Fea.

I just checked out Stereogum and he put up the video for "The Black Parade", which I obviously watched. I want those five minutes of my life back. WTF, I was TOTALLY RIGHT. It's like an ad for an anime convention. Actually, the lyrics to the song are taken pretty literally in this video and it makes me sad that they didn't go crazy with a concept. I mean, it's a weird song, it's got a weird structure. The video totally makes me dislike this song. Like most of the video was Gerard on the camera and y'all gotta understand, I love Gerard but there was so much more to love when he was a fatty, y'know? Ugh, what a waste of a budget. I was expecting "Wake Me Up When September Ends": a lot of laughin', a lot of cryin', and a lot of cryin' from laughin' too fuckin' hard. The only thing that made me LOL was when Gerard is all like, "I'ma smash this mic stand!!!" I was like, yeah, okay. Shit, even a video of "Snakes on a Plane" quality would have made my day. Sigh!

Great news! My Bowie secret finally showed up!! I made one about Stuart Murdoch too, but they must have taken it off... I understand cos it was a total wank and I really honestly did submit it just to piss off people. Hee...

I watched the premiere of Ugly Betty today and it was really cute! It doesn't take itself very seriously and the cast was hilarious. OMG and the clips with Salma Hayek in them made me laugh even harder. I dunno how long this could go, I really feel like it should be like a real telenovela and just go one or two seasons... Then again, I get a feeling it's gonna get cancelled. :/

I went to the library today and found out there's DVDs of the original Degrassi series.

-----

Class went as badly as I imagined it would. Bummed me out a bit, more so that I had to workshop a poem that even I hated! I feel bad for the rest of my classmates. :( Actually I was lying, it's really depressing me. I got so frustrated during class that this one girl was like, "Well at least you tried." Word.

I may or may not be making friends. And by "friends" I mean people with whom I exchange banter about Lydia Lunch and Love and Rockets and America's Next Top Model and David Cross and Our Band Could Save Your Life. It's shocking the amount of namechecking I've committed in the past day and a half. I hate myself, hahaha.

!

ohhh my god, i just bought an mp3 player. i hope it works okay and doesn't get damaged on its way to my home.

School is Cool.

Coño, y'all! When are my fucking secrets gonna show up?!?!

I heard the coolest song today in class! It almost beats the time I heard "Hey There Little Insect" in my previous music class! A note about the Richman song: my VH1-talking-head teach was all like, "LAWLZ RICHMAN IS SUCH A SQUARE" but when I heard that song I was like, "WASSUP GENIUS", etc.

Anyway, this is a reggae song called "Don't Call Us Immigrants" by Tabby Cat Kelly (yousendit link).

Class was pretty amazing, mostly because my teacher told us this crazy story about how she went undercover to report on a National Front rally and how Skrewdriver, the most famous racist Oi! band played at said rally. The National Front was (is?) the fascist, racist political party in Britain. Very conservative. Anyways, you guys don't know her name, but she's got a sorta Jewish name. So she goes to this rally and this racist dude is all like, hitting on her. She wrote about this rally in like Melody Maker I think, but I'll tell you the rest: so for the sake of her undercover plans, she's like, sure, take me for a drink, and so she and the racist dude go to a crowded bar and he starts spewing all this racist bullshit. And she was all like, "Um, yeah, so before we do anything else, I gotta tell you I'm Jewish" (!!!). And the dude is like, "Whoa". But then he thinks about it and he still wanted to hang out with her!!!!! HA.

I heard another song during the weekend, which angered me because I liked it so much. To elaborate, it's by some sensitive Swedish singer-songwriter chick and it's got cheap electronic beats in the background and it's less than two minutes long. And I TOTALLY FELL IN LOVE WITH IT. I don't want to talk about what song it is, because (1) it could go terribly wrong and everyone might hate it and be like, "Gawd Elizabeth you are a moron" or (2) everyone might love it and it might get popular to the point of ohhh maybe ending up on Grey's Anatomy or The OC or the next movie Zach Braff makes, cos it's that type of song. SIGH! It's a futile effort, as you could very easily go to my audiocrobbler and find out which song it is.

In other news, apparently yesterday there was a whole "free day at the NYC Opera" dealio. I almost died when I found out. I would have cut work for that shit!! I've only gone to the opera once in my life and I really wish I could go!!!

