Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in I Look Pretty Young But I'm Just Backdated's LiveJournal:

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Monday, December 7th, 2009
8:14 am	Invisible Now I always a had a goal, a next step, an idea about what I was aiming towards, a direction home as it were. For the first time in my life I haven't the foggiest idea of what's next and even less of a handle of what it is actually that I WANT to happen next. So I've been listening, really listening, to "Like a Rolling Stone" for the first time. I guess I should be thankful that, for the moment at least, this song hits me rather than my previous personal Dylan anthem "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues". It's still unnerving. "You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal." Yes, THIS, absolutely. It's beyond emotional nakedness, it's being literally seen through, as if there was nothing really left. There's more, obviously, "Napoleon in rags and the language that he used," that's my manic side right there, and the whole song seems to be about the moment that occurs between me and everyone I know at some point, where the jokes, the crazy behavior, the insights, the philosophy, whatever sorta thing that people like about me, just becomes too much, when the "real me," that frightful possessive untrustworthy insane delusional insecure angry side of me, comes out in full force. I've mentioned this before, the fall-outs I have had with essentially all of my friends? And the Mystery Tramp never selling any alibis, always been a "she" whenever I heard it, yeah, I've always always had some unreachable girl in the back of my mind, as some sort of an excuse never to actually fully engage in the Dating World. I didn't even know I was doing it until recently. It's easier to do that than just admit you're scared of intimacy, that if I really DID want to have a girlfriend, you'd think I would have made any real attempts, wouldn't you? I've only ever made attempts when I 100% knew I was going to get shot down. What's that great early Magnetic Fields line: "You love to fail / That's all you love." How does it feel, to be on my own, no direction home, a complete unknown...? I dunno. (Comment on this)
5:43 am	Three Quick Thoughts On Amanda Knox 1. It should clearly have been declared a mistrial. 2. Still, she probably did do it. 3. Guilty or innocent, yeah, I'd hit it, thus proving my old adage that I'm the male version of those women who propose to jailed murderers. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
2:52 am	"No One Left to Run With" The more I think about it, maybe I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth here. Yes, I'm really far less mature than most people six or seven years younger than me, and don't really have a lot of life experience in many areas (particularly in the terms of Romance, having never had a girlfriend or been on a date) but I look young enough and feel young enough and (God knows) act young enough to get away with taking my time going through the maturity process. I mean, I know I'm growing up and becoming more responsible, and it has been a long time coming, but as long as I continue to grow up at a steady pace, why should I try to speed up the process? The faster you grow up, the faster you grow old. I've been given the genes and temperament to be young for a far greater time period than most. As long as I don't devolve into arrested development, why not take advantage of this gift? I guess after my trip to Tampa, I finally saw the positive aspects of settled family life and it sorta influenced my thinking. How could it not? As my emotions settled, I started to realize that this wasn't anything that I wanted myself. I still have no idea what the fuck I'm actually after, but I'm completely and utterly free to follow my own whims, no matter how stupid, and I suppose I should be very thankful for this, as not a lot of other people my age have such luxury. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
6:20 pm	"Desperadoes" Rough Draft by Song References Here's list of songs explicitly quoted so far in the play, just to show you how impossible it is for me to communicate without song lyrics. Warren Zevon - "Desperadoes Under the Eaves" Bob Dylan - "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" Warren Zevon - "The Indifference of Heaven" David Bowie - "Breaking Glass" Bob Dylan - "Jokerman" Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Loverman" X-Ray Spex - "I Live Off Of You" Amy Winehouse - "Rehab" Steely Dan - "Rose Darling" New Order - "True Faith" The Who - "Disguises" Warren Zevon - "Lawyers, Guns and Money" A-Ha - "Take on Me" The Grateful Dead - "Touch of Grey" The Byrds - "Turn! Turn! Turn!" Steely Dan - "Kid Charlemagne" Eddie Murphy - "Party All the Time" Steely Dan - "Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More" Roy Orbison - "She's a Mystery to Me" David Bowie - "Starman" R.E.M. - "It's the End of the World As We Know It" The Byrds - "Wasn't Born to Follow" Warren Zevon - "Please Stay" Walter Becker - "God's Eye View" Van Morrison - "Moondance" Van Morrison - "Everyone" Steely Dan - "My Rival" The Drifters - "Save the Last Dance" Bernard Fanning - "Wish You Well" James Brown - "The Payback" Steely Dan - "Monkey In Your Soul" Warren Zevon - "Mr. Bad Example" Warren Zevon - "Suzie Lightning" David Bowie - "Young Americans" Walter Becker - "Book of Liars" Amy Winehouse - "You Know I'm No Good" Amy Winehouse - "Me And Mr. Jones" Blondie - "Detroit 442" Warren Zevon - "Mutineer" They Might Be Giants - "Your Racist Friend" Tom Waits - "Goin' Out West" Weezer - "El Scorcho" Black Grape - "Kelly's Heroes" (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 4th, 2009
