thursday june 14 2001    |    8:28 p.m.

all i want today is this: it's a wonderful life. which was originally going to be called king of nails.

i haven't bought an album in well over two months. maybe three. mainly because, as mark put it the other day, i've been livin' la vida broka. (tee hee.) but today i was listening to "sunshine" and i was looking at the gorgeous stark pictures on the website (linked above), and i got this irrepressible urge to run out of the house screaming en route to the record store.

but i didn't. i couldn't. the stores are far and the friends are off doing things and the vehicles are not accessible. more importantly still, the album hasn't been released yet in the united states. british-isles release was this past monday, and the rest of the world holds its breath but gets them soon. so this afternoon, instead of b/raving through traffic, i lit a cigarette by the windows in my room and listened to the beatles to try to get mr. linkous off the brain. but i just managed to get more and more irritated.

what an album this third one will be. a good part, i think, was recorded in europe, as opposed to mark linkous' farm/studio in virginia. he has pj harvey and nina persson sing for him, and tom waits, and joan wasser from the dambuilders plays violin. and there are nods to his old friend vic chesnutt (also wonderful), as on distorted ghost they were reserved for daniel johnston (ravishing).

sigh.

so to shake off the sparklehorse blues, mark and i idled away the afternoon happily playing each other fugazi and supergrass over the phone, drinking coffee, making plans. i made damn good mashed potatoes (woowoo), suffered a phone call from record label guy (how things change), picked things halfheartedly off the floor, played rimsky-korsakov for dad as i was making him lunch to get his spirits up a little. (two days ago we listened to roberto carlos and jobim/gilberto/getz, and he told me stories about hanging out in brazil during the 60s, and i think it did him a world of good. so i plan on making this a habit.)

also, since all i've done at home thus far is bum around, i've been thinking of doing what writers do and forcing myself to write. not in diaryland, not e-mails, not revised shopping lists or cover letters: sitting in my room on the carpet at the old-school typewriter in front of the window with a cup of coffee and a pack of something stronger than marlboro lights 100s.

we'll see.