good afternoon,
today i made a vegetable quiche.
life <3 goes on
my new roommates bf is a classic 'tame impala fan' tinder chad and we put the dining room table back together using power tools last night. then i smoked a joint in his car. bonding <3 then i drank a whole bottle of white wine and then my roommate told me she's gay and doesn't know what to do about him essentially. it's because i have been making them watch my gay movies with me, and doing dyke activities under the carport (sanding my desk in my white summertime shorts.) i don't think the bf likes the movies but who cares. he is nice enough and 'likes to party', he wears tie dye sometimes if i am remembering him correctly. i wonder if they actually met on tinder, i haven't asked them how they met honestly he just keeps coming over to the house and helping me reach things i can't normally reach in the kitchen. i wonder what his tinder anthem was/is?
my new roommate also brought her cat, named "juice", and we have been watching youtube tutorials to try and get juice and blanche to get along but they keep hissing at each other and being aggro for no reason.
anyway can you guys believe david hockney said (verbatim) "if you do not smoke, you'll simply get coronavirus"
i smoked a cigar (like david hockney) to celebrate alex buying a house before turning 26.
it's soooo so ooo (bjork email style) crazy he bought a house this week and all i did was write an article called "20 TikTok Recipes We Think You'll Want To Try..."
also here is a link to travis scott's old blog... wigggg in orbit. ...
i'd like to start off this post by saying yes, it is true - and i've said it before - tavi gevinson taught me when i was like 12 or 13 that fangirling should be celebrated and embraced as an essential part of 'girlhood' as a concept. this has always been something i've felt generally self conscious about because 'girlhood' as a concept is embarrassing in most ways.
i think my fangirling peaked when i was around 14 and got really into the burger records fandom.
being a cog in this online community of mostly teen girls living in southern california who were obsessed with colleen green or whatever (to make a long story short) led to having a lot of online pen-pals who i would send stickers and zines to about all of the music we liked. it's been interesting to watch all of these girls grow into who they are now, and how all of our interests have shifted. some of them are like married now? wild.
today i'd like to discuss kate bush. for me, liking kate bush transcends 'fangirling' - i can't say this about too many things.
this is a photo set of my mother and kate bush just to set the tone.
as i'm sure you can imagine she is a huge fan of kb. i'd venture to say she's a collector. in her possession are boxes and boxes of kate bush fanzines with lyrics and illustrations, rare records, bootlegs, merch etc etc etc. she even traveled to a 'kate bush convention' to meet her and they were wearing the same outfit by coincidence?
she's not insane because she has other interests, and i understand why she was/is like this. i mean, if you're reading this and you're on my wavelength about why her music is so important then you get it.
thankfully my mother took advantage of her own era of fangirling and held onto all of these important things. listening to kate bush together has always felt like a very common ground between us, and a defining link in our connection as mother and daughter. spiritually, her music affects both of us deeply & equally. anytime kb comes on it's like any angst or resentment towards her that i have ever harbored just washes away instantly and reminds me of our connection at it's core - and that's love, baby!
honestly, growing up i never realized how intuitive or 'spiritually inclined' my mother inherently was. i mean, i think all mothers are, but she never really talked about religion or spirituality to me very often, if ever. i think she wanted me to figure out my own sh*t which i'm appreciative of.
she's told me in the past that she was actually hoarding most of the kate bush stuff in order to pass onto the singular daughter she believed she would have in the future / would have 'visions' of during her youth as a club kid.
to further prove my point about the major importance of 'synchronicity' and 'odd occurrences' that have always been weaved throughout my existence i'd like to share this photo of a drawing my mother purchased in 1996 during her kate bush stan mecca pilgrimage to london:
this photo freaks me out! that's me as a kid! i have no idea who made this, neither does my mother - but like... y'all. okay. here's a great photo of me as a kid for reference:
i was experimenting with makeup and blow drying a fake dog <3 xo
<-- this is my mother
<-- this is me
like i was saying - she straight up told me she used to have visions of like a little redheaded girl in her dreams and then purchased that drawing on impulse 3 years before i was born?
