Road Trip: Day 16
Teary goodbye with Mom this morning before she left for work. She said that there's still always the chance she might be in this house at Christmas, which would give me one last visit here. We'll see. If not, farewell to the home that sheltered me during my formative years. At least I've left my mark.
Should be out the door and on the road in the next hour. Hope to be in a state capital I've never seen before by the end of the day, if all goes well. Fortunately I have five new CDs for the car: Regina Carter, Chris Potter, Andrew Hill, SF Jazz Collective, and Brad Mehldau. A jazz lover's delight. And the Tigers are on XM this afternoon, fresh from beating the Rocket last night.
A good day to be on the road again, for sure. The non-urban part of the trip begins now. I'll be in Northern woods and relaxing on a beach before long.
28 June 2006
27 June 2006
Musings
Road Trip: Days 14 and 15
Yesterday gave us lunch with good friends, book and CD shopping all afternoon at some of our favorite stores, and a get-together in the evening. Today was manic last-minute visiting and going through adolescent treasures from the closet of my boyhood bedroom. I was reduced to tears at discovering my first honest attempt at a novel: from when I was 10 years old, a coil-bound notebook with a narrative obviously indebted to the Indiana Jones movies. You can see I was trying to be careful with my penmanship. The story gets about 29 or 30 ages in before it falls away.
Just in case the house sells and my mother moves before I return here, I wrote in permanent marker in a secret place of my bedroom closet, "The writer [my name] grew up in this house and slept in this room."
Back on the highway tomorrow.
Yesterday gave us lunch with good friends, book and CD shopping all afternoon at some of our favorite stores, and a get-together in the evening. Today was manic last-minute visiting and going through adolescent treasures from the closet of my boyhood bedroom. I was reduced to tears at discovering my first honest attempt at a novel: from when I was 10 years old, a coil-bound notebook with a narrative obviously indebted to the Indiana Jones movies. You can see I was trying to be careful with my penmanship. The story gets about 29 or 30 ages in before it falls away.
Just in case the house sells and my mother moves before I return here, I wrote in permanent marker in a secret place of my bedroom closet, "The writer [my name] grew up in this house and slept in this room."
Back on the highway tomorrow.
25 June 2006
Musings
A Grand Summer's Day
A truly grand afternoon today. My father's side of the family congregated at Comerica Park, where we saw the Tigers complete their sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals. It's the first time all of us have been out for a game together since September of 1999, when, as a family, we said goodbye to blessed Tiger Stadium. My uncle secured good seats together, on the third base line, with a nice view of the infield, and we cheered ourselves hoarse as Jeremy Bonderman pitched brilliantly, and the team rallied with three late runs to win 4-1. We are nearly at the halfway mark now and the Tigers remain the best team in baseball. I am trying not to get ahead of myself after years of disappointment, but can an October playoff run actually lie in store?
Today's win was extra special because this is my mother's birthday as well. I was glad to take Mom to the ballpark, though I know she's also indulging me a bit by agreeing to spend her birthday at the game.
Afterwards, we retired to my grandfather's apartment for take-out food and much chatter. I don't recall the last time all of us were so aglow with excitement. Baseball is a religion in this family.
R. and J., newlyweds, are likely packing for their European honeymoon right now. I told J. last night that she was one of the most fun brides I've ever met. She boogied hard late into the night, as did R., who proved when the DJ played House of Pain's "Jump Around" that he's the only one still in the shape that he was ten or fifteen years ago. All of us began the song bouncing up and down as hard as we could only to slow down considerably by the second verse. R. looked like he could have pogo-sticked his way for another 10 minutes. His family and I kept a quiet respectful distance, so the tension was at a minimum. The grace that I said before dinner--irony of ironies, being the "bad influence" that his parents once dismissed--was more rushed than I would have liked. I was deep into my second pre-dinner beer when all of the sudden the DJ called me to the mic to lead everybody in prayer. R. said it went well though, so that's all that matters. In all, a splendid night and I'm glad we were here to share it with them.
As for the story about my parent's wedding-- It's a long, funny one, that I hope sees print one day in a slightly fictionalized form. I'll tease you with the opening lines of the fictionalized work-in-progress, but remember I usually try to keep my anonymous Whining Stranger and my real-life aspiring fiction writer worlds from colliding too much:
As if there hadn’t been enough trouble with the rushed arrangement of my parents’ nuptials in the summer of 1973, on the morning of the wedding itself my mother’s father found a corpse sprawled on the front porch as he went to collect the paper.
The body was fresh. It was a young man, judging from the length of his hair and the slightness of his frame. He might have just been asleep, a kid dozing off the last of a wild night. Confused, my grandfather extended his leg, was about to give the body a nudge with slippered toe, when a voice sounded from up the front walk. It came from a police constable.
“Do you know that man, sir?”
“I’m sorry?” my grandfather said.
“Do you know that man, sir? That dead man.”
“He’s dead then?”
“Do you know him, sir?”
“How did he die?”
“Do you know him, sir?“
“No. Well, I can’t see his face.”
“It’s gruesome, sir,” the policeman said. “Don’t look.”
[/end teaser]
And on that note, here's to June weddings, and visits to the church of baseball, and eight dollar ballpark beers, and family get-togethers, and happy birthdays, and the people we love, and all the other myriad blessings that life is good enough to offer at times.
A truly grand afternoon today. My father's side of the family congregated at Comerica Park, where we saw the Tigers complete their sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals. It's the first time all of us have been out for a game together since September of 1999, when, as a family, we said goodbye to blessed Tiger Stadium. My uncle secured good seats together, on the third base line, with a nice view of the infield, and we cheered ourselves hoarse as Jeremy Bonderman pitched brilliantly, and the team rallied with three late runs to win 4-1. We are nearly at the halfway mark now and the Tigers remain the best team in baseball. I am trying not to get ahead of myself after years of disappointment, but can an October playoff run actually lie in store?
Today's win was extra special because this is my mother's birthday as well. I was glad to take Mom to the ballpark, though I know she's also indulging me a bit by agreeing to spend her birthday at the game.
Afterwards, we retired to my grandfather's apartment for take-out food and much chatter. I don't recall the last time all of us were so aglow with excitement. Baseball is a religion in this family.
R. and J., newlyweds, are likely packing for their European honeymoon right now. I told J. last night that she was one of the most fun brides I've ever met. She boogied hard late into the night, as did R., who proved when the DJ played House of Pain's "Jump Around" that he's the only one still in the shape that he was ten or fifteen years ago. All of us began the song bouncing up and down as hard as we could only to slow down considerably by the second verse. R. looked like he could have pogo-sticked his way for another 10 minutes. His family and I kept a quiet respectful distance, so the tension was at a minimum. The grace that I said before dinner--irony of ironies, being the "bad influence" that his parents once dismissed--was more rushed than I would have liked. I was deep into my second pre-dinner beer when all of the sudden the DJ called me to the mic to lead everybody in prayer. R. said it went well though, so that's all that matters. In all, a splendid night and I'm glad we were here to share it with them.
As for the story about my parent's wedding-- It's a long, funny one, that I hope sees print one day in a slightly fictionalized form. I'll tease you with the opening lines of the fictionalized work-in-progress, but remember I usually try to keep my anonymous Whining Stranger and my real-life aspiring fiction writer worlds from colliding too much:
As if there hadn’t been enough trouble with the rushed arrangement of my parents’ nuptials in the summer of 1973, on the morning of the wedding itself my mother’s father found a corpse sprawled on the front porch as he went to collect the paper.
The body was fresh. It was a young man, judging from the length of his hair and the slightness of his frame. He might have just been asleep, a kid dozing off the last of a wild night. Confused, my grandfather extended his leg, was about to give the body a nudge with slippered toe, when a voice sounded from up the front walk. It came from a police constable.
“Do you know that man, sir?”
“I’m sorry?” my grandfather said.
“Do you know that man, sir? That dead man.”
“He’s dead then?”
“Do you know him, sir?”
“How did he die?”
“Do you know him, sir?“
“No. Well, I can’t see his face.”
“It’s gruesome, sir,” the policeman said. “Don’t look.”
[/end teaser]
And on that note, here's to June weddings, and visits to the church of baseball, and eight dollar ballpark beers, and family get-togethers, and happy birthdays, and the people we love, and all the other myriad blessings that life is good enough to offer at times.
Musings
Road Trip: Day 13
From one sentimental event to another-- After yesterday's wedding, which left me all misty because I love my friend R. so much and was glad to see him so happy, we head to the ballpark today for a family outing.
Go Tigers!
From one sentimental event to another-- After yesterday's wedding, which left me all misty because I love my friend R. so much and was glad to see him so happy, we head to the ballpark today for a family outing.
Go Tigers!
24 June 2006
Musings
Road Trip: Day 12
We're into the second day in an eventful final weekend here at home. Last night we had a lovely family dinner at home with my sister and her boyfriend, and my mom and her boyfriend. It was the first time all of us have had a chance to sit down together. Then today is R.'s wedding. And tomorrow finds us at the ol' ballpark to see those amazin' Tigers beat up on the Cardinals.
Art gallery visit was stupendous yesterday. Their summer special exhibit gave me the chance to see about ten Bearden works that I've never seen in person before. And much Jacob Lawrence. Absolutely divine.
Going through the Fiction folder today I found a story I need to revise about my parents' wedding day. A guy died on my mom's front porch, the morning of their wedding, if you can believe that.
Maybe I should go phone R. to make sure the specter of death hasn't made an apperance this morning.
We're into the second day in an eventful final weekend here at home. Last night we had a lovely family dinner at home with my sister and her boyfriend, and my mom and her boyfriend. It was the first time all of us have had a chance to sit down together. Then today is R.'s wedding. And tomorrow finds us at the ol' ballpark to see those amazin' Tigers beat up on the Cardinals.
Art gallery visit was stupendous yesterday. Their summer special exhibit gave me the chance to see about ten Bearden works that I've never seen in person before. And much Jacob Lawrence. Absolutely divine.
Going through the Fiction folder today I found a story I need to revise about my parents' wedding day. A guy died on my mom's front porch, the morning of their wedding, if you can believe that.
Maybe I should go phone R. to make sure the specter of death hasn't made an apperance this morning.
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
24 June 2006
"Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung (from the album Mosaic, 1986)
This one goes out to my dear friend, R., who marries this afternoon. For someone like me, who came of age in the 1980s, it might not really be a celebration until a crowd of intoxicated people gets a chance to shout out, "Everybody Wang Chung tonight."
Happy Nuptials, R. I love you, buddy.
"Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung (from the album Mosaic, 1986)
This one goes out to my dear friend, R., who marries this afternoon. For someone like me, who came of age in the 1980s, it might not really be a celebration until a crowd of intoxicated people gets a chance to shout out, "Everybody Wang Chung tonight."
Happy Nuptials, R. I love you, buddy.
23 June 2006
Musings
Road Trip: Day 11
Important activity today: a visit to the art gallery!
[applause; cheering; manic celebration]
Important activity today: a visit to the art gallery!
[applause; cheering; manic celebration]
Musings
[Two more poetry B-sides from the laptop today. These, like the last two poems, date back to a period in the late 90s and up to about 2001, when I thought I could bounce between fiction and poetry. The poems, always ended reading as too prosaic to me, though, so I dug my heels in on the fiction front and--with the exception of the occasional haiku--write prose pretty much exclusively now. These will never see the light of day under my real name, so here they are anonymously for your amusement.]
A Part To Be Played by Michael Caine
Another middle-of-your-
mid-life crisis.
You’re so old at 27 that when the sting
of death-to-come really hits
it will be
a relief. “At last,”
you’ll say, as you grasp
the handful of loose hair
in the shower. “Finally,
the swollen bladder in the
middle of the night.”
