Poetry 365: Hero Worship

The bullet train ends
in a town called Takajo.
Jane walks the five minutes
into the center of town to the museum
where they've built an exact replica
of the bedroom that she grew up in,
next to the mockups of Edison's lab
and Neruda's study.

"Exact," thinks Jane.
And it is. The dark panel walls
and card table with the old Mac.
Exact. She takes her phone
out of her inside coat pocket
to call her mother to ask
what book is sitting on the bedside table
back in the original.
In both places, it's a dog-eared
paperback of "The Big Sleep".

Macho macho man

I'm working on a new sword form in kung fu. It's a southern broadsword style, it's chock full of muscle man poses and power attacks. Yao, my kung fu master, says it's a macho form and that I'm not a macho man. He says that I've got a coolness that is mutually exclusive from macho. So, we're gonna have to figure out how to fake the machismo to get the set right.

I've never thought of myself as macho, and I'm happy to be unmacho. Macho to me is oafish, brutish and insensitive.

This is NOT me

I have a very common name, so it is very often that I find other people with the same name doing things for which I may get blamed. Men with my name have died in my hometown, prompting the weird experience of seeing my own name in the obituaries and been arrested for drug possession with intent to sell, thus allowing me to see my name in the police blotter. Well, another namesake has done it again:

William Lee, 48, died after witnesses say he became belligerent and shoved an attendant during an evening American Airlines flight from Los Angeles and was physically restrained by seven men, possibly members of a rugby team from Australia or New Zealand.

Sproing

It's finally bearable outside today, and Jen and I decided to get back into our running routine. We haven't been running for a long while due to a combination of factors: the brutal winter, the joblessness situation and the first trimester uncomfortableness. But all of those factors have fallen away now.

I decided to run a 5.6 mile route, while Jen took a shorter 5.2 loop. The first two miles were brutal for me. My body was still trying to remember how to run. Finally, the endorphins kicked in and I finished up strong. I didn't realize how much I miss running.

I'm going to enter the James Joyce Ramble 10K again this year. That race is at the end of April, so I've got to get down to business and really start training. It's one of my favorite races despite the giant hill in the middle of mile 3. One of it's distinguishing features is at each mile marker, there is someone dressed in period costume reading from Joyce. What's even more bizarre are there are bandit readers, standing on random street corners reading from their favorite Joyce. One year, there was a guy reading aloud from the Italian translation. I thought I was running too hard and had somehow come down with aphasia.

Radio Nervda #5

Spring looks like it may finally make an appearance. It's been in the forties and much of the snow has melted away. I hope winter's taking his final bow for the year.

Ryan Adams is the closest thing we have to the 80's Replacements. If you go to one of his shows you don't know if he'll be to drunk to play, or brilliant. He doesn't sound too drunk here: "My Sweet Carolina" (live in Denver).

If we're going to play that music criticism game where everybody is somebody from the past, Ted Leo and Pharmacists is definately Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Ted and the Pharmacists make catchy propulusive rock just like E.C. back in their glory days, before Elvis thought he could write sontatas and standards as well as rock tunes. Ted, stay away from the "culture" and you'll be fine. This is "Tell Balgeary Bulgury is Dead"

The Kaiser Chiefs music have a pretty extensive old record collection. Listening to this song, I can hear that they've got a lot of Clash in old milk crates. There's something else that I can't quite pick out. Maybe you can clear this up for me. This is "I Predict a Riot"

Instead of listening to new music and making up some sort of nostaligia for the 80's, I've cut out the middleman completely. This is a recording of XTC live in 1982. "Burning in Optimism's Flames"

Here's OOIOO from Japan the what could be the world's heaviest sounding piece of surf rock, called "Right Hand" If you're a fan of the Flaming Lips you will recognize the woman's screaming vocal. That is THE Yashmi of the Boredoms singing on this. I think it's sung in English, but as always, I could be wrong.

That's what you learn in life, that at any given point, you could be wrong. Most of the time, it doesn't really matter.

Roxy's birthday

Hail, hail. It's Roxy's birthday. He's turning 20 today. Quite an accomplishment. There's no real good rule of thumb to convert human years to cat years. Let's just say there are only a few varieties of dirt that are older than he is. He's still spry. Got all of his teeth and still jumps up on the couch and meows very loudly for his breakfast.

Poetry 365: Overnight

One thousand yellow robots,
each smaller than a postage stamp
are amassed outside your bedroom door,
and you hear them.
You hear them scratching
on the door jamb.
You hear their little robot prayers,
pleading for victory,
and you can't wake up just yet.

Poetry 365: One Clearwinter Night

The cold air brushes
away the usual haze.
one thousand blue stars.

