Well I took a nap that didn't work out for the first show but it was good anyway and got 1.81 listeners by the end.
You are not supposed to compare horrible things because people will be offended, but sometimes it is time to do it. The gulf coast hurricane and the September 11th attacks: the hurricane was worse. There I said it.
Just to be clear I'm talking about what actually happened not the political consequences and shit.
Well I realized after the last one that like three entries or something here in the past few months I had forced in a way in that I thought about it from an outside perspective, well that is no tht epoint of this blog, nosiree, so no more forced entries ever or I quit, but like at some point I'll want to say something so that won't happen anyway, don't get your hopes up you dumbass.
Despite Eli Goldfarb's best efforts, which luckily for me were half-assed efforts because Goldfarb is too lazy to really put that much effort into anything, The Bob Dylan Show will be debuting on WBAR (Barnard College Radio) at 2-4 am Friday morning, which is Thursday night, which for college is Friday night, and technically Saturday morning though technically it is Friday morning. Barnard College Radio is of course a deceptive name; it is not operated by Barnard students and is not really broadcast over the radio, though if you do have special wires you can get it inside select buildings. The Bob Dylan Show is a deceptive name only because of the word "show"; nothing is, in fact, shown. It is, however, focused on the works of Mr. Zimmerman, and influences and influencees and cetera (note the use of "Langlish") It is hosted by sincerely, which is how I sign my letters because I only write letters in formal circumstances and that's the ending I use, never "yours truly". If anyone listens to it, you should call in, whether you or listening to it or not, or send an AIM and have me read the dialogue out loud and imitate your voice poorly. If you want to be "snazzy" you can download an m4a audio clip of the show, which they call a "podcast" in order to ride the wave of the future. If you don't want to listen to it, you are probably sane. Good luck with that, it's quite boring I hear.
If you look at this you can see clearly how I wrote it; pausing 15 seconds before each sentence to decide how to write it cleverly. Thus it consists of a bunch of lame-to-decent one liners, and lacks the free-flowing style of stuff I just write, or the coherence of something I write with thinking about first. I don't like it. I never thought about my own writing until this motherfucking class I had to take.
Ok, now for your least favorite type of entry: the personal ramblings that belong on some livejournal with a vaguely clever self-loathing self-loving name and a "uniquely" designed background and a picture of someone else.
Today I got an e-mail from UT and I realized I had bullshitted myself into not going there. I have been a Texas man since my balls dropped and was a Texas boy before that, and I love the city of Austin more than anywhere else in the world. I'd love to go somewhere unpretentious and free of political correctness and not one of these stereotypical schools for people like me. There would be other people there to care when Vince Young done took off and ran down the field faster than a guy running really fast but not as fast as him, and I could actually watch the games live. Don't get my wrong, I'm happy with where I am, but I was foolish to not go to Austin when I had the chance, and now the yuppies might move in and if I go there in four years it might have changed too much for me to know. Ya'll don't understand how great Austin Texas is, but let me explain: it is really great, and you're a narrow minded prejudiced fucking idiot if you write it off because you don't politically agree with a lot of the South, never mind that a Texan, LBJ, was the very man who started lots of these liberal programs and the war on poverty instead of the war on drugs so the police can bother Tupac. Yeah he fucked up at Nam, but he will always be great because he had the balls to disregard the political consquences of his actions when he supported the Civil Rights Act, and any of you who think the political consequences (Democrats losing the South) weren't worth it, well you go back in time and tell that to Martin Luther King, "Oh I'm sorry Reverend King, I'd love to address the racial injustice that you suffer, but see, racist people wouldn't vote for me anymore if I did that, so I really can't responsibly do it. Maybe in the future it will be more politically viable, try to hold on until then."
Alright?
