Sentences

My old url has been taken over by spammers. Oh well, I try not to worry. I will eventually get around to complaining to Blogger about it, but I don't think they will consider it a priority. Had a good day today. A trip to Jackson with my thesis adviser to meet people at the Museum of Natural History and the Nature Conservancy. Lots of enthusiasm and good will about the project. Home to read and deconstruct "Make Way For Ducklings" to the boys, then to absorb a documentary about Ralph Nader, which troubled me somewhat.

santa

We took the boys downtown last week to have cookies and punch with Santa at a local bank. My these boys are growing up fast. I got my Christmas cards done today. Yesterday we went to see a local play: A Sanders Family Christmas. Lots of music, nicely done. Balmy weather, drinks on the back porch, no need for covers at night. We bought a red camper shell for our deep blue Tacoma. Everyone is going to think we pull for Ole Miss...

Tannenbaum

Spent a lovely weekend decorating the tree and hanging bird feeders. Almost done with school. Doing household projects. I think I will build some shelves.

No more anon comments

I love comments. I check this blog every day to see if anyone has commented. From time to time, somebody leaves a cryptic comment and doesn't identify themself. This really creeps me out. I am pretty sure that only five or six people read this blog. Just pick a name, don't leave any more anonymous comments, it's not cool. Best case: it is one of my buds trying to generate some heat. Or it could be some jackass that has wandered in from the nether regions of the web. Whatever, if it happens again, I am turning this car around and heading straight home. I can delete this blog with the press of a button. I'll do it, too. Don't make me use all caps. I'm serious.

Sketches: Cotton District, Starkville

what to do

I am not sure what to do with this blog. The best jokes I can come up with usually get their punch from being slightly offensive, and, being that I am quite happy with the Landscape Architecture world and would like to do some serious work in it when I get out of school, I am always wary of postings that might offend potential employers, and I never know when I have crossed the line. I try to keep identifying clues to a minimum, but I don't think it would be that hard to figure out who I am here. Sometimes I wish that I had kept it bereft of such clues, so I could just post anything I like. for example, I would like to say that a lot of what Landscape Architects do is more or less exactly the same thing that Landscape Designers and contractors do, except that we dress it up with a lot of pretentious theoretical nonsense. But I can't say that, not here anyway. I heard a landscape architect say "We create spaces. Contractors draw wiggly worms around buildings." Truly there is quite a difference between a space that was designed in a deliberate and thoughtful way by a trained professional and one that was just laid out by a contractor to look neat and organized, rows of hollies interspersed with street trees or whatever. Generally speaking, we do it much better and it is worth the expense (hiring us). But there is at times an awful lot of BS in the process. I guess that is true of many professions. Yeah, I guess, come tho think of it, we are no worse than lawyers or mortgage bankers or real estate developers or any other fee-for-service profession you can name. So I'm glad I did not say THAT.

The other thing I would say, if this were truly an anonymous forum, is that, in landscape architecture, you have a choice. You can work for the devil or you can work for the angels. You are a skilled professional and your services are sought after by the various government agencies and nonprofits who are trying to preserve the precious remnants of our ecological heritage, as well as by the developers who want to destroy it. If you work for the devil, the rewards include riches beyond your wildest imagining, and your name in magazines and eventually in textbooks and the sacred archives of LA history, and you will be lauded as a genius. If you work for the angels, you will labor in obscurity, for a respectable but entirely predictable income for the rest of your days. But of course the choice is much more complicated than that. Best management practices are becoming universally accepted in the construction industry, and the concept of sustainability is being applied more and more to all practices and processes. But to what degree is "sustainability" just a public relations item in the real world of Orlando, Dallas, Atlanta, where the action is? As Obi Wan says, "only a Sith deals in absolutes." I would never seriously put forth the "there are two paths you can go by" dichotomy. But just the fact that it is on my mind is, well, scandalous.

Yep.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair...

Finally my mosque project is over. I am rather pleased with it, and in a solipsistic spasm I see fit somehow to share it with you all, the fans, the little people, without whom I would not be where I am today, which, you know, is, uh, Starkville, Mississippi. Click on the pictures to make them real big, and if you want to see them in all their intended glory, print them on 11x17 sheets, or, better still, put them in Powerpoint and project them onto the side of your house.

I give thanks

Most of all I am thankful for my good health, my lovely wife and adorable little boys. I am thankful that we are able to live in such a nice home and that Starkville, despite the fact that it is not a very attractive town, is a really really SAFE town for kids to play in. Aside from that, I am really thankful for the BBC world service, which I listen to all night long, although it has kind of turned into all Pakistan all the time, and no word at all on Dog the Bounty Hunter and his quest for redemption, which is annoying. I’m thankful for my parents and for the fact that they both really worked hard to make something of their lives, and that they didn’t become mullet-sporting bounty hunters in biker gear with their own TV show and they didn’t cuss me out over the phone telling me that I couldn’t be part of their bounty-hunting operation. I’m thankful that they started out raising me near the town of Sylva, NC, a tiny hamlet kind of like Starkville, where kids can just roam over hill and dale all afternoon without getting hassled by the cops. I’m thankful for good coffee, pepperjack cheese, the White Stripes, all the characters in the local grocery stores, In Touch magazine, the New York Review of Books, and all the other little things put here for my amusement. The world is so full of such wonderful things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Tuesday

I am feeling much better. Wife is home with the kids, who have the whole week off from school. I am supposed to be studying for an exam, but instead I am fiddling with my blog settings. I added a picture, hope it helps. Our cat is costing us too much money. So what else is new. My mosque design is coming along slowly. I have resolved all the big issues, now I need to redraw the plan and do some sketches. Also create a bunch of inventory and analysis pages. People, if you have time, check out how the White Stripes ingeniously combine old and new with their cover of "Death Letter," which can be found on You Tube. I particularly like the part when Jack sings "so hard to love someone, when they don't love you." and he's looking at Meg and Meg doesn't care. Also another great moment is when he addresses the crowd with the line "don't mind people grinnin' in your face." I'll watch it one more time then I'll get to work.

up all night

PT went well today. The guy was about fourteen, looked exactly like Bobby Kennedy, and was very positive, and it seems that the pain was lessoned some, so my spirits lifted. But now I am staying up all night doing the master plan for the mosque. I am tossing out a picture of the giant marble sculpture that appeared in front of the LA building a few weeks ago. It seems strangely evocative of some archetype, I just can't put my, uh, finger on it...

Thank God for the Continental Cafe...

Well, the radiology came back and the news was less than optimal. But all it took was for the Doctor to say the words "back surgery" and the pain mysteriously evaporated! I am feeling much better now, thanks.

