California Political Solicitation

Since I'm canvassing, and I have the police called on me pretty regularly, I decided that I should actually know what the law is when I'm out there getting into the most polite, shit-eating conversations I can with the police and management, while still not doing what they want.

Turns our that the law is a lot more complex than what we've been led to believe, at least in our vague employee verbal culture (Ott'd have a field day—maybe I should write a thesis on that some time) at the office, where the sense is generally distilled down to "If it's a shared parking lot, there's nothing they can do."

This also explains why we don't ever canvass Targets.

A quick google for "california political solicitation law" brought up the Target page on their policy. It certainly sheds a lot more light on what the Redondo Whole Foods manager was on about, claiming that a "recent decision" made this all illegal and how she was going to get us all locked up.

What she was referring to was (likely) the California Supreme Court decision of Albertson's v. Young 107 Cal. App. 4th 106 (2003)(pdf), in which it was found that Albertson's had the right to prohibit petitioners from setting up a table and collecting petitions.

A little context here: In a 1980 decision, Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center, the California Supreme Court found that California's state constitution gives not only the same protections of free speech as the federal constitution, but also an affirmative right to free speech that is more expansive. The case revolved around a group of high school students who were protesting against a proposed UN resolution condemning Zionism. In a broad finding, the California court found persuasive the argument that because of the increased suburbanization of California culture, supermarkets were taking the place of the public square, thus infringing on property owners' rights to control the content of the speech promulgated thereon… Ugh. That just reads like third-rate legalize. Basically, they ruled that subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, people could exercise their rights to expression in "quasi-public" places.

It was a bold ruling, and both liberal and populist. Which is part of why the California courts have spent the last 30 years chipping away at it. In Trader Joe's Co. v. Progressive Campaigns, Inc. (1999)(pdf), petitioners were banned from a stand-alone Trader Joe's in Santa Rosa; similar outcomes resulted from Costco Companies, Inc. v. Gallant 96 Cal. App. 4th 740 (2002) and the Albertson's case. In all, the court found that a lack of things like coffee shops and areas where customers were invited to linger or congregate placed the stores firmly outside the free speech protections.

Granted, the property owners were greatly aided by the behavior of the canvassers. If the store managers are to be believed, the canvassers not only hassled people outside, but also went into the stores to continue petitioning, and even got into fights while they were in there. But, conversely, because I frequently hear similar stories from grocery store owners, without a lot of proof I tend to assume they're apocryphal. Given that a fair portion of my job is shooting the shit with folks who stop, I've got a pretty good ear for what truth sounds like and what's a convenient, half-remembered story that's simply what you tell someone when you have neither the time nor the inclination to explore an issue fully. Don't shit a shitter, as my Papa Fred used to say.

It's also worth noting that many of the decisions cite prior restrictions on free speech enacted to keep things like violent or disturbing anti-abortion rallies from happening. There's something keenly ironic in noting that when the Planned Parenthood canvassers are run off, it's at least in part because of the laws enacted to keep Planned Parenthood clinics open and operating.

Where does that leave us? Well, in reading through the decisions, it's worth noting that the stores were excellent in picking test cases—the petitioners behaved badly and the stores themselves were able, likely due to good counsel and the inclination of judges to rule in favor of property rights, to get fairly minimizing readings on their businesses. That and a frankly more conservative court has ended up with Pruneyard all but overruled, and more than a few calling to have an explicit ruling doing so.

However, it does appear that the canvassers made their points remarkably poorly, unable to answer questions of fact which the court gave them, instead relying on things like mothers testifying to the good character of their sons and expansive, novel interpretations. They seemed to do a poor job arguing that the notions of public squares have largely become obsolete—no doubt in part due to the fact that much of the public would rather not be engaged with their fellow citizens, a point made repeatedly in the latest Harper's. An emphasis on modern ennui and how that by disallowing political discussions by virtue of a lack of political discussions does seem to beg the question—these are not public spaces because politics is already banned, but that doesn't support the argument that these should not be public spaces. Further, over the last decade, grocery stores have explicitly enlarged their business model to encourage behavior that they explicitly denied prior—the decisions noted that their "convenience" character was at least somewhat based on not having places to linger, nor "coffeeshops or entertainment." That's simply not true of many modern supermarkets, of which many have at least a Starbucks and a set of benches outside as an eating area. A well argued case could, at the very least, expand the time, place and manner restrictions, though the best remedy would likely be legislative, and in California, the grocery lobby is so huge that I'm not very hopeful. They've been able to crush nearly every labor fight in recent memory.

Back to us: So, if a business is able to ban canvassers, how does it do so? Well, it has to enjoin a canvassing group through a preliminary injunction against its canvassing, a civil action. At which point, and hopefully with smarter legal counsel than in prior cases, a canvassing group should be able to countersue and at the very least get the time, place and manner restrictions declared unreasonable. But it's important to note that this is civil law, and that the actions take place between the two corporate entities—those of the business that runs the canvass and the business where the shoppers are. So, while they can ask us to leave, we don't really have to—their remedy is to sue the company we work for.

Further, our—or at least my—technique should leave me in a more defensible position. I only canvass people on their way out, and if they disagree, I tell them to have a nice day. It's hard to construe that as harassment nor as damaging to the business model, and given that they have to prove that the specific company I work for is responsible for damages to their business… Eh. It's a gray area, at least so far as I can tell (though I hasten to add that I'm not an attorney and not giving anyone else any legal advice here). It's simply far too much of a hassle to deal with it, and one of the few areas that is explicitly protected is direct criticism of the store itself, which means that if a store did pursue banning canvassers in a way that harassed or injured them, the canvassers would be within their rights to picket the store and hand out literature about it.

One of the few regular impediments that I deal with is when the business calls the police. They come, sometimes ask me to leave, and I tell them that I have to have a direct order to leave. Sometimes, they'll call the city attorney and ask about what we're doing. It is explicitly political—we are funding a grassroots campaign for EQCA, at least as far as I know. I'll probably look more into that later. But frankly, the understanding of the law that the police have is just as blinkered as that of the store managers or the canvassers themselves, except in one important regard, and that's that nothing we're doing is criminal.

Robert C. Phillips, the deputy D.A. for San Diego, writes about it under the title"Who You Gonna Call? and both views the issue more expansively than the courts appear to, but also concludes that in the vast majority of cases, the police officer should do nothing, in large part because there are no applicable statutes. Of course, canvassers will leave if given an order, and police can enforce a civil injunction, but aside from that… Well, welcome to the ambiguity and ambivalence of public/private life in the 21st century.

I'll end this with one more note, and that's this: Because business owners only ever hear from folks that disagree with the canvassers, they don't realize that we really are supported by the majority of folks that we see. That's why we go to the places that we do. If you like us, or don't mind us, or would like to keep the world a little bit more politically aware and active, or even just have a post-modern view of space and delocalization, tell the managers you like having us there and thank them for the canvassers. It'll make our lives easier and will work to undermine the negative perception that a lot of business management has of us.

I have also made a movie

Mmm. Drinking.

Wanted to add a dash of something to a Manhattan (in lieu of cherries); dash of Cointreau is perfect.

News

New office, same job. First canvass of the day yesterday was Battlestar Galactica's Ron Moore. Getting official internet and cable on Saturday. Found the farmer's market last Sunday; think we're gonna go to the Hollywood one this weekend.

Fresh basil!

Made something close to this, except that I like knife pesto instead of blender pesto, and that the asparagus were tasty enough that I just tossed them in on top rather than blending with the orzo.

On Bullshit

Harry G. Frankfurt's modern classic: On Bullshit.

You can't talk in your sleep if you don't sleep

On Saturday Amy's coworker took us all to see In My Sleep, a fun indie thriller.

In it Marcus (Philip Winchester) finds himself leading a double life due to his sleepwalking. He's already a parasomniac philanderer, but might be a murderer too.

What In My Sleep does well is balance Marcus's sleepwalking blackouts against his growing suspicion and horror, and I really respected that while it briefly flirted with occult imagery, the film stuck to a psychological mystery. Given a conceit that could have easily stuck to clichés, the realistic portrayal of parasomnia grounded the film and was more effective as a tension device.

That said, In My Sleep does suffer from the indie thriller malady of trying to fit in every twist possible—the film ends up being about half an hour too long, mostly thrashing at the end between two equally plausible solutions before finally settling on one. The reveal could have come sooner, and the movie would have been tighter for it.

This is also a film with a lot of peripheral appeal—The cast is pretty strong, and even though Amy Aquino's campy hardboiled detective ("You know what I like about sunflower seeds? You have to crack 'em just right to get the good stuff.") plays more as comedic relief than a real adversary. The overall tone has more in common with NCIS than Law and Order, and that the closest comparisons are television, not film, seems intentional.

As a side-note, there's also more beefcake in this movie than anything I've seen since 300. Marcus seems to have his shirt off in three-quarters of the movie, and I assume is being sponsored by a boxer-brief company. Even the poster's got him naked. This isn't a film to see if you're in some sort of post-gay recovery program.

