Holiday Head

Christmas is the time of year when I'm willing to give a pass to the most annoying carbon-based lifeforms imaginable. Really. Elderly driver with out-of-state plates taking his half of the road out of the middle? Damn, look at the grandad go! Middle-aged, two-toothed, white-trash guy in a battery acid-spattered White Zombie shirt tryin' t' buy smokes with an expired money order in the express lane of my grocery store? "Gums" the word, dude! SUV driver with TWO McCain/Palin bumper stickers flipping me off and passing me on the highway because I choose to do 70 in a 60 mph zone and I'm simply not moving fast enough? You betcha! It's the most wonderful time of the year!

One of my fave TV shows is House, M.D. For those unfamiliar with the program, Hugh Laurie plays Dr. Gregory House, a self-centered, misanthropic doctor who is a genius diagnostician. That's all you really need to know. To me, the best parts of the show are those times when House has to do clinic duty and he helps regular Joes and Janes with their problems--right after he belittles and humiliates them. On the last episode I saw, he makes a young chastity-obsessed couple wait six hours in an exam room while he runs tests and produces x-rays that prove the girl has, in fact, developed a pregnancy via virgin birth. By the end of the show, he lets it drop to the hospital chief that it was all a ruse, the dude's "soulmate" is merely a dirty whore, but House let it slide because, hey, it's Christmas!

So in the spirit of Dr. House, here are some people who wrote some hate mail to AP who I'm not going to respond to personally. Nobody wants to get hate-flamed over the holidays--it just wouldn't be right. Which is why I'm responding to them here, for your entertainment.

I can usually count on AP to keep up with my favorite bands, but for the past few months I've been kinda disappointed. I understand that in the past few years they wouldn't get much publicity here in the states, but Tokio Hotel has gotten pretty huge in the past couple of months, if i do say so myself. I've seen not even a single review for the release of their Scream album in the states, much less an interview. I was really looking forward to the German band being featured in the Most Anticipated special, seeing as their new cd comes out next year. But, oh well, I guess reading teenie magazines is a sacrifice I'm going to have to make to see anything related to them in a glossy page of literature.--Joey from Pennsylvania

Joey: There's a guy who works in our building named Nick, but his buddies call him "Beppo." Beppo is grossly overweight, has a skin disorder that looks like impetigo and wears the same three t-shirts (Cleveland Browns, WMMS radio and a multi-stained plain white one). He says he hasn't experienced a woman's company for over 11 years. One day I saw him in the parking lot, and I read him your letter. He responded by laughing and saying, "Thanks, Jas. I feel pretty good about myself." Here's why.

I was beyond excited to see Say Anything and The Used in the Most Anticipated Albums of 2009 feature. What disappointed me, considering how much love and appreciation your magazine has showed the band in the past, was the omission of Motion City Soundtrack from the list. They're not the same gritty-sounding indie darlings I'm sure you were in love with when you featured them in 2007, but they've grown up and grown into their sound, and deserve to be recognized for that. Hopefully someday soon you'll open your obviously blinded eyes and realize that. --Jasmine from Colorado

Jasmine: Over the years, I've used plenty of terms to describe MCS (most of them positive), but "gritty sounding?" Maybe you're getting them confused with this band. Or maybe your parents are brother and sister. In that case, thanks for typing us with that arm protruding from your forehead.

I was very disappointed to see Green Day on the cover of January's issue. While Green Day used to be a great band, they have outlived their fame and people just need to move on. Green Day just isn't Green Day anymore. --Rick from Utah

Rick: I know it's rough when a band you've grown up listening to gains traction in the mainstream. You feel like you've lost something precious, that special entrance to a secret society that only you and handful of similar misfits know about. I bet seeing GD at Gilman Street was totally awesome. (I'm jealous, I never did.) I bet having them crash in your apartment when they were touring behind Kerplunk was a pivotal moment in your personal development in the understanding of underground art and culture. I know how empty you feel when you think something special has been lost. Hang on: It says here you're SEVENTEEN. You haven't experienced LIFE, let alone the multi-faceted career arc of one of the country's (hell, the WORLD's) most-respected bands. Do the right thing and fill out an organ donor card this very second. Now drive yourself to a teaching hospital, lie on a gurney, push yourself into a transplant demonstration and yell "I'm bored. Do you need any of these parts for anything?" at the top of your lungs.

