from the mess to the masses

do you ever get emails from your long-distance best friends that make you laugh out loud? Make you smile with a cupped hand over your work-day face? Stare off thinking of how amazing they are and how you are never thoughtful enough to try and 'catch up'

and you think...ok. reply. I have to be clever. and interesting. something good. there's so many things to say. No time will suffice. I'll totally write back at lunch.

and you never do.

dear friends, readers, lovers, fans. This is my returned delayed email reply.

there's too much to say - to go from then to now.

Let's go with an old-school top three, for today, and today alone.

1. I don't care how many times they Play '1901' on whatever lame FM radiostation Torontoians listen to. THE NEW PHOENIX ALBUM IS GOOD FROM START TO FINISH. And even the remixes I've heard so far are making me think this album is going be the Bill Murray cameo of every Kelly/DJ Deadbeat dad mixtape for years.
Today I really like this one: http://hypem.com/#/track/836504/Phoenix+-+Fences no wait, this one: http://hypem.com/#/track/835607/Phoenix+-+Single+Lisztomania+A+Fight+for+Love+25hrs+A+Day+Remix
seeeeeee? so many gems.

2. ONCE in a WHILE the best solution to a Saturday hangover is not to solve it at all. Wallow in it. Eat no vegetables. Spend a mere hour outside in the beautiful June sun but complain incessantly. Read "11,002 reasons to be miserable" out loud in the park (my current favourites: Oprah. nostril hair. babies.) eat the food of jock-girlfriend-abusers (we like: wings. big macs. french fries. gravy.) make the livingroom a fort. But most importantly: lay back and let a complete TV series wash over you in utter comedic gluttony for hours on end. If you pick 30 Rock, we'll be friends for life.

3. I'm quarter-life crisising. I knooooow. I'm a fucking white-middle-class-post-graduate-city dwelling-cliche. I'm lying in a permanent unmotivated milky white haze of hangovers and slothlike ambition. I'm content to swim through this malaise of modernity. for at least another week.

How to win the weekday war.

1. Tease. At ONE MINUTE long – the newest Erol Alkan remix for Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Zero is already burning a hole in my overworked little office speakers. I kind of forgot about the YYYs…maybe I’ll go see them in like, California or something. They’re headlining some festival I think I’m going to …. As for you, Alkan, you amaze us as always. Love, hearts, stars, applause.

2. Dance. AGO Massive Party – recipe for success? You have to know the official party planning committee guru…then watch as your most talented friends of friends come together with all of your favourite sweetly dressed girlfriends…throw in a billion free drinks and make eyes at the suits…and you’ve got a weeknight party that could seriously ruin any semblance of Friday productivity you had envisioned…

3. Race like someone’s counting* I have officially met my morning lane swim match. AND! He’s under 70. I know! Today I threw down a good 60 laps. Thanks i-have-no-idea-what-your-name-is swimming friend. I am actually exhausted.

*I am.

Trust me on this guys. It's gonna be good*

*quote: Dan Deacon set - Coachella 2008

Everyone has a friend who’s a bit hard to handle. Won’t shut up. Hits on your friends, doesn’t get the hint…but the truth is, those hyper-active, obnoxious ones are pretty much always a guaranteed good time.

That’s so Dan Deacon. Sometimes you want to punch his annoying overthetop beats in the fucking face. BUT. in the meantime, while listening to his newest schizophrenic amphetamine-fueled dance gem – Bromst – you are going to get pretty pumped up. You’re gonna wanna dance. You’re going to get happy. This shit would make the crabbiest old man in town* fucking break into a little Paula Abdul dance-off.

*or the staff at Ted’s Collision.

I think Deacon makes music with a huge fire pit. He calls up all of his bandgeek childhood friends and they all throw everything in the flames. Then they drop acid and watch as the fire mixes with the xylophones and the keytars and the synths and the recorders…and the result is out of control, unstoppable dance music that makes you wanna get naked and start rock-star kicking around the fire.

So yeah, suffice to say, I like this album. Oh and, he’s coming to town in a few weeks.

See you there.

...to the kids from France and from London...but I was there...

When was the last time you danced like crazy to Tiffany and Phil Collins?
If it wasn’t on Saturday night, then you should get with it already.

The scene: a few dozen shoulder-padded Wall-Street boom squash-playing cokeheads crowded into my favourite gallery.
The DJ played everything we loved about the late 80s – with an American Psycho leaning – think: Huey Lewis over Madonna. Comme des Garcons over neon.
(one exception...Golden Girls are still not winning me over. Am I alone in my disinterest in that guy?)

Then, clad in Holly glasses, 18 years old …all of 5 feet tall and 75 pounds soaking wet - this kid strolls up to the stage and kills it for the next 2 hours. Fucking. Unbelievable. Girltalk style mashups crossing Feist with old school Daft Punk. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the best parties are the ones that surprise you. For a second I saw my fleeting youth dash across the stage – oh to be 18 again and new to it all, notes of an LCD Soundsystem track whipped through my head. But then the second passed. Sure, we’re not 18 anymore. But my friends still know how to have a good time. And 27 isn’t exactly geriatric, either. Fuck – I’ll say it: 30 is the new 21.

It’s starting friends: The SPRING OF KELLY. Let’s hope every weekend goes out like that.

lust.lust.lust.

Ok. I’m going to get back to writing about things that actually happen. (ok. Admittedly the light things)... This is not the place for me to tell you my opinion on foreign affairs or what I think of the new tax bill. Nor is this the place to whine about the weather and complain about chances missed…

I've lost myself lately (following the loss of my wallet and the subsequent overly-complicated fallout of that for the past month….no money can make even the most sensible the most reliant on their friends…)

I think I’m back. I think I remember the sarcastic, hard-edged girl of late who – in milliseconds – started slipping into idealized oblivion. I know why I am the way I am. I think the Kelly of March is someone I don’t recognize. All starry-eyed and lovestruck.

