Sunday, Jan 16, 2005

DAYS 4-6

You Blind Filmgoers,

Day 4 saw the number of band members doing absolutely nothing skyrocket from two to a one-week high of three (out of three!). Since Michael got all his drums done in the first three days, this day consisted of Top Gun Drum Engineer Rob Brill and Producer Ariel Rechtshaid editing and cleaning up tracks, loading everything off the studio's computers, etc., while the gentlemen of We Are Scientists concentrated on breathing 70 degree air and sitting up straight. Here's a shot of Michael passing the time while Rob toils away in earnest:

Actually, we did accomplish something on Day 4 –– not until Day 5 would our causative properties be completely neutered; not until Day 5 would we find ourselves wandering an oblivion where, like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, we would have to strain just to make an empty can acknowledge our physical presence. No, Day 4 would have been different if we hadn't been alive, because on Day 4 we did publicity photos with Dan Monick, photographer, musician, barrister of wit. It was a fun couple of hours shooting with Dan, and the results, which we saw that evening, delighted us. We've never looked so virile, so handsome, so jugular!

That's Dan up top; as you can see, he strongly resembles emeritus W.A.S. guitarist Scott Lamb, which was a great comfort to us. The second photo shows Dan searching frantically for his camera, which he thinks he's lost -- that's it on top of the tripod! It was one of those situations where you think you've lost your sunglasses when in fact they're on top of your head, except this was a huge camera sitting in plain view in the most obvious possible place.

That was a total lie -- Dan never lost his camera.

Here's us at the end of Day 4, psyched to wrap a week of drum recording. As usual, we've occupied any vacant space in the photo with the head of a kitten.

Reading this News page, you probably get the impression that we're alcoholics, since in almost every photo we're drinking. The fact is we do drink a whole lot, but not always. Not every minute of every day, as the photos imply.

Day 5 we were off duty, though editing and mixing of the drum tracks continued, as they will for the next 7 days or so. But we only know how to hit and strum things, not how to do any of that technical stuff, so on this day in history we did jack shit. The first order of business was to teach Lewis how to drink.

The rationale behind this was that if we could get him drinking, he could appear in lots more photos on the News site since photos of him would meet both of the criteria we have for News photos, which is to say that there would be a cat and there would be drinking. He has yet to really take to it, but all we had in the house was whisky and vino; we're going to pick up some wine coolers and see if that doesn't suit him better.

Next Michael headed off to do some concerted hanging with buddies, and Keith and Chris went to the park to spend quality time with their friend they haven't seen in years, the sun.

We had a great time at the park, squinting to read novels for five minute stretches before giving ourselves over fully to eyes-shut tanning. It was the park across the street from The Grove shopping center, which Greg Fishbein later told us is the most dangerous park in LA, but we had a great time. How could it be dangerous when there is an Apple Store in The Grove? Probably Greg was just trying to scare us, and it worked -- we're never going back to that fucking park ever again.

But man, we got pretty great tans there:

Now it's Sunday (Day 6) and we're getting ready to fly back to New York. This week will be a very slow one for recording activity on our end -- all drum mixing done by Ariel here in L.A. We'll be getting ready for Friday's show at CBGB and just generally enjoying all the freezing disgusting types of weather New York has to offer this time of year. This'll be the last show in New York for a little while, at least a month, so we intend to play very hard, as defined by at least one person's arm falling off -- could be a band arm, could be an audience arm, doesn't matter. Then we have to lie low a bit and get this g-damn album made. (See the Shows page for a more complete view of this Spring's schedule.)

Okay, more soon you truculent succotash.

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