so it's time for my review of the Kings of Convenience show.

First off, Iota is a weird place, they don't sell tickets in advance, which is annoying, especially because I was pretty sure this show would sell out. So my friends and I got there at 7 or so for a 9:45 show. We figured we'd get dinner there, as they have a cafe, but there was an hour wait, so we hung around and got beers. At 7:30 a guy game around collecting the money for the show and stamped our hands, then we were free to leave, so we went down the street to eat. We came back at 9 or something and bypassed the line, which by that time was huge, so it was good we got there early, even if we did have to waste some time. The place itself is pretty small, a bit bigger than the Black Cat backstage, if people know that. However, it's nice inside, except for a random big pillar in the middle and a booth that people can sit in the middle of the floor, meaning it's smaller than you'd think. And for some reason, there were a bunch of tall dudes in front of me. I felt like a nerd holding my camera phone up in the air to get photos. Oh well.

But the show itself was very good, everyone was quiet and the music sounded great. The guys in the band are pretty funny too, they were joking the whole time about things, making fun of each other, etc. They played a good mix of new stuff and old stuff, and I recognized most of it, though they didn't do "Free Falling" (by Tom Petty). Rae found a bunch of live mp3s on their website, which is pretty cool of them to do, and it gives you a good idea of what they sound like.

so I saw Kings of Convenience on Saturday at Iota, they were excellent. Here are some pics from ye olde camera phone. Blurry, but as good as I can do.


Erlend Øye (left) and Erik Glambek Bøe (right). I wish my name had a Ø in it.


Erlend rocking out. He's very tall, maybe 6'5. Unfortunately, so were a lot of the people at the show.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll post a brief review soon.

so here are some more interesting links and news.

my friend jess sent me this clip from an old Muppets skit. Funny stuff. I also like the vaguely Scandinavian subtitles.

Andrew Bogut's blog. Andrew's a forward/center on the University of Utah college basketball team and he's really good. He's Australian and has some funny stuff on the page, like a poll of which animal would you rather see him fight: a crocodile, a kangaroo, a dingo, or a koala. I voted for the koala.

And the Super Bowl is coming up, which made me think of the Bud Bowl, and how awesome it was. I wish they'd bring it back. What's funny is I was probably in elementary school when they were on, but I loved watching those beer bottles play football. And also, I wonder what happened to Bud Dry and Bud Ice, I don't think I see them around anymore. Anyway, here are a few pages about the Bud Bowl.

Bud Bowl's Greatest Games
Some other page that has good pictures.

And again speaking of college hoops, GW is playing Temple (at Temple) on ESPN tomorrow at 2 pm eastern. Everyone should tune in, it should be a big game for both teams, as both are NCAA tournament bubble teams. But now it's time for the weekend, over and out.

so here's a little update on Chris Wylde on American Idol:

First, here's a video, from College Humor.com via Stereogum.

And the American Idol website had this to say:

"Now we have Christopher Noll rapping his little heart out. MC Fivehead bringin' the thunder, y'all! I'd say that this is actually Chris Wylde rehearsing for an upcoming role,. And it's definitely not a gag for The Chris Wylde Show, since that was cancelled in about four days. Nope, this guy just regular sucks. There's no angle to it. All of his lines did rhyme, though. That's a step in the right direction."

I still think they got duped though, because if they knew he was a comedian, why did they let him on the show?

so Rae found some more stuff about the Arcade Fire and some more Final Fantasy mp3s.

Zoilus, which I assume is a Canadian music blog, has a bit about the Arcade Fire (including an image of them on Conan O'Brien, wearing motorcycle helmets like they did at the 930 Club show), and some good Final Fantasy mp3s, especially the CN Tower one, which he played at the show I went to. I really like that one. As I said before, Final Fantasy is just one guy with a violin, and he records a bit, then loops the recording and records some more, and so on. It's really cool to see in concert.

so apparently a guy duped the American Idol people yesterday. I was watching it with my roommates, laughing at the delusional people and what not, and a guy came on who looked familiar, he said his name was Christopher Noll. He did a pretty funny rap about the judges (and Brandy, who was a guest judge), parts of which went something like "Simon Cowell, S. Cowell spells scowl" and "praise God and Anisha, look, it's TV's Moesha" (I'm paraphrasing here, I don't remember exactly.) Anyway, he was pretty funny throughout and obviously got rejected (after pretending to wipe his brow) then cussed a lot, I assume for dramatic effect. So I went to look him up, and it turns out that Christopher Noll is also known as Chris Wylde, who had a show in 2001 on Comedy Central, the Chris Wylde Show. I assume the Comedy Central page is old, since everything I read on Google said his show was pretty bad (according to some miscellaneous blogs at least, but who believes what they say) and was cancelled after 10 episodes. According to IMDB, he was also in Joe Dirt and Coyote Ugly and some other stuff, as well as getting his home fixed up on Trading Spaces.

And it looks like he was in some show called Film Fakers and a Truth.com commercial, according to this page (beware pictures of girls in bikinis if you're at work), which is probably what I remember him from. Funny line from that page: "I'm so white I eat clouds and piss bleach." And this page has some funny Fox Sports commercials. I remember seeing the first one.

And it looks like he went to American University in DC as well and had a show there, according to this article here from the AU paper. And his own pretty weird website is here.

So hooray for Google. I thought it was pretty interesting that he got onto American Idol, being a comedian and all.

so I found a few more examples of Borf, my new favorite graffiti writer. The first one is on Irving St., just west of 14th, and is the one I was talking about where the line of the F goes all the way down to the street. The other one is on the south side of U St. somewhere near 15th St NW. I think it's close to Cada Vez.

so it's time for some miscellaneous interesting sites. or as ben calls it, more reasons to love the internet.

nflcheerleader.blogspot.com. Just what it sounds like. I actually haven't been able to peruse it too much because I'm at work.

Fuggin It Up, a blog devoted to photos of celebrities in stupid looking clothes, sent to me by Rae. Maybe people will stop wearing those stupid eskimo boobs and shiny sunglasses.

A video of a kid lipsynching to a Romanian techno song. Pretty funny. One of my friends actually played me this song on the ride home to Tennessee for Christmas. He's not the guy in the video though.

And the translated lyrics of that song. My favorite lyrics: "[These are just sounds.]"

We Regret the Error, a blog about newspapers' corrections and retractions. Pretty interesting. Check out the University of Virginia's corrections page. Those guys could use a fact-checker.

An oldie but goodie: the video of the "More Cowbell" Will Ferrell SNL sketch, from Ben's blog.

And finally, a guide to prank calls to Moe on the Simpsons. My favorite is "Uh, hey, everybody! I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and big butt and my butt smells and I like to kiss my own butt."

so the Express reported yesterday that Metro is thinking of getting corporate sponsorships for its stations. (Pretty shocking that I read something in the Express that I hadn't already heard). Anyway, I think this is a good thing, especially since Metro always seems to be needing money and people don't want to pay the .0001 cents more of taxes for it. However, I hope if they rename stations, they put the ad part at the end, it would suck having to go to Prada Station at Foggy Bottom-GWU for GW basketball games. It's kind of lame to have a station sponsored by anybody, but I could put up with it if it's at the end: "Foggy Bottom-GWU station, brought to you by Prada." Or you know, Kate Spade or Gucci or whatever GW girls wear nowadays.

I could give a shit about who sponsors the station, really, unless there's a Krispy Kreme or Haribo Gummi Bears station, then all of my trips would end there. "Sorry I'm late boss, real long delay on the Red line. We were stuck at Krispy Kreme station for an hour."

Or another could sponsor the station at College Park. That would be funny and confusing for tourists, which is also funny. College Park-UMD, sponsored by George Mason University.

so there's a lot of news regarding those free newspapers they give out at the Metro. There's a new one called the Examiner (DCist talks about it.) Apparently it's owned by Philip Anschutz, a big-time contributor to the Republican party and conservative Christian groups like Focus on the Family, so I won't be reading it, but it looks like it's written strangely too, just from a glance at the website. Some headlines that seem strange and amateurish to me: "BABY BELL SBC ACQUIRES THE MOTHER SHIP - AT&T - FOR ABOUT $15 BLN", "Wow! Maryland 79, No. 22 Georgia Tech 71," "Come on Nats! Only 62 days until the Nationals play first game." Those look like they should have been in my high school newspaper, except there aren't any typos. But the paper looks corny to me. I'll stick with my pseudo-hipster Express.

However, I found a funny and misleading headline on the front page of yesterday's Express. On the lower left, there's a picture of the Scissor Sisters (who I hear are good,) and it says "Also, gay characters in cartoons, ODB's final album." To me, this reads like there are gay characters in cartoons and in ODB's final album, which sounds pretty interesting: "Wow, ODB is rapping about gay people! I wonder if he treats them like normal people, or if he's making fun of them?" So I went to the article about ODB's album and there's no mention of any gay people. Obviously the comma between "characters in cartoons" and "ODB's final album" is supposed to separate two different articles. How about use "and" next time, or put "ODB's final album" before "gay characters in cartoons." Pretty amusing.