Piety

is for weaklings and conformists.

I'm going to North Carolina.

Why is it that the only people who list my photos as their Flickr favorites

are handcuffing and barefoot fetishists?

NCBBQ: Eastern Style Joints

Last night, I made a spreadsheet of places that might be worth checking out. During the day, I have substantially less fun making spreadsheets. Hmm.

NCBBQII begins tomorrow.

Not
Soon
Enough.

I'm out of here at 5pm tomorrow and already have my first-class upgrade for the flight to DC. Free bourbon! Lott and I need to hit the road EARLY AS F*** on Friday to make it to Greenville (NC) before the lunch rush. No later than 7am. I've been practicing by setting my alarm for 6:30, but I still can't get out of bed before 8.

The only argument people understand.

Here's a token CNN article, with token quotes, pointing out how gas prices have caused the biggest annual drop ever in miles driven and a tremendous increase in public transit usage. You're learning, people!

Toledo Iron Works, New Orleans, La.

The next batch of photos will come from a trip to NOLA this spring. I like this new policy of one blog post per Flickr upload. Do you?

Late Night(s) on the MILF Divorcee Circuit

They always come out of the woodwork in even numbers from Brookline and New Hampshire. They flirt with the city and its filth and its youth and its music. Sometimes they have sheepish, middle-aged non-husbands in tow. Sometimes they dispense advice about waiting to get married and when to produce offspring. I think: if they can find these places so easily--Wally's and Toad, for instance--are these places really that cool? Why do they start talking to me if they don't want to talk to me?

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: DPW Checks the Flags Before the Parade Begins

Start here, scroll down.

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Refreshment Stand

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: The Parade Arrives at Walnut Street!

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: SPD Honor Guard

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: SPD Auxiliary

They're not cadets, right?

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Biker Cop

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: SFD Prius

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Waltham American Legion (Post 156) Band

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Laid Up

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Driving

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Watching

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Picking up a Water Bottle

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Poland Spring!

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Volunteer Tossing Water Bottles to Marchers

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Aleppo Shriner

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Aleppo Shriners

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Tattooed Spectators

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Happy Nuns

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Expressing Displeasure

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Aleppo Shriners

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Middlesex Sheriff Charger

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Middlesex Sheriff Honor Guard

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: The Crowd at Central Street

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Jazz Band

These guys are awesome. The whole band plays atop a vintage pumper outfitted with a mixer, amp, and speakers all around. They sound great!

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Happy Marcher

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Kids with Fake Dogs

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Spike's Hot Dogs Guy

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Watching from Within

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Free Candy

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Celtics Fan

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Roma Band

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Fans of Roma Band

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Keeping the Girls Cool

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Mayor Curtatone Approves

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: Ready for Anything

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: The Lone Shriner

Somerville Memorial Day Parade 2008: The Aftermath

I interrupt these 97 new photos to bring you the Somerville Memorial Day Parade in its entirety.

Click here for 41 shots on Flickr.

Creamery, Lubbock, Tex.

Ruins, Lubbock County, Tex.

Bus Station (#2), Lubbock, Tex.

See also #1.

Chair, Texas Tech University

Chair, Texas Tech U

Chair, Texas Tech U

Wreck, Seagoville, Tex.

This was a good one. It appeared that someone dropped an empty flatbed trailer and fled. The trailer appeared to have hit this pizza delivery car and forced it into the guardrail. Cops were placing evidence markers all over the road and diverted all traffic to the rte 175 service road.

Seagoville, Tex. Police

Gun Barrel City, Tex.

There is a place with this name.

Abandoned Theater (#2), Athens, Tex.

Abandoned Theater (#1), Athens, Tex.

Ellio's Pizza

Brotherly late night ritual.

Roadside Easter Bunny, College Point, Queens, New York City

Western Farm Service

Oil Fields, Bakersfield, Calif.

Bakersfield, Calif.

Wreck, Monrovia, Calif.

The Contested West--Redlands, Calif.

This is all that remains.

Sun City Mortuary (#2), Perris, Calif.

See also #1.

San Diego PD

San Marcos, Calif. FD

San Marcos, Calif. Fire

Winter in Teele Square

Wreck, Kansas City, Mo.

