God, Fridays are always the worst. Yeah, really.

This wasn’t always the case. Nothing could be worse for me than your standard Monday, once the alcohol has been completely removed from your system, your bowels are essentially decimated from a weekend of bad/binge eating, and you face five straight days of work.

But now, Friday is the new Monday for me, because another weekend in Los Angeles represents another weekend of wasted opportunity. Whereas six months ago I’d be sitting at my desk in my office in New York staring at the clock on my computer, chomping at the bit to get out of the office and into the wild, now I’m actually spending extra time at work, because why not? At least I can wait out the traffic.

(I actually do have something kinda cool planned for tonight: I think I’m going to sit in my parked car outside my house and drink beers. Just to switch things up a little bit, since both my spot on the couch and my chair in the yard are getting seriously strained. In the car, I don’t know, maybe I can pretend I’m on a stake-out or something. That might be cool. And I can still listen to the radio, which is nice.)

I’m 29 years old, in the prime of my life, rich, handsome, and not even a little bit well-hung – and yet I’m going to treat the next year of my life like a prison sentence. I should probably pick up a copy of the Koran tonight to speed things up.

Happy Friday. Monday’s just around the corner, and that means another week in the books. Can’t wait.

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A couple of things before we get to the music:

1) If any of you live in the South Bay-area and have a cleaning lady, please pass her information on to me. I share a bathroom with a girl, and despite being the one covered in hair and possessing a penis, I am the much (much) cleaner one of the two of us. Also, my other roommate – potentially both my roommates, really – doesn’t understand that you must rinse off dishes before you put them in the dishwasher. There’s nothing quite like opening the dishwasher after it’s been run and having to re-wash half the dishes because of caked on debris. Because of this, I almost exclusively use plastic utensils, drink out of keg cups, and do not cook, but I’m starting to feel guilty about that.

(Not because of the environment, but because I keep still forks and spoons from the sandwich shop in my building.)

2) Some blogs you should check out (if you haven’t already): Amish in the City, Cajun Boy in the City (no relation to Amish), East Village Idiot, Midwesterner’s Guide to NYC, and Redacted. Also, I wrote about this previously, but Slack is back (joy!). I’ve also added these to the right, with the other good reads.

3) I forget what three was. If I had to guess, it was probably either another complaint, something about football/fantasy football/the Eagles, or how I’ll be in NYC next Thursday (and in Philly Friday or Saturday). Whatever one it was, I can assure you you’re not missing anything.

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Six Songs

Muxtape is dead; mixwit is alive. All songs can be heard there, with a couple of extra ones.

“Hellodrama” What Made Milwaukee Famous
If I could start a band, it would be a five or six person group with at least two women in it. Our sound would be described as Fleetwood Mac having an orgy with Sly and the Family Stone while the Arcade Fire plays drunk. I could share vocal duties and play either guitar or bass (I’m very talented).

However, if I created a side project that allowed me to delve into my nerdy side and really bring out my Elvis Costello-meets-Weezer influences, this would be what our first single would sound like. It’s strange; I really like this song, but when I first heard it, my reaction was not “Man, that’s a great song” but rather, “Man, that sounds exactly like something I would write if I had any musical talent.”

So listen and tell me what you think of my fictional side project that’s a band in real life. If think we/they have a real future.

“The Only One” The Cure
I’ll tell you, I really do have to be in the mood for them, but sometimes, there’s just nothing better than The Cure. This song also makes me miss London – I was due for a visit in 2008, since I go every two years – but I miss so many things right now that London can’t quite make the list. Sorry. Just really backed up right now.

“Three Days From Now” The Ladybug Transistor
When I was in high school, I used to play a lot of video games (shocking for someone who was smart, had tiny circular John Lennon glasses, had long hair that naturally “flipped” at his shoulders, was 240 pounds and wore a cape, right?). My radio station of choice while playing was the Princeton University indie station, which I believe was 103.3 on the dial. One day, I heard only a fraction of the song, and remembered the lyrics, “Don’t want to get stuck inside/looking at your dry eyes/I want it to look like you are crying.” I never heard the song again. Twelve or thirteen years later – two weeks ago, to be exact – I remembered the lyrics, googled them, and it turned out to be the Ladybug Transistor song “Stuck”. Good song, but this one is better. To my surprise, the band is terrific.

We all find new music in our own ways.

“Divine” Sebastien Tellier
You’d better believe that this one is on heavy rotation when driving around in the car. I don’t even know what to else to say.

“If Your Mother Only Knew” Rahzel
Maybe it’s just me, but few things give me as much joy as a large group of black people exclaiming “Oh shit!” and the like in surprise and joy. I mean, have you watched the reaction of black athletes during the slam dunk competition or the home run contest or when someone gets punked? I can’t name many things that make me happier than their reaction. I sideswiped a parked car on a crowded Venice street a month after I moved to LA and when I first hit the car, there was a large black family walking back from the beach who screamed “OH SHIT!” and laughed and clapped just as I crunched it. I mean, I had just literally hit a car and still was happy, because I saw how much joy that African-American family got out of some chubby white kid with a beard smacking the shit out of a parked car.

The point: in this “song”, when Rahzel starts doing the beat and the chorus at the same time, this is a genuine, African-American “OH SHIT!” moment. Listen to it, and I promise you won’t be able not to smile.

(It’s the second “untitled” song on the mixwit. I can’t figure out how to rename them.)

“Elephant Gun” Beirut
This is what it’s going to sound like when I finally lose my mind. Only there will be more wild animal noises when that happens.

[Have a good weekend]