The Wily Filipino

Some Stuff That Has Cheered Me Up.

1. Thanks to Jean and Pat for your comments (no, I haven't downloaded the mp3 yet, but will in a sec). I am hanging in there, thanks to my friends -- you know who you are! -- and relatives both far and near. (No, it's not about health; thankfully those I love are all healthy.)

2. The latest (and last) Guided By Voices album, Half Smiles of the Decomposed, arrived in my mailbox on Monday, and it is a blessed gift from indie-rock heaven. It's already vaulted into my favorites of the year -- see the right-hand column. Lyrically and musically, it's even stronger than the last GBV-With-Big-Speakers album, Isolation Drills -- heck, right now, it feels like it's already in the GBV top 5 (up there with Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, and Propeller).

As Uncle Bob himself put it: "We are the kings of indie rock. When we quit, indie rock will die."

3. Now this made me smile. I love the "coconut leaves and kerosene" part, though the article is maddeningly quiet on the ingredients. Did the wedding guests think it was lechon, perhaps?

4. Watching the very first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus last night. "Nine out of ten British housewives can't tell the difference between Whizzo butter and a dead crab."

5. Eric Idle's "The FCC Song."

6. Whoa -- Puffy is coming to the Fillmore in October. I have to go.

7. I'm having my friends Lito and Nerissa over for dinner in a few days (then we're watching The Village, despite the bad reviews), and just by chance, Lito's poem "Her First Night Away" is open in front of me, as I try to figure out questions for discussion of another one of his poems for class next week.

"For once in this marriage, more than
darkness separated us, more than sleep,
though it's now daylight where you are."

Posted by the wily filipino at August 25, 2004 09:54 PM