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6.29.2009
Tyranny is the mother of metaphor.
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6.27.2009
An update on my Download My Albums page. I added three new releases and re-upped some links. It's all free (unless you'd like to donate). Download and enjoy.
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6.24.2009
I've decided to become a local TV newsperson, so I'm off to hand-gesture school.
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6.19.2009
New song: Atonement. This one's for my sins / the shedding of those ancient skins.
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6.15.2009
New song: This Mystery. With apologies/respect to Raymond Chandler.
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6.11.2009
What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it, either.
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6.7.2009
Mankind's epitaph: We got distracted.
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6.2.2009
New song: Nasty. Sure to be big in, I dunno, let's say Belgium.
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5.29.2009
New song: Toxic
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5.27.2009
"Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out."
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5.19.2009
Death by Dr Pepper: "Contents under pressure. Cap may blow off causing eye or other serious injury. Point away from other people, especially while opening."
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5.16.2009
My DJ Shadow book is hanging in there at No. 17 (out of 61 titles). Thanks to all who have bought it.
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5.15.2009
Next week I'm going to have an MRI to find out if I have claustrophobia.
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5.5.2009
Astrid wisdom: Always fall on something fluffy.
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4.26.2009
New song: Gaslight. "I don't intend to be contrary / but I never did like the name Larry."
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4.24.2009
Ever notice that when a house burns down, the only thing left standing is the fireplace?
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4.20.2009
Possible new euphemism for old, downwardly mobile people: Oddies.
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4.16.2009
I was so much younger then, I'm older than that now.
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4.13.2009
New song: Best Days. A big thanks to DW.
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4.10.2009
Somehow my new album "Westphalia" has wound up on Last.FM.
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4.7.2009
New song: Tiny Steps. I guess there's a religious theme in these last few songs.
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4.6.2009
All across the country people are losing their jobs, their homes, their dreams of a better tomorrow. Meanwhile, "Fast & Furious" pulled in $75 million at the box office over the weekend.
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4.5.2009
New song: The Tourist. It's a trip, it's got a funky beat and you can bug out to it.
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3.30.2009
New song: Salvation. It's about a kind of insecurity.
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3.29.2009
Looks like my new album "Westphalia" has leaked.
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3.27.2009
Nothing can quench a life that is drained of respect, and partched for the want of work.
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3.22.2009
Scar, the video.
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3.19.2009
Heidegger describes phenomenology as "the process of letting things manifest themselves." Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation.
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3.16.2009
If you live long enough, you'll discover that eventually everyone gets theirs.
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3.13.2009
A world without copy editors: "One of the many things great things about the album ... was the band's consummate story-telling, the burlesque universe, populated by sometimes outlandish characters, they created, their songs in this respect like short stories, by turns darkly chilling, sardonic, surreal, hilarious and haunting." (from Uncut magazine)
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3.12.2009
New song: Carry Me. I can't carry you.
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3.9.2009
A piece of my history. For the record, Mutt was never a glitter, prog-rock band. At least, I hope we weren't. Then again, maybe we were. Or not.
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3.8.2009
New song: Good Intentions. The road to hell is paved with them, you know.
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3.6.2009
Now you know: Kellogg's Special K Fruit & Yogurt contains strawberry flavored apples.
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3.2.2009
New song: Veritas. With thanks to Harley Hatcher.
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2.23.2009
Ask. And give. If you want less distance, move closer. I am here.
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2.17.2009
Dear Mrs. Jones,
I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer. I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn't show me dancing around a pole. It's supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot. From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.
Sincerely, Mrs. Smith
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2.13.2009
Apparently, I'm not performing in Omaha, either.
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2.12.2009
Who's in control - me or what I'm thinking?
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2.11.2009
"Facebook appeals to a kind of vanity and self-importance in us. If I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my favourite things, I can construct an artificial representation of who I am in order to get sex or approval. It also encourages a disturbing competitivness around friendship: it seems that with friends today, quality counts for nothing and quantity is king. The more friends you have, the better you are."
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2.6.2009
Booger + flick = blick
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2.5.2009
Women with strong jawlines have more affairs, research shows.
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1.30.2009
It was a great mistake my being born a man. I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death. -Edmund, the youngest Tyrone son and the Eugene O'Neill alter ego, in "Long Day's Journey Into Night."
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1.28.2009
"A crook is somebody who comes in with a gun and holds people up. A thief is someone who comes in the night and steals his way into someone's home. The thief is a more despicable person in the Jewish mentality, because he thinks he's fooling God."
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1.27.2009
Astrid: I have to tell you about Barack Obama - he's cute but not square.
