The Big Green House

Friday, November 28, 2003

 

Overheard

Two older ladies talking � actually, one talking at length and one patiently listening. Finally the listener interrupts the spieler and says, �This is a lovely story you�re telling. Does it have a point?�

Genius.

bmarkey 11/28/2003 08:37:00 PM

Thursday, November 27, 2003

 

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

Today was one of those days that made me want to move to Seattle in the first place. The smell of woodsmoke filled air as I walked Lucy around the neighborhood. There are still some trees with a few leaves left, but most of them have fallen. It was cool and overcast, but visibility was high enough that I could see the Olympics to the west and the Cascades to the east. And just to round things out, Mt. Rainier was looming over downtown as I drove to work. (Note to folks living elsewhere: when one can actually see Mt. Rainier through the clouds & whatnot, the locals say that �the mountain is out�. There is one stretch of I-5 southbound that actually slows down to a crawl on such days. Even though we all know that the mountain is there, we are always surprised when we see it.)

And yes, I am here at work today, thankful for the job but not really happy to be working on the holiday. Ah well, it comes with the territory. My question to you is, what the hell are you doing on the computer on Thanksgiving? I mean, I�m stuck here. What�s your excuse? Why not get out and enjoy what�s left of your holiday?

(Obviously, the above is aimed at my fellow Americans. If you�re visiting my little corner of the web from Somewhere Else, carry on. Although you, too, might want to get outside and enjoy the ways in which autumn has visited your neck of the woods.)

(Those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, um, go to the beach or something.)

bmarkey 11/27/2003 05:14:00 PM

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

 

Our house, in the middle of our street

The floors in Science Manor are done. They look mighty swell.

Also, the big dead tree that could easily have flattened the kitchen but at the last second chose to fall relatively harmlessly in the backyard is scheduled for disassembly Friday.

So, it appears that we will begin moving out of The Big Green House and over to Science Manor sometime this coming month. For Science Girl and myself, this means a lot of packing and unpacking and deciding where the furniture goes and hoping the dog will get along with the cat & vice versa. For you, it means that my postings will probably be sparse, and that said postings will quite likely consist of pointless complaints about things which cannot be fixed. Also, since I�m going to have yet another birthday in there somewhere, expect some bitter moaning about how old age is no place for sissies and/or how utterly clueless you young �uns can be & how much better/tastier/more difficult but ultimately character building things were back in the day.

In other words, business as usual.

bmarkey 11/26/2003 10:19:00 PM

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

 

Rockin� around the Xmas tree

Maybe it�s some sort of weird virus I�ve caught, or a previously suppressed gene suddenly expressing itself like there�s no tomorrow. Whatever the reason, I�ve become obsessed with Xmas music. Not, I hasten to add, the moldy old lugubrious carols that make ya wanna open a vein every time you hear them � and you will be hearing them, from now right on up until 12:01 AM December 26th. Perish the thought. No, I�m talking about fun music. Or, if we must stick with the old standbys, then fun arrangements.

It all began last year. Now, as the holidays approach like that inevitable freight train barreling down on Wile E. Coyote any time he stepped near the railroad tracks, I find myself searching out new Xmas tunage. I can�t help myself. It�s sad, really.

Of course I�ll be putting together a mix tape. Or, if we can actually get the CD burner up & running again, I�ll burn a CD. Knowing me, I will probably do both. If you�re interested, drop me a line & I�ll see if I can�t make some extras. Don�t look for anything soon, though, since I�m still shopping. I've yet to find that Joan Jett version of �The Little Drummer Boy� that I know is out there.

bmarkey 11/25/2003 09:30:00 PM

Friday, November 21, 2003

 
This is utterly pointless, but I'm gonna share it anyway: I just recieved a spam with the sender's name listed as Flukier S. Curmudgeons. Should I ever need to change my name, I think I know what I'm gonna go with...
bmarkey 11/21/2003 08:25:00 PM

 

Will this wind be so mighty as to lay low the mountains of the Earth?

Washington State, due to the generally mild climate and year-round moisture, has become home to a great many insidious, exotic pests. (Pause here for native Washingtonians to make the obligatory joke at the expense of transplanted Californians.) I was very surprised to find that the blackberries one sees in just about every uncultivated spot up here are actually Himalayan blackberries. Tasty, yet stubborn; once it gets established, nothing short of chemical warfare will totally eradicate it.

