Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Weird Owl bring le rock

Yo! Well, it's too late for an exclamation mark: a simple "Yo" will have to do. I just wanted to say that my friends' band, Weird Owl, have made an album that I would like to magically transform into a spinning tab of acid and let settle on my tongue. (I'm thinking that the tab would resemble the 2-dimensional square that served as a prison for Superman's enemies in Superman 2, and that the transformation/miniaturization could happen with the same technology utilized in The Cars's video for You Might Think--man, it's been a while since I've heard that tune.) Okay, um, their album, "Ever the Silver Cord Be Loosed" (check the semantic reverb on loosed/lucid) is heavy, thoughtful, and just shakes with energy. Plus, the album is inspiring some great writing: Weird Owl have provided some links to select reviews on their MySpace page, which is at, um, yeah, you guessed it. Once you've determined that url, check out Keith Boyd's review from Blog San Diego, and just note the seriousness and commitment of these writers to the music--they can hear that something awesome is afoot. Dudes just got written up (and described as "hirsute") in Mojo!

Monday, February 23, 2009

on acid

Man (first of all, hello! This is my first post, and I'm quite excited), those were the days when the comparative phrase "like ______ on acid" had a vivid, shocking effect on people.

Here's what I mean: My roommate's girlfriend just gave him the Stella Season One Box Set. (Why I Capitalize Each Word I Do Not Know.) Stella, for those of you (like me) who didn't know, was a series on Comedy Central in 2005 starring the guys who created The State. On the back of the box, back-of-box perusing gentlefolk like me are treated to the following quote from The Hollywood Reporter:

"Like the Marx Brothers on acid."

And man, I'm just seeing yellow flowers (like the ones on the inner sleeve of Neil's On the Beach?) jump into the clear blue sky of my mind, recalling the innocent days when saying that something-was-something-else "on acid" actually meant something!

Is there a word or a term for when, in the midst of the almost exponentially multiplied world of descriptive possibilities in which we reside, a vestigial phrase parts the thick language branches like, um, the nose of a dinosaur emerging from the woods, and, uh, bellows (maybe?) before withdrawing back into the trees?

This weekend, see how rudimentary you can make your descriptions of random stuff. It feels kind of weird to reach back for old matter, like your tongue is slipping down your throat and into your stomach for linguistic compost.

I guess it's just refreshing when "on acid" does the job, historically or contemporaneously. Contemporaneously, by the way, might be my least favorite adverb, like generality is my least favorite noun, and like orientate(d) is my least favorite verb. But this post is about (like) being on acid, y'all, and the wonderful simplicity of such a statement.

The Magic Man

Walking up Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud in Paris’s 10th arrondissement in mid-October, I saw a man who was working in the doorframe of Ô   Lieu ...