I had to hand in a poem for my creative writing class today and it was horrible. I almost cried in the middle of class because the workshopping on Thursday is gonna be total bullshit. We're supposed to say good things and bad things, but honestly in my mind this piece is no good, I wanted it to be one thing and I failed to bring these goals to life. It makes me feel like such a human with like, FLAWS and shit. UGH. The only thing is that at least I tried. It's a great failure, I think. And I would have been angrier at myself if I HADN'T tried to make it totally over the top.

Woohoo, I'm doing research on Touch and Go. Time to whip out my very own copy of Our Band Could Be Your Life. Oh boy, that was exciting to type. This book makes me so happy.

Bee tee dubs, I keep forgetting to mention that I watched Anna Christie in English. It was fucking great. It was my first time watching a Greta Garbo movie. She's so beautiful. The whole movie was so angsty. I loved it.

Rant.

Check out this fucking douchebag.

Why is he a douchebag? Because
(1) He doesn't write anything that hasn't been mentioned already. I mean, hey, The Hipster Handbook mentioned most of what's discussed in this Op/Ed like 4 years ago, and said it in a wittier manner.
(2) He doesn't get the difference between Indie as a genre of music and Indie as an easily-packaged marketing term used to sell shit to people.
(3) Because he writes as an outsider, who doesn't even bother to learn what Indie kids are like before writing about them as an authority on this subject, which, in turn,
(4) Proves that even though he lived in the same apartment as Claudia and Steve for almost a year, he hardly bothered to even acknowledge their presence and to learn about their lives.

He can go choke on a cock.

(Props to Boogie-Down Nicole who alerted me to this Op/Ed.)

Bollywood Madness.

Dude, look at this awesome very polyester-happy Bollywood video:

The woman is Helen. Her schtick was her dancing. She was a huge, huge star, and her singing was usually done by Asha Bhosle. Here's another by Asha Bhosle, maybe my favorite of hers, "O Mera Sona"



God bless for YouTube; I missed America's Next Top Model. I feel like the girls this season are easier on the eyes than the previous one.

I was passin' by the IFC theater and they're showing Y tu mamá también this weekend!!!!! AND! THEY'RE GONNA DO A RUN OF 49 UP SOON!!!!!

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, Iggy Pop is doing a campaign for John Varvatos. I'm not used to seeing so little of Iggy's skin, lol.

Revolution Girl Style Now!

Hey dudes and dudettes, to coincide with the release of Bitchfest, the women who edited the anthology are doing a book tour. Supposedly they're visiting Barnard tonight, but there's also one tomorrow night. Here's the info:

Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen Street
New York NY
9/22/2006 7:00 PM

And it's FREE!!

http://www.bitchmagazine.com/

Totally Pointless.

Omaigá!!! ¿¿Por qué no me dijeron que el video de "No Hay Igual" tiene Calle 13??



To be honest, the video is lackluster, but whatevs, Calle 13 dude seems to be havin' fun. Can't say the same about Nelly. Well, I think the rappin' sorta cuts the flow of the whole "party hard" vibe, but at least he keeps things interesting, plus I do like his bit at the end.

Okay, agora I go to work. Wait, before I go, here's the video for "Atrevete-te" that Calle 13 did. WARNING: LOTS OF VIDEO HO'S IN CUTE SKIRTS. Okay, ¡bai!

12XU.

This list is dumbfounding, if only because it leaves out Our Band Could Be Your Life, which is one of my top 5 books EVER. Also, I can't believe that High Fidelity was counted in. Moreover, I wish this list wasn't about "Rock n Roll" books, cos they include Yes Yes Y'all, Can't Stop Won't Stop, and the Ego fucking Trip Book of Rap Lists. But I should mention that all three of those books are amazing; I was thinking about getting the Ego TRip book, cos even though I know nothing about rap, it's REALLY interesting!



Last night Boogie-Down Nicole, Notorious Angela and I went to a free screening of American Hardcore at school. It was pretty good and done with sincerity, but definitely disappointing in its delivery. It wasn't very enlightening about hardcore's significance; like, it was telling me a lot of things I already knew. Y'know, how it branched out from California and over the years the touring network was established and how different scenes developed their own sounds. Well, no shit!

As a documentary, I didn't feel like it was interesting visually. The editing was a bit weird. And this is totally off-topic, but the movie had weird "cigarette burns" (see 2nd definition, or watch Fight Club). Like the movie was shot in mini DV, I thought digital shit wouldn't have crappy cigarette burns in the corner? Like in real movies they have really slick cigarette burns, but these were a bit crummy. I can't believe how hung up I was about it, but after watching Fight Club I've never been able to get over it.

