2) I saw the Doves in concert last week. I actually bought the tickets the day the advanced sales were available, a good while before Kingdom of Rust was actually released just on faith. Because they may be my favorite band. They're at least in the top five, but I think they may be number 1. There were fantastic, just buckets of awesome, and played a good wide sampling of stuff from all of their albums, which was nice. And the tickets were ridiculously cheap -- $20! $20 bucks and I was right up to the edge of the stage! What you have to understand is that these dudes are huge in England, like with number one albums and such, and here no one but me and a handful of hipsters (of which, I grudgingly accept, I am one) pay any attention to them. Tell you what, I was glad to be American that night.
The opening act was a band called Wild Light, which I think I would have enjoyed more if I'd just listened to them instead of having to watch them, too. See, thing is that they (well, three out fo the four of them, the drummer stayed put) kept randomly switching instruments between songs - practically every song - and I just wanted to yell out that they should maybe have planned their set better and each members' facility with bass, guitar, and keyboards was growing less impressive with each handoff. Also, they kept turning around when they played and showing their skinny asses shoved into ludicrously tight pants for no discernible reason. Which was distracting. I kept worrying that they would get blood clots.
But the best part is that one of the multi-insturmentalists bore a rather striking resemblance to Trent Lane from Daria. Good show, that.
I also kind of think the dude behind him looks like Jonny Lee Miller when he was all blond in Trainspotting.
3) I'm growing rather improbably attached to crayons. One of the characters (who is a sneaky surprise character that sort of popped up out of nowhere and is steadily taking things over. There's a looming blog post in that phenomenon, I think, so stayed tuned. If you're so inclined.) from the 2nd generation City of Mages thing I'm working on is a painter, and I have felt compelled to replicate what I imagine his style of portraits of the other characters would be if he existed. I'm not sure why, it's not like I'm terribly artistic. In any case, I have no paint, so I've settled for a somewhat strange mixture of a black sharpie and crayons. You can do a surprising amount with crayons if you get creative - lots of shading and using the direction of the strokes to heighten shapes and simulate thre dimensionality. I never knew that way back in the day. One thing though, all the colors are so damn bright that everything I do looks a little too pop art-ish. Because apparently children hate muted, rich dark colors and they don't make a box of crayons for adults who like to channel fictional elvish painters. Crazy world.
1 comment:
That guy wishes he looked like Trent.
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