Fifth and last goodbye: NAME: Adri Mehra ASPIRATION: Move to Uptown where da ladies at. To have a change of scenery. To continue performing in music related endeavors with Patch, Sharp Teeth, Nikki Schultz, yet call Uptown homebase. Northeast seems to be a little off the beaten path when it comes to the "scene". I feel it. It's more of a neighborhood feel, a place to settle down. Adri's doing what I should be doing. Getting in the middle of the hustle and bustle before the bustle moves on without him. BEST MEMORY: Adri was my gateway into the Brotherhood. It all started through him. He and I met while at the University. I had seen him around, talked with him here and there. It wasn't until we were in a play together, "The Laramie Project", when it all came together. We talked music, clothes, girls. He was my other, my brotha from anotha motha, to the point where we were inseparable. He and I would show up to parties together all the time, people thought we were gay lovers.
The entire run of "Laramie" would have to take the cake, though, for the overall best experience with Adri. The play is somewhat of a downer, considering it's all about a homosexual boy who's beaten and tied to a fence and left for dead. Despite this, Adri and I could never stop laughing. Not at the subject matter, mind you. But backstage we'd constantly be doing things we weren't supposed to do. Whispering and laughing hysterically to the point where we could be heard out in the audience.
One night we had to be off book, meaning we had to know our lines through and through without calling "LINE?!" to the directors. The entire cast was competent in this. We knew our shit. We started to have a run-through, everything was going tip top. Adri's first cue came about. The spotlight was on him. Everyone was silent. Drama was at the extreme. He stood there. Strong, competent. He cleared his throat.
And in total character: "LINE?!"
I fucking lost it. The entire cast did. We were rolling around on the floor laughing.
Adri was scolded, he learned his lines. Through and through. At the dress rehearsal, he was on fire. He was getting laughs galore from the faculty audience. The hardest monologues were seared into place. Then came his easiest role (in "Laramie" each cast member plays about five or six characters).
The Bailiff.
His only line: "All rise."
He gets out onstage. Again, the dramatic pause. We're all choking ourselves up for the big courtroom scene. Tears in our eyes.
In front of an actual audience:
"LINE?!"
I fell off my bench I was laughing so hard.
From then on, Adri and I always shared a private joke. If you screwed up, tripped, made a dufus of yourself, you pulled a "bailiff".
The heat is on at work as new men gain employment at the Southeast school. The one adult bathroom has now been impeded by heartless souls who leave the seat up, leaving pee driplets for all to see on the rim.
Nevermind the fact that it's the RIM OF A TOILET. You ever going to sit on that? No? Just . . . you just don't want to look at it, right? Three drops of yellow? O-okay, just clarifying, crossing t's and dotting i's, is all.
What's the cleanest part of the toilet? Sure as hell ain't the rim, amirite? The seat. Yeah, the seat's the cleanest. Ass cheeks don't really pick up too much in terms of germs, I could be wrong, though. So, we're all making a fit about reaching down and bringing a basically germless piece of porcelain onto the rim of the toilet.
Here's the thing. I have it ingrained within my skull to put the toilet seat down at all times. Growing up, I had a dog who had an obsessive pension to drink toilet water in obscene amounts to the point of pukage. So yeah, we always put the seat down to save ourselves a cleanup. Now I persist on putting the seat down by habit, only slightly aware of my honorable duty to help my fellow females out.
Here's the thing: it's not that we leave the seat up on purpose. It's because we forget. We couldn't give a shit either way. We reach down and put the seat up all the time. We look at the pubic hair ridden rim as we let 'er rip. We put the seat down . . . usually, as we flush.
There's always that one time, though. You forget. Whoops.
It's not our fault the rim is usually our making. It's not our fault we have to put the seat up and down. We're trying to get by with what we have. We look at the rim every day, doesn't bother us. Most of us have the courtesy to put the seat down for y'all.
There is the man who constantly persists on leaving the seat up. Personally, I hope to sometimes go into the bathroom right after and find that GASP! I don't have to reach down and put the seat up! I win! A little stress off my day! Even when I go in on these post-forgetful sessions to take a full out dump, I don't mind if I have to put the seat down.
For women, you don't need to concern yourselves with the seat. As far as you're concerned, the pubic hair rim doesn't exist. Bathroom ignorance. Alright. Don't you think a visual reminder is always healthy? Like taking a shower before you go swimming, it prepares you for when you have to clean the rim at your house. It exists, you can't hide from it forever.
Think of it as a service to you. Our petty forgetfulness and unfortunate tuneout of chivalry could be your pre-pool shower for when cleaning day is right around the corner, and it's your turn to clean the commode.
By candlelight I sit. Operatic drama does not blast out of my Victrola. My own music does. That, or moody acoustic music made to put me in a somber mood. A state of moody decision making. Relationship woes. Song ideas. Strange anecdotes to share. Stories for the purpose of prose or songs.
The place I visit . . .
. . . a culmination of four different projects, seeming at first to have no connection, but inevitably my brain ties it all together into one vast story and world. This is not a happy place, per say. It's a responsibility. It's a nuisance. It's exciting. Pleasurable. Nauseating.
The artist's landscape is one akin to love. Love is a feeling where you want to cry but can't exactly bring tears to stream out of your eyes. My art taps into that same feeling. It's hokey to say Art is Love. It's not. Art is Shit. It means nothing to you. You don't feel my love.
You just hear me say I love you. And you make up the rest for yourself.
