[(- tonight, matt's bipolar update will be executed by the illustrious puffin, read well kids, this shit should be good. m@ -)]

apparently matty has been too occupied with the goddamn spider-man game to deem a bipolar update necessary. don't fret boys and girls, your uncle puffin is here to provide a little insight to the coffeemonk world.

brian transmission3000 madness as of late. it would seem peoples is going nuts over the hey mercedes show. from what i can tell the best is yet to come (mofo better get the three second kiss show up and running soon). he's got the june of 44 show from last year waiting in the wings as well as blonde redhead (and if you haven't pick up their latest album, do so. it's one of my top three of the year).

i am currently recovering from a ultimate nullifier jam session from earlier this evening. full of blisters and fatigued arms. i'm the only one with enough rhythm to play drums, so i pretty much get drafted into that position. bri and matty wailed on axes. much fun was had. however, i'm a guitarist, and my strengths as a musician are more suited there. my other musical project has been developing nicely. it's just my friend neil and i, but we are very happy with the songs we have written.

our friend bob had a letter to the editor of the LEO published this past wednesday. it was good to get a glimpse of the old bob (long story made short: drugs should be an accessory, not a lifestyle). a nice spit in the face of candied know-nothing, dare i say, journalism. well, the ending of the letter was very current bob (all mystic and hippified).

for a good laugh, check out radiskull and devildoll at www.shockwave.com. quite hilarious and oh so edgy. now, if we could only get some new sifl-n-olly stuff i'd be a very happy puffin.

more beer calls. until next time.

puffin

I have just witnessed one of the most embarrasing spectacles of the twentieth century. last night, brian, Jess, (brian's friend) Scott, & I all went down to the waterfront to catch a "free" show. the scheduled entertainment for the evening was Tone Loc and C&C Music Factory. I wasn't expecting much, but it was a free show, and I did recognize the names involved–I even actually used to like Tone Loc, so I thought it would be an interesting evening out for four broke-and-bored-as-hell people.

as we approached the entrance, we noticed that they were actually taking money, so in a flash of fortuitous thought, we decided to take a stroll to a point where we could hop the fence (not that that was a really difficult task, but…).

C&C were already on the stage as we approached, and pretty much from the moment we'd gotten out of the car, we'd been laughing our asses off at the lame attempt at edgy, funky, hip-hop. now, C&C were never what one would consider "good", but I did like that one song at one point (back in high school when the only music I had to listen to was WPKY in Princeton, KY.–if you haven't heard of Princeton, you get the idea…) anyway, as we listened further to the strangling cat sounds coming from the stage, and the worse than a three year old, totally non-flowing "freestyle" coming from the "leader", we began to despair and would have immediately started looking for long range weapons, had we not been completely mind-wiped before we could protect ourselves.

eventually, we just started yelling for them to get off the stage, go home, go shoot themselves, or whatever during lulls of the "music". death would have been much more enjoyable… a slow, gruesome, excrutiatingly painful death.

I was simply holding out for Tone, holding a flicker of hope in my heart that he might be somewhat good.

all I can say is that he was better. he, at least, could freestyle with some actual style. it was still somewhat dissapointing hearing his live rendition of "Funky Cold Medina" I remembered it being much better, much more dynamic. and the fact that Tone can turn the deep gravely "Tone Loc" voice on and off at will, and that actually 75% of the time he sounded just like every other rapper, kind of dispelled some of the old magic.

the worst blow to the evening came after Tone's little teaser, after he urged the crowd to chant– " I say wild, you say Thing!", then decided not to do Wild Thing, but instead to freestyle some more. not only did he decide to freestyle rather than going on and performing one of his greatest hits, but he invited (or maybe was forced to invite) the guy from C&C onstage to join in the rhymes. a collective groan was heard from the three individuals around me, and we swayed on our feet as we tried to decide whether or not to leave. Tone rapped for a while, then passed the mike to C&C guy (brian just pointed out that his name is Freedom Williams–we can only hope for eventual freedom from mr williams) who immediately started pretending he hadn't stolen all his rhymes from his much more competent predecessors. even with his third grade rhymes, he had absolutely no flow whatsoever. he made it about three, sometimes four phrases, before having to pause for several seconds to rack his tiny brain for more rhyming words.

within 10 seconds of "freedom" taking the stage, we had firmly decided to immediately leave. we had almost forgotten how to walk, and swore we'd just lost over 100 IQ points. the discussion centered firmly around the horror we had just witnessed, and we decided that if we were Tone Loc, on tour with these "performers" we'd probably blow our brains out after the first show.

