You have probably heard me say it before, and you'll definitely hear me say it again, but as the saying goes, "If all you have is a Hammer, then the whole world appears to be a nail." I had the discussion with my good friend the other day and came to the conclusion that I'm only happy when I'm not. It's not that I like to rain of parades or invoke my inner Debbie Downer. What I enjoy is knowing that no one can ruin my mood, and so long as I'm comfortably upset it's pretty hard to shift my pleasure curve in a negative direction. (EDIT: "He who sleeps on the ground, cannot fall out of bed." Just saw this on twitter and found it pertinent. Carry on. 5/2/10)
Killing Ants with a Sledgehammer
You have probably heard me say it before, and you'll definitely hear me say it again, but as the saying goes, "If all you have is a Hammer, then the whole world appears to be a nail." I had the discussion with my good friend the other day and came to the conclusion that I'm only happy when I'm not. It's not that I like to rain of parades or invoke my inner Debbie Downer. What I enjoy is knowing that no one can ruin my mood, and so long as I'm comfortably upset it's pretty hard to shift my pleasure curve in a negative direction. (EDIT: "He who sleeps on the ground, cannot fall out of bed." Just saw this on twitter and found it pertinent. Carry on. 5/2/10)
I've got nothing to say
i have a surplus of this stuff
And my first Begotten son shall be called...Bovice
I wrote earlier this year about forgiveness. I found myself in a position where forgiveness became some sort of situational currency. To be able to forgive someone, they have to first infringe upon your rights somehow and to a lesser extent also recognize that they’ve wronged you. I could kill your dog because it won’t stop barking late at night, but if I don’t find that to be an incredibly horrible thing, then your forgiveness not only isn’t likely to be forthcoming, but I’ll have no use for it because I don’t see anything wrong with what I’ve done. That realization right there spells out the point, that forgiveness is an especially human thing. Prayer in some religions is said to be the means of asking Holy absolution for ill deeds but that clemency is more highly regarded because it is believed the dispenser is…well…God. If the big guy lets you off the hook then not only do you avoid eternal damnation but you take it seriously because you trust his judgment. Humans however…we’re a far less reasonable bunch. I feel like on balance there are more people forgiven that shouldn’t be than people not forgiven who should be so that’s good. But the reasons for people’s decision making is often far less principled than perhaps the creator or your run of the mill, average Lord and Savior.
So we have to recognize, and I say we meaning me but if you’re smart then you too; that forgiveness might be the least important thing ever created. Can you imagine if you did work but sometimes less than you expected came or none at all? Conversely sometimes you did nothing and a check came in the mail anyway just because you said you worked? This is basically the way forgiveness is dispensed on the individual level and so I put little value into it and I think we all should. In the end when you do something wrong and you truly feel remorse then you should know you’re probably forgiven by those that matter, and when you are wronged yet you can’t find it in yourself to let go, then you need to know you’re holding no power over anyone but yourself. I think as far as I’m concerned I learned that I’m incapable of real forgiveness at least in any sort of timely manner and that it is largely dependant on me feeling okay with a situation. Some things are just unforgivable and in the words of Michael Corleone; “Mistakes can be forgiven, but I’d kill my own brother for betraying the family.”
Shut up Cat
Today I woke up roughly around 3 or 4 in the morning. In the predawn glow, from a short distance away I could hear the feline voice of someone speaking to me. It appears to have been my lucky day because Drama, our household 'fiend chose to serenade me with his song. Apparently he was hungry and wanted me to feed him. The sun wasn't yet up and in the dark his black fur made him out to be a Cheshire like character, just a voice, eyes glowing, and an outline. It amazes me that animals with such human characteristics can lead such inhuman lives. Just yesterday the neighbors dog jumped it's fence and chased him right in front of the kitchen window. I shooed the dog back home and let Drama come in only to find he was kind of a wreck. I didn't know animals could get scared like that. I mean do Zebras spend 15 minutes shaking and shivering every time they escape from a Lion? I have no clue but the point is Drama was having a serious emotional breakdown and I was having none of it. Perhaps this visit to my window was his way of retribution or perhaps he is just some sort of food crazed maniac. (It's definitely the latter)
Good Things on the way
That is what she said
So this is a hypothetical I want you all to play along with. It was posed to me as part of a homework assignment and I find it kind of an interesting take on a tricky situation. You might have heard it before and I’m adjusting it slightly to make it fit the WB&C just a bit better, but the story is still the same.
