this is josh g

I recently saw the excellent film by Penelope Spheris, The Decline of Western Civilization Part II. Part I was a documentary about the early LA punk scene, and it was unbelievably good. Hunt it down, the performances are stunning and seeing burnt-up stars like Darby Crash at their zenith is so energizing. Great great film.

Part II takes a look at the 1988 metal scene in LA. It’s a lot funnier than Part I, because hair metal is just naturally more hilarious than raw punk. Poison have become big stars, Ace Frehley of KISS is interviewed on a bed full of girls, everyone talks about how intensely they’re into drinks, drugs and sex, Aerosmith talk like they’re the biggest thing ever. Guns n Roses get a random mention at one point, but it’s in the context of all the bands currently playing LA trying to make it big.

And that’s one of the most poignant aspects of this doc — that there are so many bands profiled or mentioned who are so determined to make it big, and now, with the hindsight of history, we know that they won’t. Where are these folks now? There’s a sadness, and an irony, but also a strange sense of maturity that comes from seeing so many bands play out variations on this conversation:

PENELOPE: So what if you don’t make it?

BAND: That’s not an option. I will make it. There’s no alternative.

Maturity because I think, well, they didn’t make it, so they must have had to change that dream, or realize that the exuberance of youth is sometimes not enough to make the dream come true. You also need a healthy amount of luck. Rock is for the young, as others have been noting.

I wanted to show one of the bands so you could get a sense of what I’m talking about. For a bunch of reasons I chose this band called Odin. They seem to have it all, poised to break big. They’ve got the look, the girls, the Budweisers in the hot tub, the awesome old-school manager in a suit, oh yeah, and the ASSLESS CHAPS. The only problem is that their music is terrible…

…but somehow it’s still fun to watch them.

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Penelope Spheeris would go on to direct Wayne’s World, Beverly Hillbillies, Black Sheep and many other weak films.

It is now summer. Let us celebrate in two ways:

First, by song,

(yo la tengo – the summer)

and then, by poem (this poem is amazing! the ending is so fierce!):

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver   

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung

herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating

sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws

back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with

her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale

forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings

open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what

a prayer is.

I do know how to pay

attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to

kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and

blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been

doing all day.

Tell me, what else should

I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at

last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you

plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Down in Nashville, TN, Maxine and I interviewing Native Alaskans about incredibly expensive guitars.

1940 Martin guitar

Yes, the Red Hook, Brooklyn Ikea opens on Wednesday, in two days’ time.

Yes, they’re doing some crazy promotion thing where the first 35 people in the store will get a free couch.

Yes, there are already people camping out in line.

I camped out once at RFK for Grateful Dead tickets in 1993 (I think it was ’93…Traffic was the opening act, so JW what year was that?). I knew a lot of people going to the show (and to camp out), and I figured I should experience the fabled Dead show at least once before Jerry died. Camping out was a lot of fun, almost a party unto itself, with various parking-lot shenanigans and goings on. I didn’t sleep much and the next day while driving home I had to repeatedly slap myself in the face to stay awake.

If you’re curious about the shenanigans and goings on at the Ikea camp out, racked.com is live-blogging from the line; they’ve got an embedded blogger who’s fifth in line.

It may be overstating the obvious, but these people must really really really want an Ikea couch.

UPDATE – from one of my favorite blogs of the moment: "Red Hook Blacks Line Up To Rob First 100 IKEA Customers."

the original pooh & piglet, also eeyore

early precursor to the more famous 7?

This is one of my favorite kinds of graffiti…it’s painted on a board which is then bolted onto a municipal sign…the backs of the bolts are bent so it can’t be removed…so smart…the 2pac quote is a bonus…

Last night I went out in the rain to this event at the Eyebeam gallery in Chelsea. I’ve been to a couple of things there (Robot Talent Show!), and they do these Mixer events every now and then…we tried to go to one when AK was in town but we got there too late. That time, it was pretty much finished, but we could tell that something cool had definitely gone down — leaves all over the ground, and weird screens set up and so on. So last night I got there well in time, and it had bunch of different, interesting things…

First off, there was a stage with bands, DJ’s, etc. and 3 giant screens being VJ’d behind them…pretty cool, the visuals were amazing, but I wanted the music to be better…

In another room, they had a large inflatable pool filled with inky-black water. People would get into a bathing suit, stretch out on some kind of weird rack, and then get submerged into the pool. As this was happening, behind them on a giant screen, somehow a computer was tracking what their body looked like in the water. In realtime. It was really wild. Kind of like Minority Report, or as someone next to me remarked, "It’s a Hybrid!"