Lordy lordy, between my various ailments and the breakneck pace of the Landscape Architecture culture it is enough to make a fellow want to sing the blues. Down in Mississippi, where I live, the blues are a part of life. Being as I am, however, a white, slightly neurotic graduate student, I am more an insult to the blues than anything else.

The only thing that keeps me going these days are thoughts of Chapel Hill. Walking down Franklin Street to Fowler's grocery and talking to the nice wine merchant there, or going into Big Bertha to buy a case of Little Kings...drinking coffee at the Hardback and chatting with Randy Ward or Andy Roberts...eating a hamburger at the Continental Cafe while the theatrical bald guy refills my tea...chomping on a morning star salad and sipping iced red zinger at Pyewacket...looking down at passers by from the second floor window in the paperback section of the Intimate Bookshop...happy I am to know that it is all still there and I can take the Greyhound bus anytime I want and be dropped off at the downtown depot there across from the Cradle, next door to the Chrysler dealer...

monday

Spent pretty much all of Saturday in a Photoshop workshop. I learned a few shortcuts but it probably was not worth losing a day. So I was too tired when I got home to take the kids up town to see Marty Stuart. The festival was actually not to commemorate Johnny Cash's arrest, as the organizers expressed many times in the local press, but to celebrate the spirit of redemption exemplified in his later years. It was built around the idea of issuing a pardon for Johnny Cash for the 1965 arrest. I just wanted to clear that up.
Pain in my leg is persisting, but I can still walk. Sunday was spent on little household projects. We are planning a party for Saturday. We are gonna steam some oysters.

It's all less than optimal

Nagging pain in my leg has grown to a sharper, stabbing and more persistent sensation. The doctor at student health suspects a disc problem. She prescribed a steroid which did nothing, so she gave me a drug called neuronten, which does nothing for the pain at all but does give me a somewhat loopy perspective for which I am trying to cultivate an appreciation of sorts. Today I got an MRI at the local hospital, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm really hoping this whole thing just goes away.
Halloween was OK, but kind of rushed being in the middle of the week. I skipped the trick-or-treating and stayed home to greet trick-or-treaters, of which we had none. The kids just went around the block with some friends and I hear it went well. Cooked a chicken and some sweet potatoes and ate with our friends and their kids.
Reading about Islam, doing research for the mosque project. Big Johnny Cash festival in town, Marty Stuart is playing, in commemoration of the man in black getting arrested for public drunkeness here in 1965 and writing a song about it. The hotel he and June staid in is now The Dark Horse Tavern, but it still looks like a hotel, I think they still rent rooms. The house where he got busted, for "pickin' flowers" as he put it, is one that I drive by every morning taking the kids to school. There is a brick wall around it now, presumably to discourage future horticultural pilfering. I hope I can convince the family to walk up town and see Marty Stuart tomorrow evening. Small town America.

Its all good

Went to Birmingham on Monday to visit a landscape architecture firm with a class. We also went to a new urbanist development called Mount Laurel. Nice place but expensive. Check out their website. With residential real estate as it is right now, they have stopped building. It is sort of a cross between Southern Village and Governer's club, for those of you who know Chapel Hill. I missed the turn at Tuscaloosa on the way home and tried to get back to HWY 82 by navigating the country roads around tiny hamlets like Union and Aliceville, which was a little unnerving. Made it home just in time for cub scouts. Now I have four projects going in four classes and not enough time. In Design I we are developing a landscape plan for the local mosque. The leader of the mosque owns a Middle Eastern restaurant in town and every time we go over there to measure or take photos he brings us out a ton of really good food. Today I must come up with a concept and some design elements. I'm thinking symmetry. Also get ready for trick or treating tonight. The dog busted out yesterday by getting into the crawl space and removing some loose bricks under the front porch. I came home to her standing on the front porch and a note on the door saying "Punkin is in our back yard. She got out earlier today. -R, next door." So she broke out of two yards, actually.

sloggin

So far the forecast of rain for the entire week has proven to be accurate. I snapped a photo of myself with my phone of me slogging across the green pastures of Mississippi State University last Tuesday. If I look strange in the photo it is probably because I was very busy and had a lot on my mind. My woman and I have given all the pets nicknames that reflect their individual idiosynchracies. Cody, who bites us every morning to get us out of bed (to feed him we surmise) is now "Chomper," Spooky, who wanders about the house commenting inanely on the state of affairs, is "Talkie Walkie," Tarot, who is about 105 years old, just doesn't want to put up with this shit anymore, and occaisionally pees in our shoes, is "Surly," and the dog, Punkin, the excitable puppy who loves to eat, in a nod to the grocery chain that just took over our neighborhood Southern Family Market, is "Piggly Wiggly."

It all comes down to perspective

Here are some sketches I did for one of my classes. In both cases I was given a site in plan view (view from directly above, as in a typical plan) and had to render a sketch that dipicted what was on the plan. Sketches always have people, to show scale. Most of my fellow students trace the people, but I prefer to draw my own. In the two-point perspective, I set up most of the perspective lines, such as the arbor, the walls and the joints in the paving, in a SketchUp model and traced over them.

Tuesday again

Rain today, yesterday, forecast rain for the rest of the week. This after a long dry spell. So much for the fall color. In my back yard, a ginormous pecan tree drops nasty brown leaves and diminutive pecans over everything. Lotta work to do in the studio, I'd best get crackin.

Dicynodonts

I don't have anything to say, so I am passing along a scrap of news I came across while researching the geological time line. I think this guy lived during the Triassic, but me not sure. The dicynodonts were mammal-like reptiles. This guy munched on grass like our cows do today. I thought you'uns might like to know that they were here, doing their thing, back in the day. The image is from Wikipedia, where you can read all about them.

Sentences

Trotline Freddy rolled into the dirt lot of the Buckhorn Road Flea Market with a five-pack of Mickey's big mouths on the floorboard, three ferrets in a wire cage on the seat beside him, and a hundred and thirty-six dollars in his wallet, all in ones. Woodsmoke in the air cut the fresh chemical stench of the port-a-johns, and a single duck marked a tangent overhead with her steady, lonely bleating. It was the first cool day of the season, and it was going to be a good one.

crash

When you are drawing in SketchUp, you should always use the the 2D trees instead of the 3D trees. The 2D trees take up much less file space, and they rotate with the viewport so they will always end up looking pretty good in the final image, which will be rendered in D2 anyway. Same with the brick cladding, the tiles, all those details slow down the response time of your input and make the drawing difficult to work on. Put that stuff in at the very end.

In Second Life, the trees, the houses, everything is 3D. The level of detail is astounding. But Second Life is notoriously buggy and there is often a lot of lag time. If you are using a slow connection speed, Second Life crashes all the time. The amount of disc space and RAM needed to just wander around is considerable. But, you know, it is nothing compared to the amount of RAM required by real life.

