One of those smell-the-roses type things

It takes a good deal of courage to be a wrestler in high school. I mean, there you are, in your prime please-don't-make-fun-of-me years, wearing a sheer unitard, a padded helmet, and perplexing footwear. You're grappling with other youngsters is identically silly garb, risking cauliflower ear (much better than broccoli lips, by the way), and, well, being compared to Rick Flair, who, somehow, is still alive, still wrestling, and still weirdly intimidating. Like I said: it takes courage to anything that's so imminently make-fun-of-able (for lack of a better word) and to those of you that did it or do it, I applaud you. Same goes for anyone involved in a glee club. Although, really: glee club? Just don't forget to untuck that polo shirt when you're done. And those khaki shorts are a little tight. Just so you know.

So when I across this article, I was saddened. I quote: "The Minnesota State High School League banned competitions and direct contact contact between wrestlers...after cases of herpes gladiatorum were reported by 10 teams."

And that's just not fair.

That's like getting crabs from a bus seat. If I'm one of those kids, my bookshelf is filled with Nietzsche books by next Tuesday and I'm suddenly listening to a ton of Morrissey. Not fair. In any way.

So let's all take a moment. Maybe your sister just read your diary and called Langdon Alger and told him about that crush you have. Maybe your boss just threw a large, pointy book at you. Maybe your neighbor's toilet just came crashing through the roof, into that pot of beef stew you'd be cooking for a day and a half. Any manner of unfortunate and unwarranted thing has probably happened to you recently and you have our sympathy. But you didn't get herpes from not having sex. Just one of those things that puts everything in perspective.

A thoughtful eulogy for an American champion, or, Barbaro: we hardly knew ye

Look: he's just a horse. Sure, he was a horse that strangely proportioned little men rode in circles, whipping maniacally while I tore up a six dollar Preakness ticket, but in the end: just a horse. With less developed leg muscles, he would have been in a can of Alpo or a bottle of Elmers. Let's not go crazy.

But, wait: we already have. I've seen pictures of people weeping for this animal, crying like they were sitting through a Schindler's List/ Life Is Beatiful double feature. The always drab Associated Press claimed the "ordeal" Barbaro went through (a broken leg) "made him even more of a hero than he was as an undefeated Derby winner." And look, I don't want to sound callous, but, seriously: he was a horse. And he wasn't even a fancy, talking horse. He wasn't Black Beauty or Flicka or that pony from that Dakota Fanning movie we gagged through one morning last tour. Also: not a unicorn (for the record, I'd cry for a dead unicorn).

Don't we think the word "hero" should be reserved for, well, people that deserve it? Note, that was "people" not mammals. (Also, no offense meant to the thoroughly heroic lizards and mollusks of the world). Heroes are great men and women who defied the status quo, who championed useful change, who made universe altering discoveries, who played Doc Holiday in Tombstone, not a horse with a funny name.

Americans are fairly gifted at blowing things out of proportion, you know. The French disagree with a war and suddenly, I'm eating Freedom Onion Soup. Some vaguely talented twenty-something who spent her high school afternoons singing Fiddler on the Roof to the mirror is suddenly selling nine millions albums a week because of text messaging, a snarky British guy, and the woman who sang "Cold Hearted Snake."

We need to relax. We need to keep repeating our mantra: he's just a horse. And likewise: it's just some soup; it's only Kelly Clarkson. Let's save the emotional outbursts, the fanatical ire, and the wholesale adoration for things and folks that actually deserve it. Like your friends and family. Or the guy who plays Ernest. You know, the important stuff.

Excuses, excuses. Also, drug users and day time drunks. It's like a Tom Waits song.

Look. Just blame Captain Bluebear. I wanted to keep the blog updated while we toured and relaxed and generally spent a good week in Southern California, where it's short sleeve weather in the middle of January after a spate of frigidity that left all the citrus frosted over, which is of course depressing, unless you enjoy $30 orange juice, which of course you don't.

Like I said: blame Captain Bluebear. I certainly would have had more time if it wasn't for him, although he made my back-seating far more interesting, despite that innevitable section of any sci-fi or fantasy book where the author devolves into seventy pages of plotless description regarding characters and races and beings and buildings that might never even appear in the story, thus boring you to distraction and wholescale skimming. That said, if you want to shirk obligations, friends, family, and the outside world, I recommend this book. Also: purty pictures. And trolls. All manner of huggable dorkdom, really.

So I owe some stories. After all, it's been nearly a week and I'm back at a desk now, so there's no strangely hued mammal to distract me. Onwards.

- I'm not sure which is more off-putting: that we played at on-campus bar at a publicly funded university at noon or that there were people there already on their fourth beer. Wait. The noontime drunks were more off-putting. That's right. Still: that was a fun show. Not everyone there was destined to be unemployed and twice-divorced at twenty-eight, drinking Steel Reserve in a public bathroom.

- You ever been somewhere that seems immediately sketchy? How about playing a place bisected into two groups: one containing concert-going high schoolers, the other containing a Narcotics Anonymous group. Nearby pawn shops were alerted. I stared suspiciously at mustachioed meth heads. Someone tried to sell David a religiously-flavored necklace.

- The aforementioned venue (The Dome in Bakersfield) was also a gym. And not one of your sissy, wheat-grass, stationary bike gyms. No, sir. It was a boxing gym. I mention this only because I tried to use the speed bag and found it it's the most difficult thing in the world to master. That and improvising an aria in Chinese. It's a toss-up.

- The Prospector in Long Beach is fantastic. I thought you should know. The all-night free-drink bribery may be affecting my recollection, but it was my favorite new venue this tour.

Anyway, here's the point. I'm finished with Bluebear and we're still technically sort of kind of half on tour so I'll be back tomorrow. For the time being, I have to do that first day back at work thing where I pretend I'm following up on old assignments but really just answering stale emails and reading Jon Carroll from the week before. Don't tell anyone.

In which Birdmonster plays San Jose and San Diego, battles nagging illnesses, and relives past shames

There are oh so many little things that remind me we're on tour. Unfortunately, most of these involve some sort of physical or mental trauma: sore back from shows and beds deemed too ergonomically diabolical for state prisons, grumbling stomach courtesy of Jack In the Box and Margie's Diner (whose goal, apparently, is saturating bacon with enough grease to power Woody Harrelson's bus), and the all important overall lack of familiarity with reality. Maybe its Tuesday. Or Friday. Or Arbor Day. Maybe Rhode Island exploded. You can't be sure. And being sure would really take all the fun out of everything.

Of course, we've only played two shows. Above and beyond that, the last two days have been spent relaxing at parents' houses, drinking with old friends, playing ping-pong, and eating home cooked meals. In other words: I need to not be sore. Or confused. It's Tuesday, I've got a healthy bagel in my left hand, Rhode Island: still around.

As I've mentioned before, David & I grew up in San Diego (the not-so-close-to-the-beach part of San Diego, granted, but still: nice weather, bikinis, subpar baseball team) so trips back home tend to be a personal highlight of every tour. This tour, my folks were kind enough to not only cook us dinner, provide housing, and take Zach to the doctor (he's battling the stubbornest fever I've ever hoped I wouldn't get), but also to bring out a snapshot, circa 1992 or so, of Dave & I in horribly embarassing Halloween ensembles (I in some sort of Russian peasant dress, John Lennon glasses, a beret, with a cigar (probably still in the plastic) jutting out the corner of my mouth; Dave looking like an extremely fey Indiana Jones, wearing, for reasons unbeknownst to us all, a blouse with a knot tied in the bottom so as to show off some midrift and give me disturbing, disturbing nightmares).

(Oh, and before anyone asks, no. The picture has been burned. The ashes of the picture have been burned. I then ate the ashes and burned my bowel movement. Then I burned the entire bathroom, just to be safe).

And yes: Zach. Poor Zach. He has the closest thing to consumption I've ever witnessed but has soldiered through two shows presumably rife with feverish hallucinations. I had to remind him after our San Jose show that I wasn't a cat named Rufus, even though I sort of wished I was.

I don't think either audience caught on though. We've had two fine shows thus far, the first of which was in San Jose and was mentally relieving because we played well, unlike our first trip there, a show that involved misplaced guitars, more fevers, and a triumverate of broken instruments by show's end. Always nice to wash that out of your mouth. San Diego was of course wonderful, with some folks I haven't seen since I was eighteen coming out of the woodwork, telling me about their lives, and making me feel sort of immature. Example:

"I'm doing my post-doctorate work at UC & getting married in the fall. We'll be honeymooning on Mauritius. Yourself?"

(spilling free beer on pants) "I live out of a bag in a van." (spills more beer on pants, passes out drooling)

Tonight, we venture to the land where traffic was born, where the Lakers moved, and where various unwatchable awards shows take place for us all to ignore. We're playing at the Echo, so do drop on by if that's your neck of the woods. If not, well, I don't know: it's Tuesday. Go blow up Rhode Island or something.

A few non-related items of interest. We hope.

- Look.You should really get your eyes checked. I did yesterday and trust me: the world is a gorgeous place. I'm in a constant state of bewildered joy. I'm making discoveries at a rapid pace. My neighbor is far less wobbly than she was on Tuesday. Also: she's black. Surprises are everywhere.

