( 12:33 PM )
Here's a photo of my dogs
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( 11:31 AM )
Apache attack
I'm assuming this happened in Iraq...although, from the looks of it, could've been a Kansas wheat field. Either way I'm sure the bastards had it coming.
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( 11:52 AM )
Coles County Leader | Local news & sports reaching more than 21,000 weekly in Mattoon & Charleston plus the communities of Oakland, Kansas, Humboldt, and Ashmore, Illinois
Here's one of my papers...
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( 11:51 AM )
For immediate release:
In case you're wondering about those pigs you saw flying east into the setting sun, let me explain: I got engaged last weekend. To be married. To a girl.
Her name is Lori Erikson. We've known each other for about a year and I can't figure out how I got by before she came along.
I started 2003 knowing it would be a big year. I had just quit a good job for no good reason. It was time to gamble on myself again, so why not bet it all.
I won the bet, although not without plenty of anxious moments. In the end I got a great job running a group of weekly newspapers in small Illinois towns.
But what I didn't gamble on was Lori. I never expected to remember '03 as the year I gave up my singleton lifestyle. Frankly I wasn't sure I'd ever give it up.
But here I am, happier than Rush Limbaugh in a pharmaceutical warehouse. Lori is beautiful, smart and funny. She's also intense in a way that I'll never be. There's something about her intensity that makes me desperate; I don't scare easy, but I'm scared to death of life without her.
Alright, this isn't a Meg Ryan movie. I'll stop.
You're all invited to the wedding. Just bring proof that you've read my blog. And a gift.
And look for increased blogging in '04. I've made a resolution and downloaded the Google toolbar (which kicks ass...blog link, search box, pop-up killer), so everything's in place.
Stay tuned.
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( 1:01 PM )
On the Cubs, with playoff predictions
I had written this long thing about what it means to be a Cubs fan and how I don't feel worthy because I haven't suffered enough to qualify as a real Cub fan.
Know what? The hell with that. I just came in from running a bunch of errands around the North Side, and I gotta tell you: this is fun. Chicago is abuzz, and it's not even happy hour. Three hours till game time and nobody is whining about their years of disappointment and ineptitude.
Not to say that anybody expects to win. Cubs fans have fallen for that too many times. No, they know it could end any time, which just adds to the excitement.
If losing has taught Chicago anything, it seems, it's how to live in the moment. It's a great feeling and I'm going to enjoy it too. I never suffered with the Cubs but I'm not going to feel guilty because they've started winning just two years after I came on board.
History is bunk! Go Cubs!
I’m also rooting for the Giants, partly because I think Frisco is a cool town and partly because I don’t think Florida deserves a team, let alone another World Series. I had planned to root for the RedSox, but I flipped over to Queer Eye for a few seconds and they fell two games behind.
I want the Twins to win, if only to see Steinbrenner’s head explode with the knowledge that he’s pissed away $180 million. The Yankees have become a caricature of their megalomaniacal owner and of major-league economics and for that reason I wish they should lose. Plus, I fucking hate the Yankees.
I’ll predict another Bay Area World Series, with the Giants beating the As on Barry Bonds’ Game Seven walk-off homer immediately followed by an earthquake that causes a raucos PacBell park to collapse in on itself as Tim McCarver comments ‘We’re gonna die, Joe, but what a Series!’
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( 4:37 PM )
Started a new parttime job last week: running orders in the livestock markets at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I take order tickets from phone clerks and deliver them to brokers in the trading pits. The orders are for futures and options on cattle, hogs, pork bellies, milk and lumber. I don’t know how lumber got in there with all the livestock; it’s the smallest and saddest market--a dozen or so guys standing around waiting for something to happen–and it sits off to the side, out of sight of the other pits, like a stack of old two-by-fours piled behind the barn.
