notes

austin

2006-03-25T00:58:00.000-05:00

was lovely. huge thanks to all of you who came out all the way from houston just to see my show.
some things i did in texas:

- played a show with henna, who's busy dodging drama and downing pabst on the road with am syndicate these days. they are a rock and roll band.
- talked to people until my throat was hoarse and my pocketbook was full of business cards
- passed jimmy lafave's number onto an ex-roommate
- ate for free, drank for free
- obtained an excellent new haircut and some confusing styling tips from nina chou
- watched shows performed by old friends, new friends, and people who are not my friends and whom i don't know personally, but whom i enjoy very much: the reputation, julie doiron, the weepies, the submarines, te shi ma mire, lyle lovett, oranger, gemma hayes, ben taylor, owen, terri hendrix and lloyd maines, annie hayden, the twilight singers (sort of -- watched them from the outside of a bar where they were playing), bruce robison, we are scientists, shearwater, tralala, and rocky votolato.

some things i didn't do in texas:

- watch k. mccarty perform, even though she was slated to play at two different showcases
- catch the debut of that betty page movie
- pot
- make out with any boys. i no longer even have time to date people online, and this my friends is just plain sad. i need to get a life.

some pictures:

shows coming up in new york and seattle. stay tuned.

signed jeremy nobody

2006-03-06T00:31:00.000-05:00

new words; new song. or rather, old song i've been working on for a long time and have finally finished. if the name jeremy nobody doesn't ring a bell for you, read this website.

my hope is to be ready to perform this at sxsw next week. we'll see how practice goes. i still need to rewrite a few lines here and there, i think:

signed jeremy nobody
by me

we drove south
till the gas ran out
and the sound of the engine
gave way to dust and clouds

you were right about the desert
and the way it swallows you whole
you were sick of getting better
so young, but good at getting old

so are you going out with a bang?
will they be singing the songs that you sang?
growing taller in the stories they tell [Ed. note - this and the next line will probably change. also, depending on how things feel, i might also add a bridge]
jeremy nobody farewell

if i gave you a number
odd and smaller than ten
that's how old you were when
all the cowboys left the west

for the sake of conversation
there was nothing left to say
you could complain about bitterness of luck
or go to the trouble to explain

but are you going up in flames?
will they be singing the songs that you sang?
growing taller in the stories they tell
jeremy nobody farewell

don't break before the chorus
don't break your father's heart
we'll sweep out the ashes
from the wood of your guitar

and in a picture of the skyline
the mojave lights at dusk
you were waiting for the ground to open up
and swallow both of us

so are you going up in flames?
will they be singing the songs that you sang?
never growing old in the stories they tell
jeremy nobody farewell

no pants, no problem

2006-03-04T22:41:00.000-05:00

the only thing better than writing songs is writing songs with no pants on if you own a guitar with a nice soft wood grain, like the new one that i have.

* * *

and in other news, bushwick represent!

some words

2006-02-16T22:25:00.000-05:00

god only know what you've got to prove
to live out your days with nothing to lose
to take out a loan with nothing to pay
to settle your debts the american way

there is nothing to say.

2006-02-11T02:31:00.000-05:00

i will always be alone.

a few good band names

2006-02-09T00:53:00.000-05:00

bear in mind, eric and i looking for just one. here are some of the suggestions we've received thus far:

spinner rack
setting to sea
january effect
killer soap
invierno
the keep
project meerkat
sea foam green
20 ohm resistor
fake naked

keep them coming, yo.

show! show! show!

2006-02-05T16:12:00.000-05:00

this thursday night at makor, nyc. please come.

also, heads up to austinites and texans: i'll be coming to austin for sxsw and will be performing with henna at ventana del soul on friday mar. 17th.

montrose

2006-02-02T00:43:00.000-05:00

the montrose stop of the l train usually makes me feel a little nostalgic for houston. i know it's maudlin, but often when i pass the stop, i close my eyes and imagine the tiny thrift stores, the tattoo parlors, the broad main drag that leads from rice to the artsy part of town. behind the stores are rows and rows of tiny houses, and in those houses, my friends live and play in bands, produce plays, throw parties and write stories. they meet up for tea and post-show conversations in nearby coffeehouses where i never had to pay because the baristas remembered me.

today was no different than any other day. aside from the ongoing drainage of my airways and a wicked toothache from the cracked tooth that will hopefully get fixed on friday, there was really nothing i could complain. things have been going pretty damned well.

maybe it was the ryan adams song i was listening to or the fact that i have seen too little of my friends lately, because i really don't have many friends in new york. maybe it was because life in the real world, particularly if is your reality is new york city, isn't easy. maybe it was because it was my choice to live here and because as you get older, you can't really take these choices back so easily. you can travel, but it gets harder and harder to uproot yourself.

either way, i cried tonight when the train passed the montrose stop.

adventure of a restless cougher

2006-01-28T22:56:00.000-05:00

wyckoff heights hospital turned out to be located only a few short blocks from my house. because i could, i took the l-train shuttle between jefferson street and dekalb, about five short blocks, because i was exhausted and short of breath. a bored-looking receptionist at the information desk waved me in the general direction of the emergency room. she probably the same lady who told me she couldn't answer my insurance questions over the phone and told me initially that they couldn't give me a chest xray.

i wasn't sure exactly where the emergency room was, so i walked down a hall and approached the double steel doors at the end of the hall. the doors opened outward toward me to reveal a vast room, cordoned off by paper curtains and bustling with doctors, nurses and families. every last foot of space had a bed in it, and in those beds lay anxious pregnant women, men in various states of undress and unconsciousness, and old men who looked so frail and pained they appeared to be dying. nearly everyone had an iv.

i only, as it turns out, had a bad case of the flu. i felt very out of place in that emergency room.

in yorba linda, the emergency room has a waiting area, and you have to sign in to get past the beige door. the room behind the beige door has a few beds in it, and on those beds sit kids with earaches and stomach viruses. next to those beds, their parents mill around in polo shirts looking at their watches and trying to catch glances from the doctors and nurses as they hurry by. there is a second entryway, a set of double steel doors that open outwards like the doors at wyckoff heights, but those doors are at the end of a hallway behind the beige door. i have never walked through those steel doors.

they gave me some antiobiotics and told me to drink lots of gatorade. i guess the internet could have told me that for free.

but what counts is that i don't have pneumonia as i thought i did and that i'll be better in time for the feb. 9 show at makor. eric l. (ex-highwire) and i have been working on some new songs, and we're hoping to be able to debut them at that show.

and on an unrelated note, i can't decide whether to be flattered or horrified: i'm apparently bargain bin material. it really is time to record a new cd.

happy birthday to

2006-01-14T19:47:00.000-05:00

me!

i write this houston where i will, after joining my friends for a nice vegetarian dinner, beat the living shit out of an elmo pinata.

it's one way of celebrating.

this is the best day ever.

just a thought

2006-01-04T01:49:00.000-05:00

from: me
to: a friend

> sorry to hear you've been down. but that's
> the stuff that gets the creative
> juices flowing, right?

by the way, for the record, i hate it when people say that.

it's to be filed under the generally asinine category of "oh well, x y z shitty things are happening to you. but that's actually a good thing because you can write a song about it, right?"

if your friend were an antigun activist and some psycho shot your friend in the face, you wouldn't go up to him and tell him, "hey, sorry you got shot in the face. but now you can campaign for your cause passionately and the people will DEFINITELY know you're speaking from personal experience, right?"

just a thought.

happy new year.

a

and in news of awesome

2005-12-31T01:08:00.000-05:00

i did finally get a guitar. after five hours of running around between stores on 14th street tonight, i have a martin guitar to call my own. it sounds so good.

ask me sometime about how i got an $800 martin with a fishman pickup for $200, and maybe i'll tell you. and no it does not involve stripping.

awesome? awesometown!

new

2005-12-30T15:26:00.000-05:00

sometimes the sadness takes away the words, and there is nothing i can say. i have been so quiet lately, and it's hard for me to say much, except that i still care. i'm not directing that at anyone in particular; it's just something i want you to remember.

this has been a difficult year for everyone, i think.

but the new year brings: a new guitar, some new songs, and a new ep -- co-written -- which is still in progress.

as usual, my fingers are crossed.

