Dog day aftermath

As is my summer tradition, I selected the worst thing I could think of to watch. The rules are simple: it can't be "good" bad, it can't be too obscure or recent. Last year, the selection was "Zeus and Roxanne," wherein Steve Guttenberg and Kathleen Quinlan formed a creepy pseudo-nuclear family with the help of their children, a dog and a dolphin. After doing this for many years with justly forgotten family flicks, I decided to stick with the cutesy animal theme this time, but to also gradute to something in the PG-13 arena.

I cannot claim this has been a bad summer, or even a bad year, really. It's gone by really quickly, and I've been busy as hell. No one I care about has died, no major expenses have crippled me, the job is OK, living by myself has done wonders for my peace of mind... I haven't even gotten dumped. Because things are going so well, I figured it couldn't hurt to give myself an extra dose of shit cinema for summer 2006. Balance, right? So, I'd had my eye on something ever since I spotted a sequel on the shelf of my favorite video emporium - it went directly there ten years after the original. Then, to my amazement, some sick fuck made another one three years after that. All three star the least likable beneficiary of nepotism on television today. And a German Shepherd with an "attitude."

That's right. I'm saying that at the tender age of 31, I am sitting through the entire "K-9" trilogy.

"K-9"
(1989)
An innovator of sorts within the brief "renegade cop gets reluctantly partnered with a loveable dog" milieu of post-"Lethal Weapon" American action comedies, the original "K-9" hit the market just months prior to eventual two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks' turn in "Turner & Hooch." Both came more than half a decade before hirsute stoic Chuck Norris took on "Top Dog," which was infamous at the theater where I worked during college because it had made the least money of any movie that ever played there. "K-9" only ushered in one variation of mismatched cop pictures; at the height of their popularity, others included a grump (Burt Reynolds) pairing up with some sassy black kid in "Cop and a Half," a grump (Gene Hackman) partnered with a spazz who has disassociative identity disorder (Dan Aykroyd) in "Loose Cannons," a grump (Danny Glover) ushering around a spazz who is prone to accidents (Martin Short) in "Pure Luck" and faded grumps Sylvester Stallone and Estelle Getty teaming as son and mother for "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot." All winners, I'm sure.

Our grump for this film and its astoundingly belated sequels is Detective Mike Dooley, known as Dooley to both his co-workers and girlfriend. He's yet another copper who doesn't play by the rules, his cavalier disregard for decorum and penchant for snarky quips ultimately painting him as a lame white guy who's seen the "Beverly Hills Cop" sequels too often. Dooley is portrayed by John Belushi's loathesome brother, credited in these films as the more pretentious "James" (I smell a SAG workaround - according to the IMDB, he's credited as "Jim" for TV and voiceover parts). This guy's stardom has always baffled me. I think I'm supposed to like him because he's a regular Joe and he likes the Chicago Cubs. I know plenty of people like that, but only some of them are funny or personable. Jim Belushi is neither. Mel Harris of "thirtysomething" fame plays his girlfriend, Tracy, who is so underdeveloped she might as well have been played by a block of wood on which the words "plot device" were inscribed. Tracy complains that Dooley doesn't spend enough time with her, and she's right. He runs around all day and night trying to bust a drug-running industralist, even after his superiors pull him off the case. You'd think it was something personal, but Dooley doesn't seem to have any reason for pursuing this one guy beyond pure macho bullshit.

To this end, he snags a police dog named Jerry Lee ("The Killer," get it?) from another cop played by Al Bundy himself, Ed O'Neill. Dooley convinces Al to let him have the German Shepherd because he helps his fellow officer catch a plane flight, speeding up the police stand-off the surly cop was stuck overseeing by renting a car and driving it straight into the house where the baddies are holed up. It's only one example of this renegade clown's shoddy serving and protecting, which also includes blowing up his own police cruiser, handcuffing an informant to his car and driving down the street to extract info from him and bringing a police dog to a suspected drug storehouse, expecting results even though Dooley hasn't bothered to learn any of the proper commands. Furthermore, the film asks us to both accept and applaud his devil-may-care approach, although it seemed pretty disturbing to me. Dooley is so unapologetically reckless, he could be a character from "Reno 911!" (or, if he was cheating on Tracy and hit more people with his gun, from "The Shield").

