11/28/05 -- 12:39 a.m.
Went to visit my sister, Eartha Kitsch, in Nashville over the holidays and had a great time. I get to see a little more of Nashville each time I go, and it's a complicated place. My piddlin' observations this time:
11/19/05 -- 12:27 a.m.
One day I won't be talking empty smack and then she'll be sorry...
My bright idea for the day: If my wife and I ever decide to have kids, and the fates give us triplets, I'm naming them Walker, Texas, and Ranger.
If we have twins, then I'll arbitrarily pick two new names every day and make the boys fight for who gets first choice. "I wanna be Q-Bert! No, I wanna be Q-Bert! You have to be Sputnik!" It'll make them stronger, just like in Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue."
11/19/05 -- 12:04 a.m.
I keep promising to let my sis and other people borrow my copy of Plans, the new Death Cab for Cutie disc, but I find myself in a bit of a dilemma. Two of the songs, "You Will Be Loved" and "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," are cornerstones of a new mix CD I'm working on, and to let those songs out of the bag before the mix is ready would be to steal their thunder on my mix. I know that's terrible, selfish reasoning, but these are two of the best songs I've heard all year -- heck, Plans is a pretty strong album -- and that selfish little voice won't let me loan it out.
One other thought. Heaven's choirs had better sound like The Jayhawks (the vintage Olson/Louris incarnation), or I will be sorely disappointed. I've been listening to "Two Hearts" almost nonstop for two weeks now. Mortals just shouldn't be able to harmonize like that.
Still reading Dan Simmons' Ilium, and while I'm enjoying it, I can safely say it's not in the same league as his Hyperion books. I think my biggest gripe about the book is the way he uses certain characters for what I feel are easy-outs of exposition. The characters run across something they don't recognize? There's a character who's studied the past who says something to the effect of "I believe that's what they used to call ... a whale" or somesuch, and so on. Maybe that aspect will improve, but it feels like an awfully clumsy plot device for someone of Simmons' talent. Still, the Trojan War segments are awfully intriguing.
11/18/05 -- 11:25 p.m.
My review of the new Kate Bush album, Aerial, is out on PopMatters. I guess it turned out ... OK . Sony never sent me a promo (they must have been too busy patting each other on the collective back, congratulating each other on how well that whole DRM/copy protection/rootkit thing turned out), so I had to buy a copy and try to listen to it on vacation. In the category of "Good CDs for driving around the American southwest," Kate Bush probably doesn't rank very high, despite Aerial being a good record. I stand by the review's overall position, that the new disc is very comfy, and a very welcome return by Kate Bush. Given more time, though, I could have actually analyzed the set a little bit more thoroughly.
I think some of the criticisms of the 2nd disc that are out there are a bit extreme. As concept albums go, the 2nd disc of Aerial might not rank up there with The Wall, but it's pretty strong, and has a very nice effect when you listen to it all the way through.
Listening to it also reminds me that I need to replace my prized copy of The Dreaming, which was stolen a few years ago. I would have replaced it by now, but it was the disc from my Japanese This Woman's Work box set, and I kept hoping against hope that it would show up in one of the local used record stores. Alas, no such luck.
11/12/05 -- 1:32 a.m.
I'm on vacation, driving around the southwest with my wife, and I keep trying to read Dan Simmons' Ilium. I say try, because I get a few pages along, and I feel like throwing the book across the room, it's so well-written. The first two paragraphs alone nearly rendered me incapable of turning the page:
Rage.
Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you're at it, O Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they may have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede.
Man-killer. Cold folds of Ganymede. Not to mention the incredibly efficient way he introduces the traditional elements of the story of Troy, but also the way he off-handedly introduces the science fiction elements like post-humans, Io, and the rest. Simmons is so good he puts you right on that fine line where you could quit the whole writing game as easily as you could be inspired to finally get to work on that epic saga you've been dreaming up.
11/12/05 -- 1:13 a.m.
I guess it's a sign of my baseball addiction that, when I see those low-scoring hocky results between teams like Philadelphia and New York, I have to remind myself that baseball season's over, and I can quit waiting for Baseball Tonight to come on.
11/02/05 -- 11:32 p.m.
Requiem ... er, tear in my beer ballad for a roadhouse
On the way to my mom's tonight, I passed the plot of land where a bar called Wendell's used to sit, and noticed it bore a For Sale sign.
Wendell's was infamous in its day, with good reason. It was the type of roadhouse bar where there were as many people in the parking lot, drinking on the tailgates of their trucks, as there were inside the place. Needless to say, fights, assaults, shootings, stabbings and every other kind of disturbance became common. It's a fair bet that the police and paramedics didn't need any directions to the place.
