Yesterday afternoon at the grocery store this dog tried to scare the bejesus out of me as I got into my car. Hello, you're like two feet high and behind glass. Get over it. Actually, the little guy looks scarier in this photo then he did in real life. I guess, like many things, it's all about the angle.

A mostly quiet weekend spent studying and sleeping (lots and lots of sleep, bliss) and catching up on TV (Survivor) and even making it out to the Jet show in SF. Which f*&!ing rocked, thank you very much.

Some things on my mind this fine September Monday:

--Is Gavin from Vice Magazine really a conservative, anti-gay, white rights kinda guy? The New York Times says so, but Gavin says no way in this painfully unconvincing letter to Gawker. Whatever the case the sight of him in a Speedo is crime enough in my book.

--The dishearteningly mediocre new Ryan Adams song at the Lost Highway site (To access, click on the jukebox that's on the bottom left of the main page). What the fuck? He sounds like, as Cory put it, "sensitive Euro guy" a la latter-day U2-meets-Radiohead. Blah. Someone needs to tell Ryan that it's time to take his carefully tousled head of hair outta his ass and write a good song again. Oh yeah, and this photo from Ryan's site is also enough to scare me off of my breakfast for awhile. Dead hanging bunnies—never a good idea.

--Johnny Cash on the cover of Rolling Stone. Finally, they get something right again.

--In my possession: advance copies of the new Paul Westerberg album and DVD. Life is good.

--Outkast's "Hey Ya"....shake it like a Polaroid picture...

Ha....read it and weep Winona...(via Coolfer)


conor oberst (bright eyes): you and conor are
moodily intense. go to a corner and cry
together, pansies!


who's your indie rock boyfriend?
brought to you by Quizilla

Uh, no he didn't. Mmmhmm, yes he did: Arnold Schwarzenegger just said in his closing remarks of the gubernatorial debate: "When I came to California I only had one thing-I had a dream. A dream to make California a better place."
A dream.

Well shoot, throw in a copy of "Pumping Iron" on DVD and you've got my vote.

How do you know when you're having a nervous breakdown? Can you tell? Or is that you're always the last to know when you're joining the ranks of the criminally insane?
My school to-do list is growing longer by the hour-despite the work I'm putting in. And right now I'm faced with a creative dilemma: workshop the story I wrote this summer but now hate beyond belief OR write a new story (due by Oct. 16) based on a recent idea and pray that I can whip out 10 pages of semi-coherant plot, action, description, dialogue in just 3 weeks AND get all my other homework done? It feels like I have no time to write and isn't that supposed to be the point of all this?
And can I just say that although I'm very happy to have my Gilmore Girls back on the air- I thought the whole Luke-is-married-oh-wait-he's-not plotline was a cheap cheat on the part of the producers/writers.
OK, I think I've reached my bitch-and-moan quota for the day.

I finally got to leave the office for about an hour today and out there, in all that sunshine, I felt a breeze and saw leaves falling and with Fiona Apple playing on the car CD player -- for just a moment, everything was alright in the world.

I just love it when Scout Niblett sings "it's a sure shot that'll kill you".

I don't know which gives me more of a headache, the on-again, off-again California recall election or the on-again, off-again Bennifer.
Can't you people make up your minds?
More Advil please.

So does this signal the end of civilization as we know it?
My mother would probably say that it does...

One of those weekends that felt both very long and very short. I actually started this post on Monday morning and suddenly it's already late Tuesday night ... how did that happen?
Spent much of the last few days listening to Johnny Cash records and catching bits and pieces of a CMT documentary. Damn if it just doesn't make me very very sad - even though it was not surprising.
Now, I'm not even going to try and be cool and say that I was into Johnny Cash before being into Johnny Cash was cool. Because I wasn't. My intro to the Man in Black came circa 1994 with the first American recordings album. And even then it took me awhile to be taken in by his low-down dirty charms.

Honestly, I think the real defining moment for my love for Johnny Cash came in 1998 when I saw that infamous Billboard ad (see below) and thought man, that is one bad-ass motherfucker.

And he was a bad-ass. But he was also, by all accounts, an incredibly kind-hearted man...that's something that came through whenever one saw him with his wife June Carter Cash or in the company of other friends and family.
Over the last few years as I've enjoyed each new American release, I've also been going back and discovering a lifetime's worth of great recordings. Just listen to some of Johnny's live albums and you'll discover his great wry wit and earthiness.


I was also a big John Ritter fan. I'm not ashamed to say that growing up in the '70s, I had a huge crush on Jack Tripper and even though my mother would have preferred that I didn't watch "Three's Company"--because she thought it was too racy--I never missed an episode.

Today, I found a good interview with Joyce Dewitt via CNN and earlier tonight I watched ABC's tribute to the late comedian. Even with the at-times heavy-handed sentimentality (mostly on the part of Diane Sawyer), it was still a nice way to remember to Ritter. And, I swear to God, as they showed clips from "Three's Company", I realized I have probably seen every episode of that show twice....

OK, just now as I was writing this I was also watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and they just name-checked Jack Tripper and the Regal Beagle on an episode that was obviously taped months ago. Somewhere, I'm sure, John Ritter's having a good laugh.

Fuck:


Johnny Cash: Feb. 26, 1932-Sept. 12, 2003

Time to open your wallets if you want to feel popular. Friendster gets cash from three investors (via San Jose Mercury News)- which means you'll probably have to pony up your own dough in order to hold on to your Internet social circle.

A Pitchfork interview with Broken Social Scene on being indie rockers who "learned how to play our instruments, but didn't forget how great it felt to play 'em like we didn't."
Love this band's record, as recommended by my friend Glenn....it's noisy and pretty and emotional and wandering and yet very precise. Check it out.

