Nothing confuses me quite as much as a) women and b) popcorn nutritional labels. Fuck, who is going to eat unpopped popcorn? Just tell me how much stuff is in a full fucking bag of the 'corn. I will stand there for five minutes at Star Market just looking at one label, trying to figure out what I'm getting myself into.

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Saw Pernice Brothers on Saturday, which was a really good show. I also showed Rosa (who of course recommended PB to me) the beauty of wearing earplugs at concerts. And since I had no money and forgot my earplugs at home, she even bought me some at the show (you can get them at the coatcheck in the Middle East). Seriously, I can't imagine having to see shows without them now (I started wearing them at the Franz Ferdinand show in February). I suppose standing further back makes the noise less worse, but there's something beautiful about standing in the front row at a show, next to a wall of speakers, and being able to both hear the show really clearly and not have any ringing in your ears afterwards.

Highlight of the show for me was a) when Pernice's brother (Joe Pernice is the only full-time Pernice brother in the band) came on stage to play guitar on a few of the songs and b) hearing my two fave songs, "Weakest Shade of Blue" and "Flaming Wreck" back-to-back near the end of the show.

Also, the second band, Lambchop, is perhaps the most bizarre I've seen in concert. Their music was pretty good, but their lineup was something to see. They had five guitars and a lead singer who both sat down while he played guitar and looked like a deranged Southerner. He looks about 40 and wears a mesh hat, not because he's one of those wannabe Diesel Jeans and Polo types, but because he's a bald guy who probably wears it when he goes fishing. The rest of the band looks kind of like his inbred family members. Their bassist is excellent and looks relatively normal. Their piano player also looks about 40 but has very unpretentious black hair which in a month would be a bowl cut. He tells lame jokes during concerts that are funny because he knows they're lame. They also have a woman on guitar who sometimes plays an enormous saxophone that you can't hear. Her name is Big Al.


Mmmm...Lambchop...

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I am going to make a preliminary recommendation on The Secret Machines. I actually read about them in Entertainment Weekly of all places...supposedly they sound like Pink Floyd, BRMC, My Bloody Valentine, et al. I've actually never heard My Bloody Valentine, but this is the second time I've been looking into a band and all these fucking My Bloody Valentine references started coming up. The first band I saw associated with them was M83, which like all good French groups is a two-man outfit (ok, so Daft Punk and Air are the only other French bands/groups I really listen to). Anyway, The Secret Machines have one of those bullshit digial albums out that you can only pay to download or whatever and they won't be releasing a proper disc for a while. Luckily you can listen to their album on their site.

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I'm going to go ahead and say buying "digital albums" is fucking lame. Not because you should illegally download everything, but because it seems like a lot of the iTunes prices I saw (when I had iTunes for a day) were basically the same as you'd pay for a CD. I also saw something in the Wall Street Journal about how they are going to start raising digital album prices in the near future. Given how easy it is to find stuff on Kazaa still, I would think that the music industry would rather not alienate everyone just as they're beginning to feel alright about paying for music again. Well, fuck 'em. I'll keep my futile one-man iTunes boycott going as long as I can. I guess people are just too lazy to go to a record store.

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Rolling Stone finally got their shit together and reviewed Franz Ferdinand's debut album. Bout fuckin time. Anyway, they wussed out, as is RS' wont, and only gave it 3.5 stars, but whatever. We don't need their approval. Of course, Aerosmith's Honkin' on Bobo got 4 stars, which shows you how retarded RS can be, but so it goes. Anyway, if you want an intelligent review, check out Pitchfork's.

My second Franz recommendation is to go right now to www.franzferdinand.org, where you can find a couple of great live mp3s of "Take Me Out" and "Auf Achse." DO it. DO it.

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I think buying the Chappelle's Show Season One DVD may the best DVD purchase I've ever made. Well, maybe a close second to This is Spinal Tap (which gets bonus points because I'd never seen it before I bought it). Next on my list--The Office: Season 2, which comes out in a couple weeks. Also, Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season Two comes out in June.

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The Spider-Man 2 trailer (not to be confused with the teaser of course) is fucking cool. It also seems to map out the plot extremely clearly...definitely worth a look.

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But I'm looking forward to Kill Bill: Vol. 2 even more. All the initial reviews suggest it's an unbelievable film. I LOVED Volume 1. Giddyup. The trailer is here