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This last week was pretty fun. I finally escaped the doldrums of winter and made it out to several fun events around the city. I don't have too much to say about the last several months, just know that lots of movies were watched, many books were read, and the number of mostly-completed crosswords littering my house is innumerable.

Tuesday, I saw old favorites Of Montreal play at The Granada in Lawrence. They'd just played in Larryville a year before and I'd attended that much more sparcely attended show. Their popularity seems to have expanded exponentially in one year and I can't figure out why. You'd think after ten years and almost as many full-length albums that the masses would have recognized their great talent for writing great pop songs. Maybe it's the recent Outback Steakhouse commercials that feature the reworking of "Wraith Pinned to the Mist" that are bringing out all the kids. At any rate, the show was pretty good but not quite as good as last year's performance (which still rates in my top 5 of all time), even with the new video backdrop and stage props. A Japanese sextet called Elekibass opened for them. They fit right in with their bubblegum pop over thick Japanese accents. I left thinking that I probably won't see anything like this ever again.

Wednesday was the assembly of our latest CD compilation idea, "cities". You can see the tracklist here. This is only the third one that I've participated in but they seem to be getting better and better. Future ideas include "songs about death", "heaven and hell", and "animals". I'm a big nerd, yes I know this.

Thursday was our annual trivia session at recordBar. After months of not winning, we finally nabbed first place. It's not that we're not smart or anything, we just make bad decisions or don't know the final answer (which really is what the whole game boils down to). I went home with $23, which covered dinner and drinks with some money to spare. Trivia the next night at The Brick went over like the Hindenburg though, quickly deflating our fragile thought balloons.

Saturday was a proud moment in Kansas City music. Local public radio DJ Robert Moore and former Frogpond bandmember Megan Hamilton started up a new record label called Oxblood Records and put on a weekend-long local music festival at the recordBar to promote their second release First Blood. This one is a sixteen-song compilation of The Who's Who of Kansas City rock music. The songs were newly recorded specifically for the compilation and most of the artists made appearances over the weekend. It's been a long time since anyone has undertaken something this big in Kansas City and I have to say the CDs came out great and the artwork is hilarious. The show that I saw was all aces featuring In the Pines, Be/Non, American Catastrophe, and closing with the bar owners themselves - The Roman Numerals. Stay tuned for future releases.

Staying out entirely too late the night before, I reserved Sunday as the day of rest. I did catch all of the Academy Awards for the first time in my life. I hadn't seen any of the movies except for The Departed. I guess that was the one to watch though as it grabbed Best Director and Best Film. I'm thinking I may make a tradition of watching this from now on (although I wish they'd shorten this by about an hour or so). I now have a fat queue of movies to check out for 2007.

Look for my annual Best of Music any day now. I'd like to get this thing out earlier but there's music coming out until New Year's eve and it takes a LONG time to get through all of that.

-ick!