There's nothing like the sound of synchronized shotguns playing "Auld Lang Syne"
December 31st, 2006 (11:27 a.m)
Well, the New Year approaches. In my neck of the woods, that means that the daily, all-day sound of gunfire from the shooting range (and various yards) nearby eases into the sound of fireworks, and you don't really notice the change. You just say to yourself, "Huh. It's dark. Surely they can't still be firing guns. Must be fireworks."
Then you say to yourself, "But it's raining really hard. They can't be shooting fireworks. Maybe they're firing guns after all."
Then you remember going to the liquor store the night before, to get a couple of bottles of wine as gifts. You remember the hordes of people buying drinks of all sorts, from six-packs of cheap beer to $165 bottles of Dom Perignon, and you think to yourself, "They're probably doing both, and hopefully they're shooting only the fireworks at each other, and not the guns..."
So it goes out here in the country, where my wife is convinced that the jungle gym in a yard up the road has the equivalent of a Medieval torture cage hanging from one end of it...
I guess my wife and I are showing our age by the fact that we're ringing in the new year by watching the ETV broadcast of Garrison Keillor's New Year's Eve show from the Ryman in Nashville, and not one of the MTV or Dick Clark productions. Those overhead shots of Times Square, with their teeming throngs of people, are the very definition of hell to me. And every time I've flipped over to MTV, I've felt myself go into Old Fuddy Duddy mode, muttering, "So-and-so did it better fifteen years ago."
Don't get me wrong, I still tune in to MTV2's Subterranean every Sunday night, but at my age, it's hard to get into a lot of what the kids are digging these days.
The saying goes that whatever you're doing when the clock strikes 12 is what you'll be doing the rest of the year. Sitting in recliners, drinking sweet tea and surrounded by lazy cats, sounds good to me. Only next year, I doubt my sweetie will still be asleep on the other side of the room, since we'll probably be contending with a crying baby. Still sounds good.
This time, the cape stayed on
December 25th, 2006 (10:37 a.m)
Sad news today that James Brown passed away. I can't say anything here that won't be said more eloquently elsewhere, just that he was a legend for a good funky reason, and that you can't do wrong tracking down any of his vintage stuff.
The ever-reliable YouTube has tons of primo footage of Brown doing his thing, like this one:
Brown was born near here, and lived in this region for much of his life. A friend's father was a disc jockey back in the day, and a then-getting-started James Brown would often meet this DJ at the back door of the radio station with a handful of his latest 45. Even back then, before he was known as "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business," it sounds like Brown was probably the hardest working man in show business.
Let's just hope Heaven's band has been keeping their chops sharp, or Brown might talk the Man into bringing folks like Bootsy Collins and Clyde Stubblefield home a wee bit early.
Of course, no one ever tells the Nativity story where Baby Jesus is slingin' fireballs at everyone...
December 25th, 2006 (10:11 a.m)
We went to a Christmas Eve service at the local church last night, which consisted of Communion, a quick sermon, and a candle-lit prayer to end the proceedings.
They handed out the candles at the beginning of the service, with word that the congregation would pass the flame from the front of the church to the back.
A family came in and sat in front of us, and the son was in a wheelchair, his breathing helped by an oxygen tank. This talk of fire passing through the congregation, naturally, got this family's attention.
"Don't let anyone sit behind him," the father said. "Or this whole half of the building will get blown off!"
"If it gets near that tube, it'll be just like a flamethrower," another added.
"When they start lighting those candles, I'll have to wheel him out of here," the father decided.
As people came in and tried to sit behind the son, his family waved the interlopers away, and even physically prevented an usher from giving the son a(n unlit) candle.
Meanwhile, I was gauging the distance between that tank and me -- about 15 feet -- and wondering if there was enough stout pew wood between me and the tank to save me and the missus. Definitely not, I decided -- but at least death would presumably be quick and painless. I took comfort, though, in the fact that the family was on the case, talking amongst themselves in ever more vivid detail of the almost apocalyptic destruction that would befall the church should the merest hint of flame get anywhere near their son.
So the service proceeded in normal fashion, until it was finally time for the candle-lit prayer. The candles were lit in the front and people turned to pass the flame to the parishioners behind them.
As the flames made their way back, the son got nervous. "Keep that flame away from me. I don't want to catch on fire," he muttered to his father.
So you can imagine my surprise, after all this, to hear the father say, as if the son were some kind of worry-wart, "Well, just cut off your oxygen for a minute."
God bless us, everyone.
