Don’t take it too hard, Kel.  We’ll still call when we’re drunk and feeling alone.

(This post was probably better at Go Fug Yourself. They are always better.)

Franz Ferdinand drew in a near-capacity crowd to First Avenue on a dreary spring day.  My excitement was actually more piqued for the opener, Born Ruffians, than for the headliners — but no mind — Franz has always lived in my mind as a band that could bring a live-show worth shelling out a few duckets for.  My whiskey-stunk hands gladly handed the girl $30 and I was in.  Hello….   uhh…. hello, who?  Who were these people?

My first reaction was that every square within 100 miles decided it was a big night out in Minneapolis.  (Side-note… upon reflection I realize that I think of geeky guys as “squares” and geeky girls as “adorable.”  May help explain my reaction….)  The vibe?  The girl in the ’ship had been nagging that they “never do anything fun and/or cool” and this hopeless schlub decides that Franz Ferdinand would be the perfect show to impress his slumdog girlfriend by VISA’ing some surprise tickets.  They all had on their finest plaid and their freshest kicks.  Was I annoyed?  No.  My car had broken down on the way and I was just happy to be there.  Plus…  I was with good company and my eyes were slightly dull with Jim Beam.

The Born Ruffians were just as skinny and awkward and fantastic as I imagined.  The leads voice seemed significantly less whiny than on CD (which for some reason really dissapointed me) but they had good energy and I loved the idea of the bassplayer ending up with some 4th string groupie at the end of the night.  (Note to self: learn bass.)

I planted myself towards the front of the stage, my big tall head obscuring tons of sightlines and proceeded to watch FF set up.  The screen never came down which led to this conversation:

Me, Drunk and Loudly, With Incredible Amounts of Observation Intelligence: Hmm… I’ve never seen the screen not come down between acts… is this normal?

Girl, 19, sober as a church mouse: What?!  I’ve NEVER seen it come down between acts!

Girls Boy, 20, Abercrombie Beclothed: Yeah, dude… check your facts.  Screen stays up at this place.

MDLWIAOI: How many shows have you two been to here at First Avenue?

G1SACM: umm… like… 5

GB2AB: 3.

MDLWIAOI: Oh… go drown in a pool of your grandmas blood.  I’ve been here at least 200 times.  At least.

The point?  I was right.  These fools… wrong.  And because of that, I wouldn’t feel bad dancing my fat-ass all over their toes once the band came on.

And I did.  And it was great.  And unlike the eponymous Franz Ferdinand, this one didn’t strike me as the 1-Shot group I had expected.  They played a number of great songs, then Take Me Out and then another one… I have no idea of the names but the whole crowd went nuts, the band rocked out, and I felt the PASSION in that room.  Then they decided to slow it down… and I left.  They should have finished with the hit single, the next bonkers single and then walked off stage.  It would have been brilliant.  I would have left drunk, happy and satisfied that I got my $30 worth.   Oh wait… I did.

Completely meaningless score with no baseline or relativity: 9/B

What does interest me, however, is the process behind this rebranding.  Initial estimates put the cost of launching this new logo in the $1B+ range.  All for a concept that has (at best) baffled people, and (at worst) polarized the existing market-share.   Now, the creative team behind the logo, Arnell Group, has “leaked” a document that was used during their Pepsi pitch.  I put “leaked” in quotation marks because it’s debatable whether this was the result of corporate espianage, or whether the entire thing is some kind of self-satirical joke.  I haven’t made up my mind yet….  The effort required to put a document like this together?  Mindboggling.  And to think that all of this Copernican mumbo-jumbo was manufactured (on company time, no less) as a joke?  REALLY?

ASTONISHING.

More sample pages available at Brand New.

Despite traditional views about the effects of booze on male performance, new research suggests that moderate drinking actually protects against impotence in the long term – perhaps for the same reason a glass or two of wine a day cuts the odds of suffering from heart disease. [...]

After accounting for differences due to age, smoking and heart disease – all risk factors for ED – Chew and colleagues found that drinkers experienced rates of impotence 25% to 30% below those of teetotallers.

From The New Scientist (via Boing Boing)

Most of the bands and artists I’m betting on to make inroads in the mainstream in ’09 are already known to pop music zealots, to the point that many among that particular subculture might already deem a few of them “old hat.” My interest here isn’t with these people, because –as you know if you’ve ever been cornered by one of them in a bar –they already know everything.

Even if hipsters will assume that as soon as a band becomes popular that band is no longer cool, most people don’t hear music until it makes it into some form of the mainstream, be it via the Internet, the radio, the television, or one of those Web radio stations that does the thinking for you (Genius, Pandora and the like).

This, then, is a list of bands to watch, both local and national, in the coming year:

Who: Fleet Foxes [...]

Who: Vampire Weekend [...]

Who: Santogold

From The Buffalo News Who’ll be rockin’ in 2009? Jeff Miers’ list of bands to watch (via Idolator)

Top Ten Things Lil Wayne Doesn’t Do, According to Lil Wayne On The Carter III
10. Owe you, like two vowels
9. Rap, he films movies
8. Fantasize
7. Have to get his tooth fixed
6. Write shit, cuz he ain’t got time
5. Have the answer
4. Wanna finish
3. Know what you are on
2. Give a fuck if you see him
1. Care

Click through to full article to see The Top 25 Things You Don’t Do According to Lil Wayne and The Top 50 Things Lil Wayne Is….

From Fader Magazines Listmania 2008 (Via Thepunkguy)

Also, in case you’d like to know where I’ll be on Jan 19th:

Rap star Lil’ Wayne might finally have to wear something besides his trademark low-riding, heinie-exposing jeans: He’s coming to Minneapolis to perform in January.

From Minneapolis Star Tribune (Via Keezy M, Baby)

From The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)

Number of French Psychiatric Theses on Hysteria

“Two scientists, drawing on their own powers of observation and a creative reading of recent genetic findings, have published a sweeping theory of brain development that would change the way mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia are understood.

“The theory emerged in part from thinking about events other than mutations that can change gene behavior. And it suggests entirely new avenues of research, which, even if they prove the theory to be flawed, are likely to provide new insights into the biology of mental disease.

“Their idea is, in broad outline, straightforward. Dr. Crespi and Dr. Badcock propose that an evolutionary tug of war between genes from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg can, in effect, tip brain development in one of two ways. A strong bias toward the father pushes a developing brain along the autistic spectrum, toward a fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of social development. A bias toward the mother moves the growing brain along what the researchers call the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity to mood, their own and others’. This, according to the theory, increases a child’s risk of developing schizophrenia later on, as well as mood problems like bipolar disorder and depression.”

Continue reading at the New York Times. (Nov. 12, 2008)

“Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by modern medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment was routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe. Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical literature of the Victorian era. Women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and ‘a tendency to cause trouble’.

Since ancient times women considered to be suffering from hysteria would sometimes undergo ‘pelvic massage’ — manual stimulation of the anterior wall of the vagina by the doctor until the patient experienced “hysterical paroxysm”. This deep psycho-emotional release is today referred to as the ‘g-spot’ or ‘female’ orgasm (see article orgasm), qualitatively different from ordinary genital (clitoral) orgasm.”

Continue reading at Wikipedia.