mx. self destruct
For this week, I selected and wrote about six frames from SpongeBob Squarepants. I’m surprised it took ten months of biweekly blog updates for me to think of this.
You can read that here.
Coming Up:
Overheard plays O+ Fest (!!!!) in Kingston, NY on Friday October 10th. Our first time playing in the new Kingston venue Assembly! Get tickets here.
I have my photos in a gallery and for sale for the first time ever, and the opening reception is this Friday, September 12th! More info below.
A reminder that two weeks ago I released my debut album as Ghost Down, Mr. Mist. You can stream or buy it here, and read a track-by-track breakdown here.
Misc. Stuff I’m Into:
Movies:
Jaws [1975, dir. Steven Spielberg]. It’s Jaws.
Lost In Translation [2003, dir. Sofia Coppola]. Watched this during COVID isolation. It has quickly entered the canon of films like High Fidelity or Before Sunrise in that I am glad I didn’t watch them in my late teens or early twenties, as they would have become my entire personality (derogatory).
Hard Boiled [1992, dir. John Woo]. A little Hong Kong copaganda, as a treat.
Splitsville [2025, dir. Michael Angelo Covino]. Hack your relationships with this one weird trick (communication).
Music:
Pile’s Sunshine and Balance Beams; possibly my new favorite Pile record, a spot long held by A Hairshirt of Purpose.
Hayley Williams’ Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party; despite that travesty of a Bloodhound Gang interpolation on ‘Discovery Channel,’ I do really like this record. Hayley Williams will never stop being messy but that’s where all her best art comes from.
Deftones’ private music; after a decade of trying I finally succeeded at getting into Deftones earlier this summer, and was rewarded with an excellent new album.
Soulkeeper’s Holy Design; This album starts out with a ridiculous, hammy drum solo that made me laugh out loud. It’s stupid metal for idiots and I love it.
Emma Louise & Flume’s DUMB; “You’re big daddy Flume, dog!”
Chance the Rapper’s Star Line; and we back (with a mostly solid album, but still, we take those).
Water From Your Eyes’ It’s A Beautiful Place; didn’t care for this at first but I like to give things I bristle at second chances, and this one was well worth it. Really excellent guitar work and some poetic bars!
Games:
Super Mariomon. A Pokemon Emerald romhack that turns everyone into Mario Characters, with a whole new world built around them. Cannot believe someone made this, and it is extremely fun to play.
Hollow Knight: Silksong. All I’ll say is that you almost didn’t get a newsletter this week because of this game.
Etc.:
MacStories launched a new tech show hosted by Jonathan Reed called First, Last, Everything, a delightful interview show about a guest’s first, most recent, and most important pieces of tech. I made the theme song, a jaunty little tune I love! I hope you’ll check it out.
On Friday I went to see “Puerto Rico in Print” at the Poster House with my friend Syenite! I believe the exhibit just ended, and missing the first attempt due to COVID made me nervous I’d never get to see it, but we got to sneak in at the eleventh hour. Political commentary, organizing, and captivating art all bled into one another in luxurious boricua fashion. Some of the posters were kinda tough to read which I don’t agree with from a graphic design standpoint, but what can ya do. I have a lot to chew on for the next time I make a flyer.
It’s the blog part, and a big one since it’s been a month.
Shortly after my email about birthday month melancholy, I decided to take some action and make a bunch of plans in the weeks leading up to the big event. Tickets for AnimeNYC, a trip to the Poster House, all kinds of food. That very weekend, I attended a show and played a show: seeing The Armed at Le Poisson Rouge and playing alongside Jersey Star and Worldwide Seagull at Hart Bar. At the former, I saw the Armed cover my favorite Nine Inch Nails song, Somewhat Damaged, and went absolutely feral. That was my only moment in the mosh pit the entire night. I wondered if Nine Inch Nails would play it themselves when I saw them in a few weeks.
The evening of the show at Hart Bar, I started to feel a little sniffly, but figured it was early fall allergies. I played an ambient set, tied around an occasional percussive synth ding and a sample of a man shouting about lust in Atlantic Avenue Station. I handed out stickers and tagged a few spots in Hart Bar, and got to see Worldwide Seagull and Jersey Star play lovely, ocean- and romance-tinged sets, but only started to feel worse in ways Matt Mahoney’s cough drops couldn’t fix.
When I awoke on Monday, the worst had come, and I tested positive for COVID. The moment in the mosh pit did me in. Thankfully I managed to not infect any of my friends, but every weekend plan I made fell apart instantly, and the melancholy came back with a vengeance. Despite finally having time to watch movies and take it slow amidst fever and chills, and COVID round three still not robbing me of my sense of taste or smell, I couldn’t help but feel like this was some cosmic punishment for attempting to enjoy my birthday for a change, made to isolate even from Em, alone in my tiny bedroom. Eventually I was well enough and able to go for some masked walks in the park, but the sun and warmth couldn’t make the static go away.
