because i suck

...i didn't go to any shows this past w-e. no, fuck that. i'm not apologizing for shee-ot. with (lately) at least five oppos a month to play out, i feel less compelled to hang out in bars than ops normal. (altho, as gawd is my witness, someday before i die i'm gonna go sit in on bryce harp's tuesday-night halo gig. first week in july, right, matt?) it's like this old chief master sergeant i knew in the reserves told me once (and he knew whereof he spoke): as we get older, we get more sentimental. and right now i'm having my biggest kicks hangin' out wit' my sweetie and doing stuff like discovering _her_ rekkid collection. big fave right now: tom waits' anthology, esp. the songs "i hope that i don't fall in love with you," "martha," "tom traubert's blues," "jersey girl" (the best 'n' most archetypal springsteen song brooooce never wrote) and tom's take on "somewhere" from, uh, west side story; the confluence of romantic melody 'n' howlin' wolf vocalismo absolutely slays me, even more so 'n waits' later, more "experimental" stuff, and reminds me of the time me 'n' my best friend / mentor / nemesis michael (r.i.p.) were sitting at the bar in a lower manhattan dive called kenny's castaways ca. '74 when waits walked in the door. "look," my buddy said, "it's _tom waits_!" so waits, of course, gave a little cry of alarm and split out the door tout de suite. smooth fuckin' move, pal. you're not supposed to take notice of celebs in noo yawk city.

been watching more flixxx than usual, too, altho i haven't yet taken the plunge into netflixland (i fear if i did, i'd _never_ leave my couch). we generally watch movies my dtr brings home, or ones we cop on vhs for a coupla bucks at half price. 'twas on this basis we saw a sweet late-'90s coming-of-age flick called dancer, texas that i hadn't seen since my kids was kids, just in time for father's day (the biz between the rancher 'n' oilman fathers 'n' their sons is great, evocative, 'n' understated). yesterday, on my very own hallmark card holiday on which i knew i wasn't gonna see any of my kids, there were only two movies i'd have considered watching. since we'd seen big fish in the last six months, we settled on 25th hour. the final fantasia between father 'n' son brian cox 'n' edward norton as fireman dad drives his drug dealer son upstate to the hoosegow never fails to bring a tear to my eye. reminds me that like his contemporary oliver stone, spike lee's a great filmmaker at least 25% of the time (and we need to scour the racks at half price for a copy of do the right thing).