you know, some might find a lot of points to make fun of miss U.S.A. for falling on her A.S.S. in the middle of a competition in which it seems like the goal of the competition is to see who can not fall on their ass the best, but NOT ME. if there's anything that the past eight seasons of america's next top model have shown us, it's that these beauty competitions are about more than just being really really really ridiculously good looking--it's about HEART. and SOUL. and even though miss usa may have fallen on her ass in physical form, her soul didn't fall on its ass.

and that's what matters.



really though, i'm waiting for the pageant where a contestant slips, and right before her ass hits the floor, she spreads gigantic feathered wings, punches a hole in the ceiling and soars away.

ps: i didn't take that concept from anything in particular.

anybody who has set foot in my car for the past month know that i'm pretty much all about the british this spring (when it comes to music). i can't even front...i don't know what they're smoking over there across the pond, but they're cranking out the bangers like hot crumpets.

so you can imagine how curled in my jerries i got when i found that arctic monkeys (my favorite band right now) covered amy winehouse (my favorite vocalist right now)!

what this all amounts to is, yes: adriel loves The White People. The White People, you rock.

my glares burn through her and i'm sure that such actions aren't foreign to her so in the presence of this higher being the weakness of my masculinity causes me to personify my

With all of the traveling that you've been doing lately, you've made a game out of figuring the best way to divvy up your time. In selecting flight preferences to excavate the ultimate balance between getting enough rest, and having enough sun while on land to frolic whatever new grounds you find yourself to claim stakes in. You stayed in Chicago two extra days, for two extra reasons:

1) To build with your midwest contingent, and

2) Because you can.

"Because You Can" has been your recent catchphrase lately. Maybe not something that you say aloud, but definitely a mental note that, for the past few weeks, you've been hoisting around like a letterman jacket post-tryout season. You thrill yourself in stacking shit to do, getting giddy when people react to the boldness/insanity/stupidity of your daily agendas. You wait for it--for someone to give you the cue to boast.

Person: "Sup man."

You: "Wadduuuuup."

Person: "What are you doing on Saturday?"

You: "Oh, yenno, just waking up at 5:30am to fly out of Chicago, land in Oakland at 10:30, do an iLL-Lit show in Davis at 3 and then drive to Mountainview to catch the Bjork concert."
Person: "What the hell, are you crazy?? Why would you do that to yourself??"

You: "Because I can."

Holler back, pimp. Unsure of whether all this is really going to happen without your eyes exploding in your skull, you opt to sleep early the night before your early morning flight: 1am. Within four blinks you find yourself at some ungodly hour that you're sure is reserved for only three kinds of people: Zombies, Wal*Mart employees, and hunters...of Zombies.

As you shove a limp dollar bill into the CTA machine, you hear the train to the airport rumble away above you. It sounds like a 20-minute wait you weren't hoping for. The next 14 hours are pretty much a blur, somewhat involving metal detectors, sitting in seats, an awkward outdoor daytime gig, and ending up in Jozee's apartment at 6:30 in the evening. You are very excited. Jozee and Sarah Dayley are the only two people that didn't react to your invitation to see Bjork as abhorrently as if you were proposing a hippopotamus orgy.

You: "We're not in a rush are we?"

Sarah Dayley looks up from her Vice mag for a second, before directing her attention back to the skater pics, and nonchalantly chirping, "We sort of are."

Jozee cushions his lips against Roxie, the fire-red glass contraption that has graced many a night like this. The haze snakes from his pursed lips, his eyebrows curved not unlike the Sean Connery Bond. He exhales, ballooning the cloud into pure opacity and sets Roxie on the table. "There are opening acts," he says. Which basically means, "Yeah, we'll be late."

You've been looking forward to the Bjork show for a hot minute. She's in that list of people you have to see in concert before you die. Along with Stevie Wonder, Prince, Sade, Jay-Z, and God. Luckily, unlike others on that list, tickets to the Bjork show weren't the cost of a small island. Lawn seats, baby! The part of the Shoreline Amphitheater where the audience is hoarded like cattle, where you're so far back that the performer is reduced to a mere speck projecting sound from the open dome as the only indication that they are in fact a person and not a Christmas light.

Two hours into the drive, the three of you decide that getting directions would've been a good idea. You slither back and forth on the 101, u-turning exits and winding up on completely wrong freeways. 411 calls are made. Voicemails are left. You speculate whether Mountainview is north or south of San Jose, squinting to make out signs to let you know the exit is coming up. When you finally wander into the right vicinity, your contrived "Whooo!" is embittered by the fact that you've all become quite demoralized and sure that you've already missed the show. As you trek toward the auditorium, you search for any sign as to whether or not the drive has been in vain.

"They're playing transition music," huffs Jozee with a smile. The queen hasn't come on yet. You rush into the venue gates and Jozee goes straight to the $8 cups of beer while you contemplate over some ridiculously overpriced piece of paper sneakily named a "poster." The weather's warm, Bjork is in town, and you're extremely blazed. It. Is. The. Life.