- When loaning someone your van, it's advisable that you remember you did so. Otherwise, well, otherwise you leave your house on the way to work, notice the van is gone, proceed to shriek like a gymnophobe at a porn convention, spend your next hour frantically trying to locate said automobile, only to have it returned, full of gas, by the very same person you loaned it to. Just a tip. Not like it happened to me this morning or anything.

- Attention Braniacs: As a public service, I would like to announce that you can take the Jeopardy test, online, from January 23rd to the 25th. I have dillusions of going on Jeopardy one day, rubbing Trebeck's head like a good-luck Buddha, then finishing in the red. I will of course be taking the test and failing it with flying colors. Remember, when in doubt, the answer is "Charlamagne."

- A reminder: we're touring starting tomorrow. All manner of California towns will be descended upon. That includes you, Burbank. Dates are available in many, internet flavored locales such as our website, on our myspace, and down there on the right. I've also burned them into my arm like some kind of forgetful frat boy. If you see me in short sleeves, well, that works too.

- I woke up this morning with a Gilbert & Sullivan song in my head for the second time in as many weeks. Needless to say: a disturbing development. In related news, I'm happy I don't remember my dreams from last night. In related news, I am the very model of a modern major general, I've information vegetable animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England and I quote the fights historical, from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical.

Eyeballs and magic and all sorts of nonsense

Essentially, I'm blind. Without glasses or contacts, my ability to navigate a city street borders on those of a Mr. Magoo or a Stevie Wonder or a Ray Charles, who as you probably heard, is dead. At any rate: lots of stumbling. Lots of forehead bruises. And no, I can't tell you what the third line says. Just a bunch of vaguely angular blobs. I think the first one on the left is an "F" though.

My grandparents always swear that my terrible vision must have come from hours of watching He-Man and Thundercats close enough to touch the screen and, in fact, blame most problems in society on TV, although, of course, they watch "Touched By An Angel" and once, just once, I caught them watching "Maury." But that's neither here nor there.

So today I'm getting my peepers peeped. It's part of the all-important pre-tour ritual wherein you must arrange all your mallards in a neat line, so I'll be taking a short break from work today to have someone I don't know shoot air into my eyeball and say "better like this....or this?" six hundred times in an hour. I'm excited already.

Then there's the aftermath: should I get new glasses? I've always wanted those Malcolm X ones with the rims on top, but they don't sell those most places, so you have to get them at a thrift store, but that means they were probably in someone's pocket when they died and that's just off-putting. Maybe I should get colored contacts: then I could put one gray-blue one in and look like one of those Siberian Huskies. Or Marilyn Manson. Either way: fairly off-putting.

But, let's be honest. I'm cheap. I'm boring. I will not be getting new glasses or contact lenses like the guy in Last Action Hero. Which is probably a smart move. Impulse purchase money should be saved for theremins, fabrege eggs, and magic beans. In fact, suddenly, I want a theremin. I don't think you can get much closer to magic that an instrument you don't touch. Oh, and only a hundred dollars plus tax and I can make my own. Where's my wallet?

Good. I was getting pretty sick of work, to tell you the truth

We've been home since early November, unless you count a quick trip to Los Angeles or that long Christmas weekend or that whole Turkey Day thing or that weekend at Nigel's in Lower Upper Middle Hillstonburgshire, which is to say: we haven't really been home all that long. But I miss the van. I miss the mid-afternoon pause at In-N-Out. I miss that feeling at a hotel when you pull back the comforter and you aren't quite sure if there's a gecko under the covers. I miss being completely destitute.

Well then, I'm in luck. Starting Friday, we're off on a California-only tour which takes us from San Jose to San Diego, Los Angeles, Fullerton, Long Beach, Bakersfield, Santa Rosa, Oakland, Sacramento, and, of course, home in San Francisco at the very end. Looking here at my handy-dandy schedule, I notice we've got a ton of days off, conveniently in places where we grew up, have friends, or know a really posh abandoned cottage where the owners paid up for a decades worth of premium cable before dying in the bathtub. Which is nice, of course, because those places are all free and at only one do you have to avoid the bathroom.

In other words, we'll be touring leisurely enough to not even need an oil change or grow one of those beards you think you're enjoying until you see pictures of it three months later and you suddenly realize you looked like some kind of lumberjack sociopath and you're wondering why nobody shaved you while you'd passed out drunk one night like the good Samaritan you hoped they were. I've posted the dates down and to the right for posterity's sake, down under all the links you've hopefully perused time and time again. Hope to see you there. I'll be wearing my state flag t-shirt, some jams, and screaming "Eureka" every thirty seconds. We can bond.

Let's not overreact here.

Here's something you might not know about California: it gets cold. Really. I swear. Sure, we all wish it was topless Hasselhoff weather three hundred and sixty five days a year because, well: hairy chests a-glistening. But that's just a pipe dream. The deserts routinely dip into the 40s at night and we've got skier on them thar hills.

And here's something you might not know about Californians: we cannot handle the cold. In fact, we can't handle anything beyond a light breeze. When it starts drizzling, we immediately slam on the brakes, throw our hands in the air, and shriek at whatever New Age God we're currently worshipping. When the wind starts blowing, we complain about it's mussing the new hair-do of the tiny dog we all keep in our purses. We don't even own pants.

So you'll agree that the news of possible snowfall in San Francisco is a reason for all out pandemonium. We've got lows today of 26 and lows this weekend are threatening to hover around ice cube temperatures (highs will be more around Ice-T temperatures.*) In fact, it snowed last March while we were in Texas, fainting from heat-stroke and too much pulled pork (if there is such a thing as too much pulled pork, that is). So, in all honesty, I'm hoping for snow. Praying for it, even. I want to make snow angels and snow men and snow avatars and all matter of snow beings. I want to wear mittens with fire trucks on them. I want throw a snowball at someone who won't find it cute or funny. I want to go sledding. I want a toboggan. I want to write my name in freshly fallen snow with my pee. I want to have a sword fight with some icicles and accidentally gouge someone's eye out. I want...

Wait. What's that? We're expecting what? An Inch? An Inch at the absolute most? Well...drat. If you need me, I'll be making dirt angels in that vacant lot over there.

* I hereby apologize to all our readers for that joke. The thespian Ice-T is also unamused. Which is okay. I saw "Leprechaun in the Hood" and "Tank Girl" and I too was unamused. Just repaying the favor, Mr. T.

Wherein a contest winner is announced and I share my love of Billy Mays

Although I can usually sleep through earthquakes, car crashes, and Metallica at volumes meant to drive Noriega insane, I've been sleeping in fits and starts for the past week. So last night I decided I should take some Tylenol PM. You know, just so I wouldn't wake up at 4 a.m., wander to the couch in my robe, and find myself strangely entranced by the bewildering Billy Mays.


(As an aside, if I'm ever really wealthy, I will be hiring Billy Mays to follow me around all day and having him translate everything I say. We'll be at the Dim Sum place and I'll whisper in his ear and he'll nod politely and then: "WE NEED A PORK BUN AND WE WILL NOT SETTLE FOR ANYTHING LESS!!!! KABOOM!!!! DON'T MAKE ME COME OVER THIS COUNTER AND GET IT MYSELF!!!! SHAZAAM!!!!" See, some people squander their riches: not me).

And it worked. I slumbered like baby. But of course, it's a well documented fact that babies wake up about 300 times a night, so, really, for the past week I was sleeping like a baby. No: slept like a baby high on OxyClean.

I'm still groggy though. I've got that muslin sheen over everything. Almost feel drunk. But there are announcements to make, so let us make them.

We had a little contest before our New Year's show, asking folks to send in their presale ticket receipts so we could draw one and then end up playing at that person's house. It seemed like a nice "thanks" for people spending their New Year's with us, which I was kind of humbled by and very appreciative of. (My 11th grade English teacher just read that sentence and cried). Anyway: we concocted a robust and expensive randomizing tool (names on paper in a hat) and selected a name.* The winner is Ms. Zara Evans. We will be contacting her, presenting a bouquet of incredibly cheap flowers (maybe just wadded up newspaper, honestly), and one of those sashes that Miss USA gets. To everyone else who sent in receipts, well, thanks. We're always appreciative that people take an interest, come out to see shows, and would actually want us in their homes. We're barely house-broken, to be frank.

* Actually, we did it on the computer with a randomizing program. But that's not funny, so I lied.

So far, so good indeed. Or, more rambling.

This time last year, Birdmonster was almost-but-not-quite in Los Angeles, almost-but-not-quite recording our almost-but-not-quite debut record (we had an EP, after all) and I had almost-but-not-quite quit the job I somehow still have. In fact: sitting here right now. Which is odd, honestly. I could of look at a year where so much happened yet so much remained the same with a half-empty glass of self-pity or a half-full glass of not-being-homeless. Take your pick.

Yes, it was a good year. Our first national tour allowed us to see the gaudy and horrible wonder that is Wall-Drug, the oft-maligned eyesore that is Cleveland, a collection of surprisingly impressive presidential noggins in South Dakota, cruel and unsual sausages in Utah, and lots of hipsters in ironic t-shirts. We got to see both coasts and swim in the Gulf of Mexico (pee-warm, by the way) and play countless, sometimes to hundreds of people, sometimes to a janitor who booed us profusely.

