WHY ALL MY CRAP IS STILL IN BOXES

So on this, the week I move, I'll be at two (two! two!) trivia nights. Last night, at the Baggot Inn (where I'll be playing a week from tomorrow, incidentally), we won handily in a thinned out field (we being Steph, her friend Jen, The Anonymous Outsider, this guy Matt, and two of Matt's friends). We drank like sweet vaguely competitive dilettantes we were, and won 25 bucks! You'd be proud, mom.

Tonight I'll be hosting another trivia night at Dempsey's in the East Village (2nd Ave. between 3rd & 4th Sts.). My carefully crafted questions on "Homeless Guys Courtney Love Has Infected" and "Places To Put A Hamster" are going to stump even you smartypantses.

But there will be booze, much of it free, especially if you win. Like, I think I mentioned, we did yesterday.

YESTERDAY, IN BRIEF

The move went well. A two hour operation become seven tedious hours of grip-and-wait, with twice the number of trips. Heavy lifting, except I have no furniture to speak of aside from a kitchen table and a bed (now broken). The rooms still echo. I am a poor man. I have nothing. I can only give my heart.

They finished the renovations. Place looks fantastic. New stove, fridge, bathroom, cabinets. Cleaner than clean, and huge! Jeezus, I could install bleachers. Thanks to everyone who helped. (Vidiot and Val make that list easily, though my cousin Richard sacrificed his car (and a rare quiet Sunday with his new baby girl) to lug shit around and brave Midtown traffic all day long. He has more patience than me. He has more patience than ten of me.) New landlord, slightly older friends. I'm not worthy.

Leather-clad Valkyries shaking it to Parliament made up the welcoming party. There was more beer than we knew what to do with. We broke the bed. I lost a nut. Out cold by nine. Missed a party and a Zambonis show.

True, every last truncated fucking word of it.

Ultra-jaded outsider rants to return in 5. 4. 3.

2.

FANTASTIC NEWS

I didn't know they had actually solved the murder of Mia Zapata. I hadn't heard of the Gits until someone played their album with Joan Jett filling in for Mia, who'd been raped and murdered in Seattle a few years before. That record is amazing, full of the savage beauty that comes from a great band playing through their collective grief.

But they actually found the guy who killed her. It might not be justice, but it sure as hell is closure. Right on.

OUR NATION TURNS ITS LONELY EYES TO YOU (II)

Noam Chomsky has a blog. Of all people.

This is cool as much because there aren't a lot of bloggers I know who aren't in the 18-to-40 age group, and Noam is, what, a hundred and six years old, as it is that Noam Chomsky is blogging.

He's a dry writer, and some weeks he'll be as lofty and opaque as anyone, but (and I love that I get to use this line) no linguist is more cunning.

THEIR NATION TURNS ITS LONELY EYES TO YOU

It's news items like this one that convince me that Jon's hiatus is temporary.

Who else would have the guts (literally) to keep on top of the continuing spread in popularity of deep-fried chocolate bars?

Now that the Brits have discovered them (and if that ain't a natural culinary fit, then what the hell is), it's time to sell them on my newest idea: mashed potato wrestling.

Book the commercial time now. All we need is a celebrity spokesbot. (Ah, get Kylie to do it. That creepy looking little minx'll do anything.)

TRESS TEST

Chucky! What the hell did you do to Kimya's hair?

TOUR DIARY

The show at Mr. Beery's in Bethpage on Saturday night was a sickeningly fun affair, with an absurd amount of shots being devoured and more musical styles than any freeform radio deejay could possibly handle.

Mike Ferrari can always be counted on to be a genial and stellar impresario, and despite the fact that the evening was running two hours late, he kept the crowd interested with lots of schtick and nonsense. And the place was actually packed. There was video and audio recorded of the evening's festivities, which was a good thing because I couldn't hear myself over the din of the mullet people in the audience, and I'd love to know just how croaky and fucked-up my voice was. It's always heartening when people I don't expect to like indie music are way into it, and this was no exception.

I think I might have killed a guy. It was all in fun, though. And he did give me ten bucks.

I was scheduled to go on at 11:30, but it was well after 1:00 when I finally got up. It didn't matter, though. No one left, and everyone was right into everything that happened. I could have made armpit fart noises for a half-hour, and it would have been fine. (That might be because I went on right after the energetic Imaginary Bill, who are my favorite Long Island band, bar none. But I think it was more that everyone was, and I'm quoting here, "screwed, blued & tattooed, dude," and would have moshed and groped each other to anything that wandered up on stage this side of, oh, Tiny Tim. Maybe even him.)

