So, like, I’m in this movie. For maybe 25-seconds. I’m awesome.

It’s screening on the 27th, at the Contemporary. You can hit the hotlink here, or the read the text below. Word has it that many of the folks involved will be on-hand and that organized-yet-improvised hijinks will ensue. Potentially even from those who cameo. Nice.

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3.27.2008: Film Screening: A, (anonymous)

6:00 pm, Free admission

Directed by Daniel Bowers and shot in St. Louis, this mockumentary explores the world of support groups and 12 step programs. Gavin Tartowski has been called a quack, a cult-leader, and a barista who sees himself as a guru. Looking for a support group to help him with his compulsion to wear extremely tight pants, Gavin was turned away from 12-step programs like AA, NA, and GA. “Why all the labels?” Gavin asks. “Why not put all problems under one umbrella? That is why I created A. I want to help people no matter what their challenges are.” Members begin to work through their own inner-demons and start to see the value in their lives. Although Tartowski’s methods are less than orthodox, his ability to heal is indisputable.

The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis will collaborate with B-Side Films, a film distribution company based in Austin, Texas, to present a film series of independent films from local, national, and international filmmakers. We will be teaming up with B-Side every Thursday night during the month of March to bring you their latest releases free of charge!

In lieu of doing of needed, “serious” work, I’m going to toss up some playlists from recent KDHX shows.

Thursday, March 13, The Underworld, 2 – 4 p.m., sub for Doug Morgan (artist – song – album). Note: all STL set.

Hour one: Junkbox, Need to Explain, Out of the Gate Again; Treeweasels, She Denies Them, Three; Belinda Chaire, Riding a Wave, Growing up Naked; The Nukes, Five Years Left, State of Missouri; Phonocaptors, Broom Factory, Futura Phono; Uncle Tupelo, The Long Cut, Anodyne; Tinhorn, Take the Line, Adios-Exactly-Goodbye; Shelby, Steady Stars, Steady Stars; The Love Experts, Cuba Street, Cuba Street; The Boorays, Band of Gold, Pumpkin Pie Crustacean; Jon Rosen, Silence, The King of Las Vegas; Drift, Beehive, Suddenly the World’s Glass is Half-Full; The Getaway Car, The System, First Gear; Tripstar, Becoming, At the Instar Motel.

Hour two: Rough Shop, Dance all Night, Live at Kemper Museum CD sampler; Painkillers, Dork on the Moon, unreleased compilation; The Ambassadors, California, The Ambassadors; Bunnygrunt, Names of Trees, Jen-Fi; Stranded Lads, Someday, Reservoir I & II; Corporate Humour, Not that Good, unreleased compilation; The Red Squares, Separated Lives, Jumping on the Bed; Finn’s Motel, Thanks to Gravity, unreleased bonus tracks of Escape Velocity; Judge Nothing, Nashville, Riveter; The Dead Celebrities, X-Ray Eyes, The Many Moods of the Dead Celebrities; The Ded Bugs, Bandwagon, Planet of Blood; The Urge, Bread, Bust Me Dat Forty; Cloister, Possibilities, Recorduroy; WaterWorks, I Hear the Voice, WaterWorks; The Imps, Secrets, Innocence is Full of Pleasure; The Blastoids, Eat Like You Mean It, The Blastoids; Crushed, Trophy, The Closed Room.

Tuesday, March 4, Suffragette City, 10 p.m.-midnight, sub for Rene Spencer Saller.

Hour one: Klaatu, Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, Klaatu; Monade, Etoile, Monstre Cosmic; James Combs, OK It’s Sunday, Nice Dream if You Can Get It; Cat Power, New York, Jukebox; The Warlocks, So Paranoid, Heavy Deavy Skull Lover; Black Angels, Empire, Passover; PJ Harvey, Grow Grow Grow, White Chalk; Kendra Smith, Stars are in Your Eyes, The Guild of Temporal Adventurers; Siguar Ros, Salka, Huart; Adam Franklin, Morning Rain, Bolts of Melody; Mark Gardener, To Get Me Through; These Beautiful Ghosts; Mojave 3, Who Do You Love?, Out of Tune.