Well now, I also had to defend my literal hometown, Washington D.C., against these reportedly 300,000 motherfuckers who held their protest. Whatever their fucking views, they cost the citizens of DC so much fucking money and time, and the citizens of DC are not the issue. Now the fucking White House people, they all were at work already, but the normal people on lunch break or with early exits or afternoon or early evening shifts, they probably found these fuckers real fucking inconvenient. Don't come down and pee on my fucking city and disrupt my fucking rug. There's no shock value anymore, this isn't the March on Washington; go fuck with the government or fuck with yourselves, don't fuck with DC. These guys didn't even spend any money for the most part, they came, fucked around, and left. If I was a more violent, powerful, and unreasonable person I would have gone and blew up these busses at every place they were leaving from.
And also let's not forget that "anti-war" is a misleading label. I'm anti-war, or was. Past tense. The war is over. We are now in Cleaning Up The Fucking Mess phase. I was anti-war. I am pro Cleaning Up The Fucking Mess. It's two separate issues. Now we do have to get people out of there, but we can't abandon the Iraqis, and as much as that is gonna be used by assholes like Bush and Rumsfeld, there's some truth to it. I sort of see what we're saying about cutting our losses like Nam, we have the opportunity to prevent Iraq from being as completely fucked as it will be if we up and leave and we damn well better do it.
In conclusion, I have a radio show.
Think how different It's Alright Ma would be if the last line was "I'd tell them to blow me"
Say okay, I've had enough
What else can you show me?
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, I'd tell them to blow me
that actually rhymes better with "show me".
It makes it sort of in the spirit of a Johnny Cash song, except it's a guillotine instead of a gallows and saying "blow me" instead of the more creative forms of contempt that Johnny came up with.
Which reminds me, as much as Hurt was probably the most compelling song from The Man Comes Around, especially if you take into account that video, Sam Hall is my favorite song and if you don't have the album you should download it. It's like one of his old fun songs and reminds me of 25 Minutes to Go.
Possibly the worst song in existence is one that is, fittingly, used in commercials for the OC, or some knockoff of the OC. It is probably called "California" because that is the only word in the song. It is a word, however, that is sung several times. It is sung not only in a really whiny voice, which is what you expect from some pussy-ass surfer boy, but it is song intentionally off-key, for the purpose of annoying people or for being a joke song, I'm not sure which. Little did I know, having only heard the song in segments of about 15 seconds, it exists as an entire song, and during that entire song, no words other than "California" are said, and that word is said throughout. I am sure the song was invented by someone from Oregon trying to make fun of California and they took it on as their own just like the US did for "Yankee Doodle". I am sure this is by no means the official state song of California, but if it is well then they are dumber than I thought, which is saying a lot.
New York, New York, is, unfortunately a song I hear sung and referenced far too often around here. What makes it worse is that I am living in New York City, New York, which is New York, New York, and whenever I think that I also think of the really bad song. Now the song is not so bad if you hear like the Frank Sinatra version once, but it becomes really obnoxious when you hear it multiple times, ridiculously so when it is sung by enthusiastic theatrical, or, in the parlance of our times, faggotty groups. Now the lyrics are pretty dumb, the tune is pretty annoying, but the overuse and the presentation are what makes it horrible. I heard, and it seems likely, and Robert Routh could probably confirm, that it is played at the seventh inning of every Yankees game. This explains why so many pitchers have really bad ERAs when they play for NYY. They know that if they pitch well, they will still be there in the seventh, and have to hear that really horrible song again, so they start throwing badly to avoid it. On the road, they have memories of the song in their head from hearing it so much, and they're trying to concentrate on throwing pitches but eventually they break down and get really pissed off and clench up and lose their release point. This is a problem that can only be overcome by the magical formula of constantly getting some of the most talented players in the league onto one team.
Now, a good state song is The Eyes of Texas. For one thing, the lyrics are very good.
The eyes of Texas are upon you
all the live-long day
the eyes of Texas are upon you
you cannot get away
Do not think you can escape them
at night or early in the morn
The eyes of Texas are upon you
till Gabriel blows his horn
The theme is very simple: Texas is watching you until you die. Also the music is the same as I've Been Working on the Railroad, which is a good enough song. And also they went and beat Wilson Dizard's team in their home stadium, and the win was so brutal that Dizard is to this day still sitting in his room crying, halting his tears only long enough to take puffs of cigarettes and makefairly simple statements in an overblown way to make them sound philosophical.
