My boss jumped onto a closing elevator. The rest of us waited for another, giving us time to laugh at how ridiculous it was to be eating lunch at a strip club at one in the afternoon. When we reached the lobby, I could see el jefe out on the sidewalk texting. We met up with him and walked south on 4th St to meet up with the final member of our party, the resident gambler on our team, puffing away at a cigarette.

“So how many singles do you have in your wallet?” my boss asked the gambler.

“Uh, y’know, enough for the buffet an makin’ it rain.” he said as we all walked down Howard.

We continued down a few city blocks until I saw a blue carpet leading to a wall of a man in a black suit standing next to a door with the word Gold Lounge written on a royal blue awning.  After the card check and paying the five-dollar cover to a disaffected cashier in a tight black dress, I stepped into the darkness and blue glow of the main floor of the club. The music geek in me immediately noticed the song playing, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Like in most strip clubs, you can tell a good deal about the girl on stage by their theme song before you even see her, so I assumed she was pale, skinny with absolutely no curves, and covered in tattoos. I looked over for confirmation and, lo and behold, I was right. I would have checked to see if there was any image of Cobain on her skin, but I was very hungry, so I made a beeline to the buffet line.

On the menu was lettuce with vinaigrette, churros, cake with white frosting, meatballs, something that I believed was beef brisket, and fried chicken. I stuffed a little bit of everything save for the cake (it looked like a cheap Betty Crocker piece) and started to hunt down my coworkers. I didn’t realize how annoying the prospect of consumption would be in this place. The combination of eating and darkness is as bad as a poorly made cocktail. I munched on the lettuce, careful not to spill the dressing on my shirt.  The meatballs were playing a Sisyphean game with me due to the weak plastic fork in my hand.

As soon as I heard “Living Dead Girl”, the staring began.  This girl was taller and wore a black bra and g-string that accentuated her thick posterior. She had a lot more ink than the previous dancer – she had  tattoos down to her wrists. As I munched on my salad staring at her ass and pale breasts, I noticed they had unnatural curves. I sighed and whispered to myself, “Fake…” and turned away.

My boss motioned to me and the new guy. “We’re going upstairs and find seats,” he said. We followed him to the mezzanine, where a smaller crowd sat and ate in a well-lit area. We waited until a group of women around a small table right at center edge closest to the railing. We swarmed it with plates in hand, the lifer taking the furthest seat back. The plastic-bottomed stripper still had her 90′s metal set playing, but she wasn’t onstage beneath us. That’s when I noticed the almost story-high pole, and saw her legs wrapped on it hanging upside down. When the song reached its peak, she loosened her legs and slid down spinning, eliciting claps and cheers from the crowd below.

Her dance ended and we all started joking. “That pole must be dirty as hell,” the new guy said.

“They sanitize it with that smoke coming out,” My boss replied.

“And she must have hella rug burn on her thighs,” the lifer quipped.

“She’s probably got Vaseline all up her legs,” I said.

I turned back to my co-workers, texting my friends and casually asking what they were doing for lunch before I dropped my story on them, when I heard the opening bass line of “Feel Good Inc.” I couldn’t guess what she would look like, so I spun my chair to see what the girl on stage looked like. In the distance was a tattoo spread on her clavicle and a black corset with white trim at the bottom. That slight detail only came to attention because they sat right on her incredible hips, which led down to pair of legs with the right proportion of thickness.

“I’m gonna grab seconds,” I said, then stood up and darted to the stairs. I got back on the food line, snatched the first two things in bulk, and began my examination of the stripper. Her straight brown hair swayed away to expose the deep rouge on her cheeks. Her old-lace colored skin blended with the blue haze of the lights and smoke, transforming her into a space-age dancer from pulp covers.

She held the pole and made a long spin. She stopped with her back faced toward the crowd.  Hips swinging, ass out, I could almost time it to the last pluck of the bass line, but it didn’t and the reptilian part of my mind was choking the music nerd in me. Another song started to play. I didn’t care about anything at that moment save for the slow unlacing of her corset, which she deftly threw it on the small black rack off to the right side of the stage. Another spin, and then she started unclasping her simple black bra. Her breasts were small, but her skin and the seemingly natural look on them met the criteria. As she started climbing the pole, I realized I hadn’t touched any of my food, and half of my coworkers were on the buffet line. I crept by them and went back up to the mezzanine. I found my seat, and munched on fried chicken as she made her barrel roll down the pole. At this point of the meal, my mouth was on autopilot, disregarding regulations and moving the standards to a level befitting the atmosphere.

