$4= 2 Cheese Dogs and a Kinish

Everyone should have a local Papaya Dog. Everybody.

Tonight First Meeting of Staten Islanders for Barak Obama

Come to Martini Red, 372 Van Duzer (on the corner of Beach and Van Duzer to get more specific). We intend to discuss plans for fund raisers and voter registration drives. Not to mention it's just a good venue to meet some like minded politically motivated people.

Please come down, starting at 8 going for about 2 hours. Come late if you have to, we'll be glad to fill you in.

Before Andy Barker PI Conan O'Brien Wrote Lookwell!

Tonight is the "premiere" of Andy Barker PI, a new show created by Conan O'Brien and starring Andy Richter. (I say "premiere" because the damn things entire 6 episode run is available legally on NBC's website, iTunes, and YouTube. I have decided to save the thrill of watching it early and instead enjoy it on my family's wonderful HDTV.) All signs seem promissing tha the show will be a wonderfully funny and inventive addition to the NBC comedy line up.

It is strange however that Conan O'Brien's other foray into sitcom making would share so many of the same talking points of Andy Barker PI. That show was called Lookwell! and is one of the great never picked up pilots of all time. If you've never seen it here it is, in it's entirety.

Been writting a bunch about Conan, or at least related to Conan recently must be somethign in the air.

Something I Missed: I Never Thought I'd Like An Album By A Fellow Named Jay Retard

Back in October an album was released and some (most really) probably dismissed it out of hand. At least you might have dismissed it if you were keyed in enough to know it had been released. It was made by the front man of a sub-par Queers rip off band. It has a fairly horrific album cover. The fellows "last name" is Reatard. Indeed the moniker of his sub-Dwarves home base is The Reatards. All this stacked against him and yet it turns out it might be the best slice of vintage sounding/feeling protopunk since the Exploding Hearts ended their too brief run.

The songs inspite of their brevity rarely hunker down on repetition or lowered expectations. Each is frothy and sweet melodically without losing it's ragged, aggressive swagger. Say what you will about him; Jay Reatard is the real deal and Blood Visions is the sort of album that reveals a depth that the artist himself couldn't of strived for. It's that rare serendipitous brilliance we all wait for.

Jay Reatard has probably shot this album in the foot. I have a picture in my head (perhaps it's a crude stereo type) of a number of "real" punk kids (the leather jacket and colored hair set) hearing this album and tearing apart it's sincerity and it's amazing sense of melody. I have another equally sad picture in my head of an "indie" kid (listening to Tapes N' Tapes, perhaps a copy of the latest issue of Magnet under his arm) seeing the cover reading the name and never thinking about the album again accept to make himself feel better about how much more "enlightened" his interests are. These are sad pictures because albums like Blood Visions don't come along very often. It's terrible to let them keep drifting by.

Check out Jay Reatard on MySpace.

This album was recommended to me by Paul Bruno, check him out when he DJ's.