3.29.2009

dude, WTF is jasmine

on the label of a California Riesling i read, 'notes of white peach, jasmine and pear' WTF is jasmine? jasmine has a flavor? who eats jasmine? where does it come from?

adventure

I embarked on a Spurr adventure yesterday evening and had the pleasure of encountering my good friend Alex and his partner in crime, Maureen. Tanya and Tina were running the bar and Chris was handling the karaoke duties. I like karaoke. I like the car-accident, train wreck aspect of it. You don't want to listen or watch but you have to. It's compelling.
First up is Bill. He's a tone-deaf monotone. He starts singing some old 70's song and I gratuitously howl like an injured dog. His friends laugh. He laughs. When he's done. I point at him and I say, that was fantastic. You are my new hero. And he agreed. So now he is officially my new hero.
Then came the short girl with glasses, Gene Simmons (KISS) hair and no chin. No chin at all, straight to neck. She sang a very obscure song very badly. I think it was Helen Reddy. My previous dog-howling was Godlike in comparison. Plus, as mentioned, glasses no chin and bad Gene Simmons (KISS) hair.
I leaned over to Alex, who is a very accomplished vocalist, and mentioned, 'she totally fails'. He agreed with the obvious as her piercing (like a hound dog wearing a shock collar) emissions continued. But I really sealed my fate when she sat back down and after I glimpsed again her face and future, turned to Alex and said, 'Jeez, she can't sing and she's only gonna' get uglier, that's unfortunate'. I believe Alex aspirated some Tecate. Maureen punched me.
Thanks for reading. I'm off to Hell now. They're waiting for me.

3.22.2009

baby sasquatch

I was taking Colleen home after karaoke night at the Spurr Lounge because she works tomorrow (home health care) and as I pulled up to her place, this little bugger popped out of the bushes and bolted down the street in front of me. Short guy, stocky, kind of bandy-legged. At the moment, I thought I'd either seen a baby Sasquatch in human clothes or a Mexican shape-shifting chupacabra. I gave Colleen a big distracted smooch, shoved her out the door and checked my Ruger single action and went into full-pursuit mode. I needed to know whether it was a stinky bud hallucination from the KGB I got from the dude in the parking lot at the bar or whether I had actually seen a mythical creature. If I could catch it and keep it alive for awhile, I could surely earn some TMZ cash.
Turns out, it was just a midget. A hobo midget.
I caught up with him in the park by the monkey bars. My stride gave me an advantage. Though he could scurry, I could run. And he stopped at the first shot I fired at him. He was drunk but because he was built so low to the ground, he didn't sway or stagger. He said his name was Bill. He offered up a flask. It was 12 year old MacAllen.
I said Bill, why were you in the bushes outside my girlfriend's house and he said, and I quote, "I was counting."
Counting what, I asked.
"Leaves. I'm from Omaha. They have trees and there we spend the better part of any given year counting the leaves. Like a census."
I left it that because I was flummoxed and baffled. So Bill and I finished off the flask and about three-teen beers each. Then I took Bill down to the hobo camp under the I-10 mini-stack. Gave him a loaf of Circle K bread and some onion rings and he scurried into the bushes.
As he fled, he yelled "there's too much company, Connor Oberst was right". Huh?
Now I'm conflicted, do I tell Colleen about the midget or do I find a new weed dealer who doesn't lace his product with fairy dust.

3.20.2009

oddity

i was fishing in a little pond just east of Cesar Chavez High School in Laveen when i reeled in a patagonian toothfish. that's a seagoing member of the cod family. a deep sea wanderer. most people know it by it's marketing name, chilean sea bass. i just know it trolled in like dead carp. but since it didn't smell bad, i scaled it, grilled it over oak charcoal with a pinch of sea salt and a little olive oil and served it with a side dish of parboiled garlic snap beans and fresh hothouse tomatoes. it was good, but i still can't figure out how that toothfish got in that pond.