I resumed my conversation with the new guy, chatting about how’s the job been so far.”I really like the Bay, Oakland is -’ he was cut off from a blaring hair metal riff.”Aw, shit,” I thought, “I shouldn’t…turn…” my head had turned a good ninety degrees before common sense kicked in and averted my eyes. From my peripheral vision I could see a baby blue bra and blown out black hair. I turned back, to see a ballooned-breasted, Aqua Net-coiffed, “cougar” of a woman danced to what could have been Mötley Crüe, Poison, et.al. She had a broad smile on her face, a stark change from the sultry one of the Porcelain Gorillaz Doll, the nickname I gave to the previous girl since I hadn’t bothered to listen to her stage name.

While my coworkers joked at who’d sleep with her, my boss got up and headed for the stairs. The gambler followed suit, and within minutes took a chair at the front role of the stage. The 80s-time dancer moseyed over to them and bent over. I almost cringed as she jammed her falsies into my boss’ face as he put a dollar bill in her bra.  My stomach had already started churning from the horrible strip club food – the sight of this stripper was not making it any better.

The rest of us went down and sat in the front row after the 80s set was over. I was hoping for another PDG-type girl to show up. I stopped paying attention to the stage when I saw a generic one come out. The only interesting thing of that set was actually my female coworker. The rest of the group almost had to drag the girl in our group to sit down with them. She sat on the side of the stage opposite from me, so from my point I view I saw her making it rain on the stripper enough so that she stayed in front of her for a good portion of her set. She was embarrassed, of course, and I after we had returned to the office she told me that she was pulling out a few singles from her purse to give the dancer out of courtesy.  The fan behind her blew them away an on to the stage. Regardless of truth or reality, either version was still funny as hell.

The last dancer I saw before we left was a black girl. All I really remember was her popping her ass and telling me her stage name – Jada. She asked me for mine and I said the first name I could come up with – if she can hide her name, why should I? I gave her my one dollar out of politeness, not to her performance in particular but for that almost understood rule that you don’t leave a strip club without at least giving something out for the entertainment.

My boss, the gambler, and I were the last to leave the place. The walk back to the office was unpleasant, partly because of my eyes taking a bit longer to acclimate to the harsh change from the dark bluish haze of the club to the sunlight bouncing off the impeccable beige sidewalk surrounding the Moscone Center. The real pain came from the growing boulder in my stomach from the mess I had just eaten. The gambler made a joke about the crappy desserts, but I boss pretty much summed up the last half hour of our lunch. “I’ve had enough cakes today.”

My mother told me a story about something that happened to me back in the old house in Lima. My late uncle Paco found me standing up behind the couch in the living room, catatonic and ice-cold. He called my mother over, who immediately wrapped me in blankets and rubbed me down. ” In that hour you were staring off into space,”  she said, “I’ve always wondered where your mind was going.” I was two when this occurred, so I don’t remember any of this. I didn’t think there was any relationship  between  the Lima event and  the office one. I know better now. The kink in the right hemisphere of my brain might have made my brain go haywire when I was a toddler. It just took nineteen years to show me what really happened that night in Lima.

One of the many reasons I hate Walmart stores is, aside from my normal gripes with the mega-chain, is that I was in one when I started feeling the symptoms of what would later be described to me as an “aura.” It’s a warming, prickly sensation on the top of your head that precedes a seizure or migraine. I was in Rochester buying groceries with Gwen and by the time we left the store, a pain had flared up deep within my right nostril and spread all over the right side of my head. I’d had similar migraines in the past, but I knew this one felt…different. The pain was persistent where the others were throbbing – it  felt like it was in the deepest parts of my brain instead of that general dull pain on the exteriors of it. I drank some water, which only exacerbated the growing pain.”I’m gonna take a nap,” I told her, and lay down on the bed.

