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That’s right, rock and roll is fun. Or, at least it’s supposed to be. Decades ago, the rock senate of prog bands and balladeers passed a bill banning fun in rock music. Try as they might, the punk delegation couldn’t lobby a veto and all of a sudden, having fun on stage was a musical faux pas.

They Might Be Giants don’t care for manners, though. In case you didn’t hear about it on the radio, TMBG were in town last night to play at the Pageant.

They started out great with a few songs from the wonderful new album, “The Else.” After showing the new material could hold up on the road, they band cranked up the energy and started in on the old classics. The band kept the energy high and the between song banter was hilarious and nerdy. At one point, they declared they were “Taking calls from beyond the grave.” John Flansburgh left the stage and “called in” as Buddy Ebsen’s TV detective Barnaby Jones. “I’m trying to solve the mystery of the missing night club…I can’t find Mississippi Nights.” (Serious TMBG geeks - 99% of the audience - know about the band’s love-hate relationship with that venue.)

“That club is dead” said John Linnell. “And so were most of the bands playing in it.”

After some uproarious laughter, the band returned to rocking, playing more old favorites like “Istanbul” and “Particle Man.” When John Linnell misread his setlist and started playing “Mesopotamians” instead of “Memo to Human Resources,” Flansburgh called him out on it, and referenced locally-born tennis star Jimmy Connors in the process.

Two encores of b-sides and foreign singles later, the band called it a night. What a night it was. I always love the crowds at TMBG shows. It’s a great mix of nerdy people like me and kids who like punk rock but who are too dorky to feel comfortable at the Creepy Crawl (like I used to be.) But no matter who came to the show and how they fit into society, the fact remains that the show was fun. Flat out, fun rock and roll.

This Saturday, Star Clipper will host an evening with three legendary (legendary if you’re in to that sort of thing) cartoonists: Peter Bagge, Jim Blanchard and Johnny Ryan. The three are the creators of Hate, Trucker Fags in Denial and Angry Youth Comix, respectively.

If those titles don’t sound appealing or familiar, it’ll help to know that Bagge is most famous for his character Buddy Bradley (pictured above) who appeared in Hate. Bagge has also drawn comics for MAD and the Weekly World News.

Bagge is legendary, but Blanchard and Ryan both deserve serious credit for their outstanding work. The cartoons the three produce are often cynical, abrasive, sarcastic and grotesque. They’re also hilarious. (But, obviously not for everyone)

The evening starts at seven and will be a gallery reception of sorts, with the cartoonists showing off drawings, paintings, books and toys.

Star Clipper is located in the Delmar Loop, just west of Rag-O-Rama.

It’s official, NPR is brought to you by listeners like us. Listeners like us and Wisconsin-based brewers of hipster beer.

While listening to KWMU the other day, I heard Pabst Brewing listed among the sponsors. There it was, PBR in between the CPB and BMG (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.)

I’m not surprised that a beer company would sponsor great programming, I’m really just shocked that Pabst is making enough to make donations. I can see how PBR drinkers would like NPR shows, but I’ve never seen Pabst priced above $2.00. For those who haven’t been to a Strokes concert or a liberal arts college party in the last five years, Pabst is the beer of choice for the young, broke and hip. I guess all those scenesters really chug.

Considering how much I like public radio, next time I’m at a bar, I may have to take a Pabst for the team. Drink a cheap beer for Carl, Dianne, Garrison, Terry and Ira.

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For those of you who couldn’t make it out to our Blog Party last Friday, our condolences.  We thought it’d be nice to let in on our fun with this slideshow, of which individual pictures can be inspected on a FlickR photoset.  If you have any pictures from the event yourself, might we suggest using the appropriate Flickr tag or at least adding it to the event page on Facebook?

Although I must admit that attendance was lower than expected, the blog party was a definite success.  On what turned into one of the busiest social nights of the year, we finagled just enough friends and well-wishers to eat through a couple pizzas.  Thanks everyone.

Since we first announced the Blog Party we’ve generated quite a bit of interest (or at least conversations) on the Meetup (remember those) ideas.  And we agree: a blog party should be more like a block party, celebrating the neighborhood with our neighbors.  Consider this the alpha preview, and any potential follow-up a beta release.

Folk troubadour (and son of a folk troubadour) Arlo Guthrie will be bringing his “Solo Reunion Tour - ‘Together at Last’” to the area with a stop at the Espenschied Chapel in my hometown of Mascoutah, IL on October 14th.

The chapel is an intimate venue. As the name implies, it’s one large room with a small stage up front. Plus, it’s in a graveyard.

Tickets cost $100, so if you have…um, one of those things…what are they called? A job, you can go.

Visit the chapel website for more info.

