Intangible Arts

MISSION IS TERMINATED.

2009-09-22T10:35:00.006-04:00

The total lack of activity on this "web log" has led to a state of irredeemable decay. I'm terminating the mission. But Intangible Arts never dies.

This "web log" began in the summer of 2005 as simply a reason to take more photographs, and as a place to report on the DC underground arts and music scene. But eventually, the neighborhood reportage bug led me (and this site) down a wretched nasty rabbit-hole, and it wasn't much about "intangible arts" anymore. But it introduced me to numerous charming persons local and otherwise, and led to a very fruitful partnership with his Royal highness Prince of Petworth.

So what's next?

The idea is to re-launch the Intangible Arts web presence as a single portfolio site with organized space for all my schizophrenic brain fragments, from music to photography, graphic design, and what passes for writing.

This means after about 17 years of designing for print and refusing to consider web, I finally drag my cynical ass kicking and screaming into the brave new world of SITE DESIGN. Tattoo a barcode on my forehead. I give up. I'm one of maybe three print designers still employed in this country, and I'm beginning to feel like the last polar bear left standing on a tiny wafer of ice. Surrounded by friggin' web people, and the looming threat of "web publishing." It seems like an utterly joyless usurper into my chosen career.

And so it'll be me in the basement during precious off-hours, locking brains with a copy of whatever Adobe site-building app came with CS2. Working it out. Learning on the fly. Life is a work in progress, no? With luck, the new site will be launched sometime before we're all dead.

In the meantime, watch for Blue Sausage Infant gigs if you dig a bit of sonic psychedelic noise drone paranoia (tomorrow/wednesday 23sept at the Velvet Lounge, part of the Sonic Circuits festival, 9pm!). And I'll continue to guest post at all my usual digital hangouts, if they'll still have me.

If you're so inclined, contact me via the "complete profile" link at top of this page. Otherwise, we'll meet again under the Intangible Arts freak tent eventually, Incha'a Allah.

Destroyness!

2009-09-08T12:05:00.005-04:00

Well, there wasn't an earth-shattering kaboom, but it's something.

So here's a quick glimpse of the Bruce Monroe school from the Irving Street side: It's finally showing signs of destroyness, after weeks of the demolition contractor pissing around with much less exciting forms of destroyness. So far it looks like just the thorax was taken out, leaving a disconnected head and abdomen.

Now we can make funny faces at the houses on Columbia Road from Irving, and we will, simply because we couldn't do that before. And now we can. And so we will.

But our appetite for destruction isn't quite satiated. So c'mon folks, swing the big ball, let's see some real destruction. I want to see wilted blossoms of rebar gesturing to the skies like the fingerbones of a helpless mute behemoth... boom! BOOM, dammit, BOOM!

ALERT: SONIC CIRCUITS 2009

2009-08-31T15:33:00.007-04:00

Now that we're physically, mentally, and spiritually within the month of September (or will be in a few hours...close enough...summer can't die fast enough), it's time to raise the freak flag on this thing:

Your good friends at DC Sonic Circuits have been hard at work on this month's week-long festival of experimental music, and this year (the ninth) promises to be the strongest one yet. Advance tickets can be purchased online (as early as right-the-hell-now), at the festival site's schedule page [here], and festival passes are available as well, for a mere $50.

The lineup contains a very thorough cross-section of the global experimental music scene, encompassing everything from improv to new composition, free jazz, ambient soundscapes, electronics, organic/acoustics, microsound, harsh noise, avant-rock, neoclassic/chamber, psychedelia, theatrical hooliganism, and god knows what else.

Headlining the festival over the course of a few shows are krautrock godfathers FAUST, the enigmatic JANDEK, and noise-rock kings HEALTH, along with free-jazz icons Evan Parker and Ned Rothenberg, Ukranian noise chemist Kotra, New York avant guitarrorist Elliott Sharp, etc etc...

For now, a condensed schedule to tickle you where it counts:

Tuesday Sept 22
Elliott Sharp
Annea Lockwood & Tom Buckner
Never Work
BLK w/BEAR & VJ Poppins
--at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of MD / 7pm / FREE ADMISSION

Wednesday Sept 23
Nine Strings + Pilesar
Twenty-first Century Chamber Ensemble
Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind
--at Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage / 6pm / FREE ADMISSION

Wednesday Sept 23
Fern Knight
Luigi Archetti
Odal
Blue Sausage Infant
Twilight Memories of the Three Suns
--at the Velvet Lounge / 9pm / $10

Thursday Sept 24
Bernd Schurer
Martin Neukom
Thomas Peter
Jan Schacher
Marcus Maeder
--at the Embassy of Switzerland / 7pm / $10

Friday Sept 25
Evan Parker & Ned Rothenberg duo
David Daniell
Bicameral Mind
Janel & Anthony
--at the Pyramid Atlantic, Silver Spring MD / 7:30pm / $15

Saturday Sept 26
Jandek
Kotra
Northern Machine
Qfwfq Duo
ayyoko confidential
ige*timer
Jeff Carey
Tim Hecker
Gunter Hampel European Trio w/ Elliott Levin
Blevin Blectum
Fckn Bstrds
Soft Pieces
Pilesar
Ergo
Second Land
Sean Peoples
--at the Velvet Lounge / starts 2pm / $20

Sunday Sept 27
Faust
Rat Bastard+Chris Grier+Ulrich Krieger
HEALTH
Pekka Airaksinen
Alexei Borisov & Anton Nikkilä
--at the Black Cat / 8pm / $15

For many more details and links to the artists, see dc-soniccircuits.org/ ... Flyer by Intangible Arts. Click it for much larger version. Please download, print, distribute, email, embed, link, etc.

I'll tell you when to sing...

2009-08-29T15:03:00.006-04:00

And so with two great events, the Corn Weenie circle of life is fulfilled.

1. Finally got my copy of the Corn Weenie compilation CD, which was WFMU station manager Ken's marathon premium for the 2009 fundraising campaign. For the unschooled, see [here]. Intangible Arts' own Blue Sausage Infant contributed a remix which seemed to cross over into a weird mangle of Egyptian-flavored folk and drug-soaked kraturock trance, complete with vocal contributions from several allies and their kids. All great fun. Cover design above: For once, a CD design on the site not of my own making; this one is the work of designer Tim Lacy.

2. Finally found a vinyl copy of the album that started the whole thing, Port Said by Mohammed El-Bakkar & His Oriental Ensemble, at the great Som Records shop on 14th Street. It's one of those classic late-50s albums that came out during the flood of exotica/bellydance/polynesian records... so I've seen Port Said a million times until of course I had a reason to find it.

And now, finally, I can move on. Blue Sausage Infant has much to do. The great 2009 Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music [link] is coming soon. Watch this space for updates within the next day or two. Fans of noise, free jazz, krautrock, glitch, and experimental electronics will have much to celebrate in about three weeks...

Your procedure is immanent.

2009-08-18T14:14:00.003-04:00

A team of local specialists has scheduled your procedure for tomorrow night.

Lovers of fine noise, unexplainable music, and bizarre tonalities, behold!

Gate 54 and host DJ Mark Williams will be presenting, for this month's PROCEDURE night, an evening of DJ sets by DC Sonic Circuits folks. It's our little way of impregnating the universe with excitement before this year's huge 2009 DC Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music.

It all begins at 10pm and will feature the sonic spinnage of your humble narrator (Blue Sausage Infant), Jeff Surak (Violet), Cory O'Brien (Myo), and Dani Seiss & Curt Seiss (Second Land).

I'll be throwing down (or up) a mix of eccentric noise from artists scheduled to play the fest this year, as well as some ultimate whatnot from far out... For the truly masochistic, some new/unreleased BSI will certainly creep into the mix.

So, c'mon down. Have a strong beverage. Freak out a little.

Wednesday / 19aug09
Gate 54 (downstairs @ Cafe St.Ex)
1847 14th Street NW: U Street Metro
10pm until close

Wrecker's cramp?

2009-08-13T09:28:00.007-04:00

And now, a brief follow-up to a recent post on some planned destruction in the neighborhood:

Behold! It's been a month since the Bruce Monroe Elementary school (Irving St/Georgia Ave) was cleared for demolition, and they've finally begun the job. Kinda.

This was the scene yesterday morning (12th Aug) and it hasn't visibly changed since. It looks like the mighty beast took one bite and then had to go sit down for a while. Too bitter, maybe? Need a chewable antacid?

Or is the plan to destroy the building a dozen bricks at a time? I realize I'm speaking from ignorance; I'm just a neighborhood schmuck with no inside knowledge, but c'mon folks, give us a little horrific destruction! Where's the KABOOM?!?! There was supposed to be an earth-shattering KABOOM!

I suppose I should make a really clever and bitterly cynical anti-union joke here, but I haven't finished my coffee yet. The acid tongue is still asleep, but fear not. If this is the pace of progress, said joke will be coming soon.

Ah, but for what it's worth, they're finally knocking the thing down. Kinda. And true to my obsessive nature, I'll be covering the demise of this building down to the last spec of drywall dust. You betcha.

Real United

2009-08-10T20:44:00.013-04:00

Kind of ironic, wasn't it? One of the 2009 season's most hotly anticipated matches had nothing to do with the 2009 season. But it had everything to do with the spirit and potential of football* in America.

It sounds so nice to call these matches friendlies: Exhibition matches which allow us lowly Americans to tangle with the Europeans and South Americans. On one hand, it's just another opportunity to risk injury and keep the team off-focus from the regular season. On the other hand, it's a very important diplomatic (and financial) exercise. FIFA gets to market world-class brands to us barbarians who have yet to understand (as a nation) what a magnificent game this truly is. And we barbarians get a chance to see some world-class players. We're doomed to lose the match, but it's still a win-win.

It was exactly thirty-five million degrees (kelvin) in DC yesterday, with humidity at nearly sixty billion percent. The match was held at FedEx field, home of the Washington Redskins and property of Dan Snyder, evidently the most hated team owner in American sports. Reportedly a great number of rabid DC fans boycotted the event to avoid lining Snyder's pockets. I understand that many Redskin fans do this as well.

Hasn't Six Flags bankrupted that man yet?

Whatever. I mashed my way through the gauntlet of security to my seat (by way of the vendors of unspeakably expensive fluids), chanting quietly to myself:

"All I ask, Allah-God-Buddha-Santoshimaa-Eris-Soehn, is that we not end up as humiliated as Toronto..."

It's true. Real Madrid had just come off a victory against Toronto that bordered on torture-porn. The 5-1 result left the Canadians in stunned silence, drooling on their boots. They were clearly too busy being dumbstruck by Madrid's offensive powers to bother playing the match. "Just let it not be quite that bad, various gods and goddesses..."

And I daresay I got my wish, despite the 3-0 loss. DC held firm for a solid 55 minutes of play, providing a great showcase of the DC back-line and goalkeeper Josh Wicks' trademark daring saves. And then of course, it all fell apart, and we began letting them through. ATTACK, ATTACK, we're all shouting from within a gigantic, viscous pool of sweat from 71,000+ dying spectators, JUST SHOOT THE F*KKIN' BALL...

I won't bother with the match details, since Steven Goff has done his usual, exquisite job [link.] As for Madrid, between their two big star acquisitions, I was much more interested in seeing Kaka than Cristiano Ronaldo. I've seen Ronaldo and I seriously don't get the appeal. The man clearly has world-class talent, but his lack of sportsmanship and obvious ego issues make his presence in any match an annoying distraction. And every time that bitchy fruitcake takes an overly-theatrical and time-consuming dive, I feel the need to perform bizarre rituals to cause his head to explode on the pitch...

...but the FedEx security goons had confiscated my sacrificial chickens and sharpened ox-bone blade at the front gate. Bastards!

I must say though, it seems a bit too easy to assemble a world-best team by simply buying world-best players. It does away with the whole romantic notion of developing team chemistry and reduces it to a packet of dehydrated Instant Championship: just add seventeen trillion dollars, and voila! The salary comparison between Madrid and DC would be too hilarious to mention. But whatever: it's always great to see such talent on a home field, even if it is a bit pre-fab.

Still, the taunting chants of "MONEY FOR NOTHING" (sung to the cadence of the typical "DC UNI-TED") was ripping bloody hilarious.

Enough! It was an entertaining match. And it was a groove to see the mixed fan-base (more white jerseys than black, and many wore a mixture, like the dude in the top photo) -- Well over 70,000 tickets were sold, so clearly there's an interest here.

It was my first time at FedEx, so this may be an ignorant comparison but despite the lack of gooey comforts, RFK is a far more comfortable venue to catch a match than the obscene plastic hellhole at FedEx. If this is the kind of rancid pit throwball* fans stew in every week, no wonder it's such an impossible sport to watch. They can have it.

------

*If you've read this blog more than twice, you know by now I'm referring to true Futbol. That ridiculous American game played by thick dudes in body armor and no pace of game-play is henceforth called THROWBALL, to avoid confusion. Don't darken my doorstep with that septic nonsense.

Gomez Eats the Universe

2009-08-05T21:29:00.005-04:00

82 seconds of life at home with a psychedelic sky-eating ape. Audio is an excerpt from "The Sons of Baron Karza" by Blue Sausage Infant.

Assume this Metro is bugged.

2009-07-30T14:41:00.014-04:00

The potential for terror is everywhere, even right above our heads, and we often fail to realize it.

Specifically, the potential for terror is sometimes about thirty inches above our heads while we sit on the Metro immersed in a book during afternoon rush. And thus begins our morality play for today:

It's rare that I ride Metro anymore. Honestly it's too much of a hassle, since I live and work within the district. Busses or walking fills the need most of the time. Yesterday, however, the plan was to meet the missus at Nanny O'Brien's after work. And hell, I was lazy. It was hot outside, whine, wheeze, meh-meh...

So, I took the red-line train from Farragut North towards Grosvenor. Afternoon rush, no seats available. I'm standing, gripping the bar overhead, leaning precariously over a 40-something professional woman in the sideways-facing seats, intensely involved in her book.

Many of us read for pleasure on Metro, and many of us use books and magazines as shields against human contact. [me have book. me no want talkies. go way.] Sure I love reading but I'm guilty of this shield technique as well: Who wants to be faced with giddy human interaction after a 10-hour shift of lobotomized droning in an air-conditioned box?

This woman in particular seemed squarely in the NO WANT TALKIES camp. Which is cool, of course.

It was then that I noticed, about 30 inches above her head, the body of what looked like an enormous stink bug. Wikipedia says the common stink bug can grow to about 20mm, which means this one was either the King God of all stink bugs, or it was another sort of bug entirely. But it clearly had the abdomen shape to be what entomologists call a "true bug" (Hemiptera/Heteroptera). And its body was at least an inch long.

It was nestled in the crevice behind the advertising frame, facing down, as if contemplating the woman's scalp. At this point, various scenarios begin a giggly cartoon dance across my brain:

I could (probably should) address the woman directly:

Pardon me madame, but there appears to be a brown, chittering herbivorous Death Star looming over your head, I wouldn't want you to be shocked if it were to fall...

Somehow I just couldn't do it. It was loud in the tunnel. And she looked like a hard, angry woman, fresh from some board meeting where everyone had been slaughtered and left in a bloody heap on the conference table. After croaking her demonic laughter out the shattered plate-glass office windows and into the boiling stormclouds above, she just had time to wipe the blood from her lips before catching the train....

Oh well. I'll just hang here, on my pole, and stare at the insect beast. And its lazily waving antennae. Then I had another thought:

Since the red-line crash, all trains have been under manual control. Some operators are smoother than others, and this one was NOT smooth. Each stop was a jerking spasm that nearly catapulted folks out of their seats. So with that in mind, I considered my new friend. The bug.

The stink bug...The big, scalp-teasing, antennae-waving little demon who now commanded my full attention simply because it was there. How the hell did it get on this train? It's probably craving a succulent leaf to nibble, and couldn't care less about taking the redline to Grosvenor/Strathmore. It was a living, breathing non sequitur.

Whatever it was, I was stuck there, locked in a kind of voyeuristic showdown with the bastard. I just knew the train operator would do another jerky stop and that king-sized evil cornflake would end up swimming in this woman's hair while she goes completely supernova with panic...

It never happened. I squeezed out of the train at Cleveland Park and had my rendezvous at the bar. In the back of my mind, though, I could almost hear the terror that was surely happening down there, in the tunnels.

...and I knew that Metro was surely more adventure than I deserve. Back to the bus from now on.

What is old is weird again

2009-07-23T17:45:00.012-04:00

And now, suffer a little selfish sales-pitch. This one is worthy:

CHANGES TO blind + BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT
Intangible Arts CDR no.IA011
$6 plus postage

A new CDR of previously un-released material has been added to the Intangible Arts merch-bag...a true time capsule of weirdness.

Back in 1992, Phil (CHANGES TO blind) invited us (myself + Les: roommate, accomplice, partner in many crimes and honker on the tenor sax) to assist him and his accomplice Robin in a live gig he had booked at the Last Exit in Troy, NY.

He had drafted the framework of a musical composition whereby the performers "play" the rooms of a large suburban tract home, in audio. It was a sonic stew representing the kids coming home from school, watching cartoons, parents coming home, hosting a cocktail party, getting extravagantly drunk, stumbling upstairs to execute a horrendous thing in the bathroom, etc...

We practiced this surreal symphony over several weeks, always keeping it fresh and improvised, but knowing when to switch from one room to the next. By the time of the show (April 25 1992, opening for the great Con Demek) we had collected hours and hours of sessions on cassette, with many brilliant digressions. I couldn't let it all just rot in a shoebox.

One special bit was a 20+ minute improvisation of just Phil and myself which had nothing to do with the House composition, and came to be called ESOPHAGUS FULL OF MARBLES. It's full of supple twists and telepathic transitions: trippy noise with moments of quiet and full-on insanity, with a sense of delirious humor throughout.

So all that material has been distilled down to a cozy 50-ish minutes for the Intangible Arts CDR. If you've been following the exploits of Blue Sausage Infant and/or the Sonic Circuits experimental music scene, you may dig the hell out of this. Have a bathroom available at all times.

Use the obnoxious little paypal widget on the right sidebar for easy ordering. Or catch me at a BSI show, I'll probably have a few for sale. Sometime in the next few weeks, you may also get it at the mighty Squidco online store.

Mural that, and a bag of chips...

2009-07-22T09:33:00.007-04:00

Just a quick cross-post from the Columbia Heights listserv, hoping that some folks take advantage of this:

---

Good morning residents,

The DC Department of Public Works and Councilmember Jim Graham have launched the second year of the MuralsDC program, created to replace illegal graffiti with artistic works, to help revitalize communities and teach young people the art of aerosol painting. This initiative positively engages DC youth and has been successful in deterring future acts of graffiti vandalism on the property.

District citizens may have their residential (or commercial property) considered as a potential mural site if they are privately owned and highly visible from the street. Residents also must be willing to sign an agreement form authorizing use of this space for the mural (which will be approximately 10 x 20 feet).

For more information, please contact Nancee Lyons at (202) 671-2637 or send an email to receive an application and release form.

---

Thanks to Ms.Lyons and the DPW. We've had some good progress with public art on Georgia Avenue recently, and it couldn't hurt to splash a little more weird color around. The photo above is an earlier example on the vacant Cluck-U Chicken building at Georgia Ave. & Columbia Rd.

No, I wouldn't call it "high art," but I'll take a giant chicken in a kilt, enraging elephants and vampire donkeys with the fried limbs of his ancestors over graffiti-tag carnage any day.

Bust a Monroe

2009-07-13T11:51:00.005-04:00

For those that dig a little neighborhood architectural deathwatch:

According to a recent post on the Columbia Heights listserv, the doomed Bruce Monroe Elementary School is scheduled for demolition this week.

Details from the post:

--Demolition of the Bruce Monroe School is supposed to start on/or around July 15, 2009. (A press conference is being planned at the site the morning that demolition starts.)

--Demolition will take approximately three (3) months. (Work will proceed every Monday - Saturday from 7 AM to 7 PM. Signs will go up around the site.)

--Solicitation of construction bids will begin on July, 15, 2009. It will take 60 to 75 after the closing of the bids to evaluate them. A contract may be awarded by the end of 2009. The contract has to be approved by the DC City Council.