One more rewrite and In My Sleep might have been fantastic; instead it's pretty good and worth seeing.

The Secret Life of … Shrooms

The Secret Life of Mushrooms.

A trailer for spec documentary about psychedelics and culture, still in need of funding. via Jesse Green's facebook feed; he's an old high school friend and apparently his wife makes TV about drugs, which we can all get behind.

Duck hunt

I've been meaning to post this up for a while: My pal Matt G's album Dead Duck is up for free on Bandcamp and it's pretty tight. Backpack hiphop, whiteboy uppermidwest (Slug, Atmosphere RIYL).

Goddamn CSS

I can't seem to make the main posting part of the blog wider without it getting rid of the sidebar. I want to make the main part wider so that the photos (uploaded at even medium size using blogger's own defaults) don't get cut off.

Grr. I know enough to know how to monkey around but not enough to fix even a simple problem.

Music can't be seen.

Water, fire, air and earth, how the fuck do magnets work?

I RON IC

Steve Ahlgren takes maybe ironic pictures of modern, generally corporate spaces.

Accidental Mysteries

Snapshots from Accidental Mysteries.

Black line arabesques

Bibliodyssey does blackwork prints.

Beard on Beard

from Jandrewedits.com

The Only Sensible Ranking

1. Special Dark
2. Krackel
3. Mr. Goodbar
4. Milk Chocolate

and there's a pretty huge gap between Special Dark and Krackel, and then another between Krackel and anything else.

Hyenas

Even though it's totally in that danger area of Exoticizing The Other for me (not necessarily for him), I love Pieter Hugo's work, especially the hyena series. I mean, part of the danger is because hyenas just look so goddamned weird to me, these wrong dogs, but even with dogs these would be powerful images.

David Maisel's Oblivion, aerial shots of Los Angeles.

Ghost, by Nick von Woert.

Endless ripples

Been staring at this far too long. Physics two-point interference.

Alberto Seveso

Red and blue.

Grind, grind, level

Wheew.

As most of y'all know, I took a wicked whip offa my bike two weeks ago, leaving me with a broken femur and ulna. Since then, I've been laid out, working on recovering as best I can with the invaluable help of more friends than I even realized I had. There's another blog for the recovery (klangklangston.blogspot.com), but I haven't been added as an author yet, so I'm writing this here.

So far, I've worked hard at the PT and gotten to the point where I can sit up, stand, walk with a walker, get to the bathroom (fracture pan to bedpan LEVEL UP bedpan to drop chair LEVEL UP to commode LEVEL UP to using the extension in the regular bathroom and wiping my own ass LEVEL UP), fix my own food (breakfast, lunch and dinner today). The exercises still hurt like a motherfucker and leave me wiped, but grind grind grind. It's like Final Fantasy without the level breaks. Still can't do stairs, and god knows when I'll be able to ride in a car or even type two-handed, but at least Amy's gone from worrying about 'round the clock care to being able to grab dinner tonight with her friend.

And throughout, I've been all overwhelmed and choked up at the awesome help from people all over—though the locals have been phenomenal.

So, just a note to let you all know that I appreciate this and am still working hard on my end.

♡2BNJOY

On the way back from my coworker's short film premier thingy, Amy and I saw a vanity plate that read ♡2BNJOY.

We have no idea what it means, but we're both going to see how many times we can say "Heart to bean joy" to unsuspecting folks. Already, I'm telling her to tell her Chinese coworker that it's a greeting. "Heart to bean joy! Oh, yeah, no, there's not really a translation. It's an idiom. Heart to bean joy!"

Mostly boring, buying kitchen stuff

Our consumer binge

Two weeks ago, we finally took the money that Amy's parents had given us for kitchen supplies and had a day of it. I looked up the old NY Times $200 kitchen article, then we started out at Charlie's Fixtures, on Venice east a ways.

We already had most of what we needed; my folks got stainless religion a couple years back and proselytized us. We finally got Amy a stainless stock pot that she'd wanted for a while, as well as a mortar and pestle, and a bar citrus press. All told, about $65-70, not bad at all.

We were looking at the microplanes, at better mandolines (weirdly enough, the one I bought at Ross for $9 is a piece of shit. Who knew?), and, well, I started thinking about how life would be different if I had my own soft serve machine and professional doughnut fryer.

"No more amateur doughnuts, Amy. For real."

We didn't find the chef's knife that I wanted, nor the cast iron skillet. Their cast iron was only in griddle form, or tiny, and for some reason they didn't have a very good selection of chef's knives at all. Like, I could get twelve different kinds of boning knives, but all the chef's knives were 10" or even 12", which is pretty much a fucking sword, and where am I gonna store that? A scabbard on my hip?

Then we headed down to the barware joint on Cotner, which swore on its website that it was open weekends. It is not.

Finally, we headed to Surfas (online as Culinary District), in Culver City. Now, we drive past this place nearly every time we go to an art opening, and I figured it was a regular restaurant supply spot, similar to Charlie's, only with a bit more of the chichi that Culver requires, the type of people who would declare that if you're not microplaning, you're not zesting.

Well, it is, kinda. Except that it's lacking about two thirds of the shit you'd need to have any sort of functional restaurant, and has used that extra space to bring in overpriced gourmet ingredients, a cafe, a test kitchen, and about 5000 goddamned yuppies waddling through the aisles like stoned geese.

Sure, granted, it was Valentine's Day. They'd had some kind of test kitchen event where they had fondue (getting TMBG's "Hot Cha" stuck in my head for the rest of the day… "Fondue forks for everybody!").

But we found a cast iron skillet there, no problem. Their knives were a bit of insanity—I'd love to spend $85 on steel honed by German gnomes, but I just can't. And while Charlie's had only had electric sharpening steels for real goddamn professionals—"Sure, our cheapest one is three-fifty." "That's three hundred fifty, right?" "Yeah." "Oh."—Surfas had plenty of exotic sharpening implements that drew the least purpose-driven browsers, so I ended up just deciding that I didn't need to figure out the Japanese whetstone system even if it was only $14 bucks or so.

Then, after waiting behind a guy that kept telling us that he was in line, he was in line, and yet letting cute girls step ahead of him since they had so little, we were finally out. The experience had overstimulated my German gland, and I was stalking off with fantasies of gassing the whole place, but goddamn if I don't love that skillet. We've used it for weekend breakfast potatoes a couple times now, and it's amazing. The stainless, it just took so much oil, and could never get a high heat without sticking the potatoes to it, whereas the cast iron just gets things so crispy and so deliciously brown. Big fan of using it to heat tortillas too, since it takes very little oil there. Stainless seems likely to be relegated to fry pan status, which is cool, because it's deep enough and heat sensitive enough to give a lot of control, but that cast iron is going to be the main skillet from here on out.

Oh yeah, and that chef's knife? Finally just bought a mediocre one at Smart and Final. Ten bucks or so, same basic model that I used at Tio's all those years ago. Loving that too, since now I can slice shallots totally see-through. I need to find a regular place to get our knives sharpened though, since the last guy that did it at the Farmer's Market, those blades barely kept the edge a month. The shitty Kroger knife, I expect that (though it's surprisingly sharp given the abuse it's taken), but the Calphalon santoku should get real attention and needs to be retrued.

Next week? Buying a bed!

But so that this isn't a total waste:

1 oz. Blood orange juice
1 oz. Lime juice
1/4 oz. Simple syrup
1 oz. Soda water
1 oz. Brandy
1 oz. Rye
dash bitters

Pour rye and brandy into rocks glass. Add blood orange juice, lime juice, simple syrup, soda water, bitters. Stir. Delicious. Needs a name.

Saturday MADNESS!

Oh, Target.

So, long story of yesterday short:

Went first to Sammy's, dropped off film. Well, first, got high. But then went to Sammy's and everything was hitting on all four cylinders. Then to Target to buy a water filter.

Our Pur had broken, no doubt out of self-loathing; its little gauge window pissed a fine jet of water out, and a seating that never quite worked on the faucet eventually led to its just falling off. After dicking around on the internet (finally finding a phone number on Consumerist), I talked to some guy "Tyler" on the phone, who assured me that nothing like this had ever happened before but by the way we're going to send you a coupon for a free water filter with no more questions asked.

Since we bought the filter at Target, we figured we'd get the new one at Target too. We spent a little time milling around, Amy getting some sweaters and floss, me picking up stuff absentmindedly, then setting down five boxes of glowsticks in the foot care aisle. We found a similar filter, noting that they'd gotten rid of the one that we bought prior—since I saw identical complaints all over the internet, contra "Tyler," I assume they discontinued it due to its crappy mount, but the new ones had a spring-loaded mount that couldn't have been as secure as threading. Whatever. The salient point is that we got as close to the same one as we'd had, in part because that's what the extra filters we already had fit.