This low-fi cellphone movie doesn’t do it justice, and you can only just see the screen at the end, but here, check it:

I should also mention that it was $15 to get in, but then it was open bar(!!), which was nice. So the music was decent, the ink bath was wild, but really, in my mind the real money-maker, the thing that made it all worth it, was Boozbot.

A robot bartender!!!! I got in line and a guy next to me said "A robot bartender?" and for some reason I answered by saying "Finally." Because really, shouldn’t we have had this before? The experience was amazing. You got up to Boozbot and there was a list of drinks he could make (vodka straight, vodka tonic, vodka tonic and cran) next to a USB mic. You’d speak into the mic and Boozbot would chat with you for a bit. When he talked they had this small screen animating an 8-bit graphic-y mouth, and he spoke (naturally) though a metallic speech synthesizer.

There was obviously someone watching you through his camera eyes, ‘cuz Boozbot would talk about your appearance, and make conversation with you that wasn’t computer-based. After talking to him for a bit he’d make your drink by dispensing the quantities of ingredient through the plastic tubes at the end of his hand (see that in the pic)? It was so much fun.

Later in the evening, quite randomly, I ended up running into the guy who made Boozbot and having a conversation with him. He wasn’t geeky at all, more of a space-case type, and really friendly and cool. I was trying to ask about how much Boozbot could actually do on his own and —

"You mean how autonomous he is?" the guy cut me off.

"Right. How autonomous is he?"

"Well actually it would be illegal for him to be completely autonomous because to serve alcohol you need to be able to id people. So he’s only semi-autonomous. But damn I would love to see the cops arresting him for being completely autonomous!"

"Yeah, that would be a great court scene…Boozbot taking the stand…"

I then told him that I was going to borrow his idea and take it out to Burning Man, which he said was fine, so I’m stoked for that. I’ve already got some mods that I think would make it a better experience, so now all I have to do is solve the engineering issue of regulated hydraulic pumps to make the drinks. I think my dad could probably help me out with that, so it’s on. But I can’t call him Boozbot ‘cuz that’d be downright stealing. And it’s too bad, ‘cuz what a perfect name. 

Maybe Robooze? Johnny 500 proof? Liquorbot? Drink-a-tron? Robartender?

Help me out people…

UPDATE – It should be pointed out that when I presumptuously speak of borrowing the idea of Boozbot, I am more speaking to the spirit of the idea, and not to that actual execution. I just read a fascinating blog entry on how Boozbot works, and I love the complexity of it, but it’s…how can I put this?…a bit out of my skill set. Only time will tell whether this is a project that comes to life…

Yes, I have had a job where I had to blur out the naughty bits. It is both more and less fun than you would think.

This is genius v. clever.

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The track is "Toe Jam" by The Brighton Port Authority (BPA) feat. David Byrne and Dizzy Rascal.

Wow, that’s quite a "featuring" section, huh? The BPA myspace has more songs on it, with witty titles like "Should I Stay or Should I Blow". Nice.

EDIT – my first sentence refers to a job in the past…I didn’t actually make this music vid, as much as I would love to lay claim to it…

Related to the post on Super Pii Pii Brothers below, I wanted to tell a quick story…

I went yesterday to try and get a replacement social security card (lost mine) and the line was absurdly enormous. I asked the guard when was the best time to show up, and he said at 7am, when they open. So this morning I dragged myself onto my bike and rode over. Sure enough, there were hardly any people there, and I was able to get my form in with minimal hassle.

Two things of note happened:

1. They make you go through a metal detector and put your bag through one of those x-ray machines. It turned out that I had a fork in my bag, left there from when I was working at Sundance and getting salads every day — I got tired of wasting the plastic forks they would always give me, so I brought in my own. I’d wash it every day and leave it in the edit suite where I was working. It was great.

