yesterday me and amanda and mel had a real swell outing, supporting BDK at his chess tourney in sturbridge (which was super boring but it was fun to be in a very large totally silent room with a ton of people, and there were a lot of good characters in full ownership of “chess tournament partipant and all the stigma thereof”). we also went to building 19 for tiny pies, and i also got cool fake vans for $2.50 and the requisite barbeque chips. oh, but the most amazing thing was that we went to quan yin, and found out it was the lady’s birthday and i made her a card. i’ve been trying to have a first-name relationship with this famously stand-offish (but genuinely nice) woman for, oh, EIGHT YEARS. this could be a very big step. great day. amanda, we like you. when you leave, come back (and when you come back, bring me a present).

speaking of presents (although maybe if something is in parentesis you can’t say you were “speaking” of it?) i got that usb thing in the mail, and after some fretting over versions of this and that, it looks like i’ll be able to start assembly tomorrow once i confer with my buddy at stark electronics and pick up the neccessary buttons, pots, switches, and get a nice wooden cigar box from the owl shop.

paperrad is playing this thursday in providence, and i can’t go, but it’s cool because i’ll be at two events that day that add up to one paperrad. SIGGRAPH during the day with my man psibs, blue man group in the evening with our own mike “tasty legs” leslie. yo!

friday’s drag show at the flophouse bar was not as fucked up as i hoped it wouldn’t be, in fact it wasn’t fucked up at all, it was fun. terribles, french in action, this was hypersection, and junior drag champion of worcester nikita la femme. many dudes in dresses and ladies in slacks, many locals who as i half-expected, have seen way crazier shit than that in the course of a day. drank a beer, tried to get jlvw to put “the bitch is back” on the jukebox (to no avail), generally cold kicked it. jonk napp wore his new cool style of bleached hair and eye make-up, he looked like a buff gary numan, it ruled.

i keep getting spams with subjects that sound like jo dery movies:

saturday night began at 7 or so at the italian american veteran’s hall behind d’errico’s on shrewsbury st.. i rolled up when i thought the show would be well underway to discover that it was just about to begin. nadir is the grindcore band from maniac mansion, they played first and it ruled. concrete facelift was all hardcore skater music, mouth sewn shut was hardcore with reggae and ska parts and from the angle i was at, the guitarist looked exactly like my friend david moore and moved like him too. the last two bands were from vermont but i left early. the weird thing about this show was that the hall was just too big. no complaints about the cathedral ceiling, but the floor was so wide it messed everything up. hardcore dancing is all a derivate of the circle pit, and all involves pacing from side to side, but also running, skipping, crawling, rolling, shoving people, and whirling around. in a basement or smaller club this is fine, there’s a packed buffer of people ensuring nothing gets too big. but at this huge spot people dancing built up so much speed that they were really plowing into people hard. and since the dancers were at the front, everyone else played the back, and the bands got lonely. not anyone’s fault, just a victim of architecture. the saving grace was that it was big enough that you couldn’t really get across the room twice without being a little winded. anyway, this isn’t me complaining, it’s just me observing. i had fun, some friends of mine were there, i felt like a sore thumb amongst all the comraderie, but that is nothing special. at one point one of the dudes drinking at the bar (just one of the club dudes) pointed at me and yelled “hey, that guy’s not wearing black!”. yup. but no one there looked down on me for not being in uniform, it was just me feeling conspicuous.

after i left i rode over to ralph’s for Boston League Of Women Wrestlers, which two drinks is the referee for.actually i stopped at the supermarket to get an apple and a bag of carrots. eating a carrot at a bar- funny, also satisfying. before the wrassling there were a few pretty bad rock bands, which was weird to see after getting destroyed by hardcore only an hour before. i drew in my book and talked to people outside, while kirk used my bike chained to the fence as a backdrop for his scene portraits. the wrestling show itself was pretty good, with themed matches between characters (a nun vs a girl scout, a stewardess vs a nurse, an american indian steroetype (?) vs an 80s rocker. two drinks told me that a lot of people get riled up and complain about the announcer, who really antogonizes the audience. and it’s true, he said some pretty shitty stuff. but it wasn’t fun to hate him, it was just, i don’t know, an appropriate action.

rode home eating carrots in the rain, slept through the major taylor race this morning, which i had really been looking forward to but still somehow forgot about.

talking to nice guy matt at the crust show about wikipedia, so here’s the wikipedia entry for all varieties of syllabus-free dance, including the circle pit, the pogo, and the ickey shuffle.

friday’s show ruled, obviously. professor murder destroyed it with the whistles and the synths and the timbales (just like tito puente (w/r/t timbales)); goin’ steady was perfect, playing total oldies, 100% gems, with matt coe really shining in the singing deptartment as promised, mike going coocoo bananas on the guitar, CB holding it all down on drums; this was hypersection had little andrew’s brother filling in, and it was cute to see them in a band together; jambu twanged out the banj in the fashion, no complaints there, i love it.

tonight there were two more shows, but more on that in the morning.

