File Under: More Ammo For Laura And Alice

I went to see Spider-Man 2 last night at the midnight showing, as I’m a nerd with no job with nothing to lose. This, of course, meant that I slept in today, supposedly. At ten or so, I woke up with a very clear impression of a dream, which rarely happens.

Sarah and I were on tour with the Pet Shop Boys, documenting the whole thing – her words, my photos. I’m in the back of a car with Neil when he turns to me and asks me to tell him about my relationship with her. I explain our story (which is, in fact, very cute and a testament to how I am sometimes smarter than my hormones) to him and he smiles and says “I think it’s wonderful than you’re in a gay man’s relationship with a beautiful woman.”

I called Sarah to tell her of this and she responds with “Neil was always my favorite.”

(My main problem with the first Spider-Man movie is that does a great job of recreating the feel of the comics without any story, really. Spider-Man 2 was a huge improvement on this – chock full of character and story while never losing the essential elements that have kept the character in print for the last 40 years. Every bit of soap-opera, every funny bit, every non-costumed moment works, and with better fight scenes and a villain with a motivation you understand, you get a much richer movie. The best super-hero movie yet.)

So, in a fit of being not quite as bright as Mama Beaucoup wishes I could be, I quit my job the other day. It’s nothing personal – strictly professional. Unfulfilling, the work, to say the least. I struggled to little avail. Nothing but respect for everyone there, but the Midwest was not buying software from this guy.

Two interviews lined up with places doing stuff that is not salesy. I doubt they’ll give me nightmares about calling and calling and calling to no real results.

(PS> If you’re going to quit your job, make sure you do it in June. Man, I love this sitting in the sun, reading books about Kraftwerk jazz.)

The whole trend of wearing a “pant” under a skirt can end now, as can saying “pant” instead of “pants” or “trousers” or “jeans.”

I am tempted to, once again, write up a couple of electronic music reviews for The Weekly Dig, Boston’s lesser (and more snarky) free weekly that contains news and reviews instead of, oh, Hot Club News and women in various states of undress. Last time I tried it, I got roundly ignored, which was just plain rude of them, what? Maybe I need to just get insanely bitchy with my reviews, which is what they seem to want.

File Under: My Heroes – A Comparison

(You’ll have to scroll down – Blogger hates tables.)

Born and raised in Arkansas, a desolate, mostly flat state.	Born and raised in Iowa, a desolate, mostly flat state.
Married and had a kid with a shrewd, blondish lady he met in college.	Bedded and had a kid with shrewd, blondish lady he met at the Academy,
Liked other women. A lot.	Liked alien women. A lot.
His second in command appeared to be robotic and emotionless, but would occasionally surprise friends and enemies.	His second in command appeared to be robotic and emotionless, but would occasionally surprise friends and enemies.
His chief advisor when trying to become president was a cantankerous southern guy.	His chief sounding board when trying to make decisions was a cantankerous southern guy.
Got caught with his pants down by Ken Starr.	Got caught with his pants down by Khan Noonien Singh.
Rose up from impeachment proceedings to lead the country.	Rose up from losing his ship to save the planet.

Guess who’s back?

File Under: Wait A Minute, Mr. Postman

Yesterday was the day of much mail at La Casa De La Maison Beaucoup. Part of an order from Amazon, some old Star Trek (shudup) books from a nice lady on eBay, two Netflix movies (The Straight Story and Mystic River – I’ve watched neither yet), and the first issue of Harvard’s “porn” mag.

The Amazon order portion that arrived was Fragile State’s fuckin’ gorgeous album, Songs From The Dust Bowl. Wow. This is the chillout record I was looking for when I wandered over to Caia’s Magic Dragon and found it a bit too wishy-washy. I told J that it was like Air with the French Irony removed and replaced with a healthy dose of The Funk.Big Chill’s review of the record sums it up perfectly, if a bit effusive, as the writer notes – album of the year contender. I came across this thanks to Soma.fm’s Groove Salad – you really should listen.

H-Bomb is disappointing, to say the least. I am a pretty simple guy when it comes to porn – I like to look at naked girls I might, feasibly, stand a chance with – bonus points if they’re smart enough to make it to Harvard. Too bad that there’s maybe 10 photos in the whole damned magazine (a slight exaggeration, but only slight) and there’s way too much postmodern angst about sex and not enough sex. In fact, all told, this was basically a year’s worth of bad sex articles from Bust. They promise more in their second issue, but I seriously doubt they’ll deliver.

File Under: It Takes Time To Build

Well, the Beastie Boys have done it – they’ve made an album that’s as good as their seminal Paul’s Boutique (which, while I love it to pieces, is more about production than rhymes in my book.) To The 5 Boroughs is a tight album – 15 tracks clocking in at 42 minutes with not an ounce of bloat anywhere. The city they were raised in is shown a lot of love – the title cut (obviously), references in “3 The Hard Way,” and “An Open Letter To NYC” all speak of the New York experience in a way that nobody that isn’t from there could ever come close to.

Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten

From the Battery to the top of Manhattan

Asian, Middle-Eastern and Latin

Black, White, New York, you make it happen!