Reality, as we now know, is a sort of compromise or a collaboration between physical matter and consciousness. Both have their limitations. The greatest problem with over population is not that people are consuming resources at a rate that is not sustainable (although that is a problem), but that more consciousness is created every day, and the universe just doesn't have the capacity. I am sure some of you have noticed driving around, how the leaves on the trees don't look as sharp as they did when you were little, how they cut on and off, how sometimes, especially during peak usage moments, everything just freezes up. I sense the big crash coming. One day we will all wake up to the big blue screen of death. And where will Tech Support be then? Lost in the virtual world....

Anniversary

It was a warm October day, much like today, when Missus Icker and I were wed some fourteen years ago, in Schley, North Carolina, at my buddy J-skull's country home. Seems like just last week. We toasted each other with some bubbly wine and ate dinner on the back porch with the kids. I have a cold, and am working hard on a big project that involves creating a geological timeline of the history of the earth. The earth is four point six billion years old. I figure, if I can cram a thousand foot long path into my space (the front of Hilburn Hall, the geosciences building here on campus), that gives me 4.6 million years per foot, 46 million years every ten feet, and four hundred and sixty million years every hundred feet. You get the idea. At that rate, there will still be large spaces in the path where not much is happening, such as in the first billion years, when the moon was created, oceans formed, and continents arose. Dinosaurs would appear in the last twenty to fifteen feet. Humans, or hominid creatures, rather, would show up in the last six to twelve inches. I am thinking of putting some of the path underground, in a tunnel. I have a long way to go.

Married life has been very good. We are so happy together. We hope to go out and celebrate properly, maybe shoot some pool, this weekend.

onandon

Spent most of the weekend flying around Second Life. I like being able to fly, but after you do that for a while, what are you supposed to do? I could buy some land and build a house, I suppose, but then what would I do? Sit in my house and watch television I guess. Do they have cable? Ideally I guess I would find a nice, wholesome lassie, get married and start raising kids. Where are the good schools in Second Life? And where are the kids anyway? As much time as I have spent there I have seen nary a one...

Get a li(f)e

You won't be hearing from me for a while, since I now have an account on second life. Being of the non-gamer generation, I am just learning how to fly, dance, and play paper scissors rock. If you feel like chatting with me over there, my name is Winter Thursday. Mom, if I say anything offensive to you, I apologize in advance. Oh, and about the Den Meeting, I apologize. The joke about teaching kids to mix drinks is at least as old as The Little Rascals, and I will be coming up with some new material soon, presumably from my second life experiences. Got to go flying now, -BIG T

Den Meeting

Monday night’s den meeting went pretty well, but it kind of broke down at the end. We got off to a great start: everyone did well on the drink of the week, which was as expected since it was a very easy drink: gin and tonic. Since they are only in second grade, I had given them a drink where the proportions did not matter all that much. When you start your own clubs in junior high, I explained, or when you pledge a frat, or get into law school or medical school, you’ll probably want to go with my personal preference, a one-to-one blend. Use a lot of ice, and it melts quickly, so one-to-one makes a nice gin and tonic. If you get a job bartending, however, the house will tell you how to mix them. A few kids forgot the lime, or went for the lemon instead, but overall I was very pleased. Then we went over the basics of five card stud. We have not discussed strategy yet at all, just trying to establish the hierarchy of hands. There was some confusion over whether a flush beat a straight, but we cleared it up quickly and moved on.

I was so pleased with what the guys had retained from the last meeting, I decided to go ahead and plug in the guitars. But before we warmed up, we went over my special punk rock catechism, which, to my astonishment, they had down cold.

Who are the godfathers of punk? Iggy and the Stooges, Patti Smith, The New York Dolls.

Who were the first punk bands? The Ramones, The Clash, The Sex Pistols.

When did punk die? 1987.

What killed punk rock? Appetite For Destruction.

Our den has a policy of not playing any punk rock recorded before 1981. We call the 70s punk rock albums “untouchables.” I tell them that if they get really really good at 1980s punk, we might try a few of them. Last week we worked on “I Saw Your Mommy And Your Mommy’s Dead,” by Suicidal Tendancies. Those of you (one, maybe two) who remember this song know that it appeals to the eight-year-old that lives inside every sixteen-year-old punk rocker’s heart. I did not have much confidence that we would be able to pull it off without getting totally silly. Little Dewey started that loopy bass line, Dakwon came in on the drums and Tommy Junior started the lyrics:

Yesterday, as I went out of the house,
I saw a body lying quiet as a mouse.
Lying face down in the sewer,
I got up closer and realized that I knew her.

Well, they made it through the whole song without cutting up and getting all silly about it, and I complemented them on their serious approach to the material. I was so confident that we had something that would be a big big smash hit at the pack meeting in Camp Seminole in October, that I introduced them to what I believe is perhaps the greatest post-1980 punk rock song of them all, Black Flag’s “Rise Above.”

At first the kids were a little rattled by the heavy feedback as the song opens, but I just kept pushing them to turn it up higher. As the guitars come in, it’s their job to tame that feedback. Before I knew it, they were full bore into the song. They ate it up. They were so good, I could do little more than sit back in amazement, trying to imagine what the other parents would think when they saw this going down a month from now. Dear god, I thought, oh dear God…

Then I noticed something was not quite right. With “I Saw Your Mommy,” I had been worried that the boys would not be able to bring off a serious delivery. Here, with Rise Above, it became obvious very quickly that the lads were taking it TOO seriously. I looked into Tommy Junior’s eyes as he screamed: WE…ARE TIRED…OF YOUR…ABUSE…TRY AND STOP US…IT’S…NO USE! Clearly, he was in another world. The stifling, suffocating miasma that is Starkville Mississippi in 2007 had suddenly become manifest, and he was stirring the caldron of his lambic rage to break it apart and, Moses-like, lead his people out. I had been there, once, long ago, and what came forth from his gone, solid gone brown eyes took me back to the heady kingdoms of my own mis-spent youth, of too much coffee, my ridiculous adolescent scribbling, the tobacco roads, the glass-eyed skeletal apparition, cocky and indolent, slouched in the driver’s seat of my soul…

STOP STOP STOP, I cried. I unplugged the amps and put the guitars away. I tried to bring the lads down to earth, especially Tommy Junior, by telling them that it was just a song, just noise, basically, just an arrangement of cacophonic squawking, but they weren’t buying it. The whole time I pled my case, TJ looked off at something just over my right shoulder, something he wanted more than anything to destroy.

OK, Chill out time, I thought. We tried a little I spy, then resorted to dodge ball in the parking lot till the parents came to pick them up. At home, I got out the banjo, and started working on “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round The Mountain.”