Actually, I like lumber. When you take an order back there you feel like they’re grateful to have it. In all the other pits they just snatch the ticket out of your hand and thrust it into the chaos, leaving you standing there empty handed and apart, looking in at their yelling, gesticulating, cussing, pushing each other sometimes in anger but usually just because they’re in each other’s way. Nothing personal.
Occasionally of course a fight does break out. That’s futures trading. And by the way, a future is a contract to buy or sell a commodity on a specific date in, voila, the future. So if you buy an October hog contract at 66, you’ve just agreed to pay $66 for a rail car full of hogs come October. Of course, traders never get the hogs; they sell a contract to negate the one they bought, closing their position. If they sell for more than they bought, or buy for less than they sold, they’ve made money.
Beyond that I won’t try to explain futures trading, because beyond that I’m not sure I understand it. Nor do I want to. I took a job on the trading floor because I’d always wanted to see it up close. There is a subculture in the pits, something you can’t see from the visitor’s gallery. You’ve got to get down and move around in it for a while.
I’ve only been down there for two weeks so I all I can offer are a few observations. Later I hope to develop this but here’s what I can tell you for now.
Running is easy, and boring. A runner spends about half the day just standing there in his flimsy yellow jacket, waiting for an order to come in. Once it does, he has to know who takes what orders. In the hog pit and both cattle pits, a different clerk takes orders for each contract month. Options go to somebody else altogether. All in you’ve got about 20 clerks whose faces you’ve got to match with a contract and a month.
And that’s another thing: the months. You’ve got to memorize the fucking months–not which ones have 31 days or which ones go with what zodiacs, but which ones match their completely unrelated and illogical one-letter abbreviation. For instance, January is F. April is J. July is N and November is X.
I’ve asked a few old salts if they have any idea why the letters don’t match the months; they don’t, although one guy closed an eye and looked up at the ceiling, searching his memory as if I’d asked him the name of his first teacher, something he’d long forgotten and now wondered if he’d ever known at all.
So after a week or so you learn the months, and the faces that go with the contracts, and then you can start to look around. And you might as well look around, because there’s nothing else to do. Running is one of those minimum-wage gigs that are not only tedious and stupid, but offer no opportunity for excellence.
In most good jobs you can excel by outpacing your obligations, by going above and beyond. In running there is no above and beyond...go above and you’ll hit your head, go beyond and you’ll never return.
The best part of the job: you get to throw trash on the floor. The trading-floor is covered in wall-to-wall scrap–-old order tickets, discarded duplicates, morning newspapers, gum wrappers and other hard-to-identify paper detritus. Somebody put a few trashcans around the floor, a gesture of decorum that is utterly futile before the irrestible joy of making a mess. Like the six Coke cans you toss in a cooler full of beer.
Every day in the morning there’s a guy next to our desk who takes a deck of old tickets and flings them in the air. They go about 20 feet up and burst apart into a fluttering dome that makes the exchange look, for a second, like the inside of a snow globe.
There’s lots more to tell, but it can wait.
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( 5:07 PM )
DRIPPING WET LATINAS
In today's news, some daredevil idiot named Aron Ralston got himself trapped under a boulder in Utah and had to cut off his own arm with a pocketknife to get free. Amazingly, he then dressed the wound, rapelled down a rock wall and found somebody to help him call for a rescue helicopter.
Denver Post story.
If you read far enough you'll notice the oh-by-the-way news that there is a precedent for this. Ten years ago some fisherman cut off his own leg and then drove himself to the hospital!
Are you fucking serious? He drove himself to the hospital? After he chopped off a leg? Who says there are no heroes? I bet he thinks this Ralston kid is a total pussy for calling a rescue helicopter. Fucking get on your bike and pedal out of there, pantywaist.
And I wonder what it must've been like when this madman showed up at the hospital that day in October 1993. Maybe something like this...
'Can I help you sir?'
'Yes--I think so. I'm afraid I've had to cut off one of my legs.'
[Nodding, typing] 'Which leg?'
'Oh, um, left, just below the knee.'
