I always get the impression that I’m blogging every day then I check in and realize a week’s gone by. Here’s the run-down:

Being Good got its Blogcritics review over the weekend. Hits received from Blogcritics.org: zero. Wow. Does that say something about me, the reviewer or the non-influence of Blogcritics? I have my suspicions. I could probably say quite a bit about the review, but why? I will add only this note to the commenter: why is it when a writer self-publishes, it’s “vanity publishing,” but when a band puts out its own CD it’s DIY entrepreneurship?

Weekend: spent most of Friday night in a bar where there was no band playing. That’s definitely out of the ordinary. And though the company was great, my ass really hurt at the end of the night. Saturday, I went down to the De Novo Dahl show at the Exit/In. There was a line around the block and I had arrived at 10. So as I circled, I called Atom since I was going to be meeting him. He and Josh and their friends had seen the same line and gone over to Ken’s Karaoke. Having never been in a karaoke bar, I went over and watched them perform. At 11.45 or so we hit the DND show. It was still packed. Unbelievable.

Talked to the Slacks a couple of times over the weekend. The first to run by them the idea of renaming the ‘zine. The second because Ben had to tell me the story of their totally effed up evening. It involved drunk girls, estranged husbands, a naked man, 3 boa constrictors and a gimp squirrel. Wild.

Dress Your Family: I’ve slowed down on my book consumption. Does the new laptop with internet connection having anything to do with it? Jeez, I wonder. Still enjoying it, but it’s taken some weird turns. My impression is that Sedaris has really honed his story-telling ability and he can milk weird little incidents into effective stories. It benefits the longer stories too. Helps make the longer stories move quickly and feel short but meaty. The guy is good. I need to finish it up.

The Office. Last, maybe Wednesday? Thursday?, I finished Episode 5 of Series 2 and decided not to watch the finale until we could watch everything with Todd and Amy. Then Saturday, I woke up early and decided “Fuck it.” So I watched the finale. Huh. Well, it didn’t really scratch the itches that it caused. Further comment would be a huge spoiler.

Pop music: I really dig the new Geri Halliwell song, “Ride It.” On the way to the show the other night, I was blaring “No Good Time” off the new Graham Coxon album. It rules. The line “gonna do some coke ‘n’ maybe do some pokin” is genius. I have discovered that I have never gotten tired of Atomic Kitten’s “Turn Me On.” That is fucking disco.

Watched most of the Ramones Raw DVD last night. There’s a chapter on Dee Dee called “Dee Dee is a punk rapper” where they cover his departure from the band. It’s a pretty smart segment. In the guise of letting Dee Dee tell the story himself, they use footage from an interview Dee Dee gave MTV. But the clip is preceded and followed by footage from Dee Dee’s video for “Funky Guy.” It is – and I don’t think I’m exaggerating – possibly the worst “song” by an established musician ever. So, cleverly, the filmakers have let Dee Dee make an ass out of himself without injecting any editorial from other members of the band.

I’m pretty sure we may be changing the name of the ‘zine this week. I’m still hesitant to pull the trigger on that decision. But we’ve got a good name cooked up and I bought the URL this weekend. If I do decide to change, I’ll have to get some server space and begin the always awesome process of transferring a site. Sweet.

Just finished watching another episode of The Office during lunch. Series 2 Episode 4. Watching Brent become unhinged is becoming really delightful. Yes, I just used the word “delightful.”

Also, just got a phone call from my friend Janie. She and I always talk books and she called to tell me she’d read Being Good and loved it. She said she laughed out loud several times. Whew…

So this is the first entry I’m making from my new laptop in my apartment. (Previously, I had no internet connection in the apartment and only an old laptop to write on. The new laptop has a wireless card and I can sponge off my landlord downstairs. Cheers, Mr Furley.)

Media intake has been limited since I’ve been otherwise engaged.

My friends Todd and Amy gave me a thanks-for-feeding-our-cats present of the Second Series of The Office and the book FDR’s Folly (so I’ll check those off the old wishlist). The Office I dove right into watching 3 episodes of the 6 on Sunday. Good Jesus, it’s even harder to watch than the first series. I was telling Amy it’s the kind of show that when you laugh, you’re not laughing at a joke, you’re laughing AT someone. And the laughter is always a surprise. Like “OH MY GOD!” Just an exclamation of laughter.

The book I’m really looking forward to, but I’m going to have to put it on the back burner for a while. After Sedaris’s new one, I’m planning on gorging myself on some sordid Hollywood tales. Amber and I hit the bookstore on Friday night and I stumbled across The Devil’s Candy which looks awesome. I’d also like to read Roger Simon’s Director’s Cut and a couple more. Also, my dad whipped through Crichton’s latest and passed it to me to read. That will have to wait as well.

