My friend John's band the Dexateens playing a song that John wrote 12 years back when we were in a band together. My various bands since have always covered this song and Parks & Wildlife has, in fact, recorded it for an upcoming ep. John, who sings the song, does not appear in this video.

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Hall and Oats comic: [link]

Win points by attempting to commit suicide! Take online quizzes for bragging rights! Parents, lock up your whiny, pathetic children!

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Hahahahaha! Great one, Cor. So good, I played it on my show this morning!

So in the eyes of paranoid parents and sensationalistic media, is emo worse than goth?

Lacey Crisp? I kind of love the earnest sheriff describing the import of having hair hanging over your eyes.

My favorite bit is when they describe some Internet quiz as having any import.

My favorite bit is when they describe some Internet quiz as having any import.

"You can get points by cutting yourself or wearing black..."

I kind of love the earnest sheriff describing the import of having hair hanging over your eyes.

That's the point where I wasn't sure if this was real or not...

"You can get points by cutting yourself or wearing black..."

Or by crying!

I am listening to Jon's show and just came by to ask him where he found the clip. I should have known...

Jon Parles of the NYTimes has been reporting from Mardi Gras. I kind of love this bit. It's the New Orleans that I know.

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For me, the giant official Mardi Gras parades tend to blur after a while. Only a few hold on to carnival's satiric bite. Most have bland themes--gee, the circus--as they strive to impress crowds with the elaborate decorations of their floats and the generosity of what's thrown from them.

But New Orleanians aren't about to let other people do their parading for them. While the big krewes mount their spectaculars, Mardi Gras is also defined by countless informal parades thrown by gaggles of friends who name themselves krewes, make their own costumes and set out on spur-of-the-moment parade routes, traffic or no traffic. It's a great city for wordplay: the official Bacchus parade is spoofed by Barkus, featuring dogs, while the historically black Zulu is fondly echoed (and used to be directly followed) by Julu, which was started by the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars.

I was led by locals to Monday's parade by the bohemian Krew du Poux, who had gone all-out on costumes in a ghoulish mode. A scary clown with a larger-than-life head wielded a giant mallet. Little Bo Peep carried not just her crook but a sheep. Someone with a wagon was rolling around the new dwarf planet Eris, about six feet in diameter and painstakingly textured and painted. Someone else was riding around in an Uncle Sam hat on a cart holding a giant carrion crow and a tombstone for New Orleans, described in the epitaph as dead from neglect. Another crow wheeled around at one point on a unicycle. Of course there was a band, oom-pahing away in a Kurt Weill-Tom Waits style.

The parade ambled along nearly deserted streets, from the Upper Ninth Ward into the Marigny district, until it came to one that was more like an alley. Someone kept a lookout for the police. Out came shopping carts turned into bumper cars, with shock absorbers made from tires; one was painted with the words Bumper Bummer. Volunteers climbed in, other volunteers pushed, and as the band played a relentless drumbeat, a full-scale demolition derby began, ending only when one last cart remained untoppled. The krew's leader called for another round, and another; the contestants shrieked threats at each other; a spectator chanted "Kill! Kill!" A woman fan-danced amid the vehicles. The clown bopped people with his mallet.

There was humor in the competition; there was also anger and unfocused bitterness. New Orleans has always been a haven for arty misfits with a taste for decadence. In post-disaster New Orleans, they also have a taste for catastrophe: in sorrow and in rage, but also for the thrill of it.