Absurdity at it's worst

Thanks to a braincrash engineered by Hollywood meets Washington, the Iranian democracy movement has had a useful tool, an American Free Radio forum for young Iranian protestors is now the same old shit-pipe vomiting Whitney n' J-Lo and 10 minutes of headlines an hour. If they had to change it (which they didn't) why couldn't they at least have made it a metal station?

Tentacle Session #37

Erik Davis gave a fascinating Tentacle Session presentation on Philip K Dick last night at Spanganga. Check out Erik's website for more on him and his book Techgnosis.

The punk party was incredible. And speaking of incredible, the amazing furtographer has already uploaded images he took at the party to shutterfly.com!! For those of you who were there, you can order prints from shutterfly. Actually, if you weren't there you could order pictures, too. I guess there is some blackmail potential.

The night was great. The bands were hot, especially our punk karaoke backing band THE CRAP CHUTES who rocked out both in karaoke mode and in a variety of impromptu backup roles. Mongoloid not only fronted his Devo-covering band of the same name, but also played drums with a couple bands and gave us an inspired, in-your-face version of Holiday in Cambodia. Chicken read the punk traditional Saint Sid Christmas poem and showed us a little piece of GG Allin. Aaron Seeman played Minutemen & Dead Kennedys tunes on an old punk-rockety accordion and then destroyed it. V Vale broke the fuck out of a royal commemorative plate, said a few words, and sold some excellent books at lowlowlow prices. Barb Traub performed an incredible tribute to the Talking Heads & Patti Smith. Darren & Sarah were incredible hosts as always--consider 21 Grand for your next wedding, bar mitzvah, or convention of attack ponies.

The clothes modifications and collages were a big hit. Thanks to Giles & Tryntje, respectively, for leading each of them.

My favorite quote of the night, by me, of course:

I'm not going to take that from a woman herding stuffed monkeys into an accordion shop!

...or maybe you had to be there. It was a lot of fun, thanks to everyone who came, and all of you who helped make it happen!

Any Minutemen
fans out there? While doing "research" for the punk rock party I
hit a mad fat vein of Minutemen websites. The ones worth noting
are corndogs.org which features
live audio & video from the various Mike Watt bands. You can download
entire concerts in mp3 format (192kbps) and see concert footage of the
Minutemen in the day of their hey. And also Watt's own home page, or href="http://www.hootpage.com/">hoot page he calls it--and he now jams econo with Quicktime VR. Lots of
great real-live-it's-still-going-on-punk-rock-spirit PUNK ROCK CHANGED OUR LIVES!!. I love that guy. Maybe sometime soon I'll post about the time I met Mike Watt and why I think he's so cool. Not now though.

Garry Trudeau, author of Doonesbury, did a rare interview on Ted Koppel's Up Close program. I missed last night's show, but I'll be sure to tape the one tonight.

The Punk Frickin' Christmas Show is this Friday (12/6). Details are still being finalized.
It will include Bring Your Own Band which is a chance for anyone who wants to go onstage and have a band
for the night to do it. Play an original or your favorite cover. Just because your band only exists for a night doesn't mean
that it shouldn't need to be immortalized! We'll have a flyer making table and digital band photos taken on-site by the furtographer. There is a fine tradition of making flyers for bands that don't exist.
Plus there will be a table with clothes you can rip, pin, mark and emblazon with your favorite bands' names (including your own).
In addition to the BYOBand, there will be other performers [DETAILS SOON!]. It all goes down at 21 Grand Gallery in Oakland. It starts at 8:30pm this Friday. All Ages are welcome. Hope to see you there!