All of your myspace accounts are belong to us. Seriously, brah. That shit is hurtin lately. **

My weekend can pretty much be summed up by the following:







**

Jimmy brought to my attention that The Thermals have a new record coming out next month. How this went over my head I'm not sure. I was able to track it down on Soulseek and after 1/2 listen I'm not so sure how I feel about it. It sounds like The Thermals.. with a few overdubbed keyboards and guitar parts.. but.. I don't know. the lyrics are awful distracting. Jesus, locusts, sinning, praying... blah... yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's lame, but I prefer "1,2,3 Forward!" any day of the week. You can check out an MP3 of one of the better tracks here. **

This week is going to be brutal at work. 11pm tomorrow night. 8-ish the rest of the nights. Found out I might be going to Wildwood this weekend, though, which would be a nice way to forget about this seemingly shitty week. I went to Wildwood each year from the age of 1 - 20. It's been five summers since the last time I was there... and I've heard it's way different now. All the Motels are being torn down and replaced with condos. Even my beloved Sands Motel, which I can't even find an image of on Google. I'm glad I'm going to be able to check it out before it's all torn down, even if it's only for a weekend. --

Dig these

Tonight, immediately after work its straight to the highway and directly to Red Bank with Marissa to see Steve Forbert. I don't know him much but Marissa is a big fan and I don't see how I could ever say no to free music, nice weather, and wine with good company. After that we'll be hightailing it back to Wayne so I can make an early morning doctor's appointment and then it's into the city to watch the Yanks trounce on the Devil Rays. I hope to hell that A-Rod has a good night tonight... because I will become enraged if I have to sit through an entire game with people amped up on booing the hell out of him, which clearly has a negative effect on his game. Yes, I understand.. he makes a lot of money and you think it's funny to boo him when he doesn't do well... but seriously, enough already. If you're a Yankee fan and want the team to do good, why would you take part in booing him at every available opportunity? I'm not worried about him, though. I think he'll have a great second half. And speaking of second halves, I'm incredibly excited to be going to my first game since early in the season. Yankee Stadium after the All-Star break might very well be my favorite place in the world. There will be much drinking of beers and much fun if I have anything to do with it.

Sunday I'm going to take a shot at playing soccer again. The soreness from last Sunday's game has finally left me, so I think it's time to remind my head how out of shape my body is again. Plus, it's a hell of a lot of fun.

It'll be Monday before I know it. Bummer. But since it'll be the product of a weekend filled with awesomeness, I think I'm ok with it.

I Am We Todd Did
I Am We Todd Did
I Am Sofa King We Todd Did

I Am We Todd Did
I Am We Todd Did
I Am Sofa King We Todd Did

I Am We Todd Did
I Am We Todd Did
I Am Sofa King We Todd Did

Since Hot Cops are being sleepy right now I've been thinking a lot about what we were able to do in one year. Fifteen songs. Three covers we could probably pull off without messing them up too bad (ok, maybe two). Eleven shows in Eleven months ranging from bars / clubs, to legion halls, to living rooms, to Baltimore. Played in front of audiences ranging from four (Lucky Cat, Brooklyn) to about two-hundred (Sidebar, Baltimore). One record (which reminds me.. Drew, please message me your mailing address so I can send one to you).

I mean.. that's pretty good, right? Certainly more than I expected when Jimmy and I had our first practice with a drummer who decided to quit on us the night before the second practice. It's been a good, fun, and sort of productive year as far as I'm concerned.
--

Which sorta leads me to my next thing I've been thinking about. I've got a handful of new songs. Some are definitely hot cops songs. But some are most definitely NOT hot cops songs. Mostly acoustic.. sometimes noisy.. a little angular.. fast, but not very poppy and definitely not pop-punky. Yeah, I dunno. I think it might be time to spring Pink and Dirty* in to action.

* Pink and Dirty has been the name of an imaginary band Jimmy and I have been talking about since last summer. One very, very drunk evening on Toni's parent's deck (i believe it was the first time i'd ever 'hung out' with birdsting), former Mitsuko bassist Phil mumbled something to himself that to me sounded like "Pink and Dirty". He was actually saying something far less intriguing sounding, but I couldn't shake how much I liked it as a band name. I always sort of envisioned it being a My Bloody Valentine-like sounding band... but maybe it's suitable for my new tunes? ***

Apologies for the ramble. Work has become incredibly, incredibly dull.. even when I'm busy, so the mind has been wandering more and more.

