Or was there a left-handed fat guy singing on SNL last night?
Also, after reading this, I’m having difficulty sleeping. It’s an excellent read, but you might not believe how evil people’s machinations can become when faced with the problem of faith. No longer are the Crusades a mystery. They could happen any time. Except now, they happen in courtrooms and in wire-tapped offices.
My lady craves meat. So I go to the Walmart nearby to purchase some of their finest beef. I feel bad giving them my business. But I feel bad all the time so I might as well shop.
There’s a gal there with a high squeaky voice to match her low squeaky frame. She’s probably 4 foot six, and her voice greets you every time you enter, so to speak. Her enthusiasm vexes me. Mocks me. There’s no escape. She’s nice enough, but today, after I nod a grumpy rejoinder to her robotic salutation, we could swear she disappeared into thin air. We looked around but she was gone. Son One wondered aloud if she may have taken that moment to return to the North Pole. I didn’t get it. Terrible.
I do the do and find what seems to be the shortest line. Sadly, size of line is no accurate indicator of SPEED of line. Had I taken a glance up and out of my sullen funk, I would have seen the “4″ attendant to that line’s designation blinking as the carnival of souls before me powerlessly waited for a manager, any manager, to bring the secret key. The longer lines on either side of us trundled along nicely, as if on those moving sidewalks at an airport, while we stood impotently watching their progress, ill-gotten. There was, I imagine, a good time to call it a day, to consider our investment in time lost, to make the switch to one of the lines we found ourselves annoyingly betwixt. I did the calculus and decided to not give up. To stick it out.
Soon the manager turns the key and we snap back into motion. My attention wandered to Son Two idly rearranging the feng shui of the gum rack. The girl behind me is pretty. I thought she had that rode hard, hung up wet look one might find at Hillsborough’s own Esquire Health Club and immediately I decided I would resist my compulsion to get the person behind me to join me in a group eye-roll. No. No. No. Eyes straight ahead. I can do this.
The nonagenarian ahead of me snuck away, but I didn’t notice. Walmart’s cash register kiosks don’t have that moving belt to usher your groceries along. It’d be neat if they were like those moving sidewalks at an airport. So the gap between my groceries and the register was too wide for her bingo arms to blancmange.
The gal behind me:
“Hey, Sir, the register lady needs you to move your stuff up so she can scan it.”
“Oh, sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Pause of three seconds.
“Because I didn’t want to touch your stuff…”
Don’t do it. Doooooooon’t you do it.
Nicola Coviello (1846-1926) was a well-respected cornetist and musical professor who had performed for many dignitaries of his day, including Queen Victoria. Realizing he was at the end of his life, he made one final pilgrimage from London to Saskatchewan to say farewell to his son. On the way he stopped in NYC to say goodbye to his nephews, Peter, Dominic and Daniel. On June 13, 1926 the young men took their famous uncle to Coney Island to give him a taste of America. All went swimmingly except for the constant blare of the jazz bands. Finally, he could take it no longer. “That isn’t music,” he complained as he fell to the boardwalk. He was pronounced dead a few minutes later. Cause of death was “strain on the heart”.
I wonder if that’s how I’m going to die if I hear the cast of Glee singing “Creep” again.
This weekend come hear the funk/pop stylings of Dirty Red Pagan at the Broad Street Cafe at 10 PM. Good for you. Good ON you. And good TOWARD you.
I finally got around to the Death Certificate. It was NOT the third of September. It was the seventh.
Shit.
Why do I keep coming here? Sitting down at this local semi-chain drinking wimpy dark roast and listening to the resident blowhard prattle on to anyone who will listen that he’s met Cokie Roberts because he trained her son’s dog. He talks about Peter Noonan [sic] of Herman’s Hermits. He talks about everything to anyone like some great black hole of banality. “I train dogs.” And it’s loud, and it’s cold. And it’s awful.
And it’s Valentine’s Day. And it sucks.
The people riding in my car are not responding well to the CD player.
It’s this:
I’m killing time in so many ways.
Today turned out pretty good.
