Well I know its been a while since I wrote anything here. This is not due to the usual reasons (that there has been absolutely nothing of any interest, however meager, happening in any area of my pathetic excuse for a life) but actually for the exact opposite reason: I've been just too busy. No, seriously.

At work, I've got the new kids to train, and of course I've got to write all the programs for them to use and actually have everything work, a process which is not exactly sped up by having management or the surveyors changing their requirements, field codes etc. on an almost hourly basis. And with the onset of spring my own regular work is starting to pick up.

And of course, there's all the usual springtime boat-related work to do, in fact more than the usual amount, because not satisfied with cleaning varnishing waxing painting scrubbing one boat I went and got me another. Cookie is a little rough around the edges, but with a little sandpaper, epoxy and wood-filler she's shaping up pretty sharp indeed. She has the nicest lines and rows like a champ (Cookie's a little mouse pram I bought off Rich Craft a few years ago, brought back to Columbus, and never figured out how to get back to the lake) .

But I've spent even more time trying to be useful to my parents. They had made the decision a year or so ago that the house was just getting to be too much and it was time to find a retirement community. After much looking they finally found a place they liked. Brand new, still under construction in fact, all kinds of programs specially designed for old fogies, it was everything and more. They had a well-thumbed but still shiny brochure, chock full of pictures of happy oldsters wandering sun-dappled trails. It's mostly my mother who wants to go, of course, in fact my Dad doesn't really want to go at all, but they are both getting excited about the coming move. No more cooking! No more stairs!

There's a world of work to do before that could happen, of course. There's forty years accumulation of crap to deal with in the house- the detritus of a lifetime- boxes of pictures, books, clothes that were possibly fashionable in the seventies, Christmas gifts which, never fully appreciated, still couldn't be decently thrown out and sat in the closet for decades. No less than seven umbrellas.

All this stuff has got to go.

So they've been cleaning and sorting away, ruthlessly disposing of everything- all the garden tools, perfectly good stuff, sold on Craigslist for peanuts. All the pictures off the walls, because nobody buys houses with pictures these days, apparently, and so all the nail holes have to be spackled and the walls painted. This is a lot of work for old-timers like my folks, so I've been trying to help out in odd hours in the afternoon and evenings when I can. Marty and I painted the garage. After all this, the house (a "project" house, a "fixer-upper" or "handyman's delight", which is to say a "dump" when my folks bought it) a house that my parents had been working on almost continually for forty odd years, was finally finished, finally the way they had always envisioned it. They signed the papers and put it on the market on Monday.

On Wednesday they got a call- their retirement community had gone belly-up.

Today in the mail I got tickets to see Yo La Tengo next month. As you can see from the accompanying picture, it appears that Yo La Tengo is the opening act, and furthermore the opening act for some outfit going under the name Girl Talk, of whom I have never even heard. I'm blessed with an open mind though, and I like Girls, and I like Talk, so Girl Talk- okay what the hell.

It did get me to musing though, about how lately all the shows I've been excited about seeing it's always the opening act which has caused the excitement. Last winter, for example, I went to go see Quintron, who was opening for some pack of losers called, if memory serves, the Black Keys or something- who all were, it should be noted, strikingly white in complexion whatever they liked to call themselves.

But it's kind of cool when it's the opening act that you're going to see, because generally speaking nobody else in the crowd is, so you are assured of a good spot right in front of the stage to jump around and make a fool of yourself. And then, after the set- when Quintron is standing forgotten and alone by his merch table, you can go and hang out with him, and make a fool of yourself all over again because you've had too much too drink. Also you can buy one of his CD's that you've never even heard of from the man himself: "Oh man! this is totally fucked up shit!" says Quintron- you assume that by "totally fucked up shit" he means that it's pretty good stuff indeed, and so you buy it. Turns out that, really, he meant "totally fucked up shit" in a literal sense. It is pretty much totally fucked up, and it is pretty much shit. Those are nine dollars I'll never see again. But it's worth it to hang out with a legend like Quintron and, like, slur your words.

A few years back I went to see Superchunk, opening for some pack of losers called the Get-Up Kids. I don't know why they called themselves "Get-Up", as their outfits didn't seem particularly outlandish by normal rock-star standards, but Superchunk rocked out as per usual. For those of you who don't know how much Superchunk usually rocks out, I ask you to contemplate how much a regular Chunk would rock out, and then to consider how much more a Superchunk would rock out; that will give you a pretty good idea.

But again, it was pretty much the same deal- here were legends- Superchunk, dammit!- and nobody in the crowd paid the slightest attention. I tell you, sometimes I despair for the future of our nation. Between sets I hung out with them- Jim Superchunk was pretty cool ("Hey man! Good to see you again!") although it was pretty clear he didn't know me from Adam. "Well look I gotta go home", I say, "I gotta work in the morning" (another benefit of being an Opening Act Groupie is that the hours are much more agreeable, that and no icky sex with the drummer). "Aw no" says Mac Superchunk. "You gotta stay and catch the Get Down Kids! They are awesome!" I'm like "Well you know I'd love to and all but really I gotta get up pretty early"

"That's cool" says Mac. "But still you oughta stick around for a song or two. After that, hell, they all kind of sound the same anyway. You heard one song you heard 'em all"