'Is it currently bleeding?'
'No, not too bad.'
'And when did this occur, sir?'
'Well, let's see, the boulder fell on me about, oh, eight hours ago, I'd say.'
'I mean when did you amputate the leg, sir? How long since you cut the leg off?'
'Ah yes, of course. I'm sorry. About two hours.'
'Well!'
'I know, but it took me more than an hour just to crawl back to the car. The drive in wasn't so bad. Still have the right foot!'
'And have you brought the amputated portion of your leg with you?'
'No, afraid not. Left it under the boulder.'
'Please fill out these forms and the doctor will be with you in a few minutes.'
'Could I use your pen?'
#
( 9:57 PM )
BRAD & JENNIFER HONEYMOON VIDEO
Spent the afternoon at the ballpark. US Cellular Fan Attack Field, formerly known as Comiskey Park. White Sox-Royals. I wanted to see the Royals play while they were in first place, and they won’t be back in Chicago till August. I went alone–which is perfectly normal. If you’re a serial killer. Anyway, here’s a statistical abstract from my day.
2
stadiums; my baseball afternoon started with the sounds of corny organ music and scalpers calling hoarse at the end of a long homestand. And this was half an hour before I got to Comiskey. Standing on the platform at the Addison L stop I had a view of the pregame scene in and around Wrigley for Cubs-Reds.
$1.50
fare for half-hour Red Line journey from Addison-Wrigley to 35th-Sox
$36
price for a ticket 16 rows behind homeplate
$0
amount I spent on concessions
Priceless
an afternoon at the ballpark with your kids. Thank god I don’t have any.
1
people sitting in my row, including me
2
times I was asked by an usher, or whatever they are, to show my ticket in order to prove I hadn’t snuck down to a better seat in the 5% full lower section
44
degrees farenheit at game time
1917
last time the WhiteSox won the World Series, as celebrated by a banner in center field
1919
last time the WhiteSox threw the World Series; no banners for that
4
hitless innings pitched by White Sox starter Esteban Loaiza
4
hits allowed by Loaiza over six innings, in which he gave up one run (earned), struck out 11 and walked two
4
innings before Royals starter Chris George retired the Sox in order
4
Sox home runs; all solo except Carlos Lee’s 5th-inning Grand Slam
5
security guys on the field down the third base line
6
security guys down the first base side, the visitors’ side; the KC boys had threatened not to play unless security was beefed up
2
bats thrown into the stands (accidentally....????) by Royals 2B Carlos Febles
1
times per at bat the drunk-ass south-side bitch behind me shouted ‘you suck’ to Royals hitters
10,116
announced attendance
4,000
actual attendance (my estimate; much closer than the official, laughable figure)
7.5
innings I stayed before seeking warmth
7
runs the Royals trailed by when I left (they lost 8-1)
4:30
I walked off the L train at Addison to a platform packed with smiling Cubs fans who’d just seen the northsiders pound Cincinatti 16-3
So a banner day for Chicago baseball. Of course I had hoped to witness a Sox loss, and maybe see some drunken piece of trash Sox fan charge the field. Well, too bad.
I did enjoy watching Loaiza work. The Royals didn't look like a contender, but I think they'll be fun to watch. Today they lost, but to a hot pitcher and without two of their best every day players: Brent Mayne and Joe Randa. Young Chris George had some good stuff but didn’t spend nearly enough time in the strike zone.
As for the drunken south side trash, I can see that anytime, come Bears season.
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( 12:18 PM )
CATHERINE ZETA-JONES NAKED
I'm going to see if provocative titles will increase traffic on my blog, which as far as I can tell is generating about as much buzz as a six-pack of O'Douls.
Random thoughts for today, Tues. April 15...
It's tax day and I still haven't filed...last year's return. Ha! I denounce the income tax as unconstitutional. Plus I hate filling out the forms.
Memo to Roy Williams: Fuck yourself.
