OK, so the last time Nicole came to Brooklyn things just did not go well. She got all lost and the directions I gave her were messed up and the 7 was acting up and she showed up at my place, like, an hour and a half late and she was all pissed off and if you've ever seen that girl pissed then you've seen into the colon of God (of course, then we got ridiculously drunk and staggered all over Greenpoint and sang Johnny Cash on the Pulaski Bridge and spilled Chinese food all over my floor and listened to Elvis Costello and then all was right with the world).

Anyway--she's a forgiver and I'm a forgiver and we both have a very delicate sense of justice. She's agreed to come to Brooklyn tonight for the Art of Shooting show, but only if a few concessions are met. One of those concessions is the most precise possible directions to The Mark.

So I got online to get the exact address and, when cross-referencing it with the Art of Shooting website, realized something.

They're not playing at The Mark. I always assumed they were, because they list the address as "Manhattan and Freeman." I thought it was weird that they called it "Tommy's Tavern," but it made sense to me since the owner of The Mark is named Tommy Mark.

But no. I checked the address. They are not playing at The Mark.

They are playing at that other creepy-ass club on the corner.

Yessss.

That one that, if there's not a punk show going on, always has about three people in there silently watching TBS.

That one that I've only been in once and it was because Julie was at some sort of theatre party in there and I grabbed her and immediately dragged her five doors to the left and into the safe womb of The Mark.

That one that's lit only by the flourescent light over the pool table.

Yeah. That one.

Anyhoo--The Art of Shooting plays at 10:00. My rehearsal tonight ends at 11:00. So I might drink with The Art of Shooting. I know this little place down the street that has a really great selection of beer.

Crap.

*****

And, oh yeah--totally go see my brother's band in Austin if you can. He's been writing pretty excited stuff about their mew material. Get it while it's hot and weird.

You be PBR. You poor bastard.


What kinda beer be you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I thought for certain I was at least Sam Adams. But no. But no.

Ah well.

STOP TALKING TO ME I'M WRITING IN LIVEJOURNAL AND I'M CLEARLY NOT LISTENING TO YOU AND I'M LOOKING AT MY COMPUTER AND EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE GOING "UH-HUH" AND i'M TYPING LIKE CRAZY AND YET YOU ARE STILL TELLING YOUR STORY I DONT' CARE ABOUT YOUR SISTER I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE TYPING THIS IS MAKING ME REALLY REALLY LAUGH AND OH MY GOD SHE THINKS I'M LAUGHING AT HER STORY OH GOD CORPORATE CULTURE IS SO FUNNY AND WEIRD

OK. That was fun. More story?

Jesus.

I noticed this guy reading the Village Voice and we started talking politics in our little cubicle cluster. Then we cut out the picture of Bush on the cover and put it up using cardboard and a coffee stirrer. It's the most activity this office has seen in a while. And then we laughed about The Onion.

So if your Celibrex gives you hives, you know why.

Anyway, now that I got a little dose of heroin, I've gotta pass this on. Sweet lord, this is funny.

The scape goat? Remember President Bush and "The Pet Goat" in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"? After learning that terrorists have flown passenger jets into the World Trade Center towers, Bush spends a full seven minutes reciting to Florida schoolchildren from an instructional reading workbook, including such lines as: "A girl got a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her goat in her house. She played with her goat in her yard. But the goat did some things that made the girl's dad mad." Today at 7 a.m., Air America radio jocks Marc Maron and Mark Riley will read "The Pet Goat" in its entirety on their show, "Morning Sedition."

Too much.

UPDATE: More fun stuff from the Daily News:

Not everyone wants Jenna Bush to teach in Harlem.

Artists and Activists United for Peace, a black and Latino public-action group, plans to express its displeasure with the First Daughter at a rally on Sept. 2, during the Republican National Convention.

"We don't think she is of a high enough moral character to teach school, considering her past adventures," said group organizer John Penley. "Her taking this job is keeping a black person from getting the job. We think she and her sister should enlist in the military."

You go girl!!

Don't say that there aren't geniuses in the US Military:

Bigger breasts offered as perk to U.S. soldiers
The U.S. Army has long lured recruits with the slogan “Be All You Can Be,” but now soldiers and their families can receive plastic surgery, including breast enlargements, on the taxpayers’ dime.

The New Yorker magazine reports in its July 26th edition that members of all four branches of the U.S. military can get face-lifts, breast enlargements, liposuction and nose jobs for free -- something the military says helps surgeons practice their skills.

“Anyone wearing a uniform is eligible,” Dr. Bob Lyons, chief of plastic surgery at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio (Whoo-hoo!!) told the magazine, which said soldiers needed the approval of their commanding officers to get the time off.

Between 2000 and 2003, military doctors performed 496 breast enlargements and 1,361 liposuction surgeries on soldiers and their dependents, the magazine said.

The magazine quoted an Army spokeswoman as saying, “the surgeons have to have someone to practice on.”

It just...sorry, I'm getting a little choked up. It just...makes me so...damn...proud!

More freedom and bigger breasts. This is the Best Damn Country in the world.

Man. It's a shame that Devin Schryver, Airman First Class, is already pretty. The guy needs some perks, man. Wes too. Maybe Wes can get, like, un-crazy eye implants.

Nah. That dude's always gonna look crazy, and months on an aircraft carrier aren't gonna help that.

