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carnis resurrectionem – fiat vita

Blessed be the city water in un-metered abundance, according to what was freely given.

Blessed be the California sun.  Scourge of the green grass; anathema of the cold-blooded.

Blessed be the potting soil.  Rich and dark and dank with potential energy.

Blessed be the ants.  Their tunnels a holy sacrament of aeration.

Blessed be the Spring rain and Summer warmth.  Handmaidens of the Hops.

Blessed be the dormant life.  The stone rolled away.  The empty pot.

Blessed be the absentee caretaker, who did not labor or spin.

Blessed be the resurrected Hops.

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duck and cover

When I was in third grade I remember doing duck-and-cover drills.

No, I’m not old enough to have gone to elementary school in the 1950s.  My dad worked at the nearby air force base, where the government was busy realizing Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” if you were a kid like me and keyed into anything on the six o’clock news.  Working for Martin Marietta at the time, I believe, my dad and the whole base in Southern California were nose to the grindstone on the MX missile program.  Conservatively dubbed “The Peacemaker,” the MX was capable of delivering ten 300 kilton warheads (each alone with twenty times the power of Hiroshima).  While I don’t really know if the many MX test shots from the base had live nuclear payloads, I think it’s unlikely (the internet probably knows, but it wasn’t readily available on Wikipedia).

In addition to playing host to the MX program, the base also routinely launched Delta rockets carrying all manner of military payload.  In 1986 there were two failed Delta launches from Vandenberg, that base where my dad worked so diligently to do his part in our global pissing contest.  The first in late August of 1985 and the second in mid-April of that next year.  I don’t know which one I remember so vividly, but I’m fairly certain it was the more dramatic of the two: the 1986 explosion of a Delta 34D, which happened only nine seconds after liftoff and was therefore right there in terms of the experience of those nearby.   I was one of those nearby.

We were out at recess at the time.  The base itself couldn’t have been more than ten miles from our school, and I’m not sure how far the SLC-4E site was inside base lines – but from the playground that morning I remember thinking it looked like a huge orange mushroom cloud.  A massive rumbling followed by a huge orange-red cloud blooming from the ground in the distance.  The yard duties blew their whistles and all us kids were ushered back into our classrooms.  The teachers instructed us all to climb under our desks and put our hands behind our heads.  I’m sure this is something they were instructed to have us do, but I’ve thought since then how it must have seemed eerily full-circle to the Cold War alums that were the thirty-something teachers of the day.

I can remember one kid cursing “Libya,” likely owed to the bombing operations the US had carried out there just three days prior and which had been all over the news. But for the most part we kids had no idea what was going on.  We sat like that for maybe an hour, it seemed forever in memory, and then an “all clear” message was broadcast over the PA system and it was all over.  From then out out, however, we were subject as a class to regular duck-and-cover drills in preparation for a worse accident.  An accident that never came, thankfully.

And that’s why, when all the old folks are talking about hiding under desks in gradeschool, I can join in the conversation.

Goodnight.

 

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don’t call it a comeback

Don’t call it a comeback.

No, really, don’t.

It’s Saturday morning and I’m looking back over these past few weeks with a sense that the worst has passed.  This Thursday and Friday most recently gone saw a bit of “culmination” for me at work.  The primary two or three things I’ve simply been pouring my time and efforts into seem, for the most part, to be “over the hump” and knocked down to coal from their previously stoked bonfire.  I think last week was the worst; I worked eighteen hours days, 6am to midnight and then again, Tuesday through Thursday.  Some might say I’m doing it wrong; perhaps so.  Doesn’t matter now, what’s done is done.  I missed writing.

From a blog perspective, I missed writing a poignant (or at least tongue-in-cheekily so) series of paragraphs about Keaton’s first day at Kindergarten.  I missed it, the actual act of it, well the part that a parent can miss, anyway.  The part where she’d be all lined-up at 8:15am on Monday morning outside room J25.  The teacher then bidding them to wave goodbye to their watching families for the few hours they’ll be under her care and tutelage.  The part where she’d be all dressed in her day-one finery and mom will have her hair shining and straight with one-hundred strokes and she’d be smiling and look all youthful-healthy and filled with excitement and maybe just a little visible trepidation, noticeable only to those close enough to spot it.  The part where maybe a big ‘ol grown-man dad might get a little misty as he watches his baby girl start her probably-not-long-enough march into adulthood.

