coming up things:

Okay, first off, I need to tell you about this show I’m doing Friday night at Roboto: It’s at 7 (probably more like 8), and features three bands: Potboiler (from New Paltz, NY), Tin Armour (from Columbus), and Lucas Sloppy’s Flying Organ (from Beaver County). It’ll be $5, and a good time — it can be that thingy in between when you eat dinner and when you do Friday night things, like parties and bar shows and raves and whatever.

Now, slightly further off: next Thursday, the 18th, Colin MacCabe is giving a lecture in 1228 Cathedral of Learning at 5:30pm. It’s called: “Dead Mothers: Patrick McCabe, Neil Jordan and Mother Ireland.” I don’t know much about Patrick McCabe, but it sounds interesting, as Colin MacCabe is a smarty and Irish things are interesting to me.

It’s part of a series of lectures by Pitt film studies folks that seems to be leading up to this conference in March: The Virtues of Fidelity: Film Adaptation as Literary Truth. Details seem to be a little sketch, but Laura Mulvey is speaking, so I’m amped.

And while I’m acting like Horbal, let me refer you to his synopsis of a free film series that’s part of a grad seminar in the German Department: Experimental, Underground, Revolutionary: Avant-garde Films from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

It’s every Wednesday night this semester; I missed the first two but I’m going to try to hit as many as possible. Big ups to Professor Halle for making it happen.

nice brane

Last night, I flipped on “Charlie Rose” right before going to bed and caught the tail end of an interview with Lisa Randall, Harvard theoretical physicist. She was talking about a bunch of crazy stuff I don’t understand, and strangely enough, it made me want to read her book. So part of my goal for Christmas break (one of the perks of working at a university) is to read Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions. Or at least parts of it. I have trouble keeping with my vacation reading plans, and I’ll also be getting my reading list for my independent study together, but it seems interesting enough to make me perhaps want to actually delve into it some.

Speaking of reading, don’t forget the reading thing tomorrow, which you read about below. There will be good reading and good singing and playing. I’ll have little poetry books made, and for sale for a dollar or two. If you’re interested and you can’t make it, let me know and I’ll mail you one.

here is a flyer i made

For the show/reading coming up:

Do come — I’ll read you sweet verse about my messed-up outlook.

Twas not a fit night out for man nor beast this evening — Jo and I walked home after I waited for a bus for a good twenty minutes. Good thing, since according to rumor, the next 54C to come was at 6:00, and that one was full, and the next one wasnt for another two hours at least. I don’t know where my gloves are, and I think I got low-grade frostbite walking home. But I got back faster than I would have if I had been driving, eh?

Also, the quote of the night came from the mouth of a man slipping over to his car with his significant other close to my house at the height of the icy traffic mess: “We’re gonna fuckin’ die going to Wal-Mart!” 

something that’s coming up

I’m curating the Solo Artist Showcase at Modernformations next month. Here are the specs, folks:

Thursday, December 14, 8pm, $3, 4919 Penn Ave

SAS presents music and poetry!

Music by: Julie Sokolow, King Egg, Michael Cosentino
Readings by: Kristofer Collins, Beth Steidle, Ed Steck, Andy Mulkerin

I may or may not be reading the dialogue from Mary Worth strips. We’ll just see about that.

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!

take note

Busy busy busy here at Andybot, Inc.

For the record, my band’s last show (at least for a long time, likely forever) is tomorrow evening. The details:

• Sequoia - the sea, like lead - Allies
• At Roboto, Friday (9/8/06), 7pm
• $5, benefits The Big Idea

I’d like it a lot if you came.

Also, I’ve got a couple fun shows in the pipes, just gotta get a few details ironed out. They’re not for a while yet anyway. But I like to build suspense.

Also, I’ve had no takers on the aforementioned mixtape, still unfinished. Don’t be ungrateful, you fools. Trade me.

this ain’t rock’n roll, this is genocide!

Things that have been keeping me busy:

• Getting ready to play tomorrow night at Garfield Artworks with the epic Japanese hardcore(?) band Envy (on Temp Res), and a band called Sleeping People (I have to like a band with a name like that) and Knotfeeder (I guess ex-Don Cab, and featuring Andy from Southpaw as well). This is our next-to-last show, forget S*nic Y*uth and come see us and a band from Japan that kids shit their pants over instead!
• Work is busy as all get-out, what with having a lot of requesting being done, and training new student workers, and having my name rhymed with “candy” in a sing-songy manner by whomever is manning the information/candy desk when I walk by, and being asked by multiple professors if I’m not an undergrad.
• Speaking of undergrads, in the class I’m taking (I’m taking two, but one is web-based and therefore I don’t see undergrads when attending), I was struck today by the youth and, er, exuberant naivete of my classmates. That’s code for me saying some are kind of annoying. But hey, not all of them. It should be interesting.
• I wrote over the weekend, stuff I’m happy with, for the first time in ages. Not blog writing (obviously). Poetry type stuff. It all started flowing out Saturday evening, enabled perhaps by delving into nature at Cook Forest with my mom earlier that day, or by seeing awesome experimental films at Jefferson Presents that evening, or alcohol, or all of these things and more. Regardless, I’m happier with myself than I have been in quite a while on account of this.
• I fully intend to present you with an essay on the importance of the holy trinity of Ben Folds Five albums (S/T, “Whatever and Ever Amen,” “The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner”) in my life, at some point in the near future. (Ed.: Apparently I already mentioned this, in a post I vaguely remember writing a few days ago. Deal with it. I’m not taking it back.)
• What’s new with you?

taking the easy way out:

I’m going to expand upon the least in-depth of the things I threatened to mention today: what my band is up to coming up soon.

As I obliquely referenced earlier, we’re “going on indefinite hiatus” as of next month. Upcoming shows are:

• Saturday, August 19 at Roboto with Sinaloa, Life at These Speeds, and html.
• Monday, August 21 at ModernFormations with Sparrows, Swarm and Sing! (assuming this is still on — word has it those poor sweet guys had some gear yoinked in Portland).
• Tuesday, August 29 at Garfield Artworks with Envy (on Temporary Residence, from Japan).
• Friday, September 8, LAST SHOW with Sequoia (Zak will be in town), Allies, and two others the names of which escape me currently.

We’ll try to have CDr’s with our last few songs on them for the last show or two. It would mean a lot to me to see people at these last few shows — we’re getting sort of busy with other aspects of our lives and heading off in those directions slowly but surely, which is why we’re calling it sort-of-quits, but we still cherish the energy we share with people when we perform and would like our last few shows to be memorable.

Tomorrow I’ll post more analytical-type stuff, swear!

Here are the updates in my life:

I wrote the letter to the editor urging the P-G to move “The Family Circus” to the editorial page. If they don’t have the COJONES to print it, I’ll post it here. Let’s just wait and see.

My band is playing a show in St. Clair Park in Greensburg, to benefit a skate park for Latrobe. A bunch of bands are playing, we’re next to last, Zao is last. Weird I know but cool!

I’m look look looking at grad programs to apply to and trying to decide where to export myself to.

My roommates won’t stop watching “Roswell” on DVD.

Man Man/Centipede/Harangue tomorrow night at Der Brillobaux. Be there, buy me drinks. Thanks!