My Life So Far (The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

These aren't necessarily my favorite songs (if that were the case, songs from 1965 and 1977 and 79 would consume almost every slot).  No, rather these are songs that remind me of a particular year in my life.  I might have been obsessed with the song, or heard it a lot on the radio.  For the songs prior to 1972, they remind me of a year in a historical rather than personal context, since I didn't really pay attention to music as such prior to my 10th birthday.  I've added more than one song per year only when I felt that one alone could not convey those 12 months for me (the mid-60's and late-70's, mostly).

I'm not sure why I felt the urge to list these here, but the compulsion was strong nonetheless.  I'm sure books, films and TV shows are soon to follow, I must warn you.  Or not.  You were warned.

1962. The Wanderer by Dion
1963. Please Mr. Postman by The Beatles (ironic that my favorite Beatles recording is a cover?)
1964. Don't Worry Baby by The Beach Boys
1965. Desolation Row, Ballad of a Thin Man and Positively 4th Street by Bob Dylan followed with You've Got To Hide Your Love Away by The Beatles
1966. California Dreamin' by the Mamas and the Papas followed with Rain by The Beatles
1967. Heroin by The Velvet Underground followed with Suzanne by Leonard Cohen
1968. Ball and Chain by Janis Joplin/Big Brother and Holding Co.
1969. Suspicious Minds by Elvis Presley followed with Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones
1970. God by John Lennon followed with Dress Rehearsal Rag by Leonard Cohen followed with I Think I Love You by The Partridge Family (which one is my favorite now?)
1971. Moonlight Mile by The Rolling Stones followed with Yo-Yo by the Osmonds (which one was my favorite at the time?)
1972. Layla by Derek and the Dominos
1973. Captain Jack by Billy Joel
1974. Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks followed with Kung Fu Fighting by Karl Douglas (we could play records on Friday in math class at George Washington Carver Middle School 7th Grade)
1975. Backstreets by Bruce Springsteen
1976. Dancing Queen by ABBA followed with Blitzkrieg Bop and Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue by the Ramones followed with I've Loved These Days by Billy Joel followed with Night Moves by Bob Seger
1977. Alison by Elvis Costello followed with Career Opportunities by The Clash followed with Anarchy in the UK by Sex Pistols followed with Sheena Is A Punk Rocker by the Ramones
1978. Badlands and Racing In The Street by Bruce Springsteen followed with Big Shot by Billy Joel followed with (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea by Elvis Costello followed with I Wanna Be Sedated by the Ramones
1979. Dance This Mess Around by the B-52s followed with Oliver's Army by Elvis Costello followed with Discovering Japan by Graham Parker followed with Alternative Ulster by Stiff Little Fingers
1980. London Calling by The Clash followed with Los Angeles by X
1981. Shot With His Own Gun by Elvis Costello followed with Seven Year Ache by Roseanne Cash
1982. Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo followed with Add It Up by Violent Femmes
1983. Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 followed with An Innocent Man by Billy Joel
1984. Country Death Song by Violent Femmes followed with Don't Go Back To Rockville by REM
1985. Just Like Honey by Jesus and the Mary Chain
1986. Dear God by XTC
1987. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2
1988. Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen
1989. Fight the Power by Public Enemy followed with Tramp The Dirt Down by Elvis Costello
1990. Last Day of Our Acquaintance by Sinead O'Connor
1991. Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
1992. Runaway Train by Soul Asylum
1993. Flower by Liz Phair
1994. Doll Parts by Hole 
1995. Sinaloa Cowboys by Bruce Springsteen
1996. Criminal by Fiona Apple
1997. Tubthumping by Chumbawamba
1998. Intergalactic by Beastie Boys
1999. Sleep Now In The Fire by Rage Against The Machine
2000. Stan by Eminem
2001. The Blower's Daughter by Damien Rice
2002. Complicated by Avril Lavigne
2003. Knockin' On Heaven's Door by Warren Zevon
2004. American Idiot by Green Day
2005. Reno by Bruce Springsteen
2006. Black Cadillac by Roseanne Cash followed with Dancing Shoes by Arctic Monkeys
2007. Sweet Jane by Cowboy Junkies
2008. The Bright Lights of America and The Modern Rome Burning by Anti-Flag

2009. Sulfur To Sugarcane by Elvis Costello followed with Lust For Life by Girls followed with Bad Romance by Lady Gaga

Dyslexic Misanthrope

Dr. G is now on the Discovery Science Channel!  So there's a chance Oprah's destruction of Discovery Health next year won't mean the end of my favorite Medical Examiner (sorry, Dr. Quincy).  There's some solace in that.

