weak end

One okay thing to do on a Saturday night when you don’t feel like seeing people but you’re a little lost for things to do at home is to download video files from Ubuweb and watch sweet things like Beckett’s “Not I.” Which is precisely what I did last night. Also, read a bunch from the Project Gutenberg eBook of Tintinnalogia, about change-ringing, the far-pre-Cage English tradition of ringing a series of bells, not for melody, but in mathematical permutations of order. (Here’s something: do you know how expensive handbells are? One octave seriously costs a couple thousand dollars. There go my one-man-handbell choir plans.)

And I wrote some stuff this weekend, which was nice (I’m feeling the pressure because I’m setting up a reading in December and theoretically want to read at it. And want to read stuff that is actually good.) And I made a prototype of a new book-ish project thing that I’m pretty stoked on. It might be the basis of my XXX-mas presents this year (seriously, if I don’t start now, I won’t have anything for anyone by Christmas, like happened last year).

If you’re reading this today (and I mean, who reads blogs on Sunday afternoon?) you should go see Des Ark tonight at Mofo. And if you don’t run out of energy, go to the Green Milk From the Planet Orange show (Centipede headlines) afterward. And maybe go see Amoeba Knievel and Weird Paul at 6. I want to but the Steelers are still just about to start, so I dunno.

Also, the wind this weekend has howled so wildly, I’ve been in fear of the house being blown over. It reminds me of the time a few years ago when we lived on Taylor Street and my bedroom window (thankfully on the opposite side of the room from where I was sleeping) blew all the way in, and sleet came flying across the room in the middle of the night. It took some doing to get that back together (it didn’t actually break, the entire storm window just fell out of the frame).

hyper real deal

This weekend the things are:

• The Great Pumpkin Friday night.
• Maybe PIMBA marching band championships Saturday night? We’ll see.
• Friend/amazing singer/songwriter Des Ark Sunday night at ModernFormations. Green Milk From the Planet Orange is playing with Centipede at GA the same night; I might try to hit all three.

Me? I’ve been chillin’, listening to Astral Weeks and Bookends a lot, and now I’m gonna read about hyperreality for my class. Get into it.

oh gosh oh golly.

Where DOES the time go?

Apparently I’ve done and seen nothing in the past week worth talking about. Maybe I should start re-telling old stories or something. No really: I watched Masculin/Feminin this weekend. And I watched the Steelers get outplayed and still almost-but-not-quite pull off a win. I played Boggle and successfully convinced the room that “neb” and “nebs” should be permissible words. I didn’t do my homework until really late in the game and kinda freaked out about it. I dreamed about neighbors being shot to death outside my house.

Should I go see Deerhoof Friday? I ought to, but I’m kind of sick of shows. Also it’s $15. Also it’s very nearly sold out. Maybe I should watch The Great Pumpkin instead? Yes, maybe.

these guys are from california and who gives a shit

Today I will purchase my ticket to see Negativland. That is, in case you hadn’t heard, Halloween night at the Kelly-Strayhorn on Penn Ave. in East Liberty. Count me super stoked.

Otherwise, further homework, which has made me a dull boy (well, that and gross time mismanagement). And I might try to check out some of the NLCS game. I’ve lost the ability to care that much about baseball, but I’m happy for the Tigers, so I’m gonna root for them no matter who they go up against. But it’s fun to watch playoff baseball in the fall. At least, if you’re a bored person who doesn’t have cable. And who wants something to be slightly distracting, but not TOO distracting or you won’t get your work done.

Also I have this show coming up. Did I tell you about it?

• Cinemechanica
• Slingshot Dakota
• Isha & Zetta (CD release)
• Sleep Little One Sleep
• November 7 @ 7pm, Modernformations (4919 Penn Ave), $6

Sweet!

important!

Take the Post-Gazette Comics Survey. Make sure they don’t do away with Mary or “Mutts.” Also, vote for “F-Minus” as the best test comic. Bad late ’90s punk band, good comic.

weekend end

A certain air temperature, when combined with the smell of diesel fumes, to this day brings to mind nothing other than marching band. Similarly, when I have anxiety dreams, they’re just as likely to be about showing up two weeks into band camp without knowing any of my music or drill as they are to be about showing up most of the way through the semester and know that I haven’t been going to class at all.