I woke up in a level of disorientation completely unknown to me. I could only hear two things — the sound of the EMTs telling me I had a seizure and Gwen sniffling while talking to me through her cracked voice. There is a vague memory of seeing her face, eyes red and worried as all hell. Half an hour later, after a cold ambulance ride, I was lying down on a hospital bed, still disoriented. The doctor grilled Gwen about any drug use, using every tactic my father uses when he wanted more information from a patient. I laughed, which probably made the doctors suspicion of drug use even higher. Then, the fun part started — a nurse moved me on  my left side and impaled me straight in the vertebra for that lovely lumbar puncture, then a battery of blood tests, EEGs, MRI scans, etc. I don’t have any problems with tests and checkups, but it was that I wasn’t particularly lucid made it trying this time.

For days, I laid in the hospital bed in a haze. Gwen slept in the bed with me one night, which was the only time I felt normal in the month afterwards. My parents came to take me back to New Jersey. At home, I felt like I could fit in as an extra for a movie as a drugged up mental patient. The NJ neurologist prescribed a new MRI scan – I needed a new one because the first one was in reverse, which made it impossible to know what happened. She showed my father and me what they had found: a cortical dysplasia on the right parietal lobe. Cliff’s Notes version: There’s an abnormality from when I was still in the womb right around the spot that controls tactile functions like processing the senses and spatial awareness.

From the time of the seizure until my move to California, I remained seizure-free. However, I would need to be on anticonvulsants for at least two years just to make sure it was a one-time attack. The neurologist I saw at UMDNJ advised me that the first medication I was on were not as effective and would increase my weight gain. Instead, she prescribed these incredibly small twenty-five milligram pills to take one-hundred milligrams a day. They easily fell out of my hands, which made me feel like a crack fiend searching for that elusive rock every time I’d drop some. Despite their size, they were effective. One little side effect affected me drastically. The medication affected my thyroid in such a way that I lost my appetite. There were days that I only remembered to eat something when I would see Gwen have dinner – even after cooking the food myself. I forced myself to eat out of common sense. Because of the inevitable weight loss, I dropped thirty pounds in the scope of four months, sitting on my ass in front of a computer. It’s a strange feeling to hear compliments of looking better when, in fact, I wasn’t.

October 2009 brought a one-two punch: Gwen lost her job in a massive layoff, and I started having unexpected goose bumps on my left arm. It was too warm in the Bay Area to have goose bumps, and it was only on my left side, which was strange. I just brushed it off as panic attacks due to the fear of the two of us being unemployed, but even after we both got jobs, the attacks continued.

I called them “shivers” because at first, it felt like one, but it slowly became something else. I would space out, lose seconds of memory. I would lose my sense of direction and walk indiscriminately around the apartment or while out – that last thing would scare the crap out of Gwen when we walked around the city out of fear of me walking aimlessly into an intersection. My senses and awareness went haywire – which perfectly matched the symptoms I mentioned earlier.

I tried my best to keep it together despite my fear.  I was doing some manual labor late at night for a crappy retail store for a month and a half, and there were many times during an attack that I’d walk away from what I was doing so that I wouldn’t hurt myself or someone else. When I moved up to a comfortable office job, I told my boss about my condition as a precaution if I would black out during conversation — that happened quite a bit, sadly. Both my bosses were great guys about my condition. They had no problems with my routine doctor visits without using my PTO. Still, it kept me at a distance with coworkers.

By September of 2010, I had an average of six attacks daily. The pills were pointless, but I was still on them, mostly because I thought it would get worse if I wasn’t on anything. When I finally had health insurance, I asked my (now third) neurologist for an MRI. This time, however, something new appeared — white spots showed up all over my brain. When I hung up the phone after the doctor called to tell me, I paced around the house in panic. I called my parents to explain the situation. I stood outside my townhouse, waiting for Gwen to get out of work so I could tell her the moment she got out of her car.

I went through the routine again — lumbar puncture, EEG, another MRI. I also had Gwen record videos of the attacks for the neurologist to see. I still have them on a disk somewhere – not that I need to watch them again, those videos are stuck in my head now. The spots didn’t show up again, but at that point I couldn’t shake that feeling that I was going to have a full-blown attack at any moment. By Christmastime, my attacks increased from six to ten. Any moment I had one, I had to go to Gwen or someone else to hold onto. Close friends had already started noticing or admitting to seeing my attacks.  I went out with friends one night a few days before New Year’s, but left early because I just couldn’t function. I finally broke down and cried that night.

