J and I fought all the time. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, I did, but I knew I wasn’t in love with him. He was a rebound, a boy I met after my first true love knocked the wind out of me. When J and I met I was doing crazy things like dancing in typhoon rains and writing love songs in G-D-Em-Am chord progressions, for the boy who broke my 20-year-old heart.
J saved me, in a way: he taught me what a real relationship was. How the mundane, the annoying, and the sweet were all rolled up together, indivisible, as if you’d rolled up oatmeal and raisins in cookie dough. J would pick me up from work in a heavily guarded building in the middle of a busy business district. I was almost always late, but he’d drive around the block for 30 minutes until I appeared, breathless and running, by his door. I bought him a pug. I met his parents, we vacationed in Cebu with his family. Sometimes he would have lunch with my mom without me, they liked each other that much.
But the fights were always terrible — I always felt that he was holding me back, from someone, something, somehow. I remember a particularly bad one: we were eating at a pretty high-end restaurant, the kind with oysters on half-shells served with mignonettes and Lalique wine glasses. I told him I couldn’t eat while looking at his face in front of me, and could he please leave. He got up, stood outside the restaurant and waited for me to finish dinner, then brought me home.
Our relationship may have evolved out of my need for a lot less emotional intensity, but it taught me a lot about the push and pull of coupledom. I learned how to give of myself, I held my anger. However, the feeling of being trapped never left me– it contradicted the fact that I grew to love him exponentially the longer we were together. I didn’t understand it, and in the end we broke up after being together almost three years. I still consider him one of my dearest friends.
This was my song for J:
At one of those breaking up and getting back together moments, J told me this was his song for me.
2005
D played bass in a band that my (then) band gigged with fairly often; we’d bump into each other at random shows and eventually became each other’s band contacts. Setting up shows together evolved to watching shows of other bands together; he was always down to go to a concert and I always had a (+1). We were both music nerds; he knew everything there was to know about Brit-pop and LA bands, and he was constantly making me mix CDs. I was going through a crazy period in my life, though, and my feelings for him were constantly vacillating between fondness and love and friendship and nothing. He introduced me to Myspace, the Magic Numbers, and girls who stalked me and left me mean messages on the Internetz because they liked him.
“I never thought you wanted me to stay, so I left you with the girls that came your way”: I heard this Magic Numbers song and immediately related it to D.
One day, this song came on the radio. He said he felt this way about me: “Everybody wants to go forever/I just wanna burn up hard and bright/I just wanna be your firecracker/And maybe be your baby tonight.”
2009
I always thought this was the most beautiful love song written, and was so jealous of everything about it — Conor Oberst is such a poet, and he was lucky to have loved somebody else so much, he wrote this song, which inspired this video. I’d always tear up watching it, it was better than Oprah.
I always wanted to be one of the people in this video, and feel every uber-intense gooey seratonin-induced emotion that love gives you. And now I am.
And I realize that I need you, and I wondered if I could come home.
I wrote this blog entry six years ago. In it, I talked about my life 11 years ago, and how it paralleled Andie and Blaine’s in “Pretty in Pink” because my boyfriend then was really rich and there really seemed to be this class divide between him and his friends, and me and my friends. This entry, made before Youtube, references every scene I could relate to.
Pretty in Pink=My Life 5 Years Ago
So I was watching Pretty in Pink with Mark last night and I realized that it was the story of my life five years ago! (I then googled his name and it turns out some other girl believed my ex was also Blaine to her Andie! I am not alone!)
He does pithily look and act like Blaine, in fairness.
It was also a coinkidink that I was playing “Rumble Breath Man” right before we started watching and I was telling Mark how most of my songs were written with CTCFS (what we called said Ex) in mind. Proof:
#1 The Party:
The party where they first go to where everyone was stoned and drunk and Andie felt totally awkward? That was me! I was so scared to meet his coño friends because I didn’t have the right clothes, the right address, the right look…one of his drunk friends even told me, “Oh, you finally broke through our group…” or some shit like that.
God. As if it was everyone’s lifelong dream to sit on the coño bench.
#2 Duckie:
Ed was my Duckie! My friends used to diss CTCFS to his face all the time (”Make pa-share the ice cream? Pa-share?! PA-SHARE?!? Can you make pa-tuhog your eye?!? Bwahahaha!!” or “Lille! You’re ditching us to hang with Mr. flavor of the month?”)