Geology lesson

Last Saturday I went to Vicksburg with my design class. We met Robert Poore, in the center of the picture above, a landscape architect, who showed us three sites, two of which were his designs. The other one was this waterfall, which has some geological and historic significance. The solid band that is resisting erosion is Glendon limestone, created during the Pleistocene by millions of sea creatures, much like the Osborne pictures I showed you last week. Until very recently, by geological standards, Mississippi was underwater. Not much water, 30 or 40 feet or so, a shallow sea. When the land emerged, glaciers came and retreated many times, the organic layers created during the intervals were ground to powder, the Missouri and the Missippi Rivers ambled back and forth, and all that resulting silt and dust were blown by the winds across Arkansas and Louisiana to create the Loess bluffs, which run more or less continuously in a band just east of the delta all the way to Tennessee.

The loess bluffs are a very fine, slightly acidic clay, while the Glendon lime layer is coarser and more alkaline. In some places the loess soil is 60 feet deep, in other places the limestone layer is very near the surface. Obviously this has a big impact on what you can do with the land. Loess soil is not stable for building, and most ornamental and crop plants would just as soon not grow in limey soil (but prairie plants have adapted).
The historical significance comes from the fact that the pool at the bottom of the cascade was a source of water long ago. Especially during the battle and siege of Vicksburg, many soldiers on both sides lost their lives at that very spot. As we climbed about on the rocks, Robert Poore said, "if you fall and die, your ghost will join hundreds of Confederate and Union soldiers." This waterfall is within the bounds of the national battlefield park and is not marked, because the park service discourages visitors. We were told that you could reach under just about any rock and find belt buckles and bullets but of course it is forbidden to take anything out, even flowers. Everywhere Robert Poore took us, it was obvious that he had done a lot of research. I came home wondering why anybody would NOT want to be a landscape architect.

Dig if you will the picture

My freshman year in college I lived in a dorm which had a dormer window with no screen. On cloudy winter days (and some nights as well) my room mate and I would hang out barefoot on the slate rooftop. The university put AC units in all the windows long ago, so this is no longer possible. I could tell you what this guy does for a living now but you wouldn't believe me.

Ghost Dance

Kids today don’t understand irony. In my studio, many of the students have inspirational messages situated near their work areas. Many of these are biblical scriptures. I made a little poster to hang over my desk which says: You’re not fooling anybody you lying sack of shit. The kids just don’t get it. They ask me about it all the time. I have a super-huge ego, I tell them, my friends, my family, my therapist and my pastor all agreed that this is a message I need to read every day.
Our professors in Landscape Architecture are always asking us, what emotion do you want people to feel when they come into this space? The kids always say the same things. Tranquility. Joy. Blah blah blah. The other day I told my professor: unspecified dread. The Ghost Dance. The sense that some Native American spirit has returned to bury us all under a mile of topsoil, for as we drag our carts over the bones of the dead, the reckoning draws nearer, and the balance due will not be reconciled by our worthless notes but only by the blood and flesh of our babies.
The professor just said, OK, develop your design element matrix in such a way as to express that concept with forms and materials in physical space. Finally, someone who understands.

Dancing lines

Big project due tomorrow. Pulling all-nighters in the studio with undergraduates. Kids today are fond of using "gay" as a pejorative. I don't think they really mean gay as in homosexual, just as we didn't mean "sucks" as in actually sucking. They way they use it, it means slack or lame, which doesn't really seem to jibe with what I have observed in actual gay people over the years. I guess it is a way of saying "that's so weak." It makes me a little uncomfortable. I mean, it would be totally unacceptable to say "that looks like a nigger did it," but these people don't think twice about saying "that's so gay." I'll probably be saying it before long. Jeesh, what am I saying? I'm so gay...

If we only had a chicken...

The nice thing about living in Mississippi is that you can always go out and find an alligator to look at. This guy was enjoying the backwater below the spillway of Loakfoma Lake at the Noxubee wildlife refuge.

Back at Osborne

Why spend all that money to go to the moon when you have Osborne Prairie practically in your backyard? I took six kids with me, we got lost, and as a result I was late for my cub scout den leader training.

art

One of these little kids that I live with produces two or three of these things a day. Near as I can tell, they are skeletal renditions of monsters he creates himself. Sometimes he writes notes to go with them, like "grabs things with his tongue." I think he has a pretty good line, and, as they say, "good composition."

What's the frequency...

"out and proud" concept did not go over well with my group. I am going with "Line Dancing." Spent most of the night drawing the floral design studio in skethup. Boy does my head hurt.

Well I hope you see me as I come streakin by...

First cub scout meeting on Monday, in a small Methodist Church. Cooked a nice chicken and shrimp gumbo that lasted two days. We are out of butter. Had some trouble with AutoCAD tonight. Worked on a list of "out and proud" plants for the floral design studio.

Meet me in the bottom, bring me my running shoes...

Colin Linden playing guitar while Blind Mississippi Morris plays harmonica at the Howlin' Wolf Blues Festival in West Point, August 30th. We had a blast.

Weekends

Here is the closet I built for my clothes in our bedroom over the past few weekends. It is now painted, and I just hung the door today. The door was saved from the demolition of a closet we eliminated over the summer. It is not perfect, but I am happy with it.

Dad?

Here is a picture of a hawk looking for some breakfast at Myrtle Beach about a month ago. I have only been to Myrtle Beach a couple of times, but I have been to nearby Oak Island every year for the past seventeen years, and I have never seen a hawk in the dunes before. Was it a sign? Was someone trying to contact me?

The Wolf

Still not gay. Went to the Howlin' Wolf blues festival in West Point last Friday night, had a blast. I think I heard enough blues to last the month. I was most impressed by a group called Homemade Jamz. Fifteen-year-old Ryan Perry is the oldest member of the band. He plays guitar and sings and in general commands the stage like an old pro. I almost said "old soul" there, and something about his playing of the blues reminded me of Dexter back in C-Hill. Last Friday, Ryan played a guitar that seemed to be manufactured from an old car muffler. It had little blue lights that twinkled towards the end of the set. His fourteen-year-old brother Kyle played bass and his sister Taya (only eight years old!) played the drums with RED STICKS and they rocked like old pros. We saw four different bands and they all used the same drum kit, which I thought was great. It was the same kit my buddy Crow used to use. Crow should move down here and join a blues band. It would do him a lot of good. I was so impressed with Homemade Jamz that I bought their CD. They have a Myspace page: look it up. If you have kids, slap that disc in your machine and tell 'em: that drummer is EIGHT YEARS OLD...

Let's get one thing straight.

