Electric Revival

Hello my darlings. It's been so long. How are you? How are things? How's your mother doing with the... unpleasantness? Oh! How grand! I've been doing so much since my last half-assed post in June that I've barely had time to sit and write pithy commentary about my own work, thank you very much, and I regret that I've left you in the dark regarding wherefores and whatnots and the particulars of the general thing.

I intend to get back into the swing of things by forcing myself to make a comment on a picture -- taken since June -- from my vast, incredible archives and I would be ever so pleased if the readership, whomever or whatever you are, would submit your personal favorites. An end-of-half-a-year review of sorts. I shall begin with the following,


Japanther, Whitney Museum, 7/11/09

I remember when Japanther didn't exist anywhere except on the page -- this is a well crafted legend at this point so there is no need to go into it here. There are old, shamefully bad pictures of them from my archives when they were playing to no one and still giving their all -- isn't that how it always is? Riley's hair was shorter then and he looked less jacked, Ian had fewer tattoos and wasn't married to his kit (in fact, I don't think there was a drum kit at all). The Marshall behind Ian had no graf on the face, though the name "Marshall" still read "Ma-." There was no telephone microphone.

This is from the Whitney Museum (obviously). I was down at Solar-1 at another series of shows and I was getting bored because a white man was rapping and I was actively looking for something else to do. Earlier in the week, Anita had suggested we all go uptown for the Japanther show. Y'know... for old times' sake. Besides, I mean, come on, how many times do you get to see Mega BMX-guy Darryl Nau doing quarter pipe tricks at the Whitney*? I hopped in a cab and went.

Going to this show was seriously a no-brainer -- regrettably I've passed on a surprising amount of no-brainers this year -- I have no idea why. Dissatisfaction with my work? More amusing things? Granted, a lot of those "more amusing things" have been amusing but it hammers home the fact that I can only do so much at a time. I'm not Satan.

*More on this: Japanther has played the Whitney before so if you are asked how often you get to see them play the Whitney, the answer is "occasionally," whereas the answer to the question, "How often do you get to see Mega BMX-guy Darryl Nau do quarter pipe tricks at the Whitney," is probably a shrug, or some kind of emoticon, depending on your questioners' format.