Not uplifting: Elliot Smith

Spent an hour yesterday adding more music that I don't need to my iPod, including a bevy of Elliot Smith songs. He's got a great voice and his lyrics are beautiful and he's sad and he's dead, because he stabbed himself in the chest with a steak knife while his live-in gf had locked herself in the bathroom. So, every song is tainted with this knowledge that he ends up dead. Oh, just did some Web research on him and he was born in Omaha, NE. A Cornhusker, like me. His mother's name was actually "Bunny." At one point, he smoked like $3,000 worth of crack and heroin a day but was still writing music. Then he started to clean up and went into treatment and was making another album and then he killed himself. No illegal drugs were even found in his system. Dumb.

Spent Friday night on Liz's brand new roof deck and her friends, Peaches (Drew) and Rauol (sp?) came by--they're in town to do the bike race in Manayunk today. I told them a super embarrassing story and then cringed the next morning remembering that I had related it to them. I suppose I think that if I tell whatever embarrassing story enough times, it will take the edge off, but, really, it never does. Sat., walked downtown and it was one of those days were the worst homeless people were out, passed out on ledges of buildings, begging for change outside of the subway, and in one case, sitting on a piece of newspaper outside of Burberry's with pee running down the sidewalk. Sat. night, took the R6 out to Manayunk to go to Ingrid's going away/birthday/I have a new job party. They have lots of space out back and a bunch of dogs in the neighboring yards including two old Rottweilers with waggy tails. I threw raw hot dogs at them because they are neglected. This other big guy brought out his two dogs, a fat black mix and a pointy-nosed German Shepherd who let me pet her and pull tufts and tufts of dog hair off her back. I love German Shepherds. We get each other. I don't think I could live in Manayunk--it's pretty yuppie and white and populated by people who look like they're on their way to audition for Real World, Manayunk. On the way in, I couldn't stop watching these two drunk ex-frat boys, one of whom I hated with a little more intensity than the other because he kept doing that drunk thing where he would repeat the same phrase over and over, thinking it was funny, when it never ever was and didn't improve with repetition. Hey, dude, where are my socks? I lost my socks. I lost my socks. I lost my socks. Of course, his drunk friend laughed every time which didn't discourage him. They got off at our stop and I noticed that he really did lose his socks. His ankles were even sunburned.

I have to read VS Naipaul's, A Bend in the River today. That is my plan, anyway.