Sometimes It's Good to be Bored.

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Awesome original vid + Legos = bangin'!!!

Pop Goes the Weasel.

Last night I went to Etherea Paul's place for the first and probably last time, and it was as tiny as I thought it would be. You know how East Village tenements are--expensive but tiny. Well, I had a lot of fun. No party can go wrong by putting on Pink Flag. Though Kareem said you couldn't dance to Wire and I was shocked.

You can dance to almost anything if you put your little heart into it. I believe it!

Yeah, it was pretty much the same kids, and everyone was drinking PBR and I drank water and I had some cool ranch Doritos that were ridiculously salty and apparently I listened to the Wu-Tang Clan (J. Ro's request?) and it was a good time. At least Boogie-Down Nicole danced with me. And Rachel too. And J. Ro loosened up more than I've ever witnessed. Brother needs to chillax a little, though I hear he has and I've never been there to see it!! I don't have much of a play-by-play on last night cos I didn't stay too long before my dad called me and picked me up to take me home. I did tell Chase how excited I was about the convention at MoCCA in June, and he's like, "Oh yeah? Who's gonna be talking there?" He was sorta challenging me. And I was like, "Charles Burns!" He was impressed by that. I am too!

I wasted most of the rest of my day, though I did read a bit of Yes Yes Y'all, which is really cool, if not revelatory (it's just an oral history, and from the EMP at that) and I think it's beautifully laid out.

But yeah, most of it was spent watching Mariah Carey videos on YouTube, and then when I got tired of that, I watched Sugababes videos, and seriously, I cannot believe I didn't get into them 3 years ago when I first read about Mutya in the NME, and now Mutya's gone from the group and I think that sucks because when you watch those videos you're like WHOA when she's on the screen. I didn't even get to enjoy it when she was in the group. Pretty much all the videos with her in it have comments like, "MUTYA I MISS YOU SO MUCH" like she's dead or something. Dudes! She just had a kid. Supposedly she's gonna try the solo thing, too.

It's weird, because I always thought that Mutya looked too fierce and she always seemed so serious to me, but then you watch her doing all this bubbly pop, and you're like, "Hey... she's not about to kick anyone's ass... yet." I also found out she looks "weird" because she's like half-Filipino, half-Irish, and all FUCKING AWESOME.

Anyway, I watched a really old Sugababes video with their old member, redhead Siobhan, and she was cute and the song was good, but I like the blonde girl, Heidi. The new member, Amelle, I don't know about her. She's only been in the team for a few months, but I don't know, Mutya looks so cool in the old videos!!

That's not the point though, the point is that I heard "Push the Button" for the first time and I can't believe how good the song is. Like I can't believe people like "Biology" better than this song. Damn. Also, I can't tell any of the Girls Aloud members apart, though I'm sure they have their merits as a group.

I can't believe I just wrote multiple paragraphs on how cool I think the Sugababes are--or were, let's see how the Amelle shit goes down first.

Here comes the part where I explain that I'm not gonna apologize for the regression into pop music I seem to be afflicted with at the moment. Listen, has any album this year so far really really really impressed you? I mean, besides the Sonic Youth, and they don't count because the album hasn't officially come out, plus, they're like on a level of their own. But seriously. The most raves I've heard these past four, five months have been for Tropicalia and Big Apple Rappin', both of which are compilations. I really dig the new Liars, but that's pretty much it. There's been some good stuff but it's been mostly underwhelming. Everything else I've fallen in love with has been older stuff, Odetta, Depeche Mode, etc.

I hope it gets better as the year goes on.

If you want some "cool indie rock" you should watch Fearless Music, which I stumbled upon last night trying to recover over the fact that I smelled like cigarettes. It's on Sundays at 1 am on Fox (Saturday night). Apparently Tally Hall have been on it? And this show has been around since '04! It also seems to be stuck in '04. Oof, I mean, they have decent C-list and D-list bands, but the fact that they're decent is overwhelmed by the fact that, yeah, they're C- and D-listers. I admit, though, the Clem Snide performance I watched was good.

Shiiiiit I forgot about this Coachella webcast stuff, but it's not too late, maybe I'll catch a couple of them today.

Schadenfreude?

This is so awful and awesome and it makes me angry and makes me sad and makes me laugh all at once. As soon as I heard about this girl, I thought (a) "Holy shit I gotta get onto Gawker ASAP!" and (b) "When's she gonna be on Oprah?!"

First off, she was already grilled by Katie Couric, who, although she will never be Oprah, apparently zinged the girl pretty badly. If only YouTube would come through and had a video of the girl. Second, Gawker has indeed been having a ball with this whole situation, as the post might suggest. I liked that afore-linked post because the Gawker intern's name is Neel Shah, which is like the "Grace Lee" of Indian names. Just sayin'.

Let's lighten up the mood a bit with a dose of ol' school Mya:

Everything is Everything.

Oh my fucking god. I just found out Sasha Frere-Jones is white. I thought he was black. This is as tragic as finding out that Kelefa Sanneh was a man. OMG.

