Ahhhh, vacation. I just returned from 6 glorious days and 5 sweaty nights in Bawlmore, MD, and what a time it was. It was great to see the Spape clan assembled in one place, drinking, eating and carrying on in the fine family tradition. We saw Morris Day & the Time do the bird on Friday, and the Diabolical Biz Markie worked the crowd with a deejay set on Sunday, all at Artscape, and good times were had by all. Food… oh, we did some good eatin’. Freshly sawed up chicken parts at Pollo Rico, an outstanding french meal from the fine, fine folks at Petit Louis, great Mexican food at some place I can’t remember, pierogis and kielbasa at Ze Mean Bean (a Ukranian place with an awful name), uncannily delicious chicken salad (and coconut cake) at Cafe Hon, fresh rockfish/flounder/corn/etc purchased from one of the many fine indoor markets in town and grilled up at home, and lots and lots of Natty BO. We also saw a truly great exhibit of Shomei Tomatsu’s photography, went to a great little waterfall up in B-More county (I think), did some MacGyver-style repairs on my sister’s new BMW, met some cool Baltimorons, got bitten by insane MD mosquitos, got tremendously sweaty, and enjoyed a 7-hour delay on our return flight (peace out, Spirit air). Good times, for sure - and thanks to my family for rocking the bestest!

Over the weekend, chanchan and I saw Night Watch, a Russian film that came out last year, and is scheduled to come out in the US sometime this fall.

Night Watch is an adaptation of the first book of a hugely popular Russian fantasy trilogy. The story opens with the forces of light & dark battling to a stalemate back in the 1600s. When both sides realized that no one could be a winner here, they started the Night Watch and Day Watch to make sure that both sides would be kept in check, and the balance could be preserved. Fast forward to present day - the Night Watch, who operate under the guise of an electric company in modern-day Russia, are still keeping an eye on the dark forces. They issue licenses to dark folks that allow them to be vampires, but if any of the vampires start acting up and going after people (they’re supposed to just chill out and sip on pig’s blood, I guess), the Night Watch comes after them, armed with special flashlights, sunglasses, and… well, that’s pretty much all they have. And there’s a guy named Firefly who drives a super-souped up huge truck that goes really fast. Oh, and some of the night watch folks are actually wizards that transform into animals (including Tiger Cub, Bear, and Olga the Owl), which is pretty sweet. The main character is Anton, a night watch guy that looks kind of like Eugene Mirman, and doesn’t have any cool animal powers. He stops some vampires, killing one in the process, which pisses the rest of the Dark Ones off big-time. Here’s where things get complicated - prophecies are fulfilled, people swordfight with flourescent light tubes, and a creepy baby doll grows spider legs.

The story is pretty interesting, and there are a lot of cool effects in the movie. It was a little tricky to figure out some of the plot points, but I would blame that on the poorly-colored subtitles more than anything else. I haven’t seen any recent Russian films, so this one was a pleasant surprise - it was definitely better than most of the effects-laden, big-budget action films coming from Hollywood. I’m looking forward to checking out the rest of the trilogy when they come out.

Last night we staggered through the sticky night to the Blind Pig to see 25 Suaves and the Dirtbombs…

25 Suaves is a husband & wife band from Adrian, MI - Pete Larson sings and plays a really LOUD flying V, and Fumi Kawasaki beats the hell out of a drumset. Bass? No room! These guys were really, really fucking metal - not black metal, or 80s metal, but like authentic Motörhead metal (loud guitars, fast songs, gravelly screamed vocals), which is fuckin a-excellent in my book. I don’t think that they were expecting much from the crowd, but after a passionate speech about the Phonecian alphabet and love (I think), Ann Arbor was all in. Really good set, and they even did a cover of Judas Priest’s Hell Bent For Leather. Those fuckers know how to properly end a song, too! We even bought a cd, because they rocked so damn hard.

The Dirtbombs were amazing as always - it was great to see the 2-drum/2-bass setup on that tiny-ass stage. Mick got sweaty and broke lots of strings, the twin drummers were insane (as usual), Ko made her rock-out face all night long, and the new bass player was great. AND we even got a half cover of I Wanna Be Your Dog. All this (and the opportunity to drink $1.75 budweisers) for a measly ten bucks? Outasight.