Yes: I'm feeling nostalgic. I feel like reminiscing. I feel like I'm sitting in a rocking-chair, chewing Skoal, rambling at my grandkids. Hopefully I have a banjo. No. I definately have a banjo.

It's kind of pleasant to be at work, honestly. Not because I enjoy my job. I don't. This place is vaguely cancerous: you can only deal with it for so long. But because I realize that life is still work, friends, family, and music. That's soothing when you're getting Christmas cards that show your erstwhile high school buddies with dogs and kids and then there's you, not responsible enough to keep coffee stains off your white sweatshirt.

And then I get to thinking that this year will be pretty similar. I mean, we've got a tour coming up in a couple weeks, we're recording again at the end of the year, I'm still selling Barbara Streisand tickets to old Jewish women and young gay men. And that's a good thing. Except for Streisand, but she's "retired" again, so: hooray 2007. We've written a new song and found a batman fish too. So far, so good.

Fish! Superheroes! Superherofish!

There are some kinds of news stories that appear with almost clockwork regularity. "Scores dead in Iraq," sadly, is a daily occurrence. "Famous female exposes self" happens every month or so, usually coupled with tasteful reportage and grainy paparazzi photos with superimposed "oopsies" stars over nipples. "(Insert celebrity here) mates with (insert celebrity here)" is a perennial favorite, followed by the inevitable "Check out these famous humanoid offspring!" photos in US Weekly. You can count on news about how rich people store their money, one of myriad slightly pudgy tyrants spewing invective, and some story claiming I'm fat or you're fat or our children are fat and, by the end, you just throw away that hamburger you're eating and cry for an hour.

I hate all those stories. I know Iraq is bad looking worse. I know celebrities have genitals. I know I shouldn't be eating this croissant. The only story we get constantly that I truly enjoy is "Scientists discover new species of (whathaveyou)." I love those. I like reading about how whatever they've found is barely different than this other kind of cactus or how the jaw bone of the dinosaur they've uncovered is slightly more angular than that of an Apatosaurus, so some scientist, hitherto shrouded in obscurity, gets to trumpet some new find and, best of all, gets to name it for posterity. Take that, Britney Spears's crotch.

Which brings us to Batfish. Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nah-nah-nah-nah, Batfish!





Pablo Lehmann, I salute you. I salute that you discovered a new catfish and, noticing that there's a black smudge on its tail that looks vaguely like the Bat logo, named your discovery "Otocinclus batmani." Anytime you try and Latinize a superhero name, you're alright by me. Next up: Equus Caballus Mister Fantasticus. At least you'd hope so.

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You think there's a website where they compile these new species? I hope there is. I'd go there. Daily. Hourly. I mean, when faced with the horrible sadness of war stories and the risible sadness of celebrities, I'll take a brand new plant any day of the week. Let's go find one.

In which we shake our collective fist at Monday, January 8th

If you're like me, this is the first Monday you've worked in weeks. There was that whole day-after Christmas Monday, which is a de facto holiday (and Boxing Day, in places that aren't America) and there was New Year's Day last Monday, which, in addition to being one of the better U2 songs is also the only holiday on record dedicated to a national hangover recovery. I always thought that was thoughtful.

Now consider the fact that Martin Luther King day is celebrated next Monday and, hopefully, you'll be getting that off. (By the way, if you're not getting to spend MLK day in bed, bring your CEO the Dukes of Hazard Criterion Collection. You will get a raise.) So that makes this the only lonely working Monday in the span of four weeks. I, for one, am too lazy to stand for this. I should be on my couch watching Tombstone again, goddammit. I'm your Huckleberry. All that.

But you've got to work sometimes. And going to work requires early rising. And getting up early allowed me to learn that Van Halen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame today. So, in other words, going to work just made me very, very sad. Talk about "the day the music died."

However, I did learn why the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland, a place hitherto famous for bad Chinese food and bigoted gas station attendants. Apparently, Alan Freed, a DJ at WJW Radio in Cleveland not only popularized the term "Rock and Roll" but also helped stage what is considered the first rock show of all time, headlined by the imminently forgettable Paul Williams (and the Hucklebucklers) and Tiny Grimes, who sounds like one of the spam names we compiled yesterday. Anyway, the fire department shut down the show, one song into Paul Williams's set, fearing the over-capacity crowd would start an early '50s riot, which, as I understand it, involves men in hats smoking pipes furiously.

To sum up: it seems Cleveland was actually a really fine choice for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Especially since rock and roll was once thought synonymous with the downfall of modern society in the same way Cleveland is now. Everything's coming full circle. It's enough to give you goosebumps.

Oh, and because it must be said: Thanks to everyone who stopped in and contributed a few wonderful monikers to our list o' spam names yesterday. I think something special was accomplished here. Womanhood P. Marzipan agrees. I'd like to throw a special "Holy Shit" to Matt, whose list was something like 200 names long and included, among others, Reassessments F. Squeler and Hitch J. Polysyllable.

A mighty fine reason to read your spam

A year or so ago, basketball player Latrell Sprewell, hitherto famous for playing solid defense, having dreadlock pigtails, and strangling his coach with his bare hands, was offered 7 million dollars a year to play the game he'd been playing all his life. He refused, infamously, by quipping "I gotta feed my family."*

But of course, as vocations go, tossing a ball in a hoop for millions of dollars annually is about as good as it gets. You could always be a metermaid or the guy who cleans up suicides or a session drummer for Nickelback. You could always be the guy who sends me spam at 2 a.m. every morning.

In fact, it was that guy that got me thinking about Latrell Sprewell. I'm not talking about the "I living Nigerian prince, would you help distribute my funds" emails or the "Enliven your Pensi" messages. I'm talking about the stock tips I get daily, free of charge, from my own personal back alley Charles Scwab. And you might hate this man. In fact, you probably do. Who'd blame you, really. But me? I love him. I love the nearly poetic intext gibberish ("And if de bees wake, it doan matter for her her"), the wonderful email titles ("intrinsically regimental" or "lumpy connote"), and, especially, the names. They read like a list of distinguished hobos:

- Faulkner T. Rasmus
- Ty Coon
- Lestat Crownover
- Crabtree S. Stella
- Milligan Peg
- Lavonne Negronne
- Barrera Fanny
- Eduardo Watches
- Gonzales B.B. Bertram
- Septimus T. Stevenson

Expectant parents: throw away those two dollar baby-naming periodicals. Faulkner T. Rasmus YourLastNameHere is better than anything inside. Not unlike that Men's Wearhouse guy: I guarantee it.

Of course, how does a Rutherford Viola or a Dominquez Q. Tessa make any money with this stock email thing? Well, let's learn. Firstly, the text is filled with that seemingly random poetry in order to get it past your email filter: your filter is looking for words like "Viagra" and "Diet" while Barrera Fanny is sending you words like "puppy" and "sassafras." Confused, your email server lets the letter through. And, in some image which the filters cannot decode, they ask you to buy some stock you've never heard of. For example: CDC Holding Company, which bares no relation to Janis Joplin. Now, our gentle Lavonne Negronne has purchased, say, a million shares of CDC Holding and, if there are a few people out there smart enough to act and ACT NOW and buy their shares while the getting's good, Lavonne will sell his quickly, making maybe a penny a share, but, since he's got a million shares...well...you see how that works. Septimus T. Stevenson has to feed his family.

Now, I have a request. Since it's Friday and you're probably not working anyhow, go check your email, maybe your spam folder, and leave some particularly good names in the comment box below. Or ignore me completely. That's fine too. But we can have the definitive list of Faulkner T. Rasmuses and I think that means something. Not something important, per se, but something funny, which, for my money, is far superior anyhow.

* His children require lobster milkshakes to survive.

Cheap euphoria achieved while still in pajamas

A while back, I lost my passport. I can't remember exactly when this was, but it was during some large and epic room restructuring and I put it somewhere thinking "it's safe here" and then, of course, completely forgot what that something was and where that something went. I do this quite frequently. In other words, do not let me watch your children.

Then, late last night, I realized I actually needed my passport today. Some sort of work restructuring thing where they needed two forms of identification. Boring stuff. So I spent a good half hour last night picking up boxes, opening drawers, patting down jackets, and cursing under my breath. I began concocting excuses for our Human Resources lady ("I had my passport, honestly, but I was mugged on the way here. By a naked woman. On a horse.") and went to bed dejected.

Flash forward to this morning. Woke up after a dream about zombies (lots of zombies), sat up, and, strangely possessed, I went to the closet, pulled out a box I'd already looked in, pulled out a manila folder I'd somehow ignored, and found my passport in about thirty seconds.

Now, there are plenty of simple pleasures in life: eating your roommate's ice cream, learning curse words in different languages, knowing final Jeopardy when the contestants don't and then gloating at the TV during the credits. But there's really nothing better than finally finding something that's been lost for months. Sheer joy, I tell you. Plus, now I get to say I never lost my passport, I simply misplaced it. For half a year or so.

