Event Review: Black Eyes & Neckties at Bay St. Coffee

So, you haven’t seen Black Eyes & Neckties live? Oh, honey, you have to.

I don’t know why I put it off for so long, especially when I’d heard nothing but enthusiastic reviews to the tune of “oh! God! Best live show ever!”, and every clip of their music I’d heard I loved, and every band they’ve been compared to is inevitably one I adore (think Murder City Devils, The Deadlines)–and especially given the fact that I’ve known 4/6 bandmembers at some point in time but haven’t seen any of ‘em for years.

The moment of truth came at last. Black Eyes & Neckties played at the Bay St. Coffeehouse last night, with Racetrack and a couple other bands that we missed, and Lyle, Mitch and I were there. It was great.

While Racetrack was fun to listen to, the three of us were squeezed onto a love seat somewhere near the back of the shop and all we could see of the show was the occasional flailing of the bass player over the spiked and bleached heads of the crowd. Before Black Eyes & Neckties came on, however, we relocated to the second floor, where we could lean over the railing and look down on the band–ultimately, this was a good move, because we didn’t miss a thing.

Now, for those of you who’ve actually been to Bay St. (the coffeehouse formerly known as Stuart’s–*sigh*), you might have difficulty imagining a punk show taking place in any part of the shop, especially one of the caliber that Black Eyes reputedly put on–I definately couldn’t picture it. Even as the band began setting up, I couldn’t picture it. Surely, I thought, they’re not cramming the bass, guitar and keyboard all into one corner, within mere inches of the drum kit?

But they did.

And then they started playing and it was chaos, utter chaos. We were directly above the aforementioned corner, and so we had prime seats to watch the drama unfold as the keyboard took a dive (as did the keyboardist, unbelievably steamy Brenda Grimm) into the audience, after the guitarist crashed into her, once, twice, something like three times, until finally the keyboard stand collapsed and called quits, and Brenda was forced set up her keyboard on an unused bass drum.

Smoke machines, red lights, wailing! The crowd was sweaty and mad, Davey Crypt nearly killed his drums, he was playing so hard, Brenda crawled into the crowd on hands and knees and writhed around on the ground screaming, while Bradley Horror stalked back and forth shrieking into his mic; Ryan Cadaver, Josh Homicide and Benny Bloodbath (guitar, guitar, bass) tumbled and tossed and took flying leaps at the crowd and each other–all within an area the size of, say, a mini-van.

They’re playing the 3B on Monday night (Halloween! Hoorah!), and periodically the three of us would glance at each other, pump our fists and mouth, “3B!” I can’t wait to hear them on a real stage, to see what they do with space.

[ look | listen ]

Happy Thanksgiving, eh?

Ha! Thanksgiving has arrived! Before you start panicking, though, keep in mind that the Michaelis family functions on a whole other timeline–Thanksgiving comes before Halloween. It’s just easier that way.

So, dinner’s tonight, and I’m making dessert. My house smells like pumpkin.

In other news, we (Mitch, Lyle and I) are going to a Black Eyes & Neckties show after dinner–never seen ‘em play before, and I know something like half the band from the days of yore. Haven’t seen ‘em in ages. It’ll be great.

Happy unBirthday (to me)

We have a houseguest. I think this is awesome, even though I’m not a very good hostess.

I mentioned Lyle in my entry about Myspace, and here he is, showing up again, but this time he’s shown up in my house, with a toothbrush and shampoo. Through an odd twist in events, he’s landed on the couch in my living room for a few days, and I love it, having him here, especially since I actually have a living room for the first time in 1 year+ of studio-apartment-dwelling.

Of course he’s been a terrible influence–without company, Mitch and I are usually in bed by eleven, after a happy evening of homework, blogging, reading and Warcraft, but with Lyle, well. Bedtime has been extended.