Radio Free Nervda

Music is a lot of things: it's a soother, a stimulant, or sometimes a time machine. I first heard Virgil Shaw before the turn of the century. (That makes me sound like a crusty old man, doesn't it?) It was 1999 and I went to visit my friend Will in Austin during SXSW. I actually bought an advanced copy of Quad Cities from Virgil himself. He played this song that night: "Gypsum". It's so spare and blue collar. Basically, the opposite of me.

Devin Davis has a new album coming out called "Lonely People of the World Unite". How did this title escape Morrissey all these years? I love this line in this song: "We can talk on and on for hours about how the wind goes 'doo doo doo doo doo". Enjoy the non-sequitirly titled "The Turtle and the Flightless Bird".

"Cars Can't Escape" is an outtake from the legendary Wilco album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I'm always amazed by the songs that DON'T make albums.

I didn't know that Polly Jean Harvey had a favorite Fall song. But she she'll tell you all about it. "Janet, Johnny and James" It is sort of refreshing to hear a Fall cover because it means someone might actually understand a lyric on occasion.

Moonmaan is Rick McCollum's new Minneapolis based band. Who the hell is Rick McCollum, you axe? He was Keith Richards to Greg Dulli's Mick Jagger in the late great Afghan Whigs. "Light of the Moon" is a rough mix from their upcoming debut. If this is the rough draft, I can't wait to hear the finished product.

Enjoy the music. Let me know what you think? Fifth caller wins movie passes.

Poetry 365: Marching Towards Spring

Clearly, the winter
hasn't had enough of me:
snow falls left to right.

Radio Nervda #4

This week's show is the first one that I actually put together on a playlist and blasted in the car. That's the true test of music: how does it sound when going 55?

I doubt that many of you spend a lot of cycles walking idly through the supermarket aisle asking yourself, "What happened to Fiona Apple? Shouldn't she have a new record out yet? Hey, is mac and cheese on sale 3 for $1?" For those of you who do, she recorded a record a few years ago and Sony shelved it because they "didn't hear a hit" And yes, mac and cheese is on sale, but it's not Kraft. It's Craft Markoroni and Cheez. You should probably avoid that. Here's a song from those lost Fiona sessions called "Get Him Back".

Robyn Hitchcock should be a much bigger star than he is. This is the reunited Soft Boys live in the studio with "If You Know Time". Granted, it's not live right now. And it's not my studio.

I remember when I was little, I thought that the music on the radio was all live. That the musicians were down at the station in the same room as the DJ. We went to the easy listening station for a class trip and I was sorely disappointed to see all the tape machines and blinking lights. This station didn't even have DJs. It was all automated systems from the home office.

So imagine if you will, Depeche Mode hanging out with Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. Martin Gore offers Annie a Kool Light, and she says, "No thanks, I've got to sing in a minute." Right. This is a mash up of "Policy of Truth" and "Sweet Dreams".

Liz Durett "Ablaze". I have no idea what to say about this track other than this sounds like the 15 minutes immediately after a summer thunderstorm.

Pavement is one of my favorite bands of all time. This is a louder, fuzzier, more reckless version of my favorite Pavement impression of the Velvet Underground. This is the Peel Session version of "Here".

If you can find the link, I'll play requests. Download away. Burn the tracks to a CD or your iPod. Let's spend our last quarterstance randomly...

Michael Jackson Reenactments

Jen and I were flipping through the channels when we came across the reenactments from the Michael Jackson trial on E!. I realized that the guy who plays Michael might not say a single thing during the duration of the show, if his lawyers keep Michael off of the stand. He has to sit there and react and look like Michael. What a strange job.

The other weird thing is that the network bleeps out the last name of the family of the accuser. So you keep hearing sentences like, "Did you confront the BLEEP family about their accusations?" My brain just plugs in a curse word for the bleep.

Nervda vs. Snow

Last night, Jen and I were watching Fear Factor, when suddenly a man driving down Beacon St. with a bullhorn announces that the city of Boston has declared a snow emergency and anyone parked on Beacon needs to move their car or risk ticketing and towing. So I throw on my shoes and coat to move the Scion.

You gotta move fast before the other people on the same street find parking spots on the side streets. I ended up orbiting around a few blocks in the neighborhood with three other cars until I found a spot five blocks away. I didn't even realize what street I was on at first. The snow was coming down in small hard pellets at this point, so I ran home to minimize exposure.

This morning, it took me twenty minutes to dig out this morning. For some reason the plows stayed a good two feet away from our car. This left a huge chunk of snow between me and the clean road. It took me forever, since I'm a Florida boy, and in my years of being a Northerner, I never really drove. I gotta figure out all of the shovelling tricks.

The coolest snow moment was in my cubicle this morning. I managed to get a cube with a window for a back wall. It's near a L shape portion of the office building on the fifth floor. The swirling wind caused the snow to look like it was falling up. It's mesmerizing.

Somehow after of six winters in Boston, I can still find snow mesmerizing.