september baseball

forgive the jumping of the monthly gun, but i turned my calendar over this morning, ostensibly because it's far easier to write "spinners vs oneanta, 5pm" in a full box without a number than to try to squeeze it into half a box, sharing space with both a 31 and a 24. (ok, the verb in that sentence ought to have been "read", i admit it...) besides, once the birthday has passed, what's left worth worrying about august, anyway?

the weather is spectacular this morning, and demanding of a full outdoor plate. the revs need to give padilla a little time to get the coverages down with mr. parkhurst (giving up 2 goals to little speedy guys like landon donovan always bothers me, but a late tie off the foot of shalrie joseph always satisfies) so methinks i might just knock one or two down this morning to re-balance the universe. :-) (nah, too nice a day--i'll just enjoy the last "friendly" of the summer and leave the lumber-lowering for next week's season opener:-)).

so how about them sox???

first of all, there's something intensely satisfying about drubbing a division leader and likely future playoff opponent while sporting a 5-foot-nuthin energizer killer rabbit--mr. babe pedroia himself--in your cleanup spot. you just knew he wouldn't be able to help himself from rising to the occasion. (4-fer-4 PLUS a walk and a couple of runs scored, the day after he went 4-fer-4 plus a walk and 3 runs scored, though no rbi last night because it would appear that mr. jed "julie who?" lowrie was intent on scrubbing up the bases before he or mr. ortiz could get their chances). speaking of julie who, in the 38 games since he was called back up to the big club for good, ol' jed has collected 27 rbi, while not making a single error in the hole in over 100 chances. (his lone error for the season, dropping his fielding percentage to .994, was at 3b, leaving only omar vizquel among shortstops fielding over 150 total chances at any position with a better percentage, and 27 in 38 would project to a reasonable 150-game hypothetical season total of 106, and the guy's been batting 7th and 8th most of the way). you put mike lowell's gold glove back at third, and i'd say we're sporting the hands-down best infield in major league baseball, bar none, and mr. lugo can take his manos de piedra back to the dominican and pout about it all he wants. (it's that bullpen we need to talk to mr. epstein about).

so it's still august and the yankees are virtually eliminated from playoff contention, and that's a pretty remarkable thing. (coolstandings.com runs through game projections for the remainder of 1 million hypothetical seasons and then extrapolates the probabilities of each team making it, and here's espn's write-up on the process, and please note the wizening 1.6 on al east line number 3, beneath the gaudy 93.8 on the al east line number 2, and, yeah, that's tempting fate, but it's time to start doing that again). think joe girardi is getting much sleep these days? it's gone so far down there that the yankee stadium crowd has actually taken to cheering FOR carl pavano, and there's nothing more bizarre than that. and the sox, though they're still gonna need some help to rein back in those impossible-dream rays (would have sounded SO much better to be able to say impossible-dream devil rays) for a division crown, are pretty much assured of the wild card now that they've put that big lowell spinner alumni hurt on both the twins and the white sox. (3 out of 4 sox infielders agree, and that guy making the circus catches in the outfield and the closer with the best look at 'em from the bullpen do, too).

so, be that all as it may, the real boys of summer are the BOYS of summer, and the spinners go off down at lelacheur at 5pm today. no more peeks at louie sumoza now that he's been traded for the kotsay-cure to jd drew's ailing back, but you still have super aussie mitch dening and the rest of the boys, so there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

play ball!

lowell rocks

a little ukelele noir and inspiration ensues--my ipods all now are sync'd with the latest incarnation of my itunes library, complete with the brandy new lowell rocks playlist. melvern taylor and the fabulous meltones, jen kearney and the lost onion, and frank morey have all staked the first claims there, to be joined soon by all the cd's recently and additionally purchased because no collection is complete until it's complete. (anyone finding a copy of melvern's "handsome bastard" can claim reimbursement and their additional special reward here--don't wait and don't be late). right now i'm swept away in jen kearney's "pantomime" as it plays on the pc speakers, and remembering how perfectly her rhodes segues from virgin to slutty as she chooses her patches...

melvern taylor day 2

remember when you were a kid and you bought a new record that you loved, and then you played it over and over and over and over and over again?

the four day birthday distance runner vs the sprinters

ever remember being sent ruefully up to bed because someone else--mom, dad, whoever--said you had to go? i took one of those long walks up last night, and it's ironic that you never stop having to take them for one reason or another, no matter how much you believe you won't. (being 20 miles from home with nothing but your pair of sneakers if not your designated driver is one).

i'll let their reading this if they ever might stand for their admonishment, but it's not lost on me that everyone in my life has, at one point or another, caused me to miss an encore, and i'm not sure exactly what will be the solution to that.

the first thought that springs consequently to mind is that jen kearney and her lost onion pulled "what is and what should never be" out of the way-back bag last night (quelle apropos!!!) and it was GOOD. no left/right stereo effects to aid the solo, but it doesn't matter. (props to carl!) it was my birthday, and i was rocking to zep where i perhaps would have least expected, and the universe was for those moments in perfect alignment. they're so hot with the horns and yahuba, and the more i hear the songs the more i love them. latin rhythms, soulful r&b arrangements, and TIGHT. there's no better reason to climb down a set of stairs into a basement bar on gods green earth.

there was a pointless discussion in the car on the way home about how, with the barest minimum of additional presentation, the lead singer would have audiences dropped breathless on the floor from just the simple sight of her, (not that they weren't all in vigorous agreement that she slayed on sight regardless) and i was too tired from having been pulled out BEFORE THE LAST NOTE to try to educate them on what real beauty is. (perhaps part of it is that three out of the four of us at the table aren't attracted to women, but i digress...) there was a moment that turned into many moments during the evening when jen was at her microphone pouring it all out, and i could see how free she was to be singing like that. stops time and my heart whenever a musician can do that... the sound in the space was so perfect to me, and its in those moments where people cease to have an appearance that's not EVERYTHING about them--sound, taste, touch, smell... is there a sight not perfect that melds all?

so they'll forget there's a band, and call her "my crush" (one of my wittiest and favorite people started that one) and miss the fact that i spend more of my time craning to watch the guitar player (my standard concertgoing weakness) than marvelling at how much worthy of adoration their frontwoman remains to be. (and, don't get me wrong, i could stare at her all night, too).

where was i?

oh, music!

why does it matter what people look like?

why does midnight fall on people like a dark weight and steal from them their inspiration and what could have been their life, if only they were poised to seize it?

i could have rocked all night. i could have had the barkeep pour me another cambridge amber ale or three, and i could have sailed right on through to this moment without blinking or batting an eye. (afternoons are what naps are for).

sorry, jklo, all of you, that i had to be one of the early stairclimbers. you know you sounded far better than that, and, someday, i'll figure out how to engineer the party so that i don't have to be. because my heart was still downstairs with you, even if the ride couldn't be.

(and if i found out you guys did let love rule after i had to ditch, i think i'm gonna cry).

GREAT SHOW

melvern taylor and the fabulous meltones

you must hear this band. like von sternberg's theory of cinema, that the best can be enjoyably viewed upside down and backwards, you could fall in love with simply the sound of these guys, forward or reverse, without listening to a single lyric, and be completely satisfied. cd baby will let you buy spider and the barfly, though only preview two of the tracks, while it'll disappoint you that handsome bastard is out of stock but let you sample all of them. go figure. but go listen. you must.

fabuloso is easier to get (there's new on amazon for less than $5) and it's got my new favorite song on it (angel on my shoulder). love songs for losers you can get straight from the merch bag at the show, which is my personal recommendation to you for that one, coming as it does complete with one of the sweetest evenings you'll ever spend in a bar, but i'll leave the ultimate choice up to you.

i love my town. (you could see it coming that they're from lowell from the get-go, right?)

from the police blotter

though the dateline is wilmington, the lowell connection is in there, so you can enjoy this from today's sun:

wilmington -- a 31-year-old man is facing a charge of operating under the influence of drugs, after police say they found him passed out in his running car at fordham road and concord street early tuesday.

after managing to revive [him] about 4:30am, officers said they noticed the strong odor of spray paint in the car. they also found yellow paint "caked" under [his] nose...

"officers determined that he had been huffing from a spray can before he passed out" ... "he failed all of his field sobriety tests and was subsequently arrested".

so here's my favorite part:

a 46-year-old lowell woman who also was found passed out in [the] car was taken to the hospital for evaluation. she is not facing any charges.

although [the man] is currently homeless, he has prior addresses in acton and maine...

you gotta love a country where you can be a 31 yr old homeless guy and still get cougar tail while huffing the krylon. (which reminds me, i need to write to brian wilson to see if he can update "california girls" with something appropriate for our mill city hotties).

the three martini lunch, the lost weekend, and the danger of losing onesself in a show like mad men

when birthdays, tectonic-level life changes, and fantastic new/old worlds where a man could have anything his imagination could summon for him converge, the possibilities are endless.

the goal is to make it through sunday and its 5pm spinners game. the gauntlet begins happily with dinner tonight at dali, followed by ukelele heaven and stevie wonder goes to cuba. (which would be melvern taylor and the fabulous meltones opening for jen kearney and the lost onion at the lizard lounge in cambridge, complete with designated driving throughout, yay!). friday is regroup day before keb mo at boardinghouse park, leading to saturday and regroup day redux before robt cray at the same venue. sunday, it's all day brunch leading up to baseball in the late afternoon sunshine. (yes, it is always sunny among the plans for my birthday).

james hunter and chris isaak were a fine prelude. i told james at the merchandise area, recalling his recent show at the paradise in boston, to which he agreed, that his best venues are those where the people don't start seated at tables. chris isaak's mirror suit for his encores was priceless, too. (helped that james had returned to the stage with his horn section to help out). i didn't have breasts to sign, (one woman did, i kid you not), but james shook hands with me anyway. i love live music.

party starts at the lizard tonight at 8:30!

patriotism

"those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety". -- ben franklin, from the title page of "an historical review of the constitution and government of pennsylvania", 1759.

if we consider ourselves americans, why not, next time we hear bush or any other horse's ass talking about the "safety and security of the american people", remember where we come from.

we are what we say

this has been hanging around my inbox (thanks to a similarly-contrarian geo-politicist) for a few days, and i thought it might be useful as food for everyone's thought, in case you're one of those who might be more aligned with the "western" line of rhetoric about the recent caucusus violence.

i'm frequently amazed at blissful american ignorance when it comes to foreign blood feuds, though less and less surprised as the years go by, if only from experience. i think perhaps that we, owing to the petty frictions within our "melting pot", have grown an extremely sanitized view of what it might mean in various other parts of the world to be a distinct people. (e.g. our perceptions of "the troubles" in northern ireland are all broadcast in the queen's english...) we think the world thinks like us, and we're confused when others don't follow our perceptions.