The same is true of the English ivy growing everywhere that the blackberries haven�t taken over. This vine is really bad news.* People plant it as groundcover, unaware that it will eventually take over the entire area, climbing trees and choking them off.

This, in fact, is what has happened on the lot just downslope from Science Manor. We went over there today to check on the progress the guys have made refinishing the floors. That�s actually coming along nicely; they think they�ll be done just before Thanksgiving, which is right on schedule. Since we were there, Science Girl wanted to water some plants in the kitchen. While she did that, I took the opportunity to look out the back window. There�s a very nice view out that way, but something about it didn�t seem right today. Then I looked at the railing of the deck, which was almost completely covered in tree branches. �Oh�, I said to myself, �one of the trees lost a limb during the storm the other night.�

Well, yes and no.

Approximately 75% of an ivy-covered alder tree blew over and now fills most of the back yard. Had it fallen five feet to either side, it would have likely taken out the entire deck and possibly the kitchen as well. As it is, we lost part of the back fence & (probably, but we�re not sure yet) a few recently planted hydrangeas, but there�s no damage to the house. SG spoke with the woman who owns the property on which the tree stood, and it sounds as if she�s being pretty reasonable about things. That�s quite a relief.

In a way, this may turn out to be a good thing. Now we have the opportunity to point out that the ivy is also attacking the huge maples on her property & be fairly certain that we�ll be heard.

In happier news, it snowed again last night. We were just getting ready to go to bed when SG called me into the kitchen and had me look out the window. Huge flakes of snow were falling and had covered the road & everything else. We hurriedly changed out of our jammies and into warm clothes, put the sweater on the dog and went out for a midnight stroll in the snow, which was still coming down pretty heavily. It changed from the larger, wetter flakes to a nice powder over the course of our walk, and then stopped just as we were getting back to The Big Green House. We got about half an inch, all told, which stuck around most of the day. There may even still be some left when I get home tonight. That would be nice.


*While researching this little piece, I found out that not only is it a invasive pest, it�s also poisonous to pets. Yet another reason for its eradication.

bmarkey 11/21/2003 08:18:00 PM

 
Outdoor hockey! This is pretty damn cool. (No pun intended, I swear.) I�m glad they chose two of the remaining Canadian teams for it. Don�t know if I�d want to be sitting there in 15-degree weather, but I�m glad they�re doing it anyway.
bmarkey 11/21/2003 06:23:00 PM

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

 

Baby, it�s cold outside

Science Girl awakened me at 7:30 this morning. Regular readers (yes, there are a couple) will recall that this is ordinarily a hanging crime. SG gets special dispensation, of course, being SG. Were that not the case, though, she would still probably have gotten off the hook � it snowed overnight. When we went to bed around 1 AM, it was blowing and raining something fierce. It must have switched over to snow not too long after that, since we had about an inch accumulate on the car & about that much in the yard. It had already started to melt in the slowly falling mist that had taken over by the time we got up.

So, now that we�ve begun packing for the move over to Science Manor, I finally got to see snow on the roof of The Big Green House. And all the other houses on the block, too. Lucy and I went for an early morning walk around the neighborhood to see how things had changed. (Well, that�s what I was doing. She had her own agenda, as usual.) I always find walking in new snow a little disorienting. All my familiar landmarks disappear, replaced by strange new shapes. And over it all, the slightly spooky silence that comes with snowfall.

It�s all gone now, of course. Snow never sticks much more than a day or two here, and usually melts the same day. Today was no different. There was a little bit on the ground when I left for work, but by the time I get home tonight it will be as if it never happened.

Why any of this would mean anything to you is beyond me. It happened, I enjoyed it (except for the waking up early part), and it�s my blog, so that�s what I�m writing about. If you don�t like it, you can go piss up a rope. And twice on Sundays.

I get a little cranky without enough sleep.

bmarkey 11/19/2003 08:12:00 PM

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

 

The girl with the most cake

As previously mentioned, today is Science Girl�s birthday. Happy birthday, sweetie! And, as promised: cake and ice cream. Although serving ice cream with that particular cake would be like putting a pair of these on the back of your Bentley. You could do it, but why?

(Why you�d hang them off your pickup is another matter. Why you�d be driving a Bentley is still another matter. So many questions, so little time�)

I saw Michel Richard bake that cake on Julia Child: Lessons with Master Chefs about ten years ago and have been obsessed with it ever since. I will bake it myself someday. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow� well, definitely not tomorrow. But someday. Possibly very soon.

