THIS ONE'S FOR YOU, KACE
Two days of musing and ruminating, and all I could come up with was a story that, despite its look, is not about a mouse.

A GOOD NIGHT, IF JUST BARELY
Well aside from the fact that I almost got into a scrap with this guy who accidentally spilled water all over my notebook (it was an honest mistake, but it happened quickly and I just got the rage, and had to go out and walk around the block until my needle came out of the red zone), the show tonight went well. I did a song for Kaycee, and talked freely about my bad mood, which seemed to be a good move. The rage, and eventually the joy, flowed freely. It went nice. I felt way better after the show - I don't know about anyone else.

And after I apologized profusely to the guy (who was twice my size, and shocked that I was mad in the first place), I saw on the bar TV the other good news: Leafs 2, Devils 0. I'm about ten weak seconds from constructing a shrine to my man Curtis Joseph in the corner beside the piano, with the incense and glitter and magazine cutouts and everything.

All the Toronto clubs are playing New York area teams this week (Raptors-Knicks, Leafs-Devils, Blue Jays-Yankees), and with the Raptors manhandling the Knicks tonight and me being all rah-rah about it, really it's a wonder I got out of that place alive at all, let alone that the night, which ended with a lovely conversation about nothing at all, wound up being as quiet and pleasant as it was.

I'm also aware that me being almost, whaddyacallit, happy has very little to do with sports or having screamed and jumped up and down for an hour tonight or any of that. It's that I can start thinking about more than the next two minutes and who I have to placate next, which feels like it's been an issue for a little while.

I'm lifting my head up and looking at the scenery, and there's actually beauty out there. Check that out, eh?

BLAME EVERYONE ELSE DAY
In case you're wondering, I didn't plan to stop writing just this week, but a couple of things are happening.

I was supposed to start this temp job this week, but the person I was supposed to be covering for was still there, so they said to come back Monday (sure, whatever, I'll just take my belongings and starve to death quietly under a bridge somewhere, don't mind me), so I've been just firing off resumes to the four corners of this round planet.

I have been writing what was going to be a little story about Kaycee's, um, new developments, but something else happened this week that was kind of related in a not-nearly-as-significant way, and I've been rendered speechless (which you can translate as, I can't stop adding to this larger story I'm trying to finish on trying to make sense of my feelings). It's amazing how much this person whom I've never met, and barely spoken to, has been able to touch my life in, what, four months? Damn.

I played the open mike at the Raven tonight (to promote my show for tomorrow (that's Thursday) night), and I played a brand new song and realized only as I was playing it how utterly hateful it is. Where'd that come from? And I thought it was a real good song. (No one else thought so. Selfish bastards. Screw 'em. Their great-great-grandkids'll be dissecting the delicate meter and humming it in gym class in 2048. Yeah, right on, baybee, I'll show 'em.) Might want to revisit it. Or not. Like George Clinton said (in a completely different context, sure, but still), "whatever it is, let the vibe flow through."

It's been a week where just keeping things together feels an awful lot like victory. Substance when substance comes.

ZINE UPDATE (AND A POLL)
Okay, the last issue of A/M (or as it's being called now, the last issue) is finally up. I put a few extra pictures than were in the print edition, and I know I omitted Randi Russo's last article and a CD review, but there's some more reading material up there now, because really, how well-read do you think you are?

I have a question about the zine, actually. I'm going to make up a poll, because I don't know what to do with the damned thing now that the site is at least nominally up to date (as in, all the issues I edited are up there - we're still working on the 50-some-odd back issues that Jon Berger has). So I figure, why not ask the four people who read this page what their opinion is? Reading habits aside, y'all're smarter than me. Especially at 4-something in the morning (actually, it's just after 5 as I type this. But anyway.)

The Relevancy of Antimatters

How much does it matter to you that the Antimatters site is maintained, fixed up and kept up to date? It's vital - I use the pages regularly as a reference for the East Village scene, or would even more if they were more organized (more cross-indexing, formatting, extra photo galleries and articles, etc) It's real important - I like to keep up with what's happening in the East Village Scene on a monthly basis It's pretty important - I like having the back issues up so I can reference them at some point It's nice that they're there, but I don't really use them much I don't care, I'll never read it, I don't know these people Results

WEDNESDAY NIGHT FIGHTS
Oh, alright, here's one.