* * *

if you know anyone who is interested in throwing together an animated music video for cheap or free, please let me know.

unfortunately, i can't offer too much by way of financial compensation (i feel very badly about this), but on the upside, your video would likely get play on mtv china. they've recently contacted me expressing an interest in my work, and i don't have anything to send them.

photos from thursday night's show at kenny's castaways

2005-12-10T17:53:00.000-05:00

thanks to celina fang for taking photos:

decisions and quiche

2005-12-09T18:19:00.000-05:00

i've decided i would sooner take my guitar to a luthier and get it fixed than buy a new guitar. i can't really buy a new guitar right now.

in the meantime, i just made the eggiest, cheesiest quiche ever. the quiche is eggy and cheesy because i skimped on heavy cream, and i skimped on heavy cream because i am cheap. oh well. it's edible, and it will feed me for the rest of the week.

and in other news, hey look -- it's santa to the max.

broken guitar

2005-12-09T02:02:00.000-05:00

the subject line pretty much says it all. it stopped working before soundcheck tonight, and i had to play the entire set glued to an instrument mike.

it's the only guitar i have, and i've had it since 2002.

i don't know what i'm going to do.

anxieties, both general and specific

2005-12-05T22:45:00.000-05:00

this shirt has talking bears on it. it on sale, which just goes to show that i am one of the few people who would ever think that talking bears are awesome. and this shirt has a pink bear on it.

this isn't the best album cover ever. but it is a pretty damned awesome album cover, isn't it?

there's a snowstorm in progress right now, my first, and it makes me worry about how i will pry the metal front door of our industrial building open -- and how i will manage to stay warm when i'm lugging a guitar around in the snow.

i am full of anxieties, both general and specific. my stomach is starting to hurt badly again.

what else is new?

ack

2005-12-02T00:10:00.000-05:00

i am much more poor than i thought i was.

comida

2005-11-27T14:18:00.000-05:00

post-thanksgiving notes

2005-11-25T12:20:00.000-05:00

this morning my roommate kim woke me up to inform me that something in our bathroom was leaking. we called the superintentent, but he wasn't picking up his phone, so the three of us slipped parkas over our pajamas and trudged up the stairs and outside. we pounded on the superintendant's door until i said it was too cold and he probably wasn't home so can we please go back inside?

the puddles on the sidewalk were frozen solid.

my other roommate called the landlord jj who was, as usual, none too pleased about hearing from his tenants, but nevertheless told us to go into the boiler room to turn off the water main. we did, and the leaking stopped. we spent the rest of the morning mopping the floor yet again. all of the faucets in our house still seem to work, and the toilet still flushes, so i think everything might be okay; i just hope we still have hot water because i did want to take a shower before i go to my friend's house for post-thanksgiving thanksgiving dinner.

i'm going more for the company than for the lack of food. we made a vegetarian thanksgiving feast for about 18 people, and in the end, there were only three people dining. i'm proud of what i accomplished (with some assistance from kd): nine courses cooked from scratch in the span of half a day. the only thing that was not made from scratch was the graham cracker crust in the pumpkin pie, which was storebought. here are some things we ate:

three vegetarian pot pies
salad with apples, pears, mangoes, blue cheese dressing and golden raisins
buttered green beans with mango chutney
cranberry-apple relish -- i simmered this over a medium flame for an hour to get the flavor right
french onion soup -- made with vegetarian stock, not beef broth, and served with croutons and melted cheese. we heated the bowls in the oven to brown the cheese.
herbed potato stuffing
scalloped corn -- sauteed onions, bell peppers and celery baked with corn under a breaded crust
pumpkin pie -- the recipe called for powdered ginger, but we minced fresh ginger for this
honey cake

i wanted to go shopping today because i desperately need sweaters and thermal underwear, but it's too cold, so i'm going shopping online or window browsing (browser-browsing?) at least, since merely browsing is something i can actually afford to do.

happy thanksgiving, everyone.

baking is coping

2005-11-24T04:38:00.000-05:00

thanksgiving: an excuse to cook up ridiculous amounts of food that you ordinarily wouldn't have the excuse to cook. tonight i used two small jars of honey to make this cake, which left the kitchen smelling like bread and honey:

Honey Cake

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup sour milk
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Cream shortening. Add egg and honey; stir well. Sift flour with
baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Add alternately with milk to
creamed mixture. Bake in a well- greased 9 x 13 in. pan at 375
degrees for about 50 minutes.

i also baked sugar cookies (from cookie dough mix that cf brought), baked herb-seasoned potato chips and chopped up vegetables in preparation for tomorrow's projects.

tomorrow i will make: vegetarian pot pie (crust plus filling), potato stuffing, mashed potatoes, french onion soup, scalloped corn, cranberry-apple relish and biscuits. everything will be made from scratch -- or at least, at this early juncture, that's what i'm telling myself. my roommates will make: salmon in molasses sauce, green beans with butter, and salad with apples, pears and fancy cheese. i should probably wake up early to bake, but my sleeping schedule is off again.

my roommate is having a sex and the city marathon in the living room. he's probably going to fall asleep to the dvd and then the theme song will loop endlessly. hopefully i'll be asleep by then.

i can't cook and bake my problems away, but it at least distracts me from my problems and is a productive use of my time. in the past week, i've baked the following:

buttermilk pralines
caramel
irish soda bread
banana cake
banana and cranberry bread
brownies

my roommates are starting to get fat, and they blame me. i take it as a compliment.

i can't believe i even considered buying a turtle

2005-11-20T23:55:00.000-05:00

at the ida show, tam handed me a paper bag and explained, "it's an amaryllis plant. also, your wireless router and your moma card." i am embarrassed to say that when she wasn't looking, i looked inside the bag to see if there were cupcakes inside too and was a little disappointed when there were none. why did i do that? because i am a terrible friend.

for the record: it was very nice of her to bring me a plant. had i known that tn would be at the show, i would have brought her the book and dvd she lent me. possibly even her electric drill set, though that's pretty heavy to carry.

on the subway ride home, i stared at the amaryllis in the paper bag and was reminded of the v.c. andrews novel i had read when i was in seventh grade. it was called "flowers in the attic," and in the novel, a selfish mother locked her four children in the attic so that she could inherit a fortune from her relatives. the children, who were the product of an incestuous relationship between brother and sister, lived in that attic for several years, and the only plant they ever managed to keep alive was an amaryllis plant, the only flower sturdy enough to blossom in a place with very little natural light. "flowers in the attic" was later adapted into a made-for-tv film. i heard it wasn't very good.

all i could think about when i stared at the plant was the v.c. andrews novel, and i thought to myself, the amaryllis is the most depressing flower that ever was. there was a big green stalk and two green buds, the promise of bloom, at the top. i am going to have to water thing thing regularly to keep it alive, i thought glumly as the train passed all the familiar stops, graham, grand, and montrose. i felt sorry for the plant. it will probably die, i thought.

the train finally stopped at jefferson street, and i grabbed the paper bag with the amaryllis plant and headed for the stairs. when i was halfway to the top, i stumbled or tripped and fell down. the paper bag slipped from hands, and my hands hit the concrete as i landed on the ground. except for a scrape on my hand, i was okay. i picked myself up, dusted myself off, grabbed the paper bag and walked up the rest of the stairs.

i checked the plant to see if it was okay. it looked fine at first, but then i noticed that in the impact, the two amaryllis blossoms had fallen off. and even though i had in my mind maligned the plant during the entire trip home, i felt very sad and guilty. i started to cry.

poor plant.

you will always be the same. i will always be alone.

2005-11-19T03:47:00.000-05:00

part of me thinks: how can i be sad when i have a warm room to sleep in and plaid bedroom slippers with red felt apples on them?

but tonight i felt disconnected again. the sadness wasn't anything new, and i know i won't be sad forever.

but i do know that i will always be alone.

the edible adventure

2005-11-14T22:40:00.000-05:00

i spent the evening chasing paper cuts at the kinko's near astor place, where i printed out, photocopied, and sliced up my roommate kim's avant garde flier for the dec. 8 show. the fliers are little squares of bright yellow paper, printed with chaotic ribbon squiggles that actually spell out the information for the show. the ribbon typeface was something that kd actually hand-drew, scanned and then made into a font for this occasion. yes, kim makes fonts. that impresses me so very much, far more than she knows.

