Archives : all posts by Dan

Edmund was tired. 2% battery life and last night's clothes. Blood thick with sugar like raspberry jam. How meaningless a poker win seemed in the face of this grey morning. The morning seemed to have nothing to offer, it seemed to just stand there, stoic, ignoring him. The last year of his life could be titled I Wasn't Dressed For This. His winnings bought a breakfast sandwich and it seemed a cosmic injustice that terrible food tasted good. Edmund wondered where the line was between "knowing you're dying" and knowing you're dying. If you could feel it, with your hands.

Angel Olsen - "Forgiven/Forgotten"

This song will play on the day I am let out of jail. It will be cold and clear, and cars won't look like God's moving turds, and food will have a taste. Everything will look bright because getting out of jail is really just being given back your senses. And that will be the same day my phone grows legs and walks away.

--

The immaculate Angel Olsen is back with Burn Your Fire For No Witness and it starts with rockers and it ends with softies, both of which I'm getting fully into. It's about loss in a sense that I feel especially today. Like knowing you can't ever, like someone asking you to please let me go.

[image from consumeconsume]

Beck - "Ramshackle"

Sep 1 Barry Weiss from Storage Wars tells me about the time he refused to suck Jack Nicholson's dick. Sep 5 Moving apartments in the rain. It was my first time seeing the place and I was moving in with my cousin. We were choosing rooms and she chose the nicer of the two, and I was dismayed. But then more searching revealed a third room, much more amazing than either of the other two, wrapped in windows with a view of mountains and a city, all still somehow in Toronto. I said I wanted this room and she came running, obviously not having noticed it either, and claimed that, no, she wanted it. I started to think about how much we were paying. I asked her about rent, and she seemed panic stricken, she wanted this room. As I was waiting for her to respond, I woke up. Sep 31 I lost my shoes Oct 31 These elements somehow related: a political candidate, a baby's head, and a restaurant that was allowing improv practice in the back, but sold undercooked chicken in the front. Nov 13 At an after party for a well-executed but over-complicated alien abduction prank, Frank Black is singing with a band called the Fuck Yeahs (did I create them?). Nov 27 Filming a commercial with friend Paul Johnston, where he was my son and I was (weirdly inappropriate) a Tony Soprano-type. Paul entered a family restaurant and said "You." And I replied, with the wrong intonation, "What's WITH the insecurity and you?" [sic] And that's the take they used. Nov 28 Ken Finkelman is my father. He has a really nice BMW that uses a complex computer so he always needs a boost to get it started. Dec 3 My friend Brent had made me an afro hat which was fitted foam that sat snugly on my head and covered one eye. It was a blond afro, and people didn't really know what to say about it. Dec 6 My brother-in-law, emaciated, and joke-real strangling me in the kitchen. Dec 9 At Y's wedding. I was moping at the party wondering why I had come, when I met a young man and woman who were also only distantly connected to this affair. They were inseparable, but took a shine to me, and the young woman told me of her life up to this point, and she told it in a song:
I was born in the south of the state,
Where I found out a day too late
That my parents didn't want me
They considered me a mistake
We all slept in tents and trailers and the next morning in the light of dawn, people were walking around wiping condensation off of windows with their sleeves. Dec 11 On a stressful Megabus lunch break. Dec 18 Stanley Kubrick directing Mad About You. Dec 20 Was hanging around with a friend from junior high and a facebook friend and we were using an industrial steamer. And we could fly. Dec 27 A close friend gets a case of sudden-onset cerebral palsy. "Smoking, nonchalance, and pop retardation" were cited as causes.

--

Beck has made a new album and I don't love it yet. I may later, but until then, I'm still over here in Odelay, lit with christmas lights and clad in plaid.
(image source)

The Growlers - "One Million Lovers"