We get up to the line, Amy pays for her stuff, and I try to pay the tax on the new filter. Well, except that the register keeps responding with "No Such Item Found—Manager Override Required." The coupon I have from Proctor and Gamble says that it's for any filter system up to $55, and is redeemable anywhere that sells Pur products. So, the poor girl at the counter doesn't know what to do. She calls her supervisor, who tries a couple of times, then tells us that Target just doesn't take coupons like this. I point to the sign right next to her head that says "Target accepts all manufacturer coupons." She looks blankly, tries it again, and calls her supervisor, who tells her we don't take it. I ask to talk to him, to someone who has the authority to accept the coupon.

We wait a little bit more—Amy gets walked on by some lady's cockatoo, who she's brought through the checkout (complaining all the while that it's like having a two-year-old that she can never leave except when he's asleep, while the bird watches her with a demonic red-rimmed eye). The manager, a burly dude built like a football player, comes out (he never introduces himself). He starts telling me that they can't take the coupon because they have no way to get paid back for it from the manufacturer. He keeps saying, "As a businessman, you have to understand that." My point is this: The register says that it simply needs manager approval. How Target gets paid back for the manufacturer coupon isn't my concern, though I'm certain a mechanism exists. Both Target and Proctor and Gamble are huge concerns, this can't be the first time. The item that we bought prior, that we're replacing, is no longer sold, so we can't just get a new one, and the coupon says it's for any system up to $55, and Target has clear signage that says they accept these coupons.

We get to the point where he's just telling me that no one can do it, that it's impossible, that he won't do it because it would be the same as us stealing from him.

"I asked to speak with someone who had the authority to authorize this," I tell him.

"There's no one. That person does not exist. No one has the power to authorize this," he says.

"Really? No one in the company can say that you're going to honor this coupon and sort out the details on your end? No one?"

"No one at Target."

"Well," I say, "You clearly don't have the power. What phone number do I call to speak to your supervisor?"

He gives me the 1-800 number for Target, the broadest number they have. I wait through the phone trees, I muddle through the counter-intuitive menus, going through Returns and then Customer Experience, though neither's really what I want. I finally reach some guy with a thick Indian accent who asks for my information about three times—he has a hard time understanding me, I have a hard time understanding his replies—all while the manager sits there scowling at me. I tell William what happened, he asks a few questions, then asks to speak to the manager. At this point, I find out that the manager's name is JD ("No, Jay Dee. No. they're initials. No, Jay Dee"). JD starts giving the same argument, then gets quiet. Yeah, they've tried keying it in. Yeah, but… Yeah… But how do they get paid… "I just submit it?"

JD pushes my phone back to me across the counter, keys in the code, and I hang up on William without thinking about it. Then JD says, "Oh, he still wanted to talk to you." After a moment of watching the rest of the transaction, he walks off. He does not apologize. Neither does the other supervisor who was the one who finally charged me my $3.30.

How grim, this computerized service economy. For the rest of the day, I was all keyed up, especially from that bit where I had to keep asking who had the authority. If I were rewriting it, that's where the dramatic music would swell, and I'd turn in a performance like Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino. "WHO HAS THE AUTHORITY!" I'd thunder. Instead, it was just stressful and obnoxious and took about an hour and I didn't even get an apology.

So, the lesson? Next time, just fucking walk out with it instead of waiting for some jackass to get read the riot act by some Bangalore phone center operator who they've outsourced all the courtesy and competence to.

The New Neighbors

We used to have fantastic neighbors. Emily, Carlo, Vic, they lived downstairs in One and were courteous, smart and able to share our weird parking alcove that does take real driving skill to navigate.

Then they got an apartment in Santa Monica, and we were sad to see them go, but hey, they were in a better place.

The downstairs sat empty for months, and we spent endless idle time speculating on who'd move in. The landlords wanted too much, some 1500 plus for a crappy two-bedroom where one of Vic's friends had once plunged through the drywall in a Spongebob costume. It had weird rats and roaches, because of which Emily never used the oven. Even after the landlords put in new fences, it still wouldn't be worth the money. (Though it was fun to stroll through during the three unlocked months.)

But down came the Vacancy sign, and in moved the new neighbors. The first thing we notice, they have an immense, white Benz SUV. And they have absolutely no idea how to fit it into the tiny spot their allotted. We lean over the railing and watch them edge in and pull back, edge in and pull back, edge in and pull back. After five minutes or so, they pull out and leave, and we go back inside.

A brief word about the parking: Anyone who's been to our place knows this, but the parking at our place is a little crazy. We all have assigned spaces, with most of the units getting two, three of us officially getting one, and finally Wayne, the weird college kid in Seven who gets none. Amy and I get one of the two spots that are hooked around underneath our house; the folks in One get the other. To get out of those two takes a three-point turn. Emily and Carlo were eminently able to zip under there with their Honda Fit or Vic's Toyota pick-up. The Benz SUV would be a challenge for anyone.

So, our new neighbors are terrible at that parking—they routinely pull in across the line into our spot, and seem to, even after a month and a half or so, to be constitutionally unable to pull into the spot with any confidence. In and out, in and out, hesitating like middle school romance.

Amy meets them first, introducing herself when I'm off doing something. They're French, she says, Josaine and something. She thinks they're husband and wife.

I meet them a couple of days later, just that perfunctory, Hey, I'm Josh, I live upstairs with Amy. Welcome to the neighborhood. France is pretty great. Oh, you're from Paris? Paris is pretty great. (I omit that all I know about Paris is really art museums and a weird Formula-1 themed hotel on the outskirts of town that was recommended when we failed to get a hostel lined up in advance. It's a bit like saying, Oh, you're from LA? I love Burbank!)

The woman is Josaine, the man something like Eduaward, and they have a kid named Herbert or something. The kid's, like, 25, or something, but the dad looks to be about the same age. I can't tell—the mom just has that frumpy black woman in her mid-40s look, and the kid looks just like his dad only the kid seems perpetually embarrassed and his dad wears work clothes on weekdays (the kid is always in baggy sports jerseys).

The problem with recounting this now is that given the number of stupid interactions I've had with them, I'm not having trouble not remembering the mother having great lolling frog eyes and a thin tongue poking past her wide frog mouth. And I think to myself, but "frog" is such a stereotypical French slur! Is it nationalism coloring my memory? Or worse, racism?

Luckily, every time I start to second-guess myself, they park us in and make me go down there and force them to move. It's either their huge SUV somehow wedged into the driveway so that no one else can get past or some friend they've let blockade us.

They way that we'd deal with this with Carlo and Emily is to walk down there, knock, and someone would immediately leap to and move the car. And if they had friends coming over, they'd ask us, let us know how long they were going to be there, then make sure that they were gone. We would do the same thing when we had friends come over. Like I said, Carlo and Emily, fantastic.

The way we'd deal with it when Wayne's predecessors, the Horde of Apartment Seven, would park us in was to tow them. We warned them a couple times, they ignored us, we towed them, the problem stopped. It pretty much severed any hope of being on good terms with them, but there were seven of them in a one-bedroom apartment without a kitchen.

In fact, and I don't want it to sound like I'm boasting, because I'd really rather not ever do this, we've had quite a few cars towed. But they were always blocking us in, and given that it takes a tow truck half an hour to forty-five minutes to come get someone here, it's not like it's unavoidable or capricious.

But we don't want that relationship with Josaine and Eduaward and Herbert. Instead, we'd like to all be cool, able to mingle at barbeques or whatever, maybe have them over to play board games which we will let them win (but not by too much). Try a Manhattan, Josaine! Play some foursquare, Herbert!

Instead, our interactions go like this: They have parked us in again. Usually I go down, since Amy would just as soon tow 'em. I bang on the door. I wait. Already, with each passing second, they're worse than Emily and Carlo. I check the time—I'm invariably late already—and maybe fiddle with my cell phone. Josaine comes out, head nodding.

"It's very difficult to park here," she says.
"Yeah, I know," I say. "But I've got to get out."
"It is very hard to find a place."
"Well, I usually have good luck up on Charnock, and there are always spaces on Venice."
"No, no, I looked on Charnock."
"Well, OK, but I have to get out. I have to go."
"Oh yes."

Then a pause.

A long pause.

"So, I have to go. You have to move your car now."
"Oh, yes."

"Ok." Then she climbs in and takes ten minutes pulling back and pulling up, pulling back and pulling up.

Not so egregious, but then it happens again. And I have the exact same interaction. And then again, and I'm telling her, Look, you really can't park your car here. I can't have this happen. Then it's her friend's car, her friend who's have through with having her hair braided so doesn't want to move the car. Then the same thing again, with the same exchange about Charnock and Venice. I know there are spaces around—my friends find them all the time. It's not easy parking, but there's parking, and part of living in a city is knowing how to find parking. If you're from Paris, you should either know how to park or know how to leave your car in one spot and use public transit. But no, her friend cannot find parking easily. And they're still parking over the line.

