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As in, "I'm not dead yet."
Still loving life at the Book Barn in Niantic -- stop in and buy something next time you're exactly in-between New York and Boston on 95. Good books -- cheap (most hardcovers/trade paperbacks are four bucks) and plentiful (about 375,000 volumes). This week, a lot of families and kids due to school vacation, which is usually a blast. The kids go nuts over all the animals (Uptown: 16 cats, 2 goats, and a very cool Australian collie. Downtown: 6 turtles, 2 gweepers, and the improbably massive Frank, last of the Engish Sumo Tabbies), not to mention the books. I heard one 8-year-old shout out, "I just hit the Goosebumps jackpot!" from the back of the shop while his twin brother was swooning over all the Bermuda Triangle books. Neat.
Still happily single. Have moved into The Cottage, the house I more or less grew up in (some days less, obviously) after my sister's death from cancer late last year. Still making radio weekly. Have become something of a CPAP evangelist. Can be obnoxious in my reverence for Obama. Trying to be grateful every day. Am something of a lazy-ass Buddhist.
Good lord, I'm middle-aged. How did that happen? |
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Nov. 17th, 2006 @ 11:46 pm
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Mid-life crisis, ahoy!!!
After the cut, playing Lola Lola to my Professor Unrath, it's...
( that indie-obscure object of desire... ) |
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On what was otherwise the slowest sales day in many months (welcome to the autumn doldrums, hurry up and bring on the foliage, yo) I sold a rare RM Stanley (predecessor to Capt Jeffrey Spaulding in the African colonialism biz) and the Big Barn sold a Mark Twain 1st edition, thus saving the day. Huzzah!
Margaret Atwood's "Robber Bride" is back in the on-deck circle having been pre-empted by the arrival this morning of Frances Kuffel's "Passing for Thin," which at the midpoint is one of the few weight-loss memoirs that hasn't had me chanting "bullshit bullshit bullshit" by the third chapter. So far, so good, looks like I'll run through the rest of it later tonight and hurl a few thunderbolts of judgement when I'm done. |
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Either that, or I really have _no_ ambition/imagination.
Here's my recommended list from FindYourSpot.com's quiz:
Danbury, Connecticut
Eugene, Oregon
Hartford, Connecticut
Corvallis, Oregon
Providence, Rhode Island
Boston, Massachusetts
New Haven, Connecticut
Worcester, Massachusetts
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Salem, Oregon
Medford, Oregon
Stamford-Norwalk, Connecticut
Portland, Oregon
Bend, Oregon
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Sheboygan, Wisconsin
Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Johnson, Vermont
Oshkosh-Appleton/Neenah, Wisconsin
Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts
Andover, Massachusetts
Charleston, West Virginia
Reno, Nevada
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Fayetteville, hmmm? Curiouser and curiouser. Sheboygan, here I come! |
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May. 8th, 2005 @ 10:26 pm
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For the record: still a bookstore guy, and still pinching myself at my luck. Still mostly happy. |
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Just another dead meme: the reader may skip this section without penalty.
Know how to get an ironist to shut up? Ask him what he really means. Know how to get a record shop guy to admit what he really obsesses about? Take him out of the shop for a year, let the snowglobe of his mind settle a little, and then have him work a by-no-means-complete-or-definitive list of 30 or so albums with he has from earliest childhood to callowest youth and incipient dotage for various reasons obsessed over, and not always in a healthy fashion. Not to be confused with a canonical best-of list, these are just the albums that I'll probably wake up listening to five minutes after I'm dead. Admittedly, it's heavily weighted toward the music of my, uh, younger days, but the main criteria I used for inclusion was having been immediately floored by the first listen in a way that was new to me, then having spent a good chunk of time afterwards working out what it was that I found so fascinating. A few albums snuck their way on by virtue of the varous folks past and present with whom they are irrevocably associated, and in those particular cases I was as much obsessed with working out what it was that I found so goddamned wonderful about them. In any case, I'll proudly stand by them, then and now. The records, that is.
So this post is, selfishly, pretty much just for me. Hence, the cut. Still, I'd be flattered by feedback.
