Dr. Frank's What's-it

Here Comes the Judge

Looks like I'm going to be a judge at the US Air Guitar Semifinals once again. Saturday, August 3 at the Independent in San Francisco. Should be a good time.

Also:

(Here.)

When disincentives might as well be incentives

Remember when the DEA left that college kid to die in a locked room for five days? A ways back I was wondering what ever happened to him and his case, and the consensus of facebook comments was that there probably was a settlement with a secrecy clause that would prevent anyone from ever knowing anything about it.

But I guess not. AP reports that he has settled for $4.1 million (cheap). (He was originally seeking $20 million, and I imagine a jury would have given it to him.)

The agents responsible have been disciplined, relieved of their duties and are now being prosecuted for attempted murder. Just kidding. No federal agent has been, or ever will be, disciplined, criticized, prosecuted, or even identified. They were just doing their jobs. And the settlement will be paid by the taxpayers. Not much of a disincentive there; quite the opposite really. Nice work if you can get it, eh, fellas?

(Previously noted here here.)

Shopping enabled wikipedia?!

Never noticed this before. But it's still missing links to the music, as outlined here. They need to "globalize" the product content, or at least extend it beyond books, for this to be truly useful.

Every picture tells a story, don't it?

I'm Easy, List Me

King Dork is on this Buzzfeed list of "15 books every punk should read," so of course I am powerless to resist linking to it.

Rick

I think this was probably King Dork's finest hour:

Making Amazon Do what You Want it To

Getting a small start on re-organizing the Dr. Frank internet in advance of the new book, and I came across this guy:

The strangest thing about this is that he's obviously been around for quite some time, yet not one person has ever made a joke about him to me, not even in Europe. There are several other Dr. Franks of various sorts in the US, and you can bet I've heard about all of them, in the form "hey, Doctor, I didn't know you wrote diet books" or what have you.

Anyhow, one thing that would be pretty useful these days would be if you could aggregate all your "content" on, say, Amazon, and present it as single link with an easily-understood list of things. You can do this to a degree with linked searches: here's the one for digital MTX albums, and this Amazon "author page" works for the books.

But some of the "Dr. Frank" records require their own separate search link for that purpose, and they (apparently unavoidably) include things like our German friend pictured above and Dr. Frank Lawlis's Quick Relief Collection; and it's not possible to add anything to the author page that isn't a book. iTunes has a similar issue: I'd need four or five different links to encompass all my various content on the iTunes store. You may think, what's the big deal, so post five links, but these links add up quickly and pretty soon your pages are nothing but confusing links, when all you really want is a way to make "hey buy my stuff" simple and comprehensive for those who might want to do it.

Now, maybe there's a way to do this that I haven't been able to figure out, and if so please tell me. I'm sure I'm not the only person who'd like to be able to do this stuff and can't figure out how.

Anyway, at least my website no longer says that Andromeda Klein is "coming soon" in 2009, and the links to the music page all work now, I'm pretty sure. Progress.

Sweet Lady Genevieve

Here.

Rachel

8/9/13 Brooklyn

One Down Three to Go

So the Porchlight thing happened and it happened to go pretty well. I've realized that the easiest audience in the world is a slightly drunk, PBS-y, "arts and leisure" population used to listening to writers trying to be funny, because the bar for funniness is extremely low. I mean, they'll laugh at almost anything. So even my little wingin' it spiel about making a pact with the devil and confiscating a crazy girl's gun followed by "Cingular Wireless (Worse than Hitler)" clicked like Groucho.

Still have the remaining three things on the schedule. See ya in Brooklyn?

-- Friday, August 9: The Gutter, 200 N. 14th street, Brooklyn, NY, 9PM. Acoustic set, w/ Mikey Erg and the Science Police.

-- Saturday August 24th, Old Ironsides, 1901 10th St Sacramento, CA 95811. The Knockoffs' 20th Anniversary show w/ me, Arts & Leisure, and Bright Faces.

-- Tuesday, September 17th: 1234Go! Records, 420 40th St., Oakland, CA. w/ Kepi and Miss Chain (that's Franz's band from Italia, for those of you who know him.)

I Told Ya... Ruined it...

Piedmont.

Defend Pop Punk

Wendy snapped this photo of what I assume is a band's T shirt at the Warped tour. Man overboard!

Doing these three four things

--Friday, July 26: Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa St., SF. Porchlight Story Telling Series 11th Anniversary Show 8 PM. w/ Anthony Bedard, Hai Ning Luan, April Sinclair, Dominic Riley, Michelle Tea, Arline Klatte, Beth Lisick. Gonna talk and play a song or whatever.

-- Friday, August 9: The Gutter, 200 N. 14th street, Brooklyn, NY, 9PM. Acoustic set, w/ Mikey Erg and the Science Police.

-- Saturday August 24th, Old Ironsides, 1901 10th St Sacramento, CA 95811. The Knockoffs' 20th Anniversary show w/ me, Arts & Leisure, and Bright Faces.

-- Tuesday, September 17th: 1234Go! Records, 420 40th St., Oakland, CA. w/ Kepi and Miss Chain (that's Franz's band from Italia, for those of you who know him.)

Thanks doll!

Found in Oakland.

I would like to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand

You may be surprised to learn that King Dork is one of the nine most "transformative books" of the last 45 years, but Reason magazine says it is, so it must be so. Cheers, guys!

To Phoebe, the chicest patient in the history of illness

Found in North Oakland.

Wendy

Sure, they're not that original, but some of the best bands in the world have been totally derivative.

Because of a question about where to buy MTX / Dr. Frank stuff on line, I took a look at the iTunes store's MTX page and found the sentence that is the title of this post in the band bio. Evidently, this comes from the allmusic.com's MTX page, and has thence migrated to many of the usual digital music hubs like iTunes, Pandora, etc. It's not something I would necessarily disagree with, especially in context, but it still seems a bit of a strange way to try to sell stuff. That is, however valid it might be as criticism, it doesn't seem all that solid as "marketing." So, it seems like I should perhaps try to come up with an alternative to submit to them, if they let me. (Anyone who'd like to give it a shot, give it a shot and email me.)

Anyhow, though I have mentioned it on the blog a couple of times way back when, I realized there are no links on the sidebar, so I've put some up. They go like this:

MTX;

Dr. Frank

So there ya go. Buy something if you want!

Gorgeous custom sword and scabbard from Peter Johnsson

More here.

Cyclical in structure...

Flipside's old review of Love is Dead, via face-thing post:

Well, this is awkward...

Chimo: Canada's attempt at a new national greeting.

Hey, I'll take it.

Nerd Appeal puts King Dork on a list with David Sedaris, Paul Feig, and Chuck Klosterman.

Just some girl who was on the make

When I first got this album, I had no idea who Eva Braun was, or even that it was the name of a real person rather than a made-up name. Eventually, though, I looked it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wow, I thought, the narrator is Hitler, and he's singing about his girlfriend… kinda stayed with me.

Tyrolean Landesknecht Sword

Sweet new "next generation" line two handed sword from Albion, available for pre-order.

Arma Virumque