Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Midnight all alone on the pavement has the moon lost her memory?












charlie n kelly being cute @ danial johnston.
blurry danial johnston.
la estrella!!!! the best fish taco in the world. remnants of goodness. thats a 2 dollar monster by the way.
i went by my old neighborhood to see if it had changed, luckily it just made me really proud of who i am and what i am and where i'm from. viva chicana!
and lastly the mouth of the beast. i call this portrait great expectations. where many a young girls heart swelled with anticipation of damp puddles and the reflections of the night inside them.
and finally, i stole this pic from the website, actually dan monick took it, but i couldn't resist. how adorable r these little rapscallions? i cant believe i work for such babyfaces, and that such swetties put out the record. (dan included!) but i wouldn't call dan a cutie, id just call him hot.

Ahh, cats lyrics. Look me stealing concepts left and right. so basically im a shitty blogger. i spent all weekend doing awesome awesomeness and i left my camera at home.
friday night i went to go see Danial johnston with chris, kelly and charlie. it was like an la record filed trip, then was fuck yeah fest which ruuuuuuuuled. im bummed i didnt snap a few. k came and i bumped into a million people i hadn't seen in years like Melissa, joel and countless others. plus i saw jessika and dave!!! which was cool, were gonna go see superbad at the beautiful art deco egyption where its always 5 bucks b4 5 and u can get a giant tub of popcorn plus a free refill at the same time! 2 popcorns 4 1. but this is sort of pointless since i don't have pics.

i did have dinner with smach and dylan though and that was so good. chris took me to see where the black dahlia lived and worked he lives across the street. it was delightfully morbid and made me think of old movies. i walked on the beach and saw a seagull with a cigar!!!!!! i will never forget that, until the last day that i am alive and my eyes part into darkness, i will see that seagull on the water break in long beach, smoking a cigar.
i think im slipping into unconsciousness here, everything is so grand.
ps. Indian jewelry owns ur soul.

Friday, August 24, 2007

All I've Ever Wanted















im blogging this from a library across the street from rachels old apartment in highland park. near la estrella. i remember when they were building it and the gold line. we would walk down the train tracks at night to where the platform was being built and drink highlife 40's then go to mr. t's and get crazy. oh the early 0's. this was way before we even started going "out out" when i was shaking off all my residual teenage high school ways of life. put down the boones and pick up the blow. oh oh what a way to go! anyway, its weird to be inside this place. its actually really beautiful in the arts and crafts style and looks very true to the arroyo's architectural history.

neway here are some pics so far of my WONDERFUL trip. ive only been here 18 hours!

the last pic of leon the morning before i left. i <3 him.
Casa de la Swang,
the two page detailed note she left for me that basically boiled down to water my plants and feed my pets. she had time to write this thing but left her back door open and all her windows open and the front door unlocked. this is why sarah is the greatest human ever conceived. she also told me that if i fucked up her house she would "ruin my life." threats from sarah should not be taken lightly.
what lola thinks of sarahs note (i agree!)
beezles! btw, this house is so amazing, its like someone took the romote control that shrinks chocolate bars in willy wonka and shrunk a big house and made sarahs tiny little adorable house. AND the most aggravating part? it costs $200 more than my tiny ass room. oh new york, sometimes you test me.
the first thing i wanted to do was see k, and the first thing i wanted to eat was vietamese food, so she came and picked me up and we went to golden deli. ohhhhhhhh, god, the bounty, and then the wreckage. best thing about this meal? it was under 20 bucks. i love la.

Monday, August 20, 2007

hurry up and wait









Bow and Arrow came to visit!
Mike n Alice drive us to a Pow Wow near Spite n Dievel (thats so fun to say!)The Clipd Beaks came n their super nice guys and their band rulz, check em out!
The pow wow mc was super mean and hilarious and was like yelling at little kids, and the guys selling food were like Native American stereotypes, they were sooooo slow n funny, me n heather were like, doood, pick it up. I saw they were makin strawberry fry bread and i go, (I'm pretty much native american and mexican on my moms side so i can say these things) "is that a native american delicacy?" and he goes "im a native american delicacy!" not to steal from another blogger but, WOOT!
Danica has a birthday
Heather graduates
I have a birthday.
I just found out that Marcus is in Ambulance LTD, everyone was like, Duh. I'm always the last to know these things.
And beautiful Brianna who made my whole birthday possible.
so why this sudden new interest in a blog i started months ago and then dropped? well, mainly to blame is my new wonderful job for which i get paid zilch at the record. i just raced home from Atlas because I was supposed to interview Mark Arm from Mudhoney at 1:00, unfortch he has decided to not pick up his phone. So now I'm stuck in my house (i cant leave cos if he does call i have to be at my computer)anyway, I'm finding that lots of musicians like to not be available when they say they will be. Ahh, tis the ramblin road way of life. In the meantime while i wait, heres some more pictures from this summer, a sort of recap thus far and before its over. - Sadly Pennsylvania and Capri aren't in here! I need to get my ass on the bus!
Funny side not, as a child i always got the words Pennsylvania and Transylvania mixed up in my mind, and I thought Dracula lived in America.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

