There are those of you who live in the Boston area that I don’t know in “real” life, so I may not have told you that this Saturday, December 16, 2006, Terri and I will be at the Boston Bazaar Bizarre selling goods as the Rainy Planet Press. It’s from 1pm - 7pm. Come say hi.

Admission is only $1, you can get lots of cool holiday shopping done, and while I don’t know much of the rest of the entertainment line-up, I have seen Hilken Mancini, and she alone is worth at least 10x the price of admission.

It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen at the Brattle did not disappoint, as usual. While I usually think of Starbuck’s as the Mr. Potter of coffee shops, they did, without much prior fanfare, pay for everyone’s tickets at today’s screening and give everybody a $5 gift card, and I know it was just advertising, but it still felt nice.

In other Brattle-ish news… If you weren’t sure that Bradley of Bradley’s Alamanac was a civic treasure (and  international, what with the interweb),  he was at the David Lynch Q&A last weekend, and has posted mp3’s.

There was a big fire down the street from where I work. The only thing that I saw was the lights go out in my office for about three seconds. But Ed was there.

I’m surprised that the Brattle isn’t showing Wings of Desire this year. They were showing it every holiday season for a while there, and this year people might be inclined to go, given that the A.R.T is putting on a stage version. Or maybe they are thinking that people will be all Wings of Desire-d out.
(We’re going to the A.R.T. production next week; I’m not sure whether it’s going to be great, like 90% of everything the A.R.T. puts on, or whether it’s just not going to translate to the stage. The cinematic technique is part of the point: the use of black and white stock, shot from high camera angles lets you see as the angels see; the overdubbed thoughts of the people on screen lets you hear what the angels hear. I have no idea how they’re going to pull that off. I wonder if that’s why Wim Wenders decided not to get involved— he’s a film director and might really not really have an idea of how to bring it to the stage.)

Anyway, I am also a little disappointed to see that It’s A Wonderful Life is relegated to two 1pm matinees next weekend. I have fond memories of the year that they served cookies and cider after one of the evening screenings.

And I’m really disapointed with myself for being too slow on the draw to get tickets to see (Brattle boardmember) David Lynch do Q&A after his new film premieres tonight at the Brattle. All I get is this YouTube video of him with a cow (which is pretty great: “Oh, my God, it’s f***ing David Lynch! What is David Lynch doing with a f***ing cow on the corner of LaBrea and Hollywood?!”).

“Boston Loses Its Wang”

You heard it here first.

I was blogging a lot about the Someday back in August before it closed, so people keep asking me if I’ve heard any news.

Here’s what I know. There are still plans afoot to re-open the Someday (I guess under the same name?) as a worker-owned co-op. They have a website. They are currently trying to work out an arrangement to share space with Sacco’s Bowl Haven on Day Street.
There is a benefit show this Saturday at 7pm in Harvard Square (?), on Mt. Auburn St behind the Lampoon building. I probably won’t be going because Terri and I are printing our butts off this weekend, but that shouldn’t stop you.

Last week, the Dig noted The Globe’s comically priggish circumlocutions in printing the title of the new Yo La Tengo album.

The one that stood out like a sore thumb for me this week was this one, in a story about Kelley Link et. al.:

Like many genre categories, this one is a shape-shifter with an array of aliases, including “slipstream,” “new weird,” and even a variation that combines “weird” with a common scatological term.

One one hand, it feels like taking them to task for this is a little like trying to get the prissy kid to swear during recess. But really, the only reason that’s fun is because the kid is so prissy. Just saying “weird shit” somehow sounds far less offensive than “even a variation that combines ‘weird’ with a common scatological term.”

I guarantee you, that no one, not James Taylor’s most rabid fan, wanted to see that. And, the article is pretty much six pages of this:

“We’re eating a lunch of poached salmon, soba noodles, bok choy, and spring rolls in the dining room of his large, unfussy hilltop house. The meal was prepared by Taylor’s wife of six years, Kim, a longtime executive with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The couple’s 4-year-old twin sons, Rufus and Henry, are hurling themselves onto their father’s lap and biting my nose with a snapping turtle made out of a paper plate. Taylor feeds them chunks of fruit and sings “Kumbaya” with new words about honeydew melon until Kim manages to shepherd them into the family minivan for a trip to Seiji Ozawa’s pool.”

Overheard at Fluff fest:

“I can’t believe there’s a war on, and here we are watching the Flufferettes. I guess it’s better than, I don’t know, caring about what Angelina Jolie is doing.”

I guess a little apertif of smugness helps numb the sense of guilt over not doing more to end the war?

