the bars at gemstones and the blue shamrock sure do suck

don't know any other adjective for a club that stocks no beer, (seriously--last night they said it all got used up the night before), and features "bartenders" whose response to "she'll have a seabreeze" is "what's in that?" on the other hand, visiting paul at the bar at fortunato's directly after, the contrast could not have been more dramatic. (best bartender and best bar service in the city, imho).

why is it that so many businesses complain so much about the business conditions these days? from where i'm standing (in line at the bar that has no beer) it sure looks like they just don't have the first clue about the business they're supposedly in.

the next night there's music at both fortunato's and gemstones, even if the band sucks at fortunato's, (which you know it won't, but i'm just sayin'), i'm going to be much happier sitting there and feeling like somebody gave the first damn about my experience.

oh! and you know that rancid and reeking little fountain they have on the stairs going up to gemstones from the blue shamrock? you know, the one all foamy and stinking with lord knows what that certainly can't be water? well, last night, i'm happy to say at the very least they appear to have treated it with blue ty-d-bol, making the whole thing only mildly disturbing, instead of more so. (at least gotta give props where they're due).

carry on.

la reine est mort, vive la reine

1968 was the year of my very first and longest-lasting crush. that was the year that peggy fleming won gold in grenoble, and i have been a star-struck, unabashed and unequivocal fan ever since.

or, i should say, had been, that is, right up until yesterday when two sea changes intersected and passed each other traveling in two completely different directions. first of all, (and my loyalty to my first love being what it is, i won't link you to the photographic evidence, but, trust me, it's compelling and it's tragic), peggy fleming's sad and all-too-obvious plastic surgery has taken what had been, to me, an icon of enduring beauty, and left her a frozen-mouthed mumbler mumbling platitudes on international tv. (i think they even botoxed her lips). just sad. on the other hand, today is the day for the gold medal match in the 2010 vancouver olympics curling tournament, and, in largest part owing to inimitable and incomparable canadian skip, cheryl bernard, the sport has never looked better.

la reine est mort, vive la reine

is this the exception that proves the rule?

peter lucas has been writing (blathering?) columns in the paper of record (nods to the mr mill city boys) for months now, without, until this morning, a single useful thing to say or to add to the public discourse. today, as i'm compelled to do whenever a blind squirrel finds a nut, i'm surprised to say he's offered some interesting insight into the state auditor's race now that joe denucci is hanging up his green eyeshades.

is this the start of an encouraging trend? or the journalistic equivalent of a stopped clock being right twice a day? (in which case, i'm wondering, how long we might have to wait until the next useful chime...)

either way, it looks good on ya, peter. maybe a little bit more of this kind of stuff, and a little bit less of why every elected democrat is ugly and their mothers dress them funny. (it may not occur that way to you, but if you substitute "official" for the word "democrat" in that previous sentence, you'd actually have something there).

OLYMPIC! (pronounced like EPIC!)

can't help, whenever i'm watching a hockey game between a team loaded with talent against one loaded with heart, rooting for the underdog. ironically, i love both the czech and slovak squads, and turned on the tv yesterday expecting to be pulling for them since they make great potential giant slayers for upcoming matches against finland and sweden, not to mention the us and/or canada and/or russia (no, just can't believe in the swiss) if they should find the way to get that far. however, it didn't take more than a few minutes to be pulled into the emotional fervor of seeing a bunch of kids who will never be seeing that fat nhl contract going inch for inch, stride for stride, check for check with each of them, and, for a day, i was latvian and norwegian, in turn, for 60 minutes of epic ice hockey.

the latvians were amazing, withstanding the barrage from czech uber-talents like martin havlat and boston bruins' own david krecji, and giving every single inch as good as they got. they clawed back in the 3rd period, down two goals, to bring it even, and you could feel the earth's foundation shake with the canadian fans' fervent appreciation for something special. when david krejci finally found the space to take his overtime shot that won the game, you could see that here was a group of men who had left EVERYTHING on the ice, and would never have to wonder about what might have been, had they any more to give. to that point, the best game in the tournament, and, yeah, i saw the us/canada game. this was more.

and then, looking for a little idle wind-down from playing soccer last night, i flipped the channel to watch a little slovak shooting practice, but found that all the tv had on was an indomitable bunch of norwegians playing even further over their heads, if that could be possible, than the latvians earlier. they were down 2-0 before 10 minutes were even gone, (courtesy of a 5 minute short-handed situation caused by their one nhl'er's headhunting habits, which should have no place in olympic or any other kind of hockey), and you could imagine the slovaks setting it on autopilot, and cruising easily in for the victory. and then... with less than 2 minutes left in the first period, a glimmer... which was so promptly snuffed out less than a minute later by the slovak's third goal, so that you almost wanted to turn it off between periods... almost... but i didn't, and i'm glad--first came the one, to make it 3-2, and then, with less than a minute left in the 2nd period, this time so as to allow no answer, the norwegians found their third prayer answered. in an an elimination game, we had another tie that you could feel was never going to be settled until the final moments. everything became nominally un-knotted after about 8 minutes into the 3rd period by the slovaks, (by yet another bruin--miro satan), and you'd think the norwegians would finally have to quit, but they fought right down to the sound of the final horn. epic.

if canada/russia today is half the game these two were, then we're in for some amazing ice hockey alright.

the olympic mens hockey brackets are set

the canadians earned the short end of the hockey stick for sure when they to the americans, by now having to face (potentially) russia and sweden on their way to the gold medal game. sweden does have to tune up on (i.e. risk losing to) the slovaks (who should have little trouble with the norwegians) on their way to their date with destiny, while canada gets to sharpen its collective skates on the sorry germans tonight before colliding with AO and the russkies tomorrow. i don't know about you, but i'd rather have a day off before having to do that, but, either way, it looks like three awesome games in a row for the canucks or whoever can climb out of that half of the field.

meanwhile, back at the ranch, the americans get to wait for the outcome of switzerland and belarus (i know) before crossing that bridge to meet (likely) the finns, who are waiting for the czechs to spank the latvians so they can then take care of them in turn. i know kipper is a great goaltender, and the finns are a tough bunch this time around, but i'm liking the draw for the us, and lets just say if they don't make the finals with this bracket, then they didn't deserve to be there in the first place.

set your schedule to catch the canadians and russians tomorrow, (yes, germany, i know, that's presumptuous of me, but, hey, if you get drummed out of the prelims at 0-3, with a 17-3 goal differential, and those three goals were only against belarus, that's what happens), and then both semis on the 26th. i know you want to know why i'm not insisting you watch the yanks on the 24th, but, seriously, even if it's a close game, or, ESPECIALLY if it's a close game, it won't possibly be a good one to watch. the real game of this tourney will be canada/russia, and it very much looks like we're going to get it.

now THAT's hockey

meaning what you say and saying what you mean

had another dose of treat her right last night at toad, and besides its being just about the best musical experience one can have anywhere around these days, it hit me like that proverbial train called love ("she was driving a train called love--big yellow letters on the side of the engine--the train was moving so fast, i couldn't make out what else it said") that there's something about writing a lyric than just can't be distilled into either eloquence or simplicity--there is only eloquent simplicity, and we're lucky to be able to achieve even an instant of that in our lives, let alone for 3 minutes of a song. ("i'm no wild animal trainer")

"what else it said" is the *almost* throw-away line you could imagine got appended there just to satisfy the meter, but i know that such would be looking at the whole thing backwards. "what else it said" is the whole point of the song. (other than to deliver the ultimate in lyrics, "the ropes were hers--i helped tie the knots").

so i'm practicing again today a collection of songs i am rapidly falling beyond in love with, not least reason for which i can *play* them, and play them in the way they are intended to be played, because the parts i'm playing are mine and no one else's, even if the songs might not be. and the last remaining piece to the intoxicating puzzle are the words that will become how others come to know them, and i'm daunted that, for all the words i can spew on a page, moving so fast, i just can't yet make out the important ones. maybe it's because i'm too awe-struck at the songs' seemingly effortless creation, and my respect for their creator, but i know that the truth is far deeper and far simpler than that.

