Last night, I decided that I have absolutely had it with putting together a narrative analysis of a news article and reading 500 pages of repetition (I get it, news is "socially constructed." I got it half-way through the preface. Isn't that enough?). I needed a study break.
That said, I grabbed a sweater an some earrings, put on a bit of make-up so that I didn't look like I just spent five hours on the computer, hopped into my car and drove down to Santa Monica with Black Celebration blasting the entire way.
Must stop thinking about school. Must stop thinking.
***
Generally, I try to avoid Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade, on account of the fact that I have a low tolerance of both tourists and upscale hippies. (For those who don't live in LA, 3rd Street Promenade is a beach-adjacent outdoor mall/indoor mall boasting two of all of the major Gap and Express Corporation mall stores, Urban Outfiters and a bunch of other crap that replaced the hole-in-the-wall record stores and NaNa.) However, our friend Nelson was spinning at 217, a tiny bar across the street from the Macy's parking structure on Broadway at 2nd. 217 is minimal-posh in appearance with tree branches doubling as lighting fixtures and lots of smooth, natural surfaces and the crowd was large for such a small bar, but fairly mellow in attitude. Nelson and Oscar Sanin split up the 10-12 set, playing techno (ranging from minimal to, er, not minimal) and a bit of house. It sounded as if there was a fairly good representation of Output records. Someone, at some point, played Optimo, but that's about the extent of any attempted trainspotting on our part, since I was too busy dancing and chatting.
Mostly, I just hung around with Carlos and the usual suspects (Juan and Nery) engaging in fascinating discussions as to how to get pictures from a cell phone camera in a really dark nightclub (for an example of shitty night crawler cell phone photos, see the picture of Nelson at the bottom of this entry). Other stimulating topics included whether or not it is odd that M.I.A.'s single "Galang" is now featured in a car commercial and how the stiff-legged guy dancing by us was an Alex Kapranos lookalike, which led to another conversation regarding the fact that Estelle and I were dissed for liking Franz Ferdinand last weekend by one of our friends. (Fortunately, Estelle is quick with the comebacks.) Then I realized that it was midnight and, as much as I did not want to get back to reading another 200 pages of media criticism, duty called.