john lennon, bob dylan and mary jane

i'm back in hell, eh? now. yeah. nothing has changed, still listening to lots of dylan, still in isolation, still broke. it's pretty rad. gives me plenty of time to do what i wanna do.

a meeting of two great minds, and apparantly some green, in the back of a cab in london, circa 1966.

the audio is a kinda hard to understand, but check it out:



lennon always talked about how dylan "influenced" him...

is anyone going to the dylan show in costa mesa on july 26th? does anyone even read this god damn thing?

a complete unkown

i've been awol in the middle of nowhere for the past week, 'cos i left LA in kind of a weird state of mind. i'll be back soon; all my stuff is there anyway. what i don't have is a job, direction, or any money, so it's kind of a bummer to think about going back right now. anyone wanna give me some or all of these things?

so in the mean time, i'm pretty much doing a whole lot of nothing but watching old concert bootlegs and listening to bob dylan and the doors, and taking lots of pictures of nowheresville. lots of rocks and jocks.

it's kinda rad, though, 'cos i picked up some great new (old) stuff. my mom gave me her old olympus camera that's like 35 years old, and in awesome condition. she also bequethed to me all her old vinyl records... which means first issue beatles, lennon, doors, dylan, johnny cash etc. FUCK YEAH. I've been sitting around having a quarter-life crisis and all i wanna do is just listen to original recordings on vinyl.

check it out...



so, yeah.

after hearing my mom geek out on old hippie tales about how she hung out backstage at the hollywood bowl back in 1968 with jim morrison, i got pretty stoked. who knew my mom was that fucking cool? yeah, dudes, i may be a dork, but my mom sure wasn't. back in the day, she knew how to go off!

check out "this is the end" from the doors: live at the hollywood bowl dvd. sucks that it only seems to be available on region 2 and hasn't seen an official us release. anyone know anything about this? anyway. watch as jim (super doped up), slays it live... with a 15 minute rendition!

part 1



part 2



yeah, my mom said that show was fucking rad. i'm inclined to agree with her.

dylan is my co-pilot

lately, i've been on a huge dylan kick. not just a little "essential bob dylan," smattered with a helping of his "greatest hits," no, i'm talking all balls out, bootleg series, blood on the tracks and another side of dylan, etc. on-repeat. check out my "friends" i took with me to the joshua tree desert yesterday...




yeah. (click to see more pics from my trip to the desert)

so naturally when my friend (and fellow dylan enthusiast) lionel sent me a link of weird al yankovic parodying dylan, i had to watch:



i'm not a huge "weird al" fan, 'cos his stuff is usually pretty lame, but this kinda floored me. i mean, fuck. it's spot on, hilarious, and it combines my love of dylan, palindromes and folk music. it just keeps on getting better and better.

anyway, i'm going back to watching the copy of "no direction home" that my friend joe matt just got me for my birthday. fuck yeahhhhh.

i sold my soul

not that i was all gung-ho about the new manson album "me me me me" or whatever the fuck it's called (i'm sure it's something as equally as pretentious), but being a fan of the 1996 classic "antichrist superstar," i feel at least slightly inclined to check out his newer shit. even though i have been disappointed. repeatedly.

anyway, i just watched manson "revisit" (see also: rip off) his past by "eclectically sampling" (see also: hacking) from the following films and music videos:
- david lynch's "lost highway"
- stephen king's "carrie"
- nine inch nails' "starsuckers, inc."
...and even his own "(s)aint" video.

seriously. get over yourself, dude. it's called "coming up with something new." or better yet, not at all. let's face it: you're over. and frankly, you're starting to remind me a bit of pre-butterball robert smith (and not in the good way. we all know where that fucker ended up).

back to the video, though. nowadays, it wouldn't be a real goth video if it didn't feature a bunch of topless suicide girls, so of course, there's a whole roomful. oh yeah, and let's not forget the ridiculous amounts of gratuitous blood-bath sex between him and goth-lolita girlfriend evan rachel wood. we get it, dude. you're banging a famous teenager. that's totally gonna last.



pushing the envelope? nah, more like rehashing the envelope. i'm over it.

it's my party...

tomorrow, i'm turning 21. staying typical to 20-year-old angst that didn't wane with the loss of my teen years, i'll be spending the entire day alone. kinda by choice, kinda not. i've already managed to piss off a bunch of people here in hollyweird, and i'm pretty indifferent about the whole thing. besides, birthdays have never been the balls-out event for me that they have been for everyone else. another year, whatever. at least now i don't have to use a fake id to see most of the shows i wanna go to. i don't drink, so it's not gonna be drunkfest 5000 over here, but i will prolly go to a couple of bars just 'cos i can now. anyone know of a place where the gin is cold but the piano's hot? and by gin i mean coca-cola. and by piano, i mean jukebox. yeah, i'm square.

in celebration of my upcoming non-birthday, i've decided to post a fucking rad promo video of "nick the stripper" by none other than nick cave and the birthday party. watch as nick goes off at some pre-burning man bon fire rave.



they don't make music videos like this anymore. oh yeah, and fuck you, mtv.

