Oh wait, what?

Hi, remember me? Is there anyone out there? Have you given up on me? It's only been 11 months, that's not too long to go between posts is it? I could just start a new blog but what fun would that be?

The TV is on. The State Farm falcon commercial on. I met the guy who bought the falcon in the commercial when I was in LA. I assumed that he was losing his hair because he was wearing a fedora. Then I realized that guys in LA just like wearing hats, like a lot. I don't get it. When I see a guy in a hat in NYC I automatically assume he is balding and about 90% of the time I'm correct.

Yeah, LA, that's something that happened. I flew out there to meet up with Cult of Youth on the second leg of their US tour. They were out with Danish teen sensations and dance party enthusiasts and aka the somehow over-hyped yet under-appreciated Iceage. I got back two weeks ago.

Omar's all grown up and is currently chasing a fly. Heaven Street and Fox & Fawn a thriving. It's now just Sean and myself in our apartment over the Greenpoint oil spill. I was diagnosed with endometriosis and as a result I had to stop eating wheat and dairy. I stopped writing for Vice and am just about to start again (and by just about I mean I'm submitting my first piece in ages tomorrow.) My mother moved to California. I went to Mexico and climbed pyramids. Bad Girls Club Season 7 started. Sean told me it's a bad idea to get a third cat. I baked a loaf of bread for the first time yesterday.

Oh and Pam and I started a band.

That's me, that's my life, spastically, sporadically domesticated.

And so I leave you with some pictures from the road with Cult of Youth and Iceage:


Jacob, Elias, and Dan backstage in Portland


Sean immediately after COY's set in Portland


Nu Sensae in Vancouver (new favorite)


White Lung in Vancouver (so much love for this band)


Vancouver, but I coulda sworn for a minute we were in Montreal


Cult of Youth plays to the on-coming storm


Iceage in Vancouver


Post show tiki bar dance-party in Vancouver


Danes dancing hard while Sean DJed


Things got vaguely homoerotic, par for the course with Iceage


Tour manager/everybody's favorite guy Logan got loose


King Dude in Seattle!


Christiana in Seattle


Iceage in Seattle

I was booked to fly back early the next morning post-Seattle show. The boys/bands were so bummed to leave each other as it was the end of their joint leg of their respective tours. I was just along for the ride, but I was crushed when a plan developed to go to Aurora, WA aka the site of Twin Peaks filming later in the day. I tried to change my flight but it didn't make sense geographically and I had to miss out while the others went. Such is life, but I gotta say there were some Facebook uploads from Aurora that were totally crushing. Also crushing was the show's schedule didn't permit for the boys to get tattooed together. Elias was set to get a Cult of Youth tattoo and Sean was set to get an Iceage one. I contemplated a Cult of Youth one on my left hand, another crescent moon to match the one I have on my right palm. I guess there is always New York. I hear that someone in the Midwest gave Iceage a tattoo machine and they've been tattooing each other. So far every tattoo Elias has given has gotten infected.

And that's that. I'm sweating in my apartment writing about sweating on the West Coast. Omar is lying on his back with his legs sprawled. We've got an AC unit in here, but it's not turned out, it's more loud than effective. I'm watching Bad Girls Club while Sean packs up copies of the new Cult of Youth 7" to ship. I numbered and assembled almost all 500 of them.

I miss writing on this thing and hopefully this won't be a passing visit and I'll be back for good.

Nebraskans Eat

About a month ago I wrote a preview for the Taste of Nebraska event for the Vice Blog. My editor over there asked me if I could write an event preview for something happening that upcoming weekend and that is what I came up with. Of course I sincerely doubt that anyone actually came to the Nebraska Society of New York's event because of my posting but it sure did make Glen's mom happy.

It was a blast, well it least it became one once we got the DJ set-up figured out. Of course the manager was not a sound guy and I ended up having to figure everything out myself, but at least my free admission was well-earned. I was thrust into the role of volunteer and Nebraskans are so damn nice I couldn't very well say no. After setting up the MC who hailed from Red Cloud (most known for the Brandon Teena murder portrayed in Boys Don't Cry) I was finally free to wander around and get my grub on. I ran into two people from my high school, one I was on Student Council with, Emily Chen who brought up our soon approaching 10-year reunion. Class of 2000, oy vey. I'm not going, I've got nothing to prove, and more importantly nothing to show off aside from the fact that I'm like 30 pounds lighter than I was in high school and the fact that I have a super rad boyfriend that none of them would appreciate. I can't imagine going to a reunion sober and me. I'm in touch with everyone I need to be from my class and have no desire to reconnect with anyone else. Besides, there's always Facebook for that.

