Tonight! Lake Worth or Bust!

We’re so excited to hit up Lake Worth tonight! Six great bands will be playing in that little Palm Beach town, and we’re gonna chill up there for my birthday. We even rented a hotel room so that we could party hard and not worry about driving home.  We’re gonna catch this show and see the incomparable John Ralston-fronted Invisible Music, the Dan Bonebrake-fronted Grey & Orange and see what the Northwood Social Club at South Shores Tavern. Northwood Social Club is pretty new, and I’m curious to see what it’s all about. Chris has heard a couple of the tunes before and he says that I, and anyone else who’s planning to attend, should expect good things.

Then, we’re going to head over to Propaganda to catch The Freakin’ Hott, Stonefox and Zombies! Organize!! live. Yes, that Stonefox. Yes, back together. Yes, you should probably already know that. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to miss the Florida Yeah Poor House show tonight with Kill Miss Pretty, Dooms De Pop and Murderous Rampage!

Stonefox Adieu, Salt Water Gargle and Killer Comedic Blues/Bluegrass

I feel like I just crawled out of a suitcase. My legs hurt, my shoulders ache and I’m hoping that the warm salt water I’ve been gargling on and off for the last 12 hours will stave off what seems to be a sore throat. Chris has one too, and we sure earned them last weekend. The weird weather didn’t help. On Friday night, we went out to watch local band Stonefox play its last show. It was a pretty dramatic evening. Most bands break up without ever telling anyone, including venues they still have booked. Stonefox’s departure was entertaining and well-attended. Here’s a link to the review I wrote about it for the New Times music blog Crossfade.

On Saturday, we went to The Monterey Club to see Smokestack and the Foothill Fury. It’s a cozy place. Chris and I arrived early to get a seat on the huge couch right in front of the stage. Then, I kicked up my feet and took in Smokestack’s show. This cursing, storytelling, blues-playing man did the math for me, and said that he has been on the road for about two years now. He’s a pretty handsome and seemingly collected guy when he’s not playing, but once he starts his drumming and strumming, he talks and looks like a hillbilly — like someone who might pop out from behind a tree and scare you while you’re camping, or like a character in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man who cooks beans over a fire and says things like, “Terrible is what it is.” He didn’t say things like that at his show though. Smokestack’s stories were mostly about good karma, sleeping in his Chevy Blazer and getting his ace kicked while breaking up domestic disputes. I want to keep tabs on this guy. He’s a real character, and it’s good to know that there are people like him out there on the road in America.

Yvonne Colon of IWAN and The Bubble warehouse told me that if I ever saw Boise Bob & His Backyard band, I would love them. I had no idea why she thought I would feel that way about them until I saw the show myself. The band played at The Monterey Club with Smokestack on Saturday night, and I could not stop laughing from the moment they went on. Boise Bob yelled, “Living in a swamp, living in a swamp” like he felt persecuted about it. Owen Cash standing on top of his washtub bass (called The Holey Ghost) with his pant legs rolled up making animal sounds cracked me up as did the entire band’s performances of “I Luv Possom Meat” and “Calling in Drunk”. These people are off the chain. I hope they do birthday parties. Seriously.

Stonefox- Mid-Week Stonefox Show in Delray and Other Stuff That Rules

Stonefox plays tomorrow night, Wednesday, at Delux in Delray Beach.

The official Dubfest pre-party will be at Propaganda in Lake Worth on Thursday, September 3rd with performances by Deerfield Beach band Stampede and Lake Worth’s Speaking Volumes, which will play Dubfest on Saturday.

Dubfest at Young Circle in Hollywood with reggae legends such as three-time Grammy winner Bunny Wailer and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Other reggae, ska and rock acts to appear at Dubfest include Reel Big Fish, Bad Fish, Goldfinger, Ballyhoo, Authority Zero, Speaking Volumes and local band B-Liminal. The park will be divided into 5 sections with names like Meadow, where you can watch skate demonstrations, Serenity, where you can mellow out and sit or lay down by a fountain, and Plaza, where you can purchase food, clothes and other items of interest. Pre-sale tickets cost $35 and $40 gets you in at the door. The day begins at 11 a.m.

Also, Palm Beach band Surfer Blood got love from Pitchfork this week. That’s pretty rad, man. That band, which is touring like crazy (Nova Scotia?!), will release album Astro Coast this Friday night at Propaganda accompanied by Lil Daggers from Miami and XOXO from Orlando.

All of this stuff is making me feel kinda blue about the fact that I’m going up to Mobile this weekend to see my little niece. What can I do? I mentioned it last week, but IWAN and Laser Wolf are putting on that local music/film event at The Bubble too. I just noticed that that hand is not OK. That’s a friendly reminder, friends. I can tell from the lineup that there are going to be cute dudes there if you enjoy looking at dudes.

