I just can't look, it's killing me....

I can't believe I actually stayed home tonight on purpose to watch these effing VMAs. Maybe I'm just too old for this nonsense. I'm no longer in MTVs demographic, so perhaps it makes sense that I'm not enjoying this. But I don't think it's my old age that is making the VMAs painful.....They're just fucking boring. And, worse than that, when it's not boring, it is just plain embarassing. (In fact, since I'm watching them by myself and don't have anyone to scream to or give running snarky commentary to, I keep finding myself yelling a the TV or hiding my head in my shirt so I don't have to look directly at the trainwreck.)

I'm embarassed that "Diddy" keeps dancing. I'm embarassed that Hilary Duff and her scary ass teeth just said that she learned about Morrissey from Joel Madden. I'm embarassed that Kurt Loder was such a tool on the red carpet, calling Young Jeezy (who, by the way, I've never heard of) Little Jeezy and getting made fun of/corrected by Jay-Z. I'm embarassed by John Norris' outfit, which could be in the gay hall of fame (a purple, studded, t-shirt with ripped off sleeves????). I'm embarassed that I had to watch MC Hammer perform "Can't Touch This." I'm embarassed for the Killers, who looked monumentally bored, especially Brandon who has officially crossed over from being cute in eyeliner to looking like an underage rent boy wearing a tight tank top and too much bronzer. (PS: Mark, the moustache? Just say no!) I'm embarassed by the blatant, intrusive advertising, like Satern presenting highlights of the evening so far, ONE HOUR INTO THE SHOW, with clips I'd just seen, playing over a picture of a car or the "performances, presented by the Gap." I'm embarassed that it is taking each winner an hour to get to the stage to accept their award and that no one knows where to go. I'm embarassed that the Simpson sisters (those bastions of savvy) walked right past the microphone they were supposed to present at, so MTV just had to keep looping Jessica's horrible cover of "These Boots Are Made For Walking," until they stopped slapping fans' hands and backtracked towards their mark. I'm embarassed that, right now, Diddy is conducting an orchestra. I'm embarassed that Lil Kim has to talk about going away to jail while she's presenting an award (though I must say this is the most clothes I've ever seen her wear!). I was REALLY embarassed that R. Kelly came out and lip synched (BADLY, I might add), like, part 24 of "Trapped in a Closet," during which he played the part of his mistress's husband's boyfriend in a weirdly effeminate and homophobic manner.

The only thing making the show worth watching is that I've now developed the hugest crush on Kanye West. I mean, I always knew he was talented, but tonight, in his unbuttoned shirt with his white suit, he is fucking fine! Seriously, he is the best looking thing at that show. He, unlike the rest of these yahoos, doesn't even seem to be sweating. I hope his performance (which is still upcoming) is good and doesn't ruin this for me. He's like the only thing I'm looking forward to. (Ok, I admit, I kinda want to see if Mariah is gonna sing my jam.) I feel like I'm getting stupider every minute I watch this and yet I can't change the channel.

There won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime

Dude, how fucked up was I when I wrote that last post? There are weird spelling errors and lone letters at the end of sentances. Sorry about that! Well, I'm sure this post will be no better, as it's the middle of the night and I should be sleeping so I can get up tomorrow morning for work. (Damn this office life!) But I just found this awesome song by a indie star-studded ensemble of my favorite people including Beck, Karen O, Jenny Lewis, and my new boyfriend David Cross among others (Malcolm McLarren, anyone?) doing a charity single that mocks my other boyfriend Bob Geldof's "Do They Know Its Christmas?" (What? That's a good song!) Check out "Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?" here on Vice's site. It is hilarious and still manages to be a good song. And they really are selling it for charity in October to benefit Unicef. Awesome!

(The best part of the Vice site is that you can click on a link to read the lyrics and see who sings which line. Take that, "Thank God, tonight it's them instead of you" Bono!)

