Odds and sods
I'm not quite sure what George Tabb is most famous for--I was familiar with him as a MaximumRocknRoll columnist, but he's also been in all sorts of bands of varying degrees of obscurity and fame. His new memoir, Surfing Armageddon: Fishnets, Fascists, and Body Fluids in Florida, details his teenage years, during which his insane, abusive father uprooted the family from their tony Connecticut enclave and moved them down to Florida. It's a bildungsroman involving sex, punk rock, personal identity crises, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Parts of Surfing Armageddon are entertaining, but overall it reminds me of that friend in school whose seemingly endless stories were hilarious but totally unbelievable. Moving on: The Raconteurs played a much-hyped one-off show at Irving Plaza on Friday, and I got a ticket at the last minute from my neighbor-twin. You may recall that I am not a White Stripes fan, but I went anyhow. The crowd: Bent-brim baseball-cap brahs, their pointy-toed-shoe girlfriends, famous people*, and critics (identified by their potbellies, beards, and glasses). The sound: Edgar Winter meets Alice Cooper meets ELP. In sweater vests! All other criticisms aside, I cannot take a rock band seriously if they're wearing knit wool on stage. Nice website, though. Onto Brick. N picked this, and I'm glad he did. Like Dashiell Hammett meets Heathers. Or something. Immanently enjoyable, it captures the agony of high school, the patois and pacing of hard-boiled detective stories, and fuses the two with dark comedy. That kid is really cute, too. Finally: PCU, which for some reason is on heavy rotation at HBO Family right now. This movie is 12 years old, and regardless of what anyone says I still contend that it's one of the greatest achievements in the history of film since Citizen Kane. *Of whom I saw approx. zero Posted by Dana at 08:43 PM
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Quickies
There are all sorts of serious reviews of that are sitting in three-quarters- finished draft format right now, because I can't quiiiiiite finish them, and because there are these other lesser items, discussed below, littering the canyons of my mind. So, quickly:Stop staring at my pot-belly, beard, glasses.
Kidding. I couldn't get a ticket, and ate my Heartless Bastards tix to get some work done.
But that's the best review I've seen of that show, yet.
Posted by: J at April 17, 2006 12:02 AM