The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

'Cos I need cheering up: a contentless post

Unless you count embedded content, that is! Ha-ha!

("Pronounced with an 'umpty.' ")

Also, the creepiest video of all time:

And one more funny one, because that was just downright scary.

Summer... was that the one you had in mind? Hee hee...

Are we having fun yet?

Doesn't look like it, does it?

In fact, it sort of looks like these folks (three of whom are apparently members of the Matching Douchebag Hat Society) are in line at the low-income medical clinic waiting to get their gonorrhea test results back. And they're watching the most recent patient doing the walk of shame back toward the parking lot, thinking to themselves, "This is sort of an embarrassing place to be, but at least I can get this whole mess cleared up with a brief course of antibiotics."

You'd never know they were actually at Holocene, a club in Portland that puts on pretty good shows a fair number of nights per week, watching Strangers Die Every Day, a string trio/rock band with a beautiful godspeed you! black emperor-ish vibe and an amazing stage presence, would you?

So listen. I love Portland. I love living here; I love the restaurants, the bridges, the live music every-freakin-where you go, the fascinating fashion combinations and so on. But this is a thing I've noticed since the first show we went to here, and it bugs the hell out of me every time:

If you are too cool to enjoy yourself at a show, you are too cool to be there at all. And so you should probably stay home.

Jim and I went to Someday Lounge on Saturday night to see a trifecta of bands: Bodhi, Eternal Tapestry (yes! it is the goofiest name ever for a band!) and Modey Lemon. All the bands were good; we went because we'd heard fine things about Bodhi, but everyone ended up putting on a pretty swell show. Eternal Tapestry was the biggest surprise of the night: their guitarist, who was a very unassuming-looking and rather nerdish fellow, ended up shredding in major Guitar Hero hip-thrusting axe-slamming guitar-strap-snapping style. And Modey Lemon (straight outta Pittsburgh!), all three of whose members looked remarkably like refugees from Stillwater (the band in Almost Famous, if you don't want to look it up) freakin rocked. They were amazing--heavy and solo-ey without being jammy or noodley (both of which traits are the kiss of death as far as I'm concerned... I don't want to feel like I've accidentally wandered into a Phish concert, for god's sake).

So there's all this fine music happening on stage in a fine venue (Someday Lounge is beautifully nicely laid out for a small club). And Jim and I are having a fine time... you know, a little head-bobbing, a little toe-tapping, nothing egregious. (Nobody loves the solo hippie dancer who seems to show up at every free show on the planet, twirling and waving her arms about like a sad little Deadhead kelp strand.)

And pretty much everybody else in the place is standing there, arms crossed, super-blase cranky expressions on their chin-pubed faces, as chock-full of enthusiasm as a box of All-Bran. Smiling is uncool, you know, as is clapping or, heaven forbid, shaking your booty a little bit.

I can't even imagine how disheartening it must be for a band to be putting their hearts into a show (especially those bands who have to schlep their own gear... gee whiz), rocking too hard for just one hand, and then to look down and see a bunch of po-faced knuckleheads standing there concentrating on maintaining the Facade of Eternal Hipness.

Seriously, people, if you can't just stay home and suffer your angst in private, can you at least get away from the front of the stage so those of us who are actually there to enjoy ourselves can get a better look?

Portland, get over yourselves! Have fun or get out!

Gooooooals

1. Get my feature outlined today and written by the end of the day on Thursday.
2. Get my photo column outlined today and written by the end of the day tomorrow.
3. Go through submissions for my techniques column by the end of the day Monday. Collaborate with April on submissions, get them finalized by the end of the day Wednesday and get the copy written by the end of the day Friday.
4. Get 1000 words written on The Book every day between now and July 16.
5. Have the Best Anniversary Ever on Tuesday. Jim says he's already planned an evening full of stimulating surprises and exciting allsortsathings. Including dinner at a place he will not yet name, but which I'm kinda hoping might be Clarklewis. Or Park Kitchen. Or, y'know, whatever.
6. Have a thoroughly amazing, guilt-free, 100% metal time at the Mastodon show Thursday night. (Oh yes. I am going to see Mastodon. The awesomeness is palpable, even if I am going all by myself.)

Here's their video for "Blood and Thunder" for you to enjoy...

And here's a compilation of Gooooooooals. (Sorry about the Linkin Park.)

Why I can't get anything done

Having had this song stuck in my head for the last three days might have something to do with it.

