Don't Think Too Hard

I was writing about vampires, but that's pushed back to Friday. Here's why. It was moving, but not quickly. I ended up putting that down and do other things. I read two pieces over dinner by students about a) there were no stores that sold music in the American form and b) a girl who really, really needed her cell phone.

It made me shake my head and I felt that I had to write something in response. 45 minutes later, I got this. Rome is Rome, and if I'm going to enjoy it, I can't be thinking about ways to abscond back to the U.S. for other things, I'll miss what's cool about Rome, and post-facto, make the trip worthwhile. Vampires pushed back to Friday.


I'll admit it: It is killing me being in Rome.

Long Island hardcore cultists Crime In Stereo are breaking up and I'm not gonna be at either of their last shows. Planes Mistaken For Stars, a bawdy, feral aphrodisiac of a band, is reuniting for two shows, one of 'em in Chicago. Envy, a transcendent, colossal screamo band that tours America about as often as we elect presidents is coming through with a support bill of three bands, each one good enough to upstage their Japanese benefactors every night.

Batman and Robin, the best Batman comic in 30 years, (think this: the stakes of the Dark Knight, neon-colored in terms of hue and mentality, written by the industry's resident mystic, with art from artists that have long since priced themselves out of anything but covers) is being published right now and there's not a power in the world that can get my hands on those issues. I am living in the middle of a period that will be cited in 20 years using words like historic, game-changing and mind-blowing.

And I'll admit it: I shouldn't be giving a damn about any of it.

This is not why I came to Rome and even if it was, I'd be missing the point. I will miss these things, and if I am to make sure that missing them was worth something, I must act as though I have already missed them and fling myself into the Roman culture headlong. Not that I'm advocating for complete mental transition, mind you. November 10, Bane (the house band of my heart) is rolling through and nothing short of actionable evidence of a chemical attack on Rome's center will keep me from the venue.

I am here, and therefore, not there. In return, I have gotten to go to the Coliseum, the Forum, a lounge based on the one from A Clockwork Orange, seen Rome at 3 a.m. from a well lit bridge, ate gelato meters from the Vatican remarking, yes, this is the dolce vita, slipped into one of Rome's oldest neighborhoods for a drink and god knows that I'm forgetting. (Though, if I do have to give a favorite experience, listening to Slayer in St. Peter's would climb embarrassingly high on the list.)

I haven't yet been robbed or roofied, either, so Rome retains its charm.

The point is this: All the things I miss I will be able to find when I get back. Odds are good both the Crime In Stereo and Planes gigs will be on the internet by the time I return to the troubled stateside, there's already a full set from Envy in NYC uploaded to youtube and I can be certain of an entire day back in the Windy City just catching up with a fellow comic nerd getting me up to speed with the happenings in that hard luck town, Gotham.

And, all those things I've done? They've more or less been in a guidebook. Now that I'm sort of comfortable with the city, who knows what I'm going to find next. Anyway, until I have to go back to my creature comforts and obtuse rock bands, I'll see you on the 990.




I'll admit another thing: I slept on Astronautalis. Hard. I missed him perform at my fucking college coffee house, because I was beefing with the radio station that brought him through. I didn't listen until 2009 when I heard Handmade Handgun on P.O.S.' Never Better. It's a hidden track on the disc, and has some of the best lines on the record. Case in point: "I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't, and be damned if I end up playing Job with God's loving hand on my throat."

Anyway, what's past is prologue. What's now is a mashup of his greatest hits to "top of the pops" kind of stuff and the first track on it (Do You Believe In Life After Thugs) is a full new set of verses, blistering and ready to strip paint. "Rappers miss the subtle stuff, like reading braille with bandaged hands…Baby it's a farce, the indie artsy fable, Warner owns us all, Google ADA label."

Yes, turn this up.

On the Bird in the Cage.

Sometimes the best weekends are the boring ones where nothing happens and there's little, consequently, to write about. So here's things.

Last post's title, A View of Something Beautiful, is a direct Crime In Stereo lyric from one of my favorite songs of theirs, from one of my favorite records, The Troubled Stateside. The song it comes from is called Bicycles For Afghanistan, and is not political at all, surprisingly. It's about the literally, the amazing moments of being on tour and how you want it never to end, but also the distance between the performer and the family but also between members of the band. It's like every tour song in that it expresses highs and lows, but unlike every tour song in the fact that it mentions balance sheets and doesn't mention a girlfriend. The last line, to that effect, is usually hysterically shouted by the crowd: This is not a lonely soul!

The full context of the lyric is below.

So I wanted goals, saw all I needed was:

-a home with a view of something beautiful
-a woman that I trusted,
-the friends that I grew up with

But it was asking too much for just us to pray things stay in exactly the same way.

Oh: While I'm here, Gaga's meat dress seems less cruelty enhancing and more simply absurd. I got nothin'.

