Elliott . . .

I'll fake it through the day with some help from Johnnie Walker Red . . .

It's actually one of me least favorite Elliott Smith songs lyrically. It's about a lost lover that you still yearn for but who was so awful for you in every way. It would take another 7 years to know the pain of those particular circumstances (Bradley), but the music always had an immediate grip on me. Perhaps it was the driving 3/4 time and the tumult of the cord progression that kept me fascinated, but it was the voice behind the song that got me hooked.

I was sitting in a Jeep Grand Cherokee in the parking lot of a supermarket in Summit, New Jersey when I heard him first. I was with my nephew who had passed out in his car seat. NPR was profiling an obscure singer/songwriter who had been in an even more obscure Portland Oregon rock band called Heatmiser. He had written a song for a not so obscure Gus Van Sant film. Elliott's song was already nominated for Best Song, but would surely lose to a now "has been" French Canadian singer who's song's nauseating grandiosity was surpassed only by the movie for which it was "written". (In the sadest of all after words to his life, her name appeared in almost every one of his obituaries).


I bought the soundtrack to Goodwill Hunting which contains Miss Misery and four other Elliott Smith songs. It's worth having just because it is the only place to get the studio version of that song.

I often read posts on Sweet Adeline dot net by some girl's college-type sad sack who fantasizes about how if she were with Elliott he wouldn't be so sad or at least they would be sad together and that would be ok. I am she at heart.

is it wrong to name a guitar?

OK I am a total dork, but I had to have one. This guitar is older than me. It's a 1969-71. This guitar has a reputation as a forgotten step child of the Dreadnought style guitars. I played a '66 Martin that a guy wanted $2500 for. This guitar is better . . . or at least feels better to someone who got it for an eigth of that. And of course it's the guitar he played . . .

What is with the Serpico thing?

I am extremely paranoid about being perceived as being arrogant or vein. With that said, I am arrogant and vein, but only in the way people with low self-esteme or self doubt are.
Not to long ago, the time came to change my instant messanger "handle". The handle contained the word "boy". Now I don't consider myself a "boy" then nor do I now. I simply named the "handle" after a Belle & Sebastian song I really liked. Anyhow, realizing that the name selected distracted from the main goal for which it was created, hooking up or meeting guys, I decided I needed a change.
I decided I needed a name that would evoke a sexy persona that guys could relate to and would conjure an image for them that I could roughly emulate. I remembered the Al Pacino film Cruisin' and thought, ok . . . um, no. But as I was searching on his name I came accross stills from Serpico a classic from about the same era. Now I had known about the film and the person on whom it was based, but I had never seen the film. As I looked through the stills and posters I was hooked. One great upside is that Pacino in the film goes from clean shaven to mustache to full beard and from short hair to long hair. I do the same general tranistion each year at least once. I figured if the image did conjure something positive for guys they would likely be into facial hair and frankly sort of scruffy guys.
Well that is most of the story of BrooklynSerpico. A couple people have picked up on it. Oh well, its post-modernism, i got to resemble someone. (I passed on the IRA soldier motif since terrorists are so not in now).