7:50 pm	A major bummer of a customer experience today, this middle aged guy had his phone stolen for the third time. He apparently had lost his job, and had a series of expensive operations, and was now living in a shelter under the constant threat of robbery and rape. He said he used to own a place right on Newbury Street, he was desperate to get a few numbers that he had saved through Backup Assistance. I ended up digging up an old phone out of Hopeline and redownloaded the numbers. I was sympathetic to the guy, but I guess I was growing a little antsy, until I heard what exactly he was calling about. He was calling a health clinic about an appointment, saying that "they had also stolen my meds." Then it hit me. This guy is stuck at a homeless shelter, without a job, and now completely without medication. Eventually he made his calls, and I shook his hand, and sincerely hoped for the best for him, that I didn't know exactly what he was suffering from, but I was coming from the same place. A really sobering moment. This could have been me. Heck, it could still be me if my luck turns bad. He's definitely in my prayers. ************ For an utterly NON sobering moment, Metafilter has a link to a great post on Lester Bangs, from one of his late-period friends. Highly recommended. You mindmeld with a dead guy just once in your life, and he's sort of with you forever. ************** Although a disappointment at the time, certain set pieces from Dylan's concert still haunt me. Particularly the nigh-apocalyptic last set, "Thunder on the Mountain" onwards. Dylan and his band recasting "Ballad of a Thin Man" into this freaky '50s style song-and-dance routine still lingers with me, maybe the most memorable scene I've seen in a live performance. In any case, I'm freakishly happy to finally dive into the extra material on "Don't Look Back." (4 Comments |Comment on this)
12:11 am	I've been feeling empty since I finished the rough draft, but a good kind of empty, maybe some very mild form of Sunyata. I feel like I've purged a part of me that's really fascinating and funny to listen to and interesting to watch from a distance, but is absolutely intolerable and dangerous up close for any amount of time. This play was always meant to be my farewell to my fucked up, twenty-something "lost in the desert" phase. I guess I couldn't complete it until I was ready to move on from this stage of life. And keep in mind, this stage of life, even during the worst moments, has been a LOT of fun and I've tried to avoid growing out of it as long as possible, but the time, sadly, has come. I have no idea what the next step is going to be. It's easy for most, I think, you get married and maybe have a kid or maybe start a true career rather than a series of wage-earning jobs. I don't know, really, what the next step is beyond revising "Desperadoes" and seeing where it takes me. I mean, I've finally realized that I don't really want to be in a Romantic relationship, I have no desire to be a boyfriend or, ick, husband or father. At least not now. And as far as a career? I dunno. I'm not even sure if I really want to sacrifice everything to be a "famous writer" like I thought I wanted to be during college. I don't know. Life is very short, too short to devote one's entire life to just one path. I guess that's why I've started to become more and more interested in Spirituality. It's the same impulse that got me interested in baseball after two decades of actively hating sports or the same impulse that got me interested in James Joyce after swearing that I would never read him... *********** This play has been a long time coming, and even if it's the worst thing ever written by anyone, it has at least done me a lot of good. I still think it's pretty good, even in this muddled state, and it's definitely funny, but the weakest parts of it are probably the moments where I'm the most sincere, as I point out a few times during the course of the play. It's okay, I'm willing to gut those sections. One of the things we've all learned from Woody Allen is that a small amount of emotion in a sea of comedy is much more potent than some kind of uneasy compromise between drama and comedy. (Think both versions of "The Office," Christopher Guest's mockumentaries, "Knocked Up," etc.). I mean rewatch "Take the Money and Run," which is essentially a series of one-note gags and sketches. Even with this sketch comedy approach, the movie's emotional storyline is way more involving that any of Woody Allen's movies from the last decade or so. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