side note but my name was originally supposed to be BRONWYN !!!!!!!!!! until my mom (thankfully) overheard a mother in a park say "kaitlin!" and she looked over and it was like... a little redheaded girl - then it clicked and now i'm here. my mom told the story a lot better than i just did, but i'd like to meet that girl 1day.
here's a photo of me at piedmont park cosplaying as my predecessor:
anyway back to kate bush,
the first noise i ever heard coming into this lifetime was kate bush... i was literally birthed to this music! birthed to kate bush, baptized by howard finster. a blessing and a curse! i think this is why i am insane.
and you'd think - oh well this b*tch likes kate bush so much because her mom was a stan. like obviously, yes it's in my orbit as a result of her being my mother but i never fully realized how important her music was to me personally until i grew into myself a bit more, which i'm thankful for. we'd listen to kb in the car together while i was growing up and sing along to it together, but i was too young to actually understand the lyrics and ... energy/power this music holds.
basically kate bush's music feels like an integral part of my being? it's probably not good to give so much weight to media in a real world emotional sense, but i do actually feel this way about her music. my mother and i have a really unique relationship & bond (haven't even scratched the surface) but kate bush amplifies it is all i'm saying.
i feel like i got heavily into kate bush on my own too, like i don't feel as if my mom tried to force me to listen to it or anything. her songs always kind of just made their way into my rotation when they needed to be (as long as i've been alive) and that's another reason why i love kate bush.
seems otherworldly!
my mom said if i don't play "mother stands for comfort" at her funeral she will haunt me. i believe her! stop talking about your funeral though? if i ever need to cry on command this is the conversation that i think about. i think i used this trick during a play when i was in elementary school. i remember one of the drama teachers telling me to like think about "puppies dying, or something" and i was already deep into thinking about my mom telling me about her very serious funeral arrangements in 4th grade. she's a leo!
i think kate bush, for me at least, embodies the spirit of femininity - like she has so many beautiful and varied songs. the dreaming?????? b*tch wtf... like that's feral creative manic mode. no f*cks given. meanwhile you've got like some of the most beautifully written pieces of music ... ever? and she wrote them WHEN? when she was in her TEENS? try and expect a hoe not to be impressed and overtaken.
but yeah - i feel like i'm listening to god when i listen to kate bush, depending on my mood.
"mother stands for comfort" by kate bush
and for fun ... here's a photo of the 3 generations of women prior to me, weird how none of them have red hair. i have to include this photo because like... the glamour...
i'm glad i grew up without the money because i'm a very hard worker as a result but it is fun to think about your family once owning the liberace mansion before all the money went away.
and if anyone is interested in buying liberace's wells fargo credit card (found in his estate) i am selling it on ebay right now. how the times have changed. ;)
the card says "mr. liberace" on it and that's it???
i'm not staying on topic here but this is essential viewing - probably one of the most ridiculous videos i've ever watched. i love it.
my takeaways after reading this post back while pretending to be someone else:
1) kaitlin and her mom have a freaky bond and are both insane
2) kaitlin loves kate bush
3) kaitlin's name was almost bronwyn
4) liberace?
in 2009 i definitely recorded an "unofficial music video" for ke$ha's song 'TiK ToK' with my friends - i almost wish it was still on youtube.com just so i'd be able to watch it now. i'm sure it was f*cking insane but i really don't remember what the final result was like. i do remember putting on an egregious amount of eyeliner before recording it on a flip camcorder though.
this camera was everything to me. i liked my flip camcorder because when you stopped recording it would pause, kind of like recording a vine. and because it was pink.
i wish more people used flip camcorders and made unofficial music videos with their friends just because they simply like a song. maybe i'm a purist for valuing these videos more than tiktoks.
reject modernity, embrace tradition.
the rumors are true... tonight's internet relic is an unofficial animal collective music video from youtube.com. this is one of the first visual memories i have associated with their music, which is funny considering what it is.
for some reason i still think about this video a lot. it's just one of those things that stuck with me i guess. at the time i don't think there were many, if any, actual animal collective music videos available online. country girls made do and watched the unofficial ones though.
