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Bacolet– an omelet made with Bacon salt (also feta and some Parmesan because I don’t have any other kinds of cheese)!

Last night I saw !!! at the Middle East– they were awesome as usual. However, I really hate the Middle East. It’s impossible to see anything if you are under 6 feet tall– the stage is really low, since the ceiling is so low. So, if you’re short, you either have to be exactly up in the front row or way in the back where you can see over peoples’ heads because they’re so far away. Plus, it was super wicked hot and sweaty. I know that most shows are hot and sweaty, particularly when you’re seeing a show with lots of dancing, but this was out of control! I had to go to the back because I was breathing in too much hot sweaty air; I felt like I was drowning! It didn’t help that there was this tall girl with sticky-outy dreads that kept smacking me in the face with them. I had to watch her every move so I didn’t get an elbow in the face or my feet stomped on. Eventually I fought my way to the back because it took too much effort to constantly get out of her way, and the floor was so packed there was no other place to go.

Maybe I’m of another generation; but I think it’s rude to dance wildly, flailing your arms in all directions and jumping up and down in a place that is packed with wall-to-wall people. I’m just old and cranky I guess. I let the environment dictate too much how I feel about a show. I should learn how to block all the extraneous stuff out.

Anyway, the music was awesome. They played some brand new songs, including one that they had never played live before! That was pretty cool. The opening band was called Dragons of Zynth, which I thought sounded a lot like TV on the Radio. Surprise! They’re buddies with the TVotR people, and have collaborated with them as well. They were good, but a little too cerebral and experimental for me.

Yay for shows!

Right now it’s about 90 degrees in my apartment, which really sucks. The fan only blows the hot air around. It’s a little cooler outside, but I can’t open a window because I don’t have screens and the cats will escape. I REALLY HATE THIS WEATHER! I’ve been kinda cranky about it all week. I can’t function when it’s hot. I should move to Antarctica. However, I also hate endless winters. I live in the wrong climate– it’s wintery, grey and shitty here for 10 months out of the year, and then for 2 months it’s obnoxiously hot and humid. Isn’t there someplace that’s just kind of 65 degrees all year round with occasional mild temperature spikes and drops allowing for sun or snow? When I am Overlord of the Universe, I will outlaw bad weather.

I just got tickets to see !!! at the Middle East! I AM SO PSYCHED! I’m going to ride my bike, too, so they don’t tow my car this time. The forces of nature don’t want me to see this band… I will defeat them!

A: We are Devo (and the Tom Tom Club)

Tomorrow Devo is playing with the Tom Tom Club at the harborlightsfleetbankofamericaArcherDanielsMidlandProctorGambleMicrosoft Pavilion tomorrow night. I’ve been wanting to go ever since I heard about it, but I’ve been lacking in the funds lately. Also, there’s a $10 convenience fee + a $5 handing charge (even for will call tickets) which annoys me. The last time I was going to see Devo, I had 2 tickets to a totally sold out show in Central Park where they were playing with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and stellastarr*… and it took 9 hours for the Fung Wah to get to NYC (It usually is 3-4), so I missed it. Will I make up for it tomorrow?

The Whatever It Is This Week Pavilion is a glorified tent outside, and tomorrow it’s supposed to be thunderstormy, blustery, and hail at times, as well as being in the 90s and humid. I don’t feel that bad missing the show under those conditions! Thank you Mother Nature, for helping me with my crippling indecision! Now, let’s hope that the meteorologists are correct and I don’t end up kicking myself for missing another Devo show…

Philippa is my bike, in case you forgot. It’s the 4th anniversary of me adopting her! She has new handlebar streamers as well as some new stars for her spokes.

I just rode her to go see Jamie Lidell at the Paradise, and the show was AWESOME! I was a little dubious when I heard he was going on the road with a backing band, but it all ruled. I knew I should never have doubted Jamie Lidell, the man is a god among scrawny British freaks! He did a bit in the middle where he beat-boxed and scatted into the sequencer and made his own backing music to sing to. I love when he does the whole experimental bit, and this time around it was as brilliant as ever. As for the backing band, they were really great! The drummer’s dad even came out and played a number on the bagpipes. I can’t remember what he played, but I think I played that tune back before my pipes were destroyed in that flood (I’m still annoyed that my SECOND FLOOR bedroom flooded in a rainstorm, but what can you do?). Anyway, it was a nice touch!

