Photos are up of Friday's Meat Guild. Poor Samar, she fell into the tackle box. Again.

I guess I haven't mentioned our latest adventures in ghetto HVAC: the little AC we bought a couple years ago commited suicide a while back, so this time we just took a couple of the two foot floor fans we had sitting around and poked some holes in the walls. Instead of trying to vent out through the crack between buildings, we managed to make a circular flow in the main office, through the rear Computing Facility, though the liquor room, and back around into the backstage area. It seems to work remarkably well (better than the AC ever did), and it cost almost nothing. So, yay.

When cutting the hole, we made an unexpected archaeological discovery inside the wall pictured here: there's a chain-link fence inside it! Apparently this office was once a cage, used as the liquor room, and when they decided to wall it up and build a bigger liquor room, they just drywalled right over the fence on both sides.

And, believe it or not, construction on our new kitchen is done! We still have some more inspections to pass, so there will no doubt be some changes required, but it's close...

	January: the posting of our construction permit. We held a small ceremony with champagne and caviar.		January: the old bathroom walls were torn out, revealing the walls of the previous bathroom: yup, they just walled right over the old mirror and soap dispenser...
	Some intra-wall graffiti from our clever and hard-working contractors, c. 2001.		April: we finally have walls and tile... Also floor drains, and a big vent penetrating the roof. These things do not leak. Much.
	July: at last! It is a tiny room with three sinks and a salad bar. Microwave TBA.		Observe how when the service window is open, it is brighter than the sun. Something will have to be done about that...

Happy Birthday, Margo! Photos are up of her birthday burlesque show, featuring the usual suspects and a very fun band, The World Inferno Friendship Society.

So, last week was our 5th anniversary of re-opening. We all forgot.

Total events:   964 Total live shows:   200 Total bands:   317 Total djs:   1331 Events per month:   15.6 Live shows per month:   3.2 Events per week:   3.6 Live shows per week:   0.8

We have had more pleasant weeks.

Hey, the Living Dead Girlz made the Guardian's Best of the Bay:

Best Proof That The Dead Can Dance

The age-old question "Can corpses be sexy?" is unequivocally answered in the affirmative when the Living Dead Girlz take the stage. You don't have to be a necrophiliac to enjoy the shimmy-shake moves of this seven-lass troupe as they strut to spooky tunes (think Screamin' Jay Hawkins) with an undead rhythm not seen since Jacko's "Thriller" video. Though there's a Village People~esque flavor to each gal's themed character ("Cowgirl Zombie," "Pippi Long-Zombie," etc.), their unifying hotness (or is that dead, blue coldness?) is pretty much all you'll notice during their routines. A late-May gig opening for The Elm Street Murders at the DNA Lounge culminated in the Girlz chomping on one of their own -- but you never know with zombies. This is probably the only burlesque show in history where your brains just might become a dancer's din-din.

Smash-Up Derby got one too:

Best Tori Amos Meets Slayer

Who would win in a street fight, Britney Spears or the guitarist from Motörhead? What about Kelly Clarkson versus that weird stomping dude from AC/DC? The members of Smash Up Derby have been studying these bizarre hypothetical scenarios for years and have finally found the answer: both -- as mashups. A seamless mixing of the vocals from one genre with the music from another, mashups (a.k.a. bootlegs) have been around on the Internet nerd circuit for years, but Smash Up Derby is the only band that performs them live. Equal parts girly glam pop and straight-up rock 'n' roll, Smash Up Derby is San Francisco's answer to America's binary categorization problem. Gender benders Adrian Roberts and Trixxie Carr sing your favorite bubblegum tunes while the backup band grinds out classic punk rock and heavy metal, every second Friday at Bootie, America's first mashup monthly.

(Previously: "Best Place to See an Electronic Duo Score My Dinner with Andre"...)

You should, by the way, plan on being here on Friday night for the Red Nose District Hullabaloo. There will be clowns. Filthy, filthy clowns.