Biographical Mythology

For the last two weeks, I’ve been enjoying fresh organic local produce delivered right to my door. Each week, a box comes filled with a variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables from local farms. If you’re interested, check out Farm Fresh To You.
 
I’d been looking for a way to break out of both my eating and cooking habits. I tend to fall into the routine of cooking the same dishes again and again. This is easy to do when you don’t have anyone saying “What? This again?” to you. Now I love to cook, but I’ve always been a figure out what you want to make and then go get the ingredients kinds of cook. I want to be more of a here’s this ingredient, now figure out what to do with it kind of cook. So getting a produce box delivered seems like a good solution. And along they way, I can do my part of the environment by eating locally grown, seasonal produce. Oh and fruit. I definitely need to eat more fruit. M&M’s are not a fruit.
 
So last week, I came home from work to find my first farm box sitting by my door. I decided to start with the “weirdest” thing in the box: kale. Now, I know I’ve had kale before but it certainly hasn’t ever been a staple of my diet. I have a friend who went to NYU film school and whose first student film was named “Kale”. She picked the name randomly after seeing a frozen package of it at the supermarket. Then, at the screening, she sat in the back with a sly grin on her face while her fellow students went on at great length analyzing the significance of kale in regards to the film. Instead of cooking the kale, I decided to get my raw on and make lacinato kale and ricotta salata salad. I had a moment’s hesitation when, after washing and chopping the kale, I nibbled on a piece and found it bitter and, I think the technical term is “yucky”. “Not to worry”, I thought, “you don’t have to like everything in the box.” But once the simple salad was assembled and tossed with the lemon-shallot vinaigrette I made, well, it went from yucky to pretty damn tasty.
 
And so all week I’ve been munching on apples, pealing oranges and bunging pearl potatoes into roasting pans.  That and the opening of the new Patsy Stone’s supermarket in the Castro have been a real boon to my healthy eating habits. 
 
On a sort of related note, I’ve seen the work farmpunk being electronically bandied about lately. Of course there is a website here.
 
What interests me is this description:
 
“A farmpunk could be described as a neo-agrarian who approaches [agri]culture, community development and/or design with a hacker ethos. "Cyber-agrarian" could supplant neo-agrarian, indicating a back-to-the-land perspective that stands apart from past movements because it is heavily informed by conceptual integration in a post-industrial information society (thus "forward to the land" perhaps?) The art and science of modern ecological design will be best achieved through the combined arts of cybermancy and geomancy. These hermeneutic disciplines are not categorical or reductionist, but open-ended. Natural ecologies must be seen as the original cybernetic systems.”
 
And in particular, this bit: “heavily informed by conceptual integration in a post-industrial information society (thus "forward to the land" perhaps?)”. As a little-p progressive, I have an inherent distrust of nostalgic attempts to live in the past. To me, the past should be used to inform the present. You take the things that worked and learn from the things that didn’t and you leave a hefty amount of room for the new and the unexpected. And you take all of those things and you use them to build the future. 
 
So I’m intrigued about what might be going on here in regards to a new take on neo-agrarianism. I’m going to keep my eye on this. In the meantime, I’ve got these hecka-big, dirt-covered beets sitting home in my fridge. 

A group of us gathered last night for a memorial for Jeff (beg1n). It was exactly what one of these things should be. No talk of being in a better place or resurrection. Instead, it was grieving people gathering to cry, to laugh, to hug and to remember. There were songs by Prince and Radiohead. Jeff’s brother, sister-in-law, and his amazing niece Nicole came up from Texas. People got up and told funny stories and poignant stories or just poured their hearts out about what Jeff meant to them. It was all incredibly moving and one of the most human things I’ve ever witnessed.

I got up and said this:

I first met Jeff in person about 2 hours after I arrived in San Francisco nearly six years ago. Before that we were LiveJournal friends, which, for those of you who don’t know, was kind of like being Facebook friends only a whole lot wordier. We’d see each other at bars and occasionally go out to movies or shows together. And the movies and shows continued after he had his stroke and recovered enough to get out and about.

Now here’s the thing: no matter how much I tried I would always end up walking and talking or sitting on his bad side. I mean DUH there was a frickin’ eyepatch to tip me off but somehow I just couldn’t ever get it right. We would go to the movies and I would go into the row first and sit down and Jeff would follow and sit on my right. And then I’d just start talking away, commenting on the slides or whatever. And after babbling on for a bit I’d look over and Jeff would be twisted halfway around in his seat aiming his opposite good ear and his opposite good eye at me. Never saying anything like “could you just stop taking for one damn minute and shift your ass to the other side so I can actually hear your inane babbling without getting neck strain.” No he never said anything like that.

And over the last few days I’ve been struggling to figure out why I kept doing this. To come up with some reason other than “well it must be because you’re a complete self-involved narcissist”. And yesterday I thought of this instead:

I’d look at Jeff during the last few years and sure I’d see the patch and the cane and I’d hear the gravelly (yet sexy) voice. You couldn’t just ignore these things. And you SHOULDN’T just ignore them. These things were more than just functional tools or symbols of a handicap, they were his weapons, his badges of honor earned on a battlefield that most of us can’t even imagine. And they served as a reminder to those of us blessed with better health of how Jeff had to fight for many of the things we take for granted. So no, there was no dismissing these things.

But that said, it was so easy to see past them and just see…Jeff. He was still there. And sometimes he was there with a REALLY sarcastic comment. No matter what the operations and the strokes did to his body, they didn’t change who he WAS they just changed how he did things. So I would sit there beside him and babble at either side of Jeff, just as I always had done and listen to him chuckle. And I’m really going to miss being able to do that anymore.

Man, this is a hard one. Jeff Corich (beg1n), died yesterday. Jeff was one of the first people I met after moving to San Francisco almost six years ago. He was also one of the sweetest guys you could ever know. He was part of that big, friendly, bunch of familiar-from-the-internet guys who I found packed into the Edge on the Friday that I arrived in town. And they welcomed me into this community with open arms and big hugs. Looking back on it now with memory-clouded vision, it seems as though our friendship developed in the blink of an eye.



Over the years, Jeff and I would go to shows and movies together on occasion, or just see each other out in bars. Ours was that sort of casual friendship that you fall into when you think that things are always going to be the way they are now. Then came that fateful IBR where Jeff had to leave 440 to go get an MRI for the headaches he was having. And suddenly things were not the way they had always been: there were operations and strokes and helplessness and worry. Everything changed, if not in an instant, in a very short period of time. Then came the long recovery where Jeff pulled himself back from those 18 hour stints on the table and the damage inflicted on his body. In slow, courageous and painful steps, he worked to recover, not the life that he had before-that was gone- but, instead, a sense of himself that could be forged into a new life, albeit one where the rules were different. And to the admiration of everyone who knew him, he did just that.

