MIX CD for a person who was lukewarm towards me

                Internet romance is a fleeting thing. At first, you’re so excited to finally connect with someone in the virtual sea. You think of them, of all the fish in the sea, I wanted her, she wanted me. Even though I met them on a site their parents paid for, in a weak attempt to get them a boyfriend, our bond felt strong. It felt great, we were connecting. Adding her various networking sites felt good, it felt right. We were happy sending random messages through vast distances. 

                Sometimes, you know, it doesn’t work out with people. The two of you might seem to have a lot in common. At an undefined moment in time, things change. Everything changes. Such a thing happened with this person. Without meeting, we had grown bored of each other. Other people appeared to me more interesting than little old me. Rapidly our AIM conversations dwindled to nearly nothing.

                But one day, out of the blue, I got invited to her birthday party at a beer garden of high repute. Perhaps I’d be given another chance. Working throughout the week, I not only came up with my usual stellar mix, but I did something more. Look below to see. This is the unedited selection of descriptions for each song, sent as text to her Myspace account. 

                When I arrived at the party, we became friends, nothing more than that. Feeling rejected, I spent the rest of the night talking to her brother about some creative stuff he did for work. She made up a story about how we met at some concert. At the night of the night, we left as friends. We’re still friends on Facebook, but I never spoke to her again. My MIX had failed.

                That doesn’t mean it’ll fail on you. All of the descriptions are perfect for the songs. I hope this helps you more than it helped me. Consider this the prehistoric ancestor of my current MIX CDs, like a fossil trapped in amber, waiting to be resurrected again.  

        

1. Red Krayola - Hurricane Fighter Plane.

Once upon a time, Mayo Thompson had something in his pants. And with his snotty voice, he announced it to the world with the strangest backing band ever, complete with the most thoroughly incompetent bass player he could find in the great state of Texas. In a perfect world, this would’ve been a hit single. Most people lacked his clear vision of a world without logic, sense, or musical talent. 

2. No Age - Cappo

These guys go surfing on the Southern California coast. Or at least it sounds that way. They also sound like they might exist in reality, unlike our previous guest. 

3. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention - Who needs the Peace Corps?

Frank Zappa sings scathingly about the false political awareness many of the “boomer generation” possessed. Singing about one young lad, who decides to wear non-traditional Western garb for the purpose of looking cool, he then enjoys marijuana and gets some police officers to kick the shit out of him on Hate Street. This intrepid cut summarized Zappa’s perfect satire with musical talent.

4. Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - Washington Wabble

A young bird goes and gets a bum’s rush from the local bull. Now he doesn’t care for this sort of thing, and calls the bull a wet blanket. Well, ha, you can see here why he’s a bird, can’t you? So off he goes, in a real huff, and sees a tomato. The real McCoy, but he can’t stop and make whoopee with her, get a few sinkers. No, he’s out on the lam, on account of that insult. Good thing he didn’t stay and chat with the cat’s meow either, she was a moll anyway.

5. British Sea Power - The Lonely             

I listened to this constantly as I went back and forth on the train, from civilization and out of it. As this played, I’d see backyards of people both rich and poor. This is a truly enlightening experience of listening to a lonely former naval power sing about playing on a Casio, electric piano. 

6. Crème Soda - Deep in a Dream

A bunch of hippies got together about 5 years too late and decided to make some hippie-ish jams. They were of high quality, as were the performers. Then they realized it was 1975 and got cynical, then employed. 

7. Slint - Breadcrumb Trail

Slint existed in a certain moment of time, when a bunch of paranoid people moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to make uncomfortable, tense rock. Some called it Post-Rock, since it lacked any of the sort of things that made things rock, like happiness and girls. The members of Slint most likely did not have adoring women flocking towards them; they most likely had those record-store types with the beards and thick glasses, nodding their heads in approval. Despite their overwhelming ability to give almost anyone nightmares with their delusional, uneasy songs sung in uncertain voices, they broke up. Then, as paranoia and unease gained currency towards the latter half of the Bush administration, they gave it another go. Our song here discusses the joys and terror of being in a carnival. 

