Odds and Sods for Thursday, June 8

Studio Belew - photograph by Eric Slick during the Nashville rehearsals last month

So I'm taking a quick break from writing my novel to report a few interesting things here.

First of all, Eric has a gig with Dave Dreiwitz, bass player for Ween tonight at Mexicali Blues in Teaneck, New Jersey. It's a crazy bass and drum only thing called "Crescent Moon" -- Eric's pretty stoked about it, so if you are in the area, the show starts at 9:00 p.m.

Because of this gig, which is like a half hour from New York City and Eric's dad is tagging along, Julie and I decided to stay home and go out to dinner tonight here instead and we were looking in the Philadelphia City Paper for some new, cool downtown restaurants and what do I stumble on but an article about Julie and Eric written by music columnist A.D. Amorosi in his Icepack column...and of course as usual because I am both anal retentive and excited, I will cut and paste the pertinent part here as well:

You know that I know that you know Philly expat Paul Green's School of Rock gets greedier daily. A new CEO—Matt Ross from Clear Channel. A Hollywood branch so to be close to Jack Black's kids. Yet, it's funnest knowing that chicken-choking guitarist Adrian Belew (King Crimson) just plucked a duo of Philly Greenies, siblings Eric and Julie Slick, to anchor Belew's new power trio, this after playing Zappa's "City of Tiny Lights" at February's School of Rock gig at World Café Live. "Musically it's closer in spirit to Crimson than Cream," says Belew of his trio's odd time signatures and dark chordal shapes. "But we'll follow the Cream/Hendrix mold of adventurous playing and loads of stunt guitar work." And if the kids act up, will Belew take away their allowance? "Worse yet, their credit cards!" says Belew, who's "pretty much of a kid myself."

Um, I have to admit I don't exactly love what A.D. wrote...either about Paul Green or the kids, but hey, what's that they say about publicity? Even crappy/inaccurate publicity is better than no publicity at all.

First of all, Julie and Eric are Rock School grads who played with Adrian at the New York Knitting Factory in March of this year, not at the World Cafe in Philly and not as Paul Green's students. Julie will be twenty one years old and Eric is nineteen and as readers of this blog know, just came off a five week tour with Project Object featuring the legendary Ike Willis. As far as having their allowance/credit cards taken away, don't count on it. Julie has more money than God and can buy and sell me. So yeah, I sort of beg to differ with A.D.'s jab that they're kiddies and the stuff he says about Paul but I do love Adrian's response and wonder if A.D. called him directly for those quotes. Hmmm...

Anyway, as luck/serendipity would have it, I just caught A.D. Amorosi on our local news/entertainment television show, 10 Live! and he goes on and on talking about Harry Connick, Jr. and Nelly Furtado, and Ice Cube...oh, and the dreaded American Idol people, so that tells me all I need to know about him.

But still, you know me, I'm going to be picking up 100 copies of the City Paper today, anyway.

Also, I see that Krimson-News has picked up my blogpost about Adrian Belew and Julie and Eric and did a nice job of plucking the relevant parts from a few different blurbs I made last week so I'm very pleased about that...especially as they also used some photos and the link to the Rock School soundtrack.

I am also humiliated to announce that I now have a My Space Account to help promote my books and the new anthology in which I have a story which will be out next month. I am a truly pathetic person who has no understanding or knowledge of how My Space works but if you are interested in being one of my "friends" or seeing just how pitiful I am, here's the link. You are welcome to add me as a friend, ask to be my friend, whatever it is you have to do and if anyone wants to volunteer any info as to how to make my site prettier and automatically hear the music (Adrian Belew, of course) when you sign on instead of having to hit the play button, I will be happy for your assistance. As far as the blog portion goes, I guess I'm just gonna cut and paste what I type here for now until my new books come out -- both Another Bite of the Apple and the short story anthology -- but really, I have no idea what I'm doing.

Funny story already. I have a pal, Grant Jarrett, who also has a short story in the anthology and he said yesterday that he was going to start a My Space site, too (that's how this whole thing started -- all 12 of us in the anthology said we'd do it) so this morning I get an invite to be Grant's friend. So that much I knew how to do -- I clicked "Accept" and went to Grant's site to comment. What do I see? He's got 83 friends already! I'm like, how the hell did that happen? Up until yesterday, I only had four friends, one of whom was that bot "Tom" who I honestly thought was the kid who lived next door because yep his name is Tom and the bot bears an uncanny resemblance to him. I was like, oh my god, how did Tom find my site already and why does he want to be friends with me when he's 21 years old and friends with Julie and Eric? And then I see another "friend" is not a friend at all but a pair of swingers or a porn couple of some sort but I must have hit "accept" thinking they were someone I knew. I hear I can delete them but to be honest, what if I do know them and I hurt their feelings? They may be someone I know from the erotica web ring to which I belong, what do I know. They haven't commented so they aren't hurting me. Huh. Actually, I just clicked on them and it turns out they are writers so it's a good thing I didn't delete them and I apologize for calling them swingers.

One thing I do find weird about My Space is that people comment and you can't comment back so their remarks just kind of hang there. I don't know if I'm going to get used to that.

Oh...back to the Grant story. So I asked him in a comment on his site How the hell did you get 83 friends already and it turns out it's not the Grant I know but another Grant -- a writer named Grant Baille who is also a member of my on line writing group. So now I've been an active My Spacer for a few days and I've already made two faux pas. Oh well. I'm guessing there's a search option where other writers seek each other out and that's how he found me...I have no idea...all I know is I'm extremely worried that My Space is going to become a huge addiction for me and that's the last thing I need...not to mention the fact that I really do feel too old for it. I have to giggle, though. I notice everyone over thirty lists their age as 99. Yeah, like we're all really going to type in our correct dates of birth.

Whatever. All I know is, I've promised someone a perfect, newly revised one hundred pages of my new novel, Baby Boomer, by the end of this month so I've got to close all windows, get off the internet, and resume writing.

But for you, Susan, here's our daily twisted Neil Gaiman moment, fresh from Balticon:



Oh my. I don't know about Neil, who is currently in bed with a sore throat, the poor baby (oh god...don't even go there, Rob) but I know seeing that pic just made me feel a hell of a lot better.

Later,
xo