Touched in the Head

Chris Traynor's updated the Helmet blog.

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I dreamed that Whit McClendon and I got into some sort of beef with some martial arts students. He of the decades of training in MMA, me of the one month of judo lessons...

We went into their dojo, and he was holding his own just fine. Me, I ended up squaring off with a towering Karate black belt. Luckily for me, someone tripped him, and as he landed on his belly I jumped down for a toe lock. He actually tapped out.

We'd have won overall, but some Kung Fu chick grabbed a bladed weapon off of the wall (the cheater!) and we had to admit defeat.

(At this point, btw, a toe lock represents about 50% of my repertoire...)

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The new Anders Parker EP, The Wounded Astronaut, is really flippin' good, of course. You should go buy some and hand them out to your friends.

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I listened a guy on the train today who may be a bit touched in the head. Young, good looking black man with a respectable vocabulary. But he prattled on and on about how he'd once stolen a crucifix so that Jesus would protect him, and how St. Francis of Asisi was born with stigmata (markings on his extremities analogous to crucifixion wounds/scars), and how, since the young man had studied French, there was some sort of religious connection between him and saint.

And then Geoff wrote about Garey Busey's unnerving evangelical ramblings on the religious talk show circuit...

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Busey performed as part of the "cluster pluck" that wrapped up the Willie Nelson Big Six-0 show I worked back when I was an audio grunt. I knew a guy who'd been assigned to basically tail Busey during his time in Austin and try to keep him out of trouble. (A) he failed and (B) for some reason he wouldn't share the details.

So after this CBS-run show became a "cluster f*ck," the musicians weren't done until nigh on 2am. The crew had basically put in a 20-hour day at that point. Exhausted, frazzled, out of our minds from everything, just everything that went wrong. CBS had NO idea how to put on a concert.

So even as the band waved to the sparse crowd, the shot during which credits would roll, the audio crew stormed the stage, eager to strike the gear.

But feedback was howling in the monitors. There stood Busey with an acoustic guitar pointed right at a monitor, and I thought he was the likely culprit. Exhaustion superceded manners, and I grabbed his guitar to mute the strings. The howling didn't stop, and I looked up to see a very pissed off Busey staring at me for laying a hand on his guitar. I moved on before he had a chance to speak.

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Spring training baseball is on MLB.TV! Mets/Nationals... It's good to be alive.

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C'mon lunch break...