Odds and Ends

A few things I've been meaning to put down before they get rudely shoved aside in my mind by intrusive thoughts of the butterscotch milkshake I'm craving or dress fitting appointments or JDE invoicing or whatever else might randomly slip in:

Random Compliments That I've Received Lately and To Which I Have Not Known How To Respond:

- "You look like a young Bette Midler" (holy crap -- what???)

- "You have the nicest skin! I'm looking at it so closely and I can't see any pores at all!" (while I certainly appreciate the sentiment, get.away.from.my.face -- we're at a business dinner, psycho)

- "You've got great boobs." (from a chick, no less)

- "You've got great taste in food." (okay, well...yes, I do -- thank you)


A Movie Scene Which I'm Sure Has Never Been Filmed But Which I Would Very Much Enjoy Seeing Nonetheless:

A sex scene in which the two lovers are locked together 9-1/2 Weeks-style in some very random location (like the inside of an old phone booth or a drained swimming pool next to an abandoned hotel), completely throwing all decency to the wind and saying nothing to each other as a Hardingfele plays mournfully over the scene. I know, I know: you're laughing now at the Hardingfele, aren't you? You're either laughing at the word "Hardingfele" even though you have no idea what it is, or you're laughing because you actually know what one is and you're either associating it with The Lord of the Rings soundtrack (no! stop it!) or you're imagining a jolly Norwegian tune being played on it while two people get down in a phone booth.

But go and listen to "Folkdance from the Hills" by Edvard Grieg (you can listen to a small snippet of it on Amazon, but it's not the good part and it really doesn't do it justice). Now picture that playing over the sex. It's totally hot, isn't it? Smoking hot. And here you were, making fun of a Hardingfele like a 13-year-old.


The Temp Who's Sharing My Office With Me Is Very Interested in Homeopathic Medicine

Very interested. He talks about it all the time, which I have a hard time reconciling with the music that he listens to all day long (paging Megadeth to office 1350, Megadeth to 1350, please). I mean, as I write this, he's mumbling something to me about Valerian root. Thank God he can't see my computer screen. So today, I'm getting a little flustered while I'm on the phone with an employee and I flub my words. Big deal; whatever. But when I finish the call, there's the temp waiting with baited breath to tell me:

"You messed up your words just now." Yeah, thanks for noticing.

"You know that the reason people do that -- the reason their minds are all foggy -- is that they have a stomach fungus." What?

"Yeah, a stomach fungus -- it's called candida." You mean yeast? Like a yeast infection? In someone's stomach? O.....kay.

"Yeah, gross, huh? You should totally eat some cream of tartar; it'll clear that right up." Thanks for the heads up, buddy. I'll get right on that one.


A Poem Which I Had Forgotten That I Really Enjoy and Found Again In the Back Of a Notebook Today:

If I should go away,
Beloved, do not say
'He has forgotten me'.
For you abide,
A singing rib within my dreaming side;
You always stay.
And in the mad tormented valley
Where blood and hunger rally
And Death the wild beast is uncaught, untamed,
Our soul withstands the terror
And has its quiet honour
Among the glittering stars your voices named.

-Postcript for Gweno, by Alun Lewis


Hey, Bette Midler's Looking Pretty Good For an Older Broad!:

Groovy, Baby

I would pay good money to see the Mike Flowers Pops cover every single song ever made. They are made of pure, swinging awesomeness.

I'm Not Planning On Going Solo

Rolling Stone recently released its list of 20 Most Annoying Songs, which I've included for your reading pleasure below. I really couldn't find any fault at all with the list, so...spot on, Rolling Stone. You still know your shit...sometimes.

Some of them make me want to cringe and/or vomit after reading only the first syllable. I mean, I saw "Mac--" and that was enough for me. I was instantly transported back to 1997, a terribly awkward and annoying time in and of itself, and to the memory of doing the Macarena at my 16th birthday party, all flailing limbs and Elaine Bennett dance moves. Why? Why???

Basically anything by Nickelback belongs on this list, I think you'll agree. For the love of all things holy, I can't understand why this band is so popular. The lead singer looks like the bastard offspring of Sammy Hagar and a quarterhorse. Not exactly cream-inducing. And the music itself...ugh. Words literally fail me. I can't describe how awful and mass-produced and insulting it is without my head caving in. Let's move on.

There was a brief moment in time where I actually liked James Blunt. My friend Julia burned me a James Blunt CD long before he hit the airwaves here and as I drove away from her house with it playing in the car, I thought, This guy isn't bad! Not exactly a strong sentiment, but I certainly didn't hate him. And then commerical radio ruined him like they do everything else. Aside from overplaying that goddamn song to death, they also exposed the sad fact that James was a one-trick pony with as much depth as a petri dish.

