Dear Phoenix,

You a bizarre city. Big and small at the same time. Talking with my cousin, I tell him if I started a street style blog in Phoenix, I would call it L.A., Jr. He tells me that I just slammed both L.A. and Phoenix so hard with just 4 letters. Phoenix: learn to keep the right secrets.

I anthropomorphize your weather often; it seems to be the only way I manage to stand it. I compare your weather to bad service. Like I am in a restaurant and have a horrible waiter who is rude, almost barbaric, and continuously getting my order wrong, unapologetically. The light is too bright and I can he has dandruff on his shoulders and I wonder how much of it is in my food. I keep coming back though, it's the only joint in town.

You are also like a teenager just discovering her body, wearing all the wrong things, showing me all you have all at once. Short shorts on short legs, exposed belly- like a baby. I can see it all- there is no mystery and I am disappointed; I can see into your future and you will be dressed in a more vulgar version of what you already have because it's the only thing you know. I want you to put on some pants, cover up your shoulders, save your cleavage- let me wonder what you will grow into. Right now- I already know.

I long for the rain and when it happens I am jubilant and grateful- I give myself away and you take notes. Rain makes the brown mountains orange and the green look verdant instead of fake.

But when the climate takes a chill pill, things get civilized. The temperature drops and you are inviting and entertaining, interesting and enviable from afar. I want to be outside every minute of the day- wandering down the streets that the heat keeps from me. I want to stare out the windows of places I don't go because I've been there too many times and I want more from them. My daily bike ride to work is invigorating, the wind sweeps across my face and I can smell the beach somehow. It's happened a few times. I don't know where it comes from. But I know that smell. Florida taught me well.

I love when I have the energy to explore what you have, when the heat doesn't suck it all out of me. I remember a time when the weather broke and I wanted to walk everywhere. Nowhere seemed unsafe or too far away. I felt connected to you, and not unimpressed and bored. You really have a lot to enjoy- you can be charming, sweet and familiar. But I wonder if you even like that side of yourself. You will always be slightly off the right track, but on a track nonetheless.

I won't be here forever, you've seen to that. But for now, I can handle it.

Love,
Chloe

A post where we talk about music but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read it...

Regis: Each new Hold Steady album is kinda like A Prairie Home Companion and Craig Finn is the post-punk Garrison Keillor I am just going to say right now that Craig Finn is probably on par with John Darnielle in terms of ability to create believable vivid characters and situations in song. I've never been in a destructive marriage in Tallahassee but because of that album I kinda think I know exactly what it feels like because of Darnielle. And I've never been a confused scene girl who ends up doing too many drugs and trying to find some semblance of belief or solace in her Catholicism but I kinda feel like I know what that feels like now too. The fact that The Hold Steady cross-reference situations and even lyrics from other albums will never stop impressing me. Finn sings the line "there's gonna come a time/when she's gonna have to go/with whoever gets her the highest" on three out of four of their albums and the amazing thing is that it works. That's part of the reason they're like prairie home companion: each record is like visiting the same town. Except in keillor's case he's describing an idyllic Midwestern town while The Hold Steady are describing the archetypical directionless teen scene where everyone has these really intense but totally vague and unfocused desires.

Chloe: There's something about his voice I find un-placeable but oddly familiar. I want to say Bruce Springsteen but I know that's wrong. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by The Hold Steady because it seems like their songs are so jam-packed with stories and characters that I can't listen to it all and sort of tune out. I like how the Mountain Goats uses the same lines in songs across albums too. That always impresses me and you feel like you're in on a secret as the listener. Even though everyone else who pays attention and listens regularly is in on the same secret- you feel a connection to the band that wasn't there before. I appreciate the thought. I always thought Garrison Keillor was describing my family growing up when he said that all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above average. And I felt like maybe I really was a Midwest girl even though I only lived in Minneapolis for a year as an infant.

Regis: I don't think the Bruce Springsteen comparison is wrong. The overall rhythm of Hold Steady songs - the way they build to a crescendo - is very Springsteenian. And Finn references Springsteen lyrics and situations a lot.

Springsteen: tramps like us...baby we were born to run.
The Hold Steady: tramps like us...and we like tramps.

Their songs are definitely NOT background music. It's music to pay attention to.

Chloe: Oh good, glad I wasn't off about The Boss comparison. I think both of them seem very Americana to me in the non-Wilco sense. Like blue-collar or common experiences for certain segments of society.