Sunny and 85 degrees in Chicago today. Gorgeous. Lori and I are going to walk home from work tonight (that's her work; I have a meeting downtown this afternoon, but I do not work). The lake shore path will be crowded with joggers, roller-bladers, bikers, dog-walkers and four-ton baby strollers, but the traffic won't spoil the pleasure of a long walk on our first summer night.
So three years ago Roy turned down the job at Carolina, choosing to stay at Kansas, my alma mater, because he said he couldn't look his 'kids' in the eye and tell them there was another team he'd rather coach. Which would imply that this time, there is another team he'd rather coach. He also said, in that misty-eyed news conference three years ago, that he'd be at Kansas till they fired him or drove him away in a hearse. Doh! Good one, you really had us going. Prick.
Then again, HOW 'BOUT THOSE ROYALS? Goddamn and hell if they're not a surprise. I know it won't last, that they'll be out of the post-season race by July, so I'm enjoying it. Been years since I woke up every morning wondering how the Royals did. Exciting stuff.
Now that the war is over, when are we going to start discovering some weapons caches? I can understand not finding any WMDs to this point--our guys have been pretty busy whipping ass. Now though, I need to see some of these horrible threats to our national safety that caused us to whip said ass. Americans have died in Iraq. If they died to save the rest of us from a worse fate, I can live with it. Let's hope...
KU is now operating with no basketball coach and no athletic director. If we lose a few players, we could be in for a multi-year swoon. Bill Self would save us from that fate, and I'd love to see him pacing the Allen Fieldhouse sideline next year, but I don't expect it to happen. He's building something at Illinois, has a good team coming back and a strong recruiting class coming in. KU would be a step up, but not a big one. And there's a lot of uncertainty in KU's athletic dept right now.
Saw a great show last night: The Jayhawks at Metro. An acoustic three-piece set, under two hours, but packed with prairie harmonies and that cool power-twang the Jayhawks do so well. Gary Louris got his vocal swerve on and Metro is the best venue in Chicago for a good singer. They played my favorites from 'Hollywood Town Hall' and 'Tomorrow the Green Grass,' plus most of their new record, which isn't bad.
Sitting here with the windows wide open, it strikes me that the 'beep-beep' backup signal has replaced the emergency siren as the signature sound in American urban life. Whoa.
Dear Coach Williams:
Congratulations. Hope you like your new job, coaching a team full of brats who play in a spiritless dome filled with linen-pantsed douchebags who got rich selling tobacco products to our nation's youth. Best of luck, fucker.
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( 2:06 PM )
MARIAH CAREY LINGERIE
I’m not writing this in response to Mike Walls’s column on David Wells; I want to address the Wells hubbub in general.
I find it a little troubling that the Yankees would fine Wells $100K for claiming he was half-drunk when he pitched a perfect game in 1999. Fining a guy for telling a story about something that really happened troubles me. I know the Yankees aren’t a government agency, so this isn’t a First Amendment issue. It’s more subtle than that. Please bear with me as I try to explain.
I don’t have a problem when a player gets fined for calling his manager a dumbass or ragging on his teammates. I didn’t have a problem with MLB’s spanking of John Rocker. But there’s a difference between what Rocker said and what Wells wrote. Rocker expressed views that baseball officials found repugnant. It’s their organization and their right to take action when some moron insults a portion of the population (particularly one to whom MLB hopes to sell lots of merchandise).
Wells, on the other hand, simply stated the facts. The fact that he was half in the bag during his perfect game might subject him to discipline in and of itself, but telling the world about it should not. He didn’t attack his teammates, didn’t insult any ethnic groups, didn’t slander anybody, as far as I know.
Does that make sense? I know it’s a blurry distinction but to me it’s an important one. I don’t like it when people are punished for telling the truth.