I know we're cool

Now I remember why I used to always write posts full of lists.....because I would wait so long in between posts that by the time I sat down to write, I was bursting with shit to say (all of which was unrelated) and I wanted a quick, easy way to get everything down. (Gee, can you believe I'm attempting to be a WRITER as a career, when I can't even keep up and organize my stupid blog?) Anyway things have been busy, but I've been busy with stuff that I can't really write about on here (namely...work, which I wish I could bitch about--giving you all the full scoop on a certain horrible place....but I like to eat and not be homeless and with the spate of recent firings of dumbasses who named names on their blogs while explaining the ins and outs of their various workplaces, I don't really think its in my best interest here to get too detailed. And, believe me, once I get started with my complaining, I'm hard to shut up! That said, I've already told most of you about my difficult last few weeks, professionally speaking. So you're probably all caught up). That whole gramatical nightmare of a parenthetical is just to say that all of the big stuff in my life isn't really for public consuption. But really, when have you ever really known me to blog about "the big stuff." I'm much more interested in redonkulous minutae.

So here is my list of unrelated minutae that I really felt I needed to blog about.

1)I'm really really confused about all of the new reality shows about reality show stars. Its just too meta. And do these people really need any more attention? Dude, Trishelle, get a real job!! And reality show producers: Every dumb opportunity like "Kill Reality" and "Battle of the Network Reality Stars" is another reason for her NOT TO! Normally, I'm the first girl signed up to see MTV reality losers battle it out for cash and an additional 2 minutes of fame (After all, I fucking LURVE those Real World/Road Rules challenges), but Christ, it is all the same people on every show. I was especially disheartened to see Joyce and Uchenna (my fave couple and the winner of last season's Amazing Race) on one of these dumb ass shows. Guys! You are so much better than that! I can't believe I actually cried when you won the Amazing Race!

2) Is everybody else obsessed with Gwen Stefani's "Cool" video? I've tried to resist. I'm kinda over Gwen's ubiquitousness. (Plus, she got on my last nerve with fucking "Rich Girl," which was not only terrible, but I've also been told was a beat that appeared on some rappers mix tape like a year earlier. Sidenote: can the next pseudo hip-hop song called "Rich Girl" please sample Hall and Oates, not fucking Topol!) I kinda love how she looks like a kemmer baby of young Madonna and the girl who plays Amanda on All My Children when she has brown hair. And I kinda love her big forties style skirts and glamourous, Italian Riviera Sophia Loren look. I even kinda like the song because it reminds me of Lisa Lisa (who happened to be the second concert I ever went to!). The only thing I don't like is that it is always over so quick. It's like I realize that its on and stop flipping through channels and then--poof!--it's over.

3) Speaking of things that make me stop on MTV while flipping channels....I have a new guilty pleasure. And not even a kinda cool one (like my love of Kelly Clarkson). I'm kinda obsessed with the new Mariah Carey song, "Shake It Off." I have never....NEVER liked a Mariah song. And she's had 16 number 1 hit singles, so that is quite an accomplishment. But the skittering, jittery Jermaine Dupri beat. (Hey, he might be the midgiest midge in midgeville, but dude can make a good beat! It won him Janet Jackson, didn't it?) It's really stripped down and syncopated and the best part is that, for the first time ever in her her career, she doesn't over-sing it. There aren't really any vocal pyrotechnics or trills or belting. It's just breezy. It kind of reminds me of a female version of Usher's "U Got It Bad," which was always playing on WBLS when I was temping and all of the other temps listened to WBLS all day (mostly for Wendy Williams' afternoon show).

4)Am I the only one who missed "Best Week Ever?" I hate summer break. I need more of the Modern Humorist guys. I think Shaya and I should go on a double date with them. Where am I supposed to turn to discuss Diddy's name change or the fake Maddox Jolie blog or how much I wanted to die after watching the final episode of Six Feet Under??

