Month: August 2019

Anniversary Weekend Date 1: The Astoria Underground Tours. This reminded me so much of my days working at the Velveteria: Museum of Velvet Paintings. The place is cool, the story about the clown car is fantastic, and the other bits about the Astoria history and fires was great. As with many things like this, there is as much PT Barnum to it as there is actual history, which is most of the charm for me, and the folks who run it are more fun than you can imagine. I very much recommend it.

Apparently, you can book rides on the train car, too. We saw a few folks doing a bar crawl after the tour. Very excellent.

Tonight on the program: two hours of experimental music! 1 hour of new records! 1 hour of live jams! One complete Mid-Valley Mutations!

Join me, Whirlynn, Don Haugen, Tim Maloney, Derryl Parsons, Dylan Houser, Chris Phinney & Jim Barker, Drunjus, Mr. Bacon and The Meat Parade, AND a live performance by Mini-Mutations and A Moment’s Sound (Scott Eave).

Live radio on a Friday Night? It must be Mid-Valley Mutations… KMUZ.org, 10 PM, sharp!

Planning my Sacramento trip. I’m quite looking forward to seeing my NorCal NoiseFest family, hearing some new stuff, practicing my Klingon.

On that note: as I plan the before / after travel, I’d love to try and squeeze in some radio or a side gig while I’m down. Anyone on the air, into experimental stuff, and wants to make some additional noise? I’d be willing to do a little driving, perhaps.

Let’s make this happen…

I’m re-listening to a section of “The Restaurant At The End of The Universe” on UB RADIO SALON and I’m reminded at how ridiculously funny that goddamned radio show is.

I almost ruined Adams for myself, through a series of missteps that any young man can make. I had the audio books read by Adams for most of my young life, and also came into recordings of the radio show in my 20s. But there was a period, when maybe I was drinking too much and feeling particularly low, that I listened to those tapes almost endlessly. There is something about his sense of humor that is incredibly sharp, dizzyingly rapid, and more out-loud funny than almost anything else I’ve ever read. (Maybe Wodehouse is that good? Richard Meltzer? Borges? There’s a few others.)

Anyway, I listened to those recordings, on a near endless loop, when I was at my worst, and through college and just afterwards I put them away, and didn’t listen to them again. Part of me feared I had burned it out, that maybe I had played them so much that I no longer would find them funny, that I would somehow see the matrix through repetition and I could no longer evoke that feeling of the first time I read Hitchhiker’s, by myself, over two days, and found myself addicted to prose in a way I had never encountered before.

Fortunately, those recordings aren’t ruined. They’re as funny as they ever were. Bursting forth with great jokes I only half-remembered and lines I couldn’t wait to hear again. Who knew there was still some teenage Joy left in me, if not wrapped up in very complicated feelings, too.

And thanks again, Das and Nina for reminding me of something amazing.

“Put your analyst on danger money. NOW.”

“No no, your monkey has got it right, sir.”

Hell yeah.

I was cleaning my office today instead of doing anything outside in the 100 degree weather, and I was reminded: hey, I released a new album recently! This month, even. Seven new cut-ups and re-contextualized sounds, formed into an audio essay that is only available on CD! This disc comes packaged with an essay on the role buildings play in our lives, cover art by the incomparable Devin Miller, an addition digital album only available through this release, and the entire package was hand made by myself, right here in the Lava Lamp Lounge.

Pick up your copy today, and enjoy something new as part of your own back-to-school program.

Message me if you’re interested! Limited to 100 copies…

So, it’s that time of year again. In October we like to tell ghost stories on the radio. It’s a lot of fun, and this year we’re on Nov 1st, so we even get an extra week to get spooky.

Do you have a ghost story? Do you want to be on the radio this October? Let’s scare our radio listeners, and: let’s get in touch…

We recently hosted two Veronica Mars watch paries to celebrate the new Season of the show, as it seemed like a fun idea. We knew enough people who are nerds about the show that it made sense, and my wife is a very big fan, and likes hosting parties. Seems like a win for everyone.

The first party was to watch the first couple episodes of Season 4 after it came out, and the second party to watch the final two episodes a few weeks later, after everyone was able to catch up. (There were a number of lead-in nights too, where a few of the crew got together to watch the past seasons.) Our group included fans and people who felt strongly (and positively) about the show, and given the era we live in and how well loved Rob Thomas’ shows are, it seemed like I was going to be the noob who was just there to watch some real fans enjoy their show, and hopefully catch up.

