Once again, I took part in the Idiotarod. COBRA are now the shopping cart sabotage champs of both NYC and DC.

I took part in last weekend’s 2006 Idiotarod, a shopping cart race across the Brooklyn Bridge. Here is the Wall Street Journal article about it. This appeared on Page 1A of today’s WSJ:

On Brooklyn Streets, Shopping Carts Roll In a Renegade Derby

Teams Dodge Potholes, Police In Race to Manhattan; Cobra’s Bag of Dirty Tricks
By JOE BARRETT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 2, 2006; Page A1

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Tom Grise and his team had high hopes for their shopping cart. They attached 10-foot metal bars to make it easier to pull and placed a scary plastic skull on the front. They girded it in cardboard, painted to look like a mining cart. The five members of the team decked themselves out in Indiana Jones costumes.

When they crested the hill of Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park last Saturday afternoon, they realized what they were up against: nearly 200 rival teams including a group of 7-foot bananas and a barrel full of naughty monkeys. Vampires escorted a bat with a 12-foot wingspan. An Old West saloon featured cowboys, a busty barkeep and a working keg of beer. A team from the “Mayo Clinic,” dressed as doctors, smothered themselves in mayonnaise.

Mr. Grise, a 25-year-old engineering consultant, had arrived at the starting point of the third annual Idiotarod, New York’s answer to Alaska’s Iditarod race, with shopping carts taking the place of sleds and human beings taking the place of dogs. Instead of more than 1,000 miles of snow-covered back country, the course features about four miles of snarling traffic, crowded sidewalks, nasty potholes, stern police and a chaotic crossing of the Manhattan Bridge in which entrants sabotage one another with body checks. They also throw fruit.

Shopping-cart races are popping up in cities around the country, offering an outlet for on-the-edge creativity and urban anarchy. San Francisco will hold its 12th “Urban Iditarod” on March 4, the starting date for the real Iditarod race from Anchorage to Nome. Racers will leave downtown San Francisco and go a little beyond Fisherman’s Wharf, about three miles away. Portland, Ore., and Ann Arbor, Mich., have similar events.
[Members of the Cobra team push their cart through the streets of Manhattan.]
Members of the Cobra team push their cart through the streets of Manhattan.

Jeff Stark, a 33-year-old film-production worker and handyman, and Maureen Flaherty, 31, a buyer for a maker of recycled glass and concrete countertops, were looking for something fun to do at the end of a dreary January. The Brooklyn roommates are part of a loosely knit community drawn to the borough for its somewhat cheaper rents and low-budget, participatory art scene. They decided to steal the idea from the San Francisco event and import it to New York, redubbing it the Idiotarod.

“Art is one of the reasons that people will accept for doing things in New York,” Mr. Stark says. “You can get away with all kinds of creative high jinks.”

They promoted the event on the Web and through Nonsense NYC, an email list Mr. Stark runs highlighting “independent art” and “strange happenings.” The first year drew about 150 runners pushing 30 carts. The second year, 600 runners showed up and about 1,000 turned out this year, according to Mr. Stark.

Like their counterparts in San Francisco, the New York organizers had no interest in going through official channels and getting permits to close off streets along the route. Concerned that police were onto the published starting point in an industrial section of the Williamsburg neighborhood, organizers called participants the morning of the race and told them to assemble at the top of Fort Greene Park, a steeply sloping spot with a view of the Manhattan skyline.

Racers didn’t even know where they were headed. They were given one checkpoint at a time and were free to chart their own course.

Luke Stiles, 32, a Brooklyn software engineer at MTV, says his team, “Double Down — Red Squad,” acquired their cart from a store parking lot the night before the race. The morning of the event, they stenciled some white T-shirts with the logo from Mr. Stiles’s bicycle-racing team. Red bandanas completed their outfits. Short a fifth person, they recruited a friend’s girlfriend at the starting line.

Richard Garcia, a 38-year-old carpenter, spent six weekends building a cart with a cobra theme in his Jersey City, N.J., basement. With his girlfriend, Anne Silvernail, a 25-year-old sculptor and member of the Brooklyn Bombshells roller-derby team, Mr. Garcia enclosed the cart in plywood and installed a battery and a propane tank. The finished product had working headlights, a hot-rod paint job and a sculpted 6-foot-high, fire-breathing snake head.

