Click images for desktop size: "Audrey Hepburn" by Unknown Its pretty easy to get mad at corporations.
Its as easy as it is futile. Why rail against things too big and too far away to hurt.
Anyway the screwed up internet install isn't going to be fixed. It will be if I guarantee a blank check and pay $99 an hour to have the phone company come out to fix their error.
Pretty good racket. Go out and screw stuff up and then charge major bucks to fix it. If it weren't the phone company you'd call it a cowboy scam and get the cops to bust them. But its
Click image: "Frankenstein" by Universal Studiosthe phone company and we all know that the phone company and banks are sober businesses that are looking out for us . . .
So I ended up crawling through the rafters and the basement (boy, what a lot of spiders! Creepy cob webs for sure) and stringing my own wire.
Got it fixed well enough. Hurt myself, my body anyway, just a bit but nothing to complain about too harshly.
Its working as well as its going to. With some tweaks and study it will be working damn well.
It almost gave me a moment to be amused by the $99 per hour price from the phone company. 99? Like its a bargain? Now I can get all the spam mail I need. And still I wonder why George Bush and the NRC are spamming me . . .
My friend asked me a stumper question. I think it points to the mental blocks I have. She asked me when I was thirty where I expect to be today.
I have no answer. Thinking about it I just see a dull pitted lead door. I don't dream in that way. I don't live that way. I'm too focused on the now and surviving. Even waaay back then I lived in the
Click images for desktop size: "You Only Live Twice" by JW McGinnis present with contingency plans for the future. I did what I wanted to do and/or what I needed to do and was always surprised by whatever happened.
Its the same sort of mental block that has the days a blur. These past few days. Without the discipline to sit down and review the days they lose their consistency. They mush into just being life.
I don't even really remember the movies I've watched. I have thought a lot that the Korean movie "A Man Who Was Superman" is probably going to end up being the best film I've seen in 2008.
A movie you find yourself thinking about in the middle of nowhere and when you remember it with a laugh or a tear is a damn fine movie. I wish someone else was talking about it. I can't believe it was made only for me, or that it bombed.
I have been listening to a lot of music. In my quest to remove any RIAA music from my life I've been pretty successful. Plenty of great music not tainted by hook handed creatures sniggering in slimy alleys and with $5,000 suits.
One thing I discovered that startled me. I like the Ramones' track "She Talks To Rainbows" even though it seemed out of place.
It seems Joey Ramone wrote the track for n EP he produced for Ronnie Spector. Yeah, the lead singer for the Ronettes! Ronnie Spector's version of "She Talks To Rainbows" has a slower tempo and a cleaner sound with a much more confusing sexuality.
It makes a lot of sense and fits in perfectly with my enduring image of Joey Ramone. I remember being called and told to watch "The Morton Downey Show". Downey was an old big band style crooner who had launched a successful right wing hate show in New York. You know the kind that
Click images for desktop size: "Fallen Angel" by Melanie G Fox News does today, get people on just to yell and spit on them. Joey was on stage doing something with a group of people.
He got interviewed for about 10 seconds. Whatever he said was unintelligible. He was smiling and laughing and jostling, clearly so excited to be on the Morton Downey show that he couldn't put words together. Since Joey had just returned from Europe where the Ramones did a set on German TV that a lot of people, myself included, consider the greatest rock and roll performance ever put on the tube its hard to see why he was so excited. But he was and he loved it and I loved him for enjoying life so much.
So when I discovered that he also got Ronnie to cover one of my favorite Beach Boy tunes I had to take a cold shower! Ronnie Spector's cover of "Don't Worry Baby" is more than a touch awesome. That she even sings the line, "I should have kept my mouth shut when I start to brag about my car" is cool, that she invests it with a sensual purr that makes you think of her at 18, all cute and nubile, in jeans and a dirty white tank top with grease on her face and a monkey wrench in her hand is a credit to both artists.
That version reminded me of my third favorite version of the tune, my buddy John Blair's as Jon And The Nightriders doing a medley "Be My Baby-Don't Worry Baby" combines both the Ronettes and the Beach Boys in a pleasant musak-y way I'm fond of. I still wonder how John could afford to hire a string section!
I still love surf music. I really like The Vivisectors' double picking furious "House Of The Rising Sun". Its got more to do with the Animals version than the old country blues tune. Really mysterioso. I like it fine.
And in the mysterioso vein there's this band, Susan and The Surftones. I never much liked them. This Susan is a fine guitarist but her music left me sort of nowhere. Suddenly she's added a spooky Farfisia organ and that made her a better guitarist! (?) Anyway, Susan and The Surftones "Wipe Out" is very cool and fun. Its movie music for your life. I like that.
I also found this band from Arizona - home of the capable of greatness Supersuckers! This band isn't as awesome as the Supersuckers at their best but they seem more consistent. The Sand Rubies cover of the cool "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" (and I still have a fondness for song titles that include parentheses) really rips! It makes the quixotic Sand Rubies' take on "Memories Are Made Of This" as exciting as it is weird.
It makes me appreciate Bill Lloyd's take on Ray Davie's defeatist "This is Where I Belong" seem inspiring and insightful. So its just been a rush of sound and images that play out best in my head and probably shouldn't be shared with anyone else.
My puppy remains fine and scrappy. The gentle dog still like to bite me and the giant dog is always bewildered as to why he's not everyone's favorite and best friend.
My friend is away for much of this - quarter end at her job which entail all nighters. That means I get to play everything a bit louder than would be considered mature.
For mature I've got the fake madrigals of The King Singers doing their cool weird cover of the Beatles "You've got to Hide Your Love Away". Which is a track I've never gotten and liked just the same. Pretty much just like my life.