AnonymousCoworker

The Beastie Boys show last night was great. The audience was pumped, the guys were very willing to entertain, and there were many surprises.

To kick things off, Talib Kweli was there. He had the floor moving, and some people in the stands. He should have gotten more respect, but most of the people there had never heard of him. In the bathroom, when someone asked the 20 or so other people in there if they had heard of who the opening act was, everyone looked around and shrugged. I offered, “It’s Talib Kweli.” Silence. “He’s been on the Chapelle Show.” “Oh,” as if they had just forgotten. Kweli did mostly new stuff, from what I heard. (We got there late because of traffic on 95, 495, and 66. Why the hell is there rush hour traffic at 8pm on a Friday. I have my theories, but that’s for another post.) He closed with some of his older, more recognizable, stuff. I think everyone was impressed, if not turned on to a new artist.

The show started with Mix Master Mike building the atmosphere. Mix Master Mike is one of the best turntable artists I have ever seen. He was arguably the glue that held the show together. The 4th Beastie Boy, as it were. At one point, and this was his most notable feat, he brought up “Scenario” by A Tribe Called Quest on both turntables. He matched up the play rates, and then let them go at the same time. Once the crowd realized the records were perfectly in sync, and began to cheer, he started scratching. He’d scratch one record, and then bring them back in sync. He’d scratch the other, then bring them back in sync. Finally, he was scratching both records, looping Busta Rhymes over Busta Rhymes, and with a deft twist of his friggin’ ELBOW he brought the records back in sync. The crowd went insane. (ACWGF made the comment that she thought that Mix Master Mike was even better than the Beastie Boys.)

The Beastie Boys came out, and they got down right away. They did stuff off all their records, and they looked like a group of guys who were out to have a good time. They occasionally missed rhymes, or fell off the beat a bit, but they were so intent on keeping the crowd happy that it didn’t matter.
They had 3 sets and 2 encores. The first set was straight rappin’. The second set was all instrumental, and they closed with Rectify. They were dressed in leisure suits for the second set, and were dragged on stage while on top of a tiny stage built like a prom stage. The third set was more rappin’, and the only place where they played any of their new stuff. The encore came in one of the back sections of the arena on the parapet. After that, the house lights came up and people started to file out. (I was shocked when people were leaving after the 3rd set, but even I went out after the encore.) Something didn’t feel right though. There was no closing ambient music, and there were no roadies rushing to dismantle the stage. We walked back into the area when we heard the mics being turned on, and the beastie boys were being dragged onstage by the tiny stage again. They closed with Sabotage and the crowd, once again, went crazy.

It was a great show, and I was psyched to see the Beastie Boys. It’s something I can cross off my life’s To Do list.

ACWGF and I were both a little underhyped when we left for the show. Traffic didn’t help any either. In fact, I was pretty pissed because I had accidentally left the tickets in my apartment and had to go from ACWGF’s house to my apartment and back, all at the height of Baltimore rush hour. I’m an idiot. Anyway, Mix Master Mike definitely helped change our mood, and the concert was nothing but better and better after that.

For more on the Politics and Technology of the show, check out Minimum Safe Distance.

So Kmart and I saw “A Dirty Shame” last night. It was really funny, and it definitely felt like a John Waters type of movie. The plot plugged along whether or not the continuity was there, and each scence was set up to be hilarious and disgusting and then move on to the next scene. It was sort of like a roller coaster, but not in the stupid “movie critic” way, but more in a very realistic sense. The movie took you to small peaks of laughter and disgust, then took you back down again, then back up to laughter and disgust. At the end of the movie the peaks were higher and the valleys were fewer and further between.

As a huge benefit, I learned a few new terms for different sexual acts, though I laughed too early at a “top decker” joke, so everyone in the audience knew I was a pervert. Though anyone who regularly reads Dan Savage’s column should know about 60 percent of the acts depicted/described in the movie.

I know why the movie got a NC17 rating (apparently Tracey Ullman picking up a bottle with her vagina, which I thought would be just across the NC17 line, was nothing compared some of the rest of the movie) but really, there’s nothing in this movie that I wasn’t joking around about when I was 13. Poop jokes? Check. Sex jokes? Check? Sex and poop jokes? Check. I’d say the only difference is that I just didn’t know the terminology when I was 13. “Do I want to go shrimping? Sure, I love shrip! Are we going to Red Lobster? Why are you laughing?”

