House of Urban Angst

I'd get myself in all sorts of trouble if I told you what I used to like to do to this song ... ahem. Take Me To The River | The Talking Heads | Live in Rome 1980

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:22:00 -0500

♫ http://blip.fm/~hpwz9 (a particularly great live version)

Foursquare War

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:41:01 -0500

emilyshmemily: Since Bobbbyg and I started this Foursquare thing - it’s been all out war. It has...

"I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any..."

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:22:26 -0500

“I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of...

andrewakessler: Alex & Zack, Local 188, Portland, ME How...

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:11:00 -0500

andrewakessler:

Alex & Zack, Local 188, Portland, ME

How can you not love this photo?

Two elite members of Portland’s hipsterati.

And neither of them are even slightly annoying.

Please note the absence of Alex’s signature Rogue’s Gallery flannel thus making this photograph undoubtedly a collector’s item.

adamiss: Would you believe this little gem of an antique store...

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:01:11 -0500

adamiss:

Would you believe this little gem of an antique store is in the city? You walk through an alley on 17th street, and there you are, in this serene, beautiful shop. Day: brightened.

The Delicate Art of Seduction

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:07:00 -0500

The Dennis System - A Comprehensive Approach to Seduction:• D - Demonstrate value• E - Engage...

emilyshmemily: DO NOT GO TO THIS - Their clothes are too...

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:00:47 -0500

emilyshmemily:

DO NOT GO TO THIS - Their clothes are too fantastic, and I don’t have the patience to fight with you today.

Covet, covet, covet … this mantra is always my solution to dilemmas like this.

I always wanted someone to call me Lovage. "Licking your greasy spoon" Lovage – Pit Stop (Take Me Home)

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:38:51 -0500

♫ http://blip.fm/~hnskx

nevver: $11,250.00 This is just … yuck.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:58:05 -0500

nevver:

$11,250.00

This is just … yuck.

The Ultimate Influential 80’s Movie She’s Having a...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 19:11:00 -0500

The Ultimate Influential 80’s Movie

She’s Having a Baby (1988) - How can you possibly beat a Kevin Bacon/John Hughes combo (plus an outstanding cameo by Alec Baldwin as a creepy (psychotic) visiting college friend of Bacon & co-star Elizabeth McGovern)

And there is a highly influential advertising theme that runs throughout. This movie + the epic show Thirtysomething pretty much provided me with all the incentive I needed to launch into my current career.

What the hell happened to Elizabeth McGovern? (Please tell me she’s not on Dancing with the Stars or some shit like that)

nevver: South Africa under apartheid Good God. How embarrassing...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:27:58 -0500

nevver:

South Africa under apartheid

Good God. How embarrassing for white people everywhere. And, for f*ck’s sake put some proper pants on.

nevver: My Gal Friday I’d like one of these please.

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:34:09 -0500

nevver:

My Gal Friday

I’d like one of these please.

Fun with Meghan and Photo Booth ~ today it is December and the...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:04:17 -0500

Fun with Meghan and Photo Booth ~ today it is December and the holiday season is upon us

We both really like Christmas so we’re even more joyful than usual

We’re just hanging out drinking eggnog and singing Feliz Navidad at the top of our lungs

It’s going to be an awesome month likely involving more sugar than usual

jakks: Self Directed Self PortraitJaica Kinsmanc. 2002 Look at...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:49:13 -0500

jakks:

Self Directed Self Portrait
Jaica Kinsman
c. 2002

Look at my friend Jaica. She looks so beautiful here (she is) & very tough. Jaica is a very talented artist but I don’t think that she tells many people about this part of her life. She also has really cool shoes. The coolest.

emilyqualey: OMG. Bubbah’s. 80’s. Etc. This was my Friday...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:40:07 -0500

emilyqualey:

OMG. Bubbah’s. 80’s. Etc.

This was my Friday night. With lots more people. Hot.