I came to the program very late; my wife showed it to me, only a year or two ago, and it was great. But I didn’t have a tattoo from the show, and I hadn’t spent years waiting for this possibility. I really enjoyed the show I saw, and was ready to dive in. Need I mention there are spoilers below? Here’s what happened:

I think, up until the last episode, everyone was in agreement: the new theme song sucks, and the show is better than we deserve. The writing is sharp, the characters are as good as they were before, and the story is actually better now than they were ever able to do (or present) when the show was on originally. This is for a number of reasons: TV has changed, the writer has evolved, and the world we live in has changed, too. So the show, while not on the air, benefited from everything that has happened in the years since. TV is good now; Veronica Mars was always great, even when TV wasn’t. In an era when TV is just better, so is this show, by quite a bit.

But the end was very controversial in our home. Some of our guests were horrified, and weren’t sure they could recover. Other’s feel like the end leaves us with an incomplete season, and their judgement is being held until we see where the show goes. Other’s seemed to be in shock, not sure if they will be able to process the events for some time. There’s no reason to beat around the bush (except that the end of the season isn’t really what interests me right now), but let’s say that if you care about this show at all and you are still not sure what we’re all dancing around right now, then perhaps you want to watch it and come back to the next paragraph, afterwards. Two warnings should be enough, yes?

Okay. Here we go.

I really liked the ending. And, I think that it is not only in the spirit of the show to have ended that way, but that the end as interpreted is not nearly as final as I think many folks are still thinking it to be.

I was in the minority in my house. That’s for certain. But I’m used to liking things that other people don’t like, and favoring unpopular opinions, too. But I think I’m possibly grading on a curve. I don’t think the last few scenes of the show have any effect on my opinion; clearly those are meant to be a cliffhanger, meant to set up the next season, and meant to – possibly – be a misdirect, in terms of what actually happened. Not only is that common practice on most shows, but on this show specifically; every season ends with a cliffhanger, the movie does too, and Rob Thomas is very good at setting hooks that keep viewers interested until the next time around. To end this season in a nice and tightly wrapped up story at the end is not only out of character for the program, but would be incredibly unsatisfying to fans. The show is based on their antagonists striving for something to overcome. How long can a happy couple in marital bliss with no conflict last in the world of Veronica Mars, where many relationships suffer, in one way or another?

The end is cleverly telegraphed not only in the story itself, but in what the story explores throughout the season. Over the course of these episodes, we see and hear about her friends and family moving on to new phases of their lives, while Veronica herself is still in the same job she held when she was in High School. Veronica seems to want to let her hair down a fair amount in this season, and while her friends do join her to some degree, there’s a lack of caution that she exhibits in her willingness to get high at the drop of a hat that her other, grown up friends do not show. While this isn’t exactly a new place for Veronica to be, Season four really highlights how the rest of the cast really have moved on to new careers, new pursuits, new priorities, and in some cases, new parts of the world (Mac), while Veronica is the only person who hasn’t changed much, outside of being a little older and having a little more experience under her belt.

Certainly she’s an even better detective now, but what this Season puts on screen more than anything are the characters and their relationships; or, more specifically, how they have changed from the first three seasons. Which shouldn’t be surprising at all; the characters are so far removed from the High School setting of the beginning of the show that they had no choice but to evolve what this program is / would become. The program needed to leave school too.

But the masterstroke of Season 4 is to keep Veronica in a state of arrested development, and let the world around her grow up. This gives the audience a way to follow Veronica into this new Season and feel like they are with the same character they loved before.

What fascinates me about this season, though, is not Veronica; as mentioned, she more or less stays the same, learning to become more bitter and cynical than she perhaps was at the beginning. For a show that seemed focused on the relationships that women have (that is, Veronica), quite a bit of screen time this Season is given to male friendships and the many forms they take. While not precisely the center of the storyline, a number of male friendships get a sizable amount of time on screen, and strangely enough, in ways that are not precisely plot-centric, but have components to them that go out of their way to show how their friendships take shape.

Alonzo and Dodie pal around quite a bit, getting to enjoy the luxuries of America – including Lavender Tea and having a girlfriend – while remaining existentially philosophical about the job the’ve been given by their crime boss, that of murdering the person who accidentally killed his nephew in a bombing connected to the primary plot. The scenes we get between these assassins show two men who have become friends through work, and do their best to enjoy the temporary boons that come their way, as they know that sooner or later they have to wrap a head up in plastic, toss it in the back, and return to the boring lives they knew before, that of being contract killers.