I was excited to see a full page advertisement for the new I Set My Friends On Fire CD. With that said, I was completely shocked to read Phil Freeman's review saying the album should be "reduced to ashes." My main problem is the fact that the magazine as a company accepted the large amount of money it takes to get a full page advertisement and printed it in the same magazine they ripped the band a new one in. I know the magazine wants to make money, but don't promote bands in your magazine and accept their money, then turn around and do the complete opposite of what the advertisement was for and tell your readers the album was crap. This is hypocricy [sic] at its finest and it makes many readers like myself lose respect for your magazine. --Jared from Arizona

Jared, it's readers like you who make me want to pray that President-Elect Obama would reinstate mandatory military service for people your age. According to your twisted, mad-cow-disease-addled, liquified brain, any label or band or pierced-and-inked diaper-drinker with a trust fund (and an enormous sense of self-entitlement) should be able to BUY great reviews for their ill-conceived, puerile sonic dogshit. Did you intern at a Clear Channel-owned radio station? Is your father one of those CEOs who ran successful companies into the ground and got rewarded for it? Are you one of those dudes who demands his dates put out after you've paid for dinner and a movie? Actually, I bet you are none of those. You're probably just some unloved dude with soda-bottle thick glasses who's grown accustomed to being used as a urinal in your hometown. I know in my heart, Santa's gonna bring you a box of Wet Naps this year.

God bless us one and all. Happy Christmas, everyone!

Bikini Red

One time during my tenure at AP (I think it was 1947, but I could be wrong), a publicist told me that I had to do a story on one of his clients, a singer-songwriter hippie chick. The pitch he gave me was, "Dude, she's incredibly hot. She'll look sweet in the mag." Never mind that her music sounded like the tired old mewling you can hear at any coffeehouse on open-mic night. When I purposely asked if she could come to my office and help me launch a new piece of office furniture as a "casting couch," he got all offended and began spitting out a series of politically correct diatribes about my implied chauvinism. When I reminded him that his rationale for getting his proud arteest in the pages of AP was because said gal was "hot," he suddenly got off his morally superior hobby-horse and poured himself a tall cold glass of Shuthafackup. (Sidebar note to singer-songwriters: I don't like you. I don't care what rest room you use, you people work my nerves. If you feel compelled to send me your music, make sure it is as good as or better than this dude or this gal.)

This past summer, I was invited to Guitar Center in L.A. to chair a summit meeting with some well-respected members of the punk community. A young woman in the crowd raised her hand and told the panel how the band she was singing in fired her because apparently female singers, according to the chief band dude, "weren't happening right now." Hayley Williams was unavailable for comment, so I said, "Well, men are douchebags. There, I said it." I don't think the guys on the panel really appreciated it, but I'm pretty sure they weren't offended, either.

Now people who have been subjected to my record collection/personal taste know I tend to be slightly more unhinged than most of the stuff I see being worshipped in the blogosphere. So my question is: Where did all the girls go? A defined aesthetic that's considered left-of-center isn't something exclusive to penis owners, is it? One of my favorite players in life was Larissa Strickland, the bad-ass guitarist in late-'80s Michigan attitude-rockers Laughing Hyenas. She was capable of insane dynamics, corrosive textures and was a tempered foil to singer John Brannon's lupine growl. Sadly, Larissa is no longer with us, but she was a world-class firebrand. Your band would be 56% cooler if she merely walked into your practice space.

