How hard is it to keep a band together for 25 years? Apparently pretty hard!

Cruising the interwebs tonight, I saw a press photo of U2, with Bono jumping around and Larry smiling like he's still 17 instead of 40-whatever. And it got me and Steven thinking. How many bands can say that they're still around, still putting out records, with the same exact lineup that started the thing?

A band is like a marriage, and while many end in divorce, we salute the ones that go the distance. Sooo....

How many bands can you name that ...

1) Have been together for at least 25 continuous years
2) Have the original lineup still intact
and
3) Are still putting out new music?

This was harder than it might appear at first blush.

The Beatles? Only ten years. Not even worth mentioning, really.

Cheap Trick? Replaced their bass player in the mid-80s, and while he did rejoin, we think this violates the spirit of the thing.

Bad Religion? Please. The list of former band members has its own Wikipedia entry.

Now, if a band broke up in the early 90s but has reformed and is putting out nostalgia product, it does NOT count. This is the Poison exclusion.

* If a band had a little problem with its arms or its noses but has managed to put all that behind it and meets all the other criteria for the last quarter-century, it MAY count. This is the Aerosmith codicil.

* If someone dies, and is replaced but the overall spirit is observed, this band MAY county. This is the Def Leppard exception. I mean, come on. They didn't even kick out their drummer after he lost a fucking arm, for chrissakes. If Steve Clarke were alive today, we have no doubt he would be taking the stage with Joe Elliott et al. This exception also applies to Queen.

* If, in their formative years, up to and including the release of their first record, a band makes a lineup change that fundamentally created their defining sound, this band MAY count. This is the Rush addendum.

It doean't seem like such a lot to ask. Sure, like a 50-year marriage, it's rare, but it happens. Doesn't it? So we wracked our brains and reviewed our CD collection and came up with ...

U2

And then the four bands listed above, all exceptions and limitations to apply.

This is the kind of thing Steven and I do with our late nights. So please, someone, prove us wrong. U2 can't possibly be the only band clocking two and a half decades with original members. Can they?!

Any verifiable suggestions will be added (with credit, natch) to an updated post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAoJY6pmvoM

OLIVER!! Seriously, I love Richard Hammond. And his ridiculous car. For those who care, this was what the BBC had to offer him to steal him away from Braniac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKkR9S2lq6Q

If the book is half as funny as the video, it'll be well worth my $20.

I'm having my morning coffee from a mug reading "I love the smell of rocket fuel in the morning."

Yesterday was the annual open house at my local branch of NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in beautiful Pasadena (okay, La Canada Flintridge, but close enough).

I love space. There. I said it. You know what else I love? Other people who love space.

For two hours, I got to wander the grounds with hundreds of other civilians, watching Mars rovers roll over the backs of small children and collecting astronomer trading cards. There was a young woman with a sleeve of full color rocket tatoos explaining that they didn't need fans to blow dust of the Mars lander solar array because the wind at the poles is strong enough to do the job for free. Swoon.

And kudos to the young scientist trying to explain thermoelectric generators to me in the Cutting Edge Technology tent. I think I almost got it.

One of my favorite things is how clear it was to me that these were people who shared a library of childhood books and television with me. The names for things referenced sci-fi from Bradbury to Star Trek and it just made me happy. My cheeks hurt, I was smiling so much.

Also very cool, I just got done reading a biography of Jack Parsons, a disciple of Aleister Crowley who invented the solid-fuel rocket (like what gets the space shuttle off the ground). His work built the foundation for JPL, and they had a picture and plaque, commemorating the first successful test. It was a nice synchronicity.

Alos in the JPL museum was a photograph of the women who worked as "computers" in the '40s and 50s. These were mathematicians and physicists who did the calculations, and guess who was in the middle? Evelyn Boyd Granville, whose biography I worked on at Mazer. She was the first African-American woman to earn a PhD in math from an elite US university, and had such a cool life, including a stint calculating rocket trajectories at JPL. 

In 2020, there's a planned mission to search for terrestrial planets specifically. Is it too early for me to start a countdown clock?

So, yeah. Steven and I went to Europe. Where, as Eddie Izzard says, the history comes from.

This is the first day we've been semi-over the jetlag. More detailed blogs, with pictures (edited for time, space and an eye toward keeping our friends; we took 1300+) to follow.

Suffice to say we are home, we are well, and my French, as ever, is awful.

So, I have this trip coming up to Austin, for work. I have been dreading this. And not like "this is an annoyance to the flow of my life" kind of dread. Like in an "Oh my god we're all going to fucking die" sort of dread.

I couldn't tell anybody why. Everybody keeps saying how lucky I am, how much fun it'll be. And all I want to do is cry and scream at them, "Fine, you think it's so much fun, you fucking go to Texas then."

I did the first part once or twice. Managed not to do the second. Go me.

And today, two days before I get on the plane, I've finally realized what the problem is. See, I'm going to Austin to hold meetings with legislative analysts and academics and potential authors for a new program we're proposing. All well and good. I can talk to people like nobody's business - ask questions, look interested, take notes, remember names. But, because we have zero money for this program, I've also had to do all the outreach and the organizing, putting on my exquisite phone voice and cold calling strangers to invite them to dinner.

And I hate every miserable bloody fucking second of it.

If you've known me for any length of time, you will know that I am the world's worst party planner. This is why I seldom throw parties, despite the fact that I enjoy them and very much want to be the kind of person who throws parties. But I'm just not; I can't even manage a casual get-together. I don't know how to make good food decisions, when to tell people to arrive, what they can bring, how many to invite. I do very well when people just show up at my house, or when we bring a crowd back from the bar. I suck at parties that require planning and I live in petrifying fear that a)no one will show up and if they do, b) they will have a shitty time, leading them to c) hate me forever and mock my pathetic attempts to be hospitable and entertaining.

I know this may sound weird if you've been to one of our parties. I mean, the house fills up, people eat and drink and laugh, and everyone seems to have a good time.

But the days and hours leading up to the arrival of the third guest (takes 3 to make a party) make me want to vomit. I hate it.

And Texas is my party. It's all on me. I can't even count on Tiffani to be there to rescue me if everything goes pear shaped. Some things have already started to go south (haha) in that I lost my private venue, some folks have canceled, oh, and I'm not really ready to present at the academic conference I signed up for. I am going to be a jittery wreck until Friday night.

When I am someday on Inside the Actors Studio as a writer/producer, and James Lipton gives me that survey, I now know the answer to "What profession other than yours would you NOT like to attempt?"

Event planning. Hands. Fucking. Down.

This sucks, until further notice.

Octopus jewelry cast from real octopus bits! I think you need some. . .

OctopusME! Jewelry made from REAL Octopus!


photo totally property of  OctopusMe, who hopefully will not mind that I ganked it to promote her/his awesome work.

Minky, these are SO your people.

This is how you use sex to sell fashion. Also, how you use words, French, and some fine face acting. I could listen to her say 'crepe de chine' for fucking days.

That scruffy young man being seduced by la Parisienne is Michael Pitt from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Just in case, you know, you were wondering.

(Dazed Digital, via Jezebel. God I love those gals.)