SHE Says

"She says always through the nighttime.
Wasted drama with the nightlife.
And I will shake it up tonight just to make it right.
She says always all the time" She Says - VHS Or Beta

Every once in a while I run across a band name worth noting, and at this moment that would be Portland, Oregon’s “Hotter Than A Crotch”. Their Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/hotterthanacrotch) says “Campy Soul-Singer Punk for Awkward Horny People”, which sounds about right. They aren’t great or grating, but I give ‘em props for the moniker.

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I caught Friendly Fires on Carson Daly’s show doing “Skeleton Boy” live. WAY better than I expected them to be on stage. You know I LOVE this song (Sketelon Oy!) but now even more so that I’ve heard it emanate from the sweaty, rasping version of FF. The singer sounds great on recordings, but a tinge of Colin Blunstone (one of my favorite singers EVER - The Zombies you tard!) seeps through in his breathier live performance. Fucking golden.

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May 25th should be marked on your calendar for the new release by Phoenix, “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”. A French Indie band that sings in English (yeay) so well, that I had no idea they weren’t when I played “Long Distance Call” to death on my IPOD a few years ago.

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While I was typing this, I could hear the neighborhood ice cream truck doing its rounds. It was playing “La Cucaracha” (Mexican Cockroach song). I fail to see how this would entice a person to want to place anything in their mouths that resides in that vehicle.

Ultrasound

“It's not the way you give in willingly
Others do it without thrilling me
Giving me that same old feeling inside that I
know I must be right
It's the singer not the song” The Singer Not the Song - The Rolling Stones

Last December, I was having one of those meaty conversations with one of my friends that such things can occur. He’s a fellow musician and was going on about a Morrissey song that he loved so much that he questioned his sexual preference when listening to it. I probed a bit and it was a love thing, not an erection that the song was providing, AND it was the song NOT the singer (Mick had it all wrong).

“Don’t you wish you could find someone that you could love as much as a song?” I asked.

His face drained of all meaning and he replied “Wow, I never thought of it that way. I think you’ve just ruined my life. Thanks, now I’m always going to hold that as a standard.”

Oops. Yeah it’s horrifically “holy grail” of me to compare humans to their art because they will never be as awesome. I’ve met lots of singers that are shitty people but have brilliant songs, and I’ve also met loads of super nice musicians with less than stomachable songs. Our great arts are the higher parts of ourselves, the ULTRA, if you will.

No one has ever made me feel as good as a song of my choosing does.

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I was thinking about ultrasounds/sonograms the other day. It’s sound seeking something. Sound forming a visual image, usually a fetus, but they use it for a ton of things these days. If you’ve ever heard a pulse or heartbeat through a sonogram really loud, it kind of sounds like death metal, which to me sounds like sharks belch talking, but it too, is sound seeking something (probably an alibi).

Ironically, as I’m writing this UnderOath’s latest video is on my TV. I thought these guys were supposed to be death metal? Oh excuse me, Christian death metal (we all know how I feel about that kind of thing: Guess Who Digs Me?). If it wasn’t for the religious connotations, the song isn’t half bad. I really dig the clapping skeletons, heh.

Sound seeks connection. The “icks” I feel from religion prevent my connecting to UnderOath in this case, but I really believe the intent of all sound is to connect and form an image - bad or good, like an ultrasound.

Never Mind the Bollocks

“But it's alright, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
I got my nuts from a hippy in a camper van on Saturday night”

Got Ma Nuts from a Hippie - The Fratellis

About a year ago was the first time I encountered the infamous “Truck Nutz” (if you‘re lucky enough to NOT know what these are http://www.bullsballs.com/balls/photos.html will photo you up to speed), but ironically, they were on a car. One of those jacked up, spinny rimmed, wigger-mobiles. I was behind it on one of those circular off ramps and I couldn’t help but notice the bronze sacs that gravity was coaxing to one side as the car hugged around the curve.

Being in Florida, I was surprised at such a sight because you can’t spit without hitting a church here, and they don’t usually go for the public display of genitalia. At the same time, I wasn’t shocked at all - it was just the next step in men’s obsession with their balls.

Whether it’s ICP or AC/DC (statistics show that initial bands dig their balls more than one word titled bands), balls are ever present in lyrics when a dude is on the mic. You’d be hard pressed to find a female songwriter or otherwise, as excited about the scrotes as their possessors. We just aren’t as enamored of them as the men folk are. I’ve asked my non-nutted friends about their views on the danglies and most of them find them gross (especially if the owners aren‘t familiar with the concept of MANSCAPING), or tolerable at best.

Personally, I’m a practical female. What I refer to as the “Sperm Purses” don’t really do anything for me and that seems to be the consensus amongst my girly social circle. Not one of us in our friskiest of states was ever thinking “Hmmm yeah, I gots to gets me some of them balls.” The only time we value the balls are when we want to procreate or severely put a hurt on an offending or attacking male (either situation usually brings a man to his knees, heh).