Too long have you imagined yourself
a man of superannuation: slump-shouldered
with the burden of experience.
(Enter Atlas bearing a world of weariness...)
As if the spread of belly meant wisdom
when the wrinkles round your eyes are less
from fatigue than joy.
In night-time pub dark,
you still have your moments.
A longing for the sepia residue
of some ancient past. This
is not the behavior of young men:
to indulge myth with such musty care.
A sad anachronism, you here on your barstool.
And when the last lights come up, what
are you left with?
Blushing cheeks and a turn
to fictions:
an old man,
a nasty thing.
You,
making up the deathbed,
will hobble on.
Running: Late Autumn
I’m not one to get sentimental
about
this is not
the fractured smoke
of my concrete city
the mulched leaves, rust-colored
and morning
frost of Northern forest
then a rustle:
a magpie
squirts through the foliage, hungry
My breath in
Unsound silence
(Somewhere
Trees.
eyes are
watching me run.)
A Part To Be Played by Michael Caine
Another middle-of-your-
mid-life crisis.
You’re so old at 27 that when the sting
of death-to-come really hits
it will be
a relief. “At last,”
you’ll say, as you grasp
the handful of loose hair
in the shower. “Finally,
the swollen bladder in the
middle of the night.”
Too long have you imagined yourself
a man of superannuation: slump-shouldered
with the burden of experience.
(Enter Atlas bearing a world of weariness...)
As if the spread of belly meant wisdom
when the wrinkles round your eyes are less
from fatigue than joy.
In night-time pub dark,
you still have your moments.
A longing for the sepia residue
of some ancient past. This
is not the behavior of young men:
to indulge myth with such musty care.
A sad anachronism, you here on your barstool.
And when the last lights come up, what
are you left with?
Blushing cheeks and a turn
to fictions:
an old man,
a nasty thing.
You,
making up the deathbed,
will hobble on.
Running: Late Autumn
I’m not one to get sentimental
about
this is not
the fractured smoke
of my concrete city
the mulched leaves, rust-colored
and morning
frost of Northern forest
then a rustle:
a magpie
squirts through the foliage, hungry
My breath in
Unsound silence
(Somewhere
Trees.
eyes are
watching me run.)
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
23 June 2006
"Shout, Pt. 1" by The Isley Brothers (1962)
Keeping with the theme I began yesterday--tunes that will likely get ol' beer-drinkin' me out of my seat and onto the dance floor at tomorrow's wedding--here's another surefire bouncearound favorite. Like "Rock Lobster," this also has a section that invites dancers to get low-low-low to the ground. I'd better remember to stretch a bit before the DJ hits the mic.
"Shout, Pt. 1" by The Isley Brothers (1962)
Keeping with the theme I began yesterday--tunes that will likely get ol' beer-drinkin' me out of my seat and onto the dance floor at tomorrow's wedding--here's another surefire bouncearound favorite. Like "Rock Lobster," this also has a section that invites dancers to get low-low-low to the ground. I'd better remember to stretch a bit before the DJ hits the mic.
22 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
22 June 2006
"Rock Lobster" by the B-52s (from the album The B-52s, 1979)
In anticipation of the wedding in a few days, I've started to think about the inevitable songs I harass DJs to play before I hit the dance floor. This is one of them. Though, as I discovered at a wedding last summer, I don't spring up from the "get down to the floor" part as easily as I did ten years ago.
"Rock Lobster" by the B-52s (from the album The B-52s, 1979)
In anticipation of the wedding in a few days, I've started to think about the inevitable songs I harass DJs to play before I hit the dance floor. This is one of them. Though, as I discovered at a wedding last summer, I don't spring up from the "get down to the floor" part as easily as I did ten years ago.
Musings
Road Trip: Days 9 and 10
A good mix of eventful and uneventful. We had lunch with my grandfather. We went for Vietnamese food--a sorely missed luxury in the town where we currently live. We saw Prairie Home Companion and then went for overpriced European beers with a friend of mine. We had a lovely dinner with Mom. We went to my favorite no-natural-light, leaky-ceiling bar here in town and hung out till 3am. Wedding rehearsal dinner tonight.
A good mix of eventful and uneventful. We had lunch with my grandfather. We went for Vietnamese food--a sorely missed luxury in the town where we currently live. We saw Prairie Home Companion and then went for overpriced European beers with a friend of mine. We had a lovely dinner with Mom. We went to my favorite no-natural-light, leaky-ceiling bar here in town and hung out till 3am. Wedding rehearsal dinner tonight.
Musings
I Am Not a Whining Cartoon Dog
Today, somebody discovered my blog by googling, "whining cartoon dog." Ouch. That is a million times less the identity I want for my virtual geography than "corduroy sportsjacket." Fortunately for the preservation of my ideas-about-myself, a number of people have also discovered this blog by googling Detroit Tigers related topics.
Go Tigers.
Chris Shelton, please don't sit and watch any more strike threes go by when the bases are loaded and the game is on the line.
Today, somebody discovered my blog by googling, "whining cartoon dog." Ouch. That is a million times less the identity I want for my virtual geography than "corduroy sportsjacket." Fortunately for the preservation of my ideas-about-myself, a number of people have also discovered this blog by googling Detroit Tigers related topics.
Go Tigers.
Chris Shelton, please don't sit and watch any more strike threes go by when the bases are loaded and the game is on the line.
Musings
[Another B-side from the laptop hard drive. I think I wrote this about six years ago, and it's been collecting dust ever since. I'll never send poetry out for publication with my name on it, so I guess there's no harm in sharing this here.]
The Reluctant Wolfman
It begins in morning
with a pencil thin line
that hugs the curve of his jaw.
By afternoon it shades his cheeks
charcoal blush mark
scratchy gray in the hollows
He shaves in the men’s room,
scrapes smooth the bristles that
threaten there.
This a world of seeing after all.
The eyes on the streetcorner are ever open,
alert to the trick in the shell game.
(Recall 1960:
the white burn of t.v. cameras,
podiums wrapped in Old Glory.
Nixon and JFK square off in
fits of rhetoric and international matters.
Jack wins it on marquee looks alone--
swarthy, shifty Dick dismissed,
the telltale sign
his 5 o’clock shade.)
At dusk our man’s alone in the office,
frozen in fear
beneath desklamp halo.
Doubled-over and fixed on his image,
he sees the oblong reflection of monster
in his cigarette case.
His eyes are red, teeth gone yellow and sharp.
The jaw is transformed.
Fur tangles in the sweat beneath his shirt.
There’s a tautness in the musculature:
veins expanding in transformation, tendons
stretching in elemental change.
And what do you make of the lover’s kiss
with altered taste? The stranger’s face
in the morning mirror--
So he runs.
Targets home, imagines
the charge of the village behind him.
Torches and bloodlust in hot pursuit.
He bursts through the door,
chases the sleepy breath of love through
the house, up the stairs, in the room.
The startled shriek of waking wife at the touch.
With horror-flick certainty, it ends as you’d expect:
An embrace,
A murder.
The failure of love
in unexpected lycanthropy.
Another lonely villain
howling at the moon.
The Reluctant Wolfman
It begins in morning
with a pencil thin line
that hugs the curve of his jaw.
By afternoon it shades his cheeks
charcoal blush mark
scratchy gray in the hollows
He shaves in the men’s room,
scrapes smooth the bristles that
threaten there.
This a world of seeing after all.
The eyes on the streetcorner are ever open,
alert to the trick in the shell game.
(Recall 1960:
the white burn of t.v. cameras,
podiums wrapped in Old Glory.
Nixon and JFK square off in
fits of rhetoric and international matters.
Jack wins it on marquee looks alone--
swarthy, shifty Dick dismissed,
the telltale sign
his 5 o’clock shade.)
At dusk our man’s alone in the office,
frozen in fear
beneath desklamp halo.
Doubled-over and fixed on his image,
he sees the oblong reflection of monster
in his cigarette case.
His eyes are red, teeth gone yellow and sharp.
The jaw is transformed.
Fur tangles in the sweat beneath his shirt.
There’s a tautness in the musculature:
veins expanding in transformation, tendons
stretching in elemental change.
And what do you make of the lover’s kiss
with altered taste? The stranger’s face
in the morning mirror--
So he runs.
Targets home, imagines
the charge of the village behind him.
Torches and bloodlust in hot pursuit.
He bursts through the door,
chases the sleepy breath of love through
the house, up the stairs, in the room.
The startled shriek of waking wife at the touch.
With horror-flick certainty, it ends as you’d expect:
An embrace,
A murder.
The failure of love
in unexpected lycanthropy.
Another lonely villain
howling at the moon.
21 June 2006
The Whining Stranger on Film
An Inspired Choice
Robert Altman's use of Lindsay Lohan in this summer's A Prairie Home Companion is probably the most inspired casting in an American film this year. Saw this last night and enjoyed it immensely. If you're not a fan of Garrison Keillor you likely won't enjoy it, but I think it's a winner, a great mix of Altman's usual improvised aesthetic and GK's folksy appeal. Some of its politics are heavy-handed, but mostly it's an on-the-mark commentary on American culture's recent demise.
Robert Altman's use of Lindsay Lohan in this summer's A Prairie Home Companion is probably the most inspired casting in an American film this year. Saw this last night and enjoyed it immensely. If you're not a fan of Garrison Keillor you likely won't enjoy it, but I think it's a winner, a great mix of Altman's usual improvised aesthetic and GK's folksy appeal. Some of its politics are heavy-handed, but mostly it's an on-the-mark commentary on American culture's recent demise.
The Whining Stranger on Sport
On this day in baseball history...
...18 years ago, Alan Trammell (pictured on 1978 Topps Rookie card above) solidified his place in the WS's pantheon of great heroes with a bottom-of-the-ninth grand slam against the dreaded Yankees to solidify an amazing come-from-behind win in the greatest sporting event I was ever fortunate enough to attend. That moment amplified Trammell's already heroic status in my teenaged boy's imagination, but also cemented my resolve never to leave a game early. Just in case.
Read the game summary here: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B06210DET1988.htm
...18 years ago, Alan Trammell (pictured on 1978 Topps Rookie card above) solidified his place in the WS's pantheon of great heroes with a bottom-of-the-ninth grand slam against the dreaded Yankees to solidify an amazing come-from-behind win in the greatest sporting event I was ever fortunate enough to attend. That moment amplified Trammell's already heroic status in my teenaged boy's imagination, but also cemented my resolve never to leave a game early. Just in case.
Read the game summary here: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B06210DET1988.htm
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
21 June 2006
"Fatbackin'" by The Fatback Band (from the album People Music, 1973)
Again, lest you think this visit home is all weltschmerz and wist, here's a bit of breakbeat levity to help you shake your groove thang late into the evening on this, the longest day of the year. Like the Deodato track I highlighted earlier this month, the Fatback Band make funkified reference to Richard Strauss on this Brooklyn block party favorite from the early days of hip hop and graffiti culture. I listened to it in the car yesterday with the windows down as I cruised again through the streets of my old hometown. Summers in the city for me will always be the sound of great music heard in tantalizing snippets out of car windows before being dopplered away when traffic lights change from red to green.
"Fatbackin'" by The Fatback Band (from the album People Music, 1973)
Again, lest you think this visit home is all weltschmerz and wist, here's a bit of breakbeat levity to help you shake your groove thang late into the evening on this, the longest day of the year. Like the Deodato track I highlighted earlier this month, the Fatback Band make funkified reference to Richard Strauss on this Brooklyn block party favorite from the early days of hip hop and graffiti culture. I listened to it in the car yesterday with the windows down as I cruised again through the streets of my old hometown. Summers in the city for me will always be the sound of great music heard in tantalizing snippets out of car windows before being dopplered away when traffic lights change from red to green.