Meanwhile, in other important television doings, Five-0's Steve McGarrett was on the witness stand on WFMZ 69 this afternoon.  Steve was testifying against some super villain loan shark and talking turkey about the exorbitant interest rates in the leg-breaking business, or "the juice, as it's called in the underworld parlance."  Classic McGarrett-speak.  Shuffling between that and a Twilight Zone marathon on the SciFi Channel brings to an end my last week on the dole, topped off with a rousing snow storm to boot.

And down the snow tumbles.  I can hear all the fuckers up and down my block cackling with glee at the chance to rock and roll tomorrow with their machines of destruction.  You know, I can't believe, we're on the eve of destruction.  They're probably already hunkered down in their garages, greasing up their Sno-Blower 10000s for the big day tomorrow, anxious to gun the engines and shoot that snow a mile high in the sky before crashing it back down to earth all over my freshly hand-shoveled walk, erasing the fruits of my manual labor.

The idiot across the street from me was revving up his monstrous contraption this afternoon before a flake had even hit the ground.  It was like qualifying day at the Indy 500.  Better find my headphones so I can drown out the screams of 20 Blowers doing their synchronized dance tomorrow while I'm breaking my back with the ol' faithful $5 plastic shovel.  I think a little Never Mind the Bollocks on the iPod will serve as a gentle alternative soundtrack to my back breaking efforts.  My body is already aching just thinking about it.  Of course I covered this neighbor problem in a December post, where I swore I'd break into my each of their garages at the dawn of the next big snowfall and fill the gas tanks of their blowers with nitroglycerin.  Better set my alarm early tomorrow. :-)

But who am I kidding?  I'm a dyslexic misanthrope: whenever I get especially angry at someone or something, I tend to take it out on myself, no matter how much I may want to lay into the true target of my fury.  It's perhaps just something ingrained into my DNA?  Nah.  Odds are, it was tattooed onto my psyche by off-brand byzantine parenting since recalled. 

I'm going to be signing off from this blog for the most part while I get back down to the business of business.  That means more postings on my technology blog at the expense of this one.  I'll still be checking in from time to time but probably not at the near daily clip I'd been posting to date, tossing globs of drivel-laden keystrokes at the web and watching precious little of it stick.  Which is not to say that the quality will improve just because I have a go at it less.  But I'll feel more guilty if it isn't.  So I'll try.

"Dip - ri - van! It's my life and it's my wife ..."

Lots of slow - and not so slow - dancing going on this week ...

First, Rush Limbaugh boogied on camera to the beat of Lady Gaga at the Miss America pageant on Saturday night, no doubt helped by the halo of Oxycontin-based opiates tap dancing down his brain stem. When Rush is "rushing on his run" - which is always - bet he "feels just like Jesus' Son."




The dancing will be (mainly) verbal as John Stewart heads back to the O'Reilly Factor tonight and tomorrow for a two part taped interview between the Daily Show razor wit and the "No Spin Zone" host and resident wit of nits.  Should be something to behold.  Stewart was on Bill-O's show a little more than 5 years ago during an equally volatile time in American Politics (it was just a few weeks shy of the 2004 election). A good time was had by all.  Gitcha popcorn ready.

To get us primed, how about a golden oldie from Bill O'Reilly back in the early 1990's ...

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson's really, really slow dancing coach and Pusher/Doctor is finally "ready" to turn himself into the authorities.  Jesus, this thing is dragging out, almost as slowly as your heart beats when Heir Doktor Conrad Murray puts that spike into your vein.  The good Dr. Murray was Jackson's "travel agent" of choice, sending him off on many a Diprivan-fueled "anesthesiologist's holiday" with a skillful drip of the IV into MJ's blood stream.  I hear tell Michael was thinking of remaking the Velvet Underground's classic "Heroin" as "Diprivan" but I might have heard wrong ...

Speaking of dancing (and heroin) ...

Leif Garrett, former 70's Tiger Beat mainstay (he of "I Was Made For Dancin'" teenybopper fame; see below), was busted for heroin possession for the second time while loitering around LA's mass transit system (Los Angeles has mass transit?!?).   His previous LA transit bust occurred when he attempted to jump the turnstiles for a free ride and was caught holding.  This time, Cherry Valance's evil Soc boyfriend Bob was apparently shaking and sweating up a storm on the train platform when the cops came upon him.  Garrett has been dancing with Mr. Brownstone for nearly 30 years now and apparently has not quite hit bottom just yet.

I didn't fit Leif's teen idol target demographic and hated his sort of "music" but do remember his picture plastered everywhere in the late 70's and I did dig his 1999 VH1 Behind the Music special.  Seems they need to write yet another chapter.  He's just about my age and so serves as at least one Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, or Future for my generation. Which one? Depends on your perspective and outlook, but I'm hoping he's not the Ghost of Christmas Future.  He's certainly one barometer of where you stack up/how far you've come since the disco days of yore. Here's hoping you measure up fairly well when judged relative to Mr. Garrett.  Leif, we hardly knew ye ...

