Wednesday, April 30, 2008

what it is

A blog is like having your own radio show. Kind of. Or more than kind of.

Maybe having your own radio show is like having a blog? Just a different medium, but mostly self-indulgent bullshit sent out to whoever might care to look/listen.

Really.


myspace.com/butcherkfo

whatever blows your hair back

When I got home I took a couple of minutes to plug Puddin into the big amp. Puddin is it's name, of course. All my guitars have names. It was Pete for a while but we decided Puddin was better.

Anyway. Puddin is a screaming bitch through the big amp. I am pleased to no end.

no no no. I'm fuckin stoked.

What are my guitars names, you ask? Ok maybe you don't but you get them anyway.
'57 acoustic Harmony Archtone six-string: Luna
'63 Harmony H2- Buster
'90s Ibanez GSR100 (at least I think that's the model. I don't have it in front of me)-Thud
undated ancient frankendano guitar- Greenie or JR
'90s Epiphone acoustic (model unknown, never bothered to look)- The Range (as in Home on the...)
The Yamaha I traded for the boots, that was my brother's, had a name for a short time- Yomamaha. Like Djeef's drums.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

two goals

Yes two. !!

I am going to get an A in my math class over the summer. Ok I have never in my life gotten anything better than a C in ANY math class. But I'm going to get an A in this one. There's no reason I can't.

I'm going to start a garden. It probably won't be of any use until next year, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm going to use the square-foot gardening thing. I will start with a 3 x 3 square and see how it goes from there.

Our backyard is long and flat. I could fit something like 10 4 x 4 plots out there if i ever felt that adventurous. It'll be predominantly for food, but I intend to grow some flowers too. Next weekend I'm going out to mark off the spot and go out and see about scavenging some boards.

I already have a compost pile going. It's just that up until now it was just where we threw stuff that fell off the trees and put lawn mower clippings sometimes. I will build a chicken wire enclosure for it and see how that goes. It's going to be behind the garage, and with any luck, will stink like hell and piss off the jackasses on that side of us. haha just kidding. maybe.

Already every scrap of plastic and paper and cardboard goes in our bins. Returnable bottles and cans get carted off to become shiny nickels. I'll just start a new bucket for compostable bits and start adding that to the pile.

Monday, April 28, 2008

pistachio puddin

I played the Danelectro for a couple of hours today through my weenie little 25 watt(I think it's 25?) Behringer v-tone practice amp.

That little amp always surprises me. It gets a lot of neat sounds. Good deal for $70 at the pawn shop.

Anyway yeah. The Danelectro. It is the color of pistachio pudding. Which I love. To eat and just look at. Whatever that means. And it plays like puddin. Just plays super nice. Maybe I'm just used to the extra force necessary for an acoustic guitar, but to me this thing plays like a dream come true.

I played with all the switch settings and fiddled with the different sounds on the amp and it just sounds good through all of them. I really like how it sounds dirty.

Tomorrow, the big test. How does it sound with some watts behind it? I will play it through the 100 watt bass head and 15" ported cabinet and see which neighbors complain first.

YouTube comment wisdom

"Life's so circular, and it only gets worse"

most gorgeous geet score

Ok well I haven't been able to buy a guitar in a while. In fact, I didn't buy this one, it was given to me. Add it to the collection of pawn shop queens that I have. This is a pic of one just like it. - click here

Mine is not a reissue, though. it's the real deal. Masonite and all. In near mint (har har pun cos of the color) shape, though. I haven't had a chance to play it yet.

But, FINALLY! An electric guitar that works good. I love my old green unidentifiable dano/silvertone thing but I am so frustrated about the pickups on it that just never play it. They're old pickups... older than the Harmony bass has, the pots were dated at '59 on it, and the pickups are just old and worn out and need to be rewound, probably.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

last lap at talladega

was friggin AWESOME!

And Montoya took second. More awesome!

Saturday, April 26, 2008

more on multiplying

its not for any ethical or idealogical reason that my smart half and i don't have kids.

I babysat when I was a kid for spending money, kids of all ages, 6-month-olds to second graders. All that pretty much rubbed out any desire for kids I might have had. That desire has never returned.

I see people getting batty about wanting kids, and I guess I'm wired up all funny because I don't understand why. I lack the mommy gene or something.