"welcomed as liberators" in relation to the tribal randomness that is "iraq" is an example one such folly. unwilling to pay enough attention during history class to understand the british colonial whim that created a border where none ought to exist, we persist in calling the people there "the iraqis" when there has never been, really and historically, any such thing. little wonder that the kurds and the sunni and the shia arabs cannot peacefully make sense of what we are trying to impose there, but impose-away we continue, all the while blaming everybody else there for our ignorance. heaven help the blundering us presidential candidate who doesn't also realize, beyond those historically intractable geo-political relationships in what we persist in calling "iraq", that farsi is a light-year's jump from arabic, and a whole different kettle of fish. the brand of nationism practiced in iran might as well be on the far side of the moon for all we can understand of it.

so, no wonder, just as ignorance of the balkans once lit the fuse on world war one, we are standing on the precipice of something potentially explosive in the caucasus while completely ignorant of where the bombs of our rhetoric are falling. ossetians aren't kidding when they resist georgian domination--they speak something akin to farsi, while the georgians hold onto a tongue some think might be closest related to basque, and they're as different as two neighboring peoples can be, both linguistically, and ideologically. the ossetians have backed the russians right down the historical line. the georgians somewhat more than less so. voila--flashpoint.

so here we are trying to play judge and jury over who is right and who is wrong, as if this is some sort of "states rights" kerfuffle, when the answers are profound, as well as both everyone and no one. we think nothing of sanctioning the "freedom" of kosovo from the serbs, yet play outrage at the same thing in reverse in ossetia. if you want my opinion, i think both areas are proxy for a dick-measuring contest between the russians and the west, and, observing that we've got folks like dick cheney pulling levers behind the curtain on our side, i'd say i know who will prove to be the biggest one in the end.

sovereignty is a curious thing. it's either respected, or it's not. we've proved we have no respect for it in serbia and iraq and guantanamo. it's only going to lead to war if we can't respect its disrespect in georgia in the same way.

some day, if our ideals are worth anything to us, we'll be able to devise a post-national ideology that will recognize autonomy from the basque country to kurdistan to even, dare i say it, scotland, too. until then, it's cold war two.

mad men, and why critics aren't always wrong

from the first season of mad men, courtesy of a dear friend who always knows what i need:

roger sterling (asked the quintessential existential question, of what do women want, immediately after having denied that he had told don draper over the course of a drunken evening that his daughter was seeing a psychiatrist): "you know what? i am very comfortable with my mind--thoughts clean and unclean, loving and... the opposite of that. but i am not a woman. and i think it behooves any man to toss all female troubles into the hands of a stranger".

CLASSIC, but, wait, there's more:

don draper: "we had one head shrinker in the army--a gossip, busting with other people's thoughts".

sterling: "hasn't changed much, just costs more".

draper: "you can't shoot at them".

sterling: "we live in troubling times".

[just hand them every emmy in the closet]

draper: "we do? who could not be happy with all of this?"

sterling: "jesus--you know what they want? everything. especially if the other girls have it. trust me, psychiatry is just this year's candy pink stove". -- long pause to finish his whiskey -- "it's just more happiness".

writing like this is stunning to me--and i wish, for all the candy pink stoves in the world, i could write...

"we will be welcomed as liberators"

anybody confused about dead-eye dick cheney's concept of "welcome" should compare the streets of iraq to the scenes of jubilation and celebration in abkhazia and south ossetia. russia has, perhaps for less-than-perfect reasons, done a right thing.

what do the neighbors in the ukraine think--the country perhaps most vulnerable to additional russian hegemony in the region? check out the pictures from sevastopol:

the right time

maybe this all started with george thorogood and the [delaware] destroyers the other day, singing about "the right time". (i say the night time / that's the right time / i wanna be with you / in the night time). it could also have been influenced by arlo guthrie's reminding of marilyn monroe's philosophical contribution to the universe. (have you ever noticed that "what the hell" is always the right decision?) either way, i found myself standing in front of a pet shop door last night that had a sign in its window saying "free gerbils".

you might recall that the last pair, having been acquired through a "reputable breeder", proved tragically fragile, despite all conscientious care to the contrary. (having raised and cared for many, i can confidently say the best was done for them as could). for months since there has been a heart-felt concern on the part of my daughter that i needed more constant companionship, (no snickers from the peanut gallery, please), yet no clear decision or action. well, on a bit of a whim, and though her favorite shop turns out to be closed on mondays, we were passing by a second one nearby, and saw the aforementioned sign.

have you ever wondered about timing? i once thought myself lucky that, were i to have met my ex earlier in life, i never would have married her. (now i realize better that that particular joke is squarely on me). it occurs to me that, had i been looking for the right signs, i might have made better choices.

last night, in front of the pet shop, i was grateful to something higher and bigger and better than me that all i had to do was read the clear one right in front of me, and know the mystical secrets of "what the hell". you can ask my daughter about them--they're perfect.

little sammy was a punk rocker

since the 8th, a full 17 days ago, i've happily had this song for company in my head:

little sammy was a punk rocker
you know his mother never understand him
went into his room and smashed his billy bragg record
didn't want him to hear that communist lecture

and little sammy was a punk rocker
you know his mother tried to take him to war

war, sammy, the war is over
war, sammy, we're at the war's end
we're at the war's end, we're at the war's end
we're at the war's end, we're at the war's end

GO [and here you have to imagine lars frederiksen's audio homage/barrage to immovable object meets irresistible force on the break, and if you don't often put punk rockers and sonic symbolism in the same sentence, you can listen to the solo here]

little sammy was a punk rocker
now it's time for you to leave home

war, sammy, the war is over
war, sammy, we're at the war's end
we're at the war's end, we're at the war's end
yeah yeah yeah we're at the end

we're at the war's end

mother can be such a universal and symbolic little freudian niche...

ever met a 48 year old repatriated punk rocker?

generations

arlo guthrie graced boardinghouse park last night, under a sky full of stars, and it was all of the times that have ever stood still. to his left stood his son, abe, at the keyboard, and to his right sat his grandson, krishna, behind a sparkling silver drum kit. what we think we know of "protest" we hardly know of arlo, and the irony of his progeny being named from such diverse religious heritages is only one such clue. to sit in front of arlo is now, to me, to sit and to be begged to have an open mind, and to USE IT, no more and no less. not to be left, nor to be right, nor even, especially, in the middle.

"i've only met two kinds of people in this world--those who gave a damn, and those who didn't." paraphrasing now: "i learned i had more in common with people who gave a damn than those who might have agreed with me on one particular issue or another". (did you know that arlo endorsed ron paul for president in '08? if you read his reasons why, i dare you not to agree with him).

during the evening last night, arlo described being invited, during one particular tour break, when he found himself in possession of a few free days and staying at a backwater hotel somewhere between the back woods behind shreveport, la, where leadbelly is buried, and peoria, illinois. (time first begins to stand still when it begins to sink in to you that standing before you is a man who learned to play 12 string from huddie ledbetter himself). also staying in the hotel was a convention of vietnam veterans, whose organizer took it upon himself to invite arlo to say a few words to the group. i cannot even begin to imagine the moment. here in lowell arlo invited those assembled to imagine it as marilyn monroe once did--"ever notice that 'what the hell' is always the right decision?"

our treat, for having our seat in the park last night, was to hear arlo follow that story with the haunting "when a soldier makes it home". it put me in mind, sung as it may be for the russians who once returned northward from afghanistan, of the stories i've read of the interviews with those russian veterans of that and their particular war, and how they see themselves in solidarity with the americans now there. not idealogues, nor enemies--just men and women of families, and sacrifice that is never completely their choice. to be against war is to be against all war...

and arlo regaled us with the truth he learned, that he sold more copies of alice's restaurant through military px's than he did through regular record stores. (though the literal truth of any of arlo's stories is always a riddle unanswered, and hard to truly know). i won't paste a link to the entire piece, which arlo also pulled out of the repertoire and played for us, because you will have to want to find it and listen to it all the way through if you don't already have the whole thing memorized as me and my son do, about the "27 color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used in evidence against us". few songs say as much, and seem so short while doing it...