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1.23.2009
Whenever you travel, always remember to yield to the right.
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1.21.2009
Astrid's science project: freezing dinosaurs and sporks.
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1.16.2009
Useful tips on dating courtesy of Mary Weiss.
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1.13.2009
Davy Jones, my little Monkee, what the *%$#@ are you talking about?
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1.9.2009
Oh you sexy things.
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1.7.2009
A serious warning: After October 30, 2078, I will no longer be signing autographs. Peace and love.
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1.5.2009
Dick + jerk = dirk
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12.30.2008
How did my songs wind up here? More importantly, when do I get paid?
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12.22.2008
When banality reaches a certain density, velocity no longer matters.
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12.19.2008
Remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still": Close encounters of the turd kind.
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12.17.2008
Inspiration: A momentary cessation of stupidity.
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12.14.2008
Yesterday, DW and I finished some new songs: Ghost Town and Till Death. Album number three, "Alphabet City, is nearly complete.
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12.11.2008
"Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves."
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12.8.2008
In the final direction of the elementary town, I advance for, as long as forever is.
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12.4.2008
Affection is even more important than love.
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12.1.2008
"And when I plugged her in she just blew up."
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11.26.2008
Johnny Guitar: "I never shake hands with a left-handed draw."
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11.24.2008
Nietzsche: "We rub our ears after the fact, surprised: what have we experienced?"
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11.19.2008
I took my foot off the gas and the damn thing stalled. As with cars, so with life.
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11.17.2008
The lamb may lay down with the lion, but he won't get a very good night's sleep.
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11.13.2008
Astrid: procedure + routine = prootine
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11.10.2008
Last night, DW and I finished recording two new songs: LA and Mermaids.
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11.7.2008
Picasso: "I can hardly understand the importance given to the word 'research.' In my opinion, to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing."
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10.27.2008
What happens when a force of nature meets an immovable object?
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10.20.2008
"My heart is like a train because people go on and off."
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10.16.2008
J: So, you're some sort of Renaissance man?
E: Yes. Unfortunately, I live in the 21st century.
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10.15.2008
Another instrumental: Cop Show
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10.13.2008
Live slowly, die old, leave a hideous corpse.
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10.10.2008
Wish is the father to the thought.
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10.6.2008
Jerry: You prefer dumb and lazy to religious?
Elaine: Dumb and lazy I understand.
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10.3.2008
"I asked them to look into the Abyss, and both dutifully and gladly, they have looked into the Abyss, and the Abyss has greeted them with the grave courtesy of all objects of serious study, saying: 'Interesting am I not? And exciting, if you consider how deep I am and what dread beasts lie at my bottom. Have it well in mind that a knowledge of me contributes materially to your being whole, or well-rounded men.'"
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9.30.2008
Astrid: Daddy, I dreamed about when I was older.
Me: What were your doing?
Astrid: Older things.
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9.29.2008
How come belching in public is pretty funny but farting is not?
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9.27.2008
New song: Home. For all those looking for one.
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9.25.2008
There's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity.
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9.22.2008
If Jesus had a handgun, do you think he might've won?
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9.16.2008
New song: (Let's) Take a Walk. Basically, me jamming with me on the laptop. Light a spliff.
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9.10.2008
Astrid on her way home from her first day at school.
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9.8.2008
Astrid's first day of school.
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9.7.2008
Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.
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9.2.2008
If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible.
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8.31.2008
A parable: Once, a group of travellers were on a perilous journey, in the course of which they had to cross a river. Unluckily, their guide forgot the location of the bridge, so the party had to ford the river, which, at the place they then found themselves, was shallow but very wide. After several minutes of wading through the icy water, the travellers began to grumble, "This guide is worthless! Let us abandon him and find another!" Sensing the discontent of his charges, the guide cleverly led them into a deeper part of the river, where the current was stronger and the footing more treacherous. "Help us!" the travellers cried. "Esteemed guide, do not abandon us!"
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8.28.2008
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," Yossarian observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
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8.27.2008
If Jesus was a Jew, how come he had a Mexican name?
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8.22.2008
It was the blurst of times.
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8.20.2008
One good turn deserves another.
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8.18.2008
Fred: Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and ...
Ted: Really?
Fred: And one of the things that keeps popping up is about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs - they all have a subtext, which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?
Ted: The text.
Fred: OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.
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8.13.2008
From love delayed, nothing less than music, painting, poetry, architecture and religion are born.
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8.10.2008
Here's the final mix of my new song, The Bitter Hereafter. Thanks to DW, who came up with some amazing orchestral parts.
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8.5.2008
Astrid: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Astrid: Astrid.
Me: Astrid who?
