Sigur Ros played at the Orpheum last night. Once again, storms and tornados hit Omaha. Cody and I drove downtown to the wonderful soundtrack of tornado sirens. Then we proceeded to get out of the car when the torrential downpour was in full effect. We were armed with an umbrella, but it didn’t help much. The wind was too much for its brittle bones and it broke.

There were a lot of people down in the basement of the Orpheum, where apparently the band came through playing. That would’ve been pretty awesome to see. Instead we hung out in a parking garage for a little while and then under a building’s overhang. But it was cool to watch the storm from outside. We were pretty much soaked by the time we were actually let into the delayed show.

Despite sitting in wet jeans and having soggy, freezing feet, the show was pretty amazing. My favorite part was in about the third song (?), when the horn section made their entrance from offstage in a serpentine march across the stage. That was really cool. It’s so impressive when a band like that, that has such a specific sound - layered, ethereal and almost other-worldly - can sound as good, if not better, live as they can on record.

That’s Cody throwing his socks out.

The end.

southeast london., originally uploaded by NotoriousLBT.

This was taken in Southeast London in 2000.

This is a gravely inadequate post, but I just want to say that I saw The Fiery Furnaces the other night and they were amazing and now I can’t stop listening to them. They are an extremely talented and intriguing band live. I saw Mates of State on Saturday and they were pretty awesome too. Their new album Re-Arrange Us is really good and poppy and the songs and bits of lyrics are guaranteed to stay in head for days. The past couple of days I’ve woken up with pieces of their songs in my head…like the moment I woke up. That’s how catchy it is.

In downer news, Little Couch had a less than impressive showing at pub quiz tonight. In fact, we were so embarrassed that we used a pseudonym. We’ll bounce back next week with a best ever score!

Above are photos from the Jeff King show “Better On My Off Day” at Pulp. Here is my review of the show, published this week in The Reader.

Here’s my “Meeting the Band” with Spring Gun, published in this week’s City Weekly (my scanner’s not quite big enough, sorry).

To read it more legibly, here’s the online version.

The Red Wings have won the Stanley Cup! Henrik Zetterberg, one of my two favorite players (Pavel Datsyuk being my other), won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the Playoff MVP.

In addition to being one of the greatest young players in the NHL, he is also easy on the eyes. I’ve often referred to him as the Jared Leto of hockey. Here’s a comparison.

Jamie, Erin, Kyle, Cody, Melissa, Brandon, and I went to see Jules and Jim (Truffaut, 1962) at Film Streams yesterday. Our group alone doubled the attendance.

Much is to be said about the film’s innovative camera work, fresh and revolutionary for its time. I love the brief freeze frames they use a handful of times - especially when Catherine is revealing the way she looks now and before. The sequence on the bridge (see above) is still exciting and breathtaking even after a few times of seeing it referenced.

However, what is most striking is the complexity of the triangular relationship at the core of the film. Friendships and romantic entanglements are shown with all of the messiness, depth, confusion, manipulation, sincerity and love that often characterize them. Every character shows strength and vulnerability at some point in the film, and throughout you get glimpses of the layers beneath each character’s exterior. The scenes between the three of them (four including the child, Sabine) crackle with both warmth and more intensely, tension. Within this threesome, the characters vacillate between their public and private selves, often slipping back into a skin that they thought they had shed.

(a week and a half ago)