The Banzai Beard Bonanza II: Bonsai's Revenge
Day 29: I am waiting on my father for the latest round of photographs, taken yesterday. The beard is beginning to take on the aspect of a proper beard, not just overgrown stubble. I did not properly recall from the first Bonanza just how coarse and curly my beard hair is, so different from the hair atop my head. My beard's first instinct is to go wild.

You're waiting on me and I'm waiting on my father; as soon as he gets the photos to me, I'll get them out to you. The process might actually be faster if I hadn't loaned the X-700 to The Impossible Ingenue for her photography class, but I'd have to be pretty creative with filling up the rest of those rolls, and of course there is the expense of developing to consider. That's naught but idle musing, venting my frustration with my father dragging his feet and bellyaching every time I ask him to photographically document the beard's progress. Really, Dad? You take a lengthy nap every afternoon, but these four or five photos put too much pressure on your jam packed schedule?

Banzai!

He's Dead, Jim
Three months to the day that I twisted the unholy hell out of my ankle, and I can tell that things still aren't quite as they were on the day before that fateful skate. I'm beginning to believe things may never again be exactly as they were before, a dreadful thought. Ah, well. I've got to try running on it soon, though increasingly I am thinking about hitting the pool as the way to restart Operation ÖSTERREICH.

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Fountains of Wayne, "Little Red Light" from Welcome Interstate Managers (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Call me juvenile, denounce me as a fool, I don't care; I was ever-so-excited this morning when I received a text message from The Impossible Ingenue, "Hey. Where are you?" Thus was initiated our delightful afternoon together, during which she, an intensely secretive and reticent girl if ever there was one, was uncharacteristically forthcoming.

I was away from my mobile this evening and missed her call, and typically for her age group she didn't leave a voicemail. By the time I rang her back forty minutes later, she informed me that she and The Most Dangerous Game were halfway home. She'd been calling to see if I wanted to get some dessert. Drat and double drat!

"It's not right, it's not fair,
I'm still a mess and you still don't care.
I go to work, I come back home,
But you're still gone and I'm still alone.
And the little red light's not blinkin',
No, no, the little red light's not blinkin',
No, no, the little red light's not blinkin'
On my big black Radio Shack digital portable phone."

The despairing tone of "Little Red Light" isn't at all appropriate, I'm quite thrilled with how today went. But I thought of "Little Red Light" last night on the drive back from Ann Arbor (which I'll tell you about in the next Project MERCATOR post), the dark bastard doing a number on me, taunting me with all the fun The Ingenue had surely had over the weekend without the merest thought of me flitting across her mind. It was in that context, my mouth still fouled by the aftertaste of that moment of doubt and self-loathing, that I was so overjoyed by her text this morning.

Sonntag, 24 Januar
Fountains of Wayne, "Denise" from Utopia Parkway (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "She makes me weak at the knees."

Samstag, 23 Januar
Less Than Jake, "Bad Scene and a Basement Show" from Borders & Boundaries (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: I drove directly from the weekend's debate tournament at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti to a show in Lansing, to see Flint's own improbable ska band, The Loose Ties. I'd been forewarned that the "club" hosting the show was run by Communists, but I didn't quite believe it until I saw a sign on the wall:

"Environmentally Friendly
Planned Economy
NOW"

Planned economy. "Honest to American God" (in the words of Conrad the Comrade), the sign actually called for a planned economy. There it was, staring me right in the face, the dark side of Amendment I of our nigh-sacred Constitution. Even those who explicitly wish to destroy American liberty are at liberty to say so. The place, called Basement 414, sits at 414 East Michigan Avenue, and the entrance would be within sight of the Michigan State Capitol were it not hidden in a back alley in the shadow of a large smokestack. Seems an appropriate hideaway for Communists plotting against American prosperity and freedom.

The bands besides The Loose Ties were just dreadful, that cacophonous mix of ill-conceived and poorly executed genres known as "screamo." It really was a bad scene and a basement show.

"With too much small talk and lame inside jokes."

Freitag, 22 Januar
Fountains of Wayne, "The Hotel Majestic" from Traffic and Weather (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Actually, it wasn't the Hotel Majestic; for the second consecutive weekend I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express on the University of Michigan-Flint's dime. Of course, as a partially-trained economist I know the University has few dimes of its own, almost all its operating expenses are covered by student tuition and the largess of Michigan's taxpaying citizenry. Thanks, taxpaying Michiganders, and please know that we spent your money frugally by putting three chaps in a room with only two beds. (The fellow I've nicknamed Too Sly voluntarily slept on the floor, which he claims helps his ailing back.)