I was riding on the sidewalk and was nearly clipped by a driver at Elmwood and started formulating a "bike theory." See, there are four kinds of drivers: ideal, careless, oblivious, and hostile. Ideal drivers are respectful and don't gamble with your safety. Careless drivers are generally respectful but will gamble with your safety for their benefit. Oblivious drivers are good-intentioned but are not aware of what they're doing—almost always they are only temporarily distracted. Hostile drivers deliberately try to hurt cyclists. Given that ideal drivers will never hurt you and careless ones don't intend to but gamble, and that oblivious drivers and hostile drivers will always be a threat, it's probably best to ride obnoxiously down the middle of the lane. That way, you will improve your odds against the careless drivers ... theoretically, your best bet is to be as chaotic as possible, but you might convert some of those good drivers to hostile ones in the process.

Ok ... enough of that stuff. I've heard that I should just blog about stuff more so people can live vicariously. Ordinarily I would just tell people to piss off and go out and live their own lives, but heck, it's been around a month since I've written about any specific stuff, so why not. Besides, it's really easy to write.

So, on Thursday last week, I got out to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) and holy moly ... they've now got a touch-screen game, a golf game, and a pool table. Aside from the initial shock, I'm glad that there's activities, but I wish they were either all social (like the pool table) or at least bug-related — I mean, come on: golf? What about Centipede? Millipede? Even Galaga?

Anyway, that night I got to see several bands ... Low Ton now has a fourth player again, and although they still rocked, it'll be a little while before I get used to the more complicated sound ... I kind of liked them more with three guys just because their sound was cleaner. Next was Cobra Verde who do this very good high energy rock, but my interest strayed from them after a while since it seems they couldn't maintain that energy level. Also that night was Nebula who do very good late 1970's-style power rock.

On Friday I got over to The Rochester Visual Studies Workshop (31 Prince St.) to see the Equipped show there. Audio-wise, Grebben opened up the show with sample-oriented beat-based loops. Something went awry with the connection to the audience and most of the 70-or-so people there cleared out like rats from a sinking ship. I suspect it was a combination of the music being too loud for conversation at such an early point in the evening. I think a lot of people were digesting the videos: PETE's video-noise-rich loops, Chuck Miller's video loops with applied distortions, Joo-Mee Paik's sort-of bland "YESes" and two-channel video of "Do Nothing/Something, Seong-Whan Park's 3-pane division of non-patterned patterns in "Mapping the Pathways," Joe Tunis' abstract ants, and Hilary Taillie's fascinating and titillating video conceptualizations in "The Land of Make Believe: Sixty Thoughts in Thirty Minutes" projected through fan-blown ribbons with mirrors. By the time the rolling loops of noise and beats from Aural Surgery started, there were only 40 or so people left, and even fewer for the semi-structured beats of noise and melodic samples from The Unfed.

On Saturday I was back at The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) to see the pretty good punkish, surf-rock band The Husbands. Next was the first full show of punk-rock/power-rock band The Scarlets. It's an uphill battle to convince haters of The Purrs that Sara's new band is really way better. Oh well. I missed out on the last two bands: Angry Johnny and the Killbillies, and The Bloody Hollies because I was mired in conversation with one of ... oh, I don't know ... some very small number of absolutely captivating women I've met. This led to a trip out with three of her friends to get food on East Avenue ... imagine that: me with four attractive women. I should brag more ...

Anyway, when I got back to my house, there was this woman wandering around apparently because her car ran out of gas. I actually didn't have any cash to give her, but I gave her a ride to Monroe ... although the circumstances were odd, she seemed sincere enough. I finally got back home around 3:30 or so ... all the coffee earlier in the evening kept me up until 5, though.

On Sunday, I made it out to ARTWalk (University Ave. from Atlantic to Merriman) for their annual "ARTWalk Alive" event. I was happy to have seen Urknee and Bjürton do their own brand of thoughful spoken word poetry over avant garde ambient music. Plus, I got pictures ...

Monday was spent digesting a garbage plate with my friend from Colorado ... that, and the half-gallon of homemade wine which was sorely lacking in alcohol content until we punched it up with some rum. Tuesday, I made it out to Lux Lounge (666 South Ave.) to see Aaron get his hair cut. He looks so little like Chewbaca now that it's hard to recognize him ... I guess he was donating his hair to some group that makes wigs for kids on chemotherapy. Anyway, later on I was back at The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) yet again. This time to see Tiger Cried Beef do their own brand of rock-and-roll ... epitomizing some perfect variety of 1980's rock. Next was Charles Bissell, of The Wrens who did this solo guitar work with loops and effects to create a the sound of a very lonely band ... it was pretty cool. At least there were a bunch of people to see him ... maybe it was the touch-screen game that drew them in. Who knows.

• Criminal (at The Little) - A couple guys get together to sell some money.
• Festival Express (at The Little) - Archival footage of, well, "The Festival Express" which was a train full of 1970's rock stars stopping for concerts wherever they went.
• Shaun of the Dead (at The Little) - Shaun has no idea his neighbors are now the living dead in this revealing satire of modern suburban life.
• Silver City (at The Little) - If only real life politics were as simple as in movies like this.
• First Daughter - Hasn't this topic already been done to death this year? I mean, come on ... Chasing Liberty? Spartan?
• The Forgotten - Come back in 6 months and see if the title lives up to its name.
• The Last Shot - I heard Alec Baldwin giving this the royal treatment on The Daily Show ... apparently it's based on the true story of a couple movie makers who get duped by the FBI posing as movie producers to catch members of the mob or something. I strongly suspect the story is much more interesting told in retrospect than a reenacted movie would be. (Er ... I mean, I don't watch TV at all except for Free Speech TV.)