is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.

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I Still Want To Be Told.

Over the weekend I got to see my friend Bill. Bill is funny and smart and talented and handsome and all that, but he�s also semi-prolific and modest, so I didn�t even know that he had designed some shoes for adidas with his signature on them. Wendy just happened to mention it. And then I hit Bill. Hard.

The shoes come in 5 different versions, one for each borough of New York. You can see them all here. They came out last summer, so it�s harder to get them now than it would have been then, though there are still some on ebay and perhaps at Foot Locker. They have cool logos on the soles and Bill�s signature on the inside, etc. Apparently you can get matching tracksuits, too. Once I got done excoriating him for not having told me about this, a good laugh was had at my expense wherein all at table wondered what I�d look like dressed in the gear, had I known in time to go buy it.

Yes, it�s true that it is unlikely I would ever be seen wearing a tracksuit and adidas. However. I do wear track pants and sneakers around the house and on the weekends when I walk around campus and sometimes even to the grocery store. And you KNOW I would rather be wearing something designed by Billions of McMillions any day.

Apparently some guy was wearing Bill�s shoes in an airport, so Bill stopped him to ask about the shoes and whether he liked them, and the guy was all excited about the shoes, and Bill didn�t even tell him that he was the designer. I said, �I would have wanted to know!� And Bill thought I was still yelling at him about not being told. So I clarified, �I would have wanted to know that I was TALKING TO THE DESIGNER OF THE SHOE I LOVE.� Who wouldn�t?

Then Bill�s all, �Well, I didn�t tell you because it�s like when people send you an email that their band is playing, like: look at me, come consume my commodity!� And I said, �I want people to tell me when their band is playing, too.� I really do. As long as they don�t expect that I always have to attend their shows, or buy their sneakers, I STILL WANT TO BE TOLD when my friends succeed in creating things in the world.

So, yeah, Bill�s got some sneakers out. If you like sneakers, you should go find some, because the ones he was wearing were pretty cute in that cute-guy kind of way.

I learned about all this while eating the hugest piece of chocolate cake ever served, at Billy�s in NYC. I don�t know why my piece of cake was so big. Maybe the counter girl was trying to seduce me? Everyone at the table took turns at my cake (iykwim) and yet we still couldn�t get to the bottom of its luscious endlessness.

Bill is also the designer of the best tshirt ever, the one I was wearing when John Vanderslice said to me, �have you met my friend Sufjan,� and I was all �Sufjan Stevens?!� and Sufjan wondered how I could possibly know his name, but then was distracted by the combination of my tshirt�s utter coolness and its manifest tightness on my rack. Anyway, the tshirt has four Star Wars Storm Trooper masks on it painted with KISS make-up. Unfortunately he is no longer able to sell them due to the whole �cease and desist� order from someone who has no sense of humor or pop culture whose initials are George Lucas.

Tonight I was cleaning house and listening to an old Kate Bush album (The Dreaming) wherein Kate does a lot of caterwauling and screeching, and this sent Hans Blix (TCNTUNWI) running out of the room. As you all know, Hans Blix is a rocker. He doesn�t like the New Wave at all, though he�s OK with something kind of westerny like Richard Buckner, and he likes it if I sing Cole Porter songs to him. But he just cannot deal with screeching caterwauling overdramatic women. And usually I can�t either. But Kate Bush is special.

One time my dad asked me, as I was playing Kate Bush, why someone would ever listen to that music. He didn�t mean it like, �you young whippersnappers and your crazy bad music.� He actually wanted to understand why. He�s a rock-guy, who only really listens to guitar and not lyrics. I think I tried to explain that her arrangements really are complex, and, on the record in question (side 2 of the Hounds of Love), it�s actually a song cycle with repeating elements that tells a story both lyrically and musically. And I like something that requires a bit of work and repays close attention. I really do. I�m not sure I succeeded in making my case, especially because I was a lot younger then, and when someone said to me, back then, �why would someone listen to this music?� I would have tended to take that as criticism or dismissal, instead of as genuine interest.

Lots of people never grow out of that, taking question as threat. I�m not saying I never slip back into it. It�s just that I know better now. And I also think the world would be a much better, less violent, more accommodating place if more people realized that questions like �why do you think what you do?� aren�t threatening, not even when you�ll never succeed in convincing someone else of what you think, feel, or believe. There is no need for the whole world to agree on most things. In fact it would be a dismal, sad world indeed if all we could do was agree on the same old sameness day after day.

I�m just now remembering that I already wrote about this once, when I wrote about why I like a 24-hour date, and why I don�t like universalizing statements. I still like a 24-hour date, and I still advise caution with universalizing statements.

Sometimes it�s hard to tell whether it would be better to try to write something anew, to see if anything new or better comes of it (not the same old sameness!), or whether that ends up being tiresome. For the reader.

Right now the answer is: time for bed.

12:56 a.m. - December 13, 2006

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