It’s been five days since San Diego Comic Con 2004, AKA NERD PROM, and I am still fucking exhausted. Nobody told me I would acquire some kind of Nerd Mono while I was down there. Seriously, it’s fucked up. You notice how none of the folks I went down with have updated their blogs since they’ve gotten back? They’re still in recovery.

Spending five days with fat jedis is just about as frightening and fun as you’d expect. It’s not as loud and overwhelming as E3, but it was just unbearably hot and humid on the con floor. The rooms upstairs were much better, so panels were definitely the way to go. I didn’t run into quite as much nerdstink as I had expected, but there was this one guy that smelled like he wiped his ass with kim-chee and then kept it in his back pocket. Other than that, the olfactory experience was not nearly as offensive as I’d been led to believe. This could also be because I tried to avoid the jungle of the con floor as much as possible.

I’m not going to go with the full con report because… well, I wasn’t really into it from a news perspective. I actually didn’t learn about a lot of the big announcements or see a lot of the sneak stuff until I got home and read it on the internet. I know it seems like a backwards way of doing it, but trust me on this one. Most of the time it was just your basic hanging with nerd friends, getting completely bombed, crashing out on a bed and repeating the cycle through the weekend. So Dan and Megan kept me intact most of the weekend, except for that one time Megan left my drunk ass in the hotel lobby of the Hyatt. Finding the hotel room that night was one of the longest half-hours of my life. That was fucked up, Megan.

Aside from the folks I already knew, I got to meet some cool kids like Kelly Sue DeConnick and Laurenn McCubbin and see Matty Matt Fraction for our semi-annual meet and greet, as well as a bunch of other folks without webpages, and therefore not that important. One of the stranger moments of con was standing in front of Jeff Parker‘s table and having him ask me about one of the old message boards I moderated. He even came from behind his table to take a take a picture with me and KSDC and Sam Humphries, for his own records. I’m sure he’s looking at his pictures now wondering who the sweaty dude is, as we speak! Internet semi-stardom is such a bizarro thing, I swear.

One thing I realized was that I really do need to actually read some comics this year. Tilting my head sideways and looking cute and confused really only goes so far when conversation comes around.

I was able to bookend my trip with some time with Axel and Charity, deep bros from the wayback, and getting some non-nerd time in kept me regulated. On Sunday I went to a hot sauce store with Chazzer and set my tongue on fire from sampling everything, and that was way rad.

Anyway, I have a bad set of pictures up at my new and improved gallery, and Megan’s got much better ones of virtually the same events (the first few days anyway). I don’t think anyone else that I was down with has put up pics yet. Oh, and Kelly Sue is doing a pretty in depth recap right now on her site. I make a cameo appearance.

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1) July, July! – Castaways and Cutouts – The Decemberists

I’ve been waiting for months and months for July to come just so I could put this song on a mix. There’s a pause right before the chorus where I’m so anxious to yell JULY! JULY! that my heart almost leaps out of chest.

2) July Jones – The Electric Version – The New Pornographers

The other July song I’ve been waiting on. peppy!

3) On The Table – The Slow Wonder – AC Newman

Of all the tracks on AC Newman’s solo album, this is the one that is the most “pornographic.” With its punchy melodies and cacophonous vocals, this song would have blended perfectly with any of the New Pornographers albums.

4) Anything You Want – Girls Can Tell – Spoon

Spoon’s always been this band that snuck up on me. I’ve listened to Girls Can Tell zillions of times, but this sly track came up on random and it still surprised me. Britt Daniel’s vocals are always so effortlessly sexy.

5) Grace Cathedral Hill – Demos – Tiara

Robert Duffy made me download this, but it’s a fantastically cool Decemberists cover. It’s about as bare as the original, but the doubled and echoed vocals give it a haunting depth. Depressingly sad, achingly pretty.

6) C’mere – Antics – Interpol

New Interpol. Sounds like old Interpol. A bit faster.