The same from Ducky: “Blaine? That’s not a name, that’s a major appliance.”
Ed even wrote CTCFS a break-up letter (separate from mine!), saying “you are a spineless fuck…” or words to that effect. Hee!
#3 Le Freak C’est Moi!
Tapos the part where Andie freaks out on him in the school hall? I totally wish I had done that to him instead of freaking out to my friends outside the 7-11 in Malate right after a reading in Caribana. “If somebody doesn’t believe in me, I can’t believe in them.” Whoo!!!
#4 “I don’t want you to take me home!”
The part where Andie doesn’t want Blaine to see where she lived kills me. The first time CTCFS picked me up he said, “I’ve never been anywhere like this before.” (This=Skwaking). On one date, he picked me up first then went back to Forbes (where he lived) to pick up his friend! Sheeyet. I guess cause he didn’t want his friend to see where I lived. And of course in the end, his car stereo was stolen right outside our house in Baguio. But that house was in a really nice area, so that’s pretty ironic. Hee.
Man, young love. It is hilarious and cute now, but hurt like hell when it was happening. So watching that movie was like reliving my past. I hate the ending though; I forgot that Blaine and Andie ended up together. I would never have let that happen. But read what Jon Cryer has to say about the ending.
Seriously? All I wanted was to live in a bubble with him. Aww!
If you’re in a chick singer in LA, note that West Indian Girl is now looking for a permanent replacement. Also, Trent Reznor is currently in the Philippines, touring with Nine Inch Nails. Wonder if he’s participating in history and attending President Cory Aquino’s funeral?
WhatFar*Out, the best Brit-pop band this side of the Atlantic When Aug. 8, 9 p.m. Where CHARACTERS (old town pomona), 376 E. 1st st., Pomona, Ca. 91766 Playing withMOSCOW, and AMAZING REVERB ENGINE
I’ve loved Far*Out for a very long time, and now they finally have a video that is awesome the way monkeys and bunny rabbits are awesome. Aww.
1) I’ve never seen No Doubt live, even though it was my favorite band from 1995-2002 If … I had seen a lot of No Doubt shows in my youth, I would probably not have been as blown away by Gwen Stefani and company. The venue wasn’t gigantic; it housed thousands, but it wasn’t an arena. But we were seven rows away, and I could see her sweat glistening off her abs, the fake lashes, the hulking skulking way she danced around the stage. Although she opened the set with a bum microphone (they had to switch mics THREE TIMES during “Spiderwebs,” we didn’t hear anything until the chorus! WTF?) I was transported to my 15-year-old self again, waiting for No Doubt videos to come on MTV.
2) I watch a lot of shows — maybe two or three a week. If… I didn’t watch so many concerts as a music journalist, I would probably not have had a good point of comparison for No Doubt. As it was, I was totally blown away by the production value of No Doubt’s set. The visuals were created with After-Effects. The lighting was impeccable. The sound was full. The whole band looked great — everyone was in black and white outfits, Gwen Stefani had three costume changes. Everyone PERFORMED.
No one was in a dirty shirt, no one was looking to the ground while playing guitar. Tony Kanal jumped four feet into the air while playing bass, and still connected with the audience. I had forgotten what it was like to watch a really good, produced show — watching someone with money to spend on lights, clothes and sound makes for a really entertaining experience. I love watching a show that’s light years away from what a recorded album feels like, and the difference between a regular concert and a show like Monday’s No Doubt show is like the difference between going to Disneyland and going on rides at a county fair.
3) I have no qualms about going to reunion shows of bands I love. If … I were a purist, I would avoid reunion tours because of the bands’ motivation. Whether or not a band is performing because they need money, even to an audience that they rejected years ago, is irrelevant. I can accept nostalgia acts because I grew up abroad and didn’t have a chance to see any of these great bands before I lived in the States. So whenever I hear that a band that was super important to me — the Police, the Pixies, Smoking Popes — is touring again, I jump at the chance to see them. “Tragic Kingdom” was my 1995 soundtrack. When I started dating my first real boyfriend, we broke up and got back together constantly — so much so that he appropriated “Ex-Girlfriend” and called it my song. In 2002, my father, my sister, my brother and I went on a road trip around North Luzon; we listened to No Doubt’s “Rock Steady” and Bob Marley’s “Legend”constantly because it was our only musical middle ground. After my father passed away, I stopped listening to “Rock Steady,” because it would always make me sad.