Musings
[Another lost snippet from the deep recesses of my hard drive, to commemorate further 100 Days of Nostalgia. This is a poem I wrote nearly eight years ago. I'm not a poet.]
The Hometown Museum
Stepping into the home of my youth
I marvel how the furniture’s changed.
This is the feeling of visiting museums,
snickering at the shrunken chairs of our ancestors.
“A primitive, distant race,” we assure ourselves.
“Nothing like us.”
Speaking with my mother over coffee,
I look for the zippered rent in time’s fabric
That I must have fallen through to end up here:
Foreign at the table where I once drank morning’s milk.
This is different somehow, it’s alternate.
She never wore her hair that way.
I part from the wax figure before me with thanks.
Me, flesh and movement, trying to step from
peculiar still life and move away forward.
But dust motes drift in the air of this exhibition.
There is animation here.
People clink knives against plates at this table, and
a living man sleeps in my father’s bed,
His hoary breathing a pulse in the walls I would see still.
The Hometown Museum
Stepping into the home of my youth
I marvel how the furniture’s changed.
This is the feeling of visiting museums,
snickering at the shrunken chairs of our ancestors.
“A primitive, distant race,” we assure ourselves.
“Nothing like us.”
Speaking with my mother over coffee,
I look for the zippered rent in time’s fabric
That I must have fallen through to end up here:
Foreign at the table where I once drank morning’s milk.
This is different somehow, it’s alternate.
She never wore her hair that way.
I part from the wax figure before me with thanks.
Me, flesh and movement, trying to step from
peculiar still life and move away forward.
But dust motes drift in the air of this exhibition.
There is animation here.
People clink knives against plates at this table, and
a living man sleeps in my father’s bed,
His hoary breathing a pulse in the walls I would see still.
20 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
20 June 2006
"Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)" by Parliament (from the album Mothership Connection, 1976)
Just when the WS's virtual geography seemed unavoidably imperiled by brooding nostalgia and moody introspection, Dr. Funkenstein and company landed on from the mothership and brought a little bit of interplanetary groove back to the fore.
"Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)" by Parliament (from the album Mothership Connection, 1976)
Just when the WS's virtual geography seemed unavoidably imperiled by brooding nostalgia and moody introspection, Dr. Funkenstein and company landed on from the mothership and brought a little bit of interplanetary groove back to the fore.
Musings
Home Geography
[Here's a snippet of something I discovered in the Fiction folder on my laptop since we've been here and decided to post it since it's so thematically consistent with my posts of the last few days. I started writing it during one of my early morning writing sessions this year but seem to have abandoned it midway through. But for the names it's not really fiction.]
It’s an evocative geography—this ramshackle street in a crummy little town. It gets you, the inconsistency of the houses, some mildly middle-class, some consigned to be rentals, left in tatters. It’s poignant, that a place so easily dismissed or left to ruin could hold your imagination so thoroughly. The slope of the street makes you sentimental. When you turn onto the street, heading south, away from the river, you see how the road moves downward, slanting toward your mother’s front yard. It’s poetic, but lousy too—the house in which you grew up sits at the low end of the slope; the yard collects rain every spring. A swamp. A lake. In the spring seasons of your youth, you were thrilled to find ducks there, stopping for a rest on their homeward migration. Once you called the local paper to see if they’d take a photo but they never responded to your call.
The house itself is white with green trim. The green paint peels. The outside walls are sided with aluminum, which is cracked in places from various winter storms. The front lawn rolls, but not in a sprawling suburban way. The ground wasn’t pressed flat when the sod was laid, a thousand years ago, in the prehistory of this place before your parents moved you here. And it’s a small yard.
(You lived in one other place before this one: an apartment in an old brick walk-up on the forgotten east side of town. As a child, you were shown it innumerable times, directed by a parent’s pointing finger as you sat, buckled in, in the back seat. “That’s where we used to live,” one of them would say, as though it still had currency. As though it weren’t from some distant part of your experience, before early memory even. They—you—were only there a year, when they were first married, and for a short time after you were born. Then they bought this house, your house, your place, on the West side, and this became the only place you ever really knew.)
Out front of the house, the asphalt in the road is cracked. It has been patched over many times by city workers. Hot tar wedged into the fissures to hold this street together for a little more time. On summer days, strolling bare foot, you walked those haphazard tar trails like a tightrope, balancing your way on tiptoes to cross the street. The asphalt would have scalded your soles but the tar saved you. You have spent much time looking downward, taking in the topography of this road, these sidewalks. The concrete in front of your house is patched with old gum, grey and black blotches to mark the times when some kid grew tired of the wad in his mouth and tossed it carelessly aside. There are cracks in the sidewalk too. Cracks between sidewalk blocks. Cracks where humidity and age and shoddy workmanship and whatever else caused a split in the pavement. You try to avoid stepping on any of them, even still. Your mother’s back is at stake.
Long ago, these sidewalks were chalked colorfully with hopscotch grids. When you were very small you watched from the front steps, at the older girls in their gymnastic poses, bending over, stretching flexible limbs in unlikely ways to pick up their markers from the ground. There were so many children in those days, it seemed. A population of Frisbee-throwers, and toy-gun-wielders, running up and down the road. In the early days you were a mascot to them, the tag-a-along for older kids when they played hide and seek. “Don’t give me away,” one kid would whisper to you, pressing you close to him behind the bushes. “If we get found, you’re dead.”
But nobody ever harmed you then. You were blessed, protected. Even when you made it to school, blocks away, you felt secure. Escorted in your travel by the older kids who would come to pick you up. Guarded in the school yard by Billy from next door, the toughest kid around. You watched him bloody another boy’s nose once. It horrified you but made you feel safe all the same.
If you walk down the street, moving from the north corner to the south, you can still hear the hopscotch calls and the squeals of laughter when some poor kid gets ambushed behind a car during hide-and-seek. They call to you from the past. The sound of their sneakers scraping on the pavement echoes still. Francis, the tall boy with the lateral lisp. Or Henry, the quiet kid who lived with his grandfather and never participated in any games. Moving South, you get to the Lalibertes, a kid extravaganza, the family of eight. The oldest children weren’t like kids to you; they never seemed like possibilities for Frisbee or toy cars on the sidewalk or a pepper game with an Indian rubber ball in the middle for the road. They drove cars; they smoked cigarettes; they were adults. So many Lalibertes, the names flowing like reindeer in a Christmas rhyme: Jimmy, Johnny, Matthew, Veronica, Helene, Andrew, and Elizabeth, whom everybody called Betsy.
[Here's a snippet of something I discovered in the Fiction folder on my laptop since we've been here and decided to post it since it's so thematically consistent with my posts of the last few days. I started writing it during one of my early morning writing sessions this year but seem to have abandoned it midway through. But for the names it's not really fiction.]
It’s an evocative geography—this ramshackle street in a crummy little town. It gets you, the inconsistency of the houses, some mildly middle-class, some consigned to be rentals, left in tatters. It’s poignant, that a place so easily dismissed or left to ruin could hold your imagination so thoroughly. The slope of the street makes you sentimental. When you turn onto the street, heading south, away from the river, you see how the road moves downward, slanting toward your mother’s front yard. It’s poetic, but lousy too—the house in which you grew up sits at the low end of the slope; the yard collects rain every spring. A swamp. A lake. In the spring seasons of your youth, you were thrilled to find ducks there, stopping for a rest on their homeward migration. Once you called the local paper to see if they’d take a photo but they never responded to your call.
The house itself is white with green trim. The green paint peels. The outside walls are sided with aluminum, which is cracked in places from various winter storms. The front lawn rolls, but not in a sprawling suburban way. The ground wasn’t pressed flat when the sod was laid, a thousand years ago, in the prehistory of this place before your parents moved you here. And it’s a small yard.
(You lived in one other place before this one: an apartment in an old brick walk-up on the forgotten east side of town. As a child, you were shown it innumerable times, directed by a parent’s pointing finger as you sat, buckled in, in the back seat. “That’s where we used to live,” one of them would say, as though it still had currency. As though it weren’t from some distant part of your experience, before early memory even. They—you—were only there a year, when they were first married, and for a short time after you were born. Then they bought this house, your house, your place, on the West side, and this became the only place you ever really knew.)
Out front of the house, the asphalt in the road is cracked. It has been patched over many times by city workers. Hot tar wedged into the fissures to hold this street together for a little more time. On summer days, strolling bare foot, you walked those haphazard tar trails like a tightrope, balancing your way on tiptoes to cross the street. The asphalt would have scalded your soles but the tar saved you. You have spent much time looking downward, taking in the topography of this road, these sidewalks. The concrete in front of your house is patched with old gum, grey and black blotches to mark the times when some kid grew tired of the wad in his mouth and tossed it carelessly aside. There are cracks in the sidewalk too. Cracks between sidewalk blocks. Cracks where humidity and age and shoddy workmanship and whatever else caused a split in the pavement. You try to avoid stepping on any of them, even still. Your mother’s back is at stake.
Long ago, these sidewalks were chalked colorfully with hopscotch grids. When you were very small you watched from the front steps, at the older girls in their gymnastic poses, bending over, stretching flexible limbs in unlikely ways to pick up their markers from the ground. There were so many children in those days, it seemed. A population of Frisbee-throwers, and toy-gun-wielders, running up and down the road. In the early days you were a mascot to them, the tag-a-along for older kids when they played hide and seek. “Don’t give me away,” one kid would whisper to you, pressing you close to him behind the bushes. “If we get found, you’re dead.”
But nobody ever harmed you then. You were blessed, protected. Even when you made it to school, blocks away, you felt secure. Escorted in your travel by the older kids who would come to pick you up. Guarded in the school yard by Billy from next door, the toughest kid around. You watched him bloody another boy’s nose once. It horrified you but made you feel safe all the same.
If you walk down the street, moving from the north corner to the south, you can still hear the hopscotch calls and the squeals of laughter when some poor kid gets ambushed behind a car during hide-and-seek. They call to you from the past. The sound of their sneakers scraping on the pavement echoes still. Francis, the tall boy with the lateral lisp. Or Henry, the quiet kid who lived with his grandfather and never participated in any games. Moving South, you get to the Lalibertes, a kid extravaganza, the family of eight. The oldest children weren’t like kids to you; they never seemed like possibilities for Frisbee or toy cars on the sidewalk or a pepper game with an Indian rubber ball in the middle for the road. They drove cars; they smoked cigarettes; they were adults. So many Lalibertes, the names flowing like reindeer in a Christmas rhyme: Jimmy, Johnny, Matthew, Veronica, Helene, Andrew, and Elizabeth, whom everybody called Betsy.
19 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
19 June 2006
"Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (from the album Deja Vu, 1970)
To commemorate my ongoing nostalgia on this visit home, a sentimental tribute to a home founded on love. Here's to past days, when my sister and I stormed through these rooms as manic children, when my father was alive still, when my mother had us all living here alongside her.
"Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (from the album Deja Vu, 1970)
To commemorate my ongoing nostalgia on this visit home, a sentimental tribute to a home founded on love. Here's to past days, when my sister and I stormed through these rooms as manic children, when my father was alive still, when my mother had us all living here alongside her.
Musings
Road Trip: Day 8
Things I should be doing today:
Things I should be doing today:
- going through closet of boyhood room to see what baseball card/comicbook type memorabilia is indispensable and thus needs to come back in the car with me, and which can be donated to the yard sale gods.