300 handbills were due today; i had to go to the all-night post office to mail them to the organization that's actually slipping them into a mailing and sending them to 300 people in the new york area. (thanks, debra and mags!)

right now i'm eating toasted fancy-bread (12 different kinds of grains! organic!) from whole foods with el presidente-brand cheese spread from the 24-hours pseudo whole foods off the lorimer stop, the mart where i bought edamame. i am also eating a bowl of miso soup, which i made with superfluous quantities of seaweed, and will soon be eating a bowl of thin-skin chicken dumplings. after this, i'll probably eat half the container of sliced pineapple i bought from whole foods. and then i'll pack an apple from whole foods, which i will slowly nibble throughout the day at work tomorrow.

normally i never get to eat this well -- it's always eggs from the ghetto corner supermarket, dollar bread, and tired vegetables from chinatown. so i feel compelled to describe my food in elaborate detail so that if i am poor again in the future and can no longer shop at the yuppie food marts, i can scroll back to these entries and remember a time when i ate well.

new words

2005-11-13T13:25:00.000-05:00

dirty hearts, dirty hands

you never said i'm sorry
you said that life could be much better
in another country
maybe back in argentina
where everybody wants to be your friend
and the government knows your name

you're the only one that gets away with it
you're the one who never has to ask
you would not dare to let them touch you
with their dirty hearts and dirty hands

you made it through the army
pencil and a sketchbook in your bag
you were the first one to draw me
and now that picture's all i have
you never said you'd be there
you said it yourself: man, life is short
but every time you try to walk away
you ask me to block the door

'cause you're the only one that gets away with it
you're the one who never has to ask
you would not dare to let me touch you
with my dirty heart and dirty hands

you never said i love you
even though i know the words are cheap
and i don't have to know you
to know that your price is much too steep
you blame it on the city
the people here look and talk the same
but when you're feeling lonely
you call me again to say you've changed

'cause you're the only one that gets away with it
you're the one who never has to ask
i would not dare to let you touch me
with your dirty heart and dirty hands

no life, new songs

2005-11-12T12:03:00.000-05:00

i've had no life lately. i haven't been responding to email. i'm sorry.

on the upside, though, i've been writing new songs.

these days, i'm reclusive, but happy.

what does this say about me?

2005-10-29T21:33:00.000-04:00

i am going to be friendster for halloween.

the artfuloft is ready for halloween

2005-10-29T06:06:00.000-04:00

today i:

spent some quality time with a friend
baked dozens of cakes and cookies in preparation for the halloween party tomorrow, a proper housewarming for the artfuloft
learned to use an electric drill
rearranged the furniture of the house
cobbled together a rough shoe rack out of scraps of lumber my roommates and i have picked out of garbage heaps in brooklyn. this shoe rack cost $2 -- the price of the l-brackets that support the shelves
made a hangable tea kettle out of a broken saucepan
tried valiantly to install a wireless card on my roommate's computer, but failed even though i adjusted his dhtcp info (is that the proper acronoym?) to match up the settings up on the server we use
cleaned like crazy

* * *

photos from the show at the loft, a beautiful soho room like something out of a movie, coming soon.

i haven't had a chance to actually write much email these past two weeks due to the hectic schedule. apologies if you haven't heard from me yet; i'm still playing catch up.

incriminating photos

2005-10-26T22:53:00.000-04:00

luggage: found. it arrived a day after i did, but nothing inside was missing, and everything was more or less in one piece. halloween is this weekend, and i have a thousand things i need to take care of, like laundry, fixing my website, getting sleep and sewing a costume.

things are pretty hectic here. i still have to reply to all the emails i sort of ignored while i was gone. i am playing a show tomorrow. here's the info:

Thu Oct 27
The Loft
383 W. Broadway, 6th floor, NYC
Benefit show - w/ Jenny Choi, Wendy Ip, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Yellow Rage, MTV's SuChin Pak, actress Christine Toy Johnson and other artists. Advance tickets available at yellowribbonparty.com.

new york is starting to get very cold. they've turned on the heat in the building finally, but that doesn't mean you can wander around in a tshirt, not unless you want your arms to fall off. my scarves now also serve a utilitarian function.

here is a grid of photos from my time in san francisco:

a quick on flickr will also yield many, many photos from the show. i found a bootleg of the thursday night show, and its name is mr. e. haller.

how exactly do you sew a bear costume, really?

homecoming

2005-10-25T23:54:00.000-04:00

although i came home to find the chairs in my room rearranged, no one used my laptop when i was gone. this makes me happy.

ata airlines managed to lose not merely one piece, but both pieces of luggage i checked in, both the backpack and the cardboard box full of cd's. this means: i have to wear lisa loeb glasses until they find my luggage. and also, i can't charge my cell phone and mp3 player. ata airlines had better deliver my bags soon: half of my warm clothes are in that backpack.

time to upload pictures. tomorrow i must buy a second (larger) down comforter because it's 40 degrees outside. i miss heat.

the red house painters walking tour of san francisco

2005-10-24T04:38:00.000-04:00

on this particular trip to san francisco, i'm trying to take what i call the red house painters tour of the city. that is, i'm trying to visit all of the san francisco landmarks mentioned in red house songs. today, the lovely and ridiculously well-connected min jung, the dapper and flirtatious sergio v., my kid sister, sandra from edmonton and i headed to ocean beach, where min jung used the seaside backdrop to take "emo shots" of us when we weren't looking. i never set foot on a single beach this summer. it felt good to sink my ankles into the sand and to jump on kelp bulbs when no one was looking. i found a shell, but it wasn't very good, so i threw it back into the ocean.

there is a beautiful red house painters album called ocean beach. tomorrow, if possible, i'd like to go to grace cathedral park or maybe visit the great highway. where exactly are san geronimo and cabezon?

thanks to the generosity of my hosts, this has been a truly amazing and lovely trip. photos to be posted in a few days when i get home and get back to my own computer.

bicoastal living is: gothamist and sfist [Ed. note - san francisco's answer to gothamist] in the same week.

some people from mtv will be filming and interviewing the performers at my next show in new york. i've been told that i will be asked to name a favorite music video during the interview. due to the lack of both television and time, i haven't watched music videos in many, many years. in the interest of not sounding like an idiot, i'm going to try to watch a few good ones this week. any suggestions?

a few more things:

(1) podcast of interview with the tourist in the city radio show (promo for last week's show) is here.
(2) photos and bootleg videos of the sf show are floating around on the internet. google and ye shall find.
(3) san francisco is cleaner and warmer than new york, but new york's public transportation system wins hands-down. there are lots of artsy, but emotionally unavailable boys in new york, but there are also lots of geeky, emotionally unavailable boys in san francisco. it's a draw?

dorm life revisited with my sister kimberly

2005-10-22T15:41:00.000-04:00

(posted from earlier)

my sister kimberly is piecing together a collage of art postcards on the white wall next to her bed. there was a sheryl crow concert at the greek theatre tonight, and when we got back to kl's dorm, people were streaming out to the parking lots in droves. i told kim not to put up too many postcards because i'm taking her to haight-ashbury tomorrow -- she's never been -- and there will be plenty more postcards to pick up for free.

dinner tonight was at alegria, one of those restaurants so upscale that they only have five items on the menu, all of which cost more than twenty dollars. we considered a japanese restaurant, which eric and tam had recommended, but the place sounded like it was too far. we dined on scallops, polenta and the best roast pork i have ever eaten in my life.

on our way back from the restaurant, i saw a flash of white and felt something on my head. it was a giant moth, and though i didn't know that at the time, i could tell it was some kind of horrifying insect.

"oh my god!" screamed kimberly.

"oh my god!" i screamed too, "get it off!"

instead of helping me swat away the bug, she ran for cover several feet away on the sidewalk.

the moth eventually flew away.

"thanks a lot, kim," i said, "i'm being attacked by a giant insect, and you just run away. what if someone were to run up to me and throw acid in my face?"

"you'd be really ugly, and i'd run away," she said.

live blogging from lap-pop 2005

2005-10-20T23:53:00.000-04:00

it's rare for one to have the opportunity to check my email during a show or, for that matter, post an indulgently self-referential blog entry, but the nature of this event -- lap-pop, a blogging-themed conference -- lends itself to this sort of geekiness.

as someone had promised me earlier, there are cute, geeky guys in abundance in the audience. some people are wearing yahoo backpacks (because they work there?). i think min jung is webcasting this in between emceeing stints. earlier a guy named ernie read snippets from his blog, little yellow different, that were hilarious.

min jung has really good lighting in her bathroom, and i was able to pluck my eyebrows and floss my teeth before this show.

now a lady named glenda is reading a blog entry about the phenomenon of burning man. henna's been to burning man. in a picture taken of her at the festival, which she showed me once, she was wearing a gauze shirt and black go-go boots.

my sister's in the audience watching this. she and two friends came all the way from berkeley.

i'm a little nervous, not about playing my songs but about what i'm going to say between them. i'm going to have to refer to some past blog drama to ensure that my show suits the theme of this event, but i'm not sure how much i want to give away. maybe i'll just read snippets of my old tour diary.

we'll see.

show! show! show!

