Murky Time=Time School

have been spending some time with a bunch of old no limit stuff...

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:17:28 -0400

have been spending some time with a bunch of old no limit stuff lately, especially kane & abel’s first two albums. kane & abel (i think kane is the better one? i wouldn’t be able to say who’s who other than when they say their names) are a bit more polished (internal rhymes, assonances n shit like that) than is usually expected of no limit dudes, particularly on their first album, the 7 sins—which also has some fucking awesome beats, courtesy as usual of beats by the pound. “god and gunz” (above) rolls slow and heavy (and nothing like a well-placed clap to make shit really knock), and i get hype every time when the synths come up for mia on the chorus on “jealous again”—sounds like someone just turned on the lightshow on the stage. speaking of mia, she also fucking kills it on “basement session”: “pop goes the nine millimeters beretta leavin you wetter than april showers followed by your second line in flowers,” “my flow so grand it make the beats say damn / shit jumps back makes you wanna holler / but I sees nothing but dollars / feminist power”. actually, not to slight the twins themselves, but most of my favorite moments on the kane & abel records come from features: big ed’s call-and-response opening and mac’s flurry (“flip em like burger king workers be flippin burgers”), both on “let’s go get em”; any of the soulja slim spots on am i my brother’s keeper.

fortrevoryoung: Trevor Young “Hire” 12”x2”, oil on panel, 2012

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:25:00 -0400

fortrevoryoung:

Trevor Young

“Hire” 12”x2”, oil on panel, 2012

i forget now how i found this; browsing amazon mp3, i think....

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:37:00 -0400

i forget now how i found this; browsing amazon mp3, i think. anyway, i kinda really like it. really dig the switch from that chunky staircase-y verse riff to the more fluid chorus with its swoon of ‘verbed, multi-tracked “ooooh”s. this was released in 2009 but i think i would’ve put it earlier, if i had been to guess—somewhere between ‘01 and ‘04 maybe? (not sure why.) she used to play guitar for ash, several of whose albums i downloaded a month or so ago ago and have only thus far listened to a little bit of (i like this one, though).

RE: recent stuff/thoughts

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:06:25 -0400

i ate from work yesterday, for the first time since i started there. i had a baconator with no ketchup, no mayo, no cheese slices and instead blue cheese and guacamole. it was really good.

i actually don’t know that i’m going to be able to finish “melanctha”. aside from how i find it gross how stein seems to be using some half-baked caricatural notion of black vernacular to prop up her experimentation, it just wears me the fuck out to read; characters referring to each other by name like five times in a single sentence, a hundred million sentences starting with “i certainly am” or “always now” in a row. i think sometimes that she was aiming for some kind of a, i guess hypnotic?? effect but it just feels like one trick being stretched way too far. there might be interesting things going on with the characters underneath it, but it’s so hard to keep my brain from glazing over long enough to get to it.

i tried tea in earnest for i think the first time the other day. my whole family save me and a cousin are faithful daily tea-drinkers; i drink coffee mostly daily, although it’s never really got its hooks in me—sometimes i forget about it for a day, and i don’t really suffer for it. anyhow, tea is pretty good. the next day i got an earl gray at mcdonald’s after work and that was good too. slightly related: i think i like burger king’s coffee slightly more than mcdonald’s’s. i don’t think bk has free refills though, so it doesn’t end up with an upper hand really after all.

a few minutes ago i was dozing off on the couch and in a flicker of half-awake moth-eaten by dream thought mixtapes and burgers blurred together in my mind and i think i was somehow imagining drought 3 as a burger. i wish i could articulate this better and also that it was real.

this is from the first issue of punisher 2099. the next lines...

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:52:40 -0400

this is from the first issue of punisher 2099. the next lines are “what is today’s date?” “punishment day!”