The couple got swept into the race last summer by Oscar Owens, a 31-year-old Brooklyn music producer. He heads a 40-person “team of teams” called Cobra, or Carts of Brooklyn Racing Association. The group had five teams in the race, including Mr. Garcia’s and one with “anyone who admitted to having run before,” Mr. Owens says. An additional 15 team members with no carts at all were on hand simply to disrupt the other racers. Says Mr. Owens: “Our goal was a clean sweep.”

At 2:30, small explosions and a rain of confetti marked the start of the race. Contestants picked up their carts and scrambled down several sets of steps before descending on the city — taking over sidewalks on both sides of the street and dodging cars to cross.

It took only minutes for a passing patrol car to notice something amiss. Their lights flashing, police cars shadowed the racers for much of the day.

A few blocks short of the first checkpoint, Cobra laid a trap. Team members had set up a folding table with a sign that said “CHECKPOINT.” Runners scrambled to hand the bogus officials their paperwork, seeking a stamp to show they’d completed that leg of the race, Mr. Owens says. Many of them didn’t get the forms back, he says.

At the real checkpoint, Mr. Garcia says he tried to send flames out of the cobra’s mouth, but the bumpy ride had jarred loose some wires.

Leaving the checkpoint, contestants ran a gantlet of hurled bananas, maple syrup, ketchup and other goopy stuff. “We got pelted with everything,” Mr. Garcia says. “Eggs, whole fish, pudding, Silly String. I couldn’t stand the smell of myself.”

The tight quarters on the Manhattan Bridge walkway set up a free-for-all of cart bashing, shoving and other mischief. “It was the closest thing to ‘Mad Max’ I’ve ever experienced,” says Mr. Grise, the Indiana Jones team leader.
[Temple of Zoom: Maggie Grise, Lars Russell, Tom Grise, Jason Lee and Adam Duerson (left to right) at the finish line of Saturday’s Idiotarod, with their Indiana Jones-themed shopping cart.]
Temple of Zoom: Maggie Grise, Lars Russell, Tom Grise, Jason Lee and Adam Duerson (left to right) at the finish line of Saturday’s Idiotarod, with their Indiana Jones-themed shopping cart.

Mr. Stiles’s team fell victim to a well-worn Idiotarod trick: Someone cut the ropes they used to pull the cart.

Police were waiting on the Manhattan side of the bridge, urging participants to slow down for a tight turn and handing out citations for drinking in public. The police “couldn’t have been nicer about it,” said one recipient, who said it carried a $25 fine.

Police later said the race caused only minor problems. “Police officers were called to marshal traffic and pedestrians,” said Detective Bernard Gifford. The group really should get a street-closing permit for future races, he said.

Mr. Stiles’s Double Down team picked up speed after the bridge. One of his fellow teammates knew Chinatown and the Lower East Side well, and the team reached the second checkpoint in first place.

The race ended in East River Park, just across from Brooklyn, where it all had begun. The first team to cross the finish line, “Scout Troop 666,” a bunch of guys in scout uniforms, was disqualified because it hadn’t stopped at any of the checkpoints, Mr. Stark says. The team did pick up a prize for best-in-sabotage. The second team to finish, “Hawaii Five-0,” was penalized for being rude to the judges at one of the rest stops, he says.

That left Mr. Stiles and the Double Down squad, who crossed the finish line third, to take the first place prize by default, winning $500.

After walking the last leg of the race with all 25 of the Cobra team racers and crossing the finish line in style, Mr. Garcia finally succeeded in letting loose with a 3-foot-long blast of flames for the judges. The Cobra team was rewarded with the $500 best-in-show prize and the honor of organizing the event next year.

Kym just returned from points abroad last weekend, and true to form I immediately got sick. According to the various snake charmers, charlatans and other practitioners of medical quackery, I have gastritis, which is a pre-ulcerous condition. What this means is that I have been home sick this week, unable to eat anything aside from water, jello and broth. This is to be my diet for the next several days, until I move to a permanent diet of bland foods. Ugh!

So, in addition to vomiting after every meal and fearing that I am going to die, I also have to make sure that I don’t fall behind at work. At least THAT’S not stressful.

(I’m writing this from my couch while watching TV - thanks wireless and a commercial just came on for Tylenol, describing how, unlike other pain relievers, Tylenol is gentle on your stomach and will not cause stomach pain. Talk about a day late and a dollar short.)

Luckily, there is a bright spot in this otherwise dark universe — Danica McKellar (Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years) appears in this month’s FHM. I think that I can now die a happy man.