Sidenote: Apparently if you want cashiers at Cosi to think you are nuts, tell them you don’t need a fork with your salad. They will look at you as though there’s no other way to eat the damn thing you idiot!

Anyway, I had forgotten to to take it out of my bag. The guard manning the x-ray looked me dead serious in the eye and said "We can’t let you take a fork in here." Even at 7am the guards are paid for one thing only: to be serious. I love it. I took the fork out, and put it outside the office door on Fulton St, downtown Brooklyn. Just up against the wall near some other trash, figuring I’d get it on my way out.

I was in there for less than an hour. It was 7:30am. The fork was gone.

I love this town.

2. As I was standing at the window while the guy processed my form, I let my eyes wander around to look at the official-type office notices they had on the walls. One was this nice glossy poster that said "Beware! Everyone wants a piece of the Pii!" Then underneath it there were a number of photos with small text under them.

A photo of a pie on an oven rack (seriously). Then a photo of what looked like some filled-in forms. Finally a photo of a shredder. Hmmm. I really focused my eyes and was finally able to make out the words, under the large bold "PII", "Personal Identity Information". It was all about identity theft.

But I couldn’t stop thinking how great it would be if it was actually referring to Super Pii Pii Bros. Because you know, I’m pretty sure everyone does want a piece of the Pii.

I wanted to sneak a cell phone photo of it, but you know, the vibe didn’t feel too right. If they’re not allowing forks in there, I don’t think they’d like me taking photos of their Pii.

Well at this point everyone’s probably at least a little familiar with the Wii, Nintendo’s semi-revolutionary game system with the motion sensor controller. I haven’t played the thing myself (game systems make me stay up until 3 in the morning trying to win the robot) but everyone I know says it’s the greatest thing since Guitar Hero. The new Wii Fit game(?) made the front page of the New York Times Sunday Style section a few weeks ago, so it’s definitely in the popular consciousness.

A while back I came across a pretty keen Ted lecture about how to use the Wii remote to make some sophisticated and cheap equipment…it’s pretty cool if you’re into that kind of thing…I love this stuff, listening to brainiacs wax poetic about their specific area of uber-nerd expertise…

but then MM (thanks, Malcolm!) hipped me to this new Wii game that made me realize they have barely scratched the surface of what this thing can do. It’s available at ThinkGeek.com, but let’s not bother with descriptions or critiques, let’s just go right to the videotape:

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Some of you are loving this (I’m looking at you Devito!), some are hating it (M Trump, nice to see you), but I have to say I do love this part:

According to the Japanese text on the box "Super Pii Pii Brothers promotes good bathroom skills and allows women to experience for the first time the pleasure of urinating while standing."

What a pleasure it is. What a true pleasure it is.

As I move more and more out of the realm of various intoxicants (and into the realm of various antioxidants) I find the I have more respect for art that is able to transport me to that same, mind-blowing realm while I’m stone-cold sober. I tried to do it with the PhD mix and I feel like I was able to get pretty close. As much as I am a fan of the idea of "Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To", these days it seems more badass to me if you can conjure up that feeling while straight-minded. In the daytime. Drinking water.

This song by "Milkshake" by Holy Fuck is doing a great job at that. Jack gave me the album when we visited NC in May and I’ve been giving it a thorough listen. This track sort of takes over my mind by force in the beginning, only to relax its grip once the vibes kick in. It’s fantastic.

(Holy Fuck – Milkshake)

In the same vein, I recently revisited the animated film "American Pop" by Ralph Bakshi. Bakshi gets (sort of) a bum rap in the world of animation, I guess mainly because his stories are pretty thin, his animation takes cheap short-cuts, and I’ve heard he’s kind of a jerk. (Plus he made "Fritz the Cat", which I haven’t seen but is notable for being the first X-rated animated film…) He also made the first "Lord of the Rings" film back in the 80’s. It’s not very good.

