DEFINE 'LOVE.' OKAY, NOW DEFINE 'NEIGHBOR.'

Just had this conversation, coming in the front door of my building, with some gruff-looking guy just leaving:

- Oooh, man, (he says,) look at you. Where you coming in from at this hour?

(I smile and shrug. I am a good neighbor. Or I try.)

- Ah, you been a bad boy tonight, then?

- Well, not bad enough, apparently. I am home.

- But it's so late. Sun's coming up. (He cocks the eye.) You have been bad, haven't you?

- Aaaah, (throwing him a bone - I was actually out in Babylon for a show), I was out of town. So where you going so early, then?

- I'm off to be a bad boy myself. (At this point I'm past him and halfway up the stairs. I look back at him a little skeptical. We're messing with each other at this point.) Have you been bad enough tonight? Wanna come on out and be bad some more?

- Aw, thanks for the offer, but I'm just done a nice hefty shift of bad. It's your turn, my friend.

- Alright, said I tried.

(You know, I did everything right except be bad tonight. Okay, that, and make the 2:00 train back into town.)

"THE SONG 'HOT SHOT CITY' IS PARTICULARLY GOOD."

On the other hand, if you're going to write puff pieces, for god's sake, do it right. Here are 661 excellent examples of the form:

Customer Reviews: The Best of David Hasselhoff

An example, from gbwenslow:

David Hasselhoff stands promethean astride Olympus as he hands to us mere mortals this delicious ambrosia laden with such astounding songs full of manic intensity and thought-provoking lyrics. Like an ancient Greek muse, David sings, and we, helpless, can do nothing but drink in his dulcet musical stylings. Not since he played the Holiday Inn Stardust piano lounge in Des Moines, Iowa has music been taken to such stellar and lofty heights. Like predecessor crooners such as Sinatra, Crosby, Bennett, White and Bolton, David sings from the heart and brings us along for the ride.

This is an album for all time.

The song "Hot Shot City" was particularly good.

ON THE BANALITY OF MODERN MUSIC JOURNALISM
In the NY Press this week, J.R. Taylor has an interesting piece on current-day music criticism and how it's gone completely down the toilet. Not that there isn't some good writing being done about music, but there isn't a lot of critical thought being given to what's being promoted. I mean, where do you go if you really want to know if so-and-so's new record is any good? Sure, every once in a while someone at Spin will give a tepid review to the latest superstar side-project or something, and the second-tier mags (Vice, MRR and the like) make great sport of dissing bands not aimed at their target markets, but it sure feels like the golden age of Nick Tosches and Cameron Crowe (and my beloved non-uncle Lester) is deep in the past and fading fast. The article describes an unnervingly cynical and corporate seminar hosted by Us Weekly Music Editor Shirley Halperin through Media Bistro, a website for freelancers:

Sadly, Halperin doesn't seem to understand that writers -- even those with a "passion for music" -- can express negative thoughts. We will find ourselves writing positive things about artists we don't like, she informs us. For all intents and purposes, Halperin is warning that 70 to 80 percent of the time, we will be expected to tell lies.

That's the big opening, and everyone who doesn't walk out deserves to hear the rest. The good news is that Halperin doesn't expect anyone to do a lot of work. Her first advice is to read lots of other music magazines.

"You are what you read," she declares, and then suggests that we read Blender, Rolling Stone and Spin -- all magazines that primarily share a commitment to female musicians willing to show off lots of cleavage.

Well, not to dis cleavage, because sex has sold like nothing else ever could since cavepeople useta bang on rocks in their skivvies (I freely admit it: I bought Liz Phair and PJ Harvey records before I'd ever heard a note of their music, frex, and the fact that I like them (early Liz & later PJ better than the other way around, but still) is merely a bonus), but this is why I gave up writing about music and figured I'd have better luck trying to make some myself: I saw too many people with balls of concrete and talent to match, monomaniacally convinced they were the second coming of Hendrix or Billie Holiday or They Might Be Giants or whatever, who dulled the senses of the musicians and the writers around them until their little two-paragraph puff piece got written, and as a critic I met too many editors and other bidness pros who were shocked (shocked!) at the idea of doing anything other than going along to get along. I'd mention that the new Brit thing wasn't so hot, and they'd chuckle, and say something dismissive ("Well, Tony, you'll just have to be creative, then, won't you?") before patting me on the head and giving me a cookie.