Astrid: (pause) Astrid.
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8.3.2008
Two new remixes: I Need You adds the Woolly Mammoth Philharmonic Orchestra (David Westner conducting); Not Too Far to Fall corrects a slightly out of tune guitar.
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7.28.2008
My DJ Shadow book is hanging in there at No. 16 (out of 59 titles).
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7.25.2008
For the last few years, me and my buddy DW have recorded more than 30 songs together. Next week I'll be heading to the studio to lay down yet another, this one called "The Bitter Hereafter." I've demoed it at home, and here is a sneak peak of the basic track (sans vocals). I'll post the full deal upon completion.
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7.23.2008
Every addict is formed in the crucible of the memory of that first hit.
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7.21.2008
Is the truth the thing someone tells you when they say they are being honest with you?
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7.18.2008
"Experiencing like breathing is a rhythm of intakings and outgivings. Their succession is punctuated and made a rhythm by the existence of intervals, periods in which one phase is ceasing and the other is inchoate and preparing. We compare the course of a conscious experience to the alternate flights and perchings of a bird. The flights are intimately connected with one another; they are not so many unrelated lightings succeeded by a number of unrelated hoppings. Each resting place is experience is an undergoing in which is absorbed and taken home the consequences of prior doing, and unless the doing is that of utter caprice or sheer routine, each doing carries in itself meaning that has to be extracted and conserved. If we move too rapidly, we get away from the base of supplies - of accrued meaning - and the experience is flustered, thin and confused."
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7.16.2008
Astrid: TV is so boring.
Me: Then why does everyone want to be on it?
Astrid: Because they think they are outside.
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7.14.2008
There's no story. It's just people, gestures, moments, bits of rapture, fleeting emotions. In short, the greatest story ever told.
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7.9.2008
I'm not shy anymore.
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7.3.2008
Astrid, the gardener.
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7.2.2008
Which is the most universal human characteristic, fear or laziness?
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6.30.2008
Between the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion, all the interim is / Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.
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6.26.2008
I don't know about you, but when I'm in the swim I want to be with goldfish.
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6.23.2008
"It's called 'The American Dream' because you have to be asleep to believe it." -GC
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6.21.2008
"On this bridge, Lorca warns: life is not a dream. Beware, and beware, and beware! And so many think because then happened, now isn't. But didn't I mention, the ongoing WOW is happening, right now! We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance, where even our inabilities are having a roast! We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel starring clowns! This entire thing we're involved with called the world, is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others' presence. The world is an exam, to see if we can rise into the direct experiences. Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it, matter is here as a test for our curiosity, doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write a hundred stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling in to a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration, as he realized at last, something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely, which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say, that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me. And I can learn to love, and make love to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of Self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don't forget, which is to say remember. Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting. Lorca, in that same poem, said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And, as one realizes, that one is a dream-figure in another person's dream: that is self-awareness!"
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6.20.2008
"I Got a Boner for You."
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6.18.2008
"I bought me a brand new toy the other day / It's a two-way radio that only goes one way."
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6.16.2008
Ralph Wiggum: "Sleep! That's where I'm a Viking!"
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6.12.2008
New song: Sundowning. Big ups to DW and Natalia, who came 3,000 miles to sing on this.
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6.10.2008
For the longest time, I thought that perhaps I was losing my mind, that I was being paranoid, that something's happening like in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" where people appear human but you sense something's missing - a soul, perhaps? But then I thought, no, that's just crazy. But more and more, I've come to realize that there is something wrong in the world, that something is missing, that all those people you see consumed with mindless text messaging and yakking on cell phones while they walk blindly into oncoming traffic are all part of a not-so-cleverly disguised pod parade, and I should be paranoid. I should definitely be paranoid.
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6.9.2008
Of whom and of what indeed can I say: "I know that!" This heart within me can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping though my fingers. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give that assurance, the gap will never be filled.
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6.6.2008
And the sign said "Long-haired freaky people need not apply / So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why / He said "You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do"/ So I took off my hat, I said "Imagine that. Huh! Me workin' for you!"
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5.31.2008
New song: The All Golden. It's about counting your tender mercies. Thank you, DW.
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5.30.2008
My review of the band Tori Pyne as it appears in the Noise (it's the fourth item down).
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5.29.2008
There's a William Burroughs story about a man who ventures into the rainforest in search of a tribal ritual with extraordinary powers of spirtual transformation. When he reaches the jungle clearing and meets the witch doctor, he discovers the experince involves "fucking the sacred crocodile."
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5.21.2008
Clov: I can't sit.
Hamm: True. And I can't stand.
Clov: So it is.
