Jeff Tweedy, ETC.

I meant to write up the Wilco show earlier, but I got distracted by a few things.  It was a good show, and perhaps more importantly, it was a very nice evening weather wise.  The band played two encores, which was awesome.  You can see the full setlist here.  They didn't play most of my favorite Wilco songs- "Either Way", "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart", "I Must Be High", "Passenger Side", "Side With The Seeds", but I still had a great time.  The opening act was Bon Iver, who I hadn't heard before.  They were also good.  The crowd was about what I expected for a show in Cary- a mix of young people wearing Modest Mouse t-shirts and middle aged people who probably heard about the band on NPR and own a copy of Summerteeth and who don't go to a lot of rock shows that don't involve a holdover from the sixties or seventies.  A lot of Obama votes, in other words.  I noticed a few people wearing Wilco t-shirts- I never quite understand the people who wear a t-shirt of the act they are going to see.  I saw one guy wearing a Son Volt t-shirt, and tried to decide if that counted, or if that was just awesome.  

What I'm Reading: The Illumantus! Trilogy, which I've been meaing to read for nearly a decade, but always kept putting off.  The book is amazingly strange, and I'm a little worried about how many of the references and allusions that I immediately recognized.  I've always been a big fan of conspiracy theories, without ever subscribing to any of them, and the book is kind of like a Rosetta Stone for paranoia.  

What I'm Watching: The final season of The Wire on DVD (McNulty has lost his damned mind) and filling in the Hitchcock films I had missed up to this point (over the weekend I watched The Trouble With Harry, which is a dark comedy and amazingly strange, and tonight The Wrong Man, which sums up a great deal of Hitchcock's own anxieties.)  And The Venture Bros.  Always The Venture Bros.  

What I'm Listening To: Liz Phair, Wilco, Sage Francis mixtapes, Petra Haden, Nas.  Nothing too interesting at the moment.  I'm curious if I'm about to embark on another obsessive trip through one of the usual suspects (The Beatles, Dylan, Aesop Rock, Buck 65, Nirvana, The Band) or perhaps in a new direction (I've never really binged on The Clash or the Replacements or Tom Waits, and I see all three of those as distinct possibilities).  It seems like it's about time for one of my obsessive spells.  

What I'm Playing: Deus Ex: The Conspiracy on the PS2.  It's an older FPS, originally put out for PCs and then ported to the PS2.  The game is interesting because it gives you several different ways to accomplish your goals.  I generally use the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later approach, mixed in with some stealth.