A place to indulge my narcissism... and write stuff...
I really wanted this post to be special. The passage of the measurable, especially those ending in a zero should be. Thirtieth birthday… 50th anniversary… Ten Years Gone… 600 goals.
All that went out the window today when I received the best voicemail ever. My last post included heartfelt memories of the transformative power of music. I wrote, “Yeah, music can do that.”
Unfortunately it can also do this.
The pages are turning, and a few back my friend Barb and some of her Freehold homies all put together compilation CD’s they shared with each other called “Music that matters to me,” based on the Starbucks “Artists Choice” collections. The “Music that matters to Barb” included, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, the Kinks, the Clash and the Cure. Bruce is in there (natch), but so are the Strokes and Madness… It’s a “Mad Hatter’s Tea Cup” of a sonic soundtrack to her life.
Back then I began to fill “Blog Ideas” with a list of my own, and it’s been sitting there since April of 2005. Scanning down to a random spot on the list I come to:
Not coincidentally, I somehow flowcharted myself to this cute diagram at 5:30am, but it’s a recent rediscovery of the Mudcrutch frontman that got me writing.
Yeah, my sub-list above contains U2 and Prince songs, and Tom Petty.
And now a word from my morning commercial experience…
Doctor my eyes have seen one sweet LCD HDTV in the Panasonic Viera Series. My aunt needed a new TV and wanted HD, but she knew nothing about them so she asked for help from her tech-geek nephew. Auntie Bev has limited space, so my online and brick/mortar research turned up the 26” Panny TC-26LX85. It has a crisp HD picture and a superior imaging of “regular” TV channels. This is a very important consideration as most HDTV’s make regular TV look awful. Oh, and I had another great buying experience with Chris Majoros at Cleveland Plasma. Yeah, they’re in Cleveland…
Now, back to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers…
The Boston Phoenix calls their July 15, 1978 shared bill at the Cape Cod Coliseum with the J Geils Band the 29th greatest show in Boston concert history. Yours truly missed it, but best bud Dillard did not, and my introduction to TP began. My first Fall in Tucson, Arizona was dominated by Petty’s first two records, but mostly the sophomore effort “You’re Gonna Get It!” Man, I lived the words of that record and when it was followed up with 1979’s “Damn The Torpedoes,” Tom Petty became a star. I hung in there through “Hard Promises” in 1981, but once I moved back East things changed. Around 1985 I went to see the band with a girlfriend at the Worcester Centrum. A teenage girl next to me screamed through the entire show like she was seeing the Beatles in 1966. It was a nightmare and we left. Since then 23 years passed and I kinda left Petty back there. Yeah, I heard the radio hits over the years, but didn’t purchase any records with the exception of 1999’s “Echo,” a dark brooding record made during his painful divorce. I listened to that tape endlessly while running away from life that year.
Last week I spent $40 in iTunes gifts on his first two remastered records, Echo and “Wildflowers,” a record I need to listen to with headphones late at night with a Maker’s Mark and a cigar.
Tuesday was a tough day at work. For the commute home, a newly loaded iPod fatty accompanied me and I queued up “You’re Gonna Get It.” I was immediately transported 2677 miles into my old apartment at “Casa Del Oro.” I anticipated every chord and the evergreen with orange highlights shag rug still looked sweet. Tom Petty was on the turntable. Yeah, music can do that.
“How deeply these songs affect people in such a way that when you hear the song you know like where you were and even the feeling in your gut when you were fourteen hearing that song.” – Eddie Vedder in the Petty documentary “Runnin’ Down a Dream”
2009 is here and in the long-running “good versus evil” tilt, evil is still winning. I have a quasi-theory about the journey of man along a singular plane. One direction is our good and the other is well, not good. Since the beginning of time, the human race has sprinted in each direction with many of us pursuing both paths simultaneously.
As I walked the floors of the Portland Museum of Art on Saturday with my brother and son, reward was a few gems in their closing Impressionist show, the attached and historic McClellan House, and the discovery of Lynne Drexler’s (1928 – 1999) work.
There was beauty everywhere and my family enjoyed the immersion. Kyle asked several times, “What is that, Dad?” Each time my response was “anything you want it to be.”
At the same time on the other side of the world, Israel was reaping massive retaliation on Palestinians in Gaza. Most of the world was calling for a cease-fire, but my country blocked a UN Security Council effort to demand one. A short war isn’t good for business, you know, and our “defense” focused corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics, just to name a few of the 185,000, have numbers to meet…
“You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”
From Carl Sagan’s “Contact,” 1997
For the past several years, I’ve hit December 26th or 27th and the realization hits me that Christmas is over and I missed it. Not literally, of course. I physically pass through the timeframe of December 25th, but “that Christmas feeling” passes on a different plane. The pace of life is a factor. It’s like the advice Ferris Bueller gave us back in the 80’s: “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
What’s lacking is Christmas spirit. Not religiosity, but a human spirit of connectedness. I think online shopping has some relation. There’s nothing like being elbowed aside by an old lady for the last Wii game to get one feeling jolly.
I don’t have the answer, but I’ll seek it today and report back. I’m not looking for a miracle, simply an expansion of my Grinch heart to just one size too small.