2005-10-19T10:49:00.000-04:00

hello. i just woke up. i am leaving for san francisco in three hours. i have to do laundry before i leave!

thu oct. 20
8 p.m.
LOCUS ARTS @ SPACE 180
180 Capp Street, 3rd Floor (@17th Street)
San Francisco, CA

Presenting a night of performance & readings & photography from notable APA bloggers and artists. Lap-POP! will be an intersection between geekery, personal expression, and pop culture. Wifi a plenty. BYOG = Bring Your Own Geekery. (laptop, digital camera, camphones, etc.)

with Ernie Hsiung, Writer of
www.littleyellowdifferent.com
Glenda Bautista, Writer of
www.agendacide.com
Robynn Takayama, Sound Artist
of www.nonogirl.com
Courtney Patubo, Visual Photography of
www.endofthetour.com

AND

yours truly, of course.

i'll be hanging out in sf for the week, so get in touch with me if you'd like to hang out at some point. maybe we can have an after-after party.

slow, sad and beautiful

2005-10-18T00:47:00.000-04:00

overrated:

(1) franz ferdinand/sons and daughters afterparty. i can't really complain because i was on the guestlist and didn't have to pay, but that was far too late on a monday evening for me to be out. i must be getting old.
(2) the arcade fire. yes, some of you may find this to be appalling
(3) u.s. news and world report

underrated:

(1) finding gainful employment and thus buying more frozen dumplings
(2) new harvey danger (of flagpole sitta fame) [the entire album is available for download and for free here.]
(2) new friends who play slow, sad and beautiful music: jen, tomo and drew

what a wonderful weekend i had: my show. jen's show. two birthday dinners for friends. an evening of piquant wine, acoustic guitar, and poignant four-part harmonies with new friends at a humble, beautiful brownstone in clinton hill.

friends, i don't have to leave new york after all. it's all going to work out, i think.

live

2005-10-15T13:48:00.000-04:00

my roommate kim's a great photographer. she's also a motion graphic designer. see her online portfolio here.

creeps

2005-10-15T12:03:00.000-04:00

this story creeps me out.

on "no"

2005-10-15T09:29:00.000-04:00

the taste of rejection lingers more strongly in the mouth than the taste of alcohol.

also, did you know that j church is (1) asian and (2) lives in austin? i didn't know either of these things. he wrote a column in a recent issue of giant robot, the one that features cover art from the late great margaret kilgallen.

yet another reason to stay away from the bronx, if possible

2005-10-13T03:12:00.000-04:00

someone needs to increase this reward for information leading to the capture of the person who shot and critically wounded a chinese deliveryman in the bronx this week. $1,000 is simply not enough. i hope they catch those bastards. unfortunately, though, they probably won't.

two shows this week

2005-10-11T18:49:00.000-04:00

(1) wed 10/12 - sidewalk cafe - this show was booked somewhat last-minute, but i'd love to see you come regardless. i'll be playing a full, hourlong set. 94 Ave A (and 6th street), (212) 473-7373

(2) fri 10/14 - the vapor - short set at art auction - 26th floor productions - tickets $10, doors at 9 pm, 143 Madison between 31st and 32nd, (212) 348-1353.

three fishes, zero wishes

2005-10-11T18:38:00.000-04:00

you don't get any prizes for living life. some people say that life is a gift, but sometimes, on days like this one, you just wish you could go back to the department store and ask for some kind of refund.

i wish i could guess how many jellybeans there are in a big jar full of jellybeans and get to keep the entire jar of jellybeans for free as a prize. i wish i could explain why people disappear or simply drop out when you least expect them to. i wish i wish my phone would ring with a call from someone bearing good news, such as news of gainful employment that would allow me to avoid having to move from new york.

i've given up a lot to come here, and i don't want to leave.

shows this week

2005-10-11T02:57:00.000-04:00

laundry + superhero (hidden in the pocket of tradon's clothes) = double amputation:

apple cider vinegar + shallow dish + a few drops of dishwashing fluid to break the skim of the liquid = shockingly effective fruit fly trap:

for those of you who use livejournal

2005-10-09T03:24:00.000-04:00

take note: i live in a loft.

pity party vs. pinata party

2005-10-09T02:40:00.000-04:00

as we all know, i love pinatas and am of the belief that a pinata party is almost always better than a non-pinata party. so when my roommate kim invited me to attend pinata party in williamsburg, i could hardly contain my excitement. i considered bringing the handle of our paint roller because i imagined we might be able to savagely beat the pinata to pieces with it. kim said it was bring your own food/beer, so i even baked a chocolate devil's food cake and wrapped it in tinfoil and plastic bags to protect it from the elements.

so i followed kim's directions when i got out at the morgan street station, but the directions led me to a street i no longer recognized. i made a turn when i wasn't supposed to and wound up at a police station, where i banged on the door until they let me in. the police officer was very nice and gave me directions to the pinata party, but instead of following his directions, i walked out to meet my roommate, who was cold, drenched and equally lost. the two of us followed tried to retrace the directions that the cop gave me, but we got hopelessly lost in a neighborhood not too far from the housing projects that the cop had warned me to avoid. it was raining, the slanty, windy kind of rain, and kim and i were drenched by the time we finally found the right building on moore street: waterlogged backpacks and wet jeans stuck to the legs.

we thought the party was on the second floor, so we knocked on the door of the loft, only to discover that the party was in fact on the fourth floor. the guy who answered the door, a heavily tattoed guy in a turban, said we should come back to the second floor for the party if we didn't like the other party.

on the right floor, the fourth floor, we knocked and knocked, but no one came to the door. a guy and two girls, the kind of girls who wear long painted fake nails and fake-designer jeans, joined us on the landing and knocked to get into the party. as it turned out, they were headed for the same party that we were. my roommate's friend, an artist, was nowhere to be found, and neither she nor i knew a single person at the party. most of the people at the party didn't seem to have any particularly interesting interests; they seemed like the people who would list "clubbing" as a hobby or "anything but rap or country" as their favorite music. i set down the cake in the living room, where a middle-aged jewish man first insulted the smushed appearance of my cake and then immediately afterward tried to hit on me. the worst thing of all, though, was that there was no pinata to be found anywhere at this party.

people started to dig into my chocolate cake with their fingers. my roommate whispered to me that we should leave right away.

on our way down, we decided to stop by the party on the second floor. the loft was the warmly-lit home of a local painter named adie russell. it looked like something out of the pages of readymade magazine, with its 18-foot ceilings, tasteful modern furnishings, and fanciful paintings. the decor wasn't even the best part of the party; the best part of the party were the hors duerves, which made good icebreakers because i had to ask people what the foods were before i could eat them. did you know that pears taste really good when you eat them on top of endives with some brie? and that a fig, if stuffed with blue cheese and walnuts, is equally delicious? half of a cherry tomato tastes really good when you eat it with a little bit of goat cheese and a tiny kalamata olive. in addition to these things, i also ate: an orange, a chocolate cupcake and some matzoh bread in vegetable dip.

the crowd at the party consisted of low-key artists, musicians, designers, photographers and dot-commers in their twenties and thirties. people were slightly tipsy and generally very friendly. i got a lot of business cards and gave away a lot of cards, too. it felt a little like a party in san francisco, and i mean that in a good way. i don't usually much like parties, but i liked this one.

* * *

someone at my food, so i used my new typewriter to leave this note:

well.

2005-10-06T21:25:00.000-04:00

that went surprisingly well.

love letter typewriter

2005-10-06T02:05:00.000-04:00

today i bought my first typewriter, a vintage smith-corona, circa 1960. it cost $15, and it's the only frivolous purchase i've made in a while. the seller on craigslist was a writer in his sixties who claimed that he had written his first novel on that typewriter in the summer of '67. "of course, no one ever published that novel, but it was my first, and i wrote it on this typewriter right here," he told me.

the typewriter came in a heavy black case that looked like it was either made for instruments or for guns. i lugged the thing down the stairs of the subway and then lugged it all the way back to jefferson street.

when i came home, i cleared off my desk and typed some words on a paint sample from home depot. then i typed a postcard to my friend venu and a message for our refrigerator. i'm going to use this typewriter to label envelopes and make invitations to the dinner party i will throw for my friends after i am gainfully employed.

i like the way the paper smells like hot ink after i type a paragraph too quickly. there's something satisfying about punching letters into paper that you don't get when you're printing things out on a fancy laser printer.

