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Crossfade: Last Night - Joss Stone

passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers

...I wish I thought of this...

1) makes me sad
2) for some reason reminds me of how much I used to like The Libertines....Babyshambles sucks, and apparently, so does crack:

My very soon-to-be roommate and I had just finished looking at about 5 potential new homes (one with a view of the water – refinery, that is) when the slow, sawing pain evoked by the poorly stitched straps of my cheap Nine West wedges finally reached my metatarsals. Since MVSTBR (how very Dan Savage of me) lives near Lincoln Road, I suggested we go to Zekes to chill, people watch, and most importantly sit.

Unfortunately we never quite got to the whole sitting part. After getting our drinks we walked out of the tiny lime green shoe box of a bar, and noticed that all of the 9,2138,0128,3103,8018,3012 tables in front of Zekes were completely occupied. MVSTBRM noticed two guys (no George Clonneys, or even George Constanzas) sitting at a table with two available chairs. We asked the guys if we could take the chairs and they treated us like we were straight-up dogs (not like Lady and the Tramp-dogs, but more like Kim Stewart-dogs).

Rejected -- but, really -- not caring that much, I promptly turned around and proceeded to bust my ass right in front of the massive crowd; scrapping my knee and elbow on some crusty-ass, most likely AIDS-infested concrete.

I managed to save every last drop of my Amber Honey Rose, though. Clearly showing where my priorities lie.

Needless to say, it was horribly embarrassing. But I felt I took it pretty well, laughing it off as MVSTBRM stopped the bleeding with citrus blotting strips (which felt terrific).

Anyway, I sat down last weekend to write a blog about the incident, and instead this came out.

Enjoy!:

How to be the Coolest Girl on South Beach in 40 Easy Steps:


1) See a pet store.

2) Dig in your purse for your pet Bush Baby.

3) Chuck it over your shoulder – preferably your left, for good luck.

4) Enter pet store.

5) Buy a small, pure-breed dog
a. If it’s a Chiahuahua make sure to starve it, no one likes a tubby Tinkerbell.
b. If it’s small and white (i.e. Maltese, Shitzu, or Poodle) make sure to always dress it in ridiculous outfits. This distracts from these breeds' eternal Dirty Sanchezes.


c . Puppies are the only exception to the small dog rule – baby Rottweilers and American Bull Dogs especially (so cute!) – but once they grow over 30 lbs. (and become un-cute) its time to lock them inside your 20x20/$3k a month studio on Collins and let your cell phone be your companion.

6) Buy a Louis Vuitton collar, leash, dog carrier, pooper-scooper, doodie-bag, chew toy, dog perfume, toothpaste, nail polish, and skate board.

7) Buy a funky blouse at BCBG or Anthropology. They're so cheap there!

8) Make sure to look extremely disenchanted by your surroundings, if not, everyone will totally think you’re a tourist. And you’re so not. You’re practically a native. You moved down from New England at leas three whole years ago and know everything west of the beach, east of North Miami Ave., north of 2nd, and south of 79th – I mean, that’s pretty much all of Miami, right?

9) Complain about old people.

10) Complain about the ugly tourists.

11) Complain about the ugly foreigners.

12) Complain about, ugh! Like…whatever.

13) Complain about the humidity.

14) Take your new blouse and wipe about 3 lbs. of Clinque foundation (leaving approximately 7 lbs.) off your dripping forehead.

15) Since you hate to be wasteful and the trash can is three feet out of your general direction, quickly give blouse to bum (This way you appear charitable AND environmentally conscious).

16) RUN – you do not want to linger. Bums:
a. Reek
b. Want stuff
c. Live in boxes
d. Want to rape you
e. Might attempt to read you a passage from the Bible - Awkward!

17) Find the nearest bar with a DJ.

18) Flirt with the DJ until he lets you hang out behind the booth.

19) Once behind the booth, put the earphones on and press them against your ears, so you look like you know what you're doing. Like this:


20) With one hand hold the ear phones, with the other point at people and jiggle.

21) Please flip tape to side B.

22) Only stay long enough for the DJ to offer you a line.

23) Neogociate a second one after a line’s snorted off your tit.

24) Leave and head for Zekes because drinking $3 beers on the beach makes you look humble. Or simple. Or poor, but cool. Like Carrie Bradshaw. With beers instead of Cosmos.