- booking research trip to NYC, since I'm supposed to leave in about five weeks and hotel prices and flights are not getting any cheaper with each minute I wait.
- calling any relatives and/or friends I need to schedule time with this week.
- reading for and starting to draft boring academic article that I need to finish by summer's end and only have vague ideas about thus far.
Things I did instead:
- slept late.
- had lunch.
- shot the breeze with Mom.
- read most of a months-old profile on Sean Penn from old New Yorker issue.
- read about Tigers online, and marvelled that as June nears its close, the Tigers still hold the best record in baseball.
- wrote this blog entry.
At least, I:
- managed to get the car vacuumed out.
- went to the bank.
- took wedding outfit to the dry cleaners.
- shot the breeze with Mom.
18 June 2006
Musings
Road Trip: Day 7
After last night's alcohol-soaked bachelor party events, the WS found himself tired today. And with fatigue comes meditative. And with home geography comes nostalgic. Took my partner to the city's international festival this evening, to eat fattening Hungarian food and too-rich saganaki made by old Greek women, and to listen to other languages in conversations at the tables around us. Then we drove through the grand old neighborhoods of the city's east side, gawking at stately brick manors that sell for a quarter of a million bucks or more. Then later, a dog walk through my mother's neighboorhood, past the old elementary school where I pretended to be an ace baseball pitcher in an imaginary stadium, and then back on to the street of my youth, past the falling-apart houses that used to shelter the families I knew as a child.
The longer I stay away from this town, the more it haunts my imagination.
Into Don Quixote. Page 111.
After last night's alcohol-soaked bachelor party events, the WS found himself tired today. And with fatigue comes meditative. And with home geography comes nostalgic. Took my partner to the city's international festival this evening, to eat fattening Hungarian food and too-rich saganaki made by old Greek women, and to listen to other languages in conversations at the tables around us. Then we drove through the grand old neighborhoods of the city's east side, gawking at stately brick manors that sell for a quarter of a million bucks or more. Then later, a dog walk through my mother's neighboorhood, past the old elementary school where I pretended to be an ace baseball pitcher in an imaginary stadium, and then back on to the street of my youth, past the falling-apart houses that used to shelter the families I knew as a child.
The longer I stay away from this town, the more it haunts my imagination.
Into Don Quixote. Page 111.
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
18 June 2006
"The Hockey Song" by Stompin' Tom Connors (from the album, Stompin' Tom and the Hockey Song, 1973)
In honor of a great win last night by those plucky Oilers of Edmonton, Alberta, here's a foot-stompin', singalong, sporting event favorite.
Go Oilers. Win in 7.
"The Hockey Song" by Stompin' Tom Connors (from the album, Stompin' Tom and the Hockey Song, 1973)
In honor of a great win last night by those plucky Oilers of Edmonton, Alberta, here's a foot-stompin', singalong, sporting event favorite.
Go Oilers. Win in 7.
17 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
17 June 2006
"Home at Last" by Steely Dan (from the album Aja, 1977)
An Homeric epic reconfigured as lush pop song. Fagen and Becker keep the main narrative of the Odyssey intact--the long exile, the welcome return--and evoke one of the poem's finest images over and over again in the chorus, with Fagen-as-lead-vocalist-as-Ulysses lashed to the mast, long after the danger of the siren song is over.
A perfect song to commemorate a homecoming almost a week in the driving.
"Home at Last" by Steely Dan (from the album Aja, 1977)
An Homeric epic reconfigured as lush pop song. Fagen and Becker keep the main narrative of the Odyssey intact--the long exile, the welcome return--and evoke one of the poem's finest images over and over again in the chorus, with Fagen-as-lead-vocalist-as-Ulysses lashed to the mast, long after the danger of the siren song is over.
A perfect song to commemorate a homecoming almost a week in the driving.
Musings
Road Trip: Days 5 and 6
Landed home yesterday, just in time for a quick dinner with my mother, and then onto the nightlife to whoop it up with my turning-26 younger sister. A long night of catching up with people, and imbibing libations. I'm trying not to be too melancholy over the For Sale sign on my mom's front lawn. At least the city's still the same. Even the dog twitched his nose upon recognizing the familiar scent of pollution in the air. But it's good to be back among people who all cheer for the right sports teams too.
A family barbecue today and then on to a bachelor party tonight for my friend who marries next week. I should buy some Tylenol at this rate. Will need it.
Landed home yesterday, just in time for a quick dinner with my mother, and then onto the nightlife to whoop it up with my turning-26 younger sister. A long night of catching up with people, and imbibing libations. I'm trying not to be too melancholy over the For Sale sign on my mom's front lawn. At least the city's still the same. Even the dog twitched his nose upon recognizing the familiar scent of pollution in the air. But it's good to be back among people who all cheer for the right sports teams too.
A family barbecue today and then on to a bachelor party tonight for my friend who marries next week. I should buy some Tylenol at this rate. Will need it.
16 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
16 June 2006
"Funky Town" by Lipps, Inc. (1980)
A disco relic to celebrate my sister's 26th birthday today. This was the number one song from the day of her birth. (Check out This Day in Music to see what was number one the day you were born, and leave a comment.) Back in the car on this sunny Bloomsday (what do you mean you've not read Ulysses?) and heading back to my old hometown in time for the birthday celebrations tonight.
Won't you take me to, a funky (home)town?
"Funky Town" by Lipps, Inc. (1980)
A disco relic to celebrate my sister's 26th birthday today. This was the number one song from the day of her birth. (Check out This Day in Music to see what was number one the day you were born, and leave a comment.) Back in the car on this sunny Bloomsday (what do you mean you've not read Ulysses?) and heading back to my old hometown in time for the birthday celebrations tonight.
Won't you take me to, a funky (home)town?
15 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
15 June 2006
"The Weight" by The Band (from the album Music from Big Pink, 1968)
Another great road trip song, this one (re)discovered on a mixed CD made long ago while we inched along toward my aunt's yesterday. A good journey narrative in the lyrics and a fun sing-a-long chorus. If only the dog had been more co-operative, we could have pulled off the three-party harmony central to the refrain.
"The Weight" by The Band (from the album Music from Big Pink, 1968)
Another great road trip song, this one (re)discovered on a mixed CD made long ago while we inched along toward my aunt's yesterday. A good journey narrative in the lyrics and a fun sing-a-long chorus. If only the dog had been more co-operative, we could have pulled off the three-party harmony central to the refrain.
Musings
Road Trip: Days 3 and 4
So, after three days of driving, we trade one college town for another, and arrive at my aunt's. We're properly feted with a dinner of grilled pork and asparagus and wine--and immediately the sugary and salty snacks that sustained us along the highway disappear into memory.
I finished Carolyn Parkhurst's Dogs of Babel on my aunt's front porch this morning. Great premise, not-so-great resolution. Don Quixote looms now.
Saw Carlin-meets-Coulter on the Leno show last night. Coulter got me worked up; Carlin was disappointingly silent, presumably to protect the promotion of his new cartoon film. Sigh. My aunt tells me to lay off the anger re: Coulter, that really Coulter is part of a long tradition of American theatre and I needn't get so angry. I still say she--Coulter, not my aunt!--needs a kick in the ass.
One more night here, and then to my hometown tomorrow in time for my sister's 26th birthday.
So, after three days of driving, we trade one college town for another, and arrive at my aunt's. We're properly feted with a dinner of grilled pork and asparagus and wine--and immediately the sugary and salty snacks that sustained us along the highway disappear into memory.
I finished Carolyn Parkhurst's Dogs of Babel on my aunt's front porch this morning. Great premise, not-so-great resolution. Don Quixote looms now.
Saw Carlin-meets-Coulter on the Leno show last night. Coulter got me worked up; Carlin was disappointingly silent, presumably to protect the promotion of his new cartoon film. Sigh. My aunt tells me to lay off the anger re: Coulter, that really Coulter is part of a long tradition of American theatre and I needn't get so angry. I still say she--Coulter, not my aunt!--needs a kick in the ass.
One more night here, and then to my hometown tomorrow in time for my sister's 26th birthday.
13 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
14 June 2006
"East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" by Duke Ellington (1926)
A jurassic jazz side from the greatest composer in the history of 20th-century American music. This one features a famous growling trumpet part from Bubber Miley, and constitutes a quintessential example of the "jungle music" style that thrilled ethnographic white patrons at the Cotton Club in the 20s, but sent squares into a moral panic.
"East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" by Duke Ellington (1926)
A jurassic jazz side from the greatest composer in the history of 20th-century American music. This one features a famous growling trumpet part from Bubber Miley, and constitutes a quintessential example of the "jungle music" style that thrilled ethnographic white patrons at the Cotton Club in the 20s, but sent squares into a moral panic.
Musings
Road Trip: Day 2
The second day of the journey was all about:
The second day of the journey was all about:
- Mike and Ike and Hot Tamale candies eaten compulsively in the front seat.
- Listening to interviews with John Updike and Quincy Troupe on XM Radio.
- Driving through the hometowns of two major American literary figures and one titanic figure in the history of jazz.
- Rolling hills, and more greenery than we expected to see.
- Too many in-your-face pro-life billboards.
- One famous landmark.
- A late-lunch stopover in a park where the dog chewed sticks and looked annoyed until we indulged him with a pizza crust.
- Shitty driving from truck drivers.
- Wine, sourdough bread, artichoke hearts and brie, consumed on the bed at the motel at day's end.
What, I wonder, will tomorrow bring?
12 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
13 June 2006
"Surrey with a Fringe on Top" by Blossom Dearie (from the album One Upon a Summertime, 1958)
A bit of Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadyway kitsch revised in the cabaret way by a wonderfully urbane and pixie-voiced chanteuse. We're not traversing the terrain in a surrey with a fringe, but this one is, well, somehow appropriate nevertheless.
"Surrey with a Fringe on Top" by Blossom Dearie (from the album One Upon a Summertime, 1958)
A bit of Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadyway kitsch revised in the cabaret way by a wonderfully urbane and pixie-voiced chanteuse. We're not traversing the terrain in a surrey with a fringe, but this one is, well, somehow appropriate nevertheless.
Musings
Road Trip: Day 1
After the resolving the unexpected SNAFU of the messed-up AC in the car today (turns out there were leaves clogging up the system; and yeah, even the clerk at the dealership seemed surprised that the mechanics didn't find it when they changed the air conditioning filters last week!), we finally hit the road by mid-afternoon and put in about 350+ miles into the heart of highway America. Funny things you see as you cruise through the belly of the empire, riding the interstates through rolling fields and occasional rocky slopes.
We saw:
After the resolving the unexpected SNAFU of the messed-up AC in the car today (turns out there were leaves clogging up the system; and yeah, even the clerk at the dealership seemed surprised that the mechanics didn't find it when they changed the air conditioning filters last week!), we finally hit the road by mid-afternoon and put in about 350+ miles into the heart of highway America. Funny things you see as you cruise through the belly of the empire, riding the interstates through rolling fields and occasional rocky slopes.
We saw:
- giant crosses, but not burning, thankfully.
- a giant woman riding a Harley without a helmet.
- Miller High Life for sale in 24 oz cans for a dollar. (It's cheaper to buy beer than drinking water in some roadside stops!)
- giant Zippo lighters (like giant! big enough for King Kong's paws) for 19.99 at a truck stop.
- a semi-truck moving a house.
- a lovely sunset.
- the Motel 6 from which I write.
Hoping for an earlier start tomorrow, to maximize mileage and get to our first "real" checkpoint--my aunt's house a few states away--by the end of day three.
And yes, Willie Nelson made an appearance on the car stereo, to christen the journey. Don Quixote remains uncracked. Tired, beery (1 dollar for 24 oz!). Maybe tomorrow.
