Dance, Monkey

I've made you a gift. I made you a gif. Guys what am I doing?

Forever.

Dear Henry,

When are you going to get off your ass and get a real band?

Love,

America.

Matt and Melissa Got Married

I was Matt's Best Man. I was asked recently if I was really the BEST man and I asked her if she really wanted to find out. It was a regrettably short conversation. This is my speech for Matt. He was pleased, if he was honest about it (and I have no reason to believe he wasn't. Love you, bro).



Hello and thank you for coming. One of my favorite quotes is from the great American movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," which goes, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." This is a very important quote because facts get hazy as time passes, but the gist of this story is basically true.

I have known Matt for 13 years, and during most of that time he never drank. He didn't like it. He was one of those kids who says, 'It's like they made it taste bad on purpose.' So this had to have been fall 2006, and Matt and Melissa had been texting each other in the way that young kids do, and that was kind of cool and all, but she was living in Seattle and Matt was living with me in Brooklyn. There's
that little problem of DISTANCE.

Matt, Gary, Phil and Sam went out to San Francisco for Halloween to visit their friend and Matt and Melissa had arranged to meet up while he was there. Romantic, huh? Beautiful city. Magic. I hear nothing from Matt the whole week.

Matt comes home and he's kinda groggy and tired in that post-vacation way. And I say, "Hey dude, how did it go?" And he says, "Well it was a blast. I got my tire stuck on the Golden Gate Bridge and almost killed myself. But it was pretty cool."

"So how's Mel?"

"Oh, man. Well we met at some bar and I spent the better part of a night downing whiskeys to get up the courage to kiss her. I got totally hammered."

"You don't drink."

"Right."

I think the lesson is that Melissa drove Matt to drink before they even started dating. Please enjoy your evening.

drops mic, exerunt

Could There Be More Work? (New Work pt. V)

New songs for you on a summer's day!

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The Devil Drives a T-Bird

Cancer Conductor

International Creeping

Here Come The Goyim*

Tune Yards

He's Undressing You With His Eyes (But So Am I)

Chinese Takeover (So Many Whites)**

Hired Tomorrow, Fired Tomorrow

A Delight But A Dilemma

Love Letter to Fucking Up***

Shitty Bangs

Wood from Elephants

Summer is for Lovers****

The Germans Speak to Me

Soundtrack to Kickball

Casket for a Viking Funeral*****

Trash Night Stands******

The Cards Speak in Metaphors

Shitty Luger

Grandma Tommygun

Unsocial Butterfly

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*This is a song about bikes, a subject I know little, if anything, about.
**This is a song about the trade deficit.
***This song should not be as emo as the title suggests. This is also about the trade deficit.
****I'm sure this song already exists somewhere.
*****This should be a sea chanty, but not sound like The Decemberists. I don't know how that's supposed to work, musically, but I think it can be done.
******Courtesy Melissa B

FUCK YOU

Hey Richard,
I saw your photos on flickr from Hillstock 2011. I was wondering if you would allow us to use one or two of your photos (sans watermark) for an article on pro.billboard.com we’re more than happy to give you full credit for your photos.

Thanks!
--
XXX XXXXXX
Multimedia Editor
Billboard Pro
XXX.XXXXXX@Billboard.com
212.XXX.XXXX

A New Post on Identity, at 12:45 AM

I finally took two pictures of Scout I'm happy with. Years of her being a Sphinx have ended, as far as I can tell. Sometimes you you can only attack a problem after solving a smaller, simpler problem (cf. Smallpox vs. Cowpox), and sometimes you can only succeed after a bloody mess of attrition (cf. Stalingrad, or Napoleon in Eastern Europe). This was a combination of the two (cf. That monkey from Futurama realizing that the hat goes on the head). I dunno, I feel like I've been on a hot streak, portrait-wise. These are they:



and



I gave her the one of the hair flip, because she liked it so much (as far as I could tell) and she also lent me her scanner so I can finally do a too-long-in-the-works website update and let me fuck around with her Mamiya 67 (!!!!). For this I was, and am, thankful. The only other Polaroid I have given away is to a Devil Whose Name I Dare Not Speak, because I believe in the Hail Mary and because, as I wrote at the time, "...If I give you this, I have nothing left." I was out of ideas, and it was a last ditch effort to make an impact on someone I thought I cared deeply for.*

Because I am so vain, I signed the hair flip, "To Scout, w/ love, RGIN, 6/12/11." The "RGIN" being a signature that I have not whipped out in MONTHS. I am not too far away from endorsing cheques with an "X." I sign tax forms and NDA's with a series of squibbles and malformed circles. I have no autograph. Not in the awesome Marty McSorley way, anyway. But I was able to sign, with a permanent marker, on an item that was literally one-of-a-kind, my name in a way that is both legally acceptable and historically accurate.

What does this mean? I guess it means that,

1) I have my priorities straight. That is to say, for day to day garbage and paperless transactions my "X" is good enough. When it really matters (frameable documents, depositions and immigration papers), I can become a legal, law abiding citizen on demand.

1a) That means I'm clutch.

2) I don't do enough things to warrant that kind of focus as a signatory. I mean, I have release paperwork in the pipeline that doesn't need that kind of performance. This bothers me, and I can't expand on that more without being completely insufferable (thank you for bearing with me).

3) Robert Crumb was right, and I shouldn't REALLY believe in autographs.

*I mean, I'm really curious where she is though so, "...thought I cared deeply for," is a little glib and melodramatic, but whatever. Bear with me.

Yet More New Work (New Work pt. IV)

I wasn't in the proper state of mind to continue this song title nonsense. I am now.

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Date With Myself

Partner in Crack

Stuttering Darth Vader

The Edie Sedgewick of Nebraska*

Lesbians and Ghosts

A Delightful Weekend of Promiscuity

A Grand Rascal

Cheat You Fair

Mystery Veils the Desert

Monsters of the Past

A Hatchling

One Man Gay Parade

Black Santa

She Sleeps

Enough with the Hate Speech

I blew Up Your Body but You Blew My Mind

A Short List of People to Not be Trusted

The Forbidden Third

Wine and Sex and Love

Left Handed Monkey Wrench

The General would be Proud

I Need a New Person to Cause Me Pain

Christmas in My Lungs**

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*Attr: Ron Wax
**Attr: Olivia Drusin, but you know what they say about good artists borrowing and great artists stealing.***
***Stealing from myself 2011.