weekend (or, be careful where you park that thing)

this will be a nice long post, as a lot happened this weekend. friday night, the SLF and i went to pi for dinner, and then to dave and casey's for a little bit of the grape. it was a very nice time, although there was one odd moment. paul and his girl came a little bit later on in the evening, and the conversation between the SLF and another woman there turned to how small and cute paul's girlie was. the other woman (whom the SLF had only met one time before) said something to the effect of "they never have clothes for us big, ugly ho's"... my head snapped around at that one, and i waited to see the SLF to cut her open to show her the black stuff inside her, but it didn't happen.

saturday morning was brunch at the SLF's friend's house. there was lots of tasty treats... crepes and this fantastic baked potato and veggie thing, and a kickass apple crisp thing for dinner with like double-thick crust. here's a few pictures from that:

  

after brunch we ran back to the SLF's house for her to get changed, and then we were off to the bob mould show.

the opening act was this guy jason from a chicago-area band called verbow. he was very good... fantastic voice, lovely songs... a nice opener.

bob was really good. his voice is so strong, and he has such a stage presence. i do have to say that i didn't enjoy this show as much as when he opened for the first gut pagaent show. his acoustic stuff was more amplified this time... not as clean and pure. he did some really good stuff, tho... opened with "wishing well", and did some old stuff, and then some stuff off of his upcoming album. one thing he talked about between songs was this incident, which i had read about before the show, and was telling all my friends gleefully about it. bob basically retold the events as they happened, and then also mentioned that the woman in question had posted like 9 times to *his* message board to explain herself. it was all quite amusing.

then bob switched it up. he put down the 12-string, and picked up his electric and started doing songs from "modulate", which is his "electronica" record. he put on a cd of the backing music, and played and sang along. it totally didn't work for me; sounded like he was playing/singing at half the speed as the backing track. he did a few encores, and in general i thought the show was very good. full review thread here. below are the only 3 pictures that came out halfway decent (i try to not use a flash at these sort of things):

  

along with the SLF, ryan and his new boyfriend friend were there. after the show we wanted to go out and have a little fun, so we decided to go to brewers. this is a "hotel bar"; in addition to the bar on the ground floor, it's also a halfway house for semi-homeless gay men. it's also a nice hangout for a good assortment of crack whores, as well as a healthy helping of black transgendered prostitutes, all of which are named "mahogany", for some reason. you just have to understand what a scary place this is. i had never been there before, but ryan had been there several times before. one time he went he had his briefcase stolen, and another time he was at the bar, talking to a semi-cute, well-dressed boy, when he started to smell something. the bartender comes running over and throws the guy out; turns out he had shit himself while ryan was talking to him. i just want the scene to be set.

ryan's boyfriend friend drove all of us in his new xterra, and i wouldn't say that he's the best driver. he sort of darted from the main road onto the sidestreet where brewers is, and almost nailed some guy in a black pickup truck. we parked, and as we were just about to get out of the truck, the guy we nearly killed came back down the street, honking and shaking his fist at us.

ryan: maybe we should turn the car off, wait for him to drive away, and then park somewhere else. ryan's boyfriend friend: nah.. it'll be fine.

into the bar we go, and it's scary. women who used to be men, most people looking like they hadn't had a bath in several days... it was quite.. um... "earthy". everyone (besides me) was doing shots of blueberry pucker (ick!), and we were all having a good time. awhile after we got there, a new group of people came in, including a female impersonator. i managed to get a few pictures of us with some of them:

 

we finally leave and head back to the truck, and of course the windshield is all smashed in. fucking hick motherfucker had come back with a baseball bat and smashed most of the driver's side of the windshield, and knocked the sideview mirror mostly off. ryan's boyfriend friend got a glass splinter in his finger sweeping some chunks off of his seat, but mostly everyone was unscathed. it was still a little freaky tho.

review of j mascis show at rosebud

ok, so the j mascis show last night was pretty cool. i got to the club a few minutes before the doors opened; i was actually first in line. i would have been first in, but some ratty-dreaded woman with her kid and boyfriend and some other old guy (with white sneakers for god's sake!) sort of wormed their way in front of me. i didn't get particularly upset, but i was still a tiny bit annoyed that just because there was physical space between my body and the locked door that they could just sort of wander in front of me and then go in ahead of me.... i always wish that i was a bigger guy, but last night really crystallized it for me. if i was some 6'4" 220lb lummox, they probably wouldn't have done it. "take karate and learn how to kick ass", you say? well, i wouldn't actually want to hurt anyone... just would want to look menacing enough that nobody would fuck with me. a good friend of mine from my old hometown has been taking all sorts of street fighting classes, and he's stopped just shy of a brown belt, because apparently when you hit brown belt, you are legally a deadly weapon, which would have much graver implications if you were to get into a fight, which my friend does occasionally.

