like a hole in the head!

Wow. If you’re in search of a high-quality internet-wide flamewar, there’s no better place to start than as I did today: looking for information about bicycle helmets.

I did find out what I needed to know, but holy cats! People who don’t want helmets REALLY REALLY don’t want them! The wikipedia article is a classic NPOV disaster, to start, and then you look elsewhere and whoa.

I mean, I don’t like a sweaty head any more than the next guy, but.

LA bus doors open, kicking both doors open

The Mountain Goats show was very, very, very good. Got there just as it was starting, maybe missed one song. The band was excellent. It’s easy to forget the importance of the rhythm section when you’re essentially there for a singer-songwriter, but these guys were a *band*.

I think I like the songs even better after the live performance, too. The audience singing along and calling out for songs like crazy, and the intimate or even conspiratorial bond between singer and audience: intoxicating! Makes me want to sing along again later when I’m listening.

On a personal level I loved the shout out to the day of the Scream and the Anti Club, followed by the Kommunity FK cover. Oh! Oh! I’m 19 again and my friends are opening for them at the Anti Club!

That made me want to get some Kommunity FK, which I don’t have, until I looked at their website and saw that they were Minutemen supports. Thanks, Mata. I’ll pirate it.

Additional bonus points for the evening are: sooz; a nice long walk around WeHo before the show; sooz giving me a sack of avocados; seeing the glum beatdown people waiting for and riding the bus and knowing I didn’t have to do that ever again; picking out the Mountain Goats nerds from the WeHo crowd; watching fancy people on Robertson trying to look like celebrities, or maybe they were celebrities, I dunno; finding parking easily; and not getting shot.

I mean, there were a few shootings around there even, but no one shot me. BONUS.

You know when you see a band and you want to get in a car and follow them on tour and then go to their houses with a bottle of wine and a big greasy grin and say PLAY MORE FOR ME NOW? Yeah. I haven’t had that feeling in years.

Adventures in literature: what’s with all the big words?

reminded me of a favorite Internet book reviewer, and linked me to two of his critical pieces I had not seen.

  1. Moby-Dick “The plot could be wholly told in about 15 pages, none ommitted. The rest is philosophy and whale-encyclopedia.”
  2. Mrs. Dalloway “Just WTF is this book about ? Making fun of the London “drawing rooms” society of 100 years ago ? M…kay, whatever.”
  3. The Odyssey “The style is heavy, but there’s no other way out, I guess. They spake (hehe…) this way back then…”

Newport Beach Police Blotter: A Waitress’s Life

From the Register:

A man, who appeared to be a transient, had entered Bay Burger Restaurant, in the 600 block of East Bay Avenue, a few times during the weekend and asked for a server by name.

The man said he wanted to take the server along with him on his “lifelong quest.” He came in again Sunday and began walking toward the woman, who was eating during a break, but abruptly stopped and turned around when he noticed a cook was watching.