X marks the Spot (on the floor I can now see)

A lazy, rainy Sunday finds me cleaning out my "office" (i.e., the place where I throw all the shit that doesn't fit in the other rooms). Mainly it's a graveyard for computers in my life that have since gone to that big bit bucket in the sky. And cables. Lots and lots of cables. CATV, Ethernet, RGB Component, HDMI, extension cords, telephone line, and several whose purpose I can't readily discern. But amidst this twisted rat's nest of wiring, I came up with gold: an audio cable long enough to reach from my laptop on the coffee table to the stereo.

I can finally play my iTunes collection directly off my computer through my stereo!

You'd think I'd have found - or just bought - one of these cables many, many years ago. But no, I'm a notorious procrastinator and have been making do simply plugging my iPod into the three foot audio cable previously protruding from the stereo audio-in. How primitive! I can only fit a small fraction of my collection on those devices and can't control them from the comfort of my recliner when they're tethered to that shorty wire across the room. It took me quitting my job - and thus not having any work to do over the weekend - to get me to dig up what I should have had all along. Perhaps one day I'll even hook my computer up to the television!

Good ol' Steve, living out on the bleeding edge of technology circa 2002 ...

And now with my music all stereoawesomeified - that should be a word - I'm jamming to lots of the brilliant late 70's/early 80's LA punk band X. Calling them punk really doesn't do them justice because they're about much more musically than the three super-fast cords, attitude and two minute songs defining the bulk of the genre. I don't say that to disparage others of the punk persuasion: three chords, two minutes, speed and an attitude is what great rock and roll is all about and why punk is my favorite flavor. And X had all that in spades; however, like the best of anything, they layered more on top. John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebrake had range and style and a thirst for experimentation, all within the confines of the punk rock spirit. Most of all, they were smart.

In fact, I'm enjoying the music so much I just realized I've stopped cleaning up the "office", but that's okay because I've moved onto another important task: importing into iTunes the CDs my friend John gave me upon his departure with the family to the Rocky Mountain wilderness of Adolph Coors and Mork & Mindy (thanks again, John).

Well, I've got to get back to cleaning again. If you've read this far, you're a masochist for sure and should get that checked out.

[Postscript: spending a surreal evening flipping back and forth between the daily news cycle focused on Haiti and the Golden Globes. One juxtaposed on the other makes for a really bad acid trip.]

All Play and No Work makes for a Confused Boy

Saturday. January 16th, 2010.  High noon.  I left the safety of full-time employment yesterday to dip my toes back into the world of consulting, this time as an independent.  I've had a lot of folks asking if I'd been laid off but in fact it was quite the contrary: my now-former employer is looking for and hiring technology folks with my skill set pretty extensively these days and were thoroughly disappointed to see me leave.  The follow-up questions are the same once folks hear I left of my own accord without a guaranteed job and with the national unemployment rate still hovering around 10%:

• So why'd ya do it?  Life's too short.  Enough said.   
• In this economy?  I'm lucky in that the market's pretty active for my particular niche and I have several interesting consulting engagement possibilities on the horizon as well as a couple short-term gigs in the bag.
  
• Are you insane?  Yes, on multiple levels.   
• What you did is like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and then searching the sky for a parachute on the way down.  That's not really a question and the analogy isn't completely apt.  From my perspective, this particular aircraft has major structural defects and several of my fellow passengers look disturbingly dangerous (in fact, so does most of the crew).  That said, I do have a standing offer to climb back into this particular plane if I so choose.  Besides, the sky seems filled with functioning chutes I can reach out and touch.

So I'll be okay.  And I feel a giddy sense of freedom.  But I also feel a bit empty today.  I tend to be a workaholic and am going through withdrawal as I take the rest of the month off.  I need a fix or something that'll take my mind off this "no work and all play" thing staring me in the face.  Books, movies, exercise, withdrawing all my savings and going to Atlantic City, coming up with a sure-fire get-rich business plan, writing a novel, fixing up the house to sell.  All are possibilities I've contemplated.  My A.D.D keeps getting in the way of going further.

