Let's NOT talk about what happened in the green kitchen

Today at the new(ish)job in the dub room: In addition to hearing Ah-nold repeat "My name is Julius. I'm your twin brother!" over and over again to a Hawaiian shirt-clad Danny Devito, I was forced to sit through the movie Sybil in it's entirety. For those of you who weren't exposed to this profoundly disturbing movie in 6th grade health class by Mr. Mandell, Sybil is story of a multiple personality headcase, played by a super young Sally Field, who attempts to get to the root of her traumatic childhood. Occasionally Fields simply portrays Sybil, muted and confused, a woman unaware of the workings of her complex mental condition. But most of the time Fields bounces back and forth between Sybil's three or four dominant alternate personalties, in different degrees of annoying whine and tantrum.

How does a woman develop twelve personalities that are completely unaware of each others' existence? It probably has something to do with a schizophrenic mother's unnatural use of knives and buttonhooks. (These tools were most likely employed in the green kitchen.) It might have something do do with enemas or the forced holding of a young girl's bladder in the piano room. If you haven't studied the case or seen the film, I'm telling you, you don't want to know - it's fucking traumatizing. I for one, would rather view a hundred made-for-TV movies about teenage bulimia, (preferably starring a post-Full House DJ Tanner, or maybe Tracy Gold?) than suffer through this nightmare of a movie again.

Business Trip: Blackout Holiday at The Knitting Factory Tap Bar, 3/9/06

I always wonder when the turn comes where seeing live music becomes an occasion instead of a way of life. Generations of music lovers have made the same claim: We will forever enjoy sucking down Magic Hat in a basement bar while banging our heads to killer drum beats. And then along come fourteen-hour-days, endless errands, infectious and corrosive television addictions. All of a sudden you’re at the Knitting Room Tap Bar in a room full of suits and it’s been two years since you saw U2 at The Garden, four years since you’ve worshipped at the altar of “standing room only” and about five years since you’ve really lived, god damn it! Make my return to this sound-filled cavern count. Suck me backwards through the timeline. Shake the walls of my structured world and make me feel alive!

Good thing Blackout Holiday’s got chops. A combination of contagious melodies and painstaking polish, the band proved at their Knitting Factory show last night that they can ride the precarious line between wound tight and wound out. It is difficult to finesse roughness without sacrificing raw edge, but Blackout Holiday laces up and lashes out in all the right places. Rich’s voice is slick, a surprisingly soothing salve over the booming drum crashes and silvery riffs. Although the bands plucks more from early nineties grunge and arena rock than eighties new wave, Rich’s voice leads to The Stone Roses and Morrissey like the inescapable familiarity of an ex-girlfriend’s perfume. The bass lines are clean, fast and bold, standout enough to catch the ear of an amateur listener and perfectly synched with the companion thrashing and crashing. If anything this band is well rehearsed. But the real story of this band is in the drummer, Charles Palmer, trader-by-day, musician by night, and the party responsible for the unusual outpouring of suited, shiny-shoed support.

Palmer is an ogre on the skins. He rips through songs, tears into them with vicious teeth, sets a voracious pace with his ferocious, deliberate chomps. Palmer recently subbed in R&B quintet Damsel & Fly, showcasing his ease and comfort behind the barrels and demonstrating amazing proficiency and adaptability after minimal rehearsal time with silken-voiced Jasmine Jamillah and her soul-funk crew. But although the man is all soul – more groove than crash, more jah than g-d of rock - Palmer was built for caveman pounding. Fierce, but meticulously organized, the drummer’s reverence for experimental rhythmic organization is evident. The last song in the set was an especially acute sample of the drummer’s innovation, with Palmer leaning heavily on the left side of his kit, eyes closed, shooting calculated magic out his wands.

The beat connects the band to the earth. Watching the gravel fly, businessmen are brought back to simpler days.

The College Man: "Happy Birthday to Me Motherfucker!"

Happy birthday College Man. May the next year bring you happiness and may the women flow as freely as the Miller High Life. Now hit that bong!


Shayna and Adam celebrate another year closer to legal drunkeness.