Meanwhile, the stack of albums on my stereo grows. Will I ever review even one of them?

So it took me a couple of days to pick up another book, but last night I cracked open David Sedaris’s Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. I’m always a bit wary of starting a book like this at the wrong time because I know I’ll tear through it once I start reading. So I try to portion out the time I spend reading it. But that’s frustrating too, like driving in second gear. I really want to open her up and let her rip. I read a couple of stories last night and I was definitely holding back. This weekend I’ll probably be able to sink my teeth in.

It is, of course, enjoyable. I think I remember getting to the middle of Me Talk Pretty One Day before I really started crying with laughter, and since I haven’t yet shed tears at Dress Your Family, I’m hopeful that the book will pick up in intensity.

In TV news, I think I’ve mentioned before that my girlfriend and I have a very elaborate VCR programming process worked out so that she tapes different shows every night (when she works) to watch when she gets home or the next day. When the process works, it’s great because I can be productive at night and not feel like I’m missing something culturally significant on Two and a Half Men (I almost called it Two and a Half Dads which is immensely funnier). Then I too can watch the shows at my leisure during the week. Unfortunately, because the process involves 7 different VCR tapes and my girlfriend’s show selection and programming ability, there are often shortcomings.

For example, I rewound the Wednesday tape Thursday afternoon to watch King of Queens which she hadn’t taped since she’s never figured out to look for King of Queens in the TV Guide or that KoQ comes on CBS or whatever. (This is all hard for me to discuss since the TV schedule is programmed into my brain each year like a catechism. Knowing that, in a pinch, she couldn’t tell me which network carries Law & Order shakes my faith.)

She had only taped Law & Order on Wednesday. It was the first episode with the new female ADA (the one who took that lesbian’s place) and neither of us had watched it. Well, I left the tape there and went to work. Then Thursday night, I come home and she announces that CSI is a re-run. I see the VCR is running. I look quickly to the tapes and see that “THURSDAY” is still on the shelf. Damn it. She just taped over L&O on the WEDNESDAY tape. Oh well, I guess we can watch Joey during dinner. No dice. She’s taped Wickedly Perfect. Deep breaths.

I caught bits and pieces of Committed again this week only because I think Jennifer Finnigan is cute and I’m bewildered by this adenoid-inflicted voice she’s chosen to use in the show. The first time I saw it, the voice threw me so completely I didn’t recognize her. The show sucks. Did she voluntarily leave Crossing Jordan for this? CJ sucks too so it was really a lateral move.

The K and I ponged yesterday. It was terrible. I think he won in the end, but neither of us played well at all.

[This piece originally appeared in All The Rage.]

Sometimes it’s difficult to pinpoint the moment when a band becomes bigger than a “local band.” When did the Features do it? Feable Weiner? Venus Hum? Bands tend to grow fairly gradually until one day, they’re touring Europe and you’re thinking “I think their bass player still owes me rent.” But in the case of De Novo Dahl, that moment will come on Saturday January 29th when the band releases their ridiculously ambitious double album, Cats & Kittens, at the Exit/In. (continue reading…)

So I finished Dee Dee’s Lobotomy last night. In summary, it’s a book by a junkie. So it isn’t any good. As a psychological profile of Dee Dee, it may be fantastic, but that doesn’t make it good reading.

It especially fails as a biography of the Ramones. The narrative rambles and jumps from past to present tense and rarely includes details or specifics (probably Dee Dee couldn’t remember them). Often, huge spans of time are just left out. I told a friend last night: if you took out all the sentences that went “then I went to cop some dope,” the book would be half as long. There are virtually no concrete details about Dee Dee’s time in the Ramones (or anything else). He wants to paint this as being pushed away, that even in the Ramones he wasn’t accepted. But, though parts of this may be true, Dee Dee was a junkie and after a while, it’s evident that he’s just trying to manipulate the story to elicit some sympathy.

The tragic unwritten epilogue is, of course, that Dee Dee died of a heroin overdose in 2002. I suspect those who read the book before his death wouldn’t have been shocked at all.

Must think of more interesting titles for posts.

Fargo Rock City – finished it over the weekend. Loved it.

Finally jumped into Dee Dee Ramone’s Lobotomy. It’s been sitting on my shelf for years. I’ve made many notes already on the book already. My goal is to finish it up tonight so I don’t have to drag it out. Short take: Dee Dee is an idiot. I may have more to say later.

