Blueprint Blue

Blurry Eyes Ever Again Is the New Blueprint Blue

2010-08-25T06:03:00.001-07:00

blurryeyeseveragain.tumblr.com

I'm even re-posting from here to there. But don't worry, little blue... I am not abandoning you.

Greetings

2010-07-24T02:27:00.000-07:00

If I don't post, Blogger might delete this like they deleted the poetry blog. Too much history here.

I just read most of 2008. Good stuff.

Go here for the new.

New Blog Location (for the time being unless I change mind again)

2010-07-05T07:14:00.000-07:00

New new new posts!

New new new blog!

Here.

Or if you prefer:

If I see you tomorrow, I don't know what I will do
If I see you tomorrow, I don't know what I will do
I'm not gonna cut my hair when I'm around the park
I'm not gonna drive to Dallas with blurry eyes ever again

Top 10 Opening Lyrics (Ever): Part 1 of ?. #10 - #7

2010-06-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

Although it tends toward the well played and the popular, toward the hall of fame and the textbook, it's hard to argue with most of [Spinner's top 25 opening lyrics ever](http://www.spinner.com/2007/08/06/best-opening-lyrics-no-25/). Now I wouldn't put "She's a very kinky girl" at the top of my list but I see its appeal and would likely put it in my top 25 opening lyrics as of 25 years ago. Human League's "She was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar" is a gem though it is undone by its ludicrous follow-up line: "that much is true." Come on, League, you've uttered one entire line - do you realy need to reiterate that it's "true"? We never thought you were lying. Speaking of that line, who the hell calls it a "cocktail bar?"

Elsewhere on the list: "Don't call it a comeback" is made even more powerful by its follow-up: "I've been here for years." But LL has a better one and it'll be on my list. Prince says "I was dreaming when I wrote this" and that's evocative and all. But then he challenges you to sue him if he goes too fast. Prince, you're eight seconds into the song. We have no idea if you're going too fast.

And: It's hard to argue with stalwarts like "Hello darkness, my old friend" and "You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips." But I wish the creators of this list had left more room for more recent openers. We did just go through the greatest 15-year period in the history of music. But this is the internet and I can make my own list. I can make a better list. But...I have a job so I'm only giving you 10.

Top 10 Opening Lyrics (Ever): Part 1 of ?. #10 - #7

10. "I sit alone in my four-cornered room , staring at candles."
Mind Playin' Tricks On Me - Geto Boys
Let's dispense with the obvious: Most rooms have four corners. The fact that the claustrophobic closing-in room of paranoid nightmares also has four walls probably doesn't need to be specified. But there's an attempt here to evoke a crazy, unreasonable kind of madness, one that will get anyone into deep trouble if it - the madness - goes too far. But when Scarface delivers the zinger - and I bet he called it a zinger - "staring at candles" we know he's in deep. We know the candles aren't there for romance or ambiance - they're there because he either doesn't want to turn on the lights for fear that the cameras in the bulbs will more accurately catch his movements OR he didn't pay the electric bill.

If you think of the four parts of this song as songs in themselves, you've got four awesome openers. Willie D. strikes a pose for positivity with *I make big money. I drive big cars." (Aside: How the hell did Willie D. get a singing part in Geto Boys? He stumbles over his own words, he lisps randomly, his attempts to go fake-crazy fall flat, and when he says he's paranoid, he doesn't remotely believe it.)_ In verse 3, Scarface comes back with "Day by day it's more impossible to cope." Hend proceeds to blow us away with his expressions of a dual mad love/crazy hate for his girl. Finally, in verse 4, Bushwick Bill delivers the line that would have made the top 5 of this list if it had started the song: "This year Halloween fell on a weekend."

9. "If I see you tomorrow, I don't know what I will do."
Drive To Dallas - The Fiery Furnaces
This is one you have to listen to: the complete utter limitless certainty that the singer holds that she will not be seeing this person tomorrow oozes through the line, as she repeats and repeats and repeats. She will NOT be driving to Dallas. She will NOT be driving to Dallas witrh blurry eyes ever again. Why? She doesn't know what she will do. Good a reason as any.

8. It's four in the morning, the end of December
Famous Blue Raincoat - Leonard Cohen
Handwritten letters didn't have time stamps. Hence, the need for context as L. Cohen makes a song out of a letter written from one old friend to another - old friends that had been better friends before the letter recipient took the letter writer's train-waiting woman away from him. But think about this for a second: 4AM. Why is he writing a letter so late (not early)? And it's the end of December. Must be cold as hell - that music on Clinton Street is coming from cars or apartments, not the street. He didn't say New Years' Eve. He didn't say Christmas. So it was one of those in-between (secular) holidays days that lengthen that joyous season beyond its capacity.

7. "I come back to town today."
Turtledove - Trip Shakespeare
What an opening line on the opening song of what is essentially the opening album of Trip Shakespeare's career. (Yes they had an album prior to this but this one is miles ahead - streets ahead - if you will. Shortly after he announces his arrival back in town, Matt Wilson mentions "I've been on the highway for days." Meaning -give him a meal. Let him take a shower. With a clean soft towel and moisturizing body wash. I listened to this song over and over again as I made my triumphant summer of 1991 return to Minneapolis. I played it on a boombox in the U-Haul. I would leave Minneapolis quietly eight months later, the soundtrack to that departing trip unremembered, unrecorded.

(top 6 coming soon)

I Want A Name When I Lose

2010-06-10T13:55:00.000-07:00

I'll take the blame. Yes, it is my fault that USC's football program suffered a severe penalty at the hands of the NCAA - two-year bowl game ban, forfeited wins, etc.

I try not to speak of luck or fate. Or even that indefatigable undefinable standby, karma. I'll talk about probability and random flux and likelihood. And of course the stuff that happens due to clearly seen and understood reasons (e.g., not washing ones hands -> spread of bacteria -> unhappy society).

So how do we explain the undeniable fact that every institution of higher education that I attend or work for suffers a major scandal or loss in one or more of its athletic programs. Looking backwards:

USC football: It's ugly. It's likely well deserved. The cheating was pretty blatant. But remember: I was hired with one game left in the 2005 season. The Trojans had won the 2004 national championship. The Saturday after I started working for the Family, we crushed UCLA in a game so decisive my friends on the Westside couldn't even make eye contact with me. Then, it imploded. "We" lost to Texas in the Rose Bowl early in '06. Then the bad losses to teams from the Pacific Northwest (it hurts to say it.) Yes, it all happened because they hired me and it will continue until someone buys the screenplay (for a lot of money) or the MacArthur Grant works out. (Note: one more thing: didn't the whole Pete Carroll unites a city and creates a gang truce while not drinking water seem a bit ridiculous to anyone other than me?

USC basketball: Shady Blagojovich-esque coach (allegedly) hands envelope full of cash to young superstar with infamous first two initials and friendship with extremely short minor rapper from Beverly Hills. Scholarships are given to each of the two players. Then, NCAA sanctions a bit less brutal than those the footballers got.

Minnesota basketball: In 1997, months after after I began grad school at my old alma mater, several players on my favorite school's favorite sport's team were rumored to have cheated - a lot - on academic papers. Vague tales were told about a backup point guard from the Lakota tribe in North Dakota and how he took on a hoarse-voiced ostrich farmer from Kentucky. So yeah we made the Final Four in 1997. Except we didn't - all victories forfeited.

Cal-State-Fullerton football: During my two years getting my career-delaying masters degree (but gaining a rather memorable and informative education on psychology - that faculty was solid), the school's Academic Senate voted to end the football program. The school president fought the move but eventually the team was gone, a year after I too was gone, a minor deity soaring up the 57 freeway past Diamond Bar, past San Dimas, toward America.

Cal-State-Fullerton basketball: Some time around the midpoint of my CSUF career, this guy arrived to play basketball. Yes, one of my schools was partly responsible for that blighted period (2003 to 2007) when the NBA was nearly ruined by one team (the San Antonio Spurs) and when you get right down to it, the Spurs were unwatchable because of one man - yep, him.

Minnesota basketball: In January 1986, months after I arrived on the overly brick campus, three players were charged with sexual assault in Madison, Wisconsin. They were later acquitted. But if I remember correctly, at the time this was considered a huge scandal. The team, the university, the city, and the state all seemed embarrassed. That winter quarter, the campus just seemed numbed and chastened, the sex scandal combining with brutal cold to crush one's spirit. I, on the other hand, coasted to my very first 4.0 college term (on 21 credits!) and have barely strayed from higher education since.

Penn State-Ogontz and Normandale College: I speak only in whispers of my first year of college - at the delightfully hilly suburban Philadelphia satellite campus (for freshmen and sophomores only) of the Pennsylvania State University system. But yeah I was there. And yes I performed poorly. Then, the family shuttled itself to Minnesota and I ended up at the quaint fake-named Normandale College and my GPA improved and my hair got too big. What's the sports connection? Both schools disbanded all of their team athletics programs during and after my time there. (Bonus fact: I was THE sportswriter for the Normandale College paper, The Lion.)

Why me? What did I do to create all that upheaval? Nothing. It's just that this blog needed content. And no one else but me is around to provide it. It's just a coincidence. I mean, how do I even fit in Fullerton's 1995 and 2004 baseball championships or five U of M hockey titles (in both genders!) during and just after my tenure there? You see, I hadn't written much of note lately and I used my time-honored gimmick of writing in a encyclopedia-like "multiple entries" list style. Excessive? Sure but are you still reading?

When the last thing one sees before one sleeps is Fred Savage, the first thing one will feel when one wakes up is regret, that's for certain.

2010-05-31T06:11:00.000-07:00

When traveling on business - not personal - reasons, one should not, under any circumstances, rationalize one's belief that one is sleep deprived and thus may not hear the clock radio alarm or the cell phone's silent vibratory noise, or the hotel room's land lines squealy wails. That belief has merit to it.

The last thing I saw before I dropped into slumber was the frightened face of Fred Savage. He was on a Law and Order episode. <>

This all happened on the 18th floor. I'm in town for a conference. It's way too humid. Chicago, do something about your humidity problem, please.

A Musical Journey

2010-05-25T22:57:00.000-07:00

The road from here

To here

Is a narrow one. It goes both ways. In the end, one is left with

Breathing Deeply, Slowly (CENSORED)

2010-05-14T20:57:00.000-07:00

Well THAT was the most frustrating week of my life.

I should not be writing... no not until some time has passed, some perspective has been gained. I should walk away from the blogger editor. I should walk far far away.

But here I still am. Tempted to make a list. A list of all that has gone comically wrong, inconveniently wrong.... a list of little things really. But enough little things can make a little mountain and enough little mountains can make a planet.

Silence is preferable. If I list the petty thieveries and flippant injustices, I will seem petty and flippant. Better to not say a word about...

... about the co-worker who REDACTED on the desk that used to be my desk..

... about the person knocking REDACTED census worker..

... about the person on the phone who - despite REDACTED - used the wrong credit card.

... about the individual who never OVERREACTION might mean something.

... about the crazed bus driver who questioned my SPECULATION.

... about the Charter cable REDACTED worst human beings on earth.

No... best to just accept where I am at the moment... realize that at least the cats love me unconditionally... and play a SOOTHING COVER SONG by GAYNGS.

...

Women Were Management: 2,600 Words on Billy Joel's She's Always a Woman

2010-05-11T05:43:00.000-07:00

In 1977, I was a boy. I was in a department store in Flemington, New Jersey. Though we lived in Pennsylvania, my family did a lot of shopping in New Jersey. If I remember correctly, it all had to with the sales tax.

I don't remember the name of the department store. It was a part of one of those regional east coast variety store chains, the pre-Internet, pre-call waiting, pre-VCR equivalent of Target or Wal-Mart but with one-ninth the square footage. Back in those days, it was okay for parents to leave their young children alone in malls or large stores for a couple of hours while Mom and older sister shopped for transitional clothes and Dad priced the shovels and stared lovingly at the riding mowers. (More likely, Dad was back in PA, blasting some Wolfman Jack and frying up some extra jumbo falafel balls).

Anyway, I was trolling the music department of this since-shuttered store (now part of a giant outlet mall complex). I was carefully considering the ways in which I would spend my allowance if anyone had ever bothered giving me an allowance. No weekly pay for me... I'd get three bucks here and a nickel there and a quarter tomorrow. Not enough for everything I wanted, which in 1977, consisted of lots of Warren Zevon, Bob Seger, Styx, Steely Dan, and Steve Miller Band.

Yeah, that says "Styx" up there. Let a boy be a boy.

Whoever was clerking this part of the store that day (i.e., making sure the rural route trash from PA and the gangly Catholic hoods from NJ didn't shoplift the 8-tracks) was a Billy Joel fan. Because he or she played Joel's then-new album The Stranger at least three times in its entirety while I was there - dutifully switching from Side 1 to Side 2 (between Scenes from an Italian Restaurant and Vienna) without too much extra silence.

I was transfixed. I didn't want to leave. Sure, a couple of times I had to leave the record area to head to the front of the store where I had my hourly check-in with my Mom and sister. (And no... of course my father wasn't there. Those weekend afternoons when the Swede took us half-breeds to the mall or to the doomed variety stores - those were the times of his life, the few hours of solitude that made his 90-hour work week worth it.) Anyway, at the hourly check-in, my Scandi-accented mother would indicate that no, she and the sister were not done with their "chopping" yet. I never knew what those two did in those endless aisles given over to girls. All I knew was that I wanted no part of it - just give me the records and the books and a couple of racks of "husky" clothes for boys and I was good. A few bucks for an Icee or a Julius or a slice would be nice too.

And on that day, The Stranger took my love of music to another level. Those songs - that freeform exotica about real-life Italians in the actual boroughs of New York City, and a few strays out in Long Island or back in Jersey - those songs were the shit. Yeah, you can pretend that y'all were swooning over the Sex Pistols in some grimy corner of the American urban-industrial sphere but I know the truth. You were really lamenting disco's decline by listening to William Joel, taking occasional breaks for Stephen Bishop and Sir Boz Scaggs. You weren't lamenting the long-ago deaths of Hendrix, Morrison, and Joplin. No, you were crying - real liquid tears - for Harry Chapin and Jim Croce (his eyes were so sad).

Either that or you weren't born yet.

I was familiar with the single Just the Way You Are. Also, WPST in Trenton - 98-point-something on the FM - had been rocking a couple of the deep cuts - Movin' Out and Only the Good Die Young. But in that unnamed department store in just-south-of-central west Jersey there were three songs that stunned my kid ears: the title track The Stranger, the epic Scenes From an Italian Restaurant (so sophisticated), and She's Always A Woman.

I was in what you might call the pre-pubescent years of my life. Women, to me, weren't yet mysterious elusive creatures who didn't love me. No, by virtue of having a family consisting of an ever-present mother, a moody brooding brat of an older sister, and a father who worked from 9 to 9, women were the people I was always surrounded by and constantly reporting to. Women were management.

On She's Always..., Mr. Joel created a picture very different from the pop stars of his day. This was a time when E.L.O. was calling women "evil" and the Eagles were labeling them "witchy"..... a time when Cliff Richard's "devil woman" had to change her "evil ways" per the orders of Carlos Santana. Here was this guy who hadn't done much of note in his career delivering a lilting deliberate tale of woman-as-woman.... woman-as-person-skillful-in-the-ways-of-human-interaction...woman-as-manipulator. In those songs by those other artists, I didn't recognize those evil devil witches. But when Billy Joel sang of the sly lady trickster, similar to the ones who manipulated me to eat my vegetables and not wet the bed, the ones who double-spoke as they sent me to corners of classrooms or stole my beloved red transistor radio - I knew exactly what he was singing about.

(Note: Before I go on, let me address my off-handed "hadn't done much of note in his career" remark. Yes, it's true. Before The Stranger, Billy Joel's career could generously be described as checkered. He was best known for the preposterous Piano Man (really Billy? The guy in the Navy had to be called Davy?) and a truly bizarre epic called Captain Jack about a masturbating cross-dressing nose-picking hippie with a tape deck whose masturbation, cross-dressing, nose-picking, and hippie-ing caused his father to drown in the family pool in one of the most ill-timed lyrical transitions ever recorded.)

So here was The Stranger, with its fetish-y cover (that's an awful small bed for a man and a mask... are those boxing gloves in the dark corner?) and its nine damn-near-perfect songs. Or should I say seven damn-near-perfect songs and those last two slight disappointments in which Billy half-assedly tries his hand at fake jazz and fake gospel (Get it Right the First Time and Everybody Has a Dream, respectively). But seven out of nine ain't bad. The seventh song, the one that brings us here today, the one that I looked forward to every time I heard the record in sequence, starting with that day in Flemington, had a profound effect on me.

She's Always a Woman was the song that likely pushed me toward an adolescence and adulthood of appreciating the pointed sentiment of highly personal songwriting, as opposed to the more distant, more obtuse stuff that others liked. In other words, She's Always a Woman made me love the lyrical specificity of The Hold Steady and led me to be completely puzzled by the adoration of the merely serviceable Radiohead.

(Note: I could just as easily present a completely opposite version of the just-mentioned theory and use as proof of its veracity my distrust of the populist Arcade Fire and my complete adoration of those fiery Friedberger siblings. But that's another theory for another mid-week epic post.)

But what else did She's Always a Woman do? Was this song also responsible for my own clumsy, fraught-with-misdirection relationships with women and the resulting missteps, missteps that include - if you check my archives - overly detailed but historically inaccurate recollections of past relationships (and non-relationships)? Yes, some of those recollections - the more humorous ones, especially - have backfired. And this swarthy-uncle-going-through-a-break-up of a song is partially to blame.

Let's take a step back and look at the lyrics carefully. The lilting melody and soft vocals of Woman suggested a sweet sugary classic, to be played at weddings for generations. And that's exactly what happened - it was played at weddings by people who didn't listen very carefully:

“She can ruin your faith with her casual lies”
…
“She can ask for the truth but she'll never believe you”
…
"She steals like a thief"
…
"She never gives in; she just changes her mind"
…
"She'll carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleeding"

I wrote about this song once before and I was a little harsh on it, calling its lyrics spiteful and hateful. Billy was going for something more subtle, which to him was like learning to fly. Women are crafty, he wants us to know. Women will argue with you, change their minds.... deceive you and derive joy from it. But oh they will always be women. Or at least she will. Yes, I must conclude, this song may have contributed negatively to my between-gender issues of trust, issues that as of April 2009 have been resolved or at least rendered unworthy of attention.

Actually all of my thoughts here make this song more difficult to grasp, its end and means less obvious. You see, this whole post was inspired by news about a 90-second television commercial for a British company that sells.... I have no idea what they sell but it's something - anyhow, this British company utilizes the lovely ballad to stirring (and apparently viral) effect:

The little girl at the beginning will be a woman soon.... no she is a woman. Daddy walks her down the aisle. Rings are exchanged. The groom's ring is understated and responsible. The bride's ring is sharp, shiny, steely and can break ~~balls~~ barriers. Happily they live, ever after. Suddenly the girl/woman is old but she's so well-dressed, the seeming spawn of Candace Bergen and Gena Rowlands. We see the full existence of a woman in a minute and a half, with key life transitions coinciding with lyrical imagery ("hides like a child" with image of child's birthday, etc.) Meanwhile, entire swaths of "it's complicated" relationship fodder are ignored.

In other words, what the hell is this song doing in this commercial? Why doesn't anyone notice that maybe the mocking / deceitful / immature nature of unloving brides, as interpreted by petulant / entitled / unlovable men is NOT what should be highlighted during the dance portion of the wedding reception?

The following decade delivered more widely cited examples of misinterpreted songs. But at least the stalker in The Police's Every Breath You Take could reasonably be perceived by some as dangerous and/or alluringly sexy. At least the manipulator in R.E.M.'s The One I Love is honest about his "simple props" and goes out of his way to seem enigmatic by including exactly one word ("Fire!") in the chorus. In other words, you want to know more about those guys. The narrator in She's Always a Woman? You want him to shut up. He would not do so until 1993.

Still, Joel's is by far the best song of the three. This is the great elusive mystery of the Billy Joel Dilemma: How can someone who makes so many glaring mistakes in his professional and personal life be so damn listenable? Personal relationship mistakes, business partnership mistakes, driving mishaps, The Bridge, letting Christie B.design an album cover, and generally the ever-noticeable error of being the very thing you lyrically mock.

I once successfully/scientifically argued for Billy Joel's superiority over Neil Young (pantomimes pulling orange out of the air to compare to apple). There also exists an unpublished draft of a very similar comparison of Joel to Jack White (though that race is closer). But I can't do one-to-one comparisons of everyone in music. That would take too long. But in the interest of information freedom, let me throw you a few bones: Animal Collective > Grizzly Bear; Girls > Wavvves; Wilco > Whiskeytown (not even close); MGMT > Dirty Projectors; (Flying Lotus + Madlib) = (J. Dilla + Moodymann); Xiu Xiu > The XX.

In my struggle to finish this piece, I keep coming back to a fictional image of an unshaven haggard Billy Joel holed up in his Long Island estate trying too hard... rolling the sleeves of his flannel shirt up, not recognizing that while one middle wrist button is buttoned, the other was not... Billy then slamming his fist on the irregular wood of his way-too-big dining room table, whining to the comely maid who gave him (pre-Christie Brinkley) sexual comfort "I wanna write a Vietnam song! Waaaa! Why can't I write a Vietnam song?!" He then writes the best Vietnam song ever, topping Crosby, Stills, Nash, Mitchell, Dylan's hair, and yes, even Springsteen; he sends them all back to the spare drawing board they keep in their metaphorical wood shed.

(Note: The maid's comfort-giving is pure speculation.)

(Note: The table wood was irregular because of the warping effect from the coastal Atlantic air.)

And that's the beauty of the Billy Joel legacy: All those mistakes never stopped him from trying hard... trying too hard. He knew - he had to know - that the narrator of She's Always A Woman was a dick. And maybe his insistence at having his side of the argument heard on record won out over self-awareness. But the truth is he's never really cared about self-awareness. Or he was just blissfully un-self-aware. For a period of five albums, starting with The Stranger and continuing through 52nd Street, Glass Houses, Nylon Curtain, and An Innocent Man, he let himself make mistakes and his mistakes became practice and practice became genius.

So yeah if some British surface-skimmer wants to give him some cash for a lovely song that he wrote out of spite, let him take the money even if they use someone else's vocals on it. Billy will put it to good use. I'm sure his auto insurance premiums are super-high.