--The site will be redeveloped as a school with commercial and/or residential construction on the Georgia Avenue side of the property through a public/private partnership. The school will have 75,000 to 100,000 square feet of space.

--The new Bruce Monroe Elementary School is tenatively scheduled to open in 2013. It's educational programs will include grades Pre-K through 5 or grades Pre-K through 8 (to be worked out by the school system and the school community.)

***Active discussions are taking place between the Chancellor's Office, DCPS, Bruce Monroe administrators, teachers, and parents, the DC Education Ombudsman's Office, Councilman Gray's office, Councilman Kwame Brown's office, DC economic develpment officials, and the community.

This thing is quite the behemoth. I've only been inside as far as the room they've been using as our local polling center, but it always felt a little "tired" in there. It's certainly not the worst of our public school buildings, but it's not the best either.

I'll keep an eyeball on this since it's close to IA Headquarters, and the idea of commercial property on the Georgia Avenue side of the site is intriguing.

So stay tuned for a little demolition porn once the bricks begin to fall. For now, some pix of the doomed thing for posterity:

Above: Georgia Avenue facade

Above: South view from Irving Street

Above: Looking west along the Irving Street side

Absinthe on the hoof

2009-07-06T16:47:00.002-04:00

Ahhh..... I found a dear friend in the Welsh bit of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, on the National Mall over the weekend. Makes a body thirsty...

Rolling out the Infants

2009-06-30T11:54:00.013-04:00

And now, a bit of shameless self-promotion: Fans of DC experimental/noise-music rejoice!

The BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT reissue campaign has begun. Most copies of the original cassettes have turned to dust, but the master tapes remain. It's been a joy to revisit these old tunes, give 'em a digital spleen-cleansing, and turn 'em loose again.

Thanks to these handy PayPal widgets (see sidebar), now it's easy to score some copies, and get hip with some classic experimental noise. Available now:

BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT: Scalpels for the Animal God
56 minute CDR / $6 + postage
Not a reissue, this is new stuff: Three extended tracks of paranoid trance music and brutalist psychedelic noise recorded 2008 live and in studio. First BSI release since Supple Supple in 2001. Professionally audio mastered for enhanced, disease-free hallucinations. A great summary of BSI's live activities last year. Released in cooperation with the Zeromoon label.

BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT: Supple Supple
47 minute CDR / $6 + postage
Reissue from 2001. Heavy on the analog synth, Supple Supple offers more of a trance/ambient vibe, with a few doses of heavy riff-infused, kraut-flavored psychedelia. File under VICODIN ROCK.

BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT: Mother's Meat
46 minute CDR / $6 + postage
Reissue of the 1996 cassette. A schizophrenic quilt of experimental compositions, tribal dada, sample-loops, and sound collage using analog electronics, samples, tapes, ukulele, and god knows what else is in there... It's a weird one.

BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT: Lighthouse
45 minute CDR / $6 + postage
Reissue of the 1991 cassette. Blistering symphonies of feedback with passages of looped samples and heavy ambience. This one veers from bitter noise to insane circus tango to heavy industrial marching music. Self-indulgent harshness.

There are several more reissues to come. Hit that PayPal widget and get hip. Copies of these will also be available at BSI performances. Stay tuned here or BSI on myspace for updates.

Booty and the Beats

2009-06-28T09:53:00.004-04:00

As it does every year, the DC Caribbean Carnival shook its formidable rump down Georgia Avenue yesterday. It's just a half-block from Intangible HQ, so it's impossible to miss. And the weather was ideal.

This time, there was a greater emphasis on crowd control, with horse-corral style barricades keeping all non-official booty on the sidewalk. Seems a bit counter-productive, compressing such huge crowds in the name of safety. Considering the mass of humanity this thing has attracted in previous years, fencing in the people makes me wonder if anyone in the DC police force had even heard of the Hillsborough Disaster. It's a stretch, but just sayin'.

This thing is all about noise and joy and drunken revelry and music and danger. So with the idea of keeping the public out of the mix being doomed from the start, the parade wound its thumping, feathered, mud-caked, grinning, sweaty essence down towards Banneker Park, where the festivities continued. And will continue today.

And now the street sweepers creep along the gutters of Georgia Avenue like hungry ghosts, looking for bones to chew.

Normality seems eerily silent now.

Ignorance is not bliss

2009-06-24T12:01:00.014-04:00

Any blog post regarding the behavior of cyclists in DC invariably provokes a firestorm of hateful comments. Many of these presumably come from frustrated drivers who consider cyclists to be arrogant fools.

This tension between car people and bike people also rises when organizations like WABA struggle to gain more precious bike lanes (daring to insist that cars share the road). It's a lightning-rod issue, like dog parks. It brings out the haters like a plague of flies to a neglected terrier poo.

So allow me this moment to dive into all the rage, mix in a bit of my own, and perhaps pull a diamond or two out of the doggie-pot.

I'm a cyclist, so I'm duty-bound to despise all of you fat bastards in cars.

However, I have a brain. And a conscience. And a desire to stay alive another day, therefore I also despise all of you conceited shite-for-brains tofu-eaters on bikes. There's enough bad vibes to go around, so everybody gets a slice.

I've been a bicycle commuter in this area for ages. I never learned to drive a "car" until the age of 30. Why the hell would I? Public transit (usually) works fine, and drivers' ed was an elective class when I was in high school. I figured, might as well take classes that could lead to an actual JOB, versus learning to drive one of those car things.

At first I biked out of necessity but eventually discovered I was enjoying it. It's sneaky that way. Of course the exercise aspect isn't a bad thing either. It focuses the mind, makes the body strong, and keeps you in the world: in touch with reality rather than being stuck in an air-conditioned steel coffin with talk radio yammering like coke-addled weasels in your ear. Win-win.

After several years out of DC, I returned to my old town and my old habits, with a battle-worn but marvelous 20 year-old Bianchi racer. Its razor-thin tires have scorched the streets of Arizona, Colorado, and Maine, as well as DC. But for all the bike enthusiasm I've seen here, DC cyclists are the most pathetic screwheads I've ever seen.

Let the record show, via DC Dept.of Motor Vehicles' Municipal Regulations [link] -- Chapter 12, page 4. Specifically item # 1201.15:

No person shall operate a bicycle except in obedience to the instructions of official traffic control signals, signs, and other control devices applicable to vehicles, unless otherwise directed by a police officer or other person authorized to direct and control traffic.

Get that? As a cyclist on the road, you are traffic. Therefore, traffic stuff applies to you.

So why is it that I'm the ONLY F*CKIN' ONE out there who stops at red lights? And why is it that I witness a cyclist using hand signals, on average, maybe once a year? (To be fair, most car drivers don't know their hand signals either and would probably be baffled by this gesturing stuff, and would run into a tree while drive-texting blog comments to bitch about it.)

Seriously!

Here's three extremely relevant reasons for cyclists to obey these signals and signs (I mean, besides the fact that you're supposed to):

1. When some dipshit behind the wheel of a 1997 Ford Fiasco broadsides you into a building and shatters your spine (assuming you survive), you will have an iron-clad legal defense: you were right, the driver was wrong, and then you sue the SHIT out of them for all time, ensuring that their grandchildren are still paying for it decades later. NO MERCY! Make sure the driver bleeds more than you ever did! Mount his head on a goddamned pike at your front door as a warning to others: Watch for cyclists, you comatose gas-guzzling pissants!

2. By disregarding these regulations, YOU (cyclist) are TRAINING drivers of cars to distrust ALL CYCLISTS, which may cause them to drive offensively. Possibly dangerously. This means YOU (cyclist) are responsible for the asshole Ford Fiasco driver cutting me off in traffic. Because YOU (cyclist) have trained him to do this.

3. It's beginning to look like innocent cyclists assume that ignoring signals is OK, based on the overwhelming evidence from folks in expensive bug-suits who look like they should know better. So YOU (cyclist) are also training the next generation of cyclists to do the same thing. Killing by example.

More often than not, bustin' through stoplights and signs does NOT get you there any faster. I catch up with these people at least 80% of the time.

I'm not totally naive, I know urban cycling is a kind of insane warfare: You've got to keep aware of parallel-parked doors opening into you, evade double-parked delivery trucks on 14th Street and babbling mad pedestrians hot off a banana peel-smoking six-day bender, juvenile demons pelting bricks at you from apartments on 11th, AND THEN deal with some jackoff cyclist crashing behind you because he expects you to cruise out into an intersection against a red light like a self-righteous cockroach, etc. The temptation to avoid all that and get there fast, at all costs, is very real. It's a hard life out there for a cyclist, I get it. But more street anarchy won't help us get back to Utopia.

So is this a first? A cyclist hatin' on cyclists? If it wasn't clear that their behavior could affect my safety, I honestly wouldn't care how suicidal they are. But when a nation of drivers looks upon all of us on bikes with a unified hatred, everyone is to blame.

There. Now back to the happy stuff.

Pyramid Circuits All-Stars

2009-06-14T16:41:00.003-04:00

And now, some literally intangible arts to report on: On June 11th, something weird happened in the presence of a caterer's chocolate fountain...

A somewhat random assortment of performers connected to the DC Sonic Circuits collective had gathered at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center to make a strange noise. The gallery space in Silver Spring has played host to many Sonic Circuits concerts but this time it was a party for the Pyramid itself, and its patrons, in preparation for the premiere of the film Beautiful Losers at the AFI.

We made a gentle racket while the Gallery Folk munched and sipped and chatted, hopefully enhancing the vibe with our sounds. But then The Folk departed for the film screening, and we stayed. And the jam got a bit weirder. Intangible Spouse wandered the room with the vidcam while we made noise, and the chocolate fountain burbled in the back of the room, pumping brown sugar stink into a room festooned with fragile paper art. And noise.

And lo, it was weird. Amen.

In space, no-one can hear you dream...

2009-06-09T08:50:00.006-04:00

Drinkers of the heavy head music:

Git thee to Adams Morgan tomorrow as BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT soaks the walls of the DC Arts Center in a frothy stew of Drone Marrow. It's time for the June installment of The Electric Possible as the psychedelic space-noise of BSI meets avant jazz and improv in a cozy, womb-like brick enclosure...

in no particular order:
BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT (solo drone psych)
CIRCUS OF SAINTS (guitar/drums/bassoon)
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS (Barcelona solo bassist)

Wednesday 10jun09 / 7pm / $5
DCAC: 2438 18th Street NW, Washington DC 20009

Copies of the newly remastered Blue Sausage Infant CD 'Scalpels of the Animal God' will be available, as well as other weird scraps from the underside of stuff.

Poster by IntangibleArts. Click for enlargement.

The Chewable Game

2009-06-05T16:34:00.012-04:00

We found a football several months ago and gave it to Gomez. A big, muscular, slobbery dog simply must have sports equipment.

It was a standard American-style football, a lopsided brown egg of a thing which appealed to him because it rolled in strange ways. Gomez learned to grasp it by pinching the white laces in his teeth and he'd march around with it, looking like a demented monkey with heavily advanced cancer of the mouth.

And like any obsessive parent, I feared my child was headed down The Wrong Path and vowed to intervene. It was time to get that dog a proper football before we lost him forever down that wretched hellhole vortex of NFL fandom. Time to introduce Gomez to what Brazilian star player Didi called The Beautiful Game.

His eyes lit up as he beheld the box: THIS, he gaped wordlessly, IS THE ONE TRUE FOOTBALL. Futbol. Footie. The Beautiful Game. Hell, it's even called "soccer" in some of the more backward nations of Earth.

CHRIST ALMIGHTY he cried (wordlessly), GIT IT OUTTA THE BOX! I MUST FULFILL MY DESTINY! He was hooked already, and the ball hadn't even touched the pitch.

And then, it was pure magic. It was as if he'd been playing for years. Gomez is a natural defender: Once he gains possession, it's quite hard to get it past him. He's a full-body player with a keen sense of baiting an offside trap.

But he's also showing great promise as an attacking midfielder, by developing a unique way of advancing the ball with feet and face. I've checked the FIFA rulebook and it says nothing about kicking the ball with the side of one's face. I suppose it's technically somewhere between a dribble and a header, but it's a thing of beauty to witness in action. Of course his face becomes obscenely filthy during this contest.

Needless to say, the ball suffers as well. But it seems we've succeeded in getting our boy off the devil's wretched American style football and on to a much greater game. The timing is perfect as well, since now father and son can bond over the World Cup qualifiers: Against all odds we're supporting England in this household (currently leading Group 6 with Croatia a comfortable distance behind), but are also sympathetic towards Argentina (currently at a nail-biting 4th place in the South American group) and Netherlands (currently at the top of the European Group 9).

In truth, we named our dog after my childhood spiritual hero Gomez Addams, of The Addams Family fame (and that's John Astin's portrayal, not that criminally awful Raul Julia version in the films), but if this enthusiasm for the Footie keeps up, we can always say we named him after DC United's prodigal hero Christian Gomez. And given our boy's natural powers in the midfield position, it makes good sense...

slugday is upon us...

2009-05-26T17:07:00.004-04:00

Yes it's true: The Sonic Circuits crew will infiltrate this year's DC Artomatic festival with a full schedule of musical conflicts of interest.

I'm far too lazy to code links to all the performers here, so hit the link list at districtofnoise.org to find out who many of these folks are. For now, the basic facts:

Saturday May 30
4pm-1am
at Artomatic's Cabaret Stage:
55 M Street SE (2nd floor) above the Navy Yard metro.
FREE...

Those familiar with Sonic Circuits shows will recognize some of these names, but for selfish reasons I must recommend that you hang out for the end of the evening, and dig a little SLUG BAIT. Why? Because we are Very Friendly, although we demand a little Discipline now & again.

So bring your Adrenalin jackboots as we transform the Artomatic complex into a vast Death Factory: Our little Subhuman Psychick Rally begins at midnight, but be sure to enjoy the whole damned thing starting at 4pm: it promises to be a very strange day.

Poster appropriated/mutated by Intangible Arts. Click it for enlargement.

Corpus Callosum

2009-05-13T10:13:00.002-04:00

Oh, the things you can do with a cello...

A brief snip of Corpus Callosum live at the Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring MD a few weeks ago -- A bit of cleansing harshness brought to you by DC Sonic Circuits, video by Intangible Arts.

He aint heavy... he's my monkey.

2009-05-12T10:30:00.003-04:00

Worth noting, for pure historical significance: Gomez has officially exceeded the 70-pound mark.

We generally place bets on his weight during vet visits: Even if it's a quick appointment without the need to be weighed, we still chuck his butt on the scale and wager on the results.

This time we were both wrong. We were both utterly convinced he'd be squarely 68 pounds and neither of us would budge. So the wager became: if he WAS 68, we'd have to do something completely foolish involving money. But our little devil-monkey had the last laugh.

70.4 pounds. I think he now qualifies as "a force of nature."

The Generation App

2009-05-09T09:39:00.011-04:00

It's weird to consider that there is an entire generation out there that has always had it.

You know... it. The internet, mainly--all the knowledge of mankind, lurking just on the other side of a compact gadget. We have raised an army of young adults that has never been without email or the ability to combat boredom by googling things like BOXCAR NIGHTMARE SAUSAGES (which I just did, with 8,320 results).

Now I'm not exactly OLD yet, but The Gap has clearly formed: There was a time (seems not that long ago) when having a computer at home was a social disease for a teenager; a virtual guarantee of lifelong virginity and a descent into sociopathic killing sprees involving rifles and high windows, picking off the Beautiful People.

(You have a COMPUTER in your bedroom? What the hell for??!?!)

The great old encyclopedia publishers were never infallible and neither is Wikipedia, but the difference is pure convenience. On any metro during morning rush, half the people will be meditating over their shiny little techno-eggs. Sending and receiving things. Messages. Absorbing critical data. RSS feeds from christ-knows-where. Sure, we used to read "newspapers" but the techno-eggs are more about bite-sized injections and short attention spans.

Because there's too much stimulus. No time, no time. And I wonder how we are destined to evolve, now that we've got a generation that never knew anything else.

As I write this (via pen & paper) on the back porch with a bored dog pouting at my feet, I can hear the commencement ceremony at the Howard University field a couple of blocks away. Procession music plays, announcers' voices on loudspeakers buffeted by the Saturday morning breeze... Meanwhile the grackles and sparrows go on about their lives with no more technology than they had two thousand years ago. I'm convinced our rapid pace of technological and social change proves we are the weakest form of life on earth: The grackles and sparrows clearly have their shit figured out.

And these new grads will enter the workforce and kick my ass all over town as the economy plays a bitter numbers game with our lives. I suspect growing up with this new set of expectations will tilt the odds in favor of savvy over experience: Will the ability to simultaneously update a facebook page, text someone, sip a latte, and chat on a bluetooth Borg implant become the new survival skill-set? We're already there, it seems.

All this portability has made us an Always-On society, which is another generation gap issue: It wasn't so long ago that a person could be simply Not Available. The mobile phone put the first nail in that coffin ages ago, but I suspect many of us genuinely mourn the passing of Not Available. Today, Not Available is Not Acceptable and those that manage to pull it off are the new anarchist agitators... or like the paranoid survivalist off-the-grid gun freaks of my father's generation.

Until about 1998, I would've defined "blogging" as that dreadful thing one does in the morning after waking up with the flu.

But "blogging" isn't quite that unpleasant and I've been doing this one since 2005 for purely selfish reasons and no expectations of getting anything in return. Of course there has been a return: friendships and creative partnerships have hatched out of this dirty thing, and it's given me an uncanny view into the psyche of the world:

According to site statistics (which I tend to ignore most of the time), my greatest number of visitors are looking for two things:

- Info on serving jury duty in DC, and
- How to kill a dog.

The latter was a joke title of course, a video post on a strategy to take Gomez to TWO dog parks in one afternoon, to wear him out and give us humans a peaceful afternoon. But the number of folks worldwide searching for a recipe for dogicide is truly stunning.

.........Now it sounds like the Howard Law grads are up. They're probably getting their diplomas while texting and blue-toothing and facebooking, etc., and this is fine of course. It's the new normal.

And having spewed that dose of crotchety old-man philosophy, I will now get more coffee (black as death, no lattes thank you), feed (not kill) the dog, and raise a quiet toast to the Howard grads of 2009. Perhaps the world really is a better place now. I mean, my old encyclopedia didn't have an entry on "How to Kill a Dog," so there's progress for you.

Bravo, grads. It's your world now.

Noise Will be Noise

2009-04-22T20:44:00.006-04:00

SAVE THE DATE!

This is an alert for all sonic scientists and revelers in vibrating waves of protein-infused noise: After a brief retreat to the hindquarters of the pineal circus, DC's own BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT returns to engorge your chakras with a full frontal amplified braingasm of psychedelic hellfire, heavy trance, and hallucinatory poltergeist mindtoons for the permanent dreamers among us...

That's right. Get thee to the Velvet Lounge Wednesday, 6th May 2009. Music begins promptly at 9pm.

Also performing is electronic pop/new wave master DISASTERADIO from New Zealand. Also a rare improv collaboration between local experimental superstars VIOLET and PILESAR, and a special set by atmospheric sonic weaver MYO.

Poster by Intangible Arts. Click it for mo'bigga.

BEHOLD THE SPIRIT OF SPRING!

2009-04-13T20:26:00.003-04:00

"ehh, fuggit....."

Gomez embodies the pure, unbridled joy for living that Spring inspires in all the beasts of Earth. And in this, he is absolutely his father's son. Ehh, fuggit.

100 Tape Loops in Rock Creek Park

2009-04-10T09:03:00.012-04:00

Sunday afternoon, April 6 2009: Just off the trail and behind the stables in DC's Rock Creek Park is a surreal arrangement of carved granite. I understand it's all fragments from the renovation of the US Capitol building, stacked here amongst the trees.

There are intricately carved bits of stonework laying about, as if this were a post-apocalyptic wasteland of Old DC. After the bomb. After the people, the ruins surrendered now to the deer and squirrels and ravens.

Mixed with the scenery of the woods, it's a pretty groovy place, both haunting and peaceful. A nice place to rig up an "audio intervention"...

