long moist looks of love everlasting

Monk Hughes & the Outer Realm - A Tribute to Brother Weldon (lala)
Gene Ammons & Sonny Stitt - Boss Tenors in Orbit (lala)
The Necks - Mosquito
The Heads - various tracks (MySpace)

I went to the campus library to photocopy an article from a 1985 Time magazine. I wonder if one of the shiny students sitting at the endless rows of computers didn't frown what is that creepy old man doing with those books? as I lumbered by with the outsize library bindings cradled in my hands. I inquired where the copy services room was now (It is not where it was 20 years ago) and had to be led like a child to a little machine in the lobby to put money on my ID card, because none of the photocopiers take cash. Then it told me I didn't have an account linked to my card but I could put my remaining $2 in cash on a temporary card, only to discover it charged me $1 for the privilege and that put me exactly $.05 short of copying everything I needed, so I took to photographing the pages with my phone.

The whole ordeal felt Sisyphean as I chucked the temporary card in the trash. We still photocopy things? The only good thing that happened was when I loaded up the images from my phone wirelessly, without a card or any demoralizing Xerox bullshit, and saw this line: He gave her one of those long moist looks of love everlasting. It kinda made the whole exercise worthwhile.

feathers

The Magnetic Fields - Realism (lala)
Big Love, Season 3 (HBO)
Jonathon Lethem - Chronic City Kindle Edition (Amazon)
Adam Green - Minor Love (lala)
Chris O'Riley's From the Top Show 138, Omaha (NPR)

So many things are so good. I never really got in Big Love when it started, but I should always defer to my wife's excellent taste in TV because Season 3 is The Thing. Nikki, played by my Internet girlfriend Chloë Sevigny, is maybe television's greatest character since Tony Soprano. She is wretched and pious and embodies the conflict that the rest of the polygamous marriage - read: society - glosses over because somebody else always handily embodies the conflict. And the deal is, she actually believes the rhetoric that the rest merely utilize.

Bounce that against Jonathon Lethem's Chronic City where nobody believes what they are saying. I'm on Chapter Four. I'm a little uncertain how good this book is - I'm having trouble tearing into it but that may be a Kindle iPhone problem more than one with the writing - but I know it is how I would want to write a novel were I to do so: pit yourself as a once-was drifter (former child actor) between impossible story lines, one around an idolized personal hero (the exact Lester Bangs character that I would probably interject) the other an intangible tangible (his fiancee the astronaut stranded in space, whose letters he compiled in the superb 2008 New Yorker story "Lostronaut") and loosely bind them in a mortar of weed and heady internalized discourse. Big Love is the mechanism of game players while Chronic City is that of the bleachers.

On the above mentioned episode of From the Top, Chris O'Riley asks a young cellist "Are you a rock or a feather?" I missed the context of the question. Does he ask everybody this? The kid was decisive about being a rock, and I guess that is what it takes to be a concert pianist at 17 that gets asked questions on NPR. I feel markedly more feathery, and only partially the "float in the breeze" sense. Feathers are the evolution of dinosaur scales, the bright colors that get you laid, and the coat that keeps the rain and the cold out. I'm still thinking about the feathers on the drunken chicken from Tuesday, but haven't given a thought to the trillions of tons of rock on which the two of us stood. A rock will sit in that stream and takes what-may until it erodes off while the one with the feathers skips from rock to rock without even getting its feet wet. The feather needs the rock, and the rock gets along for a million billion years just fine without the feather. One might strive to be a rock, but I think the feather might be the way to go.

I think the tree out in front of our house looks like feathers against the dusk. Lots to think about. As Stephin Merritt and crew so drolly claim, we are havin' a hootenanny now!

We Are Having a Hootenanny - T...

If I ran Sandals: Garbage Island

John & Ernest - "Superfly Meets Shaft, Part Two" (Jukeboxmafia via Bruce Eaton's BIG STAR RADIO CITY blog)
The Eternals - Black Museum (lala)
Madlib - Madlib Medicine Show #1: Before the Verdict (lala)
The Meters - "Zony Mash" (Boogie Woogie Flu)
Various Artists - Mississippi Records Tape Series, Vol. 37 – Ghost Dance (ROOT BLOG)
Suzanne Vega - "Gypsy"

I wanted to post this picture of the camellias in the backyard while they are still adamant about displaying themselves. It has little to do with the music described below.

All I can say about "Superfly Meets Shaft, Part Two" is wow, that is an abrasive song. Be sure to read Bruce's story about it. The post-everything burglar alarm racket funk of the Eternals will do little to sooth any jarring of contents experienced during "Superfly Meets Shaft, Part Two," nor will Madlib's concept DJ album about the OJ Simpson trial, but the Meters should set everything right for but a moment, but the latest missive from the mysterious Mississippi Records will known down that house of cards.