Which makes me wonder why there aren't more girls fucking shit up. Where is the estrogen-ical version of Dillinger Escape Plan? Is there an all-girl analog to the Locust operating under my radar? Is there a sinister collective of women who make Converge sound like Tony Toni Tone?

I was talking to an acquaintance the other day who explained to me that such extreme aesthetic attitudes come off looking like The Three Stooges in the eyes of the sisterhood. "It's just too brusque and obtuse," he posited. "For the most part, women are masters of subtlety, hence the indie world's puppy-dog devotion to stuff like Joanna Newsom, Neko Case and Cat Power."

Realizing that asking a dude about the female headspace is as enlightening as asking Sarah Palin complex questions on marine biology, I spoke with some women whose opinions I trust. "Women have strong personalities," offers Jessicka Addams, frontperson from atmospheric rockers Scarling. "You can't have four alpha-female types in one band; they will inevitably slash each other to ribbons. If you have a powerful woman in a band with guys, you have a hierarchy where most of the time you know who's on top. The entertainment industry works that shit to no end. Look at the popularity of shows like Rock Of Love or Bad Girls Club or Redemption Song. There are a lot of stupid women on those shows, but they all inhibit a drive to mow over anything that will stand in their way. I think for awhile now, women have equated aggression with stupidity. They might be taking a more subtle route in their art to show they are more intellectual and able to get their message across clearer. I think that comes from being inundated with date-rape nu-metal bands and pop-punk. I'm looking toward the future, because it can't get any worse."

Maria Catamero, proprietor of the firm Blueghost Publicity (whose client list is populated with all kinds of sonic daredevils), agrees--kind of. "I agree with [that point of view], but only to a certain extent. The girls that have the confidence to get out and do a band like that in the first place are going to be alpha-females anyway-- and yes, those bitches suck to work with. But while perfect-bodied girls like Katy [Perry] and Hayley [Williams] and the chick from Lacuna Coil are the types of girls the press is going to continue to over-cover, then "normal" girls aren't going to have the confidence and be inspired to actually do anything. Millions of girls play instruments, but until there are strong women that get really over-exposed to the extent that a little junior high school girl in middle America is going to pick up AP and see and become inspired, then girls are just going to continue rocking out in their bedrooms. There are lots of girls at death-metal shows and hardcore shows and a lot of them probably play an instrument. But they need to feel like they are part of the scene and that they would be accepted. They go to all these shows, read magazines and drop serious cash at the merch table, but they don't see anyone like them in the spotlight. They need to see. They need to have the idea, the challenge presented to them for it to click in their mind. A 14-year-old girl who loves hard music is not going to feel confident enough if she isnt getting bombarded by role models. We need a real-life Emily The Strange. We need to find a Locust-y Bikini Kill that AP puts on the cover and in every issue. Guaranteed, you will start seeing talented girls in bands that actually have talent and not just looking cute and playing keytar."

I guess I'll take craziness where I can get it. Like in the smokin' hot frettery of Marnie Stern (pictured above), who seemingly pulled off more obtuse finger-tappery in a 50-minute set than the entire duration of the last Van Halen reunion tour. Or Amanda Palmer's idiosyncratic worldview that's musically engaging and gloriously twisted. There's some real scary types like Akiko Matsura from British angular-rockers Pre (whose voice cuts through everything like the biggest handle-free knife you've ever held) and Chloe "Special Deluxe" Lum from AIDS Wolf, who can throw down a nightmare as good as Dick Cheney. I still wish for a day when the planets align and Aixa Vilar, Josie Outlaw, Claire Ingram and Tracy Bellaries all share a table at Starbucks with a thirst for white chocolate mochas and bold ideas. I can dream can't I?

Come on, girls. I'm beggin' you: Now more than ever, America needs you to school America's assembly line of pop-punk bitches.

