On Vacation...

Check back next week for fresh crap!

Random and Classic

Happy Father's Day

My father wasn't a bare-knuckled prizefighter or a long-forgotten star of B Westerns.



He passed away several years ago. He was one of the funniest guys ever, and I routinely use many of his witticisms.

One of my favorites? Whenever he was asked if he knew where he was going while driving his response was: "I used to drive a cab in this town... right after the war!"

Steely Dan played in Alabama last night (and I didn't go???)

In my defense, it was down on the Gulf Coast and I've seen them twice in the last several years.(in Chicago and Charlotte) I just couldn't pull it off as I have a flight to catch Tuesday at the crack-o-freakin-dawn.

After years of being non-performing studio wizards followed by years of relative inactivity, they've emerged as a first class touring outfit.

I hear good things about the show, here's the setlist:

Steely Dan live 2009: Setlist The Wharf, Orange Beach, Alabama
June 19, 2009

Time Out Of Mind
Bodhisattva
Show Biz Kids
Bad Sneakers
Two Against Nature
Black Friday
Aja
Don't Take Me Alive
Hey Nineteen
Parker's Band
Deacon Blues
Daddy Don't LIve In That New York City No More
Green Earrings
Josie
Love Is Like An Itching... with band intros
Do It Again
Kid Charlemagne

Encore:
Peg
My Old School

A major subject of conversation "would they play Deacon Blues?", as it hadn't been played yet this tour. Yes they did, they're oddballs, but not completely clueless.

They closed with "My Old School", and a favorite album "Katy Lied" was well represented. Dang, if they'd done "Here At The Western World", I'd be even more truly bummed to have missed this..



They are playing a few more US dates after they return from Europe, maybe I'll catch one.

The "Con Air" test.. 100% Reliable and cheaper than Match.com

I can't take credit for this having heard it elsewhere, but if you want to determine your compatibility with someone, ask what they think of the film "Con Air".
Nicholas Cage delivers his ridiculous lines of dialogue using the single worst southern accent ever performed-kind of a "Forrest Gump meets The Elephant Man" dialect.

Not Soon Enough...

We're leaving very early Tuesday, which means very little activity here for a week or so- but I should be back with lots of photos and other random crap.

I've got to get away from my grief.

Noooooooo!!!

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Todd Bailey lived well and lived large. He had an enviable passion for life, an intensity that alternately seared and inspired us. In death, he has reunited us. He brightened many rooms and will be missed enormously.

When I think of him today, I remember:

He loved wretched music. Among his heroes were Joe Strummer and some guy from "Social Distortion"

When we met he drove a Jeep with a personalized plate that read: "PUNKROC".

He shamelessly flirted with (all) female co-workers just to see them smile, and they loved that about him.

Every month or so he would forward virtually everything in his email inbox to his friends.

I often described him as being "wrapped pretty tight" and if you ever met him, you know that fit him perfectly.


I'll miss him forever...

Vacation Plans Update:

We are heading to New Mexico next week, opting for desert and mountains instead of the beach this year. Meanwhile, enjoy this image of someone who greatly resembles me enjoying the beach.

I guess it's good that I'm not going to the beach, as I realized I am still sporting the same swimsuit I was in the photo below.

Meet The Fanatically Avowed Non-Readers: Part 1

"Psycho Schoolmarm" is the wife of my (marginally) estranged bass player and is also my diabolically obsessed arch-nemesis.
(She is clearly the favorite among my sworn enemies)

She enjoys:
Sarcasm, planning and directing Themed Formals, bass players, travel, square roots and stuff, talking and talking and talking, ridiculously elaborate frou-frou cocktails, providing stream-of-consiousness voice-over narration to televised mid-level Beauty Pageants, "Meet The Press", gaudy disco-era footwear, preparing "chili" with caustic/explosive qualities, thinkin' about Lance Armstrong, collecting suggestive art, avoiding first-rate on-line entertainment, "flame-spamming" my core readership with vitriolic rants, berry picking and griping.

She dislikes:
Being soundly whipped at Trivial Pursuit by her intellectual betters, aging lothario acoustic folksingers, being pressed into bread-slicing duty at gala social events, neo-conservatism and handsome charismatic bloggers.

An interesting note: She'll have quite a dilemma when she objects to this post, as that will require her to admit she's read it.

She'd rather eat nails.

T-Shirt Of The Week

Hint: I'll be wearing this on Father's Day.

Joanne Whalley: English Television/Film Actress

Joanne Whalley (born 25 August 1964 in Salford, Greater Manchester) is an English actress.She met the American actor Val Kilmer filming the fantasy adventure Willow,[2] whom she married in 1988 and after which she used the name Joanne Whalley-Kilmer. She continued filming, making more films in Hollywood than the UK, including the mystery noir Shattered and, in 1989, the role of Christine Keeler in Scandal alongside stars John Hurt and Sir Ian McKellen. In 1994 she became only the second actress to play Gone with the Wind heroine Scarlett O'Hara when she appeared in a made-for-TV adaptation of the sequel novel, Scarlett.(Text lifted from wikipedia)





Joanne Whalley-Kilmer was my imaginary girlfriend for several months after I saw "Scandal".

NYC October 2000: David Letterman and Warren Zevon

We travelled to New York in October 2000 and were fortunate to have Letterman tickets. More correctly, we were "on the list" as they don't issue tickets and really try to eliminate any possiblity of scalping. Therefore, getting in and seated was only slightly less difficult than getting out of East Berlin (that's another story). We were thrilled when we found that Warren Zevon was replacing Paul Schaeffer for illness or something. Zevon wasn't the musical guest that night (Jewel) so the attached clip is from an older appearance. I remember Zevon did "Veracruz" during one of the commercial breaks.We stayed in the Ameritania Hotel, which is directly attached to The Ed Sullivan Theater on the right. Tiny room, great location.
I took this photo of the iconic Flatiron Building on that trip.The World Trade Centers as seen from Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, 11 months before 9/11.