Under the guidance of Layne Garrett (of Lighthouse and Cutest Puppy In The World fame), participants wandered into that open-air cathedral of stonework with all manner of tape-playing devices. Boom boxes. Toy karaoke machines. Walkmans with miniature speakers. iPod docks. Each one playing a unique 30 second loop of sound.

They were suspended in trees. Wedged between massive stone blocks. Lowered down into dry wells. Stuffed into bushes. Perched high atop the rockpiles. As more participants arrived, embedding their sounds into the environment, a curious audio salad began to form.

Seeping out of the rocks were the melancholy notes of a piano. The burbling ooze of a nightmare beast. The distorted wailing of a devil's solo on a buffalo thighbone trumpet. The squealing laughter of an infant. The textured noodling of a fingerpicked acoustic guitar. Voices. Breathing. Static. Echoes.

The result was an oddly joyful, heady melange of sounds. Folks left their tape recorders behind and wandered the site, discovering. For two hours, this simple installation had transformed the woods into a playground and us adults into children, climbing precarious rocks to find the source of the next sound. Or just sitting, drinking in the mixture as the loops formed a braided cacophony in the air. A strangely appropriate Rite of Spring.

The deer and squirrels will be talkin' about this for a long time.

Triumph of the Loo: Part 2

2009-04-06T11:09:00.008-04:00

There's been a time-lag since Part One, and the people have demanded updates! They gather on the street outside the house, shaking pitchforks and fists and spatulas and stuff!

Where's Part Two, you godless hack!??!

So here's a brief, retro-reported Part Two, with homeowner commentary AND bonus demolition features! But no subtitles, alas...

On the positive side, shortly after Part One wrapped up, things began taking shape. We had torn out the existing shower-stall (some dreadful white plastic coffin with sliding doors), to replace it with a proper shower stall by building a tile-wrapped, full-height wall. And it wasn't until that wall started to appear that we felt progress was being made.

Meanwhile, it was discovered that the outer wall above the back door was, infact, a surreal lasagna of insulation with tarpaper shingles glued directly to it, and siding on top of THAT. And the siding wasn't even screwed in place using the convenient holes in each piece, oh god no... Each slat was nailed at random, as if by insane fourth graders after raiding daddy's liquor cabinet.

And once the siding was removed, the shingles underneath billowed softly, having been glued directly to the insulation as if a simple piece of plywood had been a frivolous luxury item back then. The back of the house was like a fetid creme brulee under there.

But seriously: Once you peel back the layers of your old house, you begin to see how generations of homeowners have outdone each other in doing cheap fixes. It's fascinating, really, like some twisted urban archaeology. But discovering all this in our own home (the first we've ever owned) is a bit like doing your own abdominal surgery while holding a shaving mirror, and saying things like "whoa, cool... I didn't realize THAT was in there..."

Next up, the happy conclusion and the christening of the new bathroom. And we flip a coin to see who gets to "use" it first...That bit will not be photographed.

THE MISSION IS MUTATED.

2009-04-03T09:58:00.003-04:00

A cross-post from anonymous culture agents at work here in Washington DC:

>>TRANSMISSION BEGINS<<

Watch the skies.

>>TRANSMISSION ENDS<<

Triumph of the Loo: Part 1

2009-03-23T10:42:00.007-04:00

We knew the thing was shite when we bought the place.

The extension, mind you, not the entire house. It hung off the back of our proud, old, loveable-yet-battered 1915 porch-front DC rowhouse, still standing somehow. Like many of us, still standing despite a lifetime of adventure. It had a floor about as level as a funhouse mirror. The crawlspace underneath revealed a bizarre network of improvised plumbing. All a bit too exposed for comfort.

Well, we thought, just add it to the list of things to fix, someday. By the time we'd owned the house just six months, I was ready to KILL KILL KILL the next bastard that said, smugly, "welcome to home ownership..."

It wasn't until the pipes started freezing and bursting in that extension bathroom, that we finally confirmed what we had suspected all along. Not a scrap of insulation anywhere in there. Inner drywall, open space, outer board, siding. And the plumbing, just floating in space there.

Not to mention during heavy rains, that room would leak worse than a Senate Republican's little black book. Well, fine. Let's renovate the sumbitch.

When the interior walls and shower stall came down, it got much better. Or worse, depending on your level of sarcasm: In addition to the complete lack of insulation, we enjoyed the sight of warm sunlight streaming through gaps so big you could fit BIBLES in there.

When the wobbly floor was removed, another shocker: Whoever had transformed this addition into a bathroom found that one of the floor joists was in the way of the shower drain. So of course, this spotted herbert just severs the joist, leaving a worthless board suspended in space. How precious.

So at the end of Part One, the old loo has been gutted like a kill in the wilderness, vandalized by wild dogs and carrion-birds. And the yard is bloated with bones. And we wonder what the jumping hell they'll find next...

How to kill the dog

2009-03-04T09:07:00.002-05:00

Intangible Arts' Complete Waste of Bandwidth (CWOB) continues with this documentation of an experiment in cruel joy, executed (heh) in one afternoon and covering two dog parks (Wheaton Regional Park MD, and 11th Street in Shaw, DC).

Frosted flakes

2009-03-03T16:22:00.005-05:00

We, the citizens of the District of Columbia, are led to believe this was THEE SNOWSTORM OF THE YEAR. So mote it be!

In truth it wasn't bad. Or I should say, it was entertaining enough: The wind was just strong enough to blow the stuff, which was just wet enough to stick to the sides of things. For a moment, all of DC seemed precariously tipped on its axis and dunked in a crystal foam which, upon contact, makes otherwise sane people rush out to buy canned goods.

But of course kids and dogs know how to live without that kind of stress. Gomez frolicked in the yard, attempting to EAT all visible snow before it vanished. He seems happiest when being pelted in the face with loosely-packed snowballs.

Aah, that's the life.

And the young pagan mound-builders were hard at work, as well. Snowmen appeared in every school-yard, with bad posture and vacant faces, looking like a lost tribe of albino dwarves wracked with bone-white tumors.

And now we, the citizens of the District of Columbia, are led to believe the daily highs will be back in the 60s before the weekend.

My frozen dwarf buddies are doomed, I suspect.

Meatwalker clip

2009-02-20T21:17:00.003-05:00

Some industrial space disco for The Faithful:

A tiny slice of Blue Sausage Infant at the Blue Nile, Harrisonburg VA 15feb09. The projections weren't mine, but they suited the mood nicely...

Drone is where the heart is

2009-02-13T09:03:00.007-05:00

Yet more news on the experimental music front.

The Luck of the Draw Art & Music Experience is a joint venture of Artomatic, the Pink Line Project, and the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District. And it kicks off today at 6pm. Click the poster for larger version. Check that link above for full details on the event, but for the music side, I know this much (thanks to zeromoon):

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13
6:00-7:00 rifle recoil
7:00-8:00 Layne Garrett
8:00-9:00 Extremities
9:00-10:00 Sejayno

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14
7:00-8:00 Violet
8:00-9:00 Blue Sausage Infant

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15
2:00-3:00 Shadow Farm
3:00-4:00 Doug Stailey and Dan Barbiero
4:00-5:00 Pilesar
5:00-6:00 Janel & Anthony

Saturday promises to be very heavy indeed. There may be some surprises in the format, and possibly some cross-contamination between Violet and Blue Sausage Infant. By the end of the performance, everyone present may be contaminated. Do not wear surgical masks. They will not help.

But do come with your curiosity glands fully inflamed.
It's free, fer crissakes.

Find the tent on Half Street, between L and K Streets Southeast. That's the Navy Yard metro (green line). And remember: whatever happens, we have always loved you. Very, very much.

DC Noise in the Post

2009-02-09T09:58:00.004-05:00

Looks like Saturday's Post had a tasty blip in the Style section on the DC experimental music scene (with photo by your humble narrator). Nods are given to Electric Possible events as well as DC Sonic Circuits, both of which provide regular opportunities to hear unexpected sounds: Artful, noisy, ambient, avant garde, plunderphonic, drone, free-jazz, neoclassical, psychedelic, improv, etc... Any combination of these might be waiting for you at a Possible or Circuits event. And therein lies the adventure.

So thanks to the Washington Post for the verbal flowers. According to the article's lede graf, this scene is now bona effing FIDE, baby! (what the hell does "bona fide" mean, anyway? must take batmobile to wikipedia immediately...)

Article is [here].

Blue Sausage Infant goes there.

2009-02-06T21:31:00.005-05:00

...specifically, Blue Sausage Infant goes to Harrisonburg Virginia on Sunday the 15th: BSI and two other majestic noisemakers from DC will travel to the dark and twisted void underneath THE BLUE NILE somewhere in the Shenandoah Valley, where the heart of the earth pounds mightily in its darkened veins, thrusting splendid mountains towards the sky as a rocky affront to the gods...

...and DC's own BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT will pray chants of hallucinogenic noise to those mountains, with comrades KUSCHTY RYE ERGOT, CUTEST PUPPY IN THE WORLD, and Harrisonburg's indigenous shaman guide BIG DRUM IN THE SKY RELIGION. Come out for a whopping dose of trance noise, psychedelic escapism, experimental tomfoolery, and sonic mythmaking. Details:

Blue Sausage Infant
Kuschty Rye Ergot
The Cutest Puppy In The World
Big Drum In The Sky Religion
Sunday 15feb09 / 9pm / $4
The Blue Nile:
181 North Main St. Harrisonburg, VA

Unofficial joy

2009-02-03T16:23:00.011-05:00

Last week, Prince of Petworth reported that the gated property around the Columbia Heights Metro vent at 11th and Park had become an "unofficial" dog park.

And for some reason, this inspired a storm of angry comments on the blog. It would appear that a "dog park" is like having an open-air infant butchery in the neighborhood. Haters, haters, everywhere! But I'll get back to those creeps in a minute.

Of course we're delighted that Gomez might have a place to run around, so close to home. That is, a place larger than the back yard, which might be enough for a small terrier. Or a mob of killer ferrets (I call the big one "Ben" and take him to the office with me..... uh, nevermind).

So we went to investigate.

As PoP reported, it's "unofficial" but WMATA has made improvements to the fencing with dog-park use in mind. This includes the addition of two latching gates where there were gaps in the fence. Now at least, the perimeter is fully enclosed.

Note, however, there is a significant gap (maybe six to nine inches in some places) between the ground and the bottom of the fence. So this is not ideal for the small dogs.

MPD will supposedly turn a blind eye to its use since it's Metro property. Ward One CM Jim Graham had tried to get the space transformed into an official dog park, but we're left with a strange, gray-area compromise now.

This is a huge leap of faith for Metro, and a great chance to prove what considerate neighbors can do if given a chance. This shouldn't be a problem--For the most part, owners who frequent dog parks tend to be responsible types. And why not? Anyone with an energetic breed (like, uh, say a boxer for instance) can appreciate the ability to stroll a block or two and let the beast cut loose for half an hour, if it means a more peaceful evening at home. And a happier dog. Everybody wins.

And this is where I get to bitch-slap the haters. There will always be negligent dog owners and self-absorbed scumbags who let their animals dump everywhere. These are folks who can't be helped in ANY area of life; they will cut you off in traffic, they will talk loudly in the theater, they will take ages doing some bizarrely complicated financial shit at a busy ATM while jabbering on a cell-phone, and they may hurl on your shoes at the corner of 11th and U Streets.

Dogs aren't the problem. Scumbaggery is the problem.

Any properly equipped dog park will have trash containers which DO NOT smell, unless you're holding the flap open and shoving your nose inside. They also provide folks in the neighborhood with a pleasant place to chat and socialize, and, best of all, they give the pups a place to be awesome.

Put a bunch of DOGS together and, with just a few exceptions, they will have an insanely good time with one another.

Do the same thing with PEOPLE and you get wars, panic attacks, gridlock, depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, jealousy, terrorism, organized religion, etc... so clearly dogs have this living thing down much better than us.

Anyway. There were no other dogs around during our inaugural visit to this "unofficial" dog park, but no matter. Gomez ran around like the champion he is, grateful for the chance to stretch his legs and throw some slobber around. Dog parks are factories of joy.

So please use the place, be nice, and maybe a more permanent solution will come along. For now at least, we have a place in the neighborhood to let the monsters freak out and collapse at home afterwards in an exhausted heap of dogmeat. As I said, everybody wins.

Time-sensitive CORN WEENIE alert!

2009-01-31T12:14:00.003-05:00

Attention comrades!

Blue Sausage Infant is in the middle of recording a grand, apocalyptic remix of WFMU's classic mystery recording CORN WEENIE. To do this with the appropriate level of crazed energy, I beseech you... ALL of you... to send me a sound-file of yourself saying the words CORN WEENIE. If you're familiar with WFMU (esp. Ken's Wednesday morning show), you know the glorious evil I'm talking about.

SAY IT!

Record it. And send me the .mp3. Or park it on a server somewhere and let me know how to get it. I can be reached via email at the link in the "view my complete profile" area at top-right of this blog.

SAY IT!

Corn Weenie.

Sing it, intone it, scream it, speak it. Do a few takes if you like. No background noise, I just need the voice. It'll fit a much bigger mix. I'll need all CORN WEENIEs by Saturday, 7jan09. That gives y'all ONE WEEK to be a part of history.

Those of you who know me personally may do this via voice-mail to my cell phone if you prefer.

The point is, I've got 16 tracks of digital recording capability and by the end of the three minutes, I need to build up a fierce chorus of CORN WEENIE.

If the track rocks as hard as I think it will, I'll immortalize it beyond WFMU. So let me know what your name should be in the credits.

Be brave. Say it.

Hawkins/Blue Sausage Infant

Bringing the Noise

2009-01-26T09:50:00.006-05:00

The poor, abused souls who read this thing regularly will know that Intangible Arts is a tireless supporter of the DC experimental music scene. And yes, there IS one. And lo, it is awesome.

I've been trying to capture the evolution of this sub-subculture for a few years by photographing shows, designing CD packages and event posters, and of course by making my own dreadful noises at live events.

So it's a glorious thing that districtofnoise.org has been launched. The site is a group effort from local performers, and pulls together gig listings from across the scene. It's a one-stop-shopping deal, which includes Sonic Circuits, Electric Possible, Lighthouse, Velvet Lounge, and other events as they arise. All mashed together in a gory digital hellhole for you to enjoy.

The site also has a decent archive (which seems to grow daily) of streaming and downloadable live recordings, as well as an exhaustive list of links to the bands and artists' individual websites.

So diggit. And if you are involved with a project, venue, or performance which should be included, contact the folks at the site. Amen.

Sects and Violence

2009-01-23T08:49:00.011-05:00

It was about 1pm yesterday, and I was enjoying a lunchtime stroll. Within a few blocks of the office, I had reached the fringes of a massive tide of humanity, surging out of the Metro Center station and moving with a single-minded purpose. This kind of thing is not unusual. This is Washington DC after all, and there's always a group in town making a racket about something.

This one was bigger than most, however. It was a national gathering of the members of some radical sectarian group. They marched and chanted and giggled and sang towards the National Mall. It looked like they were promoting a religiously motivated form of social fascism.... or something. Couldn't quite tell, but it seemed to involve babies and some middle-eastern messianic religious movement.

It looks like a strange, cult-like religion where the devotees are all white people between 19 and 21 years of age and come from well-off families, judging by their attire and grooming. Their clerics were older folks and didn't seem to do much chanting. That was left to the devotees.

I wandered through the crowd and it became clear that they were all uptight about the practice of terminating unwanted pregnancies. How quaint, I thought: This cult has a Supreme Being that gets very specific in matters of public medical policy.

Clearly these are very intense religious types and may be dangerous to innocent outsiders. I was too fascinated to be cautious and wandered in amongst them.

I understand that one argument in favor of hunting is to keep the animals from overpopulating and damaging their environment by over-feeding. Thus, states allow an annual hunting season. In June, for instance, the state of Maine holds a public lottery whereby selected hunters are permitted to bag a specific number of Moose.

Now, I'm not a hunter. Nor do I support or oppose this practice, but it's pretty widely accepted as a method of environmental balance. And clearly, humanity has a certain environmental impact as well. So it would seem logical to hold a public lottery whereby doctors are given a minimum quota of abortions to perform during a designated "termination season." Just an idea to kick around: The first doctor to get to 300 gets a free trip to Club Med somewhere.

At any rate, this gathering of sectarian extremists on the Mall yesterday was a little alarming. With luck, they will remain a minority phenomenon and won't influence public policy with their ideology.

Oh, and for any fans of Lothar & The Hand People, the title of this post should have a song running through your head about now. You can thank me later.

Inaugural walkies

2009-01-21T11:03:00.018-05:00

Intangible HQ is about a half-hour's walk from the National Mall in Washington DC. And, uh, yesterday wasn't a typical day in town. Might as well go sniff around.

There was no way to get close to the "official" action without having waited in the cold for several hours, so rather than stress about getting to a particular place, it seemed more fun to simply follow the wind. A casual afternoon walkies. Obama had been sworn in and was in the midst of his speech when I braced against the cold and headed south. Towards The Stuff.

Georgia Avenue was a dead zone. Ambulances sped by at regular intervals with sirens wailing towards Irving Street and Washington Hospital Center. The sky was peppered with ominous, fat black helicopters. But here on Earth, the stillness was unsettling: A mob of some two million people was just a few blocks down.

Duffy's was nearly empty. Maybe seven people inside. I thought this might be my last chance for sustenance before reaching the mob, and maybe spotting the giant devil termite queen squeezing helicopters out of a bloated worm-like abdomen. Who knows what's down there. So I considered my attack over a pint of Guinness, club sandwich, and a mountain of tater-tots...

The TV screens in Duffy's were tuned to MSNBC. Obama's speech was over and all parties were about to have a ritual lunch in the Capitol. Chris Matthews comments to the effect of "Joe Biden is like a regular guy...he'll be like our Ed McMahon to the President."

erm...right.

Further down 6th Street, I found these residents (affiliated with the Church of Jesus the Reconciler...that's a new one, yeh?) handing out coffee, hot chocolate, and Rice Krispies Treats (tm) to the chilled passers by. All humans seemed in good spirits.

Then, at Massachusetts Avenue, I hit the Wall o' Swag. Obama's confident, smiling visage beamed out from an endless bounty of posters, t-shirts, bumper stickers, dog tags, jackets, hats, framed photographs, temporary tattoos, bundt cakes, pinto beans, solar-flare radishes with spin-dried crouton button flips pressed into keepsake leafy hard-cover gilded panda-tongues... Five dollars and up.

Closer in, streets were blockaded with a mash of military vehicles, buses, jersey barriers, and partitioned steel gates. Through it all, of course, were the people and the swaggies. Spirits were still high, most folks smiling through the cold and clearly enjoying themselves. Ambulances were everywhere (how could so many people be injured simply by being here?) -- It almost became difficult to imagine these familiar blocks without the carnival atmosphere.

At this point, the parade was underway somewhere, but I wasn't inspired to track it down. I wasn't finding the freaks and batshit crazies that I hoped for. Everywhere were regular folks, simply here to enjoy the day. There were no twelve-eyed lunatic protesters or spastics demanding to eat Obama's children before the Lunar Jellyfishes declare war with Palestine... And I'm not sure if I was pleased or discouraged by this. Perhaps the freaks will be out later, after several hours of cheap booze in plastic cups up 18th Street somewhere.

So I wandered home on wasted, cold feet through rivers of discarded newspapers and crowds of people speaking every language on earth. I figured the official stuff will be covered very well by others. For my part, I'll offer much smaller reportage based on a meal at a pub and a random walk to catch a whiff of the scene. This can be a strange town to live in, at times.

The day before the morning after

2009-01-20T09:51:00.004-05:00

Who's the maverick now, pigface?

All Noise Considered...

2009-01-07T09:44:00.005-05:00

I knew a piece on the DC experimental music scene was in the works for NPR's All Things Considered a while back. Sonic Circuits' curator Jeff Surak did some interview time, and reporter Neda Ulaby had attended the festival's opening night, recorded some of Bonnie Jones' set...

And finally the piece aired on last night's program. You can hear the archived report [here]. A fine job by NPR, with nods to Surak and Sonic Circuits, as well as Jeff Bagato's Electric Possible series.

