forgetters

Saturday, April 2nd

2011-03-28T17:05:00.001-04:00

The last time we tried to play the QxBxRx party at the Cakeshop, the cops shut it down. The party has since been moved to Public Assembly and we're giving it another go with Little Victory and The Ruffian Arms:

www.facebook.com/qxbxrx
www.qxbxrx.posterous.com
www.myspace.com/qxbxrx

Come out and get wild!

European tour 2011

2011-03-04T18:29:00.010-05:00

Poster by C.P.

04/27/11    wed   Germany * Aachen - AZ
04/28/11    thu   France * Lille - La Chimère
04/29/11    fri   UK * Leeds - Josephs Well
04/30/11    sat   UK * London - Lexington
05/01/11    sun UK * Brighton - Hydrant
05/02/11    mon   France * Paris - la Miroiterie
05/03/11    tue     Germany  * Bremen - Friesenstrasse
05/04/11    wed Germany * Hamburg - Hafenklang
05/05/11    thu   Germany * Münster - Gleis 22
05/06/11    fri   Germany * Braunschweig - Nexus
05/07/11    sat   Germany * Göttingen - T Keller
05/08/11    sun   Germany * Berlin - Schokoladen
05/09/11    mon   Germany * Leipzig - ZORO
05/10/11    tue   Germany * Off day
05/11/11    wed   Czech Rep. * Praha - 007
05/12/11    thu   Austria * Vienna - Venster99
05/13/11    fri   Slovenia * Ljubljana - Metalkova
05/14/11    sat   Croatia * Zagreb - AKC Medika
05/15/11    sun   Italy Bologna - XM24
05/16/11    mon   Off day
05/17/11    tue   Italy Rome - Sinister Noise
05/18/11    wed   Italy * Milano - Dauntaun
05/19/11    thu   France * Lyon - Grrrd Zero
05/20/11    fri   Switzerland Basel - Hirscheneck
05/21/11    sat   Germany * Karlsruhe- Stadtmitte
05/22/11    sun   Germany Oberhausen - Druckluft
05/23/11    mon   Off day
05/24/11    tue   Germany * Munich - Kafe Kult
05/25/11    wed   Germany * Freiburg - Slow Club
05/26/11    thu   Germany * Trier - Ex Haus
05/27/11    fri   Germany * Nürnberg - K4
05/28/11    sat   Germany * Würzburg - Cafe Cairo
05/29/11    sun   Germany * Frankfurt - IVI
05/30/11 mon Germany * Giessen - AK44

the company with the golden arm is booking this tour and as shows are confirmed, the list will be updated. Any questions related to booking can be sent to o@cocococo.org

TAKE BACK THE FUTURE WEST COAST TOUR!

2011-01-15T01:06:00.005-05:00

IT'S ALMOST TIME!

01/27/11 San Francisco, CA Bottom of the Hill w/Bam Bam!

01/28/11 Chico, CA Monstro's Pizza w/Severance Package

01/29/11 Portland, OR Branx w/Social Graces

01/30/11 Seattle, WA The Vera Project

01/31/11 Olympia, WA

02/02/11 Santa Cruz, CA The Catalyst Atrium

02/03/11 Santa Barbara, CA Velvet Jones

02/04/11 Los Angeles, CA Center For the Arts - Eagle Rock

02/05/11 Los Angeles, CA The Echo
02/06/11 Off!

02/07/11 San Diego, CA Bar Pink

02/08/11 Fresno, CA The Bel-Tower

02/09/11 Oakland, CA Oakland Metro Opera House w/Homeowners

Twitter? Myspace? Facebook?

2011-01-15T01:01:00.000-05:00

Hello! Just a heads up that we, as a band, do not officially maintain anything else on the internet besides this blog account. There's a couple misleading accounts in our name, so please know that regarding all things forgetters, this is the only place where you can hear it straight from the horse's mouth.
If you happen to be someone who runs one of these pages, it would be great if you could specify that it is fan run, or, just delete it! It's a little confusing for everyone- fans and us alike. While the enthusiasm is appreciated, it's not necessarily the format that we've chosen to use for the band. A blog account seems to be the best (and easiest) for us to maintain since we're Luddites living in the Big City!

Next post will be through a carrier pigeon!

Happy 2011- Year of the Rabbit!

Caroline

This Saturday!

2011-01-03T14:17:00.000-05:00

QxBxRx!!!!! We're really quite excited to play this!

www.facebook.com/qxbxrx
www.myspace.com/qxbxrx

Like/Unlike: Dr. Z on the Island of Octagon

2010-12-15T09:20:00.001-05:00

Blake Schwarzenbach: I need to see Dr. Z, yo! Chemical peel, pore reduction, nitrous, orange juice and cookies. Then I'm going to see Dr. Octagon about some Chimpanzee acne and anti-gravity Rhinoplasty.

5 hours ago · LikeUnlike · Comment

#0: and, of course, moose bumps

Blake Schwarzenbach: Professional Ethics. I am just a doctor...

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#1: Oh, fuck! There's a horse in the hospital.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: Should we get into Viktor Vaughn? He's about about three pieces ahead of MIA, as chess and bragging rights go.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: The Vaudeville Villain. Loves language.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike ∑ 1 personLoading...

#2: You can call 1-800-peepee-5-1-doodoo.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: Who he?

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: all Vik scripts available for buy or barter

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: like a trucker to Fuddrucker

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: Think about it; if you were there standing looking at me what would you do if I hit your face with dog doo doo?

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#1:...Maitre D' at Canal Bar?

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: How can he be? Simple, son, mad practice makes a man mad crazy

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: too long funning with the yoke of this limited language

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: 5 colors, yellow, black and red and green purple.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: somehow it still come up -- shit, that's it, egg on the brick wall -- there it run like brains while the gaggle cops goof with their iCan Came.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: freeze clown, officer down, request backup

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: Doc Oc is the shizzle. You're lucky!

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#3: paramedic fetus of the east

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#3: I was born on Jupiter.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#1: My skin turn orange and green in limosouine.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: I know them cats don't like V, and if they took my head off they'd get off, most likely

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: Fuck it, he's dead.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: In any event. Many men are evident. All will be alright if we just live here in this moment.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#1: 98 year old fridgerator. YouTube.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: Later anger. I have so much danger off this planet.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: Supersonic bionic robot voodoo power Equator ex my chance to flex skills on Ampex

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: Why would I dabble and twist before these furious stunts, when I am a cunning series of linguistic events?

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike ∑ 1 personLoading...

Blake Schwarzenbach: COWS said that once.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: There's a finer line between all of us than people tend to assume. I should know.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: Paramedics fetish your legs with eggs chicken hatch can't find too they dead ex, but the skin don't match.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: I just love you for this.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#4: This thread reads well to the music of Queens "Under Pressure".

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: robyn. Robyn. ROBYN! In that order.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: Definitely made my night. I'm gonna have bump some Oc now.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: You see, that's American history. I've moved on.

5 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: But in an okay way. Not insensitively.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#5: you might as well know, hell is hot as hell boss.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: Mr. Gerbik. Half-shark, half-man, skin like alligator. Carrying a dead walrus.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: With thoughtful awareness.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: I love the Cabin Boy sample. "Half man, half shark."

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: All this shit is free. Knowledge, friends, walking. It's almost that simple. Except that then there we are. Suddenly! Not happy with walking, friends, or knowledge.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike ∑ 1 personLoading...

