Hey (e:Leetee,145), you know I would travel to the far ends of the earth to see the Buzzcocks! I have not yet heard of any confirmed US tour dates, but they are sure to play the Bay Area so maybe you could come here! And of course (e:Uncutsaniflush) is welcome too. ;-)

In anticipation of that happy day I changed my usersound to my personal favorite Buzzcocks classic. (Which is not the one in my title - although that is another goodie, and seemed appropriate for this post.) Enjoy.

Larry & I were just talking about the Buzzcocks last night after dropping off his 2 boxes of CDs/DVDs at Amoeba. (He got $461 for them! And could have taken $615 in credit.) Larry's been scanning the 100s of photos he's taken at concerts over the years. He sent some early Pete Shelley shots to the Buzzcocks' secretpublic.com fansite - they said they're going to post them later this week. I'll send you a link or post a preview here later. I'm jealous of some of the shows he's been to, but it's cool to hear about them second-hand.

Speaking of only getting to experience something second-hand -- let me take this opportunity to wish a Happy St. Matty's Day to all who celebrate it! (And who the hell doesn't, after all?) I wish I could join the revelers in person tonight and wish (e:Matthew) a happy 25th anniversary of the occasion of his birth, which we all thank our lucky stars for! You can bet your bottom dollar I'll be celebrating it here, though. Happy Birthday (e:Matthew)! Have fun!

I finally made it to the Rainbow Grocery co-op. It's about time, since they've been around for 30 years.

It's actually really fun to shop there, although it's like negotiating a minefield. Some stuff is very reasonably priced, and other stuff is like, holy sh!t! Nothing quite as extravagant as the truffles at Wegman's, but for some reason the "sea jerky" in the pet aisle caught my eye. Holy mackerel! Sure, with all those omega-3's I'd have the shiniest coat and the fishiest breath at the dog park. But $23 bucks! For a dog treat? I don't even spend that on treats for myself.

You can also pick up a nice assortment of hair colors. Some of these are pretty tempting.



And there's tons of gluten/wheat-free items. The soy sauce aisle alone was mind-boggling. Matthew, if there's anything you're having a hard time finding there, let me know I'll see if they have it here. Everyone out here has sworn off one food group or another, it seems. Apparently Californians have very sensitive constitutions. We should be called the "canary in a coal mine state" considering how many substances have been found to "cause cancer in the state of California" long before the rest of you catch on.

In other news, Larry is continuing to purge his apartment. I should be doing that too, although I'd have to get all my crap out of storage first. The last two weekends I drove him to Green Apple Books to unload four boxes of paperbacks ($240) and three boxes of hardbacks ($150). I'm really excited about tomorrow's mission though. Hard-Fi is playing a free show at Amoeba, so Larry's going to unload the first round of vinyl, CDs and DVDs. I get first crack, naturally. This is not helping my cause.

New usersound: Cash Machine by Hard-Fi

p.s. - Rainbow gave me 10cents off for bringing my own bag. Safeway never does that!

p.p.s. - I stand (partially) corrected. Safeway does give a 3cent credit per bag! I never noticed before.

Being at the gym is fine. It's coming and going that's dangerous.

You already know about the cashew [inlink]twisted,312[/inlink] den of iniquity next door to my gym. I decided to see just how many pounds of cashews I was going through in one week, then quickly called my own bluff. Some truths I can handle, but that's not one of them. So I decided to see if two 8.5oz cans (that's only $4.00 worth of cashews!) would last me a week. That seemed reasonable. It was hard, but I stretched them out. It'll just be easier if I don't have cashews in the house at all, no matter how much of a bargain they might be.

So I bought some soy flaxseed tortilla chips from Trader Joe's to satisfy the occasional crunchy / salty craving. For something so damn healthy- sounding, those things are pretty tasty. But not as addictive as cashews, so I guess they'll fill the bill.

Then on my way to the gym today I noticed a sign at Burgermeister's that Monday is half-price on wings! That's 12 wings for $3.46! 24 wings for $6.24! Hey, there's no law that says I have to eat all 24 wings at one sitting, but a bargain is a bargain.

It's funny because when I joined this freakin' gym they did the whole evaluation thing, and I told them my "goal" was to take yoga and pilates to counteract all the time I spend hunched over a computer. Weight loss? Not necessarily. Weight redistribution would be nice. Eat healthier - lose 6-8 pounds would be great. But mostly, firm/limber up, etc.

Well, they poked and pinched and weighed and came up with their master plan for the perfect me. Ok, I'll play along, god knows I could use improving. According to their printout, I weigh 118 lbs now, and my "goal" should be 116 lbs. So I ask if that's in 2 weeks? 1 week? what's the ultimate goal here? They say, oh no, 116 is the ultimate goal. WTF! 2 pounds! That's not a weight loss goal, that's a diuretic pill! Ok, whatever. It's ridiculous. I don't care how much more muscle weighs than fat, I definitely need to lose more than 2 pounds to be the ideal me. Whatever the hell that means.