When I do think about it, having a kid of my own, I come to the conclusion that I would be an inattentive, probably selfish, possibly resentful parent.

I like kids. I like to teach kids stuff, but wouldn't want to be an actual teacher because it doesn't seem like teachers are allowed to teach much anymore. I know a teacher who had a class of fifth graders that didn't know about primary and secondary colors and that red and blue make purple. Raise your hand if you knew that by second grade.

good thing that shit's not contagious

I swear almost every one of my chick friends is pregnant right now. One just had a baby.

How do you render into text the noise one makes when suffering a deep shudder and saying "bleh"?

on the visuals

The phrase "When the shit hits the fan" wandered into my head this morning.

So I explored it, by visualizing such an event.

Damn that's funny.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

free firewood

oh i almost forgot to mention.

Yesterday morning there were a couple of crews working their way south on the 97 doing some fuels reduction stuff in the KNF. Quite a few nearly dead trees came down, there were piles of stuff, a lot of the trees had their woofhairs trimmed, and a few stacks of neatly stacked, uniformly cut wood rounds were scattered around. Some of what went over in the storms over the winter were cut, too. This was on the southern end of the Mt Hebron summit, but not quite to grass lake.

I also noticed that the load of potatoes that dumped at the 161 and 97 in March has been dwindling.

a gas price report

My first two stops in Siskiyou are fuel stations, but I didn't notice the prices at either one of them because the sign isn't in my line of sight when I arrive just due to how the lots are set up. They're both in south Weed. Next two stops are in Mt Shasta, though.

Where immediately after coming into town at the central Mt Shasta exit I was totally stoked I had filled up in Oregon. Gas at the central exit area is $4.05/gallon for 87. The cheapest I saw was in S. Weed when I left, at $4.03.

Apparently there was a glitch since I was there in Mt Shasta last. Somehow one of their stores pumps got set to .39 cents a gallon. The manager said people were lined up down the road to get gas when she came in to fix it. Yeah, I guess so. A couple of weeks ago one of the toilets in one of their stores exploded. Yes. Exploded. Probably scared the crap out of the little kid who ran out to report it. (hur hur)

So I paid more attention on the way home.
McDoel Shell- $4.15/gallon. Diesel is close to $4.50.
Dorris $4.17 at the Alliance station, $3.99 at the other one.
Did not notice the price at the Worden truck stop, even though I was there for an hour and a half. They do have Biodiesel there, though.

In town, the cheapest I've seen is $3.59. The one closest to our house has it for $3.69.

Why am I in school? Oh yeah... slightly less than my half of hourly wage buys me a gallon of gas.

Monday, April 21, 2008

everyone else's crazy weather

Not so alarming here, I guess. Last year we had a lump of cold move through in early June, leaving snow over parts of the Grass Lake area and a fresh coat on Mt Shasta. The year before, it snowed over Memorial Day weekend. I know, because I was up at the Running Y trying to keep my bass tuned at an outdoor gig.

(later- changed labor day to memorial day. I always think labor day is in May. Must be the commie in me)

Which is why last year, during the Earth Day celebration, where they had the group of scientists outside in Antarctica playing music, I laughed til I cried.

Yesterday's NASCAR

Hey anyone watch the Nationwide series race at Mexico City yesterday? That was a good race!

And then I got to watch part of the Long Beach Grand Prix, too.
Just a good weekend to hole up in the house and fritter away a couple of hours. It was cold and snow-showery yesterday.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

just have to tell someone

no one else I know would probably be as excited as I am about getting "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" album by Traffic, today. But I have to tell someone.

So yeah, I'm thrilled to death. Thanks for being excited with me!

Eat her dust, boys

Danica Patrick is now the first woman to ever win an IndyCar race.

Friggin awesome. I knew she would do it eventually.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

sooooooo cold

man it is so friggin cooooold

crap from the phone's notepad thing

(spelling preserved)
1. Ker bdate 4:24p
2. Metro berlin chord
3. sticjers 4 main and tl
4. minuteman and bedlam r overs 4 robyn
5. Rodney 500 dol boat 1 5 ft w evinrude
6. God is a bullet eind
7. 513572
8. kf hope dope
9. beat keepers union
10. bren eraser

interesting - anyone need work?