Soccer:


Faux Hawk:

This weekend was a whacky combination of relaxation, near-misses, and complete exhaustion. Friday night found me at Marissa's roommates', almost boyfriend's, roommates' birthday party. Free-ish booze at some bar with a nice view of, umm Queens. The party there was eventually moved to a bar downtown in which the birthday boy had called in advance to reserve a VIP room. The joke was sorta on him, though. The place had no VIP room. But whomever answered the phone when he called had creatively sealed off the coat room area and gladly took his VIP room money. I felt sort of bad for him... but he took it in stride (or was just too drunk to care).

The vibe of the place was a bit off, though. Seemed tense. It was a pretty nice night out so I grubbed a cigarette from Marissa'a non-smoking but smoking that night friend and took to the outside. Before that cigarette was done a windowed door was flung open and whacked me square in the head. The patrons inside were brawling. Yelling, screaming, chairs flying. It didn't hurt or anything, but it was a bit of a surprise. I stepped away to watch two other fighting folks tumble outside of the club. A female employee of the bar stepped in between them and the guy closer to me held up his hands truce-style and said "no more, no more, I'm done." He feigned walking away for a half-step and then swung around the employee and cracked the other guy in the head, making the loudest punch sound I've ever heard. A few fist pumps later, the dude who threw the punch was in a cab and off. I was way too sober for 4am on a Friday night and we thankfullyu took to Jersey City to finally get some sleep, seeing as we'd both been awake for nearly 24 hours at that point.. with only 5 hours of sleep before that.

Saturday was supposed to be relaxation day / party night.. but the party night never materialized for us. Got my oil changed, ate eggs benedict, bought a new shirt for work. Later we went to see Clerks 2 (more on that later). After that we ended up falling asleep before meeting up with the partyers. I gather that it was a swell time from the people I've talked to, though. Happy bursday, Niraj.

Sunday, finally feeling rested after a sober / early to bed night.. I decided to play afternoon soccer. I haven't played any soccer in over two years.. or even really done anything active since then... but the early September-feeling weather made it an impossible offer to refuse. I enjoyed myself.. felt and played very out of practice.. but it was definitely something I plan on doing more of. I returned home and was barely mobile, making any chance of going to the Birdsting / Terrible Friends Drunk-a-thon block party impossible to honor. I heard that was a swell time, as well.

While not very eventful, it was a good weekend that I think Marissa and I both enjoyed a bunch. ***

I've spent most of my workday reading through Kevin Smith's multi-part story on Jason Mewes' drug problem. It was one of the more entertaining things I've read on the internet in a long time. The first part of the story is here. You can continue with the rest by using the calendar thing on the top right hand corner of the web page. It pretty much goes in order by date. Seems like a lot of the feelings Smith has for Mewes made it into the Randall / Dante Clerks 2 story arc, which (for me) made any cheesiness associated with those scenes vanish. The funny stuff was very funny and everything else was endearing at its worst. I liked the movie a lot more than I thought I was going to. --

Jon Auer does covers. Pretty poorly, I might add.

Pinback is a band.

I have yet to hear Thom Yorkes' album, but I imagine it's pretty on point. I also have yet to see Henry Rollins' show on IFC, but imagine it's also pretty on point. The two pointers merged recently.

Song(Cymbal Rush)
Song(The Clock)
Interview
Pt 2
Pt 3
Pt 4

Sir Henry also had Daniel Johnston on recently, doing The Mask and Careless. Neat. A few more tons of Henry.

Lil' Benny Kweller is 25, a new daddy and played every instrument on his new album. Here's a bad song from it.

The Weakerthans are still amazing. YOU TUBE !

So it appears as if I'm without my pretty little home here in Ruggedfjord come September 15th. If anyone has a home for a tall dude who will drink alcohol, one kitty who will shed, one who is half bad, and two other humans, hit me up via the comments section.

Stencil Revolution is a site I've been peeping for a few years now. Some really amazing shit. Honest. Browse for a bit, then ask me to go do our own somewhere.

My Old Kentucky Blog has Lebowski Fest, and some My Morning Jacket(!) covers. I suggest we get Imri on this thing and have him track down the top ten reasons why MMJ is keen.

They fucking delayed Monkey Ball until August, I've been playing Mega Man Collections again, pick it up if you ever liked Mega Man and have a GameCube, only $11 used. Played through MM1 a bit, then went onto 2, fuck it's hard. I nominate this game as having the best music from a video game. Ever. Can I find this soundtrack online, does that exist? If so, what is the competition? Only one I can think of competing is Lemmings, but really, that was a bunch of standards. I heard PlayStation(2, PSP?) has a new Lemmings game out. Fuck, if you have one of those systems, get that, Lemmings was the shit.

i hope to god youre still carrying the light. so have you seen the preview teaser for the fountain? damn im so excited for that.

so that picture is from huey, some dude that travelled america and took pics. ive got a bunch but i picked that one, for you.

forsooth, i am vanquished.

ps, jimmy?

