Letters to Holly

Friday, March 17

I Have Been Exploded

We left Mayberry around 4:30 and made it to Greenville by about 5:30, plenty of time before the show. Because that town offers so many more eating options than Brevard, we were flush with choices. We picked Barley’s Taproom and used the parking garage just one street behind the restaurant. We had beaten the dinner rush, but remembered that Barley’s can be slow to serve and we grabbed a copy of The Beat (formerly MetroBEAT, my paper) and Link, the Gannett weekly allegedly designed to put MetroBEAT out of business. There’s a whole conspiracy theory behind daily papers squashing alt-weeklies by stealing the advertisers at a virtual revenue-loss rate. Even if true, my old paper slit its own throat.

Inside The Beat, Your Sister finds an ad for a new production of A Doll’s House and is keenly interested. We’re gonna try to get tickets for a show next weekend. In Link, I find many ads for St. Patrick’s Day parties, including an ad using a drawing I did for a local bar. It was technically a commission piece: a partying leprechaun for March party. I got two t-shirts out of it with my design on them. Still, I figured they would have found another piece of art to use by now. It was a bit of a shock to flip the page and see my guy there. He has to be three years old by now.

After eating, we sashayed down to the venue and ran into a collegiate running buddy of Your Sister. They went on foreign study together. He was strolling with two kids and his wife who also went to Furman. It was a fun little chat until I mentioned we were going to a concert. What concert? Nine Inch Nails. And shock swept over them as if I said “and then we’re going to tattoo our eyeballs.” But they wished us well and we parted ways.

Got to the venue a little after 7. My God, the youngsters. We skewed the age curve hard and became so conscious of it that we spent a good half hour guessing the age of passersby, hoping to see people nearer and above our age. We had great seats, elevated off the floor and right in front of a wall. No one was sitting behind us. We immediately noticed that the floor area was general admission; there’s no way I would risk that mob during this show with a wife in tow. The opening act hit right at 7:30, a rapper named Saul Williams. More of a street poet, really. The kind of act that spends so much time railing against hip-hop clichés and society’s ills that he forgets to bring the party like a good MC. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but I liked it. We used this time to test our earplugs, making sure they felt right. It was a very noticeable difference. Everything was crystal clear, just turned down several notches on the speaker dial. I could hear every word Saul spoke. He played for about thirty minutes.

Unfortunately, NIN didn’t hit the stage for another 45 minutes, an interminable wait spent watching the stage crew and drunken audience members. But when they did hit the stage, it was like a bomb went off. For two hours.

I am utterly wiped out. I hurt, I ache, my voice is shot, and I’m blinking too much. I’ve had workouts that weren’t that intense. But am I complaining? Oh, no. I stepped into a Wind Tunnel of Awesome. A raucous, hard-rock party filled with an audience and band losing their collective minds to stomping, screaming rock and roll. They played stuff from all over their career, which I realized last night stretches through half my lifetime. I was in complete glee. Your Sister was hearing much of this stuff for the first time, and she seemed to dig it too. Part of the reason I’m so shot is that the arena was smothered in smoke. Once the audience realized the band was going to launch dry-ice fog for the entire show, they all lit up, and the air was like we were walking through a forest fire. Compound that with me screaming lyrics for so long, and yes, my voice is hammered.

Once, and only once, did I take out an earplug to test the noise, and holy crap. Imagine standing behind a jet airplane as it ramps the engines before takeoff. That’s what it sounded like. We looked like goobs with our plugs, but we’re able to hear today. The show ended with their first single “Head Like A Hole,” and the band thanked us and destroyed some instruments. They did this not in a “we’re so very angry” attitude, but one of “this means there is no encore” style of communication. They left the stage, the lights came up and the roadies started dismantling the stage. Nine Inch Nails hit the stage, never stopped playing, and left. There were a few nice moments like when lead singer Trent Reznor tossed water bottles into the crowd to hydrate the moshers or when he chucked a microphone into the crowd so they would sing while he played guitar. It was a fantastic show, and I’d see it again today if I could.