* * *

i know already that i've failed the bar: i knew i would fail it before i took it, and i knew that i had failed when i finished it. yes, i recognize that i studied for the exam under atrocious circumstances, but i'm not quite willing to let myself use that as an excuse.

when i get my failing score in november, i'm still going to be crushed and upset (and probably unemployed and broke). and no one will really attempt to comfort me because, after all, i saw it coming all along.

if i can't find a way to mitigate this brokeness, i will have to sell what little i have left (except for the stuffed animals, the laptop and the guitar) and come back to houston on a greyhound bus. though i like houston, the last thing i want to do right now is leave new york. i'm starting to really love it here.

rejection from a boy is something i can deal with; that kind of rejection, if delivered swiftly, directly and politely, isn't likely to cause any serious bleeding. but rejection from life is another matter entirely. one blow follows another and then another. at first you stand up and weather the obstacles, but when it's too much, you'll find yourself prostrate and limp on the ground, waiting for the blows to stop and yet not really caring whether they do.

i really shouldn't stay up because then i think too much.

nobody likes a morose girl.

misc.

2005-10-05T03:20:00.000-04:00

phone calls and notes. dates in the western region. dates in the village. database design (a self-taught crash course). portfolio a-go-go. non-fiction books i plan to return when i've read them. vegetarian dumplings. skyflakes. new crushes. old crushes. sleep.

99 ranch

2005-10-03T20:11:00.000-04:00

for 100, we try harder.

good

2005-10-03T02:42:00.000-04:00

i hope your weekend was every bit as awesome as my weekend, which involved an unexpected invitation to a pixies show and a post-show after-party where my friends and i cooked dumplings, baked brownies, and played scrabble into the wee hours of the night. i ate too much blue and pink cotton candy. my tongue turned purple. coney island is really, really far.

i am very behind in work. i am working on some shows, i am working on finding gainful employment, i am working on the website, i am working on new pictures. i am aware that i should have used semicolons to separate the statements in the last sentence.

if you've emailed me and i haven't writen back to you, i'm sorry i haven't written back. i will try to write back at some point within the next week or so.

* * *

and on a somewhat unrelated note, please discuss:

shoegazer bliss

2005-10-01T04:27:00.000-04:00

i love, love, love aden. this is one of the best bands i've discovered all year. i started listening to them as i was walking around doing errands in the east village today, and i sort of melted into a small puddle of shoegazer bliss on the sidewalk. thanks to tam for the recommendation.

if you get a chance, go see annie hayden live. i only caught the tail end of her show at magnetic fields the other night, but what i saw was very good. she has a new cd out on merge records.

my throat hurts a little, and i'm feeling a little feverish. i know i should go to bed, but i'm working on w. coast dates and dealios for oct. 19-25. i should have done this earlier, i know. can't. go. to. bed. until. work. is. done.

it's my roommate alex's last night here at the loft that still has no name. as we feasted on heated frozen cheese pizzas and chinatown dumplings, she and i sat around and talked about boys who like lame bands and or play guitar badly. she gave me a going away present, a glittery lil' kim sticker designed by marc jacobs. for absolutely no reason at all, it cost $27.00. i'm going to miss alex. let's hope the new roommate kim is just as awesome.

two things, one bad and one good

2005-09-30T03:13:00.000-04:00

(1) the cold makes my stomach hurt. i don't like bridges and tunnels. it's starting to get cold.

(2) i like somebody.

rock and roll mcdonald's

2005-09-29T02:18:00.000-04:00

i appreciate the (apt) inclusion of the wesley willis song "rock and roll mcdonald's" in the film "supersize me," which i'm watching right now.

the images of fast food that flash by on this documentary make me slightly nauseated, not hungry, and i think that has a lot to do with the way that stomach problems have radically affected my diet. there are a lot of things that i can't eat anymore or can only in very, very limited quantities. it's not a matter of choice, really. if i sat down to a supersize meal of the sort that morgan spurlock gorged himself on during his self-imposed month of mcmeals, i would probably lose the contents of my stomach violently and painfully within an hour or so. i couldn't even eat the mcgriddle pancakes, at least not with that rich syrup they give you. rich foods and greasy foods make me ill.

so when i buy foods, i opt for bland foods, foods with carbohydrates and vegetables or vegetarian options, since the vegetarian dishes are often less greasy and less rich. sadly, i love cheese, and yet i stay away from cheese whenever possible. i never eat fried food. i love desserts, but i have been reduced to looking at them in the window. once in a while, i'll buy a tiny piece of cheesecake and bring it home to eat it, but i know that i wouldn't be able to eat it on the street like everyone else. that would invariably make me sick. i hate that.

every morning i work, the bagel guy on fifth avenue at west 21st is puzzled by what i order every time: an everything bagel with nothing on it.

"let me get this straight. you don't want cream cheese or butter?" he always asks me.

but the upshot of it all, i suppose, is that i'm not fat and that it's possible i won't get fat anytime soon. if i were to start eating foods that were bad for me, my body would force me to expunge those foods from my system before i could even begin to digest and absorb them. it's better to eat this way, i think.

i think i'm going to eat some edamame now and watch the rest of this movie.

tonight i finished making a new shirt out of an old ktru tshirt and wrote half a song. let's see if the other half emerges tomorrow.

one mouse, two meese

2005-09-27T02:05:00.000-04:00

we have mice. i have mace.

i'm trying

2005-09-26T03:08:00.000-04:00

i have 15 mosquito bites, a bag of swedish fish to eat, and the beginnings of a cold i probably caught from my roommate. swedish fish are my favorite.

in the meantime, the search for gainful employment continues:

2005-09-23T10:57:00.000-04:00

my friend troy, who is holed up in spring, texas, a town just outside of houston, along with her boyfriend kurt and sa's family, said that my alma mater is incredible well-prepared for this hurricane, and after reading this press release, i have to agree. from what i recall, rice did very well during tropical storm allison. let's put it this way: my stuff was in storage in a basement that summer, and none of it was ruined. contrast the construction of rice with u of h, where the flooding ruined everything in the basement where they had decided to construct a third of the law school.

but i couldn't help but notice this quotation from the rice press release, which reveals a little about the economic background of a person who might be so privileged as to enjoy rice university's storm protection measures: "Bring something to pass the time for you and your families: books, cards, games, DVD players and DVDs, iPods, etc."

terrorists 1, me 0

2005-09-22T05:36:00.000-04:00

it's nearly 6 a.m., and i can't fall asleep because i can't stop thinking about the robberty at gunpoint outside our apartment the other night. i'm sure my roommate can't stop thinking about it either.

i attached a tiny can of pepper spray to my keychain and emptied my wallet of essential, but unused cards, like my social security card. as i lay in bed trying to fall asleep, i kept thinking of things i could do, like carry a tacky fake wallet containing minimal amounts of cash as mugger fodder. i mentally tested out some lines i could use to defuse the situation, like "hey, if i give you this wallet full of cash [Ed. note - see tacky fake wallet supra], will you please put away the gun, and we'll call it a night?" or "i just lost my job, and my boyfriend broke up with me tonight. i'm really sad. please don't do this tonight. [Ed. note - of course i don't have a boyfriend, but hey, when you're being mugged, honesty should be your last concern]."

but none of these imagined scenarios could quell my fear and help me sleep tonight because when there's a gun involved, the game automatically becomes an unfair one. the person with a gun holds all the bargaining power; the person without a gun has no bargaining power at all. nothing i could do or say could change the situation, and i think that's what scares me the most. normally, nothing scares me.

the door of my building is locked; the door of our apartment is locked; the door of my bedroom is locked with a lock i installed today. but still i can't fall asleep.

i hate to say it, but it's the truth, kids: i'm afraid.

gave me pause

2005-09-22T04:28:00.000-04:00

this article gave me pause.

bad news, bear

2005-09-21T22:20:00.000-04:00

this afternoon, i heard a loud roaring sound and an expletive coming from the direction of the bathroom. i ran out of my bedroom to discover that water was pouring into the hall. my roommate had, in his good faith effort to replace the pump in the toilet, unplugged an important pipe.

"put the thing back on!" i yelled. that was unnecessary of me. he was already hugging the toilet as he stood in rising water, fondling the back of the commode to find that vital pipe.

i ran to the living room to find my roommate's cellphone and tried to call the building superintendant. the superintendant wasn't home.

"unplug the stereo!" my roommate screamed.

"what?"