I remembered what I wanted to post yesterday, and I realized that it really wasn't important. It's just that I borrowed out this book from McSweeney's, an anthology of comics that has shit from pretty much all the big guys. Anyway, I was reading it on the steps of Kimmel, waiting for class, when Chase and his friend came in. I tried to hide this geeky-ass book out of his sight, but he knew what it was from just a glimpse of the cover. He gave me a thumb up, but damn, I felt a bit dorky.

In other news, I was in Korean class, for the last time really, and several people asked who Elizabeth Taylor is. I almost died from the horror.

Things I am digging right now:

(1) I have come to the conclusion that Adrian Tomine is sort of really fucking awesome.

(2) Hey! That new song the Futureheads got on their MySpace, "Skip to the End", ain't too shabby. At least it was an immediate like, unlike "Area", which I've only recently gotten around to liking okay.

(3) Ooh, I didn't know the Jesus & Mary Chain stuff was getting re-released.

Conflicts of Interest

I was in my last real class of Reporting and this girl was discussing issues she was having interviewing people. She was telling the professor the bouncer was messin' with her about the club being strict about IDs, because she's underage but she's gotten in there plenty of times, right? And the prof asked her why she couldn't point this out to the bouncer. This girl was like, "Duh, dude, she doesn't wanna give herself away! She still wants to go there!!"

The professor looked a bit embarrassed for asking something so obvious. He bought us bagels today!! As I left class today, I realized how sad I was to be leaving this class. It only dawned on me recently that I actually learned a lot!

Oh shit, and may I add? Upstein has bending straws!!! UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE. I was so excited about it yesterday that I went to the park and I found J. Ro chillaxing and I was like, "YO! BENDING STRAWS!!! ;aeroamiwp450a985a" He took it with stride. And then I met Matt and I spoke to him for like 5 minutes. But that was yesterday.

Lemme think about today, I did have something very (read: not really) exciting to report... :/ I really can't remember. Shit, I shouldn't have started watching old Savage Garden videos on YouTube!

The Clint and Charles Show are playing at the Bowery Poetry Club on Sunday April 30. They go on at 10 pm, and you should be there to witness the spectacle (and then report back to me, since I have TWO tests on May 1).

Quoth Calvin: "Hasn't Your Mother Taught You Any Manners?"

Last Friday, Steve had an interview with this band at around 6 pm. I went out with Claudia to do my homework, which involved field work. We left at around 5 and I came back in at 6:45ish with Claudia's extra key (Claudia went out on a not-actually-date date). You should have seen the look on Steve's face. He was just so frustrated and stressed out. You see, after much fumbling about, they finally decided to reschedule for later. From what I gather, the conversation went a little like this: Steve did catch this singer on the phone, and the singer asked how long this would take. This reminded me a lot of my own experience with the singer dude. That's why he had to call me back, because I said I might take as much as half an hour. Anyway, the singer dude told Steve he had about 10 minutes. Steve told him he was planning on writing a full feature on this band and that he needed more than 10 minutes. Understandable. Which is why they rescheduled for 9 pm.

I asked him 9 in what time zone.

Steve hadn't thought of that. He was like, "Oh shit..."

Well, no matter. I left the apartment late, after it was 9 pm in the singer's time zone. He still hadn't called. Steve told me later that he rescheduled for Sunday.

Now, I don't doubt that Steve is a good reporter, partly because of how determined he was to get this interview. But I did think this was overkill, and I was like, "Give up, give up," but he told me there was a reason why he was being so hard-headed about doing this interview. (He did tell me the reason, but I'd rather not tell because we never know who's reading these things.)

So yeah, Sunday came along. The interview was supposed to be at 4, but by 6 nothing had happened, expect for Steve making several phone calls, including to the tour manager who said he'd run over to the singer's apartment to see what the fuck was up. Steve told me laters that the singer guy called back at around 11 muthafuckin' o'clock, with a half-assed apology. What was his excuse? HE FORGOT ABOUT THE INTERVIEW.

Let us rewind a second and analyze what the fuck went wrong.

(1) Does this guy realize how inconsiderate he is? Steve pursued this interview for a long time. When Steve should have given up, he tried one more time. And the singer reschedules over and over, only to FORGET about the fucking interview?

(2) Steve and I are not lazy interviewers.

Yes, I'm bringing myself into this situation, and I'm very much upset about what happened to Steve, because I didn't want anyone to suffer through this situation. I actually didn't think it would happen again, but Steve's experience was even worse, much worse, than mine.

We try to research all our subjects as well as possible. We don't fuck around and we want to do an honest, good, and even FUN job. We don't have little certificates from the state saying, "Certified to Interview Bands," but you know what? We try to do a good, professional job. We don't need to be BFF with the artists we cover, but common courtesy is always nice.

(3) This singer has got to be kidding me. He's NOT in a band that is truly well-known. Pete Wentz's penis is more famous than this singer. Hey, Morrissey, you wanna hang up on me? Yeah, dude, go ahead! Madonna, you wanna reschedule on my ass? Damn girl, that's aight. This guy is not in any position to be a fucktard about press--the two publications Steve and I write for are a lot more well-known and respected than his band is. Does he think bigger publications will be better and THEN he should be respectful? If he really doesn't want to bother with stupid press obligations, he should just not agree to it. He doesn't have to do press. Jandek hardly agrees to press and plenty of people know about him.

