Pistol’s Sunday News Commentary!

In which I weigh in on the BIG STORIES of the week.

Sasha Frere-Jones has always seemed a little suspect to me… In addition to being the great modernizer of the New Yorker’s music coverage, isn’t he supposed to be, like, a thinking man’s rock critic? And yet I’ve watched him offer up the same breathless strokefests of the Arcade Fire and the Hold Steady and Radiohead and Bright Eyes that you find everywhere. (If it matters to you, I love the Arcade Fire, can’t get into the Hold Steady, have never heard Radiohead except that song that was on MTV, and abhor!!!!!!! Bright Eyes.) He also thinks John Darnielle, aka Mr. Mountain Goat, is the best songwriter, like, ever? I can’t find the exact quote. Regardless, a little crazy. I can listen to the Mountain Goats–especially the early stuff–in small doses. I like the one about lightning storms. It’s sweet. But I’m not sure what that guy writes are songs. You know?

Anyhow, now Mr. Frere-Jones has officially lost all credibility. Because, Fall Out Boy? The emo slicksters with a surfeit of muscles/hair product, and naked internet pics, and a disreputable history with Lindsay Lohan (which is, I guess, redundant)? S.F-J.calls their new album “deeply pleasurable”? For serious? I will admit I had never heard them. Because I thought you had to be thirteen and, you know, badass. With a lot of patches on your bag and whatnot. So I tried listening to one song, got about 25 seconds in, grimaced, and shut it off. Sasha Frere-Jones is dead to me.

Here’s a New York Times article with a funny title.

Insufferable Clinginess, or Healthy Dependence?

It doesn’t seem like much a question to me. I mean, if a person is INSUFFERABLY clingy, it probably isn’t HEALTHY, ya know? But anyway:

The domestic scenes that would slowly suffocate the marriage were not scenes at all, in the usual sense, but silences, imagined slights, private fears that went unspoken…

[S]he would dress up to go out, and then struggle against a growing dread as the moments passed and he did not comment on how good she looked.

“I never once said anything, but I had this need for approval, this terrible dependence that he had no way to understand,” Ronni Weinstein, 61, a therapist living near Chicago, said about her former husband. Indeed, she added, she has since learned that her dependent urges might have been used to bind the marriage rather than undermine it.

So I guess when I incessantly ask Mr. Pistol if he thinks I might be getting the muffin top, that’s actually good for our relationship. And when I say, “Hey, you haven’t complimented me in a really long time. Aren’t you ever going to compliment me? Don’t you think I’m pretty at all?” and then Mr. P, in his weird dirty old man voice that’s a low-quality cross between Bogart and JFK, goes, “Sweetheart, you’re the finest piece of ass I’ve ever seen,” and then does this deeply unsexy and off-putting grab-and-shake thing, like how one of the Three Stooges might grab a gal’s ass–apparently that means we have an awesome marriage!

And finally, this letter in this week’s Get Naked [Time Out New York] struck a chord in me:

I’m a 26-year-old girl and I’m in a new but intense relationship. I fell hard for this guy, but there is a recurring problem that I’ve experienced in all my other relationships: I’m a shameless dream-cheater. I really value honesty in a relationship, and for this reason I’ve never cheated on any boyfriend I’ve ever had, and never will. But I’ve dream-cheated on all of them, numerous times, and in all sorts of ways. What’s going on here? I feel guilty when I wake up and even more so when my boyfriend tells me that he had a hot dream about me the night before. Does this mean anything? I know that I’m afraid of commitment, and am always wondering if the one I’m with is really the best match for me. Is that part of what’s going on?

Jamie Bufalino gives a perfectly serviceable answer.

What I would’ve said is, Are you a fucking idiot? With the most overactive superego ever? Sex dreams are one of the few real plusses of having a brain. And sleeping at night.

Sure, a person feels guilty sometimes. Like, a couple of weeks ago I had a sex dream about a made-up Italian guy named Luca, and it ended with a police chase. I was in BIG TROUBLE. Because I’m such a bad bad naughty naughty girl, etc. You know what I didn’t do when I woke up? Write a letter to Jamie Bufalino! Jeez.

by Pistol Whip | 11 March 2007 | reading, music, sex dreams | Comments