vanderslice, doughty, inwood, decemberists

I never noticed it before, but John Vanderslice has posted MP3s of his 1999 album Mass Suicide Occult Figurines — including the classic “Bill Gates Must Die.”
Mike Doughty, former frontman for Soul Coughing, has a blog. And it’s pretty good, too. “When I was 5, my family moved to Kansas from New York. 1975. We crossed a river and the sign said WELCOME TO INDIANA. ‘Are we really in India?!’ I asked. Yes, my distracted parents said. I spent the next hour staring out the window, spooked, worried about cobras.”
And: “I keep seeing Scarlett Johansson on TV, promoting that movie with John Travolta. I met her at the first celeb 24 Hour Plays, in 2001. I was backstage tuning an acoustic guitar, she was waiting for her entrance. I was talking to her in that kind of nervous, inadvertantly hostile way that you speak to a crushable someone. I said, in an attempt at being flirty that I think came out sounding just ambiguous, ‘I could just whip out “Stairway to Heaven” on you right now.’ Scarlett Johansson said: ‘So do it. Play “Stairway to Heaven.”‘ And I then had to admit, mortified, that I was among the tiny minority of acoustic guitar owners in the world who did not know how to play ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ Have you ever met a celebrity, maybe had a moment’s casual chat with them, and from then on you feel a warm bond of friendship with them when you see them being interviewed on the Today show? That’s how I feel about Scarlett Johansson. Also Griffin Dunne.”
FYI, Dallasites, the Inwood Theatre reopened last Friday. All new and renovated. The attached bar is neither new nor renovated.
Also FYI, Dallasites, The Decemberists will be in town on March 31 for a show at Trees. For those of you who have not yet gotten your filthy, nautical-song-loving hands on a leaked copy of their new album Picaresque, I can assure you: It kicks ass. Substantially better than their last two albums, both of which inspired great affection.
(It’s due out March 22, so you’ll have time to memorize the lyrics to the euphoric “We Both Go Down Together” before the Portlanders hit the stage.)