And by the way, who are the Yankees to get indignant about Wells’s revelations? So he pitched pissed. That should cut-and-paste seamlessly into Yankee history. Everybody knows Babe Ruth was a drunkard, a glutton and a womanizer. Mickey Mantle probably never played a game less than half drunk. The great 70s teams of Jackson, Munson and Nettles were full of coke-sniffing egomaniacs. Goose Gossage was a raging stoner who couldn’t get George Brett out (okay, he probably didn't get high, but Brett did own his ass).
Lighten up, Yankees. You win the World Series every other fucking year, so quit your bitching. And maybe someday we’ll get to read about how Derek Jeter played the ‘98 Series in Mariah Carey’s underwear .
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( 3:54 PM )
PENELOPE CRUZ SHOWER CAM
Today, I bought a hairbrush. Normally, I know, this would be one of like three things that aren’t interesting enough even for a weblog, but I'm all about, you know, breaking down barriers and shit. I have never purchased a hair brush. Nor have I purchased a comb, a pick or any other hair-manipulation device. In truth, I’ve never even owned any. Until now, I never needed any.
For 15 years my hair was so short as to defy even the most densely packed brush bristles. You couldn’t move the damn stuff. Which was how I liked it: easy. I’d tussle it with a towel and sort of flatten it with a palm and, bada-boom, my look would be complete. In the last year, though, I’ve been growing it longer. In that time I have received only three haircuts.
That’s as many haircuts as I used to get in three months, if you must know. For years I’d go once a month to the barbershop, where the guy would wrap my neck in tissue, clip on the No. 3 blade, buzz-cut the sides and back, taper toward the top with a bigger attachment–a No. 3 ½ maybe–and scissor the top to finger length. No sideburns. And a month later, just when it would get long enough to start lying over–-long enough to need a comb–-I’d go back under the clippers.
Before that, in high school, my friend Tab and I would cut each other’s hair. None of this tapering bullshit or finger-length scissoring. Just uniform buzzcuts, short and straightforward as any Marine.
We weren’t Marines, of course, or militarists or skinheads; just guys with curly hair in a time when it wouldn’t do for a white kid to wear an afro. We cut one another’s hair, in his mom’s garage usually, because we were too manly for salons and too cool for barbershops, where all they ever talked about was weather and government incompetence.
Sometime in college I started letting it grow out a little on top, but never more than an inch and a half or whatever an alchoholic barber’s finger could swell to. It was clean, cool, conservative, copacetic.
And so it went, through the years. Time passed, wine bottles emptied, love came and went, but my hair stayed the same. Until early last year, when for no reason, without planning it or deciding to do it, I went six weeks without a haircut. Then I went three months. Then I went six months, my hair growing longer than it had been since my very first haircut, when I was two years old.
That’s how it looks now (four months past a haircut), and just like in those baby pictures, it’s curly, unruly stuff. If I leave it alone it gets pretty crazy, curling around the top of my head like the thoughts that swirl on a first kiss. So I use hair gel–-a glop of clear, unsmelling goo with little plastic-looking bubbles in it. This odd stuff makes my hair look wet for an hour and keeps it matted down for about three hours. After that the mop starts to assert itself again and begins the poofing process that leaves me looking fairly Greg Brady by nightfall.
I like to stay in control of my hair–-a compulsion left over from my short-hair formative years, I suppose–-and it occured to me that a brush might help; I thought it might get the gel down in there, really work it down to the follicles, or whatever. This morning, I was in Walgreens, and there they were.
So now I own a hairbrush. It looks like a nice one, a black Conair about six inches long with a ribbed rubber grip and a nest of maybe 120 pins (they’re hard to count; try it–it’s a bitch) with round black-coated tips. I used it and it seemed to work okay. When I got home late this afternoon nothing had gone too haywire up there.
I can’t tell you why I decided to grow my hair longer. Like I said, there was never any moment of decision. There was some egging on from Stephane and some whispered endorsements from some friendly ladies, but I don’t think those things influenced me too much.
