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10/20/04 12:34 a.m.

Hamlet: The Early Years

Gomez was in town the other day -- quite a coup for the city of Greenville, which gets its fair share of bands but we really lucked out on the coolness factor with this one.

Things started out with a trip to Horizon Records, where WNCW (a great local music-heavy NPR station) was hosting a live in-store broadcast. Very nice performance, with six songs in somewhat acoustic, but very loud mode. A great warm-up for the show that night.

Sitting right in front of me, though, was a mother and her (I'd guess) five-year-old-or-so son. Things started out normally enough.

The son gave his mom a quick smooch on the lips.

And another.

And another.

And another.

And dear god, a few more.

OK, he's an affectionate little cuss, but then he goes for her with his mouth open. Thankfully, she shies away from this, so he closes his mouth and plants a long one on her. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one-thousand ... jesus, you can tell this is just innocent affection on the part of the boy, but this kid's kissing his mother like some old closed-mouth '50s movie kiss, head cocked to the side and everything. I have no idea if anyone else in the place is noticing this, but it's right in front of me.

The kid then starts crawling into mom's lap (he'd been sitting to the side and coming over mom's shoulder for some sugar this whole time), and I'm thinking, "Oh god, if this five-year-old starts breastfeeding, I am so out of here."

Finally -- and I'm talking after about ten minutes of this --  the mom turns the kid around toward the band and kind of wraps her arms around him to keep him still. Needless to say, the whole thing was a bit of a distraction from the show. The worst part is that you get this creeped out mentality, and even when the kid was doing something innocent like whispering in his mom's ear, you were looking with dread to make sure there was no tongue.

Tales of Survival

It's a few hours til the show, so my buddy and I cruise up to the other local record store, where there are many nice things to be had in the bargain bin, and then over to the Pita House, where we have some tasty Middle Eastern food and my friend regales me with secret tales of nearly getting deported from the Philippines while his parents were missionaries there. He plans to tell his parents the sordid tale one day. Personally, I wouldn't, but my dynamic with my parents is such that we get lectured when we curse.

Once, I was planting a dogwood for my mother, and let slip the "F" word when my hand got caught in part of the shovel. To this day, I'm sure my mom doesn't water that tree, marvelling at its poisonous ability to maintain sustenance from that dark day.

At any rate, we made it back to the Handlebar, where the show was taking place. It turned into quite the social hour, as I saw tons of people I had fallen out of touch with. Most notably, there was Trev, who'd just returned from a stint as bus driver and DJ for some Playboy 50th Anniversary Playmate Tour. City to city, on a bus and in hotels with ten Playmates.

"You think you're ready," he said. "But you're not. It takes weeks to get up to speed. And after it was over, I had to wait two or three weeks to make sure I wasn't going to fall over dead, unable to physically recover from the partying."

The Show

The show was really good. The opening band was an Australian group named Augie March, who weren't bad. Gomez were very good. I think they're a little tired at this point, this being like the third leg of their tour or something, but man can they hit a groove. Definitely very glad I caught the show. Excellent drum-heavy version of "We Don't Know Where We're Going" and a cover of "Not Fade Away" that shed all that bothersome Grateful Dead baggage.

Just as glad that I noticed the guy dancing with himself off to the side. The guy's moves were impressive, especially when he glided through some hippie noodle dancing, the robot, the Jed Clampett shuffle, and some booty shakin' all in the span of about a minute. The entire show, this guy was just going at it, a smile hidden behind his Will Oldham beard, with much less pretension than the guy in black t-shirt and black shorts who kept dropping down on the floor and doing push-ups to supposedly impress the ladies.

10/14/04 11:15 p.m.

When you live in a little town like mine, you hear a phrase like "these local kids have made a movie and there's a free screening at the Irish pub tonight," you say to yourself, "I gotta see me some of that."

After all, you figure that even if the movie sucks, there'll be some good people-watching.

That's exactly what my cousin proposed to me while I was hanging out in Home Depot (I was there because, well, I guess that's where we married, domesticated men go when our wives are out of town ...). My cousin and his buddies were going, and I should tag along, they said. It promised to be fun, they said. And they were right.

I don't know the names of any of the film's participants, but I recognized most of them from my days tending the local record store. The geeky kids, the slightly goth kids, the kids you knew were way smarter than the mainstream kids who picked on them. So it was a real kick to see these kids giving Anderson the bird, saying "you're not going to smother me with your fetid dreams of old textile jobs, new strip malls, and half-ass provincialism." It seemed like every time the door opened, an almost forgotten, black-clad denizen of Anderson's shadowy artsy world would enter. Good times.

The film was called Buy Sell Kill: A Flea Market Story. It centers around a mob hitman who's been sent down to Georgia to lay low in a flea market money laundering scheme. As you can expect, things quickly go awry, with a body count to rival The Godfather. Eccentric southern characters? Check. Bullying sheriff? Check. References to sweet tea? Alas, none.

Was it good? Well, it was certainly enjoyable. I laughed a lot, and in the right places. Sure, the New Yorker hitman had a southern accent, and sure, the sound sucked, and sure, the acting was uneven. But there were also inspired parts, like the fact that everyone in town had the same "secret spot" for hiding bodies, or Seamus' affinity for selling sticks for huge sums of cash at the flea market, or Seamus' explanation of how the town's lone black man - a midget - lost his arm while artificially inseminating a cow, or ... well, Seamus (played by the director, I think) was just inspired all around. And it was fun to see good use made of local landmarks like The Jockey Lot, McGee's Irish Pub, and the infamous Southerner Motor Lodge.

Turns out these kids have done this before. Their previous film, a work about midget vampires called Anklebiters, was apparently something of a hilarious local triumph (alas, I haven't seen it). And word has it that Troma, they of Toxic Avenger fame, have been sniffing around one or both of the films. Heck, Buy Sell Kill even has the star wattage of an Estevez (uncle Joe).

All in all, a good time, as we sat around drinking beer, eating good Irish stew, and chasing it with some popcorn while we watched the movie. At the end, we all agreed that we had certainly paid good money to rent worse pictures in the past (usually they involved a Lundgren, a Seagal, or some other martial arts bohunk), and that these kids certainly have some potential.

10/14/04 11:11 a.m.

The joy of a clever woman (remembered while watching a group of artsy kids):

A friend: "So my niece is becoming a pre-goth..."

My wife: "Pre-goth? What, is she wearing only gray?"

10/14/04 1:30 a.m.

"He's not the kind of wheel / You fall asleep at."

    -- Tom Waits, "Dead" (from Real Gone, released 10/05/04)

"There's a man inside you / with his fingers at the wheel / crashes you no matter how you feel"

    -- Robyn Hitchcock, "If You Know Time" (from Spooked, released 10/05/04)