Spaceman Welder Brings You Glam Rock

Went to campus this afternoon to buy a semester pass for thee bus, have lunch with Justin, and buy textbooks. Success, success, and success!

I was telling Justin that since classes start in a week, I have six days to make ten million dollars -- you know, because then if I had ten million dollars I could give school the finger and follow my dream of opening a bar with an endless supply of frosty mugs.

Actually, that wasn't my inital ten-million-dollar dream; that was cooked up with Justin, who better not be making any more plans with my fantasy money. My initial ten-million-dollar dream (or "ten-millions-dollar dream", if you're British) was a life of idle reflection and iPods. Think Henry David Thoreau, but with more iPods. It doesn't matter now, of course, because unless a meteor filled with money crashes into my livingroom over the weekend (screw my security deposit!), it looks like I'll have to go back to school after all.

And that's not sooo bad. I mean, I like to learn and I like what I'm studying, and I like Turkey Thursdays at the Ex[eter Dining Hall]. It's that whole "exam" thing that finds a way of ruining the whole deal for me. I really don't like exams.

What I do like (clever transition, eh?) is Spaceman Welder. On my walk back from campus I was listening to Ursula 1000's glam rock compilation, Clap Your Hands, Stomp Your Feet, and I saw that one the construction guys on 25th Street was wearing this huge full-body welding gear. Mind you, I don't think "Spaceman Welder" was a particularly popular look among the glam artists of yesteryear, but by gum it should have been. This guy looked awesome! Picture one of the racers from David Cronenberg's Fast Company, except hanging out in downtown Saskatoon instead of erupting in a ball of flames in Alberta. I tried taking a picture of Spaceman Welder with my camera phone, but it was not to be. Perhaps Spaceman Welder has a Space Force Field around him that prevents hu-men from taking photos.

Perhaps some shadowy, pseudo-governmental thinktank is offering a bounty for Spaceman Welder, and it's ten million dollars, and ... yeah, probably not. Real life is a lot less interesting than that.

Here's the [indirect] result of a Google image search for "space welder" ("spaceman welder" came up empty):



So imagine this guy in his protective welding suit, and he's on the run from a shadowy, pseudo-governmental thinktank, and the guy who wants to bring him in for the reward ends up becoming his pal, and they listen to glam rock together.

Spaceman Non-Welder appears really deep in thought, apparently about the numbers 4 and 7.

The picture is from http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-113/images/medium/, which has a ton of awesome pictures.

On a happy note ...

... there's the trailer for Slither. If you like gooey special effects in your horror movies, you're in luck.

"This supervillain of parcel delivery"

What I love is going to the UPS website and looking up the tracking info for my package, and seeing this note from yesterday at 4:34 p.m. :

THE RECEIVER WAS UNAVAILABLE TO SIGN ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT. A 2ND DELIVERY ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE

I love seeing that because I love fantasy. I was home yesterday, all goddamned day. I phoned UPS at 3:30 p.m. yesterday and was told that because I called them at 9 a.m. that morning with my door code information, the package could not be delivered that day. And yet, apparently a delivery attempt was made an hour after I made that phone call. There was no sticker on my apartment door or on the front door of my building indicating a delivery attempt was made, but the driver seems to be under the impression that a delivery attempt was made indeed. I called UPS this morning and asked about this system of not attempting delivery but claiming otherwise, and the phone slave was stumped, sympathetically asking me if I wished to lodge a complaint.

Hell yes I want to lodge a complaint, but I can't. "This supervillain of parcel delivery", as I referred to the driver, is out there with my package, and I can't lodge a complaint because who knows what the fuck this psychopath is capable of doing? Who knows if my package is even still in one piece? This goddamned brown-collar prole probably cut open the box and sold the contents to support his lifestyle, complete with gap-toothed hookers and detergent-based blow, and now he's just trying to maintain the illusion of attempting to deliver my package so that he's kept on the payroll for another day.

And see, I thought the old saying "Another day, another gap-toothed hooker and spoonful of detergent-based blow" was something entirely mythical, like a good Fleetwood Mac song. But no ... it's real, and it's fucking me over.

Sticks and stones may break my bones

but s'mores will give me cancer.

Are you depressed?

Have a peanut butter sandwich.

