House of Dioxin

So I'm feeling every one of my years tonight. Just got an invitation to my best friend's daughter's graduation. Y'know, I remember going to say with Pru when she was on bed-rest at the end of that pregnancy and Mr. J had to go outta town for work (ah, the marginally employed days of my early 90s). Anyway, any of y'all with kids probably get constant reminders of this but for the childless, these events in other people's children's lives are sorta like punctuated equilibrium nudges that, yes, time is passing whether we notice it or not.
In other news, even though I'm not reading George R. R. Martin (or watching Game of Thrones), I loved this post on how seasons might work in Westeros. The funny thing is that after I saw the headline of the post but before I got around to reading it, I was thinking about irregular orbits. Which isn't actually right but it could be considered wrong headed in the right direction.
Finally, shout out to the great Chuck Brown, who died yesterday. Here's a track he did with Thievery.

Check this out. It's Lego Inferno. That is pretty damn impressive. Obviously inspired by Dante but not a direct interpretation. In fact, in the interview on the site there, he says that he didn't read any of the Divine Comedy, just the brief descriptions of the circles of hell on wiki. Which, honestly, could have resulted in his art being really facile and superficial. But I think he's done some impressive work. Plus, y'know, Legos

Today was the final day of matches in the EPL. Which Fox Soccer apparently felt stateside futbol fans wouldn't be able to appreciate unless they gave it a stupid special name -- Survival Sunday. As far as I can tell exactly no one in the UK says that (and more power to 'em). Anyway, we were watching Spurs v. Fulham. I haven't really started following Spurs but I'm leaning that way. Plus I always like to check in and see what Dempsey's up to at Fulham. But the game was pretty much wrapping up and I was following the Guardian MBM of City v. QPR and wondering why none of the Fox stations (they'd commandeered at least 3 of their channels to show matches) seemed to have it on. Finally thought to check the cable guide to find that it was on ESPN2. Missed Joey Barton's "John Terry moment" and subsequent meltdown and really thought I was just watching City's chance at the title slip away. Then this happened. Sweet jumping Maradona, that was five of the craziest minutes of futbol I've ever seen. There was a moment, after Dzeko tied it up but before Aguero got the winner, where the camera panned the crowd. Just after a throw-in was awarded to QPR, I think. And they caught this City fan in the stands just turning around and smacking the back of his chair with his sweater or jacket or whatever it was he had in his hands. Really the perfect capsule moment of the horrible, nerve-wracking powerlessness of fandom. When you want something to happen so desperately but there's nothing at all you can do to actually make it happen.

First off, here's the setlist from the Elvis Costello & the Imposters show at DPAC.
Here's an interesting article about some jamoke trying to shake down Teller. Not sure if I'd say it's their best trick but it's a great moment in the show. I mean, yeah, okay this guy figured out how to do the trick. Fabu. Altho, according to Penn in that clip that's imbedded w/ the article, it may not be that tough to figure out a way to do the trick. But he pretty much loses all his fabu points when he starts demanding money from Penn & Teller or else he'll post a video spoiling the trick. That, my friends, is a dick move. Major, major dick move.
Hats definitely back on.

