Time Flies…

The year’s almost over. How the hell did that happen?

Spent most of last night trying to work out some frustrating cross-browser CSS issues with Joey. Grr, fucking IE 6 quirks mode rendering. Microsoft made a browser that renders CSS correctly, but then put in a feature that cripples that rendering under certain circumstances, since they have a vested interest in making sure that people don’t see “broken” layouts in Internet Explorer. Public Perception = Internet Explorer works better. Designer Perception: Great, one more set of exceptions, hacks, and workarounds to make standards compliant code truly standard across all major browsers. Fuck you very much, MS, for effectively making site designers do your dirty work for you.

Anyways. The Berkeley trip was fun…I made it to Comic relief for their Thanksgiving sale, and picked up Bone #53 and a ton of Love & Rockets stuff (Tears from Heaven, Locas in Love, and Vol. 2 #’s 8 and 9. They were out of #7! Shit!). “Locas in Love” is one of the funniest books I’ve read by Jaime, absolutely great stuff. I really like his stuff a lot better than Gilberto’s (although that Palomar book is pretty sexy….gggrowr…). Especially Gilberto’s newer stuff, specifically the High Soft Lisp story in vol. 2. That’s really a little too much for me…The “Julio’s Day” material is good, and “Me For the Unknown” is great also, but Fritz’s story just doesn’t sit well with me. Oh, but I found out that the final two issues of Bone will be 48 pages each! Sweet!

I also made a bit of a haul at Amoeba that night. I ended up with Kid 606’s Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You (very good, with a great video on the cd!), Cex’s Maryland Mansions (a little disappointing, but “the Strong Suit” is one of my new favorite Cex songs), Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker (which I had downloaded already, but hey…), Dntel’s Early Works For Me If It Works For You (very nice, along the same lines as Something Always Goes Wrong), and Low’s Things We Lost In the Fire on vinyl. I was replacing that Low album, since my CD copy was stolen last year, and the vinyl has the lyrics engraved into it on side 4 (since there’s only 3 sides worth of music). Very unique idea, and a really hauntingly beautiful album. I also got he Lightning Bolt DVD, the Power of Salad and Milkshakes. That band, and their fans, are truly insane.

I’m trying to get inspired and find the time to work on more PD and Buzz stuff, and maybe I will, now that Joey has a rehearsal schedule that keeps us from practicing a lot of weeknights. I’ve got one Buzz piece already that I’m excited about. I might end up posting it here as a work in progress….In the meantime, we should be playing open mic again on Tuesday, if we can find a monitor of some sort before then.

More later….

Odds and Ends

Obviously, there hasn’t been much activity here lately. There hasn’t really been much going on in general, so that’s probably why. They did finally post my live show report at EM411.com, so that’s available for reading now.

Emily’s going to Sacramento tomorrow, with Ian and Alyssa, but I’m gonna hang here for the weekend. I’m thinking of heading down to SF tomorrow night, maybe catch a movie or a show, but I haven’t decided yet. Oh, and it’s my Mom’s birthday tonight, so I need to stop off and pick up her gift before heading over there for dinner with the family. I also told Lonnie I’d stop by North Light and catch the tail end of his show if I could…

Anyways. I orderd some Bone collections for 30% off at Mile High Comics the other day, and they should be showing up at my place soon…I finally re-read the first dozen or so issues, and decided I needed to get back into that series. That’ll give me something to do over the weekend as well…

More later, perhaps…

Oh, Chan! *Swoon*

OK, then. So the Cat Power/Dirty Three show was awesome. The Dirty Three are an incredible live band, and far louder then i would’ve thought. They can summon up this incredible noise seemingly at will, like on their amazing closing song, “I offered it up to the Stars and Night Sky.” That’s always been one of my favorite album tracks, and it was awesome in person…the violinists was the default frontman, telling silly little stories about what all the songs were about before they started, and he was flailing and dancing and screaming into the soundholes of his electric violin while they played. Superb.

Cat Power was great also…She didn’t do any of the nervous break-down freaking out that I’d heard about and expected. During the solo portion of her set, she just did a sort of goofy nervous thing…started fiddling with her tuning, noodling on two chords for a few minutes, and nervously joking with the audience. She seemed to be in a really playful mood though, which really helped the atmosphere of the set. The full-band portion was nice, with violin, keyboards, drums, and extra guitar and vocals backing up Ms. Marshall’s rudimentary plucking and breathtaking vocals. Then, after a few songs, the band left the stage and she struggled her way through a long-ish solo set, peaking with the chilling piano/voice rendition of “Names.” Then the band joined her again and they kicked into a cover of the White Stripes “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” and a stellar cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” I had a good view from the balcony for most of her set, while Joey watched, lovesick, from the floor.

Anyways, in other news….Me and Timm have our Car Stereo Destroys Michael Bolton Tape shows on Friday and Saturday. We’ll be running through our set on Thursday, since we’ve both done a lot of re-working since our first practice. We’ll be recording to minidisc, so hopefully I can post at least part of our set online somewhere. Flyers were finished yesterday and should go up today, so hopefully Josh and Co. have been posting them like mad. I’m really happy with the finished designs, so I’d kind of like to see them in the wild, so to speak. Can’t wait to see From Monument to Masses again, at the Saturday show. The new material they posted online is really good stuff.