While in Tulelake yesterday I and the owner of the store I was working at had a conversation with someone who is involved in one of the local farms.

This is the gist of it. I didn't get to follow the whole conversation because standing around jawing with people doesn't get me out of a store any faster.

Strawberries and strawberry stock are going into the ground right now. RIGHT NOW.
There are not enough workers to do this.

Anyone interested in a job should get hiking over to this area.

Anyone who says "Illegals steal jobs from Americans" has an opportunity to prove it. Anyone who can find one single anglo-American willing to plant strawberries and strawberry stock should be sure and send them this way, or even pull on some work clothes and do it themselves. Oregon unemployment is, as usual, high, so no excuse for a shortage of farm workers, really. REALLY.

Does this make me pro-illegal immigrant? No. Nor does it make me anti. Just pointing out a little real-life issue for anyone interested. I know no one in the bigger cities will give a rat's ass about basin farmers or their issues. That's already been shown over and over, that if you don't live in one of Oregon's big cities, your voice is not worth hearing.

Granted, Tulelake is in CA, but the strawberries are going in on the Oregon side, as well.

Enjoy your imported strawberries, I guess.

We're eating cake, still. Just like we were told to do in the early '90s. By people who love "protecting the worker".

We also have thousands, yes thousands, of acres of sick and dying and dead trees and 30 years of fuel buildup waiting to either catch fire or be doctored, but the doctoring involves cutting, and no.. can't have that. Much better to just watch all the forests, including "old-growth", go up in huge canopy fires and then find someone extraneous to blame for it. And then some poor guy who needed a decent job and got one as a wildland firefighter will burn up with the trees and who can be blamed for that...

Assholes.

"Tourism!!!" What a big fat fucking joke. It's all been a big fat joke.

Oregon- "The Punchline!"

Thursday, April 17, 2008

friggin GOLD MINE

the station has an incredible amount of oddball shit. I'm like a kid in a candy shop when I go in on Thursday usually, Paul runs it and I go hunting for interesting blues stuff and other goodies. Found in the vinyl today (and making me impatient to learn to run the turntables right) the Transvision Vamp album that has "Tell That Girl To Shut Up" on it. The Trashcan Sinatras. Oodles of Hoodoo Gurus. I generally borrow three or four CDs and make them mine, and then return them. Stumbled upon a Mike Scott CD today. I didn't even know he had a solo CD. Mike Scott from The Waterboys.

Which reminds me, when I had the Wild Irishman on a couple of weeks ago, he was shocked I had heard of the Waterboys. I was shocked that he was shocked. Didn't everyone know who the Waterboys were? Apparently not, as he says I am the first American he had met that knew who they were.

Shit, I could rattle off the words to about half a dozen Waterboys songs and can play at least three of them on the geetar.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

i feeeeeeel nice

I got some feedback about my show finally. I had given a couple of copies away to some people who can't get the station at their house so they could hear it. Yeah, I record them.

"I listened to the whole thing. I have to say I liked about 75% of what you played. There was some good stuff on there."

Which made me feel good. Not one top 40 hit among them.

I also came to an alarming conclusion about what I already have. Ok, I have done four shows now, where probably 50-60% of the songs have been cover songs. I have not had to repeat them at all yet. I still have a ton of cover songs left that I haven't played or can't play because of the FCC. So, four shows at three hours each, with about half those hours being filled with cover songs. About six hours of cover songs. Figure you can probably play about 20 songs in an hour.

There are those who would say that's demented.

more of the same

Smart Half and I were chowin a lunch at Red's the other day. Red's plays country music in their restaurant. I love the food there, but the music is unbearable, basically.

A song came on and the singer's name escapes me. The same chick who sings that song about vandalizing the ex's truck with a louisville slugger. Which I hate, anyway. But this other song had the same structure, vocally and musically. And it occurred to me that the singer is not as talented as maybe some think. She has very little vocal range. Like listening to a female Chad Kroger (the guy from Nickelback).

There's just no escaping shitty music. Doesn't matter where you live, either.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

dammit

I had thought of something interesting driving back from Bend, but apparently left it floating in the air along highway 97 near Chemult.

