Optimal Awesomeness and the Ubermensch

It's been said that writers are inherently sadistic in the way they create their work, putting perfectly innocent fictional characters through conflict and trial just for fun. And it follows that the creation affects and then consumes the creator, thereby making her masochistic. I've always blamed this for--among other vices--continuing to watch and read things that constantly give me anguish at all the catching up I have to do, in my search for Optimal Awesomeness.

Some call it nirvana,

others salvation. My fierce northern ancestors called it Valhalla. And as long as I am not at the great feasting table, I am tortured. It's a method called the double-bind, which if youse a English majer you'll find when rooting around some Beckett one dusky autumnal twilight, trapped and paralysed eternally. This is the effect of the double-bind: paralysis. And when applied to writing is that little devil known as Writers Block.

So that being said, I have come to terms with my masochistic nature because although I habitually--compusively--seek out music and books and film that make me ache for admiration, the opportunity to wax rhapsodical as prelude to their Optimal Awesomeness is cathartic.

If I wrote screenplays and the OA was strong with me I would have written Arrested Development, Weeds, and...yeah:

But just the screenplay, because I thought I was too good for a vampire book. And because of the casting.

I have a mean case of the gots-ta-have-its with Brad Neely. He's been around for a while--an artist friend turned me onto his cartoons "Baby Cakes" and "The Professor Brothers." It's comically genius, you'll see.

But now I've found his essays, and I'm having fun. Here's one that's more joyful than achey, mostly because it makes me think about Brad Pitt. It's about Brad being a sort of unfair but necessary illusion in our sad, vapid little lives. It's called "Brad Pitt: God Substitute.

(excerpt)

“Brad Pitt is the perfect man.”
The promotional period for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was on, and I was hearing it again.
The radio, the smiling entertainment shows, my friends; everyone needed to say it.
“He’s better than us.”
“Just look at him.”

Brad Pitt is the biggest movie star on the planet. But, while waiting for the movie’s release, I began to ask myself, “What is a Brad Pitt movie?”
I knew to expect the usual guilt brought on by jealousy, admiration, and basic inadequacy.
But after light investigation I came to a very flimsy conclusion: A Brad Pitt movie is never about his character, but rather about other characters reacting to his stasis, his perfection and his flat out otherworldliness.

(See: Hopkins in Meet Joe Black, the elder brother in A River Runs Through It, the entire family in Legends Of The Fall, Statham in Snatch, the team in Oceans, the entire sane world in Twelve Monkeys, Norton in Fight Club, Redford in Spy Game, Ford in Devil’s Own, his friends and the court in Sleepers, Robert Ford and crew in The Assassination of Jesse James By That Coward Robert Ford, and most definitely in the case of Cate Blanchett’s character withering in his glow throughout Benjamin Button.)
Often, the stories in his films are even told in the first person perspectives of those dealing with him. We watch as they evolve, adapt, and grow in order to comprehend him, to abide in his shadow. They tell us about him.

He has come among us. He is the new version, the knower, the seer. He need not develop for he has long sense arrived at stillness, at godhood.

>>end transmission

All hail the Ubermensch!!

I love how he just crumbles at the end. Don't you just love that? He's right, you know. And I haven't even seen all those movies. But now I will, because now I know it'll be like stepping into a Starbucks after traveling so far out of the country my gravity feels off but then ahhhh thank you Father Capitalism for driving out foreign markets to make way for your big, strong, market-competitive gimmicks to cradle me in your familiar, methodical bosom. No disappointments, just treats.

Never On My Own

The line at the side door of Ottobar last night was wrapped around the alley. A far cry from the Down To Nothing show in Richmond half a year ago, which boasted a crowd of bandana-ankled homegrown scuzziness, I was amused at all the D-rings attached to ball-buster jeans. (Is it possible Baltimore is more hipster than Richmond?) But more amusement seemed directed towards me, as I elected to show up in a Banana Republic cream collared blouse tuckedinto a high-waist denim mini skirt, my little vintage cherry flats and a light blue Alice inWonderland bow in my hair. I knew better than toWear the Shirt to the Show, so even though I don't yet have shirts of the bands playing last night, I left my Strike Anywhere, Bracewar and Hatebreed shirts at home and decided I wouldn't be the chick who is trying too hard to look like a boy in order to like the music she likes. So I ran the opposite direction, and we will analyze the consequences later.

