imbasile

Real Estate 101: You Should Go Somewhere Else

2011-05-11T20:27:00.000-04:00

Hi,

I don't live here anymore.
My new home is here:

http://imbasile.tumblr.com

Mwah!

M

Breaking News 101: Fox News Reporter Lambastes CNN Rival, Calls His Reporting 'Bullsh*t'

2011-03-23T10:56:00.008-04:00

Hi,

Wow, that was a terrible Live-ish blog of being in the studio with Casey Shea. Sorry - About - That. Anyway, you will be relieved to know that things went well, almost as well as this morning's breakfast. You might say that I enjoyed both so much that I forgot all about showing you a picture. What can I say? When you perfectly spread your Apricot preserves on your perfectly toasted toast and/or Josh Dion perfectly holds down the perfect groove you kind of just forget about all the little people in your life. Sorry - About - That.

And speaking of little people, I'm guessing that one of the following statement about you are true:
1. You're totally bummed that you're probably not gonna get into the probably gonna be sold out show at The Knitting Factory this Saturday night when Mother Feather opens up for Deep Dish Rocket or whatever Linda Perry's new band is called.
2. You've never heard of Linda Perry or my mom's favorite song from the 90's. Maybe this clip from their 2007 reunion tour will jog your memory:

Holy crap! Did you see the Whammy-Bar on that kids bass?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I gotta call Matt at 30th. St Guitars right now and get one installed on all of mine ....

Mwah!

M

P.S. I'll be playing with Wes Hutchinson this Saturday night at some place called Rockwood Music Hall.
P.P.S. I'm pretty sure it's on the Upper West Side, but I'm never sure ...
P.P.P.S. All those places with the ropes and stanchions out front look the same to me.

Live-ish Blogging The Casey Shea Band Recording: Step One, Make Sure You Have The Right Shoes

2011-03-17T13:43:00.000-04:00

Culinary Arts 101: This Morning I Almost Lost A Thumb In A Fight With A Cheese Grater

2011-03-12T18:40:00.006-05:00

Hi,

Okay, let's get a couple of things straight. First of all, it's way too late in the day for you to be wondering what I had for breakfast. I mean, by this point in the day I've even done all the dishes and reset the fruit bowl on the kitchen table in a manner I like to call: "Just so." So, pity for you that it's gonna have to be your imagination that fills you in on how wonderful my morning was with a plate full of grits and eggs and bacon an mushrooms and tomatoes, a cappuccino on the side, and an extra helping of Adele's "21" on the old hi-fi.

Speaking of pity, one thing I will tell you about is a little article (er op-ed? errrrrrrr open letter to the ego?) that I read, while eating the breakfast that was better than yours, by one Alec Baldwin. Don't know who Alec Baldwin is? He's the guy you thought was pretty cool for making those funny Call To Action spots for WNYC's recent fundraiser wherein he sounds particularly funny saying the name Sylvia Pujoli. He's also the guy that had this popular film role written specifically for him:

All of that is just to remind you about why Alec Baldwin apparently matters enough that I would read an entry in today's HuffingtonAOLPost.portal.blog.com.whatever entitled '"Two And A Half Men" Is Better Than None' by Alec Baldwin and proceed to almost throw up on myself at about the half way point, whereupon I realize that "Holy crap, Alec Baldwin is actually not making the needed and appropriately impassioned plea for people to recognize that his colleague Mr. Charlie Sheen is actually a profoundly hurting, suffering, sick person who needs help and support and that while it's understandable that people find some humor in the seemingly self inflicted train wrecks of celebrities, perhaps the media could just back off and not report on it all so much and thus, like, ultimately kind of, you know, make it all kind of worse and more sad than it needs to be. No! He's not saying that at all! He's actually just making a bad anecdotal comparison to his own career and using his own prestige to get top billing on a website that attracts roughly 1.5 billion visits per day to make the apparently-not-completely-obvious-to-everyone-else point that there are some people in the business end of the entertainment business who are scoundrels."

By the way Alec, for the record, I have donated to WNYC a few times. This year I didn't. Mainly because someone else I know did and I can just read her copy of the New Yorker. Whatever, I bought the radio.

Anyway, in today's episode of the occasional series "Next Blog," I am thrilled to present to you a site which recently won the award for "Best Conceptual Use Of Brevity By A Blog" at the Matt Basile Awards For Things He Finds Interesting Awards Show ... drummmmmmmrrrrrroooooooooolllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!: http://fightingflashinglights.blogspot.com/
In related news, the award for "Best Show You're Gonna See At 10pm On Monday Night" goes to ... drummmmmmmrrrrrroooooooooolllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!: Andy Fitzpatrick at Rockwood Music Hall.

