Raindog

Ahhh… Here it is.

Where the FLIPPIN’ HECK is the GOLDANG SNOW!?!!!?

 

Neko Case has a new album out on March 3, 2008. Can’t wait!

  

 

Oh.My.Gawd… This is hilarious!

We’ll have to try something like this the next time we play "Rock Band".

 

 

Here is the setlist for the Ryan Adams and the Cardinals show I went to on Monday night. Well, it was really an Oasis show but who cares?

 

Off Broadway
Let It Ride
Please Do Not Let Me Go
A Kiss Before I Go
Cobwebs (new)
I Fix It (new)
Shakedown On 9th Street
The Sun Also Sets
Everybody Knows
When The Stars Go Blue
Two
Crossed-Out Name (new)
Come Pick Me Up
Mockingbird

 

    
 

To celebrate, here he is on Letterman doing "Come Pick Me Up", one of my favourites. It’s a little sanitized ’cause of being on network tv and all, but it still keeps its soul. I doubt if he’ll perform this song when I see him but I can dream.

 

 

Okay, I just lifted this entire article by Neko Case from Poetry Magazine because I want to keep it forever and I love the reference to Rocky Top. I could die happy if I could sit down and have a drink with Neko, something tells me she’d a appreciate an IKEAtini.

 


When I was asked by Poetry to write an article for them I was ecstatic. I was flattered. I felt important! I agreed immediately. About twenty minutes after sending my e-mail of acceptance I paused to triumphantly sharpen my claws on the bookcase when I noticed the blazing, neon writing on the wall. It said: YOU’VE NEVER EVEN PASSED ENGLISH 101 AND EVERYONE WHO READS THIS MAGAZINE WILL KNOW IT. Why do I care? I’m not sure. I think it’s because I don’t want to let poetry down. Poetry is such a delicate, pretty lady with a candy exoskeleton on the outside of her crepe-paper dress. I am an awkward, heavy-handed mule of a high school dropout. I guess I just need permission to be in the same room with poetry.


I think the fear began in about fifth grade. Right off the top they said poetry was supposed to have "form." Even writing a tiny haiku became a wrestling match with a Claymation Cyclops for me. (I watched a lot of Sinbad.) We aren’t too cool for poetry; it’s the other way around. At least that’s the impression I took from public school. The fact that these feelings would remain into adulthood is ridiculous. We all have the right to poetry! How could I still think it’s for other people? Smarter people. What’s doubly confusing is I don’t have the same reservations when poetry is accompanied by music. Perhaps I feel that way because there is music all around us — it’s the wallpaper of our lives. It’s not considered precious in American culture unless a symphony is performing it.


I do know when a string of printed words busts my little dam and the tears spill over and I sponge them up with my T-shirt. I couldn’t give you that formula before it happens, it just hits me like a bat to the face. That’s a sweet, hot, amazing, embarrassing moment. It even makes me feel a little included, as if I have to be "ready for the poetry" for it to be happening.


I can’t choose which kind of poetry I like best. Sonnets? Prose? I don’t know the terminology. I just blurt out some fragmented gibberish into the vast, woodsy country of poetry. It freezes in midair. Here come some examples now . . .


Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus haunts me. Aaron’s death speech is veiled, venomous gospel music. I read it over and over even though I’ve already memorized it like a teenage girl in love. W.H. Auden scares me under the couch (even when he’s being funny). I hold my flashlight on "The Witnesses," with its haunting "humpbacked surgeons/And the scissors man," until my arm shakes, my trusty dictionary in my other hand. Dorothy Parker makes me manic! I can’t even make it through the first three lines of "The Godmother" without bursting into tears. Lynda Barry and Sherman Alexie save my life constantly. They battle identity crisis with a sense of  humor and a language that speaks so hard to me because they came from my home, in my own time, and they talk to me in our special parlance. They tell me I’m not crazy because they remember it too. It really is the old Washington State that created my personal brain-picture ABC’s. (D is for "Douglas fir.") The same Washington State I can never go back to. Barry and Alexie volunteer to go in my place. Their memories make friends with mine. I can’t live without them.


What do these poets have in common? They don’t write sycophantic, roman-numeral-volumed postcards to God. They don’t get all "love-ity-love-love" either. I get the sense they imagine their audience and want to comfort them. They are so good at it they even have the ability to comfort us with scariness. Sadness too. I think that is a powerful magic. They don’t just write poetry either; they are playwrights and painters and singers and novelists.


How can we help them out? I guess we keep on needing them, even if it’s kind of a secret. If the poets handed out anonymous comment cards for us shy poetry lovers to fill out so they could get a better idea of what we needed, I would direct them to the Osbourne Brothers’ bluegrass classic, "Rocky Top." They say in two lines what poets and writers "Anna Karenina" themselves to death to convey, about a girl who’s "wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop/I still dream about that." If those lines were written about me I could lie down and die. It is perfection. Uncool Perfection.



 

I had a pleasant, if abbreviated, May long weekend this year. Some friends and I crammed geo-caching, paddling and al fresco dining into an eight hour period.

The weather was cool with a stiff north wind blowing which put my companions off paddling, however, I would not be deterred. Though I would not have gone out in a canoe, I have gone out in much rougher waters in a kayak, so I left my companions to their own devices on the shore. Their own devices turned out to be building a mega sand-castle and later… um… playing pat-a-cake. I have video proof!

I went up English river and saw ducks, geese, loons, a kingfisher and a heron, all at one view. The paddling was a little challenging but it felt really good to be on the water again.

I came back to a shore lunch of drunken cheeses, homemade breads, bbq’d turkey and noodle salad washed down with sherry and wine. 🙂 That made me feel a little better about having to spend the rest of the weekend in drudgery.

 

Man, I wish I was twenty years younger and that my ears, brain and legs would recover like they did when I was twenty-five. I also wish the internet and mp3s existed back then. Although, if they had existed I’m sure I would be a homeless, useless, unwashed burden on society.

I went to see !!! (Chk Chk Chk if you want to actually speak their name) at the Pyramid the other night.  They didn’t hit the stage until 11:00 PM but once they hit it, they hit it hard!

They played everything I wanted to hear including Must Be the Moon, Yadnus, Myth Takes and a scorching Heart of Hearts. On the latter song, lead singer Nic Offer was joined onstage by Shannon Funchess who helped out on the album version. Bonus! 

The band isn’t known for their intellectual lyrics, but who cares when the bassist lays down those pounding basslines and Nic offers up his sweet, geeky white boy dance moves?