So in this scenario you are a person living on earth and things there are just as they are now here. You are just like everyone else, no better no worse. You happen to be single and your job allows you to support yourself, so for all intents and purposes you are part of the nameless faceless crowd that make up our metropolitan areas. In this world however there is an international star of some sort. Lets say this person is regarded like a Perez Hilton mixed with Michael Jordan. Everyone loves them, everyone wants to be their best friend. Basically in my mind (because I am a geek) this person figures out how to solve our solid fuel propellant problem and allows NASA to get to Mars with only 2,000 lbs of fuel. (usually it’s 500,000+ lbs)
Now here is the story. You are walking around one day and you happen to hear that Salma, this wonderful person whom everyone knows and loves is sick with some incurable disease. A group of especially crazed fans begin to scour the country looking for a cure stopping at nothing to find out what it is. As it happens you are the only person on earth whose blood has the antibodies to combat the illness though you don’t know it. And how anyone else knows it is unimportant but what is important is that on your walk home from work as the manager at the local Popeye’s chicken you are taken and knocked unconscious. Somehow this deranged group of super fans, intent on keeping their beloved alive, have taken you and when you wake up you realize you’ve been hooked up to Salma via some system of tubes and wires. The doctors apologize profusely and assure you that the people who did this to you have been arrested and are facing life in prison because their attempt to kill you was stopped short but not before they could connect you to Salma.
After you gather your senses and calm down from obvious anger you are posed with two options by the doctor. Unplug yourself immediately and walk away. Allowing Salma to die or maintain attached to her until such time they can produce a treatment, which could take months. They reiterate that it is completely up to you and there is nothing keeping you from pulling the plug on her but they also stress that without you she will die assuredly. What makes this scenario interesting is that you yourself agree that she is a much more important person than you. Her work has brought new discoveries to mankind. Men love her, women want to be her, she is a truly great individual and you are just a fast food joint manager. Salma is asleep and you haven't been able to speak with her since you woke up but you are told she is doing better already.
So…what do you do?
Fight the Power
I didn’t go to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival this year. I actually have never been to that desert party held each year in Indio, California since 2001. Somehow though I feel a sort of kinship with it and it’s beginnings. Pearl Jam, a band I have almost no familiarity with was the first to test the arid desert locale for viability as part of a dispute with Ticket Master back in 1995. The inaugural show featured J5, Beck, Rage against the Machine, and DJ Shadow. I could see right away after reading this, that I felt a connection with Coachella and it’s rebellious roots as well as its’ taste in music. The need to be out away from everyone else is usually accepted as a desire to accommodate the drug culture that surrounds rock music but for me it is something different. The hordes of L.A. natives who flock there each year now represent part of what I think I talked about a few posts ago.
Sure there are lots of girls who like to take MDMA and go dance with some glow sticks while chomping on pacifiers. There are also a lot of so called “DJ’s” and “producers” who are there to see the contemporary greats put on a show they will emulate on laptops at clubs for weeks to come. But to me getting away from it all and taking it to the desert is really all about one thing…control. No one is going to tell you how to behave at Coachella. It’s an experience and in a lot of ways you just kinda have to learn how to survive it. 3 days in the desert with 80,000 of your closest friends. That’s some serious headache if you’re not careful. Going to shows in regular venues is cool but there is always some element of control that everyone lacks. The band has to play by the house rules, the crowd has to play by the bands rules, and the venue is at the behest of those in attendance. But at Coachella, you can do what you want. The acts are going to be more loose with their set, and the crowd won’t have to worry about being told to make some noise because there are probably 30 or 40,000 people seeing live music on a cocktail of drugs and heat that will handle that for you.