2:48 am	I just re-read the thing from start to finish and have only now started to realize what "Desperadoes" is actually about: It's about giving up, but in a good way. It's me giving up on the idea that I'll ever be in a serious Romantic relationship with anyone, it's me giving up on substance abuse as a reliable escape, and, most importantly, it's me giving up on the idea that I can trust my intellect alone to guide me through life. I guess it goes along with the idea that you lose nothing when you lose your ego, because your ego is an illusion and you can't lose something that never existed in the first place. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
10:42 pm	A Timeline I know I said it was a two and a half year process to write "Desperadoes Under the Eaves," but the roots are way deeper. The first idea came when I caught the pilot episode of "Monk," where his detective powers were connected with his OCD, so I was thinking about that sort of analytical type of pothead, who is able to concentrate on something really specific in great detail but sort of is in a haze about everything else. Later I read a piece on SomethingAwful written from the POV of an older bitter Encyclopedia Brown, and I thought that could be a great idea, like he could be the detective equivelent of a drugged up former child star. I kept trying to write pieces for this character, when I went through an Agatha Christie phase (may I recommend "The Death of Roger Ackroyd" or "Curtains"), but I couldn't write a standard mystery even with a drugged out protagonist. So I put the idea on the shelf. Keep in mind that the druggie detective is not a new invention. Think Sherlock Holmes on coke, of the hero of "Zero Effect," or the long history of alcoholic detectives. Recently that fucker Jonathan Ames has come up with the fantastic "Bored to Death" that is essentially the kind of short story series I initially wanted to create but didn't have the skills. Also, Pynchon's "Inherent Vice," which is very very similar to "Desperadoes" which pisses me off because he's probably the greatest living English-language writer and he took over my turf. In any case, I put the project until I got here in Boston. At first I was writing, in a period of unemployment and alcoholism and depression and being alone in a big city for the first time this INCREDIBLY dark novel written from the perspective a huge sociopath. Thankfully I discarded this once I actually found a job, and my life stabilized. However I was still drinking heavily and also abusing other things, so my work days were really straight-and-narrow, with the exception of my shaky hands, and my nights were... My nights were bad. Around this time I watched Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch" and Linklatter's "A Scanner Darkly," and I really kind of understood the idea of the addict as a double agent. I was also starting to fall in love with Boston, and I wanted to write the screenplay that could be filmed around the area, like what Linklatter did for Austin in "Slacker." I don't know when I first got the idea for "Desperadoes Under the Eaves," transplanting my stoner detective to the City, but the idea probably just came from the fact that I hadn't actually had much contact with anyone I knew from my previous life, and I was wondering what would happen if suddenly, while I was in a sort of crisis, a bunch of people from my past would show up and sort of and throw things into confusion... I was also trying to work out my lingering crush situation, with the hope that writing through it I could get the closure that I never thought I actually would get (it somehow worked, even if I also did get actual closure). Also at that time I was knee-deep into "The Invisibles" and I once had a drug freakout moment where "Comfortably Numb" and "Centerfold" played back-to-back and I was worried that it was a message to me from some sort of Invisibles type group. (Also, Bukowski's "Pulp" was a huge influence on the play as well with its combination of genre parody, sci-fi/fantasy, and caustic drunk humor, an underrated book by an overrated writer.) Needless to say, very shortly after that I made my first major attempt at sobriety since college, but that moment sort of set the otherworldly half-reality half-paranoid fantasy realm that I'm trying to create in "Desperadoes." Then of course, there's the Ghost of Lester Bangs story, but I've told that story so many times... So, yeah, this is why I'm a little lost right now, I thought this would be sort of an endless project. (Comment on this)
6:37 pm	I Think I Actually Got To The End The rough draft is officially done. Next comes the hard part, actually making it into something coherent enough to send out for the first round of workshopping. That process can wait for a day or two, I'm drained. (Comment on this)
