Poptarticus

Year: 2007

  • Something to Talk About

    Is the blog dead? Not just my blog, but everyone’s blog? It’s not what it used to be, let’s face it.

    If you have a blog, and you don’t write in it all the time, then it is not a blog. Right?

    Tomorrow I head to Berlin, a city that I have wanted to experience forever. Another transatlantic flight, another valium, another night passed in that weird void that takes me from California to another planet. When I get there I will be with family. I have never been picked up at a European airport by family before. I can’t tell you what a bonus that is; it’s like flying first class or something.

    In the end, I belong to big cities like Berlin. Amazing things will happen. More from the road.

  • Sunday Brunch with Wilco

    Wilco will be streaming their new record, Sky Blue Sky, again tomorrow… head over to Wilcoworld and check it out. The hours are:

    2 pm – 2 am GMT
    10 am – 10 pm EASTERN
    7 am – 7 pm PACIFIC

    and 1 am – 1 pm AEDT – Monday
    (Yo Lisa, check it out.)

    I love that Wilco does this stuff. They are awesome.

  • Sad and Beautiful Mark

    I never wrote about February 9th’s Sparklehorse show at the Henry Fonda Theater in L.A. It was the last night of one straight month on the road, and when I got home, well, I didn’t really feel like writing about much of anything. If it had been some mind-blowing show a la Eels I might have been forced by experience to write about it, but it wasn’t. It was merely a good show, and especially good for people like me: the People Who Love Mark Linkous.

    Mark Linkous IS Sparklehorse. He’s this sort of quiet, mellow, introverted, mysterious, enigmatic, tripped out genius. His records are, at the same time, scratchy and harsh and lush and gorgeous; his songs are discordant lullabies. He’s a studio guy, a loner, a dude who probably won’t be looking for a blow job after a show. (Not that I know of, but what do I know? Maybe he is totally looking for a blow job after the show.)

    I saw Sparklehorse in Germany once, and it was a quiet and mellow show, so quiet and mellow that on the night of the L.A. show I almost wanted to drive straight home instead of stopping in L.A. But I couldn’t help myself, so stop I did.

    The show was, well, like the one in Germany, with an adoring L.A. audience who all love Mark Linkous. It only lasted an hour, but there were moments of true beauty and I was very happy I went in the end.

    The reason I bring this up after all this time is, Bradley has the Boston show up on his blog, and listening to all the songs again is bringing it all back. It is really great stuff – check it out.

  • My Place

    Is it just me, or is this year flying by?

    My brother Tom, who moved to Berlin last month, now has a myspace music page. I find this pretty humorous, as even though I am an internet junkie I would never have a myspace page. That’s what I have this website for, I guess. I can have a page AND control it. Plus, I can see all the sick and twisted things people search for in my site. And I never have to invite anyone to be my “friend.”

    I guess if I were a musician I would have a myspace page and I encourage all you myspacers to head to Tom’s page and sign up to be his “friend.”

    In other news, the new Arcade Fire record is out and it is dark and deep and crazy. Kind of sags in the middle a bit, but it’s pretty epic. I have also heard the new Wilco , and as you all know I am sort of a freak about Wilco, so of course these are Happy Times for me. What do I think? It doesn’t have the harsh creativity of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or the orgasmic reverb of A Ghost is Born, so at first I was, well, unsure. It’s one of those records that grows on you, slowly, and I am starting to really love it. After a while you start thinking about how it will sound live.

    So how will it sound live? AWESOME. It’s sounding more and more awesome even as we read.

    This morning I got an email from the Lollapalooza people and they were selling tickets for sixty bucks for all three days; even though I can’t really afford it I tried to buy a ticket. So I got in the waiting cue and waited, and waited, and waited. After an hour I gave up. Oh well.

    Myspace. Giggle. Tommy must have a lot of time on his hands.

  • Vincent Spano, where are you?

    Yesterday I got an early morning call that The Shins have a San Diego date, and that tickets were going on sale today.

    It’s true, they are coming to San Diego, but for some reason this is all totally under the radar. I bought tickets on the Shins website YESTERDAY. Just like that, got tickets. No racing heart, no trying to put the stupid code into a box on Ticketmaster and failing to get it right three times as the clock ticks.

    They are playing at the hated SOMA, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? Lucky San Francisco gets them for two nights at the Warfield. Tickets go on sale at Ticketmaster tomorrow but you can get them from the Shins website TODAY. Go! Go!

