The trailer for the new Coen Brothers movie. This, too, brings a smile to my face.

Contempt is Sexy!

This made me laugh.

For those readers who are not in the New York area, let me make one thing clear: the humidity in NYC has made the outside world wretched. It’s a summer night; I realize that I should be outdoors, breathing in the night air deeply and savoring each moment, but at this point air conditioning and Mojave 3 seem much more suitable.

It looks as though I’ll be doing a good amount of writing about music in the next few weeks, which has left me feeling good. It’s been a while, probably since the days of editing the zine, since I’ve done this much, and I’m hopeful that it’ll also get me back into gear with some of the fiction I’ve been working on.

***

Saw Buffalo Soldiers with this guy last weekend. It was good – grimly funny in places and smart enough to let the audience decide how it felt about the film’s relatively amoral protagonist without resorting to predictable moralizing. Before the film, a trailer for The Secret Lives of Dentists played. Seemingly consisting of awkward pauses only, and with a jarring operatic piece playing throughout, I was left with one impression when the trailer was over: this film looks hella pretentious.

I ended up seeing it this past Saturday. First impressions can be wrong, and mine certainly was. Far from pretentious, the film is alternately bitterly funny and crushingly sad, with fine ensemble acting besides. Well worth seeing, I’d say.

As an added bonus, the trailer for Lost in Translation was running before Dentists. Bill Murray singing a karaoke version of an Elvis Costello song? I’m there.

***

Had a good weekend, and the rest of the month looks promising as well; assorted folks I know from the western states are heading east, and it’ll be good to catch up with them. Right now, I’m content to sit at my desk, feet up, writing; quarter to ten on a Monday night, and I feel fine.

10:25 PM; not tired at all. Might do some writing in a bit. The first American Analog Set disc is on my stereo at the moment, and it’s doing wonders for my mood. Not that my mood before was bad; far from it, but this just has me feeling very…steady. Good stuff.

Just shy of one A.M. on a Tuesday morning. Been working on a Kilowatthours piece for Copper Press; an inexplicable crash set back my transcription efforts a bit, and has convinced me to throw in the towel for the night.

I’m obsessively listening to a TV On the Radio MP3. Yeah, I read the Pitchfork review this morning; yeah, that piqued my interest.

An old roommate of mine stopped by last night, which made for a pleasant surprise; I’m reminded that I really should make a trek to Wildwood to see the exhibit she’s responsible for.

Finished reading Ian McEwan’s Atonement earlier today, and am still trying to figure out what I thought of it. If my vocabulary was larger and my critical nature more oriented towards literature as opposed to music, I suspect I’d talk more about books here. Instead, I’ll toss off the occasional line or two of commentary and let that stand.

***

The benefit of this not being quite as personal a page as the last iteration of my blog means that I no longer feel obligated to record each and every event of my life online. However, this does mean that a couple of significant things have gone unreported here – most notably, the fact that this guy is, as of ten days ago, married. The festivities were an amazing time; everything from tailing a Hummer on Route 46 to watching young’uns go nuts on a dance floor to Death Cab for Cutie.

It was a fine time. I know it’s a cliche, but nonetheless, it has its uses: I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

There is a bottle of Rheingold in front of me.

Admittedly, it’s 11:30 on a Sunday night – hardly the right time for getting something, anything, productive done…but nonetheless, I’ve made a goal of trying. (At least one deadline project, plus a personal thing).

Sebadoh’s Bakesale is on the stereo.

The local record store that opened up not long ago appears to be closing up shop, which gets me down just a bit. Bought a couple of CDs there when I stopped by yesterday, at dramatically reduced prices: an older American Analog Set disc, Luna’s Romantica, and the most recent Mojave 3 album.

Said Luna disc is, upon a couple of initial listens, pretty damn charming….

More, hopefully coherent, thoughts to come.

Listening to Brian Eno’s Music for Airports now. It’s one of the few albums that has a genuinely calming effect on me; there was a point in my life when I was doing a lot of flying, and this was the disc to listen to, look out at the clouds, and feel just a bit safe.

At this point in July, low-level frustrations abound. Nothing major; just the usual ankle-height jabs and plucked ears that set me off, compounded.

I think I’m going to try to head to Montreal in the next month or two, for no particular reason. This past weekend, I realized that the last time I’d been out of the NYC metro area was for my work trip to Albany in late October, 2002, which is just a bit sad.

It’s one A.M. This’ll be the earliest I’ve tried to sleep in a week or so. Worth a shot.

