Re: 'venge

Emily took me to see Colin Meloy at the 9:30 Club for my birthday last Sunday. Not that it was my birthday last Sunday, or this Sunday, or even next Sunday, but that's when he was playing and sometimes you do what you have to do.

So he was doing his third solo tour without the rest of The Decemberists. I've never seen the whole band live, but based on this show I'd see them in a second, though hopefully they'd play for longer than that.

'Twas a good show, and though he tended to play mainly Decemberists songs that I don't really care for (Am I the only one who hates "Perfect Crime #2"?) and he dropped "Everyday is Like Sunday" from the set (so now I've seen both Morrissey and Colin Meloy and neither played it live), the final song in the encore was one of my top five concert moments. Easily.

He played a solo acoustic, campfire sing-along version of "The Mariner's Revenge Song." It may be my favorite song. If you've never head it go here and listen to the live KEXP version. It's a murder ballad about a sailor whose mother has a relationship with a rake, who leaves her destitute. On her deathbed, she implores her son, our narrator who is about five at the time, to seek revenge:

Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and
Break his fingers
To splinters
Drag him to a hole
Until he wakes up
Naked
Clawing at the ceiling of his grave

Tilda loves the song and sings along. There is nothing creepier than hearing a two-year-old singing that. It's all very cute.

Anyway, it's a great song, and though I thought I loved it before, seeing it live was awesome, even with just one guy and a guitar. The audience sings the mother's words and during the instrumental waltz section the crowd sways back and forth like waves in the ocean.

And it's just occurred to me that there's no real way to convey the experience to someone who wasn't present, or to someone unfamiliar with the song. I would say get the song and listen to it loudly and often. And if you get the chance to see Colin Meloy live with or without The Decemberists, do it.

And on another nautical note, I think I may have found my favorite verse from the Bible. I'm not particularly religious and I'll keep my views on the whole matter of god to myself, thank you very much, but this is from Psalms 107: 23-24, and is beautiful:

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
These see the works of the lord, and his wonders in the deep.

Now if I'd just known about the Hellboy comic they were giving away in New York yesterday that uses the first bit as it's title.

Oh, Hell

So my brother-in-law-in-law Kevin and I went up to the New York Comic-Con yesterday. And came back. I'm exhausted and am currently aching in places I didn't know I had. Kevin may feel worse. He did the driving.

The initial draw for me was that Guillermo Del Toro was going to be there. Never did get to see him - the Hellboy II panel was packed, and my lotter ticket didn't get drawn, so I missed out on the signing.

But I did get one of these:


It's a Drew Struzan painted one sheet that was exclusive to the New York Comic-Con. Only 2100 printed. Heavy paper and individually numbered. It's just nice and the lil image above really does not do it justice.

Otherwise, the con was both over and underwhelming. It was packed, which was to be expected, and I didn't get nearly as much stuff scribbled on as I brought. I found out a couple of days ago that Michael Whelan was going to be there, so I spent the day lugging around my copies of The Dark Tower 1 and 7, which is probable contributing to my general achiness today. But he was very nice and signed both of them, and now I know what to bring if Stephen King ever comes around.

Only met a couple of other artists that I like. Darwyn Cooke, who did The New Frontier, was great, but he had a line and I didn't want to take up too much time. Plus he'll be in Baltimore in September and hopefully I'll have a copy of the Absolute Edition of New Frontier by then.

That is a hint.

Glenn Fabry, who did the covers for Preacher and Hellblazer was cool and I got Kelly and Kevin a print he was selling of the main Preacher folks. He did do all the driving after all.

And Duncan Fegredo, who drew Hellboy: Darkness Calls was great. He signed all six issues and drew a little Hellboy doodle on the cover of issue #3.

Kevin and I ended up going to the Grant Morrison panel on a whim. I've liked Morrison's stuff, though sometimes he gets a little weird and esoteric. Yeah, even for me. But he seemed very cool and basically spent the entire hour doing a Q&A. The highlight was when someone asked him about the Batman movies and he said that the great thing about Batman is that you have a character who's been around for seventy years and you can do pretty much anything you want to with him. He then stated that there's been some great superhero moves and some really bad ones, but you can even find stuff to like in the bad ones.

At which point someone yelled out "What about Batman and Robin?"

And without hesitation, Morrison replied:

"Oh the colours are brilliant!"

Which is now why I like Grant Morrison as a positive role model. He can even say something nice about Batman and Robin.

But I still don't think I can bring myself to watch it again.

Ever.