25) Wait, I’m confused.

26) Do not compute. Do not compute.

27) Sadjk (^#^ aois %62bjha dska***…_____________4

28) Once at Zekes make sure to order something exotic – like Heineken

29) Find the last empty table (for some reason, YOU always seem to find the very last one).

30) Take table entirely for yourself, but make sure the table has at least four chairs; one for you, one for your dog (Remember? He’s that tiny, panting, weight you’ve been dragging around all night), your oversized Chanel bag, and one for a “friend” (you don’t really have friends, you’re waaaaay too pretty).

31) Pretend to nurse your one beer for about an hour, but don’t actually drink it - Do you know how many carbs are in beer?!

32) Instead, do either of the following:
a. When no one’s looking (because, come on, people are going to be looking at you, you’re hot) strategically pour out tiny amounts on to the ground every 10 minutes or so.
b. When someone who looks like they work there walks by, ask for a tiny water bowl for your dog. When you finally receive the bowl (because you had to ask, like, 5 different people - it’s not your fault that everyone there looks poor enough to have to work), drink the water in the bowl yourself and replace it with beer. This is a win-win-win situation: 1) You get rid of the beer 2) Water is great for your complexion 3) Beer will put your puppy to sleep, making it WAY easier to stuff him inside your bag and zip it closed.

33) Once you’ve got your dog in your bag, wait about 15 seconds. You’ll know 15 seconds have passed when either
a. Your bag stops squirming and starts whimpering
b. Someone asks you whether or not you’re using the two empty seats.

34) Then:
c. If it’s a cute guy, say no. Invite him to sit with you.
d. If it’s an ugly guy, say yes - you’re saving it for a friend, but you’re soooo sorry a cutie like him has to stand! Then wink, hand him 2 dollars, and ask him to get you a beer.
e. If it’s a girl under 115 lbs., say yes – but tell her you like her shoes. Then when she turns her back, take the dog out of your purse and deck her in the back of the head.
f. If it’s a girl over 115 lbs., say yes - then make sure to laugh super loud when she turns around and accidentally trips in her cheap Bakers’ heels. Get up, tower over her, spit into her open scrapes, and say “Aw, is little Miss Piggy having a hard time standing on her piggy hooves? Go ahead, take the table. Rest your cankles. I can actually walk and stand in heels.”

34) Now that you’ve successfully made someone else feel like shit, it’s time to go home.

35) Paint a pentagram on your forehead with Mac’s Virgin Blood No. 5 lipstick and slaughter a goat.

36) Proceed to snort rails until your millionaite boyfriend shows up pancakes and ecstasy.

37) Celebrate your boyfriend’s winning of a bid to sell AK47’s to the troops in...Iceland? India? Indiana? Whatever! Have him suck the leaking saline from your brand new breasts until the sun comes up.

38) Put on a bikini bottom (no need for a top), thin white T-shit, diamond belly chain, and oversized bug sunglasse.

39) Head to Niki beach to bake/sleep until 5 pm.

40) Wash and repeat.

A few weeks ago, I caught my editor throwing a bunch of CDs into the garbage. The sight alone kind of hurt my heart.

I’m aware that the majority of these albums are probably pretty craptacular. Not to mention a good, Andre-the-Giant-size handful are sent over by major record labels that just want us to write a review for publicity/sales-sake. But for me, that doesn’t take away from the hours, and experience, and love put into some of these unknown discs. Shouldn’t the fact that someone took the time to stuff the CD into an envelope and sent it over to a publication with the slimmest hopes that someone might give the thing a listen, enough to, well, listen?....Even if that person was just a lowly intern at Sony who gets paid by the hour to stuff them into envelopes while answering phones...

I decided to evoke my inner dumpster-diver and fish the CDs out of the trash.

Not only do I intend to listen to every one of them, I’ll write each one a short review, regardless of whether or not they should’ve stayed where my editor put them.

Philpot
Label: Toucan Cove/Universal Records

Before writing this review I took a quick glance at Philpot’s label, Toucan Cove’s website and read their description of their sound. The site claimed they were comparable to “Blur, Pearl Jam, REM, The Stone Roses, Alice In Chains, Freddy Mercury, The Yardbirds, The Beatles, The Smiths, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin and The Doors.” They then went on to say “They've been labeled ‘New Classic Rock’ and ‘New Americana’, the next band from the American heartland, and the ‘American Oasis’.”