I know I should be taking something substantial away from this, some maxim to remember in times of strife. Something like "never give up" or "it's always in the last place you look" or "that's the way the cookie bounces" but I'm not. I'm just feeling way too proud of myself for finding something that should have never been lost in the first place. But hey: what joy would I have gotten if I knew where the thing was last night? None at all. I think I'll go home and hide my keys and my wallet, get too drunk to remember where, and have a thoroughly fulfilling Friday.

Good luck & Godspeed.

It's that time of year when we all evaluate ourselves, realize we smoke too much, have too gigantic an ass, or owe Visa our first born, and so make big plans to erradicate bad behavior or instate good behavior or just stop eating entire fetal pigs while watching Jeopardy (which, amazingly, is a rather widespread phenomenon). We hope that by February, the chain-smoking fatty we once were is now a marathon running, smoothie-drinking, vaguely annoying pseudo-yuppie. You know, the one with really weird looking calves who wears cream colored turtlenecks and checks his stocks on the bus. And then, if you're like me, you realize: wait a minute; that guy is horrible. I hate that neo-Puritan, organic-soy, mixed-greens, my body is a temple of the holy ghost jackass who works on the second floor and has teeth that are radioactively white and who, instead of eating Dim Sum at lunch, goes for a run in sheer, testicle strangling running underpants.

But it's important to remember: there is middle ground. You can get healthier and not be too healthy. And yes, there is such a thing. Wheat grass, after all, is brandy's bitch. So whatever it is you've resolved to stop doing or start doing, I wish you the best of luck, remind you to not go overboard, and, well, if you see that guy from the second floor, poke him with something sharp for me.

Birdmonster too is making resolutions. We've resolved to record an album late in the year. We've resolved to not run another van into oblivion. We've resolved to go off to a cabin and write some songs. We've resolved to go on a California tour this month (starting, say January 19th) and then a long national one sometime mid-March. We've resolved to let you know who won that contest tomorrow (or today, maybe). We've resolved to write an opus about Lavar Burton's sexual exploits. It's going to be a big year.

Of course, it's also a good idea to take a step back and realize that today is probably really similar to December 21st, for example. I'm at work, I'm not working. I'm making plans. I'm rambling. The point? As always: who knows. I just wish you luck with whatever cockamamie, 2007 plans you've concocted. As always, this is the year. Or, rather: this is the year. Or, most fittingly: this is the year. Or...you get the idea. Godspeed.

Wherein we attempt to divine what 2007 will bring, revel in the revelry that ended 2006, and try to remember where my phone is

I never like going into a new year unprepared; it's important to do your research. The less creative minds out there might wonder how you can research a year that has yet to happen, that's only 34 hours old, that is unfolding right before their very eyes. I have a simple answer for those people. It's called Hollywood.

See, pretty much every year has a cockamamie sci-fi action-adventure that is purported to occur then. Time Cop, for example, that time-travelling epic which showcases Jean Claude Van Damme's Lawrence Olivier-like thespian knowhow, was set in 2004. That year, I was constantly on the look-out for Belgian has-beens. I saw none. Last year was the year when, according to Michael Drosnin's book "The Bible Code," the apocalypse was supposed to happen, but, really, the closest we got was the Kevin Federline album. So, now that I think about it, what I'm going to suggest maybe isn't the best strategy, what with the lack of ray-guns and world ceasing to exist and all. But "Paycheck" was made for a reason and that reason certainly wasn't to make money. Let's examine, shall we?

First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I never saw this movie. I'm actually medically required to never watch any movie with Ben Affleck in it as my doctor fears I'd go epileptic or lose control of my bowels. However, "Paycheck" was made in 2003, which, much like Einstein's 1905, was Ben Affleck's "miracle year" and is therefore worthy of mention. In addition to "Paycheck," the esteemed Mr. Affleck starred in three feature films that year; the remaining pair being "Daredevil," a movie based on perhaps the worst comic book ever conceived (what's cooler than a blind, kick-ass lawyer?) and "Gigli," a callous money grab starring then-beau Jennifer Lopez which in fact made no money but a large portion of "Worst Movies Ever" lists since.

Strangely enough, "Paycheck" itself is about seeing into the future. More specifically, it's about the wisdom of refraining from looking into the future. So what we've got is a movie I'll never see telling me to not do exactly what I'm trying to do by invoking the movie itself. I think that's a Catch-22. It might just be annoying. Either way, I should probably quit while I'm not too behind.

What I can say is "Happy 2007." We had ourselves a truly wonderful time on Sunday night, playing Bottom of the Hill with Boyskout (safe travels and good luck in New York) and the Blacks (who were all white but who sold underroos that said "I Heart the Blacks" which lead to a hilarious encounter between a well-dressed black guy and a girl wearing them outside her pants). Anyway, it was our first show in quite some time and we managed to play two new songs and two covers without incident. The new songs, as usual, have no names, while the covers, of course, did. We played "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" by Billy Joel (a.k.a. the lesser, American-ized Elton John) and "500 Miles" by the Proclaimers, a song that everyone loves whether they know it or not. Da-da-la-da-da. It was certainly one of my favorite Birdmonster shows ever and, hey, I've seen them all. Strange, but true.

Next? Who knows. I'm giving up planning. No more looking into the future. God knows it could result in some sort of plague or apocalypse or another triumverate of execrable Affleck-helmed vehicles. Nope. Today, I'm just going to be happy that it's today, the beginning of a four-day work week, during which, thus far, I've done absolutely no work. Cheers, aught seven. Cheers.

A plea for new celebrities

One thing about America is this: if you're famous, you're never out of work. An actor who was as best a has-been and at worst a never-was, Joey Lawrence, for example, whose entire emotional range is varying eyebrow maneuvers whilst "whoa"ing, can now, in late 2006, not only get onto a reality show where he learns to dance, but can also go on a multi-city tour, selling out arenas with other paragons of thespian virtue (Mario Lopez), and foxtrot his way to the further outskirts of "that guy" fame and glory.

Of course, if you aren't attractive or spry enough to land yourself on a didactic reality show, you can always host a second-tier game show. Since you're a bottom-rung also-ran, the producers will feel it necessary to make the contestants a parade of spastically energetic mongoloids who would rather going into fits of epileptic yelping than actually try to figure out the game.

Of course, if you aren't bald enough or poor enough to be given Emcee duties on "Deal or No Deal" or "Identity," you can always be the sibling of another famous person. Or you can marry another famous person, impregnate them with your magical famous mansperm (as opposed to the highly underrated womensperm, of course), and sell the pictures to US Weekly. Or you can have a reality show about your family that exposes your hitherto imagined lunacy. Or you can box other once-famous sit-com bit players.

Or you can do something. Maybe the problem with pop culture right now is that we reward ex-stars for being has-beens. Maybe we don't have enough room for the future Dustin Diamonds of the world, the future that-guy-who-was-Urkels. We're saturating the airwaves with people whose fifteen minutes are now well into the hour-and-a-half range. It's getting out of hand. After all, who will be our children's Danny Bonaduce?

You see: we need new stars today so that they can be has-been stars tomorrow. I don't know exactly how to make this happen though. I know it involves shutting VH1 down between the hours of...well, really all day, I think. They can still play videos though, which they actually do, unlike MTV who pioneered the wildly experimental recycling of reality TV stars, so that you get to see the same emotionally imbalanced frat boy every third season of Road Rules. We also need a moratorium on hiring of anyone you recognize from a show you watched while in short pants whose name you can't remember. They're out. They now need real jobs. I hear they're hiring at Quizno's.

But I'm not a heartless man. No. We can grandfather in all our current celebritisn'ts. They get a free pass for two seasons. This will give them time to make future plans before they too will be toasting my lunches and asking me what size cola I want.

Oh, and this weekend, we're playing Bottom of the Hill on New Year's Eve. You know this. I know this. But reminders are fun, right? Everyone loves a nag. Hope to see you there. Unless you live in some other country, in which case, you can be late.

Be back in aught seven.

Home is where the heart is. And the brain. And the bed. I miss the bed. In fact, should still be in the bed. No matter. Onwards.

Merry, merry belated whateveritisyoucelebrate. I'm back at the office after a long four day weekend of cat-petting, gift-giving, fine cuisine, horrific airport experiences, couch-bed slumbering, and my first (and let's hope only) smooth-jazz Christmas concert, which was spectacularly incomprehensible and filled with oh so much yogurty-smooth flugelhorn. And I'm exhausted. My flight last night was delayed because that guy in orange with the plane-parking light sabers apparently blew it and two planes had themselves a little fender-bender, so everything was pushed back (two hours in my case), and, by the time I got home, well, let's just say I should've drove. But then, if I'd driven, I couldn't have spilled a Miller Lite on my shoes. So I'd've missed out on that.

Still: I had a wonderful weekend. It was great to see the folks, my sister, and spend Christmas in San Diego, sweating in short sleeves. Sure, the only thing keeping me from being a proper zombie is the fact that I don't want to eat the brains of my co-workers, but it's MonWednesday, I've got a three-day work-week followed by a damn fine New Year's Eve show, and I'm wearing new shoes. No complaining allowed.