Mwah!

M

P.S. ___ __ _____.
P.P.S. ____ ____ ___.
P.P.P.S. ___________.
P.P.P.P.S. ___ _____ ____?
P.P.P.P.P.S. ______ ...
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. __ _____ ______ !!!!
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. _________ _____.

American History 101: Union Busting and The Case For Mandatory Human Chorionic Gonadotropin Injections

2011-03-10T10:05:00.013-05:00

Hi,

Just when you thought my life couldn't get even more better than yours, I gloatingly present something you probably only get on Sundays: Blueberry Pancakes ... on a Thursday!

If you have a brain, you already know that having "Blueberry Pancakes on a Thursday" is just one of the many benefits of collective bargaining. But since you went to a public school in Florida, you may need to brush up on the concept of collective bargaining, to say nothing about your usage of commas and quotations. In general collective bargaining is basically a group of peasants, or in some cultures "employees," coming together with a metaphorical "single voice" in order to devise with their overlord, or in some cultures "employer," something called a "collective agreement." The resultant collective agreement usually sets out (according to the dubious reporting of wikipedia) "wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs." A clearly sinister enterprise.

Here in the greatest country in the history of countries that generated a level of general comfort heretofore essentially unheard of as a direct result of something called "Collective Bargaining," the concept of "Collective Bargaining" was first introduced in 1891 by one Beatrice Webb. If you're a large multination corporation owner, hearing the name Beatrice Webb probably makes you go: "Oh yeah, I shoulda known it was a woman who ruined everything for us! And by us, I mean me! If it weren't for all those stinkin' women and their stinkin' support for things like rights and unions and collective bargaining, I'd still be able to do things like ...

Hire uneducated children for my soda factory:

Or employ US workers to make garments:

(Editor's Note: This is all still part of the quote from the multinational corporation owner I am imagining you are...)

But thankfully there are still states in the union who are responsive to the needs of business:

And thankfully all those Democrat Senators in Wisconsin somehow forgot about how the legislative process works in their state and had no choice but to let the Republicans pass a bill that pretty much outlaws collective bargaining for public employees."

Anyway, I'm just glad that that last sentence actually didn't happen because I voted for Barack Obama and everyone knows that if state after state were diminishing the "collective bargaining" rights of it's public employees, a guy like Barack Obama would surely stand up for not only the rights of middle class people but also make the case for balancing budgets by reestablishing the tax rate of the nation's richest people on account of the fact that they haven't been doing such a great job of creating jobs with all those tax cuts they said they needed in order to create jobs. Thankfully Barry doesn't need to make that speech.

In related news, my indentured servitude to The Casey Shea Band continues tomorrow night at Rockwood Music Hall. We go on at 10pm.

Mwah!

P.S. What's that? Yes, the smiley face is meant to rub it in.

P.P.S. Tonight I'll be at The Living Room with Kris Gruen.

P.P.P.S. He's cool.

P.P.P.P.S. In addition to his acoustic guitar ...

P.P.P.P.P.S. He also has a farm.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S. In Vermont.

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Oh man. Really?

The Beatles 101: Late Breaking News

2011-03-09T12:06:00.003-05:00

Hi,

In today's installment of late breaking news, I present to you a link to some guy "singing" a pretty good song:
Link To Some Guy "Singing" A Pretty Good Song.

Mwah!

Media Studies 101: Chief Executive of NPR Resigns

2011-03-09T10:41:00.007-05:00

Hi,

Today I'd like to offer you a selection of recent of something I like to call: "Recent Observations and The Things I have Learned From Said Observations."

Observation Number 1: Known increases in the instances of "eyes and smiles" I receive is directly proportional to the wearing of one of my fashionable vintage ties.

My takeaway from this observation really only needs to be read men: Guys, apparently it really does make you more attractive if you're dressed like you are actually expected by someone to be somewhere at some point during a given day. However, it's not cool to be dressed as though you act like a complete a$@#ole when you get there.

Observation Number 2: The other day I was riding the D Train around whatever time it is that public school's out for the day and almost had my awesome game of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 interrupted by, you guessed it, a bunch of kids. Illegally leaning against the subway doors, I kept my head down. I was going for 200,000 points on a single trick combination. Not easy. And I got them. 213,578 to be exact. As you can imagine, it was pretty tough on account of all these kids basically yelling at the top of their little kid lungs about God only knows what. Anyway, you can imagine how self satisfied I was about accomplishing my big goal for the day and felt that I deserved to take a load off. So, I sat down. The eleven year olds were still screaming. Well, most of them. No, actually I'd say it was roughly half of them. You see, literally all of the laughing, impolite name calling, punching and cavorting were something commonly referred to as : "Boys". The twenty or so girls basically just sat there and watched them. I thought this was pretty interesting. So when I got home, I brought this all up by basically saying all of the stuff you just read to a pretty smart young woman I know. She said: "Yeah, I've been to a public school before."

