the word cosmic

Fishing.

Mountain Man, Reach the Harbor
Guy Clark, The South Coast of Texas

I like that word cosmic; it's just the way that people
Tend to use it that offends my sense of survival
- Guy Clark, "Who Do You Think You Are"

Fleur De Lis.


Stadium seating lights during Tron: Legacy


Maya and her friends were playing "Jackson Pollock" at the sleepover, presumably not peeing in the fireplace during a fancy dinner party

Gordon Gano & Lost Bayou Ramblers at Blue Moon, Lafayette, LA 1/15/2011

Gordon Gano (of Violent Femmes) & Lost Bayou Ramblers, "Blister in the Sun" at Blue Moon, Lafayette, LA 1/15/2011

Commentary about this show is forthcoming Wednesday in my 225 column, but yeah, it was a great show only rivaled by the greatness how it came about and how I ended up there. Thanks to Clarke for hipping me to the show, a whole different Alex for driving, and Rainier for being the catalyst you are. Let it also be stated that Gordon Gano is a really nice guy and no slouch at the fiddle.


"Add It Up" from the back of the bar.

One for "Gone Daddy Gone" is  "processing" but I got antsy. You can probably click here and see it by now.

You know why I don't like miserable people?

The scene on the way to the bank.

There is a new guy working at the bank, a scruffy white guy with a short beard ringing the bottom of his head, like an exagerated. partial outline drawn on when he looks at you straight, and a yellow polo shirt working among five older black tellers. While I was filling out my deposit slip, he was asking the other tellers, "You know why I don't like miserable people?" but no one was biting. He persisted, "You know why I don't like miserable people?" The woman directly to his left did not acknowledge him and instead said, "May I help you?" to me. The guy started to ask again but another teller to her immediate left, the guy that helped me set up my account a couple months back, glaced at me and then sideways at him and cut him off. "Why, man." "Beacuse miserable people are just trying to make other people miserable." and the teller nodded in affirmation. "True. That's true," and without looking, walked past him to the little glassed-in area where he sets up new accounts.

Fred Frith, Nowhere, Sideshow, Thin Air
The Music Tapes, First Imaginary Symphony for Nomad


Streaking gentleman hits unexpected obstacle, via BoingBoing

I just talked to the singing saw guy from Neutral Milk Hotel and the Music Tapes on the phone, which means were I to be plunged in darkness right this second, I might give off a faint glow.

When I interview relatively famous people, or even less than famous people, I keep their contacts on my phone just so when I scroll by looking for the pizza place or Maya's friend's mom I'm like, oh yeah, there's so-and-so, even though it's usually the case that I'll never contact them again. Even if for another interview, I'd go through "their people." A lot of times these things require a couple of calls to get everything scheduled. I wonder if the guy from Men at Work has my name in his phone.

Phone numbers are weird like that. They linger. Plenty of people have the same phone number forever and you know it forever and you still don't call and instead feel anxious about it. I wonder how long until we don't have phone numbers anymore and will those connections remain somehow? Will the resulting anxiety from not using connections remain? I already barely know anyone's number by heart because "they are in my phone". It was not long ago that I'd reccomned someone just look me up on MySpace and then Facebook and then when that implodes, will I join the next thing or just let the connections dangle? Data like that, in database terminology, is called "orphan records" - it is there, forever until it is forcibly removed, holding the key to something but you can no longer get to that thing that has the key; you instead start cutting new keys.


The Music Tapes / The Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour / Static The Television performs "The Television Tells Us" live at SUNY Purchase on 10/16/2008

Playin' ping pong on his honeymoon

Some sketchy characters Maya sketched on my whiteboard last time she was up here.

Mark Richard, The Ice at the Bottom of the World
Richard Hell & the Voidoids, Blank Generation
Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band, Safe as Milk
Pere Ubu, Dub Housing

Never will get tired of Blank Generation. Or Dub Housing. Hey, Joe, was watching Police Women of Cincinnati last night, looking for the Polar Bar and a Hudy Gold sign and wherever that place we ate breakfast when I got off the train that had the guy taking bets behind the counter who remarked out of the blue "Johnny Bench? Playin' ping pong on his honeymoon when he shoulda been upstairs, takin' care of business!" and thinking of you and if you're still reading this, or even if not, happy new year!


Pere Ubu, "Ubu Dance Party"

tracers and little demons

Portrait of the artist as a Google Image search

Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel (or 2 or "scratch")
Daryl Hall, Sacred Songs
Robert Fripp, Exposure (YouTube playlist, embedded below)

To Peter Gabriel: Once my friends and I spraypainted a logo one of us made for your name on the undeveloped cul-de-sac street behind the neighborhood. We had to make one up because you didn't have one, or even name your albums until So came out. We never thought about it, or I never did, but that was a cool move on your part. The second of those is a lovely, delicate rope bridge strung between the sweaty headiness of the 70s and the cold, plastic charm that would take hold in the 80s.