Music notes

I got an e-mail from a previously-unbeknownst-to-me person the other day who'd stumbled across the Pic-Dem via a comment I'd left at another blog:

While scrolling down the page, I noticed the cover art of Mastodon’s Leviathan on display.  Can I take this to mean that you are personally endorsing this album? Would I be safe in assuming that you believe as I do that this album fucking rules?

Regards,
[redacted]

So I figured I had a great excuse to spend some time nattering on about music.

First of all: yes, in fact, Leviathan does in fact fucking rule. I listen to it a lot. It's loud. It's metally. It's about Moby Dick, for crying out loud. And Remission is almost as good. But I haven't had it as long, and it's growing on me.

After a lengthy-ish hiatus from metal--I dropped out when "nu-metal" became the misbegotten spawn of the day--I've been picking up the pieces recently and listening to a lot of, er, progressive metal. Seriously. It's like the best thing ever for listening to while writing. Except for film soundtracks... but see Fantomas' The Director's Cut for a doubleplusgood rendering of both, sorta, in an inimitable Mike Patton sort of way, featuring Slayer's Dave Lombardo on drums. And the two genres have quite a bit in common, what with the loud-quiet-loud intervals and the deeply atmospheric arrangements. (Hee hee. I said "deeply atmospheric arrangements." Whatta douchebag.)

Anyway. What I really wanted to tell you all about, in case you've been living deep under a rock and haven't heard yet, is the new Portishead album, Third. Oh. My. Heavens. Beth Gibbons' voice has gotten only more gorgeously anguished and shivery during their decade-long hiatus, and the new songs all feature a more brittle, less trippy edge that gives the whole record an incredible sense of nervous immediacy.

So basically, even if you just completely skipped over that whole semi-nonsensical last paragraph, you should go out and buy (or stay home and download) Third. That's Third, by Portishead, and it's their Third album.

Also: did you get your CD yet? I made it to the post office. Actually, that's a lie. Long-suffering Beloved Sweetie made it to the post office. I have been trapped in the midst of self-loathing deadline-looming depressive freakout and haven't really gone much of anywhere... except to Summerfest at Village Home today, where I worked the concession table and repeated the sentences "Pie is two tickets a slice" and "The drinks are in the cooler by your feet" approximately 10¹⁷ times each. Good times, good times.

The gentle art of playlisting

Some of you may remember that I used to have a radio show once upon a time, and that my very most favoritest part of having that show was spending hours designing The Perfect Playlist. One of my show's reasons for existence was to play as much music off the "new rack" as possible (for those of you who have never had occasion to spend time in a radio station: the "new rack" is where some percentage of the fifty kajillion CDs that your music director receives every week end up in the hopes that some of the DJs will pick some of them up and give some of them airplay).

So I tried to do a healthy mix of about two-thirds stuff that I brought with me, one-third stuff I had probably never heard until my audience heard. This was always a little scary but a little thrilling. What if the new track sucked? (Sometimes it did.) What if it clashed wildly with the vibe I had been trying to project? (Often it did.) What if I loved it so much that I couldn't think of something suitable to follow it up with? (This actually happened rather more often than you'd imagine, especially because I used Trevor's recommendations as a guide to off-the-cuff music picking.)

Making a playlist that you're managing start to finish is scary and thrilling in a different way. This playlist being, of course, the one that I'm sharing with those good folks who were good enough to comment on the three-year-anniversary post (and some of you who didn't but who need this CD anyway). What to include? What to leave out? How to pack my limited 75 minutes with maximum musical value? (Like, frex, I really really want to put some godspeed you! black emperor on there but their songs are all like seventeen minutes long so that's not going to work.)

And what is too polarizing, offensive or just plain weird to include? (So far: Mos Def's "Close Edge," Peaches' "Fuck the Pain Away" (link goes to an outstanding but sadly NSFW video) and Reggie and the Full Effect's cover of Slayer's "South of Heaven.") And does its timeworn tiresomeness outweigh the pure karaoke-style belt-along enjoyment of "Fairytale in New York" ("You're a bum, you're a punk/ You're an old slut on junk")? (You have no idea how difficult that last sentence was to punctuate. I'm flying blind here.)

And, most importantly of all, how does one song flow into the next? Sometimes you just find that magical combination of rhythm and chord and weird little thing with the melody that makes you go "oh, yeah." And then that gorgeous chilly shiver climbs up your spine and just about brings you to tears, because music is really the best, the best thing of all. Writing, cooking, science all be damned. I'd throw them all over in one hot minute for a single juicy chunk of genuine musical talent.

