A year after I abandoned this blog, Chris pickled a fight with me.

Christopher

hows it

4:24amCharles

chill i guess

i am half agony and half hope

etc

it feels good

i got two jobs on monday

j.crew or american taproom "classic bar and grill"
4:26amChristopher

nice what is j crew
4:26amCharles

played j.crew's $9 an hour against American Taproom's 7.50+tips and came out on top with 8.50+tips

j crew is fancy pants jason schwartzman clothing

fancy clothes for businessmen but cut for people that aren't beer fat

like, medium polo shirt doesn't have 3 gallons of extra room in the gut

and the slacks don't tent, or taper in weird ass ways for flabby assed old men
4:28amChristopher

sounds kinda gay
4:28amCharles

well, you're gay, so take it as you will $9 an hour plus awesome clothes

and i'm not even working there, the speed with which i was hired was leverage at the restaurant

so i got a raise before they hired me

ayyyyyyy i got that pma
4:29amChristopher

pma?
4:29amCharles

positive mental attitude, listen to some bad brains
4:30amChristopher

......yeah, I applied for a job with the school district today, lunch lady i will be
4:31amCharles

cool

wages?
4:31amChristopher

hows school going
4:31amCharles

well enough
4:31amChristopher

dont know DOE
4:31amCharles

does?
4:32amChristopher

Wage is based on experience, you talk to them first

how did that $200 thing go
4:33amCharles

its not until september 12th

i may have said the 12th
4:33amChristopher

oh
4:33amCharles

but etc
4:33amChristopher

hey i got to go make a phone call, ill catch you later
4:34amCharles

peace!
5:20amChristopher

have you slept?
5:20amCharles

fuck no!
5:20amChristopher

why? did you go out tonight?
5:20amCharles

No...
5:20amChristopher

Just restless?
5:21amCharles

i spent all day trying to find a second hand cell phone and then dropped 75% of my cash in hand on a new cell plan

thank christ my mom had an upgrade i got a 200$ phone and a new contract with bluetooth for 110$ but now i've got 45$ for the rest of the week and yeah,. that sucks

the phone is a piece of shit though

shitty plastic casing, etc

i broke my razor last night, so i insured the new one for 5.99 a month so if i do break it it'll only be 50$ to replace as opposed to 220

but fuck! i'm an IDIOT

i'm going to get a new one on ebay or something as soon as i get a pay check and pay off some bills but god DAMN i'm behind the curve you know?

i've got to cancel this bullshit plan as soon as possible thank christ its only 9.99 + 5.99 a month
5:24amChristopher

hmmm....if you got a new one why worry about getting a new one
5:24amCharles

so after that i went to JJ to replace some of my contacts

because this phone is plastic and fat and hurts in my pocket and bulges bigger than my dick

these are all bad qualities

i like razors because they're metal and slim
5:25amChristopher

.....what happend to the razor
5:25amCharles

they're just not water proof

etc
5:25amChristopher

it just broke
5:25amCharles

no, its water proof

not water proof

submerging a razor in water will kill it like a vampire
5:26amChristopher

drop it in the toilet?
5:26amCharles

exactly!

slipped outta my pocket
5:26amChristopher

nice.
5:26amCharles

god damn slimness

btw jeff posted those videos of me pounding pitchers of beer at that bowling alley
5:27amChristopher

so why you so cracked out
5:27amCharles

i've finally got a reason to be proud of myself
5:27amChristopher

its like 5am
5:27amCharles

oh, because i'm 6 bud lights deep
5:27amChristopher

nice...
5:27amCharles

nah, weird

i'm drinking out the lust
5:28amChristopher

so i hear you guys had a going away party for cameron

lust for....
5:28amCharles

life?
5:28amChristopher

ah
5:28amCharles

i dunno, every pretty girl that crosses my path?

self deprication?

water boarding?
5:28amChristopher

you still have not worked that out yet
5:29amCharles

phillipe's bd attitude?

my own dick?

no wait, my mustache!

yeah!

my lust for my mustache

i look like a mexican
5:29amChristopher

a homo from the 80s'
5:30amCharles

mustache's = everyone's boyfriend thinks they're girl is trying to bang me
5:30amChristopher

exactly
5:30amCharles

its wonderful, i laugh at boyfriends all day long
5:31amChristopher

have you seen district 9
5:31amCharles

HELL NO!
5:31amChristopher

what time does your school start
5:31amCharles

the last movie i saw was Public Enemies

noon
5:31amChristopher

that movie blows
5:31amCharles

no, you blow
5:31amChristopher

maybe but what i say is true

that movie blows
5:32amCharles

tommy guns, model t's, tweed suits, and bank robbers do not blow

johnny depp is a mime, and you have no taste

subjectivity is not quantifiable therefore what you say is only true to you
5:32amChristopher

