At the Department of Forgotten Songs

Initials, my sister and I went to the Jens Lekman concert last night, and rather than make a long story-song out of our experience, I'm going to tell you a short antecdote about the opening band, a quick sentence or two about the fashion, and some mp3s.

Some of you may remember Jens Lekman from my top ten albums of the 2007, or because Matt at Debriefing the Boys was at his concert last week. He's a Swedish indie pop star, sort of a ganglier, more nordic version of Morrissey or the Magnetic Fields, but with more samples of horns and strings. He's definitely work checking out if he comes to your neck of the woods, and tickets were reasonably priced and not through Ticketmaster.

The opening band, the Honeydrips, started with a tall, high man bringing out an Apple computer and setting it on a barstool on the stage. He then took a $3000 fender out of its holster onstage and put it on. He readied his hands at the frets, then reached over and clicked on his computer, starting some fun guitar-based dance music a la Joy Division. He closed his eyes and sang to the background music, his right hand resting above the body of the guitar, his left hand occasionally changing the fret, with no correlation with the song. He would contort his face when it got to a guitar solo, but otherwise he would just stand there, eyes closed, and sing these hilarious send-ups of sad songs.

At first I hated it, but then it started growing on me. He changed guitars after a few songs, muttering into the mic that it was getting out of tune. The songs had a few seconds of silence inbetween the preprogrammed beats, and if the audience didn't clap long enough, he would say something like "I thought you guys would like that song better" while filling time. After three songs, I realized just how funny the whole thing was. It was like an early Steve Martin stand-up, self-referential and ironic and parodying the conventions of the genre and such.

Afterward, while talking to an ugly homo trying to pick me up at the merch table in the lobby, I found out that they couldn't afford to bring the entire band over from Sweeden, and it was easier to remove the vocals from their last cd than both the vocals and lead guitar. Tragic. But still fun.

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A fashion Note: There were a ridiculous amount of cute people wearing flannel at the concert, both onstage and off. I can understand Jens and the band wearing flannel; after all, they come from the far up north reaches of the EU. But I didn't realize that trendy homos and their tragically hip female friends were also partaking in occasional bouts of plaid. I'm kind of tempted to pick up a shirt or two myself.

Although I did a flikr search for some examples of cute guys in flannel, and came up with disappointing results. I did stumble upon this guy, but I think he's from an Abercrombie ad, so I don't know if he counts.

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MP3s of Jens Lekman songs that will stay up until I get annoyed that I'm running out of bandwidth, mostly from his latest album, Night Falls over Kortedala

A Postcard to Nina
Maple Leaves
The Opposite of Hallelujah
I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You
Sipping on the Sweet Nectar

I have no standards

I think I've done this before, but some website online has posted a list of the One Hundred Unsexiest Men.

And I would do a whopping 13 of them. Not all at once, of course. And I would do them this afternoon, none of this "Five years ago, when he was hot" stuff. I'm not saying that we would date or even talk, I'm just saying that they are bone-able.

Of course, my implied want of sexual relations with unsexy men says absolutely nothing about Initials' desirability.

Plus he's got nice legs

I know I'm not one for posting youtube music videos often, but this song is an accurate representation of the past few days.

Kind of. If only because on the way to work, I keep wanting to break out in an imitation, but I keep chickening out. I always think about it, but it never goes any further than chuckling to myself.

But one of these days, watch out.

Whoops!

So it turns out, Initials read last week's post about the deep dark secret I was keeping from him, and I am in shitloads of trouble.

Well, I should say was. And even then, it was mostly because I was stupid. He had asked me some sort of vague question about my blogging habits, and then I fudged the truth a bit, not being smart enough to realize that he remembers the blog's address, and is easily able to catch me in my web of lies. Well, not web, but a loose-knit net.

This is why you don't tell your deepest darkest secrets to the internet.

But all is more or less well.