I didn't try my hand at music journalism so I could fuck rock stars and their sometimes hot hangers-on, or for dibs on the backstage seafood tray and open bar (nice as those perks may have been). Nor was I necessarily angling for a gig somewhere in the bizz so I could become part of the problem, as cool as that would have been (especially to my ambitious would-be rockgod friends, a few of whom once were or have since become actual rockgods). I got into it because I thought giving my reasonably informed opinions on what records were good and which weren't might be a decent public service. (Really. I was the fucking Gandhi of Rock and Roll. You got a problem with that?) And then at some point I could sell an Oscar-winning screenplay and marry the hot guitarist chick from Heart and live happily ever after shitting out so-so screenplays from my mansion in Brentwood. That, O dear friend, is my vision of how to sell out right.

As a rock critic in Toronto, I saw 30 bands a week for a while there, and not nearly enough of them were any good to consistently bring positive reviews out of my three golden typing fingers. So instead of kvetching constantly in print to people who were increasingly sick of hearing it (I never claimed to be a good writer, especially at that age; I just had nothing good to say about damn near anyone I saw, including the big-name hotshit hotshots we were told to say something nice about), I figured I'd waste my youth on the other side of the mike, at least trying to do something different. Yeah, I still made zines in which I bitched about crappy music, but it's a lot easier to justify spewing that kind of printed bile when you're handing each individual copy to someone who can call you back personally and tell you you're full of it. And when I tried to be straight about things in Antimatters when I moved here, I got shat on by the locals. So maybe some other time.

In the decade or so since I got out of journalism, seems that scene's gotten steadily worse. Like the radio business it mirrors, music criticism has become a series of homogenized puff pieces that have only a passing acquaintance with the acts they're pushing. And judging from Taylor's article, the people in control of the paying press seem to like it that way.

(Why doesn't the movie business, or the literary or live theater businesses, have this problem? Because they don't.)

BEST TOY NAME EVAR

Kubricks!

[from the ever wonderful Kelly Sue, who has a blog, and can I get a hell yeah for that]

FOR THE PERFECT STRANGER IN YOUR LIFE

support-your-local-busker.com is the new public performer-themed blog of my friend E. Bess. She's a comics geek with a thing for Irish music, and I think she's swell.

She's been doing a busking zine, PLATFORM, for a little more than a year now, which is notable because there used to be zillions of zines and now everyone seems to have gone online (though maybe that's just me), and PLATFORM is actually really well written, well organized, the themes are thought out, I mean really, I'd have pimped it even if it wasn't an interesting read. But she's really on to a compelling formula.

SPORTS PAGE

Item: As much as my black little heart wants the Leafs to bring home the Stanley Cup just once before I die (if you look at an 80-year-old Red Sox fan, that's gonna be me in fortymumblemumble years unless God does exist and lives in Etobicoke and just wasn't telling anyone, which I grant is possible), I would derive no small amount of glee from watching the Ottawa Senators win their first Cup in three-quarters of a century, and have them thumbing their noses at the self-obsessed pompous team down the way (with which I love and live all the days of my life and for which I die a thousand deaths every year when they inevitably lose, but let's be frank). Not only does Ottawa (the city and the team) need the extra playoff money as much as anyone, but it would be a certain kind of masochistic pleasure watching a teeny little backwater Canadian town (yes, it's the capital, but otherwise it's even a bit out of the way for people driving between Toronto and Montreal) beat up on the rest of the hockey world. It'll be hell for ratings here in the states, but hey, they have an L.A. area team in, so come on, ESPN, promote the finals already. Sheesh, the Ducks are the company team anyways. I hope the Sens crush them like bugs in the final.

Item: As of this moment, Annika Sorenstam, having shot a 71 in her opening round, is right on the line to make the cut at the Colonial, and can I get a hell yeah for that. How can you not want her to at least do fairly well? One, it's not the Men's Pro Golf Association. There are no rules excluding women, at least that I've heard of. (Individual courses are another story.) Two, do you know the last time I paid attention to golf, like, ever? Pardon the cliche, but it's good for the sport. She's the best in the world, and she's trying to raise her game. That's what sport is all about. If Tiger Woods got an invite to play on the Martian tour, I suspect he'd give it a go if he thought it would make him better. Thirdly, she's asked for no favors, and has refused them when offered. She's hitting off the same tees as everyone else, using the same clubs, playing in the same crappy Texas weather as everyone else (well, except for Vijay Singh, of course). Look. Maybe it's a good idea for the guys who don't feel they should play with women to set up an MPGA tour, so they can put a big sign on the clubhouse door that says NO GURLS ALOUD, and then we can all be happy in our own little worlds.

