smelly stink pun

This week’s L.A. Weekly decided that No Age is today’s epitome of punk:

It is then that you get that they are so much more than a band, they are deliverance — they are everything everyone says they are — everything we’ve wished and waited for in punk.

Deliverance? Punk? It’s true that No Age and The Smell are doing something amazing, but punk? What happened to “post-alt-rock-noise-crust-grunge”? Do any of these words even mean anything?

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You don’t have to make a history book out of it, but The Smell definitely started something in this festering city with more musicians than real music. Through a no-alcohol policy, constant local band lineups, and its piss-soaked location, the little venue that could built a dedicated underground following. But just because it’s underground, doesn’t mean it’s punk. And just because cover stories heralding the triumphant return of dingy hangouts for under-supervised teens-cum-Grammy nominees say it’s punk doesn’t mean it is either.

The eastside created a culture as an escape from the mind-numbing, static banality of the mainstream, but—in a fit of irony that only one member of No Age seems to be aware of—is succumbing to the same feedback loop as No Age finally breaks from a year of touring to realize that all the high school kids that saw them on MTV are now massing to form awkward sold-out crowds at the Smell!! The fact that No Age left a burgeoning grit scene and came home to a room full of newbies who were “glancing peripherally for cues on whether to dance and how,” shows the amount of hold the culture industry has and how fast it can ruin disconformity. No one is spared–not even urine-smelling alley venues. Not even No Age.

Does this signal the end of the organic aspect of Smell bands? Are we all bearing witness to another loss of subculture?

When an underground music scene like the one surrounding the Smell becomes massified, it eliminates the essence and detracts from its authentic nature. Because our gritty downtown scene is so hinged on its context, once you send a Smell band on tour, they cease to be Smell bands and all performances not done at the Smell are just attempts to reproduce one. Doing this draws even greater distance between the audience and the band so that a sold-out show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom has no correlation to the actual scene that the band embodies.

No Age is as punk to New York teens being fed Los Angeles underground as the Sex Pistols are to American kids buying Never Mind the Bullocks on iTunes. Which is to say, not a lot).

The dirty underbelly of L.A. music has come a long way since the Masque days of Hollywood punk, but it risks being eliminated at the hands of its inceptors. They created a new culture as a vehicle of protest against Sunset Strip cock rock and although these punk rock ethics had a nice run under the radar in downtown Los Angeles, the influx of publicity to the scene is threatening its fragile existence. Bummer, dudes.

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In another observance that I won’t ramble on about, but did anyone else notice that L.A. Weekly redesigned to match the LARecord font and line-heavy, big-art layout? Way to take inspiration from the low and put it on high as if it was there in the first place, fuckos.

rolling stones

Spent all day watching Rolling Stones movies and hearing people talk about Mick Jagger’s ass. Decided that all the audience members in Rock and Roll Circus are wearing Snuggies and absolutely love the feeling I get when I watch raw subculture overload caught on film. This is everything Lydia’s parent’s fought for and everything they watched disintegrate. It will take several days to process what just happened.

TED

Yesterday was the first day of the Techology, Entertainment and Design convention here in Long Beach. Crazy thinkers like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Liz Coleman, Gever Tully, Jay Walker and Barry Schwartz used to travel to Monterey once a year to give 18-minute speeches that blow invite-only audience members’ collective minds.  But apparently, they’ve outgrown their central California digs and have–for some reason–decided that my town is the place to be for forward-thinking and future-planning. That means that all the aforementioned intellectual celebrities are here–walking my streets and drinking at my bars. Eric and his friends almost went to a party at Smooth’s down on Pine last night but the guest list ended up excluding those that live within five blocks and would stick out like sore, un-educated thumbs.

The front page of the Press Telegram proclaims that “Bill and TED are in Long Beach,” even though Gates just talked about his new vision of philanthropy and how it will revolutionize Africa the same way Windows did to computers (even going so far as to open a jar of mosquitos in the convention center to prove a point?).