On Friday night, a friend of a friend went with a few of her girlfriends (yes, I know it’s confusing) to a local strip club. Sherry had never before visited a strip club, much less a male strip club, so she was a bit *ahem* unprepared for what she witnessed. Reports indicate that she was most curious about the large number of men at the strip club, and in fact, she and her friends were the only women in the room. Sherry, those men you saw were probably gay.

Hearing Sherry’s tale — the details of which don’t concern you — led me to recall my sole trip to a strip club, which I shall now recount for you.

(Before you start writing angry letters about the state of morality in America, please allow me to state for the record that I don’t generally go to strip clubs, for the same reason that I don’t watch pornography or go window shopping. I don’t enjoy perusing the sale racks when I know I won’t be taking anything home.

Pun intended.

Besides, if you want to start a letter-writing campaign let me suggest that you begin with the Hooters corporation. At least the strip club I went to had the decency to admit that it was a strip club. They didn’t bother to advertise themselves as family-dining establishment… but more on that later.)

What had happened was…

One Friday night many moons ago I met up with my friends Robert and Liz for dinner and drinks. At the restaurant we bumped into two of Liz’s ex-coworkers, Peter and Jacob, who apparently had a thing for Liz. (Don’t worry, the importance of this will become apparent in a few paragraphs.) Remember that guy you knew in high school who always had a scam, who always had something up his sleeve? That’s Jacob. Those kind of guys are great to hang out with because they are fun, but you never consider them friendly or trustworthy in the least.

Peter and Jacob invited Liz to hang out with them, and she invited Robert and I along to be her buffer, because she was not interested in this guy at all, and wanted to avoid as much weirdness as possible. (For the uninitiated, the purpose of the buffer is to run interference for your friend; to make sure that they stay out of trouble; and to ensure that they make it home safe and sound.) I am constantly asked to be someone’s buffer, because I’ve got a boyish grin and am everybody’s “good guy friend”. Whatever.

Anyway, these guys decide that they want to go to a strip club, and after a few minutes of refusals, I relented, partly because I had already signed on for buffer duty, but also because I’d never been to a strip club and I was more than a wee bit curious.

The record store, your house of worship, your favorite bar; these are places where you want to be known by name. The police station, the Emergency Room, a strip club; these are places where you do not want to be known by name, so I took it as a bad omen that Jacob was on a first name basis with the bouncer at Leather and Lace. We were shown to a corner table and the drinks and food began to come, courtesy of Jacob’s American Express card and unquenchable narcissism.

My mother told me to never take advantage of a stranger’s hospitality, but my father told me to never pass up a free meal, and as I can only assume that the logic also applies to drinks, Robert and I set ourselves to the task of making the night very expensive for Jacob and his Amex. He could have Liz’s number if he could get it, but it was going to cost him a more than a few dollars.

The thing about strip clubs is that they are designed to do one thing — facilitate the ogling of women — so even when you are sitting in the corner and chatting your friends, it’s almost impossible to avoid looking at the… entertainment. Not that I was trying terribly hard. After one dance, the stripper walked over to the table, gave Jacob a polite nip on the cheek and sat down next to me, as Robert and I exchanged curious glances.

I had no precedent, no grounding… I honestly didn’t know what to do. What would you do if a stripper finished her performance, threw on a bath robe, walked over to you and introduced herself? This protocol is definitely not covered by Miss Manners. I knew, I looked in the index. I recovered as best I could while Jacob made the introductions. I’m sure I mumbled something polite like “nice nipple ring”, but honestly I don’t recall. I was quite tired and flabbergasted.

Luckily(?), I had a few more opportunities to learn the protocol, as Jade (the stripper’s name was Jade) came over after every set to sit and chat. I learned a few life lessons that night, like it is ok to look at a stripper’s breasts if she’s sitting at your table. That’s kind of the whole point of the exercise, and you’re already sitting in a strip club, so restraint has pretty much taken a flyer. More importantly, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, there a three questions that you can ask to jump start the conversation between yourself and a nightclub dancer:

How did the night end you might ask? Jacob started to get a little rowdy with the staff and the other patrons, so Robert and I grabbed Liz (we were the buffers after all), stuffed her into a cab, then went our separate ways into the starry, naked city.