Musings
My Kingdom for a Definite ETD
Partner just called car dealership, got redirected to voicemail. No word for hours now.
Those fuckers better not have left it up on blocks while they went to lunch.
Grr.
Partner just called car dealership, got redirected to voicemail. No word for hours now.
Those fuckers better not have left it up on blocks while they went to lunch.
Grr.
Musings
"Salty snacks?" "Check." "Don Quixote?" "Check." "Air conditioning? Air conditioning?"
Drat. As the ETD for road trip was creeping upon us we faced a new wrinkle-- Remember last week's scheduled maintenance on the car? Apparently, the mechanics monkeyed around with something they shouldn't have, because in the weekend a decidedly bad sound has begun to resonate from the car's air conditioning unit. A sound that might be compared to a bunch of wrenches being dropped down some stairs. Only more repetitive. Yikes.
Car's being looked at. ETD pushed back a little bit.
[Note: Mechanic pictured above is not our actual mechanic, but a random Internet photo-subject pulled to dramatize the clownlike behavior that left our AC in the state it is currently in.]
Drat. As the ETD for road trip was creeping upon us we faced a new wrinkle-- Remember last week's scheduled maintenance on the car? Apparently, the mechanics monkeyed around with something they shouldn't have, because in the weekend a decidedly bad sound has begun to resonate from the car's air conditioning unit. A sound that might be compared to a bunch of wrenches being dropped down some stairs. Only more repetitive. Yikes.
Car's being looked at. ETD pushed back a little bit.
[Note: Mechanic pictured above is not our actual mechanic, but a random Internet photo-subject pulled to dramatize the clownlike behavior that left our AC in the state it is currently in.]
11 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
12 June 2006
"On the Road Again" by Willie Nelson (from the album Honeysuckle Rose, 1980)
This is track 1 on a mixed CD I made for a big road trip last summer. The CD is a melange of some real roadie tunes, including "Theme from Speed Racer" and Clarence "Frogman" Henry's "Ain't Got a Home." Made sure to put it at the top of the CD pile for when the car pulls out of the driveway sometime in late morning.
"On the Road Again" by Willie Nelson (from the album Honeysuckle Rose, 1980)
This is track 1 on a mixed CD I made for a big road trip last summer. The CD is a melange of some real roadie tunes, including "Theme from Speed Racer" and Clarence "Frogman" Henry's "Ain't Got a Home." Made sure to put it at the top of the CD pile for when the car pulls out of the driveway sometime in late morning.
The Whining Stranger on Books and Reading
The Votes are In!
Well, 10 votes are in. The people have spoken. Six voters said I should go with Cervantes, and so it's Don Quixote that got packed with the pretzels and the dog leash and the fishing rod and the hoodie sweatshirt and the XM Radio. Thanks for helping me choose!
Well, 10 votes are in. The people have spoken. Six voters said I should go with Cervantes, and so it's Don Quixote that got packed with the pretzels and the dog leash and the fishing rod and the hoodie sweatshirt and the XM Radio. Thanks for helping me choose!
Musings
The Whining Stranger is (Mostly) Out
Amigos, tomorrow, 12 June, the Whining Stranger embarks on a long road trip, for a friend's wedding, general family visitation time, and a cabin-camping and fishing expedition. Little did I know when I started this blog last month how totally addicted I'd become to this format. But I have. And so, it'll be hard to be away from here for a bit. I may offer occasional trip-in-progress posts from the road, but expect little regular Whining Strangerdom until around the second week of July.
Amigos, tomorrow, 12 June, the Whining Stranger embarks on a long road trip, for a friend's wedding, general family visitation time, and a cabin-camping and fishing expedition. Little did I know when I started this blog last month how totally addicted I'd become to this format. But I have. And so, it'll be hard to be away from here for a bit. I may offer occasional trip-in-progress posts from the road, but expect little regular Whining Strangerdom until around the second week of July.
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
11 June 2006
"Truckin'" by The Grateful Dead (from the album American Beauty, 1970)
In honor of the start of an epic road trip tomorrow, a highway anthem from the Grateful Dead. Songs that list geographical sites, with catchy choruses, are as essential as salty snacks and a road atlas when you spend long hours behind the wheel.
"Truckin'" by The Grateful Dead (from the album American Beauty, 1970)
In honor of the start of an epic road trip tomorrow, a highway anthem from the Grateful Dead. Songs that list geographical sites, with catchy choruses, are as essential as salty snacks and a road atlas when you spend long hours behind the wheel.
10 June 2006
The Whining Stranger on Books and Reading
Get Your Votes In!
If you've visited this humble blog but haven't yet cast your vote for the June poll, please do so pronto. (The June poll is on the sidebar to the right of your screen.) The Whining Stranger is hitting the superhighways on Monday morning for a road trip and needs to get his trip reading in order. Is Don Quixote the way to go?
If you've visited this humble blog but haven't yet cast your vote for the June poll, please do so pronto. (The June poll is on the sidebar to the right of your screen.) The Whining Stranger is hitting the superhighways on Monday morning for a road trip and needs to get his trip reading in order. Is Don Quixote the way to go?
The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events
Whither Humanity?
Does anybody still remember the President's outrage back in late March of 2003, when Al-Jazeera ran footage of American POWs being interviewed by their Iraqi captors? I could understand that outrage, even though the Monkey-in-Chief and I rarely see eye to eye on substantial matters. I was angered by the constant showing of footage of obviously terrified young soldiers. I don't like the idea of people's pain being shown in an obsessive, would-make-Don-DeLillo-shudder media spectacle loop.
But where is that outrage over the constant media exposure of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's battered corpse this week? Where was it when American news media gave us an eyeful of Uday and Qusay Hussein's annihilated bodies in the summer of 2003?
Why is it so easy for me to find photos of the Hussein boys, post-autopsy, merely by typing "Saddam's sons" into Google/images.
I don't need to see it.
You don't need to see it.
Does anybody still remember the President's outrage back in late March of 2003, when Al-Jazeera ran footage of American POWs being interviewed by their Iraqi captors? I could understand that outrage, even though the Monkey-in-Chief and I rarely see eye to eye on substantial matters. I was angered by the constant showing of footage of obviously terrified young soldiers. I don't like the idea of people's pain being shown in an obsessive, would-make-Don-DeLillo-shudder media spectacle loop.
But where is that outrage over the constant media exposure of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's battered corpse this week? Where was it when American news media gave us an eyeful of Uday and Qusay Hussein's annihilated bodies in the summer of 2003?
Why is it so easy for me to find photos of the Hussein boys, post-autopsy, merely by typing "Saddam's sons" into Google/images.
I don't need to see it.
You don't need to see it.
Musings
Do You Have a Quarter for the Phone?
Ok, I admit readily that I am a 20th-century man living in the 21st century. I don't care much for cell phones. I stare angrily at students who forget to turn them off in class. I don't feel the need to make myself that available via phone. In fact, I rarely even answer my landline. Friends call and I hear them over the machine saying, "Come on, pick up. I know you're there."
But, I would like to have a phone in my car. My partner and I sometimes take long road trips--and in fact are planning one to begin in a couple days--and we'd like the safety of having a phone in the glovebox in case a tire goes flat or the call stalls on some lonesome highway.
However.
Cellular phone companies, as anybody living wholeheartedly in the 21st century knows, make it damned hard to have a phone that you just use occasionally, for emergencies.
I was sold the phone pictured above two years ago by a cellular salesman--you know the type: expensive jeans, cool haircut, phone on belt, and maddeningly vague whenever you ask him about what makes a more expensive phone inherently better than a less expensive one--who assured me that that model was all I needed to suit my 20th-century cell phone needs.
Of course, he lied.
He lied about the ease with which I could switch from one wireless provider to another when I moved geographical areas. (I knew I was going to be moving. I explained it to him.)
He lied about the coverage within North America that their pay-as-you-go service offered (as I found it when I finally removed the phone from glove box and tried to use it somewhere, only to discover it was not functional where I was.)
And now the phone is useless to me. It is locked to the former wireless provider--who doesn't offer coverage where I live now--and basically unlockable, even by the former wireless provider. (I spent a while on the phone with them the other day, and was told that because the phone was two years old, they don't even have the technology to unlock my phone from their service.)
Since when does two calendar years make an otherwise functional device antiquated?
Everybody's response seems to be, "Just buy a new phone."
The woman on the phone from the old wireless service: "Just buy a new phone, sir."
The guy at the potential new wireless provider when I took the phone there initially, naively hoping they could fix me up: "Just buy a new phone."
I don't want to buy a new phone! This phone is only two years old and has been used less than five times!
Yesterday I listened to a mall-outlet cell phone salesman extolling the virtues of a phone he was encouraging me to buy: the high resolution camera; the text messaging; the games!
I just want a phone. In case I get a flat. Or my car breaks down. I don't need to take a photo of the flat. Or send a txt msg to somebody which reads "omg wtf tire flat." I don't need to play Pacman while I wait for a tow truck to arrive.
Sigh.
We're leaving for our road trip in a couple days.
I don't want to buy a new phone.
Maybe I'll keep a roll of quarters in the front seat and hope that there are still payphones to be found in this great country.
And Ryan M., slickster who sold me the phone, you are so lucky I am back on my pacificism kick, dude. Otherwise, I'd track you back down and give you a worthy-of-Ann-Coulter kick in the ass.
Ok, I admit readily that I am a 20th-century man living in the 21st century. I don't care much for cell phones. I stare angrily at students who forget to turn them off in class. I don't feel the need to make myself that available via phone. In fact, I rarely even answer my landline. Friends call and I hear them over the machine saying, "Come on, pick up. I know you're there."
But, I would like to have a phone in my car. My partner and I sometimes take long road trips--and in fact are planning one to begin in a couple days--and we'd like the safety of having a phone in the glovebox in case a tire goes flat or the call stalls on some lonesome highway.
However.
Cellular phone companies, as anybody living wholeheartedly in the 21st century knows, make it damned hard to have a phone that you just use occasionally, for emergencies.
I was sold the phone pictured above two years ago by a cellular salesman--you know the type: expensive jeans, cool haircut, phone on belt, and maddeningly vague whenever you ask him about what makes a more expensive phone inherently better than a less expensive one--who assured me that that model was all I needed to suit my 20th-century cell phone needs.
Of course, he lied.
He lied about the ease with which I could switch from one wireless provider to another when I moved geographical areas. (I knew I was going to be moving. I explained it to him.)
He lied about the coverage within North America that their pay-as-you-go service offered (as I found it when I finally removed the phone from glove box and tried to use it somewhere, only to discover it was not functional where I was.)
And now the phone is useless to me. It is locked to the former wireless provider--who doesn't offer coverage where I live now--and basically unlockable, even by the former wireless provider. (I spent a while on the phone with them the other day, and was told that because the phone was two years old, they don't even have the technology to unlock my phone from their service.)
Since when does two calendar years make an otherwise functional device antiquated?
Everybody's response seems to be, "Just buy a new phone."
The woman on the phone from the old wireless service: "Just buy a new phone, sir."
The guy at the potential new wireless provider when I took the phone there initially, naively hoping they could fix me up: "Just buy a new phone."
I don't want to buy a new phone! This phone is only two years old and has been used less than five times!
Yesterday I listened to a mall-outlet cell phone salesman extolling the virtues of a phone he was encouraging me to buy: the high resolution camera; the text messaging; the games!
I just want a phone. In case I get a flat. Or my car breaks down. I don't need to take a photo of the flat. Or send a txt msg to somebody which reads "omg wtf tire flat." I don't need to play Pacman while I wait for a tow truck to arrive.