I lost weight again, this time from depression. The neurologist prescribed new medication. Like the previous one, it had no effect, and added the wonderful side effect of irritability and bouts of rage. He prescribed new ones, along with a different type of test — an ambulatory EEG. Imagine walking out of a hospital with sensors glued to your head – hair and all –wrapped in gauze. With a head as large as mine, I looked like that head-wrapped bounty hunter next to Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back. I jokingly said I was going to take photos of it but I didn’t out of self-consciousness.

Something interesting did happen while I was an EEG mummy, though – I wasn’t having as many attacks. I had six attacks in the two days I had that thing strapped to my head– a forty percent drop of my normal rate. I even tried to force myself to have more just so that the neurologist can get more data –I know that’s stupid, but if you were in my place, you might have done the same for the sake of your health.

So, apparently, the new drugs just started kicking in. The rate dropped so fast that a month after that last EEG I stopped having seizures altogether. I wasn’t afraid of what would happen when I would leave the house. When I would wake up in the middle of the night, it was because Gwen was pushing me off the bed as she is wont to do, and not because I had a full-blown attack at four in the morning. I had a couple of odd days, but when I upped the dosage, I never had an attack again. I still haven’t.

This is what I take every day – 600 milligrams a day, three pills in the morning, and three at night. I’ve had no side effects from it. In fact, those suffering from manic-depressive disorder s use this to extend times between episodes – the joke I tell everyone now is that I’m on antidepressants as well.  My other option is surgery. That wouldn’t be as dangerous as you think it’d be, according to the neurologist, but after the last few years I had, I didn’t want any more stress. That, and the fact that they’d have to keep me awake to stick a hose up my nose, pump me with contrast liquid, and run an MRI to find the exact location of the lesion didn’t quite sit well with me.

It’s been a few days over three years since I had that first attack. Sometimes I still get worried any time I shiver or get goose bumps from the cold. I always remind myself of the time when I broke my knee in high school. It took me a good four years to stop worrying about messing up my leg. It’s only been a little over ten months since the last attack. It’s going to be a while before I catch up to the other twenty-six since the first one. Who knows, a year from now I won’t even have to tell this damn story again.

On October 23^rd, I saw Sleep No More, a play created by the UK-based avant-garde troupe Punchdrunk. The play devoured the insides of a building and replaced it with a 1920s hotel, mixing it with Shakespeare and Alfred Hitchcock – and just a little Stanley Kubrick – to create a non-linear retelling of Macbeth. After constant haranguing from my good friend Jeff, I decided to make a trip down from southern Massachusetts to the Chelsea district in Manhattan to see if it really deserved the hype.

There is no sign for the show, and the looks on the people waiting on line to a large midnight brown door showed doubt if this was the right venue at all. From the attire of the people waiting at the front, with women in flowing velvet skirts and men in retro three-piece suits, it was clear I was at the right spot. Despite buying a ticket for a later showing, which cut the length of the performance considerably, I tried my luck by showing up early. Luckily, my plan worked and I found myself holding my ticket – an ace of clubs playing card—underneath the red lights of a bar. One of the ushers, a slender woman in a tight black dressing, handed out the mask I’d be wearing the rest of the night. I asked a bartender from southwest England what the special was — to no surprise, it was absinthe punch. I pounded mine down after hearing the semi-aristocratic and spooky voice of one of the ushers calling for us to the elevator. He said “Welcome to Manderley” to me as I passed by. “Sure thing, Olivier,” I replied.

Another usher wearing a tuxedo spoke out the rules to all the watchers before he pressed the button on the elevator: Wear our mask at all times, don’t speak, and follow the instructions on the ushers wearing black masks. As a joke, he’d let out a few of the audience in groups, closing the doors behind them as he continued. There is a secret sixth floor open to random chosen audience members, but no one got lucky in my group.

