Please, someone, help me! I’m to ashamed to buy this “tasty hot junk food”:http://www.uncrate.com/men/culture/food/kettle-fire-and-spice-party-pack/ over the internet. I love potato chips. I love hot things. It’s meant to be.

“Fake It”:http://www.newsweek.com/id/78149 – Northern England: a middle-aged bumbling man and his 80 year old parents created one of the most successful art forgery studios in recent memory. The best part…what did they do it for… the money: no, the fame: not really, but to thumb up the art world. Brilliant!

A simple list of records that I’d love to hear.

1. Slow Dance Society – The Slow and Steady Winter
I love quiet, sad, stately music, the kind of which sends you spinning in the remembrance of a dream long forgotten. And apparently this Spokane, Wa band delivers on this ridiculous sentiment.

2. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
On many of the best of lists this year was this unknown. The story is old in the tradition of literature. A writer sequesters himself in an icy, secluded Wisconsin cabin last winter for three months and begins to write songs that are designed to move your soul.

3. Pale Young Gentlemen – Pale Young Gentlemen
This record, on paper, gets lots of favor from those that have heard it. It’s not rare to hear that this records reminds them of how great a broken heart could feel.

4. The National – Boxer
Yes, I’ve not heard it yet. Yes, its apparently the sort of 3am broken hearted aging record that I have written my life over.

5. Iretsu – The Moon and Starts Remain in the Morning Sky
I love the pull of a cello and squeeze box and the first track is laden with the sound of a cafe in paris. Or it reminds me of the circus, not that I ever went to the circus, but in my imagination there is a childlike version of me fascinated with the sound of a circle from the 1970’s.

6. Dr. Dog – We All Belong
Not a rap album so I’m told. I’m not sure why but everyone loves this record of lo-fi 60’s indiepop. I’ll have to find out for myself.

When in Verona, they say that if you touch the breast of Juliet that you’ll have good luck in love. I need as much luck as one could get.

_On the side of evil:_

Nusch I miss you it is sudden
As if the tree could miss the forest

I have never written a poem without you
I am in a cold bath
Of solitude and misery
Words have the weight of rags on wounds
The images sparing and stubborn
All of what I say reflects an absence
I receive the present like a treasure the pickaxe
My pleasure now is to kill time

Masking itself with smoke the young wood burned
The leaves and flames were not visible
O you my great black star you become distant
Your circle is only a point in my vicinity

You my vision changed into an insensitive and blind thing
Do away with reflections echoes of deceit
Do away with my remorse for life
Take back the kisses I receive in vain.

_On the side of good:_

My love we were sleeping together
And we laughed in the morning
Together all the time we needed to live

An entire eternity
And the more I saw you living by my side
The more I mistook you for the dawn and the summer

Sleeping deeply dreaming higher
Awakening one for the other
Such is the law of innocence

And to live higher than our dreams
To be identical through trust
That was our pleasure

In a world always an instant too young
Could we foresee winter or our death
Considering ourselves fossils before the end of the long spring

Reason we were both embodying you gentle
Like a cheek under the blush of the first fire
Reason we were free we triumphed.

_-PAUL ÉLUARD
translated from the French by Lisa Lubasch_

Grand Archives CD Release Show – “Feb 20th at the Triple Door”:http://www.tripledoor.com/calendar.aspx.

“wito staircase”:http://theresalduncan.typepad.com/witostaircase/ – the blog of Teresa Duncan. In retrospect, I enjoy knowing the lives of others in a day-to-day kind of why, even when they’re gone they leave a record.

“Happy Birthday Perl!”:http://use.perl.org/articles/07/12/17/2046212.shtml 20 years old today.

A must read story. This harrowing Vanity Fair write up, “The Golden Suicides”:http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/01/suicides200801?printable=true&currentPage=all , recounts the life and death of artists Duncan and Blake. Amazing yet sorrowfully strange love story. [via kottke]