As you make your way to the lawn, you're taken aback by the 25,000-capacity amphitheater packed to the nostrils. As if on queue, as soon as you find a crack between bodies big enough for you to see the stage, the horns come on, the sparks starts shooting, the lasers beam, and the Icelandic speck appears. All the songs you recognize come on, but you know that your Bjork fan-ness only stretches as far as knowing songs as "the one where she's wailing at the end" and "the one with the video where the robots are kissing." It doesn't matter though. You don't need to be as die-hard as the group of people in front of you dressed like forest nymphs and most likely spazzed out on acid. At shows like this, all else goes. You probably get a good 4 feet of air the way you start hopping up and down when HyperBallad comes on. There are far too many sounds, smells, colors for you to take in without your head exploding (that's your second explosion reference this day). And when it's all finished, there's not much more you can do but stand and watch the theater empty of people filled to the brim solely by the babbles of one person.

And this is your life. Arranging your travel itinerary for your shows in order to catch someone else's. Because the greats are those who make watching the show feel just as glamourous as starring in it. Regardless of how many contracts you fax through, mics you soundcheck, books you sign and plane ticket stubs you have lying around under your car seats, you will always be, above everything else, a fan.

damn.

Random flight question #1: While in the lavatory, I asked myself, where does all the human waste go when you flush it? You push the button and it sort of just gets vacuumed into some abyss. I have concluded that there are two possible places that the flusher leads to--either some massive septic tank located in the lower portion of the plane (you know, near where your luggage is stored) or it's released into the open sky. Regardless of which, it's pretty disgusting. You know how sometimes you're walking on the street and all of a sudden you get two little squirts of liquid on your arm and you look up and there's nowhere that it seems that it could have originated from, and so you assume it was just a random droplet of rain even though it's 80 degrees and sunny and there are no clouds? Yeah.

Random flight question #2: Back in prehistoric times, did cavemen ever worry about getting shitted on by pterodactyls?


Flights like these trip me out. Columbus to Chicago, a 65-minute flight going backwards in timezones. So our flight left at 11:30 and we're landing at 11:35. We had a decently-attended show at Ohio State, though I still can't help but be disappointed when we don't pack the house. I give myself excuses like, Mondays are awkward show nights, and publicity wasn't aggressive enough, but really I just need to be more patient with the way we're catching on.

I nice little surprise though--some members of Animal Collective, who had a show scheduled at the same venue right after ours, ended up catching the tail-end of our show and chopping it up with us afterwards! It has been pretty exciting how these maybe-not-coincidences have been popping up all around. I had just spent a good part of my flight reading a Fader article on Panda Bear of Animal Collective, only to go on campus the next day and walk in in the middle of their soundcheck. As we left the venue after our show, the front was lined with tight-jeaned emo kids, some gripping flimsy cardboard signs with "NEED ANIMAL COLLECTIVE TICKETS" sloppily markered on. The show was sold out, as I found out during the quick chat with the band where I tried to hint at free tickets with no success.

Sigh, one day. Hard-pressed for us to expect people to be spilling into our shows when we haven't even released our first record, pretty much snailing up a fanbased through small-city touring and YouTube. On top of that, I supposed there's a substantially smaller following for spoken word in the first place, compared to hip-hop or rock (even the kind with echoey owl noises in the background).

words cannot explain how ridiculously great it would be if YOU were here tonight!!!!!!1!!!!1!! after a week of landlord beef, losing a computer, one of my favorite rap groups breaking up, and the result of all of that being straining lack of good music, we shake it all off TONIGHT! it's gonna be poppin! buy me a drink and boogie down with me

live via: my old crappy computer that's on the brink of crumbling to pieces

Somewhere in Berkeley, someone is running around with a computer full of unfinished flyers, great music, and incredibly sappy love poetry.

So it finally happened. Last night, backstage at a show, my laptop was stolen. For the most part, I handled it pretty well...I didn't go into a room to scream, or maniacally search all my friends' bags, or start crying in the middle of the venue. My over all theme of the night was, "Well, twas just a machine, and a machine is but material in this fictitious materialistic realm." (yeah, I start talking existentialist when in the presence of tragedy)

To be quite honest though, today I've been suffering a bit of a mild case of depression (can depression be diagnosed in less than 24 hours of..the sadness...starting...?) Maybe I'm just sad. It does suck that I no longer have the thing, but what has really been bumming me out is the fact that all of my personal journal entries since last July were in that machine. The stuff that never made the blogs, or stage, because they were too slurred or vulnerable or painful or written in the code of my infinite randomness. Those 3am half-innebriated spills. The desperate hustles to find the first lines to poems, the blueprints that never found themselves into the public eye. The accidental masterpieces that I probably never even read more than twice. Ironically, what I miss is all the writing that I produced during my "writer's block."