Killer Born Man: Art Black

"This record is like a nap in the woods. Which is better than being gang-raped in a leper colony I suppose, but I can think of things I'd rather do." "A straight-razor shave from a giggling little man who won't stop talking about his old job slaughtering cattle." "Imagine forming a band with the hopes that someone will call you one of the better R.E.M. imitators. Here, catch."

I have never used the above sentences in a record review. (These days, I might, without conscience, steal the last one and switch out Messrs. Buck, Mills, Rieflin & Stipe for the phrase "Fall Out Boy") They came out of the clackety word processor of Art Black. During the mid-to-late-'80s halcyon years of the planet's indie underground music scene, Black was documenting as much stuff as his tireless digits would let him. As publisher of the fanzine Away From The Pulsebeat, Black (and then-wife/ace photog Monica Dee) fearlessly ran his enthusiasm up the flagpole. The underground saluted in return, allowing him to offer free 7-inch singles with issues, as well as a primo compilation (Mondostereo), which featured some of the brightest-burning units in the scene. Sure the wax was good (I found out about the Celibate Rifles Christmas song way before the compilers of this disc), but it's Black's writing that still captivates me 20-plus years after the fact.

"It's Kismet that you've come calling at my virtual door these past months, since I've only recently pried the nails out of the sides of my head,"says Black. "You know, the ones that I pounded into my brain to hold the plywood earflaps in place so I wouldn't have to listen to the thick, sebaceous crud masquerading as music for lo, these past 20 years or so."

Home was New Jersey, right? What things made you spend time, money and tears in creating Pulsebeat? What excited you the most?
Home during the AFTP era was indeed Le Jerse Nouveau, although I believe the idea of the mag first festered while I was living in a box I built out of wooden planks in the center of a (not) friend's living room in Brooklyn. That was back when Park Slope was a polite euphemism for "bolt from the subway to your apartment clutching your wallet for dear life." Nowadays, my plank box would probably sell for seven figures.

The whole concept of the mag was born of long conversations about music with a like-minded co-worker at a shi-TAY job we both despised. I know, it's hard to even imagine such a scenario. Working a job you hate? How unrealistic. Nonetheless, it happened, and me and my pal Dean kept ourselves sane by debating earth-shattering topics such as the nascent geopolitical subtexts of the most recent Stranglers 45 (e.g., "Did you see the gazongas on that chickadoodle who squirmed out of her top onstage at the Ritz last night?"). When a coworker politely suggested we shut the fuggup and write down our stupid goddamn opinions, it was truly a tiffany. I mean, an epiphany. (Damn typewriter keys. Who keeps moving them?) I should pause here to point out that this all took place in the era of the cut 'n' paste underground, when typewriters, Xerox machines, and Elmer's glue did a fanzine make. Dean and I had a slight advantage. Our shi-tay job consisted of working for a typesetting firm. Weren't no laptops at the time. No desktops. No home computers at all. We worked on computers literally the size of washing machines with removable hard discs holding an astonishing 80mb of data. A dozen or so typesetters tip-tapped on workstations that shared those 80 megs. How fucking quaint.

Anyway, we held a contest, Dean and I, for a name. He won with Away From The Pulsebeat, a moniker I dug immediately. Speaking of moniker, no music mag is complete without a photographer, and for mine I had only to wrassle to the ground my then-galfriend Monica Dee and rub salt-water in her eyes until she agreed to take pics for the nonexistent magazine. Good to go! That is, until Dino got cold feet--or more the point, blue balls. He and his galfriend had a falling out. He wound up moving back to his hometown Chicago, where poosay apparently grows on trees and can be had for the price of a potato. Leaving me with a fanzine title, a photographer, and 80 hungry megabytes of space.