It’s not any kind of political statement or attempt at noncomformity–-I’ve never believed your individuality had anything to do with your hair or your clothes or the bumper stickers on your car.
I hope it’s not some premature midlife-crisis bullshit. The last thing I want is to become a Richard Ford character, a thumb-sucking baby boomer trying to reclaim his soul.
But I think it’s not surprising that this hair thing happened in 2002, a year in which I changed apartments twice, almost moved to a new city and quit my job of four years. All year I felt restless, unsettled. Craving change. Maybe what started with skipping a few haircuts led to quitting a perfectly good job.
In a few years I’ll be ready again. I’ll be bored and restless and maybe I’ll go back to clean-cut. For now, though, it’s working. My girlfriend likes the hair: she buries her hands in it and she laughs in the morning when it looks like it could be home to a family of condors. And that's what it's about: make a change--you never know what joys it'll bring.
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( 12:24 PM )
BRITNEY SPEARS TOPLESS IN A HUMVEE
We almost lost me this morning. I was sitting at the computer in my living room, reading about how Kansas kicked hell out of Wyoming last night, when I noticed my eyelids getting heavy, my pulse slowed to three-quarter time and my lust for life draining fast. All the signs of an ensuing coma. Luckily, I instantly diagnosed the source of this swelling lethargy: Fresh Air. I had left the radio tuned to NPR following the morning news, and for the last half hour it had been playing Teri Gross’s interview with Joe Lieberman and his wife.
I’m sure you recognize what a dangerous combination this could be, this cocktail made with one part brushy Teri monotone, two parts incessantly reasonable Lieberman droning. I got up and switched the goddamn thing off, and just in time. Any longer and I would’ve needed an adrenaline injection, a big fucking needle rammed into my heart to avert the catatonic slumber that can result from listening to lethally mellow public radio hosts.
Disaster averted. Neko coming out of my speakers now. Passion in her voice and in the air. But just to be on the safe side, I’m gonna make some more coffee.
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( 2:16 PM )
J LO GIRAFFE SEX
Today's my last day on the job. I gave notice just before Thanksgiving, and as of 2003 I'll be unemployed. Spent the last two days cleaning out the desk I've occupied since August 1998. I'm prone to silly nostalgia, so it's a little sad, but it's the right decision.
I've been at this job for four years, and change, and that's long enough. I don't have another job waiting for me, but I've got some ideas. There's a good chance I'll fall on my ass, that a year from now I'll be broke, evicted, humiliated and/or suicidal. But as I see it, any and all of those are preferable to letting my soul atrophy in the same job year after year.
I could tell you about the liberation I feel. About the elation that shoots through me when people say I'm crazy. About the myth and the futility of careerism. But I'm sick of hearing myself yammering about that shit, so I'll spare you.
What I will tell you is that I've met the Berlitz girl. Her name is Alyssa (sp? no idea) and she's from Sao Paolo. We met just before the holiday, when I stopped her to say we'd be having our office Xmas dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse (I'd heard she was Brazilian from another Berlitzer...and yes, I enjoy using the word Brazilian in reference to her). Today she waved me down on my way out of the men's room (hands washed, thank god) to give me some mail that had accidentally been delivered to their office. I told her it's my last day. We made a little small talk. She wished me luck.
I wanted to tell her how much she's meant to me. How much I'm going to miss the sight of her, smiling behind her desk, floating through the hallway, jabbering Portugese into the phone. But I didn't. I won't. She'll never know.
So this is it. My desk is empty, my personal junk stowed, my farewells said. I'll miss the place, but it's time to get moving again. I'm not sure where the next year will take me, but I know it'll be a year to remember, and that's the point. Stay tuned.
#
( 1:52 PM )
Thoughts on the indie bands who send us their records.
Each of the CDs I've received fits one of two descriptions:
1. Sucks (probably 8 of 10 in my little collection)
2. Sucks, but shows potential not to suck
I don't mind listening to any of them, even the ones that suck. My time isn't that valuable. And sucky music isn't offensive or even bothersome to me.