Kimo’s

I went to Kimo’s in San Francisco lat night, with Erin, Timm and Fonda, to see Oma Yang, From Monument to Masses, and the Rum Diary. It was an awesome show, despite how small, hot, and loud that room was. It was great to see FMTM again, and they were playing mostly new material (with the exception of “the Sharpshooter”, which I think they’ve only recorded live so far). Looks like they’re going to be playing the alternative to Day in the Sun show that Timm and Josh are setting up on May 3rd. Oma Yang opened the show, and they had just started before we got there. They’re a pretty cool band, but I didn’t really pay close attention. We were too busy hob-nobbing at first. FMTM played second, and rocked the house. Then the Rum Diary played, and they rocked as well. I haven’t seen them in forever either, and it was great to say hi to those guys too. While they were setting up, they were showing the Wedding Singer on their projector, while the soundman played Mr. Bungle’s Disco Volante, which I haven’t listened to in quite a while. It was an interesting combination. Then the Rum Diary played an excellent set, backed by a varied and awesome set of projected video, from retro vacation films to science program footage and other material.

I’ve been listening to Radiohead’s new album almost non-stop lately, and I’m planning on writing an entry with a track-by-track commentary, but that’ll have to be some other time.

More later…

Cex vs. FMTM?

So, I have a dilemma tonight. From Monument to Masses is playing at the 40th Street Warehouse in Oakland tonight. They are a fantastic band, and they’re playing at a super-cool venue (the first one I saw them at last year, actually, the night that a cop totaled my Mom’s car while I was driving home, a few days after my car’s engine had died). Also, Cex is playing somewhere in San Francisco tonight. He is the self-proclaimed “#1 Entertainer,” and he works hard to earn this title. I’ve only seen him play once before, and it was incredible. I’m leaning waaaay more toward FMTM, but there’s this magging doubt that’s saying “Go See Cex!!” in the back of my mind. Why couldn’t they both be playing in Oakland tonight? We could show hop! Damn, yo!

Anyhow…I don’t know why, but I keep picking up copies of “The Filth.” Actually, I guess I do know why. It’s intriguing, but consistently falls just short of being coherent enough to be really enjoyable. It’s floating on this borderline between Great Ideas and Poor Execution, but I keep hoping that the next issue will tip that balance, and everything will make sense. It hasn’t happened yet, and I’ve read the first 7 issues, so I feel like I’m in too deep to give up. Only 6 issues to go, and I’m hoping the ending will tie things together and make it all worthwhile, so I can go back and read it and really absorb it. But then I fear that it’ll just keeping plugging along with it’s super-compressed storylines and mish-mashed storytelling and garish colors, and end up a colossal waste of time and money. We’ll see. but hey, the covers are awesome. That’s one thing I love about it.

It reminds me of Automatic Kafka though. At first, the issues were hard to follow and make sense of. Characters, scenes, and relationships seemed loosely developed, and transitions and motivations weren’t always clear. But now that I’ve just gone back and read through the first 7 issues again, I managed to pick up on more of the actual plot and characters. I think it’ll read really well as a collection, rather than monthly. Something about the pace of 22 confusing pages a month is working against it, while reading it straight through gives you a much better thread to follow through it.

Ramble ramble. I need to get someone else to read 100 Bullets with me, so we can talk theories and re-cap and clear things up for each other. Any takers? Any of my three or so readers want to join in the fun?

More later…

Forget the Pledge

Recently listening to:
Mr. Lif - Emergency Ration EP
Outkast - “Bombs Over Baghdad”
Sigur Ros - ()

It’s been hard getting my thoughts together well enough to actually post here lately. I spent last night with Emily, flipping between Cartoon Network and CNN, drinking wine coolers and fighting off a headache. We’re planning on going to the protest on Saturday in SF. We wanted to go today, but decided against it for various reasons. So Saturday it is. I would’ve liked to be one of the ones linking arms in an intersection this morning, but it’ll have to wait.

Send back the Architects of Carthege / Take down the flag / forget the pledge…
-Les Savy Fav

Berkeley

So I missed going to APE this weekend. But that’s the end of the story…We went to Berkeley on Saturday, to buy art supplies for Emily’s art class. I finally picked up that 7-pen/$45 rapidograph set I’ve been lusting after since last time I was there! I loooooooove my new pens. Then we stopped off at Comic Relief on University, which is a kick ass comic book store. It’s up there with Comix Experience in SF for me now. Both great stores. I picked up the Popbot collection, Johnny Double by Azarello/Risso (pre-100 Bullets), and Channel Zero by Brian Wood. While we were at Comic Relief, we found out that APE was happening that weekend, so we planned to go on Sunday. Then we cruised over to Telegraph and went to Comics and Comics, which was ok. Nothing spectacular. I miraculously managed to stay out of Amoeba, Rasputin, and Mod Lang, which is good, since I was way over budget anyways.

So anyhow, on Sunday, we were going to get up early and go down to APE, but we ended up sleeping in and watching Cowboy Bebop all day instead. Which was still fun.

I’ll probably end up doing some more drawing tonight, but maybe not. We’ll see. Once I get another batch of stuff done, it’ll be scanned and posted, so keep checking back.

More later…

I’m in the top corner…

I was there.