My takeaway from this observation is something I like to call: "Confusion".

Observation Number 3: In my neighborhood, all of the young men I've seen engaged with the NYPD in something called the "Stop And Frisk" program are decidedly not caucasian. Wait, should caucasian be capitalized? Caucasian. Well, yeah, I know it gets capitalized there dummy. Jeez. I meant in the middle of the sentence.

My takeaway from this observation is that if you live in The United States, you probably won't ever get "stopped" and "frisked" in the middled or a rain storm if you managed to get something called: "Born White".

Observation Number 4: My breakfast is better than yours.

My takeaway from this observation is that I am _____________.

Mwah!

P.S. Tomorrow night I'll be playing with Kris Gruen at The Living Room.

P.P.S. Look it up.

P.P.P.S. The night after tomorrow night I'll be playing with Casey Shea band at someplace called Madison Square Garden.

P.P.P.P.S. Don't look that up.

P.P.P.P.P.S. Just go to the Will Call window at MSG on Friday night and tell them that Wes Verhoeve of Family Records left you a pair of tickets for something called: "Tonight's Show".

Economics 101: Conflict Of Interest and The Case For Not Being A Foodie.

2011-03-02T10:57:00.011-05:00

Hi,

One of the great things about having someone around who, despite the errant crumbs on your jeans with the hole where your keys have worn through, a wine stain on the shirt you've been wearing for two days, which incidentally coincides with the last time you showered, pretty much always thinks you're good looking is that every once in a while you get to have homemade chocolate chip cookies instead of wheat toast with your breakfast:

Wow. Who knew there were so many things for you to be jealous of me for?

Don't worry. I'm counting.

In related news, if you wanna be either jealous of some other people or just need some details to backup your ongoing depression about pretty much everything, you should totally find someone to give you a link to illegally download the Oscar-winning feel-good-movie-of-the-millennium: Inside Job.

In more related news, now I'm totally gonna get re-depressed just thinking about how much money I coulda saved on therapy if I had only read the article this part of this sentence links to first. Anyone wanna go shopping?

Finally, in today's episode of "Creative Marketing", the second half of this sentence links to what can only be described as a novel way to publish a novel.

Mwah!

Economics 101 :Late Breaking News and The Case For Editing Your Online Photo Albums Before It's Too Late

2011-03-01T22:18:00.008-05:00

Hi,

Welcome to today's second installment of what once would have been referred to as "my web log" but is now referred to as the awkward to pronounce "my blog". Actually, I take that back. "My blog" isn't so much difficult to pronounce as much as it kind of just sounds dumb. And to make matters worse it sounds suspiciously like something that is gonna sound really dated in 2012. But who cares right? I mean, everyone knows that judgement day is only 18 days after what would've been my dad's 81st birthday ... That's May 21st for all of you who either A. don't know how to plus or B. never knew my dad's birthday ... and the entire world will have ended by October 21st. So go ahead, say Blog all you want I guess. For that matter, you might as well go ahead and wear the Uggs your stepmom found on sale at that outlet mall off of Route 15 on the way to visit Gramma in Temecula.

Anyway, all this is to offer you and yours the late breaking news that while many of you have your own many and varied reasons for thinking Mother Feather is best looking band since Mother Feather, Chris and I just made it official:

Mwah!

P.S. You can come be jealous of us on Friday, March 18th when we play Rockwood Music Hall at Midnight.

Civil Planning 101: Loud Talkers and The Case For Euthanasia

2011-03-01T10:01:00.007-05:00

Hi,

Today I am writing to you from one of those Manhattan coffee shops, complete with a variety of faux looking, but probably actually real, leather chairs that make you think of the Pottery Barn catalog you were reading the last time you took a crap at your Aunt Lucy's summer house on Crystal Lake. The best part about this place is the people having really loud business meetings. For instance, right next to me is a some kind of a hot shot lecturer guy who's got some woman trying to explain to him how a YoutTube channel works. He seems pretty important. The woman has been instructed to "CC ..." him "...on all emails with these German people about the YouTubing." Next they're probably gonna start some really kinda boring conversation about his upcoming spot on Ted.com.