Be that as it may, when I first saw American Pop — a rotoscoped low-fi animation sort of history of popular American music — I was appropriately under the influence and was totally blown away. The rotoscoping looked amazing, the songs that appeared were unexpected and awesome ("People Are Strange", "I’m Waiting For My Man"?! "Pretty Vacant"?!), and the pizza I was eating was delicious.

Upon re-viewing, however, it didn’t hold up so well. The story was kind of a joke, the animation is still pretty neat, but the parts where he cheaped out are more obvious. The songs are still good, but when the story is that meaningless the songs are kind of beside the point. The look of it is pretty cool though, and it’s rotoscoping way before Linklater thought up A Scanner Darkly or Waking Life…

When I first saw it, the film’s final scene totally blew me away. I was so caught up in the psychedelic majesty of it all. Now? Well, parts of it still hold up, but wow the very end is kind of embarrassing…I do love the bit early on where he’s handing out the music and he says "Pass ’em out, turkey!" People should still call each other "turkey", it’s such an endearing put-down…

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It’s been a long time since I listened to one track on repeat over and over and over again. I think the first time was in college, pulling an all-nighter to finish a report for a speech I had to give in History 102, taking Vivarin (first and last time) and listening to David Bowie’s "Heroes" (the full version) over and over and over and over and over. What a night. Needless to say, my speech was really really weird.

All the speeches given up to that point had been really dry, and since the grade was half from the professor, and half from student evaluations, I figured I should make my speech kind of funny, you know? So I wrote in all these "jokes". Let me be the first to tell you that jokes written in the middle of an all-nighter on Vivarin are not going to be funny. At best they will be odd. So I gave my speech, red-eyed and fried, and babbling incoherently about how the German soldiers of World War One wore funny hats. I can remember thinking it was strange that no-one was laughing at the funny bits. My friend PatH who was in the class later told me that it wasn’t making any sense.

Sure enough, when I had slept and re-read my speech, it was a mess.

Lately, I’ve been listening to "The Low Murderer is Out at Night" on repeat 1 and it’s been great. The song is kind of a mini-suite, going through several movements, each of which adds on the previous one.

Initially it’s a bit like Air, with an acoustic guitar groove and bubbling electronics. Around 2 minutes in, a distorted guitar and funkier beat get added. At the 3 minute mark a sweet Floyd-esque solo comes sweeping in and I feel the presence of JWilmeth is hanging out with me. So good. I once read this description of a track by Country Joe and the Fish and it said something like "at the 2 minute mark, suddenly the walls begin to melt." That’s how it feels, the wall begin to melt. Then the vocal sample, and the dirrrty synth at 5:15 and we’re in it deep, you know?

Loving it.

(Low Motion Disco – The Low Murderer Is Out At Night)

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My favorite wound:

I was 16, working as a prep cook at The Rustic Inn and one night I had to train a new cook. I can’t remember the woman’s name, but she was nice enough, I guess. One of the things we prep cooks were responsible for was to slice a load of ham and swiss for the evening’s Chicken Cordon Bleus. I was showing her how to work the slicer, which was one of those classic, giant deli slicers with the rotating blade and metal handle to hold whatever you’re slicing.

It wasn’t going very well. I was trying to demonstrate to her exactly how to slice it, what thickness to set the blade to and so on, but the cheese kept kind of sliding out of the handle mechanism. So I, playing it cool, was all like "Of course, sometimes the handle won’t hold it, so you just sort of use your hand to keep it steady." And I reached up and held it with my left hand. 

On the next slice, my hand went too far and the outside of my left pinky finger slid into the slicer. It was so quick, sharp, and smooth that I didn’t even notice what was happening for a second. I think I only realized what was happening when I saw the blood spin around the rotating blade and splatter the cheese. Ick. I pulled my hand back quickly, and saw that it hadn’t gone all the way through, that the skin was still attached.

"Umm, no problem, you know, no big deal…"

"Are you sure? It kind of looks pretty bad…"

And I grabbed some paper towel and wrapped it around my finger, where it quickly became blood-soaked. My finger didn’t hurt at all, but my humiliation at looking like an idiot was acute.

When it healed it scarred over very strangely.

Many years later, when I learned what the word hubris meant, I was able to retroactively categorize many incidents in my life as pertaining to hubris. This was one of them.