How many issues did you end up doing? You had a good run of artifacts (Mondostereo, 7-inchers et al)
When we had all our goods together to start fanzining, we were feeling a little like John Holmes in a Turkish bath fulla midgets, so it didn't make a lotta sense to just timidly introduce ourselves. "Hi, we're AFTP: Another Flat & Turgid Publication." Instead, we rolled out our first inaugural with a bold-faced lie: Issue No. 1 of AFTP was advertised as our "comeback" issue. The conceit was that this was our second lifetime. Surely you own those killer issues we put out years ago, right, Mojito? Prized by collectors and selling for tall bucks. Don't tell me you don't remember, loser. Call it the not-so-great rock 'n' roll swindle. Bottom line: It worked. With no history or pedigree, in a matter of minutes we had distributors lining up to handle version 2.0 of our "classic" fanzine. Of course, it helped that the damn thing was ho-hum mildly entertaining, and Monica could snap a shutter like nobody's business.

And because doing something well is the best reason to not do it again, we always tried to take it to another level with subsequent issues. Which led to better print quality; free 7-inch records; the Mondostereo compilation album, and live benefit shows at the best club in the history of history, Maxwell's in Hoboken. One little-recognized fact is that all of this took place over a mere four issues. The entire history of AFTP can be summed up on the fingers of a bad Yakuza. If there's a secret to our success, it's that we were the right people in the right place at the right time. Indie/alternative/underground/whatdafuck music in the mid-to-late 1980s was as strong, serious, aggressive, antagonistic, impressionistic, artistic, anti-artistic and playful as anything from the heydays of blues, R&R, garage, psychedelia or punk.

And then, sadly, there was Nirvana.

Ahhhh, sensei! I see where this is going. When did you stop?
I can tell you the exact moment AFTP ended. My buddy Greg was visiting from Tokyo or Hong Kong or wherever he was working at the time, and as usual, we rendezvoused in a titty bar in Newark. Somewhere in the middle of the night, the post-disco and hair-metal anthems split like the Red Sea before Moses, and outta nowhere, the platinum blondies began bumping their poles to the beat of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Life hasn't been the same since.

Every once in a while I pull out the cassette tape I made of Nirvana's early gig at Maxwell's and try to like it, and every time I fail. Nobody was more surprised than me to hear their commercial breakthrough, and Thor knows, nobody was more surprised than me to discover that I actually liked their major-label spew.

The problem wasn't Nirvana. The problem was everything else. My Bronx chum Roland tells me that Nirvana changed the world for the better on his turf, where the 1980s meant tough guidos in mascara and hairspray. Once Nirvana broke, suddenly flannel was in and poseurs were passe. Me, I couldn't have hated the 1990s more. Everything I used to like about music and culture--everything that used to be isolated to people who were into these things because they were genuinely into these things--all of it became a new fashion, a way to sell magazines and move units. The heart disappeared and in its place we had Green Day. And Tool. And Helmet. And, and, and. And that's when I pulled a Rumplestilstkin. Thank you, no. I'm goin' to sleep. Wake me for Armageddon. (Editors note: I think he means Rip Van Winkle, or his son, Robbie Van Winkle.) I folded the mag and breathed a sigh of relief that I no longer had to deal with the Satan spawn that are magazine distributors. Perhaps the only saving grace in the demise of literacy is that most of those yellow-stained ball-sucking leeches have been driven outta business.

You stopped doing AFTP, but you were contributing to various fanzines. What have you been doing all these years since?
Scott Crawford [former publisher of Harp, now CEO of the online mag Blurt]in Maryland was the first to seek me out, and I wrote and ultimately served as contributing editor for his mags Noiseworks and Bent. Billy Childish sent me an illustration that became the header for one of my columns. It was in Scott's mags that I started playing around with non-music writing. Back in AFTP I had a catch-all closing column called Shock! Horror! Boobs! Blood! where I scribbled about books, movies, comics and whatnot, but for Scott I went totally off-topic and spooted stories like the one about the poosay industry in Asia (title: Babes in Thailand).

