By
anders pearson
07 May 2002
there was a huge linden tree in my grandmother’s yard in connecticut. the trunk was at least 5 feet in diameter and it had stood there longer than anyone could remember.
<p>everytime we visit, my grandmother points out the linden tree and how old it is and how close it is to the house and how it’s bound to fall down any day now and dear god don’t we hope it falls away from the house. i always look at this huge, sturdy looking tree and figure that it’s pretty solid and won’t fall down and grandma’s just worrying over nothing.</p>
<p>well, it fell down last friday. away from the house thankfully.</p>
<p>i should go visit again soon so i can see what it looks like. the tree was such a big part of the landscape that i can’t imagine the house without it towering over everything.</p>
By
anders pearson
04 May 2002
the default template now validates as xhtml 1.0. the validator doesn’t like some of the characters in the posts themselves so the site won’t actually validate at the moment, but the template is clean.
<p>i’ve only got mozilla to test with so let me know if IE screws something up now.</p>
By
tuck
04 May 2002
so, today, day three of vacation, i reminded myself how truly moronic i can be. im sure all of you who know me have a little collection of memories of my bad judgments- but hopefully most of the incidents in such lists involve some degree of blood-alcohol blame. unfortunately, i have no excuse this time.
<p>as some of you can testify to, i go through phases of either having an orderly living environment, or having a heap of dirt and organic grime build up to the point that rather than clean up, i consider moving.</p>
<p>i probably should have just moved this time. </p>
<p>i spent almost this entire day today moving, scrubbing, gagging and gasping for breath, polishing and marveling at the fungal universe of my under-closet area (just had a flashback of my old jeep where i once found actual mushroom-things growing in the wasteland area under the back seats – that was infinitely cool) and also categorizing, filing, scraping, wiping, taping, screwing (with a screwdriver you pervs) (with a screwdriver on screws you pervy-pervs!) (dammit, using a screwdriver to actually screw screws into pre-drilled screw-holes you mega-pervy-pervs) (…. never mind) and other such purification of my little beijing cubbyhole.</p>
<p>and then i almost killed myself accidentally. </p>
<p>see, ive never actually polished anything besides combat boots and an ex-girlfriends bright yellow, 2002 audi S4 quattro race car. so, ignorantly, i bought some chinese, lemon-scented cleaning polish hoping to add a last perfection to my new, sterile abode. i polished everything that was polish-able. the walls, the shelves, my water cooler, and the blunt message of this little story is…</p>
<p>after everything was all glimmering and nearly divine in visual (and olfactory) sensation, i noticed my tile floor was pretty much just a clean-but-regular ol floor. so i sprayed it wth polish and let the cleaning-demon continue to take over my soul. </p>
<p>once the floor began to dry, unbeknownst to me, it now contained a coefficient of sliding friction which approached zero. satisfied with the glow, i took my first step on the now mirrory floor, and basically pulled and/or strained every single muscle in my entire body, probably broke my coccyx (sp?) and i think i have a mild concussion. after the 3 seconds of wild, physically impossible break-dancing i did, and then the final impact of 100% me-ness essentially squashing, i think my entire body actually started to slide towards my door.</p>
<p>so, one cool thing is that you can see my body-print on the floor which looks kind of like the chalk-outline of a corpse at a murder scene. another cool thing is that i can actually play an air-hockey equivalent using boots across my floor with a friend- ill probably be able to beat her after my body recovers .</p>
<p>so, people, dont use furniture polish on your floor. its a horrible, stupid thing to do. i now have to crawl across my floor for safety reasons.</p>
<p>this is all. carry on about your business.</p>
By
lani
03 May 2002
or anyone in the area.
<p>objective #2-a is to invite enough people to subdue the “yura effect” (which usually ends in tango lessons, russian folk songs, and things that shouldn’t happen) to a house party. not that it’s all bad, it’s just been done…a lot. so i am welcoming all stalkers, crack addicts, and “other”. may 11. </p>
<p>(if anyone would actually seriously consider coming, email me. please…)</p>
By
anders pearson
02 May 2002
right now i’ve got the worse case of hiccups ever. i’m dead tired but i can’t go to sleep because i’m hiccuping and it won’t go away. this is so strange.
