Starbucking with the Cold War Kids at the Tokyo Police Club*

*this title makes no sense whatsoever.

great weekend. played frolf, laid around a lot, and when to a fantastic show saturday night. Tokyo Police Club opened for Cold War Kids saturday night at the Mercy Lounge. it turned out TPC's drummer was ill and couldn't make the performance, so rather than canceling or bowing out, they decided to attempt it more acoustically (which was odd because they aren't that acoustic).



so they played the first few songs with just guitar and piano and then decided that everyone from Cold War Kids and the first band, Delta Spirit, should come up and help with percussion. there were about 12 guys up playing and beating on everything. the songs sounded totally different from anything on the CD (which was a disappointing fact), but this new "everyone up to play TPC songs!" was awesome. there was so much energy.



it was just a blast watching them. as jesse put it, it was almost anticlimactic when just Cold War Kids (the opener) went on! low and behold though, a few songs in, everyone came back up to play CWK songs. so much fun. they all put on a fantastic show. beyond my expectations.






then on Monday night we went to see the documentary Starbucking. in a nutshell, it's about this guy whose goal is to visit all of the Starbucks in the world. to keep it in perspective, he started this when there were only a handful across the US, then they exploded all over the place, but he figured a goal was a goal. i'll be honest, jesse wanted to see this one. i... did not. i did not see the appeal in watching a guy drive around and visit starbucks for and hour and a half. however, about halfway through the movie, the movie's message seem to take shape. it wasn't about Starbucks. the guy has no affinity for the company or what it stands for or all the random coffee drinks it sells. he's never even had anything other than straight coffee from the place. he just chose starbucks because they seem to be everywhere; as someone in the movie put it, 'they're part of our man-made environment.' and it's true. it's a great constant to work with in such an experiment. so all the guy (Winter) does is work and travel to Starbucks. his point for the whole thing being (and this is the part that i really didn't expect to get from this film or the man starring in it) that in this world of incredible technology and wealth, merely surviving should be no one this planet's goal each day. in our world, the fact that almost 6 billion people work for survival (not music, or art, or anything "extra" in life) day in and day out is ridiculous. and i was really surprised at how "on the mark" that was when he said it. i wish i could remember exactly how he put it. to continue the point, the goal of the starbucking mission was to show people that's it's okay to dedicate time to things other than working 40hrs a week and sleeping in a bed... there were others but i can't remember. IRregardless, it was an interesting movie. and what was really neat was that he was there afterward to answer questions. i asked him one about other goals conflicting with this one and he said 'yeah', he also wants to be a Scrabble champion. apparently he plays Scrabble with the guys in Word Wars, so that's pretty neat. (it also explains a lot about his obsessive compulsive behavior.)

it was definitely worth the trip out to the Belcourt.