• Baltimore and Danbury

    Friday, May 2
    BALTIMORE, MD
    The Ottobar
    2549 N Howard St.
    w/ Big in Japan, Gunwife Gone, and The Old Souls
    ALL AGES SHOW!
    9pm doors
    9:45 showtime
    TICKETS

    Saturday, May 3
    DANBURY, CT
    Cousin Larry's
    1 Elm St.
    w/ Fonix and Creepdust
    9pm, $5

  • The oldest guy in town forgot to cover his head with a napkin.

    This old guy from town fashioned a bird out of marzipan for a contest to see who could make the best Ortolan Bunting dining experience without harming a real bird. Inside the marzipan, he packed corn-based sweetened breakfast cereal to mimic thorny bones and used salted jellies to mimic organs.
    In a similar contest, there was a real tiger behind the old guy, doing the same thing but with the wax figure of a gentleman. When the old guy turned around, the tiger looked at him and cocked his head like a house cat asking to go outside in its cutest manner.  The man nodded in deference, as cats killing birds around the home is congruent to natural selection because they evolved a face that is darling to humans. The tiger was gnawing on a large stick in order to fashion a femur within his paws, then took the finished wood bone in his mouth to the wax figure’s fake leg, nudging it inside the pants with his nose. Behind the tiger was a baby man and the baby man had fangs and the baby man was laughing at the funny papers someone had glued to the ceiling. The comic strip was Howard Huge and Howard, an enormous dog, had eaten a room of marzipanned figures: a tiger, a man, and an Ortolan Bunting. In the comic strip, a frustrated child seated next to Howard said something funny.  However, the baby man couldn’t read and the laughing eventually proved the fangs to be rice-pudding spittle.

  • The Plausible Frog

    Dear Girl,
    Hopefully you’ll get this letter.  I wrote the first part of it a year ago and just finished the last part today.  I couldn’t figure out why I wrote to you but now I do.
    I can only tell you part of what I’m doing and then I want you to guess the rest.  I’ve been living by the pond near your house, eating tadpoles and minnows and the occasional horse apple (the last one I keep throwing up).  I fashioned my semblance to an amphibian, webbing my hands with 2 pairs of rubber gloves and attaching fish fins to my toenails with the aid of Lee Press-On Nails.  The gloves are excellent.  The toe fins are still in trial stages.
    Unfortunately, I managed to bore a hole in my neck on accident due to an attempt to fix a rake I bought from an Amish fellow.  I kept pulling on one of the pointy pegs from the rake and it came out with much force and jabbed into my neck.  I thought I had finally found my invitation to heaven but the bleeding miraculously stopped, leaving an awkward hole to my esophagus.  I was inspired to fashion it into a blow hole with a stopper to prevent water from coming in.  I had a couple of mistakes.
    After many more tries, the blow hole was a success. I tried to make a gill out of pvc pipe embedded with a device that would filter in H2O, triggering the emission of an equal amount of cariporide (a sodium-hydrogen inhibitor), with the goal of oxygen entry.  I had a couple of mistakes.
    After more tries, with the success of gills, I attempted to present myself as a plausible frog, swimming in the benthic zones (due to my size) and sitting on larger rocks for great lengths of time.  I had no inspiration to coexist with them, merely to study. I earlier mentioned eating the tadpoles for protein.
    After a month of sitting naked by the pond and swimming in its murky water, I forgot why I had begun the experiment in the first place and wondered if it even was an experiment.  The lack of inspiration led to boredom and want for something else.  That something else was a sandwich and soup.  I broke into your house because it was the closest one and made myself a peanut butter sandwich with bean and bacon soup.  After eating manfood I realized I was naked in a stranger’s house and ran back to the pond, immediately fashioning some short pants out of a plastic bucket I’d found in the old shed.  It looked more like a dress, so I drew a line with a pen down the middle in order to resemble shorts.
    Here’s the second part:
    I want to know if I could use your phone because I think I should check my bank account and see if I have any money to afford a proper apartment lease.
    Love,
    Randy

  • Werewolf Tonight!

    I may be on NightWatch tonight at 9pm CTR. This will be the first time they've had a real werewolf on the show. UPDATE RESCHEDULED FOR MAY 6TH!

  • 3/12/08 Austin Beauty Bar

    We stopped at the Czech Stop in West on the way to Austin.  Ron and Suke had never been there and wanted to make sure we stopped there again on the way back so they could stock up on kolaches (Czech pastries).  I wrote a song about that place once and gave them a recording of it.  The town has a big festival and Myron Floren and Brave Combo have played there along with many other accordion players.

    bravecombosimpsons.jpg brave combo on the simpsons

    It’s a great town.

    SXSW registration was overwhelming. Ron and I went to register while Suke and Dave looked for a place to park the van.  At one point we were going up the escalator and Ron said, “Do you feel a knot in your stomach?”  “Yeah, I do.”  I’ve never seen such a concentrated cool contest as I did there.  Not that everyone was trying but enough were to make me feel like I was in high school again.  I saw a group walk by that looked as if their manager made them go to a stylist before registration.  They looked very uncomfortable as if their stylist was mom.  From clowntown.  I saw my friend, Will Johnson, and everything was better.  The registration was very easy, too.  It was very organized.

