If you thought the iPod sock was absurd, get a load of this.

zee best friend says: "If you buy that case you're going to need imaginary friends. 'So, where's the iWife?'"

Apparently the people at Speck decided the original silicon carrying case didn't donate enough additional bulk to your iPod, so they added arms and legs. I guess they also decided we could benefit from an extra dose of inanity in our lives (and that we have a dispensable excess of cash and unlimited pocketspace). This mutant version of the iPod carrying case is selling for nearly twice the value of the one without arms and legs.
zee best friend says: "Ah, the price of limbs."

So let me get this straight... for $15 more, I can turn my iPod into a cumbersome, unwieldy and irregularly-shaped bendy toy. Yeah..... who else thinks this is an injustice of the world?

Note, also: the iGuy has a derriere...!!
Nope. They were so not kidding with this one. I'm horrified.
Then again, we should probably just be glad they didn't affectionately name the mini version of the iGuy the "iChild".

Ironically, they put heavy emphasis on the "functionality" of the thing.... So, I stand corrected. I guess the limbs can and do serve a purpose. (But let me ask you this -- what purpose in hell does the ass serve?) It's actually very convenient. Like, you know, the next time I'm talking to someone on the phone and I need to put the receiver down for whatever reason, I can dig my iPod out of my pocket and position iGuy's fabulous POSEABLE ARMS such that it -- I'm sorry, he -- doubles as a super-nifty, uh... phone holder. Because it would just kill me to put it on the table.
(Also, I suddenly feel inclined to go out and buy myself a dangly star keychain just to hang it from iGuy's limbs when I do invest in one. And make no mistake, it is quite the investment, for an iPod carrying case.)
more gems from my quotable best friend: "I guess my iPod case is an amputee."
(I guess it is...)

Sad thing is, many of you are going to run out and buy it. Because, really, what you need -- what we all need is an iPod case that looks like fuckin' GUMBY.


Other ridiculous trends in soupin' up the old iPod:
Big bass headphones. They, too, defeat the whole purpose of the iPod's attribute of, you know, portability and everything.

But Natalie Portman wears them to listen to The Shins in (sort-of) independent films, so they're cool.

Surefire drummer mystery unraveled. The guy who's been playing drums for Surefire lately is indeed an official member of the band. His name is Andy.
And he really isn't that much of an enigma.

In other news: the torrid summer is draining my will to live.

My friend Clara, meanwhile, has been on a cruise in the Alaskan waters. Damn you, Clara, damn you to hell. (which would be here...)

band line-up change mystery further complicated.

There have been some conflicting rumors and general confusion surrounding Surefire's drummer situation. (Where the hell is Justin? Why has someone with an alleged hand injury been incapacitated for several months? Why won't anyone shed some light on this, and furthermore, why does the band avoid acknowledging his absence?) Recently there has been more compelling evidence to suggest that the guy "filling in" is permanently in the band. It comes to us in the form of... the flyer for the Vicious anniversary show that took place a week ago.

There's a certain infatuation Surefire has with being translated into illustration; each show is an opportunity to be illustrated and they see to it that full advantage is always taken. If I were any less familiar with them, I might have had them pegged as a narcissistic band. Below, exhibit 1 -- a testament to the amount of effort and strain that goes into the design of their elaborate show flyers and promotional art. Also, our "evidence". Pictorial renderings are sometimes hard to interpret, so the nature of this article of "evidence" is more complicating than it is telling. In this particular rendering, I had trouble placing the band members. There'd been lengthy disputing among the company of myself and myself in assigning identities to each of the persons shown.

examine: exhibit 1.

Without a second glance, you wouldn't have noticed the irregularity. So what's suspicious and peculiar? Well, first let's identify the band members. To the far right, Jacob. Second from the right is Ben. (I think we can all agree on those two.) Third from the right... Nick? I remain uncertain, but I say that's Nick. However, take a look at the one to the far left. Who is that? Blame it on disparities in the artist's visual representation, but that likeness to the far left sure doesn't look like Justin to me. (The other three seem to have been pretty accurately depicted.) To the converse, he very closely resembles the temporary drummer. That is the likeness of a bona fide enigma. He is nameless to most of us, known only as "the new drummer". The next time I see them (I think I'm banking on tomorrow at Southpaw), I shall incite him to speak; then he will be an enigma to me no more. (Perhaps he can even offer me some clarification on the situation.)

