Basketball Diaries

The Cure show last Friday was good. The band evidently only consists of one original member. Thank goodness it's Robert Smith (who looks a bit like a bloated shitzu from a distance, sorry Bob). He's in top form, if not physically the at least vocally. The band sounded terrific, they had a beautiful backdrop on which images of their old singles covers were projected. The lights were twinkly and pretty. They opened with a glorious "Plainsong".
The venue blew chimp. Hard.
It's a g.d. basketball court. The sound bounces like, well, basketballs. The sharp drums of songs like "Lullaby" hit the back of the room and hit your ears a good .25 seconds later for the second time. Thank goodness The Cure is heavy on reverb and distortion so some of the uglier acoustic elements were drowned out somewhat. Still, it will be a cold day in hell before I hit the George Mason Patriot Center again.
The Cure on a basketball court. Never thought I would live the day!
It was getting very late and they had played for nearly 2 hrs. Matt and I hit the road back to Hampton cause I had to get up and go to work the next morning. Turns out we missed three encores and another full hour of music! Matt is bummed that we missed "Boys Don't Cry". I can sleep a little better at night now having heard "Pictures of You" played live and played surprisingly, remarkably well. On a basketball court.
Work is boring. Utterly boring. We have no shows til July 19. I run the box office and nothing is on sale. I don't know what to do with myself! It's rather lovely but boring.

Old bands, new music

So all these oldies are hitting the road and making new records when they should probably be contemplating a retirement to Shady Pines. Instead the geezers are touring and fools like me are paying silly money for tickets.

Today the Nick Cave tickets are on sale for the 9:30 Club show (see yesterday's post). His new record is Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! and it's pretty good. I don't think it's anywhere near as good as Murder Ballads and I even liked Lyre of Orpheus/Abattoir Blues better. Still, it's a heckuva step up from Grinderman which I didn't care much for at all. I'm so excited to finally see the man live!

The big Cure show is tomorrow. I bought these tickets last July. The show was supposed to take place in September. This is a long time coming and I hope it's not one huge disappointment. This is the first show of their major U.S. tour so it could really go either way. If you visit their official site, http://www.thecure.com/ then you can hear a snippet of the first single, "The Only One". It sounds a lot like Wish, "Friday I'm In Love"-era Cure. That's not necessarily bad. At least it's a lot better than that last piece of junk they put out. I've loved the Cure since I was about twelve years old, so I'm getting geared up for this one. Let's hope the band has taken their Centrum Silver and are ready to rock! The image above is taken from The Cure's official site. It's really a terrible picture and that's an indication that perhaps the years are not being very kind.

For those interested parties...

Tickets for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds at the 9:30 Club on Sunday Oct 5th go on sale tomorrow, Thu May 8th at 10:00am.

I'm O.C.D. about things like this so I'll be logging tomorrow am for tickets.

I have found myself constantly thinking about that movie Wristcutters: A Love Story and the cool music and the little dog. I originally rented it from Netflix but I was compelled to go buy a copy today. As much as I detest Blockbuster (their online rental system is atrocious and I am against their banning of adult videos), they often have an excellent selection of reasonably priced recently released used DVDs for $15 or less.

Memories

Please read this article that hit national news today:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/135610?GT1=43002

This reminds me of my own experience. Except I didn't know the dumbf^c#s were cops and I also didn't crash.

Still, I wonder why the cops "gave chase" like they did in my scenario. It seems like flippin' the bird wouldn't warrant a car chase. Cops have too much time on their hands.

Also, a bird flip doesn't seem like it would warrant a verbal berating like I received. One of the two (!) cops that stopped me told me that I could be charged with a felony and that some judges looked upon road rage as "being as bad a murder". Seriously, that's what he said to me. My cops (probably just like the ones in the news story) were just very peeved that someone had given them a rude gesture, therefore they had to prove their merit and show how big their you-know-whats are.

I gave my cop a mouthful about how I was sick of being treated so poorly and how I was tired of not even being able to walk to the local mailbox by my workplace without being harassed or bothered. I was sick of this crummy neighborhood and the crummy lowlifes. I told the cop that I figured he and his buddy were just more of the sleazy residents cruising around ogling folks, being that they were in an unmarked beat up old Buick. Cop shut up, cop let me go. What a jerk off.