Or, you could just look at the flowers and be glad you don't yet live on Toxic Garbage Island, the Texas size island of garbage floating somewhere out in the Pacific. A friend and I wondered during the parades how many tons of Mardi Gras beads wind up on Toxic Garbage Island, and then wondered if one day people would build floating resorts on it, like Sandals: Garbage Island. If I ran Sandals: Garbage Island, I would find John & Ernest and have them play their hit single "Superfly Meets Shaft, Part Two" during the Flotsam Luau on a beach made out of actual foam sandals every night as our visitors watch the sun sink into the garbage horizon.



Suzanne Vega remade "Gypsy," my favorite song of hers recently. She would be a suitable substitute were the John and Ernest deal to fall through.

kid feeding his daiquiri to a chicken

I took a lot of pictures during my stagger through Mardi Gras in Mamou and Eunice yesterday, but this kid feeding his daiquiri to a chicken he'd just bought outside the library in Eunice kinda sums it up.

Here is the street dance on the north side of Mamou


and the courir riders (the guys that dress up in costume and collect chickens on horseback) at the street dance in Eunice.



Here are a few other favorites:



The glitter man in Mamou; Cajun Country Queen in Eunice; the Lafayette Rhythm Devils at Fred's Lounge in Mamou



Boudin Ball before; and after



Again, that chicken is my new spirit animal.

Rough weekend for guitar players

Lil' Dave Thompson at Teddy's Juke Joint in Zachary, LA, 2008



Dale Hawkins at the Ground Zero, Clarksdale, MS, 2009

RIP

Give Iron Maiden the time of day

Orchestre Philharmonique De Monte-Carlo, James DePreist cond. - George Tsontakis' Four Symphonic Quartets
London Sinfonietta, Esa-Pekka Salonen cond. - Stravinksy's Pulcinella
The Jancee Pornick Casino (via MySpace)
Ruthie Foster - The Truth According to Ruthie Foster (lala)
Sonny Landreth - Levee Town

While parading, I met the guitarist/singer for the Jancee Pornick Casino, a one third German/America, two-thirds Russian rock trio that features a tiger-print bass balalaika in its lineup. On description alone they are already my favorite band, but behold their rawk majesty. He described the trials and joys of touring Russia by hitchhiking and train because the cops will bleed you dry from bribes if you try to drive, and how "people take a lot of drugs in Southern Spain." I like anybody who will give Iron Maiden the time of day.



Here is my other favorite version of that song by the wrongfully maligned supagroup Zwan from the soundtrack to the excellent Spun.



The presto from Pulcinella is just as badass a thing, if you can believe it. If only old Igor had lived long enough to witness heavy metal, he might have seen some of himself reflected in all that leather.

Share Stravinsky: Pulcinella; Ragtime; Renard; Octet by Esa-Pekka Salonen

Here is the promised video of the Spanish Town Mardi Gras Lawnmower Brigade. Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Year of the Tiger. Image from the calendar in our kitchen from China Taste.

That's the spirit!

Van Morrison - "Brown Eyed Girl"
Owl City - "Fireflies"

In order: The cute one of the organization with some huge beads that she caught off a float at the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade, establishing her ranking as #1 in the bead procurement game; A venison-kabob grilled by the kind folks with which we paraded. I could quite happily eat only venison forever. The kabob looks like an archipelago; Grilled Spam on a biscuit! We are a pro-Spam family - it is integral to our version of onigiri - but I was surprised to see a Joe Hunter type putting this on the grill. It was thick enough to be juicy, which, if Spam already grosses you out conceptually, should gross you out worse but, yum y'all; The requisite parade Bloody Mary. I was a bit let down that they didn't pop in the pickled okra, as is the custom here, but it did the trick that Bloody Marys do; The masses. We caught the parade not in Spanish Town proper and I have to say, I enjoyed the parade part much better this way. STown is much more suited for the mayhem aspects of post-parading; Finally, myself reflected in the baubles of one who I love, which seems a fitting thing on this Valentine's Day.

Not pictured: the poor dude who was trying to get back to where the hell he parked with a bag of beads perched precariously atop his rolling ice chest. He took a turn wrong and the beads fell off, out onto the concrete, which prompted his equally drunken spouse to publicly exclaim, "GODDAMMIT Fred! You are such a fucking idiot!" That's the spirit! Somehow I think this was not the dumbest thing Fred has done, even that day, nor was the incident really a product of his proclaimed stupidity.

Maya heard "Brown Eyed Girl" booming out of some soundsystem during our epic hike to the parade catching site and said "Hey, I know that song!" I'm glad she has mastered the musical sophistication of 90% of everyone. She also heard "Fireflies" from Owl City from another camp and surprised me by knowing most of the words, despite her radio station of choice being exclusively Country Legends 107.3. It's good to be worldly.

Speaking of, I started reading Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux, about his late life revisit to Africa, going from Cairo to Cape Town to wallow in the continents misery and celebrate its joys, but also to be incommunicado for a while. Upon leaving he proclaims

I am outta here, I told myself the next Web site I visit will be that of the poisonous Central African bird-eating spider.

I don't share his desire to be off the grid at all but again, that's the spirit!

I will have a video of the famed lawnmower brigade of Spanish Town Mardi Gras up shortly.