Hamm: Every man his specialty.
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5.19.2008
"I make papes off the shit I create, and then dictate / So get your motherfuckin' shit straight / I got skills and I'm hard to kill / So y'all bitch-ass rappers better chill and just guard your grill."
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5.15.2008
When you find yourself with these old, familiar feelings of anxiety because your world is falling apart and you're not measuring up to your image of yourself and everybody is irritating you beyond words because no one is doing what you want and everyone is wrecking everything and you feel terrible about yourself and you don't like anybody else and your whole life is fraught with misery and confusion and conflict - at that point just remember that you're going through all this emotional because your coziness has just been, in some small or large way, addressed.
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5.12.2008
"There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be an answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer." Who are you going to put stock in, Gertrude Stein or Tom Cruise?
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5.9.2008
She sleeps by the edge of America.
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5.7.2008
Saw a guy stuff a woman's purse into his backpack. Then he tossed a soda bottle he'd been drinking from onto a hedge, despite there being two trash cans nearby. Then he cured cancer.
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5.5.2008
Love is like quicksand; the more you wiggle, the more you sink. -Isaac Hayes
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5.2.2008
We think we know the ones we love. Our husbands, our wives ... we think we love them. But what we love turns out to be a poor translation, a translation we ourselves have made, from a language we barely know. One morning we awaken. Beside us, that familiar sleeping body in the bed: a new kind of stranger.
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4.30.2008
Memoirs of an executioner: "I alternate kindness and violence. Psychologically, it's a good thing."
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4.28.2008
It's gotten to the point where I've lost the capacity to believe the stories people tell me. I listen, but it's as if the person I am listening to either has no idea what he or she is saying, or they do and they don't care because it's simply easier to lie. You know, people complain about what a terrible president that Bush is, and yet to me he is scarily appropriate for the times we live in. Here's a guy for whom talking out of both sides of his mouth is as natural as breathing - it's perhaps the single thing he is actually good at. What better person is there to symbolize what we've become? Sartre described the human condition in summary form: freedom entails total responsibility, in the face of which we experience anguish, forlornness and despair; genuine human dignity can be achieved only in our active acceptance of these emotions.
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4.25.2008
My "Endtroducing" book is hanging in there at No. 17 (out of the 55 in the series).
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4.23.2008
The cure: the transformation of hysterical misery into common unhappiness.
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4.21.2008
"Things lose their balance and totter from the small blows of memory."
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4.19.2008
Big in China. Apparently.
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4.16.2008
New song: (Just Like) Lebowski's Rug. Natalia unwittingly blessed me with the title and Dave and Lisa tied it all together.
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4.14.2008
I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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4.11.2008
Scato-logic: fart + burp = farp
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4.8.2008
Lisa in the sky with birdies.
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4.4.2008
Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
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4.2.2008
"We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions and moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more."
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3.31.2008
I see life as a dance. Does a dance have to have meaning? You're dancing because you enjoy it.
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3.28.2008
New song: The Warm Rain. I had the title kicking around for years, and a week ago the song came to me while at the playground with Astrid. Huge thanks, as always, to DW, and to his friend Lisa, who added just the right cloudy day backup vocals.
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3.26.2008
It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. "Tragedy," D.H. Lawrence said, "ought to be a great kick at misery." This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are so many things today deserving such a kick.
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3.24.2008
Do you think poop has ghosts? -Dale Gribble
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3.20.2008
Really digging Nick Caves's new "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" Here is an article I wrote about him a few years back. A very engaging fellow.
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3.17.2008
We all know what it is like to read whole paragraphs, and even pages of a book without assimilating a word. Few of us realize that we spend most of our lives in such a state: perceiving the present - present sounds, sights, tastes, and sensations - only dimly, through a veil of thought. We spend our lives telling ourselves the story of past and future, while the reality of the present goes largely unexplored.
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3.14.2008
The drawback to rediscovering home truths is that when the excitement fades the reaffirmations turn back into platitudes.
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3.12.2008
More past regained: Years ago, I sold a pile of my photos through a stock agency in Japan called Mega Press. I had long lost touch with them, until recently when I came across one of my pictures on the cover of this CD. I got a hold of Mega Press, and not only did they pay me what I'd been owed, but they also returned my photos, many of which were taken 15 to 20 years ago. I've posted a lot of them on my gallery page.
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3.10.2008
Apparently, I'm still not touring in Boston right now.
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3.3.2008
My friend Natalia, who has sung on many of my tunes, has just recorded some her own, which you can listen to here.
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2.29.2008
"Meet me after 7 at the Jack in the Box," trills Peggy with the golden locks in Mission Bay. Hard to believe that this is the same guy singing A Wonderful Life. Oh, I was so much older then.