…and a nut! Well, I did a couple hours ago. For the second time in an earth spin, my snowthrower um, threw a curve at me when I was looking heat. Yesterday, a simple spark plug swap renewed my Ariens vigor, but tonight a missing screw rendered 12” of my 24” auger limp, seriously hampering the removal of white stuff. With nearly another foot covering my long, horseshoe driveway, shoveling was a painful option, so I searched a toolbox and junk drawer and scored a screw, but not a nut to hold it in place. I scanned for anything that might be held together with a similar combo and hooked up with the removal of said pair from my table saw. The fit was perfect and about 10 seconds later I smoked a cigarette. Only kidding of course. I don’t smoke, but I did burn through my driveway and feel pretty, pretty, pretty good about it.
No, I don’t think Caroline Kennedy is qualified to take Hillary Clinton’s vacated Senate seat, but if her name was “Joe” would the criteria questions even be posed?
I’m glad I don’t have to say “Blagojevich” for a living.
Rick Warren? Really?
Unless Detroit changes the game and pulls a “Moore’s Law” x 10 on their propulsion systems, they are going the way of the Edsel.
The Yankees have spent $243.5 million in salary on two pitchers this off-season. C. C. Sabathia and A. J. Burnett raise expectations that the Yankees won’t suck and that’s great news for Red Sox fans. Oh, and they’re not done spending.
As for the Sawx, they’re posturing with agent Scott Boras in pursuit of one Mark Teixeira. News reports indicate it’s going to take $180 – $195M to land the slugger. With this economy’s trend, I suggest Mark get as much up front as possible. Who’s going to pay these salaries when fans lack the cash to buy tickets or even cable to watch?
Long the second class citizens in town, the Celtics and Bruins have reinvigorated the [Insert some corporate bank name here] Garden. The C’s have won 17 straight and are 25-2, while the B’s have snuck up on the NHL and jumped to #2 in the ESPN Power Rankings, whatever that is.
It’s still snowing.
As Christmas approaches, I’ve battled the consumerist demons ripping from my American DNA, but I didn’t buy this token of the Decline of Western Civilization.
And finally, She’s Got The Jack.
Remember taking a “spongebath” as a kid? The technique was basically taking a bath with a facecloth or sponge and was usually employed during constrained supply of:
It’s been quite a week. After release from the refugee camp at mom’s house Wednesday courtesy of Unitil, Kyle and I arrived home to hot air, but no hot water. Oh, and Megan shoved a refrigerator full of castaways down the disposal which caused a serious case of Polyvinyl chloride constipation, but I’m straying…
It seems that draining my electric water heater to protect it from freezing wasn’t such a good idea. When power was restored, the unit fired up inside a dry chamber and burnt itself out. It was fixed for $168 Thursday afternoon…
Now a cold shower has a time and a place, but that time was not Thursday morning and the place not where I shower, so morning at the improv ensued… I’ll spare you the details except to say I have a huge pot where I heated water and it provided 3 liquid sink cycles for shaving, bathing and even hair washing! I was pleased with the state of hygiene I attained, although it wasn’t exactly spongeworthy or the best of hair days so I did pass on after work drinks. Instead I came home and snaked out a clogged drain pipe for an hour from a cramped position on a ladder in my basement. Good thing I didn’t have to sponge off after that.
“YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF!” That was about ½ a song into Wilco’s set opening for Neil Young Saturday night. Yeah, seems I could have been a bit more diplomatic in my request that the woman next to me stop talking in my ear. [Edit: As pal Jeff points out in his comment, the woman blurted out the opening all CAPS barrage, not me…]
Anyway, I won’t repeat Jeff’s review of the show, but I will say I love the sonic booms that curse through the wires of “Old Black,” Mr. Young’s trusty 1953 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop and anyone who can play a guitar and a mouth harp simultaneously is no poser.
I’m about to leave the refugee camp for work, but one quick story will tie all this together… Friday while out with the lovely ex and the kids, Gigi said, “I want to go!” when she heard I had two extra tix. “He sings that Fenway (Sweet Caroline) song, right?” Uh, no. That’s Neil Diamond, the guy whose picture is paired with the Neil Young review in the Worcester Telegram…
…but I do. Posting from my mom’s basement, the entire clan is here, forced from the Hollywood Bungalow by a natural disaster. Since 1am Friday night, I laid awake, thinking a huge overhanging tree would come crashing through my roof into my attic bedroom. Gravity pulled large limbs to a rest on my roof as I listened to trees shatter through the night. The sound of one cracking tree limb is a grabber. A nocturnal cascade of hundreds accompanied by reigning shards of ice crashing down is better than a triple espresso for alertness.
You know when you see on TV stories about people displaced by natural disasters. That’s us, albeit on a small scale… We are fortunate that our home wasn’t damaged and none of us were hurt. And Wilco/Neil Young is still on tonight in Worcester! Here are a few pics I grabbed yesterday just getting Megan and Maddy to their mom’s house and a warm fireplace… There was beauty in it.
My mind was spinning in a black hole collapsing into itself like a “we fucking told you this would end the world” Hadron Collider disaster. Just behind my drive-in movie screen forehead was a low-budget indie flick of a short-circuiting electric wireframed milk crate tumbling through black space… That was what I saw Monday night when I shut the bedside light and closed my eyes. It was beautiful. A “My God, it’s full of stars” 2010 moment, but at the same time, I question what the hell’s going on in there… I suppose a freakish “Tron” trailer is better than seeing a gerbil on a treadmill, but is that activity due to too many hours of computer stare downs, excess MSNBC, or an unhealthy buildup of swimmers? Discuss.
© 2026 Fifteenkey
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
