----- Original Message ----- 
From: <drewmacdonald@ca.rr.com>

> Stewart, inimitably:
>
> "...one of whom I told at the merch table, 'You know, next time you 
> should just go ahead and
> actually masturbate on stage.  It'll be just as unpleasant and 
> self-indulgent, but slightly less annoying.'"
>
> HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! How is it that I can totally picture this 
> when I've never actually met Stewart? Ten years of reading him, I 
> guess.
>
> But, dude! You have to tell us what the reaction was.

Actually, he just stared through me like I wasn't even there, which 
was exactly what I expected.

I have to set the scene here.  His "performance" was that he walked 
onstage, sneered "This is gonna be excruciatingly loud," flipped a 
switch on an amp and then stood behind a box of electronics flipping 
switches as they produced howls of feedback and noise.  He 
occasionally screamed wordlessly through a condenser mic he held in 
his teeth.  After about 15 minutes -- during which about half of the 
already half-empty room left -- he turned everything off, stood there 
for a second waiting for applause, and then slinked offstage while 
everyone remaining looked pityingly at him, as if to say, "Well, 
aren't YOU Mr. Badass Extreme Noise Terrorist?"

Or, as my friend JO put it, as the guy was breaking down his box, "Oh 
well, back to Mom's basement.  They understand me there."

The thing is, this guy, the band after him and the guy after them all 
did performances that would have been exactly the same had there been 
no one else in the room.  It was that insular and masturbatory.  No 
wonder it was such a relief when Lavender Diamond came on and made an 
effort to actually engage with and connect to the audience.  We were 
so starved for someone to notice that there were actual people sitting 
in the seats that they were received just rapturously, and they gave 
it back to us.  Very engaging performers.

S