Peter Gabriel, "Mother of Violence"

Also, somebody on Facebook thinks it is your birthday and I know it to be Feb 15 because we one afternoon made a joke about it being on the "ides of February" which isn't much of a joke, but I don't know how to tell the guy without making the joke worse. So, happy birthday!

According to Wikipedia, This album was originally intended as part of a loose trilogy with Robert Fripp's Exposure and Daryl Hall's Sacred Songs (all three albums were produced by Fripp) and it's been decades since I heard the former and never since the latter so here's a plan for the day.


Daryl Hall, "Babs and Bads". It's very 70s/80s stacatto-strut dated but stick with this one; it goes some weird places come the 3:30 mark, a 'lude interlude, if you will. Daryl's soul-filled blue eye blinks back to life like nothing happened, like a total professional, crooning through the tracers and little demons tugging at his blazer tails.


Robert Fripp, Exposure. YouTube playlists are the new cassette without that impatient 45 minute wait in some friend's bedroom waiting for the album to finish.

neon patches of wildflowers

When I got to the library, a girl in the coffee shop said, "Nah, I'd marry Bill Cosby over Bill Clinton." The guy working with her asked, a little incredulously, "Over Funkadelic Bill Clinton?" and she said, "Yep, over Funkadelic Bill Clinton." I was going to look up and image for "funkadelic bill clinton" but elsewhere someone put up "zombie cosby" and so the pattern emerges.


View Larger Map
The walk to the library is now one mile exactly.

Mark Richard, The Ice at the Bottom of the World
Adebisi Shank, This Is the Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank
Blind Idiot God, Undertow
Santo & Johnny, Volume Secondo
Praxis, Profanation: Preparation for a Coming Darkness
John Zorn, What Thou Wilt
Erik Friedlander, Maldoror

Media Announcement: Local independent maching band needs your help + Wire + British Sea Power + Eugene Hideaway Bridges in this week's Record Crate at 225 Magazine.

At night, stray dogs come up underneath our house to lick our leaking pipes.
- from "Strays"

Mark Richard's stories are furtile ground for thought but his sentences are neon patches of wildflowers. They go like this except down and cut across and get stuck and then you have to get out in the muddy, stuck parts and you might not make it but you probably will but the person with you won't. But it will be pretty even when it isn't.


Santo & Johnny, "Sleepwalk"

I got an email this morning about a band called Adebisi Shank, particularly about their second album, This Is the Second Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank but only a few songs were available to me, so I'm instead listening to their first album, titled This Is the Album of a Band called Adebisi Shank. The OZ refernce almost killed it for me, but the artfully aggro, transpunk, jazz-tinged, surfin'-on-no-wave grind of the band, plus the Conceptual Art 101 album titles won me over. Words do matter, I guess. Also, it is the kind of music I would make if I could make that kind of music.

So here we are really feeling bad about what we finally ended up doing to Vic's horse Buster, us drinking about it in the First Flight Lounge after we called Vic's wife at home and she said Un huh and Nunt uh to the sideways questions we asked her about Vic being home yet, trying to feel out how bad was the tragedy, and her hanging up not saying goodbye, and us wondering did she always do that and then us realizing we'd never talked to her on the telephone before.
- from "Happiness of the Garden Variety"

Blind Idiot God, "Wailingwall"

Praxis (Featuring Iggy Pop), "Furies" (MP3 stream)

Our dad is out in the car listening to the radio scores because the power is off to the TV. We know not to bother him.
- from "This Is Us, Excellent"

Edited to add: last night on Man v. Food, host Adam Richman was inspired out of the blue (because he said this one place's chili had the consistency of pudding) to do an extended Bill Cosby impersonation, so that's three unrelated mentions of Bill Cosby in one day. My advice is to avoid pudding for at least 24 hours.

the vast heliograph of lightning

Illustration for Malcolm Lowry's "Lunar Caustic" by J. F. Ulysse, who, according to the Winter 1963 Paris Review bio, "began drawing at the age of 4, then as now, with his left hand."

I finished "Lunar Caustic" over lunch after a meeting that left one longing for the solace of a drunk's account of a week in Bellevue. It pulled itself together at the end in that deliciously triangular way Malcolm Lowry has with his characters. A trio of malfunctioning humanity supports itself as it tumbles alongside those too plain or base to not malfunction in the world's cruel chaos. One of whom, the manic and charming Mr. Battle manically semaphored through the window to ships on the river, while:

Only the vast heliograph of lightning responded distantly.

The novella is rife with ships; the narrator believe himself to be one as the DT's take hold, while a young murderer Garry desperately tells seafaring stories he doesn't understand to be tragic, eager to be interesting. Icebergs get smashed. Whales are killed. Elephants too. Madness is generally acquiesced to in "Lunar Caustic", opposite to how it was denied in Lowry's masterpiece Under the Volcano. Bottles, lots of bottles, bob around in the choppy seas of dialog. Maybe we are all ships in our own bottles. Ones with little triangular sails hoping to catch a little wind that might pull us out of our bottles and dash up valiantly on the rocks.