8. Sun City Girls - Radar 1941

Sun City Girls knew the Norwegians could no longer defend them, so they made one last stand in Hammerfest, Norway. Using the only items nearby, booze and guitars, they coined this little ditty, a drunken surf song that loses interest in itself every now and then. 

9. Flying Saucer Attack - Standing Stone

One fine afternoon, the singer realized his voice was shit. So he brought up a ton of distortion and feedback, and sang like someone on an acid trip. Then he got a three-year old to play the drums.

10. Gong - Witch’s Song/I am your Pussy

They dedicated this song to their mother, and some fleas. The 1970s were a strange time.

11. Optiganally Yours - Stop Touching Me

Originally written after a harrowing experience with a toaster oven, this song exudes positive feelings, also sexual harassment. 

12. Sergio Mendes Trio - Vivo Sonhando

Back in the 1960s, Brazilians provided the world with perfect music to drink cocktails to. This particular band did it especially well. To improve the ease, they replaced the singer with a saxophone, just to be so cool and casual.

13. Stereolab - Tone Burst

It’s like a giant burst of distorted guitars, and then we get those socialist lyrics sung in French. Why French? So that way, it’ll sound sexy.

14. Deerhoof - Polly Bee

Originally starting off as a pop group, they didn’t realize how weird their singing was, or how inane the lyrics were. Here we listen to the singer ask such probing questions as “Why am I so happy all the time?”

15. Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg - Jane B

A couple of French people, singing about French shit. They were so explicit that even France put its foot down on having their songs on the radio.  Possibly perfect music for some kind of bad ass spy flick in the near future, which would involve a former KGB agent trying to kill the President of some total shit-hole Eastern European nation no one’s heard of, and the one CIA agent down on his luck trying to bring him to justice. Also hamsters would be involved.

16. Low - Caroline

Most rock bands start out playing fast and slowing down. When Low decides to slow down some more, their songs will last half an hour each, with eight notes played in total. Their beauty is to play those eight notes perfectly right, and at the right times. Too many bands figure if they play fast, perhaps they’d occasionally get the sound right. Low know better.

17. Nick Drake - From the Morning

Apparently his life revolved around sleeping late, smoking pot, not getting laid and playing the guitar. He spent his entire life on a college campus as a philosophy major.

18. June of 44 - Sink is Busted

Here is one of those greats from Louisville, the Post Rockers. Here they display their inability to cope with even the simplest of problems, a broken sink. Instead of doing anything about it, they wrote this meandering song that feels like it’s always moving away from you.

19. Penguin Café Orchestra - Hugebaby

As a couple of penguins sat drinking their coffees and reading the New York Times Magazine section, they noticed a baby flying out of a car. The car’s passengers had dissolved away, as had the car, and the baby slowly floated about, looking at the penguins below with dreamy amusement. 

20. Beirut - Untitled

Apparently this musician lacks basic naming song skills. Perhaps he should’ve stayed in school, instead of hanging around the Balkans in seedy clubs, listening to their degenerate hobo music.

OK Cupid Trends Article – Best Questions for a First Date: The Beach Sloth Response

                Ah yes, it has been a while since I’ve gone over the dating site OK Cupid, a site of which I’m a member. Remembering what Groucho Marx said:

                “I don’t want to belong to any dating site that will accept people like me as a member.”

                I think about why I’m even there. Thus far, I haven’t even met any fellow sloth-lovers. But I’m not terribly worried; I’m not fully accepted anyway. According to an advanced algorithm, I’m not even attractive enough to get a special email message telling me how I’m too sexy for my shirt. Oh well, their loss. I’m great.

                This installment of their stab at snarky blog humor is a bit better than their usual flaccid attempt at humor. Parts of this elicited a response from me besides pity for the pathetic person trying to get laughs. Some of the questions they explored really went ‘in depth’ into the real meat and potatoes of why people date. 