A foreboding cloud loomed greedily up ahead. Ten miles away from my current position. I drove, watching it carefully. Suddenly, my car swerved violently in the wind, as I was on a bridge. Emitting "Whoa" such as a cowboy would with their bucking horse, I gained control of the wheel ever so slightly.
As I neared my next destination, I recognized another car, much smaller, prevailing against the hard blowing wind. My car was larger, wider, and should have been more stable. Riding behind them, I noticed they were laughing inside. There was no wind.
As we drove along, I noticed that they were going to the same place I was. I parked nearby, catching a glimpse of the knowing aura surrounding the car. I spied two people I knew getting out. They were laughing, walking cutely, braving the weather in coats and leggings. I stepped up to say hi . . .
. . . as I left the store, the clouds had blown past, leaving behind the evidence of a short, yet violent rainfall. I missed it. In a fit of giggles, persisting to cling onto my psyche from the hearty conversation I had had with my friends, I traveled to the top of a nearby hill to take in the new sunshine over the city.
I realized the wind had died down. Inside and outside.
Might just be my new favorite date spot. From hot tea to tea shakes to tea chillers, it's like Bubba describing all the different kinds of tea in the world whilst cleaning the barracks floor with a toothbrush.
As stated earlier this year, I'm a huge Pixar fan (sadly, my countdown of YouTube videos have been removed due to copyright infringement . . . that took a long time to collect). I tend to shun other animation studios' work. "Shrek" relied on pop culture musings and jokes rehashed from other movies. Pixar stays original in their humor. "Ice Age" was alright, "Madagascar" was the same caliber of "Shrek", pop culture blahdom. Plus, the animation of other studios flat out sucks. It almost seems a tier above video game cutscene animation.
That's why I was surprised to find that Sony Pictures Animation's "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" could come out as one of my favorite computer animated films. It's Pixar caliber. Better than "Cars", and more laugh out loud funny than any Pixar film. There were moments where I had tears in my eyes.
I love the book. I read it a lot to the children. It's clever, the pictures are great, the descriptions are vivid and funny. The movie takes the book and embarks on a mad scientist story. Complete with the awkward failure, to the impending success, the inevitable notoriety of the inventor and their creation, flying too high and burning wings, chaos caused by the machine, the creator needing to bring down their creation . . . it's "Frankenstein" with food. It's a story we've all seen, but you forget that it's a recycled format. The dialogue is extremely witty and the animation is flat out cute.
An interesting anecdote as told by my coworker today in the nap room:
In Milwaukee, I have a neighbor, a grandma, who told my mom a story a little while ago. Something that happened to her 7 year old granddaughter.
She said that her grandchild went on a field trip to the Shed Aquarium in Chicago. Things were going smoothly. The children behaved, willingly herded to each tank. Staring at each of the exhibits.
All of a sudden the teacher realized that my neighbor's grandchild was missing. They started to panic, looking all over the aquarium. They looked in the Oceanarium room, and found her near the beluga whales, to their relief.
On the bus ride home, the child spoke to her teacher. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I did something bad."
The teacher shook her head. "No, it's all right. You know what you did, and we have you safe and sound. It doesn't matter. It's okay."
The girl persisted. "No, I'm sorry. I did a really bad thing."
The teacher also persisted. "It's okay, dear, really. You're on the bus with us. You scared us a little but it's alright."
The girl shook her head. "No, you're going to be mad at me. I did something really bad."
The teacher started. "No you didn't--"
She stopped as the child started to unzip her backback. Inside, quiet and frightened, was a penguin. A live penguin that had crawled into the girl's backpack. And they had traveled halfway to Milwaukee with it on the bus.
The teacher yelled "Oh my god!"
Apparently, as far as I can tell, the girl had snuck behind the scenes into the penguin exhibit and had somehow lured a penguin into her backpack.
They called the aquarium, turned the bus around, and retured the penguin before returning to school.
--------------
I just about shit a brick when I heard this story.
My computer is shot. Like, virtually out of nowhere, a virus, or, more precisely, a shitload of viruses decided to up and bite the living will of my computer to exist in a mere state of reloading, never booting up. After calling Louie, we decided to wipe the hard drive, save for My Documents documents.
I may even have to copy those files onto a portable hard drive and then wipe the rest of the main drive out. Start new. Which means Lizard People's "The Know" will be gone. Recording software will be gone. Original Patch files will be gone.
This is like death. Pure hell.
I would like to make it my purpose in life to find the programmers who made these malicious viruses. They don't reap the benefits of SEEING people suffer. The kind of person who just makes shit to fuck with people and then not even care to SEE their efforts realized by a victim are the true enemies of this world.
Death would not be proper. Cutting off their hands so that they can never type a line of corrupted code will suffice. Do it without anesthesia, and when they pass out, bring them back from unconsciousness. Make them watch you hacksaw your way through their wrists.
A journey into the comfy confines of the past, and a breach into the novel unknowns of the future. House parties are checkpoints to a youth's existence. They are places where seminal events take place. Hook ups, promises of roommate friendships, possible business partner meetings, relationship fights, breakups, the ultimate porcelain goddess embrace you've ever had the pleasure of experiencing, etc.
The Hipster party tonight was one of trepidation and outright uneasiness for me.
It mainly had to do with all the new people showing up in the household. Actually, not really the household, but our front yard.
You can't really see the extent of just how many people were outside. The rest of the neighborhood was dark, sans our beacon of light and music. We looked like a frat party. I just knew the blue and reds would be around any minute. Luckily, they drove past, on a quest to bust careless Monroe Street drivers.