And they picked some tasty shots by yours truly for the NPR page (above: Philip White at the Velvet Lounge 2oct08). So diggit. A little bit of glory for local noise.

Motel Dog has bovine intervention

2009-01-03T17:37:00.009-05:00

They say the best way to raise a puppy is to expose it to a whole universe of stimuli from an early age: frequent socializing with other dogs and people, changes of scenery, etc. Throw an occasional curve-ball into his routine. It's supposed to keep the dog's mind well-rounded and ready for anything.

In other words, blow his doggie mind regularly.

And so we shoved Gomez and his bed in the car for the two-hour journey to Luray, Virginia and a night at a pet-friendly motel near the caverns. A random exercise in doggie mind-blowing.

This was the longest drive Gomez had experienced since he was 8 weeks old and being driven home from the breeder's place in Gettysburg. So even with occasional pee breaks along the way, this was already a doggie mind-blower.

Yay! Ride! Ride inna car! Yay!
.... uh, yay? Dad? Uh...............dad?
Why we still inna car? uh, yay?
we inna car long time....snif...

By the time we pulled everything into our room at the Days Inn, Gomez was already experiencing a horizon-expansion of biblical proportions. And he hadn't even met THE COWS yet.

This particular Days Inn sits on a sparsely-traveled stretch of Route 211 next to a fenced cow pasture. We walked him around the perimeter of the motel's property. Taking in the scene. Gomez tugged at his leash, hoovering scents from everywhere. The air was FOOD now. Between the alien location, the (very exciting) evidence of other dogs at the motel, and those freakin cows, the air was a heady melange of smells for his punk monkey nose: a hallucinatory lasagna of snooty goodness. He could hardly contain himself.

Then the cows noticed him.

And they gathered in the pasture, mesmerized like a tribe of fat, retarded dirt-hippos, stumbling towards the fence...and Gomez, the object of their desire.

They had this lovely, synchronized beatific gaze in their cow eyes, nudging each other out of the way to get a glance of this........... this "Gomez"... the Great Fuzzy Space Monkey. BEHOLD! It's the PROPHECY...

It was like a paparazzi mob at the birth of Christ. We walked him along the fence and they followed in a trance, falling over each other, tripping over roots and rocks, behold.... We dragged His Righteous Great Gomezness back to the room, leaving the cows to ponder this vision. This visitation. This city dog with the shattered mind.

Yes. By now, Gomez had his mental horizons napalmed to ashes. Teehee.

We drove into town and scored some dreadful Chinese takeaway. While Marian was getting the food, I waited in the car with Gomez. Pondering the scene.

Yes, Luray is a small town. I hadn't been here since I was about ten years old. Every kid that grows up in & around DC eventually gets to Luray Caverns, right? But clearly, my adult sensibilities are much more urban. Whenever we visit Small Town America, I feel like a foreigner; a beast with twelve eyes and liquid blue skin that reeks of subways and curry and deadlines and smog.

Just going up to the grocery store cashier, felt like somehow these people can sense he is not one of us... Despite my sickly white pallor and shoulder-length hair and day-old stubble. I should be able to pass among them undetected. But no. Somehow, no...

I end up quietly studying them from the car, waiting for the kung pao chicken to arrive: Some random dude walking across the parking lot to his pickup truck... holy shit, he's even wearing a cowboy hat. Where does he work? Can't imagine him renting some tiny apartment--dude probably owns some sprawling ranch house, maybe something that's been in his family for a generation or two? or... or.... SHIT! Everybody is white here!

But I Digress. Gomez and I both had our little minds blown, by cows and a statistical majority of melanin-challenged people, respectively. He slept all the way home and remains in a happily brain-crippled ball in his own living room. We both live to freak out another day.

BSI/New Carrollton gig alert

2009-01-01T12:57:00.006-05:00

For those in the area next Saturday, diggit:

It's a clash of old-school DC noise titans, as BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT and NEW CARROLLTON hassle innocent shoppers at Orpheus Records with an in-store performance of fractured audio dada.

I've done several great shows in 2008 but New Carrollton performances are as rare as hens' testicles these days..... so this is indeed a sacred event (hmm, had to google this because the memory is fading: The last time I did a performance with New Carrollton was March of 1988 at the Lee Center in Arlington, so this is quite the nostalgic bill for the aging experimental improv geeks out there).

And besides: Orpheus is about to close its doors for good (really, seriously, I swear it, for real this time), so come help us put that last nail in. For old time's sake.

ALSO: I'll have the last few dusty copies of those ancient BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT CDs from the original mp3.com site for sale, fire-sale cheap. So come ye, collector scumbags!

Clarendon Metro is closest. The $5 donation will benefit the DC Sonic Circuits 2009 festival, and it'll also getcha $5 worth of the sale dollar albums. It's a win-win-win.

Details:
NEW CARROLLTON
BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT
Saturday 10Jan09 at Orpheus Records:
3173 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, Virginia 22201
Cost: $5 donation to benefit DCSC

For a weird teaser, here's a bit of the BSI gig at the Pyramid Atlantic last month, with projection visuals made special for the occasion:

Click the flyer for a larger view. Designed by Hawkins/IntangibleArts.

Xmas in the womb

2008-12-28T17:55:00.014-05:00

Keep the "Christ" in "Christmas" we say.

It's a bloody religious holiday, innit? The Shopping Mall Gods have no business begging for alms. Not this time. Bankruptcy is nature's special way of weeding out the redundant.

We're not "christians" at Intangible Arts, so we're content to leave Christ-Mass to the Christ Worshippers. For our part, we simply play it mellow: We enjoy the time off, we lounge around in dirty socks, we hug the dog randomly, and we smile at our neighbors no more than usual. True goodwill should be year-round and sincere, yes?

As far as the gift-giving scene goes,the missus scored mega karma-points in Valhalla by gifting your humble narrator with a pub-quality dartboard with hardwood cabinet. It was promptly mounted on a wall in the basement (although with the basement ceiling being a bit low, we couldn't mount it at regulation height, alas). But the thing is up now, which gives me yet ANOTHER reason to spend all my free time down there. Throwing darts. Stabbin' stuff in the Big Blue Womb.

So viva Xmas, says we.

Otherwise, not much to report. I finally got the music gear out of crates (after the Pyramid gig) and set up everything to be ready at a moment's notice for random noisemaking sessions. This of course makes the basement an EVEN GROOVIER place to hang out. Next up is training Gomez to stop being such a vapid pop-star when dad is jamming his ass off in the studio.

Seriously. Whenever I turn on the gear and start making sounds, Gomez stamps his little paws and barks his fool head off. He's not upset or stressed, mind you, he's simply joining the party. He knows that if he barks loud enough, the mike will pick it up. I generally have the microphone fed into a bank of effects that echo, reverberate, delay, loop, and otherwise mutilate sounds, so Gomez has one hell of a time bouncing around and yelling into the mike.

Fuckin' diva princess, he is.

I finally gave in a while back, and let him have his amplified glory. I kept it in the mix and called the track NECTAR OF THE DOGS. The result is available on the DISTRICT OF NOISE compilation, released to support the 2008 Sonic Circuits festival. So there. Now you're cut off, dude.

So between that and the new hazard of pointy metal darts being thrown around, it's probably time to call the basement off-limits to speedfreak dogs.

And now I'm looking timidly at the clock: it's about 6:30pm on Sunday, which means that tomorrow is Back To Reality. It'll be a short work-week, sure, but we all know that Reality is not to be trusted.

"Reality" got us into this mess. Can we trust that "reality" will ever get us out?

Best Xmas card ever

2008-12-22T11:05:00.005-05:00

Sorry folks, this has nothing to do with DC or photography. Rather, it is, simply, the best Xmas card. Ever. Thanks to fellow gooner JK for this one. Click it for bigger.

Apologies and respect to Paperlink of London, holders of the copyright.

cheers, mate.

2008-12-21T20:37:00.002-05:00

It's cold out there.
A micro scene for a winter's evening: Duffy's, Vermont Ave. Washington DC.

Egg

2008-12-14T12:16:00.013-05:00

Jhan Dean Egg died ten years ago today.

I met him around 1987 through a mutual friend: We were all bedroom noise musicians, releasing home-made cassettes of experimental music and networking across the country with others that did similar stuff. Egg had just started making his own unique noise under the name HAUNTED TOILET.

His first cassette, Borscht, was a self-indulgent hayride of static, tape collage, distorted samples, and magical irony. The whole of side two was a montage of field recordings, all music from kids' rides that were almost too old to function. Merry-go-rounds and such, rotting relics from Coney Island's younger days. The music was all saccharine sweetness, but the old equipment distorted the shit out of the sound, making it a strange mangle of beauty and nightmare. It was the joy of childhood pushed beyond its limits until it sounded like a charred ruin.

And that, I think, was the inspiration of Haunted Toilet's sound. Pure joy, amplified until it underwent a chemical reaction and became a unique force.

Sometime in 1987 or '88, I decided I just had to meet this guy. We'd been trading tapes and letters for a while and he seemed like a crucial spirit to know. I took the train from DC to NYC and even in the bustling chaos of the streets above Penn Station, he was not hard to find. I had asked Egg how I'd spot him. He said to look for the guy who most resembled a koala.

He was a giant beaming smile dressed all in black, with the words FREEDOM THRU NOYZ spelled out in safety-pins on his jacket. His head was shaved immaculately clean, apart from two tufts of hair above his ears, dyed fluorescent yellow and gelled fully erect.

Yes by god, this man was an urban koala.

We spent that visit (and all subsequent visits) up all night improvising magical noise in his Brooklyn room, eating Vivarin pills until we glowed in the dark, filling tape after tape with our symphonies of hideous joy. We slept very little.

Days were spent running (literally running) through the streets of Manhattan, laughing hysterically from one record store to the next. Feasting on curry in the East Village, then taking the subway back to King's Highway before starting up another jam session.

I'd take the train back to DC with a total sense of elation. This dude was INSPIRING. How could he be so flipping positive? In a city as densely populated as New York, he ran into friends everywhere. Something in Egg's energy was contagious and I strove to keep it alive as long as possible after each visit.

I learned that he was a self-made entity, in every way:

It seemed like nobody knew about his youth or his family. As far as we could tell, he was not in contact with anyone from before his days in college (Syracuse University, I think). He had moved to Brooklyn some time after giving himself a new name. Jhan Dean Egg. I don't think he ever changed it legally, but rather, he simply became Jhan Dean Egg. And somehow obtained legal ID, credit cards, employment, all the things that would make a life function under this newly invented persona.

He explained it like this, in a radio interview when he came down to visit me in Maryland, and we did a live gig on WMUC:

"I lived my fantasy... People have these sick fantasies, I have them to: To leave town, and tell everyone before leaving that you're going to DIE. And then LEAVE. And I did it, and since then I've been wearing black, and it just stuck. Black seemed to make the most sense. And I'm still dead! 'cuz you can only do it once..."

And in that way, he seemed to truly own his life.

He was a fanatical music collector. During a visit, I played him my copy of Kenneth Anger's film Invocation of my Demon Brother; the soundtrack was all disjointed electronic tones and squeaks, as performed by Mick Jagger. This was a revelation; that Jagger could DO such a thing? Egg then launched a campaign to own all of Mick Jagger's music. I didn't think anyone else could have more sacred missions than me, but he did, AND kept track of them all with a frightening level of organization.

After gaining much success as a body-piercer at NYC's Gauntlet shop, he did a temporary work transfer to the San Francisco location. And at some point, decided that SF had a vibe which suited him much better. He moved west, became established as a Master Piercer at SF Gauntlet, and carried on being Egg.

Then, we'd fall out of contact for months at a time: My career in magazine publishing had taken so much of my time and energy, I stopped corresponding for long stretches, and my musical output slowed to a crawl. But occasionally Egg and I still connected, and everything was fine, as if no time had passed.

It seemed to me that upon reaching California, he began referring to himself as Jhan rather than Egg. Maybe that was a mini re-invention to celebrate the move. We still traded tapes and had a hell of a good time. By then I was in Tucson; he visited me there and we we'd become the dervish twins again--Laughing like maniacs and having superhuman levels of fun.

After one lengthy period without contact, Jhan called. He was speaking painfully slow. He was speaking like someone half asleep and just learning to speak English. He would mutter a phrase and pause for a long time. Searching for the word... the words. He didn't sound sad, just broken somehow.

What the hell, man?

There was a strange sequence of events which I never fully understood. An illness, a missed diagnosis, something about a wrong prescription, that part never made sense to me. But whatever the cause, suddenly Jhan was talking to me from within a dense fog of advancing AIDS Dementia. This is a form of the disease which compromises the electrical impulses between brain cells, causing cognitive erosion. And of course there's no fucking treatment or cure.

Christ! The last time we spoke, everything was fine. We were probably talking about the latest Current 93 album or something mundane like that. Then suddenly he's on the phone in a state like extremely advanced Alzheimers. He suddenly didn't have long to live. And he had a completely rational Death Plan. The man was still in control.

This was just before the Thanksgiving weekend of 1998. We packed up the car and raced from Tucson to San Francisco in a frenzy.

He was moving from his shared apartment to a room at Zen Hospice, and he was giving everything away in a precisely worked-out sequence. His music collection was insane; more CDs than anyone should sensibly own. He joked that we might need to rent a trailer for the return trip.

When we got there, he was still packing up his room at the apartment. And for one extremely bittersweet afternoon, he sat on the floor, surrounded by soft pillows and looking like a mad sultan, gesturing to the wall of CDs, indicating which ones I should take.

"oh, you're into Can as well... there's this thing that Damo Suzuki did, grab those CDs over there..." He was weak and couldn't put thoughts together without a struggle, but he was still Egg.

We went out that night: Egg, his roommates, Marian and I... trying to find one last goth dance night at a club somewhere. But it was Thanksgiving weekend, which somehow meant the search was doomed. Even in San Francisco.

Back in Brooklyn days, Egg and I would scour NYC for the most pretentiously self-absorbed goth DJ events and cut loose with mad abandon; I mean, LISTEN to Bauhaus records: those guys were having absolute outrageous FUN with their music. I'm sure they didn't expect ALL their fans to sit in dark corners, brooding over their heavy eyeliner and writing bad poetry. No matter how crowded the club was, we always made room on the dance floor. Arms, legs feet, laughter, sweat flying everywhere.

This time, the mad dance night wasn't to be. But the ride from club to club was a riot all its own. Gallows humor was everywhere; Egg was digging for the seatbelt and we all agreed, WHY BOTHER? What, you afraid you're gonna DIE?!?!

Then he took his friends shopping on his credit cards, and maxed those suckers out; he shrugged, What is VISA gonna do? I'll be dead in about two weeks! HAHAHA!

We spent one final evening at his room in Zen Hospice. His plan was to resist any treatment. He knew his cognitive powers were vanishing, but he refused to become a vegetable. So his mission became one of controlled starvation. It was all his plan: No food. Only the pain medication. Eventually, it was no water as well.

Then at some point, he adjusted this plan slightly; his only "food" would be plain M&Ms, which he kept in a bowl next to his bed. As for liquids: he pondered, what's a non-nutritive, non-hydrating thing to drink?

Alcohol.

So his final diet became a strange cocktail of M&Ms, pain meds, and Kahlua.

On my last night in San Francisco, we napped on the floor of his hospice room, blasting the Gyral album by SCORN. He muttered before falling asleep that I should take the gorgeous Bjork poster on his door. Still giving things away. The next morning, there was nothing else to do but go back home and wait for the news.

He was found in a pose of contemplating his bowl of M&Ms on 14dec98. And to this day, it's hard to imagine living on an Earth without an Egg. If I hadn't seen his condition in late November, I'd be tempted to think he pulled another prank; told everyone he was about to die, and ran off to reinvent his life somewhere else.

In a sense, perhaps he did.

Have an Xistentialist Xmas with BSI...

2008-12-12T12:46:00.009-05:00

It's another surrealist hoedown with BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT and friends. It may be Xmas, but the theme is DEATH.

Death and Fun. There need not be any difference.

BSI's return to glory continues with a special performance this Sunday, dedicated to the late Jhan Dean Egg. He was a longtime friend who gained a name for himself as a world-class body piercer at Gauntlet (NYC and SF), and as a phenomenal noise-musician who performed as HAUNTED TOILET. There were many collaborations between Haunted Toilet and BSI over the years, the best of which was distilled into a release called WARM HUMAN REFRIGERATOR in 1991.

The show this Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of Egg's death in San Francisco, and BSI will kick out the jams with a ritualized, mighty wash of psychedelic hellfire noise to send his ghost happily humping its way to a joyful oblivion.

Sacramental M&Ms will be served during the performance.

---

Details...

DC SONIC CIRCUITS PRESENTS:

MIND OVER MATTER MUSIC OVER MIND
LOST CIVILIZATIONS
BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT

Sunday Dec 14, 2008
doors: 6:30pm
music: 7:00pm SHARP
$5!

PYRAMID ATLANTIC
8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910
301.608.9101
located three blocks south of the silver spring metro station (red line)
Free parking in gated lot out front
INFO: www.dc-soniccircuits.org
DIRECTIONS: www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org

Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind is Thomas Stanley – Electrons, Bobby Hill – Record Players, Chris Downing – Laptop, Keyboards, Samples.
MOMMOM creates spontaneous politically charged sounds that reaches across musical genres and redraws the boundaries of mental consciousness. For this show they will be performing to the film Luma 1 by Mike Sargent.
musicovermind.org

Lost Civilizations is a project of Mike Sebastian (Tenor Sax, Saxello and Bass Clarinet) and T. A. Zook (BassCello and Misc. Instruments). Together they generate a sound akin to atmospheric free jazz.
myspace.com/lostcivilizationsmusic

Blue Sausage Infant is old school psychedelic noise rave-ups dragged into the 22nd century from the ashes of 20th century technology.
myspace.com/iabluesausageinfant

Poster by IntangibleArts. Click it for mo'bigga.

With cerveza, sans cabeza

2008-12-12T09:00:00.003-05:00

Seen here: Random strangeness on the porch of an abandoned house... or possibly a deliberate attempt to trap wandering photobloggers?

I can imagine someone sculpting some curious evil thing or spray-painting surrealist nonsense ("viva the teeth!") and maybe constructing a Burmese tiger trap in front of it.... Then taking cover in a hunter's blind nearby, and waiting for the photobloggers to come out.... like roaches, them scurvy bastards be.

And yes we are.

This scene was snapped on the 500/600 block of Irving Street NW, Washington DC 5dec08. Old beery Peru is gone now. He slouched a little after Day 2, then vanished. No doubt in search of another beer. Or a head.

BSI: New material on Zeromoon

2008-12-09T11:49:00.007-05:00

Well, it's about time. The first Blue Sausage Infant release in seven years: Three tracks of live improvised psychedelic trance noise, taken from performances at George Washington University and the Velvet Lounge. Available now on the very fine Zeromoon netlabel.

That's a full album's worth of material (in vinyl terms that is: about 41 minutes) all free for the taking, baby.

Go forth and download [here], mp3 audio files and hi-res cover art. And remember set and setting, astral travelers...

McMillan plan to be presented...

2008-12-05T10:23:00.002-05:00

Just a bit of quick neighborhood business:

For those who share my interest in the fate of the McMillan Reservoir's Sand Filtration site, listen up:

There will be a community presentation next week by Ward 5 councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., as well as site investors/developers. It'll be a "town hall" style meeting, where current plans (based on feedback from the last meeting) will be presented, and new feedback invited.

Details:

SATURDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2008
10am - 12pm
Social Hall, Trinity University
125 Michigan Ave NE
WDC 20017
Parking provided.

Agenda topics:
- History and existing condition of the site
- Presentation of concept plans: Includes open space, historic preservation, mixed-income and multi-generational housing, retail and restaurants, office space, hospitality, and community/education/cultural space
- Community issues: Context and density, traffic/smart growth, infrastructure, community benefits, LSDBE participation, job creation, sustainable/green development, other...

I've got a few things brewing but I'll try to make it out there, and will report back. Watch this space...

No Drama With Obama

2008-12-01T17:38:00.002-05:00

Spotted on 11th Street near Q, Washington DC.

