Regarding music, Hulk Hogan, your calendar, and the atrophied ghoul that is Jason Kidd

If you're anything like me, you have a calendar of Scottish Highland Cattle in your den that hangs there naked and useless. Sure, there are twelve glorious photos of creatures are both be ferocious and have horrific emo hair, but the days themselves are blank. So, in an effort to fill up that calendar, we here at Birdmonster have a few dates you may want to add.













- August 5th, 2008: The date our new album comes out on them there interwebs. You can do the download thing at your favorite mp3 hole and, well, we'd love it if you did.

- Monday Nights, 8p.m.: As a young skip, my Sundays were often filled with cereal, He-Man jammies, and rapt viewings of American Gladiators. Now, while some things from my youth, like my undying love of Dream Theatre and uncontrolled poison marshmallow cereal fetish died hard, my love for all things American Gladiators was rekindled last night. I can't recommend the ludicrous stupidity that is the updated AG highly enough. They've got a bunch of failed tight ends wearing lycra and wolf-fangs, Hulk Hogan pimping Toyota (brother), and last night, the subtle homoeroticism was through the roof, with one of the contestants nearly outdoing Tobias Funke, with gems like "I always come from behind" and "You might be on top now but I'm behind you just waiting." Thank you NBC.

- September 2nd, 2008: The date you can get the album in stores. Not the American Gladiator album, mind you, though if that's also being released, I admonish you to buy one as well. We must support my newfound love.

- February 22nd, 2005: The day "Rich Girl" was murdered by its creators. Look, I loves me some stripped-down acoustic jams and I loves me some "Rich Girl" and, I may as well admit I'm coming down from a veritable Hall & Oates addiction (it's hard doing without "Private Eyes" after a long day of notwork but the shakes and migraines have abated), but I do not loves me some "Rich Girl" acoustic with added croontastic intro. May mustaches be regrown. May funkiness be rekindled.



- September 3rd, 2008: We're playing a hometown shindig with Nada Surf at the Great American. So, if you're in San Francisco or surrounding parts and can't quite get to Amoeba on Tuesday, come out and celebrate our release on Wednesday. We can talk about that Monday's American Gladiators, unless its off the air by then, in which case I will likely be suicidal.

- August 8, 2008: The Olympics start and 'Merica tries to reclaim its International Basketballian Glory. Of my many other, non-Hall-&-Oates vices, drinking beer and watching basketball is among the most pervasive, though I do my best from yammering about it too often, but the Olympics is a special deal. Sure, Jason Kidd is starting at point while far superior, less decrepit young 'uns wile away on the bench, but I have faith that the United States of Nike team can make our country proud. We might've crapped the bed for the past eight years here, both in international politics and international roundball, yet I can't help but think that this summer and autumn, all that will turn around. Of course, if they lose and McCain wins, you'll find me in my roommate's fortified zombie bunker, eating SPAM, playing gin, weeping in the fetal position.

Here's to Populism

I always feel awkward at museums. I mean, I've got the slow motion museum mosey down, but beyond that? Nothing. I'm one of those rubes who looks at sculptures worth more than my house and says things like "The 'Fountain,' huh? Looks like a fucking toilet." I can understand the theories and reasonings that form the foundation of some modern art but that doesn't mean it makes me feel happy or awed or give me any other emotion that good art is supposed to. It just makes me think "Piss Christ" would be a kick ass band name.

I'm okay with this. I'm not proud of it per se, but I'm not not proud of it. I just know what I like: original Kincaids and Wylands. I mean, get a load of the brush technique, bro:


Far out.

Which brings us to the first Tuesday of every month. On these glorious days, a whole slew of San Franciscan museums are free to the public, a courageous move that puts pleebs like me right next to black turtleneckers who use a word like "ephemeral" while staring at an installation piece composed of expired subway tokens and the plush, severed head of Donald Duck. It's a day that invites that's supposed to foster appreciation of the fine arts, unite the community, and to gather the largest amount of shameful goatees under one roof since the Philosophy Majors and Major League First Basemen Convention of 1998.

This past Tuesday, I ventured out to the de Young and tried the idea on for size. I went to see the visiting Chihuly exhibit (which costs five dollars and is an affront to all things Free-First-Tuesday) and, I must say, it was worth every penny that I did and didn't spend. He's ostensibly a glass blower, so the whole exhibit is a series of massively colorful glass sculptures which should win several lesser-known awards, among them "Worst Place To Be In a Massive Earthquake," "Best Place to See a Confused Stoner," and "Best Exhibit In Which To Dribble A Basketball and Give a Docent Heart Murmurs."

The real beauty of the whole exhibit though was it's sheer likabilitynessness, with those aforementioned connoisseurs mixing seamlessly with casual rubes, old ladies in dangerous hats, and summer school field trips. It's the only art exhibit I've ever seen a baby enjoying, though said baby may have just been relieving herself with euphoric abandon. It's, in other words, the reason for museums. It's art that anyone can enjoy without the necessity of historical context or having to peruse those infuriating mission statements that read like sycophantic knob-slobbing. It, like most of my favorite art, is for everyone. It's the difference between something like John Cage's "4:33" and the Beatles' "Two of Us." You can certainly enjoy them both, but one requires context, intellectual detachment, and a scholarly bent, while the other awes by merit of its supreme kick assitude alone.

And, not to go all Simon Cowell on you here, but isn't that the whole point?