Originally posted at The Outbreak on Feb. 27th, 2005:

Last night my friend Ken threw himself a birthday party. And when I say he threw himself a birthday party, what I mean is that he did not fuck around. There was an open bar, a knife-throwing act, a ska band, an artsy marching band, burlesque dancers, and a happy-birthday-to-Ken strip show involving two of his friends that ended in an act that reminded me of nothing so much as George Costanza’s declaration to a Senegalese home-care aide of his acquaintance, “I want to dip my bald head in oil and rub it all over your body,” only in this case “oil” was replaced by chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and maybe some other stuff I couldn’t see from that distance. When Amy and I left the party, there was a man with a face tattoo on stage doing some sort of revival-tent speech (that, or the opening for the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams). As I said, Kenneth did not fuck around. What’s funny about all this is that this was not for his 20th or 21st or 25th or 30th birthday (hell, given his and my predelictions, I’d have understood if it was his 23rd), but his 27th. I now sort of feel I can’t ever have a birthday party again, because this would be pretty much impossible to top.

One thing I feel I discovered last night is that I truly can put away Guinness. I don’t think this makes me special or anything, but I know that for a lot of people (my grandfather, for instance), it’s just too heavy. It actually feels lighter than Pabst Blue Ribbon to me. I feel I am fortunate in this regard.

Another thing I discovered (or re-discovered) last night is that despite the fact that I work in the comics industry, I actually have one of the least ridiculous jobs of my high-school circle of friends. We count among our number a glass blower, a knife-thrower’s assistant, and an anti-capitalist zine archivist. Granted, Ken’s gig at a Fortune 500 company completely ruins the curve, but still.

Meanwhile the highlight of Amy’s night was when a gay man complimented her ass. I do this all the time–seriously, all the time–but I guess she reasoned that this fellow knows from asses. Fine, fine, anything that gets her to actually accept a compliment. Right now she is asleep with her head in my lap, so perhaps I’ll try subliminal messages to that effect.

We also saw the Gates last night, finally. Eh. It’s impressive, in the sense that most massive things are impressive, but they just look like dirty shower curtains to me, or something from the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

Amy and I fought quite a bit yesterday. Wish I knew why, but I was just in a rotten mood and I let her know it. Yuck. On the other hand the nice thing about being married is that it lessens the drama–what’re we gonna do, get divorced? Although, as Amy put it, there may be less drama but there’s also more irritation, as we’re stuck with each other. 99 times out of 100, though, that’s just fine with me.

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 2nd, 2005:

During the (surprisingly, and yet unsurprisingly, brief) period I wasn’t actively blogging, I ended up writing the occasional lengthy music-review missive to the members of the file-sharing listserv to which I belong. This meant that these people got personally subjected to my year-end music wrap-up. The bonus, though, was that they could actually download my favorite albums of ’04, because I uploaded them to our file-sharing server. Can’t do that for you all, but in my continuing quest to make a liar out of myself when I said this wasn’t going to be a music blog, here’s my favorites from the year that was. (I even made specific song recommendations

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 1st, 2005:

Courtesy of Eve and Dave, here’s a list of ten things I’ve done that you probably haven’t.

1. Visited Loch Ness

2. Won an award for Best Senior Essay in the Yale Film Studies department

3. Married my high-school sweetheart

4. Played Brad and emcee’d in the floor show of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

5. Had my writing called “so fucking smart” by Clive Barker

6. Attended, and helped to host, several Naked Parties

7. Burned my junior year religion textbooks

8. Gotten both a Star Wars and a Lord of the Rings tattoo (Rebel Alliance insignia on right bicep; emblem of the Kings of Gondor on left bicep)

9. Had “Happy Birthday” sung to me by the Dandy Warhols

10. Worn a “FRANKIE SAY RELAX” t-shirt on my honeymoon

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 7th, 2005:

All Killer, No Filler

I think we can all rest assured that there’s a particularly uncomfortable section of Hell reserved for Sum 41 because of how they ruined that phrase for the rest of us. And because of a wide array of other reasons.