"i've got one of every single man-made thing" will likely always be beyond me. ("in my junkyard").

when i think of everything i've known from a to zevon, i realize that it can never be the point--matching the unmatchable. all i can do is mean what i say, and say what i mean, and find what economy of expression might be required by the meter to fit it all in.

or, put another way by someone who gets it: "i'm compelled to w_nder"

le tigre

i've ultimately become disquieted by the ubiquitous and incessant coverage of tiger's widely-reported misdeeds, but not for its implication of promises made and then broken, (which seems to be the primary basis of the avalanche of criticism and ridicule being heaped his way), or even the classical dramatic fall from grace, which is apparently why the rest of us are so compelled to spectate. on the one hand, yes, tiger did do an extreme job of breaking his marital vows, and that's not so cool, but the most troublesome part of all this to me has been the spectacle of his forced public contrition. isn't anyone else finding this bizarrely surreal?

first of all, one might usefully argue that it's no one's business but elin's, and why should any of us be rubbernecking at someone else's marital car wreck if not out of a base nature of perverse and purile voyerism? but even that would be fine for me, except that's not really it. what's really making my gut churn with discomfort is that the man has been hounded by the pitchfork-waving mob and marked with hester's scarlet A+ out of all proportion and reason. nobody was killed. he even claims that the obvious circumstances of his famous 911 call were not domestic violence. so what is the crime, exactly? sex???

of course, that's absolutely it. somebody had sex, and now everybody else is compelled to punish them for it. it's how we run things.

though, are we really, as a species, what this makes us to appear???

gawd, i hope not, because then there really will be no place for me except adrift on that proverbial ice floe...

score one for the righties

CPAC (conservative political action committee) did a straw poll today, and the mittster crashed to second from his usual impotent spot at the top of the rankings, in order to make room for the strongest voice of fiscal reason we have in our congress today--ron paul. of course, glen beck did the keynote, so a lot of lefties won't be listening, but this one sure has my attention, and i hope it captures the attention of many more.

in my warped way of seeing the world, this the first useful glimmer of hope for 2012 that we've yet seen in this country.

does that make me a conservative now???

gawd, i hope not...

when it counts

the us olympic mens curling team began this tournament snakebitten to one way of thinking, or, in another, victim to its own remarkable inability to come through when it counts. skip john shuster, hero of the first-ever us medal team (bronze) in torino, found himself inexplicably unable to come through and make the final shot in a succession of three extra-end matches, on the way to an 0-4 cusp-of-elimination record, even though having the last shot in curling's final end is generally money in the bank. to some there may have been some moral victory in cornering so many favored opponents into ceding so many final rocks, but it's all for naught if you can't make that last shot when it counts--and the us stood at the precipice of all-for-naught from its last-frame futility, and in need of nothing more desperately than someone who would stand there when it was all on the line and counted.

the good news today is that, for two days in a row now, vice skip jason smith has been there when it counts--first with shuster on the bench in favor of 22-year-old alternate chris plys, and then second today with shuster curling them second to last in the come-from-behind victory over the suprisingly competitive swedes. still with a long hill to climb to make the elimination and medal rounds, the us remains in the running due to nothing more important than having someone on whom to depend when it counts. we should all be so lucky.

yes, this all seems especially pertinent to me today, living as i do in an apparently perpetual state of being regarded or feared to be just short of such grace, and i honestly don't know what to do, beyond continuing to curl those rocks, just like jason did for those four days before his coach phil drobnick figured it all out. (if only we all had our own personal coach to help identify the combination that will provide the solution--it would be all so easy. but it's never...) i do have sympathy for those who can't see clearly in me my dedication and devotion to be there for them, as i understand how hard it can be to just let go and to trust. but, honestly, it comes to a point where its no longer anyone's job but our own to see the rock(s) of our salvation, and to throw our lot in with them on the rink of our lives. the demonstration of worth HAS to be simply being there always when it counts, and never the grand gesture or plea be given the chance. or, put another way, all words become empty beside the act.

my life has its bedrock layer of simplicity, where all that i am is devoted to my children. beyond that, it has been stripped of its loveless veneer of a marriage, and, to some, this might seem "reason" for my resolve not to define myself in such a way ever again. (not even without the artifice of "marriage"). but i look at it another way:

i will always stand by whom i care, and should i remain so fortunate as to have more than just "the one" for whom to care, then my life is richer, not poorer, for that. at some point, others will also have to decide if it feels right to them this way as well. or not. my part is simply to curl those rocks, and to be there when it counts. what anyone chooses to do with that promise and that commitment, such as it is, is up to them. for the us olympic mens curling team, it all goes back on the line tomorrow. on whom is your money?

had enough of figure skating yet?

the real sport this time around at the winter olympics is ice hockey. boston bruin and german olympian marco sturm was interviewed recently, and he observed the difference between salt lake city and nagano compared to this year's five ring circus, and it's all about the ice hockey now. (canadians will do that to a party).

the overarching drama, of course, is whether the hands-down most talented group of skaters ever to lace it up (the canadians, natch) can overcome the collossal expectation of their success, to actually succeed. their opening tilt against norway showed 20 minutes to knock off the rust, 20 minutes to get going, and then 20 minutes of sheer brilliance in thrashing the unfortunate norwegians by an 8-0 score. (the americans, my team all the way, meanwhile, pinned a 3-1 defeat of the swiss). but just a few days later, the canadians showed hints of the potential for their mortality by being driven past overtime by the swiss, (where they gave up three shots on goal while mustering only one), to the shootout where jonas hiller finally coughed up the nail to the swiss coffin to canadian wunderkind sidney crosby. (the americans, meanwhile, back at the ranch, were handling norway 6-1).

the big early game, us v canada, takes place on sunday.

the yanks, underdogs in every hockey fight against the canucks, currently and ironically hold every boys hockey title there is, save this one at the top men's level. the us reigns supreme at under 17, under 18 and under 20 right now, the latter of which would be the world junior hockey championship which was an epic win just recently over the powerhouse canadians on canadian soil. (USA! USA!). nobody will be eliminated, win or lose, in this game, but it's the opening round of the title fight, for sure. (and, with goal differential being used to figure the fourth team to get a bye into the quarterfinal round, both may very well go straight to the dance regardless of the outcome).

i can't wait.

us v canada at 4:45. treat her right at toad at 9. sunday is the day, people.

ps. slovakia took down russia in a shootout last night as well, so even though they lost to their czech cousins the other day, zdeno's boys are showing some grit. sweden and finland, of course, are playing well as always, so they'd be the other crews to watch in addition to all the aforementioned. (sorry belarus, latvia, norway, and the germanic peoples of north/central europe--it's not looking so well for you guys, but, while talent like hiller's has proven 45 saves can be strung together against the canadians, you know anything is possible).

favorite quote of the tournament so far, by rick nash, after that 45 shot shootout squeaker: "we passed up a lot of shots". you have to know this canadian team is going to be a juggernaut.

USA! USA!

people are crazy part i-don't-know-how-many-and-one

this one intersects both my usual rant on our bizarre paranoia and profound misuse of the terms "terrorism" and "terrorists", and my recent rant on the wholly misunderstood and lethal selfishness of small plane owners.

it seems a good ole red-blooded american texas boy has flown his little airplane into a federal building, (this time it's the IRS), and innocent people are once again threatened far more acutely by our own collective insanity than any foreign malice. so, tell me, "patriot" act-ers, is this a "terrorist" incident? somebody flew a plane into a building, after all, and it would seem to meet the same criteria as some better-publicized incidents of a few years back. or is it just more of what people do, and something against which we need to open our society more, as opposed to less, in order to address? (i'm offering a vote right here and right now for the latter).

bad people do bad things. i would say, only treating a collection of people as a coherent and cohesive class of miscreants gives them the necessary opposition against which to organize and amplify their mayhem. only treating them as individuals (criminals, if necessary and warranted by their special crimes) gives us the proper basis to put their anti-social and psychotic behavior into the necessary focus by which to address it, and, hopefully, mitigate it in others for the future.

or, as marvin gaye so eloquently put it so many years ago now, "only love can conquer hate".

always makes me choke to hear the REAL terrorists running our geopolitics on a "faith" basis that we're a christian nation when we can't even get that simple little christian ideal right to begin with.

he/she's perfect

had an interesting experience, listening to a (female) friend explain her frustration with her current (insert inadequate and/or innacurate relationship word here) and his insistence upon telling her how to "fix" whatever it is that she chooses to tell him about from her life, whenever it is that she chooses to tell him about her life. it was a twilight-zone experience of deja vu for me, recalling a younger version of myself and his complete misconception, compounded by years of hollywood romanticism, that women wanted guys to be strong so they could fix things for them. from the very moment the first moustachioed bad guy tied a damsel to the tracks to create a scene of cinematic distress, we're all handed a load of tripe that simply can never square with the complex reality of men and women.

my friend's complaint was that she had reached a point in her life where she absolutely did not need or want someone to try to rescue her from things she's quite capable of resolving herself, yet she seemed never able to find any men but those who would insist on treating her like a helpless, hapless whiner, and responding with nothing but "helpful" advice and admonitions. (cue the music for the "AHA" moment...) what she really wanted, she explained at some length, and i was, thankfully, experienced enough to recognize i should just listen, even though i already knew how the story came out, was a guy to just listen to her, and understand her, and simply be there for her. ("be there for her" meaning simply to be, and not to do the least little anything other than be--no action beyond remaining in physical proximity and maintaining all indicators of paying rapt attention). i was uncomfortable inside in that all-too-familiar impatient way, because i did already know how the story would come out, but i was wise beyond my considerable years from having been well-trained at the marital failure academy, and prepared to sit and "mm-hmm" her 'til my ears bled, just the same way i would set my will and keep pushing the swing for my kids, even though they should be teaching school lessons on the concept of infinity by letting students try pushing a kid in a swing until they say they've had enough. when it's all over, the wise and patient man/father will have the reward of a great big smile from the one(s) he cares about, and, when you get right down to it, that's all a man can ever reasonably hope to get.

"reasonably", because, well, not that he can't hope to find a woman who is smart enough to show her gratitude by displaying her facility with the concept of "show up naked and bring food", but we're talking practical here, and if we're describing hopes and dreams still possessed of one foot in reality, we'll set our sights on the smile. it's all the too many men are ever likely to get.

there's great irony in the discovery of this, because such smiles are, when you get right down to it, equally rewarding on the "show up naked and bring food" scale, (as in, not much at all where it counts to a man's basest motivations), whether they be from intimate or casual acquaintance. this leaves an enlightened man free to dispense his "that must be so very hard for you's", and all other equivalencies to "mm-hmm" to all the women he cares about in his life, whether contemporary, too young or (and there are fewer and fewer of these every year, i'm here to tell you) too old for naked food visits. and "that must be so very hard for you" has a remarkable effect upon women, when dispensed with the proper amount of "rapt", and an absolute absence of "unwrapped" attention when it comes to her clothing. (guys who haven't yet understood the point of this, and who are still trying to equate it all to usable tactics in the "how do i get her to show up naked and bring food" quest, will only hear such things a certain way, and i can't do much about that, so please don't write back and tell me she threw you out when you moved that comforting hand on her shoulder to her breast like it's any kind of my fault).

guys, for the most part, she doesn't want to have sex with you. girls, for the most part, he doesn't want to have to listen to you. (all of which is god's little hint to us that he/she has a sense of humor). but if you want either of those things to happen, you're going to have to pay the piper. it's how such things are wired.

thankfully, along with this tiny little piece of buddha's third eye, i have the blessing of a few special friends who get the naked food thing. i like to think they appreciate the fact that i'm well beyond feeling compelled to try to fix things for them, even though, as a man, i'm never going to be far from yearning to do just that. it's always a fascinating thing to know that exclusivity, whether of listening, or of dishabilimented comestibles, is never the point of either at their purest. i can listen to a girl half my age or enamored of someone else just as effectively as anyone. (the beauty part is that you don't have to really understand what it is that's being talked about beyond being sincerely sympathetic, since the point is not fixing anything but your attention on the story at hand, and since there will be no hands from shoulder to breast involved, such girls/women could be your proverbial best friend's girl without worries, and, best of all about that, your being a good listener can take some of that burden off your buddy and leave you secure in the satisfaction that you're helping him keep getting some thanks to your efforts, and what's not to like about that).

the hard part is in waiting around to find someone on the other side of the gender divide who will finally get it and come to you, either listening and not doing, as does the "perfect man", or naked with food, as does the perfect woman. (no quotes needed there--you can take it from me, she's perfect). my sincere hope for you is that he/she will do it without the least regard for exclusivity or monogamy, because, and here's the advanced part, once it returns to the self-involved interest in doing it because you're trying to get (or need) something in return, the magic bubble bursts, and you're back to gender politics as usual. and that, sadly for our national divorce statistics, though happily for our advanced sense of relationship schadenfreude by watching people try to maintain relationships in front of all of their facebook friends, never works.

some day you may wake up and realize you've been with someone for what will have been the rest of your whole life, and that's the day (and not before) you'll know you got it right. until then, people, listen, and/or show up naked and bring food, (you know who you are), and don't sweat that you can't control the rest. simple truth is that karma depends on your never having been meant to control it. (it's just good karma).

peace.

people are crazy part i-don't-know-how-many

there's a story about a small-plane tragedy in california making its way around the wires today that has me scratching my head at how bizarre some people can be in the way they think about such things. the menlo park fire chief, in discussing the circumstances of the crash of a twin-engine cessna 317 into a home in a residential neighborhood, was quoted to say "either by luck or the skill of the pilot, the plane hit the street and not the homes on either side. that saved people in this community."

let's call a spade a spade here: the luck and the skill of any pilot is always secondary to his or her purely selfish act of flying a motorized projectile over the places where people live. nothing about flying an airplane saved people in this or any other community, who were in no danger of being landed upon by a streaking hulk of out-of-control aluminum right up until the point where some other self-centered person decided to point one at them.

the whole approach to aviation in this country is remarkably skewed towards the people who can afford to fly their own airplanes. i lived for years down the road from a private airfield, and, trust me, there's no relief from noise or any other environmental pollution coming from one of these to be found in any of our existing civil peace statutes. air rights over our homes are likewise completely beyond our influence or control, and too bad if something might drop down out of the sky to tear the roof off our otherwise castle.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm not against the public interest in maintaining safe and well-regulated air travel, and to gain such benefits as might accrue from such a thing, we do need to make some compromise. but when some clown decides he or she "needs" a private plane, and then "accidentally" drops it on somebody, that's where i would be inclined to draw a very stark line.

i don't have the right to drive my car up anyone else's driveway at 150 miles per hour, and, until i do, i would prefer that yahoos in private planes be denied the right to fly their little toys over my building, lest they "accidentally" crash into it, and someone congratulates them for not having run it into the building next door.

"it's a monday night"

ok, there's an asterisk for last night because a lot of people, like me, don't have school today or aren't working this week. but i've been there too many previous mondays to be confused about this--jen kearney and the lost onion (alphabetically, claire finley, carl johnson, pete maclean and quite often mark mullins) quite literally own monday nights in greater boston via their monday night residency at toad, and the world is absolutely beginning to take notice.

there was a point last night after the roof had been blown off the joint where one of the musicians even had to be impressed, observing, "just look at the crowd in this place--and it's a MONDAY NIGHT". it gave me a chance to pause and reflect, because these sorts of things are becoming commonplace for me, and i'm in danger of losing my perspective. we're talking MONDAY NIGHT. after 10:30pm. until, basically, 1am. in a bar. dancing. cheering. living life. where else does this happen?

it's a wonderful thing, this monday night gig. it's seriously flawed premise because it's a monday night, but who is to say that isn't why it's working. (where else can you be part of this kind of scene so early in the week?) i'm swearing to myself i won't give in next monday, because, seriously, it's a MONDAY NIGHT, but you know my track record where these things are concerned.

if you ever want to treat yourself to a tuesday off, or even just a late start, i highly recommend indulging yourself on a monday night at toad when jen, carl, claire, pete and mark are holding court. it's where it's at.

ok, they got me

in yet another installment of kad's issues with bureaucracy, we can skip over to the local CVS where it was convenient (can't say necessary, as there are other pharmacies in town, just not DOWN town) to fill a couple of scrips for my son's recuperation from his wisdom tooth extraction(s). i actually shouldn't characterize this as an "issue", per se, but i mean to point out that i have previously and scrupulously avoided getting into their loyalty program out of my preference to avoid spam, as well as get a lot of my personal care products elsewhere where they tend to be a bit cheaper. well, CVS got me today, and i know it's because i'm old and worn down and just unable to resist anymore.

you know i'm their key growth demographic--middle aged guy on an accelerating path of physical decline--and the key to getting me proved to be just that. my new habit of popping glucosamine tablets, rather than admit that my knee is just never coming back the way it used to be, has left me staring at the prodigious price tag of those big horse pills, and wondering why some smart guy or gal hasn't already tried to create a prescription version of the stuff so that it might be covered under our burgeoning health insurance fiasco, and them pumped into every elderly home much like those scooter guys are now scamming us with their "scooter in every pot" tv ads. ("no out of pocket expense!!!")

well, today's CVS deal was 2 for 1, and i now am the slightly ashamed owner of a whole collection of little "extra care" cards. (one for the wallet, and one each for a couple of key chains, but, honestly, i just can't go there yet). there was a deal on the kind of conditioner my daughter has been using today, and for the future i recall one particularly sweet friend of mine insisting i take the second of her "buy one get one free" deal on laundry soap awhile back, and i imagine sooner or later i'll be in for another one of those too, and maybe able to return the favor.

it's really not so bad, these loyalty deals, when they're actually making it worth your while, unlike airline miles and a host of other scams for which i no longer have time. (just get me there fastest, and the rest i seriously couldn't be bothered to care).

can't wait to ride my scooter down for my refills!

craptastic

there's a certain cable provider whose marketing slogan invites plenty of opportunity for sarcasm, and, like clockwork this week, they dinged me $45 on my bill for a piece of equipment that i've been trying for three months to hand back to them. at first they had no record of ever having given it to me, so no way for their bureaucracy to accept it, and i'm thinking it's pretty lucky i was smart enough not to drop it in the basket on my way out. they said "well, either throw it away or give it to someone you know who might be able to use one". (or at least one of their people did). i then tried to get it back to the installer guy who got me set up, in case he could manage something with it or at least make use of it, but despite frequent "yeah, next time i'm in the neighborhood i'll grab it", nothing came of that either.

so now it's on my bill as a piece of unreturned equipment, and it's up to me to once again head down to washer street to stand in line and get the full craptastic treatment all over again. "more choice"... IF ONLY. comcast, you have to know that the very next outfit to run high speed lines to my building gets my business, even if only to just change the scenery on the place where i take my electronic abuse.

presidents day

my newspaper is telling me to buy a new car, but i think i'll go to see jen kearney and the lost onion at toad in cambridge tonight, and put my "O=W" bumper sticker on the bar, instead.

(you can buy yours too at zazzle.com, and a discreet hat tip to my still-party-affiliated friend with all the best web skillz to be finding gems like this).

have you unenrolled today?

city of lowell survey

please try to move past the insipid "alive, unique, inspiring" BS at the bottom, and consider following the link and completing the survey:



From: "Errickson, James"
Sent: Wed, February 10, 2010 5:05:06 PM
Subject: Please take this short City of Lowell survey and forward the request to your contacts

The City of Lowell is undertaking a planning process for its Five-Year Consolidated Plan. This HUD-required plan is our roadmap for spending federal dollars that will be allocated to the City over the period of July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2015.

We are looking for broad public input into the planning process and are requesting your assistance with this endeavor.

Please take the short, on-line anonymous survey, linked below, and please forward this request to your staff, your clients, and other email contacts that you have who live in the City. You can also assist by enabling clients or community members to take the survey on computers in your office. People without computer access can also access the survey via the computers at the Pollard Memorial Library. There is a link to the survey on the City's website.

Keep in mind that Consolidated Plan funds are targeted to serving the needs of low- and moderate-income residents and neighborhoods with high concentrations of low- and moderate-income households. If you represent a social service provider please consider the issues or concerns of the majority of your clients in your answers.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8BJQN7V

Thank you for your assistance with this important project.

The survey will be accessible through the month of February. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Allison Lamey | Senior Community Development Planner

The City of Lowell

Division of Planning and Development
50 Arcand Drive | Lowell , MA 01852

t: 978.446.7200 x1429| f: 978.446.7014| www.Lowell.org



LOWELL Alive. Unique. Inspiring.

ok all you self-righteous D's, we wanna hear the explanation for THIS one

i'm thoroughly disgusted today to be reminded of the decidedly UN-patriotic passage of the "patriot" act all those years ago. (always required to be put in quotes because of how anathema to patriotism such tyranny always is). however, i'm also thoroughly disgusted to hear the deafening silence from all the D's in the house about THEIR guy rubber-stamping the biggest FU to the Constitution in our lifetimes, and that even includes nixon's plumbers for those of us who go back that far.

all we heard for the better part of a decade from the lefties was how much of a draft-dodging criminal fascist geo dubya bush was, and how desperately we needed regime-change here at home. well, you know what? WE STILL DO. and, this time, it's on YOU. not only has your guy continued to shove the bureaucratic broomstick up our collective asses by extending the un-patriot act, but now he's got his minions arguing that us citizens "have no reasonable expectation" of personal privacy when we're on a cell phone.

"no reasonable expectation"???

i'll tell you what. when i read my Constitution (capital C because it's that important) i have EVERY reasonable expectation of privacy because my country is FOUNDED on the idea. but, apparently, some folks with major political party designations of both D and R think it's just fine to deprive me of that and whatever else they damn well please.

can't wait for the big long explanation on left in lowell. (cuz you know the righties are all red in the face spluttering on about how they're shocked, shocked i tell you, that a president might presume to do such a thing, and we don't have to wait for that).

party politics SUCK, and people who are affiliated with a major political party are, quite literally, guilty of racketeering for their part in this.

tim cahill for governor, and i don't care how unqualified or unsavory you (or me for that matter) might think him to be. he's the only guy in the race not stained with the shame of this, and that's good enough to win my vote this time and every time.

melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones rock the house

it's remarkable whenever a guy with a ukulele can raise the roof on a place, and last night at TOAD in cambridge melvern taylor (and his fabulous meltones, of course) did exactly that. many folks had gotten the news that an upcoming cd project and other various life-exigencies would keep the boys from playing out in the immediate future, so the mood was right for everyone to come together and let the band know how they feel one last time before the break. and, as is the case so often with these things, the band couldn't help but let the crowd know how they felt about all that, too, so the results were, to say the least, an evening for the ages.

i am so very proud and pleased to have been there when.

thanks, melvern and bob and dave and matt, (and bumpy, cuz you know a piece of you is always somehow there on the stage, too), for yet another great evening of great tunes and good friends. even dancing phil came out of his semi-retirement to take all the ladies for a spin around the old dance floor, and it was, as they say, very, very good.

the other part that sometimes gets lost in all of this is that the set is evermore being influenced by the new music that hasn't yet found its way into the recording studio, (table for two, wild irish rose, bottom of the sea, melancholy waltz, etc.), and it's already evident that the new record is going to be yet another keeper. as the final encores were played out, and bowling in billerica stood tall between working stiff (one of the greatest songs ever written) and angel on my shoulder (another one of the greatest songs ever written), reminding us yet again that even the stuff that didn't make the records from the back catalog is still better than anything else playing on the radio these days, all anyone could do was look ahead to even better days and give a rousing hand to the guys on the stage making it all happen.

the capstone to the evening, and the gem still ringing in the ears the morning after, was "hello mary lou", and dave livingston's nonpareil guitar. when gene pitney and cayet mangiaracina heard rickey nelson hit #1 with it back in '61, i'm quite sure they never realized that the best was yet to come. you know what they say--always leave 'em wanting more--and last night, at TOAD, melvern taylor and the fabulous meltones surely did.

casa who?

i hang out with a chronologically diverse crowd of people these days, and it never ceases to amaze me how quickly culture passes us all by, or we pass by it, whichever the case may be. one particularly beautiful and talented compatriot among my many impressed me a few weeks back by pulling the answer to a tennessee williams trivia question out of thin air (apparently to me, because i was never a theater person during my formative educational years, nor anytime since) that was clearly outside her era, just as it is mine, or to have known in any other way than by being culturally omnivorous beyond those tender years. ("young enough to be my daughter" is starting to edge more towards "young enough to be my granddaughter" with every passing year, so by "tender" you shouldn't infer a lack of sufficient time on this earth to have acquired suitably broad education and cultural seasoning, but we don't have to get into that right now).

the reason, i think, that i was so impressed was that she had so obviously leap-frogged my own cultural stagnation, and reached back and preserved something culturally relevant, (at least if my theater-aware friends are to be believed about mr. williams), that most of us here (i'm going to presume) have forgotten, even if we ever knew it in the first place.

which brings us forward to last night, during which i became aware that an entire table full of people who are generally culturally aware in this kind of way about a lot of things, one of which would include film, as demonstrated by this same person's appreciation for gable and colbert in "it happened one night", might never have seen casablanca.

???

to explain my bias right up front, i'll say that i think citizen kane is a sometimes tiresome exercise in artistic brilliance that one has to study more because its good for you than because its entertaining in and of itself. i'll also say that, nodding to my friend's clark gable fetish, that gone with the wind (which these folks also had not seen) is a going-on-4-hour soap opera of inarguably-grand style and epic sweep that hardly excuses itself beyond the fact that it's a ball to watch, and there's something to be said for that, too. (though its literally going-on-4-hour--with a 222 minute running time that doesn't even include the overture music, the entr'acte music, or the exit music that goes along with it does try the seat of ones pants after awhile).

but casablanca...

again, my bias here, but i'd say, though it's not technicolor, that casablanca is one of the most colorful black and white movies you'll ever want to see. (it's literally a ball to watch from the first cheesy opening animation to the very last fog-enhanced final "here's looking at you kid"). the writing is great, the acting is great, the directing is great, the art directing is great (etc. etc. etc.) and you can study it to death in film school (did i tell you that my degree in finance and quantitative methods from babson college is augmented by a second qualified minor in film studies, but that i chose to keep that off the diploma cuz it seemed a little non sequitur?) and be amazed at every turn, no less so than citizen kane or any number of other "good for you" films that, unlike casablanca, bore you to tears, and you'll like it even better for all that. but, let's face it, movies are entertainment as much as (hopefully more so than) they are art, and that's the beginning and end of the argument for me. casablanca is a movie you enjoy to see, and not just because bogart looks so iconic with that white dinner jacket, cigarette, and ever-emptying glass of scotch. ("of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine...")

for one thing, the entire screenplay is quotable, and not just "you played it for her, now play it for me" and "here's looking at you, kid". ("major strasser has been shot--round up the usual suspects"... "i'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here"... "you know, rick, i have many a friend in casablanca, but somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one i trust"... "tell me, who was it you left me for? was it laszlo? or were there others in between? or aren't you the kind that tells?"... or, my personal favorite: "yvonne, i love you, but he pays me"...) of course, there are the romantic ones, too: "kiss me as if it were the last time..." "louis, i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship"... and we can go on and on about the casting and the music and everything else.

so how is that people can live their whole lives and cheat themselves out of the experience by never getting around to it???

i don't know--i've never seen a tennessee williams play.

but i am going to make sure i share casablanca (and "to have and have not", because i love that one even better) with my friends at my first available opportunity.

"so much for global warming"

the new englander had a good one yesterday examining, among other things, the religious fervor that seems to accompany each "side" of the "climate change" debate. (the link to an extremely relevant michael crichton's essay is also there, but i won't put it here, so you can get it there). the great line from crichton is:

"i have been asked to talk about what i consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and i have a fundamental answer. the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as i think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance."

amen.

recently i ran across an LA times article that illuminates something i had previously missed--that the "intergovernmental panel on climate change" is actually comprised of four separate research tracks, and not all of them have been caught gaming their data and/or their conclusions. (in fact, only one track has, and even there the errors discovered are more akin to nuances than smoking global hothouse guns). but i digress...

so why is everyone so quick to either A) believe with a religious ferver that we're already half cooked to death in an imminently boiling soup of carbon dioxide (against which only al gore can save us), or B) refuse to believe anything could possibly be wrong with this global utopia we live in simply because it just (almost) snowed yesterday? do any of us actually have any first-hand knowledge of either point of view, other than our choice to believe what certain people tell us, and disbelieve others?

the whole thing resembles to me like nothing so much as yet another one of humanity's seemingly endless supply of religious wars, in which our gods conspire to "save" us by coincidentally encouraging us to butcher one another over our "beliefs", lest someone else's belief gain momentum to the cost of one of ours. but here's the thing--we can measure things like never before in human history, and one of the things that we've measured is the history of the surface of our planet to change in temperature to a remarkable (and life-threatening) degree. glaciers created almost 100% the topography here in new england, for example, though i doubt anyone has ever seen one within 1000 miles of here anymore. can anyone seriously conclude that something didn't change to cause all that ice to melt?

of course, knowing that something has changed, and concluding the cause, and whether there's anything to be or that should be done about it, are completely different questions, and i happen to believe that that is where our global geopolitical discussions ought to start, but, somehow, they don't, and i think it's because (my conclusion, anyway) a lot of knee-jerk democrats want to believe the sky is falling because that would mean that those big bad rapacious (republican) industrial robber barons are guilty guilty guilty, and a lot of knee-jerk republicans are compelled to disagree with whatever a lot of democrats believe, so they're just as busy compiling their own lists of reasons that al gore is really chicken little in a colonel sanders body suit.

can we all just read for a little while, and then come back to the table with some interesting things we've learned?

i've learned by walking on a bunch of them (from argentina to northern canada) that many of the world's glaciers are disappearing in our lifetimes. this doesn't seem to me to be a geothermal coincidence, and i'm fascinated to read scientific research postulating as to why. this may be because my dad was a weatherman in the navy in WWII in the days when they had only recently discovered isobars and that you can actually predict this stuff with better accuracy than the old farmers almanac. or it could be because living within a few miles of countless superfund cleanup sites has taught me that corporations will never worry about cleaning something up if they can make a profit messing it up in the meantime, and it's up to us to decide what they can and can't do to make those profits lest we all end up living in the global equivalent of love canal.

in the meantime, i also believe that producing 100% of our energy needs via renewable (solar, wind, hydro) resources is a life-and-death matter of national security, observing as i have the wars oil promulgates, and the economic collapse that pursuing those wars on top of a prodigious imbalance of payments for that oil has wreaked upon our economy. (and lets not forget our vulnerability to the foreign powers who might control the means of powering our livelihoods).

whether or not that all helps out our global climate situation would be gravy as far as i'm concerned. so why can't we all just get along?

snow phobia

one of my fondest memories of alberta remains a january trip that included -35 degree weather along with the chinook that brought things up into the 20's a couple days later, and you might be surprised to learn how warm 28 degrees can be when you're standing in the sun and recently reminded of what -35 feels like. (if you've never felt -35, i'm still sure you can imagine it, and you can take my word that you'll be out in your shirtsleeves and nothing more than a sweater when it hits 28 afte rthat and feel perfectly toasty about it). that was also the trip during which my cousins enjoyed explaining to me how automotive breakdowns in the dead of winter in their part of the world can be life-threatening experiences, and how the first things you do when your pickup craps out on a back road is to remove the battery and drain all the motor oil into the bucket you always carry around with you for just such an occasion, to make sure to drag them with you on a sled so as to get them indoors with you at your first available opportunity. (so they can be warmed up before they're used to try to restart the dead automotive beast, natch). sure puts winter in southern new england into clearer perspective...

if you've ever driven the roads further north from here during or immediately after a snowstorm, i'm sure you've recognized the effective difference between northern new englanders and the wimps we are to the south when it comes to winter. for one thing, the plows there are the right size, as well as outfitted properly for the job at hand, including the extra pieces necessary to throw the excess snow far enough beyond the big pile in the shoulder so that it doesn't remain in the way on the next trip. for another thing, the cars there all have snow tires and/or chains or whatever might be necessary to actually drive in the stuff. unfortunately, down here, we might as well be washingtonians with the way we get paralyzed by even the threat of a little fluffy stuff. (tell me the story you haven't heard most often today isn't how snarled up everything got back in december of '07).

makes me embarrassed to even admit i'm from massachusetts.

the biggest disappointment today, however, is that trivia has been cancelled at major's pub for tonight.

i understand not everyone has snow tires, nor the desire to compete with the snow later for a little useless knowledge and a couple beers they really don't need. but, geez, people, where do you think you live, anyway? it snows here, ya know? and life most certainly goes on.

i chose to live where i can walk to such things regardless of the weather, and it's more than a little disappointing to learn that, at least in this case, it's all been for naught.

LL bean, people. and blizzaks. and maybe some gloves and an ice scraper. it's all you need.

meanwhile, if you want to come over and hang out while we don't have trivia to distract us, just let me know.

what's a blue dog?

back in '94, while the R's were kicking the D's out of their congressional majority, a group of democrats "choked blue" by the liberal excesses of their own party formed a working group that thrives to this day. for the righties among the readership, it can be pointed out that these folks were so bold as to have supported the republican "contract with america", and that they railed just as loudly as any rightie about the more liberal tendencies and excesses of the clinton white house. some of 'em (billy tauzin and jimmy hayes) even went so far as to switch to the republican party itself. unfortunately for the more reasonable among us, they also support(ed) things like the iraq war and warrantless government wiretapping, so they can be applauded in only extremely circumspect fashion. (for example, when they act to stymie nancy pelosi's spend, spend, spend super-majority politics related to "insurance and pharmaceutical company welfare", i mean, "healthcare"). as you can see, for the lefties, there's not much to like about them at all, except for the fact that their states are colored blue instead of red, but, then, to piss off the lefties is a compliment where i come from, just as much as it is to piss off the righties.

i'm just sayin', cuz it sure seems to me the quicker we tear down the ideological monoliths that the major political parties have become, and the quicker we get the whole country back to building political platforms based on doing something positive, as opposed to simply opposing everything the "other" guys stand for, the better.

for me, i just wish there was a party that sees a smaller government, properly invested in protecting the interests (e.g. civil liberties) of the electorate, as the goal. the fact that our current supreme court is so befuddled as to insist on extending bill of rights protections to corporations, instead of regulating their worst behavior in order to protect the rights of citizens to run their own politics, and no one in my government is resolved to do anything about that lest it impact their ability to get re-elected, is beyond the pale.

what's a tea party?

self-prior-described neocons (e.g. sarah palin) have swooped in to attempt to appear to be in front of the tea party movement, and it's creating some of the most bizarre politics i think i have ever seen. (e.g. self-identified and obviously confused "tea party" candidates are running against ron paul, the godfather of the kind of civil libertarian, fiscal conservatism upon which the whole tea party idea is based, in his texas district).

oh em gee.

on its face, the "tea party" movement appears to be the kind of thing that could carry extremely positive potential to disrupt the politically-stagnant status quo on the right side of things in this country, in much the same way that the "blue dog" designation serves folks coming to new and different conclusions from the left. if i might be so bold as to paraphrase, the original intent of the "tea party" movement is to blow up and reject, along with all that's wrong with the democrat side of the aisle, the "bush" GOP ideology and legacy that embraces big government spending (e.g. foreign wars, corporate bailouts, etc.) and big government intrusions against civil liberties (e.g. "patriot" act, and what other example could possibly be needed beyond that?). in fact, it's expressly an attempt to reject everything our current party politics stand for--both D AND R. as a staunch civil libertarian and fiscal conservative, this kind of fresh air addresses exactly the points of my frustration with all the yahoo republicans i have current misfortune to know, as well all the yahoo democrats i have current misfortune to know, too. good things, right?

and then politics as usual happens.

neocons happy to bust the treasury in order to pursue oil-fueled violence across the globe, thus stoking the flames of the perfect firestorm of fiscal melt-down, continued energy dependence, and endless vulnerability to terrorism, (yes, we're talking about the beauty contestant from the now-debt-burdened metropolis of wasilla, alaska), see that the tea party movement is loudest in bashing the current D-controlled capitol, and can't help themselves but to have wet dreams of standing in front of the disaffected masses and reaping the political benefits. the lower-iq echelons of the frustrated republican-leaning portion of the electorate, happy to have any opportunity to have their misspelled placards plastered all over fox news, take all their xenophobic, "bomb iran" and spare no expense while doing it vitriol, and pour it out like fuel on a very ready fire, and start showing up to the rallies as if they have the first clue about what they are talking about, or what the rallies themselves were originally supposed to be about in the first place.

and then people like me who believe in actual civil liberties, and reining in the government instead of setting it loose on a pet political agenda, can't help ourselves but to tune out.

and that's a shame.

ron paul--tea partier. sarah palin--neocon populist opportunist pretending to be a tea partier in order to sleaze votes. barack obama--bush II with a D on his badge instead of an R, who wouldn't know a tea party if and until it votes him out of office.

seymour duncan

brands are funny things. some, like those of many soft drinks and light beers, do little but obscure better alternatives by saturating our media with their own unique kind of environmental pollution. others, like seymour duncan, live funny little lives below most people's radar, and become relevant only in the most surprising of places and ways.

seymour duncan, if legend can be believed, was a moderately talented guitar player whose fell in with les paul and roy buchanan, and followed their advice and his penchant for the electrical workings of such things to wind up at fender's soundhouse in london rewinding pickups for people (quoting wikipedia here) like jimmy page, george harrison, eric clapton, david gilmore, pete townshend, jimi hendrix, peter frampton, and jeff beck. jeff is the guy who reputedly put seymour on the map by featuring duncan's stuff on his first solo albums, and, don't get me wrong, i have "blow by blow" and "wired" on original vinyl so it's not completely lost on me, but it wasn't until angus young came along that i put 2 and 2 together and became a knowledgable brand fan. (LET THERE BE ROCK!)

around that time (mid 80's) i was also at my youthful musical fan-dom peak (not to mention standing in line all night long to be first for ac/dc tickets whenever they went on sale) and i noticed when seymour duncan amps started to show up in the various clubs around boston, in addition to those little pickup coils inside all the various teles and strats and les pauls and SG's and what have yous that were always plugged into 'em. sadly, it wasn't long before the boxes and speakers got beat to virtually unusable hell, (i don't think seymour toured much before becoming a musical tinker), but then a very curious thing began to happen: the guys would hack those mangled boxes up to save the tubes and the circuits, and make their own little homemade head units for the marshalls and other cabinet indestructibles beneath, and damned if they didn't keep plugging those seymour duncans in night after night because they sounded oh so very sweet.

fast forward a few decades, and even the head unit business may not have survived for the seymour duncan people, but those little tubes and sound circuits sure as shootin' did. they're packed right there into that little brick of pure sonic gold that now sits on my living room floor, to forever forward bedevil my poor and unsuspecting neighbors. the reviewers at electric guitar review dot com practically proposed to the thing in their write-up, and, i have to say, they aren't exaggerating. more succinctly and to the point: "it's ultimately an entire tube pre-amp in a floor pedal". got that right.

the part i like best about it is how clean and pure and full it can pass a hard signal from a nylgut-stringed ukulele. when i opted for the under-saddle piezo i knew i'd be wrestling some prodigiously wide frequency responses that would always potentially overpower the sweet woody goodness of the natural uke tones in the middle, so i figured i'd need something equally powerful to bring the focus back into the center and from there right up to heaven. and this here seymour duncan's the trick. even (especially) jacked through into my little tiny 5-watt fender champ, the tone is all there. (along with the ever-present temptation to kick that little lead switch and listen to the razors come out, but that's another story altogether).

you want to screech with a higher gain electronic edge? go for SD's "mayhem" model. but if you want the warmest, fullest, suh-weetest sounds this side of everything you remember best about your musical childhood, then go for the twin tube classic. i'll tell you about the sustain from my gretsch electromatic next time. it's nothing short of orgasmically breathtaking.

which makes this a perfect night to go out and have a musical beer

jen kearney and the lost onion are doing it once again tonight at TOAD in cambridge. (give a shout out if you want into the carpool). it's the last week of work before vacation week, so you know you can at least consider it. (c'mon, you know you wanna).

which reminds me to remind you that melvern taylor is at TOAD on thursday this week, and rumor has it this may be your very last time to catch melvern and the boys (bob nash, dave livingston and matt berlin) playing out for a somewhat long time. (something about recording and unrelated personal stuff getting in the way). which reminds me why i always try to make the effort when i can to see live music--you never know when it's going away, or ever going to be as good again.

which further reminds me that treat her right is at TOAD (there's a coincidence here, yes there is) on sunday night, which is valentines day, but don't let that get in the way of having a good time. these are guys who are some of the best who ever were who are still some of the best who ever are, and i saw 'em back in the day as well as saw 'em last month and can vouch for all of it personally. if you really want to impress somebody special, take 'em to this show. then, when it turns out so very well for you afterwards, you can book the following two sundays (the 21st and 28th) for more of the same thing. when or where are you gonna get odds like that ever again?

which would make me remiss not to mention that, especially if you're a fellow lowellian and not a big fan of semi-long-distance urban hipsterism, you can catch arte k, carl j and friends (that's kenyon and johnson, along with steve esposito and justin beaulieu) on friday night at 31 main in ayer, which is a great little room only 45 easy highway minutes away, and the first night of the big vacation week, so you know you have absolutely no excuse not to hop out and catch a set.

you'll be glad you did--promise!

are they kidding?

the partisan pissing contest is starting early for upcoming gubernatorial elections here in the commonwealth, and i'm already tired. actually, it's more like tired and hung over from the punchbowl full of pot-shots lobbed back and forth over the recent special senatorial election, but, either way, it's hard to take any of these yelping yahoos seriously. "your guy is a dirtbag". "no, YOUR guy is a dirtbag". (and, once again, everybody can be right).

actually, i don't want this to be gender-biased, since we can point out that niki's first move, upon the whole country figuring out that the electorate won't stand for big government spending on anything right now, even if it's healthcare, is to propose going back to the biggest-spending option of them all and starting the debate all over again. (is she, as we used to say back in the neighborhood, retahhhdid?)

i like the fact that timmy "the opportunist" cahill is still on his independent high-horse. his record of profligate government spending is no less impressive than deval's or charlie b's. (from whom lt. governor tim murray happily pointed out getting lectured on fiscal responsibility is a lot like getting lectured on abstinence from paris hilton", to provide one of the best early sound bytes of the election).

but why do folks think that whining and ranting and stamping ones blogological feet about how bad the other guys are does anything to mask the truth about their candidate being at least as bad???

some of us here without party affiliation would sincerely like to find one candidate who isn't a two-faced sack of lying partisan political BS. (and, no, replying to me that your guy is better than the opposite one, or that your guy's stuff don't stink, doesn't count for squat).

what we have here is a political process that spends without restraint on programs without representative sense. tell me who's going to change THAT? (and, no, telling me that YOUR guy will, because he's not like the other two, won't work, either--they all have track records, and it's all pretty obvious and scary stuff).

ttuukkaa!!

great game yesterday wasn't it? the way the underdog came through and finished going away?

yep, that tuukka rask sure is some kind of goaltender.

GO BRUINS!

some things you just can't joke about

had a conversation earlier tonight that included a bit about cars, and, well, you know how i like to talk about mine. one of the descriptions of what i like most about it was the eff you factor it yields in contrast with the one with whom, (and, thought to myself, the way), i used to be. something in the way i illustrated the point with a little extra digital visual aid pulled up a "bitter divorced guy" impression and facial expression out of the audience, (which wasn't party to "the way i used to be" part), which i guess is something i should have expected, and about which known better.

some things you just can't joke about.

i drive that car because i love to. i play music because i love to do that, too. (thank goodness for the car's sake i'm a better driver than i am a musician). i spent 20 years of my life choosing not to do what i love out of devotion to something and someone who really wasn't what they seemed, and that's not to say i was, either. it's just the odd way two people compromise themselves right out of themselves, and then can't figure how to come back from it. and if i (and she--who knows how she feels) can joke about it, well, then, i feel i've earned the right, and if spectators read bitterness into that, well, there's not much i'm going to be able to do about it, is there.

living well is the best revenge. george herbert said that. (back in 1300 and something). and he's not wrong.

but when you put it that way, people don't get it, either.

i have no idea, other than to say that i think most people don't want to hear stories about divorce. too bad, cuz i've got a million of 'em.

eff you, baby! ;-)

how's your action?

my action is hot and fast these days.

a few days ago i shipped off a ukulele and a couple guitars (yes, my little hobby is taking over my life) to carl at carl's custom guitars for some upgrades. (my favorite line in all the matrix trilogy, when neo runs into the agents for the first time in the second movie and they're faster than before: "hmmmm... upgrades...") the uke (kala tenor ka-kt) and the acoustic (yamaha sg700s) needed some electronics so i can plug 'em in (just cuz) and the gretsch (electromatic g5120) was just begging for a rocker bridge (better mass for tone and fewer snags for whammying the bigsby), and as part of the service carl was kind enough to adjust the action on all three, just for me. (he'll do it for you too if you ask him--he's good that way).

i think any non-musical women otherwise interested might be disappointed to learn that "action" in this context means the height of the strings from the fretboard, and adjusting it is a definite art because too low and the strings'll buzz and go dead on you, but too high and it's like trying to pull telephone wires down to the street with the tip of your finger--literally--and just right isn't as easy to achieve as you might think. (something i've tried with varying success on previous instruments, proving that you always want to send an expert to do an expert's job on something like this). well, the review is simple: all three play better, sound better, (another of the adjustments is to adjust the string length from the nut to the bridge, and i swear this isn't dirty, either, to just the right distance so that the tone carries true on every one of the frets all the way up the neck), and FEEL better (the importance of good action can never be underrated) than ever before. carl even polished them all and treated the wood so they look better than ever, too.

naturally, i plugged in the uke first, and was wow'ed by how awesome it sounds with its new under-saddle piezo. a uke expert advised me to go with the glue-on option instead, to be able to amplify the tone *after* it's resonated through the wood, but i've thought a lot about it, and i think i'll prefer the wider frequency response that i'll enjoy from the saddle (the little piece the strings sit on at the bottom where the vibrations are the most direct and "true" as far as the strings are concerned) instead of going for the richer, but less versatile, tone i'd get from gluing a piezo to the inside of the soundbox and working off the wood. yeah, it may have lost me just a wee bit of "uke"-ness, but i'm going to make up so much more of it in everything else that i think i can live with it. (worst case, i switch to the glue-on later, or, even, buy a second and better uke which isn't far out of the picture, either). the great news for me, (though not so much for my neighbors), is that the saddle pickup puts great tone into the amp, and fuzzes up like cotton candy, or a basketful of barbed wire, just as you please. AWESOME. (thanks, carl!)

the acoustic is similarly tuned in via the (new bone) saddle, and sounds GREAT. a bone saddle really amps up the volume, richness and tone all by itself as compared with the composite version that's stock with the guitar, and carl has mine sanded down to perfection so that both the sound and the action is like, as mike meyers in his best barbra streisand fan voice says, buttah. fun. the even funnier part is learning how carl's ear and mine are so different. i had worked in the last set of strings until they were mellow mellow mellow, and really liked how they smoothed themselves out and gave up every bit of their original (to me, tinny) twang. (along with, granted, some of their other tone, but that's what i mean by different). carl immediately recognized the setup needed new strings, which were in the case, and he put on, but i'm finding that i'm compelled to whale the crap out of it as hard as i can so i can beat these new ones into submission, too. i LIKE my sound a certain way, hey. it's great when you start to "move in" to your instrument, and you know both what you like, and how to get it. (step #1: take it to carl).

as for the gretsch, well...

carl likes the feel of the flat-wounds on the gretsch, too. (strings that are smoother and not as ridged, albeit a tad more expensive). there's something they compel in you when you feel them, and i know they're most popular for jazz players who go for that smoother sound, but i absolutely adore the way they heat up when you crank up the gain and overdrive 'em through the tube amp, and rock out. ("little sammy was a punk rocker...") with the rig all tuned up the way only carl has been able to tune it, the whole thing absolutely SINGS. i could not possibly be more pumped.

the seymour duncan twin tube pre-amp comes from ups on monday. i got a chance to test drive one, and it's absolutely what i want for the whole set. the obvious capability will be kicking some serious ass when the hollow-body gretsch is cranked up and rolling. the 16 volt system and twin tubes will give the guitar a massive and very pure power drive into whatever amp i'll be running with it, (the fender blues junior in carl's signature all-wood cabinet, tyvm), and it'll rock like very few people's toys will rock. (now, if only i could actually PLAY it...) but for the uke...

everybody keep leaning me towards the truer "uke" sound, but i know that's not what i'm going for--not entirely, and not every time. oh, the seymour duncan will push clean signal like nobody's business, and that's the fine part about that. the uke will sound full and clean and perfect when i want or need it to. but with the tubes warming everything up and pushing it just that little bit further, my little wooden toy is going to have a growl and a bite to it whenever i please, too.

can you tell i'm like a kid in a candy store?

step one: dump anyone in your life who doesn't believe in your dreams.

step two: live 'em.

step three: encore!

if you've ever wanted to get your best out of a stringed instrument, talk to carl. he's gonna hook you up and leave you smiling and breathless with the way it plays, and that's a fact. and then, when you think you can stand it, you can boogie up to portsmouth on saturday, and see carl really cut it loose, and then you'll know there'll always be more to which to aspire.

i'm loving life today. are you?

follow your dream.

pre-superbowl musical trifecta

thursday night it's jen kearney and the lost onion (carl johnson, claire finley and pete maclean) at ole in downtown lowell. sangria, small plates, and the perfect music to go with it. you know you want to... so go!

friday night it's melvern taylor, and his fabulous meltones of course, (dave livingston, matt berlin and bob nash), at the blue mermaid in downtown portsmouth, nh. a bit of a drive, but a great spot with great eats and great sounds and well worth the trip. you know you don't want to drive... so carpool!

saturday night it's carl johnson solo at the blue mermaid again in downtown portsmouth, nh. there aren't all that many people who can do it all, but carl's definitely one guy who can. even better is that he can do it all before midnight and still give you time to make it back to the old court for the last set, though i'm not sure whether that'll be speakermute or tex macnamara by that time, but you can't miss with either. you know you want to party... so do it!

then, on sunday, you'll be just the right kind of mellow to want to enjoy the game with all the new friends you've met.

perfecta trifecta

helpful suggestions for the mortally depressed

i've been profoundly moved by the tragedy in westford this week, even more so (if that's even possible) from several other recent local tragedies in which (supposed) loved ones were murdered as part of a troubled relationship. words cannot express the shame i feel as a human being that such things remain possible in this world, and i know of no way to understand it, let alone stop it from ever happening again. my advice to myself and to everyone else is to hug our children, and remember that love is the answer. remember what it is to love, and be loved. and try to find our way back. try. please. try. all of us. and maybe some time later this week i'll stop feeling like every minute i'm going to start crying all over again. (it's that close to the surface--the tears are in my eyes all day long).

and then the heartache and sorrow turns just a little bit to righteous rage for lives cut all too short, and i'm compelled to want to offer some helpful suggestions for the mortally depressed.

perhaps a useful discussion will be to talk about the reports from ayer yesterday, where a guy in a pickup truck tried (unsuccessfully) to kill himself by running himself into a slow-moving freight train. (we can only hope he took the advice to not be shooting innocent family members before attempting his auto-denouement, observing that such is supremely cowardly among many other reprehensible things). but, seriously, this guy has turned himself into a poster boy for the benefits of not paying better attention in physics class, and it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

first of all, lets all remember that force = mass x acceleration. granted, a freight train is aces in the mass department, but even all that doesn't overcome a slow pace and the solid frame of what was a very substantial truck (did you see the picture? hysterical) when it's not anchored to anything more substantial than a few rubber tires. more effective for larger truck drivers might be the old aspirating wendy's chili technique, though one has to also be careful not to strike a house in the meantime and dislodge the tracheal obstruction.

