I'd rather do Billy Bragg than Pete Wentz any day

"The arch in your eyebrows can tell the truth,just imagine what your back could do. And the dance floor where I do my best is your, your mattress."

This is not a Fall Out Boy lyric, which was my first thought when I saw this as someone's status. I looked it up. It's called "Sweet Talk 101" by Cute Is What We Aim For, a band with an entirely too long name and not enough substance to justify its length. The reason I thought it was Fall Out Boy or Panic! At the Disco (it pains me to put that exclamation point there, but I can't be too much of a hypocrite considering I completely respect Against Me!'s unnecessary punctuation) or Boys Like Girls, or even Bright Eyes--or any other one of those post-ironic pop-punk bands who use seemingly eloquent turns of phrase to create devil women and provocative double entendres. I thought this was cool when I was fourteen. I don't anymore, but also don't really begrudge or condescend toward people who respect and enjoy these bands. And I don't claim to be so evolved musically and so super duper indie and in the know when I do have a strange liking of Ke$ha--who is kind of total crap--, and I really like musicals, and I also have an almost embarrassing amount of really soft, tame acoustic music that I enjoy in my iTunes. But I just find this trend in bands like Cute Is What We Aim For kind of interesting.

Because most of these skinny white guys with high voices seem like they were total doofs pre skyrocket to fame. And now that they're making their music for their fans--now that they have fans who hang on their every word--its like they've newly realized the art of insinuation--particularly sexual--that can be put to use in music and lyrics. But for me, I can't get past the fact that these guys all look kind of awkward and weird, and aren't really smooth talking nonchalant sex machines at all. So I'm not taken in by "I've got more wit, a better kiss, a hotter touch, a better fuck/Than any boy you'll ever meet, sweetie you had me" because I know that's just probably NOT TRUE. And all these poseur Don Juans know it too, so they overcompensate by making all of their lyrics heavy with innuendo, allusions, and double meaning. And I don't think they're actually being ironic about it--which is a cop out anyway, so don't even try it. You can do anything and get away with it now solely on the basis that you were doing it out of irony.

If you want to be sexy, you've just got to be sexy. Don't cloud every meaning with a trompe l'oeil. Don't rely only on silly plays on words. And for God's sake, don't use the word "sweetie."

All of these self proclaimed "better fucks" should probably go listen to Billy Bragg, who writes some of the sexiest songs I've ever heard:

http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-warmest-room-lyrics-billy-bragg.html

Listen to that, The Saturday Boy, and A Lover Sings and tell me the art of true sensual subtlety and beauty isn't dead.

My God

My God protects me against pregnancy scares and cramps. He listens to my frantic pleas when I need a good grade on a test, and He helps me find lost things. My God will sometimes make things better when I ask him to. My God gave me beautiful people. My God accepts my confliction, and He doesn't resent me. He doesn't ask that I capitalize His title, but I do it anyway, out of a kind of amicable respect. My God doesn't always grant my wishes. Sometimes I wonder why, and curse Him. Sometimes I say I'm an atheist. Most times I denounce institutionalized religion as bunk. My God doesn't care. He likes me well enough--but doesn't love me, because I don't love Him. He is filled with an understanding of his duty, rather than the arrogance of an all powerful patriarch. He is quiet and steady, and he is not a miracle worker. My God is not your God. Your God is presumptuous and vengeful, exclusionary, omnipotent. My God is too wise for presumptions, too old and tired for vengeance, too worldly for exclusions. My God gets my letters, but sometimes he takes a while to respond to them. He's not everywhere at once, and sometimes he has errands to run.

My God lets me hurt, but not to prove a point. Because hurt is the thing that's omnipotent. And my life is my own lesson to learn.

I relay for life

How many bags were there? There must have been close to a hundred, lit up around the court with little Christmas lights, glow sticks. How many names were there? A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, some unwritten but all still remembered. How many people were there? Too many to actually keep moving around the track, stopped in clusters, looking out over the darkened gym. How many memories? Tears? Compromises? Bargains? Sacrifices? How many shoulders shook, how many arms reached, how many eyes squeezed shut?

How hard was it? To recall the Saturdays spent at her bedside? Do you remember? Watching all the energy leave the stark bedroom, floating out the door in a yellow rush, giving up on us? As we sat there, week after week, almost rotten with testifying to her deterioration.

And yet, it was better to be there. Better to bring it out in front of strangers then let the regret and guilt and anger fester in the back of my brain. Better than constantly asking unanswerable questions to an unresponsive deity.

And it was refreshing and I felt a tiny bit better about everything. I felt together.

Crazy people aren't so fucking boring.

A lot of the time I wake up feeling kind of uninspired. There are so many boring people out there; and why should I stand for it? I don't like small-talk. I'm really, really good at it; but I don't like it. I hate searching for common ground on a shallow level. I wish I didn't have to talk to anyone who bored me, anyone whom I found obnoxious or petty. Why is it so wrong, to demand that people be interesting, functioning human beings? Too many people making small-talk. That's what life is. It's crabgrass, and kids and other people, and money.

