check check it

Oh, man, the St. Louis The Police show is Monday. We'd been thinking it was the following week, but I had it written on the calendar, and I happened to turn the page to peek - saw I'd written it, then checked the tickets. wowie. I'm not too excited about the opening act - Sting's son, for heaven's sake - but I might take off work an hour or two early to give us enough time to grab a breadstretcher's and make it through the traffic jam before the parking garage is full.

The Avett Bros are in town soon, but I saw an ad that said they'll be $20. I dunno. I'd pay $10 based on the spread in No Depression, but $20 for a band I've heard nothing of ...

After that, Bottle Rockets at the taste of downtown. (Someone tell me why the great downtown restaurants that have vegetarian choices pick Taste of Downtown to trot out their boring, meaty, state-fair type food. YAWN.)

End of July is the Crossroads festival. We have seats, lousy ones, but still.

AND my husband J's rescheduled gig got rescheduled again, so now we're apparently going to Joe Walsh. Which is great. I'd pay state fair ticket prices just to get beered up and shout along to "Funk #49." Am I right, people?

The Police in L.A.

A friend provides the following setlist from the Police at Dodger Stadium last night:

message in a bottle
synchronicity II
walking on the moon
voices in my head/
when the world is running down
don't stand so close to me/
driven to tears
bed's too big without you
truth hits everybody
every little thing she does is magic
wrapped around your finger
de do do do, de da da da
invisible sun
walking in your footsteps
can't stand losing you
roxanne
++
king of pain
so lonely
++
every breath you take
++
next to you


Invisible Sun! Awesome. Our seats for the Police in St. Louis are horrible, but I'm still glad to be going to see them.

Marty Robbins/Steve Martin mashup

Our conversation over dinner last night: Los Straightjackets led to Freddy Fender, Freddy Fender led to Marty Robbins, and a vague-but-hilarious childhood memory led me to the wikipedia and the imdb and, eventually, to the google and this video from Steve Martin's 1980 TV special. How I can possibly remember it I don't know, and truthfully I'd always envisioned Galapagos tortoises instead of a much larger animal, but here it is! I'm just glad to have its existence confirmed.

As when I was 12, I'm still not sure whether it's the most hilarious thing ever or not. But it's, well, different.

(also my first attempt to embed a youtube video, so good luck to us all.)

Driveshaft

If you're a Lost fan at all, or if you're a fan of the band Driveshaft, do check out the website created by my insane friend marie siu and an equally insane friend of hers, driveshaftband.com.

From the beginning, they designed the site with complete straightforwardness, as though Charlie-from-Lost's band Driveshaft were real and he were a real rock star who'd gone missing in a real airplane accident. I love the idea of a site reflecting events around the TV show, but never seen on the show - just in the same universe, kind of, but as consistent as they could make it. As events unfolded in the TV series, they went back and recreated backstory to match. Which made things quite hectic for them sometimes! Shannon even got to meet hobbit-guy once and gave him a mix cd she'd made, and the site got a bit of national attention.

Particularly hilarious are guestbook entries insisting "it's just a TV show! What's the matter with you FREEKS!!!11".

Anyhow, due to recent events, the site has seen its last update. But what a brilliant, cracked, twisted, and totally mad idea.