We're like a full two miles out from authenticity at this point. Soon we'll hit international waters.

Some thoughts on Wolfmother (without going into their name):
Wolfmother rips off good bands and their singer has good hair. Really, wanting anything else from a rock band is pickiness.
That having been said:
No, music critics, Wolfmother doesn't sound like Zeppelin or Sabbath. The guitar lines they jacked from "Paranoid" are a red herring; the proper rock equation is "Jet trying to sound like the White Stripes" or the other way around. Confidential to NYC: And no, not "on acid". Probably on pot, maybe even on a lot of it, but their delay-heavy breakdowns lack the sort of frontal lobe sizzle and absolute pedalitrous conviction that mark the music of real acidheads. I'm not mad at Wolfmother, though. They're just the latest pencil tossed at the drop ceiling for an industry looking for an Important band to justify keeping rock at the front of the record stores. I can almost see groups of record executives kneeling together in prayer in a conference room in LA, trying to wish hard enough for a band that will eventually end up in the RnR Hall of Fame. If wishing doesn't work, then they bring out the checkbooks.

They're for when you're trying to sound smart, but then you realize that you're just making words up.

Portland is still the hipster "Big Rock Candy Mountain": the thrifting's good, the vintage-machine arcade serves beer, and everyone you meet is either a DJ or a band. There aren't any streams running with PBRtinis, but you can order one at a club with a tastefully worn-in modern design scheme, so it's all cool.
I came back from PDX with a bunch of photos of a half-dachshund/half-chihuahua named Carl Weathers and the beginnings of a new look. The look involves a camo parka, more jewelry, and possibly a ponytail. I've named it French Coke Dealer after Jessica's description of me the other morning. She meant it as an insult, but everyone knows that Eurotrash drug dealers are a total high-five among middle class white girls with parent issues. I'll take it as a compliment: that's an important demographic.
-
Q: What are the most important tools for someone attempting to write an article after reading nothing but David Foster Wallace essays and Blender for a week or more?
A: The delete key and a bootleg video of The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior.

One out of seven is actually pretty bad

One of my really awesome talents is how I can pick up bits of how a person is speaking to me, little touches of cadence and accent, and incorporate it into how I speak back to them. For instance, the guy selling women's hats on the sidewalk outside of the Bottle last night spoke with a Southern African-American accent, so when I turned down his proposition of gay sex I kind of draaawled it out, y'know? Just kinda letting the vowels run the show. It's the kind of behavior that you read about in the books about the habits of successful people, but I don't read those books. The shit just happens to me.

If I had to spell it out it would be like, "huurrggghhh".

"When it came time to record, it wasn't hard for Stipe to recruit the artists who participated in the project. In addition to the duet with Coldplay's Chris Martin, Justin Timberlake and will.i.am (Black Eyed Peas) contributed a remix of the song that will also be available for download. Also involved were Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger, who plays piano, and former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, who produced the song with Stipe and Arthur at Stratosphere Sound studio in New York City."

In a tribute to the destructive power of Hurricane Katrina, Michael Stipe has created the perfect storm of douche chills. I'm not going to say that this press release makes me fully understand what it is to be a bloated corpse floating around in murky sewage water, but I feel like I'm a lot closer to it than I was yesterday.
This is like the musical equivalent of that scene in Wayne's World where Garth's talking about someone vomiting and the puke chain reaction that it started.

That's money in the bank.