Ave. of Destruction

2008-11-24T20:25:00.009-05:00

Those of you who live in my corner of DC may have wondered just what the hell was making all that noise at 2:30 Sunday morning.

Quote Angry Parakeet, via email:

Did you see that the guy wrenched his front wheel off as it was partially stuck in strorm drain, then drove all theway to Children's on 3 wheels and a deployed air bag, jumped a curb came to stop. The Corolla belongs to my sister; I ran after the SUV after waking up enough and found the ambulance was already treating the driver inside. He was not seriously injured.

End quote.

Our stretch of Irving street has had its share of joyriding misfittery of late, but this was brutal extremism.

I rarely sleep soundly anymore, but I was definitely in Deepest Wonderland at that hour. My brain had wrapped a whole crazy psychedelic dream around that unbelievable metallic moaning sound... It was the sound of the driver going full-tilt on the accelerator with the front wheel stuck in the drain. And the horrible sound of all that steel losing its battle of will before the wheel was torn out like a defeated lobster's claw.

Somehow I was already peeking out the window when I had gained enough consciousness to focus on the vehicle kicking up geysers of dust into the streetlights. I didn't see the rogue minivan hit anything, though clearly it DID at that point, but in my heady carpet of sleep, I remember admiring the shower of sparks vomiting out from the undercarriage as the crippled thing lurched away from the drain... a trapped animal that had gnawed a foot off, to get away... and it squealed its metallic violence down the road like a comet, towards the hospital where the joyride ended.

This morning, I had to ask The Missus: Did that happen?
To which the only sensible answer is: Did what happen?

I haven't seen any further details on this but I know of a couple of allies in the neighborhood who read this thing (poor fools). And they might like to know why several cars parked on the northside of Irving were severely damaged this morning. Looked like a truck-sized cheese grater had roared down the street with no sense of direction. And that's pretty much what happened. At least it seems there were no (innocent) injuries.

If there was any justice in the world, the driver would be made available to everyone whose property was damaged, for fifteen minutes of "private counseling." And those of us who rarely achieve that delicious, zero-gravity level of REM sleep should get a few kicks in as well.

Top photo by IntangibleArts, the rest by Angry Parakeet. Anybody else have info?

D'Vines: Endorsement renewed!

2008-11-21T09:26:00.004-05:00

Behold! D'Vines, the wine and beer shop in Columbia Heights gets a mighty high-five type thing, and a bonus renewal on my earlier endorsement [see here].

After our Very Excellent trip to London and Newcastle, I'd been craving Sam Smith's Nut Brown Ale, which out of the bottle seems a reasonable replica of the house pints we enjoyed at the Cheshire Cheese and other pubs over there.

I checked D'Vines for the Smiths almost as soon as we got back (my suitcase wasn't even unpacked at that point, I guarantee it), and they didn't disappoint. 550 ml bottles and a few four-packs in stock. Delicious. Now if we could afford whatever satellite package gets us Fox Soccer channel, life would be complete.

But then, months went by without Sam's lovely brown elixir on the shelves. None! Eh? Am I the only one in town buying this stuff? Is there no demand? What's the problem? Why does God hate me? I decided to start a campaign of ruthless hazing; I'll nag these good people until they stock it again. I shall not be denied! Then work deadlines built into a frenzy and I lost track of time; had to put my quest on hold.

I checked the stock last Friday (no Smiths), and asked nicely..... though I was fully prepared to go into full-on hysterics with weeping and ritualized self-immolation on the floor of the shop, if it came to that. But first, let's try it with dignity:

"Please sir, ain't you gots no Sam Smiths Nut Brown Ale for a local dweeb what wishes he was still vacationizing mit der pubby und London groove, hmm?"

Whereupon store manager Pat Hayes gets on the phone and after a minute of mumbling sacred words, points to the counter and whispers "....tuesday..."

I returned on Tuesday and D'Vines had the stuff. Pat and his staff have always been friendly and knowledgeable of the products on offer, helpful, all that good stuff. But THIS was service raised to heroic proportions.

Thus, the Intangible Arts Official Stamp of Yeehaw is renewed for D'Vines: 3103 14th Street NW, Washington DC: Just steps above the Columbia Heights metro (eastside exit).

Keep 'em in business, troops. Holidays are coming up. You need beer. Wine. Sake. All that.

Suck it, America.

2008-11-18T12:12:00.008-05:00

I generally keep the focus of this blog on a hyper-local level, but for once, let's expand the horizon. Just a touch. And indulge a wee rant:

Today, several top executives from the automotive industry are pleading their case to Congress for a Federal bailout. They will argue that the ripple effect of an automotive-industry collapse would destroy our economy much further. They will argue that their industry affects people from all sectors of our society and thus, an infusion of cash is needed to sustain everything we hold dear. Our national infrastructure depends on it. And they may be right.

Even if so: Suck it, America.

I keep trying to reconcile the America of my grade-school textbooks with the schizophrenic empire we have, and it can't be done. The dream was pretty groovy but the reality isn't working.

American Business and its shotgun bride The Labor Movement have proven to be a gang of wretched crybabies that change the rules of the game as soon as they start losing.

We're big on "competition" as a force of nature which keeps product quality up, prices down, and operations lean. "Free-market competition" became a banner of American patriotism. It's the process that made this country great, dammit:

1. The strong will survive.
2. The weak will perish.
3. The strong will acquire the weak.
4. The strong will get sued for antitrust violations (because it defies free-market competition).
5. The government breaks The Strong into fragments to restore competition.
6. Wash, rinse, repeat.

...and the "invisible hand of the marketplace" which keeps it all in check sounds like a fruit-loop religious hallucination. Is it the hand of GOD?!?!? Did Saint John the Divine come up with that idea while tripping on mushrooms and writing that Revelations thing?

Those of us old enough to remember the gas crisis of the 1970s will also remember how businesses across the country refused service to folks that owned foreign cars. Then (as now), foreign cars were cheaper, more fuel-efficient, and cuter 'n hell.

So the notion of "competition" was shot when America wasn't the clear winner. You saw it on the news regularly: GM workers hassling some poor schmuck with a Datsun B210 for making their families starve. "Domestic terrorism" in utero. J'accuse!

Suck it, America.

Which is to say: Build a car worth buying and try to become a legitimate player in the global marketplace. Don't beat your chest about "invisible hands" and free-market physics if you'd just run home to mommy as soon as someone plays the game better than you.

Anyway: It's been thirty-something years since that fuel crisis and the Datsun schmuck starved some dude's family. Today, a mob of auto execs are just a few blocks from this desk, pleading for a bailout before they crash and burn. Appropriate metaphor there.

Jeepers, a bailout? How strange.

If I lose my job and miss mortgage payments, I'd be homeless. I'd also be without health insurance and may fail to treat early cancer. I may crash and burn without spending a minute in front of Congress.

I've known a few good people with sharp intelligence who fell upon hard times and ended up living on the streets of DC. I'm not sure what the shelter scene is like now but 20+ years ago, you'd be safer on the streets, doing battle with cops and hypothermia, versus staying in the shelters where you'd likely get your stuff stolen and your body beaten to hell. A good life can be wrecked in a flash.

In the real world, people are allowed to fail. Many die. Simply being alive is a form of free-market competition, and that's fine, of course.

There's probably six thousand valid reasons why the American automotive industry is bleeding from the gut, BUT: Our "free-market system" dictates that as a natural result of competition, some entrepreneurs will fail. Small businesses will fail. Corporations will fail. Entire industries will fail. All of that is fine, of course. It's hard-wired into the system.

So now we're faced with an America that's changing the rules again, as a desperate attempt to stay in the global business league. That's understandable, no argument there. Just stop being afraid of it and drop all that flag-waving business rhetoric. And for crissakes, revise all that nationalistic propaganda that kids get fed in grade-school, and reflect a little reality before they grow up totally confused about what country they live in.

All that paranoid bullshit about "socialism" from drooling Republicans during the election cycle was totally meaningless. If we're going that way, just DO IT. Or not. All or nothing. Shit or get off the pot, as a wise man probably said. The point is, America can't compete, it's a sore loser, and it's making up PLAN B as it goes along. We're improvising now and can't get back to the song we started playing.

Folks were always fond of saying "socialism works on paper, but...."

Jeezus, at least it works at all. Capitalism seems like a dead end these days, and it clearly doesn't even work on paper. Can anybody suggest a decent "socialism for dummies" type book? I think I'm ready to switch teams here.

UPDATE, 19NOV: Former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney makes a similar point in today's New York Times, albeit without all of my hysterical profanity: If failure is earned, let there be failure.

But I admit there is still a delicious, forbidden-fruit quality to the notion of Socialism. Most Americans have a rabid opinion without knowing anything about the topic. So that'll be my next research project, just for kicks...

On the block...

2008-11-14T09:47:00.006-05:00

Warder street at Irving, NW Washington DC:

The old J&K Market has been vacant for a long time, but occasionally I've noticed signs of life in there. It looked like a massive cleaning orgy was going on a few months ago, which caused the block to reek of bleachy chemicals for most of a Saturday afternoon. Great screeching Lord, I thought, perhaps they'll open up again.... That would be, in a word, most totally awesome. Alright, three words.

Then nothing. Once in a while, evidence of a bare lightbulb on, somewhere inside. Then last week, we noticed the signs. The place is up for sale.

So, despite never having seen the inside of this unit, I hereby endorse this sale as good and proper and fully worthwhile. Because I live on this block and what the hell, a bit of new money would do us proud. And I'm clearly being selfish.

But seriously, folks: the homes on these blocks seem to be mostly filled with decent working families, I'm sure the business would do well. Thus:

Dear Potential Retail Investor Dude, or Dudette as the case might be: Sure, I'd give one ear and several toes for an Indian restaurant so close to home, but this corner is better suited for a decent convenience store. It's visibly removed from the main commercial strip of Georgia Avenue, but you'd have an instant customer-base from all the homes in the area. And every time Howard U has a game (or Homecoming, particularly), the streets are packed with folks from other neighborhoods looking for a place to park. AND you get a lot of daily foot-traffic from Washington Hospital Center employees walking to and from work.

So just write the check and open the damned store. Keep it clean, stock a few beers and basic necessities. Nothing fancy, but nothing wretched. All the neighbors I've spoken to would love it.

As I've said elsewhere, IntangibleArts endorsements don't come easy. So this is solid gold, boss. Git down on it.

post-mortem

2008-11-10T20:09:00.009-05:00

What you missed...

Absolutely ripping DJ sets downstairs in the bar, which was tragic since there was crucial stuff going on upstairs (of course). Every time I ventured down there, it was a different treat of space-rock or free-jazz or experimental stuff or kraut or..... NO! GO BACK UPSTAIRS, we must start the show:

BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT: A deliberately short set this time (the audio file clocked in at exactly 13:13, how spooky). A brief sonic buildup followed by a large, stomping, improvised, freeform freakout of distorted electronics and tremolo-chopped wordless howling vocals. It was a childish tantrum of noise, soaked in psychedelic paranoia. It came back down to earth (more or less) with the pulsing Korg and looping chants. So far, the best description of modern-day BSI is "mean-spirited euphoria"... sounds about right.

MONDO DRAG: A totally satisfying set of heavy garage psych in the tradition of Pretty Things, Spacemen 3, Stooges, and even some of the heavier krautrock of Jane or Kin Ping Meh. Tight fuzztone riffs and wailing abandon; Good food for the groin AND the brain.

PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND was joined by Djin Aquarian of Yahowa 13, the psychedelic superheroes of Father Yod's "Source Family" commune. Yahowa 13 formed in 1969, when I was ONE STINKIN' YEAR OLD. At least they had the decency to wait for me. Djin supplied second guitar to Plastic Crimewave's assertive spacepunk onslaught. I wasn't aware of these guys until Scott (Kohoutek) and I were discussing adding BSI to the lineup. They formed in 2001, and have earned a maniac following in a short time. Djin fit Plastic Crimewave's precision-meets-space approach perfectly. I was happy to see some vinyl for sale and scarfed up the new lp, and the last copy of a limited-release Yahowa 13 live album. A good night for shopping.

KOHOUTEK was the classic ensemble cast, and GOD, did they belt out a mountain of sound. Heavy space jamming with twin guitars, bass, Scott's powerful drumming rolls that build from simple patters into monstrous armies of thundering hooves, AND a pair of noisemakers on circuit-bent homemades and contact-miked balloons, cymbals, and who knows what-all.

So next time I go pimping BSI flyers, you'll know what to do, yes?

BSI pic by Marian, all others by Hawkins

Get your psych on, comrades.

2008-11-07T09:17:00.005-05:00

Prepare for an evening of gallant experimental noise, heavy psychedelia, and spacerock at the Velvet Lounge this Sunday.

Kohoutek echoes the best of heavy krautrock psych (early 1970s Guru Guru/Ash Ra Tempel/Amon Duul), with an ever-changing lineup and a consistently strong sonic attack...

Chicago's spacepunk masters Plastic Crimewave Sound should need no introduction. Their sound lies somewhere in the ashes of a great collision of the Stooges, Chrome, Butthole Surfers, Spacemen 3, you get the idea. Very strong stuff. NOTE: Djin from the mighty 60's cult band Yahowa 13 joins Plastic Crimewave for this. Dagnabbit!

Mondo Drag's brand of garage psych fits the mix beautifully with riffy fuzztone splendor (think Pretty Things' heavier sound, maybe early Jane, Atomic Rooster).

And of course, our own Blue Sausage Infant kicks it off with a short set of mean-spirited euphoria, via heavy trance noise.

Also, DJ sets by Naraku, Provoke, and Elephant Bone. All pupils will be DILATED OUT TO HERE by the end of the evening. By any means necessary.

Details:

Sunday 9nov08
doors 9pm
$10 / 18+
Velvet Lounge: 915 U Street NW, Washington DC

Flyer by IntangibleArts.

An old lease on life

2008-11-06T15:49:00.005-05:00

Thanks to Jon at The Vinyl District for the alert on this.

Clarendon's Orpheus Records is a record store determined to DIE yet can't seem to do it. Proprietor Rick's "final days" and store-closing sales have been going on since last winter, and we hungry vinyl-hounds have picked the bones while wiping away tears... But there's STILL meat on them bones.

Orpheus' door was set to close for the last time this Saturday but there may be ONE LAST RALLY. Evidently Rick has the month of December to clear out even more inventory, if he can be convinced the customers will be there to support it.

And if you think this means he's down to a few battered copies of Frampton Comes Alive and Bread's Greatest Hits, have faith: Rick ended up with much of the stock from Silver Spring's VINYL INK shop years ago. And much of that stock remains in boxes but might still see the light of day.

So this is a cross-post with the mighty Vinyl District. We're all after the same thing. To quote Rick from Orpheus' website (via Jon):

"After all the proclamations about our demise we have another reprieve from the landlord for December... What do YOU think?? Would you like to see Orpheus around another month or so? Should I stay or should I go NOW? (apologies to the Clash) Please, let me know. If I stayed would you like to see the Vinyl Ink stock that's been sitting here for years?? Or do you only want me to put out stuff for a dollar. Most of the stock that is not currently available to you would NOT be a dollar. We only have a little time left. I'd like to use it to our mutual advantage. Talk to me!!!"

So go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell.....I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GONNA TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

And after you're done re-enacting that classic scene from Network, get down to Orpheus and block the door from the clutches of locks and chains! Use your own mortal body as a human shield if you must, but help us vinyl-crazed bloggers to persuade Rick to keep the place open if he can, and to finally crack open those boxes of Vinyl Ink goodies.

YES WE CAN.

Electric Possible, this Sunday...

2008-10-31T11:30:00.005-04:00

BEHOLD! Friends of experimental music! Diggers of crucial wierdness!

BSI will join the mix for the November installment of The Electric Possible. Details:

PLATYPUS DREAMS: Free improvisors Gary Rouzer (Vector Trio) and Jason Tremblay (Aleasthete) team up with Nancy Havlik's Dance Performance Group to explore chimerical phantasmagorias of sound and movement. http://www.nancyhavlikdance.org

BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT lives somewhere in the gray ooze between noise and psychedelia, using a mixture of electronics, toys, and conventional instruments. The result stumbles between delicate ambience, krautrock-flavored trance music, and harsh brutalism. BSI has performed and recorded since 1988, including collaborations with Lida Husik, Haunted Toilet, New Carrollton, Delta of Venus, Changes to Blind, and Stolen Government Binder Clip. This year, BSI has taken a fresh attack on live performances in the DC area, promising an unpredictable, hallucinatory stew of sounds for the brave and confused. http://www.myspace.com/iabluesausageinfant

BEAU FINLEY: Decaying improv guitar loops played through multiple amps; soloist formerly with They Can Never Take Our Crow. http://ts2.fluxed.net/

more links and info on website:

http://www.electricpossible.org

$5--all money goes to the artists!
8:00 pm, Sunday, Nov 2, 2008
Phillips Hall, 801 22nd St, NW
Rm B 120 (in the basement)
(22nd and H Streets/GW Metro)

The United and the Divided: an update

2008-10-30T09:06:00.008-04:00

Honduras did us. Last night's Champions League match against CD Marathon fell short of target, 2-4. Two yellow cards for Quaranta sent the whole thing into a tailspin. The goals came courtesy of Francis Doe and Greg Janicki. So now begins our long Winter's nap.

Beh. See previous post for basic remarks about the state of things.

For now, let's reflect on a happier day in UnitedLand: Some mad revelry I shot during the August 23rd DCU/Colorado match, with La Barra Brava cranked up to eleven. Speakers on for this one, folks.

PS: It's a bit old news at this point, but since we're on topic, and for what it's worth, Chelsea's obscene, distracting unbeaten streak is finally broken due to Liverpool's superior game. I'm no Liverpool fan as such, but Praise Allah, Spongebob, and the Baby Jesus that this Chelsea madness is over.

The United and the Divided

2008-10-28T18:37:00.009-04:00

Blog activity here at Intangible Arts has slowed to a crawl...the crawl of the crippled and of the barely alive. But like a stubborn zombie, it refuses to die.

There just hasn't been TIME. Between the day-job and the triumphant return to psychedelic noisemaking, this "blog thing" has been left weeping in its room like a forgotten stepchild.

So now I'm catching up with the rest of the world. Case in point:

DC United just pissed away the playoffs, and I agree with Jon at The Offside: this is probably a good thing. We could have squeaked into the playoffs and had a mediocre run, but that would inspire no great improvements. This way, perhaps the front office has a greater incentive to make some changes in the organization.

For starters, swap Crayton & Wells. Wells may be a fine goalkeeper but Crayton seems to be finer. He takes insane chances but seems to have miraculously good judgement. Or at least, the sumbitch pulls off some daring stuff, jumping way off his line when needed (in the absence of any defensive support most of the time) with great success. And he's a passion bomb. The guy puts life back into the game.

And I was a Gallardo supporter early on but after spending so long out with injuries, it seems the team can get along without. When he WAS out there, his playmaking abilities were alternately awesome and totally non-existent. Is he truly worth the money? Can we get some other talent in midfield and cut off a slice of his gigantic salary for Moreno?

I was giving coach Soehn the benefit of the doubt for much of this season but I wonder if his strategic sense is all there..... eh, I'm no talent scout, but clearly the team needs a little nip/tuck. With the MLS cup out of the picture, let's just get the surgery done now. Hence, no big cry over losing a shot at the playoffs.

Hell, why not send Christian Gomez a loveletter? He's rotting like wasted meat over there in Colorado. It'll never happen of course, but, you know... a dozen roses, a box of chocolates, and who can tell?

Screw it.

I'll spend the rest of the English Premier League season hugging pints at Lucky and belching madness at the screen for Arsenal..... The missus and I and our season tickets will be there for you next year, DC, but it's Gunners until then.

Dragon's Lair

2008-10-14T09:39:00.007-04:00

Often, in the gentle hours of twilight, when the first tainted rays of morning begin melting the gauze of sleep from the world, a creature stirs. A dragon. A juvenile one perhaps, but a dragon all the same.

And She Who Hunts is never far behind, for we often hear her call. It rings out like the tortured song of a deranged gypsy with a wicked hangover:

".....baby dragon......."