Perhaps baby steps are in order.  Finish reading the six books I've started over the past several months. Watch at least a few of the flicks that sit untouched on the DVR or in unwrapped DVD/Blu-Ray cases next to the tube. Writing?  How 'bout I write a whole short story instead of the fragments/"moments" I've churned out to date before tackling my War and Peace tome?  Just a thought.  Fix up the house?  I did call a roofer, who'll be here Monday for an estimate.  That's a start.  And I did go for a run just a bit ago to (try and) make up for the Girl Scout cookies I bought - and ate - this morning.   The kid at the door was adorable and I was hungry.  Now my feet hurt from the run and the downside of the earlier sugar rush is catching up with me.  But one run does not my "regular exercise" New Year's Resolution make.  So why not devise a daily regiment?

Things to ponder.  Meanwhile, I've been catching up with some music.

Elvis Costello at Hollywood High came out on CD/MP3 this week and I'm loving it.  Recorded in 1978, it catches Costello and the Attractions at the height of their craft.  They were a great live band and this is grand evidence of that fact.  I also picked up Graham Parker and the Rumour live in San Francisco 1979 which was likewise recently released (last month).  Parker and company are equally wonderful. Perhaps I'm showing my age just a bit, but the best of first generation punk and new wave circa 1976 - 1979 is likely my favorite era in music, certainly the best of the eras I experienced first hand as a music consumer (the heart of the "60's era" roughly book-ended around 1964 - 1968 is my other fav period but I was just a toddler then and only later enjoyed the tuneage in reruns).

Well, this post has been meandering, unfunny, and thoroughly boring.  Not altogether to be unexpected given my track record, but it's sub-par even when compared to that.  Better luck next time, dear reader.

And so I'm off for the evening, fighting a cold - a parting gift from my employer - while flipping between play-off football and Closer, one of my fav flicks of the 00's (I discovered it today sitting there in my DVR fresh from a recording off IFC earlier in the week).  Ahh, Leon's sweet young Mathilda all grown up.  Natalie's just a notch down from my all-time pantheon of Hollywood crushes but climbs higher every year.  She took a big leap up with the one-two punch of Closer and Garden State stuck in the middle of the "Noughties" decade.

And so it is
Just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
Most of the time
And so it is
The colder water
The blower's daughter
The pupil in denial
I can't take my eyes off of you ... I can't take my mind off of you ...

The Jan 8-Ball Posse

Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Larry Storch (F Troop's Corporal Agarn) were all born on this day.

Man, those cats could have combined to make a dynamite early 70's movie franchise. Sort of a rockin', druggin', slap stick Odd Couple (the Odd Triplets). Or perhaps a less sane variant on the Three Stooges. Elvis all loaded up with fried banana sandwiches and firearms, the contents of a small pharmacy coursing through his veins; Bowie all androgynified and strung out, his Ziggy mullet flapping in the breeze; and finally Larry picking up the rear in full-out Storch-itude, hanging with Sgt. O'Rourke and the Hekawis busting on Captain Parmenter.

As Cher sang, "If I could turn back time." Indeed. The accompanying music video for her 1989 hit had Sonny's already middle aged gal dolled up in a skin-tight flesh colored outfit dancing on the USS Missouri battleship surrounded by Navy "crew members", the irony of the words seemingly lost to all. Cher attempted to turn back time in Nip/Tuck fashion and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, maybe we can turn back time for our Elvis/Bowie/Storch bonanza with some FX magic of our own.

Larry and Bowie are still with us, so maybe we dispense with the full-on CGI and can option this film series idea with the real-deal codgers themselves, targeting it at the Octogenarian demographic (and the many of us who are Octogenarians at heart). With still just a bit of help from Lucasfilm's Industrial Light and Magic crew. The Marx Brothers meets Cheech and Chong meets the cast of Cocoon. The Three Amigos in Depends (hell, Elvis was wearing Depends in his 30s, so in a way it's a tribute to his memory as much as it is to their advancing years). Grumpy Stoned Men.

We just need an Elvis replacement. Lisa Marie? Nah, too young. Elvis Costello? Perhaps Presley was about more than just a quirky first name. We need an aging, pill popping iconic rock star with a ballooning weight problem and delusions of grandeur. And an enabling posse of hangers on. That shouldn't be difficult. Oh, that's right: this rocker also needs to be alive. That might be more challenging. Christ, grab one of his contemporaries - both Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard are still breathing, kind of, and seem to meet most of the criterion. But still, they simply aren't The Pelvis. Somehow that combination of rebellious sneering rocker, Mama's boy backwoods hick, and pill-popping paranoid batshit loon is harder to find in a single persona than one might think.

Ahh! It seems R. Kelly was also born on January 8th, so let's go ahead and inject some young blood into this would-be celluloid gang. It's now becoming sort of like a cross generational Mod Squad! Though it needs that certain special Peggy Lipton-style lady to truly make it mod. Amber Benson belongs to this special fraternity of "celebs" born on Jan 8 so why not let her in on the fun? Who the hell is she, you ask? Exactly. And in the spirit of 60/70's crime dramas, I'm thinking we want to make this gang more Ironside-like. As luck would have it, guess who else was born on 01/08? No, not Raymond Burr (he's dead anyway), I'm talking about Professor Stephen Hawking.

