some dudes showed up at the store out of nowhere and installed a bench just outside our window, only 20 minutes after i told a lady waiting for the bus that i was going to get a bench to put outside, further proof that when jacob berendes says jump the world asks how high. or, to be fair, jacob berendes and at least one other person sometimes have similar ideas.

friday (which is today, if you’re reading this the morning after i wrote it) from 3 - 5pm there will be a caricaturist at the junk store. his name is bert and he lives next door. he is in the fourth grade. he came in and drew caricatures once before, maybe a month ago, and it was a total success, so i told him we could do it maybe once a month if his mom says it’s ok. 3 - 5, be there.

phone book is playing a surprise last-minute show at hampshire college this sunday at 8pm with jessica rylan aka can’t aka my favorite band.

right now i’m listening to marge and walczak watching a country line dancing video, and while watching them is funny, it is not nearly as entertaining as listening to it being watched by these sassholes. marge is of course my red-headed roommate and walczak my downstairs neighbor, a real chatterbox/gigglepus with whom i maintain a coach/spaz relationship- “WALCZAK! take a lap!”. recently we moved in a new downstairs neighbor, old friend jon knapp and his electric piano. glad to have you on board, JK! now that we have the whole house we’re doing some remodeling, some stretching out, some being able to leave the house without getting in awkward conversations with good-intentioned drunken louts (probably). there’s a very tall space on the back porch stairs perfect for something huge but i don’t yet know what, and fyi we have a porch closet bigger than the one cool breeze used to live in and it’ll be warm yet for a short spell.

saturday there was a show at the firehouse which pretty much ruled. the firehouse is aka the participatory culture foundation offices, the basement of which is an unused recording studio. when bands were playing you could stand just outside the room and have a talking conversation, and you couldn’t hardly hear it from the street. bands that played- friday knights (our hosts when we went to chattanooga TN), red thread (of boston MA featuring jen millis and other people whose names i don’t exactly know but i like them), the terribles, and my new band incisor. it was incisor’s second show and it went even better than the first- we had a mess of songs including two covers (of snow ghost and russian tsarcasm), and our new drummer matt zaccarino was 100% in the spirit, throwing shit around, everybody screaming, fake blood, it was great. because it was such a small room the sound was great and any movement from the crowd meant everyone was moving. red thread brought a mess of people from boston, lots of worcester folks were in zombie costume for some reason, it was great.

saturday’s show capped off a week in which i played not once not twice but thrice. now i’m cleaning my room in my brief respite, in the hopes that a clean room will grant me more headspace to deal with hectic future activity clusters.

and taking short respite, but everything will start up again soon enough.

the really aggravating thing about being on a bike getting yelled at by someone in a car is that there are no oftentimes no witty retorts. the other day someone yelled out to me “you’re in the road!”. i was like “i know!”.

last night played a show at downhill mansion with jjb buckmaster, tiny messy constellations (lilah & jim), and paul baribeau. paul’s new cd has him looking like a bearded jeffy from family circus, which is pretty accurate i think. all in all the show ruled and even i had fun playing, in part because jamie and andrew each joined me for a song, and i did a cover of one of jamie’s songs (”shaving too close”). as is the custom, i got some of paul’s cds for the store, as i got sword heaven cds and carlos’ zine “slime freaks”.

speaking of the store, there’ll be red bean buns for the first oh, 20 people that want them today, hot out the microwave into you mouth. did this last friday and it was nice.

today i got the new fat day/pshaw 7″ from the pshaw shop then me and mel sat around reading all the other junk he sent, comics and stuff, that i sat down and wrote him a nice letter and now he’s sending me a mess of stuff to give out at the store! it’s just like the singing cat on the novelty business card said- YOU GOTTA MAKE CALLS IF YOU WANT TO GET RESULTS. also today i ordered a mess of pyramid studs and the conical kind, which i thought would be a good resource to have available at the store. incidentally the price breaks for pyramid studs are at 10, 100, 1,000, and 20,000! obviously i want 20,000 but that will have to wait.