I've never seen this woman but I think she lives in one of the basement units in a rowhouse a few doors down. And her call has become part of the unique fingerprint of our block.

"baby DRAAAAAAA-GUNNN......"

Marian says it's a cat she's calling, but that seems dishonest to me. She should be out there shouting "CAT!" in that case. Who are we to assume dragons of any age cannot co-exist with us here in DC?

Cat or dragon, I haven't seen the little bastard, so it could be a cat. Or a baby dragon. Or a six-headed serpentine ocelot.

Sometimes it's best not to know.

Bricks for Obama

2008-10-13T10:17:00.002-04:00

The writing is on the wall now.

1200 block Irving Street NW, Washington DC: Things must be pretty bad when our very houses rise up to thwart that doddering jackass republican and his Ritalin-soaked muppet of a running-mate. Can a brick wall vote? Please? 13oct08.

pressing plans...

2008-10-12T22:41:00.004-04:00

Blue Sausage Infant
A Cooling Board Bacchanal: live in washington dc 2008

Just a brief note to self, and a place to dock the front-panel art for now...

Working on a double 10" vinyl release for this winter, to celebrate BSI's 20th anniversary and all the great musical activity of 2008. There's one more gig before '08 is finished (Velvet Lounge, 9november), so there should be enough meat in the can (so to speak) to edit a live album out of the recordings.

At 33rpm, a 10" disc can handle 15 minutes per side, so that's an hour of material to fill. Shouldn't be a problem. All protein. No filler. And a pair of 10" discs in a gatefold sleeve might be a strange enough format to be interesting. There have been several working titles and cover designs, but this one smells like a winner.

The muse is back, and she's freaking weird, dude.

BC, MIA

2008-10-05T10:57:00.003-04:00

Alert, for those who frequent the 14th Street neighborhood between U Street and Logan Circle: Ruff & Ready Furnishing's resident black cat is missing. I'm not generally a fan of these "cat" creatures but I'll make exceptions in special cases. BC is a special case. Click the pic for larger version, and note the phone number if you see him...

system status

2008-10-02T09:15:00.013-04:00

Blog posts have slowed to a drool.

This is due to work (deadline on the next issue of the magazine which has four times the normal complement of features, all of which are graphically intense, plus deadline on the extra-special-extra issue of the magazine, also with four times the normal complement of features, all of which are graphically intense, plus deadline on the other, newly-acquired magazine, plus rebuilding templates in InDesign for the other-other newly-acquired magazine, then eventually rebuilding templates in InDesign for the first-other newly-acquired magazine, etc), as well as keeping tabs as much as possible on this year's fabulous Sonic Circuits festival. So things are busy in Intangible Land.

All this forces biological necessities like sleeping and blogging a bit further down the list of priorities. But fear not; we'll be back up and cranking out the hits soon enough. Don't lose faith.

Speaking of which, I've completely lost faith.

The debate tonight between Biden and Palin will be the most uncomfortable viewing in the history of television. And I'll be at the Velvet Lounge digging tonight's Sonic Circuits event with Pacific 231 and others. So I'll have to catch up on the debate via the inevitable flood of YouTube excerpts.

It's gonna hurt. But the best medicine is the most bitter, is it not?

I suspect that Palin will crucify herself every time she opens that vacuous trap-door of a mouth. This should be an absolute slaughter. By the end of the first question, I want to see Biden completely bathed in Palin's blood, with one booted foot upon her vacant head and howling like a feral demon in the wind as if from a high mountaintop beyond the range of the most savage hunter gods. And then he will straighten his tie, wipe the gore from his hands, and say:

"Next question, please?"

It MUST go down that way. And it probably will. But the sad truth is, it would likely have no impact on the voting public. She'll chatter like a hebephrenic ferret for an hour, and leave all intelligent life on Earth stunned by the very fact that IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED AT ALL. And afterwards, the GOP will still have an uncomfortably close shot at the Big Job, come election day.

The voting record of the American public is not comforting.

And if it goes that way, Mrs. Intangible and I are willing to take a crippling loss on the house by selling it far too early (hell, GIVE the damned thing away), sell off 90% of our worldly possessions, and get the un-medicated FUCK out of this country as fast as possible. McCain was bad enough on his own, but with that wretched cockatiel as his running-mate, he clearly has no respect for the institution of a free-electoral system. This is some kind of global practical joke.

Now, I'm not exactly a rabid Obama-worshipper either. My take on him is, to corrupt the memory of Douglas Adams:

Mostly Harmless.

But that's probably what we need right now. The world is far too complicated for there to EVER be an ideal candidate anymore. So the most we can hope for is someone with a decent heart who can mend our diplomatic relations with the world and instill some kind of confidence that we're NOT all about to die. Not yet, anyway.

So I'll take "mostly harmless" over Bush's meat-puppet and that batshit crazy soccer-mom any day. But something terrible in the gut tells me it may not go that well. There hasn't been a nation this arrogant in its detachment since Rome.

Miriam Webster first defines a "maverick" as:
an unbranded range animal; especially: a motherless calf

And now Palin is calling both McCain AND herself one of these "unbranded range animals."

If this is the best we can do, to hell with it. I'm folding up the tents and kissing all these paranoid, gunpowder-snorting terror-whores goodbye.

SONIC CIRCUITS 2008 BEGINS!

2008-09-25T12:23:00.009-04:00

After all the (much deserved) hype from myself and others, this thing is finally bustin' loose.

Opening night of the 2008 Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music is this Sunday, 28sept, at the Velvet Lounge and involves more acts than I can reasonably describe here. So rather than give my typical editorial preview, I'll simply round up the details and urge you to attend. And not just to see Blue Sausage Infant, which is a treat in itself. If I do say so...

SONIC CIRCUITS 2008 OPENING NIGHT:
Sunday, 28sept.
7pm / $8
at the Velvet Lounge, 915 U Street NW, Washington DC.

Performers:
The Deep End Ensemble
Ben Miller (ex Destroy All Monsters)
Blue Sausage Infant
Kohoutek
Insect Factory
Chris Grier
The Cutest Puppy in the World
This Bag is Not a Toy
Hume
Tone Ghosting
Echolalia
Corpus Callosum
Twilight Memories of the Three Suns
Bonnie Jones

Also: The evening is effectively a CD release party for DISTRICT OF NOISE, the Sonic Circuits companion compilation, consisting of all local musicians and sonic magicians. So come early, get your copy, and take a piece of critical DC noises home with you.

The CD features tracks by Blue Sausage Infant, BLK w/Bear, Violet, Tone Ghosting, Corpus Callosum, Cash Slave Clique, Caution Curves, Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind, Echolalia, Janel & Anthony, Northern Machine, RDK, The Cutest Puppy in the World, and Twilight Memories of the Three Suns.

For even more info, visit the Sonic Circuits website here.

Flyer and CD package designs by IntangibleArts

England Journal no.3

2008-09-25T10:00:00.006-04:00

Photo: A bit of random art in an alley off Crispin Street, Tower Hamlets, London. Read Part One here, Part Two here.

Hard to believe this trip is nearing its conclusion. Our London hosts J and S have been incredible. And patient, as we try in vain to squeeze our tremendous list of demands into a few short days.

Aieeee..... Still need to score a few jars of Bovril for the folks back home. I threatened Bovril before I left, and Bovril they shall get.

Marian has been shooting the chicken in various tourist locations around Britain. Here we collaborated on a composition in Trafalgar Square. Our first notion was to stuff the poor bird into the mouth of one of Trafalgar's massive stone lions, but I feared the riot police might beat the snot outta me once I started climbing the beast...

The chicken seemed to startle the bag inspector at the London Eye. He picked the thing up by its tiny, bean-sized head, letting the body sway a bit while he squinted his confusion at us.

"It's a rubber chicken" Marian says, with a shrug.

Obviously it's a rubber chicken, but what else can you say to a uniformed guy with cartoon-style question-marks shooting out of his head? Uh... it's a rubber chicken.... sir?

We tried for a return trip to the Cheshire Cheese for a final pint, but the after-work Friday crowds made it impossible. So we wandered further up Fleet Street to Fuller's Ale & Pie House. Evidently this was the very establishment where Sweeney Todd was a frequent customer during his murderous days. His barber shop was a block or so down the road, I believe.

And yes, the pub did offer a good array of meat pies. Hopefully without the meat of priests, policemen, and such. Seemed like a perfect way to end the trip: some ale and meat pies in Sweeney's old place. But the kitchens were closed by the time we arrived, alas! So we drank our refreshments and sought cheaper grub elsewhere.

--------------------

6sept08: Return flight to DC. Back on the 777, in the middle row of seats, surrounded by the retching, screaming children of American tourists. American flight crew as well. The ambient noise around us is peppered with the lulling drone of American accents.

Sigh...it wasn't that way on the flight out.

After ten days in London and Newcastle, we hadn't encountered any Americans (apart from that random dude with the Wonderland Ballroom t-shirt), so we felt safely embedded in the Mother Country. But hearing the voices at the gate in Heathrow just now was a jolt. Everywhere was the slack-jawed, salivating stupor of American english: the patois of the buffet table and of Monday Night Football and of John McCain's zombie, rifle-humping hoarde of chromosomal catastrophes. This election season will continue to bring out the absolute worst of the American people. There are peeps of optimism in the cacaphony, but the stew of intolerance and fear clearly sells more papers.

The next several weeks will be very challenging. Perhaps it's finally time to start investigating a way to leave that arrogant nation for good.

Clearly I don't wanna go back. I guess that's the sign of a good vacation.

England Journal no.2

2008-09-24T13:54:00.008-04:00

Photo: From the Tyne Bridge, across the rooftops of Newcastle towards the mammoth Sage Gateshead. Read part one here.

3sept08: On the train from London to Newcastle. Dense rows of flats have dissolved into vast farms and swollen green hills infected with sheep. Stoic windfarms churn in the distance. There's a blue sky overhead with a lattice of clouds, like pulled cotton against illuminated seaglass, rolling long shadows down the hills like the ghosts of children laughing past the sheep who remain in their munching oblivion...

...and then there's Marian, photographing that dirty rubber chicken at the train window. We're surrounded by that legendary Geordie accent and blends thereof. Leaving London behind for a while.

Public transport: Now there's a telling contrast between Britain and the States. Here we sit, crossing the length of England in a swift, efficient surge aboard the National Express Service... And back home, Amtrak is an anachronism; a neglected idea just one more government bailout short of total death.

No-one cares about train service in America, land of the car and of the "birthright" to travel like gods in refrigerated steel boxes. Like nomadic electric cowboys. Trains are doomed back home. "Birthrights" are the playthings of selfish bastards.

Photo: From the Tyne Bridge; the Akenside Traders pub (foreground right) and a bit of Dean Street.

4sept08, Newcastle: At the Kook Inn Cafe. We just conquered another native delicacy: the breakfast butty. Not sure if it's a northern England thing, but here they seem to put such a horror-show of items in those gigantic buttered sandwich rolls. It's wonderful. Mine wasn't nearly as intense as some (as in the classic Chip Butty), but I call it good.

Breakfast special: bacon/egg/sausage/beans in a butty for 2.40. A damned fine breakfast.

---------------------

The camera is in the shop. It's been suffering attacks of the brain. Computer freezes. Error messages. Refusal to comply with simple orders. Doesn't seem to be a battery or a card issue.

It's a devastating blow, particularly after our walk across the Tyne Bridge to Gateshead, and that stunning vista of old architecture mingled with new optimism (see top photo). I've been using Marian's downmarket snapper; a Canon PowerShot. It's one of those tourist cameras where you compose a shot by holding the thing up at arm's length, looking at a screen on the back.... very weird. But it's good to have the backup.

Funny thing is, we had a crisis with that very Canon PowerShot on the train: an accidental reformatting of the memory card. And the subsequent DELETION of many, many photos. So in a weird exchange of misfortune, we lost everything she shot in the first half of the trip, and I've just lost the ability to shoot anything for the second half.

It's so symmetrical it's damned freaky. Terrible but strangely great, timing-wise.

----------------------

And the verdict from Newcastle Camera Guy is, the poor thing is dead. Looked like a tiny screw had come loose and was having a little party inside the housing for a while. Eventually it connected two conductive items and shorted out the camera's brain.

Nothing much to do but have a pint of local bitter and toast this mighty creature: It was my first digital camera. It was the thing that empowered me to take chances (no charge for film!) and it captured a few years of wild stuff.

So yes. Some pints and a curry will sort it out.

4sept08: After a day of heavy walking around Newcastle, we crept into the quayside pub Akenside Traders and assumed a comfortable posture 'round a couple o'pints. Then it became clear that the news had just broken (via the TV screen reflected in the framed picture, in the shot above) that Newcastle United's manager Kevin Keegan had finally, officially quit. The Toon was not amused. All around us, pint glasses were suspended in a collective trance as everyone sat, transfixed by the screen.

....holy jeezus, I thought. What deadly reactionary madness may erupt in the streets of Newcastle this evening, I wonder?

The following morning, we spotted some fan jerseys, violated and abandoned in protest. And above-average evidence on the sidewalks of bountiful drinking from the afflicted. It must've been a rowdy night for many fans.

Then, we discovered this: a proper Bollywood shoot, just a block from the hotel. How oddly, amazingly odd.

As it happens, this was a location shoot for the hindi film Kaun Bola, with hunky superstar Arshad Warsi (that's Warsi getting the fake tears, in the pic). Earlier in the day was the stunt bit involving the red car zooming around the Newcastle Theatre Royal and doing a nasty roll. Pity we missed that. For this shoot, however, we got to witness a few takes of Warsi giving desperate CPR to the poor actress visibly shivering on the cold pavement... A pretty groovy diversion. Must find Kaun Bola when it's released.

And with that, our time in Newcastle is nearly done. Back to London tomorrow...

England Journal no.1

2008-09-24T11:05:00.016-04:00

Photo: Aboard the London Eye

See the backstory on the trip here.

We've been flying for 140 minutes and have yet to cast our lonely, moonlit shadow upon the ocean. Our flight-path takes us up the coast, over Bangor Maine, and lurching in an arc past the rocky filigree of southeastern Canada before finally leaping over that big black pool.

37,000 feet. 868 kilometers per hour groundspeed. No scotch served in the economy seats.

Photo: Site of our first curry in London. Brick Lane is a microcosm of paradise with rice and naan.

America may have created the television but Britain perfected it with a single show. Effortlessly, the English carved a JEWEL from that electric, anaesthetic, pixellated brain-numbing coma-engine. A true Holy Grail of television achievement. The best fucking show EVER: Match of the Day.

The very idea! All the Premier League matches played on a Saturday, edited down to their most essential plays, with minimal commentary. You can get the full scope of the day's action in one programme. Absolutely brilliant.

Of course, the American MLS is nowhere NEAR as vital as Premier-League football is in England, but I feel duty-bound to bring this concept back home... Like the dazed caveman who discovered fire from a lightning-struck tree... Got to bring THE FIRE back to the others...

...must bring...
......the stone tablets down from the mountain...
..........the gospel from the lips of GOD...
............Match of the freaking Day from BBC One.

I mean, Jeezus! All MLS matches could be summarized for the benefit of us who don't have pay-per-view or satellite television... HOLY CRAP, children: people across the Atlantic LIVE like this, with this level of JOY in their lives EVERY WEEK?

RIGHT THERE is enough reason to move to Britain. I'd expatriate fully right the hell NOW for Match of the Day alone. The show has been on since 1964 and has become as much a part of British culture as Walker's Cheese and Onion crisps (which are also worth expatriating for, by the way). Uh, anyway.

The first of many ceremonial 40th Birthday Pints was a Sam Smiths bitter, and was lifted with great cheer at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, one of London's older pubs. The place is legendary and predates the Great Fire. Thus, the current location has been in operation since 1667.

The Smiths was delicious, and I had my meat pie with mushy peas as well: another English must-do, done properly with good company. Mushy peas. Brilliant.

The Cheshire Cheese seemed a classic pub without the glam of tourism, despite its fame. The downstairs bar was dark and loud and comfortable and womb-like. And the pints were a mere one-pound-eighty-something, so as Honorary Birthdays go, this was one for the trophy shelf.

-------------------------

Standing by St.Paul's Cathedral, wondering why the camera was DEAD, and a fellow in a Wonderland Ballroom t-shirt walks by. I was tempted to tackle the bastard to get him out of my line of vision: BEGONE!

I mean, sure, the Wonderland is our cherished neighborhood bar back home, but egad! It's one thing to run into other Americans, but one from within blocks of your house? BEGONE!

Photo: Mrs. and Mr. Intangible at Shakespeare's Head, Soho. pic by Lettuce.

Met up with our charming blogger comrade Lettuce for a rapid tour of the greater Soho area, Chinatown and such. I had reported earlier that Sister Ray (giant indie record shop on Berwick Street) was evidently having trouble saying afloat, but happily, it was in full flower when I got there. Within an hour, my bag was much heavier. A great day of street prowling, with a satisfying pint of bitter at Shakespeare's Head to convince us that we could yet walk some more.

And walk more, we did.

Stay tuned, the story continues tomorrow.

BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT live tonight

2008-09-19T09:01:00.006-04:00

Just a reminder, with bonus features:

Tonight at Jackie's in Silver Spring, IntangibleArts' resident noisemaker BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT will join KUSCHTY RYE ERGOT and CORPUS COLLOSUM for a celebration of improvised sonic adventures. It's also the last benefit for the DC Sonic Circuits festival, so 100% of your wretched $6 will be supporting the fest.

ALSO...Two additional performers have been added to the bill:

TRUE WOMANHOOD twists "avant pop" into pools of lysergic abandon, using a mixture of traditional rock instruments and homemade devices. Spacious and surreal.
--and--
Andy Ayers' solo project READ UNDERWATER builds a delicate terrain of minimalist, stargazing layers with guitar, vocals, and loops...

Check the links for samples of all the performers. And for more on the other acts, see the previous post.

Abridged details:

Friday 19sept
Doors: 8:30pm / Music: 9:00pm sharp!
Jackie's
8081 Georgia Ave Silver Spring

$6.00 at the door, all proceeds fund the festival: www.dc-soniccircuits.org/

pic by marian/oct2005

Friday belongs to the Infant.

2008-09-15T22:35:00.015-04:00

Stop wondering what to do this Friday night: I've got your plans all figured out.

IntangibleArts' own BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT will be plugging its infernal machines into Jackie's in Silver Spring for the final Sonic Circuits benefit. It promises to be an evening of intense, hairy psychedelic noise, sonic trances, and surreal sounds for the cosmic capillary disco surging inside your eyelids.

Friends, this is an event for the ages.

Also on the bill is KUSCHTY RYE ERGOT, an improv collective (with family ties to local legends Kohoutek) which promises to deliver something between trippy space-folk and all-out walls of heavy kraut/psych madness.

And let us not forget CORPUS CALLOSUM, which combines amplified cello and analog electronics to produce waves of atonal drone and moments of sinister beauty.

...and if that isn't enough for your crummy six bucks, rumors abound of a fourth act (fifth?), yet to be confirmed.

So come to Jackie's and support this critical music festival and dig the most unpredictable and unique music in the DC area. WE ARE your plans for Friday night. Come early, what the hell: it's a restaurant for crissakes, so there's your dinner plan as well. Case closed. The show will be in a back room somewhere off the main area, methinks.

Clinical details:

Friday 19sept: SONIC CIRCUITS DC 2008 FESTIVAL BENEFIT IV

Doors: 8:30pm / Music: 9:00pm sharp!

Jackie’s Restaurant
8081 Georgia Ave Silver Spring, MD 20910
(301) 565-9700
Enter around the corner on Sligo Avenue. Free parking after 6pm. There is a metered garage just across the street off Sligo. Silver Spring Metro station (red line) is within easy walking distance.

$6.00 at the door, all proceeds fund the festival: www.dc-soniccircuits.org/

Venue info:
www.jackiesrestaurant.com

Performers:
Blue Sausage Infant
myspace.com/iabluesausageinfant
Kuschty Rye Ergot
myspace.com/kuschtyryeergot
Corpus Callosum
myspace.com/corpuscallosummeltsskulls

Flyer by IntangibleArts/BSI

memento mori...

2008-09-13T10:44:00.002-04:00

...a Latin phrase which can be translated as "remember that you shall die."