We've got the makings of a real rock and roll Ocean's Eleven, bent on drunken acid and slap stick high drama with some commercial grade physics thrown in to satisfy the public's insatiable hunger for the hard sciences! Let's call it The Jan 8-Ball Posse featuring "Howlin' Black Hole" Hawking.

We better hurry, though. Storch is pushing 90, Hawking's been living on borrowed time for 40 some years, and timing is everything. I'll start work on a draft treatment for the inaugural romp down 8-Ball Alley and ring up Hollywood at once to start the funding round. Gotta work on my sales pitch, though: "Man, if the kids loved Twilight I can only imagine how they'll eat this up ..."

To Slur with Love

Ahh, Courtney - my favorite human train wreck is in the news again with word that her daughter's finally had enough of the babbling head-on collisions, opting to live out the waning months of her life as a minor with her paternal grandma. Better known as Amy Winehouse's AA sponsor (she wishes!), Ms. Love has lately taken up roost on Facebook, hammering out head scratching non-sequitur-laced status post/rants from her computer keyboard like Cecil Taylor pounding free jazz from the ivories. Well ... perhaps not so much. More like what I would imagine Captain Beefheart might write were he to put pen to paper immediately after being beaten senseless with a baseball bat. Or maybe Allen Ginsberg shot through Andrew "Dice" Clay suffering from advanced dementia with a touch of LA Law's Benny Stulwicz. You get my point: batshit lunacy and scatterbrained linguistic scats.

But I say all this with love in my heart for the gal. I'm serious about that. She just seems so little-girl-lost that it's hard to get pissed at her antics. But I imagine it's a different story from the vantage point inside the eye of her particular storm. And she's certainly managed to marginalize what could be a considerable artistic career, were she to shake off the shakes long enough to want that.

I'm serious when I say I think Courtney Love's got mad skills. She did more than a fine job as an actress when she put her mind to it (see The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon). And I think Hole's Live Through This is a great fucking album. One of my absolute favorites. And that's largely her doing. She's no "Yoko Ono", for sure. Of course, Yoko Ono wasn't really a "Yoko Ono" either - after all, the B-52s are indebted to her innovations. Now Linda McCartney - she was most definitely a "Yoko Ono."

Of course, what's Courtney done in the decade of the "00"s? I'm not sure even (or perhaps especially) she knows the answer to that.

Good luck, Frances. I hope you make it out of childhood in repairable shape - I feel a kinship with you. In an odd way, we had a similar set of parental units. Now, to be clear, my Chuck and Ruth were hardly Kurt and Courtney. But they did share a surprisingly similar brand of addiction and dysfunction. And, I imagine, myriad ways to embarrass.

It could always be worse. Sounds like your granny's got your back and just think: your name could be Lohan - now that would be a bitch, eh?

Tripping

I just had to comment briefly on a strange chat William Shatner had back in August with Rush Limbaugh, to air on the biography channel this Saturday. Shatner, I'm sure you all know, is a master thespian, free love musician and acclaimed beat poet. But you might not be aware that he also hosts his own talk show on basic cable. It's called "Raw Nerve" and often lives up to that title (though perhaps "Weird Non-Sequitur" would be more apt). If you can't wait until Saturday, I've included it below.

As I've recounted in these pages, Shatner recently interpreted Sarah Palin's Twitter Tweets, enhancing her words with a crazy beatnik beat. He also gave equal treatment to Levi Johnson's twitter verbage. Yah, daddy-o. It was, like, way out. Much like his music. But taking on the Rush is something else again, sort of My Dinner with Andre with a healthy side of psilocybin mushrooms. Rush all strung out on Oxy-fueled Ego and Shatner all strung out on - well, Shatner. (I trip just watching him so I can only imagine what it's like being him, his heart pumping lysergic acid through his bloodstream 24/7.)

The actual content of the Shatner/Limbaugh summit is almost beside the point. It's the idea of these two yakking - the concept of it all - that's most interesting.

Anyway, children, put on Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow - or Shatner's own Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - dim the lights, plug in the lava lamps and groove ...

The Philanthropic Philanderer and other Random Nonsense

I'm taken aback by the public's surprise over the recent Tiger Woods revelations. It doesn't turn my head, even if all the allegations are true. The guy's a super type-A personality (type AAA?) and I've known enough of them that I'm wise to their tendencies. Like the others I'd fit into this category, Woods has never come off as a "good guy" to me; in fact, I always thought he at least occasionally shops at the Jerk Store and might well be a regular customer. Personally, I'll take John Daly any day - he at least keeps his skeletons out on parade for all to see (even takes them on tour). John doesn't lock them up in a closet - they can develop a particularly concentrated rare trapped in there, as Tiger is discovering now.