I got inside too late to catch Alpha and Omega from LA, but they'll be on the tour with Bane and TUI when they go to Europe next month. Cruel Hand struck me as pretty

traditional, call-and-response, heavy distortion and aggressively uplifting lyrics. Tight, charismatic, balls-to-the-wall. Some punches were thrown down in the pit, and before too long there was mild crowd control--two songs into the set. Reptilian, yes. Juvenile, certainly. But impressive nonetheless.

For sake of the Bmore experience, and to break the ice with myself being at a show unaccompanied, I grabbed a PBR at the bar and tiptoed carefully up the stairs to the loft where I could observe without getting beer all over once the windup really started. Here's where the majority of the ladies sat together or with their strong silent men. Some of them were clearly making a statement (yes, you, bleached mohawk girl with the bull ring), others were making neutra-statements in flannel and jeans. I got some good pictures from up there (to follow), but I had to scamper back down to the floor once TUI took the stage, because you get good photos but bad experience up there. There's not nearly enough sweat, and it was cold as hell.

My solo status afforded me much more opportunity for eavesdropping, and something I've learned is that if people think you're listening even casually, they put on a freaking show for

you. It makes for good notes. Some of the snippets from up there in the loft:

-Who

said hardcore died in '83?

-I think it was Reagan.

-You see that fat dude? He kicked me in the fucking dick. The dick, dude. Not cool.

-Maybe he thought he knew you.

-Would YOU kick your friend in the dick??

-Maybe.

-Not cool.

My beer drained and my senses really kicked up a notch, I descended from the lofty lair and joined the sweaty peons below. Their first two songs, including "Believe" from their new album, sent everyone into a whirling, kicking, pushing frenzy. Unfortunately their momentum was disrupted by a problem with the kick drum, and they had to carry it off on a stretcher.

Question: why is Trapped Under Ice possibly the most badass hc band I've ever seen (other than maybe DTN or Cro-Mags?) Their breaks are well timed, the anthems are the most triumphant, and even a whammy bar and the occasional guitar solo makes it better. When a band is uniformly throwing down as hard as its fans...you get it: totally, fucking, badass. Punches thrown pamby-pamby and hugs in between. Just one big dude (was his name really Frodo?) on the floor, going totally batshit insane on absolutely everyone, and someone tries to stage dive but misses and gets to eat some concrete floor. He's okay. But he gets kicked out anyway.

I've never seen Bane, but I've been exposed to the name and a few tracks off their myspace, and a fellow music-stalker and scribbler on the West Coast agreed that it was going to be an epic show. I'm curious about the direction some hardcore bands take in adding more melodic elements to the sound, turning down the distortion a little and giving notes to the lyrics. These are the guys who pull it off, although the risks there are great and border on that pop-punk bullshit I really can't handle. I hate to be a hater, but there it is. I need music that could punch ME in the face, not the other way around. And yes I love folk and indie jams and of course I'm a huge Dead head, so that's not what I'm talking about. I want to see a hardcore band kick the ass of all those fucking beefcake pop-punk lead singers who bench press in their videos, probably wear too much cologne and whine loudly if the hotel has no hair dryer. Just sayin'.

The aggression you feel in the room at a hardcore show is the most positive form of male friendship I've noted in our increasingly man-child addled society. And don't think it doesn't make me a little jealous that girls think they can't have the same thing without going lesbocurious. Aaron Bedard broke it all down a couple times, giving shout-outs to his old show-going Bmore crew (he's in ol' beantown now), and especially to a dude who was standing along the sidelines for the entire show, who apparently is from Texas but since missed all of Bane's shows out there, he looked up cheap tickets and flew out to the East to catch them.

It's not a Scene, although there are those who have created some around the bands. It's most definitely a brotherhood, and the loyalty there is fierce and bolstering. It's what gets you high, and a lot of them are still straight edge. I can't imagine trying to be knackered and playing those riffs and breaks at the drop of a hat, break-neck speed and ear-pummeling volume. It's been done, and when it's right it's a beautiful thing. But I daresay a skiezed-out drummer would collapse after one or two songs. That's four minutes. Think about it. There's something pure about it, and I like that just as well as my beloved junky jams.