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:23:07 -0400

RE: "openness"

Fri, 10 May 2013 20:29:08 -0400

sometimes i hear people going on about openness as this great, crucial thing (“for a successful relationship you need openness”, etc.) and sometimes i find it kinda gross. i mean, there’s a point there, keeping everything in to a certain degree or in certain ways probably isn’t healthy, but often i get a sense they’re sort of trying to conflate privacy with secrecy,dishonesty—or they make relationships sound like some sort of contract where you sign on full disclosure of all your thoughts and experiences. fuck that. nobody has a right to yr shit if it doesn’t pretty directly pertain to them, and i tend to think anyone who felt particularly wronged by a friend/partner/whatever keeping some shit to themselves would have to be some kind of possessive or controlling or something. i mean openness is cool, i guess i’d say it’s a trait i like i people, but i don’t think it’s a virtue or anything. (today at work i was thinking about that dan harmon article i read a while ago: he sounds very, very open—genuinely unusually so—but he still sounds like kind of a weird asshole, and being open about that doesn’t diminish it.) there are people who i feel i know better than people who i may know more about and that’s fine. different strokes, etc. (this is a thing, right? this “openness” talk? i’m not just getting mad at something i imagined remembering?)

RE: more on 'acid rap'

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:24:00 -0400

one of my favorite parts of acid rap is how (on “juice”) chance can bounce a line about how he’s been on since his very conception off a line about how he still can’t get over his friend’s death and neither diminishes the other and it all flows. it kind of amazes me that he can do that; face something really heavy like that in the middle of this joyous torrent of words and not get brought down by it but rather keep gathering steam.

Work (Wendy’s): May 2: 10-4; WeLearn computer training...

Mon, 06 May 2013 09:10:00 -0400

Work (Wendy’s):

May 2: 10-4; WeLearn computer training course
May 3: 10-4 (-30min break, ~1:00); bacon / side sandwich
May 4: 10:30-4; bacon->front sandwich

Readings:

Self Help by Lorrie Moore:

COMMENTS: Quite liked it; although if I had less so the bag of tricks (second-person and stylistic tics (“…like (x), like (y), like (z); it was like z”)) would’ve probably grated on me. It struck me while reading that a lot of the writers I enjoy the most are women. I don’t know if that’s significant in any way. A lot of dude writers get on my nerves.

some of Three Lives by Gertrude Stein

COMMENTS: I liked “The Good Anna”; the observation about balance of power in friendships. The back cover says something about Picasso inspiring the syntactical repetitions in “Melanctha” (I’m about halfway through) but I get the sense part of it is also some kind of dialogic blackface (i.e. the constant “I certainly do…”s). It makes for a rather tiring read, anyhow.

Listenings:

Acid Rap by Chance The Rapper

COMMENTS: Chance is very very talented but doesn’t quite know what to do with it yet; he’s getting drunk off the potential and spilling it everywhere and that’s what makes Acid Rap so fun. Brandon Soderberg nailed it: “Such an off-the-rails flow creates the sense that at any moment, a verse — or a full song, or the entire record — could crash and burn and overdose on audacity.” It’s not really a great album (i’m saying album because it seems to me clearly to be trying for the albumier end of mixtape) but there’s so much to love about it. He obviously really wants to impress you, but then he’s so good that he totally does and then some. My friend pointed out “rapper song singer suspended subpoena for misdemeanors dreamer held back low key still a seenyrrr” as a particularly great bit, and I still smile big every time i hear “even my haters kinda glad i’m on”. None of the name guest spots save Twista do anything for me but Vic Mensa and Noname Gypsy are great; “practice backflip tragic actress” stuck in my head for days.

