Concert Review #1: Fountains Of Wayne

This is concert week for me. Fountains of Wayne, who I saw Friday night, put on a very good show at the Double Door.

Getting to the Double Door, however, didn't work out so well when a certain person who shall remain nameless (but not linkless) borrowed my car, parked it ass-far away, and didn't tell me where she parked it, so Katy and I had to wander around for half an hour in the cold trying to find the damn thing.

However, we did get there in time to catch the excellent openers, Motion City Soundtrack, who reminded the three of us of early Weezer, with a keyboardist who was apparently on methamphetamines thrown in for good measure.

MCS also had one of the more inventive CD packaging ideas I've seen in a while: they cut up old five-and-a-quarter floppy disks, took the data disk out, and then inserted their CD, using the diskette instead of a jewel case.

Environmentally friendly and amusing: Always a good combination.

The crowd was kind of weird (and for some reason, really, really tall...I could barely see most of the show). There was a group of extremely drunk people next to us I was about to slug, though to their credit they knew all the words to the songs, though to their debit, they were really off key.

Then there were the folks directly in front of me whose philosophy was summed up by my nameless friend: "I'm wearing a hat, you're wearing a hat. Let's make out!"

However, I ceased caring about such things when Fountains of Wayne went on. Fountains of Wayne, for those unfamilar with them, are composed of the guys who wrote the songs for That Thing You Do! plus a drummer, a 2nd guitarist, and a keyboardist.

They've got two really excellent albums, one self-titled and another called Utopia Parkway, and I've been utterly obsessed with the band since I got my hands on Utopia Parkway. They do really funny, almost absurdly catchy pop-rock.

Oh, and if you can download their song "Alien For Christmas," do. It's my new favorite holiday song.

Anyway, they played an excellent set, which got the drunks jumping and singing, and everybody else just singing merrily along. Their music is so much fun to listen to, you can't help but smile.

Unfortunately, they were having problems with their monitors (speakers in the front of the stage through which the band hears themselves, for the uninitiated), so they ended up cutting their set a bit short, but the stuff they played off their forthcoming album sounds good.

If only anyone could actually say when the album was coming...

The rest of their tour is listed on their site (linked above), and you should defintiely catch them if they're coming through. Yay good music!

Auxiliary Utah-Bashing

Since Mark's weblog has been pronounced dead for some time (though he told me he's tried to resurrect it, but Blogger has foiled him repeatedly), I've decided to do a wee bit of Utah-bashing in his stead.

I talked to him earlier tonight, and he mentioned that he got the call from his folks that his sister-in-law had gone into labor, and that he should expect to be an uncle sometime soon.

He then did the math: November 14th minus nine months is February 14th....Ew.

Mark, unlike the vast majority of Utahns, including his sister-in-law (Angela), is not Mormon. Angela is very religious, and Mark's brother, Eric, was kind of like, well, whatever. This has Mark somewhat concerned about the name of the child.

Mormons tend to give their children...unusual names. There is even such a thing as the Utah Baby Namer, which lists some of the more ridiculous monikers that people have come up with. Some of them are clearly bullshit, but Mark went through and recognized some of the ones that I thought were made up.

The one name that generated particular concern on my part: Moroni (pronounced more-oh-nee, not how you think it's pronounced).

Moroni is an angel of the Mormon Church, and many Mormons name their sons after him. This is a fine practice if Angela and Eric wish to stay in Utah, and the kid to stay in Utah for all his life.

Were he to ever leave Utah for a non-Mormon resplendent place, however, he'd never hear the end of it:

"So your parents actually named Moron? God, you must be really dumb."

If it's a girl (nobody knows until the little one decides to come out), there's also dozens of fairly bizarre but comparatively innocuous names. So everybody's waiting to see what Eric and Angela come up with.

Or they could just be original and name it Mark (or some variation thereof), David, Daniel, John (or some variation thereof), Joseph, or Adam.

God knows there aren't nearly enough of any of those out there...

And Mark, if you see anything else related about Utah you'd like me to bash, do let me know.

No more!

I respectfully request that people stop sending me that goddamn scary picture of Michael Jackson that's been floating around the internet. I had at least five people send it to me yesterday, all referencing different sites.

It is the scariest picture ever. It was taken as he testified yesterday in his defense against a lawsuit he backed out of two millenium concerts, costing the promoter millions.

