This summer has been bookended by two shows that was re-living my 15 year old self.  It started out with The Dead Milkmen and it finished up with Nine Inch Nails.

Let me tell you about the Nine Inch Nails show.  First of all, it was a ticketless show, which means no souvenir for me.  Terminal 5 actually did a pretty good job getting everyone inside in a timely manner.  I was accompanied at this show by a friend and we got a fairly decent place on the floor.  The opening band was The Horrors.  What can I say about The Horrors besides the horror, the horror.  Let me just quote some of my text from that time:

Dude, I got this great idea for a song: what if we play the whole thing semi out of tune?

And during our shows we can use the strobe light to make the audience think we are something other than the love child band of The Cure & Marilyn Manson-the child noone ever wanted.

Was the opening line of this song: I want to have sex with Jews?

It’s as if Trent decided, “I suffered for my art, now you will too.”

Nine Inch Nails came on stage promptly at 8:45pm just like the flyer said they would.  It was loud.  It was crazy loud.  It was so loud I could feel the bass blowing my arm hair.  At one point I could feel my ear drums vibrating.  It was also hot.  Crazy hot.  Crazy lots of muscle-dudes jumping on each other and sweating towards me hot.  The mosh pit did pretty much wipe itself out after March of the Pigs.  Guess I’m not the only one who just isn’t 15 anymore.

The video below is pretty much the view I had.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been fairly busy with life.  Last week I went to the Mets game at CitiField courtesy of corporate America.  Miss Trish landed some tickets through her job so off we went to the box seats.  Now that is how to do a game.

I’ve also been in training for the Run A Muck in October.  My outdoor running shoes have been biting into my feet quite viciously.  I have two nice blisters on my left foot.

Also Jude Law is coming to town for Hamlet.  I purchased my tickets so if you are looking for me October 21 I’ll be doing the theater thing.

Nick Hornby had a column in The Believer about his monthly book buying versus book reading habit.  As a professional writer he tended to have quite a book buying habit.  Mine is more ridiculous than his.  I’m mean to myself about it as well.  Just the other day I bullied myself into purchasing a book.

I was down at St. Mark’s Bookshop just looking about when I spotted The Shanghai Gesture.  It was listed as one of the best works of 2010 so far by another writer type.  I picked it up and flipped through it.  I read a couple of lines and thought…um I don’t get it.  So I put it back.  Then, of course I started in on myself.  You don’t get it?  You don’t get it?  What kind of idiot are you?  You are smart enough to ready a book?  What’s wrong with you?  I turned around and picked it back up.

Of course I also bought three other books, two of which were on sale.  Did I need the KGB Non-Fiction Reader or Jack Kerouac’s American Journal?  No, just like I didn’t need Herself Defined but I picked them up anyway.

The next day I was at Book Culture, oh why oh why did I even go inside?  Of course I ended up with an armful of books.  This time it was The Male of the Species, The Galosh, A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes, The Convalescent, and Ablutions.  Of all of these books and all of the books purchased in June which included Yeti 7, Spirits of the Salmon River, and the literary journal from Naropa University I have read exactly one of these titles.

I’m a bookoholic.  I have a problem.  I need professional help.  And no a library card will not suffice.  I know this.   I have library cards.  They just make the problem worse.