Do you have more laid off friends than employed ones?

I feel like that is slowing becoming true.

In fact this whole weird economy seems like a very long car crash in a very drawn out slow motion sequence. The car is crashed, but we're all being blown forward into the wreck in excruciating slo-mo.

Hopefully it's a fendah-bendah. But I don't recall that I ever knew so many of my friends who were laid off at the same time.

You know you are getting old when...

Ok, well really I am not getting old. I look 27 and think 17. The word "poop" still makes me laugh and for the most part so does farting.

However I can mark the passing of time with certain universal milestones. For example I recover less quickly from a night out, not that I can't stay out late, but face it - I am exhausted by midnight. And now my body wants to get up early no matter what time I go to sleep, so there is that conflict.

I am also at that point where I am starting to get cynical about "youth today", because face it - they never walked to school, in the snow, five miles each way, all uphill.

The biggest "ah HA, uh oh, oh no!" moment however is when it finally dawned on my that I am losing my sweet tooth. Coming from a person who used to put sugar on Frosted Flakes, this is saying a lot.

It hit me today when I stopped at Starbucks on my way home from Russos. I got a foamy coffee and a sugary doughnut. And as I took a chunk of the doughnut I thought "ugh, too sweet". At which point I nearly crashed my car to the river.

Too sweet.

Might as well switch from Underoos to Depends.

*sigh*

Fun times with music

Friday night I went to the Los Campesinos show at the Paradise. A friend asked me if I wanted to go and since I usually say 'no' to everything, I decided to start saying 'yes' more often.

Which seems to be working out well for me these days.

Anyway, I'd never heard or listened to Los Campesinos before, other than if they were played on WERS. But let me just say, Los Campesinos put on an AMAZING show. I will admit that I felt totally alien in a crowd that was made up of mostly cooky-cutter hipster lads with pouffed/shaggy hair, sideburns, scraggly beards, thin sweaters, and i-phones and hipster chickys in stripey tights, kiddie barrettes, thin sweaters, and i-phones. And I will further admit that during the soundcheck I was a little unnerved by the sight of the zylophone looking thingys.

However, once the music started... forget it. I was hooked.

The sound is hard for me to describe because I am completely unmusical. The best I can do is say that it was raucous, and delicate, and drummy, and melodious, and loud as all get out. It was a wall of noise that you could hear and understand. Which I guess is hard to explain - it's just that sometimes shows are just LOUD, you can't hear any separate sounds, just very loud noise and you leave with your ears ringing to sh*t for two days. This was loud but articulate and it was intelligent and I could still hear afterwards.

Most of the lyrics seems to be quite depressing but wrapped up in pretty paper. Except for the song below. Let me just say that this song is way, WAY, better live - but the video is very cool.

If you get a chance to see them live, I highly recommend it. And for the love of pete, leave the i-phone in your darn pocket.

Ugh. Enough with the graffarti.

Look, this whole business with Frank Shepard Fairey is ridiculous. The media circus that swarmed over Roxbury District Court was nearly larger than what we usually see even for murder arraignments. And a bunch of self-righteous boobs blathering on about the "timing" and questioning the "motive" behind the warrant make me laugh.

Stupid.

I bet a stack of flapjacks that the Artist Formerly Known as Frank dropped his own dime on his own bad self. Prior to his arrest on Friday, his show at the ICA was more of a "who? oh yeah that guy" shindig. But now it is a media hoopla. And who does that benefit exactly? I mean, Mr. Fairey is no Robert Mapplethorpe, so why would anyone even care unless he wanted them too. And anyway, he could have done what hundreds of other folks with default warrants do, send your lawyer over to court and arrange for a next court date to clear it up. That's what lawyers are for, that's how the system works.

Furthermore, at the end of the day, Mr. Fairey defaced property that did not belong to him without permission. Which is a no-no, according to the law. He is no more exempt from it as the kid who put this on my house is:

Which, by the way, I reported to the BPD. With photos. Because you just never know. It's not art to me.

Art is relative, and similar to pornography in that you "know it when you see it". And everyone's taste is different. One person's graffiti, is another person's graffarti.

A simple test. Pick one photo below and imagine someone you don't know and will likely never meet, spray painting it across your front door:













And yeah, you HAVE to pick one. Because part of what graffiti is is living with someone else's choice of art.

Have fun and remember to give this much of a crap about the criminal system when more serious issue arise.

I hate this newfangly digital tv business. But I like it a little... sometimes.

No, I hate it.

The f*cking signal keeps going weak and so the picture scrambles. Which I could deal with, but what is totally annoying is that the sound also breaks up. At least with my old rabbit ears the picture might get snowy, but the sound was still ok.

Sorry, but a horribly stuttering tv is probably going to be the thing that finally turns me off tv completely. Because there is nothing more annoying to me than hearing every third or fourth word. If you can't imagine what it is like, try having someone flick the mute button on and off randomly. For full effect occasionally turn the tv off randomly as well, which is what it is like when the signal goes weak.

Oh, and I no longer get channel 38 (WSBK), but I do get four channels of WGBH 44. Which would be great, only without the stutter.

I get it that there are still glitches in the system, but really I would give back those four channels of WGBH to get the rabbit ears again. And I refuse to get cable again.

So I guess my long relationship with the telly is coming to an end.
Which is probably a good thing.