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August 04, 2005

So Much to Blog About; So Little Motivation

I've had to put blogging completely on hold lately for various reasons. We've been doing summery things, like going sailing and going to the shore, and I've also been working on this site for a friend pretty much every weeknight (warning: I'm a terrible designer), so my blogging time is cut short. Here are some quick catch-up things, since I'm away this weekend and the next and the next and so on until September (and where I'm going, there's NO INTERNET).

First, Francis blogged about this ages ago because he is a responsible, dependable blogger, but we saw Brian Dewan at Barbes and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I knew nothing about Dewan's music (although we had caught him showing film strips a while back at the Brooklyn Museum) so I was happily surprised. It was a one man show, except for the hilarious barbershop trio performance of The Beatles' "Revolution #9" at the end. Think about that for a minute. Imagine one guy saying "number 9" over and over, and all of the other discordant sounds on that loooong track being reproduced a capella by the other two. The added a little choreography, too, jumping to face the same direction, etc. All with straight faces. Anyway, Dewan plays various throwback instruments -- an autoharp, a zither, and an accordion. His lyrics are clever and wacky and his straight-faced, intense delivery is a hit with the audience. It reminded me a bit of TMBG even before he played "The Edison Museum" -- a track that is on TMBG's "No!" He did an amusing heavy-metalish parody on the zither ("Loathsome Idols") and some vintage-sounding, tamer pieces on the autoharp and accordion. Lyrics to one upbeat song played on the accordion go like this: "Put your money where your mouth is. [pause] Put your money in your mouth. [pause, silence] Eat it [pause] it's the principle of the thing ... eat that dirty salad ... eat it ... now." I'm doing a terrible job of describing this, but please go and see Dewan next time he's playing something. Anything. It'll be worth it. Or go buy a CD or listen to the clips on Amazon or iTunes. I laughed my ass off and I wasn't even drunk.

That same day, at an obscenely early hour for a Saturday (8AM), Derek joined me for a Sebago sail for the first time. Because the wind was strong but shifty, we spent the morning screaming (not at each other), getting wet, hanging off one side of the the boat, scrambling over to the other side of the boat when the wind suddenly shifted, and barely managing to keep the boat (a Laser) upright and ourselves out of the bay. It was crazy. We were sore for a week. Hopefully it didn't completely spoil sailing for D.

What else? Last Saturday, we were extremely lucky. We went to visit my sister and her family at the Jersey shore. The traffic was good (amazing), the weather was good, and we found fantastic lobster rolls. Both Derek and I, like idiots, wore our prescription sunglasses in the ocean and lost them in the waves. I searched for mine for a while since they're biggish and expensive, but eventually gave up and taught my nine-year-old nephew to knit instead (he wanted to learn! how cool is that?). About half-an-hour later, my-brother-and-law showed up with my sunglasses dangling off the end of his fishing pole (the tide had washed them up over where he was fishing -- no, he didn't actually catch them when he was fishing). Later on, Derek managed to find his pair around the same spot (after diving into the muck a few times). The waves were rough enough to have sandblasted all the paint off his frames, but the lenses were fine. It's kind of eerie that we found them both.

Okay, I'm clearly depriving myself of far too much sleep. And blogging about mundane things. I'll pick this up again when I have something interesting to say. (Did I mention that it's hot in our apartment? And muggy? And sticky? These are not ideal blogging conditions.)

Posted by csageday at August 4, 2005 02:34 AM

Comments

Posted by: Francis at August 5, 2005 01:54 AM