If anyone was wondering why World Famous In SF is so prone to epic fail, check out this latest promotional e-mail:

Lol i’m wasted here is our music i am ni a band called the passionisats i hopeyou like our music it is pretyrad it isfrom our first7″ . we are from san francisosc. i heopr you like it.

Aarn

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So the internet has brought snuff films into our living rooms. This is far more extraordinary than the internet’s spreading of porn. Watching sex is a life-affirming experience- especially the amateur sex films that populate the internet.

Watching people getting butchered though is a whole different experience. It is not artful or beautiful- these are not the gore-spectacles of horror movies. The bodies are clumsy- the murderers and the murdered. There is no drama- the bodies lie there, flopping a little. The feeling I am left with after the three I’ve viewed is a coldness. In these movies, we are just sacks of flesh.

I know that this is extraordinary: snuff films were an urban myth, and now they are everywhere. It’s a testament to the web and what an extraordinarily free place it is that these movies are available.  Anyone can know what death looks like.

For whatever reason, all of the murder-movies that I’ve seen (three of them) have been from the former Soviet Union. The least disturbing was the one by Chechan rebels who kidnapped and murdered Russian conscripts. They shot them in the back of the head. It was fast, and the context is in it’s way comforting: it’s war, and war is awful. It’s sad but is within the realm of ordinary life. Men go to war, and they die in war, often in awful ways.

The other two are equally sick; ranking them against each other is a waste of time. One is a neo-nazi beheading in a park in Moscow- they are beheading a central Asian they kidnapped. The problem they run into is that beheading someone is not easy to do; they end up sawing off his head.

The final was a film taken in Ukraine by three friend who went on a murder spree- they killed 20 people before being arrested. They also cell-phone-video’d there murders (i know, what?). One that ended up on the web involves them beating a guy with a hammer in a yellow plastic bag, then sticking him with a screwdriver. It’s a grinding video to watch.

So what do you all think? Do you think that it’s good that this stuff is available? do you think it should be censored? Have any of you seen these videos? what does it make you feel?

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I dunno how I feel about this…I mean I made out with the bride once when we were teenagers and then she rejected me hardcore so there’s always a twinge of unresolved jealousy…but there’s also a sense of relief that I never got involved with anyone like this…and then there’s the fact that I find wedding ceremonies so emotional that no matter how lolzy you try to make them, i still tear up a little.

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I received an e-mail from Spicy Carrot about a party: the subject line was ‘Drink Yourself (almost) to Death’ party. The e-mail promised:

” a gigantic lofty startup office space with bamboo, a hammock, and dark corners for you to do naughty things.”

and

“our coping mechanism at Joby is partying like there is no fucking tomorrow (because there might not be), so this party should be sufficiently ridiculous.”

So I went to it, and here is the real: there was a hammock, but it was for coats. Strike one- I love hammocks, and any opportunity to lay in one is a boon for me. Unfortunately unless I wanted to lay on ITdiot’s jacket at the front of the party, this was impossible.

Second, lets discuss those “dark corners for you to do naughty things”. A more accurate description of the space would have been “panoptic office space to make you feel watched”. Any naughtiness would have been a performance.

Third, the music was lame!!! Like srsly, it was like the non-sense they used to spin at the Tenderloft, only that was…seven years ago.

Which I guess gets to the core of what was lame about this party: these people who threw this party obviously don’t party very often. The e-mail was the best part of the party- as a concept it sounds fun. But the execution was thoughtless- it was basically one big room, with no privacy, no clear rules about where you could and could not go, nowhere to sit and meet others (all you could do was stand around- there was no chairs, no couch-couch-chair set ups) and a DJ who was playing ‘drinking at Medjool music’ not jams that make you want to DANCE.

A good party is ultimately about three things: who you invite, the refreshments you serve and the way you organize the space. A significant enough failure in any of these areas can doom a party to wackness. In terms of the first, I have no idea about the quality of the people: they were not my people, but some of them may have been perfectly charming- I did not meet them. In terms of the second, the food was obviously purchased at Cost-Co. I know this because they were still in the Kirkland containers. They had medium to good liquor- Makers Mark being the peak. The party failed most significantly in the third respect- they did nothing to organize a space that facilitated socialization- rather it was set-up in a way to fight socialization, because there was nowhere to relax.

Imagine if they had not been so lazy, but rather tried to do something that would have been remembered: imagine if they had filled the room with hammocks, rows and rows of them like banana’s with walkways in-between. Suddenly, instead of no privacy, you would have had many individuals cells of privacy. The hammock would have provided a place to be intimate with a stranger; you could ask someone pretty if you might lie next to them for a moment, like a dance. The organization of the space would have helped us organize ourselves, told us to pair up and to circulate our pairs. Instead of a nervous mass, we would have been divided and individualized, and allowed to meet other individuals.

