courtship dating + the closing of the American mind... .. .

Crystal Castles was totally wasted on stage at their LA show, but i still enjoyed them a lot... although i find it less excuseable for an electronic act to stumble around & fall over to the point of fucking up the machines laid out on stage. i wouldn't mind seeing the Stones (back in the day), Amy Winehouse or a cool local indie rock band owning the stage in a drunken stupor, but when there's nothing more to the act than the music coming out of machines & you can't even hold your own, well... ok, i still enjoyed it, and after a few interruptions, Crystal Castles delivered in the fashion of a punk band or whatnot. i don't think they gave us 100%, which is the whole point of doing a show, dont u think? but still... it was close to that, which is better than nothing, right? the crowd went wild that's for sure. my white shoes were blackened by several stampedes!

Crystal Castles should take a lesson from Glass Candy. now that is what i call having a great stage presence, considering there was nothing else on stage than a singer & a sequencer/synthesizer/dj...

now on a more serious & unrelated note, i just read this opinion & feel the need to share something a little deeper. even if it's not my own opinion, i fully agree...

As an atheist who takes a dim view of the influence of religion, said author Susan Jacoby, I am greeted enthusiastically in nearly all of my public appearances. I am not bragging. It's just that everywhere i appear, "95 percent of the audience shares my political and cultural views--and serious conservatives report exactly the same experience." Indeed, it's getting harder to find anyone who's willing "to give a fair shake--or any hearing at all"--to opposing viewpoints. "Whether watching television news, consulting political blogs, or (more rarely) reading books, Americans today have become a people in search of validation for opinions that they already hold." So when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress, liberals tune to radio or TV shows that mock him and insist that Iraq is lost; conservatives, meanwhile, comfort themselves with echo-chamber pundits who proclaim that victory is at hand. Such close-minded stubbornness is not only lazy; it makes you very vulnerable to being duped and misled. "As long as we continue to avoid the hard work of scrutinizing public affairs without the filter of polemical shouting heads," we have no one to blame for our growing national ignorance "but ourselves."

so true. eh, still... living in America beats living anywhere else! well, as long as we're talking about Los Angeles or New York, San Francisco or Miami, Portland or DC... anywhere else in between would be scary!

love kills

Jill Freedman was born decades after the legendary photographer of ’30s grit, but her visions of the underside of the city of the ’70s have a similar power to shock.
click HERE for more on Jill Freedman... i wish i would have known the New York she captured, instead of the gigantic sanitized outdoors mall it has become. well it still smells like piss on a hot summer night! either way, i love going to NYC from time to time. some of my favorite people in the world are New Yorkers after all.

3 IMPORTANT FILMS

• Standard Operating Procedure
• Fields of Fuel
• War Dance

disco sirens + 2 more MP3s

listen to THIS beautiful 2008 cover of Robyn's 2007 hit.
now stretch out & dance to the disco sirens:


lets end with THIS incredible Holy Fuck remix of Radiohead!

I GOT FINGERED

first things first:
download this amazing cover of let's groove & listen to it as you go along with the pics below... or listen to this one.
Dianna K (an old friend from USC film school) & i had dinner at the Blue Hen in Eagle Rock before heading downtown for the FINGERED PARTY. i didn't have my camera but hijacked Dianna's for most of the evening:

the band was we are the world,
including former work members.

GLASSER

last night i met up with some friends at the Gold Room in Echo Park for 90s AWESOME. i then headed out to the Silver Platter in MacArthur Park to see GLASSER perform. such a cute show...