Georgia is another state with a good song, called Georgia on My MInd, or, as the popular Ray Charles version is titled, Georgia on My Blind. That was a cheap blind joke, here's another "I went to a party once and saw Stevie Wonder, but he didn't see me." Willie Nelson does a good version too, and Frederic Yonnet, the great unknown Belgian (or something) harpist who is my friend's harmonica player, can play a mad eight minute version that's really good. It is a great song that can easily be used to show off great singing, musicianship, or both.
Alabama does not have a state song per se, but Sweet Home Alabama is a good song though far from Skynyrd's best. Here is a sample of one of their best:
Well, I’m a whiskey rock-a-roller
That’s what I am
Women, whiskey and miles of travellin’
Is all I understand
Free Bird, T For Texas, Call Me the Breeze, and Saturday Night Special are all also great songs that are on One More From the Road, the only Skynyrd album I own, that are better than Sweet Home Alabama. But it is still a good song, and mentions Neil Young, who was good in his own right. There is also a Bob Dylan song that mentions Neil Young, a weird-ass song called Highlands on Time Out of Mind that is cool but weird, listen to it if you want to spend a quarter hour listening to one song and then an extra minute something. Neil Young wrote Ohio, which is not a state song, but rather a good song with a state name. It would be funny if the state song of Ohio had "four dead in Ohio" in the name.
What other songs are there? It is one song per state, I'm not giving California Love to California, nor California Dreamin' or California Girls. It is direct state songs, about the state, or the official state songs.
Davy Crockett. Hell of a song. I lived in Nashville for a year, and it was pretty cool, there was an amusement park at the Grand Ole Opry but I think it's closed now. They also had a really fun to watch minor league team called the Nashville Sounds. I'm gonna go catch some Nashville Sounds games one of these days. This song only mentions Tennesse at the beginning, but does contend that it is the greenest state in the land of the free.
New York should change its official song to N.Y. State of Mind, the only negative effect being that overexposure will ruin the song.
So far, here is the food I have encountered.
Unknown name: Jamaican eatery with five dollar lunch specials. Birthday trip there tomorrow.
Koronet's: 2.75 pizza, huge slice, crispy with great cheese-bread-sauce ratio, minizes sauce without getting rid of it. Also decent beef pattie with mozarella 2.40.
Tom's: The food sucks pretty much. It is a diner. The breakfast sandwich is more expensive than steak n egg and not as good.
Appletree Deli: They make good sammiches. 4.75-5.50 range. Cheesesteak-style pastrami jont is good, as is the italian sub there.
Taqueria: Really high quality tacos, but expensive. It is like a genuine mexican place. The burritos are enormous, so I hear, but I have not had them.
Roti roll: These weird-ass things called "frankees". Good, but too expensive.
Chickenfest: Pretty good chicken.
Famiglia: It is worse than Koronet's in every way. Fuck Famiglia.
Wai Lee: Hell of a half fried chicken at 3.25.
Famous deli: "Famous Broadway hero" is nowhere near famous and not very heroic but still pretty good.
Some good latin american food joint: Hell of an oxtail steak.
This indian place: Really, really fucking good food in an all-you-can-eat format.
Stand #1: Really good curry chicken.
Stand #2: Hell of a gyro, but small portions. 3.00 for a reason - it doesn't feed you.
So a podcast is not anything. I was wondering what it was, maybe it was some way that people could like run a college-radio type joint out they iPod, or perhaps it was a way for people to get radio through the iPod or maybe something so crazy I couldn't imagine it, but no, it is nothing, it is an audio clip you can dowload. You can play it from your iPod, but you don't have to. Your iPod cannot get it except through the computer. Let me repeat: IT IS AN AUDIO CLIP! IT IS JUST A REGULAR FUCKING AUDIO CLIP. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE EXCEPT THE NAME. AUDIO CLIPS HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR YEARS. AUDIO NEWS HAS BEEN AROUND FOR YEARS.
