Badly Drawn Boy at the Troubadour

Badly Drawn Boy had a difficult last show of the tour at the Troubadour in LA on Thursday Dec. 16.  He was extremely unhappy about the sound.   He was extremely unhappy when voices from the crowd offered encouragement telling him it sounded good from the audience.  ("Yeah but I'm up here.") He was unhappy when audience members strated heckling him about his behavior.  ("Fuck you" "Stupid LA twats" "Cunts").  When an audience member said it was ok that it was late. ( "You are talking nonsense".)


"At least I'm being honest. You could at least applaud me for that."

"It's like being in a roomful of fucking lions or something.
No one should have to go through what I'm going through up here."

"Nobody cares as much as me about this."

"Just don't react to anything I say up here."

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2010/12/badly_drawn_boy_at_the_troubad.php


It was a marvelous Ricky Gervais / Russell Brand performance.   (And he made it through to the end, and was convincingly contrite about it all.)

Corrections of the Year, etc.

http://www.regrettheerror.com/2010/12/08/crunks-2010-the-year-in-media-errors-and-corrections/

A sample, perhaps familiar:

"This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black men who have sex with men."

Mel Brooks on Leslie Nielsen

I liked him very much. He was lovely, and he'd do anything, and he was funny, and he was just great, and you'd never take him for a Canadian.

2000 Year Old Jokes

Carl Reiner: Of all your girlfriends, who was your favorite?
Mel Brooks: Shirley.
Reiner: And what was so special about Shirley?
Brooks: Her friend Lila.

I was not alarmed. There were only four and I always feel safe with women. Men sometimes punch each other for no good reason but petty theft is my worst experience of women.

   from "Old Men in Love"

Several minutes passed before I saw she has finally moved out, helped by a systematic partner or partners who own or have hired a van. . . . I wandered from room to room in a kind of daze, wondering what to tell the police. My fondness for young things could lead to difficulties if Niki is under the age of consent. What is the age of consent? (Memo: find out.)

 from "Old Men in Love"

Pynchon being Pynchonesque

Favorite fake law firm name:

Salitieri, Poore, Nash, De Brutus, and Short

GR p. 591

Surprise party

Recipe for successful surprise party:  invite only people that the guest of honor does not know.  

Jokes

1.     Movie Review

Man #1:   I'm here to recommend to you the movie "127 Hours."

Me:  Oh, I hear James Franco is totally disarming in that.



2.    Fish and Chips

Man originally from Chester, England: 

I will say that last year I went back to Chester and was very disturbing to see that my favorite chip shop, which had been there for years and years, was gone.

Man #1: 

And you are telling us this because . . .?

Me:

You don't understand.  He went back to his old hometown, and his old neighborhood.  And on the block where he used to go, to his favorite chip shop, where he used to eat and hang out, looking forward to it, he discovered the chips were off the old block.

from Gravity's Rainbow

Rain drips, soaking into the floor, and Slothrup perceives that he is losing his mind. If there is something comforting -- religious, if you want -- about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many if us can bear for long. Well right now Slothrup feels himself sliding onto the anti-paranoia part of his cycle, feels the whole city around him going back roofless, vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only pasteboard images now of the Listening Enemy left between him and the wet sky.

Overheard Behind a Lawyer's Door

"We don't write checks!  We get checks."

Bringing People Together Through Violence Against Others

I need you to beat someone up for me.

from Gravity's Rainbow

Nice sentence:
Trudi, the blonde, and Magda, the sultry Bavarian, have spent the day looting a stash of Wagnerian opera costumes.

Why She's So Good at Her Job of Recommending What Books to Make Movies Of

Patrons at the bar:

A.   She does coverage of manuscripts.

B.    Is she a literary person?

A.    I wouldn't say she is a literary person. I'd say I have more of a literary background than she does. admiringly:  But she reads much faster than I do. 

A.    It's exactly like forcing yourself to go to the gym, getting yourself to read.
I can read scripts, but not a book. She can do it.

The Bar Where The Bartenders Have Problems

Bartender reading e-mail:

"You keep saying how much your life sucks. How do you think that makes me feel as the man in your life?"

Later, not reading:

I'm a such a perfectionist and, it's so, stupid!

Later:

It's bad, his business is doing so well he makes so much more money than
me.

Self Portrait