Finally, I've been (self-) accused of writing in variations of a point/counterpoint style. For example, I may start by stating a rule, then provide an exception to that rule, followed by a reason the exception doesn't apply here, followed by a justification for ignoring that reason. Thus, I will end this ridiculously long piece by admitting that there may be a devilish legitimacy to the use of Billy Joel's song in weddings and in that TV commercial. In the last verse, Joel sings:

She'll bring out the best and the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself 'cause she's always a woman to me

Here, Billy is making a case for personal responsibility: If you are at your worst or your best, you are the one that should be blamed or praised. I realize that he says "She'll bring out" these qualities, making it seem like he's passing the blame. But he censors himself immediately and assigns responsibility squarely where it belongs (the self). He then repeats the song's title phrase.

Yeah, that final verse is a big piece of fluffy fluffiness and you can't help but think that Billy Joel got to some real self-awareness by accident. But then you remember: his mistakes became practice and practice became genius. She's Always a Woman is kind of like a micro-version of his career: throwing it all out there, baring emotions and biases, hitting a few good points, missing a few others, projecting his weaknesses onto others, admitting his weakness for projection, and melodies so perfect you remember exactly where you were when you first heard that song in 1977.

It had to be her (a 3/4 true story)

2010-05-11T01:32:00.000-07:00

She was walking away from the bridge. That's what I told myself. That's what I insisted to myself. In a tone of voice reserved for stage poets and lone lobos along a dry riverbed.

I had no idea. I had no desire and no idea. I had no desire and no idea and no way of knowing I'd say the wrong thing. I always said the wrong thing, it seemed. What was interesting was how little I said anything. Out loud.

The words got out in poetry. The thoughts were covered in verses - 4 or 6 or 8 lines. Rhyming or not. Ghosts along ridges of nation-bisecting rivers. Her skinny lament a planned song on the playlist of the day.

And ridges rise up and suddenly....

To bridges, still rising, still sudden.

It's a long way down from the pedestrian path to the mud of the river. And I didn't want to see her take that fall. She never took that fall. It never occurred to me that when I stopped looking, she didn't stop existing. No, she did walk away from the bridge and this I witnessed. I then retreated into a classroom building on the riverside. While she returned to the bridge and tried again.

To jump. To fly. She was so close that next time. As that taller lankier one in my class gave her end-of-term presentation on the psychology of Abraham Lincoln. As the younger one, with her catacomb wrists and lists of old men to read, gave it another shot. Gave it her best shot.

She did not jump. She did not fly. She merely fell into the water from a low height. A living height, several feet shorter than a suicide height. Witnesses arrived and fall jackets became swaddling blankets. Three women held her from two sides in three ways. Two men gripped cell phones and waited for the ambulance. Two police officers - a man and a woman - questioned her in the warmth of a squad car. She was not being arrested, they insisted. She shivered, she spoke, she told them about the godforsaken prairie and the motel key card left in the popcorn pile.

She lived. I did too. We're not that far apart. We were never that far apart.

Circular Logic

2010-05-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

When is it just too much?

Is it:

A. Waking up on a train.

B. Selling legally purchased electronic goods to orthodox Jews in Beverly Hills operating a fly-by-night operation that must be seen and experienced to be believed and regretted… and then standing in the doorway of the world’s most successful “lap band” company in order to be free of cell phone reception-destroying torrential winds in order to make a crucial phone call.

C. Waking up in a train station.

D. Arguing with a Napoleon-Complex-ridden bus driver about who is blocking whom at a gas station, a bus driver clearly not impressed with the giant painted arrows beneath the soles of his white shoes, beneath the tires of his unnecessary bus going the opposite way of the arrows… the arguing made more vehement because there existed the need to stand next to a fax machine to receive several faxed pages relating to a joint tax return from 2006, a return that the IRS might have problems with.

E. A and C.

F. B and D.

G. None of the above.

H. All of the above.

I’m still breathing so I will choose G.

...

(Checking answer key)

I’m right!

(Note: Not all of these things necessarily happened to me.)

Streets Ahead

2010-04-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

The "controversial" post stayed up there a bit too long I think. I realize I'm risking reopening a worm can that no one asked to open in the first place but a few points about my Fallen Women post:

45% of it was true
40% of it was mostly true (i.e., exaggeration, plausible theory)
10% of it was mostly untrue (i.e., implausible theory)
5% of it was false

Good...got that out of the way. Now, a few unrelated questions:

I know that The Beatles' Yesterday is a nice song but isn't it a bit maudlin to be the noon-time song that plays in the USC clock tower?

Where exactly is this clock tower? Why can I hear it so clearly?

Will I eventually like the new Hold Steady album? The opening track Sweet Part of the City is a masterpiece but the rest of it hasn't connected with me yet. I'll answer my own question: Yes, I will eventually like it but not without a lumbering sense of self-doubt that will slowly crumble (internal rhyme!) away, revealing the particular music-appreciating neurons necessary to like the new Hold Steady album. In other words, the problem is me.

Will the universe praise last week's episode of Community as much as I have been praising it? Jesus, that was amazing. PLEASE WATCH IT. It should be up on Hulu for a few more weeks.

Fallen Women and the Death of Hope: A History of My 20 Relationships and their Memorable Endings

2010-04-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

In honor of my 666th post, I'll get self-indulgent and give you a recap of the 20 breakups I've experienced in my lifetime. We'll hit all the states: PA to MN to CA to MN to CA to MN to CA. We'll find the highlights of the low points (i.e., my twenties).

Are these stories exaggerated to (a) make me appear more interesting / mysterious / fascinating? (b) make the relationship appear to be more than what it truly was? or (c) make the breakup seem more historic and tragic than it really was? No, yes, and sometimes.

Part 1: The 1980s
1. First girlfriend accuses me of only being attracted to her because she's a "fallen women" and says it just won't work. She disappears and may have become a lesbian. As far as her status as "fallen," she was only 21 - way too young to fall. I was 18. Anyway, her accusation was spot-on.
2. My next girlfriend - a real college girlfriend - leaves me for a sorority but not before starting my frustrating pattern of relationships with women who LOVE Annie Lennox way too much begins.
3. Okay, this one was so close to being a relationship that I'm going to allow the rosy spectacles of memory make it as if we dated and consummated and all that. This made-up relationship pretty much ended when she ended a phone conversation with "I have to go mail a letter." It was 11:00 am. On President's Day.
4. She sleeps with another man in my bed. Or at least I think she does.

Part 2: The 1990s
5. We only dated for a few weeks. It ended in the Barnes & Noble in Roseville, MN. She ordered me - commanded me - to believe in ghosts - right there, hovering around us in the bookstore! She couldn't accept that I could not see the ghosts. She ended it. Or I ended it. Don't remember.
6. My first California girlfriend leaves me because she needed to move across the country to hook up with some high school dude she met on the Internet. Oh and just to reiterate re: #4: It was a postal holiday.
7. The next one is a blur. I believe we broke up five times. At least one of those times was precipitated by her saying the worst thing anyone has ever said to me. No, I will not tell you what she said.
8. Back in Minnesota, I'm a T.A. with too much time on my hands. The girlfriend-who-wasn't-really-a-girlfriend needs to talk. She explains to me that she can't continue to date three guys at once and has to make a choice between me, the guy who looks like Eric Stoltz, and the guy who looks like Ed Begley, Jr. She chooses Stoltz. She later marries Begley. In between, she gets drunk at my wedding and says to all 162 guests - in a rambling but entirely-audible-over-the-intercom toast "It could have been me."
9. I got her Scooby Doo slippers for Christmas. I made her a mix tape. I thought that would be sufficient. It wasn't. On the plus side, she did wean me off my annoying habit of trying to "save" the women I dated.
10. I marry #10. We're together in one form or another for 8+ years. The breakup here is probably the least interesting one of them all ("growing apart," etc.) . It's also the most painful (2005 = the year of too much therapy) but I'll say this: It wasn't my idea; we're still friends, and there was too much Annie Lennox. Anyway, this relationship extends into the mid-2000s and takes us from Minnesota back to southern California.

Part 3: The 2000s to today
11. This is where it starts to get interesting (or ridiculous, or even sad, depending on your point-of-view). Also, almost everyone from this point on is a Facebook friend so I'd really better be careful. My first post-separation relationship ended because... because I was only separated and not divorced. Completely legitimate reason, although I brazenly said then that it didn't matter.
12 and 13. These relationships were occurring simultaneously, sort of. Or at least there was enough overlap that it would be unfair to put one chronologically ahead of the other. So, there are a few ways to interpret what happened but really it comes down to this: One of them liked the show Lost too much and the other one felt I fell in love too easily. Or maybe it was that one of them liked my friend more than me and the other one lived too far away. Or was it that one was an ROC (relationship of convenience) and the other a lesbian. Or was it because ?
14. Yeah I blew this one. She said I had "too much of an ego." Me? Just because I wanted her to hear my mid-90s-west-coast-hip-hop-influenced rap My Name Is Ali?
15. Would you believe only seven months passed between #10 and #15? Okay, this was interesting. And she refused my friend request so there's no need to hold back: I broke up with her because I didn't like her and she reminded me way too much of my sister. She also seemed weirded out by my request to download a couple hundred of her albums onto my iPod. She had the Zombies box set! She said no to that request too.
(Free advice for all of you: Do not break up with someone - even a half-Jewish someone - right before Christmas, especially if her birthday is the day after Christmas. She won't be happy.)
16. In a cruel irony, my longest post-marriage relationship ends when she moves to Minneapolis, the very place I didn't want to leave six years earlier (right after 4 other people close to me hightailed it away from California for the Midwest. Bastards. See how it feels in JANUARY.)
17. I'm not exactly sure what happened. I do know I kept falling asleep at inopportune times.
18. I should probably not say anything at this point.
19. My first breakup via email (she was the sender). Somehow I make it to the post-email texting era before I'm involved in an ermail breadkup. Again, too soon for a lot of details but this one piece of information should be enough: The subject line in her email was The Death of Hope.
20. We get in a fight. A huge screaming argument. I cry for only the fourth time since 1983. She takes a picture of me crying because she thinks it looks funny. (Postscript: I saw the picture. It did look funny.)

Some notes:
- One person shows up on this list twice and probably doesn't realize it.
-If you know me well enough to do the math, #1 to #10 took me 21 years. #11 to #20 took me 4 years. Progress? Or the opposite of it?
-15 of the 20 are Facebook friends. I need to stop being so nice.
-Two of them managed to get me to take care of their cats, well after the breakups. Which explains the presence in my home - to this day - of Ringo and Lily, those loveable balls of fur.

They dumped me 9 times.
I left them 4 times.
It was mutual on two occasions. I don't remember - twice.

I shouldn't be so flippant. There were good times. I mean this with all my heart: I had some amazing memories with every single one of you. Except #5.

For the rest of you - a lovely song by my most famous Facebook friend (if you get headaches easily, please don't watch. That's some shaky movement):

Seven Sunday Morning Wake-Up-Enjoy-Your-Sunday Songs

2010-04-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

7 for the 7th day

Lessons Learned From Rocky I To Rocky III - Cornershop

Now that's how to lyrically frame a rock anthem.

Hello 2morrow - Moodymann

"We don't roller skate. We roller boogie."

My Egyptian Grammar - Fiery Furnaces

Slow it down just a bit but stay hopeful, stay positive. It could happen to you!

We Gotta Get You A Woman - Todd Rundgren

Friends...

Good Intentions Paving Company - Joanna Newsom

I went outside and I found one! Perfect song. Gorgeous ending.

Lemon - U2

Just imagine how insufferable I would be if all of U2's songs were this good. Just imagine how insufferable Bono would be if all of my opinions of his band were this high. Anyway, now we're well on our way to enjoying our day. If only we had a waffle iron.

Paul Bee and His Nutria - The Channel

You'll have to take a chance and click on that weird all-caps link. It'll take you to my experimental side-site. What you'll hear is a strange pop masterpiece. From "Let me introduce myself. My name is Paul Bee" to "Na na na na na na na" with "Think about your corazon" to the 1986 southeastern United States production value.... you've got a song roughly 12 times better than the entire recorded output of that band you like that I don't.

WE USED TO GO DRIVING DOWN PAVED ROADS

Things I Should Have Known

2010-04-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

How did I not hear about this? Tarantino saved the New Beverly back in February. Granted, it's been over a year since I saw anything there and they need to lighten up on the grindhouse but that is some amazing (and underreported) news. Even a Google news search revealed just a few mentions of it. Almost as if it's entirely fictional. Next thing you know someone will tell me that Jon Bon Jovi is a genuinely decent philanthropist.

And why did no one tell me about the unreleased-in-the-U.S. post-Reed/Cale/Morrison/Tucker Velvet Underground album with the horrible cover called Squeeze?

And why did I just learn that Super Pretzels are far tastier when prepared in the oven than the microwave?

And when was I going to find out that Monica was pregnant? News shouldn't travel that slowly from Wisconsin.

Enough complaining. I am enlisting your help. I'm trying to find an album that was released in 1987 or 1988. This is all I can remember about it:

I owned it on cassette.
It was by a man named Bill or Bob or Robert.
It was a sort-of-bitter (for it's time) break up album.
It was.... oh I remember the name of the album. It was called After Words.
(BRB)
By Bob Pfeifer, who, I'm surprised to learn, later became a record executive and was involved in the notorious Pellicano wiretapping case. Why did I not know that?

I used to know everything. I was on game shows.

Now? My head hurts. My eyes strain. I work late. I sleep late. I get to work late. I work late.

Enough feeling sorry for myself.

Time for some sunshine and informational reading on a Sunday. I have some catching up to do.

"And Now They've Gone Too Far"

2010-04-07T04:57:00.000-07:00

I recently read something in a music review that blew my mind. I've seen some amazing things in my life - a solar eclipse, a cat wearing headphones, one of the most touching musical performances ever occurring in a Borders bookstore in Rapid City, South Dakota. I've been moved by emphatic words and resonating statements of purpose... been disturbed by manifestos and intrigued by philosophies. I've rejected religion and tea and embraced statistics and art. But I was not prepared for a particular sentence in a review I just read on the arts/culture/criticism site PopMatters.

Reviewer Justin Cober-Lake was writing about the Fiery Furnaces' 2005 album Rehearsing My Choir. (Yes, I'm allowed to read five-year-old music reviews; I had a lot going on back in '05. These days? Nothing but time.) Cober-Lake spend much of the piece lamenting that despite the fact that the Furnaces were getting "progressively better" over three previous albums, they continued to favor self-indulgent experimentation over short tight straightforwardly delivered pop songs.

Before I get to the sentence in question, let me respectfully disagree with the reviewer about that last sentiment. Asking the Friedberger siblings (Matthew and Eleanor aka The Fiery Furnaces) to cut back on experimentation is like asking a horticulturist not to work with plants. It's what they do.

Let's go back to the previous album Blueberry Boat. At first, I liked the song Paw Paw Tree because it sounded cool and had funny lyrics about mango mush (the best mush). Then I realized that the long slow nearly-two-minute lyricless slog at the beginning was the narrator-soldier's attempt at ensuring anonymity as (s)he comes to a clearing of silence (or a vista of allies).

And the she-singer playing the he-soldier is relaxed and just sitting up in that tree and the slogging beat with its quirky flourishes of melody and it's off-beat odd tones is the enemy. And no amount of tree camouflage will protect her. She/he will be mango mush.

So I'm trying to say there's a lot going on in that song and if it had been presented or performed in a straightforward pop-song way, it would not have worked nearly as well. Which brings us to Rehearsing My Choir.

In all fairness to the PopMatters reviewer, this is a difficult album to even approach. Despite having the finest vocalist of the 21st century in Eleanor Friedberger, the Fiery Furnaces decide to make their grandmother Olga Sarantos the album's primary voice. This decision is made perhaps because the subject matter of many of the songs is the mid-century Chicago of Greek immigrants (like Sarantos): the 1930s through the 1960s, small-time criminals and elevated trains.... knives used for making candy and for committing small-time crimes.... barely concealed back rooms and barely explained octets of priests.... and broken hearts. And if you were expecting the voice of a sweet old lady - perhaps a quiet, if coarse, wisdom lilting on the simple notes - your expectations would be dashed. You get a full voice, a masculine European ladymouth of syrup and finger-pointing storytelling. She's not pleasant. But she's present.

Which makes it rather amazing when Eleanor Friedberger's voice suddenly shows up, simultaneously sounding more sleek / professional AND less full-throated / full-ranged. Eleanor will sing a verse or two here, trade some lines, and then retreat back to the shadows as the grandmother sings the grandson's lyrics and you learn more about old Chicago than you ever would watching those old movies that you just knew simplified a complicated town.

But does the critic - the neglected-for-several-paragraphs Justin Cober-Lake - have a point, that these messy chorus-less songs, these narrative-less narrations aren't as good as the Fiery Furnace's songs? Well yeah but that's the price you to hear an experimenter. Sometimes, as is the case of Radiohead, the experiment adds nothing to the song (nor does it detract). Other times, as is the case of U2's Zooropa, the experiment justifies the band's existence. For the Fiery Furnaces, the experiment is the band. That's why Eleanor knows her lesser presence on Rehearsing My Choir's songs is nothing to get too upset about. She'll be the big star on the next album. This is Olga's time, that lovely grandma of ours.

What does Justin write? I'll be fair to him and put it in context:

"The previous album, Blueberry Boat stretched out the art-pop aesthetic with its songs in parts and large narratives, but the Furnaces have always been at their best when matching compelling hooks to intelligent lyrics. It’s about songwriting, not about Art. And now they’ve gone too far."

It's that last sentence that still slays me. And now they've gone too far. Really? Can an artist (capital A or not) really go too far? Of course. Pull up a chair; let me tell you about a young man named Billy Corgan. But the Fiery Furnaces went too far in the name of telling an as-yet-untold story, through the voices of three people from two generations. The story was made of songs busy with images and cluttered with ideas. They had to get out and make a city out of themselves. They needed the grandmother; the grandmother needed them. They had to go far. Maybe even too far. Too far is where the story lived.

Even the one story that stands out among the others on the album - track 2, The Wayward Granddaughter - needs a soaring stacked structure. The wayward one dated not one but two Kevins. The grandmother judged her for both of them, the black one and the white one. The "wh" sound in white is withering as it comes out of Olga's mouth. It's also the one song that needs a different era: the 1980s. And it's apparently a partially true tale about a different grandmother/granddaughter combo.

The way I see it is that there's not enough room in the band for the typical 10-12 songs every 16 months. They want more. And in order to write the tight ambitious pop masterpieces like Take Me Round Again off of their latest I'm Going Away... in order to create the cohesive-but-still-fucking-crazy song cycles like the entire album I'm Going Away, they needed to go even farther first with Rehearsing My Choir.

You can't stop progress, Mr. Cober-Lake. Progress needs to progress. Olga needs to sing. Eleanor needs to watch. Matt needs to preside. The other rotating members need to rotate their nights away,

A little more than two years after the album's release, the Fiery Furnaces would release two more albums and Olga Sarantos would die. Eleanor would sing better than before. Matthew - god bless him - would still be unable to sing his wonderful songs in an effective manner. The band would keep getting better and better.

Scenes From a Holiday Weekend, Postscript

2010-04-05T16:45:00.001-07:00

Act 3, Scene 4, The Final Scene: Long Beach. I open my door. I put my things on the table that is there for the purpose of holding my things. I turn on the light to the living room. Ringo (cat) keeps the floor bed warm for me, even though I am determined to sleep on the bed bed. But Ringo has an offering laid out on the blanket. It looks like maybe one of his plush toys infused with catnip. Nope, look closer. Is it Ringro excrement, which he likes to distribute - randomly - from time to time? No, that's not it. It's the giant flying cockroachfrom a few weeks ago. Ringo has destroyed it, sending it to its final resting place: my comforter cover, its red-yellow wings still and useless. I put an empty plastic bowl over the giant flying dead cockroach. I lift the blanket from below, ensuring that if the cockroach is suddenly revived, he/she will have nowhere to fly. I carry the entire balled-up blanket with its bowled-over dead vermin to the balcony. I hurl the whole sad mess over the balcony, holding on to the blanket tightly. The bowl and the roach fall to the wet grass, sickly and never coming back. Ringo doesn't speak to me all night long.

Scenes From a Holiday Weekend

2010-04-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

Act 1, Scene 1: Los Angeles. I leave work at 6:30pm Friday... much later than I should be leaving. My cell phone, presumed to be "charging" all day long, was near the end of its ropes, its "power" relegated to a few blips and bleeps. There was no getting around it: I would have to go to The Valley.

Act 1, Scene 2: The Valley. The voices are familiar. The streets are familiar. What the voices are saying is unfamiliar. I park around the corner. I check for parking meter change. I find it but it may not be necessary. It's not as if I'm parking on Ventura Blvd... just around the corner from it. Moments later, the lanky girl with the bruised heart hands me the nine dollars I am owed.

Act 1, Scene 3: Long Beach. I keep circling the neighborhood. It's as if they took my street away. Where did it go? Truth is, I'm in the wrong place. I find my way. Never trust the numbered streets of Long Beach. You see 3rd Street and then 4th Street and you're probably expecting 5th any moment now. There is no 5th Street. You see a street sign for the street you live on, a street named after a famous island nation. You see where this street begins and where it ends. You don't see anything familiar; you're confused. You consider asking a homeless person for directions to your own home. You choose not to, out of respect. The next thing you know, it's the next morning and your cats are hungry for new food.

Act 2, Scene 1: San Dimas. I switch back to first person. I am in a town famous for exactly one reason. It is where the film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was set and (partially) filmed. It is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The city's meager streets are decorated with the following ubiquitous sign:

Do you see the bottom of that sign - those final three words? I thought it was a dream but it was not. They really are holding on to that. And I totally respect them for it.

Act 2, Scene 2: Long Beach. I am speaking to my ex-wife on the phone while my ex-girlfriend's cat plays with another ex-girlfriend's packing peanuts. Meanwhile, I am texting two other people (ex, possible future ex) and considering plans to Facebook-message one of the two text recipients about the other text recipient. Where does it all end? I fall asleep on my living room floor before 10:00 on a Saturday night while watching a 30 Rock episode I have seen twice before.

Act 3, Scene 1: Long Beach. Same floor, same cat, same TV. The next morning. Now I'm watching a paid-pay-per-view movie, Funny People. I cry sincerely during the film. It is toward the end when..... when that one thing happened, when they came up with the perfect ending.

Act 3, Scene 2: Los Angeles. The sign on the 7-11 soda machine says "No refills." I am determined to get my money's worth. I wait until the man at the counter is distracted by a customer. I stealthily add Orange Whip to my Orange Gatorade. I am a superhero.

Act 3, Scene 3. On a Freeway. (Edited seven times because I keep changing my mind about the ending). I'm on a freeway heading south, going home. The 605 perhaps. Or maybe the 710. Or maybe the mythical in-between 657.5? (Why? It's the mathematical average of 605 and 710.) I'm listening to the one CD I listen to all the time in my car and I repeat to myself one more time: Get a new car stereo with the auxiliary jack! And before I can say "My name's not Jack" I hear this song not over the speakers but in my head:

And I imagine myself in that tree. Hoping, praying that I am in control of the mango mush.

