Pros and Cons 2003

Pros: Drive By Truckers live, all flirting with my girlfriend from the stage; Neil Michael Hagerty in all endeavors; Fiery Furnaces; American Chopper / Monster Garage; Open Pit Barbeque Sauce; rescuing a dog from a junkyard in South Carolina and driving her back 15 hours in a car full of people and instruments; David Sedaris; rediscovering Steely Dan; free tattoos; the Atkins Diet; Curb Your Enthusiasm; The Streets; Fountains of Wayne; Okie Noodling DVD; fishing.

Cons: The deaths of many great and talented folks from John Ritter to Johnny Cash to Art Carney (and that's just the last three months!); PC paranoia raging on unabated; coming close enough to getting a job to put a down payment on a house in another state, only to become a victim of a hiring freeze; food poisoning twice.

Pros: Having an awesome girlfriend for most the year. Seeing Jackie O Motherfucker, Khanate, Wolf Eyes, Lightning Bolt, Prurient and tons of other awesome bands. Not failing out of school. Teaching English to immigrants over the summer (most fulfilling thing I've ever done, I think.) Rediscovering the Beatles greatness.

Cons: Getting dumped. Having to shell out NYC prices for shows. NYC prices in general. Getting mono. Getting bronchitis. My adorable fat kitty being hit by a car. My mom breaking her leg and being essentially helpless. Not having a job in New York to support the prices.

Oh, and losing my virginity happened this year. That was pretty neat.

well done!

pros: having found john coltrane's 'live in japan', metal machine music 2 LP in 2nd hand store (finally!!!), tons of great classical music and some rare-ish 'free' jazz courtesy of slsk. As far as shows john zorn at the barbican (with marc ribot riffing away), sunny murray, keith rowe/eddie prevost with taku sugimoto, hugh metcalfe at the klinker, alan wilkinson, seeing derek bailey for the first time with milo fine, a second time with his limescale group and so much more in terms of recs/shows (microhouse, neu), loads of CDR exchanges with ILXORS and planty more to come I'm sure. Read Ulysses and gravity's rainbow among a nice bunch of stuff.

ILM!!!

studies going OK, family fine.

cons: deaths, makes no sense. feeling the loneliness at times.

pros:
found the woman in my life. moved in with her in a flat i've been waiting for for six years. finally starting the final paper of my master's degree.
seeing lots of great live showa: björk, jackie-o-motherfucker, yo la tengo, gang starr, malk de koijn (several times), aesop rock & el-p, mikael simpson, sigur ros, goodiepal, jomi massage, hess is more, bjørn svin, sole, sketch show, themselves, sage francis, matthew herbert big band, carlos casas dj'ing balie funk/proíbidão, puppetmastaz, kevin blechdom et al.
getting into ILM!

cons:
terrible, terrible break-up with ex-girlfriend. haven't found an indoor football team to play for this winter. world politics. busta rhymes being a prick live. 50 cent being an amateur live. nu metal still dominates. missy giving birth to her album way too early. halle berry kissing fred durst. having no money whatsoever. hitting 31.

pros:
more freelancing opportunities opening up; Matos getting hired as Seattle Weekly editor; Interstella 5555; walking home at night listening to Basement Jaxx's "If I Ever Feel Better" for the first time and seeing a black early '80s Lotus Esprit Turbo glide past; Brock Lesnar; realizing I no longer hate mainstream hip-hop; the CDR700MB GO! compilations (mine and others); Kill Bill Vol 1; MC Pitman; the Nissan 350Z; Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band's Safe As Milk; seeing the White Stripes live in St. Paul on July 3rd and walking out to watch the fireworks over the Mississippi river after the show; finally getting to see Aesop Rock and El-P live; Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi 03/01/03; finding two copies of the "flames" cover of Skynyrd's Street Survivors; MF Doom and all his aliases; "Viva La Bam" (esp. Don Vito); being employed for most of the year; joining the I Pissed Off Ryan Adams Club; Ludacris' "Act A Fool"; watching Spirited Away with my folks on Thanksgiving; the Monarques, the Mountain Goats and Lifter Puller at the Triple Rock Social Club 6-6-03; the first two seasons of Futurama on DVD; "The Hardest Button to Button" (song and video); discovering I have a whole bunch of Derek Jeter and Manny Ramirez and Todd Helton rookie/draft pick baseball cards which will be worth a ton in 20 years if/when the trading card market rebounds; Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude; Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. And "Hey Ya".

cons:
depressing baseball postseason; George Clinton's arrest; war; chemical bomb/dirty nuke/general terrorism fear; overexposure to oldies radio which has given me a violent pavlovian negative reaction to the very mention of "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll"; my dirty-old-lady coworker carrying around a little green plastic frog with a hard-on; every single summer blockbuster movie released between X2 and Kill Bill being a nauseating piece of shit; the Exploding Hearts' fatal van crash; my receding hairline; French people hatin' us and us hatin' French people; Triple H beating Booker T at Wrestlemania 19; idiotic ILM outbursts on my part; still haven't learned how to drive; James Lileks; "The Golden Path"; the impossibility of finding a really good portable MP3-CD player.

Pros: contract for a book I'm really excited about writing; writing for The Wire (my first piece was in the August 2002 issue, but it was this year before I got anything else in); getting a DVD player and a laptop and an iPod; promotion and raise at work; getting burns of the Japanese editions of Agharta and Pangaea from a friend (they're longer, you know); shows: Cecil Taylor, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Motorhead, Khanate, dozens of others I can't remember now; tons of free jazz reissues and eBay scores; Herbie Hancock's three albums with Mwandishi, which I just heard this year (the best stuff he ever did).

Cons: general stress and strain; total disgust with the US media vis-a-vis domestic political coverage; John Ashcroft's attempts to crack down on the porn industry; mainstream media's on-the-one-hand condemnation of and on-the-other-hand stroking over the porn industry; St. Anger; mainstream hip-hop (yes, including Outkast).

Pros: Getting married. The charts.

Cons: Job stagnation (me) and lack (wife). MAD WORLD BY GARY CUNTING JULES.