My current mini-obsession is the mouse lemur:

They are nocturnal arboreal primates found in Madagascar with really huge eyes that make them look like those creepy computer-enhanced pictures of animals. They’re PRIMATES! They’re related to us! Some varieties find grubs under tree bark by echo-location, which is pretty cool- no other primates do that. Anyway, read up on the mouse lemur if you’re into small mammals.

Oh yeah, it’s also Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran’s birthday– maybe I should embrace all the useless knowledge my 0-12 year old self amassed and celebrate it somehow. I am always lamenting on how I can remember, for example, the names of Nellie Olsen’s husband and children on Little House on the Prairie, having seen the episode where she has twins ONCE, yet I can’t remember my phone number or my cousin’s kids’ names.

The genealogy saga continues– one industrious person traced a line of people back 17 generations. That’s back to the 1300s– there’s probably more, I just haven’t had the patience to keep tracking. I’m glad distant relatives have done all the research for me, because I really don’t need another thing to be obsessed with to take up all my time. As it is I’ve been staying up until 2:00 a.m. every night looking up stuff on ancestry.com because my free trial subscription runs out in like 12 days.

I’m having a bad week. I’m in a cranky mood. Allow me to indulge in some more whining…

1. I worked 10 hours straight today with no breaks or food. The plants on my accounts are suddenly all getting bugs of various sorts. Plus, all the lawyers at the law firms I had to service were mean today and didn’t want me touching their plants because they were busy. The lawyers that is, the plants weren’t busy. Plus, I cut myself 3 different times today on various plants and bled all over my clipboard.

2. I went to the Cambridge Hospital to see about my ear on the suggestion from someone at the Somerville Referral Line. Unfortunately, the free care clinic is only open from 8:30 to 4:00, and I have to work usually from 8:00 - 4:00. Maybe I can try to work something out tomorrow.

3. My shrink is on vacation for another week, so even if I could find some way to pay for drugs without insurance, he isn’t around to prescribe them. So, I have a splitting headache and am prone to bursting into tears at inopportune times. Oh yeah, the constipation isn’t terribly fun either.

4. Lard Ass peed on my brown pants, but I didn’t realize it until I got to work and smelled myself. I smelled lovely today.

ON THE OTHER HAND…

-Lard Ass hasn’t been peeing on forbidden things since I set up another cat box. Now he has one all to himself.

-I’m even more addicted to MI-5 and I discovered that season 2 is also available for “instant watching” on Netflix.

-It’s the perfect temperature for hot cocoa, and I actually have some.

-All Lard Ass and Jarvis do is sleep together and fight. They’ll fight, and then the next moment they will be curled up together snoring. They’re kind of like most of the couples I know!

-The new Indiana Jones movie comes out this week.

-I have a ticket to see Jamie Lidell next month

- Athena and I went for ice cream sundaes yesterday and mine was exceptionally tasty. Ice cream (at least temporarily) solves all my problems!

- I bought a new battery for my camera so now it works again.

- I just watched the movie Gone Baby Gone and it was actually pretty good.

-My bike will be fixed by tomorrow! I got new purple handlebar streamers just for the occasion!

Today went on and on FOREVER. First we had to install a bunch of plants, then we had to go and water all the regular ones… oy, 9.5 hours of hauling and pruning is enough plants for one day! I came home and crashed and am lame.

I wanted to go see the Foals tonight at the Middle East… I’m really seriously digging them. But, I’m lame. Next week is Cut Copy and the Mobius Band at the Paradise, and I will not lame out on that one!!! The following day British Sea Power is at the Paradise, but I’m getting old. I think my days of being a slave to mopey Brit rock are coming to an end. I’m more of just an indentured servant at this point. Oh, except CC are Australian and the MB are from Western Mass… close enough.

My newish job is awesome, but man is it making me tired! Today I went up and down like a million flights of stairs 21st floor to the 25th and back down again and back up again and then down and up some more, sometimes carrying a big tree that we couldn’t figure out what to do with because we had ended up with it by accident. I get home from work and sleep and read a book or play Boggle with the innernets or something… basically, all these entries are totally boring and my life is headed in that direction as well.

Let’s see… something interesting…

I caught a snippet of conversation on the bus today: this woman in maybe her early 20s was talking about some ailment she had. “so I went to the doctor and he said I was 6 months pregnant!” Like… 6 months? How could you not know you were pregnant for that long?