But if you're really not down with the long loopy songs about jungle trees and fruit exotica, then I recommend you listen to the future anthem of the current soundtrack of our times:

And if that doesn't work, some comedy is in order:

a few short notes

2010-04-01T17:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, I censored myself. I removed a post for the sole purpose of not wanting someone to see it. I will quietly repost it in the future. No, this isn't about some budding relationship or a jealous rage. It's about making fun of famous, better writers and realizing that it doesn't take others that long to find me.

Yes, there's some text about New Jersey appearing in the upper right corner of the blog, all loose and I have no idea where it came from. My blog is haunted.

And I just realized. JUST NOW. That it is only Thursday. Since 4:00, it has felt like Friday. I didn't miss the deadline. I have time!

Gigantic ambitious post coming soon. In the meantime, something for a Thursday night:

September Gurls and October Revolution: My Contribution to the NCAA Zeitgeist

2010-03-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

You weren't imagining things. There really was a new post here on Friday, one that disappeared completely by the next day. When I wrote the post, I discussed a few of the college basketball games that day and I was in the middle of a completely understandable search for an appropriate photo of Murray from Flight of the Conchords and the next thing I know, it's 90 minutes later and my unexpected nap is over. Still, in my groggy fog, I felt it necessary to publish the post without finishing it and without checking for errors or lack of humor. On Saturday I chose to remove the entry. Don't worry - the good jokes will get recycled eventually.

Which brings us to: There's no better way to revive a sleepy fading web presence than to predict some basketball games between teams I know little about. (If this entry goes on for too long, just skip to the Chilton song and the final game at the bottom and you'll be happy)

NCAA Basketball Tournament predictions, Round 3:

Thursday:

West Virginia vs. Washington
As I wrote in the disappeared post, I was recently trying to figure out how many states I've visited. I came up with 39. I included two states - Tennessee and Texas - even though my entire experience in each was limited to time in airports waiting for connecting flights. My justification: if you're on a giant flying machine and that machine makes a thunderous entrance onto state pavement, you deserve to claim that state.

So what does this have to with West Virginia vs. Washington? I've never been to the state of West Virginia. I've been to the state of Washington four times and those four trips are some of the most memorable ones of my life. This is enough for me to pick Washington to win this game and continue to be the lone Pac-10 rep in the tourney.

Kentucky vs. Cornell
I'd really like to pick Cornell to win this game. My nephew goes to school there. They could really use the happiness. They're not Kentucky. People say Duke is the most annoying basketball team with the most insufferable fans. I disagree. It's Kentucky. I have no reason for this belief. In fact, I'm bored expressing this belief. Back to the game. Kentucky is the best team in the nation. Cornell is the lowest seeded team left in the tournament. I have to listen to the voice of reason deep within me. But this is a blog. I have no accountability. I'm taking a chance. Cornell wins.

Syracuse vs. Butler
This one might seem like yet another upset. But I'm going with Butler. When I was running late for work a few weeks ago, I accidentally caught a radio interview with the Butler coach. He seemed like a nice guy, Yes, that's all I've got.

Xavier vs. Kansas State
Wow. I think you may be reading the dullest, most pointless thing I've ever written. It will either continue to devolve or it will become an exercise in meta-blogging, in which little pearls of quotable wisdom dot the landscape of your browser. Kansas State will win because... because... I don't know.

Friday:

Michigan State vs. Northern Illinois
Michigan - what the hell are you? You've housed the car industry. You've launched many boring music careers. You've given us cereal. You sent us Rabe. You allowed Sufjan Stevens to reach his peak. Definitely a mixed bag. Rabe is a godsend and cereal is a blessing. Sufjan needs to get back to work. The auto industry has seen better days. But if you put it all together, Michigan and its secondary state university far surpasses Northern Illinois because really if you're north of, say, Des Plaines, you might as well be in Iowa. Or Wisconsin. Michigan State wins.

Tennessee vs. Ohio State
There's a lot I could write here about one of my musical heroes spending time in Columbus. Or I could write about my employer's head football coach quitting his position at Tennessee and setting off a level of anger there surpassed only by the level of bemusement here. Or I could write about hot middle-aged women. But I'm getting tired. Ohio State is a better team. I pick them to win even if Big Ten basketball is not fun to watch.

Postscript (the next day): I have changed my mind. I must pick Tennessee for not other reason than it contains Memphis, the hometown of Alex Chilton (1950-2010). You'll be missed, you big big star:

Duke vs. Purdue
What the hell is this? Another goddamn Big Ten team and no sign of my Gophers? Go away Purdue. You annoy me. Yes, you annoy me even more than Duke. Duke wins.

Baylor vs. St. Mary's

I'm assuming this is a typo in my bracket. Maybe I'm looking at the women's tournament. Apparently these are colleges in America. In Waco, TX and Moraga, CA. Further research into St. Mary's reveals that it is the alma mater of Tom Meschery, a mustachioed basketball player of the 60s and early 70s, a man whose image on basketball cards is still familiar to me now, more than 30 but fewer than 40 years after I saw it as a little boy card collector, a man whose Wikipedia page reveals a truly awesome life:

born in China in 1938 to Russian parents, both of whom escaped the October Revolution in Russia in 1917
is held in a Japanese-run internment camp (of confined Chinese and maybe Russians) near Tokyo during WWII
emigrates to America, ends up in San Francisco
becomes a star at St. Mary's, graduates in 1961
plays in the NBA for the Philadelphia Warriors alongside Wilt Chamberlain
plays in his hometown after the Warriors move to San Francisco
plays in Seattle, grows mustache
retires from basketball and makes the typical post-NBA move to....
...
gets his MFA from the Univ. of Iowa Writers Workshop
studies poetry under a poet Laureate at the Univ. of Washington
teaches high school English in Reno
writes poetry, publishes book of poetry
gets inducted to the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame AND the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame
marries with an art professor
lives with the art professor in Sacramento

To review:

Russians in China / Chinese in Japan / Camp / San Francisco
Basketball / Wilt Chamberlain / Seattle / Reno / Poet / Art professor

Sure, living in Sacramento might sully the legacy but come on! Is Tom Meschery - born Tomislav Nicolayevich Meshcheryakov - the badassest badass of them all? His school - St. Mary's of Moraga, CA wins.

Where is the amazing annual NCAA tournament prediction post?

2010-03-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

As the longtime reader(s) of this blog surely know, there is nothing people look forward to reading here more than my prediction for the NCAA college basketball tournament (men's division). I mean - just look at the titles for these posts in past years:

2005: Fairly Dickensian (Part 1)*; Gypsies, Tramps, and Cheese (Part 2)**
2006: As you know, 2006 never happened.
2007: The effects of 2006 linger, as I divide the entries into four uncreatively named parts, each with names like "Basketball, Part 1" and "Hoops, Part 2" and 3 and 4... or something like that.
2008: Titters and Tiny Teacups (Part 1); Baltimore, a Belt, a Train, a Taxi, a Disappointment (Part 2)
2009: One Night in Cleveland, One Decade in Dinkytown, and One Lifetime in the "Family" (a massive single-part entry)

It is now 2010. The tournament has begun. Because of life's get-in-the-way-ness and its grant proposals and giant cockroach and loose engine belts, I have not had a chance to come up with 32 narratives about 32 games, most of the narratives Ali-centric. Instead, I will wait until ~~Thursday's and Friday's~~ the opening weekend's games are over and then write about the 16 8 ~~second~~ third round games that begin Saturday. Think of it as a Great Compromise. You should see something basketball-related in this space ~~tomorrow~~ by Wednesday.

Oh.... and this game happens tomorrow but: ~~GO GOPHERS!~~

*The first truly great entry in this blog.

**Edited to account for recent Facebook friend additions.

The Most Ironic Demonstration of Irony, Ever

2010-03-10T12:52:00.000-08:00

I've asked this question before. I'm sure I will ask it again. Now that the executive and legislative branches are comfortably in the hand of Democratic party, can we please give Arianna Huffington back to the Republicans? This is not a joke. If it were a joke, then I would be the kind of person who repeatedly goes for the same punch line over and over again and of course I am not that kind of person.

Today, on KPCC's Airtalk show with Larry Mantle, Ms. Huffington was a guest during a segment in which she implored Americans to move their money to smaller banks and credit unions. Now I agree with her sentiment. I agree with part of her reasoning. But when another guest brought up the very cogent point that smaller banks are also failing and do not tend to give out loans to small businesses (an issue more important to the people on the radio than to me), Arianna Huffington turned into the familiar super-condescending version of herself that has made me cringe with horror.

Now, I have actively disliked Huffington since her stint as a very public and extremely shrill angry conservative back in the 1990s so maybe I am unfair in my description of her behavior. But when show host Larry Mantle - normally a calm, patient, exceedingly prepared, and skillful interviewer - is surprised and put off by a guest's ridiculous behavior, you know something is up. After Huffington condescended toward Larry Mantle (something you simply do not do) by suggesting that her new pet fake move-the-money movement (which I, again, agree with) would benefit if Mantle himself moved his own money to a smaller bank, Mantle mercifully but cheerfully shut the interview down. You could almost hear him thinking "maybe over in Santa Monica you can get away with that crap but not in Pasadena, not on my watch."

After a news break, it was off to the next segment, titled - and I am being completely serious here - Condescending liberals and angry conservatives. Really, KPCC? You're going to have on your airwaves the one person on earth who has been the epitome of both of these things at various times in her life. And you're going to use her in a completely different segment of the same show? In the immediately preceding segment? This was either intentional or the most ironic demonstration of irony, ever. Or both. I can just see Mantle rubbing his hands together and giggling in his windowless studio lair while thinking "that was my greatest work of art, ever. Most will not have gotten the joke but the few who get it will work hard to make sure that the word gets out, via their web logging and pamphleteering. Ha ha ha ha ha ha."

Finally, let me get one thing out of the way. At least two of my male friends find Arriana Huffington hot. This is their word - "hot." Now I consider their line of thinking absurd and perhaps sociopathic. In my list of the five most unattractive things in the universe, Huffington's website* and Huffington's accent, make the list at #4 and #1, respectively. (For the record, #5 is the smell of cold eggs in a salad, #3 is the sight of more than one Peter Gabriel album on anyone's shelf (we all get one Gabriel free pass but more than one is inexcusable), and #2 is the way intestines really look inside a living person.)

Now, my dislike of her sickening accent (not to mention her reptilian physical appearance) might mean that I objectify Huffington in a way that is unfair to her and this objectification may be informed by the fact that she is a woman and, especially, by the fact that she is a very visible woman with a very public forum. Yes, I will admit that if she looked like Catherine Keener and spoke like Frances Anderton, I might have less of a problem with her. I don't think her status as a successful female media figure informs my dislike all that much, though. She was my enemy as far back as '93 when I first heard her voice curdling through my radio speakers. But hey at least I don't objectify her in the other direction. Hot?? Really J and M? You honestly believe that?

*I understand that the Huffington Post's web designer may actually be to blame but she puts her name on it and she likely profits from it and plays a role in how it looks. That is one ugly website. It's almost as if she were a secret operative sent by the right to infiltrate the left. Wait a second.... Oh I get it now!

The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh of March

2010-03-08T11:27:00.000-08:00

That was a strange weekend. Each of its three days (and I'm counting Friday because I work at a university) contained large slab-like portions that were stunningly sunny, morosely cloudy, and Memorial-Day-1987-like-rainy. If I were a higher-level combination meteorologist/climatologist (you know, the kind that receives generous research grants co-sponsored by non-profit foundations, governmental agencies, and for-profit corporations), and I could have planned the local weather for my annual Los Angeles-based strategic planning retreat, then 3/5-7/10 would have been perfect.

Other things I learned this weekend:

-Strange car noises don't magically go away. In fact, they can mutate into something scarier when left untreated.

-I didn't disagree with any of the Oscar winners. In fact, anytime a James Cameron film goes, for the most part, un-awarded, is cause for great celebration. And I say this despite the fact that he seems like a completely genuine, thoroughly humble, and all-around nice guy (based on his recent interview on Fresh Air). I also say this despite never having seen a James Cameron film. Yes, I'm aware of his involvement with Terminator and Titanic. Besides, I may have wanted Quentin/Basterds to win and I may not have seen The Hurt Locker but Kathryn Bigelow deserves the Oscar for her direction of the awesome Strange Days back in 1995.

-Though it works just fine as a play, someone still needs to make a film version of Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July. And no the 1982 made-for-TV movie doesn't count. And yes of course Parker Posey should be involved somehow. And yes my sentence construction in this blog post has been rather unwieldy.

-It's difficult not to laugh when the waitress says "Sorry. We can't serve alcohol until we pay our taxes."

-I need a louder alarm.

-In researching the accuracy of my never-seen-a-James Cameron-film statement above, I came across an interesting fact. Cameron wrote Strange Days. And I, as a screenwriter, consider screenwriting to be as important as, if not more important than, "directing." So I need to revise my statement to read: ..."never having seen a James Cameron-directed film."

-Oh wait. I might have seen most of Aliens in a Baltimore hotel room in 1995. Or was that Alien? Does it make a difference? I'm told that it does make a difference. Okay: change it to: "never having seen a James Cameron-directed film on the big screen."

- I also said that Cameron seemed "humble" and "all-around nice." According to my Wiki-research, he's also been described as "dictatorial" and liable "to use a nail gun to nail the film crew's cell phones to a wall above an exit door in retaliation to unwanted ringing during film production." Huh? Asshole. Just delete the entire Cameron-related entry. It's easier that way.

No Regrets, Coyote: 2,717 Words on Joni Mitchell's Hejira

2010-03-01T16:54:00.000-08:00

For yours truly, 2010 has been a year of candor. In this very blog, I've admitted to you my one flirtation with chicken gluttony. I owned up to wearing two right shoes and having a third right shoe close by as well. But today I'm dropping a big one. Get ready for this. This is something you didn't know about me. This is something you've never suspected. You'll never look at me in the same way again. Let's put this thing in bold all-caps blood-red: I AM A JONI MITCHELL FAN.

It's not that it's shocking that I'd like Joni Mitchell. She is, after all, a talented well-respected singer-songwriter with a history of writing and performing good songs. It's just that none of you have ever heard me mention her. It's not like I went on some anti-JM crusade, similar to what will befall another beloved Canadian in the next paragraph. No, I just never talked about her. Until now, Joni Mitchell, to me, seemed too daunting - her career too vast and varied, her Canadian-ness too authentic.

Robbie Robertson of The Band once said in a VH1 interview that Joni Mitchell is unchallenged as a songwriter. He then repeated the key word for effect. It went something like this: "Joni Mitchell is unchallenged as a songwriter. UN. CHALLENGED." *(yes - this asterisk refers to a footnote below. I'm bringing the footnotes back!)

Setting aside the debate about whether Robbie Robertson is a pompous blowhard OR a bombastic windbag, let's appreciate his enthusiasm and his good eye toward recognizing greatness.** (yep - another gratuitous footnote, one that allows me to continue my bizarre unrelated crusade against a beloved institution)

Instead of taking on Mitchell's long and impressive career (the daunting one I still kind of fear), I want to focus here on Hejira, her 1976 collection of sweeping epics set against a backdrop of a car trip she took by herself across America. Joni herself says Hejira is about "the sweet loneliness of solitary travel."

The loneliness may be sweet but she's not alone in her songs. She's singing to the important people in her life - the childhood friends from Western Canada who continue to live and love in the prairie. She's singing to the Laurel Canyon hippies who tried to break her heart but never got close. She's singing to her own future self, asking whether she'll die happy and alone in Malibu or Western Canada, blissfully unaware that her career sales will be high enough that she can have a home in both places! (And that's a stone cold miracle since she spent 17 years or so dabbling in something called jazz.)

(Before I continue, many many thanks to Eva for playing this album for me. Yes, it has had its effect on me.)

The Hejira trip must have been a doozy. If her lyrics are to be taken literally (and why wouldn't they?), Joni accomplished the following:

Song 1. COYOTE

1. Had a badass conversation with a coyote:

"No regrets, coyote, we just come from such different sets of circumstance."

YOU try saying that to a coyote.

Note: I get that the coyote is a man, that men are feral instinctual creatures, especially those Saskatchewanian lumber jacks, with their unruly uneven unrepentant sideburns and those Hollywood Hills hippie hangers-on, with their lack of watches and their scent of musk. In much of the song, the coyote is metaphor for "absent man / dead man." Now that I'm not coming back, who is there left to wait for?

Also, you wouldn't expect a real coyote (as in the animal) to be watching the waitress's legs while picking up Joni's scent on his fingers (another scene from the same song). Or maybe that's exactly what you'd expect of a coyote. Anyway, what I think happened is this: on a pine-scented hike through a rough hewn mountain glen in the American middle, Joni turns a corner by a bluff and comes to face to face with a real coyote. Real coyote's reaction reminds Joni of how a man would act - eyes fixed, ready to punce, wary of his rivals... when he should be wary of the blonde and her notebook and her proclivity toward flames.

Song 2. AMELIA

Stayed in a motel with an awesome name:

"I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel to shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust."

Holy crap - did she just effortlessly invoke and intertwine imagery of sleep AND movement into one line (the one that ends with wanderlust)? To my knowledge, there has not been a better description of the constant push-pull mental conflict that's the essential component of physical life.

Song 3. FURRY SINGS THE BLUES

Dressed down an old Memphis bluesman and simultaneously called middle class America for blindly adoring the blues while baldly living outside of it

"Cheap guitars, eye shades, and guns aimed at the hot blood of being no one."

Song 4. A STRANGE BOY

Had sex with a skater boy, plying him with alcohol and jewelry:

"We were newly lovers then.
We were fire in the stiff-blue-haired-house-rules."

Song 5. HEJIRA

Admitted to herself and to us that she wasn't above falling in love or being loved but things just weren't working out, explaining her table for one=

"I'm traveling in some vehicle.
I'm sitting in some cafe.
A defector from the petty wars.
That shell-shock love away."

34 years later, she's still single. Those must have been some wars. That shell shock must be deep and forever echoing.

Song 6. SONG FOR SHARON

Went shopping for a mandolin and knew right away that the girls in New York, like the girls in Maidstone (Saskatchewan, Canada), like child Joni herself, had dreams of a wedding day

"I went to Staten Island to buy myself a mandolin.
And I saw the long white dress of love on a storefront mannequin......
Some girl's going to see that dress and crave that day like crazy."

"Long white dress of love" just kills me - in five words, Joni Mitchell captures the trivial commodity of the wedding day (because surely no white dress - no matter how long - can capture love) AND the sometimes-honoured hope for a love-filled life contained by the dress.***

Song 7. BLACK CROW

Saw herself in the mirror. Wasn't happy with what she saw. Turned her gaze from mirror to window. And outside that window, she saw a black crow doing what she needed to do:.

"I looked at my haggard face in the bathroom light.
I looked out the window and I saw that ragged soul take flight."

Earlier, she schooled the coyote. Now, she learns from the crow. Fly, Mitchell, Fly! Yes, it's on to the next town, the next album, the next tour for Joni. Also, haggard AND ragged - impressive... not as easy as it looks.

Song 8. BLUE MOTEL ROOM

Remembered - while in rainy Savannah - that she eventually will be going back home to Los Angeles:

"Will you still love me when I call you up when I get back to town?
I know that you've got all those pretty girls coming on
Hanging on to your boom-boom-pachyderm."

I don't know what she's talking about here but whatever it is, it's pretty filthy and "boom-boom-pachyderm" is the clearly the best descriptor for it. And Boom-Boom-Pachyderm is totally going to be my next band name (with both hyphens, the way Joni wants it),

Song 9. REFUGE OF THE ROADS

Summed her journey up with a light-and-lovely turned dark-and-desolate centerpiece of a song (the centerpiece appearing at the very end of the album ofcourse):

"I fell in with some drifters cast upon a beach town ......
There was spring along the ditches.
There were good times in the cities
...
...
A thunderhead of judgment was gathering in my gaze.
And it made most people nervous.
They just didn't want to know."

So she may have had some good times, made some revelations, and written some songs that'll soon sound perfect in the studio with Jaco and Larry and the guys. But it hasn't been easy. This was not a hedonistic romp across America. This was self-discovery, with some corrupting sex along the way.

And in the album's final final words, Joni Mitchell becomes the first person to ever use the carrying-baggage-as-carrying-emotion metaphor and though that particular device is currently on Language Death Row, scheduled to be executed by seven dead poets and a sexy librarian, it must have sounded revelatory and fresh when she, in 1976, worked said metaphor in at the end, right after singing of the earth as it looked from the moon this way:

"And you couldn't see a city on that marbled bowling ball.
Or a forest or a highway or me here least of all.
You couldn't see these cold water restrooms.
Or this baggage overload, westbound and rolling
Taking refuge in the roads."

Let's see: she's taken on a coyote, a ragged crow, an old cranky bluesman, the institution of marriage, drifters, her own regrets, her real longings, her distant past, her near future (b.b. pachyderm).... she's watched a boy on a skateboard and remembered a girl (herself) on roller skates.... she's addressed the moon and New York City.... she's gone walking in Memphis and has her sights on doing the same in L.A. though it's been said no one does this.

She's written 9 songs, each of them with at least one - and, in most cases, several - awe-generating moments... 9 songs - 6 of them brilliant, 2 of them good, and Furry Sings the Blues. I've focused on the stories and the lyrics but don't forget the undulating melodies, curved basslines, and plucky starbursts of guitars. Ms. Mitchell and her band of crackerjack ace session men set a standard here that none of her jaded, faded peers could touch. I've never heard a set of songs that sounded anything like Hejira. Okay I tried to avoid it but in the end I could no longer hold in my desire to use sinewy and sinuous in the same sentence as I described Hejira. Get ready. Joni Mitchell's sinuous melodies wind their way around her personal planets of primal urging men whose muscled thrust gets postponed by the singer's sinewy forces of resistance. Thank you.

And in 1976, while I was getting acclimated to the seventh and last family move of my childhood/adolescence I was not yet ready for Ms. Mitchell. Sure I was a precocious kid who understood what Steely Dan really were singing about and knew that Bruce Springsteen was way more wild than innocent. But I was not yet ready for Hejira, for Joni, for one of the greatest batches of insightful, tough, tender, and honest songs ever recorded.

In fact, given that I had never listened to more than one or two Joni Mitchell songs at a time prior to the autumn of 2009 and never wrote about her until this afternoon, you could say I spent a long time not being ready. Maybe I was afraid. She confronted a coyote!