So like I said, the show was recorded, and if anything is listenable, I'll post it. But I honestly wouldn't know.

I got home close to 5 am on Sunday morning, which meant that Area 52 wasn't updated until about that time this morning. Yes, I'm bragging. No, I don't have a right to.

I'll push my next show (Thursday, August 8th at the Baggot Inn) a little later. But now I have to pack for the big move next weekend. And reclaim some sleep hours. That didn't happen at all this weekend.

'SCARY KITCHEN SCORNED BEEF HASH': CRUDDY SIGHT GAG, OR INCISIVE COMMENTARY ON MAD COW FEARS & YANKEE OBESITY?

I loved Wacky Packages as a kid. They were part of the whole Cracked magazine playground culture deal when I was in the third grade, and just learning how to play hockey and talk to strangers without them taking my lunch money.

It was the kind of indicator that made separating the Cool Patrol from the eventual comic relief artists and Dungeons and Dragons aficionados easy. I remember sunning myself on the concrete ground of some friend's apartment pool one hot summer afternoon, having gone through so many packs of baseball & hockey cards & Wacky Packs that our sweat smelled like that crappy hard pink gum. I delivered the Globe and Mail for a few years as a kid, so for a kid I was flush with money, which I spent on packs of all these things, and sharing them with my friends probably stopped me from getting beaten up a lot more than I was. (It all comes back. Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end.)

You always think these things stop existing when you stop being a kid, because well, they're no longer there. But it turned out that by the time I and my friends had discovered them, they weren't being made any longer, and the Havenbrook tuck shop where we were buying the things was thrilled to be selling off aging overstock. But I remember having a Coffin-Mate and a Jail-O stuck inside my hockey helmet, not to be cool, but because I was fidgety and that seemed like the right thing to do.

But now they're going to try and bring them back. I suspect this is going to sell to a lot more grownups than before, if only because in their heyday, it was the zany 70s, an era where everyone dressed like clowns and listened to bouncy stupid music and felt like they had no control of the greater world around them, and just needed the one-off dumb gag... yeah, actually, this is a good time for them to come back, ain't it. Or perhaps, in this the golden age of Photoshop, we should make our own. (Fark/Something Awful contest, anyone?)

TALK ABOUT OVERDUE

It's only now that they're setting up a real Jazz Museum in Harlem, possibly next to the Apollo theater, where it bloody well belongs.

The museum will feature performances, storytelling and interactive exhibits from modern players and scholars, and should be a boon to the local community as well as filling a cultural gap that's been around forever.

Before this, if you wanted to make a New York jazz pilgrimage of any kind, what was there? Pay thirty bucks to see some hit-or-miss flashyfingered hotshot at the Village Vanguard or Birdland? Really, there was very little. In New Orleans, by comparison, virtually the entire French Quarter has become a jazz-age study hall, and places like Pete Fountain's, Tipitina's and Preservation Hall stand as places where you can see, learn and absorb what was happening fifty or seventy-five or a hundred years ago while still seeing top-notch contemporary stuff.

New York hasn't had a consistent place where the best of then and the best of now could be shown in proper contrast, and hopefully this place will fill that void.

[Two WSJ articles cited in one week does not constitute a trend, okay?]

IT ROCKS, IT ROLLS, BUT IT AIN'T ROCK AND ROLL

So here, as promised, is a sort-of review-slash-reminiscence about Eugene Chadbourne's show last night, and a similar show he did with Mojo Nixon a little over ten years ago, which got me into playing music in the first place. Now, Mojo's retired, I'm slogging it out, and so is he. God bless him.

Just because it reads like I shat it out over my lunch hour doesn't mean I -- okay, actually, I did. But it's still worth a read, if you've ever had an inkling of what the guy actually sounded like. If you're happy just knowing there are people who sound a little freaky and impressionist, without having any time for it, believe me, I understand.

Aaron and I really should start a zine for this stuff.

A FURTHER DISTRACTION

I got a big long review of the Eugene Chadbourne show at Tonic last night a-coming, but until then...

I didn't know Tony Millionaire made cartoons for Saturday Night Live. The humor's a little dark. I warned you.

And speaking of SNL, and we were, here's a list of Weekend Update jokes that were cut for various reasons from the live broadcast after the dress rehearsal. They do read good as one liners, some of 'em.

[via con dios]

SET AT SERIF, AS SAFIRE STATES

An impressive collection of celebrity palindromes to kick start your morning.

[via Caren, whose latest book I'm reading right now.]

