Confusion, Relief, Crankiness and Then Finally Total Satiation

1. Confusion, you are twitter - So presumably you’re exactly like me. You set up a twitter account months or maybe even a year ago then never touched it again and now you are getting email notices that friends and sometimes strangers are now following your twitter. They’d probably be far more entertained if they followed the vapor trail of passing passenger jets or the Texas Rangers or something. I don’t even remember my password for twitter. Wait, is there a password for twitter? It’s really very passé to be that person who bitches about the newest development on the social networking/blogging/exposing your life on the InterWebs front because ultimately you will give in and learn to use it and then you will compulsively check it and update it and it will become part of your vernacular and you will use the website’s name as a verb one day and it will come spilling very awkwardly from your lips and you will wonder if you just coined the term. You didn’t. Someone has already referred to being “Facebooked” or “twitted” or whatever.

But I am really trying extremely hard to figure out the point of twitter. When I started getting notifications that people were following me, I felt a mild (repeat, mild) pressure to learn what twitter was or at least reset my password. Then, as luck would have it, on Access Hollywood (I only watch crap on TV) yesterday, Billy Bush did a hard-hitting expose on what twitter was. It entailed him asking Julia Roberts to tweet something for the Access Hollywood twitter (“Julia Roberts loves Michelle Obama”). Then Billy told me how ALL the celebrities are on twitter and how I, the Mia Farrow to their Jeff Daniels in this techno Purple Rose of Cairo, can follow their twitters and see what kind of things they think about on a daily basis. For instance, Ashton Kutcher’s twitter (Aplusk) reveals that he needs to hit the gym every day this week because he’s super self-conscious about filming scenes with his shirt off. LOL!

So other than following the guy from Punk’d’s workout routine, why should I Twitter or be tweeted or really invest in finding the point of this whole thing? In doing some research, I have found that “twitter has experienced a substantial growth in popularity in the month of March 2009” which means that there was some big marketing push and that’s why I suddenly am aware of more than just its’ mere existence. But then I found it. I found the reason I must tweeteroo:

At some point yesterday Stephen Fry overtook Kevin Rose to be the most followed individual on twitter.

He's still number 3 overall - above him are Barack Obama, who does not do his own twittering, and CNN Breaking News, which is not an individual user.

So here I come, twitter. Please be gentle with me.

2. Relief, you are me not having to be at South by Southwest this year – The haircuts are swarming in. I can just imagine the scene right now. The tote bags flapping in the breeze. The headbands glistening in the Austin sun. The iPhones being tapped into submission over in the line for the Black Lips show. The absolute ass-beating of an event has begun and you know where I am? 3 hours to the north in Dallas where the sun is out, it is 74 degrees and I had dinner with my friends last night that didn’t involve standing in a flyer-littered street eating pizza off a soggy plate.

I’ve never been called up for jury duty but I assume this is feeling you get when you find out you aren’t going to have to sit on the jury. Combined with the feeling you get when you find out that your positive Hep C test result was just a false positive. Basically, there is no place on earth I would less like to be than in Austin now and no matter how stressful my day at work may get, I can always take a second to remember that I am not standing in a hot parking lot watching 20 year old snotty white kids sing songs about their scene over Macbook beats and I get a rush of energy and enthusiasm. If you want to see me go a slightly jaundiced color, just say the words “Fader Fort” to me. Thank you Music Jesus for allowing me to not have to go to Hipster Hell this year. I owe you one, buddy.

3. Crankiness, you are clearly Morrissey – I got really excited about seeing Morrissey the other night. I was, am and will probably always be a maniacal Smiths fan. I think Morrissey is a probably a horse’s ass but I can’t help but love him. Even Sparks wrote a song called “Lighten Up, Morrissey” then admitted that they loved the guy. Alright, no one needs to hear anyone gush about Morrissey on the internet. I don’t go to shows much anymore. So I thought it would be great to go see Morrissey. My office roomie loves the Smiths too so she and I talked about going to the show. I was really getting worked up.

Then I took the initiative to look up tickets today. First off, I am so out of the loop that I didn’t know if tickets had gone on sale yet. Yes, they did. In January. Because the show is in three weeks. And it is sold out. No big surprise there. But then I start finding tickets on the internet for anywhere from $58 to $283, which is hilarious since the venue is general admission. I am assuming that the $283 tickets come with a Morrissey DNA sample or something. So I start to falter a little. $58 isn’t out of my budget. It’s just money that I could probably spend at Target with much more satisfaction.

I say this because I have seen Morrissey twice and once was pretty good and once was not pretty good at all. So I am taking a $60 gamble on potentially being bored and let down. Add in the fact that his new album sucks. And all but 2 of the past 6 or so that he has put out also fall into that category. Then I think back on that Morrissey show that I saw that was good and why it was good. It, ironically, was at a SXSW a few years ago. Richard Hawley opened which probably had a lot to do with my radiating happiness by the time Morrissey hit the stage. So what was my big mental highlight from Morrissey’s set? “Still Ill”, which was the only Smiths song he did. Wait, I am paying $60 for a chance to hear Morrissey sing approximately 3 to 4 minutes of a Smiths song?

Oh my god, it’s not Morrissey I am wanting to go see. It’s The Smiths. So here’s my math on that. I would be willing to pay up to $40 for one Morrissey-performed Smiths song at the April 10th concert here in Dallas. However, if The Smiths were to reform and play a set of 10 to 12 Smiths songs together, I would still pay $40 a song to see that. So instead of paying $60 to be disappointed, packed into a venue like cattle and bent over and raped monetarily for a lukewarm beer, I will instead save a little money every month to pay $400 – $480 to see The Smiths perform a set at some point in the future. It’s the same price as a SXSW badge and way more satisfying. Ball’s in your court, Steve and Johnny.

4. And finally…total bliss, you are Astro Novelist (TM Amber) – I know that I have just spent a lot of time telling you why music sucks and life sucks and twitter sucks. But it doesn’t. And I know that now because I saw an old friend last night. And when I say “old friend” I mean “a guy who doesn’t know me at all but who I used to go see perform all the time” and that guy is Astronautalis. But due to Amber’s tendency to be easily confused by names and things, he will henceforth be known by her version: Astro Novelist.

Big ups to Slim from the Landing for hipping us to the fact that Mr. Novelist was playing down the street at the Doublewide last night. It turned out to be one of the best shows I have seen in the past year or two. I got out of the music journalist game a long time ago so don’t ask me to tell you why this guy’s a glittering chunk of genius gold. Use Google. It works, I promise. You won’t regret it. We couldn’t stop talking about “Timothy McVeigh cats” after the show last night. I would buy one of everything he had on sale if musicians would remember that I’m not a day laborer or drug dealer and therefore don’t carry cash on me ever. As Philip yelled at the end of the set, “Hooray for music!” Astro Novelist makes me happy crazy about music again. But only for as long as it takes me to check everyone’s SXSW party-related Facebook status updates. And then I am back to the grey zone of apathy leaning towards “meh-ness”. But thank you for that beautiful respite, Astro Novelist.