I see where they’re coming from with this whole festival idea. One thing that makes this especially unique, and most unlike me, is that the organizers have never shied away from making things interesting. I would say that I take space from everyone else, to be more like me, but the people at Coachella put it out in the desert in order to make room for people to come fit an image, to be wild, to have a story to tell. In all honesty I would never plan a party in the desert. I don’t like pooing outdoors, I don’t like others disturbing my sleep, and I don’t enjoy loud music if it is an artist I don’t enjoy. (I mean some bands are popular but that doesn’t mean I like ‘em) It just makes me think about how I grew up. I shied away from trouble because I was always trying to secure my future, but Coachella is the opposite. If we don’t find some trouble then we won’t have a future. It kind of makes me wish I’d embraced trouble a bit more as I’ve now pretty well carved out a persona that just doesn’t look very good wearing stripes.
I think she told me her name was "trouble"
Ask yourself what stories they will tell about you when you’re gone because If you don’t think there are any exciting ones, then perhaps it’s time you wrote a few, I know that's what I'm working on.
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles - Celestica Album Mix by SerpicoJones
"I paid for them titties get ya OWN"
It used to be I could walk up to the window the day of the show and grab a ticket on my way in. Tix’ at Will Call? Don’t worry about the matching credit card, an I.D. is more than enough, hell just know the name the tickets are under and walk away with a coke and a smile. This week I was hyped to see some live music for the first time in a while. I’ve always loved live shows since I saw Gnarls Barkley for the first time back in 2005. It just so happens I’ve seen more of them as a single guy than while I was dating but that is just the way things go, nothing more to it. (I make the point only because I tend to go on tears where I will see a lot of shows in a row and then none for a while. The tears always coinciding with me being single randomly.) I’ve missed some good shows and I’ve been to some better ones, but this past week was shaping up to be one for the record books. The last time I went on a real tear with shows I was going to see established artists that I knew I’d love and wouldn’t miss for the world. I remember getting to my first M.I.A. show and literally grabbing the rails around my date so we could keep our spot right in front of the Roseland. This time around I was conflicted to begin with because of the three shows all conveniently scheduled on one night, I was at the one I thought was a safe bet, but not exactly the one I was most excited for. All month leading up to this past Monday I would torture myself by picking one show to see knowing there was no way to see them all and then suffer the excruciating torment as songs from the other two groups would pop up in my playlist. So as it was, in my standard fashion I bought tickets roughly 18 hours or so before show time and planned an impromptu trip that had been 6 weeks in the making.
To be honest I like that the shows I go to are sold out. I feel bad if someone I really like isn’t getting the respect they deserve, but at the same time when I can’t grab a ticket because scalpers from OTHER STATES buy up all the tickets just to resell them, then that really irks me. You don’t see me buying up Lady Gaga tickets just to go resell them to people for more. I don’t believe in profiting off of someone else’s talent like that….however I want you to know that given the opportunity to buy ALL the tickets to one of her shows and then keep them to myself. I definitely would do that. I would of course not attend, but I think distributing the tickets to random vagrants on the street might be cool. I’d also give a ticket to anyone I thought might be inclined to boo, but that’s just me. This is also why I can’t have money. I would absolutely do bad things with it, we should all be glad things aren’t worse. I’m starting to really see where Donald Trump is going with this.
Digressions aside the show was of course amazing as I said, but what I don’t like is that everyone’s taste in music is suddenly becoming mine. I’ve been here people!! I was listening to M.I.A. and Diplo because of Hollertronix, whom no one has ever heard of. 2004 was the year I graduated high school, and by ’05 I was elbows deep into “Piracy Funds Terrorism”. I cannot in the least bit be surprised these acts have taken off. I love these acts for a reason and there are probably 50,000 people with the same story as me about bands of their own so yea I’m spitting in the wind a little bit here. It's all good though, i'm in it for the long run and pretty soon these acts are gonna be people younger than me so I will enjoy the long careers our contemporary artists for as long as I can.
