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Dispatches: Jimmy Buffet, New Found Glory, Hole

It’s been a rough week for me. I’ve had to accept a couple harsh realities of this life. Let go of some dreams. First of all, I finally had to give up on the idea that anyone -- anyone -- in Thailand was ever going to get it when I referred to Jimmy Buffett as Jimmy Buffet, which I did at every opportunity in the past few months, believe me. No laughs though. Just blank stares, more loneliness. I was also forced to abandon my letter-writing campaign to punk-pop upstarts New Found Glory and the surviving members of Hole urging the two bands to unite and form a single supergroup called …

Dispatches: Day of Heaviness

I woke up today and went downstairs to get breakfast from one of the vendors on my street. A table with an array of hotel pans and stock pots all with fresh, colorfully blazing curries and murky stew-type things for sale. This is real cheap food but delicious, in fact way better than what you are served in practically any restaurant with a door here. I had spicy pork with unknown fruits and vegetables in it – off-green melon (?) and this strange giant caper type thing I have only ever seen since coming to Thailand. I don’t know what it is but it’s good and, unlike some street food, isn't flavored with anything that smells alarmingly like sewage canal fish so I don’t ask any questions. Thai food is really tasty but it can be like a minefield with the fish-stank if you’re not careful. Sometimes they just toss the aforementioned fat capers in without taking them off the vine they grow on and that’s kind of not so cool unless you are a deer or perhaps a deer-monster, and into eating branches, but like I said, non-fishy so okay...

Dispatches: In Which I Get Peed On By An Elephant And Spend My Paycheck In Record Time

They walk these elephants around at night in the tourist areas. Sometimes little baby elephants and sometimes big guys. You give the dude 20 baht and he hands you a bag of fruit and you feed the elephant. The first time I had to make room on the sidewalk for an elephant I gotta admit my thought was “Wow. This place is insane and I am never leaving.” So I fed them whenever I saw them.

 

Dispatches: The Two Rants

These blog posts (which are regularly required of me or I get beaten by Garrett) are taking shape as weekly missives from the Far East with some links to songs thrown in. Sorry if it’s obnoxious but I really don’t have anything else to talk about here without getting fired. This week I am gonna talk about shooting pool, an activity that takes up much of my time here in sweaty, smelly Bangkok. I shoot pool a lot because I love it. I love the game. Love it. Also, I hate it. Why? Because shooting pool invariably means I have to interact with other expats. If you care to continue reading, kindly click the link below.

People Who Died: Halloween Edition

It’s Halloween! Well, almost. Okay, Halloween is a full two months away but what else is there to look forward to right now? Besides Labor Day weekend and year end model clearance insanity on the Auto Mile. Whatever, Halloween’s coming and you know what that means, right? Kids will dress up in costumes, bob for apples and guzzle hot cider. You will pass candy out to the four little bastards that show up at your door. There will be bad, mis-informed decisions made at parties. And best of all, the dead will rise from their graves and feed upon the living. That’s actually what Halloween is all about really – dead people. Not parties and costumes but people who died. In light of this we’d like to remind you of some dead people that it seems like no one ever talks about anymore. Music types.

 

Dispatches: Horror Has A Face, and You Must Make A Friend of Horror

I was shooting pool in a bar yesterday. Nice day. Very relaxed afternoon. It was one of those afternoons in Bangkok where it’s too hot to be outside, I have a little money and a wide open agenda and the bar I am in has a laid back vibe. I love days like this. Bars in Thailand aren’t always so sedate. Usually there is at least one group of dudes living out some debauched mid life crisis fantasy at top volume. But yesterday, this bar had a few people quietly clicking pool balls around, the (awful) music played over the sound system was at a bearable level and the chilled white hand-towel a waitress gave me felt absolutely wonderful as I buried my face in it and wiped the back of my neck. Also I didn’t have the experience where I look up and accidentally witness some fat bald old creepo from Bristol making out with a 22 yr old Thai girl. So I was having a good day.

 

 

Dispatches: Heavy Into Quint

I am really into Quint, the shark hunter character from the movie Jaws, lately. I don't know why. He was definitely one of my all-time favorite movie characters when I was a kid. I regularly re-enacted his scenes and dialogue from the movie in my back yard, or any time I was near a pool. I'm just not sure why he's crept back into my consciousness of late. And with a vengeance -- Quint-themed emails, out-of-place Quint quotes thrown into conversations, dressing almost entirely in Army surplus olive drabs. I bought a fishing rod and reel even though I haven't been on a boat or near water even for almost 2 years.

Coup de Stereo -- Hall & Oates & Dedina & Shea

Eric Shea and I had been excited about Hall & Oates coming to San Francisco for weeks. We've both been forgetting everything lately (going to work, showering, paying taxes) but we never forgot that Daryl Hall and John Oates were going to play San Francisco on August 1st.

Shea was so stoked that he actually grew a beard just for the concert. That wasn't enough for him, though. He also bought an enormous '70s van and somehow found an amazing Welcome Back Kotter leisure shirt (I'm not joking! The picture of the shirt at right is really the shirt Eric had on! It even had Kotter sayings on it, like "Up your nose with a rubber hose.")

Since I look like a naval intelligence officer circa 1966, I couldn't grow a beard or wear a Kotter shirt to the show. But even Shea wasn't being ironic -- both of us truly dig Hall & Oates (and Shea is also really into beards, vans and leisure wear adorned with pictures of Gabe Kaplan). Now, on to the show....

Hall & Oates came out strong with a full band and a string section. We have arguments here in the Rhapsody office about whether there really is a style of music called baroque pop. So, when the string quartet started playing, Shea leaned over and said that he wished our editor was present to see that baroque pop actually exists. Anyway...

Life Is Just a Vantasy

Holy crap! I just realized that last week marked my eight year anniversary here at Rhapsody. I think that means I've worked in the San Francisco building longer than anyone. Back in the day we were called listen.com and what the hell were we listening to in 1999

Dispatches: Screams, Manassas

 

Here is something interesting that happened today:

I was walking into my apartment building and suddenly this guy on one of the floors up above started screaming really loud. The landlady and security guard immediately went into emergency mode and started running through the building knocking on doors and trying to find where the screams were coming from. First I realized they were coming from my floor ...