I'd established earlier that the band treated Justin's absence like a negligible temporary change in the band's line-up, too miniscule to mention. The other three have strategically avoided mentioning the "current" drummer's name, possibly to emphasize his status as, supposedly, temporary substitute. I really hadn't begun to see a reason to suspect anything until the guy subbing in had been drawn into the band art in place of Justin. (above) Last I asked, Ben had personally "confirmed" to me that Justin would indeed return, but I've grown suspicious of his word. This band, after all, is by nature reserved and secretive. I suppose it adds to the collective mystique they exude, as a band.
Damn mystique.

After about a week of laying low (and missing two huge shows while I was at it), I ventured out to the LES last night to see brooklyn band The Diggs, wondering how a band that was so celebrated a fixture in the local scene could have passed under my watch for so long. I discovered them under some odd and random circumstances, but it was serendipity, for here was a band that offered originality. You'll want to think "brit-pop" upon initially hearing their material but there aren't distinctly British elements prevalent in it. Present in some of their songs is the suggestion of shoegaze, though absent are many of the quintessential components of the sound we know as "shoegaze", so it isn't quite that. (Still, anglophiles tend to LOVE The Diggs.) They've established enough of a musical identity of their own to constitute being described as "innovative" rather than being likened to five other bands.

But I'm reluctant to decide on my opinion of any band until I've heard their recordings and seen their live performance, so I took it upon myself to go see The Diggs at Cake Shop last night. Before me were all the indications that this band was on the rise: a loyal core fan base skirting the stage (uh, the performance area, rather; this was Cake Shop) a photographer darting around photographing them with (what appeared to be?) an SLR, employees at the club seeming just about smitten by the end of their set. They play short sets, but they do not disappoint.

Take it from me, if you like their sound, make a point of catching them live. (If you need more motivation, you should be pleased to know that they're also really nice guys.) Sin-e loves them enough to book them for a four-week residency next month, that should be reason enough for you to drop in on any one if not all of the shows. (Honestly, what else have you got planned on Thursday nights?)

Cruel laughs at the expense of a bad musician with cancer. I slay myself!

Did you hear? The singer from Something Corporate was diagnosed with leukemia.

Huh. Go figure. ....Maybe he can write a sad, sad song about it. And then of course, an even sadder song about his girlfriend leaving him after he loses his hair from all the chemotherapy.
(Come on, what else is he gonna do while he's held immobile in a hospital bed pontificating melodramatically about the awful, awful fate that has befallen him?)

Okay, that was low.

However, I don't care.

I apologize personally for this interruption of the regular social commentary-based content with crap about my life.

I'm about to do something horribly irresponsible and unprofessional as a blogger, and gush about my day.

I was at a professional photo shoot today, something I agreed to do -- on an impulse -- for the experience alone, and it was the single coolest thing ever. I should never be in front of a camera, I make an indecisive, difficult subject -- typical of me. (Come on, consider my personality.) But I got to be awkward, wander around the studio, meet an accomplished photographer, ogle his gorgeous... assistant? Apprentice? Intern?
Yeah. It was awesome.

I passed Chocolate Bar as I walking back to the subway and stopped by for an iced chocolate. It was the most godawful thing I've ever tasted. If you're ever in there, don't get that. You've been warned.
I'm sorry, I have no friends, hence no one to call and gush to.
< /gush>

Post with substance coming soon. Stay tuned. (God, this blog is going to hell.)

Sunburned again. DAMN!

I return. I return from Hipster Fest 2005. (Sunburned but alive.)
About five different people snapped pictures of me, the first of whom I'm convinced was part of the Siren staff, and the last of whom was a photographer from New York magazine. Each time I tried resisting, and each time I gave in.
There are pictures of me floating around. THAT'S UNSETTLING.

I kept a log of all the thoughts that occured to me, and all the sightings of note:
12:31pm - food-serving establishments filled to capacity with some of New York's most flamboyant and pretentious indie rockers. Discouraged, I turn away because the damn hipsters are making me nervous. Currently standing in front of the wonderwheel, down a secluded street, where I feel at ease. Planning on heading to the boardwalk.... provided I ever find it.

1:09pm - back on W. 10th street in front of the mainstage. person slaps sticker on me. (without ever explaining what kind of cause it represents) Most of the other people milling around the area have had the same sticker haphazardly slapped on them as well.


