a magic place full of people doing incredible things.
You might not believe me.
“KCK?” you might say.
“Yes, KCK is a land of inspired and gifted entrepreneurs. One of those wizardly businessmen does something wonderful…”
NO!
Sadly, it has come to my attention that he or she did something wonderful:
Alas, it seems CFJ no longer makes custom sings.
The magic is always fleeting in KCK.
My wife worked her ass off (yes, my pregnant wife works harder than me – pretty much across the board) while I napped and ripped a bunch of Nice Guy Tony’s CDs to my ever-expanding .mp3 collection.
Thanks to Rob, I also had plenty of reading material to tide me over this holiday weekend:
I finished Voice of the Fire, Alan Moore’s debut novel. I could recommend it to the right person. Thematically, the novel deals with many of the same subjects as Moore’s comic work: history, the occult, the act of creating art and how each of us weaves our reality from whatever loose threads existence presents to us. There’s also a fair amount of narrative experimentation, which one would expect from Moore. The first chapter alone is probably enough to frighten off the undisciplined reader – its written in the voice of a neolithic half-wit who has trouble separating dreams from reality. Another chapter’s narrator is a severed head with a lump of coal in one eye…good stuff! What surprised me about the novel is how tight Moore keeps his prose. Given his tendency toward over-description in his comic scripts, this is a unexpected and welcome feature. I think I’ll pick up my own copy of this novel so that I can read some of these stories to my son whilst we sit around a campfire late at night.
I also looked through Batman: Year 100, Paul Pope’s Batman books. The art: awesome. Drawn by Pope and colored by Jose Villarrubia (who also did digital photos for Moore’s novel above), Batman: Year 100 is a visual treat. I didn’t much care for the story – Batman in a dystopian, police-state Gotham City attempting to thwart a bio-terrorist attack. The media of the future paints Batman as a terrorist…yadda yadda yadda…but the real terrorists are________. The plot was blah and not very interesting and Pope (who scripted as well) had many subversive angles to work in this story but chose to go with the most obvious instead.
Finally, I looked through Put the Book Back on the Shelf, a collection of comics inspired by Belle & Sebastian songs. This book worked for me from start to finish because:
1) I like Belle & Sebastian
2) I like comics.
3) I really, really like comics that interpret songs or poetry. I’ve written a few myself (one for Peter Murphy’s ‘Cut You Up’ that I’m particularly proud of).
So, pick up this book if you like B&S or if you’re just a fan of fine comics.
Last, but not least, this just came to me from my beautiful wife:
“Afentra just mentioned that the Emasculators is going to be a comic book but they need artists.”
E-mail Afentra: afentra(at)965thbuzz.com for details.
(Rob, if you’re reading, would you cross-post this?)
Well, you won’t find any here. But, thanks to persistent devious commenter, Pissed in St. Louis, you can get this:
We are writing you with regard to your inquiry about the recent Depeche Mode show at Starlight Theatre. We appreciate your patience and understanding with this matter, and we’ve been steadily working to address the issue.
As everyone is aware by now, Dave was unable to finish the show in Kansas City due to illness and was not able to perform the next night in Chicago. No one involved with the show wants the fans in Kansas City to be disappointed with this abbreviated performance. For this reason, we have put together a special offering to you for taking the time to contact us in this matter.
Live Nation will forward to you a voucher for tickets (equal to the number of Depeche Mode tickets purchased) to any Live Nation show in Kansas City between now and December 31st. This includes Live Nation promoted shows at Starlight Theatre, Verizon Wireless Amphitheater or any of the other locations Live Nation promotes shows. Furthermore, Depeche Mode will include a piece of band merchandise for you in appreciation of your continued support of the band.
Depeche Mode and Live Nation would like to see that some further good comes out of this difficult situation. For that reason, a donation of $10,000.00 is being made to establish The Music Cares Fund for the Kansas City Missouri Public School District. This money will establish an endowment fund to purchase new instruments for young musicians in the Kansas City school system and create new opportunities for area student musicians in the Kansas City arts community.
Thank you once again for your patience while we worked through this totally unexpected situation.
Depeche Mode
and
Your friends at Live Nation
*Please provide address and ticket stub information to guestrelationskc@livenation.com if you have not already done so. We will need this information before vouchers are mailed.*
Did anyone else have a moment where they mistook Hasselhoff
for Willie Ames
?
(I wish I could find a screenshot of Dave in his glasses – the two megastars have grown to look awfully alike.)
In other news,
Throughout the episode he justifies himself in a number of ways.
