Rode up to the casiotone/xiu xiu/kill me tomorow/japan air show with badger.
Casiotone was interesting for what it was (ie, a guy playing weird songs played
on an assortment of casio keyboards). Xiu Xiu was trying to do something different
and interesting, but couldn’t quite pull it off live in an interesting fashion. Too many
long pauses between songs for seemingly needless instrument switching. Kill
Me Tomorow was pretty interesting. bass/guitar/percussion trio. Percussion
was kind of a standup kit augmented with a few korg electribes. The
songs tended to be be fast tempo, distorted mushy guitar, vaguely tribal
drumbeats, and biting distorted bass lines played with lots of energy. All
in all, pretty good. Only odd thing was they only played maybe 25 minutes.

Japan Air played a slightly stripped down set (no keyboards or samplers).
So they tended to the simpler less proggy songs ( where simple and
less proggy means only 30 or 40 changes per songs… ;->)

Much conversing about weird music was done.

need sleep…

doesn’t look like there are any interesting shows this weekend.

the “down from the mountain” tour apparently plays the ESA this
weekend. Emmylou Harris, and Alison Kraus, plus others… That
could be interesting. Seeing bluegrass at the ESA might be a bit
weird though.

bleah. Think I got a couple hours of sleep between about 10:30am and
1pm. Don’t know why, just couldn’t sleep at all.
From looking though the friends list, that seems to be the trend today.

read about halfway though the “Eames Primer” book. I hadn’t realized
that the Eames were the creators of the Powers of Ten
film. Neat.

Rode over to the MileMarker/Fin Fang Foom show last night with johnray. Pretty
good show, thous Fin Fang Foom didn’t really live up to my expectations. Not
nearly as mathy/weird/heavy lots of reviews seems to indicate it is. Could of
definitely used more aggressive drumming as well (apparently though, I’m
the only person on the planet that likes it when drummers hit drums alot.
At least in harder edge bands. Nothing more annoying to me than seeing
a good band thats kind of heavy and energetic, and the drummer thinks
he’s trying out for REM or something… but I digress)

MileMarker was actually better than I expected. There cd didn’t really
impress me much, but live they had a pretty strong Trans Am/Fugazi
thing going, and put on a good show.

Time to go pick up a carryout order from sushi tsune.

Does anyone else type words with words that sound the
same when typing? ie there/their, hear/here, even things
like Could/Good. I seem to be particularly bad about it
when on irc or typing lj entries. I do know the difference
between the words, just seems like it doesn’t matter when
typing stream-of-consciousness

anyone planning on going to the Milemarker/Fin Fang Foom
show tonight at Go! ?

analysis
of the methods used to win the honeynet reverse engineering challenge.

Color me impressed.

also from here…

David Sedaris
 October 21 
 Charlotte, NC Ovens Auditorium. 
Box Office Phone:704-335-3100.

Interesting. Haven’t actually read any of his books yet (I couldnt
find them at B&N and didn’t feel like asking for it…) but have
seen him on Letterman and a few other things before and
suspect it would be an interesting talk/lecture/reading/whatever.

Maybe there will be a Sedaris/Rollins speaking tour. That
could be interesting.

A pretty uneventful weekend/holiday all around. Pretty much just sat
around and read most of the weekend.

Picked up a couple books from B&N. Why People
Belive Weird Things by Michael Shermer,
Stupid White Men
by Michael Moore, The
Phillip K Dick Reader, and
An Eames
Primer (books on 20th century americian designers seems to be my
new kick…)

So far only read “Why People Believe Weird Things”. Fairly entertaining
overall, though the chapter about Frank Tipler and his “omega point
theory” was just bizarre and didnt seem to fit in at all. Especially
the 4 page digression on why Tipler being a firstborn child causes
him to be weird. wtf is that doing in the middle of an otherwise adequate
book on skepticism? I almost expected to get to the end of the chapter
and have the last paragraph be “Just kidding. If you believed that perhaps
you should read chapters 1-4 again” but no such luck.

The book of Philip K Dick stories is somewhat interesting. Mainly just
because I hardly read fiction, and basically never read sci-fi or fantasy
books/stories. But aside from my trouble “suspending disbelief” it’s
pretty entertaining. I suspect reading a book on skepticism at the same
time doesn’t help ;-> Kind of interesting to read a short story with a
pretty obvious anti-scientiology theme to it that was written in 1954 though.

The Rush concert was excellent. I managed to luck into a 15th row ticket
(Kevin from Wafer Thin
and Dave from Japan AIr had a extra
ticket… Going to a Rush show with two drummers, who would of guessed?)

Sow started at 7:30, no opening band. They opened with Tom Sawyer,
which got things off to a good start. The set was composed of a song
or two from each of the last couple albums, and then a handful of
classics.

They played some songs I’d never seen them play live before (
except maybe as quick bits in a medley…). “Natural Science”
was one I wasn’t expecting. They also played somewhat
shortened versions of 2112 (“Overture”, “Temples of Syrinx”,)
and Cygnus-X1. YYZ was played in it’s entirety, and most
of La Villa Strangiato (only the beginning was shortened).

“Vital Signs”, “Bytor and the Snowdog”, “Working Man”,
and “Red Sector A” also surprised me.

The stage set was actually fairly small. The oddest thing
was on Geddy’s side. instead of a wall of bass amps, there
were three maytag coin operated dryers. They were setup
to at least be spinning with a bunch of tshirts in them. And
just to make it goofier, they were all miked. Or at least,
had mikes pointing at them ;-> I’m sure somewhere there
is a bizarre in joke that led to that.