's Blog |
| | |  |
| Rumours
| | Hi |
"So I'm nailing shards of hope together to put something over my head."
I've started a blog centered around The Upsides a couple of times now, but each time I've erased the ordeal midway. I'm not sure why, other than the fact that I can't really say anything other than: This record has touched me. It's a near perfect encapsulation of being a 20-something teenager in this very strange decade. Now, it should be obvious that I don't actually know if these years are any more strange than any other decade because I have no real point of reference other than VH1's programming. And also I don't watch network news because they don't show network news on TBS. But whatever I lack in hindsight or foresight or mediumsight, I think I make up for in gut feeling. It just seems like things get weirder everyday, and that can be kind of a bummer.
But if this record has taught me anything, and it has taught me something, it's that feeling ok one minute and then feeling pretty terrible the next and then making a joke about the whole thing is more than normal, it's life. Even though it's called simply The Upsides, there is an inherent implication that to have an upside there must have been a side that was, you know, not up. So you make it through that part of the rollercoaster, that moment where you might just lose your lunch, and then it's onward and upward. Or whatever cliche/metaphor you feel like using. The point is, there's more. Especially at 22 (and 3/4!).
I've got nothing currently to be sad or disgruntled about at this moment, which is more than awesome, but it's still nice to have a record like this to reaffirm some of the places my head's been at during these last, oh i don't know, 6 or 7 years.
There's a line here that some people may pass off as jokey stupidness, but shocker, it's stuck with me: "And I don't think that I love anything the way that some people love Morrissey. It's just that nothing speaks to me like that." I think we've all felt that way, like we look around and see everyone else in the midst of merriment and self-affirmation, and it's one of those moments where we hate people for being happy and then hate ourselves for not allowing those people to be happy. I think this is called human nature, but I may be wrong. Either way, I think that particular line showed me that everyone else's happiness is my happiness, too. So enjoy, even during the bad times. Because there will always be more until there isn't.
www.myspace.com/thewonderyearspa
BLAKE | | Tags: blake, the wonder years, life |
|
| | | Better |
Immoor - She Moves
I often look for albums that can match the electronic subtlety of The Postal Service's Give Up, but naturally such treasures are hard to find. However, I think Immoor's album comes close. Wispy vocals, transparent lyrics, smatterings of guitar solos and, of course, smart inclusions of beat-driven electronics that always aspire to sound as if they were created with a full band.
I don't know, maybe this just hit me at the right time. I could hate it tomorrow. But isn't that uncertainty what makes any of this music worth hearing?
www.myspace.com/immoor
BLAKE | | Tags: immoor, recommendation |
|
| | Beanie |
Irony has always been one of those words with an elusive definition. ("Relationship" is also in this murky area.) But for once I'm pretty sure I saw living, breathing irony at my local Best Buy today when an old man paid for an HD hook-up cable with a personal check.
BLAKE | | Tags: irony |
|
| | Tomorrow |
It's weird how 2010 hasn't become a year so much as a treasure chest we initially thought lost to poor pirate handwriting. A lot of us, myself included, sort of just figured this whole world thing would have been blown up or disease-ridden by now. If the media is any sort of indication, we should have all bitten the dust around 2004. Nuclear bombs in Whobetchastan, Lemur Flu invading Ecuador. AND THE ECONOMY YOU GUYS. HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE DOW ROBERTS AND THE NAFDAL?? It's bleak out there.
So when New Years night came and went, which was only a short time after I spotted EVAN CHAMBERS from GREEK at some party on some street at a nondescript house in Dallas, it was kind of shocking. I woke up the next morning, that was curiously also a new decade, and used the restroom and turned on the TV and ate a donut. But it wasn't just a donut anymore. It was a donut of hope. It was like a little promise that I would be able to eat donuts in 2020, too.
My milestone new years - at least the one's I remember, I'm sure 1990 was a hoot when we were wearing parachute baby pants and pacifiers from Cher's BAAABY Boutique Line - have been marred by a sense of stupid astonishment.
"Our computers still work? What are we going to do with all this Campbell's Soup?" - anonymous, January 1, 2000
"Roland Emmerich is full of crap." - anonymous, January 1, 2010
I hope that the turn to 2020 is one of excitement and joy, not surprise. There will be a lot to work through this decade, like figuring out why we need our cell phones to also be projectors, but I hope that none of it is so bad that we forget to plan our 2020 NYE parties. I'm not one to plan ahead, especially when it comes to revelry, but I will be having a monster bash on December 31, 2019. Because I'm an optimistic kind of guy.