Each interaction I have with this woman, there's that central ambiguity: Does she not understand this because it's cultural or because she's stupid? For instance, is there a language ambiguity? She gives me that nod that I give folks speaking a language I don't understand, when they go too fast. But when I try to slow down and explain things, she brushes me off with a "Yes, yes." And then does the exact same thing again. Does she not understand that it's rude? Does she not understand how parking works here? She certainly picked a gauche car. Is she simply in over her head?

Or, and again I'm remembering her with lolling frog eyes and a weak neck, is she just stupid? She might just be a moron. She seemed genuinely upset when someone who had purported to live in One got some letter from immigration. But it was a name that neither Amy nor I recognized, not one of the folks who had lived there for years before us, not anyone who'd lived in our place, no one who'd lived in Seven… really, no one we knew at all. She just kept repeating that it was very serious, and that it was for someone who lived in One but was not her. Amy told her how to RTS a letter, but Josaine just seemed really peeved that we didn't understand that it was from immigration, and was very serious. Yeah, well, what do you want us to do? I don't know any Mohammed Nguimi. They haven't lived there in years, if ever. Let's just hope they hadn't already been deported.

Josaine bears the brunt of this bashing for two main reasons: That she's the primary terrible driver of the SUV, though both men seem equally inept. They just drive it less. And that she's been the primary conversation point. The men are certainly giving impressing the cliché that it's better to be suspected a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. I'm not sure how much English Eduaward knows, and I suspect that Herbert knows a lot more than he lets on. Helistens to Jay-Z over MC Solaar, so he can't be that alien, and I think it's him and his goofy friend that keep tagging everything.

Ah well. They looked horrified when they saw me coming back from the laundry room shirtless, so maybe they're just clueless petite bourgeoisie who need to have their car towed once or twice in order to assimilate properly.

Valentine's, pretty good, actually

This gnudi recipe, with basil substituted for sage (plus a little garlic toast).

Cake truffles.

This wine (from these guys).

Bouquet hand made by Cory there, kicked ass. (I work with his brother.)

In a post about The Game, can there not be a 50 Cent reference?

Nitsuh Abebe writes on Jessica Hopper writing on Nitsuh Abebe writing on Jessica Hopper writing on Vampire Weekend

I like Abebe, generally dislike Hopper, and couldn't care less about Vampire Weekend. I am interested in identity politics in pop music, and the question of whiteness that Abebe writes on is pretty compelling. As someone prone to toss around the phrase "white" to mean bourgie, I feel like I should take a swing at some of the nuance I think Abebe misses there.

First off, it's worth noting that Abebe handily skips over the question of whether being bourgie is worth criticizing, if that's the central complaint of "whiteness." And, frankly, it is. Abebe's point that it's bourgeois to criticize the bourgeois (therefore implicitly hypocritical) is fair, but that doesn't mean that the criticism is wrong.

Second, and I think Abebe misses this fully, there's more to the charge of "white" than "bourgeois." It might be handy for Abebe to think about it as French—calling something "blanc," blank, loses some of the most obvious race and class baggage (which is only really tedious because most college educated folks learned it early) and replaces it with what's a common complaint about his e.g. Vampire Weekend, that they're bland.

Their blandness is on track with most other indie blandness, with facile, cheery, clever lyrics, and perfunctory "outside" influence. Vampire Weekend's was afropop by way of Paul Simon's "Graceland." It might just as well have been cellos or ukuleles.

Now, I totally grant that "bland" is a subjective judgment and that a lot of people like Vampire Weekend a lot and that I only downloaded their first album when it came out, listened a couple times, then deleted it (the system works!). But not every smug crack about "whiteness" is unjustified or playing The Game (which Abebe seems to not realize is Nomic). But no one gives a shit when I complain about Coldplay being overhyped, bland, and yes, white.

Heads up, Ypsi!

"Five DVDs is enough for anybody, right?" I ask.

"Don't take too much pornography, you'll get flagged by security," Amy says.

I imagine the conversation going something like this: "No, officer, I'm bringing pornography for my barber. I can't shave my neck at my parent's house."

This can only end with me on a watch list.

Amber rolls off

Younger, or richer, folks miss something in riding with air conditioning. This is the first time in my life that I've had it consistently, and that's mostly because I tend to drive my girlfriend's car. Still, out of inertia, cheapness, and a certain amount of philosophical post-hoc justification, I rarely turn it on.

It's roughly 95° outside today, and the heat gives an oppressive clarity. I think to myself, people who ride with air conditioning are disconnected from the real world. They watch traffic like they watch television. Not me, man, I'm getting the real thing, the real experience of doing 35 through the armpit of the 110 and 101, baked out of my gourd.

Driving in the mid-afternoon around Los Angeles is a totally different experience than at night; at night, it's an endless extra-spacial drift and best handled a little bit drunk. That's what the huge boulevards and endless sprawl are for. I come from Michigan. I know drunk driving.

But during the day, everything turns into the sweat lodge version of Rockford Files. Huge sedans still cruise here, and Datsun pick-ups with huge plywood walls and beds full of scrap metal roll by with timeless élan. You expect James Garner to cut you off in a low-speed chase at any minute.

I didn't need air conditioning to drive to Amber's. I got there about 10:30, and mornings had been extra cool, what with all the smoke in the air. The mushroom cloud had broken, and now everything just had a fine coating of ash. On the way there, it was enough to have the windows down.

She and Sean had everything boxed by the time I got there, I was strictly for stacking and securing in the trailer she'd rented. Or rather, handing things to her while she stacked them, and narrating the reality show Sean and I invented called "Foreclosure."

The way "Foreclosure" works is similar to an extreme version of Supermarket Sweep, or at least that part of the show where they try to cram everything into a shopping cart. In this show, a trailer would be rented — one of the open ones, so your stacking was only limited by your dreams — and whatever you could fit into it and secure was yours to keep. Though we didn't decide whether this would be prizes provided by some sort of sponsors, or whether this would be all the contestant's own shit. The crux of that is that making you decide which of your own possessions to leave is infinitely crueler, but is cruelty good or bad for reality game shows?

Maybe a mix of old stuff and new stuff, that would add to the strategy.

Have it all narrated by the guys from Takashi's Castle, Sean said, but we couldn't remember their names. For the rest of the afternoon we affected the concerned but facile voices of announcers.

"What do you think Sean, does she have room for the futon?"
"She's going to have to make a call on that lamp soon, Josh."
"Fuck you, fuck both of you and hand me that crate."

Stacking it was the easy part. Amber got her futon and futon frame and other art frames and a reference skeleton and the nice paper she stole from her job all layered in. Even a painting from an ex-boyfriend of some woman with wonky eyes in a lurid Expressionist orange and green.

Then came the securing.

That's the other part of "Foreclosure," you have to drive cross-country with the huge Clampett stack. You only keep what you keep.

So we lashed it down with twine across the top, and it fell to the contestant to tie it down officially, because while Sean might not have been inept enough to have to try to puzzle out the knot-tying instructions on the package of rope ("Wait, are these nine different knots? Where do you start?") he wasn't up to the friendship-bracelet standard that Amber held.

Then Sean went in to shower, and Amber and I went to first the U-Haul store to see if we could buy some ratchet straps. On starting to turn toward the U-Haul, the great cluster of squatting men stood up and started waving their hands. We were too poor and too finished to hire anybody, which meant two passes through them, telling the same guys, no, sorry man.

Getting the straps would have seemed like less of a hassle if we'd known what we needed, and if we'd known what we needed we probably would have known how to use 'em. After returning the first set (overcharged), Amber noticed that one kind was, in eight point type, listed as "Endless ratchet." Neither me nor the manager knew what the hell that meant, but they were cheaper. I thought it meant that it could ratchet forever, whereas the other ones only ratcheted a certain amount of strap.

"But why would people pay less for being able to endlessly ratchet?," Amber asked.
"Closure," I answered.
"Who knows?" said the manager, already being hassled by some other customer needing to return what he called "chrome brakes."

The answer, we found after forcing open the blister packs, is that endless ratchets don't have hooks. Oh, well, fuck it, we got two with ends and plenty of tape.

There are no real instructions on ratchets either. They are of a class of objects where if you have one in your hands, you're expected to already pretty much know how to use it. There are no instructions on a hammer, because if you don't know what to do with a hammer, we as a society have decided that you're not worth talking to. You're either fucking stupid, or haven't seen any of the same TV shows, so what's the point anyway?

The instructions on the ratchet read: "Feed belt into ratchet. Tighten with lever. Check tightness every 20 to 30 miles." That's it. Which meant when the big one fucked up, and Amber was in the shower, Sean and I passed them back and forth between each other like maybe the language was so precise that it needed multiple readings to sink in, like an industrial haiku.

