I drove up to Richmond Wednesday night for a very uncertain Daedelus and Nosaj Thing show at the Xscape Lounge. I say uncertain because while I saw the date and location listed many places online, finding out details about the show proved to be impossible.

I had never heard of the Xscape Lounge, and all I could really find out about it online was via its really crappy website and links to its MySpace page (ugh). But nowhere on either site was info about the show; no times, prices, ticket sales, nothing. All I learned was that it was located where The Biograph was and it looked really cheesy.

CvT tried to find out some local info, even rode past the place a few times, but had just as much luck as I had. We had read 7pm, 7:30pm, & 8pm as showtimes, and he had seen $8 as ticket price somewhere. He had an NYC bus to catch that night, so having an early show, as odd as it seemed, would have been ideal.

I decided to drive up despite the confusion, because it had to be happening.

As I got to The Fan, I made a point to drive down Grace and past the Xscape Lounge. Lights were on and people were standing around, so I thought that was a good sign. Got to CvT’s and hung around for a bit before we walked over.

As soon as we got there we knew that this was not going to happen. It was 7:30 and all the house lights were on and guys were just starting to drag equipment out of vans. We walked in to try and find someone to ask what was up.

We ended up meeting this guy called Mike who owned EQ Produktions, the company hosting the event. He said the show should start around 10pm, was $15, and seemed completely ambivalent when we told him how much wrong information was floating around out there and how hard it was to find. “Oh, yeah, I don’t know what other people are putting out there. You should friend us on Facebook, that’s the best place to get information.”

As you can imagine, I was ready to leave at this point.

Chris chatted with him a bit about shows, turns out they were they same group to bring The Glitch Mob to town. At least they are doing some good. He interjected “add us on Facebook” into the brief conversation at least five times. This is the quickest way to lose my attention.

I just met you. I am neither your friend nor your fan. And get a real effing website if you own a production company and don’t rely on MySpace/Facebook to do everything for you. Those sites are just additional tools for your marketing; not the first and last stop.

We left and walked around and thought about what to do. The show starting “around 10″ most likely meant closer to 11. CvT would have to leave by 11:30 to get to the bus. So then I would be alone for the rest of the show. If you had seen the inside of this place you would understand my hesitation. Not the kind of environment I wanted to be alone in. Not to mention that we would end up paying $15 just to see the opening act, and wouldn’t even make it to Nosaj Thing or Daedelus.

It brought a frown to my face, but we decided to skip the show and find fun elsewhere.

We stopped by CousCous to see if there was any music that night, but it was their weekly Karaoke Night. Then the bartender told us to add them on Facebook to see all their events. Moving on.

We decided to have some dinner at good ol’ reliable 821 and then chill out at Chris’s until he had to leave. We sat around and watched some episodes of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, which was pretty hilarious. Soon it was time for Chris to head out, and I made my way back home.

The night certainly wasn’t all I had hoped for, but at least I got to visit with my CvT and make some fun out of it.

ps – I just found the FB event page for the show. If only I was one of the cool kids.

Our Valentine’s Trip to NYC ended up being cut short a day thanks to the weekly 2010 Snowpocalypses we’ve been having, but Amanda and I made the most of our time there.

There, sadly, was no room for a Bensonhurst/Spumoni adventure, but we managed to do some shopping, hit up Other Music, dine at El Cantinero, and get drunk off tequila all night before devouring a pint of ice cream and watching The House Of The Devil. Not to mention the general delight it brings me to be with my James and Kevin, surrounded by love and laughter.

Our ride home proved to be quite a surprise when we discovered that we had been sent to the wrong bus, and were heading for Richmond instead of Norfolk. Luckily, our amazingly-kind-and-awesome-and-over-the-top-generous friend Dave Nye drove to Richmond and picked us up, getting us back to Norfolk just in time for last call.

This was my 3rd Valentine’s I have spent with my dear Amanda, and definitely the best.

For the real-deal Valentine’s Day, we had a fun party at 37th & Zen with special screenings of Punch-Drunk Love and Sid & Nancy (a V-Day tradition that will never die). I had fun quote-texting with The Worst Person Ever all through both movies.