Happy 2010
BLAKE | | Tags: blake, 2010, new year |
|
| | | Glue |
Let me crack my knuckles before I continue on with this ... ... ... ... OK.
Anthony Bourdain has a show on television where he makes fun of stuff that he actually loves. It's called No Reservations and it comes on TV at random times, usually sandwiched (pre-pun HEYO) between episodes of Sandwich Paradise or Hamburger Paradise or Fat Americans in the E.R. paradise. CHECK LAST SENTENCE FOR PUN. I respect Mr. Bourdain because he used to be really stupid and now he isn't; becoming less stupid is actually the only thing we have over monkeys.
And you know what my favorite part of this whole ordeal is thus far? This post isn't about Anthony Bourdain or his gastronomic travels. YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME IF YOU THINK THIS IS ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN.
No, it's about The Wire, HBO's now defunct cop show that was on for 6 seasons in the dark ages of the 2000's. We're talking iPod's the size of soap bars, people. But Mr. Bourdain visited the show's hometown, Baltimore, and mentioned that both he and that nerd Steven King loved this show. So I started watching it online.
And now I am a hardened SOB. That's slang for something, maybe I'll learn what exactly in season 3.
Basically the show follows a few hard-headed police people and their various assignments. Each season deals with a new facet of crime. 1 was about heroin and gang activity. 2 was about greeks using polish longshoremen to smuggle through customs. 3 is probably about prostitution or something like that. You get the idea. And they work a case and cuss a lot and try not to die before their next promotion. Lots of the actors aren't actors; they are just people who actually know this and have offered to "know it" on camera.
Also, none of the show's music is piped through a studio PA. You only hear music when the characters hear music, like through a car radio or on a hoodlum's boombox while he waits for a package by the stoop. Very interesting to me, and it only makes the things happening on my screen all the more realistic.
But I realized today during the end of Season 2, which was both sad and happy and mediocre (Season 1, in my opinion, is WAY better), that being a criminal is really just being a scared person. I don't feel like any of the criminals on this show became so because they were tough. They became so because they were afraid of what would happen if they didn't. It's very rarely evil people or diabolical masterminds in capes that make the bad in this world. It's just people with their thumbs in their mouths, hiding around corners and hoping that nobody makes them wet their pants that day.
So stay brave. And watch The Wire.
BLAKE | | Tags: the wire, blake, blog |
|
| | Twine |
This blog thing has been a struggle lately. Not because I've been creatively exhausted (one of my classmates likened his right brain - or is it left? - to being like a lemon after southern mothers squeeze them into their sweet teas), but just because it's hard to tell what is actually worth putting down.
But I guess, ahem, that's kinda the point.
We all come in here, use lots of pronouns to describe situations that nobody else understands and we have a little vindication for a half a day or so. "She called, but I didn't pick up! I'm treating myself to Sonic!!" And god bless those who read anyways, because if the person is worth his/her salt at all - I'd like to think I'm worth sugar because I'm so sweet! Mom? Are you out there? - we can all relate in some way, no matter how minuscule. Why I feel it is my duty to even point this stuff out is stupid anyways. Everyone can blog their own way on absolutepunk.net. There are no rules. I just had the idea while I was peeing. So I sat down and here we are. I WAS PEEING. I might still be peeing. That's the beauty of the internet. Or maybe i'm jealous.
I hope the sun comes out today.
BLAKE | | Tags: blake, blog, scolding |
|
| | 2009's Best Songs |
1.) The Dangerous Summer - "Weathered"
2.) Transit - "Stay Home"
3.) Why? - "This Blackest Purse"
4.) Phoenix - "1901" (because I'm unoriginal)
5.) Dance Gavin Dance - "Carl Barker"
6.) Metavari - "Kings Die Like Other Men"
7.) Harlem Shakes - "Strictly Game" (R.I.P.)