    Afterwards we went to Charlie’s house to hang out.  Charlie makes t-shirts in his garage.  He’s really good at it.  We had an order with him and they look really good.  To kill more time, we watched Blazing Saddles.  I won a trivia night in Belfast one night with my keen eye for the great Cleavon Little.

    austin1.jpg Charlie photo by suke

     The Beauty Bar was run just like registration.  They were a well-oiled machine.  They helped us load in and load out.  Really nice people.  It was a bitch trying to park the van but we found a place 10 minutes before set time.  I saw my friend, Erica, who was in the band after us, The Faceless Werewolves.

    We had a good set.  My sustain pedal went out halfway through and luckily Suke brought his soldering kit with him, fixing it the following day.

    Afterwards, I wanted to watch The Faceless Werewolves but we had to get our stuff in the van and get out of there. 

    We went to a bar outside of the festival and I saw another friend from working there.  We drank beer and watched the Spitzer news.

    austin2.jpg the late Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder

  • 3/11/08 Driving Day

    We drove to Dallas from Athens. We stayed at my old roommates’ (Corbett and Becky) house where they were watching Cat Soup. Beth made ravioli lasagna for us. She’s real sweet.

    We’d been craving Shiner Bock since the tour was planned and Corbett and Becky had it. Corbett was in an art rock band with Dave and me called The Dooms UK. His moniker was DJ Geeky C. He had good samples. He also has an awesome dog named The Baron. I love that dogs don’t worry about being over excited. What a joy. I had a dog in high school that pissed everytime she saw me come in the door. That’s a lot of excitement.

  • 3/10/08 Athens, GA – 283 Bar

    On the way to Athens, we stopped to get gas in Harlem, GA. It’s the birthplace of Oliver Hardy. Subsequently, there is a museum dedicated to Laurel and Hardy. It was closed. I’m sure it's excellent.

    oliverhardy closed. coño. photo by suke

    Lori, the owner of 283 bar, is a sweet sweet lady. We arrived in Athens and she immediately gave us drinks and let us hang out a bit before loading in. During the load-in she made note of the coin-slot disco ball by the jukebox. She would deactivate the monetary switch in order to give us carte blanche with the ball along with the smoke machine.

    athens5 photo by suke

    We wandered the downtown with cd’s trying to put some on consignment. They are good with the local music but understandably not willing to burden themselves with unsigned touring bands. Except Wuxtry. Mike, the fellow working there, recognized me as a friend of Fishboy and allowed me to sell him some of our cd’s. Friends are good to have. He then put the cd's in the display case, replacing the remastered Joshua Tree cd. That was extra nice of him.

    athens1 wuxtry photo by suke

    The next stop was Wilson’s Restaurant. That place is amazing. The ladies were sweet on us and made us fried pork chops and fried chicken with the most comforting sides.

    athens4 suke's dinner-green beans, mac and cheese, okra and tomato, biscuit photo by suke

    athens3 the ladies who made our dinner photo by suke

    My friend, Doug, was getting off work so we went to his house. He has an amazing place and a great dog, Tiny Doug. The last time I was out there we went out on his boat, Woman Magic. He’s my good times friend. He owns a flooring company that reclaims wood floors. He used to be an entomologist and still has museum-style glass cases with taxidermied insects. He’s selling his house complete with a movie room and fenced-in yard for Chinese Crested dogs like Tiny Doug.

    athens2 Tiny Doug and Doug photo by suke

    We hung out for a bit and then Lori came over. After porch sitting a while in good weather we went back to the venue. Edison Project pulled up and we helped them load in. We had a good night. The crowd was great and we had fun. Athens is a great town.

    athens7 Lori's other place is Dynamite photo by suke

    athens8 shirt from Dynamite photo by suke

    athens6 one more pic of Tiny Doug photo by suke

  • 3/9/08 Augusta, GA – 1021 Bar

    We checked into the Budget hotel.  They had a Coke machine that dated before Coke Classic.  I have a theory that New Coke was introduced as a smokescreen in order to replace sugar with corn syrup with Coke Classic.  Theories are fun.  I also had a theory that if you looped the electromagnetic spectrum you could reverse time.  Here’s some digression to magical realism:  If you put a radio at the end of a rope and spinned that rope at a 5-foot diameter from yourself during a nuclear explosion, then you could go back in time to a date that you really enjoyed and cut the time line into the form of a Wheel-O. Problem solved.

    We were early so we hung out in the room and watched Randy Jackson’s Dance show.  A dance crew dressed as vampires were my favorite.  They were beat by Fish and Chicks.  They brought it, but I’m still fascinated by dancing vampires, even if they look like the kind who shop at Hot Topic, they’re still dancing vampires.

    We got to the venue where there was a photo shoot with girls dressed as strippers.  It was very popular with the locals who turned up on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

    Our friends, Edison Project, live in this town and invited us to play this venue.  They’re really nice and I like their band a lot.  Two of the mates are brothers and their dad played drums in a band that toured with the Beach Boys.  During that tour, Dennis Wilson’s bus, that carried the drummers from the other bands as well, had gotten lost.  As a result, Micah and Zach’s dad had to sit in with all of the drummerless bands, including the Beach Boys.

    The show was good and we were happy to be there.

     augusta1 photo by suke

    zach zach from edison project photo by suke