On top of - and I'm sure enhancing - the driving type-A+ dickdom, Woods is one of the most famous and praised people on the planet, always the center of attention where ever he goes. Mix those ingredients all together in a (fish) bowl and bake it in the oven of the 24/7 media circus for a dozen or so years, you shouldn't be surprised if you don't end up with at least a couple of cookies on the tray fucking around on their partners. Sure, he gives back some healthy coin to charitable causes and donates time in that regard every now and then. That's just good business. The business of nurturing the Tiger Brand. And he'd been pretty savvy at that or so it seemed.

If some of the more outlandish behavior does turn out to be true (and we may never know), I am a bit surprised that he went about it so seemingly carelessly. Especially given all he has to lose. You may have noticed that he doesn't like to lose. It just seems very out-of-character for a guy who takes calculation and strategy to a level very few people reach. But it's not all that uncommon for those who are grappling in the depths of addiction to forgo the disciplines that come second nature in all other aspects of their lives, especially when they are in the midst of feeding their compulsion. Believe me, I know from where I speak. I'm not suggesting that's what's at work here with Tiger, but it's possible.

Okay, that's about three paragraphs more than I promised myself I'd devote to this particular fallen idol. After all, it's not the typical hard news I like to cover on these pages. You know me - always and only important topics like ...

• Paris Hilton Tweets. Maybe I've got the vowels wrong there.
• Dead Jacko. Is he still entombed? Or did they pull him out of the mausoleum for the holidays? As a sort of Christmas Tree replacement.
  
• The War in Afghanietnam. Apocalypse Now II - Colonel Kurtz Jr. Conquers Tora Bora. "I love the smell of Heroin Poppies in the morning." I'm sure our Prez Barack O'Johnson .. er, I mean Obama wouldn't miss the premiere of this one. Just kidding, Mr. Prez. I hope. What's that I hear? "One two three, what are we fighting for? I don't know, I don't give a damn, next stop's Afghanistan ..." Country Joe, time for a second act?
  
• The Endless Healthcare Roundabout. It appears our intrepid lawmakers are determined to debate the already-compromised-beyond-use legislation into literal nothingness - in fact, approaching anti-matter - perhaps agreeing simply to mail two aspirin out to every citizen and be done with it. I only wish Mr. Smith goes to Washington was real. And by that, I mean the remake envisioned by Homer Simpson and realized by Mel Gibson, Lethal Weapon-style:
  

Or something to that effect. Perhaps Maureen put it best here so I'll leave her with the last word on the Tiger and his Tail, at least from my corner of the world. Unless Woods goes bonkers and decides the best way to redeem his public image is an appearance on Dancing with the Stars with his new dance partner, Boy George. Should that happen I'm sure I'll have something to say, if only "I told you so." Because I did. Here.

It's the first real day of my vacation this week and I've thus far resisted logging into work email. I can tell my inbox is filling to burst, though. I can feel it. Cries from the great unwashed. Well, they'll just have to learn to clean themselves or stay dirty until Monday 'cause I've got more important things to do. Hawaii Five-0 is on, after all. The best ham and cheese to ever grace the small screen. Jack "The" Lord doesn't just chew the scenery, he lays out the silverware, slaps on the ketchup and wolfs it down with gusto. A great one today. Some disgraced ex-cop McGarrett had thrown off the force way back when for rampant corruption is now exacting his revenge, tormenting Steve-O, leaving anonymous threats and crazy non-clues and ultimately pinning a death sentence on the Governor (the Gov's assassination would ruin McGarrett's career apparently "because I'm responsible for his safety").

Five-0 commercials find me alternating between the beginnings of the pages of Third and Indiana and the rest of the HBO Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert resting out on my DVR. Springsteen and Rage against the Machine's Tom Morello doing Ghost of Tom Joad is incendiary (apologies to William Miller).

And the beat goes on ...

Sunday's Best ... (Okay - Sunday's Dreck)

The first snowfall of the year here in Philly - really, more a sleet/snow mix. It was quite lovely to look at and thoroughly miserable to be out in. So I did more of the former and avoided the latter (easy to do when you're stuck working all day, as I was Saturday in an effort to prepare for the upcoming week off). But work is now done and I can turn my attention to more pressing matters. Whatever they might be. I'm sure I have some. Maybe not.

The hard physics problem I was grappling with yesterday while trying to juggle work and a football game? How to reach into the television with my jumper cables and attach them to the testes of the nitwits calling the SEC title game.

