Dumbek's Random Stuff

Within 30 minutes of being in our first San Francisco gay bar we were treated to a 60+ year old, mohawked, heavily tattooed man wearing nothing but a jockstrap and boots, doing an interpretive dance to a Green Day/Oasis mash-up.

I love California.

So I'm getting ready to leave for a week in San Francisco. Any suggestions for things we must do while we're there? Dinger will be there with me for a few days. We're gonna do all the touristy stuff and some Gay Pride stuff over the weekend. Amoeba is already on the list. Anything off the beaten track we should check out?

All responses that include the word "Radiohead" will be ignored.

Had a good time at the Punk's Not Dead showing last night. The movie was pretty good. It's not really a history of punk, but it sort of shows the progression of how things have changed over the years. From the early DIY days of bands crashing on the floors of fans and bands making/distributing their own records, to the Target-sponsored, Hot Topic Grammy-winning bands of today.

An interesting movie, but I'll admit I was getting a little bored by the end. That's probably because they were pretty much done with the bands I was interested in and the bands like Good Charlotte and Sum 41 couldn't open their mouths without saying something that made me want to throw things at them.

Highlights:

Some nice old footage
the CHiPs and Quincy clips
Captain Sensible flipping over a table and mooning the camera
Seeing some of the bands that are still plugging away at it after 20+ years.

After the movie there was a Q&A session. Unfortunately most of the crowd left during the credits, so there weren't a lot of people left. I kind of felt bad for the folks on stage, because there really weren't many folks with questions. Fat Mike from NoFX was on the panel though. That was kind of cool.

Other punk celebrity sightings: Boyd and Mike (Black Market Baby), John Stabb (Government Issue/The Factory Incident), Ian and Amy (The Evens/Fugazi/Minor Threat/The Warmers) and Glenn Kowalski (aka "Jake Whipp" of White Boy). I'm sure there were others that I didn't recognize.

There was an after-party following the Q&A. I had initially decided to skip it, since I'm going out nearly every night this week and it was already after 11:30. But I had to walk right past the party entrance on my way to the garage...I saw the line outside and figured I check it out for a few minutes.

I grabbed a beer (did I mention it was "open bar"?) and grabbed a seat. Within a few minutes Boyd recognized me from another forum I hang out on and he came over and introduced me to a bunch of other folks. I ended up staying for a couple hours, hanging out with Boyd and Glenn most of the night and checking out a live set by The Goons.

So I got the movie, an open bar, a live show and I got to hang out with a few guys from some of the bands from my earliest punk-rock-loving days. Not a bad night at all.

There's a documentary called Punk's Not Dead playing at the Silver Theater at in Silver Spring tonight. Filmmaker Susan Dynner grew up in the early DC punk scene. From the blurb at the Silverdocs website:

Twenty-five years later, the kids are still at it. Still rebelling, still trying to find a place to call their own. But their scene has been commercialized; their look is purchased, not hand-sewn with dental floss. In PUNK'S NOT DEAD, filmmaker Dynner explores the origins of the punk underground and its intersection with mainstream culture today.

View the trailer here.

The movie is playing tonight (6/14) at 9:30 at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring. Don't be afraid of the suburbs.

Pansy Division - C-cks-cker Club
Pansy Division - Rock and Roll Queer Bar
The Go-Go's - Johnny Are You Queer?


The songs are only up for a few days. If you like what you hear, please go buy the songs.

The pic came from here.

One quick email to the county government and Comcast is calling me within a few hours, begging for forgiveness. In addition, they're giving me 7-times the reimbursement they originally offered me to make up for yesterday. They better come through with it.

Don't f-ck with me fellas.

Seriously though - I got an amazing response from the Montgomery County government office. They answered my email in about an hour, noting that they had already filed a formal complaint on my behalf and telling me that I should expect a call from Comcast by the end of the day. The email included names, phone numbers and email addresses of who I should contact, should Comcast not call me tonight. They followed that up with a phone call at home with the same info.

How awesome is that? Thanks to them for all their help.

I guess Comcast considers 6/6/06 to be some kind of holiday. Now that I think about it - that sort of makes sense.

My internet service has been out since sometime Sunday night. As of Tuesday morning it still wasn't working, so I decided to call Comcast.

8:00am: I call Comcast. We do a little troubleshooting and they decide to send someone out. How about sometime between 10:00am-1:00pm? Perfect.


1:15pm:
Dumbek: Where's the cable tech?
Comcast: He's running late. He'll be there in about 15 minutes.
D: Are you sure? I can't wait all day. If it's going to take much longer, I'll have to go to work.
C: No - He's on his way.

2:00pm:
D: Where's the cable tech?
C: Let me call him. (On hold for 2-3 minutes.) He turned his phone off. We'll keep trying and have him call you ASAP.
D: I'm really late for work.
C: It should just be a few minutes.

3:00pm:
D: Where's the cable tech?
C: Let me check with the dispatcher. (On hold over 5 minutes.) It seems there's an outage in your area. There has been one since Thursday. There's a good chance nobody is coming out today at all.
D: That's ridiculous! Nobody mentioned this and you're the 4th person I've spoken to today!
C: You should call your local office.
D: Just get me a manager.
C: I can't do that. You need to call the local office.
D: What happened to "15 minutes?"
C: I don't know.

3:10pm: I call my local Comcast office.

D: Where's the cable tech? What's this about an outage?
C: There's no outage. Let me call the tech. (On hold over 5 minutes.) He's running late. He's going to be another 45 minutes.
D: What happened to the 15 minutes at 1:30?
C: I don't know.
D: Why didn't he call me after 2:00?
C: I don't know.
D: Manager, please.
(on hold over 5 minutes)

C: I'm a manager.
D: Where's my tech?
C: I don't know. I'm really sorry about all this. Let me call him. I'll get to the bottom of this. Hang on.

At this point I'm on hold for about 25 minutes. I get cut off.

3:45pm:
D: I just got cut off. Where's my tech?
C: He's going to be another 45 minutes.
D: That's what I was told at 3:00. Does that mean he's almost here?
C: No, That means he'll be there in 45 minutes.
D: Manager, please. (On hold another 5 minutes.)

D: Where's my tech?
C (different manager): Let me call him.
D: NO! Do not put me on hold again.
C: We're very sorry sir, blah blah blah, We're trying to improve, blah blah blah, We're sorry for the inconvenience, blah blah blah. He's going to be another 45 minutes. I promise to call you back every 20 minutes or so until he gets there, to reassure you that we're trying as hard as we can to please you.
D: I'll be waiting.


4:50pm:
C: Sorry for the delay. I had another call that took a long time to resolve.
D: I'm not surprised. At least you called. That's a first for today. Where's my tech?
C: He's going to be another 30 minutes.
D: (click)

Around this time, I discover that my internet connection is back. After being down for about 40 hours, it just magically reappeared.

5:15pm: The tech finally arrives. He says we have "too much signal". He reduced it and says it should work better now. I can't really tell, because it looks the same as it did 5 minutes before he got here.

Comcast sucks. Has anybody tried FIOS?

Has anyone been to Riff Raff? It's billed as a queerpunk dance party upstairs at the Green Lantern on Sunday nights. I think I might check it out tonight. I'm not a big fan of going out on Sundays, but if you want stuff like this to be successful, you gotta show up for it.

Grateful Dead keyboardist dies.


photo by Herb Greene.

So sad.

You know our love will not fade away.