I was recently inspired by this post on a blog I enjoy a lot to try to remember every artist I’d seen play live.

I was complete rubbish at trying to do this from memory.

Billy Joel (Giants Stadium, 1989 – this was my first concert)
Bruce Springsteen (Meadowlands)
Melissa Etheridge (Tech)
Connells (Tech)
Mary Chapin Carpenter (Tech)
Drivin and Cryin (Tech)
Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers (8+ – Birchmere [2], Herndon, Wolf Trap [2], Jammin Java, 9:30 [2])
Eddie From Ohio (7+ – Birchmere [4], Wolf Trap [2], Fairfax)
Matthew Sweet (Tech)
Eric Johnson (Tech)
Aimee Mann & Michael Penn (Birchmere)

I knew I’d seen SK6ers and EFO more than any other band, just because we discovered both of them in our 30s and they’re somewhat local (especially EFO, of course) and it’s easy to see them at least every year, and we’ve developed a habit, but I had no idea I’d seen them that much.

So then I started browsing through iTunes for reminders of acts I’d seen live.

Paul Simon (2 – Central Park, MSG) [seriously, can you believe I forgot I was at the concert in the park, I mean come on]
Coasters & Shirelles (BH)
Toad the Wet Sprocket (Tech)
Gin Blossoms (Tech)
Indigo Girls (3 – Beacon, Tampa, Wolf Trap)
Jonathan Coulton (2 – Birchmere, Jammin Java)
Tom Petty (Nissan)
Jake Armerding (Birchmere)
Del McCoury (DelFest [2])
Abigail Washburn (DelFest [2])
Vince Gill (DelFest)
Adrienne Young (DelFest)
Sam Bush (DelFest [2])
Tim O’Brien (DelFest)
Lyle Lovett (Wolf Trap)

Then I went and fetched the box where I keep tickets. I never throw a ticket away. I got a few things, mostly opening acts, from this box. I also learned that I’ve been to a LOT of hockey games. I had no idea we went to that many hockey games. Honestly, we went to like TWENTY.

Steve Winwood (Nissan)
Paul & Storm (2 – Birchmere, Jammin Java)
k.d. lang (Wolf Trap)
Matt Wertz (9:30)
Mary on the Dash (Tech)
Ramsey Lewis (Tech) [I have no memory of this, apparently it was an “Evening of Jazz”]

(Contestant wins a pool table.)

(Next prize: scuba equipment.)

Drew: Do you scuba dive?
Contestant: No, I don’t.
Drew: Well, you can wear the scuba equipment while you play pool!

(Contestant wins scuba equipment.)

(Next prize: wine cabinet.)

Drew: Now, if you’re going to wear scuba equipment while you’re playing pool, let’s face it, you’re going to need a lot of wine.

(Contestant wins wine cabinet.)

(Next prize: PT Cruiser.)

Drew: So now you can get drunk, play pool in your scuba equipment, and then
(slight awkward pause)
–when you’re all sobered up–
hop in your PT Cruiser!

(Contestant wins car.)

The post was about Beowulf. The blogger insisted he’d hate the movie but he’d see it anyway, and he hopes the new digital 3D (especially IMAX) takes off.

I simply don’t understand why people are so excited to hate this movie. Why they post over and over on site after site that Beowulf will suck but they’ll see it anyway. Or that Beowulf (the poem) sucks and they won’t see the movie.

One commenter said there was no IMAX near him so he wouldn’t see it in IMAX.
One, bless him (or her) knows Neil Gaiman properly and is as excited as I am.
One was concerned about the CGI, the uncanny valley situation. I believe I cover that below.

One said Beowulf (which, I need hardly remind you, is an EPIC about a MONSTER and a MEAD HALL and some VIKINGS and another MONSTER) was “too nerdy.”

The word “poem” apparently scares some people off (though that commenter referred to it as a “book”). I feel bad for the people whose teachers didn’t explain to them why a poem has power, how to read one starting from “April is the cruelest month” or finish another with “slouches toward Bethlehem to be born” and feel what you’re being told. Even the easy stuff, Tyger and like that, is terrifying in the right light. What seems like gibberish at first (“anyone lived in a pretty how town”) is joy incarnate in the right light. Why is that right light not shining in every school?

This just shows ignorance. Ignorance and willful ignorance to boot. It makes me crazy.

This is the comment I left:

It’s not the same Beowulf from high school. The poem is only half this story; the other half is Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman *making things up* (to use Neil’s phrase), and those are two guys who are damned good at making things up.

Personally, I think Beowulf is an awesome story. Monsters and men and mead. It’s good rollicking stuff. I don’t know how long ago high school was for the other poster, but if it was the Seamus Heaney translation you didn’t read, you missed out. For me, high school was before that translation came out.