yes, i was at the concert with my son, in another one of those generational facets to the evening. he immediately embraced arlo's description of how he was asked to the woodstock stage to play after richie havens, having imbibed and ingested, among the who's-who backstage, all the 175 cases of champagne meant for the close of the festival, and a few of the other "substances" on hand. arlo described how the stage was designed to rotate, though it never was successfully made to, and how its center was a hole into which all the wires and conduits were threaded, and into which it was first his peril to have stepped. he told of successfully teleporting himself up out of the hole onto the safety of the other side, to be able then to describe for all those once assembled the experience of coming into los angeles.

speaking of such, the funniest story of the evening, for both me and for my son, was arlo's of his first tour trip to california. his mother, worried as she was for her son set free upon the world, and vice versa, insisted that he stay with family friends, and she chose for him a guy known by the monicker of "rambling jack". (elliott, i looked him up). arlo explained how he knew rambling jack far better than did his mother, and how he was EAGER to follow her instructions. rambling jack's first words to arlo (again, how literally to take these stories we shall never know) were "take this, son--don't worry, it'll eventually wear off". funny enough, and we were all laughing already, but the line that still cracks my son up this morning was delivered in description of how reality appeared to arlo as he stepped to the stage for the first time immediately after... "the notes on my guitar were coming out wha-ow-wee-oohhh..." (funny enough). "but i knew i was in trouble when the people in the audience started melting".

maybe you just had to be there. but the memory my son and i will always have of being there, and being able to say "i knew i was in trouble when the people in the audience started melting" and always laugh, is priceless to me.

my favorite nostalgia of the evening was arlo's contribution, early on, of the motorcycle song. (accompanied version here 'cuz i love 'em all). "i don't want a pickle... i just want to ride on my motor-sickle... and i don't want to die... i just want to ride on my motorcy... ... ...cle". he prefaced his rendition by observing the potential embarrassment to his family for it, that such was something he actually sat down and wrote, and so he followed the song with an instrumental he suggests is easy to be motivated to do if one writes such lyrics as the alternative. (the instrumental reportedly being composed on a trip to hawaii where the local pickers guard secretly the strange tunings they pass down from generation to generation, and, for which if they should happen to notice you trying to figure them out, "they have to kill you"). the instrumental i can't describe other than to say i'll always remember.

also indelibly memorable was arlo's take on huddie's alabama bound. his version last night was up and rockin', which you'll have to extrapolate from the original, (plus imagine the incredibly rich blues keys by abe during the breaks), but, trust me, it was tasty and delicious.

yes, he did city of new orleans. he did it after telling an hysterical story of talking his oversized childhood piano teacher into playing each piece as many times over as needed to learn it from watching her fingers, rather than actually learning to sight read the music. his stepdad, being unable as well, wasn't able to tell the ragtime pieces arlo preferred to play as a child weren't the ones painted on the pages labeled "beethoven" while "practicing" at home... so the one day his mother happened to walk in on him snowing stepdad on the truth, and the description of the sweeping, slow-motion whoosh of her backhand, had the whole park in stitches. he even treated us to one of his own compositions played on the grand piano on the stage, explaining that, because he wasn't able to pack one into his tour bus, the only chance he ever got to play/practice such pieces was right on stage in front of an audience. we felt ourselves the lucky ones.

but the capstone of the evening, by far, was this land is your land. the same awe at who was seated in front of us was there as was when telling tales of leadbelly, only now it was blood and his father, woody, and the story of how his mother, a dancer with the martha graham troupe, had returned from a cultural exchange in china back in nixon's 70's, to glowingly tell of the chinese schoolchildren singing for their guests "this land is your land", even unknowing whose wife it was for among whom they were singing it. arlo explained his first dismay at the irony, and then his mother admonishing him that he was missing a larger point. to which arlo, upon reflection, reported a revelation that "from california to the new york island" didn't have to go the short way around... and that, indeed, for the chinese and for everyone else in the world, this land could, indeed, be their land... except then, what about the americans? (my son, getting it all, was quick to point out that we here in massachusetts would have still been included either way). the audience got to sing it along with arlo, and you could hear the music of the true stars all throughout.

manny watch--seeing it all

all of '06 and through the series in '07, manuel aristides never copped a free one. got caught once for trying in '06, sure, but he never needed to run to get the olde towne team going. (sox fans hating on his resurgence need to remember that "believe" billboard they put up over the pike in '04 down 3 games to none against the yankees with manny's picture on it, and think about who else could have been so pure of heart that every game was a brand new one when the next one was anything but to everyone else in the stands). if you can't love manny, you can't love baseball...

so derek lowe, there to have seen it all back when, pitched last night against the colorado rockies who basically own him with something like a .500+ batting average against him in previous starts. (i only exaggerate a little). takes some kind of guts to stand on a mound, i'll tell you that much. and he summed up the whole game, not in terms of how he worked 6+ innings out of his 35-year-old arm giving up only four hits and a single run, but how "manny got a stolen base to get us going".

manny told 'em that "juan pierre told me to go, so i went" with his inimitable smile. (juan, of course, denies all charges).

don't bet against the dodgers as long as this keeps going on, "this" being manny being more manny than manny himself. i'm tuning in sportscenter today just to see it.

heritage cherry, or jen kearney and the lost onion come home again

i wonder how far back you'd have to go to determine exactly when gibson started calling their classic sg color scheme "heritage" cherry?

reminds me of '83, though it could have been the fall of '82, when i first met and grooved on one particularly winsome and chrissie-hynde-obsessed and will-be law student. it occurs to me now that the deep, dark cherry sg she handed me to play one afternoon wasn't pure chrissie at all, (chrissie's a tele girl as you know), which, looking back, was somewhat out of character for the booted and heavily eye-lined homage to all things pretender, but the guitar was, in both its color and its relative experience, quite cherry. could it have been "heritage cherry", or just "cherry"? (anybody have a circa '82 gibson catolog lying around?) i dunno, but i'll always remember that instrument because it was the very first one i ever plugged in, and it was, as they say in the bible, good. (i think my first electrified riff was smoke on the water, followed closely by--thinking only of hendrix the entire time--wild thing, and, yeah, the gain was screwed so far up that i think my eyes were having trouble focusing. (even a novice, i knew what nigel and every other mother's son knows about eleven).

so all this came flooding back to me in an instant, occuring at or around 7:05 pm last night, as i was marveling to the weather and the beauty of an urban park well tended, when to the stage came the lost onion, newly and once again found with their front woman jen kearney from their travels toward the rockies. carl johnson's kit was exactly that same shade of deep, dark cherry that gibson imbues in their most classic sg's, (yeah, angus!!!), and except for the fact that carl can actually play the damn thing to make you feel like you have to give it up and not touch it again (and the will be law student was even worse at it than me, if you can believe that), it was just like coming home again. and it occured to me as jen called out to the five year olds running joyfully about in front of the stage by name, that there was something very special about home that can't be measured or described. (and, don't worry, the morning after your musical self-loathing you still know you love it too much to ever put it down).

so i'm sitting in this park i've never visited before in my life, sitting next to a guy even older than i am who is wearing a jen kearney t-shirt and telling me about his most recent trip to pittsfield to follow the band, and i'm thinking that there's something truly remarkable about lowell that you can wander into any one of the neighborhoods, maybe even toss a fin into a glass jar just because you really feel good about doing it while you're grabbing your free hot dog and popcorn and pink lemonade, though nobody's going to worry if you don't, which is all the more reason why it feels so good to, and strike up a conversation with whomever you've been lucky enough beside which to unfold your folding chair, and feel like you're both inside someone's home, and welcome there, too. even the cops riding by during the set leave their sirens off, and the blue lights are just that much more of the ambience, to go with the yellow from the ice cream truck and the line of happy kids on the other side of the park...

and the music is sooo good. not like park music from the attempt in billerica going on outside the unitarian church basement where you and two dozen of your closest wanna-be-divorced friends are getting the "divorce's impact on children" lecture, not so much because it's going to make you feel any less devastated about what you're doing to your kids, but because you need that piece of yellow paper in order to get the judge to let you go on with your life so you can be better for them... where was i? oh... park music... there were as many folks in downtown billerica on tuesday, but there was such a HUGE gulf of difference between the "down by the old mill stream" sing-along stuff there to getting some stevie wonder, city side, in my (no qualifications or caveats or apologies for being so new here) home town. my home town.

it must have been like this in great barrington, massachusetts in 1965, would arlo and a couple of friends do something generous for the green space of their community, or at least that's the way i would imagine it. maybe jen and carl and pete and vinnie won't get to record a seminal cultural touchstone like alice's restaurant, or maybe the soulful lilt of "pick yourself up" is all that it ever will need to be for a working-on-50 divorced guy who hears it, even if he's never had to deal with the ignomies of tears clotted with rotted mascara and pride... (yup, they just get clotted with other of ones own personal things).

do the people in the highlands know how good they have it? (of course they do...)

the folks downtown do, too.

