Rifling Through the DUMP pt. III

New year. Time to take out the trash

I put on the Ethel Cain album as I went for a long walk while the sun fucked off to Hawaii. This was my second crack at it [first try was unmemorable. Last.fm says it was the morning of June 20, 2023 which meant I was at the job I had very much checked out of. Maybe not the best environment to hear this for the first time] and I decided to listen to it loud; full immersion. I don’t do this often since I have very mild tinnitus in my left ear [assumed, undiagnosed] and I suspect this has been the case for a while but was exacerbated in April at Coachella. I blacked out for about an hour or so and when I came to I was dancing [wildly] under the Despacio disco ball. To my surprise, I was missing my bandana and [much more importantly] my left ear plug. A quick and fruitless phone flashlight sweep around my feet meant I had to improvise. I spent the next hour or so standing perpendicular to the nearest speaker tower with my speaker-facing ear plugged and alternated ears every ten minutes or so until I saw my good friend Alexio who lent me an extra pair. 

I like the big sweeping swings of the fist on this record but I think I might not be hearing what others hear. Love the leaps; don't so much like the landings. Is this record too big to wrap my arms\brain around at this juncture? How many spins does it take to “get” it? I imagine many get it first try as a 76 minute album is a lot to ask.

“Televangelism" now that's a fucking track! A lot can be done with a piano. “American Teenager" is obviously massive. I like when artists put on the Bruce Springsteen hat, more so than when The Boss does. I have not given Bruce a fair shake and I love writing about baseball which makes me genetically near-guaranteed to love him. Perhaps he will be this year's rediscovery of my dad's favorites. 

I decided to give this album another go because I was going through Meaghan Garvey’s Substack (one of my favorite writers. She has her tropes which is why i like her so much. This piece is the only thing I’ve read this year so far that knocked me on my ass) and saw that she had interviewed Ethel and I quite liked the interview. Preacher’s Daughter was better on second listen for me but I am still searching for that next level. Can’t quite articulate what I feel is missing—this will require more thought. How much thinking?

i've been reading a lot. 

Books, essays, long form pieces, newsletters, interviews, things that even Eric Garland would deem too long for a Twitter thread. It’s been great, but a lot of the things I’ve read are so good that it actually makes me upset that I am not as good a writer as whoever wrote said piece. Not fishing for compliments or sympathy or whatever: I think I am a good writer I just want to be better. I’ve been writing down lots of ideas for what and where I want to write this year but jotting all those down has been paralyzing. I want to do a really good job and the fear of not living up to those expectations keeps me from even starting. But I’m gonna start—I promise for real.

what is your go-to karaoke song?

I would like to know. Email me, text me, DM me.

san gabriels don a magenta crown

The sunsets in Los Angeles are really stunning to me. Portland had some truly insane sunsets and their cloud work exceeds LA’s but the way the last light of the sun bounces off the San Gabriel mountains is so astounding to me. It creates this 360 halo effect that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get enough of.

five nights at freddie's pop up pizza shop 

Saw this while in an Uber the day the movie premiered. It was a madhouse outside the Five Nights at Freddie’s pop up. A phenomenon that I will never bother to interrogate; that stuff is not for me.

Inception

I have not seen this movie maybe since high school but it probably should've been a warning sign when the general consensus upon release was that this movie is a confusing mindfuck. It is so straightforward: the characters explain in very simple terms the exact details of how the incepting works. Nolan really holds your hand through it. At least everyone learned from this experience and media literacy has improved a lot :)

you win a very specific lottery that grants you and a plus one an all expenses paid two week trip to anywhere in the world. you have to use it this year. 

Where do you go?

"For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away” -Thomas Pynchon

He wrote this sometime in 1965 so, obviously, he was talking about film photography. Now, in 2024, I and many others consider film photography to be more "real" than a photograph taken on a cell phone. At least for me, I feel this way because there is considerably more intention ("considerably" generally meaning here to mean a bit more than zero rather than near absolute zero) put into a single snapshot taken on film because it is a physical act. It is imprinted onto the roll rather than beamed into a cloud. You cannot know if it turned out until the roll is spent and developed. The general understanding of photography is that it captures a moment and in many ways that is true. But I think, also, and now especially with the cameras installed into our phones, ready to snap at any moment, that in many ways we are not so much capturing a moment as we are killing it. This is doubly true when photographing dynamic moments, moments that cannot be summated in a single frame. Concerts come to mind. And I am already finding myself annoyed by complaining about people's phone usage at shows on here again but I'll soldier on. The fundamental problem, in my eyes, is that these pictures are on the whole not very good. I'm guilty of this too! I take pictures at shows and almost never do they produce a satisfying image that I find myself returning to. The impulse is obvious: "I'm having a great time. I want to remember this forever." Is this a healthy way to live? Probably not, I think, but who can be blamed for wanting to savor the special times in life? But that's the problem here. It's not so much savoring as it is siphoning. A picture taken is a moment removed from your current place in time, seeing through the screen, fast forwarding to tomorrow. Videos even more so. A simultaneous expression of narcissism while detaching from the self. 