“All killer, no filler” is a good way to describe Daft Punk’s new record Human After All, as it turns out. I found this somewhat surprising based on the nature of their last album, Discovery. Now, as anyone who has listened to that album can tell you, the first four songs (“One More Time,” “Aerodynamic,” “Digital Love,” “Harder Better Faster Stronger”) comprise pretty much the best first-four-song sequence on any album whose first four songs are not called “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” “The Battle of Evermore” and “Stairway to Heaven”–I defy you to find me a better suite of hands-in-the-air-there’s-a-party-over-there music on God’s Gray Earth. Unfortunately, the rest of Discovery can’t help but feel like a let-down by way of comparison. Out of the entire 14-song platter, I think around nine are worth listening to. (The others being “Something About Us,” “Voyager,” “Veridis Quo,” (especially) “Face to Face,” and, depending on what mood you’re in, either “Nightvision,” “High Life,” or “Short Circuit.”) And the five (or so) clunkers are real killers, man. That closing song, “Too Long”? Talk about truth in advertising!

So the first thing you notice is that Human After All is pretty much wall-to-wall rockin

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 24th, 2005:

I finally saw the third film in the Matrix trilogy, and I actually liked it. But I liked Reloaded too, so maybe that

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 21st, 2005:

As the type of person who, after the catastrophic failure of director Rob Bowman’s Elektra, thought to himself, “Dammit! Now Reign of Fire will never get the respect it deserves!”, I couldn’t have been happier with Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real, which aired earlier tonight on Animal Planet. It’s the latest “what if?” documentary Animal Planet has produced, this time breaking down how dragons “really” would have looked and acted had they actually existed. The special was remarkably well thought out, using the unusually uniform appearance of dragons in the mythologies of disparate cultures to create an unnervingly and delightfully plausible natural history for the creatures. It was all done in a mockumentary-style tone that, aside from one straightforward disclaimer at the beginning of the show and several implicit ones later on (after each commercial break), dropped the “what if?” tone and treated it like straight science. Apparently this was too much for some critics to process–read this, oh, I guess let’s call it a review, why not? from Linda Stasi at the NY Post; you can practically smell the wood burning as Stasi tries to plow through her own confusion, and hopefully the odor will distract you from how embarrassing it is that she expects you to be just as uncomprehending–but for the rest of us it was a fascinating way to while away 90 minutes on a Sunday evening. (Less than 90 minutes with the magic of TiVo at your command, of course.) The damn thing was even narrated by Patrick Stewart. About the only false note came in the appearance of some of the later dragon species, who had forelegs, hind legs, and wings, rather than the far more feasible hind legs/wings combo; it just kind of jumped out at me all of a sudden that this evolutionary quirk, which has no analogue that I can think of in all of non-insect biology (indeed, the show’s website resorts to fruit flies for justification), had gone completely unexplained and unremarked upon by the special, in a clear sacrifice of plausibility for artistic license. But other than that, all the questions you’d want answered (how does it fly? how does it breathe fire? how long did they last?) are answered in spectacular fashion, as are some you didn’t think to ask (they manage to account for variations in the descriptions of dragons between different cultures, and even link the creatures to sea serpent myths). If you are a nerd, and I’m assuming you are, this is great TV.

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 20th, 2005:

For some reason I didn’t know that Pitchfork existed until last Friday or something like that. Actually, that’s not entirely true: I think I’d heard of it, but assumed that with a name like that it was some sort of Papa Roach/Damageplan fan site. Nu-metal, like Communism, can still do a lot of damage in its lingering death throes. Call it Snow Patrol Syndrome. (It’s amazing how much damage a poorly selected moniker can do. I mean, I’ve got to assume I’m not the only person who drew that conclusion about the site, since let’s face it, any thought that occurs to anyone has occurred to somebody else, and probably lots of sombodies else.)