Unfortunately, this was my only picture of the night. Those seminal events related around partydom took place shortly afterward, and I was left as an unknown host to most, fraternizing with the people of the past who dared breach the novel unknown, trying to deal with these events.
So, in this case of emptyhandedness in terms of documentation, I'll give you reading on what exactly a hipster is, and hopefully one of our guests took pictures that will show up soon in a future edit:
Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization by Douglas Haddow (Printed in Adbusters #79)
I'm sipping a scummy pint of cloudy beer in the back of a trendy dive bar turned nightclub in the heart of the city's heroin district. In front of me stand a gang of hippiesh grunge-punk types, who crowd around each other and collectively scoff at the smoking laws by sneaking puffs of "fuck-you," reveling in their perceived rebellion as the haggard, staggering staff look on without the slightest concern.
The "DJ" is keystroking a selection of MP3s off his MacBook, making a mix that sounds like he took a hatchet to a collection of yesteryear billboard hits, from DMX to Dolly Parton, but mashed up with a jittery techno backbeat.
"So... this is a hipster party?" I ask the girl sitting next to me. She's wearing big dangling earrings, an American Apparel V-neck tee, non-prescription eyeglasses and an inappropriately warm wool coat.
"Yeah, just look around you, 99 percent of the people here are total hipsters!"
"Are you a hipster?"
"Fuck no," she says, laughing back the last of her glass before she hops off to the dance floor.
Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.
But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of "counter-culture" have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the "Hipster."
An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the "hipster" – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.
This obsession with "street-cred" reaches its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof.
Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.
"These hipster zombies… are the idols of the style pages, the darlings of viral marketers and the marks of predatory real-estate agents," wrote Christian Lorentzen in a Time Out New York article entitled ‘Why the Hipster Must Die.' "And they must be buried for cool to be reborn."
With nothing to defend, uphold or even embrace, the idea of "hipsterdom" is left wide open for attack. And yet, it is this ironic lack of authenticity that has allowed hipsterdom to grow into a global phenomenon that is set to consume the very core of Western counterculture. Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster's lack of individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles.
***
Standing outside an art-party next to a neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.
"I'm not comfortable with that term," she replies.
Her friend adds, with just a flicker of menace in her eyes, "Yeah, I don't know, you shouldn't use that word, it's just…"
"Offensive?"
"No… it's just, well… if you don't know why then you just shouldn't even use it."
"Ok, so what are you girls doing tonight after this party?"
"Ummm… We're going to the after-party."
***
Gavin McInnes, one of the founders of Vice, who recently left the magazine, is considered to be one of hipsterdom's primary architects. But, in contrast to the majority of concerned media-types, McInnes, whose "Dos and Don'ts" commentary defined the rules of hipster fashion for over a decade, is more critical of those doing the criticizing.
"I've always found that word ["hipster"] is used with such disdain, like it's always used by chubby bloggers who aren't getting laid anymore and are bored, and they're just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable," he says. "I'm dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda."
Punks wear their tattered threads and studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a proud hipster. It's an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it.
***
"He's 17 and he lives for the scene!" a girl whispers in my ear as I sneak a photo of a young kid dancing up against a wall in a dimly lit corner of the after-party. He's got a flipped-out, do-it-yourself haircut, skin-tight jeans, leather jacket, a vintage punk tee and some popping high tops.
"Shoot me," he demands, walking up, cigarette in mouth, striking a pose and exhaling. He hits a few different angles with a firmly unimpressed expression and then gets a bit giddy when I show him the results.
"Rad, thanks," he says, re-focusing on the music and submerging himself back into the sweaty funk of the crowd where he resumes a jittery head bobble with a little bit of a twitch.
The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.
***
Perhaps the true motivation behind this deliberate nonchalance is an attempt to attract the attention of the ever-present party photographers, who swim through the crowd like neon sharks, flashing little blasts of phosphorescent ecstasy whenever they spot someone worth momentarily immortalizing.
Noticing a few flickers of light splash out from the club bathroom, I peep in only to find one such photographer taking part in an impromptu soft-core porno shoot. Two girls and a guy are taking off their clothes and striking poses for a set of grimy glamour shots. It's all grins and smirks until another girl pokes her head inside and screeches, "You're not some club kid in New York in the nineties. This shit is so hipster!" – which sparks a bit of a catfight, causing me to beat a hasty retreat.
In many ways, the lifestyle promoted by hipsterdom is highly ritualized. Many of the party-goers who are subject to the photoblogger's snapshots no doubt crawl out of bed the next afternoon and immediately re-experience the previous night's debauchery. Red-eyed and bleary, they sit hunched over their laptops, wading through a sea of similarity to find their own (momentarily) thrilling instant of perfected hipster-ness.
What they may or may not know is that "cool-hunters" will also be skulking the same sites, taking note of how they dress and what they consume. These marketers and party-promoters get paid to co-opt youth culture and then re-sell it back at a profit. In the end, hipsters are sold what they think they invent and are spoon-fed their pre-packaged cultural livelihood.
Hipsterdom is the first "counterculture" to be born under the advertising industry's microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.
An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster's self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution. Western civilization's well has run dry. The only way to avoid hitting the colossus of societal failure that looms over the horizon is for the kids to abandon this vain existence and start over.
***
"If you don't give a damn, we don't give a fuck!" chants an emcee before his incitements are abruptly cut short when the power plug is pulled and the lights snapped on.
Dawn breaks and the last of the after-after-parties begin to spill into the streets. The hipsters are falling out, rubbing their eyes and scanning the surrounding landscape for the way back from which they came. Some hop on their fixed-gear bikes, some call for cabs, while a few of us hop a fence and cut through the industrial wasteland of a nearby condo development.
