ETC.: I Have Nothing To Say

ETC.: I Have Nothing To Say

Egad, I seem to be having blogging block this week. Perhaps it's October ennui or this pesky little cold. I know all three of my constant readers are dismayed at my lack of posting. So I'll steal an idea and just do a nifty list of....

THREE COOL THINGS THIS WEEK

1. Just got in the mail today my DVD of "The Right Spectacle - The Very Best of Elvis Costello," a great compilation of all of Elvis' videos and even better a huge selection of rare TV performances. Elvis' videos are a bit, well, stagey and dated (he's no Peter Gabriel in that department), but still fun to watch, and the DVD even boasts commentary by the man himself which I can't wait to listen to. But the live material is swell indeed. Watched a four-song mini-concert from a 1979 episode of the Dutch program "Countdown" with Toddler Peter earlier, and it's awesome, worth the price of the DVD all by itself. E.C. and the Attractions are in top form, jittery, sweaty, manic and blasting through "Watching the Detectives," "You Belong To Me" and more with an audience of statuesque Dutch Amazon women in very dated late '70s fashions swaying about.

2. Franz Ferdinand's new CD "You Could Have It So Much Better" is great bouncy Brit pop-rock fun, filled with the same propulsive rhythms and hooks that made their first CD such a blast. Been listening to the first single "Do You Want To" a lot this week which sounds like the Knack's "My Sharona" run through a blender with some long-lost Duran Duran hit single from 1983. It won't stop playing in my head, dammit.

3. Been reading the 1950s comic goodness of Showcase Presents: Superman Vol. 1, which is perhaps the biggest comic book bargain of our time - 560 pages of comics in a huge phone book-sized tome for a mere $10 (yeah, they're in black-and-white but you really don't notice after a while). These stories are so wacked-out goofy and fun that they make most of today's self-serious, overpriced comics look like a waste of paper. Actual stories from this book include one where Superman suddenly develops the ability to shoot a midget version of himself out of his finger (I swear I'm not joking), or the one where Lois Lane accidentally knocks the bottle city of Kandor off a shelf (apparently miraculously failing to harm a single person inside the bottle in the process). Sheer gold, man. I'm only partially through reading this tome, but let me just share the cover of one of these stories with you, and you'll understand why everything was better before you were born:


Really, for having blogging block I guess that wasn't too bad...