Saturday, November 11, 2006

a friday night out with the folks

Some Friday evenings you stay in, watch repeats of CSI, threaten the cats and think about repainting the living room. Other Fridays you spit an entire mouthful of beer in your wife's hair and end up in a pointless conversation about combining polka with eighties goth music. I am here to tell you (hell, this may be the reason I was brought to Earth) that the latter makes for a better night.

Tonight we went out to the Queer City Cinema fundraiser (unused slogan: Queer City Cinema, For If'n You Want Your Films Gayed Up - I can't believe they tossed my suggestion) at The Exchange to see the finest in bent musical entertainment, Kelly and the Kelly Girls (warning: myspace music assault) and Intergalactic Virgin (warning: more of assault on you ear).* I didn't do any sketches of tonight's gig, but I did take some notes.

I often take impromptu cryptic notes to anchor little moments in my memory. When I looked tonight's notes over, though, I discovered that I'd written the following:
- Keynote speech for annual meeting for the Advancement of Progress of Robots - 2032?
- audience: Humans? Robots? Mixed? And is there a difference at that point?
- effects of peak oil on robot society
- Matrix viewed as romantic comedy?
Apparently I think there's still comedy to be dredged out of a movie franchise now three years in the past. Somebody come up with another turgid sci-fi trilogy quick. I guess this is what happens when you take notes in a darkened club. On the plus side, you can expect a really daft post about robots sometime soon. Here, by the way, is the first google image result for "robot progress".

Despite the bleak outlook for robot progress in this image - check out the dejected slouch as the ship in the background departs for the next robot-friendly planet - I really dig this picture. Although I'd like to know what a robot's doing in the country. Everyone knows that robots belong in gleaming art deco cities with vaults and arches of inhuman scale and unfathomable intent. Go visit http://penguinx.org and let the artist know that he's misplaced a robot in bucolic idyll.

Hey. Was I trying to talk about a night out with my wife and friend? And the spitting of beer into my wife's hair? I was, wasn't I? I had just funnelled a mouthful of Black Amber Ale into my mouth when the lead singer of The Kelly Girls made an offhand fart joke. The beer ejected from my mouth in arc that almost, but not quite, sailed just over my wife's head. She gave me an exasperated but kind look that said You are a total spaz, a specialized, gracious expression that acknowledged my unfitness for public display, forgave me completely and let the night proceed. I married well, as the busybodies in Jane Austen novels like to say.

*I'm really hoping that someone will come to my site by googling "assault on you ear".

7 comments:

blackbird said...

You married UP as the busybodies in Tuvalu say...

Anonymous said...

I'm wondering why your notes included robots? Do you have trouble reading your own writing the next day?

Elan Morgan said...

I am definitely in blackbird's corner.

Mr. Head said...

Looks like a cropduster. Although perhaps by 2032 they will be commonly used in interstellar travel.

palinode said...

Looking at the picture in the light of day, I agree - I think it is a cropduster. Why is the robot so dejected then? Did he or she want to get a shot at dusting the fields of wheat? Is that, like, prime robot employment? I'm going to go out on a limb and say Yes.

Anonymous said...

Do you think intergallactic virgins have hymens on their robot vaginas?

(You didn't think I could actually resist making a robot vagina reference, did you?)

Oh, and beer is supposed to be really healthy for your hair, so you kinda gave schmutzie a spa treatment.

Ray Frenden said...

I drew the robot. The finished version is here, actually.

Nice to hear you liked it. There are a number of plausible reasons why the robot is sad. The one I like the most is that he's simply broken down. New fangled agri-bot didn't work out or couldn't be fixed due to a lack of funds and the ole biplane still works.