It’s Not Happening

I went to see Mr. Reggie Watts say and sing and do things at the Triple Door Saturday night with the adventurous Rob, Steph and Alison, and laughed myself hoarse. Hoarser. I laughed myself all the way past hoarse, past raw, past disabled and on into I-get-a-new-syndrome-named-after-me-or-more-likely-my-doctor territory. He is funny.

More than that, though, he is shockingly, freakishly, embarrassingly talented. His voice is like the northern lights – okay, that’s too much, I’ve never even seen the lights, but he radiates a powerful stream of lovely, fluid, sometimes wordless melody that would seem beautifully chaotic if it were in any way discordant. He busts in with beatbox noises, semi-improvised ramblings reminiscent of Firesign Theater and straight-up haw-haw jokes. He brings a dancer up to steal the stage from him during the show-stopper climax, sticking his emotional security in our collective eye. Nothing is harder to take than humble genius, but we take it like lambs – how can we not? Do yourself a favor and check him out as soon as possible.

I should mention his opening act, but that means convincing you I am not making up its awful, awful name. Though they were incredibly funny and nerdy, kind of like what might happen if Tenacious D made a baby inside They Might Be Giants, they saddled themselves with the name (man, this is difficult for me to write) Hard N Phirm. Okay, deep breath and let’s move on. So these guys. We were expecting very little, though I had gone to the minimal trouble of Googling them to see if they were better off skipped. It turns out that they’re quite good, and when they decide to change their name, I expect they’ll go far. Check out their videos on their web site, honestly. Pretend they’re called the Trap Streets or Mountweazel or whatever.

Two of my favorites, all mashed up: The Nietzsche Family Circus.

Yes, it’s true: I am going back and reading the cyberpunk and other nerdy stuff I missed for one reason or another back in the day. This Sterling classic, published while I was still in college almost twenty years ago, is both hilarious and sobering today thanks to what he got wrong and what he got right. His communications network might already have seemed dated upon publication, which seems weird for a genre that prides itself on asking for the moon, stars and sun. His early references to FAXes and other Stone Age tech (including explanations, bless his heart) almost killed my interest.

But I pushed through that to get to the good stuff, which for Sterling is his big thinking about social systems. He might not have been the first to write about the post-nation-state world, but he sure put a lot of hard work into it, and since that’s a pet what-if of mine, I appreciate the effort. The first two thirds of the book deals with the corporations and criminal gangs that are de facto world rulers in the mid-21st century, and like the best utopians, Sterling knows how to weave his massive exposition into an interesting narrative. Events move the main characters from Galveston to Grenada to Singapore, and each stop lets the master compare and contrast systems for getting by without real governmental power.

Unfortunately, the last part of the book seems to have been written after the author ran out of big ideas but still needed to wrap up his story, and while it’s interesting enough – and certainly visceral – it feels rather deflated and slowed down, turning from a traveler’s guide to a character study between chapters. It’s not bad, but it’s not what I signed on for. But as far as utopias (and dystopias) go, the book as a whole is largely top-notch.

“Can, if you don’t know, and it’s likely you don’t, was an early 70s experimental rock band from West Germany.” Way to go, Josh!