It looks like another piece of his oft-modified nose has quite literally fallen off, and he's got facial hair that forms what he seems to believe is a goatee, but which really looks like it's been drawn on with a pencil. This is just disturbing.

I will not link it here because I do not wish the few people that read this site to go blind, but if you're terribly interested, use the link on the right side of the page to go to E! News.

I take no responsibility for the side effects of seeing this picture.

Sauna Time!

My heat hasn't been working particularly well for the last few weeks. I got tired of my landlord sending the super, who clearly can't fix the heat, over to try and fix it again and again, and finally, after threatening him with calling the health department on him, he called a professional heating guy.

The heating guy called me to set up a time, and he came first thing this morning. He managed to figure out that there's something controlling the cycles of the boiler, causing it to shut off before the radiators are generating sufficient heat to actually heat my apartment.

Apparently, my apartment is the only one with this problem, since we're the only ones who complained. But it was fuckin' fifty-nine degrees in here, and my roommates and I were waking up repeatedly in the middle of the night because we were so cold.

So the heating guy says, "Well, I'm gonna just let the heat run until I can get into Conrad (my landlord)'s office and see what's causing this to happen," which he says will be sometime this afternoon.

This is fine with me, because it's a hell of a lot easier to crack a window than it is to go out and have to buy more goddamn blankets because it's so cold in here I'm starting to run out.

Unfortunately, this solution makes the building ridiculously hot, and Conrad got a bunch of angry phone calls from people who thought they were living in a sauna, and the radiator of the people upstairs started leaking, which made the ceiling in Katy's room leak, as well.

So now I don't know what the deal is. I haven't heard the boiler kick on all night, but it's still much warmer in here than it has been in weeks. So who knows, this may not be over yet.

I just can't believe it's this fucking complicated to get a building to a decent, livable temperature.

Bah.

The Long-Awaited Iowa Post

So, finally, my trip to Iowa to see Wilco.

Sometime in early September, shortly after I had my wisdom teeth pulled, my friend Jack asked, hey, do you wanna go see Wilco in Iowa City in November?

Since I didn't know my schedule and I was on lots of nice happy painkillers, I thought this sounded like a tremendous idea, especially because I always end up missing their pre-thanksgiving show here in Chicago (which they're actually not doing this year).

I also liked it because there was a possibility mentioned of meeting Wilco, since the girl we'd be staying with works at the Iowa U. radio station, and said concert was being held at the university. I've been a big fan of theirs for a few years now, so I was like, sure, what the fuck.

My participation in this endeavor was crucial, since I was the only one of the interested parties with a vehicle. This was also a very loosely organized trip, so I didn't find out until about 3 days before we left that we would be leaving on saturday.

By this point, I was drowning in work and looking desperately for a job, and not finding a bloody thing (I've since found out I have two interviews next week, so hopefully that's a sign of better things to come).

I suddenly wasn't so sure I wanted to go, but I couldn't back out, so I decided fuck it, I need to get out of Evanston for a couple of days, I don't care how much work I have.

I drive a Subaru Legacy Outback station wagon, which I've nicknamed The Green Monster, and it's supposed to hold 4 people other than the driver. We proved this weekend that it can hold 5, so long as one doesn't mind riding in the trunk with everyone else's shit.

Our intrepid travelers were: Jack, his girlfriend Kate (whose best friend we were staying with in Iowa City), Pat King (who I never refer to by only his first name, for no reason whatsoever), Anne, and MDep (Mike DePilla).

So we left around 1 on saturday, getting to Iowa City around 5:30. We stopped along the way at the Iowa 80 rest stop, one of the sketchier places I've been to in my interstate travels. It appeared to be one of the preferred places to stop of Harley denziens on their way to the Sturgis rally.

Anyway, by the time we got to Iowa City, most of us (including the people who inhaled hamburgers at the rest stop) were getting hungry. So Brittany, Kate's friend whose floor we were all commandeering, suggested her favorite Mexican place, which she asserted was 25 minutes away.

So after getting gas, we got on the interstate, and drove. And drove. And drove some more. We drove through Cedar Rapids, which, according to the good folks at MapQuest, is 34 miles from Iowa City. Even at 80, that's not 25 minutes.

Anne, Kate, and Brittany had gone in Brittany's car, leaving me and the guys clawing at the windows of my car, trying to figure out where the fuck we were going and if we'd ever see food again.