Catching Up

So Jamee's out of own in Charlotte for about a week. So I'm here with Tilda by myself for a couple of days. Well, technically not really, because dad come up for the weekend and watched her last night while I went to a concert with Emily.

So, since Jamee was out of town I Netflixed a couple of things that I knew she would want to see. The first night of bacc'ing it I watched Right at Your Door, a low-budget flick about a guy who gets stuck in his house when a series of dirty bombs get set off in Los Angeles. It's pretty good. Small-scale and scary, but it kept bugging me trying to figure out where I'd seen the male lead before. Turns out it's Rory Cochrane, who played of my favorite characters in Dazed in Confused. I thought he'd disappeared after that one, but he's apparently been working steadily since. Which is nice.

My dad and I watched Breach on Friday night. It's the one about Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who was selling secrets to Russia for twenty-something years. It's a solid picture, and It's weird seeing DC locations in movies now that I've been living up here for eight years. Which brings me to a quibble with the flick. Hanssen was arrested the weekend Jamee and I moved to Ashburn. And unlike in the movie, there was no snow. Because if there was, I'd be even more pissed at the people who bailed on helping us move (None of whom read this. I think.)


So, on Saturday Dad and Tilda and Emily and I went to DC. Technically, Emily was already there. We went to the Natural History Museum where Emily is now doing an internship (a picture of her with her lunch can be found here is you scroll down to the R's). We walked around for a good six hours, taking a break to get lunch at the American Indian Museum, which we walked to. And Tilda did not tire. At all. She also did very well with the escalators. To my knowledge it was her first time riding one and she did great. Older kids were freaking out, but not Tilda.

She saved that for the dinosaurs.

Apparently dinosaur skeletons, like the Joker, freak her the fuck out. We'll try that again later.

She did like the new mammal exhibit, which is like a big zoo where all the animals are dead, and she seemed to really enjoy the bones exhibit, which is a long hallway lined with glass cases filled with skeletons. She's freaked out a bit by human skeletons, but she didn't have a problem with the one there. It's a pretty cool exhibit, too, and goes to show that context is everything. A hall full of skeletons in glass cases in a museum is neat. In your neighbor's basement, not so much.

We also found out this weekend that Tilda likes snakes and bugs. There was a display of a couple of snakes and according to Emily, Tilda pointed at them and labeled them "Mommy 'nake, Daddy 'nake, Tilda 'nake." Which is unbearably cute.

And I could not drag her away from the Insect Zoo. Which would horrify Jamee.

There are things that Jamee does not like. One of them is in the following picture. It is not me.


It's kind of hard to make out, but that big black thing halfway up my forearm is a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. They had a petting zoo portion of the Insect Zoo and the thought of letting a four inch long cockroach crawl up and down my arm horrified and repulsed me.

So I did it.

It was cool.

Tilda would not allow it. We shall save that til next time. Oh yes.

We then went to the gemstone exhibit that Tilda loved because I think she thought it was a store. So she likes skeletons, snakes, and bling. We are not warping her at all. Maybe I should play her more Alice Cooper.

We're going to have to go back to the Natural History Museum in the fall when the Ocean exhibit opens up. All you can see of it now is the giant whale they have suspended from the ceiling. I showed it to Maddy and said, "It's a whale, just like 'Find Him'."

Which brings us to the next post, which I will hopefully have up tomorrow.

But no promises.

Finding Something New

So Jamee found this yesterday:



It's pretty good and reminds me of Jonathan Coulton's brilliant cover of "Baby Got Back." There was a great video of it where someone took the original Sir Mixalot video and slowed it down so that the Coulton version matched it perfectly.

You can find the Coulton version here. It's worth your dollar.

On the other new stuff front, we're going to see DeVotchKa in May. There's a Canadian singer named Basia Bulat opening for them. Lately we've been skipping openers, but since we shelled out a whole $17.00 to see them, I wanted to see what her stuff sounded like. She's really good and if you want a taste of it, she did a Daytrotter session that you can download here for the princely sum of nothing.

Enjoy.

The Opposite of Awesome

The Omega Man
M'House
DVD

I think that The Omega Man now exists so that when someones says that they didn't care for the Will Smith version of I Am Legend, I can say, "you should check out the Charlton Heston version where the monsters are a cult of albino disco mutants."

Albino.
Disco.
Mutants.

Or something. It doesn't really matter. The Omega Man, like, I Am Legend, is an adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, but is so loosely adapted that it only shares the lead character's name and the general idea.

(OK, I started writing this two days ago and based on tonight's news it seems to be in really poor taste to go where I was going to go with it, so I'm just going to abandon it for now until I see the Vincent Price version and can do a big thing on all three.)