"the stereo! you have to unplug it."

and then i saw it: a live stereo plugged into an extension cord, which was attached to the wall. the plugs were immersed in water. i threw some bags onto the ground, jumped onto them, and then reached out as far as i could until my hand made contact with the cable. i yanked the extension cord out of the wall. five minutes later, the water stopped.

tonight my other roommate called me and told me she had been robbed at gunpoint outside our apartment at 9 p.m. the other night. now all of us are too rattled to leave the place; i've spent nearly all of today at home. thankfully, the internet came back up tonight, so i'm busy responding to all the email i missed these past two days.

my beloved montrose will soon be under water or at least in pieces -- so much for the possibility of moving back to houston if i am broke. my houston friends are fleeing to austin in droves, and i only found out about the hurricane today because i have no tv, and i've been without internet for two days.

my cell phone number is a houston number, so if any of you are trying to call me, you most assuredly will not get through. several people have told me that you'll get some kind of message about all circuits being busy. so please email me instead.

on the upside, i made apple cake from scratch today.

all in all, though, it's been a very bad day. my parents want me to move back to california.

thanks to tam for these photos from the sidewalk cafe:

on my way back to brooklyn tonight

2005-09-19T04:01:00.000-04:00

people at the subway station were staring at me because i was smiling. i'm not saying why.

i fought the roaches, and the roaches won

2005-09-15T05:52:00.000-04:00

yet another last straw: i was lying down on the futon in my old apartment and reading an article online when i noticed something crawling on my keyboard. it was a roach that had crawled from the futon onto my keyboard. i got up, sprayed it to death and then balled up the sheets from the futon and put them on the floor, all while muttering, "i hate this roach-infested hellhole."

of course, it would be just my luck to discover that my new apartment will be even more of a roach-infested hellhole.

but at least i'll be able to have guests.

people in new york like me better when i'm wearing glasses

2005-09-14T01:56:00.000-04:00

as i was walking back through the east village, some random old hispanic guy called out a compliment that i wasn't expecting.

"nice frames," he said. it was a welcome remark; usually it's "nice legs" or "come here, mamacita."

"thanks! i bought them at a toystore and got a prescription put in them." [Ed. note - celina, henna and i bought the frames at an adult novelty store on westheimer, but of course i didn't tell him that.]

"no kidding!" he exclaimed and walked off.

this applesauce cheese blintz is delicious. hooray for odessa cafe, where i bought a somewhat expensive slice of vegetarian lasagne that i aim to split up as a meal for two days.

but we are just the baby animal friends

2005-09-13T01:19:00.000-04:00

the search string "we are the baby animal friends!" didn't pull up a single item on google.

somehow this disappoints me.

absentia

2005-09-12T01:05:00.000-04:00

i haven't really responded to email in a week. i'm going to try to do that this week, promise. starting now! with email number one out of 455. really, no joke.

i also need to finish writing that article about jandek article for space city rock.

craig has my permission to post some very rough demos of my new songs to his very awesome site. these are not available anywhere else online -- he painstakingly transferred them to transferred from cassette to computer. you can let him know what you think here.

i think these recordings are fun because the tape speed makes it sound like i sucked helium before singing.

farewell to all those rotten teeth

2005-09-11T22:18:00.000-04:00

the $300 replacement filling, the one i paid for a few weeks before the bar exam, fell out a moment ago as i was eating granola cereal, and now i have a wide gaping hole in my tooth, one of several that i will be losing. i don't know what i'm going to do. i don't have dental insurance, and there's no way i can afford to have the problems fixed. the last dentist i saw told me that i have to have four or five root canals, and that those teeth have to be replaced by crowns, not merely caps.

tonight he reminded me of how cheap words can be

2005-09-11T01:21:00.000-04:00

he talked about how he would be moving to argentina, probably permanently, before december. he went on and on about countries and the state of the economy and the need to achieve artistic success on a larger scale.

"well, then i need you to do something for me," i said.

"sure," he said.

i took a deep breath. "i need to hear you say, if it is the truth, that you're not interested in me and that there's no possibility of anything between us ever in the future."

without a moment of hesitation, he did what i asked of him. "i'm not interested in you, and there will never be the possibility of anything between the future," he said matter of factly.

"well thanks. i guess i needed to hear that, you know, just to get on with things. and is that the truth?"

"it is. listen, i have to go," he said, beating his way to the usual hasty retreat. "but i mean, i'll call you sometime this week."

"yeah, sure," i said, and i hung up.

the truth was something that i needed to hear, but of course that didn't make me immune to sting of it. but what hurts even more than rejection is the realization of my own naitivete, colored by my desire to believe his words. he would call me up late at night and flirt with me for hours. he told me that he thought of me often and that i was the only girl who challenged him. he had said that he was thinking of moving to new york for graduate school and that he wanted to visit me in september. i had promised myself to never let him get close to me again, but nevertheless i knew that if he showed up at my door and knocked, i would let him in.

words are so cheap.

my sole consolation is that, in the end, i didn't let him break my heart. i took matters into my own hands, as i often do, and did the job myself. that doesn't necessarily make it hurt any less, though.

* * *

i just killed fifteen roaches, including a large one that was trying to get in my room. "the cucarachas gonna miss you," laughed my landlady as she watched me pick up the body of a dead roach from the floor with a napkin.

she thought it was hilarious, but i didn't think it was all that funny.

home is an improvement

2005-09-10T13:54:00.000-04:00

well it appears that i've been invited to a cmj afterparty on sept. 15th. the constantines will be performing at this afterparty. yes, it is a +1 event. but i haven't exactly figured out who my +1 will be just yet. anyone interested? it's the same week i'm moving to brooklyn, though. i'm not sure if i'll be able to make it just yet, but i would like to.

i could have sworn that the constantines had broken up already -- but i could be wrong, and that could be the libertines.

my new roommate and i discovered that the new loft was infested with fat, ferocious two-inch roaches, so we fumigated the place. he told me that when he came back to the place, the floor of every room was covered with dead and dying roaches.

we installed a new toilet seat and scoured every surface of the apartment twice. i painted one of my walls red and am installing a fake wood floor at some point before i move in next week. these days i feel like i'm living at home depot, not guitar center. i'm learning just how easy it is to underestimate the complexity and the cost of the "do-it-yourself" way.

i will have room for all of my guitars at the new apartment.

"a tree grows in brooklyn" was a really good book

2005-09-05T03:26:00.000-04:00

a medium-sized roach just crawled from the tile wall onto my right arm as i was taking a dump in my bathroom. my landlady/roommate, a 60-something year-old brazilian lady, asked me to list this apartment as "very clean and nice" in a posting to new york craigslist. she asked me to go back on craigslist and relist the apartment on her behalf every two days.

i'm tempted to post an anonymous followup message, something along the lines of: east village apartment for $900, utilities and many, many roaches included. that $900 is for the room that's smaller than the one i'm living in now, the room that's 8x6 (my room is 8x8). and this time she's asking for three months upfront. she raised the rent this time so that she could make even more of a profit off parlaying her rent-controlled apartment into two pricey sublets.

if i were mean, i would post that craigslist message, refuse to post any other messages or do anything else to help her rent out my room (not my responsibility), and report her to the building owner for sidestepping rent control laws. that would be grounds for a rent increase of several thousand dollars, since she's lived in this building since the seventies and currently makes a tidy profit off the rent she's charging.

but i'm not going to do that. it irritates me when she hangs panties to dry over my soap dish in the bathroom or when she refuses to allow me to have overnight guests. it irritates me that she won't let me bug bomb the apartment and that she insists that i pay for half of all total utilities if i get air conditioning, even though she already has an air conditioner in her room that she runs all the time and even though there's a third roommate i would be essentially subsidizing. however, the roaches are not her fault, and she hasn't gone out of her way to do anything malicious. she's not a bad person, just old and set in her ways. i never take drastic measures unless they are absolutely necessary.

but tonight i nursed a platter of vegan food and watched the sun come down over brooklyn from the roof of an artists' loft. it was one of those experiences that i had hoped for when i uprooted myself from houston and moved across the country to new york. grub is a bimonthly event, sponsored this particular night by visual resistance, a williamsburgh-based artists' collective.

and then later i went out to coffee with my friend annie and her high school friend michelle. the girls were wearing silk tops, jeans, and dainty sandals, the kind that hold up better in the suburbs where you can drive everywhere. we could only find parking on avenue d, so by the time we walked to alt cafe and back, annie said her feet hurt. but at least her car was still there when we got to avenue d.

in about a week or so, i'm going to become an official resident of brooklyn. i'm doing what every artist or musician probably does at some point; i've moving to (east) williamsburgh. at long last, i have found the cat-free loft apartment i've longed for, though i will be sharing the space with a painter and a toy designer.

must find house NOW

2005-09-04T06:06:00.000-04:00

and in other news, desperation is starting to set in because i realized that i have to find a place within two weeks. my lease is up on sept. 20, which means i have to find a place that starts in mid-september. i really have to find a place to live as soon as possible. why are these craigslist people not writing me back? ack!