Anyway, the cigarette burns were still significant. Cos about half an hour into the movie, THEY MISSED THE CUE FROM THE CIGARETTE BURNS. WTF! So the movie just stopped and everyone's like, "That's so punk rock" and I was like, "Bitch, please! That's not punk rock at all! That's just fucking ghetto!!!" And it took them like two or three minutes to actually fix the stupid reels. I mean, what the fuck was the projector person doing? If you see the first burn, you have to get ready for the fucking second one! C'mon!

Back to the movie. The only things I pretty much knew nothing about: the music itself. Ha. So... it was sort of the first time I ever listen to Bad Brains and it was sort of really amazing and I can't believe I didn't check them out earlier. Hey, sorry hardcore didn't change my life and I'm a total retard about it.

I really don't understand why certain hardcore bands were mentioned but not others, y'know? Since I don't know that much about hardcore, it all sounds like shit to me, to put it kindly. So even though seeing all this old footage was nice, it makes you wonder about all the stuff that was left out. And Moby's one of the talking heads, how relevant was he to the scene? They even got Jesse Malin. (I guess Peen Wentz was unavailable.) Actually, the interviewee that annoyed me most was Jack Rabid. As soon as he showed up, Nicole and I groaned loudly.

It was interesting the way they tackled certain subjects. One thing that was cool was that there were plenty of people of color. One surprise was that there was some dude named Inouye, which sounded really familiar, and then the dude's like, "Yeah, my dad's a politician" and I was like "Ohhh that's right!" Anyways. So it was nice to see some black and Latino punkers and shit, but it was weird that only the women seemed the tackle the "women in hardcore" issue, or how only Ian MacKaye and this dude named "Straight Edge Hank" seemed to talk about sXe. I think only Ian talked about how dumb the violence in hardcore was.

I feel sorta geeky, you know you've read up on too much about Ian MacKaye when he starts telling a story about the good ol' days and you're like, "Oh, yeah, I totally know that story." Yikes. The hilarious thing, of course, is that I'm totally Team Picciotto and less Team MacKaye, and it's just cos Ian doesn't fucking shut up so of course you end up knowing everything from how he came out of his mom's womb and how ripped his own umbilical cord up to what he had for dinner last night. Hahaha. One really shocking thing about Ian in this movie: they show pictures of him with hair! And it really is toooootally curly!

I didn't realize how funny everyone's accents sounded until the New Yorkers showed up on screen (LOL!), but even then, hardly any time was spent on New York.

The really good thing about the movie was the people interviewed. So many people participated and most of them were pretty funny. Like that Straight Edge Hank guy, he's like a priest now, and he actually was interviewed saying "jackass" in church. AHAHA.

It pains me to say so, but I must confess, I was sort of touched by none other than Henry "No Neck" Rollins. He was just talking about how he auditioned for Black Flag, and how he wasn't sure whether to join, but he talked to Ian and Ian was like, "Yeah dude, join, you're gonna do great," and that's why Henry said aight, cos he just wanted to get Ian's approval on it. I was like, "Wow, they really are good friends, huh?" But then I almost threw up in my mouth when Kira Roessler showed up on screen and mentioned that she and Rollins had had a "thing". ICK!!! Even if I'd already read about this, I must have totally blocked it out of my mind, so I almost shit myself from the horror when I watched her say that... can you blame me?!?!

Anyway, don't pay to see this movie or read the book. Just borrow them out of some place or other (cough). The director (Paul Rachman) and the author (Steven Blush) were there, and you could tell they had the best intentions, but seriously, not the type of movie that would rock anyone's punk world.

To me, this is hardcore:


Oh, shit, here's a bonus vid, just cos I can't help myself, "Vowel Movement" by the Evens:

This is the Link to the Obsolete Units page.

Sheesh, bitch can't stay calm for one minute just cos I decided to actually go to sleep instead of linking his page or even proofread my last post.

HERE. THIS IS THE PAGE FOR PAUL'S LABEL, OBSOLETE UNITS. GO THERE AND CHECK OUT SOME TUNES.

Oh, the demands of blogging! Paul better not say I never did nothin' for him.

Another word about the parties: at Scott's we heard this mashup of "My Humps" vocals + "Heartbeat" music. I think it was Girl Talk. My heart sort of broke when I heard this abomination.

And while we're at it, here's a video:

I think I'm gonna have to get the mp3 for this. I forgot I liked the song so much.

Weekend.

A little recap.