1:44 am	The Final Lap I've ran up the "Heartbreak Hill" that has been the emotional turmoil of these last few months. I think I needed this challenge to fully complete the first rough draft of "Desperadoes Under the Eaves," without this (ENTIRELY self-inflicted) drama, I think I would have been forever stuck on Act 3. Yeah, I don't know whether I need life to give me material for my writing, or if I need potential writing material to force myself out in the world and take chances. It's exciting. I never thought I would make it to the end, but I never thought I would make it past 27 either. So, hey, there ya go. There's still miles to go, even after the first draft. I'll always have my "therapy" version here, but the goal is to create something that OTHER PEOPLE will actually enjoy and relate to, and that's going to be the real challenge. Still I'm happy that I'm soon going to have a completed SOMETHING to send to others, to show that I've been working on something that is fairly involved and substantial, and that I can prove that I've spent at least some of my time trying to create something worthwhile. I may have failed, but I would rather have failed than not to have tried at all. I have to send it to Travis and Cassandra first, and, after that... Well, we'll see. I've spent two and a half years with this play and I'm incredibly biased, so I'm going to need some editorial guidance. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
3:40 am	Girls Talk I think my problem with girls, and trying to figure out who likes me and who doesn't, comes with the fact that I absolutely love to hear "Girls Talk" (as Elvis Costello once sang). I love hearing girls talk, I love having conversations with them, I love hearing them vent. I love arguing with them. Maybe it's because I grew up without sisters, and never had a female friend until college. I don't know. Of course, I often talk over them, but I really do listen. The thing is, in my word and story driven mind, these conversations are something akin to flirting, when they really aren't anything close. (Comment on this)
Monday, November 30th, 2009
10:37 pm	"There's Nothing I Regret"? You can't just remember the good things about the past and escape the regrettable parts. My first year of college was filled with regrettable moments, but after four years of less than splendid isolation (believe it or not, I won "most quiet" in every high school poll), I was thrown into a social situation without any sort of guidance, completely and utterly insane and unsocialized. Luckily it was a college full of other crazy people, so I was able to somehow survive. Plus, the good times were some of the best times of my life, and I met A LOT of friends that I still have now. I guess that's the trade-off. I have no desire to make that trade-off ever again, but it was worth it. I'm not going to go into the many many bizarre decisions I made, although I really wonder why Danielle Fischer didn't just put up a restraining order. I don't feel the need to mention my introduction to hard liquor would have some grave (one nearly-grave) consequences. My most notoriously insane act was probably the time I cut off a lock of a girl's hair for no reason. It wasn't even a girl I had a crush on! She didn't mind, but it put my embryonic social life on hold for a few weeks. I almost forgot about this until I had a Satire class with this girl, and, of course, we had "The Rape of the Lock" on our syllabus. Thankfully she missed class that particular day. Still, "I wouldn't give up a single stupid decision / For another five years of lies." ************ Wow. Drew Brees is a BEAST, I almost don't mind that the Pats are getting crushed by him. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
9:28 pm	The Unique Joys Of "Watching the Detectives" For so long, I've been stuck on the narrative, should I shit or get off the plot? Themes, ideas, dialogue, philosophies, symbolism. characters, subtext, dick jokes, bad poetry, and sometimes surprisngly good prose... I have a handle on these things. Now, I get way way lost trying to come up with a plot that can maintain people's interest and provide forward movement and plot twists, no matter how wacky and only subconsciously understandable. So far, I've been relying on some of the more bendable rules of genre fiction to reign myself in. Otherwise, I'm playing tennis without a net, y'know? Without strict guidelines, my writing becomes Calvinball. Still I hit a snag here: the main character, Warren, has this sort of insanely suicidal confrontation with the main villain towards the end. During the course of this he is taken down by Sheryl, the villain's bodyguard who starts the play out as a random bit player but turns out to be a double agent who betrays Warren. Now, there's no way that Warren can bring down the villain on his own. No matter what he will fuck things up and go to jail for a crime that is seen, in the media, as a nutjob's assault on a powerful political figure. Also Sheryl has to be a triple, possibly quadruple agent for anything else in the play to make sense. Paint meet corner. Today I figured it out. The main villain seems very reasonable because he's addicted to a personality-suppressant, so his sociopathic and evil ideas seem reasonable and logical and as examples of homespun wisdom. Like Ronald Reagan back in the day. Today it's clear: Our hero Warren is merely a decoy, planted in the middle of a battle he's only dimly aware is even going