Yeah, you guys!

Okay, so you’ve left your tiny American label Merge and gone on to 4ad, so I guess this stunt was to generate publicity for that storied label.

Yeah, I called it a stunt!  You book two shows at tiny places in New York City and they sell out immediately (and creating buzz as people scramble to get tickets).  One at Mercury Lounge (an old trick for that venue — Echo & the Bunnymen played a semi-secret show there in 1996 when they first reunited and Swervedriver played there in 1997 when they switched to label Zero Hour) and another at the Bell House.   What the fuck is the Bell House?  Nobody’s even ever heard of it!

So when both of your March shows sold out immediately, the “fans” who snapped up your tickets started hawking them on Cragislist and eBay immediately — at 200%-500% markups!  Those jackasses are your fan base now.

Remember when you played the South Street Seaport in 2007?  I couldn’t make it, but it lives on here, here and here.  That was cool!  Dude, you played a free show!  For the people!  For your fans!

You know how much I love/loved you guys?  I have your fucking albums on vinyl!  Do you know how hard they were to find?  Really hard!

I pushed your songs on everybody I knew!  I even forced my wife to listen!  She hates much of the music that I love!  She still wants my head for forcing her to go to the Undertones reunion show!

I wasn’t ready to be heartbroken, but now I am.  <sniff!>  And one thing’s for sure — I won’t be seeing you live, not this month, anyway.

A Korean chain opens their first American outlet in America! In NYC! Kimchi and hotdogs and bulgogi all in a wrap!

And speaking of wrap, here’s a wrap-up as to why I haven’t been posting as of late.

I’ve been busy, mostly holed up writing and watching many, many movies.

Yes, I said writing!  The sequel to This Is a Bust is coming out on St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne/Minotaur in Winter 2010, but the specific “pub date” has not yet been set.

Whew!  I have never written a sequel before and though it was possible with a Chinatown mystery, surely there could never be a sequel to one of the best books ever about Asian American/coming of age/sexual discovery ever?

In any case, it’s been great hanging out with my old pals Robert Chow, John Vandyne, the midget, Paul and of course, Lonnie.

But if you, my real-life pals, miss me — and I mean really miss me in the way that I do you — I heavily suggest you spend your next 66 minutes wisely and go here and watch me.  It’s a reading and Q&A I did last week at Hunter College.

By the way, like many Asian-American studies programs on the East Coast, the administration is messing with the one at Hunter and I strongly suggest you go here to get the full scoop.

In other news, I’ve put up a link for Ed Lin merch.  No, I don’t get any money from this, Mr. IRS Man, but I’m glad to have loaned my image for a good cause.

More soon.