A little backstory:

About two years ago I was approached by my friend Josh Frank to be the musical director of a show he was working on about The Pixies. It was gonna be a musical review which told their story, featuring a live band. I would lead the band and play Joey Santiago. I knew Josh from all the weird absurdist punk rock shows we did in Austin, and I trusted his judgement. Obviously, I was thrilled.

We started working and shaping ideas and talking about possible sponsors and such. Josh was really giddy about this and (as is his most endearing personality quirk) was hopelessly optimistic about the possibilities. Nothing could convince him that this wasn't gonna be the biggest thing in the world.

And why not? He had, tenacious little fucker that he was, somehow befriended Frank Black and had interviewed three of the four Pixies (Kim could give a fuck, of course). The little pig-fucker called me from Joey Santiago's house.

"What do you want to ask Joey?"
"Uhh...ask him what effects he uses to get that sound."
"Hold on...He says he doesn't use effects: he just turns the amp way the fuck up."
"Whoa..."

So we kept working and created a song list and he got cracking on the script.

At first we were gonna develop it in Brooklyn, workshop it, and then try to move it to an Off-Broadway house. I was totally cool with that.

Suddenly, he had a change of heart: why not develop it in Austin?

This was not so enticing to me. I had just gotten here. He started talking about doing this for six months or more. That felt like a really long time to be away from Bina. I told him I'd think about it, and that I'd prefer to only be involved with the New York aspect. I said, "If you can't find a guitarist in Austin that can play The Pixies, you're not looking very hard."

He wanted my help on the script. I offered my services as a dramaturg. I had grande ideas for it: in my mind, a play about the weirdest pop band in the world had to be almost supernatural: the kind of thing that would take place in other dimensions, the kind of thing that would rip through the fabric of time. I imagined most of the action taking place on the surface of Mars.

I got the script.

Turns out, the story of the Pixies is really, really fucking boring.

They got together, they started playing, they caught on a bit, they started bickering non-stop, they broke up.

Anybody else see that Behind the Music of Every Band that Ever Existed?

It didn't help that the script kind of read like a Behind the Music, with a bunch of people delivering short monologues ("interviews") and no dialogue or interaction and then a song would play. Then, every once in a while, Kurt Cobain or Lightnin' Hopkins would show up, but they wouldn't talk to anybody else. They'd just say something and go away.

I called Josh after a few days of deep thought. I told him that I wasn't going to leave my girlfriend, my apartment, my theatre company, and my job to work on this show until the script was in better shape. I told him I woudl work on it if he did it in New York, but with the script as it was I wasn't going to spend six months temping and couching in Austin.

He yelled at me for not being supportive enough. I told him, "I support you: in fact, I support you so much I don't want to see you fall flat on your face. I want to help you make this as good as it can possibly be. I want to work on this and help make it amazing. I just don't think it's in good enough shape to warrant quitting my job and leaving my girlfriend."

He dismissed me, saying that he only wanted to work with people who could go about the project with a positive attitude. However, he left a door open for me and asked me to send him a written critique of the play. I spent hours on it, and finally forwarded him a reponse that ran about five pages long, filled with detailed notes on things I thought were weak in terms of story, character, structure, and theatricality ("You put Kurt Cobain in the same room as Frank Black and don't let them talk to each other. WHY?????").

He responded to my e-mail with one line: "I totally agree, Alonzo." I never heard from him again.

One time Bina ran into him at the movies. "Chris isn't gonna be here, is he?" "A little later." And then he ran away.

Another time I saw him on the L train. He looked rally startled, and then ran to the other side of the car.

I haven't seen hide nor hair of the guy since then. And then I find this on MTV News:

Playwright Josh Frank's proposed upcoming biography on the Pixies, "Fool the World: An Oral History of the Pixies," has been sold to St. Martins Press. It's slated for release in 2005.

What?? A book? A little research and I found this:

For the past three years, writer Josh Frank has been conducting interviews with members of the Pixies and their affiliates, compiling an archive of material that he's poured into his musical Teenager of the Year: The Frank Black Musical, which is set to premiere this September in New York City. Additionally, along with Spin writer Caryn Ganz, he's compiled a book that represents the Pixies' legend as told by band members themselves, as well as their friends, family and acquaintances. It also features the comments of such Pixies followers as Tom Yorke, David Bowie, Bono, PJ Harvey, and Dave Grohl.

Also, oddly enough, I kept finding all these hits where they called him an "assistant to the producer" of Love, Janis (the musical about Janis Joplin). The guy ran the concession stand. Dru is, I guess, also an assistant to the producers of MTC.

At any rate, I don't want to be a hater. I totally respect the guy and I really, truly do want Josh to do good (though, in his head, I'm certainly considered the enemy).

Anyway, I searched and searched but couldn't find any information about the show itself (Josh's official website is just a bunch of PDF's of the press he's gotten so far). I don't know where or when it's going to come out (and this is the third date for the New York premiere that I've heard) but I know that I'm wearing a full suit and bringing a bottle of wine on opening night. And Josh will, undoubtedly, say some weird version of "I told you so."

And I will not say anything derogatory in return. I will present him with his bottle of wine and congratulate him.

And if that fucking shit-ass play takes place on Mars I'm suing him thirty feet into the ground.