Clyde Pickett develops a similar relationship with Keith Mars, initially to play him for information, and later looking for a Dodie to his Alonzo. Clyde spends his days in other male relationships that he finds less than desirable: working for Big Dick, negotiating with Weevil and the street thugs, or conning his way into fancy cars. The opportunity to exchange stories with Keith is Clyde’s idea of social fun, and he goes out of his way to continue to grease the wheels of this relationship in spite of Keith being less and less adept at hiding his lack of interest. This relationship is painted so well that when Keith has to directly break it off with Clyde, Clyde is visibly crushed without saying a word. Adult male relationships are hard to maintain, and you can either become distant-but-philosophical work partners (Alonzo & Dodie) or end up like Clyde and Keith, struggling to both define where work ends and friendship begins.

In fact, this season manages to show the many stages of Male friendship in a way that, perhaps, presents a spectrum of ages and desired pairings. Be it the stoned friends who just want to watch Space Ghost together, the college friends that bond over a common misdeed, the street kids working for Weevil just trying to keep the money flowing, Logan & Little Dick falling into old patterns while both having changed in spite of themselves, or finding the kind of work partner that you can really open up to, and then finally, the friends we try to make as we get older, Season 4 has an incredible focus on how these friendships are maintained, and how they are often forged by sharing a common secret. It is this secret that keeps them close, but how they negotiate that closeness depends on your current stage in life cycle of friendships. This is particularly fascinating for a show that often portrays a female perspective and the relationships she has to maintain in order to continue her crazy (and complicated) life. Again, in a Season where everyone is moving forward but Veronica, it is interesting that we see her continue to negotiate her relationships in the same way she did back in High School, while nearly all the other characters are having to find new friendships outsider of her. (Even Little Dick has a movie career now, which is sort of like growing up for him.)

This is particularly underlined in the way that her primary relationship – that with Logan – is shown this season. This season is probably unique in that she is seeing the same person the entire time. And, in fact, it is the same love interest from Season 1… a character that has been in nearly every episode of the show… and, in fact, who she was paired off with in the movie. But their relationship is as much on-again, off-again now as it was before; he’s a special ops military gent who gets deployed and returns suddenly, creating a situation where they don’t see each other very often. As a result, their intentions are different when they see each other. Logan wants to treasure the time together, as a grown adult who is working to become more than the caricature of an angry young man that he once was. Where Veronica likes the pattern of him leaving and returning, and wants things to stay as they have been all the way back to High School, when life was exciting and he was only occasionally available to her, depending on the current drama.

Logan wanting to Marry Veronica is his attempt at getting her to join him on the path to growing up, but she also senses the tension the fans feel: with a marriage, there is no show. They settle down and… then what? Can you see Veronica having kids? Even staying with Logan this whole time is an effort on her part to keep things the same, where as Logan is trying to bring change to their dynamic.

Killing Logan – I really hope that wasn’t a spoiler, I warned you couple times – was not only essential for the story, but for the future of the show. This keeps Veronica in detective mode, forces her to carve out a life outside of High School, and face the world that exists when we acknowledge our own mortality. Ironically, Veronica needs to be violently forced out of her High School life in order to “grow up,” something we’ll see more of next season, I suspect.

While this show is not prone to the kinds of things one sees on “Lost,” I also rest easy knowing that some part of me can invoke the rule of all long running comics and television: no body was shown. An incredible amount of time passed between Veronica’s last glimpse of Logan and the explosion that we do not directly see on screen. So much of that ending is left for us to infer and is not stated directly that it’s funny, in a show with absolutely more ridiculous plot contrivances to be sure, that no one is speculating that perhaps Logan did not die in the explosion. He is a spy. He was supposed to be gone for a while, and returned suddenly, and quickly. Those end scenes seemed… odd acted, by Logan, to me.

Am I wrong? Am I reaching? Maybe. And if Logan is dead forever I’m fine with that too. (But we’ll always have flashbacks, which I think will play s role in next Season.) But what I am excited about is this being the catalyst for taking Veronica to somewhere new, and showing off the skills she has in a setting where she can grow and excel as an adult. It’s what an grown up Veronica Mars deserves: a chance to leave the town of her youth and find out if there’s anything else out there for her.