Item: Steffi Graf never expected her husband to win the Australian Open this year. No one did; Andre Agassi's a creaky, spent 74 years old, and the rest of the hotshots on tour are all Borglike giants (not Bjorn Borg, the Star Trek kind -- oh, forget it) who gorge themselves on horse pills and crystal meth before every match, and have serves more accurate and deadly than Bush's bogus Bunker Buster bombs. So when Steffi promised to play mixed doubles with him in the French Open if he did win, everyone had a little chuckle. But then Dre put it all together for one more glorious (well, glorious for tennis, anyway) run, and suddenly everyone was excited about seeing Graf step on the court one more time. But I guess getting pregnant counts as a valid excuse to pull out of a tennis tournament, especially when you haven't played competitively in years.

What can we learn from this story? This: never make a bet with Steffi Graf. She'll go to any lengths, including bearing your child, to weasel out of it.

Item: Would Roger Clemens just hurry up and win his stupid 300th game already? It's getting painful watching him fake sincerity about caring helping the team win. Come off it. He's a selfish prick who has sold out every team he's been on, not to mention his family and his hometown (remember how he led the Texas Rangers to believe he really, really wanted to come home before turning around and signing with the Yankees? Prick). He'll get his milestone, and then won't win five more games the rest of the season. And if the Yankees make the playoffs (what's their magic number to clinch the East now? Six?), he's going to pull John Rocker-type numbers, and it won't matter. Because he has his little glory-trinkets, the world series ring he came to New York to get, the 300 wins, the hell with it, the rest doesn't matter. Mark my words. (Am I bitter? Well, maybe a little.)

'TECHNICALLY, PETER FRAMPTON WAS NEVER FAMOUS.'
You just know when you hit the site of the great rock critic Brett Meisner (that's right, from those rock hard-partying gods from '82, Spartacus. You remember Spartacus, don't you? Don't you?) that you have found a one-stop Hollywood rock and roll debauchery depot.

If there was any question that Hollywood might be rock and roll central, Brett asks that question. If there is a buffet or a B-list rock star left unattended, Brett does the attending. He's submitted articles to some of the greatest magazines in rock. He's, um, hardcore.

Don't miss his ten (actually only nine) favorite bands of all time, his undeniable truths about rock music, and Spartacus' Smoking Gun-style tour rider (now I know what to ask for next time I tour, in order to be more rockstarlike).

And to answer the three-part question I had about this site ("1. Really? 2. I mean, naw, he can't be. Is he? 3. Really?"), ... You know, the problem with satire in general, and with the Brettster in particular, is that at its best, this kind of sunshinesouttamyass runs the risk of being true. Hm.

UPDATE: Brett's gotta know this guy.

LUXURY TO DIE FOR

Turns out, to show off the new season of Six Feet Under in the UK, Fisher and Sons are branching out into retail embalming accessories (like they were threatening to do in the beginning of Season One).

No matter if you lived fast or died young; the good-looking corpse part is now easier to achieve with products from Luxury To Die For.

(I'm already suffering withdrawals, and the new season's not over yet. They better be shooting the fourth season right now or else I'll get all Russell-stalker style on they asses.)

I'M A-COMIN', ELIZABETH, THIS IS THE BIG ONE
I never thought of myself as old. All my high school friends, one by one, started talking about how they feel the onset of aging, they can't stay out all night or they don't pee so good all the time (and thanks for that info, Bub - I won't out you here, and you're welcome), but I've escaped it until now. You'd never know it, but I'm 72 years old, and still I have the unrelenting pep of an Olsen twin. My skin is butter-supple, I can run marathons after all-nighters, my bones heal in minutes, and I look better than Charlize Theron when I shake my little ass on the catwalk.