ADORABLE



this is what i do when i cant sleep. make creepy photoshop pics of my editor, the resemblance is uncanny however. yes, i am a total freak. <3

some things take time







moving to new york can be tough, kind of like starting a new school in 6th grade when everyones been together since kindergarten. that said now that the whole cat craze has sort of cooled down to a simmer i'd like to share with u my favorite artist ever, his name is b. kliban. i first discovered him because of his cat calendars which my mom would buy me every year as a child because i loved cats (and still does and i still do)anyway, as i got older and became interested in in his career i discovered that he was actually a bona fide genius who inspired many cartoonists that we consider innovators of their craft. most notably gary larson. in any event you can see his influences as well, such as the great saul stienberg. b. was a dirty, drunk asshole who died poor and unrecognized but with a giant body of work. it is posthumously that all his dumb (ADORABLE!)cats made him famous. unfortunately they overshadowed his most masterful works.
whoever is owner to his estate though, meow! what a score.

Thats Glam

Mr. Pink


I've recently become re-obsessed with Pink Floyd after cleaning my house and discovering that we owned The Wall, as well as many other movies I thought we had lost. Much to my delight I am going to be in LA all next week for Fuck Yeah Fest and just hanging out. Neway, I'm not going out this weekend so I can save money and get work done so I don't have to work while I'm away (Monday will be a rapid fire of interviews Wanda Jackson, Mudhoney and Girl Talk, plus transcribing Bert jansch and Jason Molina -both of whom are asshole btw- and letting the exterminator into my house and packing and then 2 more 12 hour days before I get on the plane) whew! So I spent last night all rolled up in a sheet burrito watching The Wall trying to remember why I was so enthralled with it in high school. I was on the phone with Chris who was in a deli trying to decide what to buy and take back to the show he was at because he hadnt eaten dinner yet. (i call them deli's now, im such a ny'r! he called it a liqour store last nite on the phone and it took me a minute) and he was like, because you were stoned. I watched the whole thing with leon with a sheet over my head in the dark cos michelle and heehaw are out of town, just me n the cats. it was bliss.
we also talked about robert mitchum and humppry bogart. the barefoot contessa was on 13 and that movie is simply amazing. melodramatic, thrilling, lush, and beautiful to look at with some of the best lines ever written. i LOVE old movies about the movies. check out Day of the locust, its another must see, plus its from the 70's the last golden age of screen goodness. according to me of course. BUT if u havent read the book do yourself a favor and do that first.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Fistacuffs, <3 n late nite texts










So there are some pics from this past weekends social registry thing. It was at this place called the yard in carroll gardens off the gowanas canal. i went to cover it for the record. it was super beautiful. heath and i went on saturday and jory and i hit it up on sunday. the gang gang dance show was definitely one of the best shows of my life.
this journalist maureen keeps calling me for an interview for this story in the post about the secret (weird sentence please with a side of i cant sleep or spell). she needs to talk to somebody who thinks its full of shit. and guess what? im her gal apparently. so heres my the original live from new york, befor hein ziegler butchered it with his professional hard nosed journalism.

i like this one better, but he is the boss. kiss kiss Darling's, oh wait, thats me!

