...because the Ladies do rock. 'Went and saw Barenaked Ladies this weekend, in concert with Alanis at the Greek. It was a wee bit unsettling to have so much Canada on one bill, eh?

I felt my first embrace of the Barenaked Ladies back in college (like so many others) back when they were cult status - before One Week really put them on the map. Unfortunately One Week's radio omnipresence eventually drove a lot of listeners irreversibly insane. Mental hospitals hadn't felt such a strain since Reagan closed down half the institutions in the U.S. - just as "With or Without You" was hitting the airwaves back in '87.

"Chickety china, chickety china, chickety china..." Yeah, you get the point.

You could tell the Ladies are tiring of One Week - even more than "If I had $1,000,000." The latter at least affords them the opportunity to ad lib something fresh and funny every night - the part of their concert that separates the Ladies from the boys. They played an accoustic version of One Week, downplaying it - even changing the beat. It's probably all for the best that song dies a slow, painful death.

But imagine my surprise when I saw BNL had commissioned Red vs. Blue to produce rants for the guitar-change interludes!

Brilliant! Ingenius!

I think I and like, one other geek way in the back were the only two people cheering - who actually understood what was happening up on the screen. "Red versus fucking Blue - that's awesome!!"

(Needless to say, Cronkette slinked down in her chair, pretending she didn't know me. Understandable.)

Seriously though - Halo's worse than crack, isn't it? And not just for nerds or socially inept gamers with nothing to do on the weekends. I mean, they just designed that game to rope in people's brainwaves Strange Days-style and never let go, right? There's probably subliminal product placement being flashed at us over and over and we'd never even know. I first played Halo over two years ago and, like the Kerry hamster, I've never quite been the same since. Now Halo 2 comes out just as I start Grad school. Thanks guys, not-flunking out of school would have been nice...

Alanis was pretty good. I'm not convinced she actually needed to be playing the guitar when she had one, and when she's just standing at the mic, she does this weird two-step dance over and over - but so does Dave Matthews so that would be sexist of me to go after one and ignore the other. I guess the lesson is, you both suck and I could do better.

(Kindly send hate mail here.)

The rest of the weekend was a blur. I did this "Poker ride" all over Hermosa, Manhattan and Redondo. It involved about 9 hours of drinking at 5 different bars, Cronkette winning $150 which I'll never see, and a round trip from Playa Del Rey to Hermosa by bike. I guess unsurprisingly to anyone who's ever been drinking that long, the ride back home was a lot less painful than the ride down...

Next day: Woke up. Went to beach. Drank mojitos. Played volleyball. Watched beachfront condo party, consisting of only two sketchy old guys in their 60s and about 17 twenty-something models (not kidding) and wondered if there's anything that comes remotely close to that insanity in Chicago, then drank more mojitos. My name is Dickie and I am an alcoholic...

(and to answer your question yes, of course I got in trouble for staring at the models.)