Turns out there are still people who think that New York City is some kind of crazy eternal party where a big yap and a swaggerin' 'tude is all that matters, and the laws of nature and humanity just gotta take a back seat. I sometimes forget that people like that still walk the earth (even though I have definitely been one of those bully-in-glasswares types myself, hey, I wasn't always the sage and erudite grownup I am now), and when one of them shows up on the radar it's kind of jarring.

Case in point. On Wednesday night (I'm behind on the news, sorry), I had the good fortune to participate in the final edition of Fragile Male Ego's Weekly Comedic Calamity, which had been running for three or four months. There were lots of people I hadn't seen in a while, and the whole vibe was kind of we-are-the-world anyways all night.

Brad and Randy (Eric, the third F.M.E., had a slipped disc and couldn't make it - he sent his love to the audience via Randy's cel phone) ran through a couple of songs that really needed Eric (the lead guitarist and soprano voice of the trio) to fill them in, but I think they only did this to show how much they missed their fallen comrade.

Then I went on and did a few tunes (including one I wrote on the weekend, "Silicone Dreamgirl," from a title that Alwin provided - that was fun, and I'll write more of those and let you know, I promise), and, well, I thought things went okay. Everyone seemed into it, whatever, I can't tell, I figured it was the roll of the evening.

So this one table (two ladies and a guy) bought me a drink, and Brad and Randy went back up, and another comedian named Susan went up and she was real funny too, and we all sat and chatted a little bit, and then after the show ended the dozen or so of us that were left all went downstairs to the pool room.

Where things got whacked.

One of the gurls (it bears mention that she's from another country where carousal is stereotypically a way of life) came downstairs at one point and shrank into the back of the room. "They're gonna throw me out. Hide me," she whimpered, hiding behind every guy she gave her phone number to this evening. Which turned out to be quite a few people. (Yes, including me. Hey, she was on the warpath.) There was some garbled story about taking photos of the bar upstairs without permission and getting into some argument with the bartender. Whatever. Oh, and her best friend was fighting with her date, and there was a little vibestream of hate going through the room at this point, but there were enough people playing pool and joking that things were still plenty fun.

About an hour passed, said best friend's date left in what I think was a huff, but might have been a snit, and the bartender from upstairs came down and asked Paranoid Girl to leave. At which point PG starts into her "But I didn't do anything!" squeak & squeal spiel, which really amounts to an admission of guilt, even before factoring in the fact that I can vouch for the bartender's levelheadedness over at least a year of spending time with her in her club, which happens to be sorta my home club too, as well as the home club of everyone else in the room, and for her to leave her post (with a manager in tow) and come all the way downstairs to eject Paranoid Girl told rather a lot about whether or not she did something to warrant all this attention. Also she'd been about five steps too rowdy the whole evening up to then in the first place. Well anyway, although all the evidence was circumstantial, it did seem real clear that Paranoid Girl's night at the Sidewalk was pretty much over at this point.

So as she left, she picked up Jon Berger's undrank Cosmopolitan. And threw it at the bartender.

(FX: bzzzzt - sound of Trap Door opening)

The (formerly) level-headed barkeep goes apeshit (gee, you think?), and I remember looking over at Brad, and Brad looking back at me, thinking did we really see what we just saw?

Her classless carcass was dispatched in short order (the evening pretty much wrapped right then for all of us, actually), but we all had a long talk about what happened, and we kind of pieced together that she just figured New York City was the kind of place where you get to go crayzayyy, let it go, force your movie on the rest of the group, that's how the town works, know'msayin?

What any of us would have happily pointed out to her is that it kind of works out quite the opposite: New York is little more than a big room with 8 million people in it, who out of necessity have learned to get along, despite how much we may hate the boneheads and wankers all around us.

The moral of this tale?

Never, ever forget that it's all about the love.

EVERY PARTY NEEDS A POOPER
I've been having a bad couple of days. I don't want to post anything when I'm in the mood I am now.

