Weekend

Weekend (runner-up)

Two things about late 1991

1. Okay, in 1991, I was pretty much out of my mind: all my friends had graduated or were graduating from college, I was still in my college town, delivering pizza and simply drinking my head off.

Passing out under the stars (literally - like in someone's yard), with a 22-year-old sense of broken-hearted doom afoot. That sort of thing.

Fortunately, Metropolitan came out on VHS and we could rent it from the video store across the street (the same video store that once sent a squad car to retrieve out beyond-overdue copy of Uncle Buck). I watched it about seven hundred times and survived and (eventually) flourished!

Watched this last night, under mild protestation of the Bride, who was making some sort of liner for our bassinette/Moses basket thing (whatever that is).

My point? Had never noticed that Audrey is reading The Rector of Justin when they are at Von Sloneker's under the sunlamp! I have the same edition, and, given how the fates work, likely the very same copy!

2. All this babble about Nevermind being twenty years old (and I swear, the first time my friend "Meatman" Pete rode up on his Yamaha and made me listen to his Walkman to hear "...Teen Spirit" [which I had already heard on 97X a bunch], I actually said: "Hmm, Sounds like the Pixies...", and this was a full two years after I heard "Wave of Mutilation" on the radio at the U-Shop and said to him "Is this new Jesus and Mary Chain?"), no one has said a thing about it being 20 years on for Trip Shakespeare's Lulu (np).

And that is because no one cares!

Except Morgan.

A reminder

If you have goofy shit you've seen, send it to me and if I like it I may put it up and then you will be a Far-Flung Correspondent, won't you?

Yay!

"Arrest ME?? Ha ha! Nay, for I am HELIOS, GOD OF THE SUN!"

Of course I am

Annoyed every time I see the commercial for Real Steel? Me?

Why, because it's just fucking Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, is vulgar and has a moment where Hugh Jackman tells some kid with a Kid Haircut "I couldn't have done this without you?"

Those aren't reasons.

The Icicle Works Story

Listening to the first Icicle Works record yesterday,

[he wrote]

I was crowded in with memories of ninth grade and riding my bike hither and yon, dangling a full-on old-fashioned mono cassette recorder, blasting, like, Quadrophenia and The Wall, and later, shit like Echo and the Bunnymen and Heaven 17.

I also remembered going to a friend's and saying "Wow, you guys should see [my then dentist's son and classmate]'s stereo!"

He had, like, good speakers and a real turntable. Compared to my one-piece turntable/cassette/receiver doodad, which was not Tandy but close.

The two guys I was telling this to sort of looked at each other and conversation moved to other things. Later, while listening to (probably) Yes or Billy Idol Rebel Yell, I noticed that the friend whose house i was at had a freaking Bang and Olfsun turntable and, like, really real stereo shit. Stuff that made my drooling over Toothy Jr's "good stuff" seem sad. In his bedroom, not even like his family's or whatever.

That was how I learned about Class Distinctions.

Anyway, that I never got laid until my thirties is no surprise, then.

Not bad

I do like the art for the Smiths boxset.

Don't need the actual article, though.

"The Elephant provides"

(that would be the HIV-causes charity shop The Brown Elephant in Andersonville, Chicago)

Goddammit, not ANOTHER Pnin thing

"Genius is nonconformity."

Nina!

A co-worker is seeing or is friends with or something (who really knows what the younger set is doing these days?) a girl who owns Nina. Nina is going through an "eat EVERYTHING" phase, which includes, in the last week, three dozen set-out-to-cool chocolate chip cookies and a couple of roach traps!

And yet she thrives!

Like this shirt

Our friend Nithin plays bass for Marnie Stern, and how could he not?

They played the other night and we had to go drop off a power adaptor to one of the other bands, so, other than saying hi to Nithin (and Marnie and the drummer, who claimed not to know who Alex Lifeson was, which was so Pitchfork-y that I had to give the kid the patented Kyle "are you bullshitting me?" cynical face, lest I gouge my eyes out), my entire Marnie Stern show experience was taking this picture of their/her tour shirts:

Was Bret Easton Ellis in front of our house last night?

Had he watched me sleep during that time?

Had he?

Seen in GA

Aha! So it IS a crime for an actor to make their obligatory "blues record!"

Oh, wait. That's not House dude.

This year's weird, vintage Pnin paperback cover:

This bodes well

6:50 am, on the changing table:

Not worth googling a suitable picture,

or even worth reading, really:

Dan Ackroyd to sign vodka bottles at Jungle Jim's - DDN

Kyle's gripe

Kyle doesn't have a blog, so needed me to get the word out there that he hates when you see a movie and the soundtrack features some lilting version (usually sung by a lady) of some 80's alterna-hit, such as Bridesmaids featuring some mild girl* ululating "Blister in the Sun."

He hates that shit!

* Nouvelle Vague, actually...

Muck Fichigan!, etc

...