We drove out of town and found a Walgreens to buy drinks. I needed carbonation to soothe my throat and bought a big enough Pepsi to burp my way merrily back up the mountain. We got home at about midnight. I used my cellphone to record bits of the concert, and as I listen to them today, the clips sound like they recorded an exorcism.

Picture of the Day

I tried to find something to convey the full elation and glory of the show. The best visual representation is Hulk Hogan playing guitar in front of Old Glory. Feel the rock!

Bonus: A picture from the show taken from the band’s website. We’re in the picture, just tiny. We’re just next to the top edge of the guitarist’s left shoulder.


In the news
The news is that my ass has been rocked off.

Thursday, March 16

Deafness Is Imminent

I’m leaving work early to catch Nine Inch Nails in Greenville. I’ve listened to this band since my senior year of high school 16 years ago. I’m one of the diehards buying every CD, including the remixes and live concert recordings. Whereas most folks I knew back then leaned toward Nirvana, Guns N Roses, and Pearl Jam, I went for NIN. Your Sister is going too. I corrupted her with NIN CDs about two years ago. Turns out, she originally liked NIN’s first song, “Head Like A Hole,” without knowing who sung it. This will be the first concert we’ve seen since Sting and Annie Lennox played Charlotte in 2004. It will also be the first hard rock show I think she’s ever been to. Loverboy doesn’t count, I don’t care who says otherwise. I picked up hunter-quality earplugs at Wal-Mart this weekend. I don’t expect to have a voice when I go back to work Friday.

Gas prices are going whacky again. Since the beginning of March, prices have gone up 33 cents including a 12-cent jump overnight.

The alt-weekly website came back, which makes me think it was an administrative foul-up.

I again stunned Your Sister with a "Jeopardy" answer. The last question asked us to name a native Hawaiian mammal of the order Chiroptera. Once again, comic books told me the answer: bats. Thank you, Batman, Batgirl, Man-Bat, Bat-Mite, and Ace the Bathound.

Picture of the Day
In order to garner a larger audience, the Weinstein Company is packaging their Transamerca DVD with a lenticular cover photo. It changes as you turn the case in your hands. But the original photo of Oscar-nominee Felicity Huffman shows her all dolled up to the nines. She never looks this way in the film. She always appears as she does on the right of the photo, in character as a transsexual. At best, this polarizes the audience into two camps: 1) the gang that says “wow, look at her hag it up for the role;” and 2) the gang that says “wait, where’s the hot blonde? REFUND!”

In the news
Iraq has a new parliament. They were all sworn in, and then they promptly went back home.

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Bush reaffirmed his first-strike policy against enemy nations, and one has to think this was meant for Iran’s ears.

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Star Wars producer Rick McCallum says the upcoming “Star Wars” TV series would run at least 100 episodes. Given modern network scheduling, that would take about five years. The series would allegedly cover the years between Sith and New Hope.

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The University of Alaska-Fairbanks won the NCAA rifle championship. This is their seventh win in eight years. But the real story is that the Army and Navy teams came in third and fourth. The armed forces are getting trounced by hunters.

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An Ozarks family lost a home to a tornado on Sunday night. One hundred Amish neighbors rebuilt the whole thing within 15 hours.

Wednesday, March 15

Happy Julius Caesar Murder Day

The alt-weekly I escaped right before its collapse rebooted as a smaller paper a few months later. Just yesterday, however, the domain name lapsed. I don’t know if the company is still operating anymore. It’s possible they plan on moving to a new domain. Now that I think of it, this isn’t the first time such a thing happened. When I still worked there, the domain lapsed. Turns out the publisher paid a lawyer to nab the URL we wanted, but he held onto the rights to the site name. And because he was the contact for the domain company, we never got the notices that the domain was about to close. The new publisher may have gotten the website from the last publisher, but he may not have gotten the rights to the domain. The lesson for the day is this: That paper was cursed with mismanagement, and the inability for the higher-ups to get their act together is still frustrating to me. I hope my production officemate is doing OK. He’s not with them anymore either.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday is that I affirmed my long-held suspicion that caffeine makes me sleep. I ate some chocolate-covered espresso beans and downed a half-glass of Pepsi and was out cold within a half hour. Some say this proves I have ADD. I don’t quite buy that because it’s the hot go-to diagnosis.