Still angry that I never got my electric guitar, I take my boombox to the mall every year and blare Slayer at Santa
December 24th, 2006 (1:16 a.m)
Well, it's time to start the holiday travelling. A couple of days at my inlaws' house downstate, and then back up this way for Christmas with my own family, and hopefully a Christmas/New Years supper with some friends. I expect it to be pretty uneventful and relaxing.
Next Christmas will be the first with the baby, beginning the long series of holidays where we accidentally fill him/her with memories we don't expect. Will the big memory of Christmas be the bike or the Barbie Dream House? Or will it be of waking up at three a.m. to the sound of my curses as I bang my knuckles against some toy that requires six hours to put together? Or will it be of noticing that Santa apparently enjoys a few bottles of Guinness during his stop every year, if the empties in the trash can are any indication?
One year, my parents decided not to wrap any of Santa's presents. My sister and I leaped out of bed on Christmas morning, ran into the living room and were confronted with, in one glance, all of our toys. I'm sure we enjoyed it OK, but my parents say that it was very anticlimactic, that the air just went out of Christmas morning that year.
My dad, though, liked to tweak things (for example, he apparently thought it was OK to dump a can of Veg-All -- one of nature's most vile canned concoctions -- into pots of whatever my mom happened to be cooking). One year, he didn't put anyone's names on the gift labels -- only some alphanumeric code that we never figured out. Imagine the frustration -- not knowing which presents were yours, which ones to shake.
Yet another year, my parents decided to seal the fireplace -- I can't even remember why. Maybe we just didn't light that many fires. But I can remember my sister and I staring at it dumbly, our lower lips quivering , as we stammered, "but, but ... how will Santa get in?" My parents assured us that Santa could get through the front door. I'm pretty sure we both stared at the front door, hoping that some wino from the convenience store across the street wouldn't mug Santa on our front porch.
And then there was the year we realized that Santa kept using the same wrapping paper as my parents. That, my parents told us, was because they actually stayed up to help Santa wrap presents. I can't remember why they told us the elves couldn't handle what was, presumably, their job.
Always one step ahead of us, my parents had to be. Just like we'll have to be when Lil' G asks how Santa's able to safely land his sleigh when it seems like half the neighborhood's heavily armed and liquored-up -- and more than ready to add more venison to the fridge.
"It's not heights I'm afraid of. It's landing at the bottom of them..."
(a half-remembered quote from Dangermouse)
December 22nd, 2006 (12:39 a.m)
I've been totin' this link around for a while now, and never got around to forwarding it to my friends. I've seen it making the rounds of other blogs, but since no one I know has sent it to me, they still might not have seen it. And at least a few of them know I adore bittersweet stuff like this.
p.s. Make sure to have the sound on loud enough to hear a faint, but important, sound at the end...
"Kiwi," by Doni Permedi
And then he told me, "Squirrels can't waterski..."
December 21st, 2006 (10:14 p.m)
When I was but a lad, full of wide-eyed wonder at the world and its infinite variety, I saw a rat climbing a tree in our back yard. I thought it was super cool, and ran to tell my dad. He promptly told me, "Rats don't climb trees."
No matter how much I protested, I couldn't get my father to believe that I'd seen a rat climb a tree. "Maybe it was a possum," he said. "Or a squirrel." As if I didn't know what a rat looked like.
This argument went on for years.
At any rate, since then, I've seen films where rats climb plenty of things, things that make trees seem like the kiddy course of rat travel. And for some reason, I think back on that experience every time I read tales of nature's weirdness, like this one:
New Scientist: Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds
I mean, how freakin' weird is that? You know what's probably weirder? I'll bet it was a trained rat that climbed that tree to take the picture.
At Least I Don't Have to Bury Anything on Holy Ground under a New Moon
December 18th, 2006 (12:35 a.m)
My dad read my post about the neighborhood man dangling dead crows from a tree in his front yard. My dad says that it's a method for scaring off the remaining live crows. And sure enough, searches of ever-trusty Google and Wikipedia confirm that it's an old tradition found in various places like the Appalachians, Texas, and even India. A pretty interesting take on "scarecrows," huh? So thanks, Dad! Your folksy wisdom comes in handy yet again!
The whole discussion reminds me of a moment in the childbirthing class that the missus and I recently took. It was at the end of the day, after we were exhausted from videos of raisin-skinned and coneheaded babies emerging, computer simulations of C-sections, and interactive displays. The lady leading the class implored us, if we were thinking about it, not to bite off our baby's fingernails.
She said the hospital had even issued a memo about the problem, it had gotten to be so out-of-hand. I think I and most of the class had on our best "what the hell?" faces, but my wife had actually heard of this. In fact, she knew that it was an old wives' tale: if you clip your baby's fingernails, they'll turn into thieves.
