Month: May 2007

Because it just came up in my Rhythmbox’s shuffle

Jason Preu7 Comments

I thought I would take 2 seconds to tell you that one of my all-time favorite albums is the soundtrack to Blade Runner. It’s a deserted island must-have.

All right – more than 2 seconds…can I pick 10 albums to take with me to a deserted island (in no particular order)?

1 – Vangelis – Blade Runner
2 – My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
3 – Bob Marley – Legend
4 – Boards of Canada – Geogaddi
5 – Public Enemy – Nation of Millions
6 – B-Boys – Check Your Head
7 – One Dove – Morning Dove White
8 – The Orb – Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
9 – X – Wild Gift
10 – Erasure – Chorus

Now, I don’t think those are the 10 best albums ever – but they’d be most entertaining to me should I find myself alone on a rock surrounded by salt water hoping I don’t have to eat myself to survive.

Because it just came up in my Rhythmbox’s shuffle

Momo

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First, read this.

Then know that we went last night to see the grandeur that is Momo the Clown!

beep beep ritchie

The Uptown, fairly packed but far from sold-out, with old-school goths (still goth in their mid-40s with 10-year-old children in tow), with former mod/alt-rockers turned insurance agent, real-estate broker, VP of finance, with late-20s-early 30-year-olds who came of age during the alt-music explosion, and with late-teens who know they should pay tribute, welcomed the aging, asexual, alternative troubadour, Morrissey.

We went on a invitation and Sarah did fear for her life. We saw no gladiolas. We saw no one trampled by knee-high leather boots or buried under boobs bursting from Hot Topic corsets. The couple who took us with them got drinks poured on them by a gay boy doing some sweet DDR moves then, when said couple turned to ask the lad to watch out when he came back with a new drink, said lad ran to get security and our couple got escorted to the anti-gay dance section for the rest of the show.

I’m not much of a solo Momo fan. I like a few of the singles he’s released over the years. But Momo’s solo songs sounded just fine last night. His voice is still solid and strong. And, much to my surprise after hearing Sarah’s tale of Momo woe, he had a fine sense of humor. The production in general was pretty sweet. Very loud – I’m not going to shows anymore without ear plugs – and very tight. The Smiths’ songs, however, that Momo deigned to play, those were the highlight. Girlfriend in a Coma? You better believe it.

We left before the encore, so maybe someone else who went could comment as to what we missed.

Update:
Someone just forwarded a picture they snapped at the show of when Sarah and I hopped on stage to rock with Momo:
the more you ignore us

Momo

sigh

Jason Preu4 Comments

it’s friday…hoorah.
we’re taking ro-dog down to the crossroads tonight so if you see us strolling about stop us and say, “yo.” our little monkey turned 9-months-old this week. fast fast fast goes the time time time. i feel i’ll blink my eyes and he’ll be 9, then 19. but, until then, he’s a baby. a baby who hates to crawl and only wants us to walk him around so he can try to kick everything in his path. he’s baby beckham. the cat, remote control, dirty socks, toys – doesn’t matter. ro wants to kick it like JCVD. he saw a soccer ball in our yard one day and i showed him how to kick it. now he’s a kick addict. so that’s ro. what about my sweet spouse? read her blog, bitches. it’s the drift, over there————> . she gets in trouble a lot at work. that’s what she’s got going on. me? i’m living a charmed life. i realized sometime after the new year that in over 10 years I haven’t had a job where i actually had to be mentally present. that’s kinda pathetic, but it did allow for me to expend that mental energy elsewhere (like blogs). i passed one of many IT security certification tests this week. that was cool. i’m glad funkmeister won kc’s mayor-ness. that was cool. i heard yesterday that kcmo is putting a school downtown at 10th and central. that was odd.
OH –
let me use this blog for two things other than self-indulgence:
1: do any of you know any good babysitters close to where we live (WYCO, 18th & State)? we’ll need someone after the summer and preferably someone close by.
2: Next Friday, May 18th, at the Record Bar – Mac Lethal is gonna tear shit up. It’s his last Record Bar show, too. (No Joe Good this time around, though, I guess he quit rappin’.) I’mma try to go if anyone else is down. Gimpy? Brandon? Your momma?
that’s all for now, kids. have a rockin’ weekend and watch out for zombie pimps.

sigh

Discover and rediscover your city

Jason Preu2 Comments

Last Sunday, we celebrated our two-year anniversary by dropping off Ro-Dog at my folks’ and scoring a sweet suite at The Hilton President hotel. What a gorgeous bit of KC history. We were hoping for ghosts, but all we got was fantastic service. We ate our anniversary meal at The Drum Room, where the Executive Sous Chef came out and chatted with us for about a half hour after we asked our server about a discontinued melon-avocado soup. Nothing finer than chatting up food with a world-class chef.

The hotel itself is interesting in that it’s obvious Hilton enlarged the rooms (this was confirmed in a fact sheet we saw that told us the hotel now has 200-some-odd rooms down from 400-something) but the elevators are still very compact by any contemporary standard. If you’ve ever visited the Hotel Phillips, it’s the same thing there. The restoration as a whole, though, is stunning and I’d recommend taking a visit just to see what’s been done.

After the grub, we decided to walk around downtown. The weather was nice and I wanted to show Sarah my office. So we walked into the eerie emptiness that is downtown KC on a Sunday night. We strolled past all the P&L re-development and imagined the future with the help of detailed posters showing what’s to come. Street construction, city-block construction, a facelift looms for our city.

I’m writing this while 25 floors above 12th and Walnut. Directly below me is a big hole in the ground that will someday house a downtown supermarket and fitness center. Will any of it bring people back to KC for a Sunday night out? Goddamn, I hope so. I hope people come to feel the breeze blow between the high-rises. I hope people come to hear the late-night buses running lonely down the streets, beastly machines, fuming and loud, looking to fill empty bellies. I hope people come to smell hints of coffee and river water and the surprising lack of weekday exhaust. I hope people come to speak with those working in servile solitude in downtown bars and ask them for a favorite drink only to hear, “We ran out last night,”…which is a good thing. We live in a city to be proud of, a city to take a chance on, a city to spend time with, a city to get lost in, a city to learn, a city to criticize, a city to watch, and a city to watch out for.

We had breakfast in The Walnut Room, which featured on one wall a huge, black and white photo of old-time 11th and Walnut, in front of Jenkins Music, behind which now sits Town Pavilion parking. But then, instead of a host of vehicles, a throng of pedestrians filled the street. Maybe they’ll soon do so again.

Discover and rediscover your city