Blake Schwarzenbach: I am a living, walking, friend-having palindrome.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#2: African beads, snakeskins, cold script through you my medical passes you can't see, with greedy glasses carbon dioxide, pour right through 'em with gases.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: Which is not to say -- and this is the great mistake of the indignant Right of this country -- that I cannot also meet you somewhere, at midfield, when it's totally unsafe.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#6: i had a 72 year old patient the other night who had very large breast implants. creepiest thing i've seen so far.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#4: His thoughts were dÈj‡ vu, unaware of walls which surrounded his awareness of the truth.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: Perhaps Obama's bravest and gravest error. Who knows? Either he's cynical or naive. Are those good choices for the first black president? Can we know without waiting 20 years for Kissinger to be dug up and repatriated to Chile?

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: I'm listening to Robyn so hard I cannot even hear the ambient pain that is the floor of this country.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

#1: This whole squat reminds me of a young red faced boy who was so dissappointed with a Christmas gift one year. He came tumbling down a case of stairs holding a monster of a guitar. Yet he carries this sour, hoola dancer look on his face. Asked what's wrong, little Kenneth. "Mom! I can't play Coal Chamber without a 7 string"! Holidays fall flat for everyone once in a wheel.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: It would be easy enough to say, "this is just what they want." But I don't agree with that assessment. I want to dance back the hours stolen from me, and I want to live long enough to see Newt Gingrich and Paul Wolfowitz totally humiliated.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike ∑ 1 personLoading...

Blake Schwarzenbach: It happened long ago. But Julian Assange and Corporal Manning have fact-checked a lazy, sycophantic media.

4 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike ∑ 1 personLoading...

2011! West Coast Tour!

2010-12-07T00:49:00.001-05:00

We're happy to announce that we're heading out West in late January! We'll be playing shows with Street Eaters, who are old friends and all around veteran-rocker-badasses. There's still a couple shows in the works, but here's what we have right now to share:

01/27/11 San Francisco, CA Bottom of the Hill

01/29/11 Portland, OR Branx

01/30/11 Seattle, WA The Vera Project

02/02/11 Santa Cruz, CA The Catalyst Atrium

02/03/11 Santa Barbara, CA Velvet Jones

02/04/11 Los Angeles, CA Center For the Arts - Eagle Rock

02/05/11 Los Angeles, CA The Echo

02/07/11 San Diego, CA Bar Pink

02/09/11 Oakland, CA Oakland Metro Opera House

Also, it's calendar season: 2011 is approaching (whether you like it or not) and everyone needs one! Hand-drawn and printed all at home!

http://www.carolinepaquita.com/indexhibit/for-sale/

Happy Holidays!

xoxoxo,

Caroline

Show! 12/09/2010

2010-12-01T20:51:00.000-05:00

Join us and our friends!!!

249 4th Ave. Brooklyn

8pm

LIKE/UNLIKE: The BBM Discourses

2010-11-16T07:49:00.002-05:00

Blake Schwarzenbach: Anyone know where to find the BBM ad with the uber-Williamsburg guy sitting by his pool talking about how awesome stuff is? I think Blackberry pulled it because it is hateful even by indie-rock standards, but I need it! Who is this blithe guy? What kind of entrepreneurial malaise does he reside in?

Blake Schwarzenbach: Seriously. Help me out, the internet.

Nicole Brewer: I like it better than the BBM bike messenger ad. SO fictionalized, it's not even funny.

Blake Schwarzenbach: But this guy is like the apotheosis of everything shitty in Brooklyn. We had a landlord in W-burg who was the spitting image.

Blake Schwarzenbach: He's like a connector of people and things -- a stroker -- an enabler of corporate synergy.

Blake Schwarzenbach: This is the guy texting in the front row of a show. He's so there he's not even there.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Come on, how hot is he?!

Nicole Brewer: Well it IS a blackberry ad... What do you expect from this technology that is consuming our culture & regurgitating it to us at a price we can't refuse?

Blake Schwarzenbach: He's like Vampire Weekend's friend who shows up with the really good tempeh.

Rob Nelson: Have you tried... The youtube?

Matt Vachon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM4p7GxqUKI

this one?

Corey Byrnes: Good to see how thrilled he is about the product he's advertising for.

Aja Olander: Haven't seen this one yet, but am now quite interested...I will be on the hunt for it tonight...

Piyu Sen: There is nothing wrong with really good tempeh. Do not bring food into this.

Nicole Christian: Are you talking about the diplo blackberry ad? Yeah it is kinda ridiculous

Blake Schwarzenbach: The one Matt posted is an attenuated version of it -- he eventually talks about a pool party he had with all his friends. With friends like that, who needs associates?

Blake Schwarzenbach: Okay, Vampire Weekend's friend with the MDMA.

Blake Schwarzenbach: The world diaspora MDMA.

Blake Schwarzenbach: All I'm saying is, the dude is STOKED.

Blake Schwarzenbach: He is food. Fish food.

Blake Schwarzenbach: "Society is a whore."

Blake Schwarzenbach: Okay, he's a patsy -- bigger fish should fry -- but patsies get a pass so readily these days, maybe it's time to start punishing the underlings

Blake Schwarzenbach: (I would have failed the reasonable man march.)

Blake Schwarzenbach: MDMADD. You're multi-stoked. 1000 broken mirrors. Behind each a glittering surprise.

Ryan Osborne: For a second there, I thought you were calling him a "pasty" and that "pasties" should fry. Probably also appropriate for Williamsburg.

Rachael Pleet 1. i did not know what BBM was, and thought it was related to digestion. 2. dude sat down at the pool, took off his shoes, and used his sweaty toe-touched hands on the new and exciting mobile device. i am not fussy about stuff like that, but i have a feeling that the type of person they are trying to portray would never do such a thing. i am pretty sure he would carry some kind of self-sanitizer to prevent his own germs from contaminating the new and exciting phone thing.

Blake Schwarzenbach: No, I'm pro-pasty. That's a savory, stuffed pastry with a flaky crust. What I'm describing is a cold robot with an expeditious, inhuman armor.

Blake Schwarzenbach: All feeling has been sublimated with an eye towards achievement. If you put this guy in an oven it would turn into a refrigerator.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Can I get a witness on the MDMADD comment?

Blake Schwarzenbach: Why am I not popular anymore! Oh no, I'm turning into "Mark" from the BBM! Would his name be "Mark"? It might be "Trevor" or "Garrett" -- or it could be "Mike." Or "Robert." I bet it's Robert.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Robert is making an I can't spell omelette and Rebecca is building a friend list for an event they're throwing. He feels his feet on the broad Spanish tile. It's election day, but the skies are of a permanent blue.

Blake Schwarzenbach: He's wondering if she should get surgery. She senses this and beams a look of kindred pragmatism his way. To be curated is to be acknowledged. There are three different kinds of salt on the kitchen island.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Jason, their mutual friend, wobbles out of the guest room, head down to his phone. He's updating his profile to find out what he will wake up and be.

Blake Schwarzenbach: It's proleptic.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Goals are important. We all contribute to the great novel of civilization. Jason is making his small contribution.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Robert sets down the asiago and grater to snap a photo of Jason in his pink bathrobe and anti-gravity hair. He's in sync with his life, assiduously documenting it as it happens. It's a streaming mission, both happening and happened.

Blake Schwarzenbach: This is some of the best robot fiction I've ever written. I'm self-publishing the decline of Mid-Atlantic civilization.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Rebecca considers Jason. Hot, for sure, but kind of a loser. He lacks the vision of a Robert.

Blake Schwarzenbach: She wants to text Tiffany but is afraid that then she might come over. There is a certain mastery in being the one woman in this tableau.

Blake Schwarzenbach: It's safer in the morning -- after the painful questions of intimacy and physicality have given way to plans and hopes.

Blake Schwarzenbach: In the morning everything is before you. The needling questions of the night before dissolve amidst the exigencies of: (1) The Event; (2) the gym; (3) updating the CV; (4) posting personal verdicts on internet content.

