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padmerrie · 3 years

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I want you to know that I think about your drawing of Kakashi and Sasuke with the cat every day. I just can't deal with it its too much his lil shoes gaaaahhh I'm weeping. And now I can't stop thinking about kakashi tying the laces of Sasuke's lil baby star shoes while he pitches a fit about the cat. (Btw what is the cat's name this is very important information I must have)

I’m sorry it took me so long to respond to this, but I am not exaggerating when I say that your message made my year lol. I basically live in this AU now so for someone to actually like my silly, self-indulgent art enough to take the time to message me about it was just

My sister @panharmonium and I are watching Naruto for the first time (we haven’t finished yet, so no spoilers please! <3) and while there’s a lot that we love about it, we are particularly obsessed with Kakashi and Sasuke, so an Adopted!Sasuke AU was inevitable. I call it Bookends. There’s a summary on my AO3, but the “story” has evolved since then. It’s loosely based on Gilmore Girls. Yes, you heard that right - Gilmore Girls, the tv show about the mother/daughter duo who love coffee and talk fast. The universe is built on three basic pillars:

1. After Itachi supposedly murders his family and disappears, Sasuke is left in the hands of his estranged relative, Madara. Gramps has grand plans for Obito to raise Sasuke and mold him into the next great Uchiha, but Kakashi knows that Obito isn’t ready for that level of responsibility and sensing his friend cracking under the pressure, steps in at the final hour - much to Madara’s disapproval. Obito splits. Drama ensues.

2. Kakashi raises Sasuke with the help of 8 dogs, 1 cat, and lots and lots of caffeine.

3. When Sasuke is accepted into his dream school, Kakashi goes to Madara and Hashirama (who are married, duh) and asks for their help in paying the tuition. In exchange for their help, Madara demands that they have a more active role in Sasuke’s life, and thus begins a new era for Kakashi's relationship with the Uchiha.

Aside from those three “plot points”, it’s all just domestic funtimes with my faves bc who needs plot?

It’s funny that the shoes became a Thing bc I HATE drawing them and am very bad at it (hence why Kakashi is still in his socks lol). But kids shoes are so much cooler than adults, you now? And then I got to thinking about how *not* superficial Sasuke is, but I can totally picture him walking past a store with Kakashi while they’re out walking the dogs and he sees these crazy cool shoes on display in the window. And every time after that, the street that this store is on is suddenly a permanent fixture on their walk. No matter where they’re headed somehow they always manage to find themselves on this street. But Sasuke is too stubborn to actually say what he wants, so for weeks Kakashi just watches him gaze longingly at this pair of shoes every time they walk by. Until one day, they get to the store and the shoes are gone. Sasuke doesn’t say anything, but he’s crushed. He’s surly the rest of the walk and when they get home, he stomps off to his room - where he finds the shoes sitting sparkly and new on the edge of his bed. :’)

(also - this is in no way discouraging you to cease daydreaming about Kakashi tying Sasuke’s shoes bc this is a very worthwhile way to spend your time and I fully support you in that endeavor - but I actually made Sasuke’s shoes velcro bc heaven forbid he let someone help him tie his shoes XD)

Yes, the cat does have a name! It’s Tabi, like the traditional Japanese socks (courtesy of pan’s research). Sasuke wanted to name him something cool, but Naruto, who famously calls everyone by an obvious nickname (i.e. Lee = Bushy Brow), took one look at kitty’s white double-pawed paws and immediately christened him with Tabi. Try as he might, he couldn’t get Tabi to answer to anything else after that. The next time Naruto comes knocking on their door to see if Sasuke's home, Sasuke tries to convince Kakashi to pretend they moved.

#naruto #naruto au #bookends #sasuke uchiha #kakashi hatake #replies #sea-ember #thank you again for the best message ever!!!#<3

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crowcawcus-blog · 6 years

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Interview with Rob Crow, circa 2012

Crow says you need to be “a real music nerd” to appreciate Devfits: Devo in the style of the Misfits and vice-versa. When I hear he's playing a benefit for UCSD's Ché Café, I jump at the chance to witness this spectacle.

After scuttling about like any good roadie, setting up his equipment, Crow steps into a corner and wrestles on a suit constructed of duct tape, a creepy skin-toned mask, and thick geeky glasses while a film clip of his five-year-old son instructs the audience to buy lots of merch and tell everyone how well the show went, "even when it sucks."

He bursts out onto stage and takes hold of the mic, which is hopelessly tangled around its stand. After belting out his first lines, he brandished the offending machinery and commands, “Please undo this thing from here.” I grab it and unravel it awkwardly, nearly spearing him in the process. He nevertheless tells me, “Thank you very much,” and forges on.

I'm charmed by his manners, but moments later my opinion shifts when he charges his way through the audience, trailing the mic wire behind him heedlessly. Me and two other spectators barely squirm our way out of a firm trussing-up, and I twist my shoulder in the process.

