I’ve been spending the last few days getting the Lake Holiday website up and atom. While there’s still work to be done, I am pleased enough with it to post a linkie – check it out here. More content will be migrating over there over the next few days. And yes, there are frames. Judge me not.

Taking advantage of the last day of a Mymusic.ca/Visa promotion, I’ve ordered Steve Earle’s El Corazon and The Clean Anthology. May is New Zealand Music Month, so that’s appropriate.

There’s nothing I like more than going to the washroom and noting that the guy who was in there before me was in some gastronomical distress. Nothing at all.

np – Wilco / Live At Lounge Ax, Chicago, Januray 9, 2000

Okay, so SARS has finally had an impact on my life. The Bright Eyes / Arab Strap show next Monday has been cancelled. Yeah, that’s fine Conor, you little wuss. You stay squirreled away in Nebraska. You could have just played wearing a face mask – hell, it would have kept you from spitting all over the audience this time. But on the plus side, I’m now $16 richer ($32, actually, since Kyle hadn’t paid me for the ticket) and won’t have to stand around the Opera House into the wee hours of a weeknight.

The Weakerthans’ debut for Epitaph, Reconstruction Site will be released on August 26. They’re at the Phoenix on June 7, but I will likely be out of town. See Conor? John Samson ain’t afraid of no SARS bug.

Wuss.

np – Billy Bragg & Wilco / Mermaid Avenue

The WHO is to lift their dumb-ass travel advisory, effective Wednesday. While good news, I fear that the damage to our economy and reputation is already pretty bad. Will people accept the all clear as quickly as they did the panic alert. Fuck WHO. Fuck SARS. Fuck acronyms.

Well, SAE is an alright acronym. I found this last night – for my fourth year project in university, I was on a team building an open-wheeled race car from scratch. I was responsible for the aerobody. There are some pics up there from the unveiling. I think I’m in one of them. If I recall, we’d been up for around 35 hours straight welding, cutting, painting, etc by that point, so my memories are understandably hazy. I do remember that I needed to go home and get fresh socks at one point. Fresh socks make all the difference, no word of lie. It was a ridiculously stressful way to wind out university, but in hindsight, it was pretty fun. But don’t tell Ross I said that.

np – Ken Stringfellow / Touched

Here’s a nice idea to support your local independent record store – In-Stores Across America. I can attest that the in-stores at Soundscapes here in Toronto rank very high on the cool-event-o-meter.

My copy of Bettie Serveert’s Log 22 arrived yesterday. It’s less polished and more eclectic than its predecessor Private Suit, maintaining the requisite amounts of fuzz. An interesting contrast with the new Cardigans album – one band has dived headlong into mature sophistication, the other… not so much. This is not a slight, just and observation.

Luna bassist Britta Phillips (who I think would be a definite write-in candidate for the Playboy poll…) is auctioning off some memorabilia from 80s cartoon Jem & The Holograms. Why? Cause she was the voice of Jem, dammit! She was also in the best-forgotten 80s rock flick Satisfaction with Justine Bateman from Family Ties, but that’s not as cool. But if it was JASON Bateman, that’d be a different bag of toffee altogether. Anyone remember that sitcom It’s Your Move? My cousin was in love with him on that show. Taped every episode.

Coffee. I should be reconsidering my position on coffee.

np – Bettie Serveert / Log 22

This is fucked up. This studio doo-dad is designed to help singers stay on pitch by – wait for it – administering electrical shocks whenever they stray. Man, crank up the voltage a little on one of these and bring it into the recording sessions for any of those Top 40 ‘pop’ acts, and you’d be able to smell the charred flesh from blocks away.

There’s an interview with Bob Pollard over at Stuff Magazine. I dunno, thinking about Bob Pollard getting groupie action just isn’t a pleasant image. First the Playboy beauty pageant, now this. It’s official – cheesecake magazines love the indie rock.

517 sent a few of our songs to Mark Robinson of Unrest and Teenbeat Records for his critical appraisal. Verdict? He liked “Awake Too Long” and “Beautiful Again”. Heady praise. Now we just need them to bankroll an excessive double-concept album and world tour.

np – …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead / Source Tags And Codes