I’ll be seeing it in IMAX 3D to be sure (at Channelside in Tampa, as I’ll be visiting my parents down there for Thanksgiving). I’m glad I’m able to be near an appropriate theater right around opening weekend so I can see it without any preconceptions.

The internet’s preconceptions–dozens upon dozens of bloggers and reviewers declaiming the movie’s faults *without having seen it*–are baffling to me. You don’t know the movie until you’ve seen it.

As far as the CGI, I fully expect it to be much better than Davy Jones, who was exponentially better than the Polar Express, which was better than Final Fantasy. Every single time they do this technology, they get it better. Don’t believe me? Watch Gollum in Fellowship of the Ring, then watch Gollum in Return of the King. Look at the shading, the eye tracking, the lip movement, the movement of the fingers when the fingers aren’t in focus. This is the speed of the improvement in this technology, and the day is soon when these CGI characters come OUT of the uncanny valley and into daily life.

For now, while the CGI is still recognizable as it is, Beowulf has the advantage of being a fantasy movie, the advantage of being able to make the argument that this is the only way to have the human characters and the nonhuman characters appear from the *very beginning* to belong in the same world. That’s key; it’s not Johnny Depp facing off against a CGI monster, it’s a CGI Ray Winstone facing off against a CGI Grendel (and Grendel’s mother), and that’s got to be more of a fair fight.

I can’t wait.

The Noble Collection Products:

Ah, yes, my alethiometer. I knew it would come. I even guessed the price right.

April 30, babies.

Meg Marco of Consumerist.com sums up this weekend’s biggest popular-music story thusly:

Radiohead announced pre-sales for their record-label-free new album. The twist? You pay what you want. We predict that they will make a hilarious amount of money.

I agree. Hilarious is an excellent word for it. Take me, for example. I don’t want to be a douchebag and pay one penny for this record, though I could. For years I’ve been hearing about how Radiohead is the best band ever, but I’ve never made the effort to get into them, kind of fearing they’ll be less like Foo Fighters and more like Coldplay, and I need more of the former and less of the latter, and new music frightens me. New free music is a complete crapshoot; for every Jodi Winterton or Jim Vick.Combo you find on Indy.tv (they’re apparently rebranding themselves now, but they were a Great Thing), there are a hundred mediocre bands to wade through. Letting me download your album, legally, as DRM-free MP3s, for a price of my choosing, and standing out from the crowd in the first place, is exactly how you get me to listen to your band. I’m thinking … six bucks?

This is what the order form looks like.

This is a fascinating tidbit from the registration form. Note that asterisks indicate required fields.

http://www.inrainbows.com

I didn’t think Jonathan Coulton could fill the Birchmere, but he damn near did. Empty seats here and there in the center section, and more in the wings, but he did well. Good for him.

It was a really fun show. I had a lot more fun with Paul and Storm’s set than I usually do; they had one or two new things, which was refreshing, and their asides and comments were raunchier, more topical, and therefore significantly funnier than at Jammin’ Java. I suppose the venue counts for a lot. I also noticed, thanks to David and to some snide remarks they made to each other, that Paul does not in fact play his guitar; it’s not plugged in, he doesn’t strum it, it’s a prop. He does play the piano, and at one point the harmonica, but the guitar? Nope.

Storm: “Oops.” Paul: “Ha ha!” Storm: “Hey. How many chords have you played tonight?” Paul: “At least I’ve fucked up less of them than you have!” Storm: “That’s true. Call it even.”

Coulton’s set was less energetic at first than Paul and Storm’s, but the crowd was absolutely with him, and they’d come prepared. During every monkey song (there are three; he sang two) and during “Octopus” (apparently never played live before), he was pelted with small stuffed animals, many with notes and money pinned on. After “Re: Your Brains” he was pelted with gummy brain candy.

One stuffed animal hit Paul’s shoe, and he declared that it touched his foot, so “it’s mine now … no, really, I was just looking for extra toilet paper.” I played the Explainer explaining this joke in the car on the way home. See? Topical and raunchy. Apparently my blasé reaction to them at Jammin’ Java all this time was just because they were holding back the blue for a “family” crowd. I can’t get over how much better they were tonight. I finally almost understand why the first time I saw them they were the headliner and Coulton was the opening act.

One stuffed monkey had on it four dollars and a note, which read something like “Will you play my bachelor party in exchange for a room in a three-star hotel on the Vegas strip and a $149 daily gambling stipend?” Coulton responded with “let’s not discuss this now, send me an email.” To which the thrower called out, “That’s the same thing Neil Diamond said!” Following which there was much chuckling about Jonathan Coulton being the guy’s second choice.

