#<- so real wikipedia <3 so true bestie

[kvetchs]

pet sounds is the eleventh studio album by the american rock band the beach boys, released on may 16, 1966 by capitol records. it was initially met with a lukewarm critical and commercial response in the united states, peaking at number 10 on the billboard top lps chart.

[recurring-polynya]

Fake Writing/Art Update 2/26/2020:

Uhhhhh I forgot to do an update this week because I didn’t do anything. I guess I redrew one of my bunny drawings that I wasn’t happy with. I’m thinking about my next fic, but not too hard, just trying to let it roll around in my brain. Been posting random junk on Tumblr ‘cause that’s what I feel like these days.

What I DO want to talk about is that is I went to see Mike Doughty with my bestie (whom I will refer to as “L”) and it was L I T. It was so, so, so strange and we loved it all.

First of all, I think a dude tried to hit on me while we were waiting to go in, because I was talking about the time I saw Procol Harum open for Jethro Tull. This never happens to me, and now that I think about it, it was especially weird because you have to understand that L is, like, a stone-cold 11, and I am a 6 at best. [Note: I sound like a cool person when I talk about concerts I have been to, this is a weird illusion, I am absolutely not a cool person]

We had really good seats-- it was at a place where you sit and can get food and drinks and Mike Doughty was just... like... right there? So, for the first set, he and his band come out and they’re wearing garbage man jumpsuits and neon ski masks, and they just jammed for 40 minutes. Sometimes Mike would pull his ski mask up over his face so he could sing better, but then it was really obvious that he couldn’t see. And when I say sing, I mean he would mumble some random words like, “the Weather Channel” or “Sea Creatures” or “Sylvia Plath” ten or twelve times into the mic. L, who is a huge M. Doughty fan, declared all of this “the most Mike Doughty shit I have ever seen.” Apparently, this is a shtick they do, where they call themselves “BABY MEN” and pretend to be their own opening band?

They took a little break and came back in a bit dressed more normally. Mike plays the guitar and he also had Andrew “Scrap” Livingston on the electric cello/bass and drummer Stephen Chopek. I have to say, the combination of these three instruments is just amazing. I love deeper pitched instruments (I used to play the trombone and tuba myself in high school although I was balls at both). I am not good at talking about music, but their ability to just play these weird little scraps and beats and then Mike would sing a line in certain way and it just wrenches your heart straight right out of your chest. I generally prefer produced over live music, but the amount of control these guys had over their sound, their ability to mess around with tempo and BLAH! I am not good with words! So good! My dingdang heart! I died and came back to life at least three times! I love the electric cello/bass!

They also had a thing where, I guess when you bought tickets, you could ask a question about the future, and Mike would... ask The Future. It is what it sounds like. One guy, Todd B., which they insisted on pronouncing “Todd-buh” asked what he would be doing in 50 years, and Mike Doughty told him that he would be trapped in this music venue, outside of the normal flow of time. Mike would be trapped with him, and they would stare at each other forever. I believe all this is true and Mike Doughty cursed this man to be frozen in time while we all sat there hoping he was going to play “Busting Up a Starbucks.”

Did he, gentle reader? Play “Busting Up a Starbucks”? He did. He also played “Super Bon Bon,” a song which is special to me for the extremely specific reason that it was used as the backdrop for a SomethingAwful gif compilation known as “Judohobo” and one of the ways that I knew my and L were gonna be besties was because I said something flip about “the Judohobo song” once, and she replied “Oh, Super Bon Bon by Mike Doughty” and prior to that, I did not know she was a Goon OR a Mike Doughty fan. Neither of us were actually true Goons, but that was a formative moment in our friendship, so this was Very Special to Us. Also, watching a human sing Super Bon Bon in real time is... wow. Mike did not play my favorite of his songs (Madeline and Nine, which I think I have mentioned approximately 1000 times on this website), BUT he did play my SECOND favorite song, the Bells. This was also very special because L is a girl in sales and marketing and also “They say you snooze you lose/Well I have snost and lost” is a perfect lyric and now I have heard it sung live.

I had not gone to see live music in a really long time and also, it’s been a long time since I’ve gone out without my husband and L is my extremely close together friend and she asked me special if I would go with her and I was super anxious about it, but we had a lovely time and I felt really super good about it all weekend. This was definitely in the top 3 concerts I have ever been to (up there with seeing Great Big Sea, who were probably my favorite band at the time and I literally knew all the words to every song they sang). I am really blessed.

Oh, and afterward, I learned on wikipedia that Mike Doughty’s solo career only took off after he met Dave Matthews at Bonnaroo in 2004 and that was the year I went to Bonnoroo, I could have been waiting in line to buy a vegan burrito behind Mike Doughty, and I had just told L my story about how we went to Golden Corral on the way home from Bonnaroo, life is weird and good and I hope Mike D. and Todd B. are having a good time staring at each other, staring at each other, in this, the first days of forever.