The roommate quest forges onwards. Showed the soon-to-be-open bedroom to someone else this evening; proceeded to watch the last half of an episode of Buffy and cook up some salmon burgers.

Yes, I’ve fallen most of the way off the vegetarian wagon. I realize that this is probably causing my karma to nosedive, that my inability to fill bedroom number two is due to the fact that I’ve had to own up to the fact that salmon and tuna are really, really tasty.

On the other hand, one could also argue, in some Philosophy 101 for the Incurably Trivial way, that the smell of cooked salmon that’s lingering around the apartment is my payback for it. I’ve just taken a can of cinnamon-scented air freshener and marched around my apartment spraying it everywhere, in an almost medieval manner. “BRING OUT’CHER DEAD! BRING OUT’CHER DEAD! BRING OUT’CHER CINNAMON DEAD!”

Coherence slips away, if ever it was there. Back to reading literary criticism of a book I may never read and listening to the kilowatthours in preparation for an interview tomorrow evening.

Eleven-twenty-two in the morning; I’m at my parents’ place right now, sipping coffee and trying to figure out if I’m hung over or not. Can one be hung over if one was never drunk the previous night?

My sole goal for today is to make it back to the city in time for hockey – which, barring any train-related delays, shouldn’t be a problem.

Tomorrow and Tuesday, I’m showing the spare bedroom in the apartment to people. Wednesday, she gets into town, and I’m heading back down to Jersey on Thursday for my dad’s birthday. Saturday, this guy is gettin’ hitched. I will be a busy man in the next week; wouldn’t miss any of it for the world.

Now playing: Discount’s cover of Billy Bragg’s “Waiting for the Great Leap Forward”, which is, I daresay, a longtime favorite of mine in both versions. (Odd aside: as a Discount fan, I really should pick up their last album, to say nothing of actually bothering to listen to The Kills…)

Saw J Church and Ted Leo in late 2000 at Brownies. There was no gap between Ted’s set and the J Church one that followed; rather, he closed with “Waiting…”, with the members of J Church slowly making their way on stage to back him up.

Later that week, I was relating this to Scott, who’s largely responsible for my enthusiasm for both J Church and Billy Bragg. “That sounds incredible,” he said. “Was it?”

I hated to say it, but…no, it wasn’t. The prospect of Ted Leo and J Church covering Bragg practically gave me chills, but the buildup crucial to pulling the song off wasn’t quite there; the gesture was a fine one, but the band was off in places, not as tight as they should have been.

Hell of a gesture, though.

Dinner, 10:48 PM: egg whites, with bits of toast, pepper, salt, garlic, and a touch of parmesan cheese mixed in. Pretty damn tasty.

The album that I’ve been listening to for review purposes has been losing its lustre. Maybe it’s because the last song features the singer yowling, “Murrrrrderrrrrr!” repeatedly.

On iTunes now: Damien Jurado, followed by Damon & Naomi. Very hard to beat that, I’d say.

I think I’ve just been sold on the new Arab Strap disc. It may very well be time to stop by the new record store in my neighborhood…

I’m discovering the “radio tuner” function of iTunes tonight. Seam segues into Catherine Wheel’s “Show Me Mary”, and all of a sudden, I feel like driving down 35. It’s 1996 again, at least for three minutes…

(Am I wrong for thinking, incidentally, that Idlewild appear to be pushing many of the same buttons that Catherine Wheel did, musically? They both hit me on a similar level – intelligent yet forceful rock music, fronted by a fellow with a pretty impressive vocal range – and both make me long for a vehicle and long stretches of empty highway.)

Day three of the weekend approaches. I haven’t a clue what I’ll be doing – though I should probably have a go at reviewing the new Pleasure Forever disc.

I have lost all sense of time. It’s the Saturday of a July 4th weekend – on some level, my mind understands this. On the other hand, I’ve got part of my brain telling me that today is the 4th, and another part of my head’s certain that it’s Sunday. (Yet another part of me is glad that it’s Memorial Day, and that summer’s just kicking off. Like I said – no sense of time.)

Due to the sweltering heat right now, I’m holed up in my apartment, listening to a couple of On the Sun MP3s and contemplating cleaning the apartment. Excitement, I know…

I’ve just installed Camino for my Mac. All of a sudden, the blogger interface has become something far more pleasant to look at.

Haven’t a clue what happened to the BlogThis! button, though. Ah well.

It’s 11 PM on a Thursday night, and tomorrow’s a holiday. That’s a fine kind of feeling.