happy smurf day

this year will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the smurfs. smurfs, of course, are those loveable sexless creatures whose message is one of understanding, camaraderie, and love. i have a special place in my heart for these blue sentient beings due in part to hours spent watching their exploits on television and also various childhood dreams about smurfette. their lore is deep and their vocabulary flexible. i’ve even used “smurf” as a verb several times this past year, mostly in the following context: “that is fucking re-smurf-ulous. stop being such a smurf.”

upstream

i think about free will frequently. thinking about this leads me to think about the incomprehensible randomness of the technically finite-state machine of the universe. i mean, just a hair’s edge one way or the other at one time can lead to the difference between ketel one and five o’clock vodkas. this leads me to think about that big wheel people spin on the price is right, since it’s impossible to watch that show sober. there are so many applications to the close-but-don’t-exceed methodology. while blackjack is the most notable follower, i’d like to propose certain aspects of every day life also follow this rule. take consumption, for example. the game is to drink as much as one can without tipping over. at work, the goal is to take as many paperclips from the bin as possible without being noticed. the tipping point is also the balance point. and that is the most beautiful thing anything can be: a delicate balance.

fax machine anthems

the real difference between the good old days and today is not the times themselves. it is us as the observer. we were more easily impressed back then. by definition we were less experienced, so things seemed fresher. in the late eighties i knew nothing of drugs and sex and was content with snap bracelets and schoolyard tomfoolery. a decade later i spent my time being impressed by alcohol and girls who could chug tequila, but i knew nothing of freedom. now that i am free i sometimes long for the good old days when i wasn’t. but only because i remember being happier in my ignorance. of course, there are always the other times when one craves licking absinthe off of a hooker’s navel. and then i thank lord xenu i’m an american.

no jacket required

“no jacket required” was yesterday’s theme. luckily i had purchased that phil collins album at a record shop in doylestown recently and i listened to “susudio” on the hi-fi at home. it was also a spot of luck that i didn’t bring a jacket to work or i’d have tied it around my waist like it was nineteen eighty nine. i still do that when no one is looking. but nineteen degrees centigrade leaving the gym in january was as close to heaven as i can imagine. it will probably be a once-in-a-lifetime experience that i look back upon in my senility with fond remembrance. yes, the day i dead-lifted three hundred pounds and lost my virginity to the spinning instructor was a warm one. in january!

the last weeks

i have returned from my tour of the eastern caribbean. actually, i returned a week ago. i decided that during last week both ripping down all signs of the holidays and laying on the ground face-up were more important than writing. i was also fighting off some sort of disease i most likely picked up on some island somewhere. it made me feel tired and crave rum. i did make it to a party for the new year at a nice house in shadyside. three stories high, this place had a college-like first floor with pool, beirut, and shuffleboard tables, as well as a wooden bar. the second floor was clean and furnished, with another kitchen like it was a separate apartment. the third floor consisted of a long multipurpose room and a catwalk that overlooked the second floor. it was impressive. i spent most of the night drinking champagne from the bottle and playing beirut. it appears i still have the skills i acquired in college. the blurriness of the late evening attests to that.

the vacation was relaxing and tame. i caught up on my reading and sudoku puzzles. i stared at the ocean for hours listening to michael mcdonald and the mary jane girls. i visited some islands and learned about the general history of tourism. i also saw the hospital where anna nicole smith’s son died. i wished a native happy holidays. i laid on a beach in a bay where i could collect my thoughts. i listened to jazz at night in a faux-ivory room. i found the elusive balance between winning and losing in the casino. i can’t help but think that this may be the last family vacation i attend.

over the sea

as i write this i am in a boat on the atlantic. the outside temperature is seventy-eight degrees f. some northern swells are rocking the boat more than i like, although some boat-rocking is undeniably good. i have seen the bahamas. i did absolutely nothing today, laughing at coordinated events. i don't want anything coordinated, except my trip back home. on the eve of christmas i have slightly overdosed on sun, giving my skin a holiday sienna coloring.

the middle

post-reading music: southern-space-chamber group japancakes – in memory of honey (thanks swanfungus)

as i prepare for my journey south to the tropics i reflect upon past year-end times. i wonder if i really do whatever i want or if i just do what is easiest, and that in turn becomes what i want. two toothbrushes, one razor. do i have the fortitude to turn my shoulder on people who are easily offended? the longer i wait the more i see this must be done. i’m wearing my sunglasses in the morning, but the future isn’t bright. i see i need to cut the cord to have any chance. greatness and middle-management are antonyms.

h,b,f,s

this video of an a capella group has already made my week. i am not sure where the group is from but it’s clear they are talented. i developed a love for a capella music during college. the lack of instruments is a very interesting constraint and, when done well, vocal harmonies are one of the greatest things about human music. thus, i get excited when i hear pop music covered by these types of groups. and it just so happens everyone likes daft punk. it appears good music may actually be seeping slowly into public consciousness.