We invited the third over to the house and tye-dyed Easter eggs last night, but with no hanky panky this time. Or at least no hanky panky under the clothes.

Secrets Secrets Are No Fun

On Joe.My.God's Open Thread Thursday, today's question asks "What is your darkest secret?"

In the comments, someone erroneously left my homepage instead of their own while leaving his response. Any secrets put on Joe.My.God linking to my site are not my own, just to let you know.

I will, however, let you in on a secret. Not my darkest one, because I'm not sure if I even have one. Besides, if I did, there's no anonymity in here, unlike while leaving comments on his site. If I had one, I'd be much more likely to do something on PostSecret anyway.

Remember in the previous post my mention of trying to find friends that are not Initials nor mine, but ours? We found one, and then we had sex.

And afterward, I'm pretty sure he made it clear that he liked me better than he liked Initials. And I'm not going to tell him about it.

Friends

A friend of Initials' came into town to visit this past weekend. A good time was not had by all, specifically me. The friend came off as a high school imitation of Truman Capote. Overweight, balding, and fey, and trying to work the coversation dirty and overly choreographed attempts at wit. Also, he mocked Initials' cooking, which is a no-no.

"Oh, these potatoes aren't really doing it for me. It's like when I'm getting pounded and he's getting close so I start calling out 'It's adequate! It's adequate! Give me a teaspoon of your jism, please!' That's what these potatoes are like."

Two points about that.
A) He repeated the joke twice again over the course of the night, and once again at lunch the next day.
B) Those potatoes were fucking delicious.



The problem is, I don't like any of his friends. They're all overweight Dungeons and Dragons players with no redeeming social skills. My friends have all graduated and moved on or are about to graduate and don't have the time to pick up their cell phones.

So we need couple friends, or gay friends, or something. It's a step in becoming a 'we' with phrases like 'our friends' instead of 'my friends' or 'his friends.'

And if we end up sleeping with them, then all's the better.

Update

The thing with becoming a lazy blogger is... I don't know. I'll think of something to finish that statement at some point.



The thing is, by the time something somewhat interesting happens, like my father's six day stint in the hospital, which isn't so much interesting or important is as much as it is long, it just takes too long for the backstory, and it happens in fits and spurts, and blah blah blah. Whatever.

And every time I post music, my bandwidth is gone within an hour, and I can't liveblog everything, and posting the pictures of cute guys with books covering the good parts is fun, but also leads the blog down a NSFW type of road, and if I get one of those goddamn "Adult Blog" notices on the front page, I'm quitting.

Anyways, the bar across the street from work has the greatest happy hour of all time. Free mussels, hotwings, and cheese platters and half-off martinis, bottles of wine, and tap beers.

If I were still a student, it wouldn't be considered alcoholism. But nowadays....

More Cabaret than Dance-Punk

My friend Liz is not a colossal douchebag, as she claims in her most recent blog post, if only due to the fact that I don't make mix cds for colossal douchebags.

1. a-punk by vampire weekend
2. funeral face by suburban kids with biblical names
3. love song by seymore saves the world
4. clap your hands by the pale young gentlemen
5. rhthm and soul by spoon
6. just by phantom planet and mark ronson
7. take me out by the guillemots
8. wonderlust king by gogol bordello
9. pumpkin soup by kate nash
10. you are the light by jens lekman
11. the magic position by patrick wolf
12. 1000 pounds by superchunk
13. did I step on your trumpet by danielson
14. satan lend me a dollar by hill of beans
15. abe lincoln by bishop allen
16. two ghosts by boy eats drum machine
17. and I found this boy by maia hirasawa
18. toxic by tiggers and old dirty bastard and mark ronson
19. girl anachronism by the dresden dolls
20. i'm in no mood by the fiery furnaces

right click, save as, flail to, preview use only, etc etc.


(Music down on March 20, becase I'm sick of running out of bandwidth six times a day.)

Goodbye, Student Loans!

Ok, not really. But that would come in handy.