All in all, a fun weekend. Friday night, went to New jersey with Yes Sensei, where they played at a skating rink, to just a few more people than the Sly Caps, about 20, including bands. the fucking skee ball game ate my tokens, as some theiving bastards stole the "Out of Order" sign and the old lady didn't seem to care, as she was making money off my misfortune. What is this, Vegas? What can I tell ya, no respect! The South Park pinball game, on the other hand, showed me plenty respect. The best pinball game they've come out with in many, many years. I really don't like the pinball games that were released post-1988, so this game was a pleasant surprise, and I hope I can find one here on Long Island now that I am aware of its existance. I mean, you can get a massive bonus for getting the ball in the toilet!! Absolute genius! But the trip was another great excuse for me to get out of Long Island for a little while and get in the van with Yes Sensei, which is always fun. I love those guys. I honestly do not know how many of their shows I have been to... Even with the vast amount I have blown off, I doubt anyone (including Lindsay and Jill) has been to more of their shows (excluding Mike, Paul and Davecat, of course).

Saturday, I had to get up early (at the crack of noon) so I could go to a WUSB staff meeting, where I was a few minutes late, running in with my coffee and a bialy in my mouth... Then I had to stop off afterwards to get some party supplies for Mike's b-day (#25!)/ Club Paul. Got a couple of packs of blank coctail napkins so I could print "Club Paul" on them with the hotstamper, and I also found a ton of Star Wars party favors, which I couldn't resist, since Mike is real big on that stuff. Got home at 3:30, then straight away, Matt & I went to go catch "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" in Commack at 3:50. Excellent fucking flick. It was honestly the fastest-paced 3 hour movie I've ever watched, and I've watched many long movies. The "Kingdom Pt II" was the fastest paced 5 hour movie I've ever sat through, in case you were dying to know. Got home from the movies, took a shower, ate dinner, called Charlie to let him know I was running behind schedule (like that NEVER happens, hee hee), and that I did not forget him.

Had plenty good conversation with Charlie in the car on the way to the Come Down show. He was a very good passenger, as he didn't complain about my recklessness once. He picked out the Boo Radleys on the mix tape I played in the car, and that surprised me. If someone likes the Boo Radleys "Giant Steps" album, then he/she is automatically in high esteem in my book. I dominated the conversation, as expected, and subjected him to many rants about my past relationships and random experiences that have shaped my life to get me to the point I'm at now, which is a good place to be, I think. I have a new job; friends who really care about me and whom I care about greatly; I've been really creative in the last couple years, and between this, my blogs and my other random writings, I've been honing my skills with the written language; my playing has gotten much better, and I am no longer embarrassed to play guitar in public, and my songs are getting stronger, too. It is as if all my life has been leading up to now, and I must say that it has been worth the wait. I am finally confident enough in myself and my abilities to write a book and record an album of non-jokey, concise songs in a more structured format than the stuff I had been doing in the past, which, even though it took lots of effort and still holds up for me, lacks the maturity I have recently found.

So Charlie and I get to Ludlow Street and bump into Tom, who is happy to see us, but regrets to inform us that Pianos has pulled a Local 7 on us (my term for double-booking or booking two shows in one night, which usually leads to interminable delays in the starting of the second show), and they won't be playing until about 11:30 or so, instead of the posted 10:30 set time. We go inside and mingle with Sergei and Sean from With Every Idle Hour, Jackie, Karen from This Year's Model, Schneider (not the dude from "One Day At A Time"), and others, though Charlie and I are shy and don't do all that much talking, just because of how freaked out we were getting from the incredible amount of people packed into this joint's barroom.

To the tune of "Too Many Puppies" by Primus:
Too many hipsters/ are crowding into this bar
Too many hipsters/ but no Charles DeMar
Too many hipsters/ with expensive drinks
Too many Hipsters/ bet they have no sinks
Too many hip-hip-hip-hip-hipsters...

Seriously, though, the place is a damn hipster dive, and being a Long Island dork, I felt totally out of my element, as did most of our dorky Long Island friends. Safety in numbers, as they say. But I still couldn't shake that funhouse mirror feeling, almost like those high-school hallway scenes with the fish-eyed lense that makes everybody's nose look huge while they take turns laughing at you. Just too crowded. I hope I don't have to go back to that joint. But, it's time to talk about the music part of the evening....

Come Down is what i like to refer to as one gigantic auralgasm. Total bliss-out music for the post-rock set. I hate to use such a cliche term as post-rock, though. But to name their influences is unfair, as I feel they transcend that patchwork-quilt school of "spot that influence" to come up (ouch) with a sound that is uniquely their own. Just download some songs from www.come-down.net to let the music speak for itself, instead of taking this pretentious windbag's word for it. I will say this, though -- tremeloed and delay-pedaled guitars, undertow bass, a Fender Rhodes (!!!), and intricate, yet pounding, drums holding it all together, with a yearning, Yorkean vocal cherry on top as dessert, should be enough to wow anyone. Music so good you can listen to it in the dark, whether you are alone and depressed, or simply don't own a Barry White cd.