Monday night found Lyle, Sarah, Galen and me (all friends from high school, recently reunited), playing pool at the Nightlight well after midnight, despite the fact that I had to work in the morning. Lyle and I, whose birthdays are April 25 and 26 respectively, bickered over scores–I told him that I let him win, as a special unBirthday present; he claimed he’d let me keep on thinking so, as an unBirthday gift to me.

Tuesday morning found me groggy, moving slowly, but not sorry for a second. Every time I rubbed my eyes I thought of lining up shots on the green felt table, of sinking into vinyl couches and listening to my friends tell stories and laugh, and I grinned. I’d yawn, and find myself smiling.

Here, let’s have a moment. I want to say: what is it about my high school friends, that they’ve all become such wonderful people? And then I will move on.

Tonight, we’re playing at domestic, the three of us. Veggies are roasting in the oven, Lyle’s out getting beer and a movie, Mitch is studying in the still, spare moment while I write and try not to think about the awful lot of writing I’ll be doing over the next month.

It’s fun coming home to another person, fun finding somebody else’s gadgets plugging into various outlets, fun getting to know somebody I’ve known so well, and discovering what a splendid person he’s become. Say what you want about houseguests, I’ll be sad when he goes back to Tokyo and takes all his clutter with him.

Nerdzilla!

This is probably the coolest thing ever. And I mean that. I always go around saying that stuff is “the coolest ever”, but I’m serious about this one. Introducing: National Novel-Writing Month!

From November 1-Nov. 31, all kinds of silly people from one end of the world to the other are going to be churning out 50,000 word novels in a single month–forget rewritting and carefully-constructed plots; it’s a fiction-writing free-for-all!

Now, grab your pompoms and get cheering, because–that’s right–I’m one of those silly people who signed up. The emphasis, the website assures me, is on quantity, not quality, so I can write 175 pages of total crap (but I’ll really be trying, honestly–probably it’ll just turn out crap, and that’s o.k.! I’m o.k. with that) and still qualify. For all the actual details, check out the link above.

In two weeks I’m probably going to be regretting this big-time, but I do think this is a stinkin’ cool idea. Besides, I’m not in school anymore–what the hell else am I going to do? And they gave me a button:

(props to that one guy for the idea)

I smell revolution

My friend Kiah got me started on Myspace.com, and I’m not sure if I should thank her or fall on my knees sobbing, or what. Because whatever life I had…d’you hear it?…just went out the window.

Here’s the funny thing about Myspace–you can find tons of people. People you’d forgotten about, or been trying to forget about, or perhaps had been searching for, desperately. Take my friend, Lyle–good buddies, kept in touch for a bit, moved, moved again, boom! Haven’t talked in two years. Haven’t seen each other in four. Hop on Myspace, look up kids in my graduating class, and wham! There he is. And he’s in town for a month (he lives in Japan, now). I had lunch with him yesterday and everything.

But no, this is not a commercial.

The mixed blessing of Myspace is that you start to want friends, badly. You also become terrified, thinking of the kids you knew from high school who are embarrassingly unchanged, whose photos look the same, whose bios read like those of angsty high school sophomores, and you start praying, pathetically, that you’re at least a fraction cooler than you used to be. That when people happen upon your profile they say, Wow, that Thea! Look at all the fascinating stuff she’s been up to! Oh, and she’s lookin’ foxy!

I know. I’m embarrassing myself, just admitting this.

But the worst are people who really are doing cool things, and who look great, and I’m so happy for them in that shallow “wow, your life looks great on paper” sort of way, but I’m also stabbing at the keyboard rather aggressively as I tell them so, and hoping that my feeble life looks great on paper, too.

I have to remind myself, periodically, that I adore my life right now. Forget Myspace.

Oh, but I keep going back, checking every few minutes to see if anybody’s found me, if anybody wants to be my friend–so far, I’ve gotten an invitation from a sci-fi site (how they found me, I don’t know) and a bench. An honest-to-goodness park bench. Go figure.