These Nights are haunting Me
Step aside Kim! Last night I was lucky enough to see Little Dragon perform live at Mississippi Studios. Shouts to my girl Ari and her backpack! Anyway, it was a show like most. The opener, Audie Darling was a great singer, her tempo was a tad slow for a room full of adults at 9pm on a Monday but her songs were good, and she had real talent. The interim was good, with an older crowd there weren’t the same antics of bum rushing the front that go on at other shows. Had Patrick been there I’m sure he’d have been upset we didn’t get in a fight. The lead singer actually caught my eye a few years ago when I saw her face in a blog post. She has freckles and looks a lot like Lucy Liu's foreign cousin which I suppose she is? Yukimi's mom is American and her dad is Japanese. The soulful voice she sings with though belies her tiny stature. She absolutely sings the brakes off of any song she does and without a hint of accent. Xenophobic as it may be when someone is playing your heart strings like that, it helps if it's in a tune you recognize. I went in thinking she would do a great job, but by nights end she had completely wound me up. I felt UNDER prepared for the dance show she put on. Just watch the video of their performance for Wink live and try to imagine yourself at the show somehow NOT transfixed by it all? Yes that indeed is a photo of 75% of the band playing the drums all at once.
I appear to have quite the affinity for Swedish Rock #NoABBA. I don’t mean rock like the Beatles or the Stones but Rock like the Rock n Roll hall of fame. Rock as in the coolest shit we got going right now. For the most part people call it Indie Rock because the shows are frequented by Tom’s wearing Indie kids but in reality this stuff is Synth driven, electro pop with a grown and sexy twist to it. I could never be a music critic or even a music reporter because the way genres continue to grow and intermesh makes things hard to accurately describe. Anyway, the Swedes really know how to bang a drum and so there are many acts that I enjoy. Yukimi and her fine ass as well as Lykke Li, Miike Snow, and of course Peter Bjorn & John all hail from the great music Mecca surrounding Stockholm. Just typing that list leaves me a little speechless. I feel like that lineup would murder West Coast rappers as far as quality and relevance right now. The band played great and I had a lot of fun. It’s been a while since I’ve been out in Portland and I won’t soon forget the trip.
Happy Black Girl Day
A blogger who's stature and cachet I have only begun to aspire towards started something she terms, "Happy Black Girl day". Here at OneChange of Heart we definitely like to support, and permeate that which is socially remedial and/or positive. Here is a quote I pulled from last month:
"Happy Black Girl Day: National is not big enough. International is for chumps. We are interplanetary, baby. If Pluto was still a planet, they would be in on it too. The original intent was to celebrate Happy Black Girl Day on the 7th of every month. But the 7th fell on a Sunday for the past two months, which reminded me why celebrating holidays on number days doesn’t always work. We don’t even celebrate Dr. King’s birthday on the real date, so who is HBGD to ask for special treatment? ...Every second Wednesday of the month will be Happy Black Girl Day."
I definitely want to support a fellow blogger with positive intentions and I surely need the exposure to new topics, so joining the movement for me was a no brainer. This month I'd like to take a look at a hero of mine who just so happens to be married to a HBG of his own. I'm not yet ready to start making any deep and insightful remarks on the state of Black women, or ANY women for that matter so for starters we are going to give a shout out to my man Roger Ebert and hopefully I can learn something about what it takes to be as successful in all phases of life as he has been.
