FOOL’S GOLD

Ever since the Seinfeld episode about “these pretzels are making me thirsty” I’ve had what you could call a mild obsession with pretzels. I don’t actually eat them much, I just like talking about pretzels. Good conversation starter. But upon closer inspection my rapport with pretzels is very peculiar. I really like big pretzels, the soft kind you’d get at a ball game with cheese dip, but I really dislike the small, dry kind they give you on the plane. I can’t think of any other food that I love so much in one variation but find so yucky in the other. The big ones are so chewy, you can practically see steam come out when you take a bite. The small ones are so bland, what’s the point? They provide zero satisfaction. (more…)

I just landed in Barcelona for the famous Sonar festival. We were billed as “DJ Mehdi vs A-Trak feat Kid Sister”. I love it because it’s a math formula: “vs” is like “x” and “feat” is like “+”. But wait, there’s an issue with the priorities! Is it (DJ Mehdi x A-Trak) + Kid Sister, or DJ Mehdi x (A-Trak + Kid Sister) ? In other words, the DJs and the MC, or Europe meets America? I think I might ask the organizers. Strictly speaking, the way they wrote it without parentheses it should mean the first one. But Kid Sis actually canceled last week so they might not be receptive to my little question.

Today I’m in my 10th hotel room in 12 days. One of the underrated sciences of the proverbial tour life is remembering your room number day after day after day after day. Of course you can simply keep the little cardboard sleeve with your key-card but where’s the fun in that? So I was trying to analyze what goes on in my head when I step into that elevator and think, “Shit, what’s my room?” (more…)

I’m about to board a flight to Australia, where I’ll be performing at the Good Vibrations festival in 4 cities, both as A-Trak & Kid Sister and with Kanyeezy. I think it’s my 8th or 9th time in Australia. I’ve been there more than France, for some reason. (more…)

This morning I had to wake up at 6am to go to the airport. In the car I was thinking of the expression “the bane of my existence” and wondered if bane is one of those words that you only find in a specific expression. I’ve never heard the word bane elsewhere. So I looked up the definition on my phone. As it turns out you can also say “the bane of my life”, and bane can be used in other sentences. It means death or ruin. I also learned that there are poison names like wolfsbane that follow the model:
(something poopy)bane.

Fast-forward many hours later. I’m in LA getting ready for my show and somehow the Australian city Brisbane pops in my head. And then I think, could Brisbane mean death by bris, i.e. circumcision? An operation gone wrong?