I interviewed a really excellent band today called De Novo Dahl. They’ve been around for a few years and I actually was at one of their very first, if not their actual first, show. They’ve just made a really amazing record called Cats and Kittens. It’s actually a double-album. Cats is the album proper and Kittens is a remix of every single song. I haven’t been able to listen to it enough to absorb it yet, but it’s damn good.

Shit, my throat hurts and I’m trying to talk Todd K out of ping-pong and I’m too concerned about my throat to concentrate on writing any more.

Yesterday, my media intake and output was slight, owing to a “full day at the office.” I wish that were a euphemism for something seedy, but it just means that I spent nearly twice the usual time on my temp job. I went home after work; my girlfriend was sick. I went to the Post Office, grocery store and drug store, then back home. Then I went to Todd K’s house for the pong. We ate some ass-tastic pizza before doing battle — battle which was severly handicapped by the ass-tastic pizza. NB: the “tomatoes” on a Roma pizza don’t taste like tomatoes on pizza should.

The pong went well again. Todd won one match; I won one and then I won a championship match that went to three games. It was pretty damn good.

I left Todd’s at almost a quarter to 11 and raced downtown to see Slack at the Exit/In. Despite my fears that they might have hustled to get the show rocking and I might have missed them, I arrived in time to see a few songs by The Privates — a band I’ve now seen several times and still have no idea how any of their songs go. Slack played their first show with Ben in more than three months and it was great. You’d never have known he’s been practically bed-ridden since September. I hope he felt well.

An hour and two Budweisers later and I left to go back home. Now I’m at work with a headache from lack of sleep and allergies. Also, I don’t think I’m rid of the pizza yet and it’s causing trouble… If my ass holds, we may have more pong tonight.

I actually laughed out loud at Fargo Rock City last night (previously I’d just been chuckling guiltily on the inside). It was when Klosterman suggested that Whitesnake’s video for “Here I Go Again” was about “watching a woman trying to fuck a car.” Then about two pages later I laughed again. I think Klosterman’s obsessive metal knowledge is a little hard to drill into.

It might be laugh-out-loud funnier to someone who wasn’t as steeped in metal lore as I was. I read all the magazines he’s talking about. I know the name of White Lion’s guitar player. So to me, reading the book is largely like having an amusing conversation with a guy I knew from high school.

Unlike Klosterman, I was never really a metalhead. I was just into music and as Chuck points out metal was pop back then. That was what I absorbed because it was the most easily accessible. Chuck brings up the classic argument about keyboards “being gay” (in the words of Charlie Benante). I’m not completely sure I ever had that argument with someone, but I remember vividly a scene in which I decried the use of drum machines.

Todd K and I ponged fiercely the other night. I think we’ve gotten back in stride. My wins over the last couple of months have been largely due to series of errors from the K man. Finally, we got to a point where we were both having to concentrate to play the game. It wore us the hell out.

(Oh, and I still won the majority of games.)

After pong, we watched most of an episode of 24. Wow, does that program ever suck big, sweaty donkey balls. I know, I’m such a low-brow doofus who just wants his detective shows to make sense that you shouldn’t even pay attention to my thoughts on this. Why for example are all the people who work in Jack Bowers’ FBI office such backstabbing mothereffers? Why do they work in Dr No’s volcano? What is wrong with that deranged, mousy woman?

It’s not like it’s the new wave of TV not to make sense. The Law & Order and the CSI franchises base their shows on reality, evidence, reason. The plots for each take liberties but the genre makes sense: Detectives following clues to solve cases. The truth is 24 isn’t a cop show. No, 24 is a soap opera. The characters speak with the same misplaced gravitas. The scenes jump from one to the next with no regard for conflict resolution. Sure, they may think it’s edgy because every so often they off a 16-year-old girl. But it’s total bullshit.

First things first, I finished Bright Lights, Big City and was severly annoyed with it. There was no real story at all. It just stopped right in the middle. I realize it’s largely a preference issue. I like stories like I like pop songs. Maybe this is for classical or jazz people. I don’t know. Mind you, if I had read the book when I was 18, I would have thought it was the greatest thing ever. But I’m not 18 any more.

It so annoyed me that, though I finished it at 1 in the morning, I picked up Richard Russo’s Straight Man and read a chapter just to remind myself what I like about books. I laughed out loud at Straight Man again and didn’t laugh at all at Bright Lights, despite the quote on the book that said it was “hilarious.”

So I’m back in the middle of Fargo Rock City and enjoying it.

I figured out yesterday why I don’t read GQ and Esquire anymore. I’ve been wondering for about a year why I purchase issues of those magazine and they sit unread in my house. I was flipping through some old issues this weekend and I figured it out. It’s the effing advertisements. Jesus. 100 pages before the content actually starts. That is what we in the ping-pong world call “bullshit.”