8.) Switchfoot - "Needle and Haystack Life" (shame the rest of this album is so poor)
9.) Between The Trees - "We Can Try"
10.) Alexander The Great - "Home Alone in Central Park"
11.) We Were Promised Jetpacks - "It's Thunder and It's Lightning"
12.) fun. - "The Gambler" (good lord did i overplay this song)
13.) MT. - "Lecture on Nothing"
14.) Person L - "Good Days"
15.) Jay-Z - "Young Forever"
16.) Oceans - "Your Plane Leaves Tomorrow"
17.) Man Overboard - "5 Girls Pizza"
18.) Set Your Goals - "This Will Be The Death of Us" (good sweet holy lord did i overplay this song)
19.) The Audition - "Los Angeles"
20.) Discovery - "Osaka Loop Line"
21.) Memory Tapes - "Bicycle"
22.) The Years Gone By - "The Last Perfect Thing About This Year"
23.) Suckers - "Afterthoughts & TV"
24.) Years - "Are You Unloved"
25.) Fake Problems - "Heart BPM"
Other than maybe the first 6 or so, the numbers aren't super important. But no joke, music blew me away this year (especially some new instrumental bands.) Good gracious, 2009, I will miss thee. Holla at me, y'all.
--Honorable mention: any music video from the 70s or 80s that is easily found on Youtube.
--Also, just for kicks, here was my Top 10 albums of 2009 when we were halfway done with this magnificent year: http://www.absolutepunk.net/journal....entry&e=191272
--And if you'd like to see all 50 of my favorite albums of the year, that can be found: http://rateyourmusic.com/list/utman8..._time_to_shine
BLAKE | | Tags: best songs, 2009, list, blake |
|
| | Their |
David Sedaris fascinates me. It's not because he's funny (he is!) or that he's a good writer (he really is!); it's that oftentimes he is saying nothing more than what we are all thinking. That may sound horribly uncreative, but reading someone's true thoughts, be they selfish or even obscene, especially in the year of our LORD 2009 (THE LORD OUR GOD), is actually sort of revolutionary. And no, Naked wasn't penned this year or even this decade, but as I attempt to survey the last ten years of my life - AKA the first decade that I remember everything that happened to me - the one thing that strikes me is how often we say nothing at all for the sole purpose of bothering nobody at all. Maybe if I had one dream for 2010 and beyond - AKA the decade I have to be grownup and, ahem, put away as many of my self-destructive ways as possible - it's that we all get on each other's nerves a little more.
How can we know if you don't tell us? Dinosaurs come to mind, and I'm not exactly sure why.
Oh, the passage that inspired this: "I'd always been afraid of sick people, and so had my mother. It wasn't that we feared catching their brain aneurysm or accidently ripping out their IV. I think it was their fortitude that frightened us. Sick people reminded us not of what we had, but of what we lacked. Everything we said sounded petty and insignificant; our complaints paled in the face of theirs, and without our complaints, there was nothing to say."
Those words give me goosebumps (or goosepimples, you sickos), but it's not because what he is saying is so profound. Mostly it's just the act of saying it that inspires me. Because if we're being honest (we are!), that's some pretty petty crap. What's not petty is his gumption to put it down on paper and then ask people to pay for it. But he's said it, thank goodness, and now such words are out there for us all to read on the train, look around furtively to see if anyone can see what we're reading, and then smile widely to ourselves.
BLAKE | | Tags: david sedaris, honesty, blake, blog |
|
| | Coincidental |
Do you ever wonder what it takes for a waitress to give up her duties in the midst of your meal? It's not a ball game, waitresses aren't allowed to tire after a couple of innings serving watered down gin and tonics and thin pieces of pizza. I mean, I appreciate that they are doing work and making that paper, but is my demeanor so insulting that you can't stand to hear another one of my - let's face it - super hilarious jokes?
Or is it just that I kept unknowingly disconnecting the jukebox cord from the outlet? If that's the case, I totally understand. But to be fair, they shouldn't put the cord right under a table, it's bound to be jiggled from time to time. And if I do say so myself (I DO!), I did the restaurant a favor by stopping the 3rd Bon Jovi song in what was sure to be a magical 5 song Bon Jovi set, courtesy of the haggard looking woman in blue flannel. Something tells me she could use some time to think clearly without treated guitars and midwest mantras flowing through her slightly dense skull.
But maybe the biggest problem was that the new waitress was sort of a bi**h. She didn't have any of the flair the last one did. She mumbled. But then, just by the luck of good timing, she heard Dan telling me, I'm sure, to kill myself for the 14th time that day, and interjects, "My baby's name is Blake, too!"
