B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

I forgot something, another little bit of weird confluence that seemed perfectly reasonable on the same night the Doctor put a hole through his head.

Patrick and I became friends over both quoting REM's 'Crush With Eyeliner,' one of the only traces of sweetness on the band's ode to bad sex and reptile brain thinking "Monster." The song came up while in email about This Girl and her Rock Star Boyfriend. She's five miles of bad road. She's the real thing. I was in Huntsville and Patrick in New York and meeting in San Francisco was months away, but that did it. Of course it was music, of course it was girls.

This Girl was, is, beautiful. The sort of pretty that just smashes all your brain gear like sledge hammer applied to an old Ford's engine. And she was smart, and funny, she listened to all the right music and sung smokey, harmonica-fueled blues songs. Rock Star Boyfriend was most famous for being in that band we all sorta liked in high school and not being bald, or a girl, or killing friends with his junk habit. The band was dead and we had all moved on but he was still around, thriving on royalty checks and a limping solo career that no one could even nod polietly at any more. At some point, I think between New Year's of '04 and the end of May she came into the record store with a new boy with an actual job and everything, and that was the last we heard of Rock Star Boyfriend.

Until last night, when we're sitting in International talking fictional lives over a shot and a beer a piece, and he's two seats down from us with some friends have a birthday. Still skinny, still the compact size of a twelve year old boy who runs a lot, still wearing those terrible shirts even his heyday '90's snickered at. Paler, and his hair's been bleached and dyed a sick blonde so often it hanges off his head like a dead, brittle thing, like it would snap if you ran your hands through it. Confluence moves over the world like the dealer's brush at a craps table and we all just move along.

posted by chris  # 8:12 PM 0 comments

I was in the last few pages of GENERATION OF SWINE and waiting for Patrick to give my back my computer. I wanted to climb in to bed and fall over with a stack of movies. It had been a long day of cold wind and bad art in Central Park, walking under giant horseshoes colored like parking cones with last week's laundry hanging off them and making snide comments about my friend's new boy parts with the nattering speed of someone not eating properly. It was time for sleep and moving pictures, and Patrick was filling his iPod shuffle with Bob Dylan.

Bondphone went off in my lap with an email. Warren Ellis was up and watching the AP wire, and Hunter S. Thompson has shot himself.

We went out, calling and texting and emailing on the way. By the time we got to Alice's, it was on the internet - The Denver newspaper had all the information any one had. Thompson was found dead at his home. His son identified the body. No word on a note. Nothing about the fifty-foot talk aluminum cylinder intended to shoot his ashes out over his mountain compound. It'll come.

It's snowing outside. I should have mentioned that sooner. "Potential blizzard" is the term to use. Run through it like bank robbers to Cheap Shots, which is full and humid and ugly with NYU students. We throw back shots of the most expensive tequila in the house and leave, disgusted. There's a snowball fight going down across the length of St. Marks Place to weed through and then International. I stand outside while Patrick runs to an ATM and make jokes about the fight over St. Marks; it's gone from powder-based turf war to guys vs. girls; "If I don't hit the ickle girlie my dick'll fall off." Run inside and throw money at Lauren for shots of Powers and Red Stripes - this is the worst idea. This is the best idea. I break the news to Lauren in the least graceful way I can and she pours each of us another shot and a kiss of the top of the bottle for the floor. She spreads the words around and suddenly we're the guys who know.

Outside again, taking blurry camera phone shots of the light on the snow. A small girl with dyed red hair spilling out the top of her parka, cowboy boots and a short skirt to match stumbles into Bondphone's frame and twists in the wind, drunk and broken and lost. Everything she says is giggling. We leave her at what looks like her door and move on.

It isn't until Thompkin's Square Park that the inevitable snow ball fight starts.

First it's us, then a random girl cuts the air between us with a shot at chest level. Her boyfriend holds her out as a human shield and we chase her down the street, pelting her retreating back. A misfire turns us on each other again before a pack of Englishmen, drunk to the teats on American whiskey and yelling "You gotta know! When to hold 'em! You gotta know! When to fold them!" start sending volleys across the width of Avenue A. Their leader catches Patrick's first shot and returns it. Clearly no one is fucking around here. After a few rounds of no one hitting each other and the bulk of the English mob stumbling off into the dark, their leader shouts "You're lucky I like you, lad!" I shrug and run after Patrick, who's rounding the side of the park in the opposite direction from the apartment.

We're planning an ambush, building up a store of ammunition in preparation for the group coming up on the stair case we're using as a fort. "On the three," Patrick says. "One...two...three!" And he pegs me. The group passes safely as we pour all available rounds on each other before resorting to shoving. Treachery in the ranks brings down the best-laid plans once again.

