Californiageddon

can't argue with the sky

2008-08-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

My grandfather just passed away and i decided i wanted to play this song, from Fred Thomas "Sink Like a Symphony"
This is all I can think of to say right now.

"I held my breath, but I breathed in the smoke regardless
of my room as it burned.
It filled my lungs and I was done,
and I slept.

I saw the line between sleeping and death.
As I stepped over it, a small voice said, "don't be afraid,"
and a choice was made.
and I dream of an auditorium surrounding me.
A thousand eyes, a thousand hands held up the sky.
And I believe I heard their voices in my mind say,
"don't be sad; it's just your time go.
Make a ladder of your spine,
let every rung be stepped and climbed.
Make hummingbirds from your insides,
and let your face turn into vines,
and let your teeth and bones rewind.
But realize, now, realize
that you were only walking light,
and let it go back down
and shine on everybody that you loved when you were alive."

And so Elit,
would you wait for me,
even if I was removed from our time and died?
Well don't cry, 'cause it's only the last part of life,
and i'm still by your side.
And it will happen to you like it happened to me,
and the rest of the people we know.
Like the summers all end and trees lose their leaves,
and the water turns back into snow.
Every grandmother, grandfather, particle--
we're all here for a while then we go,
living for love and love alone.

And you will be with those angels in disguises,
cleverly holding their hands over your eyes
to make from your nightmares the nighttime.
And you will believe a thousand days before you die, maybe 999--
you'll feel the numbers' slow decline,
but, everybody, it's alright 'cause you can't argue with the sky.
You can't argue with fire."

busy month

2008-08-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've been hiding out a lot, but it would be nice to see you all - I'll be travelling for about a month, details below. Please make it to some of these other events, I am pretty proud of them all (I've neglected promoting a lot of these because of the Club Sandwich 2 Year anniversary show, which went really well (review here). We even won a Guardian "Best of the Bay" award!), and am in a rush to get a bunch of projects done before tour. Please come out!

Aug 4th Monday
Playing tonight with KIT and BARR/Brendan, Fox Pause (the Sarah Han jambode), and Nighborhood Stars (Diekman) at Mama Buzz!
6-9 pm. all ages

Aug 9th Saturday
Craziness of crazies - CHEN SANTA MARIA is almost done with our album (yay) and we are playing in Napa Wine country this saturday the 9th!
di Rosa Preserve: Art & Nature
5200 Carneros Highway 121 Napa, California 94559 • 707.226.5991
from 6 to 8pm for the opening! come out and experience this.

Aug 10th Sunday
READ IT AND WEEP:
performing as a "spoken word"/"comedy" format (only the second time I've done this) opening for heavy hitters such as Sam McPheeters, Tara Tavi, Erika Anderson, Yasi Perera, Lanie "THE RIPPER" Fletcher, and Sarah Cathers. Should be a total goof, but fun times
http://21grand.org

Aug 14th
SISSY SPACEK BIG BAND/LARGE ENSEMBLE is playing at 21 Grand on Thursday August 14th,
>> George Chen - Guitar
>> Vice Cooler - Drums
>> Paul Costuros - Woodwinds
>> Chris Dixon - Drums
>> Tony Dryer - Double Bass
>> Jacob Heule - Drums
>> Matt Ingalls - Clarinet
>> Loachfillet - Percussion
>> Kanoko Nishi - Koto
>> Corydon Ronnau - Guitar
>> Amanda Warner - Bass
>> Kim West - Woodwinds
>> John Wiese - Electronics
>> Gerritt Wittmer - Electronics
http://21grand.org
http://clubsandwichbayarea.com

Really stoked to be going on tour with my 7 Year Rabbit Cycle bandmate Rob Fisk as COMMON EIDER KING EIDER, opening for other 7yrc-ers Jamie and Ches in Xiu Xiu! The first half will be with the ever-amazing Evangelista with Carla and Tara and friends. The second half is with Prurient, totally running the spectrum! All dates below, come out and say hi if you can! We may also need places to rash, so get in touch about that...