The Globe reports that the Boston area’s two biggest dairies are going to stop using growth hormones. This is good, but it should be noted that they don’t seem to be going for organic certification, which would actually require them to really officially not use them, and to have it verified. Another thing that jumped out at me was that some “guy on the street” they interviewed at Whole Foods said “Organic to me means they let the cows out of the pen,” which they let pass without comment. That’s actually not really the definition, and it’s not at all true.

Personally, I’ve recently developed a very visceral distaste for milk, totally aside from any moral considerations. It’s really actually pretty vile-tasting, and really weird to think about. Killing and eating animals doesn’t really seem odd to me, but putting them in pens and extracting their secretions to drink is bizarre. No wonder we have collective nightmares about being used for fuel.

At any rate, soy milk has started tasting better to me.

You know, more than anything, I think yesterday’s “What the Fluff?” event was a demonstration of a great demand for these kinds of wacky events in Union Square. Lots of people turned out; it was actually pretty crowded. But I got this sense– and maybe it’s just me here– that everybody really wanted it to be cooler than it was. Really, I think it could have been a full-blown carnival, and they could have taken up the whole square area, plus the parking lot. Don’t get me wrong, it was a brilliant idea, highly unique, appealing to hipster and old-school Somervillian alike. But I felt like I had done everything there was to do, and we only stuck around maybe 20 minutes? I also noted that given the small number of entries in the science fair and the cooking contest that it would have been entirely feasible to come up with an entry that won both contests. (Actually, come to think of it, the fluff volcano cake could probably have taken the science fair, too).
Anyway, if you’re reading this, and you were one of the organizers, keep up the good work, and don’t be afraid to pull out the stops for future events. I honestly think if these things keep coming to Union Square, it’s going to be the Davis Square of the 00’s.

Much, much more coverage here.

If you’ve been to Harvard Square in the past two years you know who I’m talking about. He’s the asian guy who saws manaically at his bowed, one-stringed instrument (which I don’t know the name of; probably one of these) while staring off crazily into the distance.

At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He’s simply a virtuoso whose art simply sounds cacophonous to my untrained Western ears. But the more I saw him there, with his Kleenex box for donations, I came to a hypothesis that, no, he’s just some crazy guy sawing manaically at his one-stringed instrument.

The hypothesis was more or less confirmed during our recent trip to San Francisco where we saw probably a half dozen guys playing similar instruments on various Chinatown street corners. When they played, it sounded, you know, like music.

The thing I don’t get is that the guy in Harvard Square doesn’t seem to be displaying one of those Cambridge street artist licenses that all the other buskers in the square have. What’s up with that?

The other thing that drives me bonkers: he seems to be  always there, right in front of the Coop. Even those damnable Andean pan flute bands seem to sleep sometimes.

As if to punctuate the end of a horrible Red Sox season, the Hood blimp crashed.

Just more proof that Union Square is becoming Where It’s At in Somerville. Science, music, burlesque; what more could you want?

I’m bummed that just as I’m really starting to warm up to them, B for Brontosaurus is going on “Total Hiatus”. Doug and I caught their excellent show tonight Lily Pad in Inman Square.

This incarnation had them as a 12-piece ensenble, doing “American Standards”, including some Magnetic Fields, some obscure-ish 60’s pop songs (including a Lennon/McCartney song the Beatles never recorded), “Smile” (you know, the one that goes “Smile, though your heart is breaking…”, which was written by Charlie Chaplin- who knew?), and, happily, some B for Bronto originals.

Yeah, they do remind me of Jonathan Richman and TMBG and The Magnetic Fields, but I think it’s especially unfair in their case to treat them as the sum of their influences. I don’t think they’re trying to sound like anyone or be anyone other than themselves, but I bring up the comparison, because they do have a similar way of making short, heartfelt, simple-ish songs that have a deep melancholy streak, but that make you smile and feel like a kid in spite of yourself. I think it’s something that couldn’t be pulled off without an overabundance of enthusiasm and originality, and I very much think they pull it off.

So while I’m throwing out he comparisons, I will also say that as a big ensemble, they also remind me a bit of the early Belle & Sebastian albums and EPs, where there are some ambitious arrangments pulled off with a kind of Andy Hardy lets-do-the-show-right-here!-in-the-barn! kind of optimism. I am sad that they’re going on hiatus, too, because I think that if the large ensemble version would get more used to playing together, they’d really be fantastic.
Another thing I like about them: despite the small, simple songs, they think big. The whole “American Standards” thing had its own kind of ambition. Also, Ben Morse helped organize the very fun Jonathan Richman tribute show at PAs Lounge this past March.

Update: correction: It was a Rooney/Garland vehicle (and a Busby Berkeley one, too!) where they put the show on in the barn, but not an Andy Hardy movie. Also, sorry, Doug, I corrected the spelling of melancholy.