I saw less of Jeff after all of that partly because he didn’t get out as much, and partly because, without the constant reminder of medical crises, it was easy to wrap myself up in my own problems and concerns. After all, he had Dave, AJ and Phil and so many others in his life, I reasoned, so he was well looked after. We could just catch up later. Believe me, I’m acutely aware of how lame that now sounds.

So things again resumed their “this is the way things are always going to be” pattern. Jeff and I would see each other occasionally, whenever the mood would strike us, going to shows and movies and sometimes letting months go by without seeing each other.

And now things have once again changed, in the most painful way possible. Jeff is gone, suddenly and unexpectedly. A sadder, emptier reality has asserted itself as if to say “this is what happens when one of the things you’ve always counted on being there isn’t anymore”. This, of course, is the very crux of grief and no matter how many times you experience it; it still takes you by surprise and never, ever gets any easier.

So at the end of this grey and sad day, as I sit here missing my friend and regretting that we didn’t spend more time together, I can’t help but think of this bit of a song from Elbow, one of Jeff’s favorite groups:

“Do they know these days are golden?
Build a rocket boys!”

Finally (and because this post has been mostly about me), I’d like to share some of my favorite times when Jeff and I DID get to spend some time together:

My favorite Jeff story is when I was sitting between him and Greg (gregorbehr) listening to the two of them compare brain tumor battle-wounds. When we tried to determine who’s head scar was bigger, Jeff, with perfectly-timed, mock-horror cried “I have a scar?!?!?”

Hanging out with him on my first ever Lazy Bear.

There was the time I carried him down the steps on my back at The Willows during another Lazy Bear, neither of us realizing until halfway down the steps what an awkward, heavy, sack of squirmy weight a full grown man actually is.

The time we went to see Margaret Cho in the nosebleed seats at the Warfield, and wondered why they thought those particular seats were any way handicapped accessible. They were, however, Jeff accessible.

This picture:



How, no matter how many times I tried to remind myself (I mean there’s a goddamn eyepatch you’d think would be a tip me off!), I would inevitably end up walking and talking on his blind/deaf side. He would never correct me; just maneuver himself around me to the other side.

The surprise birthday party where we all greeted Jeff in matching eye patches, and the look on his face when he saw us.

If there is such a thing as an afterlife, Jeff, I hope you are there shaking your ass to Prince and Radiohead. Goodbye my friend.

The dog days are over! After over a year and a half of soul-crushing, seemingly never-ending unemployment, I got a job!!! I start two weeks from today and I cannot tell you how big a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I feel like a new person already. The dog days that began with my father getting sick again followed by my lay off, and then his death, then stress-filled unemployment limbo are well and truly over!

And speaking of dogs (he says grabbing the wheel and painfully wrenching this post onto a dirt road of a tangent half-glimpsed out of the corner of his eye), I had an odd dog encounter the other day. I’ll get to that in a moment, but THAT encounter reminded me of another story from about twenty-five years ago (Yes this tangent has a flashback-deal with it!). I was down in Newport, Rhode Island visiting some friends for the weekend, not in the mansion part of town but in the drunken college student part of town. This would turn out to be an expensive weekend for me as my car was ticketed twice and I lost my only set of contact lenses during a late night swim in Narragansett Bay. All of that was annoying but it was a dog that dealt the real humiliating blow.

It was Saturday and my friends and I had gone to the beach to do beach-type things. It was a beautiful summer day and the beach was crowded. At one point, I grabbed a sand chair-you know one of those folding chairs that sit a few inches above the sand unless you’re really fat in which case you’re pretty much just sitting on sand with a backrest? Anyway, I grabbed one of those and took it down to the water’s edge to sit with my feet in the water. A ways down the beach, there was a rust colored Irish setter spazzily running around the people walking on the beach. Twenty-five years later and I can still remember what that mutt looks like, probably because of what happened next. I turned my attention back to watching the waves crash on the beach. Out of the corner of my eye, I became aware that the dog was heading over towards me. Now I love dogs. Have never had any fear of them, whatsoever, even after that poodle bit me on the face when I was six. (I don’t, however, particularly like poodles). So I began turning in the chair to say hello to the dog, which was now at my side. The thing is, the dog was turning as well, rotating his hindquarters towards me. Before I could react, he lifted his leg and proceeded to send a stream of dog pee all over me.

It is at this point I would like to remind you, gentle readers, of three things: a) my location (edge of the water), b) where everyone else was (behind me) and c) the direction that everyone faces when at the beach (you guessed it, towards the water). So not only did this dog just whiz all over me, he whizzed all over me in front of the entire beach-going population of Newport, Rhode Island. By the time I leapt to my feet, the laughter and the pointing had begun. I stood there for a moment and tried to figure out the protocol of what one does when urinated on by a dog. I had nothing, so I grabbed the chair and marched into the water with as much dignity as I could muster.

The incident that reminded me of this, thankfully did not involve urine of any kind. Saturday, I was in yoga class, doing a standing backbend: chest pointing up, arms reaching out behind me, eyes closed when I heard a familiar yet out of place tinkle. It definitely wasn’t one of those little ching ching sweetie bells they sometimes ring in class. No, it sounded like…hey is someone licking my leg?...dog tags. I looked down and saw a happy looking dog, which had apparently run in the back door of the studio and was now saying hello to say hello to me according to the ways of his kind. The entire class and I dissolved into laughter and I gave thanks that I hadn’t been doing tree pose or we might have had a repeat of that long ago scene on a Rhode Island Beach.

So there you have it: dogs love me and I have a job!

I have a dream of one day opening a gym that plays no lowest common denominator music, has no TV’s showing Oprah, allows no reading materials, and is fitted with state-of-the-art mobile device dampeners. Talking must be kept to a minimum and no one is allowed to join for the entire month of January. I’m sure my gym will be spectacularly unsuccessful but it will make me happy.

January is a tough month for those of us who also go to the gym regularly the other eleven months of the year. It’s the month when badly designed locker rooms suddenly fill to bursting with resolutionistas bound and determined that this will be the year (really!) that they get into a shape other than round. They will shuffle around the gym floors like newborn zombies, mindlessly going from one machine to the next, with little or no thought as to why they are there and what they are doing, because just showing up is half the battle! Their faces will show an odd mixture of confusion and boredom trying to dress itself up to look like determination. Today alone I saw one kid with Twilight hair work out sulkily and half heartedly in flip flops and pajama bottoms and another guy who did maybe two sets in a half hour while spending the rest of the time texting while standing smack dab in the middle of the gym floor. Yes, yes I know we should encourage people to get fit and everyone has to start somewhere but couldn’t they just start somewhere out of my way.