Aug
20 - Austin, TX @ Mohawk - w/ Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, Common Eider, King Eider
21 - Houston, TX @ Orange Show Center for Visionary Art - w/ Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, Common Eider, King Eider
22 - Birmingham, AL @ Bottle Tree Cafe - w/ Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, Common Eider, King Eider
23 - Atlanta, GA @ Drunken Unicorn - w/ Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, Common Eider, King Eider
24 - Charlotte, NC @ Milestone - w/ Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, Common Eider, King Eider
25 - Baltimore, MD @ Sonar - w/ Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, Common Eider, King Eider
26 - Providence, RI @ Living Room - w/ Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, Common Eider, King Eider
27 - Boston, MA @ Paradise - w/ Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, Common Eider, King Eider
28 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom - w/ Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich's Evangelista, Prurient, Common Eider, King Eider
29 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Garfield Artworks - w/ Xiu Xiu, Common Eider, King Eider, Prurient
30 - Columbus, OH @ Milo - w/ Xiu Xiu, Common Eider, King Eider, Prurient

September 2008
1 - Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop - w/ Xiu Xiu, Common Eider, King Eider, Prurient
2 - Pontiac, MI @ Crofoot Ballroom - w/ Xiu Xiu, Common Eider, King Eider, Prurient
3 - Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge - w/ Xiu Xiu, Common Eider, King Eider, Prurient
4 - Dekalb, IL @ House Cafe - w/ Xiu Xiu, Common Eider, King Eider, Prurient
5 - Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon - w/ Xiu Xiu, Common Eider, King Eider, Prurient

Catcall

2008-07-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

My bandmate Vicent Coolier (just made legal) hipped me to this track.
A few years ago (guess it was 2006) Kiosk from Sydney came out to the US and did a bit of touring. I still have one 7" of theirs that I think is quite good (the CD didn't do as much for me). They played the crazy final show/party at Club Short with Finally Punk, xbxrx, and Paradise Island and I was busy with trying to clean the last bit of random stuff out of the basement and wondering why the hell we were having a show when we were supposed to be out the next day - it was also being referred to many as an "eviction party" and the rumor was that the hosue was being demolished anyway, so no one seemed apologetic for snapping the metal railing off the side stairs. I could do an entire series of Club Short posts, but i will refrain for now.
Point being - Kiosk played one of the first Bus shows (in front of Mama Buzz), the last house show at my place, and were rumored to sign to Kill Rock Stars before going back to Australia and breaking up. I've seen Jack a few times since, but i did not know what the rest of the band was up to till just now.
The vocal stylings on this song are very removed from the hoarse riot grrl styled screams that Kiosk traded in, but both the video and song are pleasant surprises. Catcallis the project, the nausea inducing video (perhaps a camera inside a plastic hamster ball?) is directed by Warran Wright of the enigmatic Moop Jaw. I can't vouch for the rest of her material, but this song is really catchy, and confirms my unacknowledged recent softening towards mainstream female fronted pop (Santogold and I've come around to Feist). Enjoy.

Demolish Serious Culture

2008-07-22T15:44:00.001-07:00

thanks.

movement

2008-07-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

*it has been an interesting summer.
*i left 19th ave in a mess, it was a mutual mess, but i prefer clean breaks. these breaks kept throwing abusive tendrils my way, and seemed to spiral and drag me down into their black hole toxicity, but i am in a beter place now, that is all there is to say about that.

*i was told "you don't have enough room in your life for other people." maybe that is true. at least in terms of the amount of physical stuff i have, the carbon and papyrus and plastic footprint of my existence thus far, i accept the accusation. now i will be all ephemeral serverspace, i will have enough memory to disseminate, i will multitask.
*finally feeling settled into this place. the first few days, it felt unreal until i could get wireless. wireless became more essential than showering or cooking, at least in the state i was in. now that is sorted, i have some plants, i have the kitty cat, i even got some art for the walls that i bothered trying to find a frame for. i lack tools, but improvisation is the best tool.

*i made myself puke the other day. i came home from a show and was so hungry i ate these hardboiled eggs that i had in the fridge and a whole pasta dinner after midnight. some time around 5 am i was up and feeling wretched. i knew i was going ot be doing nothing that whole day but hanging out in the bathroom. the next day, i moved my pa speakers that i'd leant to the girls rock camp and ate some pho, the only thing i'd eaten in more than 24 hours. i noticed that i had a broken blood vessel on my eyeball. i don't think that's ever happened before, but it probably happened with either the puking or the lifting. it hasn't changed colors yet but the doctor says it will. can't wait.

