i cut my hair and now i look like brainiac 5.
every morning for three days now it’s strawberry rhubarb pie with yogurt, and hot coffee. then 2 hours later i eat a peanut butter and honey sandwich. pure champ!
tonight’s all that stuff then tomorrow shakespeare in the park, just a stone’s throw from my house.
this year’s major taylor race was last sunday. i missed the registration (which was kind of ideal) and thus could not enter the race proper, but i had a great time nonetheless. the event is a one-person-at-a-time time trial up george st, a super super steep hill (only two blocks long) off main st near the courthouse. because there is no real head-to-head competition, people of all ages and ability levels participate, some to compete, but most to just to participate, and rep. and because it’s one person at a time, you can really cheer on every single person, which is really fun, and since it’s kind of grueling and in close quarters (the audience lines the sidewalk), the cheering really helps to motivate people. we were camped out pretty far up the hill, and i really feel like our voices and antics pulled people that otherwise might’ve given up. really a great feeling.
that afternoon and night more flitting around. after the hill climb and the traditional pickle barrel lunch, me and MZ, ML and MC all ambled to mouse feet house in home invasion mode to “watch a movie” aka “take a nap”, which ruled and as i expected, randa made cookies, which we ate (cookies: good). waking up all groggy we strode umbrellaed in the rain to the soda place for suicides and deck steaks, then hung out in the parking lot under the 7-11 eave for a good long time. a dinner party at jenna’s house produced two kinds of enchilada, then back to the fold. NICE.
now a little more on the topic of major taylor:
major taylor was a bicycle hero who lived in worcester at the turn of the century (19th - 20th, not 20th - 21st). he was only the second black athlete to become a world champion at anything (after boxer george dixon), and was conspired against at every level of organized bicycling for the duration of his career. he was constantly being threatened by fans and was at least once beat up by another racer. bicycle associations moved many races to sundays, when they knew he could not race for religious reasons. but he persevered and didn’t just “survive”, but became a champion, and what’s more, remained the entire time a gentleman. GOD BLESS.
also, i know i say this every year, but in re: the major taylor hill climb, next year is the year to rep, so train up, get a 1:1 gear ratio if you need to, get your costume ready, and notch your pride up.
major taylor on wikipedia
major taylor association hill climb
bears repeating:
this hump day, HUMP IT.
starting at 6pm at the firehouse, it’s the return of the missoula oblangata theatre troupe, performing their new play “last hurrah of the clementines”. this theatre troupe is just two people –two best friends– and recently me and ML had the honor of appearing in a play written by one of them, and it was really really fun. the last play they did here in town had a lot of boxing, kaleidoscopes, detectives, and moody behaviour. what this new play holds in store for us, ALAS I KNOW NOT. but it’ll ripp. i said on the flyer that the night would start precisely at 6pm with a short movie, which is true, but the flyer intuited that it would be a new movie, and i didn’t really have the time to put this together, so instead the movie will be a short by my friend xander marro (who recently had a show at HBML). the movie will be about ducks, bonnets, and ghoulish monsters, and as i said, will start at 6pm S.H.A.R.P. with free pupcorn and also coffee. again, the play will start immediately following the movie, which is not long, and is quite enjoyable.
THEN immediately following the play, or anyway, some brief spell afterwards, at distant castle (which isn’t a far walk), there’s ANOTHER AWESOME SHOW, of the roque varieté. bands include (and are limited to):
TERRIBLES (courtly rogues of times long present)
BONEZONE (hardcore that left hardcore)
BLISTER PACK (first show! featuring kp, pkp, kindy prennan, and k-matt pkoe)
BLACK RAINBOW (joplinesque vox over excited rhythms, featuring erick lyle of scam magazine. this is your favorite band!)
GENESIS CLIMBER (previously REGGIE JACKSON BASEBALL)
epic show for a weeknight, which will start very soon after the end of the play.
these are two independent shows, and we humbly ask you to chip in some moneys for both, as gasoline is NUTS and people break their backs to bring incredible works to your hometown.