anyway, get in, get a good table (the SLF was going to be meeting me there), and wait.

the opening act was cobra verde, and they were pretty friggin' awful. it's kinda hard to tell from pictures on their site, or from the ones i took, but half the guys looked like someone famous.... ....'s brother. the lead singer looked like a fat eddie vedder. the one guitar player looked like a cross between charles manson and the unabomber, but was so skinny that his face looked like beaker from the muppet show. and the other guitarist looked like that greasy irish dude dominic from the real world.

so, they start, and the singer is jumping around like an idiot... holding his arms in all tight to his body, and in general flopping around like a prissy idiot. he was acting like robert plant at the end of a 3-hour zep show, but they had just started. he also did this thing where he would wave his full beer bottle around like a crazy tamborine or something, but he was smart enough to put his thumb into the neck of the bottle... a "real" rock star would have just sort of let the beer fly, you know? i think he just did it to build up the carbonation, so when he took his thumb out it would make an impressive spray.

thankfully they were done after an hour, and j mascis came on. first of all, he is looking old. his hair is quite gray, and he looked a lot like smokey from the big lebowski.

his performance was fantastic, however. his voice is as good as it's always been... as good as on "martin + me", and that's going back 6 years or so. he played a lot of cool older stuff; "thumb", "so what else is new", "repulsion", as well as some things off of his newer albums. he was playing with an acoustic guitar, but would occasionally turn on some distortion to rawk out a bit more. he actually had some sort of cool digital real-time looping stomp box, which he would use to record himself playing a rhythm part, and then kick on the fuzz and throw down a solo over his own accompanyment.

when he finished his solo set, he had the drummer and singer (now playing bass) from cobra verde come out and help him do some heavier songs... "ammaring", "freak scene", etc. at one point, someone yelled out from the crowd for him to play "keeblin", at which point he said "i already played keeblin"... nice of that guy to be paying attention, right?

all in all, a very good show. have some pictures:  &nbsp  

the exile follies show

the exile follies show last night was fantastic! made it over to the club around 6:20 (friggin' traffic!), and the Special Lady Friend and i got a table right in front of the stage... almost too in front. our friend leslie from Up the Sandbox snagged the table next to us, and was probably even more geeked out than we were. she opened for kristin last time she was in town, which i unfortunately missed because i was out climbing in colorado.

BillyO was setting up the schwag table, so i ambled over to say hi and give him the little shirt thing. he was as warm and friendly as always; recognized me from previous shows, and talked about how great kristin's pregnancy is going. her due date is early december, but he thinks that it'll actually probably happen around thanksgiving.

john doe was up first, and came out and played a really good set. i hadn't heard his music before, but lots of melancholy songs, with funny lyrics about fluffy tigers trying to kill him. he played maybe 5-6 songs, and then invited kristin up on stage to join him. they only did two songs before he left:
white girl (one of his)
trouble (one of cat stevens)

kristin and john chatted a little bit back and forth... he commented on the trippy stage set (see pictures below), and he said he must be high or something.

kristin: unless you smell burnt toast.
john: why? what does that mean?
kristin: it means you're schizophrenic...unless you're actually burning toast.

then kristin was left solo. she looks great for being 6-ish months pregnant. the Special Lady Friend commented that she's carrying very high and round, and looks fantastic.
she sat down and got ready to start, but couldn't find her setlist. crisis! oh, wait... it was on the floor in front of the stage (i had already copied everything off of it). matt to the rescue! here you go! setlist (or "security blanket", as she called it) in hand, she started playing.
here is her setlist:
your dirty answer
37 hours
gazebo tree
tar kissers
spain
cuckoo
hook in her head (?!?!)

a few songs into her set, this total cock-knob (who came in too late to get a seat, so he just sat on the floor right in front of the stage and kristin) lights up a cigarette. i was actually sort of suprised that they hadn't made an announcement about it being a non-smoking show, as kristin has done in the past when she was pregnant. the ashtrays were out on the tables and everything... maybe it was the club's refusal. anyway, i caught the fucknugget's attention and motioned for him to put it out. blank stare. i moved my hands over my stomach like *i* was pregnant, pointed to kristin, and made a "grinding-out-in-the-ashtray" motion, figuring he couldn't possibly be that stupid. oh, but he was. i didn't want to disturb the people around us during the song any more than i already had, so i just sat back. at the end of her song, kristin asked him as nicely as she could if he would mind not smoking right in front of her! it was her baby, not her, that was the prima donna, she said. ha!

