baum boulevard

when a man’s an empty kettle he should be on his mettle

someone once called me robotic.  i think it was a comment on the lengths i go to not waver from my logic-based decisions.  even in the face of overwhelming emotion i try to do what is right and not what any particular urge pulls me toward. 

i hear a beat (thump, thump).  how sweet!

however, giving in to emotions is one of the greatest things about being human and i allow myself to become overwhelmed as often as i can when my actions in this state don’t affect others or have a small probability of negative consequences.

just to register emotion: jealousy, devotion

recently i listened to “evil bee” by menomena, a song about yearning to be a machine.  the amazing bass breakdown and overall musical genius of that song made me yearn instead to be human. i think, however, i got the point quite clearly.

lawrenceville love letters

tender, new amsterdam, cantina, thunderbird.  atmosphere, dive, courtyard, smoke.  time flows differently through the hours of a warm night, weaving in and out of conversations and skipping long stretches like a needle moving perpendicular to the groove.  the boys can’t help but let portions of their tightly guarded happiness reserves escape in the form of smiles.  the warmth makes the dark no longer menacing but womb-like, erecting temporary barriers against reality.

signifcant & sublime

saturday emily and i went to a local art gallery in the basement of a house.  it was the opening for an exhibit featuring regional art teachers’ work.  i was impressed both with some of the pieces and with the open bar.  my favorite piece was ram skull with stripes by josh criswell.  it reminds me of austin, texas.

after art we sat in the car outside emily’s house for about twenty minutes trying to decide which direction the night should take us.  bouts of silence broken with discussion, followed by whispers, then building to crescendo.  imagine the conversation as the spoken word equivalent of “breakers” by local natives.  it was awkward yet perfect, the stuff of larry david situational comedies.  i’m not a sadist so i wouldn’t want to drag out decisions like that all the time but when the perfect storm of factors causes a simple choice to be much more difficult than it ought to be it’s hard not to enjoy it from ten thousand feet.

the black keys

is it sad that the black keys song i’m most into is the tobacco remix of “i got mine”? i don’t think so as it is just as slimy as the original, with attitude dripping down its sides.  it does add, however, that psychedelic and noise mixture that i love from tobacco.  and it has lost any resemblance to the sound of strings being plucked.   

i caught the black keys last night at the consol center.  it is never quite as good to see a band in a huge venue but i liked it. my favorite two songs were “sinister kid” and “everlastinglight”.  “sinister kid” had so much swagger.  the rhythm was sharp but the guitar was warbly and that made for an awesome contrast.  the bass didn’t come through like in the album version so it sounded a lot more like they played it as a twosome (even though a backing band was there).  two huge disco balls and hundreds of beams of light danced around for the falsetto-only “everlasting light”.  it was like prom at the school for the ordinary-challenged.