We don’t watch a lot of television. I’ve said that here many a time. So, last night, after getting back from an awesome bike ride in Lawrence with D and Gimpy*,
 
imagine my surprise to come home to Sarah watching the season finale of American Idol. Thankfully, she was watching because we got to catch a killer live performance by Prince. But I digress. My wife was in a state of shock and awe. Not because of the show itself, but because of the reaction to the show and how many damned people were in that theater and how many people voted (“more than have ever voted in a Presidential election” Sea Breeze was quick to point out) and how many people actually care. I’m sitting in my basement, covered in mud, dazed with my wife at the hubbub before us on the telly. Why so much hullabaloo? So one bland singer can have a shot at __________? Don’t get me wrong. I think Castle Greyskull can sing like a champ – and I’m sure he’s got a long career awaiting on Lite Rock stations across the nation – but zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…that dude’s an American Idol? I repeat zzzzzzzzzzz. I demand more. I demand my American Idols to be more like Karen O. or John Ferguson. In fact, I’m going to e-mail John and suggest he try out for the next season of AI (no, I don’t know him, so that should prove all the more interesting).Â
In other music news, yesterday after work I kick on the ol’ 96.5 and hear the Dixie Chicks and I think I’ve got the wrong station but then I remember the furor that the Dixie Chicks have created in their genre’s camp* and I think Lazlo’s fun enough to play them and sho’ ’nuff, he is. Then the calls started coming. Most were supportive. But there were a few who called and legitimately thought that these girls were a disgrace and I thought, well, country music has never had much a space for protest songs but what takes more courage: welcoming voices of dissent or shunning them? More importantly for country music artists and fans, why is free speech OK only when speaking about kicking someone’s ass to defend the Red, White and Blue?Â
*This is Michael McDonald: 
I shit you not – NPR just played a Michael McDonald song after talking about last night’s Idol.
* poor gimpson. his shoes got wet and he had crappy pedals so his ride was cut short. 😦
* key quote: “…when asked, programmers and consultants that listened to the project were virtually unanimous in saying we should put the politics behind us and concentrate on all this other great music we were hearing.” We’re in a war for fuck’s sake! Is there some better time for music that expresses a political opinion? This attitude pisses me off.
Well, he might look like this (by the way, imagine Hall & Oates playing the soundtrack to this):
Easy ready willing overtime
When does it stop, where do you dare me to draw the line
You got the body now you want my soul
Don’t even think about it say no go
Now i’ll do anything you want me to
I’ll do almost anything that you want me to
But i can’t go for that
No can do
I can’t go for being twice as nice
I can’t go for just repeating the some old lines
Use the body now you want my soul
Oo forget about it say no go
Yeah i’ll do anything you want me to
I’ll do almost anything that you want me to
But i can’t go for that
No can do.
It’s quiet at night in Southern Missouri. Dark, too. Streetlights don’t exist past the limits of the small towns connected by Highway 60 and a home-based nightlight glows bright in most driveways of the houses tucked back off the road.
But it’s light out when we head down to Southern, MO, plenty well-lit to see road-killed armadillo after road-killed armadillo littering the shoulder of every highway from Kansas City to Mountain View. Every year we begin to see the dead animals at a point further north then the year before.
Heading to our first baby shower, given to us by my mom’s family. They’re awful generous and we shouldn’t have to buy any clothes for a year.
The shower ends and we take a nap and night descends and darkness comes and quiet too and we enjoy the lack of sirens and gun shots and mewing cats and barking dogs and we sleep.
And we wake and head to Springfield for a breakfast date with my old friends Pat (and his wife) and Jay Feagans and Pat and Rosie’s new baby, Goldie, who is a doll and quite well-behaved and I can send a photo to those who know and would like to see Patty’s baby girl since he’s an e-mail-a-phobe and can’t get his e-mail to work right.
We get home and we sleep again.
And we watch the Who’s the Boss? and Charles in Charge True Hollywood Story and we sleep again.
Now it’s Monday and I’m working on something very cool that I hope to share with you soon.
Also, in an effort to help out Gimp’s promotions, go see MC Frontalot:
And I’ve got a spoiler for all of you.
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If you don’t want to know the true secret of the DaVinci Code, please stop reading now.
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If you don’t want to know information so mind-numbing, paradigm-shifting, bowel-releasing, faith-shattering and finger-licking that God himself has banned from on high, please stop reading now.
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If you can’t handle the Truth, in whatever form it may take, please stop reading now.
Â
People everywhere, I am going to save you $8 on a movie and 3 hours of life wasted reading terrible literature.
Â
People everywhere, I will now unveil to you the True Secret of the DaVinci Code!:
The True Secret is:
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Wait for it:
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Wait for it:
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THE TRUE SECRET OF THE DAVINCI CODE IS!:
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Jesus and Mary shared popsicles.
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Jason Preu 
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