By
anders pearson
02 May 2002
last night, against my better judgement and in complete disregard for my health, i went down to the roseland with my friend brian and some of his friends to catch a Down show.
<p>brief background: Down is sort of a stoner/southern/rock sideproject of members of several thrash/hardcore bands (pantera, crowbar, corrosion of conformity, and eyehategod). they put out an album and did a short tour in 1995 and blew everyone’s mind. no one heard anything from them again until they released a new album a few months ago and announced another tour. for those of us who have been listening to their first album since 1995 and kicking ourselves for not catching them on that tour, this was an opportunity that couldn’t be missed.</p>
<p>before the show started, i ran into angela, a friend and fellow metalhead from Bates who was trying to scam a drink off someone.</p>
<p>instead of an opening band, they had a projector set up and played about 40 minutes of videos of all the classic rock that presumably forms the core inspiration for the band. black sabbath, hendrix, thin lizzy, kiss, etc. that was interspersed with footage of the band consuming vast quantities of alcohol and pot while recording . </p>
<p>when they finally came out onstage, phil was stumbling and obviously already wasted. as the first song started, i got kicked square in the head by some combat boot wearing, crowd-surfing maniac. i couldn’t see in my left eye for a few minutes. luckily i was so packed in to the crowd that even if i’d passed out, i wouldn’t have fallen down. that pretty much set the tone for the evening for me.</p>
<p>for a band that’s only written two albums, a two hour set list is fairly predictable. they pretty much just played every Down song that they’d ever recorded.</p>
<p>phil really was wasted. after each song, he’d sort of ramble more or less incoherently into the mic for 5 or 10 minutes about how much he hated the record companies and journalists and about how stoned he was. eventually, someone would throw a joint on stage and he’d get even <em>more</em> stoned. meanwhile, the rest of the band would stand around waiting impatiently for phil to get his head together enough to play the next song. a few times he even stopped songs in the middle so he could say whatever had popped into his mind (“wait… stop… i want them to really <em>hear</em> the ending of this song… ok… start again from the drum bit… everybody listen closely…”) by the end of the set, Rex (the bassist) was looking downright pissed at phil. don’t get me wrong; i loved every minute of it. i’d happily pay just to watch phil stumble around stage and rant for a couple hours. he doesn’t make much sense, but he’s pretty funny.</p>
<p>so despite still being somewhat under the influence of a flu with the worst sore throat ever, i found myself spending a few hours in a moshpit getting kicked in the head, crushed, screaming my lungs out and somehow enjoying the whole experience.</p>
By
sarah
01 May 2002
I had a dream about Thraxil last night. It is my first dream about anything online, and I hope it never happens again. Luckily I forgot most of it… but there was an Anders-type and a Lani-type, and I guess a Tuck and Emile or two. We were in New York. I’ve never been to New York… and it was more like New York meets Gotham City meets a glass and marble shopping mall designer’s wet dream. And we were going to a party, and we were all in a very large washroom ‘freshing up’, and psyching ourselves up. I’m used to co-ed washrooms. Then we went up to the party. I woke up realizing I had to take a pee.
<p>The question is why I would think it was New York, and full of Thraxilites… but I did. Everyone even talked like they do, in my mind. Though I’d never thought of that either. I think it was in New York because Anders was being cocky like Sienfeld (which I’ve never seen an epsiode of) and Lani sounded like “The Nanny” which is as popular in France as Jerry Lewis was, I think.</p>
<p>I hope this wierds you out less than it did me.</p>
By
anders pearson
01 May 2002
called in sick to work for the first time yesterday. on monday my throat was a little scratchy; then at about 11pm, i began to feel like i’d been hit by a bus.
<p>spent yesterday in an endless loop of: wake up, pee, drink some orange juice and water, stumble back to bed, fade randomly between semi-consciousness and sweaty, fever dreams, repeat.</p>
By
tuck
01 May 2002
Boat.