But even I know that's not true.

Because there are those fascinating people I know; incredible specimens that I want to talk to all day. Some of them make small-talk and some of them don't. Some of them are nice and some of them aren't. But they all mean what they say, they all think about what they mean. And it's not usually something I've heard before. And it's never unnecessary. Or a silence filler. I hate that.

Maybe I'm boring. I hope not. If I ever found out I was boring, I don't know what I'd do.

I see sky

The first thing I saw when we drove into Charlottesville was sky. I hadn't seen sky that close since New Mexico, six or seven years ago. I remembered that vacation; "The sky is so BIG here," my dad kept exclaiming. That's what I felt like when we drove into Virginia. Felt like I could almost touch the lazy white clouds if I rolled the window down. There was sky everywhere, and it was large, and bright blue, and beautiful. It seemed to settle the mountains. And I could feel it all around me. The sky was so big.

Later that night I saw the sky again, this time with stars. So many stars. Stars I hadn't been able to see in a long time, since the last time I went camping with my Dad and his friend John. We'd go walking and they'd point out the constellations to me, ones that I couldn't really make out but pretended I saw. Those few days out of the summer were always a good time, not really showering and peeing in the woods, sleeping on the ground and cooking things around a fire, and walking at night. John always talked to me like I was a real person, too, instead of just a skinny little nine-year-old.

But I haven't been camping in a long time. My dad's too tired, and John's dead now, mugged and hit by a car when he was drunk in the street. And it wouldn't be the same anyway. Seeing all those Virginia stars, I was reminded of bumfuck Wisconsin and camping and life before real shit happened. So it was kind of sad, but still great because it was like there was an entire map of significance above me. All the constellations that people had assigned meaning to, everything that human beings had tried to figure out for centuries was just laid out in that sky. Billions and billions of stars burning in that huge, close sky. And it seemed perfectly natural to be there staring into it, but also kind of holy too. Makes you feel like you're part of something real.

But that sky, and the sky in New Mexico, and the sky in Wisconsin--its all the same sky. Isn't that funny?

Isn't life funny?

Regin-ah, Regin-ah, Regin-a-ah

I really like Regina Spektor. I know it's not super hardcore or punx of me to say that, but I don't care because I really dig her. She's probably of the same vein as Liz Phair in terms of song-writing, although Liz is rougher and more raw and bitter. Her songs are also a lot more interesting in terms of musical composition. She basically just uses a piano (and sometimes guitar and percussion but not very often)--and whereas in Liz's early demo tapes she uses one guitar (later she uses a full band), Regina's songs are fuller. Richer. Plus every song makes you feel really good, even if the lyrics are incredibly depressing. A woman refusing chemo, the inner monologue of Oedipus, an alcoholic husband and a wife in denial, suicide by carbon monoxide inhalation, a lonely woman who spills her life to strangers, people only calling on God in desperate situations; all put to gorgeous piano compositions.

And every instance is specific. Every instance she's singing about feels like its happening while you listen to the song. Regina Spektor basically lays out her life and her thoughts, and puts it to music and it works so fucking well. Observe:

"Hey remember that time I tried to save a pigeon with a broken wing?/ A street cat got him by the morning and I had to bury pieces of his body in our building's playground/ I thought I was gonna be sick."

--That Time, Regina Spektor

"My name is Lucille and I know how you feel/ I live downstairs/ I hear you taking out your garbage/ I hear you loving your girlfriend/ I hear you loving yourself too/ I hear you flushing your toilet/ I hear you turning your thoughts off/ I turn mine off too."

--Pavlov's Daughter, Regina Spektor

"I have dreams of Orca whales and owls/ But I wake up in fear"

--Hotel Song, Regina Spektor

"Summer in the city, I'm so lonely lonely lonely/ So I went to a protest just to rub up against strangers/And I did feel like coming but I also felt like crying/It doesn't seem so worth it right now."

--Summer In The City, Regina Spektor

"But God can be funny/At a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke, or/Or when the crazies say He hates us/And they get so red in the head you think they’re ‘bout to choke/God can be funny/When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way/And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini/Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus/God can be so hilarious."

--Laughing With, Regina Spektor

I just think she's weird and kooky and kind of just awesome. And I think she should be appreciated, even if you don't dig the genre. Because do you know anyone else who writes a song about Ethan Frome? I didn't think so.


On another musical note, Malcolm McLaren died yesterday. Kinda bummed me out. He was ridiculously influential in the UK music scene.

This is the part I wouldn't show you; the part where you say, I don't even know you.

It's weird how you can spend hours a day with someone and still not know their passions and their fears. Sometimes you can predict their next word, next yawn, next stretch; sometimes you look at them and it's scary how much you don't understand. When you want to know someone else as well as you know yourself things get messy. Maybe erasing mystery is what dampens relationships, friendships, kinships. Maybe we shouldn't quest to unearth every desire and secret. But isn't discovery what tightens the bonds between us? Isn't trust what grooms deeper love? I don't know--I try not to let anyone really know me. Because if they've realized everything buried in my brain, why would they stick around?