Jerry Lee is considered eccentric because he eats chili (imagine the hilarious aftermath!) and also smells really bad. One supposed highlight of the film comes when Jerry Lee chews up a can of doggie deodorant that Dooley sprays on him, prompting the cop to secure the dog inside his prized 1965 Mustang convertible and send them both through a car wash with the top down. During this, Dooley watches on in glee and dances tauntingly at the dog while Rose Royce's "Car Wash" punctuates the non-humor in the most obvious manner possible. Yet, this sack of turds has the nuts to complain for the rest of the movie after Jerry Lee rips off the car's mirror when Dooley chains the dog to it. Jerry Lee gets back by interrupting Dooley's sex time with Tracy, upon whom the cop lays a reptilian lie about finding the pooch and bringing him home for her.

This scene includes footage of James Belushi running back and forth across a moonlit dining room wearing only boxer shorts.

Eventually, they make up, Jerry Lee proving himself willing to attack criminal-types with a violent fury that seems a psychic extension of Dooley's own sadistic tendencies. When Jerry Lee spies a hot poodle in another car, the soundtrack underlines their canine lust with a minute of soulful glances set to Yello's "Oh Yeah," and after the dogs get their freak on with Dooley's assistance, Jerry Lee rolls around in the grass to the strains of James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)." Eventually, after a clumsily-edited car chase (during which Dooley hollers such quips to the dog as "You wanna drive? Get a license!"), Tracy gets kidnapped and Dooley barges into the bad guy's swanky dinner party, firing his gun and calling the guy a murderer in front of his blueblood guests. Other stuff happens, the good guys win as expected. There's a forced "serious" section at the end where Jerry Lee gets shot by the evil drug runner and Dooley barges into an emergency room, ignoring health codes and threatening a doctor into removing the bullet by flashing his gun - just another oblivious move for which Dooley will receive no comeuppance. Dooley, Tracy, Jerry Lee and the poodle all drive to Vegas, a tepid recording of "Iko Iko" signaling an end to a flick that covered every base necessary for a cop-meets-dog action comedy, negating the necessity for another to ever exist. Of course, there are two more to go...

The only other thing worth noting about "K-9" is its familiar bit players. In addition to Ed O'Neill, who always seems weird playing someone other than the founder of NO MA'AM, the film includes brief appearances by a maitre'd played by Dan Castellaneta, a car salesman played by William Sadler and, most intriguingly, a guy who delivers a pizza to Dooley while he's on a stakeout played by Jerry Levine - best known as party animal Stiles in "Teen Wolf," which was helmed by "K-9" director Rod Daniel. In addition to that immortal Michael J. Fox vehicle, Daniel is also responsible for a bunch of terrible shit: "Like Father, Like Son," "The Super," "Beethoven's 2nd," "Home Alone 4"... I'll just stop.

While I hunt down a copy of "K-911," you should read this well-done article about gay metal musicians before Decibel takes it down. Props to those who made it out to my first *real* party at the crib this weekend... I'm still cleaning up, but now I know some of my neighbors. If you're looking for recommendations among new music, I can say I have recently enjoyed OutKast's Idlewild (the movie looks like the bomb), Placebo's Meds, Kalmah's The Black Waltz, Ratatat's Classics, The Bouncing Souls' The Gold Record, Beirut's Gulag Orkestar, and - soon to be released - Insomnium's Above the Weeping World, The Roots' Game Theory, Zoé's Memo Rex Commander y el Corazón Atómico de la Vía Láctea and Mastodon's Blood Mountain.

Mad Catz is Magic

I swear I didn't fall off the face of the planet, nor did I get a new job promoting gadgetry. There is a new toy in the house, and it's damn near the best $25 I ever spent.

The tale begins several nights ago, when, in a rare fit of mobility, I decided to hit the local mom and pop video store and grab some flicks I'd missed in the theater. First on the list was "V for Vendetta," which I'd put off because my desire to ogle Natalie in all her close-cropped hotness was tempered by my distrust of the Wachowskis following their mediocre sequels to "The Matrix." Second was "The Ice Harvest," because I like a nice dark comedy, and this one eluded me during the past Christmas season, when I was too cold and miserable to worry about a damn movie. My last selection, "Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic," is one of those jobbers that only played at theaters in remote areas of Chicago, and although I was pretty sure I'd love it, I don't get out to those hoity-toity arthouses like I used to.