Then all too quickly, the show is over and everyone begins filing out. I am apart but not alone! It's after midnight, and the several block walk home does not seem like a good idea. All instincts point to wait--and listen. But I'm totally conspicuous standing outside with a notebook and a cell phone, trying to wake up a girlfriend to pick me up. I'm going to have to bum a ride, and it's gonna be a while because the bands are packing up and everyone else is packed into their sedans and headed in opposite directions. I'm like four blocks away, I say. Or...more like six to eight. Someone calls me out on it, and there ensues a total bum rush of boys directing point-blank questions at my wardrobe, my bag, my notebook, hands start pawing through my purse which I obligingly hold open, feeling a bit like a tourist in the monkey house as they remove the fliers, atomizer, pens, camera, lipstick...thank God I didn't bring all those things I thought to remove! I answer their questions the best I can, amused that I thought I would be on the other side of this conversation.

-If we give you a ride, can we crash at your place?

-Do you have room?

-Do you live in a crack house?

-Or a trailer? (There's a story to that one.)

-Why doesn't your boyfriend come pick you up? (Ah, the real question implied.)

-On a scale of one to ten, how good of a kisser are you? (Jesus, look at those expressions. They're serious.)

I tell them: yes, I'd love to have all of them stay, but I'm afraid I just moved in and I only have one small couch but lots of floor space.

-I don't do couches. Or floors.

-Yeah, beds only.

It's funny that despite all this banter, not one of them has officially decided to walk me back or drive me back. The one van has a dead battery and they're jumping it with another. A few beers appear from inside the van, and they're all in dojo form and yelling and laughing at fart jokes and ignoring the Ottobar staff whistling at them to mind the neighbors. I'm fine to hang around, but I stick out like a sore thumb more and more, and I'm sort of anxious to end my public appearance and disappear into my apartment and digest all this. I consider walking myself home, just so as not to be a bother. But my instincts tell me to stick it out, and I thank them now.

I got to chat for a bit individually with some members of all bands, and I get a chance to tell Aaron Bedard how much I loved the whole thing. It is he who mans up and agrees that I cannot walk home alone. "Jump in the van, sit there and look pretty. We'll get you home." They are on their way to Long Island, and ask where I live. I tell them it's actually pretty convenient, it's between here and Long Island. I'm giving play-by-play directions while fielding more middle school questions and absolutely loving every minute but wishing I weren't so swept away by the attention that I'd maintain presence of mind to ask all MY questions, maybe get a picture of me with all of them in their van, anything to have some physical proof of my brief taste of that fantastic van full of two awesome hc bands. I'm afraid I'll have to settle for my scribblings and the hope that I can hook up with them when they're back in town so I can pretend to be a real journalist. (What am I saying??)

Many many thanks to the bands for reminding me of the virtuous life of heavy music, clear minds, and loyal friends, but mostly to my instincts for telling me that it was better that I showed up alone, and for making me stick it out for two hours after the show.

It is crazy when they tell me that this is just screams to a beat
when i know its what shot you into my veins
glue that binds, a weapon that defines us
and I would be so lost without you
though I walk alone I am never on my own
cuz the places we've been become the times we have shared
and they crash like waves and mark these days
and I don't go anywhere without them

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When Bands Stop Taking Drugs

Anyone who is familiar with Insane Clown Posse's early days of glory would be looking forward to their new album blowing a hole through their soft, malleable skulls a la The Tower:

However, I'm afraid you will have to settle for their recent genius which has produced some of the best art I think we can expect from two wiggers in facepaint and a way inflated video budget. There are no words, and laughter doesn't do quite do it justice. Just watch. And be soothed at all the "miracles up in this bitch."

Hungry for more? Maybe you're ready for Spring Break, ICP style on their own Juggalo Island.

Ottobar Blowing Up

The month of September will be a great one at the Ottobar on Howard St. in Bmore. Check it: next Friday, none other but the venerable BANE with worthy companions Trapped Under Ice will be slamming around, and yes yes yes I already have my ticket. TUI has a new album out, Secrets of the World, on sale and for download on iTunes. Check out their official video for "Believe," shot in Bmore:

The next day is Tobacco, formerly Black Moth Super Rainbow, spacey electro-something that will probably invite tons of SpecialK-heads and acid freaks. Thereby, the Ottobar will be totally cracked out and we like that.