at the end of her solo set, she called out grant lee phillips. they did a few songs together:
panic pure
your ghost
heavenly (jeff buckley!!!)

after "your ghost", grant commented that he was worried about screwing up and putting plurals where there shouldn't be, or leaving them off where they should.. "you were driving circle around me". kristin then commented that people on her website were getting on grant's case for screwing that up at an earlier show. but he was really good! we're not lunatics, i swear!

i couldn't quite make it through the jeff buckley song; i had to pee so bad that i got up and ran to the bathroom and peed for a good minute and a half, solid.

grant did his solo set, and he was fantastic! really strong, great voice, and completely hilarious! he called john doe back out, and then only did one song before they started calling for "little sister" to come back on stage and join them.

the chemistry between the three of them was amazing. they were picking on kristin because this tour was supposed to be only for tv stars. then john commented that this tour was getting like "hee-haw", complete with "two guys in denim shirts and a pregnant white girl".

they started out with a verse or two from a merle haggard song... they were going to have a "hagg-off"; trade verses back and forth, but only really did one.
all 3 again remarked about the psychadelic background, and john was lamenting that he had left this amazing record of johnny cash reciting the intro to star trek. grant then busted out a perfect johnny cash impression, complete with musical background... "space, the final frontier.... i fell into a burning ring of saturn..", etc. i think i actually soiled myself.
here's a setlist from all 3:
the merle haggard song
the funny-as-fuck johnny cash song
see how we are
sugar mountain
when the levee breaks

afterwords, the SLF and i got a chance to chat with grant a little bit; he was a very nice and funny guy, very low key. we each bought his two cds, and he asked if he could sign them. i found that funny for some reason. hope he'll come back to pgh next time he's on tour. also saw BillyO again; he said that everyone loved the "onesie".

here's some pictures:

full list of pictures here.
thanks again to kristin and BillyO for visting us once again!

Discuss pittsburgh exile follies show

the luna show last night

the luna show last night was fantastic. they sounded wonderful... and watching them was great. they all looked so casual and effortless. there was this large group of idjits standing right next to us, tho. they were jumping around like idiots at a punk show. they were in need of a serious beatdown. right before i left work yesterday, i got a little package, delivered by messenger. it was another 5 or 6 winning pepsi caps! i was a bit puzzled about it until dave revealed that it was him (i should have guessed). here's how our email exchange went after that:

me: please don't tell me you had your company pay to messenger them over to me.

dave: the "company" doesn't pay for anything. they bill it all back to the client (in this case, [client name withheld]). [different client name withheld] has paid to fed-ex a 14" cock to about 34 different states. ahhh. corporate america.

in other news, i'm really starting to get the hang of biking into work. it's been feeling easier on my legs (and my lungs), and i'm less convinced that i'm going to get splattered all over someone's hood. but the best part is that it has served to expand my heretofore thought limitless disdain for all humanity, and especially the kind that drives cars.

The Legion of Incredibly Strange Superheroes

went last night with the Special Lady Friend and saw what may have been the greatest band in the world; The Legion of Incredibly Strange Superheroes. they were having a cd release party thing, and playing a couple of sets. we walk in, and the singer, Captain Moodring (a.k.a. zombo, a local radio fixture) was wrapped up in that flexible cable christmas-style lights. the best part is that he was plugged into a surge protector because of said lights, so he couldn't move very far. their songs were campy and fun; very much like cartoon hero theme music. they also did this fun thing were anytime anyone in the audience yelled out "The Flam!", the band had to sing The Flam's theme song, which was a short little ditty that sounded like the batman theme: (descending tone) "nah-nah-nah-nah-nahn-nah-nah-nah-nah.... THE FLAM!"

the other really fun part of the night was for their last song (besides an a capella rendition of "The Flam" since they had unplugged their guitars), when they grabbed someone out of the audience, had him don a wrestling/gimp-style mask, and play on the band's theramin, and dubbed this individual "The Thera-man". they did a whole song with this guy wailing away on the theramin... it was good stuff. i'll have to check them out again in the near future.