Is It Ever OK to Make Fun of Dumb People?

I know that I’m a jerk from posting this video, but it’s a must see, so I’m doing it anyway. I first saw it on The Huffington Post. The people who put this video on the internet should be ashamed of themselves, but since it’s already out there, we might as well watch it.

I’m So Excited…Sweet Bronco and I Are Canceling Our Cable…Yay!

We’re eliminating HBO from our lives just as the second season of True Blood is set to begin. Why am I so happy about this? Because TB is probably the most overhyped, insultingly mediocre television show I’ve ever seen, and all of the accolades and awards that the first season received drove me bonkers. Also, what’s the point of paying $125 or $140 a month to get the HBO package when In Treatment is over? HBO recycles the same movies through the On Demand list over and over again. How many times can you really watch 27 Dresses or Sydney White or Waitress? I wouldn’t pay $5 a month to watch that garbage. Plus, Bill Maher is a broken record with his religious views and sexist views, so what’s the point of watching that show anymore? Speaking of too strong opinions about media, I’m so psyched about the mainstreamification of Zach Galifianakis , who’s appearing in the new movie The Hangover.

He competes with Doug Stanhope (who will perform in Lauderdale in November) for the title of Courtney’s favorite comedian, and I think he’s good for people. I might try to drag Sweet Bronco to the movies tonight to check out Zach.

Southern Flaw Plays Tonight!

Wow, I just saw on the New Times wesbite that Southern Flaw will play tonight at Bar TV tonight at 8 p.m. This is located just south of 6th St on the east side of Federal Highway (at 530 N. Federal Hwy, right near that Winn Dixie shopping plaza). I think I just might have to go to this.

Chi Town With Friends Who Put the “P” in Peeps

Dang! I feel like I’ve just been slingshotted through a time warp and across the universe. I spent the weekend in Chi Town, and not only did I get to revisit some of my favorite places and visit with some of my favorite flesh incarnations of greatness (old and good friends), but I had layovers — long tedious and uncertain layovers — that afforded me that soul-searching experience of taking off and landing in an airplane four times. Wowsers! I even had the opportunity to spend eight hours running around the airport trying to get on any standby flight and testing my negotiation skills when my flight got canceled in Atlanta and no one at Delta would help me until someone finally did, and I only cried once. In the last year, I’ve had the fortune of visiting many of the U.S.’s great cities, such as D.C., Austin, Mobile, Los Angeles and Boston — not to mention my days and nights spent in Fort Lauderdale, but there is something special about Chicago. The clean air, the lake, the friendly, super real, and not a little good looking people might might explain why it feels so good to be there during the non-winter months. My crew had such a great time shopping on Michigan Ave., drinking at bars like Rainbo Club and Beachwood Inn and The Pepper Canister and eating at hotspots like Gino’s East (the spinach artichoke dip was killer, but not as amazing as the bloody mary I had. Dang!).There is my gang at Rainbo’s. Darn I wish I could have been in that one. I can’t imagine any vision — even if it were Clive Owen sitting at the bar mouthing my name with a rose in his hand — that I’d rather see when walking into a bar than this gang of sillymakers, my very best friends from high school. There might be one more exceptional vision — har har har: Each and every one of them, on this trip, exhibited the exact same personality quirks, good and bad, that glued us together in the days when PHS ’97 was rocking harder and nerdier than it has ever rocked before or since. Someone met up with us very late and was overly apologetic for always being late and forgot to eat dinner before meeting us at 11 p.m. at night; someone barfed all over the bedspread; someone referred everything that happened back to a cognitive psych self-help book; someone couldn’t stop talking about whether she was going to buy or rent; and someone, as always, is just about perfect. But I’m not saying. We also went to Gino’s pizza and downed some over-priced drinks at the rooftop lounge in the John Hancock building. Was Sweet! There are very few hand-in-glove friends in the world, and I am grateful for mine! Yay!

PBR Pics from Zoo Bar. Yes, I Know It’s Stupid Awesome

If you think you looked hot on Saturday night, you should see how hot you looked with a big bottle of PBR right next to your head…or foot. The $1 PBRs at Zoo Bar make great accessories for photos. I think we can safely assume that all subjects in these photos are posing (when it is voluntary) with an appropriate understanding of the irony of posing with a PBR bottle while rocking out or getting rocked out. If you think the Hep Cat Boo Daddies look hot in this poster with a big PBR bottle right next to their heads, you should hear how hot they sound in concert at the Zoo Bar next Saturday night, the 28th of March.

Bad Advice, A Funny Video and Great Commentary

At every turn and at the drop of almost every lip that opens to emit speech, there is bad, even horrible advice, spilling forth. Even a chronic disposition to give advice, it seems, should be regarded with suspicion, not suspicion of ill intent, but with suspicion that the person speaking is likely madly in love with the sound of his or her own voice and the authoritative tone it can take. Who besides yourself can tell you what’s best for you anyway? The only advice that I can give is to run away screaming when someone drops a hand on your shoulder in a paternalistic way or starts a conversation with, “Well, you know what I would do?”