The big one was 30 feet of belt, and anyone who's used a ratchet strap apparently knows that means that you need something pretty close to 30 feet long, or at least closer to 30 than to 25. Because if you try to take up five feet of slack, it turns into a huge impenetrable curl, which you've jammed into the metal using the force of simple machines. Without knowing that this alone will fuck up a ratchet, and underestimating the amount of friction that takes, Sean and I spent half an hour futilely trying to pinch down the huge springs that held the gears in place and pull the belt out. If we couldn't get it, $25 of ratchet strap was wasted and Amber's run as a contestant would be sorely threatened.

Like a skill-less ape, I even took to wedging a stick in there to release the gears before I realized that the belt was only touching the feed lever anyway. It was 2001 without the obelisk.

Even cutting the belt, once Amber gave us the go-ahead, was hard going. Working with a pair of kitchen shears, we got the pinched part of the belt isolated, then spent ten idiot minutes both of us pulling on that little wedge of nylon fabric. At the very least, when we got it on the truck, it'd be proven strong.

"I never took any shop classes. I bet they deal with this there," I said.
"Yeah, I regret that," said Sean. "It's like, they also had this Practical Math class that you took if you weren't taking analysis or calculus or whatever. They taught you how to balance your check book and estimate length. They should have made that regular math, that's the only stuff you need."

Amber slashed the rest of the belt and had it working in about thirty seconds. Once we knew how the ratchet worked, we avoided the same slack problem by lashing around the back grill. Then we taped it on all sides with clear packing tape that will probably only last to Arizona, and made the trailer look like a cross between a mobile rape shed and a present wrapped by the world's largest retard. Sean drew eyes and a snout on it, and that was that.

Strawberry sorbet, the kind you'd find at a second hand store.

I made this. Came out well. Cut sugar in half on second pass, added grapefruit wedge. Came out better.

Tried to adapt it into a red pepper sorbet. Not crazy enough to work.

Oh, the internet

I was trying to remember a song that was on a mixtape my friend Chiann made for me years ago, by the band Flashing Lights. I was churning through google results and came on this:

jardine 01-14-2002 05:24 PM
A side
1. Future Bible Heroes -- I'm Lonely (and I Love It)
2. Sloan -- Chester the Molester
3. Of Montreal -- The Miniature Philosopher
4. Belle and Sebastian -- She's Losing It
5. Ashley Park -- Lucy and the Bourgeoisie
6. The Salteens -- Bubba Da
7. The Underdogs -- Punkrocker (live)
8. Eric's Trip -- Kiss Me on the Head
9. Lali Puna -- Together in Electric Dreams (Human League cover)
10. Mercury Rev -- Boys Peel Out
11. Modest Mouse -- Custom Concern
12. The Magnetic Fields -- In My Car
13. Pink Martini -- Que Sera Sera
14. Liquid Plumber -- Pants and Anti-Pants

B side
1. Milch -- Es gibt kein geregeltes Leben
2. Elevator To Hell -- Veins/Green
3. Hydroplane -- Wurlitzer Jukebox
4. The Get-Up Kids -- My Apology
5. Apples in Stereo -- What's the #?
6. They Go Boom!! -- Sunnyday-A-Go-Go
7. Momus -- The Most Important Man Alive
8. Shoestrings -- untitled demo
9. Tara S'Appart -- Beautiful Dreamer
10. The 6ths -- Puerto Rico Way
11. Rufus Wainwright -- Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk (reprise)
12. The Flashing Lights -- Elevature
13. Dabrye -- Hyped-up Plus Tax (rudely cut off)

This is the tape, and it is awesome. Apparently, Chiann posted the track list onto the Giant Robot forum back in 2002. Sometimes, I love the internet.

lol screamo

So, Attack Attack has this song about Stick Stickly, you know, that Nick in the Afternoon host. And not only does it have everything that I assume people love about screamo (gutteral screaming, emotions, greasy black hair), but it also has a hilarious operatic Eurodance breakdown at the end, and you-say-"awesome"-but-you-mean-it-ironically choreography, as shown in the animated gifs below:




via

I just found Nathan's M.U.S.C.L.E. page and am now going through obsessively. My little brother and I used to collect these and stage these massive wars on our bedroom floors, using rubber bands (especially after my friend Alex gave me a bag from his paper route) to shoot down vast swaths of the men. They were fleshy, weird, awesome things, and there was more than a little horse trading between my brother and I over which ones were best. I think mine are still in a basket at my parents' house, but damn, I'd kinda like 'em again.

It's weird, because I'm not usually someone who's like, oh, yeah, my Star Wars figures, my GI Joes, but these (and Battle Beasts) trigger some sort of weird wistful feeling.

Roger Ballen

Loving Roger Ballen's series of boarding house photos, including this one. Granuaid had another great piece from him. via.

Shen Wei

Shin Wei: Her two bodies of work displayed, Almost Naked and Chinese Sentiment, primarily portraiture and landscape respectively, are muted meditations on Chinese and Chinese-American identity.

While I think that each set suffers from over-abundance (sometimes, it's not clear what the unifying premise behind Almost Naked is), there are still hundreds of great shots there.

Black box

Brice Bischoff has a fantastic series of abstract photographs taken through light leaks in a cardboard box.

The Sharif Don't Like It

33-Year-Old Mixtape.

"So here's the story...
In 1976, when my wife Kat was one year old, her father made a cassette tape of music recorded from the radio in Iran, while there on business. That's the cassette in the picture up there. I like how it says Stereo Disco on the label and how the music on it is anything but.

Her father would always play this tape endlessly in the car, on family trips to Ocean City, Maryland – it was his all-time favorite mixtape and was also Kat's first exposure to music.

This cassette was, until now, broken for some time. His birthday is coming up, so we thought it would be nice to mend the tape and transfer it's contents onto a CD. That's all done now, thanks to my trusty splicer block.

We're hoping to be able to identify the tracks on this cassette – even my father in law doesn't know, he just likes the music. So please have a quick listen to the tracks below. There's an entry for every track, complete with MP3. If you know any of them, or have a clue as to who it could be, please leave a comment.

Good luck and thanks for helping us out!

Nick & Kat

T. Rauschmiere—Monster Trucking

12 Ocular Landscapes by Aaron Rosenstreich

Here

No Comeuppance!

For the first time in a long time, I stayed up late reading and didn't stop until I'd finished the book, The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I borrowed from our pal Cat. I had to make a physical effort to not keep reading the rest of the trilogy right then, since it's all in one volume.

Damn, that was a well-written, nicely paced book. It made me an odd sort of wistful, thinking, yes, it used to be so easy to get away with murder.

Oh, the lonesome ramble

I know that my parents would put it down to all of Gramma's tapes, with titles like "Blood On The Saddle." For them, it was corny music Mom's folks liked, from goofy grinning white dudes with fake ten-gallon hats.

But I love it. I love the loping beat, the plaintive yodel, the cheesy innuendo—everything that Western Swing 78s serves up. I can't pretend to be anything more than a slick dilettante, but I've been loving the Maddox Bros. and Prairie Ramblers. It's the perfect music to fry eggs to, so I've been waking up to it every day this week.

A Brief Menu for Gourmet Drinking in LA, for Thirsty Guides LA

A Brief Menu for Gourmet Drinking in LA

One part foodie, one part craft tradition, three parts drunk and left to set a moment—LA’s haute cocktails are doing their part to rescue drinking from vodka, neon liqueurs and anything –tini. These are the best of the best.

The Aperitif

Behind the French brasserie in Comme Ça in West Hollywood, Tim Loden’s pouring drinks. Comme Ça has borrowed the aesthetic established by Eric Alperin and Sasha Petraske at Milk & Honey in New York (arguably the vanguard in the Cocktalian revolution), emphasizing fresh ingredients from Erlenmeyer flasks. Try an Eastside Fizz (cucumber, mint, gin, soda) or a Pepper Smash (red bell pepper, Rittenhouse rye, honey, lemon) before trying to get a table here or afield.

The Relevé

At Copa D’Oro in Santa Monica, fresh also means local, with the Market Menu coming from the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. Their Market Menu does bespoke boozing, and between their $5 Prohibition-era happy hour and their extensive menu of cocktails to any palate, they’re the perfect precursor to sunset on the beach or a night of serious drinking. Try the Jack Rose (applejack, fresh lime, homemade grenadine) for a classic, or a Sour Kraut (Miller’s gin, Cointreau, lemon, marmalade, Dijon mustard) for a taste of perfect cocktail audacity.

The Entreé

It’s hard to imagine a more serious spirit than whiskey, and Seven Grand (Downtown) is the West Coast home for whiskeys. From the ice (bottom frozen blocks) to the vermouth (Andica), Seven Grand is the bar to learn what a Manhattan or a Sazerac, both classics, should taste like. If you’re afraid of the brown liquors, start with a Bourbon Berry Bramble, with muddled blackberry compote bringing out the sweetness of Knob Creek, or breathe mint deeply with an authoritative Julep. But then, really, try the Manhattan and Sazerac. Seriously.

