Not A Dollarshort

Fiery Furnaces

In our relationship, Ben is the one who explores new music. I’m the one who, on first listen to Ben’s music, will then disparage Ben for being an artsy-fartsy fuck who needs to listen to obscure shit or pure pop to feel better than me. Of course, this is all insanity on my part. The thing is, almost without fail, I end up loving the stuff Ben introduces me to. Of course there are exceptions: I will never ever like Scritti Politti on principle alone.

So when Ben introduced me to the Fiery Furnaces last year, namely “Blueberry Boat,” my to-the-point response was “what the hell is this?” After listening to it a lot in the car, I realized that I really really loved the Fiery Furnaces -- especially E.P. (You should really check it out).

After ten years of Ben introducing me to new (to me) music -- you should have seen the shit I gave him when he first bought a Serge Gainsbourg CD -- I've finally come to accept that I do indeed like Ben's taste in music and there is no point fighting.

In fact, I really need to embrace his taste since its the only way for me to discover new stuff. Take Maxi Geil! & PlayColt. Another Ben introduction that turned out to be one of my favorites of last year.

That said, I'm still not going to get into Scritti Politti, though. Or Klaus Nomi, for that matter. Ben will say "you like Sparks, you should like Klaus Nomi."

I won't give on that one either.

Back to the Fiery Furnaces. They'll be performing at the Great American Music Hall this Friday. If tickets are still available, you should definitely check them out.

Flat Stanley

Here's the thing: I'm a shitty cousin.

My cousin, who's in 2nd grade read a book called Flat Stanley where "Stanley" travels the world in an envelope or something Here's the backstory. Anyway, because I travel all the time, I was designated to be the person who would send postcards to my cousin, Alexander.

Since I can barely remember to bring my toothbrush on trips, I wasn't the best travel companion for Flat Stanley. He is due to return back to my cousin at the beginning of May.

Sadly, Flat Stanley (me) only sent him 4 postcards.

Here's where I could use help. If you live anywhere in the world (preferably Europe or Asia) and you're interested in sending a postcard to my cousin's class, please email me. Or, if you live near some sort of landmark, I'll send you a scan of Flat Stanley and you can take a picture of him in front of the landmark.

The deadline is really soon and I'd feel really bad if he gets the least amount of postcards/pictures.

You should see the tribute to the Chinese

Last weekend we went on a hike up in Marin, followed by dinner in Tiburon. For those unfamiliar with Tiburon, this page about Tiburon should sum up the city -- basically, the median income in 2000 was $106,611 and the median income was $1,000,001.

So, you could imagine how seeing something like this little guy in a public area of Tiburon (the main parking lot) was a bit disturbing.

My reaction:

Mena: Oh my god, please tell me that they don't have a black lawn jockey in this parking lot.

Ben: What?

Mena: This lawn jockey! That is just so wrong.

Ben: Wait, there is a plaque.

We then read the plaque underneath and unbelievably they have just justified their little piece of local color with the most pandering inscription ever:

"Dedicated to the first eleven African American jockeys to win the Kentucky derby."

I guess that this was Tiburon's contribution to one Black History month years ago.

Lego Disneyland

So cool: Lego Disneyland!.

Via The Disney Blog, one of my new favorite blogs.

High School Reunion

After reading Heather’s post about high school photos, I turned to a photo that I keep on my desk at work. In this picture, Ben and I are 17 and a couple weeks shy of our first date. At this point, we have barely spoken to each other -- I just grabbed him and pulled him over so my friend could take a picture of us together.

Only recently have I started to notice that we look like kids in this picture -- Ben, especially.

I’m not sure when it happened, but we’ve started to look like we’re adults.

We've got our 10 year high school reunion coming up this year and I'm sort of dreading seeing how old we all are going to look. Despite the fact seeing a beer gut on a jock might bring me some short-term pleasure, the fact that we're all documenting the aging process brings out all my death issues.

I think I may have inherited this from my grandfather who, after attending his 50 year high school reunion in Cleveland (and after driving cross-country and getting sick to the point of near-death), came back home and uttered a simple phrase that summed up his reunion:

"Everyone's dead."