Caffeine by proxy

Old, older, oldest

Just found out that Matthew Settle, hyper-annoying rock dad Rufus Humphrey on Gossip Girl, is actually four months younger than me! So I guess when I call him a dick as he does dumb stuff on TV, I'm actually being a bully for once in my life!

About time!

More Jack

Jack is now a month old and went to dinner with us Saturday. He is anxious for his best friend baby (ours) to appear on the scene so they can talk about matters such as: seeing stuff, breastfeeding (they are for it!), weighing under ten lbs. and dogs coming in the room and licking their faces!

Such a gentleman!

There was rock

We had a sort of rock practice yesterday. Two or three new songs were parsed. Hoping for a show at Xmas, given there's a baby coming, the bass player lives in San Francisco 65% of the time and we are old busy people. Still, book your flights!

Redskins!

I need the Redskins to win tonight, and I need the total points to be 49 or less. Then I will win the pool.

Blast! Time to move...

Back in Mink, ca. 1998, we had a song we never really recorded (except once while setting up to REALLY record stuff) called "Why You Shouldn't Go Out." I should have paid attention to that song on Saturday instead of going to see all the sweet aminals [sic], because maybe then I would have had the presence of mind to chain myself, Virgin Suicides-style, to the hundred-year old tree the neighbors behind us were having chopped down.

This changes our whole backyard view. ARGH! Irked.

Here it is, at almost the bitter end. It was all full and occupied nearly the entire sky, horizon to horizon. Sort of.

Applefest 5

As Applefest was winding down, things started getting a bit Eyes Wide Shut:

Applefest 4

Day of the pigs!

A baby pig:














A louche twosome:

Applefest 3

This giant guy said hello...maybe some sort of goat? Anyway, tall.

Applefest 2

There were chickens and such!

(also - Gabe and Cait saw a taxidermied rooster [below] down Savannah way, but he was $350!)

Applefest 1

There were goats!

Hey, Peter Hook!

Stop going around performing Joy Division albums live. It's dumb and pointless.

Thanks!

Weekend

At last! The phone "app" (short for application, like on your computer) that will make me MILLION$$$

Okay, so we have a ceiling fan in the kitchen (3 speed) and one in the bedroom (5 speed). Powering these all the way down, when, in one's dotage, one doesn't remember which runs at which speed, is a pain in th' ass. I have actually spent more years than I have been alive standing there watching to see that the fan has stopped, or, worse, having it at the stopped chain-pull and anxiously, panickedly pulling the chain again on accident thus setting the entire horrific process in motion again (and we've only lived there two years)!

Okay, so, phone app: hold your phone up to the fan as if it were StarMaps. This app will tell you:

1. How many speeds are on that particular fan

2. What speed it's on now

3. How many tugs of the chain it will take to power it completely off

Plus! Most apps are about .99 or 2.99. This one will cost $30,000, and be a bargain at thirty times the price!

Before you ask me this, think (and I mean think) about whether your fragile soul can take the answer

Overheard (well, said to me actually):

"So, Nick, do you like John Hiatt?"

I thought this was great, but I'm a twit

Jarvis should sue

"It was an accident...but, uh, no one got hurt."

This car has been sitting in a used car lot near us for months and I think of the above line from The Godfather every time I see it. So I took a picture and posted it here. You're welcome!

After around fifteen years of being lousy,

REM break up! Now come yet more reissues for eternity and reassessments of dross like Up.

Meanwhile, new GBV record. Here is the cover, which is insane:



















In other alphabet-band news, a secretly-recorded and saved-for-unearthing-now ABC album made simultaneously with Lexicon of Love (only better) would be vastly appreciated. This afternoon. Thanks!

"Hmm, I'll take the giant 'B' with two birds and a Fred Perry wreath around it..."

Camera found!

On Saturday, I absentmindedly left the digital camera at the greatest restaurant in the world, Tacqueria Mixteca! This was especially embarrassing because, mere weeks ago, I was in mid-gab with a dinner mate and blithely walked right out without paying! One of the ladies had to call after me: "Sir! Sir!" It wasn't that big a deal, they see me about once a week and knew it wasn't on purpose. Anyway, just before I snapped this pic of the owner and one of the servers by way of thanks, I could swear I heard her say:

Oh, que triste de cabeza grande abuelo tio esta perdiendo su mende...

Ring found!

The Bride's wedding ring has been missing since...March, maybe? We kept thinking it was in the house, and it was! I had assumed some jagoff cat or other had batted down an air duct never to be seen again, and while one or the other of those feline cretins was the culprit, the ring was found at the back of the closet, and then only because I was considering which shoes to give away.

Anyway, found!

Shakespeare 3 - fey!

This made me chuckle:

Come, I cannot cog and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping
hawthorn-buds that come like women in mens' apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury
in simple-time;

Shakespeare 2 - Trees

Here are trees backstage at just showtime:















1:45 later, as a faerie ring closes and the fog machine goes berserk:














Quick, someone throw on a Clientele record!

Shakespeare 1

Hey, Merry Wives of Windsor was really good! Seriously. If it wasn't, I would not have told you.












(cast milling about backstage, acting all natural)