Another dream I have is to have Batman’s gym. Just imagine the gym (or more likely gyms, one in Wayne Manor and one in that Gotham skyscraper he owns) that Bruce Wayne gets to work out in, most of the time all by himself. Oh sure, sometimes Robin is there and Alfred is always around to hand him a towel, make him a fruit smoothie or provide a spot (if you could ever imagine a circumstance where Batman would need a spot) but neither of them is likely to get in the way of his goal of becoming the perfect physical specimen to fight the superstitious and cowardly lots. My goals may be a bit less superheroic but I do have them.

Years ago, my first office job had a decent, hardly ever used, little gym in one of the rooms. Most of the time I could have a nice solitary workout while listening to WBCN on the boombox. And one day, when the DJ reported that Kurt Cobain had killed himself, I could even shed a few private tears.

Not that I think that working out has to be a solitary experience. Yoga, for example is better with a group. Trying to figure out complex postures on your own can be tricky. Weightlifting, by comparison, is simpler but does require a certain level of knowledge and concentration to be done properly. I have no problem sharing a gym with other people who are clearly there to put some effort and thought into their workout. But what I don’t get is people who show up and go through the motions while doing everything in their power to distract themselves (and everyone around them) from the fact that they are in a gym doing something they clearly don’t want to do. To me that just seems like a waste of time and is doomed to failure which is probably why gyms have a much smaller number of people in them the other eleven months of the year. I’d like to think these people have moved on to doing some other form of exercise that they truly love doing. I’m sure somewhere in this great grand world of ours there is an athletic activity that even a sullen lad with Twilight hair, flip flops and pajama bottoms could love. In the meantime, I’ll be in the gym, working out quietly and happily.

In many ways this was one of the weirder Christmases I’ve had since I found myself standing at a New York City cinema urinal next to Ed Koch (who didn’t peek). Nothing I did this year was part of any tradition or convention it was just all…different.

But then that’s been this entire year. Not a good year, by any stretch of the imagination. I thought the previous year, with the back to back losses of my Dad and my job, was going to be the nadir but it turned out that those events were just the kickoff to another full year wandering lost in the unmapped badlands of unemployment. If you’ve never been unemployed for a long period of time, well I can’t say as I recommend it. Sure you’ll learn things about yourself but not all of them may be pleasant. It feels like being slowly rendered down to the bone by weak acid and then wondering what it is that’s left. Am I a business analyst? If so why can’t I find a job? How long can you exist in modern society with little or no finances? How do you explain to the people you know that sometimes it’s easier to just avoid them than it is to have to answer “how are you?” with the perpetual “still looking for a job” or how the question still gets asked by them in my head even if I don’t see them.

So yeah all of that was what I was wrapping up and carrying into the holiday season. Frankly I was prepared for a pretty depressing Christmas. And yet…and yet it didn’t really work out that way. I sort of enjoyed myself this Christmastime as weird as it sometimes was. I went to some fun parties and sort of just let Christmas happen around me. The most Christmassy thing I did was put on a Santa hat and join a big group of group of similarly chapeau’d guys and hike across the Golden Gate Bridge on Christmas Eve Day. Judging from the honks and the smiles we got from passing motorists and pedestrians I’d say we spread a little holiday cheer. One little kid even came up to me and said “Hi Santa” which I chose to take in the spirit of the holiday rather than him just saying I was old and fat. Overall it was just a really fun day.

Wow considering I was just going to come on hear and talk about the hike, this ended up being a lot more confessy than I intended. Here look at some pictures:

Full gallery here

In which I wax crankily on a host of subjects:

+ If you wear these things on your feet while you are in the gym lifting weights then you deserve to have a 45-pound weight dropped on your toes.



We’ll see how your cutsie ootsy little piggies look like all flattened and shit.

+ Ok Wikileaks. First let’s start with that ridiculous sounding name (extra ridiculous sounding when read by aloud by BBC presenters). It sounds like what you get when an infant’s diaper fails-come to think of it, that might be the perfect name. I love how telling the truth now makes you a terrorist. Are we now adding journalists to no fly lists too? It’s also interesting how a situation that’s about the transparency of governments is shedding unintended light on all sorts of other things. Like the fact that our corporate overlords* really don’t like it when you mess with their government puppets. Also if the CIA can’t do a better job on a frameup of a globe trotting Australian, maybe it’s time to outsource out spies. Imagine what a profit-driven CIA could accomplish!

You know I accept that we live in a world where secrets have to be kept but I also think it’s my right and the right of every citizen of every government to try and find out what those secrets are. Governments need to accept greater transparency or get a whole lot better at keeping secrets.

I shit you not-just typed “Wikkieaks VIsa” into Google and my computer was mysteriously knocked off the internet.

+ The following words and/or phrases never ever need to be said online ever again:

-“I hate being sick”

-“Tee Hee”, “Hee hee” or any tittering form of laughter. This is double super especially true if the person writing it is a grown man. Dispensation will be given to geishas, and anyone who is the reincarnation of Michael Jackson. The rest of you knock it off.

-“Post this if you know someone who has had or been affected by (Cancer, Herpes, Rickets, Bubonic Plague, Lupus, etc) Sheeple, please!

-“It’s like they’re raping my childhood!”-usually said by extreme nerds when faced with the remake of some beloved movie or TV show. Look, choosing to remake something, whether for lack of originality and money-grubbing profit or for the desire to try and tell a story in a different way, in no way, shape or form affects that original work. It’s still there in its original untouched form for you to enjoy over and over again (unless it was made by George Lucas in which case I’m sorry to tell you that now Greedo shot first). What has changed is you. The best stories thrive in the retelling. Imagine if we only had one version of James Bond or Batman or Sherlock Homes or Hamlet.

-“I can’t believe how commercialized Christmas has gotten” Really? REALLY? Dude that stopped being an interesting observation right after some guy tweeted it from the back of a camel, somewhere in the suburbs of Bethlehem, in the year 2. There is no one, either alive or dead, who does not already know this.

+ And while we’re on the subject of Christmas, you holiday haters are just as tiresome as the people who overdo it. You know who you are with your wreaths of disdain and your assertion that “Fairytale of New York” is the only Christmas song you can listen to. Christmas is an entirely volunteer event. Get your ho ho’s on or don’t but for Vishnu’s sake stop complaining about it.

+ It’s called a birthDAY, not birthweekend, birthweek or birthmonth. You get a day. Don’t be greedy.

+ Your being on the phone and/or texting on the sidewalk does not absolve you of the responsibility to watch where you are going. The onus to make sure that YOU do not run into someone does not automatically fall to me because I am watching where I am going and you’e like all busy and shit. And this is especially true of you kids with your always-up-even- though-it’s-sunny-and-warm-out-peripheral- vision-removing-hoodies. I know you think the world sucks and all but at the very least it is interesting and you are missing seeing about 85% of it. Now get off my lawn!

