thematthewbriancohen:

Titus Andronicus - In A Big City

I feel like I’ve posted this before, but the more I listen to this song, the more it becomes a personal anthem to me. Like all good Titus songs, it’s about fighting the faceless enemy that is mass society, being simultaneously proud and resentful of New Jersey, and asserting your identity by screaming it.

I think everyone from New Jersey who moved to New York to peruse something creative relates to these lyrics:

I grew up on one side of the river I was a disturbed, dangerous drifter moved over to the other side of the river now I’m a drop in a deluge of hipsters … and some of my dreams are coming true and some of the smoke from the other room is seeping through and some other ghost in another tomb is screaming too

but as silly as it sounds, it feels deeply personal to me. I’ve told people about the weird anger transplanted New Jerseyians have, this deep desire to constantly and aggressively prove themselves, unable to fully wash off the metaphorical stench of the Garden State that they think they have, that alienates them from the rest of the city folk. I’ve been going to New York since I was a kid, but it’s never going to feel like home to me no matter how long I’m here. Some people can move to New York and fully integrate themselves, learn the subway systems and where the good pizza is, but people from New Jersey can’t shake the lifetime of begging your parents to take the upper level of the George Washington bridge so you could take the whole city in, of taking the PATH after a terrible show and wondering why you’re not funnier, of Secaucus Junction and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and the infinite ways to get from Jersey to Manhattan but no real way to feel like you belong.

Reblogged because I forgot replies were dumb:

This is interesting because it seems like a North Jersey thing. South Jersey is basically a world away and inhabits none of the stereotypes (or the feelings of inadequacy), so in many ways I always felt like a transplant in “Real” New Jersey. Moving to New York for me was like a duck taking to water.

Part of me thinks that’s because our regional identifier is Philadelphia and not New York, which is a very different metropolis to aspire to. Philly is a town of underdogs. “Belonging” is about the worst thing you could do there, because it would mean you were a bigheaded calf fat on its own offal, and therefore ripe to be butchered by the nothings you ceased to notice. And since practically nobody knows (or cares) about the difference, any time someone lobbed a stink-type salvo at me, it only served to prove their ignorance and meant probably they had nothing to offer but TV quotes.

Patrick Stickles strikes me as a very Northern musician in the same way Springsteen is so much of the South (which, I don’t think we need to get into any “Central”-ized delineations, but any beach town has a Southern soul)—Bruce fully knows he can show everyone if he could just get out of this dadgum place; Patrick is sure he’s going to be miserable so he might as well be miserable here. There’s a stout resoluteness common to both characters (and I’m pretty sure you’ve talked about that in a Titus post before) but I think the Southern version has a little bit stronger faith in itself, in the aggrandizing sense that it views the rest of the world as just some fuckers who don’t yet know.

(And there’s probably a definite parallel to be made to the whole Confederate South pride-in-ignorance thing, as much of that part of the state remains rural and racist. Case in point, as of 2005, one of the teams my school played football against was still called the Fighting Clan.)

Anyway I could talk about this for hours but I’ve never for a single second been ashamed to be from New Jersey, because it contains so many multitudes in such a small space, and as a result seems to produce the most adroitly normal people in the nation. What can you show a Jersey person that they haven’t already seen, processed, complained about, and learned to enjoy (without being a jerk about it)? I’d much rather be that than some rat-dick city kid, any time of the day.

4:43 pm  •  13 November 2012  •  3 notes

Sitting at the opening party for the New York Comedy Festival and my cool magazine writer friend is awful late.

Why is it that rooms where people are talking make me feel like a bag full of hammers?

Could be that nobody here seems to tip, which is awful, if that’s a regular thing.

I think the reason I do comedy is cause it’s the only time when people certainly shut up.

Everyone coming through the door pauses almost imperceptibly to fix their hair. A teenager would say that makes them gag. I know I’m an adult because it just makes me powerful sad.

I can tell all these people are ancillary to the actual laughs because their teeth are too nice. Parkas, too, but sometimes even we got cares. I did buy a sweater, which at this specific second makes me want to run in front of a bus.

The design of this room can be described as “maximal tile.”

I never drink 7and7’s outside of rooms that make me uncomfortable.

Oh wait, people I know are here. Never mind. Life is the best.

12:34 am  •  9 November 2012  •  3 notes

I’m trying to avoid all hurricane pictures because Atlantic City is my hometown and I’d rather not see how it died.

But this photo of Obama one town over is doing serious things to my tear ducts, at this point in time.

(Source: theobamadiary.com, via kellyqehudson)

8:04 pm  •  31 October 2012  •  3,579 notes

“Dry Mons Aren’t Forever”

3:16 pm  •  19 October 2012

(Source: ryannxp, via coreybrown)

4:03 pm  •  17 October 2012  •  74,849 notes

Some people have nightmares about rape or murder or scenes of incomprehensible violence.

My head just fills with the look in people’s eyes when they’re posing for a photo and it goes on a beat too long.

2:58 pm  •  14 October 2012

The apartment has four cats and sure i was a little stoned but it occurred i had never pet two at the same time and then it happened that they came on me and it got real good and i began to lose myself in pleasing them and feel as though we shared a strange knowledge and right as we must have topped the crest of some longbuilding wave of understanding one curled over and started eating the others asshole

and i don’t know what to do with this information

3:01 am  •  14 October 2012  •  3 notes

Yeah okay sentence fragments are played whatever, but that moment when you’re across someone in a crowded room and it’s loud and they don’t bore you most times but they do with these words and maybe your mind is just consumed with more selfish pertinent things like how you could destroy a whole collective conception of yourself with six seconds of the wrong sort of yelling and so you’re listening but they are also hard to hear and you are not quite interested in the first place and so their words come out like headphone fuzz and you could not with knives at your eyes repeat what was just said but something screams that now is the time to laugh now and you do so heartily, lustily with a vigor that in no way reveals that you are not wholly invested in the statement being shared or jeopardizes the sense that this person could ever be a disappointment to you and it’s not you believe they buy it but they betray none of the signs and so you walk away feeling you have done no damage in the world.

In that second, what are you hearing.

And do you consider yourself to be bad.

3:12 am  •  13 October 2012  •  2 notes

Obviously people have all sorts of motivations and degrees of other-focusedness, but as a general rule, if you see someone from your office taking a smoke break, and you stand and speak to them for the duration of their cigarette, every molecule in their body wants you to die.

5:30 pm  •  1 October 2012  •  1 note

Sometimes your best dude has a brain appraisal and disappears to France for a few months for god knows what reasons and you don’t really talk about it before he leaves and you’re not sure when he’s officially coming back but this is how he chooses to announce his return.

Welcome home.

6:57 pm  •  28 September 2012  •  2 notes