Hey, if you're a confirmed playlister and you want to play along, please feel free to post a 75-minutes-or-less playlist either on your own blog or here and shoot me a trackback. I want to know what you're listening to and perhaps even why.

Update: OK, I think I'm pretty happy with this playlist. The songs seem to have a reasonably clean flow, and they kind of progress from upbeat-but-not-necessarily-happy to downright-melancholy, finishing out with a lovely Brad Mehldau jazz instrumental. (No, not that kind of jazz instrumental, blargh.) And I'm including this one Stars song that I really really like even though it's probably twee and ridiculous. Don't. Freakin. Care.

Why, oh why, can't I just get paid to sit around and make playlists all day? Where have I gone wrong in my career management choices? (All two of them...)

Physics makes us all its bitches

Sam posted a music video (Dead Prez's "Hip Hop," totally worth watching), and so I thought I ought to post one too. Bandwagons for everybody!

This is Of Montreal's "Gronlandic Edit," one of my favoritest songs ever. And a head-hurty strange video. And the line I loved so much I made it into a t-shirt.

And, in the endless quest to Get Shit Handled, I went through and archived all my e-mail messages. And accidentally deleted a whole bunch of them, because, y'know, my shit ain't that handled yet. So if you were expecting an e-mail from me and I didn't e-mail you back, um, that's my excuse.

And now, because at least I can see the top of my desk and I feel like maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel ("the light you see at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of a fast-approaching train"... anyone? anyone?...), I have about an hour or so (wow, profligacy!) to work on the beautiful gorgeous wonderful CD of super-high-quality music I'm going to send to all you mo-fos who commented on the third anniversary post (thankyou thankyou, and I think we still have like 5 slots left if you don't want to miss out on the excitement) and do my utmostest to get out on Friday (yeah that'll happen, let's make it next Friday and maybe then we'll be living in the realm of realism).

(You know what's great about being in a manic phase, besides the generally cheery mood? The sheer number of parenthetical statements one can cram into a single sentence, that's what.)

(Wow, it's going to be a doozy a couple days from now.)

Nothing to do with me

Because nothing says "blogatorial creativity" like a stolen meme, I've taken this one from Amy--thanks, Amy!--and had the chance to do some random listening.

Wanna play? Here are the rules... let me know if you join in the colossal funtime.

1. put your music player on shuffle
2. press forward with each question
3. use the song title as the answer to the question - EVEN if it doesn't make any sense whatsoever - NO CHEATING!*

*Yeah, I cheated on a couple of them, but mostly just because the first songs that came up were instrumentals and not really suitable for the subject. Where actual skip-a-song cheating occurred, I noted the fact.

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
"I Will (No Man's Land)" by Radiohead. "I will lay me down in a bunker underground/ I won't let this happen to my children." Startlingly apropos, and also one of the most depressing Radiohead songs out there, which is really saying something.

WHAT'S YOUR OUTLOOK ON LIFE?
"5:15 The Angels Have Gone" by David Bowie. "Train overdue, angels have gone/ No ticket/ I'm jumping tracks/ I'm changing trains." Chronic restlessness and purposeless dissatisfaction? No, that doesn't ring any bells...

WHAT DOES YOUR FAMILY THINK OF YOU?
"Long Way Home" by Tom Waits. "I put food on the table and a roof overhead/ But I'd trade it all tomorrow for the highway instead." Well, gosh. I hope they don't think I'm thinking that. I mean, I might think it sometimes, but I don't mean it. Or at least I only mean it temporarily.

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
"Expectations" by Belle and Sebastian. Yes, I do so like Belle and Sebastian. They rock. So shut up. "Your obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strange." Hmmm. Doesn't sound familiar either...

WHAT DO STRANGERS THINK OF YOU?
"Radio Song" by R.E.M. "When I got to the house and I called you out/ I could tell that you had been crying, crying." Does that have anything to do with the knuckleheads who yell "Smile, sweetie!" at me when I mope past them on the street?

WHAT DO YOUR EXES THINK OF YOU?
"Down to This" by Soul Coughing. It starts out "No no no no no no no no no no," which is terribly funny and probably exactly what my exes think of me. Ha ha! I'm the one that got away and brought happiness to their lives thereby!

HOW IS YOUR LOVE LIFE?
"Where Is My Love?" by Cat Power. "Where is my love?/ Safe and warm/ So close to me/ In my arms/ Finally." Hells yeah! (This is a lovely and romantic song, BTW. And it has a not-too-hard piano riff which might be kind of fun to figure out in my copious spare time.)

