Minus the Planning
Minus the Bear played at the Bottom of the Hill last night, and I jetted on down there with Joey at around 8:30-ish to check it out. We got there after 9 sometime, only to find out it was sold out. So there we are, standing in front of the club with our $8 in hand, looking at each other like “oh. well…what do you want to do now?” We ended up thumbing through the Guardian and heading over to Cafe du Nord for indie folk night. Except that I forgot which block of Market Street Cafe du Nord was on, and we walked 6 blocks in the wrong direction before we relaized it. So then we walked 8 blocks back (back down the 6 blocks we’d walked in the wrong direction, plus the 2 blocks in the right direction!) and got there at 11, just in time for a quick gin and tonic before the last act.
Dave Dondero was good, wholesome folky fun, with songs about burning his body and scattering the ashes on the highway, and losing $500 to a Vegas hooker. He was damn entertaining, and a damn fine guitar player as well, playing some down home country folk licks through an acoustic guitar fitted with a humbucker pickup. Lots of straightforward but slightly leftfield song arrangements and clever, often hilarious, sometimes poignant lyrics.
All in all, not too shabby an evening. We capped things off with a quick trip to Safeway, an impromptu Britney Spears singalong in the candy aisle, and a drive back home with the company of the Gene Burns program on Newstalk 810. Good times, except for wanting to fall asleep at work the next day (today).
I watched Gus Van Sant’s Elephant with Michelle, and was thoroughly creeped out. A really well made film about very uncomfortable subject matter. Some really interesting techniques that put you inside the situation in a very “fly-on-the-wall” sort of way; excellent and sparse use of music and sound effects as well.
In other news….I’m fighting a losing battle against comment spam. I’ve been deleting a handful of comments advertising the usual internet scams per day lately. Grr. I’ll have to do something about that.
More later.
