I remember ...

... seeing PETE for the first time at the Purple Onion in SF, the purple and pink lights glittering off my white mod warmup jacket and Dave's shiny Charvelle guitar alike, Bill W smoking a cigarette that looked like it was six inches long, heading to a party at Veronica's place on 33rd Ave. afterward having not spoken to her in a year ...

... going to the Edinburgh Castle nearly six months later to have fish 'n' chips, Guinness, and to see PETE again, sitting in bleachers with Michael and Jessica in the small room in the back, gradually realizing that these were the best songs I'd heard all year, asking Michael if they needed any help managing the band or running Shameless Promotions, agreeing to design their web site ...

... walking into the Stork Club for the first time and being amazed at how the Christmas lights, cowboy decor, Miller High Life, and PETE blended together so seamlessly, hearing how perfectly the opening song "Iron On" trailed into "Some Summer Someone" ...

... spending nights coding the Shameless web site, being giddy with excitement when I got my hands on a new PETE demo, seeing the band practice in their space in Hunter's Point, watching them play at a house in Oakland on Halloween while I was dressed as Clyde after the final shootout with the cops, Michael was Fresno (a concept costume), hooking up with Dave, Bill W, and the infamous Pete for soccer in Golden Gate Park on Saturdays ...

... having Michael tell me that a guy interested in local music (a big Brian Jonestown Massacre fan, as it turned out) was so impressed with PETE that he wanted to give them $30,000 to record an album and do a small tour, coming to see the guys in the studio mixing the album and witnessing a big argument over whether Bo could rerecord the improv guitar parts to "The Big Swell" ...

... heading to the Starry Plough to see PETE for the god-knows-how-many times, but never getting tired of it, seeing Bill W get up from behind his drum kit screaming and lunging at Dave, wondering if the band had just imploded in front of my eyes, finding out from Michael that Bill and Dave had agreed to stage a fight to liven up the quiet Sunday night crowd and thinking it was really funny, but secretly wondering how long before that scene was acted out for real ...

... watching Michael grow increasingly frustrated as the $30,000 got smaller and smaller with nothing to show for it, hearing that Bill W had left the band, sympathizing with Michael as he finally gave up on managing, feeling incredibly helpless that such talent and resources could fall through ...

... hearing "Some Summer Someone" and remembering what was one of the best times in my life ...

meet me under cover, i've been laid out cold for days the forecast is a nightmare and i've heard it's here to stay i'm living on a steady diet of booze and sleeping pills 'cause i've got a hole the size of california i can't fill send a sign 'cause i'll sleep through one more year if you don't get here soon some summer someone will swim smiling at my side with pelicans and popsicles, water wings and water slides fireworks and fireflies from her fingertips and eyes will keep me warm all night sitting on the beach alone i sift through years of sand looking for the hope i'd buried in a million washed-up plans out on the horizon watch the seaplanes sketch your shape i jump up but i sit back down, the vision quickly fades

Here's a little math problem for you:

+ + + = ,

but

> + + +

Answer me that fundamental inequality and help me understand how Bauhaus could be so brilliant yet the efforts of Peter Murphy, Tones On Tail, Daniel Ash, David J, and Love and Rockets could be so totally mediocre.

there goes the challenge of being chased by the blue blue meanies on wheels, the vicious traffic squad cars are after our lone driver, the last american hero, the, the electric sitar, the demigod, the superdriver of the golden west. two nasty nazi cars are close behind the beautiful lone driver, the police numbers are getting closer, closer, closer to our soul hero in his soul mobile, yeah baby, they're about to strike, they're gonna kill him, smash him, rip the last beautiful free soul on this planet.

I kept telling all my friends, "they're going to blow it." I didn't care how comfortable their lead appeared, in the hands of the Giants nothing is safe. And lo and behold, up 5 runs and needing only nine outs to win Game 6 and clinch the World Series, the San Francisco Giants proceeded to give up six runs to the Anaheim Angels to force a deciding Game 7, which they lost 4-1. Hope is a dangerous thing. At least now that baseball is over again, I can revert to my opinion that the sport is a mindless exercise in statistics that would better decided by flipping a coin, played by spoiled, steroid-pumped athletes who are in general so out of shape they wouldn't last five minutes on a football field.

Chelsea and the San Francisco 49ers both managed victories, but other than that it was a dismal sporting weekend for me. The Giants spectacular failure in the World Series, the Oakland Raiders third consecutive loss ... plus I got hammered on my NFL picks. On the up side, both Terrell Owens and Daunte Culpepper had big games on Sunday so my mostly-ignored fantasy football team may have done well.