*every few weeks i go visit my grandfather. he's been in and out of hte hospital, but he's like 93, so it's kind of to be expected. i feel guilty that i don't do more to help him. i have my flurry of activity, and when i am free some times i just want to relax and read or sleep, and i know other people don't have that luxury. my cousin and aunt have taken on the major care of him, i think it's sort of acknowledged that i don't have that many resources to spare, other than driving them to and from the doctors. there's some what of a language barrier between us, which is more on my part than his, but he's always been a reticent, strong silent type. it's weird to think that i resemble him the most out of anyone in my family, possibly my dad, but it's been pointed out by others, and i see it more. it is really hard to fathom the loss of independence that comes at that age, and dealing with the inevitability of your own mortality, and it's hard not to get morose or sentimental about it. the place i have felt most effective has been when i'm able to talk to the doctors. my aunt's english is passable, but there is a lot of technical information she may be missing, and i recently went with her to the pharmacy to get medications - she had to bring a chinese to english medical dictionary to break down what all the drugs were doing. i worry about how often he's lapsing into hospital visits. one thing that keeps me encouraged - he was always into ping pong, and even though he's on a walker and can only stand up for about 5 minutes without it, he can still hit the fuck out of a ping pong ball. his skills have declined a bit since christmas, when he was doing some crazy backhand returns and reaching for the ball. this time he missed a few direct down the center shots (which i'm not even that good at) but i am still amazed at the accuracy and reflexes he has considering what he's been throug the past few months. he's not reaching as far as before, but he can assuredly beat my mobile ass. i wonder how much practice, how much muscle memory and instinct stays with you, and what if anything i will be good at if i ever make it to that age. it actually inspires me to be good at something, anything, to the level that i could even do it one tenth as well as he can at 93.

donate money to my medical bill

2008-06-09T17:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the hooligans of pepper juice, I have a $1200 ambulance bill. My insurance is covering part of it, but I am now responsible for $740 of this bill resulting from a "caustic chemical assault". We may not know each other, but if you feel like helping me out, even though there are way worse problems in the world to deal with, I sure would appreciate it. Thanks, GC

red hot chili peppers are bad in your eyes as well

2008-05-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

i was about to move some stuff from my old place to my new place on friday. it was garbage day and i was bringing in one of my trash cans from off the street when two guys were walking up the hill towards me. one of them asked me for 50 cents. i said "sorry" and kept going about my business. as i came back down stairs to get my other recycling can, they were still standing in front of my house. one guy said something to the other and i could tell something was about to go down. the next thing i knew, my glasses were covered in some orange-red shit. i just took them off and looked at the guy. it was some homemade shit he'd put in a plastic squirt gun. i am not sure what response they were expecting, but i just said "what the fuck is this?" and he stuck his hand in his pocket pointing it at me saying "you want some more?" i should point out that these guys were both a lot taller than me and no one else was on the street to witness this at all. i was more pissed off and just shocked that anyone would bother to do this, over 50 cents no less, or just boredom. i knew it was just a plastic squirt gun, but if someone in east oakland is trying to fuck with you and sticking something out of their shirt, it's probably a good idea to leave it alone. i just started walking towards the house so as not to drag out this confrontation and they just started laughing and walking back up the street. i tried to throw something at them but it just landed on the sidewalk. at this point, no one else was home and i tried to wash the shit off my face. bad move. although you are supposed to wash your eyes out, the fact that most of this stuff hit my glasses probably prevented me from falling to my knees right away and possibly getting rolled for my wallet that had $2 in it (ironically the same amount of money i had in my wallet when i was mugged before). but throwing water on my face just spread it all around. i was feeling an insane burn and mucous running all over. i wished i could just look up on the internet what to do to treat pepper spray, but then got more anxious about hte fact that this was some home brew ghetto mace that could have mixed anything else into that squirt gun. i ended up calling 911, barely able to see what the right buttons on my phone were. in a short burst, 3 cop cars and an ambulance rolled up. the ambulance just helped me blow my nose and then put me on the gurney thing and ran water over my eyes for a few minutes. they told me they wanted to take me to the hospital. i tried to think of a way not to go, having heard horror stories of insane bills for ambulance trips, plus i was only 2 blocks away from highland anyway. my paranoia about the spray got the best of me, and they made me think that i should get everything checked out just to make sure i did not have my eye cut or anything. so i'm sitting on the thing with my clothes completely soaked and get admitted. hopefully my insurance covers all this, but i'm not feeling optimistic about it. i'm sitting in the hospital for nearly 2 hours. one of the cops comes along and asks if i want to press charges. i think about this, and who knows if these assholes were over 18 or under, and i think about this conversation i had last week with em about "the prison industrial complex" and just the fucked up dynamics of gentrification and how everywhere i've lived in oakland the past 7 years has had insane crime and violence happening, and how i have been told not to trust cops my whole life. when it comes down to it though, i figure these guys could be doing this to anyone else and maybe they wouldn't report it and yes, i think i could pick him out of a line up, but no, i don't know for sure. they want to irrigate my eyes again, but once i'm able to see and i'm drying out all the contents of my wallet, i just ask them to make sure i'm not going blind from whatever got sprayed on me. he does a ph test on my eyeball and it looks fine and they discharge me. i walk the two blocks back to my house somewhat disoriented and clothes still soaked through. thank god i'm getting the fuck out of east oakland.