This is the spring of Kelly and I promise it’s going to be all fun, all the time. Back are the days of album reviews, art shows, wicked banter and travelogues….I’ll remember that I never believed in that stuff anyway...that I was getting a million miles ahead of myself…and now I'm back.

(for the record, it was fun while it lasted).

back, back, forth, forth

Spring is always on the verge, it teases like highschool make-outs in basements....It is the back and forth last embrace of winter that – while still in March – leaves you feeling anxious, desperate and makes the skin crawl.

I am so ready for sunshine....so ready for the feeling that spring and the possibility of summer, that I am aching with anticipation. And it’s not just the warmth, the suntan or the litany of spring shows to look forward to…it’s that everyone is happier in the spring.

We start to shed the bitter winter angst. The work week blends into the weekend and we wake up. I’m so tired of sleepy, cold, awful winter.

I want the return of Tuesday drinks, of nightly dinner parties, of stolen cigarettes on patios without the chill, of kissing outside and not freezing together and of black tights for style, not for necessity ; )

(I'm back. sorry. I have a real job. sometimes.)

I thought spring was here. I let my bitter winter guard down.
I thought I caught the faint drafts of bbq’s and sunscreen…alas the chilled wind is back and I could not be more non-plussed.
but! fear! not! friends! I promise you spring..then summer are coming. I know it's true.
To get back into the spring of things…here are the top 5 spring shows that make dreaming of the green grassy side of winter seem a bit more possible:



1. Dan-fucking-Deacon in what will probably be the weirdest show of the season in the most interesting venue.






2. Animal Collective. If not just to dance in total abandon to ‘My Girls’ (yes. I said it. I still love that song…see? What did I tell you? Best of ‘09….)





3. The National. I hear they have new stuff ready…I close my eyes and picture the National boys, all earnest and darkly clad against the hazy desert backdrop of a hot California day and I hope that this little (surely less epic..) show lives up to my first vision of them…






4. Noah and the Whale. Cute. Clever.British
(hmmm..this seems to be a Kelly- trend lately…)

5. Like you had to ask.

YES / NO / MAYBE

YES





Caplanski’s Deli – If you can’t handle the smoked meat sandwich/poutine combo, you can just take a permanent seat at the kids’ table there bud.






YES runner up: Coeur De Pirate. I imagine dancing in summer dresses in the dark with CLOSED eyes, all grins and sunkissed cheeks. Listen to this and I want the summer of my youth.



NO

NO NO NO to this never ending winter. It is ruining me. Enough already. I'm dry and cold and wrinkly and bitter. Stop already.

MAYBE

this is my first unsatisfying Chuck Palahniuk experience. I get the hyper-consumer-superficial-debased reality, but I still don’t care.

...I just want to turn you down..I just want to turn you around...

Everyone hates MGMT. Five years ago, everyone hated the Strokes. It’s soo indie to hate whatever ends up on the radio. Forget that Oracular Spectacular is a great album. Forget that This Is It changed a million musical minds and they actually said something on that album that meant something to people like me who thought we were the only ones who didn’t know who the fuck we were (or are, for that matter).

So, whilst perusing my favourite dress store the other day, this track filled the space, I was immediately reminded of why that band mattered. I hope their new album pumps blood back into the limp corpse they became after the backlash. I hope they make music that is so tight and on point again. I hope they have it all figured out now and they can tell me how they got there.

I hope I can figure it out too, all I know is in that song, I am 100% with Julian.

The last chorus is fucking telepathic.

Monday Top 3.

1. The dry month of march begins: day one.
I’m already boring. I can tell. Boring and sober and boring. See? I can’t even think of another interesting adjective. Fuck. This is going to be a long month.

2. I’m giving in. letting go and sliding down the hill to complete and utter brainwashed consumer bliss. I have decided to buy the dreaded girl trappings of feigned exercise fiends. I know. I know! The most brutal, overly-done overly-priced fashion of the least-fashionable. And now I’m one of them. But the truth is, those fucking pants are awesome. And I vow to wear them ONLY to pilates and ONLY indoors.
Please take heed my friends, if, in 3 weeks, you see me scuffing down the street in pony-tail, uggs and the aforementioned lulu’s, please, do not hesitate to intervene immediately.

This is a slippery slope, dear friends.

3. Guys, I’m totally starting a band. I’m going to be the lead (OBVS.) and only my ridiculously attractive friends are allowed to audition.
Once formed, we’ll destroy the local scene with our inherent, attractive, awesomeness. All’s we need is a few thousand color photos of my face and the yettobedecidedbandname splayed in only the cool neighborhoods across town.
The outoftheloopers will be all, “who are those ridiculously attractive people I see on all of the telephone poles lately?”
Intheloopers, “pffffft. You don’t know? That’s yettobedecidedbandname. I heard the lead singer is dating Winona Rider.”

How will we achieve such success, and so soon?
Pfft. We’ll steal the booking books from only the coolest venues in town. Once returned, out yettobedecidedbandname will be splashed all over and those books don’t just fill themselves you know. If the book says you’re playing tonight? You bet your ass you are.

And if that doesn’t work. I’ll just watch these guys and get more tips.

p.s. dear Jay McCarrol, let’s get married already. You can be all deadpan funny and tall and shit and I’ll laugh a lot and let you write piano songs for me. I don’t ever need to eat peanuts again if it means not killing you.