Weekend Happenings and Concert Review

Not much has happened lately, but I've been busy.

On Friday, as part of my resolution to get Ontario license plates, I headed to get my safety and emissions tests. I called a place in Toronto and they wanted to charge me $100, so I called my car's original dealership in Brockville. They wanted $64.99. I knew that any work that needed to be done would cost less in Brockville than Toronto, so I headed there on Friday morning.

Thinking that I would be slowed down by bad roads, I left at 8am. I skipped along nicely, and hit Brockville seconds after my car clicked noon. I decided to head to the lot right away and get things rolling. At 2:30, my car was still sitting exactly where I'd left it.

I waited until 4:45 only to be told that my car had passed the emissions test with flying colours, but had failed the safety inspection. In order to pass, I need to fix a chip in my windshield, get a new wiper blade, and replace a brake light. These are the smallest most insignificant things, but will end up costing me a fortune. The brake light has a tiny chip about the size of the last digit of your pinky finger in the plastic cover. The chip, can hopefully be filled without replacing the windshield, and I do believe that the wiper is bullcrap, since it is better than in most new cars. It seems to me that all of this is a load of garbage and is government instituted make-work taxation.

I drove the my parents farm after that debacle. I spent Saturday helping my parents clean out their garage. While it sounds easy enough, it was quite a tough job. My father is a serious packrat and cleaning the garage involved carrying furniture up stairs for storage, moving wood, purging garbage, and a lot of tidying. We had two truckloads full of garbage.

After working for 7.5 hours, I drove back to Toronto. I had tickets for The Most Serene Republic concert last night. Chris and I headed to the show at Lee's Palace. We missed opening band, Debaser, but did catch In-Flight Safety. I had seen them play at the Harbourfront Centre in August and enjoyed them then. I thought that they were tighter in August, but still good last night.

I don't mind The Most Serene Republic's album Underwater Cinematographer. I especially like the opening track, Prologue, and only wish that they had more instrumental tracks on the album. I might even go so far as to say that I like the album. That said, I lost a lot of respect for the band last night. While I do appreciate that they are trying to do something different, not only with their music, but also with their live show, I found the whole thing a little overdone: like an acquaintance that tries to hard to make you like them.

The audience was given kazoos before the show, which seemed only to provoke the doofuses in the audience to believe that they too were musicians. I'm glad that TMSR are trying to engage their audience, but I think that they underestimated the moron factor last night. Guy One: Real pretty boy type with barbie on arm. He wore a blue and green checkered sport jacket on top of a baby blue shirt with a collar that he refused to fold down. He had on frayed jeans, and black and white "Elaine shoes". To top it off he wore a mesh hat skewed to the right.

When you could actually hear the music above the din of exclusive-to-Toronto during-show- conversations and the incessant humming of kazoos, the music was enjoyable. The lead singer's microphone was NOT loud enough and the sound person really dropped the ball since it's only as difficult as turning a knob.

The frenetic on-stage act quickly grew sour. It was just too much. Lead singer, Adrian Jewett, bounced around the stage like a superball, which is fine, but I am always somewhat skeptical of bands whose lead singer doesn't play an instrument on each song. Band members wore white shirts splashed with mud and dirt. There was a clothesline that spanned the hall which was used to hang out clothes during the show.

I all seemed too forced. After 30 or so minutes I was faced with the option of spending the next hour watching the same thing. I decided that I'd seen all that I needed to see and we split.

Today, I haven't got too much planned. I'm heading to Jon's to watch Miller's Crossing, and then I'm going out for dinner. Fairly quiet which is okay with me.