+ I eat Nestle’s Semi-Sweet Morsels by the handful because in my mind they are a baking item and not candy.

This is the story of how I was almost frightened to death by a song. To tell the story, first I’m going to need to set the scene. This happened back in the mid ‘80s, when I was a junior at UMass (“it’s educational!”). It was winter and between semesters. I had decided to flex my freedom and not return home to my family for a month and instead remain out in the western part of the state, hanging out on my own and working at my exciting sandwich shop/ice cream parlor job. My buddy Chad had said I could stay at his house while he was gone provided I looked after the yellow lab he had impulsively adopted. I loved dogs so of course I said yes.

Chad lived in a 150-year-old house with about eight other guys. All but one of them had gone home for intersession and the one guy who stayed was never around. So it was basically just the dog and me. I spent my free time watching Magnum P.I. and Remington Steele reruns and exploring. All that time staring at TV and the wall behind it made me realize that the width of the living room and the width of the adjoining kitchen didn’t seem to match. Poking around under the sink, I discovered that the back wall under the cabinet was actually a small door. I crawled my way through it and found myself in a hidden room that reached up two stories! There was nothing in the room but a chair but just the discovery of this hidden place was exciting. When I told Chad about it at the beginning of the semester, he thought I was nuts until I lead him under the sink to see for himself. None of the guys living there had any clue that their house had a secret room. I found out later that the house was part of the Underground Railroad.

So now we have the scene: alone in an old house with secrets. Now’s the time, kids, when I need to talk a bit about drugs. I’ve never been much of a drug taker. I’ve done my share of experimenting but that was about it. Like most people in college (especially at UMass!) I’d smoke a little weed occasionally. Now generally when I get high one or all of three things happen: I eat everything in sight, I get ridiculously horny and/or my already active imagination goes into overdrive. It’s this last one, especially, that can lead to trouble.

So one night after a particularly grueling evening of making steak and cheese subs for mostly drunk people, I came back to the spooky old house with the secret room, walked the dog, and decided to get high and listen to some music to unwind. I remember listening to The Velvet Underground’s self-titled album, thinking how intimate it sounded and how cool “The Murder Mystery” was with the different voices coming out of the different speakers. At some point I switched over to one of the numerous left of the dial college stations that filled the airways of Pioneer Valley, turned out the lights and climbed into bed. I liked to drift off to music. The station started playing a song I’d never heard before. It was more spoken than sung and was telling a story about this guy Frankie. “Oh good bedtime story,” I thought! Frankie was a factory worker and his story was getting sadder as it went on. The guy speak-singing it was doing so in this sort of breathless voice over a triphammer beat and this buzzing sound that got more insistent as the song goes on. The song just drew me right in and I was listening pretty attentively when it suddenly switched from sad to horrifying. Frankie decides to kill his family starting with his six-month old kid. Now, as if that thought wasn’t horrifying enough on it’s own, the killings are described and punctuated by these blood-curdling screams. The first one scared the crrap out of me and nearly launched me to the ceiling. And there were more to come.

So here was me, high, already a bit paranoid, sitting bolt upright in bed, hugging on to the poor confused dog for dear life, in the dark in spooky house with a secret room listening to what sounds like the musical representation of a family's murder, which, for all I knew at the time, was actually happening live. I was so frozen with fear that I just sat terrified and listened to all ten minutes and twenty six seconds of the thing never even thinking to turn it off-all the way up to the last terrifying scream and the image of Frankie and us listeners lying in Hell. To this day, I’m not sure why I didn’t have a heart attack and die of fright right there on the spot.

It wasn’t until some time later in those pre-Google times that I discovered Suicide and their song “Frankie Teardrop”.

Here it is if you haven’t heard it and are curious:



So the moral of the story? Never, ever do drugs alone in spooky old houses with secret rooms at night while listening to overly descriptive songs about murder/suicides.

I woke up with this morning with my muscles all wound up good and tight. Not in a painful way but instead they were just letting me know that we’d had a good workout. As I waited for the coffee to brew, I began to slowly stretch them out. I was thinking about how I had really pushed myself in yoga last night. Correction, my teacher Chrisandra really pushed me.

I’ve been doing yoga now for about two and half years. Most of the time, I do it at home, following podcasted instructions, either in the home office or, on days when the weather (and the spiders) cooperate, out back in the garden. The exception to this has been making sure I got to Chrisandra’s Wednesday (and sometimes Monday) night Gentle Flow class. It was the perfect mix of work for the body and the mind and I always left the class feeling looser, calmer, less stressed and more at peace than when I went in. Last night was the last Wednesday evening Gentle Glow class with Chrisandra as she moves on to other teaching opportunities. Ones to which I’ll no doubt follow-you don’t just let a teacher as good as she is slip away.

Yoga has come to be very important to me. These last couple of years have been a sequence of events that I’ve had absolutely no control of: my father’s long painful decline and death, my job loss and never-ending job search and family trouble, have all left me feeling like the rocks along Ocean Beach in a storm. Logically, I know this is just life and that control is just an illusion. It’s just that sometimes I’d like my little bubble of self-deception to be a bit bigger that it has been, you know?

But in the meantime I have my mat and I have the gym. There, at least, I can decide how much I push, what I can achieve. There are limits, sure, but still, I like the simplicity of effort=results you get from both of them.

When I started doing yoga, my hamstrings were so tight that the only way my toes ever got touched was if they came up to meet me. Now I can stretch down and wrap my fingers around my big toe. I’m not Bendy McRubberlimbs or anything but it is progress and it feels great.

Last night we were doing this posture that involves lying on your side, twisted, so that your lower arm is extended out perpendicularly behind you and pinned to the floor. The other arm is arced to the floor above your head. The more advanced version of this involves sweeping your upper arm down your body and back behind you. The goal then is to try and use this arm to grab the upturned fingers with your other hand, without turning that wrist. As you would imagine, doing so involves a good deal of shoulder flexibility but the real tricky part is locating that upturned hand in space without being able to see it. It’s trickier than you’d think as your spatial perceptions get all out of whack with your body twisted into an unfamiliar shape.

After months and months of practice, I had finally got to the point where I could reach and touch my wrist on of my left hand. I hadn’t got to the fingers yet but this was considerably better than having my hand groping around in space, which is the place I was still at on the other side, where I still couldn’t find my arm. One of the things you learn doing yoga is that your two sides are NOT equal!

Anyway, I was on that side groping around as usual for my left arm, which I knew was back there…somewhere. Chrisandra came over and gave me some assistance. Behind me, I felt her raise my left fingers up as she gently guided right arm down until I felt them touch something. I assumed what I was touching was some part of Chrisandra. And just as she says “feel that?” I realized that what I was feeling was my upturned fingers as my sensations and my thoughts caught up to each other. “Wow!” I said in amazement.