I went there only once (honest, mom!), after a couple of friends and myself had spent too many hours at TJ Whispers (a literal hell on earth, a story all its own), when someone got the bright idea to head out to Wendell's. Pick any country dive bar cliche and you've got the place. A section of the floor that had honest to goodness sawdust, the man-mountain at the door named Tiny, a full range of beers from Budweiser to Bud Lite, the palpable sense that everyone on the rather large dance floor was blowing off a lot of steam.
One of our group was a female, and she immediately became the center of attention for a very large, middle-aged guy. He stood about 6'4", probably weighed about 350 pounds, and he reminded us of Porky from the Porky's movies.
"Wanna dance?" he asked.
Our female friend looked back at us.
We shrugged. What were we gonna be able to do about it? This guy could have picked me up by my mullet and snapped my 185 lb. frame like a piece of dry kindling, probably growling some variation of "piss-ant college boy" while he did it. My only chance would have been to start spouting Chaucerian English, on the off chance this guy would think I'd been touched by the Spirit and was speaking in tongues.
But my buddy and I kept quiet, figuring one or two dances and we'd be good.
So they hit the dance floor, doing some kind of two-step with all the rest. My remaining friend and I just kinda watched, pretty sure that she'd be plenty safe while she was in here (well, unless Porky had a Mrs. Porky somewhere on the place -- then things could have gotten ugly). After a couple of dances, she excused herself on the pretense of a restroom break and as she passed us, muttered, "If you two aren't in the car with the engine running by the time I walk out of here, I'm screaming to everyone that you're gay."
Needless to say, we got the heck out of there, spinning our tires in the gravel on the way out. I know I never went back, and I'm pretty sure the others didn't, either.
But the building that had contained Wendell's (and later, a short-lived dance club) burned down years ago, hopefully exorcising a lot of that land's demons in a cleansing fire. I hadn't thought much about the place until I saw the For Sale sign, and it makes me wonder if I shouldn't go out there and bury something antithetical to the bar on the spot where the taps once stood. Like maybe a Bible, or an Enya CD, or a good pour from an imported beer.
11/02/05 -- 11:27 p.m.
Hank III -- Quite a Show
Went and saw Hank III last night, which was a hoot. Definitely gets a high grade for people-watching, prompting my friend Ward to say, "You count the Misfits t-shirts, and I'll count the curled-up cowboy hats." I saw things there. I saw a pair of hamhock sideburns that would make Elvis feel like a wispy-faced schoolboy. I saw musicians and roadies that looked like they crawled out of a Wes Craven film. I saw Joe Buck, formerly of the Legendary Shackshakers, playing upright bass with a feral smile on his face, screaming obscenities at the crowd, looking like some city cousin of The Devil's Rejects who could leap into the crowd and go straight for someone's throat. And I saw the current generation of the Williams bloodline, tattooed to the nines, singin' songs about whiskey, weed, and women. I haven't heard that much cussin' ... well, possibly ever. But what a fun show. Hank III and his band start out with the country stuff, barreling through it at a breakneck pace, whipping the crowd into a hooting, beer-toasting frenzy.
During that set, he also did a classic country set, including a cover of his grandfather's "I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive," which really underscored his physical and vocal resemblance to his grandfather. During a "showin' respect" segment that included songs from Hank Williams, Jr. and Charlie Daniels, it was definitely a highlight. Then the band kicked into hellbilly gear, with this frenetic 2nd singer bouncing around the stage while the band seemed to play in triple time. By this time, Hank III had taken off his patch-covered jacket and pulled his hair out of a pony tail so that it was hanging over his shoulders. And that was an additional interesting part of the night, watching his appearance change.
By the time the hardcore punk/speed metal portion of the show hit (and about 4/5 of the crowd had left in fear of the mosh pit that was destined to form), he'd pulled off his baseball cap and stripped down to a torn, sleeveless Misfits shirts, playing a guitar painted with the Misfits skull logo, looking like every mother's worst nightmare, and singing in a gravelly, gutteral growl that he must have picked up just this side of Hell. It was pretty impressive watching a band span all those styles, and to watch Hank III look comfortable in all of them (although he seemed really at home during the hardcore portions).
It's surprising that some people question his integrity. After all, if he'd wanted to play the Nashville game and walk in the style of his grandfather, he'd be a gazillionaire right now instead of touring the small bar circuit. But he looks happy, which is worth a lot all on its own.
11/02/05 -- 11:19 p.m.
The King, He Haunts Me
Thinking some more about those dang Burger King commercials (and realizing that I probably shouldn't watch TV late at night, when those commercials seem to always run back to back with commercials for Saw II). But where's these guys' fight-or-flight response? If I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw the king staring back at me, I'd be swinging a tire iron or something til the backseat looked like the one from Pulp Fiction. Maybe the King's greasy smell, born of Burger King kitchens in the pre-dawn hours, acts as an air-borne sedative. Or maybe in those initial shots, we can't see the King's stinger, dripping with a potent nerve agent, whipping around and lodging it at the base of the guys' necks.
(c) 2005 Sweet Tea Prohibition