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2.27.2008
It's been my experience that a person betrays his or her own darkest secret when making observations about your failings.
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2.26.2008
Astrid-logical: "How do you go to a picnic with no sandwiches? You just forget them."
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2.21.2008
Mission Impossible: Greg "Barney" Morris tears into his rendition of The Look of Love.
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2.20.2008
If Dracula can't see his reflection in a mirror, how come his hair is always so neatly combed?
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2.18.2008
Overheard on the subway:
Smart person: "Like, what's MIT?"
Smarter person: "Like, I think it's, like, a techie school."
Smartest person" "Yeah, you need to be, like, super smart to go there."
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2.14.2008
Astrid loves Ringo.
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2.13.2008
Synchronicity.
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2.11.2008
Man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
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2.8.2008
"Art is not meant to rally the troops. A good political speech is meant to do that. Art speaks to our dream nature, our secret desires, our wordless understanding of the world."
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2.6.2008
This post on Josh Haden's blog got me to thinking of my bygone days in Los Angeles, and mostly of Yuca's, one of the best Mexican eateries in the city. The taquerias here in Boston are just no match.
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1.31.2008
For some reason, my song, Walk Away, is being downloaded at a rate of about 2,800 times a week. Who are you? Where are you?
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1.30.2008
I'll buy a gas station or open a small TV repair shop in Tampa. I'll move in with an attractive divorcee, a clerk who sells beauty products in a department store. She'll be tired of sleeping with people in motels that are so well lit outside you can never get the room dark enough. We'll sit in the backyard of our trailer in those chairs that have straps on them, next to a chipped birdbath. We'll grow old together. Then, one day, I'll get a hernia when I'm fishing in my small boat and hook a cinderblock. She'll turn to Jesus, who has snake hips, is quite lean, blond, a pretty fair surfer, has a beautiful tenor voice, plays pedal steel guitar and would be a fine dirt-bike scrambler except for his robes. She'll go to church wearing a shiny blue dress with frills around the neck, a hat with a little bunch of cherries, a purse, gloves and sensible shoes. And there will be no scroll on our doorway, only the totemic pink flamingo, made of plaster of Paris, on our front lawn.
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1.25.2008
A joke isn't a joke when you hurt someone. -Fat Albert
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1.22.2008
New song: The Milkman's Matinee. Me and DW get down in a cosmic hoedown with banjo and lap steel. Yee-haw.
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1.18.2008
Why I love religious dogma, Part 1: "The new theory that I would like to introduce here is that due to the incredibly large number of engrams on the whole track, the erasure of basic-basic does not always cause all later engrams to erase."
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1.16.2008
Is a cliche only authentic when it becomes habit?
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1.14.2008
With Astrid possibly starting kindergarten in the fall, we're looking into the schools she might attend. Here's how one Boston-area school describes how it is preparing its students for "educational success": "Children are directly involved in learning how to read and learning to become readers who enjoy the power of reading. Children are engaged in reader's and writer's workshop. Through these process-oriented strategies, children are which they share their reading and writing with a larger audience." Scary.
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1.10.2008
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
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1.8.2008
Intelligent, dispassionate, unlikely to be seduced by the trappings of power ... isn't it time for a robot to be the next U.S. president?
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1.4.2007
A new Brian Wilson song: Heaven. And it is.
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12.27.2007
For those of you who can't wait, the opening scene of the new season of Lost.
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12.24.2007
... roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair ...
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12.21.2007
"After sin comes repentance. But if that isn't followed by forgiveness, buddy you're on a hard road indeed."
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12.13.2007
If all men are created equal, does that mean the crazy person shouting outside my window is Einstein?
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12.11.2007
Room with a view.
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12.7.2007
The other day I saw a young woman with a cellphone in her ear walk across the tracks directly in front of a moving subway train. The conductor rang his bell and blew his whistle, but the woman didn't even flinch - she just kept on walking and gabbing. The train missed her by just a few feet. I had to wonder what she would've thought had she survived being run over. "Couldn't the train see I was talking?!" An unjust war rages on, while back at home people are lost in iPod oblivion.
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12.3.2007
Jokes are funny because they have strong muscles. -Astrid
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11.28.2007
Zsa Zsa Gabor + Gabor Sazbo = Zsa Zsa Szabo Gabor Gabor
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11.26.2007
Home fucking is killing prostitution.
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11.20.2007
This is My Story. What's yours?
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11.17.2007
Info on the new collection, 33 1/3 Greatest Hits Vol. 2, which features an excerpt from my book, "DJ Shadow's Endtroducing."