SOMEONE'S GOTTA NOT MIND THE STORE

I should have mentioned it before this, but my monkey-pal Dan the Walrus has left his worldly belongings and is off on a trip around the world. How Phineas Fogg of him, or nobler yet, how totally Marco Polo of him.

Anyway, he's in India as I type this. I'm jealous beyond adjectives.

Oh yeah, and he's keeping a blog while on the road. It's fun just pronouncing the names of the places he's visiting, let alone reading about them.

A HUGE PORTRAIT OF NANCY REAGAN FILLED MY DREAMS LAST NIGHT

There were a million posters all over the place at the Women's National Republican Club for the launch of Content, a architectural mindfuck book-cum-magazine exploring Rem Koolhaas' post-jadedist social-construction fetish. The hall looked like a political rally, and despite the fact that there was precious little in the way of food (hipsters, like any army, travel on their stomach, and none of us were going far on teeny chicken satay skewers and cucumbers), the bar was open, which kept the conversations between the other writers appropriately lubricated. Which for an operation like this is a bare minimum.

Now, I'd never heard of Herr Koolhaas before (he's as teutonic as you'd think in person, with all the ironed corners and stern clockworky precision in his movements you'd expect of an accomplished German Architect), but this book is typical Taschen, superglossy, oversized by half, and perfect for creatively blocked layout types to have a serious wank over. Every page looks like it was ripped from a different ad agency, and it hurt my eyes when I tried to read more than a couple of pages at a time.

It reminded me of one of those hippy-dippy books by Buckminster Fuller or someone from the '60s that weren't so much books as pieces of clip art and provocative photographs and slogans and aphorisms that were supposed to open that third eye & expand your mind into new and transgressive frontiers. The one I remember was Vietnam and astronaut-heavy, full of the-present-sucks-but-dig-the-future-oh-yeah-the-glorious-fucking-future.

This one is exactly the same, but about four times as big, with 9-11 and Mars substituted in. It'll turn a nice profit I'm sure, and you'll never hear about it again.

Oh, if it wasn't for Stephanie and Ron, I would have drank a lot more and left a lot earlier. Thanks, I think.

MORE PROOF I AIN'T LIVING RIGHT

This man is the super in my building.

I could kvetch here about how I'm going to have to explain to the management assessor that the stains all across the ceiling are not my doing but that of either the person living upstairs or the decrepit condition of the pipes, which wouldn't be an issue if my super were more reachable, which is part of why I'm leaving for brighter, more spacious pastures. And if I'd known my super (My! Super!) was keeping spammers in business almost singlehandedly, instead of tending to the job I (and the rest of the building) pay him apparently about $40,000 to do, I'd have smeared goat blood on his front door or something (probably a nasty letter-writing campaign, but really, same diff) long ago.

But I'll save the standard New York City Tenants' litany for a time when I have even less to write about than right now.

Because what really tans my haunches is that apparently, the best way to get an article about yourself in the Wall Street Journal (and have one of those neat-o pointillist daguerrotype portrait thingys done of yourself) is to simply be real gullible and fund people who make everyone's life hell by their very obnoxious existence.

It may not be better in the new place, but I'll settle for different.

HEY, CHECK IT OUT

I've been shamed.

Last night, this touring band from Ireland going on right after me brought an entourage of happy drunks and apple cheeked maidens to my show, and they were a pretty good band too. Apparently Vidiot was there, but I didn't see him. (I'll give him credit for attendance, though. The three increasingly agitated cell phone calls were a big ole hint.)

I was scratchy and hesitant, with stage rust I have no business having, even after six months. My guitar sounded like a ukulele, my voice resembled Jack Nicholson's at the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, all slurry and kill-me-now-chief. But the place was lovely, I got paid, which is always nice, and though I was fully prepared to take all my new frie-ends out afterward, a mess of people took off at the end of my set, so I was even in bed at a decent hour, which of course makes the baby Elvis very happy.

I'M PLUGGING THIS PRETTY HARD

If you're not planning on Digitally oscillating the single serving soup dispenser, Having an arm-wrestle with the Lighthouse, Moisturizing the bunny, Scratchin' the crotch trombone or Assaulting the one-handed air guitar tonight, come on down to the Baggot Inn and have a listen to what the hell I've been doing this year.

I'm on at 7, which means there'll be plenty of time to, oh, Bludgeon the Staff, Wake Bubba, or Jack your Johnson afterwards. Or have a friend do it for you. Hey, whatever unblocks your tackle.

[link via]

CANUCKLEHEAD
(Warning: Hockey)

My heart goes out to Todd Bertuzzi.