Oh yeah. And James Brown's dead. That's a bummer. He was one funky criminal, I'll tell you. I'll confess to thinking almost all his songs sound the same but, hey, they all sounded pretty good. So's Gerald Ford, who the news keeps asking me to remember, but who was president before I was born, essentially on accident (his presidency, not my birth...I hope), so I really can't oblige. Plus, I can't recall him doing much during my lifetime, honestly. But let it be known: 2007 will be less funky. And less that-guy-who-wasn't-Spiro-Agnew-y. And that's all I have to say about that.

Hmm. I feel like I had an amusing story to tell but forgot all about it. This is possible. I blame the non-sleep and the brain-pain. Maybe it'll dawn on me later. For now, let me say welcome back to those of you who spent the weekend away, "sorry" to those of you who didn't, and "rest up" to those of you I'll be seeing on Sunday. It's going to be a fun, champagne-y sort of evening. Until tomorrow.

There's nothing to worry about. Step away from the Asian-fusion cuisine.

Earthquakes are like avocados. Well, not really. But bear with me for a second. The thing about earthquakes and avocados is that most non-Californians I meet fear them both without much of a reason. Our singer, Peter, is Connecticut Yankee (yes, sometimes he wears a hat which has three corners (three corners has his hat)) and insists that the kitchen remove all traces of avocado from sandwiches which, really, should be covered in the stuff. Now, Arizonans & Texans seem alright with avocado too (it's a proximity-to-Mexico thing) but beyond that, I can't think of another population that enjoys avocado pretty much across the board. Vegans, maybe, but they don't eat cheese which I feel should disqualify them from all culinary arguments. Sorry guys. Here's a box of Kashi to suck on for a few minutes till we're done.

Non-Californians also fear the earthquake. And, to be honest, so do most Californians. San Francisco itself was demolished by one in 1906, though the fires afterwards did most of the damage, but, then again, the fire department would have had way more success had the quake not broken all the water lines. Plus, most of the houses here have already survived one decent quake (in '89 during the Giants-A's World Series no less) and they're all a little slanted because of it. You could go sledding in some of the kitchens I've visited which doesn't necessarily fill you with a feeling of comfort and safety. So you make a safety kit, fill it with water, canned food, a couple books for when your legs are crushed under a collapsed roof but you're incredibly bored anyway, and you just hope that there aren't any major tectonic shifts. If there are? Well, I try not to think about that.

But then again, some earthquakes are just...weiners. Like last night's for example. We were practicing at our studio and we played right through it. I didn't even know one occurred until I got home and my roomies asked "did you feel it?" which, essentially, is universal code for "we had a really wimpy earthquake" but allowed me to say something like "no, we were rocking too hard to care about the earth moving" and then throw up the pinky-and-index-finger-all-hail-metal-thing and make a total boob out of myself.

Of course, our newscasters were breaking into horrible game shows and promising "damage reports" which consisted, I'd guess, of a few old ladies dropping their tea glasses out of moderate surprise and then continuing their Bid Whist tournament.

So what lessons did we learn last night? Well, it was a reminder to check our 72-hour survival kit (which I of course didn't do) and to eat an avocado every day. If you're going to live in the Bay Area, you might as well enjoy it. There is nothing to fear but fear itself. And your house collapsing. And poisonous guacamole. But that goes without saying.

Look. You really should have heard our other ideas...

Very rarely do I actually bring up press we get. It always seems tacky or self-congratulatory or pointless---I mean, we don't have that Sunny Day Real Estate-vibe where we refuse to play California or break-up seven times or find Jesus---so I've always abstained from posting about press. It's the band equivalent of sending one of those Christmas cards with your whole family photographed professionally on the front, in matching reindeer sweaters, and then when you open it it's filled with half-truths about how Junior is really excelling in basketball and his Sophomore year even though he has a well-documented addiction to huffing glue and hits on middle schoolers while they wait for the bus.

But I heard we showed up somewhere interesting yesterday, and I thought I'd share. Perhaps you're familiar with David Eggers. One of our erstwhile readers always suggests, when we ask, that "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is the book to take on tour and read, but, well, Michael Malone usually trumps him somewhere in Arizona. I'm making it a New Year's resolution to actually read this book, starting when our post New Year's Eve show hangover ends, which should be sometime in mid-February. Eggers also runs a tutoring facility called "826 Valencia," which, in addition to providing cheap and sometimes free help for all flavors of writing, reading, and test taking, is also a pirate store filled with oddities with products tucked in Tim-Burton looking drawers, dioramas, and a giant vat of lard sitting in the middle. Bonus points for being located next to Paxon Gate, which contains all manner of taxidermy, carnivorous plants, and mammal skeletons dressed up in Victorian-era garb. If you have a ten year old, you should probably take him there. If you don't like your ten year old boy, you might be able to leave him there. Not that I'd condone that, but, trust me: he will not be bored.

Eggers also edits something called "Best American Nonrequired Reading". They're collections of stories, comics, Onion headlines, errata, and lists. We showed up the Best Band Names of 2005.

Of course, not everyone likes the name. In fact, we've found ourselves on some Worst Band names lists. We sent the compilers of those lists anthrax-coated thank you notes. In the end, though, all this just makes me think about the name itself, which, let me tell you, was not an easy decision. It's a pastime of ours to come up with fake band names ("Memory of the Oversoul" and "System of a Ho-Down" come to mind) but when you've actually got to decide on something and realize you'll be saddled with it forever, well, things get a bit more difficult. It's like naming your child. Sure, Ebenezer Gonzopolis sounds like a great idea but can you really put that on his birth certificate? (an aside: my two all time favorite names are Rip Torn, whose name can be pondered for hours and an anchor man from Central California named John Beard, who, while not that great of a name, had the audacity to sport only a mustache. He's a personal hero).

The point is I have no point. I'm just happy we chose Birdmonster.

How to shop for Christmas

So, I finally ventured into the Christmas shopping world yesterday. Every year, I end up waiting until the most procrastinated second, so that, typically, it's me and hundreds of like-minded idiots fighting over the one shirt that isn't Marlon-Brando-sized. This has a tendency to dampen the holiday cheer, turning gift-giving into a Darwinian fiasco of conspicuous consumption, but when you haven't had a paycheck since, say, late October, you're stuck with the last minute gift-grab. I'm not going to bitch about it thought. No. Today, we're optimists. This isn't going to be a five-paragraph whine about how Christmas is too commercialized or how there's a war of Christmas or anything else that could be confused for the ten unsettling minutes of the O'Reilly Factor prior to the next 50 downright disturbing minutes of high-volumed yelling and visual proof that it's actually possible to contract Down Syndrome during an hour long broadcast. I wouldn't do that to you.

Instead, here are some important strategies for procrastinated Christmas shopping.

1- Go to Costco: So maybe you don't have a special something for your little sister. You'd check the book store or the record shop but she's deaf and illiterate. That's why you go to Costco. Nothing says thoughtful like a 30-pack of C batteries and a maroon Kirkland turtleneck.

2- Add to your friend's weird collections: If you've got a friend who collects doo-rags or dented cans or who stockpiles shotguns for the robot apocalypse, then buy them a doo-rag, take a can out of your neighbor's trash, or buy me a pump-action cyborg-mutilator. Get cracking. They're organizing their forces as we speak.

3- Buy Crap: When in doubt, find some one of a kind bric-a-brac at a garage sale or thrift store. Sure it's one of a kind because there are (at most) three people on earth who want a "Symphony of Destruction" music box, but imagine the joy on that special person's face when they open a box and find a unicorn, circling a carousel, to the soothing vocals of Dave Mustaine. Can you say "New Best Friend"?

4- Give Personalized Gift Certificates: Nothing says "thoughtful" like a gift certificate made by the giver, perhaps 20 minutes before the giving, written in ball-point pen and rife with misspellings, especially when its for something the giver does for free anyway. "This Gift Certificate entitles the recipient one (1) accompanied walk to the liquor store and the coverage of half (.5) the incurred cost of one (1) domestic six-pack," for example. You'll be everyone's best guy.

5- Get their gift first: The worst thing about getting a great gift is when you give something horrible in return. If you're getting a digital camera and you're giving some white socks you bought at Walgreens, while, have a nice divorce. So it's always good to pretend you left the rest of your gift at home or that they haven't delivered it yet. That buys you time instead of looking like a thoughtless prick. And that's what Christmas is all about. Either that or Baby Jesus. I'm going to need to look that up.

It's O.K. Homer. We all have those days. I'll see you same time, same place, next week.

Let's talk about "The Simpsons." See, I've been watching that yellow, mostly overweight family since 1989, when I was eight years old and the "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" gag from the first episode resonated with me because I'd just sang it a week before. Ah, the things that are funny when you're eight. (Also hilarious in 1989: armpit fart noises, men getting kicked in the groin, the word "poppycock." Still funny to Brendan Frasier in 2006: all those things. Except "poppycock," which he deems "too cerebral.")