Allow me to state for the record that two things that I enjoy are summer days and girls wearing sweatpants. I don’t mean a sweltering, hellish summer, and I don’t mean your grandma’s “running to the supermarket” sweatpants. I am speaking specifically here of cool, endless summer days and of sleek women in sleek velour sweatpants. Preferably baby blue with stripes down the side. The sweatpants, not the women.

The fashion seems to be to have some sort of message written across the backside of your sweatpants, sometimes a brand advertisement like “Gap”, but more regularly something sporty and collegiate like “GWU Swimming”. There is usually room for only a few letters, because anyone whose fundament can display something long like “Joe’s Pool Hall Sunflower Emporium” does not want to draw attention to that fact. This seems to me to perfectly reasonable and the natural order of things.

As luck would have it, these things converge regularly on the streets below my office here in Chinatown, when groups of college girls make their way to the MCI Center for some sort of sporting or music event, or more recently sporting and music events, unknowingly warming the secret inner recesses of my heart.

All of that changed last week.

I was walking through Chinatown on my lunch break and ahead of me I saw a woman walking along with an older man. From behind, he seemed to be wearing typical “father-wear” khakis and a collared shirt, while she was dressed in some sort of top and baby blue sweatpants with stripes down the side. Scripted across her derriere in wide block letters was the word “Paradise” which was, in this case, a fair and accurate assessment of the display.

Please understand that I look at everyone’s butt. I’m a tall guy and my gaze naturally falls a little low. It’s merely a happy coincidence that I naturally look at alot of chests and butts. I don’t leer, mind you. These things seem to present themselves to my field of vision. Men, women, whoever. If I know you, I have looked at your ass. You’re not getting any taller, and I’m not getting any shorter. Get used to it.

Anyway, I walked behind this pair for perhaps a block or so, enjoying the *ahem* “scenery”, when they stopped on the street and I passed by, sneaking a look at each of their faces. I correctly guessed his age, but I was way off on her’s. This girl whom I thought was in her early to mid-twenties was in reality much younger, closer to fifteen or sixteen. SIXTEEN!

In that instant, I was magically transformed from a guy innocently checking out some girl on the street into a tongue-wagging pervert, which ruined the experience for everyone involved.

Didn’t this father realize that his daughter had the word “Paradise” stretched across her ass?

Didn’t she know that there is an age limit on those pants?

That’s just wrong.

I am totally in favor of young people exploring their nascent sexuality in whatever way they see fit, but I don’t think that I should have to ask for three forms of ID before I check out some girl, so please don’t put me in that position.

Update: Big Congratulations go out to Shannon Stamey on her engagement to Matt in Bogota. Please choose a wedding dress from among our fine collection.

Alright, let me shake the dust off of this thing and see if it still works. This post is going to suck and is mostly informational, but sit tight while I get back into the groove of things.

About two months ago, I contemplated a simple redesign of the site, but I thought the first thing I should do was get a new webhost. I’ll skip all of the technical jargon… suffice it to say that changing webhosts while simultanoeusly redesigning your site is a BAD IDEA. It turned out to be too much of a headache, so I scrapped those projects until I get my shit together.

So, what have I been up to?

I’ve seen some amazing rock shows in the past six weeks. Kym and I saw Pinback(!!!) last Saturday night, along with this band Therondy Ensemble. Pinback is an amazing band, especially live, but Therondy Ensemble only underscored my belief that music majors should not start rock bands. If someone invites you to see Therondy Ensemble, just save yourself a trip to your favorite rock emporium — you can stab yourself in the ear with an icepick in the privacy of your own home.

Holly and I took in a fine show at American University featuring White Light Motorcade, The Ravonettes, and The Mooney Suzuki. All of these bands were just great, and the show was really tiny… maybe 75 people. What do these bands sound like?

I think first heard Interpol’s PDA on last year’s Precipiate EP, but I don’t really remember. It wasn’t exactly a red letter day. The buzz out of New York (that sweet nexus from which all buzz flows) is that they are the next NYC band in line to save rock and roll. Personally, I didn’t know rock and roll needed saving — and I tend to keep a fairly close eye on exactly which musical genres need saving and which do not. Country music, educated hip-hop, torch singing. . . these genres need a hero in an almost Bonnie Tylerian sense of the phrase. Rock and roll is doing just fine. . thank you very much. In any case, even if rock and roll did need saving, I would put my trust in a more steady hand, perhaps Elvis Costello, before I would ask Interpol to respond to the signal flare.

