i’ve had a fever the past couple days, running around 100 degrees. i left work early yesterday and drove home in the traffic, feeling drunk with my head swimming in an ugly, murky mud and my eye sight filtered through the moldy glass of the windshield. i sat around watching tv all day and emailed in sick to work again hoping to regain some sort of hold on my health.

when i was younger, i used to get insanely high fevers and hallucinate, i’d see grotesque creatures hiding in the corners and folds of the ceiling, waiting to kill me in my sleep. my mom would tell me to pray, and i’d recite these prayers as fast as possible, scaring the shit out of my mom. i recall seeing tracers on people, and my brother told me once that i ran around the room with my middle finger and pointer finger turned down as if they were walking around. what i remember of that, was seeing a small guy running around on the dressers and on the walls.

i hate being sick.

turns out jason from neo/eureka farm is going to be death cab’s new drummer. i remember hearing stories about how they recorded his drums in some canyon, down at the bottom with a bridge arcing over the top and mics hanging from it. another one is that he had pieces of metal on strings attached to his snare drum and he’d pick them up with his stick and drop it in time to the song, making some weird noises. good stuff.

robbie recorded the last revolutionary hydra album, and it sounds good, i love the sound he got out of the vocals. check out indiepages for a sample: indiepages.com

we went over to book soup finally, in west hollywood. it’s a nice place, books stacked to the ceilings in these really burly black bookshelves. it’s overcrowded with books, really, and it’s hard to get around in there because it was so crowded. i loved it, really. i only wish they had some used books.

i picked up a copy of the tape op book that compiles a lot of really good articles from the mag - interviews with fisk, vanderslice, albini, elliott smith, apples in stereo, and a lot of other people. there’s a ton of informative and interesting articles on recording philosophy and equipment, i haven’t been able to put it down all weekend. if anyone knows where i can get a couple (or three) sm57’s for around 50 bucks a piece, lemme know. you can get a free subscription to the magazine, too, if you visit the website. i’m waiting to move to start all my magazine subscriptions, and this one definitely goes on the list.

speaking of moving (segue’s flawless, huh?), we finally applied for a place in hermosa beach. it’s about a block and a half from the beach, is a little small, has a view of the ocean, and is expensive. hopefully we’ll find out if we get it soon, looking forward to it.

went to part of the afi films festival tonight and caught shaolin soccer, which will be re-released in the us next year by miramax. they dubbed it, and originally i saw the subtitled version and was pretty satisfied with that, although i noticed a few scenes were cut from that version, so the us version will be a little longer, albeit still a short hour and a half. i liked it just as much as the first time, although could’ve done without the remake of kung fu fighting song at the end. oh, yeah, they’re renaming it “kung fu soccer,” because not everyone watches pbs (shaolin wheel of life) or slow motion martial arts (kung fu) and knows shaolin monks are the shit.

i’m convinced that a lot of bands just aren’t doing it for me these days because they lack what i’ve only recently been able to pinpoint, a really solid rhythm section.

now, this record’s got some beats. i like it a lot, but in a different way than i’ve been liking a lot of quieter stuff lately - it’s not necessarily about what they’re saying, how they’re saying and doing it, just that it’s getting done. not sure if that makes sense, but it’s not about beauty on this record, it’s about shaking it off, and stepping over it to get on to something else, quick.

not impressed, so far. this season seems to be full of boring-ass guest stars (see horation sanz, kelly ripa, et. al.), and the cast being retarded. eli seems to have disappeared for the last two episodes since debuting on the show, and phil stubbs has delivered some of the only laugh-out-loud lines i’ve heard.

this whole carol/ed/dennis love triangle is stupid and drawn out. carol’s an idiot, martino is an ass, and ed is a little of both.

i’m still going to watch next week, just to see if that cheesy scene where ed rides on the horse in a white tuxedo is a dream, and if so, will seriously re-think watching it anymore. i’m losing interest, fast.

my apologies for that bum link to that karate song last post. i’ll get it back someday, i’ll have something else for you by the end of the post. if you just came for the music, skip to the end, junkie.

what a bitch to sound so pretentious about all these “art” projects i’m working on.

it’s been raining here for the past few days, almost three, now. the first day it rained, i was pretty ecstatic about it, i drove to work in the dark and it was bumper to bumper traffic from here to la brea. the next day, the same thing, and i was still pretty happy about it, it’s what i enjoyed most about being in seattle - being in someplace warm when it was cold outside.

this place, however, is not made for rain. i was driving home from work at around 3 am and hit highway speed entering the onramp, and right when i got to the main highway there was a huge puddle infecting the road. i let go of the gas and crusied over it like a good drive, but i could feel the car already losing control. accidents are no fun, sadly, amy got into car accident the other day, that makes three in the past three weeks. i wish i didn’t need a car, nor want to drive one so often.

