Have you ever seen Jules et Jim? Well, Glam Librarian Lady Gaga has.

PINKERTON: rivers cuomo's moment of genius

I used to run cross country in high school, and I used to train doing something like 5 mile circuits while holding a portable CD player. (Idiot!) I invariably listened to Pinkerton, Weezer's delicious dark album every time I ran, and during real races where CD players weren't allowed it was the song "The Good Life" that got me through that final mile. "Shakin' booty, makin' sweet love all the night/it's time I got back to the good life." Nothing could propel me to the finish line faster, except for maybe imagining that the tallest mofo on the team could poss be cheering me on. (He wasn't. So thanks for everything, Rivers Cuomo.)

Lately I've been running again, albeit a little bit slower and on harder pavement courses in my beloved Brooklyn. See now there's this guy who really is cheering me on to run and has helped me to get back into the good, good habit of 30-40 minutes at least 3 times a week. And today I got super nostalgic for my collection of 3-minute gems called Pinkerton Trystan got me for my 17th birthday.

Onto the iPod Pinkerton sprang, and I felt like running extra today. Thank GOD I hadn't listened to this album last summer when I was a mess. Rivers is all heart break and longing, and I just melt at his sorta creepy, ultimately so shy and sweet musings. And where Album by Girls stepped in during my desperate love craze this winter, Pinkerton could have picked up some slack, what with its multicultural, interracial, May-December self-loathing psychodrama. Rivers loves that half-Japanese girl, the one who's so much younger and makes him call himself an "old man," the one who plays the cello and leaves it in the basement (on purpose, you just KNOW it) so he can "whack it" to the thought of her hands going up and down, up and down its neck.

Oh, love. Oh, torture.

Naked in desperation, "Across the Sea" has always been my favorite Weezer tune, as I've always had a melodramatic bent. He opens the song singing the words written to him from an 18 yr old girl in Japan whose letter opened a deep chasm in his chest, as wide as the Pacific fucking Ocean that separates the two. He "thinks it would be wrong" to touch her so he gives her this song instead. Why? She's 18. She's legal. He's a rock star and he has money. The thought of making love to a girl from another country makes him nervous? That doesn't stop him from sniffing and licking her stationary and thinking of her touching herself in her teenage bedroom (and then telling us all about it, the crazy). And when he exclaims, "Words and dreams and a million screams, oh, how I need a hand in mine to feel!" I just about lose it because I totally get it. Sometimes the fantasy really is good enough, no, even better than the real thing because it never, ever goes bad. But there are rare instances where you're absolutely certain, would sign your name on any dotted line for it, that if you don't get what you want, if you don't get to stick it to her (or get stuck) you really will fucking perish.

And then this Japanese girl shows up again in "El Scorcho," where she's cursed in the first lyric because "you do it to me every time." And her cello shredding makes him jello. He's just going crazy-- the distortion tells you so-- thinking of all the ways they belong together and could help each other. There's a cute cultural impasse in the form of Green Day. And once again he says he can't talk about "it:" his physical craving for this totally different girl. He can only make a "record" about it. He can't even talk about it. And I've been there too; where all the oppositions mentally pile up and you feel like the only thing you can do is sit in the bedroom with a bottle of Kentucky Bourbs and make cliche art but feel like it's so, so good because it has this... shine... which is the essense of that face. God, that flat, black-eyed face.

Before Rivers closes the album with the happy dagger that is "Butterfly" he gives us one more chance with "Falling for You." Maybe to give us a little bit of hope? He admits his "irrational fear" about being an "old goat" hanging out with such a young chick, and "Holy sweet, goddamn, you left your cello in the basement." If he has a fetish for the letter, the pages, the envelope, then just what is he going to do with that instrument? He's a musician, for God's sake, and this girl is playing him better than he can go Guitar Hero on stage. No wonder he says he'd do anything to get the hell out alive... or maybe settle down with the crazy girl. And isn't that always the challenge?

Before I started running again I told myself I had a timeline. I had a date in June that I had to face and if at that point nothing had materialized with the cello-player whose cello had been in my mind's basement for months then it was time to physically, mentally, and literally, even, wrench myself out of that sitch and get the hell out alive!! But through it all, I always clutched at the thin shred of hope that I might just get to "settle down." Somehow the old goat and young chick combo made so much sense, so much like "I'm a lot like you, so please. Hello. I'm here. I'm waiting. I think I'd be good for you and you'd be good for me."

And you know Rivers ended up marrying a Japanese woman, and I hear they're pretty happy.

adam green and the dead trees open up for the cribs

So, last night the Dead Trees and Adam Green (supported by DT) opened for The Cribs at Irving Plaza/The Fillmore. Because I love both opening acts so much, they deserve their own post. The above pics are in opposite of chronological order from top to bottom. Dead Trees (now from LA?) started out with early songs "Television" and "Shelter." They played tight, clean Pavementy songs as usual, and I can't say enough about how underrated these guys are! (And sexy... my friend once called lead singer Michael a "fucking cherub," but my heart stops for guitarist/keyboardist/gray tee-shirt wearing skinny dream of a man Matt.) If you can't spring for their excellent album King of Rosa, then d/load their latest Daytrotter set.