I finished something up for a magazine and I tried to explain to a fellow writer that I don't finish the pieces, I abandon them. There's always something else to take another look at or another sentence that I could always tighten up a little more, and that gigantic deadline of tomorrow (errrr, today, when this is posted) is the best way for me to leave a column/introduction/whatever in a way that I feel comfortable sending it in to be published.

The schedule is not some terrible invention meant to rob creatives of their freedom, but instead, to make sure the motherfucker is ever finished. Think of it like this: When you have thirteen years to work on a game, you don't get Deus Ex, you get Duke Nukem Forever, which looks like it's only going to be published now because it was going to fucking die and have a toxic half-life as a part of a lawsuit until a good friend to both parties stepped in and gave the 3D Realms team a manageable, but fuck all deadline with the only stated goal being shipping the product.

As for what this means to me, well, I've done my best writing under a deadline. I've done some of my worst when I haven't. The reverse is also true, but, since high school, I've written for publication with the understanding time is an extremely limited resource, second only to vespane gas word count. The fact that we didn't stick to the schedule and let ourselves get a little precious with our material was one of the things that sunk Eleven Names and letting the schedule dictate publication, while bad from a creative perspective has lead to the last this blog getting updated consistently this month and gotten me started on 2666, a book I'm devouring and only 1/3rd finished with want to go back and re-read when I'm done.

Apropos of something, of course, this praising of the deadline comes as I'm the closest I've ever been to missing one for this website. (And it will be backdated roughly 1 a.m., but don't worry, that's just so it gets published when I think it should and not according to some mystical inbetween time that only the Blogger server seems to be aware of.) But there's something, the schedule keeps me honest and will keep content coming. The schedule precludes me from becoming too precious with my updates, that I might be able to get away with not publishing an idea for a couple days, but nothing more reliably than that.

In other words: The beast has to be fed. Thank God.



Oh! The new video from Japan's Envy comes out. I don't understand a word of it, but it's pretty, kinda slow at the start and intense, like the record the track comes from. Enjoy.

A View of Something Beautiful

There's always a temptation for me to be pessimistic. I'm a glass half empty person, historically and it's taken a concerted effort for me to vocalize and act optimistic. Changing my behavior patterns to ones that favor and foster optimism is hard work. (It's more often Fuck my life and hardly ever Fuck! My life!) So, when my roomate, a ditzy gay kid maybe 4 years my junior, clogs the sink in the room while cutting his own hair and leaves it filled, 80ish percent with water and then is about to leave to go dancing for the night, I immediately feel the years of my age on my back.

(I make him clean it up, which requires he find a cup and literally scoop out the water and pour it into a trash can. That's how much water was in there.)

So that's not good, but on average, this is a fantastic change and something that I have really to thank globalization for. Case: I was listening to the new record from Envy (called Recitation, below), a Japanese screamo band, while reading 2666, by a South American and Spanish author translated into English, in an Italian bistro where I would soon get gelato.

It is hard to argue with the thesis of these months. Sure, I recognized that I am incredibly privileged, five or six times over to go on this trip, but man, this couldn't have happened thirty, twenty or even five years ago. Yes, I am immersing myself in many other cultures and seeing what works out. I am so very cosmopolitan.

Or am I?

2666 is a book nerd's book, Envy's a screamo band that is loved by maybe 10,000 people tops in this world and both of those pieces of media are things that are intimidating to people who want to interact with me. The headphones shut out verbal communication and if there's movement meant for my consumption, I'm too absorbed in the book to see it.

Even as I'm supposed to be absorbing new culture and different ideas, I'm still listening to the same bands I was before and as opposed to changing my behavior, becoming a little less obviously anti-social and interacting only in a way that is prefunctory (Can I buy a coke? Yes, it will be 2 Euro. Okay, thanks.) Yes, I'm not going out to the usual bars for entirely mediated behavior where expats and dudes looking for American girls speak the language.

Am I just contributing to the rise of the American mono-culture around the world? Am I an unknowing agent of the societal chlorine that is Americans abroad? Okay. Societal chlorine might be going a little far and is extremely insulting to the kids going out who are a) trying to have a fun time in a familiar-ish setting, but also b) didn't sign up to be a kind of post-globalization punching bag.

Still, we're all caught up in systems, few of which of are our choice. And now that I think I see the system and the ripples of my behavior, I can't look away, right? I am far more fettered than it is fashionable to admit. But even including fetters, this is an incredible opportunity, one that I'd do well to take advantage of. I'm not entirely sure I am, and even if I were...I'm not sure I know what it means, which sounds like a great subject for another blog.

A friend, however, IMed some sense into me: you're in fucking rome. I'm somewhere beautiful. I have friends in and outside of the screenbox of my laptop and I'm comfortable. Life's good, but I still wonder about what's obscured in the view....



The song comes from the Canadian punk band, the Flatliners, off of their reinvigorating 2010 disc called Cavalcade. Lyrically, the song is about accepting your faults while being in a world that is more fantastical and wider than you can believe. Also, they rep Chicago in it, so there's a little bias on my end. But still: It's a song about being on tour, seeing crazy shit and realizing that it's awesome.