There's a ton of things I want to tell you about: the shows of the last couple days, all the cool things my friend Samara's doing, a couple of other acts I really like, not to mention the FTAA crap that's happening in Quebec City this week which is quite frankly scaring the hell out of me, but until I can make these thoughts coherent and not colored with my current mood, I'd best refrain.

But hey, the new (and final) Antimatters is out, and the Leafs advanced, which is good news.

Now, I've got some work to do.

BECAUSE I CAN
The little bumper sticker on the left over there may mar the whole feng shui of this page, but really, I don't much care. Like any fundamentalist, I'm only interested in beaming my religious leanings in any direction I can aim this little light of mine.

I have been a Toronto Maple Leafs fan since about 1976, the era of Darryl Sittler's 10-point game, Lanny Macdonald's Islander-killing overtime goal, and of course the completely improbable acrobatics of Mike Palmateer in the nets. That team, if I remember, was pretty damned good, a perennial contender, and would have left a way larger legacy if it weren't for the Montreal Canadiens sucking up all those Stanley Cups in the late '70s (and the following rise of the New York Islanders, for which I was happy, being born on Long Island, but still), oh and of course the very occasionally lucid tinpot-dictatorial posturings of Harold Ballard, the deeply insane centenarian owner who systematically dismantled the team and left behind a mess that took a decade to clean up.

Didn't matter. Their resurgence in recent years is to me little more than long-awaited validation. Childhood bonds thicken and deepen as one ages, and now that I'm approaching grownuphood way too quickly, I find my allegiance to the blue and white only strengthening. (It's a safe bet that my favorite professional athlete at any given moment is generally whoever is the Leafs' current starting goalie.) It's easier, of course, when they're rolling over their current competition in the playoffs (they're on the verge of sweeping the Ottawa Senators as of this writing), but for as long as they're still in contention, I shall fly that particular freak flag as high as propriety and weblog space permits.

I plead neither insanity nor innocence; fact is, if you'll permit the comparison, I'm doing this for the same reason a dog licks itself. No more, and no less.

S'MORES, SWANKY UPTOWN STYLE
Tonight I went to a birthday party at this DT-UT (which stands for Downtown-Uptown, not something Vietnamese as I originally thought), this bar in the rarefied air of the Upper East Side where I usually durst not go, at which I had the distinct vaguely guilty pleasure of having s'mores (of all things) for the first time in about ten years tonight. They were served fondue-style, with this chichi little flame-thingy in the middle of a lazy susan-style platter filled to overflowing with marshmallows and graham crackers, and chocolate bars and little skewers so our little fingers don't get burned.

Now. I know what you're thinking.

Tony, pal, buddy, Chico, dude, you are surely assimilating your once-proud and self-sufficient self through some whacked NYC looking glass to that trend-sucking parallel universe where everything fake is real, and the most homespun things are served as if exotic to gullible hyperurbanites who no longer know better or even care. You used to be of the people, maan, what happened to you?

I hear you, and quite frankly, I feel your pain. As I was sitting among my friends (having I must admit plenty of fun with the play-food, telling each other the stories about how we all moved to New York, and oh of course the lately-ubiquitous Joey Ramone), I'm shmushing melted burning marshmallow between the chocolate and crackers, and I'm thinking, every single one of us at this table should know better than to pay through the nose for this little camp treat here.

Well, we did at least know better than to gush about how "authentic" the whole experience was. We all had been to camp and had enjoyed exactly this treat (are there lots of different recipes for s'mores? I guess so, but whatever), and I had a flash about how we all were being systematically removed from our native environment, and how thoroughly unnatural this kind of urban living really is, and that isn't even going into the whole bread-and-circuses thing which I sometimes get worried about, I mean really, as long as we can have our inane little creature comforts then the world could be going completely to pot and none of us would even care.

But I worry too much sometimes about these things.

And of course (far as I can tell) the world didn't implode completely because, well, the same reason as always: that's right. Ironic distance.

