Sunday, December 17, 2000 05:54 p.m. EST
first, a little something for all the jawbox fans out there: i don't know whether this is common knowledge or not, but jawbox has an additional rare track that for some reason didn't make it onto my scrapbook of fatal accidents. it's called "chump II," and appears on the 1994 jabberjaw compilation good to the last drop. as the diehard among you will have already surmised, the song is a slower, gentler take of "chump" off novelty, with lead vocals (i believe) by bill. it's obviously essential for completists, but the rest of y'all should napsterize it as well to be cooler than all your friends.

lately: i have rediscovered the joy of two-man two-dimensional digital combat. last night i played capcom vs. snk for the first time ever and won 3 out of 6 matches. (yeah, everyone i fought had experience on their side, so it's a testament to my monumental skills.) back in high school i was a real killer at king of fighters 97 and 98, and i didn't realize until last night how much i had missed the thrill of tossing fireballs and executing combos and counters against a worthy opponent. so it looks like i'll be spending a large chunk of next week down at my local tilt exploring the finer points of head-bashing. yes, you will hear all about it. but check back tomorrow or the day after, because i'll be giving my own personal history of the mp3 revolution, which includes two years of pre-napster old-schoolness. seeya there.

Friday, December 15, 2000 03:00 p.m. EST
fuckers! this is the third time i've tried to write this blog entry. but my parents' obsolete windows95 machine keeps crashing everytime i try to multitask. oh well, here's the short of it: i'm in a 3-story house alone, and it's making me paranoid. i just wrote a rockinriff that recalls on the mouth-era superchunk, and it will surface in a wolf 359 track soon after i return to california next year.

i've been having a recurring fantasy about the following: walking down broadway and seeing viacom ceo sumner redstone being heldup at gunpoint in a dark alley. i save his life by clobbering his assailant with a cinderblock, and he's so grateful he gives me 24 hours of airtime on mtv and full access to the tech crew and whatever cast members i want to use. of course, i wouldn't use any of them. i'd change the name to 359tv, and broadcast from the back room of the cat's cradle in chapel hill. the whole day would be devoted to the kind of stuff you see on supersphere and insound's media section: live performances by, let's see, probably. . . lurve (of course), 90 day men, modest mouse, oxes, milemarker, shellac, faraquet, les savy fav, the plan. . . and my mom. also: many gratuitous close-ups of me, interviews by me of the aforementioned bands, rare videos mtv never plays, and interspersed between the main segments, short blurbs spotlighting Albums You Must Own. and at some point i think i would show an episode of mst3k. definitely.

right now i'm listening to polvo's celebrate the new dark age. i only mention this because my band recorded its debut at the same studio where polvo recorded ctnda. so yeah, that pretty much does make me indier-than-thou. also, us against them reports that some ex-archers, fin fang foom, and cole guys are forming a new, hum-like combo called the tall ships. color me salivating, as i watch chapel hill rise like a phoenix from the ashes of musical irrelevance.

Thursday, December 14, 2000 02:47 p.m. EST
arrived in nc last night at about 7.15 pm EST, after a surprisingly relaxing nonstop flight. i had the entire three-seat partition to myself, which allowed me to extend my overlong legs to lengths previously unimagined. best plane experience i've had since i started school.

i canned the holiday mix-cd idea and just made a cd of mp3 tracks i'd been listening to over the past month. i had some faraquet on there, q and not u, gvsb, and that one jealous sound song i like. also present in the mix was heirs to the math-rock crown oxes, doing "and giraffe natural enemies." with the recent breakup of don cab, oxes now lead the pack for metal-influenced guitar/guitar/drums indie angularity. when i saw these guys live this summer, one of the two guitarists actually left the stage, hung out in the crowd for awhile, walked up the stairs to the mezzanine, and entered the girls' bathroom--all while managing to not skip a single beat. needless to say, it was pretty goddamn cool. they only played like 4 songs tho, which was kinda wack. but if they come to your town, make sure you go see them.

while scouring napster for rare oxes tracks a while back, i ran across a song with the title "climax!!s," supposedly by them. but it sounds like one of the mellower instrumental tracks you might hear on a joe satriani record. the other thing that makes me doubt it's an oxes track is that it's got bass, and oxes are bass-free. i really like it though: it's borderline easy-listening (yeah, i know), but it captures an emotional resonance that most rock-based guitar instrumental music never touches. and it's undeniably rock; there's no hint of blues or classical, simply a rhythm riff, a lead riff and bass-snare-bass-snare repeating drum beat. if anyone knows what i'm talking about, feel free to confirm or deny that it is the same band "oxes" on monitor records. everybody else should locate the track and decide for themselves.

also my parents' computer has measles. literally. i'll show you later.

Tuesday, December 12, 2000 05:02 p.m. EST
just got off the ticketmaster website, where i failed to secure tickets for everyone in lurve for the dec. 29th d-plan show at the black cat in dc. i was quite pissed: tix cost $7, but ticketbastard charges a $3.50 surcharge on each ticket. so instead of paying $28.00 for 4 tix, somehow they end up costing $43.50.

but the reason i didn't get the tix is because they only ship to the credit card billing address (jackasses), and mine is in palo alto. which is no good, cuz i'll be in north carolina when they ship. i swear, there's prolly a room full of smug execs out there whose only job is to think of ways to fuck the consumer over. bastards!!

on a more seasonal note, i'm trying to compile as many holiday-related indie rock tracks as possible for a custom holiday cd that i can play between handel's "messiah" and nat king cole while i'm home. so far, i've thought of jsbx's "high gear," the plan's "this christmas" (as well as holiday trax by the promise ring and alkaline trio on the same split ep), throwing muses' "santa claus," beck's "little drum machine boy," and. . . "christmas in hollis" by run-dmc. i'm gonna keep looking tho. feel free to make suggestions, but make 'em quick because i'm leaving california in the morning.

and you can just forget about that goddamn jimmy eat world song.

Tuesday, December 12, 2000 10:55 a.m. EST
rock on. props of the highest order to nylpm, which has given my site a permanent link. kick-arse!

more bullspit to come after 6pm tonight. still gotta lot to do.