(i am such a fan...)

here's what i couldn't help but think last night in tyler park:

carl johnson has that guitar for "let love rule" down so stone hot cold i could listen to it for an hour, vocal harmonies all over the top and so good...

vinnie briguglio is steady, steady, steady, and so good with the caribbean meters that sometimes you just listen to his line and let the rest of it wash over you like background music...

pete maclean can make the sparest of trap sets talk in complete sentences...

and...

the year of the ox could be either '61 or '73 or '85, but you know it's not '61 or '85, and it makes you feel your age and your youth at the same time to know it's '73, when you were discovering there was a whole world of music that never made it onto the radio, (from doctor my eyes, and did you know that jackson's first name is really clyde, with jesse davis' THE SOLO, to little feat on the same bill, compleat with linda ronstadt, and from there it goes), and you have time to catch your breath and think too about your year of the rat because it'll be that time again on thursday, and it's all coming together so fast in your head that you know the paragraph to describe it will be virtually unreadable for its run-on digressiveness but you don't care because it's coming off your fingers at the speed of thought and you know it'll get where it needs to go by the end, because...

you're a fan of life, and it's all just simply the truth.

i'm a very lucky man.

sox watch

buccholz: 2.1 innings, 5 earned runs.
aardsma: .2 innings, 2 earned runs. (and the dinger that cost clay 3 of his 5).
lopez: 1 inning, 3 earned runs.
timlin: 2 innings that took 61 pitches to complete, and 1 earned run.

you don't have to go far into the box scores to know what's going to give the sox fits trying to survive into the playoffs this year. first of all, we still have to keep ahead of minnesota just to get in, which isn't a complete lock for sure, and, second of all, we're going to have to find a way to get somebody (ANYBODY) out when wake and lester (and maybe matsuzaka) aren't pitching, and in case there's a bridge needed into the 8th and 9th.

good news, if you can call it that in the wake of his three-run meltdown against toronto the other day, is that okey dokey tossed two innings of no-hit ball last night. maybe, just maybe, we'll have someone to solve the 8th on the way to pap and the 9th. but, honestly, if this pen is the best we've got right now, then we are in seee-rious trouble against playoff hitters.

said it all that we saw alex cora tossing warm-up pitches in the pen last night.

saying it all

one of the peculiar/fascinating qualities of music as an art form is how quickly it polarizes and tribalizes its audiences. if you had asked me in the sixties "beatles or stones?" i wouldn't have hesitated to say beatles. (john or paul? paul). tell me how it is that a seven year old forms such instant and strong opinions because i sure don't know. but strong they were, and they still are. by that i don't mean that i don't appreciate the stones, because, 40 years later, i surely do, but just because i'm drawing my circle of appreciation a bit wider these days doesn't mean it has disappeared.

this i know because this weekend's custody squaredance is defined by a certain somebody's yearlong anticipation of neil diamond at fenway park. it wouldn't be fair of me to judge, so i'll just say that the tickets i hoarded most jealously this year were those for rancid at the palladium in worcester, and my saturday's aspirations are for arlo guthrie at boardinghouse park, and not just because it's in my neighborhood. (lucky for me the kids prefer arlo, too).

all this says all you need to know about both of us, i think.

normal relations

some medium-sized country invaded a smaller one, so a third one bigger than the other two combined invaded the first in retaliation. would that be georgia, ossetia and russia, or would it be iraq, kuwait and the us?

nato says it can't have "normal relations" until the troops are withdrawn, so i wonder if condi will have to be coming home soon? oh, i guess they meant the other guys.

i truly wonder how the four stars keep this stuff straight.

petula clark gets it

the lights are much brighter there
you can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares and go
downtown / things'll be great when you're
downtown / no finer place for sure
downtown / everything's waiting for you
downtown

c'est continues the seemingly never-ending process of opening its doors, and this past week's addition to the inventory answers one of the few remaining i-miss-it's left on my list about living in shangri-lowell.

REAL MILK!!!

that stuff that hood and garelick (and who knows who behind the "store brand") stacks on your supermarket and/or convenience store shelf is white, alright. it even sours like the real thing if you let it languish long enough. but its hormone-addled ultra-pastuerized pabulum is such a far cry from the real thing that it amazes me that people will even stand for it. (you can literally see through their blue-tinged skim offerings, and that just ain't right).

i know i was spoiled growing up with my grandparents (not to mention the upstate ny cousins) running a dairy. at home, my father mixed powdered milk with the stuff from the supermarket because it was cheaper to sustain his family of five, and i do understand the economics of "can't afford it" to know why that was necessary, even though i think they invented the word noisome to describe it. but, trust me, if you ever want to enjoy the contrast between throat-choking mason's mortar from the pure cream heaven of earth, then start your day with starlac and then head up to grandma's for a quart of the real thing.

shaw farm in dracut milks its own organic cows. (the herd even has its own personal nutritionist that visits them every three weeks). no grown hormones, (your nine year old daughter won't start menstruating on the swing set), and no antibiotics. they still use the RIGHT pasteurization technique (low relative temperature, long time, as opposed to searing high temperature short time, and if you want to know the difference, just ask this son of a son of a dairy farmer) and they don't homogenize a drop. yes, the cream still rises to the top! yes, the flavor still stops you in your tracks and lights up your taste buds like a county fair midway on the fourth of july. this is the real thing.

so some day soon c'est will start stocking that wine they've been promising, but i don't care what the oenophiles believe about "the good stuff", because, in my book, it's white, and it's so creamy that the bottles sport a line at each spot down their insides where the pour last stopped, like little gradations on a scale of ultimate happiness.

i just finished my first bowl of cheerios this morning, and i'm going to have another one, just because i can.

downtown -- everything's waiting for you
downtown

but there's no place like home

it occurs to me that blog-order will leave this title preceding the one that suggested it, but i'm figuring you guys can figure it all out.

the reason there is no place like home is that home here delightfully includes the lowell southeast asian water festival. i have no photos, but you'll be amused to know that navigating the merrimack in 22-person canoes is not so very easy for novices. (one of the experienced/winning boats unsuccessfully tried to counsel one of the inexperienced/non-winning boats about the necessity to keep paddling forward, kinda like a huge wooden shark, though the novices didn't quite get the message in time to save themselves from capsizing, which was a good laugh all around). in addition to the traditional boat races, there were multiple stages and live music performances, a seemingly endless array of food, (my fave was the thai noodles and rice, but i ran out of room long before i could give all of the other vendors a fair tasting), and countless cultural opportunities, from meeting with vietnamese mormons, to spending some time with a collection of lao buddhists. (who have forsworn physical contact with women, so they had to transmit their blessings to their female visitors via strings held between fingers). the visible and friendly lowell constabulary was patrolling the full length of the esplanade by bike, ensuring an extremely family-friendly atmosphere for all.

whatchoo got? :-)

big cities just might be cities too

my manhattan-based coworkers have learned to just roll their eyes and change the subject whenever i get on one of my shangri-lowell reveries. they first dismissed the comparative dissing as some sort of sox-based boston/ny thing, (my spinners being of the sox farm system didn't help the appearances of such), but they soon realized i was just as dismissive of *all* big cities, even the athens of america to my proximate south, and that i was quite possibly and not only from another planet, but also, there's a fair argument to be made, out of my figurative tree.

but i'm here to reassure those fearful of my sanity that i can, indeed, allow that there is life and culture to be had outside the friendly confines of my fair little city, and just yesterday evening i had a full and wonderful dose of it down at the bank of america pavilion with my old musical friends buddy guy and george thorogood.

first of all, in nobody's version of the universe should the world's greatest bar band be closing for the man who is perhaps the last of the masters still able to give it the master treatment. (sorry, bb). the globe's sarah rodman got it exactly right when she described buddy's set as "criminally brief". and, second of all, i think someone has to explain the phrase "bar band" to sarah so she can get her idealistic head out of her clenched patootie far enough to be able to enjoy what george and the destroyers (i miss the delaware part) were gleefully throwing down. i saw george plenty back in his delaware destroyers heyday, and the set probably wasn't much different than he used to put together back then, about the time he was earning sarah's second-best descriptive phrase of the evening, "the rough-and-tumble poster boy for the liquor lobby". sarah's feeble acknowledgment ("certain salty charm") missed that whole point, as well as the significance that guys like elvin bishop will always happily roll out onto george's stage for a reason. (elvin slammed through "don't let the bossman get you down" and was clearly having a grade a ball). sarah, "discernable soul fire" isn't ever gonna seem like it to you if you don't get how george means coming in last night about half past ten. and tell me who covers one bourbon one shot and one beer with more of john lee hookers hooks intact. you go george.

but that's all a digression.

buddy guy is amazing.

we do need to pause here and say also that quinn sullivan is amazing, and explain why, because if you've never heard quinn play guitar, then you are in for quite a treat as soon as you do. (and you for sure will). he's 9 years old, and while out in chicago to tape an oprah winfrey show earlier this year, he ventured out to legends, buddy's blues club there, and sat in with buddy's brother phil while buddy was in the audience. the result of that intersection of genius answers the musical question "whose gonna fill those shoes", which is both a track on buddy's new cd, as well as the song during which buddy brought quinn out on stage here in boston.

surreal.

if you've never been able to close your eyes and see music, then i have the solution for you, cuz quinn is also playing a few more of buddy's east coast shows this month. the two of them together are something. really something. the big old noisy black guy (one of my fave lyrics of the night was buddy singing "she put one leg to the east, one leg to the west, and i was in the middle tryin to do my best") and the big old noisy white kid (though things were much more g-rated during quinn's numbers) just amped up to eleven and letting it all wail. go to youtube. it's starting to show up there, and the maturity is accelerating cuz last night's show was better than what's been caught on video so far. and that's plenty amazing enough. how far can a kid go when he's learning his chops onstage with buddy guy...

buddy...

i first saw buddy in harvard square back in the early eighties, when he had gold on his teeth to go with his polka-dot strat, and it was good. not everybody realized back then where clapton and hendrix got theirs, but there was no mistake when you heard guy amped up and tearing it loose. amazing, too, that you could sit in a club close enough to have to duck when he swung his guitar around in the middle of a solo... (those were the days). the seats last night were almost as close, though a bit further from the beer. (the sacrifices we all have to make). the sound was everything i remembered, and more. ("noisy", i think leonard chess called it, when he wouldn't let buddy cut loose on his recordings the way he always did in the clubs, right up until leonard figured out that noisy, a la buddy's proteges like jimi and eric, was selling beaucoup records). mmmmm... noisy....