The problem I have with most of these bands is that they take themselves too, too seriously. This is a problem the world over, but it's especially bad with artistic and creative types, because these people not only take themselves too seriously, but are prone to expressing it.
It's true that great art requires some degree of self-absorption. But just because you're self-obsessed doesn't mean you can't recognize how ridiculous you are.
#
( 12:57 PM )
In defense of WBEZ
I like Chicago Public Radio. I like weeknight Jazz from 8pm to 4am. I listen to ‘Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’ on Saturday mornings. I think ‘This American Life’ may be the best thing ever to ride an electromagnetic wave.
And I listen to ‘Morning Edition’ every day while I shave, wax, put on my lingerie and otherwise prepare to face the day. I don’t have a problem with Lisa Labuz. She comes on, she reads the local news, the weather, the sponsorships/ads, she introduces the traffic reports. I don’t find her inarticulate, but maybe that’s because I often tune her out. If the local news lacks interest—school boards fighting over attendance policy and so forth—I stop listening. Maybe I put on some music, maybe I just retreat into my head (you want to hear some annoying voices, step inside this head).
The sponsorship announcements are tiresome, but necessary. WBEZ has managed to pare down to one pledge drive a year. I’ll trade a few more ads for a few less pledge drives. Besides, they’re not nearly as irritating as the jingle-laden crap on commercial radio.
And then there’s the traffic. I love the traffic. Listening to the traffic report in Chicago is like listening to old World War II radio chatter—a rat-tat coded message to comrades doing battle on the Chicago freeways. I’ll never forget hearing it when I first moved here. "Dan Ryan twenty five minutes to the interchange. Ike 50 minutes from the North-South. Bishop Ford 30 minutes outbound to Kingery. Southbound Stevenson backed up with gawkers at an accident near the circle." I felt so cool. I had a big-city job, a crappy big-city apartment and soon I would know all the big-city traffic lingo: who was this Dan Ryan, and how did he get a freeway named after him?
Four years later I listen to the traffic just for the sonic pleasure, even though backed up traffic on the Kennedy affects me no more than a backed up toilet in Milwaukee. Now I know the code. Dan Ryan was on old crony of Mayor Daley (the First). I’m in. And every morning, I’ve got WBEZ to remind me.
#
( 11:31 AM )
In the interest of jerking around, I've made a list of my favorite songs from 2002. Disclaimer: I, being of sound mind and (mostly) body, undertake this waste of time with full knowledge of its futility and irrelevance. I'm doing it because, why not.
Here then, in the order they come to mind, the best songs I heard this year.
10. Buddy Miller, 'Midnight & Lonesome'
9. Ryan Adams, 'Dear Chicago' Only truly worthwhile song on his half-assed 'Demolition' album
8. Carol's Pub house band, 'Silver Wings' Friday Nov. 29, approx. 1:30 a.m. Coolest country band in Chicago, my favorite Merle Haggard song. Moment immediately ruined when followed with 'The Gambler.'
7. Nick Cave, 'Love Letter' Face it: Nick Cave kicks ass.
6. Tom Waits, 'Flower's Grave' Another bad motherfucker, still getting it done.
5. Kasey Chambers, 'Water in the Fuel' Live at Martyrs, February. A Fred Eaglesmith tune rendered perfect by Kasey's big, beautiful voice.
4. Neko Case, 'Wish I Was the Moon' ...pitter-pat goes my heart.
3. Wilco, 'Jesus Don't Cry' Best song from the album of the year.
2. Johnny Cash, 'The Man Comes Around' Gives me chills every time.
1. Wilco, 'War on War' Live at the Riviera Theatre, Chicago, August. Jeff Tweedy belted out 'You're gonna lose, you've gotta learn how to die....If you wanna wanna be alive,' and I saw the light. Those words, that song, cleansed me, healed a summer heartache. I was saved on that night, with the Riv as my church, Wilco my minister, and music, my gospel.
