Weekend

One in, one out

Okay, trying to get rid of acres of books that we have no reason to have. Will I really read an Aldous Huxley bio (through 1946)? Am I gonna sit down and enjoy Sophie's Choice?

Moreover, local book fair doodad is two weeks from now, so if I am going to get more crapulous ephemera, I have to clear out the space for it.

Which reminds me: if you were John McEnroe and were writing an autobiography, how would you start it? What would you think the interested reader is thirsty to know about you, right from the top?

If you are John McEnroe, you will want to start on what you were doing in on 9/11/2001. Natch!

More Suede drivel

I'm leaving myself open to the boorish ridicule of the stupid here, yes - but more Suede crap!

One. Per NME, they are pretty much just a going concern, with Brett making standard cryptic-but-not-at-all-really statements about how they will keep doing it as long as it's "special." For God's sake - what it will take for them to hear my idea that Bernard Butler should produce a new LP thus bringing the whole Suede Story to a neat snake-eating-own-tail close? Also, I want to open a store that sells nothing but the exact navy-print-on-sky-blue REMEMBER ELVIS tee shirts that Butler wore on his final tour leg with the band, but that's another subject entirely.

Two. In NME interview (go watch it) Brett is wearing a conspicuous wedding ring, which is funny. I think this is him and his bride Jodie:

Three. And here is Brett's cat Fluffington (15 years old):

Overheard:

I had two valumes in me...

Pushed from Car

Was informed through a friend of a friend that I was pushed from a moving car back in 1997.

Crazy!

They found each other

I survived the Storm of the Eon

As did you! It was touch and go. When the tornado sirens went off, I went and stood in the parking lot. I didn't ever hear anything like a freight train; I did hear something which sounded like truck air brakes, which turned out to be a truck.

I rather expected a twister to strike a nuclear plant and some sort of biomedical facility at the same time, thus causing a Living Radioactive Tornado With Fearsome Will, but not this time.

Obligatory cemetery pics 5

Whoa! Johnny Morehouse! Story goes that this little boy drowned and his pet dog pulled his little body out of the water. His parents, morbid literalists, decided to memorialize said tragedy in stone. Slumber sweet, indeed.

Happy to see the dog's head is back, as some cretins decapitated him within the last couple years. Ah, D_____!

Plus the loyal pooch seems here to be fending off the encroaching GIANT FINGER that is, um, encroaching!

Obligatory cemetery pics 4

Bride, chastened, lies struck down by her past, and all in a Joy Division stylee!

Obligatory cemetery pics 3

Opdyke!

Obligatory cemetery pics 2

They are a dead end, man:

Obligatory cemetery pics 1

It's a law that all bloggers with cameras must, at some point, take high-schoolish pictures in a cemetery!

The Bride and I took a little bicycle jaunt through Woodland Cemetery (final resting place of les freres Wright, Erma Bombeck, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Tim Taylor, etc) on Saturday, and like many another sensitive teen, I took some autumnal shots, some snarky, but all twee!

Standoff!

Here are the mother and daughter who live in our yard, very Gilmore Girls, now that baby Sadie is a tween:

What is Mama Tess looking at with such concern?

Could it be a loathesome, bullying PIG [and this is literally real-time standoff footage]?

Ol' lardy here was in bad favor all weekend - even peed on a duvet cover in an effort to prove her bottomless capacity for dickheadedness!

Mom was fed up!:

And, yes, gentle follower, that IS some wood for next year's additional thirteen garden beds!

There will be twenty total!

Poignant-as-hell squirrel decoration pic!

Weekend

Onward, Christian skaters

Verily, I shit you not that I saw a sticker on a sport utility machine yesterday that was the Independent truck logo:

Only the cross was more conspicuous and it said "DEPENDENT."

It's a free country for the moment, but is this really necessary?

Next: Pete Doherty for J Crew

A correspondent forwards this amazingness:

This is actually pretty good!:

Oh, I'm just clearing my throat

A reader made it clear last week that he feels I've been slacking, depth-of-contentwise. I am trying to remedy that today with SOME GOOD OLD-FASHIONED BITCHING ABOUT EVERYTHING.

Eg: I get called out all the time for being "dressed up."

"Why you all dressed up?" [sic]

This is not because I am in a suit and tie, or even a tie. This is when I may be wearing a sweater.

The best part is that I have not changed - I still dress as I did twenty years ago. Like shifting political climates, I have stayed where I am while the society has shifted toward utter fucking garbage around me.