"First impressions are very important"
Bullshit. What you have to do is get everyone to underestimate you so you don't get overrated, especially in terms of letting people think you're stupid. Better to be underrated than overrated, unless you want to "succeed" in which case you have to "sell yourself". Man, fuck that shit. I'm gonna go sit in a house and drink White Russians and eat fried chicken and do whatever I want as long as it doesn't involve money because I won't have any.
But that's about the future and me. This is about my first impressions of college.
Well fuck college. It's pretty good but I dunno enough yet to comment.
So I will talk about this city.
New York city is essentially divided into two parts.
Really lame places where I spend most of my time.
Really cool places where I don't spend as much time.
And by "really lame" I just mean in comparison to the rest of the city from my experience. Morningside Heights, despite the really gay name, is actually pretty cool, except like directly in front of this place where I live. I mean there is pizza for 2.75 a big delicious slice and a completely obscure deli called "Famous Deli" and a bunch of sketch-ass bars and the Amsterdam Avenue is better there's like 50 cent sodas and lots of carry-out restaurants and a 24-hour corner-store-type market but like better stocked than most corner stores and with actually a good deli, they got this sub called the "Godfather" with ham, salami, pepperoni, yeah that is standard on most italian subs, but also they got mortadella and prosciutto, those are the real-ass italian meats, and they throw on the provolone and the sweet peppers and like the olive oil vinegar sub dressing you know that stuff. There's like a high concentration of yuppies for a small area but they dissappear pretty quick.
Well Morningside Heights, it is divided from Harlem by a fucking enormous wall. It is like the white people saw a bunch of black people and decided "let's build a big, big, motherfucking castle-ass wall to save us in case the black people try to kill us in a mass attack and are too lazy to go down the hill and come up again so as to go around the wall, and so they'll try to scale the wall and we can drop boiling oil on them and ballista them and I dunno shoot arrows or something" but now there's a nice staircase because they realized black people were better than them and they could go visit them with a staircase, and some black people went up the staircase and decided to stay there and that's why we have black people up here too now, so god bless the stair-builders. I mean I don't hate all white people, far from it, I do not hate myself or most of my friends, but you know, you know the kind of white people I am talking about. Well it's good they're not all over the place.
Harlem is really cool from what I've seen, there is a Jamaican place with good lunch deals and a Jamaican Kola that is "champagne cola" which is what Inca Kola is, but it is better, and comes in glass bottles, you can always judge drinks by the kind of container, from shitty to great, in this way:
Plastic cup
Plastic bottle
Can
Glass bottle
Fancy-ass glass bottle
Fancy-ass glass glass
that holds true except High Life is served in cans but on those cans it is depicted being drunk by a tempting woman sitting on a moon in a champagne glass, which would put it at the top of the classiness, and maybe if you drink enough of it in a champagne glass you too can have sex with classy women on the moon.
Queens is the only other "borough" I have been in, I liked what I saw, and there was this damn fucking good Indian all-you-can-eat place discovered courtesy of Mr. Storch.