Thursday I went to the Queer Office at school and we had pizza and this real cute dude from The Advocate came and the conversation was really interesting, a lot of it was about money and advertising and the internets and the direction the magazine was thinking of taking in the future and uh... Lance Bass. So it was pretty much like Gawker, but just a bit gayer.

Friday was brutal. I was a retard and went on an errand that involved a lot of walking while it was pouring a shitload. Grrreat.

Also, I feel like my allergies have flared up all of a sudden? I dunno what to do.

Yesterday was awesome! My parents are dorks and I was like "I'm a go party" and they were all like, "Dress nice" and "Are you sure you don't need to bring anything to the party" and I was all like, "Whateva". Also, I didn't tell them I was going to two parties instead of one because they would have asked even more questions like, "Who's house is it?", "Why does this person live in Brooklyn?", "How do you know this person?", "Are people going to be drinking?" and my favorite (NOT), "Are there gonna be boys there?"

They also tried to tell me what parties are like, to watch that nobody touches me the wrong way or steals my shit. Yeah, okay. I love how they don't know I've been to parties before. At least they care enough to ask me about it and pick me up, which is what my dad did after Scott's party. LOL.

Anyway, so I called up Maria and was like, "Come to Scott's party" but she wasn't sure how to get there so I was like, "Uh you can come with me to Paul's noise party if you want" and she accepted and then we had to figure out how she would take the train but finally we figured out she could take the R and then switch to the F and funnily enough we ended up on the same F so we found each other at the platform and it was quite the joyous moment.

So here's the deal: I know nothing about noise music. But Paul started his own little CD-R label, Obsolete Units, and to kick off the label, he threw a party-slash-band showcase, so I decided to go and show some support. About 6 months ago, in the spring, we had to review demos for this little Battle of the Bands events at school, and Andy and Jordan #2 submitted a demo under Totally Dad. The first Obsolete Units release was the Totally Dad demo, and now there's also a second release for Oubliette.

Anyway, I think Maria and I showed up right as the first band was starting. It was all very abstract, and I didn't quite "get it". Though I have to say, some parts I really liked. Like the process of making all these sounds seemed pretty interesting. But I sort of regretted not wearing earplugs when the high-pitched shit started. Also, I thought it was totally hilarious because from where I was standing, I could see a lot of the neighbors who'd be peeking our way. One individual in particular looked out his backyard, turned away, and when the noise didn't stop, he came back to close his door. AHA. I'm really shocked the police didn't come, especially during this first band's set. I didn't catch their name.

The second band was Archaeopteryx (sp?), who were just a bassist and drummer but I really liked them! They were totally aggro and shit! They seemed a bit needy emotionally (they kept asking the crowd watching from above to please come down into the "audience"), but overall they seemed like cool dudes and they totally delivered a big sound.

Totally Dad went last and I was pleasantly surprised. I was hoping they wouldn't suck--and they sounded great! Jordan #2 and Andy were on guitars, and they had a drummer dude named Eddie. The drummer dude was awesome! Except for the fact that multiple drums fell, he kept beating on them anyways. I feel like Totally Dad still have a lot of room for growth; I'm excited to see what they put out in the future. At times it felt a bit sloppy in the edges in a very Jandek-y way, but when it gelled, the music was awesome and sounded a bit Deerhoof-esque. Also, Jordan #2's vocals were weird, in a high quivering sorta way in the great tradition of Jamie Stewart and so on.

Apparently, someone from Magik Markers showed up to the showcase, and Paul was toootally geeking out. Aw, what a nice dude. He looked like a proud father as he watched Totally Dad do they thang.

Honestly, the best part was hanging out with Maria and seeing all my sophomore buddies and especially witnessing Totally Dad live. I'm not big on noise but this was totally worth it and I can't wait for another party, cos the place is pretty sweet. And I loved seeing Paul and hearing all this gossip gossip. Some of it was so shocking that, uh, I made sure to regurgitate the information to Rachel, and believe you me, her jaw dropped when I finally told her.

But yeah, I left the party feeling good and very happy that I went to this even though I have no idea what's good or bad in terms of this genre of music. After a few hugs and parting words, Maria and I left for Scott's. When we showed up we were greeted with Scott telling us we were guests number 4 and 5, and Gabs was all like, "Yeah, I'm not expecting a big turnout". Well fuck, the party was rockin'! Gabs looked really pretty, her outfit was cool. Rachel, Boogie-Down Nicole and Notorious Angela didn't show up until around midnight, unfortunately, but dancing to normal music with Gabs and Militant Vegan Emo Boy Adam and Scott was awesome!!!