3.17.2009

teever/bowman ticket likely

Following extensive negotiations between the the two camps, it looks like a Teever/Bowman ticket is likely in 2011. Cornered in the plaza at Trump Plaza near Columbus Circle, Ms. Bowman said to the assembled, "i was ready for this." Later, she and teever were seen eating pancakes though observers were unable to establish the syrup on either plate. Whatever it was, if Ms. Bowman was involved in the decision, the pundits agreed, it had to be sweet, just like Pat.

3.15.2009

squeeze

after Frank Fools Crow passed and the planets were no longer aligned, a Bear Lodge Creek Lakota elder answered a question I had presented via email. the question was, what does it mean when you're holding hands with your pretty lady and she gives you a squeeze and a soft look. the elder related back to Ben Black Elk who said the sacred hoop is broken and the nations have scattered. the elder then stated that the squeeze was an affirmation that the natural order was being restored. as for the look, he said, you're just one dang lucky wasicu.

3.13.2009

cat door

i need a cat door. if you have one, please call.

3.11.2009

neko

The Winds
by Sasha Frere-Jones March 16, 2009

The title of Neko Case’s new album, “Middle Cyclone,” is a reference to “mesocyclone,” the core rotational structure of a thunderstorm, which can produce a tornado. This was not my interpretation of the phrase, which I took as a commentary on age, and on how Case turned thirty-eight last year: hair flying, throat open, poorly secured items be damned. Case’s work on “Middle Cyclone”—the best of her career by a generous margin, and every song her own except for two covers—addresses youth, aging, marriage, death, change, and all that knobby stuff you run over on the way to your midpoint.
Nature and violence are the forces at work in “Middle Cyclone.” Mockingbirds sing, ants march, and the sky drops marbles on Case’s characters. The Sistine Chapel is “painted with a Gatling gun,” and the characters in “People Got a Lotta Nerve” are all types of trouble—one is a “man-eater,” another eats “hearts of sharks.” Case sums up this scenario—after a long pull on a cheap cigarette, one hopes—by singing, “It will end again in bullets, friend.”
“Middle Cyclone” isn’t an album that breaks apart the world with new sounds. It has the same feel as R.E.M.’s “Murmur,” Meat Puppets’ “Up on the Sun,” or X’s “Under the Big Black Sun,” perfectly formed rock albums from the eighties that emerged from the nest of punk rock, steeped in a love of older music and newer sounds, with self-indulgences held in check by a quick pulse.
The wide-open spaces and narrow hopes of the characters in “Middle Cyclone” could come from any of the many stages of Case’s life. Born in Virginia, Case spent most of her youth in and around Tacoma, Washington, leaving home at fifteen for Vancouver, where she played drums in punk-rock bands. She lived for five years in Tucson, and recently moved to Vermont, where she bought a farmhouse and a defunct post office, to use as a rehearsal space. She is an avid defender of animals (the song “I’m an Animal” is not all that metaphorical, apparently) and has lived much of her life in places where cars and guns usually go together, and fast. If you can’t tell how far Case is throwing her voice as a writer, she gives you a big cue in “Vengeance Is Sleeping,” when she sings, “I’m not the man you think I am.”
Case began recording in the nineties, with a revolving band of musicians billed as Neko Case and Her Boyfriends. Their sound, as Case described it, was like “a bunch of kids trying to reproduce some sort of Owen Bradley magic.” Case and her band took elements—pedal-steel guitar, loads of reverb on the voice—of the so-called “Nashville sound” that Bradley helped create for singers like Patsy Cline. At first, Case’s take on country was engaging, mostly because of her voice, which Case herself describes as “breathing through a fire hose.” “I’ve never really listened to my voice and gone, That is a quality instrument,” she told me. “It’s more like, O.K., that’s good and fucking loud.” She added, “I’m kind of the horn section of any band I’m in.”
Without Case’s voice, the Boyfriends records would have been fairly unremarkable country-rock albums. It is ironic that Case, of all people, would be so fond of reverb, an effect whose metallic curve can sometimes obscure a truly great voice but is a boon to modest singers. (The Jesus and Mary Chain would be a couple of links short without the reverb.) Case’s tone has the glint and the bruised shading of well-handled brass, her pitch is merciless, and when the throttle is open her chest voice is more than a mere horn section: Case is an event, a force that sets off things around it.
One of the Vancouver groups that Case has worked with is the energetic pop-rock band the New Pornographers. The band’s principal songwriters are A. C. Newman, who has a knack for twisting melodies which recalls that of Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook, and the prolix Dan Bejar, who writes mainly for his band Destroyer. Case’s role with the New Pornographers has been largely as a voice—she does not write with the band. But a song like Newman’s “The Laws Have Changed,” a magnificent and clever work from 2003 that implicitly likened the Bush family to ancient-Egyptian rulers, does not peak fully until Case enters, singing, in chorus with her own voice, “Introducing for the first time, Pharaoh on the microphone.” You can’t help cheering along with the royalty for three minutes.
As the New Pornographers grew in popularity, so did Case, who made her first full-length Boyfriendless record, “Blacklisted,” in 2002; it was her last and best iteration of the countrified middle ground. The attraction to mid-century country music, especially when it goes a-waltzing, makes sense. Like Nashville ballads, Case’s songs tend toward long, luxurious phrases that suit her voice. (By contrast, she cites “nimble” vocalists, like her backup singer Kelly Hogan, as people with voices as precise as “coping saws.” “They’re like little mountain goats—they’re just hopping up the cliffs,” she said.)
Case’s change in writing style began with “The Tigers Have Spoken” (2004), an album of songs recorded live. The material is mostly covers—several traditional numbers, Loretta Lynn’s “Rated X,” and “Loretta,” by the obscure late-seventies Boston group Nervous Eaters—combined with four Case originals, including “Favorite.” It’s a waltz, a time signature that Case leans on a little heavily, and though the textures are country, the melodies have become longer, the chord changes a little stranger, and the themes more Case’s own. (She hits a deer with her car, but only in a dream.)