Marissa pointed out that our life saving concierge from the Hotel Rialto is depicted on their website's photo gallery, so I figured I'd post his picture all up in this bitch:



***

I added a few links over to the right. Two far superior blogs and a huge source of time wasting. Get thurr.

I kept a travel journal while I was in Italy. Most of it was sloppily written at times of near exhaustion, but if I can ever find a few minutes I'd like to type it up and post it. I never really wrote about the trip on the blog because I thought I was going to get to the travel journal thing sooner. But since I've floundered, here goes:

In sum, it was great. Everything about it surpassed my expectations tenfold. Marissa's planning was flawless and we got to nearly every single destination that we wanted to see: The Sistine Chapel, Roman Forum, Colosseum, Uffizi, Accademia among dozens of others. The weather was perfect, about 86 - 88 and sunny ever day. The food was ridiculous. I will never, ever be able to think about Italian food the same way again.. I don't know if it's an attention to detail that we don't have here in America... or if it's something as simple as the soil the food comes from... but it was hands down the best food I've ever eaten. Our air and train travel went flawlessly and our ability to navigate through cities / communicate with locals was way easier than I thought it would be.

The only hiccup came on our second to last night. We arrived at our hotel in Venice at about 9:55pm to find the front door locked. Eeventually we found a sign on the door that essentially read (in both Italian and English): We have waited until the previously discussed check-in time. Our lobby is closed for the night. See you tomorrow!

The only problem was that there was no previously discussed check-in time. We talked to an employee at the restaurant adjacent to the hotel but he didn't speak much english and didn't indicate that he knew how to get in touch with the owners. We brought two police men over to the sign.. but their English was even worse. Their most understandable response was an excited "you can come back..... tomorrow!". Yeah, great, thanks. But what about fucking tonight!? Of course, the little bit of italian that I knew failed me and I couldn't remember how to ask about "esta notte?". We were initially worried because Venice is quite small and it was a very, very crowded week at all of the cities we had visited. Luckily, Marissa had spotted this beautiful joint on our walk from the waterbus. The gentleman at the desk spoke great english, sympathized with our plight, and gave us a discount on one of the two rooms he had left when he had every chance in the world to gouge us for far more than he did. It was expensive, but we'd been very good about our spending money while there and not having to sleep on the watery Venetian streets made it worth every penny. We actually have a good shot at getting our money back from the travel agency for their miscommunication about the "previously discussed check-in time", too.. which would ensure that there was not a single bad thing about our entire trip.

I've been half-heartidly saying that I wanted to visit Europe for a very long time. I'm very glad that I was finally in the right position to do it and that I went with the right person. Now that I have I know that's it's not only very do-able, but worth every penny and minute of effort and I definitely plan on returning. ***

Posted some pictures up from the Dear Electric recording session at my house this past weekend here.

Back to work after 15 days out. Bored.

this is a great webcomic

http://www.marriedtothesea.com/

and one of my faves

dont forget about pbf - this guy is one of my favorite artists.

I rearranged my furniture last night. So, instead of my former blogging surroundings featuring views of nothing but walls and an ironing board, I can now look to my right and check out the back yard and woods beyond... or cock my head about 100 degrees to the left and see what's on the TV. The PC desk is now right near a couch so guests can be comfortable rather than sitting in metal folding chairs while I'm doing PC related activities. I think it works better this way. It's kinda messing with me a little bit... as I haven't moved anything around down here in nearly two years (ugh, depressing), but I'm sure I'll get used to it. ***

Today's the last day of my two week vacation. Since the weather calls for clouds / rain I'm going to spend it watching the end of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, playing a little Kingdom Hearts 2, cleaning the dust off my record collecton, and mixing in the 80 CDs or so that I've accumulated over the past two years alphabetically onto my CD shelves. Joy.

Marissa found this book:


on the "free to take" section at her office and thought I'd be interested in reading it. She was damn right as I'd actually just recently added it to the mental list of books I wanted to try to plow through on my week off from work. I'm almost done. For the most part it's been very satisfying, pretty much everything I expected... but the most informative part for me so far is its inclusion of the best description I've ever read of the "legal" way that radio stations and record labels work around the payola laws, included here:

What's illegal is payola, when a record company pays a station to play a particular song, and the station plaus the song without disclosing the record company's payment to the listeners. There is, however, a way around this prohibition - independent radio promoters. Imagine an alternative rock station called WXYZ. Now imagine independent radio promoter named Bob Tapeworm. Tapeworm goes to WXYZ and says, "Give me an exclusive peek at your playlist before you announce it each week over the next twelve months, and I'll pay you a hundred thousand dollars." Now Tapeworm has exclusive access to WXYZ and WXYZ has additional income - which is "legal", as we will see. Tapeworm calls up the record label and says, "If you want your songs played on WXYZ, you have to hire me." MCA, like the other labels says "Okay, Mr. Tapeworm, here's a thousand dollars. Help us get [song title] added to WXYZ's playlist." The record company's accounting records will show "consulting fee" payments to Tapeworm, the radio stations records will show revenue from Tapeworm's "consultant contract," and since there's no identifiable link between payments from the record companies to Tapeworm and payments from Tapeworm to the station none of it is "illegal." -- (buy from amazon)