He let the remaining watchers on the third floor – a long lobby with a concierge desk in front of a wall filled with hooks for room keys. Bookcases lined the walls and taxidermy animals and other foreboding early 20^th century knickknacks sat on the top of bureaus and tables. I looked around until the first actor walked into the room. She played the role of Mrs. Danvers, the antagonist from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca,  in the style taken from Hitchcock’s adaptation of the novel. She slowly moved around holding a tray full of glasses with a pitcher.  Oddly enough, that actor was the most attractive of the night, at least to me, despite her white hair and the conservative servant’s dress she wore. I followed her, but she disappeared into a hidden door. The usher blocked me, so as I looked for another room, I took one of the room keys as a consolation prize and pressed on.

I found myself in the balcony overlooking a stage where a pair danced under blue lights. The female dancer – I assumed she was one of the three witches – was very androgynous, and the line blurred even more when she threw off her wig to show her shaven head. She like, many other performers I saw that night, was towering and lithe. Later that night I saw her in a chapel, performing a dance-attack mix attack on an actor kneeling in prayer. The room was so small that I almost took a kick in the chest when penitent actor flipped over the altar table. In another moment of assault, another actor charged through the crowd and jumped between metal walls, propping himself up in quick bursts and then sliding down. Later on the stage turned into a ballroom under lights of a warmer color, and seeing all the dancers move in unison even while performing in very difficult maneuvers was impressive.

It was during one of those dancing scenes that I picked up another keepsake. One of the witches and a male dancer passed a king of clubs to each other sensually from their mouths while performing on a pool t table. They left the card there and I snatched it the moment the crowd left.

I moved on floor by floor, moving away from most of the directions the crowd headed to save for a few times the characters ran to other places for a new scene. When forced into the crowd, I tried my best to fight my habit of pushing through older women, which was hard to do in the middle of a charge up flights of stairs. I was on my own most of the time.  I ran through a thicket maze that led to a hospital room where an actor filled a bathtub with water. I touched it after the scene ended – it was cold and had a slight orange hue. Foreboding, that scene definitely was. I saw Banquo’s death and Mrs. Danvers hounding of poor Mrs. de Winter from afar.

Performers randomly interacted with members of the audience. The first one I saw involved a speakeasy bartender motioning a woman from her husband and to the bar. He played a card game – he put down three cards and one on his forehead. She guessed correctly and as a prize, he pulled out a bottle from a locked box and brought her over to an upturned box. He poured two glasses and drank one. He raised his foot on the box and moved closer to her, lifted her mask, and helped her drink the other glass. Later on that night, one of the witches grabbed another audience member and pulled her behind a hidden door.

In my disjointed path through the floors, Lady Macbeth had the most interaction with the audience. She slow danced with a male audience member, and handed her necklace to another person. My personal moment happened right after she let go of the necklace and fell to the floor. She put her hand out in the hopes that someone would pull her up. I stood dead center from her, so I reached out and grabbed her hand. She had stringy blond hair and wore a sequined black dress. I looked right into her pale hazel eyes as she moved in closer. She whispered to me and caressed my mask before kissing it on the right side. Later on, I saw her naked and crying, sitting in the bathtub as she rubbed the orange-tinged water on her body to clean the imaginary bloodstains off her body.  Despite that scene, It was the moment when her face was inches away from mine that is embedded into my memory.

The one thing I wanted to make sure to see was an intense verse version of Macbeth’s visit to the witches, which my friend named the “techno orgy scene.” It became my only priority when I reached my last hour of the performance. The sound of throbbing bass coming from the fourth floor above me increased my desperation as I ran through the third,  and  I got lost in the maze and the hallways on the fifth– I don’t know how I skipped a floor, I wasn’t thinking straight at that point.  As soon as I entered the fourth floor, I saw a small group of the audience walk through a slightly opened mirrored door leading into a room with flashing lights pouring out. I walked in and joined them as we surrounded the three witches and Macbeth. The bass wasn’t as loud as in a club, but it had this primal thump.   The dancers slithered on top of each other, their clothes disappearing between flashes of light. One of the witches placed a black goat mask on Macbeth, transforming him into a clubbing Baphomet. The music turned brutal and the lights flicked rapidly. One witch held a bloodied baby doll in her arms, while another held up a small miniature tree as a priest would hold up a Catholic host. I turned to see the third witch pouring a black liquid on Macbeth’s chest. It trailed all the way down. It was around this time I did a conservative Jersey fist pump to the beat for a few seconds before anyone noticed it.  The lights cut out and the music stopped. When the lights came on again, the only thing left was the baby and the tree. Seeing as it would be impossible – and insane – to steal the baby, I took the tree as a consolation prize. At least, I tried to. It fell out of my pocket on my way to the grand finale.