...and in case you were wondering what nick cave is up to these days, he's in a sick new band called grinderman, which features current members of the bad seeds. it's pretty rad, 'cos their website featured the "grinderman podcast" which is a series of recording fragments from the band's writing sessions.

check out this awesome clip of them performing "honey bee (let's fly to mars)" live on bbc2's later... with jools holland on may 11.



yeahhhhhh, he's still got it, 25 years later.

their debut self-titled album is OUT NOW. check it out. seriously. no, i'm serious. do it. now. go. seriously.

lollapa-loserville

okay, so the lollapalooza festival has been trying for years to recreate what it once was back in the early ninties... back before emo, screamo, shitmo, whatever you wanna call it. back when "depressing teenagers was like shooting fish in a barrel" and their medication was the original carnations of the smashing pumpkins, sonic youth, nine inch nails and nirvana. not any of these new band lineups. if you were there and you saw 'em back then, rad. if not, you're outta luck. leave the bands alone, and someone tell billy corgan to keep his dick out of the sacks of money. let it go. without james iha and d'arcy, the band is NOT THE SMASHING PUMPKINS. it's just another shitty billy corgan zwan-nabe mash up.

back on track... lollapalooza is and has been for the past, oh, 10 years, just a new way to leak thousands of dollars from the willing hands of hapless teens who wanna "experience the music, man!" at a festival where the "vibe is real" and "just being there is saying something." tough news, dudes, you gotta be at glastonbury to experience a real festival. no second-rate us fest can even match up. how can they by charging $5 for a bottle or water or $10 for a beer, and setting up booths for spin magazine every ten feet? if you're not wading in other people's shit (literally), not showering for 1+ week(s), using cow manure as a pillow for your head (if you even do sleep), then you're not "keeping it real" at a festival. no amount of 'shrooms is gonna "transport you there." you missed it. woodstock is over (or at least any trace of what it was has been shot to fuck). this isn't the 70s. we're not in leeds. even the artists know it's a shit sandwich, as they're raping and pillaging the wallets of teens in a corporate setting under the guise of "indie music."

whatever, this is nothing new. as long as people are willing to shill out the money, corporate rise and capitalistic funding is just gonna keep thriving. blah blah blah. i'm all about supporting the music. i buy merch, i buy cd's (me and like, 12 other people in the world), and i consume whatever else gets handed out that i am mildly interested in. that's all part of it. i just can't say i approve of those $15 falafels at coachella.

anyway, lolapalooza is still trying to garner the attention of teens in the midwest who still listen to pearl jam and know who mia is... so they've created a pretty simple way of getting the culturally hip and tragically indie 18-35 year old demographic's attention. check out the rad little corporate ploy to help them advertise. you can upload your face from any picture and put it on a spindly character's body (of your design) and have them dance to interpol or whatever the fuck other indie-but-not-really band you want to... providing of course that they are playing this year at lollapalooza. stupid? totally. simple minded? definitely. soft-shelled corporate advertising? uh-huh. effective? absolutely. i've already made myself 5.

everyone's always said i look like karen o...




here's a couple of other ones i did of myself...

glowsticks make the rave, not the raver

contrary to popular belief, you CAN actually breakdance to sparklehorse

and some of my friends...

cartoonist and author of peepshow, joe matt...

my roommate likes wearing my clothes (seriously)...

and some people that it just looked funny to do it to...

aaron north really slays it whenever he listens to amy winehouse... btw, nice chicken costume, brah...

and while i'm at it, might as well do the other half of buddyhead...

fat chicks love that dude from dfa

if you wanna make one yourself and didn't catch the link above, go to paloozahead.com and have fun sucking your life away for the next 6 hours, 'cos that's what i did...

i have the sense of humor of a 12 year old.

i'm sorry girl, but that ho was me...

it's not a secret that r. kelly's hip-hopera "trapped in the closet" is one of my favorite movie musicals ever. fuck that, it's probably one of my favorite movies ever period. even lucasfilm super-fan jeordie white (ak/a twiggy ramirez) stated "this is better than star wars!" upon his first viewing of the now classic cult flick. truer words were never spoken.

since it's initial release upon the world back in 2005, the phenomenon known as "trapped in the closet" has spread faster than hepatitis c at a tattoo convention. even my mom has seen it and asked "is this for real?" yes, mom, it's all real. or maybe it isn't. is r. kelly so completely absurd and out of his mind to think that this is what we as cinematic movie-goers want to see? or do we really want to believe that this man is so witty and intelligent that he created this all as a joke? the world will never know. what we do know, however, is that it's amazing, and nothing quite like it has even been created before, and anything since is just a cheap hack of the original. everyone from the upright citizen's brigade theater to weird al himself has parodied this defining piece of r&b music video achievement.

here's the kicker, though, what we've seen so far is only the first half of this amazing story. yes, never fear, while we were all left on the edge of our seats at the end of chapter 12... it's been reported that the second half of this pop culture staple will be release sometime in july of this year. check the trapped in the closet wiki for more info.

anyway, while you patiently wait for part two to continue forth with it's operatic tale of sex, lies, and midgets, check out r. kelly's you tube video channel. with (almost) daily updates from the guru of water sports and underage girls himself.

here's my personal favorite in which r. kelly explains his forthcoming album, "double up"'s intended incarnation as "makin' babies." check out the chick in the background braidin' his corn rows. she really looks like the last thing she wants to be doing is fixing up his skanky ass weave.



unbe-WEAVE-able.