Mercifully, feeling the worst I’ve ever felt physically and emotionally can only last so long, and the static subsided once the first negative tests rolled in. I went to a delicious birthday dinner with Em at an Italian spot Ian showed me last year, and despite the promised cacio e pepe cheese wheel not being present at the center of the restaurant like last time, the house-made gelato was still magic. They didn’t pay me but I guess since I want this place to stay open, I’ll say it was Locanda Vini e Olii in Fort Greene.
I then rolled upstate for the first ever Overheard Unplugged show in Catskill, NY, opening the multi-venue Saturday festivities for the third annual DromFest. Some beloved friends came over for birthday cake, wings and wine the night before, and I was only a smidge hungover while Erin and I performed accompanied by Grace and Kenny on violin and viola, respectively. My sister drove an hour to be there, and we covered Sufjan’s song Chicago! The day was filled with music and poetry and the night was capped by getting to see the iconic indie rockers Yo La Tengo in a venue I have myself performed at about a dozen times. I bumped into my friend Ben, who was running sound at one of the venues and lamented when I told him I was going to the Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize show the following Tuesday.
At about ass o’clock the next morning I made my way back downstate to be in NYC for the monthly Tiny Slices, where my friend Nico read stories dripping with simultaneous grief and charisma, and Stan Zenkov played folk tunes in Russian and discussed the colonization of language. Grief seemed to consume the evening, with me relaying my story of the month’s lost joy, and others telling tale of angel dust, visiting hospital beds, standing on graves, things dominatrixes won’t do, and being held while you weep. I also hit the perfect dap with someone I barely know, so now I think we are contractually best friends. If you’re reading this, James from Toadal Package, link up soon.
My post-COVID birthday week whirlwind ended with my friend Dennis getting me into Nine Inch Nails at Barclays Center. He kept throwing free VIP booth tickets at me, so I invited Brendon and, by chance, Ben, who caved after our conversation and bought the worst possible ticket for a seat where maybe you’d catch a glimpse of the back of some band members’ heads. Watching my two heroes of ambient music meet and interact while Boys Noize freaked the decks in the background was a kind of unexpected and magical coalescence. I also got to check in with my buddies Henry and Haley about comics and Kingdom Hearts, respectively, and hear Boys Noize play his mix of I Know from the Challengers soundtrack live, all things I never thought would happen simultaneously.
Just as I decided to sneak in one last bathroom break, the curtains peeled back and Trent was revealed at a piano, opening the show with the With Teeth closer, Right Where It Belongs. It’s kind of funny to hear this man who’s pushing sixty sing the songs that edgy teen Will would grumble to themself in the back of their parents’ car, and yet I still found myself deeply affected. Trent and Atticus bounced between stages, joined by the full band for cuts such as Gave Up, Reptile, and Copy of A, with dizzying lights and effects for all.
The highlight of the night for me was something completely unexpected (…if you weren’t spoiling yourself with setlist dot fm like I was), a Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize B2B set. A cameraman frantically flitted about the small stage, circling Trent, Atticus, and Mr. Noize as they tore apart and added wubs to songs like Closer and Came Back Haunted. I was reminded of the cameraman for Charli XCX working just as hard to get all her best angles, and feeling like Trent and co. were really in tune with what made an arena show successfully hypnotic.
The band returned to the main stage to run through a few more classics like Mr. Self Destruct, whose sample of the beating from George Lucas’s 1971 directorial debut THX 1138 was synced up with bright flashing lights; The Perfect Drug, a song from the soundtrack of the 1997 David Lynch film Lost Highway, after which Trent flung his guitar up through the air and onto the ground; a low-key flex cover of the David Bowie collab track Afraid of Americans; the Rock Band classic The Hand That Feeds; Head Like a Hole, a song with a live version I’ve been wanting to hear for myself since I first legally acquired the 2002 live album And All That Could Have Been; and finally, a song I have gotten in many arguments about the significance of and The Downward Spiral’s closer, Hurt. When the first acoustic chords were plucked out, Brendon walked over to me and handed me a chicken tender from the VIP booth’s catering. I took a bite, and it was maybe the driest and most unsatisfying chicken tender I’ve ever had, having been sitting under a heat lamp for four hours. It felt…correct.
They didn’t play Somewhat Damaged, and I was a little bummed because I had seen from my setlist peeping that they had played it on other nights. They’d even go on to play it on night two in Brooklyn.
But…
I remembered that at least I got to be in the pit to see The Armed cover it. Spit and sweat and breath flew about in the writhing crowd while we held up the singer and screamer of the band, crowdsurfing and flailing about, punishing guitars and synths pulsing and drums beating, and them yelling and yelling and yelling:
BROKEN BRUISED FORGOTTEN SORE
TOO FUCKED UP TO CARE ANYMORE
POISONED TO MY ROTTEN CORE
TOO FUCKED UP TO CARE ANYMORE
Worth it.
- Will