tubing

2008-04-20T02:32:00.000-07:00

Muxtape

2008-04-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

yeah, i made one as well.
http://geochen.muxtape.com/

jpg roundup

2008-04-13T00:57:00.000-07:00

Rio En Medio. Saw her at a weird traintracks show in Berkeley last Saturday

along with Avocet from Feathers and Idea Fire Company, recently relocated to SF.

Scott Arford churning guts at Misanthropic Agenda with Obstacle Corpse, Wiese, and DJ Gerritt.

"Flesh Flows" by Adam Beckett 1973

Rebecca Whipple paintings at Johansson Projects

For Pudding

2008-04-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

I had a dream about a nuclear attack. Not to make the name of the blog more meaningful, I guess it's just anxiety. The thing about it was having like half an hour or so of awareness that bombs were coming, and trying to tell people, but the people I was with seemed to embrace it. I told this girl that I was not ready for this, but she said we should just go outside and watch it, that it was better to be outside than hidden away in a cave.
Needless to say, I did not feel very good when I did wake up. It took a lot of effort to drag myself out of bed and when I got to work I parked behind a Ford Explorer whose license plate read "IVPUDYN". The license plate holder thing around it read "Never Satisfied". Both of these things confused me. For one thing, why would it be good to advertise that you are never satisfied? Sexually, or with the need for speed, or are you a perfectionist? "Insatiable" maybe, but "Never Satisfied" seems to be about, you know, life. Or possibly never satisfied with the amount of PUDYNG in your life. Do you think "IV PUDYN" means "For Pudding"? Or an intravenous way to inject pudding? Or worse, intravenous "pudyn."
The best thing that has happened today is Sikwaya finding this on eBay.
I would love to grow more arms just to play this. Maybe after the nuclear apocalypse, I will.

Friday in a food coma

2008-03-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a a delightful pulled pork social and going away party for Richard from Absolutely Kosher (I'm sure the irony is not lost on them). At one point Cory Brown is lecturing the youngin's about ye good old SF days of PEE, VSS, A Minor Forest, Track Star, et al. Dawns on me that this is all over ten years ago and no one else in the room cares to process such nostalgia. I am chastened by the indifference of youth.
The two links that I wanted to point out today are perhaps unrelated, but in my carb-induced daze, I am sort of blown away by this pre-Edison sound recording that is being presented down at Stanford for the Association for Recorded Sound Collections conference. Makes me wonder if the cryogenics people were not at least half not-wrong in their thinking.
The other bizarre news of the day is the Mexican emo riots. Or are they technically "anti-emo riots"? Sort of like the way Zoot Suit riot got turned from an incident of white soldiers beating up Chicano kids to a terrible, terrible song by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies.

