Gerardo Was Kinda A Mentor

My self-imposed exile from Radiohead has ended today after two months. And what happened? "Reckoner" started to sound real good. "House of Cards," though, still pretty questionable.

My "Bends" CD circa '95-'96 is officially, finally dead. Interestingly, the skips and squawks start/end at the start/end of what I dub "The Middle Gauntlet," the brilliant sequence that is - Nice Dream, to Just, to My Iron Lung, to Bullet Proof...I Wish I Was - the four songs that converted me into a person with good taste. Or pretentious taste, whatever the case.

Well, not pretentiousness. I still hold that NOW & FOREVER by Color Me Badd rivals the greatest modern r&b record, II (Boyz II Men). That makes me delusional, maybe, but not pretentious.

Between The Bends and OK Computer, I was forced forever into a servitude to music. I discovered that music was important and that I wanted to make music. Especially in our age of disposable media, it's important to find serious art. Remember when we thought, "LORD, music can't get any worse than Lil Jon?" And then Soulja Boy came out? Yeah. I was at the tail end of the Last Generation - born three years later, I wouldn't have known any better. Mr. Tell'em would actually sound INNOVATIVE to me. I'd be at my high school reunion saying, "Man, those were the good days, OneRepublic was ROCK N ROLL!" Man, I wish I were alive when mainstream pop was Chet Baker, or Dean Martin, or The Beatles, or Kate Bush, or Rico Suave.

NOT new songs listened extensively this week for seemingly no reason

water curses - animal collective
hit the wall - brendan canning
cyoa - heartsrevolution
ill believe in anything - wolf parade
take it easy my brother charles - jorge ben
gozashteh - moein
babe im gonna leave you - led zeppelin
echoplex - nine inch nails
gobbledigook - sigur ros
vitamin c - can (one of my favorite songs of all time)

side note: taking a break from listening to radiohead non-stop since I was ten.
guilty pleasure deal - although I truly don't think coldplay are great songwriters, you have to admit The Scientist was one helluva single. probably everyone has cried at least half a time while that song was playing; or, more aptly, whenever you were crying the fuckin' song grew little legs, ran to a nearby television, or into your headphones, or onto your computer, and just played itself, like chris martin was hiding at every melancholic corner just waiting for you to lose your shit.

i remember laying under the table. having some major end-of-Dancer-In-The-Dark cryfest. or my friend travis at the end of watching A.I., which is another funny thing, because in all likelihood he and I are the only two who actually cried listening to The Scientist and watching Artificial Intelligence.

Which is why we're secretly in love.

But these days, The Scientist only makes me want to walk backwards to a car crash. It reminds Travis of the moment when he drove off to Arizona, turning around to look as I waved goodbye, further and further away, regretting applying to U of A - then putting foot to brake, running back toward me, as a smile creeps up on my face, and we stand there like gunslingers in the old West, and we wonder if bisexuality is in the mix, and this never happened although we both wish it did.

I want to be: Paul Thomas Anderson without the coke deal or Thom Yorke without the Creep deal.
I want the world to be: happy.

I fear for my life, just realized I'm paranoid (but no android), and miss my girlfriend.