HOW WILL YOUR LOVE LIFE BE IN THE FUTURE?
"Don't Ask Me Why I Drink" by Mojo Nixon. "Don't ask me why I drink/ The reason's worse than you think." Oh goody! Jim and I can grow old and bitter and alcoholic together. Sounds like fun.

WILL YOU GET MARRIED?
"They Never Got You" by Spoon. OK, it's probably a little late for warnings, but they certainly don't seem to think marriage is a good idea for me: "Cover the path to the heart/ And don't let those footholds start/ And don't let no one in/ 'Cause they never got you and you never got them."

WILL YOU HAVE KIDS?
Once again, a tad late for forecasting, but... "Christmas in July" by Sufjan Stevens. "If I miss my chance, I didn't even try/ I'm not one to regret Christmas in July." Huh. Well, honestly, I didn't want kids and had no intention of ever having them, and then I somehow ended up with these two awesome little nutcase crazy-makers. So I guess this is righter-on than it sounds.

ARE YOU GOOD AT SCHOOL?
"How Soon Is Now?" by The Smiths. Well, it doesn't really say anything about how I did in school academically (either terribly, considering my Untapped Potential my parents/teachers were always on about, or pretty damn well, considering my abysmal attendance rate and total lack of interest in the subject). But it's spot-on about how I did socially in school, i.e., Not Well. "You shut your mouth! How can you say/ I go about things the wrong way/ I am human and I need to be loved/ Just like everybody else does."

WILL YOU BE SUCCESSFUL IN LIFE?
OK, I admit that the first song that came up was "Necrophobic" by Slayer ("Ripping apart, severing flesh, tearing eyes, gouging limb from LIIIIIMMMMMMB") and so I'm cheating on this one. Either that or I'm totally fooling myself. (Though if I could shred a guitar solo even 10% as well as Jeff Hanneman does on this track I would truly have found success in life.) How about "It Won't Happen Twice" by M. Ward instead? "And disaster has riddled my body with holes/ But it won't happen twice, my friend." That's either encouraging or depressing as hell.

WHAT SONGS SHOULD THEY PLAY ON YOUR BIRTHDAY?
"Have a Drink on Me" by AC/DC. I have no problem with this one. I might have a problem paying for all the drinks, though.

WHAT SONG SHOULD THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
"Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve. No argument here either; that's pretty freakin' perfect.

THE SOUNDTRACK OF YOUR LIFE
"U-Mass" by the Pixies. "Redneckers they get us pissed." No quarrel there. "It's educational! It's educational! It's educational! It's educational! It's educational!" All righty then!

YOU AND YOUR BEST FRIEND ARE . . .
"Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games" by Of Montreal. "Let's have bizarre celebrations/ Let's forget who forget what forget where." I'm not really sure how this applies, but maybe the general silliness of the song could be applied to the general silliness of my friend-type relationships.

HAPPY TIMES?
"Disco Infiltrator" by LCD Soundsystem, which is one of those songs that makes you make involuntary dancing-type movements and may even cause spontaneous grooving. And it's one of the songs in steady rotation on my "going for a walk" playlist, which makes it a happy song because going for a walk makes me happy. And it also contains the oddly comforting sentiment "Bear in mind, we all fall behind from time to time."

SAD TIMES?
"Pie Jesu" by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and shut up, it's from Requiem which is a lovely album and not at all showtunesy so shut up. And it's "pee-yay" not "pie" as in "apple." And it's a gorgeous song where Sarah Brightman's voice does that wonderful shivery thing and I quite like it and yeah, it's pretty sad too. Even if it is in Latin and she could really be singing about Jesus pie for all I know.

EVERYDAY?
"Harrowdown Hill" by Thom Yorke. Another cheery missive full of hope and personal strength! "I can't take the pressure/ No one cares if you live or die/ They just want me gone." Totally feeling you, Thom. Want to go console each other somewhere with a bottle of Cointreau?

FOR TOMORROW?
"Sex Love & Money" by Mos Def. Yay, that sounds like a great day right there.