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11.14.2007
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"
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11.12.2007
Why I love soul music: Jackie Lee's Darkest Days.
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11.9.2007
Pretty maids all in a row.
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11.7.2007
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."
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10.31.2007
Gave way to you.
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10.29.2007
What appears on the scanner that Maggie is dragged through on the opening credits of "The Simpsons": $847.63. Now you know.
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10.19.2007
As long as people cling to the dogma of religion there will never be peace in this world. Because there will always be someone right and always someone wrong. Which means war.
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10.15.2007
What I've really tried to do is illustrate that the reason rock is still around is that it's not youth's music. It is the music of the frustrated and dissatisfied. -Pete Townshend
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10.12.2007
"The fundamental cause of the problem is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
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10.9.2007
Go Sox, cheers Astrid.
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10.4.2007
It's a simple principle: The only thing that matters is what you do, not what you say you'll do.
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10.3.2007
You say it's your birthday. It's my birthday too, yeah.
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10.2.2007
Apropos of nothing, I'm an extra in Disney's The Game Plan, which, inexplicably, was No. 1 at the box office this past weekend. Here's me, an anonymous nobody in the background.
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10.1.2007
When it gets right down to it, life is nothing more than a complicated dance we do around immovable objects.
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9.27.2007
I agree with the Chekhov character who, when in a crisis, he is reminded that "this, too, shall pass," responds, "Nothing passes."
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9.21.2007
Girl on the subway: So he asked me, like, do I like to drink Diet Coke and I said, like, of course, and he said, like, well if you drink Diet Coke, like, it'll give you cellulite, and I said, like, whatever, like to each their own.
Guy on the subway: What does that mean?
Girl on the subway: Like what does what mean?
Guy on the subway: What does 'to each their own' mean?
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9.17.2007
Motto: To be small and to stay small.
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9.13.2007
Astrid: Daddy, I pooped.
Me: Why did that happen?
Astrid: Because we have butts.
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9.6.2007
Now you know: Harvard's Natural History Museum smells like mothballs.
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9.5.2007
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do.
Exhibit A and B.
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8.28.2007
With both my mother and father gone, I guess you could say I'm an orphan.
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8.27.2007
Things fall apart - that much we know. The question is what to do about it.
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8.23.2007
Sometimes you build a house from the foundation up, other times you renovate the one you have. Same goes with songs. Take something that's a bit of a shambles, re-record most of the parts, add new lyrics, a fresh coat of paint and presto: The Sum of All Fears. Thanks DW.
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8.21.2007
"You are perpetually spending your energy in the act of balancing yourself. You are seized with a sort of spiritual vertigo, you totter on the brink, your hair stands on end, you can't believe that beneath your feet lies an immeasurable abyss. It comes through a passionate desire to embrace people, to show them your love. The more you reach out toward the world the more the world retreats. Nobody wants real love, real hatred. Nobody wants you to put your hand in his sacred entrails -- that's only for the priest in the hour of sacrifice. While you live, while the blood's still warm, you are to pretend that there is no such thing as blood and no such thing as a skeleton beneath the covering of the flesh. Keep off the grass! That's the motto by which people live."
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8.20.2007
"Invasion," the latest "Body Snatchers" remake, has a reshot feel-good ending just like the '50s original. How far we have not come since the the terrifying feel-bad ending of the '70s version.
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8.17.2007
After 52 years, I am left with the melancholy sensation that my life has been spent in a perpetual state of parallel play, alongside, but distinctly apart from, the rest of humanity.
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8.15.2007
Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And if I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.
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8.13.2007
All these appositions - communism versus capitalism, female versus male, poor versus rich, black versus white - maybe, in a way, they're red herrings, because they keep you searching for something: they keep you dissatisfied and hold out the hope that you will be satisfied, someday.
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8.10.2007
"Keep the ball on your eye!" -Astrid
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8.9.2007
Here is a new one: Billy Take the Wheel. It's for my mom, who passed away last week after a long bout with Alzhiemer's.