3.10.2009

pol pot


when i was living in cambodia, in a small village on the border with laos, i made a report to the village elder, hun vang, about the lack of real meat,
white rice and liquor stores. hun gave me some 'monkey' meat (more likely a vietnamese ground mole) and said i should try to hook up with pol pot. he gave me a number. so i called and pol pot answered. turns out that even though he's the second coming of hitler and murdered millions, he had a line on fresh chickens and single malt scotch. he hooked me up. for a vicious devil who should have been and finally was executed, he was very congenial with me. and he wrote me a letter before he was put down wishing me, my family and my friends well, not even mentioning his upcoming demise. he did mention that since he was imprisoned he couldn't score any cocaine. it's apparently hard to come by in cambodian prisons. unfortunately, i couldn't help.

3.08.2009

more than one way

There's more than one way to skin a cat, but the result is the same. So whatever approach you decide to take, just do it well. Just let the results speak. And be prepared to dispose the carcass.

3.02.2009

the garden show

i've been informed by a certain colleen that i'm going to the garden show this saturday. i assure you i was careful and i didn't ask the obvious question; what is the garden show? it's too soon to challenge the girl things, especially 'cause she's otherwise most sweet. i assume it's about flowers anyway, and as long as i'm the principal gardener, i guess i'm ok with it.

3.01.2009

renaissance festival

right after rush limbaugh and hemorrhoids, i hate renaissance festivals. it's the ultimate freak show for mentally deranged idiots who live in a delusional fantasy world of gremlins and ghosts. an example; at my friends wedding reception this renaissance festival pagan chick in a really bad dress got up and did a hand dance. why would you wear a costume to a friggin' wedding reception? personally, i couldn't figure it out and i don't know what the point was, but if i'd had my shotgun with me i would have put an end to it!