Here’s a list of Arlo and cemetery jokes I avoided making in this post:
Dying to get in?
Fans know that Arlo “Don’t want to die,” but he’s coming to a graveyard anyway.
Don’t you know Arlo? He’s your native son.
And, in the interest of fairness, my Mom is on the chapel committee. If I made that more obvious in the story, a “Ballad of Gabriel’s Mother” joke could be tossed in. Of course, I’m not sure how many of our readers are familiar with Arlo’s lyrics or library, which is why I left these jokes out.

Look at this.

This girl is riding the Metro-Link. She’s wearing a lot of makeup. She also looks really confused.

Then again, I’d be confused too if my light rail commute involved blurriness and six outfits.

Sure, it’s great that they decided to feature the Metro-Link, but (no offense to her as a person) this model looks like a county resident who repeatedly expresses extreme fear or disinterest in visiting any part of the city that isn’t Washington Avenue or the Central West End.

As for the photos themselves, while I don’t expect gallery quality from a local rag I would appreciate it if photographers went for creative composition and stopped to reshoot blurry photos. If this was an aesthetic choice, I’m seriously missing something. Unless, of course, that choice was to make the spread look like a college senior’s Facebook album. (Was this one taken with a camera-phone?)

(more…)

While at Crown Candy with some friends, I noticed a strange pattern with the prices for ice cream.

One pint of ice cream cost four dollars.
One quart (two pints) of ice cream cost five dollars
One half gallon (two quarts) of ice cream cost five dollars and fifty cents.

So, as the amount of ice cream doubled, the increase in price halved.

It could be represented by this equation, where y is the amount of ice cream and x is the increase in price:

x=1/y

That’s kind of simple, but for this instance, it’ll work. See, if you wanted twice as much ice cream, the increase, x, would be 1/2.

Using this rough math, we can try to find the limit of x as y approaches infinity (how much will the price go up as you got closer to ordering an infinite amount of ice cream).

The result?

Lim(x) y–>infinity = 0

So while the increase will never become zero, it will get infinitely closer to zero as the amount of ice cream you want gets infinitely. So, theoretically, a little more than $6 should get you all the ice cream in Crown Candy.

Note: They won’t really give you unlimited ice cream, no matter how mathematically sound your argument is.

But, if somehow the good folks at Crown Candy agree to stick to their formula, they will probably insist on you ordering a finite amount of ice cream. To figure out the exact price, use an exponential decay equation. The first person to do that correctly and tell me the theoretical price of 25 pints of ice cream will get one free pint of Crown Candy ice cream.

Don’t forget to show your work.

With the Rentals coming to Sauget in a week, I figure it’s time to look back with the SOTW.

The Rentals are a power pop band fronted by ex-Weezer bassist Matt Sharp. In my opinion, Matt Sharp made Weezer good. The combination of him and Rivers made for two excellent albums (S/T or “Blue” and Pinkerton).

While the Rentals are good, they’re no prime-era Weezer. In fact, the first Rentals album came out in the middle of Weezer’s prime era and it was basically a less-frustrated, synthier version of Weezer’s first album.

But this isn’t about the Rentals, this is about Weezer, and where they went wrong.

This weeks SOTW is Weezer’s “Your Room.”

Rivers Cuomo is, as he says, a metalhead. But Weezer’s attempts at metal are always lame. Rivers may love metal, but he’s not meant to play it. When the band started recording demos for Pinkerton’s followup - what would become the Green Album - they regularly posted samples of the songs online.

Some were good and some were bad, and many were metal-influenced. Your Room is one of those, but it succeeds were all of the other metal infusions failed: It kept Rivers soft side (does he have another side?) confined to the non-metal chorus, creating an almost endearing track that proved to be one of Weezer’s last good (albeit unfinished) songs.

Enjoy.

Remember that sack of shirts you bought for a dollar at your neighbor’s yard sale? Well, by Urban Outfitters’ calculations, you underpaid by hundreds.

Now the company that made looking cheap expensive is doing the same thing they do with faded jeans to visual art.

That’s right. Urban Outfitters is selling Lomo cameras (better quality ones are available for less on ebay).

But not only can you buy one of these funky, cheap and cool cameras, you can take a bunch of photos of yourself being a hipster and use it to win another one.

I think Lomo photography and vintage clothes are really cool. If you want to get into either, try Goodwill and yard sales. Unless you’d rather be faux-Lomo and pseudo-retro.

Since I missed posting last week, I’ll double it up this time. Well, actually, I’ll just post someone else’s doubling.

This week’s song of the week is: Kanye West’s “Young Folks” Cover

It’s not so much a cover as it is a half-sung rant over an instrumental hook, but in light of recent news and with the song’s writers, Swedish trio Peter, Bjorn and John coming to the Pageant Tuesday, it only seems right to post this.

Enjoy.