Well, steady on. I intend to not look like shit forever.

As for the world at large: good luck!

Yes, that is a gun in his pants, and he IS here to kill you

Man admits to pistol in his pants - DDN

Another thing that does not need to exist

In the rush-up to various wars, experts will vie back and forth on whether any of it should happen, then the inexorable push occurs, regardless.

Much like this Spiderman musical.

WHY? I say again, WHY???

I mean, Spiderman has been already done to death. Point 1.

Two: a Spiderman musical. WHY???

Three: What could the plot possibly be? Like, the Spiderman story, with kids at the beginning on a field trip to the lab where Peter Parker gets bitten by the radioactive arachnid? And an opening number: "We're going on a FIELD TRIP!/Someone's gonna get BIT!"

FOUR: Then the sad number when Uncle Ben gets shot. Wait! In Amazing Fantasy #15, Peter, imbued with his new amazing strength, goes to a wrestling match and wins big $$$ (unfairly, mind you -- this kid has the proportionate strength of a spider!) but lets a guy who's robbing something (?) get away; Peter just stands there counting his winnings, all Ditko-stiff (the escaping vagabond then kills Uncle Ben! Small world!). SO, they could very well update this with some Tapout-style Ultimate Fighting shit while Edge-tastic guitar swirls (more on this shortly) wing their way overhead.

FIVE: The Green Goblin's inevitable number while his rocket sled thingy soars over the crowd!

"Oh, he's green/he's breaking up the scene..." or whatever, to some shite Bo Diddly-ish sub Rattle and Hum skiffle bullshit...

SIX: U2 - I have some friends who still love U2, so I can't get into deep on this. "Like a Song" off War is good, though. But if I think too hard I will be reminded of those Bono'n' Ally LV ads and I will go berserk.

SEVEN: Turn Off the Night? So you have to cram the whole Spiderman story, with a villain, with origin and a plot arc and pompous rock slop into 2.5 hours with intermission and saddle the whole enterprise with the torporous sub-hed: Turn Off the Night??

Kirby wept!

Actually, books might as well go away after all...

Given that I just saw (in the remaindered area at B&N) the ultimate book of all time, equipped with the greatest subtitle of all time:

Chip Chip Gaga?

More luddite crap from me

When I got to work Monday, CNN had a story/doodad up about some guy who says books will be obsolete in five years and then he sort of sits there smugly. This in advance of all literature being digitized.

This creeped me out, and creeped me out so much that it will probably be true. It's stupid, though.

I can say I will be the last lame holdout for paper books. Long after people are reading laser-etched coins that are placed on the eyelids while sleeping (?) or whatever, I will still cleave to the pleasures of proper books.

Plus, when the EMP goes up, will your kindle work then? Hmm???

I will be in the corner reading Savage Grace for the umpteenth time.

Where I stand on 's

Okay, had a debate the other day with people about "apostrophe after s."

I go with Strunk and White (no matter what!) and the classic "Charles's tonsils" example. If whatever your noun is ends in an s - no matter, add an apostrophe and an s. No exceptions! Don't care!

the laundress's sullen demeanor

Francis's sculpture

Plural gets just an apostrophe:

He didn't like the Beatles' music at all - this made him an asshole.

I won't get into the repulsive mispunctuation one sees today, where sibilant mouthbreathers add an apostrophe to whatever: "free book's!" or what have you. That just sign-of-the-apocalypse shit and should remain beneath contempt.

I should always trust me

I read a review on NME about some dumb band called Dinosaur Pile-Up (yes, really). The review wasn't any great shakes, I think they got a 7 out of 10, but something told me I should check it out and it's great. Well, maybe not great, but very good - they can actually sing for a metallish thing. Plenty of nice and surprising chords tossed in as well. They are sort of maybe between Ash and the Cribs with some Nirvana thrown in.

Point is, I trusted myself to check it out and now my morning is made.

JU sez: Let them stay!

That this exists validates the internet. Finally.

Eight Dez a Week

I so did not know that Dez "Black Flag" Cadena was the singer for the non-Danzig Misfits.

GBV! GBV! [wretching sounds]

Just getting into the spirit of things, this guy was throwing up IN LINE to get in! RAWK!



I just hope he didn't miss the Bob Mould Lookalike Contest!

