Nick Hornby, author of Fever Pitch, the wonderful memoir of his life as an english football fan, in addition to the fabulous High Fidelity and About A Boy, wrote a piece in the New Yorker about this year’s World Cup. It’s an interesting essay about team spirit, rivalry, and soccer on the world stage, and is written with Hornby’s trademark wit.
Monster Garage on The Discovery Channel is one of the coolest programs I’ve seen in a while. Jesse James is given 7 days and $3000 to turn an ordinary vehicle into a monster, and it gets raced against the vehicle it’s emulating. Day 1 is planning with experts and automotive designers, day 7 is the race, so the team of 5 mechanics/welders/customizers he puts together has 5 days to do things like turn a Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer into a garbage truck, or a Mustang into a lawn mower. When done, the vehicles have to appear stock.
The garbage truck was incredible. It was built so that the entire top of the truck pivoted up, revealing the garbage bin, and then a hydraulic arm extends out and grabs the trash can and pours the contents into the bin, and then tosses it away. When done, it closes back up and looks just like an ordinary explorer, albiet one that has 20″ custom chrome wheels and an amazing custom paint job.
These guys (and girls) really are artists, the work they do is inspiring to a shade tree mechanic. If they can weld a subframe into the explorer that allows the roof to pivot off using hydraulics, I can tear down and rebuild the carburetors on my motorcycle! You get the sense that for them, at least when it comes to machines, anything is possible. Missing a key part of a fire truck water pump you’ve never seen? No problem, just grab a cylinder of aluminum and machine it!
Oh, and while sometimes the work is more or less smooth sailing, and the group really clicks, other times there is some pretty interesting human drama.
I got an 8 bit nintendo in 1986 for christmas. I just bought my next gaming system, a playstation 2. At this rate, my next game console, which I will purchase in 2018, will be implanted in my brain.
For the sake of Murph, or a lesson in indie rock history
Andre explained to me his theory on how Lou Barlow ended up forming Sebadoh instead of sticking with playing bass in Dinosaur Jr.
Phil: Lou only had a side project because J. wouldn’t play any of his songs 
Andre: Maybe Lou didn’t ask.
Phil: Maybe he did, and that’s how ‘Poledo’ ended up on ‘You’re Living All Over Me.’
Phil: Don’t go defending J. Mascis, he’s clearly a fucker, I think he still lives in his parents’ house.
Andre: Maybe J. kept telling him, “Dude, we have to get this song on the album. It’s incredible! ”
Andre: And Lou was like, “Oh, I don’t know, it’s kinda poorly recorded and I was just messing around while waiting for you to write another awesome guitar solo.”
Andre: And J. was like, “Lou, listen to me, brother, you are Lennon to my McCartney. We must stay together. At least for the sake of Murph. That guy ain’t going no where.”
Phil: Poor Murph.
I feel like I’ve been going to an enormous number of shows in the last month. I guess it’s the combination of being in LA, so pretty much everyone I want to see passes through, and being able to get into tons of shows for free at the House of Blues. On saturday, Emily and I went to see Rasputina at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood. Tickets were only 10 bucks, and I’d never been to the Knitting Factory. In short, the show was amazing. The opening act, which we only saw part of, was a group called the George Sarah Trio. It was a standard string trio augmented by a guy with a bunch of keyboards/synths/machines, programming drum beats and things like that. I thought it was cool, but then again, I think that pretty much any type of modern music (including IDM/techno) can be improved with a string section.
Rasputina has been (including the other two times I saw them, opening for Bob Mould) 3 cellists wearing victorian-era corsets, and a drummer. On this outing, there were only two, but that didn’t really matter. God damn, can they rock. When Melora clicks on the distortion pedal hooked up to her cello, she can rival any electric guitar. She absolutely wails on the cello, having nearly destroyed her bow by the end of the night. The drummer is incredible as well, his kit is almost another melodic instrument. He plays his toms as though they’re a set of timpani, it was pretty impressive.
Oh yeah, the weird part of the show: the crowd. Rasputina attracts an interesting following. A lot of goths, a lot of women who think that they are faeries, and wear these flowing dresses and flowers in their hair, as well as your more typical indie kids. There were some people dancing vigorously behind us who were very clearly on some kind of mind altering drug.
If you’re in the LA area, and you’re reading this on Monday, Rasputina is playing an in-store (well, outside of the store) at Borders on the Promenade, tonight at 7 pm.
Here’s Transylvanian Concubine, give it a listen:
Transylvanian Concubine
You know what flows here like wine
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