I read up on it a little bit, and the time spans vary anywhere from the baby's first six months to the first year, but there it is. Not only that, but in a couple of places, it said that if you absolutely must clip your baby's fingernails, you have to let the clippings fall onto a Bible.
Folklore rocks!
"And lo, a blockhead came among them..."
December 17th, 2006 (7:35 p.m)
We watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special tonight -- old school style, waiting for it to come on network TV with commercial breaks and anything. It's on ABC these days, not the CBS of my youth. The first commercial break contained some McDonalds atrocity, cementing my belief that they should show this special with the vintage Peppermint Patties commercials and nothing else.
That's a quality Christmas special, but I realized while watching it that I've probably seen more parodies and take-offs of this special than the actual special the last couple of years.
I've especially enjoyed:
- The one where it was put to the music of Outkast's "Hey Ya!"
- The one with dialogue from the Scrubs crew (supposedly from a Christmas cast party)
That Was the Jonathan Swift Presidency, and You Don't Know the Half of It
December 16th, 2006 (11:55 p.m)
I'm always ill-at-ease around other people's children, because I don't relate very well to children in general. I'm also afraid of telling them about things their parents don't think they're ready for, such as death, taxes, or the dark matter of existential angst that binds together the fabric of human existence.
So I was talking to my wife's six-year-old nephew today, while he was looking at a list of the American presidents. The list also included the years each president was in office.
He started reading off the terms, and got to Kennedy.
"He was only President for a couple of years before he quit," he said.
For a millisecond, I seriously considered spilling the beans. "No, he was assassinated. A lot of people say that America lost its innocence on that day, and many think it was a plot by the mafia, the government, or other forces, the first American coup, really..."
But I thought better of it. Not my job to fill him in on the concept of death or ham-fisted Oliver Stone movies. Then he came across Lincoln.
"He didn't want to be president long, either," he said.
"Um, that's right. He didn't."
"He was a good president."
"Yes, he was."
Then he found William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, two more members of the presidential early-exit club. Man, this tyke had the historical touch of death. Much more of this, and I'd be pulling out a copy of Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation, and just handing it to him.
Then he asked, "Which president wanted to kill babies?"
I did a double-take. "Wha-Wha-What?" I asked. I pressed him. "Which one did you hear wanted to kill babies?"
He got a little defensive. "I don't know. I heard it somewhere."
I didn't quite know what to do with this one. It was probably just his imagination, confusing an American president with Herod or something. Knowing the political climate these days, though, maybe he heard it in Sunday School, about Clinton or Kerry or someone like that.
Best to just not worry about it, I decided. If I wasn't going to get into the deaths of presidents, I sure wasn't going to get myself mired in a discussion like that.
Zoning Ordinances Probably Wouldn't Have Covered It, Anyway
December 15th, 2006 (8:08 a.m)
One of the quirks of living out in the country is seeing the many odd things your neighbors can do with their land. One of mine has a veritable complex of brick buildings built into the hillside, apparently adding on whenever a new child required a bedroom or a playhouse, or when a new car required expanding the garage. Another, in a lack of foresight, clearcut two or three acres to build his house, leaving the only decent tree at the entrance to the driveway -- so his kids' swing is about six feet from the road, and swings in the direction of the road. Others go for the time-honored tradition of junk cars on the back-40, or putting up shooting ranges that point in the direction of other neighbors' property.
When I was growing up, there was a small white clapboard house in our neighborhood, with Biblical verses and prophecies painted in blood-red paint on all of the outside walls. And there was this giant blood-red crucifix in the front yard. As kids, we use to scare each other with wild rumors that the guy who lived there had a snake pit full of rattlesnakes in his living room. Naturally, none of us ever took each other up on dares to knock on the door and find out.
For right now, though, the king of interesting land use is the guy with dead crows hanging from the tree in his front yard. A couple of weeks ago, we were driving by this house, and I did a double-take, saying, "I think that tree had dead crows hanging from it!" Sure enough, this morning, I thought to drive by again, and yep, there's dead crows strung up like ornaments from the lower limbs of an oak tree.
I have no idea. I'd love to stop and take a picture, but I'm not sure I want a confrontation with the kind of man who hangs dead crows in his frontyard.
Ah, the Top 10 List. It's Like Crack for us Music Geeks
D ecember 15th, 2006 (1:15 a.m.)
Trying out a new design for the site -- I think it has some potential. You'll see the signs of construction for a while: links that don't work, pages that still have the old design, etc.
There is some new content, though, a list of my 10 Favorite CDs of 2006, on the Listening page.
And yes, my OCD is totally shining through that I'm thinking about categorizing the site this way.