friday last was the opening of a big art show in providence, which had both 20 years of poster art and huge installations. james put pictures from teh night up on his flickr. the show was great, i went with jenny and lilah who with yrs truly i dare say constitute a great team for any pursuit. we got there towards the end of the show and subsequently i didn’t get to see the whole thing but no complaints becasue then we went to the afterparty and got to hang out eating supermarket cookies with gary panter! yikes! i talked up the junk store, he said he’d send me empty bottles of quik syrup, which he says pile up fast and i don’t doubt it. really, i was spinning, but considering that i was talking to about the most famous person i could think up that i’m actually excited to talk to for reasons other than dumb fame (the way one is excited to be at the same restaurant as elizabeth taylor), i kept a level head and did not (to my knowledge) make a royal ass of myself.

show tomorrow at the ship room, hotel vernon, kelley square. it’s sword heaven, russian tsarcasm, phone book, and the rowdy ones. yesssssss. show starts as close to 9 as reasonable. phone book is the grudge act, starting first, so if you want us to continue to remain a mystery, simply arrive late! carlos is getting into town early tomorrow and we’re going to hit the comic book store.

there’s a big arts fest here in worcester tomorrow, sunday, on park ave, staring at noon or so and going until i think 5 or 6. start on the street. i’ll be there hard-reppin’, selling paris of the eighties shirts and other garbage, trying to get that cheddar, you know?

last night watching magnum PI me and mel and margaret got “really into” the loop, zoom, and slo-mo features on our dvd player, so much so that i started making a magnum PI ambient glitch video for display/sale at the store. two questions:

congradulations to steven “beef” fischer who only last week submitted his long-suffering college thesis, some seven+ years in the suffering. he says he still has to defend the thesis, but that’s going to be like cream cheese i’m sure. dude also got a job here in town which was a point of stress as well so eveything’s coming up roses and perhaps we can return to halcyon days of scotch sippin’, bathrobe wearin’, time wastin’ and life livin’. people think you can’t return to halcyon days but i tell you what- after years of looking for that tiger tea (the tea with the tiger on it) i found it and it tastes as good as i remember. so in the words of harvey kurtzman, “fa!”.

belated / pending happy birthday wishes to jeremy bruce, brother and friend! belated because dude dropped on the 6th of this month 27 years ago, pending because every year i think it’s the 16th. to continue with the theme of gerunds, keep searching seeking reaching and dreaming! come home, i’ll even go to friendy’s with you.

dan, i got the second book of gasoline alley reprints and it is a doozy, as heartwarming as the first but with more tension and plot twists. lord it’s good, and i’ve been trying to not read too much of it every day. nonetheless i got it a few days ago only and i’m more than half done. one thing that strikes me so hard is the art, the way the people are cartoony in a way one never sees, with huge bodies and regular sized heads, physically large in a way you only ever see in old pictures- not so much fat as broad. the main character walt is excedingly so, but i realized the other day that since the crux of the strip is his relations with a small baby left on his doorstep, walt is perfectly sized to invoke feelings of childhood comfort- his hands are huge but when you’re 3 years old that’s what adult hands are. and just to see skeezix (the child) slung across walt’s massive shoulder asleep is to experience a pleasure as warm and familiar as mashed potatos. furthermore the strips are funny through and through and oftentimes the funniest part of the strip isn’t in the last panel, which makes everything feel less like a construct and more like a thorough peek into a wonderful world. there will be there are a lot of expensive, well-bound comics collections out now. these gasoline alley reprints are, well, the best books to get if you like good things. oh, and the title of the book isn’t “gasoline alley reprints”, it’s “walt and skeezix”.

when we parted ways at the ship last night i said that by leaving you were breaking my heart a tiny little bit and you said something that to me sounded like (although it most likely wasn’t and too bad) “shove it”. this was, if not what you actually said (which was most likely an awkward pleasantry), pretty perfect. anyway i just wanted you to see the steamrollers, george washington myers’ bar band with brilliant impromptu lyricist. for what it’s worth, they were on point, it ruled, it vindicated, it was the sound of the free beer event.

also last night was the last night of duck yao, the ultra-dank vegan taoist rogue restaurant in a backyard. little andrew played cello, we ate family style, it was a magical night. i thought i was dressing up like a polite flashy martial arts practitioner, but matt z told me instead that i looked like rosemary from rosemary’s baby, in other words not exactly exactly what i was going for but i took it. place was packed, little andrew played cello, psibs was in town, fireworks were going off, bromp treb and a huge western mass contingent made the scene, it owned. “oh what a night”.

tonight is another show at the ship- bonezone, terribles, deer tick, nat baldwin, 9pm (i think)- bring money. this afternoon on water st is pridefest, so get your dazzy dukes on.