And THEN, just in case you haven't properly been ear-stroked by that point, Wavves will be gracing us with their presence as well. Their new album King of the Beach is also on iTunes and has a similar effect of hearing an album by Of Montreal or something equally overwhelming to your dopamine receptors. Brian Wilson, eat your heart out.

Your Dreams Don't Look This Good

Before all thoughts of Australia are dashed to the polluted winds of East Coast port cities, I feel this must be properly documented. First, I have to ask: do you believe in portal discovery? Astral projection? Parallel universes? It is, I'm afraid, the only way to encapsulate what you find in a little place called Yorkeys Knob, up in the town of Cairns, North Queensland. Now don't go there or anything, otherwise I will have spoiled the delicious secret. You should probably just stick to the backpacker-friendly city of Cairns, spending your days in the beergarten of Shenanigan's and picking up twenty-something American college students who are throwing caution to the wind while on parents' travel money, unless...

You know the answers to the following:

1) Cairns was discovered and settled by the English explorer named blank.

2) The main cash crop in Cairns is blank.

3) The surrounding area is most like America's blank in terms of education and opportunity.

4) You can throw your used syringes blank.

One of the first sights when you arrive in Cairns is the giant cartoonish monument to Cap'n James Cook's legacy. There he stands, proud in breeches, sharing this momentous discovery with you, but you're too busy consulting the map in your ridiculously painted mystery machine that some idiot either thought would be TOO cute to decorate the six-pack-toting backpackers passing through town, or a cruel joke to alert locals to the trust fund babies on board.

Driving down the single access road to Yorkeys at dawn is one of those smells you can't forget. They're cutting the stalks of sugar cane to add to all those products that in the US are injected with enough high fructose corn syrup to make your grandkids diabetic, and the salty sea spray air spreads it around the valley.

As with many little preserved secret paradises, the area is home to skilled tradespeople and rednecks who have a great connection to the land they tried (and succeeded) not to share with the natives.

Although I can't imagine it has very much more heroin being pumped through its wayward youth than, say, Eugene, OR, Australia definitely takes a more responsive approach to the problem by providing public bathrooms with easy syringe disposal here, there, around the corner, pick up new ones at the free clinic. Enlightened! Proactive! And yet exactly the kind of thing would send up a million furious mothers at preemptively introducing their impressionable youngsters to the evil facts of the world. Sex can wait--masturbate.

I could give a flying yorkeys knob who settled the place, but I'm most intrigued by this last bit comparison between Uzzie and Auzzie. Maybe because of pressure we feel to attract tourists and locals alike, lure them into a false sense of security by pretending that the drug problems of some of its citizens need not interfere with anyone else's daily life. A sign placed on the inside of a bathroom stall door could, hypothetically, interfere with someone's God-given right to drop the kids off at the pool without having to think about larger community issues. Can we at least get those sacrosanct five minutes, please? In our hustle and bustle of fulfilling ambition (a term not nearly as household in OZ), we need to consider the children. (Won't someone pleeeease?!) Where else will they get the brilliant idea to give themselves a booster shot of pure

sweetsugarheavenJesusridingamechanicalbullTijuananineteenseventyfourwasahelluvayear than these, quote, proactive signs? We might as well be handing out fliers at all the bus stops, for His sake! (Statistics of applicable ratios, prevalence of signs to later junky-hood still in progress).

But we mustn't fool ourselves that our empire expatriate cousins down under are more enlightened in all respects than us poor fallen Puritans. After all, we got like fifty years on them in terms of integration, and I'm sure there's been a lot of back-patting for this one at least. 2008 was the first formal governmental apology to the aboriginal and islander peoples of Australia, but the resentment still sticks like peanut butter in the mouths of many bushies who,

not unlike the natural-born workers of Arizona are having a tough time getting on with the new kids from the other side of the fence.

