Hollands - Mother EP

Review of 'Girls' at the Troubadour

New Review: Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band – Between My Head and the Sky

Patrick deWITT - Ablutions

Highly recommend lovers of drunk/drug/underbelly of America induced writing to grab this one. Just came out. Fantastic first book. Jesus. Made me feel like I was sitting in a whiskey haze underneath some dim light at the bar the whole time with a pulsating liver high on cocaine. Most books about drinking that I've read haven't created this sort of imagery in my mind at all. The character (bartender) obviously means well but like most of these 'heros' he thinks he's better than everyone else and is lost in his own mind, not caring about anyone else around them, besides fixing them drinks, getting drunk, getting paid, getting fucked. The detailed descriptions and imagination in his characters is wonderful. LA is fucked.

"You do not leave but retire to their backyard; spying a tree house you climb up the two-by-four ladder with a half empty bottle of Jameson between your teeth. This chips the bottle and you enter the enclosed tree house pulling glass bits from your tongue and gums. There is blood on your fingertips, not too much, and the whiskey burns the little  cuts in your mouth and Molly finds you sitting Indian style, wiping the blood on your pants. She takes off your pants and hers and there is no way to accomplish what she hopes to accomplish in so small a space without her head sticking out the glassless window, and so this is what she does."

I went out to Hollywood last night with about ten pages to go in the novel. Whenever I start up a novel like this, I become highly observant/detached at bars, more so than usual. And since I've cut back on going out, it was even worse. The bartenders taking shots, probably skimming money, probably alcoholics, and all of us, like beggars, leaning on the wood, waiting for our next drink to send us over the edge of oblivion. My friend ordered me a double Long Island because I joked about who would ever order it. Ruined me and our wallets. But I'm still alive.

Ray

 Incredible Book. Short read. Perfect really. Lots of people had good things to say. I loved it.

*Most writers are cowards who hide behind their words, others only write to ease the pain.

Oh no! oh ya! - Excerpt

I don’t say anything and put the car in drive. We have about 15 minutes until we have to meet up with his contact. I glance at John and he’s tapping his hand against his knee to some imaginary beat. The windows are steaming up. The Trans America building is behind us. We’re only a couple blocks away. I decide to drive up to Broadway. The scenes a bit more lively up there. Skankier girls, and strip clubs. Guys dressed in suits with women trailing. Pictures are being taken. Men yell at passerbuyers to come into their club. There’s one girl vomiting in front of a peep show. John laughs. I turn on the defroster and put turn up the volume on the radio. It’s some sort of hip hop. John says to leave it, and I do, he decides to turn it up, and we cruise through the streets with the windows down in an Escalade that isn’t ours. John opens up the glove compartment, revealing some passports and a gun. John says, “Oh Fuck” and shuts it. I say nothing. Only 8 minutes till drop off now. It would be nice to get a little extra money this week. My brother’s birthday was coming up. I could get him a gift card somewhere. He deserved it. I was usually too broke to get him anything. On Broadway I make a right. The Beat Museum is behind us and I think about Jack Kerouac high on cocaine, laughing and throwing a drink at someone, his face bloated, eyes sad. 5 minutes now. I make a left on Sansome. It’s a one way street. No ones really out since it’s one in the morning. 1:04 am exactly. A minute till drop off. I slow down and approach Vallejo. The man he describes is standing there alone, checking his cell phone and smoking a cigarette next to a large parking garage. John opens the compartment and grabs the bags.
“Make sure to get them all”, I find myself saying.

The Economy - New Song

Promo Video - Thanks to Emily Jane Robinson

this is justin rands. from EMMYLAND on Vimeo.

Flight of the Conchords Album Review

Notes from the Underground

"Every decent man of our time is and must be a coward and a slave. This is his normal condition. I'm deeply convinced of it. This is how he's made and what he's meant to be. And not only at the present time, as the result of some accidental circumstance, but in general at all times, a decent man must be a coward and slave. This is a law of nature for all decent men on earth. If one of them should happen to be brave about something or other, we shouldn't be comforted or distracted: he'll still lose his nerve about something else. That's the single and eternal way out. Only asses and their mongrols are brave, and even then, only until they come up against a wall. It's not worthwhile paying them any attention because they really don't mean anything at all."

"In short, anything can be said about world history, anything that might occur to the most disordered imagination. There's only one thing that can't possibly be said about it-that it's rational. You'll choke on the word. Yet here's just the sort of thing you'll encounter all the time: why, in life you're constantly running up against people who are so well0behaved and so rational, such wise men and lovers of humanity who set themselves the lifelong goal of behaving as morally and rationally as possible, so to speak, to be a beacon for their nearest and dearest, simply in order to prove that it's really possible to live ones live in a moral and rational way. And so what? It's a well known fact that many of these lovers of humanity, sooner or later, by the end of their lives, have betrayed themselves: they've pulled off some caper, sometimes even quite an indecent one."

Title - Badoosh

The Jesus Lizard

More Nostalgia

San Francisco 1958 from Jeff Altman on Vimeo.

SOJA Review

SF Nostalgia

Cruisin' in SF from Giant One on Vimeo.

BOOM - Mean Week - HTML GIANT

I eat a pot cookie from a man selling them, finish the rest of my beer, end up drinking some brandy someone brought, find myself floating away and lying back on the green grass staring at the view of the city, thinking how it doesn’t look real, thinking about tidal waves and earthquakes, 1906 and the gold rush, and staring at the humongous school across the street through my knockoff brand wayfarer sunglasses I can only hear sounds of laughing and dogs barking, an occasional basketball hitting the pavement down at the courts, a mans boom box he has fixated on the back of his bike, playing Bob Marley, as he rides through the crowd, a distant siren from some where on the right of us in the Mission, and yells, constant yells from people who do or don’t feel alive in someway or another.

What should I be

I’m on the corner of Haight and Divisidero contemplating walking. There are at least 15 people waiting with me. Some of the people are from the liquor store. Two guys are shot gunning beers on the sidewalk. A cop car passes on Divisidero but does nothing. Another person waiting is handicapped and in a wheelchair. That will complicate the whole bus ride’s time by 15 minutes or so. Everyone on board the bus will have to move towards the back, the bus will have to drop lower to the ground and release a ramp to get the person up. There will be yelling and stepping on or rolling over feet. The electronic timer in the bus shelter says 18 minutes until the next bus. I think of the beer in my backpack then decide to walk and catch another bus later. Think about stopping for food at the Thai place at the corner but it’s already two in the afternoon and I can’t shake the pull of the park. A bum across the street is peeing into the middle of the street. I think I see his penis but don’t bother to look again. I hear his laughing as I turn and walk down Haight and glance up at all the shoes hanging from the telephone wires and think about drugs.