Although I give serious props to whoever wrote this blurb simply for knowing who the Yardbirds were, it’s pretty much the standard “Manchester United” (The Stone Roses, Oasis, The Smiths) comparison given to almost every underground (i.e. local, garage, struggling) band because it’s code for indie. And for any emerging band, being labeled indie powers them with musical street cred and a convenient excuse for why you haven’t seen their name on the Billboard Charts.

To nip this budding tangent in, well, the bud, Philpot does not sound like any of these aforementioned bands.

The Toucan Cove blurber was relatively accurate when they described Philpot as ‘New Classic Rock’ (an oxymoron, but it works); they do have an acoustic sound with some jam-band tendencies and when I first popped the album in, I immediately thought ‘The Counting Crows’, (and okay, the opening to the first track, “Etc., Etc.” does have some Yardbird-quality to it). Initially, I was also quite pleased with the occasional pockets of original, fluttering riffs and piano chords that seemed to break up the music’s monotony. Yet, by Track 5, I was bored.

Really bored. In fact, I think I can sum up the dullness of their sound with their sharp as a butter knife use of lyrics in their 11^th track, “Drugstore Cowboy”:

“Just a Drugstore Cowboy/living out loud/touching the clouds/as you watch me go down”

…Wow, that’s like, what? - 4 clichés in one chorus? I think someone’s the illegitimate son of Bob Dylan!

One thing that sincerely intrigued me about Philpot was the lead singer, Kentz Ward’s voice. He sounded like the less talented love child of Chris Cornell and Rod Stewart, using the same inflections in his voice over and over again and sounding nothing like the “cross between Liam Gallagher and Kurt Cobain,“ that the label’s website promised. Plus, by the third song, you’re seriously jonzing to give Ward a cough drop due to his throaty vocals that’d make Brian Wilson cringe, flipping the straight-from-the-shelves-of HHhhhhKSDJLSJDLJ LD;KF;DKSF;L ``-==zz---------------lk;k;lk;pl[po[po[o[pohjkhjkhjhkhjkhjhjkhjkjHallmark claim that Ward “invests his soul and makes every note of these songs count,” accurate only if what they mean by “investing his soul” is that he sold it to Satan in order to produce this album.

Another thing that gets me about Ward is that I was pretty much convinced by the third song that he was Australian, or maybe, MAYBE, British. Yet, while reading the band’s official website I stumbled upon the discovery that they’re actually from Dugger, Indiana - leading me to believe that we might have ourselves another Billie Joe c/o Dookie on our hands, which is never good. Or cool.

In conclusion of my first Last Spin, my sentiments on Philpot can be summed up by the ending chorus of their final song – “I just don’t know” - if I should’ve taken this one out of the trash.

to survive.

to receive food and water from National Guard units outside the New Orleans Convention Center.


in anticipation of Kate Moss' new clothing line at London's Top Shop.

Kate Moss and Beth Ditto on the way to a The Gossip show

...and despite the fact that things like this have been happening in our country for the past seven years:



other countries, such as Japan, aren’t as “together” as we may think.

1) They thought Hitler was cool

2) They sell Hello Kitty douche bags (I don’t know why this astounds me, but it does)

3) This is how they fill time when a show ends early…seriously:



4) They have a black market the caters to selling used panties

5) They put hot dogs in their pizza crust

6) They suck at hooking up people’s internet, as a former roommate and dear, awesome friend of mine who’s been living in Japan for the past three years vividly illustrated in an eloquent email she wrote me this morning:

“I am getting internet on the 24th. How gay is that? In motherfucking tokyo it takes a month for them to come and hook up the internet! They said it’s because they’re so "busy" but I think it has less to do with being "busy" and more to do with being Japanese and doing everything in the most inefficient way possible. Unless it is a toilet that cleans your ass and blow dries it, those are very efficient. But everything else in this country is not. And sake gets you drunk. That’s it.”

Why do kids nowadays have to wear a helmet when they ride a bicycle, but get away, wrist-guard-free, with those stupid skate-shoes?

1) I just found a pair of underwear, that I’m not wearing, in the jeans that I am currently wearing…I confuse myself

2) Yesterday I parked next to a beautiful Jaguar…with Mardi Gras beads hanging from the rearview mirror. Classy.