On a serious note...

... I'd like to offer a word of sympathy and well-wishes for Diablo and her family. She lost a cousin this weekend in a terrible accident, and I'm sure they're all devastated. Without going into too much detail, her cousin has had a rough life, and leaves behind children who need everybody's prayers right now. Everybody offer her and her family good vibes and good thoughts today, okay?

The Kids, LITERALLY, in The Hall.

So last Thursday, Trix and Peanut were at the offices of The Major Television Program on the Major Cable Network where she works. She was chatting up the producer of the show (an almost alarmingly sweet guy), when who should walk by but Bruce McCulloch of the Kids In The Hall.

"Bruce," called over the Producer, "I want you to meet Trixi. She's a huge fan."

"Nice to meet you," said Bruce. Turned out he was officing just down the hallway from Trix, making him literally a Kid In The Hall. Trix held her tongue -- the last time she met Bruce was at First Avenue in Minneapolis; he was drunk, and he was nibbling on her ear. "Nice to meet you too," she replied, grinning nervously. "I'm a huge fan."

As he walked away, the Producer made an offer: "Why don't you stop by this Sunday? We're doing some filming, you could come by and meet the rest of the guys and watch."

So we did. Trix came up with a "good reason" to stop by the studio, some kind of errand that probably could have easily been done from our living room. As we pulled in, the production assistant, another alarmingly sweet person, came over, clipboard and walkie-talkie in hand and said, alarmingly sweetly, "Hey, Trixi -- let us know if you need anything, and oh -- if you wanna stop by the filming, come on down whenever."

We did The Errand, which took all of maybe ten minutes, and headed down to watch the filming. The Producer was already there, and as we walked up and he greeted Trix with a hug, he said "Oh -- there's a Kid In The Hall, right behind you!"

It was Kevin McDonald (whom, if you're not a Kids In The Hall fan like us, you'll remember from Outkast's "Roses" video). "Nice to meet you," said Trix. "Huge fan, you know."

"Thank you, thanks very much, thank you, thank you, thank you," said Kevin, nervously.

"Last time I saw you was in 2002, at First Avenue," said Trixi.

"Oh yeah, that's right, that was the night Dave got punched." It's true -- that evening, apparently, Dave Foley got slugged by the roadie from a Prominent Cool English Band after an exchange of words.

"Uh -- that was my fault. I was giving him vodka-Red Bulls all night," she replied, sheepishly. "Red Bull makes you angry."

"Well, the guy totally misunderstood something he said -- if anything, its my fault, nothing bad ever happens when I'm around, and I took off early that night. I'm like the Angel of Peace."

"I think we're starting," said The Producer. "Why don't you guys come on in?"

At this point I'm revealing no secrets about the scene we watched -- you'll have to go see Kids In The Hall on their forthcoming tour. Suffice it to say Peanut had to watch Dave Foley say the "F" word fifteen times. At least.

Dave Foley, to me: "Are you sure you want your impressionable young child to see this?" Me: "Eh. She's heard worse." Foley: "Good man. My own child doesn't stand a chance."

Bad parenting? Bruce sure thought so, I overheard him telling somebody "I just don't understand people who bring their children to this kind of thing. It's grotesque." But the way I see it is: Peanut, if nothing else, has a well-developed sense of humor for her age. When I was her age, I'd already seen stuff like "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein" which, though they did not contain either the F-word were certainly inappropriate for a kid my age. And she's already seen the compleat Monty Python series AND the second Austin Powers movie. So I figure it was part of her comedy education.

Forgot to mention:

Now! With working link!

One last piece of Gouda to share with y'all: We got to meet the awesome Bryan Lee O'Malley, the creator of the "Scott Pilgrim" books which Edgar Wright is adapting for screen. He did a signing at Meltdown, my second-favorite comic store in the LA area, and he drew a little picture of Scott Pilgrim on one of my books! Buy the books, read them, love them, live them, then see the movie.

The Weekend

This blog entry is maybe a little bit...



...but eh, it was a fun weekend, so who cares, right?

Friday: We did a lil' bit of bar-hopping -- had a delightful martini at the Formosa before ending up at Canter's Deli, where we saw this guy:



Yup, that's Rodney Bingenheimer, and if you're anybody who loves rock and roll, you should probably think that's pretty cool because Rodney is an awesome God of Rock, having been Davy Jones' double on the Monkees, brought glam rock to the United States (you can thank him that you know who T. Rex and David Bowie are), and been a rock tastemaker on KROQ for the last umpty-ump years (see "The Mayor of Sunset Strip," an otherwise informative documentary that unfairly paints him to be kind of a sad figure -- he so isn't). Trix flashed him the pearly whites and got a nice big sweet smile from the guy, but both of us totally chickened out of talking to him. Phoo. Next time.

Saturday: We took a lovely drive up the PCH where we ended up, at the recommendation of the guy who runs the agency that reps Diablo, at a little seafood shanty called Neptune's Net.



Everybody that wasn't us was a gigantic, mean-looking biker, but damned if the food wasn't amazing. And the drive up the PCH is -- hoo, wow, it's something else. The ocean on your left; gigantic, picturesque cliffs on your right, its really unbeatable. I wish we'd had even longer to just stop everywhere and explore, or sit by the ocean for a while and just stare off into nothingness.

Sunday: delightful cheddar chowder at the home of Patrick and Cheryl, my completely awesome bandmates who, I'm sure I've mentioned, are total geniuses: they regaled us with a new Silver Phial song that blew the top of my head off, much as all their other songs have. We need more gigs, so you can see how fucking brilliant they are.



Patrick, and...



Cheryl. They're so cool we had to wear parkas at their house.

This week: Peanut week! Whoopee!