The entire audience returned to the stage to see Macbeth in the gallows. I saw the scene from the balcony next to Mrs. de Winter, rubbing her now pregnant belly, and the austerely posed Mrs. Danvers. The lights were deep blue, and when I peered down I finally realized just how many of us had walked through the five floors. The floor, packed with the white masked voyeurs, watched as our tragic hero stood upon the table – originally made for the banquet seen where the ghost of Banquo drives Macbeth mad—used as a makeshift gallows. After he made his last shout before the pulling of the lever, there was no sound save for clapping – no whistles or hoots or shouts. Even after the usher showed people the way back to the lounge, they made no sound. It was a quick shuffling of mutes.

The thing stuck to my mind, even as I write this, is that a persistent feeling of walking into a house of ghosts. Don’t confuse it with the feeling you get walking through a haunted house.  Walking alongside them, hearing them whisper and at times making physical contact that serves as a reminder of the barrier of the scene that is unfolding. I hope I get to see something as mind-bending a feeling like sometime in the near future. For the time being, I’m going to go watch Hitchcock. I wonder what they would do with Vertigo.

GODDAMNIT. I dropped the ball with everything. On the bright side, I am going to the gym, so I am losing a good chunk of time for a good reason. Here’s the breakdown:

An additional 4504 word for my initial re-write. I need to start considering cutting it down a lot. I do plan it on making it a novella, but I still need to make sure it’s not a mess.
1612 for an article on my experience at Sleep No More.
addition 291 on the seizure article. This one, of course, is going to take a while.I want to make sure this is perfect.

I should at least try to get to 90% by the end of the day. Halloween is calling me though….

The first two came out like crap. I hadn’t used Photoshop in a while

Lyrics: We Don’t Care
Art: Clayton Crain

Lyrics: The New Workout Plan
Art: Erin Gallagher

Here’s where I step it up.

Lyrics: Gone (Ft. Cam’ron and Consequence)
Artist: Espeng

Lyrics: Get Em High
Artist: Steve Dillon

This is the latest one so far. I’ll put up more later.

Lyrics: School Spirit
Artist: Unknown

]]> http://jesusgaray.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/im-the-west-at-what-i-do-and-what-i-do-is-pretty-nice/feed/ 0 jesusgaray We Don't Necrosha New Gods Plan Kanye Silver Surfer Swamp Them High KanyeAlphaOmegaSpirit http://jesusgaray.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/the-past-isnt-all-that/ http://jesusgaray.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/the-past-isnt-all-that/#comments Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:22:08 +0000 jesusgaray http://jesusgaray.wordpress.com/?p=2390 ]]> I’m losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties.
- LCD Soundsystem, “Losing My Edge”

I’ve let a lot of the ever-increasing surge of nostalgia pass by me. First it was the 80s kids pouring money into Michael Bay’s account or squee at the moment you see Jeff Bridges return as CLU from the Tron sequel. Yes, I know it’s a cycle – the 70s made its way into the 90s via a blitzkrieg with tye-dyed trustafarians wearing bell bottoms parachuting  in as VW Beetles crashed through our memory’s Maginot line. I’m not a slave to the 90s, though I do have a couple of guilty pleasures (cough*Hackers*cough) and I have no intention to become one. I need to fight back from it.

I’ve seen enough men dressed like Ducky from Sixteen Candles to know how large a best 80s nostalgia became in the 00s. But I’m not attacking the awkward hipster teenager I’ve seen many a time while walking down the street in the Village. It’s the older Smurfs crowd that allows this nostalgia fetish pervade and seep into the rest of mainstream culture.