Sigh.
We're leaving for our road trip in a couple days.
I don't want to buy a new phone.
Maybe I'll keep a roll of quarters in the front seat and hope that there are still payphones to be found in this great country.
And Ryan M., slickster who sold me the phone, you are so lucky I am back on my pacificism kick, dude. Otherwise, I'd track you back down and give you a worthy-of-Ann-Coulter kick in the ass.
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
10 July 2006
"Kentucky Avenue" by Tom Waits (from the album, Blue Valentine, 1978)
Heard this one at a friend's last night, for the first time in forever. A touching ballad from a great balladeer, from what I think of as Waits's underrated "middle" period--after his boho-ratboy-folksinger beginnings, but before the Kurt Weill-influenced clanky-metal Brechtfest of later years. Blue Valentine is a favorite because of its jazz and blues influences, but this song is stark: a quiet narrative about friends growing up with a simple piano part and a shiver-inducing string arrangement.
"Kentucky Avenue" by Tom Waits (from the album, Blue Valentine, 1978)
Heard this one at a friend's last night, for the first time in forever. A touching ballad from a great balladeer, from what I think of as Waits's underrated "middle" period--after his boho-ratboy-folksinger beginnings, but before the Kurt Weill-influenced clanky-metal Brechtfest of later years. Blue Valentine is a favorite because of its jazz and blues influences, but this song is stark: a quiet narrative about friends growing up with a simple piano part and a shiver-inducing string arrangement.
09 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
9 June 2006
"The Only Living Boy in New York" by Simon and Garfunkel (from the album Bridge Over Troubled Water, 1970)
My sister got me hooked on this song last Christmas, playing it constantly from the Garden State soundtrack in her car. I guess I should have known it from listening to the Simon and Garfunkel album from which it comes as a kid, but somehow it eluded my memory. This is one of Paul Simon's great sad numbers--written, supposedly, to mark his parting with Art Garfunkel when the latter was leaving to go film Catch-22 in Mexico. The exaggeration of the hook (that Simon, lonely without his compadre, is like the last living boy on the isle of Manhattan) is touching in its simplicity. Great echoey vocals too.
"The Only Living Boy in New York" by Simon and Garfunkel (from the album Bridge Over Troubled Water, 1970)
My sister got me hooked on this song last Christmas, playing it constantly from the Garden State soundtrack in her car. I guess I should have known it from listening to the Simon and Garfunkel album from which it comes as a kid, but somehow it eluded my memory. This is one of Paul Simon's great sad numbers--written, supposedly, to mark his parting with Art Garfunkel when the latter was leaving to go film Catch-22 in Mexico. The exaggeration of the hook (that Simon, lonely without his compadre, is like the last living boy on the isle of Manhattan) is touching in its simplicity. Great echoey vocals too.
Musings
How Can It Be That...?
a) nobody else has yet to take the Which Glass Family Member Are You? quiz and post a comment with the result?
b) nobody--without Googling--has been baited into answering the trivia question of one of my earliest posts, "From what source does the title of this blog--'The Whining Stranger'--come?"
Just trying to elicit some conversation. Just talkin' about Shaft, as Isaac Hayes says.
Then we can dig it.
Halfway through the day's first coffee,
WS
a) nobody else has yet to take the Which Glass Family Member Are You? quiz and post a comment with the result?
b) nobody--without Googling--has been baited into answering the trivia question of one of my earliest posts, "From what source does the title of this blog--'The Whining Stranger'--come?"
Just trying to elicit some conversation. Just talkin' about Shaft, as Isaac Hayes says.
Then we can dig it.
Halfway through the day's first coffee,
WS
08 June 2006
Musings
Pacifism: A Brief Return
I've been feeling bad today about the infantile violence at the heart of my rant about Ann Coulter. Yes, she's a stupid, ignorant, freakish-looking bitch. She is. But that's no reason for me to go calling for resolute kicks-to-asses now, is it?
I am a self-professed pacifist.
I am a wannabe Buddhist--by which I mean I like what I know about Buddhism, I subscribe to the right magazines, and I sometimes try to meditate but still can't bring myself to give up sushi.
In any case, I shouldn't be advocating violence of any kind.
Often, when I tell students that I'm a pacifist, the more conservative factions often try to bait me into that "necessary violence" line of thinking. "Oh sure, Professor Whining Stranger," they announce. "We're for non-violence too, but what if somebody attacks us, then it's necessary, and then we have to fight back harder, to prevent chaos... [insert various crude rhetorical moves here] ...and so that's why the American military must command the insanely huge budget it does, even though that money could go to public education and health care."
But does the military budget need to be so grotesquely big?
Do we need guns at all?
Indulge an idealist for a second, will you?
Most people I meet, if posed with this question, "Do you think you ever want to bash someone in the face? For real. Just wind up and punch them in the face?" would respond with an aghast, you've-challenged-my-status-as-a-rational-being, "Of course not!" I'm sure that if I took a survey of most adults in the world and said, "Do you ever feel the need to take out a gun and shoot someone and watch them bleed?" the percentage of respondents who reply in the negative would be in the high-90s. Those that answer in the affirmative, of course, are either just fucking with me or in need of a serious time-out.
So.
Since most rational people don't really want to do physical harm to others, why don't we all just make a pact?
I know I can sign a document--and have it notarized!--that announces that I will never commit an act of physical violence on another human being. So why don't we all do that? If each of us were to focus on pledging non-violence and channeled all our determination toward that goal then we could start channeling public funds back into health care and education, couldn't we?
Now, I can already hear the cynical snorting from here. My opponents' likely response: "Oh sure, I'll agree to do that and then some guy will punch me and steal my wallet and so [insert crude rhetorical moves here] that's why the American military budget needs to be so high." Well, I'm not asking you to worry about other guys. I'm asking you only to worry about and to control yourself, since that's the only person you ever really have any dominion over anyway.
And really, much of what passes for acceptable behavior in North America turns on leaps of faith anyway, right? Or is it rational to believe that some guy who lived 2000 years ago was a) the son of God; b) got nailed to a stick just to save your sinful self; and c) rose from the dead to seal the deal at the end of one wild weekend? Is it really reasonable to think that you have any tangible affinity, living as you do in Nebraska, with some other bloke out in West Virginia, merely because you both have homes within a geography bounded by an invisible national border?
And, finally, is it really so crazy to ask adults to sign a pact calling for non-violence, given that the Right (my perennial enemies) seem to find it perfectly reasonable to ask teenagers to sign pacts as the only true way to combat STDs and unwanted pregnancies? Hrm.
Anyway, in the quiet of this night, with the face of a fallen terrorist spread triumphantly all over every news report I see, a world of self-conscious people who commit themselves to peaceful activity and a personally willed cessation of violence is certainly pretty to think about.
I've been feeling bad today about the infantile violence at the heart of my rant about Ann Coulter. Yes, she's a stupid, ignorant, freakish-looking bitch. She is. But that's no reason for me to go calling for resolute kicks-to-asses now, is it?
I am a self-professed pacifist.
I am a wannabe Buddhist--by which I mean I like what I know about Buddhism, I subscribe to the right magazines, and I sometimes try to meditate but still can't bring myself to give up sushi.
In any case, I shouldn't be advocating violence of any kind.
Often, when I tell students that I'm a pacifist, the more conservative factions often try to bait me into that "necessary violence" line of thinking. "Oh sure, Professor Whining Stranger," they announce. "We're for non-violence too, but what if somebody attacks us, then it's necessary, and then we have to fight back harder, to prevent chaos... [insert various crude rhetorical moves here] ...and so that's why the American military must command the insanely huge budget it does, even though that money could go to public education and health care."
But does the military budget need to be so grotesquely big?
Do we need guns at all?
Indulge an idealist for a second, will you?
Most people I meet, if posed with this question, "Do you think you ever want to bash someone in the face? For real. Just wind up and punch them in the face?" would respond with an aghast, you've-challenged-my-status-as-a-rational-being, "Of course not!" I'm sure that if I took a survey of most adults in the world and said, "Do you ever feel the need to take out a gun and shoot someone and watch them bleed?" the percentage of respondents who reply in the negative would be in the high-90s. Those that answer in the affirmative, of course, are either just fucking with me or in need of a serious time-out.
So.
Since most rational people don't really want to do physical harm to others, why don't we all just make a pact?
I know I can sign a document--and have it notarized!--that announces that I will never commit an act of physical violence on another human being. So why don't we all do that? If each of us were to focus on pledging non-violence and channeled all our determination toward that goal then we could start channeling public funds back into health care and education, couldn't we?
Now, I can already hear the cynical snorting from here. My opponents' likely response: "Oh sure, I'll agree to do that and then some guy will punch me and steal my wallet and so [insert crude rhetorical moves here] that's why the American military budget needs to be so high." Well, I'm not asking you to worry about other guys. I'm asking you only to worry about and to control yourself, since that's the only person you ever really have any dominion over anyway.
And really, much of what passes for acceptable behavior in North America turns on leaps of faith anyway, right? Or is it rational to believe that some guy who lived 2000 years ago was a) the son of God; b) got nailed to a stick just to save your sinful self; and c) rose from the dead to seal the deal at the end of one wild weekend? Is it really reasonable to think that you have any tangible affinity, living as you do in Nebraska, with some other bloke out in West Virginia, merely because you both have homes within a geography bounded by an invisible national border?
And, finally, is it really so crazy to ask adults to sign a pact calling for non-violence, given that the Right (my perennial enemies) seem to find it perfectly reasonable to ask teenagers to sign pacts as the only true way to combat STDs and unwanted pregnancies? Hrm.
Anyway, in the quiet of this night, with the face of a fallen terrorist spread triumphantly all over every news report I see, a world of self-conscious people who commit themselves to peaceful activity and a personally willed cessation of violence is certainly pretty to think about.
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
8 June 2006
[Note: I started typing this entry before midnight to be 8 June's song of the day but then blogger.com tech problems derailed me.]
"Exit Music (For a Film)" by Brad Mehldau (from the album, The Art of the Trio, Volume 4: Back at the Vanguard, 1999)
One of contemporary jazz piano's favorite sons covers a moody ballad by Britrock wunderkinds Radiohead. Mehldau strips away the sonic hullabaloo of Radiohead's moonscape production values and exposes the lovely melody lurking beneath, arranged here for piano trio. But while Mehldau brings a nakedness to the sound of the song, he opens up its form, turning an ostensibly simple melody into an expansive platform for improvisation. The result? Introspective, inventive, relevant jazz from a masterful, precocious talent.
[Note: I started typing this entry before midnight to be 8 June's song of the day but then blogger.com tech problems derailed me.]
"Exit Music (For a Film)" by Brad Mehldau (from the album, The Art of the Trio, Volume 4: Back at the Vanguard, 1999)
One of contemporary jazz piano's favorite sons covers a moody ballad by Britrock wunderkinds Radiohead. Mehldau strips away the sonic hullabaloo of Radiohead's moonscape production values and exposes the lovely melody lurking beneath, arranged here for piano trio. But while Mehldau brings a nakedness to the sound of the song, he opens up its form, turning an ostensibly simple melody into an expansive platform for improvisation. The result? Introspective, inventive, relevant jazz from a masterful, precocious talent.
07 June 2006
The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events
Well, I guess you would know what a witch looks like, witch...
Sigh.
I'm a critical thinker.
I know how marketing works.
I know that Ann Coulter, that ol'-too-skinny-bitch-who's-the-face-of-ugly-conservative-America, is just trying again crudely to play the provocateur and incite discussion (i.e. earn cash through scandal-inspired sales so she can continue to buy cocaine and black boots), by calling certain 9-11 widows opportunistic "witches" who actually delighted in their husbands' deaths.