One more song

My daughter -- you all know her as "Peanut" -- and I don't get to see each other often enough. We talk on the phone almost every day, but she lives in Minneapolis and I live in Los Angeles and eventually maybe that will change, but maybe it won't. I miss her like crazy. She's such an awesome kid I can't even tell you. "Candy Girl" sort of froze her at 3 years old, if you've read that, but she's eight now, and she's rad as hell. Today on the phone I reeled off a whole string of totally confusing information to her, and she interrupted me with "Hang on, hang on. Do you come with subtitles?" I laughed so hard I almost puked.

Whenever I want to sort of feel her close to me, I play this song. That sounds so corny, but there you go, I'm a sentimental guy. Her middle name is "Willow," after this gorgeous, heartbreaking Paul McCartney song, my very favorite off his "Flaming Pie" album.



She's coming next week, for the whole week, and I couldn't be more overjoyed. Enjoy. And happy Easter, everybody.

Musical Soul-Salvation

You folks remember my bleating about the new Bruce Springsteen record last October, and how fucking unbelievably great it is, right? You remember me telling you "even if you're not a fan, you need this record NOW because it is astonishing," right?

This is for those few of you who didn't listen to me, and went "really? Bruuuuuuce? (fist pumping) Dude, why?"



Please. Trust me. Listen to this song. Today I noticed it was my iTunes Top 25 most played song -- 21 plays in the last couple months, which is a LOT for this particular ADD listener.

And remember: *I* wasn't even really a fan when I fell in love with this song, okay?

Hypothetical questions

1. If I painted a painting -- let's say it's called "Vase With Flowers" -- and hung it in a gallery, and it got tons of positive reviews and people called it a work of genius -- but then some asshole took the painting down, and totally without my knowledge or permission TRACED IT WITH TRACING PAPER, colored it in with fucking Crayolas (and didn't even really stay within the lines, the slob!), slapped it in a plastic neon-orange frame, and hung it in a gallery RIGHT NEXT DOOR, called it "Vase With Flowers," and charged admission to see it, you'd think the guy was an asshole, right? And I'm not talking Andy Warhol, either, let's say this guy was a fucking moustache-twirling huckster of the snake-oil variety, too, so you don't get THAT kind of hypothetical out.

2. If I wrote a book -- let's say it's called "Man Falls On Ass" -- and it got released to huge public acclaim and people loved my book and raved about my book and formed fanclubs about my book, but then some other asshole, totally without my knowledge or permission, retyped the book but made LITTLE TINY INSIGNIFICANT CHANGES like changing the name of the characters, and then REPUBLISHED the book under the title "Bob's Man Falls On Ass" or something and charged a buck more for it, you'd think the guy was not only an asshole but a complete moron, right? Furthermore, wouldn't people be crying plagarism and taking the guy out back and kicking the shit out of him with "Balls to the Wall" playing top volume?

And yet, this is the untenable situation Diablo's friend Edgar Wright finds himself in. See, Edgar (along with his pal Simon Pegg and the awesome Jessica Hynes nee Stevenson -- see her in the Doctor Who episode "Human Nature" if you wanna know how completely fucking awesome she is) created this brilliant comedy called "Spaced" over in the UK. It had -- and still has! -- a massive following, and for good reason: not only is it hysterically funny, its also masterfully directed, much like Edgar's films Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. Making it even more awesome is the brilliant ensemble cast, which also includes Pegg's Fuzz and Shaun foil Nick Frost.

So what happens? Fox buys the rights to the show and decides to make an American version of the thing, thinking they can catch some hot Office bucks. They assign McG, a guy who is responsible for a great deal of cinematic and televised evil (he directed the two Charlie's Angels movies and fucking exec produces The O.C. for which he should be given a good old-fashioned blanket party), to produce the thing. And they hired a second-string TV writer (Adam Barr -- I'm sure he's just fine, he wrote some episodes of Desperate Housewives or whatever, but he's not the level of hysterical genius you NEED for this kind of thing) to write the pilot -- which he does by essentially re-typing the original pilot script with different names. Brilliant.

MAIN PROBLEM: Apart from the fact that we're talking about a McG production, which is its own brand of pure, unimaginable evil, at each and every stage of the game they FAILED TO INFORM OR CONSULT WITH THE ORIGINAL SHOW'S CREATORS. Who are absolutely, rightfully pissed.

See, the reason the US version of The Office worked as well as it did is manifold -- they got top of the line writers and directors (including Paul Feig, Harold Ramis, Joss Whedon, etc), top of the line cast (do I need to list them? You know and love them) and most importantly THEY INVOLVED THE SHOW'S ORIGINAL CREATORS AT EVERY STAGE OF THE GAME.

Fox's decision to NOT involve Edgar, Simon and Jessica means their decision to make this thing comes from the crassest place imaginable -- some cigar-chomping, money-grubbing exec sitting at a boardroom table, going: "Hey, what's hot these days? What's bringing in the ad bucks? The Office? Isn't that a fucking fag British show? Okay, fine, get on the horn and buy me one of those fucking things. What? I don't give two shits from shinola who made it, we're doing this our way. This is the good ol' US of fucking A, I'm not gonna let a bunch of limey ponces tell me what to do. Get me McG on the phone. He's getting a blow-job from a thai hooker? Interrupt him, god dammit, I don't have all afternoon!"

I'm not exactly sure that petitions actually do anything, but signing them sure makes ME feel good. How's about you all go right now and sign the petition and register your distaste at this foul, disgusting situation, and show Edgar, Simon and Jessica some support?

And furthermore, surely you all have multi-region DVD players? (I don't -- but surely you all do, being discerning, intelligent folk, right?) Buy the DVD set of the original series so you're not even slightly tempted to watch the remake.