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8.7.2007
Isn't it true that we continue to strive all our lives in order to find peace and fulfillment? It's like a journey on a pier that goes out endlessly into the ocean without ever reaching the opposite shore. We never seem able to realize that everything in life is ephemeral, that new problems will always arise to meet us, that frustration never ends, that all is in flux and that there is nothing solid to hold on to, not even the love you share with another person. But how did we get the idea that there were ultimate solutions in life in the first place? Most of us were brought up on fairy tales, books, TV programs and movies in which there was a linear progression. At the beginning, the characters were happy, then something terrible happened and they were unhappy. Then they set out to overcome the difficulty, finally succeeded, and everyone was happy again - and that was the end of the story. Our early education was based on the premise of problem solving: every problem posed a challenge that could be solved - mathematic, scientific, whatever. There was an answer to every question; all you had to do was find it. Adults and the established authorities are committed to convincing children that there are linear solutions to all problems, and nowhere are you taught the continuous incompleteness of life. Oh, we talk about it, but inwardly we believe there is an answer, an end, a conclusion. I have a theory that all the modern books and movies that allude to absurd character of life and suggest the ultimate meaninglessness of human activity are fashionable only because people like to pay lip service to ideas of nihilism and senselessness. They like to pretend that they no longer believe in the old myths we were taught as children. That is, they effect an existential attitude but they don't really believe it. It's a kind of a vicarious appreciation of meaninglessness. Soap operas offer a perfect example of life's inconclusiveness. In them, people lead lives filled with striving. Every scene raises a problem and suggests that its solution is imminent. But if you follow any of these programs for more than a week or two, it becomes evident that not only will these people's problems never be solved but that they will never be completely stated. They will continue to exist and accrue, and the solutions are actually, or inevitably become, new problems. And further, these programs are among the most steady and lucrative on the air today, which means that there is an enormous audience who, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, still hope and believe these characters will solve their problems soon. The same idea is communicated in commercials. They give you the impression that you can unravel the knots of life simply, and they fail to confront - as a matter of fact they completely ignore - the human condition. It's like what Hamlet said about the undiscovered country: to look into the lie of progress, to understand that life may have no meaning, to contemplate the inconclusiveness of each person's struggle for fulfillment is simply too terrifying; that there is no answer, no end, that you'll always be on your way, that life is not a game you can win, but a game that has no end - and all you do is die somewhere in the middle of it.
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8.6.2007
They told each other the story at length, each one supplementing the memory of the other, and, when they had finished: "That was the best time we ever had!" said Frederic. "Yes, you may be right. That was our best time!" said Deslauriers. -Flaubert, "The Sentimental Education"
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7.30.2007
"You must be like me / you must suffer in rhythm.
Some of these days you'll miss me, honey."
Rest in peace, Mom.
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7.25.2007
I very much hope that the world will become a better place. And if it does, our grandchildren may look at us the way young people today regard the generation who collaborated with the Nazis. They'll say, 'I do not understand you.' We will explain that life simply was the way it was. 'Famines came and went and nobody did anything about it. People died of hunger to provide us with cheaper coffee.' We'll have to admit that we knew but chose to do nothing about it.
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7.24.2007
With each passing day, the body count rises in Iraq. Elsewhere, grief counsellors are standing by to assist those traumatized by the death of a major character in the new Harry Potter book.
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7.23.2007
"I'm not Elvis!"
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7.18.2007
My DJ Shadow book moves up a notch again to No. 12 (out of 49 titles). Thanks to all who've picked it up. Come November, an excerpt will be featured in 33 1/3's "Greatest Hits, Vol. 2."
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7.17.2007
Here is a sequel of sorts to "My Dinner With Andre," entitled "Astrid's Afternoon With Scott."
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7.16.2007
"The essential thing is contingency. I mean that one cannot define existence as a necessity. To exist is simply to be there; those who exist let themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce anything from them. I believe that there are people who have understood this. Only they tried to overcome this contingency by inventing a necessary, causal being. But no necessary being can explain existence: contingency is not a delusion, a probability, which can be dissipated; it is the absolute, consequently, the perfect free gift. All is free, this park, this city, and myself."
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7.13.2007
People hang on to these images of father, mother, husband, wife because they seem to provide some firm ground. But there's no wife there. What does that mean - a wife? A husband? A son? A baby holds your hand and then suddenly there's this huge man lifting you off the ground, and then he's gone. Where's that son?
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7.10.2007
Astrid turns 3. Whew.
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7.9.2007
Everything is going too fast and yet not fast enough.
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7.2.2007
We have witnessed lying, humiliation, killing, deportation and torture, and it each instance it was impossible to persuade the people who were doing these things not to do them, because they were sure of themselves and because there is no way of persuading an abstraction, or, to put it another way, the representative of an ideology. -Camus
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6.27.2007
The world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence.
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6.25.2007
"Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them. They are useful nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts."
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6.22.2007
When you gaze for long into the abyss, Nietzsche says, the abyss also gazes into you.
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6.18.2007
A man without a face.
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6.15.2007
"Today's high will be 70 degrees. Currently it's 74."
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6.11.2007
Twenty years of "The Sopranos" and in the end the cat did it? Wha?