Regis: Springsteen is a huge fan of The Hold Steady. They have played together. Your description is on-lock. "Non-Wilco blue collar" is a very good description because Wilco (and most alt-country groups) affect this "real blue collar" stance which actually doesn't reflect the actual working class: it just conforms this bourgeois ideal of working class virtue: a Springsteen ideal without grit or bad food or chewing tobacco or shitty apartments. The Hold Steady have this sloppy ugly sprawling picture of genuine American life that encompasses a lot more than that "ideal". Springsteen describes the common experience of being working class using the specific experience of being out of work and working class in post-Vietnam war New Jersey. The Hold Steady describe the common experience of being directionless and young and full of intense desires and hedonism and curiosity and a need for meaning using the specific experience of being townies and music fans and middle-class methheads and skaterats and heshers in suburban America.

Part Animal, Part Machine*

I subscribe to Domino Magazine and also Lucky. I'm OK with that. I'm also OK with Domino as a substitute for Blueprint. There was much kerfuffle over the abrupt demise of Blueprint. Rightly so- it was a good magazine, attached to the Martha Stewart Omnimedia juggernaut. The conspiracy theorist in me says that Blueprint achieved a popularity that Martha Stewart Living hasn't seen in a long time and the plug got pulled for ego reasons. It's a shame because everyone lost out.

I do enjoy Domino for their ideas, recipes, room layouts and stories. I think the most attractive thing to me is that it feels like an amalgam of lists of things. And there is nothing I love more than reading (with pictures!) people's lists of things. Things they love. Things they can't live without. Things they avoid. Things that changed their life. Things they pack on trips. Things in their purses/backpacks/make-up bags/suitcases/lunchboxes. Things they do in a given day and where they go. Things they buy from their favorite stores. Things they wear all the time. Things they are obsessed with.

Both Domino and Lucky meet this need for me so very well. This is most definitely a secondary gain- because first and foremost they want me to buy stuff. Which I might.

But the culling of lists! The itemized details of insignificant stuff! The devouring of other people's lists. I feel like a raccoon in a pile of tin. It can't be just a plain list. It has to have pictures and blurbs of why this thing is important. What does it do? Where can I get it if I wanted it? How much? What do you use it for? Why do you love it? How'd you find out about it? I almost can't read it fast enough. I have to slow down, savor it, re-read it. Dog ear the page and come back to it. So I can read it again. So I can look at the montage of things.

I think it's a form of voyeurism because I have little interest in creating my own lists. I only want to read yours.

*A Henry Rollins thing. I think he meant in a much more uncontrollable intensity/inhuman drive to produce. But I like in it an inoccuous curiosity/repetitive sense. Part magpie/part bike pedal.

Enter/Return

So when I was in high school, I was in I.B. It was this accelerated magnet program that offered somewhat more than most schools had in terms of AP classes. The program was also used to diversify student bodies and bring in more funding (ie- make the poor, black schools whiter and richer). Which was the case at Eastside, where I went. Many of the students I graduated with went on to Stanford, MIT, NYU, Yale, etc. Not this kid- I took an athletic scholarship to attend a small private university in North Florida. In your faces, smarties.

During our senior year, we had to take this colloqiuam called Theory of Knowledge or TOK. TOK was designed to offer us the experience of sampling, theoretically, all the different subjects of thought/learning by way of exposure to the "masters". For example: physics, math, biology, art, history, literature, music and so on. For some reason, we spent about 2 weeks on art and, like, 3 months on physics (much to my chagrin). This is where I first learned about the important Stephens of the world: Jay Gould and Hawking. Totally interesting stuff, right? Right.

So, ok. I did my best but I was way more interested in art, literature and music (which my grades wholly reflected.) I was not what you would call invested in my foundational education nor in the teachers that presented it. I always felt it was a fluke I was in I.B. at all, but in restrospect, I did all right given all the homework I didn't do. I was mostly excited about college and getting to study what I wanted to learn.

As a TOK project, we were given chapters to read in a book on the basic principles of physics with the assignment to present to the class an example and summary of the chapter we read. I don't remember what the book was called- all I remember was that I supposed to somehow demonstrate to the class that a sphere with a hole in it had the same surface area as a flat plane of the same general size. How the hell was I supposed to do that?

The only thing I could think of was to make a paper balloon, which I learned from my dad. When you fold up this origami "balloon" it has a hole you blow into for inflation purposes, but it comes from a piece of paper. Flat plane becomes a sphere (-ish shaped object) with a hole in it. Genius, right? I totally thought so.

My teacher's response? "Next."

I have to tell you, I don't hang onto much but this still makes me angry. In that moment- all my feelings about high school were summed up and expressed and what energy remained that was invested in my being an active learner and participant in my education was sucked out of me. This is a very 17 year old response. I know that.

But, Mrs. Brantley, if you're out there: you were a terrible teacher. And I hated the poems you wrote about Princess Diana's hands.