so buddy is so ON these days he's got a record full of new material, and he plays tons of it in his show. out in the woods kicked things off, and skin deep (the title track) is a marvelous live experience. aforementioned "whose gonna fill those shoes" is a gem. best damn fool is another one. (heh--for once i'm touting a show without raving on the covers). buddy walked completely around and through the audience on one number, and jammed on his strat with a drumstick on another. (a guy staple). his drummer is as big as a house, (literally), and his rhythm guitarist, ric hall, sports one of those center strap hardware thingies that lets him twirl the bird around a la zz top. his bass player is OUTSTANDING (and you can figure that out without even a single solo to show it off, though i can't for the life of me find mention of his name anywhere, and that's a shame) and his keyboard player, marty sammon, is even better than that. a great show.

and not even in beautiful downtown lowell--imagine that.

manny's cooling off

with last night's dinger, in his 16 games with the dodgers, and 59 at bats, manny has 25 hits. (a .424 average). 11 runs. 21 rbi. (a couple more and he passes julie lugo's entire season output). 6 homers. .507 on base percentage. .780 slugging percentage. 1.287 ops.

since his batting average technically dipped from .317 to .316 over the weekend, this is now what dodger fans have come to know as a slump.

da man

not for nothing, but nesn noted during one of the many pitching changes required of the red sox this past weekend that tim wakefield is currently fourth in the majors in opponents' batting average with a mark of .220. his closest teammates are jon lester in 46th place (.262) and josh beckett in 48th (.263).

wake da man.

einstein's greatest theory

"the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest"

who is the dirtiest one of all?

nfl fans have long enjoyed debating which team might have the dirtiest defensive back in the league. though the pats' rodney harrison is often regarded as the titleholder, there were always those contrarians who held out for the broncos' john lynch, and wouldn't budge an inch. so how is an open minded fan to decide???

well, sports fans, debate no longer. with new england's acquisition of lynch's services (for a quick and affordable $1.5m) there can be no dissent. the new england patriots, tom brady's poster boy looks and sportsmanship notwithstanding, have now cemented their place at the top of the hard-hitting, or was that cheap-shotting, standings.

put those two dates on your calendar, mr. favre, cuz i can gwar-on-tee (ya like how i slid that little bayou patios in there?) a safety blitz or two for your non-retirement pleasure. even money one or more of them are delivered "clothes-line" fashion and just a couple of hairs' breadth after the whistle.

:-)

utter shame, disgust and outrage

i can't even begin to list the visceral and overwhelming shame, disgust and outrage i feel to read this quote from george w. bush in today's news:

"bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century".

(if they aren't, then what the fuck are we doing in iraq???)

more irony:

"only russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations or continue to pursue a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation."

amen, and insert "united states of america" in that sentence, and read it again.

anyone who is thinking that russia is in the wrong in georgia and who is not also committed to getting us troops OUT of iraq ASAP is a hypocrite of the most monumental and dangerous order, and the scariest part is that these are the folks who are running the government of the most warlike and powerful nations on the planet, or, in the case of one particularly shoot-first-ask-questions-later presidential candidate, dreaming to run one, and heaven help us if that sort of philosophy prevails in november.

which way is it? either it's ok to disrespect national sovereignty via armed invasion or its not. either it's ok to kill innocent civilians and destabilize their entire country in the interest of "helping" them, or it's not. either the world learns what marvin gaye knew to be true, that only love can conquer hate, or it continues to fight violence with violence, and nurture a global culture of fasicst "might makes right" and unending misery.

i'm so mad i can't stand it. maybe i need to go out and invade someone...

slacking on you

i'm ashamed to admit i've been slacking on you for a whole week, posting trivia after nonsense about manny, global politics and shapewear, all the while holding out on you for the greatest story to hit the lowell sun in DAYS. to wit: (per robert mills, who apparently scooped our fave lisa redmond on this one, though she did post a brilliant follow-up story the next day from which i'll also quote in a bit)

"LOWELL -- Police say it started when a 42-year-old Lowell man used cash advances from credit cards to fill a duffel bag with $62,000, spent an hour or two drinking cognac, and then set out in search of a prostitute."

robert names names, gives addresses, and spares no detail in describing the consequences of being too drunk and/or too stupid not to realize that, with prostitutes as with most everything else in life, you get what you pay for. (the hooker negotiated for $30, and then, noticing that the guy had to ruffle around his duffel bag full of fifties and hundreds for a couple of twenties, tied him up around the ankles with his own belt, pushed him over, then grabbed the bag full of cash and ran). i kid you not--you gotta read the story!!!

anyway, my own personal favorite part of the tale is both imagining how hard it was for the cops to keep from laughing when the drunk guy came down to the precinct with his story, and then how they immediately knew to ring up the doubletree hotel (the one hotel downtown here) to ask if anyone fitting the description of a $30 whore had just checked in paying cash for her room. bingo.

per lisa redmond, who had the benefit of an additional day and the official police report of the incident to go on, there were stacks of bills up to six inches high piled all over the room, at least those surfaces not covered with lottery tickets that she and her girlfriend were in the process of scratching. (you get $62,000 cash from a duffel bag, and the first thing you do is try to give half of it to the mass state lottery commission???) when the cops questioned her, she immediately spilled her beans over the whole affair, describing how he "was so drunk that he didn't notice when she used his belt to bind his ankles together. then, she shoved him onto the floor." i also love lisa's inimitable prose about the next moment, when the guy "realized he was being robbed when [she] allegedly grabbed the duffel bag and ran." apparently, the belt around the ankles wasn't quite enough to give him the full picture.

lots of questions here, like, c'mon, a guy does NOT cash in credit card advances on a duffel bag full of bills, so, first of all, where'd he get it? next, why, after amassing such a stash, is $30 the best he'd be interested to go on retail skin? of course, we mentioned the silliness of not realizing what was going on until after she was actually with bag in hand going out the door... as for the girl, i have to ask--who answers a knock on a hotel room door at 3am, with piles of money all over the room, and OPENS IT??? too funny.

the police interview with the suspect was videotaped, and i'm wondering if freedom of information act inquiries could actually earn a peek at the part where she's quoted as saying she "knew an easy mark when [she] saw one". as they say, takes one...

:-)))

mannywatch

just cuz i can't resist looking at the dodger box scores every morning:

in addition to nomah's walkoff dinger in the bottom of the ninth, manny was on base 3 out of 5 times last night, (1 for 3 with two walks), his hit being a two-run homer. the stats so far:

12 games, 45 at bats. 21 hits. (a .467 average). 10 runs. 16 rbi. 5 homers. an 18 point increase in his batting average. a .547 on base percentage. an .867 slugging percentage. a beyond-comprehension 1.414 ops. two weeks in, and the astronomical numbers ARE STILL GOING UP!!!

all this an' nomah too. great days to be a tied-for-first-place dodger fan.

more fun with advertising

a reader has emailed to point out that, in addition to the distorted face and facts about his rival, one of the two presidential candidates is featuring pictures of big white wind turbines on his ads, implying something favorable about them and his support...

except, as this attentive reader just pointed out, (i hadn't realized until prompted to look it up and confirm it myself), this same candidate failed to appear to vote on the last eight times the alternative energy tax credit bill came up for a vote in the senate. his record is actually 15 absences out of 15 of the votes deemed critical by the LCV (league of conservation voters, whose scorecard i'll link here) but who's counting...

so, back to the wind turbines...

i mentioned that one red flag about a candidate is his or her use of negative ads about their opponent, but i think i omitted to mention that outright lying via imagery is just as much a propagandists tool, and even more of an alarm bell that we're in serious danger as an electorate if we're tempted to be thinking positively about other aspects of a candidacy. "in favor of alternate energy" and "in favor of victory in iraq" are two sides of the same duplicitous coin. the direct translation is "in favor of the monied interests who have bankrolled my campaign", and, if i get any more agitated about it this morning, i'll start linking to the dozens of lobbyists who are funneling corporate money into the candidates' coffers, and remind that the worst offender is always the one crying that the other is the worst offender. (or haven't you been paying attention to presidential politics over the last decade?)

scary stuff that we're being fed here.

freedom fighters

one of my favorite political word-plays is, "if fire fighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?"

the stories from georgia this past week have been wildly emotional, and regardless of whose army you're backing, quite sensational. the press has photos of anguished civilians in front of bombed-out buildings, and all the material needed to whip the entire world into a frenzy, and the political mouthpieces have had more outraged mouthfuls to say since srebenica, and they've all been saying them 24-7. so who's right here?

sarkozy has been mum during his shuttle diplomacy, but listening to our fearless leader from poolside in china, (he who would have us bombing civilians in afghanistan in our attempts to win their hearts and minds), it's pretty clear we're all supposed to fear and loathe the russians. though it's hard to read an edgewise word about the real story since john edwards' penis made the news...

here's my contrarian position: ossetians and abkhazians aren't georgians, in the same way that kurds aren't iraqi's, and pashtuns aren't anything but pashtuns. it's very convenient for our political spinmasters to want to paint these peoples alternately as innocents and villains, but i'm having a hard time understanding how different they really are from each other, and from the sunnis who are terrified of being ruled by shias, and vice versa. let's face it--our tanks rolled into iraq because we felt the urge and right to be free was important enough to ignore sovereignty to support those trying to do it. so where do we get off excoriating the russians for doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING???

which is it???

