So once again, we gather together to witness the rare magic that is Radio Raheem. Despite recently having all their equipment stolen, they were on top of their game, if not on top of their tuning ability. It's always a pleasure to see them play out, and I cannot wait until more than the 4 songs of theirs I own are available to a clamoring handful. Rumor has it that they may play with Yes Sensei in March. Props to Pretty Polly and the Reformation for playing solid sets and bringing many fine folks down to the bar tonight. But seriously, we needed something to prop Paul on his feet, as he actually got BLIND DRUNK! I swear, he totally couldn't see if both his eyes were open. Amazing! He told me he loved me more times than my freshman year roommate (first semester) told me that time he got really, really, really, really, really, really, really drunk and then puked in the bathroom and passed out. About a week after we got into a brawl and decided he would move into a differnet room across the hall the next semester.

I've known Paul a while, and I've NEVER seen him like this. Alternating "I love you"s with "I'm such a DICK!" every 30 seconds before ordering his Bison Burger Deluxe at the diner was funnier than David pulling the blanket off that girl in "the Real World" and getting kicked out of the house. His name was David, right? What I've been finding enjoyable is the casting of Sabrina Lloyd ("Sliders," "Sports Night ") as Ed Stevens' new assistant on "Ed." Absolutely brilliant. She and Tom Cavanaugh have great back-and-forth going on in the two episodes in the arc thus far. I hope they keep it up. You may be thinking: "Why does he like this show so much?" My question to you is: "Why WOULDN'T I like that show so much?" It's brilliant, and funny, and sad, and it makes me teary eyed sometimes, and makes me bust a gut other times. I find it to be one of the best written shows curretly on the air. Oh yeah, an added bonus: NO Jerry O'Connell (aka the fat kid from "Stand By Me" who grew up to play crappy roles in crappy movies - the exception being his stint in "Sliders," the pinnacle of which I had thought to be "Joe's Apartment," but with the impending release of "Kangaroo Jack," seems to be reaching new highs in the levels of suckdom)!

Okay, it's 6:23am. Time to sleep.

n.p. Loose Fur (aka Tweedy/O'Rourke/Kotche) - "So Long"

Excerpts from a journal entry gone haywire:

1/16/03 2:49am

Remember that time you said that I was as smoove as Coolio? That was one of the funniest jokes ever!

So yeah, I don't know who might possibly think "Yeah, that J-Ro is pretty kickin' with the ladies, uh-huh" but rest assured, those people are absolutely insane, or just completely misinformed. If one were to ask me about my methods for wooing a woman, this is what I'd have to tell them:

"i cannot do anything normal-like. I have a rube goldberg-like way of asking people out. which is to say, it's overly-planned, there's a lot of jerry-rigged rubber bands and pulleys involved, and it only works about 3 out of ten tries."

And there you have it. I can never just go up to someone and say "Zowie, you're a fetching bird, what say you and I go back to my place for some snogging and a shag you'll not soon forget." Then again, I'm not British, so that may be part of it. I totally don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I think I just like to type and force others to read it. I probably wouldn't if it weren't for the fact that my friends seem to like reading my inane prattling, as if I actually were amusing and witty in the non-Village Idiot manner.

I can only liken it to that scene in "Better Off Dead" when John Cusack's character tries to ask the cheerleader out and he says "hey, i was wondering, since you skate and I skate if you wanted to go out and maybe be a skating team.." and she says "get lost" and then he loses his balance and accidentally grabs her clothes and rips them off and she screams and he gets beat up by the basketball team, only without the skating, dress-ripping, "get lost"s and the getting beat up parts. But really, I guess everything just comes down to 80's movies with Curtis Armstrong playing the best friend - in this case, as wannabe druggie Charles DeMar.

If that's just for the coffee, just imagine the sitcom episode asking her on a date will be. Maybe Curtis Armstrong will make a triumphant return (he was Herbert Viola on "Moonlighting" for several seasons) to the small screen as my mentor in some cracked-out scene of me in a bar, blathering about what a hapless dolt I am in the romance department, like "Scent of a Woman," but instead of being a crazy blind guy, he is just a crazy grown-up version of Charles DeMar, still carrying that pig foetus in a jar, wearing the top hat, looking to score nasal spray, and I have to help him learn that Flonase is addictive and evil, while he teaches me the Art of Zen Romance from a book he picked up at a truckstop in Fresno. If anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about, congratulations. You've won the prestigious honor of a free copy of Caroline's Pneumatic Drapery "3rd Debut Album +" 6th Anniversary Edition cd. respond with your ideas, and I'll enter you into the drawing. Don't be shy, now. Operators are working around the clock to...oh hell, nevermind. It's just a retired barkeep and his shoulder-perching parakeet named Saul.


(music playing at the time of this writing was Azure Ray "Seven Days")

Day 2 (or is it Night 2) of 7pm-7am working. It's 4:48 am and I have to admit, I'm a little bit tired. Did a good job of not taking my lunch break until 4am. Unfortunately, there is a meeting at 7:30, half-an-hour after I should be leaving here and getting some zzzz's on. I finally told everybody to call me J-Ro, but Sean (the soup) says it doesn't flow. He can call Ilene "Salami" but J-Ro is too long??? Then again he calls Triple C "Trip." Of course, I think Trip sounds cool, but I keep expecting to see the guy from the Grifters pop out of the woodwork suddenly. I told Sean I didn't want to be called "J.R." because of friggin' "Dallas." 1981 was a horrible year to have the initials J.R. Every fucking village idiot and their mom would yell "Who shot J.R.?" And I would inevitable have to show them the error of their ways by replying "I dunno, but J.R. shot you, you son of a bitch!" and subsequently shooting them, which made staying in one place hard for me and my family. For some reasons, schools expel little children for crimes of passion. I mean, shit, I was 8! What was I supposed to do? Anyways, I suppose I should do a little bit of work now, followed by a little bit of napping, followed by a little bit of tv viewing and chit-chat, getting to know the crew better. Ilene and Finnamore were having a discussion of matters of the heart before, and I interrupted by proclaiming "I had my heart ripped out of my ass!" That made an impression, let me tell you. That and having dated an 18 year old when I was 28. If I'm not careful, I may end up with a reputation. I've always wanted one of those. New movie "Reinventing J-Ro."