Also back at the end of April was the long-delayed Elvis Costello show. He was originally scheduled to be in Durham back in September of last year but the end of the tour got cancelled due to some kind of family medical situation. I don't remember know but I think it was that his father was in the hospital. Anyway, the dates were rescheduled and not only that but Durham ended up being the last night of the US tour. Which might account for the "extra" 20 minutes (the pre-show info said the show was scheduled to end at 10.10 but it actually ran to 10.30. And it was quite the extravaganza. This was another of the "spinning songbook" shows and there is, in fact, a giant wheel on stage and Costello or one of his minions would go out into the audience and pick someone to come up on stage and spin the wheel and then they'd play whatever came up. Some of the wheel spaces were songs ("Country Darkness") but others were blocks of songs (a set from Get Happy! or a set of songs with "time" in the title. Plus a joker space (spinners gets to pick anything, on or off wheel). And Elvis has turned into quite the showman (which didn't surprise me, having seen him on Colbert several times, esp. the Xmas special). So lots of stories (including ones about Johnny Cash and Chuck Berry and Nick Lowe) and a bit of dancing and lots of witty banter. Things started with a bang. Well, actually they started with a song I didn't recognize but then they ripped thru "Heart of the City" (which I last heard performed live by Rockpile in Albany, NY about 30 years ago), "Mystery Dance" and "Radio Radio" Another highlights for me was the start of the encore set which was just Costello acoustic and solo. For one tune he even switched to ukulele and at a couple of points he stepped away from the mic completely and played and sang unamplified. Oh, and he also interpolated a bit of "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" into the end of "Jimmie Standing in the Rain." To wrap up the pre-encore potion of the show, they brought out the song hammer. Which was a short version of one of those strength test things where you swing a hammer and if you hit hard enough, you make the bell ring. Of course, since it's a shortened tower, all three hit the bell and got to pick the last three songs, which were "My Funny Valentine" (surprising), "Alison" (of course), and "Everyday I Write the Book" (not one of my faves but they did an amazing job with it). I should mention here that Costello's current band, the Imposters, includes Pete Thomas and Steve Nieve, so that was awesome. Apparently, Costello and Bruce Thomas, bassist from the Attractions do not get along. So much so that when Elvis & the Attractions were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Bruce Thomas did go onstage w/ the band to be inducted but did not play w/ the band. And, when asked, Costello is reported to have said that he only wanted to play with professional musicians. Anyway. one other thing I noticed was that, because they were using the wheel, the encore set didn't really build like a "normal" set. The first final spins landed on two jackpots and "Clubland." The jackpots were "time" and "girl" and Elvis said "we know a lot of songs with time in the title." They did four and also two "girl" songs, including "Girls Talk" (hey, it's another song I heard at that Rockpile show). Plus while that was going on, two more people came up and spun, adding two more songs. And then they played "(What's So Funny) 'Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding" and that really was the high point of the night. I seriously could have left completely happy and satisfied at that point. Then they played "Pump It Up" and by now pretty much everyone was on their feet, even up in the balcony. In case you were wondering, second row balcony is not at all conducive to any sort of dancing in the aisles. And then, probably because they'd had to learn it (cos it was on the wheel) and it was the last night of the tour, dammit, they played "Please Please Me" to finish up. An amazing show. And I think, at this point (and between shows I saw back in the day and acts I've caught up with lately) that I've now seen all of my personal pantheon of big stars from the 80s.

Interrupting the usual chat about music and food and fun stuff like that to mention, by the way, that it extremely sucks that NC (my home for the last 15 years) just passed this heinous amendment to the state constitution saying that marriage between a man and woman is the only legally recognized union. That's a paraphrase but I think it captures what's going on. Which is that apart from isolated pockets like the Triangle, Asheville and Charlotte (and one lonely county way down SE -- I need to figure out what's down there... Beaufort, maybe?) voters rolled in like 60/40 in favor. So fucking embarrassing. Lots of interesting points being brought up around the intertubes. One that I liked pointed out that, if people were confused by the amendment, that was not an accident. The suggestion being that it was written the way it was to confuse voters and make it harder to campaign against. And there does seem to be polling that supports the idea that some voters did not understand that the amendment will also ban heterosexual civil unions, etc.
One of the most interesting takes on amendment 1 that I saw suggested that pro-1 backers had succeeded in framing the issue as "religion under siege" and "traditional values under attack." This, on one level, is the same lowgrade bullshit as the perpetual whining of Fox News. You know, the war on xmas, war on this, that and the other damn thing. The stuff Colbert is so good at mocking. You have only to look at an NC voting map and see the small pockets of "No" voting counties surrounded by swathes of "Yes" counties to draw your own conclusions about who is and isn't under siege.
But in a weird way, they're right. I mean, they're right for the wrong reasons and they don't understand why they're right. It's not that there's some army of "others" set to destroy America. We're not laying siege to America. We are America. What's laying siege to them is reality and its well-known liberal bias. And they don't like it. As Chuck D said, it's fear of a black planet.
The problem, of course, is that shit like amendment one is very real and can do a lot of harm. It's like they know they're on the way out, so they're just gonna fuck shit up while they can.
And before this gets any more depressing, I'll leave you with this point to ponder (something we were kicking around on facebook tonight): is the "yes on one" vote worse than sending Jesse Helms to the Senate five times? I kinda think it is. Honestly, Helms probably was more of a destructive force in the world. But this is more of a personal slap in the face to friends of mine. Plus, it's the 21st century for fuck's sake. Maybe the arc of history could bend towards justice a little faster.

