It's not easy, making real friends.

Just got back from seeing genericus play with Crack Sunday at the infelicitously named Hogue Barmichael's. This is the bar next to the airport where airline pilots have 8 Cuba Libres, sway across the street into the cockpit, and pass out at the controls on takeoff, augering into the Upper Newport Bay in a 757 full of Disneyland returnees. They also have live music there!

All the elements of the weeknight show at the local venue were there. High school kids in a messed up van with stuff written on it, and a PA through which they mumbled. Grumpy bartender. Decent turnout for a late evening weeknight like this. There was a wacky woman who kept demonstrating her belching technique.

The cast inside the bar was familiar too. Some friends of the band, some fans of the band, some totally random people. There were the two Ghost World girls who danced and had a good time and were fun and nice. It seems that there are two girls like that at every show. There was a very happy backwards-baseball-cap guy with bad teeth who said to me "There's lots of girls here to see these guys. That's good! Hey, maybe only 15 people here but ten are girls!" There was the silent ponytailed sound guy.

The music is prog rock with a lead keyboard, which is very much not my style; I like maybe 10 songs total in this style of which maybe 7 are early Peter Gabriel solo songs. ("White Shadow" and "On the Air" are examples.) Fortunately genericus knows and likes this music better and plays it well. I couldn't hear the guitarist at all. There were a few songs I was able to roll with and enjoy, and I have to say it was because of the bassline more than anything. I have major problems with the singer in this band, and it's been hard for me to get past this previously too. They got better as the night went on, though, as you'd expect from a band that hasn't played live in a while.

At one point the cheesy fog machine vomited out a load of cheesy fog directly over genericus's head and he looked up and was struck down by fear and horror for about 5 seconds; it made me wish I'd brought in the camera.

I left a bit early because I have been working on and off in 4 hour shifts for the last 24 hours and I was burnt.

The television over the bar first gave us a show in which grinning people handed each other gigantic fish. This was followed by sickly yellow salesmen infomershing, and finally by the end of Rain Man.

hey, speaking of recycled junk culture

INDIE HELL!!!

See, it's funny because we're iro... [GUNFIRE]

Welcome to the Hotel North Korea

thenulldevice just alerted me to the existence of the Ryugyong Hotel, which is one of the world's weirdest buildings.

According to the Wikipedia article and a fascinating blog post about it, the hotel is over 1000 feet tall, has 105 stories, and is windowless. It is completely unoccupied. It's a sharp and pointy pyramid at a 75 degree angle; Lovecraft would have made it Cthulhu's headquarters. The thing sits glowering over Pyongyang like an Aztec temple. You have to wonder if it has decorative blood gutters on it the way the Mexicans did theirs back in the day. Now there's a culture that understood official architecture!

It has seven revolving restaurants. Begun in 1987 to get back at the South Koreans for building another big hotel quickly, it was supposed to open in 1989, but construction stopped in 1992. It may well be completely unsound because of the concrete used to build it. I want to see it SO BAD! A tantalizing hint of some fun to be had: an Italian magazine is sponsoring a contest for completing the thing. I bug-me-not'd through their registration to peek at it, and they have photo survey and plan documents to download.

Now if they could just somehow move the thing to Las Vegas. Or sell it to Robert Schuller for a new church...

Chock full o'links

1. They managed to spend almost $50K on a Mini, and ruined it thoroughly. For reference, the base Mini is about $20K, and I specced out my dream loaded super fast one with all my desires for $30K. Someone let a 12 year old build this thing after 3 liters of Mountain Dew.
   
   
2. A modest proposal from zarriq Michael Bay should should remake the MST3K movies, since he's already ripped off one of them.
   
   
3. If you're a bird, stay away from the ballpark, and particularly from the strike zone when Randy Johnson is pitching (MPEG video; warning, animal injury occurs).
   
   
4. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the number one impresario of celebrity porn (LA Times, bugmenot if unregistered). Jesus Christ, he looks like a fired club bouncer. What a thug. I'd love to be a fly on the wall while he was doing business in the office.
   
   
5. Meet the guy who heaved a grenade at Dubbya; Gavrilo Princip rides again.