Showing posts with label current events. Show all posts
Showing posts with label current events. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

give me dead

today at school was horrifically depressing. it started out with a chocolate donut, conversation with my great friend margaret, and a little bit of hope. it ended in depression and near-tears into a vanilla milkshake. i don't know what's more pathetic. i really can't believe that bush is president again, and i don't know what to do. we watched kerry's concession speech in pre-calculs from the couch, holding nervous hands and trying to be light-hearted about it. my shock and sadness surprise me. everybody is stirred to act somehow. eileen's rallying people to go to the "what do we do now?" type meeting at media co-op tomorrow night. allison says she wants to start something, do SOMETHING at our school, just to put something positive in the world. there's an intense need to create, to act, to believe in something greater. i'll get behind anything right now. i was looking forward to sudan awareness week, but it's mostly just that-- goddamn awareness. watching a video, having a speaker. i feel like there's so little action. i need to DO and there's nothing doing. i predict that the play this weekend will be teeming with passion. after that i'll have no direction, and i need to not feel useless. if anyone has ideas, please get me there.
i came home to my sister, who stayed home sick (half emotional, i think) on her 15th birthday. we tried to get happy with a massive dinner at pho saigon and dessert from the cheesecake corner. i like that the cheesecake man remembers me. morgan opened purple birthday presents; we wore hats, sang songs, and made merry. a strange conclusion to a weary day.
a girl in my psychology class made a depressingly humorous joke (which i've been repeating all day -- sorry) about how since bush has been reelected and he's going to get to appoint like 4 justices to the supreme court, they're going to reinstate the draft and overturn roe vs. wade. so we'll all be pregnant and in the army. i can't wait.

Saturday, August 23, 2003

from pitchforkmedia.com....
"Alternative Tentacles has reported that Chicago's most prolific street singer, Wesley Willis, peacefully passed away yesterday evening in his hometown. Willis, who suffered from schizophrenia and Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, was brought to a Chicago hospital to undergo emergency surgery at the beginning of June to supress some internal bleeding, but his health had reportedly been deteriorating since. He was 40 years old.

Wesley Willis' recordings were strikingly unique, a textbook example of what music journalist Irwin Chusid has termed "outsider music" due to its similarities to outsider and folk art. Willis began to gain national recognition for his unusual songs-- on which he was often notoriously backed only by a Casio keyboard-- that routinely paid homage to musicians whose work he appreciated. He managed to score minor hits in the early-to-mid 90s with two of these, "Alanis Morissette" and "Kurt Cobain".

Jello Biafra-- ex-Dead Kennedys mouthpiece, Alternative Tentacles founder and dear friend to Wesley-- stated in a press release today that Willis "will go down as one of the most unique songwriters and entertainment personalities in history. His music, lyrics, drawings, insight and the way he put them together are like no one else. Ever. There will never be another."

Willis recorded more than fifty full-length albums for various labels during his lifetime, the most recent of which, Full Heavy Metal Jacket, was released via the Artist Workshop label in 2001. He has also released two greatest hits CDs, with a third volume due out on Alternative Tentacles in October."


this is depressing.