I stayed the night before at Sean's house so I wasn't dressed for the event. My "Poppa Husker" shirt unfortunately spent the afternoon languishing on my bedroom floor. Glen. on the other hand, was dressed for the event. He had it down to the footwear:




The big man behind the DJ booth which unfortunately didn't have turntables...after all the trouble we went through it ended up being a laptop sort of day.

You know, until I wrote the write-up for Vice I didn't feel any nostalgia for Nebraska food, least of all Valentinos. Vals as it's commonly called was the site of many a soccer team banquet dinner and childhood birthday party. It's locally famous for it's buffet which I will admit is impressive. More baffling is how it's sweet gloppy pizza is consistently voted the best in town by locals year after year. Papa Johns is better than that crap. The only worse pizza in town is probably Godfathers or maybe Ramos. But my family's scorn for Valentino's had led me to forget their crowning glory, their Dessert Pizza!


It doesn't look like much, but GOD DAMN it's good. Hot apple filling, struesel topping, and a cream cheesey icing. Fuck, I can't even explain how awesome it is. I hadn't tasted it since those birthday parties of my youth, and now it's going to be hard to avoid a trip there when Sean and I visit in July.


Another local obsession are Kolaches. I never quite got their appeal, to me they seem like an inferior Danish, but I guess it's a Czech heritage sort of thing. I was more stoked on these cinnamon rolls I hadn't tasted since I was a little girl and the best ice cream ever from the UNL Dairy, more famous as the home of Husker Cheese (I know, sounds a little gross, right?)


There was a silent auction featuring several items donated from Nebraska businesses, the most humorous to me being the Bright Eyes and Cursive gift packs from Saddle Creek Records.


"Nebraska...enjoy flying over us"


Dorothy Lynch Dressing, the stuff of childhood nightmares. I was salad-phobic and this orange concoction scared the crap out of me.


Glen digging into the most important of Nebraska delicacies, the RUNZA!


These savory beef and cabbage pockets are a little bit of heaven. I smuggled three home in my purse to share with Sean. So good. Even working for almost a year at their now-closed 50's theme restaurant Rock N Roll Runza during my high school vegetarianism didn't traumatize me enough to not want to indulge in their deliciousness.


One hell of a t-shirt, but doesn't Glen look mean?


I asked him to stop making his mean face and this is what he gave me instead. I think I like the mean face better.


It was crowded, a sea of mostly red and white, or should I say scarlet and cream as those are the official Husker colors.


I tried so hard to get a good picture of the lady in pink on the left. She was in full LARP gear and her nametag said "Lady" somethingorother. I wussed out and only got a crappy aerial shot from the DJ booth.


Someone wanted a photo of all the Husker garbed people together. She asked for my help. I fled the scene.


I'll leave you with a photo of Glen's souvenir, the least practical, most flammable candle holder of all time.

New York - Nebraska's Coming to Town

I wrote about Saturday's upcoming Nebraska Society of New York's Taste of Nebraska event that Glen is DJing for Vice. I am pretty sure that 100% of the readership will not show, but I, for one, will surely have a blast and take a gazillion pictures. Anyway, getting people to come was secondary, I've got hometown pride. I may even have some Valentino's dessert pizza even though it's horrendous just for old times sake. But mostly I just want a hot dog, a Runza, and a Miller and Paine cinnamon roll. Oh and that ice cream from the UNL Dairy...so so good.

Hometown Tourist Part 2

As mentioned in the previous post, I like to treat everyday things in my hometown as an attraction. I get nostalgic for some things from my former midwestern life. Grocery shopping is a big one. The experience is so incredibly different in the city than it is back home. Maybe because while there are several large grocery stores, there really isn't a supermarket on par with those I grew up with anywhere accessible to me. There is one on Broadway near the Lorimer stop that comes close, but with it's open air fish section and gigantic selection of South American and Caribbean produce, it definitely smacks of Brooklyn.