Now, onto Adam Green. I kind of want to talk about him in the context of Julian Casablancas. My first exposure to AG happened at the Central Park Summerstage show The Strokes did in 2003. Adam opened up, and I was like, who is this freaky, skinny little Jules-Woody-Dave Grohl mix singing like Jim Morisson and dancing like a toddler? And I quickly learned and devoured his at-the-time tiny oeurve. Over the years, Adam has acted as the Hyde to Julian's Jekyll. As Julian's productivity petered out over the decade, Adam's spiraled to new heights (Garfield, Friends of Mine, Gemstones, Jacket Full of Danger, Sixes and Sevens, and the upcoming Minor Love). While Jules and Co. played bigger venues and became recluses in their own right (AHJ has a fucking cabin in the woods, people) Adam Green played free shows at Sidewalk Cafe, opened for pal Ben Kweller @ Southpaw, and made himself generally pretty accessible and friendly in real life (he'll always shake a hand, take a picture, or just smile like a happy little kid) and on the internet (Twitter, his blogge, etc.) And while Julian quit smoking and drinking and generally calmed down his early twenties antics in the favor of better health and family happiness, Adam Green has increasingly increased his increasingly increasified drug-fueled crazy train craziness.

I won't lie. I enjoy a freaktastical AG show just like everyone else (Santos Double Kokomo after his "Just a Friend" duet with Lissy Trullie kicked ass), but last night he kind of scared me a little bit. In the wake of people dropping dead from prescription painkillers and drugs all over this town (Dash Snow, Jay Reatard...???..., Brittany Murphy, Heath Ledger, M.J., etc.) I just want him to take care of himself. Yes, Adam always seems like he's one of the crowd, the joker, the class clown, and semi-in control of himself, but I would absolutely hate to lose him in the long list of (local) celebrity deaths that have plagued such young visionaries (I believe he is one) in our Generation. So I won't say more than that, just take it easy on the coke and what have you, and keep making music for my life. You kick ass, you're so much fun, and I want to see you play for a long, long time.

like a fucked-up face

my parents got me the criterion collection copy of my own private idaho for christmas, and i have to say once again, how beautiful is river phoenix? classic. classic. classic. and how sad the lines, "i really wanna kiss you, man." ughhhh it's the neo-easy rider. and gus van sant and i love the same dirty boys. no wonder i'm obsessed.

i'm so confused about my life that i can't sleep, and i totally should be since i have to work a double tomorrow and then i gotta meet up with my homegirl kelly!

my phone was off the hook tonight, and i kept falling asleep on the train in my red hunting hat. thing's padded like a pillow and almost as awesome as my new american apparel sheets.

but i'm tired of sleeping alone, so maybe i won't hold out for the mountain i'm trying to crumble as if i were an absolute earthquake created solely to crumble that one fucking mountain like a destructive siren of awesomeness.

maybe i'm just brainwashing myself into believing i want something that i don't even want at all.

maybe i should listen to the craziness that surrounds me and realize that i don't want anything specific, just the multitude of possibilities that present themselves to me.

maybe i want something i've always sort of had but never really had at all, and maybe now's not the time for that and maybe there never will be a time.

whatever the case may be, i do know my new years resolutions:

1. wash face daily and take off old makeup. no more pancake layers or any more of this edie sedgwick shit.

2. floss

3. stop eating cake.

4. make a plan for the future and execute it. writing poetry in notebooks doesn't count, but it should still happen every day.

5. figure out a way to stop sleeping.

6. allow myself to accept what life offers with two open hands. you know, kind of like, "wherever, whatever, have a nice day."

we've got tonight

Adam Green: Master of Sad

Say what you will about crazytrain Adam Green, but the boy can write sad songs better than anyone else. His surreal (and sometimes disgusting/disturbing) lyrics manage to perfectly describe existential pain. Sometimes when I feel like I wanna get all Emo, I play 3 killer tunes from AG's 2nd album Friends of Mine, 2003.

1. I Wanna Die

"I wanna choose to die/and be buried with a Rubik's cube/and sleep inside the big blue buildings/as the sweet disease drives through." Yeah, I think this means he wants to make a choice to die without having to actually do anything about it himself... instead he'd want to just die in his bed in some big blue building without exerting any effort. But to want to be buried with a Rubik's cube? I guess that means he wants to know there is a solution to the problem and hopefully he'll finally fucking get it once he's dead. I feel that!

2. We're Not Supposed to Be Lovers

The opener alone is enough to make you want to cry. "Picture a place that's far from danger./A nicer place to cash your chips/I'm not the one holding you hostage/squeezed in between my lips./We're not supposed to be lovers/or friends like they'd have us believe./We're not supposed to know each other/accept my apology."

But it's the end that gets me every time. "Picture a person you've forgotten/kissing your brother or your friend./Picture a wounded entertainer/cutting his hair again." While we can all get what he's talking about in the first part: you'd want to kill your brother or friend for making out with one of your old lovers, it's the last lines that I find most poignant. Everybody knows that one of the best things to do after a heartbreak is to go crazy, cut and dye your hair, get a whole new "look" and get on with it. Poor Adam.

3. Bungee

The most gut-wrenching of all is Bungee. I don't know why. Adam talks about incest and the Clap and Indian chiefs and priests, but there's something so disorienting and devastating, almost as if it's straight out of a nightmare, about "she went bungee jumping/one fine day/off the cliffs of our friendship/and at the bottom she stayed./when they told me/that her body was found/an astronaut drowned/in the long island sound/i tripped down the stairs/in my basketball shoes/and paddled downstream/in my father's canoe." I think it's the juxtaposition of something so tactile like "basketball shoes" with the metaphorically dead body of the girl and the dreamlike strings of the music.

The video below is pretty bad, but unfortunately Adam doesn't usually perform "Bungee." So instead watch and see how fun he is and how much German people are obsessed with him.

"Rapid Fire Eyes" and "Twink Seemingly on Deathwatch"