Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: 7/19/89

The Uncanny Alpine Valley

  • So much Bobby. Not in terms of screen time–he got the same amount he always gets, which is a lot–but in surface area.
  • Desolation Row is a tragic song. Not tragic as in sad: the classical tragedy. Everyone in that song needed to be saved from themselves.
  • The conventional timeline is that Garcia was clean(ish) from the coma until after Brent’s death, but his filthy fingers and nails belie that.
  • Also, the cocaine on the front of his shirt.
  • I mean: Jesus, man. You knew they were making a movie. At least put on your cocaine bib.
  • If you need a cocaine bib, then what you really need is to stop doing cocaine.
  • Here’s the show from Alpine Valley, if you’d like to listen again or didn’t get to go or are a whackadoodle and didn’t see the whole thing.
  • Oh, look, Mickey: you’re wearing a blah blah blah.
  • Although–and I begrudgingly respect the crazy little fuck for this–knowing that there was a camera behind him, Mickey chose the Dead shirt that had Dead bullshit on the back of it as well as the front.
  • That’s some good Dead shirt-wearin’, Mick.
  • Everything Phil was wearing or doing was competing to be the worst thing Phil was wearing or doing. He was dressed like a second grader with an alcoholic mother.
  • Did New Balance sponsor the tour?
  • Speaking of shoes: Garcia was not wearing them. A “shoe” has requirements – a sole, a cap, a heel, sidewalls. Whatever was on Garcia’s feet had none of those. I think he might have stuck his tootsies into loaves of bread.
  • I’m right, right? They didn’t even register as shoes to me until I consciously thought about it.
  • For ten minutes, I thought Garcia had Homer Simpson’s feet: those clompy hoof-things. That’s how shapeless and non-shoe-like those things were.
  • Foot mittens. That’s the closest I can get to describing them.
  • Unlike the previous Alpine Valley ’89 show released to the theaters, this one has very low levels of Brent. If you were allergic to Brent, you could probably eat this show.
  • Two reasons for the lack of Brent-y goodness: he doesn’t have any lead vocals in the show, nor any big backing parts; and because the two or three times he did have a close-up, Brent looked like the Grim fucking Reaper.
  • Or a Ringwraith.
  • Let’s just agree that Brent should not have taken his Tinder picture that evening.
  • Garcia may or may not repeat one of the verses in Foolish Heart, but he kills that tune.
  • Okay, let’s talk about Bobby.
  • So, so much of Bobby. My favorite thing about the shorts is not how they deliver on the promise of their name–and they certainly do that–but the little notch on the sides.
  • So you can see juuuuuust a bit more o’ Bobby.
  • But, as we are duty-bound by the laws of honest brokerage to report, Bobby’s got a kick-ass set of gams.
  • It’s a weird double-standard that you’re allowed to show off your killer guns, but not your sick wheels, bro.
  • It’s also weird that if a woman with equally fetching stems wore shorts of the same cut, people would be pleased.
  • No one would be happy, however, if that woman with the nice legs in the short shorts displayed even half of the amount of chest hair Bobby was putting on display.
  • Was he drying it?
  • Did Bobby’s chest hair need an alibi, and thus demanded that Bobby display it to the world?
  • When did Bobby’s chest hair turn to a life of crime?
  • Holy shit, how hairy is Bobby now?
  • Counting Bobby’s hair, shirt, and semi-trousers, the man was single-handedly keeping the Little Aleppo shopping district alive.
  • I can’t believe I forgot! This is a Thoughts on the Dead EXCLUSIVE: the shirt Bobby modeled in tonight’s show was NOT long-time purveyor of aggressively casual menswear Sammy Miami, NOR was it his protegĂ© in Drunk Dad fashion Tampa Ray, but the newest designer of flowered shirts that tell the world to go fuck itself, Saint Pete.
  • The fashion world is so scandalous.
  • As always, Bobby’s scrunchies are provided by CCH Pounder’s Headcoverings for Those Willing to Leave Their Foolishness at the Door.
  • Garcia’s ponytail is held together by Garcia Glue, which is something Garcia makes out of his own leavings and droppings and flakings and spit.
  • I am now watching the end of the show.

Crack Up At The Movies

This might be it for TotD and the Meetups at the Movies. It might, in fact, be it for TotD and leaving the house at all: I have lost every last shred of patience I ever had with people and their chit-chat and their phones and their singing and their tentative after-song clapping and their belief that flip-flops are appropriate.

Everyone is dressed unacceptably, groomed haphazardly, and styling their hair in ways I do not approve of. There are the fat, who are loathsome; and the skinny, who are despicable and few. Various airs of varying foulness waft unchecked from every orifice.

People’s necks are disgusting.

Okay, pal. Wanna throttle back on body horror and agoraphobia?

I’m just expressing what everyone was thinking.

You were not. In no way, shape, or form. You were confused and frightened by all the uncontrollable stimuli and you responded by how?

How many times did you get out of your seat?

Maybe twice.

Eleven times. In the two hours you were there–and we’ll get to the bit where you left early–you bopped in and out of the theater eleven times. Bathroom, cigarette, Heineken, you needed to post to the blog because you’re awful, another cigarette…

I get ants in my pants.

Ants.

The people in the theater were bothering me, so I went outside and then the people outside were bothering me, ao I went back in where it turned out the people had not changed one bit, so I went home. I saw Terrapin, which was the big thing, I guess.

Who knows? Maybe during Morning Dew a big dog ran onstage and Bobby wrestled it to submission with a thigh-lock?

Lot of Bobby on that screen.

But, you’ll never know.

Maybe I’ve grown out of a need for the communal experience. Also, I took a piss next to a guy whose prostate must have been the size of a catcher’s mitt. It sounded like this: “HAAAaaaaletsgo. CumMON. Humph. Humph. Ah, ah, ah. Ohhhh.”

I want you to call that psychiatrist back. Your type of crazy ends up on the evening news if you let it get out of hand.

Did I mention the necks?

You did, yes.