have we all gone mad?

so here's my helpful suggestion to the mortally depressed: take your beef to washington. pack a .45 (at least) so as to be reasonably assured of the force necessary to blow your own head off, then wander over to capitol hill with a note explaining that "it's JOBS, you assholes", and off yourself on the steps. you're just as dead as with the family tragedy angle, but maybe after a few of you do what you're going to do anyway where it can actually do some good, then the rest of us will get their attention away from dreaming up all the pork-barrel ways they can sink this country even deeper into the fiscal swamp, and we'll all be better off, and then fewer of us can feel compelled to be shooting ourselves.

seems like it would make as much sense as the rest of the world this morning...

liv, rest in peace.

the politics of a horse's ass

perhaps we should try to make something of the prodigious piles of wasted newspaper space the sun devotes to its editorials, opinions and other opinionated columnists. i mean, it's not like it's doing anybody any good otherwise...

today's sun blows (bloviates?) just about a third of their page 3 on a nonsense rant about the distinction between "allies" and "americans" on omaha beach in order to pick fault with the recent SOTU address. the first and only thing of which this reminds me is how quickly the idiots of this particular partisan bias wanted to whine "allies" when it suited their de facto unilateral disrespect for our own (i.e. only congress can declare war) and international (go look up "soveriegnty" some time) law. (yeah, that's right, it was ALLIES who were all up in that iraq thing).

last i checked, d-day was considered a single invasion, not five separate ones, and when referring to canadians and british as "allies", it's more than a bit disingenuous, if not outright wrong, to suggest that we, the americans in that fight, weren't "allies", too.

i'm also not quite sure what is meant to be suggested by "do they teach world war II at harvard? or do they just teach about wars we lost?". i'm not aware, considering my scant comparative education, that we as a country have ever officially lost anything that's been officially called a war... (since, after all, the subject today is the careful splitting of semantic hairs...) are you?

oh, there's been a conflict here and there (e.g. korea) where the outcome has been left undetermined (korea is still just a "ceasefire" over 50 years later), or historically been deemed less than favorable, (i.e. we did strike our colors over saigon), but a war?

perhaps the horse's assistant can do some fact checking and get back to us.

the soul of downtown lowell

i moved downtown (yes, i'm a downtownie) back in '07, and have ever since almost daily heard stories of the downtown music scene "back in the day". well, i try to keep it to myself that "back in the day" for me was actually back in the mid-seventies, when a kid could get a glass of beer at the worthen house (ironically then the old worthen) for fifty cents and no questions, but who's counting. the main thing is there's a hole where the music used to be, and this, as much as anything else, is holding back the soul of downtown lowell.

well, bernie lynch and the boys and girls down at city hall are only ever going to be able to or do so much, so it's not on anyone else but us to make the rest of it work. and it's easy. for example, thursday night, and every other thursday night until we stop coming out to see it and them, jen kearney and the lost onion (carl johnson, claire finley and pete maclean) animate the downtown space known as ole with their sweet sounds, which are like none other you're likely to be able to see anywhere anytime around, and that's a beautiful fact.

yes, there's something happening downtown these days, and you owe it to yourself and your sense of place to check it out.

if you'd like a review and some suggestions, order yourself a pitcher of sangria and some tapas from the small plates menu, and kick your feet back and be prepared to sip with a smile on your face. jen is one of the best songwriters, keyboard players and singers in this city or any other, and the musicians around her are remarkable players who are every bit equal to that standard. (as a group they've opened for derek trucks, daryl hall and los lobos, to name three that i've seen 'em open for so far, and if the standing O and encore for their opening set with daryl hall didn't put 'em on your map, then you need to be getting out more, and claire is fresh back from auditions with lady gaga, if you like pop cred, so there's all that, too).

the music is lyrical and infectuous, with latin rhythms and sensibilities layered all over its heart and soul. their new record, "the year of the ox", recorded right here in lowell at bob nash's wonka sound, is one of the most remarkable recordings of the new millennium, and it can be had at the show for a bargain, which will get you in good with your valentine when she or he hears it and you come lookin for your sugar a week from sunday, trust me.

and you know you've always wanted to hear the music breathing life back into the downtown.

so be there. live it.

move your money

i don't care what you think of her politics, today arianna huffington isn't wrong. today's lowell sun isn't wrong either. investing in your community via your local bank gets you more than a good deal on a checking account or a loan--it gets you right with karma and the rest of the universe, while making sure that the last time you were screwed by your big bank can be the last time you've been screwed by your big bank.

as you may have noticed has been mentioned here previously, i've worked with the internal financial systems of literally all the world's top financial services giants. (who says software is boring? I DO! hehehehe). want to know where i do my banking? enterprise bank and trust right here in lowell. (i used to do business with middlesex savings bank when i lived a bit further south of here). want to know with whom you should do your banking? head to moveyourmoney.info and plug in your zip code. you'll get a list of institutions longer than your arm with ira (institutional risk analytics) ratings of B or better. no excuses people!

bloomberg's london bureau chief gets it. (his quotes are on the moveyourmoney site). even tim geithner, when asked, had to admit he agreed "with the basic principle that people are right to expect more from their financial institution".

so what are you waiting for? ever been gouged with a huge fee from your big behemoth bank for picky little crap that was mostly their fault anyway? ever have trouble getting a human being on the phone to make your relationship with your bank, who is, after all, profitting from YOUR MONEY, work even a little bit less in the bank's favor?

you need to get a banking relationship that works for YOU, not the bank. you need to move your money.

word.

"the boston rock legend"

richard axtman is doing the whole world a solid by promoting a raft of artists that the whole world needs to see. through his northern music ("the northern music network for fans bands and soloists") he's promoted everything from new years eve parties with james montgomery to linda mccluskey's latest showing at the whistler house museum's parker gallery.

i'm on his list, and i'm impressed with everything he's putting out there. want to catch up with the lastest appearances of bellevue cadillac? richard's your guy. miss the recent tex macnamara & his bucking broncos gig when they took over fortunato's in downtown lowell last friday night? you wouldn't have if you'd been hooked up with richard via his facebook page. (and it was a GREAT night). get it? GET IT!

so it's with a certain amount of amusement and bored detachment that i see his promotions for andy pratt always followed by the all-cap blare-out: "the boston rock legend". c'mon. really?

from where i was standing, andy seemed like a nice enough guy with a self-indulgent adventurous streak (you know what they mean when they put the tag "experimental rock" on reviews of all your circa 1970 albums) that really didn't translate into the clubs or into anyone's record collections. it certain didn't define, represent or seem like "boston". rumor has it that the song columbia records commissioned based on a demo ripped off from woody guthrie's "ballad of pretty boy floyd" ("avenging annie") took 500 hours of studio time for andy to be satisfied with it, which is ok, i guess, because the pop manifesto eventually charted, and even i've got the thing on my ipod these days, but what did that ever have to do with my home musical town? don't get me wrong--i've got nothing bad to say about what little of andy's ouevre i've got. (little, because he's put out over 20 albums, so it's not like he's shy or anything).

but, geez, "boston rock legend"???

in point of fact, andy could have been doing what he was doing just about anywhere in the world, and boston just happened to be where he collected his mail. "boston rock legend", to me, implies someone like willie "loco" alexander (and his boom-boom band, yo) who popped the cherry on so many great boston venues (like the rat and etc.) after he came off his teeth-cutting stint with the velvet underground that everybody who was anybody couldn't wait to get billed on one of his gigs, or at least play in one of the same clubs cuz you knew that place would ROCK.

it's little more than ironic to me that andy's latest projects are hooked up with people like sal baglio (the stompers--now there's a boston band) who actually WERE boston musicians back in the day.

andy's farewell quote before he let punk drive him out of the country was "i hate ugly music". which only to me means that he must have hated everything there was to do with what finally kicked "the bosstown sound" (bad 60's psychedelia joke for which you had to be there to understand, and, no, you didn't miss a thing) to the curb, and, courtesy of actual boston rock legends like willie alexander and his all-out punk-sensible though also quite fluently pop contemporaries (duke and the drivers, j geils, aerosmith, etc.), actually put boston squarely on the musical map.

caveat capital letters, folks.

get the real thing at a local venue near you. (treat her right are at toad on the 14th, 21st and 28th this month, and having seen them just a few weeks ago, i can promise you that THERE is a legendary lineup--jim fitting and dave champagne plus tim gearan, billy beard and steve mayone).

get it?

GET IT!