Not everyone makes it home from the Road.

Kansas City, Mo.

Very little was open this day...but we still went to work.

The bag always follows.

This is somewhere in America.

Hotel Night--Kansas City, Mo.

It was ten degrees out and I didn't want to sleep. I ended up going to a bar and working on song lyrics for an hour or two.

Dutchess Diner, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Excellent Corporate

Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

97 new photos coming to Flickr.

I just went through all the spring shots from my D50 (fancy camera), and I picked 97 to post. Tonight I'll go through all the shots from my not fancy camera and pick more.

BIKE ACQUIRED.

A lot of people around me really want to be worshipped.

You probably think this post is about you.

I am listening to "Painted from Memory" by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach Over and Over Again.

Potential New Bike

Gary Fisher Artemis:

• Fixed Fork
• 24 Speeds
• Big, fat, slicks
• $399 at WheelWorks
  

The sales dude was very helpful today. I might pick this up tomorrow!

"Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous."

--Nathanael West

Great career choices for creative, culturally critical nonconformists:

• Rock Star
• Novelist
• Reporter/Nonfiction Writer
• Photographer

Done with MP3s.

When you buy mp3s, you don't get much, and the artists probably don't get much, either. You don't get carefully chosen photographs, essays, acknowledgements, or songwriting credits. You don't get something you can hold in your hand. And artists probably get screwed by distribution deals. I've weaned myself from DRM mp3s to DRM-free MP3s back to CDs.

Side note: I just completed my first-ever purchase from CDBaby.com. A huge fan of independent music, I can't believe it took me this long to actually buy something there. Check out their about page. It's a compelling story: independent web store founded by an independent musician. They claim to pay artists three to six times what major distributors pay.

Eastern Carolina Barbecue Hitlist

I've googled and googled. The guide books and barbecue societies and tourist websites all say to go to the same five places. They may be the best of the best, but I want the realest of the real. I want vinegar-based pork BBQ in its native habitat.

The folks at WITN, the NBC affiliate for Greenville, NC, have assembled this webpage of several dozen local establishments.

Nothing on the list seems to be west of (or even near!) RDU. There are unheard-of towns like Macclesfield (pop. 458) and Trenton (pop. 206)that are probably photogenic delights. Places with names like Kill Devil Hills and Hookerton. There's even a place way out in the ocean!

This is seriously cool. I wonder how many of these towns and eateries we can get to, how many people we can talk to, how many geographical oddities we can experience, how many photographs and stories we can take away.

Where's my f------ money?

Tax Day has come and gone. Still no refund from MA, still no "stimulus" from the Feds.

Hanging Memorial Day Flags in Somerville, Mass.

The crew just went down Broadway.

Hanging Memorial Day Flags in Somerville, Mass.

The crew just went down Broadway.

Hanging Memorial Day Flags in Somerville, Mass.

The crew just went down Broadway.

It is nice

to be back in my natural habitat.

YOOP08

OFFICIAL TAGLINE: WHY ARE THEY GOING? 'CAUSE YOU'RE NOT.

Infrastructure Update

New song, "Graduate School," will be done this week. It's the finest in double-edged swords...

Only in the American workforce

can you be attacked and your character defamed for not being positive enough.

Hybrid Yellow Cabs of New York

By 2012, all cabs are supposed to by hybrids. On the streets yesterday I saw the following hybrid models: Toyota Prius, Camry, and Highlander; Ford Escape; Nissan Maxima; Honda Civic.

history of confrontation

from knife fights pocket knives to pocket vetoes

irreverence

can it be taught?

positive psychology

not my favorite thing

Assholic Comment of the Day

I just helped move my brother out of college, and somehow we ended up talking about the song used in a recent Dockers commercial*. We googled the song, and found it on this message board. One user who comments on the song says:

I love songs with live musicians playing in the background !!!!!!!!

?!??!?!

Is there any other kind?

*I will attempt to launch an advertisement immunization program here soon.

The Greatest North Carolina BBQ Webpage Ever

From Rob Lott: An interactive trail map from the NC Barbecue Society.

It looks like a noble plan, but it is weighted toward variety and not vinegar (that's another link from Rob). Truthfully, I quest to find non-standard, rural, Eastern joints, where the dip is nothing but vinegar and peppers.