I don't think anything else has had a more profound effect on what I think is funny than "The Simpsons." After all, I've been watching it for 17 years (17 years and one day, to be precise). I remember almost going palsy with glee when they started syndication. I had Simpsons video games, Simpsons books, and Simpsons shirts made by slave-wage-earning pre-teens in Indo-China. And I'm not even close to the most rabid fan I know. I have a roommate who can call an episode based on half a joke, recites memorable quotes in every other conversation, and shaved his head a-la Homer for Halloween (with his girlfriend sporting a full-on, two-foot blue-cotton-ball Marge-wig no less). And you know what? I still sit down every Sunday at 8. "The Simpsons" are just what I do every Sunday. It's like church except, well, far superior. Added bonus: not having to drink the body of Christ after some guy with herpes sores.

But every once in a while, "The Simpsons" dissapoints. Last night was one of these nights, one of those nights when the show's all over the place and they're borrowing jokes from the phenomenally-inferior "Family Guy" and it doesn't seem like the writers have their hearts in it. But, of course, I watched. I watched in the way a parent might watch his kid foul up at his piano recital by concluding a Chopin piece with that knuckles song on all the black keys. I watched, recoiled in vicarious embarrassment, but never lost faith. Because, like I said, nothing has ever had a more profound effect on my sense of humor than "The Simpsons." If it wasn't for that show, I might have ended up watching T.G.I.F., shamefully laughing at Urkel or the Olson twins before they devolped eating disorders that were barely less funny than the show they were on. I could have ended up watching "Major Dad" or "Mad About You" or "Will & Grace," which are all about as funny as watching your dog get put to sleep.

So I'm taking today to remind myself of that. They'd need roughly 15 years of crappy episodes for me to lose my faith. Or if they allow Paul Reiser to start writing. Either or. Because, hey, if it wasn't for the Simpsons and Alex Trebeck, I wouldn't even have a TV. Which, come to think of it, might not be a good thing. Perhaps I should reevaluate this whole thing...

Happy endings and Occam's Razor

I'm a sucker for a happy ending. It's not that I prefer my Brother's Grimm Disneyfied or that I can't watch the Empire Strikes Back without weeping uncontrollably, it's just, well, I like a happy ending that doesn't feel like it cheated you. (Tom Robbins, for example, always leaves me feeling fleeced, despite a cover of clever and impenetrable similes.) If our hero gets the girl, rescues his father, and vanquishes the agonizingly annoying receptionist at my office, I'm going to feel fulfilled. (Especially the part about our receptionist, who's screaming about bagels right now in a language that appears to be English but may in fact just be hysterical grunting during some kind of bagel withdrawal seizure that, as I'm sure you can tell, is really distracting. It's like having a banshee on the Atkins diet craving potato bread in your brain. Where was I?)

Now, pretty much any neat, wrapped-in-a-bow style pleasant conclusion is going to be a little ridiculous. You can't really have a perfect ending without it being, at some level, a farce. But I'm okay with that.

Then, there's those times when life itself is a really weird fable that ends up all mushy and lovable and farcical all at the same time. Preferably this involves freaks. And communists. And dolphins. Yesterday, it involved all three.

Here's what happened: A couple of captive dolphins, usually far too smart to go munching on plastic, decided, well, to eat some plastic. Since plastic is rarely found growing naturally underwater, evolution had neglected to give the dolphins Tupperware-digesting amino acids and their trainers feared for their lives. So, they tried to extract the plastic with some sort of instrument (I'm imagining something like this) but they failed. Then with a special genius and a sense of porpoise (I'm sorry), they decided to call (who else?) the World's Tallest Man, who, as it turns out, also has really long arms. So he shows up (looking sharp, I must add), reaches in, yanks out some plastic, and vamooses. Your rather perfect happy ending to a tee.

I have to say: whoever was sitting there, faced with failure and a couple of unhappy dolphins, and thought "You know what? All we need is a really, really tall guy" is seriously a genius. He's like whoever decided, back when we were knee-deep in a costly World War, that we could save energy and increase productivity with more daylight and thought "You know what? Let's just move the clocks an hour." Occam's Razor used to it's fullest. Dolphins and steel magnates everywhere rejoice in unison to unexpected results.

A dubious award given to a deserving culprit

Dave and I drove home from practice on Monday, having spent a good twenty minutes coming home, listening to radio that was the auditory equivalent of waterboarding. Or the Catherine Wheel (the torture device, not the reverb-y rock band). Or eating a kitchen sponge soaked in Ipecac. Point is: Unpleasant stuff. On the Modern Rock station? Playing some trash where a guy sings “Love, love, love, love, love” in the span of half a second and suddenly, my ears are bleeding. On the Classic Rock station? Well, it sounded like Foreigner but it wasn’t Foreigner so I couldn’t even enjoy hating something I recognized. How about NPR? The world is melting, the country is imploding, and apparently I am to blame.

Of course, we could’ve just turned it off. But then, you know, we would have had to make clever conversation and after playing music in a once-frigid then finally way-too-hot studio (like architectural menopause, essentially), my brain usually shuts down on the drive home. Monosyllabic grumbling: my forte.

Eventually we parked and walked home and, with some hateful ditty stuck in our heads, we tried discussing the most annoying song ever. The Gold Standard, if you will. (The Brown Standard, if you prefer). Contenders included Muskrat Love (too funny to be really annoying), Rockin’ Robin (this is actually the happiest, bubble-gummiest song I’ve ever heard, which makes it kind of annoying, sure, but nowhere near a contender), the entire Alvin & the Chipmunks oeuvre (disqualified on a technicality). Parenthetically, all the contenders above are about animals or sung by lunatics pretending to be animals. Perhaps this is something we all need to avoid in the future.

But we settled on a certain song by the time we reached our house. And, honestly, I hope you don’t remember who I’m talking about. But, in that exhaustively researched three minute pow-wow, Crazy Town won the highest honor, the Nobel Prize for Suicide-Inducing Annoyance, if you will, for that song “Butterfly” oh so long ago. If you must torture yourself, you can listen to a snipet on Amazon. I don’t recommend it, of course, except for scientific purposes. What do you think here? I defy you to name anything more annoying, musically. You can try and claim that Celine Dion “Titanic” song if you want, but at least she has crazy neck veins and I find that funny. So, I veto that. Preemptively.

The Inclined Plane is the Umbrella's little bitch

Sometimes, you forget simple things had to be invented. Like the fork, for example. Nobody used forks before Middle Easterners started around 1000 B.C. and Europeans didn't catch on until, believe it or not, 1600. Even then, the fork was denounced as effeminate and "an insult to God" and took another couple centuries before it was sleeping in the cutlery drawer next to the spoon and knife. Before the fork? I think people just ate onion rings. I could be wrong about that, though.

Anyway: I can lay odds that everyone reading this used a fork in the last twenty four hours. Unless someone reading this is a gaucho, which involves eating off a giant knife, which means they can do whatever the hell they want. (And they do. In fact, they wear these thingies that sort of look like diapers but I'd never think of pointing that out because, again: big knives).

Then there's the umbrella. Fairly cheap, completely useful, and you can keep it in your purse (I mean...um...backpack). Like the fork: simple genius. Sure, there are other ways of staying dry: the huddling-under-overhang move favored by dillydallyers, the news-paper-as-mortarboard move favored by the incredibly prepared, the garbage-bag-with-neck-hole favored by, among others, Coco Chanel, but the umbrella is superior to them all. It's to staying-dry what the napkin is to not-wiping-Cheetos-on-your-pants.

But, see, I've got this problem. I lose things. I mean, I left my keys onstage at the Riott festival and told everyone Sage Francis stole them. My wallet is always in a pocket or on a horizontal surface somewhere, I just never know which one unless I'm sitting on the bus and my ass is falling asleep. I haven't had a phone charger since they arrested the Unibomber. Also: I'm prone to breaking things. At least half my shoes have holes in them, all my earphones make that yelling-through-shredded-paper noise and, inexplicably, I'm on my third melodica in 18 months. Which is to say I go through an umbrella about every week. If I ride the bus, I leave it under my seat. If I go in a store, I leave in the trash can up front. If I'm walking down the street, I swing it around in circles until it separates uselessly. So then, I have to buy a new one. I'm like an umbrella junkie. The people at Walgreen's at two umbrellas away from cutting me off. They're the dealer who cares. That's their new slogan, in fact.

So what I need is a disposable umbrella. I need to invent this. An umbrella that costs, say, 50 cents, and that you can leave anywhere and you won't slap your forehead when you realize that you're getting home soggy again. Wait. Wait. That's just the newspaper-on-your-head thing, isn't it? Perhaps I've been looking at this all wrong. I'd rather not spend the 50 cents on a Chronicle if Jon Carroll is on vacation.

Maybe I can call Oswald Cobblepot. I bet he knows the score.

Crazy little thing called internets (pt. 2)

Some weekends are just too short. I spent this last one alternately on the couch, in the kitchen, at practice, and at a friend's Saturday brunch party, which means too many mimosas too early in the day, which means falling asleep halfwaf through Batman Begins, the indisputable champion of all Batman related cinema (apologies to Tim Burton; no apologies to Val Kilmer, who should never have been in any movies except Tombstone and who should've gotten 18 Oscars for Tombstone now is undoubtedly working at the Macy's on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, unshaven and smelling of gruyere).

Of course, a weekend of voluminous sloth doesn't lead to good stories. So, in the spirit of laziness, cop-outs, and our endless voyage against Taylorism, we're providing you with a series of internet-flavored distractions. Let's roll.

