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Wednesday, October 24, 2001 06:37 p.m.

the instrument soundtrack could only tide me over for so long. the new fugazi record is really fucking good.

Sunday, October 21, 2001 01:46 p.m.

friday night was the strokes show at the palace. nat and mehran met me at my house and we sat in traffic for 45 minutes on the way to hollywood. the palace is a really nice venue and it reminded me a lot of the fillmore in san francisco. a band called the moldy peaches opened who had a gimmick, but i'm not sure what it was (homelessness?). underneath the silliness they actually had some good songs and were very entertaining. between bands we looked up at the balcony and saw the band bush, courtney love, zack de la rocha, and i think todd rundgren.

then the lights went dark and the strokes version of a carpenters song came on before they took the stage. boy did they look cool. style consultants must have spent a long time with them because there's no other explanation for the singer wearing a hoodie with a jean jacket under stage lights for 45 minutes without getting extremely uncomfortable. they sounded really good live -- almost exactly like the record note for note. they played one song that i haven't heard, which was the one that replaced "new york city cops" on the us release. the strokes didn't move around much and the singer only moved to toss his mike stand angrily for no reason at all. the crowd went truly nuts for them; it was insane. everyone seemed to know every word to every song. even zack in the balcony was out of his seat excitedly singing along to every song. courtney wasn't singing along because she was busy trying to get into gavin's pants and gavin was probably too busy trying to keep courtney out of his pants to sing along. the set lasted for about as long as the record and they left without an encore.

after the show i sorta felt like i had lost $20 in one of those card game scams where you follow your card and try and pick it out of three other cards and the one you pick up is always wrong and then you say, "ok, it sucks that i lost my $20, but i knew i was gonna lose it going in and now i know not to do that again." i was satisfied with the show and i played the game and contributed to keeping the hype machine oiled for a few more days. no harm done.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001 07:13 p.m.

bosses are assholes. no foolin'.

Tuesday, October 16, 2001 08:08 p.m.

if it wasn't obvious enough from this pita, i watch a lot of tv. more specifically though, i watch a lot of mtv, which i'm not proud of, but i think is important for a pop culture fueled vocabulary. recently, mtv has unleashed by way of some record company a new low in hip hop music. his name is trick daddy. i can not recall ever seeing a more talentless individual in my life (though i've yet to catch the emril sitcom). it's just disturbing watching these videos and seeing people who agree to portray and perpetuate stereotypes like it's no big deal. grr.

last night on letterman john mellencamp performed. i never liked the guy because i always saw him as a springsteen wannabee with lame songs, and after he performed there was a commercial for his album that was even more of a sick attempt to capitalize on the attacks last month than i had written about earlier this month. in the commercial for mellencamp's new album cuttin' heads, the commercial voice says, "from singer songwriter john mellencamp comes a message of hope (cheesy, "uplifting" music plays in the background)" while more american flags fly around the screen than at a texas barbeque. you would think that a "message of hope" would come with more sensitive title than cuttin' heads, but basically you get the impression that it's your duty as an american to buy a john mellencamp album. a fucking john mellencamp album! ahh capitalism, ain't it grand?

q: what's snoop dogg's favorite kind of weather?

a: drizzle

Friday, October 12, 2001 07:00 p.m.

there was just a film on ifc about my favorite documentary film director errol morris. he's such a neat guy and the dead horse thing on his site is confusing. now ifc is showing one of errol's documentaries named gates of heaven, about a pet cemetery, which i'm recording because i've never seen it and can't find it at any video stores.

mehran's coming over in a little bit and we're gonna head over to aron's records and i'm going to spend money i don't have have on records. i'm probably going to be driven to homelessness when amoeba music opens in la in a month or so.

did you know that there was a human milk bank in los angeles until 1948? neither did i, but my bio psych teacher said there was one and i did some seachin' on the ol' web and found that there are still some human milk banks across the country. you know, in my 22 years on this earth the subject of human milk banks have never come up in any conversation i've ever had until just yesterday. if you have a lactating fetish or if you'd like to donate, click here to find the location nearest you.