On my way to our keyboardist’s house for good coffee and manufacturing codas where there were none, I forgot that the hatch to the truck was still not closed after taking in the groceries from last night. Driving down the very busy Rte 70 from Durham, the basket of clothes I had been planning to donate to the Goodwill or whatever spilled out and onto the boulevard. There was nothing for it. When a lady stopped me about a half mile down the road, incessant in her revelation that I lost my basket, I sort of shrugged, having immediately measured the effort it would have taken to collect a basket full of clothing from a busy thoroughfare, put it back into the truck, etc.etc. It was fate. The needy were not meant to wear Residents t-shirts.
Do you still use newsgroups? I posted this in 1999.
RALEIGH AREA MUSICIANS: TOGETHER TO BENEFIT THE FOOD BANK OF NORTH
CAROLINA
Using modern technology to make a difference, twenty-six Raleigh, NC
area bands andmusicians met, conceptualized, organized and compiled a
two CD set of music completely on-line, through e-mails, Web pages and
the message board on www.raleighmusic.com. Can you believe that?
On June 28th, 1999, at around 2:30 pm, something strange and wonderful
happened. A group of Raleigh musicians and fans, in the middle of a
fiery www.raleighmusic.com messageboard discussion about the merits of
the local music scene, put their heads together. They decided to use
their musical differences positively, to hopefully affect change, make
some new friends, and hear some local music they would not have been
exposed to otherwise.
The musicians also decided it would be appropriate to donate half the
purchase price from Internet sales of the compilation discs to the
Food Bank of North Carolina, since the needs of the poor and ill-fed
throughout North Carolina often get overlooked amid all the reports of
economic boom in the Raleigh/Durham area.
So co-producers Thomas “Ski” Szypulski and Gilbert Neal began putting
together a compilation of Raleigh music. Musical styles and scene
popularity were not considered, as they wanted a mix of styles, and
wanted new artists to have their voices heard as well. The response
was better than anyone dared imagine!
The CD is called Whisper to a Scream: A Raleigh Music Compilation, a
two volume set of music whose contributors include alternative, rock,
punk, metal, electronica, pop, funk and world music artists. The CD
will help bring needed funds to the North Carolina Food Bank who will
receive all the profits from the CD sales. The NC Food Bank is a
private nonprofit organization that fights hunger in 34 counties in
central and eastern North Carolina. Emergency food pantries, soup
kitchens, shelters, programs for the elderly, day care centers and
group homes all benefit from the work of the Food Bank. The Foodbank
is particularly busy right now aiding in relief efforts for the
victims of Hurricane Floyd.
Web surfers are invited to visit http://www.mp3.com/whisper2ascream to
sample on-line audio clips, learn more about the artists involved and
purchase the two Whisper To A Scream CDs, priced incredibly reasonably
at $5.99 each. The two CDs contain just under two hours of music with
13 bands on each disc. Both volumes of Whisper To A Scream are
available for purchase. Fifty percent of the purchase price goes
directly to the Foodbank of North Carolina. A Whisper To A Scream
concert to benefit the NC Food Bank is currently being organized, too!
So enjoy! There’s everything from Miles Partridge to Meat Rocket,
Aftertax to Wofat. There’s electronica, emo, metal, funk, world music,
jazz, everything. The cover art’s by Todd Parham and Dean Sauls. All
for you, a musical postcard from Raleigh, NC. There’s more to come, so
enjoy.
Feels like there’s no one to talk to , so I talk to you again.
Watched “Spinout”, the 1966 Elvis movie. In this movie, Elvis sings a song called “Smorgasbord”.
A song called “Smorgasbord”.
And in this song, there’s a line:
“I’ll take the dish I please, and I please the dish I take…”
Go to :15.
I know it really wasn’t his fault, but this is the year “Revolver” and “Pet Sounds” came out. After “rubber Soul”.
This song was written by the same team that wrote “Devil In Disguise”.
I find it difficult to list my favorite David Bowie album, since most of them have some pretty big flaws. I suppose I would choose Hunky Dory from start to finish. But if there’s one record of his that influenced me more than any other (I didn’t hear Hunky Dory until well into my 20′s) it would have to be “Low”. The choices he made production-wise with those Berlin records still befuddle me. The drums are cacophonous but the bass (played by the tragically underrated George Murray, my favorite bass player of all time) is something that I try to emulate even now in my own ham-handed way. I also love this video for the way Bowie can teeter and fall at any minute. Coke? Heroin? No sleep? Who cares?
Stanley Dorfman also directed:
