Comic for Tuesday, March 8th

Posted: 9:03 am, Tuesday, March 8th, 2005

Pretty busy at the office - and we took the aforementioned anonymous coworker who had a birthday out for lunch, so I lost the time I usually do the links at - so not much here today. In fact, relative newcomer ScottO gets his first two links, and that's two thirds of the stuff I'm putting up today.

First, some interesting laws may be a-brewin' involving blogs. I guess there's some concern over political blogs and their contributory value to a political campaign (among other things). If they try and attribute my ranting about Bush as anything of a campaign contribution to the DNC, and allow Fox News to stay on the air without any alteration, I will buy a rifle and find a clock tower. Honestly, fucking blogs is where the attention is being focused here? C'mon.

The link I came up with all on my own is that the annual Wonderlic scores have been released! The Wonderlic is the NFL Draft's IQ test. I think I scored a 35 or so on the mock Wonderlic I found one time, and I think 20 is about average for NFL prospects. Miami's Frank Gore brings up the rear this year with a 6. That's good stuff, right there. (By the way, I have no idea where this dude got these from - so if they're wrong, I'll run a my-bad later on. In case Frank Gore's mother reads this, I suppose.)

ScottO's other contribution was pointing me to this killer article in the NY Times Magazine about G'n'F'n'R forever, man! Tree told me this on Saturday night, and he must've gotten it from here or from some advance word on this article, but did you know that Chinese Democracy has cost $13 million thus far? That is staggering to me. To those of you not in the know, Chinese Democracy has been the follow-up to Use Your Illusion I and II for the last eleven years, now, and will likely turn into the Brian Wilson's Smile of its day, whenever its day happens to eventually be. The Madison Square Garden show mentioned in this article? Yeah, Eric and I were there. Eric drove through a snow storm that made his 45-minute trip to the city into a four-hour ordeal, as I recall. I think it was December fifth or sixth of 2002. Good day. Anyway, my two favorite things about this article: 1) That official NY Times style results in Axl Rose being called "Mr. Rose" throughout, and 2) Buckethead announced that he would be more comfortable recording inside of a chicken coop, so they built one in the studio for him. There is a movie in the story of recording Chinese Democracy, and I do dare say that it may be an excellent movie.

Which is a good segue to me talking about my good-music day on the way into the office yesterday. I finally - finally! - finished listening to the Smashing Pumpkins' final concert. Eric had sent me a ton of Pumpkins boots for Christmas, and I've been cycling them through the iTunes so that I don't clog up 2.0's computer with probably 10 gig of Pumpkins music. Anyway, I have no idea where he got this from, but Eric found a recording of the Pumpkins' 12.2.00 farewell show at the Chicago Metro. One of my great regrets in life was not scalping a ticket to this show for the $1500 or whatever it would've taken. This regret has only grown that I've listened to the show. It was a tremendous show, although the recording cuts off before the very end of Silverfuck, the final song, probably because the bootlegger's recorder ran out of batteries (the show ran nearly five hours). They went acoustic for the middle third, slowing the show down - they played a down-tempo Muzzle with Matt Walker on bongos for some friggin' reason - but the final third of the show was so take-no-prisoners Pumpkins that it didn't matter. They ended the third act with the down-tempo Today that they had been playing on the Machina tour (which I never really liked), but it was somehow fitting. Anyway, even listening to the show on Polly while I was drawing a few strips, even that was exhausting. I have no idea how the band managed to play that long in a concert setting. The recording is from in the crowd, too, and, while the people talking gets a little annoying from time to time (all things considered, it's probably only a B/B- recording - you can hear some conversations pretty well), it's probably the most charming thing about the recording. Towards the end of the third set and during the encores, people keep announcing that they need to go grab water, and start discussing the show in terms of its historical context. Fans - hardcore fans, which I consider myself one of - tell each other that they love on another, and that they're so happy to be there. The crowd chants 'thank you' at about ten different instances. It's really hard to describe it with words, I guess, but I get such a warm feeling from this recording that I wish I could share it with everyone.

Anyway, I actually finished listening to it Sunday, and the good music feeling carried over to yesterday morning, when I walked through the glorious New York morning with Oasis' Be Here Now, my favorite of their albums, going on Polly. I heard a helicoptor overhead when I left the house to the F-train, and it made me think of the lead track, D'You Know What I Mean?, so I quit listening to Mermaid Ave and rocked out with memories of Italy. Be Here Now had come out a few weeks before I went to Rome for a semester, and Stand By Me, All Around the World, Don't Go Away, and - to a lesser extent, since it was the advance single - D'You Know What I Mean were all over the Italian radio and MTV. The weekend I should've been studying for my finals, MTV Italia aired the entire Manchester concert of their All Around the World Tour. Oasis. Bloody wankers, but I like 'em. They're coming to MSG in June, but Tree will have left the Big Apple, so it's a toss-up if I go. Dylan's touring, too, and his tickets are expensive (why, I have no idea - for God's sake, Bob, you're old and loaded, what do you need the money for?!). Since I go on about everything at great length, you can bet I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, I lied back up top - I said I'd only have three links, and then Tree and sent me this VW ad. Normally, ads with dead celebs in them make my head asplode (didn't they have an ad with Bogart pitching something? God, that's awful), but I've never much cared for MGM's old musicals, and this must remind me enough of the Weapon of Choice video for me to let it slide. More cowbell!

bullfrog