The half-built condos tower above us like foreboding monoliths of our yuppie futures. I take a look at one of the girls wearing a bright pink keffiyah and carrying a Polaroid camera and think, "If only we carried rocks instead of cameras, we'd look like revolutionaries." But instead we ignore the weapons that lie at our feet – oblivious to our own impending demise.
We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.
Continuing the Thursday Night Live Special Edition -- Part 3:
HEALTH
This may go down as one of the best concert experiences I've ever had.
I first found out about HEALTH through Trent Reznor's announcement a year ago that the band would be supporting Nine Inch Nails on their "Lights in the Sky" tour. I checked them out . . . and fell in love.
The genre artists call them a Noise Rock band. I agree. They sport noise, but they have structure. Usually noise is improvisational by nature. These guys have a routine to their songs, exemplified by the fact that in the live show, all of the members except the drummer have a mountain of pedals that they press throughout the setlist. It's rehearsed. It is the same as their recordings.
They have short songs, most under three minutes. During these songs, they might go into four different tangents and sections. If I'm stripped of ideas, I go to HEALTH for inspiration. They hardly have vocals, and when they do, they're buried. Delayed and soft, I don't really care for the vocals. It's just another layer. And that's their intent.
I draw inspiration from their lack of vocals, and I put my own in.
Usually new ideas drawn from these vocal replacements lead to entirely new songs for me. The end of "In Hopes to Mend" was conceived after listening to a section in HEALTH's "Crimewave". I hear something relating to a rockabilly drawl, I'll come up with my own actual rockabilly song.
HEALTH is a hat full of random ideas written on carelessly folded pieces of paper that I draw from once in a while.
Upon entering 7th Street Entry, we first saw John, the bassist, putting out merch. My mouth got dry. "Crap, there he is!" I thought. I went up and talked to him, very awkwardly.
"Hey, how's it goin'?" I said, eyes averting his.
He said, "What's up?"
I looked at Schuyler, my companion for the evening. "You uh . . . you buyin' anything?"
He looked at my funny, like "You're acting strange."
He looked back at the merch table. "I might buy 'Get Color'."
"Yeah, me too."
John said, "Alright, that'll be twelve bucks. Let me get change," and he left with a smile.
"He smiled at me!" I thought. "Jesus, stop it!"
He came back and I had my composure. We took our CD's.
Later, I made jokes with the lead guitarist while waiting in line for the bathroom with him. I was talking to a musical hero while waiting to pee!
The show, though . . . spot on! The band is so intense . . .
The floor was packed with hipsters like you wouldn't believe, most likely wrought from Crystal Castle's version of "Crimewave", which never really did anything for me. HEALTH became known through their remixes, played on the hipster dance circuit. Standing in the crowd, I realized I was a hipster. In fact, Schuyler and I were both mistaken for HEALTH band members on two occasions by the crowd as we shuffled through. Here we have hipsters listening to music very un-hipstery. The band prides itself on being true in art, not being ironic or funny (Insane Clown Posse was playing in the Main Room, and many a joke was made at their expense from all the bands on the bill -- HEALTH's singer said "I know everyone's being ironic and funny, but I seriously walked into there just to see what it was like, and I've never seen a crowd as dumb and idiotic as that one right in there." And BOOM! they began the show). The people became un-ironic, an un-hipster thing to do. And they let go.
They began to go crazy in a Mash Pit, a culmination of moshing and dancing. Half the people in the crowd were dancing, whilst being thrown about by other, more violent hipsters. Everyone lost themselves into the music, and head banged to weird time signatures. It was amazing.
I realized this would be the crowd I'd be playing to in Patch. It was a coming of age, symbolic.
*"DIE SLOW" video*
They were so in tune to their new sound, so into each little step -- it's everything kick ass. Everyone ran to the merch booth once they were through. John, the bassist, couldn't keep up with his money handling.
I salute you, dear HEALTH. You've reached the top tier of my musical influences.
*Live on Pitchfork TV -- "ZOOTHORNS" and "CRIMEWAVE"*
Like the sighs you’ve had on corners Tipping on the borders Of so many love lives You’re at a crossroads A duel with a demon And you’ve spat in his face You found his vulnerable genitalia Pulled and ripped clean off You make him swallow them whole
Afton might finally be washed out to sea . . . Well, maybe stuck on a peninsula With sharp rocks in between me And his naked feet.
Considering the demons in my head as of late, this song of Taylor’s rang a little too close to home. A strange project to undertake as a producer/engineer . . .
With the coming autumn, one constantly thinks of impending change. The closing of the year, reflecting back on the year’s efforts. If goals had not been met, there will be only so much time to meet them.
The interlude I’ve touched on the last couple of weeks is ending this week. The time of waiting, sitting on my hands, biding my time, keeping busy under the shadow of The Lizard People, is closing. The time of “Either Shit or Get Off the Pot” is rearing it’s friendly, yet intimidating head.
I received a call from Schuyler last week, announcing his return from Europe and the Pacific, inquiring about “Schematics” related ponderings. I’ve spoken to Greg over a pint of beer, Adri after he returned from his Sharp Teeth tour. The pieces are in place.
Patch starts Sunday. And it won’t stop. 2009, and really this blog’s true intent, was about the startup of Patch. Karmath Studio has been established. There’s been a lot of lag. But it was always my wish to start the live band in Fall 2009 with at least three shows, have a sellable EP out, and have a working website online (“Coming Soon” doesn’t count). 2010 will up the anty a little. You have to start somewhere. Starting is a big leap. I’ve been working on getting to this point almost nonstop since November 2007. Researching, writing, recording, rehearsing, designing, etc.