So is No Doubt relevant in my life RIGHT NOW? Maybe not. But does it mean I love them any less? Not at all.
4. I love watching shows in big cities. If… I weren’t in a great big metropolitan area, I wouldn’t have seen Shirley Manson, Garbage’s lead singer, sing “Stand and Deliver” with No Doubt. In LA they can pull out various celebrities at concerts, giving it that extra ooomph. When Shirley Manson came out (braless, natch), the hairs on both my arms stood up and my friends and I couldn’t stop screaming. Oh. My. God.
I walked out of the Gibson Amphitheatre (formerly Universal) exhilarated, with my ears ringing and a pulled calf muscle from jumping around so much. We had boss seats (thanks Annette!) I can’t remember the last show I enjoyed this much. Well, maybe Phish — but only because it was surprisingly fun. But that’s another blog entry.
As a little intro, we thought it’d be cool for the three of us to talk about what song we feel best fits our little towns. Read Brian’s here and Araceli’s here.
Because I have lived mostly in Southern California, and just recently in Los Angeles, most of my songs of ‘home’ are about California. Joni Mitchell’s “California” has always been my favorite, and Phantom Planet’s “California” reminds me of the period in my life when I was new to Orange County, and “The OC” was new to Fox.
But this is a blog entry about Los Angeles. Sometimes all you see is a sprawling gray wasteland of freeways, traffic crawling at 5 miles an hour. Sometimes your vision is blocked by a hot black vinyl miniskirts topped by a hot pink wigs biking around Hollywood. Other times there are gigantic houses in the hills of Pasadena, and others there’s nothing but the sound of the surf crashing onto Santa Monica, or Venice. There’s Little Tokyo, Olvera St., Chinatown and the Hollywood Bowl. The Getty, the LACMA, the hidden art galleries of Silverlake, the studios and theaters in Culver City. There’s so much to LA that it’s a constant stimulant; you either love it or hate it, but there is no indifference; it’s undeniable.
Maybe that’s why the three songs I love most about LA are about despair, disgust and destruction. It’s a paradox, just like the city. Oh, and ironically, two out of three of these songwriters are from Seattle — they write about Los Angeles because they’re jealous of the constant, sunny blue skies!!! Bad Religion is from Orange County though, and Greg teaches at UCLA, so that’s cool.
p.s. Whenever Death Cab plays “Why’d You Want to Live Here” in LA, the crowd always goes wild, like it’s a love song Ben Gibbard is singing to them (I saw this happen at the Greek and at the Wiltern). See? Everyone else here gets it too.
In line with me deciding that I was going to learn to moonwalk on my birthday this year (I set the goal in April), I had been watching a lot of Michael Jackson videos prior to his death. Now, this? Maybe I am the harbinger of doom!
Because The Adventures of Pete & Pete was one of my favorite Nickelodeon shows, I get excited when I see musicians who’ve starred in the show perform (Juliana Hatfield, half of the B-52s, Michael Stipe, Lucscious Jackson).
Tonight, Syd Straw , who played math teacher Miss Fingerwood (she also played bass in the Blowholes in the ep “A Hard Days Pete”), will be at the Echo for FREE. Openers Rich Mahan and The Unlawful Kings will also be performing at the Grand Old Echo, a country music themed night PLUS barbecue (at the back porch: The Preachers Son). Oh, and did I say it was free? Cause it is. And all ages.
A few weeks ago, I discovered that “Howlin for Judy” by Jeremy Steig was the origin of the Beastie Boys’ classic, “Sure Shot.” (We were listening to “Droppin’ Science: Greatest Samples from the Blue Note Lab” at a friend’s house.) It also has the song that that Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode” takes its hook from, “The Edge” by David Axelrod & David McCullum.
I can die now, but from envy; Brian is at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago while Araceli is at the Siren Fest in New York. Wadup, LA?
Brian sent me this invite to this Vice/Colt 45 party with Har Mar Superstar headlining at the Three of Clubs. It’s free, and it says open bar all night, but you have to RSVP here. He said, “Being on lists in other cities makes me sad.” Oh well. Tortoise is playing a ‘by-request’ setlist at the Pitchfork Music Festival tonight (not yet sold out! Omgz), so I don’t know if it sucks to be you or if it sucks to be me!