more Austin

2008-03-26T23:01:00.000-07:00

I get up pretty early on Friday to meet up with Scary Mansion at Chris Rolls' hotel. I passed on trying to get into this apparently sold out Children's Museum show the night before. I like the Austin bus system, it's pretty regular and cheap. Paul Costuros is asleep in the hotel room when we get there. Leah and her twin sister Vanessa arrive, we were hoping to shoot on the roof by the pool, but there's a power issue, and it's probably noisy, so we opt for filming in the room. The videos turned out great I think, they are here:
We eat a so-so rather bland pita sandwich at the Pita Pit. My food options are pretty wide open compared to my vegan and veg friends, but I still find the selections pretty bland and I vow not to overdo pizza. Paul goes to buy some swim trunks and I get a picture taken wearing a dorky hat and wraparound sunglasses i found at work.
On friday afternoon, we play at Okay Mountain, a gallery near/behind an inflatable moonwalk rental place, which also sold pinatas and had air conditioning. Our band was playing on an Asthmatic Kitty bill with Gary Higgins and Weird Weeds. I ran into Katie Byron and her friend walking down Cesar Chavez and dragged them there with me. It's a pretty cool gallery, and it's a hot day in a backyard with only porta potties. The abundance of porta potties is a sad reality when you bring in a ton of drunk people in to your town and the plumbing capacity is overrun.
The Okay Mountain show runs late and we have to play before Weird Weeds and bounce before they play. I also talk smack about the free gross vitamin water that is there, and I guess the vitamin water people are there. Whoops. We have to drive across town to get to the Opera House for the Smell show. We worry that we are running late, but of course there is still plenty of time because there is a band playing that is friends with the owners who got added. We watch the band Magic Johnson. I go to the cafe across the street and start talking to this random girl. She is editing video, and I ask her what it's for. "Did you watch the Super Bowl?" she asks me. No, I didn't. She says "I don't normally watch it, but I won this contest and they showed my video during the Super Bowl." She entered a Doritos music video contest and now she has a record deal with Interscope. I invite her to come see my band across the street but I can tell this is not going to happen. For the record, I eat a lot of Doritos.
Opera House is right around the corner from End Of An Ear record store and next to a shop called "New Brohemia" that is a men's used clothing shop. I ask them how long they've been around with that name, because I thought I copyrighted the name "Brohemia" in 2000. I honestly never did anything with the name, but I am pretty sure I called dibs on that shit. The guy there said they've been around "a few years," but there we go.
Anyhow, we play indoors in this tiny room and it is pretty fun. Seeing the whole LA crew is nice, it felt like a real show on a real tour. We wait till the end of the show, which is Anavan, and then drive off across town to find the 501 Theater show that Veronica set up.
(photo from The Skyline Network)
For those unfamiliar with Finally Punk, they were/are four young (still young) girls from Austin whom we met in 2006 when they came through the Bay just as we were leaving Club Short. There is an assumption that we were evicted from Club Short. It is not so cut-and-dried, but in any case, people decided to trash our house as if it were being demolished. I am sure it will one day be demolished, but up to this point, it has not been. What can I say about Finally Punk playing our house - the railing on the side of the house came completely off. In any case, Veronica is also in the Carrots and she had supposedly quit Finally Punk, but she played this show with them. When we arrive, Death Sentence: Panda is packing up and Naked On the Vague is playing. There is something distinctive about a certain genre of Australian vocal styles, one cannot put it down to just accents. There is an approach to singing which is see in bands like Sea Scouts, Lakes, and even Naked On the Vague, whose Lucy Phelan is the only woman I can throw this descriptor at. Nevertheless, they are darkly noisy and gloomy in a way that pleases me. I spend part or most of the next band waiting out front trying to locate friends I have told to come here, and I also go back and forth to Ms. Bea's where we've been told that we can play the UTR/ToddP show as long as we get there by 10:45 and promise to be done by 11. I see Michelle Valdez aka Bunnyphonic who moved from Oakland to San Antonio a few years back. We toured together a long time ago, and she seems to be doing well in Texas. Liz Harris shows up also. Finally Punk have the largest crowd as hometown advantage and the rarity of their performance surely comes into play. They have a lot more songs than I remember, and they have the crowd in the palm of their collective hand.
We play a very aggravated 5 or six songs right after them. The ticking clock of another show three blocks away probably adds to the adrenaline rush. Hate to be the dicks who run away right after playing, but that is the way of SXSW. We haul ass over to Ms. Bea's and borrow the equipment of the band before us whose name escapes me, but they are from Georgia I think. We end at 11 on the dot.
After DS:P, Michelle and Russell and I go to a diner whose name I forget. The line is not so bad. Michelle tells me about a residency she did in Barcelona. Both her and Russell agree that music is dead. Art is where it is at apparently. I'm kind of moping to both of them about feeling burnt out on music and they think I should move to Texas. It's not really sinking in at the time, but the longer I linger in Austin, the more livable it seems.

