"Holdin' On Like a Hubcap in the Fast Lane": A Dictionary For Curing Hella Seasonal Depression (N thru Zed)

Letting the Good Times Roll (Away From You Like a Ball from an Infant): Lou Reed Meta-rocking a vintage Jangles the Junkie Tee

(If you missed the first half yesterday, scroll down; much like a real dictionary, this does *not* have to be read in order. Day 2: Things get better! Worse!)

N is for "Not Tonight" by Mannie Pendergroff, aka Mannie Fresh:

"Hey everybody, I wanna explain and express myself / Sometime in a young man's life, you know, you wanna find a woman and make her your wife / You don't just wanna be fuckin' up in the club, sometimes you're lookin' for love, y'know? See what I'm sayin? And after the break, I'm gonna explain myself, but Oooooh, not tonight - I just wanna fuck you right." Because the world needs greazy comedy ballads to remind us what a humorless cesspool Romance is.

O is for "One Hit" by the Knife, a 6/8 electro shuffle about domestic violence with a clumsy reference to The Godfather, female vocals pitchshifted to imitate Scott Walker trying rather desperately to climb out of a pool of mud and a grotesque sing-song vocal howling from Disney's enchanted forest, which incidentally, is an impenetrable thicket of insects. Currently battling Sway's "Pretty Ugly Husband" for Most Upsetting Spousal Abuse Song of 2006.

P is for Pornolizer.com, for turning part of my Gaucho post into “I've been spanking to Gaucho a lot more lately and I'll be damned if it isn't one of the most interesting, funny, and complicated enters I think I've ever heard. In this scheme, I will, of course, not be felched.” From now on, this will be my auto-edit tool for anybody else’s writing.

Q is for "Quito" by The Mountain Goats, because J0hn Darn1elle probably never wrote a more concise, hopeful and bittersweetly redemptive song, which is like saying it's a hot day in hell or this is the nicest private beach I've been to all financial quarter.

R is for R.I.P., unfortunately. Ali Farka Toure, Ray Barretto, and Ivor Cutler – all in the last couple weeks. I’m most familiar with Ali Farka’s stuff, but I distinctly remember when I first heard Cutler’s “Jam” – which is well worth seeking out, or you can get an idea of his humor here – and I’m fairly new to Barretto, but I’ve been listening to his solo stuff and the Soul Jazz Nu Yorica compilations a LOT lately, and am absolutely certain that the world would benefit from listening to more 60s salsa.

S is for Searching for Steely Dan, a novel about a disillusioned writer who gets dumped by his wife and begins a hopeless search for Steely Dan. How the hell could I possibly accentuate both the implicit and explicit comedy of that premise?

T is for “Together” by Ray Barretto, one of the few idealistic civil rights/people-come-together songs whose message and motor is so irresistible that it makes me wish I had a conga to beat until I bruised my palms and bled rainbows out of my eyes. I silently frown at my dad for spending 1970 playing 22-minute covers of “Cinnamon Girl” in a dorm room.

U is for “Unicorn” by Panash; come for the Pepe Bradock connection, stay for a clumsy toy-house beat, a bassline that lopes like the speaker is gargling a broken hum, and huge middle section where wisps of melodic noise keep getting cut out and distorted abruptly, like two second strobes of MBV’s Loveless jazz blasting through the void. The “psych-house” tag was a really suspicious promise, but this track’s hooks are in my brain for serious.

V is for V/VM's Sick Love, because nothing says Valentine's Day like getting drunk on a roughshod dinghy and throwing your dramamine overboard to the sound of Throbbing Gristle screwed + chopped.

W is for “Wait” by Lou Reed. I found Lou most entertaining as Jangles the Junkie in Enfeebled Reflections on ‘American Graffiti’, where “Wait” is one of the highlights. A few years ago – college daze – I went to a party, got dangerously drunk, and proceeded to use the host house’s bathroom as my own private meditation chamber. I was wearing sunglasses and a long t-shirt with the words “I am insightful thinker” – a compliment I had been paid that morning by my sterile Literature TA – scrawled awkwardly in Sharpie across my stomach. Whenever anyone banged on the door, I shouted “get the fuck away, I’m Lou Reed.” In the morning, I awoke and walked out into the living room to find a chubby guy with dreadlocks watching television. He looked up and said “Hey look it’s Lou Reed.” I always figured the disgusting, half-assed Caddy fin 50s rock of “Wait” was basically what polluted me into being proud of that moment.

X is for I am resourceful but not that resourceful and I don't really like either X or Xibit and don't feel like XTC; I guess X is Xian forgiveness for my mortal shortcomings. Or the Xi'an province, home of the Big Goose Pagoda. Either way.

Y is for "You'll Never Get to Heaven (If You Break My Heart)" by the Stylistics, because girl, you are going to burn in hell for breaking up with me and there's nobody better to tell you than a bunch of well-dressed castrati from Philadelphia.

Z is for the theme from Zombi by Fabio Frizzi, because no matter how much I want to feel t0t411y 4we50m3 about life, dread pwns happiness on the existential richness scale, no count no question.

Yeah!

And because I'm forcing a new phase of universal acceptance, a very hearty hello to the two people that have come from the MSN search results for girls getting fucked by dogs, where this blog humbly and bewilderingly appears.