Recovering

I got home from work today at a reasonable time so I'm able to do more than sit on the chaise and half-watch the Pistons game.

This involves visiting the website for the Slow Singal Fade, an LA-based shoegazer-esque band that opened for Electrelane. All three bands that played that night at the Troubadour were excellent, I would've bought SSF's CD if they were still around after the show, I did buy the EP that Nashville-based Be Your Own Pet had for sale - very energetic art(y) punk - and, well, I already own all of the albums/singles Electrelane had for sale.

Getting sidetracked already I'll point out that I've recently had a good run of opening bands; Goodbye Blue Monday (from Thursday), the above plus Street Dogs - opened for BR on Sunday, they were good straight up punk though not quite CD worthy, and, as my friend noted, "a little too Boston" - and the two bands Sunday night (opening for Dressy Bessy): Hot IQ and The Jessica Fletchers, both good, fun psyche-pop bands, from Denver and Oslo, respectively. Hot IQ were advertised as sort of a cross between Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Thermals... which makes some sense even if it sort of oversells them.

I find it odd that I managed to stay in the second row of bodies and keep my glasses on the entire time at a Bad Religion show at the House of Blues Sunset Strip. I guess I was near enough to the front to miss the circle pit getting mostly pushing and the occasional crowd surfer.

The funniest part of the show was when Greg was talking about their recent show at the Hollywood Palladiam and how it was recorded for the upcoming DVD: It's going to be released in, uhh, August or September... err... I'll have to check with the label [walks over to Mr. Brett, they whisper back and forth a bit] The DVD is out September 20th. (I may be wrong on the date but that's not important.)

I would not have bought a car with an manual transmission if I lived in LA. Phoenix has neither the hills nor the traffic, much less that glorious juxtoposition of the two. Continuing along these lines I finally figured out why Highway driving usually yields better gas mileage than City driving: most "City" driving involves lots of lights and traffic jams. I don't see those in my driving (well, very rarely) so I couldn't understand why Highway driving - at higher than optimal speeds - wouldn't be worse.

Yes, I know many people in Phoenix have long commutes and that many have slow commutes but the options for avoiding these both more varied and more reasonable in Phoenix than in, say, LA.

Yes, I know LA has much more going on... but a good argument could be made that it's too much, and not merely because almost everything is a pain to get to. I live in southern Cave Creek and am 25-35 miles from downtown Phoenix or Tempe... but in the evenings travel is only 30-45 minutes.

I finished Diary by Chuck Palahniuk. I sort of had to rush through it - which was basically just budgeting the time; it was easy to read - so that I could finish it in time to leave it with my friend in Pasadena. I also returned The Confusion to him and received the newer novel by both Palahniuk and Stephenson in return. I have not yet updated my queue to include these developments.

I tried to leave Distress too but he had already gone there. In fact, at the BR show, after I pointed out that camera phones are the (poor quality) loophole around most "no camera" policies he asked what the security staff would do if they came across implanted corneal video recording devices (as a serious question, forgetting that something similar happened in Distress.)

I am just now getting a chance to listen to the CDs procured at Amoeba; this is one bad thing about not having a CD player in the car. Another is when your Creative breaks. Ugh.