It’s not that they aren’t a good band, they just aren’t qualified to masquerade as the saviors of anything, much less an entire genre of music. The band’s boosters will say that Interpol doesn’t WANT to save rocknroll, but I beg to differ. Any band that wears a uniform (black mod suits with red shirts) and features a bassist with a Flock of Seagulls haircut is out to save something, and if it’s not their record contract then the next most-likely candidate is ’sweet lady rawk’.

Although they’ve nailed the NYC hipster-mod thing down to a sweet science, the band that Interpol is usually paired with is Joy Division, but I think that is only because the lead singer can sometimes mimic the baritone of Ian Curtis. A vocal register is hardly a sound basis for comparision, and judging from their newest album Turn On The Bright Lights, I’d offer up Bedhead, My Dad Is Dead, a shoegazing version of New Order, or even a less inventive Mercury Rev as candidates for the “we spawned Interpol” award. not that any of those bands would show up to accept it.

Be that as it may, ChrisFromNewYork was in town last weekend, his friends Calla were opening for Interpol at the (Club) 9:30 (Club), and ChrisFromNewYork made sure that we were on the guest list.

(I once saw a bumper sticker that said “A bad day at the golf course is better than a good day at the office”, and while I can’t fully endorse golf as a good way to spend a Friday night, what with the possibilty of imminent death by four-iron, I have a fair bit of experience in the ‘going to rock shows’ aspect of Friday night, and I can say without reservation that “A bad night at the rock show is better than a good day at the office”, especially a free rock show.)*|

It was in that spirit that we four (Chris, John, Ivan and I) braved the wintery mix and trundled on down to “the rock”. I’m always ready for a good show, and I even enjoy a large crowd, but I was ill-prepared for the mass of clove-smoking psuedo-hipsters who had chosen to pack the 9:30 that night. The lot of them were dressed in the standard suburban goth/retro-mod uniforms — these kids came to see and be seen, and they wore their dis-affected aloof attitude and dismissive stares while cooling rating other audience members and summarily rejecting the uncool with a grim efficiently that can only be rivaled by white robots from the future.

Did I mention that they were smoking cloves? No self-respecting person over the age of 18 should ever smoke clove cigarettes. That’s the sort of thing you experiment with when you are in high school and then dismiss almost immediately — like paint huffing or joining the Republican party.

Even ChrisFromNewYork was not hip enough to stand firm against that onslaught, and he’s in a band in New York for pete’s sake, so we ditched the indier-than-thou crowd and made our way backstage to the Calla dressing room. The remainder of what transpired is standard backstage stuff — lots of people walking around trying to get stuff signed or whatever — so I won’t bore you with the details. Let’s just say it was simultaneously as tedious and exhilarating as you are imagining, but if you want the gory details, just email me.

As many of you are probably aware, I fairly relish when one thing I experience intersects unexpectedly with some other experience. I call this intersection — this collision, if you will — Two Things At Once and I had not witnessed, or rather taken part in, an occurrence of TTAO in a long time. Like the man said, sometimes you have to make your own luck, and it was in this spirit of Magellanic exploration that I traveled down to 17th and R a few weeks ago for the Drag Races.

For those of you who don’t know. . . the Drag Races are a DC tradition where the drag queens, cross-dressers, transvestites and other people of undetermined gender or inclination have a foot race down 17th Street. Afterwards, there is a psuedo-parade/meet-and-greet. And yes, I know it happens in other towns, but this is my story, so pretend that we’re in a record store and shut up.

It’s a good time, and cross-dressers being what they are, obviously has great potential for Two Things At Once, so I went, although all of my lame friends bailed. What with one thing and another, I found myself at the Cyberstop Cafe, waiting for the festivities to begin. The place was swamped with drag queens, or “representatives of the trans-gendered community” so I found myself sharing a table with a Korean girl who was traveling the US, and has just arrived in DC the day before.

This all happened the week before the elections, so the Mayor, in a valiant attempt to curry favor with the locals, to prove that he was “down with the queers” or whatever, was out officiating and engaging in photo-ops with the local color. Hizzonor is generally strait-laced and looks uncomfortable in social settings, so I am sure that getting is ass slapped by a funky looking Princess Diana was almost more than his fragile sensibilities could handle.