I was thinking earlier about Yacht Rock, and I was thinking about how Jack Johnson is like the Yacht Rock of now. Peaceful vibes, sort of just mellowing out and looking at the sunset with maybe like a pretty girl with a giant bowl of G-23 government-grown turbo weed, that kind of thing. And then I was thinking that Yacht Rock 2004 would be a really good project for the Chicago kids to do. I would play the part of John Mayer, because I have the same ladykilling eyes that he does, and we both play real middle-class blues. Jeff Tweedy could play Dave Matthews because they're both like "the king", and Rob Lowe would make an awesome Ben Harper, because it's either him or Damon, since they're the only black guys our scene pays any attention to. (UPDATE: Rob calls this idea both "hilarious" and "really sad".) I'm not sure yet who I'd cast in the role of Jack Johnson. My first thought is Rob from Pit Er Pat, because he has short hair and seems to be stoned all the time, but I'm totally catching a "peaceful easy feeling" from the idea of a Conor Oberst cameo. I heard that dude has the fucking chronic, and besides he can probably write a full-length off of the trauma of cutting his hair. That's money in the bank.

You can't prove that it wasn't.

I mean, odds are that it was the prad kra-prao I had for lunch, but I'm gonna hold onto my theory that listening to the new Jenny Lewis record will give you violent stomach cramps. Cuz I'm a dick like that.

Food: there is just so much to talk about

When you are deciding on a name for your sushi restaurant, make sure you consider the fact that if you call your restaurant Touch of Sushi, I will associate your restaurant with someone poking me in the face with a piece of room-temperature shrimp, and that will keep me from ever eating there ever.
Food-related note: I am currently hungry. The second-closest place to buy food from my office is the place that deep-fries cheese. Not exactly a good situation.

Close to Chuck

I just snagged a book about Chuck Close from our review pile. I can still remember the first time I saw one of his paintings in real life. I can actually remember the exact words that went through my head at the time: "No fucking way. Oh my god." Not quite the stuff that gets one into Bartlett's, but if you've ever seen his works in the really real I'm sure you know the feeling.
I plan on totally jacking Close's whole late-60's look, as exemplified in 1968's Big Self-Portrait

if I should ever find myself physically capable of growing a decent mustache. Yes, the style-jacking plan involves never wearing a shirt, and yes I know it's sort a molestorfied look, but if Chuck's not sweating it I'm not gonna either.
I'm not so amped on the books title, Close Reading, but I can't really hate. You know there's not an editor on earth who'd let you write a book about Chuck Close and not use some shitty pun as its title.

Money is Still a Major Issue: the Internet's Premiere Financial Advice Blog

I'm putting some thought into putting together a serious, mature drug addiction. I'm across the board less interested in drugs than in previous years (despite Chris Hansen's friends who have been fucking with compounds that can apparently effect visits from Jehovah himself [psychedelics that inspire visitations from J-Hova are apparently not yet available] and Joe Rogan's ringing endorsement of DMT). I'm mostly just interested in knowing exactly where all of my money goes. If I had a drug habit I could definitively say, "I spent all of my money on drugs," an economic strategy whereby my drug dealer would become something like a bank account although one that doesn't allow me to access the money I deposit and also that has an interest in me being addicted to drugs. I'm okay with that, though. Strictly from a financial perspective it could be a good move, adding an element of certainty that my current spending habits lack. As it stands, I finish up every pay period with nothing in my bank, scrambling to figure out where all my money went and coming up with nothing solid to show but magazines, more jeans than I should own, and piles of bright, shiny things.

Super-producer and power seducer.

JR and I are both giving mad props to Lola Ogunnaike for giving us not only a dece, skeptical-ish profile on Scott Storch, but also for one of the Times' all-time most double-entrendrefied headlines.

Celebrate

For the past couple of days my main source of worry is my recent weight loss, which has resulted in some loss of definition in my pecs, but then I got a press release for a Martin Luther King Day foam party out in the suburbs and now I'm just worried that I'm going to go to hell for hanging out with white people.

I'm just gonna write about TV because I'm lazy and I love my TV.