- As mentioned in a rambling post Friday, the glorious lady who designed our shirts has designed a shirt of no relation to Birdmonster but which can be championed at no cost to you. Original post is below this one and voting commences here. Thusly. Post haste. Forthwith. Something or other.

- I always enjoy articles that ceaselessly examine something I never really cared about. Like this one about sports mascots. And here I thought mascots were just around so I could throw batteries at them. You learn something everyday, really.

- What are you doing New Year's Eve? Nothing? Really? That's great! You should come to Bottom of the Hill and share it with us. I promise a staggeringly wonderful coversong, a few newies, and a meticulously constructed combination of merriment, revelry, and jollification. Don't say you weren't warned.

- Recently, a law was passed in the internet kingdom. All collections of links must contain at least one (1) obligatory YouTube clip, preferably of a wrestler on such quantities of steriods that, if he cried, he cheeks would grown biceps. This link fulfills my obligation to the above law.

- Oh no. And a man with short shorts shall lead them. Somewhere.

- When you start feeling sorry for yourself, it's a good idea to remember Roy Cleveland Sullivan. I'd make a joke, but Cecil Adams is funnier than I am.

So, while this post may have in fact seemed to be a half-hearted remedy for early Monday writer's block, I'd like to point out that the above links will cost you probably an hour of productivity which is better than the usual five minutes. How's that for rationalization?

It's Double-Post Friday! Which means Unemployed Monday! Also, we ask a favor

See those shirts over there? No, not there. Over to the right. Lower. Looower. There you go. Aren't they nice? Now, I'm not asking you to buy one (parenthetically: BUY ONE NOW), but I'm just providing you a link to a shirt that the designer of that shirt designed. (Apologies for previous mobius-strip-esque sentence structure that was like a mobius strip and also a sentence structured in a way that is akin to a mobius strip). Okay.

So, perhaps you're familiar with Threadless. It's a website where folks submit shirt designs, other folks vote on them, and magically, shirts get made. It's one of those great ideas I wish I thought of but didn't. The fine-woman-who-designed-our-shirt's submission is here. Perhaps you'd like to vote on it. I did and I know you're susceptible to peer pressure. All the cool kids are doing it. It's so easy. No one will ever know. Drugs are great. All that.

Warning: Way too much personification ahead. Proceed at your own risk.

In the unofficial hierarchy of the board game universe, Chess is certainly the all-knowing grandaddy of all games. Sure, chess is kind of pompous. If you met him at a party he'd probably be insanely intelligent, grandiloquent, and intimidating and you'd leave thinking "Man, that guy was intense but, you know: what a prick." Of course, nobody writes books about Hungry Hungry Hippos. Nobody plays computers at Tiddlywinks* (though, if we did, humans would dominate. Computers: no hands with which to tiddly. Tiddly: probably not a real verb). These are the facts.

Chess has his spouse Checkers and his hotter, less predictable wife Chinese Checkers who he broke up with when he saw six people playing her at once (scandalous behavior, quite frankly). Chess hates his younger brother Monopoly, probably because underneath his unctuous exterior, he's a little jealous that Monopoly is more popular, has his own currency (worth slightly more than the Italian Lira), and a mascot who looks like a non-peanut Mr. Peanut. Chess thinks Monopoly is all luck and that you might as well spend two hours of your life flipping coins with four friends. Sure it would be less fun but less people would be left crying.

So what I'm trying to figure out is where Fireball Island fits in. For those of you who don't remember, Fireball Island is a game in which four plastic explorers brave a treacherous plastic island in search of a valuable plastic jewel, all the while trying to set boobytraps for their peer archaeologists, avoiding giant-flaming-balls-of death (which, of course, don't really kill them at all; these are hearty folk), and trying to be the first little plastic man to the painted on boat at the end. Oh yeah: there's a giant, vengeful God on top of the island named Volkar. And no, I'm not making any of that up.

Maybe Fireball Island is a son from Chess's marriage with Chinese Checkers, except, not with Chess but with some other game because, let's face it, Chinese Checkers was promiscuous and she knew that Chess was filing for divorce, so she started seeing other people. Like Mouse Trap, who was a complete idiot but was phenomenal in the sack. Yes. I think that's what happened.

If you're ever lucky enough to see a Fireball Island anywhere, buy it. If there are two, buy two. It's just utterly fantastic. And yes, I obviously played it last night and I lost and I'm still kind of angry about it. Which is childish and obsessive and borderline pathetic but I'm okay with that.

Also, that may have been the most pointless thing I've ever written. I'm also okay with that. Have a fine weekend, one and all.

* In the interest of wrapping up lose ends from last week, Team Human lost it's final chess match about Team Robot Overlord, making the score four ties and two failures for carbon-based life forms everywhere. I say we punish the computer with a sledgehammer. Just to keep it in line. And by in line, I mean obliterated.

Our science experiment goes awry. We blame roasted beans

Today was to be the day where I went 24 hours without music. I'd forgotten, of course, until my roommate reminded me while I was snatching my iPod from the kitchen counter. "Isn't today the day you can't listen to music?" she asked. "GRrbjadbljskj" I mumbled, still forty minutes from my first cup of coffee.

It started well enough: I was on one of those buses that resembles an Indian subway more than a San Franciscan commuter bus (sadly though: no monkeys) and I couldn't hear any Eminem overflowing out the earphones of some pre-pubescent quasi-hard-ass. Sure I was stepping on some large gentleman's foot while enduring the surprisingly pointy elbow of a rotund grandma, but the bus was to be one of the great no-music-for-a-day challenges. I can regulate the atmosphere of my house and my office is a soulless wasteland, so all I had to do was travel between those two places in relative silence and success would be mine. Or, so I thought.

Our rolling sardine mobile stopped on 3rd street and I walked down the alley that takes me toward my office, trying to enjoy the early morning chill and vague aroma of urine. "Coffee," said my brain. "Yes, brain," said my mouth. "We're almost there." And, unthinkingly, I walked into the cafe where I usually start my morning and---John Mellencamp. Of all people. And it wasn't even Jack & Diane. No, it was one of those other "Look, I'm really a lot like Springsteen" "songs" that our Mr. Mellencamp foists upon the unsuspecting radio universe. That is, when he's not scoring flabbergastingly offensive Chevy commercials. Badness abounded.

So, attempt number one lasted about an hour until unbridled Mellencamp flavored failure but I learned a lesson I thought I'd realized, namely: you can't go shopping and avoid music. Attempt two will involve a sack lunch and the soil-flavored work-coffee.

The nice part was I forsaw the probable lack of success and brought my iPod anyhow. Either that or I was too groggy to fully comprehend what my roomie was saying. Serendipitous nonetheless. I say this because, when you get denied by Corporate Springsteen, it's best to wash the taste out of your earholes as fast as humanly possible. I put on that "Pillar of Salt" song by The Thermals (this week's front runner for "Best Song in the Universe"---sorry Beethoven's Ninth) and everything was alright all over again.

Sweet things go sour. But not all sweet things do. I learned that on Monday too, while music was threatening to drive me batty

There's this movie theatre by my house called the Red Vic. It's in the infamous Haight-Ashbury district (which once meant stinky, drug-addled hippie land and now means stinky, drug-addled bum land) a block away from the best record store on the planet. When I moved nearby, they used to charge you $5.50 for great second-run films and quirky little documentaries and classics both cultish and accepted. It was a great place to end up for a night. Sure the screen was small and the sound was AM-alarm-clock-radio-y, but it was charming, affordable, and within walking distance. I saw the Salton Sea movie there. I saw City of Lost Children there. I would've seen Harold & Maude there, but I had the flu. Or the whooping cough. Or consumption. Something that involved soggy lungs, no doubt.

But that was two years ago. Now, suddenly, it costs $8.50 and it's infested with vermin and blood-sucking insect life. In another couple years, there's going to be two fat guys watching some Jim Jarmusch film at $25 a ticket while getting devoured by sewer rats. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a sad, sad thing.

Not unlike when Bruce Springsteen released "Human Touch" or when Tom Robbins released that book about the tanuki with big ol' nut sack*, the Red Vic has taken a shocking turn. When something or someplace that was once adorable or perfect or at least downright enjoyable becomes less so, you can't help but feel robbed, right? You expect those special artists or restaurants or bands to remain phenomenal forever, which, let's face it, is unfair---but that doesn't make it less dissapointing. There's this Ethopian restaurant by my house that went through the same unfortunate devolution. It was delicious, cheap, hideously decorated, with a juke box full of Elvis Costello and Stevie Wonder and a wait staff of two, who also happened to own the place, and who moved about as quickly as turtle in a coma.** Now? What was once a "I've got ten bucks, let's go get Ethopian" is now a "hold on, lemme go to an ATM" sort of place with worse food and a full bar, in case, you know, you want hard liquor with your chicken.

I guess it all comes down to taking things for granted. If it's not static it's going to change and if you love it, it's probably going to get worse. So go on. Give your favorite person a hug, eat at your favorite restaurant, go to that park down the street before they turn it into a Bev Mo. And do it all while you're listening to your favorite CD. Because, even when the Ethopian place a few blocks away starts jacking up their prices and skimping on their portions, "Astral Weeks" will always be "Astral Weeks." And that's weirdly comforting.