Another snippet I overheard was when I was near this lawn full of pre-school kids. One teacher was talking to a little boy:

Olivia really likes you, doesn’t she? She’s your friend, right? And why does she like you? Is it because you’re Japanese? … or is it because you’re really cool?

I’m sure Olivia was really just using that kid for his Japanese-ness.

So, I typed “something interesting” into Google image search and here are some of the “interesting” pictures I came up with:

OK, I’ll admit that llama butts are pretty interesting.

Wow. Fascinating.

So far, I’m not terribly riveted.

So, I said “screw you” to my grocery budget this month and went and saw the Editors. I had to go downtown anyway because we had a work meeting, and then a pizza party because we increased our margin in poster sales last year more than any other store. Of course, I don’t think this was hard because the posters were stuffed way in a corner where nobody ever saw them the previous year and we moved them to a more prominent location. Anyway, The Office rewarded us with dinner at Bertucci’s, which was pretty awesome! I am very pro-goat cheese when it comes to pizza toppings.

Anyway, we were done with dinner at about 7:45, and the Editors show was scheduled to start at 7:30 with 2 opening bands. I moseyed over to the Orpheum, bought a ticket and got there just in time to catch the last 2 minutes of Louis XIV, the first opener. I saw all of Hot Hot Heat, who were pretty good. I thought they were better when I saw them like 5 or 6 years ago when they opened up for Iggy Pop, but they were still good. They’ve had 2 albums since then, but they still played a lot of songs from the album they were touring for when I saw them last.

The Editors were awesome! However, it was the Orpheum, a large old-fashioned theater, and not the close and personal environment of the Paradise where I saw them last. It’s always different seeing a show from a seat far back in a huge room–I’m not used to that, since 98% of the shows I see are in small clubs. The last time I saw the Editors I was standing about 4 feet from the bass player who loomed over me with his bass that seemed as big as a string bass. This time I was about 30 feet from the stage and there were colored lights going crazy the whole time. It was really beautiful as an effect, but everyone but the lead singer was in darkness pretty much the whole time. I like checking out the entire band and seeing how they make the music when I see a show, and the lighting made it pretty near impossible to do so. Anyway, my little gripes aside— the show was great! Tom Smith (the singer) jumped up on the piano a couple of times– he’s just so… awkward. It’s really oddly endearing how strange his movements are. It’s like watching old tapes of Ian Curtis dancing– it’s just so bizarre; it’s like he’s on his own planet, and for some reason that makes you feel closer to what he’s doing.

Anyway, concerts are like my anti-drug, I always feel tons better after I see one, and this one was no different. Yay, Editors!

I finally got to see !!! (aka chk chk chk, Bork Bork Bork, yuk yuk yuk etc)! FINALLY! Allow me to re-cap the past woes of my not seeing this band…

1. I bought tickets to an April show in February. They moved the date, but I didn’t find out about it until it was too late.

2. They were supposed to open for Daft Punk, which I had also bought tickets for way in advance. By the time the show rolled around, the opening band was The Rapture. I didn’t really care about this, seeing as Daft Punk was awesome enough to make up for any other catastrophic world event that could happen that day, and I like the Rapture a lot, but still…

so I finally made it, and the show was A W E S O M E!!! It seriously was amazing. It required moments of dancing that you can only do with your eyes closed, since vision intereferes with the groove and is distracting. I was dancing like a fiend, even after a stupid drunken 6 foot 5 college kid shoved his way in front of me and proceeded to do the “mosh eveyone short out of your way with the elbows” dance. I got smacked in the face with his elbows a few times and he also jumped on my toes. Did it detract from my time? NO! I just formulated a quice law in my head about how when I am Dictator of the Universe, I will outlaw tall people from being on dance floors. Actually, no. I will give them their own separate fenced-off area to dance in, kind of like the glassed-in screaming-baby room in some churches. The music was so good, annoyance just kind of floated away. the lead singer guy came over to each side of the room and danced in front of everyone, in his exaggerated silly-disco style and all was well. He looks a lot like Tarrant from Blake’s 7, which also kind of cracked me up.

Separated at Birth? :

Ok, they look nothing alike, they just have the same ’70s sci-fro. My inner nerd makes these kinds of connections.

