You know, even after all these years, sometimes I still wonder exactly what marital disharmony was caused by Cotton Eye Joe to the narrator of the eponymous song.

Anyway, in a hopefully never to be repeated break with tradition, I thought I might write down what I've been doing lately. According to the latest research, approximately 103% of all blogs are written by angsty whining teenage girls wittering on about their current obsessions with hair, boys, spots, dating and, I don't know, elastic bands or something. I'll try to avoid ending up doing that.

On Friday I finally managed to see the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. I've been meaning to see them for a while, but I keep failing to get into New York any time they are playing. Fotunately, I will in the city to do some work that day, which meant that after dinner I was able to nip over to Sin-e to see the band. I was especially motivated to do this after I realized the night before that the venue, Sin-e, must be the place where the EP "Live at sin-e" by Jeff Buckley was recorded. Which, to me, is interesting.

It was a pretty good show. I got the bands first album a few weeks ago, and listened to it a lot (well, it saves putting a new CD in the CD player), although they only played one song off it. In fact, they only played half a dozen or so songs in total, but that's because it was a fairly late show, and I think it was past the drummer's bed time. I wonder why it is that my favourite bands all seem to be ones who have some gimmick about their performance, even though I like listening to their music without the performance. This is certainly true of my current favourites: Alf Poier, taTu, David Devant and His Spirit Wife, Danielson Famile and TFSP. My preference for bands labelled "novelty": Daphne and Celeste, Shampoo, the Smurfs (whose semi-cover version 'Smurfhillbilly Joe' set off the train of thought at the beginning of this entry), Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, Moog Cookbook, and so on. Even my other favourite artists usually have something distinctive about them: the voices of Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake and Don Van Vliet, the music of Aphex Twin, Fatboy Slim and David Holmes. Perhaps I'm just imagining it.

Afterwards, I figured that I had ten minutes to get three miles to catch the next train, or an hour and ten minutes to get the last train. I didn't feel like hanging around Penn Station at 1am for longer than I had to, so instead I decided I'd walk back. It was pretty warm still, and so I sauntered up Broadway in the midnight air, wondering how many other places I would be happy to be out and about on my own in the early hours. After propping myself awake so I didn't fall asleep and miss my stop (because who wants to wake up in Trenton), I finally got home about 3. I thought about logging on and writing this up there and then, but then I remembered that I'm not a neurotic teenage girl obsessed with documenting every last detail of her trivial, tedious life.