We're on the way home at last, passing the church on Avenue B. The stairs are cut in half by metal bars that don't open any more, the church was closed in the Fall after a Cardinal failed to be moved by a protest march of dozens strong. It's a squat, ugly building with little of it's old beauty remaining, but it was somewhere for the homeless to be a little less cold and hungry. Not the point now.

It was Patrick's idea. Target practice for shots of Sake, first to hit the center of the highest cross wins. After something like a dozen tries there's hardly any gold left to be seen. I finally tag the middle and we just keep throwing.

We top off the night by tipping a stand off over the edge into a full blown snow ball fight right outside our building before running inside. Hunter S. Thompson is dead and there's a blizzard on the ground. But inside there's cold sake and bad ideas and christ, it's only three thirty in the morning.

posted by chris  # 7:29 PM 2 comments

It's starting to snow.

I don't have a day job. My trial period at the site ends tomorrow and after that there's nothing, no more chance to prove myself. Some other folks get the chance to prove themselves - a much shorter chance than me, and I should feel good about that - and then I find out if I get to write or not. I'm trying not to think about it, to make it some one else's problem. It's almost working.

It's starting to snow.

I have a ten dollar ticket to a rock show, twelve dollars, a few fistfuls of silver change, and that's it. A week between me and knowing if I write for a living with wonder bread and pre-sliced cheese to hold me; there is no day job. I believe in the Zombies. I believe in jumping without any sort of parachute or net. I am ready to fall. I believe all this and am still a little scared about what comes next. Don't think about it, imagine wind in your hair and ears and everywhere else it can squeeze between and let go.

It's starting to snow.

Mo needs a proofreader. David will talk to the guy that needs an editor and give you frozen lasagna in exchange for ground up coffee. I did this for May though July, eating when I could and sleeping when I couldn't. This doesn't have to be so bad.

It's starting to snow.

Right now therel s the rock show, walking down Houston in the biting cold with Patrick. There will be dancing, and cute rock show girls, and most importantly there will be the rock and roll. Walk past the Mercury Lounge towards the Sunshine to see what the midnight show is this weekend, and it starts to flurry. Flurry turns to fat white flakes that don't stick and don't stay, that last long enough to spin in orange street lamp or halogen headlights. This is better. It doesn't last, but it's better.

Febuary in New York, and it's starting to snow.

posted by chris  # 9:25 PM 0 comments

Three days into my trial period at Gizmodo and learning, learning, learning. The more overwhelming bits of it are dropping off, finally, and all that's left is the work. The biggest hurdle is writing fast and sloppy, nailing down the important bits and fitting a joke in when I can. If the idea is to do twenty posts a day then there's no room for polishing, just make sure it's all spelled right and you don't sound like a tool and get it out the door. I'm getting there. More posts today than yesterday, more posts yesterday than Monday. After writing time and style my biggest hurdle is the tech-speak: I know technology, I don't always know exactly how it works. But the audience does and they're fact-checking, asshole, so that means going back and learning all the stuff I glossed over with phones and cameras and ipods and computers.

But I'm learning. I roll out of bed, start the coffee and turn on the RSS reader. I'm writing at eight in the morning and after this week (provided I still have the job) I'll be up and running earlier than that. This is the job, this is what the job needs. So I'm in front of my ibook for the rest of the day, finding the shit what is hot and talking pretty about it. Style and tics get written over, structure is tacked on, and work happens. I'm not at full speed. I'm not where I need to be. I'm getting there.

The chance to be twenty-two and writing for a living. Strummer Effect Go.

posted by chris  # 8:50 PM 0 comments

Obligitory nattering on What It All Means later, once I'm settled into my new schedule. In the mean time, you can find me posting at Gizmodo.

I'm the one talking about about baby Jesus.

posted by chris  # 9:29 PM 0 comments

Clowns in Love vs. Max "Murder Hurricane" Fenton. Nobody learns, nobody hugs.

posted by chris  # 10:32 PM 0 comments

Let's you and me talk about the weather, huh?

Li Ruqing sits by a missile launcher loaded down with chemical-tipped warheads, just watching the sky. He commands three such batteries in the North Western corner of Beijing, keeping an eye on the weather report and a cool hand on the trigger. The weather's a bitch in this part of China, holding back rain the crops desperately need in favor of hail stones that beat anything edible or old and pretty-looking into pulp. Li isn't waiting for enemy airplanes. When the storm clouds roll in, he's going to shoot great fucking holes through them with the precision and tactical mind of a seasoned field commander. The shells seed the clouds, forcing the moisture inside to fall before it can form hail or decide to just stay up in the air in that smug fashion precipitation has. Li's a cloud shooter, and goddamn if that isn't the best job title ever.

Comics work horse Neil Kleid runs a column for writerly advice site Scryptic Studios. Between installments, he sends the new column to a stable of professional and just getting into it writers who then put together a coherent response and send it in for a different perspective. This week, it's me and Alex DeCampi.