Hour two: Dandy Warhols, Holding Me Up, Odditorium or the Warlords of Mars; Calliope, Hello… Spaceman?, I Can See You with My Eyes Closed; Thom Yorke, Harrowdown Hill, The Eraser; Bob Mould, Stupid Now, District Line; The Red Romance, Break Away, The Red Romance; The Bureau, Human Coal, We Make Plans in Secret; I Am the World Trade Center, The Postcard, Tight Connection; Brad Laner, Find Out, Neighbor Singing; High Violets, Love is Blinding, To Where You Are; Mercury Rev, I Only Have Eyes for You, Goddess on a HiWay; His Name is Alive, Letter, Stars on E.S.P.; The Orange Peels, California Blue, Circling the Sun; Aimee Mann, Lost in Space, Lost in Space; New Pornographers, The Jessica Numbers, Twin Cinema.

Today: filling in for Doug Morgan on The Underworld, 2 -4 p.m., on KDHX, 88.1 fm.

Tomorrow, March 14: early set at Royale, 6- 10 p.m., 3132 S. Kingshighway.

Week from tomorrow, March 21: switching out for the late set at Royale with the outstanding Mark Early; he’ll be spinning my usual slot on the 28th, with Chicagoan and STL expat Jamie Hays.

Okay, it’s still March. Deadline made, for a change.

Soccer team: It’s on.

Band, I: Klaatu is a group that somehow escaped me for several decades, but the Canadian prog rock group has infiltrated my daily listening habits with songs like “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft,” as lyrically ridiculous as they are strangely hooky. (Which I initially typed as “kooky,” which would also be correct.) I’m not sure if this is a fast-burning crush, but having most of their vinyl priced at $4.99 at Euclid made it an affordable relationship worth pursuing.

Band, II: Speaking of trippy, the full edition of Sigur Ros’ “Heima” film is now found on YouTube, a sprawling 90-plus minutes of Icelandic beauty, both aural and visual. Damned awesome. Don’t cheat and scroll through. Watch in total.

Band, III: My last musical obsession of the month is Mandrill, a group that was fully brought to my attention with a cover story on the fantastic Wax Poetics. On the same run that yielded the Klaatu vinyl from above, I scored a variety of Mandrill vinyl, including the stellar “Beast from the East,” “Mandrilland,” “We are One” and “Mandrill Is.” Slip this on and it’s a party at anyone’s house.

Hoopster: SLU senior Danny Brown wouldn’t know me from the man-on-the-moon, but I’ve enjoyed watching him play at the Scottrade for the last four years. His recent dunk at Saint Joseph’s is online for eternity. “Oh, my goodness, Danny Brown! Elevating and flushing!”

Docs, I: Warholia has climbed on my obsession charts in recent years. Having watched virtually everything Warhol-related on Netflix (including the recent and HORRIFIC “Factory Girl”), I was excited to see “A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory” on the Webster U. Film Series calendar. With director Esther Robinson in the house on a recent Sunday evening, the film played to a mid-sized audience of students, artists and (I hope) fellow Warholians. What a beautiful, dreamy, intriguingly-crafted film. Can’t wait to catch it again, hoping to glean all the little things that slipped past me the first time.

Docs, II: A week later at Webster, “Billy the Kid” played, and Jennifer Venditti’s doc drew an assortment of the, let’s call them, “more-unique” students from the Webster community. Perfect! After all, the film’s a look at a quirky kid rambling through his sophomore year at a rural Maine high school, the ultimate outsider captured in verite style during his most vulnerable year(s). While I’m of the belief that there’s an incredible amount of inherent cruelness to the film – most people seeing this (and most of those needing to see this) would laugh at, rather than with Billy – all high school misfits will find some poignancy and lots of pain in these 87-minutes. What a disturbing work, bouyed by positive press and sold as a story that champions the underdog.

Book: Speaking of high school, Jonathan Franzen attended Webster Groves High School the better part of a decade ahead of me, but the stories he tells in “The Discomfort Zone” ring weirdly true. After all, we both had Mr. Knight as a principal. On the other hand, Franzen eventually found a place in the school and generally doesn’t seem to hate Webster Groves’ society and culture, which would differentiate him from me on two important points. I’m enjoying this memoir, with only a few pages remaining. You can read it online here.

Flickr poster: Don’t know Manganite, a photographer from Bonn, Germany. Wouldn’t mind meeting his acquaintance, though. What an eye.