Still, s'mores are apparently catching on as some kind of big cuisine thing, which is vaguely disturbing in a way I can't really put my finger on. Still, okay yeah, it was fun to make them, and I wouldn't rule out recommending it to other non-irony-challenged friends some other time.

(And with those words, it is sealed: I am going straight to Hell.)

JOEY RAMONE, KING OF THE GEEKS, R.I.P.
I'll never forget the first time I heard the Ramones.

I was 10 or 11 years old, and I was living in this condo on Don Mills Road in Toronto, and I was getting beaten up every day, and I hated it. I hated my life, I hated everyone I knew, I hated every minute of everything, and nothing made sense. All I wanted to do was cause trouble, but I was such a milquetoast I didn't even know how.

I would watch the rebel kids in the neighborhood, mooks with long hair and kodiak work boots with the laces undone, so their feet went shhhhh-lump, shhhh-lump as they lunked about from the convenience store to the basketball courts and back. They'd wear denim and flannel, with patches on the back and the arms: The Clash, Exploited, Ramones, GBH, Stiff Little Fingers, Black Flag.

Maybe part of me knew they were losers, but they had their society, and it was closed to outsiders. Certainly they wouldn't talk to me. This was the Olympus of cool to which I aspired, and it was a hell of a mountain.

One day, I went to the Music World in Fairview Mall, and emboldened by an entire lifetime's worth of taunting and self-hatred, I shoplifted a copy of the Ramones' Rocket To Russia and somehow got away with it. I took the record home and put it on, and the opening strains of Cretin Hop filled the apartment, and my religious conversion was immediate. I played nothing else for weeks, and I still play that same copy of that same record, almost 20 years later.

Those kids still wouldn't talk to me, but I didn't care so much after that.

After a couple of other successful heists, I got arrested for stealing another record (okay, it was Chris DeBurgh, I can admit it), and my life of crime came to a reasonably abrupt end. But I've grown up with the Ramones, who still are the best pure rock and roll band in the world, who absolutely loved what they did, and who made my miserable shitty life a little less horrible. At least in my own mind, I was accepted by someone.

Thanks, Joey.

WE CAN WORK IT OUT

Turns out the Empire State Building is doing up its lights all special for the Chinese plane people. Get this: they're lighting (maybe they already have lit - my apartment window faces away from it and I didn't go out tonight) up two sides in good ole yanqui red, white and blue, and the other two in Chinese red and yellow.



Turns out that the guy who's in charge of the lighting on the building wanted to show how grateful he was that the two sides, unresolvably far apart even a day or two ago, actually managed to reach some kind of agreement. (The multicolor scheme has never been done before. (No mention on the official page); I just heard the interview on the radio last night, oh and there's a mention of it here, so I know I'm not completely delusional.)



Somehow the mere thought that Chief Electrician Robert Tortorelli, an otherwise faceless wonk, going against the tendencies of faceless wonks worldwide, has unilaterally decided to make what amounts to a nice big gesture (sure it's meaningless, but pretty much everyone within a hundred miles of here'll see it) commemorating how the most hawklike elements of two cultures as prejudiced against each other as the US and China actually managed to end their little pissing contest and put their cryptofascist little peckers back in their uniforms long enough to solve this little crisis, makes me feel all tingly inside.



Right now, I don't really care so much about the stupidity of the whole affair in the first place, or who wound up capitulating more, or who won the diplomatic battle, or whatever happened to the plane, or any of that jingoistic shite. I'm glad it's resolved and history can start obliterating it from our memory, and I can see (if only in my mind, if only for a day or two) the lights of Gotham shine klieg-bright in all their red, white, blue, red and yellow shades of compromise, forgiveness and resolution.

ANTI-LIT
Coming as I do from a scene that was originally created in reaction to the fossilization of the mainstream folk songwriter scene, I can sympathize with Karl Wenclas and his Underground Literary Alliance. The New York Literary establishment is as stratified as any other, with an insufferably hip cadre of ironically distant overeducated aesthetes rampaging Pamplona-style through the lit world, and (of course) freezing anyone not part of their clique out like this is Heathers or something.

Hell, I don't mind their writing and it's still enough to piss me off.