And so we remember the passing of my faithful Canon Digital Rebel XT, which fell in the line of duty whilst photographing the north-bank architecture along the Thames in London.

It regained strength for a while, bravely surviving a four-hour train ride into the north of England... but it finally succumbed to its injuries. A swift-responding medical team (in a Newcastle camera repair shop) determined that there was a tiny screw loose inside the housing. And somehow it connected two things which should not have been connected, and its tiny brain shorted out. And the shutter was shut, for the last time.

The poor thing had been dropped on the Main Street sidewalk in Bangor, Maine a while back... Could that have been the genesis of Rebel's ultimate demise?

Brave, brave Rebel: You have served me well since June 2005, when you were just a pup -- a bouncing young Rebel with stars in your eyes and an optimistic gleam in your viewfinder. No lens-cap could contain your enthusiasm and desire to see the world and capture it in your sophisticated image-sensor. You were so hungry for knowledge and for pixels filled with color and life.

Sleep well, dear Rebel. At least I got a few shots of London in your belly before you breathed your last....

Sonic Circuits 2008: the noise approacheth.

2008-09-11T09:00:00.004-04:00

Performers have been confirmed and the full monty has been revealed. The 2008 Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music is almost upon us.

If you haven't already, dig the festival website [here] and click Schedule for all the details. There are still a couple of pre-festival benefits to come, to whet your appetite for unbelievable sonic splendor. This year, DC shall be the District of Noise.

Poster by IntangibleArts. Click it for larger/legible version. And watch this space for further updates.

Clearage on the blockage

2008-08-26T09:32:00.008-04:00

Georgia Avenue at Kenyon Street, Washington DC 26aug09:

On Saturday, I noticed they finally took down those two shopfronts that had been marked for demolition since the winter of 2007. An early poster from the finance company promised "18 luxury apts. and 9,000 sq.ft. retail/office space" for the site.

I guess it's too much to hope for an Indian restaurant? For me, at least? All the curry in the 'hood is Caribbean style, which is better than nothing, but still; if I could walk one block from my front steps and get a decent vindaloo, I might just start believing in Santa Claus.

Or hell, even an indecent vindaloo would be worth celebrating if it were just a block away.

For reference, this was the site eighteen months ago:

And so we bid our final farewell to the old Sunray market: It spent much of its final years closed anyway, but when it was open, it was one of the only places on the street where one could find diet Mtn.Dew (for the missus). It had closed for remodeling for a while, then opened for a week or two, then shuttered for good. Then boom.

So, bring me my vindaloo, Capital Investment company, Carthage Group, and/or whoever else is behind this project... please?

United Uber Alles

2008-08-24T20:30:00.005-04:00

I'm a wee bit disappointed in the compression from YouTube on the viddie, but the spirit definitely comes across:

RFK Stadium, Washington DC Saturday 23aug08: A wee montage of fan support during the DC United match against Colorado Rapids. Typically mad freaking energy and singing from La Barra Brava shot during halftime, plus bits of spirited color throughout the match, edited for your pleasure.

This is what it's all about.

Yes, we expected to win this one. But the team was communicating better than I've seen in a long time. The ball was kept in Colorado's half for long stretches, and the few times Crayton (sub goalkeeper) was given work to do, he met all challenges with confidence, aggression, and massive style -- including one vertical save which, had he trimmed his nails that morning, he may not have made. But clearly the man is great.

Blog comments have been calling for Zach Wells' blood for a while, but I've been rooted in the benefit-of-the-doubt camp. Wells is a good goalkeeper, and will likely become great in time. BUT dig this crazy Louis Crayton bloke: with Wells out, Crayton comes out of the gate with a shut-out for his first match, and with this gig against Colorado (his third), he gets another one. Not sure how long Wells will be out, but I'd love to see the front office switch these two for the remainder of the season.

As for my previous post, Gallardo was still out and will likely stay out for a bit longer (Saint Conrad of Piacenza, why hast thou forsaken meeeee?), and Gomez was on the Colorado bench until the second half. Why did he not start?

Thus, we didn't get the mighty midfielder show we dreamed about in the Prayer to Connie, but no matter! It was a fine summer's eve at RFK, with the intended result.

Play that video with volume cranked. Vamos United!

A Prayer to Saint Conrad

2008-08-21T21:16:00.010-04:00

Oh great and groovy St. Conrad of Piacenza,
Who evidently is the patron saint of hernias,
(who knew?)
hear my plea.

For you see,
we excitedly bought tickets
to this Saturday's DC United match against Colorado
some time ago

when we beheld that such a match
would be safely after my magazine's deadline.
(curseth that day job and its pressures!)
And lo, with tickets 'neath magnet on the fridge, we waited.

And this match is no ordinary match,
O Saint Conrad of Piacenza.
For it pits United against the Colorado Rapids,
Those same Rapids who acquired our ex-midfielder this season.

His name is known across the land as CHRISTIAN GOMEZ.
And lo, he is awesome.
His replacement at United was an expensive one.
His name is known across the land as MARCELO GALLARDO.

And lo, he is awesome as well.

We've been anticipating a mighty match at RFK, Saint Conrad,
and the chance to see those two great midfielders
on the same pitch, but behold:
Gallardo has been out due to hernia surgery,

Missing several matches.

Team website lists his status as PROBABLE.
But goddammit Conrad, the bloke's been "probable" for a while.
And it would add good drama
to see his well-rested Argentinian ass on the pitch for this.

So hey, Saint Conrad? Connie? About Gallardo:
We can do better than PROBABLE before Saturday, yeh?
I mean, the team has shown it can fight well
WITHOUT the great playmaker

But it would make better drama.
you know.
thanks and stuff,
amen.

DC Photoism: Dimensions

2008-08-20T09:02:00.005-04:00

Two-dimensional man confronts three-dimensional man.
Georgia and New Hampshire Avenues NW, Washington DC, 15aug08.

Cheers.

2008-08-18T14:33:00.004-04:00

A wee postscript to the previous one, since the photo came out rather nice: A portrait of a very doomed shot of 10-yr.Glemorangie (neat, of course...why bother asking?).

A moment of relative calm with scotch, spouse, and checkerboard at CommonWealth, the new pub in town. Irving Street at 14th, Washington DC.

Forty something

2008-08-16T19:19:00.012-04:00

From childhood, we are conditioned to think of one's 40th birthday as a "milestone."

It's the stuff of sitcoms and popular culture, right up there with mother-in-law jokes: the dreaded 40th birthday. On that day, we're supposed to pause and get really deep about it. Pensive. Melancholy. As if that particular "milestone" marks the halfway point in the march to the grave.

It's all downhill from here, sport.

I've never been much for "conditioning" so I have no idea what all that means. But I'll take any excuse to do some gooey, self-indulgent navel-gazing.

I suppose turning forty means I've (perhaps) finally earned the right to be a dark-humored, cynical contrarian without looking like a snot-nosed brat who hasn't put in the TIME to pull that kind of attitude. Oddly, I remember turning thirty and thinking (perhaps) I'd earned the right to be cynical without looking like a snot-nosed brat.

Come to think of it, I recall hitting twenty and thinking how, finally being out of my teens, perhaps I've earned the right to be a cynic without looking like a snot-nosed brat.

Eighteen wasn't a milestone at all. I had no desire to drive and at the time, I hadn't discovered the demon alcohol (Maryland hadn't yet gone to the 21 minimum age, but I wasn't interested anyway).

Thirteen was a milestone because I'd finally earned that coveted "teen" suffix.

Ten was a milestone because I'd finally broken into the double-digits. And I was probably a budding cynic already (safe to say a snot-nosed brat, at that stage).

Before ten, who needs milestones? Just getting through a day of school was probably a milestone of biblical proportions. (Photo above: getting ready for a day at first grade, St.Jude's Elementary School, Rockville MD. Totally freaking suave.)

So last Wednesday was the latest, greatest milestone yet. There were several times in my early 20s when I'd swear I'd never live to see forty. So maybe this is a significant achievement after all.

Fun fact: I happen to share the date with Alfred Hitchcock and Fidel Castro: We are Top Lads, one and all.

The aforementioned celebration voyage to London is still to come, but it'll be a riot. We celebrated the actual birthday with a first visit to our new pub CommonWealth (more on that later), followed by a viewing of one of the truly great "bad" movies, The Undertaker and his Pals, a marvelously wretched piece of drive-in exploitation horror-comedy from 1966. Somehow my marriage survived the viewing. Hows THAT for being truly blessed?

But as for the 40th birthday and its required mortality fetish, baah. It's been done better by others. I can't compete.

But it is extremely heady to remember my parents as they were when I was young. And to realize that they were MY AGE. It's a very bizarre ego trip: Dad would've been forty in 1981, which is the year I moved in with him after military school. And he wasn't feeling his freshest in those days. Raw, ulcerated weldschmerz oozed from the ceiling of his townhouse like black demon-jelly and toxified the air with a sulfur stew of resignation and old hate with no fire. Old hate with no teeth and no fight. And no reason to be. The television was a bleak vortex that held the place in suspension until bedtime, after which it happened all over again. And again.

I'll be fucked if I let it go that way.

So we keep fighting. We are sacred animals, us human beings. But animals we are. And to Live is to Fight; we should be no better off than the owls and the ravens and the deer and the spiders and the mushrooms and the eagles and the centipedes. We just haven't earned the privilege of special treatment on this earth, and maybe that's a great thing.

If it must be a fight, perhaps the best way to transcend the whole thing is to dance while you fight.

Survive. And dig it while you do it.

So bring on fifty, you bastard universe you.

[photo by mum...infinite thanks]

Strut yer mutt, Civil-War style

2008-08-15T09:18:00.004-04:00

Local nonprofit Cultural Tourism DC has been busy...

Their latest effort is the Brightwood Heritage Trail, which will be unveiled in a public ceremony at 10am tomorrow. Following that will be the inaugural stroll, with some entertaining pitstops along the way: Civil War re-enactors will be on hand to answer questions and maybe terrorize people with muskets (it turns out Brightwood was the site of DC's one Civil War battle), there will also be live jazz at Emory United Methodist Church (Quackenbos & Georgia, 11am), restaurants and businesses will provide free drinks & discounts, etc. It sounds like a fine time, and a great way to pick up on the stories behind our familiar streets.

Brightwood is a wee bit north of typical Intangible stomping-grounds, but it's close. (WONDER CHICKEN needs to do up some t-shirts...their sign and logo is friggin' sacred). The weather should be phenomenal: cooler, less humid. No excuses.

ALSO: We must not forget the MUTT STRUT. Starting at noon in front of Little Rascals at Georgia and Missouri, dogs (and their owners) are encouraged to do a bit of the stroll, after which Little Rascals will provide water & treats for the beasts.

The Brightwood Heritage Trail includes 18 illustrated signposts in a winding route from 14th and Kennedy to Georgia Avenue and Peabody Street. Cultural Tourism DC's project director informs me that Columbia Heights is due for a Heritage Trail as well; we'll have to wait about a year for that one. A total of seventeen such trails are planned, the next one being Deanwood.

So stay tuned, intrepid local history buffs. In the meantime, check CTDC for details on Saturday's festivities here.

[photo: a much younger Gomez, totally refusing to 'strut' down 18th street after getting the Cold Thermometer treatment at the vet.]

Sonic Circuits benefit II

2008-08-12T09:22:00.006-04:00

The Sonic Circuits festival of experimental music looms ever closer. Hear that rumbling in the distance? It's the sound of unique, artful, compelling, unexpected music. The perfect antidote to formula entertainment.

As reported earlier, a series of benefit shows has been launched to help defray the cost of this mighty thing. The second benefit is coming up soon, at the Pyramid Atlantic art space in Silver Spring. Click the flyer for larger version. Further details below, courtesy of the festival curator:

SONIC CIRCUITS FESTIVAL 2008
BENEFIT II
Sunday, August 24
Doors 6:30pm Music 7:00pm SHARP
admission: $5.00 at the door

PYRAMID ATLANTIC
8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910
301.608.9101
located three blocks south of the silver spring metro station (red line)
INFO + DIRECTIONS: www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org

MACAROON FIVE:
Arthur Harrison is the president and CEO of Harrison Instruments, Inc., a Maryland-based company that designs and manufactures electronics for a wide range of applications, including electronic musical instruments. Arthur has over 30 years of experience with electronic music, and has performed on theremin for a decade. His work appears on numerous audio recordings and sound tracks, and he is considered one of the world's technical authorities on the theremin, with his circuit designs implemented by electronic music enthusiasts, world-over.

barsky / allison
From Insect Factory & Kohoutek on guitar and custom electronics
http://www.myspace.com/insectfactory

T.A. ZOOK
Analog sound generations with struck bowls, rainsticks, wind instruments and guitars processed through racks of loopers/fx -- an otherworldly ambience that's difficult to describe; once heard, difficult to forget. (http://www.myspace.com/tazook) Think: music from a temple in an extraterrestrial dream, emanating from the aether and enveloping you in some indescribable way.
http://www.myspace.com/tazook

[flyer design IntangibleArts]

WASA Big Idea? Part 4

2008-08-07T09:14:00.005-04:00

Get the backstory: Part One here, Part Two here. Part Three here.

This could be the final installment in the gripping WASA saga unless something INSANE happens. But for now, just a post-op report.

It's been a couple of weeks since WASA's Plumbing Berserker perforated a bowel and caused much yelling en español (see part three for details). Since then, nothing has exploded, we haven't died from lead poisoning, and everything seems wonderful. Our tap water doesn't taste like the distilled tears of Heaven's purest angels or anything, but then, we'd have to move to Juneau to get that.

(Alaska Tourist Bureau, that'll be $500 please)

One good thing about WASA's finish is the full re-patch in the sidewalk (photo above), where they had chipped away the cement to access the public water meter. Some similar WASA action must have happened years ago, since that area of sidewalk was broken away and infested with weeds and ugliness when we moved in. It's good to see the lads cleaning up after themselves this time.

As previously reported, they are laying new grass seed in front yards where the test-pits were dug. They're also seeding the turf on the public side around the meter (note the odd protective blondie-fiber wig thing in top photo). So by summer's end, the street might actually look decent.

And there's real actual living grass popping up. Hooray for the little green people.

Early on, there was some concern about our retaining walls but as far as I can tell, no damage was done. Several of our neighbors' walls have been leaning and bulging precariously for years. Ours is no worse than before.

BUT, one huge fix remains: Our block is now riddled with about a dozen exposed concrete pits in the street, where the steel plates had been. It makes driving that block something of an ugly obstacle course. If the job is truly done, could we please have a fresh skin of asphalt? Pleeeez? WASA? DOT? Dept. of Public Works? Somebody?

Admittedly, part of me wants them to keep the pitted street as-is: it's done a great job of slowing down the speed-freaks (I'm looking at you, bastard-faced Maryland licence plates heading out to PG County during afternoon rush at about fifteen million miles per hour).

Anyway: Now, the war-zone has moved on and WASA is busy turning the 700 block of Irving Street NW into a noisy cloud of dust. Good luck, neighbors. All is not lost. Just watch them suckers if they need to do the job in your basement. Have towels handy.

SpaceTime Continuum no.2

2008-08-05T21:18:00.002-04:00

THE SPACE:
Malcolm X Park (Meridian Hill), Washington DC
THE TIME:
Sunday 3aug08, 4:10pm. 90 seconds.

Truth in advertising

2008-08-04T14:28:00.006-04:00

I was blown away by this little bit of decorating a while ago; just now getting around to documenting it.

So here we have a detail scene inside our friendly neighborhood boozer Wonderland, with their gorgeous new addition to the decor.

That old wedge of neon spent ages commanding the corner of 11th and Park like a proud figurehead on the prow of a rum-soaked viking ship. The old liquor store has been dead for a long time and is set for demolition as part of the whole Bi-Rite market rehab.

As reference, this was it six months ago:

And now it joins the rest of the goodies in the Wonderland. They've got a great collection of DC relics in there; signs from long-dead shops and countless bits of random weirdness. I would have loved to witness them trying to mount that sucker on the ceiling.

Always a fan of the old signage. Glad to see it will outlive its old home...

Drool, Britannia!

2008-07-31T13:43:00.013-04:00

When the missus turned forty, we celebrated with a cruise through Alaska's Inside Passage (See the reportage here, from the earliest days of this tired old blog). We had a magnificent time breathing clean air, feasting on real salmon, and punting bald eagles like footballs off the rocky coast of Sitka...

Her challenge to me was: When my own 40th birthday comes, I should have a trip in mind: She gets one, I get one. Fair enough, and the choice was simple.

So despite our plummeting economy, our worthless American dollar, and the insane cost of oil/gas and air travel, it's still London calling.

I've been fascinated by England ever since I was a pup, for a variety of reasons. There was the infectious enthusiasm of my dad's preaching about family pride and English heritage, for one thing.

"Family Pride"!?!? Never mind the genetic side-trip that the family took into Maryland Native American bloodlines, and it wasn't that long ago. Was it really a dark family secret, or just long forgotten? Because it was quite a meaningful thing to discover. Eastern Woodlands indigenous blood understands the world like caucasian blood never will (read Maurice Kenny's poetry for evidence). And it explained a lot about the look of his side of the family, and of my grandfather's uncanny sense of reality. Behind his stoic face, the man just KNEW what the hell was going on, down to the freaking MOLECULES.

But anyway:

So there was the Heritage head-trip, but WETA was also working on my psyche during childhood: It was my mother's Zenith TV with its late-'60s ivory and turquoise-colored plastic and the knobs that pulled off easily and if memory serves, it only got Channel 26 (WETA, DC's public TV station), which meant that most of my viewing consisted of Sesame Street and BBC reruns. Thus, I spent many days sitting on the floor in front of that glass eyeball, absorbing the culture of England from a small apartment on Viers Mill Road in Rockville, Maryland...

Then later on, there was that dreadfully awesome, unrequited obsession with Diana Rigg's Emma Peel character in The Avengers... Holy Bouncing Hell, I thought, I simply MUST visit this island nation which gifted us with this leather-clad, karate-chopping goddess...

Fast-forward to 2008. The old Zenith is history and Diana Rigg never returned any of my (unreal) phone calls.

Side note: Rigg turned 70 last week, and is still kicking, according to wiki, on the theater stages of England. Bravo.

And we still have this 40th birthday trip of mine to figure out.

Truly, if it wasn't for our friend and his London-based fiancee offering us their good company and a place to sleep, we'd never afford this. Therefore I can say with ironic glee that I, for one, WILL be spending my "economic stimulus package" -- just not the way the President intended.

Yep. Me and my "stimulus package" are gonna go "stimulate" a foreign economy. Seriously, Dubya: if you wanted the money to be SPENT (not stashed away in savings), and spent domestically, you should have handed out Best Buy coupons or something.

No matter!

We'll happily do a few tourist things (ICA, Tate Modern, Tower of London, the Eye) but my big interest is in the true, everyday urban reality of London. I'm sure this is due to living in DC, another capital city where we're fond of complaining about slow-moving, mouth-breathing tourists clogging the Metro and making life generally miserable.

Only some of that tourist-bashing is fair, I'll admit. But it means I've become acutely aware of my own potential tourist-ness and will strive to remain blissfully invisible.

So like, any suggestions?

I'm making lists of the alleged BEST PUBS, RECORD STORES, and CURRY HOUSES in London. That would be the Intangible Arts Holy Trinity of any travel destination: pubs, vinyl, and curry. There will be side-trips to Newcastle and Edinburgh, so the Trinity Search also applies there.

As far as record stores go, it seems London's West End favorite Sister Ray is possibly shutting down, which is terrible news, since I was planning to "stimulate" a bit of economy in there as well. We might also catch an Arsenal match if we can wedge it in, and see how the game is played in the Motherland (no disrespect to DC United, I'm with you all the way)...

Eh. Much to absorb. But any recommendations in the comments would be cherished with gratitude.

[photo: outside the Burberry's shop on Connecticut Avenue, Washington DC 31july08]

Sonic Circuits 2008: a teaser

2008-07-30T17:00:00.016-04:00

DC is about to host one of the most crucial celebrations of experimental music in the country. Again. We are truly blessed.

