Too Tired To Title This One

(February 06, 2003)

Hey peeps and friends and odds and ends!

It's 3:47am, technically February 7th, but you know the rule...it isn't tomorrow yet until I go to bed and get up again. It's still Thursday, and I'm ready to update. I'm running on fumes, yay! I have a Hershey bar and a Hawiian Punch and my cat. But I'm only going to consume two out of those three.

Tonight (Thursday, remember) I hit two of the smallest clubs on Mass Ave-- the Plough and Toad. But more about that tomorrow, 'cuz I didn't write about Tuesday night yet. Fuck, now it's already a scattered entry and will TOTALLY be too long. FUCK, I should have updated yesterday but I did not get around to it. Huh huh...around to it. Reminds me of something that proves that I can be such a brat. This one time? At GiantSuckingSound.com? Actually that's not fair to call it that for this story. This was years before my sprightly, hip, industrious best-in-class network company got acquired by a Canadian phone company peopled with vapid prattling tarts and brainless blustering dickless idiots and became a sluggish leviathan that quickly turned its pale bloated belly to the sky and began the hopeless spiral of death that eventually squelched every last desperate gasp of allegience from its employees.

Put another way, at the time of this story, I didn't loathe it there yet to the point where I said things like, "Okay, choices this morning are: peel the skin off my face or get in the car and head for Route 3? WHICH is less painful..."

So this one time, a bunch of us were in a meeting, and this one engineer, again for like the millionth time, didn't have his action items done because he "didn't get around to it." Didn't get around to it, didn't get around to it, that's all I ever heard from this guy. DAVE, that was his name. Dave was one of those small, smiley, portly bearded fellows that look like they live with six other dudes and work in a mine. Nice guy but dude, we got work to do and you're ruining it. Heigh ho, Heigh ho, quit surfing the 'Net and DO something, yo. So while the meeting was going on, I idly tore a perfect circle out of a sheet of notebook paper and, when it came time for him to update us on his progress, I gave him the circle, in the middle of which I'd written in bold block letters: TUIT

Yeah, it took them a minute, too. Basically, they never did know what to do with me there. Keep in mind that I got rave performance reviews and surprisingly lucrative promotions rather easily, a nine-year anomaly I like to call "failing upwards." Thank god that's over. Now I don't have to use words like ACTION ITEMS in everyday conversation.

So-- Tuesday night! Everybody who came to the Lizard Lounge for the first night of the Queens residency rules. You are all sexually attractive and can hang your underwear on my doorknob any day of the week. Everybody who said you would come and didn't...YOU know what happens next. I've been practicing my smiting technique and I think I have it down. You may avoid said smote by coming NEXT Tuesday. Lizard Lounge. Hit the Superhero site for details. Valerie Forgione played a very nice opening set, and everybody seemed to really like Spottiswoode...DAMN, he's the real thing, yo. All the Queen's Men in their acoustic format are really amazing. Seriously, you need to see it. TUESDAY, GODDAMMIT.

Here's a funny little thing that happened. yesterday morning, day after the residency (funny how Wednesday follows Tuesday like that) whilst getting ready to take Spottiswoode to S&S for a late breakfast, I called Joe at work to talk about something. Mid-sentence I jumped in with, "What are you listening to? Is that Kate? Who is that?" "You like it?" asked Joe. "Yes, what is it?" He did not answer, he only turned it up so I could hear it better. I listened for another little bit. I heard groovy soaring vocals in a back-porch, southern kind of vibe. It was mind-numbingly cool. Sophisticated. Slick. I wanted to hear more immediately. But I still didn't know what it was. I said, "COME ONNNNNN!" and Joe said smugly, "It's Spottiswoode."

"It is NOT."

"It is. It's the one I got from him last night."

"It is SO NOT. I hear WOMEN!" then I had one of those bitch-slap moments...the new CD... I didn't have it yet. I turned around and "Spode!," I yelled. Jonathan Spottiswoode didn't even look up from ironing his shirt.

"Mm."

"Who is singing on your new CD!?"

"I have three gospel singers."

"This is the CD you said I won't like?"

"I didn't say you wouldn't like it."

"You said last night I might not like it."

"I said you might not like it."

Oh for the love of...isn't that funny? I can't believe it.

I should point out, I was blown away last year when I randomly got Spode's last CD in the mail. I mean blown away. You can find the review on AltarNative.com. Ask Baldino, ask any indie music writer about how much crap we get. Every month the doorstep is besieged with a bazillion pieces of fetid donkey funk pressed into plastic that "musicians" think I want to actually listen to. But every now and then, there's a Spottiswoode and His Enemies. I remember I knew nothing about the band, who was who, what they looked like (very few pics on the website), except that it sounded really really good. So I signed the mailing list and said, "I am SO going to New York to see this band," but I never did. Then, I think it was...when was it? Last summer? When Spode played the Kendall Cafe?

DAMN, bitch. Genius RULES.