( 30-ODD PENNIES ON THE TONEARM )
Oct. 17th, 2004 @ 09:37 pm
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| » Since you didn't ask. |
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Life imitates The Onion. Not the tearful, multilayered, greenglass translucence of life in these here Yoonighted Estancias, just the sheer yockfulness of how obvious it all is.
FIVE THINGS I EXPERIENCED FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE POSTING HERE SOME TIME AGO.
(Strap on those rocket-sled belts, kiddos.)
1) Actually got paid real money ($100) for DJing a club event. Usually live (non-radio) DJing means between sets at some friend's rock show for (a) the pleasure and (b) the cuties, this time it actually turned into an old-school hip-hop soul indie quirk hesher lovefest. Ironically, technically the most nightmarish: almost all my gear broke or froze, which was fine hey whatthefock because the club made little to no accomodation for setup space or even appropriate plugins. Wound up running the whole thing off my iPod. Not exactly an old-school cred-builder, but the crowd responded well and the club owner, to my amazement, slapped 100 clams into my sweaty fist.
2) Presided at a friend's funeral at the request of his sister and his Mom. Painful, genuinely tragic, and drenched in love -- the real shit, like you rarely even read about any more. Life-changing, and I'm still figuring out how.
3) Switched mode of primary employment for the first time in 17 years. Left a great job for one that's even better. I am vaguely aware of how little I appreciate how lucky I am even though I daily thank Cthulu for how much I love my new job. Imagine working at a great little record store, then leaving to go work at a (huge) all-time fave used-book store. That, undeservedly, incredibly, is me. And, next month, for the first time ever and bucking every social trend of this benighted Bush junta: employer-provided health insurance. Shoot me now.
4) Inspired farcically inappropriate jealousy on the part of my best friend's SO by being caught asleep and undressed in her apartment. Life imitates sitcom. Hilarity ensues. Actually, not the first time that's happened, I just felt like mentioning it again, though.
5) Was threatened with legal action. Bring it on, phool.
Sep. 10th, 2004 @ 08:33 pm
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| » *Foop* |
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Livejournal must really really like me -- over a year without an update and my account is still active. Insert slightly stale Sally Field reference.
THE SIXTH THROUGH TENTH PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN
06) Spalding Gray, slightly soggy and rather at a loss for words.
07) The most recent person you've slept with whose name you can't remember.
08) Miss Brubaker from 6th-grade English, and her skin still has those odd pink patches.
09) Dennis Hopper's dog.
10) Bernini's St Teresa, smoking a cigarette and stretching her toes.
Sep. 7th, 2004 @ 12:37 am
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| » Drž hubu Donny. |
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Although circumstances (money, time, motivation) prevented me from attending the 2nd Annual Lebowski Fest this weekend down in Louisville, KY, I didn't want to let the occasion pass unobserved. Herewith, once again, Lord, behind the cut, this Sunday morning, the great rolling cadences of Walter's eulogy for Donny.... in Czech.
( What-have-you. )
Jul. 20th, 2003 @ 07:58 am
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| » Oskarchen |
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Er wächst... er wächst...
May. 27th, 2003 @ 01:32 am
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| » Zbigniew Zamachowski |
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Z2. You know. Played the seemingly hapless Karol Karol in Kieslowski's White, popped up more recently as the fellow in the restaurant who asks Adrien Brody to stop playing so he can check a few coins for authenticity in The Pianist. Short, everyman type. Instantly became one of my favorite actors years ago by faking his own death and sending Julie Delpy to prison while I was identifying just a wee bit too closely with his character in the Kieslowski movie in the wake of a somewhat messy if overdue breakup. Hey, look, she turned me into a newt. Got better, though.
So if one of my favorite actors only seems to get his dupa into a US-distributed film about every three years or so, I for my own self ain't gonna feel self-conscious about posting to LJ about every six months or so, right? Right. That level of self-consciousness is reserved for the 90-minute monologue I've committed to doing in a local gallery space coming up in about 16 days or so. I should be contacting the papers and getting the postcards designed now, but the thing barely exists on paper right now and I'm getting a little pee-shy about the whole thing. Yes, I've been improvising monologues on the radio of an hour or more for over a decade or so, but there are actually going to be people there, visible people, some of whom are going to be ex-girlfriends.
Maybe no one will show. Ah, that's better. I can shine in an empty room.