This year's Sonic Circuits festival is stirring in the womb and the contractions have started already, with a series of benefit concerts at the Pyramid Atlantic art space in Silver Spring. The first of these was held on July 13th with TL0741, Pinko Communoids, and a Violet + BLK w/Bear collaboration. A second benefit has been set for August 24th (performers TBA).

The flyer above is just a teaser (another classic by IntangibleArts, click it for mo' bigga). The full schedule is still being worked out, but we do have the span of dates and the names of some of the heavy-hitters in the lineup. There will be many more added to the list in the weeks to come, not the least of which is IntangibleArts' own BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT, scheduled for the fest's opening night at the Velvet Lounge.

Watch this space or the festival homepage [here] for updates. In the meantime, get cranked for a week of unexplainable, unpredictable, and irreproduceable music in early October. And go to the benefit on August 24th. Abandon all expectations and embrace raw adventure with your malleus, your incus, and yes, even your stapes.

To whet the appetite, a brief slice of the July 13 benefit at the Pyramid Atlantic: A bit of turntable collaboration between Violet and BLK w/BEAR:

SpaceTime Continuum no.1

2008-07-29T16:26:00.004-04:00

THE SPACE:
19th Street at Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC.
THE TIME:
Tuesday 29july08 3:10pm. 90 seconds.

WASA Big Idea? Part 3

2008-07-24T08:37:00.018-04:00

Possible subtitle:
On The Rag with the DC Water and Sewer Authority

Get the backstory: Part One here, Part Two here.

In Part 2, it was revealed that we did have lead pipe in the feed from the street to the house: In the photo above is the test-pit WASA dug in the front yard to discover this. So we scheduled with WASA's contractor to replace the offending metal. Awesome. The missus and I took the day off to supervise.

And at precisely 8am, they came: Mercenaries of doom with their implements of destruction, heading down to the basement to do great things.

First of all, I admit... our basement is a work in progress. I've been turning it into a double studio (graphic design and music recording) as well as a groovy lounge area... a true DUDE's room. It reeks of nag champa and good music and books and funky awesome vibes down there. But it's a work in progress. Lots of STUFF still to organize. Papers and boxes and cables and books and all manner of things.

It was quite a task to move all that STUFF away from the street-side wall of the basement to give WASA room to do their work. But I was able to clear out a full one-third of the total floorspace. I gave them much more room than they needed, not to be NICE, mind you: just being paranoid about my STUFF getting covered in dust, getting stepped on, etc.

Good move. The brick-drilling device was insanely loud and raised an unholy cloud of red dust which billowed around, lighter than air. A lot of my sensitive equipment was protected under sheets, so it seemed everything was going to be JUST FINE.

I had carved a path through my pile of STUFF to the Mac at the other end of the basement, so I could keep half an eye on the guys and do some work at the same time. I was even getting used to the ear-splitting noise of the machines.

And then a new sound: Crazed shouting (en español) out the basement window to some other worker. He sounded both panicked and angry. Now, my spanish isn't just rusty, it's completely dissolved. I took 2 years of Spanish in high school but of course, it's long since fallen out of my brain. Today, my Spanish consists of, maybe, the days of the week and, on a good day, I can ask to be directed to a bathroom. Or a beer. Depends on the priorities of the moment.

So I looked towards the shouting just in time to see a giant wave of red soil-water flowing through the hole in the brick wall, covering the floor like a rushing tide, towards my sacred pile of STUFF.

Holy shit, señor.

It would seem that their "mole" (that would be the Porta-Mole, an earth-boring machine) had punctured the bit of pipe behind the closed valve, causing a full-force leak of city water to flood the new hole and thus, the basement. The best comparison would be getting a perforated bowel during a colonoscopy procedure... oopsie!

The water keeps coming. Worker guy runs back to the basement window and shouts more words in hyperspeed Spanish, sounding more panicked, more angry. Eventually the flow stops. Meanwhile, I've grabbed all absorbent items I can find; towels, blankets, etc., and have fashioned a barrier which saturates with the filthy stuff instantly.

Back to the window, more shouting. A pair of hands appears from outside, shoving in a bucket and some rags. Another guy comes in, and all three of us enjoy a silent half hour of bonding over a floor. And a bucket. And a pile of rags.

Luckily, I was able to build my mountain of STUFF without anything valuable on the bottom. So, miraculously, nothing critical was destroyed. From the beginning, I've designed this basement with the expectation that it WILL flood some day. Doesn't every basement eventually have a flood?

If anything had been damaged, I'd certainly be all over the foreman and working out a cut (or total waiver) of the cost of this operation. Anyway; on with the show.

The shiny new pipe was threaded, welded, sealed, whatever, and all workers disappeared in a flurry of motion. The site supervisor came by to inspect the work, and he explained their little mishap. I had never heard of a "mole" in equipment terms. I was half-believing this was the work of an underground rodent creature that could puncture hundred year-old lead pipe with its teeth.

A 'mole' eh? You don't say...

So now, like the shell-shocked combat veteran that gets twitchy when a helicopter flies over, I may FREAK OUT whenever I hear somebody shouting in Spanish. It may be years from now, when this event is long forgotten. I'll pass some dude screaming in Spanish, and I'll suddenly be compelled to grab blankets and rags for no reason...

The Truck Stops Here

2008-07-22T21:46:00.005-04:00

A random scene: P Street NW, Washington DC: looking west from 14th. A summer evening. Hotter 'n hell, as the painted lads used to sing...

Day-job deadlines have ruled the days (and nights) for a while, hence things have been pretty quiet around here. But the clouds have parted and updates will follow. The magazine is out the door as of 7pm today, winging its way to the printer.

Breathe. Breathe.

Yes. Updates will follow, not the least of which will be the conclusion of the gripping WASA saga, with the lead-pipe replacement project as reported earlier.

And oh yes, it's a gripping saga alright.

Much is planned for the near future here at the Intangible Arts Ashram, Bodega, and Sleep Deprivation Chamber, so stay tuned goddammit.

Your humble narrator will not abandon you.

Boxer vs. Boxer

2008-07-12T21:31:00.007-04:00

Of these two warriors, IntangibleArts' own GOMEZ is the slightly smaller one. Motley has the white patch on the back of the neck...It's a tender ballet of joy, as performed by a pair of spastic knuckleheads.

Sonic Circuits benefit this sunday

2008-07-09T11:01:00.007-04:00

AN EVENT NOT TO BE MISSED! This will be a special gig to benefit this year's Sonic Circuits festival of experimental music. As you can imagine, putting on these festivals is an expensive affair, with securing the venues and taking care of performers traveling from distant lands... So yes, it's a benefit. And a blitz of crucial music it shall be as well.

More on the actual festival as it approaches (late sept to early oct), but for now, the goods on Sunday's show:

PINKO COMMUNOIDS create a dynamic improvised sound between its three members, using everything from guitars and accordions to found items and bent electronics. The result is an unpredictable bath of sound which covers a wide dynamic range: everything from tickled silence to drones soaked in warm feedback. It's curious music, full of brain vitamins.

TL0741 is the solo electronic project of Pat Gillis. His sound offers a satisfying mix of the playful, the surreal, and the harsh; it never stays still for long. Over a substrate of bubbling sonic ooze (robotic magma?) you might find blasts of static, high-pitched synthetic wind, capsules of vertigo, croaking strangeness... billowing sheets of sound with an edge of menace. Good stuff.

VLT_BLK is a live collaboration between VIOLET and BLK w/ BEAR. The music of VIOLET is often harsh yet precise and delicate, using unusual items (dry ice, autoharp, turntables, aluminum foil) to build layers of monumental and very satisfying noise. Meanwhile, BLK w/ BEAR uses turntables, cello, bass, and effects to create deep drones and heavy trances that can be beautiful or saturated with paranoia. Or ideally, both.

It seems that the VLT_BLK collaboration might be a duelling-turntables situation, which could be pretty devastating.

So get yourself to the Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring on Sunday night. Support the future of Sonic Circuits and get a taste of what you'll be in for, when the festival is unleashed later this year. Check the artists' links for audio samples. Other details on the flyer.

Speaking of which, flyer design by IntangibleArts. Click the image for higher-resolution version (or here for an even higher-higher-res version), and distribute at will.

The Wake's Progress

2008-07-06T19:36:00.011-04:00

You may recall: I wrote a rather scathing assessment of the new National Harbor complex recently (evidence here). There was really nothing "wrong" with the place; my skin naturally crawls with paranoid terror when faced with glitzy "place-making" developments like that.

Instant city-center: poof! Now be happy and go shopping...

It's a matter of taste. To me, the place stank of artificial life; of manufactured opulence and cufflinks and hair-plugs and expense accounts. Classless and gaudy and overdone, like a child's sci-fi exaggerated vision of corporate success. Perhaps I've read too many J.G. Ballard novels (Super-Cannes for instance).

Then, Mr. T posted a comment which reminded me that The Awakening had been moved out to the new Harbor complex. Aahh, I must have missed it when I was out there looking at the conference halls.

For the unaware: The Awakening is a sculpture of a bearded man, some 100 feet in length, partially embedded in the earth as if he's crawling up from a premature burial; a foot, a leg, pair of arms, and a tremendous head with nostrils flaring and mouth gaping in what could be a yawn. Or a scream. It was originally installed at the end of Hains Point in Washington DC's East Potomac Park, and was to be a temporary fixture there.

My mother took me to see it in 1980 when it was brand new (uh, that would make me.... twelve years old at the time). And it was awesome. The vision of that sculpture stayed with me throughout my years of living in New York, Arizona, and Maine, and when I finally returned to DC, it was one of my top five places to re-visit.

And it seems many folks my age had a similar relationship with that silver psychotic dude in the ground. He was like a pagan deity; raw and intense and he ignited a child's imagination simply by being there.

After reading Mr. T's comment, I had to return to the National Harbor and this time, go directly to the harbor itself. Avoid all that conference-hall insanity at the Gaylord and visit the Old Silver Man in his new digs on the wrong side of the Potomac. And being the sentimental fool I am, I didn't approve of what I saw.

Of course the Hains Point site was temporary, but we were rather used to seeing him where he was. He was mighty like a grandfather oak tree, a witness to the creation of the world. Seeing him plopped in the middle of this wretched Disneyland of corporate hotels and cafes was like a violation of nature. For those of us who grew up around here in the '70s and '80s, The Awakening was almost a rite of passage; EVERY 12 year-old boy had to go crawling around the dude's mouth.

Look at him. He's clearly unhappy about it and just wants to get back to sleep. I'm turning forty in a few weeks, which gives me the right (nay, the imperative!) to be a sentimental dweeb about these things. And dweeb I shall.

WASA Big Idea? Part 2

2008-07-03T07:25:00.005-04:00

Last month, I began an intense document of DC WASA's project to replace the lead water-service pipes on our block, as an almost tongue-in-cheek service piece for others in the neighborhood. See the first installment here.

Since then, I haven't reported on it because WASA's creep down Irving Street has been very slow indeed. As soon as we thought they'd get to us, they switched sides of the street. But now they are upon us. The destructo-hoarde has arrived!

The scene above is the view from the porch, taken yesterday morning.

While WASA is dealing with the lead pipe on the city's side, homeowners have elected (or not) to allow a selected contractor to handle the private-property side of the feed.

This involves having a 5'x5' pit dug in the front yard, where the contractor can check the pipe: if it's lead, they replace it. That involves more digging and a bit of destruction to the basement interior wall, where the feed enters the house. If it's not lead, they fill the hole and move on.

So far, it seems many of the homes on our block have not needed the full treatment. And I'm happy to see them seeding new grass after patching the hole.

Here's one nice thing (photo): WASA was able to excavate the public-side meter under the sidewalk without destroying the humble wood-frame flowerbox that M put in this year. It was an ugly little patch of grass before; a place for collecting discarded vodka bottles and filthy scraps of street weirdness. But it was much improved with a few shrubs from Home Depot and some scrap wood to frame it. The shrubs haven't fared well with winter and being walked on, but hell, it's something. And with luck, it may survive the WASA project.

As I write this, a freaking gigantic truck-sized jackhammer crane thing is pounding the hell out of the street outside the front door. The dog believes The Apocalypse Is Here Now. And who am I to argue?

NOTE: Two of the workmen just asked to check the inside, where the water feed enters the basement. They say they've been "missing" the pipe junctions with their 5'x5' test-pits and want to make sure they're digging in the right spot. So if you're looking at this wall of destruction approaching your place, fair warning: they'll likely need to check your basement without advance notice. Wait, that's a knock at the door. Just a minute:

DC WATER AND SEWER AUTHORITY,
THE ENVELOPE PLEASE.......................

Well, it appears that we DO have lead pipe leading into the house. So we'll get the full treatment, including a bit of home invasion next week and a 2'x3' hole cut into the interior drywall to allow them to do whatever surgery needs to be done.

The drama continues. Tune in next time, when we puzzle over what the hell to do with the dog while all this chaos is going on. Exciting, innit?

Love in the time of tourism

2008-07-01T09:20:00.008-04:00

Here: A little Love for your Tuesday morning, from a wall on 11th Street.

Today is the first day of July, and Old Man Summer still has some knives in his pocket. Don't make eye contact. Protect your face. He means to do us harm!

The swell of tourists is palpable these days, as the National Festival of Blowing Shit Up draws near. More observations on that to come. But I must say: One amusing aspect of tourist season is watching them interact with the uptight lunch crowd downtown.

And that's no slam on the locals, for I AM one of the uptight lunch crowd. But I try to stay mellow and laugh it off. Because it really is a good show.

Places like the Au Bon Pain at Vermont and L Streets are calibrated for high-capacity, high-speed breakfast and lunch business. All the customers are regulars, everybody knows what they want before they walk in, zoom-zoom, pay the cashier, out. Like an out-patient surgical procedure. Zoom-zoom.

Now, add to the mix a random sprinkling of sleepy tourist families (dad invariably in turquoise or margarine-yellow polo shirt: why, dad, why?) after just bumbling out of their hotels and, blinking in the sun, wandering towards the first visible source of muffins and coffee.

And WATCH 'EM, it's precious: None of these cats notice or understand those golden words that keep civilization alive:

LINE FORMS HERE.

That's what caused the fall of the Roman Empire, you know. As soon as the conquered subjects of Caesar stopped heeding the sign at Bon Pain that says LINE FORMS HERE, the monuments toppled, and the whole game was over.

Nevertheless. It's awesome to see the turmoil that a few visitors with faulty internal gyroscopes can cause at lunchtime. We must laugh, lest we cry...and go on some massive killing spree, and I just don't have that kind of energy anymore.

NO! Enough talk of killing! This post is all about the LOVE!

Speaking of all things lovely, head over to Prince of Petworth, where my latest guest-post is up, glorifying the newly-crowned Mrs. District Of Columbia. We had the great fortune to attend the regional pageant to crown that title (and that of Mrs. Maryland, but we shan't speak of that one).

Beauty pageants are not my typical scene, so it was plenty weird at times. But it was a blast, rooting for our neighbor and good friend Markette, who was in the contest. No spoilers here. Go read the thing.

Gomez is a hose ho.

2008-06-23T11:43:00.006-04:00

AND NAAH, the spray wasn't that hard.

As I suppose anyone knows,
one must protect a hose-ho's nose,
with it being so exposed,
as Gomez the hose-ho's nose is.

But as the summer heat grows
and the garden hose flows,
a hose-ho's nose will strike a pose:
to get the ever-lovin' snot blown out of it.

ah, joy.

Funk the Police

2008-06-21T10:19:00.008-04:00

Just one more reason why I love DC as a place to live and work: Here we have a random incident, witnessed during my brief circuit from office to liquor store to bus-stop, after work on Friday.

Vermont Avenue: Looked like the youth protest group FUNK THE WAR was holding another march action. A group of maybe fifty young white folk was heading north from the direction of the White House. For a workplace neighborhood, Farragut West beats the hell out of Capitol Hill for these kinds of things.

As is my habit when I see stuff like this, I stake a claim on a nearby corner, pull out the camera, and wait. What the hell, something interesting might happen. It looked like the Funkers had been corraled into a very tight group by a team of blueshirt chaperones; DC's Finest.... Presumably this was to keep 'em out of traffic as much as possible. But the group seemed intensely packed-in, practically stumbling over each other's feet. At L Street where I was, the march turned east.

And conveniently, here it went a bit wonky. Looked like one of the escorting coppers knocked over a couple of marching folks (middle of the crowd in the shot above).

Accident or no? Tensions mount! Aiee!

And there followed that deliciously electric pause. Before the shouting began. Some of these kids seemed more experienced than others at such protests and confrontation. Some were reactively timid and pensive, while their seasoned companions launched fists and bellowing madness against the cops for felling one of their own. The cameras came out, held aloft from within the mob. And the barking frenzy got louder.

Middle fingers thrust into cops' faces, the crowd hurls verbal abuse at the Blueshirts and chants of SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! as the cops stood, consulting whatever little rule-books they have implanted in their brains: what to do in situations like these...

Any War-Funkers out there? What was this scuffle all about? Was it an accident gone weird, or was it the work of some evil bastard with badge and holier-than-thou complex?

It was a lively distraction, anyway. Reminded me a bit of my own younger days in this town (insert wobbly flashback effect here). I think Positive Force DC still exists, but what about No Business As Usual? Are them cats still around?

The effectiveness of street actions is debatable, but when you're involved, there can be a tremendous sense of importance and passion. I still have fond memories of the "Punk Percussion Protests" against Apartheid, outside the South African embassy in the late '80s. Deadly serious but fun as well. Perhaps it's that tiny splash of "fun" that keeps the "deadly serious" from spilling over into rage and riot. But finding the right balance can be damn near impossible.

Halls of opulent butterscotch vomit

2008-06-18T09:35:00.009-04:00

Come the rapture, may I have your credit cards?

The two-billion-dollar National Harbor Project received its final nod of funding back in August of 2004, and the big, glass-enclosed hive of marble, steel, and piped-in new-age saccharine hypnosis is nearly complete.

I had the opportunity to tour the mammoth Gaylord Resort with some co-workers as we plan an upcoming whoopie-doodle of a trade conference. And being the token Art Director in a group of editors gave me license to bring a camera and snap strange detail photos as we walked through the place.

NOTE: "Token Art Directors" will also be the most cynical, unkempt, quick to laughter, and the first to order scotch of any editorial group on field-trips like this.

Anyway: This "National Harbor" is a curious thing. It is, quite literally, in the middle of freaking nowhere. Technically it's in Maryland, across the Potomac from Alexandria, VA, and it's an easy drive from DC along 295, but it is eerily isolated. Certainly no public transit available.

As you approach it, the place begins to feel like a pre-fabricated, glossy Jonestown: It looks like the work of a cult of corporate/retail executives and paranoid survivalist lunatics who had this compound built to preserve their opulent, credit-card-waving lifestyle after the bombs drop and reduce the rest of us to carbon-stained cockroach kibble.

So why this location? What's the big idea? During the tour, I heard something about the developer having the site for some twenty years before launching the project. So perhaps "the big idea" was simply one of financial convenience, coupled with the ugly conceit of modern "place-making." Behold:

The approach from the 295 exit takes you along a new, crisp, flawless, manufactured "main street" of highbrow shopping and condos. Along the sidewalks you will see strolling families of fresh-faced Clean Laundry People, all of whom look suspiciously artificial--as if they'd been hired by the developer to wander outside eternally, providing the illusion that PEOPLE EXIST HERE. EVERYONE IS VERY HAPPY.

I know it's a matter of personal taste, but these suddenly-manufactured "town center" projects strike me as insanely creepy. The Kentlands in Montgomery County is like this: a nightmare of Stepford-Wives pleasantry, where it seems behind every smiling face is some boiling evil. Behind every WELCOME mat, some horrific violation is going on.

Can't trust it. Warning lights and sirens in the brain start going apeshit.

Despite its new-ness, the Gaylord hasn't had an easy run so far. Early on, it suffered a well-publicized plague of mice in the hotel, followed by a bit of norovirus contamination in the food, resulting in some rather unhappy guests and employees.

Oh, and on top of the mice and food poisoning was the slight problem of death. That can't be good for publicity.

But the place is definitely shiny, I'll give it that.