thursday april 29 2004    |    9:21 a.m.

i think what i've been seeing are signs that i am meant to write this article. about a month ago, the band's ex-guitarist showed up for an appointment at my office, and short bursts of correspondence ensued. yesterday, i rode the bus home with the bass player, and although we were rows of seats away, i think he recognized me. also, an old electric smith corona typewriter showed up in perfect working order by the side of our house a couple of days ago. all it needs is a new ink ribbon, and it'll excite me way more than my stolen laptop did in its day.

so what's been keeping me from writing this story for so many months? most of the conditions seem to have lent themselves, and i have the first interview down, and, potentially, open lines of communications with all the guys.

but it's the whole thing that kills me, all the crap that surrounds the idea of the story. these clubs and these über-coiffed kids with terrible attitudes. i guess i've always had more of a beer, sneakers and four-tracks mentality of rock n roll, and so all this cologne and hairspray and designer posing lately is disconcerting.

take this incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. my boyfriend and i were walking down washington av to the cvs, and we stop by this tiny store i'd been meaning to check out. ironed-out second-hand clothing in the window, but what i was interested in were the few rows of vinyl inside. it didn't look like a place club djs would frequent, so i had a hunch. so we went inside, and sure enough, the cubbies were full of new order, joy division, depeche mode, squarepusher. i asked the girl at the counter who their buyer was. she looked at me blankly through all her mascara and carefully tousled short hair, and shrugged. she asked us if we wanted to join the mailing list, and my boyfriend, the good samaritan, began to tell her about my aborted website, which she immediately checks out on her hip little laptop. "so what is this? you just write . . . about events . . .?" i told her it was a local music website, but it wasn't quite up yet. "who do you know?" my turn to stare blankly.

give me a freakin' break. as she enumerated her laundry list of contacts, i vowed to give up any aspirations of music journalism. true, the world is plagued with idiots, but they just seem to be more concentrated on the fringes of music.

but i've since been thinking: maybe it's mainly just this fringe contingent. you'll rarely meet a jackass musician at this stage in the game, which is the stage i prefer (the beginning, that is). so maybe i'm giving up too quickly, and i'm giving that dumb girl at the second-hand hipster store way too much power.

anyway. i'm having more of an identity crisis now than i ever did back in school, when i was supposed to.

i should get back to work, since i'm getting paid for diarylanding right now. just had to vent my frustrations. also: watched the thing last night, with kurt russell: very worthy horror movie, was actually freaky, love the glacial isolation factor. amazing effects (stop-motion, no less) for a movie made in 1982, the year i turned three.