October 24, 2003

cookie curve starch

Highlight of CMJ so far = Rob Crow and Optiganally Yours at Luna Lounge last night. That man is goofy. Interesting that he stuck almost entirely to songs from the first OY album (which is better anyway), but--showmanship! costumes! members of his other band in animal masks and dresses! audience participation! Also appreciated that in the course of an hour we'd seen him cover both "Spanish Flea" and "Minor Threat," the latter on acoustic guitar, very quietly, and about 150% as fast as MT themselves. His right hand is a blur.

Have been doing some... interesting interviews for the JB/LATA book. Best quote so far: "The only two honest people in the music industry are me and Clive Davis, and he's a sonofabitch." Also just interviewed DBC Pierre for a tiny piece for the Voice next week--besides having good initials, he's the author of Vernon God Little, which just won the Booker Prize and is awfully funny.

(Email I sent to a Voice fact-checker last night:
"'Velcro fucken ant-farms seize my gut'--p. 43
'They need a skate-goat, they want to hang somebody high'--p. 67
'fucken'--pp. 3-199 passim")

But beyond that there's the book issue, for me, which is that wonderful things are being published and I can't allow myself to look at them yet. Everything and More is banned from the premises until I turn in the manuscript. If Rising Up and Rising Down happens to show up, I'm not going to let myself even open the box (not that that's likely, given that it appears to have been delayed to mid-November). Even The Slippery Slope is likely to live up to its title. Not to mention the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo that's been tempting me from about page 100 for weeks. And let's not even get into that Looney Tunes DVD collection that's due out next week. Ohhhh.

Posted by Douglas at October 24, 2003 9:34 AM