In my month stay, I didn't hear of a single violent crime not linked to an aboriginal or islander man, and the paper proclaimed growing support for anti-petrol-sniffing efforts in a town north of Alice Springs. On Thursday Island where I stayed for four days, in amidst the continental crumbs from some prehistoric Pangea in between Australia and Papua-New Guinea, memories of the Lost Generation, the children who were yoinked from their families by the missionaries to learn proper cosmic philosophy still smart. Families who raised chickens to support their families were stripped of both chickens and children, then told to buy the one back at a government-installed grocer, and leave the other in the hands of Christians. (Ooh, but we love their artwork!) With a past like this, maybe inhaling petrol would feel better.

But I wasn't there for political reasons, or I really can't claim to have left D.C. at all. I went for the rainbows, the geckos, the salty sea air that poodled my hair, and the sun that turned it golden-white and my skin brown. And in this regard there were no disappointments. It's a forty-five degree slope up to where my sister lives on a cliff overlooking the dry tropics, beach and tablelands. The building is circular, and her balcony overlooks this grotesquely gorgeous scene. The windows and doors stay open even though it's wintertime because it's the dry season, and besides it's only about seventy-five degrees Farenheit. And should anyone get a little chilly out there, you can just climb on in and make for one very strange bedfellow:

And yet Octavio wasn't so dangerous as some of the other friends I made at the zoo where my sister works.

Even though he could rip me apart faster than any full-grown adult male, I am ultimately more likely to trust a fellow like this one:

Revert to Childhood

After a couple hours discovering I cannot sample and mix music like I want to on Garage Band, nor can I make fun cool spliced and reanimated movie clips on iMovie, I got to researching four of my all-time favorite songs from my childhood, and knew they had to appear on one post all together, like my fantasy dance party (David Byrne, may I have this dance?)

It started with one song that above all others I remember was my favorite song when I was about seven years old. My oldest sister had the album and would indulge me in playing it over and over until finally lending me the tape and her Walkman to listen to during her high school graduation. It's by a little band called Voice of the Beehive, and the song is from that album Honey Lingers where the sisters are all dressed up in big pink fluffy gowns:

The second is one I remember falling in love with at the beach, and wishing that David Byrne would be singing about meeee! This video employs the cut-and-paste technique, a popular style of the times. But since the embedding has been disabled, you get to click the link. (LINK)

Next, we have a more predictable favorite, but one that appeared on every single one of my many many radio mix tapes throughout middle school. Again, I remember hearing it blasting out of my sisters' bedrooms and would ask to enter and listen. Look for the turban hat. That is my favorite part. And for proprietorial reasons again, you get to clink the lick: (LICK)

And finally, the video I've been dying to find for ages, a relic of wobegone forgotten bygone times past when I was too young to read the episode titles and my other sister would have to read them to me, a timeless classic. Tiny Toons presents They Might Be Giants' Istanbul.

My favorite part is the fiddle interlude.

Sweet T-Shirts from MOFO

When I finally dragged myself away from the beach last Thursday, I ended up at a launch party for a new line of shirts at MOFO (Merchants Of Fine Objects) in Cairns. They have a fun little shop on McLeod St., complete with blinking skulls and an array of some locally-designed, in-housescreen-printed shirts. I bought three, and it'll be a fun guessing game as to which ones...

Yes, correct: the Love Bomb shirt, the piano chick shirt, and an older print involving happy dancing monsters on bright yellow T. And yes, they *do* deliver to the States! No more "Broke is the New Black" or that ironic barcode shirt you still think is oh-so ironical...these shirts are metaphysically endowed, on a scholarship from the School of Transcendental Nonthink and awarded grant money from phyllosoftsicle higher-ups. Don't go looking for better. You won't find it. And everyone will be jealous.

Even cooler is the fact that the owner, Sam Tupou is good friends with my sister, whose good friend, and his partner, Ania Ganowicz is responsible for many of these awesome designs, including the piano chick, who happens to be her best friend from Poland. Lovely people + lovely T-shirts = legend.

I also got to hear a bitchin' OZ band called Beware Wolf (be wear word play). Their self-disparaging attitude came off charming and their chops came off badass, especially considering they're still green around the edges. I was pleased to hear some keys alongside screamopop, and it was no surprise that they'd been playing together a while 'cause the drummer was actually watching the axes. They even brought their own fans, including a redhead in Mini Mouse ears. And to date they're the only people who think being from DC is kind of awesome, given our history. For which I wasn't alive. But am aware, very aware, yes indeed. Long live The Cicada Killers!!!