oh yeah, and the magic lantern cinema series now has a poster gallery, showcasing the best screenprinters there are, and inexplicably, me. totally weird, don’t ask me why

fresh events (pretty last minute):

if i had to sum up tonight by quoting the title / only rememberable part of a pop song, i would have to say “oh what a night”. first, i got mel to leave the house and we went to see the billy blue band completely destroy. i’ve mentioned billy here in the past i’m sure- a sweeter guy you’ll never meet, both humble and a great dresser (a rare combo), and a wonderful man. i feel that not many in his recent acquaintance are aware that he leads a tight blues ensemble, singing and playing harmonica, wearing a black suit, and generally owning, and tonight was i’m sure a real eye opener. the venue was “the ship” aka “the kelley square yacht club”, aka the music room at the hotel vernon, aka THE ROOM THAT LOOKS LIKE THE HULL OF A GODDAMN SHIP replete with A COMPASS FROM THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY (or that’s what someone told me) and A SHIP’S WHEEL THAT WAS A GIFT FROM BURL IVES. they’ve been proudly serving alcohol with no interruption since 1901– that’s right, through prohibition. billy brought a ton of people in, and the regulars were a good scene too. uh, $1 ‘gansett drafts.

after the show (two sets, then an encore, people dancing, and billy was, for a short time, shirtless), relevant parties trucked down the road to karaoke at the club car. we got there too late for the contest, but when the dj (god bless her) saw us coming she started a secondary $20 contest. guys, it’s been a long time coming, but i won. or rather, we won, becca and i, singing “love shack”. i also sang, per leonardr’s faraway request, “king of the road”. we closed the bar down and outside, smoked maybe an inch down, was a perfectly good cigar sitting on a ledge, and being as i was celebrating a victory, the cigar i did enjoy. rode home in the summer night with my neighbor sylvan, slowly pushing though a vacant kelley square, no-handing. really wonderful. sometimes you’re working on something, or you just get in a habit and forget to get out and have fun. but fun is still fun. also today i made a funny promise to myself with possibly hilarious implications, more news as it happens.

i welcome other’s comments on the night, let’s keep the comments dripping in.

last night hanging out with cool breeze and laura, band practice with jim (which ruled), ate popcorn for what seemed like hours as ML rattled off one band name proposal after another (many of which will become songs, like “mummyduster”, “hierospliff”, “that sphinx”, and “cartoon version of a future house”). no thunder storm like i wanted but heat lightning as i rode home. it’s cooler now than it was yesterday and i’m feeling better- doing daily exercise, shaving every day, eating granola and soy yogurt for breakfast.

i found a $50 variant of that $200 usb mixer thing i wanted, and it looks like it rules. you assemble it yourself around a prebuilt interface, adding up to 13 sliders, dials, or joysticks (actually 1 joystick = 2 dials), and 13 buttons, switches, and leds, and packing it all into a nice wooden box or whatever (a nice wooden box). i’m pretty psyched- this thing seems to be pretty much exactly what i want, and if i need more buttons and doodads i can just get another one (or two) and run them all at once. it’s totally reconfigureable– anything that controls voltage can be a control: a photocell, a body contact, a tilt sensor, anything. and once i have some customized gear i’ll be able to include cool geometric gear-layout shots in my albums, just like kites / the body / usaisamonster / paperrad (although the paperrad gear shot is just a pile of plush garfields, inflatable microphones, and cheap plastic halloween costumes). attn: luke fishbeck, this is your new shit!

hey, pictures from the show in vermont are up at robyn’s flickr account.

and timbro’s got a newish band together called HZL and today he pointed me to the webpage. check the bio- our man’s sporting the original series fujichia shirt. sweet! tim, i love to play music with you!!!

today nicky revs took me out to lunch at udupi, the new indian restaurant in shrewsbury (or rather, the indian restaurant that recently moved from framingham to shrewsbury). it’s north indian, whereas most indian restaurants are south, or vice versa, anyway it’s different, and fully delicious and all vegetarian, and a lot of the food come wrapped in pancakes, which i like. after that we went to two different borderses to find both marx brothers dvd box sets, which i bought for myself with accumulated store credit. thanks me! and thanks nick! and thanks eric y-f for the help! tonight litttle andrew cooked me a special dinner, but when he called this morning to ask what i liked to eat all i could think of was peanut butter, so he did “iron chef peanut butter” and made a delicious three-course meal based on peanut butter. thanks andrew, you’re a prince! and cool breeze and laura made a super delicious vegan chocolate hot fudge upside-down cake that was like a brownie on top and pudding underneath. so good. today is my day of no apologies, so no apologies to the people that didn’t get any of this true birthday cake- you had your own cake (that i couldn’t eat)! and no apologies for peacing out of my own birthday party without saying goodbye- i didn’t want to be there anymore!

it’s july 16th, and like i do every year at this time, i would like to take time out to wish a happy birthday to the nuclear device.

yesterday my mom brought a pie to the store with candles on it in anticipation of my birthday. the candles were the trick candles that relight when you blow them out but that’s ok because i don’t believe in total world peace anyway.

ok, so it’s my birthday this sunday. just because why not (and the squeaky wheel gets the grease), here are two things that i will not be able to get for myself anytime soon that i really really want- need, even: this midi controller that’s all knobs and faders ($199), and holy ghost, the 9-cd albert ayler box set ($95). there’s a triple LP version listed, that isn’t it. i need the 9 cd version. other than these two items, i find myself wanting nothing (that a person could buy in a store). but these two things would really really really help me out.

when you are an anvill, hold you still; when you are a hammer, strike your fill.