                 First they explored the question of: Do they have a drug problem? Honestly, that’s a big one. Call me a traditionalist, but having someone who does cocaine off of a toilet seat is usually a turn off. Personally, I’ve been lucky enough where those addicted to drugs told me on the first date. I’m not talking about minor drugs; they tend to be heavy things. Having someone tell you in the first ten minutes of the date ‘Heroin isn’t so bad’ is surprisingly a good thing. You kind of know where the date is going to go from there, and will involve lengthy discussions about how they want to live with the Crust Punks in abandoned buildings. Man, they pay way less rent than I do those lucky dogs.  

                Defining the importance of some of these questions takes up a lot of time. Personally, I would’ve avoided using verbatim questions. If you’re trying to attract people to use your website, it isn’t a good idea to show off glaring misspellings about cannibalism, dildos, and employment.

                But they have a graphic which explains all their big ideas about dating.  The blue box, the saddest box you’ll ever do, represents those questions innocent questions which lead to more interesting, meaningful results. Here’s the part where OK Cupid subtly suggests “Hey, maybe you might want to get in on this, maybe answering a few of our 18,000 questions”.

Important Questions to ask your ‘potential’ significant other

                “Do you like the taste of beer? Yes” equals “Will I have sex on my first date?”

                If you’re on OK Cupid for hookups, I guess that’s cool. Personally, I haven’t had such things happen yet. Though I will say, the people on OK Cupid tend to be really nice people, better than such sites as “PlentlyOfFish” which I think is ultra-creepy. So this is a fairly important question to a vast majority of twenty and thirty-somethings looking for their artistic other (OK Cupid does cater to a certain level of artsy-ness. Just saying)

                Some other questions which predict the likelihood of having sex on the first date (Yes answer only)

                “In a certain light, wouldn’t nuclear war be exciting” (83% chance, those are better odds than an actual nuclear war happening)

                “Could you imagine yourself killing someone?” (82% chance, maybe this has to do with that vague emotion known as ‘passion’. It proves they are passionate I guess, though I’m a bit worried about the dating world now)

                “Assuming you were in the position to do so, would you launch nuclear weapons under any circumstances?” (82% chance again. I guess radiation really turns people on).

Next Question:

Do my date and I have long-term potential? Equals the following three questions:

“Do you like horror movies?”  Personally I’m not a horror buff. 

“Have you ever traveled to another country alone?” Actually, I like this question a lot. Traveling with other people gets very annoying, I enjoy traveling alone. When you’re traveling with someone else, there’s all that compromise which is a pain.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?” I want to do this once I become a successful human being. Right now I’m a sloth. As much as a sloth can ‘work on’ something, I’m working on it. 

For their politics question, I guess that doesn’t apply in New York. New York has a wide variety of people with similar political beliefs, from liberal liberal, moderate liberal, conservative liberal, liberal moderate, and the most far right one, moderate moderate. I’m not sure if Republicans live in New York, or, if they do, they keep an extremely low profile and have secret handshakes to discover one another. 

I found their “Is my date religious?” question interesting. Spelling and grammar mistakes apparently are more acceptable by religious types. ‘Next to intelligent design, what’s a couple of typos’ is how OK Cupid phrased it. Bits and pieces like that are what motivate me to want to write for one of these sites. That’s a little weak, not going to lie. Despite that, seeing the writing and reading levels of various religions was somewhat interesting.

Overall, I like the site. Unlike most sites, they do have a specific niche group of artsy types, which basically equal my type. I’ve met some seriously cool people on there. There’s even a website dedicated to OK Cupid, called “Ok Cupid Letters that never got responses” that I covered in a previous post. I’m happy to report Jon Roren’s back at it, and welcome him back into the blogging fold. 

Maybe we’ll all find our special someone. I hope for that. I wish you all luck on this and hope you find that someone willing to sleep for inordinately long periods of time with you, hanging upside in the trees and catching the breeze.

Movie Review: David Lynch’s “A Goofy Movie” **Warning:Spoilers**

A Goofy Movie Trailer 

David Lynch has no doubt been one of the most influential directors of the modern era, with movies like “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet” being one of those movies to see. A great deal of attention has been paid to him and his ideas about the changing American landscape either rural or city-bound. Often he shows the gross underbelly that exists surprising close to our comfortable lives. The gross muck that people have as their life becomes readily apparent as the viewer realizes just how similar they are to that disgusting person on camera.