This was probably the best set I've heard them play, and man was I floored. I just closed my eyes and my body moved to the beat as if lifted by the music itself. My only complaint was that the songs ended. Charlie went and said that he thought they really "took it to the next level" without even having seen the post on their blog about Metallica talking about taking songs to the "next level" and pondering whether or not it is harder to breathe up there. He had no idea why I laughed so hard. So I had to tell Nicole and Tom afterwards. I am such a jerk. Bwa ha ha!

Dont you love it when random people IM you in the middle of the night, ask you your age, location and what you look like, and when you say "you don't mince words, do ya?" ask what you mean by that? And then they get all defensive and say "just curious, making conversation" so you say "Well, I don't look like Russell Crowe, but I'm no Clint Howard, either. hee hee" and they stop IMing you. How could they NOT laugh at that? I know someone who would have thought that was great, albeit just a tad disappointed that I didn't look like Russell Crowe...

Just watched "When Harry Met Sally" for the first time in eons. Cried a few times during it. Not like huge bawl-a-ramas, but i did shed tears. What was funny though was how when Harry tells his one friend about how his wife left him, and she says something like "I don't think I ever loved you" and it turn out that she left him to move in with a tax attorney. I thought it was funny, because it reminded me of my ex-girlfriend Christina, who actually told me "I don't love you, I never loved you, and we can never be friends" when I moved out of our apartment. Although, substitute a tax attorney named Ira for an Iranian named Anthony. Ha ha ha.

Oh well, it's 8:25AM now...time to go to sleep. I know some of you are just getting up or getting to work now. My schedule is so crazy. If I left anything out, like the actual party, then maybe I'll get around to it later. Woot woot!

n.p. Major Matt Mason USA - "Rockstar"

Hey kids, I'm splitting up the "Syntax Eros" and the "House of Chicken & Waffles" imminently. But don't let this frighten you. Let it liberate you. You will now get TWO times the J-Ro!! This site will remain the quasi-journal/rambling-when-I'm-not-sleeping kinda thing it already is, while the new and removed HoC&W will be a positing grounds for the fertilizer that is my bread & butter, which sounds disgusting, I know, but more unfortunate than it sounds like it tastes is the fact that I don't make any bread from this stuff yet. Maybe someday soon. Who knows? Do you? How come you know if I don't? No fair! Where was I? Oh yes, the newly-former Siamese Twin of this site, the "House of Chicken & Waffles" will be THE place to find my book excerpts, pointless short stories and random refuse (miscellaneous debris being an overused term these days, as it were), so feel free to pay it a visit from time to time. I will plan on updating it on an almost daily basis, filling it with lots of stuff from journals and notebooks past. Some of these will be things you have read already, but maybe not. Depends on who you are. Seems to be a problem with the new site at the moment, but I will try dealing with it tomorrow.

n.p. Sondre Lerche - "Faces Down" CD (I like it, kinda like a Norwegian version of "Destroyer" (the project of Dan Bejar, not the KISS album), I guess Bergen is the new Seattle, or the now Omaha, hee hee).

It's 8:56am now, and I wish I understood HTML just a teensy bit. I feel stupid. Laugh at me now, if you must.
8:59. damn damn damn.


n.p. Bionic Finger "Starfish"

Sunday Morning 8:18. Not a bad idea for a concept record of all songs recorded on Sunday mornings only. If I did that, though, it would sound like crap when it came to the singing. I never have a voice at 8am. My voice is great when it works, but it only seems to work between the hours of 11am - 5am, or thereabouts. Sometimes it takes holiday hours. Maybe if this "cold" ever goes away, I'll get more usage out of it. But at least I've been cutting down the number of longer car journeys screaming along to a way-too loud stereo.

I got home at 7:25, and within five minutes, Matt was on his way to work. The only thing that sucks about this new job of mine is that I've seen my brother very little since Monday. He opens Sunday and Monday, and closes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I saw him for a bit Sunday, not at all on Monday or Tuesday, saw him a bit Wednesday, before I went to WUSB to hang with Paul, Will & Adam and talk about stuff you shouldn't talk about on the radio while on the radio. I dunno. You get the idea. It's nice to actually see him once in a while. Thinking of going by myself to see a matinee of The Two Towers on Monday. I mean, I've read the books, so it doesn't matter that I haven't seen all of The Fellowship of the Ring yet. Gotta borrow that from someone, though. At least two of my friends have that on DVD. At LEAST two. I'm not saying all my friends are geeks, but they do hang out with me. 'nuff said. Guess I should go to bed now, true believers.

PS to Stan Lee --- PLEASE don't sue me for infringement, please....


n.p. Billy Bragg "Everywhere"

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"