Oh, You Kids And Your Angst

As I get older, I find myself more and more attracted to music other than the angst-ridden shantys of my youth, and the shows we've been to lately do nothing but encourage this trend. Last night was Gogol Bordello, at the Creepy Crawl over in STL proper.

The Almighty D found out about this show basically last minute and convinced me to go, even though I wasn't really feeling it. Good that she did, 'cause Ukrainian gypsy punk rocks like warm socks. We've been into Gogol Bordello for a couple of years, I guess, but much like Jason Webley, the Phenomenauts, and the Aquabats(!), this was our first chance at seeing them live. Honestly, with music like this available, I don't understand why people are into crap like Green Day, et al. They put on a thoroughly entertaining performance...you can tell they're in it for the live shows. After these guys and the Aquabats, I don't know if I'll never be able to take another band seriously if they just stand there and play. The opening band wasn't at all bad, either...I think it may have been Throw Rag. Kinda straight up punk, but well done indeed.

I took like eighteen phonecam shots, but none of them came out well, as I was pretty lazy about the position and lighting.

Lest you think I'm growing totally soft, though, we're going see Against Me! next month, which is pretty much all angst...just slightly more sincere angst than that emo crap you listen to.

I Am A Leaf In The Wind. Watch Me Soar.

I'm not going to publicly delve into the perfection that was Serenity, because the rest of the internet is already doing that. If you haven't seen it, please do so at your earliest convenience, for the good of all mankind.

However, I thought it would be interesting to measure the performance of the Firefly DVD set on Amazon, following the release of the movie. When I got home that night, though, I saw that it was already at #7 in their DVD sales rankings, and thought to myself, "Oh, well, it's not going higher than that." Imagine my surprise when I just glanced over there and found it at #2, up from #3 yesterday. Go Browncoats!

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll also mention that the Firefly link above is my first ever Amazon Associate linking. Hopefully, it will eventually generate enough kickback for me to actually purchase said DVD set. I won't be holding any breath, mine or otherwise, but it made sense as long as I was going to link to the exact same page anyway. So...those may show up from time to time, but not frivolously.

Also, at some point in the past few days, someone appears to have sideswiped my beloved WRX, which annoys me to no end. The damage is not extensive, but is definitely noticeable. Must call State Farm tomorrow.

Currently listening to: "All Mine", Portishead

The Zoo / That 70's Cave

D's parents were up this weekend, and we went to the zoo on Saturday! Despite living here over three years now, we had yet to take advantage of the St. Louis Zoo, which, by all accounts, is pretty nice as zoos go. It's pretty cool. I took about 30 phonecam shots, some of which came out well, some of which didn't. Here are a few of my favorites.







The whole set can be found here.

Sunday, we went to Meramec Caverns, the hideout of famed ne'erdowell Jesse James. It was a bit less impressive than the zoo.



Due to the decorations and signs and whatnot, I dubbed it "That 70's Cave". In the "Stage Room", there was a light show that consisted of the tour guide rapidly switching the floodlights on and off, to the tune of "God Bless America" or something. It was pretty funny, in a not-meant-to-be kind of way. She herself really was kind of funny, though, despite the "I've made this joke 7000 times already" delivery of her tour banter.

All in all, a good time was had, and her brother Wes and I took turns schooling each other at Burnout 3 in the evenings.