Ornithological dejecta

My dad and I have this thing about bad books. Not merely “a complete waste of time” bad, or even “why, God, oh why?”, but bad–so bad they’re almost good. And while we’ve exchanged several books of bad poetry over the years, the pursuit of the very worst books didn’t get competitive until last Father’s Day, when I gave Dad a copy of Why Cats Paint.

I can’t even explain the badness of this book and do it justice, so thank God for the website.

I send you forth with the chilling words, “They’re serious.”

So, we went out to breakfast at Old Town on Father’s Day, and found ourselves seated not two booths away from another Father’s Day hoopla–a dad, a mom and three kids, and dammit all if the dad wasn’t wearing a crown with “World’s Best Dad” across the front in embossed letters. Show off.

“I want a crown,” Dad pouted as we sat down.

Before long, however, we stole the spotlight as the craziest folks in Old Town when Why Cats Paint made its way out of the gift bag–laughing like mad as we read passages aloud, passing the book back and forth over our coffee cups and breakfast plates, both of us crying and pink in the cheeks. In the absence of the actual book, I give you this quote from the website:

The work shown here was completed in 15 minutes on bathroom wallpaper by Monty, a Persian belonging to Mrs. Nora Scrotes of Chicago.

Mrs. Scrotes feels sure that the work was directly influenced by Monty being washed and having his knots removed the day before. Not only does Monty find the experience unpleasant, but on this occasion Mrs. Scrotes had to take an extended call from her elderly mother when she was halfway through the final rinse and was therefore unable to restrain the cat from attempting to dry itself by rolling in its litter tray.

We learned, to our dismay, that there are honest-to-God “feline art critics.” And to make matters far worse (or better? I can never really be sure), while perusing The Museum of Non-Primate Art website, I found this.

Tell a story, tell a lie

Recently, a friend mentioned her desire to only read books that are “edifying” to her soul, by which she meant Christian books. I wondered at this. I’ve done that very same thing before–chosen to read only Christian books, to listen only to Christian music and so on, thinking that it would help strengthen my faith to be surrounded so completely by Christianity, but now I am not so sure that cutting off the rest of the world, forsaking the variety of “non-Christian” experience, is beneficial to faith.

Certainly it only crippled mine.

To imply that the books sold in Christian bookstores are better for one’s soul, to argue that rich, white, conservative, American authors can summon God more readily than Kazantzakis, Tolstoy, or Dostoevsky can, or that fiction must be Christian (must use Jesus as a presence in the story? Must say his name a certain number of times per chapter? How does one guage “Christian”?) for it to be “edifying”, seems to me to be missing a very beautiful point: good fiction paints God with many different faces, even though it might not call him by a familiar name.

Which is not to say that Christian literature is bad. Plenty of it rocks my little world–think L’Engle, Lewis, Don Miller, Bonheoffer–but why do we need to divide everything into “Christian” and “secular”? Why should all “good” books be safe?

Formulaic Christian literature runs through me like water. To finish a book like Left Behind, or The Prayer of Jabez (a book marketed on its ability to nournish the soul), leaves me hungry for substance, for characters who ring true, who experience God in different ways–whether they call him Christ, Allah, Providence, or do not name him at all.

The Brothers Karamazov edifies my soul; The Purpose-Driven Life does not.

All snobbery aside, I recognize that Karamazov is a big, fat Russian novel, while The Purpose-Driven Life is much more accessible to a wide audience, and I’m not getting all worked up because I think that everybody should read Dostoevsky as a spiritual companion to the Bible. Heavens, no. I just hate to see fiction painted as inferior to nonfiction because it’s “not true”–in some ways, I think great fiction can carry more truth per page than any nonfiction book, be it history, self-help or a computer manual.

The difficulty comes in the fact that there is no clear line between wholesome novels and the sort that threaten instant damnation (you know, for even touching the cover), and so it’s just easier to write the whole show off as false, and therefore a waste of time.

Fiction is just so damn subjective.

I worry when I see people casting off stories in favor of over-marketed facts, because “easily-digested” is not the same as “edifying.”

