Rotorglow

After months kaput,
FiveSevenFive's back again.
At last: news haiku.

[It's Fugazi Month at rotorglow.com/blog. For the month of July, for no particular reason other than I've been listening to them a lot, each post's title will be a Fugazi lyric. I'll try to make it vaguely topical.]

I spent the whole day with Veloce today. That meant giving up the James Dean double feature at the Brattle, on account of me not setting my alarm properly. (See, I set it, but I didn't actually turn it on. Seems that's an important step.) I washed, clay-bar-ed, and waxed every inch of the little vixen, which means that I touched every square inch of it 3 (!) times. Well, except the roof, which only got washed and wiped down with 303 "Space Age Protectant." (Like Armor-All, but better.)

So, for the moment, it gleams like the Hope Diamond. It's as smooth a Baby's Butt. It's as Cute As A Button.

But the whole experience got me thinking, and not for the first time, about how I treat cars, and how everone else treats 'em. A few years ago, someone I was close to asked me what it would take for me to put (for instance) a coffee cup on the (hard) roof of my (=our) car. Instantaneously, I responded, "A 90% chance of a planet-killing asteroid within 36 hours." Her response? I think she rolled her eyes first, and only then chuckled at my creativity (=glibness).

And last weekend, Cynthpop and I went to the beach, and she finally got some insight into just what a lunatic I am about cars and car care. (I should say she knows all about convertibles, though.) So I thought I'd write down some of the more outlandish customs I've developed over the years, and the rationale behind them.

And yes, I know it's kind of a sickness.

After the jump:

[It's Fugazi Month at rotorglow.com/blog. For the month of July, for no particular reason other than I've been listening to them a lot, each post's title will be a Fugazi lyric. I'll try to make it vaguely topical.]

Gonna be some changes around here and over at rotorglow.com. I think it's time to give over to my Flickr obsession, for one thing, and do away with all those Flash based image viewers, slick though they are. This is facilitated in no small part by Daniel, helped me figure out how to get Flickr to talk to b2evo, so I'll be able to send pix over here, from there. Much more elegant.

Etc. So why am I telling you this? Dunno. I guess that's just how we roll.

Four Tet @ the MFA
Originally uploaded by rotorglow.

[It's Fugazi Month at rotorglow.com/blog. For the month of July, for no particular reason other than I've been listening to them a lot, each post's title will be a Fugazi lyric. I'll try to make it vaguely topical.]

Cindy, Tim, Kat and I went to see Sunburned Hand of the Man and Four Tet at the MFA last week. It was supposed to be outdoors in the courtyard, but the weather didn't cooperate. So it was inside the big auditorium--Note to Malcolm Rogers: It's great that you're doing these events, and I know you don't have many options if the weather goes bad, but that's a terrible place to see music.

I have no pix of SHOTM, but I got a few of Four Tet in action. (Not that there's much to see.) Initially, I wasn't really sure what I though of his set. It was notably free of the beats and melodies that make his records so interesting (to me), so it was more of a noise set than I was expecting.

Over the last few days I've been remembering it more fondly, though, and I'll probably go see him at the Middle East when Sept rolls around.

This video of Scott McClellan carefully hanging himself (with rope helpfully provided by his bosses) in front of the White House press corps is one of the greatest things I've seen all year. I can't stop watching.

Or smiling (grimly).

It's a must-see.

Edit: Here's the transcript.

IMG_4698.JPG
Originally uploaded by rotorglow.

Played softball yesterday (for the first time in forever) with Tim, Kat, Sam and the rest of the (un)usual suspects. I didn't hurt anything or anyone, so that's pretty good. Had a few hits, a few RBIs, a few putouts and a few errors. So all that's pretty good too.

Traces of Mustard.
Originally uploaded by Gogi.

This is from a really amazing, but oddly somber Flickr set called 50 Grams of Urban Loneliness. Great stuff.

Endcap_b
Originally uploaded by cantpark.

A Flickr group proving that not only is bad parking behavior universal, but outrage about it is too.

Been on a bit of a music buying spree lately. Here's what been rotating oh so heavily:

20 Years of Dischord: Fantastic 3xCD compilation covering the first 20 years of Dischord Records. A song from every band, and a 3rd CD of unreleased/live stuff. And a, like, 130 page book with pix and history of each band. Some I knew about, others I didn't. In particular, this led me to....

Polymer and Post Mortem Anthem, both by Bluetip. Not sure how I missed this before, but I did. Diamond-saw guitars and lyrics to match. "I'm told my house is haunted, but I don't recall inviting you."

The Evens, S/T: Great, mellow-but-intense angsty stuff from Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina. Nice boy/girl harmonies and a baritone guitar, which I confess I'd never heard of before. Great stuff, very different and at the same time oddly similar to other Dischord/MacKaye Weltschmerz. Even the Fork likes it.

Take London, by The Herbaliser: The usual dope-ass hip-hop/soundtrack stuff. What else can you say?

Kraftwerk: Minimum-Maximum...
Man...So good. Old faves updated and played live (or at least, in front of an audience). Lots of the songs are now kind of house-y, but they're low and funky. Wish I could see them someday.

The Cherry Valance: TCV3 Grunchy (yep, new word..so?), sweaty, AC/DC-ish, double-drumkit cock rock. Everybody say "yeah."

Some of these things are not like the others. But hey....

"Got most of the big shit, there's still boxes inside. Tell me if you mind this is all I can take."