this is my new favorite thing ever

Sun, 05 May 2013 17:32:32 -0400

this is my new favorite thing ever

RE: the place beyond the pines

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:27:08 -0400

i’m tired of lives-intertwined-by-chance stories and i’m tried of dads-&-lack-thereof angst and this movie lays both on pretty thick so we’re off to a bad start already. cianfrance is so hung up on biological dads that mothers—even (apparently kind, committed, lifelong) adoptive dads—count for pretty much nothing. cianfrance seems to disapprove when the asshole cops crack on jennifer, but he hardly treats her with much more respect himself: she gets to act concerned then promptly get brushed off or told to shut up, and is given only a cameo in the third act to show us that, without a dad, she’s been incapable of saving her son from drugs & ruffianism. romina, beleaguered throughout, is thanked by her son with a photograph in the mail to remind her of the man whose fuckups she’d worked so hard to build a solid life in the wake of. i get the sense we’re supposed to like or at least feel bad for luke, even though he’s an asshole; perhaps because of his shy mumbles and that little half smile he does—so, in other words, because ryan gosling is playing him. gosling is on cruise control, basically mix-&-matching his drive & blue valentine characters (mysterious, criminal, amazing driver + deadbeat dad but kinda charming) then wrapping it up in a new look (wanted to rip the fucking inside-out shirts off his back).

and it’s fucking 2 hours and 20 minutes long and broken into three stories and i was waiting all along for it to come together somehow, and when it does of course it’s in the most trite, convenient ways. portentous coincidence, sins of the fathers, past violence coming back to haunt, etc etc etc, and then the photo in the wallet, and that last scene, feel like some movie of the week shit. the circle is complete, and……this is what i sat through all this for?!

RE: a thing i thought the other day

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:20:23 -0400

the way in which i’m not sure quite what spring breakers is trying to do with the iconographies it’s playing with reminds me of the way the same happens to me w/r/t raymond pettibon’s work.

getting really into this album. have been listening to this and...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:49:00 -0400

getting really into this album. have been listening to this and “miserabilia” over and over for like two days now. shallow listen notes:

not that i’ve spent a long time w/either, but this seems like a really big jump from hold on now… sounds like what happens when hold on now…’s cleverness totally ruptures.
there’s something scrappy in there that reminds me of (my limited listenings of) boyracer.
it’s funny, i find this album sounds more like a dave newfeld production than hold on now…; similar messy/on the verge of collapse feel, something of a similar shout-it-out emotionalism—although, of course, entangled with this self-consciousness/-loathing. cf. “you gotta shout something out you’d never tell nobody”, maybe??

RE: further adventures in nothing much

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:38:00 -0400

as stated intended, got fucked up tuesday (a colt, a bowl), saw jurassic park 3d (had never seen before; enjoyed it a bunch, liked the wonder better than the terror—favorite scene was laura dern first seeing the triceratops), went back to the basement and got more fucked up (another colt, more bowls) and then my memory of how the night wound out crumbles from hazy to nonexistent.

consequently, was very hungover wednesday (my friend, who i’d planned to meet before, was (as ever) super nice and patient as i groaned and grumbled about how much my head hurt and how i wished i didn’t have to be alive) but in the evening had a good meal w/lots of water (and there was like a dozen lemon and lime slices in the pitcher so the water had a really nice citrus tinge to it), got a haircut and gradually felt better.

thursday i did some yardwork at my grandmother & aunt’s place; raked rocks from the driveway out of the lawn, where they had been pushed along with the snow by plows during the winter. i worked for about 4 hours—not particularly strenuous work, mind, but after several months of laying about it felt like a substantial exertion. they paid me for it; i felt kind of guilty taking the money, but i don’t have a job right now so i didn’t quite have the strength to turn it down. (on that note: my friend is working at wendy’s now and seems to think i’d be able to get on there, which i probably would if i could. i’ll need to see what the schedule is for my spring courses (if i get into them, that is), and it’d be a hassle because mom has a thing about fast food jobs and, like, i know they’re shitty and aren’t going to do much on my resume, but they’re still jobs and they still pay and this is a job probably there for the taking vs. ???? soooo…)

today i had to go in to my old high school to pick up a transcript; felt old and lame and bitter, then realized the only person i’ve any right to harbor bitterness towards is myself. (well, and maybe my dad a little.)