Promoted! (But still working for free)

Well, Saturday hit my house in a flurry of laziness–I slept in, took an obscenely long shower and spent something like forty-five minutes at the breakfast table, reading. The laziness was so complete that I didn’t even brew coffee. I just thought about how much I’d like some coffee.

To top off my morning of blissful inactivity, I spent something like two hours editing the new site layout, getting the colors and font size and borders and tables and photos just so, and if you don’t like it, hmph. That’s all I’m sayin’. Hmph. See, you may or may not have noticed, but for the last week I’ve been taunting you with little entries, mostly devoid of content, so that I can get this damn layout working (to see the template I started with, click here)–but now we’re back in business, so get ready for more long, long rants about, well, nothing.

Eh. I never promised content in the first place.

When I finally left the house, it was only to step outside and realize that I was tragically overdressed, because–what the crap?–it was sunny out, and 60-degrees. Surely, I did not authorize this. So I sweated my way through the walk downtown, peeling off scarf and ski sweater, and pushing up my sleeves. Though threatened with heat exhaustion, I did not miss the opportunity to ooh and aah over nature: heaps of copper-colored oak leaves! Bare branches, just showing through fiery yellow and gold and red leaves! That autumn sky, an intense blue; the mountains looming, violet and gray, over church steeples, office buildings, the lone parking garage!

To spare you lots of sentences that would inevitably begin “And then I…”, I’ll summarize: the afternoon involved bookstores and several hours spent curled up on a couch at the Black Drop, refilling my bottomless cup o’ joe and reading, alternately, Report to Greco, Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter, and a stack of loosly paperclipped stories from the Bellingham Review.

And this is where I plunge fearlessly into an aside. See, for the last couple years, since I graduated from college, I’ve been putting in a few hours a week doing grunt work for this literary journal on campus. Keeps me in the writerly scene, or something.

Nobody really knows who I am, except the editor–I drift in and out of the office at will, opening envelopes, logging in submissions, entering subscriptions into the database, usually rocking out to Frank Sinatra or Audioslave on my headphones while I work, so I don’t really have to talk to anybody. I have no status. It’s awesome.

But this week, the editor looked woefully at the mounting stack of fiction submissions (200 in 3 weeks! Egad!), sighed, looked at me, and asked if I’d be interested in being a reader.

Um. Yes?

Some kids do this for college credit; I do it for the love of reading. And I get paid in KitKats.

So I checked out a stack of stories, took ‘em down to the Black Drop and got crackin’. What I honestly expected–I say this without shame–was for the stories to be horrible. Really, really bad. And I was excited, because I love terrible writing (I get this fascination from my dad–for an entry on our love of crappy literature, click here)–but in this respect, I was disappointed. The editor warned me that the magazine accepted something like 2% of all submissions, so I certainly did not expect the stories to be, well, good. I definately didn’t expect them to be–ahem–better than my writing.

I know, I know. Ouch. Ego, deflated. Moving on.

In the end, I quite enjoyed the stories, but by the time I’d finished the last one I noticed that my hands were trembling rather badly (how many times had I refilled my cup?), so I packed up and went home–

–where I noticed the light on my answering machine blinking.

Dun, dun, DUN.

But the rest of this is probably a story for tomorrow, since I’m all tuckered out and ready to hit the hay. ‘Night!

What, another new template?

Yes, it’s true.

"Is you is, or is you ain’t my baby"

Must really be fall now. I hear rain hitting my windows at full speed; the kitchen smells like licorice tea, the living room smells of candles. I spent the evening curled up on the futon with a book, while Mitch scribbled and scratched out and pondered aloud his homework.

I miss our woodstove, but a fleecy bathrobe will do.

We listened to old, crackly jazz recordings courtesy of the Radio Museum’s broadcast station, but we kept the volume low enough that we could still hear the rain outside, the slap of wet leaves against wet glass.

Like a cat curled in front of a fire, I am content.