The house is now in its post-brotherhood stage. We’ve rearranged the living areas, making it more spacious and roomy. Very lounge based. A place to read books, to feel lazy. I hope it continues to feel this way in winter, when weekends turn into bouts of laziness, and books are the only way out of succumbing to the persistent cold.
The updated living room: The updated dining room turned reading room 1: Shot 2: Blur -- "Coffee and TV"
Like any large populated city, you’ve got your run of the mill homeless people stationed at various locations along busy thoroughfares. Reliable areas that constantly have beggars coming up to cars with cardboard signs: “Hungry and homeless, God Bless”.
I’m wishy-washy on the homeless issue. On one hand I sympathize with their need. At the same time, I’ve seen the same people begging on the same street corner for five years. I give money out to those who seem to be in a bad bind, hoping to see a turnaround wrought by my handful of quarters. 99% of the time you’re feeding a drug addiction, someone who thinks it’s their job to beg. They’re not getting a job, they’re perfectly content, they’re getting what they need by begging on the street. You offer certain people leftover burgers and they look at you like you’ve just cursed at them.
Louie told me once about a homeless guy that had Taylor in his clutches. Taylor, empathetic to the core, saw a homeless guy sitting outside of a nearby grocery store in Dinkytown one New Years Day (I hope I’m getting this right). He offered to bring the guy up into his apartment and have some macaroni and cheese. The man took him up on this request and had lunch with Taylor.
Taylor saw the man on the same corner begging and again offered him some food. The man took it.
Pretty soon the man started showing up at the apartment, begging for food. Adri and Louie would wake up and find him sleeping outside on a couch perched on their balcony. The man even showed up during a sexual romp one of the guys was having with their girlfriend, peeking through the window to watch until they got up and looked for the peeping tom.
Adri had to yell at him after finding him outside on the couch, “Stay away from here!” He stopped showing up soon after. Taylor extended his hand to help someone in need . . . but it turns out he wasn’t in need, he was in want. My view is that if someone doesn’t turn their life around, they are not mentally handicapped, and they stay in the same rut day after day, they WANT that lifestyle. There are jobs. Yes, the economy is bad, jobs aren’t hiring . . . but still. If I see a lazy homeless person, persistent in their corner, they’re not getting any cash from me.
Now, granted, there are the mentally handicapped, the ones who just plain NEED money. In that case, I would want to give money to someone and escort them to the nearest shelter. One man used to come to my current house, saying he just got out of jail and needed five bucks to go to the shelter. He once fixed Louie's porch in return for ten bucks. He felt like he could come back. He got me. I gave him a couple bucks. He literally asked me if I had any more. I said, "No, sorry."
He kept showing up. Just got out of rehab the next time, asking for fifteen dollars. I said I didn't have it. He needed to stay in the shelter again. He offered to walk with me to the nearest ATM to take out money. Granted, this was at 12:30am. I was going to bed. I said sorry.
He came again another night. At 2:30am!!!! I finally started to yell. "I don't have anything, and if you come around here again I'm getting the cops! You had your chance." He started to yell, "Just a little bit, man!" I said, "No." He said, "C'MON!" I said simply, "No." And shut the door on him.
Apparently, Taylor also encountered him. At 3:00am. He woke me up pounding on the front door but I didn't answer it. Taylor did instead.
Fucking asshole.
There are panhandlers in Chicago who actually live in the suburbs, travel downtown to play their instrument, and make $100,000 a year panhandling. They WANT that lifestyle. Granted, they’re doing something they love, playing, performing. But I’m pretty sure most homeless people don’t love hand extensions, asking for money, and spreading Christian virtues. They’re lazy.
Today, I had just bought McDonald’s, and I was driving home eating french fries. I was stopped near the Walker, where a homeless guy had “Hungry and Homeless” written on a cardboard sign. I realized he may have just seen me take a handful of fries and stuff them into my mouth, and I started laughing. It was a strange situation. I felt both guilty and angry. I hid my McDonald’s bag underneath my arm, hoping he didn’t see me scarf down my junk food. The light turned green before he reached my car and I continued laughing from the sheer weirdness of it all. Maybe I was having an influx of different emotions, and I chose laughter as my way out of the cluster of thoughts.
Another time I was in a McDonald's, some guy came up to me and said, "Hey, you're Rob, right? From Dinkytown. I helped you fix that boat."
I have never owned and/or fixed a boat in my life. I said "No, I have a card." He said, "Man, just a little to take the bus over the hill." I was thinking "What hill?! There's no hill except the bridge over the Mississippi down the street. Fucking walk, jerk!" I said "No" to him.
I thought giving him McDonald’s or a dollar may not have helped in the first place. I’ve lost faith in the homeless. God does not bless a man giving another drug money, and I can’t tell the honest hands from the bad anymore.
In yesterday’s blog, I touched on my two main musical influences. The first was Nine Inch Nails, the second is The Mars Volta.
Last night I saw The Mars Volta at First Ave.
Close, intimate, surreal. I had seen the Volta at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium a year and a half ago, back on their Goliath tour, with the eight piece band. It was perhaps the better concert, in that they were all in good spirits, laughing at each other’s mistakes, improvising. You could see the friendship between the band members.
Last night they seemed to be in sour moods. Stripped of two members, the songs were less about improvisation and more about tight, coherent beginnings and endings. They dabbled in a lot of their older material, including a run of “Eunuch Provocateur” from the Tremulant EP, my personal fave of the night. Cedric went crazy, Omar even crazier.
