Comic for Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

Posted: 12:00 am, Wednesday, April 11th

Man, I almost forgot that Pete had a mustache these days 'til I loaded this. How 'bout that?

Apparently, the new Peanuts book is available already. I thought they came out in May - Amazon says so - so maybe it's just available for order. At any rate, that's good news. The next five to six books probably represent the pinnacle of the strip - Schulz was untouchable in the Sixties and Seventies, which is kind of funny, because the Peanuts kind of bring to mind the rosy-lensed version of the Eisenhower Fifties that didn't really exist much more than they do the tumultous Sixties and Seventies.

Grafe sent me this from the Washington Post the other day, an article about sending pretty much the best violinist on the planet down to the DC Metro system to see how much money he'd make. At the risk of sounding like a snob, I would put money on my noticing him, at least for a second. I've stumbled across violinists on the platforms before, and even with my sound-reducing headphones, the violin is an instrument that you can really hear. I wouldn't wager that I'd give him anything, though - Sonny Paine, whom I haven't seen in quite a while, and break-dancing kids are generally the only ones I give money to. Although there's a pretty good guitarist on the F-train around Park Slope that I'm OK with giving cash to from time to time. And 2.0 really liked some dude one night who was playing the drums on empty paint buckets. But, generally speaking, it's hard to get me to give cash to these guys any more. You just see so many of them.

Anyway. Yeah, the entry's still not much, but, hey, it's immediate.

bullfrog

That's the thing about the string and woodwind sections. You can really tell the difference between good and mediocre players in a heartbeat. My kindergarden teacher would play her violin whenever she wanted to punish us for doing something bad. She sounded awful. Of course, she might have been really good to play really bad, in that Jack Benny kind of mold.

Well! The Wilco online presale certainly screwed me over. Thanks for forgetting my member credentials, gang!

Projection on the number of strikeouts Dice-K will gyro against the Mariners tonight?

That violinist article was pretty sweet, although it tried a little too hard to be high-brow...I thought it was interesting that all of the people who appreciated the music and stopped were people who had studied violin. Maybe that just means the rest of us are tone-deaf :)

I remember junior year, it seemed like every damned campus band at Notre Dame had a fiddle or a violin or something in it.

Let's see. Beckett struck out eight yesterday, mostly with the heater, and Daisuke's out pitches all seem to be breaking stuff. Still, the M's lineup is not, how do you say, fearsome? I will guess Matsuzaka will be good for eight, as well. But! I will also predict that many for King Felix on the other side. I am actually not looking forward to seeing the boys go up against that kid. I hope the cold does not agree with Felix.

Enjoyed the violin article as well.

Speaking of masterpieces, I'm still a bit flabbergasted that Grafe got 10 out of 10 on the Hair-band quiz.

What can I say? I lived on cheezy glam metal from 5th through 8th grade b/c we finally got cable and thus got MTV.

MTV - destroying civilization since 1981.

for what its worth, i had trouble w/ the wilco thing too. they didn't recognize my email or anything. it apparently confused email addy and userid.

Anyway, hope you got your tix. it took me a while but i finally got mine.

Those bucket guys I saw that day were exceptional. They're pretty ubiquitous in the city, but this guy had brought with him a shopping cart full of car parts and pots and pans to add musical interest. Additionally he used the garbage can next to him as well as the floor. He was SO good, that a crowd of about 100 people had gathered...people were dancing! More to the point, me in suits were dancing. This was not your average tourist crowd either. These were people who had put in a full day of work and who were on their way home.

The best part of this event was a nearby florist brought a cop over to complain that the musician had been there too long, and it was impacting the sale of his flowers. The entire crowd booed him in response! The cop gave him another 20 minutes.

It was an awesome New York moment. I'd like to think I'd notice the violinist too.

There's been a push lately in the DC Metro system to put more performers in the stations. Not just kinda inside them, like Bell was, but down by the tracks themselves. I'm not a big fan of it, because if they're there during rush hours (7-10, 3-7), they'll make an already-crowded platform almost unbearably dense. And if they do it during other hours, they wouldn't make much money. I dunno.