elevator to hell - “not the least...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:49:00 -0400

elevator to hell - “not the least surprised”

“It was so emotional but that’s also where the dope smoking and stuff started going on,” White says of the period. “That’s also when Elevator [to Hell] was formed too, and around when I recorded “Parts 1-3.” When you’re just getting into pot and hash, all these ideas are just falling out of you; that’s when the inspiration is just crazy.”

fittingly, the first time i really “got” this album i was really really high, and i’ve loved it since then. that bit about ideas falling out of you—that’s what i love about it, mostly; every song sounds like its own little stylistic or sonic experiment, many of them quite weird, most of them somehow successful. this song sounds to me kind of like british folk and krautrock blurring together over the course of a few bowls. then that big yell, which feels like that scene in garden state if i didn’t hate basically everything about garden state.

RE: anniversary

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:45:47 -0400

this night last year—well, technically the 17th, but the night of today—i felt like everything was ending. (in a personal sense, I mean, not literally—although it still felt pretty apocalyptic to me.) this year, i’m not anywhere much better in a way you could map, and honestly i don’t know if i feel much better (less bad maybe, not to say more good) but my best friend is home from school and i’m going in to his place and we’re going to get fucked up and ring in the summer and hopefully this time around i won’t end up listening to “take care” over and over and sobbing into a pillow.

superdrag - “the emotional kind” from their split...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:22:26 -0400

superdrag - “the emotional kind”

from their split with the anniversary (the rest of whose discography i just got and so far so so good). they sound like sloan here, i find.

RE: recent watchings

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:45:09 -0400

finally saw the avengers. it was okay. too long, too much s.h.i.e.l.d. stuff. hawkeye was so undeveloped it hardly seemed worth including him, black widow wasn’t much better. i find whedon’s tony tends to trip over the fine line btwn eccentric and annoying hyperglib jerk. he (and ruffalo) did do a great job on banner, tho.

saw killer joe; well made i suppose—certainly well acted—but nastier than i care much to watch. (“long scenes of brutality” (whether physical or psychological) movies aren’t really my bag, especially when—as here—i can’t see any greater ends to it.)

saw spring breakers and am still not really sure what to make of it, i didn’t love it like so many people have, but i found it interesting for sure. i don’t think i “got” it though. i might end up seeing it again before it leaves theatres.

saw some kind of wonderful and sixteen candles; the former didn’t do much for me (i think bc i found eric stoltz kinda boring and wished masterson had been the main protagonist), the latter probably would’ve been fairly enjoyable if i hadn’t been so repulsed by the whole long duk dong thing (and i think other stuff was kinda gross too? can’t remember specifics; from the first gong noise on the attention invested declined rapidly).

RE: yesterday

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:17:00 -0400

another driving lesson. he says i’m getting better, i still feel not very comfortable with it. still pretty shakey on turns; i put in too much gas or turn the wheel too much or don’t turn it fast enough.

played pool for the second time in my life. i like it, it feels like (and this is the exact opposite of what i don’t like about driving) something that i could not only learn to do but get confident with, with lots of practice maybe even good at. the bartender gave me a few bucks off a pitcher because i look like elijah wood and rory mcilroy.

new mountain dew rankings, as of the moment: 1. code red, 2. whiteout (those two are neck&neck), 3. voltage, and a distant 4. supernova. none of them are as good as regular dew. there’s a quality to whiteout (my friend pointed this out first time he had it) like the frozen glaze over the lime flavor when you have a fresh-out-the-freezer green popsicle. also, easter egg: if you swallow it in that way where it goes over your tongue and hits you straight in the back of your throat, there’s a nice, kind of sweeter note. supernova is way better once it’s gone flat, though.

(i think i’m going to see spring breakers tonight.)

bonus answer.

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:33:29 -0400

bonus answer.