#
( 2:33 PM )
I've been grooving on this song by Ryan Adams lately. It's a great example of what this guy is capable of. Unfortunately, most of his recent music has been uninspired, overproduced mediocrity, but when he puts his heart into it he writes strong, honest, interesting songs like this one. "Dear Chicago" is about that dark, sad feeling you get after the heartache, after the bitterness, when you realize you're getting over it, whether you want to or not. Anyway, here are the lyrics...
Dear Chicago,
You'll never guess
You know the girl you said I'd meet someday
Well I got something to confess.
She picked me up on Friday
Asked me if she reminded me of you
I just laughed and lit a cigarette
Said that's impossible to do
Life's gotten simple since
Fluctuates so much
Happy and sad and back again
I'm not crying now too much
Think about you all the time
It's strange and hard to deal
Think about you lying there
And those blankets lie so still
Nothing breathes here in the cold
Nothing moves or even smiles
I've been thinking some of suicide
But there's bars out here for miles
Sorry about the every kiss
Every kiss you wasted back
I think the thing you said was true
I'm gonna die alone and sad
[bridge]
The wind's feeling real these days
Yeah baby it hurt's me some
Never thought I'd feel so blue
New York City, you're almost gone
I think that I've fallen out of love
I think I've fallen out of love with you.
#
( 12:30 PM )
After four days and five nights of considering the matter, turning it over in my mind, studying the media reports, listening to the experts and weighing the possibilities, I have reached a conclusion.
Angels in seven.
#
( 10:53 AM )
Okay, I read this piece about Neko Case in the Globe & Mail and I had to share. The story was lame, another meet-for-lunch interview (when and why did these become the staple of rock journalism?), but the reporter did get a rise out of Neko by telling her that Bruce Springsteen had been bad-mouthing Tacoma, Washington--Neko's hometown--based on the stench produced by the city's paper mills. This G&M hack had the good sense to print her response in full. Here it is....
"He doesn't like my town? Whatever. He also just made an album about Sept. 11, so what do you expect? Cash it in, Bruce. Bruce Springsteen can fuck off if he doesn't like Tacoma, Wash. It's one of the most beautiful places on Earth. There are pulp mills, pork rendering plants and nuclear power plants all across the United States, but if I didn't find some beauty in my hometown, where would I be now? I'd be dead. If I couldn't find hope in something that other people find ugly, I don't know what would happen. I feel pretty ferociously in defence of my hometown. So fuck you, Bruce Springsteen. I'm glad the pulp mills are keeping people like that out. That's totally my knee-jerk, asshole reaction to Bruce Springsteen not liking my hometown."
You go, girl.
#
( 6:03 PM )
The girl at the Berlitz office on my floor is gorgeous. Tall, dark, Latin. Dark eyes and big beautiful lips. Cheek bones like Corvette fenders.
I don't know her, but Berlitz is next to the men's room and she's the receptionist, so I see her every time I go to the bathroom. Of course, sometimes I don't have to piss or anything, I just walk over there to steal a look at her. We've never spoken, and that's the thing: I don't really want to talk to her. I like just seeing her, occasionally exchanging smiles. Any time I get bored or depressed at my desk I can take a walk down the hall and there she is--even a glimpse and I feel better. If on the other hand I get to know her, make friends, ask her out or do anything to advance toward any kind of relationship, then every time I go by I'll have to say Hi, make small talk, at least wave. Fuck that. Relationships, with friends, lovers, even acquaintances, are complicated. Sure, they're wonderful, but just seeing a pretty girl, just smiling at her, can be wonderful too. If you're going to make it in this world you've got to learn to enjoy the simple pleasures: good food, music, Saturday mornings. Or a pretty girl's smile. You don't have to earn it, nobody can take it away from you and you don't feel bad for enjoying it.
What you do once you're in the bathroom is nobody's business.
#
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