So I’m sitting in JFK airport right now, about to head to Long Beach, California. I’ll be meeting up with four friends from Chicago who were in Las Vegas last night and we’re all staying at some friend’s place in Long Beach. Afterward, we’re riding in the Rosarito/Ensenada bike race.  It looks to be a great time.

There will be a long-form post of all the pictures, words, idiocy, etc. on this blog at the end of the trip.  In the meantime, if you feel like keeping up, check out my Tumblr.

http://listlessintellectual.tumblr.com

Please wish me, my friends, our legs, and – especially – our livers good luck.  To the Conan The Barbarian-run state and Taco Bell-land I go!

But Kermit and LCD Soundsystem raise some good points.  Gentrification, being poor for the first time, moving to a city that is somehow safe, political and police-oriented disillusionment… but oh, how we still love you.

And for more Kermit action, here‘s a site made by someone with this absolutely brilliant idea: “Soon after the death of Jim Henson, Sad Kermit spiraled downward into a life of addiction, romance, and pain.  The songs and videos on this webpage shed light on Sad Kermit’s descent into his dark, hurting world.”

Sad Kermit

The Myers-Briggs test was first given to me during my freshmen year of college.  Approximately 48-hours after returning from an alcohol-induced hospital visit (thanks, big 10 colleges and bigger-10 egos), I found myself filling in an unending amount of bubbles on an 8-page scantron.  The visit to a school therapist was mandatory in order for me to maintain residency in the dorms, so I decided not to voice my displeasure with the idea that this overweight, underworked human being could glean a portrait of my personality based upon a #2 pencil and unending writer’s cramp stemming not from a Kerouac-esque stream of consciousness, but nearly an hour of responding to questions by elementary “coloring inside the lines.”

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I’ve been a fan of Garrison Keillor ever since I was a little kid.  I didn’t have much say in the matter at the time because my parents refused to listen to anything but NPR when in the car, but that’s beside the point.  I’ve grown to like almost all the same programming as my parents (it makes my chest hurt to say that) and Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” is no exception.

Since I usually can’t catch it when it airs (sorry, I do have slightly more important things to do Saturday nights…) I subscribe to the podcast that updates every Monday with his segment, “News From lake Wobegon.”  Garrison performs this monologue every week by himself without a script and it’s usually one of the most uplifting, honest, and accessible portions of the show.  This week’s was particularly good, ending with the line:

“He says, ‘We’ll think about it…’ that’s all you have to do, is just think about it.  If you think about it you will say ‘yes’ eventually.  We know that.  Life is irresistible.  Love is irrisistible.  If he thinks about it, he’ll go.”

Here’s a link to all the podcasts, the first one is the most recent/the one I’m talking about (like I said, it’s a good one).

That last post was a little harsh.  Anyway.  This is what’s really been happening:

On Thursday, I rode the subway all the way through Brooklyn, to the AirTrain, straight to the ever-festive, newly remodeled Terminal 5 at JFK.  I fly in and out of this terminal quite often, as I’m building JetBlue points for free trips to such charmingly demure locales as Bogota, Colombia soon.  Nonetheless, it never ceases to amaze me.  This place makes me feel like Schaumburg, Illinois took a Woodfield Mall-sized dump on Queens and JetBlue decided to jump on the shitstorm that ensued and open shop.  What results is an airport terminal complete with fountains, skylights, plants, a LaCoste store, numerous places to get drunk and eat Buffalo wings, and a food court:

A quick vid of Terminal 5:

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I was turned on to this project by my friend, Anna.

21 Maps of New York, real and imagined by amazing artists.  It really draws out the idea that this place, where I am, where you are, wherever we go, is just as much experiential as it is the numbers on the buildings on the labeled streets.  It makes all this asphalt animated.

My favorite: Lordy Rodriguez re-imagines Manhattan in an almost Blade Runner mindset.  Fragmented, angry, outposts of calm, a downtown financial district fortified by a wall and extensive security.

See the entire project here.

This made my chest hurt:

The blog it’s from is pretty great: here.

In light of expounding on my own affairs, I am currently taking solace in the fact that some “made to be” couples are, indeed, getting together forever: Zooey Deschanel is engaged to Ben Gibbard.

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Everyone should check out HeaveMedia right now because I wrote the top story in the “Music” section.  It’s about two singer-songwriters who live in Brooklyn (and give me inordinate amounts of free coffee)… this is not to mention that they’re pretty good at what they do.

Jump here to the article.

Jump here to the Heave Homepage.

There are scant few times when I put my coffee mug down, shove my headphones deeper into my ear canals so that the vibrations can rest right up against my auditory ossicles, and wave away my flaneuristic yearnings in order to become totally engrossed in something I find online.

La Blogotheque made me do all 3 of these things then made me drop my coffee mug on the floor. This got the attention of the baristas who were on duty and, after paying for the mug, I showed them the site as well.  They agreed, it’s a veritable gold mine of “indie rock” excitement (zeus, how I hate that term).  Though a lot of the site is in French, the key features are displayed in English as well.  For instance, scroll to the bottom of that opening page and click on “All Take Away Shows.”

Here, you’ll find a collection of improvised “shows” by any band that Pitchfork heralded in the past few years.  They are all performed “spur of the moment” in public places, oftentimes involving more people than the typical band line up.  The results are almost always serene, buoyant, transparent versions of songs that are left out of the deepest part of your heart due to production on an album.  Here, each artist is stripped of all semblance of modernity and left to perform the song however they see fit.  The results: inspiring.

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