                “A Goofy Movie” tends to be one of his more overlooked projects. Written around the same time as ‘Lost Highway’ this is another one of his ventures into the often dark world of Americana. Initially he wanted it to be a father/son bonding experience but realized it would be more interesting if he displayed some of the heartache and loss that he saw running rampant, particularly indirectly referencing the events of the Waco Siege in Waco, Texas.

                Since the plot often uses multiple perspectives and the narrator’s motives are dubious, the audience is left to figure out exactly what goes through Goofy’s mind as he watches his comfortable life unravel around him. Due to the limited release and unavailability on DVD (an issue Mr. Lynch has promised will be resolved) there isn’t a huge amount of critical review on this classic snapshot of America during the early part of the Clinton era. Following are spoilers for this movie and I’ve linked the trailer for it. The soundtrack is phenomenal and easily rivals Philip Glass’s “Koyaanisqatsi” work.

                The movie begins with a shot of an idyllic grain field. Apparently this symbolizes the pure good hearted nature of Goofy. However as the camera focuses more intensely on the field, we see a funeral. Goofy sadly looks into the ground as his wife’s coffin is lowered. Listening intensely to the priest as he mentions all the good she did for the community, Goofy uncontrollably sobs. Seeing his young son, he promises to make sure he’ll raise him well. He hopes that even without his mother’s angelic demeanor, Max will still turn out ok. 

                We forward into the present. A sterile office is presented as Goofy’s workplace. Working under a demanding boss, Goofy has clearly aged since his wife’s death which was many years ago. During his lunch break, he checks various online dating sites for potential dates, only to find that most people he messaged had read and deleted those messages. He longs for a wife, someone to help ease his tortured heart. 

                The phone rings on the wall. Startled, he heads towards it. Picking up the phone, he hears his son’s principal explaining what happened to him. To Lynch’s credit, it is never explicitly stated what Max’s crime was, but it is alluded to that he had developed a methamphetamine habit. 

                Worried about his son’s increasingly erratic behavior, he proposes a trip to Idaho to help him detox. Max’s face falls at first as he hears this information. Apparently from photos Goofy looks at before Max’s addiction, Max used to be a close son to him. But over the past several years, Max has become increasingly distant from his father. Part of this is due to Goofy’s lack of willpower and the blind faith he has in the lost sheep that is his son.

                As the trip progresses, Goofy tries to engage him with things that he deems ‘wholesome’. Initially worried about Max’s attempts at hitchhiking and general lack of respect towards his father, Goofy begins to trust his son. Goofy explains how lucky Max has it, mentioning how he was abused physically and emotionally by his father. Those few scenes showing Goofy’s abuse as a child are uncomfortable and disturbing even by Lynch’s standards. For a brief moment, Max seems to understand. Slowly those images of Max dying fried out of his mind on meth in some abandoned building fade away.

                But this proves to be an illusion. Max becomes better able to deal with his father as he changes the course of the trip. Instead of going to places that only Goofy would enjoy, the compromising that Goofy does brings his son back into contact with drugs again. The hardness of the drugs and the relief they provide allow Max to cope with the aggravation of being Goofy’s son. And after Goofy foolishly makes Max the navigator, real trouble begins to ensue, though Goofy does not realize it.

                Chance encounters with his good friend Pete make Goofy more aware of what is going on. Pete explains the danger of the gangs that Max is indebted to, and that Goofy should just let his son go. Goofy find this hard to believe and has a small tantrum in the car. It is only after seeing the altered map heading to one of the largest drug regions of the US that he is convinced his son continued to head down the wrong path.

                Sadly, the confrontation happens too late. As he tries to talk some sense into his son, the son violently tries to force the car into oncoming traffic. Pulling a knife on his own father, Goofy is forced to drive to the California drug den. Upon arrival Max foolishly puts up his own father as collateral since he doesn’t have any actual money. While under the gang’s possession, they perform sadistic electrocution experiments on him. Max starts to laugh as he sees his father being brutally tortured. 