I was lucky enough to visit my favorite mega supermarket grocery store, Super Saver twice on my trip home. The first was right after I got into town to pick up provisions for breakfast the next day and vegetables to go with the duck my dad and I were to roast. As I walked past the giant smoked meats display adorned with placards one in various categories of competition at the State Fair, I lamented that I had neglected to bring my camera inside. In the bakery I frantically searched for my favorite midwest supermarket staple, the maple frosted donut topped with chopped peanuts or at least filled with cream (and not of the bavarian variety, of the grainy white fluffy kind, so sweet it kind of burns your tongue.) Alas! The holidays had temporarily interfered with is space in the gleaming donut case in favor of vanilla iced donuts transformed with seasonal food coloring. Cameraless I still browsed as though at a museum, pointing and marvelling at the size and scope of the meat department, the warehouse-esque produce section, nearly as big as the Associated on Grand Street back in Brooklyn. I gawked and gasped and giggled at memories of foods not commonly found in New York. Sure, things like tahini and plantains are staples at any neighborhood bodega here, but do they have a deli case filled with Ambrosia and Strawberry Fluff salads? Does Key Food have a sample lady for chipped dried beef dip (dried beef in cream cheese) or house cured meat sticks, beer salami and pretzels with yellow cheddar cheese cubs next to the "exotic" flecked white cubes of pepper jack on display for you to sample? All staples of middle American picnic cuisine.

Thankfully we went back to pick up some last minute items and this time I was wise enough to bring my camera. As I walked around taking pictures I noticed all the employees noticing me. Unlike the mall where my picture taking was completely ignored in every store we went in, my snapping was causing somewhat of a frenzy of speculation from the staff. As seemingly no one normal would be taking pictures of their store, I saw a woman from the bakery staff point me out to her manager in wonderment. I guess "blogger" isn't a recognized past time to everyone yet and I sincerely hope they think I was a journalist not a terrorist. Regardless, I shied away from some amazing things because I was getting so stared at (I know, I'm a pussy.) I still regret missing the giant turkey made out of cupcakes, but I think I got a pretty good representation of how amazing Super Saver (motto, "We sell for less") really is.


Bulk candy and pinata display, perfection in merchandising




The biggest hot dog case I've ever seen


Champion meats








Patriotic beef jerky


Field of sausage


Holiday aisle


Cookies and cream = childhood dream

Half-blind homeland

Less than one hour in Nebraska and I've already lost a contact. In my weaker eye nonetheless. Driving's gonna be a blast.

I haven't been home for some time. It's been almost a year since I've seen my parents. Little seems to have changed in the good ole hometown aside from a bumper crop of condos sprouted up all around. That and I don't recall the word "loft" being relevant in Lincoln 5 years ago. Then again I'm not around much.

I am learning to live with separated parents. It makes the holidays slightly awkward. I am new at this, so all you old pros with long-divorced folks bear with me. I try to avoid getting to personal on this blog, but it's the most present thing on my mind aside from the lost contact and I am sure you don't want me to go on bitching about that. But more than my family, my hometown is on my mind.

After being gone a certain number of years one is forced to realize that life goes on without them. And life in my hometown is no different. People get together, people break up, people have kids, get jobs, move away, get married, it all goes on and has nothing to do with you. You are just a part of the town's memory, and not a present memory at that. Your childhood haunts get torn down or revamped, places get renamed, and the food doesn't taste the same. It is hard not to feel sad because even if things have changed for the better, you are no longer a part of the story. Your body is not in the motion of the town and you are at odds with it's ebbs and flows.

Restructuring memory isn't an option, but when the tangible structures change it's hard to know what to go on. To trust in your memories of things when confronted with a new reality, be it the inevitable reality of adulthood where your contemporary eyes show things in a different light than your child's, or the more concrete reality of change. The things you looked at for the first eighteen years of your life are gone or different. It's not your perspective that has changed but the world itself.

Maybe I've just lost focus since my eyesight is down to one eye.

Loaded and Goaded

I recently was looking through old photos of mine that have languished in a plastic bin in my room for years. In it I found an old black and white picture (of course it was in black and white, it seemed so much more indie in those days) taken one evening in front of my friend Molly's house. Russ, Jenny, Molly and I had spent that summer evening lounging in the circle drive of her trailer park smoking cigarettes and talking shit. I had brought my version of the bible with me, Jim Goad's Answer Me!: The First Three . In the photo my friend Jenny is sitting next to Molly and they are reading the article, I Hate Women. The group of us, in our post-grunge glory in the trailer park lapping up hate, Molly, our hostess chain-smoking packs of $2 generic cigarettes from Kabredlo's. That volume of hate lived in my backpack that summer. I picked it up at the book distro table at a punk show at the Haymarket community arts center, a spot where we had Food Not Bombs meetings and punk shows. The community center was housed in the same building as a treatment center and there were many a time a teen punk got off on the wrong floor and came face to face with a detoxing lunatic.

