this saturday i’m playing at as220 in providence with eli keszler and ashley paul, scott reber and geoff mullen (as “ten thousand things”), ptarmigan, and the dead and those who have died (no info on these two). this is my first show in providence as a resident, and i’m always nervous/anxious before a show (to the point of wishing it wasn’t happening), and this is no change. don’t know what the set is going to be like… the one new song i learned for the last show i already forgot.

watching movies with james mc shane is so tite!!!!! not only is there always soda but there’s sometimes beer, and today also pizza and duh, popcorn. most importantly, i will make a plan with james to watch movie “A”, and james will show up with ALSO movie “B”, which would make a good double feature, and it always rules!!!! lots of yokai movies lately, including “the great yokai war”, “kitaro”, and two of the three “yokai monsters” movies. me and james (who i have a HILARIOUS new nickname for but it’s too good for just a webpage) are going to SPX in one month, and we’re working on a split comic book (or “CoBo”) that you can i’m sure guess the theme of. tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite!

oh, and speaking of CoBos, this friday there’s a cool book show in northampton ma, at the APE galleryy. NOHOCOBOSHO! i’ll be there OK, with a new solo book (two if you weren’t one of the 20 people at that one show that got “letter to sweetie”).

today i ran into jung-il hong aka jungil hong aka jung il hong, and lucky me, i ran into her on her way to her garden, and she kept picking things and giving them to me, some of which, the cherry tomates, the regular tomates, the musk cherries, the mexican gherkins, i ate, and right away. the flowers i simply carried in my hand like a wedding person all the way home. a gherkin is like a small cucumber, often pickled, which i only know about because of a replacement verse in the non-zacherle version of “dinner with drac”. but i withheld this information, and its source. when you are rich with nice garden items, you are truly rich, because fresh food from strictly loving hands is better than money, and not only is the potential energy greater but the kinetic is as well– how often does someone suddenly have a bunch of money and you see them on the street and they say “do you want to walk with me to the place where all my money is?” and then when you get there they keep handing you money and apologizing for not giving you a bag to put it in? i would wager quite a bit on the answer being “not a lot”, but this is how garden veggies seem to operate really, “splendid”.

also splendid- last night i saw garbage strike at the hotel vernon, plus RATSS, which is john shirley’s new band. both of these spikey punk bands had heavy noise influences, which i was pretty psyched on. the garbage strike demo is super awesome, and there’s a song about coast to coast, and dan’s dad sings the backup vocals. also, a line from one of my songs got adopted into one of theirs, which i love, and moreover, it’s the line i got from lazy magnet! “blame life, don’t blame the drugs”. i drank some $1 beers, crusty tim talked to me for a looong time about mickey mouse, all my favorite punx were there, it was wonderful.

it’s late summer and for some reason there’s punk shows up the WOZZZ…

tonight was another story night in the array of x stories that are 1000/x seconds long. previously was 100 10 second stories and 50 20 second stories, this time, 200 5 second stories. lots of good heads on this one- maralie.com, crisp haddock, kate schapira, robert pickle, muffy, julia newman, scott rebar, others. most used this time to tell jokes or pieces of a continuous story. scott was the best and fully harshed everyone’s comedy buzz in his fashion, leaving us all high and dry in a desert of “wait, what? oh…”s. lots of his pieces were the things he says in his WORK/DEATH shows, that usually get way fuzzed out but you always knew they were so brutal, but didn’t know how uh-oh they were. YIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKES!!!!!! most of the show i was trying to come up with an initials nickname for julia newman- i got “jangled nerves” and “joyeaux noël”, and amazingly, that’s it! my one critique of the night is that the time limit is totally meaningless and not enforced– people were allowed to ramble on, flubb up, grandstand, or dawdle. perhaps better would be a story length measured in number of words.

previous to that was the jeremy harris homecoming show featuring three consecutive JH + 1 bands (wherein. in turn, 1 = jeff hartford, ali denning, and christopher kites). this was the show of the summer, it was a truly splendid mess, and after everything went everywhere, a surprise dance party that even had me, a wallflower, dragging the other wallflower into the fray. no child left behind! the one touring band played last, having arrived 4 hours late to a show scheduled for 10pm, and they were just a band! how embarrassing, all their clothes stayed on, and no one even fell down.

jean wants me to talk about the show before that, which was really the dreary other side of the coin from the jero show. yes, i’m talking about the miserable depressing “freak folk” neo-shaman “whiskey is a sacrament” actually painful to sit through, insulting our intelligence and being like “i am freaking you out” noodley toodley whoopsy doodley bullshit show. FUCK THAT. it made me wish i could summon “being an asshole”. the entire time i was on the verge of: throwing the guitar out of the window, or stomping around banging a pan chanting “THIS SHOW SUCKS”, or making myself throw up. scott set the show up, as a favor to a friend, and god bless, and he played and it ruled, and there was only one other band, and this band played easily the worst / most embarassing / least redeeming set i have ever seen a musical act perform, and for a very very very very VERY long time. for the record, the band is called “anita fix and bambam”. if this is your band and you are googling your band’s name and reading this, i don’t know what to tell you except to learn a trade.

today was the foo fest at as200; it was the marshall allen-led arkestra, lightning bolt, standing on the miniature golf field counting coup, being handed halves of beers and plates of pasta salad, and (to be fair) pacing around mostly having half conversations. yesterday was phenomenal pianist thollem mcdonas and eating power biscuits (dumpstered donuts) in the alley with scott rebar. the day before (?) was the zarlag homecoming at MARS GAS, the perfect fucked show environment owned of course by a drunk lawyer and uninhabitable by day on account of waves of plastic fume from next door etc.. late summer show stacking– it’ll be nice when things slow down and i can go to the movies again, or visit people at their homes and play rummy five hundo.

here’s a clip from the zarlag show, a nice jan and dean number:

today at kennedy plaza in downtown providence, at 5:30 sharp, sierra leone’s famous son STEADY BONGO, featuring scott “work/death” reber on bass. tomorrow the show is at tazzo, $5, 10pm. no joke! in the 11th hour everything is valid.

it was jenine’s birthday the other day (another JB79!) and she had a nice potluck in her studio. i brought raw green beans and dumpstered hummus that wasn’t electric yet, knowing that a jenine potluck is a rare space i can be welcomed with such. james mc shane brought a 12 pack of natty ice and a container of tic tacs, and i tried to take a picture but he stole the tic tacs back, saying (and this i disagree with) “this isn’t pretty, and it isn’t alright“.