10/28/02
At some point during the marathon, one is supposed to hit The Wall, and get past it. I suspect I've already hit it, and the Marathon proper hasn't even started yet. Saturday night was the Soft Boys at the Bowery Ballroom--Robyn Hitchcock was in better form than usual these days (particularly a long monologue about the relationship of the "magical triangular chord" D to the invisible pyramid tattoo over the pineal gland ["it's okay, it's invisible, you can still be buried in a Jewish cemetery"] and how this relates to how time will start running backwards in December 2012), Kimberley Rew still looks like a refugee from AC/DC, and it's improbable how well they play together.
Last night was the final night of Chickfactor's tenth anniversary "Black & White Ball," and an all-around lovefest, pretty much. My friend Kardyhm was there, having recently ended up on the right side of some difficult life experiences; hope we get to see more of her soon. I was also introduced to a young woman who said "Oh--you're Douglas! I've got your wedding CD! And I saw you and your wife a couple of months ago in that French restaurant on Vernon Blvd., but I didn't want to go up to you and say hi then, because you were in the middle of dinner..."--Wait, how do you know what I look like? "Oh, you're in the photos on Lisa's site." There were actual performances going on, too: Future Bible Heroes, the Aislers Set, the Aluminum Group (who are now playing all their backing tracks off iPods whose cords trail out of the breast pockets of their sharply tailored suits), and the Cover Girls (all-girl cover band, featuring Phoebe Summersquash on drums, Fontaine Toups on bass, a guitarist or two I didn't recognize, and lots of different people singing--including Queen Gail O'Hara herself, who brilliantly enough picked Liz Phair's "Fuck and Run" to sing. Also, a fashion show and a sword dancer.
And tonight was Sleater-Kinney's end-of-tour show at Warsaw, a venue to which I'm never buying tickets again until they do something about the acoustics and the general boomity-boom effect. Nice cover of "Private Idaho," though. And at least a quarter of the audience looked exactly like Jenny Eliscu. No shows tomorrow, I think, but starting Wednesday... I'm already hearing the squeal of the subways.