Blake Schwarzenbach: "It's a way to be free" -- Bill Callahan.

Blake Schwarzenbach: The question is really whether we assimilate all the stray bits of data into a semi-coherent whole, or whether we are simply awash in stimulation. Do we process and participate ("make some sense") or do we passively flicker in a warm field of ambient reaction?

Blake Schwarzenbach: Robert and Rebecca and even Jason sense this -- they are each uncomfortable with disclosure in person, but hungrily rake over the many confessions one sees online.

Blake Schwarzenbach: The question was how to keep Tiffany on board as an an ally without jeopardizing the pleasant advantage she was enjoying at Robert's split-level home. Let her find her own male harem, I worked for this one, she thought. Having to lay there through Robert's erratic, twitching predations.

Blake Schwarzenbach: There were no words after contact, just a rolling over and checking of the phone.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Of course, one could read this as a level of comfort. They were beyond words, there was an understanding. But, at the same time, she felt a philosophical chill running over the clean linoleum and right up her leg. No thank you! It was time to connect and quickly...

Blake Schwarzenbach: My work is a combination of the laconic nihilism of a Pettibone caption and the embedded melancholy of a Barthelme experiment. (With an underlying humanism that often goes unseen.)

Blake Schwarzenbach: Self-knowledge is a terrible thing. I mean, you see it, but then there is this enormous sucking and...

Blake Schwarzenbach: I am Rebecca trying to understand Robert. What makes him move? What engine, what soul lurks in that beautiful machine? It could drive you mad -- you want to punch him like you sometimes want to punch the dim zen off of a Jake Gyllenhaal.

Blake Schwarzenbach: “No one is that content! I'd like to see him angry,” Rebecca thought. ”I'd like to see him cry like a shivering child.”

Blake Schwarzenbach: Fortunately, the alluring tones of breakfast began to drift over from the island -- her ruminations on the couch had begun to get nasty -- now there was panini in the air, and a squeezed citrus concoction.

Blake Schwarzenbach: As long as these sweet turns in the continuum present themselves we will be more or less safe. No one likes a dead fish, festering in its own ruin. Or an old carp filtering the same white excrement in a murky fountain.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Movement was the key. Was this Robert's key as well? She knew he did things, but what did he actually do? He seemed to facilitate a lot of gatherings -- trivia nights, sentimental 70s games, arcane enthusiast clubs...

Blake Schwarzenbach: Sometimes they would look at things and just think they were funny by the very fact of themselves. "Remember POGs?!"

Blake Schwarzenbach: Or, like, Haysi Fantayzee. Some things were just funny, and by saying them, by evoking them, it could feel like you yourself were making something.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Of course she thought this was all nonsense and was good at rolling her eyes. But she could appreciate Robert and Jason's skill at improv'ing a whole mountain of the stuff. Funnier and funnier still. Until the bubble burst and they were all a bit breathless.

Blake Schwarzenbach: They found the decade of their birth fascinating.

Rachael Pleet: just because i liked the bill callahan line does not mean i do not also like yours - there are just far too many things to like if i like all of yours. robert would never like that many things, unless it was ironic enthusiasm. i am afraid my post will interrupt your odyssey. if i break the story, i'm blaming tiffany.

Blake Schwarzenbach: The vision was one of a pre-lapsarian kookiness, but also of a kind of vulgar superficiality. You know: Fun.

Blake Schwarzenbach: When Robert would DJ at his own parties she thought he was unattractive.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Something a bit unseemly about being all hip-hop and sophisto in the same breath.

Blake Schwarzenbach: There weren't even any black people at their parties. Well, there was Drianna, but she was just kind of world. Plus, her family was from Westchester.

Blake Schwarzenbach: (Though she liked to claim Mt. Vernon.)

Blake Schwarzenbach: Where was it all going? Jesus, better eat something. My mind is feeding on itself, she thought, but without actual words.

Blake Schwarzenbach: "I must not think bad thoughts."

Blake Schwarzenbach: The prescience of Brett Easton Ellis using an X quote to kick-off Less Than Zero.

Blake Schwarzenbach: "Who will finally hold me," she wondered.

Blake Schwarzenbach: The bifurcated author then realized, somewhat aghast, that if he/she did indeed have an updated BBM, s/he could be messaging this serialized nervous breakdown to a whole coterie of readers.

Blake Schwarzenbach: The PoMoment: Can we Horse the Machine? Or are we merely processed once inside, with our ten hiding men and big ideas?

Blake Schwarzenbach: TCBFY: "The City's Best To Be Continued."

Blake Schwarzenbach:
PoMo.
Fro-Yo.
Glenn Beck.
J-Lo.

Chelle LaBarge: This is perhaps, the next great american novel...

John Renaud: Now my brain hurts. Must go listen to the Screeching Weasel song now.

Borko Norkingham: Douglas Coupland is suddenly much more relevant again. And I thought PoMo had been swept out of the post-cultural drift!

(A rash flurry of LOLs contravene.)

Blake Schwarzenbach: Saying laughter is the equivalent of fucking tears. Say "awesome" again and I will be out the door before you can say average. Vote with your body.

Blake Schwarzenbach: That was a bit more forceful than I intended. You see, Robert would never cave to vicious outrage like that. He burns cool -- almost in a kind of amniotic stasis -- there is a patience with him that could be called Egyptian; an inscrutable, Sphinx-like cast to his placid features. I suspect that there is an unconscious riot happening somewhere within Robert, but it has been converted into an obtuse drive.

Blake Schwarzenbach: This initially drew Rebecca to Robert like lunar traction. He's just too pretty not to know something, she thought, even as she realized she might be striking a bargain with her own transient desire.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Now it had become one of his least appetizing characteristics, as it began to dawn that there was perhaps very little at work in that sinewy, unmarked body. Paranoia again, before the Acai-berry comedown.

Blake Schwarzenbach: "He eats baby hearts to stay young." Or, "There's a secret regimen of corporate surgery paid for by his patrons." She wants to stick pins in him when he sleeps to see if there is basic motor response.

Blake Schwarzenbach: But sleep has become so precious and rare -- a refuge seized as succor against the grim ambiguities of the day -- that she can't be sure he even does sleep, being too busy with her own precious knockouts.
How does he stir? Does he even stir, or is he always ahead of everyone, ruminating over a C-Section of the city paper with am unreadable half-smile?

Blake Schwarzenbach: He diligently sends out his pictures and adroitly notes the names and events.

Blake Schwarzenbach: To fact check him would be folly.

Blake Schwarzenbach: This is all being generated by a 3-bit app.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Simply put in: "Robert," "Techno-Zeitgeist," and "Classic Embolism."

Blake Schwarzenbach: It's like SNL if SNL didn't have Standards & Practices under the iron heel of the Chamber of Commerce. Random can be purposeful. Back then it was called Modernism.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Anyway, Robert has gone to sit on the diving board where he will bask in his good fortune. There aren't words or ideas to this moment, it's more like Radiohead's "Kid A."

Blake Schwarzenbach: It sounds morose but it is experienced as totally euphoric.

Blake Schwarzenbach: That's Robert. That's how he can telegraph this intense melancholy without missing anything.

John Renaud: He is the most interesting man in the world.

Blake Schwarzenbach: To be on the forward edge of a generational divide must be quite something, the wing shearing new air and leaving a cold blue wake.

Blake Schwarzenbach: We are Munch's concentric phantoms swirling in the rotor wash…

Blake Schwarzenbach: …of Robert & Friends' Apache Longbow...