May 5 A flying corkscrew, that would hover in the air, lazily, with animal wings. "It will be a long drive back." May 10 A kind of death match. I don't remember details. May 15 Watched a multi-camera sitcom film 12 episodes. A friend of mine pulled focus, a nearly useless position on such a show, and we talked at length about how to charge batteries. May 16 Steampunk Monopoly, dating a movie star, and Dad wearing a fishbowl on his head from Honest Ed's that was embarrassing me. Talk of building a "great but simple chair". May 17 Get lost between platforms when boarding a train. Looking desperately for a "sleeper car" which is revealed to be a row of tents set up on the tracks. May 18 In line for coffee, stressed because the old high school acquaintance ahead of me was asking for weird change from the cashier. Jun 4 Many different people from my life on cocaine. I think my brain does not fully understand the cocaine high, it seemed like it was badly written. Jul 12 A Best Show that never existed. Tom Scharpling taking script pitches, in a game that was being called Keep It, Ditch It, and Fluff It Up A Bit. Jul 26 Had stopped going to a French class in University, but had a panic attack when I realized I still had to take the exam. The phrase "The Great Deflator" came to mind. Aug 9 Crossword before & after: "handsome deviled egg". Aug 19 My sister, looking very 2003. Aug 29 Y brought me to her breast and kissed my forehead. It was intimate but not passionate, full of history but not weight. There was also a dream about drugs and guns and being ambushed beneath a highway but understandably I've forgotten it.

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Perfect Pussy - "IV"

Sometimes Edmund texted Vera. Vera. She even had a mistress' name. Vera loved him, even in his stubble and with his old-man ass, the kind that sagged like paper on the edges. She loved him and he knew it and he liked keeping her on the line. Every couple of months, a text like I just broke 200 bowling or saw a creepy cat, thought you'd like it and this would ignite a back-and-forth that would usually end with her propositioning him, the only way she knew he'd take it seriously, and him acting like "well, if you insist." Today he was fucking her on the afternoon of Valentine's Day, with plans to meet May, his wife, at 7. He looked around at Vera's house: a spare sadness in the decor, inspirational decals and scented candles. In the moment that he swung from his orgasm like monkey bars, he wondered what May would be wearing for drinks, and if he were still blushing when he showed up he would just say it was the cold.

[5$]

Waylon Jennings - "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way"

WE WANT YOU TO SUCCEED. An ad for Calvern College on the side of another bus that howled past Edmund, bursting at the seams. It was early in the morning when his mind would often scrape loose the caked-on vomitous elements of his memory. In the -18 10:04 he recalled the disintegration of his various sex lives. With Carolyn it was chip fingers. With Alison it was sniffing in the house when it was Fall and getting colder out. With Jen it was driving. The secret seeds of doubt and the way the light hits your face. The way your life is built out of wood and creaks and settles into place and suddenly it's slanted, and suddenly that matters. He could only guess at what did it for them. Calling out wrong jeopardy answers. Stupid walks. Checking his phone. Leaving cupboards open. The smell of his spit. Frost was forming on the front of his scarf, and the sunlight was like cold water.
leftovers.
talking to dogs.
the "going to bed" lie.
the photo face...

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Cate Le Bon - "Are You With Me Now?"

Edmund took fish oil before bed and dreamt of his wives, past and present. Carolyn, his first wife, was getting re-married. To Garry, her longtime boyfriend, a lazy customs officer with a face like a brick wall. It was strange enough that Edmund would attend this event, in a smoky Polish community center full of strange old faces, but his other exes were there too. They had even less reason to be there, he thought, his smooth shoes gliding over the smooth tiles of the dance floor. He had spotted Alison, his second wife, on the way back from the bathroom. She was prepping something clandestine in the kitchen. Something black with wires and a digital clock, that she was placing inside the cake. He didn't say hello. He went to congratulate Carolyn, and she looked at him with that same face she had given on the first night they'd made love after her art party. That look like I can't show you here but I never want you to leave. And he wondered if maybe she had always wanted him to just go away. The smoke seemed to be the breath of the Polish community center, the music was its smoky language. Edmund searched for a spot on the dance floor, that spot that isn't intruding yet lost in the action, and he spied Jen, his third wife. Of course, surrounded by men, all beautiful and tanned and probably Hawaiian. Her laughter, her glass laughter, dripped through the cracks of the music, and Edmund felt his face go red. Where was May? he thought in his dream, and went to find her. He passed back through the kitchen, Alison was gone and he could hear "cake!" being shouted from the main room. He went down the steps of the Polish community center to check outside, and still nothing, just cold hard crust. Then, back inside, shaking off the cold, he spied her ankles and her shoes. She was just standing amidst the coats. Just standing there. As if she didn't know she was supposed to leave her coat there and join the party.

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(thank you Roger for recommending)