Mike Weldon was the next fella to ring me up and ask if I was interested in laying down words for his mag. I'd known Mike since he used to hand-write the Xeroxed fanzine Psychotronic, at that time a weekly guide to obscure and oddball flicks showing on NY broadcast TV (pre-cable, y'see). We used to bump into each other in basement clubs on St. Marks Place or screenings in Queens where Ted Mikels or H.G. Lewis flicks were showing. Remember, back then, those were the only places to catch dusty cult flicks. No videotape. It was a different universe, Tonto.
Starting with issue two of Psychotronic Video Magazine, I had a regular column devoted to record reviews. Yes, I said "record," not "CD." I was one of the last holdouts for vinyl, kinda like those Japanese soldiers in Borneo who hid in the jungle for 40 years and refused to acknowledge that WWII was over. Eventually, of course, all those soldiers packed it in and became CEOs at Honda and Sony, and now I have a Sony CD player in my Honda and that's that. The world moves on. Daniel Clowes drew me a pic that became the header of my column. And I continued to listen to music I despised and write increasingly cranky reviews about it. Ultimately, Mike, who knew my interests well, grabbed me by the lapel and shook me till my diamond cufflinks rattled. "You hate this stuff," said he. "It's your column. Why don't you write about what you're passionate about?"

It was, needless to say, a "duh" moment. So I did. Gotta hit the rewind here to explain what it was that had snagged my passion after the Nirvanification of the underground. The answer: Asia. Back in the 1980s, Hong Kong cinema owned my eyeballs. Starting with John Woo and Jackie Chan, of course, but spreading from there like Ebola on steroids. American cinema was in a period as fallow as American music, but overseas there was an electricity so strong, it reinvented the entire language of film. Sadly, we all know where that led: to the co-opting of everything unique and interesting; the absorption of Asian action into Hollywood film; the cannibalization of the Hong Kong film industry; the slick commercialization of a wild guerrilla style and the death of yet another individualistic regional identity for the greater good.

But back in the day, when HK cinema was in its prime, I went hog-wild writing about it for Psychotronic, and ultimately a boatload of other places like Asian Cult Cinema, Hong Kong Superstars, Thunder and Kung Fu magazines, TV Guide's website and their annual Motion Picture Guide, and various other books. I also began working with international film festivals as a programmer and wrote for their festival guides.

Be honest: Do you have the slightest inclination to check out any new music?

Music? What's that? Art before the whores.

The Dogs Don't Like The Smell Of Your Children.

Meet Audrey. She is my eldest child, an ebony-tickedOriental Shorthair cat. It's funny how when I'm on the computer at home, she will howl at me until I spin toward her so she can jump on my lap to "check her email." She's the kind of cat who likes to take swings at the television screen when she sees something on Animal Planet that pisses her off. Because she can't get her slap-happy paws on whatever's on the screen, she will actually walk behind the set and see if the object of her curiosity is hiding back there. She's like, eight pounds and fearless. Forget Beyonce: Audrey is Sascha Fierce.

But what's really interesting is that Audrey rocks hard. When I go downstairs to shovel out the listening room that's under construction, she insists on coming with me. When the stereo is on, she hangs with her dad, jumping on top of the speakers (I have free-standing, old-skool Bose speakers and not some 5.1 Whaddafack nonsense). What's great about the kitty girl, is that she's down with anything her old man plays. I have seen her smile and whip her tail simultaneously to disparate titles as Saturday Night Wrist and The Black Parade. She once stared at the speaker cabs warily while Mindless Self Indulgence was in rotation, convinced the band were actually rolling around in there. But what really gets me is how she responds to music in the extreme metal/hardcore/grind/noise quadrangle: She rubs her face on the speaker and naps. Or, if I'm going through boxes of books, bills and magazines, she'll curl up between dad's kneecaps and snooze. But when the sonic onslaught ends, she wakes up, either suddenly or gradually with a HECS. (That's Highly Effective Cat Stretch in the Pettigrewdian nomenclature.) This week, she was inexplicably content around the recent discs from '90s nihilist attitude rockers Harry Pussy (please hold your groaning; I realize puns are the lowest form of humor) and The Order Of The False Eye, the latest from Florida tech-metal maelstrom Gigan. I have absolutely no theories on why this is. Could it be that the frequencies of some of these recordings are horrific to some (aka Mrs. Pettigrew), but positively blissful to other species? I personally know people who can't sleep unless they have a white-noise source running in their bedroom (a small table fan, the hum of a small refrigerator, an air conditioner set on fan operation); do animals respond that way to music?