The Dessert

An underground lair of Nu-Victorian affectation, The Edison would be insufferably pretentious if it weren’t full of such delicious drinks. Ignore the writhing burlesque dancer and her listless snake—focus on the masterful menu, a mix of venerable favorites like the Rat Pack approved Flame Of Love or Embassy, and original inventions like the Brass Flower (gin, grapefruit bitters, elderflower cordial, champagne). If you’re not sure yet that you want to love cocktails with all your drunken heart, The Edison’s accessible, well-balanced drinks are the place to grow your courage.

The Digestive

The Varnish, a nouveau speakeasy hidden in the back room of Cole’s, is where the “cocktail forward” bartenders come to do their drinking. If you’ve ever wondered what George Washington drank (Philadelphia Fish House Punch), or wanted to try Cynar, the artichoke liqueur, this is the bar you hit. Just make sure to hit it early and on a weeknight, because it gets tighter than a wino’s gullet.

The next round:

The Hungry Cat, Hollywood: Worth visiting if only for the Avation No. 1, a drink copied around town but worth seeking out at the source.
Malo, Sunset Junction: What Seven Grande is to whiskey, Malo is to tequila. Able to match their anejo to your mood.
Providence, Hollywood: What kind of restaurant has a tasting menu of cocktails? Our kind of restaurant.
Tiki Ti, Silverlake: Secret formulas and unlabelled flasks mean you’re never quite sure what’s in your drink, but it’s tasty enough that dark gods must be involved.

By Josh Steichmann

Doctor, it hurts when I do…

For some reason, when I paste a URL into Word, then hit return twice, it crashes. I don't recall it ever doing this before. I've restarted, repaired permissions, generally puzzled it out, but all I can think is God, MS Word is kinda shitty product.

Tape deck!

Just got the $2 tape deck up and running after my old one decided that everything needed to be pitch shifted down a step.

First mystery tape:

Side A:

The Clash—Jail Garage Doors

Not a bad start, and the totally muddy sound makes sense. The Clash sound a thousand times more punk rock coming from a degraded tape.

Cash Audio—Capitol City Blues
Gov't Mule—Monkey Hill

Both of these tracks were on an old CMJ sampler, and go well together (both about capitol cities). Cash Audio totally peaked too early for the grotty bluze duo wave that came after them.

Big Chief—Liquor Talkin'

I loved these guys as the biggest thing that ever came out of Ann Arbor in the modern era. Too bad that they aren't as good as I remembered and totally disappeared. I think even Sponge is more remembered.

DJ Food—Nocturn

These guys were Coldcut mates who put out a draggy, druggy trip-hop album that was actually pretty good (mostly because of the bass tone). Because of the tape's condition, about all that's coming through is the bass, and it's pretty nice.

Belle and Sebastian—Me and the Major

Oh, yeah, I loved these guys. Whatever happened to them? They put out a bunch of albums of dubious necessity and dabbled in smoov 70s easy listenin'? OK, sure.

Menthol—Ciphers

One of my favorite bands that never quite got it together. They put out an "electro" album when that was all flashy, except it sucked. Then they broke up and I forget what the main guy is up to now. La Scala? Maybe I should check them out.

Flying Saucer Attack—???

I can't tell what FSA track this is, but the muddy tape is perfect perfect perfect. I need to find them again.

Side B:

Blank? Ugh. I don't think I'll finish this one.

Lester Bangs Patti

Lester Bangs reviews Patti Smith's Easter.

I love how Lester Bangs could be great while being glib, though this is an instructive lesson on how to piss off your friends by reviewing their work (which is why I haven't really bothered with the new Crystal Antlers—it sounds half-baked, the band knows it's half-baked, that's pretty much happens when you're the LAST ALBUM EVAR for a label that oh by the way is going under RIGHT NOW).

Law and Order website

YouLenz.com

From 19th season opener, Rumble.

Things she won't appreciate

"I love you so much I touch your eyeballs while you sleep."

Vengence of the Lizard King

Oh no! Jim Morrison's time-traveling clone, The Lizard King, has returned to wipe out the monkey race that eventually spawns Bill and Ted! Will ? (of the Mysterions) and Sun Ra be able to convince Ray Manzarek to come out of retirement to stop him? ALL NEW ACTION!

Amy and Josh show dialogue (old)

Josh: Now everybody likes the Slits. If we had a band, we could be this good. We don't have a band, or instruments.
Amy: I don't like the Slits.
Josh: Well, then, we don't have to have a horn section.

Ann Arbor Two!

Did you know: Some people call Ann Arbor "Ace Deuce" or just "The Deuce."

This is the full mp3 mix I made for Carson, which wouldn't fit on any of your mortal CD devices.

here. Forty songs of rock, noise, pop and folk, including The Rants, Saturday Looks Good To Me, Nomo, The High Strung, Cornish In a Turtleneck, Isaac Schankler, and more. In going through this, I'm already thinking about the music that I left off (I couldn't figure out a way to make Binary Star fit in the mix) and what would go on the next one.

Places drunk guy told me to see in SF

More for my reference than yours:

Truly Med on Valencia between 16th and 17th.
Pancho Villas Tacos.
Aztecha 16th and Market (he swears by the mole)
Sparkies (24 hour "American" food)
Zeitgeist for the Bloody Marys.
Kan Zaman on Haight
Mejouls for tapas or top-off (he swears that if I take a girl there, she'll "let you fuck her in the ass, man, the food is that good.")

Multiple topographies

Greg Afinogenov talks about "topographies" versus "biographies" in this blog post, including the following line:

"Though there may be several ways to understand this or that historical figure, the topographer must commit to choosing one interpretation."

In topographer, he's talking about people who write histories of place (at least, I think he is), and Greg's relying on a post-modern (instability of facts) framework to pose his assumption.

But must this be true? Certainly, given an apatite for abstraction, where each option for transience can be met: the author commits to a single interpretation even if that interpretation includes multiple nested interpretations; no matter the depth a deconstructed text is still a text. Even if that text changes, there's a limit to what can be perceived by the audience, etc.

There is, however, no need to restrict this to topographers (a term I like regarding with expansiveness perhaps because I am not a topographer). Those same restrictions are necessary for biographers—even an imagined biographer who tells the story of a life by reliving that life would be necessarily tied to any one given interpretation at any one given time, especially if meta counts.

Which brings me to a challenge: I would like to see stories of place that encompass multiple sets of facts, as much as is possible. I would assume that this is best handled by multimedia, as different media necessarily imply different perspectives due to material constraints. I would assume that this would be parallel and dynamic, making the restrictions on sets of facts more incumbent upon the practical realities of the audience rather than the work itself—it should be impossible to see all of it at once (tangent: unfair art?). To ideally detach itself as much as possible from a single set of facts, it should invite interaction and mutation.

Perhaps selfishly, I'd think this would be best set in Los Angeles, both because I'm here and because it is a city diffidently aware of the difference between portrayal and reality, and one that (even as it exports them) eschews easy narrativization.

Ann Arbor in sound

A pal asked me about a song from the great Ypsi punk band The Submarines, which I put on a recent mix (which I'll upload here pretty soon). Did I have any more stuff?

Well, yeah, I used to write about local music. I had plenty. So I started putting together this mix, and fussin' with it and fussin' with it… Basically, it's the best music that I found while I was working at Current, writing my column, and that I had digitized. Which means that some of it is actually from before I took over, some of it is from later (because I'm a goddamn cheater), and some stuff just isn't on there (Tadd Mullenix, for example, I had a tape with a fantastic version of Hyped Up Plus Tax… And I'm just not set up to rip my 7"s).

For some folks, though I can't imagine that there's actually a very significant overlap, a lot of these songs were on a CD I gave away for a contest when I was at Current.

And as soon as I get done uploading it, there'll be a longer version, which has a lot more weird stuff on it that just didn't fit on a CD.

Here's the link to the music.

And here is where I swiped the image from.

Funemployed?

I've been out of work a week now, and I'm at the musing point, where jobs like this still seem plausible.

An elderly man needs a caregiver; also he believes he's being persecuted by aliens? Sign me up, jack, even though my bullshit detector's clicking like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl.

Packzi day!

Through the magic of this Chowhound thread, Amy and I found paczkis in some weird retirement home on Adams. They were prune, and the best damn paczkis I've had, since they had a much better balance of tart and sweet than the usual gloopy ones from Detroit. I've still got one left, which I will eat with gusto tonight! GUSTO!

It was easy, too, all I had to do was go through the giant metal gate, tell the overall-wearing guy who looked like a bouncer that "I read on the internet that you can get paczkis here," and he grunted and motioned me inside. There, a bunch of families in total church finery were drinking coffee in a room that my grandmother would have loved (curio cabinets full of porcelain dolls and lace). We waited for the woman behind the counter to get done chatting with some woman wearing a plum business dress (with shoulderpads), and bought eight. The plum woman lamented the fact that they're now $1.50, telling us conspiratorially that they used to be a dollar. She then tried to get us to go to the mass that was just starting, but luckily I was able to brush her off because I wasn't "dressed for church."