So, I get these suckers home, only to discover that someone had apparently been so offended by Sarah's film, they decided to drag this rented copy of the DVD around their driveway for ten minutes so no one could ever watch it again. This thing was scratched to shit, and naturally skipped so badly that a mere cleaning couldn't help. If it had been a copy of "Balto III" or something, I might have understood, since children exist to ruin nice things. Kids treat their DVDs like they treat babysitters - they coat them with boogers and spit and remnants of PB&J. (Don't get me started on the myriad bacteria I could have expected if I'd rented porn.) But sometimes, I'll rent some movie you would expect a more mature viewer to favor, the kind of person who won't ruin their family's VCR by sticking pizza inside it. Yet, even these so-called adults manage to mutilate copies of grown-up movies. What kind of sicko would rent "In the Bedroom" and then fuck the disc up? Seriously, the average American has degenerated into such a filthy, selfish animal they can't even be trusted to take care of a little plastic circle that they're paying to borrow.

The solution came to me after I tried to rip the "Jesus Is Magic" disc to my computer in a last-ditch attempt at a workaround within my immediate means. Confounded not by copy protection but by human negligence, I then hit Google in search of home disc-fixing remedies. The suggestions I found, like rubbing olive oil or toothpaste into the scratches, sounded shady, so I looked for options among commercial CD/DVD repair kits instead. There seemed to be two: an overpriced variation of the toothpaste rub-on method involving chemicals and a fancy cloth, or a machine that shaves off a microscopic layer of plastic so the disc surface evens out. Further searching revealed that GameStop sells a reputable device of the latter variety. I was kind of scared to try it on a rented disc, lest I be responsible for a new copy if something went wrong. Then I remembered how my brand new director's cut disc of "The Frighteners" had been somehow scratched between its trip from the factory to my home, and how pissed I was when I discovered this mid-viewing, months too late to exchange it. With this as my intended test subject, I located a GameStop in my mall-littered environs and purchased Mad Catz's disc repair kit.

My first surprise? "The Frighteners" played without problem when, not seeing any major scratches upon inspection, I stuck it in my DVD player to determine which of the disc's sides needed fixing. Had I imagined that it was messed up? I distinctly remeber popping it in and out a couple of times and having the same problem. Well, I ultimately decided to try repairing my copy of Arcturus' The Sham Mirrors, a big favorite of mine from a couple of years ago that somehow got scratched in a horribly concentric fashion some time ago. I figured the disc was already nearly unlistenable, and I could just download the damn thing if I ruined mine.

To work the repair machine (it looks like a CD Discman), you open the top, put a drop or two of solution on one of the little circular pads inside, position your disc on a spindle, close the hatch and press start. The disc slowly rotates while the pads rub against the surface, one wet and one dry. When it gets to a problem area, a horrible grinding sound emerges which will terrify you no matter how many times you've heard it. After several passes, it shuts off. You take out the disc, wipe it off with the static-free tool provided, and suddenly, you can listen to songs your player hasn't been able to read in years.

"Jesus Is Magic" took a little more effort; after several passes with the regular method, I resorted to the "buffer" pads, tougher inserts reserved for more severe jobs which come in a darling shade of pink. Now, not only can I watch that damn movie, I have also listened to The Sham Mirrors, Faith No More's The Real Thing and Pink Floyd's Meddle in their entirety for the first time in forever. This product is recommended for those who own many discs, audio or video - even if you're careful, the law of averages says something good will eventually be damaged.

