Richard Reviews the Dirty Projectors' Concert / The Boys' Video Game Report

The Granada was not full for the Dirty Projectors' first-ever trip to Larryville, but the hipsters in attendance were so very hip that each one of them made up for five normal hipsters at least. And from the moment when opening act Tune Yards' vocalist took the stage by performing a few whale calls, looping them, backing them up with a hip-hop beat, and tuning her ukulele, we knew we were in for something special. It was simply an added bonus that her voice was absolutely amazing, so much so that the Talking Heads-y schtick of the (surprisingly accessible) Dirty Projectors soon paled by comparison (apart from their equally impressive female harmony vocals). Notorially pompous Projectors' frontman Dave Longstreth, perhaps embarrassed to have left New York to play for a half-full room of Midwestern rubes, barely acknowledged the audience all night except to remark on the eerie "Lynchian" shadows along the empty back of the room. Even so, the remark was enough to win Richard over, since he has seen everything Lynch has done three times at least, and he soon began to believe that he was just as hip as Longstreth. This illusion was shattered, however, at the bar, where Richard friend's Heather, formal kickball star turned dodgeball wizard, was given a special "dodgeball discount" on a fine Free State ale while her friend, the newly elected East Side President, was given a special cup larger than anyone else's. And Richard? Richard was charged an exorbitant price for a shitty beer in a tiny cup.

Three PBR's out of four for the concert. Zero PBR's for the hipster bartenders. Cute hipster drawing courtesy of interweb (click to enlarge and study):

















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Like all red-blooded American geeks, the boys have taken the day off to play the just-released, most-anticipated new video game of the season: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In a NY-Times piece, a young man explains his devotion to the game:

"Patrick Kienbauer, an 18-year-old student in Austria, said the game's last installment, which has sad background music and a ''comfortless ambiance,'' let him ''feel the cruelty and violence of war.''"

Chip: "Yeah, right. If we wanted to think about the cruelty of war we'd all be going to see these liberal anti-war films that Hollywood keeps trying to feed us. The Messenger, with Woody Harrelson? Give me a break. We play Modern Warfare because we want to shoot a bunch of motherfucking terrorists!"

Richard: "I believe that The Messenger, with Woody Harrelson, is going to be a very good film."