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autumn | nin | mr. goodbar | stars below | b.s. bassist award


today is the last day of autumn, and it is 27 degrees outside. last night it got down to about 17 degrees. something tells me that last year's mild winter will not have an encore.

i'm continuing my unexpected re-awakening of my long-held appreciation for trent reznor. some people you just come back to. i was sifting through my cd case a few weeks back and decided to pop in the downward spiral. i knew that the 10 year aniversary remastered verison was coming out, and that was perhaps the subliminal trigger.

in the past several weeks i had been listening to eric clapton's slowhand, and ben folds five's second cd, the local rock compilation, lowdose exposure and jesse payne's album. i think there was a day in there somewhere when i threw in miles davis' bitches' brew when i was driving downtown, and it completely surfaced my latent omegaman complex.

whereas listening to miles davis made me long to be the last man on earth, listening to the downward spiral nudged me to consider taking the proper measures to insure that my dream (or delusion/complex) might some day be realized.

or maybe its just a truly great work of sonic genuis. because of this, i got ...and all that could have been, which is a 2 dvd set of nin in concert on the fragile 2.0 tour in the summer of 2000. i had the luxury of watching the phoenix show in june 2000 from the opulent vantage point of a party suite overlooking the crowd. there's something pretty obscene about watching the default disaffected/disturbed sonic anarchist of our era, from corporate seats.

that could pretty much sum up my experience in that town. a really pretty setting for a bunch of truly evil mutherfuckers. you know who you are.

the plus side is that i recognized the phoenix arena on the dvd, and i remember the opener, a perfect circle, mentioning that they were filming that night.

i didn't really do anything this weekend. i bugged out on ashby's post-finals bash, bugged out on a birthday party at a martini bar, slept in both days, went to see the new johnny depp movie, finding neverland. i loath victorian era movies, and i liked this one, so there you go.

did some laundry, editing the new album, now re-titled,

"fuck this shit, i'm tired of editing this shit" (subtitled: fuckin' bullshit).

i basically ate, slept, hung out with jen. it was cool being laid back for once.

judah gave me some rough demos for two tracks that i am to play bass on for his band stars below, immediately after new years. pretty punchy modern rock stuff, with a sting-like ascending chorus line on one track. it shall be fun.

looking for mr. goodbar...

i watched most of the '77 movie looking for mr. goodbar. this was the film that embodied the dark side of the sexual revolution. to think that my mother, around '80 began dating again - juxtaposed against this film - frightening.

to think that this film, based on Judith Rossner's devastating 1975 best-seller, was based on an actual 1973 incident... it makes the movie seem almost too sordid.

even though this movie came out 27 years ago, and i remember watching it as a kid, i was stunned at how violent it was. and how sexy. richard gere looks like jeff buckley on viagra. it was filmed in '76, and everyone is doing coke, and fucking. it was fabulous, and edgy, right up to the part where diane keaton gets butchered with a knife in her studio apt. while getting raped by a crazed tom berringer.

that part wasn't so good. and lastly...

i was voted the best bassist in the folk-rock category on the ever expanding garageband.com. hmmm. i guess that means i can retire now.

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