Someday we won’t remember this

Written by

The Mountain Goats – Damn These Vampires

There was a time in my life, albeit brief, between moving back to America for college and this god-forsaken Twilight fad in which vampires were, unmistakeably, cool. My nerdy friends and I found them just counterculture enough to champion.

We sat on futons in dorm rooms watching Interview With The Vampire and Underworld. We patted ourselves on our backs for picking up analogies to the treatment of homosexuals, and in general geeked out over the superpowers and the gritty themes. We read up on the malleable back-story through the centuries, and posited drunken theories about how the myth began.

Obviously, vampires have since become synonymous with the most nauseating form of tween romance and glitter being worn in public. But this Mountain Goats song reminds me of how, briefly, vampires were as ice cool as the blood not circulating through their blue veins.

[Buy music, not glitter.]

Junkyard angel

Written by

Bob Dylan – From A Buick

Women, everywhere: in households, by the water, on the street. Golden-haired vixens carrying themselves in a way that keeps men wary, aware. A young Dylan loves women, writes about them. Gnaws on his molars with his eyebrows contorted, piecing together the clues. “From A Buick” is not the most mesmerising song he’s ever written about a girl, about girls. Hundreds of great singles, covered and remodeled. It’s the instrumentation, the way Dylan crafts a sound that feels like a dose of amphetamines, a rush, a dizzying spell of infatuation and running, running towards the warm light that brushes your face a blushed tone when your wearisome eyes start hanging. It’s the sound that makes this song. [Ready to sew you up with the thread.]

Like a bird on a wire

Written by

Leonard Cohen – Bird on the Wire (Live In Zurich, 1993)

Like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried, in my way,
to be free.

[Be free with your money when it comes to L.Cohen merch.]

BOULEVARD

Written by

Ryan Adams – Drunk And Fucked Up (Like The Twilight)

“Fuck,” my stomach growled. I was hungry, the dime-store diners were shut – boarded windows and unkempt sidewalks, leaves crumpled along the cracks in the concrete – and the twilight’s thick, hot air in my collar. I fumbled around in my pockets for loose change, only bus tickets and a stray button.

“Fuck this,” kicking angrily against the curb, stubbing my toe through the worn leather of my shoes.

It should have changed. I was meant to be richer, cleaner, sophisticated. I’m poor, dirty, puerile. Sick to the knees with buttermilk curdling in my stomach. I can feel the mucus in my lungs, the clumps of nicotine blackening arteries, strangling my throat.

I keep reaching into my pockets, thinking there’ll be coins I missed, small coins quiet, stuck, in the stitched corners of the inside fabric. I keep doing this. I know there are no coins and no notes and no unclaimed cheques crumpled and useless, but I keep fumbling.

The last cheque came in the mail on Thursday. A mumbled hello and thank you when Arthur, the postman, nodded and handed me the envelope. $130. Mother was worried. I sat at the foot of the bed and penned a letter, reassuring her, I was alright, I was waiting for the tide to break so I could paddle to shore quietly, unnoticed. As soon as I was on sand, I would make it. I would head to the terrace at the head of the beach and buy a Popsicle, suckle on it while the sun beat down on my bare back and sweat greased in the long thickets of hair hanging from my head. I would be rich, respected, a known expert in my field – whatever field that was. I could do anything.

She would buy it. Parents want to be lied to, want to believe their children are working towards something incredible, something that will feed and clothe and, somehow, absolve them.

I signed the letter, tightened my belt, dropped it into the mailbox on the corner and kept walking.

I liked walking. Women were everywhere. I desired the women on the street. All of them. Plump women, meager women, women with eyebrows that said they would do some beautiful things, women with lips that snarled when they caught you watching them read the newspaper, women with friends, boyfriends, husbands, businessmen, women alone on their way to somewhere, dependent women, independent women, women with a stunning grasp of vocabulary, women that smile warmly when they lie, “I’m sorry, honey, but something has come up. I won’t be able to see you for coffee this afternoon.”

There was nobody watching at this hour. It was late, people were asleep and stuffed with roast dinners. My feet ached, the weary leather soles of my shoes doing little to stop the pebbles scraping. I knelt, leaned against a signpost, lit a cigarette, fumbled through my pockets. “Fuck,” my stomach grumbled.

[Buy.]

You can’t ask that of me, we’ve only just met

Written by

Listener – You Were A House On Fire

A little over a year ago I drove up I-5 from Los Angeles to Seattle with the cruise control set at 75. I cranked the music up over the road noise. The incessant vibration and blaring radio jarred me into near senselessness.

