The Brunch Table

It’s been a while since I’ve written…and I’ve been pretty mobile over the past four months, covering seven cities (Huntington, WV; Madison, WI; Montreal, Boston, Pittsburgh, LA, New York), getting to play at a couple of good shows, and accumulating rejection letters…

So I’m currently in Philadelphia, being slowly eaten alive by a pack of mosquitoes that’ve mysteriously gotten themselves indoors. (Maybe they’re fleas. Or ghost mosquitoes.) On Wednesday, I’m shipping out for San Francisco, where I’ll be blowing the rest of my grant money on rent as I keep on looking for work…

In the meantime, here are some pictures from Ask the Robot, a variety show that takes place in the bottom of a decommissioned lighthouse boat in New York Harbor. I’m filed under “Montreal Scribble Video,” which I think is an excellent name….

If you have any interest in the nightlife of your respective locality, you might want to check out Upcoming.org, a collaborative event-listing site that launched a month ago. The value proposition is something like Friendster-meets-Citysearch. You can indicate which events you’re going to (if they’re not listed, they’re easy to add yourself), and then you can see a combined list of things that your friends are going to. Will this be more useful than reading your local weekly? Time will tell, but I think that the site’s RSS-feeds-for-everything approach will probably help remind me of all the events I want to go to…

I’m back in West Virginia…the big news here is that Clear Channel is holding one of their “Rallies for America” this weekend in the local college football stadium…40,000 people are expected to visit for the occasion. Flags and themed billboards have sprouted up around town…one that particularly caught my eye shows a scowling minister, bible in hand, under the words “Prophecy and the Jew.” I’m taking the first bus outta town tomorrow morning.

My sister says I’m reading too much into it…it’s just one billboard, after all. Plenty of ‘em say nice things like “Freedom is More Than Just a Word” and don’t mention Jews at all. I wonder if the Rallies folks have got some extra-long, vertically-hung versions of our national flag? Nothin’ says “fascists on parade” like one a’ those.