The "S" is for "Suck", I think

Dear UPS,

You suck. A lot. You're the poster child for corporate sucking. I'm tempted to buy stock in you because any company that reams the public as thoroughly as you do must surely be raking in the dough. Your truck drivers are self-centered idiots who will look for any excuse to avoid delivery of a package. Your telephone operators are dolts who should be sent back to the glass-sorting plant. Brown is an ideal choice for your company's colors, inspiring thoughts of feces and Brownshirts.

UPS, you suck. I'd burn down your building in Saskatoon, but it's out in the middle of fucking nowhere and it would cost me $30 in cab fare to get there and back -- oh, that's another reason why you suck.

I hate you sincerely,
David Y. Bushnell

BUtterfonlust

I suspect I'm the only person who likes John O'Hara. To me he's not the guy who wrote as his epitaph "Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time, the first half of the twentieth century. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well"; nor is he the guy who wrote to John Steinbeck and said, in essence, "Congratulations on winning the Nobel Prize, but I think I should have won it"; nor is he the guy who wrote a newspaper column to convey his bitterness at his lack of critical or academic accolades. To me, he's the guy who write Appointment in Samarra.

I loved Appointment in Samarra when I read it in high school, greatly preferring it to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Gatsby had this annoying air of "Great American Novel" about it; Samarra was just ... a novel. Gatsby was about a world I could never know and thus felt completely disconnected from, whereas Appointment in Samarra was about a guy who's just trying to get along, who works and is unhappy and drinks and his wife resents him and he puts the moves on the babysitter and is rebuffed. It's arguable that Gatsby's setting is irrelevant vis-a-vis the themes of the novel, but I shan't argue that here, save to say that over-reliance on Gatsby's damnably obvious themes makes the book even more tiresome. Basically, I was overwhelmed by O'Hara and underwhlemed by Fitzgerald; I suspect this contrarian position is the real reason behind my 1999 expulsion from the MLA. (You don't really think those fuckers kicked me out due to "syntactical impropriety", do you?)

Upon returning to Saskatoon from Ashland two weeks ago, I was exceedingly pleased to find my battered copy of O'Hara's BUtterfield 8. (I was worried I'd left in Sarasota in January.) I started reading it again, and it's ever good. The problem I have with it is a small one: sometimes I don't know what the fuck is going on. For instance, at one point O'Hara describes the marriage of Weston Liggett, a Yalie via Pittsburgh, and Emily Liggett, daughter of an aristocratic Boston family, and ... well, we'll follow the action in media res ...

She was better off married to Liggett than she might have been with a Boston man because he never took her passion for granted. A Boston man might have, and might not be long looking around for more of the same from someone else. Liggett could not take her for granted. There is something about those good, good words of sleeping together, the language of sleeping together, when spoken in the tones of Commonwealth Avenue, that no man who has been brought up west of the Connecticut River can fail to notice. And when a man is listening for those words, when he teaches them to a woman, when he asks her to say them, he does not take everything all at once. He will want more.

Did you see what O'Hara did there? He starts off with the literal (taking passion for granted, looking around for more of the same from someone else) and then moves into the metaphoric (the language of sleeping together) and then he crashes the metaphoric into the literal (teaching a woman the words of sleeping together) and then he's back to the full-on literal (he does not take everything at once, he will want more). While I never finished my English degree, I still fancy myself a capable reader, but I'm completely stumped by this paragraph. Are Boston men lousy lovers, cynical lovers, selfish lovers, or some amalgam of the three mixed with other ingredients? Are non-Bostonians good lovers, gullible lovers, patient lovers?

And let's not get into the inconsitency of the first sentence -- "better ... married to Liggett than ... [married] with a Boston man ... " (emphasis mine, duh) -- though that's per'aps a nitpick.

Occasionally impenetrable writing aside, I really like BUtterfield 8. (The "BU" is not a typo: it has something to do with the telephone switching system of the 1930's, though I've yet to get far enough into the novel to see the title's significance. You know, like the Glenn Miller song "PEnnsylvania 6-5000": that's a phone number. If it were a real phone number, in years to come it would be shortened to "PE 6-5000", and then "736-5000". I find that really interesting. Now back to our story ... ) In her introduction to the Modern Library Classic edition, Fran Lebowitz praised O'Hara's depiction of "the low life of the high born and the high life of the low born" (or something like that; I skimmed that intro a month ago in NYC). And what's fascinating is way he informs his characters with his own insecurities; O'Hara never attended university, and he's able to use that to make a Yale grad seem like a second class citizen when faced with a Harvard family. True, given the choice I'd turn down Yale in favor of Harvard, but I hardly think Yale is small potatoes. And yet O'Hara can make it seem so!

