show tonight is going live on the webcam ~ starting now (8pm atlantic time)

My question for you is: if you could knit a sweater for Rusty the narcoleptic dog, what would it look like?

You remember Rusty the narcoleptic dog, don’t you? Run run run, flumpf. Google it or something, I’d find the link for you but I’m on dialup and it would take me 45 minutes.

Anyway, sharpen up your knitting needles and think that one over.

I was looking through my archives and I realized that the most boring posts are the ones where I talk about music. So, sorry. I have two shows in Halifax this weekend.

Friday April 28: Gus’s Pub w/HotShotRobot, The Stance, Oh Beautiful! Majestic Eagle!. 10pm-ish. $5

We are renting a subwoofer for this show in the hopes of exposing architectural defects in the pub’s walls and ceiling. I was thinking it would be cool to have people kissing through the vibrating glass walls of the VLT room. You can just try out what it might be like to kiss various people and open your eyes and see what you think of it. It doesn’t mean anything since there’s a wall between you so there’s no pressure. Boys can kiss boys and it won’t even mean you are gay. Maybe you’ll learn something.

Saturday April 29: One World Cafe w/We’ve Gone Feral, Juan Love. Early show. 7pm? $cheap

I’ll be opening this show, performing as 9Volt Sound System. That’s instrumental electronic music with a bunch of drum machines all wired together and noodly stuff over top. You can dance to it if you want to but it’s meant to be the kind of music where you’re just hanging out talking to your friends and not even really aware of the music until it stops and then you look around and go, “Aww, what happened to the tunes?”

Meanwhile I’ve been sending coded subliminal messages straight to the back of your brain for the past 45 minutes and suddenly you’re super horny and you have no idea why. Here are some beats I jammed in my bedroom the other night:

http://destroyhotaction.com/9volt/angerbattery.mp3

I got the A/V CD release coming up. Saturday May 20 at the Attic in Halifax and then on the 21st at Elwood’s in Saint John, NB. Both shows with The Trick and Gary Flanagan.

The CD is done, I’m just waiting to get a final master so I can ship it off to be manufactured. For the first time I’m going to get someone else to make the whole thing. Just once I’d like to have a normal CD. No spraypaint stencils, no last-minute CD burning, no running to Business Depot to photocopy covers and cutting them out during the opening bands. I just want to be a normal musician with a normal CD with shrinkwrap on it. Shrinkwrap! Well, I’ll try it and see how I feel about it. I just want to try being a normal dog for once and not keel over every time I’m chasing a squirrel across the lawn.

I’m also releasing a 9Volt CD in May. And a Swordfight DVD of all my weird little art-movies.

I mixed the A/V disc at home on my iBook using GarageBand, and if anyone would be interested in getting their paws on the actual GarageBand sessions to muck around with, I think I’ll release those as well as a separate disc of their own. So you can do remixes and mashups and solo the vocal channel and hear all my mistakes.

Today’s the deadline for VideoFACT applications. I’m pussing out and not applying. I had some cool ideas for a visual treatment but got bogged down in the whole budget section. There’s too much that I don’t know about. Maybe I’m just not ready. I suck at applying for stuff, I always feel like I’m a fraud and I’m not really eligible. Why do I even need a grant? I’ll probably just shoot the whole thing myself on mini-DV and stick it on the web for free.

Sometimes I watch movies on DVD and then I watch the special features with the making of the movie. Making a movie looks like fun, but jeez isn’t there any way to do it without having 25 people all standing around on the set watching? Who are all you people? I want to make movies where the actors are over there and the camera person is over here and that’s that. All the rest of it is just a lot of hard work to make a lie seem believable. And lies are cheesy, I mean half the time “the making of” is more entertaining than the stupid film itself.

In other news I have a MySpace for A/V now.

myspace.com/avhotaction if you want to check out a couple tracks from the new CD. I will probably just delete my old profile or allow it to fall into chaos and neglect, so there you go, MySpace people.

I am looking for someone to go on tour with this summer so I don’t have to burn gas driving my lonesome self around. It’s more fun to travel with people anyway, makes the drives go faster. If you’re feeling the A/V, I do not take up much room in a van, my demands are few, I can drive and as an added bonus I can do your live sound so you don’t have to trust the dude at the venue with the pony-tail.

Or maybe I’ll persuade my solo new-wave brethren to quit their jobs and hit the road in my ’93 Tempo on the cross-country half-naked make-out tour from sea to sea to sea.

I used to think that my heart was broken. Then I realized that my heart isn’t broken so much as it’s simply gone.

I got up this morning and drank a bottle of Javex bleach. I stood around in the backyard for a while. Then I took off my pants and waded out into the river.

The water was so cold, my nuts crawled all the way up into my abdomen. I had to come inside and sit on a space heater for a while to try to coax them out. Finally I wound up having to use a pair of salad tongs.

So which do you prefer, French dressing or Italian?

I’m driving to Grand Manan Island on Saturday afternoon.

I made a spontaneous plan to head down on Friday but decided to wait a day after talking to my friend on the island. She informed me that high winds were making for a very rough ferry crossing.

She said people were wearing life jackets and praying on the ferry, not a word of a lie. Little kids were puking all over everyone’s shoes. I’ve never been seasick in my life but I don’t think my limits have really been tested.

