nah pop, no style

Okay, here’s the EXCITING BLOG PROJECT that I’ve been hinting at for weeks — okay, months — okay, over a year, to some of you.

Today’s the official launch of truespies.org, a new collaborative blogging project based out of Pittsburgh. It essentially consists of myself and a bunch of real-life and internet friends writing about things we’re interested in — music, food, physics, pedagogy, sports, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

I’m excited about the content we’ve already got up — I think some of the other folks who just started posting within the past month or so already have more extensive content than I have from my past two years of blogging.

My new location for nah pop, no style is: http://truespies.org/andybot

I apologize to all of you who have had to move with me once already, when I went from blogspot to wordpress . . . I think for your sake I’ll “simulcast” and start feeding my new blog onto this one so you still get my content (if I can figure out how exactly to do that) but if you can update your links to the new site that would rule.

Go take a look and enjoy everyone’s writing!

Today is Wednesday the 13th. Fairly meaningless to even the most superstitious. Tonight I read at the show at Roboto I mentioned last week — Cages, me, Natty Mike’s Amplifier (apparently this is Evan doing things with, yes, Natty Mike’s amplifier), and Mantooth aka Gregsetsfire aka Greg Mantooth Is A Liar. Not completely sure, but I’ll probably just read the normal stuff. Maybe with FEELING. 7PM. Tonight. Do come.

Other plans for the future include going to check out Chihuly at Phipps. I PROMISE that I’ll actually report back about that. Though my expertise in that area isn’t horribly impressive. What do I know about glass artists? Just that there are seemingly thousands of them in the area exhibiting their work this summer.

I’m hopping onto this last-minute show — next Wednesday, June 13, at Roboto, 7PM or whatever. Cages play, I read, maybe someone else does a thing. Come out! It’ll be chill and fun, I’m pretty sure.

Midnite Snake profile; I didn’t get to do as much with it as I’d have liked, but I might work more with the material I got and republish elsewhere. Regardless, I’m pretty happy with it. Also, Z’EV preview.

Today walking around downtown at lunchtime I saw a man who looked like an old sailor rolling up to the library on roller blades while another dude kind of stared at him, some young clean people (Mormons?) giving away CD’s (DVD’s?) about the Lord, a man who looked like Inpector Clousseau clutching a briefcase, etc. etc. This place is often more interesting than Oakland during the day, surprisingly.

Today’s paper has my pieces about Midnite Snake and Z’EV; pick one up, I’ll post the online versions tomorrow once they’re LIVE. Midnite Snake is the cover and golly gee is the picture insane. Unfortunately, it’s eclipsed by the back cover AA ad, which, of course, is an ass and says — not kidding here — “Pantytime™.”

Okay, I guess I’m a little jealous of Dov for getting that trademarked before me.

JUST A LITTLE.

I’m in the middle of moving. I moved like half of my stuff today, and the rest will go within the week. Expect me happily settled in Regent Square by Memorial Day. Maybe I’ll post PIXX if I get around to taking them. If I know you, expect an updated contact info email message as soon as I get a new phone number (going cellular in 2007). Also I’m gonna be attempting to go without home internet access, while at the same time continuing work on mounting a brand new internet offensive that will hopefully knock your socks off (after they’ve geeked it into a bed).

Hey. I’m reading in this event next week. Do please come and see. I don’t promise I’ll impress, but many others will.

The New Pittsburgh Poetry

May 10, 2007, 7:30 PM, ModernFormations Gallery. $2.

Readers, in order of appearance:

Andy Mulkerin
Jerome Crooks
Jacquelyn Seigle
Thomas Kane
Jason Endress
Tiffany Merriman-Preston
Shannon Norman
Jonathan Loucks
Claire Donato
Jonathan Moody
Jessica Fenlon
Scott Silsbe
Kristofer Collins
Ed Steck

News:

Plotkin and Wyskida were good. Not mind-blowing, but good. They had good parts. And iffy parts. And it was at Kiva Han, which was weird.

This evening I brought vegan sloppy joe to a housewarming potluck and was met with a bunch of bougie (sp?) “arty”middle-aged folks. One of them looked a lot like Bea Arthur and insulted my food offering. Hating her made me feel punk. Giving her the finger would’ve made me feel more punk, but I’m not that good with confrontation, and besides, I didn’t want to ruin the housewarming, being hosted by wonderful friends.

Ed’s making a poetry anthology zine thing that I’m helping with — that’s on tap for tomorrow. They’ll be available at the reading on the 10th. Included is a typically semi-disturbing entry from yours truly. THEN, tomorrow night, Dan Higgs aka Sir Lungfish is playing at Belvedere’s (yeah, weird). That’ll be fun.  Then it’ll be the week again and I’ll go back to work and all that.

Since I sat down an hour and a half ago, there has been a beeping noise coming from somewhere, presumably under or around a desk close to mine, but I don’t think from under mine. I’ve gotten beyond the point where it strikes me as a possible form of torture, but now I’m worried it might be an explosive device. I guess we’ll find out soon enough, eh?

Speaking of suspect devices, I have a preview in this week for Blue Cheer, a band that so far as I know never covered that song and likely never will. In fact they may never have heard of the Stiff Little Fingers.

The plan tonight involves seeing The Lives of Others. The plan for the weekend is a bit hazier, but will hopefully involve a lot of writing my paper for my independent study.

What can I say? Things haven’t been boring lately, but they haven’t been much to blog about either. Left old job yesterday (sad; I was there for five-plus years and really like my coworkers there), started new job today (happy, like my new co-workers there, though being positioned close to the sales people’s cubes isn’t necessarily ideal), looked at an apartment last night (nice, I’m gonna try to get it, I think). What more is there to say about this stuff, really? Just that it makes me more of an insomniac right now, and perhaps a little emotionally vulnerable? So don’t mess with me, okay?

As a quick addendum to the above (below) post about the Takemura album — it’s WONDERFUL music for commuting, especially in the morning, because most of the tracks sound like they could be soundtracking one of those arty films that show things going on in the city, maybe sped up a little so everything’s going really fast and the greater patterns of repetition emerge more clearly. If you want to feel like you’re in one of those films, pick it up and listen to it while you’re walking to work or waiting for the bus or whatever. Not as effective if you’re driving, I would presume.

Nothing major on the docket this weekend besides recovering from a somewhat stressful week, and hopefully checking out Jonestown.