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6.9.2007
A few weeks back (see entry for 5.20), Dave and I recorded a new song called Goodbye Richmond. Last night, Natalia added some amazing background vocals and here is the result, another song about memory and loss.
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6.6.2007
Their tastes and opinions were identical. Often whichever of them was listening would cry, "So do I!" And the other in his turn would chime in, "So do I!" Then their interminable laments against Fate: "Why were the heavens against us! If we had met ..." "Oh! If I had been younger!" he sighed. "No! If I had been older." And they imagined a life of nothing but love, fecund enough to fill the vastest solitude, exceeding all joys, defying all sorrows, whose hours would have melted away in the a perpetual exchange of confidences and which have become something shining and lofty, like the shimmering of stars. -Flaubert, "The Sentimental Education"
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6.4.2007
Me: Where did we ever get you?
Astrid: The clock.
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6.1.2007
"We live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell."
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5.31.2007
Now you see that only dreams can send you where you want to be. -Nico
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5.24.2007
Useful tips on dating courtesy from Mary Weiss.
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5.22.2007
Astrid explains religion to us all.
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5.20.2007
I spent the day in the studio yesterday with my buddy Dave and we put together a new song called Goodbye Richmond. This is a rough mix, with Natalia's background vocals to be added when she comes to town in a few weeks.
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5.17.2007
A good friend of mine, Scott Cooper, has written a fascinating book on the art and science of coolhunting called - what else? - Coolhunting. You need to get this.
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5.16.2007
Recent words Astrid has coined: montreen, astramoke, kathernon, mary mashup.
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5.14.2007
Every day is a comedy, every meal is a feast.
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5.7.2007
There are times when my life is like a Rube Goldberg contraption: knock over one little thing and the whole deal goes haywire.
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5.3.2007
Apparently I'm on tour.
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5.1.2007
"With more and more music fans turning to online media for information and product every day, it should come as no great shock that Amplifier magazine has opted to forge headfirst into the future with the expansion of our website and to discontinue our print edition." Finally ... at least now I no longer have to cringe when I visit my local newsstand.
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4.30.2007
"At least two major publications - the New York Post and People - digitally obscured a portion of a photo from the Virginia Tech shootings. In the photo, emergency personnel are seen carrying injured student Kevin Sterne out of the Norris Hall classroom building, his clothes soaked with blood. Standards being what they are, the concern about the photograph was not the shocking amount of blood, but whether the student's penis was visible."
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4.26.2007
Any honest neurotic could probably tell you: the emotional payoff of an obsession is not obtaining some longed-for goal - it's the obsession itself, which fulfills certain needs. If it didn't it wouldn't be an obsession.
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4.23.2007
Categories of knowledge, according to Donald Rumsfeld: known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.
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4.19.2007
When extreme acts of violence occur, the question is: Why does this happen? Perhaps it should be: Why doesn't this happen more often? Our culture has a rapacious fascination with and indifference toward violence; ever wonder why movies with sex scenes are rated R but that ones where thousands of faceless characters are senselessly blown away are rated PG-13? Ever wonder why unjust war rages on while back at home college students are lost in iPod oblivion? We act as if we mourn our losses, yet what will change?
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4.18.2007
The world according to Garelick Farms: "The key to life is what you add to it. Add something."
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4.16.2007
The best part of wanting something is not having it. Or is it, the best part of having something is not wanting it?
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4.12.2007
Farewell Kurt ... who will carry on with the Children's Crusade?
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4.7.2007
Here's a new song called The Bread of Dreams. If you have a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's, perhaps you can relate. This one's for my mom. Thanks to Dave for putting his guts into this.
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4.3.2007
Nerds and geeks are so often romanticized in pop culture as being somehow heroic that it's easy to forget that they are ... nerds and geeks. Like the geeky nerd on the subway yesterday who shouted, "Will you get that thing to shut up!" at me when Astrid was crying, something that 2-year-olds do from time to time. Fortunately, because he was a nerd and a geek - with his bad haircut, ugly glasses and stupid mustache - it felt good to watch him tremble when I shouted back at him, "This is a human being, not a thing, you fucking asshole!"
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4.2.2007
No one's better than anyone else and everyone's the best at everything.
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3.29.2007
Asked and answered.
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3.23.2007
If God is everywhere, is he in the toilet?
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3.19.2007
My DJ Shadow book moves up a notch to No. 13.
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3.12.2007
I'm standing in an overcrowded, overheated subway train, Astrid in one arm, glomming on to the poll with the other while just beneath us two pretty BU girls stare vacantly at a cellphone, unaware of our presence. And I think, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang or a whimper but with indifference. An unjust war rages on, while back at home college students are lost in iPod oblivion.
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