Slobbery saves the day!

Amy and I later learned that Isaac and Amanda apparently don't have the same crazy memories of ZOMG PACZKIS, but dutifully ate theirs in front of us (we thought about bein' total grubbers and asking for the other ones back, but it seemed beneath me, someone so recently mistaken for church-going).

Map projection demonstration

Just can't stop watching.

This video needs some heavy dub behind it.

Weird Detroit music

My pal Geoff runs the Cousin's Vinyl record store and blog, and a couple days ago, he sent me a link to Our Lord's Space Ship, a bit of crazy Christiania masquerading as a country tune. While it's OK, it's a bit novelty for my tastes (I have a similar complaint about The Story of Suzie, a country ditty about a girl who ruins her life with marijuana cigarettes (who hasn't?).

But it did get me over there to listen to O Yes My Lord by the Voices of Conquest. Those drums are fucking killer, and that's exactly the sort of Gospel that I'd love to own if I had $150 bucks (damn!). I know that the Cousin's Vinyl guys are ripping the records so they can put them up on the blog (and, I hope, give buyers a copy on mp3, so they don't wear out their vinyl), so I hope I can get a copy of that track from them.

Fake Law And Order Websites #1

Searchling.com "Pledge" 1/21/09

What I'm listening to today

Apollo Heights. Last Of Montreal album + fuzzy shoegaze Working For A Nuclear Free City. Potential, but not there yet. Too much mid-tempo, mid-range earnest lyrics. Plus their song about disco isn't fun so much as trying to be funny. Still, easy to listen to in the background at work.

Red Mass. Ugly garage-psych rock. Dirtbombs plus echoes, some Stooges. Fun. Oh, wait, they also get noisey and weirder! Nice.

Voyager. Prog instrumentals, from Minnesota or something. More space probe than French traders.

Thunderbolt Pagoda. I started to write "Magma" for the text of the anchor tag there. Add Amon Duul II too.

Unusual art spaces

Unusual art spaces in LA

Slumdog Millionaire

Was pretty good, though "Just So." Still, geographically fitting. Worried about fetishizing the other a bit, but a fun love story well paced and well shot.

I wanted a lot more dancing though.

Mix Monday!

MY LOVE IS A ROCKET LAUNCHER

Tracklist in .txt file.

I go yugo

Rust in peace.

As a eulogy, let's all take a moment to listen to that great paean to the $3000 new car: The Left Wing Fascists' "I Drive A Yugo."

If things keep going the way they seem to be, I may be posting LWF's "K-Mart Shopper" before too long.

Fannie and Freddie sub-prime culprits?

Nope.

Lots of good data (and pretty graphs!). Long story short, Fannie and Freddie were doing fine because they largely avoided the sub-prime market (due to dastardly Democrat regulations!), then they bought a bunch of mortgage-backed securities that were inaccurately rated. Sub-prime foreclosures undercut the value of those securities, and the F&F siblings got hosed.

Weekend link dump!

Best LP covers category: nude

S-S Records catalog

Zilch, dice game

Ryan McGinley, photographer

Swear like a Mexico City Mexican

Chain of events

Meant to do this, but Los Llamarada Take the Sky LP (S.S.) $10
Lamps Songs of Sexual Frustration 7" (S.S.) $4
Krysmopompas Heute Schlafen - Morgan Aufwachen 2LP (S-S) $15
Nothing People Anonymous LP (S-S) $10 new
XYX Sistema de Terminacion Sexual 7" (S-S) $4
A Frames Police 1000 b/w Traction 7" $4
Monoshock Runnin' Ape-like from the Backwards Superman 1989-1995 CD $5
Crash Normal Heavy Listening LP $8
A Frames 2 CD $5
A Frames s/t CD $5 showed up. (That was quick!)

Salvation Mountain last Saturday.

Other Josh got fired. Now I gotta get my ass in gear regarding letters mag, since he's got the free time.

GAININ' ON YA

Lina Scheynius

Photographer. I like her loose, ethereal snapshot style, and the playful sexuality.

Have we reached Peak Melody?

Have we reached peak melody?

NSF (your) W

I started with ffffound and stumbled through a bunch of nude photo (often tumblr) blogs.

So, now I've got these open tabs…
Modfetish, Tumview Keng, The Trembler, Indie Porn tumblr.

I've played this three times in a row, just now

Great pseudo-Prince from Cousin's Vinyl!

Friday in Venice

Started with Gregory Lomayesva at Muse in Venice:

About the best thing that I can say is that it was an absolutely amazing space—winding catwalks around a huge exposed concrete center. As for the art? Well, it looked like a particularly literal mash-up of Rauschenberg and Kahlo/Rivera, with thick Native women and gritty screen-prints of guns and text. Later, it seemed, he added endless shoes to his paintings and sculpture. The shoes, whether painted or made, didn't seem well-constructed or particularly interesting. They were, no doubt, in the service of some metaphor or another, but frankly, it seemed likely that any effort invested in trying to discern meaning from the work would only be greeted by stupid meaning. Everything, from the chunky, rounded cod-surreal sculpture to the rhinestones on the Gucci glasses the artist wore, seemed like an empty reference to someone else's art. The best moments were actually more simplistic Rauschenberg knock-offs, with shots of famous Madonna (the pre-Renaissance figure, not the singer) printed in the shape of Glocks. They'd make wonderful handbags for bourgeois scum. The entire show had the feeling of what movies think that art shows should be like, and I pitied the folks there as I belted down their cheap Merlot.

On the way to the next opening, we walked past a gallery that had had a lecture that evening (which we were too late to go to, due to my dithering). I was glad; it was some Robert Ketchum looks like Thomas Kincaid bullshit. I felt bad for the girls in there that looked like they were my age.

Then we made it to the Ken Price show at LA Louver, where they'd closed the bar (frowny face), because, seriously, if you're looking at art like this: , you should be at least a little drunk. It was OK, just, y'know, twenty pieces all playing with organic shapes and the same corroded metallic glaze made for some boring viewing. Luckily, upstairs (in another fantastic space) there were some pretty nice pieces. I wish that I'd brought my digital camera—I'll have to go back for another opening sometime. But mostly, it was gobstopper turds. I think that my capacity to enjoy abstraction like that may just be abnormally low.

Then there was a bit of tangential vignette drama: Some little drunk guy, in flat-brim Dodgers wear, starts asking Amy if she's an artist, etc. Another guy, who looked enough like his brother for me to imagine this moment as having more portent than it probably did, came and gently put his hand around the guy's shoulder and told him "I'm sorry, man, but that's enough…" He sounded legitimately sad, which was why I assumed a connection, despite the gallery guy being dressed to the nines and having only a moderately similar face (they were both Hispanic, and I'm likely racist). It just seemed like this was the gallery dude's big night (though he wasn't the artist, that wasn't clear to me at that moment) and his brother was drunk and creeping chicks out.

Then, outside, we saw the little wobbly drunko goofily chase some screaming yuppie chick who was trying to hide around people. I dunno. I realize that having some dude come after you is frightening, and I started to get my back up, but it also seemed like she was a rich woman who was freaking out beyond all proportion to the guy's actions.

From ILX Stooges vs. Sabbath poll

"Sabbath are Frankenstein's monster lumbering dementedly through the wastes; the Stooges are all about that one high-voltage shock applied to the rotting cadaver."

I can't think of a more awesome way to put it.

The '90s are back

Excellent article from American Heritage (I know, I know, ignore the fiscal conservative swipes) about the S&L crisis from '91.

TWIN CITIES HARDCORE

Twin Cities Hardcore.

TOP FIVE NEW EATS ADULT

So, as a kid, I had two strikes against me in the "eating awesome crap" race: I was vegetarian, and my mom was convinced she was hypoglycemic, so I couldn't have any white sugar.

But now I'm an adult, and able to eat crap on my own! Top five things I love now that I wasn't allowed then:

—Pop Tarts

I'd never really had these until Amy started bringing home the Trader Joe's version, and, frankly, they're damn good. I've tried the originals now, and they don't hold up nearly as well. Verdict: Glad I waited.

—Oreos

I remember what a big deal it was to finally be able to eat Oreos; they used to have lard in the center (Hostess stuff still does). Pretty fucking fab to twist 'em and stack as double deckers. Unsated Longing: If only I could get Hydrox. I may be the one man who still loves them.

—Jerky

Someone, and I assume this means the Germans, has to have a word for imagining a taste that you've never experienced and have always been denied. Trying to explain the allure of soy jerky to folks who didn't grow up "healthy" is hard. Next furtive hope? Soy pork rinds.

—Soyrizo

The world of soy really has moved forward drastically since I was a kid. Back then, lumpy tofu dogs were the state of the art. Now, I only have to feel vaguely conflicted about the agricultural-military complex I support when I delve into the world of hyper-processed vegetable protein. God only knows where it comes from, but it can't be any weirder than pig glands. Verdict: Not only is it delicious, for once I get the attendant moral quandaries that meat-eaters usually monopolize.