7) Engine – Live – The Decemberists

“Engine” feels like the bastard child of “Wichita Lineman” and “Driver 8,” The bridge lyrics really knocked me out: “If you don’t love me, let me go / I am a writer / a writer of fictions / I am the heart that you call home / I’ve written pages upon pages / trying to rid you from my bones”

8) Good Year For the Roses – Almost Blue – Elvis Costello

The first verse is arguably my favorite verse of all time, a lyric so good that Elvis Costello was jealous enough to cover it: “I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick / on the cigarettes there in the ashtray / Lyin’ cold the way you left ‘em / but at least your lips caressed them / while you packed / Or the lip-print on a half-filled cup of coffee / that you poured and didn’t drink / But at least you thought you wanted it, that’s so much more than I can say for me”

9) Film – This is Cinerama – Cinerama

Whenever Cinerama pops up on my ipod I feel like I’ve been transported into the greatest spy movie ever. This track was no exception.

10) 18 Wheels – Broken Bottles Empty Hearts – Murder City Devils

This rager isn’t really supposed to be romantic, but I always think a trucker drunk off his ass on the highway thinking about his girl is kind of sweet. Dangerous, but sweet. “like a smuggler, like a trucker / drinking while you should be sleeping / sleeping while you should be waking up / never hung over, either wide awake or way too drunk / the only thing, only thing i ever wanted is gonna fuck you over / its gonna fuck us up, the only thing that i ever wanted / i never wanted you / to be a sailors girl / to be a truckers wife / to be left behind”

11) Abra Cadaver – Tyrannosaurus Hives – The Hives

The Hives are back with this? This track’s got the swagger, but most of the rest of the album borders on extinction. Yes. When you name your album with a dinosaur crack, you’re going to hear a lot of bad extinction jokes.

12) Girl Is On My Mind – Rubber Factory – The Black Keys

The new Black Keys record’s got the same shimmy and swagger as the first two, but a little more of a country, down-home feel. Fucking’ great white boy blues.

13) Walking to Do – Shake the Sheets – Ted Leo/Pharmacists

TED LEO and he’s got something to say and shit to do. Watch the fuck out.

14) Everything I Do, Nothing Seems to Turn Out Right – B-Sides – The Decemberists

YES, this is the 4th Decemberists song! Bet you can’t wait for the December mix. That’s going to really blow your mind… or bore you to death. The title’s kind of the story of my life. The botched and awkward relationship examined in the song is not really the story of my life. “we turned off the tube / and crawled to your room /leaving discarded clothes in our way / we both had some fun / though I twice bit my tongue / and it lasted a bit long / for my taste / there’s a nagging suspicion that just won’t leave me alone tonight / everything I do, nothing seems to turn out right” That’s just hilarious.

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Anchorman is, at times, pee your pants funny. The other parts go by fast enough that you can go back to peeing your pants in short order. There’s no plot to speak of, so I won’t pretend to speak of it. Look for producer Judd Apatow’s cameo during the “sex panther” scene. The other cameos are bit more obvious, although just as funny. While everyone in the movie pulls their weight, Steve Carrill’s portrayal of BRICK, Retard Weatherman, made my abs burn with laughter.

Control Room deals with news of a completely different sort. It’s a behind-the-scenes documentary about the Al-Jazeera broadcasting networking during the Iraq war. Content-wise, the documentary is fascinating. While it’s mostly based on Al-Jazeera and its controversial (well, in America at least) coverage of the war and occupation, it also covers CentCom in totale, where the military held its press conferences and doled out information to US networks, the BBC and Al-Jazeera alike. What you see isn’t really a traditional media outlet as much as constant game of propaganda, where the military played the press as much as it could. Some of the best parts of the doc are when they cover events like the Jessica Lynch episode or the Saddam statue toppling in the middle of the Baghdad square, and you get to see the backstage hustle of the reporters and military as they jockey for position and information. The big weakness of the movie is that it’s very dryly presented, little more than a collection of talking heads. The doc almost presents Al-Jazeera as a freedom fighting organization, a source of truth and justice. One of the lessons of the film is that there is no objectivity in war, so I wish they could have extended that thematically a bit more, rather than go for the more obvious presentation.