Between that bullshit and the price fixing lawsuit that was settled a few years back, it's pretty great to know that technology has knocked these greedy fuckers down a notch or two. It's rare that the little guy gets back at the big guy, but when it does it certainly is sweet. I say that fully aware that there is another party, musicians, that might be getting the shaft in this deal, but that's a whole different discusscion for a whole different time.

***
In that regard, I'd like to freely distribute two MP3s from the new Jon Auer (Posies) record called Songs From The Year of Our Demise. Of the 15 tracks, about 11 of them are bonafide fucking winners and the remaining four aren't half-bad either. Listen to these, love them, and then get to fucking buying. I will be as soon as I get my next paycheck.

* Jon Auer - Bottom Of The Bottle
* Jon Auer - The Likes Of You

***
You can view the pictures from Marissa and I's excellent week in Italy here. I'll add captions sometime today.

well that sure is interesting. carry the light, i suppose. now more than ever its time to run everything through your head. time to think.

i went and saw phil lesh on sunday evening in bethel new york. quite the experience. if one is not careful it's fairly easy to see and promote a growing cancerous hatred. for what? for each other, silly goose. soon as petey and i arrived we were witness to a "near-brawl" because some hippies had 7 tix extra and two tour rats were arguing over who got em. i guess you can tolerate hatred and intolerance if you dont know where your next meal is coming from. both looked fairly healthy, for tour rats, however.

i hate to meditate on the darkness, the growing oil based, five fingered hate puddle we all wade in everyday. but thats where my mind is at. i put out my antennae. channel, dont harbor, let it flow through you. ive been having some fun with this. the other day i was talking with someone caught in the white side of the ying yang. its all, humans are infinitely capable, bent towards good, carry the light. all, universal harmony, the shadowed side of the pitch on a 95 and humid day. its fucked. im swimming in shit im not showering tomorrow.

alls im trying to say is, why not fuck around in the black side for a bit. id argue the luxuries over here are just as comforting as what they got over there. i guess here were responsible for a little more pain, but we're in your face with it. plus you cant live without us. see that dot? where am i going.

oh, six feet under. just put down two episodes with a side of applesauce. pork. gross. ive watched this show very slowly, to take it all in. but now i see that method has me a little lost. im starting to not really understand when something dramatic happens. im missing little references. the most recent episode i watched was fairly good. carlos castaneda theme, reality in my mind and that is that.

but phil lesh. played some shit that was apparently played back in the day, same setlist whatnot. i brought a soccer ball and played with myself in petes backseat. two pluses. so many little children, staying through the whole show. in one way thats admirable, taking your little kid on tour, or just to a show. but in another way, having a kid is completely fucking insane. at least they get to have some music and unity before maturity.

well im sick as fuck and musing on trivialities. fire a fucking beam in your head now you see, right?

zinedaine zidane

i heard materazzi called him a harki

(4 years of guido pride? maybe 2 solid ones...)

To reinforce what Paul said:



(taken just after the Italian win over Germany, last week in Florence)

Some celebrities turned singers. I had no idea Patrick Swayze sang that song.

The Jantzen wedding was fun. Check out some wedding go-ers Flickr pages if you want some of that, here are some dancing highlights.

Lemonheads are doing a new album.

"THE LEMONHEADS SELF-TITLED DISC DUE OUT SEPTEMBER 26, 2006

Reformed group's first new album in 10 years

Features guest musicians Garth Hudson, J. Mascis

(July 6, 2006) THE LEMONHEADS just announced a September 26th,
2006 release date for the group's first new album in almost 10
years. The self-titled disc will be released on Vagrant Records and
was co-produced by Evan Dando and drummer Bill Stevenson
(Descendents, Black Flag) and was recorded at Stevenson's Blasting
Room studios in Ft. Collins, CO earlier this year. Joining the two
was bass player Karl Alvarez (Descendents) along with special guests
Garth Hudson and J Mascis on select tracks.

The Lemonheads are planning a U.S. tour for the fall, but fans in
the U.K. will get to see the band this month at the Lattitude
Festival in Suffolk on July 14th and on July 16th at Somerset House
in London. The current touring band includes Dando with Josh
Lattanzi (bass) and John Kent (drums)."