A patient’s self-rewired brain revives him after 19 years in a vegatative coma.
Minus Kyle, Duncan, & Grant, you people missed a fantastic show. Tigers crept off the stage, dreams of lights, lakes of visionary stormy weather. The Roman Empire shuddered and fell under the waves of Atlantis. Shane brought his mother back to life as the audience cried and his grandmother told us all to rise and shine, all to a really good steel string slide. I managed to film clips of most of the first act, but not all of it, only enough to give you the barest skeleton of what actually happened. In the end, I have shaky teasers, but no real trailers. Next time, you, be there. Get out your silver kitchen knife and go culture hunting when I tell you to.
So with only about a full day’s warning, we managed to get almost thirty people to Pirates of the Caribbean. An affable man sitting behind me noticed that our group took up two full rows and asked how much organization went into it. When I told him we hadn’t bothered with very much this time around, how it was entirely arranged through our on-line journals, he mentioned oh-so-fortuitously that he has an event coming up at the Planetarium. He handed me a cleanly designed flyer, the sort of thing I would notice on a table, and smiled when I said I would give him a plug. After a bit more conversation, he asked, “Will you really mention us?” Then handed me a free ticket.
I’ve been listening to the music The Beige have on their website for hours now and I’m going to leave one on when I finally go to bed. The flyer design made me ask if it was ambient, but though their songs powerfully insinuate Brian Eno leanings, they seem to play something else, a translucent mellow jazz with a delicate twist of quiet pop. I really like it. Stylistically, they remind me charmingly of Múm. The musicians, Andrew Arida, Geoff Gilliard, Mark Haney, Rick Maddocks, and Jon Wood, manage to dance the line between chill, softly effervescent, and catchy without being fluffy, bland or relying on hooks. I’ll have to remember to bring extra money when I go, because I want to buy the album.
The show is only an hour long because they have to vacate in time for the stoned kids to watch the resident Doors/Zeppelin/Hendrix/Pink Floyd laser show, but they’ll have drinks and mingling downstairs afterward and their own visuals projected on the ceiling during their set. I’m curious to see what they’re going to do with the space. It can be awkward to set up anything meaningful around a giant robot projector ant that rises from the floor, but already I can imagine how their melodies could transform awkwardness into underwater gracefulness, sort of how a good director cuts out the sound in moments of tension.
About half my books have been spoken for and some already bought.
Sheri S Tepper
      Raising the Stones
      Te Fresco
      Beauty
      Six Moon Dance
Patricia A. McKillip
      Harpist in the Wind
      The Riddle-master of Hed
D.H. Lawrence
      Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Conan Doyle
      The Hound of the Baskerville’s
Joseph Conrad
      Youth: a narrative
Ntozake Shange
      Liliane
Charlie Boxer
      The Cloud of Dust
John Berendt
      Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Irvine Welsh
      Filth
Alan Isler
      The Bacon Fancier
Astro Teller
      Exegesis
Gregory Maguire
      Wicked
A.P. Hope Moncrieff
      Romance & Legend of Chivalry (with dibs from Sarah)
Loise May Alcott
      Little Women (abridged)
Robert Zelazny & Robert Checkley
      A Farce to be Reckoned With
various The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy
& sequel: The Flying Sorcerers: a collection of comic fantasy
Terry Pratchett
      The Truth (hard cover)
      Night Watch (hard cover)
Gail Anderson
      A Recipe For Bees
Ursula Le Guin
      A Wizard of Earthsea
J.R.R. Tolkien
      The Hobbit
Ghost Stories (illustrated)
Andrew Lambirth
      The Art of Aubrey Beardsley
various
      Reflex (photos)
Bert Archer
      The End Of Gay
Alex Shearer
      Box 132
Boyreau
      TRASH
LIFE Science Library
      The Mind
MAXIM 31, 36, 61
WIRED 3.01
Rudy Rucker
      Software/Wetware