    Mark is pretty bummed about the SOMA thing. We both HATE that venue. And they are playing a show in Berlin just a few days after I get home (causing me to go into fits.) Still, I am just happy that I got tickets, because I love, love, love this band.

    Arcade Fire at the Greek in Berkeley also goes on sale tomorrow at 10:00. This year is looking pretty stellar so far, show wise. I’m kind of jealous of the Bay Area peeps at the moment, but having tickets to see Arcade Fire in Berlin doesn’t suck, does it?

    This is totally cool. Someone morphed the fight scene from Rumble Fish and Arcade Fire’s Intervention. Motorcycle Boy!

    Also, whatever happened to Vincent Spano?

  • Continental Lift

    I am home. I got home yesterday, and I feel very, very lucky that American was kind enough to get me out of Houston on a Continental flight. Lots of people were stranded. Maybe I would still be there, I don’t know. All I know is I am very thankful I didn’t get stranded for very long.

    Yesterday was my first Continental Airlines flight in, I think, something approaching twenty years. I’m scrunching up my forehead now, trying to remember if I have flown them in the near or even not so near past, and I don’t think so. The last time I flew on Continental was so crazy and out of control weird and so completely impossible in the world we live in now, that I feel compelled to write about it. In twenty years, everything has completely changed.

    In 1987 and 1988 I lived in New Jersey for a time – I moved there for love, but it was a sick and twisted love. Fucked up, alcoholic, kicked in the face kind of love. About halfway through my ten month sentence I decided I was going home for a couple of weeks, and when I say I decided, I mean I decided. I drank a few coconut margaritas and the next thing I knew I was at Newark airport. I had no ticket, and to make matters worse I had no cash. All I had was something like two hundred bucks in the bank and my checkbook. Who the hell was I kidding? I wasn’t going to get out of New Jersey and back to California on that. Not on an airplane, anyway.

    So me and my boyfriend are at Newark airport, and even though he is an asshole in general he sees the desperation and wants to help me get home for a while. At the counter, we are told by the agent that we are trippin’. Airlines don’t book tickets at the last minute for $200, and they don’t take checks. The fare is something like $350 in cash. (I had no credit in those days, I’d already crashed and burned as a college student with a Visa card.)

    I was not surprised to find my hopes dashed. But as we walked away the agent called out my boyfriends name. Turns out, they went to high school together and while my boyfriend was currently a total dick, in high school I guess he was something of a legend. That was all it took – within minutes I had a ticket for a flight for San Francisco that I had purchased with the dregs of my checking account. As impossible as this seems in 1987, now it is just, well, Totally Impossible.

    It gets better. On this Continental aircraft flying from Newark to San Francisco, they had a BAR. One you could go up and stand at! Sit at! Drink at! Have conversations with other passengers and flight attendents at! They were trying to make flying fun, so they put a bar in on the friggen plane. The thought of being able to get up and go hang out at a bar on an airplane is so weird and random and impossible now that if I had not experienced it once myself, I am not sure I would believe it really existed.

    Our flight was delayed three hours, so drinks were free. DRINKS WERE FREE, AT A BAR, ON A PLANE. It’s true, I swear it. I drank heavily with a bunch of surfers and it was really fun, but then things got a little out of control and they made us go back to our seats. I can still see all those mini bottles of Chivas and Stoli rolling around on that bar – it was insane. Insane, and fun. What happened? Flying is definitely not fun anymore.

    So thank you, Continental Airlines, twice – once for the memory of the way life used to be, and again for getting me safely home yesterday. Now, if you could just hook up some San Diego to Europe non-stops, we’d be set. But even if that never happens, it’s all cool for now.

  • Tales from a Stinky Land

    You know how it is when you are watching the news and there is bad weather somewhere and there are people stranded at the airport and you are like, thank god that isn’t me?

    Today it IS me. Stuck in fucking HOUSTON of all places. Everyone knows how much I love it here.

    I’ve been working here at few days at the Texas Wine and Grapegrowers conference, and today I was oh, so ready to get home. I was so ready I showed up for my flight five hours early, hoping to stand by on something earlier. And yes, I called; I called yesterday and they said it would be no problem to stand by, through Dallas and on to San Diego. An hour before I left for the airport, I called and they said the flights were now full, but I wanted to get the fuck out of dodge so bad I decided to go to the airport and pray.

    So I got to the airport and what did I see? A long string of CANCELLED all the way down the board. I got a really yicky feeling in my stomach. The line was already long. I started asking people how long it would take to drive to Santa Fe, New Mexico. (Too long.)