last weekend nat and i drove to las vegas to go to some radio station concert that cyndi lauper headlined called "the bite of las vegas." if you watch mtv all day like i do, but enjoy it, there's a good chance you would have really enjoyed this concert. you could have seen the 15 year old guitar sensation michelle branch and the brunette, y2k nelson brothers evan & jarron who played the ac/dc song "you shook me all night long" with as much edge as a marble. this however, would only be the first time that ac/dc collected royalties from performers that evening because next to grace the stage was the marvelously untalented uncle cracker. how some people have managed to get songs that played on the radio is completely baffling. we missed most of the band’s sets so we could drive down the strip and go into a couple casinos, and so i could get drunk and be medicated for mr. cracker’s impending set, but there was a ton of traffic and we barely had time to do anything before going back to the concert. we were really close to the front of the stage when uncle cracker played because cyndi played right afterwards and it was fun yelling stuff out when the applause ceased to keep ourselves entertained. things like "play one for limited education! play one for the g-e-d!". they also attempted to cover "paradise city" which was borderline offensive. when that ended and it got quiet i yelled, "is nothing sacred?!" and i don't think they or anyone around us understood what i was talking about. then cyndi came out and played a really good set and despite the band not being that well rehearsed, they still sounded good. she has a new album coming next year (hopefully) and the new songs she played were more rock sounding than the songs on her last album. people can be really annoying and rude sometimes like the girl who was behind us yelling for cyndi to throw her boots and her clothes and her guitar picks over and over and over again. i was surprised nat didn’t punch her, but i think that was only because the girl’s family was right there and she was trying to be polite.

Tuesday, October 2, 2001 08:09 p.m.

commercials have been really getting on my nerves lately with how advertisers have changed them in order to be more patriotic, which is leading me to believe that the events of september 11th might have had something to do with advertisers conspiring with the companies who manufacture american flags to sell patriotic-themed merchandise.

my first gripe is with that mitsubishi commercial with the barenaked ladies song in it. can a pop song just die without being revived in a commercial so soon after it was a hit? advertisers keep pushing this newfound nostalgia for things that we had just forgotten about and forgotten about good reason. when you see that commercial you're supposed to think, "oh, hey, it's that barenaked ladies song...i remember that. look how they try to sing along to the fast part. oh my gawd, that's like me and my friends last summer. that's so silly. we're so silly. we're all so silly in this big, silly world. i wish i had a mitsubishi lancer." of course you remember that, valley person, it was like 3 months ago, moron! grr.

they had to add to the song a subliminal patriotic message with a line that says "i have a tendency to wear a flag on my sleeve", which i think replaced "i have a tendency to wear my mind on my sleeve". now, although i know close to nothing about the barenaked ladies, i do know that they are from canada (you can tell because their eyes are different.) and i don't think they wear canadian flags on their sleeves. although, they might when they tour other countries so that they don't get mistaken for americans and have people hate them and give them bad service. canadians do that you know. as far as just anyone wearing flags on their sleeves, in a literal sense, what americans are going around sewing american flags on their sleeves? none. you heard me, none. we're americans, we don't fucking sew. we leave the sewing to the canadians.

there's also that commercial where they're running around on a cliff or something and it might be for some cologne or tommy jeans or some crap like that and the song they use is "fortunate son" by credence clearwater revival and the line in the song that they want you to hear is, "some folks are born, made to wave the flag. ooh, the red, white, and blue". that's fine and all, but the next line in the song that they don't play is, "it ain't me. it ain't me. i ain't no fortunate son." the whole song was critical of the draft and the war in vietnam and now it's being used to sell america and tommy jeans. how would you feel if you wrote a song being deliberately critical of the united states and it gets embraced as a rallying cry for war? if you were john fogerty you wouldn't care because you'd be an asshole who doesn't care about anything as long as you get paid, but if you were someone like bruce springsteen whose "born in the usa" was used by reagan during a speech or something, you'd be pissed. and i'm pissed for being subjected to stupid commercials with false patriotism. if the commercial people really loved america, they wouldn't pay enormous sums of money to get the rights to use a song that's saying the exact opposite of what they want to say in their commercial now would they? that is, unless they were communist...