Starting a standard format for weekly meta posts. My reading and study backlog is getting under control now and nothing crazy is going on so I’m going to write more again. Obviously I spare to one meta post a week, but if they start piling up I’m going to feel like a real asshole with no clever title or anything, a blog full of excuses, a house of lies, a Beckett play with NO AUDIENCE. “Oh, look at me in the depths of existential angst with this audience of thousands and critical acclaim, respect from my fellow artists.” Sure, bub. I guess you’re bleak. Lo, but it is I who blog the blart of darkness. None have obscured their toil in more frosty a blackness; it is like unto the proverbial liquorice milkshake, inside the proverbial broken refrigerator at the bottom of the proverbial dead sea, inside the proverbial overlong sentence inside the proverbial blog no one reads. Ugh! That’s rough. Is it even possible to go on?
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Started this post on 4/20. Had some stuff to say. Then I got hung up on the title. There’s a thing in WordPress (there it is) where it automatically capitalizes the WP so the spelling is “on brand” I guess is how they would say it. No big deal, but this is Hitler’s bday. I am not a fan, and don’t like to make any hints otherwise. Of course, if you have not read much anti-fascist literature (or websites) you may not be hip to the common abbreviation of “White Power”. I’m following people on twitter who use WP for “West Philly”. They are not Nazis(, Mom). But I would never use it for anything. WordPress for is always one word, no big P. Outside of WordPress that is.

Also this logo is not an endorsement of the terrible president, mediocre Wu-Tang album or absolutely wonderful Hello Project unit...or maybe it is. I do not work for the company.

I should mention at this time I was not high. That’s my totally sober thinking process. You can see how weed doesn’t really work that great for me. Haven’t touched the stuff in years, or any stuff, which basically means avoiding all friends. I am in favor of full legalization, not so I use it, but so I can not feel the need to prove I’m down with law-breaking. It would become a super-corporate branded product overnight and lose all coolness. You’d no longer need to know a guy to score, you’d just hit up 7-11. The same people would do it, but would have to be the ones making the lame excuse for engaging in such uncool behavior and then I guess would try to get you to snort bath salts or cat litter or whatever. (“Dude, I can’t snort this litter by myself, I’d feel like some kind of loser.”) Not against it, I’m just saying.

All that stuff is nothing like drinking, obvs. Oh shit, it’s also nothing like blogging. Total thinking out loud moment. See, I was going to try to pressure more peeps onto WordPress. Most of you/my blog buddies of the past used to use livejournal or Blogger, and now use Tumblr, Twitter, or gave up and just use Facebook. I use the downloaded platform WordPress on my own server, which is admittedly, a bit much. But normal people can use wordpress.com and the whole thing is free and easy as stolen cat litter. I used to say it was for more ~advanced~ internetters, but they make the interface easier every time they update the thing. Yeah, some people use Tumblr just like lj. Most don’t. Nobody cares about pics of your lunch, man. How are you doing? Some of that lj oversharing could get gross and we got over that, but c’mon…a lot of people I new used to write every damn day, like, paragraphs! Twitter is cool, but remember paragraphs not being a special occasion? It wasn’t that long ago. Message board people—where did some of these people go? Some of the best stuff I’ve read online is from people who never had a blog, some went straight into freelancing I guess. That would be the smart option. But some of you have got to be like me: really smart, and yet on another level really, really dumb. Wait, that’s not very convincing. I’m being an asshole again aren’t I. Mostly to myself this time, too. I am the worst. Join me?

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The Philadelphia Art Museum has an ongoing concert series call Art After 5
. I’ve never gone to it. I love the Art Museum but I usually go on Sundays when it’s free. Usually because I’m broke but also because it’s like church to me. It’s the only place I get those churchy feelings since before I figured they were making all that up shit up. Let’s not get too heavy into it.

But it’s also the anniversary of the Japan’s 3/11 disaster (already yesterday there), and the Japan Society donation box over on the right is not going anywhere. One of their members recorded their moment of silence this afternoon:

A moment of silence for Tohoku 3/11 at Japan Society by suteebu

There’s nothing else I can say about it.

The museum did not have a moment of silence. It was the day before. That would be a bit much, wouldn’t it? They had a rock show to put on. (It was creepily silent in the rest of the museum I wondered off in after the show, never seen it so empty.) I came in halfway during the first set and the modest setup thundered through the entire lobby of the west entrance. The front hall where they performed is marble floor-to-ceiling and that ceiling is 100-foot high. (I’m guessing.) It’s not the ideal place for a rock band. There were some mic feedback issues but overall the sound was nothing as bad as say, the cheap seats at Madison Square Garden. Here is my watercolor impression of the band from the marble staircase/bleacher seating:

I’ve been trying to not pressure myself into carrying around a real camera again, but that is obviously bullshit. I’m just being lazy now. See that glitch in there? Happens all the time now to some degree when I send something to flicker or email. Sometimes the result is interesting. Here it isn’t. And the lens is obviously wacked. Whatever, you get the idea. It’s a weird setup. You got some tables on the sides too, they had like, art food: wine, hors d’oeuvres, etc. As a former art student I am a great lover of art food, when free. Here it was not. I did without.

Now you might be thinking, this is all pretty Not Punk Rock. No…if you think Punk is a list of should and shouldn’ts, I guess not. None of my various contradictory sensibilities were offended. I think punk is about reality and the reality is that hall is an alternative venue. And I think the Museum is a place for any kind of work which you mentally have to put in it’s own context. That said, the people who insisted on getting served while in the bleacher seats where a bit distracting. I’m strictly a cafeteria-eater at this place. I can’t get into the upper-class aspect of it. (Literally.) Even waiters seem like a class above me. Sometimes I think, one day that could me…a waiter. Damn. It is but a dream, and I remain…a fool. What?

I got up closer for the encore, but I don’t know what I was thinking with this overglaze. Did I mention a kid was dancing up front the whole time so they let him play maracas? That happened. It was him and then a hippie grandmother and then maybe some secretaries? That’s probably wrong, but they were some professionally attired middle-aged women in there too on the dance floor for the last couple numbers. Then a fight broke out, the curtains were lit on fire, and they smashed the Archer statue with their guitars, rode it down the steps and straight out the front door, marble chunks flying everywhere. Nah, that last part didn’t happen. That’d make the news.

Someone from Philly’s Japan American Society posted this video on twitter:

I’m in the shot somewhere. Big time fame. %