<p>you know, im always struck by how easy it is for me to latch on to music from overseas. actually, overseas is too general a category; every example im thinking of comes from somewhere in asia. mostly japan. i could elaborate on why i think this is, but it would take some serious writing and exploring of my inner-self which im too afraid to do. (i once tried figuring out why i like eating <b><a href="http://www.lavasurfer.com/cereal-quakeroats.html">Capt n Crunch with Crunch Berries</a></b> by such exploration and suddenly found myself in bed covered with slinkies, pound puppies and asking a giant, stuffed, papa smurf for advice about which g.i. joes i should allow to die as bystanders in the upcoming Decepticon invasion of my star wars base.)</p>
<p>in any case, imagine <b><a href="http://www.bunglefever.com/">Mr. Bungle</a></b>. now, while keeping bungle as a background, add the <b><a href="http://www.spe.sony.com/tv/shows/sgn/pf/">Partridge Family</a></b> (try not to discriminate too much just yet.) render both of those (as you would in, say, a musical Adobe Photoshop) and spread a very, very fine layer of <b><a href="http://www.boingo.org">Oingo Boingo</a></b> (all the way out to the edges mind you.) copy this into a new window. now, in a separate bowl, take one of those Fathers of Funk or similar Funk All-Star type of compilation cds and blend all the songs together into a thick funky custard. i recommend <b><a href="http://www.wolfstoves.com/Mixers.htm">KitchenAid mixers</a></b> . oh what machines they are. now not-so-carefully poor this funk over the rendered and smothered copy you made.</p>
<p>now were getting somewhere.</p>
<p>youll need to have the following:</p>
<p><b><a href="http://www.punkbands.com/nofx/"><span class="caps">NOFX</span></a></b> (chunky is preferred)</p>
<p><b><a href="http://members.tripod.com/~Sara_loves_grover/sara.html">grover</a></b> </p>
<p>a couple of female anime characters</p>
<p>slash and bb king </p>
<p>the deftones</p>
<p>ok. take the <span class="caps">NOFX</span> and give it some <b><a href="http://www.esake.com/">sake</a></b>. now castrate grover to raise his vocal key an octave. also add sake to grover. in fact, just poor sake over all the other ingredients for a while. keep going with the sake. throw the castrated grover into the <span class="caps">NOFX</span> which should mix nicely. now toss bb king and slash into the microwave and nuke them until they melt into a rifty, bluesy, but downright catchy and, well, just a very pleasant puddle which smells kind of like grilled cheese relaxation.</p>
<p>dice the castrated grover-ized <span class="caps">NOFX</span> and pretty much dump the whole thing into the puddle. let this congeal overnight. fortunately, i was clever enough to prepare some ahead of time.</p>
<p>youll notice the gel is kind of like putty. thats what you want. begin sculpting a giant statue of <b><a href="http://score.sega.com/games/sc5/sc5_main.html">Ulala from Space Channel Five</a></b>. make sure her mouth is opened because youre going to cram the custard covered copy thing from before in there.</p>
<p>add some sake again.</p>
<p>now take the deftones and separate the distortion and most of the electronically generated audio and load what youve separated into an airbrush clip and spray over most of Ulala in a giant, flannel schoolgirl/field-hockey skirt pattern.</p>
<p>and there you have it: Boat.</p>
<p>heres a smattering of particulars:</p>
<p>songs move all over the place- some carry a nursery rhyme melody which is first played marching-band style, then with kazoos, then with metal guitars, then have robotic monster voices before returning to the kazoos. others jump from folk to industrial… its hard to imagine such a jump working well at all. but it does.</p>
fuck/you/summer/baby is a tune which, well, its fuck/you/summer/baby.
