Category: Uncategorized

Trivial Comedy

I got to sit in on a round of questions from the ShanRock brand of trivia, the finest trivia in the land, and make jokes about it.  Here are some of the things I said.  They’re not good for anything, so I’m just gonna tell ‘em to you.

What turns a Mogwai into a Gremlin? A: That’s stupid.  You can’t turn a band into a car!

Moby Dick has one of the most iconic opening lines in Western Literature.  Fill in the missing word: “Call me ______”     A: Call me crazy- Is that the biggest white whale you’ve ever seen?

What exact bird do you find on the back of a Canadian $1 coin?  A: That’s the Queen, and it’s very disrespectful to call her a “bird.”

And Dax Jordan’s favorite: Q: Virginia, did you ever drink Absinthe? A: Yeth, and I haven’t been the thame thince!

Chaircuts!

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One of the many fantastic features of the WFMU record show was the Chaircuts of Nelson Loskamp- wherein a volunteer is sat in a chair, has his or her eyes and mouth taped, and is given a haircut with scissors wired through a selection of guitar pedals and a mini-amp strapped to the artist’s back, so that the haircut made music. The music sounded like the harmonic guitar scrapes from an early-80’s Cure record, and after a few minutes of it a cranky New York guy came and yelled about how loud it was. There is no activity that can be pursued in the greater New York area that will not involve an older guy yelling at you about the volume. After the Chaircut, the volunteer is brushed off, their haircut is deemed attractive, and his or her hair is collected for posterity. Or Voodoo. Not clear. The Chaircut has been exhibited in the London Bienniale, Amsterdam, the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, and, I presume, at the artist’s house.

Anyway, it was super-neat!

The Rich Life In Recession

Photo by Artikip

I know that there are troubles in the world. However, the recession is the time for comics to shine! We have not received an increase in pay since 1991, so we’re skilled in every day ways to make money, like reusing tea-bags and road ass. I sure hope I can find some acid-washed jeans with my early nineties money! The economy has gotten so bad that I’m upper-class now, and I can prove it. I can offer three forms of classy identification, including my Platinum Subway punch card, for which I might acquire a FREE fancy sandwich after purchasing eight of the selfsame sandwiches, a Costco card bearing a golden star that indicates that I might go and make bulk goods purchases at any time after 11AM, when the platinum star people have stopped stinking up the place with their rich perfumes and Corinthian leather smells, and also a card which affords me access to more world-class literature and media than one could consume in a lifetime, which says Multnomah County Library upon it, with my name, emblazoned in richest ebony ink. I must go and polish my solid gold boot-buttons now.

The World Is Changing! Ask Per Mo How!

Peroxide Mocha are all about love. The love between a boy and a girl (not like THAT). And the love of a boy and girl for music . Love has seen them through highschool, military service, video gaming, inter-state relocation and many other adventures that have got them to this, the eleventh year of their existence as a band.

And through all of this, Pete and Rachel – for they are Peroxide Mocha – have created a series of home-made records that sound like nobody else, and which have winged their way around the world through post and internet and recommendation into the collection of a diverse and loving set of fans.

Pete and Rachel met in highschool in Sequim, Washington, in 1997 and recorded their first EP that very same week. After rejecting names like Salmon-Cherry Casserole and Don’t Touch My Moustache, they decided on Peroxide Mocha, and an era began. Their album Sit Down And Wait To Be Seated was released the following year. Vital Peroxide Mocha themes were mapped out, including sex, drugs, sarcasm, Japanese sweets and what it’s like to think someone is neat. Themes that were to be developed over a series of albums that would fall together over the next few years each time Pete and Rachel managed to simultaneously find time to sit down, fire up the PC and let the songs pop out.

Though Pete’s quirky beats and Rachel’s nonchalant delivery and funny lyrics were limited at first by the fact that neither had any idea how a record should be made, people who heard the results of their work tended to loved it, and played it to yet more people. The duo discovered that there were kindred spirits all over the world – people who think pocky is important and recycling is funny. People who got such a collective crush on the music that each new Peroxide Mocha album has now become a keenly-anticipated event for that small but very lovely club of people who Know.

Which brings us to Making Out With Strangers. Now in their 11th year as a band, Pete and Rachel are older, wiser and a bit more educated in how a record should be made – but they are still as nonchalant and natural as ever, and have managed to avoid building any desire to sound like anyone other than Peroxide Mocha. So while the sounds on this record might be a bit tougher, a bit slicker, the kind of thing that electro and eclectic DJs all over the world will find perfect for rocking a wide variety of dancefloors with, this is still the Peroxide Mocha we all love, the Peroxide Mocha who remind us that the tiny details of life can be stranger and more important than we’d imagined, that horrible things can be funny and funny things can be horrible, and that the word “frigidaire” deserves pride of place in the construction of popular songs. This is Peroxide Mocha, and they bring you love.
*swiped from their CD Baby Write-up!

Goth Juice: The Most Powerful Hairspray Known To Man


I don’t know the last time I was just an out-and-out shill for something, but I was pretty excited to pick up a container of GOTH JUICE last weekend, the new hairstyling product from Lush. It’s purple, it’s powerful, and it’s inspired (along with a companion product called King of the Mods) by the fantastic UK comedy, The Mighty Boosh.  Each tub claims to be “Made from the Tears of Robert Smith.”

Confidential to Gabe Dinger and Pete Ellison: Robert Smith is *still* not a member of the Smiths. Oddly, none of them were called Smith, which makes them the opposite of the Ramones, who were all named Ramone.

POSTSCRIPT:

I loved this product and used it when my hair was short, and then one day, I went to Lush to pick some more up and my friend Andrea, who is now the lead singer of the great band Holy Grove, had to break the news that it was discontinued, and comfort me because I was crying in a soap store.  Zen teaches us that loving something means one day you will lose it, and you must always prepare yourself for that loss.

Getting Squirrelly in Kennewick

I just spent three delightful days in the Kennewick/Richland/Pasco area, doing comedy at Joker’s, opening for the fantastic Susan Rice. More importantly, I found this 50’s era rubber squirrel lamp. Here he is in his native habitat: in an antique store, between clackity teeth and a jeweled coin purse.

Spouse thinks he might be a bootleg/miscolored Flower, the skunk from Bambi, which might increase its resale value by as much as fifty cents.