I know I should turn away.
I know I should not get dragged into anger over another annoying subtle-as-a-piano-falling-to-the-pavement rhetorical ploy from a bonehead conservative pundit.
I know this is just a cheap attention-getter like O'Reilly picking on Jeremy Glick.
And yet.
I would love to kick Ann Coulter right in her skinny ass.
And by this, I don't mean metaphorically. This is not whimsical hyperbole.
My boot; her ass.
One swift kick.
Ann Coulter lands on Mars.
Much rejoicing by civilized people.
And in less of a departure from my pacifistic ways, I will say that it's interesting that after five years of enduring the wolfish Right's use of 9-11 as sentimental justification for all kinds of unethical bamboozling of the American people, Coulter would potentially alienate her Cro-Magnon fan base by writing so insensitively about people hurt so devastatingly by that Event-About-Which-We-Don't-Discuss-Critically-And-Thoughtfully-Because-It-Means-You're-An-Anti-American-Terrorist-Sympathizer-If-You-Do.
Even Fox News is saying she's out of line this time.
Again.
My boot; her ass.
One swift kick.
I need another beer in the mean time.
Sigh.
I'm a critical thinker.
I know how marketing works.
I know that Ann Coulter, that ol'-too-skinny-bitch-who's-the-face-of-ugly-conservative-America, is just trying again crudely to play the provocateur and incite discussion (i.e. earn cash through scandal-inspired sales so she can continue to buy cocaine and black boots), by calling certain 9-11 widows opportunistic "witches" who actually delighted in their husbands' deaths.
I know I should turn away.
I know I should not get dragged into anger over another annoying subtle-as-a-piano-falling-to-the-pavement rhetorical ploy from a bonehead conservative pundit.
I know this is just a cheap attention-getter like O'Reilly picking on Jeremy Glick.
And yet.
I would love to kick Ann Coulter right in her skinny ass.
And by this, I don't mean metaphorically. This is not whimsical hyperbole.
My boot; her ass.
One swift kick.
Ann Coulter lands on Mars.
Much rejoicing by civilized people.
And in less of a departure from my pacifistic ways, I will say that it's interesting that after five years of enduring the wolfish Right's use of 9-11 as sentimental justification for all kinds of unethical bamboozling of the American people, Coulter would potentially alienate her Cro-Magnon fan base by writing so insensitively about people hurt so devastatingly by that Event-About-Which-We-Don't-Discuss-Critically-And-Thoughtfully-Because-It-Means-You're-An-Anti-American-Terrorist-Sympathizer-If-You-Do.
Even Fox News is saying she's out of line this time.
Again.
My boot; her ass.
One swift kick.
I need another beer in the mean time.
Musings
Hasta la vista, beard (8 May 2006-7 June 2006)
Well, at four weeks, it was a good run. From those first scratchy days of not shaving to the mature phase in the past seven or eight days, when I emerged triumphant, hirsute into my 19th century Russian novelist look. But it was time to go. I'm heading to visit family soon and I don't want to listen to my beloved grandmother go on about the smooth cheeks of her generation, or worse, embarrass my friend--son of conservative family, whose parents already think I'm an immoral loose no-gooder as it is--at his wedding while I'm there.
I'm going to miss the beard though. I'll miss the time it took off of my shower (no shaving!), and I'll definitely miss the look I was sporting in our neighborhood pick-up basketball games of late--when I was rockin' the 70s vibe with my beard and Pistons-blue sweatbands and armbands. Now I'm just another preppy guy with short hair.
It took the better part of an hour to shave it off, in part because I had to amuse my partner with the various possibilities in those stages toward clean-shavedom. First I did the trucker-sideburns-with-goatee look; then the 1970s relief pitcher look with serious handlebar mustache; then my best Rupert Pupkin imitation (a cheesy mustachioed look that left her squealing, "You look like a porn star! It's scary); and then finally, the Hitler/Chaplin mustache afterthought, just to remind myself why that look got put to rest forever sometime around 1945.
Smooth cheeks now. Maybe until fall, when the start of a new semester and a full-time return to my professorial guise might tempt me to let it grow again.
Well, at four weeks, it was a good run. From those first scratchy days of not shaving to the mature phase in the past seven or eight days, when I emerged triumphant, hirsute into my 19th century Russian novelist look. But it was time to go. I'm heading to visit family soon and I don't want to listen to my beloved grandmother go on about the smooth cheeks of her generation, or worse, embarrass my friend--son of conservative family, whose parents already think I'm an immoral loose no-gooder as it is--at his wedding while I'm there.
I'm going to miss the beard though. I'll miss the time it took off of my shower (no shaving!), and I'll definitely miss the look I was sporting in our neighborhood pick-up basketball games of late--when I was rockin' the 70s vibe with my beard and Pistons-blue sweatbands and armbands. Now I'm just another preppy guy with short hair.
It took the better part of an hour to shave it off, in part because I had to amuse my partner with the various possibilities in those stages toward clean-shavedom. First I did the trucker-sideburns-with-goatee look; then the 1970s relief pitcher look with serious handlebar mustache; then my best Rupert Pupkin imitation (a cheesy mustachioed look that left her squealing, "You look like a porn star! It's scary); and then finally, the Hitler/Chaplin mustache afterthought, just to remind myself why that look got put to rest forever sometime around 1945.
Smooth cheeks now. Maybe until fall, when the start of a new semester and a full-time return to my professorial guise might tempt me to let it grow again.
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
7 June 2006
"Sunny Afternoon" by The Kinks (from the album Face to Face, 1966)
In anticipation of another blazing sunny afternoon, a quirky summer serenade by those High Priests of Wit from the British Invasion, Ray Davies and co. As the mercury rises, look for a life of luxury--open a cold beer, repeat.
"Sunny Afternoon" by The Kinks (from the album Face to Face, 1966)
In anticipation of another blazing sunny afternoon, a quirky summer serenade by those High Priests of Wit from the British Invasion, Ray Davies and co. As the mercury rises, look for a life of luxury--open a cold beer, repeat.
06 June 2006
The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events
God Spelled Backwards is Still Dog
Stuck in traffic today, I had the good fortune to be crammed behind another jackassedly big pick-up truck, this time sporting a bumper sticker which read, "If you take the God out of America, it ceases to be America."
Oh, how I wanted to follow my fellow citizen to his destination and remind him that as that ol' loveable democratic homeboy, Thomas Jefferson (who surely articulated the best of democratic ideals while he shamelessly flouted them in practice) once wrote:
"Believing that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."
Alas, the light turned green, my fellow driver, Hoss--ever God-lovin', may he be blessed by Allah--sped away and I didn't get the chance to engage in a lively democratic exchange.
Later, and this is only mildly related, I was sitting in the waiting room at the car lot while my beloved fuel-efficient four-cylinder was getting its scheduled maintenance, and a big blustery bloke walked in, with a flat-top brush cut, and a cigar (!) sticking out of his mouth and an obnoxiously loud cellular phone, the ring tone of which was (I kid you not!) "What Would You Do with a Drunken Sailor." (I know this with certainty since he took three or four calls while we were sitting there.)
Fittingly, when I got back into the car and drove away from the lot, Donald Fagen was singing on my CD player, "In this everlasting twilight, home is just a sad abstraction."
Stuck in traffic today, I had the good fortune to be crammed behind another jackassedly big pick-up truck, this time sporting a bumper sticker which read, "If you take the God out of America, it ceases to be America."
Oh, how I wanted to follow my fellow citizen to his destination and remind him that as that ol' loveable democratic homeboy, Thomas Jefferson (who surely articulated the best of democratic ideals while he shamelessly flouted them in practice) once wrote:
"Believing that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."
Alas, the light turned green, my fellow driver, Hoss--ever God-lovin', may he be blessed by Allah--sped away and I didn't get the chance to engage in a lively democratic exchange.
Later, and this is only mildly related, I was sitting in the waiting room at the car lot while my beloved fuel-efficient four-cylinder was getting its scheduled maintenance, and a big blustery bloke walked in, with a flat-top brush cut, and a cigar (!) sticking out of his mouth and an obnoxiously loud cellular phone, the ring tone of which was (I kid you not!) "What Would You Do with a Drunken Sailor." (I know this with certainty since he took three or four calls while we were sitting there.)
Fittingly, when I got back into the car and drove away from the lot, Donald Fagen was singing on my CD player, "In this everlasting twilight, home is just a sad abstraction."
Some Art I Have Seen and Liked
Part 3: Untitled by Donald Judd (1988)
Ah, Donald Judd. Who knew there could be such beauty in precision, in boxes upon boxes? But there is. Judd's work moves me in strange ways.
Go minimalism!
Ah, Donald Judd. Who knew there could be such beauty in precision, in boxes upon boxes? But there is. Judd's work moves me in strange ways.
Go minimalism!
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
6 June 2006
"Also Sprach Zarathrustra (Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey) by Deodato (from the album Prelude, 1972)
A funkified version of Richard Strauss. The recording for which Deodato, the Brazilian one-time bossa nova artist, is most famous, this track takes the Strauss piece that Kubrick had used so effectively in 2001 and transforms it into a hip-shakin' boogaloo affair with a beat so catchy even the monolith might want to hit the dance floor.
"Also Sprach Zarathrustra (Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey) by Deodato (from the album Prelude, 1972)
A funkified version of Richard Strauss. The recording for which Deodato, the Brazilian one-time bossa nova artist, is most famous, this track takes the Strauss piece that Kubrick had used so effectively in 2001 and transforms it into a hip-shakin' boogaloo affair with a beat so catchy even the monolith might want to hit the dance floor.
05 June 2006
Musings
Am I Just Too Much of a Nostalgia Junkie?
...or has North American culture really gone down the toilet in the past fifteen years?
The impetus for my asking this question was listening yesterday to a retrospective of number 1 songs from the past thirty years. Number 1 songs from my early salad days (say, from the time of my birth in the mid-1970s to sometime in the mid-80s) all seemed so, well, good. At the very least they were all passable. The Bee-Gees I can handle. 98 degrees? Not so much.
So it got me to wondering about a pro vs. con list: 70s-80s vs. 90s-00s.
1970s-80s had Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman; 90s-00s have Brad Pitt and ben Stiller. Advantage: 70s-80s.
1970s-80s gave us Diana Ross; 90s-00s offered Mariah Carey. Advantage: 70s-80s.
1970s-80s had Reggie Jackson; 90s-00s have Albert Pujols. Advantage: 70s-80s.
1970s-80s had Happy Days; 90s-00s have Beverly Hills 90210 or The O.C. Advantage: 70s-80s.
1970s-80s had Kurtis Blow; 90s-00s have Kanye West. Advantage: 90s-00s, begrudgingly.
1970s-80s had bumbling or deceitful Republican presidents; 90s-00s have, Wow. Advantage: 90s-00s for the double-whammy: bumbling and deceitful.
I'll wrap it up there, on a high note.
...or has North American culture really gone down the toilet in the past fifteen years?
The impetus for my asking this question was listening yesterday to a retrospective of number 1 songs from the past thirty years. Number 1 songs from my early salad days (say, from the time of my birth in the mid-1970s to sometime in the mid-80s) all seemed so, well, good. At the very least they were all passable. The Bee-Gees I can handle. 98 degrees? Not so much.
So it got me to wondering about a pro vs. con list: 70s-80s vs. 90s-00s.
1970s-80s had Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman; 90s-00s have Brad Pitt and ben Stiller. Advantage: 70s-80s.
1970s-80s gave us Diana Ross; 90s-00s offered Mariah Carey. Advantage: 70s-80s.
