Mikey Angelface (nee Angelakos) was one of my best bros in my college days of yore. Much like a certain Alexis K Page I know, he is a Greek Buffalonian (and dang proud!) familiar with the sweet temptations oft posed by wings, Sabers, and Mighty Taco… He started his band Passion Pit as a solo project in his bedroom a couple years ago. Me and his roommate Sam used to listen to him sing all falsetto (which has since become a signature of his music) into his GarageBand while we were in the next room like smoking pot and listening to Throbbing Gristle or whatever. Sam and I were also there for his first live show in Boston’s finest venue, the Emerson College Cabaret, for which we provided some sweet live video mixing. Now Mike’s opened for Girl Talk, These New Puritans, Death Cab for Cutie and, currently recording in Brooklyn under the guidance of indie label French Kiss, is well on his way to pop superstardom, f’real!
But I 4got. Now, I’m no nationalist, but unlike some of my closest Canadian ex-pat cohorts who have proved themselves to be yet again HATEFUL, Canada Day was (inexplicably) my fave holiday from ages 1-7 so for this reason I truly hold a torch for it and the country that stands behind its festivities, given that this is the fine nation that has successfully reared me into all that I am today (i guess).
For those of you ignorant to its traditions, Canada Day is the exact same thing as Fourth of July only it’s celebrated four days prior to the latter holiday and, you know, like only happens in Canada or whatever. Fireworks and eating and flags and crap like that.
Although I’m from the Ottawa valley area of Ontario (gag me…jk! except not), I never really go back MOSTLY because being there makes me want to die BUT ALSO because my father now lives in a weird Inuit village thing in the Northwest Territories… like, in the Arctic. Weird, I know. He spends a lot of time in this place called Inuvik and this other place called Tuktoyaktuk. I went to visit him there once so I can indeed confirm that he has spent at least some greater portion of his last five years there in spite of the fact that every time I try to call him he is mysteriously on yet another vacation in “The Caribbean”.
ANYWAYS so I went there like a few years ago and I probably should have just stayed at home because it took me like 6 days to get there via all these ghetto three person planes shared with all these like crazy old Inuit people wearing gigantic parkas that DEFINITELY took up some of my own much needed personal space… but they gave me meals on every flight which was awesome save for the fact that several of those meal options included the fine dining entree of Caribou which is totes nasty but apprently a local delicacy for the Arctic Circle region of Canada.
So I thought I was going to like get to Inuvik and ride on a polar bear’s back and swim with whales and play with rain sticks and stuff like that but upon landing I was greeted with a vast, desolate, empty tundra populated by a bunch of drunk townies (which, as I’ve mentioned before, is not a lifestyle I’m opposed to)… The freakiest thing, though, was how when I went to this place called North Mart which is like Arctic K-Mart in that the Lisa Frank stationary aisle is adjacent to the animal pelts and hunting spears aisle, there were all these mall goth girls hanging around outside wearing XXL hoodies emblazoned with logos for shitty bands like “The Used” (SO SICK…do they even exist anymore???) I mean, HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? Like, really, where the hell are the kids there getting this from–they live in the ARCTIC amongst DRUNK INUIT PEOPLE!
However I later learned that this part of Canada is no stranger to the alternative music scene, as, apparently in 1995 Molson Beer sent 500 contest winners to Tuktoyaktuk to see a performance by Metallica, Hole, and Veruca Salt. This might have sounded cool when presented to members of these bands, given that this place is literally at the end of the world and not many people really go there, but NOT MANY PEOPLE REALLY GO THERE BECAUSE THERE IS SERIOUSLY NOTHING THERE. So I’m sure like Courtney Love and co got there and were all “This sucks where’s the crack at” and fortunately for them, were quickly placated in that somehow this Arctic is indeed a haven for booze and drugs. I guess the permanent winter-induced depression from which most inhabitants suffer really encourages those sort of habits. Um I’m assuming my Dad is ok though since he clearly has a secret vacation home in Cuba.
Anyways here is a clip of Metallica performing at the aforementioned Arctic concert.
SO in spite of my better efforts to resist, I joined facebook this week as a means of finding this girl I knew in second grade because I bet my sister 20 bucks that she’s a total slut now and, upon challengement (especially when there is due compensation…no matter the price!), I demand victory. Results are inconclusive as I await friend request approval but this wait may be a long one as I have no profile picture nor have I any personal information detailed, nor have I a substantial and compellingly secure amount of facebook friends… whatev I’m working on it.
So far, facebook is as unfun as I thought it would be. First of all there are all these useless thingies on everyone’s profile… some shit about vampires and tiny cartoon graphics of random crap like toilet paper and sushi and stuff like that. In addition, I’ve found myself too lazy to add people as it has already proven tedious and boring and I couldn’t be bothered after looking up like five people I know in real life and accosting them for their virtual friendships (met with varied levels of success… um apparently I need to start re-evaluating the authenticity of some of my questionable real life relationships). It has also proved incredibly difficult for me to sit in front of a computer and think to myself “Now, who do I know?” as the only name I could come up with for at least the first fifteen minutes of this brainstorming process was this kid in my college freshman speech class who once gave this totally fucked up speech about how he got drunk in Miami one time and accidentally killed a kitten… someone I most definitely do not want to be real life friends with, let alone virtual!