Not because I approve of the hack job he did on Steve Moore. It was a move that transcended simple words like dumb and wreckless and fell into a zone of deep, dangerous insanity, which I only hope and assume was temporary. Bertuzzi is a quality player, which makes this all the more surprising.

But now, his deep talent for scoring and playmaking, his well-earned reputation as a leader both on and off the ice, his marketability as one of the better power forwards in a game where good ones are rare, and some of the remaining shards of goodwill that hockey has over the other major sports have largely evaporated. People who don't know anything about hockey will point to this incident and talk about how hockey is a game for uneducated goons, ultimate fighting with sticks and knives on your feet, where you can break someone's neck because they knocked out one of your guys a couple of weeks ago and people will merely shrug, suspend him for a while, and move on.

What hockey needs is a serious charm offensive, and with the looming lockout, I wish I could be more optimistic that it's gonna happen.

IF I OWE YOU AN EMAIL, READ THIS.

I know, baby, I done you wrong.

I been distant and actin' all funny, beng inconsistent at best (and nonexistent at worst) in this space, letting your messages go through to voicemail, ignoring you when you got real gripes about things like my hygiene and the stale turkey from Thanksgiving that's still in a Ziploc bag in my fridge and that now has the consistency and color of a mypetfat piece, I rented Deuce Bigelow Male Gigolo even though we just watched it last week, it's your birthday tomorrow, right? Whaddyamean, last month? Really?

Aw, shit, I'm sorry, baby, I just forgot. My mind has been elsewhere.

You know what it is, right?

I been thinking about music all the time, just making music, getting it into magazines and onto radio stations, into people's ears and heads and asses and spleens and chuck taylors and living rooms, and I been going a little crazy just trying to get on top of the flow, you know?

It's just coming, like a geyser, like a waterfall, like -- a third metaphor involving water would be great here -- a torrent, sure, okay, a torrent.

The songs are just coming one after the other. Old ones, new ones, reggae, death metal, ska, nose-harp tone poems, fuckin, everything just oozing out like a, whatsit, a catharsis, yeah, a catharsis. I had a bad year last year, baby, I don't know if you know how bad. Didn't get nothing done, hated my job, lost a lot of chi, baby. That ain't no good for nobody. That's why I set up the song-a-week thing, so I could at least point to something and go, well, at least I got some shit done this year.

And its working, sweet jumping elvis in graceland but it's working. I got a new job better than my last shitty one, I'm moving into a new apartment the end of this month that's huge, like, huge, like, bleachers-in-the-living-room big. I been working on my act in a secret location in Soho for my upcoming shows, and compared to last year, I'm rockin' like Dokken.

Now all I gotta do is get back to you, which I hain't done. And for that, baby, I lay myself prostrate on the ground before you in hopes that you might forgive me.

Much love to you and yours, Tony.

(PS - This is all true, every last jive-heavy word of it.)

GIVE IT UP FOR... FIDELITY SCAB!

Brian Whitman created a script from a survey he did a couple of years ago that spit out Ten Thousand Statistically Grammar-Average Fake Band Names.

I like Secretarial Pagoda and Hornet Chewer, but then again, any Kurosawa reference gets me going.

Okay, no, I don't know what I'm talking about.

[via A-Rock]

AREA 52 UPDATE

I knew weeks like this were a-coming.

I've been working ahead, trying to get more than one song done in a week, because I was a Boy Scout for all of three months (my mom couldn't afford a uniform and I remember even in the third grade thinking the whole conformist vibe was kind of bogus, especially since when I was eight years old I figured I'd be about where Mel Gibson is today, if you catch my messianic drift, and no, I don't know what went wrong, aside from the whole reality-kicking-in part. You don't have to say it, I already know), and in those three months the one thing I learned was that sometimes being prepared is a good thing.

So I've been working ahead for a rainy day, and this week it rained in Area 52. I wrote a sweet little song about seeing a friend of mine in a TV commercial (for a very embarrassing product that propriety forbids me to share, for the moment), and after fucking & mucking with it for three days this week, it just wasn't coming. There are two breaks in the middle that, despite the round-the-clock efforts of the greatest minds of my generation, remained unfilled.

I hate that.

So I got home from this Oscar party last night, thinking less about how sick I got watching Renee Zellweger squint and wince and preen through her speech and more about what-the-fuck-now, and then I realized. The Song About Drowning!

I stayed up all night remixing it, and I present it to you here. Enjoy the pants percussion, yet another Innovation By Necessity(tm) here at Nero labs, and the best guitar solo I ever played.

Being coherent at work is for wusses.