Yeah; I missed all that.  It’s not as bad as it may seem though, as we got to go to an “orientation” thing the Friday before and watch a practice-run of the whole ritual.  Who’s to say that wasn’t the real “first time” anyway?  For me it was, at least.  So I got to see it, got to watch her face and shiny hair and even got a touch of the vapors seeing her disappear with the column of other mostly-eager fiver year olds.

She tells me she met a new friend named Angela and her favorite parts of the day are recess and lunch.  She tells me that she wasn’t sad at all leaving mom on that first day, and that she’s happy her next-door-neighbor girlfriend is in her class.  On Mondays she has school, dance, and soccer.  Sharaun has adapted crock-pot meals for the new schedule.  I feel like maybe it’s the “next phase” of parenting, the “shuttling” phase.  She’s getting bigger daily, so I can’t be doing this eighteen hour bollocks much longer.  Not enough days to miss more than a few for work.

Goodnight.

 

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people have asked me…

… if I’ve abandoned the blog.

No; I want more than anything to write.  About Keaton’s first day of kindergarten; about how I’m working from 6am to 11pm on daily basis; about how we visited my brother and his wife for the first time since they moved to California.  So many things to write about but not a spare second.  Writing this in between answering email at 1035pm on a Monday.  Got home at 915pm.

I’ve not abandoned anything, I just need to re-fit this thing into my day and haven’t figured out just where to do that.  Maybe at lunch.  Maybe I need to do it early, before work.  Nights aren’t working.  Days are too busy and stifle thinking.  I just have to pick a new sweet-spot and get to work.

Aside from work, things have been rosy.  Having sex often enough, eating well, weather is nice, money in the bank.

Be back later.  Goodnight.

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winning the bread

A dismal week for writing.  The Thursday debut speaks for itself.

Been working late most nights, winning the bread.  Meetings have eclipsed most of the daytime working hours to evenings are email catch-up.

Within a week Keaton starts school and soccer and re-starts ballet.  I’ve told Sharaun that we’re going from a relatively “easy” schedule to one of those suburban first-world problem nightmarish kind.  The school, off to ballet, right from ballet to soccer practice and back for a late dinner kinda thing.  Maybe this is some new phase of parenting that we’re about to be broken in on.  Keaton… people ask me if she’s excited about starting school.  I tell them that she is, but, in reality, she has no idea what she’s excited about… so who really knows.  She’s excited to wear her new twirly “first day” dress and see what all the other girls are wearing; she’s excited because she and the next-door neighbor best-bud share a class; she’s excited because they have playground.

Yeah, one’s school-age now and one’s working on crawling (no appreciable progress yet, friends).  One’s a boy and one’s a girl and that’s about as “square” a family unit as I could ask for.  I guess that’s why I paid a visit to my general practitioner the other day for a physical.  See, they wouldn’t refer me directly to the urologist… maybe they wanted their insurance money or maybe that dude really likes squeezing my balls, but whatever the reason I had to go there first and get checked-out before they’d point me to the vasectomy doc.  Yup, sterilization.  Can you believe that, before they’ll do this to you of your own volition, you have to go to a “counseling” session and a class on the practical irreversibility of the whole thing?  After that they make you wait through a “cooling off” period before you can have the procedure.  California: where elective surgery is akin to buying a firearm.  It’s OK though, I’m not in any real rush or anything, I can wait.

This weekend is Disneyland for Sharaun’s birthday, courtesy of the travel miles, courtesy of the RV trip spending, courtesy of the bread won, courtesy of Monday through Wednesday night spent working instead of writing here.

Goodnight.

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best of 2011.5

Look; either I’m getting older, more irrelevant, more intolerant… unable to cotton to the “new sounds,” or there just wasn’t a whole lot to froth at the mouth about in the first half of 2011.

I was disappointed with Radiohead’s effort; first-time since well… since never.  It was a trial admitting that and leaving it off the list; felt like betrayal.  Much of the year’s hotly-anticipated or raved-up albums just didn’t work for me – Panda Bear, James Blake, The Weeknd; no thanks..  Even old stalwarts fell short, I’m looking at you Decemberists and Strokes.  It was just an off half, I guess.