Look I know it’s not life and death (but what is what is, as Elvis sang) or a career but it WAS an achievement, if one that was important only to me. I never expected to find myself, at the age of 44, once again searching around for my place in the world. But I guess that’s life and since I am, I’m all the more grateful for the people and the activities that help me reach and find that other hand.

So the idea is that people should wear purple today to honor the recent spate (and presumably all) teen suicides by LGBTQ, which happened as a direct result of their being bullied at home and/or at school.



This is the closest thing I have to anything purple-sort of a grey with delusions of lavender. But at least it sends a clear message which is this: Just as America weathered attacks by a much older and stronger nation with their Revolutionary War era steampunk anglobots, you too can weather attacks by bullies. It DOES get better.

I should know because I’m a 44-year-old man who survived being bullied and now I live in a purple room in the gayest neighborhood on Earth. See? Better.

Frankly I’m of the opinion that we could totally eradicate bullying for good just by having people spend some time in soothing purple rooms. But until we can put that plan into effect, just know that it will not always be like this. And you know what? I bet if you asked some of the copious amounts of straight people all around you THEY don’t want it to be like this forever either, even without the bullying. No one in his right mind wants to be a teenager forever. And the best part is no one has to. Eventually we grow up and wrap ourselves in the armor of lives full of amazing things, fantastic experiences and wonderful people. And the best part is that things never ever have to be as confusing and as lonely as they are for you now. For now, your job is to live, to learn and to prepare for the rest of your life. It really does-totally telling the truth here-get better.

And any of you bullies out there? Knock it off or the unicorns are going to get VERY angry.

http://www.thetrevorproject.org/

I will warn you right up front that this story is about libraries and penises. If either or both of these things offend you, you’d better stop reading right now.

Still here? Ok. One more warning: this is story is not for the faint of heart. It’s a horror story- a tale of one boy’s day of creeping, biting terror.

Our story begins in a small New England town in the early Stephen King late Seventies. I was a twelve year-old, skinny, tow-headed blond who had been devouring books ever since I had learned how to read. So it was no surprise that I loved to go to the town library. At the time, the Billerica Public Library was a beautiful stained glassed and steepled late 19th century building. The stacks of books were divided up into the small rooms, each one full of countless nooks and crannies. So going to the library meant not just getting to explore the books but also the building. It was the ideal kind of place for a curious kid who had devoured The Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown (not to mention quite a few of the Nancy Drew) books when he was younger.

On this particular day, I was on my own at the library. My mother had just dropped me off on her way to go grocery shopping. Being a preteen in the Seventies meant that I had a level of freedom unimaginable to kids today. And I, being the independent sort anyway, took every advantage of it that I could.

I moved from room to room in the library. Even at that young age I recognized the sense of history that you get in a library that you wouldn’t get in say a bookstore. And this place in particular was haunted by the past. It was history housed in history.

Scene of unimaginable horror------->

I made my way into the general fiction stacks-the adult fiction that I had just graduated to reading. It was around this time that I would be secretly reading “The World According to Garp” in the back of my seventh grade social studies class. And it was there where I would let out an involuntary and audible gasp that nearly got me caught when I read Garp’s infamous car accident dismemberment scene. But that’s not the willy that is of concern here.

So I’m looking through the books when all of a sudden I felt a sharp jab…”down there”. I involuntarily flinched and would have thought “what the hell” if I weren’t still convinced that such thoughts would send me there. I looked quickly around. Seeing no one, I gave my crotch a quick scratch. I was beginning to get used to strange and mysterious things happening down there but none of my parents’ fumbling explanations nor the super-confusing sex book I found in the attic (I was still freaked out by the idea of “eggs” and “seeds”) made any mention of sharp and really unpleasant pains in my privates. I wasn’t Carrie White and I was reasonably sure something like this would not be the sort of thing my parents would purposely not mention. I decided that it must be a one-time thing and went back to my browsing.

Then it happened again. And then again. The jabs made me jump and each one freaked me out more and more. There was no way this was normal! I had to find out what was going on down there so I made my way to the men’s room as the pricking continued.

Alone in the men’s room, I quickly pulled down my pants and my underwear. And what I saw was so terrifying, so unexpected that I was literally frozen with terror.

There crawling along the shaft of my little guy was a black bug.

It was about a half an inch in length. In any other circumstance, it would have been the sort of bug you just ignored. It wasn’t a wasp or a cockroach or a (yuck) millipede. It was just a bug. But what made this normally unassuming little creature so terrifying was that it had appeared where no insect should ever be. Ever. Frankly the list of things that you would not want to manifest themselves in your pants is a very very long one that runs the gamut from Cthulhu right down to your garden variety everyday little black bugs.

At that moment, three things happened simultaneously: The little bugger bit me again right while I watched, I let out a loud “ahhhhhhhh”, giving full voice to my pain, shock and revulsion, and I whacked at my John Thomas with enough force to send the little black horror on an involuntary flight out of my nether regions. The many-legged demon landed on the bathroom floor a few feet from me. Anyone entering the bathroom at that moment would have encountered a terrified pre-teen with a look of terror on his face, his pants around his ankles, clutching protectively at his thingy, while at the same time jumping up and down on a small black smudge.

Eventually, and only once I was good and assured the creature had been squashed from this plane of existence, did I manage to return breathing to normal and my pants back up to my waist, after first checking to make sure nothing was missing or had been…eaten. It was then that I figured out what had happened. Earlier, at home, I had been in the bathroom peeing. As I was standing there with my pants around my ankles (which was easier than mucking about with Y-fronts when alone) I felt a bug land on my neck. I swiped at it, removing it from my neck to…well at the time, I didn’t know where. I was just happy that it was off of my neck. What I now understood is that I must have knocked it right down into my tighty whiteys.

Perhaps the most horrifying part of this entire nightmare is the knowledge that, for a period of at least an hour, there was a monster running amok in my underpants while I walked around with no idea of the terror that was lurking right there down between my legs.

And so my favorite weekend of the year and another Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival has come and gone. Hardly Strictly for me is what I imagine spas are for like for other people. It resets me and it renews me. It reminds me of the things I love about life and this chosen city of ours. For those that don’t know (or who haven’t heard me go on about it before), The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, is an annual three-day free festival in Golden Gate Park entirely funded by billionaire Warren Hellman. The twin high points of the festival both came for me yesterday with the performances of two musician who I’ve loved for years but have never seen live: Martin Sexton and Patti Smith.

First up, early in the day, was singer/songwriter Martin Sexton. Listen I have a huge amount of respect for any performer who can do any one of the following:

1. Initiate a sing along at 11:50 in the morning
2. Get a good sized crowd up on its feet and dancing with nothing but an acoustic guitar and his voice (again at 11:50 in the morning!)
3. Make all the hairs on my neck stand up

Martin Sexton did each one of these things and more. He both charmed the crowd with his patter about singing on the streets of Boston and awed us with his vocal range prompting the guy standing next to me to lean over ask “who is this guy?!?!?”. He’s Martin Sexton and I don’t think anyone who was there was likely to forget it.

