Evil's Way Too Cool To Lurk Here
Now Playing: The Roots--"Web"
Yesterday, I went into Grizzly Peak to say hi to Elizabeth and instantly became so depressed that I left without doing so. That place is awful and the beer's terrible. Stuffed animal heads everywhere...

The experience drove me all the way to Aubree's in Ypsilanti. I love Aubree's. If that's uncool, then it's your problem. I rode in on the #6 (Ellsworth), taking in a rather attractive part of the town I'd never seen before, along Michigan Avenue. The streets were lined with pretty old houses and tiny brick cornershops, with what looked like a couple of communal gardens interspersed between them. The evening was already stunning and the windows were partly open, so we got a cool rush of air as we passed "Recreation Park" (a bizarre generic name that sounded like something out of a Communist dictatorship, like "Happiness Generation Quadrant" or something). At Aubree's, I actually got the first-ever shoutout on my Don Carlos NTN tournament T-shirt (a relic of my April 2003 triumph when I won $100 at the Washtenaw Ave. location, now the apparently thriving "Coin Laundry"). Aubree's has NTN, of course, and I managed to win my first game there, while scarfing down a delicious (and cheap) calzone and a colossal (and cheap) mug of Molson. The view down the Huron as I walked the Cross St. Bridge was the prettiest I'd yet seen there.

Because I'm an idiot, however, I decided to go to the Friday show at the Blind Pig, which "featured" Otto Vector. I've described these people earlier (however incoherently), and I know at least one of you might wonder what possessed me to go this time. There were three other bands playing--The Nice Device, Novada, and The Fury--and the cover was pretty cheap, so I figured if they sucked, then I wouldn't be conned into going to another one of their shows. The place filled up surprisingly quickly with a mildly fratty crowd that brought the place down for me. It didn't help that the beer of the month was Miller High Life (I'd thought it would be Molson--cruelly disappointing).

One mildly not-unpleasant surprise: Brandon Wiard opened for everyone, and he was... all right. I'd heard a lot about him from various sources, and it would be interesting to find out for myself. Half the time I couldn't understand the lyrics, although I think that might have been due to the din from everyone else (obviously not a problem with bands like the Dirtbombs). Some of the songs were very pretty, melodically speaking, especially "Miss Michigan" (I think that was the title). In the end, though, I wouldn't call him one of my favorites. He left, and I decided I was out, too. Tired, a little moody from youthful yuppiedom all around, and in need of some fresh air, that was me.

The walk home restored my spirits. The weather was gorgeous. On the way to the Pig earlier, I'd seen the usual fundamentalist Baptist/Taliban/Cromm (?) demonstration on the corner of N. University and State St. besieged by a brand-new variety of religious fervor, on behalf of robots. A gaggle of people, most of them teenagers, I think (some of whom I recognized from the library computer labs), shouted down cars and waved signs urging people to "worship the robots" (I'm not sure if they actually said that, but the gist was there). A couple of passersby asked me to explain the thing to them and I did my best. My walk back met with weirdness as well. A couple of old ladies and younger male hippies were spraying words on the Diag near S. and E. University and I paused to see that they were commemorating today's sixtieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

This morning, I saw the same words and images sprayed all over State St., Main St., and Kerrytown. They must have been working through the night. My position on the whole thing, really quickly: "I believe, by and large, that the 1945 bombs were necessary to prevent the greater loss of life that would have resulted in a US invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. However, the present-day US government's hectoring of other countries to give up their bombs--even loathsome dictatorships like North Korea--while maintaining our own nuclear weapons, only serves to further alienate an already alienated world. There may be no way out of the present impasse, but this double standard's something to keep in mind." Okay, that wasn't "really quickly," but it could have been worse. The images were rather clever, too--cutouts of human figures had been laid on the ground and sprayed over with white paint, to remember the "shadows" left on the walls that were all too frequently the only remains of many of Hiroshima's residents. Well, they succeeded in one thing--they made me think, although I almost certainly would have done that without their help, thank you very much.

I laughed, though, to see that it must have gotten a little much for them towards the end. In front of Gratzi, an (I hear) overpriced Italian restaurant, one of three or four on that stretch of Main Street alone, among the somber shadows and lurid "HIROSHIMA--1945; ANN ARBOR--?????" stencils, someone had finally chalked "OLIVE GARDEN RULZ." Classic.