    So there we are all in the Houston airport, all pretty much screwed, with a non-moving line. The thought of staying the night, much less two or three, was making me feel queasy. A woman came around with little squares of paper with a phone number to CALL American while we were in line. So I called, and the wait was twenty-two minutes, but a super cool guy behind me got through before I did (he was on the phone to them way before that lady started passing out the phone numbers) and he let me talk to the agent after he was done.

    The agent was like, well, can you fly from Hobby Airport? And I was like, I’ll do whatever you want, just get me out of here. And she told me she had ONE seat on Monday.

    “NO.” I told her. “I ABSOLUTELY cannot wait until Monday, I have to get out TOMORROW.” I wasn’t mean, or bitchy, but there must be something resembling angst or desperation in my voice because she put me on hold for a really long time and then came back and told me she got me on a non-stop on Continental, first thing tomorrow.

    Here the poor guy who lent me his phone had to wait around for me for like twenty minutes. As I was thanking him profusely, practically offering sex (no not really but you get the idea) he said “we’re all in the same boat” and walked away.

    If I would have arrived later, I would have been screwed. Well actually, I probably would be DRIVING home right now. I am telling you, I would not spend another day here. I wouldn’t.

    So I am here at the Hilton Garden Inn where the airport van is bringing another ten stranded passengers every fifteen minutes. I can’t believe I am getting out tomorrow.

    Well I gotta go, because all these people are walking by looking meaningfully at this computer. Tomorrow, I will write about some of the crazy shit that was going through my head about an hour ago as I sipped from a crappy glass of pinot grigio on a barren strip of land with nothing, and I mean nothing, on it except for a bunch of boring airport hotels on it.

    It could be worse, but it could be better. How come I never get stranded in Paris?

  • The Countdown

    Two weeks to go ’till Neon Bible comes out, and I can hardly sit still. ARCADE FIRE, dudes. Remember?

    Call this number NOW: 1-866-NEON-BIBLE. My god, could they be any cooler?

    NPR has a live Arcade Fire show up – check it out. And this song gives me chills:

    As for me. I am seeing Arcade Fire next month – IN BERLIN. I love that all the best bands sing in English. It’s definitely a plus for me. Plus I can ask the bartender for Rot Wein. Whoo hoo!

  • Voros Bor, Por Favor

    The other night, I was in the Vine and started talking to one of the other regulars about my upcoming trip to Berlin.

    “Know any German yet?” He asked.

    “Entshuldigung Zie! Bitte! Guten Tag! Weiss Wine! Rot Wein! Uh… uh….” I tried to remember something else. How are you… how are you… vie… vie… “uh… uh…”

    “Rot Wein. That’s a good one to know.” Whew.

    It is a good one to know, and I have been meaning to put together this list for some time. It’s a work in progress, so feel free to comment if you have anything to add. I, for one, am dying to know how to say red wine in Polish, just in case.

    HOW TO SAY RED WINE IN MANY LANGUAGES.

    rot wein – German
    vino rosso – Italian
    vino tinto – Spanish
    vin rouge – French
    voros bor – Magyar (Hungarian)
    sheraaz – Australian
    rode wijn – Dutch
    rodvin – Danish
    vinho tinto – Portuguese
    czerwony wino – Polish (Thanks Angie!)

    As for any more, uh… uh….

  • Put Yourself in My Shoes

    I think I can count the things I love on one hand. Well, maybe two hands if I really think about it. Once thinking, you’ve got to think about things in terms of; do I really and truly love something, or do I just like it? Because those are two completely different things. It’s a the difference between merely living, and orgasm. Or even, between living and something better than orgasm. If that makes any sense.

    Observe, then, a moment that completely and totally slays me – a moment so perfect, so atmospheric, so Totally Killer, that I can’t really imagine anywhere else I would rather be.

    Imagine you are me for a minute, if you can. In a big, dark cavern, with a musty, wet smell, full of the most incredible anticipation, surrounded by like-minded people. About to touch, briefly, something you listen to and think about and even dream about for months beforehand. Close your eyes, and imagine you are me, in this dark spot, practically falling over with happiness.

    It makes you want a little more, doesn’t it? It’s a bit of a harsh reality at the end there, isn’t it? But thankfully, there is more. THERE IS MORE!

    Pretty fucking awesome, I must say. My current obsession with The Shins won’t be over anytime soon.