russia is doing something very interesting in georgia, and we ought to be paying more careful attention. they're defending the ossetians from the same sort of oppression that besets the muslims in serbia. we all know they're always wrong, right? or was that right, wrong? it's the same hypocrisy in the way we backed the fascists in central america, but then turned around and claimed moral high ground on overthrowing an oppressive regime in iraq.

pots and kettles all.

for once, i think the russians may be doing a right thing. (though what do i really know, i only have the barest of news accounts to go on, since i'm still hearing earfuls about john edwards' bedroom habits).

the face of the enemy

i watched an audi ad last night during the ball game, and it struck me that it actually showed the mercedes benz automobile with which it competes. (not all that common in car ads). immediately following, there was a political ad that barely even bothered to show the simultaneously swollen and shriveled visage of he who approved the message. (much more common in political ads, to the point of ad nauseum). and it put me in mind of the software company advertising of my company's biggest competitor, whose ad copy puts my company's name in such humungous and bold type, that you sometimes have to wonder who is paying for it.

why is that? well, it's a classic advertiser's ploy. difficult as it may be to "brand" yourself the way you'd prefer, (try convincing the bank to ignore your less-than-stellar credit rating), it's a piece of cake to smear the other guy's image. and you know it's true, like how much more easily the negative stories about people can be self-spread from around the office water cooler, like, did you hear who so-and-so was mashing in the stairwell during the company christmas party, etc. bad credit histories, unsavory divorce rumors, you name it, such things are so easy to spread that it's almost no fun to do it. right up until there's money or power on the table, and then watch how easily sex sells. (right, mr. edwards?)

so this morning i'm asking myself, in the market as i am for an automobile, why is it that mercedes benz automobiles are so good that audi's finding it necessary to try to talk people out of them? of course, i can ill-afford a benz, and that isn't, ultimately my point, because, you know it's campaign season, and for everyone swallowing all the attack-ad BS from someone who once swore that they'd never be running such things, i wonder how many people there might be with the better sense to realize that there's a real reason that this is the best thing that they have to say about their candidate.

the real reason is, they have no good reasons to offer in his favor that they figure will be possible to spread around the national water cooler, so they're going straight towards the gutter for their tactics. now, i'm not saying there are no good reasons in his favor, and i'm not saying they're actually *in* the gutter, the way the tabloid press is after (possibly deservedly so) john edwards, but i am saying that as long as we repeat the slurs, or even "think" we're in favor of that candidate for a worthwhile reason of our own, we're still as party to their creation as those imagination-impaired miscreants who make them up, and that's a shameful thing to be, as well as likely making a huge mistake in our own judgment.

so next time you see something characterizing something else, whether it be a car ad, a software company ad, or even an ad attempting to influence you over one of the most important decisions you'll have to make for the next four years, i wonder if you or anybody else will be thinking about how small somebody else must think your mind to be, that it couldn't grasp something great yet less-accessible about their candidate, rather than something small and rumor-friendly about his opponent. or has everyone forgotten what happened the last time a major political candidate said something like "read my lips, no new taxes" while smearing his opponents about "tax and spend"? or wondered how it might be possible that a draft-dodger can succeed in appearing more troop-friendly than a thrice purple-heart-decorated war veteran?

think for ourselves, that's our first hope. or, if you prefer not to think, i have a useful, rule-of-thumb suggestion that'll prove more reliable than swallowing the smears, hook, line and sinker, or even pretending that you have a noble reason for supporting that other point of view separate from that. if you see an ad saying bad things about something or someone else, that's your first clue that the right opinion is the opposite from what they're trying to sell you. (trust me, i'm in marketing, and i know from whence i speak). you may think you have a better grasp on the question, but, i promise you, you can't possibly. or, otherwise, the ad copy would look much different than it does. you're being played.

think about it: if they had something truly worthwhile to say about themselves, they would have said it. the fact they don't is your first clue that you're being manipulated and your own judgment is flawed.

fight the power!

the record

i was figuring, two weeks in, some sort of respite from his torrent of clattering hits was inevitable, but manny ramirez seems determined to set such a record for hitting to begin a tenure with a new team, that nobody will ever even dream of being able to break it. to wit:

10 games. 40 at bats. 19 hits. (a .475 average). 9 runs. 13 rbi. 4 homers. a 17 point increase in his batting average. (sorry, red sox nation). a .533 on base percentage. an .850 slugging percentage. an otherworldly 1.383 ops. (what the f*** are these NL pitchers thinking that they aren't just giving him an intentional pass every time he steps to the plate?) the numbers would be even more staggering, but then you realize that this is just the tip of manny's potential iceberg.

he's a 36 year old world series mvp, and only just begun to show his full potential. the diamondbacks desperately added dunn to try to proactively rescue their season, but there's no way it'll make a damn bit of difference if manny doesn't want it to. red sox west (nods to derek lowe and nomar garciaparra) are on a roll, and joe torre is no slouch in the dugout. i know it'll probably be the cubbies, but should our olde towne team survive tampa and anaheim and whoever wins the coin flip in the central, wouldn't it be something to see what manny'll do in the series against the team that cut him loose? i'll hate every swing, just like the rest of red sox nation, but i'll be a fan, too.

why can't scandals be about money and corruption anymore?

i lost it a few moments ago over a succession of john edwards discussions that have crossed my path in person, over the telephone, and on the internet. it would seem that everyone i know is shocked, shocked i tell you, that john edwards is a philandering politician. my ensuing concerns are several:

first of all, he's not now, nor has he been for the past four years, a sitting elected official. he's not even anymore (and hasn't been for seven months) a candidate for president.

second of all, his wife and family, informed of the affair several years ago, have asked publicly for privacy.

so why can't we give that to them, and is any of this in any way "news"???

the *real* scandal here, as i see it, involves $114,000 of campaign funds spent toward "web videos" that nobody can seem to locate. but you'd never know it, because everybody else is falling all over themselves over tabloid rumors of questionable paternity, clandestine hotel room visits, and all the other ingredients to a good old-fashioned soap saga.

i mean, all this moral concern of ours is great, but what i want to know is why none of us seems concerned that WE'RE QUITE POSSIBLY BEING ROBBED HERE???

want to know the #1 morality question i have in this particular presidential election? does anyone else but me remember the largest public fraud in the history of this country, and the five then-sitting senators who were party to trying to cover it up?

it begins with a K...

so why can't scandals be about money and corruption anymore? could it possibly be that the thieving and corrupt folks robbing us blind behind the public trough have figured out, that like the matador waving that bright red cape in front of the bull's flaring nostrils, that distraction is the single most effective weapon ever invented by mankind?

when are we going to stop becoming distracted? when are we going to be smart enough to realize that it doesn't matter who the kid's father is, so much as who paid mommy the $114,000 for not a whole lot of legitimate work? when are we going to recognize that leopards and spots and FIVE BILLION DOLLARS of the public's money aren't nearly so changeable as any of our particular candidate's wives? when are we going to WAKE UP to realize that, even accepting the most rosy possible estimates for the total amount of oil in ANWR and offshore to the US, not even worrying about whether or not it's accessible, will still not even be a spit in our oil-consumption ocean, and NOT THE SOLUTION??? when are we going to stop being so naive as to be accepting any glib politician's opinion that "alternative energy sources" are either proven, or available, unless we're given PROOF THAT THEY EXIST AND ARE VIABLE???

t. boone pickens has a very reasonable plan regarding our energy issues.

al a. gore jr. has made a very resonable point about our energy issues being not only their own solution, but also to those to our trade imbalance and financial woes, as well as to our seemingly-intractible world security/terrorism problem.

i wonder... where could we possibly get presidential candidates like THEM???

or news media that would actually cover those stories instead of who's kissing who...

*sigh*

it's not a girdle, it's "shapewear"

the ap's got a feature today on "shapewear", and its popularity among 20 and 30-something women, though, if you look on dreamwear's website (they were mentioned in the ad by name so i googled) you won't find a single mention of the word "girdle" anywhere. i couldn't help but laugh--an entire generation apparently already their grandmothers, though somehow eager in the belief that if they don't use the actual word, those 20 and 30-something, not-quite-so-hormone-addled-anymore boys won't notice the difference. (and, of course, they won't, as i think their girdles are branded with names like "underarmor", but i digress). everything old, including william shatner's oft-girdled hip, is new again.

editors note: instead of the word "girdle", dreamwear does offer this wording regarding their "delta burke" line--"delta's inbox continues to overflow with feedback from gracious consumers who have 'finally found fashion innerwear in my size that fits and flatters.' " or they could, as craig ferguson likes to rather point out, "eat less, move around more", though, nah, i guess not.

the politics of image

lest anyone be confused about whether or not there are real sports going on during the olympics, don't blink or you'll miss one of the best ones: sovereign image politics. (and the gold medal goes to...)

yes, people get stabbed in beijing, no, spontaneous firework footprints can't be made to traverse the city on command, and, lest you be confused, it's never about what's real whenever international politics are involved.

occupy tibet, sponsor genocide in darfur, and be rewarded with a smiling george bush in the cheap seats as if there's nothing wrong with playing charades if you're a walking, almost-talking charade yourself.

there's something profoundly wrong in our world when it comes to this.

oh! and before i forget!!!

my son is eagerly excited about the olympics. track and field is his sport of choice these days, so he wasn't exactly thrilled that it seemed to be all swimming all the time last night, but it's always exciting to watch competitors give it their all, under water or out of it, and we quite happily sat and watched hours of the coverage on tv.

i am so glad we did.