Ooh Back Door Slam was great, of course. And I got to kind of talk to Davy Knowles and Adam Jones, but they had this blonde piece of duct tape clinging to them when ever we tried to have a conversation with one of them. We'd talk to one, and she'd float up and stick to him, and we'd talk to the other one, and there she came again, being sticky. heh. I did, however, score a promo for my show. wootness!

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Confession #982

I just spilled this in a comment here.

I really dig Neil Diamond. Been a fan since I was a wee tyke. My mom had a bunch of his records. Know the words to most of the damn songs still.

I'm listening to "Solitary Man" right now. I love the low brass in it. The snappy little hip-snap beat. The acoustic guitar over the horns. The melancholy.

The man writes some fantastic songs.

lewser

heh. I just spent like an hour and a half looking through and playing through like 20 duran duran songs.

I just went looking for "Friends of Mine", I swear...

Saturday, April 12, 2008

its nice

I have thought, for a few years, that a musicology degree would be awesome, and right up my alley, but also completely pointless. But it is there, on my interests regarding a degree. And I see that UofO offers it as a degree program. Part of me says, "Do it. Get the degree in the commercial art thing and minor in musicology.". Sounds totally reasonable. But then so did quitting a great job so I could do more cocaine, so you see why I often doubt my decision-making abilities.

On the other hand, my friends sometimes call me from various parts of the country to ask me things like "When DID Milo go to college?". "Are Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukenen the same guy?" and "What's the diff between a Chicago shuffle and a Texas shuffle?". And a favorite rolled in about three months ago, from New Mexico, "Can you explain, again, why the old church had such a hard-on about fifths?". Which I love explaining, because it's so totally ridiculous. As is so much associated with the early Catholic church.. and come to think of it, the modern one, as well.

I'm something of an amateur musicologist already. I'd like to complete it somehow.

Bummer!

*cry*
I found out about halfway through my show today that KTEC was off the air. Something is up with the transmitter. So I just finished up the show and left at the usual time. I was recording it to send someone. If its still down next weekend I think i'll go visitin to Coos Bay for a weekend. Tam got a hot tub.

Anyway I had put together this "thing", I know they have names but I can't remember what it's called, about the Damned's song "In Dulce Decorum". The original recording of it had a bit of a Churchill speech at the beginning, but the version I have doesn't have that, so I added a bit of a General Jack Pershing speech in that was recorded in 1918. Then 'splained how the song was inspired by a Wilfred Owen poem, "Dulce et Decorum est", which in turn came out of a speech by Horace. It took me a long time to put it together and dig up the right information, and then NOBODY HEARD IT!!! oh well... I have it ready for next week. Or whenever we're back on the air.

It's time for the grunion!

Grunion run. The name still makes me giggle, because it was always fun to see and has such a funny name.

What is a grunion run?

This time of year in San Pedro, mill-ee-uns and mill-ee-uns of these tiny little fish wash onto the sand on oncoming waves, spawn and wash back out. Crowds of people line the beach to watch. Some are down at the waterline scooping baby-food jars full of them for science projects. I did it in elementary school a few times, for classes and my girl scout troop.

Now, you have to have a fishing license to catch them. Didn't used to. But it didn't really become an event until John Olguin started teaching about it.

30 years ago, Olguin seemed an old man to me. He's almost 90, now. A native Pedroid and born there in 1921. I loved going on field trips to Cabrillo to get learnin' from him. He had an accent, even though he was born here. I don't know where his family was from. But it made it so you had to listen carefully to what he was telling you about, really had to listen because the stuff was so cool. Like, the critters who make little holes in the rocks around San Pedro harbor are pittas. Weird that I would remember it, but I remember more HOW he said it than what he said about them.

To the grunion!

Friday, April 11, 2008

LBGP time!

The Long Beach Grand Prix is coming up.

In my late teens and early 20s I knew someone who lived in a tall apartment building in Long Beach that you could see part of the route of the race from the higher floors, and from the roof you could see about the whole thing. Going to spend a weekend at her place for the GP was the highlight of my year for three years.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Suomi awesomeness

I have had a chance over the last couple of days to give the Leningrad Cowboys album a precursory listen (all three CDs, all the way through).

Their version of Sweet Home Alabama is not on the album, unfortunately. Luckily it can be found on YouTube for anyone interested.