What modern lit needs (actually, so does music) (actually, so does most everything these days) is an enema, something to take the same 50 people that write every single littish thing ever published in, um, Harper's or the Atlantic Monthly or whatever and shake them until their little plastic Ivy League heads pop off, or they come to their senses and become more inclusive of other styles of writing that bring different classes and styles into the mix, whichever. The world will only be better for it. It's certainly going to happen at some point.

Things can't go on the way they have been. I mean, I read McSweeney's pretty much daily, and the New Yorker fairly regularly, and I dig them, really I do. Hell, I write like that sometimes myself, but I can see that there's got to be something else out there that can bust up the monopoly of this one clique.

That being said, and despite the fact that I agree with many of their stances (modern literature does lack the "bite" it has occasionally had in the past, and people of privilege do get a disproportionate share of the grants and publishing space, just like they get more than their share of everything else - hey, it's called privilege for a reason), it doesn't seem to me like the ULA is going to actually be the group that does the busting. I mean, I've never read any of their stuff, but Hillary Frey's piece seems to give them plenty of rope with which they hang themselves.

At the press conference the ULA was more aggressive, making "a Declaration of War on establishment literature." With lots of rage and little charisma, it felt more like a declaration of war on small literary magazines; nearly half of the 20-odd-person crowd hailed from Open City or The Paris Review, both of which the ULA has lobbied heavily for attention, and both of which have published Wenclas. Even George Plimpton--whom Wenclas repeatedly pointed to as "an example of what's wrong with New York's elite literary world"--was sport enough to attend. "We went down there hoping these people really did have something to offer," says Plimpton. "But I was so disappointed by it. I'd hoped to make some sort of connection with them."

(Of course, it would be just like the Voice Literary Supplement, one of the paragons of the Modern New York Literary Cabal, to paint any threat to their little Yale-Hamptons-ohsojaded-pantywaistful status quo as eternal underdogs, amateurs and outcasts throwing rocks at the windows while the endless orgy goes on uninterrupted inside, now, wouldn't it?)

Look, if I haven't written it here yet, then I'll say it now. If being as good as the next guy isn't good enough to get you what you need, then just go be better. It may sound impossible, but it really is that simple. Don't whine about how "they" get all the breaks. Don't complain about how the competition is all sizzle unless you've got your best steak ready.

As the ULA has found, a good publicity stunt will get you noticed in this town. But substance is still the way to keep that attention, and it's what'll get you into the party, no matter what social caste you're from. I still believe that.

HOLD THE MALAISE
I just realized it's been a few days since I last updated the gigs list. And (glory of wonders! it's been when I've actually been doing a little bit of booking! Spring should come more often! (Do the seasons dictate my moods this much? Really? Damn. There's got to be more than that to this malaise stuff, especially this year. Oh well, he chirped, I'm off to piss off all my friends with my born-again perkiness!))

It's 20 degrees cooler than yesterday, and still I have all the windows open and I'm listening to Sloan as loud as I can without knocking something over.

Dammit, life is gonna be good if I have to wreck this apartment and everything in it (including myself) to make it happen.

DO MY JOB FOR ME
It's contest season, so I can't not join in.

Next Wednesday I'm slotted to play four songs at Fragile Male Ego's Weekly Wednesday Comedic Calamity at the Sidewalk Cafe, so I'm thinking, they're probly expecting these songs are gonna be funny. And I'm a little short on that wacky zany (or even wry and dry) stuff these days, with all this burnin' churnin' towerin' infernin' angst in my pore little procrastinative soul, tearin' up my heart like a land shark in Intensive Care.

So I figure I'll write some songs this weekend, I'll play them next Wednesday, and tape the show, and if anything's any good I'll post it for y'all.


What I need are some titles.

Send me some titles to a song that hasn't been written yet, and I'll write it (if I can) and if it's funny (big if, but if) then I'll give you part co-writer's credit, and then you can lie back and watch them thar royalty checks start a-rollin' in!