Some jerk on the T this morning stuck their gum on my bag. Grr.

I made my first "TV recipe" yesterday, this one taken from the former Naked Chef's show Oliver's Twist. It was a spaghetti bolognese, not incredibly difficult but very tasty. My stomach is growling as I think about the leftovers I have awaiting me for lunch.

The San Francisco Giants are one game away from a World Series title. This team has been "on the bubble" for as long as I can remember ... doing well, but just not good enough. I've been telling Veronica all through the World Series, "they'll blow it." But after last night's 16-4 trouncing of the Angels and their ace Jarrod Washburn, who knows? Of course, now that I'm showing signs of hope, who knows indeed ...

I had been hoping that since this is ostensibly Gianfranco Zola's last year playing with Chelsea, he and they would have a great season. Well, I've been half right so far ... the little Italian, my favorite Chelsea player in my five years of following the club, is currently leading the league with 8 goals scored. Meanwhile, Chelsea has taken up their usual 6th - 10th position in the table, and for the third year running was knocked out of European competition in the first round to a no-name club.

I made the mistake of watching Boston Public on Fox on Monday while doing ironing. Oh man, stay away, stay far far away. Can David E. Kelley cram any more hot-button topics into an hour-long show? Teenage pregnancy, teenage violence, declining schools in the inner city, race relations, domestic abuse, teenage prostitution ... and I only saw the last half hour of the show! Just really really trashy. Dare I say, trashier than All My Children?

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City comes out next week. Oh man. Robotech: Battlecry is getting really hard so it's time for a new time-waster. And lord knows Grand Theft Auto 3 did that marvelously.

I think my iPod has a brain ... it selects random songs much better than Winamp.

I spent an hour or so trying to figure out what's wrong with this site so that text scrolling and the menu bar don't work on Macs. After spending a few days furiously coding and testing the site to make it work on PCs, I just don't have the patience anymore. Anyone have any bright ideas?

it's like going to bed at a quarter to three, finally tired, finally empty.
it's like going to pieces could fix everything, 'cause at this point i'm finally me.

It's been an exhausting week, but Veronica and I headed to the Roxy again last night for Clinic and The Apples In Stereo. We took our time getting over there, leaving the house at 8pm for a 7:30pm show (already giving up on openers the Standard), then stopping for dinner at Montien, an excellent Thai restaurant a few blocks from the venue. So we show up at the Roxy at 9:15pm, expecting the Apples In Stereo to be wrapping it up (I used to be very keen on them, but lately they've just bored me). To our surprise, Clinic were in full swing on stage, resplendent in their hospital scrubs. I'd only heard the song "Walking With Thee", but was entertained by their moody organ-infused garage rock. Veronica made the observation of the evening, regarding their penchant for wearing surgical masks: "they must be really ugly". We were happy to get home early and relax, despite us paying $15 for about 40 minutes of music.

On the way back to the car I was almost run over on the sidewalk by a guy bolting past on his bike. I took a second to gather my wits, then noticed that a police car with lights flashing was speeding after him on the street. Strange. On my plate for the weekend is the Harvard-Northeastern football game Saturday afternoon (courtesy of New Balance), britpop club The Pill's second life at the Common Ground Saturday night, a whole lot of sleep, then a whole lot of NFL Sunday.

Been lots going on since my last update. First off, I made it to the Chameleons at the Middle East on October 6. Even managed to get Veronica to go, despite the fact that she had been in bed all day with a cold. The show was as brilliant as the last time I saw them, in San Francisco in November 2000. Such great songs, such great live sound. They had a percussionist with them this time, a shrill little Jamaican who spat out things like "Maximum respect Boston, ha-ha-ha" between songs. Must be a Chameleons fixture I'm just not aware of because a lot of people there seemed to know who he was. Anyway, the set started off with "Swamp Thing" and touched on "A Person Isn't Safe Anywhere These Days", "Pleasure And Pain", "Don't Fall", "Second Skin", "Less Than Human", "Intrigue In Tangiers", "Perfume Garden", "Caution", a great near-drumless version of "Tears", "Soul In Isolation", "Indiana", and "Anyone Alive". So so good. Even worth putting up with the thirtysomething bozos in front of me who sang the worst accompaniment to The House Of Love's "I Don't Know Why I Love You" I've ever heard.