The only song I was sad to see didn't make the list is the putrescence that is Pachelbel's Canon in D. I would rather drive rusty nails under my fingernails than listen to that shit at one more wedding, gala, Christmas party, or anywhere else that lame string quartets with limited gig books hired by idiots who have no real appreciation for classical music exist. Back when I was still gigging (and that, folks, is officially a loooooong time ago), I always made it a point to tell the people hiring us that Canon in D was not in our repertoire and -- so sad! so sorry! -- we simply didn't know it well enough to play it from memory. I had also ripped all of the copies of the sheet music out of our gig books for good measure. I fucking hate that song with all of my being.

So, without further ado, the list:

1. Black Eyed Peas, My Humps
2. Los Del Rio, Macarena
3. Baha Men, Who Let The Dogs Out
4. Celine Dion, My Heart Will Go On
5. Nickelback, Photograph
6. Lou Bega, Mambo No. 5
7. James Blunt, You're Beautiful
8. Spice Girls, Wannabe
9. Sisqo, The Thong Song
10. Cher, Believe
11. Aqua, Barbie Girl
12. Chumbawumba, Tub Thumper
13. Rednex, Cotton-Eyed Joe
14. Eiffel 65, Blue
15. Crash Test Dummies, Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
16. Meatloaf, I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
17. 'NSYNC, Bye, Bye, Bye
18. Ricky Martin, Livin' La Vida Loca
19. Semisonic, Closing Time
20. Wham!, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

In the Golden State

To briefly explain my profile song back at the ranch, I love John Doe. Not the crap TV show with Dominic Purcell, but the singer / songwriter.

Back in the 80s, he was with the band X -- a pseudo punk / folk outfit whose lead singer was married to Viggo Mortensen -- but since then he's been all over the board, character-acting in random films here and there (trust me, you'll recognize him) and reinventing his sound over and over.

His latest incarnation is a neo-Western poet, still in love with the Old West and its promises and mysteries, but with a sound that strangely resembles Joni Mitchell and a younger Bob Dylan. It's intoxicating. NPR recently did a story on John Doe, which you can listen to here. And for your further listening pleasure, here's an acoustic version of "Golden State," which I prefer to the studio version on my page:



I love the simple, soaring harmonies and the equally simple but moving lyrics:

You are the hole in my head
I am the pain in your neck
You are the lump in my throat
I am the aching in your heart
We are tangled, we are stolen
We are living with things that are hidden

You are something in my eye
And I am the shiver down your spine
And you are the lick of my lips
I am on the tip of your tongue
We are tangled, we are stolen
We are buried up to our necks in sand

We are luck, we are fate
We are the feeling you get in the Golden State
We are love, we are hate
We are the feeling I get when you walk away
Walk away

You are the dream in my nightmare
I am that falling sensation
You are my needles and pins
I am your hangover morning
We are tangled, we are stolen
We are living with things that are hidden

We are luck, we are fate
We are the feeling you get in the Golden State
We are love, we are hate
We are the feeling I get when you walk away
Walk away, walk away

You are the hole in my head
You are the pain in my neck
You are the lump in my throat
I am the aching in your heart

Good stuff.

Hair Misadventures

While poking around tonight on YouTube, I found this amazing video of two of the great modern masters, Yo Yo Ma (the cellist) and El Gran Ástor, Ástor Piazzolla (the bandoneon player). If this doesn't move you, then you're made of stone:



I think most people have heard of Yo Yo Ma, but Ástor Piazzolla is still largely unappreciated in this country. He basically reinvinted tango music by taking it from the nightclubs and cabarets of Argentina and elevating it to a legitimate art form by fusing it with modern jazz and classical music. So go and give El Gran Ástor a try sometime. If you like him, you'll probably like his protege, too: Dino Salduzzi. My newest CD is also Dino's newest, Ojos Negros, which also -- coincidentally -- happens to be a recording of duets between a bandoneon player and a cellist. Very, very good stuff.

In other news, after an unfortunate hair-dye incident yesterday, I am now a brunette. I made the sad mistake of attempting to dye my hair (I was tired of the dirty blonde look) and, out of an overinflated sense of my own styling/coloring techniques, I decided to do it myself. First mistake. I went for a "strawberry blonde" shade -- at least, according to the Clairol "Coloure Experte" box. That's the last time I buy hair dye whose own packaging can't even spell the world color. Second mistake. Needless to say, the color didn't quite turn out as expected. Instead of "strawberry blonde," I got this:

Only more frightening. I waited a full 24 hours and shampooed it furiously, praying that the color would tone itself down, but to no avail. Instead, I ended up doing the walk of shame into my local Visible Changes today where I was the butt of many jokes in the coloring department. I was even an example to some trainees of how not to "do red." No shit? Yeah, I think everyone got that memo already.

So, three hours in the salon, a headful of bleach paste (yes, bleach paste) and $250 later, I am now a brunette. It's obviously not my natural color but the stylist said that putting anything else on over the bleach would damage my hair too much. Then, of course, she loaded me down with hideously overpriced salon shampoos and conditioners and hair masques and I bought them with my head hung, simply grateful that anyone was able to correct my Pennywise 'do and ashamed of my own hubris.

