Into The Cauldron - Part 3

(Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth; she's my girlfriend, she just doesn't know it yet.)


What the hell is going on at music concerts these days?!?! When I started going to shows back in the early eighties, people would show their excitement by dancing or maybe playing some air drums/guitar, sometimes smoking a little weed, or sipping a beer while nodding their heads. Today, it seems like a lot of concert goers think that they're simply socializing at a club or bar, and that the band working their ass off upfront is just background music to their super-exciting life. I went to see Sonic Youth at the Greek Theater in Griffith Park in LA last week, and I was astonished by the total lack of attention or interest people seemed to have for the stuff that was actually happening onstage! Most people appeared to show up late, and I mean like 20 minutes late, and then proceed to get up every five minutes to go buy a $7 beer, or go to the bathroom to piss out said $7 beer, or check messages on their blackberry or iPhone, or in general, just have extremely loud, asinine conversations with the person sitting next to them, or on the phone. I calculated that the three middle-aged Silver Lake hipsters sitting in front of us actually saw maybe half the show, and that the drunken Irish women behind us probably witnessed a cozy 20 minutes of music. The rest was spent doing other shit that would NEVER come to mind to a person like me who paid $35 to come see one of his favorite bands play one of their best album in a fantastic setting by the hills of Griffith Park! Let me make myself clear: I do not care about anything you have to say, so shut the hell up! The only thing you should be doing is looking at the stage and enjoy the show. Forget the bad beer, and if you must have one, keep it at ONE, not five! Oh, and a music show is not the right place to catch up with your friend over the phone. If that's what you want to do, buy a six-pack, go home, put the fucking record on, and call your dumbass friend, but please don't ruin my evening! Into the cauldron, the lot of ya!!

Note To Self: Next Time, Use Throw-Away, Prepaid Cell Phone

What's more damaging to the sanctity of Senator David Vitter's (R-LA) marriage, and his relationship with god?:

A. Having to live in a world where gay people can legally get married and enjoy their love for each other like the rest of us?

B. Cheating on your wife by using the services of high-class DC prostitutes?

The answer, of course, is A.

Sexo y Violencia!

There is this great show here in LA called Lucha Vavoom, which is a mix of Mexican wrestling, comedy, and burlesque striptease. It happens several times a year at the great Mayan Theater in downtown LA. Rosemary and I went to see it the other night, and it was a a lot of fun! It was clearly a standard gathering spot for the hip 50's retro/psychobilly crowd, and other scenesters; there were several comedians acting as MCs and commentators during the matches, some fun striptease acts using female, male, and transgender dancers, and above all, 5 great wrestling matches with people with names like Dirty Sanchez, Mini-Chicken, and the Poubelle Twins. It was all there - the good guys, the bad guys, the all-girl battle royale, the crazy tag teams, the blatant cheating, the incompetent referees with slow counts, the audience taunting the wrestlers, wrestlers getting thrown in the audience, and much, much more! Nothing like a good dose of theatrical sex and violence to relax one after a week of hard work! Lucha vavoom!!

No Jazz!

On Saturday June 23rd, my ex-girlfriend and I went to see The Police at Dodger Stadium. We paid $50 a pop to sit in the nose-bleed section, but we didn't care. The Police were the first contemporary band that I got into when I was growing up. I will always remember hearing Message in a Bottle for the first time on Top Ten radio in the winter of 1979. They were cool, and wrote great, catchy rock songs. I loved them, and I was more than happy to sit in one of the upper decks of this huge baseball stadium from what looked liked a mile away form the stage, just to catch a glimpse and hear them do all the classic tunes the people came to see them play! My Russian navy binoculars did help a little bit, though...

Anyway, the Foo Fighters opened up. I never was very impressed by them, but they were quite enjoyable live. Frankly, I've always been quite surprised that someone like Dave Grohl, with his talent, background and pedigree, and his impressive musical influences, couldn't come up with better material for his own band. Anyway, an entertaining set, which seemed to please the plastic, OC-type middle-aged wives and girlfriends who were dancing around us, their fake tits bouncing in their $90 tank tops. We briefly reminisced how we saw the Foo Fighters play in Boston back in '95 opening up for Mike Watt on his first solo tour. Dave played drums in Watt's backup band then, and I think Eddie Vedder was on guitar. Mike Watt is still touring the country in his Econoline, and the Foo Fighters, well....they are almost like classic rock at this point...funny.

The Police came out and did their thing, and they were great! Stewart was The Man, wearing a black headband and white gloves, and playing like the old days. Andy Summers' riffs were clean and angular, and faithfull to the original recordings. And Sting was....well....Sting, I guess! They played all the songs I wanted to hear, including my favorites (Walking on the Moon, Invisible Sun, Spirits in a Material World), and it was a great show. The only criticism I had was about this annoying habit that Sting has about changing the arrangements on some of the songs, or sing them in a different key, or do these improv meddleys that sometimes dragged on for way too long! I was reminded of a story that the aforementioned Mike Watt told about playing bass for the Stooges: he said that Iggy Pop was very keen on him playing the original, simple Dave Alexander bass lines, and not get all fancy, and that if he got carried away playing live, Iggy would turn to him and scream "no jazz!". Let's just say that I felt like Stewart or Andy should have turned to their singer a few times during the show, and yelled "Yo! NO JAZZ!"

Weird Sh*t I See While Riding My Bike - Part 1 (Why Don't We Do It In The Road?)

Another segment I'd like to christen here to document all the interesting (and sometimes bizarre) stuff I see and ride by - or over - while on my bike. I'll start with a bang: yesterday, on Waring and La Brea, while riding back from the Bicycle Film Festival in Hollywood, I passed a bright red silicon vibrator sitting in the middle of the road. For the rest of my ride home, I kept thinking: how did this vibrator end up on the street? Did its user throw it out his or her apartment window in a fit of orgasmic joy? Or was it thrown out of a car window as it was getting pulled over by the cops because of its excessive swerving? Or maybe it simply fell out of someone's bag while they were crossing the street? Or was it dug out of the trash by a stray dog looking for food? Ah, if sex toys could talk!....but then again, forget that thought - this is probably best left unsolved, as Nigel Tuffnel would say!

Through Furnace Creek on a Fixie

I went to the 7th Annual Bicycle Film Festival here in LA this weekend, and saw a wonderful short documentary about 4 Los Angeles vegan cyclists who decide to compete in the famous Furnace Creek 508 bike race...on their fixed-gear bikes!! This is a relay-style, 48-hour, 508-mile race that goes through Death Valley, with total elevation gain of 35,000 feet! The documentary is called "Eat! Sleep? Bike!", directed by Sasha Edge Perry, and I highly recommend it to anyone who gets a chance to see it. Them LA fixie riders are tough!