In twenty years when your kids are putting beer on top of your coffee table books and spilling chips in the crevices of your expensive craftsman couch while you’re out of town playing golf in Big Sur, the warped faces looking up at you from those books upon your return will be Gang Gang Dance. And don’t yell at the kids for scratching your Gang Gang Records either, just make them clean up the mess and throw down some rules about parties while you’re out of town, go upstairs to your room, change the sheets, lock the door and get out the scrap book and smile to yourself because you were there man.
I go to a lot of shows and a lot bands pass before me on a monthly basis and very few leave me really thirsting for more. But Gang Gang Dance is going to be remembered as one of the seminal bands of this time, mark my words. I was sitting with Jorskie yesterday at the very end of Social Registry’s wonderful and surprisingly pleasant (more on this later) two day music festival waiting for Gang Gang to set up and discussing best bands of the 2000’s thus far, I said The Kills were one of my faves because of their live performances, Jorskie wrinkled his nose and said “Nah, not innovative enough, what’s original about them?” I nodded my head, yes, yes, I had to concede, he was correct. (One of the things that annoys me endlessly about Jorskie is that I am a devils advocate and so is he so I often find myself arguing points I would usually agree with just because I like to argue and then before I know it I’m all tangled up in a tongue twisting battle of “You’re right, you’re, I agree.”) Next I said Vietnam, again he nodded his head and scratched his shadow, “nah, good, but not new” No way! I countered. But maybe he was right again, although almost nothing beats a good Vietnam show, and all those hundreds of hungry supermodels walking the streets of SOHO in their Vietnam band shirts couldn’t be wrong. Then Van Jorskie looked up and said, “Gang Gang Dance.”
“What? Really?” I asked. He turned and with the setting sun reflecting off his black Ray Bans said, “Yes.”
Hmm. I chewed on this. I did like Gang Gang Dance quite a bit and it was a fun little conversation and it would give me something interesting to think about the next couple of days, but what I didn’t know was that my mind would be changed over the course of the next hour. With the sun now fully set and the band set up, we sat in our plastic chairs in the shady halo of trees along the wonderful breezy Gowanis Canal waiting for the band to play, the smell of barbecue and sunscreen and fresh cut grass surrounding us and giving a break from the smelly grind of the city streets. They lumbered slowly on stage taking swigs from bottles of water and wiping sweaty hands on buttocks to grip their drumsticks. Final chords were tuned on the guitar and then Brian turned the knob. – Now before I continue I would like to say that I have seen Gang Gang Dance play before, twice before to be exact, and each time the experience was different. The first was at The McCarran pool summer shows last year and the place was packed and the band was pushed for some reason to the back of the stage, the second time was at a club, I forget which, and I had to keep running in and out to scream at my x boyfriend into my cell. Neither time rubbed off on me as particularly memorable, except that there was mild recognition that they were good and that everyone else for some reason, seemed to be obsessed. I had heard their music on CD and liked it alright, I’d even gotten a chance to interview them for The Record, an experience that was nothing short of lovely, but still if you asked three days ago would I rather go to a Gossip show or a Gang Gang Show, I probably would have had to think about it (no disses to Miss Ditto you are and continue to be the bomb!).
The music started out how I remembered it, a lot of pre recorded wailing and beats and samples from films or looped over chants, but then suddenly a mans deep distorted voice started muttering “Lift up your eyes and open your heart to god, lift up your eyes and open your heart to god.” A red light and a spinning rainbow psychedelic orb and a smoke machine had been placed on the rickety wooden plank stage, smoke started to push out into the audience and because of the Canal it sucked it out over the water like a scene from Night of the Hunter. The past two days everyone had casually sat back in rows of chairs and chatted quietly while bands played but as Lizzie started to squirm and chant wildly like a possessed woman, her eyes rolling into the back of her head, the guitar slowly intensifying to match the beats and drums (the guitar playing in this band is hugely ignored or underrated in interviews and articles, as much of what the band follows to keep their many dismembered parts together is the linear under melodies that the guitar keeps hidden and then repeats to pull them back in, not to mention that when he does solo some of things he plays are mind blowing.) But of course the percussion is pushed to the forefront, and wisely so, because as Jorskie so aptly puts it, that’s what makes them innovative and will keep them transcendent (sorry Gossip, Kills, Vietnam, your influences are like your hearts, all on your sleeve’s) First it was one group of people who approached the stage, then anther cluster got up and joined, soon everyone knew what was happening and started to rush up to grab a piece of what would be considered prime front row real estate. Jorskie shrugged at me and I said, “I guess we should get up.” And we snagged a spot right in the front, people pushed in tight and we were transported into the world of Gang Gang where music from all genres, specifically world music is open game and game spit out into a truly unique danceable beat.
And just as they were building up to the climax of perhaps what was their best song of the night, everyone sweaty and mesmerized the power went out and the stage went black, the Christmas lights set up around the space, the lanterns over the shed, the amps and the smoke machine. It all seemed to disappear into thin air. The band acted as if it wasn’t planned, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.
Other bands played and they were good as well, definitely check out Electroputas their my new favorite band of the minute after yesterday’s performance (at some further date I would like to do them more justice but I realize after my Gang Gang Dance fan dance it might fall a little short, but really! They were my second favorite of the day! Sian Alice Group from England was also very nice, a sort Lavender Diamond meets psychedelic surf music kind of a thing and of course TK Webb was amazing as usual.
My best advice to you? If Gang Gang comes into your town, do yourself a favor and go. I watched as the back of this little boat shed became what I will remember as one of the best shows of my life. It felt how I imagine watching The Velvet Underground in the sixties might have felt or The Pixies or Nirvana in the late eighties/early nineties, or what it must have felt like to be in college getting to watch Kathleen Hannah rip off her shirt and write Bitch across her chest, or the great Janis Joplin wail herself rasp. I joke not. It was something I will always remember. So go go go! Because twenty years from now you don’t want to have your kid come to you and ask what was it like to see them live and you go, “You know what honey? I didn’t go, I was too busy fighting with this guy who was almost your daddy, but who am I kidding would have never been your daddy, but I decided to stay home and make cupcakes and casserole with him and snuggle and watch Herzog on Netflix.” To which their hopeful little teenage face will fall and they will shrug their shoulders and go, “Oh never mind, I thought you were cool.”

Reporting Live From New York
I’m Nikki Darling And You’re Not!



me as a simpson, i thought the blue tooth was a safty pin and i couldnt figure out how to take it off. foss n heehaw n jory in the shade.
two happy creatures of this earth. happy happy happy to be alive like they should be.
one big dick.

ps. im still trying to figure this blog stuff out.