I was in an especially dark mood but I think with these clowns even Rachael Ray would be screaming "god damn babbling, yammering morons with special needs turrets - shut the fuck up or drop dead!" Or something to that effect. Then again, maybe that's her modus operandi whenever she's planted in front of the tube.  Folks with sunshine beams flying out of their asses 'round the clock are always suspect in my book.

But I'm meandering off track, as I'm wont to do.  Perhaps in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that I got nothing "on track".  I'm exhausted from the madness of the week's corporate chaos - mentally drained and in no shape to wax poetic on life's amusing follies.

Now it's Sunday and I'm listening to more brain-dead motor mouths calling the pro games.  Cables clamped on car battery, other end clamped to your testes, then I climb behind the wheel and rev the engine.  Call that play, dickhead. Verbal diarrhea in need of binding.  Eat some cheese, shitheads.

Clicking around the dial I see on Pay Per View "Jerry Springer/Big-Breasted".  Hmm.  Springer *and* breasts?  Intriguing. Tell me more.  Well, for just 9.99, you can see Jerry "shine the spotlight on the most-magnificent mammaries ever to grace his studio in this titillating collection of clips."  Clearly for the most discriminating tastes only.  Personally, I think that selecting "buy" for this fine selection should trigger an alarm in the local firehouse, followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of a fire-engine full of bruisers  at your doorstep, there to kick the living shit out of you (they'll first allow you to pull your pants back up, if you're lucky).

Boy, I'm really filled with vitriol this weekend.  That's not such a bad thing.  Vitriol - it does a body good.  Maybe it's all the coffee I've been slugging down.  Too much caffeine with me leads to bad skin and a pissy mood.   I should probably go for a run or something.  Get my frustrations out.  Fucking Michael Vick scores a touchdown in Atlanta.  And the crowd is filled with people cheering him.  A plague on all their houses.  I'm definitely going for a run.

Okay, this post is way too long for such drivel.  Perhaps I'll be inspired later.  A run with Dylan on the iPod might do it.  No, I need more anger.  Black Flag, perhaps.  Rage Against the Machine, maybe.

Until then, I apologize for any of you who've made it this far.  They're not all this bad.  Not all of them.  

I've started five books in the past month and have no desire to finish any of them.  I need to get my hooks into something really interesting as my A.D.D grows more severe with age.  Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem is the one next on my list.  Perhaps that will do the trick.  Meanwhile, after the run, I think I'll re-read Ginsberg's Howl, just for the fuck of it (it's one of my coffee table books that isn't about coffee tables).  That will also help dissipate some righteous indignation percolating through my psyche.  Just trying to find the release valves where ever they might be before it all erupts (usually on undeserving innocent bystanders for all the wrong reasons).

And so I'm off into the chilly late Autumn afternoon to slap shoe to pavement and drag my frustration along for the ride (hopefully, I can give it the slip in the bargain).

Charlie Don't Surf

I'm watching this lame Manson docudrama that's been playing quite a bit on the History Channel. I can't help but compare it to the vastly superior 1976 TV-Movie Helter Skelter, based on prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's book of the same name. (Speaking of Bugliosi - man, talk about defining one's career around a single specific event.  This guy continues to milk that cow as though the heifer wasn't dead, dry and rotting. He grabs onto any anniversary or parole hearing or what-have-you to spout the same eerily encyclopedic recall that he unloaded into his original book and has continued to spout on the talk show circuit ever since. I have no ill will toward the guy: he did society a good service by locking these swine away.  But find something new in your life, Vince!)

The 70's Skelter movie was brilliant on many levels and for my money the first and last word on this twisted story.  We don't need to keep regurgitating the thing.  Yet here I am watching this low rent History Channel "reenactment".  I guess anything that mixes psychedelics, cultism, insanity, hippies and mass murder is bound to be a ratings grabber in 2009, much as it was in 1969 and 1976 - probably more so, with the nostalgia factor at play.  But no more of this crap for me, time to lift up anchor and surf on to another beach (Ooh, Dr. G is on!).

Steve Railsback did Manson better than Charlie himself in the '76 treatment.  He looked and acted more "Mansoneque" than the real deal ever could, try as he might.  So having some other joker on the History Channel attempt to inhabit this lune doesn't do anything for me.  It's like Ned Flanders doing Stanley in the Springfield production of Streetcar.  Ned's fine, but he's not quite Brando. Grab the Skelter movie DVD and watch Railsback if you want to see evil personified.  Or turn on Fox News and catch Glenn Beck. Your choice. But do yourself a favor and skip History Channel's Manson.

Let's flip on Dr. G - but first, of course, some commercials ...

