i'm so vain

"i'm so vain, i probably think this song is about me!"

videos:

nick cave and the bad seeds: "more news from nowhere"
nick cave and the bad seeds: "dig, lazarus, dig"
nick cave and the bad seeds: "night of the lotus eaters"

radiohead: "house of cards"
radiohead: "pyramid song"

leatherbag: "on down the line"

carly simon: "you're so vain" w/chinese captions

paul mccartney/wings: "too many people/big barn bed"

the strokes: "last nite"

spoon: "the underdog"
spoon: "i turn my camera on"

the truth

holy shit. i am currently watching/listening to the john stewart interview with jim cramer. i am hearing exactly what i've been thinking in my head out of the mouth of john stewart.

you don't generate profit by blowing up the house. that's the bubble mentality. don't buy into it. recognize it for what is and play by those rules. play by the rules of the shadow banking system and hopefully you won't get burned. either that, or invest your money in yogurt stands. those things are gold.

your redneck past

i missed it. i don't have cable and apparently i missed the undressing of the new century. jim cramer, who i was obsessed with early on in my education of stocks/finance, was on the daily show last night. now although john stewart is a funny man, he has a knack for pinpointing hypocracy within the media. he did it with crossfire, which was subsequently cancelled, and now he's doing with CNBC as a whole. i agree with his assessment to a point. yes- CNBC is not for the average investor who watches it for stock information. yes- CNBC was so far up the ass of corporate america that they could not see the fall coming and it brings their journalistic integrity into question.

but....come on. if you are watching jim cramer and following his advice to a tee without doing your due diligence and investigating where you're putting your money, you're an idiot. john stewart's right: this isn't a game. this is real. these losses are real. that's why i cannot understand for the life of me why people put their money in these stocks/mutual funds/hedge funds and never look at it again. or investigate who is in charge. who makes the calls. who handles the checks. information is power. you have to know where your money is and what is happening with it.

i have since recognized that jim cramer is an idiot. the person i listen to for stock advice now is the tiny man who lives in my sock drawer. his name is ted and i found him paddling on a bar of soap on buffalo bayou during a rainstorm. we started talking and he was looking for a place to stay. i suggested my sock drawer and he was fine with that as long as i fed him honey nut cheerios. he actually wades in the bowl of milk to eat the cheerios. it's really funny. but he's got great stock advice. like one time he told me: "i would never fetch a reindeer if i wasn't sure which way was north." brilliant. made thousands of dollars that day. another time he said: "it's not called bluffing if you're not wearing underwear." another thousand dollars. sometimes he talks of travelling and wants to get out, but i put a lock on the sock drawer so he's not going anyway. ah, ted.

more news from nowhere

"then a black girl with no clothes on danced across the room, we charted the progress of the planets around that boogie-wongie moon, i called her my nubian princess, i gave her some sweet-back bad-ass jive, i spent the next seven years between her legs pining for my wife."

-nick cave, "more news from nowhere," dig, lazarus, dig

the fact that i am getting into this album as much as i am is starting to tell me something. i feel like i've entered into the second phase of my life. this second phase didn't have a definitive beginning and i'm sure the next one won't either. it just happens. you wake up and see the world a little different. you have different opinions and your concerns are different as well. songs like "more news from nowhere" ring around in your head. leonard cohen's music. the concern for what is new and exciting (in the way of music, fashion, etc.) gives way to exploration of your own personality, your faults, your desires, your relationships. there's a calmness that is taking over me. the edges are sharper, but only used on rare occasions.

it's not something i can truly discuss within the text of this blog because it's not something i completely have a handle on yet. it's emerging and it's not even considered true fact yet. but i like it.

great little article/conversation about george lucas and steven spielberg discussing the raiders of the lost ark. lawrence kasdan is there too, but, really, who cares?

citi claims they made a profit and the market vomits happiness. let's see what happens through the rest of the week.

these are some really awful poses, but the morning show on 1560 the game is the best in houston. john and lance are freakin' hilarious. lance doing his uncle drayton impersonation and john calling people out. it's the best. i was listening this morning to them talking about sheriff blaylocks nachos at minute maid and uncle drayton giving away free foul balls. it was great.

seriously

no more auction block

there's no better feeling than doing something nice for someone you love. that's how i spent my weekend. well saturday, i worked all day. sunday i spent all day doing something nice. but saturday night was interesting. i was alone. my wife is out of town for the week and i had nothing to do. i didn't want to drink at all. so i drove down to get some coffee and decided to check out the bookstore over off of shepard and walabama. i saw some good stuff, but nothing i decided to buy. the new mojo magazine had a cover of nick cave and my mind got to thinking about his music.

but before i decided to expand on that, i thought i would look for cheaper books at the half price bookstore near montrose. i found a pretty good book by roger lowestein called origins of the crash. he's the same guy who wrote when genius failed about the spectacular death of long-term capital. so i got that book and looked around their used cd section for nick cave albums. didn't find any, so i went to soundwaves on montrose to find them there. didn't find them there either and that place has gotten way expensive. so i trucked it over to the new cactus records to look there and they didn't have any either. so i decided to call it a night, but before i went home, i went by target to see what i could find there. they had a sale on the john adams miniseries and i also got the watchmen book. but that's where i got the grand idea about what i wanted to do for my wife.

i won't divulge the details, but it's pretty sweet. i think she's going to love it when she gets home. to close up the nick cave story, i found my way to a website called secondspin.com and they had them there. i got let love in and nocturama.

anyway, pretty unusual weekend.