Later, towards the end of the day, was someone who needs no introduction: Patti Smith. I wasn’t sure how her music would translate to a festival crowd but she just reached out and grabbed hold of each and every one of us. She was fierce. She was electrifying. She and her band rocked the friggin’ meadow! She reminded us all that we live in a truly special city, one built on freedom and tolerance. She saluted Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jim Carroll and even John Walker Lindh the “victim of the Bush regime whose only crime was searching for something”. She did “Dancing Barefoot”, “Pissing in A River”,“Beneath the Southern Cross” and “People Have the Power” and a nice version of the Stones’ "Play With Fire" (at the end of which she joked “ooops I fucked up the rhyme”). And then she ended with “Gloria” which was one of the most exciting things I have ever seen. Seriously I almost completely lost my shit!

The rest of the weekend:

Friday I caught some of Jerry Douglas’ set before Patty Griffin and Buddy Miller came on to give us some gospel in the woods. Next up were the boyfriend/girlfriend team of Jenny and Johnny (Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice), who played a nice little set of power pop and were joined by Elvis Costello for a rollicking version of Jenny’s Carpetbaggers. Next I was going to stay for the start of T-Bone Burnett’s set but my bum was getting sore from sitting on the ground and Twitter was reporting that The Dukes of September (Donald Fagen, Boz Scaggs, and Michael McDonald) were starting early over on the main stage so I wandered over there. Boy am I glad I did as they were great! They played a nice mix of songs associated with each of them and songs by Chuck Berry, the Band, and Aretha Franklin (a really nice “Rock Steady” ). I even enjoyed most of Michael McDonald’s stuff as he wisely stuck to older Doobie Brothers and his earlier solo stuff. His only misstep was a limp version of Ray Charles’ “You Don’t Know Me”.

Saturday I met up with akil and we caught the end of Jonathan Richman’s set. Then it was over to the main stage for The Carolina Chocolate Drops. I was really interested to see them as I love their album Genuine Negro Jig and they sounded even better live. Each of them are multi instruments and singer Rhiannon Giddens used her opera trained voice to sing us an acapella Scottish reel, entirely in Gaelic, that was (no pun intended) breathtaking as she built up speed as the song went on. They ended with their brilliant reworking of the Blu Cantrell song “Hit ‘Em Up Style” that had EVERYONE up and dancing-song of the year and highlight of the day for me.

On the way to see The Fountains of Wayne we were literally stopped in our tracks by the voice of someone I had never even heard of before, Carolyn Wonderland. One of the joys of these festivals is finding unexpected things like this, so we decided on the spot to stay and listen to her and forgo getting “Stacy’s Mom” stuck in our heads. Then it was Connor Oberst, a couple of songs from a fierce sounding Richard Thompson. Then the conundrum of the day: Do we see Buddy Miller, Bonnie Prince Billy or Gillian Welch and David Rawlings? Well we tried to catch a bit of Gillian and David but the crowd was getting logjammed so we retreated over to Buddy Miller’s set, just in time to hear a bit of Emmylou Harris singing with him followed by him calling Patty Griffin out on stage for some “Gasoline and Matches”. Then it was over to the Star stage to see Bonnie Prince Billy, who frankly was a bit of a disappointment with his rambling set. Kinda wished we had made more of an effort to see Gillian and David. Oh well, next year!

Then there was a Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Interlude as we went to see The Arcade Fire. akil had kindly offered me an extra ticket so we raced across the Bay to Berkeley and did a nice little tour of the city as we tried and tried to find the parking garage. Got in The Greek just in time to catch the end of Calexico’s set. Thanks to a good call by akil we managed to work our way down front, nearly center about 20 people back from the stage. And man what an incredible show it was! I mean I liked them before but now I LOVE them! Seeing them live has completely transformed how I listen to them. And the crowd was sooo into to them, singing along with every single word. We were standing amidst a throng of drunk and stoned college kids, which I thought was going to be, you know, sucky, but really they just added to the enthusiasm level singing, dancing, and telling each other how “epic” it was. Epic indeed!

Sunday got to the park super early to catch most of the Felice Brothers and then Martin Sexton. Then, again met up with akil and we planted ourselves way in the back to hear (but not quite see) The Indigo Girls harmonizing to a very large crowd, then we went over to the tiny Porch stage, and found a nice spot to sit on the hill just as the sun came out to catch sister act Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer. We were briefly joined by zbear20. In a really sweet moment, Steve Earle and baby John Henry came out and stood next to us to watch mommy Allison and Auntie Shelby sing some songs for the first time together in public. Then back to the Rooster stage to hear some of Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women, joined on stage by brother (and former Blaster) Phil Alvin for “Marie Marie”. Then we and 14 billion other people all went over to see Elvis Costello. We stayed for a few songs including “Brilliant Mistake” and rootsified version of “Blame It On Cain”,and a "New Amsterdam/ Hide Your Love Away” melody. When the way was clear, we made our way back to hear some of Rosanne Cash’s set (She joked that given a choice between her and Elvis she would probably pick Elvis). She sounded great doing songs from The List and Black Cadillac. Then on our way to see Patti, we managed to hear Elvis rock his way through a nice cover of the Stones’ “Happy” which made me, well, happy.

After Patti, The Avett Brothers had managed to pull in every single young person in the crowd so we bailed over to the Rooster stage to see Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings. They were running late, and I was tired and still on a Patti-high so I decided it was time to call it a day. I made my way out of the festival to the sounds of Emmylou Harris’ beautiful voice wafting through the trees of this truly special place.

Mostly uncaffeinated. Beard unbrushed, probably with bits of oatmeal in it. Contacts are still in their case. Looking out at this small part of the world through glasses that could use a good cleaning. Bedside light still on from early morning reading beside a bed that is as unmade as I am. And so the day begins.



"When you read this you're tagged. Take a picture of you in your current state, no changing your clothes or quickly putting on makeup. NO PHOTOSHOP. Show your F-List the real you!"

You know, I’ve always thought I would do well in prison (shut up). Or on some long, solo, space mission to out there, like a latter day rocket man. I don’t mind spending long periods of time by myself and I’m rarely bored as long as I have access to books and movies and the odd video game or two. I even thought the whole “being inside all of the time thing” would be ok as long as I could exercise regularly. However the events of this past week has taught me that if you cut me off from the outside and fresh air my mental state will crumple faster than trailer park in a tornado.

