go to museums, concerts, plays, lectures and dance performances more often

Wilbur Theater with Mel and her friends. We were general admission down front, so were about 5 feet away from the band—great for the visuals and the ears, not so good for my poor fucked up orthoticless feet. Played a lot off Beware, the new album, and didn’t play Break of Day or May it Always Be (2 of my favorites), but oh well. Great show anyway.

Still very good, but not my favorite we’ve seen. The first piece (Jack in the Box) had a kind of Catholic school theme- a lot of conformity and order and repression mixed with aggression and sexuality. A lot of awesome highly synchronized fast numbers. Second piece Rossini’s Cards was slower, less impressive I thought.

Awesome! Played 4 Smiths songs which I was surprised about, and I actually knew/recognized quite a few of the rest from the burned CD’s Aaron gave me for schooling. At one point swabbed off his sweaty chest with a shirt and tossed it into the shrieking, seething crowd. A good time was had by all. Except for my feet that is.

A lot of melancholy acoustic fingerpicking, but a good time was had by all. Michah Whatever the Fucks’ songs were good, but they all sounded really similar, and Meg Baird’s songs would’ve been a lot better without her vocals in my opinion. Not that she had a bad voice (it was alright), but it just didn’t seem like the vocals fit with the rest of the music. Guy who played the dulcimer was pretty cool though. James was insanely speedy, clearly very talented, great to watch.

Chris had an extra ticket so I tagged along, even though I’d never heard them and know nothing about them. Energetic, happy pop songs were fun, but my plantar fasciitis ridden feet were not too happy, even leaning against the bar.

Had a nice dinner with Caitlin and Antonella, then sipped a delicious rose tea while we watched Faces on Film open for Juana (okay, but all the songs sounded pretty similar…). Juana and bandmates were super energetic, lots of crazy looping, yelps and squeals, everyone looking really happy to be there, definitely very different than other stuff I’ve heard lately. She kind of reminded me of a crazed Almodovar character…

Only problem was I was exhausted and falling asleep in my seat (handy for the old plantar fasciitis though) by the time it ended at 11 something… on a “school night” to boot.

Ended up having to wait in line for almost an hour in the drizzle because they were “at capacity”—shocked it’s that popular. However the nice lady at reception slipped Chris and me in for free for some reason, so that justified my $8 bellini (ahh Bologna memories flooding back). It is such a lovely atmosphere in there, especially at night… wandered around for a while with Chris, Antonella and her friends, then headed out to some tasty thai with Chris.

Israeli anarchist dude showed a film he made of Palestinians weeping, having their orchard of apricot trees uprooted by bulldozers, talked a little about his involvement with AATW, then a prof from Umass gave basically an insanely concise history of the conflict and the peace process, then Chomsky spoke a little about the lack of media attention and the illegality of ignoring the UN resolutions with settlements, but he was a little rambly and tough to follow. A good time, anyway.

Elizabeth’s friend was in this afrobeat band and said it’d be a fun dance partyish kind of show, so decided to go. Unfortunately, it was actually seated, and seating was assigned based on when you bought your ticket so we were all scattered around the room… but we did sneak together anyway. My feet were killing so I didn’t feel like dancing, just kind of sat zoning out listening to the trumpets, saxes, keyboards, drums, guitar, bass, hand drums and thinking about the last couple of weeks.

Went with Antonella on a blustery January night to see “Elements”, pieces grouped into Water, Fire, Earth, Air themes. Very funny/ “naughty” for lack of a better word… good music choices (Devo’s Whip It, Walk it Out, Let’s Do It, Chopin, etc.), water bottles, towels, suitcases and flight attendants. Happy, amusing dance.