The album is pretty good. To be a band and take this grand scheme on the road must have been a hell of an undertaking. It also seems to be a huge cross-cultural mishmash. This is what I mean-

A lot of the album artwork is very Mexican looking. A painting of a skull that's reminiscent of something you'd find on Dia De Los Muertos adorns the CDs. The costuming on the band and backup singers also reminds me of Mexican folk art. Hanging from the sides of the stage are giant middle eastern carpet designs. The band is Finnish. They brought along the Red Army Air Force Ensemble (and these guys are great to watch in the videos on YouTube), UMO Orchestra, Angelique Kidjo, The Wild Magnolias, Jamar and the Galaxy, Johanna Rusanen and Zsar Aleksander II. I don't know who those folks are. Have to look them up. Songs on the album range wide. "Black Hole Sun" (sung by an female opera (maybe? Sure sounds like opera training) singer with a heavy eastern european accent), "Those Were The Days" (yes, that oooold song), "Sweet Home Chicago", "No Woman No Cry", "El Cuarto de Tula", "Keep on Rockin in the Free World" and "Kashmir" (also sung by that opera singer). All of this with full orchestra backup, choir backup, balalaikas and other Russian instruments, regular type band which includes an accordion and various guitars painted and designed in all wildness. So far my favorite song on the album is "Easy Livin". Mostly because I love the song anyway and it's the first time I've heard someone else do it.

Can't wait to listen to it some more and am dying to play it on the show.

Counting Crows

I still don't like these guys all that much.
heh

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar

She is, as she says, on her sixth career.

Julie Newmar Writes

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

seriously, what the hell?!

I woke up to about two inches of snow on the ground and it's still snowing.

again, i ask, what the hell?@!

Monday, April 07, 2008

i love the mailman!

cos today he brought me my copy of the Leningrad Cowboys' "Global Balalaika Tour" CD, a freebie CD and a T-shirt. I ordered the shirt too big. Oh well. All my clothes are too big now.

I have lost enough weight that none of my pants fit without a belt, and I'm not even sure what size pants I am now. weee! I'm wearing a pair of junior sizing 12s and they're too big. awesome.

on wine

I really dislike wine. I hate it enough that I can't even pretend to be trendy and get on that wine bandwagon.

One of my friends in Booze Bay kept a couple of beers around for when I came over. She couldn't stand to watch me mix water or juice with the glass of wine she poured for me. The last time I drank wine in any quantity I found out that Merlot stains EVERYTHING when you barf it back up. Another friend up the river has a permanent (small) red spot on her grout from this experience that I had there. Of course, it probably is not so hot of an idea to drink some beers, a couple of everclear shots and THEN a glass of Merlot... but when has that ever stopped me.

If I'm already buzzed, I can enjoy a chardonnay or two. Bottles that is.

I took a local friend shopping not too long ago. He enjoys wine. We were in the wine aisle and he was trying to decide which box o'wine he ought to purchase. He was dissing one kind over another. I had to laugh. I told him it was like watching someone try to decide if they ought to buy Milkwaukee's Beast or Pabst. They both suck. Shut your eyes and pick, right?

boing

spring time.

The time of year that I feel if I bend my knees just right I can jump 50 feet in the air, maybe higher. I am wound up. I don't know how to unwind this. I just keep getting more and more wound up as the season progresses. I go full-tilt through spring and summer and take my crash in the late fall.

Some of my friends get spring fever in the form of "need to clean the shit out of my house". Mine is "need to get the hell away from the house". Need to play certain songs. Need to learn new stuff. Need to write. Need to take pictures. Need to draw.

Need to go out and irritate the crap out of the buzzkillers. The boring people content to tell everyone else what they need to be doing. I keep running into these assholes, everywhere I go. When I tell them they should shut the hell up and bother someone else, they get upset. I don't know why. It's ok for them to tell me what I should be doing, but not for me... ?

Need to get a shirt that says "Fuck you and your opinions". Because your opinions are just as stupid and useless as mine, right? Just big round nebulous thoughts, based half in fantasy and half in reality.

Yeah I'll pick that one up right after my "Fuck the OLCC" shirt. Which i still need to have made.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

hausaufgabe

I did some of this today.