This guy's band is doing all right in the blogs, but the blogs, my man, are fickle and it's like, how long will they adore you? You say there's a "scene" where you live. Well it's nice they're taking care of your band and making you feel like you're the greatest, because I don't feel that way about you.

(4) This brings another thing. He's in a band with four other people. What a bad representation of the band to have their singer and main songwriter be so careless about this stuff! Not only that, he's got a tour manager, a real manager, and a publicist (who, by the way, does not seem to communicate that much with the singer, defeating the purpose of having a publicist, but I spoke to her and she was cute, so I sorta forgive her). Now, all these people are trying to work with this band to get them to be big, but the singer is just sabotaging his chances.

(5) The biggest insult of all, and the one that hurts me most: it's sort of tainted the music for me. You don't understand how much it pains me. I mean, I'm still listening to the songs, because they're really that fun and good, but I start listening and I'm like, "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS DUDE MADE ME CRY." I really thought that having cried over my own not-so-stellar interview was a sign of MY weakness, but I feel so justified now. Steve has been nothing but a muthafuckin' trooper.

Steve emailed his editor saying something like (and I quote), "i don't want to do an interview with someone this unprofessional. you can give it to someone else, but i'm not dealing with this bullshit."

my editor e-mailed me back and told me that he's not going to re-assign it, because he doesn't want to run a feature on someone who has rock star fever off of 2 demi-successful e.p.'s. today, i e-mailed their publicist and told them to just forget it. she was all like "i'm confused, i thought you interviewed him, should i talk to your editor?" so i was like "he forgot about the interview after cancelling twice. feel free to contact my editor."

I didn't have as many balls dealing with this the way Steve did. And for this, I give him props. I also give props to the editor. It was exactly why I decided not to write up anything about this band (other than the answers to the questions weren't that hot, anyway). Even if this is being published online, I don't want to give the band the space. That singer dude, he can stay far away from me in his liberal college town and think he's fucking God.

I know I must sound totally completely immature for griping about this one dude for so long. Maybe as time goes by and I get dicked over more often in this interviewing business, I won't have the time and patience to write a post about every stupid band that hurts my feelings. I know I need to suck it up. But this one time, I'm letting it all out... except for the band's name.

One important edit: I cannot emphasize how different this interview was to the Art Brut one I did with Rachel. The Art Brut was great. I mean, Mikey, Ian and Jasper were all so ridiculously friendly and actually seemed interested in talking to us. Art Brut are so much more popular than that dumb band, and even though they had no idea what publication we were from, Art Brut were happy to give us the time. Plus, they were quite funny and charming and started quoting Spinal Tap, which is never a bad thing. Not only that, if there's any reason to give Karen Plus One props for, it's that she was actually quite professional when dealing with us Tiny Mix Tapes scum. That stupid singer could take some lessons. Steve did finally interview the bastard and found him quite boring. Sad.

And the Prescription Was Not "More Cowbell."

Because I finally have the energy and time to update! We begin with two weekends ago and the party:

The party was good. I wouldn't call it great, but still pretty good. There was this one hour where I was unhappy in the true sense of the word, and wanted to die, but the party really hit the good parts extremely well. Kareem, for example, made sure to come bright and early this time, to maximize the dancing and schtuff. Also, the music was done pretty damn well--"Like a Virgin," "Bonnie & Clyde," "1 Thing," "Enjoy the Silence," "Train in Vain," "Crazy." I danced to the last two with Maria and Kareem, respectively, and these shall be some of my fondest memories of the party. The PA bloc was representin', huh?

I can't believe how much water I drank at the party. I went to the bathroom several times. Part of it was that I didn't wanna look dumb and wanted to hold SOMEthing in my hands. I dunno. Didn't make much small talk. Didn't care to meet the Quirowitz's friends, though I know they're quite nice. It's just odd meeting people when they're a bit busted, especially if you're not busted right with them.

Things started going downhill starting Saturday, leading to several, painful days of fever, coughing, runny and stuffy nose... It was all painful and not worth remembering. The whole thing was ridiculous. I even made Boogie-Down Nicole sick. Ick. I feel bad about that, I do.

So last Friday, having reached a stable condition, I was hanging out with Steve, who was also attempting to interview this band that gave me grief. They gave him grief too. A lot a lot a lot. More than the singer gave me grief. But that requires a full rant that must be explained at another time.

In other news, I love comics!!! Especially when they're weird and out there. That's all.

Party Hard.

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Hm, yeah, I'm sort of going to a party tonight, and I thought I was the only one who was excited about it, but plenty of people are and that makes me happy. Rachel and I met for like 30 minutes yesterday and talked about it. She's like, it's cos the last one was so damn good. So true! It's really nice because my general circle of friends is like 5-10 people, but there's going to be a shitload of people and maybe they'll even dance.

(It's all I ask for.)

By the way. Rachel is my hero because she took the tape off my hands and transcribed the Art Brut interview. Props!

Oh! and I have to return the Clint + Charles Show demo. I'm just a bit heartbroken. :(