It'll be ironic if I actually gain weight now that I'm exposed to all these tasty enticements on my way to the gym. I was probably better off stuck in from the computer with next to nothing in the 'fridge. I would gladly relinquish all authority for food aquisition to someone else. (Notice how I make it sound like a perk? Now if I could just find someont to fall for that, I also have a fence that needs whitewashing, haha.)

BTW, I love my Tues/Wed yoga instructor, Jehfree. Forget for a moment the oh-so-California spelling of his name and the fact that he's gayer than the Castro on Pride week. I unconditionally, unequivocally, love him. (Those short-shorts he was wearing my first class when I sat right in front of him certainly didn't hurt.) I love him without reservation, and I know he loves me too. Why else would he hold out hope week after week that I might actually contort myself into a one-legged pigeon balancing pose? That is so not going to happen. But he doesn't give up, so I keep trying. Oh yes, we're in it for the long haul.

Did you ever get hung up on a little thing and then it becomes a big thing? I do that every once in a while. You'd think I'd see it coming by now, but apparently not.

The latest instance is really stupid so I'll be brief. I had to fill out an application for Pacific Gas & Electric and they want you to fax it back to them. I don't have a fax machine any more, plus I have some questions about the application and I want to pick up some info about solar power incentives. So I figured I'd just drop the damn thing off at whichever of the two huge PG&E buildings is the right one downtown and actually talk to someone about the other stuff while I'm there. Ha!

It's taken me three days, four PG&E offices that "don't handle" my type of application - each one incorrectly directing me to the next address - to finally give up. The icing on the cake was the last office where visitors needed a security escort just to enter the building. The sign on the door helpfully gave the extension to call security, so having come that far, I plugged the four digits into the house phone mounted outside the main entrance. No answer. Eventually, a voice attendant asked me to enter the extension of the party I was trying to reach. Well, I'd already done that, but I tried entering it again. And when that didn't work, started over and didn't enter anything new. Same result. The infuriatingly pleasant voice attendant came back with, "we're sorry you're having trouble. Please try again later." Yeah right! Next time I'm looking for an excuse to go postal, I'll do that!

So I faxed the damn thing after all. It would be easier (and faster) to deliver a first-born and give it to them. But I don't have time for that either.

Even if you are one of the peeps who may have been mildly interested in my Arctic Monkey stories to begin with, you're probably sick of them by now. But here's one more. I'll throw in a real-life example of the law of supply and demand to spice things up.

Even after three hours of milking my way through Kathy's birthday afternoon [inlink]twisted,333[/inlink] drinking binge, I managed to stay conscious for Arctic Monkeys AND made damn sure we all got there in time for the Spinto Band. Knowing this was going to be a sold-out show, Larry bought four tickets. The lucky winner of the extra pair was Larry's friend Dave and his wife Pascal. Well, turns out Pascal had a really bad experience at the Franz Ferdinand show last October, so they decided she better not take a chance on another sold-out show. WTF! I was at that show, and it must have been a really, really bad experience to cause that much of a negating effect! Anyways, the back-up lucky recipient turned out to be Dale, who works for a recruiting firm (if anyone ever needs to find a job out here) and was also writing a review of the show for some local music 'zine. So he was writing down every damn thing we said about the show/bands. Naturally I talked up the Spinto Band, since I had already seen them the day before at Amoeba and again that night at Cafe du Nord. (Does that make me a groupie?)

The show was great, so I won't even go into that. They ended with "A Certain Romance" (currently my usersound if you want to hear it) and NO encore. That's the second show we've seen recently with no encore. I hope this is not a trend. Speaking of encores, I'm really glad I got to see the Spinto Band headline their own show. They do an awesome cover of Seal's "Kiss from a Rose" which they squeezed into the Amoeba set and again at Cafe du Nord, PLUS a cover of The Motors' "Airport" for the encore at Cafe du Nord. And you know how I love my 80s tunes. Anyways ... back to last night's show.

We started chatting with these two British guys (Larry's a real anglophile, so he can pinpoint exactly where they're from and which bands originated from nearby and all that sh!t). When the guys went to recycle their beers, one of the British guys confided to me they had paid $260 on eBay to buy their two tickets for the show. Whoa! When Dale got back, I figured he'd be interested in that little tidbit of information for his story. I mentioned it to him and out came the notepad.

I thought I'd better check the facts myself. Looks like with shipping that was the going rate:



I think the lesson here is clear: Scalping can be damn lucrative! No wait, that's not it. I mean: Buy your tickets in advance!



My $13 ticket even included a complimentary Spinto Band kazoo. Who doesn't love a band that plays the kazoo? Maybe if I start practicing now there's still time for me to become a rock star. ;-)