Today's trick:
ENDLESS NECK ROPE
Here is a new twist on a popular effect. An endless circle of rope is examined. It is twice looped around the neck as in illustration. A portion of rope is grasped in each hand. Slowly, the hands are extended out from the body and the rope passes clear through the neck.
The astonishing part of this penetration is when it is repeated a second and third time. Let others try it without success. A good effect for your show. It is also a good close-up pocket trick.
Price, with special rope, $1.00
Feb. 18th, 2003 @ 02:59 am
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| » Wall-punching night. |
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Oh, my, it's so much fun to have authentic emotions. Pass the pepperspray eyewash.
Jul. 18th, 2002 @ 09:38 am
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| » Narcissistic? Honestly! |
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In the grand tradition of singleton pre-Valentine's-Day complaint, an excerpt from 'Control Games' (Gerald Alper, 1996, pp 163-4):
"There is a variant of narcissistic giving which may be called narcissistic honesty: the attempt to deflect expected criticism for an unconsciously perceived failing by brazenly admitting it, as if to thereby indicate that, far from being ashamed, one is actually proud of what has often been accused of. Thus, as can often be noted, someone who is known to be hostile and insensitive will defend himself by volunteering, "Yes, I am blunt."
"When the deficit in question happens to be an incapacity to relate or to be intimate, narcissistic honesty is a popular defense. Such was the case when the boyfriend of a patient, who for several months had acted as if he were steadily falling in love, suddenly announced, "When I first met you I really thought this could develop into something romantic. But it hasn't, and I don't want to be in that kind of relationship anymore."
"In the session, the woman cries bitterly, freely expresses the various levels of her disappointment, and in so doing gives a good picture of what it feels like to have the relational rug pulled from under one's feet. It hurts not only because so much has been taken away in such a short time, but because, perhaps even more unfairly, no transitional space has been provided in which to make a desperately needed adjustment. In relationship terms, the person has sustained a quantum drop. Making it all the more powerful is the fact that the other is apparently denying any responsibility for the psychic wreckage he has left in the wake of his tranquil message of doom. Radical withdrawal such as this can be almost unbearable because it takes a relationship in which two people are seemingly meaningfully engaged and unilaterally redefines without allowing the other the slightest say or input. There is then, in addition to feelings of resentment, a chilling sense of what at various times each of us experiences as "They have the power."
"By denying, as my patient's boyfriend seemed to do, that one is effectively moving out of the interpersonal domain (by radically withdrawing), one simultaneously denies the right of the other to assuage inescapable feelings of abandonment. Typically, the denial is in the form of insisting that the retreat to a more distant relationship is simply outcome of a natural and healthy process -- human affiliations, so it goes, wax and wane like everything else -- and does not therefore signal (as I believe it does) a sudden rupture in an already fragile ability to be intimate. Accordingly, a second-tier denial on the part of someone who is engaged in narcissistic honesty is to defiantly claim, should the callousness of his behavior be called into question, that the other is trying to curtail his right to self-determination."
Not particularly well-written, but gripping reading nevertheless. Floats my leaky boat.
Feb. 11th, 2002 @ 01:34 am
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| » New CrastinatePro plug-in: Googlewhacking. |
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Since, even with the excuse of being television-free, it took me six rather bewildered months to figure out why 'wassup' broke into common parlance two years ago (still kind of mystified as to why folks find it funny, but hey, just one more chance for me to prove Russell/Darwin right) it's fair to assume that the rest of you loggercrabs are not only aware of but already rather bored of googlewhacking, but nevertheless, may I submit:
"bosky tweezer"
score: 128,469,000
Jan. 28th, 2002 @ 01:49 am
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| » Mulholland Drive 3 |
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There I was two months ago, squinting myself awake in the New London morning sun, briefly fighting panic that the record shop was already forty-five minutes open, even though I knew the owner was covering me, and there my truck was, broken down on the shoulder an hour up the road. Ari and Goob -- friends, and good ones -- had heard my late-night answering machine message and came to get me out of my truck at 4am that morning. So much for a quick run up to Hartford to see the new David Lynch.
Sun. Toe stretch. Hungry cat. A piss on the way to the shower. Warm water to clean, cold to wake up. Goob and I met up downstairs outside his place, piled in, grabbed a couple of quick takeout coffees, and sped off to the Trooper. Goob had a guy for me to meet.
