BoBblog
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Wow, just... wow
I keep rereading this, waiting for it to make some kind of sense.
But each time I do I just become more and more perplexed. Is there some kind of deeper critique going on, some kind of assault on the punk/hippy dichotomy? Simon Reynolds comments "this lot don't seem to quite have a grip on the philosophy of the Situationiste International," but possibly they have a very high level meta-detournement going on? Some sly... Idunno, calling into question of the utility of art or protest in our post-post-everything age?
Or do these people really actually just think that the Sex Pistols were around in 1968?
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Bit of meandering to follow, fair warning.
Meandering. I've already sidetracked myself. Was gonna talk about music to start with, but instead my own use of 'meandering' made me think of Sunday afternoon. Beautiful afternoon. Folks at The Bike Rack were planning a group ride that morning, but at 8:30 AM. I have trouble getting up at 9 on a weekday, plus hadn't gotten home from the Job until 2:30 AM. I considered joining another group ride I'd learned of which started at 10 AM, but ended up sleeping until 1 PM. For the best, really, as I was finally able to shake the tiredness I'd long had from waking every morning STARVING-- just too hungry to sleep any longer. Don't ask. Yes I eat!
But it was a perfect day for a ride: overcast but with no sense of impending rain, warm but with a cool breeze. Still in mind of a group ride, I headed first to the Cafe, former source of caffeine and income, to see if any other of the American Gladiators was about. I found two, but one was working, the other just leaving for work. So I went off on my own.
(elided by that last sentence was my unfortunate and ill-considered... nono, never mind)
My route (hence meander):
Up 14th street, left on Park, across RCP on Tilden (some joker on a fixie passed me on the uphill, but I was just warming up), left on Connecticut and down past the Zoo to Woodley, right on Calvert (past the Job), down 24th to the Rock Creek Trail... up to Beach Drive (which is closed to motor traffic on weekends, when it is taken over by cyclists, bladists, and pedists). I didn't realize I'd left the District until I hit the East-West Highway, although according to my map I'd been out of it for a bit of a bit. So? So I kept going, why not? And found the Georgetown Branch Trail... except that it was closed down and so I ended up following a breadcrumb trail detour in what I can only suspect were circles or at least ovals or ellipses... some form of conical section perhaps but which finally put me on the Capital Crescent Trail: Chevy Chase, through Bethesda, eventually down to Georgetown (I made a stop at the suburban City Bikes location (restrained myself from asking why they weren't called Suburb Bikes) and bought a blinkyblinky light for my bag-- bright blinky motorist blinding red thing fit for a rave!). Approaching Georgetown I was struck by a thought: I'd already been to Maryland, why not add Virginia to the list? And so across the bridge to Rosslyn and up the hill to Clarendon, where I stopped at the Murky and bought some Bolivian beans, refilled my water bottle, ran into the barista who usually works their Capitol Hill location on Thursdays, read a bit from "V." (I had no recollection whatsoever of Evan Godolphin's reappearance, and had not previously noticed V.'s rat-shared name in this final chapter). Then back to Georgetown and to Logan by familiar tangled routes, stopping there for a beer, a veggie burger, and another of L's "every time I tell a story about Joe, it could be the one that ends 'and that's how Joe died'" stories about Joe, then finally home.
So, that's Sunday. No good segue or meander into what I was originally going to talk about, except to say that I wrote it all listening to Blonde Redhead's new "23," which I'm digging despite its overproduction. The My Bloody Valentine comparisons it's been getting are mainly only applicable to its (pig-friggin' brilliant) first track. I'd heard grumblings of it being too radio-friendly... but if BR have a radio hit I will first off: be entirely shocked and secondly: not begrudge it them at all.
Which segues into bad news which I will not share in ways that I would not reveal under threat of waterboarding.
As a brief update: Simon Reynolds still kicks butt, if only for hepping me to the astonishingly brilliant k-punk.
Wait... did I never actually post my first Simon Reynolds fellation? Ah crup...
