Mesh Magazine

I worked as an extra for a music video by The Little Ones. It was directed by superduo Terri Timely. There was a lot of “free dancing,” seltzer water, fog machines, grass stains and $75 checks.

See more at my website lovebryan.com. It’s on the BRYAN page.

Anticon’s WHY? chats with MESH
By David Ma

A couple months back, I had the brilliant idea to interview the entire Anticon stable. An editor from an outlet I write for gave me the go-ahead, as did the folks at Anticon. I had spoken and written about them individually before, but I rarely saw an interview with Anticon as a whole. So I thought it’d be worthwhile to discuss how their music, record label and overall outlook has changed since their debut, Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop. Though terribly titled, the album had its merits, showcasing young talent that has remained active to this day. But the entire article I envisioned never materialized due to bad timing on my part. Of all the core members who agreed to be interviewed, only one got back to me—Yoni Wolf, known to his fans as WHY?

In this brief chat, Wolf discusses some of his favorite current CDs, his future plans, favorite spots from touring, and other questions he sufficiently answered without his label-mates. And you’ll see, his quirky responses are probably a far better read than my initial idea of interviewing the entire crew. Thanks Yoni.

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Today we begin the 12 (well, 13) Days of New Year’s, where we’ll be bringing you only the best New Year’s options in the Bay. So, if you want to go out and mingle with the masses on amateur night, keep checking back for updates. Or, just add our RSS feed if you’re a nerd like me. We’ll also throw in a few hints for off the map after parties if you want to keep the party going long past midnight.

With a show that is sure to turn the party out, The Independent hosts Lyrics Born, Zion I and Crown City Rockers. The ticket price is a staggering $80, but includes an open bar. Oh damn. That could be some serious trouble. Above is the second issue of Mesh Magazine, with Lyrics Born artwork by John Stewart. Get your tickets from The Independent.

I spent about two and a half hours online yesterday trying to find some decent clothes for my nieces (oh man is there a whole lot of crap out there) for Christmas presents. First, here are the shirt designs that I won’t be buying my nieces, available from babywit.com:

Yeah, I think I’ll pass on the drug/serial killer/womanizer/alcoholic/profanity angle until they’re at least 10, though I’d really like to meet the people that buy their baby the pot leaf t-shirt.
However, I did find a site with cool kids clothes made by a San Francisco designer: Bunny & Bee.

It’s not supposed to be this cold in San Francisco, but that’s alright, feels more like Christmastime. Join Trainwreck Riders in seasonal sorrows with the video for their song “Christmastime Blues” below. Then catch them live at Cafe Du Nord on Friday, January 12th with Wires on Fire. $10, 18 and up.

Beware: the norovirus is going around. I threw up in the back of an AC Transit bus. Hopefully you can evade the virus, but these two songs are too infectious to resist.

Peter Bjorn and John - “Young Folks”

Matt and Kim - “Yea Yeah”
Enjoy your Sunday morning.

Rancid return to the Bay Area after a long absence with two shows at The Warfield tonight and tomorrow. (They also played at Thrasher Magazine’s party at Great American Music Hall last night). Tickets are $23, all ages.

The band is working on new material for a Spring 2007 release, in the meantime, listen to “Sidekick” off of Rancid’s 1994 release, Let’s Go.

I caught the Mexican Museum Don Julio Collection opening at the Togonon Gallery on Thursday. Stiff tequila cocktails and Tommy Guerrero playing live is hard to beat. Some very cool art too. I can’t wait for the museum to open downtown. Tommy was joined by Bing Ji Ling, also on guitar.

Isabel Urbina

Julio C. Morales
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Headed down to a. Muse Gallery last night for an opening featuring the work of Felix Macnee & Matt Gonzalez, who started doing collages about a year ago. Turns out, they are really good. I was never really that into Felix Macnee’s work before, though I hadn’t seen that much by him, but the pieces he had hanging last night were really powerful. I spoke with Matt Gonzalez for a bit. He said doing collages were meditative to him, “Some people watch TV. Some get on the Internet I do this.” Which explains the fact that he has done 250 of them over the course of the year. Some are completely abstract, others recall architecture. He finds some of the pieces he uses on the street. I asked him if his piece DBI (which features a Department of Building Inspections blank memo) had any political meaning. He said no, but that he was definitely aware of the political implications of him using it in his art.

Felix Macnee

Felix Macnee
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This originally appeared in the January 2006 issue of Mesh Magazine.

My original plan for this issue was to write a Year In Review-style piece, detailing all the amazing shit that happened to me in 2005. But then I realized that I’ve spent the majority of this year looking at 15-year-old girls in their underwear on Myspace, perfecting my swept-bangs combover and looking for track jackets at the Salvation Army so I can act like I paid $80 for them at Urban Outfitters. A nutshell without a nut indeed. But I am still young! Why look to the past when there is such an infinite, limitless future laid out before us? What follows are my thoroughly researched predictions for 2006. Read ’em and weep.

“Intelligent Design” will become the cornerstone of science curricula across the country. Students will also be required to learn Chinese and Korean, so that when those countries figure out how to use stem cells to cure every disease known to man we can be their bitches and beg for them to save our lives.

The United States Supreme Court will overturn Roe vs. Wade. Republicans in the House and Senate will immediately push for a new round of tax cuts for the wealthy, so they can afford the child support for their illegitimate children.

A cup of coffee will officially become known as a “Starbucks.” In turn, local coffee shops across the nation will be forced to change their “small” to “tall” despite the fact that it makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

Super Wal-Marts will include built-in churches. Realizing that the only people better at selling bullshit to poor Americans are generic Christian churches, Wal-Mart begins building Sam’s Club Churches of Christ right next to the Tire department in every new super Wal-Mart, undercutting local churches by only having five commandments.

Soymilk will give me bitch tits. My attemps to get emo-thin by going vegan will backfire when all the estrogen from my soy-rich diet causes me to grow some B-cup boobies. On the bright side, my long lonely nights will not seem quite so lonely with my two new friends.

Looking to bolster his image, President Bush will team up with Mel Gibson to star in Passion of the Christ 2: The Second Coming. Broadcast exclusively on Fox News, Passion 2 stars the President as a loose cannon messiah, kicking ass and taking names. An action packed romp in the spirit of Lethal Weapon, Passion 2 was filmed entirely in the rare English dialect of Bushisms. Fundamentalism for the whole family!

A college student somewhere in America will figure out that money is only worth anything because people all agree to adhere to the same arbitrary system. He will totally trip out on this for like five minutes before taking another bong hit.

I will convert to Christianity. As the saying goes… If you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em. Plus American Fundamentalist Christianity is like the University of Phoenix of hardline religions: pay a few dollars, show up on a few Sundays and you can get the same piece of Salvation as all those people working their asses off to be pious. Besides, Christian emos wreck all kinds of hot gash these days.

We will all die from the Bird Flu and our Myspace profiles shall be our eternal epitaphs. In 1000 years, extraterrestrial visitors will still be able to ascertain exactly how “gr8 it was 2 C U last night!” but will have difficulty figuring out what the fuck “< 3” means.

Don’t Sweat the Technique…daniel at synthesis.net