preposition

on: My Favorite Band

In spite of us both having been sick enough this week to miss the Los Amigos Invisibles show last night, benjy and i did catch the Red Elvises tonight at Slim's.

We arrived in time to catch the last song or two of the Rock and Roll Adventure Kids. They were surprisingly high energy for a band playing to a crowd that contained a small set of enthusiastic people up front, but that was unengaged overall. They then brought out a guy in a chicken suit (with the legs truncated at the knees so that he only had chicken-suit short-pants) for their song, "Fried Chicken". Said Chicken Guy then danced around in the audience.

I tried to buy their album, but they only offered it on vinyl. In fact, they had it on both 7" and 12" vinyl.

I asked the chicken guy and the merchandise chick about this, and they said there had been a problem with the cd pressing, and that "most of the kids at the other places we play buy vinyl". Was this an implication that perhaps i wasn't hip enough to listen to their music? I dunno. Chicken Guy also mentioned that Weezer was his second favorite band, prompted by my wearing my Weezer shirt (which -- as illustrated by this incident -- was less of a good borderline shirt at this show than it usually is).

The Elvises came out and did their own sound check, then the guitarist said, "Uno, dos, tres. Okay, let's go.", and they went back offstage to change into their concert attire: zebra-striped suits of various colors (and a black top hat and sunglasses for the keyboardist). More surprising than the outfits, though, was that the lead singer/bass player's bass was gigantic, bright orange, and 3-stringed. When i say gigantic, i mean that the body was an equilateral triangle about three feet on a side. It was so big that it had a built-in monopod in addition to a neck strap.

The bassist played that mother well, though, in spite of the missing string. Indeed, i was impressed overall with the Elvises' musicianship. Each member got to solo and jam, including the saxophonist/flautist and drummer.

Their stage presence was awesome. They introduced four or five songs as "sing-along songs", which is not surprising given their combination of crowd interaction, dancy stage energy, and catchy, clever lyrics. Imagine the following, crooned with a thick Russian accent:

I got a condom in my pocket, I'm gonna meet me pretty girl,
I got a condom in my pocket, I'm gonna meet me pretty girl,
I'm a hoochie-koochie papa, I'm in love with the whole World.
We're gonna rock this joint,
We're gonna roll this joint,
We're gonna rock this joint,
We're gonna roll this joint,
We're gonna smoke this joint,
Until we sound like Pink Floyd[2].
--"Love Rocket"

There's something especially charming about the utter lack of any indefinite pronouns. As in, "This is tragic song. It is called, 'Strip Joint is Closed'".

It's also hard to resist a conga line, especially when the lead singer says, "Feel free to start congo line" before launching into the next song. The resulting conga line was so long that it bifurcated and then collapsed back on itself, but somehow formed a loop. And this loop managed to find its way around us. So while i'm in favor of the conga line as any number of things, its capacity as imprisonment is somewhat disturbing, and led me to think about loop detection in a conga line as a problem, which is somewhat more disturbing.

Overall, this was an excellent show. If you could get into a fun, bizarre, surf/punk/swing/lounge/rockabilly band made of Russians (and a drummer from, according to the lead guitarist, "Connect-icut"), don't miss an opportunity to see the Elvises.

up: Untitled

tyler is trying to find you
tyler is always tricked
tyler is gay
tyler is loving to people but is somewhat dominant with other dogs

tyler is a tenured professor of pharmacognosy
tyler is author of java web services
tyler is a submersible motor market leader
tyler is framed for killing a rancher and is forced to pose as an outlaw in this slam

tyler is in the driver's seat
tyler is the real deal
tyler is more than just a pretty face
tyler is one cool cat

tyler is hope

up: Variations on Benjy

benjy is a nuisance
benjy is not even awake yet

benjy is an idiot by definition
benjy is not a puppy anymore

benjy is frenetic in anticipation of tasting something at the annual fair that he has heard is both hot and cold
benjy is rocking back and forth because he's angry at me

benjy is sick of making a fool of himself
benjy is a man among men

benjy is the key to the novel's title
benjy is castrated

benjy is in fact an enabler
benjy is now

up: Untitled: b-sides

tyler is the best pizza ever
tyler is a sweet college schoolgirl in pig
tyler is strategically positioned just 95 miles east of dallas/forth worth
tyler is excellent service
tyler is perhaps texas' best kept secret

about/up: Lots of Irritating, Silly Parentheses

I have a history of interface problems:

"                                              2-21-92

" Well, I'm almost at the end of a page, which is clearly shown by the yellow line coming closer and closer as I write this text...  So, for everyone's convenience, I'll finish thist writing on Page Two...  [21 spaces](cont)

" Gee, wasn't that cool!?!

" Anyway, today was another slight improvement on Wednesday, bringing the "how-was-your-day-o-meter" up to at least a +1.  T.G.I.F. helps a little (the phrase, not the ABC evening line-up)  So today I finally felt inspired enough to write a book, using AD&D (of course) as a baseline."[1]

Interface problems:

• the yellow line was the Textcraft Plus page break marker coming up. This was the word processor i was using on my Amiga 500. You had to set its settings just so to get it to print on a page(1), but it was significant effort (if for no other reason than loading a template(2) off a floppy disk(3) was slow and cumbersome), so i only did it for stuff i knew i was going to print.[2]
• That date is supposed to be centered (via TC+'s closed-amiga-c(4) "Center" command) but is instead about 4/6th of the way across the page)(5).
• I'm writing this in vi(-1), for which i have no useful plugins to make html(6) easy, especially the escaping in the bibliography(7).
• I'm writing this while listening to music via xmms(8), whose ui interface issues are myriad and frustrating compared to all my iTunes using friends, i must admit. Party Shuffle is fucking brilliant.
• But a lot of why xmms sucks is because of GTK(9), whose file browser stuff (and/or xmms's implementation thereof, though i strongly suspect that these are more limitations of gtk) doesn't include some pretty basic and necessary things, like "back" instead of "..", non-broken symlink-following behavior, and some form of find-as-you-type[4].