Nerd Rock

I tire, babies. I didn't sleep that well last night.

What's happened? Last weekend, Eve and I played Scrabble in Greenwood Cemetery. It was very beautiful. I almost, for the first time in my life, used all of my Scrabble letters by spelling out 'wolverine,' but was thwarted.

On Tuesday, I went to go see Peelander-Z and Go!Go!7188 at The Knitting Factory. Go!Go! is from Tokyo, but I'd seen flyers for the 'lander for years and had been curious about their live show. It turns out that they're a little bit, uh, sloppy, but their enthusiasm and the variety and quality of their props pretty well makes up for it -- they're like a manic tricolor Japanese Carrot Top! They led off with a song called "Mad Tiger," during which all three band members donned these awesome, realistically-furred tiger masks. Then there was an interlude in which the gap-toothed lead singer removed his yellow helmet and called up volunteers from the audience to help him scissor off his remaining tendrils of hair. Then they played more songs, the drummer and bass player holding up white cardboard placards with the titles on them, presumably for the benefit of the audience. For their last song, "Health," they invited a bunch of audience members up on stage, this time to play the instruments while they cavorted in the crowd. The yellow dude quick-changed into this bowling pin costume and kept charging and pile-driving the red guy while their merch lady (whose jumpsuit was pink) refereed.

Go!Go!7188 was really very good -- their lead singer, Yuu, has a great set of pipes, even though she's pretty small, and the band is incredibly tight, musically.

On Thursday, Mike Frank came up from D.C. and he and Eve and I went to see The Hold Steady in Prospect Park. They were characteristically energetic -- even though a lot of their songs are a bit too down-tempo, or, I don't know, meandering for me, it's kind of impossible not to be in a good mood while you're watching them. The crowd was psyched, and Craig Finn was doing his trademark shout-unintelligible-stuff-off-mic thing (what is he saying?). He was wearing a baseball jersey given to him personally by Kent Hrbek, I think he said. They didn't play as long as they did at the show of theirs I saw at Warsaw, nor did they drink as much, really, but I think the Celebrate Brooklyn people had to get people home; also it was raining, kind of.

Last night the folks at 680 threw a barbecue. I borrowed Eve's bicycle and Nina and I went around Prospect Park a couple of times before heading down to the party. We saw a whole bunch of fireflies in the park, as well as two bats and a bunny.

Today was the big Thermals / Ted Leo show in McCarren Park Pool. Nina and I got there kind of late, on account of we were kind of hung over and tired and sick-feeling from the activities of yesterday, so we got there just in time to hear The Thermals wrapping up, but that's okay. We were eating sushi. Ted Leo, though, was excellent, as usual and despite the heat, which must have been unbearable up on stage. I'd never been to one of these Jelly NYC pool parties before, and I don't know what I think about them -- they've got enclosures set up for water polo and dodgeball, there's a Slip 'n Slide, and, thankfully, a cooling-off tent with these big fans that kind of spray water at you; and as a result the space is so big and distracting that you don't get the kind of critical mass, crowd-wise that really makes for a good rock show. Nonetheless, they were loud and fast and really tight. It was the bass player's last show with the band, so they did Counting Down The Hours as an encore, since it's apparently his favorite song. I think it might be my favorite song, too!

On the way home from the show, after Nina detrained to go get dinner with her bro and her dad, I bought some stuff at Trader Joe's and then got on the N, which was running local, infuriatingly, as it's been doing recently. I sat down next to a young man and woman who were engaged in animated conversation. I wasn't really paying attention at first, and when the woman started saying, "Kids want different experiences, they want to experience stuff -- electronically, or outdoors, whatever -- it's about experience-hopping," I thought she was talking about, you know, child psychology or teaching or something. But she wasn't. Her male companion took the ball and ran with it: "Right, definitely. So it should be like, 'You can take Go-Gurt to the beach, you can take it underwater, or, uh, in a boat, you can take it to Space Camp..." These were ad people, working after hours on a campaign for Go-Gurt, the yogurt-like acrylic paint you drink out of a condom!

"Yeah," the woman said, "we should have pictures of all the places you can take Go-Gurt, you know, photos or illustrations..." The dude cut in with "I think where all this Dr. Seuss kind of stuff is leading us, though, is that there's nowhere you can't take Go-Gurt. I mean, maybe we give it as a challenge -- show us a place you think you can't take Go-Gurt and we'll show you that you can. And, you know, this is really something we should let the 'creatives' take care of -- because we're not creatives. But, in a way, we are." They went on like this for some time, waxing philosophical on the "portability" merits of Go-Gurt, to the exclusion of all other topics, except for one point, when, after a brief pause in the conversation, the woman started expounding on the virtue of... herself, in a kind of frightening tone of voice. "They're going to love me. I mean, they already love me, but they don't know what I can do. I didn't know what I could do, but now that I do, nothing can stop me." The last thing I heard, as they got off at 9th St. (to return to the apartment that they apparently shared?) was the guy asking the girl, the concern in his voice actually kind of plausible, "Wait, are you proposing a redesign of the product?"

"No," she assured him. "I'm not trying to change the tube experience."

Danica moved out, slightly ahead of schedule -- surprise funeral upstate this weekend, she's flying back to CA tomorrow to start the fall semester as planned. This is kind of sad; she was a good roommate. But tomorrow is Vampire Hollywood at Rock Star Bar!