i am ENTERTAINED

I should note that I saw some nice shows over the last week.

Last Saturday daerr and kyroraz visited from W-ville to see They Might Be Giants play at the Avalon, and I went along. The show was the big happy-making for me. They played many, many songs, old and new, and they played constantly for... 90 minutes? or so with no breaks (except before their two encores) since they started late and had to be done by 10 p.m. to make room for the disco crowd. (Who was the target of various snipes from John F. "We're on a strict curfew because the clones are coming.") Loud and very energetic the whole time. Concert-only stunts included random play-alongs to things found on a slow crawl across the local radio dial, and confetti.

I really didn't think I'd ever hear Fingertips in concert.

The opening act was the folksy Kimya Dawson. The content of her songs, heavily laden with references to Ms. Pac-Man, Garbage Pail Kids and Jim Varney, may have packed more nerd-power punch per verse than any folk act (or "anti-folk", I guess I should say) I have seen live. This is not to say I liked the songs more than anything else ever, but I liked them enough to buy two lovingly hand-crafted CD-Rs from her after the show.

It takes a long, long time to leave the Avalon, especially if you checked in your coat.

This Friday night I went with cthulhia to see the MIT Gilbert & Sullivan players' Utopia Ltd. production. It was kind of funny, because I knew several people from Circle D were involved, but I didn't know what they actually did, so it was joyous to discover Jennie and MattS playing flute in the orchestra (I was vaguely expecting them to be among the actors, I suppose) and I recognized MattM (mattrolls) on stage after some straining. (Neither of his characters wore his glasses, and both hid his hair under helmet or wig.) I spotted chanaleh right away, of course, since she's been blogging about her role as one of the languid island girls who set the opening scene. I think I fumbled my "compliment" role after the show to her. Just so it's clear: I liked the singing a lot! No kidding.

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This breaks my heart.

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Thanks to all who responded to my query about sunken apartments on Friday.

Quick responses: I definitely prefer ground-level apartments (most of my apartments have been so) because I like to be through two doors and home, rather than door-stairs-stairs-stairs-home. And this makes moving a lot easier, too. I have so for not had a problem with noisy upstairs people, and try to nullify any lack of security by just living in low-crime neighborhoods.

The flooding risk makes me more alarmed, but judging by the fact that this place has wall-to-wall carpeting without the least bit of funkiness to it, I think that it must be acceptably watertight under normal conditions.

Natural-light bandwidth doesn't seem to be an issue here, but the view is rather unimpressive, as I've noted.

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Watching Notorious C.H.O. for first time now. First belly laugh from me: "Every bachelor apartment would look like a murder scene."