Between the months of November and January, I went through the phase of typing late at night on my computer. Before then, I could never do writing on a computer, and could never write for shit past 10pm. For the most part, I thought my writing was horrible, but I had fun doing it. I was reading a lot of Sylvia Plath at the time. In the back of my head, I thought to myself that this would be the shit that would be compiled if I ever got to the point of greatness where my bullshit writing was worth compiling. It was my secret. I left behind punchlines, incredibly dense imagery, references that no one would ever get but me, for myself.

It was during this process that I realized that a writer's block isn't the inability to write, rather it's the inability to be satisfied with what you're currently writing, because you want to be writing something else. Quite fittingly, I realized all of this just weeks ago. Most of my design projects, and music, and photographs, and things that I love much less than the writing that I thought I hated were backed up. But I never back up projects that I'm in the middle of, so I never backed up the chronicles of my life.

Really, it feels like a breakup. And one of those breakups where you're pretty sure she's not coming back. I'm dealing with the separation from a time that I was more open to myself than I've ever been, or that I am now, when I finally figured out how to write for myself and only myself.

But whatever. Q-Tip lost the first draft of Love Movement in a house fire, and he's still doing okay. Dr. Dre has all his Death Row-era beats for ransom and he's okay. And I'm pretty sure Detox is more highly-anticipated than the journal anthology I was planning to release on the 25th anniversary of my death (how's THAT for morbidity?!?).

So ultimately, all is well in the neighborhood. HOWEVER. I would greatly appreciate if you would take a second to mourn with me. Here we go, y'all, lets take it back, and pour one for all the mac-daddies that done passed away.

Dear Mrs. Rogers-Jones,

First and foremost, I would like to congratulate you on your current overwhelming success, best exhibited in the recent announcement of your new MTV reality show with your newly-wed husband, Nas. Not that you need one to validate yourself as an artist, but truly in today's Digital World, the fact that you are starring in a reality show in which you are not aspiring to become Martha Stewart's intern, pimp your ride, or elope with a crackhead in a viking's helmet, illustrates that you have officially been catapulted into the elite limelight of American fame. And who more deserved than you? I still remember, not too long ago, discussions with my peers about how baffling it was that "Kelis is so huge in the UK but people hardly know her in the States." You are Living Proof that true talent does exist at least in some corners of pop, Kelis, you are no longer a Lil Star.

Unfortunately, as most open letters go, I am not writing to you just to say hello, or to stroke your ego. It is currently around midnight, and I just returned from your show which, much to my dismay, I was not able to catch you at. Now, in the same way that I'm sure Obama didn't have much of a direct hand in his administration's hostile takeover of a supporter's Myspace page, I'm sure you also didn't really have anything to do with the dress code at tonight's event. But truly, I ask, how do you measure the irony of requiring collared shirts, slacks, and dress shoes to see an artist whose debut album cover featured her completely nude and drenched in paint?

You see? That was Kaleidoscope, Kelis. I've been down with you since then. But then again, I'm sure that's not crossing your mind while you're performing (which you may be at this very moment as I write) to a crowd of wannabe Popular Thugs in fake gators and way too much CK One. I, on the other hand, had your futuristic-outerspace Tastiness in mind and came decked out like Mr. U.F.O. Man himself. Yes, I wore tennis shoes. But they were hotttttttt tennis tennis shoes! They Glow, dammit! Look! Wimbledon shit! And my jeans? Uniqlo jeans, which you model for! AND I wore my shiny blue windbreaker, which is soOOoO in the tradition of your Wanderland days. But I guess the bouncers at your show must've also been following Kelis tradition, because they sure were BOSSY.

Alas, perhaps your fame is now a bit too Young, Fresh N' New for us old-time fans. There's No Turning Back now. But when you perform to the crowd and realize that only a Handful of them are able to do more than mouth the hook to Milkshake, will you Flash Back and feel that same fulfillment that you did back in the days when you (although not yet a Millionaire) were surrounded by the supporters who were down Til the Wheels Fall Off? I Don't Think So.

Ultimately, I should've known that a $5 Kelis show with an open Hennessy bar was too good to be true. I would like you to know that after the bouncers bounced me, I took my five bucks to Safeway and bought a box of Honey Bunches of Oats to munch on while cursing the existence of soft leather dress shoes under my breath.

Anyway, I don't mean to sound harsh, I simply felt that I needed to Stick Up for those of us who feel Suspended in this sudden outburst of Attention toward you. But real fans keep it real, Wouldn't You Agree? I still love you and your music dearly, I will still bump your albums, awaiting the day when your pink stilettos will graze my back (they probably wouldn't have let you in with those stilettos, by the way). And with that, I leave you with a rather fitting poem by my good friend Dahlak, entitled, "The Club." Have A Nice Day.

Sincerely,
Adriel Luis

live at the ill-literacy hard knock radio interview this afternoon! stream of the whole interview coming soon...

gotta love overbooked flights.