ALSO: karaoke afterwards at ralph’s until last call, then running naked through institute park, then falling asleep in the parking lot of the antiquarian society, then working out next morning at the WPI gym, then eating raw eggs at price chopper when no one’s looking, then staring into the sun, then drilling into the center of the earth and pooping, then waiting 40 years, then the poop has become a diamond, then you give the diamond to your granddaughter, your granddaughter hawks the diamond, buys a guitar. A SPACE GUITAR.
today i had the nice experience of unarresting my friends on the basis of my own ridiculous appearance. really! after a nice day at the shoppe, i swung by the still-in-progress wormside skate park to see what’s good, only to find one uniformed officer and one other guy talking to my dudes (danny, the smoker, and dan from nadir) in what seemed like a tense moment. well, i have nothing to hide and i figured if i was super casual and “what’s up fellas?” it might add some weight to the idea “this is so obviously not anything bad”, so i roll up to what is instantly casual levity between the two interlopers at my expense (in code), following which they maybe say some authoritative mumbo jumbo and point some fingers but then amscray. total pressure valve!
the backstory is that “kids” have been working on transforming into a skatepark an unusable dead end *somewhere in worcester* (don’t ask me where) that previous to their arrival was just junkie mattresses and “casual encounters”. pretty early in the game and continuing to the present day they were individually thanked, big upped and/or actively helped by the individual beat cops, members of the DPW, and every neighbor in the vicinity, almost to the point of “here’s some lemonade, guys”. and the obvious reason for this niceness is that they are a self-organizing group of kids putting A LOT of time, hard work, and resources into making a vacant lot into a playground, which is a pretty classic “good thing”, of the sort you read about in highlights magazine. unfortunately they have to remain beloved of individuals and scorned or at best blind-eyed by the institutions these individuals are a part of, for reasons of laws, liabilities, hierarchy, paperwork, etc.. today the cops were rolling around looking for someone specific that stole a bike or something, but then the non-beat-cop wanted to check out these punks and found a casual sipper of an open 40, and also weed and spray paint in a backpack, plus of course people trespassing and damaging city property. anyway as implied, danny said it was pretty much take ‘em away boys until i rolled up and made myself the butt of some joke, the casual-dress cop peaced, and the beat cop said in so many words: there are cops (and it was implied that the other guy was one of these cops, and that they were, as a breed, bummers) that at the end of the day are looking for an easy arrest, and independent of the drinking or the weed would be delighted to reliably have a spot to go arrest punkers for trespassing. classic bummer of a bully situation but what to do but persevere?
ATTN: other crow-town bloggers– be cool, don’t bounce this. what good could officially come of it? maybe even i should yap down about it…
you know when it’s hot all day and then it rains way hard and it’s awesome but you say well, it’s awesome but i’m happy i’m not out there and then you’re like wait, am i? and then you’re like no? that happened the other day but by the time i had emptied my pockets of everything ruinable (everything except soda money and keys) the rain had really let up to a degree that a mythical regular person would enjoy walking in and stubborn in my resolve i walked a really long way away from my point of departure until it hammered down again and mission accomplished. it was cool, i used to walk late at night a lot, this was like that except it didn’t make me depressed. i walked all the way to the 7 11 near my old house for a suicide soda, which i’m sure helped to elevate the mood, although also someone told me about ionizing properties of falling droplets of water that cause your feelings to better but now that i write it down and look at it, that seems like pretty bogue science. ok, maybe it’s just this, which we all know: there’s a certain flavor of “dumb + confusing + valueless” fun that, when realized, is a fine draught of amiable meaninglessness.
and sspeaking of no-wrong-answerhood, last night’s incisor / tinsel teeth / nadir show was a ripper with lots of fake blood and white clothing and masks and nice dresses. mike’s new pedal pooped out so even though we practiced a hundred times (aka 4 times) the universe conspired once again to sound us like ten eggs in a box in a swamp, WHICH IS FINE. nadir has a 7″ out, which rules, and it’s two different genres if you play it on 45 (as intended) or 33 1/3. tinsel teeth was good although it’s awkward to watch someone’s unpicked wedgie.
