YESTERDAY'S GONE

I wrote this at lunch today, on the theory that the world needs more poems about Fleetwood Mac.

Fleetwood Mac

Eileen if I still knew you
I’d borrow your copy of Rumours

And put it on my iPod.
Well, everything except Oh Daddy

And Dreams. Ah, but maybe
I’d keep Dreams

To remind me of
Your love for Stevie.

Yes, I’d keep Dreams
Eileen if I still knew you.

SCISSORS

Taeko is now pretty much obsessed with the DDR I got her for our anniversary. Pretty good at it too.

Me? I'm like some sort of degilled marine creature flopping around on the land, trying to figure out just how these things you call "legs" work.

All the songs are knockoffs, but I'll be goddammed if even the fake version of I Don't Feel Like Dancin' is not totally awesome...

A NEW COMPLAINT

If you're going to die young, with drugs anywhere near the scene, well then brother, you'd be better served by not leaving behind pics of yourself looking this much like Kurt...

SWEET MAGNETIC JESUS

I confess that I have not been pining for a farrago of Magnetic Fields and the JAMC.

But I am at least curious…

YOU ARE A TAR-ZHAY MARKET

It’s pretty amazing how ambient music has evolved.

And here I don’t mean “ambient” as a specific genre or subgenre. Rather, I’m just talking about the music they play in public while you do stuff.

This afternoon in the men’s room at the Westin Alexandria, they played La Femme d'Argent by Air.

And the day after Christmas at the Potomac Mills food court, they were playing World Shut Your Mouth. Which is the most awesome choice of songs to play at a mall food court, for post-holiday Americans wallowing in obesity of body and spirit.

Most. Awesome. Choice. Ever.

Ambient Music Selecting Geniuses, I want to shake your hand.

I want to consume, piss quickly and efficiently, avoid the urge to shoplift, consume more, and then shake your blessed hand…

TEENAGER IN LOVE

Today is our 15th wedding anniversary, and Taeko slipped a card into my brown-bag lunch.

This is what she wrote:

“Thank you for being so nice to me for 15 years!”

My first reaction was to giggle a little.

But after about 30 seconds, I could feel the sentiment evolving, and a minute later I realized it was incredibly profound.

So thank you, Taeko, for bearing with me and my veneer of cynicism and irony.

Thank you for being so nice to me for 15 years…

HELLO PANDA

The problem with Person Pitch is that the first three songs sync up pretty well with the length of my commute.

And they're so fucking brill in both the "-iant" and "Building" sense that for the longest time I've lacked real motivation to get involved with tracks 4-7.

I'm sure that Comfy in Nautica/Take Pills/Bros will begin to pall soon, and when they do, woo hoo, more Panda Bear for me...

PERSON PITCH

As it turns out, my brother was at game one of the 1986 WS. I didn’t know this until a few years later.

I was sitting in his rented house, the one where the wood floor in the living room sloped to the west, and squirrels breached the flue routinely. He was working the remote, and stopped at a Mets’ game.

“What are you doing? You hate baseball.”

And that was true, as far as I knew. Baseball was my thing.

Growing up, I had a bottomless chest of baseball cards in my room, and had memorized all sorts of arcane facts and records.

I spent many afternoons as a kid hurling a tennis ball against my garage door, pretending I was Jon Matlack or Jerry Koosman. I played in the neighborhood street games with the boys my brother’s age, who chose me for their side before they chose him. I played little league, made all-star teams, went out for celebratory pizza and soda with the coach.

And all the while my brother glowered at the game. Said it was for “pussies.”

Really what it had become was a symbol. A symbol of how much easier things seemed to be for me. A symbol of all his struggles in the world.

But as we sat quietly and watched the game together that night, so much of the accreted bitterness dissolved away.

We sat and we watched, and we did not make a sound for destiny to hear...

SYMPATHY FOR THE RED SOX

Among my 2007 holiday swag was the nine DVD collection of every game of the 1986 World Series, plus the sixth and deciding game of the NLCS.

I have now watched the playoff game and the first WS game.

And going back to the beginning and starting with game one of the series raises the whole experience-- which exists in the memory as high drama-- to the level of Classical tragedy.

At the outset of that first broadcast, Vin Scully notes the heroic effort being put forth by Bill Buckner.

Scully returns again and again to the image of the hobbled warrior, who is earning the respect of friend and foe just by being out there.

And it is truly painful to watch, particularly when Scully points out that one of Buckner’s legs has atrophied due to his injuries. You squint a little and swear that you can notice the difference.

Then with the Sox holding a 1-0 lead, John McNamara replaces Buckner with Dave Stapleton for defensive purposes, and even the most hardened Mets fan must get a catch in the throat.

I muttered “Learn from that” under my breath when I watched this time around, but of course destiny did not listen...

TORQUED TONGUE

Things I learned on my winter break, part 1.

Panda Bear’s Comfy in Nautica makes a great soundtrack for your first car accident, particularly if the collision occurs on a road that encircles a large shopping mall.

Ah, sweet irony…

Here’s the damage report, for those of you scoring at home.

Body and spirit: undamaged. Car: $4,800.

FORKED TONGUE

Bless the pointed heads at Pitchfork for arranging to make available MP3s of almost half their Top 100 tracks of 2007 list.

My iPod now has a nice 25-track album named "Pitchfork Best of 2007" that I'm just itching to get to know...