jonny depp is a sucker for sure things
5:32amCharles

go stare at your belly button please

just go stare deep into your belly button until you disappear, then johnny depp will do whatever you want
5:34amChristopher

lol subjectivity is all that really matters....learn that and you will feel a lot better
5:34amCharles

uh huh sure

subjectivity is all that doesnt matter to a free man, learn that and you can do and say whatever you want and you'll feel a lot better

what you want is what you need what you need is what you want what you want is what you can't have and what you can't have is what you desire

so stop listening to other people please

public enemies is about being a fucking man, and proving it historical accuracy can go to hell
5:36amChristopher

freedom requires thought. and doing what you please requires understanding.
5:37amCharles

getting what you want requires understanding and freedom requires not wasting your time
5:38amChristopher

.....that statement lacks backing buddy
5:38amCharles

uh, not so much as yours

who the fuck are you?
5:38amChristopher

your kinda saying both sides don't apply unless you choose for them to
5:39amCharles

well yeah

whats it called? oh yeah! pragmaticism!

suck a dic

k
5:40amChristopher

....sorry you are the least pragmatic person I know....logic isn't your strong point.
5:41amCharles

chris

like i said

suck a dick, brains aren't your strong point

why don't you go pay for someone's bar tab?
5:42amChristopher

.....nah, maybe, sometime
5:42amCharles

nice one! cleverness running out?

oh wait, nothing you said was clever, merely sarcastic
5:42amChristopher

just answering your pragmatic questions
5:43amCharles

there are no questions, just the fact that i've got a hard on for not caring
5:43amChristopher

sure i could see that

why dont you care
5:44amCharles

because I'm a lost soul! i'm beyond the salvation of the green party!
5:44amChristopher

i mean before you realized it got you hard and all

yeah so is the green party, but they still care
5:45amCharles

i've never met a person i looked down on, therefore i could give a fuck about caring, actions are all that exist

politics are the science of manipulation

find someone else's nipples to tweak
5:45amChristopher

oh.......I see
5:46amCharles

as i said, its 545 where i am, but i'm drunk and i was reading a psychology text book but whatever, what are you doing up at 345?

oh yeah, tweaking my nipples

are you going to watch jerry springer in the morning?

i mean, before the soaps, and morry?

is that where you get your philosophical stances?
5:47amChristopher

low blow

so low
5:47amCharles

you are a low blow, don't talk semantics with me

my "statement lacks logic" i am "not pragmatic" go fuck yourself
5:48amChristopher

i like to think think I can see, hear, and process meaningful thoughts, and come to a conclusion on my own terms....that is what caring does for me
5:48amCharles

caring has got you very confused my friend
5:49amChristopher

6 beers in and reading at 5:45am
5:49amCharles

oh shit

is that abnormal for a student?

oh well, i guess that status quo got me again

like i said, eat a dick faggot
5:50amChristopher

maybe but u cant see
5:50amCharles

uh huh

i'm blind

i need to open my eyes to cable television
5:50amChristopher

your not blind your dumb
5:50amCharles

gagga gagga gagga

chris, you're not smart, you're crazy

congratulations, is the bitterness coming out? do you feel the coffee shop growing inside you?
5:51amChristopher

Do you see daddy in the mirror yet?

keep trying.
5:51amCharles

no i see anti-daddy in the mirror
5:51amChristopher

you will get there some day
5:51amCharles

p.s. i sold your bong

are you above that?
5:52amChristopher

if you did it isn't cool, but people do what they got to do.

right?
5:53amCharles

well, it is cool because you're a fucked up drug abuser, and you're yet to prove otherwise

see the logic in that statement?
5:53amChristopher

thats just kinda funny
5:53amCharles

i know! i blew a line of ecstasy last night!

a big fat line of x
5:54amChristopher

sounds like fun.
5:54amCharles

it was mostly coke, and i didn't hallucinate

and no, i didn't get in touch with shit

it felt good, and then i got up in the morning
5:55amChristopher

yeah the next morning is not always the best feeling on the body or brain for that matter
5:56amCharles

uh huh, no

it was mostly coccaine

my fingers got numb, and i was giddy

shitty x

anyway

did you repair the squirrel damage to your car yet?

i bet you could figure that out at barnes and nobles

i hear wittgenstein has a lot to say about squirrels
5:57amChristopher

when I got here, i used my tax money to get the damaged electrical fixed not the seat belt.
5:58amCharles

cool

my dad gave me a car too
5:58amChristopher

I fixed my back bumper by myself
5:58amCharles

cute
5:59amChristopher

it took a few goes but it worked out

are you tired yet?