Last night’s “Sex and the City” featured some Russian lingo. My “Jeopardy” answers would not have been impressive at all had we seen this episode first.

I tried a new recipe using asparagus last night and learned that, unless you blend it into a dish, asparagus tastes a lot like weeds. I also overcooked the steaks to the point that they became sausage.

I don’t know if this is getting much play up in Boston, but the sports world is abuzz that superstar kicker Adam Vinatieri might leave the Patriots. I don’t have the heart to tell Your Sister yet. The team homepage doesn’t list him as a player.

Picture of the Day
A closer look at Enceladus, the Saturn moon that might have liquid water. Or not.

In the news

Israel and Palestine continue their war of occupation.

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The judge overseeing the Saddam trial closed the court to the public and media. Hussein used his testimony time to deliver a speech claiming to still preside over Iraq.

Tuesday, March 14

Shock The Wife

There’s nothing more satisfying than correctly answering “Jeopardy” questions so seemingly obscure that one’s wife pauses the TiFaux, turns with mouth agape, gasps “how the FUCK do you know that?” and then compares your rinky-dink, party school education with the one she got from her expensive, hoity-toity, high-falutin’ university. The topper, however, is when you tell her you gleaned the info from comic books. It can’t happen often but that makes the occasion that much sweeter.

So I know some Russian. Big deal. You’d think she just discovered I was ex-KGB.

On the way home yesterday, I pulled over and called her on the cell phone as a test. One large reason we bought them was so I could call her at work. Her classroom phone doesn’t ring, and the message light doesn’t work. She has to pick up the receiver and listen for a distinctive message signal. There have been many a night when 8:00 has arrived and I had no way of reaching her besides going to the school and banging on the lobby windows. We had definite conversations about her turning on the phone after school hours so I could call her. And because I’m writing this, you can guess what happened. I called. She didn’t answer. But, it turns out, the phone was on; she had however gone back home and gone to sleep. She didn’t hear the phone ring as it was on the other side of the house. I love it when a plan comes together. Mainly because my plans rarely come together.

I can't get Blogger.com to upload images today.

In the news

Baghdad
police have found more than 80 bodies in 24 hours. Again, the crime rate comparison for Iraq and the States doesn’t convey the intensity of violence.

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The government managed to successfully prosecute Zacarius Moussaoui as the “20th hijacker,” but it has twice crossed the judge during the sentencing phase. The most recent allegation is that a TSA representative sent transcripts to witnesses with tips on how to testify. At stake is the pursued death penalty.

Monday, March 13

Cells

Friday was the nine-month anniversary of the legal wedding, and we had dinner out at Jason’s, the restaurant that catered the formal wedding. It both does and doesn’t feel like nine months. A lot has obviously happened since then: We’ve moved into the house and settled into it; she’s started two semesters of teaching and coached a volleyball team; I’ve produced a comic story, three magazines, and five newsletters; and we’ve had another round of holidays. We haven’t had anything like what I’d call a real argument, just geysers of stress here and there.

Your Sister has also started working on the yard as the warmer weather lures out outdoors. She’s pruned quite a bit to give me more space to mow, killing my excuse to let some patches grow wild. We’ve talked some about the rows of plants in the front yard and the garden. We might build a new compost box.

She received surveys from both the Republican Senate Committee and the Democratic Congressional Committee. She anwered the Dems' survey, and I took the GOP one. The GOP survey stated that it wouldn't be tabulated unless you paid an $11 "donation." This strikes me as designed to received feedback from those who are either wealthy enough to spend $11 or loyal enough to want to. Doesn't this skew the survey toward those with more money? We didn't send it in.