Someone should write a screenplay about that cross-country trip from the middle-70s. Eleanor Friedberger could dye her hair (again) and play Joni Mitchell. I'll play a composite of the love interests. Call the composite Leonard Pachyderm Crosby Taylor Nash Young Skater.

Hejira - named for Muhammed's journey (which is ballsy in itself) - would work well as a film. Her original Atlantic to Pacific route - from Maine to Los Angeles via Madison easily works as a framing device, the American west opening its vistas and warming our heroine as she leaves behind the beautiful lakes and strange one-night-lovers of the east and middle. Still, there's conflict as the California looms ever closer and 3/4 of CSNY fights for her love and she just smirks at their foolhardiness. She's way past the rock musicians... she likes the jazz cats.

Okay I'm losing my thesis here. Back to Hejira - such an ambitious and timeless album, rich with moody songs about traveling on the road - not as a touring musician but as a musical tourist, searching for poetic adventure and studiously avoiding romantic love (and being steeped in both).

In particular, her troika of one-word six-letter songs - Coyote, Amelia, and Hejira - add up to as 17+ perfect minutes of music, with lyrics and a voice that show a brave honest woman revealing sad/funny/momentous tenderness. The baring of her soul is set to some truly weird melodies unlike those of anyone I've ever heard. It's a rare document of a particular time and place (the American road and its motels and busted cities... the mid-70s) and a particularly ambitious personal mission (to look love right in its coyote eyes, to receive the consequences, and to emerge on the other side scarred, stronger, truer). These are great heights to reach and Hejira reached them. And I can't think of anything else from that era that comes close. Could it be that Joni was unchallenged? UN CHALLENGED?

Indented Aside to Jason:
Hey Jason - I don't know if you know this but the lake that Joni is standing in front of on the album cover,**** that's Lake Mendota in Madison! Which of course is the last place I saw you and the rest of the Butlers. And the second song is called Amelia. Wait a second... are you and M closet Mitchell fans? I knew you guyes were hippies!

Indented Aside to everyone other than Jason:
Jason is being rewarded with a personal aside because Jason regularly leaves COMMENTS at this very blog.

Oh so you want to listen to the album? For free? No, you'll just get a taste here. Go to lala for one free listen to each song

Song 6: Song for Sharon (2 more songs can be found way down below):

*Technically, Robbie is wrong. Joni has been challenged; it's just that her challenders can't come close to what she's putting out there. This includes YOU, Robertson. I bought your solo album in '87 and over-listened to it, hoping it would inspire me. It inspired me alright...it inspired me to perform excited impressions of Sammy Llanas, the BoDean you employed as background singer on the Crazy River song. God, I love making fun of that song. "Somewhere down tha crazy riv-ah." Damn, Sammy could (can) sing. Wait, where was I? Do I have a fishing rod around here? Found one. (I'm reeeeling it in...)

**I'm also setting aside the fact that The Band is an absurdly overrated "band" oddly worshiped by critics mostly because of the house one of them lived in, once.

***Honoured is spelled the Canadian way. Both for Joni and for Canada winning the gold medal hockey game yesterday. You guys earned it. Just don't get too cocky. You've had a good run - Cohen, Mitchell, Young, Gretzky, S. Crosby, Crash Test Dummies, M.J. Fox. But that doesn't mean I'll ever listen to more than 10 seconds of As It Happens. And, in my description, the dress contains the hope, not the life.

****You know - the album cover with its photo of Joni and the vagina highway and the cloud-boobs:

And for making it this far, here are great live versions of Coyote (from The Last Waltz, with The Band featuring Robbie Rob... okay they're a pretty badass band) and Amelia. The Coyote video is from 1978. The Amelia is from late 1998 in Los Angeles. Joni is older here but still has a presence - a jarringly different yet lovely presence.)

The latter video - Amelia - is ostensibly about Amelia Earhart but really the disappeared pilot acts as J.M.'s invisible travel companion for now... before Joni gets used to - and relishes - the idea of traveling alone. Note: Mitchell is stunning in the photos of her between shown between the 4:55 and 5:00 mark of Amelia.

And If you've ever wondered if you can tell the difference between a youtube video of a film made by a genius of the visual arts and a youtube video made by a "regular person," here's the perfect opportunity for a systematic comparison: Coyote (directed by Martin
Scorsese) vs.

On Paved Roads and Poetry

2010-02-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's been too long. No post since 2/17 which was really a 2/13 post (mysteriously disappeared so I reposted) meant for 2/14 but actually written on 1/22. So we have to go back 14 days to 2/11 and the epic Seymour post that caused eyes to well up and fists to rise (stop talking about the stupid song, Ali... talk about the cat!) if we want something relevant and new.

Where have I been? Is it possible I have been cheating on you... blogging somewhere else... with that somewhere being a different blogging platform?...

(Don't say it! No!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Have I been blogging on ...Tumblr?

Did I really start an entirely new blog with that graphics-happy small-post-friendly microblogger?

Yes. But.

It does not replace Blueprint Blue.

It does not replace Blueprint Blue.

This site here will be where you go fro my words, my daily living, my soliloquies on music and basketball.

The other site ~~will~~ may eventually replace BpB's sister site - the poetry-centered Take the Body With You.

Was there really a time I thought that poetry - and poetry alone - could sustain itself?

(And I can hear your impatient rumbles. Just tell us where to go damn it! Where is the other blog? No, not just yet.)

Poetry is wonderful. I got my start as a poet. I remember the early days well... hitting the dimly lit readings in the darkest cafe corners of sad St. Paul or maybe Minneapolis. Reading my heart out - reciting all my classics - Worms, Albatross, CompuNation, Bakersfield, Marbles - only to be met with heavy heavy silence.

Meanwhile, Johnny PoetDude would get up there with his black-and-white composition notebook and his floppy hat and his goddamn tambourine that he held like a harp and he'd read Twine of Souls or The Low Moan of the False Witness or Mother is Sister and Father is a Salesman in a breathy tone presuming significance and the audience would swoon.

When Johnny PoetDude read, girls would throw napkins with numbers on them; boys would learn from JPD and write notes on their palms because the napkins were all taken.

Full disclosure: I have never read my poetry publicly, unless you count the small wine-cooler and pizza parties attended by my movie theater co-workers and me in the mid-1980s, usually while the guy-in-charge-of-the-record-player was over-deciding what to play next. (The songs Steppin' Out by Joe Jackson and Goddamn Motherfucking Love Vigilantes by Motherfucking Rat Bastards New Order would invariably be playing at these parties.) Nevertheless, reading among friends is very different from reading to strangers. So yeah, that preceding paragraph was fiction. Except my poem's titles were real. And Johnny PoetDude - he's a real person. Rather, he is real persons. He is a composite.

Full disclosure #2: I have attended only two poetry readings in my life and one of them was technically an open mike in a Borders in Rapid City, South Dakota in which songs were allowed and the poets were ignored. So yeah just that one reading in St. Paul with Laurel, John, and Greta.

Today, however, poetry is a tougher sell. The short bursts of creativity and raw emotion formerly housed in my poems are more frequently exposed right here at this URL. Rather than shyly express my sadness at the death of a pet or the bleakness of a lost chicken weekend in verse, I now just tell the story - reporter-style, with short bursts of clever prose mixed in with the facts.

These days, when I write poetry, I set up parameters. I challenge myself. I come up with a title - say, Unincorporated East Los Angeles #1 - and go from there. Or I force myself to write a poem as a boredom-curing exercise. In these situations, maybe I forgot I was ever a poet until I'm faced with 10 minutes of nothing to do in a waiting room or drive-thru lane. So I get out the Rhodia notepad (orange cover) or iPhone (black rubber case) and I write (Uniball Jetstream - black 1.0 or the fingers of my own two hands touching screen). I write about the embellished past or the unlikely future. I imagine what would have happened if....

If...

Nah, not today.

But then Tumblr comes along with their cool interface and rather amazing templates. I consider moving this whole damn blog over there. But then I realize that long text entries and Tumblr aren't exactly best friends (e.g., they have not yet figured out the HARD RETURN). And then I hear you say "yes Ali - maybe if you move over there your posts will be less... less... gratuitously lengthy?" Hey - whose side are you on anyway?

And then I remember that visual stuff has appeal too. I can experiment a little. I can pretend to be a photographer, a cataloger of fascinating images, a poet with visual supplements. So the decision is made: I will create something altogether new. It will be where my poetry and most of my visual imagery can be found. It will be on that nifty newish bloggish place called Tumblr. Blueprint Blue will stay here - perhaps forever, perhaps until September. Who knows?

The new site will link to and be linked from this very site but I will not provide constant updates telling you to go over there or here. You will do the work. Visual imagery in the form of photos I find in my internet slumming will still show up here from time to time. Maybe even photos. It will be a liquid process. I'll probably put more song files over there. Mostly words over here. The process is not a fluid one. I hate that word. Fluid. Disgusting word.

But...

What shall the new blog be called?

We Used to Go Driving Down Paved Roads.

Why? The story behind this title is long; you don't want to hear it. (Which really means: I can't remember.) I'll say this: We did indeed go driving down paved roads. And we can say that with confidence. Lest you think I'm setting us up for failure, let me ask you this: Me and you, did we ever go driving down paved roads? Perhaps you are hesitant to say a definitive 'yes' though I know the answer. We did - you and us and them and me. We drove.

We Used to Go Driving Down Paved Roads. http://wutgddpr.tumblr.com/

But tread lightly today. There are pictures of cats and trees and well-structured sentimental poetry over there. It'll get ugly soon enough.

Orange Addendum :

I'm aware that there are ways - there must be ways - to post on one site (here?) and have the same entry to be entered at the other site. I think we're close, so close to something like this. Then, everyone can have everything. But the current available tools are not quite enough. And then there's the automatic redirect.

The Four Moments in My Life When I Asked "What am I DOING with my life?" Part 4 of 4: The Valentine's Day Massacre of Misfortune

2010-02-17T02:28:00.000-08:00

Don't forget to read parts 1 and 2 and part 3 of my woe-is-me whinefest. Now, in honor of Valentine's Day...:

February 14, 2009

Remember last year... last Valentine's Day? It fell on a Saturday, which means the day before was Friday the 13th. And as I wrote the other day, my cat Seymour had just passed away on the 11th last year. So, with this set up Valentine's Day 2009 wasn't shaping up to be one of the best.

Due to reasons I can no longer remember, I postponed a trip to Chicago planned for that weekend. I had planned to see my cousin Sharif and to forget about my status as a 40-ish single man on that most romantic of fake holidays, Valentine's Day.

Despite my postponing the Chicago trip for the second time (there would be three more postponements), my cousin, in a very helpful and empathic gesture, suggested I take a road trip up north, to San Francisco. That way, I could mourn Seymour among caring familiar people, while at the same time getting away from home. He arranged for me to stay with his friend Audrey.

I had done this before... take the long drive up the 5, spend the weekend socializing with Sharif's friends (which almost always meant watching lots and lots of TV because Audrey always sprang for the HBO AND the Showtime and really what else is there to do in San Francisco?), and then drive back on a Sunday night asking myself if I could have just done the same thing in L.A (the answer: "Yes but it wouldn't be as much fun.")

Then, on Friday the 13th, my car started acting up as I drove to work. The "check engine" light was on and it mysteriously stopped running while I waited at a stoplight. (Short aside to Honda: Your game is over. Your cars are so mechanically unreliable that any aesthetic superiority you may have once emitted is forgotten, locked in the vault of my (un)consciousness like my lost affinity for bands like Styx and Possum Dixon. I am never buying one of your crappy Honda crap-cars ever again.)

I got the car started again and took it to the reliable Mr. Yu down the street from where I work. He told me what was wrong and said he could fix it. I didn't really understand what he said but... as with everything involving the CR-V and Mr. Yu, it would be ready at 5:00 and it would cost me $260. Okay, that's $240 more than I could really afford but if I pick up the car by 5:00 and rush home to pack, I could make it to SF by car by midnight.

At 5:00, Mr. Yu gave me the bad news. The car would not be ready until 6:00. Also, the timing belt needed replacing very soon. I asked if an impromptu 800-mile round-trip drive starting tonight would be imprudent. He gave me the classic Mr. Yu look, indicating moral and mechanical superiority, silently emitting the message that I would be taking my life into my own hands. Did I mention it was raining hard? There was no way I could drive to San Francisco. I'd be spending Valentine's Day alone in my Hollywood apartment, staring at the misty rain with only the ghost of Seymour keeping me company.

(Yes, I know about Lily, my other cat. But she doesn't really keep me company so much as hide in closets and on top of laundry baskets, skitting away like a bunny when she hears approaching footsteps.)

There was one small detail I just mentioned that represents the most important part of the story. It's the one variable that sent Valentine's Day '09 up to the top of the Misfortune Chart. The car was not ready at 5:00. It would be ready at 6:00. What was I to do between 5 and 6? Well, it was dinner time and Yu's garage was just a block away from the college campus where I work. I was very close to the campus food court that housed the new branch of Wahoo's Fish Tacos. Yum. Wahoo's. That would make me happy.

Inexplicably, I ordered chicken - not fish. A quesadilla. I ate half of it right away and the rest of it in the car after picking up my car, as I braved the Friday night traffic home.

Chicken. Not fish.

Around midnight, as the 14th began, I began experiencing the stomach pains. I thought it was just excessive heartburn. But no it was worse. Was I finally paying for my lost KFC weekend-in-one-night in '91?

Yes, I was. The vomiting began in earnest, at 3:00 in the morning. In a way, it felt like that was it, there would be no more. But with food poisoning, there never is just one trip to the bathroom, crawling on all fours because standing just wasn't going to happen.

Before I finally fell asleep around 5:00am, I threw up two more times. I should have had the fish. After the final time, my head was clear and I could stand... and walk without dizziness. I got it all out of my system. Good.

The next thing I knew it was around noon and my phone was ringing. It was my mother. I told her about the food poisoning. She must have felt some sympathy because for only the second time in the three years I lived in Hollywood, she drove from the Inland Empire into the City to see me. Seymour's death wasn't enough to do it. But Seymour's death PLUS debilitating food poisoning did the trick.

Minutes after I got out of bed, ready to shower, the inside of my body struck again, purging itself of what was left in the stomach. That's GOT to be it. There could not be anything else in there.

Mom and I ran some errands. We went to Rite Aid and got medicine and saltines and Gatorade and light bulbs and everything I needed for the apartment. We went to the vet's office where she took care of what was left of Seymour's vet bill ($822 and you couldn't even save him? No - you give ME $822.) Eventually, she drove back to La Verne and I decided my system had stabilized itself, that I was better.

By 9:00pm, it had been nine hours since the last episode. I had successfully consumed saltines, bagels, fruit, and Sprite. I was feeling better. Physically, if not psychologically. The parade of sympathetic Happy Valentine's Day Sorry About Seymour texts from ex-girlfriends, non-girlfriends, and the ex-wife was in full swing. Laurel checked in from Minnesota, Alex from Long Beach, Michelle from some restaurant on the west side, the one whose name starts with a J wrote from a few miles away, someone else texted from the Central time zone, and I think there may have been one other one from Long Beach.

My memory may be playing tricks on me. The texts may not have all come at once; it just seemed that way. And it was very nice of all of them (you?) to think of me. But the sheer magnitude of all the stuff that had happened in the past few days got to me. The medicine may have played a role too. I began to feel dizzy. I slumped on the couch and tried to lose myself in a movie (The Break-Up with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn), only to find myself feeling my stomach stir again. Oh no. Not again.

All those other times, I could make it to the bathroom. Not this time. I dropped my body to the (hardwood) floor and tried to roll myself to the bathroom. I only made it a few feet when I vomited something that was 90% Sprite and 10% other stuff. All over my living room floor.

I just stayed there all curled up, not in an attempt to get fetal but to avoid the pools of body detritus that lay on the floor from inching toward me. Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was only a few minutes, I felt strong enough to crawl (yes, crawl) toward the kitchen where I could get some paper towels with which to clean this mess. No paper towels. Then, I crawled to the bathroom where there may be some left over paper towels and, if not, I could use one of my rejected towels (i.e., the towels that I was in the process of retiring.)

Most of the towels I owned at that time were in the washer - wet, waiting for the dryer. In the bathroom, I realized that there were no more paper towels and the rejected towels I had used to clean up the mess from that morning had been thrown away. I had nothing with which to clean the living room floor.

Don't get me started on mops. They weren't an option. That's all I'll say.

Did I mention that my mom and I bought everything I needed for the apartment that day? Except we forgot paper towels.

Well, I did have one thing I could use. Toilet paper. And that's what I used. Two full rolls did the trick. The floor was eventually clean. But let me stress something: When you find yourself unable to stand, writhing in pain, stuck on a cold wood floor on a rainy Saturday Valentine's Night, cleaning up bile and vomit with massive amounts of toilet paper, you find yourself at a low moment in your life.

So, to sum things up and to end this sad sad story: Broken car, canceled trip, chicken again, food poisoning, throwing up, death of favorite creature ever, soiled towels, The Break-Up, sympathy texts from the exes, and cleaning up vomit with toilet paper: What am I doing with my life?

Purple postscript: I spent the following day - Sunday - in bed all day, watching movies and slowly starting to feel better. Monday was a holiday from work (great timing - I spent the entire three-day weekend sick, all from food I ate at my workplace.) But I felt good enough to leave my apartment, thanks to a helpful visit from Alex. She took me out to lunch and I successfully kept all of my food in. I hung out a bit at home that Monday evening before realizing the overwhelming suckiness that the weekend represented. I had to get out. Even if it meant driving around in the rain (pouring rain!). I had to get out on my own. I dressed warmly, gathered my umbrella and backpack-with-laptop and strode defiantly toward my car, which had not been driven since Friday night. As I approached the car, I senses something wrong. My driver's side front tire was completely utterly totally FLAT.

But, as I mentioned, I strode defiantly. Fuck it. I'm not letting this flat tire stop me. What did I do? Did I change the tire, employing the full-size spare strapped manfully to the back of the CR-V. No. I just started the car and drove.... my rims rolling on the wet asphalt all the way to the 76 station three blocks away. I pumped my tire full of air. I drove to Peet's for coffee and thinking and reading. I drove home, believing I had stared Satan in the face and emerged victorious, that I had reached the nadir of low points. And maybe I did.

Seymour

2010-02-11T16:59:00.000-08:00

Today is the one-year anniversary of the death of my cat Seymour. I've assigned the event to February 11 though it may have been the 12th. I do know the last time I saw him was on the evening of the 11th when I visited the vet's office and spent a little time with him. He had been having kidney and stomach problems and lost more than 20% of his body weight, going from a jolly 19 pounds to a stocky 14.5 in just a few days. I knew the prognosis was not good. His body was mostly rejecting the IV fluids. Sadly, for animals, kidney problems don't go away and often have no solution. This was especially true for a 16-year old cat.

Still, I had hope on the 11th. The vet's assistant brought me to a clean white room with a bunch of average-sized and large cages, most of which were empty. Seymour was the only creature in his section, on the near right side of the room. They gave him one of the large cages. The cage door was opened for me and I got to interact with him for a short time. Careful not to dislodge the IV tube in his wrist, I gently petted him and he gave me a sweet but distant look. He appeared exhausted and just too skinny. When I rubbed his belly even more gently, his eyes came to life and I felt him purr for a moment. When I rubbed the back of his head, he looked genuinely at peace. He closed his eyes. If this was the last time he saw me, I wanted him to remember peace and comfort. I kept my hand there for a moment as he kept his eyes closed. I then pulled away slowly, closing the door carefully as I hoped he'd drift into sleep. As he lay there with his head on a towel and a clear tube feeding liquids through his white fur, I didn't want to leave him. But when he half-opened and glanced at me for a second, I just whispered goodbye and walked away. He didn't want me to see him suffer. And he didn't want him to see me cry.

The veterinarian that had been treating Seymour called early the next morning. He said Seymour passed away in the night, that his body kept rejecting the fluid, that his kidney just wasn't working, that 16 years is a long life for a cat. I never asked for a time of death so I've chosen to assume that it happened before midnight, thus ensuring that his pain didn't extend to February 12.

I expect that the anniversary of Seymour's death may one day pass without notice, on my part. I remember after my father died in 1995, I feared that as I approached his April birthday or the June anniversary of his death, it would all hit me hard, months of pent up emotions spilling out of me. But that didn't really happen. First of all, time changes everything. mourning evolves into merely remembering. Eventually, the days passed with little notice. That hasn't happened with Seymour's death. The emotions weren't really stuck inside me over that time. We live with our important losses in our everyday lives. We can't hide them.

We expect the death of a loved one to crush and devastate us but we're resilient. We go to work. We go to sleep. We have dinner with old friends and cousins and, when we go through entire days without bringing up the missing ones, we think we're okay. But the loss is recognizable, to those around us. So, if I haven't been myself these past 12 months - and it's true, I have not - I apologize.

Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend about what it means when someone (a man, usually) loves something (his record collection, a sports team, etc.) too much, to the detriment of his ability to actually love someone (another person). My friend and I were listening to a radio interview of an author whose novel featured a character obsessed with the "soundtrack of his life" - the songs that impacted him at particular times in his life. For this character, the obsession manifested itself in such a way that he became an overzealous collector of the physical manifestations of the songs (records, ticket stubs, cassettes, liner notes, etc.). Each object, the author and his interviewer argued, took him farther away from the thing he should have been "collecting" - actual human contact. Or actual life experience.

One could argue that each object took the book's character away from the song itself, that his relationship with its sound and words and melody was the true human life experience and the rest was all just packaging. In The 40 Year-Old Virgin (a film that touched me deeply), the main character collects superhero action figures in their original boxes. It is not until he gets rid of his "toy collection" that he is able to break out of his isolation and become a (non-virginal) man. I'm simplifying what happened but I think it was the film's one mistake. There was no need for Steve Carell to sell his dolls. His was too smart of a character to live a life where action figures replace human contact. All he needed was to connect with the right person and, though she was the one who convinced him to get rid of his toys, Catherine Keener was the right person. (When is Catherine Keener not the right person?)

How does this all relate to Seymour? The radio interview I cite above reminded me of another film, High Fidelity. A major theme running through the movie and the book its based on is that of a man in love with his music more than his girlfriend. One scene, seemingly played for laughs but truly meaningful, features that man - John Cusack's character - trying to resolve a conflict between two other music-obsessed men, played by Jack Black and that one guy who looks like Moby.

Black's character enters the record store where all three of them work, eager to play his new mix tape. He hears the song that's playing - Seymour Stein by Belle and Sebastian - and is enraged. He doesn't need this sad mopey maudlin pop. He turns off the music, replacing it with a song that, mathematically, is Seymour Stein's opposite, Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. Then Jack Black dances maniacally, the Moby guy mopes, and Cusack calms everyone down and tries to resolve the conflict. In a lesser film, this would be the moment when Cusack realizes just how over the top his own music obsessions are. But this was a good film based on a great book and the main character's distance from his girlfriend was about a lot more than music. He had some other life inventory to complete, before coming to terms with love.