Along with the previously mentioned Transformers, the one that bothers me the most is, shockingly, Back to The Future. When the 25th anniversary came around and propped up a celebration and reverence to the truly deserved trilogy, I couldn’t help but think of it as a Cult of McFly (no disrespect to Michael J. Fox, the man is a hero).  And then I thought of Optimus Christ, of disciples wearing neon Ray-Bans like a Catholic nun wears rosary beads. I don’t blame them for my indifference. Between my jaded vision of the 80s due to cannibalistic alternative types or from just being born in 1987 – where the only image of Transformers I have is of toddler Jesus biting on Optimus Prime’s head – I don’t have that level of connection with poseur 80s kids or the early Millennials.

And then the Lion King happened.  23.9 million dollars on opening weekend  for something released seventeen years ago, remastered Lucas-style with 3D. The kids I grew up with watched animal Hamlet one. more. time. Really, people? Why are my brethren letting me down like that? This, on top of Nickelodeon’s re-airing of 90s television under the title ”The 90s are All That”.  The first time I saw the media release, I already had a severe reservation to the 2-4 AM broadcast block. While people are heralding the return of their beloved shows, I’m wondering why they aren’t hunting for new ones. It’s insane to say that, given that we’ve all grown up and have tuned our television watching to the right frequency (with the exception of reality TV show viewers who are probably ones most likely to have a sort of arrested development to begin with) we’ve decided, like our older brothers and sisters before us, to go from the HD-quality television we have at our disposal and go back to CRT style drudgery. All this, in the name of reclaiming childhood.

I’m already annoyed with 3D over-saturation, now I have to deal with nineties-fatigue? When do the fucking pop-up videos show up in 3D? Let go of the past, my people. It’s worth looking into it now and then, but life’s too short to spend your 2 AM laughing at Mellisa Joan Hart when you could be laughing at a new forms of absurdist comedy or even traditional ones. Why play crappy side-scrollers from the 90s when you could be championing anytime someone makes the Kinect just a little bit better?

The best way I can explain my sentiments in the format of those trite and schmaltzy “I remember when”  chain letters. Here I go:

I remember when you could find information on the word  ”rotary phone” faster than anyone can turn the dial on an actual one for the first number (or better yet, faster than remembering they even existed)

I remember melting tapes and floppy disks to use as materials for the frames of the first pair of augmented reality glasses.

I remember shows that didn’t have a media blitz when a minority was a part of the cast.

I remember when the word ‘Letter” referred only to the abecedarian ones.

I remember when Kenan Thompson fell off the Brooklyn Bridge.

If you remember your future, send this to the trash bin. Make something new.

Dammit.Well, last night’s push definitely help, but I got mired in weddings/Dark Souls/unpacking and I can only take the fault for Dark Souls (that game is the goddamn devil). Here’s the breakdown:

4541 for continuing my rewrite of the initial Terra Occulta comic arc into short story/novella form.
3371 for a story in the same universe that is muuuuch later in the story between the protagonist and his sister
752 for a work-in-progress entry on my seizure.
768 on an anti-nostalgia article which I’m cleaning up now.

If I keep working on the main story, I should be able to bang out the remaining 53%. let’s see what happens.

Anyway, The new deadline will be All Hallow’s Eve, so starting tonight, that gives me a month to write:

OK, let’s get there.

Das Racist – Relax
I don’t even…just get on this. Heems and Kool A.D. are insane on the wordplay ( and that’s not to say anything of El-P’s bars on Shut Up, Man) and their references make Childish Gambino sound like a punk (sorry Donald, stick to funny). Oh, and “Punjabji Song’ is reminiscent of Punjabi MC on Jay-Z’s “Beware the Boys” but this song puts a flag on that then drops 16 weed-filled deuces on it.

DJ Shadow – The Less You Know
OK, I have to finally admit one of my greatest sins:Up until recently, I’ve never had a good pair of headphones. I’ve always rocked the cheap Sony wrap-around blue sports one – it was the only one that’d survive my clumsiness – and now that I have these massive Skullcandy ones with the ultra bass, I’ve heard songs in completely new ways. I’m still not a snooty audiophile (I’m too lazy to convert to lossless formats) but…oh, the drums..the drums on a Shadow song on them.