Blake Schwarzenbach: It's so rarely one-on-one with us, Rebecca thought. And yet we've always been Robert and Rebecca, the essential unit radiating friends outwards.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Gatherings -- usually six or seven in a throw -- at creative eateries with infused cocktails.

Blake Schwarzenbach: With a group it never got heavy.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Someone would always bring the conversation back to the living, the now.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Failing that, there was always the food! "Is it Cardamom?" "Or is Fennel?" We should make this sometime.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Having things brought out to them was custom. They never drank too much. That's what people like Jason were for -- a kind of proxy Id, a safe-staging area for thrills and outrage.

Blake Schwarzenbach: A mascot, she thought, suddenly feeling young again.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Jason was a thing they put between one another -- an emollient and an adhesive.

Blake Schwarzenbach: ”What the hell,” thought Robert. “The world needs emollients too.”

Hit It or Quit It Podcast on WBEZ!

2010-11-10T19:06:00.000-05:00

http://www.wbez.org/story/music/performances/video-new-band-jawbreaker-jets-brazil-against-me-and-bitchin-members

Like/Unlike: A Public Self-Dialogue on Contemporary Horror

2010-11-09T08:16:00.000-05:00

Lightly edited by facilitator and auto-engager, Blake Schwarzenbach. (Originally aired on facebook 11/9/10.)

Blake Schwarzenbach: I'd just like to thank Rick Florino, of Artistdirect.com, for his singing endorsement of the most recent Elm Street film: “THE MOST TERRIFYING NIGHTMARE YET.” Thanks, Rick, spot on as always! If, by terrifying, you mean a feeling of overwhelming powerlessness and despair as what feels like an 81-minute commercial for H&M infects your psychic lair.

Ben Brennan, James Mark Mounsey, Joshua Greene and 19 others like this.

Blake Schwarzenbach: (Do you charge by the review, Rick, or just do whole whole job lots for ailing franchises?

Dan Wallach: zing!

Blake Schwarzenbach: People should go to Artistdirect.com to learn about more great films! (Ask for Rick Florino.)

Blake Schwarzenbach: There's an obscure indie there that some of you may have missed. "Eat Pray Love." It's a story about personal growth and frozen yogurt.

Blake Schwarzenbach: And Carmelite nuns. Or Carmelized nuns, I'm not sure. It's way arty.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Boosh!

Blake Schwarzenbach: You know, I didn't wait 25 years for Jackie Earle Haley to come back and do this!

Blake Schwarzenbach: Wham!

Jason Ray Strickland Transformers was pretty rad.

Blake Schwarzenbach: There's actually a scene in "Nightmare" where one of the kids goes to Powell's Books to study up on insomnia -- and he uses the internet! With towering bookshelves all around him!

Blake Schwarzenbach: This may be the best Nightmare yet!

Blake Schwarzenbach: Ka-Chow!

Blake Schwarzenbach: Co-seduced by Michael Bay. Hot tops!

Blake Schwarzenbach: There's lots of hugging and Joy Division t-shirts in it.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Plus, the goth kid is a Christian. Nice one, Samuel Bayer, director of "A Nightmare on Elm Street."

Blake Schwarzenbach: The last time I saw a movie this profound it was "Donnie Darko."

Blake Schwarzenbach: (Hugging and Joy Division. Intimations of creepiness -- "old people," "slow motion.")

Nicholas Anthony Sweet Micheal Bay has also been going into my dreams and molesting the transformers while i watch...

8 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: Nu Horror, Rule #1: If the kids are hot, zero scares.

Blake Schwarzenbach: We haven't even touched on the spectacular misanthropy of such projects.

Blake Schwarzenbach: As in, you can't wait for these assholes to die. And you hate the killer, too. Win, win.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Ka-blam!

Blake Schwarzenbach: There's actually no unconscious in this film. In Craven's picture there was at least a semblance, or a passing love of theory. But due to new protocols, subtext and text have now been streamlined into a seamless ribbon of shit and pandering.

Blake Schwarzenbach: They wouldn't watch their own movies. I hope the margaritas are good at the bar where you guys go to grouse about the old days and your early film school years.

Blake Schwarzenbach: It must be gnarly to be jaded at 28.

Morgue Kalish Coming soon: Halloween H20: 20 years later:H20: 20 years after that.

7 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Blake Schwarzenbach: Maybe if you watch "Mean Streets" again, you'll finally break through. You probably have a bong and a Pit Bull.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Halloween H20 would work if the band H20 starred. Like, them vs. Snoop.

Morgue Kalish Implying H20 would last more than a few minutes in the same room as Snoop if killing sprees were involved.

They should just collaborate on an album instead. Heard Snoop's into recording with subpar musicians these days.

Morgue Kalish SNAP.

Blake Schwarzenbach: But they have such good hoodies!

Blake Schwarzenbach: When did everyone start wearing hoodies? Is this really protest?

Blake Schwarzenbach: Society IS hoodies. You can't be anti whilst wearing a hood.

Blake Schwarzenbach: There are so many kinds now -- slim hoodies, and beefy hoodies, and zip hoodies, and lady in waiting hoodies, and I'm sleazy but 16 hoodies...

Blake Schwarzenbach: It's the best Nightmare yet!

Blake Schwarzenbach: Sha-Ding!

Blake Schwarzenbach: How does it feel, one year on, when you find a hoodie you spent $38 on? I don't know, I've never done that, but I'm curious.

Blake Schwarzenbach: It must feel like, "Well, the blue album is still pretty good."

Blake Schwarzenbach: Or, it feels like you just rented "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and it's over and you're waiting for things to start.

Blake Schwarzenbach: I've now been writing for longer than it took to write that movie.

Blake Schwarzenbach: And this shit is straight to video! We're all here!

Blake Schwarzenbach: There was a joke on tour about "streaming content" and Taco Bell, but I won't get into that.

Wassen Aziz Such contempt for this movie, must watch now just to see this innate flop.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Don't watch it! You've seen it all your life. It's just things that worked once done really poorly.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Really, I would feel worse if I knew this had in any way compelled people to watch this movie.

Morgue Kalish I am suddenly taken with morbid curiosity. I feel like pirating it should be kosher.

Blake Schwarzenbach: It's just a proxy pulpit. Could be any film right now.

Wassen Aziz I feel as if I got a massage and you are denying me the happy ending.....

Blake Schwarzenbach: Really, I was so bored by it I had to come over here and freestyle. For which, Rick Florino and Samuel Bayer, I am strangely grateful.

Wassen Aziz Such an optimist, always a silver lining.

Blake Schwarzenbach: Get the unhappy ending from real horror films. And read Robin Wood's classic essays on "Texas Chainsaw" and "It's Alive." Totally invigorating, and a full release.

Blake Schwarzenbach: "Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan...and Beyond," Robin Wood. Columbia Press, 1986.

Blake Schwarzenbach: That's not exactly MLA, but I've been out of the program for a while.