sold more t shirts to the comic book store, so even though i’m pretty strapped for cash, i got some awesome comics (utilizing the player’s discount that is “payment in trade”). i got 2 paperbacks of old family circus (”PEACE, MOMMY, PEACE!” (1969) and “WANNA BE SMILED AT?” (1970)), 2 issues of jack kirby’s 2001 comic, and the new fantagraphics book of the comics of lyonel feininger. the family circus books are really good– better design than later ones and the jokes seem less trite maybe, or you maybe you think they’re more “classic” or whatever; the 2001 comics are pretty nuts– a ten issue series filling in the gaps between the apes and the spacemen in batshit kirby style; the feininger stuff is, duh, awesome. i’ll try to do a full review once i digest a little.
the email:
hey you fucks
the INCISOR show with TINSEL TEETH is actually tomorrow, thursday.
NADIR is also playing.so again, that’s
INCISOR: ululating world-haters vomit live scorpion eggs
TINSEL TEETH: strutting glass-breakers flaunt bodily transgressions
NADIR: quiet guys that are 100% twitch muscle unpent their aggressions with technical finesseas before, this show is at distinct hassle.
and it’s on thursday, which is tomorrow.
tonight you can go wherever you want to go to discuss the weather.
i don’t know what’s happening with my life
july 30th (wednesday) at the firehouse, 6pm. i think the movie thing is not going to happen, but we’ll have some other attraction.
there’s another show this nite (alluded to in the flyer), which is black rainbow, genesis climber, terribles, bonezone, and blister pack, at distant castle. blister pack is kpars, macoe, the countess cindy b, and PKPKPKPKPKP, it’s their first show.
people! i had a great weekend!
slept during the dumbest part of the day on saturday, then woke up and worked at the shoppe, which was nice and some folks came in and i had some good ideas. band practice after work (incisor) which is really fun and somewhat cathartic for me and in any event it’s good exercise. at night me and nicky revs drove deep into the woods in RI to visit peter glantz. peter lives in the back house of an estate grandfathered in to the middle of a state park, a house unpinpointable with GPS. as we passed the front house (not knowing if we were in the right place), a perfect curtain inside parted to reveal a near-lifesize marionette that proceeded to gesticulate with no one in the room watching it. guys, it was really scary. but we just followed the music (snoop dogg) to the campfire, and everything worked out. jo dery was there and i told her about this blog– hi jo! we all took a nice late nite walk into the woods, it was fun and i hardly even thought about being hunted by a mountain lion.
driving back through providence was where the serendipity really kicked in and i quickly found very recent (that day) internet social networking friend and now-actual friend micky achilles kicking on a street corner texting some goblin. sometimes shit just goes off, and in no time at all i was hitching my wagon to her train and together with empty mountain, lola, and dylan we peaced the bad karaoke spot to the 2am art gallery in wakefield RI. the event was 24 hour comics day, and we stayed there until 6 or 7am scribblin’ and gigglin’, listening inexplicably to a live dj playing only portishead (?), walking to tim horton’s (which was delightfully exotic to me), and generally cutting up. awesome!!! fell asleep back at little pancakes for a few hours, then borrowed a tiny BMX bike (fun) and all day cruised around finding people and drinking water with them, strategizing, gossiping, ofttimes regaling, and a little bit, kvetching, bringing choice morsels to a harmonious table, every conversation and interaction a fine river through novel territory. guys, great weekend!
a piece of the post-birthday blues and on top of everything, it’s hot out, like, will-evaporatingly hot. yesterday i think it was the low air quality ssomeone heard about on the news that gave me an all-day headache because it wasn’t not eating or not drinking enough water or not taking a little nap or not talking to my friends or not being outside or not drinking enough coffee or not wearing a lemon yellow t-shirt. there was a show last night but i had to excuse myself to not be in a throbbing environment and take some advil and watch a marx brothers movie. it was nice.