On Saturday, I hit the gym while Your Sister worked the Altar Guild to prep the church for the Sunday services. We had our usual Saturday lunch out, this time at Ceilito Lindo, where you heard the mariachi band. Then we did the unthinkable, the most horrid of all deeds, we bought cell phones. We checked out the local Verizon store but weren’t encouraged by the look of it. It’ll do fine as a part and accessories store though, and indeed we went back to buy a car charger. No, we instead, drove back to Best Buy and followed up on the previous look-see. This time, they had the styles we wanted in stock and we signed all the paperwork and bought nifty little clip-pouches, and left the store armed with our new cellosity. That night, after sitting by the firepit and having a beer, we delved into the working and options of the phones for about two hours. And went to mind with our minds reeling. The ringtones are despicable, but we enjoy using nicknames for the voice-activated dialers. The cell phone puts me at ease with my commute and now I won’t be reliant on passersby if I need to call in a phone accident. Also I can stick by the car and talk to AAA or the insurance company. Because the phone has a clock, I don’t need to buy the watch I was contemplating.

Sunday had a slow start as Your Sister was enrapt with watching “Mad About You” and then napping. I worked on the below sketch and used the Feast Day to get in some PlayStation wrestling. I don’t find the absence of gaming and ice cream annoying at all. I’ve managed to weather Lent pretty well by staying busy with Things That Need Doing.

One of those is delving into “Harry Potter.” I’ve only gotten as far as the Sorting Hat chapter, but I’m enjoying the book and going through it quickly. I can’t ell if the book is this well-written, or I’m reliving the enjoyment o the movie adaptation. The movie, from what I can remember, follows the book almost word for word so far. I can easily see myself reading the whole series. I don’t know if I would have enjoyed this if I read it when I was younger. I didn’t have much interest in magic stories back then. The highlight of the weekend was seeing Your Sister laugh at a stand-up comic, a rarity that rivals Halley’s Comet. But what made it even better is that she laughed at Eddie Izzard, one of the best funny guys around. BBC America showed his “Dress To Kill” concert last night.

Sketch Day
DC Comics has reworked Catwoman a lot, trying desperately to find another heroine who isn’t a simple spin-off of an established character. Wonder Woman sprang from no previous hero, but Batgirl and Supergirl are, essentially, sidekicks. As has virtually every other female hero DC has managed to sell successfully. Catwoman is also that most beloved of comic clichés: the redeemed villain. Comic writers love to make bad guys turn good or at least become a sympathetic antihero. Catwoman is that now. She fights crime but also steals when the mood strikes, like an itch that escapes scratching.

In the news
Scientific American provides 15 answers to pro-creationist attacks on evolution theory.

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March Madness begins with the list of the 64 teams making the tournament. The ACC Championship game between Duke and Boston College was tight. BC had a few chances to put away Duke but couldn’t make the shots.

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V For Vendetta opens this week as the first big film of 2006. It was to be released last November but the London bombings and tight editing schedules forced the move to spring. It’s getting a big profile for its subject matter – revolution against fascism – as well as its pedigree. Genius comic writer Alan Moore crafted this with artists David Lloyd back in the mid-‘80s of Thatcher and Reagan social policies, and the film is the first by the team behind The Matrix since that trilogy’s end. While I treasure Moore’s writing, “Vendetta” is not a great comic. It’s bogged by multiple subplots and character arcs. The hook is the progression of V and Ivey, the two leads. One segment of “Vendetta” is the biography of a government prisoner long since dead, and it’s possibly the best written chapter Moore’s written, which is saying a lot. There will be a lot of babble from the pundits about what this film says about Homeland Security and the war on terrorism, but it’s no different from the previous centuries of rascal heroes fighting corruption in authority. Give this guy a car, and he’d be that much closer to the Dukes of Hazzard. Give him a horse, and he’s Robin Hood. Your Sister has read the book, and we both geeked out for Matrix so we’ll be seeing this movie when it opens. We root for the success of the film mainly because we want a studio to give a big director a pile of money to make the long-attempted adaptation of Moore’s masterpiece, “Watchmen.” After the mixed results of adapting “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “From Hell,” we hope the Vendetta film will convince people that the stories work as Moore designed them and don’t require updating.