wobbly post

without ale i consistently find gatherings to be a bore. so i travel lightly, making sure to complicate everything with spirits. when my spirits are low i just remember an old nursery rhyme, “liquor is quicker”, and then my glass is half full again. trees just reinforce the need for gin, and models the need for vodka. it’s too bad all my drinks are martinis these days. these days…

value at pi/2

in the endless sine-wave functions that make up my life the social wave and the music wave are exactly out of phase. i am quite alone but i have been making out with great music all week. just yesterday i saw this string of music videos on the gym screens: “chicken payback” by band of bees, “so much trouble” by matt pond pa, “pachuca sunrise” by minus the bear, and “maneater” by hall & oates. i bought “alive 2007”, daft punk’s live set recorded in france which mixes together songs from different eras dj-style. and i became aware of oh astro, a project that mixes and changes samples to create totally great tracks. their latest album champions of wonder is so good it may become my favorite of the year. if you don’t like “hello fuji boy” there is something wrong with you (it splices lionel ritchie’s “hello”, fujiya and miyagi’s “collarbone”, and hot chip’s “a boy from school”). i just wish i had someone other than my holiday tree to listen with. he’s such a rube.

snipe hunt

i think the satisfaction of tracking down an errant piece of code floating in one of thousands of files must be similar to that of a sniper connecting on his or her target. it gives a brief feeling of purpose to one swimming in their own entropic mess. many people try to make their lives a ceaseless string of these kinds of mini-projects so that they can consume meaning in small portions steadily. i don’t believe in this practice, however, as it intentionally leaves no time for stepping back and gazing. while i like the entropic mess i do wish to find some greater purpose or truth. but i don’t think it can be found in a life full of focus. i think my time is better spent blurring my vision and trying to see the invisible. this has led to a number of half-finished projects and a mediocre life on paper, but i haven’t given up.

snow day, snow day

last night was the first significant snow of the fall. while the snow was falling i was putting candy canes on branches of my holiday tree when i thought that perhaps i’d drink some holiday cheer in the form of a vodka shot with a candy cane chaser. since the only light in the house was my holiday tree i had a great view out from the sliding glass doors in the kitchen. to my surprise i saw that the back yard was not covered in the black of night but illuminated in a white glow as if it were dusk (it was ten p.m.). intrigued, i finished my holiday cheer and then put on a hat and mittens to see what was going on. not only was my back yard lit up, but the whole sky was bright. i can only assume that either angels were shining flashlights down from heaven or the moonlight was getting reflected by the cloud cover. i made some snowballs in the driveway and threw them at my house thinking, “this is what alaska must be like in the summer.”

getting back to my roots

friday night was the most fun i've had in a long time. a friend of mine was playing a show at the brillobox. she plays drums for my other friend, an indie-pop music group that makes liberal use of the violin. i must say that i enjoyed all three bands, though, and two of them were from pittsburgh. donora was up first, employing a minimal three-piece lineup. fronted by a girl with a great voice, they set the tone for the night (and i was not upset with the tone at all). ben hardt played second with a string section in addition to drum and bass. the songs had a lot of gravity as well as pretty arrangements. even with the strings, though, they are more rock-with-strings than chamber pop. which makes them a little less appealing to me. i had a very nice conversation with tara from mof during his set. it was also during this time that i started drinking straub beer and night began to fuzz over. i do remember it taking a while for my other friend to start their set, but when it began it was pretty. somehow i managed to get one girl's number and also apparently i agreed to tutor a different girl regarding music. such is my life.

back from black friday

after an extended absence i have returned. the widely speculated rumors of my rehab stint are overblown and less than thirty per cent true. i did hit the amaretto liqueur hard over the u.s. thanksgiving extended holiday but only for the purposes of getting drunk. my house was basically a revolving door of people with one objective: grabbing a piece of t.price. hopefully i satisfied everyone by being as aloof as possible and using the phrase “may or may not” hundreds of times. i am also hard at work on a project that could be even grander than phlox loves arthur and does not directly involve consuming liquor. my christmas gift this year is a ticket for a cruise, and perhaps this is the year i will finally see a palm tree decorated with lights, which has been one of my lifelong goals. if that happens, all i’ll have left is to end world hunger and see stevie nicks naked.

michelle and tina

i’ve been wondering if it means anything that i like the version of santana’s “the game of love” with michelle branch’s vocals better than the one with tina turner’s vocals. don’t get me wrong, i’d do whatever either of the two women told me to do if i ever met them. including, but not limited to eating a jelly doughnut (i’ve been jelly-free since nineteen ninety-four). but in this case the high range of branch’s voice outweighs the gritty funk of turner’s. now you may be wondering, “but doesn’t liking that piece of music intrinsically mean something? like that you suck?”. and to that i would reply, “everyone needs some pop in their lives. it may as well come from a living legend selling out his credibility.” and it’s also more exciting because it’s so wrong.

the inevitable, the universal

by now many of you may think you have a pretty good idea who the enigma t.price is. you may think that i could be your best friend. perhaps you think i am an excellent conversationalist. maybe you detest my mixture of northern sense and southern sensibility. in any case, if you don’t envision this in my future then you are quite a ways off. it has become clear to me that my future is a funnel, swirling inevitably toward hairspray addiction:

When White confronted him, he noted the man appeared to be under the influence of alcohol. The man admitted drinking two bottles of spray. He also told White that he is “a hard-core alcoholic,” who drinks the spray for the alcohol in it.