Anyway, the show rocked on every level. It rocked so hard, in fact, that I didn’t really mind it that much when I left to discover that my car had been towed. Stupid Brookline! I parked on the other side of Comm Ave, in an area that said “2 Hour Parking Limit”… but I neglected to see the sign further down that said “Tow Zone from 10pm-3am, 6am-10am” So, you can park for 2 hours at a time from 3am until 6am and then again from 10am until 10pm. That’s so Brookline! Damn I hate that stupid haven of fascism! Terrence & Tanya were kind enough to let me crash on their couch last night since I had missed the last train home.

The parking office was of course closed today, so Terrence suggested I called the police station. Luckily, that was the right thing to do, although no place on their website or on the parking office’s voice mail does it tell you to do that. I had to go to the police station in Brookline to get a release for my car (the stern-looking no-nonsense officer who wrote up the paperwork was named Kaylee. I discovered this when an elderly policeman said, “Hey Kaylie, lets see ya get some real wohk done ‘dinight, ok?” Kaylie has got to be the least menacing name on earth. Can you picture yourself being arrested by someone named Kaylie?). Then I had to go pick up the car in the outer regions of WATERTOWN. Would they ever tow a car to a lot nearby from where your cars was towed? Of course not! Would they ever even tow it within the same city limits of where you parked? Whatever for? Why tow cars someplace that was even accessible by public transportation? Luckily Terrence was there to chauffeur me around to my various red-tape encrusted destinations. $110 later (OUCH), I have my car back. To add insult to injury, I still have to pay the $30 parking ticket, of course. FUCK YOU IN THE GOAT-ASS, BROOKLINE!!! FUCK YOUR MOM, TOO!!!!!!!!… AND YOUR MOM’S MOM AND YOUR DAD’S MOM FOR GOOD MEASURE! WHILE WE’RE AT IT, FUCK YOUR DAD TWICE AS HARD BECAUSE NOBODY EVER MAKES FUN OF DADS!

Ok, I’m done with my anti-Brookline rant. The show was totally awesome. they even played “Me and Giuliani Down By the School Yard” which they apparently had not played in NYC the night before, despite requests. They played “Must Be the Moon,” “Heart of Hearts,” “Pardon My Freedom” and a few other songs– they didn’t play that many different ones since each song lasted about 10 minutes or so. This is the only instance where I can 100% get behind the freeform jam on songs, since they do it so funkily (is that really an adverb?). !!! has the perfect amount of rock and roll. I tend to like music that’s more roll than rock, but music that’s all roll can get a little boring… kind of like Trance music. That’s all roll. This is why you can’t dance to Black Sabbath (it’s pretty much 100% rock) and can’t headbang to anything John Digweed ever touches, since he’s all roll. !!! is 70% roll and 30% rock, I’d say. What’s the difference? I can’t really describe it. The beat is circular. It is more like a wheel rolling than a pendulum swinging. I actually saw a dude once at a show, instead of tapping his hand on the bar, he was making a circular motion with his finger, as if he was demonstrating the motion of a Ferris Wheel. That’s what I’m talking about! Try doing that to AC/DC or especially CCR (their songs are all in 1 or something; maybe a really fast 2. They’re not even in 4. It’s weird.) Because I’m a dork, I’ll demonstrate.

*OTHER stands for influences outside of the realm of rock and/or roll (i.e., jazz, polkas etc.)

So, uh, where was I before I went on this Photoshop tangent? Oh yeah, the !!! show. It was awesome. Brookline Bites. !!! = good. Brookline = bad. That sums up my world today.

How big a hole would it make on the surface of the earth?

HOLY CRAP THE EDITORS WERE AMAZING!!! They were really, really good. They played just about all the songs from their new CD and at least half of the songs from their last one. I was impressed with the attention paid to the final consonants of lyrics by the lead singer (Tom Smith). If there’s one thing I hate, it’s sloppy diction and poor enunciation. Tom Smith totally nailed all the words like they were bullets. He is such a strange person on stage. He sings his heart out and plays the guitar and fake-piano thing with as much energy as possible, all the while flailing around randomly and occasionally making odd gestures with his hands, like he doesn’t know what to do with them. He kind of has the Michael Stipe syndrome in that way, which is nerdily endearing. He seemed kind of shy, yet he made a silly face for a fraction of a second at a dude in the audience who was taking a picture.

The other person whom I saw the most on stage was Russell Leetch, the bass player. He is a huge guy who plays a huge bass almost upright as if it were a bass viol. The big bass looks tiny in his hands, and he nonchalantly plays it as if it were the easiest thing in the world. I was kind of mesmerized watching his fingers effortlessly hitting the notes. I always watch bass players and how they play; I can’t help it. I always think maybe I can pick up a thing or two. However, I know that if I were to play Russell Leetch’s bass, my short, stubby fingers would barely be able to get any of the notes, and the huge bass would probably be way more than half my height! I didn’t really see the other two guys, being short and the show being super crowded.

