A long awaited John Waters Boxed Set Update: Melissa eventually got around to watching Polyester. She said she found it wacky. It didn't apparently change her life forever, but she got an hour and a half of hilarity possibly mixed with some bafflement, plus ten unique olfactory experiences from the Odorama card. All the elements of a satisfying artistic experience, in short.

I spent part of this past week writing a new tune for Yid Vicious. We've never had a tango in our book, so I took it upon myself to pen one. Sort of. It's got a tangoey feel to it, but it's melodically based on two of the klezmer scales (really the same scale, but with the tonic moved. Basically a harmonic minor, with the flat six and major seven, but in the freygish scale the fifth of the harmonic minor is the tonic. In the more minor-sounding Misheberakh, the fourth is the one. Incidentally, Misheberakh also means "one who blesses". Now THERE'S a bunch of information you never asked for!). So it also kind of sounds like a slowed-down bulgar. Tango + bulgar: tangar! Kia and I debated, bulgo verses tangar. Tangar won out, and rightly so. So I entitled the tune Twenty-First Century Tangar, which sounds spage-age and exciting. We played it for the first time last night at rehearsal; the band's response to the material was somewhat mixed, but that's okay with me. In the Penelope Spheeris film Wayne's World one of those two guys says to the other, "Chyeah. I mean, Led Zeppelin didn't write songs everyone liked. They left that to the Bee Gees." I've tried to live my life in accordance with that principle.

Plus, it was very enjoyable just FINISHING something, which I rarely do. Our house is littered with bits of music paper with long-forgotten stuff scrawled on them: misbegotten ideas, still-birthed themes, tunes that wouldn't go anywhere no matter what. Finishing any sort of music piece gives me the rare satisfaction of knowing that I've concentrated my energies in a positive way. And, if people don't like it, there's always the hope that they'll be just a little bit VEXED by it. Or at least annoyed. Or just respond in any way whatsoever.

At this point I could recount the Odyssean ordeal of making copies of Twenty-First Century Tangar in time for rehearsal. Of course, I won't because it's too boring to type, but it left me wondering: Where did all the copy stores go? There used to be three on every corner in this college town, but now they're all gone or never open, and why in the hell would a copy store be open on a Sunday but only until FIVE? If anything it should OPEN at five. Making copies isn't something you get up early on a Sunday to do. It's something you put off as long as possible, hoping that the day will present you with something more exciting than the mundane, boring-ass rigmorale of your day-to-day life. It never does, of course, but we persist in our little illusions. I suppose life would be unbearable without them. So we spend our Sundays, each one a week closer to our last, telling ourselves delusional stories, or if we've a religious bent, we go to a House of Worship and the stories are spoon-fed by some variety of self-proclaimed "holy man".

Right, but getting back to the copy stores. I wonder why there aren't very many copy stores any more. Maybe because so many people have high-quality printers and scanners at home next to their computer that the copy store has grown obsolete. So now all the copy store people are being thrown out of work, due to accessible and inexpensive technology. Thanks, Bill Gates. As if you haven't already done enough.

NEXT: More of the same...but DIFFERENT!