1:10pm - victory! I find the boardwalk. I am also studying my sticker. So inviting is the excess space on it that I decide to write "blogger on duty" on mine. (Maybe with the hope that it will give me some sense of entitlement to whip out a notebook at random and scribble things on it every time a thought occurs to me? Maybe as a proclamation to all those who are watching me write compulsively in a notebook at irregular intervals that the notebook is instrumental to my self-motivated documentation of the event?) Who wouldn't have succumbed to the temptation of vandalizing it? Obviously since it was already on me, I had to attempt the feat of writing it upside-down. Backwards, I can do with no difficulty. Upside-down I can't do in any timely sort of fashion. I figure this must be what writing is like for severe dyslexics.


1:15pm - ambulance ltd. has been cavorting on the beach right in front of me, but I've been too busy writing upside-down letters on myself that I've neglected to notice. No, seriously, they are right fucking in front of me, I lift my eyes up and there they are centered in my field of vision. Admittedly, I am tempted to run far far away and secretly photograph them, at a distance (possibly from an angle too), without their consent or knowledge. (Instead I just watch them.) Slowly I notice that they are being photographed, that this is an actual photo shoot and they are posing.

3:00pm - I SPY SUREFIRE! Ben and Jacob Surefire (singer and bassist, respectively) seen on the boardwalk. I fumble for my camera but they disappear into the horde of fans heading for the mainstage area before I am able to turn my shitty camera on. I curse under my breath.
(editor's note: Clara, it's too bad you don't read this, you'd probably get a kick out of all this talk of Ambulance Ltd. and Surefire.)

3:01pm - Discouraged, I sit down on a bench and check in for my first Top of the Hour Sunburn Check. Results? Not sunburned.

3:30pm - I spot one of the photographers from lastnightsparty.com. I figure a top-ranked scenester like him would welcome the occasion of being photographed by a total stranger who recognizes him, so I try to chase him around the boardwalk, to no avail. (editor's note: Let it be known I've watched this guy mack on a girl he was returning from some party with on the G train. I've watched a top-ranked NYC scenester mack on a girl once. Heh. That's funny.) I mean, come on, I'd like to have something to show for at least one of these Noteable Persons Sightings I claim to be having. But it seems like whenever he isn't engaged in some conversation with somebody he knows, he's briskly pacing the boardwalk.
That guy walks awfully fast.

4:00pm - top of the hour sunburn check: still not sunburned yet.

4:19pm - I just let people from New York magazine photograph me. FUUUUUCK.

Admittedly, as the day wore on my tolerance for the heat, the sun, the isolation, the alienation, wore threadbare. But the worst, the absolute worst was my sense of isolation, which had so magnfied itself in intensity by 4 o'clock that I began to wish I'd sought out somebody to go with. Had this been winter I probably could have dealt with it. But the heat, oh the heat, the heat makes me grumpy and severely impairs my ability to think clearly. I spent much of the late afternoon loafing around on the boardwalk (where at least the ocean breezes made it bearable) wishing somebody would talk to me. Everyone was with their friends. That pissed me off. Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't have minded, but like I said, Summeritis loves company, and I'd contracted the worst case of chronic Summeritis there ever was. My voice was probably hoarse from disuse. Save for some protestations upon being asked to be the subject of photographs, and three orders for soda at the boardwalk concession stands, I'd hardly said anything at all. Feverish (I really was feeling feverish by this point, I felt the onset of a sunburn despite all my top-of-the-hour documentation, and my skin was emitting heat), I sought refuge from the sun and ducked under the corner of an awning of one of them concession stand things (awning? I don't quite remember what it was) on the boardwalk.

and for your viewing pleasure, two stray photographs that I could not find a way to incorporate into the tale of Siren Festival as I had experienced it.

What a promotion strategy! Other bands -- take a tip from them. Your fleets of fifteen-year-old converse-wearing street team girls just don't cut it anymore. (did they ever?)

It's such a departure from everything else that was going on that day, from the tired old promo strategies everybody else had been using. It was subtle, it was clever, it was genius. He (he? it's hard to tell, the person's in costume) invokes wonder and curiosity by merely being there. He does not bombard you with a flyer, he compells you to take one. The others, they slapped big obnoxious stickers on unsuspecting people (as a result, many were walking around with stickers on their back pockets and shoulders), shoved things in your face when you weren't paying enough attention to realize you should have been avoiding them as you walked by, pressed handfuls of 1" buttons in your hands. And this, in contrast, is so discreet. So effective and so discreet. The guy doesn't even move from where he's standing, but he lures you to investigate.
A hearty "cheers" to the person in the disturbing 'guise, and to the band too.

Not that it isn't nice to have things shoved in your face. I scored two CDs and a Shout Out Louds sticker. Awesome. When you've been there long enough, you'll reach a certain point at which you are decidedly sweaty and haggard enough to take whatever you're handed, no questions asked. Flyer? Thanks. Sticker? Thanks. Flyer advertising a show I won't want to go to? Thanks. Big hairy tarantula? Thanks. Odds are, if you'd handed me a big hairy tarantula after hour 5 of the excruciatingly long day, I probably wouldn't have noticed until it crawled out of my bag an hour later or until it had bitten me and I was dying.

So aside from the highlights of the afternoon, it was pretty much a complete waste. I'm so going again next year. I so did not learn my lesson.

Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg.

Thank you for passing the law prohibiting smoking indoors. (What a novel idea.) So that our entitlement to do as we please in public places is impeded upon. So that when I'm walking through the LES on a Saturday night (I specify Saturday night because never is LES more congested) clusters of chainsmokers who've congregated outside Pianos, 12 inch, Cake Shop, whichever hipster enclave they've come out of, decked out in certifiably "cool" but ugly as fuck glasses, shoes, and ill-fitting clothes smoking their Parliament cigarettes can survey my hair color critically as I pass by and say to each other at perfectly audible normal speaking volume while I am within earshot, "that is so not cool."

The air quality in clubs doesn't bother me, I'm more concerned with the quality of the people who occupy those clubs, because once they spill out onto the street for their cigarette breaks, I'm essentially subjecting myself to mockery by merely walking down those streets. It's like an extravagant and ostentatious showcase of each establishment's hipster clientele; each parades its trendy patrons, all fair-faced, perfect of feature, their cigarettes balanced on their fingertips, and the groups of smokers rotate about every 5-10 minutes. The sidewalks of the LES are polluted with bohemian barflies and delinquents, debauchees and art students... people I'm sure fancy themselves this city's hipster elite if for no other reason because they can stand outside of 12 inch looking pretty, arms crossed, Parliament accessory cigarette in hand, jeering at passersby who don't quite measure up to their standards of hipness (but who, nevertheless, have much sharper aesthetic senses).

So my hair is the color of windex, what's it to you? My jeans still hang nicelier and the hems fall to my shoes more gracefully and the lines of my clothes are straighter. Your clothes are hip and ugly, mine are contemporary and aesthetically pleasing. BEAT THAT, BITCHES!

Thank you again Mayor Bloomberg.

You wanna know a surefire way to make a drugstore salesclerk think you're not crazy? Waltz in at 11pm and buy a singular item. They'll totally not stare at you in bemusement.

I was experiencing a duct tape shortage in the middle of making myself a duct tape wallet one night, so I postponed construction on my project to run out for another roll. And I guess the cashier felt entitled to stare at me like I was insane. What, lady? It's not like I'm walkin' in at 11pm with a condom emergency. It's a roll of duct tape. Sometimes people have duct tape needs, you know! It is indeed multi-purpose, and its many uses aren't limited to kinky bondage and kidnapper paraphernalia. (Yeah. I got my ex in my trunk on my way to a dark alley, and he's regaining consciousness, okay?)

Every time I go to Kevin Devine shows I stand slouched over and look guilty. Paranoid and guilty.

I'll not permit myself to pan the room, but caution will tempt me to look over my shoulder. So my eyes just sort of dart around anxiously and I'll have the general appearance of being in prepared-to-dive-spontaneously-behind-a-table mode.

I saw him play a while ago at the end of last month, got chatted up by someone who turned out to be Kevin's good friend. By the end of the show he'd pretty much introduced me to everyone present who was a friend of Kevin Devine, and Kevin Devine himself. Needless to say, by the end of the show everyone was aware that I was the girl he was serenading. He insisted I call him, all but beseeched me to call him, really, cornered me into a position where it would be unspeakable and irresponsible for me not to call him. I didn't call him.