(I used to write song titles this way. Bowling With Stevie Wonder, Infomaniac, Not About Ani Difranco (from my first record), I'm In Love With A Fascist Girl, I'm On Acid You Can't See Me, Mom's Gone To Florida (And She's Never Coming Back) from the earlier days of the Toes)

If you have any ideas, send them in by the weekend. I'll be writing the songs Saturday and Sunday, and learning them from then till Wednesday.

(This is a bit of a test of the training I've been getting on Sundays with the Funny Sheesh improv troupe. I'm realizing that improv comedy holds many answers to life's problems. Of course, so do newspaper horoscopes and fortune cookies. But whatever.)

If this works well, maybe I'll keep it going after next week. It's easier than actually working myself.

UPDATE (warning: terrible analogy alert)
All the issues back to last July are up now. I keep thinking, content is king, the ugly pastel is temporary, at least it's all there, people can go read it if they want now, but really, I'm gonna hate it until I fix it up and make it purty.

You remember when this page here was that crappy green or lavender or sky blue (I tried to put band aids on the spurting wound that was the design of the Evil Twin Theory for a long, terrible time) and that clunky block title graphic was up there with that infernal pig (it's still around on some of these pages, like a fart in an empty elevator - I could purge it completely, but I guess I don't hate it that much, it is part of this home and all) and I complained, like, every other day about it ihateitihateitihateit until I finally got around to fixing it and now this page is this airy gorgeous spacious (Palm Pilot friendly! Really! Go Figger!) model of visual and esthetic perfection (cough, cough) you now behold?

No? You don't? Well don't let me remind you. I told you nothing, see?

Anyway. The same ugly-duckling process will take place with the A/M site. But the last eight months of Anti/Matters is all there, and all readable, and it's proof I haven't been boinking the proverbial pooch to the exclusion of all non-proverbial-pooch-boinking activities of late.

And now that I've mentioned proverbial sex with proverbial dogs, I am clearly no longer proverbially awake.

Good night, sweetheart, good night.

OPERATION BOOTSTRAP CONTINUES
I'm working on A/M this weekend - not just putting together the new issue (which is about six weeks overdue), but actually putting the back issues back online, because there's been a few people who wanted them up there and I figured, what the hell.

At this point I know I owe every songwriter on Avenue A an apology for being so lax with the production of this exalted rag. If you've been around me at all lately (or have had the unfortunate luck to have read this space at all over the last few months) you'll know that things have been sufficiently far from normal that I often don't have a clue where up is, let alone which week it is and who needs to be pushed into doing what they have to do.

I used to be so good at this. I have to believe it will change back.

But I know it's too late for a lot of people. I've spoken with a few people, and we'll scale the production back of the zine to something a little more manageable for everyone concerned. The concept of a scene weblog has been tossed around, and logistics aside, I think it could fly. Perhaps every two or three months, the best of the weblog could be published in a hard copy and everyone concerned, editors and readers alike, might just be (dare I say it?) happy. (If you have any ideas or willingness to help out, fergawdsake, let me know.)

That's my favorite idea, although the question of how to get from here to there has yet to be answered. Until then, I'll get this issue done, and stop the hemorraging for a little while.

So that's what I'm doing this weekend. If for some reason you need me or are looking for me.

SIMPLE QUESTION
Is there anyone who's not in some kind of terrifyingly deep malaise these days? It feels like months since my travels have brought me near anyone who was in a genuinely good mood. Now, I know the seasons have been screwier than they have been in eons, but really. Is anyone cheerful?

Or is that me just projecting a lot of black light into everyone's otherwise bright sunshiney day?

In that (lack of) light, um ... never mind?

PAUL REUBENS
I don't know if this counts as an observation, but - on the cover of Time Out NY this week is Paul Reubens, who's re-emerging into the public eye after ten years on the fringes, playing semi-visible (and semi-memorable) parts like Murphy Brown's spoiled slacker secretary, or The Spleen in Mystery Men, and from what I can tell from the article, he's really got his head back on straight. He's apparently got some sort of major role in Traffic II (sorry, they're calling it Blow, aren't they?), and he's hosting You Don't Know Jack, the TV version of the video trivia game that's so popular among the square-screen-and-bookworm set.

