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

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.