Let's go back to Seymour Stein, the much maligned Belle & Sebastian song that I feel ranks as one of the greatest ever. Ostensibly, it's about a couple of members of the Scottish band having a meal in America with Seymour Stein, the legendary record executive, sung from the perspective of one of the other band members who couldn't make it to dinner. The song is written as if he is singing to Stein himself. But running through the song is a heartbreaking longing for a lost innocence, an innocence lost the moment the band started having meals with record executives. The band (in song and in real life) never signed with Stein's label, Sire, They went with Matador. Still, the song became a symbol for the band and their transformation (I'm exaggerating here) from cuddly indie-rock darlings to distant, stilted superstars writing songs about being famous. People - even their fans - hated that song. It was one of the band's songs written by the band's "secondary" songwriter/vocalist Stevie Jackson, the guy who's not Stuart Murdoch. I love Murdoch's songs but I've always felt that Jackson - who writes about two songs per album - is underrated and underutilized as a writer. If, at a Belle & Sebastian show, a fan yells out for Seymour Stein, he/she is likely to be beaten senseless by a gang of lanky wool-scarved bespectacled men, all of them former baristas well-versed in the more obscure of the martial arts.

But this was not a song about Scottish sellouts. The look on the face of (the guy who looks like) Moby in that scene when Jack Black violently interrupted Seymour Stein was one of shock and heartbreak. He loved that song and suddenly he's powerless to play it again. That song's hypnotic graces got to him. I don't know why he loved that song but I know why I loved it. I sang it to my cat all the time. When I came home from work and saw him run like a fat jaguar to the door, I crooned "Seymour Stein, I've been lonely." On those mornings when I'd wake up and feel particularly down and I'd find Seams still sleeping on my feet, I'd sing "Seymour, send her back to me."

I knew I'd be writing something today that would attempt to tie together Seymour's death, High Fidelity, and the song Seymour Stein. The 40 Year-Old Virgin part was unexpected. But I truly didn't know where it would take me. I've told people that Seymour was "my favorite creature ever - human or non-human." So, during his 16 years, was it possible that I was giving him too much of my love, to the detriment of others - humans - who deserved love (family members, girlfriends, myself)? Or could it be that the love I felt for Seymour was just a substitute for the love I felt for my similarly named dad who died two years after Seymour was born. No, love is not zero-sum. Love can be infinite. I can love them both. Seymour is not my father, just as he is not the action figure or the long lost b-side needed to complete my collection (e.g., Lifter Puller's Bitchy Christmas or Prefab Sprout's Radio Love (on vinyl)). Seymour was a cat I loved and still love. The love was real and the sadness hasn't gone away.

And I haven't remembered that quite well enough. In the past 12 months, I've retreated into a greater sense of solitude, content to let friendships or other kinds of connections just fade away because it's just easier that way, because I won't be devastated again by one sudden movement and one early morning phone call. I'm filled with great ideas. I love ideas. I share the ideas. I start the work on these ideas. But I never finish. Through it all, I feel like I am too delicately getting by in life, that I walk away from what's difficult because to not to do so would be catastrophic (not a pun).

I talk a lot. I write often. But I have too many notebooks with writing on the first few pages and nothing on the next 80 pages. I have too many conversations that devolve into monologues. I have no shortage of thoughts. But I do feel a shortage of love, both given and received. I have an idea where some of it went. It went away with Seymour and with Samir, 14 years earlier. I just need to remember what I said moments ago: love is infinite, that the disappeared love is different in nature from the love that could be waiting for me around any corner.

Seymour, this one is for you:

Sunday Morning Forced (Failed) Metaphor #1: Egyptian Reggae vs. Swedish Reggae

2010-02-07T12:04:00.000-08:00

(First of all - YES, I did write a blog entry this morning at 4:30, one that is far more personal, provocative, and self-revealing (or what passes for it here) than my typical posts. Your question is likely - Ali, were you still awake from Saturday or just up early on Sunday? Neither. I was in between two 180-minute sleep sessions. Second of all - YES, I did push that entry's prominent top-of-page position down below that of my first entry in the SMF(F)M entry. Finally - my Super Bowl pick? New Orleans... nothing but New Orleans 34-17.)

In 1977, Bostonian / future desert hobo / troubador / icon Jonathan Richman released a song called Egyptian Reggae. Though not a fan (nor a detractor) of reggae, I acknowledge this song's genius. This is Egyptian reggae. It sounds exactly like what you would want it to sound like. No need to try to top it. And no one has.

In 1990, Finnish ethno-folk-jazz collective Piirpauke released a song called Swedish Reggae. Like Sweden and Finland in all wars, I am neutral regarding whether this song achieved Swedish reggae-ness. But really - can we trust the Finns to capture what Swedish reggae is all about? Those dudes are practically Russian.

I was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and an Egyptian father. The family as a whole was really more Egyptian than Swedish, Dad's homeland entering our psyches more often and comprising a greater chunk of the family sensibility. As with the nationalities, Egyptian Reggae is the more well-known, more readily available song. In fact, I didn't hear Swedish Reggae until earlier today after reading that Pavement singer Steven Malkmus wanted to name his first post-Pavement-breakup solo album Swedish Reggae, a fact which caused me a disturbingly large amount of glee. In the end, the album was self-titled. Malmkus chose no title at all over Swedish Reggae. (And Pavement has reunited!)

So, if Egypt and Sweden played against each other in World Cup Reggae Soccer (stay with me here), the final score would be Egypt 2, Sweden 1, the swarthy husky moody brooders garnering both their goals in the first half and then employing tight Gaza-level defense the rest of the way, never allowing the pressure to drop. The lanky tousle-haired Scandi-boys do score a too-little, too-late goal in the 88th minute, when the Mediterraneans begin celebrating too soon by singing One Love while facing east.

On how many levels did I fail, metaphorically? I'm going with six.

The Six. The One. The Three (alternate title: Postmarked: Precious Metals)

2010-02-07T04:30:00.000-08:00

That was a strange day, a lovely day.

It begin in bed. I woke up. Later than planned. MUCH later than planned. I needed the rest and I need more. Just like I needed the unrest.

Then, off to the City of Orange. It seems like I'm always there, in the Circle - a place many many miles from home but a place that important people in my life seem to find themselves near. So I get invited to lunch. Or I invite someone to dinner. And we go to the one place or the other. Today, it was the other. This makes four trips to this one restaurant - all in the last 18 months.

In time, all time, one time, it was at night and things were calm. The second time, she was going to be moving away soon. The third time, things seemed peaceful for one hour. Today, I saw old friends and I'm glad I did. May have made new ones too.

I was exhausted when I entered the restaurant. My head has been in a funk some days, in a ruckus others. Today felt muddy before lunch. I had every reason to doubt and then every reason to believe that doubt. Memories rushed me, in one ear and never leaving. I saw her face. And then hers. I recognized his and the other hers. I was introduced to one more his. They saved a seat for me. I saw her face but I couldn't quite believe.

After lunch we strolled. We walked into stores where sudden movements could cause art to fall. Nothing fell. We talked about languages and cities. We reminisced on missed weddings, kept weddings, gun laws, and things kids know.

I remember in the early 90s I had to convince myself that feelings I had weren't real. It was easier that way because the ones I had feelings for weren't there or weren't available. You could call it a coping technique or you could call it essential to survival.

No, there wasn't just one feeling, nor was there just one unavailable heart. Take last night (another story for a quieter night) for example - she had a smile in her step and a skip to her face. Puddles had no chance at slowing her.

So I entered the restaurant. It was obviously them. Haley, I hadn't seen for 18 years. Impossibly, she looked younger, truer, more alive and beautiful today than... than what, who knows? It was clear that she's spent 18 years living a rich life, a real life, an unexpected one.... not an easy life but none are. She is also aging in reverse, or youthening if that's a word.

When I saw what I saw, my instinct was an old one, a shy one. When I saw Haley, I pretended to believe that it couldn't be her, that this wasn't real. They must be in another part of the restaurant. But look there - there was Tinka across the table - it had only been a few months since I had seen her and I knew there was no way around the fact that this was the place. This was the table. There was no pretending that two of the most important people in my life were sitting at this table for seven, in the front room, left of the center, a half-block from the circle

In other words, I arrived (late, yeah). I saw them. I looked away; this must not be the place or the part of the place. I'm shy, you see. But not that shy. I glanced back quickly and then I felt what love felt like.

Later, earlier tonight, I drove past the old apartment building in Brea. I was in town, nearby... after the sun set and before the rain set in. I was surprised to see that La Casa Brea had a security gate for the parking area off of Laurel Avenue. I drove to the Date Street side and tried to figure out which balcony, which window belonged to the two of us - John and me - when we lived there. Or the three of us - add Tinka because she spoke loudest (a compliment). Or make that the four of us - add Matt because he was there more often than... than everyone but the first three.

Or, and I say this with the purest of hearts, the five of us - Haley once knocked on the front door on a Saturday night in March, 1989. I don't remember why she knocked. The party - I believe this was the first one, of two - had not yet started. She may have arrived early and yes she could have just come through the door, knockless and wearing white and black and red (what I remember). I opened the door. We shared a non-conspiratorial look and what happened next... or later...or never...is up to discussion. In fact, we discussed it this afternoon at the table. To answer your question, no we did not. But hearts were affected and poems - or at least verses - written. Back to 21 years ago. She knocked on the door. I opened the door. There were chips and pretzels and beer and three of us walked to the liquor store on Imperial Highway, for something fruity but menacing.

Jim is the sixth. But really he's the first. He set it all in motion and he waits in Seattle for his own next great entrance.

I could be clever and create a hexagon. Or two triangles that don't cross. They can cross but they won't. Or three straight lines, each with two points (different shapes on each point; but inside each shape is a face and each pair of faces smile at the same time).

Which pairs of faces belong to each other? The easy answer is six times five equals thirty divided by two equals fifteen. But we were in pairs a lot back then and we know who we are, who we were with. And being that no one else but the six of us will have read this far down this self-indulgent page, I'll consider my question fully answered.

It's the second balcony, yes that's the one. We never went outside on those March Saturday nights. We never approached the balcony. Window-wise, it's the third one

We went our separate ways. I kept coming back, over and over. Katinka never left. Matt traversed oceans. Jim is in the city of pockets. John is happy... must be happy if we hear his silence. Haley lives in her own strength.

Ali doesn't know but he's happy nonetheless. His past came back in big storms of wild wet rain, settling in messy asphalt puddles. He's writing the book. About the girl who mailed the letter. He's the third person. There are six of us. In time, there will be five then four then 3-2-1-0. Until then, there are risks to take, risks not yet enumerated. Until then, there are surprises manifesting themselves through the openness.

It drizzled as the three of us walked back to our cars. The two I was with were not among the two that were among the six I had known. They were new. They were good. I had said goodbye to Katinka and Haley at the height of the rain, minutes earlier. I said goodbye to the others as the rain stopped. I hit the 22 West as the clouds parted and the sun fell hard on the February trapper-keepers.

"And the Stars Fell Over Michigan: A Parallel History, Courtesy of Mango Mush: The Top 7 Songs of the Past Decade That Did Not Appear on the BpB Top 100, Part 1 of 1: #7 to #1

2010-02-05T07:58:00.000-08:00

Given that it took nearly three months to compile my top 100 songs of the '00s, you'd think that no song would elude my radar. I put so much thought into that list (there are Excel spreadsheets!) and you have to admit it's the best list I've ever written (emphasis on 'written' as opposed to 'list.") But I did forget a few songs here and there. In other cases, I underrated or overrated certain songs. And then there are the songs I had never heard until 2010.

Actually, forgetting songs isn't that bad - there were about 30 trillion songs written/performed/recorded during the decade. No one is perfect. Not even me. Well I was perfect once. It was the mid-nineties. I took the GRE test before applying for grad school. My score on the since-discontinued Analytical portion? A perfect 800. God, I loved that standardized test with limited predictive validity.

But I didn't want to edit my existing list. I will let it stand on it own, its all-over-the-place but not-that-many-places quirkiness a monument to that part of my being that feels the music. There is only one Blueprint Blue song list.

But, back in the early days of this blog when my first and last name appeared in the URL (not a good move, professionally), it wasn't always called BpB. It was known by various names and one of my favorite incarnations was when it was briefly (very briefly) called Mango Mush, after a period when it was The Mango (which was supposed to sound like The Onion but tastier and fruitier... but people assumed that it was some kind of reference to the Saturday Night Live character Mango played by Chris Kattan. No!)

So, how about if I call this untimely fake list the Mango Mush Best Songs of the Decade. Becuase I am finishing this up in one entry (this is what's known in the industry as "filler"), we're only going through a limited number of songs. A top 10 list would be customary. But Mango Mush was an outsider blog. Mango Mush broke the rules. Mango Mush says "Rules??? What does that word even mean? Me want to write only about 7 songs as a way to pay tribute to that period of time back in the day when it always seemed that track 7 was always the best song on any CD... back when we had CDs." Which leads us to

Mango Mush Presents:

The Top 7 Songs of the Past Decade That Did Not Appear on BpB Top 100

7. Good Fortune - PJ Harvey (2000)

Last week I stopped by the face recognition / family tree website myheritage.com. They have a feature where you can upload your photo and they return a list of celebrities who supposedly look like you. First on the list for me? PJ Harvey.

Now, the obvious response is "Ali, you're a guy; she's a girl." But look at her. Look closely. Holy crap, it's my doppelganger. No need to wonder what I'd look like with long messy dark hair and an inability to hold the weight of my own head.

If I had a sister who was a brunette, she'd look like PJ Harvey. But I do not have a ... wait, yes I do indeed have a brunette sister and she looks nothing like PJ Harvey. Rather, she resembles Sandra Bullock mixed with Rico's wife from Six Feet Under.

Anyway, great album. And Good Fortune is a great song. Okay, time to post a link and move on to the next song. But wait. STOP.

(talking to myself... Ali, didn't you once write a poem about your dislike of PJ Harvey? You titled it My PJ Harvey Problem. You recently posted it on your under-read poetry site.)

Yes. I did. But that was the 90s. The 90s were over when the album with the #7 song was released.

6. Little Bird - Jazzanova featuring Jose James (2008)

It took guts for me to type the word "Jazzanova" on this list. Because that's a truly wretched band name. One of the worst ever, right up there with Infected Mushroom and Cowboy Junkies. But Jazzanova, though talented and resourceful, earnest and skillful, are not the story here. No, it's Jose James' awesome soaring vocal performance that I would say stands alone among that of all jazz singers of the decade if I listened to enough jazz to make such a statement. I did not listen to enough jazz to make such a statement. Besides, jazz? Who has the time? The new Jose James album comes out Tuesday. This is my (your) last chance to say you (I) heard of him before most everyone else did.

Little Bird is an example of a song I never heard until the decade was over. Number 5 is another one.

5. PS Exclusive - Life Without Buildings (2001)

World, I think we've found our female Craig Finn. Wait a second... you mean Life Without Buildings lead vocalist Sue Tompkins has retired from music after one album, that she wants to paint? Damn. Well, she had a good run as the best female talk-singer of her generation, an honor I bestow on her based on just this one song. Here it is. Enjoy PS Exclusive from 2001. Which I did not hear until 2010 (an acronym for 2001). I want to court and coddle her down solely for the way she says "exclusively." Not "exclusive" but "exclusively."

4. Singing Joy to the World - Fruit Bats (2009)

Don't manipulate me, Fruit Bats! Don't toy with my pop culture-focused suburban-upbringing-informed emotional reservoir. Eric Johnson, you cannot write a song like this and not expect me to almost practically nearly cry when you sing "She didn't love him back. It wasn't even close." But I smile (as does the guy in the song) when I picture her dancing to I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man at the Michigan bar. Which brings up a question: In this song, there are separate references to a cantina, a Mexican restaurant, and a bar. A Mexican restaurant is sometimes called a "cantina" especially when it's marketed by non-Mexicans. And cantinas pretty much all have bars. So: are the cantina, restaurant, and bar three separate places? One place? Two places?

We can rule out three places with a careful reread of the opening lines:

He got lonely every time the cantina lights came up on the Indian Casino Queen
'Cause he'd loved her from the time she'd been the waitress at the Mexican place where he'd left his keys

(Note to me: Try the "losing my keys" trick some time.) So then she's dancing at "the bar" where they play the Prince song... the bar might be connected to the cantina but probably not the Mexican place, it nearly being on the wrong side of town (my theory). No those are three different places and then there's the fairgrounds and the parking lot at 3AM. But what is the parking lot for? The bar? The cantina? Perhaps a hacienda-style bistro? And if you can't follow me, it's okay. Just keep reading, keep listening. We're not going anywhere.

If you have 40 minutes to spare, listen to their amazing live performance on KCRW last week. Unlike all other bands save pre-Chicago Poi Dog Pondering, they sound even better than on the album. Video and audio of their radio thing here. Or just enjoy the track here

3. Space Humping $19.99 - Lifter Puller (2000)

Yeah how do I leave this off the list? I mean, these guys put out 15 songs on the 2000s and another 60 or so in the 1990s. I could have put all 15 songs on the top 100 list, along with 13 by The Hold Steady. Those songs are that good. But I only placed 9 songs on the 100 (4 by LP, 5 by THS).

And get this - I think Fiestas + Fiascos, their legendary 2000 album could have been BETTER. It's too short... some of the song ideas aren't as fully realized as on The Entertainment and Arts EP or the masterful singles from 2000 and 2001 (see number ONE on my top 100). But Space Humping? Awesome.

What do you think his girl wants?

"I love some funky drums and I hate some chunky drummers." Hey! One of my best friends is a chunky drummer!

I can't find a link to a video or a streaming track but this link will give you the song. Yeah it's free but be a sport and buy one one these LFTR PLLR hoodies. (I wear an XL hoodie but an L T-shirt btw.)

2. Table For One - Liz Phair (2005)
Because she's Liz and she needs to be positively coaxed and and consistently encouraged to PUT OUT NEW SONGS. That's why I chose this song. Please, Elizabeth. Please.

But this isn't a charity pick. Damn this song makes me shiver from sadness. Damn this song makes me want to never feel what the narrator feels (felt): "I want to die alone with my sympathy beside me." Holy crap. That's not what we use sympathy for. Until we can't get it anywhere else. You nailed it Liz. You still got it. If you've got writer's block, I can help. I write poems too. You can make those poems sing! I heard you live in Manhattan Beach. I'll meet you at that one bar on that one corner. Oh and - let's never forget the greatest letter to the editor of this decade. Bitter? Yeah. Defensive? A little. Awesome and timeless? Yes. Oh, yeah: a song:

1. Myopic Books - American Music Club (2004)

I discussed my reasons for putting Mark Eitzel and AMC at #3 for Long, Long Walk, even after weeks of speculation that it would be #1. Well, I inexcusably forgot to include Myopic Books off their 2004 comeback Love Songs For Patriots. Let's run down the awesomeness:

-Named after the actual Myopic Books in Chicago, yet I didn't know this after deciding I loved this song. I had been to Myopic Books years earlier. I just didn't know its name then.

-It's a song about a bookstore.

-This verse

I'll find a bookstore and buy Saul Bellow
and one about old ruins
for my mother you never met her
she liked Manhattan
they taste like mouthwash
she understood how to be alone
all alone
all alone

Look closely. She liked (past tense) Manhattans - meaning she's dead or she doesn't drink anymore (which to Mark might mean she's dead). They taste (present tense) like Manhattans. Hey just because she's dead doesn't mean her son hasn't tried them... doesn't mean they taste somehow different now. Nope, they still taste like mouthwash. She understood (past tense) how to be alone. Uh oh, she's not coming back. That's an understanding you never lose if you're lucky enough to get it. If it's past tense, she's no longer with us. Oh and Mark - if you're reading this - your best vocal ever.

Myopic Books - American Music ...

And here's a great video of Mark Eitzel singing the song solo in the KCRW studios and KCRW, ikely marking the only moment in KCRW history when they bothered playing Eitzel or AMC, creators of some of the greatest songs ever and here I could give you a list of all the artists they do play who don't deserve the airplay but that would be petty and different people have different tastes and why would I use this forum - an opportunity to praise one band and singer - to complain about Damien Rice and the Gainsbourgs and Kinky and William Orbit and.... come one, influential radio station just play them once Play THIS song:

Football Postscript and No I Didn't Forget About Bon Iver

2010-01-25T15:37:00.000-08:00

Sure the Vikings lost but look at it this way: In each of the last three seasons, playing for three different teams, Brett Favre has thrown a crucial interception to essentially end his team's season. Two of these (2007 for the Packers, 2009 for the Vikings) occurred in conference championship games, the other (2008 for the Jets) in a crucial game the team needed to win to make the playoffs. In other words, we were all witnesses to history. Such under-pressure incompetence is nearly impossible to replicate.

Also, you can arguably say that the last two crucial moment interceptions (Jets, Vikings) were so over-the-top stupid that Brett Favre may possess a low enough level of intelligence to receive the DSM-IV (TR) diagnosis of mild mental retardation or, if not an Axis II diagnosis, he could at least be suffering from an Axis III condition that only manifests itself in high pressure situations. It takes a lot of guts and poise to overcome such an unfortunate circumstance.

Now, maybe I'm off base. One could claim that Coach Childress's underuse of Adrian Peterson is the true reason for the Vikings' loss, that if Peterson were utilized as he was during the 2007 season, or to a lesser degree, 2008, then the Vikings would have either won the game or would have had home field advantage which would have improved their chances.To this, I say: yeah but let's say that Peterson was given the ball more often. Let's say that Purple Jesus carried the ball 1.5 times as often. Now, allow me to use the statistical technique of extrapolation: Rather than fumble the ball 1 million times, he would have fumbled the ball 1.5 million times. An extra 500,000 fumbles would actually make victory more elusive.

Yes, I know that I just spent three long paragraphs complaining about a Hall of Fame quarterback that took my favorite football team to the NFC championship game and a young talented running back with a nickname suggesting son-of-God status who scored three touchdowns yesterday Perhaps I should keep things in perspective. The Packer fans might be gloating but didn't the Vikings season last two more weeks than that of the Packers? Yes it did. Don't Packer fans attach foam souvenir heads representing blocks of cheese to their own oversized heads? Yes they do.

Also, doesn't the obsessive identification that Wisconsinites have vis-a-vis cheese look a little sad when they refuse to acknowledge that California outdoes their state in every aspect of the domestic cheese debate: quantity, quality, variety, and distribution? This is true for the hard cheeses as well as the soft.

