Stratovania

It's been a pretty busy week, and a pretty rainy one as well. On Monday, Beth and I went to see The State perform live at the Palladium in Times Square, which I believe is where they filmed their show back in the 90s. Eight of the eleven are part of the Breakin' Hearts and Dippin' Balls Tour, and the new performance was a mix of sketches from the show with some new material, or sometimes old stuff repurposed for a new context, like the sketch about a college dorm safety lecture from people with tape on their faces instead became a talk about theater safety, Barry and Levon tried to sell reverse mortgages, and an expanded "Froggy Jamboree" gives the characters a dark backstory.

Older sketches included Louie at the Last Supper, the mailman who delivered tacos instead of mail, the Bearded Men of Space Station 11, and "Porcupine Racetrack," which was the closer.

While changing scenes, they played some bits from the CBS special and a pre-State project where they reenacted weird stories people told them. Since Michael Showalter was one of the members who wasn't there, they made a joke out of getting an audience member to play Doug.

Before the show, we ate at Jollibee for the first time, and I liked the chicken and the peach and mango pie. I wonder what their spaghetti is like. Beth saw the show again on Tuesday, while I stayed home to watch Clone Wars episodes (I've now finished watching the sixth season), play Animal Crossing, and write a post about monster shamans. Less exciting, to be sure, but I've come to appreciate evenings where I don't have to do anything, even if that thing is purely for fun.


Thursday was the fall event at Green-Wood Cemetery that I think we've been to twice before, but the name isn't always the same. This time, it was Nightfall: Danse Macabre. I can't say it was much different from before, but a lot of what you see depends on timing. Some performances repeat with only short breaks in between, while others are only at specific times. We saw fewer of the circus performances than in previous years, although we did see some fire eaters and someone playing what sounded like music from the Legend of Zelda soundtrack on a harp.

There were two different theremin performers, and a shadow puppetry performance about a girl who befriends some crows.

As usual, getting around was a little difficult, as it was dark and the paths at the cemetery twist all over the place anyway. There were lanterns marking the proper roads, but it was still hard to figure out which way we were going, even with a map.


On Friday night, we went to see the Middle Aged Dad Jam Band at City Winery. The band has David Wain on drums and Ken Marino on lead vocals, plus some of their friends and collaborators. Craig Wedren, who did music for The State and related projects (and is married to Thomas Lennon's sister), plays guitar, David's son Henry saxophone, and Amy Miles does backing vocals and some percussion. It's all very casual, but still sounds really good, and some of the people involved are professional musicians even if the leads aren't. They play covers (mostly from the sixties through the eighties, although a few later songs made their way in) and make a lot of corny jokes. They also had several guests who did a song or two, including Paul Rudd playing Gerry Rafferty (it didn't make a whole lot of sense even in context), David Yazbek, Kevin Allison, and, most exciting for me, John Flansburgh, who sang "Born to Run."

Amy introduced him as a friend of hers, and I actually was first aware of her because she and Flansburgh's wife Robin Goldwasser were in a band, The Last Car, that opened for They Might Be Giants a few times. I believe David met her on the set of Wet Hot American Summer; she was married to actor A.D. Miles at the time, although they've since divorced. In terms of connections, it's also interesting that Yazbek did a song from an upcoming musical about Elmer McCurdy, who was already the subject of one by frequent TMBG collaborator Brian Dewan. I've heard that Joe Lo Truglio had played Rafferty before, and that Weird Al has played with the band. It was a surprisingly long show, about three hours long with one fifteen-minute intermission. And it was mostly standing room (there were seats, but they cost a lot more), so it wasn't too kind on my feet. I also had my backpack with me because I brought it to work, but I might have used a smaller bag that day if I'd remembered about the standing.

I find myself not wanting to use Twitter that much these days, even though I still have one-off thoughts that seem well-suited to that format. It just seems like nobody reads my tweets, and my feed is a lot less interesting. I don't think Elon Musk directly messed up my personal experience, but his general toxic, chaotic management has driven a lot of people away. Or maybe it's just my own perception that's changed. The change from the cute bird to a letter of the alphabet doesn't help matters; it just seems a lot less friendly now. I have a Bluesky account, but I'm not following that many people (and even fewer are following me), so it's kind of slow. I've also read some stuff recently on how Google (and probably other sites as well) has basically sold out to advertisers and donors with particular agendas that you don't even necessarily get results for the words you actually typed. Apparently you're more likely to get popular results that are sort of related to your search. It seems similar to how YouTube and apparently Tiktok have algorithms that constantly suggest related things that are selected more for being popular than relevant, and are sometimes actively dangerous. It appears to be how Musk wants Twitter to operate, too. I'm sure that, at times, it's just the computer program not working very well, but I think there's an undertone to the whole concept of not trusting the user to seek out these things themselves.

I feel like there's a general trend on the Internet of homogenization, like you don't see as many personal websites anymore. Of course, a lot of these sites were terrible and boring, but they were still personalized in a way that things really aren't these days. This makes it easier, in that users don't have to learn even the tiny bit of HTML I did in order to put stuff online, so it's not all bad. There's somewhat of a pattern of increased corporate control, but not always in ways I can specifically identify, so it's more of a general feeling on my part. And there's the current obsession with the word "content," as if writing, art, research, music, etc. are all just commodities these days.

Personally, when I make posts on my WordPress, I do so casually, but I want the information to be accurate and fairly thorough. Too often, I'll do a Google search and it will result in the Wikipedia page, some other sites that just copy Wikipedia, stubs on wikis, and unsourced conspiratorial stuff. I realize I could do some more thorough research, as I did learn something about that in school, but it's probably not worth it for a short post that will get maybe ten readers. I just feel that some of this can't be so obscure as to barely register on the whole Internet.