Well if I hadn't been so swamped with homework over the last few days, you would have actually heard from me. I mean I definitely would have come here to tell you all about the REM/Wilco show at Shoreline on Saturday. I would have asked you if Michael Stipe has always been so funny and charasmatic...I mean, I know he's been a strange bald guy since long before Moby ever touched a razor...but still.
Had I the time, I also would have mentioned seeing The Lucky Stars on Friday night and hanging out with Mark and our good pals Michelle & Richard who are getting married in less than two weeks.
Or maybe I would have talked about my new camera phone and the headaches I'm getting trying to figure the damn thing out. (Not the camera part - that's easy, it's how loud the phone is when I turn it on and off that's bugging me).
Or perhaps I would have discussed my recent trips to the doctor. But then again, maybe not - do we really know each other that well?
OK, well politics then. Or the kick I'm getting out of the bits and pieces I've caught of The Newlyweds - the new MTV 'reality' show featuring Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey.
Or maybe I would have merely whined some more about school (and all current thesis director drama) and too much work and well, you know the drill...
But I haven't had the time, so I haven't talked to you about any of these things and now those moments have come and gone so guess I'll just move on to other topics ... eventually.

If you want a pretty, sad record to make the journey with you from summer into fall, then please pick up James William Hindell's "Prospect Park". It's Brit-folk with bits and dashes of Simon & Garfunkel, Kings of Convenience, Elliot Smith and all those melancholy Kindercore bands.

According to researchers in Manchester, your house isn't haunted by ghosts - just bits of barely dectectable infrasound. OK..but that doesn't explain those times that I swear to God I've felt someone place his or her hand on the small of my back when I'm alone in the house. Or the times that both cats suddenly freak out and go into raccoon-tail mode as they stare down the empty hallway.
Are my cats spooked by infrasound? Is Infrasound giving me a lower back massage? I don't think so...I'm pretty sure our house has at least one ghost....but as long as s/he doesn't start throwing plates around or banging cabinets in the middle of the night or whispering boo in my ear on dark and stormy nights when I'm home alone - well then I think we can all just get along.

So, school started last week and i'm already feeling frayed and a bit freaked. Three classes. OK, technically it's two classes. Well, two-and-a-half...confused? So am I? It goes something like this: I'm taking one fiction workshop. Plus I'm TA-ing a class. Plus I'm doing an independent study version of the class that I'm TA-ing. But I've already read most of the books for the independent study. Except I kind of need to reread/skim through them again. And I still need to write my term paper for the independent study that I did this summer. That independent study is actually showing up on my fall transcript so I technically have until Dec. to finish it...but that would be pretty damn dumb of me if I waited until then. So I'm trying to get started on it now and get it out of the way before our St. Louis trip next month.
And then there are weddings to attend (two - one this month, one in Nov.) - both of which I'm really looking forward to...and George Jones in Reno next month...and other daily life-type things.
Yep. Frayed and freaked.
14 weeks left of school. Not counting this week. But who's counting?
I am.
I definitely am.
But...if I make it through this semester alive then I will have completed a total of seven credits...which means I will only need four more credits - plus a completed, approved thesis - for my MFA.
The thought of which, I think, freaks me out more than anything.
Because then, you know, it's like...um, now what?

So last week's whirlwind trip to the Playboy Mansion was a blast.

The trip was sponsored by the Concord Jazz record label so before actually going over to the mansion we stopped off at the label offices (which were right across the street from our hotel) to visit and mingle. Concord's offices are on the same floor as Norman Lear's offices, so we also got a brief tour through there and got to see some nifty memorobilia from TV shows such as All in the Family. Then, after a few drinks, we hopped into a car and drove off to UCLA where a shuttle bus was waiting to take us up to the mansion. Apparantly when you are not rich and famous you cannot just drive right up to the Playboy Mansion.

It was still daylight when we arrived and were guided towards the rear of the Mansion. Here we found a gorgeous sparkling pool, an enormous bar made of stone, the world-infamous grotto, the tent under which the concert and dinner would be held and, of course, some bunnies.
Lynn and I got very excited about the bunnies and wanted to take pictures with them right away - but we were quickly stopped. Bunny pictures, it seems, were $20 a pop. So...we took a few covert pictures of our own instead. We were then given a quick tour by two former Playmates (Miss July 2002 and Miss March 2001 - but I can't remember who was who, just that one of them apparantly didn't know to talk and the other one, well maybe it would have been best if she didn't know how to talk either). The mansion grounds are lovely. There's a small zoo featuring monkeys, bunnies (real ones), an Owl, peacocks, etc. There's a tennis court, golf course, aviary and a game room - the latter which Lynn, Cory and I missed out on because we were too busy taking photos near Hef's star on his own personal Walk of Fame. One of the interesting things that we did learn on the tour was that Hef has not one but three main squeezes - and they all have expensive cars (think Cadillac Escalades) and their own reserved parking spaces. There is also a dorm-type building attached to the aviary - this is where the Bunnies stay when they come to do photo shoots.

After the tour we returned to the pool area and took full advantage of the open bar before sitting down to dinner and checking out our only celebrity sighting of the evening: Craig Kilbourne. Craig is freakishly tall in person and apparantly was there because his girlfriend knows a bunny (a human bunny, not a zoo bunny).

What else is there to say about the evening except that it all felt wondrously decadant and I felt more than just a little bit like a Beverly Hillbilly as I snapped pictures and indulged in free drinks and amazing desserts. Alas, we did not get a Hef sighting because apparantly Friday nights are his classic movie night and we (i.e. all the people partying outside his windows) were too low-rent to come check out.... But that's OK because the music from Poncho Sanchez and Diane Schur was nice, the evening was beautiful and I got tipsy. Fun for everyone! If you're so inclined, there are more photos, commentary, etc here ...