The man had $15 in his pocket at the time. White asked him why he didn’t just go to a liquor store and buy a bottle of liquor.
“The temptation was too great" in the store, the man replied. He also admitted to being in Wal-Mart on previous occasions and drinking hair spray.

drunk elephants and paris

this is the first sentence of an associated press article:

Paris Hilton is being praised by conservationists for highlighting the problem of binge-drinking elephants in northeastern India.

i think i may speak from the heart here, as this is an honest, shirtsleeve-wearing, god-fearing blog. drunk elephants are absolutely the single most important concern in india at the moment. during my time over there this summer the number of drunk elephants i encountered far outnumbered the rail-thin homeless, starving people i saw. as a matter of fact, one pissed elephant stole all the liquor i had on my person, leaving me none to give to the poor indians. i love paris.

f.y.i.

this information about women is all news to me. this is why i watch tyra. tyra and katie couric only for all my news. i just wish they’d do a “what’s down there?” day for men. i haven’t really ever looked down there while naked. i use the bathroom looking straight ahead and whenever i’m hooking up with someone i just take off my clothes and say, “showtime synergy!”. then some stuff happens.

ten gallon whiskey

so where have all the cowboys gone? you may think that the answer to that question involves the themes of chivalry, chaps, and cultural norms. but you’d be wrong. the one-word answer is “pennsylvania”. i’d be lying if i said i didn’t enjoy drinking whiskey on the porch and walking slowly. but i never really understood the need to wear dirty clothes and use dim speech. and don’t get me started on the horrible, simplistic music. so i am proposing a new “modern” kind of cowboy that embraces the slow lifestyle but doesn’t need the hat or truck. he can drink all day and play the guitar, but his songs won’t make you want to spur him in the groin. perhaps there is little difference between my modern cowboy and an alcoholic. although the former could use the noun “pard” un-ironically.

weekend in nc, yeah you know me

the making of a good road trip is a very subtle art. you don’t want to take too many people along with you or else logistics become a nightmare. however, too few participants in each others’ presence for too long can lead to feelings of hate and murderous rage. my trip this past weekend to north carolina was an example of a well executed road trip. even though it included a thick fourteen hours of driving in three days, no one was killed, arrested, broken, or maimed.

the drive south was dreary but our spirits were high. it was myself, three other men in their twenties, and a female preacher. i’m pretty sure there is a joke that starts out that way and i think it ends with “…that wasn’t my bellini!”. i made a mix tape for the journey with lots of current stuff on it (if you want a copy you can get one by contacting me). the scenery was about as good as it gets, with multi-colored trees and exotic nude dancing house billboards around every corner. the times when we couldn’t see a car length in any direction because of the rain were magical, like we were floating in a cloud unseen by anyone.

eventually we arrived at our destination, the homestead of i am not victor ward. it was a modern home with high ceilings and loads of stairs. spacious and clean-lined, it was a great place to host a party. friday night we went out to a bar with some horrible cover band. there were quite a few people dressed in costumes. somehow the people i was with found people they knew. i don’t know how that always happens. for whatever reason my old girlfriend’s cousin was there. so when the cover band quit it became a pretty fun night. i talked to a bunch of people who never asked my name. when we got back to the house we turned up the music so loud that they said it was shaking two floors above us and we hung out on the front stoop, just like i used to do when i lived in the south. there’s really nothing like it.

saturday was a long day. after being awoken by distant voices after a few hours of sleep i lay in a stupor for a while and came to the realization that i had twelve hours to kill before the party. i basically spent the day watching “america’s most smartest model” reruns and college football and by the end had had just about enough of men in tight pants (although is can you ever have too much?). as a break during the middle of the day my friends and i took a tour of the city. we ate some north carolina barbeque at a biker bar. later on the box social began and i made the playlist for the first floor of the house. people trickled in during the early going, glanced at me huddled over the laptop, corona light in hand, and passed by. the party started so early that by ten o’clock i was already fuzzy. i kept asking people who they were supposed to be even if they weren’t in costume. i met some nice young ladies and fellows. a couple friends of mine from high school showed up and we talked for a while. later in the night we sang songs of our youth in drunken disharmony. after about eleven hours of party, i finally passed out.

the drive back was hard to bear because of the total of 6 hours of sleep in two days. but i’d do it again, if only to see the looks on everyone’s faces when i claimed, without hint of sarcasm, that “yes, r.kelly is on the playlist. and please don’t touch the laptop.” congratulations to i am not victor whose party was definitely victor-esque.