To which I reply, "I hope he doesn't turn out like me." And then I think when she brought our pizza out there was an extra topping that I didn't recall ordering. But if we ponder on things like that for too long we will certainly lose all of our hair. And I'm nothing without my hair. But I will say this, she was a little less cool towards us after the name revelation. Because I have the theory that even if you meet a person with the name of one of your loved ones and they suck, you still feel bad treating them like total crap. Unless, of course, you are into domestic abuse. But if that's the case, please stop reading this blog.
Hear that convicts, STORE IS CLOSED.
BLAKEallmystoriestakeplaceinrestaur ants | | Tags: blake, waitress |
|
| | Gehrig |
| How weird can you be if you keep calling yourself weird? | | Tags: blake |
|
| | sweetbitter |
This post is bittersweet because Adam P. allowed me the opportunity to do something I never, ever do: push my opinion on people. I am featured in his Five and Alive spot this week, which somehow made the front-page cut. I'm not complaining, though, it's definitely a cool honor.
So check out the blog HERE HERE HERE and let us know what your "under the radar" albums are. And maybe check out one of mine? Whatever, your hands aren't tied.
Oh, and the bittersweet part? My Big Brother wrap-up blog will now officially leave the front page of this blog. That means Ms. Jordan will also be gone. Let's all take a moment and remember her cunning lack of every skill necessary to actually win that reality show. It's astounding.
Love and more love
BLAKE | | Tags: blake, five and alive, big brother |
|
| | Sound Sad |
My mother is a holidayaholic. It doesn't matter what the event is, be it something important like Flag Day or something that's less important than Flag Day (i.e. President's Day). There's no celebration too small for her. In fact, after one of my childhood home's many redesigns, an odd thing when you think about it because you invite - at certain points, up to 15 strangers into your home to make it more like what you think "your home" should look like - she hollowed out some room for a closet the size of a mausoleum just for holiday decorations. Have you ever studied a blueprint? It's weird. But I think I'm digressing, although it is hard to digress when you don't really have a target or point. We'll find it together. TREASURE MAP.
Anyways, I don't check my mail often. Atlanta seems to be the capital of fast food coupon handouts, and it kinda bums me out because our country is in such a bad way that something that was previously 2 dollars is now just 1! and we are supposedly better off for it. But when I was speaking to her today, she mentioned that she had sent me a Halloween card. It even came in an orange envelope. Spooky! I went down to the mailbox and sifted through a particularly jarring image of Popeye's Chicken (the hand offering me the fried food was clearly in need of a manicure - details, people!) When I opened the card I found a 10 dollar bill.
And you know where this is going! TO THE LIQUOR STORE. No just kidding, I bought music on iTunes (Foals' Gold Gold Gold EP and Driver F's Not Home Yet EP.) But having said that thing about Popeye's, it was pretty hard to not just go there with the cash. I'm not sure if I've ever received a Halloween card before, but it was definitely way better than whatever you did today. It will go perfectly next to my Flag Day card.
WE MADE IT! 2009!
BLAKE | | Tags: blake, blog, momma |
|
| | At Least We Are Civilized |
this song owns my life right now:
Driver F - "At Least We Are Civilized"
-- "Alone in a crowded room
wondering what everyone is thinking about me
And I've second guessed myself to the point
that even my heart started to doubt me
So I started running
Until I couldn't feel my legs
Then I kept on running
Until I couldn't recognize my own eyes in the mirror
As they stare right back at the ghost I had become
I couldn't remember why I started to run
I gave up
No more running
Now everything is different
No, let me explain
You see, nothing is different
It's just, I am not the same
Oh, if I could make a difference
If I could make one change
I pray to God just one soul could hear these words
So they won't have to feel the pain
of waking up every morning
fever sick and scared to get out of bed
Not knowing if I took in oxygen
would it just be one breath closer to death
And I've been there before
Barely living for a year or more
And I've asked myself a million times and I said
"Can I live like this?"
"Yes I can live like this."
"No, I must insist I can't live like this" --
cliff notes version: YES I CAN
Save The White Whale rules.
BLAKE | | Tags: driver f, optimism |
|
| |
|
| Blog Tools
|
Browse Blogs
Start a Blog
The Charts
Adv. Search
Share This Blog
Blog Tags
Profile Picture
Currently Playing
RSS Feed