For the most part Maria and I talked, though we also talked to (1) Scott about the underrated genius of dark chocolate M&M's and (2) this pale dude came up to me and Maria and was like, "Do you know Diana?" and I was like, "Sorta" and he's like "I'm her brother" and I was like, "Oh I think she's really pretty but don't tell her that cos I'm not really supposed to know who she is and she might be creeped out that some girl she doesn't know thinks she's pretty" or something like that. Anywyay, said brother of Diana's ended up being TOTALLY AWESOME. I mean, he danced his ass off!!

Oh, also, these two siblings showed up, they were so cute and seemed very sweet. The sister was all like, "I want to dance, but I don't know how" and I was like, "It's aight if you don't know, nobody here can dance well anyways" which was especially true because Kareem hadn't shown up yet, haha.

The one other notable thing that hilariously relates to Diana-the-pretty-girl-I've-never-spoken-to is that The Twat showed up. Now, I feel sorta bad about calling him The Twat because Boogie-Down Nicole reported to me that he's actually quite genuine and nice. But to justify my actions, I have referred to him as The Twat cos whenever I would bump into him around school, he'd be sporting these obnoxious aviator shades and he had his hair parted at an angle and whenever he walks he sorta swaggers in a wankery manner. ANYWAY. So he shows up and I was really surprised, cos I didn't get who'd show up at this party to bring him along. Except then I remembered that I'd seen Diana and The Twat walking together a few weeks ago, so I assumed that they're going out (this was confirmed to me laters).

To make things better, as I was getting ready to leave, I kinda encountered him in the hall looking all confused and we exchanged the following words:

The Twat: Do you know where the bathroom is?
Elizabeth: Um... I think near the entrance maybe.

It was a conversation for the ages, I tells y'all.

So I left soon after but I had a lot a lot of fun and people were very nice and it was a relief that it wasn't a 100% NYU kids deal. I hear I missed out on a lot, like a remix of the Futureheads' "Hounds of Love", and Scott whippin' out some rejected bottles of vodka from his company. LAWLZ.

Cos the Car Commercial Thing's Been Overdone.

Um, I was watchin' some show this morning and this car insurance commercial came on for Geico. There was a song playing and I'm preeeeetty fuckin' sure it was the voice of Erlend Øye. Could someone please verify this for me?

They showed this documentary (Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Story) a couple of nights ago on music from the Bronx and how much Latin music influenced shit. One of the talking heads was Charlie Chase and I almost died from the shock to see he's like, fat and a bit old. Oh my lord. From the pictures I'd seen, he seemed mad cute, y'know? So just to see the older version of him... It was a bit traumatic.

I also watched Breafkafst (!!) at Tiffany's for the first time ever. It depressed me quite a lot. Well, more than I already am, haha.

Plans.

Tomorrow:

(1) I will be unprepared for every class I have. Wish me luck.
(2) The queer office is having free lunch and someone from (I think) The Advocate is coming in. That should be fun.
(3) I need to watch Carmen Jones, Breakfast At Tiffany's, and that Greta Garbo movie I borrowed out of the library.

Watch Me Now, Feel the Groove.

Kinky have a video for "Sister Twisted". Listen, this track is really cool, but the video sucks. I'm not even linking you to it (it's on the MySpace). It pains me to say it but seriously, the green screen shit is poorly executed. They better not do this to "Una Línea de Luz"...

This is a bit old and depressing, but still worth checking out. My answer was Radiohead.

Sometimes it's fun to read I Love Music. I agree with "Fragile" by Wire and "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" by the Buzzcocks.

Today my teacher told us that Lily Allen is some of the best stuff that's come out in years, or something like that. It pained me and I emotionally shut down from trying to understand how she could utter such lies into my ears.

I just watched the Gilmore Girls episode when Lane gets married. Yellow people who aren't Korean trynna speak Korean! LOLZ! Except I was enraged at the line where this girl's like, "You can't dance to Joy Division". It's like, hey fucker, try telling that to Ian! Second worst thing I've heard in my life, after "You can't dance to Wire". Fuck that!!!

I rewatched Billy Elliot during the weekend and I remembered how much I liked it and I'm also so glad Jamie Bell is old enough to fuck now. Also, the soundtrack was so good.

I borrowed out Pyongyang from the library! And Carmen Jones!!

Also, I submitted two new musicsecrets. Be on the lookout next week.

It's September 11.