Now I secretly flip off every single cop I pass. I just do it discreetly under the dashboard cause no damn cop is work getting a stupid ticket and paying a fine (or doing time with murders, evidently). They're not worth my time.

Several small updates

Toggle Switch posted a good review of the Lou Reed show here.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Wristcutters: A Love Story and specifically wrote about the dog. The dog was played by the actor dog Foxie, so I did a little research and found out something cool. Foxie doesn't just look like my cocker spaniel and Eskimo spitz. Foxie is exactly that. She's a mixed breed, a Cockamo. Great breed name, huh? Visit this site for more info, plus a picture of Foxie wearing sunglasses. I want a cockamo. Not now, but someday.

A the end of June I'll be teaching a course on Surrealism in Film. I think it will be pretty easy, but please feel free to offer comments or suggestions for material. It is always more difficult than I anticipate once I get started on the research. Go here to read my class description or to register if you are masochistic.

My brain hurts

My work has been crummy and I'm dealing with some family drama. I don't wish to blog about such things, however, I want to blog about the fun and delightful things happening in my dullsville life in VA. So I will use this opportunity this blog presents as an outlet for presenting the fun and entertainment-oriented stuff rather than the depressing or downright boring details of daily life here.

Good news numero uno: The fantastic Gogol Bordello will be performing at Toad's Place in Richmond in June. Yes! I've missed them before because of my unwillingness to drive to D.C. or Blacksburg or due to poor time with work schedule. This time, it's on!

Good news numero dos: Word has hit the street that the legendary Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will be in D.C. at the 9:30 Club on Sunday October 5th. No word on when tickets go on sale. I must attend this show. I've been into Nick Cave since I was in high school and I've passed up his shows before. I won't make the same mistake again.

Treis: The Cure show at the Patriot Center is Friday! Yeah! It's about freakin' time.

Quatro: Got my husband his early birthday gift: tickets to Weird Al Yankovic at the National in Richmond.

Cinco: Bellydance Superstars Raqs America extravaganza weekend in June! I've registered for a bunch of workshops and all sorts of fun stuff. I'll get to learn from my favorite dancer, Sharon Kihara (pictured above). Although her video is a bit advanced and too fast-paced, she's incredibly talented and I'm looking forward to the workshops. Matt's coming so that we can make it a weekend getaway and snuggle up at a hotel, too.

I took French in high school so I don't know number six in Spanish. It's rokku in Japanese. Numero Rokku: My beautiful Leah from NYC will be town this weekend. It's her birthday on Sunday so hopefully I'll get to see her.

I wish everyone a happy Cinco de Mayo! Hope to see some of you out at these upcoming shows (give me a shout if you're going to be there).

Wow, time flies

March was the longest month ever, April was the shortest. I can't believe it's May already.
The Lou Reed show was pretty good, especially considering the fact that we're talking about a guy who's pushing seventy. Unlike Iggy and Morrissey, Lou had the courtesy to keep his shirt the whole time. He also avoided breaking a hip, which was nice. The show began around 8:45 and ended at about 10:15, so I was home by 11pm so I was a happy camper. Lou was perhaps the coolest 66-year-old rocker I've seen. Instead of playing the insanely boring set of experimental new music that I anticipated he would perform, he actually played "I'm Set Free", "I'm Sticking with You", and my fave, "Sweet Jane". It was actually kinda rad. Go Lou.
In happy news: Matt and I finished all 29 episodes of Twin Peaks, starting with the pilot and finishing up with Fire Walk With Me. I may expand upon this cause it's quite a story, but I saw FWWM when I was a naive fourteen year old and when I hadn't seen any episodes of the television show. As a horror movie buff, I was pretty resilient at that age, but FWWM scared the living crap out of me. Terrified me, couldn't sleep for nights on end. Saw it again at the age of 22, still hadn't seen any of the tv show, still scared the s#!t out of me. When Matt said that we should watch the film, I was freakin' and was not excited to see it again for fear of endless sleepless nights. However, after taking in the tv show, I'm delighted to report that the film made so much more sense and I conquered my fear! Yay! I kinda even want to see it again soon.
The new Portishead album, Third, is out now. Do not walk, run to the store to buy it right now. Also, the Flight of the Conchords full - length is now available and it's wonderful. I laugh so hard I nearly cry every time I hear the track "Think About It".