THE ADULT ROB GOULD~ getting the reaction I want-or-a fortunate...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:15:23 -0500

THE ADULT ROB GOULD~ getting the reaction I want-or-a fortunate exercise in futility

A re-post in honor of another one of the Caseys in my life (see preceding post) …

This is a photo of me and my friend Josh, aka the artist formerly known as Yoshi.*

Josh pretty much defines calm (or at least a good impression of calm). He’s very laid back. Unlike me. The following words have been used to describe me this week (mind you it’s only Tuesday): “passionate,” “high energy” and “driven.” It is conceivable that these are being used as code words for “overbearing,” “loud” and “exhausting.” My point is that I am confident that the term “laid back” has never been used to describe me. Even at times when I have been unconscious.

One of my favorite things about Josh is that he listens to me. I am occasionally prone to long and dramatic dissertations about situations or people in my life complete with wild hand gestures and, lately, clove cigarette smoking. These explosions of me, me, me usually reach a crescendo with a detailed summary of some kind of life-altering self-realization that I’m certain I have achieved. It’s all very blustery.

While these verbal spectacles are occuring Josh just looks at me. Earnestly. With his head kind of tilted to one side. Kind of like someone watching performance art that they just don’t get. When I finally run out of steam and I’m flushed with the heat of whatever emotion has consumed me, he will say something like “I’m hungry,” or “Let’s watch Arrested Development.” At first pass, these reactions (or more accurately, lack of them) can seem enormously frustrating but it is always exactly what I need.

I’ve learned that pushing him for more of a reaction is not a good idea.

I’ll tell you a story of what happened when I once pushed Josh for a reaction.

It was summer. It was hot. We were driving in his car. I was having a complete meltdown. I was in my mid-thirties, divorced, single, overweight, living in abject poverty (or what seemed like it at the time), uncertain about the future of my career but absolutely certain that nothing good was going to come of my life and that I was going to spend my remaining years alone. Friendless. I was a morass of self-loathing, self-pity, self-everything.

As I ranted and sputtered Josh just stared straight ahead. Driving. Minding the road. This was not the reaction that I wanted. Not even close. So I pushed. I said, “I’ll bet you can’t even think of one positive thing about me! Not one reason why anyone would want to even be around me. Face it, I’m fat and ugly. Practically repulsive. I do not even have one redeeming quality. Name one positive thing about me. Just one.”

He stopped minding the road for a moment and looked straight at me. Then he kind of looked me up and down. There was a long pause in the dead, heavy summer air.

Then he said, “You’re really tan.”

I almost opened the car door so that I could roll to my death on the pavement.

So that’s what I get when I push Josh for a reaction. Not pretty.

I’ll tell you something. This guy, this guy who is so unlike me in so many ways, who has so little to say, is like my brother. He has taught me more about myself than decades of psychotherapy (top-notch psychotherapy mind you). He’s kind of like my perfect alter ego.

And we both like art and shoes. What more could I ask for in a brother?

*Josh actually is a real starving artist and I called him Yoshi for a while until he told me to stop it.

THE ADULT ROB GOULD ~ when life gives you a do-over. I...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:56:32 -0500

THE ADULT ROB GOULD ~ when life gives you a do-over. I love that.

So, I got home tonight and I was feeling really sorry for myself because, well, transition is hard and 2009 has been a huge year of transition. Of course, along with transition comes disappointment. This is almost always because situations or people don’t turn out like I want them to. I should think that disappointments would come a little easier after having had my fair share of them (along with many, many more joyful moments). And they do come easier, they just still suck. I make mistakes and people are human and really not nice sometimes. I have lots of past experience being the deliverer of not nice so I get this all too well. Anyway, I recover much faster now but it still really hurts.

I wrote this post about my good friend Casey last Spring. I thought about Casey tonight when I got home and was feeling all lonely and sulky and pathetic. I thought about the fact that she called me last week on the morning of my birthday and left me a really sweet message. I realized that I had never returned her call because I was consumed with new people and new things (I do this from time to time). Casey has known me, really known me, for years now and she loves me for exactly who I am. I always seem to forget about all of the Caseys in my life when I am focused on something shiny and new. So I thought I would re-post this (and a few others) in honor of the Caseys in my life. Thanks guys.