Skylight Inn is amazing (I wear their t-shirt a lot). Wilbur's is pretty good. B's was closed when I went. In order for Eastern North Carolina BBQ to be a true tradition, it must be served at more than three places.

Almost all family-run BBQ joints are closed Sundays, so we have a Friday, a Saturday, and part of a Monday to eat as much as we can.

"Praying at the Pump"

Speaking of gas, Zach West comes across an article about religious activists praying for cheaper fuel.

White Flight:

LET'S RUIN CITIES AND THEN NOT LIVE IN THEM
AND THEN TELL OUR CHILDREN NOT TO LIVE IN THEM EITHER

Doing Stuff is Awesome

• Session Americana at the Lizard Lounge Tueday
• Some show at Wally's or Toad tonight
• Johnny A at the Regattabar tomorrow
• "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the Palace Theatre Saturday
• Lettuce at the Knitting Factory Sunday

I will continue to blog compulsively as I work from home for most of the summer.

Dawn Report #1

5:45 am, May 7th. Sun fully risen (!) but also fully obscured by rain clouds. Newsradio blaring about gas prices and food prices. Voice suggests we should only blame ourselves since we have barely adjusted our driving habits since crude oil crossed $1xx per barrel. I think: I have no driving habits. Fuck you. And I go back to sleep until 8.

Sunrise, Solstice

Melissa tells me that the sun is already up at 5:30! Indeed, weather.boston.com confirms that the sun will rise at 5:31 tomorrow! This is one of my favorite differences between Boston and New York: the summer days are 30-50 minutes longer. (And October through April is gray).

Shit! I didn't think this started happening until mid- to late- June. One of my pipe dreams during a particularly miserable summer was to wake up and do a bike ride every day at sunrise. I never got up once, and I haven't had an operable bike since August.

I need to get up early tomorrow, and then I need to get a new bike.

Session Americana at the Lizard Lounge

I was so glad that I didn't read their website before I ended up at their show last night; having no preconceptions is often a good thing (even if a challenge for a judgmental bastard). The band provided an unimaginably fluid mix of roots, rock, bluegrass, even a little soul. More than worth the $8 cover. See this show.

Gas

I don't have a car. I don't need a car. I save money instead of spending it on gas. I don't care how much gas costs at retail establishments. I'm tired of hearing about it.

GROUNDSWELL!

required momentum building

Proclivities Live

It must be noted here, on this "gravestone in the ether," that db and rb did an impromptu performance of the grindfolio "Proclivities" at db's house party in Middletown, Conn. last weekend.

We were sitting in the darkened living room, where a few xeroxed copies of "Proclivities" (2004) and Dan's "Sticks and Rocks and Stars" (2003?) beckoned from the bar. As usual, I wasn't sure what was happening when someone handed me an acoustic guitar. Its action* was so poor that only the first two frets were playable. "Get me a real fucking guitar and a beer," I said, then resumed speaking to the people around me. Within seconds, people I don't know handed me a phenomenally expensive Yamaha acoustic and a fresh cup of Long Trail from the keg. So something had to happen.

Dan demanded blues, so I did some standard riffs and all the new Infrastructure material. Once I started playing, I noticed that Erich was now playing basslines on the busted-ass guitar. Dan thrashed about the living room awkwardly, reciting such grind classics as "i can't talk; i'm too busy remembering the alamo" and "same dead animals, great new taste" in a nerdy, loud monotone. Sometimes people clapped.

I don't know what anyone thought, but I don't care**. We didn't perform under a name, but this was as close to a Future Suicide Heroes show I've gotten since 2003.

*Distance between strings and the fretboard.
**I didn't even remember that this happened until this morning. Since doing this show in Middletown 8 days ago, I've been to dinner in the Bronx, home in Queens, in my office in Manhattan, back in Boston, presenting stuff in Guelph/Toronto, at a function in Austin, spent the weekend in Austin, and got back last night. I am very happy that I actually do things while I'm getting things done.

Now taking my life back.

INFRASTRUCTURE vs. Austin!

partnerless, exhausted

Entering Hour 54 of this work week in an Irving, Texas Holiday Inn Express.