Spent today thinking about when I saw [Spunge] in November. I was right at the front, and the singer does that thing where he asks who’s seen them before, and everyone around me cheers. Then he goes, “who’s here for the first time?” and I cheer, like, on my own right at the front. The guy next to me, probably mid-30s, turns and asks how old I am. I say 18. He kind of laughs and goes, “do you want to go up?” (not even fully a question) and that’s basically how it starts. Next thing I know I’m crowd surfing during Jump on Demand, which felt very on the nose, especially since the venue had technically said we weren’t allowed to.

Surfing

I only knew them in the first place because my guitar teacher saw them back in 2003. So it felt less like discovering a band and more like being handed something down and finally doing something with it.

ILuvSKA

I ended up thinking about ska today because of the hoodie i wore into college. Despite looking like a human checkerboard my love of ska held me through the strange looks.

I did a small LaserDisc deep dive today because I’ve been watching a lot of LGR thrifting videos and he just keeps casually pulling them off shelves. What gets me is that they feel like a version of the future that almost happened. They’re huge and impractical but also stupidly appealing to me. It’s like someone took a vinyl record and fully futurised it, all shiny and serious and convinced this was the way things were going to go.

laserdisc

I think I like that they sit in this strange middle ground where they weren’t a joke and they weren’t a failure either. They’re garish but hilarious reminiscences of the past, the kind of thing that only makes sense if you remember how much people cared about physical media. The funniest part is they’re still weirdly cheap on Vinted, which means you can collect some of the greatest films ever made for less than the price of a pretty shit vinyl.

I also went back and watched some more episodes of Clone High today. Its this show where they clone famous historical figures and dump them into high school, and it starts off as a joke about teen dramas but turns into this oddly specific thing about inheriting identities and expectations you never asked for and still having to figure out who you are anyway.

Nothing bad ever happens to the Kennedys!

Its a really cool show and it has an absolutely banging intro by Abandoned Pools. Who also collaborated on one of my favourite albums: Beautiful Freak - by Eels (which I happen to have on cassete :p) check on the album wall for my fav song and thoughts on the album!

Here's a skiing cat