Ahoy! Forced transition ahead, Cap'n!

And much like John O'Hara can make Yale seem minor league, Magnum P.I. can make the Ericofon seem like a good decorating idea.



I've been watching the first season on DVD and I've come to the conclusion that when it's firing on all cylinders, Magnum P.I. is one of the greatest detective/action/beautiful-scenery television shows ever. I was watching the show the other day and was stunned and delighted to see a cherry red Ericofon on the desk in Higgins' study. In one episode he even uses it! I just about had a telecommunications-related orgasm. I hit Ebay and then the "Ericofons for sale" page at Ericofon.com and came within a hair of getting one before I snapped to reality: dude, the vast majority of Ericofons are rotary! WTFOMGLOL! I then tried to rationalize an Ericofon purchase by thinking that I could use it as a bedside phone for receiving calls only, but then the "bedside" element added a nasty wrinkle: anyone seeing it on my nightstand would immediately assume it's some wacky sex toy. Just take a look at this chick:



No one who's about to make a mere telephone call has that kind of mischievous smile. Surely she's about to call Barry White and have him purr while she puts the earpiece to her ... you know ... clitoris.

Of course, for someone to think my bedroom Ericofon was a sex toy, I'd have to get someone into my bedroom in the first place, but that's another post for ... never. Alas, if only all love could be bought with PayPal. In the meantime, I'll have to settle for Swedish love.


Rowr.

11:47 a.m.

When there's no more entertainment to be had on the internets, it's time to put on pants.

Ars Gratia Artis

My desire for a nice bowling theme for my livingroom is unrealistic because I'm unable to find acceptable bowling art on Ebay.

Take these two prints:

Sure, the ladies are lovely, but they're only tangentially related to bowling. How is anyone supposed to take me seriously as a fake bowler if I've got prints of amateur bowlers on my walls?

What I need is real bowling cred, and for that I'd need to go to the O.B. (Original Bowler, duh), Dick Weber. I found this gorgeous piece on Ebay ...

... but it's only 7 inches by 11 inches. If it were 7 feet by 11 feet, then we'd have something. Then we'd have the start of a respectable bowling theme by a lousy sometime bowler who'd like to convince acquaintances of his deep and abiding love of the pins, however fraudulent and utterly pointless that display of love may be.

But yeah, 7" by 11". So maybe I'll go with a Frank Frazetta barbarian theme instead.

Hell yeah!

Of course, I'm still hopeful I'll find a nice black velvet portrait of Elvis crying. I suppose if I were a true patron of the arts, I'd commission a black velvet portrait of Elvis crying as he battles the hordes of the undead on horseback (in a bowling alley), but with my luck I'd accidentally hire a Cubist and then it'd be back to Ebay for me.

ABC After School Special box set: why? And why not?

The 13-disc ABC After School Special box set. I know what you're saying, because I'm saying it, too: "It's $60. And you've already learned most of these lessons. And you've got enough crap."

But if you're anything like me, you're also saying, "There's a special called Did You Hear What Happened to Andrea? aka Andrea's Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy? Oh, that sounds awesome."

I think it's hilarious that they had to make an After School Special to tell kids that hitchhiking is dangerous. Although maybe hitchhiking was never really that dangerous until the word circulated around the serial killer community that America's highways were like a smorgasbord, and then the word got out to the ABC After School Special people (mind you, I'm not saying that the producers of the ABC After School Specials had contacts in the serial killer community ... although maybe they did) and they made Did You Hear What Happened to Andrea? aka Andrea's Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy and used the fear-mongering power of tv ("Bathroom germs will kill you and your family. Tonight on Local 6 Action News!") to get the word out about hitchhiking.

I am, of course, working under the assumption that Did You Hear What Happened to Andrea? aka Andrea's Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy involves the ... y'know ... bad stuff that can happen to a hitchhiking teen, and the tragedy isn't that Andrea was counting on hitchhiking to the prom and couldn't get a ride and ended up missing the prom. I mean, missing the prom is vaguely tragic, especially if you had a nice dress and were hoping for a nice venereal disease (as they were known then), but it's not as tragic as ... y'know ... the bad stuff that can happen.