Every time I say "I have homework" I giggle. It just seems ridiculous.

like a weasel

Sometimes I marvel at how fortunate I have been to get to do the things, however small they are, that really make me happy. The radio show? Damn this is the coolest thing ever. Playing music? No one I know imagined 12 years ago when I bought my busted up 1963 Harmony H27 bass that I would keep at it, and not only keep at it but keep learning, and learn other instruments on top of it, and holy shit, step on stage and play and get paid for it.

Some people look at their teen years as the best ever, some have loved their 20s, but my good time started in my late 20s.

Last night I went to the other open mic in town that runs once monthly. I had been nudging The Warthogger and The Smith to get up on stage and do some songs sometime soon. We did it last night, the three of us. Our first two songs went really well, but the last song we did, we always have a problem with it somewhere, and last night it fell apart on the last verse. So we laughed our asses off, thanked everyone for listening, and sat back down, to wild applause. I floated off to the ceiling. Warthogger and Smith analyzed what went wrong. I didn't care! I got them to get up and play some songs in public!

I am nearly ready to sing and play three songs I've been working on in front of an audience of both my music peers and total strangers. I get all worked up about it, and then I tend to chicken out when I get an opportunity. It's the singing part that I wig out on.

Singing is like being naked. Singing with other people, I do ok. Alone... might as well ask me to show up in just a thong.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

whaat?

more snow~! right now!

somethin's creepin' in

The title is a line from a Therapy? song i tend to start playing a lot in the spring time and through the summer, and then it gets put away in the fall. It just has that kind of feel to it. But yeah I started playing it again last week and taught some friends how to play it.

But I think another summer song is going to be "Alone Again Or". I have never heard the original, as far as I know, but have heard (and enjoy) both Calexico's version and the earlier one by The Damned.

And today I just learned to play it.

Well, someone who can really play guitar would probably laugh uproariously through my labored, yet exuberant, playing. But it's recognizable and holy mackerel I can sing it too.

For anyone wondering, I use a combination of cheater chords, cowboy chords, parts of cowboy chords and sheer fakery. What I do apparently looks difficult, but it's just me being a crapass guitar player.

And I think I will share my mad skillz (yo) at the acoustic open mic at Mia's and Pia's tonight. Much to the detriment (say that with the french pronunciation) of the patrons of the establishment.

squeeeee!

To be honest, I get just about as excited on Saturday mornings about doing my radio show as I did anytime ML went to play a gig anywhere. Reverting to childhood expressions of glee, in fact, over it. Impossible to sit still for hours before, light-headed and giddy, i do the weird thing where i rub all my fingers with my thumbs ( i don't know how to explain that, except that I know I was not the only kid who did it, and i often still see kids up to 10 doing it), can't keep a song (or a thought) in my head.

Today Wild Irish Gerry is going to pop in. I don't know what from there, but I told him if he comes by to bring his favorite music with him to play. He said he might bring his guitar, too. Wondering if I ought to bring mine, then we can play "Dirty Old Town" together. Tonight he's doing the open jam at Mia's and Pia's and I may finally go to one. I just keep forgetting about it, and he'll remind me about five times, tehrefore, there's a good chance I'll remember it tonight.

Friday, April 04, 2008

meanwhile on the thursday blues show ..

yesterday i brought out the pre-war blues stuff i had found on archive.org for the 4-7 show that the blues society does on KTEC.

Now, when I am playing the tunes, I usually do it with a MP3 CD and I go through and pick songs out, write the song down as I play it and then remove it from the playlist, and then go back and tell about them after a handful, or sometimes just one... but anyway,
I looked down the list of songs I had to back-announce and the guy doing the show with me laughed. songs by- Blind Alfred Reed, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell and Blind Blake. Prior to that set i'd picked a few blues women like Ma Rainey and St Louis Bessie. Picking songs by five blind guys wasn't intentional, and apparently when dealing with old blues, not unusual.

Also played recently was some Peg-Leg Pete. Who really has a Peg-Leg.

For the lady who was 20 on the day Martin Luther King was shot

That was the title of a poem I wrote for my mom on her birthday in.. hmm.. 1993 or '94.
So, yeah, today is my mom's birthday. I will be calling her later when I am done stuffin muffins for the day.