This just in: apparently my facial hair which I always think of as a goatee (altho I think technically it's a Van Dyke, but whatever) and which I've had since the early/mid 90s is some kind of hideous trademark infraction. At least according to some Russian guy. I guess I probably shouldn't post a picture of myself here since I just linked to the NYTimes which linked to that guy and I don't want to end up with a C&D getting slapped on my face.
Hilarity ensues.
Back at the end of last month, we went to an amazing performance by the John Brown Big Band at the Cotton Room. They were performing Ellington's suite "Such Sweet Thunder." Ever since we saw video of Ellington performing "Such Sweet Thunder" (at a jazz festival in France in the early 1960s, I think), Sarah and I have both been big fans of the suite. And as there's exactly no chance of seeing Ellington perform it, we were not going to miss a performance right here in town. We hadn't seen Brown perform previously but of course knew who he was. And the evening did not disappoint. The Cotton Room (at Golden Belt) is a gorgeous space. Maybe not the ideal space for a concert (chairs not so comfy and AC vents blowing right on several rows of seating) but the acoustics seemed fine, at least to my untrained ear. The show was set up with intros to each piece by a prof. from Duke, who talked about how the Ellington composition related to the Shakespeare play which inspired it, often down to the musical lines following sonnet form. I thought it was pretty interesting (perhaps that's the English major in me; Sarah was somewhat less into it). Also they had actors from the NC Shakespeare Festival performing passages from the plays. Mostly quite well. One or two didn't seem quite at the same level as the others and there were a few scenes where an otherwise good actor was just not well suited to the role they were reading. Let's face it, the same actor is probably not going to be right as Lear and Oberon and Falstaff and Shylock. Overall a fun addition to the evening. But it was the music we were there for and it was awesome. The band was cooking all night. I especially enjoyed "Up and Down" and "Half the Fun" which I hadn't been as familiar with going in. Along with, of course "Star Crossed Lovers" and "Such Sweet Thunder." After they'd played the suite, the band took an intermission, then came back and jammed on a couple of Ellington tunes, including one that neither Sarah and I had ever even heard of before, "Pie Eye's Blues." They tore it up from the floor up. Definitely check 'em out if you get the chance.

I definitely did not expect to get online this afternoon and see that MCA had died. There's not much I can say that hasn't been said elsewhere and more eloquently. Speaking as someone looking at 47 fading in the rearview I will agree that that's way too young to be dying. Or: fuck cancer, as several people have said in several places. For a second, I misremembered and thought that MCA had been on Top Chef Just Desserts last year but that was Adrock. And I don't want to talk about how long I've been listening to Beastie Boys cos that gets a little music-geek "you damn kids" sounding. Which is never good but esp. now is not the tone I'm looking for. Instead, I'll just post a video. Alas, one of my fave tracks ("Putting Shame in Your Game") doesn't have a video and there's only crappy live versions on youtube. Instead, let's go with this. If I had to pick one definitive Beastie Boys cut, it'd be this one. Plus bonus Vegas footage (I believe that's the Desert Inn they're hanging around)

Early voting for the NC primary ends on Saturday (and it's only a half-day on Saturday) so I got myself downtown after work tonight and voted. I was kinda hoping that there'd be someone leafleting for "yes on 1" so I could frankly exchange some ideas with them. But of course there wasn't. Maybe on weekends they've had someone there (the Board of Elections office which is the main early voting site) but I wouldn't think the "yes on 1" crowd would be wasting whatever moneys they've got on Durham. I've got to imagine they're expecting to lose big in places like Durham, Chapel Hill, Asheville and plan to make it up in the more rural parts of the state. Which is both an unfairly broad statement about the people who live in those parts of NC (I'm sure there are lots of "no" voters outside of the cities) but also probably an accurate description of what's going to happen. I did have a nice chat with the person leafleting for "no on 1" and she said she thought it was gonna be close. I think there's a chance of a close victory. It'd be nice to win big but I think we're still a few years away from that happening.
Unrelated but helpful (and hilarious) advice on how to get more folks to "like" your stuff on social media. Definitely more tanks.

One of the more unpleasant discoveries of the week-so-far is that apparently there remains yet some uncrushed part of my soul in the midst of all the cynicism. It must be so because I'm finding that, as used as I am by now to spin and distortion and all the wow and flutter of politics, I'm still really taken aback by the amount of bald-faced lying that's going on. And it's barely fucking May! I mean, seriously. If people are just gonna be flat-out lying about shit for the rest of the year, I do not know how I will get thru to the election. Perhaps drinking heavily and donating more money.
But enough of that (see: it's barely even May yet). Here's something awesome. It's a nice overview (in the form of a top ten list) of changes in our views of dinosaurs. I'm sure there are many (altho not too many readers of this blog) who will look at the "before" pictures on that list as ancient history, people who never learned that, say, T. Rex looked like that. But I'm old so even tho I've kept up casuallly with dino news (enough at least to have seen the "new" versions of several of that list), it was still sorta nostalgic to see the "before" pictures. Reminded me of my trips to the Smithsonian and the Museum of Natural History back when I was a kid.