here are some of my favorite comments on this video.
i think it's important to also mention that the description of this video states that it was for a "school project."
i love this picture. not sure of her origin story, it's just been on my camera roll for a long time.
this morning my roommate texted me a video file of one of my old vines from 2015 or 2016. it was the "smack cam" audio and i had used some sort of face filter app to make it seem as if ho chi minh and stalin were 'smack camming' each other.
the video is mostly funny to me because i had an 'unknown mortal orchestra' poster visible in the background.
some of my closest friends today are ones who i originally met on vine or i was mutuals with on tumblr when i was fourteen.
recently i met up with someone from tumblr who i'd been mutuals with for a really long time. she lives in georgia - we're both gay, can't drive, and ended up watching russian lullaby videos together for like three hours.
sometimes the right people will just come into your life to joke around and tell you they think king princess is "frumpy."
she also left her copy of "creative loafing" at my house and i ended up annotating the entire thing for fun. i wrote out what i thought was/was not frumpy.
in conclusion, i had no idea just how frumpy creative loafing really was.
truth be told i have no qualms with this publication, i just think it's funny to call anything frumpy now.
i guess when you're subjecting everyone you've ever known to your niche content, the right people just weasel their way into your world eventually. that's one way to look at it. but because the internet is so crazy, big, and incomprehensible you'd think it'd be even more difficult for people to come into your orbit, right? & it's not like anyone uses hashtags. (actually i take that back - i have completely met people through hashtags on instagram, which i know is crazy.)
most of the longest online friendships i've participated in have really strange origin stories as far as how we specifically ended up finding each other. i feel like we all got to witness each others coming of age stories publicly / have grown with each other over the years.
so yeah, i guess i'd venture to say that a lot of the bonds i've formed with people over the internet seem divinely orchestrated to a certain extent.
but i think tumblr is the only platform where you could potentially meet friends that are just as interested in russian lullabies as you are.
this is one of the most important videos on youtube in my opinion.
it's called "Billy Joel flips out in Moscow in 1987."
there are some re-uploads on youtube.com with funnier names like "Billy's Red Rage" but i like this one because it's pretty straightforward and (depending on the reader) could give the illusion that maybe he's just putting on an amazing show. i mean, he did put on an amazing show.
how on earth did he continue playing the song while flipping out like this? his showmanship is unmatched.
a friend of mine once said "billy joel is like kate bush for men" i'm not really sure if i agree but i think it's something to think about for sure.
do men deserve any sort of "equivalent" to kate bush? something else to think about.
billy joel is someone i've talked to multiple uber drivers about in detail and i think it's important to note that in this post. unrelated but i've also had multiple uber drivers spit into the backseat of the car (not at me, thankfully) but just like... into the backseat of their car instead of outside of the window.
and because of that i tipped them more.
bold moves deserve to be rewarded monetarily i've decided.
just last night i had an uber driver named "nathan" talk to me about potholes and hunting turkeys during the entirety of the trip. while he was talking to me about these topics he was complaining about his wife intermittently. i guess at some point he decided to listen to his surroundings instead of his own twisted monologue about turkey and heard my foot tapping to "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" by the band "Jet" - you might remember this song from an iconic silhouette style iPod commercial - because he decided to play it two more times after that. he also had the audacity to turn the volume knob on that bad boy. i'll say it... i wasn't even mad.
that song is super "rock & roll" ya know?
what's crazy about this video is that it was uploaded in 2008 by an account on youtube.com called "iPodAds" - they have 209 subscribers right now and to my surprise this is not the only account on youtube.com that exclusively archives these iconic silhouette style iPod commercials.
i found another account called "TheiPodSpot" - they only have 63 subscribers.
i wonder if competition in this realm of youtube.com is tough?
alright.
somehow / someway i'm listening to a literal club mix of a dale earnhardt jr. jr. song right now. it's not "bad" but like why am i listening to it?
spotify truly said f*ck it with this one.
apparently dale earnhardt jr. jr. (since they peaked in 2010/2011) have rebranded themselves as "JR JR" in an attempt to stay relevant to some extent.
it clearly didn't work because i had no idea that this happened and i feel like if anyone would know about a dumb fact like this it would be me, right?
their EP "horse power" from 2010 was pretty good if i remember correctly. but i'm not sure if it still holds the test of time and i'm not sure if i want to listen to it again.
dale earnhardt jr. jr. is just one of those bands that got kind of lost in the mix when people used to check up on brooklyn vegan everyday to see what was new and noteworthy in indie music.
