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I’m so damn sick of Twitter, and if you Twitter around me I will punch you in the face. I know the internet masses are fickle and will jump on pretty much any hot new “web 2.0″ app, but the only reason I don’t hope for Twitter’s demise sooner is because it will just be replaced with someone equally annoying and anti-social.

In other awesome news: Buy the new Circus Devils album, Gringo!

Feel free to disagree with me in the comments, I know I am a minority on this. But grown people are calling things they write “tweets.” With a straight face.

“Totes found a parking space, yo!”

I saw this last night with Alex at the Nuart. What a great doc – a real story with people you care about and genuine emotion. The director and cinemetographer were there to answer questions and tell stories. I recommend trying to see it at the Nuart while it is there, because they have been at every screening.

If you don’t know about the movie – it is about a metal band who have been trying for thirty years to match the success they had with their first album. I recommend it to anyone… really. This goes up there with DiG! and The Filth and the Fury as my favorite rock documentaries.  It is really encouraging and amazing to see a movie about really genuine people who are doing something they love for their entire life. I guarantee you will be cheering like mad the last ten minutes.

I’ve included the trailer below. Check it out if it comes to your town – this is independent and well worth your time and ticket.

I don’t laugh at a lot of things that other people find funny. That is what I like about my group of friends, we all find the same things funny. That’s what everyone sees in their friends, right?

To me, real comedy is stuff that isn’t supposed to be funny. I like things that make your squirm a bit, or things that are really really earnest.

Which is why I really like Andy Kaufman. I like comedy that takes things a little too far. These things crack me up! I’ve been spending a lot of free time at work looking up Jerry Lawler, the king of Memphis Wrestling! Don’t ask me why, I just have. I stumbled across some Andy Kaufman videos where he is taunting Jerry Lawler, and it cracks me up. The audience can’t take a joke – they don’t get it! And that’s what is hilarious about the entire thing.

“I want complete silence, then I will get in the ring!”

If you don’t know about the Jerry Lawler/Andy Kaufman wrestling feud, then you can read about it here. OR JUST READ A BOOK!

And as a bonus, here the famous Lawler/Kaufman fight on Letterman.

Phil Spector – convicted of murder.

My favorite Phil Spector story is during the recording of the Ramones’ “End of The Century,” he pulls a gun on Dee Dee and holds him and the rest of the band hostage. Then he sat at the piano and made them listen to him play piano until early morning. He also makes Johnny play the opening note to “Rock N’ Roll High School” over and over, hundreds of times.

Anyway – I realized while reading this that I don’t own “End of the Century,” and it was released on my freaking birthday!

Off to fix that, once the wind dies down.

What happened on your birthday? Anything awesome? Day, month, and year – no cheating.

How do, readers?

Or reader. Or internet ether.

Anyway – I’ve started writing again over at my motorcycle blog “Permanent Transition.” This will be strictly about motorcycles, scooters, and the culture that surrounds them. It feels good to write about that stuff again and hopefully I can get back to posting daily.

Shoes On Powerlines will continue to be my personal blog, basically the dumping ground for whatever I find interesting. I’ve turned comments back on, and look forward to the fun discussion that usually comes from them.

I was really disenchanted with the internet there for a while. My blog was getting lots of visitors leaving stupid comments, and I realized that when you put yourself out there publicly, you will get people searching for your blog and calling you a jackass for hating on Chinese scooters, etc. Now, this didn’t hurt my feelings, but I felt like I was getting stuck at a bad party with a bunch of morons. It was a glimpse into dumb people’s lives and that’s no fun.

But yeah it is, sort of.

Oh yeah, and I also had a post completely plagiarized from another reader “who really enjoys my blog.” That was another annoying first.

Anyway, I’ll be tweaking this as well as my other blog in the next few weeks. This will be fun again. Hope reading it will be fun as well.

(short version)

The end of Shoes On Powerlines is here! I had originally started this blog when I was at the University of Oregon. After deleting all those posts and starting anew in Los Angeles, I have posted on this every week or so for almost 3 years!