But $60, man! I really need to join a ring of DVD thieves. But like, one of those DVD theft rings that lets you join without having to do any actual stealing yourself. True, the creators of the DVD's will lose income because of the theft, but it's not like ol' hitchhiking-tragedy Andrea is in any condition to enjoy her royalties.

Judgement Night 2: Fast Zombies Take All!

It's amazing to consider that I am so unstimulated during the day and yet still largely unable to sit down and write something here. Does that make sense? Not really; maybe your writing would be clearer if you tried it at some time other than 12:33 a.m. on a Saturday night. Well, I would try writing at some time other than 12:33 a.m. on a Saturday night, but I've got this weird inability to write at other times of the day -- that's what I'm trying to say, that it's amazing to consider that I don't write more given the fact that my days are largely uneventful spans of time filled with non-adventures of my own choice. Oh, I think I see what you're getting at. OK then, I forgive you. And I you. Thank you. You're welcome, and by that I mean, "I'm welcome."

Every year or so I'll feel badly for not keeping in touch with Bryant Johnson, who was the among the funniest and most talented people I knew in Montreal. So on the Every Year or So Anniversary, I'll google the kid and visit his web-comic, which inevitably leads me to believe that I always underestimated his intelligence. It'd be easy enough to contact him, but sometimes I feel that I've got too little to offer in terms of scintillating correspondence and the scathingly witty insights found therein. He just illustrated a card game based on 19th Century paleontology, and I'm wildly impressed with that.

Oh, here's Dave news you can use: I got a new cellphone. The number's the same, but the phone is all new and all different. For reasons best discussed with my fictional therapist, I got a phone that takes pictures. I'm already imagining myself taking photos of hotel heiresses in the altogether, ne'er-do-wells' license plates, and secret documents. So if anyone knows of any hotel heiresses in the altogether, ne'er-do-wells' license plates, and/or secret documents, please call me on my cellphone and let me know.

Is it "ne'er-do-wells" or "ne'ers-do-well"? (To learn the answer, flip to page 3!)

Does my fondness for incorrect convoluted plural forms ever get tired? (To learn the answer, read the next word: No.)

The title of this post is a tribute to the wonderful mix CD sent as a thank you to those who pledged during Mike Lupica's show during the 2005 WFMU marathon. Sweet Christ is it ever good. And Michael Shelley's "What Else Should I Do While These Razor Cuts Heal" is another insanely good WFMU marathon thank-you mix CD. I've got other WFMU marathon thank-you mix CD's, but I haven't listened to them yet because I'm unable to stop listening to the aforementioned two. I'll keep you posted, and possibly post an mp3 or two in the days ahead. Or hell, just email me and I'll send you a copy: superstar at this domain, yo.

1:30 a.m.

Life's pretty good. I'm completing my ridiculous errands, I'm cooking food, I'm eating food, I'm walking way too far for too little gain, I'm considering decorating my apartment with bowling posters, and I managed to sell 200 shares of Newmont before it slipped from $41 to $40. That's $200, dude!

Sure, I could have sold it last March when it was $44, but this is now, and life's pretty good now.

Carrots 'n' Coke

There comes a point in the evening when it's intellectually time to go to bed, but emotionally you haven't given up on the day yet. You've met your quota for "Things to do in a day", but you have a hankering for more and you refuse to go to bed unsatisfied. TV won't do it. Movies won't do it. Video games won't do it. All the books you want to read are in the library, which is closed at this hour. So you go to the fridge, because stimulating your taste buds is a reasonable substitute for stimulating your mind; ask a third of North America. And you open the fridge and you see the ginormous bag of baby carrots and the half-bottle of Diet Coke, and it's rather sickening to consider how happy you become.

Yes, I currently have a quota for "Things to do in a day". It's 2. I can accomplish only two things in a day. I'd like to do more, but I've got three weeks until school and all my friends have day jobs and I'm living in Saskatoon. I've got tasks, chores, goals to accomplish now that I'm here again, but if I get all productive I would everything done inside of a week and then I'll be left with long empty days in this town. It's like Schenectady, if Schenectady were in the Canadian Prairies.