No, really. I�m serious.

Fine. Keep it up with that attitude and you�re not getting any cake. When I eventually bake it. Which I will.

bmarkey 11/18/2003 08:10:00 PM

Monday, November 17, 2003

 
Too much work tonight for posting. I�m just slipping in here on the QT to let y�all know that tomorrow is Science Girl�s birthday. There may be cake and ice cream for all. If you're good.
bmarkey 11/17/2003 09:01:00 PM

Sunday, November 16, 2003

 

Sunday morning, coming down

Hi. It�s a very wet and windy Sunday morning here at The Big Green House. Science Girl isn�t up yet, so I thought I�d take this opportunity to make up for not posting on Wednesday.

A neighbor down the block moved out this week. I can�t say that I knew her at all; I only ran into her a few times, usually at neighborhood garage sales. Invariably, she was loading her pickup truck with a bookshelf or an end table or� something large. Sometimes Lucy and I would see her on our walks. She�d be out in her front yard, selling off some of the things she�d collected or re-arranging the many pinwheels, garden gnomes, and patriotic signs scattered around the front of the house. She was always very friendly, saying hi and playing with Lucy for a bit.

Anyway, she sold the house, a nice, simple two-story affair, a couple of weeks ago. They�ve been moving things out over the past week. A lot of things. Apparently she�d been to more than a few garage sales, and didn't resell all of her haul.

It now appears that they�ve abandoned the project. There is an enormous pile of stuff � bookshelves, couches, chairs, unidentifiable pieces of what was probably furniture of some sort at one time, and box after box of who knows what � which covers the entire front yard, to a height of at least six feet. It�s been out there since Friday. I�d assumed that they were going to come for it yesterday; I certainly hoped so, anyway, since it�s been raining off and on since yesterday morning. It�s been coming down steadily since last night, soaking everything in the jumble to the point where if they don�t pick it up soon, it�s going to be beyond salvage. Lucy and I just came back from our morning walk, and apart from a few boxes that blew over in the windstorm last night, nothing seems to have moved since it was put out there. It�s a rather sad and forlorn sight.

Speaking of trashed cultural detritus that�s beyond salvage, I�ve had several hits overnight from a couple of poor dopes looking for the Paris Hilton video. Here�s the scoop, guys: I don�t have it, I don�t know where you can get it, and I�m somewhat baffled as to why anyone would want to see it. From what I hear, it ain�t worth the effort involved in tracking it down. But hell, I could have told you that without having seen frame one of the damn thing. I�d think that if you�re looking for pictures of people having sex you�d at least want them to look like people going at it, rather than some guy shtupping a coked-out whippet. Maybe that�s just me, though.

But maybe that�s not why you�re searching for this thing. Maybe it�s because you want to see someone �famous� humiliating herself in public. Well, OK. Not my idea of a good time, but whatever floats your boat, as we used to say. But can you tell me what it is she�s famous for? What has she accomplished or created? In short, what has she done? Aside from answering her cell phone while being poked, I mean. �Cause as near as I�ve been able to glean from the few news stories I�ve seen, she�s famous for being famous. Or famous for her genetic background. Famous, in fact, for merely being born. Well shit, boys, you and I have done that much. BFD, right?

What is the appeal here? I�m not losing any sleep over this, but I am genuinely curious.

bmarkey 11/16/2003 11:14:00 AM

Friday, November 14, 2003

 
Where is my hovercar? It�s 2003 already, and I have no hovercar. Not even a jet pack. Also, no lunar vacation, nor any hope of one soon.

The future sucks.

bmarkey 11/14/2003 09:02:00 PM

Thursday, November 13, 2003

 

The man who wasn�t there

My writing here seems to be ebbing more than it�s flowing, lately. I just don�t have that much to say at the moment. I guess I�m more focused on getting ready for The Big Move over to Science Manor. The floor guys come in next week to rip out all the worn-out and lead-contaminated carpeting & refinish the hardwood floors underneath. That�s supposed to take about a week, and then we�ll let the new finish cure for at least another week after that. There are some baseboards that need to be painted, but that can go on while we�re moving. So, if everything goes as planned, we should be spending Xmas in Science Manor. Yay!

