Horrible news: George Martin kidnapped!

Our Top Stories Tonight

First! A wee bit of alliteration:

Where were you wending when you wore that wide lapeled waistcoat?

...To the El Rio? To hear True Margrit, perchance? We sure did have a blast at our gig with Judea Eden Band, Dream Boat Where Are You, Julie Rosenthal, and Patty Boss. We debuted a whole slew (i.e. many) new songs including but not limited to: "Fly it Like a Flag", "50,000 Names", "syllable" (that's the working title--soon there will be lyrics replacing the gibberish). Debut, by the way, is being used liberally--we played many of the selfsame tunes last night in Sacramento on a bill with the Julie Meyers Band at the Fox and Goose.

Meanwhile...here's a headline I saw:

"Mt. Everest to replace Nepal king on currency note"

It says in the article that the king isn't very popular--But I guess Mt Everest is. I do love that mountain, myself.

Mmmmm, altitude sickness!!!

Other news: I 'm reading Macbeth (oops, I mean the Scottish play) and I noticed that Macduff utters the phrase "fell swoop" in it (and lots of other famous catchy quotes about spots, brief candles, and so on). Is there nothing Shakespeare didn't invent? Oh, Will. Why weren't you with us when we wanted for wisdom. Actually... you are, even now your language infects our brains like a beneficial virus that continues to grow 400+ years hence. Oh for a muse of fire to ascend your brightest heavenly inventions like iPods, velcro and the internet. Will these trinkets last as long as Hamlet?

Nay.

Surround Sound

A few days ago I was walking through the Mission passing within a few blocks of some clamorous clanging industrial activities involving gigantic metal obects being banged together rhythmically. It was so loud that the buildings I passed sent back full discrete reflections of the original sound--but, since I was on the move, these relections changed every few feet. Sometimes they would go: "bang!--bang-bang-bang" sometimes "bang-ang!!-a-ba" or "bang-bang", and so forth. All this ocurred in 5.1 surround round my head. FANTASTIC! One wouldn't know what the hell it was if one didn't know that it was what it was, indeed.

But in a good way

Unlike the bad way the Bush administration is making ugly repetitive sounds. You can't make "stay the course" and "surge" sound like well-considered foreign policy by repeating ad nauseum, can you now ? Nauseum being the operative word. I feel queasy when that Mr Prez dude opens his mouth. Echoes are really cool when you're tramping through your neighborhood on a blustery winter day. But when bad bad history gets repeated with only mouldering lies to explain the insanity away...I don't wanna hear that tune.