Full Disclosure
I am so in love. I met Maya more than two years ago at a concert in Portland and have been absolutely head over heels ever since. I was on stage when we met no less dancing my ass off and when our eyes met it was a transformative experience the likes of which I’ve never experienced before. Maya Arulpragasm better known as, M.I.A. is the truest representation of what I think I need in a woman to be happy. She is smart, funny, sexy, and best of all has a mind of her own backed up by a smart mouth. She can be witty without being catty, and talk shit without coming across like a bitch. She is absolutely amazing. Unfortunately for me she is married and just recently had a baby so it seems she has decided to put down roots elsewhere. Meh, at least it wasn’t that asshole Diplo.
So anyway I saw her quote being passed around Twitter and the first time I read it, I don’t think I understood. So I read it again and when I was done I paused. What followed can only be described as a mix between a laugh and an awestruck gasp. Not only did she give credence to something that for so long I felt bad about thinking, but she did it as a member of the industry. It’s tantamount to Kevin Durant telling a reporter he thought Kobe was ok, but not quite as much like Jordan as he thought. Or Zlatan telling Reuters that Drogba was perhaps just a bit more impressed with himself than anyone else. I was just taken back to that night on stage, the song ending, security ushering the throng of stage hoppers back down to the floor, and me stuck staring…standing… and waving. Had she beckoned just then I have no doubt the music would have muted for me and like a zombie would I have been at her side posthaste…not.one.doubt. In the words of another great hero of mine, Pharell, once wrote a song simply saying, “I just love your brain”. Double entendre’s aside there isn’t a better way to describe my love for her. The only other person I know right now with that same mix of charisma and intellect is my very own Bodhisattva back home. Even at 3yrs old I can tell she will be far smarter than her Nino…though that isn’t much of an accomplishment. I am a clear and devout M.I.A Stan that’s no secret.
What may surprise you is that I have no idea what she is saying when she said “[Gaga] sounds more like me than I do.” I resent that statement and I have absolutely no idea why she would say that. Those bloggers who said it sounds like a case of jealousy don’t know a thing about M.I.A. She has had the opportunity to sell out and passed. Her songs blew up when the mainstream heard her song in that damn Pineapple Express commercial or in Slumdog Millionaire. There is no way she thinks Gaga is somehow privy to chances she wasn’t. What she is though, is upset at the fans for eating up the garbage Gaga often puts out. That commercial she put out under the guise of “music video” for Telephone is a perfect example of how they couldn’t be more different.
Hate week is coming back soon. I have new things to hate, and fresh content for you to enjoy so stay tuned and I will be sure to keep you updated. Now it is time for the latest installment of Your random story about my time at UCLA medical.
So I suppose that last story I mentioned was a bit dramatic, but again I will emphasize that the simple fact I am here to recount it makes it all less so. In class the other day we were discussing abortion and it reminded me of a story I heard after I got out of the hospital. After I faded into that effortless sleep I spent a day or so under sedation and at some point my heart went berserk…again. I never gave the story much thought but now after trying to imagine life or death decisions being made without my input I find myself especially emotional. It is also scary to think what it must have been like for those who were there. I never shut up…ever. I never ever stop telling people what I want them to hear and in part that can be reassuring for people. Watching people work on me yet never see me open my mouth to chastise someone for something must have been a strange experience. So I have no memory of what had gone on. May 1, 2009 – May 3, 2009 are days I won’t ever recall, it’s part of my life that someone else has but I don’t, those memories are fuckin’ collectors items as far as I’m concerned. But unlike O.J. I promise not to stick you up to get them back. The story I had in mind involved the whiteboard I mentioned. I guess that at time there was some disconnect between my conscious and my subconscious because I was asking for things like juice and bagels, and something known as the Bruin Breakfast. I think I only ever ordered the Bruin Breakfast once and that was without a breathing tube in. I’m stubborn but not that stubborn. My stomach was literally forcing my hand to write these things. I find that amazing. I find it interesting digging up these stories bit by bit. I didn’t allow myself to feel emotions back then as many people close to me surely can attest. Looking back from this safe distance and feeling scared at a memory is like seeing a Scary movie or something. It’s riveting but truly horrific all at the same time. Next time I’ll talk about my friend Olivia and her eminent retirement.