All this is great. Reubens is one of the funniest comedians I've ever seen. The way he managed to maneuver the character of "Pee Wee Herman" from a snotty grade-school add-on at the Groundlings (his improv troupe in L.A.) to a real comic icon who, in his own way, changed the face of television, is phenomenal, and the fact that he was actually able to live in Pee Wee's skin for all that time, for pretty much 24 hours a day, absolutely amazes me. His completely unnecessary crucifixion aside, he's done pretty well for himself, and I salute him for not coming out of the last 20 years completely batty or drug addicted or worse.

Astonishingly (to me, anyway), he even still likes being Pee Wee. From Jancee Dunn's article in TONY:

And it gets much, much better. Joy of joys, Reubens is hard at work on two new Pee Wee films. He recently finished writing the first, which he says is for a "more adult" audience. The other, which he plans to begin filming by year's end, is for kids. In addition, he says, "I've been toying with doing a stage show and bringing it to New York." Pee Wee lives!

And on top of all of it... the guy looks fantastic. He's 48 years old, and he looks like fricken' Dave Grohl or John Cusack or something. If that's what hanging out in the dark does to a fella, maybe I should be spending more time in those dirty movie parlors myself.

MORE MISPLACED VANITY (OR FALSE MODESTY, WHICHEVER)
So instead of actually doing any work, I made a few more desktop wallpaper thingys. Because really, I have nothing else meaningful to do.

They're fairly easy to mock up (ask Jim if you don't believe me, and there's no reason why you should), and (let's see if I can say this without sounding impossibly pretentious) the first set of wallpaper ones I made up seemed a bit too focused on me and my face for comfort. So I hadda rectify the situation a little.

So. There's a bunch of pictures I, um, appropriated and liberated instead. I promise to get better at that stuff if you'll only keep hanging around. That's the only reason I do any of this. Because I miss you when you're not here. (Feel the pout!)

Now, I'm going back to bed. I'm really sick with some kind of chest and throat thing, and it's getting worse, not better.

Updates as I get coherent again.

CAUTIONARY TALE (NOTE: NOT CAUTIONARY)
Back when I used to be in the Toes and I didn't know how to sing at all, much less pay even cursory lip service to such trivia as 'taking care of my instrument,' we'd rehearse in those cheap ten-dollar-an-hour halls around the city with just enough room to fit our stuff in, and we'd have to play loud enough to drown out the hairfarmer band on one side of us and the noodle-boogie octet on the other side, all separated by spit-and-kleenex walls and as much tolerance as any of us had for each other's crap, which was really very little.

Anyway, we were poor enough and dumb enough that we considered a microphone a luxury. So I just yelled over the guitars and the drums in order to be heard.

And I blew my voice out every day, and I learned the songs by screaming them at the top of my lungs. It got to the point where I'd be playing shows and we'd just go until I was hoarse and then we'd stop. (I hear this isn't good.)

Anyway. I have no idea why I can still talk, much less sing nowadays. I guess I learned how to do it at some point, and it made me stronger (in that Nietzschean way), but I think back on those times and I wonder what the hell I was thinking.

That came back over the last couple of days. The taping of Dave's Place on Friday went really well (nobody actually taped the show, did they?), but there was no vocal monitors - if you watched it on TV, you can see that I physically cannot hear what it is I'm singing. (If you didn't see the show for geographical or cablelessness or actual-life-having reasons, more to the good.) We played well, everything went good, some people came to dance, it was a good night, and hey, I hear we outdrew the XFL game in the overnight Nielsens. (Little victories, you know.)

And I didn't rest it between Friday night and last night's show at the Wrong Way Inn. The show was fine (there could have been more people, but attendance there has been way worse), everyone had fun and stuff, but I blew my voice out halfway through my set.

It's coming back this afternoon, but if for whatever reason I'm whispering to you the next couple of days, I hope you'll understand.

Also, I'll be doing only quiet improv on stage tonight (d'oh! Forgot about that.) for Funny Sheesh, to which I am indentured every Sunday for the next little while, in a bid to inject some much-needed routine into my life.

Besides, improv comedy is fun as hell. I'd tell you all about it, but um, I can't talk right now.