On a completely different sidenote: CentCom would make for a great workplace drama, with the different network reporters as characters. Braver souls could even shape it into a M*A*S*H like comedy!

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The New Pornographers’ website has a few video clips from A.C. Newman’s first concert on his solo tour. I saw him play the Troubadour in Los Angeles last week and will have a writeup soon, but in the meantime checkout the videos. I’d recommend “On the Table.”

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Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme

This documentary about freestyle rap is raw and unfinished (it barely clocks an hour), but what’s there is great fun. The movie spins its wheels when MCs talk but it comes to life when they suit up and do battle. The confrontations with Supernatural, Craig G and Juice are all worth the price of admission and director Kevin Fitzgerald scores gold with an old clip of a babyfaced 17 year old Notorious BIG on a street corner taking it to some kid so hard that the kid walks away in disgust, not even taking his turn. It’s not as polished as its hip-hop DJ counterpart Scratch, but hopefully it will get there. The only really bad part was after the movie I had to listen to my friends bust the absolute worst freestyles in the history of man.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Ehn. I’ve followed the news enough that I didn’t really learn anything, and Moore’s bias is still a bit off-putting. It also suffers from some poor narrative flaws, heavy handed narration and some wild shifts in tone. That said, the info’s good and it’s important that it gets widely seen, if only to keep the channels of discourse open. I just wish it were better, I wish it were more deftly handled. I WISH IT HAD INTERROTRON.

Spider-Man 2

It’s better than the first one, but in reverse. The saccharine tone worked for me the first time, but it felt a bit cloying this time. On the other hand, Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus is perfect in every way. The physicality of the character is terrifying and brutal, and the design and choreography of his confrontations with Spidey are dead-on. The King Kong imagery of Ock climbing towers with Mary Jane in tow was probably my favorite part.

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For the first time in two years, Eric Gagne blew a save, and his record setting save streak is now over at the previously unfathomable mark of 84. The most prolonged period of domination I’ve ever seen is over.

It’s just a regular season game, and Gagne will no doubt continue to make major leaguers look like little leaguers, but still… I got physically ill watching Luis Gonzalez round third to score the tying run. That is the price of success, I guess. Gagne’s been so phenomenal that the expectation is perfection, and tonight he came up short.

When Gagne came off the mound the Dodger Stadium crowd gave him a curtain call to show their appreciation. Hats off to you, Eric. All good things come to an end, and all streaks live to begin again.

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I’ve seen the Decemberists three times now, and coupling that with Duffy roadtripping a few times just to see them, I’m starting to think they’re looking like the Ted Leo of 2004. That is, they’re the act getting way too much coverage from Donewaiting.com. That said, how can you ever get too much of the Decemberists?!?! I know I can’t.

This time, the Decemberists were playing at the El Rey, their biggest venue in L.A. yet. The show wasn’t sardine squished like the Sleater-Kinney shows I saw here a month or so back, but it was pretty much filled, a good sign for Decemberist checking accounts. As before, the pre-show music was Peter and The Wolf, with the music cutting to the Russian national anthem as the band took the stage bathed in red light.

The show wasn’t very different from the once I saw before, with similar setlists and an epic performance of “The Tain,” the 20 minute tour-de-force that is now retired from the regular rotation. Years from now I’ll get to say stupid stuff like “Man, I saw them play the Tain TWICE AND IT WAS AWESOME,” and have some teenager laugh at me and my Motorhead shirt… or something.