Five years ago I was in my drafting class, and it was still very warm so this hugeass fan was on, and it was incredibly noisy, so even though we could faintly hear some announcement being made, we had no idea what it said. Later on, when we realized they kept making announcements, we decided to turn off the fan and we heard that both towers had been hit. I knew immediately that it was a terrorist act, but I didn't fully get what it meant, because I never went to the World Trade Center and had no idea how massive and full of people it was. I also didn't understand why we would stop classes over something that happened way downtown and had no relation to me. It was only after I saw a few kids crying and worrying over their relatives that I was like, "Oh shit." But mostly I was unaffected by this. Well, this day itself wasn't the end of my life, mostly I was confused. It was what happened after, like the paranoia and the jingoism and the unjustified war and so on, that really fucked up.

Anyway, I'm gonna go to work soon. I think I'm gonna miss most of the moments of silence because I'll be in the train. Maybe they'll conduct moments of silence inside the subway system anyway? I'm not sure.

Somebody Stop Me.

Oh god, I'm gonna screw up my Audioscrobbler charts for next week... I keep listening to this cover of "Big Time Sensuality" by THE STARTING LINE I swiped from Copy, Right? It's just... it's such an endearing, horrifying train wreck. It's hilarious that they could go so wrong on a song that's so fucking right! And it's like every other damn pop-punk song ever! I can't imagine this band being proud of this song, and I can't believe this was released. On the other hand, I totally understand that Björk is a difficult individual to pay tribute to.

I've been spending the last two hours downloading music from blogs. I got some sweet shit, like Blind Willie McTell's "Your Southern Can is Mine". I'm a happy camper, really.

Oh yeah, and I also downloaded a reggae version of "Karma Police", my favorite Radiohead song. And by "favorite" I mean I hardly listen to anything else, to be honest. Anyhoo, I don't think it's that great either, but shit, there's a whole album of these Radiohead tracks; it's a comp called Radiodread, cute, huh?

At school I got a promo copy of the Feist remix album. Haven't given it a full spin yet, though.

iLose, pt. 3

I found out Marisa Monte is dropping not one but TWO new albums on Tuesday. Well, they've been out in Brazil, but they're releasing them in the US on Tuesday. I'm probably not gonna buy them but it's exciting to know her stuff is being released in the US!

My iPod return went fantastic. The kid who helped me with the return was wearing an Edan shirt, so I knew everything would work out all right. I got a call when I got home from Citibank asking me about my purchases. They were worried that someone had stolen my card and bought all that stupid shit. By stupid shit I mean photocopied readings, textbooks, and that fucking iPod. The fabulous thing about returning the iPod, other than the Edan-shirted boy, was that he tested out the iPod and came back to me saying, "Dude, yeah, your iPod's messed up." I was like, "WTF?!" It was exciting because it was like he'd said, "It's not completely your fault." WOW! And all this time, when the stupid iPod was making sad faces at me, I thought I'd fucked up big time. I win!

Afterwards I picked up a Coke at a grocery store and sat around school, doing my reading. At one point I looked up and saw this couple, armed with cameras around their necks, and the woman in the couple directed her camera at me. I was like "Um...?" and I frowned but didn't look away. I decided that she wasn't really bothering me and so I proceeded to ignore her, but not before she got a bit closer and took a couple more pictures of me. I wonder who she was and why she chose to take a picture of me without asking me for my permission. I also had to think about why I didn't stop her. I decided it was because I was flattered. I just hope it wasn't some CIA agent or something like that.

My classes are going well. Sorta, I'm already behind in my reading. My Punk class teacher is absolutely adorable.

Like a Rocking-Horse Winner.

I was feeling shitty over this stupid fucking iPod (I'm gonna try to return it), and on my train ride to work yesterday my head felt like it was gonna explode. I was trying to read that postpunk book and I finally got to the Joy Division part, but then my CD player started playing "Ian Curtis" right as I read the part about Ian hanging himself. I shit you not, it was totally coincidental, but I couldn't deal, so I stopped reading and I skipped the song and I just cried on the train.

Highlight of my day: running over to Insound during my lunch break and fiiiiinally picking up the new TV on the Radio!!!!! I only downloaded "I Was a Lover" so listening to it right now is an absolute delight! I love this band! Oh, and I got my last stiped check. $40. I promptly spent them on a fucking schoolbook. It blows! But TV on the Radio, ILU!

Coffee + Music.

Starbucks Salon, lotsa cool kids performing starting today until Sunday the 17! FREE!