lots of talk and thought in the past few days on the character of zeppo, who just might’ve been as they say, “the funniest one in real life”, in a way that didn’t translate to screen. also, zeppo as the bridge between the three primaries and the rest of the world, or as interpreter, but in any event, zeppo, despite all his qualities, being outside the magic. i guess there isn’t really much to say, i guess the question is: is there a lesson?
dag, it is hot outside! what’s up with that?
tomorrow is my earth day. i will be entering my 30th year, continuing my infinitesimal creep towards death.
inthe past few days i’ve been doing a fair amount and being lazy about writing and then remembering that when i don’t write i get sort of crazy. sunday was bratfest, i missed opie and king tuff’s band PHASED OUT but still had a fun time, hanging out with dan wars, jackie susanne, and a miscellany of locals and nigh-locals. KT has another band called NAM BUDDIES that is full grunge riffers, led by some 17 year old baggy pants, it was awesome, as was RUTHIE.
deer tick / jana hunter show was great. jjbb also played, as did a lady with a totally fake shampoo commercial singing accent, who coasted through a brief set on popular themes. jana added phrase sampler looping pedals to her repertoire, and even though those things usually rub me the wrong way, this time it was perfect. i gripped the new record, which is as the last one: good. deer tick played a bunch of new songs that are great and spotlight his incredible use of vocal overtones. also this line: “i don’t want to be a millionaire / if it’s only a million of one thing”.
me and JK and jay skonietch went to see boris at the middle east, and it was pretty boring. i like boris but my buttons just didn’t get pushed. plus it’s weird now seeing a big show with a stage and lights and everything. so mediated. also matt carroll’s brother band opened up and were followed by a very similar band: BORING. and not even actively boring, like a drone band or something. this was just rock music with nothing going for it, no personality or weird twists. jimmy’s a nice guy, but this was just boring rockers boringly rocking, no finesse, no lack of finesse, no transgression, no refinement.
the yoni show was fun, i played a computer set, all sine wave cultivation and reading from “remembrance of things past” (or whatever you want to call it), which i threatened to do and then realized that was my best idea at the moment. as promised, yoni played for a long-ass time, it was awesome and matt coe was in heaven starting from the soundcheck.
silk screen saturday last weekend at the shop, the deisgn was a t rex stomping on a gas station labeled “HBML”, under which it said “FOREVER”. someone asked me what it meant and i said “either ‘HBML FOREVER’ or ‘PICTURE A T REX STOMPING ON A JUNK SHOPPE FOREVER’”. i’ll be making a few extras on white shirts with spray paint accents, look for them next week.
this has been fujichia core dump, an essential part of fujichia minutia reportage.
tonight at the wheelchair, st jude, nadir, and some other bands. st jude is vegan life mike riley’s band. nadir has a new split 7″ out now, gotta grab it…
tomorrow at distant castle, deer tick, jana hunter, jjb buckmaster. jana hunter played in town last year and it was awesome– way echoey, with the words just crawling out of her mouth like a snake from a skull on a cool tattoo. JJBB will be playing some songs off his upcoming solo cd “MEDIEVAL LIFE CRISIS”. deer tick will be quizzed on the politics of the california raisins, by me, during the set. i would bet dollars to donuts there will be some sserious candlelight in effect at this show.
this weekend is BRATFEST at the tinderbox, in brattleboro VT. it’s a three day affair but the terribles will be playing with opie and king tuff’s band “phased out” on sunday, so that day is crucial. duh.
july 23rd at distant castle, the return of INCISOR, plus tinsel teeth and more TBA. incisor now has kpars on guitar- SSSIKK!!!!!
july 30th at firehouse, the return of the missoula oblongata, plus a short movie premiere the details of which have yet to be worked out. anyway the MO will be performing their new play “the last hurrah of the clementines”. movie starts at 6pm sharp so the whole thing can be over in time for:
BLACK RAINBOW, with TERRIBLES, BONE ZONE, and BLISTER PACK (matt coe, cindy, kpars, and PKP; first show). at the DCU center. which is to ssay, distant castle. also on july 30th, but workable.
see you shids there! maybe…