Yet his performance is hauntingly beautiful, especially his rendition of the Misfits song “Hatebreeders.” (Devfits (Rob Crow) @ The Che Cafe on 01.07.12) The herd of UCSD students seems mostly bemused. Near the end of the set Crow tells us that he’s “been coming to the Ché since way before you were all born, and that's not hyperbole."

Crow steps back into the corner and removes the duct tape suit. I watch him chat with a few fans, and after they help him pack up and he's at liberty, I approach. He greets me with a handshake and another thank-you for detangling his mic. His sweet demeanor makes it easy to screw up the courage to ask if he'd consider an interview.

"Sure!" he agrees. "You know I do 'em all the time, for my podcast. Can it wait a few minutes, though?"

I assure him I'm not going to interrogate him tonight, that I meant to schedule for another time. He looks relieved, pulls some rolled-up t-shirts out of his bag and spreads them out on the merch table, scribbling in Sharpie that they’re available for at least a $10 donation to the Ché. Again I am impressed by his gentility.

I email to ask if I might pick his brain at his "Super Amazing Happy Funtime Night" at Bar Eleven. The poster for the event intrigues me; someone pasted his torso onto a horse's body. He looks natural as a centaur. "Sure!" comes the scarily succinct reply again. I hope the whole interview won't go this way of brevity.

I sip a Monkey Paw Sweet Georgia Brown Ale while he painstakingly plots the trajectory of his projector. Then he upends a bag of 99-cent store toys: 20-piece puzzles, bubble wands, foam airplanes, barrels o' monkeys, and paint-by-numbers on all the bartops and booths. I grab bubbles. Then, again, he retreats to the corner and pulls on... a gorilla suit. Only then does he visibly relax, stationing himself in between the turntable and the bar. The smirking bartender, Justin Bess, hands Crow a beer. I start with what I hope is an innocuous question: why the gorilla suit? 

“’cause I hate thinking about what to wear,” he states matter-of-factly. I blink, at a loss. He adds that often he wears it around the house and forgets to remove it between home and the recording studio.

He downs a draught, then pauses and looks at his cell phone. “My Words are piling up,” he laughs, showing the screen with a long list of Words With Friends requests.

He busies himself in switching vinyl – so far I've heard King Crimson, Metamatics, Nomeansno, The Locust, Dead Ghosts, Electric Light Orchestra, and Neil Young. Does he remember the first album he bought?

"The soundtrack to Over the Edge, a phenomenal movie," he answers immediately. "It's the truest movie about the seventies I've ever seen. Cameron Crowe called it the greatest soundtrack ever. And I spent a lot of money on The Ramones and Cheap Trick."

A glance at the stream of videos on one screen informs me that "Your Masonic friend thinks very highly of you! You should be proud!"

"Where do you find this shit?" slips out of my mouth before I think about it. He chuckles: "I delve."

I inquire as to when he realized his voice is such a beautiful instrument.

“When I was a kid, I always thought I was gonna be a guitar player. The first band I was in [Heavy Vegetable], we didn’t know who would sing, so we’d take turns. I remember we’d go into the bathroom, which we thought would have an awesome reverb effect – which it didn’t -- and sing into this machine, and there was this giant boa constrictor living in the bathtub –"

I can’t help but interrupt. A boa constrictor?

“Yup," he affirms without elaboration, and rattles on: "And I’m standing over the toilet, all wrapped in this snake, with a drink in one hand and a mike in the other, trying to sing this dumb song – everyone liked it. And I thought, ‘Oh, okay.’”

He notes, in fact, that he likes his singing voice but despises his speaking voice as “super-annoying.” I respond that his speaking voice is very pleasing and radio-friendly on his podcast.

“That’s super-edited,” he replies. I shoot him a doubtful look. “Well, I’m being hyperbolic,” he admits.

A Western saloon-fight with dogs as cowboys starts up on the screen, and I remember that Crow said in an interview with popmatters.com (Contrary Opinions) that he does not like dogs.

In the same interview he says he dislikes the Beatles, confessing that “It’s also just really fun to tell people that you hate the Beatles and watch them flip out.” I wonder, therefore, if he’s merely being "hyperbolic" to be provocative. I mean, who doesn’t like dogs unless mauled when young? Does he really hate dogs?

“Ummm, nah," he says vaguely, distracted by a stubborn wrapper on a velvet paint-by-numbers set. "Well, it just depends,” he hems.

He seems disinclined to explain what makes a dog odious or not, so I switch gears. On the cover of his newest solo album, He Thinks He’s People, one of his signature illustrations shows a stick-figure in the doghouse under a starry sky with two feeding bowls labeled “calzones” and “Speedway Stout.” Is Speedway Stout his favorite local brew? “Pretty much. But it’s not something I could drink twenty of in a night.”

I ask, does he get his calzones from Etna’s?

“Noooo, no Etna’s,” he intones firmly. “Luigi’s. Not Pizzeria Luigi’s, who does have the best pizza in San Diego, but Luigi’s At the Beach, in Mission Beach… I’m from New Jersey; I know my calzones. Every year my family and Pushead’s meet to go there.” My eyebrows shoot up, and he pauses to gauge my reaction. “You know who that is?”

