Where have I been?

Cardiff, mostly. My update frequency has been admittedly lame, but give me time...I'm finding out more about this strange little city every day.

I've also left out a bunch of things that happened in the past few weeks, mostly due to that firestorm of political / humanitarian rage that consumed me / this blog after the Guantanamo panel (still pissed off, by the way). I went to London and spent a fantastic weekend with one Gary Barker and his brother Sam. The mission was to intercept some Manitounians, which was mostly successful, even though we missed KG and Tambini. We also found many bars, some of them huge (one of which looked like the inside of a Catholic church) Mark Stagg, who is as cool as ever, and a fake Kiwi named Holly who claimed to be a chef with between 3 and 4 Michelin stars. He also claimed to be from San Francisco. He had that happy-come-volatile way about him that we just kept confusing him and making him laugh about things so that he wouldn't start swinging. I miss him already...

Went to Swansea the next weekend, where I was hosted and shown around the city by a pair of sisters and a network of other Swanseans. It was a nice weekend jaunt, but I got hit in the face by a nasty cold a few days before (a strange and excessive night out with Declan helped this along, but it was worth every sweat-drenched Metro minute) so I wasn't able to enjoy it to the very fullest. I did eat lots of pureed seaweed, deceptively called "Laverbread." It was not bread. It was very much seaweed.

Since then, I've been in and around Cardiff, looking for adventures and kindred souls. The two greatest discoveries thus far have been Milgi's and the Buffalo Bar. Milgi's is what my living room would look like if I ever became a successful filmmaker and had enough money to cover the wall with strange art / mirrors. Incidentally, Milgis is, more or less, my living room, where I've been going and (creepily) splaying out notecards to work on a feature-length screenplay. At those creative moments, I miss my screenwriting buddies, Tetz included, who provided so much good criticism. It's going okay, though.

ANYWAY...I spend a lot of time and money at this place. They have good foods. And 85% of the staff now knows me.

Buffalo Bar is my newest favorite place to end up. Unsurprisingly, I was lead there by a Brooklyn band, Crystal Stilts. That show was memorable, but more or less what I was expecting, although the openers, Wetdog, thorugh me for a bit of a loop. The sound was good - kinde like The Slits getting into a fistfight with Joy Division, with no clear winner - but the drummer was clearly pissed off about something throughout the set. Strange vibes. Crystal Stilts all seemed to be friends at least.

I didn't know at that moment that I would soon witness a show by the friendliest band in the world, Das Wanderlust. Here my (overlong) entry finally enters the VERY recent past. I was bored and knew that I didn't have class until 3 tomorrow, so I felt obligated to go and do something. Benny was hangin' with the Music kids, so I ended up back at Buffalo Bar to see what there was to see. The first band put me in a funk. Why do some bands base their entire repertoires on minor key faux-epics that are undoubtably about politics, even if you can't hear the words. Ugh. I didn't get this group's name and didn't really care. Technically proficient but just...too much 'cool' and not enough fun.

Das Wanderlust, on the other hand were cool-fun-awesome-precocious-awesome times 10. By the end of their set, which managed to make 3 people sound like an army of cute robots with toy pianos and fuzz pedals, I was sold 100%.

I'll stop gushing, but really. Check this band out.

myspace.com/daswanderlust

If you got to the bottom...wow. Good job! Thanks!