• 3/8/08 Greenville, NC – The Spazzatorium

    Ron and Dave drove to Jersey to pick up the van and met us back at the rehearsal studio.  Our gear was a tight fit.  It started raining. All the way from NYC through Richmond the rain was torrential.  But we hauled ass because we were supposed to load in at 8pm.  We had a gps system and tried to keep the arrival time before 8.  After Richmond we hit a couple of rubberneck hold ups due to wrecks.

    I’d played Greenville in the past with the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus.  It was a great time.  This time was a little stressful getting to the venue. 

    They have Galaga there.  I love that game even though I usually die before the second challenging stage.

     spazzatoriumphoto by suke

    Jeff, the co-owner, was really nice. “We’re about to order wings if you guys want some.”  I did because wings are so good.  But I’m with the band this time.  Plus, there was no one there and he was gonna push the show back a little until people showed up.

    So, we went to check into the super 8 and then went to Bojangles, Suke’s favorite.  The Super 8 was great this time.  One time I stayed at one in Wytheville, VA and two of the staff were doing it in my bed.  And by doing it I mean watching tv with the covers down implying doing it earlier meaning having sex on my bed.  Dirty people, dirty bed, dirty motel.  No sign of that at the Greenville Super 8.

    Two other Brooklyn bands were on the bill:  Black Horse and Airwaves.  There were still wings on the counter but I didn’t want any.  I went outside to check on the van and met the neighbor, Jon, who made metal sculptures.  He invited me to his place and showed me his other artwork- paintings and sculptures.  I pet his dog and had a nice visit. He was really nice and had a great place to make his art.

     ron outside spazzron  photo by suke

    We went on at 2am and played hard.  It was nice to play our first show even though we were tired.  Jeff was really nice.  I’m glad he’s doing his best to make that place stay open.

     done and donedone and done  photo by suke

  • Muppet Movie Dream

    I just woke up from a dream about seeing "The Muppet Movie" with my family.  It was different from the real muppet movie.   Before the opening credits, there’s a scene where a family has a bad day at the mall and is on the top floor of a parking garage.  The dad says, “I don’t know how this day could get any worse” and a car blows up with three guys in their 20’s thrown from the car onto another car, one dangling through the sunroof.  They’re all dead of course but there is something comical in the way they landed. 

    The camera focuses in on a small bottle that fell out of one of the guy’s pockets.  It says “Green Felt” on it as if it were some kind of acid.  Then, it focuses on a patch of clovers that grew on the top of the parking garage.  Then, "The Rainbow Connection" starts.

    My mom says, “Let’s go,” because we were on the road and had to keep going.  I say, “Wait,"  as if something were going to happen that would make us want to stay longer and Jackie Cooper is in the next scene, driving a convertible Model T through a open field of people about to watch fireworks.  His passenger looks just like Buffy from Family Affair.

    When I woke up I thought about Jim Henson’s Time Piece.


  • Cool Shows to See

    March 21 and 22
    Genesis, no!
    by Adrienne Truscott
    Dance Theater Workshop
    One half of the Wau Wau Sisters created this dance piece.  The two brilliants Carmine Covelli and Neal Medlyn are involved, also.

    gothamist interview

    tickets and info

    March 22
    Tragedy CD Release Party
    BB Kings
    Pure entertainment packed with a good sound. The Bee Gees wrote great songs.
    tickets

    March 23
    Bindlestiff Family Cirkus
    Zipper Factory
    They always put on a good show.
    tickets

    March 24
    Megan Mullally and the Supreme Music Program
    Zipper Factory
    She has a beautiful, haunting voice. She'll hand you back your heart with her Ave Maria.
    tickets

