The first time I heard the Dandy Warhols was on a flight from Halifax to Toronto, some time in the late 90s. Alan Cross did a great radio show for Air Canada (which introduced me to a lot of great music over my travelling years, including Sunny Day Real Estate) that, this particular day, happened to feature a song called “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth”. I was in love. Later I picked up a copy of …Come Down (which, to this day, I consider one of the greatest albums I’ve ever heard) and two more would soon follow. Those first three Dandys discs were brilliant; now, after watching DiG!, I see where a lot of the genius came from: A brilliant and destructive spazpants named Anton Newcombe.

I’ve been dying to see DiG! (imdb | rotten tomatoes) since it screened at Sundance. Well worth the wait. It’s fascinating to watch a genius sabotage his own dreams, and more than a little gratifying to watch a narcissistic bastard make everyone despise him. I figure we got the best of both worlds; the megalomaniacal shithead got what he deserved, but not before his influence helped three Dandy Warhols become near-masterpieces.

I passed, with a little room to spare. B. Thank god.

No rest for the wicked though. I’m already well into the textbook for the next course. Our first assignment’s due in less than two weeks, and we go on vacation next Thursday, so I’m on a compressed schedule. I have to read 150 pages and write a six-page paper in the next week. Fun, no?

Just taking a random stroll through the stats for this blog. It turns out that yesterday someone at Cambridge University found my post about the Sleater-Kinney song “Turn It On” by typing ‘it’s just that when you touch me i can not stand up’ into Google. Maybe they heard it on the radio and wanted to identify it. Maybe they wanted to see if anyone’d reserved it as a domain name.

I just thought that was cool.

Last week, while I was shooting around in the gym during a study break, I could hear “Rebellion (Lies)” playing on the radio in the workout room. It was pretty amusing to watch people lift weights and ride the exercise bike to The Arcade Fire.

While grabbing some lunch at a Caribbean place around the corner from work, I was treated to a Michael Jackson medley blasting from the speakers. I had to distract myself with a few football chants and some butt clenches just to keep myself from shrieking out of pain and boredom, but in the end settled for stuffing some jerk chicken in my ears. Shit burns.

Bad.

Business 2.0 tells us to Say Sayonara to VHS. Wal-Mart will no longer be selling pre-recorded VHS tapes after the christmas season.

This doesn’t surprise me: CTV: Ottawa boy alleges angry cabbie hit him. The summer I spent in Ottawa, I lived in fear for my life when in or near a blue line cab. I think it was company policy to hire maniac drivers.

Thaaaaaat’s what I like to see: Today was Toronto’s 20th smog day of the year. Tied the 2001 record and it’s not even summer.

Who’s for volleyball?

Yikes. Someone over at BlogTO is taking issue with my JS Bonbons recommendation.

I started watching DiG! today, the documentary about The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. Already it’s reminded me of two things: how good the Dandy Warhols were for the first 2 or 3 albums, and how hot Zia McCabe is.