The 5 Habits of Highly Successful Indie Rockers

Thumbs up on last night's Calexico/Iron & Wine show. I've come to the conclusion, though, that unless you are really going to rock so hard that people are dancing--OR I love you and your music so much that nothing else matters--three hours is a long time to stand in one place, vaguely bobbing my head and shifting from foot to foot.

Sometime around the third Iron & Wine song, it also occurred to me that you could be Sam Beam in just a few easy steps:

1) Grow chest-length beard.
2) Write gorgeous (and sort of boring) songs that rely heavily on images of the following: dogs (dirty, drinking from cups, etc.); birds, particularly crows; and sad people. I had a better list last night, but time is cruel to my memory.
3) Perform these songs in a soft lulling voice that gets a bit louder when you get worked up during your more rockin' songs. Fans will eat it up when you enter vocal territory that is more "rousing mid-tempo" than "art professor on a 4-track in his bedroom."
4) Totally get shown up by artist/singer Salvador Duran, who busts out some operatic range and wicked mouth percussion and flamenco guitar and coyote yips. Top that!
5) Don't forget to wear a striped scarf.

Confidential to Anonymous

Hey, if all your jokes depend on the listener being aware of the subtle differences between various left-wing political movements, you may want to keep that in mind when you lament the fact that you can't get laid.

Piss and Moan

To recap my last 18 hours:

I went to a great meeting of young feminists, came home, ate a salad, drank some wine, argued with the Manfriend about canon-making and the ways in which we talk about art, argued with the Manfriend for real about stupid stuff, made up, went to bed way too late, woke up to another FREEZING day of ass-chapping temperatures, came to work on a packed train of chronic flatulators, then sat at my desk for four hours getting up the energy to get a cup of coffee.

And now I'm writing an email to tell our student workers how to use our stupid new database. The email's full of marvy sentences like: "Under the 'Time' section, check the box marked 'Completed,' which will cause a little date box to open. Type the date in that box." Yeah, that's right, the date! In the date box!

It could be worse, though! My office could be under renovation and paint fumes could be wafting in my door even as we speak!

Oh wait.

Yes, as Month Two of the Great Leap Forward continues here at the People's Republic of DoGooding, my wee workspace reeks of Benjamin Moore in an antiseptic shade of white that makes my face hurt. Such is life, though, when progress is on the line.




Currently reading: No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again, by Edgardo Vega Yunque. I love the way he piles on the words and images, then twists them just a bit to make unexpected connections. I'll reread some of his sentences, thinking, did he really just do that? I wish I had the book here so I could pull out one of his more astounding sentences. It's not just facile writerliness, though, but (I think) an attempt to get at the multitudes contained by the characters in a novel concerned with identity (on many levels), race, jazz, and politics. I'm only on page 18, but he seems to be pulling off the neat tricks better in this work than in The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Loisada Jungle.

The Longest Day That Has Ever Been

Whenever I confess to my boss that I am bone tired, like I am today, she always asks, in a tone worthy of an interrobang, "Are you pregnant?!"

The answer, unless my sweet NuvaRing has let me down, is a resounding, "NO." Knock on wood.

But the fact remains that I have achieved a state of profound lethargy and mental dullness that began its onset 'round lunchtime, when I began sorting three years' worth of my union's financial paperwork into some semblance of chronological order. I followed that up with even more tedious crap that I can't bring myself to describe, lest my brain actually shrivel up and fall out of my ear. I can only hope that the evening will bring with it a raft of hedonistic pleasures.

Sadly, my plans so far seem to be the gym and a delicious dish called "Arabian Spinach," that I will whip up for myself and the Manfriend in a frenzy of domestic bliss. Later, we'll wild out with a bottle of wine and a game of Scrabble, followed by a nightcap of Ensure and prunes, and the mutual plucking of gray pubes. Old age has never looked so good!

To your health!
No, to our health!