Meet Bowie, my eldest Shetland sheepdog. He's not a guard dog as much as he's an "alarm" dog. (If somebody five blocks up the street slams a car door, he's barking like a maniac.) I have seen him get in front of my wife and his sister (our other Sheltie, Louise) to stand down a free-roaming, aggressive pit bull until I came by to chase the bastard off. He's loyal to his fam and I love him more than some members of my extended family. He is positively TERRIFIED by the stereo. He can be downstairs hanging with me, but as soon as I put something on--even the most austere tracks imaginable--he is back up the stairs like he just remembered there was a 30-ounce ribeye waiting in his dog bowl. That one I can't explain. Is his hearing more sensitive and acute, therefore any spectrum of significantly amplified sound works his nerves?

Maybe he prefers Nickelback. Hey, kids always rebel against their parents, right?

Jerry's Electric Church

Today Scott Heisel will come into my office and say, "Why haven't you blogged in close to a week? What's your problem? Blog, dammit." Tim Karan solicits his readership for topics of scintillating interest while wearing a primitive cardboard sign with the phrase WILL BLOG FOR LOVE scrawled on it. I keep telling him the readers can't see it unless he jpegs that shit up, but some people are simply too proud. Now me, I have honest-to-God topics. What do I have on deck? Well, there's my fave band in life; chat about the new influx of British bands; girls (and who doesn't like girls?); favorite Christmas songs (although you'll probably demand plenty of soundfiles for that installment, I bet); two Killer Born Man installments; all my fave discs of the year; where I get my obtuse blog titles from... that's a week's worth of cyber-babble there, right?

But while I've got drafts of all of those things compiled and near completion, they aren't done. You could make the same parallel to musicians who give some close friends some demos and then said tracks end up online. Or maybe you want to see that new Will Smith movie, but it's too cold to go out to the theater. So you find a digitized copy of it on the 'net, where you are treated to guys getting up to go to the concession stand and the outlaw cameraman filming the thing falling asleep. It doesn't matter that the sound is bad, the lighting is terrible and the whole experience is nowhere near studio-grade. You got to see it for free!

Computer technology brings the world to your fingertips. At times, it renders said world in a less-than-optimum experience, whether it's compressed mp3 files or grainy 'n' glitchy film bootlegging. But because having the experience didn't require anything on your part (read: It didn't come out of your PayPal account), you settle for sub-par work. But let's take this out of the realm of art and put it into a journalism perspective. Because the net is so immediate, there's no way a magazine or newspaper can "break" stories anymore. At this point, all those organs can offer is analysis of what's happened. We used to fight about this stuff all the time in AP staff meetings: Do we want to have the FIRST story or do we want the BEST story? Does any of that matter to a culture obsessed with being online?

I will do my best to be more diligent in filling up this space in the future. But first I gotta check facts, scan images, chat with people who specialize in certain fields and maybe get an imeem account to offer you some more evidence for whatever kind of psychobabble I'm espousing. If you're taking your time to check up on my sorry ass, then I should step up my game with a little more than a list of what I'm listening to, who's pissed me off that week or significant return-key abuse to illustrate some kind of implied afterthought.

Which reminds me: I'm late getting Tim my copy for next week's List feature. So enjoy this ironic photo and I'll see you in a few.