In the meantime, I thought about making fun of Courtney Love, but where�s the challenge in that? Not very sporting, really. Fish, barrel, tactical nuclear weapon. Besides, I feel bad for Frances.

I suppose I could throw together something about the Paris Hilton videotape if I really had to, but truthfully, I�m not real sure who she is or why I should care. I will say this much: after seeing her picture, I�d imagine footage of stick insects mating would be more erotically charged. Yeesh.

Anyway, posting will more than likely continue in sporadic mode for a while. Of course, now that I�ve said that I�ll probably go on a two-posts-a-day jag. Whatever happens, just bear with me as much as possible.

bmarkey 11/13/2003 10:22:00 PM

 

�To each, their own�, said the farmer as he kissed the pig

On the one hand, congratulations to the kids at C-89.

On the other hand, who the hell wants to listen to Hi-NRG disco on the radio? My personal dislike of the genre aside, it�s always struck me as being club-only material. I can�t imagine someone sitting down and listening to it, or using it as background music while they did something else. But then again, I�m guessing the folks involved might say the same thing about the crap I listen to.

bmarkey 11/13/2003 05:29:00 PM

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

 

If I were Britannia, I�d waive the rules

When I saw this article in this Sunday�s NY Times on �restaurant critic� (and I use that term very loosely) A.A. Gill and his cohorts, I just about came unglued. It would appear that another aspect of British journalism is going the way of their music press. How can one possibly think that a restaurant review that barely mentions the food is in any way useful to anyone? That�s not criticism; it�s wanking.

Hmm. Apparently it�s �Berate the British� week here at The Big Green House.

I tried to find some example�s of Gill�s �reviews� online, but The Sunday Times wants money from me in order to view their online archive. As an Irish friend of mine used to say, �Sod that for a game of soldiers�, which I�m pretty sure means something like �not in this lifetime�. So, all I have to go by is the NYT article. If it is in any way accurate, I have to wonder why readers put up with his antics. From the article:

Mr. Gill wrote celebrity profiles for The Tatler magazine before signing on with The Times to write about food, which he took as a broad mandate to write about, as he put it, "everything from potato crisps to the blood and the body of Christ."

He quickly made a name for himself. He was thrown out of a Gordon Ramsay restaurant while having lunch with Joan Collins because Mr. Ramsay was angry at a review. In a review of a north Wales restaurant in 1998, Mr. Gill derided the Welsh, resulting in a complaint being filed against him with Britain's Commission for Racial Equality. Lately, Mr. Gill has been encouraging his readers to eat more whale. Because he has dyslexia, Mr. Gill files his columns by reading them aloud to his editors over the phone. All the while, Mr. Gill has made a point not to get too bogged down writing too much about what he's eaten.

"The least interesting thing about food is the recipes," he said.

Also:

�If the food is the star of your meal," Mr. Gill is fond of saying, "then you're eating with the wrong people."

And let�s not forget:

Many of his columns focus more on his dining companions� As often as not, Mr. Gill's columns begin as stream-of-consciousness ramblings that have little to do with dining. A third of Mr. Gill's recent review of an Indian restaurant was about his need for a good walking stick.

Where do I start? If, as a restaurant reviewer, the food isn�t the star of your meal, perhaps you�re in the wrong line of work. I don�t know how these things work in the UK, but when I read a restaurant review I don�t give a husky fuck who the reviewer dined with. I want to know about the food; anything else is just the writer stroking his/her ego. So much for Gill�s claim to �care an enormous amount about restaurants and food�.

Why do the British put up with such shoddy criticism? Mind you, I�m certainly not claiming any cultural superiority for the US. Not by a long shot. I truly am curious, though, about the delight the British press, and by extension I suppose the British public, take in tearing apart the work of others with horrible, mean-spirited �reviews� which are in fact little more than excuses for the writer to have a little fun at some else�s expense. It finally forced me to give up reading the NME and Melody Maker back in the early Eighties. Can anyone enlighten me on this point?

bmarkey 11/11/2003 08:16:00 PM

Monday, November 10, 2003

 

The Who sell out. Again.

