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Well, it's probably a good thing I chickened out of Friday's midnight screening, because I was headed toward the wrong theater. It was in Campbell on Friday, and last night I saw it with Tom in San Jose. It's been years since I last saw it, and only on VHS; I remembered how great it was, but not all the ways it was great. Like the childlike expression on Byrne's face when he's dancing with the lamp. It's too bad "Big Business"/"I Zimbra" isn't in the theatrical version, though.

Also this weekend I've determined that, after three years with essentially no exercise, I'm in measurably worse shape than I was when I used to run every day. I guess the scientists were right.

Sent CDs to dougo, tombking, juliansinger, morganita, and bushmiller. I also remember putting the package for my sister on the counter, but it's not on the receipt, so, um... I don't know. That's it for now, except for a couple of locals and one straggler who didn't get me a mailing address yet.

For those of you who don't know xythian--who provided me with, among other things, the frontispiece of my web site--let me point out his recent and unexpected detour into cartooning. I don't get all of them, but that's okay. Some of my favorites are today's "cartoon shortcut"; "unwelcome pet"; and, still, the first one.

It's one of those days when, of 3987 songs on my iPod, I can find almost nothing I want to hear.

Today's Barefoot show was a lot of fun. I played mostly good notes on the bass with Dave and Tom. Goh was mesmerizing. Nick rocked out. Plenty of people showed up, which always helps. Even before the show started, I had fun watching the awesomely sleep-deprived staff trudge around. I am a cruel man.

There's no show next Sunday; on the 24th, we have local singer-songwriter Pamela Mosher, "twisted folk" group Vermillion Lies, and another TBA.

Tonight I went to see Sylvie Lewis and two other singer-songwriters at the Hotel Utah, where I haven't been since a completely unsatisfying visit to their open mike. I was late, and resigned to missing an opening act or two, but it turned out they were doing it song-circle style. So I guess I'm happy to have heard the other performers, but I would give up both of them to have caught Lewis's song "New York". Essie Jain played bass, had interesting songs, and her last one was great; Jeff Rolka was engaging but his voice didn't really grab me.

Leftovers from the previous batch are by the door, waiting to be shipped to SecondSpin or driven to Goodwill. The end is in sight.

Free for the asking: ( D E F H I )

Last night: Went to Santa Cruz to see Vermillion Lies, who are very cool and will be playing a Sunday Chill Session in a couple weeks. (Yeah, I need to update the page.) They played at The Attic, a very nice space with a vast menu of teas, which unfortunately is actually the attic of another club, so we got to hear some rock band's bass player through most of the set. Not the greatest. They handled it well, though.

This morning: Recorded some demos for the new project--two bass-and-vocal takes, and one adding saucepans to an existing track. Mmm, sauce.

This afternoon: Shipping book orders, laundry, mundane stuff; maybe finally see that Star Wars movie? Or that Batman movie?

Tomorrow afternoon: I'll be sitting in on bass with the DTs (Dave and Tom's old band, resurrected), followed by Goh Nakamura and Nick Bartunek, whose band played a really impressive set with Altamont Pass last weekend. It should be a great show.

Tomorrow night: Sylvie Lewis in San Francisco?

Happy Independence Day. Here are more CDs for the taking.

( J )

Previously: K L M N O P R S V W Y Z.

I'll be taking the remainders from these last few batches to Goodwill this week, so if you think you might like some of them but you haven't checked yet, now's the time.

Further motivated, I've just put almost all my computer books up for sale on Amazon and Half.com. If you're curious, here's the Half list. I can't find a way to get the Amazon list, although maybe it'll be here eventually. Anyway, it's mostly around the cluster of Java, web stuff, and programming languages, plus some textbooks and the TeXbook.

About a third of the books didn't seem likely to earn enough to be worth selling, which means they're going free to someone. They're mostly dated, but if you want to get a basic understanding of these subjects (as of a few years ago when I stopped buying computer books), leave a comment and I'll tell you what I've got: Human-computer interface design, Painter 5, DirectX, hacker jargon, Dylan, Scheme, C++, XSLT, XML, Palm programming, and many Java topics. Otherwise they'll go to the Friends of Some Public Library.

At this moment I can recognize an Addison-Wesley book from its ISBN number. I hope that doesn't last.

I was surprised to discover I own a $100 (or more) paperback: Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines. I bought it for $13.95 at the Stanford bookstore ten years ago. Predictably, I have not put this one up for sale, while I "decide what to do with it", i.e., dither.

This morning I had the Blue Nile's "Heatwave" running through my head, specifically the little interlude:

Will I tell you?
Will you listen?
If I tell you,
What will happen?

I quote this mostly so I can share my theory with you Frou Frou fans that "The Dumbing Down of Love" pays homage to the Blue Nile. As we all should.

Anyway, enough of that and I had to try to play it. So I picked up the electric guitar and found some chords that sort of work--one of the great things about that song is that it's like it doesn't even have chords, it has, like, chordal textures built up from the interplay of all these different sounds. So yeah, I had to dumb it down to fit onto a guitar. For the freeform sections, I used my recently resurrected technique of fretting a chord and then tapping on the strings with a Pilot Precise V7 rolling ball pen--the absolute best pen to write with, and, I am now convinced, the best to play guitar with as well.

So that's what I did at the open mike tonight. And a mostly unsuccessful rendition of Whiskeytown's "Avenues", and "Four Days Low", a former mandolin song which I actually wrote at this very open mike one night because I needed something to match my bad mood, and which has barely been heard since.

It's been demanded that I play accordion at the open mike next week, so I'm going to see if I can work something up.