'Bred Crumbs

02:00 AM The seven best things about the fantastic Guster / Great Big Sea show at the Fillmore:

7 Guster kept intact a trend: at every show I've seen at the Fillmore, the headliner has been moved by the hippie heritage of the place to cover a '60s or '70s chestnut, most often one somehow involving Neil Young. (Guster's choice did not; it went with "Time of the Season."
6 Guster's Ryan completely blew the first verse of "Either Way," but handled it with great humor.
5 Great Big Sea did an Irish-jig version of R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." And much enjoyable stuff of its own creation.
4 The Guster boys livened up an old song of theirs, "Happy Frappy," by doing a cheesy Muzak-style version that was hilarious, even to someone like me who doesn't know the original. (It reminded me of how Dealership has freshened up one of its older favorites, "Jungle Gym," by giving it a full-out '80s twist.)
3 Guster managed to get the crowd to resist its own demented reflex to shout insipidly during quiet bits and shut the hell up so the band could do the last song utterly acoustically -- no mics, just voices, guitars, and minimal percussion carrying beautifully over the fans' heads and under the chandeliers of the Fillmore.
2 Even without horns, "Fa Fa" kicked butt. (Though, it must be admitted, the absence of a typewriter took just a little bit away from "Barrel of a Gun.")
1 Guster became the first band I've ever seen to finally, finally, acknowledge the façade* of the hollow rock-concert ritual of the encore. To paraphrase: Now we're going to play the last song of our set. Then we're going to leave. Then we're going to come back for the planned encore. Bravo.

* One time in a San Francisco coffee shop, I heard a woman use the word "façade" at least seven times in conversation, and not with irony and not in an architectural sense. This doesn't happen other places.

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You have come to a concert for which the ticket costs at least 20 bucks, and during the headliner you and your friends are standing in the thick of the crowd ignoring the band and having an extended chat loud enough for people 10 feet away to hear.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

One more concert etiquette note: if you are a tall person, go to the back of the room. I know it's not your fault, but you're in everyone's way.

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11:33 AM OK, after yesterday's torrent of "inspiration," today I have a goal: no 'blogging.

D'OH!

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03:14 PM Fascinating -- a few people in the world seem to sense things the rest of us don't. As the San Francisco Chronicle points out, synesthetes can hear colors or smell shapes. Seems odd, but then, I've never even had an ice-cream headache, so what do I know?

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02:15 PM The acting bug has bitten. I'm taking a beginners' class at the Harvey Milk Institute, as if I need more to do. But the fun is outweighing the stress. I'm doing Scene 3 of Torch Song Trilogy, the Harvey Fierstein role, though I've never seen it, on stage or film. (There goes my gay cred.) Last night, when my scene partner, Joe, and I ran through it for the first time with props, it really sang. And besides working on my scene, I also read the part of an absent classmate in another student's project. I was Lennie in Of Mice and Men. I was a natural. Which worries me.

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The Bay Area, you may know, teems with wondrous views from mundane places, and here's one you might try on a warm, sunny East Bay day like today: along the marina in Richmond, about 200 feet west of the restaurant Salute by the Bay. In the foreground: docked, naked-masted boats. In the background, far beyond the light-mustard office building at land's end (wave hi to me inside): the black blocks of downtown San Francisco and obsidian mounds of Twin Peaks, silhouetted against the massive white cloud already, at 2 in the afternoon, devouring The City. Meaning, not to my surprise, that I'll need my sweatshirt by the time I get home.

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The earlier (or next, because of textual sequence, or previous, because of chronology? What is the spacetime geography of a weblog page?) entry reminds me: in all my years in newspapers, the headline of which I'm perhaps most proud of having written was for a feature the weekend that Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame opened against Arnold Schwarzeneggar in True Lies. My headline: 'MODO A MANO.

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12:36 PM Time-wasting alert! Am I Hot or Not goes mano a mano in Stranger in Your Bed. The weird thing is, the guys seem better-looking in this one. (Meme gleaned from The BradLands).

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12:38 AM Once upon a time, not so long ago, I paid much more attention to current music than I do now. A friend and I regularly exchanged charts of our faves of the moment. But time passed, diversions increased, and the radio became much less compelling to me, with interesting things squeezed out by testosterock and '80s stations. Now though, my chart-swapping friend, Tim, prompts me to give it a shot for old times' sake with his latest survey (check March 27). But I can only come up with six things getting current radio play that spark my interest -- and No. 4 kind of stretches the term "current."

6 Incubus Drive
5 Daft Punk One More Time
4 Deftones Change (In the House of Flies)
3 Moby Featuring Gwen Stefani South Side
2 Aaron Lewis with Fred Durst Commenting Stupidly* During the Instrumental Bits Outside
1 Rehab It Don't Matter

* "I'm feelin' those lighters."

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05:57 PM It is time to introduce a new word to the English language. I think almost everyone will find it valuable.

oversnooze vi To wake up later than intended after hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock too many times: I got to work late because I oversnoozed. past tense oversnoozed or oversnoze

OK, maybe I'm pushing it with that last bit.

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"You need to find the right mix where you can interest users with the ads but not annoy them," a market researcher tells the San Francisco Chronicle regarding the desperate new proliferation of size, placement, and animation of online ads. Well, as a user, maybe I can help him clear things up.

Pop-up ads always annoy me.

Put that in your focus group and smoke it.

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10:59 PM No matter what may befall me or what misdeeds I may commit in my life, at least I can rest secure in the knowledge that I didn't stand before the entire American movie industry and millions of viewers throughout the world and, sincerely, attempt to praise someone by telling him "you filled the arena with the force of your face." Which cannot, sadly, be said for one of the producers of Best Picture winner Gladiator.

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At Dolores Park today, I witnessed a birthday party for a child, replete with piñata. But the piñata was huge, and in the shape of a woman with long blond hair. And as the small child struck the woman repeatedly with a stick, she swung about, and the motion and the wind would cause her dress to fly up and reveal her bare bottom. And still the child continued to beat the woman, refusing as she did to bear candy. It was a tad disturbing.

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10:46 AM An oldie, but a goodie: online-journal keeper Stee's way-funny riff on channel surfing. (Props to David.)

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