Author: substitute

nope

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-21-2008

headlines

CLINTON SAID TO BE DIVIDED ON CABINET POST (Ow!!!)

SPACE WALK ASTRONAUTS LOSE TOOLS (This happened in a Stanislaw Lem story and it was fucking hilarious. Poor guy spends the rest of his trip being taunted by the wrench orbiting his spaceship, going by the cockpit window.)

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-19-2008

The Coffeehouse Scene: Thank You For Not Smoking

It’s comedy time again at my local coffee hole.

Since this place has the only large open patio around, smokers congregate. At first the management tried to segregate tobacco to a far corner of the patio. Possibly because of complaints from an adjacent beauty salon, they escalated to a complete ban, with the expected failure.

At most coffee joints this would result in a temporary security guard, or some customers being 86’d, or a return to a more reasonable policy. But this is not most coffee joints. At this café, a failed campaign results in a full-service Mediterranean opera including screaming exits, synchronized shrugging, rapid cycling bipolar pastry flinging, eyebrow duels, threats to multiple generations of the family, and soliloquys delivered at maximum volume towards the fast food place next door. Scenes from the current production include:

  • Owner having yelling fight in Italian with cigar-smoking customer, resulting in unverified physical threats from said customer
     
  • Fifteen to 20 anti-smoking signs all over the place, many facing each other less than 3 feet away
     
  • Manager trying to stuff customer’s cigarettes into her hoodie before owner sees them
     
  • Owner attempting to get customers who are smoking in the parking lot to smoke around the other side of the fast food joint next door
     
  • Owner threatening to close the place right now tonight if customers don’t stop smoking
     
  • Owner promising to close the place in a week if camera catches even one customer smoking
     
  • Customers lining up patio umbrellas so that owner’s camera can’t see them smoke
     
  • Departure of 2/3rd of the regular evening crowd

It makes me want to START smoking just so I can be part of the action.

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-18-2008

Musical Memories: More Fun in the New World

Honest to goodness, the bars weren’t open this morning
They must of been votin’ for President or something

I love this album. I loved X before I saw them live, listening to White Girl and Los Angeles on KROQ while in high school. The harmonies in fifth, the sad resigned loud-ass music, the barre chords. What more could an O.C. punk want? They were L.A., and chaos, and soul, and everything I didn’t have at Newport Harbor High School.

I went off to UCLA and promptly saw X at my own college, in Ackerman Grand Ballroom. They opened with “This was supposed to be the new world” at 1500 dB and loads of feedback. Exene was wearing a cowboy hat covered with spangles. I wanted to marry her and John Doe simultaneously.

From age 18 to 20 I listened to the first four X albums on repeat. Later on the peak of my music journalism career was interviewing them for Creem. Twenty years later miss_geek and I went to see them and they hadn’t lost it.

Not sure why. Maybe it’s because they were a stealth country blues band disguised as punk, or maybe they just were tough enough not to die or get lame from the lifestyle.

X never made it outside L.A. I remember John Doe saying that they shared that with Oingo Boingo: bands that were loved in L.A. and a few other cities and never got national success. And the weird thing, too: their lyrics look awful without the music, but with the music they’re wonderful.

I remember that my dormitory floor at UCLA my freshman year was a musical fondue. My notable success was getting about ten people, including the diehard Springsteen fan and the guy who only liked ska, to become X fans. I bet they still are.

There’s no nostalgia here. It’s just good god-damned music, okay? It could have been made yesterday, or might be made tomorrow. They just had it. Someone has it now.

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-16-2008