Blogger, redux: Patterson’s blogging. Good for him. I look forward to vigorous disagreement shortly.

Addiction, kicked: I am over The Fan Show. Haven’t been in weeks. Have felt the twitch on Sundays. Have tuned in. But have not attended. Kurt Labelle, you’re on my list.

Website: Being a fan of photography and history, it was pleasure to get clued into a fine site called Shorpy, which seems to be a clearinghouse for outrageous amounts of miscellaneous photographs, documenting the American scene of the last century.

Restaurant: Iron Barley. Gotta go there more.

Two chances to spin music this week.

Tuesday: KDHX, 10 -midnight, filling in for Rene Spencer Saller on “Suffragette City.”

Wednesday, Halo Bar, 10:30 – 2:30, filling in for the inimitable Jim Utz.

Any requests?

Back in town and teaching! Good stuff.

New venue, whee!

I’ve celebrated the possibility of this DJ gig by investing the entire night’s pay in mega-quantities of records from both Euclid and the Record Exchange. Luckily, it’s come through, so all is well.

So, I’m debut DJ-ing here:

Wednesday, March 5
10:30 p.m. – 2:30 a.m.
Halo Bar, 6161 Delmar

In the meantime, I’ll be at the Royale, like, tomorrow. A pleasure it’d be to see you, with a completely new box:

Friday, February 23
10:00 p.m. – 1:15 a.m.
The Royale, 3132 S. Kingshighway

Scene One: UE

The Washburne Trade School is recommended by vets of this UE adventureland. Rightly so. It is amazing. (Shots are going live at flickr tonight, which only do some justice to the place.) Very few abandoned complexes in the Midwest compare to this one, an immense structure, full of interesting little areas of wonder. From the scale to the history to the unique additions in virtually every oversized room… damn. The fact that we, a traveling party out of St. Louis, run into some Austrian anarchists in the space only makes it that much cooler. (Some good basic info and a slideshow, here. Thanks, DL.)

Scene Two: Football

Arsenal vs. Manchester United. The Globe Pub. About 350 people of varying allegiances and nationalities crammed into two rooms intended for half that number. An all-star bartender named Meredith. A miserable match. A complete lack of lebensraum. Such is life when the world’s game is broadcast in a world-class city. It all makes for an impressive event, even if the match is rubbish. The Globe claims a title as America’s best soccer bar and I have no other names handy to suggest that’s a lie.

Scene Three: Korean Bar-B-Que

San Soo Gab San. Kinda ridiculously smoky. Kinda bad service. Kinda a lot of octopus in a vegetarian soup. And yet… when three bottles of Korean vodka and 11 bottles of “Oriental Beer” are knocked back, with yours truly on a Lenten bit of abstention, the evening gets loosened up. Someone’s gotta designate drive and with a bellyful of seaweed, there’s no reason not to have a smile. Not an everyday thing, but, yeah, sure. Once in a while.

Scene Four: The California Clipper

You can tell that the 6’3 blonde with the shocking mop of curly hair runs this joint. You can just tell. Hipsters out the wazoo, with quirky drinks to suit. Onstage, a classic country band in matching black suits grind out a workingman’s set for a small pocket of dancers. Do the Dock Ellis boys know about this place, about this band? If so, these big city cousins might be their best friends. Or worst enemies. One or the other. Thumbs up for the booths and The Onion, stacked by the door. Thumbs down for the eight-dozen jackasses in varying beard styles.

Scene Five: Oak Park

Coolest. Suburb. Ever. A bit too full of the Whitey Whitersons, but the lack of diversity is about the only complaint. A nice, scenic, walkable place, with astounding civic assets. Right on.

Scene Six: Starbucks

Have gone nearly 40 years with only three trips to Starbucks. For all the reasons expected: the chain mentality, the pending American uni-culture, the money that they get that doesn’t go to mom-and-pop operations… well, those are all kind of the same reason, aren’t they? I just haven’t gone to Starbucks, so there. But with two associates in the throes of a coffee jones, I wander in and innocently order a venti green tea latte. My life changes. My assumptions and prejudices will be tested, from this moment forward. The venti green tea latte? No one told me! I could have one of these, every day, for the rest of my personal forever.