* I know, I know. It's serious.

** "I knoow, I knooow. It's seriooous."

A detailed chronicle of the first half of our science experiment: dinosaur related asides and scatalogical humor provided free of charge

Disclaimer: Birdmonster would like to apologize in advance for the loopy rambling, misguided whatnot-ery, and slew of shameful "humor" that will ensue at the end of this introductory warning. Birdmonster is still drunk. Drunk enough to refer to itself in the third person, which is quite a feat, considering it's actually four people. Birdmonster needs to remember Mondays are for sleeping, cribbage double-headers, and home cooked crock-pot dinners. Gin is a poor substitute for all three. Next Monday: naps, cards, and stew. This Tuesday: ache-y noggins. Onwards:

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When I started this whole "listen to music for 24 hours straight, then go 24 hours without it" thing, there were a few things I didn't properly account for. Firstly, I overlooked the fact that I never came up with a catchy name, which, as any scientist knows, is half the battle. When I discover a dinosaur, for example, I'm not going to name it anything that ends in "saurus." Instead: "Lord Awesome the Kick-Ass." What ten year old wouldn't love that? Secondly, I thought that music all day would be easy, enriching, and downright enjoyable. Like so many good hypothesis...es...es...hypothesees....es.....guesses, that was wrong, wrong, wrong. Allow me to explain.

It started easily enough. Alarm clock muzak jazz, relaxing bus ride with Ryan Adams and Primus (not exactly kindred spirits, I'm aware), croissant with Cinematic Orchestra. I was enjoying myself. I got to select my own private soundtrack for every piddling detail of an otherwise drab Monday. Suddenly, my bus ride seemed more poignant, my croissant more epic. I was a living, horrible art house movie where nothing happens.

Then, the little snags began. See, if you're really going for music all day, you need accompaniment while eating, while sleeping, while talking on the phone, while, say, squatting over the toilet at the office. (Which in itself brings up countless quandaries. What, exactly, is good pooping music? Are people going to be slightly perturbed when you walk into the bathroom, rocking out, with headphones in? At what point will this actually get you fired?) By eleven o'clock, the experiment was starting to be a bit of a hassle. I was talking to my boss with one earphone in, trying to explain, no, "I'm not horribly rude, I'm just trying to... oh I love this drum part" when I realized that yesterday wasn't going to be easy. I hadn't fully realized I spend about two or three hours of my work day haggling with people on the phone. This becomes much more difficult when Tina Turner is offering to be your Private Dancer.

I really noticed how burdensome the whole thing was on my bus ride home. Usually, the whole "music while struggling through the crossword I stole from the coffee shop" thing is really pleasant. The bus is empty and I'm trying to figure out who the only palindromic band with a palindromic hit single is (ABBA, by the way) and I'm on my way to the couch and a cozy book. But by 5 yesterday, I was starting to feel stressed out. My thought process was breaking down. It wasn't stupidity, per se, but complete distraction. At home I watched Jeopardy with my girlfriend (while listening to Cake but eating spaghetti) and struggled endlessly. I actually knew the final answer and had to spend twenty second pacing in circles like a skittish Labrador before actually remembering Edward R. Murrow's name, followed, of course, by berating the people on the television who got it wrong to the tune of "This Long Line of Cars."

Then, us Birdmonsters got to judge a local band contest at night. This was good because live music is far superior to recordings, and, quite frankly, I needed a drink. The problem was, I didn't need several. Half-drunk, I almost blew the whole thing when I went outside without my iPod and spent the next ten minutes humming to myself while pretending to talk to some guy who may or may not have been on serious uppers.

But I learned plenty. I learned that music all day, if you're diligent about it, isn't all that hard. It's just annoying. I learned you can overdose on your favorite thing in the whole world if you really put your mind to it. I learned there's a reason everyone loves the Beatles. (News flash: they're really good).

On Thursday, we try to go 24 hours without music. I'd try to do it today, but band practice would be fairly difficult. Until tomorrow.

Today's post brought to you by burning hamstrings and distraction

I swear: I used to be in good shape. I used to be able to run a sub six minute mile, ride a bike to school, play soccer for ninety minutes without someone warming up the defibrillator. Now? I sit behind a computer five days a week, waddle to the elevator for MSG smothered dim sum, and ride the bus home. When I'm not doing that, we're on tour, which is a see-saw between spurts of bastardized exercise and hours of trucker-like immobility. Sure, we carry gear and jump around on stage for an hour every night, but calling that real exercise is like calling the Santa Clause 3 a real movie: technically true but philosophically disingenuous. As an aside: I really wouldn't be upset if Martin Short was smote by a righteous God. Somehow, I'm guessing you wouldn't be either.

Anyhow, I bring this up because I'm incredibly sore. See, there was a time when a couple hours of basketball wouldn't turn me into a salty, hobbled curmudgeon. That time, unfortunately: not now. Had a damn fine time though, atrophied muscles or no. If you need me later, I'll be in an Epsom salt bath sipping a brandy & milk, moaning about "kids today" and the buffalo head nickel.

Also: after a couple false starts, today is the day where I'm going to listen to music for 24 hours in a row. I woke up to an alarm clock radio---God knows what song, though. I do remember hating it. But I hate anything that wakes me up. I'd hate a golden unicorn with a cappuccino and the New York Times, let alone muzak-y jazz jams. Where was I? Yes. Clock radio, the requisite snooze button of five, then, to the stereo and the iPod and the radio and whatever else it's going to take to saturate my entire day with songs. Gillian Welch is distracting me right now---in the best possible way, of course. I have trouble functioning with music on, by the way. So if you talk to me on the phone today or happen to my boss, expect ditsy preoccupation to be the mood. In fact, I'm having undue trouble writing this. On the other hand, Gillian Welch sings a mean country song.

Rather than spiraling into a sea of run on sentences, dangling modifiers, and all the other not-quite-the-end-of-the-world shit that drives me needlessly batty, I'm going to mention one thing. You never want to see this sign on the wall in the bathroom where you work:

"If it becomes necessary, there is a mop and bucket in the break room."

If that becomes necessary, let me know where you ate. I'd like to avoid that and anything else in a ten block radius. Thanks.

The inevitable postponing of a science experiment and the answer to another. Alert the Nobel committee post haste

First off, I should admit I didn't listen to music for 24 hours straight yesterday. I set my alarm clock to "shrill beeping; bringer of insanity" mode, not "bad corporate rock radio" mode, so I stumbled right out of the gate, not unlike a horse I once bet on that actually ran backwards. Not a good omen for your day of gambling, by the way. It'd be like going to a Blackjack table and getting dealt Magic: the Gathering cards. I mean, sure, a Rampaging Orc and a bunch of blue manna look pretty good until the dealer turns over a twenty. Then? Bye-bye fifteen bucks.

Before exposing any other not-quite-expired dork tendencies or vices, let's stop with the analogies, hmm? Great. I've enlisted my girlfriend to join me in Monday's attempt. The alarm clock will be set---probably on the classical station, now that I think of it, since rock radio will have the requisite obnoxious buffoon morning cohosts whose names must either rhyme or begin with the same letter. It's a law, you know. The rest of the day should be constant and painless, what with iPods and CD players and whatnot. Plus---and I'm excited about this---we're judging a local band contest on Monday night along with people who, you know, actually make money on music, with the winner playing this big time-y Live 105 show at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium with a handful of really good bands, notably (for me at least), the Shins. I think I'll wear a special judging hat. Better yet: one of those British powdered wigs. Nothing says "judge" like a grown man in a curled white toupee.

Anyway, I'm planning on going mad with power, demanding bribes from every band, and heckling them to see if they go Michael Richards on me. Should be a good time for the whole family.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Team Human is nearing the end of his fourth game against Team Robot Overlords. And it's looking like another tie. Apparently, chess is the soccer of the board game world. Get the world's best together and they tie spectacularly. Which is all well and good if you understand the intricacies of the games, but if you don't: Rip Van Winkle time. Give me Fireball Island any day. Ties are impossible, vengeance is swift, and heckling is mandatory. Like Rollerball.

As way of introductions go, not my smoothest, I'll admit, but we're back to talking about robots pretending to be human and maddening me with visions of sci-fi armageddons. It was fun seeing everyone's guesses yesterday, including a few people who claimed to know the poet then chose opposite answers. Always fun, there. Without further ado:

[Author's note: It was here where I completely blew it, said that TS Eliot wrote the second stanza, thus almost invalidating the entire experiment. However, I'm going to salvage it thusly: Only a human would make a mistake so buffoonish as to spoil two days of careful writing. So there. Read my incorrectness below, with apoligies to Lester & Kasi for crushing their dreams and kind regards to Mike Young for revealing my ineptitude.]

Poetputer wrote the first stanza. T.S. Eliot wrote the second. [Or, in reality: THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THAT.] I should tally the votes, but we seemed to be split right on down the middle, more or less. Sad to say that the man who wrote not only the "Wasteland" but also the impetus for a musical that ran longer than most people live was outpoemed by a Macintosh. Spin in your grave, Thomas Stearns. Watch out for the worms.