Kablammo!

Lucky you, you have more of this drivel to read. About time I updated, eh? In any case, you’re now privy to some observations I’ve made since my last update.

Here they are, in no particular order:

• Two pounds of london broil plus a shot of warm vodka equals bad news. Just take my word for it.
• Old people who are normally crotchety assholes can, in the right context, be fairly interesting and cool.
• Digital cameras rawk.
• It feels great to be able to feel like an idiot because of something I said instead of something I should have said, for once.
• The Kajaka Salk is some good people.
• Laager’s at its best when uninhabited.
• St. Pauli Girl makes a surprisingly decent non-alcoholic beer.
• Radiohead puts on an awesome live show.
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• You’re all jerks.
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• If you ever get the nagging feeling that you want to accomplish something, just take a nap or go watch TV and the feeling eventually goes away.
• Foster’s oil cans are the shizzle.
• PLD is best cured by not giving a shit.

And so it came to pass, on the first day of the month of August, in the year of our Lord 2003, that I’ll be away for a while, so this shitty blog shall return to its usual state of me not updating it, since pine forests aren’t known for their internet connectivity. Once I reëmerge from my wonderful self-inflicted prison of blissful, isolated misery, this shitty blog may or may not return to its recent state of me updating it surprisingly frequently. And then I go see Radiohead at the ‘Meriwether Post Pavilion’, whatever that is. Hopefully I’ll find that out in time.

In other news, go and read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Also, listen to the Moog Cookbook’s cover “Buddy Holly.” Warning: I wouldn’t recommend reading the former while listening to the latter, since I’m pretty sure it would make your face explode.

Song of the Moment: “The Sinister Minister” — Bela Fleck & the Flecktones

I’m the king of the world. Seriously. If I wake up dead tomorrow, it’ll be with a huge smile on my face, because I just figured out how to use the sustain pedal on a piano properly. Properly enough so that I don’t sound like a complete smacktard, in any case. I’m not going to win any prizes for my piano playing (except for, perhaps, the “Incomplete Smacktard” award, which I don’t believe actually exists) but at least now I can let each chord I play ring out while I desperately try to remember how to finger the next. Maybe one day I’ll actually learn how to involve my left hand in this somehow, but that seems patently unlikely. Fuck it, I can play “You and Whose Army” pretty damn decently right now, and that’s good enough for me.

I totally rock, just so you know.

Song of the Moment: “You and Whose Army” by Radiohead, as performed by yours truly on a Roland HP1700

So there I was, sitting in Peter Cooper Park earlier today, reading the Voice and eating the pair of guaco locos that constituted today’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner, when all of a sudden I got a snippet of a song stuck in my head. It seemed hauntingly familiar, and I knew I’d heard it recently. There I was, humming along to the disembodied tune, when it hit me: this was no ordinary song I was remembering, it was the ultra-rare flamenco version of Eric Clapton’s “Layla”. The reason it’s so rare is that it only exists in my memories, and in a dream I had last Saturday night.

The dream opened with Eric Clapton alone on a stage, wearing a blue mariachi costume. He was clearly Eric Clapton, but he’d put on a lot of weight and let his beard and hair get all unkempt, so he ended up looking an awful lot like Richard Stallman. Well, in any case, he was playing the intro riff to “Layla” on a 12-string acoustic. When he got through the intro, two Mexican guys, dressed just like Clapton, appeared on stage brandishing classical guitars. The two new guys played a bunch of fills and stuff while Eric Clapton somehow managed to simultaneously play the lead and rhythm-guitar parts. And “Layla” was made into a flamenco song, like the Gipsy Kings might play. And it was a hell of a catchy song. Now I only wish Eric Clapton would record this song, because I swear it works really well.

Song of the Moment: “Layla” — Eric Clapton & The Mariachi Bunch

OK, winamp‘s shuffle feature is notoriously nonrandom — some songs get played much more often than others. Spinal Tap’s “Back From the Dead” gets played much more frequently than their other songs, for example, and plenty of worthwhile songs never get the nod from those fickle shufflegnomes. I can deal with that, I suppose; I know where the ‘j‘ key is on my keyboard, and I can often pick a song I’d like to hear at the moment. No biggie.