76 Greene Street (between Spring + Broome)

Tonite:
Eugene Mirman (8pm)
My one true love, Buck 65 (9pm)

Tomorra:
Lansing-Dreiden (7pm)

iLose, pt. 2

I just bought my first iPod eva. It cost mad money. Opening this fucking box has been a struggle.

Edit: I can't get it to work. I'm aware that it shouldn't be this difficult, and that's frustrating and I've been crying about it a lot.

Open Letter.

Dear Facebook team,

Please get rid of this "Mini-feed" shit. I know I can change my privacy options, but even then, I don't need all my friends knowing about my Facebook activities. The whole point of these profiles is to control how to present yourself to the masses. With this sort of mini-feed I lose a lot of that control.

Also, I could care less about the content of these feeds. Do I really want to know that my friend has just written on some other individual's wall? And where do you draw the line? Are you gonna reveal all the facebook crushes that people are stalking secretly?

On top of that, I just think it clutters the layout. Let's not turn this website into something fugly like MySpace, please. It's bad enough y'all are sucking up statistical information from us anyway.

Please reconsider your decision to add these mini-feeds!

Sincerely,
Elizabeth U.

OH MY GOD I OFFICIALLY WANT TO SLIT MY WRISTS LOS BUNKERS WERE IN NEW YORK JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO AND I TOTALLY MISSED TEHM OMYGIHATEMYSELF

WSN

I went to the first newspaper meeting of the year! The meeting took place in the hall because the University is supposed to be closed and we couldn't get into the actual offices. I didn't recognize anyone except for Vadim and the new editor, who I met briefly a few days earlier during an open house for WSN. Vadim is pretty much the same as before but I feel like I can tolerate him a bit better. The new kids seem nice, if a bit normal. We're writing about anti-suicide songs, and when I said, "What about that Third Eye Blind song?" a number of them piped up cheerily with "Oh, yeah!" in a totally sincere way. I'm not sure if I'll have much in common with these new kids because I didn't get to chat with them much today, but I hope they're cool.

I also got dibs reviewing the new Kinky album.

Anyway, I'm kinda bummed that most of the friends I've made in college are from the newspaper, because a lot of them are also studying abroad this semester. However, it's nice that they weren't around to scare off the new kids by being all pretentious and shit.

In other news, late last night my mind was blown away because they were showing TWO interesting movies: She's Gotta Have it and Rushmore. Dude, I'd never seen the former movie so I was pleasantly surprised to see some of it. I was primarily watching Rushmore, y'see. I didn't finish either because by 1:45 am I was getting way too tired.

The Tempest.

Be Your Own Pet lost their drummer. Congratulations, BYOP! You're officially a real band! Apparently he was to go to like, college and shit. I think it's a good thing.

I also can't believe that Robert X-gau got fired from the Village Voice. It's not that I like what he writes, but it's like, he's been there for like a million years!

So that post-punk book I'm reading? My future teacher is totally quoted in it. Haha! Weird.

By the way, if you ever encounter a British book called N.Y.C. Rock, don't buy it. In the bit about Interpol, he mentions that the drummer's name is Sam Foragino.

I bought some of my schoolbooks already, as well as Bitchfest, which collects essays from the first 10 years of Bitch. As soon as I saw it I got so excited and I knew I had to buy it but I'll get to it once I finish Rip it Up and Start Again. Shit, I hate having like a long queue of books to read. I'm such a slow reader and it feels like I'll never get to the next one.

Maria gave me this Manixxxxx CD called This is My Truth Tell Me Yours, and that is officially my first Manixxxxxxx album. THANKS! The album is shockingly outdated. I mean I like the songs, but you can obviously tell it was made, ahem, in the late 20th century. It just sounds like an ALBUM. It's cohesive through the entire thing, it makes sense that this set of songs is in this order from start to finish and that we should all listen to it from beginning to end in one sitting. It feels totally bizarre to do that instead of just making a playlist on your mp3 player with all your most favorite tracks from different artists.

VMAs 2006 (Delayed Reaction).

I don't have cable. So I am going to blog as I watch the VMAs online. Ooh. MTV Overdrive has been revamped. The color is nice. Apparently, Mac users can watch it now?

Justin Timberlake's performance was good. I still hate "SexyBack" and think it's dull, grating and pointless. That first song was easier to swallow. I think the greatest thing about this performance was that he answered the question "So you think you can dance?" with a resounding "FUCK YEAH!"

Jack Black's intro: not as funny as Conan O'Brien's Emmy Awards monologue, which was hilarious.

Last night, thousands of teens wondered what that Lou Reed dude was doing with Jack White's new band. I'm wondering the same thing.