There is this notion, that one of my disposition can not digest, that because we have access to an influx of information from all around the world that our thoughts should be at every moment locking on to and comprehending an unprocessable amount of information and then acting upon it — to invest or to form a political disposition in tune with each day’s newest revelations. Simple principles, in my opinion, serve us better than constant attention to all of the change — unfortunately, in my opinion, the baby boomer generation chucked those off the raft of reality around the same time that they started getting massive amounts of plastic surgery (or perhaps before) and thus did not have them to pass on to younger generations. (Sorry BBs, but I think your brains are trapped in artificial flesh located in undisclosed — though obvious to the naked eye — parts of your body)

I’ve always found television news unwatchable, even though I thought, upon bad advice, that I should be watching it. I always kicked myself in the shins for not understanding the DOW, but now I feel better about the fact that I haven’t spent the last ten years trying to make sense of climbing and falling numbers that didn’t really make sense in the first place. Is this all about me feeling good and watching programs and reading news that make me feel good about my place in the world? Not really. I don’t regard myself as one to emulate, but I do my best not to give horrible advice to others as some people unabashadly do.

On that note, I was highly amused by the montage video of CNBC’s financial coverage of the last few years on Wednesday night’s The Daily Show, which played the video in place of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli’s canceled interview.

Laughing is a good and great thing, as Stewart and Colbert and Maher have proven over the last few years, but what I found more compelling than the video itself was Will Bunch’s Huffington Post blog about what this video (yes, made by one of the three comedy shows that has maintained a sane perspective throughout the last several years of political and economic confusion) can tell news makers and news watchers about the effect of the disconnect between what’s really happening in our lives and what the news tells us is happening in our lives. Do we need all of the commentary and the red-faced commentators yelling at us like intolerant school teachers about what we just don’t seem to get? Or do we need simple, basic information that flows at the true pace of life and that is matter from which we can really make sensible decisions? Hmmm.

Mobile for Mardi Gras

Sweet Bronco and I spent the weekend in a state of immense enjoyment. Little baby Ava made us go gaga over her cuteness and the Mardi Gras festivities knocked us flat on our butts — all that I’m going to say is that those Southern folk sure know how to put ‘em away. We played with Ava on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, and then we headed off to watch Brandon in the Mystics of Time parade. He was on float #11, The Fall of Babylon. The floats were flying by so fast that I couldn’t snap a good shot of Brandon, but I did get this pic of people grasping for all of the trinkets and goodies that the MOT boys were throwing off of the floats. They weren’t throwing all that many beads and moon pies — think it might be on account of the expense of beads and the lack of money going around because of the economy. People were grabbing extra double hard to get that stuff! After the parade, Bronco and I met up with Jeremy and Ashley, possibly the cutest couple on the face of the earth, to change into our ball clothes and grab some drinks at local bars while Brandon and Brandy went to tend to the formalities that precede the festivities (we’re festivity only guests) at the MOT ball. J & A love on a lot of the things that SB&I love on like Eastbound & Down and Flaming Lips and lots of other stuff — Wilco — that we think should be like entertainment peanut butter and jelly to the common folk. They took us to The Garage and to another cool bar that I can’t remember. Then, we went to the MOT ball and found Brandon, finally! He was good and soused, but that didn’t stop me from spilling a cocktail all over him. he was up to his old trick of chewing on beer cans! Brandon wasn’t the only one we found in the party room at the MOT ball. The DJ was spinning some hot classic rock and we got down a little as we found our way to the bar and to this fine-looking group of party animals. The crew we rolled with, below:I snuck away for a few moments to take a peek at the ceremony that was going down on the main stage in the arena (there was the main ball room in the center of the arena and then little parties in each of the rooms off of the hallway that wraps around the building). There was a king and a queen and then some dude with a long beard who was all white. Not sure what they do up there, but they take it very seriously. I have yet to even scratch the surface of the history and rituals that surround Mardi Gras in Mobile. We had a radical time. SB&I thought we were totally done with all of the fun that did not include gazing at the bundle of joy……but we were wrong. The next day we went out to Callaghan’s (the bloody mary’s kill me b/c they are so good…even though they were out of pickled okra that fine day), where Grayson Capps was heading up the Joe Cain day festivities, so we danced around like a bunch of drunken hillbillies for about 6 hours.Then, Sweet Bronco and I were like, ‘Can we go home now?’ and they were like, ‘What’s wrong with you guys?’ So, we took a cab home, which drew boos and hisses from all![/caption]Ninny and Brandon danced the night away at Callaghan’s Irish Social Club, the one and only!

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