And finally, what the hell is up with people in Baltimore going to see comedies? DO YOU EVER LAUGH?! There was some laughter, but not like there should have been. The last 15 minutes of the movie was one visual joke after another, and Kmart and I seemed to be the only ones laughing. Dendrophiles would have gotten aroused, but us, we was laughin’.

In conclusion, I’m taking NO2 to the movies from now on, our society is too weird about sex, and I owe Kmart 6 bucks.

Now, I’m off to pound some cabbage.

Funny stuff that happens to me. Why doesn’t funny stuff happen to me anymore? Funny stuff used to happen to me all the time, that’s why I started the blog. That, and so I could post to Minimum Safe Distance.

Anywho, on to the funny stuff.

1) I’m getting out of the car to buy a wedding gift for ACWGF’s cousins and I walk past a woman with a toddler in each arm, trying to get into her minivan. She stoops to open the sliding van door and lets out a rippling fart that is clearly audible at 30 feet. The toddlers reacted in unison, “Ewww Mommy!” The mom, then says, “Oh yeah, that was all Mommy,” as if she was letting me know that her toddlers weren’t filthy fart machines.

2) I get inside Target and the first thing I hear is a cute little voice repeating, “Toys toys toys toys toys,” some 6 or 7 aisles away. From where I am, it doesn’t sound too loud, but the aisle listing on the registry for the items I’m looking for is dragging me closer to the interminable plea for toys. Finally, I see the buggy parked in the towel aisle, just out of range, but within sight of the toys. The kid, who was steal-me-from-my-mom cute, was leaning all the way out of the cart and peering around the corner to the toys, singing like a siren (pun intended) her cuteness luring the unwary in, and the infinite repetition of the word toys sending them screaming for the prophylactics.

3) When men buy the wedding registry gifts, the couple gets a tape measure and a 66 piece drill attachment set. (Honestly, my first choices were a cherrywood clock and the Nostalgia version of RISK, but they were all out of those.)

When I was swimming in high school (which I was terrible at) my coach would play the radio. This really sucked for someone like me, because you would only hear about 1/3 of the song as you went in and out of the water. I’ve always wanted to conduct an experiment (which has probably already been conducted) where people listen to song, and then that song is cut off before it ends. Then the experimenter would check on the subject a few hours later and see if that song that didn’t end was still in their head. If the subject was me, the song would still be in my head. To this day I try to let songs play all the way out in my car before I get out of it, so as not to be assaulted throughout the day by a song that plays continuously in my head, but stops where it stopped when I got out. It drives me crazy.

Anyway, one day we were waiting for the next start on a particularly grueling set of 500s (that’s 20 laps) when the song referenced on the title came on the radio. The coach, who was a preening Olympic Medal winner (and one time world record holder? Can’t remember) told us that the person who could first name the artist would be able to skip the last 500. I started jumping out of the pool as I yelled out, “KISS!” He was like, “Wow, how did you know that?” Ever since then I’ve been shocked to learn how easily people get trapped in their own musical era, and then 1 of 2 things happens. Either they think everyone should know the music, however crappy, that defined their generation, or no one knows the music they listened to, no matter how much it has bled into pop culture.

The assistant coach (another teen of the 80’s) went on to talk with me about bands like Soft Cell and Aha, the death of Brad Nowell of Sublime, and Gwar. Hey, it takes about 8 minutes to finish a 500, and music is a fluid subject.

I think Kmart was the first to see me in my natural form when reacting to the lies, half truths, misleads, and out and out bullshit of not-my-president.

I was jumping out of my seat at each lie, yelling at the television, giving it the finger, and then pretending to dropkick the chimp-in-chief. At some points I was nearly vomitous with rage.

It brought my anger down to have Kmart laugh at me each time I exploded, so by the end of the debate, I was pretty calm.

(By the way, I’m trying to googlebomb Kmart, so every time I type “Kmart” I’m going to link it to Kmart’s blog.)