For other Gomez fans, near and far

They're back! Well, three of Gomez are in town. We trucked down to Denver for the in-store performance at Twist & Shout in Denver. Nice show. Ian, Tom, and Ben traded lead singing duties on new songs from their forthcoming record. My sweetie was sure we've heard "See The World" before but I couldn't figure out where. We were way in the back of the store and missed all the between-song banter because no one really spoke into their mic. But it was nice for my daughter to get a chance to see them again.

Tonight we'll hear everything at etown, the radio program where they will be featured for the second time, with Zemog el Gallo Bueno (Zemog is Gomez backward), a new Latin hybrid rock band. At their first one (which is in their archives if you register), Gomez did an amazing version of the Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere." Ian seemed simultaneously out of control and brilliant, the very definition of a rock star, no?

They're also going to be at Boulder's KBCO to record a Studio C session sometime after noon today (MST, which is GST -7 hrs). From this page you can get to the live webcast.

I would post all this silliness on Gomez' new web site, but I have only been able to get to it once. Usually the server times out before I can get on the board. Grrrr.

The other news I've been wanting to post is that I think we have a venue for the end-o'-April "listening party" for their new album, How We Operate, which is scheduled to release on May 2 on ATO Records (Dave Matthews' label).

On those trendy rectangular glasses everyone's sporting now

Someone referred to the kind of glasses I and so many people I know wear now as "face furniture." Hilarious and true.

Oscar rant

OK, so I have to weigh in about the Oscars. I was delighted at the winners -- they were long shots and indies and interesting, and I was impressed that Brokeback Mountain didn't sweep everything else under the carpet because when I saw it at Telluride I didn't think it was that great. Good but not great.

But I must say that it must be a drag to be a comic and have 50 million people Monday-morning quarterbacking your work, like I am about to do. I thought Jon Stewart was way too conservative. He went for the funny stuff on the gay humor, but then he pulled back politically. When he said Hollywood is often perceived as out of touch and delivered the punchline, which was, "Uh... I don't have a joke here," the comedy was first-rate but the irony of the joke was lost. I felt Clooney was right to come out blazing after that and proud of being part of Hollywood and people's drive to dream big, to see around some corners mainstream politics or people haven't wanted to look. I was proud of him (and I'm sure he scored more than a few points with the Hollywood royalty).

Then a couple of days after the Oscars I watched The Aristocrats (the film about the dirty joke, not Disney's cartoon The Aristocats) and Jon Stewart wimped out -- he wouldn't tell the joke! The nastiest joke and he was the only one (except for the increasingly bizarre Rita Rudner, who sat with her plush toys and talked her usual babytalk voice about why it wasn't funny) who wouldn't touch the thing with a ten-foot pole.