Bush and his buddypals also get a fair amount of mic time, but not quite in the lauditory tones used for the Big Apple. “It Takes Time To Build” may be my favorite hip-hop track of the year – a pretty knowledgable (and funny) dissection of why we need Bush out of office with some tight production by the boys themselves, just like all the tracks on the album.

So step up to the window and place your bets

Is the US gonna keep breaking necks?

Maybe it’s time that we impeach Tex

And the military muscle that he wants to flex

By the time Bush is done what will be left

Selling votes like E-pills at the discotheque

Environmental destruction and the national dept

But plenty of dollars left in the fat war chest

MCA’s sort of becoming the Tom Waits of hip-hop, his voice getting lower and with more of a growl with each release. Combining their “artistic growth” with a real focus for this record, they’ve created fine, fine stuff. Between this album and Kayne West’s debut, I feel like there may be hope for major-label hip-hop. (Then, of course, I hear that damn Mario Winans track with Enya and P Diddy and I feel that it’s all over, let’s cash our chips in, go back to listening to wax cylinders with people reading nursery rhymes.)

Also: Yes, I changed commenting systems. The reason for that is that Blogger makes you suckers log in or go through loops. Haloscan doesn’t. This is customer service, people. Use it.

This is a brief story about my friend Pete. My friend Pete (pictured here) sometimes does silly nerdy things that make my silly nerdy things look like the sort of thing you’d find Dick Cheney doing when he’s not squeezing oil of out babies – utterly normal, in other words.

Pete’s got this Aryan mannequin he picked up for a song a while back and immediately, he started playing with it, customizing it. The first step was the Greedo mask. The second was the orange jumpsuit from a catalog that sells things to prisons or other institutes where there’s orange jumpsuits needed, en masse. He then procured gloves to reproduce those famed hands with the sucker-tips and finally, the vest that bears a Rebel Alliance pin and some tools in a pocket. This creates, in the end, a Rodian mechanic for the Rebels in Star Wars.

Pete was going to pop by our place whilst transporting this from his old pad in the scenic Acton area to his new love nest with his special lady, Cheryl. Kristin announced that we needed to make a Target run and, well, the Rodian Pilot needed to be moved upstairs so I’d have a place to sit in the car. It was in the middle of carrying this monstrosity like it was a recently-killed combatant (Pete at the shoulders, me at the feet) that my new downstairs neighbors decided to come outside of the house. Yeah, that was interesting. “Hi, I’m the big nerd that lives upstairs from you. This guy here is the bigger nerd who’s leaving this wicked cool mannequin with me!”

So, the Rodian mechanic was in our kitchen for a few days, scaring the living daylights out of me at least twice. When Pete and Special Lady Cheryl came by on Saturday night to pick him up and grab some movies (my movie library is pure class for those who want mordant indie comedies, HK action flicks, and classic cinema,) it was in the middle of removing the Rodian that, of course, I saw my new downstairs neighbors again. I have no clue what they think of me or the company I keep now, but I suspect they’re waiting to see if I wear wizard’s robes to do the wash.

The guys behind Sky Ape came by the shop this weekend – Bob made sure they did a sketch of the titular character of the book for me, as I have personally moved two-thirds of their gross sales in the Boston area. It’s a gorilla with a jetpack – how can you not want to read this book?

Speaking of gorillas, I was wandering home after a brief sojourn out of the house on Sunday evening when I saw a man in a gorilla costume walking towards me on the street. Of course, when you see such a thing, you wonder to yourself “Am I about to be set upon and have my bowels spilled to the pavement?” as only a madman would wear such an outfit on a temperate June evening, but Gorilla Suit Guy seemed pretty happy, sort of bouncing along and making little noises. At about the ten-feet-away mark, I raised my hand for a high-five and as we passed, he obliged me, making appropriate gorilla sounds of “OOK OOK.” We even managed the low-five on the backswing without missing a beat and each of us went our separate directions. The damnedest thing, that.

Memory prodded by a conversation with Kari this weekend: having to write, 100 times, the sentence “I will not pay Stacy McBride $1 for drawing the General Lee.”

Stacy was the fastest kid in my elementary school days – blonde haired with that ever-fashionable bowl cut that ever boychild circa 1980-1984 had. I remember that he drew these beautifully elaborate (for, you know, an elementary school kid) drawings of cars instead of doing, say, schoolwork. I think my punishment (which also involved having my mom sign the paper I wrote this down on) was also the first time I was ever in trouble for doing something wrong in school. I was once spanked by Ms. Stone in the first grade for reading too fast during a “let’s all read really, really slowly aloud” exercise. I figured that if I shut up and just read at my normal rate (which was, shall we say, on a Barry Allen scale compared to any other kid in the first grade in Arkansas,) I’d finally find out what the hell happened to that purple puppy. After about a minute, I was done with the text and stupidly didn’t go back to the same page that everyone else was on during the reading. Ms. Stone caught me looking out the window, probably daydreaming about being Captain Kirk and smacking the hell out of some Klingons and yanked me out of my seat, dragged me into the hall, and whipped out her Ping Pong Paddle For Unruly Students, laying a couple of swats worthy of Hank Aaron to my backside while lecturing me about paying attention in class. Tears running down my cheeks and red flecks in my vision, I told her exactly what the fuck the little puppy had been up to and the second I got home, I told my mother.