Tone's journal would probably read something like this…

Comeback Tour 2000

day one:

    I can't take it anymore, I tried to hold out, but it's not worth it. Tell my mother I love her, and please forgive me.

tone

quick update tonight, as if anyone cares. I haven't heard back yet from Corvus, but that's no big surprise since Jim said he'd contact me "by the end of the week." I'm planning to call him in the morning just to "check in."

haven't done much browsing lately, mainly because of the weekend's activities and the new job/new schedule I'm still adjusting to.

for your surfing pleasure, here's a link to another of my daily visits Mudhoney from Seattle, WA. This is one of the best news sites related to my all-time favorite band, Mudhoney. For those of you who aren't familiar, may I suggest picking up their best of compilation "March to Fuzz," a killer two-CD set encompasing their 11+ year career. You won't be dissapointed.

sorry for the lack of updates here on my side, I intended to do one last night, but ended up taking about three or four hours sifting through my email from the past three days.

I've got quite a bit to talk about, so I'll probably break it down over a few posts… give you something to come back for…

the cure are truly an awesome band. I am not their biggest fan, I only own a couple of their albums, and those have only been purchased in the past year; but Paul loves them and offered me a chance to go see them with him, so I took it. I had a great time.

there were lots of beautiful women running around, which enhances any concert going experience (for me, at least), and of course, there were also lots of rather repulsive members of both sexes running around as well.

I can't understand how 5'4" 250lb women can believe they look good in tight fitting dresses, or midriff tops and skirts. it is totally beyond me. I personally don't feel that I would look that great running around with my belly and chest exposed, and I'm not even really overweight.

another thing I don't get is spending a bunch of money on a concert for a band that you don't really like, listen to, or even understand; then showing up completely wasted to the point where you spend the majority of the concert either with your head between your knees or slumped over passed out in a chair. I CAN understand getting a little drunk and having a little fun, but if I wanted to get wasted and throw up, I could do that at home and get an equivalent musical experience from my CD player.

it almost ruined the show for me. we had been waiting for the doors to open for two hours or more (we got there a bit early, and had nowhere else to go, being in a strange city…), then finally we get in, find our seats, and wait another hour for the show to start. 20 minutes before the band takes the stage, the stands begin to fill up, and a group of people take the seats in front of ours. they're laughing, drinking their beers, having a good time. they break out a joint and pass it around. the band takes the stage and get started on the first song. I look down and the little eddie vedder lookalike in front of me has his head between his knees, puking his guts out. We're barely three minutes into the first song, and already the stench of puke is wafting up to my nose. I feel sorrier for the people in the next row up, they were in splatter range…

well that's enough for tonight.

in tomorrow's update:
corn fields, car talk, & fear of worldwide devastation

another day comes to a close. there's not enough going on in my life right now to warrant a weblog. oh well.

one thing I have realized in the past month or so is that if I'm going to be in a band, I probably need to learn how to play guitar.

something else I discovered recently–I'd heard it mentioned before, but this article claims to be quoting from "official" reports by organizations like the American Cancer Society–anyway, I learned that beer really is good for you.

brian may be right. perhaps I am a chickenshit. but when you're at a show to listen to one of your favorite bands, romance suddenly gets knocked down the priority list… at least for me. I go to shows to see my favorite artists play my favorite music, to enjoy hearing it live and louder than my dinky stereo at home will go.
then there's the whole thing where ALL my friends were goading me into talking to this girl. their pushing never works, and yet they always do it.
finally, this girl may have looked good enough for me to want to grab her and do the standing wheelbarrow right there in the middle of the show, but she's one of those girls who looks good, knows it, and then tries to prove it. basically, she was acting like she was some hot shit, and that kind of attitude just turns me right off. I don't mind a girl having a little attitude, hell I encourage it, but when she thinks she's just the greatest thing going, she's not.
so, maybe I'm a chicken shit for not walking up to her, bumping the morons she was talking to out of the way, and at least saying hi. maybe so, but I feel justified since she pretty much just annoyed the hell out of me through 90% of the show once my friends shut up and stopped bugging me so I could actually watch her and see if she was worth the trouble. (oh, and the 10% of the show where she wasn't annoying was when she was actually just standing there listening to the music, and not trying to act like a badass)

damn, kinda went off there.

g'night.

well, brian over there's taken off like a lemur, so I guess I better get crackin.

got me a new j o b today, I'll be workin at Kinko's third shift. I fucking hate third shift, but my broke ass needs money. being unemployed for a month and a half–though relaxing and enjoyable in a "hey I don't have to do shit" kind of way–really sucked. it's nice to be occasionally able to eat.

ok. so brian and I and a few friends went to see The Reverend tonight, and as always, they fuckin rocked. if you've not heard the Heat, get your ass to your nearest record store and buy "Holy Roller" (a best of collection, and a very good introduction to the band).

damn, it's almost 5:30 in the a.m., time to smoke my last cigarette of the day and hit the sack.