Anyway, you're probably wonder what I think Noel Gallagher thinks when he finishes peeing his pants after hearing lyrics like ... "Aaaahhhhhh, it's gonna be tough. The battle's on and your soul is the prize" ... from his little brother's "new" band's new album. I guess I think he probably wets himself from laughter, says something to the effect of "Hey Liam, have fun being the opening band!" and then goes off to ride the pony while staring at all the platinum albums he wrote.

Thanks to ________ for sending me a digital representation of the album he stole for free. If you'd like me to make fun of your album while secretly wishing more people made fun of albums I played on, you can send me links to unauthorized distribution networks here: imabsile@gmail.com.

In related new, congratulations to Mr. Spielberg and everyone who worked on E.T.

In unrelated news, not only does this guy look like an ass#ole ... shockingly, he actually is.

Finally, I gotta get outta here before I start shopping at Christian Dior.

Mwah!

P.S. On this day in 1977, Bob Dylan was served divorce papers.

Nation Building 101: Kiss My Grits!

2011-02-26T09:36:00.007-05:00

Hi,

Today, when I get to the nunnery, I'm going to try to save the life of a woman I've never met's fish named after the woman who wrote the song the kids who are about to perform a different song on the Oscar's are singing.

In related news, you'll probably be either disappointed that I used so much butter on my grits or really jealous that nobody will ever cook you breakfast this good:

Okay, yeah, I guess you're right. It could use some colored vegetables. Looks like I'll be going on a date with Key Foods today! Anyway, I really didn't use that much butter today.

Oh, and speaking of grits ... Isn't modern civilization interesting?:

And speaking of all the banal trappings of modern civilization, since I don't really know what to do about the thing that this part of this sentence links to I'm just gonna head back over to ebay and buy a bunch of records from some guy in Brazil.

Mwah!

Space 101: Because I Don't Really Miss You Either, So There!

2011-02-25T22:43:00.006-05:00

Hi,

Today I woke up super excited because I just knew there would be something good in the mail box when I walked my little happy feet down the six flights of stairs that don't bother me at all unless I'm carrying an 85lb. self-assemble dresser up said six flights of stairs. And lo! To my joy I knew that not only was I grateful to not be a state union employee in the state of Wisconsin, but that today would be the day that I would finally be the proud owner of my very own LP copy of the amzingly amazing self-titled album from the Stone Roses. And so I am. Thankful that I at least have the mp3 version still. You can see photos of it below ...

Someone needs to clue The Red Coats in to the "Fragile" sticker!!!!!

Fortunately I had the non sadness inducing appointment with TheMistyBoyceExperience to begin working on songs for her next album to help ease me into the rest of the day.

Mwah!

P.S. The Casey Shea "band" next lives out your dreams on March 11.

P.P.S. Anyone ever heard of Rockwood Music Hall?

P.P.P.S. Emma Goldman would, I suspect, at once be proud and feel the uncontrollable urge to gouge her own eyes out.

P.P.P.P.S. Or, maybe she'd just say: "Matthew, just be glad you were born a white male."

P.P.P.P.P.S. Assuming, that is, that we were having a conversation ...

P.P.P.P.P.P.S. But that's, unfortunately, impossible.

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. And by "unfortunately", I mean ...

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. I can only assume she'd be a lot of "fun".

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. If you know what I mean ...

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... We made it!

2011-01-22T16:22:00.000-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... Bathroom towel warmer = The world's most civilized country.

2011-01-21T19:35:00.001-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... A partial evolution of the British currency.

2011-01-21T17:50:00.000-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... I know it'd hard for you to see, but this photo proves that they have something called facebook in England.

2011-01-21T17:27:00.000-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... The Shea's work on their marriage.

2011-01-21T11:42:00.000-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... Quote of the week:

2011-01-21T11:09:00.001-05:00

"That stuck out like a needle in a haystack!"

-Langhorne Shea

Sent from my imBasilePhone

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... We are Totally getting kicked out of this bar and it's only 1am.

2011-01-20T20:05:00.000-05:00

Sent from my imBasilePhone

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... Awesome show. Awesomer sandwiches.

2011-01-20T20:02:00.000-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... This is the reason we got to come, thanks Mike!!!!

2011-01-20T17:28:00.000-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... Rock and Roll is hard work.

2011-01-20T16:56:00.000-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... I call this one "Mike Grubbs Backstage With Spinach Pasta and Fire Extinguisher"

2011-01-20T15:16:00.000-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... Something called "The Line Around The Block for The Wakey Wakey / Casey Shea show tonight"!!!!!!

2011-01-20T14:07:00.000-05:00

Delayed Live Blog From The Casey Shea World Tour ... This garage sure us relentless!

2011-01-20T12:21:00.000-05:00