Work Journal 1/28

Whew! Irregular Joe #2 (first draft) is now complete. Well, except for going back and adding page breaks and little cosmetic stuff like that. It took about an hour to write the one page, as, again, other little ideas popped up that I hadn't foreseen when outlining. That's all to the good, though. Initially, one character was shown to be dismissive and rude to his father on the phone, but I also worked in the guy's girlfriend in a way that showed that maybe their relationship was going to work after all. So, it got the job done but also advanced another subplot, and on more of an "up" note than expected. Pretty happy with it. It's almost midnight now, so no other work to be done. Will probably just read a couple comics and go to bed.

Great time with the kids tonight. At Baja Fresh, a Mexican restaurant a little above fast food, Trevor was dancing on the floor to the Mexican pop music playing, totally uninhibited and shaking his butt, and then Ainsley joined him, hugging him tightly. Very cute, so much so that lots of adults were watching them.

Been trying a good deal of music lately, not brand-new stuff but things I'd read good things about. Ted Leo/Pharmacists' Shake The Streets is full of well-crafted, fast-paced power pop, with his voice a lot like a young Joe Jackson, only the music is guitar-based rather than piano. The thing is, though, there's no one great song, just a disc's worth of solid "B" material. I mean, if you had to make a mix cd for someone, you couldn't pick that one standout track. I liked it all, and yet I was sort of tired of listening to it in the car after only six tracks.

The Postal Service's Give Up fares better. Crisp, clean and yet warm synth-pop with some quirky elements and a sweet, plaintive vocal. The standouts are obviously the singles "The District Sleeps Tonight" and the one right after it, "Such Great Heights" I think it's called. I also have their cover of Phil Collins' "Against All Odds" and they do well with it after the first minute or so. I don't know why they decided to make the first verse and chorus' vocals almost inaudible, but it's annoying.

Dogs Die In Hot Cars' Please Describe Yourself is quite good, a nice chunk of retro New Wave clocking in at only about 38 minutes. "I Love You Cause I Have To" is terrifically catchy, while the rest is like a lost XTC album from 1980. Bands sure do wear their influences on their sleeves these days.

Before I check out, or tomorrow, I will probably download the new Chemical Brothers, and "My Sharona," as Trevor heard this in preschool and, quite understandably, digs it. As Quentin Tarantino once said, when he had hoped to get the rights to the song to use in Pulp Fiction's infamous sodomy scene, "it's got a great buttfucking beat". Ooh, you're such a pretty one, pretty one...