However I did spend like an hour of my precious time assembling photos of polar bears (one of my fave animals) into a facebook album… I guess that was pretty fun.
I always thought of facebook as The Da Vinci Code of online social networking devices… it’s like, for a few years EVERYONE was reading that book… I mean I’ve been to many airports on several continents and I swear to god, no matter the language, for a while every person in the world waiting for a plane ever was reading that book. As a result of such, I was too weirded out to find out what sort of power said book held that it could draw so many people in and thus, I myself never perused its pages (which I’m assuming were filled with short sentences and like, god hating imagery or whatever)… Similarly, after some time of being too weirded out by facebook, I’ve gone ahead and become another one of its plebes… oh christ, do me a favour and finish this one off for me and insert your own snappy closing metaphor about waiting for a plane and Tom Hanks and whatever. I’ve got to go upload a new profile pic and find out which girl from my middle school confirmation class got pregnant first!
btw dj geo also really loves heidi montag’s new single “fashion” presumably because he too is a lover of designer clothing and indeed wishes for you to “put it all on him”
So, like, when he’s outside of the clubz and on the couch (which is often) bowl-cut fanatic DJ Geo usually picks two songs he likes and then submits me to acoustical torture in the form of putting said songs on unending repeat mode for literal WEEKS at a time. Lately with him it’s been “Bossy” by Lindsay Lohan intertwined with that song by Katy Perry that’s about being a casual drunk lesbian or whatever… which, you know, serves as a nice topical parallel to the Lindsay song, I guess.
In an attempt to silence his shitty jams, however, I’ve adopted my own anthem, which I have been dutifully counter-playing over his professional DJ picks. It’s a little thang called “I Like To Fuck” by some guy called Hotrod featuring some other guy called B. Dozier featuring my fave bi-curious azn bobblehead Tila Tequila! Not totally sure on what sort of creative input she had regarding the lyrical content, but regardless of whoever wrote them, I’m fairly confident that these timeless rhymes offer an accurate depiction of Tila’s primary interests beyond, you know, uhhh shameless constant self-promotion to a largely embarrassed or otherwise uninterested public.
Me and my roommate, Greek shipping heiress Alexis Page, each share a dangerous hidden addiction to model “culture”. Nary a day goes by without our lusty (and often highly critical) perusal of some 14 year old skinny Russian bitch’s career timeline via NY Mag’s Model Manual (the Bible!). Given that our circle of acquaintances extends to a few major catwalkers in the know, I can’t help but to go out and get fucked up with them and then embarrassingly harass them into telling me precious secrets about their stickly colleagues (lesbo affairs, diuretic pills, general retardation… stuff like that).
Anyways, there are a few of these girls I just can’t get enough of. It’s strange because I would much rather read model gossip or bullshit like that over all that gay, like, Miley/Jonas Brothers Us Weekly dish any day of the week (and I know I can’t be alone on that one… I mean, they’re on the Disney Channel and they’re ugly! Ugly as in regular people ugly, not as in model ugly, which is called pretty, duh). Maybe I love models for some deep reason about beauty and something about Kant and and stuff like that. Or maybe I love them because they’re tall ass prepubescent freaks with big feet and no body fat who are forced to wear weird stupid clothes that no one in real life actually cares about!
Whatev, take a looksie at a list of models I’m obsessed with after the jump.
My friend Fifi was here last week visiting from London. She’s a really talented tambourine player for sweaty indie rock god Lightspeed Champion. Check out this video clip, it’s Fifi with her best friend Peaches on some totally queer celebrity version of Big Brother–you know, that retarded reality tv show about people sitting around a house doing nothing other than talking to this guy shouting at them from a speaker on the wall. Last time I was in London, every copy of, like, all the British versions of Us Weekly EXCLUSIVELY featured information on all the cast members (most of it seemed to be about this fat chick called Jade) as if those people are like legitimate celebs worthy of public intrigue or whatever. Nevertheless, it made for a totally boring eight hour plane ride back home in which I was forced to finally finish The Lovely Bones (what was Oprah thinking with that one, barf!). I guess I was feeling a lot like however British people feel when they’re waiting at LAX or wherever and forced to read about those dead-eyed skanks from The Hills.
So like, I’m not really sure about the premise on this one, but somehow Fifi and Peaches have been granted control of an ill-equipped (mentally, that is) group of mildly attractive (I guess) people and, as the result of such loans of power, Feefles and co. dress up like weird animals or some shit and conduct a dance break with their plebes. Results vary. If I were in their place I’d probably pick the ugliest or most annoying person in the group and secretly kill him or her and then force all of the other people in the house to eat the leftover body. Is that weird?
Fifi also taught me about other important elements of British culture. Namely, this show called Britain’s Got Talent which, if anything, is incredibly compelling evidence to the contrary. But, in introducing me to this gem of a historical UK moment, she also introduced me to several new love interests:
This is my forum for talking about whatever crap I feel like, fools! Think of me as a necessary intellectual (I guess) palette cleanser as you flip the digital pages between, say, Jonny’s adventures in faggotry and Leigh’s adventures in, like, going to fashion shows or whatever.
(Sorry for the shitty quality, y’all. I’m not sure what loser decided to spend time recording a children’s program on their TV with a handheld camera, but whatev, it’s my only option!!!!!!)