5) Speaking of SFU.....omigod! I haven't cried at the end of a show like that in FOREVER.....nope, that's a lie. The last time I made myself sick from crying over a show's finale was Quantum Leap. C'mon...Sam finally got home and he chose to step back into the Quantum Accelerator to go back and fix Al's love life, even though it meant he probably would never leap home to his wife and family. That's friendship! (Oh and speaking of Six Feet Under, mosey over to their site and you can read everyone's obits and learn tidbits like that Claire and Ted do marry but never have kids.)

6)Everyone run, don't walk to the record store and buy the new Blood on the Wall album, "Awesomer." It is awesomer than their last. Think early Sonic Youth playing slow-burn, psychedelic Velvet Underground songs.

7) Also, Carrie turned me on to the best band, Matt & Kim. They are a punk rock Mates of State or Atom and his Package as fronted by a tattooed up Williamsburg hipster. The best/weirdest part is that their album cover, which looks like a piece of mail, lists their address as the same as my first apartment in New York that I lived in 6 years ago!

I think that's it. After a full week of work, the last thing I need to do is spend more time in front of or engaged with a freakin' computer! n

It does not move me, even though I seen the movie...

Uh, did I forget to mention that yesterday when I was at the movies I saw ELVIS COSTELLO and his wife? Yeah, they were going to see Wedding Crashers, looking like regular people (in homely, boring grandparent clothes). I really had to contain myself to not go over to Elvis and say, "You know if I ever have a son, I'm naming him after you." I know I said earlier that seeing Michael Pitt was the best celebrity sighting ever, but seeing Declan Patrick McManus and spouse (the fact that they keep getting younger and more Canadian is very promising to me! I could be next!) at the Union Square theater was freakin' SWEEEEEET!

And I'm not my perspective or the lies I tell you every time

Ok, can I first say how much I hate this weather? When the heat idex tops 100 degrees for days in a row, I get very very crabby. I just want to spend today either sitting in a cool pool (which ain't gonna happen.....you know, since I let my Soho House membership lapse) or trapped in a meat locker (or even a movie theater, except that yesterday I already saw two movies to escape the weather and there is nothing left to see until the 40 Year Old Virgin opens next week!). Even with the air confitioning going in my apartment, I'm drenched in sweat. I know, it's not a pretty picture. I just tell you so that perhaps my depresso, bad mood post has an excuse. Like, perhaps I'm grumpy because I've sweated off 5 pounds since I went to sleep last night, not because I'm a whiny bitch.

First things first, the shows I saw this week were great. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah drew the biggest crowd I've ever seen at South Street Seaport and I ran into this cool girl from work, got introduced to Kelefa Sanneh (which is like meeting a celebrity to me!), and (even though I went to the show by myself) randomly ran into like 10 people that I knew. The weather was perfect, cool and breezy (by August's standards) down at the seaport, and the band really sounded great. The next night, Bill and I went to see Pit Er Pat (who were a little too hippy, jam band-ish for my taste, but the tribal drumming was AWESOME!) and Need New Body (who were sort of like an acid trip come to life). I can't put my finger on what exactly it was, but there is something very "Philly" about them. Bill said it was their "we're underapreciated" vibe. The show felt weirdly underattended, but it was ok. When the Knit gets to crowded, I've been known to faint.

The real reason I decided to post today (aside from the fact that my internet is finally letting me--after 5 days of claiming, yet again, that I have no cookies enabled) is that I was inspired by Shaya's last post to check out what my most played ipod songs were. The results were kind of disturbing. Not because I'm embarassed or the band's are bad (on the contrary, some of my favorite bands are represented), but because I feel like there is a very sad lyrical thread that weaves between all of my most played songs. I told Shaya that I feel like one's most played songs are a like a Rorschach test. I've been sort of obsessed recently with the idea that ones likes and dislikes tell you so much about a person. (Its like Rob says in High Fidelity: "It's what you like, not what you are like, that's important.") For example, I have been wondering recently what it means about my personality that I've been rooting for the "bad guy," JR, on my soap opera (yeah, yeah, I watch All My Children, wanna make something of it?) because I feel bad for him (after his ex-wife fucked his brother and ran away with his child, telling him his son was dead) and totally understand his need for revenge, or that Shaya and I almost had an argument watching last week's Six Feet Under because she feels bad for Brenda (who I kind of hate) and I feel bad for the adulturous Quaker that was with Nate when he had his episode.