I've been recovering from a cold since last Wednesday. Always sucks to be sick, but at least because of it I let myself buy a video game to keep busy at home from work. Since Grand Theft Auto: Vice City isn't out until next week, I picked up Robotech: Battlecry for the Xbox. It's only gotten mediocre reviews, but it looked beautiful and I loved Robotech as a kid, so I was sold. It's actually quite good, I can't understand why it wasn't rated higher. The missions are varied, control takes a while to pick up but is effective, and the cel-shaded graphics make you believe you're watching an episode of the series. It really brings you the feeling of flying a Veritech, taking out battle pods while dodging hundreds of missile volleys, all in the most graceful manner imaginable.

So after getting myself back in working order, I headed to the Roxy last night with Emilio and Veronica to see Sleater-Kinney and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The Quails played first and looked pretty good, but given my distaste for unfamiliar openers we arrived in time for only their last two songs. I'd heard one Yeah Yeah Yeahs song and wasn't impressed, but Veronica was keen on seeing them. Turns out they were really cool ... a bit Liars-like in their disdain for conventionality, plus some interesting guitar work, and a kooky female lead singer. Sleater-Kinney were pretty good, not the best SK show I've ever seen but in the grand scheme of things very worthwhile. They've been out of commission for a year or so now, since Corinne had a baby. You could almost hear it from the first five songs ... lots of mistakes, sounded like they hadn't rehearsed in just as long. Carrie apparently has a new guitar effect that she's not totally comfortable with yet. It tightened up after that, however. Something I knew was going to happen one of these days at a Sleater-Kinney or Le Tigre show finally happened though ... between songs a heckler shouted out "F$#@ ME CARRIE!" You could've cut the air with a knife for the next few seconds. No retort from Carrie, just a half-believable "What?" The set list focused mainly on their new album One Beat ... just a smattering of All Hands On The Bad One, almost no The Hot Rock, and assorted favorites from Dig Me Out including the title track and "Words and Guitar". Also a couple of pre-Janet songs. I really don't like the Roxy as a music venue, but the show was all in all a good one. We're going back on Thursday for Clinic and the Apples In Stereo, also.

Now back to work. Some random thoughts and observations first: the person in front of me on the turnpike the other day paid the toll with a check ... what the f*@#? I would've won an NFL pool this past weekend, having picked 11 of 15 games right, if only I hadn't forgotten to mark down the tiebreaker over/under score ... dammit. And a big woo-hoo for the San Francisco Giants and their first World Series since 1989 and the Loma Prieda quake. Hope they have better luck this time, both earthquake- and baseball-wise.

Last night was Interpol at the Middle East. According to the web site and the tickets, the show started at 8pm with one opening band, so we arrived at 8:45pm ... just in time for Interpol, right? Wrong. TWO opening bands, first one starts at 9pm. I have little patience for openers these days, and this show did nothing to change that. The first opener, Lifestyle, would've been huge had they been around during the heyday of Cause And Effect. That's right, a heavy dose of 80's-style synth pop. The highlight of their set was a heckler calling for them to play "Chains Of Love". The singer then introduced the next song by saying "This song is about the future", to which the heckler replied "1989?". Second opener: Certainly Sir. How Interpol got stuck with these two crap acts is beyond me. If you're familiar with VH1's series Bands On The Run, Certainly Sir are the Josh Dodes Band. Almost adult contemporary, really. The first song included a large man playing a cowbell, so Veronica coerced me to heckle him, using the SNL skit with Christopher Walken playing the famous producer working on Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" ... "I gotta have more cowbell!"

So after three hours of waiting, Interpol finally took the stage. They were ... okay. That's really all I can say. I love their album, but the live show was sparse and lackluster. A few guitar effects would do wonders for filling out their live sound and making it more atmospheric and lush. I was bored and exhausted by the end, as were all my compatriots (Veronica, our roommate Emilio, and Rob and Rudha up from Providence), so we left before the encore began.

I finally broke down last Thursday ... headed to the Apple Store ... asked a few questions ... and left with a shiny new 20 GB iPod for Windows. So nice. Of course now I get no reading done on the T, but I'm not complaining. Just don't want to end up like this one-liner picture and caption from the Onion, with text iPod Flaunted. It's got 2707 songs on it at the moment, and only half full. Oh the possibilities. I'm not thrilled with the MusicMatch interface, so I might be trying out XPlay soon.