Too Big For Your Britches

Read an interview with Kevin Sorbo some years ago, wherein he carped about the awkward tonnage of the braided-leather kecks he wore as Hercules. "It's hard to do the high kicks in those twenty-pound pants," or somesuch.

And at the risk of going all Dave Barry on you, I immediately thought, "That would be an excellent name for a rock band."

A moment's reflection, however, and I realized that the name wouldn't translate properly overseas: in the UK, Twenty Pound Pants would be redolent of pricey underwear. A valid image, perhaps, but not the one I wanted to convey.

So Twenty Pound Pants became Ten Kilo Trousers, which is just as good, if not better, in a "Nine Inch Nails" kind of way. (We could tour together. 8 Eyed Spy could open.)

Imagine my disappointment when I went looking for links to verify the Sorbo quote, and found that the breeches in question weighed only twelve pounds.

I can't help feeling I've been leder-hosed.

Valhalla, I Am Coming

My current obsession:

The drawing doesn't do the real thing justice—the oars, the billowing sails, the intricate knotwork on the prow, the colorful shields along the gunwales, the sheer scale of its construction.

Beautiful to look at, but a bastard to fly; heavy (almost two pounds), with an odd profile—not quite a frame kite, not quite a box kite—and the "hull" catches the breeze in all the wrong ways. I reckon we'll need a rock-steady, stiff breeze to really make her sail. My attempts thus far have reminded me of erectile dysfunction—i.e., I can't keep it up for more than three minutes.

I've christened her Skidbladnir, and so help me Odin, when we get her skyward I'm gonna be so-o-o-o tempted to deck out her tail with knives and go out looking for challenges. A rig this badass was made for the seedy underground kite-fighting circuit.

Voi-ya-to-HO!

It Ain't Me, Babe

Lampooning grotesque baby-boomer self-righteousness has lost much of its charm for me: it's just too damned easy. But this one really is a beauty.

Bob Dylan shills for panties, prompting one commentator to get her own in a bunch.

It's astonishing to think that one person can host so many hang-ups—about money, about "selling out," about age, about sexuality and the body, about advertising, about hero-worship and "artistic integrity"—and not implode under their constant constrictive pull.

Now, frankly, I believe that anyone who takes a chronically-smartassed coyote like Bob Dylan as their "enduring icon of moral outrage and political integrity" deserves what she gets: even a momentary critical examination reveals the man and his work to be essentially apolitical and self-interested. But here's the gorgeous kicker: the byline at the bottom of this anti-sellout jeremiad...

Leslie Bennetts is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

The last I checked, Vanity Fair was a big, glossy magazine, fat with advertisements and chock-full of fashion spreads.

Gah. Boomers, man.

Living In Fantascope

How I feel, today:

Fee

Fie

Foe

Fuck You.

Show Don't Tell

So. Remember that gig I've got at the mental hospital? And how I said you'd be hearing about it here? Well. It's tonight. And you won't: not exactly, anyway.

Introducing [ acoustic eclectica ], a companion blog to this one, and the new home of my online gig diary. At this URL you'll find past and future gig notes, set lists, and musings on performance and songwriting. The majority of what's there now is repurposed material from this blog, but going forward I'll be keeping cross-posting to a minimum.

Why a new blog? Part of it is a functional thing, and an extension of how I organize my thoughts and writings in meatspace. I've never been one to keep a single diary: at any given time I'll have six or seven notebooks running, including but not limited to a work journal, film notebook, reading notebook, dream journal, sketchbook, and journal of spiritual exercises. Doing the same thing in the etherverse just feels right.

But frankly, my primary motives are mercenary: the plan is to use the BlogSpot page as a promotional tool until such time as I get my own domain running—to have a one-stop URL where interested parties (i.e., bookers and folks on the mailing list I plan to set up) can check out musical musings and info on upcoming gigs, without having to wade through this blog's usual blather about parenting, politics, and intestinal gas. Give the people what they want, maaan.

Hey, I've always been a sell-out: I just could never find anybody who was buying, dig?