I don't like spending money but there's expensive things I'd love. A $300 poster for example. 

I know. But you haven't seen the poster. 

waiting for a flight - sanitized boredom

Nothing to say about this.

Some tweet ideas for a RapTV Kids twitter account

y'all rockin with the buddy system ⁉️

hit 'em with the LMNOP

has anyone ever found a great book from one of those little public library boxes in residential neighborhoods? 

I have not. I check every single one I ever walk past.

blotto 

Really good word to describe being super drunk. Should be used more.

here's something i like about dance music: 

You can tell, basically immediately, whether or not the song is good. That is not exactly correct; perhaps it's more accurate to say whether or not you'll like the song. Or maybe more accurate still to say your degree of confidence in your assessment of the song is quite high. Little time is wasted. Not to say that non dance music wastes time, but rather hides the football longer.

these days, every time i see my mom, she imparts a piece of advice that kind of rocks me. 

A lot of times, these are offered off-hand — a throwaway line. Other times, they aren't even directed at me, just overheard. I only started noticing this recently, maybe a year or two ago, and it has been tremendously exciting. Was i not listening before? Or was the advice so good that it has been subsumed as a cold hard fact of the universe? I’m no longer a child, still her child of course, but the conversations take place on more even footing now. It's also been thrilling to get to know my younger sister and youngest brother as adults now. David Guetta voice shoutout to my family

red LL Bean backpack with RPM sewn on

I had this when I was a kid and just remembered it and wonder if it’s hiding somewhere in my parents house. I would like to have it again.

I went to the DMV to get a California license and yes it's an objectively terrible place to spend your time but if you walk in with a positive and powerful mindset you can detach from the usual trapping of anxiety, disgust, annoyed despair and have an almost out of body experience observing the strange anthropology of it all.

I honestly had a great time there.

chicken w/r/t egg territory. 

Should I make w/r/t a more frequent guest contributor? Serious writers love to be saying w/r/t; the problem is I don't want to be a serious writer, as in serious like man in a business suit. I would like people to take my writing seriously (again not serious like academic, serious as in they seriously read it, as in read it) and from what I can tell the w/r/t card seems to do at least a little part of the trick. 

high life 32 rolling around the bus 

Saw this on the bus; it was making some crazy sounds. Not much else to add, just a memorable experience for whatever reason.

i want to use the word "bandolier" in an essay

This does not count.

i've enjoyed photographing flowers. 

Under the flash they shriek shy.

tiktok being filmed on hollywood blvd

Saw this last month while walking to go meet some friends at Runyon Canyon. I am not a Runyon Canyon Hiking Girlie it is just a place I’ve been to twice. There’s a food truck at the trailhead that sells açaí bowls which is the single most genius business idea I have seen since I moved here. Perhaps the most captive açaí bowl audience in the world. Whoever runs that will be able to retire next year. But! The TikTok dance really fucked me up—genuinely stopped me in my tracks to see this women with a tripod\Ring light setup right there on Hollywood Boulevard filming herself doing a choreographed TikTok dance. God could not turn his face in shame for he was never here.

Something I found really interesting while volunteering for Bernie was that many people's capacity to imagine a better world has been completely neutered. 

The American Dream has been correctly sussed out as a lie, but the troubling thing is that it's been replaced by the American Nightmare, the idea that things will not, and more importantly cannot, get better. It's a message that so thoroughly permeates the broader liberal landscape and so consistently lends credence to itself that it feels like a runaway train. How do we stop the train?

Scientology is so busted that even with Tom Cruise they can't make the big leagues.

Really insane to me that they have Tom Cruise on the team and can’t sniff the playoffs. Like wasting Trout and Ohtani. I understand Cruise is fairly reptilian in the personality department but if someone tells you Tom Cruise is the greatest actor of all time can you really mount a convincing defense? I don’t think I could. That is a lot of star power to toss away. I’d like to see the executive board of Scientology switch places with Arte Moreno. Could they orchestrate the rebuild?

people talk a lot about airplane movies but i would like to contribute an alternative genre: ipod nano movies. 

This may be hyper-specific to just me but I watched a lot of movies on my iPod Nano in, what, fifth grade? By a lot of movies I actually mean one movie that I watched a lot: Bourne Identity. THE quintessential iPod Nano movie. Did you watch movies on your iPod Nano? If not, can you at least agree that Bourne Identity is the quintessential iPod Nano movie? Thank you!