Apparently Sir Paul and company have never heard of Grand Manan. Last time I was down there the fishermen were shooting seals all over the place. The seals pop up out of the water and the fishermen blow their heads right off with the old shotgun. Seals are considered vermin. Stiff competition for Fundy fishies ’round those parts.

You have to show up an hour-and-a-half early to be sure of a spot on the ferry. If I can’t get on I’m just gonna drive my car right off the pier and drive across underwater on the floor of the Bay of Fundy. I bet I could make it.

Monday morning I’ll turn around and drive home the same way. My car will emerge from the water onto a beach in Black’s Harbour with seaweed hanging off it everywhere.

I’ll roar up the highway all the way to Saint John, New Brunswick going 200 km/h and then I’ll bust straight through the main doors of the Saint John City Market. And everyone will be in awe of me and the Dulsemobile.

At the market deli I’ll look in the mirror and realize I have one big eye on the middle of my face, and my arms have been replaced by long floppy tentacles with suction cups all over them.

So I’ll snag a couple of mangoes from a fruit stand at Pete’s Frootique and then give’er down the escalator towards Brunswick Square. Some big pig of a security guard will yell ‘Stop’ but I’ll just laugh and climb straight up the glass wall of the elevator.

Then I’ll take off running through the hallways of the Delta Brunswick Hotel, mangoes curled up in one long tentacle with the other one dragging along on the carpet behind me.

I’ll run and run and I won’t stop until I collapse huffing and puffing on a bed inside some yuppie executive suite. Because I am Squidman and I can walk through fucking walls.

I got back to the country on Sunday night. Four nights of rain. I’ve barely left my house.

Some fierce wind today. Blew my front door open and I listened to it flap around. The wind ripped the screws right out of the door frame.

I watched as a strong gust wrenched the doors off the baby barn and threw them on the grass. Now the lawnmower glowers at me from across the driveway.

Out the back window: the river. Steel-grey and rising.

I get in the car and drive. Classic rock on the radio. I will trade you the complete Aerosmith discography for a working tape deck. I slow down at the train bridge and watch a freight train rumble across.

The train bridge is a mighty structure across the Salmon River. I slow down almost to a stop right in the middle of Main Street, watching the train, under the bridge, still driving, over my head, over my shoulder, through the driver’s side window, it comes and comes. Graffiti and petroleum. It’s important to see both sides of things.

At the causeway a muskrat wiggles across the road in front of me. Big wet rat is all a muskrat is.

I drive very fast along the empty country road. I got a headful of Hendrix, I’m feeling OK. Just me and Jimi and the need for speed. I’m goin’ down to shoot my old lady.

A deer runs up to the edge of Route 10 and stops. Go ahead, I dare you.

The car hydroplanes and goes into a skid. Bambi scampers away. The adrenalin rush is the release I’ve been craving.

I arrive back at Barton Drive (population: one) to find an RCMP car blocking the road. I signal left, and he pulls ahead out of my way. The Mountie gives me a gruff nod as I pass.

I watch the rear view mirror on my way down the hill. The Mountie backs up to his original position. Strange place for a speed trap.

Or maybe it’s for my own protection.

It’s Easter Monday. According to Christian tradition, today’s the day that Jesus came back from the dead.

That makes Christianity the original zombie movie. Jesus is the undead messiah. Tonight’s the night he shuffles out of the grave with his arms outstretched in front of him, in order to wander around for a while and do some miracles and eat some people’s brains.

ROMAN SOLDIER 1: He’s not here. He is risen.
ROMAN SOLDIER 2: Oh shit man, what are we gonna do now man, we’re in some pretty shit now. Game over man, game over.
ROMAN SOLDIER 1: Nails and spears alone won’t kill it. We’re going to have to… cut off its fucking head.

I love Easter because whenever someone asks me what I’m doing on the weekend, I get to say “Oh ya know, just hanging around.”

My laptop is back from the dead as well. Do you doubt me, unbelievers?

I wanted to post a video to say welcome back to the Internet. Only, I was too lazy to plug in my video camera. So I wound up animating a bunch of photos and doodling up some music in GarageBand.

The river has thawed out in completely in the few weeks since I took these pictures. It’s only mid-April and already I’m missing winter.

swordfight-brokenfloe.mov [2.5MB, get quicktime and firefox already]

Oh, p.s. you might have noticed that Claudette‘s site has been password-protected. This was done for a specific reason. If you’d like to continue reading Claudette’s site, just email either of us and provide some evidence that you are not a wacky internet stalker, and we’d be happy to share the password with you. Thanks!

a/v and the trick, tonight at the capital in fredericton. new wave dance party. starts 10:30pm.

They let me out yesterday.

First thing I did was call up my honey. I said, “Hi honey, it’s me… Guess what, I’m a free man.”

She said, “You are dead to me. Don’t you dare come near me or my children. If I so much as see your face around here, you are a fucking dead man.”

Next thing I did was go over to Regan’s and have a nice, long, hot bath.

I bought new pants today, a pair of grey cords from Value Village. Tonight I think I’m going to go down to Bugaboo Creek and get as shitfaced as possible.

A/V performs tonight in Fredericton @ Bugaboo Creek on Queen Street. 10PM.

Also this Friday, April 7, at Neptunes in Saint John.

Both shows with The Smear Campaign and The New Cities.