Times Square is this place downtown. Let me summarize it: Times Square is the worst place in the world, culturally, more so than Bethesda because of being overhyped as good, see it is not straight up as bad but so many people look up to it that the overall effect is worse. Maybe I'm exxagerating, but fuck Times Square. It is all about fanciness and bullshit and big chains and even the McDonald's costs more and the vendors, and it's not even good chains like Popeyes or Best Buy or Chipotle, it's like shit like Jamba Juice and TGI Friday's. TGI Fridays is for people too lazy to find out where the real food places are where they are. Everywhere there is a TGI Friday's, there is a place with better prices, food, and atmosphere, you just don't always know where it is. But anyway, fuck Times Square, it's not even a good transfer point on the subway because you gotta walk far. Let me describe the subway: it is really easy to use, due to flat rate and you can scan other people rather than everyone needs tickets, but the seats are not as nice as on the Metro and there aren't as many and it's more crowded. But the coverage is much better, it is like the Cover-2 the Pats were running a couple years ago when Ty Law dominated, compared to like the KC defense two years ago when they got owned by the Colts. And it costs slightly more unless you're going far. Well anyway, there is one redeeming factor in Times Square, that is this place called the B.B. King Bar and Blues club I think that is the real name of it wait no I think grill is in there somewhere but whatever, the point is it is a great venue that books great shows. Check out the schedule I'm too lazy to display it properly, but you know, well Ghostface and BB King are both within a two month span, and yesterday I went to this show that was amazingly good. It was Masta Killa, doors open at 12 show starts at 1, which meant in reality doors open at 1:15 show starts around 2, Masta Killa starts around 3:30, but damn, well it was great. First there was this "self-scientific" who was actually really good, and then there was this Black Market militia which was pretty good due to Killah Priest and Hell Razah kicking ass, and next was Xzibit's group which was fun if not actually that good, though they did do like two really good songs and at the end they brought on Talib Kweli, who we had seen outside before, and he joined them in singing Shame on a Nigga. Well he was not the only surprise guest, no, the big one was a man named Genius, which was a nickname that he got as a kid because his given name was Albert Einstein. True fact! False lie? You decide. Well these people in line said they saw him walking outside before the show, and other people mentioned the possibility, and then when he finally came on it was fucking great, and he did Duel of the Iron Mic and freestyle and parts of some Masta Killa songs I didn't know because I didn't buy his album but now I will because he kicked ass, and at the end did his verse from Da Mystery of Chessboxin' a cappella. And I got to shake hands with the GZA because I was in the very front the whole time, well I know that is a stupid celebrity starstruck thing to be excited about but whatever, that was ridiculously good, and I am now gonna get more of this Wu Tang solo stuff than just the three great albums and Pretty Toney, sorry about talking so much about this but I'm not allocating my writing at all because I'm just writing straight through and also that was the first really good hip hop show I've been too and it was in such a small venue, there were like 200 people there or something it seemed like, really. I am now even more pumped about this Ghostface show, and since it has fewer other acts, well there should be more actual Ghost plus Ghost's solo stuff is the best of any Wu.
Well I'm gonna shut up about that now, and describe the rest of New York. Well the only other place I've gone is "The Village", the part I spent more time in was actually not the main part, it was West 4th street, well that place is really chill, they have a Gray's Papaya clone there and there are a lot of cool music stores that have rare releases and stuff that is actually really good, although I'm sure you music-critic types would disagree or something, like "They are unreleased for a reason you dumbass" or something. Another big thing there is they sell devices for conducting marijuana smoke into your lungs via glass and metal and fiberglass (and maybe wooden?) tubes if you're into that kind of thing. Also there is a park where street ball is played, along with some sort of game resembling off-the-wall, remember off-the-wall? with a plastic ball and it's really fast and involves no catching. And these ball-players organized a charity drive.
Well I gots to get eats, that is new york.
"This is the last you're gonna see before hip hop turns...faggot, haha."
Glad to know there's somewhere in the city where you can say faggot without someone flipping out like they would here, I'm not like gonna lynch gay people don't flip out you bitches.
GZA showed up unannounced at the Masta Killa show.
Things written about the beginning of college to follow.
There was all this talk of a dude who bought a notable Klan's mailing list or phone list as this dude being racist, but what if he just wanted to use it for pranks or traps? Like he could go tell the Klan there was a big rally in the middle of a big highway, or he could call them up and tell them there wives were having sex with Ethiopian jews, or get them all to go to a meeting in a big old mansion and call Ghostbusters to go get them out, you know, or they could send around a memo saying "I advise you to use your Klan hoods as toilet paper" and then they would be walking around with shit on their heads is what they'd be doing.
Everybody appreciates a prank on Klansmen because they're funny looking douchebags.