When one of the worst human beings in the world gets a bit of bitter medicine, it’s a sweet day for the rest of us.

Thoughts, first thought, then compiled and typed, for the amusement of any…

RFT cover story: A few weeks back, I rifled through a few hundred old issues of the Riverfront Times, salvaging clips from the yellowing pages. I’m not going to get into that whole political conversation here, but it was a different paper then. Just. Different. This week’s cover story on River Styx, though, was the most literal throwback I’d read in the weekly’s pages in years. I don’t know the author, I’m not sure I completely understand the cover graphic, but, wow, how exciting to find a piece like this! An interesting, provocative and needed read.

Competition: I keep sending things. Yet, I keep not making the books, not making the magazines, not making the website. Found will eventually recognize. I dare to dream.

Pub: Soccer or beer? Beer or soccer? Were King Solomon himself forcing me to decide, I don’t know that I could face the choice of one over the other. Which make the Newstead Tower Public House such as joyous addition to the western edge of The Grove. To enjoy a Schlafly draft on a brisk weekday afternoon, while highlights of the Japanese J-League are playing on multiple screens… I grow misty at the mere notion of this. And to have actually lived such a moment? I may just burst into tears. Once I figure out what to call it (The Tower? The Newstead? The House?), all will be well.

Household item: Let’s say you live in St. Louis, a town given over to extremes in temperature and varying degrees of humidity. Let’s say that you’ve moved a half-dozen times in the last full-dozen years and you’ve got many of your belongings in cardboard boxes. And let’s say that one day while examining your many-and-varied treasures, you pick up a box, only to have the base stick to the floor when you lift. Don’t even ponder the repercussions of losing, say, little books that you wrote as a kid, or your actual, physical college degrees. Don’t think about it. Go out, right now, and buy your ass some plastic boxes. Someday, you’ll thank me.

Town: Paducah, KY, yo! Did you know that Paducah, KY, is just two-point-five hours from St. Louis. It is!

YouTube video: For class purposes, I have played a “Charlie Rose” interview of Malcolm Gladwell with guest interviewer Brian Grazer a half-dozen times. To this point, I still can’t figure out the exact moment at which Gladwell realized that he had to save the entire affair by taking over the interviewing mantle. But he did. Brilliantly. And it’s only one of many oddly fascinating moments during this half-hour of wonderfully disconnected chatter, featuring two characters with astounding heads of hair. (Zip 28-minutes into the clip for the beginnings this, or enjoy that much time with Salman Rushdie.) “Love and respect to Charlie Rose,” indeed.

Old-school show o’ the month: Monday, February 11 @ the Bluebird, with A.K.A.C.O.D. (featuring Larry Dersch, once of Common Ailments of Maturity) along with Bill Boll and the recently-reunited-for-special-gigs Aviation Club. Through the miracles of the interwebs, I played a small role in midwifing this gig, featuring STL players of the past and present, in both new and old guises. The combination of sounds is intriguing and the musicianship of this trio of acts is beyond reproach. The only problem is our generation has given on attending all that many shows, so perhaps some of you young folks can attend this, make a racket and appreciate the experience sans earplugs. Me, I think I might wear some.

Presidential candidate: With apologies to our own Blake Asbhy, has anyone seen anything remotely like Mike Gravel’s campaign? Damn! Weirdest. Marketing. Ever.

Water: Why drink it for free when you can have Snapple’s Antioxidant Agave Melon?

Celebreality show: Really, I’ve got to do something about the cable problem. Perhaps some therapy? Oh, no, I can’t, that’s part of my problem, already, in the form of “Celebrity Rehab.” Damn, these folks is jacked up. But I’m learning something, so time spent with Dr. Drew is both educational and so much more (morbidly) entertaining than “Make Me an Orange County Cop.”

Magazine: Dis chains all you want. In fact, let me join you: chains suck! That said, the magazine “A Public Space” only came to my attention because I popped into a chain, one with a mighty and strong magazine section. “APS” is a beauty. It’s well-written, attractively presented. Great cover and cool, eclectic content. Damn. I feel lucky that I came across this product at issue four, with the chance to buy back issues before they’re sold out. Worth the $12 cover price, okay? By the way, did you know about this magazine? Did you know about his magazine and not tell me? Why?