you should probably get some sleep, you got a day of school ahead of you.
6:01amCharles

i've got 10 hours of classes tomorrow baby! and then i'm going to the very last drug store cowboy show
6:04amChristopher

well it has been fun, I think I shall get some sleep.....just know Public Enemy and Jon deep blow! and enjoy the show!
6:04amCharles

http://vimeo.com/5896618
6:05amChristopher

what is this?
6:05amCharles

uhhh a short film?
6:06amCharles

featuring music by dono's band
6:06amChristopher

who is dono
6:07amCharles

remember the shorter, red headed roadie from the fuck yeah fest? he slept in our house? he's the drummer for the band that made the music for this video

he was also in giovanni's band for a while but they dissolved
6:07amChristopher

ah, is the film good?
6:08amCharles

it's a mind fuck

watch it twice

its 8 minutes

its in HD black and white just like Control
6:09amCharles

its got jazz crooning just like dark city

just stop asking questions and watch it
6:11amChristopher

ill check it out, gimme a call tomar. when you have some free time, and ill tell you what I thought about it. I got to get some sleep.
6:11amCharles

peace
6:11amChristopher

good night. GO TO SLEEP YOU CRACK HEAD!
6:11amCharles

do some crack you sleep head

Curiosity

There I was, killing time, stoned, somehow simultaneously bored and overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of mundane intrigue for sale. I was at Unique, which is possibly the largest thrift store in Virginia, if not America, if not the world. It occupies an old circuit city, complete with a red cube rooftop structure which now reads "Unique." The font of that sign always reminds me of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. Anyway, I was stoned, and wondering if I would find any ridiculous knick knacks to purchase for psychedelic stimulation. They had a $200 accordian which was too expensive (and unwieldly), a bunch of ugly paintings, their usual collection of pots and pans, foggy glassware, mildew sweaters, and overly stretched cotton t-shirts. My search for return on the "Unique" brand name's promise of titillation through undeniable individualtiy, "uniqueness" perhaps, was proving futile.

Imagine my surprise when, sifting through some severely busted records, I discovered the coolest band on earth; "the Jets." This band is so fucking cool it's cover looks like a cast photo from some secret, never produced, version of Saved By The Bell where every character is a member of "A.C." Slater's extended family. I'm serious. Look at the picture at the top of this entry!

I had a sneaking suspiscion that this incredible band was somehow manufactured by 1980's Reagon-era Corpo-Music-label white boy racists. I imagined culturally illiterate, stock obsessed talent brokers from Columbia or Universal Records hand picking every member from high school talent shows around the nation, selecting each member based on ability, african-american-ness, greasy jerry curl and the most important factor of all: incredibly light skin. Apparently I was completely baked out of my mind when this notion seemed like a real possibility. The fact that I think things like this makes me afraid I'm subconsciously racist, but then I always remember I'm just hyperactively self-conscious, not to mention paranoid. According to the awesome fan site, www.crushonthejets.com they're actually all from an island in the south pacific known as Tonga. They played "staple polynesian island tunes, such as Don Ho's infamous Tiny Bubbles." Having looked this up, I feel I can more accurately pigeon hole, mock, and generate stereotypes correlating to the music they have produced since "Coming To America." (I've put this phrase in quotes to remind you that it's the title of an incredible movie starring Eddie Murphy, James Earl Jones, and ARSENIO HALL.) Anyway, so they're Polynesian, not... African American, but thats ok, because neither is the actor who played A.C. Slater on Saved By The Bell. I make mistakes all the time, and I feel its very difficult to judge someone's ethnicity when I'm not really that concerned about its significance to begin with. The shocking thing about all this is that they weren't formed by a 25 year old hot shot with a blue suit and a 401k. Despite this, they certainly had their collective stink finger on the the pulse of the teeny-hopper fashion of the 80's. May be they invented it?

They sound like the sort of music prince would make if he was fourteen years old. Their charting singles had titles that exhibited a juvenile sense of sexuality. "Crush On You," "You Got It All," "Rocket 2 U," and even "I Do You" were all songs put out by a band that had 15 year old girls singing at dance clubs and playing $10,000 analog synthesizers. Specifically the title "I Do You" blows my mind. This was published back in the days of the Parent Music Rescource Center! Prince himself, and Frank Zappa both went before the supreme court to talk about pronography in music, but apparently it wasn't that big a deal. Prince and Zappa were just much too literal. It's ok if 15-19 yaer olds congregate in dance halls and use sexual euphemisms, as long as they learn how to eat pussy the hard way, no tips people!

I definitly can't recomend their entire catalogue; there's quite a few tracks I can picture 6th graders slow dancing too at their first school sponsored sock hop. However, the aforementioned tracks, especially "I Do You" will all make your friends look at you really funny. And thats what buying retro 80's garbage is all about right?