See, the outside of the house where I live is being professionally painted. First they put up scaffolding, which wasn’t bad because at least I could see out of from in between the levels. Then, one by one, the painters proceeded to cover all of the windows with a cloudy see-through plastic, which seemed specifically designed to only let in the light from the depressing end of the spectrum. And while it at least let in some gloomy light, it didn’t let in ANY air. For the first couple of days this was ok because the windows in our central airshaft were unblocked so at least it didn’t seem like we were completely wrapped up like leftovers in the fridge and that some outside air was getting in. But soon those too were covered. I was sealed in!


At first I thought it looked kind of cool, like the inside of a house just before a storm, especially when it was (I assume) foggy outside. However now, after a few days, it feels like the apocalypse has come. The house looks like it was decorated by the set designers of The Road. In fact, there could be zombies shuffling all over my street at any time and I would never know! Weather, other than the wind that rippled the plastic, had become an abstract concept. All that remained of outside was strange noises and odd, Spanish- speaking shapes moving about in the windows. Yesterday I thought the house was running out of air until I realized that I was just out of breath from running up and down the stairs doing laundry. I thought about rationing my remaining food and wondered which cat I’d have to eat first.

Of course, much of this (like oh so many things) is just in my mind. I’m not actually trapped in the house and can, in fact, leave at any time. But the problem is that when you’re unemployed there’s a whole lot of time to be filled up and not a whole lot of places to actually go. Usually the home office is perfectly fine for job searching-but two days in a row of doing that in the gloom convinced me I’d better get out for the sake of my sanity (and perhaps the safety of the cats).

Right now, I’ve snagged the window seat in the coffee shop. Outside the sun is shining down through the trees. People of the decidedly un-undead variety pass by with nary a shuffle in their step. Gentle breezes of oh so fresh air ruffle my napkins every time someone opens the door. I will stay here until my sanity meter is out of the red, and prepare myself for the return to the house of gloom.

"Thunder Road"

Ok I’ll let you in on a secret-I sing all the time. I sing in the shower. I sing when I’m making dinner. I sing along to the stereo. I basically sing when two conditions are met: I feel like it and I’m alone. I have no idea if I’m any good, I just know that I enjoy it. It’s funny I used to make fun of my mother for singing all the time and now look at me.

Anyway, because I like to sing, and I’ve always focused on the lyrics of songs, means I know all the words to lots of songs. Some of my favorites to sing are “Me and Bobby McGee”, “Hallelujah”, "Ol' 55", “Fall on Me”, “Because the Night”, My Morning Jacket’s “Golden”, and Josh Ritter’s “Monster Ballads”. I’ve only ever done karaoke twice in my life, both on the same day at a work thing and after four tequila shots. The first time I had to get up and sing “Material Girl” with four girls as a backup band. If it were up to me and I had to pick a Madonna song "Material Girl" would not be it. I hardly even know it so our version was kind of sucky. Later Me and a co-worker apparently did “Chain Of Fools” which, in contrast, is a song I know well. I say “apparently” because I have no memory of this at all. I’m reasonably certain I didn’t have any sort of drunken Commitments moment.

Since I’m supposed to pick one song for this, I’ll pick Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”, a song with no choruses and quite a lot of lyrics, all of which I know by heart. I can even do a mellow “acoustic” version or a more rocking one. No surprise that it’s one of my favorite songs.

I’m not a big purchaser of things “as seen on TV.” Yes, I, like everyone else who watched more than ten minutes of television, has bought something after seeing a commercial, but I’m talking here about that subset of doodads, gizmos and miracle liquids that are hawked at you, often at great volume, as a “special TV offer”. I don’t own a Snuggie, a Ginsu knife or in fact anything that a now dead bearded guy shouted at me to buy. I jut think there is this air of hucksterism surrounding these project (you know, like a Glenn Beck rally)-that and their low price goes against my Father’s steadfast rule of thumb: “you don’t get something for nothing”.

The other night, I came home from having a few beers with some friends and switched on an old episode of I Love Lucy. In between the hilarity of watching Lucy try and figure out how to make a pizza came an ad that grabbed my attention. It was for the Sobakawa Cloud Pillow and it looks like this---->
The ad promised the pillow would help with neck pain due to its “therapeutic design” and also keep my head cool in some magical way involving airflow and “microbeads” (as apposed to macrobeeds?). It was the first point that I was especially interested in. I’ve been having a lot of trouble lately trying to find the right pillow combination and layout that will keep me from waking up feeling like I spent all night whiplashing around in bumper cars. I’m a side sleeper and am not exactly tiny shouldered which means that I need to find not only the correct height to compensate for my shoulders but once I get there I have to somehow keep my head from rolling forward and down, which usually involves stuffing my bottom hand under the pillow and propping my head up. This works fine for a while but it ironically sends my hand to sleep while at the same time waking me up.

So I’ve tried tons of different pillows to see if I could find one that will work. I’m partial to down pillows but they can get a bit collapsey after a while. I hate those pillows that feel like a foam brick. I’ve tried those expensive memory foam dealies and found them uncomfortable and not a whole lot of help. Sleeping in zero gravity would probably work ut that’s an awful long way to go for a good night’s sleep.

So I saw this add for the Sobakawa Cloud Pillow and the fact that it was only twenty bucks and I thought, “hmmmm this might be worth a try.” Even if it didn’t work, at least I’m not out a lot of cash. So the next morning I found out that Bed Bath & Beyond had them (yay not having to call “the special number” and bonus-twenty percent off coupon!). So I went out and got one.

I’ve been sleeping on it for a week and much to my surprise it actually works. Using it on top of another pillow is the perfect height, and it actually keeps my head from lolling around at all-no more tingly hand. It’s a bit harder than I’m used to but I’m getting used to that. However, the keeping your head cool claim seem to be complete bullshit. Hucksterism is alive and well! I’ve noticed no difference at all in temperature from my regular pillows and in fact, the included space fiber pillowcase that came with it felt kind of creepy (but not in a particularly cooling way) against my skin so I tossed the pillow into one of my regular pillowcases instead.

So if you’re looking for a pillow alternative, give it a try!

Queen Radio Ga Ga

It’s 2004 and I’m in the gym, working out and grooving to Queen’s Greatest Hits It’s near the end of the workout and it’s time for calves so I start stacking weights on the seated calf machine. For those of you that don’t know, a seated calf machine looks like this----->
So I stack some weights and sit down and do my first set. As I do, “Radio Ga Ga” begins playing. I power though the set. It’s been a good workout. I’m feeling good-cocky even. So I stack some more weight on. More, actually than I've ever done before. I sit down and start the next set

All we hear is radio ga ga
Radio goo goo
Radio ga ga
All we hear…

Only the next thing I hear isn’t “radio ga ga” instead it is a noise that sounds like a cross between a rip and a twang followed by a crash. This comes as a bit of a surprise as it was not at all what I was expecting. Also surprising is that the weight stack has fallen back down, hence the crash. I stand up and my left leg doesn’t seem to be working at all the way a leg should work. There is no pain but the no working thing seems to be a bit worrisome. I manage to drag-limp myself to a cab and the emergency room and many hours later am told that I tore my calf muscle and that all things considered I was lucky because if I had been my Achilles tendon I would be well and truly fucked.