1970s-80s had Reggie Jackson; 90s-00s have Albert Pujols. Advantage: 70s-80s.
1970s-80s had Happy Days; 90s-00s have Beverly Hills 90210 or The O.C. Advantage: 70s-80s.
1970s-80s had Kurtis Blow; 90s-00s have Kanye West. Advantage: 90s-00s, begrudgingly.
1970s-80s had bumbling or deceitful Republican presidents; 90s-00s have, Wow. Advantage: 90s-00s for the double-whammy: bumbling and deceitful.
I'll wrap it up there, on a high note.
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
5 June 2006
"Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club (from the album, Tom Tom Club, 1981)
It's always bugged me that pop music fans my younger sister's age (i.e. born around 1980) think of that hook-thief Mariah Carey and not Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz when they hear the signature squidgy synth sound of this classic tune from the early 80s. (Carey sampled the squidge for her insipid tune, "Daydream.") "Genius of Love" has everything I think a great dance tune should have: an inspired hook, funky bass, and a nonsensical lyric. (It ranks high with another fave of mine, Deee-lite's "Groove Is in the Heart" on the funky nonsense factor.)
So, "Whatcha gonna do when you get out of jail?" "I'm gonna have some fun!"
"Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club (from the album, Tom Tom Club, 1981)
It's always bugged me that pop music fans my younger sister's age (i.e. born around 1980) think of that hook-thief Mariah Carey and not Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz when they hear the signature squidgy synth sound of this classic tune from the early 80s. (Carey sampled the squidge for her insipid tune, "Daydream.") "Genius of Love" has everything I think a great dance tune should have: an inspired hook, funky bass, and a nonsensical lyric. (It ranks high with another fave of mine, Deee-lite's "Groove Is in the Heart" on the funky nonsense factor.)
So, "Whatcha gonna do when you get out of jail?" "I'm gonna have some fun!"
Musings
Like Sally Field says, "You Like me! You really like me!"
Well, I'll be, this is what happens when you give a luddite a blog. Apparently, I mistakenly set the comments function on this blog to "must-be-approved-by-Whining-Stranger-who-obviously-doesn't-know-what-he's-doing-so-please-be-patient." Thanks to EDW, who emailed and notified me about the snafu.
And look, comments. Yay. Comments.
And I'm a google hit for "corduroy sportsjacket." And my partner and I went for sushi for dinner! Life is good, amigos.
Amen.
Well, I'll be, this is what happens when you give a luddite a blog. Apparently, I mistakenly set the comments function on this blog to "must-be-approved-by-Whining-Stranger-who-obviously-doesn't-know-what-he's-doing-so-please-be-patient." Thanks to EDW, who emailed and notified me about the snafu.
And look, comments. Yay. Comments.
And I'm a google hit for "corduroy sportsjacket." And my partner and I went for sushi for dinner! Life is good, amigos.
Amen.
04 June 2006
Musings
Looking for This?
Yesterday I discovered via statcounter that somebody found their way to this humble blog by searching "corduroy+sportsjacket" on Google. I was ecstatic. If there's one material item with which my identity has to be associated, I can deal with it being that one. My elation burns like a June sun.
It almost made up for there being no comments left here in forever.
Almost.
Nobody's reading this anymore are they?
Come back, corduroy-sportsjacket lover, come back!
Yesterday I discovered via statcounter that somebody found their way to this humble blog by searching "corduroy+sportsjacket" on Google. I was ecstatic. If there's one material item with which my identity has to be associated, I can deal with it being that one. My elation burns like a June sun.
It almost made up for there being no comments left here in forever.
Almost.
Nobody's reading this anymore are they?
Come back, corduroy-sportsjacket lover, come back!
03 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
4 June 2006
"My Love" by Paul McCartney and Wings (from the album, Red Rose Speedway, 1973)
OK, so effectively I missed the song of the day for 3 June, and I realize this is the second McCartney song to be SotD in the past week, but it's appropriate. This one goes out to Ms. You-Know-Who-You-Are on her 33rd birthday. This was the number 1 song in North America on the day you were born.
Happy Birthday!
"My Love" by Paul McCartney and Wings (from the album, Red Rose Speedway, 1973)
OK, so effectively I missed the song of the day for 3 June, and I realize this is the second McCartney song to be SotD in the past week, but it's appropriate. This one goes out to Ms. You-Know-Who-You-Are on her 33rd birthday. This was the number 1 song in North America on the day you were born.
Happy Birthday!
Musings
Ou est les lecteurs?
Sigh.
The Pistons are eliminated from the playoffs.
No comments here in forever. Is anybody even reading this thing anymore?
Just finished watching Woody Allen's Love and Death. I love Woody, but found this one sorely disappointing. Off to watch March of the Penguins now and will be back in an hour and a half with a song of the day.
Anyone out there?
Hello?
Hellllllllllllooooooooooooooo?
Sigh.
The Pistons are eliminated from the playoffs.
No comments here in forever. Is anybody even reading this thing anymore?
Just finished watching Woody Allen's Love and Death. I love Woody, but found this one sorely disappointing. Off to watch March of the Penguins now and will be back in an hour and a half with a song of the day.
Anyone out there?
Hello?
Hellllllllllllooooooooooooooo?
02 June 2006
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
2 June 2006
"The Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (1965)
Dear Larry Brown,
My smile is my make-up I wear since my break-up with you--
"The Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (1965)
Dear Larry Brown,
My smile is my make-up I wear since my break-up with you--
The Whining Stranger on Sport
A Brief Announcement from Detroit Pistons' Coach Flip Saunders
"Hi. I'm Flip Saunders. I inherited what was clearly the finest team in the NBA's Eastern Conference. I took a championship-caliber, defensive-minded team, and added an average three or four point surplus to our offensive total per regular season game. Then, in the playoffs, when--as every sports fan who's ever listened to any color commentator ever knows--defense truly wins championships, I let a defensive-minded, championship-caliber team dissipate into a confused-looking, finger-pointing bunch of whining incompetents. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote, 'So it goes.' Anyway, I enjoyed coaching in Detroit, but I hear there might be a vacancy soon at the helm of the New York Knicks. Hasta la vista, Motor City."
"Hi. I'm Flip Saunders. I inherited what was clearly the finest team in the NBA's Eastern Conference. I took a championship-caliber, defensive-minded team, and added an average three or four point surplus to our offensive total per regular season game. Then, in the playoffs, when--as every sports fan who's ever listened to any color commentator ever knows--defense truly wins championships, I let a defensive-minded, championship-caliber team dissipate into a confused-looking, finger-pointing bunch of whining incompetents. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote, 'So it goes.' Anyway, I enjoyed coaching in Detroit, but I hear there might be a vacancy soon at the helm of the New York Knicks. Hasta la vista, Motor City."
01 June 2006
The Whining Stranger on Books and Reading
Which Member of the Glass Family Are You?
I saw this quiz online today and it amused me enough to see it through. After years of assuming I was clearly Buddy, or perhaps Zooey, I was somewhat surprised to see that I might be, in fact, Seymour. Yikes. Keep your bananafish to yourself, s'il vous plait.
I saw this quiz online today and it amused me enough to see it through. After years of assuming I was clearly Buddy, or perhaps Zooey, I was somewhat surprised to see that I might be, in fact, Seymour. Yikes. Keep your bananafish to yourself, s'il vous plait.
Musings
My Favorite Words
I love words. I do. I know in our current anti-intellectual climate, as the barbarians roll through in pick-up trucks, those of us who like to nurture our vocabularies are constantly depicted as effete, elitist, irrelevant. But I really do love words. And not just esoteric words, but words from all ranges of the spectrum, from the high to the low, as it were.
Here are some of my favorites. Comment with your own!
weltschmerz [with regrets to dear Finola Hackett, who surely understands the meaning of the word now]
ostensibly
jackass
ubiquitous
rats [or alternately, "drat!"]
prestidigitation
sesquipedalianism
fuck [with regrets to my mother who probably wishes my eloquence was more consistent]
zeitgeist
wistful
dig [as a verb; as in, "I dig John Coltrane."]
vicissitude
assuage [though I never pronounce it with confidence in conversation]
malaise
puckish
dolorous
pulchritudinous
kirschwasser [as you can see, I have a weakness for German words]
hirsute [makes me giggle]
karma
I love words. I do. I know in our current anti-intellectual climate, as the barbarians roll through in pick-up trucks, those of us who like to nurture our vocabularies are constantly depicted as effete, elitist, irrelevant. But I really do love words. And not just esoteric words, but words from all ranges of the spectrum, from the high to the low, as it were.
Here are some of my favorites. Comment with your own!
weltschmerz [with regrets to dear Finola Hackett, who surely understands the meaning of the word now]
ostensibly
jackass
ubiquitous
rats [or alternately, "drat!"]
prestidigitation
sesquipedalianism
fuck [with regrets to my mother who probably wishes my eloquence was more consistent]
zeitgeist
wistful
dig [as a verb; as in, "I dig John Coltrane."]
vicissitude
assuage [though I never pronounce it with confidence in conversation]
malaise
puckish
dolorous
pulchritudinous
kirschwasser [as you can see, I have a weakness for German words]
hirsute [makes me giggle]
karma
The Whining Stranger on Film
Embarrassing Movies We Like
The other night, chilling on a friend's patio for Memorial Day, someone introduced this as a topic of conversation: "What's an embarrassing movie that you actually really like?" As proof that I'm not a complete snob when it comes to my cinephilia, here's one of mine:
Bright Lights, Big City (1988)
This movie inspired me, as an undergrad creative writing major, to sneak into nightclubs underage wearing one of my dad's sportsjackets and ties with blue jeans. While I was never a coke-sniffin' fact checker for The New Yorker, I did fancy myself a world-weary urban scribe in the [snort, laugh] Michael J. Fox mode. Jay McInerney's novel, on which this is based, is of course much better for its laconic, witty narrator, but something about this film always keeps me entertained when I stumble upon it late at night. I could try and save face by pointing out the Donald Fagen score, but really, Michael J. Fox wins me over. Go, Alex P. Keaton!
The other night, chilling on a friend's patio for Memorial Day, someone introduced this as a topic of conversation: "What's an embarrassing movie that you actually really like?" As proof that I'm not a complete snob when it comes to my cinephilia, here's one of mine:
Bright Lights, Big City (1988)
This movie inspired me, as an undergrad creative writing major, to sneak into nightclubs underage wearing one of my dad's sportsjackets and ties with blue jeans. While I was never a coke-sniffin' fact checker for The New Yorker, I did fancy myself a world-weary urban scribe in the [snort, laugh] Michael J. Fox mode. Jay McInerney's novel, on which this is based, is of course much better for its laconic, witty narrator, but something about this film always keeps me entertained when I stumble upon it late at night. I could try and save face by pointing out the Donald Fagen score, but really, Michael J. Fox wins me over. Go, Alex P. Keaton!
The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day
1 June 2006
"So Danco Samba" by Antonio Carlos Jobim (from the album, The Composer of 'Desafinado' Plays, 1963)
A playful Brazilian bossa nova tune to bring a little cool to the first day of June. This one sways like branches in the breeze; it's sweet like a fruit-juice-based cocktail in a kitschy fake coconut shell. Untouchably good mood music by way of Brazil.
"So Danco Samba" by Antonio Carlos Jobim (from the album, The Composer of 'Desafinado' Plays, 1963)
A playful Brazilian bossa nova tune to bring a little cool to the first day of June. This one sways like branches in the breeze; it's sweet like a fruit-juice-based cocktail in a kitschy fake coconut shell. Untouchably good mood music by way of Brazil.
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