—Beer

I know, I know, my parents didn't want me to end up like Uncle Mickey, the Bohemian alcoholic who started with beers in his fourth-grade lunchbox. But given my refined palate now, just image how unto a god I would have been! A drunk, porter-loving god! Verdict: My parents' ultimate failing was not starting me on a European youth drinking schedule.

Joan's On Third

Mmm. Lunch.

Went to Joan's On Third with Phil for lunch. It's an upscale deli/diner with lots of pasta salads. Reminds me of the eatery that used to be in Hudson's when I was a kid.

After some dithering, both Phil and I went with the roasted corn soup and a grilled cheese (mine with a tomato).

The soup was excellent, creamy and well-rounded. It could have benefited from a little more pepper (I'm of the belief that restaurant soups should be seasoned the way I like them without any intervention from me), but for a simple lunch it was right on.

ps. Stole the image from Mikey Hates Everything which has more to say on breakfast at Joan's.

The grilled cheese was less exquisite, but still tasty. Good French bread, good cheddar, decent tomato. For some reason, adding a tomato to mine meant that it took some 15 minutes longer than Phil's, so I was lucky to have the soup. The sweet pickles (made with a crunchy whole seed I couldn't quite place) were fantastic, especially after having sub-par pickles at Label's the other day.

Total damage? $12. Price I would have been totally happy with? $9. A three dollar Beverly Hills surcharge? Yeah, but I'll probably be back. Beats the hell out of $9 at Label's.

How Sha Na Na created the '50s

In this great feature by George and Robert Leonard (unfortunately constrained by third-person patina), two members of Sha Na Na talk about how they essentially created the image of the '50s that much of later pop culture (Happy Days, Grease) has been based on.

In it, they link other ersatz historical conceptions, such as the Scottish Highlander or Tokyo's sukiyaki, and Voltaire's concept of history being defined by what people want from the past.

But the most interesting thread to me is the connection of Sha Na Na to the rise of the Reagan Republicans, who latched onto the idyllic '50s image of sock hops and malteds (disturbed only mildly by working-class greasers) in a bid to reinvent a fairly frightened and ghastly decade of American society.

It is this image that cultural conservatives still seek to return to, and I think the challenge of those of us who consider ourselves progressives is to articulate both why the past is so distasteful (cold war bomb drills, segregation, limited rights for women, etc.) and why the future can be better by having space for competing visions of progress. I think that this goes against both the critical impulse to focus always on injustice and the generally pessimistic worldview of liberals—I know that a large part of my support for Obama doesn't come from truly believing that he'll make things better, but rather that he will avoid making things worse. But that won't convince people who truly believe that the past WAS better—there needs to be an alternate vision.

Debates have little effect

Despite all the bluster (and the obvious Obama bump post-debate), political scientist Tom Holbrook finds that debates have minimal effects on the electorate.

Quoted for truth

Quietfish quotes my answer to her AskMe about the proper way to destroy an All-You-Can-Eat buffet.

"First off, be hungry. Don't eat earlier in the day, or if you do, eat only small things.
Second off, make sure you've got the capacity. I find that emptying my bowels prior helps the experience.
Third, I like to get a massive high on before hand. I feel that it stimulates the appetite.
Fourth, the bread is your enemy. It is there to fill you up. Ignore it. You don't want to look back on your death bed and think "I could have eaten more, if not for that bread."
Fifth, pace yourself. Gorging quickly can give you a cramp.
Sixth, water is also an empty gesture. Try to avoid drinking too much.
Seventh, try to recruit your skinny, high friends. The fat ones will have stomachs compressed. The skinny ones will challenge you to eat more. You must best their gullets!
Eighth, beware of spices. The Indians whose buffet I frequent viciously increase the level of heat to discourage gluttony. A little bit of milk or cream or fat will cut the heat (a lassi). You'll pay the next day, but that's the future, and the buffet is now.
Ninth, if you're eating so fast as to have to belch, slow down. The goal is to keep eating even after you're full, but not to get extra air down there.
Tenth, you can often snag a take-out container, which is like having an extra stomach without having cud. I.e. awesome."

Crayola Timeline

by Alison Haigh

Paint fumes

On saturday, saw Victor Gastelum show at Overtones. Loved the luchadores stuff, loved the Water and Power stuff, was lukewarm on the rest—it made me feel all pretentious to be like, "It reminds me of Niagra, and you don't want to remind me of Niagra," like there was some implicit threat.

Bristol Palin's got pramface.

"I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right."

A mean, nasty and funny column from Heather Mallick, CBC shit-stirrer.

From Tuesday

Phone rings.

Josh: Hi, this is Josh at Barely Legal.
Caller: (high, nasal voice) Hi. I'm looking for a doll with parts.
J: A doll with parts?
C: Yeah, a doll with all the parts. A little one.
J: Like a GI Joe?
C: No, with parts.
J: GI Joe has parts.
C: No, like all the parts. Organs.
J: Oh, yeah, like one of those transparent dolls, you know, you take 'em apart and they got intestines and hearts.
C: No, no, I already got one of them. No, like a little statue. You know where I can get one?
J: Maybe look on the internet?
C: I can't go to the internet. I need a statue.
J: You mean, like David?
C: Yeah, like David.
J: Oh, you need to call the Uffizi in Florence. They've got the David.
C: How big is it?
J: I dunno. About eight feet.
C: I need a little one.
J: They got little ones too. You know, for tourists.
C: That's in Italy?
J: Yeah, Florence in Italy.
C: I can't call Italy.
J: Maybe you can go to your library. They got pictures of David there.
C: Yeah, I can't go to the library. I'm in New York. No, I need a doll here.
J: You tried Times Square?
C: Where in Times Square?
J: I dunno. Never been there.
C: What about in California? That's where you are, right?
J: I don't know, I never bought a statue.
C: No, what about a doll.
J: Barbie?
C: Yeah, like Barbie, but a man.
J: Oh, you mean Ken! Ken's the boy version of Barbie.
C: Yeah, but with the parts.
J: You mean outfits?
C: No, no, all the parts. Where can I get one with all the parts?
J: I dunno. Hasbro?
C: Hasbro?
J: Yeah, I think they make Barbie.
C: No, look, I saw this statue once, it had all its organs, right?
J: Where'd you see it?
C: Somebody in my family had it.
J: Oh, you should ask them then.
C: No, but they're gone.
J: Where did they go? Do they have a cell phone?
C: They're dead.
J: Oh, then you're gonna have to check the will.
C: Look, no, that doll, that doll is gone.
J: Where do you think they got it?
C: I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. Look…
J: Yeah?
C: I got this other doll, he's got his parts. He's throwing a discus. I want this other doll to put next to him.
J: A discus? That's in the Olympics.
C: Yeah, OK. But he's got all his parts.
J: Right. You should try the Olympics. Maybe get a guy with a javelin.
C: They got statues?
J: Why not? You watch the Olympics?
C: No.
J: It was pretty good. It was in China this time.
C: Yeah, yeah, I heard that. Now…
J: Beijing. It was on NBC.
C: I heard that. But what I'm really asking about is a doll.
J: I bet they got Olympic dolls.
C: Where?
J: I dunno. Toys 'R Us?
C: You think they got Olympic dolls there with all the parts?
J: Yeah, with the javelin and the discus, sure.
C: No, like, their other parts…
J: Olympics! Glad I could help. (hangs up)

My perverse plan for email disinformation

I was talking with my girlfriend the other night about the email forwards. You know the ones, from older, conservative family members or coworkers, still pumping out insanity about Obama's secret madrassas or why Palin drives liberals crazy (short answer: they hate women and freedom).

So, the next time I get one of these messages, I'm going to reply with some psy-ops of my own: that burglaries spike precipitously on election day.

See, with these new computers, it's easy for criminals (especially Negroes) to find voter registration rolls, and know that people are more likely to be out of the house before or after work. Plus, I'll add, party registration is public, and everyone knows that Republicans have better stuff. Instead of being patriotic themselves, these nefarious career criminals (released by Democrats soft on crime) break into houses, and probably rape the elderly who vote absentee.

It's important, of course, to emphasize that these boogiemen act on the basis of party registration, and I'll probably add that people are most at risk in contested counties, where there are plenty of godless criminal darkies that are just waiting to break in.

Any other ideas?

Kissing your elbow

Look, I know that I should probably bother to find some reviews, but Elbow: What the fuck? I mean, the last time that I heard Elbow, they were on a shitty mix CD between Coldplay and Snow Patrol and the CD came with a gushing, effusive note about how no one in America had heard about them but they were amazing, and they just seem to me like dying from numbness under a gray Michigan sky, and not in a good way. They were serious and drab, like someone earnestly handing me an overcoat instead of a song.

I keep hearing that the new album is great and amazing and nothing specific about what makes it so. I'm curious. What song should I hear and what's so great about it?