Just a quick not to let everyone know that I am not gay. Also, in addition, I never have been gay. That is all.

Big Hole

If you are a fan of Ironweed Breakdown, you are probably aware of the recently-discovered hole in the universe. Last week scientists at the University of Minnesota announced their discovery of a void a billion light years wide. That is to say, if you were moving at the speed of light, and you left one edge of this thing heading for the other side, you would encounter absolutely nothing, no dust, no Starbucks, no tumbleweeds, no planets, no quarks, no regular material of any kind, and not even any of the more mysterious things, such as dark matter or black holes, in short, nothing at all, for A BILLION YEARS. If you Google "Hole in Universe" you will find all kinds of articles. This is good stuff. Fun fun stuff.

Not much, but it's home

My desk in the upstairs studio.

Big Medicine

School only in session one week and already I have a lot of projects to do. Much of it involves drawing, which is kind of cool. Drawing for a living sounds nice at first, but when you realize that it means you have to draw fast, get it right and do a whole bunch of them, well, it is a little less fun that way but still pretty cool. Despite the work piling up I took the kids to Geyser Falls today, to make up for a trip that went awry yesterday when the missus took 'em all the way down there and found the park closed due to rain. Geyser falls is about 75 minutes away, near the Pearl River Resort on the Choctaw Indian Reservation. I actually got to listen to some employees speaking Choctaw, which was a thrill, I didn't know they still spoke it. There were about a half dozen different elaborate water activities to choose from, all of them highly chlorinated. It was very much like Myrtle Waves in Myrtle Beach, SC, but overall more attractive. The artificial beach, complete with cabanas and tons of sand, was impressive but by that point I was so sick of the whole scene I began pestering the tykes for relief: back to the truck and the road home. We moved on to another pool that had a bar (I had no money), volleyball and music underwater. I laid back and watched the Turkey buzzards circle the parking lot, thought that it is nice that the Choctaw are making some jack, and wondered what used to be here on this land.

Everything is going exactly according to plan

Well I have been granted a very nice L-shaped desk and a drafting table in the upstairs studio. I moved all my landscape books up there today and went out and bought some drafting pens, tracing paper, triangles, circle templates, all kinds of cool stuff. I was sitting at my new desk reading one of my new books when my thesis adviser walked in and handed me my written contract! I have to go over it with my agent, of course, but once it is all put away I will be getting paid to go to school, which has been a lifelong dream of mine.

JUDAS!

I am sure many among you are are wondering how these tattered missives laid at the alter of Truth can be so contaminated by such colorful and thrilling strains of fanciful mendacity… Let me tell you that only a fool believes that the path to Truth lies by any way other than that of a tangled web of lies. It is true that I am a student of a sort, and a teacher, that I inhabit a demi-world that few indeed can understand, never mind negotiate with stylish aplomb as I do minute-by-sweltering-minute here in the heart of Dixie. To satisfy your puerile hunger for understanding let me divulge a secret, a part of my life that I have never told anyone, a small nugget of experience from the mid nineteen-nineties that might begin to explain what exactly it is that I am “getting at” as you all are so fond of saying.

Like all serious artists, I was for a time (some ten years ago) very interested in so-called “performance art” and the revolutionary possibilities such a form presented. I observed in this phenomenon some intriguing dynamics in regard to more outward pushing on the boundaries of what art is, what theater is, indeed what is performance, what is the observer and what is the observed. Undermining this revolutionary dynamic of course was an annoying tendency on the part of performance artists to draw attention to themselves. It was all about the artist and whatever radical or extreme gesture he was presenting to the void. What, I began to ask myself, would it mean if these radical acts were done entirely in secret? Would that not at last and in deed break the bonds between the artist and the void itself and offer reconciliation of a kind between artist and Muse? My first performance piece was a form of communication confined to only myself and my muse. For an entire year I did my grocery shopping with no lists other than those I found abandoned in other grocery carts or in the grocery store parking lot. On the days I found no lists, I bought no groceries. It was a tough year. I can not really express the desperation experienced by a guy walking into a store who just wants to buy some sausage but who instead must restrict himself to “Lettuce, paper towels, tonic water, kitty litter…”

Half way through the year I began another piece: I noticed through my job as a landscaper that the county landfill charged five dollars to drop of a load of brush. This brush was then ground up and left to compost for a while and then sold as “mulch” for thirty dollars a cubic yard. This mulch was highly suspect as such, especially since I was one of the guys dropping off the brush on the front end. The composting process was supposedly hot enough to neutralize all the weed seeds, but I knew that all of the most pernicious weeds of the region (microstegium, Japanese honeyscuckle, English Ivy, Kudzu…) were part of the mix, seeds and all. It was a mulch of last resort. What would it mean, I wondered, if you drove up the road a couple of miles, to J.V. Brockwell’s mulch and topsoil factory in Calvander, and purchased two yards of mulch for twenty-four dollars, and then drove that load not to a client’s house but straight to the dump, and you told the guy at the gate I got brush, paid the five dollars and then backed up to that massive pile and forked that load of shredded hardwood bark right off the truck right there. Why, that would be just so danged asinine, so absurd on its face, it would be damn near psychotic. And as such, indistinguishable from most performance art –except for the fact that nobody, and I mean NOBODY would know that you were doing it! And in the end, you would be contaminating that noxious, weed breeding shit the dump was selling with ACTUAL MULCH, such that, every now and then, some poor ignorant sap would back up to the pile and get loaded with quality product.

I probably spent about five hundred dollars over two or three years playing this little game, buying Brockwell’s mulch and immediately dumping it at the Orange County landfill. Times were hard, I wasn’t making much money landscaping, but I refused to cut the funding on this little project until I had made my point, until I had made it even between me and my Muse. Then one day when I felt the time was right I just stopped. My career as a performance artist had ended, I determined, and I moved on to other things.

I have never told anyone about this. Well, actually, that is not true. At one point, deep in the winter of ’02-’03, I went wandering the halls of the UNC art department, seeking out somebody who understood performance art. My revolutionary sensibilities were still somewhat intact, I guess, but something deep inside me craved some sort of acknowledgement of what I had done. I did not need to know that it was right or wrong, or even that it was art, but I needed to share with somebody…and I thought that the undocumented status of the project was its crowning glory. But the person I talked to (I don’t remember if it was a professor, an associate professor, or what…) was only interested in documentation. Do you have any photographs? Any receipts? Any records at all? he asked. No, no, I said, you see, that is the whole point…it wasn’t recorded, that is the truly radical thing, it is unencumbered by archival concerns, it is a TRUE AND UNIMPEDED GESTURE AGAINST THE VOID. He just shook his head. How can I believe you? How do I know that you did this thing? No record, no art, he said. FOOL! I repled. JUDAS! My statement holds true to a five-thousand-year-old tradition! If a tree does or does not fall down in the forest, and somebody is or is not there to observe…

The gentleman calmed me down and took me into his office for a cup of tea. Here is what you do, he said, let some time pass. Five years. Ten years. Create a web page. A page no one reads. A page no one visits. There, tell your story. Then you can call yourself an artist.