Today I helped Hippie Crystal move and had the Dell Guy replace my laptop's motherboard. Helping Crystal move wasn't really a "thing to accomplish" so much as a "thing to do". Perhaps there's no distinction. I don't know. I shall ponder this on a future date and consider that a "thing to accomplish". Other things to accomplish:

1. Put away clothing.
2. Re-arrange livingroom furniture.
3. Sell stock.
4. Research status of utility bills.
5. Cancel appropriate utility services.
6. Research cellphone options.

Aw crap, that's nothing. At two per day I'll be out of stuff to do by Friday. Oh, I almost forgot "Remove/back-up songs on iPod, put new WFMU comps on iPod" and ...

... nope, that's it. So I've got half of Friday covered.

Oh! "Make curry". Booyah! That gets me to the weekend, and I'm sure the weekend will offer plentiful ideas for future diversions. Ah, Saskatoon, how I love your inadequate number/quality of art house movie theatres, live music venues, and museums.

The world's a mess, it's in my kiss.*

*not a terribly appropriate lyric, but it's what came to me. And it's X, so who knows what the fuck it really means

air canada terminal: you are bad

i mean, what kind of low-rent airport terminal doesn't have wifi access? this kind. what kind of airport terminal only has awful internet kiosks with shitty non-standard keyboards that have only one shift key? this kind.

stuck here for another 2 hrs, 49 mins. gah. i hope i get my luggage today.

i was almost air-sick today. haven't felt that since 1981. awesome!

no, not awesome ... shitty! yeah, that's it.

i wish i'd known the weather an air canada were going to screw me over; i'd've packed more movies.

time ... running out ... kiosk ... sucks

I'll miss you most of all, bear poop

In eleven hours I'll be on a plane bound for Canada. I'm sorry to leave Ashland, but I've been here long enough and it's time. I got a lot done, though I'd have preferred to get even more done.
Replace "Canada" with "the afterlife" and "Ashland" with "Earth", and that paragraph gets really creepy and sad. And weird: who gets on a plane knowing that the destination is the afterlife? Wow, I really hope I don't die on the plane. That would really suck. For you, I mean. I'd just be dead, but you'd have to go on, and you'd have to wait for my bank account to be empty so that my webhost's automatic PayPal withdrawals would finally be denied and this site would go down. But that wouldn't happen for years. My creepily prescient elegiac epitaph would hauntingly remain, reminding you of this bright candle that was snuffed out before, during, or past its time, depending on your opinion of me.

Can you tell I hate flying? 'Tis true!

I need a car. I should drive eveywhere. It'd take longer, and it's statistically more dangerous, but holy fuck do I not enjoy flying. Why, I hate it so much that I'm unable to resist vulgarities like "holy fuck" when writing about flying!

Plus side of flying: more time spent with Wigfield. Line of the day from that book: "Quitters never win and neither do losers, and you people are both."

I want to poop back and forth

I went with Mom to see Me and You and Everyone We Know this evening. It was good. Pretty to look at, pleasant actors, easygoing pace ... all very agreeable. I wanted to go based on the reviews, and the film didn't disappoint. Mom had a good time, too, which was a relief; I was afraid that teens giving blowjobs would be just the sort of thing to turn off the old dame. But no: she dug the movie. After the movie we talked about contemporary art, which was a nice dose of intellectual stimulation after the day's shopping trip. (For reasons too complicated and mundane for a blog post, Mom now has a second cellphone. Yes, I'm as amazed as you are that there exists a topic too mundane for a blog post, but there you have it.)

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, Anxious Dave

I've got one movie left in my Netflix queue. It's Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. It's listed as "Short Wait" in my queue, and I'm anxious as to whether it'll arrive before Tuesday. I'm going crazy! I somehow doubt any video stores in Saskatoon will have the dvd. I haven't seen the movie since 1996 or '97, back when it was the CFCF Late Movie one night in Montreal.

Having cable takes the fun out of late movies, because great stuff is playing 24 hours a day on the Independent Film Channel and Turner Classic Movies. Right now on IFC they're showing At Close Range, a 1986 crime flick starring a young, and therefore really cool, Sean Penn (Have you ever seen Bad Boys? It's amazing!) and a mustachioed, and therefore really Walken-y, Christopher Walken. Holy crap, look at the cast listing at IMDB: Mary Stuart Masterson, Chris Penn, Kiefer Sutherland, Crispin Motherfucking Glover, and Stephen Geoffreys.

