I always like to hope the next seven days will constitute a FUNWEEK.
Recognise this bad baby? Yeah, you know it. It's the Nokia virtually everyone owns. And mine is the ruggedest of them all. My commodity fetishism tends to run more towards CD's than phones, so I pretty much take my mobile for granted. I mean, I look at the screen, but the same way I look at my television or this computer. I don't actually look at the appliance. I look at the little window at the side. But after dropping my phone for the nth time this afternoon I gave it a real look. My phone is awesome. The buttons are peeling, one corner of the pad is sticking up, and I think either I or a red pen bled all over it. I keep expecting Japanese phone designers to observe me in the quad, take a good, long look at my phone, and then offer me two million dollars for the right to make phones that look just like it. A phoneXcore range, if you will. The indiefication of our popular culture continues apace, and I figure if a horde of dumbfucks will pay a month's salary to Karen Walker to look as though they stepped out of a thrift store, folks will line up to buy something that looks this authentic.
I'm permanently exhausted after not so much burning the candle at both ends the last couple of weeks of the holidays and beyond so much as backing over it repeatedly in a steamroller and then nuking the wider area in which the candle was last seen. This means everything including my room, my appearance, and my time management resemble some form of collateral damage right now. Added to that is the fact my phone isn't actually working so well (this may have something to do with its appearance). So I may or may not have replied to you. Even though I did reply. Although I'm everywhere, really, ubiquitous but bland. And so tired that I'm actually planning how to cope in unfamiliar social environments like the law pit in advance. It feels a little difficult to start talking to a lot of these people now after realising I've unintentionally studiously ignored them for a year.
But I did stuff this week! I got an article done for Craccum, and we had one of our finest hours on bFm after finding the worst compilation of covers ever. Read here: http://www.95bfm.co.nz/default,1736,james_joseph.sm
And last night I went to see The Sneaks at Vesbar. Who were fan-friggin'-tastic. While I like their Buzzcocksy sugar rush punk-pop thing a whole lot, I also admire the way they seem to have networked and achieved, and gotten noticed in the Auckland scene simply by being known as really fucking good guys who are nice to everyone. This might be a sense of communitarianism talking, but I still really think this is how it should be done, even if you lose some of that embarassing 'artist's mystique'. Oh, The Tutts played as well. If anyone's wondering, they walk a fine line between 'Not unlike The Bravery we were a ska band 18 months ago' and 'We will be a ska band again very very soon once the Less Than Jake revival sparks up'. Not bad per se, but already done before times one thousand. Friday I'm going to Dave Pajo, and then maybe I'd consider going again Saturday if Friday's that good, but otherwise, not sure. Sleep? On a Saturday night? That's be cool, yes please.
Here is the greatest video you will watch this week. It's also why I don't think I'm ever going to be able to do the record clerk thing. http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/1667757/
And, as a bonus on a similar note to the video, here is a picture of Pitchfork's Ryan Schreiber as a teenager. Every hipster in America despises and wants to be this man.
But I never wanted to be him until I saw that. Mindblowing.