  • Larry the Bear

    Chapter 1
    There were these 2 guys who had been pulling tobacco for five hours. A net of yellow weeds covered the patch but came off like Velcro. The pulled weeds accumulated on a pile of red tarps and soon resembled fries on ketchup. Larry, the first guy, hadn’t eaten since the day before. He kept swallowing the juice created by his skoal bandits due to the presence of a bear in his co-worker’s truck, as it kept startling him. His co-worker, Yancy, caught the gentleben when he was a cub and took care of him ever since. No bear is sacred to the best meats and Larry sensed that his skoal smell and skoal spit was akin to oozing gravy to that bear in the truck who was also named Larry.
    Larry, the man, wanted to get drive-thru for lunch and Yancy wanted sit-down, “like Denny’s. I’m craving a club house.”
    Larry, the bear, couldn’t relay what he wanted, but it seemed obvious to Larry, the man, what he wanted.
    They chose sit-down.
    Larry, the bear, wasn’t hungry because he’d eaten a baby and was pretending to be pregnant, eating a jar of pickles just to show off.

    Chapter 2
    In the restaurant, Larry, the man, pulled out a cassette tape of 1984, the one he’d borrowed from Yancy a year ago and gave it to Yancy, signaling he was about to disengage their colleagueship.
    “What’s this for?”
    “It’s yours.”
    “I know its mine. Why are you giving it to me now?”
    “Because its yours.”
    “I said I know its mine. Why are you giving it to me now?”
    “Because its yours.”
    Meanwhile, the bear wanted to make a Möbius strip out of paper with this continued parley written on both sides but couldn’t find tape or paper and moreover couldn’t paw together such a task. This quieted his exuberance over such a clever idea to the point of frustration. In the end he just growled to get this repetitive argument to cease.

    Chapter 3
    Every morning, Yancy would sift through Larry the Bear’s poop as part of his daily care to make sure the bear was in good health. It almost seemed demeaning, making Yancy less of a bear owner and more of nursing home nurse, although, I know of no nursing home nurses that do this task, only the mysterious lab work technicians who go through the plastic jar after plastic jar, looking for something wrong with its creator.
    Yancy found no remnants of said baby but found broken glass from the pickle jar that scarred Larry the Bear’s innards, creating blood in the stool.
    “There ain’t no baby. And you tried to fool me by cutting yourself up on the inside. What the hell is wrong with you Larry?”
    “Huh?” said Larry the man.
    “Not you, Larry. Larry. The Bear.”
    The bear started swaying his head back and forth like a circus elephant. He saw a baby goat and thought about swallowing it whole but couldn’t even muster the gumption to do it. Instead, he knocked over a display of tuna cans.

    Chapter 4
    It was after lunch. In most workplaces, this particular lunch would be considered a drama lunch with much murmuring, cupped hands over mouths relaying what was thought to have happened while eating soup at the respective desks. This would never occur in a tobacco patch. Yancy and Larry, the man, went back to work pulling weeds and pulling adolescent tobacco from the patch, the latter to be replanted in the field for adulthood.
    Larry the Bear sat in the bed of the truck replaying lunchtime in his head and how better he could have handled himself and how he shouldn’t have played up such bravado of eating a baby when he didn’t and how he shouldn’t have eaten broken glass which is surely going to mean a trip to the veterinarian who will surely put him under the gas for safety and that means he will have to endure a catheter. Damn, he thought to himself.

    Chapter 5
    Yancy had some vanilla crèmes in his glove box and offered some to Larry, the man. Larry the Bear couldn’t have any due to his scarred innards. Larry, the man, was still dipping skoal bandits and it made the cookies taste like mint vanilla. He forgot that he still had the pouch between his lip and gum and swallowed the cookie with the tobacco product, making him swoon a bit. He lost his balance and recovered himself on Larry the Bear’s paw. Larry the Bear liked being needed and also liked face meat but felt like eating salmon so he jumped out of the truck and ran as fast as he could until he got to Bear River. That took three days. There were no salmon going upstream so he settled for perch and some rotten apples. A bear’s regret is temporary so he went into hibernation and woke up not remembering who Yancy and Larry were. Happy.