The funny thing about my most played list is that the top 3 songs have each been played upwards of 70 times, and the rest of my most played songs have only been played 20 or 30 times. So, these songs resonate twice as much with me. Or I need to hear them twice as often.
They are:
Does He Love You, Rilo Kiley
Portions for Foxes, Rilo Kiley
and The Absense of God, Rilo Kiley

Gee, you think I like Rilo Kiley?? The thing is, while I love these songs, they aren't necessarily my favorites. In fact, they aren't even my favorite Rilo Kiley songs. But there do seem to be a lot of occasions when these songs are appropriate or times when I really, really want to hear them. Well, what does that mean, what are they about? Let's see, we've got a slow song about being the other woman, a mid-tempo jam about bad news fuck buddies, and a sadly romantic song with a string section about different people's ideas of what love is that includes my favorite line ("We could be daytime drunks if we wanted, We'd never get anything done that way baby."). What the hell does that say about me? That's almost as embarassing as admitting that I watch All My Children enough to have bothered to take a side in the JR/Babe/Jamie love/hate triangle.

Let your earth quake baby

Last night was the Hot Snakes show and, really, you should head over to shaya's site for a more detailed wrap up. Suffice it to say, the show was awesome and even though I had given lots of blood at the godforsaken doctor and smoked myself retarded, I was able to rouse myself from my the sofa to rock out. It was weird though, I haven't been to a show where the entire sea of people headbanged in unison in way over 10 years, but it was nice. I have to admit I was worried at the start of the show that it seemed too mellow and not "important" enough to be the band's last US show EVER (though I love my city and our concert venues, sometimes I think momentus shows shouldn't take place here because we are too "cool" to go apeshit and make things truly memorable), but once the show was underway, even the too cool for school kids were nodding along with big smiles on their faces.

I had to go downstairs to the bathroom before the last song of the encore (it's a problem I often have at marathon shows: my mind is in it to win it, but my bladder, which is becoming increasinly old-ladyish, can no longer sit through a four hour concert without some bathroom breaks), but they did play a Drive Like Jehu jam, which I enjoyed from the downstairs bathrooms. And then some douche got onstage and said, "We're here for Hot Snakes, not Jehu. Play Hot Snakes." (See what I mean about not being sure if New York is always such a good place for your last show--some ass will manage to ruin it for the rest of us! I mean that was the LAST thing we heard all night, some jackass complaining!)

Anyway, there are lots of excellent shows a-commin'. Tonight is DeVotchKa and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at South Street Seaport, which will be awesome if it doesn't rain/isn't mothertrucking a million degrees outside (Yes, I'm a terrible pussy when it comes to summer weather). Tomorrow night is Need New Body (give it up for Philly!) at the Knitting Factory. I don't have tickets yet, but it isn't sold out. I've been listening to them sort of non-stop all week and I think that live they'll be especially kick ass. Who's coming with me?

I always feel like somebody's watching me.

In honor of one of my favorite sites (www.overheardinnewyork.com) and in the hopes that I can take my mind of my impending doctor's appointment (I hate going to the doctor only slightly more than I hate rats crawling all over me while eating chicken on the bone after making out with Chris Parnell--so that should say something!), I thought I would share some of the best things I've overheard (or just heard) this week:


The roommate: (While calming me down that I'm not going to hell) Hell, schmell.....Hell is for red states.

Pimply, effeminate, underaged hipster to beautiful girl he was standing out of Welcome to the Johnsons with: I fucking love your voice now that you've lost it. You fucking sound like you've been smoking 10 packs of cigarettes a day since you were 7, which is so fucking sexy.

