Actually, weird as it was to see the parents actually waiting in line with the kids instead of dropping them off, this particular pair didn't come across as overprotective. They seemed to be interested in what the kids were doing, what the names of the bands were, etc. Not necessarily a bad thing.

2004-01-04
"This next song is called Chia Pet Cemetary" - Galen from The Translators, live at the Balazo Gallery, January 4th, 2004.

2003-12-31
I had a conversation with Your Imaginary Friend the other day about Pirate Cat Radio. Your Imaginary Friend was saying that Pirate Cat is basically golden oldies for aging punk rockers. He may have a point. Still, when you are cooking dinner at home on new years eve, with no plans to go out, and you hear the DJ seque from Naked Agression to the Rezillos, it can make you feel a little bit less alone in the world.
Stuff I've been listening to lately (besides NPR and Pirate Cat Radio): the new cd by Riot-A-Go-Go, and 7"s by This Is My Fist, and Allergic to Bullshit. All three have some super catchy songs, perfect for getting stuck in your head.

2003-04-19
24th and Mission, 9:30 pm on a saturday night. Two tiny twenty something girls are talking to the gigantic bart cop about voltron.

2002-09-14
I just read Alan Moore's Top Ten, and it left me feeling silly.

2002-09-08
On the bus in San Carlos, we stop in front of "Judy's Flag City", which has american flags covering every inch of window space and spilling out onto the sidewalk, with red white and blue pinwheels spinning in the wind. In the next shopping plaza, on the other side of the street, the top sign reads: "Kabul. Afghan Cuisine."

2002-07-29
For some reason I feel compelled to go the radio station staff meeting today after work. I take the train down to Palo Alto, catch the free shuttle bus, and show up about 15 minutes late. They're holding the meeting in the entryway and it's allready full so I loiter outside the door, catching most of what is said. When the meeting is over I poke my head inside the doorway and see that there is no one to bum a ride back to S.F. from.

"What they hey", I say, and wolf down my peanut butter sandwiches and carrots and run for the 8:27pm KX express bus back north. Appropriately enough I have the new Cometbus Omnibus to read on the bus. By the time we reach SF I am reading the issue of reprints from other punk zines from 1977 to 1983, totally absorbed in what people had to say about punk back then, what seems primative, what seems progressive...

I get off the bus and walk up a block to catch muni. They say there's a J-Church in five minutes. Five minutes later they say there's a J-church in five minutes. I look up and spot Susan from People Under No King zine on the L-Taraval. I hop on and she's got an extra sized cardboard box from kinkos strapped to a luggage cart, extra copies of the new issue. What better compliment to reading about classic zines than to run into someone who does a great current zine... We chat for a couple of stops and then I hop off and walk home...

2002-07-25
So today, after work, one of the interns is using the office to shoot a scene for the movie he is making. They are using the open edit area with the giant conference table which used to belong to Rolling Stone. He says the table will make the scene just like the Royal Tannebaums, which I haven't seen.

I'm torn between staying to watch them turn the office into a movie set and going to mission records to work on the zine library. I end up staying long enough to see the open edit room full of giant lights and geek out staring at the camera. When I get to mission records it's too late to do any real work on the zines but I loiter, making coversation as residents and visitors trickle in and out, and picking up the new cometbus omnibus.

When I get home, I hear the TV on and go upstairs to find that B. has just put the tape of the Royal Tannebaums in the VCR. Despite all my antipathy for the MPAA, the timing indicates that I am meant to watch this movie. I do, and I have a lot of fun watching the background visuals. I like the ways in which it is an extension of Rushmore. It's like a total tribute to geekdom, without the typical 80's movie heroification. I am inspired to geek the fuck out, memorize peruvian bowling scores, translate the works of Charles Forte into the C programming language, or start a crayfish Shakespeare Reperatory theater.

Moments after writing this down, however, the inspiration leaves me, and I'm just tired and lonely.

I go to wash some dishes and P. and L. come home. P. pulls out the copy of the Cometbus Omnibus which he bought yesterday. He hangs out in the kitchen for a while, and we talk about movies and music. I'm listening to a tape of my radio show from 6/16/2002, and at one point I seque from Cattle Decapitation to Pirx the Pilot to the Rezillos to the JellyRoll Rockheads. It was a great show that week, one of those genius inspired by exhaustion days.

Speaking of exhaustion...

2002-05-27
I've been thinking about distributed computing.

2002-02-09
Last night, at the Burnt Ramen, I saw one of the punx reach back into the hood of her jacket and pull out a 40 ouncer.

2002-02-03
There's been a lot of lip service paid towards punk rock breaking the boundary between performer and audience. Yesterday, at mission records, the headlining band, the bananas, were short one bass player. So they called out to the audience, asking if anyone knew how to play any of their songs. And no less than six different kids got up on stage and played bass on one of their songs. It was pretty amazing.