FOR YOU?
"Squeeze Me Macaroni" by Mr. Bungle, which is a beautifully obscene song about sex and food linked in a crazy hyperspeed staccato tandem. "I wanna lock Betty Crocker in the kitchen/ Knock her upper during supper/ Clutter up her butter gutter/ Hostess Ding Dong wrapped an egg roll around my wong/ While Dolly Madison proceeded to ping my pong," and that's about the only part I can even quote here. Freakin' brilliant. And Kerri Vinyard and I memorized it in high school and used to shriek it, gleefully, at the top of our lungs while driving around in my mom's minivan during school hours. (Sorry, Mom.) Not sure what it has to do with "for me," except that maybe it's a reminder that when things are sucky, bitter and crappy, all you need is a good friend to go joyriding with and a loud ridiculous song to sing. Or, y'know, to "give it a little Flavor Flav, back from the grave."

WHAT DOES NEXT YEAR HAVE IN STORE FOR ME?
"Ever Fallen in Love" by Pete Yorn. Why yes; yes, I do own the Shrek 2 soundtrack. You wanna make something of it? (We bought it because it was, at the time, the only way to get Tom Waits' "Little Drop of Poison." But it turned out to have several other swell songs on it, so hey, bonus.) The only relevance this song seems to have to future-ness is a little disheartening: "I can't see much of a future/ Unless we find out who's to blame." Hmm. I say we blame it all on me and then we can sally forth with confidence!

WHAT DO I SAY WHEN LIFE GETS HARD?
"Southside" by Common. "Know when to use a bible and when to use a rifle." Well, I never use either, but I can identify with the general sentiment.

WHAT SONG WILL I DANCE TO AT MY WEDDING?
Once again, late out of the starting gate for this one. But hey, what we actually danced to was "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?" The Van Morrison and the Chieftains version. Also, if I remember correctly, "Give It Away" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which was rather livelier. iTunes, though, thinks I should ought to have danced to "Muddy River" by Laurie Anderson, which, if you've ever heard it, you will know is pretty damn near impossible.

WHAT DO YOU WANT AS A CAREER?
"Amazon" by M.I.A. Well, I've never actually considered it before, but now that it's come up, I actually can't think of a much better job than being a bare-breasted warrior woman, especially if it means I get to hang out with Xena.

YOUR FAVORITE SAYING?
"Mr. Mastodon Farm" by Cake. Maybe not my favoritest favorite saying, but the phrase "Birds fall from the window ledge above mine" does in fact get tossed around at my house more often than you might think. No, I have no idea why.

THE SONG THAT YOU WILL PUT AS YOUR SUBJECT?
Like Amy, I totally cheated on this one. "Little Drummer Boy" (Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra) was just nonsensical, and "Opinion" by Nirvana a little too obvious. "Nothing to Do with Me" (Stereolab) strikes that perfect balance of pithy and wildly inaccurate. And it has the immortal line "You're not a doctor, you're a wanker." So there we go...

Spontaneous musical theater

This would almost be worth going to the food court for. Almost. I had to go to the Lloyd Center Mall the other day, accidentally took the escalator a floor higher than I meant to and was trapped for nearly thirty seconds in the unmitigated hell-stench of the combined odors of Panda Express, Sbarro "pizza" and Arby's au jus.

1096 days

That's three years, plus an extra day for leap year.

That's how long it's been since the Pic-Dem's inauspiciousish inception on March 28, 2005. (How happy I was to discover that my alltime favorite word, "Alas," made a special guest appearance in this inaugural post.)

Golly! So many days. So many posts (this, fascinatingly enough, is #555). So many posts about nothing. So many commenters who have since ceased to comment. Guess I just wasn't doing it for them. I miss you, Elaine!

And three--count 'em, three--reliable commenters since the earliest times: my beloved Herm, the darling and precocious Summer and the ever-fabulous Stephanie. Rock the hell on, ladies!

Which brings us to the next part: celebratory goodies! For those three commenters, I have reserved an extra-special basket (well, bag... baskets are kind of twee) of sumptuous and varied delights. (Which is my way of saying I don't know exactly what's going in them yet.) For anyone else who's interested, up to a maximum of 20 (ha, like 20 people have ever commented on any one post here), I am assembling a fine high-quality CD of Pic-Dem -related- and/or -inspired music which is sure to bring delight and/or distress to your ears. Just leave a comment with your e-mail address and I'll e-mail you to find out where to send your package. (Huh-huh. "Package.")

Anyway... thanks for three exciting and fun-filled years... hang in there, I've probably got at least one more year of fear and self-loathing (Jim thinks the blog's subtitle should be "Fear and Self-Loathing in Portland") to unload on you. Woo-hoo! Cheers!

(In case you're interested... for the Pic-Dem's first anniversary, I spewed some metrics on the blog so far, and for the second anniversary, I made cupcakes.)