Cuspid

Spent Thursday and Friday and much of Saturday building a closet in my bedroom. I learned some things in the process, and am pretty satisfied with the result. Today I took the test that goes with my TA workshop online. Astonishingly, the test violated just about every pedagogical principal they tried to get across to us in the workshop. Misleading and poorly-worded questions, a very lopsided representation of the range of topics (almost half the questions regarded how to write a syllabus, which constituted only one of the six presentations) and a whole bunch of questions on the minutiae of sexual harassment regulations (which was not even mentioned anywhere in the workshop). It was a timed test, fifty questions in twenty-five minutes. I have no idea how I did, and felt in the end as if some sort of very strange joke was being played on me.

We are winding down the weekend by watching Robin Hood, the Errol Flynn one, on the television. Trying to explain to my seven-year-old who the bad guys and who the good guys are just drives home to the family how much damage W has done to our nation, our values, our world. The usurper declaring Robin an outlaw, Robin's use of outlaw tactics to restore the rightful sovereign...were I making the movie today I would have Prince John munching on Chex Party Mix and watching baseball on TV. I would have his advisers be corollaries of Rove and Gonzales. But the analogy breaks down: who is Robin Hood? Who's the outlaw? And King Richard the Lion Hearted...who's he?

Grasshopper

Spent the morning watching twenty-six other graduate students present five-minute segments of simulated teaching. I learned a great deal about propeller rotation frequencies, anaerobic bacterial activity in chicken colons, and the coefficient of drag (which, I must admit, I always thought was a joke, but...) When it came time for me to teach, I am not sure the evaluators really "got it," although everyone else in the room certainly did. My topic: Everything You Have Been Told Up Till Now Is A Lie. I did just like the workshop team leaders advised: used eye contact, moved around a lot, varied my tone of voice. Only problem was, I ran out of time just before I was about to bring it all home. I include here a picture of my One True Teacher, a diminutive form with gigantic presence who explains to me truly novel theories about basic existence on a daily basis. Talk about challenging your paradigms...thinking outside the box...especially at six in the morning...we could all learn a thing or two (or eleven) from Mr. Zapper.

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

another day, another...

Spent the entire day in a workshop instructing grad students how to teach, even though my department has made it clear that I will never be allowed to conduct any sort of class of my own. "Every word that comes from your mouth represents the sharpest and most unadulterated truth," my academic adviser explained to me. "We let you even chat with the undergraduates and it's all over." "Can I show the parents of prospective students around campus?" I asked hopefully, "Absolutely not," several administrators replied in unison. I still have to take the workshop though.

rodentia

Students back. Found these two weirdos in my tool shed. Ran them off with a pitchfork before the kids could see them.

Turn Baby Turn

A long weekend in Myrtle Beach, getting reacquainted with another side of my extended, blended family. Took a little ride to the downtown area to gawk. One evening with Lil K and Big L and the boyz we meandered a sandy warren of tricked-out trailers, some whose porches and lattice skirts bore a sense of permanance, others recently parked, to get to and stroll the Apache Pier, where the cover had been amped up from the usual buck to three bucks, on account of the "live entertainment," which turned out to be a peppy interracial couple under a mirror ball doing karaoke-style standards such as "Rocky Top," and "Carolina Girls," while aging rednecks either shagged or did the hustle on the slick white dance floor in appreciation. Immediately adjacent to the trailer park loomed a hotel of some fifteen or so stories. Big L and I fed quarters into an anchored set of binoculars in a futile attempt to surveillance the rooms. Back at the cabana the little ones enjoyed the pool nestled just behind the dune. I marveled at a Tassimo one-cup coffee maker. I slathered my boys with sunscreen and dropped a lot of twenties at places like Myrtle Waves and Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not Aquarium. All in all, we had a blast, then headed back to our little cottage in our little town for the first day of school. One started kindergarten, another second grade. Lots of forms to fill out, lots of things to go over with the boys. Not only does school start on the ninth of August here, the daily start time has been moved up from 7:35 to 7:25. Helping the wife move her office: the woman across the hall left, and now we get an office with a window. I visited my academic adviser and tried to nail down some aspects of my funding, then hustled upstairs to the studio to procure my own desks and space. Back home I whipped out a kick-ass paella using a chicken carcass I purchased in a moment of panic from an Ingles on Exit 24 off I-20 in Georgia.

More before and after

From the kitchen looking to the dining room and master bedroom.




Standing by the bay window looking toward the kitchen.




In the dining room looking towards the front door.

Rags

So for some reason I read the instructions before I start painting these cabinet doors in my basement:

3. Stir Minwax fast-drying polyurethane before and during use to prevent settling on the bottom of the can. Stir in such a way as to rotate the product from the bottom to the top of the can. NEVER SHAKE.
4. Apply a THIN coat of Minwax fast-drying polyurethane using a high-quality natural bristle or foam brush...

Oh for Ah Pook’s sake! I say with rising irritation. I shake the can vigorously for about fifteen seconds before sopping it on with a sock from the rag box.

(OK, not bad, lets she how she does going to German, then French, then Italian, then back into English on the babel fish translator)

For a reason I read if, before that beginnings to paint the instructions these doors of scato it in my wine cellar:

3. to churn Minwax disidratatori to high polyurethane speed and during I use it to decide to prevent on under of the box it churns in such a way you turns the product of under to the advanced surface of the box it. NEVER JOLT.
4, turns the THIN layer of the Minwax a disidratatore to high speed of the polyurethane with one natural silk or rubber brush foam of great quality...

to OH - for ampèreheure Pooks reason! I say with an inflammation that it increases. I to it with a sock of the rag box strongly churn the box it for approximately fifteen second ones, before that it sopping.

Hooks and bullets

Upstairs in the grad student cubicles at the department of fish and wildlife, or as I call it, the department of hunting and fishing, or, as someone else on campus once referred to it, the department of Hooks and Bullets, I notice above one student's desk (among the many photos of young men in camo displaying turkey fans and truckbeds spilling over with limp duck bodies and a black labrador retriever happily and softly holding a limp duck body in his mouth) a photograph of a fully assembled skeleton of a deer, maybe eight or ten point, I can't recall. That was a class project my senior year at Louisiana Tech, I heard a voice say, we stayed up late drinking beer, trying to put that thing together, and I put the ribs on backwards, I put them on this way (making a curving gesture across his chest) instead of this way. You dumbass, they said, you put the ribs on backwards. We used special little drill bits and little screws that taxidermists use, and wire to hold it together. I would like to try to draw that thing, I said.

