Tag Archives: morrissey

July 7, 2014 · 3:44 PM

thrill patrol

Getting lifted at a recent Sisters of the Dick function. I spy Sarah, Belle, Haley, Hazel, Lai Guy...who else? Photo by Rosie O.

Getting lifted at a recent Sisters of the Dick function at Fort Consolation. I spy Sarah, BabyBelle, Haley, Hazel, Lai Guy, Bree, Kathleen. Photo by Rosie O.

What up, dandelion heads? The sidewalks and already-way-pale awnings of Greenpoint, where I type this to you, are scorched, and everything is pretty untenable i/r/t heat, sweat, y “why didn’t I bring sunglasses”–style regret. But, since I am (a) wearing my favorite linen jumpsuit (this red paisley deal-o that’s very Skank Joan Baez) and (b) undeterred as ever, I’m out in the world, staring loosely at a paper cup of coffee, and feeling mad aestive.

AND QUITE CLITERALLY PECKING AWAY TO YOU ABOUT THE GODDAMN WEATHER! Is this who I am now? I gently ask you to lead me out to pasture, should this meteorological bloviatin’ go unchecked for too much longer. At least maybe it’ll be breezy there!!!! (Seriously, my temple aches for a gun.)

Some stray addenda plucked from my recent-style lifezone:

– I wrote a Rookie essay about Mark Ruffalo/Sappho, crotchvasions, being a cool sex-haver in stylish denim jeans, and wanting to howl foul invectives at a stunning wonder of the natural world, which is to say, I wrote about the mechanics of sexual consent!

– If you would like to read my first Rolling Stone piece, you first have to guess what it’s abou—WHOA, quick draw, the answer is Morrissey, but maybe give the others a chance next time! You don’t always have to be the smartest li’l eukaryote in the room. (Aw, don’t give me that look—you know that’s part of what I like about you. Your arrogance, and your having-of-a-nucleus. Great work.)

– I cannery stop making playlists! This one has an overwrought name and an overwrought tonality, but what else are you supposed to do when your heart is a protean mass of carbonated slime, the Ramones cover of “Needles and Pins,” glacier shards, this poem by Marianne Moore, yawnin’ yearnin’, actual needles and pins, and discarded gum wrappers? I mean all that in a good way. (Kind of.)

To this end: Here are the jams I’ve been kicking out of late. If you’re not into Terry Reid, unfocused shoegaze, Ike & Tina (or just the latter, at the very LEAST, and if not: I ask you press a finger to one of your pulse points immediately—I’m concerned about your status as a living human person), ’80s coke-shimmy optimism, and/or Mary Wells, TURN BACK NOWWWW.

So that’s WHAT IT IS, your girl–wise, this restless aestivus. Consider my amorphous heart hot and pale, like the shredded awning of a second-rate pharmacy. Consider me “your obedient servant, but also, in this age of supermarkets, your friendly neighborhood grocery store.” Consider me yawning, yearning, slimy, and sunnily shredding.

ABOVE ALL ELSE: Consider me Skank Joan Baez.

I really do feel I’ve earned it. Wouldn’t you agree?

In diamonds and lust,

ARS

collective corrective surgery

An impossible comic by Ken Doll Koch.

Hey smiling strange,

You’re looking happily deranged, which, coincidentally, is exactly the feeling I’m living inside of righ nah, as ever. How’re you, though, really, ya little multigraph? Keeping them terrible teeth ’n’ claws well-sharpened, I hope? Some new things happening to/for/with your girl:

– I wrote my first piece for The Guardian recently, if you want to read me doing my serious voice about Kultural Koncerns.

– As of a week ago, I’m home from a two-leg flânerie to:

Me, me, and Jessica Hopper's knee in our Seattle suite, as told to Instagram.

Me, me, and Jessica Hopper’s knee in our Seattle suite, as told to my Instagram.

A) Seattle, where I attended my first-ever EMP Pop Conference. I presented a paper about the way introversion/extroversion is expressed in Morrissey’s music (and inside/outside of me and other listeners) and appeared on a panel called Critical Karaoke, where I mumbled a weird half-poem I wrote about this Kendal Johansson cover of a Big Star song, feeling pandered-to in the series of yellowed rec rooms where I yawned through the dull romances of my teenage years, and the whooshing ocean.

Radio, my Transmission. Photo by Nick Kozel for City Pages.

B) Minneapolai, where I inhaled Westerbergian air, bought some INCREDIBLY salacious denim shorts in preparation for the looming, blooming SUMMERTIME, and did a little soft-shoe and a little boogaloo (for you) at an excellent Smiths night called Transmission. I’ve since become breathtakingly obsessed with its DJ’s radio show, which I aggressively recommend you check out on The Current, Minnesota’s lovely public station.

– I’m currently scarfing down Kenneth Koch’s visual poems (see all the way above), this teeth-licking, bouncy Italo disco track by Baby’s Gang, the collected Lingua Franca (if anyone can hook my brain up to some old issues, EMAIL A BITCH POSTHASTE), this De La Soul megamix by DJ Platurn, the occidental, wondrous, and hella grisly novel Lonesome Dove, and Arab Strap’s Philophobia, a handsome little cut of which you can hear in this video YouTube sound-o-gram.

– I spoke to the Huffington’s Proste about the tinctures and balms I smooth onto my face in order to feel a little bit less monstrous as a human being with other human beings’ eyes scuttling across her.

Overall: I’m okay. I’m cool. I’m blooming, and looming, and, above all else, happily deranged. I hope the same is true of your own personal soft-shoe-ing and boogaloo-ing, however it is you may be doing it at the moment.

Yours in sweaty fervor,

ARS

feral superman-type outlook

Who watches over you?

What it is, young champions? I’m listening to the same song endlessly and peregrinating around my bedroom doing weird monster-in-love dances. Think Frankenstein joyously throwing daisies into gray water and you’ve basically got it. This happens whenever I set out to do some housekeeping. Fake eyelashes and other assorted grit huddle together more and more menacingly in the corners each day—my offspring. I ask you, how could I possibly murk them?

ITEM: I finished Morrissey’s autobiography earlier this month. It made my bones feel like they were both more calcified and ALSO filled with antifreeze. My posture is duly improved. ITEM: I’m now a story editor at Rookie and it’s having the same effect as above. ITEM: I have not had a cell phone since eight days ago, when I unceremoniously drowned it in a toilet bowl. My friends were making me laugh and it nosedived from my back pocket into the drink. Just be glad that certain things aren’t hereditary, as when my dad tried to dry off a phone he had given a similar funeral at sea by MICROWAVING IT on a doubled-over paper towel, engendering a small display of fireworks and one of my favorite stories to tell about who he is as a person. Anyway, this will all be rectified tomorrow when I get a new machine and close the book on this weeklong period of feeling simultaneously like an awful friend and a destination-free sailboat. My impulse has always been CANCEL ALL MY CALLS, you know? Do they make Wall Street Kid for the iPhone yet? Also, can everyone start calling me “Wall Street Kid” in place of my Christian name?

Man, what else can I tell you? I guess just this: Death-defying licks of the compass wheel.

You’re all my favorite. See you never/whenever.

Sincerely,

Wall Street Kid