Honestly, and I’m not making this up it’s backed with hard data from Last.fm, my most-listened-to record in the first six months of 2011 was Sufjan Stevens’ 2010 LP Age of Adz.  I don’t do that a lot, cling to a record for that long.  It’s a fabulous album, to be sure, but something in 2011 should’ve been able to unseat it from heavy rotation.  To be fair, the music below is really good too – but January through June just didn’t speak to me the way it has in past years.  I’d recommend all the stuff that follows for your listening pleasure, and let’s hope together that something spectacular comes from the back nine.

So then, to get on with it for those still with it… here’s my best-of so-far list for 2011.  Only a scant six records to speak of, but I think it’s a pretty decent crop of tunes in the end.  Check it:

06. Mogwai- Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will [listen]

Back around the year 2001 I “discovered” Mogwai.  At the time I simply could not get enough of their sound.  I liked them so much, in fact, that Sharaun surprised me with tickets to go see them live in the city around that time.  It was a Valentine’s Day gift, and she accompanied me.  It was an awful show, I recall.  Mogwai were too loud during their awesome loud parts and not loud enough during their well-crafted quiet parts.  As the years wore on Mogwai continued to make albums, and I continued listening to them, but with waning interest.  Maybe I was over “post rock,” maybe they just weren’t that good, maybe both. I don’t know if this is just Mogwai doing right again, or me meeting the album in the right mood… but if you like the soft/heavy-loud/quiet kind of thing and are into instrumentals this is for you.

05. Yuck – Yuck [listen]

And some of the records I do like this year sound like Dinosaur Jr. or Pavement or Archers of Loaf.  Yuck is from England, but these guys would be right at home with Mascis and Barlow in some seedy Chapel Hill bar. I kept bouncing this album higher in my list and then bubbling it back down, but that might be because of the six here it’s my most recent acquisition and I’m just not ready to have this new guy bump some of the more established stuff I’ve been digging so far this year.  I could see that changing though, as time goes on and I look back in December.  Yuck’s record is for you if you were a skater in middle school; you maybe snuck out late one night with a can of green spraypaint and tagged Mrs. Canty’s, the math teacher, van.  You listened to Green Mind and daydreamed about making out with chicks or maybe buying some firecrackers or maybe getting a rush from stealing Now & Laters from the Sunoco.  Some people call this “post-punk” or other such dumb taxonomy.  You’re gonna call it awesome and I’m maybe gonna call it “with a bullet” here on the old best-of.  Watch out top-four… watch out.

 04. Cut Copy- Zonoscope [listen]

Cut Copy is one of those bands where, sometimes when I listen to them, really listen to them, I’m surprised I like them as much as I do.  I’m sure, in a previous review, I’ve made the Utah Saints comparison – and perhaps even gone back to access the memory databank and pull up the good time associated with similar sounds of yore, but Zonoscope is more than just an homage or Shanghai-Gucci.  Generally poppy and beats-based, but with plenty of quirky arpeggio and oooh-kinda harmony, it’s just a fun album.  We listened to this a lot on the RV trip because it was something Sharaun didn’t detest (which says something in its own right).  Maybe the best compliment I can pay here is that the album makes me want to dance, and I detest dancing.  Get it and shake your body in time.

03. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Belong [listen]

Some of the records I do like this year sound like the Smashing Pumpkins or MBV.  Hey, maybe I was right in my exposition… I’m “stuck,” I can’t hear new sounds.  I like stuff that sounds like stuff I like.  Records that sounds like Siamese Dream or Daydream Nation.  No, that can’t be right.  I drank the Animal Collective Kool-Aid, admitted my penchant for Kanye… I have to be hip, must be with-it, right?  Well, whether I’m faking it or not, I liked this record immensely.  Yes, it does, at times, sound like the Smashing Pumpkins with Debbie Goode pedals – but, seriously, what’s wrong with that?  Maybe I’m becoming myopic in my old age, but I still know a good record and I urge you to seek this one out.  What?  You want to know a little about it?  OK: It sounds commercial, it’s well-produced, your roommate who loved “that one Killers CD” will probably like it.

02. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues [listen]

I so loved the Fleet Foxes’ first album, and I was a little surprised when I didn’t immediately cotton to Helplessness Blues.  It took a few listens, quiet listens in solitude where I could really sink into the thing, to catch-on here.  It’s one of those paradoxical albums – so seemingly sparse and reserved in instrumentation yet coming off so very lush and sonic-ally “full.”  (Is that a word, “sonic-ally?”)  There’s this rollicking kind of breakdown that gets repeated in “Bedouin Dress,” like something you might hear sung on a ship… and it’s these little bits and pieces that make the Fleet Foxes’ music almost an anachronism, crafted with eyes on the simple folks of the past.  With strings and banjo and simply gorgeous moments like the sea-change transition in “The Plains/Bitter Dancer.”   I wore the grooves off this thing.

 01. Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde [listen]

I love it when bands “come out of nowhere.”  Of course they had a record before this and I’ve still never heard it.  Finding a band I’ve never heard of and being super-impressed with their album is like hunting treasure.  And Dye It Blonde is a treasure.  Ever heard of the “C86 sound?”  Well, honestly neither had I until I wanted to make a reference to Smith Westerns’ sometimes likeness to the Teenage Fanclub for this paragraph.  Wikipedia says the C86 sound is typified by “guitar-based musical genre characterised by ‘jangly’ guitars and fey melodies.”  I don’t know about “fey,” but there is some good jangling going on here, and I hear shades of Teenage Fanclub’s “The Concept” all over.  What are you going to hear?, you ask?  Beatles sounding melody!  Guitar!  Drums!  Sorta-feminine vocals!  Catchy hooks and happy rhythms.   I love this album too, and I bet you might.  Really, go into my head and then come back out and tell me I’m wrong.

 

You know what’s funny?  After writing all that I think I may have been wrong up above… there was some good stuff around to listen to this year.  Maybe I’m just not consuming as much anymore.  I’ll admit I listened to a lot of “new” old stuff, going on benders with new boxsets and live shows and reissues of purportedly great music I’d not yet digested.  Maybe this tomb-raiding took away a portion of the bandwidth I’d have devoted to pawing through the new release bins (the digital kind, that is).

Take a listen for me, OK?  Goodnight.

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three-hundred-thousand hour service

Hi everybody.  Went to the state fair tonight with the family.

It was kids get in free and everyone rides for a dollar night so the place was… crowded.  I ate a “western sausage” (whatever that is) which had to be two feet long.  It really wasn’t that good, but there’s something fun about fair-food.  And while I’m sort of sad that we didn’t really get to sample any of the fried novelties (Oreos, artichoke, pickles, etc.), I suppose my heart and waist and whatever else is better off for it.  Speaking of health in general, I cracked the User Manual my parents passed onto me when I turned eighteen for the first time in years today.  Since I have a milestone coming up I wanted to see what the accompanying recommended servicing included.  What I found:

At the 300,000 hour mark, the manufacturer recommends the following servicing:

Oral

  • Schedule “routine” dental cleaning (because you missed the last two and it’s been over a year).
  • Statistical note: One cavity (the first since the 150,000 hour mark) will likely be found.  If this should be the case, the tooth shall be filled next Tuesday.

Genital

  • Call primary physician to inquire about “permanent” birth control via vasectomy.
  • Schedule vasectomy and throw away the last of your prophylactics.
  • Statistical note: Primary physician will require a physical before referring you to a urologist.  They will claim this is because you have not been in for two plus years, really it is so they can collect a $10 co-pay and their insurance billings.

General

  • Restart the previously abandoned “Program Cardio.”  Mandated gym usage.
  • Eat nothing bigger than your first.  Do this no more than three times per day.
  • Statistical note: At 300,000 hours there is a 75% chance your first-size will disqualify the Double-Double animal style.

I guess it’s time to get on all that, then.  I’m not happy with the pounds I put on during (and prior to, really) the RV trip – so those’ll have to come off at some point.  But you know if I had some fried butter in front of me I just might have to try it.  Yeah, they really have fried butter.  No, for real.

Goodnight friends.