me-thinks, stoogeaphilia

so the little me-thinks made their triumphal return to the evening stage saturday, along with darth vato, who were celebrating their "skacentennial" (100th show). can it really be that the last time they set foot onstage was the fweakly's spring rally thingy at la grave field last april? well, um, yeah. this was originally gonna be the release party for the long-awaited double e.p. (on a single cd, no less), but that ain't gonna be ready until the summer, so one idea that was discussed was playing _somebody else's_ rekkid (turbonegro's ass cobra) in its entirety.

in the event, the me-thinks chose to stick with their own material, but only after paying homage to the denim-clad "deathpunks" from oslo with three, count 'em, three turbonegro covers at the _beginning_ of their set: "back to dungaree high, (including the "hello, hello, it's good to be back" bit from turbonegro's darkness forever live alb), "denim demon," and "i got erection." after that, it was down to bidness and the real meat of their set, including toons like "bong macgyver," "permanent krokus," and "rock and roll over" that are already hits at mi casa, and best of all, the me-thinks' rawked-up version of "god bless haltom city" from resident closet genius will risinger's "solo" project, napoleon complex. in the process of rehearsing and recording their toonage over the past year, these guys have gotten tighter than a fly's asshole, and the sizable crowd -- half cheerfully rawkin' inebriates from the haltom city / riverside posse, half heavily-cologned tcu frat cats -- ate it up.

in an unprecedented flurry of activity, the me-thinks be playin' the wreck room's 9th anniversary party april 29th (with dixie witch and the gideons), then performing at fredfest on may 6th. the world may come careening off its axis.

my sweetie was feeling indisposed and i had been running on fumes since wednesday, so we cut out before the vatos' set (which was marred by some equipment malfunctions, i heard later) and only heard about the afterparty at, um, a secret location second hand, after the fact. (one of these days i'm gonna have to make it to one of those, but my old, day-working ass just can't seem to drag itself to any event that starts when the bars close. shame.)

next day we had stoogeaphilia practice at "me-thinks world h.q." out in the northern extremity of the city. five hours blew by like no time at all and we were able to work through the rest of funhouse (we're not rehearsing "l.a. blues"), "search and destroy," and a coupla toons from the first album. so far we've been unable to find a violinist who seems suitable for playing the john cale viola part on "we will fall," but we've got phone numbers for a few sax players, jon teague's great tyrant bandmate daron beck has offered to play the one-note piano on "i wanna be your dog," and we have at least two volunteer handclappers. a few more weeks of this and we'll be ready to take it to the stage.

also discovered a great pizza joint, big joe's, at 5111 north beach, just south of loop 820. it's only been open three weeks, but my sweetie says you can tell by the smell when you walk through the door that they use the right olive oil, herbs, and cheeses. she also reports that the pies are east coast size, with slices that have to be folded in half to fit on the standard-issue lisanti bros. paper plate. the small taste i had bore that out, so it looks like i'm gonna be stopping by big joe's for a pie enroute to my next stoogeaphilia prac. yeah!