I was immediately drawn to the cover art (which unfortunately I can't find a decent pic of because I have the first edition) and to the cute boy behind the distro table selling it. I had no idea what I was buying. I flipped through the pages, saw the interview with David Duke and the article on the top 100 mass murderers and serial killers and dove in. The three issue volume followed me everywhere, it lived in my backpack, the cover slowly disintegrating. I credit Jim Goad with successfully chipping away at my already deficient offense reflex. I think poring over his venom repeatedly in the back of the family minivan during roadtrips muted my ability to be upset by just about anything. I have Jim Goad to thank for introducing me to Mexican murder magazines (way before Neckface brought them back into NY's art consciousness), Anton LaVey, Crispin Glover as more than the dad from Back to the Future, NAMBLA, Adam Parfrey, and Russ Meyer, and of course El Duce.

A related anecode, many years later in college in an ethnographic studies course, we were assigned to read Donna Gaines' book Teenage Wasteland about the Bergenfeld Four suicides. Gaines wrote an article entitled Chicks and Cars is the first issue of Answer Me! and the book was mentioned in the Suicide issue. Upon reading I noticed a namedrop to the Goads (at the time, Jim Goad also credited his now deceased wife Debbie Goad as a co-writer of the zine. That has since changed.) in a scene where Gaines is hanging out with a group of Jersey deadbeat teens in an abandoned factory. A few days later, Gaines herself came to speak to our class about the book and I mentioned catching the Goad reference and she was shocked. Apparently I was the only student in the history of her career (she was a professor of sociology I believe in the CUNY system at the time) who had picked up on the Goad shout-out. She proceeded to gossip about the Goads a bit with me and we exchanged emails, she thinking of taking me under her wing as a sort of mentorship. Unfortunately later that night a series of events began that resulted in my moving away from New York for nine months and I never did get in touch with her. Dang.

Answer Me! was so much more than a zine, the content better than most legitimate magazines, with some mindblowing interviews (The Geto Boys! Al Sharpton! David Duke!) and consistently hilarious content. Some of the writing doesn't hold up to my older eyes, a lot of the I Hate... articles are boring to read now and don't seem nearly as badass as they once did (I was about 14 or 15 when I first picked it up.) Still some of the explorations about the hellhole of New Jersey and the article about 24 Hours on Sunset Blvd are infinitely readable and I will always be indebted to Goad for teaching me all the hilarious ways to kill oneself and tapping into my childhood fascination with serial killers (sidenote, my grandpa looked a hell of a lot like the pic of Henry Lee Lucas in the Murder issue.)

The Rape issue not included in the anthology is also worth a read. It is what sparked the obscenity trial that landed demon Goad in jail. I didn't get my hands on that until many years later, and what a story that is. When I moved to Missouri at age 18 the now tattered volume came with me. Once there I did the unthinkable and lent it to an acquaintance, some rockabilly-ish chick who worked at a vintage store. A few days after lending it to her her 19-year-old sister suddenly passed away from a brain aneurysm. She found her dead in the hallway of the apartment they shared after coming home from a night out at Eastside Tavern, the biker bar we all frequented. I remember her worried that her sister had flaked on her plans to meet up and my agreeing, as I had expected to see her at the bar that as well. The sister of the dead girl was understandably distraught and went to stay with her parents for about a month in the smaller Missouri town they were from, with my book! My out of print book. When she came back into town I visited her back at the vintage store she was again working at and she mentioned how much the volume had helped her through her tough time and hinted that she wanted to keep it. I told her it had major sentimental value and I needed it back regardless of the circumstances and she promised to return it. She never fucking did and I had to spend a mint getting another copy on EBay, but thankfully the shipper threw in a copy of the Rape issue so it wasn't a total waste. I still am pissed that I never got my book back. Just because your sister dies doesn't give you license to steal from me, however, it does make it a little easier to forgive so I stopped pursuing it.