My secret? Apathy. I flat out don't give a shit about what I look like, and so paradoxically I continuously get complimented on my youthful beauty. I take this as both a given and an insult. Well of course I still look good! I do what I love, I play in the fields of the lord, and you expect me to age? Silly mortal.

Anyway, it doesn't matter now. All that changes today. It's Tori Spelling's 30th birthday today. Come home, Dorian Gray, all is forgiven. Mindless youth is clearly gone forever; mine, yours, everyone's. So fuck it, I'm just going to find me a porch to plop my shaky ass down on, a cane to scare the neighborhood kids off my lawn with, and a casket to fall into.

I'M ONLY GETTING TO WRITE ABOUT THIS NOW
I work a block away from Governor Pataki's office, and if you only read the papers, you wouldn't know how unpopular a guy he really was in some circles.

There were hunger strikers on the street protesting for Workers' Compensation Health Care Reform, and contrary to what I expected, they got a lot of sympthy from the people whose cars they were blocking and whose way they were generally in. They were there for a week, and now that they've left, there are a bunch of cars occupying the spots on the curb where before there were people asleep on mats, with the portapotty on one end of their compound and a table with a old woman with a megaphone at the other, and part of me hopes the markings on the street, the little asphalt dents where the cots dug in, the spray-painted boundaries, don't go away just yet. Because these people had a point.

The U.S. has been the laughing stock of the First World for their backward views on health care for as long as I can remember. (When I told my friends I was moving here, I don't think any of them failed to mention the horror stories of people bleeding to death outside hospitals or inept doctors who would leave me in servitude-level debt for life if I so much as twisted a leg.) So when there's an opportunity to maybe increase the coverage net to include people that weren't covered before, or (as in this case) strengthen that coverage among the people on the fringes, that can't be a bad thing.

I know it's a complicated political football of an issue. But I've just been real lucky I haven't gotten sick or hurt since I moved here. My coverage is spotty at best, and if I get hurt here, then the record goes back on the shelf.

I know I'm lucky, even now. You don't have to tell me.

THIS POST IS NOT REAL
Apparently there's a sequel to The Matrix coming out this week.

You know, I would never have known about this significant cultural event if they hadn't plastered Matrix-themed ads for every consumer beverage, restaurant, household appliance, minor league ball team and personal hygiene product ever made in recorded human history over every saleable piece of ad space in freaking Midtown.

(I know this gripe would carry more weight if this was a new ad campaign style, and if you all (okay, I'll admit it, we all) weren't going to lemming ourselves off and see it this weekend sometime because it's probably going to be good in spite of all the promoshite, but I get it already. When I go out this weekend, I don't care if Carrie Anne Moss Herself will serve me Heinys off her heinie, I plan on sticking to Sierra Nevada, thanks. But hey, if you want some, you go nuts; this ain't no boycott. That'd be just as sheepy in the other direction.)

MAYBE IT'S THE EXTRA POT OF COFFEE I'M DRINKING EACH MORNING
I finished writing and recording demo versions of four songs this weekend. Four! Sometimes it's hard to listen to four songs in a weekend.

Of course, two of the new proverbial kids on the metaphorical block were like 90 percent finished already, and one of them I'd started in January, and by "demo versions" I mean "played from start to finish without fucking it up," and none of them are the Single of Next Summer, though that's okay because I think I might have a couple of those already and these are definitely more of the local-colour variety, and they'll only serve to make aforesaid megahits-to-be stand out like klieg lights and give the listener (the listener! That could be you! If, y'know, if you wanted to be) the impression that I'm like a genius or something.

But -- four!

Now I have to burn some long (long, long) overdue demos and start the next phase of the recording process. So much work to do, and all I really want to do is get started.

SUBTLEST REVERSE SEXUAL HARASSMENT PLOY EVER
At least once a week, usually more often than that, I come into my office and find a men's magazine on the desk. Not wink-nudge starletspreaders like Maxim or Stuff (not that I could find that stuff at the Wal-Mart I hang out at anyways anymore, and thanks for removing that temptation to sin, O powers that be), and none of that porny stuff that an average workplace would consider unseemly.