i've been reading all the michael phelps hype, and am sincerely happy for his quest to supplant spitz as the poster boy for olympic gold mining. everybody ought to dream so large. but it never felt really immediate to me until the folks at nbc pointed out several things about last night's relay. first of all, the world record in the event was set the night before by four *different* us swim team teammates than the four who would be vying for gold. WOW. the second four best swimmers on the us team are faster than *anyone* has ever been in history. now those are four guys i want to meet, because there is no more noble effort than to take on the world in support of your friends. but, more than that, it was also pointed out that there were four french swimmers who were actually better at this event than the hopeful best americans' best. world record holders. men of resolve and accomplishment who announced to the world that they would smash (their word!) the americans, and this is the reason why they were in beijing.

point of observance: boasting is un-american. yes, we've become a nation of braggarts and whiners over the past decade or two, (and last night's contest would be exhibit a as to why that's just plain embarrassing, win or lose, no matter what country you're from), and it's high time we got back to being what we are best, which is, soft-talkers with big competitive sticks. anyway, back to the story you already know already:

so i was in awe that the fastest swimmer in the world (the frenchman with the big mouth) was handily leading the race with 50 meters to go, and a de facto journeyman team captain, self coached, without any impressive world record resume to his credit, and the oldest member of the entire us swim team at 32 competing in a sport for 20 year olds, was digging in the water the better part of an entire body length behind, without any reasonable hope of closing the gap, never mind winning the race. and, as the unheralded captain recalled for the interviewer afterwards, the thought first occurred to him that the race was for all intents and purposes over, and then second that there was no reason, therefore, not to throw everything into the breach.

the finish recalled to me fernando torres overtaking philipp lahm over the course of just two strides to score the winning goal in the most recent european cup. literally, within the last ten meters and split seconds of the race, jason lezak came from behind, then pulled abreast, and then reached valiantly for the wall, trusting to fate and to luck and his amazing ability to be just that split second faster than his team's would-be nemesis. would-be, because, as we all now know, that touch was eight one-hundredths of a second sooner than second place. because, it was perhaps the most thrilling relay finish in the history of swimming relay finishes.

yeah, write all you want about michael phelps, but give me jason lezak any day of the week and twice on sunday night (chinese monday morning). THAT's an american.

i'm proud to be an american, because it's the best of who we all are.

what is "winning" ?

a friend whose opinion i respect on such things recently opined in favor of mccain's plan for iraq, reasoning that it contains the means of "winning" the war there, as opposed to obama's, which is considered to be, containing as it does the word "withdrawal", a capitulation.

forgetting (conveniently) bush's proclamation of "victory" that was applauded so vigorously by those now enamored with a more combative stance so many years ago, i thought, today i'd try to figure out what is meant by "winning" this sort of conflict. first of all, there is no sovereign power to subdue, so there's the first cognitive difficulty to be faced. (that vestige of sovereign power so publically vanquished as cited by mssr bush above). there's also no civilian population to be cowed, as "hearts and minds" cheney would insist we acknowledge, and, prima facie, lets just for the sake of discussion. so taking everything at face value, the only conclusion to be drawn is that we need still to vanquish the terrors of lawlessness and mayhem so that the people of iraq can enjoy their renewed sovereignty with safety, justice and freedom. fair enough! i don't think even barack hussein obama would object to that.

so where in that equation, i keep asking myself, exists the necessity for us troops, except as allies with the iraqi people themselves in winning their said safety, justice and freedom? and where in that equation, i keep asking myself, exists the necessity for the prolonged presence of us troops, if it's arguable that their very presence is divisive and destabilizing in and of itself?

by my calculation, the us has "won" only a handful of wars since its inception. the revolutionary war, of course, and perhaps even the one in 1812 if you consider that the alternative was british re-occupation. it gets a little murkier after that, including the still quite numerous confederate flags around, even on various state banners... we did kick the spanish out of the philippines, only the terrorists there are having quite a field day these days, and i haven't noticed a whole lot of extra love for the us since our puppets marcos were deposed and their shoe collection confiscated... at the same time, i think teddy r. can continue to take credit for san juan hill, so lets score overall one for the red white and blue and fudge the details, shall we? full marks for belatedly entering ww one after our strategy of neutrality didn't quite pan out, though i'm not sure that wilson's league of nations thing accomplished quite what it had set out to do, (end all wars, yeah, that's the ticket), observing that appeasement and all the wishful thinking in the world couldn't wish away national socialism. of course, that gives us another chance to claim one in the W column, and the greatest generation certainly proved itself worthy in those days. not so clear about korea, is it. (what's a few nukes and a little quasi-genocidal starvation amongst friends). vietnam is the one the "winners" lobby hates the most, containing, as it did, the unglorious retreat from saigon and the surrender of the field to the locals. (it was their field in the first place, though, wasn't it?)

but here's how perverse i am:

i think we as a country behaved abominably to our servicemen and women in the sixties and seventies, and, for that, no victory could ever recompense. but we, as a nation, have not lost in our relationship to vietnam, and all accounts of servicepeople's return to that nation come back in reverence and wonder at the transformation of the country. did, then, we really lose???

so here we are in iraq, facing many of the same challenges, though without a sovereign enemy with which to pretend to fight. if we were to withdraw, a la saigon, or obama, or even mccain in 100 years, how will the "victory" need to be measured?

certainly not by the duration of our engagement.

certainly not by the quota of blood spilled in struggle.

it can only be by the eventual verdict that will be held within the hearts and minds of our human brethren in iraq.

so why don't we ask them? why don't we pledge to respect their beliefs and their knowledge of their troubled country, which, historically, isn't so much a country at all, but a british colonial pipe dream knitted together out of so many tribal affiliations and the accident of proximate geography? why don't we elect our president based on his judgment to know what is right, as opposed to his pre-determined resolve to follow a course regardless, regardless of whether that course is to summarily withdraw or summarily stay?

i don't know who i believe to possess that judgment, but i do know its not anything that can be promised to an electorate hungry for something positive out of something tragic and terrible and costly in the extreme.

xenophobia

xenophobia is a bizarre human impulse that damages everybody, xenophobes most of all. yup, it's hurtful, hateful, and self-destructive, though, apparently, you'd never catch anyone in the throes of it capable of admitting the cultural cancer for what it is. (as it were, "proud to be an american / where at least i know i'm free", cloaking a perverse paranoia that the immigration which defines this great nation is somehow a threat to it, and maybe lee greenwood didn't really mean to imply "give me your huddled masses, as long as they speak english", but the people who have sung that song to me say it exactly so in just those so many words, and it scares the bejeezes out of me).

i'm proud to be an american, where at least i know that everyone else who yearns to be an american with me carries potential to be a better american than all of us xenophobes who have lost our idealistic way. (not to digress too far on the rant, but i was impressed recently to discover that fdr once said "remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and i especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionaries", and it's fair to say it's a sentiment more americans ought to keep in mind).

so, anyway, to dial things back a rhetorical notch, a friend of mine recently became intimately introduced to the asian custom of removing shoes before entering a home, and it recalled to me my recent introduction to the custom as well. my experience was more directly related to its cleanliness than to its tradition, (the agent of my appreciated hospitality was/is a neatnik), but my embrace of the practice is fully respectful of both. (and if you've never achieved the habit, then, i recommend you to give it a try, because the results are way cool). shoes are dirty, and not even after you've "stepped in something". they track grit and grime and grass and all manner of the great outdoors, and, though such things are all to be embraced in their element, (there is such a thing as *too* clean), it's wonderful when they're successfully kept at bay and out of the sanctuary that we maintain for ourselves in our homes. AND!!! there is nothing like bare feet for comfort.

yet we "cultured" "americans" have always looked askance at the habit, perhaps as some sort of pseudo-historical sino-nippnese quirk from old kurosawa movies or something, and continue to tromp through the intimate areas of our abodes with what amounts to muddy feet. for our part, we do successfully discriminate between shoes and boots, and the muddy part is a bit of an exaggeration, but that's like saying we successfully discriminate between "god bless you" and sneezing all over our neighbors while we're spreading the bubonic plague, and it's no wonder to me that europeans were the ones to be scourged by such a pervasive epidemic of communicable disease, as compared to more fastidious easterners, but that sounds a bit too much like the ir-reverend wright saying we all brought this terrorism stuff on ourselves, and those proud-to-be-an-americans will be up in arms in no time, since, after all, we americans are at our most characteristic behind the point of a gun...

eesh...

so where was i?

yeah. xenophobia. not our prettiest quality.

next time you're over to my place, take your shoes off an set a spell, will ya? i promise you'll like it.

your listening pleasure

brandi carlile's lowell show is up on mvyradio.com. if you're ever sitting at your computer doing whatever, you really oughta consider letting it take you someplace nice.

all this and rocco baldelli

i have no idea what a "mitochondrial condition" is, but apparently it's chronic fatigue syndrome with a clear and positive diagnosis, and a bitch from which to come back. but come back he has, and rocco baldelli started in the outfield last night and the tampa bay rays won their franchise record 71st game of the season.

i have no idea what its like to root for a team who has never won more than 70 games in the history of their franchise. winning 92 often earns you a playoff berth, but to lose that many and still set a record (such as it is) for "winning" is unfathomable to me. it would appear that such negative streaks are quite on their way to over.

between sets at the palladium i had opportunity to chew some baseball with an extremely knowledgeable and sagacious fan. his blind spot is for the sox, (white, i'm sorry to say), and his experience has taught him that there'll be one more slump-streak for the sunshine state upstarts before it's over. he thinks that'll cook 'em. well, we know the angels are going to be there, and i'm even willing to take on his faith that comiskey's kids can somehow stay ahead of minnesota. but we disagree respectfully about the phenomenon in florida. hats off to 'em all, but there appears to be no quit in this bunch. (the advantage of throwing off the millstone yoke that is tony larussa, i guess). pitching, hitting, fielding and the exuberance of youth. perhaps not ready to take on scioscia's bunch, but plenty ready enough to keep on that pace for 90+ wins and a division championship.