Kinda cute, tattooed stranger (who said faggot too much) sitting on my stoop who heard me say that I love Michael Pitt: Sorry, did you just say you "heart" him? That's bullshit. You're just scared. Admit it, you really, really like him.

Kinda cute, tattooed stranger (who said faggot too much) sitting on my stoop, after I explained that I wasn't talking about a guy I'm seeing, but a movie star: Nah, he's not a celebrity. I've never heard of him and I'm a man of the people.

Strangely NOT homeless guy, walking on Irving Place in a wife-beater, to the green parakeet he was carrying: You like it when we go to grandma's house, don't you? But first we have to stop and get us our sandwiches.

Dashing young man in a suit, on his cellphone in front of my office while I was smoking: Sometimes I like a hairy bush!

(The following are a collection of song lyrics that played on my ipod yesterday that I thought were funny, noteworthy, or just plain weird. Think of this as the "overheard on my ipod" section.)

Prince: Who's the funky drummer with the crooked little sticks, He might have better luck if he was drummin' with his dick.
(Seriously, this came on yesterday and I had never really HEARD this track before and I laughed out loud on the subway. This song also features the bitchin' line: "You can be the side effect, I'll be the dope." OBVS, Prince.....You always want to be the thing that gets you fucked up, not the lingering sexual side effects or the diarrhea or the incontinence!)

Fruit Bats: You hurt your foot rollerskating down by the bay, You lost your voice singing along to "Raspberry Beret."
(I'm sorry, how freakin' cute is this. He then goes on to say how much he adores her. That is exactly the type of relationship I'd want to be in--one where we rollerskate and sing along to Prince, though maybe not the above song, and it is so cute that it is almost vile.)

The Distillers: You think I'm a sucker you're fucking sick, the only thing i suck is my man's dick.
(My, that Josh Homme is a lucky man. Sorry Brody, you're hot and all, but your music BLOWS! I know you are trying for first album Liz Phair provacativeness, but you just sort of sound like Fred Durst.)

Such a perfect day....

I've been trying to blog for over almost a week, but blogger was denying me entry claiming that my cookies weren't enabled, when they clearly were. I don't know how things got cleared up, but finally, I can tell you all about the best celebrity sighting EVA! The roommate and I were smoking on the fire escape last Tuesday afternoon and she said, "Look at that Michael Pitt lookalike down there." And just as she said it, the gorgeously dirty blond dude standing in front of Essex smoking with his skinny girlfriend, tilted his head up slightly and I said, "That isn't a a lookalike."

Yes folks, my boyfriend Michael Pitt was standing right downstairs from my apartment smoking and kissing his lady-friend and nicely greeting the older African American gentleman who recognized him. I'm sorry that is worth EVERY cent of overpriced rent that I pay! He was just as puffy lipped and sexy as he is onscreen and he was especially grungy (looking like he hadn't showered in weeks, wearing a ripped white t-shirt that looked like it had never seen laundry), which was fucking hot.

I'm looking forward to his band's show at the Delancey on 8/18--he's playing with Madison and Elkland. See you all there! (Also, since we're talking shows--I'm so excited for the free Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show at South Street Seaport on Wednesday.)

Rebecca-you may ask yourself-how did you end such an amazing day? I mean what can you do to top a day where you run into the man who you list first in your list of boyfriends over there in your "About Me" profile? I'll tell you. I went out to dinner with Shaya at Kitchen and Cocktails where I had the best Mojito ever and then as we walked under a construction overpass to go to the deli for dessert, we passed a weird, possibly-homeless, DEFINITELY-inebriated man who was calling out to no one in particular, "I like my chicken fried." Upon seeing us walking together he said, "But I don't like lesbians!" I couldn't tell if I was more offended that he thought that we were a couple or that he was a homophobe. That construction overpass is now known as the underpass where we were gay-bashed. Even though we're not gay.