But then winamp goes and does something like play “Grimly Fiendish” by the Damned 6 times in a week. With roughly 6900 songs in my playlist to pick from, you’d think it would mix it up a bit more. Not that “Grimly Fiendish” is a bad song, or anything, but this is very strange nonetheless.

Song of the Moment: “Grimly Fiendish” — The Damned

“There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.”

God bless you, Kilgore Trout.

In other news, white Russians are as delicious as ever.

You Cat-in-the-Hat rapper, you Dr. Seuss Mother Goose, listen to what I’ve got to say. I’m the rex tremendae, and what I say goes. And what I say is as follows: Worlds colliding isn’t necessarily completely bad. Drinking buddies from, say confirmation camp can mix perfectly well with drinking buddies from, say, acoustics or solid mechanics classes. Also, the Blue Man Group are, as alleged, rather awesome. Stories involving Rex Morgan are confusing in that they deliberately involve Rex Morgan, of all people. As described earlier, being mentioned in a complete stranger’s blog is kind of cool. And now it’s happened again.

Before I leave you, let me just leave you with the following truth: the Box Tops were fucking awesome, those two songs that they had.

For. Nor. Or. Thor. Tor. War. Abhor. Señor. Cuspidor. Dinosaur. Ecuador. Guarantor. Labrador. Matador. Metaphor. Meteor. Minotaur. Picador. Salvador. Troubadour. Ichthyosaur. Toreador.

Boar. Boer. Bore. Chore. Core. Corps. Door. Floor. Fore. Frore. Four. Gore. Hoar. Lore. More. Oar. O’er. Ore. Pore. Pour. Roar. Score. Shore. Swore. Soar. Sore. Store. Swore. Tore. Whore. Wore. Yore.

Adore. Afore. Ashore. Before. Claymore. Deplore. Encore. Explore. Folklore. Footsore. Forbore. Forswore. Galore. Heartsore. Ignore. Implore. Restore. Albacore. Battledore. Baltimore. Commodore. Evermore. Furthermore. Hellebore. Heretofore. Nevermore. Pinafore. Sagamore. Semaphore. Singapore. Sophomore. Stevedore. Sycamore.

Underscore Gantrithor.ikoni

Well, I just lost faith in absolutely everything. Not only is it apparently possible to be born with 3 legs, 2 penises, and no anus, but public flag-desecration now apparently qualifies as a political campaign tactic. And let’s not forget the fact that the fortune in the cookie I just ate was a fucking Snapple advertisement. I have no problem with a fortune-cookie company putting lucky numbers, or ‘learn to speak Chinese, or their logo or web site inside my rather flavorless treats, but must every surface in the world be advertised upon?

On the other hand, though, I’ve regained some faith in an area where I’d lost everything: Space Moose. That link right there takes you to a place that used to be the world’s foremost repository of Space-Moosey goodness, until all the content on the site mysteriously disappeared some time ago. Thankfully, as I learned yesterday, one or two sites on teh intarweb collected archives of Adam Thrasher’s demented genius. In the mood to read about the whacky [sic] adventures of a bisexual, misanthropic Canadian moose who absolutely loves Star Trek? I recommend these fine examples of pure hilarity.

More reviews, kiddos!

Mentions in the blogs of absolute strangers: Pretty cool.

Anybody in a shirt that reads YOU’RE SO OFF MY BUDDY LIST: Keep away, friend! See below.

Fat bitches who bring drama: Fucking Pains In The Ass. Their friends might possibly not suck, other than for guilt by association.

Keith van Horn being traded: Better than I thought. Nobody was decapitated!

The electoral process in Apt. 1A: Awesome. Though elected King, I was also granted roles in the legislature and Supreme Court. Take that, peons!

Next Monday Sunday: Better fucking be great, if all yous know what’s good for yous. That includes those of you whom I have no reason to accuse of reading this shitty blog with any regularity. It also excludes some of you who do read this shitty blog with any regularity. Them’s the breaks!

Honky Tonk Woman: Best song on Hot Rocks.икони