Link your face off

My brother, in a fit of kindness¹, recently bought two tickets to see the Beastie Boys play at the Greek Theatre. It really was a sweet gesture, and I’m starting to look forward to it to some great degree. I haven’t seen them since right after Hello Nasty was released –an album I didn’t particularly like- and I haven’t really looked back since then. But I probably saw them about ten times over the years, from tiny clubs to outdoor amphitheaters, and enough to blow off my senior week to see the first Tibetan Freedom Festival thingie. I don’t know if I felt like I grew out of their music or maybe I became a lot more interested in the influences that they wear so proudly on their sleeve², or even just found better rappers. But they’ve maintained a soft spot in my heart for making solid decisions and continuing to bring social injustice and overlooked pop oddities to the attention of a greater audience. So it should be a lot of fun.

So I’m gonna get to see them at the Greek, which I’ve always wanted to check out anyway. So yeah, some excitement is brewing. As if that wasn’t enough, I just got Go! Team tickets for Pomona, which will be interesting to say the least, considering when I picked up the tickets, the venue looked like it was in a DMZ.

In completely different news, here’s some links.

There’s both a meteor shower and a magical lunar eclipse coming up. I don’t usually go for the space nerd stuff, but these sound pretty cool and I usually get into crap like this right when I move to a new town. Go lie in a field at 3 AM on a Wednesday with a beer and a smile.

A giant Lego man washed up on the shores of the Dutch resort of Zandvoort. This is fucking awesome.

Apparently, the Army wrote a manual on how to do things correctly in Iraq 65 years ago. It’d be nice if we bothered consulting it before getting involved in this whole invasion thing.

Lastly, I wanted to post the last couple of days on how mad I am about this FISA thing getting pushed through. This is why I get angrier about the Dems than the GOP as of late. Because even when they win, they still manage to jam their thumbs so far up their asses that you can’t help but wonder why you listened to them to begin with. I can’t even put into words my frustration on this, and I think so far the Onion has summed it up best with

“You won't need to eavesdrop to hear this: I voted for you assholes because you said you were against shit like this.”

¹that’s not entirely true, he’s always kind. But this was especially kind and potentially motivated by the idea that life in California is not up to what we expected.

²off the top of my head, without the Beasties I would never have gotten into Schoolly D, Bad Brains, Vaughn Bode and Cheech Wizard, Biz Markie, demolition derbies, Wild Style, Buffalo Daughter, Beck, Money Mark, Puma Clydes, Buddhism, Tribe Called Quest, Company Flow, Minor Threat, Pirate Fuckin’ Radio, Jon Spencer, "Apache", Cibo Matto, Willie Bobo, Dolemite, Bob James, the Funky 4+1, Ricky Powell, Glen E. Friedman, the ABA, Lee Perry, Pato Banton, Lovebug Starski, Jimmy Smith, Coxsone Dodd, Mike Watt, Jabo Starks and Clyde Stubblefield, Spike Jonze, Charles Wright, Haze, the Moog, Booty Bass, Magilla Gorilla, Ladies And Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains, etc.. so their influence on me can't really be measured, especially when you count how many of the above items caused me to further seek new things. Seriously this list could probably go on for days. But I'm too tired of linking this shit to go on. Good to see that Wikipedia has an entry for Booty Bass, though.

Maybe some music later, but for now I need to get away from the computer. The above image is something that came up when I was google image searching the Fabulous Stains. Goddamnit I'd love to see that movie again.