Sunday, March 22, 2009

a couple non sequiturs about music

a friend told me they thought music was the most engaging art, a medium that communicated to the human soul more directly than any other medium in existence. i realized i agreed with this, probably always have, and probably always will.

lately i've had several "only listen to the smiths" phases. while the implications of this are bad (emo), i realize that i could have far worse taste in music.

the new animal collective album, while good, is one of their worst. breakfast at sulimays was right. (and whoever edited that episode is sexually enticing [and possibly me])

i have no problem with playing a song on repeat for hours on end, in fact this happens at least every other month. it helps me stay in a certain mode of thought while drawing or writing, plus sometimes you just need to keep listening to a song.

i played the upright bass in high school and just as i was starting to get good at it i got accepted to college and never played it again. this is possibly a regret.

my music listening habits are on a sort of pendulum that swings between melancholic tender tremblings and raucous heavy shit. i spend a few months on one side before swinging back to the other, and back and forth into eternity.

in the past few years i've gained a taste for more chaotic music i.e. tuneless structureless emotionless jarble that most people would shy away from. i even bought the whole druqks album by aphex twin. this likely stems from my overall appreciation of chaos and it's outright refusal to adhere to maths.

i was, at one point, a phish head. i saw their "final" festival in vermont and got lost for several hours on mushrooms, during which time i casually peed in front of a great many people and tried to lay down on a pile of mud. this is possibly a regret.

scott goldstein introduced me to the pulp album "this is hardcore" when i was in ninth grade and it became one of the greatest things i have ever listened to. it is now adorned with many mental connections of which i am reminded every time i give it a listen.

what genre is tv on the radio anyway? art rock? fuck, i don't know.

the first concert i ever went to was weird al yankovic.

last year i made my first honest-to-goodness music documentary about the band arizona. i like to think of it as unique because i was able to capture the birth of a song. literally the exact moment the idea for the song came into existence was caught on film, followed by its progression into a fully fleshed-out piece of music. if you haven't seen it, take a 20-minute breather and do so now.

playing drums on rock band is a lot of fun but my drums are broken right now FUCK.

i recently made a mix cd that included: talking heads, fugees, kate bush, wilco, ben kweller, the manhattans, tegan and sara, and the berlin philharmonic orchestra, to name a few. i don't think those musicians have ever all made it into the same sentence before.

i had a dream last night that my mom took me out to dinner with barack obama. it was thunder and lightning outside and we all sat at a candlelit table conversing like good friends. he asked me if i thought he was the best president ever. i said "given the current situation and your resolve in dealing with it, i think you are doing great." barack just sort of smiled at me as lightning flashed outside. though this isn't music related, i thought it was worth mentioning here.

in times of severe depression and loneliness, the only thing that can truly shift my mood is good music. this is endemic to the idea that music is the most powerful medium of all. AND SO THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETED.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Baseball Caps


i don't know what it is, but i am just not a baseball cap fan. this has been a lifelong issue for me. something about wearing a baseball cap, sports-themed or not, has never gelled with my character. every time i don one it looks like i'm faking it, like i'm wearing it in the most insincere way possible. the worst part is i can't even put my finger on why this is. put me in a wool cap, a tophat, a mining helmet, or a tri-cornered revolutionary ditty, and i get along fine. hell, my look might even improve in one of these. but as soon as i try on a standard baseball cap, everything goes wrong. my hair gets weird, the shape of my head changes, and my temples are constricted, causing the veins on either side to throb as if my soul is filled with hatred. then there's the brims. i can't get the brims right ever. they are either perfectly flat, suggesting i need special education, or overly bent into a horrid upside-down V, suggesting i'm some sort of asshole. even if you were to give me a hat with the brim perfectly curved in whatever way the kids are wearing them these days, it would constrict into some unacceptable shape the minute it came in contact with my scalp. don't even get me started on the thing in the back where you can adjust the size.

as i said before, the only thing worse than my incompatibility with baseball caps is the utter lack of a reason for this issue. my head and face are pretty average; there's no definable reason why i should have an issue with caps, yet i am continually beset by this curse. i don't even have photographic evidence of this because i am so rarely seen sporting a baseball cap. i think the only way to ever overcome this would be to transmogrify into a completely different person, and though i've toyed with the idea, we both know i wouldn't look anywhere near as good in snow hats. CASE CLOSED.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

THE WORST THING ABOUT HAVING ROOMMATES

is that no matter how badly you want to scream at the top of your lungs, you can't. somebody will be upset by it, become worried, contact the authorities. they'll want to know why you screamed, what's wrong with you, etc. and you just can't achieve the kind of release one gets from screaming until completely hoarse. i'm not talking about a wail of despair, a wrath-filled bellow, or even an orgasmic cry of joy. just a good old-fashioned scream in which all the things you couldn't already say are ushered forth in a display of just how wild and loud a human voice can become. i do it driving in my car all the time, in addition to the other weird noises i make to keep busy (a lot of people are put off by this idea, yet i continue to be open about it). i'll be driving along some road in heavy traffic and, upon making sure the windows are all up, AAAAAAAAAGHGGHHGHGAHAAAAAH. the louder the better. if you can damage your own hearing with it, great. just so long as you are able to let every bit of scream pass through you and out of you. that is so fulfilling. it just feels right. christlike, almost. like taking a much-needed piss. but of course something so unabashedly good is beyond the constructs of normal society, and to scream with all your might outside of say a grindcore show is typically frowned upon. there's something almost perversely pure to it, like it should almost be made illegal. there are certainly repercussions for doing so in the wrong scenario. getting caught indulging in a scream is mortifying, as if the veil on your most personal secrets has been lifted. but when it's just you and the scream, all primal and powerful and meaningless and omnipresent, it's like saying hello to god. if you think i'm joking, try it. go out into the woods, or on a mountaintop, and just fucking cut loose. you're welcome, planet earth.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Smut Cave on G4TV


