NIN extravaganza!

So I have my dear Lizochka to blame to giving me her love of NIN, back when we started dating...

By the time I got to college I'd obviously heard a few NIN songs that were well-known, like "Head Like a Hole", "Closer" and "Perfect Drug" (the first NIN track I ever heard, since I caught the video on MTV Latin America one day back home in the deep deep South and really liked it), but I'd never had too much exposure to their whole body of work. During freshman year my friend Brian bought The Fragile and so I had my first taste of a full NIN album, and I was intrigued. I didn't like it that much at first, but it grew on me slowly.

Yet for some reason I never went out and got the previous NIN albums that were available, not even as part of my shirt-lived-Napster-download-fest (if you'll recall my school was one of the initial universities sued by Metallica over Napster in early 2000 [damn you, Lars!]), and I sort of forgot about NIN for a few years, though some songs were still on my playlist.

Enter my beautiful girl.

One of my first times at her old place in Astoria I noticed her stack of NIN albums, and my curiosity was immediately piqued, since I had a chance to do what I meant to do 4 years prior. So I started borrowing them and listening to them, and I really got into it. It turned out that the two of us even liked one album in particular the best: Broken. I remember when she asked me which one I liked the best, and I was so happy that it was the one she liked best, too. It really showed me how much the two of us have in common, how much our likes are similar, and how well we mesh together, something that has been proven to me time and time again in the almost year-and-a-half we've been together (June 1st the 1.5-year mark, and we'll be celebrating that one in Argentina, over a big plate of cow).

So where am I going with all this?

Well, about a month ago the first single ("The Hand That Feeds") from NIN's upcoming album (With Teeth) started getting heavy play on K-Rock, and I really liked it a lot. Just last week Trent released a GarageBand version of this single, for people to play around with, remix and create their own versions (you can see the hundreds of results here, and many of them are quite good). On a sidenote: that actually got me really into the idea of giving music-making a try. In fact, I'm buying a MIDI keyboard from a friend of mine and getting a copy of Reason in order to give it a shot to see if I'm any good and if I like it. Wish me luck, 'cause I'm gonna need it.

But anyway, today, while checking out people's remixes of THTF I went over to nin.com to check out when the new album was coming out, and lo and behold did I get a surprise... No, not that it comes out in a week (that was a surprise, too, but it gets better), but that you can listen to the whole frickin' thing over on NIN's official Myspace page! It loads up a little Flash program and you can stream the entire album, from start to finish. Not only that, but you can also listen to it on Much Music's webpage, if you want to go track-by-track.

So yeah, all this coupled with the fact that I have absolutely jack-squat to do at work right now and am billing to "downtime" (legalese for "Do your thang, g!") means that today has become one big NIN extravaganza. I've been sitting at my desk with my headphones plugged-in for a few hours now, and I anticipate doing the exact same thing until the appointed hour arrives and I head home, where I will proceed to load all this stuff up for da pup to listen to when she gets home.

God DAMN I love the internet.

It's wonderful, it's wonderful, it's wonderful, I dream of you

Watching Slava's Snowshow with a friend this evening, I realized more than ever how badly I want to return to Russia.

The show was conceived (and is sometimes performed) by the Russian clown, Slava. Trapped behind the iron curtain, Slava truly pioneered mime and clowning as an art form in eastern Europe. Though perestroika has since wiped away those once all-too-tangible differences between soviet and western cultures, there remains a distinct Russianness about everything that this troupe brings to the stage.

Perhaps it's the splashes of red in his costume.
Perhaps it's the glaring red wash that glows through a stage-full of roiling fog, hissing and swirling.
Perhaps it's the sound of the train that greets you when you enter the theatre and pops up again throughout the show, bringing to mind a transient existence and a willfull escapism.
Perhaps it's the sight of Yellow saying an intimite goodbye to a coat and a hat hanging from a coat rack - a sort of makeshift lover animated by his own arm in the most touching and heartbreaking way.
Perhaps it's the note left by Yellow's coat lover which he reads and then tears up, ripping into shreads that which he believed in so strongly only a moment before until it resembles nothing more than the snow that surrounds him and us.
Perhaps it's the long periods of inaction and limited movement.

V: Well? Shall we go?
E: Yes, let's go.
They do not move.

Almost certainly, it's the finale, a full theatre snow storm that quite literally blinds you with powerful lights and gale force winds carrying imitation snow that flies from all directions into your eyes, ears, shirt, pants, and shoes, all set to the last minute or so of "O Fortuna." It's an experience that takes your breath away and could never be adequately described.

Yes, there was humor. Yes, it was child-appropriate and even cute at times. Most of all, to me it reeked of Russia. It spoke of waiting, of long lines and unanswered questions, of finding color and imagination within the bleak, of hope confused and deferred, but never wholly extinguished, of disillusionment, resentment, and finally, a cathartic redemption of sorts as the snowstorm Yellow anticipated finally came to pass. It made me think, this show, really think - which is unfortunately something I haven't done in entirely too long.

A conversation with my father

“Daddy, just push tab.”
“Push what, now?”
“Tab, daddy. Tab.”
“OK. Tab. Where the hell is the god-damn, oh, there it is.”

:: pause ::

“Daddy?”
“Well shit.”
“What happened?”
“I erased the internet.”

Put it in your mouth

Whenever I see something really cute, be it a baby's chubby cheek or a fluffy fat kitty, all I want to do is pop it in my mouth. I have this great vision of popping a little fluffy something in my mouth, with only its tail sticking out. Seriously, how cute would that be? So cute! Fluff! In my mouth!

This is usually the point where most people walk away from me in disgust. Rest assured, I do not actually want to chew and swallow these cute things. I just have an all-consuming urge to put them in my mouth and hold them there. For safe-keeping? Maybe - it happens in nature.

While trying to validate my insanity by finding examples of other sickos like me, I googled the following things:
chubby cheeks, in my mouth
so cute, in my mouth
put the kitty in my mouth
tail sticking out of mouth
in my mouth, dooce (figured maybe a cite from a reputable internet mother wanting to put her baby's cheeks in her mouth would silence the critics)
in my mouth, smartypants (ditto)
with babies in mouth
I want to put it in my mouth (NEVER google this)
cute, put it in my mouth

I have proven a number of things through this exercise:
1) I am the only person in the world who wants to put cute things in my mouth
2) Crocodiles carry their babies around in their mouths, but only for safe-keeping, not because they are blinded by the cuteness
3) People are really, really fucking twisted

A Toast to Absent Friends... and Absent Toast

This weekend I spent time in the DC area with good friends from Hopkins. It felt really nice to just have some time away from New York and not visiting my parents. Not that I don't love my folks, but most of the time when I'm out of town, that's where I am. This was a welcome break, though I missed my cub very much.

Erica, J.R., and Jenny certainly took good care of me. I was well-fed with whiskey marinated steak, mashed potatoes, salad, and Amanda Hesser's chocolate cake for dinner on Saturday, and apricot ginger chicken with sweet potato pancakes for lunch on Sunday.

Aside from the food (yum yum), some other key weekend moments include:

"I am the god of weather!"

"Love, remember that thing about not singing songs to me one instrument at a time?"

"We're parked in A-G2. Remember that."
"Right. Agh-tchoo. Bless you."
:: groan ::

"A kazoo is so totally an instrument."

"Baya-hee! Baya-hoo! Baya-hah! Baya-haha!"

What fun! Thanks guys.