The Acrobats of Etiquette fought their first—and, they insist, their last for at least nine months—battle of the bands last Thursday. Simple two-act bout, and our pirate pals (we write unflinchingly with home-court bias) was in rare fettle, true fighting form. Had a new singalong anthem even, a sucker punch if ever there was one.
What the AoE hadn’t accounted for, and the reason why they’ll never stumble through this particular forest again, is the size of their opponent’ s family.
Ever been to an Arnold Rice show? Ever noticed that just about everybody in the crowd looks out of place? How you could never imagine so many people willingly coming out to see a middling singer-songwriter who has neither the presence nor to projection skills to command the stages he infrequently plays?
It takes nothing away from his performance skills (such as they are) to reveal that Arnie Rice is part of an immigrant wave which hit this town in the 1960s. He’s related to several entire neighborhoods which are walking distance from Hamilton’s. Plus he tends to book his gigs on family reunion weekends and holidays.
If the majority of the local population wants to corral a well-situated club for family festivities, who’s to stop ‘em? But isn’t holding a battle of the bands on such a night a tad unfair?

Far from being sore losers, the Acrobats of Etiquette are taking this loss as a further challenge. They intend to build their own fervent family-filled fanbase, starting right now.That’s where the self-imposed nine-month moratorium between battles comes in. “None of us have kids,” the Acs of Et regret. “We’ve got our work cut out for us if we want to have a few fresh faces at the next battle of the bands.” Then, in another generation or so, they’ll be beating mama’s boy Arnie Rice at his own game.

Poll Parrot and The Devil and Mr. O at the Bullfinch… Gene and Glenn and Forty-Five Minutes, economical cover acts, at Hamilton’s… Kitchen Klatter and The Planet Man at D’ollaire’s; two more unalike bands could apparently not be found…

The tin cans are covered with pigeon poop.

Dark Dark Dark, Wild Go.
Builds catchy tunes excitingly sideways, with accordions and strings and whatever (I can’t really tell) carrying melodies while vocals and organ sound grow into cascading waterfalls of sound—then, just as quickly, dry up, leaving the sweet vocals and frisky-weird keyboards alone. Alternately sensitive and silly, and brilliant at both. I want to see this band live. More than that, I want to see this band live in a German cabaret at the turn of the last century.

Sit Ubu Sit by Gary David Goldberg.
I dug this out after reading Meredith Baxter’s autobiography, in which she speaks very well of her Family Ties producer. He on the other hand, barely mentions her in this book–not out of spite or anything, but because he’s crafted a story with just a few interwoven threads. He wants to talk about the most special relationships in his life– on Family Ties, that wound be Michael J. Fox (whom he discovered when Matthew Broderick became unavailable). Offscreen, it’s his wife.
He writes, with selfless insight, of health issues and professional crises. He streamlines and connects the stories so that they mean something. Goldberg’s voice is calm and collected. He escaped Hollywood tensions for an idyllic east coat retirement in Vermont. Hie tells his life story not out of bravado or ego, but because he wants to share what he learned. And even more than very special episodes of’80s stockings, his are lessons worth sharing.

You’ve got to love a technological showdown like this:

Barnes & Noble, home of the Nook ebook reader, downsizes its Yale bookstore, giving up half of its real estate and shunting two stores worth of merchandise into one. (Very capably, I might add; the redesign is still roomy and browsey.)
And who got the lease on the vacated space? Apple, creator of the Nook’s nemesis, the iPad.
An Apple store is overdue in this part of the state; an Ivy League university would seem to demand proximity to an Apple store. Yet it’s taken this long.
They’ve put the time to good use at least. The whole summer was devoted to construction on that section of Broadway. (Besides B&N, neighbours include the Thali 2 vegetarian restaurant, a Yale dorm and the shop that sells touristy university t- shirts.) one hopes the inconvenience was worth ir for the other businesses. It certainly helped make the Apple store a shining testament to the hallowed computer company’s sense of style.
A whole new edifice was constructed for the store, a stand-alone bearing with the aesthetics associated with apple products: airy, spacy, freeing. The high ceilings and wide aisles resemble the generous frames and uncluttered appeal of Apple products. Giant windows on all sides lure you to the screens within. The products themselves– phones, computers, pads, laptops, all with that distinctive fruit logo–laid out on inviting try-out tables.
The staff are the eager-beaver, if bleary -yed and unshaven, sort of young men and women who clog the streets around Yale at any given time,
A long line formed Saturday morning for the grand opening, which dissipated quickly once the doors opened, because there’s lot of room in there,
Hyper space, meet new haven retail space. An apple seller on the main downtown marketing route in or fair village. The apples don’t fall far from the elm trees. Welcome to town, technology hounds. We may have lost a bookstore over the summer (Labyrinth on York), but we’ve gained an ebook store.

“Look, daddy! You must be a mammal, because you have bubbles all over you. Isn’t that the definition of a mammal?”

A miles- long traffic jam between our town and a certain big club in a certain major city. Two bands from this area en route, both on the bill, both hoping that if they can’t get there, least the other band might so “out of town nite” at the historic venue wouldn’t be a total loss.
” forty five minutes without moving, and we get out and wander around the highway,” recalls Paul straw of the sedents. “Just a few rows up, there’s the peripatetics’ van.”
The bands joined forces and honed a strategy. The peripats had a bike in their van, so Paul, a messenger by trade, took it and rode it to the nearest transit line, a guitar strapped to his back. A Paul revere of pop, he rides into town (back on the bike, having begged a transit guy to let him bring it on the train even though it wasn’t off peak), bellowing “The C-dents and The Peripatetics are coming! The C-dents and The Peripatetics are coming! At least that’s how they tell it.
Paul did a solo set, the bandmates arrived and traded of spins for the rest of the night. There was even a decent sized audience in the room, and a couple pod people who claimed to be agents.
Ride home? Don’t ask.

The Twenty-Second Letters and Star & Story at the Bullfinch. Why don’t these bands just write poetry?… Those Brewster Boys and Shadows of Fu at Hamilton’s. Scan your parent’s record collection before arriving… You Can’t Do Business With Hitler at Dollaire’s. Except on Mondays…

The tin cans are covered with pigeon poop.

Lucy Hale, A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song. Soundtrack to a new tween-friendly sequel to the fairy tale series, out on video this week. I can’t figure out how these songs are supposed to further a plot—they’re the usual Disney Radio-type rock about self-empowerment and awesomeness—but I needed a fresh dose of polished, perky pop today, and this is it. “Bless Myself” is crammed with nanosecond-long sonic references to everyone from The Kinks to Divinyls to Madonna. Even with the modern studio gadgets now available, it’s an extraordinary workout for young vocalist Lucy Hale. Elsewhere, there’s a marauding metallic “Twisted Serenade” that kicks off like Gary Glitter before lurching into ‘80s-style pyrotechnics. And the whole album ends in a Toni Basil-esque clapping song called “Crazy Girl.” I’m going to have to talk my daughters into checking out this movie.

Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini
By Sid Fleischman.
I’m a lifelong Sid Fleischman fan. I put him right up there on the tallest taleteller’s platform as a spinner of great American adventure yarns. For my daughters, though, he’s been a hard sell. His books tend to feature young male protagonists. They found the audiobook of Bandit’s Moon too creepy for bedtime.
But Escape! , one of Fleischman’s recent forays into non-fiction (a field he did not enter, other than a series of magic instruction books early in his career and a 1996 autobiography, until just five years ago; score this against his dozens of novels and half a dozen screenplays), grabbed them.
Fleischman writes in the manner of the eras of which he writes. He likes sensational adjectives and blowhard rhapsodizing. Yet he’s also a skeptic, keen to unravel yarns that get out of hand. He’s the perfect biographer for Houdini. A magician himself, he cares about the master’s craft, and notes that Houdini’s innovations were mostly about new methods of presentation rather than new concepts for tricks. He questions the established lore about Houdini’s birth, his relationships with his parents, his ego and his legacy. He does this in a way that makes Houdini’s whole life seem spectacular, even when Fleischer’s reminding you it could be mundane.
I hope to get my daughters interested in Fleischer’s new bio of Chaplin next, then spring novels like Chancy and the Grand Rascal and By the Great Horn Spoon on them. And for my next trick…