BYRON: STEAL THIS PICTURE

YOU HAVE STOLEN MY HEART.

THINGS WITH KNOBS WORLD PREMIERE!

Alert Power Love readers will note there was a reading this past Sunday, but it was not a reading it was A CAUCOPHONY OF MIND BLOWING MIND BLOWINGNESS. We invaded Sunday Salon's space for a night and they are damn good people to let us do so.

JoeTower read first. We couldn't afford lights so Joe read in the dark. Then Jeff went outside and sold Things With Knobs t-shirts and then we had a billion dollars so we bought electricity with it. And alcohol.

Then Jeff read. Jeff read in the dark, too, even though by that point we were living high on the hog, so to speak, and had lights. Jeff wanted to make a statement about how people live their whole lives in the dark and something about close-mindedness, which I think is bad, I guess, I don't know, I missed the end of the statement. I was busy getting interviewed by Access Hollywood.

Then . . .

THE WORLD PREMIERE OF THINGS WITH KNOBS THE BEST BAND EVER IN THE WHOLE WIDE UNIVERSE EVER EVER EVER. I am not making this up. The press materials that I made up clearly said "We are the best."

For context, you might want to know that I wrote a story about sucking ass at a job in which I was the official office ass sucker and I had lots of daydreams about being a rock star.

Originally, the story was supposed to be about me and my rock band. But we didn't have a rock band. And when I say "we," I mean, I don't know any rock bands. In addition, I have no musical talent whatsoever, despite the fact that I insist on singing "Edge of Seventeen" whenever I drink more than 2 beers, even when it's not playing on the jukebox or anywhere else in the world for that matter. Sometimes, I think I sound like Stevie Nicks. You would think so, too, if you were drunk and you had a pillow case over your head and you happened to be laying underneath a pool table.

Luckily, Misha has enough talent for him and me and the entire universe and also he lives behind the Fortress of Sound, which coincidentally could pass for one-half of an electronica band and voila! We are an electronica band. Except I don't sing, I just read my story. And also, I am the resident t-shirt maker. The t-shirts say: Things With Knobs, because that is the name of our band. No self respecting band would show up to a show without "merch," as we say in the "biz."

So then we rocked it. Except I kinda blew the first paragraph, so technically, I didn't rock it. Misha rocked it. I sorta square-danced it. Luckily, I wrote notes to myself so I wouldn't screw up. Things like: PAUSE! and QUIT SPITTING! and IS THAT SPINACH IN YOUR FRONT TEETH? All the things you want to hear when you're standing in front of a microphone in a room filled with people you don't know.

So then we finished and everyone in the entire bar stood up and screamed and yelled and clicked on their lighters and fainted from sheer joy and then ordered more drinks and played pool.

Forthcoming from Things With Knobs: A fan club; a MySpace page; a hot-selling debut album; a mediocre second album; an exhaustive world tour; multiple scandalous episodes including but not limited to alcoholic overconsumption, excessive gobbling of hallucinogenic drugs, various crashes involving high-performance sports cars, one crash in the Pyrenees involving a high-performance, Italian-made bicycle; irreconcilable creative differences; a wickedly public breakup; utterly unmagical solo albums; a secret reunion; a full-page spread in both Chicago dailies announcing the secret reunion; a reunion tour; $375 tickets to the reunion tour; gray hair; a winery in Napa; a VH1 Behind the Music special; a condo on Mars; a snarky public feud with Mick Jagger; cameo appearances in The Return of Animal House.

Good times!

And now, back to the evening:

Jeff is looking at the bar and thinking, "Why are we outside when the whiskey's inside?"

Misha is thinking, "Shit. This is totally destroying my credibility. Maybe if I close my eyes, they'll go away." Except maybe he wouldn't say "Shit."

I'm thinking, "Instead of 'Edge of Seventeen,' I bet the dudes would love to hear me sing Heart's 'Barracuda'."

Seriously, those t-shirts are hot.

I am Nick. I am your producer.

ALWAYS MAD AND USUALLY DRUNK BUT I LOVE HER LIKE NO OTHER

Hey! What are you doing on Sunday? How about heading over to the Charleston Bar and listening to some people tell some stories! It'll be head-blowingly fun! I am not lying to you! Jeff is reading a classic! JoeTower is reading a new story! I am reading a new story! Misha is rockin the music! THIS IS A NIGHT THAT CAN'T BE BEAT! It's all about the exclamation point, people!

DETAILS!
Sunday Salon & 2nd Story
Charleston Bar
2076 N. Hoyne
7:30 pm
FREE!
More info at the Sunday Salon site here.

WHOA

BLOOD LUST AND FURY

So then Uniqua shows up and we know that this is a trap. She's clearly a spy. But for what agency? That's always the question, isn't it? But she's clearly up to something, just look at that face, and The Writers are always on guard for this sort of thing because we are highly trained professionals and we have lived this life for a long, long time, and we are not easily fooled.

Uniqua acts like everything is all cool and she's gonna "just hang" with us for the day and, "Oh? You're celebrating Megan's birthdaysary today?" we are (again) not fooled because we know someone else made up the term "birthdaysary," not her, and we are (again) not easily fooled.