& the more i think about it the more i can confirm that i fully had their song "vocal chords" from the horse power EP on my ipod back then.
i'll post the KEXP live session from 2010 below ... as a relic of indie music history and online music blogging culture.
what i'll say about this performance (since i just watched it for the first time) is that i like how they really ran with the whole nascar motif. and i like that their little costumes are lysol and cheerios themed. other than that this performance for me is kind of mediocre now that i understand the world more than i did in 2010. they aren't bad musicians per se but i really hate how one of the guys kept deciding to improvise his vocal parts. it kind of made him sound like jason mraz or something at one point and i really didn't like that at all. for 2010 this was pretty good though. but i don't think i have the time or energy to truly dig into their new music.
it's just not worth it.
after scrolling through the comments of this KEXP video i found this interaction that gave me...
a little bit of a chuckle.
imagine getting into a fight on the comment section of a dale earnhardt jr. jr. KEXP live session.
i really can imagine getting into a fight in the comment section of a dale earnhardt jr. jr. KEXP live session though. especially 8 years ago.
which is most definitely the worst part about any of this.
i've only ever gotten into one youtube comment section fight in my life. i have no idea what the video was of but i was defending my 'boyfriend' at the time that i had for like 2 weeks tops in 6th grade. all i really remember about the "fight" was being called a "KUNT" by a complete stranger. my response to that was something to the effect of "why would you want to call me the name of a radio station west of the mississippi river" which i thought was really clever at the time. what i remember the most about that entire online interaction is my mother yelling at me after seeing the word "KUNT" associated with my name on google.com when i was 12 years old.
back to the freecreditreport.com band – after reading this article on complex.com i unearthed something really ridiculous and amusing to me.
first of all, the guy singing in the commercials is dubbed over because he sounds "too foreign" in real life. & second of all, apparently he's really into industrial music and specifically cited nine inch nails, skinny puppy, and rage against the machine as his "recent influences." (2014)
i wonder what he's up to now and if i can follow him on social media just to get a deeper peek into his life.
so this morning around 4am i was jolted awake by my cat, blanche, who was making some ungodly / almost supernatural sounding noises.
i was having a really vivid dream but i can't remember what it was.
immediately after waking up i received a text from caroline that was just this video:
i feel like something was divinely orchestrated in order for me to watch this piece of cinema at 4am in a cold sweat.
obviously after watching this video i could not go back to sleep.
& pretty soon after watching this video a moderately famous 'witchhouse'/'ambient' musician facebook messaged me and we talked for a while about music and how we've been doing. he is a weird person to be talking to at 4am i'm not even gonna lie. we used to talk on twitter when i was a financial dominatrix. he told me he was a sub and that he used to help his ex gf do findom because he knew what the subs wanted to hear, which i thought was funny. last night he told me he only has a few close friends at the moment. one of them has the same birthday as him but 2 years apart. he said that they just 'understood' each other and that he never had to explain himself. this sounds really nice. i'm glad he's not doing heroin on instagram live anymore. like i said before, it's really strange that we talk sometimes. he's never weird or anything (a first) and he's sober now, which is good.
internet connections are so weird.
i used to listen to his music on "grooveshark.com" in 2011 and now here we are. he's very talented. it's a shame he got into heroin.
but now he is releasing music again and i am happy for him.
the character development.
update: i spoke too soon about him not acting weird. i am now receiving iPhone note poetry (that he also posted onto his verified twitter account after sending to me - i guess he really liked how it came out?) and a lot of 'heart emojis' from the guy.
<-- literally what is this even supposed to mean?
i'll keep everyone updated if the situation escalates further.