What else is new? Let's see, Jon Nödtveidt of Dissection fame killed himself last week. This, after making one of the greatest records in metal history, going to jail for seven years for being party to a hate killing, pumping up and shaving his head, announcing the return of the band upon his release, putting out one of the most disappointing comeback albums in metal history, having to cancel Dissection's scheduled U.S. shows because they wouldn't let him into the country and finally declaring that the band was breaking up for good. They found him dead of a shotgun wound the other day, accompanied by candles, a will and a copy of the Satanic Bible. It's really a sad story. Right after hearing about it via a MySpace bulletin from - of all sources - fellow fans Agalloch, I tossed my feelings here (to find 'em amid the stupidity, search for my screen name, which is also SoulReaper at Blabbermouth). As I have noted before, Nödtveidt creates a huge moral quandary for me, and his death has done the same. Dissection's one and only Chicago-area gig - March 10, 1996, at the late, great Thirsty Whale - remains the concert I most regret missing during my life. The fact that there will now decisively never be another one seems worse than the fact that the show was also the last time Morbid Angel came though with both David Vincent and Erik Rutan in the band, as well as the only time At the Gates ever performed around here (at least I have bootlegs of AtG's Whale set and of all three bands from a few nights later in Texas). Nödtveidt created one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard, one I like so much I took its title as my blogging pseudonym, but his new record was really weak. The guy was obviously messed up (his crew is predictably trying to spin the suicide as part of his Grand Anti-Cosmic Plan), but he did plenty of dumb/detestable things of his own free will, not the least of which joining the MLO and writing a bland record about it or spouting mystical jargon in interviews like Trey Azagthoth after a Tony Robbins seminar. If Bård Eithun or Kristian Vikernes offed themselves tomorrow, I wouldn't have a problem saying, "good riddance." Jon Nödtveidt was an immensely talented metal musician and songwriter back in the day, and although it was lame, he at least attempted to make something new in the genre rather than ride coattails as a stunt-casted guest or turn his back on it completely, as have the aforementioned losers. I never interviewed or met him personally, but as an onlooker from another continent, the last section of the guy's life seems like a terrible waste to me. It's a damn shame.

Finally, the motherfuckin' snakes are on the motherfuckin' plane. At least until they seal them off with a bunch of luggage and forget about them for big chunks of the movie. My thoughts are here. Hopefully, my birthday movie will be more rewarding. Toodles.

"My Other Jesus Is A Camaro" and other funny t-shirt slogans

No joke, Lollapalooza was insane. I doubt the average attendee (or critic) hoofed the expanse of Grant Park as many times as I did this weekend. If it's an expanded version of my three-day music coverage you want, then come get it, sugar.

Random Lolla thoughts that didn't make it into the proper articles:

-This fest was a self-contained example of the disparity between art and commerce in the "alternative" music business. On one hand, Lollapalooza 2006 was a magnificent showcase of influential and cutting-edge acts that provided casual fans with potential exposure to dozens of musicians whom they may not have previously heard. On the other, it was a big ol' party in the park, with many gathered to play frisbee with friends, guzzle overpriced domestic swill or simply lay around baiting skin cancer until big radio stars like Death Cab for Cutie, Kanye West or the Red Hot Chili Peppers arrived at the end of the night to soothe their fading buzzes with the balm of familiarity. Most glaring were the cases of homecoming dance staples The Violent Femmes, who play at some Chicago frat bar every other month, drawing a bigger crowd against Sleater-Kinney's (supposedly) final non-hometown show, and the dishearteningly predictable way the audience galloped for the exit as soon as Gnarls Barkley finally got around to playing their top ringtone download "Crazy." Seeing this sort of willful ignorance in action always makes me distrust American music audiences even more than I already do. Sure, Lollapalooza was the only scheduled Chicago stop for some newer acts like Gnarls or The Raconteurs, but many of the other name performers come through town on a regular basis. If the majority of attendees just wanted to hear the same handful of groups they already knew, why didn't they just make the effort to see those bands on their own tours, where they could enjoy longer sets and probably pay a lot less for admission overall? If these radio slave assholes had just stayed home and listened to their Dave Matthews CDs, the walkways would have been much less suffocating. Unfortunately, their dollars also ensured that a fest of this size and magnitude could occur and continue. In a way, Broken Social Scene fans shouldn't be too pissed that the band had to shorten their rapturous set so everyone could stand around for ten minutes waiting for the aged Peppers to find the stage - would BSS have been playing in Grant Park otherwise?

-Planes flying over the festival advertised such disparate clients as an upcoming 311 concert and a new Brazilian steakhouse. This, along with the amount of corporate branding on display (the Petrillo Bandshell was re-dubbed the "Adidas/Champs Stage"), vastly undercut the fest's "alternative" pretentions... not that there has ever been anything truly independent about Lollapalooza in the first place.