Last night I packed up with my mother and sister/her family and watched some marching bands play at Mt. Lebanon High, home of lots of lighted signs that say “LEBO.” It wasn’t a competition, which was a little disappointing to me since a big part of band for me was competitions and ajudication tends to add a level of intensity to a show that otherwise might be missing. Regardless, the bigger bands especially were really good — while Mt. Lebanon’s percussion ensemble is amazing, I’d posit that Bethel Park was the best band there (and that’s not just becuase my nephew is in that band, at least I don’t think it is). Competition or none, there’s an epic quality to a good marching band show that persists even if the band is playing disco hits or, as my old band is doing this year, Cirque du Soleil.

In other news, I cleaned my room, AND had tons of awesome dreams last night. I won’t go into too much detail — in fact I won’t go into ANY detail. Just imagine. Okay one of them involved taking a boat to France to visit Jacques Derrida (apparently still alive, in dream-world) at the chapel (where he apparently lives, in dream-world). That’s all you’re getting.

pump-priming.

Seriously, this ratcheting-up of the double entendre in Peanuts of late is making me really uncomfortable.

Also, this week is horribly hectic — barely finished my paper for today for one class, got behind in my reading for the other, got punched by a 14 year old while walking to the grocery store the other day, doing a presentation at work Friday . . . and my eye is doing that twitchy thing again.  I need to up the meditation skills, methinks.

oh heavens.

I’ve never denied that there are some things I’d be better off not knowing about.

nu-discs

Methinks it’s about time for some brief reviews of things that are new to me lately.

• Rhys Chatham: Die Donnergötter. Double LP, released this year by Table of the Elements, whose website has not been working right for the past week or two. This includes some classic Chatham guitar pieces — pre-Branca drones with consistent pounding drums (“Die Donnergötter,” “Guitar Trio”) — and some pieces with different instrumentation and slightly more insane and “punk” sounding rhythms. The packaging is beautiful, though I’m a sucker for the Chatham aesthetic in general so that’s no surprise. There are some sweet photos inside and a lot of interesting historical writing. Highly reccommended if you’re interested in Rhys.
• The Red Crayola: malefactor, ade. The only other Red Crayola I own is God Bless the Red Crayola and All Who Sail On It, which predates this disc by a good twenty years. malefactor, ade has some wonderful lines and a few songs that are definitely mixtape worthy, but seems to position itself opposite of God Bless the Red Crayola in that GBtRC was a bit tough to digest on first listen but grew on me a lot, and this album was tasty at first (and had me laughing out loud at points) but grew a little boring after a few listens. I like it, and it’s worth listening to, but perhaps if you don’t have God Bless, get that first?
• Animaniacs Volume One DVD: An exceedingly clever friend gave me this for my birthday and I have, at points when I’ve had time, been working my way through it. My concerns about it not holding up were unfounded; parts, in fact, are funnier at this point than they were for me in 1994. I never really dug Rita & Runt and that holds true, but Slappy the Squirrel has a lot more going on than I realized as an eleven-year-old and most of the features with the Warners themselves are still pretty riotous. Big thumbs up.

what’s up.

The Evens played CMU on Friday, providing one of the most uncomfortable concert experiences I’ve lived through. Ian was seemingly unhappy with the lack of energy being expounded by the audience and made no effort to mask this fact (“What’s WRONG, guys?” he asks. “Did you have a bad day or something?”) (No, we’re all terrified of saying the wrong thing and being chewed out by YOUR cranky old ass!)

At one point while he was talking, the girl sitting next to me on the floor, directly in front of him, opened the cabinet door at the foot of the stage and peered in. I cringed, waiting for him to noticed — he of course did, stared at her and said, “What are you DOING?!” We all laughed both from amusement and nervousness. She remained silent and somewhat shocked. “Could you CLOSE the DOOR?”

It was all saved when one brave young soul, during an intro part in which he asked that we whistle along, began clucking her tongue, and what ensued was a tongue-clucking chorus of the best kind and a proclamation from Ian MacKaye that she was “the mother clucker.”

Saturday I hung out with my MOM, went to that crazy new(-ish) mall up route 28 in Frazier, got a couple sweet cheap shirts at H&M (where they seriously sell hats and shirts that say something about “Approved – Immigration and Naturalization – 1907″) and went to a cute park in the Alle-Kiski Valley, land forgotten by the 21st century.

Tonight, there’s a Steelers game to watch, and homework to do for class, and work to do on the Blogs-as-Research-Tools presentation for work Friday, and Edmund Fitzgerald to drink¹. Buenos noches!

1. Is it wrong that I don’t really like porters all that much but I got the E.F. because I like that Gordon Lightfoot song?