amusing.

This is too funny.

I've always thought this video was goofy as anything, and I'm glad someone else sees the absurdity too. Not my favorite Chilis song, but that part at the end gets me every time.



Also, John Frusciante has another solo album coming out, which I'm looking forward to, considering that almost everything that guy has done since he's gotten off heroin is incredible.

if it's too loud you're too old

So I'm running some errands last night and happen to flip to the classic rock radio station and lo and behold, they are about to play the long awaited single for "Chinese Democracy."

It's probably not fair of me to say it's awful, having never been a fan of the band in the first place. But I get the feeling that the fans of Appetite for Destruction won't find much to love there either.

Since I love all three of you who read this and that Chris Cornell clip posted was torture enough, I'm going to leave it to you to find the youtube video which involves lots of tanks and Chinese people and people throwing bombs and Axl Rose being his usual self.

Otherwise, here's the playlist for the show this week:

erykah badu - didn'tcha know
manu chao - mi vida
al-pha-x - first transmission
funkadelic - i'll stay
martina topley-bird - need one
twilight singers - last temptation
brmc - love burns
cafe tacuba - tengo todo
digable planets - pacifics
diplo - big lost
lauryn hill - i used to love him
habib koite - cigarette a bana
amadou & mariam - coulibaly
red hot chili peppers - my lovely man
jane's addiction - summertime rolls
dengue fever - 1000 tears of a tarantula
the dirtbombs - if you can want
the clash - clampdown / guns of brixton
novalima - zamba lanco
tony allen - ariya
robert plant & alison krauss - rich woman
my bloody valentine - soon

immersion

No pictures from this weekend. My camera was left on my bookshelf and so there's no photos of African kids, Ethiopian revivals, the snow on my car this morning, or anything else.

Caught up with Dan Friday night to hear about the great road trip out west. I live vicariously through the travels of others until I can make these adventures myself. Attempted to create art this weekend that ended up looking dismal. I'll get the hang of it sometime.

People I used to know are evidently all messed up now. I guess we all have an endless capacity for self-destruction, but it still breaks me up inside. In between moments of the truly amazing and sublime, I found myself getting full of despair about the state of things. I'm thankful for very good friends who are solid as anything and have much more life experience than me, who chill me out and put everything in perspective.

Burundi kids were good this week. We have another volunteer who's a little better at this whole keeping order in the classroom thing, which is really good. After the chaos of the last time, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I walk in the door and I'm mobbed with hugs from ten little kids who are all ready to play soccer in the hallway and show me what they're learning.

Went straight from there over to church to meet up with my roommate and hang out with the Ethiopians and witness my very first old-school revival service, Ethiopian style. Watched a woman get healed from blindness. Stayed for my very first meal of Ethiopian food, learned how to eat with injera instead of a fork and knife. Heard stories about Detroit that made me want to go back.

Helped with music on Sunday and got completely lost in the first song, as the key was something like D-Sharp and there isn't really a verse-chorus verse formation to slip into. Thankfully my amp wasn't turned up too loud and I found my groove on the second and third. That current obsession with Fela, Ethiopian jazz and African pop in general really paid off.

and it rips my life away but it's a great escape...

Somehow I managed to limp through a day that started dismal and is finally starting to look up. I'm looking forward to returning back to my apartment, where I'll have a night free to listen to my newest stack of sounds from the library and pull out the paints.

There has been so much in the way of heightened emotions between our own personal turmoils and then the national level of probably the most interesting presidential race of my lifetime climaxing. Everything just feels so amplified, like our heartbeats were run through a stereo system with subwoofers and the reverberations just shook everything up.

I had a lot of crazies at my work this week. After two summers of working the ticket window at the Cleveland Zoo, I can handle most people because at least here, I'm not cussed out on a daily basis. But there, you were all wearing the same bright red polo shirt and you knew you'd probably never see that person again, and here that person will eventually get to know who you are and you are no longer anonymous.

I'm just so ready to get away, retreat and hide, with my stereo and my green tea and my paints. I think it's a Blind Melon and Mark Lanegan night.

she's lost control again...

Evidently, I'm really good at failing.

I think everyone knows this.



For some reason, I like this version better than the Joy Division original.

election day playlist

Requests for Steppenwolf, the Who, and Jefferson Airplane that I couldn't fill.

Otherwise a much more funky show that attempted to be at least a little less political than most. Finally told the caller to go with WNCX if he wanted those tracks. They didn't fit my format this morning for sure.

the pharcyde - hey you
burial - ghost hardware
erykah badu - soldier
the roots w/ jazzyfatnastees - 3 ring government
jurassic 5 - freedom
soul coughing - idiot kings
maxwell - welcome
zap mama - kemake
funkadelic - i got a thing
mala rodriguez - volvere
joy denalane - hochte zeit
love - a house is not a motel
the abyssinians - satta massagana
joe strummer & the mescaleros - techno d-day
aricia mess - tentei
lauryn hill - forgive them father
trevor dandy - is there any love
black crowes - remedy
chambers brothers - all strung out
fugazi - break
habib koite - foro bana
souad massi - eche edeni
love battery - mr. soul
screaming trees - gospel plow
mighty walker brothers - God has been good
rodrigo y gabriela - tamacun
pharaoh's daughter - by way of haran
rufino almeida - bau
pharaoh sanders - oh Lord let me do no wrong

m to the a to the s to the k...

The Holy Ghost Party was a super success and we probably had a good 300+ kids come through the doors for pizza, candy, games. We ran out of candy by the end of the night but it was chaos in the best way seeing the parents chilling out and laughing and the kids running around popping balloons and getting sugared up. I was helping out with the foosball table and the darts but eventually ended up being the roving photographer as more people showed up to volunteer.



I also did face-painting for the first time. Attempting to portray the likenesses of Cinderella and Dora the Explorer was a challenge, but soon the girls were requesting flowers and stars and that was way easier.



We also had a zombie for Obama



Speaking of Obama, I got to hear, if not see, the man himself speak yesterday. Decided at the last minute to join my roommate and her brother and his fiancee and a friend of mine from the station, with whom I spent most of Bruce Springsteen's set making jokes about how every Springsteen song is about the same thing more or less.

I think I'm going to be voting third party this year because I really can't get behind either of the candidates running for policy reasons, but I thought his speech was really good and he had a lot of good things to say about personal responsibility and the state of the world and so on.



So we're all getting these warm fuzzy feelings and such and we get on the Rapid, which is all Obama supporters and then this older white lady asks my roommate to give up her seat. Not me, but my roommate. Being charitable types with respect for elders, we move and stand in the aisle, and suddenly the irony of what just happened sinks in as I look around at the people who are sitting down and they are all white except my roommate, her brother, and a lady sitting behind him.

Dear Cleveland, just so you know, it's not Alabama in the 1950s. Lady, you with the Obama pin, fresh from the rally, are really lucky that you ran across two girls who wouldn't cuss you out for being so oblivious. I don't even know if you were being unintentionally racist, just selfish. I don't think you even meant to evoke an iconic era, but the irony of it was just so absurd that we just started laughing at the situation because what else can you really do at that point?

We hear all these things about a new chapter in history and we get a juxtaposition of the old that exists in much more subtle ways all over this land.

My beloved city, we have so much further that we need to go.