Welp, it's the moment i've been waiting for, and i wasn't even waiting for it. by some bizarre twist of fate (this one totally out of the blue), my brainchild Smut Cave was featured on national television in a generous spot from G4, the lonely masturbator channel. here's the clip:

http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/aroundthenet/66389/Smut-Cave-Obese-Spider-Monkey.html

this came as an utter shock to me, since the show (smut cave) really isn't too popular or for that case TV-appropo. yet somehow i see these people saying these words on the screen and it all pertains to me like i'm the character in some bizarre twilight zone episode (except instead of being a bad thing it's really ok). to see actual TV people banter about me like i actually matter gives me the feeling that maybe i am starting to actually matter. which in itself is incredibly exciting and somewhat frightening. it's just like uncle ben said: with great power comes great responsibility. let's say this smut cave does continue to grow, and i become the spelunker, web celebrity. what then? my greatest recognition is born from a retarded idea about a cave-dwelling internet-fiend who likes gross shit. yay? don't get me wrong, this is truly awesome and i graciously accept the feature from these guys. i just love to second-guess my achievements with negative brainwaves that render my joy meaningless. put it this way: i don't want smut cave to be the be-all end-all of my persona. i love that in this day and age i can earn renown through such a weird venue. and i love the comments i get from people who rofl at my shit. but i want this to be a starting point in something greater. the scope of my ability goes far beyond the guy in the mining helmet. i have but to convince the rest of the world of this. if all goes according to plan, smut cave will serve as the base board for a very grand and eloquent representation of myself as meta-video-artist. i seek to deliver not only laughter, but intensely sparkling creativity the power of which is rivaled by those free agents that alter nature's math in that other entry where i talked about that. i want to inspire. i want to be new. i never want to be pinned down, definable, or prone to youtube comments like "gay" and "this sux". this much i know, america: as long as i have the strength and wherewithal to do so, i will continue towards this end and, god-willing, bring to this planet something it didn't know could even exist.

like furbies, except they have mind-control powers and make everybody zombies and you have to fight the zombies and they're really scary but eventually we figure out a way and it's cool like a dream that you wake up from smiling but with tears streaming down your face singing hallelujah free at motherfucking last.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Death Nerds, or How I Got On Street Carnage


it was 2am last night and I was feeling frisky. the mood struck me just right that i felt like pimping out my craft to the world. i do a lot of work with videos of all shapes and sizes but they don't always get received by the widest audiences. so, feeding this urge to spread my artistic seed, i reached out to a favorite blog of mine, street carnage.

if you dont know street carnage it is a fun little site hosted by derrick beckles, the mastermind behind the awesomeness known as "tv carnage", and gavin mcinnes, one of the founding members of vice magazine and creator of the fashion do's & dont's, one of my favoritest things ever.

i didn't think much would come of this contact i'd established. street carnage seemed very caught up in its own bizniss. but lo and behold, by the time i managed to wake up this morning i began noticing a bunch of fresh hits on my youtubes. and then it dawned on me; i'd been featured on street carnage:

http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/dear-street-carnage-introducing-smut-cave/

they put up a bunch of my videos as well as my desperate letter to them. they even declared me the first in a new subculture of nerd: Death Nerds. my life is so much closer to completion.

the little cherry on top was a personal e-mail from gavin himself later in the day. i present it here uncircumcised:

I like it but I don't think you should do that voice
be teh spelunker and yell like a monster but be yourself
that's more interesting to people than a fake monster man


dude has a point, but the voice of the spelunker has been an ongoing issue for me, and i am very torn about whether or not to alter it since its been altered for every episode thus far and kind of established as my thing. i wrote back thanking him for the constructive criticism and offering a guest spot on the show for whenever he and derrick were ready, replete with the ability to make said episode about basically whatever they wanted. as a regular to streetcarnage.com, it was awesome to find myself included in my own daily web browsings. it's a wonderfully validating experience, even though the general public seemed underwhelmed by it all. now i am somewhat obligated to make the next smut cave about their site, as promised in my letter to them, but my designation as the founding Death Nerd is more than reason enough to follow through on this promise. like a rainbow in the dark, i will spread the demented joys of the smut cave throughout the interwebs AND BEYOND BITCHESSSSS

*flips on shades and rides harley into desert sunset*

*sun explodes and destroys solar system and all organic life*

Sunday, March 1, 2009

24 TO 24

I've just about 24 hours left of being 23. one step deeper into manhood. it's been quite the year. many progressions and transitions, as well as a few recessions. incredible highs and lows and my first-ever broken bone if you don't count that time i fractured my skull in the 6th grade (yeah that whole thumb story a few posts back? totally broke it). i became host of a marginally popular web series, and created probably more videos of every sort than any other time in my life. and i only just realized that as i typed it out there. that's kind of cool. if nothing else i further stated my artistic intents, which can be summed up as questionable at best. i guess what really counts is i was able to live my life according to some extension of my beliefs and outlook on How I Want Things To Be. granted things were by no means ideal, and as much as i rejoiced i despaired, but fuck if that isn't the human condition, right mon? i mean shit. mufuckas try an roll up on jah, jah just roll right back.

it looks amusingly enough like my last day of 23 will be a snow day. as in a blizzard literally keeping me in place as it coats the world in snow. this is kind of ok. as evidenced by this:

especially if you fastforward about 2 minutes in when they start kicking the trees and the snow falls in clouds. that to me is a piece of heaven. so, on concluding this 23rd year with what is probably the last blog post of my 23 year old self i say

it's been utterly fascinating thus far, let's see where we can go with this nick.


signed,
the neon cthulu that lives inside your skull