2005-09-02T16:25:00.000-04:00

i can't stop reading news coverage of the hurricane. it's gut-wrenching. listen to the cnn video interview with new orleans mayor nugin if you get a chance [Ed. note - click on the video link partway down the page]

hats off to my friend angela, who has gone to volunteer at the astrodome. she's soliciting donations of things she can bring in her backpack to the astrodome and give to people -- things like socks, clean underwear, clothes, etc. you can send things to her p.o. box at:

po box 667044
houston, tx 77266-7044

point, counterpoint

2005-09-02T01:08:00.000-04:00

what w did right before the big one:

.

i find his behavior to be: (1) fey and (2) deplorable.

this is a good firsthand blog chronicling the state of things in new orleans.

i am transfixed by hurrican katrina news right now, in large part because i lived in houston for so many years and have myself slogged through heavy rains and floods as part of gulf coast life. also, they're evacuating people to houston, and people will most likely turn up in the neighborhood where i used to live because i used to live near downtown. if i were still living at the artfulhouse now, i'd probably volunteer to house somebody.

so i feel somewhat helpless. i'm no longer in houston, so i can't exactly volunteer either. now that i've made my donation to the salvation army, all i can do is obsessively browse news articles and post some links here and there.

from cnn: "Probably the most disturbing thing is that people at the convention center are starting to pass away and there is simply nothing to do with their bodies. There is nowhere to put them. There is no one who can do anything with them. This is making everybody very, very upset."

cheer up, tall skinny geeky types

2005-09-01T20:56:00.000-04:00

there's hope yet:

me: i like tall skinny geeky types
tam: yeah!
tam: that's rilly rilly hot

troupers

2005-09-01T19:09:00.000-04:00

"A single sniper or two snipers shouldn't have to shut down a hospital evacuation for two hours now," Dr. Ruth Berggren told CNN. "I look outside, I'm not seeing any military."

of course not. everybody's is in iraq.

ode to boric acid

2005-09-01T02:50:00.000-04:00

"it's like a honey bear for killing roaches, except with no honey in it and not shaped like a bear," i explained to celina. "so i guess it's really nothing like a honey bear at all."

"you have to blog that," she said.

and so i did.

la cucaracha, he's a merry little bug. mister millipede, on the other hand, is surly little bastard

2005-09-01T02:30:00.000-04:00

"you still have the problem with the cucarachas?" my brazilian landlady asked me today.

"of course," i said, "i killed more than a dozen just last night. they were all over the dish rack."

she waved her hand dismissively. "las cucarachas go away when the winter time come."

but what she really meant was, now the roaches will be replaced by giant millipedes. good bye, roaches. hello, giant millipedes.

actually, that's not entirely true because, after all, the kitchen and the bathroom are still teeming with roaches.

and in news of fresh drama

2005-08-31T14:47:00.000-04:00

recommended way of starting off the day: breakfast cereal with small blueberries in it.

bad way of starting off the day: reading an angry email from a friend and then spending an hour drafting a response. i've had better mornings, though i suppose it's not really morning anymore is it?

i couldn't fall asleep until 8 am last night, and i woke up at 2 pm, but only because i dragged myself out of bed. my sleeping schedule is badly, badly off. some friends have recommended melatonin, and i think i'm going to have to take them up on the recommendation because i can't live like this.

for the record, though, last night was for the most part a very good night. it was one of those nights that makes you remember why you moved here in the first place.

now it's off to williamsburgh to do the house-hunting thing.

post-show notes

2005-08-31T02:32:00.000-04:00

currently celina is out cold on my futon in an old purple chinese school tshirt. i am eating a tiny bag of white grape gummy candies and typing with fingers that are sore from playing a show, the first proper show i've played in a while.

the guy who played before me broke his string and decided to cut his set short because of it. he didn't ask anyone if he could borrow a guitar or get a new string from someone. i suppose i should have asked him if he wanted to borrow mine, but i was busy eating as much of my brie-and-apple sandwich as i could before my set. also, getting a new string out of my guitar case would have required a trip down to the basement, and i didn't really want to get up. so yes, i really am a terrible person.

celina, jay w, jared rehberg, darin d, jimmy, tam and eric (ex-highwire) (the latter are two recent sf transplants) were some of the people who had came to watch me play. a bearded guy in a baseball cap also came to see me play. i have no idea who he was, but he offered to buy me a drink and said, "it's so great to see you again," so i said, "it's great to see you too. thanks for coming!"

also in the audience: a singaporean music video producer who saw me perform many years ago at the bitter end. "it was snowing that night, and you kept apologizing for looking puffy. you said it was because of the cold." what i probably meant was that dressing in layers for cold weather made me look puffy. at some point during my set, he paid for my food tab. i need to email him to thank him, but i can't remember his real name, only that he said his nickname was radium.

at the end of the night, i walked down to the sidewalk cafe's basement and carried my guitar case to the ground level. it seemed a little heavier than usual, and when i opened up the case to put in my guitar, i found out why. inside the case was a fisher price pull-a-tune xylophone. it was like the part of that movie punch drunk love, where some van pulls up outside a warehouse and drops off an ornate wooden organ in the middle of the street.

as we all stood around outside the club talking afterward, i played a few nursery songs on the xylophone. eventually, a tall boy with a shag haircut heard the noise and came out from the club to claim the xylophone as his. he had accidentally placed it in my guitar case instead of his own.

i surrendered the instrument somewhat reluctantly, and then everyone walked to yaffa cafe for the after-party, which was actually just dinner and dessert. i had a slice of wild strawberry cake, which wasn't actually all that wild, just small.

my friend jay w says that new yorkers talk about real estate like people in other parts of the country talk about weather. it's a nice, neutral conversation starter that everyone in new york has an opinion about. so we talked about real estate until the conversation led to an extended discussion of interest rates. at that point, i tuned out.

tonight someone told me that astoria is not a bad place to live.

your thoughts?

* * *

insurance companies are evil.

show

2005-08-27T19:23:00.000-04:00

show me a loft share or sublet in williamsburg or greenpoint that isn't also occupied by a cat owner, and i will put down my rent for the place gladly! sadly, such a living situation doesn't seem to exist in the area because people who rent lofts seems to really like cats. since i don't really like cats, i'm probably going to have to retire my loft fantasies and opt for a regular apartment.

i'm still in california visiting the family, but i'll be back in new york soon -- to start a day job and to continue the search for a relatively roach-free place to live.

in the meantime, see you on tuesday night at the sidewalk cafe, 9:30 pm sharp! i've put off booking any shows since i've moved to new york because of el bar exam, so this will be the first show i've played in since moving here.

outsider art 101

2005-08-25T04:59:00.000-04:00

thanks to henna, i am now obsessed with jandek and have decided to make a check out to corwood industries. tomorrow i will mail it to the mysterious houston p.o. box that is the artist's sole link to the outside world. chad f., director of the documentary jandek on corwood, told me that the last on he used in the theatrical trailer was "last lover" off the cd "blue corpse," so that's the cd i've picked.

i wish that i had known about jandek earlier. perhaps i would have spotted him at some of my old haunts in montrose and the heights.

droppings of truth

2005-08-24T00:00:00.000-04:00

me: i'm just irritable. like a bowel.
mj: hmmm well when you're iritable like a bowel, then only sh** comes out unless you excercise some control

bad

2005-08-22T15:29:00.000-04:00

(1) birdying a large bottle of listerine. it will burn your mouth -- and your eyes.

(2) discovering that you are capable of losing the contents of your stomach in two different ways within a single hour. sometimes i wonder why i even bother to eat.

(3) facing the prospect of five root canals. by the time they're done capping my teeth, i'm going to look like one of those rappers, except without the gold-filigree crown etched with a marijuana leaf. that would require more bling than i currently possess.

2005-08-21T02:23:00.000-04:00

is it me or does the guy in this web ad for yahoo personals look like a total prick? if you're going to indulge in stock photography, why not manage to at least find a photograph of a man with symmetrical eyes? i guess they're probably trying to target awkward-looking, average men who would shrivel at the prospect of competing with a more symmetrical model.

i'm at a relative's house in suburban fremont right now. for those who have never been to fremont, california, fremont is asian to the max! there was one white couple at the restaurant where we ate tonight, and no we did not eat at a chinese restaurant. everyone else was chinese.

in pursuit of misinformation

2005-08-20T18:19:00.000-04:00

my dad convinced my sister that american astronauts had not, in fact, landed on the moon in the 1960s. he said that the americans did it to throw off the russians. when my sister went to her high school ap physics teacher and asked him if the russians had really landed on the moon, he looked at her as though she were crazy.

in the car on the six hour drive up to san francisco, where we are dropping my sister off for her freshman year, my dad said, "i never said that the americans definitely did not land on the moon. i only said that many people say that the americans didn't land on the moon and that all the evidence was the destroyed."

truth or fiction? you decide.

have you any wool?