The cherry on top was this: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez may very well be slightly second to Trent Reznor as far as my musical heroes go. Being up front, so close to my musical god, it’s surreal. There he is. But being up close and personal in the front row also lends itself to stripping away your hero’s glamour and seeing them for who they really are. Just another dude or dudette.
That being said, Omar’s fly was down the entire concert, and I couldn’t stop laughing about it . . .
*THE MARS VOLTA -- LIVE AT FIRST AVE 9.10.09 -- "VISCERA EYES"*
That’s how long Trent Reznor has been playing live under the moniker Nine Inch Nails. Tonight marked the last night of the Wave Goodbye Tour. The Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, CA. They played 38 songs, with three encores, and tons of special guests, including Mike Garson (of David Bowie fame), Dave Navarro, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Atticus Ross (Trent’s main studio cohort), and Gary Numan.
I was first introduced to NIN through a friend in fifth grade. He kept writing the famous NIN insignia on all our clubhouse posters. I asked, “What’s NIN?” He said in a bratty tone, “It’s Nin. If you don’t know what it stands for, you can’t be in the club!”
He kept yelling “Have you heard ‘Hurt’?!” I responded, “No.” “You can’t be in the club! ‘Head Like a Hole’?” “No.” “Can’t be in the club.”
A day later I heard “Head Like a Hole” on a Time Life Metal compilation commercial on TV. Then I listened to the radio all night long, mainly during the Total Request hours, on Milwaukee's Lazer 103 for “Hurt”.
I got “Closer” instead.
Not long after that, “Closer” came on the radio while my mom was driving a group of the kids she babysat (we were all the same age, our younger siblings were also present, so roughly a group of 10 and 8 year olds). The snotty know-it-all was present. The song came on and I yelled, “Mom, turn it up! It’s . . .”, I turned to the know-it-all, “NINE – INCH – NAILS!”
He said “Oh, this is the bad song.” I could tell he hadn’t heard it, but he knew of it.
The famous chorus “I want to fuck you like an animal”, bleeped of course, but we still got it, sounded. My mom said, “Oh god . . .” yet continued to keep the song on. The entire car was silent. I had never heard anything that sounded remotely like it. I was currently into Weezer, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, grunge and post-grunge. This was synth, hard, and theatrical. It took what I loved about Genesis and Queen and turned it into something forbidden.
My mom said she liked the song, but not the lyrics.
We went to Blockbuster Video soon after that and picked up the Woodstock 94 video compilation. Nine Inch Nails’ “Happiness in Slavery” was featured on it. I had never seen an act like it. The band was covered in mud, Trent was throwing mic stands this way and that, it was seven minutes of noise, screaming, and intensity. I was spellbound.
My brother bought “Further Down the Spiral” around that time, since it was one of the few NIN releases to have been sans Parental Advisory sticker. I didn’t grasp the concept of the remix album, but I was still spellbound. My brother wouldn’t let me listen to the CD, so I snuck a listen at 5:00am one morning before school. Track 2, “The Art of Self Destruction, Part 1” was what did it. This song may forever go down as one of, if not THE, most inspirational pieces of my upbringing. That, “Closer”, and the Woodstock version of “Happiness in Slavery”.
I made it my mission to buy every single Halo (the cataloguing system Trent uses to make it easy to collect official releases of his work). Parental Advisory Halos were stashed at my dad’s, where they were allowed. They wouldn’t have been if they had heard “Closer” at the time. In eighth grade I showed my stepmom “The Downward Spiral” album. She forbid the CD ever to be within earshot after she heard “Closer”, “I Do Not Want This”, and “Big Man with a Gun”, all songs about fucking.
Anybody who knows my own music can tell you my two main influences. NIN was the first and most lasting. They will always be number one in my book. So, tonight is symbolic. It’s corny, but it’s bittersweet for me to say goodbye to a legend in a live sense. Trent will continue making music as NIN, but the live splendour will not be had any longer. I’ve seen NIN live five times. The best way to end my live experiences was at the Minneapolis “Lights in the Sky Tour” stop. Front and center for the biggest show NIN will ever put on.
And now, no more . . .
*NINE INCH NAILS -- LIVE AT THE WILTERN THEATER 9.10.09 -- "WISH"*
Nine Inch Nails -- "The Art of Self Destruction, Part One"
Assholes unite once the barometric pressure goes awry.
I would research this more, but I’m sans internet at the time of writing. Whenever the kids at the school are cranky, annoying, lethargic, we tend to blame it on the barometric pressure. Today, it wasn’t the kids. It was the coworkers. Or it was just me.
I was snippy with everyone. I felt judged, I snapped back at people, I was basically unpleasant to be around. Grumpy, to say the least. A parent asked how my day was. I’m usually honest with them, which goes against what the higher ups would like us to say, I s’pose. I said, “It was a grumpy day.”
She said, “Me too! All of my coworkers felt the same!”
I said, “Yeah, I think other coworkers here are feeling it, too! Maybe it’s the barometric pressure.”
“Maybe, I said that to someone at my work. I think it’s true.”
So, what, pray tell, is the forecast for grumpiness when it comes to barometric pressure? Would I be able to tell when a high pressure system of asshole-ness will be infiltrating my psyche when I look at the weather forecast?
Is there a field of research related to the correlation between psychology and meteorology?
I had planned to write a blog about how I would kill Shannon's kitten in revenge for taking bites out of my left foot while sleeping four nights in a row, but then a coworker, who just resumed work after taking the summer off, made the original intent drab and arbitrary.
