Right now we're here in Boston

Just got back from seeing the Dresden Dolls at the Avalon for the FNX Best Music Poll. The concert went way later than I or any of my traveling companions (kraada, greyselke, captainbutler, my brother and his fianceé, and two friends who may be on Livejournal but nobody's told me their usernames yet) had expected, but I think it was very much worth the total exhaustion I will feel in the morning. They did "The Port of Amsterdam," which I'd heard for the first time last April at Lexington High School and still love, and "Boston," which I dearly wish they would record, and a heart-stopping version of "Half Jack" with a living statue that jerked and twitched like a marionette on drunken strings and drifted marble-dust clouds. And many other standards besides, including what I think might have been "www.wwiii" and one song that I didn't recognize at all, and I'm getting fonder of "Backstabber" as I hear it more often. I propped my cellphone open so that John Benson, who'd had to bow out of the trip for reasonable intrusions of real life, could hear the music: apparently it worked. (I am the worst radio station ever.) My ears are a bit on strike at the minute, and I am fairly certain that when I order a piña colada I should get something more complicated than rum with pineapple juice and a maraschino cherry in it, but this was a very good evening.

Did I mention that yesterday involved, gaudior and rushthatspeaks and their fantastic housemates, udon with everything, and the first episode of something called Gankutsuou that I think I may need to see more of? Also bookstores? Well, it did. This too was good. Even if it left me a little more coherent, and I didn't have to worry about making the last train back to Alewife in quite the same way. I need to visit these people more often. (Or vice versa: hint, hint!)

And for the record, am I the only person who thinks that Andrew Ketterley from C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew is rather like a daemonic (and much cheaper) reflection of Doctor Prunesquallor from Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan and Gormenghast? The long white hands, the shock of grey hair, the spinster sister . . . Yeah, I figured. Inkling analysis only goes so far.

Sleep. I hear it's a handy evolutionary adaptation. I'll have to try it one of these days.

Something here will eventually have to explode

On purchasing the live concert Palast Revue from iTunes (there goes my money), I'm left wondering what would happen if Max Raabe und das Palast Orchester and the Squirrel Nut Zippers ever played a concert together. I have no idea what the combination would be, except certainly not to be missed.

Entirely unrelatedly, I am thinking that although this Loki* looks nothing like the god as I imagine him, since I'm operating under the dual influence of D'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants and Diana Wynne Jones' Eight Days of Luke, and so always envision a rather younger figure whose red hair is always flickering into flame, I do like his smile. It suggests that your wallet has gone unexpectedly missing: and if nothing nastier has happened to you, either you are very lucky, or just wait.

Tricksters should never be safe.

*Nicked from the galleries of Deities and Demigods, for those of you who like credits. I disagree almost one hundred percent with their representation of the Olympic pantheon, except maybe Dionysos, but their Set actually has the red donkey's head (even if he's disturbingly buff) and this is a pretty cool Thor.