I'm talking about rags like Men's Health and Rock Hard Fitness Dude, magazines that have exactly the same captions every month: there's something about better abs, a point-form list of tricks to use in the sack, a bit about some new form of recreation (like climbing the face of an office building or kayaking in homemade canoes, that sort of thing) with the obligatory photo essay how-to on yoga at the photocopier, or isometrics involving the front fender of your car, you know, cheap ways to convince yourself that you can't possibly cram more exercise into your schedule than you already have. There's always a new diet too, involving some wack near-food like orange rinds or pesto, and every page has some guy in a blue tank-top doing crunches (except for the ads, where the guy is shirtless) or holding some carrot shake or a tub of Proteina Studly Chow or whatever.

Yeah, those rags. Each page more gloss on it than a Carol Channing impersonator, and they're disturbingly gummy to the touch. Never mind that these mags exploit men worse than any issue of Naked Hott American Studpuppet magazine (talk about giving your target market an unrealistic image to live up to) - I wanna know who's actually reading this tripe every week as if it has something new to say.

And why are they leaving it in my office? I mean, while I can take a hint, maybe someone might be able to hint a little louder, so I can figure out what it is I'm supposed to ultimately be offended by. If that's too much to ask, then I'm going to keep throwing these things in the bin, as long as my puny arms can still lift them.

SUN GOES UP, PANTS GO UP. SUN GOES DOWN, PANTS GO DOWN.

Andy's bored random eBay comments made me laugh like a dribbling idiot for about ten solid minutes.

Praise: What's orange, brown, black, and red? Give up? They're COLORS, dipshit!
Praise: Smooth transaction! I just wish you didn't smack my kid.

[via b3ta]

THIS PICTURE



(of Danny Hellman's Lynyrd Skynyrd memorial plane crash floaty pen) shows, in one quick-dry shot-on-the-one-clear-spot-on-my-apartment-floor picture, why I still have faith in The Future of America. Nowhere else, at no other time in history, could such an operatically tasteless death (from a quarter century ago! And really; the Van Zandts, people. These aren't the Kennedys or Buddy Holly or anything. Think about it. .38 friggin Special? And still!) bring about such a life-affirmingly gaudy item such as this. Huzzah! Hooray! America will rise again, or something! Mr. Hellman, you have made (if 'made' can be defined as 'giving me a smirk on one weekend of') my year!

Oh, they're both spoken for. Sorry. If you want one, I'm sure they still have a few of 'em at WFMU someplace, and you might be able to get one for a pledge.

PRE-DIGESTED FOR YOUR PLEASURE
Check this version of the Evil Twin out.

Makes more sense, eh? Thought so. Damn.

I have only the vaguest idea how these folks managed it, but I do rather like it.

[via FmH]

LOOK OUT, MY GUITAR'S EXPLODING
I am currently hating my day gig with the liquid fire of a thousand suns.

I don't like talking about work, but this last week or so we've been exploring new frontiers in pettiness, tinpot dictatorship, low-rent macchiavellian head games and whine-infestation here, and I'm now at the point where I'm blasting Miles in my office and greeting everyone who dares to enter with "And what the fuck do you want?" (I'm aware that this is probably not helping the greater cause of world peace.)

But all is, as usual, not lost. I'm doing this show at the Baggot Inn tonight at about ten, and all this boiling rage tends to transform itself into a serious amount of energy come showtime. Because, see, that stage crap is fun, and positive, and for me, kind of necessary at this point. The papers I push, on the other hand, would be better served with gasoline and a blowtorch than by stuffing them back into files and fax machines. Fuck that. Let's rock.

See you tonight, you magnificent bastards. If you wanna sit close, though, you better wear asbestos.

PURTY PITCHERS

Because it's Friday afternoon and I'd rather be drinking than working...

95-year-old paste-up postcards from the world's first great photoshopper, William H. Martin, and a modern master of the form, Scott Mutter.

[Just two of the excellent exhibits at the American Museum of Photography.]

M'AIDER, M'AIDER
Happy May Day, all you Commie Bastards! I got news!

For weekends in May, Jetsgo is giving free flights to Toronto, as part of convincing people to come back after the SARS thing.

Well, free return tickets, anyway. But then there's free hotel and car rental, free tickets to watch a visiting team kill the Blue Jays, and a ride up the CN Tower.

Let me know if this sounds interesting to any of you. I'm seriously considering a quickie getaway weekend. (Offer only available to those who don't believe everything they read in the papers about how pervasive the SARS "epidemic" really is.)