I went to court over it, you know... You know, you see a bathroom-tissue commercial, and you start hearing "Let The Good Times Roll," and the paper thing's rolling down the stairs. Why would anybody want to mortify and humiliate themselves? Well, it's just business, you know? The memory that you have and the association you have with that song can be co-opted. And a lot of people are really in it for the money. Period. A lot of people don't have any control over it. I don't own the copyrights to my early tunes. So it is unfortunate, but there are a lot of people that consciously want their songs exploited in that way, which I think is demeaning. I hate it when I hear songs that I already have a connection with, used in a way that's humiliating. I mean, in the old days, if somebody was doing a commercial, you used to say, "Oh, gee, too bad, he probably needs the money." But now, it's like hocking cigarettes and underwear with rock 'n' roll. I guess that's our big export. It's like how a good butcher uses every part of the cow. I don't like hearing those Beatles songs in the commercials. It almost renders them useless. Maybe not for everyone else, but when I hear it I just think, �Oh, God, another one bites the dust.�
-Tom Waits, on the plague of pop songs in advertising

I have finally lost my last few tattered shreds of respect for Pete Townshend.

In the past, I was a very big fan of The Who. Just absolutely dug everything they did, up through Who Are You?, anyway. I wore out two copies of Empty Glass, and one of All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (although I still remain perplexed by the title). Pete was the perfect combination of the Apollonian and Dionysian aspects of rock & roll for me, if you�ll allow me that little lapse into rockcritspeak. He was the guy who busted shit up and had a functional brain. Granted, he had a tendency to overthink some things, but that�s not always bad.

But the solo albums grew ever more pretentious and the Who albums became increasingly bad. Can anyone explain to me WHY THE HELL THEY DIDN�T JUST KNOCK IT IN THE HEAD WHEN KEITH MOON DIED? I found myself scratching my head. Still, I saw them on their first post-Moon tour. And on the first farewell tour, with The Clash. What can I say? I was a fan. When the farewell tours became a semi-annual tradition, though, I stopped buying tickets.

And then we had the Broadway musical of Tommy.

You have no idea how much it pains me to write that sentence.

Rock & roll and Broadway are antithetical to one another. To maintain otherwise is to miss the point of both, as far as I can see. However, there are people out there who would argue that statement, I guess. (I�m grateful that I don�t know any of them, but they must exist. Somebody bought all those tickets.) At any rate, the appearance of the Tommy musical caused me to seriously rethink my fan status.

This situation was only exacerbated by the Claritin ads featuring the overture from Tommy. I can almost justify them in my mind, since anti-allergy meds are a necessary part of the lives of many, many people. Still, my preferences are similar to those of Mr. Waits, as quoted above. Yeah, the work belongs to its author, who is free to do with it as he/she sees fit. I understand that. What I wish more authors understood is that when they sell those rights, they�re also selling the memories and associations of their fans.

The decision to continue last year�s tour after the death of John Entwhistle was yet another disturbing Townshend move. If the tour absolutely had to go on, as I�ve heard argued (and I�m certainly in no position to comment on the financial realities of such a thing), they should have at least retired The Who as their name and carried on as, I dunno, Who�s Left. For my money, it ceased to be The Who when Moon died, doubly so with the passing of Entwhistle. At what point does a band become diluted into extinction by the subtraction of original members?

The very last straw crippled the camel this weekend. Science Girl and I went out for lunch Sunday afternoon, to a bar near Science Manor. They were showing the Raiders/Jets game on the various TVs scattered around the place. I was on my way to the men�s room when I heard the familiar bass rumble of �Happy Jack� coming from the nearest TV. I stopped in my tracks, to see what the commercial was for.

It was an ad for the Hummer.

If my life were a movie, I would have run to the restroom and vomited up my lovely lunch. Thankfully, such is not the case.

I did feel queasy, though. I can turn a blind eye to a lot of the other stuff, but this shameful pimping of Hummers is beyond the pale. There�s just no excusing it.

bmarkey 11/10/2003 08:49:00 PM

Friday, November 07, 2003

 
A big stapler would probably work, too.
bmarkey 11/07/2003 08:09:00 PM

 
If any of you live in the Seattle area and have access to a nail gun this evening, will you please come to my jobsite and NAIL MY FUCKING HEAD TO THE WALL? PLEASE?
bmarkey 11/07/2003 07:15:00 PM

Thursday, November 06, 2003

 

Stuck in neutral

Sorry kids. I�m feelin� pretty flat these days, so I haven�t got much to share tonight.

On my way in to work tonight I picked up the new Frank Black and the new Dirtbombs. With any luck, this little dose of retail therapy will kickstart the tiny moped that is my brain.

