Why I Oughtta

So I’ve noticed that all of the bands I’ve recommended so far on my newfangled blog have been safely in the cute category. Matt and Kim. The Seedy Seeds. And now I’ve got Arrah and the Ferns.

The band is from Muncie, Indiana, which automatically endears me to them since my Dad was born in Indiana (a town in the way northwest called Munster — I can say that I’ve seen what the fifties were like, because I’ve been to Munster, Indiana). They’re featured every once in a while on My Old Kentucky Blog.

AATF are sort of twee with mostly girl, but some boy/girl vocals. Arrah’s got a distinctive voice that is like a more easily digestable Joanna Newsom. They have a lot of fun instrumentation, with Wurlitzers and “banjolins” (is that a thing?) all around.

Yesterday I sort of fell in love with the song Tokyo, Tokyo after reading the recent My Old Kentucky Blog post. The lyrics are kind of depressing, but the melody is undeniable. Skatterbrain has the album version on his year-end best songs list (which you should also check out — it has a lot of overlap with mine).

Jake’s new movie, Zodiac, is coming out this Friday. I won’t be able to see it right off the bat because it’s a concert-y weekend (The Thermals on Friday, Elvis Perkins on Saturday) — but let me know if you’re in.

Jake and serial killer movies — two of the great, yet somewhat shame-filled, loves of my life.

1. This PostSecret made me laugh my ass off.
2. Buy me this. It’s on sale.
3. Ekrobi has brought these gay marriage and terrorist finger puppets to my attention. Last Passover I had an experience with these 10 plague finger puppets (my favorite is death of the first-born).
4. Jake Gyllenhaal did Letterman. While looking handsome.
5. Arrah and the Ferns do some twee live tracks.

Isn’t it time for you to change the filter in your Brita?  I mean, it’s been forever.  At this point it can’t really be doing anything, can it?

This has been a public service announcement.

So Valentine’s Day cards are totally not happening. I guess, in theory, I could still send them out but I’d have to explain why they were late. And saying that you were at a funeral in Ohio the weekend you planned on getting them done will kind of quash the merriment you intended to inspire with the card.

But fear not. I’m still going to send something out, likely as a celebration for a Jewish holiday, an obscure American holiday or for some reason I just make up. We’ll see what happens. I have no timetable to give you.

Here’s the card I was going to send out — a text-added version of the famous Sacramento headless lamp person photo.

I’m pleased with it — a shame it’s not getting printed up. I guess I could have sent it next year, but hopefully I’ll have purchased my fancy new camera by then and shot a whole new crop of photos due to my renewed interest in taking pictures.

1. A cute t-shirt (Stickles?).
2. Hee! Old folks love the Nintendo Wii.
3. Natalie Dee illustrates one of the reasons why I think mushrooms are disgusting.
4. Here are some YouTube videos of The Noisettes playing acoustic versions of Don’t Give Up and Iwe.
5. Al Sharpton is a descendent of Strom Thurmond’s ancestor’s slaves.
6. A Justice League movie?
7. Q Magazine lists a hundred places to look for music online.
8. Weee! George Clooney and Cate Blanchett are going to do the voices for a stop-motion animation version of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox — a book I gave to wee Mathilda for her first birthday.

There’s the previous post and then this one. The moon looks weird in the other picture, which is both cool and annoying. I like how this one focuses on a) how the light bulbs look like drooping, dead zombie eyes; b) the way the post fades into black.

It’s just a different crop, not a different shot. I think I like this one better.

1. Snowden has a free downloadable remix EP.
2. New stuff on Superdeluxe: Maria Bamford has this weird Guacamole short and the second episode of her web show (which does recycle some material for you superfans). Chelsea Peretti has a follow-up to Making Friends.
3. An interesting article about misunderstood movies that people are bound to disagree with.
4. CSS covers L7’s Pretend We’re Dead.
5. Get Norton Anti-Virus free after a mail-in rebate.
6. An interview with Kimya Dawson. Side note: did you know she named her baby Panda? I’m inclined to think it’s awesome, but most of me just wants to hang my head.
7. NPR profile of Kristin Hersh.
8. K and I went to go see Snowden with Malajube last night. I actually enjoyed Malajube’s set more — they were all French Canadian and cute and the singer looked like Gael Garcia Bernal in The Science of Sleep. Mostly because he was wearing a silly hat (see below). You can download one of their songs here.

I got some crappy news two weeks ago today and my Mom called me at work for consolation. I won’t get into the crappy news here, thanks to my newfound and constnantly-evolving barrier between blogable and non-blogable life. But at one point in the conversation, she said to me “Well, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”

It was a moment you can’t fully appreciate unless you’re a member of a mother/gay son relationship.

So, two days later my Grandma dies and we’re all headed up to Ohio for the funeral. She’d been in an assisted living facility (in various capacities) for about a year and was then in the full-time care. During the eulogy, after discussing her work teaching English as a second language, her family and her friends, the rabbi felt compelled to mention her lifetime love affair with shopping.

Even in her later days, she would still remember the record number of catalogues she got in one day (thirty-seven).

I guess when you get older certain aspects of your personality get exaggerated. In my Grandma’s case, it was her compulsion to go to Chico’s. She frequently brought it up, so the nurses at the facility finally resolved to put on a fashion show. They arranged with Chico’s to get some clothes, and all of the nurses modeled the outfits. Apparently, there was a microphone involved with this production and someone made the mistake of giving it to my Grandma. She took the opportunity to rave about the fashions and to laud the good people at Chico’s.

I can only imagine myself in my 80s — screaming about reality shows on the hologram television and wondering why my Asian grandkids don’t call.