Ms. Stone had to write an official apology that was placed in my permanent record and I was immediately shuffled into the third-grade reading class.

File Under: Diesel, Saturday AM

I really, really, really hate not being able to breathe. Nose, mouth full of gunk. Asthma wheeze constant. Waiting on a refill at the pharmacy.

File Under: The Greatest Song Ever

I want candy, bubble gum and taffy

Skip to the sweet shop with my sweetheart Sandy

Got my pennies saved so I’m a sugar daddy

I’m her Hugh Cronyn, she’s my Jessica Tandy, I want candy!

Gonna get ya asses kicked

Nasty

Do it to your daddy, embarass your own family

Just ’cause you came in front of a kid and his candy

I need candy

Any kind’ll do

Don’t care if it’s nutritious or “FDA approved”

It’s gonna make me spaz like bobcats on booze

A hyperactive juice that only I can produce

Use a giant drill

Bore straight into hell

Releasin ancient demons from a sleep forever spell

So they can walk upon the earth

And get resituated

And hawk the diet pills that MC Pee Pants have created

Mess up the mix, mix up the mess

Come on down yo, here’s the address

I said six, one-two Wharf Avenue

Six, one-two Wharf Avanue

File Under: Australia Is Fux0red

The Exchange Hotel in the heart of the city was the scene of a pub competition in April in which live mice were chewed up and spat out by contestants.

(Not for the faint of heart or easily angered.)

File Under: See previous post. Formatting issues led to two.

• Stephin Meritt’s music, which I just discovered. Wow, he’s talented.
  
• Modest Mouse’s last two records and yes, Laura, I know I need to get the others.
  
• The last few Ninja Tune releases. Class, especially the Skalpel album.
  
• My Grado headphones. Sure, they’re all science-fictiony and sort of big, but man they sound so warm and so lush that when listening to Miles and Trane, it’s like they’re sitting in the same room as you.
  

File Under: Women are never happier than when they’re making a list, but I like to indulge on occasion, myself.

• Record labels. (Thanks, Megan, for the link.)
  
• Electroclash / “Retro” synth stuff being called “Electro.” No, electro is The Jedi Knights doing “May The Fuck Be With You” and Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” and that old record by The Egyptian Lover, not Adult. or Fischerspooner, no matter how much I like them.
  
• The RIAA treating everyone like criminals. Yes, I think that artists should retain rights to music, but your thuglike tactics are more motivated by the Record Labels’ profit margins.
  
• Emo fans with too-tight t-shirts declaring their love of some dude with a guitar who is sad. Yes, I like the occasional bit of strum-and-sob, but c’mon, lads. Lighten up. Exception for female fans, of course. Too-tight t-shirts on women is a plus. (All hate mail to the usual address.)
  

File Under: Somebody Else Noticed.

When Americans went to see John F. Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin at the U.S. Capitol in 1963, women wore dresses and high heels and men donned suits.

But during Monday’s procession through the Reagan library in Simi Valley, many men did not even remove their baseball caps as they paid tribute to a man who was never in the Oval Office without a coat and tie.”

(Registration required to read the article. Don’t want to set up one? Click Here.)

So, you’re going to a funeral. What do you wear? Oh, probably a suit. Minimal level of dress is a coat and a collared shirt, right?

Not if it’s the President’s coffin you’re going to see! I was shocked, kids and kidettes, to see that people were showing up to A) stand in a seven hour line and B) didn’t even bother putting on proper trousers! What sort of tomfoolery is this, showing up to look at the president’s post-mortem residential center without even having the decency to at least grab a pair of Dockers on your way out? On the news, I kid you not, I saw someone wearing shorts and a t-shirt next to the coffin, looking mournful. It’s impossible to show proper levels of misery while wearing an oversized Spider-Man shirt, denim shorts, and a pair of Converse All-Stars.

If you cared enough about the man to bother showing up, at least have a shred of dignity about it.

Will on Junk shared this interesting story:

This one time, my dad found a picture of his grandpa sitting on the bumper of

a truck. He (dad’s grandpa) was a truck driver. What struck my dad was that

gramps was wearing a suit. So dad asked him about it. Gramps basically said

“Boy, when I was a truck driver, it was a respectable profession. We all

wore suits to work everyday.”

Not that I really am the sort to wear a suit every day, but I think it’s a shame that at one point there was that much dignity in just doing a job like that and now people are disrespecting the zombie Reagan like that. I should start attending funerals while dressed like Ali G, I suppose.

File Under: Nice of you to give your phone number, you racist fuck.

This opens up a 248k .jpeg when you click.

You have to read the comment added by someone.

Ryan’s got a blog now. I’m his first link.

BeaucoupKevin: Now you are linked to me!

ryanssecretIMlogin: I better get some other links going or people will think we are teh gay.