as usual, Ga Ga Ga is dope

I don't know why I don't trust Spoon as easily as Mates Of State. Yes I do - poppy-ass keyboards and drums are hard to fuck up and easy to make great songs out of, so I preordered Bring It Back as soon as that shit was on the market. There are a select few groups whose records I will preorder, and I would've done it for Spoon's Gimme Fiction in 2004 except that I was on a school trip to NYC on the day it dropped, and I had the pleasure of buying it at Virgin in Times Square that night. Ani DiFranco, I think, screwed it up for me, because when I preordered Reprieve last year I wasn't ready for the big old alt-concepty kind of dark, dank Cask of Amontillado French, uh, wine storage cellar or what the fuck ever sound, and I still haven't listened to more than "Hypnotized" and "Decree". Actually I remember telling someone, "I'm not feeling that bleak right now." And the truth is that I don't want to get into that mood, and when I'm in it, I really don't want an instigator.

And I'm one of the folks who don't believe in "guilty pleasures" - if you like it and you think it's good, then you like it, you think it's good - so no one can ever make me feel bad for riding the Ani train for soooo damn long. You shouldn't be wasting your time trying to make people feel bad for the music they listen to in the first damn place.

Anyway, impulsively I started to preorder Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga but I stopped. I had the fifteen bucks or whatever, but I didn't want to get stuck with a piece of shit on my hands. And I'll comfortably call Spoon my favo(u?)rite band. I've been on that wagon since I was about 14 and at the end of my days, I'll take alternative/indie/rock over hip-hop, over funk, over "trip-hop" or whatever that's become, over trance, over Arabic pop and over Nina Simone - call me Caucasian, because I am - but I have this bratty kind of love-and-hate thing where I hate to listen to them for months, then I start again and it's like how did I live? Like a savage?

Ga Ga Ga, I streamed it from the free site Merge set up I think (I'm too lazy to get a link, boo) but I kind of drifted in and out of it. It sounded pre-Fiction, which shocked and awed me, but I've heard "Don't You Evah", "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" (is it me or are these titles looking a little fucking Fall Out Boy, except they're making it indie-retro-cool) (and I do listen to FOB) and "Black Like Me" and I'm won. I warmed up to "The Underdog" in a big way. I think I'm going to pick the record up tonight and we're gonna get some alone time.

4th of july ho-down

I can't remember what my whole stance was last year but yesterday I was really into the 4th of July, possibly for the first time. I'm at the age when every year I make a huge leap in terms of my maturity and kind of calm down a lot in terms of political beliefs and all that shazzy jazz. In emotions in general. I tend to overdo it. But having spent a good six months in Toronto with shitloads of immigrants - and I never got used to saying 'fob' which I thought was super offensive, but I did get used to calling folks 'brown' - it sounds pretty damn cliche but sadly it's the truth, that I don't think you can get a good grasp on the hulk of what the US stands for unless you've lived outside of it. And I only went to CANADA. Like almost barely across the border (but it takes a long time if you're not used to the superior Canadian road system, which assumes that its drivers are intelligently superior and just kind of figure out what to do when there's 700 lanes and 5 million exits in half a mile of expressway), and I only now have like a small gleam of appreciation for having been born an American to a family of Americans. I think the closest relatives I had from Europe were my paternal G-granddaddy from Croatia and my maternal G-grandmama from Austria. And we're totally assimmilated now.

But anyway. Bitches. I went to see fireworks at the mall closest to me (where the orig Dawn of the Dead was filmed, eat your heart out suckaaas) and they were same as every year, so at least there's continuity. My favo(u)rite 4th of July was living in NYC when I was a youngun and seeing them at the Queensboro Bridge, and I remembered that. My friends and I, our dreams right now are to aspire to live in New York, of course, we're all kind of trying to get there with the rest of the young population of the entire world (except for my internat friends, who are like, trying to get to Dubai and shit). And sometimes I worry that I won't but my friends who can will, and that pisses me off. I'm paying my own way in a lot of ways. I'm not in a position now to shoot for the moon, I'm kind of shooting at a bald eagle or something right now. And it sucks. But it's necessary. And it's not gonna kill me.

One thing we had a teacher tell us in high school in 1967 (I kid) was that we'd probably have to go abroad in our lifetimes to find work. I believe it, that's what things are pointing to in a big way. So I guess I was grateful that I was born here and I don't have to live the luxurious refugee life in Syria or, err, Africa. Any African nation. And for one more 4th of July where everything was intact and we weren't in any mortal danger, or occupied, or at war. Oh. Oh wait. Ha ha!

I really don't like to be too serious when I talk about that shit, because I have a sense of humo(u)r that's pretty dry but I like to keep it in there, still. What worries me sometimes is that I kind of have the same sense of humor as I suspect Hellbitch McCunterbury Ann Coulter has, because she is so fucking mean - I think the difference is that I'm a jizzing creaming liberal ready to go kill people who shoot looks at transvestites because I respect them that much, and she kind of wants everyone to die who doesn't, love Jesus? I'm not too sure. Coulter and I, we're mean. And we think it's funny. But I want her to die, and she probably wants me to. At least I'm on the right side of the East River. (Is there one? Lits? I don't really think so.)

In other news, I can't fuckin wait for Patton Oswalt's new album to "drop". And the countdown is on for Neko Case here in P-Burgh in two weeks, and then TV On The Radio at this wicked old church venue in Aug. I'm surprised that Pburgh landed these two shows for the summer at all. People have been staying away from Pittsburgh, big time. And you won't like Pittsburgh hipsters when they're angry: They just kind of. Blog about it!