I nod. Pushead is a fixture in the heavy metal and punk scene. I best know him for his grotesquely gorgeous Metallica album art which features skulls, twisted body parts, and lots of fire and ooze and gore, beautifully rendered, a stark contract to Crow’s signature stick-figure art.

I mention off-hand that the San Diego Reader called his cover art 'crass.' His eyes flash and his heretofore soft voice increases an octave. “You know, I’ve never NOT been misquoted in those two magazines [the Reader and the San Diego City Beat]."

The white stick figure upon a black background is Pinback’s little unassuming avatar. After a show at the Belly Up I had watched Crow dutifully draw dozens of the unique pictures on tickets, stolen set-lists, and whatever else fans brought up to him. I ask him now, why a stick figure?

“Early in Pinback’s career, we wanted to do everything ourselves,” including album art. He pauses, meditatively, then surges on: “I feel the stick figure represents the Everyman, with all its foibles or alienation or loneliness… it means a lot to me in its sameness. It’s zeroing in on the darkest parts of mortality."

I in no way expected such a profound, introspective reply, and before I feel I’ve grasped it, he continues: “I think art’s pure escapism. It shouldn’t be the purpose of art to really express joy. I mean, through art one should know what true happiness is; but once you know the real states – this whole life-deathy thing we’re in – it becomes this mobius strip…” He trails off and laughs shortly.

“I’ve been in a mid-life crisis since I was 18… manaically depressed. I don’t want to call it a perpetual e-motion-al machine, because that’s just horrible –“ I stop him to demur, because I love wordplay. He shakes his head and continues:

“But to not be able to enjoy the best parts of life because it’s all worthless… worthless!... there’s no hindsight in death – even wasting your time feeling shitty about it is just a waste of the time you have left but you STILL don’t feel great – it’s endless feedback.”

I think of the song “Scalped” from his album. Crow’s plaintive, prophetic voice cants, “I suggest you don’t waste your time... /Don’t kneel to the alter.” When I first read this line, I thought “alter” as opposed to “altar” was merely a [sic] in his handwritten lyrics, but now I think he punned on purpose, implying one shouldn’t live in a constant off/on, binary state. When happy, be happy: don’t dwell upon sadness, or impending mortality. And conversely, if sad, then address it and embrace it, as Crow does with his music.

Then again, maybe he’s just a weak speller. But given his penchant for Words With Friends, that’s improbable.

Does he mind that his solo album wrapper boasts a sticker declaring it "The new album by one-half of Pinback!"? He blinks; it's news to him.

"Does it?... No, I don't mind. What I DO mind is when they call me the Pinback 'Frontman.' It's 100% a collaboration." [with Zach Smith] I ask if he attended Torrey Pines with Smith.

"Errrrr, I got kicked out of all the schools in Oceanside," he states somberly.

Crow's buddy Tony Gidlund, who has listened to my questions with half-lidded and somewhat suspicious eyes, mutters something to Crow, who notes they might not make it. I look at him quizzically. “In-N-Out," Crow explains. "We always try to hit it before they close.” I ask him what he gets, because every late-night fast-food aficionado I know ritualizes what they order, especially after a solid drinking bout of the sort he put in tonight. “Grilled cheese with onions” is the reply.

“Are you vegetarian?” I venture. “Yup! I used to be vegan, but I couldn’t keep it up – It’s awesome, though. I recommend it.”

“But I love eggs,” I frown, “and besides, the chickens GIVE us the eggs, don’t they?"

He looks thoughtfully at his beer and says, “You’re very close to a Woody Allen monologue right now.”

He seems wont to self-effacing mannerisms. His 2007 solo album Living Well features a song called “I Hate You, Rob Crow." He flips off his own reflection in a recent video, “Sophistructure” (a perfect slice of his hypnotic mesh of visual and sonic). And he introduces his podcast, "Rob Crow's Incongruous Show," by styling himself "San Diego's Foremost Overrated Indie-rock Manchild!"

Meaning to explore this theme of self-flagellation, I instead blurt that I think he’s brilliant. Incredulous, he leans over asks me to repeat myself, then utters a short ironic bark of disbelief. “What?! Look at me! I’m in a monkey suit playing with dinosaurs!”

When I mention this to my pub-mate on the right, she nods sagely and says, “He doesn’t revel in himself. He’s an artist but not... pretentious. He’s a creative genius. I mean—“ she breaks off and gestures at one of the screens, currently occupied by a band of skeletal warriors from Jason and the Argonauts who, eerily, are shimmying to the death metal music in perfect time.

As he's packing up, he mentions that today was technically his one day off. "I should've spent it with my mother," he says, mostly to himself. I ask him how his wife feels about his late-night solo projects, and he says that as long as her vampire shows have recorded correctly, she is content.

I ask him if he liked having the last name ‘Crow’ growing up. “No, I didn’t enjoy it especially.” I tell him I really like crows, and instead of giving me the odd look most normal folks do, he says, “The other day there were 43 crows in my yard.” He counted them? “Yup. But when I went to get the camera and they flew away.” Typical Crow behavior.

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