Filed under: copouts, music, personal | Tags: freda payne, kari ferrell, magazines, print, stupidity, the internet
I spent most of the last two days re-reading everything I’ve ever written, more or less, and decided that I’m getting dumber. This will be important in a minute.
Joe from Joe.My.God just updated his Facebook status and mentioned that Freda Payne was on American Idol tonight. I had no idea, and don’t really know why she was there since this was disco week and Payne’s last hit was in 1971. However, she is awesome. I haven’t mentioned my love of Freda Payne much–though her excellent Easiest Way To Fall was on one of the mixtapes sixteen months ago–but she’s really fabulous. Reviews of her performance tonight aren’t so good, though I refuse to acknowledge the opinion of anyone who starts off an article in the misinformed style of whoever wrote this thing. (It was the first story when I did a Google news search.) Not that I’m pursuing journalism jobs or anything, but how is this nonsense acceptable in an era with so many unemployed writers? (His getting the song title wrong bugs me, too, because I just spent an hour thinking I had missed Payne singing Since U Been Gone, which was sort of blowing my mind.)
Payne’s appearance is sort of funny to me because this morning I reread the one other post here where I mentioned her, the one where I used Band of Gold as an example of why pop is just as valuable, if not more so, than the Rolling Stone-endorsed canon of rock is. (It was a pre-emptive defense of why I thought that Mary J Blige’s Real Love, and not Smells Like Teen Spirit, is the best single of the nineties. Which it is, by the way.)
Anyway. As I was saying before, I’m getting dumber. These days I rarely write anything longer than two pages, I don’t read books criticially, and I can’t remember the last time I actually tried to argue a point in any kind of meaningful way. I mean, I’m also not in college anymore, and that’s obviously a huge part of it. But rereading older stuff I’ve written, a lot of it’s really pretty okay and not nearly as pretentious as I would have expected.
I don’t know if any of you gentle readers are in Chicago, but I’m going to be in town for the opening of this show next Friday. I’m heading out Wednesday afternoon and between now and then I doubt I’ll be posting much, because there’s hours and hours of editing left to the video the BF and I are showing.
Filed under: copouts
Sorry about that last post. I wrote about a third of a draft and then lost the internet, but I guess somehow I hit the publish button first. So, expect to hear more about the Hookie nominations tomorrow, when I’ve actually found pictures and whatnot.
This article, in which hoity-toity* n+1 writer Emily Gould makes a hypothetical mixtape for Britney Spears, is annoying. Seriously annoying, to the point where I might have thrown my computer out the window were it not for the fact that I am currently in a windowless basement.
Gould makes the strange and ultimately very pointless argument that Britney makes “music that sounds like it was made by a person who has never heard any other music before.” Which would be an okay thought if you were, say, twelve, but if you’re any older than that then you’ll remember that Baby One More Time (the song that prompted the thought) sounds pretty much exactly like Robyn used to, back when Robyn was good and actually popular (as opposed to now, when she’s not good and only blog-popular.)
I’m giving in to all the pointlessness. I’ve signed up for Twitter.
Since I’ve semi-declared 2009 to be the Year of Austerity, I figured I should spend less time painting the town red and more time informing my friends and relatives about everything I do, all day long, even if all I do is already well-documented in my Facebook status and I don’t really do that much of note to begin with.
But you can follow me here, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Filed under: copouts
Expect regular(ish) posting to resume soon, now that I’m done with my albums of the year. I still need to do my songs of the year list, too, to count them down on my radio show, but that will be next week. This week I’m doing a top 50 Christmas songs countdown on the show.
I’ve also got two out of three holiday DJ parties over with. Thursday I did one, nobody had any kind of sound equipment ready so I just used my (non-Apple) mp3 player. Which would have been fun, if I had known, but as it was people had to listen to whatever happened to be on there which was not, uh, party music. (It did give me a reason to finally delete I Am…Sasha Fierce and the terrible September album, though, which have both been haunting me for weeks now.)
Then last night the BF and I did a four-hour DJ thing for a Christmas party/art opening/unveiling thing/tenth anniversary of something. It was excruciatingly long, although I did play She’s Lost Control and Wrote For Luck and the BBC Sessions version of Sleep The Clock Around. And something hippie-ish in Italian that was on a mix I made, but which I’ve since forgotten the artist and title of.
So, next Wednesday’s the BF’s and my Christmas party. That one will actually be fun. And that’s it, as far as DJing this month goes. But not as far as Christmas parties go… Tonight we’re headed up to Boston for one, and tomorrow there’s a holiday party involving a raclette. So, if I’m not too obese to type by Monday, regular posting will resume.
So, sorry I got up to the top 30 and then dropped off the planet.
Yesterday was a big mess of HIV tests (I’m negative!) and errand-running, and now it’s like 90 in my apartment so I’m about to finish watching Days of Our Lives and then go to the beach.
I’ll try to post another 10 songs tonight, but I can’t promise anything. But tomorrow’s laundry day, so expect more posts then.
Just wanted to let you know updates this week might be few and far-between. I have to work some extra hours, plus I’m working on a number of other crazy projects involving learning a new skill, organizing a film festival, and figuring out a major event for the fall. I’d be more specific than that but, you know, I’m not that way.
In other news, I watched I Fidanzati this morning. It was the first movie I’d seen in months, oddly, and I really liked it. Sometimes it’s refreshing to watch a movie you know absolutely nothing about the actors or the plot or the director. I liked how little plot there was, and how, despite the name (which translates into the Fiances), it was really just a 77-minute portrait of one Milanese factory worker who got sent to work in Sicily, leaving his girlfriend and elderly father alone for months.
So, I went to Philadelphia for the weekend and before I left I meant to post a starfucking column and a mixtape, but in the rush of packing and whatever I didn’t get a chance. Sorry about that! I’ll try to post one tonight, but I can’t promise anything. I also want to post about Philly, about the Working Sex book that I finally finished on the plane, about a column in the new issue of Out, and about some other stuff. But I’m going to be really busy with work and one or two other writing things so, like I said, I can’t promise anything right now.
Filed under: copouts
Sorry about the lack of Starfucking today. Mysteriously, I slept until 2:30 PM after one of the most annoying nights of my life. Nothing against San Serac (who performed) or Morgan the DJ, but the club is a miserable cocktail of elbowy little hipsters who run around in circles, creepy ay meth addicts, and shitty drinks that you have to wait half an hour for while little girls knock you over and glare at you because whatever you’re wearing isn’t, like, a pink tank top over a black t-shirt with something black that may be shorts or may be a skirt with skinny jeans under them and big socks over the skinny jeans. And white Reeboks with rhinestones bedazzled on them. Or whatever . And seriously, any time I order Budweiser because it’s the best option, it’s not a good sign. I kind of hate Budweiser. And it makes me even madder when it’s like $4.50. I mean Jesus.
Anyway. The other thing is that our internet was off for most of today, and by the time we got it back I had to get ready for my radio show. And, now that that’s over, I’m probably going to finish the book I’m reading. I’ll try to have something interesting to say tomorrow.
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