Look, It’s Baseball - Guided by Voices
I finally went to yankee stadium and it was indeed pretty awesome — especially because the yankees lost in an insane blowout to the tampa bay rays.
inspired!
i have had so many inspiring conversations and seen so many inspiring things on this brief trip to new york, without even having set foot in a museum while we were here. from sitting next to my dear artist friend noah at barcade talking about what makes someone pro and how we have to fight laziness every day to listening to stephen malkmus sing about putting a spy cam in a sorority to escaping from the rain in an amazing bookstore in soho where an author i hadn’t heard of was reading perfect funny short passages from his novel to the disgust of the yankees fans around us while their team got blown out and eventually replaced with scrubs from the bench to fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion to a little store on spring where the owners travel around and hand pick beautiful/useful/weird/funny/wonderful things and write about them and display them like it’s a museum.
the point being i thought for a hot second that i wanted to move here but that’s actually just ignoring the real point which is that i don’t actually live the way i want to and i’d like to start. also instead of wanting to buy things i want to learn to make all the things i want to buy, cause i don’t think it’d be too hard. i have a vision of radical sustainability — but without the being a hippie part, with the sensibility of someone who really like deep fried things and bad reality television and ridiculous clothes.
also, noah and i are maybe going to collaborate on a graphic novel about murder and i am going to finish my painting of snooki and my drawings of 90s girl bands for someone who asked for them and a few shitty at life comics — like one with the story nick rider told me yesterday about saying “no you’re welcome” to the lady who gave him a cookie when he was a kid — then maybe early next year i will feel ready again to have a real show and also to sell bunnies and silly posters and refitted thrift store clothes and drawings of cute girls with antlers and stuff online for you.
i apologize for all the run on sentences lately, i am a little overwhelmed and trying to get everything down while it’s still kind of fresh. i love you all very much and i mean that.
here i am
in bed stuy watching my old friend noah and my boyfriend play the new halo game after a night of failing at frogger at barcade, after an evening of a park on an old elevated railroad, and after an afternoon of scooting around queens behind a boy who has something i told him once written on a post it note and stuck to his wall. this was after a day spent gaping at times square and a night drinking shots served by a girl i knew in austin ten years ago who works as a bartender in park slope (which was after a dinner with my old boss, a brilliant beautiful woman who accidentally made me cry once and apologizes for it every time I see her now). and this was after a show that I’ve held a ticket to for over a year and that I’ve been waiting for half my life. And before that, surrounded by Yankees fans who were disappointed, calling their captain a bum, remembering how to keep score, giggling into my hand.
it is good and part of me does kind of wish I lived here, I’ll admit it.
Pavement, NYC, September 24.
So, I wrote this incredibly long recap of the Pavement show with all kinds of positive-adjective filled sentences, weak attempts to articulate the special magic of these people together, defenses of the reunion itself (in short: I’ve been waiting over a decade for this, don’t I deserve it? and also they actually seem like they’re having a lot of fun), comparisons between Pavement and Snooki (lazy happy), who-starts-a-Mosh-Pit-at-a-Pavement-show?!, discussion of the gay teenage boys crushing on SM in front of me, analysis of what was awesome (No Life Singed Her!) and what was missing (Box Elder!) from the set list, and all kinds of love thrown at Bob Nastanovich (the MVP of Pavement, obvs).
And then I accidentally closed the window and it all got erased. Which makes me feel that it wasn’t meant to be. So I’m not going to try to recreate it. But you should know that I finally saw my favorite band, and it was in Central Park after an afternoon of polar bears and truck tacos, and it was perfect.
Right now I can’t sleep even though I’m sleepy because I can’t believe that the show already happened and it’s over now. Is this how people feel after they get married?
PS: the band shirts we saw around us were so hilariously predictable and obvious. It was like an extras director for a movie with a Pavement show in it handed out t-shirts beforehand. Here’s what was around us: a half dozen actual Pavement shirts (dorks), Jets to Brazil, Jawbreaker, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, The Jesus Lizard, Radiohead, Nirvana, and The Silver Jews. Yep. Oh and there was an awesome dirty skateboarding dude wearing a Rush hat. He was kind of my hero.
Jay-Z by Jef Aerosol — from Brooklyn Street Art, via My Love For You.
Source: brooklynstreetart.com
Daily drawing: 01.21.10
Lou Gehrig.
Photobooth photos of Francis Bacon, from the exhibit at The Met.
Taken in July of this year, y’all.
Summer Anne’s Best 125 Songs of the 2000s: #68
“Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys
Read the introduction for details on my criteria.
And if you’re reading me in tumblr’s dashboard, be sure to visit the blog directly for video.
It’s a good thing I left some wiggle room on this list when I first made it, because it would be a travesty for this song not to be on it.
Look. I hate the Yankees. It sucks that this song has become the battlecry of their great but horrifying for everyone else 2009 season, as well as Derek Jeter’s personal batting song (ugh). But I can’t let that influence the fact that every single time this song begins my face lights up and my head starts nodding along.
This shit is just real, real fresh, y’all, and if you don’t love it too than I just don’t know what to say to you anymore.
I am Summer Anne Burton, a Texan living in Brooklyn.