I loved Logan. I thought his character was a very important part of the show. I’m shocked they choose him to kill, as there are other characters that could evoke a similar reaction and still bring about her need for change. His loss is a big deal, certainly.

But, realistically, people die. There are times in our lives where we can party and celebrate and think nothing of the future because tragedy of this kind hasn’t yet hit us hard. A big part of life is loosing someone incredibly important to you, and realizing that you have an entire life ahead of you that you need to learn to deal with.

I think that’s where Season Five will show us: what Veronica does, yet again, in the face of a massive tragedy.

I can’t wait.

First Band Name?

Cappuccino Hallucinations was mine, w/ Damon Armitage.

ACRONYM was second, a name I still use to some degree, with input from Steve, who immediately hated the name.

Cathead was third, but wasn’t my name. (Kiisu Dsalyss / Quentin came up with that, I believe.)

The Be-Sweatered Gents (a loaf-core idea with Chris.)

The Bliptones (w/ Sierra)

American Barricade (w/ Sierra. We came up with this in 1995, but there’s a current band with that name now)

The Lamplighters / The Ladies Love Us (with Tristan)

Ashtray Batteries / Cypher (w/ Trevor)

Played in The Dead Air Fresheners, but it was not my name by a long shot. (wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Air_Fresheners)

MKUltramegaphone (devils/club came up with the name, but I loved it / ran with it)

and lastly

Mini-Mutations.

Am I forgetting any?

This song came to mind suddenly and my wife didn’t know what I was talking about. In spite of having not heard this since it was on Dr. Demento, I’m shocked at how much I remember, and how amazing the choreographed sexy angles at the end are, and how they must have a funny story about making this. Always nice to see Father Guido Sarducci now and then.

Apparently this place is just therapy for me now. I finally threw away this battery, something we’ve kept around the house since our trip to Disneyland last year. We bought this fairly early in our relationship, for camping and traveling, and it has served us well. But when it was soaked at Splash Mountain, it has never really worked right.

We bought a replacement, and it was stolen from a table at a bar one night. We finally got two more, but this one lingered around for a while. It still almost-worked, I rationalized. But it didn’t, and it just took up space while I clung to the supposed memories, instead of clinging to broken technology, which is what it really was.

Yesterday, I finally managed to throw it away, but only after I insisted on taking a photo. Because I am broken.

And I already know that next year when this comes up in my memories, I’ll be hard pressed to remember why I had to keep it for so long.

Sigh. Middle-Aged-Man strikes again…

I don’t still see many people who I knew in the ‘90s. Devin is probably my oldest friend that I still see regularly; while I don’t see Justin as often, we stay in touch. Colin, Kiisu & Sierra are still around, and I see them often enough. I met Cheryl at the end of the ‘90s; I still see Tara occasionally.

But Summer hasn’t been in my life much since the ‘90s. We met in the Cathead days and we didn’t stay in touch. But it’s funny how we can sort of pick up, so many years later, and it’s like the old days all over again.

Thanks for coming out! Let’s hang again soon.

Okay friends, tonight is the night! DJ Marshmellow (Marla) has be previewing her set around the house lately, and it’s gonna sound great if I do say so myself. Come on out to the Graveyard Bar tonight and dance the night away. A little bird told me that some of the Ghost House crew from Eugene might show up to see how we do things in Salem. Let’s wear our nicest black shirts and dance dance dance!

See you tonight!

Getting ready for our show tonight, with a live performance by Four Dimensional Nightmare! But that’s not all! Mini-Mutations will be joining in during the second hour, with a bonus performance on the podcast! And then tune in for music by Daona, Bishop of Battle, The Outsiders, Tim Maloney, The Nation of Ulysses, Delroy Wilson, Thollem McDonas & Andy Kaufman, Dan Jackson & Josh Boutwell, Steamshovel Monkey, Fate vs. Free Will Turn Signals, The Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, Fatala, MX-80 and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282! Whew! It’s a packed show, so tune in to KMUZ.org at 10 PM, sharp!

Help us get through the end of the month by picking up a few items from Mini-Mutations & ACRONYM, Inc.! We have home-made music, zines and art, and mail-orders come with mail-art! We have music in every format: vinyl, CD, cassette, or digital download! Seven new releases this year alone! Some not available online! Back-Catalog music and ‘Zines going back to 1993! Novelty Mutated Money, and even a Spoken Word and Punk Rock album, for those who like that kind of stuff! Place an order, make an offer, and keep local makers busy at the end of the summer!