SXSW summarized

2008-03-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

I started off writing about this on the Little Otsu Studio blog, but now that I have my own thing, it seems more appropriate to continue the saga here.
(I just was about to say "I started blogging about this" when I realized the appropriate term should still be "I started writing about this." It would be like saying "I started zining about this." Still trying to wrap my head around this format.)
Anyhow, this is the analogy I like to use for SXSW. Do you remember (if you grew up around one) going to Chuck E Cheese as a kid? It was always super exciting in theory and the place seemed massive, but your carb overload and attention overstimulus starts to wear off after a while. There is that sort of forced sensation of fun that becomes codified, so at some point you start to wonder if it is really all that it's hyped up to be. Add into this the creepy voyeur/flaneur dynamic of excessive documentation. Also, you and your friends are just there to have fun, but some of your friends go in expecting that a guy in a giant rat suit is watching all the kids playing to cherry-pick their particular fun-having methodology out of the crowd and anoint them with Chuck E magic. How do you think they find all those clapping arms to mount on the wall?
This may sound excessively cynical, but I still associate Chuck E Cheese with fun. I like overstimulation in small doses. And if you don't play the game of caring whether or not the rat is watching your every move, you will have more fun. And would I really say "no" if Nolan Bushnell was under that rat mask and wanted to help my "career"? Probably not. The man started Atari!
My Thursday afternoon was spent at Ms. Bea's Todd P show, and then I pretty much spent the rest of my evening glued to one spot, the Habana Annex for the Upset the Rhythm show. Chris and Claire are awesome, they booked our UK tour and their band Hands on Heads played a ton of shows with us, and they put out our album. Playing their showcase was the ostensible reason for the entire trip. (Oh yes, my band for interest of disclosure, which probably doesn't apply if you are reading My Blog, is called KIT)
This is a pretty killer lineup. Gowns on first, followed by Soiled Mattress and the Springs. Bizarre yet straight-forward smoove jazz played by a strange trio of New Yorkers. Avi is on the comp I put out under his solo guise of Dim Diamond, but here he is pounding the drums. Saxaphonist Matthew Thurber also does these insane comics on Picturebox and on his own. I buy the issue of 1-800-Mice that I don't have already, which has three sushi chefs hunting down Peace Punk.

I think we play at that point. Some technical snafus, I think my pedal gets unplugged or the battery dies during the first or second song. I think we recover. There is apparently an overdubbed video on Superdeluxe. I am the one with the SG. Thanks "El Douche A" for the mild amusement.
High Places play right after us. I feel like I see them more than I see some bands that live in the Bay Area. Not that I'm complaining. Rob and Mary rule. I take the most photos of the trip here before I realize something is fucked with my memory card, so there are pretty much no other pictures for the rest of this trip.

Oh, did I neglect to mention that the Habana Calle Annex is outdoors with a giant tent? And that our stage is a giant mobile truck that was used on the Warp Tour? During the Hawnay Troof set, which actually was the first act of the night, VC invited people on stage and they bounced around, pretty literally, as the thing was probably not designed to hold that many people at once.
John Maus played after High Places. His records are great. I was expecting a band maybe, but much like Ariel Pink, he sings along to pre-recorded tracks. "Sings" may not be the right word. He freaks out a lot, runs around the audience, gesticulates wildly, is off the fucking hinge. I would not have guessed this level of aggro-ness based on his music. He looks and acts like a cross between Malkamus and Bob Linder from Total Shutdown. Truly bizarre.
Death Sentence: Panda are next. I see the kids from New Bloods at the show, and a few peeps from Terrorbird, and Tom Loftus, and a few SF peeps roll in for DSP including Tony Bedard and Chris Rolls. No Age rolls in from like their 4th show of the day. After the show I start walking with Russell back to his house, but he just moved to Austin like one week prior, so we get sort of stuck in a weird area. The first and hopefully only time in my life, we come across one of these rickshaw bike guys and he says he'll take us back to Cesar Chavez for $5. At this point I haven't slept in a while and my feet hurt, so we buck up. This guy is dragging at least 300 pounds of competent human flesh up a small grade hill. I feel intensely guilty and we are going about the speed of a brisk walk. We give him ten when we get near the Congress bridge. And then it's a long walk down Congress to Russell's, where I sleep on a hardwood floor with some sheets by his dryer. I am so tired that It does not matter.

Have to break this up into smaller chunks, this is too much to read at once I imagine. Friday is described in the next post.

inaugural posting

2008-03-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

In an ongoing series of exhibitionist tendencies, welcome to my blog. Yes, I already have a flickr account, a last.fm, a myspace, a facebook, and jesus, shelfari? When is the last time I read something that did not have pictures? It's been a while.

Right now, the most interesting thing going on is my friend Juan is going to South America for a while so I have inherited his cat named Juno. He's not pregnant. He does have mutant extra thumbs.