-Dig The Roots' enduring influence. The only hip-hop set I saw all weekend that didn't include live instrumentation was DJ Mix Master Mike's, and I tried to catch as many as I could (I unfortunately missed Ohmega Watts and Blackalicious). From Common's and Lyrics Born's basic funk bands to Kanye's and Gnarls Barkley's string sections, it seemed as if bands are now standard for live hip-hop performances. This was kind of strange to me after Pitchfork, where Spank Rock and the mighty Aesop Rock/Mr. Lif combo worked in a traditional rapper/DJ format. Now I'm wondering if Kool Keith will have a band with him on Thursday...

-For a "family-friendly" festival, there sure was a lot of swearing amplified from the stages. The cool parents probably didn't care, but they were too busy puffing reefers to notice. In other words, it was a real rock show: t-shirts with naughty words on them, college girls with their ass cheeks hanging out, the scent of vomited Bud Light wafting by on the intermittent summer breeze. I mean, I'd totally take my kid to something that, but that's why I don't want any.

-I kept track of the cover songs I heard throughout the weekend, at first trying to see which bands were covering other bands who were also performing. The Raconteurs did Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," and DJ A-Trak also worked a snippet of the unavoidable tune into Kanye's set (if DJ mixes count as covers, I should report that Mix Master Mike cut up RHCP's "Suck My Kiss"). Of course, Gnarls themselves did The Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone," but only having one forty-minute album to fill an hour-long slot, they also ran through Holly Golightly's "There's An End" and The Doors' b-side "Who Scared You?" While we were walking in Friday, we overheard Panic! At the Disco ruining Radiohead's "Karma Police." Nickel Creek did Radiohead better with their newgrass spin on "Nice Dream," also working in Britney Spears' "Toxic" and The Band's "The Weight" for maximum festival crowd approval. The Red Hot Chili Peppers plucked out a putrid version of Simon and Garfunkel's "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her," prompting me to wonder aloud to the press tent, "What the fuck happened to the Chili Peppers?" I hear that boring-ass Ryan Adams played some Grateful Dead songs which, not being a dirty hippie, I didn't recognize, and while I didn't see them at all, a colleague reported that Calexico played Love's "Alone Again Or" in honor of the recently deceased Arthur Lee. The Go! Team streams themselves doing Sonic Youth's "Bull In the Heather" on their MySpace page, but I don't think they played it on Saturday.

-Chicago is a great city, and I'll never deny that, but I'm not the kind of person who gets all teary-eyed when I see a photo of an old hot dog stand or a highlight reel of Papa Daley siccing the pigs on a bunch of dirty hippies. Still, something about the video screen image during Common's set, as the muscular, bearded rapper sweated it out, working a sea of fans, the skyline towering in the background... it actually got to me. This was a cool thing Chicago did, taking on Lollapalooza, and this year's concerted effort to involve as many notable locals as possible was commendable. In addition to the groups I saw and wrote about, the fest featured the awesome Mucca Pazza, plus Umphrey's McGee, Kill Hannah, The Redwalls, Poi Dog Pondering, Assassins, The M's, Sybris, Catfish Haven and a crapload of other Chicago acts. Now, let's see them invite Pelican and Yakuza next year. (Or are they "too metal" to represent the city's diverse musical palette? It's not like I'm not expecting The Chasm, or Macabre, or Nachtmystium...)

-If people aren't raving about Broken Social Scene's mesmerising performance like they were about The Arcade Fire's last year, there is little hope for we miserable humans. While stumbling away and noticing that a huge grin was cramping my face, I overheard comments like "Like, oh my God, I was seriously moved" and "They were awesome! Who were they?" It's a damned shame that like Sleater-Kinney, they're soon going on an indefinite break, because in a just world, a show like this should raise their profile immensely.

-I saw 58 live musical performers between July 29 and Aug. 6 of this year. Impressive, but it doesn't break my 2003 record of 61 bands in one week. I managed that one thanks to covering Ozzfest and attending Milwaukee Metalfest - its final hurrah, in fact - on subsequent weekends, with an amazing Eels show at Metro in between. Both of these marathon weeks involved festivals, a 2:1 show ratio of metal to alt.rock (reversed this time) and an Eels performance. I can say without a doubt that when you're gorging on live music, they're a fine inclusion.