n.p. 50 Cent - "In Da Club"

Survived my first shift working from 7pm to 7am. I tried to blog from there, since it was quite quiet (try typing that ten times fast!), but I forgot my username. I am such a dolt. It's hard when you have too many identities, like I do. But being Jon is boring, and besides, Garfield's owner gave Jons everywhere a bad name. Maybe he is to blame for my checkered lovelife. That's right, I'm gonna blame a cartoon, instead of my own shyness and inability to cut to the chase. Directness is my new New Year's Resolution.

(I almost forgot the subject of identity that I started, and then posted without completing, so inserted now, for your reading pleasure, is a continued rant about my nicknames.)

Being Jon is boring. Being Crazy Pablo has it's moments, but a lot of times, I don't feel like a Crazy Pablo anymore. But being J-Ro, despite my initial objections, makes me feel confident and comfortable. And since I had started toying with the idea of simply being known as J. before the J-Ro handle was thrust upon me, it seems to be a natural progression. So I guess I should thank you, Dave Harrison. I suppose I will be sure to tell my co-workers my preferred nickname. Maybe I'll feel more at ease.

But yeah, work seems pretty cool. It's nice to be working with adults again, and not spending my hours babysitting, like the last two years at Tower. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate young people, but when you pay $5.25 to start, you're gonna get stuck with The Bad News Bears of the retail world. For every 12 kids you hire, 10 of them are gone in two weeks and then one of the two left is the biggest fucking moron you've ever met. I mean, someone who goes beyond the scales of thinking that Jethro Tull is a solo artist. But enough about my old job. It seems I lucked out with my crew here. They're all friendly, but have personalities, and we have the cool supervisor. I think I'm gonna like it here.


n.p. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Demos (for the umpteenth time)

Let's discuss the Cursive show, shall we? First off, whatever the fucking first opening band was called, A DaVen or something like that, I dunno, but boy they sucked! I don't mean that they were mediocre, they fully succeeded at reaching complete and absolute suckdom. They actually played a punk song badly ("Sonic Reducer" by Rocket From the Tombs/the Dead Boys). I love that song, and I was so utterly appalled by how terrible this version was, that I could see Peter Laughner and Stiv Bators rolling in their graves, as well as Cheetah Chrome, and he isn't even dead! These guys were NOT Omaha's finest. Sergei and I were joking that they weren't even the roadies for Cursive, but rather, the friends of the roadies, who go out and buy the beer. They don't even have the chops to work at Guitar Center, but work the sales counter at Sam Ash. Sergei suggested they change their name to "Local Retard and the 4 Bored Guys" because they couldn't even be bothered to like they were rocking. I guess they had no reason to feign rocking, since they certainly didn't come close. And the jokes were just lame, as well. I told Sergei they should be called "Painful Rectal Itch" and he said "Sounds Irritating" and I said "Yes, they do." Of course, if the former was their name, the latter would be a great LP title. Apparently, Pat DiNizio, formerly a cult favorite in the late 80's/early 90's as singer/guitarist of The Smithereens, was in the balcony, walking about and wearing a funny hat that made him look like some white version of Stepin Fetchitt. He asked Austin about what he thought of the first band, and he's like "They suck, why?" He then explains that he is now a talent scout at Columbia Records, and he was just curious what people thought of these guys. I guess that means that the majors are sniffing for Omaha now. It is offically the next Seattle, what with the Faint opening for No Doubt, and Bright Eyes making it into Rolling Spin (ya know, that was an accident, but I think it belongs there anyway. It makes a good point).

Lake Trout, the second act, was no great shakes, either. Shrouding everything in reverb and digital delay does not make you appear talented. They sounded very 80's in all the wrong ways (ie, that stale "professional" echoey but dead sound that made the Fixx more commercially viable at the time, but has since made them sound completely dated), and I kept waiting for them to break into "One Thing Leads To Another" or "Red Skies At Night." One song, the last 3 minutes or so sounded exactly like the live renditions of "Echoes" the early 70's incarnation of Pink Floyd used to play. And I already went on a tirade about copying other people's crap note-for-note discussing a local band the other night, so I am not going to do it again. Oh yeah, and they wouldn't stop playing. They just wouldn't. Blah. Good thing that half of Long Island showed up tonight so we could all try to have conversations over the sounds of blaring crap. Seriously, though, it was really awesome how many of our friends showed up.

Cursive, on the other hand, was a revelation. I had just heard the as-yet-released "The Ugly Organ" cd last night, and only own a couple other tracks scattered on comps, but man, they were amazing. And not just because they have a cellist on EVERY song... but boy, I do love me some cello! Anyhow, their set was slammin' and their energy level was maxin' out. I never use those terms. That was funny. But yeah, I hope that when this cd actually does get released, everybody who has a cd-r of it goes out and buys it to support our indie musicians, so that they can afford to put out more awesome records like this one.

enough from me for now. go quote Porky Pig in your head.

n.p. Cursive - "A Gentleman Caller"