I finally finished out the Lost DVDs, busting through the last two discs Sunday afternoon in marathon fashion in the company of serious homegirl Lara. We blankied up on our respective couches, ordered Pizza Hut, and said "Fuck you," to 2006. 2006 is a dirty bitch, and we will continue treating it as such until it delivers fame and riches unto us. Recognize, 2006. Recognize.
Finishing Season 1 was kind of a bum-out, though. We don't have broadcast TV or cable up in our place (we say "fuck you" to cable around here, as well as to 2006 and a number of other things/concepts), and our current level of in-house computing power precludes me from being able to (legally or not) download Season 2. Either Apple's gotta drop those Intel laptop jams now, or I'm gonna have to wait until next month's Portland birthday excursion and jam on some new episodes at Krystal's. Fucksville.

It is dark in the woods and sometimes freaky.

I spent X-Mas weekend back at my parents' house, off in the woods in the deep, dirt-road rurality. Stuck without a driver's license I get a little too into Dad's fully-stocked basement bar and a little too into the backwoods paranoia that can creep up on you out there. Without around-the-clock near-daylight conditions like we have in town I am prone to nighttime cigarette breaks that involve partial hallucinations. I have in fact seen a UFO out there, have woken my mom up to tell her that, and have had to convince her that I wasn't on drugs. I err on the side of caution when it comes to these freakouts. Until I'm absolutely sure that the piece of ice over isn't a crouching, attack-ready possum, I'm not going to take my eyes off it. I don't know how many of you have any experience being trapped inside of a building by stalking possum, but it teaches you some respect for a marsupial's potential violence.

If you want your iTunes to look like mine

Van Morrison "Want A Danish?"
Bloody Hollies "We're So Anxious"
Blood Brothers "Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck"
Death From Above 1979 "Blood On Our Hands (Justice remix)"
David Banner "Certified"
Dennis DJ & MC Cabo "Tire A Camisa"
Kiss Me Deadly "Dance 2"
Mississippi John Hurt "Louis Collins"
Magnolia Electric Co. "Hard To Love A Man"
John Lennon "Bring On The Lucie (Freida People)"
Mannequin Men "Honey, I'm Dead"
Nightmare of You "I Want To Be Buried In Your Backyard"
the Fall "I Can Hear The Grass Grow"
Mean Reds "Minor Threat"
Xiu Xiu "Bog People"
The Robot Ate Me "Angel In The Snow"
Silver Jews "How Can I Love You If You Won't Lie Down?"
Diamond Nights "Dirty Thief"
Immaculate Machine "Broken Ship"
Celebration "Holiday"
Bloc Party "Pioneers (M83 remix)"
Vladimir Horowitz "Etude In C Minor Op. 25 No. 12" by Chopin

The low-end tech graveyard that we call home.

Despite our plans currently in the works to score a budget-priced widescreen HDTV monitor (the original plan of copping a resonable-sized television that would go on a little rolly-cart having been squashed by the sheer mass of cheap, ridiculous TVs on the market), the technology sitch around Casa Borracho is pretty janky at the moment. JR's iBook took a major shit last week, matching my own iBook's late-summer shit-taking, so we are currently time-sharing a lime-green iBook on loan from Hopper. OS 9.2 in full effect, full-time with the shitty Internet Explorer that is basically like our wireless router broadcasts the internet back to 1985 and we're supposed to blog from there, all discussing how Reagan sucks dick and how in a few years everyone's gonna be wearing Hypercolor sweatshirts. Apple had better release Intel chip PowerBooks before we revert to some Amish-style level of tech around here. I don't want to find myself having a serious debate with JR as to whether zippers are the devil's work.

The Diabolical Clinton Biz

Two of the main points Hillary Clinton made during her couple-a-minutes speech at a Crobar event in honor of her senatorial-not-we-repeat-not-presidential-campaign-she-is-not-running-for-president-seriously-not even-thinking-about-it fund-raiser event at Crobar the other night: the deficit is seriously like WTF, and young people are the future. The remaining point she made is that Chicago is a great city that is great to be in. No mention of the war, and they cleared the protesters away before most members of the press arrived, but my co-workers snagged some pics. The high point of the evening is when Biz Markie induced probably several severe coronary episodes by referring to Hillary over the PA as "Our next president-esident-esident" (complete with Biz-generated faux Yankee stadium reverb effects), then played the intro to "Crazy In Love" as she came out of the secret passage she used to enter the club. The low point was possibly when all members of the press were, immediately after Clinton's speechlet, ordered and, on occasion, shoved out the doors by Secret Service agents. But if you are into being all pissed off at the Man and the Pigs, it was kind of like a secret high point at the same time.

