Why I Oughtta

I am about to be mortified.

If I don’t make it out, divide my stuff evenly amongst yourselves.

But I want to be buried with my iPod.

1. I interviewed Nellie McKay for Express (Weekend Pass cover story!). Click here if you wanna read it.
2. The Go! Team are featured in Pitchfork’s Guest List.
3. Hey kid lit people, here’s a new blog called Chicken Spaghetti.
4. PJ Harvey talks about her new album.
5. Tim Hardaway, bless his heart, wants to become an LGBT youth advocate.
6. Caribou Coffee raised its prices. This is not pleasing, as there is a friendly Caribou Coffee near my new job.

1. Look at 50 robot t-shirts.
2. Download new Tilly and the Wall songs from their Daytrotter session.
3. My friend indie gay John sent me this recommendation for anyone who needs a nice point and shoot camera on the cheap.  It’s only good for today, so get on it if you want it. (John’s math: $350 Full price - $87 Discount - $26 10% off coupon code  C1H27R54QC5MT6 + Tax = $248.05 Final price)
4. So, Idlewild is coming out with a Best Of disc and it includes a bonus DVD.  I will likely pick it up just because I want the DVD. In any case, I just found out one of the DVD extras is a live recording of When I Argue I See Shapes done at an acoustic in-store in Boston in 2003.  THAT I WENT TO BECAUSE I LIVED IN BOSTON IN 2003! I was in the front row, or maybe second, but I was standing by these two annoying hyper-obsessive girls who, at the signing after the show, gave Roddy Woomble four pairs of socks (the socks were labeled with different Idlewild song titles with the word “socks” substituted for one of the random words. For example, You Held The World In Your Arms became You Held the World In Your Socks. When it was my turn, I apologized to Roddy for not having brought him any footwear and he chuckled. It was awesome). IN ANY CASE, the point of this is to say that I might be on the new Idlewild DVD, because Newbury Comics is very small. Unfortunately, the image of me that will be immortalized will be of the doughy, bespectacled, poorly dressed Dan 1.0 version. We’re on version 3.5 right now, if you must know.
5. Janet Reno is executive producing an anthology of American music that includes contributions from Devendra Barnhart and the Blind Boys of Alabama.

I went to Jared’s DJ night a few weeks ago at the Rock and Roll Hotel and kept running up to the DJ booth to find out about certain artists he was playing. Ends up, I walked out of the venue with two loaner CDs (that I haven’t returned yet) from Forget Cassettes and The Western Civilization (listen to songs on their MySpace pages) — both of which I’ve grown fond of in different ways.

Forget Cassettes are a super dramatic rock band fronted by the theatrical Beth Cameron. Their new album, Salt, has a lot of loud/soft dynamics and prominently features Cameron’s blistering vocals. Very urgent, very wounded. It’s melodic, but definitely a step away from the cutesy shit I’ve been listening to lately. That’s for damn sure. The song that grabs me the most is called “Quiero, Quieres,” although I think it might just be because every once in a while I like to hear someone beat the living hell out of a drum kit. Click here to download it directly from the label!

The Western Civilization is poppier than Forget Cassettes. And less dramatic. Unlike FC, they probably aren’t on suicide watch, but they’re still pretty downbeat, lyrically. Jared’s a huge fan, according to his post on them (click here to read it and download Bruise the Paper). They feature male and female singers and a lot of drum machines. For them, it seems to be all about the multi-textured layers. Keyboards, acoustic and electric guitars make for a pretty heterogeneous album.

Dear animals of Arlington,

Please stop dying in my yard.

At first, I thought it was a tiny tragedy when I found a cute little bird lying dead on my front lawn. I noticed it on a weekend afternoon and, although I was initially inclined to let nature take its course, it was close enough to the sidewalk that I figured I wouldn’t want people glancing at the festering corpse in my yard and then looking at my house disapprovingly. Therefore, I gave the little guy a small send-off that involved several plastic bags, my grimacing face and the giant trash bin behind my house.

But after finding the fly-swarmed squirrel under my tree (thank you to the good people at Arlington County animal control) and a second dead bird slowly decomposing on the other side of our property line (it’s too far along for me to think about touching it), I’m beginning to think that these are the precursors to either an alien abduction or outbreak of avian flu.

Neither are desirable.

So, if you could all be troopers and start dying in a) someone else’s yard b) near animal control (here, I’ve totally Google Maps-ed it for you), I’d really appreciate it.
Love,

Dan

I avoid talking about work on this blog, for obvious reasons. However, I’ll relate this gem.

I recently quit my job of nearly four years. It’s true.

My boss was saying that she had a conversation with the big, big boss after passing him in the hallway. He remarked that she was losing a writer (me) and she confirmed that yes, I had submitted my resignation.

He hesitated, shook his head and offered this as a summation of my accomplishments: “Strange, strange sense of humor.”

Welcome to your new favorite YouTube video.

Brenda Dickson used to be on the Young and the Restless and she made these videos called “Welcome to My Home.” It’s like MTV Cribs for white people in the 80s with an infomercial twist.

The videos are kind of enjoyable on their own for camp value, but someone overdubbed the sound and, well, you should just take a look for yourself. It starts off a little crude, but stick with it as it descends into hilarious absurdity.

Oh my God, I’m totally in love with Los Campesinos. Take a look at their new video for “International TweeXcore Underground” — which actually features the band instead of animated monsters.

If you recall, I am preparing myself to read all the books I really should have read by now. I found these two lists of good books, but I found that I wasn’t really excited about plowing through someone else’s list. Especially since I hadn’t even heard of many of the books and, thus, don’t feel illiterate for not having read them. So I’m compiling my own list of stuff I haven’t read. There’s stuff I feel like I should read again (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, Brave New World, all the Sherlock Holmes stories, etc.), but I don’t think I can do that until I’ve given the following a read.

What I ask of you, is to tell me what I am missing. What should every person have read to consider themselves culturally literate? Suggest all you want. (I haven’t included things I’ve already read, so some suggestions might already be completed)

I’m also a little worried that I’m going to enjoy compiling this list more than actually making my way through the list.

So here’s my list of stuff I haven’t read. Don’t judge me. I thought this was a safe space.

(note: the books marked with an asterisk means that I want to read something by that author, but I don’t necessarily have one specific book in mind. Let me know if you think of anything better.)

1. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
2. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
4. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
6. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
7. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
9. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
10. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
11. The Dubliners by James Joyce
12. Ulysses by James Joyce (this will be last thing I read)
13. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
14. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
15. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
16. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy*
17. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
18. The Trial by Franz Kafka
19. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf*
20. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
21. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
22. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
23. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
24. The Brothers Karamazov by Foyodor Dostoyevsky
25. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
26. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
27. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
28. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
29. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
30. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells*
31. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
32. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust*
33. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
34. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
35. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
36. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
37. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
38. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
39. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
40. Candide by Voltaire
41. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (I’ve read this, but there’s a good chance I skipped the last third)
42. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway*
43. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
44. My Antonia by Willa Cather
45. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad