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August 24, 2007
cotter ain't got shit
You know, I try like hell to get away from it, but somehow I keep getting dragged back to blogging, kicking and screaming. It’s something about the half assed anonymity, the camaraderie of other misunderstood rapidly aging lonely people looking at you on the other end, appreciating your wit on a deeper level that you just know no one else gets, and stroking your ego with appropriately placed comments and shout outs.
Take a deep whiff ladies and gents, I’m about to take a massive shit.
So west is back, god knows if anyone I used to talk to is still out there, but I’ll make the appropriate rounds, donate my thoughts to the right people, and get out there again.
It was my birthday again a few hours ago. As a general rule, year 20 sucks. I’m only…*calculates*…18 hours into it and I could give it up already. Truly. Nothing really remarkable happened while I was 19, what could POSSIBLY happen in year 20? I changed jobs about twelve times, even had a stint as a cocktail waitress, finally stuck with a major (that has nothing to do with art or computers oddly enough), ruined a few friendships and romances, and am here, home, on my birthday staring at this screen at four in the morning. Christ knows what time I’m supposed to be at work.
I work at a record store now. It shall remain nameless but if you’ve lived in Baltimore for more than two days you could probably figure it out.
DAMN I’ve missed this. It’s a character really, so easily do I slip into the persona of west, like an old familiar sweater. Ok, so maybe that was a little too Jane Eyre of me but what ever.
NEWS:
So if anyone keeps up with Red Emma’s Café and Bookstore events you’d know Michael Muhammad Knight and a group of unforgiving Islamic punk rockers came to our great city, basically on a low key press tour to promote Knight’s book, The Blue Eyed Devil, and the Taqwacore Invasion. I went to both the book talk, and a show they did the following night at 2640. I highly recommend Knight’s books, TBED, The Five Percenters, and one I cant remember but am too tired to google right now.
Knight wasn’t what I expected in the least. He was neither a black convert, nor any type of Arab, rather a pseudo punked out white guy, who just happened to be Muslim, and know more about the Islamic history and laws then any religious professor I’ve ever met. The impression that I got off Knight was so easy going; he talked about his pilgrimages across the globe as if he just got up and decided to walk there one day. He makes everything look so blasted easy. As if nothing is impossible. In some ways he seemed touched by God. I wish my aunt could have met him. Maybe she’d think twice about condemning Muslims so quickly.
The kids in the punk bands were being followed around by producers and cameras everywhere. Apparently there’s a documentary being made. I met a few of the musicians first at the book signing, as I lent out about 12 cigarettes to the famished and haggard looking boys. Haphazardly I took names, nationalities, and instruments as they passed my lighter around. There were about 8 of them altogether, and they had piled on a green school bus and driven down from Boston for this tour. They invited me onto the bus and gave me some spray paint to tag the roof of it. They invited me to the show the following night, and joked about me singing Sublime in the intermission. I don’t know why. Knight got onto the tour bus, after I had him sign my book (where he just drew a robot instead of actually writing anything) and I took a few pictures for the documentary.
The show last night was sparsely populated, and more press showed up then anything else. I only hung out for an hour before I bolted after the onset of a head ache. However I did get to hear songs entitled W-AL-QUEDA-MART, Jesus Was Black, and It’s Only Fertilizer.
A pretty entertaining group, and if anyone wants some of the music, let me know.
| By west | 04:06 AM
Comments
Send me some of that music, please! I'm very interested.
Happy B day, BTW.
Also, I remember year 20. Two young to legally have a fucking beer, but old enough to have a friggen kid. How is THAT for rock and a hard place?
Posted by: Lori at August 24, 2007 09:14 AM
Happy Birthday West!
Posted by: Malnurtured Snay at August 24, 2007 01:09 PM