MY KIND OF TOWN

Takin' care of...
Mixed...
Too much junkie...
Too much monkey...
There's no like show...

However you slice it, I'm off on a business trip tomorrow. I'll be back here late next week.

DON’T SURROUND YOURSELF WITH YOURSELF

After a few years of studied neglect, I added some info to the favorites sections in my Blogger profile.

Initially, it seemed kind of neat that you can click on your own favorites and be taken to a list of other Blogger users who share a specific favorite.

But then I got this vision of people trying to triangulate soul mates based on their common taste in movies/music/books. And that scares me.

Because the world would be a much better place if everyone’s first criterion for a relationship was the differences instead of the similarities…

HEAR WITH YOUR HEART

Today I arranged my iTunes songs alphabetically for the first time, and it made for some odd neighbors.

Like, Love Will Keep Us Together and Love Will Tear Us Apart.

So, I am left to consider-- and not for the first time-- whom it is I should believe: The Captain and Tennille or Joy Division.

Sure Joy Division had the existential industrial angst, but Toni had a cute overbite, and that Daryl was a captain-hat-wearing motherfucker...

THE MERRY MONTH

I used to think that May was out to get me.

Yes, the month. That little three-letter month. That tiny auxiliary masquerading as a month.

May had taken my father, on its 18th day. A few years later, it took his mother, on a day I don’t recall.

My brother was born on its 20th day, under one of its little dark clouds.

But then I met Taeko, born May 7, and my opinion began to change. The dread that I typically felt at its approach abated, and by the time Lana was born on its 30th day, I had developed a layered, complicated relationship with the month.

And now I finally understand the lesson here: May is life.

RENOUNCE ALL SIN AND VICE

Thanks to the bluenoses at iTunes for protecting me from reading scary bad words like “sodomy.”

Which is rendered online thusly: Rum S****y & the Lash.

Of course, if you preview Sick Bed of Cuchulainn from the very same album, iTunes has chosen this 30 seconds to share: “Frank Ryan bought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid/And you decked some fuckin' blackshirt…”

So to sum up: my eyes are OK, but my ears have an ow-ie.

I hope to god that iTunes cleans up these naughty preview segments as soon as possible, or else the aged youth of America is surely doomed.

Materfucking sodomites...

ADAY IN THE LIFE

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I needed to explain Meat Loaf’s Paradise by the Dashboard Light to someone.

Here’s the slightly compressed version of events:

[Makes passing reference to song]

[Reference to song is met with puzzled look]

“Seriously? You don’t know it?”

“No, I only know that one Meat Loaf song…”

Me interrupting. “This is that one Meat Loaf song!”

“No, the ‘I would do anything for love’ song.”

Christ. That’s Meat Loaf 2.0…

“Really? How about ‘Well, I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday’…”?

“No. I don’t think I know that one.”

“OK, hold on—you’ve earned this.” I called up YouTube and showed him the video. This whole conversation had started because we were talking about Phil Rizzuto, so I fast-forwarded to that part of the action.

“You see, the Scooter thought he was just providing play by play, and didn’t know they were going to use it for an extended ‘baseball as sex’ metaphor.”

“Hah.”

Oh, it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night...

I KNOW MY RIDER

I was behind the "1-800-GOT-BYRDS" truck today. I suspect it's got something to do with bird removal...

Jesus, who knew that bird infestation was enough of a problem to warrant a stand-alone business? And one with a fancy truck no less.

Anyway, it got me thinking that I have an inexcusable lack of Byrds music in the juke.

Maybe one day I'll get infested a little...

A MAGIC NUMBER

Hey, who’s that crazy band cozying up to the coveted 9/30 gig slot at the 9:30 Club?

Oh yeah, it’s… Stereolab.

And if they open the show at 9:30 PM with a 9 minute, 30 second version of Three-Dee Melodie (or, heck, even Three Women), all my numerological dreams will come true…

HOME OF ELVIS AND THE ANCIENT GREEKS

I was driving to a site visit with a colleague this morning.

When we got in the car, I turned down the radio, so that Jon Langford was just barely whispering Memphis Egypt.

As we drove on, every so often I swore I still heard Memphis Egypt. I looked down at the track counter, and sure enough, time was moving forward-- surely there was a rumor of Eight Miles High, an implication of Electric Version.

But all I kept hearing was Memphis Egypt...

TESSERING IS CREEPY

Just finished reading A Wrinkle in Time for Lana's book-discussion group this week.

The overarching theme of the dangers of conformity was nice. The anti-Communist rhetoric it was shot through on was anthropologically interesting, ideologically yucky, and artistically grating.

I'm most grateful to the book for the introduction to the phrase "bark my shins."

Sweet Natalie Portman as Sam, what a wonderful turn of words that is! Can't believe I never encountered it before...

PEHDTSCKJMBA

Tom Waits, you magnificent bastard, you...

WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY

I was flipping through channels the other night, and I came upon the bazillionth rerun of One-Hit Wonders on VH1.

I didn’t stick around to watch, but a couple of minutes later I realized something: One-Hit Wonders is perhaps the most profound show in the history of television.

I’m not trying to be post-ironic here, and this is not about Shatner worship. If anything, his presence cheapens the experience, and I’m thankful that the interstitial heavy lifting is done by a faceless, low-fat vanilla announcer.

I am not so moved by the folks who had one pop chart hit, but measurable success in other genres/markets (Tom Tom Club, Dexy’s, Gary Numan, Sugarhill Gang).

But Rockwell and the Starland Vocal Band and The Heights and Haddaway and Tommy Tutone and Timbuk 3?

They felt the glorious, terrible pull of fame. People wanted to speak to them, put their pictures in magazines, ask them about the future, and you can bet they all had plans. For next hit records, next tours. They were in the ascendancy, with no conceivable outcome beyond further elevation.

But then it went away. For whatever reasons, they could never again find the magical confluence of notes, beats, and words that had led them to the top.

And still there were lives that required living.

Some made peace with their trajectory and the rocket that got them there, while others floated away into the ether, cursing the afterburn.

You might be tempted to ask while watching “What would I do in that situation?”

I would ask instead “What are you doing?”