I realize that California's size gives it an advantage in terms of cheese quantity. So I'm willing to remove quantity from the comparison if the Wisconsin Cheese Board would just stop spreading* their propaganda regarding the other three aspects. If you want to whine about per-capita or per-square mile cheese production, then let's just give the award to Stilton-rich Vermont and cease our petty squabbles.

Still, I don't feel satisfied that I've demonstrated the clear superiority of my former home state (Minnesota) in relation to the fly-over / drive-through state with which it shares a border. I will end with a comparison of musical geniuses originating from each state.

Minnesota: Bob Dylan, Prince, Replacements, Husker Du (visualize umlauts over each 'u'), Lifter Puller, 40% of The Hold Steady, Trip Shakespeare, The Jayhawks, that one girl from season 6 of American Idol, Solid Gold, Tay Zonday, Gear Daddies, The Time, that one Mason Jennings song, Sex and Candy, Funkytown, and the great long lost studio band Lock Up Your Daughters.

Wisconsin: Violent Femmes, 20% of The Hold Steady, Sigmund Snopek III, and the first BoDeans album.

Even if one were to dock Minnesota one genius point each for Soul Asylum and Peter Himmelman and deduct three genius points for Owl City, the State of Many Lakes still musically outshines the State of Questionable City Planning. I rest my case.

Oh - I should point out that I'm fully aware that I go from an imagined California vs. Wisconsin battle to a made-up Minnesota vs. Wisconsin battle. And this was in reaction to a Minnesota vs. New Orleans football game.

Also, I could amend the MN/WI music comparison to reflect Hold Steady keyboardist Franz Nicolay's departure from the band. With four remaining members, I believe half the band is from MN and 25% is from WI. But let's hold off until the mustachioed one is replaced. Better yet, let's deny he ever left.

*In the original draft, this sentence looked a bit different, as I tried to squeeze** in a gratuitous analogy. It may seem obvious to any writer possessing even a minimum of pride that the use of the word "spreading" requires a cheese analogy here. So go ahead and try it if you think it should be done. The first part is easy: "...if the Wisconsin Cheese Board would just stop spreading their propaganda of cheddar..." But on what is it spreading its propoganda? On the cracker of public relations? On the French bread of state pride? The joke really doesn't work without an object on which the cheese is spread. And there is no universal spread-recipient of cheese that would make the analogy flourish. Besides, while Wisconsin may pride itself on its spreadable cheese production and consumption, here in California we have evolved far past the cheese-in-squeeze-bottle stage of development.

**This would have been pushing it. Trust me, it can't be done.

The Vikings: My Fourth Favorite Sports Team in Minnesota*

2010-01-22T17:45:00.000-08:00

I get the question all the time. Sometimes it's in the form of an email. Other times, I'm stopped in the street or the hall with someone who looks me in the eye as I look them in the spot just to the right of their right shoulder. No matter, it's the same thing that everyone wants to know: Why aren't you more excited about the Vikings?

The Minnesota Vikings are about to play in the NFC Championship game, one step from the Super Bowl. In past years I've written occasionally about good, bad, and mediocre Vikings teams. This year, as they have their best season since 1998 (deep, exaggerated sigh) behind the improbable perfect fit of Brett Favre, they barely merit mention.

Even away from BpB, I discuss them rarely. Yet, the Minnesota Timberwolves, a sad sack wretch of a basketball team in recent years gets the overanalysis from me that is normally only given to DF Wallace, Craig Finn, and my mother. (During the current season, I haven't written much about the Wolves but that's because they started out so poorly that not even their beloved suckiness could sway me. Then, there was the top 100 list. Then, there were the 4 moments and here we are... more than halfway through the season and "we" have got 9 wins.)

So the Vikings sign Favre to go with an offense led by an amazing running back nicknamed Purple Jesus (Adrian Peterson) and a rising-from-out-of-nowhere wide receiver (Sidney Rice). A team that barely made the playoffs last year and didn't make the playoffs in most of the previous years of this decade sits one win from football's pinnacle game. And, seemingly, I don't care. Why? Let's run through the possible reasons:

Is it because I don't like Brett Favre. Do I still resent his success with the evil overlords that are the Green Bay Packers and I so dislike their doughy orange-vested green-foam-fingered round-faced fans that to see him in a purple uniform sickens me. No. No. Not at all. I'm glad he's on "our" side. I especially relish the pain it causes the cheeseheads in Wisconsin. I say pile it on. Let's secede those chunky grumps deep into Canada. Let's shore up the borders so no more of "them" make it across. Especially at the St. Croix River crossing over by Hudson. Back to Favre though. I think he's doing a fine job. But I contend - SERIOUSLY - that the Vikings would have still gone 12-4 with Tarvaris Jackson, that they would still be in the NFL's Final 4. But the Favre reason for not mentioning the Vikings much has been quashed.
I don't live there anymore. Ha! Like that's ever stopped me. This reason has ALSO been quashed.
I really do love this team. I live for this team. So much so that I don't want to jinx anything by talking too soon. No, I don't live for the Vikings. And jinxes aren't real. Quashed.
Football is not nearly as much fun to watch as basketball. This is actually true and explains 30% of the reason I don't write much about the Vikes.
I never truly felt the Vikings were my team. Shortly after I moved to Minnesota, the Twins won the World Series. And being a lifelong baseball fan, I was hooked on those lovable punks. I remain to this day a Twins fan. And then the Wolves were born in 1989. Sure, I was on my Brea pilgrimage then but I was back in the twin towns the following summer (only to leave again yeah yeah... only to come back again yeah whatever... only to leave again yeah yeah yeah whatevs). But the Wolves were the first team that I rooted for since the beginning of their existence. I grew with the Wolves. I may not have lived there for their first season but I was there for season #2, their first in the Target Center. I was there for the coronation. Which explains another 30%. Which reminds me: (ignore the video; listen to the song)

Another 27% could be chalked up to what happened in 1998 when they lost the NFC Championship game in the most painful series of events to strike a sports fan (me) since the 1981 Philadelphia 76ers. Normally, that would make me more of a fan. But with football there are only 16 games a year, not enough to motivate a crushed fan out of his figurative warm foamy bathtub of escape.
Another 11% I'll chalk up to the jettisoning over the years of many of my favorite players: Randy Moss, Randall Cunningham, Daunte "Good Boat" Culpepper, etc
The remaining 2% of the explanation is due to unknown factors - possibly error or statistical "noise."

Still, I will watch the game Sunday. I will root for the Vikings. I will jump up high (very high) if they win. If they lose, I'll be sad for a minute, I'llshrug when asked if it stings, be told that the sting I don't feel would have been pride fucking with me if I had felt it, and go online to find out the latest on the Timberwolves.

*The official rankings alluded to in the post title:
1. Timberwolves
2. Twins
3. Gophers (Univ. of MN) basketball
4. Vikings
5. Gophers football
6. Wild
7. Gophers women's hockey
8. Gophers men's hockey

The Four Moments in My Life When I Asked "What am I DOING with my life?" Number 3 of 4: Oh No! They're All the Same

2010-01-21T17:27:00.000-08:00

I promised to follow up the first entry last Friday. I'm a little late. Also, I'm saving the final entry for a future date - an anniversary of sorts. Enjoy my woe.

Date Unknown, 2009: What's Wrong With My Shoes? Am I....? No I Couldn't Be.

I arrived at the parking structure at work about an hour late. This was better than most days during the middle part of '09. Since moving to Long Beach, I simply was unable to get to work on time, no matter how much I planned. The days I woke up on time - traffic got me. The days I overslept - no traffic, just the imability to reverse time. Add to this the fact that I could easily fall into a freakishly coma-like deep sleep in that godforsaken 1st Street apartment. Sure, while I was living there, I felt the walls closing in on me, as the trash can fought the washing machine for that one corner of kitchen real estate and boxes of old cassettes, New Yorkers, and records fought IKEA bags full of mail for living room floor space. (Meaning: The place was too small. I don't have a lot of stuff. But on 1st Street, even a little is a lot.)

BUT I sure could sleep hard in that place. I would sit on the couch with my night cereal as Conan began his hopeful-for-the-future Tonight Show monologue. Next thing I know, my phone alarm is vibrating its fourth alarm of the day and I'm stretching my haunches and hunching my sternum as I rise from the couch and ease into the workday and OH FUCK I'm an hour late and I live 45 minutes away from work.

I decided I would drive to work in the clothes I had fallen asleep in. It was a warm day I think. And I figured I would grab my work clothes and get changed in the parking lot at work. If I remembered correctly, I had my sweet black dress(y) casual shoes in the car. Still, I don't always remember correctly, so I brought an extra pair just in case. I also grabbed a clean dress shirt, a gray T-shirt, and those most awesome of pants I had picked up at Macy's (Are they brown? Yes! Are they black? Yes! Are they gray? That too! Do they match all possible pairs of shoes and socks, and every single shirt one could imagine wearing? Yes, yes, yes! Most importantly do they LOOK good? Yeah.)

Off to my car, wherever the hell it was parked. I've since moved, as you all know - half-block to the east (south), four blocks to the north (west), still in Long Beach (Why? Some day I'll know.) I no longer have to fight the natives (the confident lesbians, the angry hippies, the quiet quiet gay men, and the steadfast others) for parking. In my new place, I have a parking space. Sure, I have to park at a 10-degree (not 15-degree, not 5-degree) angle and my driver's rearview mirror is inches away from the alley's driving space and will likely be amputated one foggy morning, but I don't have to walk.

(Those of you who read even the blog entries that I delete the next day will remember a story about a gang of female hoodlums accosting me in a park. Others have heard of the shadowy figures lurking near the park restrooms. The hoodlums and the lurkers were only there because I had to walk a long way to the apartment, through that park. Now, there is no one that upsets my trek from car to door. No one but God or Mother Nature or whoever pulled down the rain that is currently flooding my beautiful lovely baby, my preassigned parking space.)

This is getting ridiculous, Ali. FINISH the story!

Okay. I go to my car. I drive to work. I park on either the second or fifth floor of the parking garage. I make sure no one can see me as I disrobe in the dimly lit garage. I take off my dowdy clothes. I put on my nice clothes. Everything but my shoes. I put on one shoe. I put on the other shoe.

I get out of my car. I begin walking. Something feels funny. I think something is wrong with my left shoe. Oh no, I think - another good pair gone. It feels like the structure of the shoe has been disrupted. I consider gong back to my car. I have that other pair in the back. Actually, it doesn't feel so bad. I'll walk it off... repetitive motion will return the left shoe to its normal integrity.

I get outside. I wait at the light. As I cross Figueroa, I realize something is amiss. I think to myself: What's wrong with my shoes? Am I....? No I couldn't be...I couldn't be wearing...TWO RIGHT SHOES.

I stop in my tracks and look down and I feel everyone - the students and other USC folk crossing the street, the 20 or so cars at the massive intersection, the 100+children at recess in the science magnet school across the street - looking at the man with two right feet in the middle of the crosswalk. I keep walking but once I get across I stop and confirm the obvious. The "pair" of shoes I had grabbed in haste as I ran out the door actually consisted of the right halves of two nearly-but-not-identical pairs of shoes, the Fast Decision model from Kenneth Cole (pictured; also known as the Lack of Foresight Lazy Man Snooze Button Express) and a seemingly discontinued laceless stretchy slip-on model from Steve Madden.

Now you might be saying, "Come on dude, it's not that bad. A lot of shoes look like that. Honest mistake. But you don't know WHY I had on two right shoes. I know why. It's a long story, one not being told in its entirety here. There weren't one or two circumstances that needed to happen. They ALL had to happen. Bullet point time:

I had to wake up so late that I couldn't waste any time putting on my clothes before I left the apartment.
I had to be in such a hurry that I just grabbed two black shoes that upon close inspection are clearly different. (I always double-checked my similar black shoes. Except that day.)
The two right shoes had to be close together and far away from all other shoes (This is the part I wish not to discuss.)

You might ask: What about the shoes you wore in the car before changing? Why not put those on? I suppose my very ragged black Adidas Sambas would have been better than bare feet. But somehow wearing such casual shoes with mid-week business wear seemed far worse to me than exposing my two right shoes. Still, I had an out. I had a pardon from the governor of clothing malfunctions. I had my Skechers back in the car. Interestingly, my Skechers were a perfect mathematical average of the K. Cole and S. Madden shoes - still black, laceless, and likely out of fashion. They had the patterned stretchy core of the former and the slightly flatter shine of the latter. (Did you see those internal rhymes there?) No matter (ha!). I just had to slip those Skechers on my feet and I was on my way. Plus, they were 1,200 times more comfortable if a little ragged from overuse.

They were just barely on the acceptable side of "professional" before they got overused, what with their chunky soles and pseudo-mystical-surf-y raised logo. Used and scuffed, they were now barely unacceptable for work but they sure beat wearing two right shoes.

I arrived at my car. I looked in the back seat for my emergency Skechers. I found one of them on the floor - the right Skecher. The other one wasn't around. It's got to be under the seat. Nope, no shoe under either seat... no shoe in the trunk of the CR-V. No shoe on the ski rack or in the spare tire sleeve. Nothing. Nope, now I had THREE nearly identical shoes, all of them RIGHT shoes. I also had a meeting in five minutes.

I made the decision that still haunts me. I decided that, of the three shoes, the two that looked the closest were the Madden (currently correctly placed on my right foot) and the Skecher. I put Skechy on my left foot. But I could feel the shoe practically begging to not be humiliated. I switched the two shoes, letting Madden bear the small portion of the shame that wouldn't be oozing out of my physical self. That was better. (Funny, I thought the kind-of-metrosexual Steve Madden shoe would be the whiny one and the working class Skecher would be resilient. Other way around. And am I really assigning human traits to shoes?)

I strode fake-confidently to my meeting, all the way on the other side of campus. I pretended to limp so people would be able to imagine a better reason for the two different shoes. I hoped they didn't get close enough to see two different shoes of the same foot. I made it to the meeting and I worked that entire day with two right shoes, avoiding crowds (lunch at 2 instead of noon) and choosing the emptiest paths. I made it home by 7:00. It took me 10 seconds in my bedroom to find all three left shoes.

(Note: The mystery of why the right Skecher was in the car and the left one was still at home has never been solved.)

I wrote in the last paragraph that "I made the decision that still haunts me," the decision being which, of all the possible combinations of right shoes, made the most sense, aesthetically and physically? I don't regret the decision. I regret that it had come to this: A man with a Ph.D. and a full head of hair... a poet with an office full of charts, graphs, and statistical assumptions... had to make a decision on a college campus populated by students half his age and experience... a decision that came down to: Which two right shoes should I wear and which one goes where? I should not have to ask OR answer that question. I should simply have a pair of shoes, one right and one left and both identical in brand, style, and model.

So, to sum things up and to end this sad tale of shoe woe: Two right shoes. No, make that three right shoes. Fake limping so as to draw attention away from my feet. This strategy may backfire. Oh what am I saying? No one cares. No one is looking my way. I'm stuck going through this alone. No commiseration with others who've made the same mistake. Picture me arriving at home, parking my car too far from my door... Picture me walking. The solo sundown silhouette of a man, wondering What am I doing with my life?

On Puppet Shows, Helium Balloons, and the Mango Incarnations

2010-01-14T23:24:00.000-08:00

I just spent an hour re-reading my blog entries from Year 1 of this blog: 2005. Some observations:

I complained a lot less back then. I wasn't free of the whining that has infiltrated this blog space in recent months. But my complaints were petty, one-off comments about something that irked me.... nothing approaching the gigantic woe-is-me mopefests you may have read earlier today. Do I really have it that hard? A handsome poet with the hands of a lumberjack and the heart of a lion? I have a Ph.D. and a doored office at the hottest school in the nation. I have 1 or 2 cats in an apartment conveniently located in a bubble bordered by the world's best noodle house, the world's finest ocean, a couple of Yogurtlands, a perfect record store, and a coffeehouse that surpasses all others when it comes to mismatched furniture. So, my newest new year's resolution: less complaining.

I tried harder to be funnier back then. Sometimes, I failed. But when I succeeded, look out!

The blog changed names several times, from Blueprint Blues to The Mango to Mango Mush to Incarnation of Mango to Blueprint Blue to Puppet Shows and Helium Balloons and back to Blueprint Blue.

I was extremely good at keeping my personal life private. These days, it's more difficult to keep some stories untold.

The Four Moments in My Life When I Asked "What am I DOING with my life?" Parts 1 and 2 (of 4): The Day of the Chicken and The Worst Motel Ever

2010-01-14T16:26:00.000-08:00

March 22, 1991: The Day of the Chicken.

It was a rainy Friday when I stopped at a KFC in St. Louis Park, Minnesota on my way home from somewhere. In Minnesota, rain instead of snow in March is a welcome thing but the overall gray gloom of the weather made my Seasonal Affective Disorder worse. This was near the end of my second stint in the Gopher State - the time period I don't talk about mich. I first lived there during my undergraduate days (1984-1988). Then, I piligrimaged to the promised land (Brea, 1988-1990) and received a well-earned master's degree in psychology. I then had one particularly bad panic attack (7/8/90 - dig the numerical pattern there) and immediately packed a U-Haul to come back "home" to Minnesota to find my post-master's job.

Eight months later, I still hadn't had any luck finding that job. I was working three jobs, actually but none related to graduate degree. One Friday afternoon as winter neared its end and I seriously considered a return to California (my parents had a rental property that would soon be vacant in the "good" part of Pomona). Anyway, on this Friday afternoon, I felt it was necessary to buy lots of chicken. I was living alone and I had no real plans for the weekend. I thought to myself, why not buy a giant bucket of chicken? I can eat a little now and save the rest for later, storing it for safekeeping in my refrigerator. After all, this was March Madness time, the second day of the NCAA basketball tournament. The chicken wasn't as much for me as it was for basketball as an institution. By incorporating a giant KFC bucket into my game-watching ritual, I was paying tribute to Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of the game.

Time passed and all of a sudden I found myself on the floor of my apartment in Minneapolis, with a blanket over me and the TV on. The sky was dark and I felt around for the remote control so I could turn off CNN Headline News which had been bringing my subconscious down. I had no memory of switching from basketball to news. I had fallen asleep on my floor, though I did have a real bed in the apartment.

I began my search for the remote. As I flailed at the floor space around my makeshift floorbed (3 comforters on floor + 1 flat sheet + 1 more blanket on body = floorbed), I felt the chicken bucket. I lifted the bucket only to find the discarded fowl carrion that my binge had wrought. All skin and meat were gone, from every piece; only bone remained. I had no memory of eating any of it. I looked at my fingers; my fingers remembered eating the chicken. From the looks of the filth around me - empty mashed potato container, large drink emitting condensation, a half-dozen soiled napkins thrown around randomly, I participated in a fierce binge.

I looked to the window. It was either sunrise or sunset. I hoped it was sunrise. I looked at the clock. 6:00pm. It was sunset. I looked at the window again. It was either Saturday and Sunday. God, I hope it's Saturday, I thought. I did not want to have fallen into a 48-hour chicken coma; please let it be a 24-hour sleep. (Yes, this was a possibility. The insomnia which I sometimes suffer today began showing up in '90, '91.) No, it was worse than that. It was still Friday. I bought the chicken at 1:30 in the afternoon. I had consumed 14 pieces of chicken in a 4 hour period and woke up without remembering. There were no other people or cats living with me at the time. It was all me. I moved back to California 11 days later. I became a vegetarian 19 years later.

To sum up: Darkness, disorientation, on the floor, waking up to find chicken carcasses, loneliness. What am I doing with my life?

August 26, 1996: The Worst Motel Ever
It was a Sunday evening. I was living in Amherst, Massachusetts. Those who have heard about my Amherst stint know I was only there for 12 days. Despite such a short stay, I felt the need to get away over the one full weekend I had while I was there. I drove down to visit my friend Patrick in New Jersey. I had a nice time that weekend. There was a pizza place with a jukebox. There was an old-timey drug store where I bought a giant fan for my new apartment. Then, on Sunday, I headed back to Amherst, first making a stop in Greenwich, Connecticut to see my ex-girlfriend. She had moved there from Los Angeles a year prior; she met a young man on the Internet. Things didn't work out with him but she stayed on the east coast, a spry L.A. girl braving the rest of America. Later, she moved to Minnesota (not because I was there, she says) and then Hawaii. She now lives in Wisconsin. We had dinner. We talked. I felt sad. Then, I began the rest of my drive home. I had three hours to go.

Shortly after I began driving, I felt really sleepy. I didn't want to fall asleep on the highway and crash, not with two angry cats waiting for me in a deserted college town, relying on me for food. I didn't have Joe Piscopo to shake me from my slumber. So I decided to stop at a roadside motel. Somewhere between Greenwich and Hartford (yeah I know - that doesn't narrow it down), I got off the highway and checked into what seemed like a decent enough place. I got my key and entered the room. The bed was flanked with not one - but two - machines that allowed one to make the bed vibrate. No reading lamps, just bed vibrators. This amused me; I'd be telling stories about this place.

The red bedspread looked old and faded. I lifted it and tossed it aside because my dad always took off the bedspread in every rented room he found himself in. "Because they never wash it. It's diz-GUST-ing," he would say. I found this hard to believe: so they wash everything else - the sheets, blankets, towels, pillowcases - in a diligent fashion, but they go out of their way to not wash the bedspread? No matter. I needed someone's advice at the moment. I was at my life's crossroads and I was tired. (If you know me, you understand that I have been to many many "crossroads" in my life. Ralph Macchio told me there'd be only one.)

The blanket was a faded yellowish-beige, with not one but two perfect circle holes burned into it,. Horrified, I decided I would use the bedspread as my blanket. First I had to remove the blanket. And underneath the blanket was... a plastic sheet. A clear plastic, see-through sheet. You could see right through the sheet and see the mattress. The filthy splotch-stained mattress. In a queasy panic, I covered it up again with the blanket and picked the bedspread up off the floor. I slept fetally on a small strip of clean yellow-beige blanket, with the blood-red bedspread on top of me for warmth. The plastic sheet horrified me. Why would they do that?

So, these were the three sleeping layers they had given to me:

unwashed bedspread
fire-damaged blanket
see-through insane asylum sheet

I should have asked for a refund. I had not yet developed the character trait of complaining about every little thing and demanding immediate justice. This trait, since removed from my personality, manifested itself most often at motels and hotels. (Personal aside to the desk clerk at that Hilton in Baltimore's Inner Harbor back in '98: I was an ass. I'm sorry.)

I slept for four hours, waking up in time to avoid Monday morning traffic. I was back in Amherst by noon, cursing my decision to move east. (No offense to anyone who lives on the east coast but seriously - it's like the third world out there, with your dial-up and your uncomfortable chairs.) I moved back to Minnesota three days later. I have not been to Connecticut since that day, nor have I ever seen clear plastic sheets again.