For the record, I'm the one that sounds all fucked up on drugs.

posted by chris  # 12:56 AM 0 comments

The problem with Saturday night is

1. You kiss with your teeth.
2. The artist is dressed like Avril Lavigne, or that guy from Unwritten Law.
3. You aren't terribly cute.
4. The art isn't very good, and when it is, it's hung the wrong way.
5. Most of us have seen these homestarrruner.com cartoons.
6. Kissing you, or trying to, I'm going to get a crick in my back.
7. Abby left, and the only one of your friends who's left has a fixation with shotgun-inflicted headwounds that's just plain unattractive, not to mention a bit tenth grade.
8. I'm not good at casual. I'm not good at meaningless.
9. The bit with you on the cart and Serena pushing you would have been better if it wasn't completely staged, wasn't completely Art Kids In Tribeca At One In The Morning.
10. The club was doing Morrissey night, and that's just not my thing. So I said I was going to the bathroom and didn't stop looking for one until it was an hour later and I was home.

posted by chris  # 2:14 AM 0 comments

Random basement of a building on 7th Street, a block or so away from my apartment. The basements here stomp on every Sneak button I have. All boiler rooms and naked lights hung from pipes, steam and old garbage shoved where ever; just standing still long enough to take the picture feels like waiting to get caught. Sooner or later I'll get tired of trying bondphone's camera out on every little thing that blurs or bleeds christmas tree colors.

And this is what, five posts in two days? The hell?

posted by chris  # 9:50 PM 0 comments

She can't help herself, leaning over halfway through the act of sitting to kiss him, legs shaking from holding weight in all the wrong ways. Finally she sits and they stare at each other, open menues ignored in front of them as they study the other's face. There will be a test later. Close your books and take out a No. 2 pencil.

This is early. This is new. This is fun. Not enough to hold hands, arms snake up each other, the maximum amount of skin-to-skin availible until the rest of you eating would be kind enough to leave. Table for two as a black hole, music and outdoors-voice conversation dialed down to ambient and the lights fade but for a table-top candle. This is before jealousy and and bored stares, before taudry blondes and ex-boyfriends in bands. This is new, and Valentine's just eleven days away.

posted by chris  # 9:34 PM 0 comments

I might do a bigger thing on the current state of my unread pile (christmas money means books, which now Tower of Babel off the edge of my desk. If I pick up the new McSweeny's and it's Iceland porn, I might just reach Heaven.), but for now, this:

I picked up two books of poetry at East Village Books on Monday: LIVE FROM THE HONG KONG NILE CLUB, by August Kleinzahler, and SLANKY by Mike Doughty. The former I've never heard of, the latter I never thought I'd see. SLANKY is what I wanted - Doughty's flow-over-meaning beat lyrics stripped of Soul Coughing's rythm and occasional donkey samples. The book just rolls, smells of burnt cocaine and stale cigarettes, feels like familiar used skin. Finishing it at 7A last night on the other side of three pints and a burger and just exhaled. SLANKY has road map qualities.

Halfway through LIVE FROM and it just hums. Kleinzahler approaches subjects and times like blurry photos, like carved in stone Where It Changed moments or talking over beers. His word ambidexterity just stuns. I'm halfway through the book - well, done with the East Coast bit and a couple into the West - and keep stopping to just stare at the page.

Me and poetry got together late in the game. Growing up in the fly-over country monoculture, you got four years of English and the poetry section at Barnes and Noble. so I'm snapping it up where I can, leaning towards closer to my time and my place. I can't write poetry to save my life, but there's tools there for everything else I want to say.

2003 and talking to Darby in the backyard in San Francisco, she sums it up. "Writing poetry is taking a thought it stripping it down to as few words as possible. Saying the most with the least." I'm looking for people to teach me how to stop saying like so much, to drop is in the trash and identify objects and sound and feelings for what they are with only another image, no trimmings.

posted by chris  # 9:40 PM 0 comments

Last night, walking home from work. Today, couriering for TROMA. Night setting on bondphone all around.

posted by chris  # 8:51 PM 0 comments

Delays due to details.

I meant to post while on vacation, and completely failed to. The writerly bits shut down upon arrival, like switches flipped while waiting for the carosel to deliver my luggage. Instead I hung out, I watched BRAZIL three times and plyaed video games, I saw new babies and old bars and found I don't ride in cars very well any more. I slept in and spooned, ate hamburgers and my mom's potato cassarole and a late christmas dinner. Huntsville was stepping out for dinner only to come home and find you left the VCR on pause. I'll spare you any metaphors I might have cooking about old shirts not fitting any more, or even being the same cut you remember.

