Mak­ing no com­mit­ments at the All-Star break. [The sin­gles that keep me teth­ered to real­i­ty as well as ratio­nal­iza­tions, news & notes forth­com­ing. Odd­i­ties and reis­sues also, with mp3s as evidence.]

[Unre­lat­ed: Black­mail lost some weight.]

Sick­est mid­field­er ever? Maybe. After all, Pelé calls him “Mae­stro”.

[Post-match edit: I just call him “bone­head”: Porquoi!? Porquoi!?]

[Post-post-match nation­al­ism alert: Alle­ga­tions that Mat­er­azzi called Zidane a “dirty terrorist”.]

[Con­tro­ver­sial post press con­fer­ence edit: His moth­er and sis­ter? I’m not buy­ing it.]
[See also: The Life Chaot­ic with Team Zizou]

It’s peri­od­ic updates, tips, hints, clues like this that I’d avoid­ed so dili­gent­ly up until this after­noon, when it dawned on me that unlike con­di­tions in Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, that me vis-a-vis my com­put­er, the inter­net and any­thing per­tain­ing there­in is with­in my con­trol, rather than vice ver­sa. Thus I entered the won­der­ful and fright­en­ing world of Fire­fox exten­sions and plug-ins and ven­tured down the rab­bit­hole whose alias is the seduc­tive del.icio.us. Del.icio.us: infor­ma­tion :: Gmail search: email, so it’s either a bless­ing or a curse, but only if you believe that there are still ways to pre­serve your pri­va­cy despite the best efforts of, well, gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor. To the good, you can nav­i­gate the web while main­tain­ing the appear­ance of hav­ing vis­it­ed just one site that isn’t okayed by your boss!

Pish posh, right? Where’s the fun in all that! Let me reit­er­ate though that this inline mp3 play­er that allows you to remain on the page to read about the song you’re hear­ing is an imper­a­tive and is indu­bitable. That said, it’s kin­da tough to nav­i­gate Puri­tanb with it.

[A wiz­ard, a true star, and some­thing of a poly­math: thanks Jace.]

EYE 001, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by Black­mail Is My Life.

Two turnta­bles, three drum­mers. The­atri­cal­i­ty and mag­ic. Ethe­re­al beau­ty. Light and heat.

[See also: more pho­tos]

So it was­n’t rev­e­la­to­ry or awe-inspir­ing. It was curi­ous, just curi­ous. The video above comes from Fiery Fur­naces most recent tour. Their lat­est incar­na­tion? An ear­ly nineties, post-hard­core indie rock act, with caveats galore. They’re sharp­er and more musi­cal­ly adept than the style­fuck their ham­mer­ing on, and maybe too glam for the pas­tiche — Eleanor’s white hot out­fit looks more and more like Fred­die Mer­cury’s — but Ex-Sebadoh bassist Jason Loewen­stein’s involve­ment has come full circle.

Such ener­getic music, at least in this style, seems anachro­nis­tic some­how, reek­ing of the reunion tours still to come [Pave­men­t’s is alleged­ly rid­ing on the hori­zon and, if you can believe it, Wowee Zowee Luxe & Reduxe is due some­time this fall]. And while the per­for­mance was nei­ther gut-wrench­ing­ly earnest nor taint­ed with the tongue-in-cheek irony that came to define “indie”, the stripped down gui­tar-ori­ent­ed set, did­n’t suit them well. And yet the curios­i­ty remained because what makes The Fiery Fur­naces so spe­cial is their Dylanesque ver­sa­til­i­ty, rear­rang­ing songs so dra­mat­i­cal­ly as to make them prac­ti­cal­ly unrec­og­nize­able while main­tain­ing all the quirky, book­ish qual­i­ties that have made them a cult favorite.

So while it was more than a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing to hear songs like “Teach Me Sweet­heart” de-sexed, there’s always the next incar­na­tion to look for­ward to. And if the Gilber­to Gil album that played on the P.A. is any indi­ca­tion, a return to florid arrange­ments — and per­haps total trop­i­calia — seems like­ly. Yet the ques­tion remains: where me Fiery Fur­naces dub?

[See also: Fiery Fur­naces’ Media Repos­i­to­ry]