We finally got to the place, Papa Juan's, and it was...decent. I think part of the reason we scarfed down so much food is that we were all starving by this point. It certainly wasn't bad, but frankly, I think most of us would have been more than happy to eat in Iowa City.

We got back to Brittany's place, and had the fun and entertainment of listening to her fight with her roommates (who are apparently not cleaning up after themselves, so I felt bad for her, because I've dealt with that before) while watching various combinations of people play Mario on Super Nintendo.

We are an exciting bunch.

The next morning, everyone hauled themselves off the floor and started trying to accomplish things. When the fun of that wore off for most, everyone except me and Jack (who were buried under piles of work) went down into the city to go to a bookstore.

Then they all came back, and Pat King, who often tells entertaining white lies, says in a very nonchalant voice, "Oh, yeah, we met Wilco at a record store." Jack and I were like right, whatever.

Then Brittany came back, and she was obviously really excited, and we were like waaaaaaaait a minute. And then Anne whipped out her digital camera and showed us this. Jack and I couldn't believe it.

If that doesn't illustrate my luck lately, I don't know what does.

After a quick dinner at some sort of noodle type place, we went over to the Iowa student union, where the concert was taking place. We froze our (insert body part of choice here)s off, but we were near the front of the line and thus got to be at the front of the hall.

This was definitely not an advantage for the openers, whose names I never learned. The openers were supposed to be Koufax, who are supposed to be a fairly decent emo/punk band, which I would have been fine with.

These guys, however, were rotten. They were apparently Friends Of Wilco, since Tweedy had told my friends that ran into him to "keep an open mind." I tried doing so for about a minute and a half. They had their chance. They failed.

I can deal with some kinds of experimental music. However, when it makes my head hurt, it loses.

Their main problem was that it always seemed as if they weren't playing the same song for most of their set, and when they did seem to be playing the same thing, it sounded like a frieght train approaching.

I had a bad headache after about five minutes. Fortunately, the guitarist's cord flamed out after about 20 minutes, and he was dumb enough not to bring a backup. At first, I couldn't tell if he was fucking with the cord as part of the act or if it was really broken.

Then, after having the Iowa people for some reason unbeknownst to...well, anyone, turn the lights down like 10 minutes before they came on, Wilco finally came on.

And god damn, did they rock.

I've been to 60+ concerts in the last few years, and this was definitely in the top five. It was their last show of the year, so they just broke everything out, including almost half of their first record, A.M., which they almost never play more than two songs off of.

And that version of "Sunken Treasure"....wooooooooooow. Words cannot describe how amazing that wasI would have driven all those miles just for that.

I'd describe more of the concert, but I'd go into even more excruciating detail than I already have. Suffice it to say I heard most of my favorite songs of theirs, and they opened with "Via Chicago," which was both awesome and weird at the same time.

And if anyone knows of someplace where I can get a bootleg of that show, please, please, let me know.

The drive back wasn't too bad, though we did almost get run off the road by a psycho truck driver who was trying to drive while sleeping. Then again, it was 2 in the morning. And I'd like to thank MDep for listening to my rantings while I tried to keep myself awake by annoying the living shit out of him.

All in all, it was a pretty good trip. And I even managed to get a 93 on my 11am Italian test, despite the fact that I didn't get to sleep until 5:30am.

Good times.

Just a little patience...

I'm way too wiped to write about Iowa right now. You're just going to have to wait until tomorrow. Nyaaaaaah.

Heh heh...you said Kum...

Whilst inputting reciepts from my trip to Iowa (details forthcoming), I ran across a gas reciept from the Kum 'N' Go gas station we stopped at in Iowa City, and I started giggling.

Kum 'N' Go is evidently some sort of Iowa chain, since one of my ex's friends, who goes to college in northwestern Missouri (i.e. near Iowa) has a prized Kum 'N' Go lighter, and Mark and I saw one during our infamous visit to Freedom, Iowa.

The funniest part of the reciept is the note at the bottom, after the gas total:

"Kum & Go...
24 HOURS A DAY....
...7 DAYS A WEEK
THANK YOU!"

I think should I ever open a whorehouse, I'm going to appropriate that tagline.

Wow...

Read the first item here, then click the link to the video.

God bless the internet for making this available to everyone, everywhere, anytime, instead of just the people who were watching Fox News Channel when this happened.