I can’t hear "Radio Ga Ga" and not think “rip -twang”. I also carefully work out my calf muscles on other types of machines.

 The The “The Sinking Feeling” and The Jam “The Bitterest Pill”

When I was living in London in the late 80’s, I lived and worked in a four hundred year old, unheated, haunted pub off of Fleet Street called The Harrow. The only other resident, aside from the ghost, was the governor, Tony. Tony was only a few years older than me (so late twenties at the time). He had moved down to London from Middlesbrough, with, among other things, a suitcase full of Teesside sarcasm.

One cold morning, I’m downstairs getting the pub ready for the day. As usual, I’m blasting music over the sound system, The The’s Soul Mining, a favorite of mine. When “The Sinking Feeling” comes on, Tony wanders down from upstairs, stops and gives me disgusted look and says, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “I'm just a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of the country”?!?!?! What kind of bollocks is this?!?!? “Aw c’mon this is good!” is my weak defense. He just shakes his head and goes back upstairs.

A while later, I’ve now got another favorite on, The Jam’s Snap.  "The Bitterest Pill" is playing and again Tony appears and again he’s shaking his head. “Ok, what now?” I ask him. “’In your white lace and your wedding bells, you look the picture of contented new wealth, but from the on-looking fool who believed your lies, I wish this grave would open up and swallow me alive’ not exactly Weller’s finest lyrical moment, there!” I just laugh. We then move on to the oft- told tale of how, when Paul Weller turned up at our friend Danny’s pub, Danny, a huge music fan decided to play it cool. Unfortunately his wife had other ideas asked Weller for an autograph in such a gushing way that Danny was completely and thoroughly mortified.

I can’t hear either one of those songs and not think of that musty old pub. If I want to remember Tony I just put on the Tyrell Corporation CD so I can listen to his own stabs at lyric writing and pop stardom.

 M People Movin' On Up 

Note: I'm cheating a bit here as this is something I wrote a few years ago.  

This all happened years ago.

It was T-Dance at the Boatslip. Better yet, it was a Memorial Day T-Dance. My friend Kenny and I were on the floor, dancing in that crystalline P-Town sunshine under a flawless blue sky. Fueled by the Captain Morgan and Cokes that Kenny always drank and that I only drank when I was out with him, we were having a blast. Then it came on. Our song. Understand we were not together together. But we still had a song. Good friends with the must of the closet still on us, trying on gay life like it was the cologne that everyone used to wear in those days.

Our song was Movin’ On Up by M People. I don’t know why, it just was. We both looked at each other, grinned and started energetically moving whatever parts of our bodies that we weren’t already moving. We were young and at an age when everything and nothing mattered.

About half way though the song I shouted at him, “Did you just cruise that lesbian?!?”
“I think I did!” He said with that little chuckle-laugh that he used to do.
And then he did it again.
“What are you doing!?!” I yelled
“I don’t know! I can’t stop doing it!” was his reply.
And he was right- he couldn’t stop. I was used to Kenny attracting all sorts of attention when I was out with him with his Italian good looks but this was a new one! Somehow the involuntary cruising got the lesbian to come dance with us and THAT somehow lead, in a way these things do, to us dancing with a whole bar full of lesbians at the Pied later on. Yeah it was that kind of weekend.

I remember having to leave at the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning to drive back to Boston so Kenny could go to work at Fed Ex that day. I had to drive because somehow I was the less hungover of the two of us. It sure didn’t feel that way.

A few years later, Kenny died of leukemia at the age of 27. It happened quickly and, from my perspective, “offstage” as neither he nor his family would allow any of his friends to see him when he got really bad. In my memories, he is there and then he isn’t any more. As I said, it’s been many years and a few “versions” since all of that, and I don’t think of him on a regular basis. But then I’ll hear “Movin’ On Up” or see an add for Captain Morgan and it’s like a door in my memory opens and there’s Kenny standing there, saying “hey let’s go to T-Dance at Chaps. I’ll drive.

The Replacements “Here Comes A Regular”

Again, there are a couple of ways to go with this one. There are songs that are sad because they are meant to be sad: I can’t think of any songs that are more heartrending than Patti Smith’s “My Madrigal”, Neil Young’s “Needle and the Damage Done”, Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me In your Heart”, any number fo country songs or anything Billie Holliday sings on “Lady in Satin”. Then there are songs that are sad for reasons that are more personal. I can’t hear Damien Rice’s The Blower’s Daughter and not think of the end of my ten-year relationship.

I do love a good sad song though. Sometimes what you need is a good wallow. I’m from Anglo-Irish stock and I was raised in the Northeast, which means that I tend to bury things pretty deep. Music (and as long as we are being honest, alcohol) has always been a way for me to reach down into those depths and haul things up to the light of day.

When I was younger and trying to find my voice and just who I was going to be, there were a handful of artists that I believed spoke for me: Bruce Springsteen spoke for my desire to escape, to go out and see the dream of the America I lived in but, at that point, had seen very little of. U2 were the righteousness and passion of youth-the rest of the world divided into right and wrong. R.E.M. came straight from my subconscious, mysterious and unknowable yet in a way that felt completely familiar. Hüsker Dü articulated my secrets and my pain.

And then there were The Replacements, who, besides being a kick-ass band, for better or worse, gave voice to the part of me that said, “You’re nothing special. You’re just a fuck up.” And no song embodied that more than “Here Comes A Regular.” It, along with “Bastards of the Young” could be the dual anthems for Nothing-special fuck-ups. But where “Bastards” sounds defiant, “Here Comes a Regular” just sounds resigned, as if nothing you could ever do would change your fate.  .

“Well a person can work up a mean mean thirst
after a hard day of nothin' much at all
Summer's passed, it's too late to cut the grass
There ain't much to rake anyway in the fall”

And in some ways, my entire life has felt like a struggle to prove that voice wrong. And nothing reminds me of that fight as much as this song-this brilliant portrait of what waits for me if I give in to the voice.

A few years ago when I was still living in Boston, my ex and I went over to Somerville to see Paul Westerberg. I hadn’t seen him live since the ‘Mats broke up. Much to my surprise and delight he did “Hear Comes a Regular” as an encore and I became overwhelmed. Suddenly and without warning, that struggle and all the old feelings all hit me like this huge wave. It was twenty minutes after the concert that I could gather myself together enough to talk an explained to m concerned ex what was going on.

And everybody wants to be special here
They call your name out loud and clear
Here comes a regular
Call out your name
Here comes a regular
Am I the only one here today?