Embarrassment

Mostly I work in complete solitude.

Strange hours of the night or beautiful Saturdays when everyone else is trying to wrest some leisure out of their weekend.

I listen to my ipod. Sometimes I try to work out harmony parts to my own songs. Other people's songs too. Not just vocal lines either; interesting instrumental ideas that I hear in my head. Sometimes I will slip one ear off of my headphones and concentrate and listen and sing out some little bit.

I am more likely to belt out something that I am pretty sure won't work. A peculiar interval or jagged melody line. Something weird. Gotta hear it out loud. "No. That wouldn't work" But sometimes it does.

But it is only when I am singing the most stratospherically high and warbly parts. Totally wordless and tremulously nonsensical. That is when I will turn a corner and find a slightly alarmed doctor in my building.

This has happened like three times in the past month.

Also, I submitted this picture to the basenji rescue people for inclusion in their calender.

Unstaged (you can't make a basenji stage anything).So sweet, it could put you into a sugar coma.

I like mash-ups. Lots.

Well, I like good mash-ups. There are bad/boring ones certainly. The good ones are definitely an example of two things coming together and forming a star (Eliot?)

The best source I have found is the Best of Bootie series.

http://www.bootieusa.com/bestofbootie2005/

http://www.bootieusa.com/bestofbootie2006/

http://www.bootieusa.com/bestofbootie2007/

It's free too. Right on!

All three years are good. To get you started I particularly recommend the Billy Joel/Jay-Z mash-up.

You don't think Billy Joel would have made a good rapper? You're going to find out how wrong you are. Seriously. It's a shock.

The Blankenblogger

I think we're all pretty happy that we can reach out and touch K Paddy B online. If you are curious to know what he is up to in DE check him out here:http://theblankenblogger.blogspot.com/

Above is what became of his former place of residence on Wood in Blm. They totally knocked that whole block down. Just piles of muddy rubble.

I've seen plans for the proposed statue. Kevin in his cut-off shorts and glow in the dark basket ball with his arm around Tommy, fuschia shorts and flip-flops. Aw.

Pond Ogre

There is this crazy dude who lives by the pond where we take our daily walk. He only appears at intervals long enough for me to forget he exists. In this way he maximizes his capacity to surprise the shit out of me.

Late last summer he came out of the little house where he lives and screamed,

" HEY MAN! 'R2D2' "

He actually made air quotes. He is a really big dude and when he yells at me he shatters the arcadian calm of my quiet little neighborhood.

The spring before that he came jogging up beside me and asked to pat my dog. This was pre- Cisco; just me and Shiva. He didn't seem crazy at all until he gingerly reached out and gave Shiva a quick touch on the back and ran away.

Yesterday he emerged into the cold to holler

"ASS DISPLAYED IS ASS LOST!"

This cracked up Melanie who was walking Shiva with me and Cisco.

I don't like this guy much, but I am not worried because Cisco is learning the ancient martial art of Mop-Fu:

Mr. Esgar

http://esgar-acelerado.blogspot.com/

Found this strange Portugese dude on myspace. I kind of dig his stuff.

E L Doctorow

Major Sense turned me on to this author. I am reading Billy Bathgate and getting in touch with my Jewish Gangster roots. He had a great short story in the New Yorker recently and this quote about our heroic prez:

The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.

Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

Nicely put.

Laurie Taylor

An excellent podcast on the topic of craftsmanship. This is my favorite radio program and I listen to it with relish each week. Lots of excellent facts figures and ideas here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed/