broons

it's been too long--i have been crawling out of my skin over this recent allstar break, and it was great tonight watching the bruins take the ice again for the second half. the gamewinner was a 100 foot slapper from center ice by dennis seidenberg (they all count!) but the goal of the night for me was brad marchand wrestling and twisting his way among three defenders to get his stick not once but twice on a rebound at the side of the crease to tie things at the start of the third, with an effort reminiscent of the team's cup run last spring. ok, watching adam mcquaid take care of zenon konopka right after shawn thornton dispatched chris neil was pretty sweet, too. (zenon doesn't just lead the league in fights--he's the real deal, and adam taking him on was downright huge).

i love hockey.

"how will we know, dad?"

i mentioned my kids' obligation to take the keys and perhaps the keyboard when it's time, and their interest to know how to tell when it's time. well, reading the comments on the surveillance camera post on the dick howe site, i'm reminded by tom's contribution that sitting in ones living room listening to the police scanner is something a lot of people (me included) attribute to the elders of the community. (though my college classmate living in vermont has his on all day long--yeah, i guess we're old, too...)

anyway, having been taken to task by the anonymous detractor insisting that the bar i love to hate (his implication, not mine--i would so dearly love to love it for all its potential there on the corner of market and palmer, and part of the reason for the complaints is wishing sincerely there wouldn't need to be any) shouldn't be trashed out loud owing to their being so many more worthwhile targets, i'll take the liberty of clipping and pasting tom's comment and leaving it here for people to consider:

"last saturday night for example, there were no fewer than 10 fights between 12-2am, as witnessed on my police scanner. detail officers in the bars calling for backup at hookslides, garcia brogans, the brewery and brians"

ok, is anyone else yet appalled?

this is exactly the stuff that the license commission ignores when the superintendent brings it to their attention asking for fair and active enforcement of liquor rules. 10 fights? you can't tell me there isn't some degree of overserving going on their somewhere. well, you can, but i won't believe you. nope, not one (apparently) from the anonymous detractor's favorite bar. good on them. (well, good on them i think--as i've told you, the policy there as observed first-hand while in the bar is not to call the cops when there are fights, and that's not my idea of right).

anyway anyway, so here's my take: i LIKE the fact that these places hire details on weekends. i LIKE the fact that the fights are reported, and, unlike tom implies, i'm not necessarily missing the fact that arrests are not necessarily forthcoming in all cases. (though out of 10, you'd think there'd be at least a couple, so i'm with tom as far as that goes). i LIKE the fact that it's now all out in the open so we all (including the license commissioners) can know what's going on. BUT i DO NOT like that there are fights in all these bars, and so many of them. there's no place for it. maybe it's because i'm old, but i just don't see a place for it.

i really can't comment on the brewery. i've only been there twice in five years, despite being in the beer works more often than i can count before and after baseball games and etc. but i can comment on garcia brogans: i've heard second hand by relatives that off duty cops have been assaulted there, (maybe they didn't tell the superintendent they were there so the superintendent didn't know not to suggest garcia brogan's was one of the "better" bars), and in addition to attending music performances and open mics there on numerous occasions, and watching the occasional ball game there, i spend a lot of time at a friend's apartment across the street (not as much time as that friend thinks i should, but, hey, it's all the way on the other side of the canal!!! and the games would be because she doesn't have a tv) and have seen a reasonable amount of crap there for sure. she's had to step over drunks in her doorway, and, when asking the bouncers at GB's for a hand with them, been denied any assistance, which i didn't think was cool even if the drunk wasn't one of theirs--it's right across from their entrance for crissakes. but not as bad as hookslides and brian's ivy hall in terms of numbers. which brings me to the big two downtown, who attract alone likely as many patrons as all the other places downtown put together when they are rolling. brian's brags on their facebook page of having 700 and 800 people in there, even though their room is rated for fewer than 500. we can hope they mean cumulative and they turn the room over twice in a night, but perhaps the fire marshalls would know better. when i'm there it tends not to be on the big dj nights, and it's never over capacity, and i've not been witness to anything deserving of appearing on a police scanner. i've found kevin and the other owners there to be responsive when i've had concerns. (i talked to them at length about noise complaints from other members of the downtown neighborhood association, for one example). they've attended most of the downtown meetings, and by hiring details are in continuing cooperation with the department, even if they aren't held up as the shining example as is hookslide kelly's. hookslides main differentiation is that they bar entry after 1am to anyone new coming to the bar. they've recommended that other owners downtown do the same, and i agree that would be a useful deterrent to the destination drunks who turn up late and wind up doing wrong. doesn't fix the session drunks who get their early and tank up over the course of the evening, but if i am to believe the liquor enforcement forays taken by the department, neither brian's nor hookslides has been cited for overserving, and that's encouraging.

which takes us back to the smokehouse. not one of tom's scanner calls, but it's the wild card in the mix that causes a lot of the frustration. they're the ones caught repeatedly with underage kids in their bar, and the ones not taken to task for it by the liquor commissioners. back when i used to hang out watching the live music at fortunato's back when they had live music at fortunato's, i'd entertain myself during breaks watching the prosti-tots (i can't take credit for that one--that's my friend from across from garcia brogan's) teeter across the cobblestones of the palmer and middle street intersection on their way there. it used to be more fun before they put in the flat poured concrete crosswalks, but there's still a fair number of spills that are not completely explainable by just the height of their heels. but there they go, and there they get served. i've seen more than a few shows there, and didn't have any trouble, but i'm not thinking there never is. (when they had the hip hop shows in there on thursdays it got pretty hairy, and i know enough of the performers to have heard more than a few stories).

so, in summary, 10 fights????

10 fights???

when is someone going to put a little attention on enforcing the rules whenever broken or bent, so that the bars don't cater to the folks who puke and piss and vandalize and fight?

it's something in dire need of happening.

and we thought fed-ex was bad...

we've read all the stories about how the us postal service (now there's an oxymoron) is running at a deficit so extensive that we're going to have to receive even less service than ever before and pay far more for the privilege in order to save them from utter ruin. we've thought to ourselves, "gee, it's hard to figure out how someone with a monopoly on first class mail could screw that up, but what the hey". and we've tried to feel sympathetic even so, it being, after all, our national mail.

the cost of a first class letter being a bargain, i'll say up front i support higher stamp prices. but whatever the cost of that first class letter, once they accept it and they assume responsibility for completing their appointed rounds, it's frustrating when they fuck that up. (15 year old daughter rule). by coincidence, i happen to have been party to such a fuck-up recently, pursuant to tossing a first class envelope into the slot at the main lowell post office on father morisette boulevard on january 9th, and trusting to their couriers and the hopeful swift completion of their appointed rounds. (haha, joke on me).

it being an envelope (a safety envelope--i take my precautions as should everybody) containing a check of some considerable amount, the loss was not of insignificant inconvenience. it cost me $25 to stop payment, among many other mundane things, and the second time i attempted the feat (for such is proving to be a feat) i was smart enough, or dumb enough, we don't know which, to give them an extra $5 and change for a priority mail mailer and delivery confirmation service the second time i put second check into second envelope. so far so not so good.

so it's wednesday, january 25th, and i'm told to expect delivery by friday, january 27th, but in any case by the third day, which would have been saturday, january 28th. me, being experienced in these matters, i didn't bother checking for confirmation until monday, january 30th, and what would you know but the package hadn't been seen nor heard of since the wee hours of thursday morning, january 26th, when it was received at the mail facility in nashua, nh. i think to myself, ok, one more day, but given there's no progress whatsoever, i call the usps phone number anyway, wait through the extended delay due to significant call volume (what a surprise) and begin recounting all these details and more for the lady on the other end of the line, who assures me it's being forwarded to the appropriate place for research, and i should be getting a call within 24-48 hours.

so do you know where from which this call might originate? care to guess? nebraska or some other such central mail investigation service location? bangalore, or some other low-cost phone support hub? north carolina, where the letter is supposed to be delivered? nashua, nh, where the macguffin was last spotted? nope, the brain trust at the usps has determined that when they lose a package anywhere anytime at any point along the route, the person who becomes responsible to find it is the desk clerk at the post office where it originated. (as the reverend jj likes to sing, "welcome to the city of lowell").

gee, that's helpful. so helpful, in fact, that they don't even give said desk clerk the case # with all the info in it, so i have to repeat everything once again, and then become informed that, "gee, since it arrived in nashua, there's not much we can do for you here". ya think?

but rather than give me to someone in nashua, they will continue to give me to the desk guy here in lowell for further updates. want to know what i'm guessing? our lowell guy will call nashua who will not know where it is either, and then they'll all scratch their heads or some other less presentable body part and wonder where they're going to call next.

in the meantime, i'm out six bucks to the usps, $25 to my bank for the stop payment, and sitting on the hook for another $25 to my bank and whatever it is that ups is going to charge me to take the next envelope, because i'll be damed if i ever give another nickel to these usps people if this is all they've got. so far i've counted the 800 number and the two people i've spoken with there as completely worthless, not to mention whatever wasted time is being forced on the lowell desk folks and everyone they're going to call in nashua, too.

nope, no way to run a postal service. and no wonder they're broke and going broker.

"stop me before it gets that far"

i have a deal with my kids. they are entrusted to know when to take away my car keys, and encouraged in advance to act when they know it's time. ("how will we know, dad?" "take a look at your grandfather--you'll know"). anyway, i'm figuring i'll need to have another talk with them about my computer. (this is a lay-up for the detractor, so free shot).

in today's sun there's an editorial contributed by a retired sun editorialist. (bob read, age 89, now of west newbury). i generally laugh out loud when i read the sun editorials, so i'm pleased to say the streak continues. this one is hysterical.

apparently, bob is not amused by the current slate of late night talk show host slash comedians. only he is adamant we not call them comedians, because he doesn't find them at all funny. (fair enough as far as that goes--i've long since stopped laughing at leno, and i never cared much for conan). so who does bob find funny, you ask? why, he'll tell you: abbott and costello, the marx brothers and victor borge for starters, and laurel and hardy for his big payoff.

yawn.

don't get me wrong--i've got abbott and costello's "who's on first" bit on my ipod and i listen to it more frequently than even i expected when i downloaded it. it's one of the most classic and funniest bits in the history of the comedy of this country, and it's still funny today. well, funny enough... my kids have heard it, and they know what it is, but i'll tell you that they don't have it on their ipods, nor laugh all that hard (bob describes his reaction to it as "sit through that without busting into raucous laughter and you need help"). so, bob, do my kids need help?

my kids think steven wright is funny, and always watch the tivo'd versions of the late late show with craig ferguson whenever steve's on, which is quite often. they can recite for you a good 15 minutes worth of his deadpan stuff ("i bought some used paint in the shape of a house", and, "i took a walk around my building the other day on the ledge--some people are afraid of heights, i'm afraid of widths", etc.) and never fail to crack each other up doing it. (my favorite is steven's response to the woman who told him she was a nymphomaniac though only turned on by jewish cowboys: "hi, i'm bucky goldstein"). i don't expect other people find it as funny, as steven is absolutely an acquired taste for many, but they laugh harder at that stuff than they do at abbott and costello every day of the week. but the guy they really laugh at is craig ferguson, which i suppose would be much to bob's confusion, observing as we can that craig ferguson is one of those current late night hosts that bob swears isn't as funny as victor borge.

want to know who is as funny as victor borge? weird al yankovic is as funny as victor borge. (weird al is coming to the lowell memorial auditorium this spring, so you can see for yourself). they're both musical comedic entertainers. victor, for kids or other readers not familiar with his schtick, is pretty funny. he was one of the more famous entertainers of his day. but it's not like he's irreplaceable, or even all that accessible now that the music he parodies fall further and further from public familiarity. but, bob, see, my kids do not have any deficiency in their sense of humor--they just have a different context than you.

and i'll have to presume there's some context missing, because the marx brothers are nigh on insufferable through long stretches of their movies, even while they are as funny as it gets in their moments, and laurel and hardy are just plain not funny at all if you ask me. a lot of abbott and costello's bits are pretty lame, too.

want to know what two generations (well, three if you count theirs) of comedy has been distilled down to in my household? they've got all their grandfather's stuff (bob's stuff) and they've got all of my stuff, and they've got all of their stuff too. abbott and costello they like well enough, though not enough to put it on repeat play for hours on end. monty python they find hysterical. steven wright, too. and more than anyone else, george carlin. they LOVE george carlin. which is a beautiful thing, because i love george carlin, too.

and among late night hosts, they've seen carson and love him, too. (carnac baby). they've seen leno, and yawn, just like bob and me. but, see, they're addicted to craig ferguson. ADDICTED. they watch him on tivo more that i watch him on tivo. (and i watch him a lot). they get conan, so there's that, but i swear i still don't. (though triumph the insult comic dog has to be one of the funniest things ever in the history of television, and coco gets big props for that with me). and if they were ever forced to sit through a laurel and hardy farce, they would be on bob with baseball bats to take away his car keys for even suggesting it.

see, laurel and hardy aren't funny. maybe to bob they are, but bob's era gave us talk show hosts like dinah shore and dick cavett, and there's very little funny about either of them. (ok, maybe dinah, a little). so why the hate on leno and letterman?

i know why, and it's got a lot to do with the fact that bob is 89. times change. car keys come, and car keys go.

time for bob to give up his typewriter.

and time for the sun to stop publishing their newspaper for a demographic that, if it isn't already dead, is soon to become so. it's no wonder to me whenever i read nonsense like this why readership and ad revenue continues to go down. it's funny like it's funny reading the loco-emotive writing about keven hagan white as if he has any basis whatsoever to write about him beyond the hysterically funny fact that kevin once and for all proved back, way back in 1983, just how enormous a horse's ass that the loco-emotive was and remains. (google "white will run" and "peter lucas" together to get a quick recap of one of the most famous boston newspaper headlines in history).

i guess we can sum this all up by observing that campy is all about campy.

hello world

lowell's own and favorite embedded (though is it really "embedded" when you ARE the army?) blogger is on his way back, just in time, apparently, to show those jersey clowns what a real football fan looks like while they're all learning what a real football team looks like next sunday.

can't wait to give him a hug hello when he finally gets back to shangri-lowell!

presumption and predictive sample sizes

a lot of folks like to blame downtown disorder on this being (i'm gonna quote my anonymous detractor here) "a college town and an urban center containing homeless shelters and a sizable, poor minority population", implying, if i read the code correctly, that downtown violence is presumed to be committed by college kids, homeless drug addicts and local gang bangers, and completely beyond the ken of people who haven't lived their whole lives here. (forgive me if i presume too much, but i hear this from so many people it gets tired very, very quickly). except i might offer into evidence rob mills' nice little piece on his blog tonight identifying the five disorderly guys urinating on everything from the middle of the street to church doors this past weekend as a small albeit fairly relevant sample size for making some observations. (yeah, the right there on the door to the st joseph the worker shrine).

see, the identities of the urinators don't match up with any of those demographics presumed by the folks who aren't down here at all, or the excuses mouthed by the license commission. (what do you know, or, maybe, don't know, but can't give credit to those of us who are actually out at these bars meeting the miscreants in person so as to know a bit about their backgrounds). in fact, they correspond perfectly with the characterizations offered by the superintendent of police at every downtown neighborhood, city council and license commission meeting i've attended. and they match exactly what i see myself when i'm out and about. we don't have a problem with college kids downtown. we do have a problem with homeless drug addicts committing petty crime and thefts and worse, but not particularly during the bar hours, but, rather, other times during the day. and the gang stuff, bad as it is, is happening out in the other neighborhoods, and generally not downtown where all the police are on weekends these days. but you don't have to take my word for it, you can start reading the police blotter, or getting out yourself.

anyway, the five cited are 33 and 34 year old residents of the upper and upper upper highlands, a 20 year old rochester new hampshire townie, a 24 year old littleton, ma townie, and a 26 year old dracut townie. i guess it's possible the 20 year old rochester boy matriculated somewhere nearby, but i'm gonna bet you he didn't. i wouldn't guess any of them are drug addicted, homeless, or members of a gang, either. nope, i'd predict for you that the five are, as most of the folks doing wrong downtown here, drunks from anywhere but here getting overserved at either hookslide kelly's, brian's ivy hall, the village smokehouse, or the bar that shall not be named lest i be accused of bias. in fact, i'll even retract that last bit completely, and exonerate our favorite downtown bar, and suggest that the locations of the five exposed penises and four urine streams would mostly likely indict four counts between hookslides and brians, and one for the smokehouse. (though i will observe for you the urine stains on the walkways aside of the leo roy garage and suggest that not everyone relieving themselves in public over the weekend was caught by the police, nor from just those three bars mentioned above).

good news, i guess, is that i didn't see any puke on the sidewalk this weekend. there were no broken windows or broken flower pots (that i know of) and the fetish kids were their own completely benign selves as they always are at the 'rock. melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones were fabulous, as they always are, over at the back page, which was standing room only on saturday night (and i'm glad to report in apparent full compliance with all fire codes given the quick and professional arrival and departure of three impeccably uniformed members of the department with their clipboard on one of their routine unannounced checks) and doing its usual land-office and downtown-detractor-denying business. (why is it so hard for some people to accept the fact that some folks actually like a decent place to see music downtown, in addition to all the rest of the choices on a saturday night, or any night for that matter?)

the superintendent of police and his captains and their men and women on the street with them have the stats from their arrests and their own two eyes each to tell the license commission and the city council where the problems are, who the problems are, and when the problems are. the downtown residents who are out on the street and in the bars see it too. now we just need the license commission to understand that nobody wants to put the bars out of business--just put the rules back into force, and make this the kind of place that *more* people want to patronize rather than less. it's good for the bar owners! it's good for the neighborhood! it's good for the city! and the residents here don't mind at all if they do.

it's the puke and the piss and the vandalism and the violence that have to go, and the bar practices that lead to it all via lax alcohol management and general irresponsibility. when there's something worth doing downtown, people like me and even people not like me are catching a few beers in the afternoon, (guinness upstairs at the old court at the book event), eating dinner at a downtown restaurant, (viet-thai rocks, though others i know went for the chili at the brush art gallery soiree), and then heading out for an evening on the town. i dropped my usual pile of payday cash happily on the counter at all of these places, getting value for my money and treated well in a safe and respectful environment. the whole thing cost me a fraction of what i'd have to pay for any one of the three alone in other nearby cities, and that's a wonderful thing. i don't want that to change.

it's just a bit less of the puke and the piss and the vandalism and the violence from overserved drunks with which we could do. it's not asking alot.

and another thing

i found a bit from lynne at left in lowell about various topics that are often discussed here, (self-serving comment alert--it's got links to here and i commented there as well), and was struck by one of the comments she made about the price of real estate here, and the general tone that we have a problem because of depressed values. it's not unlike many of the sentiments expressed by dick howe over at his lowelldeeds blog, (a highly recommended read), where his recounting of the registration statistics if often accompanied by editorializing about the strength and or weakness of our housing market and implying that higher prices are the best thing for all.

huh?

i don't know about you, but between alimony and the general cost of everything from gas to milk, (but don't get me wrong, i'm eager to pay my $1.55 for each quart of shaw farm goodness), i honestly couldn't afford much of anything in any other market here in eastern masschusetts, and i will tell you right now i'd rather consider staying at the bus station than moving out of the area, so we can quit that talk right here and right now. i happen to enjoy a GREAT standard of living here compared to almost anywhere else i could stand to be, and the reason is exactly that the real estate prices are exactly as lynne and dick would complain that they are. if i'm short and can only afford $2 for a beer as walter bayliss thinks is the price everywhere, i can amble on over to furey's and have one, and still enjoy some free live music while i'm doing it. what could possibly be wrong with that?

so who should i be rooting for? me? and all the other people like me? or someone or someones else with a fatter wallet?

"depressed" property values are a relative thing, and they are only relative to people who want to flip their real estate and sell out. me? i don't. i like it here. in fact, i LOVE it here, and i am not going to move. if my condo becomes near-to-worthless, it's all the same to me as if it becomes worth a kings-or-queen's ransom. (some folks think cheap real estate means lower taxes, but they're wrong, and i am not confused that our tax rates vs our tax bills are just funny math that always leaves us holding the same sized bag to pay for our police and fire protection and what have you regardless of how the total was derived). in fact, i'm actually rooting for the values to stay low, so i won't have to deal with people who might be inclined to complain about the kind of joints i like to frequent in my neighborhood. (ain't no worthen house in the town where i grew up, and that's a fact). my skin crawls when i'm in cambridge. it's an empty, self-aggrandizing place with far less worthwhile culture than they enjoy to give themselves credit. (though if you want to spend $15 for a martini, they can write you a list as long as your arm of places to get one). here in lowell, if you want one of those, i can tell you to skip over to the blue taleh, and everyone is happy.

or almost. some people prefer backed up toilets and fistfights on the stairs to clean and safe, even if still divey, establishments, and some other people feel that things can only be better once other people can't afford to live here. in my opinion, both are wrong.

furey's on saturday night. c'mon down. or up as the case may be.

sauces for goose and gander

lawlessness is a fascinating condition. right here in lowell we have a lively debate about ours, and from oakland and from china today we have curiously related stories, one in which "our" police are finding it necessary to arrest 400 people for protesting too much, and the other in which "theirs" are expressing feelings that the press is being unfair to their own efforts to keep the masses in line.

here in this country, of course, we're a bit conflicted whenever protests are made, since we like to celebrate our ability to make them, yet we also like to point out when those protests are ill-behaved and against our particular politics. (lots of folks hating on the "occupy" folks, yup). in oakland, apparently, they've felt their particular band of rowdies has taken things too far, and found it necessary to put 400 of them in the hoosegow. fair enough. quite a few americans today are saying "it's about time", of course, and quite a few others are outraged. it's how we roll. yet, it's a fair bet if 400 tibetans had been arrested yesterday as well, there'd be a much more consistent reaction, and more than a fair bit of editorializing about the chinese government's repressive and heavy-handed tactics against legitimate dissent, and the "occupy the occupiers" folks would find themselves instantly and vehemently opposed to the chinese, even while feeling the opposite about the east bay constabulary.

i don't worry so much about the contradiction. here in lowell we have people throwing rocks through business windows, and it's pretty clear everyone who is reasonable agrees that there is no place for it. (ok, not a protest rock, but i hope you follow the point). the police continue to be near-universally respected (basically by all but the lawless) and if they arrest someone, chances are good that everyone reading about it in the paper the next day is going to nod their head that a right thing was done. even the single continuing story of civil disagreement (regarding vesna nuon) has produced respectful dialogue, even if not complete accord. (i'm with the cops on this one--there are proper moments to take them to task for their behavior, and while drunk and during the incident is not one of them, though i also might not disagree with the point attempted to be made, though i can't say about this one either way because i wasn't there and i don't know the particulars well enough to have an opinion, other than we have a great department, and every reason to have faith in their continuous improvement). and i'm glad mr. nuon has been able to make his point, too, and don't begrudge him his seat on the city council, even while i regret that it's taking $50,000 out of the public purse to settle this.

so how do we judge "right"? we clearly need police to keep our peace, as clearly does oakland. but we also feel that, in the case of tibet, the chinese have taken things a bit too far. so how do we ensure the line is drawn correctly?

i would suggest we do it via rigorous defense of our constitutional protections. (yeah, it's about that). patriot act? nope, gotta go. not because we don't have need to police our citizenry, but because we need to police our citizenry the right way. franklin's admonishment that those trading liberty for security deserve neither and lose both is not just some empty platitude. living memory can recount near-countless episodes of governmental malfeasance of the most horrible kind, and mr. nuon being cambodian recalls one particularly heinous example. we need to remember that while we are attempting to "protect" our nation, that we are not destroying it in the process. i like to feel that the oakland protesters are going to get a fair day in court. i like how our ideals would have us do it.

how about you?

ignorant is as ignorant does

i've been called out in a comment to a recent post, suggesting john and lee streets to be the exclusive nexus of downtown bar-related violence, and bragging on the supposedly stabbing and brawl-free blue shamrock, and suggesting i'm being biased and unfair in my comments about that particular bar to the exclusion of others. (i think he or she used the colorful term "hard on" in their critique). their words:

"I will tell you what we can't find at the Shamrock. Stabbings and brawls. Lately, those take place closer to John and Lee streets, indicating to the untrained eye that the problems are arising at other establishments."

for starters, i will recall my last attendance to a music show upstairs at the blue shamrock (gemstones) last summer in which a patron received a broken nose in a brawl, and suggest that just because the ownership declines to call the police when such happens (as far as i know, save at the hospital, there is no record of the incident beyond the memories of those of us who were there to see it) does not make such a place a better-run joint than those who actively cooperate and coordinate with the police, as does, say, hookslide kelly's over there towards john and lee, which is fully to their credit, despite their proximity to the center of unlighted free parking in the downtown, and the people who park there. (i'd include paige on that list of streets, too, but who's counting). the fact that i actually spend time in the blue shamrock to be able to write about it is no shame to me, nor any surprise to those who know me. the fact that the commenter has not read enough of my stuff to recognize how frequently i go in there is i guess just an oversight. (i did a search on "shamrock" in my postings, and came up with 23 references to trips there. furey's got 22. the worthen is i think the winner with 45. hynes tavern got 10. voices rock club got 30. we could go on, but i'm sure you're bored already, too).

i happen to have to walk past the blue shamrock a lot, because i live across the street from it. maybe someone who lives across the street from some other joints can comment about those. but, from my first-hand experience, there are issues there, and i'm not repeating rumors and hearsay i've been told to explain why the trouble there never seems to make either the papers nor the license commission hearings. (ask some people sometime--you'll hear what i hear). i'm just telling you what i see with my own eyes.

i don't happen to ascribe to the "other people do it so it must be ok" school of thought. if beer pong tourneys are offered in other bars elsewhere in the city, i'm all for people in those neighborhoods speaking up about it, too. they're all violations of the liquor licenses held by those establishments, and they should all be taken to task. but i do mind that people would accuse me of wanting to turn downtown lowell into some sort of martini mart, because i don't, and i happen to think caffe paradiso was an overpriced clip joint, and, i think if you'll do a search on fuze in this blog, you'll see i have more or less the same opinion of its replacement. i don't go to the blue taleh. (i went once, that was enough). i don't go to centro. (same). i don't drink anything other than beer, and i prefer it out of a tap if at all possible because it's cheaper and better-tasting that way. i happen to like the back page a lot because they have music and harpoon ipa on draft. i guess that's hard on some people. i do just fine on the pbr's out of the tap at furey's, too, though if it's between that and harpoon in a bottle, like at the worthen, i'll take the bottle and not worry about it. i don't do light beer, and i don't do bud if i can help it. (tastes like crap--what can i say). i'm known to have a corona or two if all else fails. i am who i am and i go where i go and i write about it here so it's no secret. i guess i'm sorry that offends someone who neither lives here nor gets it, but ignorant is as ignorant does.

offer still stands--furey's next saturday. i'll be waiting for you (all) there. first pitcher of pbr is on me.

edited to add a mention of the "adult entertainment" restriction currently being proposed by the city manager and covered in today's paper. i've felt no reason to complain about gemstones' fetish nights, nor the savanna palace "exotica fridays", nor the under impact's various promotions back in their day, precisely because i have no problem with the premise of a business pursuing legitimate business. (which is to say, following rules for the dispensation of alcohol and providing for patron and public safety). in fact, i rather like the variety of things here downtown, because it keeps the martini bars at bay, which is a point, apparently, i have in common with my detractor. of course, i don't know how the anonymous complainer would feel about cross-dressing bumpers and grinders, but i expect from his or her comments to me about martinis that he or she would expect i'd be shocked and appalled, which i'm not, and against that flavor of nightlife, which i'm also not. i've been to drag shows at the 119 gallery and various other places in and outside this city, (that i'm guessing mr or ms anonymous has not), and i considered myself thoroughly entertained. (i especially liked the 119's version, because the rest rooms were clean). i've enjoyed punk shows and hip hop shows and all sorts of things i want to see more of here. i just feel it's too bad that some people's idea of "nightlife" is a filthy bar with no beer that can't seem to follow the same rules as we are asking of everyone else.

a little quiz for our license commissioners

ok mssrs bayliss, weicker and akashian, this little quiz is for you:

is it legal or illegal in the commonwealth of massachusetts to encourage any organized game which promotes excessive drinking?

do you or do you not consider beer pong an organized game which promotes excessive drinking?

are you planning to or not planning to take any action on the signage at the blue shamrock advertising tuesday and wednesday night beer pong tournaments?

here's the cut-and-paste from the massachusetts tips (training and intervention procedures for servers of alcohol) online training guide:

Happy Hour Laws - Licensees may not: offer single-priced, unlimited service drink specials; give free drinks to patrons; encourage any organized game which awards alcohol as a prize or promotes excessive drinking; or serve more than two drinks to a patron at one time.

in my repeated experience walking past and drinking in the bar i have first-hand observed the dispensation of free drinks to patrons, the serving of more than two drinks to a patron at one time, and, now, this.

three strikes? apparently not in lowell...

would the license commission like to respond? (i'm not holding my breath)
edited to add "drinking in" for those reading-comprehension-challenged readers (or reader?) who missed the previous references to drinking in the blue shamrock in previous posts, and wanted to imply that all i do is walk past the place.

to the moon, alice

i'm still not convinced this isn't a joke, but newt just promised voters in florida that, if elected, he's going to put the US on the moon again in sufficient numbers by 2020 to establish our 51st state.

"yeah, we're wasting too much money in the federal government and we have to throw the present bums out of office, but when I'M elected king, i mean president, we're going to put 13,000 people on the moon".

LOLOLOLOL

i promise, lord, if he's nominated, i will be the most ardent and indefatigable obama supporter you have ever seen. door to door if i have to. for months if i have to. whatever it takes. just please please please please PuH-LEEEEEEEEZE don't have this much of a sense of humor. i don't think the world can take it.

i'm convinced this guy is batshit crazy, and more dangerous than anyone since cheney.

favorites

been thinkin...

favorite red sox of all time: tim wakefield. no one else even comes close.

favorite patriot of all time: stanley morgan. this one isn't close, either, but adam vinatieri rates a mention, as does stephen neal, whose jersey i now prefer to wear on big game days. (see you a week from sunday).

favorite celtic of all time: it's a tossup between jo jo white and the chief, and i'm leaning chief.

favorite bruin of all time: do you have to ask?

ironic that orr's is the only case where my favorite player seems to come up on anyone else's radar for such. (he's the greatest of all time, and you can tell 'em from me that gretzky sucks by comparison). i'd remind you that stanley morgan has the highest per-catch average of any receiver who's ever played the game long enough and well enough to accumulate 10,000 receiving yards or 500 receptions, (lance alworth only wishes he had morgan's numbers), but you'd tell me "jerry rice" or some such nonsense (among receivers) or tom brady blah blah blah (among patriots) and we'd just have to agree to disagree. and chief? dominant enough to have played in more games than any other player in history, (jabbar can suck it), and universally recognized as the best-shooting big man ever, (jabbar can suck it again), that's all. but all that is neither here nor there.

wake i love best because his records are of the grittiest and hardest-working kind, and, truth be told, it can never really ever be about records where he's concerned. he'll just take the ball anywhere, anytime and for however long you need him to. no more and no less. he'll throw his arm off for you without regard for the futility of his chances, (as he did in the third game of that historic 2004 ALCS), and he'll come back a few hours later and give you the most heroic and scintillating extra-inning relief performance in the history of the game to say thank you for the opportunity. (three innings pitched including three pass balls in one of those innings, and yet no, count them, NO runs enabling papi to bloop in the game-winner that sent the game's most historic playoff team back to ny and immortality). he's every man who has ever shown up to work every day of his life despite inevitable short recognition and insufficient reward. he's the role model that got me through a divorce just one day at a time.

wake da man.

everything not said

"hot stove" discussions about the not-yet-born 2012 red sox are bordering on the ridiculous this year, and, upon reflection, i think we can forget "bordering"--they're straight up ridiculous. crawford's had surgery, but he's still showing on a lot of hallucinogenic lineup cards in the deuce spot, somewhere he wasn't even qualified to dream about last year when he was healthy. worse than that, i've even seen projections showing youk as far back as sixth, which is stunningly ignorant of perhaps the best right-handed moneyballer in the league. but all that is digression for the main point:

nobody, and i mean NOBODY has wake anywhere in any discussion whatsoever, other than to perhaps jawbone about whether or not he being cut (a foregone conclusion) requires him to retire so as not to show up next year in someone else's uniform. (as if we own him and his career now, and he has to run all potential choices by us before choosing).

i cannot even begin to express my disillusionment at the prospect of not seeing tim in the dugout every day, and on the mound every fifth.

that a steroid-infused low-life might have sullied cy young's team win benchmark was bad enough. that smarter-than-thou head cases jiggering a lineup all too full of all too second-rate ballplayers (ross? punto???) might feel themselves qualified to ignore one of the most loyal and productive arms in franchise history is beyond the pale.

i'm figuring it's potentially time to be taking a relative year off to reload the enthusiasm for something fast losing all need about which to be enthusiastic.

wake da man.

i'm finally today where all my friends were in '67 about yaz. he's bigger than the franchise to me. oh, i've loved tek and papi and a lot of the other dirt dogs in their day, and others in other sports (adam v we will always love you) too, but i've never identified with a professional athlete this way since orr. i never cared that orr's knees were shot and that he put on a blackhawks uniform for one last time around the rink. SI might call it the "wrong uniform", but all i ever see in pictures like this one are bobby. you can put wake back into his original pirates black and gold, or even, and i love him this much, into yankee pinstripes, and it will still be the same. it'll be like bourque in his avalanche sweater hoisting the cup--a keepsake image of a peerless athlete about whom everything will always be ok. dis obama? won't matter.

wake da man.

you are what you do with time on your hands

my grandfather once asked me for advice on how to set up diversions for teenage boys in town who were otherwise inclined to smoke cigarettes and hang out in front of convenience stores all day. not being a smoker, nor a hanger-outer, i wasn't quite sure i was qualified to offer suggestions, but i did my best. the bottom line is, smoking hanging out is as smoking hanging out does, and unless and until you change a person's ambitions, it's hard to change their behavior.

so it is that i'm contemplating mittbucks dot com this morning. see, not all teenagers prefer to smoke and hang out. i'm learning a great little song by jonathan coulton called "code monkey" that somewhat perfectly describes the evolution of a different kind of teenage problem child, and i'm abso-loooooooot-ly sure someone on that branch of the species family tree is behind the genius. time on your hands and access to a computer? why, mittbucks.com of course! (a site so nice he linked it twice!)

i know there's a third race of the species (likely more than three, but we'll start here) who prefers to dabble around the internet rather than buckle down and crank out that powerpoint he's been procrastinating, and he (or she!) is powerless not to enjoy playing around with the mittbuck calculator.

try it! it's fun.

(and, no, no political editorial polemicism to be inferred--the kennedy's were rich, as were a lot of our presidents both good and bad, and money is hardly an indicator for much of anything beyond the quality of ones haircut, but lets all agree that the truly rich are not like you or me).

MUSIC!!!

altogether all too serious for all too long around here...

so here's the deal: arte k headlines the tap room show at the bull run tonight starting at 7pm. tyngsboro carl johnson on guitar. steve "angel from montgomery" esposito on the keyboard. justin "is the kitchen still open?" beaulieu on drums. (carpool leaves around 6:30pm). it's the best of lowell playing the best of shirley and early enough that you can still be home by 10 to catch the in-honor-of-carter-clements open mic at the back page, hosted this week by matty siopes while father stephe hangs out in worcester with the star, or get to bed early for your nightly 8 hours. your call.

but, either way, it's all great music, it's all FREE!!!, and it's all right here for you to enjoy.

get out. live a little. enjoy!

learning something

there are a lot of things we feel we know, but i'm so often reminded that feeling we know something, and having really learned it to really *know* it are two completely different things. (how often have you done something you know you knew better than to?) and this is a long one, so feel free to skip it if you are short on time...

anyway...

my father used to insist that i didn't know the meaning of a word unless i could recite a succinct (and correct) definition of it. (and "like, you know.." couldn't be any part of such). i knew i had learned something when we finally met in a showdown world championship game of dictionary among the family, and i for the first time got the better of him.

have you ever played? players take turns looking up any word they please out of the dictionary, and then reading it to the rest of the players who write down their best guess (or knowledge) of the definition on slips of paper, which are then passed to the dictionary holder to read to the group along with one holding the actual definition. you got a point for being right about which was the right one, of course, but, more importantly, you got also got points for every other player who voted for your guess as the real definition instead as well. my father was a tough opponent. i know of few people with a larger vocabulary, or better knowledge of the dictionary than he. but we were neck and neck down to the final round, and the outcome hung on the answer to one of the most inscrutable and impossible-to-know words my sister had ever dug out of the funk and wagnalls. we were, as my sister was good enough to plan, both wrong with our guesses. but in my pseudo-definition, i chose to mimic funk (or would it be wagnalls) by declaring the word as indicative of a species of mammal indigenous to the australian continent. (the key word being "indigenous" as i shall next tell you).

i wasn't all that old at the time, maybe eleven or twelve, and to give at least some credit to my father, it was not necessary that a boy of my limited age and schooling would be or could be throwing a word like "indigenous" around in its proper meaning and context. so he voted for my scam definition, and so also i won the game, despite his initial incredulity that it had to be the right definition, containing as it did the word "indigenous", or his secondary incredulity about my having written the pseudo-definition, containing as it did the word "indigenous". so in response to my self-satisfactorial triumph, he sent one of his signature balloon-moment-popping conversational darts as he so often did, having learned the technique so well from his mother, and her from her forebears before her, challenging me to define "indigenous" to prove something. (what, i have no idea...)

anyway, i didn't hesitate:

indigenous. adjective. "native to a particular region or country".

boo-yah.

i had, in fact, while developing my strategy to use the word in my guess in order to win, already known that i would be tested to define it. so i practiced. "native to a particular region or country". over and over again in my mind, so i could recite it at its appropriate time without failure or hesitation.

boo-yah.

of course, rote memory can also be used to offset and thus mask a profound absence of knowing something, as i employed once in the early days of relational databases when i was conscripted to serve in a high-visibility, high-risk, high-likelihood-of-failure consulting engagement, because all of the extremely-few actually-knowledgeable people in the company were unavailable and thus unable to be thrown into the breach. i had ten minutes with one of the smartest men i've ever known to glean whatever could be gleaned before riding into the proverbial valley. (tennyson rocks). i was a finance guy. i had very little database knowledge or training. i was out of my depth. or not. gene gave me the magic words, and (i'm sure there was a german somewhere in his background) he waited patiently until i had them right and rote. "i have specific knowledge of the size, type, composition and frequency of the data, and how they are used". (you knew i was going to love it upon immediate recognition of the use of correct syntax related to the latin plural "data", which is to say, data indeed ARE used, not is--that would be datum--and don't let anybody tell you differently). which is to say, "no, i don't know crap about the relational database itself, or how it works, mr database administrator, but you don't know crap about what's in it, and that's why you need me". yup. (and, to my credit, nobody indeed knew more about what what in it than i, which quickly endeared me to my hirers and forgave everything i never knew about normalization, indexing, and the inefficiency of a full table scan, but when you know the structure of the output, in this case the accounting audit report, you do indeed know the reason why the otherwise inexplicable compromise might be advised, and then, as now, and as always, the government bureaucracy gets fed before everyone else so that's the name of that tune).

which brings us, of course, back to what i'm often on about, music, though not to the end of all this, not yet.

so i'm learning to play a song this week that i would have told you for sure i knew before i started to play it. but--and here's the joyful part--i didn't. not really. oh, i thought i knew, just like someone might think they know the meaning of some ten dollar word like "indigenous" without being fully prepared to recite its succinct definition upon request. but i didn't really know.

and so, by virtue of pounding out each chord, change and fill, i discover as i imagine do all engaged musicians when they become intimately familiar with a piece, a subtlety i never quite noticed before. a chord played perfectly straight by the guitar, harmonized just as perfectly with the vocal progression, yet accompanied by a bass note step that halves the gap and thus defies the formed basis of the melody and harmony, and perfectly dislocates its balance, and provides not, i'm sure, coincidentally, the pure essence of its most powerful emotion. i had always wondered why that moment had always drawn me so... and so this week i have discovered a little bit more of the magic.

which, full circle, brings me to an electronic discussion that began my day about the necessary credit given to science for restoring eyesight via stem cells, vs blind faith in "miracles" hokum preferred by the less scientifically inclined, to which i couldn't help but observe that it is nevertheless still possible, nee *necessary*, to see the miracle in it even so. (and why god-squadders are just as blind to this i cannot for the life of me say). it's miraculous we have "learned" to restore eyesight in this way, but i still see the rote nature of what we can find to do relative to the full beauty and inscrutability of the cosmos.

brian may, once guitar player for the rock and roll band, queen, now astrophysicist, (no joke--he's got the phd and all the papers, not to mention the full-time job), was once asked the "god" question by an interviewer, and he replied by observing that an insect's perspective on a piece of paper it might be crossing is as aware of the rest of our world as we must be about our universe, and that it's quite silly to imagine we really know anything final or even substantive about it at all. i like that answer.

and, as arthur c. clarke once said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

so, when we get there to learn the next thing that we will undoubtedly eventually learn, and we see the next thing we will be able to see, i sincerely hope we don't continue to make the ultimate human mistake which is to repeatedly conclude that THIS TIME we have finally thus and for all reached the end of the age of our faith, and our music, and our magic.

there will be many who recognize the impressive medical accomplishment necessary to be involved to heal carter, and at least as many if not more who will still know the miracle of faith that accompanies it. anyone who thinks they "know" which is which and which is "real" simply can't, though for sure anyone who thinks they "know" it exclusively had to be one or the other has got to be, for my money, more wrong than either could possibly be.

that much i know.

economy vs not

my parents were both raised during the great depression, and my father especially still has what amounts to a giant case of post traumatic stress disorder from the experience. for example, despite--trust me--greater means than he would ever be able to spend over the course of the rest of his lifetime, and until infirmity finally broke him of the practice, he would beg rides to the acton commuter rail (his closest station) so he could take a train to north station, a green line trolley to government center, a blue line train to airport station, and a masssport bus to his terminal, all while schlepping his entire collection of vacation luggage, rather than spring for a hired car to begin and end his trip. (don't bother to suggest bumming rides to and from the airport from family or friends instead--if you think any one of my relatives could ever bring themselves to be such a burden on anyone you haven't been reading the stories). anyway, this is the man who once bought me a vinyl baseball glove (they're cheaper!) with which to play little league baseball, and, no, i never did dare to show up for tryouts that year, to which we can credit my life of playing soccer as much as anything else, and you know the very first thing i bought for myself with the very first cash from my very first job shoveling driveways was a brand new rawlings real-leather outfielders mitt.

but this, of course, isn't about that. well, maybe a little. see, the one thing my father's miserliness taught me extremely early on is that there's a vast difference between the cheapest option and the most economical. the first step in any value-related decision is therefore best to be an assessment of what you're really hoping to achieve, and judging the success of your economy on the quality its achievement. in the case of vacation airport transportation, one might keep in mind the objective of a vacation, which is to relax. nothing relaxing about the mbta. and in the case of young child peer group activities, one might suggest anything other than a vinyl baseball glove for what i should hope would be obvious reasons, but lets not digress.

so it is that i'm put in mind of all such while opening my morning refrigerator and taking a long, sweet, cold swig of shaw farms all natural organic whole milk from its classic class quart bottle and feeling the sublime grace of providence for the privilege. (yes, i live alone--tell your mother to relax, and that it's my personal bottle, so i drink from it as i please). see, the bottle is now approaching a week old, and quite a bit toward empty, and it still tastes as fresh as you dream your morning taste of milk could be, and that's a beautiful thing. i've many times been given the sour grapes lament over the cost of each bottle ($1.55) from people not clued into the true economy of that number, but nowhere in their sigh of regret is ever mentioned the number of times such a sad-sack might have caught that slight whiff of "not quite" when pouring from their hoods' or market basket's or whoever have you's plastic jug.

i buy milk to be healthy and delicious, not growth-hormone laced and not. that $1.55 is much more of a bargain than my father or anyone on his side of the family can quite comprehend. (the other side, though no less old yankee skinflint than their in-laws, is comprised of a sufficient number of dairy farmers who would never make mistake over the essence of a good glass of milk, so i guess it's left to you whether or not i've triumphed over my formative environment, or whether it's just the triumph of one half of my genetics over the other).

next time your over-shipped, mass-processed jug turns on you, consider that the shelf life of a properly refrigerated quart of fresh all natural and organic milk just hours from the cow is many more times what you've been habituated to endure from your "less expensive" alternatives. and that saves money.

mmmmmmm

as if we needed more reasons to be annoyed by paul rudd

jason reitman for some inexplicable reason has found himself compelled to direct a remake of 1987's the princess bride. for those living under a rock for these past almost 25 years, the little gem of an original film takes the fantasy adventure genre and spins it so irreverently and silly-ly as to make something much better to be left inimitable, despite what reitman might be deluded to try to tell you. ("hello. my name is inigo montoya. you killed my father. prepare to die". "STOP SAYING THAT!")

the list of comedic characters in the original includes the like of christopher guest, billy crystal, peter cook, and carol kane, but they're all so completely outdone by andre the giant and wallace shawn that you simply can't help but enjoy every ridiculous moment of it. so how are patton oswalt and nick kroll (whose "creative" resume is topped by playing a spin-off of a geico commercial character of all things), going to in any way live up to any of it?

paul rudd is perhaps the worst of all of it to me, playing as he will, if the BS PR is to be believed, a character originally imbued with unwavering straight-up guileless sweetness (absolutely required by the silliness of the plot) by 25 year old cary elwes. reitman is, of course, completely lost of his mind to try to plug rudd's 42-year old whiney loser persona into one of the world's signature comic straight-man characters, but, who knows, maybe he can be better recast as the 12 year old kid who listens to the story while read to him in bed before the cameras start rolling, which would be far closer to his range and keep him further from despoiling the good parts as he so inevitably will.

seriously--if they're casting rudd as westley, they might as well let robin wright just reprise her original role as the princess--she's closer to rudd's age than he is to his own character's. and a better actress. and, if you think robin wright is a mediocre actress with limited range, then, i can just say EXACTLY!!!

or, as wallace shawn puts it so well so many times in the original: "it's INCONCEIVABLE!" ("i do not think it means what you think it means").

sadly, it doesn't...

edited to add a wink to the uncredited mark knopfler cameo in the original--who are they going to get to play that part, john mayer? (i know what you're about to say, so let me just repeat, EXACTLY!)

music is life

this one has so many loose ends, i have no idea how to tie them all together...

safe from a lifetime of possible regret, i will always know my divorce was the right thing to do because of the memory of all the times she told me to stop annoying her with the sounds of my playing. she wasn't wrong about the quality of it, but it wasn't right for her to say it that way, either. (as dave champagne sings, "that's not love"). until you give that part of you its freedom, it's hard to articulate how emotional playing your own music really is. nor is it possible to express the depth and strength of the bond formed between people who open themselves up to each others' music. (my past few torn-up days are for a million likely-obvious emotional reasons, but none more than the grace of knowing a beautiful human being as he plays and sings).

music is life.

on saturday, i had the supreme honor and pleasure of sharing my daughter's flute recital, including a spirited and supremely entertaining duet on a scott joplin piece with a friend, but crowned by the artist's declared-imperfect rendition of bach's sarabande and bourree anglais. (would have been easier to look it up had the "teacher" been able to spell it properly on the program ;-). i'm listening to my iphone's immortal recording of it again now, and i'm floored by the tone and the emotion of her playing--it's remarkable. and you are free to attribute the superlative to my emotional bond with my daughter, but that's exactly my point. in these years, she's grown from childish fumbling at notes to being able to express that beautiful portion of her soul when she cares to when she plays, and i'm able to hear it, clear as a bell. herself being yet another in this long line of oneself-can-never-be-good-enough-for-oneself germans, membership among which i am largely genetically and environmentally responsible, she heard everything she is resolved to do better, yet i love her and heard only her soul, and only wish for her to hear it, too.

such puts another tear in my eye for carter's recovery, of course, but so much also the memory of ed lyons, who greeted my same expressions of self-criticism with a scoff and the kindest of flatteries back when he was breathing life into downtown lowell, and into so many others' lives. and i don't remember a thing about what he said about my playing--it was his love for my love of it that he made sure i understood. our music can never be about good or not good, despite what the loveless among us might have us believe. it can only be about the fact that it is just that, and no less and no more--our music.

music is life.

i'll pause to let you in on the best part, too, if you have patience for just that little bit more. the dropped notes on the toughest passage? besides being virtually unnoticeable, they stand testament to something of which i'm nearly as proud--her steadfast courage and fortitude to carry the piece despite knowing of the gap in its rendition. i've watched people fumble and dissemble over far less, and you can picture rick perry's ''oops" to illustrate how most otherwise "important" and supposedly-accomplished so-called professional people fail to meet the challenge. to be in possession of yourself in such moments is, in a way, even more brilliant than being flawless.

music is life.

so she is disappointed she did not improve her "personal best" at her track meet on saturday morning, nor attain the heights of her fullest expectations for her musical self in the afternoon, but she is all the more beautiful to me for having run the race, and delivered the bach so brilliantly as she so assuredly did. i'm having a bear of a time getting two songs wrestled into even just a barely-embarrassing state (as opposed to a fully-embarrassing state) to honor her, carter, ed, etta james, and everyone else whose music has so enriched my life, and i have nothing but awe and gratitude that so many so much better than me make the effort. some people who love me will likely say some very complimentary things about my standing to perform them if it comes to that, and i'll do my level best to hear their love, and not my own self-criticism, but it's always touch-and-go. maybe it's because i know i'm still just a beginner, and i know that my soul really isn't coming through yet, but my enjoyment to just be able to play is enough for me until it can. and, even if it never does quite, i know that my daughter, and carter, and ed, and etta, and all those kind and dear friends who sit to listen would still be ok with me for it.

music is life.

(and so is everything else that is an expression of what and who we really are--it's really about art, and the entire human condition, really, and not just the music... though, for me, yeah, it's music first last and always...)

what is your life?

metaphysical tugs of war

the first news in several days has offered glimmers of joyful hope, and i'm suddenly aware of how little else i can manage to think of these days. it's hard to manage with the so little there is to hold onto, but encouraging signs give away glimpses of this great metaphysical tug of war, stalemated for so long, but finally and suddenly revealed to be in ever-so-slightest motion.

the rope is pulling our way--there's a moment of joy, but also immediate realization that now is the time everyone needs to pull ever the harder, because everything hangs in the balance, and on such an incredibly difficult and stubborn line.

go, carter, go

life is never fair...

the soundtrack to my childhood was punctuated by sibling exclamations ("it's not fair") and parental and grandparental responses ("it's not supposed to be fair") that have over time become a mantra for me. i don't know how people who perceive "intent" behind the cosmos can even bear to live in this world--it's so often so brutally unfair as to put any faithful person to the point of utter despair. today is again one of those days.

i learned last night that a story of tragedy i'm sure we all read with due yet momentary sympathy from the newspaper the day before is something much more real to a family i care very much about. it's profoundly unfair. it tears at my heart that there isn't anything more that i can do or imagine to be done--it's still too early to know anything more than just "wait and see". and so we wait, and so we shall see.

every day stories like this are in the paper, and every day families are tested for their resiliency and their mettle. a fabric of friends is sometimes all there is upon which to rely in this unfair world, to go with whatever faith can muster from beyond it. i happen to believe in the power of positive thinking. call that faith, call it whatever makes you most comfortable. but it's sometimes all that can be done while one is waiting and seeing through all the doing of everything that can be earthly done.

there is indeed more than can be met with our eyes...

all good thoughts

the yin and yang of politics

i'd link the ted talk directly, but cliff over at right side of lowell deserves more credit for finding it. his comments aren't nearly as glowing as i'd have written them. take the link. take the quiz. find out about the five channels of our moral behavior, and why neither liberals nor conservatives are posited to be able to succeed without the other side working with/against them. it's an 18 minutes well worth investing, especially if you have strong feelings about your politics.

http://right-side-of-lowell.blogspot.com/2012/01/left-and-right.html

fair use

while we're still SOPA-free, i'll shamelessly crib and copy a good one i caught today:

"cain, perry, bachman all claimed god told them to run for president, and all three are out of the race. god is hilarious".

props to self-avowed "people's atheist" dusty smith for the quote, though i hardly think one has to be an atheist to see the hilarity of it all.

i like my supreme deity to have a sense of humor, too.

vada a bordo, cazzo!

yes, it's profane, (15 year old daughter rule--happy birthday!), but it summarizes in a nutshell the worst and the best of human nature and behavior. on the one hand you have captain (using the term advisedly) francesco schettino, who ran his giant cruise ship aground with thousands upon thousands of passengers aboard, lied about the difficulty to both passengers and potential rescuers, (even as long as 30 minutes after a 160-foot gaping hole had been gashed in the side of his boat, he was on the radio to officials on shore insisting it was just a temporary blackout, even over port officials' giving him the hint that they had already taken first-person accounts of the collision, knew better, and were giving him every opportunity to amend his purely and obviously cock-and-bull story to admit to what was really happening), and then took a space in one of the life boats fortunate enough to have been made to work before the boat capsized, and then further lied as to how he came to be there. (first claiming he had been hurled into the sea via the capsizing, then caught in that lie, claiming rather that he had tripped and fallen into the boat). cazzo is being polite--people were dead, and people were dying.

on the other hand you have a forty-something balding career sailor, gregorio de falco, doing what the rest of us only hope we would have the presence of mind and courage to do--call a coward and coward, and exhort him (or her as any case may be) to take responsibility for themselves and for others, and simply do their job. "vada a bordo, cazzo!" "get back on board", *expletive not possible to be directly translated, but suggested to mean anything from "dammit" to "you limp piece of specifically male anatomy"*.

vada a bordo.

we should all bear such in mind whenever difficulty challenges us to do the right thing. de falco has it right. vada a bordo.

paula deen

you've perhaps heard by now that the most cloying lard junkie on television, paula deen, has been living with type 2 diabetes for years while she's been shoveling her pedestrian "i think it needs more butter and more sugar" cuisine on our television-besotted masses. anthony bourdain (ever since i saw him with a tribe of aboriginals eating wild pig anus on his tv show i've known he's the baddest ass tv chef out there) months ago called her "the most dangerous person in america", and now it's been revealed she's a paid shill for a diabetes drug company, he's added he's "thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later". anthony isn't wrong, and he of all people is capable of recognizing a pig's anus when he sees one.

i fear lost among all this, however, is the other half of why paula deen is such a heaping pile of pig parts. human bodies are not the solitary product of what's put into them. they are just as much the product of what we make out of them. which is to say, if all you do is totter between your living room sofa and your kitchen for another batch of hopeful diabetes, the cause of your diabetes is as much the tottering (as opposed to, say, getting out and taking a longer walk) as the teetering over your dietary precipice.

our bodies are not incapable of processing a certain amount of animal fat. in fact, it's my opinion that our bodies prefer to be processing a certain amount of animal fat. (at the risk of saying too much, my almost completely fat-free ex-wife has no better cholesterol ratings than i do to go with her chronic dry skin problems and persistent bowel difficulties and, yes, i do see both the irony and the coincidence). i'm quite sure it's the evolutionary reason we've come to enjoy the taste of it so much. same goes for sodium.

so why can't we see that the problem is not what but how much, for both our diet and our exercise? my 99 year old grandfathers ate what they preferred, and much of it included full-fat animal products from whole milk to every kind of sausage you can imagine. (i don't come by my taste for saumagen to go with my schweinshaxe by genetic accident). one used to put so much salt on his food that he had his own shaker at the table because his wife, my grandmother, grew tired of refilling the communal one. but both of my grandfathers were active to the point of what most people actually considered excess, which, to me, was merely to the point of whatever to which they were able and inclined. (the one retired when he was 85, and i'm still convinced he'd have lived to 110 if he had only worked until he was 95, something of which he appeared well capable). i learned by first-hand observation that they ate only and exactly as their bodies told them to eat, and no less just as surely as no more. when you're up at 4am to go to work, nobody is going to tell you at 7am when you stop back home for breakfast that you can't crush down twice as many cereal flakes into your bowl so as to be able to hold twice as much honey before you pour the cream you like over the top of them.

which reminds me... i'm out of shaw farm totally organic low-heat pasteurized whole milk in the quart glass bottles, and i need to head to dracut later to bag me several replacements. nope, i wasn't up at 4am, but i was out til midnight the other night playing flag football, and i used up what i had over my cheerios the next morning.

dick howe nails it

here's a gold nugget from dick howe. it's my expectation that anyone reading the local paper of record (we miss you, mr mill city boys) with any sort of an open eye will quickly grow to recognize the vague odor of editorial malfeasance. this post nails the essence of much of it.

thanks, dick!

its starting early this year

tuukka (2 u's 2 k's 2 points) has long been one of my favorites, and it was a ball to watch him take two points out of florida last night. of course, i was also wearing my tim tank thomas t shirt while i was watching, and i'm eager to see the man himself, the most dominant goaltender of this, his continuing era, take it to tampa bay tonight. (no one who knows me knows me long before having to hear about the night i first saw timmy play at the garden for a woeful team that hardly deserved him, nor knew exactly what it had after retrieving him from finland where he had been, among many other notable things, single season shutout record holder--15 in one single 55 game season--and league champion--he stood on his head and stole that game, as he's earned so many since). but it's not just because they have the best goaltending in the league. the bruins have the best four-line attack in the NHL bar none, from the top of the lineup to the bottom. they roll deeper and tougher and more talented than anyone else in the league, and it's really beginning to show in the standings.

and it's january. it's only mid-way through the season, but i'm already counting minutes before the next puck drop like its playoff time. don't get me wrong, i'm a fan every week of every season, but there's another level that takes over inside me when the team is this good, and, well, this team is this good. better than last year's stanley cup champion. better than every other team in the league for sure. and it's a ball to watch them figure out just how good they really can be. and it's only going to get better.

go broons!

it's never over til it's over

bill gates thought he had trounced steve jobs once and for good back when his windows piece of crap operating system caught on with enough cheap hardware producers that his operating system (and thus as well his applications) "won" the platform war. (bill g even fended off netscape and left us with the pile of stinking garbage that is "internet explorer" to threaten to spoil the entire internet for good measure). NOBODY was going to stake any claim to any turf that was anywhere near the microsquish monopoly on the PC, and all we witless consumers had the endless technical future to pay for it.

fast forward a few years to steve jobs' brilliant riposte which was neither a macbook or an imac or anything else remotely resembling the hulking pile of crap which continued to be the windows dinosaur, but, rather, an innocuous looking single-purpose convenience called an ipod, which morphed into the multi-purpose and way cool iphone, which has once again transformed itself into the brawny ipad from which all things PC now gain their final obsolescence.

it's my children's privilege (and cross to bear in a different sense) to possess parents of sufficient affluence that they should have been given their own state-of-the-art homework machines upon entry to high school. the first two, poor saps, arrived while laptops were the standard, so got more windows BS and an endless stream of service trips and blue-screen-of-death headaches. but the third one--the golden child--had presence of mind to be born into the age of the ipad, and it's her joy to be given an entirely new world into which to come of age. "ms word" for the laptops? hundreds of wasted dollars and many more wasted hours than that trying to wrestle it to produce what they preferred. "pages" for the ipad? 9.99 and it kicks that other software's ass so soundly as to put even a jaded old cuss like me into instant awe. (oh, and it reads and produces ms word format files if you really want to keep one foot in the stone age).

gates and company never got it, just the same way they never really got what a stinking, steaming pile of ultimate horseshit their PC's were and continue to be. oh, yeah, they pocketed some major bucks from the stock market during the glory years, but find me someone who still actually runs a zune, and i'll show you someone even more witless than the company which duped them to buy it. that ipad of my daughters is an amazing thing, and for $600 running circles around anything and everything windows has to offer, from cheap knock-offs to top-dollar "gaming" systems. the competition isn't even close. word processing? just toss in an easy 10 bucks. (have you priced word for a pc lately? frightening...) apps for drawing and recording music and creating anything her imagination prefers are equally cheap when they aren't next to free.

it's a whole new world out there, and it's never over til it's over. bill gates, like tim tebow, can suck it.

federal distress

fedex sucks.

i can't say it any more descriptively than that--fedex sucks.

i used to wonder that the usps might be the least capable outfit in the get-it-from-here-to-there game, but it's not really even close.

fedex sucks.

for whatever reason that might be better known to apple, they chose to ship the two items i bought for my daughter's birthday via two different shippers. one got here. (the one shipped via ups--an organization i love for their professional efficiency whenever and wherever packages sent to me are concerned). the other did not.

can you guess who handled that one? (tell 'em raymond--"fedex sucks").

not only did it not get here, but this relatively expensive high tech "signature required" item was actually delivered to and signed for by someone else who is not me and who is not anywhere near anything resembling my address. (who sucks? fedex sucks).

so starting friday night, and every day since, i have used the tracking information supplied to me by apple and called fedex about their having essentially stolen my goods, and i have repeatedly supplied them with my tracking number and my case number and the first names of each successive fedex stooge i mean employee with whom i've spoken about it previously and my full name and my full address and my home phone number and my cell phone number. yes, i have dutifully called each and every day and with declining degrees of civility and as politely as i can manage and asked them to call me back with information about my package. days missing? 4. days i called fedex about it? 4. return calls or any further information from fedex other than that the name shown on the online delivery confirmation screen is not me? zero.

fedex sucks.

i'm really powerless in this situation to do much beyond call every successive day until something can be resolved. for now apple insists that nothing can be done because fedex hasn't confirmed to them that the package is lost. for that much i will say that apple also sucks, in that they took money from me and then took additional money from me to give the macguffin to fedex, and that does indeed qualify as sucks in any book.

if you order stuff online, always insist it goes ups. or don't say i didn't warn you.

a walking tour of downtown shangri-lowell

i took a (bit chilly) walk around downtown shangri-lowell this afternoon, and gave up counting the piles of frozen vomit (i stopped at 3) broken bottles (i stopped at 7) and loose trash blowing around (i stopped without being able to count) in the aftermath of yet another saturday night. yeah, the patriots were playing, but, see, that just means that the majority of knuckleheads were at house parties not bars, and it should have been less vomit and vandalism, not more.

if you happen to live or happen to run a non-alcohol business in downtown lowell, your monday morning (or your patrons' monday morning) is going to be spent stepping all over all of this.

if you happen to run a rules-bending-if-not-breaking alcohol business in downtown lowell, congratulations, because you've gotten away with yet another saturday night of overserving and overstuffing your tills courtesy of the city of lowell licensing commission who continues to have your back as well as absolutely no interest in respecting the interests of the aforementioned residents or businesses. 3pm it continues to be, and yet another week of no establishment's license privileges being in any way limited by their refusing to respect the rules.

you're welcome.

rob, when you're right, you're right

rob mills, the sun's police and crime beat reporter, has an exceptionally good blog which is consistently one of the best reads in the city, even if not the most encouraging one as its not today. last night, it would seem, violence from one or more of the bars downtown resulted in a man needing to be med-flighted to boston to save his life, and nobody from the license commission commenting on whether they feel their oversight of the establishments serving liquor downtown is anything less than perfect.

rob's frustration spills over (no one save the police officers he covers sees more of this than he does) into an incredibly reserved editorial comment regarding the arguments the license commission is raising about whether their holding their meetings AS DOES NO OTHER COMMITTEE IN THE CITY at 3:00 in the afternoon while nearly everyone at mortal risk of being stabbed in the evening is at work, save the bar owners who pocket all the profits from our misery, and who, at least in the person of nick petrakos of the blue shamrock, suggest that "to take us out of our establishments exacerbates the problems".