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Vintage clothier Opal Thornburgh and I were walking down H8 street after doing a little shopping when we saw these two girls taking photos on the street. Dumbly, we looked at them, and I guess something about us caught there eyes and they accosted us.

“Can we take your photo? It’s for our fashion blog!!!!”

and we were like, OK. So, of course we were feeling a little creeped out, but we didn’t want to be mean, or a bitch or anything so we just let them. After taking a few pix, we think ok, this is over, we can go, when out of nowhere they blind side us with a notebook:

“Can we ask a few questions???”

At which point, we sort of stammered an excuse, but they just ignored us:

“whats your favorite movie and favorite band?”

“uhhhh…..oldies….uhm….east asian horror movies…ahhhh…..uhhhh….”

“where did you buy your glasses?”

“sunglass hut?”

“Ok great! do you want to give us your e-mail address and we’ll send you a link when it gets blogged?”

“OK?”

And then they left us alone. But it was too late.

This is how we felt when we got home:

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We got kicked off our new years show (I have the documentary proof) and it leads me to doubt and questioning- why don’t people just love the Passionistas?

We are so troubled right now over how everybody is out to get the Passionistas. And by everybody we mean indie ‘rockers’, critics, haterz, teenagers, men, women, hating ass judges in Valencia, copz, neighbors, SF’s next third eye blind, coooool oldies DJ’s (total frenemies), ex-lovers and old label presidents. OK, so we have questions, and if you give the best answer you can win a Glow In The Dark T-Shirt from our PPAP (Passionista Pret a Porter) line.

-Why doesn’t the indie mafia love us?

-Why does the punk mafia hate us? don’t we suck enough to be a punk band?

-Is the hatred ppl feel for us motivated by sexism/homophobia/anti-semitism/anti-AZNism/anti-tallism?

-do ppl prejudice us because we <3 yuppies?

-Is it becuz we r 2 selfish and greedy and don’t ’support the scene’?

-r we 2 bold?

-Is it becuz we never ‘hang out’?

So please answer all questions, in complete sentences.

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I know, I can’t believe it either! Somehow the Passionistas have pulled themselves away from hitting each other, bromancing, youtube and drinking gold flecked champagne to play music! In front of people! OMG!!!!

We’re playing with the caldonias (check out there video for ‘Vice Magazine’ below, which is pretty good for a video about cool people being cool [as opposed to a Passionista video, which is just cool people being retarded]) who everyone really likes actually- it’s Nadia from furrce perrm, Bob, a blooozy guitar player and this totalllly cute drummer <3 <3 <3 (Sydney?).

http://www.myspace.com/thecaldonias

Also, it would not be a queer punk night in SF 2k8/9 if Forever wasn’t playing it. Dude, so many people say that Forever is there favorite band!!!! It’s crazy!!!! I thought we were people’s favorite band, but maybe we’re just old and grimy? maybe we need band tat’s on our wrists and then we can be everyone’s fave again. It’s really unfair.

Actually, I have more questions about the Vice Magazine video. First, do they like vice magazine? I LOVE vice, but I feel like they are making fun of that. Are they making fun of me? Are the caldonia’s trying to make me feel insecure, or do they just not care about my feelings? Am I in the know? I will freely admit I know nothing about music, especially anything that is happening now.

Second, how did they pay for all those people from San Francisco to be in there video? I refuse to believe that any of those people could POSSIBLY be from Portland (just look at there skin- you can tell people from the PNW because they all have great skin). I mean, they look SOOOO SF. I guess thats what you do when you have a big budget, but you still want to make a really authentic video. I wonder if they used a charter plane, one of those executive time share jets or something wacky like a train? Was it a party train?

Oh yeah, so I guess you should come to this show. It should be fun?

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The pic above shows my dog, Jasmine (the white one) and my parents dog, Jell0 (the black one). They are definitely the original mavericks because they were a crazy pair before McPalin got together- Jasmine is like the selfish, likable cute one, and Jello’s the disabled crazy one who can’t raise his arms above his head.

I got Jasmine with my ex-girlfriend Erica, totally at her instigation. Having Jasmine made me realize what a bad parent I am. When she comes to visit, I don’t really spend time with her because I’m too busy being crazy and she sleeps with my parents, which is exactly what I would do if I had a kid- let my parents deal with it. I’m not done yet, you know??!!

I had this nightmare that my ex-girlfriend and I had a baby who died. I didn’t really realize it was a dream for a few moments after I woke until I tried to remember the baby’s name and realized that I couldn’t, and then realized that it was logically impossible for a baby to exist.

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