Here is what you need to know about pinata spies:

1. They are usually pink.

2. They are usually stuffed with newspaper, Sharpies, and brain candy.

3. They shed.

4. They have oddly stiff facial expressions.

5. They drink. A lot.

6. They will shoot you dead the second you turn your back.

We lured Uniqua to our top secret location, code name: Montrose Avenue Dog Beach. We gave her the seat of honor. She suspected foul play. We said, "Fowl play? There's no chickens here to help you, ENEMY OF THE STATE!" At this, Uniqua whipped out her magic numchuks and started fighting! It was chaos! It was undue stress and cacophony. It was high octane violence of the kind the world has never seen!

The Writers are a peacful bunch, but when faced with a kill or be killed situation, we are reminded of our extensive and somewhat painful basic training and we do what all guardians of national security do in these situations: We make mimosas.

Then the madness ensued. We reminded ourselves of the Geneva Convention. We reminded ourselves of basic human decency. But, people, I implore you, consider what you would do if you were equipped to squash pure evil and that pure evil was right there in front of you.

The Writers threw out valiant effort after valiant effort . . .

Periodically, we stopped for food. You really need to ingest the proper amount of protein and carbs when slaying pure evil.

Jeff: Look! Wooden stakes!

Christopher: This will help us fight evil in the future!

Jeff: As long as evil always arrives in the form of vampires!

The spoils of war.

Dreamers of a new tomorrow.

Notice to all pinata spies: We know you're out there. We are not afraid.

Dear God,
Yeah, sorry about that whole "Luckily, I’m God" thing in the last post. I'm glad you sent me an e-mail to let me know your concerns. Identity theft is a problem in today's turbulent and technological world and it's good to see you've googled yourself as protection against it. I have to say, while pretending to be you, I seemed to have slipped into your iTunes library, and, wow, I did not know Alice Cooper had such an extensive body of work. Also noticed you have a song from every artist performing at Lollapalooza. Will you be going? Take pictures! I'll check out your blog. Wish I could go to Lollapalooza. But I guess it's not in the cards. Unless you wanted to do something about that. That would help. But I can see how maybe you wouldn't want to, I mean, I did hack into your iTunes and all. But, I did apologize, so that should be worth something, no?

Oh, hey, while I've got you here, let me just say, top marks on the Rocky Mountains! Those things are fuckin gorgeous.


Yours truly.

Let's say you just spent the last three hours googling, "calcified DVT and superficial thrombophlebitis" and reading every link that came up for it and then realized that you could probably have a lengthy and coherent discussion with a highly trained medical professional, a discussion that would ensue in medicalese, and possibly lead to a prize-winning study showing the lack of connection between a deep vein thrombosis and a superficial thrombosis, and you were lauded across the land for your discovery; and then you looked at your bike and wondered what kind of a hat stand it would make.


Not a very good one, I mean, the hats would probably fall off. Unless you balanced one precariously on the saddle, which would look dumb, but if you never have friends over, who cares, right? But still, it would look dumb and why are you asking me--do I look like I have a PhD in Hat Standology?


Which is why you shouldn't use your bike as a hat stand, you should use it to be a back up dancer on a bike because there is a huge market for this, if you take a look at this video, which is cool because it utilizes my all-time favorite instrument, the hand clap, an instrument I am ridiculously skilled at using and use in all my own music, thanks for asking.


Even the most astutest Power Love reader probably doesn't know how skilled I am at the hand clap, but I am, even though now that I watch that video again I'm vaguely unsettled about the Donnie Darko rabbit head dude on the right and it's exactly this kind of thing that reminds me why I prefer my singers in bands to be long and lanky, preferably in leather pants, preferably wailing incessantly and nonsensically about something that's intermittently punctuated with a hearty, "Fuck you!" and swigs from the nearest bottle of Jack Daniels. Also, it's best if there is at least one Les Paul around. And a harmonica.


Ninethly, Appetite for Destruction is 20 years old and sheesh, whoa. When that album came out I still used the word "album" and I was driving around the suburbs in a four-door Chevy Chevette with luggage racks and thinking to myself how awesome cool it would be to be homeless and wacked out on heroin and trolling the Sunset Strip and fighting with club owners over their pay-to-play policies and laughing at Tracii Guns 'cuz my band stole part of his name, although, no bad vibes, dude, we just had the better sound and also, my hair hairsprayed higher, so obviously, we were way more marketable, and also, mental illness does wonders for famosity and it's quite possible nobody reading this is getting any of these references but that's because you're a bunch of losers who didn't spend all your extra time reading Rip magazine and watching Headbanger's Ball on Saturday nights.


So, to recap, it's quite possible I'm not the lead singer of Guns N Roses, which means that also I may not be an Olympic gold medalist road racer, and it's also quite possible I did not win Stage 14 of Le Tour this year, and, possibly, I may not have backup dancers on bikes in my creepy Donny Darko video, which means I quite possibly do not have a voice like velvet, which is unfortunate, because if I'm going to be lauded across the land for my sparkling medical discoveries, it would be beneficial to have a great voice to belt out the karaoke I would surely be doing at all those conferences I would surely be invited to. Luckily, I'm God, so everything should work out just fine.