Gosh darn did it

This morning, as I was brushing my teeth, I felt my head brush the ceiling. “Dagnabbit!” I foamed, “I did it again! I wanted to buy anti-cavity toothpaste, but instead got anti-gravity toothpaste!”
“Watch your language!” grunted mother, grabbing my foot. “I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap!”

Here it is again after shooting it through three languages on the babel fish translation website:

Provided that I have arranged my teeth, ecew'risa this morning, the cover in my main brush. "Dagnabbit! This I have foamed, "I have repeated! I wanted to buy a antisecteur in Zahnpasta I have that nevertheless received antj' the Antigravitationszahnpasta! "" you install your language! in that swirls mother, you want it says with regard to the leg. "I will wash abroad your opening with the soap!

War...children...

You don't want to hear about what I did today. Check out Keith Urban and Alicia Keys at Live Earth, this smokes!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u2HPbPy0wk
Edit: Don't bother pasting that url, it is bad. Search Keith Urban and Alicia Keys on youtube. Or patti smith gloria. Or kittens fall in dishwater...Dog on skateboard...

Holiday

I have been on Holiday in Oak Island this past week. I return to Mississippi tomorrow. I have been coming to this same spot every fourth of July for the past fourteen years or so and not much has changed. All the neices and nephews are teenagers now, and our little crowd has increased in number somewhat, but mostly everything is as it has always been. Now there is a grocery store on the Island, I guess that makes a difference. Took some kayaks up Davis Creek with the wife and kids this morning. Quite a workout. Pretty hot today. Maybe I'll go hit the beach one last time. Maybe I'll take a nap.

To the future and beyond

Wish I had something else to tell you other than what is going on at the Montgomery Street house. I wonder if Montgomery street goes to Montgomery. I don't think so. We hired somebody to refinish the floors, he worked pretty hard at it for two days then disappeared. I am in the process of stripping wallpaper in the bathroom. Honestly wish I could put out something more exciting than that. Just move on, people, nothing to see here. Go to thesmokinggun.com and see what Paris Hilton left in Amsterdam for the hotel maid.

Back on track

Nice long weekend solo en casa. A mojito, then a steak sandwich at the local watering hole. Phone calls from friends and family. Painting cabinet doors. I have decided that when people ask me how I'm doing, I'm gonna say "I'm back on track and I'm leading the pack."

All that junk that's in yo trunk

I spent the morning counting grass and forb species in the field margins of Bryan Farms in West Point. I found at least a dozen ticks on me before eleven o'clock. But I am not complaining. The field I was in today hosts primarily native grasses, mostly Indian grass, a few big bluestems, some little bluestems, some broomsedge and one or two panicums, and just a few forbs, mostly goldenrod and boneset, and no signs of wildlife (save one birdsnest and some coyote tracks in the adjacent soybean field). The best thing you could say about this habitat is that the survey was quick and easy. Back into town for some asbestoes floor tile chippin'. That went slowly. Trying to chew through a thin layer of tile and glue and not gouge the wood underneath too severely. I rented a machine that is supposed to do the job, but I curse this machine and grab a big steel shovel/hoe-like scraping implement. Twenty minutes later I throw this tool aside and throw the switch once again on the machine. And so it goes. At five I discover that the real problem is a lack of gin. Back at my desk, where I make the magic happen, I revamp my blogspot profile. Check it out and you will notice an improvement. My new resolution: to get through July without mentioning the eighties.

So long, Empire

Had to say goodbye to the old floor furnace. Sad, but we just don't have room for one of these guys around here. I took him to a farm where there are some really nice people and he can run around with lots of other furnaces.

Just one egg

Here is a little nest I found yesterday in the hillside prairie at Bryan Farms in West Point. I don't know what kind of bird this belongs to, but the plant it is nestled in is Ironweed, Vernonia altissima.

Eggs

A few weeks ago I was doing vegetation surveys at the Chicasaw Village site on the Natchez Trace just north of Tupelo. In one of the plots we flushed a Bobwhite quail and found her nest. This was pretty exciting. This site was the only one (of the four sites we are on) that has any quail, and it has a lot. Bobwhite quail populations have dropped a great deal in the last thirty years or so, and the notion that it might be brought back up to a huntable level is an important part of the effort to convince landowners to participate in prairie habitat restoration. Anyway, this nest had fifteen eggs. They have probably hatched by now. If I had time, I would go see how they are doing. Here is a shot of where the nest is, well-hidden, under a clump of grama grass.

Sunday

Had a fine b-day party for the Zapper yesterday. The Gator is already broken: it won't go into reverse. One of the Moms at the party told me that her friend had one that would only drive IN reverse, so it could be worse. We rented a bouncy castle and had a lot of fun in it, even though the temps got into the mid-nineties. I made a bunch of deviled eggs, but the other Mommies (no Daddies showed up) I guess were watching their figures or something, because they each only ate one (there were only two of them), so I had to do a Cool Hand Luke over the last 24 hours. Can't let them things go to waste.

blue bath

My bossman is fishing in the Gulf for a week, so I have made some progress on the house. Got the sink and shelves out of the blue bath. I am working on stripping wallpaper. Boy is that fun. The tile guys are done with the kitchen and it looks good. They are going to start on the baths on Monday, apparently. Here is some before and after of the bath demolition.
These pictures are a little jumbled up, as I have not mastered the picture formatting technology yet. You will be required to use whatever basic notions of causality you have developed over the years to distinguish "before" from "after".

S spent a good deal of time cleaning and refinishing kitchen cabinet doors with minwax yesterday. She also cleaned and polished all the copper hardware that goes with them. They are looking good.




We bought the boys one of those 12-volt battery-powered cars for Zapper's birthday. It is in the shape of a John Deer gator. It even has a little dump bed in back. They are having a blast driving that thing around the yard. J's party is today. We are renting a bouncy castle. I better go around and fluff up some pillows.

Another Beauty

I found this at Bryan Farms. Bryan Farms is a thousand-plus acre family farm in nearby West Point. Most of it is cattle pasture, but also some cotten and corn. In the field margins are a few hundred acres of prairie habitat. This was found on a north facing hillside. It is Polemonium reptans, or Greek Valerian. It is not actually a valerian. It is the same genus as Polemonium van-bruntiae, Jacob's Ladder. This is the only one we found. I can't get close in with my camera, but it has both deep violet and indigo blue flower petals. It was a tricky ID because the leaves had all turned brown and were falling off. It wasn't obvious at first that they were compound leaves.