GBV! GBV! etc

So, yes, we went to the Guided by Voices show Friday night. I played an infinitesimally small part in helping it all happen, so duty indeed called. It was very good! At least, many times better than it had any right to be. It was interesting taking my wife along who had never seen the band in any permutation but most definitely not in the "classic" lineup. I think my first show seeing them was in May of 1994, barring any shows in 1987 where I saw them and didn't care. It was also fun to stand with her, as most of the audience had probably never seen a woman before.

I was rendered deaf in one ear for about 72 hours, and I really thought, in the face of the incessant ringing, that this might be the Big One. Not so much the guitars as a couple piercing bursts of feedback that caused me to see and hear stars.

I have zero gripes, really!

Points for originality, maybe

Sexy Sadie

Look at little baby kitten Sadie! She's almost ready for a fixing.

Both she and mom Tess were not around for a week or more! Have no idea what sort of Incredible Journey-style hijinx they got up to. But they are back, for the most part.

New plan is to build them little boxes in the shape of the shed out back.

Weekend

Directive: Don't Be Hate 'in

Bonus: driven by a 45-year-old white dork who looked like he cleaned out "ambulettes" at the end of their shifts for a living! Rulin'!

Fey rock catch-all

1. Wigged out to realize that these two albums were released the same day (9/28/87):

2. Had not listened to this in its entirety for several years:

I had forgotten this insane line from "Seymour Stein" (!):

You liked Chris's jacket/
he reminded you of Johnny/
before he went Electronic

Sigh! I could write some lyrics like that, but who would care? Everybody would just be all "What one??"

Con Airedale

(












)

It just may be true!

Banner ad on Drudge yesterday:

"Vince Flynn didn't invent the post 9-11 thriller, but he might as well have."

Made me chuckle.

"Nick Eddy Relents didn't invent rambling about disconnected bullshit...but it might as well have."

"Have some Hoagie's pizza...drink quarts of beer..."

Well, we had Yoohoo and orange soda, but was at Hoagie's on Saturday. Crust still puts me off: like a frozen crust from Schwan's or something...

















Also: "This is called 'Jukebox Lungs'...1,2..."

Pixies in Santiago - coincidence?

Pixies are in Santiago around now for a festival or something...but I wonder how many of the 33 dudes down in the mine are stoked that they are out in time for the show?

"Vamos!" they yell, excitedly, kissing their loved ones quickly before they run to the venue and chuckle at how they were stuck in a deep, dark hole and now can watch the band tear into "Into the White."

Caper, continued

I have received emails numbering in the four figures, people clamoring to know just what the hell happened with Gabe's car! Well, one person commented. But this isn't, I remind myself, the Sports Illustrated site the day the new swimsuit issue goes online, nor a cliff-hanger of the "Is Little Nell dead??" variety; it's a single post among many on this raffish-yet-refined electric newspaper on which I record thoughts and the events of my day. Should I not be rich by now, though?

What was I saying?

Oh, Gabe's car...yeah, we looked in windows, talked about running some plates, that sort of thing. The dude who has the shop called Gabe on Sunday, said "yeah, man, we're on it!" in his best Mitch Mitchell-ese.

Anticlimax, thy name is this caper!

But none of this is settled. Not by a long stretch, son.

Here is Gabe, outside the garage, getting ready to really show these guys a thing or two by hitting the stray front grill of some decrepit sports car with a fireplace brush:

Caper!

So, I dunno, two years ago or so, Gabe handed over his Carmen Ghia to some fellows to have work done on it. Paint, etc. You know, work. Gave them some big moolah, as well.

Well, it's been two years and is the car back? No.

We then assembled a team to go investigate. It involved a sojourn into deepest Northridge!

The team we assembled was this:

GABE: ringleader, plaintiff, food expert



JACOB: car knowledge guru



KYLE: enforcer (at 5' 6", this was our enforcer)



NICK: trip historian and general dogsbody

On inspection at garage, there was no one around...a look through the front glass business door showed a couple microwave ovens stacked up (or maybe a microwave and toaster oven) and a bridge painted black with red 50's flames shooting up it.

Here is the car (at left -- sorry, picture taken through dusty somehow 90's-ish window):

Anyway, while most of summer was spent gently tending crops, I now find myself embroiled in a caper! I may end up with my eyes yanked from my head, by one or the other of two angry rockabilly-dressing brothers. Oh, I suppose I could say 'Oh, but fellows! Flat Duo Jets!" to try to fend them off...but, no, I will likely be found wandering, eyeless, at Wyoming and Wayne.

I will try to maintain contact as long as I possibly can!