ich bin ein auslander

Been feeling like there aren’t enough hours in the day already, and Neal Stephenson finally releases the 1,000+ page Quicksilver. And apparently, it’s really good. Great.

Went out to dinner last night with Dehais, John, Doug and a few others while Wendy went to catch Graham Norton with Jason… was supposed to meet a new client that night but he was a no show. With no work to do, the bottles of wine starting coming to the table, and kept coming… Wendy showed up after the show, and we kept going… and then decided to make a night of it. Headed back to John’s house, after a quick stop at the liquor store to restock… to make a long story short, fire, president bush dolls and monkeys do not mix well with large amounts of alcohol. We pulled into the driveway at 5:45am and wendy and i have both been feeling it all day. Ugh. Going to try and pull it together to go out and catch the Dandy Warhols tonight, but needless to say neither of us is really feeling the vibe. Oh well, last night was a total blast and you’ve gotta pay the piper.

Dinner with the new client is resceduled for tomorrow night, so that should be interesting, and then we’ve got Rob’s birthday party on Sunday… I need a vacation.

fire bad

bush worse

Been awhile since I’ve blogged - just haven’t felt like going on and on about nothing recently, but here goes.. a little catch up.

The title refers to the Fischerspooner show I went to on Sunday at the House of Blues. First off, I fucking hate the House of Blues. The sound system is consistently crap, the crowd is attracts more so, the bar pathetic, security moronic, parking situation ridiculous, but the booking agent has sporadic good taste so what can you do?

So, back to Fischerspooner. If you haven’t heard them yet, get the CD. It’s great. 80’s retro done originally as a full performance art piece, yet the music not only stands on it’s own, it’s taken off alone. Basically, they’re leading the whole electroclash movement without trying, and managed to convince some label to sign them for over a million pounds. Nice. At any rate, I knew the show was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek performance piece, but I really wasn’t prepared for it to be quite as shit as it actually was. Somehow I’ve managed to miss them everytime they’ve been in town until now, and all I can say is thank god. I was in to it through the first song, thinking, “wow, what a brilliant deconstruction of the current state of music - brittney, madonna, et al”… but then it just kept going, and I kept thinking that this just isn’t right. Alternative music, of whatever stripe, should be about realness - real emotion, real feelings, real performance, whatever. Got real sick of the nod, nod, wink, wink, aren’t we cool, now hit play on the CD player and we’ll prance around a bit more while stuffing your money in our suitcase. And the crowd reaction was even worse - people were so into being into the cool underground thing they didn’t seem to care that it was really kind of cheesy and not all that interesting. Two particular moments stick out - two girls, dolled up and as alternative as can be via Hot Topic walking past me saying “now isn’t this so much better than a real band?”. Number two - Kelly Osbourne and large crew voguing inbetween whining.

OK, so enough of that. Catching the Dandy Warhols on Wednesday, and then Interpol early next week to cleanse the live show experience. Missing out on the White Stripes (saw them at Coachella so that’s ok), missed the Cure (a definite sign I’m getting old - hell and high water wouldn’t have stopped me from seeing them play a few years ago), and probably going to miss Radiohead, which I’m just trying not to think about.

We’re still working on small projects, with large projects looming… getting into a bit of a home improvement kick as the clutter was getting us down, so spending money and time feverishly trying to get the house up to spec and looking nice before we get buried in work for the next month or so.

Halloween is coming quickly and it looks like we might be staying in LA again… i miss our usual travel for the ‘ween, but hopefully something really fun and exciting will come up. It usually does.

So I guess I’m off to Pier One for new blinds now

Been on an incredibly painful exercise program recently, and have been attempting to eat well to match. No results as of yet, which is frustrating beyond belief. I have an amazing stash of clothes that only require a little bit of trimming down before I can comfortably wear them and it’s pissing me off.

At any rate, i’m in my downtime inbetween the morning yoga and bike ride and the afternoon gym pummeling, so getting a spot of work done and harassing all the people that owe us money. Still.

Last night we went out to Maggiano’s for dinner… lovely, and nice to have one real meal this whole week. Tonight… looks like we’ve got a few art things to hit before dropping by Finn’s. Expecting it to be a fairly low-key evening as many of the Finn’s regulars are out of town… but Jason might drop in and that’s never a low-key situation.

Not a hell of a lot here… coming down from the last few week’s craziness has been a bit of a downer. Some work here and there, vespa’s crapped out and the vespa people aren’t returning calls promptly… laundry, gym, dishes, cleaning…

Eddie Izzard was a blast, except there were a few too many izzard groupies, both male and female, that couldn’t seem to shut up at all throughout the show. the belly laughs and high pitched screetches even prompted a few “but that bit wasn’t even funny” comments from eddie himself. but there you go, the perils of going outside your house.