I stumbled out of my Civic at a rest stop somewhere in the middle of Oregon and blinked a few times. A happy homeless man bounded up to me.

“Hi, I’m Keith. Can you spare any change? I’ve got to buy a sack of hot dogs for my wife and dogs.” He gestured to a lady chatting to the owners of a van a few spots down the parking lot and at two large dogs tied to the wall near the bathroom.

“Today’s your lucky day,” I said, and dumped well over $5 worth of quarters (a roommate’s idea of a joke in payment for a minor debt) into his outstretched hands. Our fingers brushed; his skin was rough and scarred.

But his face was bright, soft, grinning dumbly like one of his mutts.

“Where ya headed?” he asked.
“Up to Seattle. I’m moving from Cali.”
“You should keep on driving right on up to Everett, get a job with Boeing. That’s what I did after the war. Pays real great and with the benefits.”
“You were in the war?” I asked.
“Yeah, Nam. Me and my buddy Robbie were there before we came here. We camped just across the freeway down there.” He pointed over the highway to a dirt road that led around a hill. “He’s not around anymore.”
“Hey, listen, we can keep talking, but I’ve got to piss something serious.” I usually don’t pull over unless I have to get gas or am about to piss my pants.
“Oh, of course, by all means. You can enjoy my music too. Go right ahead.”

Keith had the male restroom door propped open with a jukebox which blared AC/DC. I kicked it aside to let the door close, filling the bathroom with tinny guitars and thin vocals as I held my dick in my hand and peed into a toilet millions of men had peed into before.

I propped the door back open and went to see the two dogs. They sniffed and licked my hand; their fur was gorgeous and lush, not the fur of a homeless man’s dog. I think they were half Boxer.

“What are their names?” I asked when Keith came over.
“The mom, this one, she’s Nance. This one’s named Robbie. I was going to give my friend Robbie one, but I can’t, so I named it after him instead. He died on that highway right out there. Little Robbie’s the only one of the litter left.”
“Oh yeah? How many did you have?”

Keith told me a convoluted story about how the policeman who came around the rest stop had threatened to take his dogs away, but eventually Keith had talked the officer into buying one for his niece. Keith seemed especially proud of that one.

We slowly meandered back to my car, chatting. He sometimes spit chunks out when he talked, and I could see the back of his mouth. It dawned on me that Keith wasn’t completely there, but he seemed good natured enough. I asked him where he was headed that night.

“Oh me and the wife are camped out across the highway, same place me and Robbie found a while back. Robbie, he was my best friend. He saved my life, you know. We were in Nam, and I got shot in the ass. They got me right here,” he turned around and pointed to his butt cheek. “But Robbie, he carried me out of there. Slung me right on over his shoulder and carried my ass to safety. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.

“He died right over there. We were headed back to camp after dark, and I made it across alright, but Robbie didn’t make it. A car hit him wham! and then drove off. And he was dead. Robbie, he saved my life, but I couldn’t save his.” Keith was openly weeping now, all tears and spit and distorted face. “I cut back across the highway and I dragged him to the shoulder, but he was already dead, man. Nam couldn’t get him, but a minivan did.”

I wiped some snot off my upper lip. I could see it: the pitch black, Keith – driven half insane by war and menial jobs and America – holding his only friend in his arms, as Robbie’s body cooled and stiffened with death.

Keith quickly moved on, telling me the story about the cop and the puppy again. I smiled, and put my hand on his shoulder and said it was nice to meet him, but I had to get going, a life was calling up north. And I drove on off up the freeway where Robbie died.

[Wooden Heart.]

The way we get by

Written by

We Have Band – How To Make Friends

The cab leaves me at the corner of Union and Bond. I’m tired. I’m drunk. I’m pretty sure my friend is hanging onto the back of the car, ready to jump off and berate me for leaving the bar early. (It’s 1 a.m.) I look back; he’s not. I reach into my pocket to get my phone and read the text messages he’s sent.

It’s not there. It’s on the backseat of the cab, having slipped out of my pocket for the second time tonight. The cab is a block and a half down the street, picking up speed. Without thinking, I take off running.

I have two chances to catch him: The light seven blocks away and the one two blocks further. Once he takes a left onto Atlantic, It’s “hey AT&T, here’s $500.”

I’m sprinting. I am Jason Bourne. I know I can run for half a mile, flat out, without getting tired. I don’t know how I know this, I just do. I am flying. I’m catching this cab.

Except I’m not. I am Matt Damon playing Jason Bourne, if Matt Damon were a drunk kid, running in skinny pants and skate shoes, rapidly losing wind. There’s no way I’m catching this cab.

