your entertainment tax dollars at work

okay, so possibly I'm having Sopranos withdrawals.

for those of you keeping score at home, we watched Season Three, then Season Four. and then there was some confusion with the library and Blockbuster and yet we still managed to circle back to Season One, then Two (and this was the exact moment when we began our Netflix membership).
and then Season Five and Season Six (both 6A and 6B).

and then it was over.

but after a couple days off (mourning?) we moved onto An Inconvenient Truth (and I checked out Sopranos: The Book from the library), actually watching on the day that the former Vice President's Nobel win was announced.
and I was reminded of those educational filmstrips (filmstrips) we were shown in elementary school immediately following lunch which magically (if memory serves) created an unscheduled naptime out of thin (or more likely thick) air.
so perhaps I should say (it would be more accurate) that we started watching An Inconvenient Truth on the day of Gore's Nobel win. I didn't make it all the way through until the following day.

and then there was Hollywoodland, which I'm pretty sure we watched because it was about to depart HBO On Demand).
which is kind of like eating the apple that's been on the counter for nearly a week (rather than placing it in the compost pile we don't have because we live in an apartment building) just because you don't want to be wasteful.
(if you're actually hungry for a week-old apple, then fine. be my guest)

and somewhere in the mix we saw Albert Brooks' Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (which may be - at least offhand, without giving the matter any thought at all - my least favorite Albert Brooks movie ever), and then Fur, the "imaginary" Diane Arbus movie starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr (which wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been led to believe. actually enjoyable).

more you say?

last book I ever read: Ben Ratliff's Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (which was kind of the opposite of Fur in that my high expectations weren't quite justified)

and I may well be the only writer in New York City who receives so much as a whiff of payment for musical discourse who has not been out and about (and out and about and out) in the numerous bars hosting (too) numerous bands (both night and day) for what we call CMJ Week.
but don't cry for me, Argentina).
while CMJ does bring an excess number of bands to the city, CMJ brings an excess number of bands to the city (and you can only see one at a time). and it's not like we don't get, you know, good bands on pretty much a nightly basis. but CMJ also brings hundreds if not thousands of college radio types. and while I have nothing against them individually, and am more than happy for them to come to NYC to spend their hard-borrowed money, collectively they tend to jam up the works.
yep, there's so, so many more potential audience members for these excess bands, that it's harder to gain list access, bigger crowds at the venues, making this, for a claustrophobic misanthrope such as myself, not a bad week to stay home.
which I've done.
including skipping Springsteen at Madison Square Garden last night (Jon Stewart didn't) and tonight (Rob Harvilla didn't). but that's okay, I've seen him before. and even before that (and yet I'm still, several days later, near stunned by Arcade Fire's appearance onstage at the Boss' show in Ottawa last Sunday).

(I'll break my streak of homeboundedness tomorrow afternoon, and most likely again on Saturday afternoon (but rest assured I will be back at the residence in time for the 9 p.m. (EST) kickoff of Auburn at LSU) War Eagle)