The brunette is growing on me, though, and Richard is strangely attracted to it. I always knew he had a thing for brunettes... Maybe I've had enough of being a blonde for a while. At the very least, now I can start conquering that other physical attribute that causes people to immediately assume that I'm a blithering moron:

They're not mine, sickos.

Hot, Warm, Nervous Hands

Woody Guthrie is deeply underappreciated.

Remember The Mountain Bed

Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves:
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds:
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves, face, breast, hips and thighs.
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes.

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled woodvines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me.

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky.
As your fingers played with grassy moss, and limber you did lie:
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots, as you lay thinking there.

Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away:
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go.

There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned.
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life’s reason why
The People laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die.

The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown,
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees were singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim, but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head…

I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams,
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands.

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears,
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here:
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again.

All this day long I linger here and on in through the night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight:
My loneliness healed my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again.

I wanted to play this song at the wedding (the Billy Bragg/Wilco version), but Richard said that he'd only indulge my eccentric tastes if I would indulge his and allow him to play Rock You Like a Hurricane for our first dance. Thanks so much for that idea, Marge.

Leonard Cohen

Well, after many moons of posting blogs on another site, I've decided to transfer them over here to lovely Blogger, which I once utilized and then callously abandoned about three years ago. Unlike Myspace, Blogger is actually accessible here at work and -- what a sad commentary this is -- I do most of my writing at work. It's not that I don't have real work to do, it's more that when I'm sitting here in a big, mostly empty office with music playing, that's when ideas come to me. That, and it really helps diminish my stress level when I can put things aside for thirty minutes or so and just gush randomly onto a little white screen and into a mostly unknown audience.

It's a Rufus Wainwright kind of day over here, by which I mean that I've been listening to old Wainwright CDs all morning long. He makes the perfect contemplative music -- relaxing yet edgy and thought-provoking. I also love the random covers that he does; if you've never heard his cover of Careless Whisper with Ben Folds, go ye to YouTube right now and check it out. It's just awesomely funny and trippy. And right here is where I could head off on a tangent about how much I love Ben Folds now that he's no longer with Ben Folds Five, but let's just stop right here, shall we?

Anyway, one of the covers that Rufus Wainwright did was an old Leonard Cohen song, Chelsea Hotel No. 2, hence the title of the new-ish blog. It's my absolute favorite Cohen song, which is saying a lot (I think that my perverse obsession with Leonard Cohen has been well-documented elsewhere in my blogs, so I'll not go into this right now). I love Cohen's voice, but in the same way that you love Bob Dylan's voice. You accept that it's not perfect, it's often off-key, it's gravelly and not in the good Don Henley way and that's okay because - goddamn - the man wrote some of the most beautiful lyrics this world has ever seen and he can fucking mime them if he wants to because they're his. It doesn't matter how his voice sounds; to actually hear the man that wrote the words say or sing them aloud is an experience in and of itself. It's akin to listening to Eliot read The Wasteland aloud (please, please, please check this out if you've never heard it) and hearing where emphasis is placed upon certain words and phrases, where the pauses and breaths communicate deeper imagery and meaning, far removed from a world where scholars endlessly pick apart his lines and insert their own agendas and interpretations into his work.

But listening to Wainwright's voice with Cohen's lyrics...that was a revelation, too, the first time I heard it. Rufus Wainwright has the amazing ability to take lyrics that aren't his or that are his but have nothing at all to do with him (listen to The Art Teacher for an excellent example) and make you believe that he's felt all of the agony or excitement or passion himself. Now that's a great artist, a great performer. When I listen to Chelsea Hotel No. 2, I ache. I ache for lost opportunities, lost friends, lost times and possibilities and potential. But aching is not a bad thing, not always. Aching - any kind of unpleasantness, for that matter - just paints the good moments in starker contrast to the bad, forces you to appreciate them both more.

Now that I've driven on that side road for long enough, back to the highway. The main point here is that I wanted to share these lyrics because - as I've always said - there isn't enough Cohen in the world:

Chelsea Hotel No. 2

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
You were talking so brave and so sweet
Giving me head on the unmade bed
While the limousines wait in the street
Those were the reasons, that was New York
We were running for the money and the flesh
And that was called love for the workers in song
Probably still is for those of them left
Ah, but you got away, didn't you, babe?
You just turned your back on the crowd
You got away, I never once heard you say
I need you, I don't need you
I need you, I don't need you
And all of that jiving around

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
You were famous, your heart was a legend
You told me again you preferred handsome men
But for me, you would make an exception
Then, clenching your fists for the ones like us
Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty
You fixed yourself and said, well, nevermind
We are ugly, but we have the music
And then you got away, didn't you, babe?
You just turned your back on the crowd
You got away, I never once heard you say
I need you, I don't need you
I need you, I don't need you
And all of that jiving around

I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best
I can't keep track of each fallen robin
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
That's all
I don't even think of you that often

BONUS POINTS: Whosoever of you can tell me about whom Leonard Cohen wrote this song will receive, by U.S. Mail, a shiny penny.