2005-08-19T23:55:00.000-04:00

there's nothing like an extended visit home to remind you that you will always be the black sheep of the family.

the death of hellfest

2005-08-19T20:17:00.000-04:00

this reads like a story from the onion. but it's actually pretty sad.

oh no, oh no, oh no

2005-08-18T08:22:00.000-04:00

i am in california, and i have a new stuffed cow named moby the cow.

moby the cow can say only one thing so far. usually he says, "oh no. oh no. oh no," which is a pretty good approximation of how i feel when things are dire. he doesn't say anything else, even if you try to tell him that things are okay or ask him why he's feeling distressed.

moby is a sad, very soft and dismayed cow. he is named after the elusive whale, not the musical artist who is my neighbor and who runs that pricey tea shoppe on rivington across the street from babes in toyland.

at mr. dumpling, i once purchased an expensive, trendy bottle of herbal citrus cooler manufactured by the teany cartel. the label on the back of this overprice, weak-flavored drink was, i have to admit, truly bizarre:

thank you for drinking this teany drink. no, really: thank you. and if you're ever in the neighyborhood (we're on rivington between ludlow and orchard) come visit us and we'll give you a free piece of pie. well, actually, we probably won't be able to give you a free piece of pie. in our heart of hearts we'd love to give you a free piece of pie, but that's no way to run a business, right? we're sure you understand, as you're a very smart and savvy person, and don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. [Ed. note - so basically, no pie, you fool. and we don't want to hear you snivel about it, either!] come visit, and we're sorry about the 'no free pie' policy. thanks, kelly and moby

thanks for nothing, moby! just kidding. some songs on "play" were okay, i guess.

what i like best about the summer

2005-08-14T19:28:00.000-04:00

is that it's coming to an end.

grizzly man

2005-08-13T01:09:00.000-04:00

snuffles is a bear. this is snuffles' review of the film grizzly man: "they are not the friendly animal friends."

well put, snuffles.

no air-conditioning

2005-08-12T12:55:00.000-04:00

means crashing at friends' houses on a fairly regular basis.

i guess the haircut is not so bad after all

2005-08-12T12:44:00.000-04:00

at least it means i use less shampoo.

good to find

2005-08-12T12:00:00.000-04:00

at babes in toyland, a woman-friendly adult novelty store, we thought "a hard man is good to find" was a pretty good name for a porno.

the black plague

2005-08-11T17:54:00.000-04:00

don't ever get romantically interested in me.

you'll eventually find out that you're very sick or dying from something.

i'm like the black plague, and i'm not really saying that tongue-in-cheek.

go ahead and say it

2005-08-10T17:34:00.000-04:00

i look like an angry asian mom, don't i?

worst haircut ever.

2005-08-10T13:34:00.000-04:00

"watch where you're going!" i yelled at the man on a bike who nearly careened into me on the sidewalk as a woman with a particularly perky derriere walked by. he turned all the way around and then biked down the entire block that way, looking at her firm, ample rear.

the post office probably lost the package of things from japan that henna sent me, and that irritates me a lot.

last night, a certain beleaguered artist from denver called me, and despite everything that happened between us this year, i picked up the phone.

* * *

in other news, i'll be playing in san francisco in october at locus arts.

2005-08-09T07:59:00.000-04:00

whoa, marc cohn was shot. i have friends who have opened for him before.

not a bad date

2005-08-08T21:09:00.000-04:00

i picked up the salt shaker from the table and examined it.

"this thing is adorable. it's like a little jar of sniffing salts. you know, if you were to pass out right now, i could use this thing to revive you," i said.

i put the salt shaker back on the table.

he said, "that is a tiny salt shaker. it looks so lonely there without the pepper shaker."

i reached out and pushed the salt shaker across the table so that it was next to the red votive candle holder.

"now it's not lonely anymore," i said.

who will want to kiss me now?

2005-08-08T02:13:00.000-04:00

i haven't brushed my teeth or changed my clothes in two days. i've been living out of a backpack to avoid the misery of returning to my hot, roach-infested apartment.

tonight i'm in harlem (even though my friend kelvin insists that 121st does not count as harlem). last night i was in jersey.

i'm playing at pete's candy store on sept. 23.

singer-songwriter seeks new apartment in brooklyn, preferably roach-free and in williamsburgh or greenpoint

2005-08-06T03:32:00.000-04:00

tonight i returned to my east village apartment hopeful. the weather had cooled down, and my room would no longer be a furnace of sweat and misery, though it would probably still be hot. maybe things weren't so bad. maybe i wouldn't need to move to brooklyn after all.

so i sat down in my room with a glass of water and watched an episode of the sopranos. and then, halfway through the episode and haflway through the water, i took a swig and felt something solid in my mouth. yes, kids, it was a roach.

my impulse was to spit out the water, so i sprayed water all over over my pants and over all my worldly possessions. that's not hard to do when you've crammed all your worldly possessions into an 8 x 8 space. i very quickly and very calmly (so as not to wake up any of my roommates) speed-walked to the bathroom so that i could rinse my mouth out, only to discover that there were several large roaches crawling around on the bathroom sink. i tried to rinse my mouth out in the kitchen, but had to wait for several tiny roaches to scatter before i could. the odor of roach spray hung strongly in the air around the sink because i had just killed some roaches an hour or so ago.

the moral of the story is: i really need to move.

2005-08-05T22:23:00.000-04:00

my clothes smell awful from all the sweat they've absorbed from my body today. sexy!

i spent most of my day at a partially air-conditioned coffeehouse! by partially air-conditioned i mean it was a large coffeehouse with a tiny air conditioner that wasn't strong enough to cool down the entire place, but was cool enough to keep me from going insane and keep me working.

pathetically enough, i'm spending my saturday night at the nyu library yet again, even though the bar is long past. this is the only place i can go that has air-conditioning. it's unbearable at my house, which has trapped all the soggy heat from today and saved it for me. not that it's any better outside -- walking from the bus station to the library was unbearable, and i had to take off my shirt in the library bathroom (when the bathroom was empty of course) and sponge the sweat off myself with wet and then dry paper towels. again, sexy!

i've brought my laptop, a dvd of first season sopranos (because i am a huge sucker for gangland drama), and some materials for sewing a skirt out of some band's tshirt that doesn't quite fit. my goal is to stay here very, very late so that the air will be somewhat cooler when i go home and i will actually be able to go to sleep. last night i only slept 4 hours because of the heat.

the perils of street food

2005-08-05T04:56:00.000-04:00

this is what i get for taking on a turkey-cheddar melt at lucky burger. it sounded so tasty at the time because i hadn't eaten anything today yet.

now my stomach is punishing me. it says, "how dare you try to eat! you wanted to be thin all these years, so now i'm making your wish come true in the most unpleasant way possible. don't forget to say thank you."

my inner voices are the cruelest i know.

2005-08-03T03:44:00.000-04:00

i wanted to buy my friend a hello kitty vibrator to cheer her up after a breakup, but discovered that they've discontinued the item. rats.

tonight i am in new jersey. what is the length i would go for air conditioning? apparently four or five stops on the new jersey transit rail line. i am writing this at my annie's house in new brunswick rather than at my apartment, which would make a fine greenhouse, but makes a rather piss-poor domicile in this kind of weather because of the lack of air-conditioning.

last night i walked back from the sidewalk cafe with a certain singer-songwriter who is moderately talented and blessed (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with a strong resemblance to pete yorn.

"someone asked me if i was him the other night at pete's candy store." he sounded really sad about it.

"i like pete yorn," i said encouragingly. "that song 'on your side' is definitely one of the most depressing songs i have ever heard."

"is that a good thing?"

"well," i said, "what you should do is tell people that you are pete yorn when they ask you. you tell them, 'i'm pete yorn, now book me a show.'"

"or that i'm pete yorn, and my last album hasn't been selling so great. that really depresses me. can i please have some free beer?"

"that's the spirit."

by the way 'on your side' really is a great song. if you missed musicforthemorningafter in 2001, i highly recommend that you make up for lost time.