Scraps

Very few things are happening right now, so I thought I would share some of my new favorite websites with y'all. One is www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org. It is the best botany site I have found on the 'net. The botany picture of the day is excellent, and the forums, especially the plant ID questions, are cool. Another place I like to check on from time to time is www.everythingispointless.com, a science and atheism blog. When I am feeling low, I can always find something here to cheer me up. I also want to say that, I don't care what anybody thinks, I like Green Day's cover of Working Class Hero. I have always thought the song was a little whiny and paranoid, but oddly compelling. I think the Green Day drummer does a good job with it. I know it is not cool to like Green Day, but, you know, cool people like me do things that are not cool all the time. It is our little way of letting the world know that we don't care what you think. Which is really cool. That is why leaving all your friends and moving to a place like Starkville, Mississippi is about the coolest thing you can do. Lastly, I have added another item to my List Of Things I Want To Do Before I Die: Scam the Special Olympics into letting me participate. Man, if I could pull that off I would be so proud. I would throw the javelin.

For context...

...here is the same view as below, taken from pretty much the same spot, on the day we first looked at the house back in March.

I got nuthin

I know I need to futurize my attitude, so I went over to E!celebrity gossip and there was nothing, and I mean nothing, happening over there. So here is the latest picture of the house, with the studs gone, the laminated beam installed and sheetrock half done. We have taken the tubs out of the two baths and all the old flooring, they are ready for tile. I learned just this morning that I have the week off, so maybe things will start going a little faster over there. Basically I am letting my audience know that I am still kicking, and cooking up something to put out here soon, so keep reading.

make it stop

Today was a very tough day for me. I had just bought my "Free Paris Hilton" T-shirt and was looking forward to being the first in my little town to have one, and firm in my belief that she is the Patty Hears of my generation, I was gearing up to network with other activists and hoping that, through our shared outrage, we could perhaps at last bring down this sham that we call western civilization, when I got word that Paris had busted out of jail and was now holed-up in a safe house in Malibu. I am of course happy for Paris, but a little peeved that I spent $34 on a T-shirt which is now worthless, unless, of course, The Man puts her back in the slammer.
Things got much worse this afternoon, when I found out that Wikipedia had rejected my article for the Styx album "Paradise Theater." They called it "sloppy, lacking citations, and inflammatory." Since it won't be on Wikipedia any time soon, I have decided to post it here:

Paradise Theater

Few people remember the pall of uncertainty that hung over the country in the early months of 1981. Ronald Reagan had been elected in a landside the previous year, and the country rejoiced that the ineffectual, stammering peanut farmer was finally gone. But nobody could say for certain that the doddering horseman we had put in his place would have anything better to offer. A winter of plant closings and bad economic news was brightened a bit by the return of the American hostages from Iran (on the very day of Reagan’s inauguration), but few realized at the time that another equally significant event had occurred that same week: the release of what would become Styx’s fourth triple platinum album, “Paradise Theater.”
With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see how monster radio hits such as “Rocking The Paradise,” and “The Best of Times,” helped bring our country out of the doldrums and give us hope in a better future yet to come. The jingoistic platitudes that our aging Anglo warlord brought forth from his monthly reading of “Reader’s Digest” played a significant part, to be sure, and The Charlie Daniels Band struck a note of proud and steadfast unity with their hit “In America” that same year, but without the conceptual genius of “Paradise Theater,” with its archetypal symbol of a once-grand theater now fallen into decay, which could indeed be resurrected in all its glory thanks to the arena-rock sensibilities and artistic mastery of one of the greatest rock bands of all time, without that urgent message at that pivotal time, many cultural historians agree that the economic and cultural recovery, indeed some may say renaissance, of the mid-eighties in America probably would have never materialized.
It was a bold step when, on “Rocking The Paradise,” Dennis De Young called for us to “futerize our attitudes.” Especially since “futurize” isn’t really a word. Whatever. But bolder still was his skill as a lyricist to incorporate his overall concern with The State of Affairs in The World Today with a traditional love song. Since most of us alive today remember only the “pep talk” aspects (We need long term, slow burn, getting it done/
And some straight talking, hard working son of a gun...), we may be surprised to recall that both stanzas of the song begin with the words “Watcha doing tonight?”
A full two years after the release of “Paradise Theater,” when America had started to digest the positive message that Styx had carefully and skillfully laid out for us and had set itself steadily once again on the correct path, an insignificant and aimless little band from Ireland shamelessly ripped-off Dennis De Young and Tommy Shaw’s love-song/political anthem ethos with a flash-in-the-pan college radio hit “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” from the 1983 album “War,” both of which should immediately have been forgotten. After musing on such somber topics as “broken bottles under children’s feet/ bodies strewn across the dead-end street,” Bono croons “Tonight, we can be as one tonight.” Astute observers of pop culture immediately noticed that Bono has presumptuously changed Dennis de Young’s interrogative into a statement of fact. We will be as one, it is gonna happen, no sense in fighting back. Besides, I am so sensitive and aware of all that is going on in the world, copulation with an entity such as myself could, if you are lucky, bring you out of your small-town paradigms and happily into a bolder, more worldly awareness. Puh-lease. Young intellectuals inexplicaply, or perhaps predictably, bought into this U2 garbage hook line and sinker. And de Young’s more gentle, one might say more appropriate, “watcha doing tonight?” was quickly forgotten.
Of course, nowadays, music historians generally dismiss U2’s album “War” as one of many of their aimless experiments. “War” represents their hard-rock aspirations, and a pretty lame attempt at that, while their subsequent albums explored art rock, (Unforgettable Fire) prog rock, (Joshua Tree), Dance and Industrial (Achtung Baby) then glam rock (Zooropa) and finally power pop (All That You Can’t Leave Behind, How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb). Face it, these pretentious blowhards have staggered all over the map, and, like many other bad artists, they are just slinging shit at the canvas hoping something will stick.
In 2005, in a moment of cosmic blind absurdity, U2 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and then, in 2006, they inexplicably won five Grammies. Meanwhile, the surviving members of Styx bicker over who can use the band’s name while touring. In a universe that must by necessity be governed by some semblance of justice, all reasonable people agree that it is only a matter of time before the witless frauds known as U2 are unceremoniously expelled from their throne, their ill-gotten mantel as the world’s only supergroup will be stripped from them, and the original Supergroup, Styx, the only band in history to release FOUR CONSECUTIVE PLATINUM ALBUMS, will justifiably take their place.

somethings happening...

Big things happen at old house, walls going away showing old studs and scraps of ancient wallpaper. Three rooms becoming one just like Christian trinity. I spend big number hours in back room scraping and sanding the paint what has the lead, which one paper say can hurt brains, but friends not worries, brain good!