Trying to explain to the Korean girl, Maria Moon, the gender politics incumbent in the evening was difficult enough, but the addition of the mayor — who looks like he may be a cross-dresser himself — was more than my anemic vocabulary could bear. I was caught unprepared, with adjectives and pronouns insufficient to the task. The evening degenerated into Maria and I walking around 17th street while she asked random people “You man or woman?” while I stammered about trying to explain that she was NOT horrendously tactless, only Fresh Off The Boat.

I mean, I’m sure they have cross-dressers in Korea, but I don’t think she had ever met any of them face to unshaven face. All in all, it was a weird evening, and didn’t make much sense. One of the unexpected benefits of the night was that in addition to being a night of Two Things at Once, it was also a night of You Can’t Call It this One Thing If It Does This Other Thing. I’ll let you suss that one out for yourself.

Speaking of things that make no sense, Maya told me that in Hebrew there is no conjugation of the verb “to be”. Apparently, when you introduce yourself, you say “I Jason” or whatever, and the “am” portion is just sort of assumed. This fact got me thinking that maybe Tarzan wasn’t struggling with English as we had all assumed, but that he had already mastered it and was working on his Hebrew to English transliteration.

Me Tarzan, You Jane indeed.

Ryan Adams was right when he wrote “The Bar Is A Beautiful Place.” For the past two weeks, I’ve been frequenting Tunnicliffe’s Tavern at Eastern Market, and I have to say it has done wonders for my social life, even if it has left an almost Republican path of wonton destruction through my wallet and sleeping habits.

It’s worth it though, if only for the people I have met. Mike West and I met Melody, a recently repatriated American who has spent much the last decade globe-trotting through exotic locales which were once described as merely “There Be Dragons”.

Caitlin and I met Bruce, an ex-hippie HVAC technician and professional inventor who spent much of Monday night describing his recent patent for inprovements to home air-conditioners. Listening to Bruce wax poetic on EPA emissions standards lent new to the phrase “Whatever yer into dude!” and also made me appreciate the hours my dad made me spend helping fix things around the house.

At 9pm, Bruce remembered that Monday was his 25th wedding anniversary, but only because that’s when I remembered that it was Michael’s birthday. Caitlin helpfully suggested flowers and chocolate, while I put a vote in for apologetic groveling.

Caitlin and I also met Kenyetta, a man who found himself in the much the same situation that I was in last September, except that he got the extra added bonus prize of having to drive his ex-girlfriend to New York the next morning. I helpfully suggested he go home and make sure she didn’t steal his shampoo. Not that I’m bitter. . . I’m just sayin’.

Emily had the misfortune of meeting Brendan, who chain smokes, thinks Trent Lott is really cool, and actually tried to pick her up with the phrase “You’re a tough nut to crack.” No one liked Brendan, even Nick, who likes everybody.

The best find has to be Nick, the is he or isn’t he? Jewish bartending lawyer who keeps my cup filled and just today hooked Karen up with a great deal on a computer.

The moral of the story, boys and girls, is tip your bartender.

Anyway, speaking of Ryan Adams, I saw him recently in a Gap Jeans ad with Willie Nelson. I can understand the Red-Headed Stranger being in a Gap ad, the IRS took all of his money for back taxes and he needs some back. Besides, he’s earned his spurs, and like most crotchety old men, he can do what he damn well pleases.

But Ryan Adams. . .

1. Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, I remember back when you called yourself David Ryan Adams, and you know what they say about three name people. Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wayne Gacy, Bill S. Preston Esq. Ted “Theodore” Logan. I sense a pattern here.

2. Drop the tortured artist bit, you’re in a Gap Jeans ad. This is the biggest example of You Can’t Call It This One Thing If It Does This Other Thing since Johnny Rotten/John Lydon, and Ryan, Whiskeytown was your Sex Pistols.

3. No matter what you do, some people are always going to say “I didn’t know Bryan Adams had a new record out”.

That’s it I’m winded.

So. . Monday.

Yet another fine afternoon with Holly. These are turning into regular occurrences, which is awesome, except that I have to worry about getting pushed into oncoming traffic more frequently than any mortal man should. She says that she just has slight homicidal tendencies, but I think I just set her off. Either way, she walks next to the curb. Also, either way, let me say — for the record — that if I should meet some sort of untimely automotive demise, I will most surely be pointing my undead finger in her general direction. That, and Mike West gets the record collection.