No. I didn't vibrate my bed.

To sum up: Darkness, disorientation, fetal position, avoiding burn-holes and mattress blood, bed vibrators, awkward meal with ex-gf, rootlessness. What am I doing with my life?

The final two "What am I doing" moments will be published tomorrow. I felt that including all four in one blog post would be kind of ridiculous.

Women Who Write: A Tale of Five Men and Their FFLs

2010-01-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

My friend Jason's entertaining Brief History of the Rise and Fall etc. blog has a new URL. Jason also has a mission this year to read only books by women. Here, he tells a fascinating story about a mutual friend who does not read books by women. This seems a preposterous philosophy to follow - who reads books by only one gender? - until one thinks about it more deeply.

I think of two of my good friends. Let's call them Jike and Mohn. Jike and Mohn are erudite educated independent-minded men. They consider themselves well-read. I consider them well-read. But... can I think of a single book by a woman that either one of them have read? No I cannot. It's just that they never admitted to having a philosophy - a rule - of never reading books by women. In practice, they're no different from the no-read-women guy.

Yes, I could be wrong about Jike and Mohn. They may have read books by women. I don't follow their every book purchase or library loan. Maybe there's a female author in there somewhere. Perhaps an instructional manual on how to program early 90s synthesizers written by a FTM? Or maybe an ESL teacher certification manual penned by a half-Madonna half-whore domiNUNtrix? Maybe. But they never mentioned these girlbooks out loud.

And who am I to judge? Am I a prolific reader of women of letters? Yes, as a matter of fact I am. I can think of at least 12 completed novels and at least seven short story collections written by women. That's at least one book every two years of my life. Okay that's not a lot. But I've also read tons of non-fiction written by women. Does all this approach the number of things written by men that I have read? A little, yeah. But no, I've read a bunch more by men. I can't help it if the basketball histories, rock bios, and World Almanacs I read as a kid were mostly written by dudes.

So I read more books written by women than Jike and Mohn (and perhaps Jason and the Sexist) combined? What has it gotten me? Well, let's see: All five of us are admitted heterosexuals; three of the other four are married, two of these three have (or will have) happy multi-child families, and the fourth has a girlfriend. Me? Unmarried. No children. Am I single? Well, that's to be discussed in private. Not in this forum. I keep my privates private.

BUT... is that really the measure of the benefit of reading women writers? Our marriage/relationship/family statuses? There must be some other way to understand a man's ability to understand women, to see in them what they truly are, as writers, as thinkers, as doers, as people. God, am I really writing these words?

There must be some other way. And, being a man with a Ph.D. in (essentially) Statistics, there must be a quantifiable empirical way. There must be something I can demonstrate via numbers to prove that my reading girlbooks makes me more acceptable to women. Yep, I'm really going to do it. Okay. I'll take care of the counting. I'll be right back.

Mike: 147 Facebook friends total; 72 are female; 72 div. by 147 gives us a 49.0% FFL (female friend likelihood)

John: 84 Facebook friends; 39 are female, one (Matrixsynth Jones) is undetermined, so let's divide 39 by 83 to get an FFL of 47.0%

Jason: 81 Facebook friends; 36 are female; 44.4% FFL.

Mutual Friend Who Does Not Read Women : Does not appear to be a member of the Facebook community. He's probably proud of this fact. As if not belonging to such an insidious dubiously dubbed "social" network where the definition of "friend" is loose enough to include people who likely do not exist (Sui Solitaire? Come on Paulson.... really?) makes XXXXXX better than us. No XXXXXX, it does not. Numbers don't lie. The rules are pretty simple. If we can't access your Facebook stats, if you have no Facebook stats, your FFL is ... I hate to say it ... equal to the number of female authors you've read relative to all authors you have read which, according to your self-report, is ... ZERO.

Blueprint Blue (Me): 71 Facebook friends. 42 are female Facebook friends, one (Tarpaulin Sky Press) is undetermined, so 42 out of 70 gives us a clean even 60% FFL, which means I win!

Now the skeptical among you may offer various reasons for my 60% WINNING score. You'll contend that my frequent singlehood in this Facebook era has created great opportunities for me to bump up my female numbers, that my winning personality, cultivated shyness infused with quiet strength, and Clooney-in-Oceans-11-meets-D'Onofrio-in-Things-to-Do-in-Denver strapping good looks easily gets me to the third date by which point Facebook friendships are enthusiastically accepted. AND you'll say that my honorable behavior and artful decency has ensured that I simply do not have bad breakups which would lead to friendship rejections/cancellations. Yes... with that one exception. What was I to do? I'd never dated a girl from Sherman Oaks before. I didn't know. I'll just say I'm glad we were in a public place.

Or you'll say that being married keeps three of you out of the female-friend-getting loop. Sorry... that's what you signed up for when you said "I do." But you do get a tax break. Or maybe you'll say that growing up in a matriarchy gave me an unfair advantage. No.

Wait. Do I have the fewest friends out of all of us? I need to go out and network. Still, 72 friends is nothing to sneeze at. I remember high school. I had two friends and one of them lived in another state. Back to the topic at hand.

In conclusion: Read good books. By anyone. In any era. In any language. Enjoy good art In any form(at). In any medium. If you find yourself deficient in a particular area (like women authors), read a bunch of them. I probably need to increase my numbers of dead authors. But it's just so difficult to connect with them.

(Aside to Jason:

So yes Jason, reading books by female authors is a clear win-win. These books are generally less expensive (about 84 cents to the dollar) than books by men. You'll impress your wife with your well-intentioned project. But most of all, you'll get to read some great books. To expand on my Facebook comment suggestions:

Zadie Smith is my favorite from that list. And On Beauty is my favorite of hers. It is a little college-y. And I know you live in a provincial if not precious college town but she's a badass Brit who can write better than pretty much anyone on the planet AND with a badass Brit perspective. I've only read a couple of her essays but I'm sure her new essay collection is awesome.

Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a solid, poignant, and seemingly fantastical but actually grounded novel about a teenage girl and her dad. They travel from college town to college town because he's a rootless professor. She comes of age, in a way. The father is a kook. Interestingly, the book doesn't seem college-y at all. The fact that every single character suffers from sort of eccentricity may be tough to deal with at first. But if you can get through Jonathan Lethem novels with his ridiculously-named characters (Mingus Rude??) you can get through this book.

The Lydia Millet book is one I haven't read (yet) but I went to a reading where she discussed it and it sounds great. It's about Oppenheimer and the bomb and all that.

Good luck! I think I'll read a book written by a man. I've heard Harper Lee is quite good.)

I Used To Be A Poet

2010-01-10T10:22:00.001-08:00

And I am a poet once again! Read my new math poem here. And the two poems that precede it are interesting too, UiELA#5 is interesting for its trainwreckness and UiELA#4 is interesting for its forthcomingness. (Yes, I'm forthcoming about something entirely fictional but still...)

2009: The Year in Review - Ruminant Streetfruit vs. The Mustard Apology

2010-01-07T03:07:00.000-08:00

I'm not done with looking back. In reviewing the thoroughly awesome music of the decade, I neglected to wrap up the year that just ended, a year that could be described in one or more of the following ways:

A. An IV drip of pain, discomfort, misfortune, and comical predicaments, delivered with laser precision by a team of invisible nurses, each armed with an illustrated annotated catalog of Ali's Trigger Points and a carefully formulated Schedule of Inconvenience.

B. A dull year in which nothing much of interest happened.

C. A delicate balance morphing into a prickly imbalance morphing into a doddering pile of laundry.

By the way, that IV drip is delivered directly into my psyche, with acute residual specks peppering my big caring heart and Clooney-like hair.

I should begin my review of 2009 by apologizing to each and every one of you. I will use my patented LIST/APOLOGIZE/FORESEE method, also known as the LAF Cycle:

1. First... allow me to LIST my transgressions, dusting the pile of reasonable excuses with the occasional inexcusable behavior:

The explanations I have given for being late to lunches, for not making an effort to connect, for appearing aloof, and for not reciprocating particular gestures were, for the most part, honest ones. There really was construction-related traffic on the 710 that one day. The check for that part-time consulting gig really did take 8 mailing days to arrive from Pittsburgh. The phone charger really did inexplicably work in the car but not in the wall (and vice-versa the next day). That email really did end up in the junk folder. And there really was construction-related traffic on the 710 later that same day. And if I ever told anyone a lie, it could easily have been perceived by me as the truth.

2. Next, I will sincerely APOLOGIZE while simultaneously magnifying and minimizing the "sin" for which the apology was proffered.

Still, my unreliability was too consistent to be dismissed with such excuses. My detachment was too ever-present to not be a symptom of something larger. Now, I just need to identify that larger something. I don't like to disappoint others. I am sorry.

3. Finally, I complete the LAF Cycle by FORESEEing better times ahead, employing the time-tested strategy of predicting warmer, truer connections in the immediate future (this weekend) AND in the distant future (this summer) but concluding with a "qualified" intention that is intended to lower your expectations of me without you knowing it had I not just told you what would have happened. There will also be wordplay.

I will change. I will change for the better. I will change for the better on a permanent basis. I will not be late to lunch this weekend. I will not change my flight time or originating airport this summer. I may not successfully identify the bigger, more incessant problem(s) that periodically perplex and plague me but I will try.

And now, the Best of 2009, as interpreted by me:

Best Film of 2009: An easy one. Inglorious Basterds

Best Meal of 2009: Breakfast, El Buon Gusto, Atwater Village, Los Angeles, July

Best Blog Entry of 2009 (Me): On February 6, I wrote this spry detailed interesting blog entry about an "extended family" vacation in 2002. Heart problems, William Shakespeare, and scoutmasters play a role in the true story I tell. I show restraint when necessary. I don't get all fatalistic. I minimize my woe-is-me Sedarisesque schtick. Good photos too.

Best Blog Entry of 2009 (Others): The Heart is an Organ that Pump Blood on cats, condo boards, mothers, and fathers

Best TV Series of 2009: Parks and Recreation

Best TV Episode of 2009: Yes it was super sappy but... the Community episode where Winger engineers a salsa-dancing-to-Greene-Daye reunion between Senor Chang and his estranged wife

Best Drink of 2009: The second one at The Fling, Santa Ana, August

Best Coffee Drink of 2009: Regular coffee, with cream and lots of vanilla powder, that one Friday morning in April at the then-new on-campus Coffee Bean at USC

Best Night of Sleep of 2009: December 21-22, my first night of pure dead-to-world deep-as-dirt sleep in my new place in Long Beach

Best Book of 2009: Lifter Puller vs. The End Of

Best Article of Clothing (Casual) of 2009: My Oakland Oaks T-shirt from Retro Sport

Best Article of Clothing (Not Casual, Not Formal): My Mustard Incident jacket from Penguin

Best Article of Clothing (Formal, for me): Gray/black patterned dress shirt, Target

Best Album of 2009: God Help the Girl

8 Other Great Albums:

The Ruminant Band - Fruit Bats
Album - Girls
I'm Going Away - Fiery Furnaces
Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective
The Ecstatic - Mos Def
Eskimo Snow - Why?
The Satanic Satanist - Portugal the Man
Klamath - Mark Eitzel

Best Website (Words): A.V. Club

Best Website (Visuals): In a Dream House

Best Music Reissue: Lifter Puller reissue their entire catalog

Best Gummi Bear: Trolli (last minute comeback vs. Harbro)

Best Fruit: Streetfruit (mango, melon, pineapple, watermelon), Glendale Blvd., L.A.

Best Poem (Me): Couldn't Call It Unexpected #6

Best Poem Verse (Me): Final verse of Honor in a Misnomer

Best Cereal: Archer Farms (Target) Hearty Grains and Fruit Muesli

Most Difficult Experience: Saying goodbye to Seymour (he's the big one) after 16 years:

"This is the story of the kids called the Crabs": Top 100 songs of the '00s, Part 16! (of 16): #3 - #1

2010-01-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

(Edited to conceal bizarre misplaced sentences peppered throughout 1st draft)

I'm satisfied with my top 3. I'm happy with my whole list actually. Sure, there may have been too much critically acclaimed indie pop and a few genres were drastically underrepresented (American hip hop, Scandinavian metal, jazz). I still favor clever over heavy, words over beats, quiet over croon, sadness over despair... everything over chillout. But I confounded expectations with my engineered absence of Radiohead, The Arcade Fire, and Outkast's Hey Ya. The latter is inexplicably beloved (it's a nice song but it should not have changed your life.) Radiohead and Arcade Fire (and The Album Leaf and The Duke Spirit and all bands with names like that) are more album bands than song bands, Or that's just a polite way to say that they just weren't top 100 material.

I've been hemming. I've been hawing. I've been comparing the three songs mentally and aurally. I have to make the cruelest cut with my writer's knife (aka, my pen, which is actually letters on a keyboard.) I have to just come out and admit that as much as I want to put the #3 song at #1, it is not a better song than the other two. Sorry, Facebook friend (and American Music Club lead singer) Mark Eitzel, your song is only the third best of the decade.

3. Long Long Walk - American Music Club (2008)

This song is nowhere to be found. Out of print. No mp3/YouTube/bittorrent presence. I suppose I could figure out how to upload an mp3 from my rare CD and then post the mp3 file right below these words but I think this song's aura should be presided over by the lure of the unattainable.

When I saw AMC at the Echo in Los Angeles in 2008, they were selling a limited edition CD of outtakes, live songs, and other songs called Atwater Afternoon. I've spent a few afternoons in Atwater (the one in Los Angeles.) It's nice. It's lonely.

Atwater Afternoon is currently "sold out" on the official pages of AMC and Mark Eitzel. Its fifth song, Long Long Walk, is about a friendship between two young men - Mark (the reliable narrator) and his friend Larry. Though only in high school (I think), the pair see themselves as the "secret conscience of men" as they walk the streets of a city to which they've been given "the keys."

Yes, that's not just one key to the city; he said "keys." They got them all. They tried all the doors to see which ones would open. I don't know why but I picture this key-testing to be happening, well past midnight... Cool and not cold outside... Alleys and streets are haunted... Nobody sees Mark and Larry so they see each other.

Suddenly, in verse 2, "some hillbilly fuck" sporting nunchuks confronts Mark and Larry in front of a supermarket. It's not explicitly stated why the two men (boys) trigger such a reaction but, judging from the slow simmer in Eitzel's voice as he tells the story and Larry's status as a beautiful "high school champion" who always stood tall, it's probably because at least one of them and probably both of them are gay. Larry, likely more outward in his presentation of self, is the one the hillbilly is after. This is made clear by the tone in Mark's voice.

A decision needs to be made. Soon. Yes, it's 2 good guys vs. 1 bad guy but the 1 has a weapon and all the 2 are holding are a bunch of keys, the great majority of them unable to open doors.

Larry, in addition to his superhero credentials, has much wisdom for a teenager. As Mark relates the story (and I'm guessing this story is 98% true and based on a real friend)... Larry is the one that decides to meet this nunchukker head-on, right here right now. Larry says "I know what this is. I'm not butter for any man's knife." This sentence sends chills up and down me: "I KNOW WHAT THIS IS." Larry has been victimized before. It's clear that he's gained strength, perhaps not from the initial physical/psychological victimization but from not choosing to run away in quiet resignation as his default first defense. Nope - Larry fights back. And he knows what THIS is and doesn't need to name it. THIS is someone taking away Larry's life force and Larry fights back to protect that life force.

We don't know what happens in the fight. We jump to Mark the narrator's defiant exuberant pride in his friend's strength and in the fact that the two of them didn't go anywhere, they didn't run and hide from the bad man. They dealt with the hillbilly fuck and then they walked and walked some more.

There could have been blood and bruises, or just some circling around with fists and sharp fingers at the ready. The fight or the lack of it disappears from the song which ends with the chorus. "We were on a long walk. We were on a long long walk."

Larry and Mark will get to their destination but it will not be without some work, some fight. That's what the song is trying to say I think. They will spend a lifetime walking a long walk.

I hope they're still friends. Long Long Walk only saw the light of day on that purchased-by-few Atwater Afternoon album. Supposedly, it was considered to be one of the tracks on American Music Club's album The Golden Age released that same year. Now, the songs on The Golden Age are quite good and Long Long Walk may not fit thematically with most of them but I think the band should have found room for this song on their "legitimate" '08 release. If not, it should find a home on the next real AMC album or the next Mark Eitzel solo project. Larry deserves at least that.

2. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand (2004)

As someone who has spent 16 of the past 20 years as either an undergraduate college student, a graduate student, or an employee working in a college, I am familiar with the notion of "extra credit." I think it's overused in higher education but it doesn't seem to cause pain so I'll stick with it here.

If I were assigning extra credit points, Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out would garner bonus points so huge and vast and heavy that a song which normally would get relegated to the midpoint of the chart would leapfrog to #2.

But you see I've already taken into account degree of difficulty or past performance or rehearsal styles. My extra credit is just regular credit.

What did Franz Ferdinand do to deserve such esteem? If you know this song, you likely guessed where FF went the extra kilometer. It comes at the 52 second mark when they CHANGE THE SONG COMPLETELY and go from "I won't be leaving here" to "take me out." The thrusts that signal the changeover should always - ALWAYS - be accompanied by jumping in place with mad happiness. Like them over on the left.

You see, they didn't have to change the song completely. They could have started the song at the 52 second mark with the hard beats that signal the changeover. They didn't need to write an entirely different song. They could have coasted on their crisp suits and Scottish charm and still had a hit with a reduced-size Take Me Out.

Back in 2004, I got a phone call on a Friday night. My friends Monica and Hallie were going to see this new Scottish band called Franz Ferdinand the following night at the Palace in Hollywood. They had an extra ticket. Did I want to go? Of course! Monica's husband (yo Jason!) had something else to do, Hallie was inexplicably single at the time, and my then-wife was on a spiritual retreat in the Arizona wilderness. So, three young unfettered people found themselves in a spacious dark club to see a band that I knew little about, save for this very song.

I tried not to make assumptions or create expectations but I thought Franz Ferdinand were another cleverly packaged UK band of handsome lads in sharp suits who would coast on the charm of their hit single. Not even close. They were simply the tightest, most professional, rockingest live band I had seen in years. Again, they didn't have to be this good. But they were this good. Extra credit is just regular credit. And yeah I jumped up and down like a little boy when they did that thing at 52 seconds. I always do.

Finally, how did it take me 5 years to find out that Franz Ferdinand lead singer Alex Kapranos is dating Fiery Furnaces lead singer Eleanor Friedberger? FF + FF! I'm happy they found each other. If they have a child, he/she will be so musically talented and so skilled at performing live in a spontaneous charismatic fashion that you just might see him/her appear in the upper reaches of my top 200 songs of the 2020s list in a couple of decades

The second best song of the century so far. Enjoy:

1. Math is Money - Lifter Puller (2001)

In the end, I went with my original choice. I gave you clues a while back. Remember?

I told you that the song "was not released in a traditional manner. More precisely, it was not first released as a song on an album of songs by the particular artist or band."

The amazing Math is Money first appeared on the Hangin' on the Devil's Tree compilation put out by punk magazine Your Flesh in 2001. Later, it would appear on two Lifter Puller compilations.

Math Is Money - Lifter Puller

I also gave you the clues that the song was released in the first half of the decade (3/27/01) and that I first heard it in the second half of the decade (7/19/09).

And then I said that it is "a song performed in a particular genre by a band or artist not known for performing in this particular genre." Some may squabble with this assessment but this is a punk song. Lifter Puller was not really a punk band and if they were, it's more along the lines of "art punk" or "post-punk art-rock." Otherwise, put them in the rock or indie rock or bombastic beats categories. Nowhere on their discography do LP get this punk. Nowhere do they even get close. Sure, Roaming the Foam marries Iggy Pop and Soft Cell which seems like a punk move but gives you back something uncategorizable (and awesome) but not punk.

My final clue mentioned that the song's lyrics "include the following words":

and
a
smart
me
you
toilet

Yes I was trying to be funny with some of the words on the list. In fact, there are several top 100 songs that contain all the words here save toilet (can you name them?) For Math is Money, you can verify my clue here.

But WHY do I rank this song as the best of the decade? Me... Ali... a decidedly non-punk guy (with a healthy respect for punks in general) loving above all other music a manifesto of a group of teenaged thugs/drug dealers/rogues - the Crabs (see the title quote for this post; the line opens the song.) Am I not the sensitive poet who likes gentle witty love songs of poignant regret? Those can be nice but sometimes I attend the very same events you imagine me running from.

This song just has so many amazing exhilarating moments. It contains weird funny prescient lyrics. And, for the hell of it, LP gives you TWO choruses and then positions them in an unexpected way (putting chorus #2 immediately after the second instance of chorus #1). The second chorus happens to be the best chorus in the history of music.

What else do I like? The guitar that punctuates the second chorus. Slug from Atmosphere showing up for exactly 7 words - "MiM and MiM." The way Craig Finn says "handbags" in verse 1. And at the end of the song, what about the manner in which the singer asks for amnesty once again, this time in New Bedford. He needs to be granted amnesty in a new strange place and he can't even ask politely. Misdirected frustration and anger.

After we meet the Crabs and learn their mantra ("you only get what you grab") and their big dreams ("grand to a gram if they could decimate these other gangs"), we listen to the narrator offer his very own sloganeering life philosophy, the narrator having been Peter-Panned here from all the way out in Springfield, Mass and who is not a member of the Crabs (I think). According to the narrator: "math is money and money is math." Well, I agree... if A = B, then B = A. But what if A = B is not really true and there are people more in-the-know about this than me? What then? Let's change the subject:

(pause for regroup)

"Leather vests and assless chaps" is the next line in chorus #1. Huh? That imagery was unexpected. It seems the narrator has a more complicated life than we initially thought. How the Crabs fit in, I'm not sure. Perhaps the narrator just wants to tell a story about some dudes he knows.

Then, in the next verse, the moment of truth comes. Some rich kid gets stabbed. He's lost in his eyelids. Something goes down the toilet. Someone mentions that the product is short by an ounce. And they pounce, the kids called the Crabs pounce:

This ain't smart dude, this ain't art dude
This is sonic economics and I'll put it on a graph for you to prove

The narrator (Who is he? A Crab? The rich kid? The ounce counter?), he repeats his narrator slogans. Not much has changed with the first rule: One is still money, the other math.

Okay so the deal broke down and there was pouncing. What is the narrator going to do? In verse 3, he speaks of getting Peter Panned BACK INTO Springfield, Mass. So now it's clear: when the Crabs pounced, they pounced on the narrator, at the very least. He's got to get the hell out of Minneapolis (where the Puller dudes were based back then).