Looking back at some of the old posts, I basically talk about the same stuff I talk about now. Guided by Voices, scooters, motorcycles. I can remember writing a lot of that stuff in my old apartment in Santa Monica. Different smells, different times.

I will be 29 in a few months. Yikes! This blog has been so much fun, but it is time to move on. I’ve grown more and more disenchanted with the whole “social” aspect of the internet. In short, I think it is sort of bullshit. “I’m going to myspace your twitter account because I posted a facebook comment talking about that flickr photo you took, let’s blog about it!” The usefulness of the internet is getting diluted because most people use it to tell others what kind of sandwich they ate for lunch. Or blog about Robert Pollard and motorcycles. I’m not exempt! It is just something I no longer understand or enjoy.

So I had a lot of fun writing and listening to comments, etc! And this isn’t the end of me blogging, but it is the end of the narrative I started back in 2006. When the new one starts, so will my writing! Check in every few months. When the new one starts, I don’t know if I could think of a catchier name than Shoes on Powerlines.

(end of short version. long version after the jump)

You don’t think I would leave without talking about my favorite albums of 2009, did you?

I wouldn’t!

I’m not going to make a top 5 list, but here are my favorite albums in no particular order:

Boston Spaceships – Brown Submarine

Eff it, I’m giving this #1. Plus I saw them in concert and it was the best concert I’ve ever been to. Hands down. I don’t know what else to say, just go buy it.

TV on the Radio – Dear Science

Wow! This has the distinction of being a really, really great album with one really, really bad song on it. I can’t stand the third song on the album. The manic beat really grates on me, I skip it every time.

R.E.M. – Accelerate

R.E.M. didn’t necessarily have anything to prove with this album, but they did anyway. I was apprehensive at first (with their producer choice, mostly). This album is not a return to form, but an evolution of what has always made them great. I look forward to their next album.

Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue / Bambu

A reissue, sure. But the first time I’ve been able to listen to these albums. Pacific Ocean Blue helped me through a rough month, and Bambu is an odd treat that sort of reminds me of The Beach Boys Love You. An unexpected treat is Taylor Hawkins’ version of “Holy Man.”

Robert Pollard – Robert Pollard is off to Business

Had to throw this in, because it is a really taught evolution of Robert Pollard’s solo mantra of the three P’s: Punk, Prog, and Pop.

Stephen Malkmus – Real Emotional Trash

I’m only throwing this in because it forced me to go buy his two earlier solo albums, which I listened to about 100 times more than this album. A little too jammy for me, but holds some pretty good gems. True story: I was listening to this album when I was rebuilding my Honda, and one song was “jamming” for too long, and I was getting frustrated with my bike at a certain point, and I threw a wrench at the stereo to stop the jamming. STOP JAM ROCK!

There aren’t many other albums that were released this year (that I bought) that really twisted my noodle. I’m usually about a year behind on most releases, so I’ll probably pick up all the hot stuff next year. But here are some albums that are honorable mentions, or they weren’t released in 2008:

The Hellacopters – Grande Rock
Circus Devils – Sgt. Disco
The The – Dusk
Doug Gillard – Salamander
Turbonegro – Retox
T-Bone Burnett – Truth Decay

Favorite song of the year? It was a toss-up between R.E.M.’s “Man Sized Wreath” and Boston Spaceships’ “You Satisfy Me.” I’d flip a coin, but I don’t have one.

A couple disappointments. The Dandy Warhols’ latest over-reaching mess of an album, Welcome to Earth. The over-produced to the point of being unlistenable Chinese Democracy.

I’d like to give a special shoutout to Airport 5′s Tower in the Fountain of Sparks which for some reason I decided to listen to like mad. Probably because it is one of my favorite albums of all time.

My email is the same, my phone number is too! Time warp back 10 years… taking life offline… starting now!

TURN UP EVERYTHING!

“Internet is dead.”

“Oh, that’s very fascinating to me.”

A real woman!

Rest in peace, Bettie Page!!!