In 2002 my friend Casey and I were roomates in the pulsing metropolis of Rockland, Maine for a few short months. We were both at very transitional points in our lives and dealing with a smorgasbord of personal issues.

My personality at that time had reached the apex of annoying. I was recently divorced, had stopped drinking after years of debauchery for like, maybe 3 days and was eating everything in sight (specializing in Ben & Jerry’s). I was also consuming approximately 25 shots of espresso a day and smoking an endless stream of Camel Lights. I was horrified that I had ended up in Rockland, ME (the lobster capital of the world) after years of what I thought was a very glamorous life in Boston, London and Santa Fe. I had hit what pretty much anyone would have described as a shocking (but sorely needed) bottom.

Casey is a Maine girl born and raised and could only be described as sweet, disarming and the definition of fun, fun, fun. She was (is) energy in motion which was a shocking juxtaposition to my depressive Jabba-the-Hut-like state at the time. She can also be wildly selfish and manipulative all in a very cute and sometimes sexy way. She had just left a tremendously unhealthy long-term live-in relationship and had also decided to put down the bottle (and some other herbal remedies) and was trying to start a new life for herself.

When we met we immediately loved each other (in a completely platonic way, as only a naive young woman with a penchant for dancing in her underwear could love a morbidly obese emotional cripple convinced that he would never have sex again). However, after making the decision to live together (taking all of five minutes to think about what that would actually be like) we set out on a road that would have ruined even the longest and strongest of friendships. Of course, ours at the time had existed for approximately one week. We basically descended into roommate hell from day one.

I gave her unsolicited advice on how she should live her life on a minute-to-minute basis (because, you see, mine was going so well)

She was passive aggressive at every turn telling me that everything was “awesome” as she wailed and moaned about what a big, fat overbearing nightmare I was to anyone who would listen.

I was obsessively clean and organized (in a freakish and unhealthy way) compensating for the complete mess that was the rest of my life at the time.

She liked to do dishes on a quarterly basis and considered dust to be a decorative element.

So, as time went on pretty much everything we did bothered the other person. She grew to despise me and I felt like she was solely responsible for the miserable state of my life (I was also employed as a professional victim at the time.)

Long story short the roomate thing did not work out very well (to put it mildly) and we parted company in the least pleasant of ways.

But, and this is a big but, Casey and I really love each other. She is one of the most endearing, fun, down-to-earth and compassionate people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I truly believe that her signature mass of curly, crazy beautiful red hair is God’s very outward way of telling the world that this is a person that you need to get to know. She is a charming, beautiful woman who has just barely scratched the surface of who she might be and anyone that she chooses to love should consider themselves blessed.

When Casey arrived in Portland a couple of months ago she was in a hard place (a very different and much more healthy hard place than the one she was in when I originally met her). She seemed kind of lost and sad and like she needed and deserved a break. Now, I have a two bedroom place and George does not really need his own room. I spent some time being really quiet and listening and thought about whether I could help Casey in a way that would not have strings (or advice) attached. I also asked myself if I could do this without the expectation of anything in return. After thinking about the countless times that people have gone so far out of their way to help me (strangers sometimes) I had my answer and offered Casey a place to stay rent-free for as long as she needed.

We have had a great time together. We have tolerated each other’s idiosyncrasies in ways that we never could have 7 years ago. We have communicated and listened in a way that is totally new for our friendship. We have developed a horrible clove cigarette smoking habit but we have laughed in a way and at a time when we both really needed it. Her arrival and presence has been a huge gift for me.

So, sometimes life gives you a do-over. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for this one.

nevver: Patti Smith & William Burroughs An outstanding...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:12:10 -0500

nevver:

Patti Smith & William Burroughs

An outstanding pair.

andrewakessler: Cornish, ME

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:22:59 -0500

andrewakessler:

Cornish, ME

mattreading: In Japan, Even the Barcodes Are Well Designed (via...

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:16:58 -0500

mattreading:

In Japan, Even the Barcodes Are Well Designed (via swissmiss)

I was wondering who would do this first. Leave it to the Japanese.