Although I do love the $200,000 electric cars unnecessarily roaming around the streets confusing everybody that lives above 3rd Street, I’m not sure if Long Beach is really the place to be setting on a pedestel as an example of elite-level thinking and definitely not the place most-deserving of being graced with such. On the surface, we’ve seem to have built up a pretty little downtown area near the convention center and it sways anime-lovers and fashion jewelry makers alike to have their annual gatherings there. The hotels and bars and restaurants and the harbor and a movie theater with a Borders and a Laugh Factory across the street says to event organizers: this town must really have its shit together. If they had done an ounce of market research, they would have found that the area is a complete disaster as far as both the citizens and the city is concerned. The Pike at Rainbow Harbor–a multi-million dollar project attempting to regain the glory of the original Coney Island of the West Coast–remains half empty, occupied by barely a Coldstone’s Creamery and the Segway Store. Shoreline Village is only cool because they still have an arcade. And the only reason the restaurants down at Alamitos Bay get anyone to eat there is because the Aquarium is open on the weekends. That entire area south of Ocean is a giant tourist trap that represents Long Beach as a comeback kid who can take a city of crime and Snoop Dogg and turn it into a corporation-filled downtown where rich white thinkers are not afraid to host one of the most important conferences of the year.

But really, the only thing that’s changed in Long Beach is that the Redevelopment Agency–which is comprised of a bunch of Orange County fat cats–has falsely assessed the needs of the area and built these tan stucco monstrosities based on Irvine corporate appeal only to discover, after-the-fact, that no one that lives here will ever hang out at The Pike or go to Pine Street (unless there’s a chance of seeing Bill Gates). But I guess that’s what this whole convention is really about–presenting the aura of having all the answers but really having your head up your ass (or down in Orange County).

The world’s greatest minds, as chosen by themselves, gather together in a convention that only other great minds, as chosen by themselves, can attend. They’ve picked the best location, the best theme (this year’s is “Rebirth”), the most important issues facing our society today and the most exhilirating speeches to get the solutions across. They are the ones that are choosing our future and deciding which $200,000 eco-friendly car we should buy. This weekend, the people staying at the Hilton, Radisson and Hyatt on the end of my street will dictate the future direction of our world’s growth efforts, but when it comes down to it, all 50 TED speakers are just as clueless as the town they’ve chosen to play host to their bougoise charade.

misty

I don’t care how stupid this makes me. I’m really into my new bike. It’s tons of pastel and probably a waste of money but, I spent an hour procrastinating writing this article about the Rolling Stones on Film so I could take photos of it in the study. Custom wheels with crazy multi-colored lacing patterns you’ll never find anywhere else, custom purple color just like the one I wanted and the celeste just turned out amazing. Same favorite handlebars and new womens toe clips. I love Long Beach Fixed Gear (and my boyfriend).

midwest overload

I’m not quite sure what the fuck this is, but it better be a Saturday Night Live skit soon. Meet John & Vicky Schroeder with RE/MAX Preferred in Waunakee, WI. They have a website that details the secret to their unprecedented representation technique as outlined in their “cutting edge” Marketing Plan for Selling Homes in Madison, Wisconsin. By utilizing the internet to the fullest extent, the Schroeders can offer you real-time viewer-traffic updates and an internet virtual tour–all on your home’s very own website (and postings on the biggest real estate blog in South Eastern Wisconsin)!!!!!! HOLY SHIT. If you want to pamper the fuck out of your house before you scalp it off to a nice African-American family, then let John, Vicky and their psychic dog Schroe-Yo have their way with it. You’re potential buyers will be whisked away to a virtual land built by a man with a creepy moustache who thinks because he graduated high school he can write marketing plans to sell your home. Everyone is scrambling to get to the full-motion-video-walkthrough capital of the midwest–WAUNAKEE!!!!–so don’t miss out on this opportunity to give this couple a chance at moving out of their trailer and finally not relying on Vicky’s night job. They might even upgrade to the “Cobalt Professional Deluxe” template and maybe someone will tell them that a website is not a blog just because you can update it!!!

I hate that these people have my parent’s names.