the news was filled with reports of the “winter storm” rushing through southern california, it was odd, and to me over-reacting, but i suppose it isn’t for locals. i felt stupid wearing a scarf here.

i love the way this song starts out so noisy, it’s hard to hold on to anything until the beat kicks in, and then the singing starts and it’s a whole new thing - the heart of the song turns into this pop ballad backed with bass blown out of speakers and then by the end it collapses back into this orderly mess of static and noise. fucking brilliant: this is the dream of evan and chan.mp3

i’ve only got about 3500 words going on my novel, pretty far behind considering i should be aiming for 2000 words a day if i want to finish by the end of november.

since i’m in l.a., i also have a screenplay in the works with jonas, and have thought a little harder about pushing out some recordings quickly, otherwise none at all would come out. it’s easier to think of doing things because i can - i used school as an excuse not to do things for so long, that now that i’m done with it, i fell like i have no excuse not to do what i want. this is my free-time, no constraints. to hell with everything else.

except for bills and debt of course. at least i don’t have to start dodging my student loan officer just yet. all in due time, though, i guess.

i’ve had at an average of around 13 hours a day in front of a computer screen, and i can’t say my wrists are enjoying it much. i do exercises at work, and i try to sit up straight as possible, but sometimes my ass gets sore from sitting up straight, so i trade off with my back getting sore from slouching. fascinating, isn’t it?

if i lived closer to work, or i worked closer to home, i would gain back at least an hour of my day, everyday. karate played here a while back and i missed it, found out the day after they played. buy the album, it’s nice: airport.mp3

i went to amoeba today, with money actually in my bank account, and went a little crazy. this was one of my nine purchases there (including some clearance stuff, so i was actually pretty thrifty). this album, whoever, was the only one that came out of the jazz section, and it’s one of the most beautiful melancholy rains to ever tap on my shoulders. perfect autumn listening.

i got it on the recommendation of the enormous jazz records book my lovely girlfriend got me. since i can’t do it justice, i’ll let them not do it: “Another ruminative solo masterwork…here Monk is elevating (or destroying, depending on one’s point of view)…As a primer for understanding his piano playing, there is not better….”

i saw a kid on a mini-trike rolling with another kid on a scooter today in hollywood. i can’t believe some asshole opened up an all scooter shop in the u-district in seattle. i wonder if he ever owned a hammer-pants shop.

i’m not sure how much i like dashboard confessional using that d/c (looking like ac[lightningbolt]dc) logo on all their stuff now. regardless, their set on halloween was interesting - it was the first time i’d seen them since their whole mtv, kroq, kndd, every estranged teenager listening to them deal. the place was huge, and i still don’t remember what it was called, but it was sold out. we missed all but two of rhett miller’s songs, and then left the room when hot rod circuit came out. they’re just not the top of my pops.

dashboard had some relatively good songs, but it struck me as strange that they’ve resigned themselves to taking all the personal acoustic songs and replacing the acoustic with an electric and adding some drums and turning them all into power ballads. it wasn’t quite awful, but with every 14-year-old girl swooning as carraba took the stage, it got pretty fucking close.

damien jurado, on the other hand, was intimate, quiet, and made me homesick to my stomach. no trampoline song, but a good number of hits off of ghost of david was enough for me. without the full band, i tend to think that jurado is a lot more personable, and this time around he was, albeit only by a smidge. i think it had something to do with LA. it’s not the most welcoming town to on tour muscians, and the city bears down on you the moment you get on through the grapevine. it can be more than a little disheartening.

song: ohia was talk-sang his way out the door of my heart quickly enough to lose my attention and cause me to focus on the rolling rock and ugly couples in the bar.

strangely enough, sonya got into a car accident recently, a hit and run. my dad got into one just the other week. i’m hoping both of them are okay, my dad says he is. i’d like to believe in karma, but i’m not exactly sure how it works. what i’d like to happen, is for those fuckers TO PAY. my dad was going to ikea and some jackass plowed into the passenger’s side door. they both got out, and the plower looked at the damages. he went back to his car, my dad thought he was going to get his insurance, and the dude just took off.

assholes MUST PAY.

finally caught the first episode of season two today, and with the exception of a few points, it seems to me that this season could quite possibly live up to at least some of the hype that the first season has brought it. i was fully convinced that last season it was one of the best new series to show up, from the first episode that i saw.

now, what the hell’s up with kim’s situation, and how does she always end up with assholes all around her? secondly, what the fuck is darlene doing on the show? not that she didn’t do her job well, in fact, for as little as she was in it, she seemed fine.

i almost like the fact that they’ve used this whole dirty bomb idea, although i’m not sure how much - i’m kind of torn between the fact that it is quite possibly trying to deal with the current political/whatever climate, and the fact that it’s just feeding off of it. i guess we’ll have to see on that one.