It was nice to spend the evening with favorite friends. And humorous to spend it with Amanda’s boyfriend. I have happily taken on the role of placeholder in their relationship.

Amanda and I showed up to the Chinatown Bus stop tonight to a hand-scrawled note on the door of the dark building that read, “No Bus To NYC.” Guess this week’s Snowpocalypse changed our plans for us. Would have been nice to be informed of this beforehand.

We shall try again tomorrow.

For the evening though, we are drowning our sorrows in wine, cheesy bread, a fire, and a movie. Things could be worse…

Also while in New York, James and I ventured out to “Williamsblegh” to catch the Kid Koala Presents The Slew show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. I was still in a euphoric high from seeing Fever Ray, so nothing could quite compare, but I’m glad I got to see The Slew performed live. Kid Koala always puts on an entertaining show.

Adira Amram opened the show, and after I got into the groove of her humor, I found her to be quite enjoyable. Very Leslie & the Ly’s. I think apheck would approve.

Last Monday, Katie, James, and I experienced the sold-out US debut of Fever Ray at Webster Hall, and we were all blown away. The show was dark and mysterious and loud and everything you’d expect from Karin Dreijer Andersson & Co. Smoke and shadows and lasers and pulsating incandescent lamps set the mood, and when Karin wasn’t in her fuzzy hut costume thing, she looked like a stringy-haired Lenore singing on stage.

I basically melted at the sight of it all, and after the too-short set was over, James and I were plotting how we could get into the following night’s show. My soul still can’t get enough of it.

Also, yesterday we had L&B slices and spumoni. This always makes for a very happy Atlanta.

The past two days have been a whirlwind of fun and silliness and yucky wine and bumpy busses and love. Tonight is Fever Ray. It just keeps getting better.

September and October are going to be very good months for travels and music. This week is CocoRosie in DC. Heading up to NYC at the end of the month to see Fever Ray and Kid Koala presents The Slew. And October’s already got múm in DC and Thievery Corporation in Norfolk. Hooray for fun times!

This just in! My beloved Mexican mummies will be traveling to the U.S. next year. The only announced stop so far is the Detroit Science Center, but let’s hope we get something closer. I would love to see my mummies again.

Mexican mummies visit Detroit in October
Kim Kozlowski / The Detroit News

Detroit — A rare glimpse into the mystery of death will be on display at the Detroit Science Center in October with the first U.S. exhibit of 36 mummies from a World Heritage site in Mexico, museum officials plan to announce today.
The 100-year-old mummies will be on loan from the Museo de las Momias in Guanajuato, Mexico.

“This is the largest and most significant collection of mummies in the Western hemisphere,” said Kelly Fulford, spokeswoman for the Detroit Science Center. “It’s a phenomenal opportunity to view something really rare and unique… something you wouldn’t be able to see unless you traveled to Mexico.”

The Mexican museum opened in the late 1800s after mummified corpses of men, women and children were exhumed from the colonial city’s cemetery because their families could no longer pay the crypt fee. Some of the corpses were discovered to have “accidentally” or naturally mummified, meaning nature, not man, stopped their decomposition.

Today 111 natural mummies have attracted visitors to the museum in the city, northwest of Mexico City, since the early 1900s.

Mummy scholars who have been conducting research in Detroit say the exhibit will offer a repository of anthropological, medical and cultural information.

“When you come to this exhibit, you will get to know these people,” sad Ronald Beckett, a Phoenix-based Fulbright scholar who studies mummies around the world. “The exhibit will tell the individual human stories of these long-dead people, and give them their identity back.”

Museum visitors, for instance, will learn about the health of the mummies in the forensic room of the five-room display. This will be done with the help of modern medical technologies such as computer tomography, endoscopy and DNA analysis.

“The study of old pathologies puts a light on health issues today,” said Vivian Henoch, medical exhibit developer. “Anything we glean from the mummies informs what we do and how we advance our understanding of many health issues.”

The traveling mummy exhibit will leave Detroit in 2010 and go on to six other U.S. destinations before retuning to Mexico in 2012.

You can check out the exhibit’s website here.