It wasn’t a carbon copy though, and there were enough new wrinkles to the evening. The band played two new songs, “Kingdom of Spain” and “The Sporting Life.” The latter is about Meloy’s burgeoning career as a soccer star, a career tragically cut short when he fell on his face at the age of 10 and was too embarassed to go on. I’m not sure exactly what “Kingdom of Spain” is about, but Colin Meloy’s intro read thusly, “After the tour, we’re all going to go to the spa, get massages, get facials. After we get uh… facialed… uh, wait. After we receive … uh, forget it. We’re going into the studio and recording new songs.” Bukakke banter aside, the song itself is a lovely ballad with Colin on piano and Jenny Conlee center stage on accordion.

Other setlist variations included the comeback of “Apology Song,” one of the six songs on the “5 Songs EP.” This one also had a looooong storytime intro, where Meloy explained that Madeline was eventually found, and subsequently crushed by Meloy’s poor driving skills. Apparently it is still tied to a bike rack somewhere in Portland (425 S.E. 3rd Street), with no seat or tires, waiting to be revived. The twist with “Chimbley Sweep” was that the main event guitar confrontation has been replaced with Accordion vs. Airline, Conlee vs. Crutchy, an instrumental duel to the death, the aural equivalent to Bear vs. Shark. Conlee holds her own much better than Colin ever did, pushing her squeezebox to new limits while giving Chris Funk violent stinkeye. Who won? Well, after finishing his beer, Meloy stepped in and balanced his guitar on top of his head, stealing the biggest round of applause.

The encore brought on a slew or surprises. Colin’s solo segment included a bang-on cover of Joanna Newsom’s “Bridges and Balloons,” before his customary turn at “Red Right Ankle.” Normally, when the band starts into “Cautionary Song,” guitarist Chris Funk dances on stage for wont of nothing else to do. This night, he left the stage completely, but not to take a powder. Donning a long black beard and strapping on a lone bass drum, Chris Funk marched through the aisles and through the crowd pounding away with abandon. Hide the women and children, Chris Funk was on the loose! They closed the show with a cover of the Smiths’ “Ask,” which they played as a singalong with the crowd. This was kind of hurt by the fact that most of the crowd didn’t know the words, except maybe the last bit of the chorus. I’ll admit to coming in a bit early with “the bomb that will keep us together,” as I lost count of all the bombs.

What’s next for the band? Well, besides all the *cough* facials, they’ll be shacking up with Chris Walla to record the aforementioned new album, and probably be touring again this fall. Guess where I’ll be this fall? Yeah.

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I completely forgot to write up the Mission of Burma show I caught about a month ago, so here’s the abridged version:

The played the Henry Fonda Theater, which holds about 1500 folks and is one of the bigger clubs in L.A. It was the same night as a sold-out Sonic Youth show and it looked like the attendance suffered. There were probably only 400 people in the place, a disappointing number to be sure. In deference to Clint Conley’s tinnitus, Mission of Burma splits their set into two mini-sets. It seemed like the short sets made it difficult to ramp up momentum.

Musically, Mission of Burma is just incredibly powerful. Even with the drums contained behind a blast shield, there’s a tangible push coming from the stage. The swirling guitars and samples created an immense, physically punishing wall of sound. The new material from “onOFFon” seamlessly matched up with the older material, which is just about as big a complement as anyone could give. This wasn’t a reunion tour cashing in on past success, but a band picking up exactly where they left off. They ain’t done yet.

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The performance schedule for the annual Sunset Junction festival is up and official. This year the Saturday lineup features the Unicorns, Har Mar, Ima Robot, Ben Kweller and the Donnas. Oh, and ASHFORD AND SIMPSON. The Sunday lineup ends with Camper Van Beethoven and X. Peppered throughout the weekend are notable local acts like The Like, Dengue Fever and Your Enemies Friends.

I went two years ago when the headline acts were Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, Mudhoney and CHAKA KHAN. Good times and funnel cake. It’s usually hot like Satan’s crotch though, so pack some sunscreen and show up half-nekkid. Everyone else will.

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