I keep trying to sum up the last six months and it just falls apart on paper. Events blur, names change to protect the innocent and after a while it seems like so much self-important grand-standing. And as that never happens on the blogelisk, I've decided to talk about pop music. The little bits of old and new glory that have just taken me over, and what I was doing at the time.

The Libertines, 'Can't Stand Me Now'

The best part of bad choices. Call-and-answer lyrics under jangly lo-fi production with just enough room to clap along shot through the same bits of brain that first responded to dare-I-say the Clash. Self-inflicting second chances because trying to make it work again is just too much fun. It'll all end in bruises and shared needles, but right now he's smiling so hard the lights dim.

You wake up in Queens, in different bits of Brooklyn and strange beds. All your time is spent running and shaking hands, meeting her people and getting drinks bought for you. Free time is fooling around, making out and watching DVDs from China on someone's posh couch while drinking all their beer. You're making it all up as you go along, Elmer Fudd ten steps off a cliff and totally oblivous. You could just keep running and never look down.

Gravity ruins everything.

Dresden Dolls, 'Girl Anacronism'

Opens like stage lights coming up, like the fade from black to empty length of nighttime street. Piano and sticks on cymbals enter as young starlet - complete with Karen O hair cropped to razor's edge and Frankenstein dress built from prom night's long past - running towards the camera and the song's proper start. A shout of "TWO THREE FOUR" and it all turns downhill and jagged bits, stumble running over S&M piano playing and too many lyrics crammed in too tight places. Three minutes of poses about poses before finally, gloriously, collapsing.

You're writing on the internets about comics, about what they can do that no other medium can touch. Your second installment was a week late and already the bitter one, something you had hoped to put off for another month or two. It comes time for the third one and the only book you can think to talk about - Morrison's KILL YOUR BOYFRIEND, is, what, seven years old? VAPOR TRAIL, the column you're doing for popimage.com, was a good idea at the wrong time. Trying to write about the triumph of comics just shines a light on how little excites you. And there's that whole shouting-in-a-vacuum feel the site has. So you quit.

A little later you'll pick up Morrison and Quietly's WE3 and sorta wish you still had that soap box.

(VAPOR TRAIL can be found here: 1 - 2 - 3)

Johnny Boy, 'You Are The Generation Who Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve'

Think Bowie's 'Heroes' if it was all cresendoes until the last bit. There's that same mix of triumphalism amongst defeat, of knowing you'll be wrong in a minute but for now you're righteous, unstoppable. 'Generation is walking, no, stomping through the city from one point to another, head full of war drums and horns with a chorus of Yeah Yeahs! at your back. Soundtrack for the anti-crusade, believing you can win as sure as you know you're doomed.

It's the week of the RNC, with nearly half a million people winding their way toward you on one of the few truly hot days of summer. It's election night, mixing beer with whiskey with wine and wrestling Will before stumbling down the street to 7A and hamburgers. More than 'Life During Wartime,' more than 'I Want You back' and the need to Motown spin in midstep during the the piano roll at the beginning, this takes over your brain and tells you how to walk. It builds until the end then snuffs out, the aural equivilent of friendly grafitti or overhearing some one else's conversation and finding agreement. It's November third and, first thing after reading the headlines and smashing the hangover with coffee, this is the first thing you play.

That weekend you're talking What Went Wrong with Max on the way to THE INCREDIBLES. There's one cylinder left in your pack of cigarettes; you study it for a moment before tossing both into the trash. Interior drums pick up and that's that, no more smoking. This year doesn't have to be so bad.

The Pouges, 'Fairytale of New York'

The difference between this and every other Christmas song is humanity, and it's all the difference in the world.

It's December 1st. National Novel Writing Month is over, and while you didn't finish, you feel pretty good about what was done. Good people were met and old business was settled. It's cold, one of the first properly cold nights of the year, and the wind comes from all sides. You're full of whiskey and Blue 9 junk food burger and fries, walking from the bar with the the terrible bartender and the secret Hobbit doors. The wind pushes you down the street and cuts at your ears, but everything is full of new christmas lights and you can't help but sing both parts of the only Christmas song to ever hit you properly.

You won't stop till after New Year's.

Mike Doughty, '40 Grand In The Hole'

Part love letter, part accoustic confessional. Doughty stripped bare of all his old tics and clever word play, and it just rips me up every time.

You're walking. You walk to Troma for the Vampirella feature, a good fifty-something blocks away, and you by-God walk back. It's raining, a pissy cold drizzle that won't let up. It doesn't matter. Anything to kill time between a pair of headphones.

Back around New Year's Eve, when you first listened to '40 Grand' properly and understood it filled all the spaces you needed it to, you made a list. You mailed it to Max for accountability. Things To Do Before Febuary, and you're almost done. On fifth avenue, somewhere in the upper thirties, you start making escape plans. What is a life without my heart at risk. What is a life.

posted by chris  # 3:31 AM 0 comments