"Stephen Geoffreys?" you may be asking. "Is he the guy who ... yeah, I have no idea who he is. Who is he?"

Stephen Geoffreys played the sex-obsessed altar boy in Heaven Help Us who passes out when he sees all the girls sticking out their tongues for Holy Communion. He played "Evil Ed" in the Fright Night, which I remember being really good. He played the guy who gets laid in Fraternity Vacation, which also starred a young Tim Robbins. (Hey, if you saw these movies, you'd go, "Oh, it's that guy!" He's ... distinctive.) And yeah, he's the guy who played bit parts in mostly decent movies and then went right into a two-decade career in gay porn. Check it out, some of these sound great! Gay Men in Uniform: really, how much more specific a title do you need? Mechanics Bi Day, Lube Job Bi Night: now that's what I call a work ethic. Cock Pit: did it really take until 1997 for a gay porn movie to be called "Cock Pit"? The Big Screw-Up: why, that sounds like something Dashiell Hammett could have written! Transsexual Prostitutes and Transsexual Prostitutes 2: I'm guessing his character was so rich and multi-layered in Transsexual Protitutes that he had to come back for the sequel. Or maybe he likes being in porn. Who am I to judge? It's not like gay porn producers are beating down my door to get me to perform in Seamen Training Day. I mean, I'd probably say no, but it'd be nice to be asked.

Back to the non-gay-porn At Close Range with Penn and Walken and Glover: I'm Tivo'ing it, which, coupled with cable tv, is really taking the fun out of late movies. Even though it's only tv, I'm nostalgic for when I didn't have cable and I could expect a late movie. I've seen so many great movies late at night that I might never have heard of otherwise. Dark Star, Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains, the aforementioned Dirty Mary Crazy Larry -- see, these are the kind of low-rent movies that are cheap enough for last-place local tv stations to buy the rights for, and the kind that are too low-rent to be shown on "respectable" broadcast and cable stations. It's kind of a shame that infomercials are replacing late movies on broadcast channels, but I felt the same way when Oprah debuted at 4 pm on channel 7, thereby taking the slot that was home to the occasional Afterschool Special. Ah well, such is life: out with the old (teens with problems) and in with the new (housewives with problems).

Best line from an Afterschool Special? "I've got this thing inside me ... it's called gonorrhea."

I hope Stephen Geoffreys has seen that one.

I hate when math makes me go to the movies

Stealth is [probably] bad.

The Island is [probably] bad.

But ...
(Stealth + The Island) * drive-in theatre = intriguing possibility.

Saget!

The Aristocrats was very funny. I guess the word is out, because the theatre was packed on a Wednesday afternoon. It's pointless to try to recount some the material in the movie because so much is in the delivery and in the context.

Bob Saget is a very dirty man. He knows it, and everyone in the movie knows it; his version of the joke is inter-cut with other comedians telling stories about him.

Sarah Silverman is very funny woman. She doesn't even tell the joke; she just tells a story about the joke, and it's gold.

Carrot Top made an unwelcome appearance in the movie. The audience's groan was audible when he appeared, and the relief was palpable when his appearance proved to be a short one.

Make no mistake: my dislike of jokes about bodily functions and their associated fluids has not changed after my enjoyment of this movie. It has to do with two things I mentioned before: delivery and context. Perhaps it's the complete overload of said functions and fluids. Perhaps it's the fact that the material is there not because they couldn't think of other, non-bodily fluid material, but because the material is the very point. I don't know. I can't explain it.

Now having said all that, I shall go and have happy thoughts about flowers and sunshine and the couch in Joe Franklin's office.

Olivia Tremor Control! Secret Taco Stand!

The Olivia Tremor Control show was so good. The ten musicians onstage were constantly trading playing duties on an amazing variety of instruments: guitars, bass, two drum sets, banjo, a cymbal hanging from the ceiling, two trumpets, sousaphone, a couple brass horns, clarinet, cello, violin, saw, typewriter, bullhorn, megaphone, keyboard, accordion, concertina, xylophone, bells tied to sticks, a stereo tied to a stick, one of those mouth-organs, a plastic sheep, and a reel-to-reel. Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum came onstage for background vocals on one song, and then played drums during the encore, receiving huge ovations both times. CGI and black-and-white film clips were projected onto the band, and the audience and band tossed paper airplanes at each other during most of the show. At one point the band picked up their horns, bell- and stereo-sticks, and plastic sheep, and snaked through the audience, then got back onstage and resumed a-rockin'.