on. So Warren, an expendable pawn, takes up the villain's time while Sheryl has been replacing his pills with a mixture of LSD, speed, and Pixie Stix. Off his meds, he'll self-destruct on camera, or tape, or cell phone, etc. (He'll be back, of course, never count for dead movie monsters, comic book heroes, or politicians they always seem to bounce back from certain death.) Warren's been manipulated by outside forces into a self-sacrifice as the Distraction. Now, for the trick play to work, Warren has to spend some time in jail to ensure this con Boom. Got it. This is the neat thing about working within the mystery/detective genre, it's writing yourself into a corner and trying to figure out a way to escape without some sort of improbable plot development. A throwaway gag about a personality-suppressant turned into a major plot point. Writers are like criminals, we don't even realize we've left behind all of the clues and evidence behind us until after we look back at th trail of breadcrumbs behind us... *********** I'm the first writer in the world to issue spoilers about events that have yet to be written. No wait, that's Homer. That's right. *********** In any case, I'm ending Act Four right now. I'm using my take on the classic five act plot structure: The first three acts build up everything, and can last as long as needed to set the stage, and the fifth act resolves as much as possible and can take its time (although it must always go quicker than the build-up, like a rollercoaster), but the fourth act is this moment of realization, the moment where things seem to come together, even if it's only a false dawn, and it must hit suddenly, like an epiphany. Act four is a bridge between the what-might-be of the first three acts and the what-is of the final act, it's vital but there's no time to dawdle. It's like the bridge in a classic rock song, like the "I told you..." lines from "Badge" or the "Brandy used to watch his eyes" lines from "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)." (2 Comments |Comment on this)
6:27 pm	Ladies And Gentlemen, I Interupt This Self-Obsessed Drama Queen Shit With an Important Announcement. CRAZY JANE IS RETURNING (briefly) TO THE DOOM PATROL!!!!!!!!!! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
3:02 pm	"Through With Buzz": A Shortlist. Stop Altogether: Drinking. Lying to loved ones. Creating drama for the sake of creating drama. Losing my Work ID and Charlie Card on the Green Line. Take a break from: Girls (bad news, good news, no news), Warren Zevon, "High Fidelity," "A Scanner Darkly," William S. Burroughs. Major unrelated lifestyle changes. Proceed With Caution: Steely Dan. "Desperadoes Under the Eaves." Facebook/LJ entries. Do: Go to Meetings Again. Schedule events to keep me distracted. Work fanatically on my best of the '00s list. Stay calm. Drink caffeine. Eat right when hungry. Go vegetarian maybe? (Wait, lifestyle change alert). Continue to take meds. When all else fails, and it will at one point or another "when your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through," fall back on meditation. ************ I suppose it especially was the dream I had last night. I ran into nearly a whole lifetime's worth of crushes in Sarasota, all of them wearing progressively more outrageous outfits (think Lady Gaga levels), each of them waiting for a blind date named "Ryan" to appear, except nobody had actually met Ryan or even knew what he looked like. One person even asked me if I were Ryan. Clearly this was either some sort of epic prank by one person pretending to be Ryan, or it was this massive piece of largescale performance art. I didn't bother to question it, it's like I was following some unspoken Prime Directive not to interfere with past and present crushes at this time. Not a bad idea really, nothing I could do would have helped, even if the situation warranted help (and what kind of help would actually help). I get so wrapped up in my persona that I lose the plot. There's the great scene in "Dig!" where a passerbye stops the Brian Jonestown Massacre and asks them if they're a real cult or if they're just a band pretending to be a cult on a photo shoot. "That's a very good question," one of the members replies, "I wish right now I had an answer for you." EDIT: Also co-workers jokingly brought up the fact that I may have an eating disorder. Since actual doctors never managed to find physical reasons (besides boozing) for my lack of appetite and food aversion, maybe worth checking out...? Shit, I already feel like enough of a drama queen seventeen year old girl as is... (6 Comments |Comment on this)
12:52 am	"Are You Making A Choice?" "Take care of yourself... I mean, TAKE CARE of yourself" Amanda V. (My only lesbian friend in this whole fucking city) said this to me on her last day at work. Was this the beginning of the relapse? When was THAT? Two weeks ago? Right when the manic state ended and I could feel the depression kicking in? Then it just got worse and worse and worse... Nate could tell immediately, but he didn't say anything. Most of you probably figured it out real quick. Whatever. It's done. I'm drying out right now, "Rachel Getting Married" is the perfect movie for drying out purposes. It's a movie almost good enough to make me not fear this next fucking Meeting. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 27th, 2009