Other recent purchases*:
Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros Streetcore - as mentioned here.
The Shins Chutes Too Narrow - slightly less of an organic Sunday afternoon psychedelic groove than on the previous album. By which I mean to say more electric, I guess. Still, quite good.
Pretty Girls Make Graves The New Romance - I like it more each time I play it. I�m not up to describing it for you right now, though. Just trust me.
FM Knives Useless and Modern - nothing earth-shatteringly inventive, just straightforward punk you won�t hear in the mall.

All worth checking out, certainly.

*Anyone who wants to send me promo copies of your new release(s), email me. Seriously. I don�t promise to love your stuff, but I do promise to at least play it & (probably) write about it before I sell it to the used record shop.

bmarkey 11/06/2003 08:31:00 PM

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

 

An impassioned plea for a favorite phrase

Y�know, I just can�t remember the last time I heard the expression �All y�all can kiss my ass!� used. It�s been awhile, that�s for sure. I used to hear it in Oakland all the time, from both African-Americans and, uh, European-Americans. Usually it was shouted across the street by someone (usually female, now that I think of it) stomping off in what can only be described as a huff, although I�ve heard it used with just about every other shading possible. Here in Seattle, it just doesn�t seem to come up in conversation. It�s possible that it�s a regional expression, but I doubt it.

I have to say, I kinda miss it. It has a nice rhythm, flowing like water down a flight of stairs. I like the repeated �all� at the beginning, reinforcing that everyone in the target group is included. The alliteration of �all� and �ass� is pleasing, too.

In summation, I heartily encourage the use of �All y�all can kiss my ass!� in your daily discourse, should the appropriate situation arise. Thank you for your time.

bmarkey 11/05/2003 08:44:00 PM

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

 
First off, kudos to Science Girl on her first post! Let�s hope there will be many more to come (although that may take some coaxing on my part).

Next, from the Chock Full of Irony department: I left my reading glasses at home tonight. I may not be too old to rock & roll or too young to die, but my eyes are too worn out from all those years of reading liner notes to do much on the computer without my specs anymore. It�s rather sad, really, because I used to have frighteningly good vision. Not quite X-Ray, but close enough. Anyway, to avoid a potentially death-dealing headache, this is probably all I�m gonna put up tonight. If I think of anything that can�t wait until tomorrow (doubtful, but not impossible), I�ll post it from home.

bmarkey 11/04/2003 08:06:00 PM

Monday, November 03, 2003

 

Old folks boogie

So, we didn�t make it to the Gas Huffer show Saturday night because my knees were not up to it. Y�see, Science Girl and yours truly took Lucy for a long walk Saturday, which was an unseasonably cold day. Really, really cold. By the time we got home I knew there was no way I was going to be able to stand all night long, no matter how many beers were involved. Yes, I am lame. Not quite literally, but it�s close at times.

Now some people, were they in my hi-tops, might take something like this as a sign that perhaps it�s time for me to finally admit that I am too old for the rock & the roll. Time and tide have taken their toll, going out to clubs is for the young, etc. There is a name for such people. Actually, there are several names, but the politest one I can think of is �wussies�.

I have no intention of giving up live music over bad knees, or anything else for that matter. As long as it�s still fun for me, I�ll keep going. I may have to sit down a little more often than previously, but so what, big deal, and who cares. CDs are great, but rock & roll needs to be experienced in a live setting, with the smoke and the sweat and the overpriced beer that spills on the way back to your table (if you�re lucky enough to get one) and the guy in front of you accidentally stepping on your toes and the girl to your right singing along with every song and the boy on your left shouting �Freebird!� between songs as if no one else in the history of the public performance of amplified music has ever thought of doing that and the drums trying to push your ribcage back through your spine and the bass making your chest cavity resonate like a cherry bomb in a tile bathroom and the guitarist�s either playing the solo of his life or he�s being electrocuted because he spilled his beer into his amp and you can�t quite figure out just what the hell the singer is saying but it sure sounds good. Y�know? All that, plus the incredible charge that comes from witnessing music being made as it happens� it�s irreplaceable, cannot be faked, accept no substitutes. I dig it all, even if some aspects of it work my nerves from time to time.

When you get right down to it, the truth of the matter is that I love rock & roll. So put another dime in the jukebox, baby. And hand me that bottle of ibuprofen while you�re up.

bmarkey 11/03/2003 08:16:00 PM