Anyway, we spent the afternoon not buying posters, despite our best efforts, which included walking through the more hip sections of DC and looking at an unfathomable number of “collegiate” posters. It’s not that they are so good, but that there are so many of them, and if I see another broad sheet describing how Vin Diesel is “a new breed of secret agent” or whatever, I will probably snap, tear the poster into little pieces and then jump up and down on the pieces.

But that’s not what I came to tell you about. . .

At 1831 14th St. NW in Washington, DC, there is a legendary rock club called the Black Cat, which has played host to all of the luminaries of rock music over the last decade, including hundreds of bands you’ve never heard of. Sunday night, the Black Cat played host to two more such bands, Rocking Horse Winner and The Weakerthans. It was an average show, as DC shows go, and overall I had a fine time.

Before I continue. . . people need to listen to me when I say that You Can’t Call It This One Thing if It Does This Other Thing. I saw this fashion punk at the club. He was sporting a serious mohawk, a nose-ring, a leather jacket, and one of those wallet-chain thingies. I also thought that a true punk rocker would chain his wallet to his nose-ring like Jane Child did between her nose and her ear. That would be real hardcore.

Anyway, this guy looked really. . you know. . . punk, and then I looked down, and saw that Johnny Rotten was sporting sandals and white socks.Birkenstocks. And white socks.

Now, before you get all “jump-down-my-throat” let me just say that I am no fashion plate myself, and only in the past few years understood the importance of the rule against wearing a brown belt with black shoes, or really understood how embarrassing it is when your blacks don’t match. Additionally, I do believe that punk is all about the music and the message. I’m just saying that if a guy is going to go through the effort to be a fashion punk, then he should embrace all of its forms, and that includes wearing black combat boots and not white socks and Birkenstocks. You Can’t Call It This One Thing if It Does This Other Thing.

Back to the show.

I’d heard alot about Rocking Horse Winner, but had never actually heard them, so I decided to venture forth and check it out. Imagine a fuzzed out Velocity Girl, or a slightly less punk Heavenly. Now imagine you’re taking a summer road trip, driving down the East Coast at 3am the windows rolled down, and your stereo is trying to play both bands at once. That is Rocking Horse Winner. Two thumbs way up.

The other band that I saw was The Weakerthans, and I should stop right there. They were the headliners, and were pretty popular, judging from the reaction of the crowd. What I mean to say is that the crowd, rather than standing in the back of the club with its arms folded across its collective chest, moved to the front of the stage and stood there with its arms folded across its chest. Like Superchunk Mac says, “That means they like you.”

The reviewer in the City Paper said that Matt Samson’s lyrics and music were emo-esque, but much more confessional and poetic, so much so that he was forced to make up a new word to describe it — poemo. It seemed to me that the reviewer’s vocabulary was obviously surprisingly limited, because I thought of quite a few words right there on the spot, but the last time I said any of them my mother sent me to my room without dinner.

These lyrics weren’t so much confessional as whiny, and although they were poetic, it was the sort of poetry that I wrote when I was fourteen and wore all black, mated with the pseudo-intellectual posturing that second-rate rappers spew when they want to preach or keep it real. If Chuck D from Public Enemy got together with Chris Carrabba from Dashboard Confessional, that would be The Weakerthans. Not to say that Chuck D is a pseudo-intellectual, he does drop the knowledge. It was mediocre and I after a few songs I went downstairs to play pool.

But that’s not what I came to tell you about.

I came to tell you that the college kids are back in town, and I will tell you how I know.

You know how when you are out playing pool and the table is taken? What do you do? You walk over and you put your quarter down on the thing and then you know when it’s your turn to play and you take your quarter back off of the thing and play. Well, I went over to the thing to put a quarter in line to play, and there were no quarters, just an assemblage of safety pins, a stick of gum, ticket stubs and whatever. Some guy even put down his student ID.

I got so confused I just started putting down every damn thing — I emptied my pockets and put like a button, a thimble, some TicTacs, my Safeway card and knows whatever else. I also put down a quarter, just to cover all my bets, but it looked so lonely and small next to that pile of stuff that I put the little guy back in my pocket.

And that is how I know that school is back in session. These kids are so worried about someone stealing their quarters in the big bad city that they. . . I don’t know. Or maybe they just didn’t grow up in arcades and never learned about putting your quarter on the thing. If that is the case, then let me take this moment to say. . . kids, you can’t put any old thing on the thing, you’ve got to put a quarter. That’s a little free advice from me to you.

That’s all, I’m winded.