There used to be a number (12?) of incredible music videos up on Youtube that would further illustrate my Saved By the Bell comparison, but Universal reigned in the unauthorized awesomeness in favor of 5 crappy videos, that include 2 slow dance worthy crap-tracks, and a christmas song. Fuck you copyright laws.

http://www.amazon.com/20th-Century-Masters-Millennium-Collection/dp/B00005PJB2/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1198714645&sr=1-1

Check out the preview of "curiosity" for an example of their sugary sweet use of funky synth and guitar... Yeah... too bad you can't hear the whole song.

So I guess I'll paste in the only embed-able track on youtube worth listening to. but trust me, this song is no where near the awesomeness that is their first album...

But I can't because embedding is disabled by request. Fuck you universal, I'm never going to your shitty theme parks again!

... here's the url...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkBchaGThis&feature=related

A p(art)y with a belly dancer.

I went to a party/ art show at this girl's house in Alexandria earlier this year (this is the same girl that helped us with the art stuff at the film "festival" some of you may remember). The "party" was pretty standard (this was my third or fourth time going to one of these) and the only art I hadn't seen before was tucked away on some lame wall near the pantry... So I was pretty much just hanging out on the back porch conversing with (/trying not to laugh at) this guy dressed in the fashion of the industrial revolution who was telling me that he was learning to play the accordian. I was mostly watching other people play disc golf between fits of wondering where accordian man got all of his ideas (uniqueness).

Anyway, there was live entertainment at this one. The first act was a band called "Brainfang" which featured David Cotton, and Patrick Williams from the kiddy music band Rocknocerous and this friendly character / upright bass master named Tom Bernath (playing upright bass) and they did original songs I had heard before and uhhhh, a couple (like 4?) talking heads covers that were fun... Anyway, they handed out plastic egg maracas, twas a blast. Things went a little downhill after that though, because apparently the chica having the party is friends with a belly dancer. So there was this 23-ish girl dressed in silk wrap things belly dancing to digital sounding "traditional" music and all I could think about the entire time was how weird her belly looked, and, more disturbingly, where two of her front teeth went. I seriously don't have a problem (philisophically speaking) with someone who has a missing tooth or two, but I just couldn't stop thinking about some long ago boyfriend knocking her tooth out (in a fit of jealous rage) mid-performance in the middle of a hooka bar somewhere. How did she get mixed up with a guy like that? What kind of dude beats up his girlfriend for belly dancing? The kind that still listen to Limp Bizkit? Like I said she working her jelly for like 20-40 minutes (possibly 3 hours) and all I could concentrate on was the 7 millimeter trust gap in some past relationship of hers (which could actually just have been an icy staircase).

On the way out of this party some drunk associate of mine asked me where I'd been for the last few months, what I'd "been up too man" and if I was still keeping off the heroin.

That night I did all my drinking as a passenger on 495 while my friends were driving me home.

"Smashing" Pumpkins, Brit-pop?

Are the Smashing Pumpkins honorary brit-pop artists? Though distinctly heavy metal sellout-rock in the 21st century, in the 90's they were as shoe-gazey as blur, as epicly immature as Oasis, and as Techno pop / lite-goth as Pulp. But thats not all, look at their name. They're not the Pumpkin Smashers, or Smashers of Pumpkins, they are Pumpkins which are Smashing. As in, 'look at my "smashing" new pull over blazer! Isn't it wicked? let's go down to the caf' and get a cuppa tea!' The pumpkins do the smashing here, which translates to the pumpkins that kick ass. They are not the pumpkins whose asses are kicked, they are the pumpkins who do the kicking, though the title brings both possibilities to mind. This duality is very appropriate; when you first hear the name you think may be they were inspired by 8-year old pranksters of holloweens past, but then you hear they're lyrics and discover they have very high opinions of themselves vs. the rest of adult society, hence how "smashing" they must think they be. Due to this egotistical approach to self description, combined with their very distinctly unamerican 90's era sound, I'd like to nominate them as honorary brit-pop artists. But this nomination is only relevant to material published before 1999, and does not apply to ZWAN, and obviously nothing which excludes the input of James Iha.

P.S. BECOME A PATHETIC CLICHE, or Realize you're one.

It's whats happened to me.

Embrace this man. http://www.spin.com/features/magazine/columns/chuck_klosterman/2005/06/06202005_chuck_july_column/

Embrace this band.



Smoke pot. Forget who you are. Talk shit about everyone. Try to try to try to try.

So like... this week... on myspace...

So like, through the twee pop bandit myspace profile of the UK's "Bearsuit" I discovered my second favorite band of this week. They're called "2 Hot 2 Sweat" and yeah, they're so cluelessly cool that they have real live numbers in their band name. They fucking don't know what they're doing but they don't fucking care. I liked them so much I added their song Your Space Or Mine to my myspace profile immediatly. Now people will think I'm really edgy or something.

http://www.myspace.com/2hot2sweat