6 hours ago ∑ LikeUnlike

Chinatown Bus Dispatch: Philly and Back

2010-11-06T09:06:00.002-04:00

by Blake Schwarzenbach

How can you not think about America on the bus? It’s a national vantage point! You think about your fellow passengers and how much they use their phones and how they eat stinky food out of Styrofoam boxes and plastic bags and how their bottles clank and how they fart and belch and you catch yourself thinking the worst of people. Is this because we’re packed so close, cheek by jowl, with the silent furious precision of the Chinese driver? This thing hurtling down the turnpike without interior light or explanation. The stoic young people with their hoodies pulled down about their heads to filter the drab reality of buses, now warlocks practicing their priestly magic on personal electronic devices. The elderly splayed out and snoring like yesterday’s trash. Who will meet them? What of the indignity of such rough passage for the old? All people of limited financial means are gathered in this vessel, chafing here and there, but more or less decent, some crazy and drunk, others tired, tired, tired of life, of its shocking lack of prettiness. A group of law students talks incessantly all the way down – about boys, about email – functionaries in the making, preparing themselves for service through non-specialized pizza and late night television. What nuances of the law will they glean? How will they arbitrate on behalf of their clients and what clients will they elect to represent? Standardized testing comes to mind – the sticky part in which you must complete analogous relationships: Bus is to America as Philadelphia is to _______. The landscape is limited once you get on the turnpike so that the really striking scenery becomes Newark and the oil fields, the derrick cranes and winking red lights of the commercial ports. Above is night, around you the whisper of the dead beatnik sages fondly lamenting the rusting industry of Passaic and Patterson. (Even back then this world was dying!) William Carlos Williams slipping into the attenuated slang of a slatternly street walker, delivering his babies, Naomi Ginsberg in the madhouse. Now the mild older men of New Jersey are shy about their intelligence. They know things but aren’t exactly sure of their company. Anyway, people learn their areas no matter how hard it gets watered down by corporate sprawl: “Here was an old pump house -- before the mall – before the mall that gave way to the Wal-Mart…” One should become concerned when men don’t trust their stories anymore. I try to find the interstitial stories in this darkened landscape. A solitary light peeps out from a residence behind the auto dealership. Hope! Despair! We’re in here! Are we talking? Is it a sullen, resentful night of mind-killing dread and avoidance before another grinding day of no work; or is it a tender loving scene of domestic bliss? Who can know! The yellow incandescent bulb against all the neon instills me with lonely hope – I cannot be green about this, I need the warmth and fragility of the old bulbs – the tenuous filament arcing all that little heat to produce an outpost of your imagination. Why aren’t there more Americans at their home desks, hammering out innovation in pitched battle with oblivion? This used to be where the arts came from. Now they come from LLPs under the banner of “culture.” It is not the individual I lament, it is the collective enterprise of unique minds in dialogue, in clashing strife. Now it seems more about consensus: a tacit, arguably commercial, assumption that when enough people like something it is significant. D. Boon wrote “the roar of the masses could be farts.” Populism is not the will of the people, it is the manipulation of mass culture. The roar of the masses could therefore be the noxious fart of a highly placed group – a board, a special interest, an NGO, a think tank. A stink tank of Imperial Ambition! But now I am far from the bus, far from my melancholy smelly people – they look so lovely and vulnerable now! – and the bus is shambling over the Benjamin Franklin bridge, into the enduring but not growing city of Philadelphia.

Show! MRR interview!

2010-11-01T22:38:00.000-04:00

Also, the interview we did for Maximum Rock 'N' Roll is now out!

Show this Friday!!!!

2010-10-20T17:26:00.000-04:00

Whoa! Whoa! New Paquita art for sale!

2010-10-05T02:46:00.000-04:00

Heyyyyyyy! There's new stuff available on my site: the 2011 Paquita Calendar and a new comic zine, WOMANIMALISTIC! Get it while it's hot!

Zines, calendars and weird pizzas!

2010-09-30T14:23:00.002-04:00

This Saturday, I'll be doing an event with Slice Harvester at The City Reliquary Museum in Brooklyn. The new 2011 Paquita Calendar will be out, as well as a new comic zine, WOMANIMALISTIC. Both will be available for sale at the event. For those interested folks who don't live in the NYC area, you'll be able to purchase them both through my website within the week or so.

Happy Fall!

Caroline Paquita

BOOSH!

2010-09-21T17:40:00.002-04:00

On a Clear Day You Can See Manhattan by Blake Schwarzenbach

2010-09-10T11:38:00.000-04:00

     It is the eve of 9/11 in New York, the bat signal has been launched into the sky at Ground Zero, reminding us all to feel bad for some more time, to haunt us with the question, "Is anyone actually going to turn up?" It is an appropriately lonely beacon, catching you unawares as you round a corner at dusk, mired as you might be in your own evening concerns. Suddenly there it is: the twin columns of light silently blasting upwards into the void without words. If I may attempt an approximation of a not uncommon response to such a thing: (1) Surprise (“Ah, here it is again!”); (2) Self-examination (“Does this inspire any kind of feeling in me? It’s pretty, but quite divorced from reality”); (3) Needling guilt (“Have I changed as much as I could in the last decade?”); (4) Simmering resentment (“Don’t tell me how or when to feel”); (5) Wariness (“Here comes the punditry and the day of angry flags”); (6) Resignation (“We are lost; we can’t even handle sadness adequately.”)
     Now look, I would actually prefer the soft jolt of this nighttime beacon to all the tearful, vengeful talking that will ensue – it actually seems commensurate with the events themselves: no words, seen from afar, it just happens and demands some kind of reflection, and ultimately it leaves us searching and feeling adrift. Unfortunately, and I think this is because we are an impressionable and deliberate people, the opening that such a spectral image provides is going to be immediately filled in with a variety of narratives. We will be told to be unwavering, to dig our heels in and find our mettle, to never forget; and we will congratulate ourselves on the enormity of the event that we have withstood – in a manner that I suspect has been found rightly offensive to the many people and students of history who know that “thousands dead” is an almost daily occurrence throughout the world. That fact doesn’t need to diminish anything. In fact if anything it ought to be (to borrow from current discourse) a kind of “message force multiplier”: We are a part of this vulnerable world. Or, perhaps, we were, for a moment, before wrenching ourselves apart from it and asserting our role as the standard-bearer for law and conduct. But this has been said before and need not be repeated here at much length – that we squandered an enormous amount of good will and collective empathy by lashing out in every direction at things deemed un-American. What concerns me now is that, over the course of the last decade, this battle has been brought home with laser-like intensity. Foreign policy has become domestic policy. The enemy is no longer out there; the enemy is in our midst, among us, laying eggs and taking root.
     What distinguishes this September in New York from all the others is the sudden outcry against the proposed Islamic Community Center in our city’s downtown. This was not an issue when it was proposed and it is a project that has the approval of the mayor and the downtown community, to say nothing of the genuine interest it has sparked in many around the world. Again the world is watching and praying for something resembling common sense and basic humanism in America; something that says we don’t hate you or consider you to be a lesser form of citizen. Think of Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo – think whatever you will of it – at the very least it promised equanimity and acknowledgment of Islam as a legitimate social and spiritual entity in the world and in this country, specifically. No more, but no less, than Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or Buddhism. Think, then, of all the arguments for bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq and Afghanistan – think what you will of them – they were the best possible outcome that Afghans and Iraqis might hope for as a result of foreign occupation. If we can hold these things in mind then the message of censuring this project becomes patently offensive: We will seize and upend your country for your right to make your own decisions – as partners in peace – but we will not countenance a social center for your community in our midst. (And let us put to rest the hyperbolic notion that this is either at the center of Ground Zero or a simple mosque. This is a community center in the neighborhood that happens to have a huge need for development, in a very closely compacted city, with a significant population of Muslims and other people who would be interested to visit it.)
     Yet perhaps we could go even further than this by assuming the argument of the project’s opponents. It is indeed close to Ground Zero, a site where the so-called two disparate worlds of East and West were brought together in a horrific, unsparing moment. And now here is a distinguished figure from the Islamic world, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has repeatedly condemned the September 11th attacks as a violent aberration of, and not representative of, Islam, proposing a center for understanding and outreach in an area still visibly unhealed from the event. People rush in to fill holes. Here is a modest proposal to occupy a small amount of space in an area that has been consumed by ignorance. So, we might ask, “Why shouldn’t we want such a resource in downtown New York?” Arguably it will hold answers for many of the questions that may linger about the attacks, but more importantly it will provide a place of growth and empowerment for a community that is as legitimate and entitled as any other in our country. Does one stop a “clash of civilizations” by refusing any dialogue between the two? Imagine the message of disappointment and resentment such a refusal would send to the Arab world. Or, put another way, would you rather have a library, pool, 9/11 memorial, contemplative space and day care in downtown New York or would you rather have a Burlington Coat Factory (or a Staples or a Starbucks)?

