Redeye - Let's Get it 'Tarded July 14 2005

It's week two of having a refrigerator full of CRUNK!!! Energy Drink, and I have yet to achieve the inanity I desire from my concentrated cylinders of What Mama Done Warned You About.

I did, however, make it to Landmark Midtown Art Cinema to see Rize, David LaChapelle's film on L.A.'s clowning/krumping scene. What's great about the film's style of exaggerated dancing - which incorporates ATL's favorite crouched, ass-ripplin' stripper dance - is that there's apparently an uplifting philosophy espoused. And when someone krumpin' does something potentially instigating, he can just pawn it off as "gittin' 'tarded."Wouldn't it be great if we all could apply a tag line and torso twitch to defuse our egos and the harm they cause? It certainly might benefit places like Internet forums, on one of which this week I managed to scandalize the drum 'n' bass scene. Behind my mighty keyboard I always think my fangs drip sarcasm, not real venom, but apparently comments I made last week didn't jibe well. So I apologize and will check my prescription; apparently, my lenses aren't rose-colored enough.

I guess Rize, raves, Internet forums and my writing do have something in common, however, as there's a segment of the population (read: "true" scene soldiers) who would apparently boil down humorous dissension to being E-tarded. Now I just need to make up a signature dance.

All this reminds me that I have an upcoming high school reunion. It's quite the timing, this online argument and reunion, because Lord knows in high school there was plenty of cliquish behavior. But when not skirting the social lines and stigmas in high school, I absorbed the music of the so-called "alternative revolution," so it's also a welcome coincidence that the reunion concert for Dinosaur Jr. went down at the Variety Playhouse on Fri., July 8. J. Mascis still knows hot to git 'tarded on the guitar, even if he looks like Cousin It gone gray, and a sold-out crowd of local hawtties such as Criminal Records/Album 88 personality Marc Crifasi shouted out their thanks for the catharsis.

A good kick-off for the Dinosaur Jr. show was at the relatively new, and no longer relatively unknown, Eclipse di Sol on North Highland in the space most favorably remembered as Café Diem. Enjoying the calm before the weekend's storms, I tried the fresh grapefruit and rosewater martini, the cava sangria and Patti's bourbon with blackberry and lemon balm. Plus, Eclipse di Sol serves some sort of eggs and bacon fare all day, a meal of which every drunk knows the recuperative value.

For the truly detoxifying, Urban Tea Party - located next door to Eclipse di Sol - is going strong and worth checking out, filling the void for antioxidants that Teaspace left and hosting a packed Luther Vandross tribute on the Friday in question. (Congrats are in order for former CL Music Editor Craig Seymour, who is writing a major cover feature on Vandross for an upcoming issue of Vibe.)

Finally, the weekend featured the first show of 99X's Downtown Rocks summer concert series held at Underground Atlanta (set up all season aboveground at Pryor and Upper Alabama streets). Everything went off without a hitch - if you consider rain not a hitch (and after it rained on Music Midtown and Atlanta Pride, how can we not take it in stride). Surely the bands I saw - the Caesars and Stereophonics - weren't concerned. They're European; it must have been just like a festival such as Glastonbury, except with better teeth on the lucky 13,000 soaked teens.

Despite the precipitous precipitation, Second Shift guitarist Wes Hoffman's prodigious Afro managed to maintain at least half-mast, much to my amazement and amusement. I wonder if my hair would unfurl like that if I drank enough CRUNK!!! Maybe if I get E-tarded enough he'll let me stroke it. We'll find out next week.

Keep one RedEye open. And send all comments, questions, observations and invitations to redeye@creativeloafing.com.??