During the summer, my coworker worked at Noah's Ark, another one of my holy stomping grounds. He was a lifeguard turned manager, and I was completely intrigued by the inner workings of the waterpark. Near the end of the convo I asked him, "So, bein' that you were totally immersed in the inner gears, what are they planning for next year?"
He smiled. "Dude, it's . . . it's insane. A looping waterslide."
I gawked. "WHAT?!"
"Yeah, you stand in a telephone booth thing, then the floor drops out and you go through a speed slide into a loop."
I'm terrified. Because I know I'll have to ride it.
A day to relax, set up by the Authority of the Calendar.
I spent it driving home through the gorgeous valleys and hills of western Wisconsin, amidst the golden rays of the Harvest Sun and Christian hymms emitting from my car stereo. WPR replaced the hymms once it became too unbearable.
The farther I traveled, the more my headache disappeared.
The reason I'm in Milwaukee is so that I can see my brother off to India and Kenya. This isn't just a study abroad venture. He's been there, done that. No, he's going to LIVE in these places. I have a feeling he'll end up in Kenya for a good period of time.
My brother and I have an interesting relationship. We don't get along. In fact, whenever I'm around him I feel inferior. I feel trapped within the body of street-smartless buffoon. It's all insecurity on my part, but it's doubly magnified when I'm in the presence of my brother.
We are the complete opposite. Take a look at me, take a look at my brother, a buzzed, Abercrombie, K-Swiss rap hound. Popped collar be damned, he is the image of the Hollister Brigade's Fall Catalogue. I've got my girlish figure, my long curly locks, my hip huggin' booty jeans, small t-shirts, and dirty feet sandals. He pumps Jah Cure, I pump the Volta.
He's not being a jerk. He's not antagonistic. If something doesn't give him pleasure he'll let you know. He's quiet, he doesn't give away too much. He only says what he needs to say. But he's quick on sarcasm and wit, so he stays afloat in his social cicles. He has a strong personality. I've always had problems with strong personalities.
He loves me. I just never feel it. If one of us dies the love will be shown on each of our faces. Until then . . . I just wish I felt accepted around him. I never ridicule him, he always seems repulsed by me. He hugs me, he retracts quickly because he thinks I smell. If another family member remarks about me, "That beard is a chick magnet. Whoo!" he'll remark, "No it isn't." He means it, it's not just a harmless punch. It's a lesson he's trying to teach.
Maybe he is teaching, but it's a lesson developed by me. My brother is the instrument I can use to face my demons, of which I have many. I don't have to be bothered by anything he says. I could just say "We're different. That's it." But it's harder than that. I've never met anyone that has made me feel so uncomfortable.
We were brought up by the same parents. My parents split when we were young, and they both developed different ways of raising us. I turned out a lot like my mom, my brother turned out like my dad. This also sheds light on my relationship with my father, which is similar to the one I have with my brother. I feel judged whenever I'm around them.
Or maybe I'm judging myself and they're just repulsed at my internal battlefield. "Grow up!" they seem to glare.
I'm trying. Just not in a way they're comfortable with.
Back to Milwaukee. A secret visit sans friends. It's all family this time. And to recoop by my lonesome via Stephen King and Corona Extra.
I tend to find that I gain a large headache by the time I leave Milwaukee after trips there. Either it's from stress, or it's from being dehydrated by too much coffee and beer. Milwaukee also tends to be a place of respite, if I sought it out. If not, if people know I'm there, the phone rings 24/7 to go out to bars I feel so out of place in.
I don't mean to be rude to my friends. I need to be nice to myself. I just want to read.
Most of the time that doesn't happen. The family is all over the place, in my room, through the sunroom, the porch, etc. Milwaukee is a last resort to free peace and quiet.
So that leaves me with this thought: in order to have peace and quiet I'll have to cough up $50 to stay at a fucking motel?! Go camping?! That's a hassle in itself. It takes hard work to have peace of mind. You have to seek it in this day and age. It never just comes to you.
You need to travel hundreds of miles. You stop at a Kwik Stop. "So, eh, where you goin' buddy?" the attendant asks. You answer, "Peace and Quiet."
He shakes his head. "I've never found it, man. But good luck."
There's also the saying that peace is within. But the literature will tell you that to reach peace of mind, you must travel thousands of miles within your brain to find it.
Thousands of miles.
Shit, I'll settle for the Motel 6 down the street . . .
Rising like a demonic cube out of the wastelands of Bloomington, as if the Highway 77 commuters were wrought with consumer drought, stands IKEA, a blue behemoth of a furniture store. This isn't a review. This is about the evil clutches IKEA holds over me, and just how genius they are at wrapping an otherwise clueless consumer like myself, a young adult who could give two shits about home furnishing, turning them into an interior designing whore frothing at the mouth at the sight of every product within its padded walls.
I attribute IKEA to be not unlike the Cube of "Cube". The Cube is a prison wrought with booby traps. It is a Rubiks Cube, with a set of mathematical probabilities etched into the framework, making it so that the prisoners who mysteriously find themselves inside need to delve into their high school algebra knowledge in order to escape unscathed.
IKEA has a designated pathway. Go through the showroom, become inspired, see their products in action, feel jealous, see everyone around you succumbing to the Scandinavian greed devil, shake fervently, cry out in defeat, write down the product number of their weakness, proceed to buy the product in a huge warehouse downstairs, the pit of furniture Hell.
