Hittin’ the heartbrakes.

The day started out fantastically, at least if you’re the type of person who does a fist-pump when you can finally fit into the pants you bought last fall that didn’t fit and you forgot to return so you just had $30 of pants in your room until you tried them on last week and ZING! (I’m that kind of person.)

Tonight was The Black Kids and Mates of State at Webster Hall (11th St near 3rd Ave). I went alone, which is nearly one step better than my last trip to see Mates of State, when I was stuck in silence with my just-barely-boyfriend and I nearly fell asleep at the wheel on the drive from Cleveland to Erie because he wouldn’t talk to me to keep me awake. I digress, the past is the past. Hakuna Matata.

A slight drawback to going alone, though, is that once you pick a spot, you must keep it. That is, if it’s a good spot. If your vision is blocked or you’re standing next to an oversized sweaty dude who smells like the cheese aisle at Whole Foods, by all means, move.

I had a good spot though, with a place to set my purse and my jacket (this is huge) and see comfortably. So when I bought a Heineken (woo! it was 8-dollar beer night!), I sipped it slowly and made it last, because if I had to leave to join the bathroom line, my perfect locale would be no more. (This was also incentive to save my $16 on things that AREN’T overpriced beers, like, say, food for the rest of the week.)

The Sunbears! started their set around 8. From Jacksonville, these two guys were teetering on the edge of nerd rock, with long ballads & drony vocals like Ben Gibbard, but colorful graphics and lots of confetti (!!) like, say, Tilly. Four or five songs, decent set, I’ll dig up more on them soon.

Now, I hadn’t heard of The Black Kids before this tour, so a few weeks ago I downloaded probably eight of their songs, and they were catchy, and that was all. But you know that band who you don’t think twice about and then you catch them live and you can’t stop thinking of them? Ta-da.

Also from Jacksonville, they’ve got five members — two chicks, three dudes — of whom only two are actually black. Going to look up where the name comes from tomorrow so as to avoid making any inadvertent racist comments.

I had a group of big Black Kids fans next to me, and with the help of the bar, they danced all over each other, arms flailing, jumping, one girl with a neck like a heron standing in front of me for a while, so now when I think of The Black Kids I’m going to think of BirdNeck with the Glasses.

When I don’t watch the Today Show.

Things I wondered aloud while watching VH1 this morning:

Ray J’s song “Sexy Girls” sounds like a parody of a hip-hop/R&B song. Unfortunately, it is an actual hip-hop/R&B song.

O.A.R.’s latest video has them again performing on a city rooftop. Is this necessary to do for two successive videos? Maybe they only rented the space for one day? Decided to hammer out two videos for the price of one? As if O.A.R. isn’t making enough money. They’ll sell out the Garden in August for 50 bucks a head.

I wonder what Chuck Klosterman thinks about the new Anvil movie. I say “new” as if there’s been an old Anvil movie.

I don’t hate Taylor Swift.

The Pussycat Dolls video for their remix of “J-ai Ho” is upsetting to me, because I don’t like anyone but Frieda Pinto, Dev Patel, and their whole Indian dance troupe performing an ensemble number to the song. Especially not The Pussycat Dolls. I like the song, though. I downloaded it this morning and listened to it on the subway. Failed to persuade any passengers to dance with me.

Jessie wasn’t kidding when she said the video for Justin Timberlake & Ciera’s “Love, Sex, Magic” was nearly X-rated. I felt uncomfortable watching it in daylight.

 

Happy Friday.

Individuality smothered by an old laptop.

There’s a woman I share my office with this summer who’s younger than I. She’s brilliant, with her mother a doctor of medicine and her father a founding member of Adobe. She’s lovely to speak with about writing, as she’s crazy about Austen and Shakespeare, but when it comes to music, she doesn’t know much beyond classical, musical soundtracks and Edith Piaf.

Which is why I was excited when she asked to burn a few of my CDs we’d been playing in the office over the course of the summer. Sure, I have some great stuff that’s worth listening to. I try to introduce everyone I spend any considerable amount of time with to Mates of State and The Clarks. I expected her to pick a few CDs, ask for my input, and put them onto her iPod, then branching out from what she liked and finding new artists even I haven’t heard of.

Imagine my dismay, then, when she took on a weeklong-and-still-going project to burn every disc in my collection. More than 200 CDs I’ve been accumulating in books in my car since I was 17 years old are now all being transferred into the computer of a sophomore at Cornell.

I’m uncomfortable.