<p>another favorite begins with one of the female singers breaking into this highly japanesey-anime-gal-cutesy-teenie-bopper sound which has intermittent screams of <span class="caps">KILL</span> <span class="caps">KILL</span> and eventually, after some nice jazzy guitar action and another verse of anime-theme-sounding music, the chick hits the chorus a bunch of times which is also the songs title: I want to kill you, whatchu want. the entire band then ends up screaming insanely for a while in front of a nice metal riff.</p>
<p>the band experiments with creative vocal sounds, both self and electronically distorted. most of the tracks have some sort of catchy chorus involving the whole band in song. in most of these instances, youll find some of the members are singing in a genuine, natural voice, and some use voices that come from someplace else entirely. i really like the amazing range of the two female singers. they go from Hikaru sounding j-pop to muppet war-cry. the band has an amazing ability to mix drastically different styles together in such a seamless way that you cant imagine them apart. youll have very fast, 1950s doo doo de doo doo doo dede behind a heavily distorted, demonic, screamy vocal lead- yet it has a natural feel to it. what i mean is, it doesnt necessarily seem like they are trying particularly hard to be outrageous. their experimentation does not compromise the quality of their sound. </p>
<p>each song is complete and satisfying and theres enough variety in style to keep each of their four albums interesting and the song-to-song progression smooth yet sparky. the songs themselves are unpredictable in the sense of melodic progression- the tempo changes frequently which is matched up with various instrumental interludes (mostly guitar) which often pass through some chaotic states. but generally they do return to the original theme-sound of the song and finish with a slow completeness. most of the songs wind down to an end, so in this sense, there is some predictability i guess. its pleasant though.</p>
<p>there are some very mature and typically japanese sounding tracks- like Blue blue moon which sounds like it should be the opening for a college-based soap-opera type anime series. for me, however, this is not as a problem as i can easily sit for hours listening to j-women sing any words containing the letter L. </p>
<p>there are times, however, when the front most melody and overall sound of a song has influences which are a tad too clearly identifiable. some songs are clearly folk, some are Jackson Five jazz guitar chkachka-breee-chkachka 70s based, some are pink floyd etc. i mean, maybe its not a bad thing- but i prefer when they they stick with Boat sound.</p>
<p>this is all.</p>
By
anders pearson
29 Apr 2002
the plan was originally for me to go down to DC, then lani and i would take a bus to richmond, anthony and kim would drive up and we’d all hang out with some of lani’s friends. had we actually planned ahead, that might have happened. unfortunately, we didn’t quite have the foresight to get in touch with the friends in richmond before we were ready to leave. when we couldn’t get ahold of them we decided that it wouldn’t be quite as much fun to go to richmond without knowing that we had somewhere to crash.
<p>as a backup, lani and i decided to just rent a car and drive down to Chapel Hill and hang out with anthony and kim there. while the backup plan ultimately succeeded, it was not without its flaws. primarily, we underestimated the difficulty involved in renting a car. despite calling ahead and reserving one, we ended up spending two painful hours at the counter of the rental place waiting for them to get the paperwork together and find us a car. we ended up with a crappy silver ford escort with no cd-player but by that time were were happy just to get out of there.</p>
<p>the rest of the trip went relatively well. we only got mildly lost in north carolina for a few minutes. then we met up with anthony and kim in downtown chapel hill for dinner. while we were eating, some guy in a spiderman costume wandered through the restaurant. then, later, in the parking lot of a supermarket we stopped at to pick up some wine, we saw some guy riding by on a unicycle. kim assured us that guys in spiderman costumes and on unicycles weren’t everyday occurrences in chapel hill and that things were just weird because we were visiting. </p>
<p>then we went back to anthony and kim’s little purple house in the middle of nowhere to have a quiet evening drinking wine, talking, and watching videos. kim showed us an interview with Alejandro </p>
<p>Jodorowsky (the director). i’m not sure if it was something he said or was just translated oddly but he used the phrase “_____ goes straight to my balls.” meaning roughly “_____ really pisses me off.” we decided that this phrase definitely needs to be worked into our slang vocabulary. eg, “Budget Rental Cars goes straight to my balls.”</p>
<p>we also watched a tape anthony had of Bill Hicks’ last public performance before his death. it was filmed in london in 1992. interestingly, all his commentary about Bush and the US government’s habit of giving small countries weapons and then going and blowing them up is still entirely relevant and timely ten years later.</p>
<p>in the morning we went and said hi to the llama (i’m not sure i could have talked lani into driving all the way to chapel hill if i hadn’t remembered that they lived on a llama farm. the promise of llama’s was an important motivational force. although apparently they’re down to just a single llama now). then i insisted on going to a waffle house for breakfast (what’s a trip to the south without going to a waffle house?). it was cheap, greasy, and filled with rednecks; the experience was complete.</p>
<p>traffic going back into DC was scary but we managed to make it alive.</p>