I was jealous of Trish for seeing them play with Neutral Milk Hotel back in the day, but this show was so good and I'm so greatly pleased that I got to see it, that what's the point in jealousy?

On the cab ride back to my sister's place after the show, I passed The Corner/La Esquina, which was written up in the NY Times recently. On the street it's a dive taco shop, but knock on the steel door in back and someone might answer it and let you in to the chi-chi secret restaurant/club in the basement. Or they might not.

Wow, when I put it like that it's even lamer than I originally thought.

Olivia Tremor Control! Cheeseballs! Face Huggers!

I'm seeing Olivia Tremor Control tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about that. Opening for them are the Tall Dwarfs, whom I'm excited to see after reading this entry at the WFMU blog. Note to self: buy goddamn earplugs.

At some point prior to that show, I'm going to see The Aristocrats with my sister. I'm pretty excited about that, too. I suspect that's a movie on which we'll be able to agree, thus avoiding another ugly Air Force One incident. Holy crap was that a bad movie.

On Thursday I will pick up another of Amy Sedaris' smokey cheeseballs. I will eat it before it gets moldy. Am I excited for that? Yes. There's also the revenge element adding to it. I will eat that smokey cheeseball and will thereby show other smokey cheeseballs that if one of them decides to go bad before its expiration date, another will be sacrificed in its place.

Since receiving the Alien Quadrilogy: Special Groomsmans' Gift Edition the other day, I've watched the directors' cuts of Alien and Aliens. Alien was almost impossible to get through because *SPOILER WARNING* I knew all the characters were doomed, except for *DOUBLE SPOILER WARNING* Sigourney Weaver and the cat, and I felt badly for all of them. They were just space truckers; they didn't have a chance!

I don't feel as badly for the characters in Aliens; they were heavily equipped military personnel who *ENOUGH WITH THE COMPLETELY POINTLESS SPOILER WARNINGS* should have been able to handle themselves.

There are so many plot holes in both films that I get annoyed trying to think about these movies to any serious depth ... so I shan't. In the future I will get drunk and air my grievances, I swear. I preferred Alien to Aliens in part because with Alien there was only one movie's plot holes that annoyed me; in Aliens they came in with all of Alien's plot holes and then tossed in their own, so that's like two movies' worth, but considering how much all these plot holes annoyed me, I suspect that plot holes are incremented exponentially, so that by the time you finish Alien Resurrection, you've had to endure the equivalent of 16 movies with massive gaps in logic. (I prefer Alien over Aliens for reasons other than plot holes, but the over-use of "plot hole/s" and "Alien/s" in this paragraph has set my brain back twenty years so the best I can say at this point is "It's just better, OK?"

Mint ice cream with Oreos: the solution to America's obesity crisis?

I think "mint with Oreos" may be the world's finest ice cream flavor. It's like mint chocolate chip, but with Oreos instead of chocolate chips. I never cared for the chocolate chips. I care for Oreos. Add mint ice cream and I'm in love. Deeply. Unquestioningly. With a fervor and an ardor that is unmatched in the annals of fervor and ardor.

It tastes a lot like mint fudge-covered Oreos, and god knows how much I dug those. But the ice cream ... mint ice cream with Oreos is like the hot friend of mint fudge-covered Oreos that you never thought you had a chance with, but then mint fudge-covered Oreos dumped you, or went to jail, or joined the army or something, and mint ice cream with Oreos bumped into you one day and you totally ended up making out and it was awesome.

I think mint ice cream with Oreos (heretofore referred to as "micwo") could solve the country's obesity crisis. No, it's not low-fat. It's regular ice cream fat plus Oreo cookie fat: it's super-fat. But micwo (heretofore referred to as "mint ice cream with Oreos" -- the hell kinda stupid name is "micwo"?) is so goddamned delicious that if the word got out about it, folks would eat gallon upon gallon of it and their hearts would explode.

So I guess I'm trying to get lots of peoples' hearts to explode. I feel somewhat badly about all the death, but mint ice cream with Oreos is an alluring bitch goddess who's got me wrapped around her minty, icy, creamy, Oreo-y finger.