I know that when people are critical of memorial holidays it can come off as churlish and arch, and I don't want to be that anymore; I don’t want to be part of the culture of complaint, the whinging left that can never be happy unless it is battling upwards against nefarious superpowers. So I would suggest this: let us be sad for once and re-affirm our commitment to being alive while we can. Again, I know it is unpretty to conceive of tragedy as opportunity, but I am afraid that such a determination was made almost at the moment of impact (arguably well before impact, if anyone bothers to read the minutes of the cabinet meetings in Washington.) So again we are confronted with an opportunity. What stories about ourselves do we want to believe and put forth historically? What do we want to remember someday and what will make us wince? Do we want to be remembered for unconditionally defending freedom or for defensive incarceration and exclusion? I think very few people in this country can honestly look back over the past decade and feel a sense of pride – the ransacking of the public trust and the plundering of foreign soil is simply too transparent, too vast to go undocumented. But because we are a plucky sort – and this is what the rest of the world finds maddening and lamentable but also terribly endearing about us – we can begin as if we were free. We can forget some of the terrible, cynical decisions we have made and remember the truth that is self-evident to anyone who sits seriously with the idea of an indivisible human community: to do to any other only what we would do for ourselves, an idea that is held in common between all national constitutions and books of prayer.

Shows, shows and more shows!

2010-09-02T13:03:00.003-04:00

September:

September 10th at the Cakeshop (NYC)

Pregnant, Bells, These Days and forgetters

September 28th at Death By Audio (Brooklyn)

Record release party with good friends Shellshag and VEVERITSE!

More info on this event soon...

October Midwest tour:

So far, here's the confirmed dates. We're pleased to be playing several shows with our friends 97-SHIKI from Chicago. They're not only completely sweet and amazing people, but they make great music and are always such a pleasure to watch.

As the information comes in, we'll update this list:

6th: Brillobox in Pittsburgh, PA

7th: MOTR Pub in Cincinnati, OH

8th: Cicero's in ST. Louis, MO with 97-SHIKI
9th: The Lift in Dubuque, IA with 97-SHIKI

10th: Triple Rock Social Club in MPLS, MN with 97-SHIKI and Frozen Teens

12th: Subterranean in Chicago, IL with 97-SHIKI
13th: Radio Radio in Indianapolis, IN
14th: Circus in Columbus, OH
15th: The Crofoot in Pontiac, MI

Excited!

Show at Cake Shop September 10th, 8pm $8

2010-08-24T14:42:00.000-04:00

We will be playing a show with dear, dear friends:

Pregnant

These Days

Bells

Come on out!!!

Cake Shop

152 Ludlow St.

New York, NY

Available in September:

2010-07-27T14:56:00.002-04:00

We're excited to announce that our double seven inch will be available on September 21st through Midheaven Mailorder. You can purchase it here:
http://www.midheaven.com/item/st-by-forgetters-2x7

XOXOXOXO!

Next week!

2010-07-23T04:30:00.000-04:00

This Friday:

2010-07-19T19:55:00.002-04:00

Last minute show: We'll be playing either 1st or 2nd and it will start promptly. If you're in Brooklyn, you should come out- all of these bands are really great!

Bees!

2010-06-15T02:51:00.000-04:00

Last month, I finally installed my first colony of bees. Matthew Wells, a BBC reporter, talked with me when I first picked up them up and then later that week, he came over to watch as I checked on my Queen. To hear the interview that was played on the World Service, you can find it here:

"Oh to Bee in NYC"

Colony Collapse Disorder is a major, unexplained problem right now and bees need as much help as possible. Please make a point to support your local beekeepers and to look out for these tiny, but truly amazing creatures.

- C.P.

May 27th, 2010

2010-05-06T13:51:00.008-04:00

Thursday, May 27

forgetters
Holopaw
Callers

The Bell House: 149 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY
Advance tickets available at www.thebellhouseny.com

Benefit show this Friday:

2010-04-12T23:39:00.001-04:00

Coming up at the end of April...

2010-03-30T20:23:00.000-04:00

http://www.thisistruck.com/about-truck-america-festival.aspx

March 12th, 2010

2010-02-23T01:52:00.000-05:00

www.skateparkoftampa.com

Richmond!

2010-02-05T07:05:00.002-05:00

LET GO

Prints, paintings, drawings and other hand-made works by Caroline Paquita.

At GallowLily- located on the second floor of Gallery5 in Richmond, Virginia.

Opening reception: Friday, February 5th, 7pm. (If it snows, the opening will be rescheduled to Saturday, February 13th). The show will be on display until Friday, February 26th, 2010.

Upcoming...

2010-01-21T03:36:00.000-05:00

lt's official: in March, we'll be heading down to St. Augustine to play the Harvest of Hope Festival. More information about HOH can be found at their site:
http://www.harvestofhopefest.com/
Happy New Year!
xoxoxo,
C.P.

February 6th!

2010-01-01T23:21:00.000-05:00

For more information and to purchase advance tickets:
http://boweryballroom.com/event/3907

St. Augustine- 12/16

2009-12-12T02:23:00.000-05:00

Saturday:

2009-12-10T05:35:00.000-05:00

This Friday:

2009-12-10T04:20:00.001-05:00

Caroline Paquita 2010 calendar out now!

2009-12-02T14:17:00.000-05:00

It's done! You can get one of your own via my etsy store, or I'll have them on our little tour coming up. Also, there have been quite a bit of requests about forgetters shirts. As of now, we aren't doing any mail order, sorry. We will have some shirts on tour though- while supplies last.
xoxoxo,
Caroline

December "Too Small To Fail" Tour!

2009-11-27T20:39:00.002-05:00

forgetters will play the following engagements:

Friday, December 11: Brooklyn, NY (Market Hotel)

Saturday, December 12: Washington, DC. (St. Steven’s Church, Columbia Heights)

Sunday, December 13: Richmond, Va. (Gallery5) Matinee!

Monday, December 14: Charlotte, NC. (Milestone)

Tuesday, December 15: Atlanta, Ga. (Drunken Unicorn)

Wednesday, December 16: St. Augustine, Fla. (Nobby's)

Thursday, December 17: Gainesville, Fla. (1982)

Friday, December 18: Pensacola, Fla. (Sluggo’s)

Saturday, December 19: New Orleans, La. (Nowe Miasto) Early show.

Sunday, December 20: Memphis, TN. (Hi Tone Café)

Monday, December 21: Chattanooga, TN. (Sluggo’s North)

Generation Records footage

2009-11-18T12:36:00.002-05:00

Mini-posters sold out!

2009-10-23T14:11:00.003-04:00

A heads up that the mini-posters are no longer available as of October 23rd. Thanks for your orders, and the kind words that have accompanied them. If you are interested in seeing any other art that I have for sale, you can check out:

http://www.carolinepaquita.com/indexhibit/for-sale/

Take care,

Caroline

P.S. A 2010 calendar that I'm printing myself is in the works- I'll announce when it's done, which will hopefully be by mid-November?

2009-10-23T09:16:00.000-04:00

The Bomb's show this Saturday has been moved to Lu Lu's (113 Franklin Street, Brooklyn). Check it out. And/Or come see them and forgetters play at Generation Records on Sunday (early show, about 1pm).