Do not bust that bullshit flavor at me.

We all know how tasty the peanut butter flavor Puffins cereal is, but do not think that just because the peanut butter flavor is the truth that you can go ahead and let them kick the honey rice flavor at you. The shit is heinous and nasty and it will wreck your afternoon, I swear.
Sal Principato from Liquid Liquid's coming to town tomorrow with his new project Electric Skin. You can read my writeup on it in this week's Reader. It's the first time that any Liquid Liquid-related project has hit Chicago, and it should be live. During my research for the article we discovered that Grand Royal's Liquid Liquid reissue is still essentially impossible to find on cd, but due to some weird twist of fate (or some bankruptcy-related inventory process) you can still cop it on lp at Grand Royal Direct. Is it worth twenty bucks to give your record geek bros jealous vinyl-boners? Some people would call it a steal.

America's media-saturated soul hits the club for the evening.

Every straight man in the club was sitting in the VIP. My friend Jillian was celebrating the first anniversary of her lesbian night at the Funky Buddha with a party that featured live goldfish in plastic cups and an appearance by Amanda Lepore. We sat around drinking some vodka-and-juice thing called X-Rated while attractive women made out on the dance floor to house remixes of Snoop Dogg songs. Amanda Lepore's entrance, somewhere around 1 o'clock was part movie star red carpet and part in-store meet and greet; every club photographer in town swarmed to get her picture, along with the gay club kids trying to get a shot of themselves with a club legend.
If you want to be famous for being famous, you have to be willing to make an effort. Becoming a transsexual with Jayne Mansfield tits and collagen lips too outrageously inflated to be compared to any woman living or dead works, or at least it does for Lepore. On paper, at least, she was at the club to perform. She's got a few clubby tracks that she sings on, and her single "Champagne" is definitely the number one best pop song by a transsexual probably ever. But the real reason she was there was to hang out. Hanging out is what she does. She's so good at it that all her singing and David Lachapelle and Heatherette modelling just look like side jobs, the way that everyone else in the place works at Whole Foods or waits tables. The Buddha's VIP section is just a roped-off area in the bar's corner, so everyone could see how the world's most famous professional clubgoer hangs: There's a lot of posing for pictures. There is a sidekick in punk-kabuki makeup and a stuffed animal backpack that may or may not be a conscious throwback to the Party Monster club kid era. There is an enormous bottle of champagne. Beyond that there is just hanging out.
It's hard to put your finger on whatever it is that makes Amanda Lepore compelling, but she is. She's a knot of America's unravelling sexual identity, the artificial incarnation of the blonde bombshell, the heartland's sexual ideal made out of skin-straining breast implants and a surgically-crafted pussy. I think what makes her matter has a lot to do with sacrifice. Lepore's something of a martyr, putting herself on the altar of the surgeon's table so we can all gaze upon the results. Think about it like this: she's Jesus, Andy Warhol is God, and on the edge of the scene in a darkened corner Marshall McLuhan is chuckling into his balled-up fist. It's 2005 and that's not too far from the truth.

The latest public apology.

I would like to publicly apologize for any comments I have made last night comparing graphic designers' overuse of the Cooper Black typeface to Richard Pryor "burning through a huge bag of rock, all ending up in the hospital, covered in burns." Richard Pryor is a comedy legend and an American icon, and I hope my comments did nothing to tarnish his legacy of being high as hell on cocaine.

1000x"Huh?"

Biz Markie is DJing a fundraiser party for Hillary Clinton at Crobar on the 3rd. I want to be there when Hillary and the Biz shake hands and rupture the fabric of the universe.