Li'l Kim... looked sorta cute.

Oh my god! Kelis looked cute too!!

"My Humps" won? Oh my god. Daddy Yankee had the saddest look on his face. Like he was thinking, "¡Los gringos no me quieren!" Papi, I feel you. I mean, your song was mad annoying, but it wasn't as bad as the Black Eyed Peas' song.

Shit, whoever created that set needs to get shot. Or at least get fired.

UMMM SHAKIRA ILU. Except I found the whole Indian dancing girl weird. I guess Gwen's Harajuku possee was too expensive to rent out. I saw a picture of Shakira with Fall Out Boy on the red carpet and her dress was really nice! She looked all pretty and glowing, so in contrast her outfit here on stage was just tacky. But still, her voice sounded so bad and I just want to say thanks for actually singing instead of using a backing track. I truly appreciate that. I wish this song wasn't so wrong, cos then it would feel so right.

I don't think LL Cool J is capable of aging. It's frightening.

The Raconteurs suck.

Oh my god! MY FAITH IN OK GO HAS TOTALLY BEEN RESTORED!! If only their songs were good. I still like their first album a lot though.

I don't think Beyoncé was singing live. That dance bit was so dumb. Bitch needs some lessons from Timberlake. She's got great thighs, though, so she's cool in my book.

Jared Leto is a fucking joke. That whole speech was ridiculously dumb. Amy Lee was just looking at him like, "You're a douchebag." I think he's a douchebag too, because I've been saying his last name wrong and it's all his fault. You see, he's an artist now, so he makes everything difficult. He makes shitty music and says his name is leh-to instead of lee-to. UGH.

I'd like to thank the VMAs for finally telling me what that fucking annoying ass song I hate is by: Fort fucking Minor. Oh my god, that song is so painfully bad. I hate it so much. Okay, the end. Wait, no. All the "Ringtone of the Year" nominees were ridiculous, even if none of them were fucking Crazy Frog. I hate the fact that people have ringtones on their phones. I already hate phones and the fact that people have noisy, shitty ringtones makes things even worse.

I found it very weird that Fall Out Boy and Panic! were dressed like in B-movie version of Sherlock Holmes. I can't believe people are saying that P!ATD had a bad performance. NO SHIT. THEY'RE A BAD BAND. Just because you like them doesn't mean you should disregard how mediocre they are. I thought they sounded exactly as I expected them to sound live.

I wish Abigail Breslin was an anti-Dakota Fanning but I've heard Abigail speak and she's one of those precocious brats who's always telling people, "You should talk to my agent blah blah" to the point you wanna kick 'em in the face. But I think she's totally cute and I thought it was so sweet when she didn't know how to pronounce "Avenged Sevenfold". She also looked a bit scared that all those dudes came up on stage. Aw.

I'm glad I don't watch Overload that often (usually it's just "You Heard it First" features), because the ads drove me crazy. I wish they had more advertisers, because it's like the same five or six commercials and I find it irritating that they repeat so often.

Oh. My. God. Lou Reed was more full of shit than Jared Leto. I still love him, though, because when he was younger he was hospitalized and given EST for his homosexual tendencies. Oh, and he was in this little band called the Velvet Underground, but that's so beside the point.

Shit, I can't believe "Wake Me Up When September Ends" didn't win. C'mon, y'all! That video almost changed my life! When I first watched it I laughed! I cried! That is, I cried from laughing so hard. "I DID IT FOR US!! I DID IT FOR US!!!" The only thing that's made me laugh harder is that part in "Dance, Dance" where the girl is telling Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III that he looks handsome. PFFFT YEAH OKAY.

WTF, I kept thinking that "Iovine" was pronounced eye-oh-vine, not eye-oh-vin. Thanks for making my life difficult, y'all.

Al Gore got fat! If he was a rock star I'd totally wanna hit that! Except I'm not really into violence, so I wouldn't really hit him. It was a manner of speech...

Ummm is Brendon Uri(n)e the worst rock star ever? First of all he gets hit by one water bottle and he passes out, and then at the VMAs he gets the mic snatched right out of his hand by some loser who for some reason wanted a show on MTV. WTF? Of course I understand Brendon didn't wanna fight back for it. White Mormon Boy Wearing Make-Up vs. Irate Black Dude? Brendon had no chance. I can't believe J. Lo didn't smack the shit out of that dude. Ugh.

ALSO! I'd never heard Rosevest's speaking voiced so I LOL'ed quite hard when I found out it was deeper than expected.