Today, I didn't come to IKEA with the intention of buying anything. I was helping my new roommate Emily pick up an As-is dresser. As we climbed the escalator, I didn't think anything would happen to me. Upon turning the corner, Emily went into a pre-made showroom. I followed, looking at all the products. That's when I felt the devil inside start to wake.
Opportunities opened. I saw a reading lamp over a bed and I thought, "Hey! That's nice. I wish I had a reading lamp over my bed . . . wait, it's only seven bucks . . . what's this in my pocket . . . a check card? I can . . . where's the lighting department?"
Pillows: "Hey, I have one pillow and a blanket acting as a pillow . . . maybe I can just get one . . ."
Candles: "I like candlelight. The candle holders are so cheap . . ."
Every department started to rain down possibility. I became an interior designer, needing a little bit of everything in each department. It became so consuming that I felt I NEEDED to buy things. My house wouldn't be complete without something from each department.
IKEA also spits you out into a dark parking garage once you're done. It's dark and ominious, it makes you feel guilty. It's like masturbating. It seemed somewhat dirty and pleasurable at the same time. Yeah, sure, why not, right? I'll clean up afterward, it won't be that big of a mess. Here we go . . . oh man, this gets better and better . . . oh, ohhhh, OHHHHHHH!!!! . . . fuck . . . Jesus . . . oh, man, there's shit everywhere . . . ohhhhh, why did I do that? Man, now I got to take a shower and get cleaner from underneath the sink. I hope the roommates don't see me going to the kitchen covered in goo. Why? WHY?!?!?
Apply this to IKEA . . . in the parking garage, you look at your armload of crap and think, "Oh man, why did I do this? Now I have to find a place for this shit. I don't have room . . . Goddammit, where's a towel?"
When Citizens Banned was on the fritz, Adri was secretly collaborating with a friend, Erica, playing bass for a little pet project of hers called Sharp Teeth. He would blushingly state that his new band was playing a show, while the rest of us would calmly state, "It's okay. It's okay to be in two bands, man."
CB filtered into a fraction of existence, culminating into another pet project, Lizard People. But in between CB's demise and Liz Peeps' little stint, Sharp Teeth gained recognition across the country. They were a hit band, a charting band on the college radio circuit.
Taking Riot Grrl zest and giving it a good dose of Hole and Veruca Salt, Sharp Teeth have honed their crowns to pearly whites.
Today, they kicked off their first tour at the 501 Club in Minneapolis. They'll be doing a ten day trip around the Midwest this week and next along with friends Disasteratti, who are definitely one of my new favorite local bands of the Twin Cities.
Fourth goodbye: NAME: Marta Haftek ASPIRATION: To study the intricacies and mysteries of Anthropology within the confines of a Washington State University graduate program. Post-Wash, she will travel the world in search of ways to apply her anthro-knowledge, most likely in the vein of Public Health. Epidemics and Pandemics beware, this woman will smite you! BEST MEMORY: My favorite memories of Marta probably happen to be memories best left forgotten on a conscious scale for Marta, but they are ingrained, memories that have built our friendship to what it is today. Marta would pop into my room every so often when she wasn't busy and talk about relationship woes. The door would close, tears would be shed, laughter would be had. The reason I pick these "not-so-nice" memories is because without them we wouldn't be so close. She trusted me and I trusted her. I always welcomed her talks, because they fueled future outings, such as to the post-Winnipeg Opera spin-a-thon in front of Northrup Auditorium and the front and center viewing of Nine Inch Nails' "Lights in the Sky" tour. The talks would continue until they didn't hurt so much anymore. They were now associated with positive experiences. True growth has never been so exemplified as in the presence of these experiences with Marta. It was humbling.
Third goodbye: NAME: Taylor Stevenson ASPIRATION: To suffer to the whims of his girlfriend, Marta Haftek, as she embarks on grad school in Seattle, WA. While there, he will no doubt be continuing the ongoing struggle of becoming a successfully paid screenwriter. Lately, he has had success in this field, namely in regards to his script "Comfort". Always the renaissance man, he has each finger dipped in a different brew of art and creativity simultaneously, meaning his painting will continue, his photography, his music, website design, inventions, wooing Marta, etc. Nothing beats his writing, though. God, I'm jealous of the man's ability to write. Poetic, illustrative, mature, if he keeps to it he'll be one of the greats. I hope he'll be recognized in time. BEST MEMORY: A recent event. The second Lizard People show. Our entire friendship has been one of shared stage aspirations. Taylor was the main commissioner for Citizens Banned, he was the vision behind Lizard People. We've had our ups and downs in this realm, having had many fights and disagreements. But with Lizard People we let emotions take a backseat ride and let the music do the talking. The second show occurred at the Acadia Cafe. It was a show full of laughter, of good spirits, kick ass rock, and the crowd liked us. We were in giggles the rest of the night, arms constantly around each other, friends who've learned to just go with the flow.
That's the story of Taylor and me. Learning to take things in stride. Taylor is a sponge of ideas. If you look at him you see his eyes shifting, producing new ideas every minute. The guy is a constant day dream machine. If there was nothing planned one day, if you're around Taylor, you'll develop a plan within the next hour, as he'll have something cookin' in the pot. I've also learned the most through him, having been tested in emotions and experiences. I've always come out more mature in the end. I have a lot to thank him for in regards to me growing the past three years.
From Wizard Sticks jests to 24 Hour film fests, Nine Inch Nails in the Rave to analyzing Nick Cave, covering PJ Harvey to destroying fly larvae, I've done it all with him.
It's almost like "Well . . . what am I gonna do with my free time now that Taylor's not here?"
NAME: Adri Mehra
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