you know what, nick? i've been in your establishment many times. i've never once seen you in it. i know you likely stop in from time to time, but please save the rhetorical BS thats about nothing else besides your wishing to keep all this violence and mayhem swept under the rug, and your tills filling while people wind up in the hospital and worse. (no murders at sub shops after 2am in the past few months, but you know the next one is coming).

the part that pisses me off the most, is the combination of commission chair walter bayliss continually ranting that the violence must not matter because so few people (in his opinion) make it out at 3pm to raise the issue, and "lowell attorney george eliades" pointing out that the 3pm meeting time must not need to be changed because "a lot...have managed to make it here for this meeting this afternoon".

is anybody listening? lax oversight of liquor laws and regulations are causing serious injury, serious property damage, and serious overtime police pay expense to the city. nobody on the license commission seems to think any of it matters beyond their convenience to meet at 3pm and decide to do absolutely nothing about it.

the commission has to go. any one of the three can stand up and give us a reason to feel they don't need to go at any time by making an effort to stem the bloody violence and nauseating vandalism. but not one of the three appears to have the courage or inclination to do so. in the pockets of bar owners, or afraid of their own shadows, i don't know the explanation.

but it's far past time when something has to change.

tebaloney

SNL got it closest to my sentiment, when it lampooned the ridiculousness of petitioning a deity over a football game. (jason sudeikis' characterization of j.c. himself was a classic, especially the penultimate line suggesting timmy t will be on his own vs the pats and tom brady, since, "have you been watching this guy? i may be the son of god, but i'm pretty sure he's his cousin or something").

a lot of my friends will be chiming in with a chorus of "tebow can suck it" whenever something won't go his way later this evening, and though i'm rather thinking tim is a sincere and honorable young man to be respected for his faith, and that it's more the networks fault for panning over to him every time he does his little genuflections, it'll still be fun to be part of the poking of fun at the nonsense of it all. (bill cosby did a great routine back in the day back when he was playing vegas, about what it must sound like to god anywhere in the vicinity of a casino, with prayers for every number in creation all arriving at the same time).

props to whoever is behind the facebook incarnation of the athenian corner for the wit of a prediction of a 31-6 pats jumbling of john's usual football stadium crowd verse.

go pats! go cousin tommy!

the rest of the shoes

here are the rest of the dropped shoes. france and austria got kicked from the triple-a club, italy now shares its rating with kazakhstan, and portugal belatedly gets what everybody knows what was inevitable, which would be "junk" status. 14 of the eurozone countries continue to carry a "negative outlook", which is s&p's way of pre-announcing the next round of ratings drops.

this isn't just a beauty contest. these ratings materially impact the interest rates these goverments are forced to pay on the debts they incur via their deficit spending, and further compromise their ability to remain solvent. as rancid sings it, "hey, ho, let the bombs blow--let the dominoes fall i ain't got control".

no we ain't got it either.

chickens and their roosts

these are never the stories that are "trending now", but they are the ones that mean the most that describe the fits and starts of the slow and inexorable implosion of global sovereign finances. the us lost S&P's AAA rating last summer, and now the european dominoes are starting to fall and follow. france got their news today. when interest rates rise, debts balloon in consequence. we are questionable to be able to pay everything off at the ridiculously low sovereign interest rates we and other "big" countries are receiving today. raise the rates, and it's only a matter of time until more and larger countries are forced to default. when that happens, their creditors often and inevitably fail (financial institutions, at their best, are capitalized at about 10% of assets, and many are only a fraction of that, meaning that a 10% loss completely wipes out their position) and the buck stops, or should i say disappears, at your and my doorstep. well, actually, if it only disappeared that would be one thing, but what appears in its place is a tax burden that will bankrupt not only ourselves, but our children and their children after them.

bush put us on this death spiral. obama not only failed to slow our to-the-bottom-of-the-toilet descent, he felt compelled to accelerate the course. we're either going all-in, or we're going to have to do something different about it than spend, spend, spend.

consolidating a few federal agencies isn't going to do it. abolishing the fed is a good first step and start, and ron paul is the sole candidate for president who seems to get it.

do you?

some journalists are just plain good journalists

here in this country, especially of late, rightie and leftie prejudices extend for us all the way to the journalists we prefer to deliver our news, and it polarizes and divides the nation when we most desperately need to come closer together to work as one on the solutions to our pressing problems. fox is full of righties. msnbc is full of lefties. i don't know many people who watch both, though i know more than a few people, like me, who watch neither, which is encouraging, but if we could all put down our ideological cudgels for just a moment, i found something i think is worth watching.

it came to me today via one of the subjects of this piece, and it's a little something done by rachel maddow (one of those horrible lefties at msnbc) that so well and clearly captures what's happening here in lowell that i cannot resist passing it along. it's remarkable to me because obviously msnbc has no local bureau here in shangri-lowell, and they (rachel) have had to put this piece together from multiple sources with no first-hand presence to sort out the fact from the hyperbole. yet, here it is.

i've rarely been so close to a piece of news and seen it done so clearly, fairly, balanced and straightforward. rob mills of our lowell sun can do it. few others i've known can.

have a watch. it's a remarkable piece.

throw away right and left--let's choose reason for a change

fox news analyst (and avowed rightie) judge andrew napolitano was a guest last night on the daily show with (avowed leftie) jon stewart. in the course of the discussion, judge napolitano had this supremely important observation to make and say:

"i don't believe there are two parties in this country... we have one big government party. it has a democratic wing that likes war and taxes and individual welfare, and a republican wing that likes war and deficits and corporate welfare"

FINALLY someone getting it right. well, two someones. here's the next line:

"only somebody like ron paul believes that the government should leave you alone, tax you minimally, and that government is best that governs least".

absolutely.

so why are we, the electorate, apparently insisting on candidates who are hell bent on pursuing war, taxes, deficits and welfare???

seriously. all the republican primary candidates (with the exception of ron paul) are clamoring to out-rant each other in pursuit of further curtailing individual liberties and our bill of rights, while bankrupting us further in pursuit of foreign entanglements that have bled us dry and left us continued to be vulnerable to lunatic regimes bent on our destruction. they are doing this clamoring in an attempt to compete with a sitting president who has made a presidential career of curtailing our individual liberties and bill of rights while bankrupting us further in pursuit of foreign entanglements that have bled us dry and left us continued to be vulnerable to lunatic regimes bent on our destruction.

are we crazy?

sure seems it.

sapere aude. choose to fight for our rights. choose to reduce the bloat and oppression heaped on us by our own federal boondoggle/government. choose to maintain US (our!) power by not bankrupting the base from which it springs tilting at somebody else's windmills. (seriously--if we want to be powerful, we need to keep from squandering it so there's less left when we need it, and if you aren't listening to iran and north korea, you aren't listening).

people have got to realize andrew napolitano is right. reflexively voting for a D or an R is reflexively voting for the same thing.

choose differently. choose better.

shark jumping and the big corporate cringe

i toil in the belly of an extremely large beast. (more than 20 billion in revenue, and 50,000 employees). it's a good gig, and one that both rewards personally as well as financially, and it's the extremely obvious reason why my apartment is festooned with so many dilbert cartoons--and all those not because they're funny, but because they are all too true.

well, today i experienced a conference call that i doubt even scott adams would believe.

it began comically enough with an extremely senior executive admonishing all us worker bees to reject characterizations of companies in our day-to-day work, and to instead and always refer to the individuals involved. (e.g. not "when i talked to colgate-palmolive", but, rather, "when i talked to so-and-so at colgate palmolive"). and i am not kidding about the near-instantaneous timing of this, but, seriously, within TEN SECONDS of that statement, he was on to telling us all about our goals for the coming year by saying "we are being asked by the company to..."

ok, maybe not so funny to those of you who don't put up with this BS on a day-to-day basis, but it's laugh-out-loud funny to many of us who do. (at least when we're on conference calls from home during which no one can see or hear us guffawing). these jack-offs seriously don't pay the least bit attention to the things that they say, nor worry about the irony of their asking us to hang on every word. putzes.

but the ultimate cringe came a few minutes later when this same personification of a pile of stinking, steaming BS exhorted us all to "unleash your inner dragons", and join him in a group roar. no, i am not making this up. on a professional business call, on which are participating close to a thousand people whose salaries for this 90 minute complete waste of time i estimate to have represented for my company in excess of one hundred thousand payroll dollars, this complete horses ass thought it necessary to engage all these otherwise professionals in a display of childishness most other sensible people would feel best belonged in a kindergarten.

yes i'm appalled. embarrassed. ashamed.

yet, still expected to do each and every single thing that this personification of a pile of stinking, steaming BS arbitrarily at whim thinks that we should do.

PHB (pointy-haired boss) to dilbert in dilbert's cubicle: "someone sent me another anonymous email with a link to an article about the world's worst bosses". PHB continuing to dilbert in dilbert's cubicle: "i get one of these emails every time i leave your cubicle. did you think i wouldn't notice the correlation?" wally, from the other side of the wall of dilbert's cubicle, and pushing the "send" button on his smartphone upon the exit of said PHB: "correlation does not imply causation".

sometimes working from home isn't as much fun as working from the office.

just sayin'