10:36 pm	It's A Sin (Been meaning to write this one for a bit, seems like as good of time as any.) "Your list of sins is very long..." I was born an original sinner. I was born in original sin. She started talking about true love, started talking about sin. It's a sin to go away. Stuart's staying in and think he thinks it's a sin that he has to leave the house at all. So I gave myself to sin, gave myself to providence. I've done wrong and want to suffer for my sins. You treat me like it's a sin, but you can't lock me in. I give in, to sin, because you have to make this life livable. They all say someday soon, my sins will all be forgiven... They say, "Everything's all right," they say "better days are near," they tell us, "these are the good times." But they don't live around here. ********** Much love to all. Spent a few minutes laying in the back incredibly dizzy, but otherwise just really redfaced in the inevitable relapse shame. The post-relapse self-hate is useful for the writing, I'm going into the motivations of the play's "villain," where he essentially explaining that he's abetting and assisting with the release of a DEVASTATING and almost inevitable lethal drug to thin the ranks undesirable people who (in his worldview) bring nothing but cause chaos and misery. On days like today I can totally identify what's motivating him. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
8:48 pm	"Please please please don't hand me over to dad..." Wow. I thought I had reached bottom before. I've reached Crystal Zevon crying in a phonebooth levels. My apartment smells like relapse. I woke up from a nap to the sight of half-filled glasses. I just sentout a Thanksgiving call to my mom absolutely blotto. I've never been more serious about the monastery idea... (8 Comments |Comment on this)
6:16 pm	A Very Depeche Mode Thanks "I'll Love You Bald!" What's that Eliot line, "I should have been a pair of claws..." I should have been a lovesick poser, back in my teenage-to-college years, on the bus following Depeche Mode. I'll say this, music aside, my love of DM is partly based on this: Dave Gahan is only mildly better-looking than me, sans glasses he could pass as my older brother. Yet he still somehow is a rockstar. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
6:07 am	A Very Depeche Mode Thanksgiving "Self-Destruction is awfully tiring." Thank you Bruce Sterling. I used to think that my self-destructive habits were only because of my substance abuse, but that's a dry-drunk sort of way of looking at life. As always this November, I'm thankful for so many things that it would be an exercise in futility to try to list them all. The thing I'm most thankful for, the reason I'm having a Very Depeche Mode Thanksgiving, is that I've been given the incredibly painful yet much needed awareness of my worst faults, my sins really (sin is a more poetic term, really). Two years ago, I used to have "Strangelove" as my ringtone and now I know why. When I talk about joining a Zen Monastery, or making a radical life change, please keep in mind that I only feel the need for such a change because of those I love. If we're talking just about MY feelings, I'd be okay with keeping on with my life here as is, it's just I know that if I don't make changes... well it would cause pain to people I don't want to cause pain. I really want to get better, to make myself into someone worthy of being loved, to be someone worthy of loving others. I want to be worthy, to quote "Wayne's World." **************** Fuck It. Let's toast the late Ian Dury and list some reasons to be thankful: My friends, family, and loved ones (that's really the endless list right there, don't ever think I don't know I've been blessed). A decent job and wonderful co-workers. Reconnecting with a decade and a half of old friends. Plus new friends! Online forums for my rants! Romantic closure. Buddhism. A newfound re-order of priorities. Marilyn Jean Felt. The fact that I've seen the greatest living songwriter in concert once, and my favorite band in concert thrice. The fact that I'm an act and a quarter away from finishing my rough draft of "Desperadoes Under the Eaves". Michel Gondry's video of Donald Fagen's utterly sublime "Snowbound" (Fagen's best solo song, better even than "I.G.Y." although Walter Becker's contribution may affect my judgment). The fact that Amy Winehouse is somehow still alive. The existence of cats. The fact that I'm complaining about Obama severely disappointing me and not the fact that McCain's sudden fatal heart attack has put America in the hands of Sarah Palin. The fact that Beck is covering Alexander "Skip" Spence's "Oar" in its entirety. Beyonce's acoustic version of "Irreplacable". The fact that in twenty years, Gay Marriage opponents will look as bigoted and as evil and wrongheaded as the segregationists do now. You. ************** I just want to wish you well, have a very Depeche Mode Thanksgiving. (3 Comments |Comment on this)