once again lucky for my sox that they went to a wildcard format all those years ago.

home decor

the murphys poster, giavis print, and mccluskey sketch triptych have all come back framed from the framer, and taken their (preliminary) spots around the place. i like 'em all. funny, as lacadaisical as i've been getting things up around here, now that a few more of 'em have made it to the walls, the remaining empty spaces are starting to itch more than ever before.

i like having my own space. did i mention that?

more music

martin sexton--two thumbs way up. solo stuff that went right to the heart of things, plus hendrix covers, (wind cries mary followed by hey joe), jimmy page fills, (iconic riffs from kashmir, stairway, et al.), and a scintillating "for what it's worth" that still resonates 40+ years on. and just when you were sure that it couldn't get any better, america the beautiful stopped the show. a beautiful night.

birthday

there being nobody better than me to know what would make the right kind of birthday celebration this year, and there being no time better than the present to start planning something, as there's being fewer than three weeks to git 'er done in time for the big day, (august 28th), it's time to start putting things down on virtual paper and working out the details.

first off, yeah, dan hicks and the hot licks will be at boardinghouse park that night, but... it just isn't sounding right to be putting west coast jive 'n jazz on the soundtrack... call me persnickety...

much better to contemplate a home town throw down with lowell legends melvern taylor and jen kearney at the lizard lounge in cambridge. the scale will be right, and the beer, too. (one thing among several that cambridge commons does right). as a tease, and because i can, here's a link to jen doing something so very alto husky and RIGHT, so you know the kind of sound i (always) have in mind. melvern on his uke is gonna sound just right, too.

yep, gonna need to figure on the transportation, cuz there should be no way this boy ought'n ta be driving. anyone eager to tag along, just say the word. after b'day hangover #1 is shaken, we can continue on friday night with keb mo at the pahk, and then, after #2, crown the three-day extravaganza with a little robert cray. (one of my all-time faves). 5pm on sunday, a little after brunch, we can sit outside in the sun at lelacheur and catch one of the last spinners games of the season, and look forward to another good year in shangri-lowell.

i'm putting in for the vacation time right now.

even more love for rancid

i remember when i first heard rancid on the radio, and i knew i just had to have it. i hadn't even yet figured out that here was something historic and epic that i'd place on even footing with any bad, zep included, that has ever been. a band who idolized the clash and the pistols and shared stage with the ramones as brothers and equals. a phenomenon so intense as it broke onto the world that (it's rumored) madonna sent nude pictures of herself as part of the package to try to entice them to join her record label.

here are four kids, a couple of 'em at the heart of things who have been friends since they were five years old, who could be anyone or anything they choose to be, and anywhere they choose to be it. arenas. headlining lolapaloozas. creating rancid-aloozas. anything. and here they are at the palladium in worcester, working out of a used greyhound tour bus, pulled right up to the side door so the kids know where to find them after the show. tickets $20. t-shirts 15. cd's 10. beers 4. (3.75 if you want bud in a bottle). my buddy has $200 seats to see the who in a little while, and i can abso-fuckin-lootely guarantee you they won't put on half the show these guys put on last night. (e.g. tim brennan from the dropkick murphys jumping onstage and grabbing lars frederiksen's sg for a ass-thrashin number). if you could be anywhere and charging anything, what the hell are you doing in downtown worcester, mass, putting out the price of everything you are to where anyone can pay it?

exactly.

music, like love, is meant to be free. for everybody. and until the latter, here's to those putting out the former, because, when it's right, it's all the same thing.

the review

ok, obscure (to you i mean--not to me) lyrics and implied (fucking) awe isn't enough for me the morning after, so you'll have to endure the full treatment today with your cheerios. it was GREAT.

capital radio and sick of it all kicked out the jams to get the night right for the headliners, and i won't have much to say about capital radio cuz their sound was muddy (so their songs were literally unintelligible to the unfamiliar), but sick of it all pulled something i'd never seen before and it was way cool from where we were sitting in the front of the balcony, and i just gotta tell you.

see, the palladium is laid out in such a way that the sound from the stacks gets pretty muffled as soon as you're under the eave of the enormous balcony, that literally swoops down to almost kiss the front of the stage. and quick reconnaissance of the mosh area (i mean industrial strength barricades in front of the stage and a veritable no-mans land/dmz in front of a phalanx of impressively-huge security guys) suggested it wasn't for the meek or the mild or the over forty, so we quickly ducked upstairs to see what the options were.

heaven.

like i said, swooped down to almost right in front of the stage, and facing a wall of overhead pa's that meant the music was ripping right through your body as if you were become part of the sonic wave. awrrrrright. and seats open right down in front. i can live with this.

so we grabbed our succession of $4 pbr's (one at a time per person per worcester city ordinance, and what's up with that???) and took in capital radio, and thought, though maybe buzzed on red bull is an ok way to experience this, us old schoolers have always done it on beer, and it still works after all these years. why mess with success. and then sick of it all came out, and it was good.

not great, i'm sure partially because, again, we weren't familiar with their music, but if you measure an outfit by how much energy they put into energizing the crowd, then these guys are right up there where a good punk outfit oughta be, and there's nothing disappointing about that. and so, as i promised i'd tell you, just one song shy of their final number, lou koller (i looked 'em up) says he's gonna do what they always do, which is give each half of the crowd their thing to do and have at it. now those of you recently come from brandi carlile who might be expecting some sort of singalong thing in two part harmony get your head out of your doc martins, cuz you know this wasn't ever gonna be a vocal exerise. (they got that out of the way with die alone--"die - a - lone" from the left, and "die die" from the right). so you wouldn't think there was a square inch to compress another body onto that mosh pit floor, but sure enough lou says "you guys over here move back as far as you can", and, like moses, the space opens up like the walls of the red sea. "you guys over there step back as far as you can"...

and with the crash of the opening chords the two sides rushed together like you have to imagine the legions once came crashing together with the visigoths, and i swear you could hear the bodies slap together over the ear-swollen din and the whole floor beneath me erupted in a frenzy that i can only imagine is what the heart of the atom looks like right before it's split and all hades breaks loose over hiroshima...

and this was just the warm up band.

i've tried for an hour to find something on youtube to compare with the show last night, and there isn't anything close. there are hundreds of rancid videos, and a few even respectably chaotic, but i think i figured it out to say, that if you could possibly operate a camera or other recording device anywhere close enough to the stage, then it just couldn't be close to the glory and the mayhem it was my utter pleasure to be a part of last night.

they opened with radio. they hit every corner from and out come the wolves. they kept digging deep for nihilism and other beauties, like radio, from let's go, and when branden steineckert (gotta love a hardcore german punker name like that) literally smashed his drum kit out of commission for awhile in the middle of things, lars jumped right up and had to almost a-cappella "wars end", since you couldn't really hear his guitar at all anymore cuz the only sound you *could* hear was the thousands of punks singing even louder than his pa was able to amp him up, and it was like being in a cathedral in time for the rapture. ("little sammy was a punk rocker / you know his momma never understand him"). "whoa, sammy the war is over!!!"

my inner ears this morning, throbbing as they are, i have concluded, are swollen, it was that loud. i've not talked much here about my love affair with loud, and those of you who have been with me at certain venues recently where i've complained of the sound and it's pointless volume might not realize how different LOUD can be from merely loud. this wasn't just loud. it wasn't just LOUD. it was FUCKIN LOUD. and it was great.

i think the loudest show i've ever attended was, believe it or not, a rick derringer show back in 1979. (rock and roll hootchie koo, yeah, that rick derringer). that isn't offered as an endorsement or an apology, it just happens to be a fact. i didn't go chasing the experience down, rick was kind enough to bring his wall of marshall stacks to the college where i was attending, and who doesn't go to a show when it's right there to be gone too? and it was loud. LOUD even. ear-crushing. but is wasn't FUCKIN LOUD like rancid was FUCKIN LOUD last night and there's a world of difference. sound that punches you and eviscerates you, too. sound that swarms around you like a cape of hot, sweaty, humid steam heat, and presses in on you so that you feel it on your skin and in your bones. sound that transports and roots you to a spot all at once, and you feel your lungs expelling the air that you know, in some parallel universe, is actually causing the sound of you singing, at the top of your voice, yet it's all taken from your mouth before it even has a chance to breathe, and consumed into a maelstrom of an inferno of a hurricane of FUCKIN LOUD that's now even part of you too. or you're a part of too... there is only sound...

"when i got the music / i gotta place to go"

so when i tell you i loved the show last night, you're gonna have to try to fall in love with the word mayhem in your life or you won't really have the whole of it.

driving home, i decided two things. first, my next car is going to have $1500 worth of sound added to it, even if it already comes with $1500 worth of factory sound to start. i'm getting the bass panels for under the drivers seat so it shakes like i'm in the imax, the sonic tubes for every empty space in the back so that the windows visibly vibrate, and the amps under it all that have to be water cooled because they throw off enough heat to warm a family of four for the winter. maybe $1500 won't be enough, but that's the budget, and that's what i decided about that, and i know it's irresponsible and unfair that people have that to spend on sound, but i do, and i will. even if i have to eat ramen noodles for two years to do it. i will. second, the city of lowell will have a club made of brick and stone that is bedrock enough to handle a show like last night's, and stand where it ought to stand in the heart of this great city, even if i have to be the one to do it.

turn it up

FUCKIN LOUD