Austin, TX

2009-10-20T20:14:00.001-04:00

We are playing the Fun Fun Fun Fest Afterparty, November 8th in Austin, TX with:

Toys That Kill

Ghostknife

Smalltown

@ Red 7

10pm

$10

Fun Fun Fun Fest:

http://funfunfunfest.com/

Tickets available through:

http://transmission.frontgatetickets.com/choose.php?a=1&lid=37229&eid=43637

Free In-store

2009-10-13T13:49:00.000-04:00

Free In-Store at Generation Records, October 25th!!! Show kicks off at 1pm.

We will be sharing an afternoon of rock with The Bomb. Hopefully you can join us.

Location: 210 Thompson St., NYC

forgetters mini posters!

2009-10-12T14:38:00.005-04:00

(As of 10/23, these are no longer available- sorry!)

Considered to be either the world's smallest band poster, OR the world's largest bookmark, I have about a hundred of them that I'm selling through our blog this month. Printed on my Risograph, they are hand-cut, sewn, and lightly misted with gold spray-paint. Made for our weekend trip to Providence and Boston, they are a limited edition and not to be printed again. They measure about 3 x 8.5 inches and come in several brightly colored paper stocks- it'll be a surprise to see which one you get in the mail.
Interested parties can paypal $5 (which includes S&H) to carolinepaquita@gmail.com. Make sure to include your full name and address- I'll send your order out via first class mail within 1-2 days. Limit of two per order! You can email any questions (concerning the posters, not about shows) to carolinepaquita@gmail.com. All other emails should be directed to: forgetters@gmail.com
Thanks and take care,
C.P.

(As of 10/23, these are no longer available- sorry!)

Shows, shows, shows...

2009-09-30T15:43:00.005-04:00

The shows this past weekend were great! A big thanks to Onion Flavored Rings for getting us out of town, and to everyone (all the bands, people and spaces) that made it happen. OFR is still on tour for a couple more weeks, on their way back to California, so you should check them out if they come your way:
http://onionflavoredrings.com/news/

In other news, everything is still on for this weekend:

Friday 10/2: Providence @ AS220. With Idiot Vehicle, Exusamwa, and Nature/ Nurture. Doors at 8pm, $7.
http://www.as220.org

Sunday 10/4: Boston @ Great Scott. With Idiot Vehicle and Chastity Wig. Doors at 9pm, $6.
http://www.greatscottboston.com/

xoxoxo,
Caroline

P.S. Mickey Colette, artist extraordinaire in Providence, made this poster for our show on Friday. She makes amazing prints, that have constantly blown my mind, and I encourage you to check out her work at:
http://www.michaelacolette.com/

The Myth of the Perfect Storm: Why We're Not Going to Make It

2009-09-23T09:35:00.002-04:00

by Blake Schwarzenbach

About a year ago I was attacked online by someone I briefly dated, a vicious, self-styled academic who plays at being smart. Like many PhD candidates, she is training herself to market her cleverness as a kind of intelligence. Politically apathetic -- in fact quite indifferent to anything that isn’t her, which sometimes seems to be an emotional pre-req for the job -- she has come to represent for me the perfect subject of life under what I’m going to call “un(self)conscious capitalism.”

This, I hope, will not seem like just another gratuitous academic coinage. Unselfconscious capitalism is a term – or at least one melancholy overture towards such a term – that I have come to feel is necessary in order to describe the unblinking and automated kind of living one sees every day in New York. But its ubiquity and massive permeation of the culture goes beyond any specific city or social milieu. It is perfectly expressed in the hasty, solipsistic rants facilitated by social networks like Facebook or Myspace. It has no home – certainly no geographic or historical identity – but instead makes a kind of provisional camp wherever it appears. One could say it infects discourse, like a hyper-vigilant settler, with its pre-existing condition of general disinterest (in things – people, countries, conflicts -- outside of itself) and unembarrassed self-interest. This general disinterest usually metastasizes into a kind of blanket hostility, or generalized anxiety, towards things outside of its own neurotic imperative: things like wars/occupations, the Left, social justice movements, anarchism, art that is not for sale.[1]

But, to return to my story, it was the very specific nature of the aforementioned attacks that I found so disheartening: jokey threats involving money and humiliation. As a target I felt grossly misunderstood, paradoxically unknown and despised. To be hated is one thing, but to be hated without being included is something else entirely. (Ah words! You do my bidding even when there’s no one home!)

There we were, in a public forum, and I was being savaged in ALL CAPS about what a bad writer I was and what a has-been I am and how she was going to auction my emails for money (because of my has-been celebrity status? Yes, you can have it both ways!) We could try to parse these charges for their unseemly desperation and psychotic mendacity but that would only lead us back to the central misery of this person. And while the claims were baseless and poorly wrought, they still managed to impart a kind of psychic damage.

My feeling was this: “We’re not going to make it.” (Not “we” as a couple or social unit, but we as a people, under one flag, and all the other shit.) If this was the level of discourse, if this kind of ad hominem was going to be allowed to stand, then we had already lost. In fact, we had lost with the very conception of such a thing because it was founded on such shitty and inverted principles that losing became a forgone conclusion.

And here is what I mean to say and why I am bothering to share such rank linen with perfect strangers: throw me away. Forget my own stupid complaint here, and extrapolate the model to the political debates of the moment.

Apply the a priori argument to substantive issues like Health Care, Israel/Palestine, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the bank bailouts and see where we are. Behold the tide that lowers all boats! The self-interest and duplicity of the most volatile (and sadly efficacious from a policy perspective) contestants in these debates make failure inevitable – because they begin from the ultimately disadvantageous position of having made up their minds from the outset.

We’re not going to make it.

We’re not going to make it because an honest discussion about Health Care or Palestinian statehood is totally inadmissible: the conversation begins with such enormous concessions (forget Single-Payer /Universal Coverage, we’re not even including a Public Option anymore; forget East Jerusalem, that’s a unilaterally sacred terrain.) Like a children’s game of tag -- “You’re it, Ramallah!” -- all existing Israeli settlements must remain because they have already been built (never mind they are illegal under International Law: Binyamin Netanyahu, like Bartleby, “would prefer not to” abide by these laws. Who, other than Joe Wilson, can so nakedly flout decorum and reason? Well, everyone, it turns out.) Again and again we are tarred “it” by the cruel brush of all the bad decisions that have come before us.

The tautology of the argument is this: because it is so, it must be so. (In a more benign context, Beethoven once ruminated, “Muss es sein? Es muss sien!” [“Must it be? It must be!”]) Unfortunately, with the current permutations we find ourselves with something less than a String Quartet.

In health care this explains Obama’s apology for abandoning single-payer from the outset: “If we were starting from scratch…” If only we were starting from scratch. The same goes for Wall Street and the myth of “too big to fail” or even the retroactively engineered “Tsunami” of perfect economic forces that miraculously converged to destroy the banks; (a perfect storm, it will be recalled, that nicely exonerates an institutionalized system of investment banking that literally seeded the clouds of the economic system to produce just this kind of storm). The same goes for Katrina: blame the storm, blame the residents, blame the victims. Blame the Iraqis for not standing up for the Democracy we promised them.

If only we were starting from scratch we could fix these things for real.

But because we already have a war in Iraq (and we still do have a war there if daily loss of life counts for anything) we must stay the course. Anything less would be irresponsible.

Because we failed initially to achieve our objective in Afghanistan (to interdict al-Qaeda and apprehend Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri), we must continue to occupy that country as it disintegrates (again!) into violence and dysfunctional chaos. The same specious logic of Iraq applies here again: “If it’s this bad with us here, imagine what will happen when we leave!” Is it that we simply cannot imagine a world without us?

This is what conservatives mean when they say, “It’s a nice idea, but I live in the real world.” While peace and prosperity is our objective, war and financial hoarding are our means.

Because we tortured uncharged enemy combatants we must continue to hold them until such time as we can determine what to do with them.

Because we will not release them or allow them to enter our (impregnable by all accounts) Super Max facilities in the United States we must continue to hold them illegally in prisons we once swore to shutter.

Because things are so bad we cannot start over in order to fix them.

The question ultimately becomes, when is it bad enough to start over? Unemployment at 9.7 %? 18,000 U.S. citizens dead annually from no health insurance? Daily violence in Iraq and Afghanistan? A resurgent Taliban whose greatest recruiting poster is the sustained military occupation of its quarters by the U.S. and our allies? Record foreclosures for homeowners and record profits for the banks that manufactured these loans and their derivative products (which also failed miserably and drove the hypothetical economy of “faith” and “wealth” into very real ground)?[2] An Israeli assault on Gaza (an already captive population) that left 1400 Palestinians dead in December/January, now papered over so as to seem like it was years ago? [3]

If we were starting over we could fix these things, but because we began this conversation an inch or so to the left of Bush, we must proceed rationally, democratically, back to the center of the far right.

Because these things have failed so miserably we cannot afford to start over. Rather, we should allow those “who got us into this mess” to figure a way out, because only they can understand these complex financial (or military or territorial or social) instruments that got us into this in the first place.

Let’s give the keys to the burglars so they can put all the loot back in the house. Lawrence Summers, here are the keys! Max Baucus, keys for you, too![4]

It’s as if the Army Corps of Engineers were asked to repair the pumps (which they installed the first time) for the levees around the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Oh wait, they did, and they installed untested pumps that are prone to catastrophic failure![5]

It takes serious planning to make a perfect storm. Nature’s not in it anymore. Any serious analysis of the current crises shows them to be purposeful, man-made disasters. If we can engineer something this catastrophic, do we not have the strength and fortitude to start over? What part of these wheezing institutions really warrants saving?

To return to the unsavory piece of gossip I used to start this piece – my fear is that we have become so fragmented and niche-oriented in our desperate attempts to sustain a charismatic “presence” that we can no longer see outside of ourselves. This is the seamless fabric of unselfconscious capitalism – the silent mandate to “get up,” do “your” thing, be “your” self, celebrate your consumption through top ten lists and shoe-gazing twitters and virtual gardens. A scurrilous and preening online community is not a movement or even a quartet, but it is a telling response to the larger anxieties that loom over us. Perfect storms depend on detached populations so that they can go about their work unfettered. If not you, when? If not now, them.

[1] Let me, at the risk of appearing wildly digressive, explain briefly why I should include “art that is not for sale” in such an austere list. I mean to distinguish between the entitlement of a culture that assumes that all creative work is “free stuff” to be downloaded or used at the whim of the consumer and an art that cannot be “stolen” because it was never bound to any specific vendor or market in the first place. I think there is a significant distinction to be made here between two very different conceptions of what exactly “free” is. Significantly, the second type of free work is often dismissed as tainted or without value by consumers of the first order of professional, therefore stealable, stuff. By way of example let me point to the “free box” that often languishes on doorstops or sidewalks in our many cities. There might be perfectly good jackets or muffins in there, but many people – cold people! hungry people! In need of a hole punch people! – will, at the sight of such a thing, draw their collar tight and rush quickly by so as not to be contaminated. There is, among Americans, a kind of village superstition about the uncertain origins of something that has been used or touched by others. I call it right of first use – why wrappers are so sexy to the consumer (I am the first and only one to undress you!) and why cellophane outlives the things it protects.

[2] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

[3] http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/16/un_inquiry_finds_israel_punished_and

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115240.html

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072003363.html

http://www.openleft.com/diary/14307/who-gives-money-to-senator-max-baucus

[5] http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/09/whistleblower_still_warning_th.html

Blake's recommended war readings.

2009-09-11T11:48:00.000-04:00

The Human and Psychological Cost of War

My interest in PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) began with growing up at the end of the American war in Vietnam, a subject much discussed in my home. It is my belief that human subjects learn the nature of their own trauma or are destroyed by it, and warfare is perhaps the most telling example of this principle. Shortly after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars began, I took a course at Hunter College called “Literature of the Great War: Gender, Sexuality, and the Poetics of History,” a survey of British poetry and fiction that grew up out of the collective trauma of the First World War. The similarities between the British campaign in Europe and the U.S. military adventures in the Middle East and Central Asia were staggering: seriously faulty premises for the conflicts themselves, utter failure and complicity on the part of media, a fear-mongering state apparatus which led to reactionary fanfare at home, and the marginalized voices of returning soldiers who spoke out against the war. There was also an invisible chorus of returning veterans who could not speak about their experience because they simply didn’t have words for what they had seen or endured. Having lived long enough to observe the thirty years’ devastation of those Vietnam veterans who initially found themselves disowned both by their country and the counterculture when they returned, I became especially interested in the conundrum posed by these recent wars. As most will recall, the dialogue was engineered in such a way that one could not support the troops by questioning the war; rather, one had to defend vigorously their right to die for this bogus conflict. Anything less did a disservice to their memory. Surprisingly, in the midst of this, I came across a series of tapes from CBS’s original coverage of the war in Vietnam, which proved to be a kind of high-water mark in media transparency. The CBS war correspondents were only half-embedded and often ended up taking hits along with the soldiers; the editorializing was sober and – I say this so as to suggest a virtue – almost lifeless. What struck me about this reporting was that there was nothing elevated or sensational about it – the camps look terrible, the soldiers have acne and are much homelier than today’s CNN images of steely-eyed, steroid-type Marines (admittedly both a function of new media technologies and modern training, but still a significant factor in terms of whether one is projecting military service as a “glamorous calling” or as a working-class job of last resort.) What follows are a few articles and features that, to my mind, are exemplary in their honesty and manage to return a certain human and psychological component to representations of the experience of war.

PTSD:

William Finnegan “The Last Tour” (New Yorker, Sep. 2008)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/29/080929fa_fact_finnegan

Dave Philipps “Casualties of War” (Colorado Gazette, July 26, 2009)

http://www.gazette.com/articles/iframe-59065-eastridge-audio.html

For those interested in the birth of PTSD as a stigmatized illness of the Great War, Elaine Showalter has a seminal chapter (“Male Hysteria: W.H.R. Rivers and the Lessons of Shell Shock”) in her all-around great book, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980 (New York: Penguin, 1987). For a more conventionally historical perspective, Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford, 1975) is indispensable. Additionally, Pat Barker’s Regeneration is a vivid historical fiction about the same period. For a more direct literary interface try Wilfred Owen’s Collected Poems (New Directions), Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier, D.H. Lawrence’s England, My England, and Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That.

Submitted by Blake Schwarzenbach

Upcoming shows:

2009-09-09T23:55:00.000-04:00

Here's what's been booked for the next month or so. Exciting shows with good friends:

Friday 9/18: NYC @ Lit Lounge. With Golden City, Solar Power Sun Destroyer, and Thought and Memory.
http://www.litloungenyc.com/

Friday 9/25: Philly @ The Barbary. With Onion Flavored Rings and Amateur Party.
http://www.r5productions.com/

Friday 10/2: Providence @ AS220. With Idiot Vehicle, TBA.
http://www.as220.org

Sunday 10/4: Boston @ Great Scott. With Idiot Vehicle and Chastity Wig.
http://www.greatscottboston.com/

More information will be posted as it comes in, but it wouldn't hurt to check the links for more up to date details concerning the shows.
(Photo by Dave Sanders- www.brooklyndiy.blogspot.com)