Following which they played “Sweet Caroline” with no apparent advance planning whatsoever and the entire place went apeshit. (“So good! So good! So good!”) It was awesome.

It was really nice to watch Lisa’s and David’s faces while these guys were playing. It’s so rare that something we do, a subset of our group, is my idea, something I know that I’m sharing. I can’t actually think of the last time that happened at all. It feels good. I see why Lisa does it all the time.

And between Paul and Storm’s song about Easter and the “Sweet Caroline” serendipity, I’m quite sorry Cindy couldn’t come along.

Wonderful movie. Funny, and scary, and surprising, and just consistently entertaining and compelling.

Please go see it. You can’t go wrong. It’s got something for everyone. If you doubt that a movie marketed as half adventure, half fairy tale, and half romance can be all these things and those above, the movie will prove itself to you. Unlike the book, it never once mentions the word “fairy,” or even the word “Faerie.” So you needn’t worry it’s too fantasy for you. The Robert DeNiro character is hilarious, and if you’ve ever enjoyed seeing him do comedy, or thought it might be nice to see him swordfighting, this is your movie. I can’t even tell you what the funniest thing he does is, as it ruins the surprise. Ricky Gervais is in it! Rupert Everett is in it! Peter O’Toole is in it!

I can’t remember the last movie I saw with no boring parts. I can’t remember the last movie I enjoyed so much. It’s just so good.

Today I did some laundry, took a bath, played with the cat, did some work, played Wii baseball, vacuumed the upstairs hall, cleaned the whole litterbox area, and took the trash out. This means it’s OKAY for me to talk about television for the next nine paragraphs.

Lately I find that when I look at what’s recorded on my DVR, it’s Dirty Jobs, MythBusters, and the other nonfiction stuff I snap up first.

This is for when I actually want to watch something. “Filler TV” is different. I record Friends and The Price Is Right and Home Improvement and NewsRadio every day, because I don’t like the stony silence of having nothing on, and because since my job involves words I find it hard to pay attention to what I’m working on while listening to iTunes (which is mostly NPR podcasts—listening to music feels like I’m not accomplishing anything).

But if there’s one time I love the Discovery Channel more than other times, it’s the end of July. Because it’s the start of Shark Week.

Allow me to share with you what I’m seeing as I page through the onscreen program guide for this weekend.

Saturday is a Deadliest Catch marathon. I’m recording the last show of the opilio season, which I somehow missed, and a behind-the-scenes show.

Sunday, the madness begins at nine o’clock in the goddamn morning and goes for twelve hours:

• Paradise for Predators: Sharks of Palau
• Future Shark
• Summer of the Shark
• Dive to Shark Volcano (I have to record this just because of the title)
• Sharks in a Desert Sea (ditto)
• Perfect Shark
• Robo Shark
• Anatomy of a Shark Bite (very glad I watched this 3–4 years ago and never have to see it again, because oh my god that dude’s leg)
• Jaws of the Pacific (breaking the streak, this title does not include the word shark)
• 10 Deadliest Sharks (I don’t have to watch this, because the onscreen description reads, in its entirety: “Tiger; horn; white; lemon; blue; gray reef; oceanic whitetip; hammerhead; mako; bull.”)
• Air Jaws: Sharks of South Africa

Is that not awesome? I think that’s awesome.

We arrive, then, at nine in the evening, which is the “official” start of Shark Week, with OCEANS OF FEAR: THE WORST SHARK ATTACK EVER. This is, of course, about the sinking of the Indianapolis, which you can read about on Wikipedia, and which has fascinated me ever since I first looked it up during about my fifth viewing of the scene in Jaws where Quint talks about floating in the sea for three days. I honestly can’t wait to watch this show.

Anyway, that’s two hours, and then the madness continues at eleven, with American Shark, followed by repeats of Air Jaws and Oceans of Fear. At three in the morning they go back to paid programming.

I love the Discovery Channel.

(The only thing I don’t love about the Discovery Channel is their continued insistence on telling me to put a “forward slash” in web addresses. I HAVE BEEN TYPING IN WEB ADDRESSES FOR ELEVEN YEARS. I KNOW NOT TO USE A BACKSLASH.)

(I suppose it could be worse. Today, today I tell you, in this day and age, I heard a radio commercial telling me to put a backslash in a web address. What’s wrong with people? What’s wrong with the word SLASH?)

I haven’t stayed up all night to finish a book since … well, okay, it’s only been since Order of the Phoenix, but still.

It was the very last part that got me. When I saw that divider page is when the wracking sobs got under way.