Up in Northeast Mpls., you will find the previously cited Jefferson Ave. though I gotta ask: Could they have been singing about another city? Jefferson does not seem to be the kind of street where Crabs pounce on an ounce counter with lost eyelids. But that's what my research seems to indicate. Wherever we are, everyone goes a separate way, though a couple of quiet observers note the eerie silence and make sure each man hidden in the Sunday bushes knows that he was noticed.

(Note: I have no idea what I was getting at with that last sentence. But it sounds good; I'm leaving it in.)

(I've ignored your question long enough. I will now answer you. You ask "What the hell does it mean when someone is "Peter Panned"? I thought I knew. It turns out that there are many many interpretations, the most interesting ones being the most sexual. Go ahead - read all 29 definitions at Urban Dictionary. I vote for #4 or #23, either one splashed with a bit of #15.)

All of that going on into one song, that should be enough. But we get a lot more, just like with Take Me Out. We get a second chorus. All hail the second chorus! Note: This is not a bridge; the instrumental bridge actually follows the second chorus, which goes:

Twin Cities! They're gangin' up on me

Twin Cities! They're double-teamin' me

Yeah, narrator Craig needs to get the hell out of Minneapolis (and St. Paul) and go to the relative safety of the Northeastern United States. The Crabs may be young and a certain level of stupid but they scare people. They scared me and I'm fully aware this is a song, filled with fictional events and caricatures of characters.

When "Twin Cities" is yelled out, I pump my fist. As long as no one is watching. I don't fist-pump too often. This is significant.

More of what makes this song #1: We still await word on the long and tortured mystery of why assless chaps were required or at least desired. Any LP members out there? Email me (see upper right corner of screen) and explain it, okay?

One day I'd like to hear this song live On chorus #2, I would jump higher than I did that night I heard Take Me Out live. (Because LP is #1 and FF is #2, that's why I'd jump higher.)

Thus, one of the final songs Lifter Puller ever recorded and released is my #1 favorite song of the whole past 10 years.

And to you math-phobes: It's true. Math IS money. Money IS math. But sometimes math and the accompanying knowledge of risks and rewards lead one to actions where math is most certainly not money; it is the absence of money. The vests and the chaps just come with the territory.

Now, my lunch break is over and I will go back to my mathematical operations consistent with statistical analyses. Which will earn me money.

If you read all 16 entries and all 100 songs, you're a saint. If you read at least half, you're on your way to being exalted.

Here's the link again for the song. Don't be afraid. Listen. It's right there / Look down. I don't want you to hurt yourself scrolling up. In a few days, once we've all had time ro reflect and rejoice, I will create a new gigantic post of all 100 songs, substituting links for actual embeds (I think) so it doesn't take 20 minutes to load for those of us with iPhones.

Math Is Money - Lifter Puller

Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your time.

The New Year. My New Life. In List Form (not about music)

2010-01-04T16:08:00.000-08:00

The year is 2010.

20 - 10 = 10.
The list will go up to 10.

1. I said goodbye to 2009 with such happiness. I was happy to see it go away. It was an unlucky year. 2010 has started out with cleaner kitchens, better vibes.

2. I now live on Bermuda Street. Still in Long Beach. I have a view of rooftops and satellite dishes from one window, more rooftops and antennas from another window. I like the place very much.

3. I keep trying but I still can't spend that damn Kohl's store credit. Target is easier.

4. I need someone to tell me what book I should be reading next. I usually know these things but books have bewildered me lately. But I implore you - in advance - don't suggest the dead Swedish guy or the time traveler woman or Chabon or anyone with a beard. I mean ANY kind of beard. Yes, I am very unreasonable.

5. My keys are color-coded. I like it this way.

6. This is the year that I finish watching The Wire. (Anyone have DVDs they want to send my way, go ahead. You know my street and my city. There is no apartment number. My zip code is my old one plus 12. My house number is 4 digits long and the first and third digits are identical. If one were smart enough to look at a map, one would see that my street is 3 blocks long, thus limiting the possibilities. Final clue: The first two digits are my age when I got my first 4.0 semester. The last two digits are my age when I saw my first Leonard Cohen concert.

7. I will not try to push the whole "woe was me in '09" thing too far. But my epic post about last Valentine's Day is still under construction. It is my Mona Lisa, my To Kill a Mockingbird, my Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend... and oops I mentioned music. Twice (Cohen, Sweet). Sorry about that. But yeah - last Valentine's Day. You think you know the story but there's so much more.

8. I'm inching toward vegetarianism.

9. The Timberwolves aren't that bad.

10. I don't want to talk about it.

"You won't lose the beat if you just keep clapping your hands": Top 100 Songs of the '00s, Part 15 of 16: #8 - #4

2010-01-04T04:47:00.000-08:00

I do the hard work so you don't have to. After a mere two songs yesterday, I give you FIVE today.

8. The Ruminant Band - Fruit Bats (2009)
My favorite song of 2009 lands at #8, a shock considering this song didn't strike me as all that interesting the first time I heard it. I remember reading (on another blog) someone's opinion that this song could very well be an anthem for a generation. Again, upon first listen, I didn't feel the same way. But then first listen became second became third became twentieth and I think I listened to it three times just last hour. It is the anthem for a generation.

But... not so fast. On December 26th, knowing that this song was slated for a spot on the list somewhere between 5 and 9, I experienced a small panic: I had no idea what this song was about. I couldn't make out most of the words. Any generational anthem has to be about something, even if that something is mystical bluster or blustery mysticism. I noted the singing of the song's title (uttered only once, in the final verse) and I made out a few other phrases ("buckets of love" and "mustard seed" being the best). And Wikipedia told me that a "ruminant" is a mammal that chews its food, regurgitates it, and chews it again (aka chewing "cud"). It also means to "ponder" or to "chew on" a topic.

These meanings appear to have little to do with the song though. For days I searched for the lyrics and came up empty. Sure the song appears to be recognizable to thousands of people (tens of thousands might be a stretch.) But no one bothered to post the lyrics. (Yes if I just bought the CD, I'd apparently have access to a lyric sheet.)

Finally, someone came through and posted the lyrics; it appears that the song lyrics are simultaneously childlike and priestly. At other times, they seem like gibberish and then suddenly poetic. I still don't know what it means but I think they're getting at a communal vibe between man and nature, between animals and insects, between a merle and a murder. In other words, Tad, Ben, and Pete may be alone on one level but they have grubs and bread and music to carry them through, Tad clearly benefiting from the presence of an Indian girl. Or I can do a copy-and-paste and let y'all figure it out:

You'll always have smokes if you always give buckets of love
Like little sad Tad who was living on beetles and grubs
He had a blue-eyed merle
and loved an Indian girl
Lived alone in the warm wet fields in his corner of the world

You'll always eat bread if you always have seeds to sow
LIke old Zen Ben who lived with a murder of crows
He wore a crown of beans
And a belt of weeds
Slept alone in the warm wet fields on a bed of mustard seed

You won't lose the beat if you just keep clapping your hands
Like sweet sweet Pete who clapped for the Ruminant Band
He had a broken lung
And a bit-off tongue
Lived alone in the warm wet fields under moon and sun

7. Benton Harbor Blues - Fiery Furnaces (2006)

I used to think that Hold Steady / Lifter Puller lead singer Craig Finn polarized listeners more than any other vocalist. Those who love him idolize him; those who don't love him want to smack him and remove his vocal cords. I never understood people's resistance to Finn's talk-rap-shout-singing; his style fits perfectly with his (his band's) songs.

Then I noticed that the same people who disliked Finn loathed Eleanor Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces. Friedberger made it safe for me to play Finn for these folks. I have likely been de-friended by Facebook friends who can't stand the FFs but mostly can't bear to listen to Eleanor's seemingly classically trained yet jazzy in an indie-rock-sort-of-way vocal style. This truly puzzles me.

Look at her. She's a doll. She couldn't possibly rub people the wrong way. Is it the way she treats every word out of her mouth as the final word up to that point in time and nothing else needs to be said until the next word comes and so on. Like going to an opera where the singer has no short-term memory. In other words - MY kind of singer!

Of all the songs she's sung, Benton Harbor Blues may be her most subdued vocal performance (unlike say, Charmaine Champagne). You don't hear her voice until two minutes and 17 seconds into Benton Harbor Blues. And you feel the protagonist's quiet pain; you sense that these blues are real and, like most real blues, they're disjointed and static... fascinating to watch but ultimately sad. And the high temperature tomorrow in Benton Harbor is a seasonably average 23 but I bet it feels like 6.

As far as I know, her brother and main Furnace writer Matthew Friedberger is the one who penned the song and its killer of a line "I thought of the ways that I've broke my own heart" but Eleanor, by seemingly not wanting to sing those words and singing them anyway, owns the line. How do you recover from that? Breaking your own heart.

It's probably best that I never heard this song until 2009. It wouldn't have helped in 2006. By the way, I'm choosing the 7+minute epic version, with the instrumental quirks and odd pauses, rather than the more straightforward 3 minute version (Benton Harbor Blues Again) which gets more than twice as many listens as the other version on lala. I expect that my link will launch the long version up the lala play frequency list.

Benton Harbor Blues - The Fier...

6. I'm Waking Up To Us - Belle & Sebastian (2001)

I wrote enough about them yesterday. Read what I wrote yesterday but pretend that their evolution to expert craftsmen was not complete... pretend that it's 2001, not 2004.

Also, keep in mind that Stuart Murdoch likely wrote this song intentionally as a "clueless narrator" whose arrogance is his downfall. Only he doesn't realize it. Sure, he sings "She was the one love of my life. And I let her go" so he knows the stakes are high. But then, in the same verse, he stops trying: "I fed her with a spoon. I made her mother smile. I helped the kid survive." He grabs the small victories where he can and lets the string section take over the longing.

(Some say that the song was written by Murdoch as a break-up missive directed toward soon-to-depart bandmate Isobel Campbell. But no one is that self-critical and self-aggrandizing in the same song. Not even Scott Weiland. No, it's a story, a story Stu can relate to, but a story all the same.) He would deal with Isobel more directly in 2006 with Dress Up In You. Enjoy the live version; it's practically identical to the real one.

5. The Wind and the Mountain - Liz Phair (2005)

I went up a mountain. And I saw another mountain. And then I saw yet another mountain. So I parked. And then my car wouldn't start. Then I got it jumpstarted but not before I got a parking ticket. They say the curb was painted yellow; I thought that was just a reflection. But the car - yeah it was a battery. I used up too much juice when I parked in the strange structure by the freeway and went to sleep. In my car. I was tired. Yeah, the strange structure is just a parking garage. But those were really mountains. And here come some more. And... NO! I've got food poisoning. Flat tire. Alone, stomach flu, car accident. "In love" vs. love. Fixed the tire but now the house key won't turn; did I take the spare and give the good one away. Left my wallet in El Segundo. Now the key works. But I'm not home. Why am I using my house key if I'm not home. Home is farther up and away. Went up a mountain. And there's another mountain. Yet another one. I stop. I gather my pen and notebook. I write something down, something that will soon be forgotten.

(What I did there was take the comically ridiculous frustrations that defined 2009 for me and addressed them in the context of the mountains-after-mountains message of the song, a message that probably should have been defined before my experiment began. Because only four people have ever heard this song and three of them are me and two people I played the song for.)

Yes. I truly love this song. It's truly inspiring. Though Liz Phair is not the inspiring type, it suits her well. I miss her. I'm counting on her comeback. How can I mount a comeback if Liz is still formulating hers?

Wind And The Mountain - Liz Ph...

4. I Trawl the Megahertz - Paddy McAloon (2003)

Here I take the most shameful of shortcuts: I re-post what I wrote about this song 3 years ago, with some edits:

Many of you know that one of my favorite bands is Prefab Sprout. They don't really exist anymore as a band but 4 years ago their lead singer Paddy McAloon released a solo album called I Trawl the Megahertz. In the 22-minute title track, a female narrator speaks Paddy's words. She tells his life story, a story that is poignantly sad and a bit amusing and - to me - infinitely meaningful and amazing. The piece begins:

I am telling myself the story of my life,
stranger than song or fiction
We start with the joyful mysteries,
before the appearance of ether,
trying to capture the elusive:
the farm where the crippled horses heal,
the woods where autumn is reversed,
and the longing for bliss in the arms
of some beloved from the past

(Present-day interruption: I'm told by a friend and by some cursory Googling that the song may actually be about a woman telling her own story, that this is why Paddy had such a person narrate, that it isn't necessarily about him. I'll accept this as a possibility but I can't say for sure.)

And with a beginning like that, I'm hooked. The story continues - absent father, search for meaning, astute perceptions of the surrounding world. But ultimately there's a frustration in the story of his (her) life:

Ever the dull alchemist
I have before me all the necessary elements:
it is their combination that eludes me
Forgive me ... I am sleepwalking.

When he wrote this song, Paddy McAloon was 49 and suffering from both an unfortunate haircut and a temporary disease that caused him to be almost completely blind:

Repeat after me: happiness is only a habit
I am listening to the face in the mirror
but I don't think I believe what she's telling me

I love the sweeping European imagery of the song (since the Middle Ages) coupled with its small personal yet universal details (face in mirror, unseen). Not only has he handed the narrative duties to a woman, but he chose a young American woman, Yvonne Connors, to do the honors. And Paddy was a man who wrote and sang every one of his band's songs, a man who loved to be photographed as the embodiment of Prefab Sprout.

By day and night, fancy electronic dishes are trained on the heavens
They are listening for smudged echoes of the moment of creation
They are listening for the ghost of a chance.
They may help us make sense of who we are and where we came from;
and, as a compassionate side effect, teach us that nothing is ever lost

If he can't see and can only hear, then the lines and swirls that send the radio voices to his ears are the most important thing in the world. The universe is always here even when we - or a loved one or our ability to see - are not. It's "a compassionate side effect" which may seem like not enough but it's the most the universe (or any entity/thing) can do.

I won't give away the song's ending. The lyrics are here (just scroll down to the first song with words) and an interview with McAloon is here. If you want to hear the song, just ask me to play it for the next time you see me (assuming you have 22 minutes to spare). I can't find a good link.

Only three songs left. I know who they are. These are your clues (in NO order because there is no order yet. I have no idea what will happen):

One song is about danger.
No - make that two songs about danger.
I'm not sure what the third song is about.

One singer dates another singer mentioned in my list.
Another singer seemingly dates no one.
The other one keeps his/her private life private.

Still don't know how they'll be ranked. But any one of them would make a fitting #1.

"And the headstones climbed up the hills": Top 100 Songs of the '00s, Part 14: #10 - #9

2010-01-03T02:36:00.000-08:00

The decade is over but the list is not.

10. Stay Loose - Belle & Sebastian (2003)

I first heard Belle & Sebastian in the hopeful early summer of 1997. The If You're Feeling Sinister CD played forlornly in my car as I settled in comfortably to an existence of graduate study, milky coffee drinks, and midday trysts with squirrely women with romantic notions and unspoken regrets. Yeah I just wrote that.

My B&S kinship continued as I bought everything they released and fought off the cynics who didn't believe in the quiet cuddly-yet-dark Scottish wonderland that Stuart and the others were selling. I put the unfairly maligned pop gem Seymour Stein on mix CDs sent to six people in three time zones. I spread the myth that was actually reality as best as I could. I loved that band.

I loved their quiet simplicity, their never changing chords and ever changing moods (from pensive to polite to ruminant to rueful). By the time the Minnesota Years ended for me (7/15/02), they were a consistent part of my life, as ever-present as soft pretzels, sleep-for-7-hours, and remote controls.

As the earth continued to stand still and change kept itself from rearing its unnecessary head, something happened to Belle & Sebastian. To say it was unexpected is an understatement on a par with 'sun makes light.' This is what happened: they learned how to play their instruments. Really well.

This transformation of B&S - from lyric-centric mopemongers to musical geniuses who can perform skillfully in any genre at a moment's notice - was a swift, yet permanent, one. A casual or not-so-casual listener might be led to believe that it was Trevor Horn's production that made all the difference in the world on 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress (the best album of a the decade by a band not fronted by Craig Finn). But those same listeners, upon hearing the follow-up The Life Pursuit in 2006 and (especially) seeing the subsequent tour, should have realized that these guys and girls, after years of playing/scheming together got really really good.

(It should be noted that many people, myself included, didn't necessarily think that the B&S's evolution to Steely Dan-level instrumental capabilities made them a better band. Many people, myself sometimes included, liked that early stuff better. Still, if you think of them as a completely new band from 2003 on, you'd have to put them in the top 5 of artists/musicians/bands working today.)

The final song on Waitress was a shocker. After hearing what a mid-80s mix tape of mine once described (when describing something else) as Different Songs of Varying Musical Styles, anyone listening to songs 1-11 could have walked away impressed and gone outside to do whatever one did back in 2003. But song #12 was still there waiting. How many of you saw it coming - the note-perfect tone-savvy tribute to 1979 post-punk-new-wave-pure-pop, with a sardonic twist? How many of you figured that Belle and Sebastian would lay down the most badass tribute to Sniff and the Tears' Drivers Seat? Nobody, that's who.

9. Palmcorder Yajna - Mountain Goats (2003)
If I were to rank the top sentences written by music reviewers this past decade, the #1 spot would belong to David Antrobus of Pop Matters for this sentence about the Mountain Goats song Palmcorder Yajna, written in his review of the Mountain Goats' album We Shall All Be Healed:

There are so many dimensions to this song that you’re no longer sure whether it’s your head that’s racing or your heart that’s spinning ... in short, with its headstones climbing up hills, unknowable cryptic symbols, carpenter ants in dressers and reflective tape on sweatpants, it’s the arcane Rosetta Stone of the entire album.

Does an album need a Rosetta Stone, an arcane one at that? This album, an impossibly sad set of songs about the bizarre banal life of a group of teenage meth addicts, needs it. The album title is a lie; not all are healed. But a story needed to be told, its precise language of dualities needed to be taught (hence, the stone).

This song leaves me with two images: its opening line gives us the geography: "Holt Boulevard, between Garey and White." Lead Goat John Darnielle places us in Pomona. There has never been a song before or since that has placed us in Pomona and there's a reason for that. The second, brutal image was referenced above. It should have stuck with you; it'll never leave my sight: "reflective tape on our sweatpants." Jesus, why would anyone do that? The studio version (lala) is amazing but the live version (youtube) is a revelation.

Palmcorder Yajna - The Mountai...

"Down the brain of my river": Top 100 Songs of the '00s, Part 13: #14 - #11

2009-12-30T20:37:00.000-08:00

Back when I was writing part 6 of this beautifully rambling list, I announced that a decision has been made about the #1 song. I gave lyrical clues... genre clues and chronology clues. I sounded pretty sure of myself. But I knew and you knew that I would change my mind. In fact, I might change it back again or go in a completely different direction when I finish this list. Which could happen tomorrow. Or some time in mid January. No, it will happen tomorrow.

Who could it be? On whose temple could be bestowed the honor of "favorite song of the decade" by a strapping social scientist who spent the decade shambling between game show immortality and near-miss moments of clarity.... between great ideas rising to reality and bad ideas filling spaces between split atoms.... between engagement and marriage and divorce and the crazy 2006 and wacky 2009 sandwiching transitional 2007 and 2008.... between the great grand hall by the river and the small summer steps to the courthouse door.... between Seymour's slumpy shuffle and spry skittish heart and Ringo's rollicking roll and rough-hewn spirit. No change has been like this change. No past will be as meaningful as this past, as soon as it passes. I've never waited for such a thing.

Who could it be? The original choice, a street opera with lessons learned? That other song - the hit song - with its precise switches and its tailor-sewn metropolitan suits hiding continental courage? The song by the idol, the song my friend says will cause me great embarrassment if I put it at #1? The break-up song that breaks my heart even though neither one of them is me, not in that song? The friendship song? Have patience. First, some also rans:

14. Epilepsy is Dancing - Antony and the Johnsons (2009)
The second best song of 2009 is a beautifully quiet song that begins devastatingly:

Epilepsy is dancing
She’s the Christ now departing
And I’m finding my rhythm
As I twist in the snow

All the metal burned in me
Down the brain of my river
That fire was searching
For a waterway home

And in the end, a human voice cries out to be cut in quadrants. And the epilepsy has danced itself done spent itself, leaving the narrator to dance. Here's the fascinating video.

13. Your Little Hoodrat Friend - The Hold Steady (2005)
Of course I wasn't omitting this song, like I once threatened to. There were other candidates for deletion that raised their ordinary hands, allowing Finn, Kubler, Nicolay, Polivka, and Drake to rep-re-sent lucky 13. This is the first song I heard by them and the one I play first to people who've never heard them. The fact that I know all the locations cited in the song isn't the reason I like it. It isn't the Rick Springfield guitars. It's the rock and not the roll. It's the words and not the silence. It's just a damn sweet song.

12. Virginia - Vic Chesnutt (2005)
I'm sad that he took his life last week. I'm sad I only listened to a little of his music though I always admired the man. This is the Vic Chesnutt song I keep coming back to, the one that fills one void but leaves open another... I want more of his songs. It's a good thing many many of his songs will always be around. In this song, he loves his mother and maybe someone else. Virginia is the first of two songs on this video:

11. You Were Right - Badly Drawn Boy (2002)
Earlier this year, I wrote about this song on my admittedly brilliant "Top 11 Chorus-less Songs of All Time" list. I said "it's a song about choosing music over love and though I've never actually made that mistake, I sometimes I wish I would have." That sentence is full of lies. What I should have written is "it's a song about choosing music over love. I've done that. I sometimes wish I hadn't."

A Brief Interaction

2009-12-29T21:00:00.001-08:00

This is my first post written on my iPhone. Considering that it took me over a year of iPhone usage before I felt compelled to use it for blogging, this might not be a common writing method for me. But you never know. If you told me back in 1988 that I would be typing diary entries on a miniature keyboard on an uncorded phone, I would have...I would have believed you probably.

I'm fully moved into my new apartment. I have no complaints, no crazy stories involving malfunctioning UHaul vans or tranny neighbors. I like the place a lot. It feels big and free. Private but not isolated. I have my own parking place for the first time since 2006. There's a skylight in the kitchen! Everything is in its proper place. My neighbors are nice.

(Aside to the 2 boys who live next door. Yes it was me who stepped on - and thus crushed -your Star Wars action toy spaceship or whatever it was. I'm truly sorry. But the courtyard belongs to all of us and until Oscar installs some security lights, it's pretty dark out there. Besides, it was just a Phantom Menace-era Wars toy so its no big deal So the lesson is this: Please pick up your toys.)

I'm enjoying my free week off. It's the best benefit of working at a university. I'm being paid to sit on my blanketed couch and watch OnDemand cable TV. I'm bored.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone