Through the miracle of Netflix: Watch Now, I got to see another concert last night: Stop Making Sense, by the Talking Heads.

This concert movie is supposed to be great, and it is one of those things I had wanted to see but had never seen (a recurring theme, here). As a Talking Heads fan, I think it has become one of my new favorite movies. The footage is fantastic (shot over two or three nights, each night from a different angle, so there are rarely cameras on screen); there aren’t any cheesy audience response shots, and you can barely hear the crowd; and of course the Talking Heads are at the top of their game here, putting on a ridiculously good show.

Turns out the director, Jonathan Demme, also directed Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, so he’s a real director, if that sort of thing matters to you in choosing your concert movies.

The concert opens with “Psycho Killer,” performed solo by David Byrne on acoustic guitar, with only a drum machine backing track. (His staggering dance moves at the end are too awesome to be described.) So check it out.

[Update: It has been suggested that his dance moves could be described as “like a chicken”]

Before starting Project: Dilettante, I hadn’t seen live music regularly since college. Looking to change that, I now have a list of upcoming concerts of note, and another list of venue schedules to check out (apparently I have some fondness for lists, who knew?). This is the first stage of the Cultural Revolution component of Project: Dilettante. (I may need to come up with a new name: Culture Club? Culture Vulture? Listening to music and watching movies for self-embiggenment?)

Live Music #1 happened this past Wednesday, at the Middle East in beautiful Cambridge, MA.

We went to see Acid Mothers Temple—a band I have been fond of at a distance for a while, but have never seen. Their Wikipedia page claims that they have a reputation for putting on a good show, and this was definitely the case on Wednesday night. After the unremarkable proggy opener, Danava, finished, the Acid Mothers came onstage like they had just come out of some psychedelic Japanese forest, and proceeded to make some of the wildest music I’ve ever heard. Gargling, throat-singing, wailing feedback, guitar-spinning, and spacey synthesizers.

That basically sums it up, so here is a video and my recommendation to see the Acid Mothers if they come out of a forest near where you live (just make sure to bring earplugs). Check it out.

I figure I might as well get started on this blog right away, while the paint is still drying and the furniture hasn’t been moved in yet.

I am starting grad school in five months. I am not getting a job. I am going to use this five months to learn everything I have wanted to learn up to this point in my life, so that when I start school, I can learn something else. I am probably not going to finish everything, but I am going to start as much as I can, and I’m going to post about it here. I’ve got a reading list, I’ve got a to-do list, I’ve got a list of lists to be made, and I’ve got a lot of free time to use up.

One of those things is learning how to make a website, make it work well, and make it not ugly. I’ve finished one of those, and you can follow the progress on the other two right here, as it happens.

The Other Things will show up here as I find something to say about them. At least that way, I won’t embarrass myself with an extraordinarily long, public list of unfulfilled goals. But don’t worry; I fully intend to embarrass myself in other ways.