When we size a man up, we do think about certain physical attributes and you’ll hear us go on about a guy’s ass, chest, neck, hair, or “front porch”, but you will never hear “His balls are to die for” make way through any female’s vocabulary that I run with.

It’s ironic that when we can’t stand someone, they are often referred to as a “dick” but if they have done something brave or outstanding, we credit the size of their balls. In the female world, we only have equally demeaning terms, but nothing that is parallel with “having a giant pair”, not even with breasts. If a girl took out a terrorist on the subway, no one would go “Dude, that took a huge rack on her part.”

Our relationship with our chesticles is far different than men with their jigglies. I mean, really, can you imagine a guy trying on clothes and thinking “Do my balls look big/small enough in these?” Me either (Miami queens being the only exception).

Since my sighting a year ago, Florida law now prohibits the display of “Truck Nutz” with fines of $60.00 per offense. Our state Senator Jim King (Republican-Jacksonville) admitted to having a pair on his truck, but in compliance with his wife’s dim view of the truckly accessory, King has caved and removed them, thus revoking his “pimp” status (“pimps” are Republicans?).

If they hadn’t been banned, I was half tempted to make a pair with one of them having torn up flesh and spikes in it, dripping blood droplets forever in my trunks shadow. The other one I would have painted an acid yellow smiley face on. =)

Sk8 Her

“If you skate, you would be great
If you could make a figure eight.
That's a circle that turns 'round upon itself.” Figure Eight - Schoolhouse Rock

My bestie and I went roller skating yesterday.

The last time I saw the inside of a roller rink, my shoe and bra size were a LOT smaller, I think I was 12. Even then, at 12 I didn’t actually go into the rink. I’d have my parents drop off my friends and I, go behind the rink to put my skates safely up in a tree, and then meet up with BOYS from other schools that got their hands on a car or alcohol. We usually went to a “forbidden by the parents” teen dance club, or to some place called “The Pit” in the woods where kids basically went to drink, get high, and/or make out. (Remember those days when guys actually tried to go to second base and you didn’t even have a target for them to land on? Now I have excess and they completely skip over my “lady lumps” [thank you Black Eyed Peas] as if they weren’t even there. Here I went to all that trouble to grow them and they get less action now than when it was illegal to think about them - unless you count chicks, they grope me all the time. Life is a humorous bitch isn‘t it?)

The rink seemed huge back then, but now my eyes and their encasement have a completely different perspective. It’s still the same in regards to skating in a circle for ages to the latest dance tunes (yep same as the dance club), but with the added bonus of screaming children going in the wrong direction and body slamming into anyone in their wake.

I felt like I had entered a video game with Wal-Mart-esque lighting (not at all flattering for any look), and before I suited up, the dude at the desk made me sign a waver in case of injury. There is also a huge sign highly recommending you don’t skate unless you have health insurance. Shit has REALLY changed.

I had not previously been in a rink in Florida, but it’s only been a year and a half since I had wheels under my toes. I used to rollerblade around my “hood” all the time but the heat, snakes, bad drivers, and endless supply of bugs that decide to off themselves in my left eye have dissuaded me from such escapades as of late. When I did go, it was only for like 20 minutes, but yesterday was a full 2 hours of Roller Boogie meets the modern version of the game “Frogger”.

The a/c and no rocks getting caught in your wheels are awesome, but the brats would prove to be another story. I nearly picked the one up by his fauxhawk to turn his ass around but he slammed into a wall instead, so I was good with that sort of instant karma. It’s not even so much the little ones falling in front of you as it is the freaked out people trying NOT to run them over and THEY don’t look where they’re going, nearly taking you down.

It was fun. I like to dance/skate, and we had a good laugh, but I think I’ll hold out for Adult night next time as I’ve heard that’s something to witness; like Soul Train on wheels with a touch of Kanye and sans the midgets.

Can’t wait.

Made of Stone Roses

"Sometimes I fantasize

when the streets are cold and lonely

and the cars they burn below me,

don't these times fill your eyes?" Made of Stone - The Stone Roses

Jackson Pollock and The Stone Roses; can't think of one without the other.

I'm a diehard Roses enthusiast. That first album was true love for me.

I was just standing there on the corner of 3rd and Broadway in NYC, clutching a bag containing the toilet paper I had purchased (I just ooze glamour don't I?), when the infamous Monkey Man jumped out of a cab and straight to me.

He smiled and said "Hullo".

I nearly dropped dead. I suppose if I would've actually done so, and my head splattered in a nice Pollock pattern, maybe he'd have taken it as a sign to reunite with the other talents that made my coming up years that much more meaningful.

How do you come together for such a masterpiece and then let it all go to shit? How do you touch upon something that brings so many to awe and then just smack it away like a loathsome mosquito?

I could ask Pollock the same, I suppose, were he here.