Okay, I got to bed at 2.30a, and hit snooze for an hour this morning, and got some shit for being late on Wednesday, so I don't think that I'll manage to get the whole story out today, but I'll do my damndest to write what I can in the next half-hour.

So, last night I saw my man Randy Newman play in Central Park. For free. And I saw him with Jen and Jen's Friend Jen and Tracing, who finally gave me my $40 back, thus ending her scam of several months, so the night was very sweet.

All we needed was Sara Astruc and it would have been the group from my birthday last year!

I got up in the middle of the goddamn night (aka 7a) to get to work early so that I could leave early and get a good seat at the concert. It started at 7.30p, so I figured that 5.30p would be a good time to get myself over to the East Side, and I was right. I met up with Jen, and we were well up in the queue.

They didn't let us in until 7p, and by that time Tracing was there and Jen's Friend Jen was not, so Jen went to look for her, which meant that Tracing and I went in and got our lovely seats (front row, audience right) and they couldn't get in for simply ages, because they had to go all the way to the back of the queue, which was snaking through Central Park like a, like a snake.

First up was Jonathan Richman, the guy from There's Something About Mary, the troubadour who did the singing bits. He is, I swear, the biggest freak that I have ever seen. And I mean that in a good way, I really do.

He's so in touch with his inner child that I guessed him to be about 25, though he looked 15, but Jen's Friend Jen said that he's a good deal nearer 50 than 15, and in fact (gotta love the web!), he's 49. How someone who looks like he was just bar mitzvahed could be 49, I don't know, but the web don't lie.

Of course, it does, but not this time.

Anyway, he dances like an 8 year old who just discovered that he has hips, he takes off his guitar and then puts in back on one second later, he makes faces so unstudied it's as though he has never seen a mirror, he forgets to play for a second, 'cause he's making gestures of some kind, he seems to forget that he needs the mic to amplify him, so he'll sort of wander away from it like a baby duck. It was like watching the Rainman perform.

And the fans were moulto fannish. At one point he sang a song about an airplane that had been on Sesame Street, because there were little kids in the audience, that went:

And I look over, and there is this huge biker dude, about 45 years old with a long beard and long hair, roaring out "And wangity-wang wangity-wang!" and I thought, yep, this song's for the kiddies.

I don't know that I was wild enough about the songs to buy any albums, but I might watch the movie again to see him, and considering that I wasn't altogether insane about the movie, that's saying alot!

And it's 10a and I said I'd stop at 10a, so I have to go!

We'll get to Rand, the actual reason that I actually was in the park and got up early and got no sleep and shit like that, tomorrow.

What's the first concert you ever saw?

And we're still talking about guilty pleasures, our new favourite books the nature of fame, scars, how we've changed since high school, pettiness, the vans (which has bizarrely morphed into a discussion of Dune), and still, and always, our big fat asses.

Today's horoscope:
Seek innovative and original approaches to what you are doing. Find ways to alter your usual routine. You thrive on change today.

One year ago today:
The only thing missing was a Taft joke or something.

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Last Updated Fri 30 June 10:07:09 2000