My mom and I have had some differences, but she's always been right there to back me in whatever bizarre plan I was cooking up. She is totally thrilled I have a radio show. She's thrilled I'm involved in the Blues Society thing and I am hoping I can get her to come up here for the festival. I think she's thrilled I made it through my 20s in one piece and with all my brain cells intact. She's thrilled I'm back in school. I miss her a lot. But of course when I go to visit we drive each other bananas and we are both relieved when I'm gone.

My mom gave me my sense of humor. Best. Gift. Ever. We were recently discussing our favorite house that we lived in on Gaffey St in San Pedro, across the street from Ft Mac. In a gorgeous two-story built in the 20s, with wood floors, built ins, a solarium, a service porch, giant gas range, giant kitchen, breakfast nook... we loved that place. It's an art gallery now.

So mom, I don't know if you still come by here to my little mostly-unknown-blabbering-place, but..

Hippo Birdie Two Ewes!

Thursday, April 03, 2008

gold mine

I came across, somewhere, archive.org. I think I was looking for a file of the original "War of the Worlds" broadcast so I could clip some bites out of the parts toward the end.

Found the file. Found that it is too big to manipulate on my computer and I'll have to do it on the Smart Half's.

Also found some great historical recordings. Things like Thomas Edison's first recording from 1887. What is so amazing is that the recording was made over 100 years ago. There was great excitement about those wax cylinders and lily-shaped horns, needles the size of Saguaro spikes. That was state of the art in 1887. Old blues recordings from the teens and 20s (later made on amberol cylinders, and then to wax and amberol platters, which in turn went later to more durable vinyl) are fascinating to listen to, especially when compared with modern blues styles. I really DO love the old, old blues. The one-guy-or-lady-singing-with-a -single-accompaniment stuff. On the archive.org site is a recording of Blind Willie McTell's "Statesboro Blues". I'd never heard it. I'd heard everyone else's version of it, and I enjoy playing it, but now I can hear how it really went.

I have a CD of oddball sound clips and I used one of them for the end of my show last week. It's an incredible one, I think. A recording of the crash of Soyuz 1, in which you hear Soviet Mission Control (the name escapes me. I know it starts with a Ba sound) and Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov talking back and forth, and then Komarov's realization that he was fucked and was going to be fried in his descent to earth, and then the sound again of the beacon beeps. beep. Beep. Beeeeeep. end of show. hehe.

Well, really, I don't know what people can expect of someone raised on Dr Demento, KXLU and the wild and woolly radio of Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s.

what i think so far

My first class on Monday I was confronted with very, very old behavior. So old that it took a minute for me to identify it and wiggle out.

These teachers do not know the family history. There is no reason to get the hackles up if one doesn't acknowledge something you say or ask right away. There is no reason to feel confrontational upon first walking into a class. They are not making note of your every move and sentence to report back to their fellows about "Springer's kid". A pink slip is not going to arrive half way through the class to go listen to the Dean go on about how your dad got away with it (over and over and over) and that a close eye was going to be kept on you, which results in a tardy or absent for the next class, thereby chipping further at what little reputation you have as "smart" or "bright" even more. If you raise your hand to ask a question, you will not be pointedly ignored.

What happened when I was in high school was damaging, and it had little to do with bullying from other students. Bullying and picking on, I could handle with aplomb. Having the faculty and administrators riding my ass for something my dad did while he was faculty at the school I went to... not so great actually. But it's weird to have that stuff resurface NOW, when it didn't at SWOCC or LAHC.

So I just have to be aware of when that kind of thing crops up in my head. On top of all this organization and scheduling stuff they are trying to teach me. Truly, the hardest part of school (ok life in general) for me has always been keeping organized, and I made a lot of attempts to get it together, but somehow managed to get out with passing grades with zero concept of study skills, organization or time management.

target acquired

sometimes... people from a particular oregon city are so smug, condescending and nannyish I just want to punch them and then laugh about it.

We don't hate you because you're beautiful, we hate you because you think it's your job (handed down to you on high, no less) to tell everyone else how to live and think, and that people who aren't in line with your idea of "right" are somehow less than you are.

BTW I hate this about many Christians, as well, so don't go thinking you're any kind of special.

With that in mind, take your new religion and cram it in there with the old one.