This was my morning on the subway. Further exposition not necessary. I have got to get a bike.

I had my 6-month review at work this morning, and it went very well. I will find out soon how much of a tangible (read: monetary) benefit will result, but the praise was nice as well.

The Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips website is now up. Not much there except some pictures of the handsome couple, but there will be more soon. Curious, however, that as soon as that site went up, the Luna website went MIA. Coincidence? I think so.

np – J Mascis & The Fog / More Light

Very little of interest to report today. No band practice, since 517 is in Montreal and Clay is working double-time to take next week off. Which is fine, cause the weather is dreadful and I didn’t much want to leave the house tonight anyway.

Sloan’s new one is scheduled for an August 5 release date.

Calla roll into the Horseshoe July 5, or thereabouts.

np – The Sunshine Fix / Age Of The Sun

Uhh… okay. Totally busy weekend. Summary forthcoming in point form.

1) Saw X2 last night. Overall impression, good stuff. Felt much quicker than it’s 2-1/4 hour running length, mostly cause it’s one long action sequence. They weren’t kidding about ratcheting up Halle Berry and Famke Janssen’s parts. And Cyclops got to be utterly useless. Xavier too, for the most part. Some nice Easter eggs for the long-time X-geeks, though, and while the plot thread seemed a little tacked on, they’ve set up X-Men 3 quite handily.

2) Free Comic Day – Picked up a big stack of stuff I’ve never read or even heard of. The Slave Labor special edition is really good. I haven’t gotten through much of the other stuff yet.

3) Picked up the DVD of High Fidelity for a measly $12. I’m not usually one for buying movies, but at that price you can’t go wrong.

4) Found Gemma Hayes’ Night On My Side. This made me very happy.

5) Got my Wilco ticket because, after I refund the Bright Eyes tickets, my big pile o’ tix would have been empty, and that simply won’t do.

6) There will be a tribute album to Hedwig & The Angry Inch coming out on Off Records in October. Some of the acts appearing on Wig in a Box: Songs From “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”? Yoko Ono fronting Yo La Tengo. Fred Schneider with Sleater-Kinney. The Breeders. Cyndi Lauper. I am actually looking forward to this. I thought some of the songs in Hedwig were top-notch. Read about it here.

7) And oh yeah, the guy in the pic up top. He’s a one-man band from Boston whose name I’ve forgotten. Bloody impressive set-up, though. The man had a banjo, lap-steel, kick-drum pedal (thumping on something for the beat), and acoustic bass and acoustic guitar being played by foot levers which raised and lowered capos to change pitch. It looked totally nutty, but sounded absolutely right – if you closed your eyes, you would have thought there was a proper band in front of you. Wacky.

np – Gemma Hayes / Night On My Side

Caught night three of the Over The Top Fest last night, with Vancouver-ites The Baron Samedi ESQ (517 says they sound like early A Certain Ratio. I was in no position to debate), local twee-popsters The Bicycles (Apparemtly you can never have too many tambourines going at one time), Chicago fuzz-rock outfit The Reputation (very tight, polished rock – the guitarists amp probably cost more than all the Bicycles’ gear combined!) and back for their third show in six months, NYC’s +/- (who still rocked hard, though not quite as hard as the last show at Wavelength). 517 got the contact info for the show’s promoter, I think we’d fit right in with the stuff he’s booking around town. Maybe he can get us some decent shows.

B-movie king Roger Corman talks about his attempts at low-budget comic book films here. I am curious to see his Fantastic Four movie from about a decade ago – it seems too awful to truly exist.

Going to be a busy day – Val is in town visitng just in time for Free Comic Day and a 25% off all books sale at Chapters. Because I didn’t have a big enough backlog of stuff I need to read, I will be adding more and more to the pile. And of course, X2 tonight. I may have to trade in my geek credentials for missing opening night, but c’est la vie. On a related note, Bryan Singer says he may not direct X-Men 3. Disappointing, but hopefully there won’t be the dead man’s drop in quality as there was in the Batman franchise when Tim Burton stepped aside for Joel ‘King Of Schlock’ Schumacher.

np – The Clean / Anthology