                Goofy begins to fade away. As the last bolts of electricity pump through him, he sees that picture of a golden field of wheat. Slowly his body hits the ground for the last time. Max realizes what he has done but by then it is too late. 

                I was shocked at how powerful a movie this is. The depictions of the various locations where Max gets his fix are startling: the back alley of a 7/11, a Burger King bathroom, a used Car Salesman’s office, etc. Each one of these represents the vast amount of corruption going on in America. Lynch explained that this movie helped him to “purge those demons” from his body and allowed him to focus on more positive endeavors. After seeing it, you will currently understand.

Is OK CUPID LETTERS THAT NEVER GOT RESPONSES marking the line between getting vulnerable and too much information?

He's a winner, I can feel it

Jake Elliot Roren embraces the prevailing attitude of sharing more. With his website “OkCupidLetters.com” he takes this to a logical place: online dating. Here, his vulnerable impulses take hold. You thought Carles from Hipster Runoff was “getting vulnerable with you”? Forget that well-adjusted put-on artist, this guy wears his heart on his sleeve; he might have been the original prototype for the Emo kid. Maybe that should be his next tattoo. Maybe it already is. 

                The site consists exclusively of messages that he sent to girls on OKCUPID and never received responses. Each message offers the reader a look into the dark, twisted and admittedly alternative soul. He’s 36 now, so he’s honed this vulnerability to an absolute art form.

                Now this would be unfair if he just showed us their responses, and stated “Wow, how could they not go for that.” Instead, he never received one, allowing the reader to make their own judgment on his wise or faltering attempts at online flirtation. Obviously his goal is to show off how shallow and superficial online dating is, but I don’t necessarily take his cynical point of view. Dating over the internet has just begun and it needs some time one can discount it.

                Having said that, OKCUPID does have a certain reputation for how it treats users. One of its famous messages was sent to the most attractive users on its site. Here I have the actual wording of that very post:

We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid’s most attractive users. The scales recently tipped in your favor, and we thought you’d like to know.
How can we say this with confidence? We’ve tracked click-thrus on your photo and analyzed other people’s reactions to you in QuickMatch and Quiver.
Your new elite status comes with one important privilege: You will now see more attractive people in your match results.
This new status won’t affect your actual match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match’s answers. But the people we recommend will be more attractive. Also! You’ll be shown to more attractive people in their match results.
Suddenly, the world is your oyster. Login now and reap the rewards. And, no, we didn’t just send this email to everyone on OkCupid. Go ask an ugly friend and see.

                Now, oddly Jake hasn’t yet written about this (yet). His site does appear to be updated fairly infrequently. But any dating site that sends such things to its users plays a cruel game, akin to Lacrosse, easily one of the meanest games ever. Those users who failed to receive this message, I’m sorry but random dating site algorithms thought you were unattractive.

                His modus operandi appears to be as a twee sort of adult. The one casually name-dropping bands and having more energy than he knows what to do with, hence all those messages he sent out. If you saw this guy in any record store, anywhere, he’d be the guy you’d tell what band you liked and he’d spit out an answer for what you’d like. And he’d be right; you’d adore him for it. He is a human, living breathing version of your last.fm account. 

                The online world isn’t as nice. His site seems to acknowledge this, though perhaps being rejected isn’t always a bad thing. I’ve known friends who kept job rejection letters and later looked at them and laughed. Maybe his site does a little of that too. When he’s met that certain someone and together they can bask in the glow of their computer monitor, reading and laughing at each post. Seeing his explanation for why he sent each and every message. How each analysis brought him a little closer to emotional nirvana? Perhaps they might even share some of that wisdom with their first child, Galaxie 500’s album “This is Our Music”. Then their next child “Slanted and Enchanted” can also appreciate his father’s bizarre sense of humor.

                But I digress. I enjoy the website a lot. I want Jake to continue with it, with all his trials and tribulations on the alternative dating site OKCUPID. His evisceration of the Ice Breaker feature is great, sometimes it just gives you random things you both like, such as “Carpets”.

 Live free and prosper Crazy Pablo.