Truth be told, The Outsider sucked. Only Phonte on “Backstage Girl” and “Artifact” saved that album for me. But from track one on The Less You Know… Shadow established that his scratching is back. The follow-up song”Border Crossing” sound like a poorly made 90s action movie version of “Artifact” (actually, check out “HYPERPOWER” from NIN’s Year Zero if you want a better version of this song). The “Stay the Course” team-up of Posdnuos and Talib Kweli is pretty solid; Kweli especially got to me seeing as he’s been off my audio radar for a minute. It’s amusing that  Shadow dropped an emphasis on the lull in the next three songs by putting up a song titled “Tedium”. The slowed down vocals and acoustic guitar on “Enemy Lines” gives the album an Entroducing pick-me-up before the break beats of “Going Nowhere” rolls in. that, along with “Run for Your Life” should get any Shadow fan at attention. Sadly, on “Scale It Back” Yukimi Nagano does her first lackluster performance on a song she’s featured on.

Now, let’s get to the singles. “Def Surrounds Us” renewed my faith in Shadow with his effective use of vocal samples, pounding drumbeats, a sprinkle of hyphy and dubstep, and pianos and apocalyptic choir singing. “I’ve Been Trying” was in the first lull I mentioned, so I didn’t realize it was a single. Oh, back  the topic of new headphones: listen to the other single “I Gotta Rokk” on them. Trust me on this.

Jay-Z and Kanye West – Watch the Throne
It’ s a little late to review this album without looking like a punk against ones like the fake Ghostface’s review. Instead, I’m just concentrating on the singers. First off, Frank Ocean dominates on his two songs; even if “Made in America” was one of the lesser cuts on WtH, he still delivers on it (and don’t get me started on his hook on my new banger “No Church in the Wild”). Truth be told, the only other ones of note is Elly Jackson of La Roux on “That’s My Bitch” and The-Dream on “No Church…”; I didn’t know that the unintelligible bridge on the “That’s My Bitch” was Bon Iver, nor did I really care. As for Beyonce on “Lift Off’, the song was pretty bad on its own, and she didn’t really help to bring it back. Mr. Hudson’s voice on “Why I Love You” reminds me of how the last time he brought something good to an album is still 808s & Heartbreaks. Oh, and Swizz Beatz needs to stop putting his “talking while straining through a bowel movement” voice all over a track.

Kasabian – Velociraptor!
Halfway through, I stopped listening it and went back to West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

Ladytron – Gravity the Seducer
It’s interesting to see the career trajectory of these electro-Liverpudlians, not just in their sound but in their whole look. The aesthetic in their music videos and photos from each album mirrors the songs of the album attached to them. In this album’s case, there is this a baroque, upper-class sound far different from the utilitarian beats in 604 or the cold grinding pulses from Witching Hour. There are some glimpses of Velocifero in “Melting Ice”. Songs like “Altitude Blues” and “White Gold” reinforce an 80s sci-fi soundtrack vibe (even the album art is reminiscent of the opening scene from Blade Runner). One of the biggest issues with the album is that there are too many songs that sound alike; “Ace of Hz”, “Mirage”, and “Aces High (which is just a boring instrumental of “Ace of Hz”) are the culprits of this. Overall, this is not as good as album as the previous one.

St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
It took one song from her Actor album to really make me into a stan for Ms. Annie Clark (go listen to “Laughing With a Mouth of Blood. The title is deceiving.). “Cruel” lets her gets it starting with her great vocals (it kind of reminded me of Feist) on the end of her verses. Then she reminds you “Oh yeah, I still got the grind” on “Cheerleader”. The eponymous track has an 80s synth thing going on until it hits you with her guitar/vocal one-two punch. The album fades out a bit until “Hysterical Strength” which reclaimed my attention with its driving drums and piano.

Keep

Watch the Throne is already in my library – hearing Kanye beat out Jay-Z on this (I think that’s intentional, but on the other hand, Jay’s skills are waning) is good enough to make it a keeper. DJ Shadow and St. Vincent stay as well. I can’t say no to Shadow’s masterful sampling/mixing and Annie Clark’s singing/rocking.

Second Listen

Ladytron might grow on me like Velocifero did. We’ll see.

Toss

ATR and Kasabian

There were artists making these murals throughout the campgrounds all weekend. This was my favorite.

Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon

The Decemberists

Arcade Fire