Pray, Misty, for me

This accursed sun is turning me so brown, I'm blending in with the furniture. During summer, I usually prefer to stay inside where the A/C ensures I won't sweat just because I'm standing there. I'm an autumn guy. But this summer has already seen me enduring the great outdoors a lot, and it ain't letting up anytime soon. Recently, I went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire for the first time in more than a decade. It was fun, although almost prohibitively expensive. I had to talk myself out of buying a Viking drinking horn. Most of my dough actually went to food (amazing garlic mushrooms, nasty-ass mead, a curiously crustless shepherd's pie, Ye Olde Teriyaki Beef Jerky), although I did come home with a packet of incense because the pleasant scent was dubbed "Elven Joy." While waiting to purchase it, I honestly overheard a clerk asking one customer, "My Lord, may I have your zip code?" In a shaky British accent, no less.

For visual evidence of the festivity, look at the comments on my MySpace profile, where anti-meredith has been so kind as to post a portrait of the Prez and myself capering about, as well as several attempted images of one of three hot bald chicks I spied on the premises that day. (Stick around and listen to the Man Man tune I have playing there. "Van Helsing Boombox" is one of the best songs I've heard all year. Pretty much says it all.) And speaking of pictures of me and of sexy ladies... we're blurry, but here's the ultimate beauty and the beast snapshot:

Remember last November's rant about "The Screaming Dead"? Its star, Misty Mundae (now going by her real name, Erin Brown) arrived late to the first night of Flashback Weekend 2006. It was my first time attending this local horror/drive-in movie convention. Although I'm much more of a geek about this sort of stuff than I am about knaves and wizardry, I found the level of dorkery on display at Bristol much less embarassing than it was at some points here - chiefly the dorkery coming from me. See, I'm usually either nonplussed or extremely self-concious around celebrities I admire. While I did resist the temptation to strike up a conversation with such cool cult movie folks as Ken Foree, Marilyn Chambers, Sid Haig, Adrienne Barbeau, Robert Z'Dar or even "Hostel" babe Barbara Nedeljakova, I could not pass up the opportunity to speak with the small screen's most gorgeous Scream Queen since the '80s reign of Brinke Stevens. Misty became famous for starring in Seduction Cinema's softcore parodies of Hollywood hits. You might have seen a few of these mega-cheap whimsies on Skinemax, such as "Playmate of the Apes" or "Lord of the G-Strings." She's also in a lot of horror flicks, having started making them on video as a teenager, and has already directed a couple of distributed features at age 26. Like Brinke, her appeal comes from her affable screen persona and her striking but natural appearance. I've never seen any of her straight-up nudie flicks, but Misty's so much hotter than the plastic doll-women that usually populate soft-focus "erotic" cinema, which as far as I can tell is still dominated by an ugly '80s Playboy mindset.

I think I offended her by saying I was hoping she would be selling copies of "Spiderbabe"; she stared ruefully at me for a second, then said I should just rent it and save my money. I mumbled something lame about wanting a picture and how I hoped she'd have a nice weekend in Illinois (she informed me that she's actually from here) and other embarassing nonsense before stumbling away. This sun-dried SoulReaper couldn't bring himself to tell Misty/Erin that he had just purchased a bootleg with every "Masters of Horror" episode for the same price as she was asking for Anchor Bay's official release of her single Lucky McKee-directed segment. Other scores: a sweet Blind Dead t-shirt with art by Wes Benscoter, every episode of "Thundarr the Barbarian" burned onto four DVDs and Mikita Brottman's "Hollywood Hex: An Illustrated History of Cursed Movies" - bringing me one volume closer to my dream of owning every title in the Creation Cinema Collection.

I could not return for Flashback Weekend's more substantive second and third days because I was busy roasting outside. I was covering the Pitchfork Music Festival, a big to-do indie rock marathon tucked into a neighborhood park near United Center. Despite the heat and some technological complications, the story got filed and I had a hell of a good time - especially Sunday, when it was less hot and a bunch of people I knew were also attending. View a sketchy rundown of the musical offerings I witnessed here, and recoil at my attempts to describe bands I know little to nothing about. I must reiterate how totally beyond awesome Man Man was, and having picked up their first disc at the fest, I am now super psyched about their return next month at the Logan Square Auditorium. Still, between Peeping Tom last Thursday, Pitchfork last Saturday and Sunday, Genghis Tron tomorrow, Lollapalooza all weekend and Dr. Octagon next Thursday, I may soon be concerted-out for a while.