Anyway, I just got done browsing through a review or twenty on Pitchfork, and it was time well spent. In many cases they were the type of reviews that are erudite, well-informed, devoid of point-scoring and trainspotting, intelligently argued, impeccably sourced, and still wrong (kinda like a superhero comic review by Tim O’Neil), but (as is the case with Tim, who of course is one of the four or five best writers in the ol’ comics blogosphere) all that other stuff is nothing to be sneezed at, so I enjoyed them a lot. (Case in point: they kinda pan LCD Soundsytem’s record, but have the good sense to a) note that the Eno homage “Great Release” is the best thing on the album; b) point out that “Never as Tired as When I’m Waking Up” owes as much to Floyd as it does to the Beatles, which everyone else seems to have missed. (I would have pegged it to Meddle rather than Dark Side, but the point still stands.))

All this is my roundabout way of introducing this thought: Once you’ve named your band Vietnam, you might as well call it a day, no? I mean, you’re never gonna come up with anything that brilliant ever again.

God, I wish I think of something half as awesome as naming a band Vietnam. (Maybe my “if you’ve thought of it, thousands of other people have too” rule is bogus. I’m reasonably sure this is the only band called Vietnam, and that’s a goddamn astounding idea.)

Postscript: Finding out that Chromeo was spawned by Vice Magazine explains an awful lot.

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 17th, 2005:

Album that is better than I thought it was: Tyrannosaurus Hives by the Hives

Album that is better than other people think it is: Frances the Mute by the Mars Volta

Album that is better than I thought it was but still not as good as everyone else thinks it is: Elephant by the White Stripes

Album that is just as good as I think it is but better than everyone else thinks it is in the sense that I don’t think anybody else has heard of it, much less heard it, much less formed an opinion about it: Pursuit of Happiness by Weekend Players

Ditto: Attention by Gus Gus

Album that almost makes inviting Ron Wood to join your band seem like a good idea (almost): Some Girls by the Rolling Stones

Album that for some reason has I think the lowest Amazon.com sales rank of all the Brian Jonestown Massacre albums but is actually enthralling and comparatively accessible: Bringing It All Back Home…Again by the Brian Jonestown Massacre

Album that it was probably a good idea for Capitol Records to put the kibosh on in favor of the songs that eventually became The Dandy Warhols Come Down: The Black Album by the Dandy Warhols

Album that it is probably not a good idea for Sony Records to put the kibosh on in favor of, well, apparently nothing: Extraordinary Machine by Fiona Apple

Album that, while entertaining, I think illustrates the artistic limitations of slavishly faithful recreations of the sounds of the early-to-mid-’80s: She’s In Control by Chromeo

Album that would be the band’s third five-starrer in the music magazine in my head if it weren’t for the fact that its emotional high point, “Walk in Fire,” is distractingly similar to said album’s predecessor’s emotional lead single, “There Goes the Fear,” so now it’s “just” a four-starrer: Some Cities by Doves

Album that everybody should listen to at least once today: Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy

Another album that everybody should listen to at least once today: Zooropa by U2

Welcome (back) to Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat, your source for free-form Collins as the fella says. Yes, I’m back.

Or I will be soon–I’ve got a whole bunch of pop-cultural posts to copy over from The Outbreak to here first, methinks, since as those of you who’ve been reading it are now probably aware, there isn’t going to be much blogging of that sort going on chez Outbreak anymore. Well, not for a really long while. Getting overrun by zombies will do that.

So yes, please continue to check out The Outbreak, the world’s first autobigraphical horror blog, chronicling the life of me and my friends and family during a major zombie infestation.

And stick around here for movies, music, books, television, personal stuff, plugging projects that me and my friends are working on–pretty much everything but comics news & criticism and political bloviation. So it’s sort of like the inverse (converse? I was not a math person) of the way ADDTF used to be, but I’m guessing you don’t need another fellow telling you what he thought of Countdown to Infinite Crisis right now, do ya?

So please bear with me and pardon our appearance as I tinker with the blogroll and various and sundry other features–we’re working harder to serve you better!