So no, you can't borrow my copy. But you can buy the reissue which is apparently expanded. And check out these links for more info:
Jim Goad's site has some great links to more info about the story of Answer Me!
Goad writes for Street Carnage
Order Answer Me! here

***EDIT***
I posted this today and then found out a few hours later that Goad was hospitalized earlier this month with a brain tumor

I forgot something very important

I hate scrapbooking. I hate the industry surrounding it, fuck I hate that there even is an industry surrounding it. I hate that people can make their living opening up shitty craft stores that exclusively cater to the scrapbooking movement. In my approximation scrapbooking in the new quilting. Sure it's a more narrative way to assemble family memories in an artistic form, but a scrapbook don't keep you warm! Plus, do you really want your memories to be packaged in the same manner as every other mom/summer camper/student council member/cheerleader who bought the same set of stickers at the same aformentioned shitty craft store you did? Yeah because, that's really special.

I hate people who stand while on single-file escalators. I'm a pushy New York jerk. I've got places to go.

I hate premature nostalgia. Okay, I get it, the rave is back because you all not-so-secretly miss your days of dwelling in K-Holes. Owning your past is fine. I can even deal with smiley faces and grunge. But I swear to god, if I see one of these worn ironically on Bedford Avenue I am going to cry:



Or even worse...



(p.s. While on my ill-conceived Google image search for "coed naked" I found this genius porn site The last photo of "Jenny Hendrix" is my favorite. Where the fuck were these guys when I was in college?)

Admittedly I do have fond memories of these being banned from my elementary school and a few of the classic camo sweatpants wearing baby dirtbags still wearing them. God, I love those kids, even though most of them ended up getting some chick named Crystal knocked up and are still in Nebraska. Some of them grew up to be my friends. You know the kids...essentially the late 80s/early 90s version of this:


Tim is my all-time favorite move kid ever and his friend Moko comes in a close second as the random half-Asian kung-fu loving sidekick. I'll spare you the quotes, as there have been many tributes to the awesomeness of this duo. But just about every future crustache sporting, Pantera tee owning, future scumfuck in my town looked just like them when I was in elementary school. Nunchucks and all.


I know every in the LES is rocking the Ione right now, but can you blame them? She was never much of an actress but she dated the coolest dudes and had the most effortless pre-grunge styling in this movie. Who needs 1994 when you've got 1986?


but I always thought that Tony was a seriously untapped style source.

So wait...wasn't I revisiting the forgotten entries on my shit list? And wasn't I bitching about hating premature nostalgia? Suddenly I find myself succumbing to it and all I want to do is download L7's Pretend that We're Dead and The Nymphs Revolt. Anybody remember that band? Their primary noteriety was from when Inger Lorre pissed on her A&R man's desk and from her rabid rivalry with Courtney Love. Ahh, the band that never was, the band that got fucked from every direction, be it rivalries, drugs, red tape, and major label low-prioritizing. I first heard them on the best mixtape ever my friend made me in 7th grade. She titled the mix "Foxxxcore" after Thurston Moore's dubbing of the alternative to Riot Grrl ragers and it featured Babes in Toyland, Seven Year Bitch, L7, and of course The Nymphs. I am sure Molly got that song off the bizarre awesome Pet Semetary 2 soundtrack.

At the time I couldn't find the album and gave up. This was before the days of the internet and it was possible for bands to seem unattainable, especially when they were major label yet not charted. It's funny how when I was younger it was easier to find a Third Sex record than one from the Nymphs.











For a pretty rad tribute article to Inger and the Nymphs check this out and if you want to hear Revolt and other Nymphs songs there are some posted on MySpace

Well, I don't know about you, but I enjoyed that trek. Todays post is obviously brought to you by my stream of consciousness. Apparently I can't focus about writing anything in particular today probably because I am at work instead of at the Mermaid Parade. Oh wait, we're back on track!

I hate a parade. I think it stems from a junior high era trauma where some dude overheard me giving my phone number to a friend at a parade and I ended up with an obscene phone caller. I was all of 13 and he was a major creep. I was a naive and didn't initially know where the phone calls were leading and being 13 I was also totally intrigued. But thank god it didn't turn into a To Catch a Predator situation. Ever since then I've been super wary about parades and large outdoor gatherings of people in general.

I've basically built a stoked list into this shit list. So to sum up that:

I am stoked on memories of foxcore.

I am stoked on sweatpants wearing pre-teen dirtbag style.

I am stoked on the River's Edge. Seriously, always have been, always will be. One summer in Nebraska I rented it from Blockbuster and for some reason it was a seven day rental and I seriously fell asleep watching it every night for an entire week. My roommates thought I was deranged.