Speaking of commercials, let me give props to one advertisement out there in La La Land: the most creative casting award goes to the Tony Stewart Burger King spot with Carrot Top and Erik Estrada!  I especially dig the Estrada shades - gotta get me some of them.  E.S.T.R.A.D.A.  Yeah.

But it's back down the green-gray cadaver corridor, in through the double doors to the fab lab with today's stiffs on the slab. Doctor Garavaglia is in and she's got a couple of real live ones today - just kidding, they're dead, natch, and in fact so were their back stories.  The methods by which the dearly departed on Dr. G's table slipped off this mortal coil are key to the show - if they're pedestrian, the doc can only do so much to spice things up.  The catch is that you don't actually know the sorry truth about their demise until the end of the segment (when you can then reflect on the half hour of your life you'll never get back).


I surfed back and forth between this and UDub's stunner over #3 USC, finally settling in on the latter. Alright, Huskies!!

Well, well, well.  Looking back, this is a pretty meandering and all together pointless post.  As they often are, alas.

All Apologies.  I click off the tube and crank up Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York on the stereo, another night in the books.

'I was born in a pool, they made my mother stand. And I spat on that surgeon and his trembling hand. When I felt the light I was worse than bored. I stole the doctor's scalpel and I slit the cord'

"A good fuck is much better than TV!"

Oh, Spam, is there nothing you can't teach us?

Words as wise as any fortune cookie just waiting to be cracked open and pulled out of my email filters.  This truism is just the latest in a long line of tidbits, parables and proverbs I regularly receive from the great spam slicer in the sky.  Many are wise in ways the sender likely didn't intend.

Often it's hard to tell exactly what the author's original intent might have been.  For example, the sex/television comparison promised in the subject line of the aforementioned email was in fact not provided: neither sex nor TV is mentioned in the message body (from what I can tell, it's an excerpt from a badly written sci-fi short story parsed from somebody's livejournal entry).

That spells disappointment for this television addict, with so many questions unanswered. Better how?  Better than Mad Men?  Better than Weeds?  Better than the mid-90s-era Simpsons?!? What defines a 'good' fuck? Is there a 'bad' variety?  Sadly, I got a no-such-address bounce-back when replying with these follow up questions to the originator, one 'Candice Farrell '.  Oh well. Pity.

Even as I was pondering all this, a friend let me know that Jim Carroll died on Friday.

The news hit me harder than I would have thought.  After all, I hadn't heard from the man regarding new material in quite awhile (to the point where I'd been re-re-reading his earlier work for lack of the fresh stuff). When did he last release an album?  A book? I couldn't tell you (though I could look on his Catholic Boy website, had I been of a mind to).  And frankly he'd been admittedly living on borrowed time since his first days as a prepubescent junky.  Making it to the ripe old age of 60 was quite an achievement, given the appetites he was loath to deny over the long term (he was, as he put it, more inclined toward shadows).

But as I said, Jim's passing hit me hard.  I read Basketball Diaries when it was first published in 1978 and it ignited this Seattle boy's love affair with New York City, along with my latent discovery of Mean Streets, Ramones and Velvet Underground that same year.

Jim's prose had an immediacy and sly intelligence to it that spoke to me like nothing I'd read to that point (I hadn't yet discovered Hunter Thompson or Lester Bangs).  It was Carroll's 16 year old voice coming at me from those pages, remember. It felt like he was talking to this 16 year old as though 1965 was 1978, instantly obliterating the 13 year gap from pen to publication.

It took Jim's death to bring back my adolescent memories of a lasting epiphany: a realization that words themselves were pure joy when you put them down to paper in interesting ways.  Paper might have given way to bits and bytes, but the feeling remains. 

Why had Mr. Carroll slipped off my radar in ways that Thompson and Bangs hadn't?  I guess the fact that he wasn't the most prolific writer had something to do with it. Working on a novel since at least 1991 (the year he first performed public readings of material from it), it was finally due to roll off the presses this year, at least as reported by Catholic Boy back in Feburary. Boy, that was fast! :-)  I'm crossing my fingers that it was truly 'done' enough to be published posthumously. And that's the thing too: this is his first novel. Apart from Basketball Dairies and Forced Entries, Jim's output was pretty much exclusively poetry with maybe the odd short story, while I've tended to prefer the narrative form.  But still, he's right there on my literary Mount Rushmore beside Thompson, Bangs and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It took his passing for me to climb back up there and kick the dust off his likeness to recognize the face again.

Oh, yeah - let's not forget: Jim also put out some pretty good music with the Jim Carroll Band.  Catholic Boy is still one of my favorite records.   When the City Drops Into the Night and the title tune - songs rarely get better than that.

Rest in Peace, Jim.