Validated!

I routinely visit "TheChive.com and have lifted several of their images, so I was pleased when they used a photo I submitted.They added the caption.

See the post here: http://thechive.com/2009/06/when-chive-users-submit-hilarity-ensues-part-2-25-photos/#more-38696

Rejected Postage Stamps

Apparently a website called "Worth1000.com" sponsored a photoshop contest to create a series of Postage Stamps the USPS would never issue.
These are two of my favorites, "The Gastric Bypass Tribute" series and The Classic Porn" series.

(Click to enlarge)

Time Fades Away: Neil Young

Anyone who has followed Neil Young's career knows enough not to expect a simple evening of mellow good times when they see him in concert, but in 1973, when Young hit the road after Harvest had confirmed his status as a first-echelon rock star, that knowledge wasn't nearly as common as it is today. Young's natural inclinations to travel against the current of audience expectations were amplified by a stormy relationship between himself and his touring band, as well as the devastating death of guitarist Danny Whitten, who died of a drug overdose shortly after being given his pink slip during the first phase of tour rehearsals. The shows that followed turned into a nightly exorcism of Young's rage and guilt, as well as a battle between himself and an audience who, expecting to hear "Old Man" and "Heart of Gold," didn't know what to make of the electric assault they witnessed. All the more remarkably, Young brought along a mobile recording truck to capture the tour on tape for a live album and the result, Time Fades Away, was a ragged musical parade of bad karma and road craziness, opening with Young bellowing "14 junkies, too weak to work" on the title cut, and closing with "Last Dance," in which he tells his fans "you can live your own life" with all the optimism of a man on the deck of a sinking ship. While critics and fans were not kind to Time Fades Away upon first release, decades later it sounds very much of a piece with Tonight's the Night and On the Beach, albums that explored the troubled zeitgeist of America in the mid-'70s in a way few rockers had the courage to face. If the performances are often loose and ragged, they're also brimming with emotional force, and despite the dashed hopes of "Yonder Stands the Sinner" and "Last Dance," "Don't Be Denied" is a moving remembrance of Young's childhood and what music has meant to him, and it's one of the most powerful performances Young ever committed to vinyl. Few rockers have been as willing as Young to lay themselves bare before their audience, and Time Fades Away ranks with the bravest and most painfully honest albums of his career — like the tequila Young was drinking on that tour, it isn't for everyone, but you may be surprised by its powerful effects.Review by Mark Deming

T-Shirt of The Week

As I mentioned previously, I'm weak for crap like this.

I got the 2X, which is downright tent-like on me, and the color of the shirt and text are somewhere outside my color vision spectrum with my color blindness so I don't really know if the text is visible or not.

Meet The Readers: Part 8

"Jimmy" is a longtime friend and dirty hippie.

He Enjoys:
Testing the limits of the human body's capacity to absorb and process caffeine, demonstrating his encyclopaedic knowledge of almost everything, photograpically documenting every bird on earth, his grandaughter, sleeping with Rocket Scientists, road trippin', knowing everyone in his home county, procreating, and building and maintaining contact with virtually every hippie on earth via a Viet Cong-like communication network.

He Dislikes:
Very few identified. He has a good life and enjoys it fully.

Ave Maria Grotto, Cullman AL

The Ave Maria Grotto, located on the grounds of Alabama's first and only Benedictine Abbey, consists of over 125 miniatures, reproductions of famous churches, shrines and buildings. Encompassing an area of over three acres, this miniature fairyland sees visitors from all over the world.

The builder of the miniatures at the Ave Maria Grotto was a Benedictine Monk--Brother Joseph Zoettl, O.S.B. Born in Landshut, Bavaria in 1878, he was maimed in an accident that gave him a hunchback, but luckily it did not hurt his ability to bend over and build the miniatures. He came to Saint Bernard Abbey in 1892. After becoming a Brother in the Benedictine Order, he was appointed to the power plant for the Abbey, and while there he developed his hobby of building miniature shrines.

Nightmare Scenario

This is funny stuff.

Normandy American Cemetary

Probably NOT True...

(from thechive of course)

Viva Terlingua: Jerry Jeff Walker

Viva Terlingua, recorded live in Luckenbach, TX, on a hot August night in 1973, is among the most legendary of "live" singer/songwriter albums ever released. It's the Live at the Fillmore East of redneck Texas folk-rock. Essentially, it's Jerry Jeff fronting the Lost Gonzo Band at the beginning of their long run together playing, living it up, having a ball, giving everybody the impression that life was a party, and to be sure, it was for a while. Given the loose, inspired performance on this set, Walker was every bit the equal of Willie, Waylon, and Billy Joe Shaver at the time. The material is terrific. Half of it is from Jerry Jeff's catalog: "Sangria Wine," "Gettin' By," "Little Bird," "Get It Out," and "Wheel." The rest? Can't possibly do better: Guy Clark's "Desperados Waiting for the Train," Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother," Michael Murphy's "Backslider's Wine," and Gary P. Nunn's Austin City Limits anthem, "London Homesick Blues." It doesn't sound anything like it was recorded in front of an audience, but it does sound live as hell. These folks were partyin' it up and layin' down the tracks at white heat. This record was made in a night and it feels like it was made in your living room. It's guaranteed to lift any dark mood within 15 minutes. This record asks no questions and there are no hidden meanings in Walker's or anybody else's lyrics; it's all there for the taking. And that's what makes it the enduring classic it is. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

Gotta Have It!!

(from the always reliable thechive.com)

Washington, DC 2006