CMJ: Someday I am going to be inside you.

After going to SXSW for the last 10,000 years, I've sometimes thought about going to the CMJ Music Marathon  in NYC. Since I'm usually double-booked in October, my going to CMJ is more a fantasy than anything else.

Sure, it's partially because I love the City--because I'm an urban creature and NYC is the urban I love the best-- but that's not all.

I totally admit that I have a bad habit of living in the future. Most of what's on the radio is music that I associate with the past, not the life I'm living now. As such, I'd totally be pleased to see new things at CMJ, and revisit a few old favorites.

TRIAL RUNS: BANDS I HAVEN'T SEEN

If I were going to CMJ 2011, I'd totally want to check out:  super-cute Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr  and the Miniature Tigers (who both played ACL 2011, though I was busy elsewhere)  Fresh Millions, Givers (whom my friends have been raving about), Metronomy, Wild Flag, Morning After Girls, The Wombats, Locksley and J Mascis (whom I'm kind of ashamed that I've never seen, even though I've loved Dinosaur Jr since the dawn of time.)

SECOND CHANCES: BANDS THAT HAVE GOOD PRESS BUT I MIGHT HAVE SEEN AN OFF SHOW

At CMJ I might check out bands who didn't blow me away the first time, but whom I have real hope that the intervening years might have taken to the next level: Titus Andronicus (sloppy and possibly drunk the first time I saw them at a late show on Saturday night at SXSW 2009--which I'd REALLY been looking forward to-- but they've gotten lots of buzz since then), Heloise & The Savoir Faire*, Robbers on High Street (I totally love one of their albums, but, again, they were sloppy and I suspect they were drunk the first time I saw them, years ago at a Fun Fun Fun Fest preshow at the Mohawk in 2008.)

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are nice, and I'd likely catch them again. Truthfully, I don't know how much effort I'd make to see them twice, though I enjoyed them at Fun Fun Fun Fest.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at Fun Fun Fun Fest

The most ridiculous horoscope EVER.

Okay,  I know that they say that these are for entertainment purposes only, but it's kind of crazy when they promise you a "life-changing" day. This was mine for Thursday. 

Here's the Bumper for that Column that I wrote about Scare last year!

It's September, which means it's totally time to start getting ready for the enormous haunted event SCARE FOR A CURE .

Today I ran across the cell phone bumper that a lot of people from Scare helped make. I wrote about that shoot and SCARE for a column in the Austin-American Statesman last year.




If you want to see the work that it took to do this make-up, check out the Flickr set.

Read Instead

Read Instead
Originally uploaded by annainaustin

This is from a bookstore in Cambridge, Mass.

Books: The President is a Sick Man

I really couldn't have picked a worse book to keep me company as I stayed up late with the ouchy results of some long-dreaded dental work. It wasn't that the book was bad, it's that the subject matter was totally wrong for someone with an aching mouth!

Yet despite my unhappy mouth, I had a hard time putting down my copy of "The President Is A Sick Man: Wherein the supposedly virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and vilifies the courageous newspaperman who dared expose the truth" by Matthew Algeo.

In 1893 President Grover Cleveland had a tumor removed from the top of his mouth. In secret. On a yacht. In 1.5 hours. BEFORE THE INVENTION OF ANTIBIOTICS. Or ex rays. Or, or, or..... I feel a bit faint just thinking about it.

I'm far, far too lazy to do a proper review of the book, but it's a well paced tale of a little-known saga from American history.

It's a story located at the nexus of American history, the history of medicine, and the history of journalism. Together it comes to a page-turning beach read for the serious-minded.

Maybe I should pass this book along to my dentist. The pictures of the casts made of the inside of Cleveland's post-surgical mouth (p. 185) were enough to give me the willies.

"The President Is A Sick Man: Wherein the supposedly virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and vilifies the courageous newspaperman who dared expose the truth."  Matthew Algeo, Chicago Review Press, 2011, 1st ed.