The first opening band was Syracuse’s own Ra Ra Riot who were really really good. The second band on was Biffy Clyro from Scotland– they were a RAWK band playing rawkin’ metalesque proggy rock. They kind of reminded me of a slightly artsier System of a Down. There was too much rock and not enough roll in their music for me– shirtless guitar wankery is not really my thing. In contrast, Ra Ra Riot played “gayer” music and have a violinist and a cellist in the lineup. I can’t think of a better word to describe music that’s the opposite of manly guitar rock besides gay. Maybe there’s more New Order in it than Metallica? I don’t know. RRR is really good and I’m glad there’s someone to eclipse Benny Mardones as the only musical act to come out of Syracuse in my lifetime.

Basically, it was a totally awesome show. There was a good crowd (it was at the Paradise), and everybody seemed to be having a great time. Saki was the one who got the tickets, so we went together, which brings me to the next order of business: I have a Real Boyfriend now. It’s kind of strange; I’m the crazy one in this relationship. I’m not used to being crazier than my S.O., but in this case I am– Saki is totally balanced and clean-cut and has a career and all that stuff. It’s kind of nice for a change; I almost feel like I’m the one being babysat for once!

Saki and I saw Shoot ‘em Up today, which was really really awesome. I love movies that break down the formula by *being* the formula. This movie took every action movie cliche and turned it inside out; yet managed to be really funny at the same time. It wasn’t ha-ha Naked Gun funny, rather darkly humorous Brazil type funny. Plus, it was non-stop action from the very beginning to the end. it had unbelievable action sequences which kept getting more and more unreal, yet the more unreal they got, the more you believed they could happen since Clive Owen’s nameless character was an all-purpose grizzled hero. Awesome.

DAFT

PUNK

Holy crap the show was awesome! The show opened with the alien theme in Close Encounters with some hard techno grooves coming from a seemingly empty stage… then they appeared amidst a cloud of smoke in full robot regalia. Decked out in space suits with gold helmets, they did their thing atop a giant pyramid. The pyramid was made of big screens, so they projected big trippy TRON-esque moving patterns and pictures all over it in time to the music. There was some scaffolding around them with different colored lights which also synched in time to the music. Plus, since it was near Coney Island, the giant sky-jumping thing was right there in the background, adding its own flashing lights which sometimes were in time with the music as well! For the encore (the appropriate “One More Time”), the dudes’ spacesuits were outlined and detailed in glowing red neon on a darkened stage, so it looked really spacey-trippy–just some outlines bopping around (it reminded me of the Anti-Matter Beast from Zeta minor from the Dr. Who episode, but you didn’t just hear me say that).

They started with “Robot Rock” and then proceded to mix pieces of all the songs on their 3 albums together, throwing a couple “around the world”s and a “prime time of your life” or two into the middle of giant extended dance breakdowns which would explode into a complete booty-shaking groove, which I’m not sure how they managed, since by all logic it would have reached a point of maximum danceitude at the first breakdown.

The entire arena was a huge dance party, with people grooving with glow-sticks (though actually fewer of these than I expected), doing the Ithaca Flailing Dance in the open space behind the crowd but before the bleachers, dancing in the bleachers, and generally enjoying the prime time of their lives (yeah, dumb pun I know; I couldn’t resist). The crowd in front of the stage (I thought I had gotten the swanky floor tickets, but it turns out I just got bleacher tix. note to self: pay attention next time!) was all dancing in unison; it was like a giant wave of bodies jumping up and down.

Now, my intellect was tapping at the back of my skull at small points, feebly saying things like, “that could be anybody up there in those suits; it’s probably Jim the Janitor from Jersey and his cousin Al pushing the PLAY button on a big CD player…” But the rest of me totally was lost in grooveland. It was purely visceral–dance music is like that. Dance music is a merely a tool to get you to shake your booty, but when it’s done right, damn it’s good!

I am still reeling with the awesomeness! Krustee forgot I was coming up yesterday, plus I am running out of kizzash, so I came home this morning rather than doing a grand NYC weekend thing. It was awesome to see the Krustmeister for those several hours, though!

Rock. On.