I reassess the situation. The cab, now three blocks ahead, looks like it will get stuck at one, if not both, lights. That’s a positive. There’s a kid lazily riding his bike 10 feet behind me. I gasp: “My phone’s in that cab. Can you try to catch it?”

He looks at me. He considers my plea.

He takes off down the street.

I am excited. I sprint faster in solidarity with my new friend and his rusting mountain bike. I’m running fast; he’s riding much, much faster. Both he and the yellow vehicle are disappearing in the distance.

Fatigue sets in. I can barely see. I just focus on sprinting. I don’t know why I’m still running; it just seems important. I’m not paying attention to what’s happening ahead of me. There’s just the pavement and my increasing urge to vomit.

My compromised senses note an object winding its way towards me. I look up. It’s the kid and his bike, riding uncommitted s-curves in my direction. The cab is nowhere to be seen.

He gets closer. Something in his hand is forcing him to ride erratically. My phone.

He hands it over, and I try to give him some money from my wallet. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “That was amazing,” I pant with far too much enthusiasm. “I kind of lost my car,” he says. “Well, I don’t know if it got lost or towed. I parked it on Union and Bond.” “Can I help with that?” I ask. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, and rides off.

When I finally make it back to the corner, he’s there, riding slowly around searching for his car. He nods at me and shrugs. I nod back, then walk into my apartment. He continues looking.

[Buy.]

By the time we met the times had already changed

Written by

Garbage – Only Happy When It Rains

Soon after Garbage broke through in the United States, fire-haired frontwoman Shirley Manson mentioned to Spin that she joined a rock band for the sex. For some reason likely related to minor teenage rebellion, I relayed this fact to my mother one afternoon. In a teachable moment she said that was nice for Shirley, you know if that was the kind of sex she wanted to be having.

I listened, then ignored. Manson was famous, beautiful, and outwardly sexually aggressive; I was 14, shy, and in love with a woman on the cover of a magazine. Teenage boys can dream, can’t they?

Nothing happened, obviously. The singer married and then divorced a Scottish sculptor best known as the “ex-husband of Shirley Manson.” I grew up, wandered happily single around New York, and learned I wouldn’t want to date a rock star even if I could.

We both ended up in the right place. But the antiquated part of me can’t help wondering whether Manson would be happy during other weather patterns as well if she found herself in a committed relationship.

[Spend your money on Garbage.]

I would die 4 you

Written by

Persons

Written by

Arrested Development – People Everyday

A song made, in four minutes and four seconds, of cigarettes and thickshakes in the Georgian afternoon wearing an apple-red silk shirt under bright yellow suspenders. Its been years now, but on the first day Sly cried: “Different strokes, for different folks!” It’s still right.

Speech married young. He lived in a one-room apartment on the west side of town with his bride, Laura. She worked long hours at the bakery and he roamed the streets, doing odd jobs to make ends meet. In the evenings, he cleaned the place from bottom to top, vacuuming stray crumbs from the carpet and wiping down the windows. He touched his hands to the bed, carefully smoothing out the creases in the blanket. Every night, Laura waited until he left the room before slipping in and ruffling the sheets, throwing the pillows across the room. Speech would go into the kitchen, toast some bread with crispy bacon and scrambled eggs with sprinkles of ham and tomato. He would make two. Speech called Laura into the living room and she would come, smiling quietly. A breath of something sweet in her ear, a touch on his arm, then they would sit side to side and ease into their toasted sandwiches. [Buy.]

The skin never forgets a deep abrasion

Written by

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip – Rapper’s Battle

I have seen an obscene amount of penises in my life.

Between a decade of dorms, a job which pits me in locker rooms, and a lack of modesty among my friends, I’ve seen enough dicks to make a whore blush.

White dicks. Thick dicks. Spaghetti dicks. Uncircumcised dicks. Crooked dicks. Sacks drooping down below dicks. Meticulously shaved dicks. Reassuringly lacking black dicks. Grower-not-shower dicks. Girthy dicks. Just all sorts of fucking dicks.

What most interests me about the locker room scene is that modesty has no correlation to penis size. The majority, regardless of endowment, slink to their corner sheepishly, towel tight around their waists, or at least with something held at their fronts. Others are more bold. I remember one Hispanic player in Los Angeles who, without fail, casually strolled out of the shower with his towel draped across his shoulders, his impish genitals hanging out like a jaundiced wrinkle of skin.

That’s an image you can’t easily discard. Believe me, I’ve tried.

[Occupy your mind elsewhere by buying and listening to Angels or by watching the video below.]