Goob is a big clean-cut usually single sometimes cynical mostly amiable always reliable bouncer of a thirtysomething guy from way up north in the middle of the continent with an encyclopaedic knowledge of sci-fi and punk rock. He's not too big on old movies, and I have no idea of his position on long walks on the beach. I have seen him closing in to eject a prime offender through the middle of a fistfight in a moshpit the way Phil Esposito used to skate for the Bruins: he seems to be moving slowly until he's blown right by you, miscreant in hand, headed for the exit. When liquored up, sometimes crass but never vindictive. He doesn't need to be. When provoked, he'll beam like a dog that just bit somebody, and if you still have any residual regard for your own well-being, you will back down.
The Trooper starts up nicely after we get there. We call Goob's guy from a gas station on the way, Goob follows me to his place off in the country, and I am thereafter introduced to The Mechanic. He shakes my hand. I note a faded needle-and-ink tattoo, a nose that never set properly after being broken, and a placid yet direct gaze that dares me to judge him on the basis of either. After he and Goob catch up a bit on mutual friends, we stand back and he gets to work.
He's a tall biker fellow Goob met in a meeting back in the day. The cleanliness of his garage is evidence of hard and frequent work, everything in its place when you need it and back again after you're done. He moves around the truck as a horse doctor would. Even I can tell he really knows his stuff. He climbs in behind the wheel, runs the truck out on the road to get a feel for the problem, brings it back, pops the hood, adjusts, runs it out again, returns, digs around in the garage for a replacement fuel filter, finds it, installs it, and runs it out again. He returns, brings the truck into the garage. makes a few quick calls, scribbles some part numbers on a pad, hands us the slip and waves us off to the parts store as he heads back into the house. When we return, he's elbow-deep in the engine. He barely breaks rhythm to take the parts from us, remove the afflicted bits and install the new ones, reassemble the engine, replace some questionable hoses, and picks up the castaway parts to provide me with a cautionary if remarkably non-judgmental illustrated lecture on regular automotive maintenance.
Afterward, he's quietly if sincerely friendly, and charges me only $40 for the better part of a day's labor. I'm ready to start a religion around this guy even if I know he'll remember the truck better than he remembers me. Goob, for his part, has already spent the better part of one of his vacation days running me around and fending off any attempt to express thanks as further evidence that your typical New Englander is as clueless about what one does to help out a guy as he is about what constitutes serious snowfall. These guys are so far ahead of me in the responsibility game that I can't even bring myself to feel embarrassed.
Before we go, I listen as he and Goob finish up their conversation. He tells this story, at first to both of us, then mainly to me: back when he was still doing the bars, he headed home good and drunk after closing time one summer night on his bike. He woke up the next morning in a small clearing well off a remote country road, aching but unhurt, the motorcycle propped neatly on its kickstand, immaculate in the morning sun. As he reconstructed it later, he had by moonlight found the one small cut in a long stone wall along the road and, in the dark, somehow worked the bike through a thicket of dense undergrowth to the clearing, where he curled up to sleep it off. That morning, however, he'd be damned if he could figure out how to get himself back to the road in broad daylight without scratching himself and the bike all to hell in the briars.
On the way out, the truck sounds good and drives well. It takes the hills with no problems now.
I did finally see 'Mulholland Drive' a week later. It's a good movie. A nice drive up and back, too.
It's getting dark when I get into the store. The owner offers to stay until closing, but I thank him, and frankly, I'm pretty happy back behind the counter. On his way out, he points out a half-full coffee cup of cold cappucino that Amelia and Greg dropped off for me earlier in the day. My name is written on the lid. Just for the hell of it, they show up again within the hour with fresh coffee, and a piece of pie just out of the oven. None of us know it yet, but in two months they'll be promised to one another. Right now, that pie looks good.
We drink the coffee, I eat some pie, we talk and laugh and sell some records. I'm foolishly happy.
Jan. 7th, 2002 @ 06:30 am
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| » Thanksgiving in London |
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My stepbrother, who works in costume and set design on Broadway and in films, happened to be one of many Americans working on the UK production of 'Sunset Boulevard'. ?When the holiday in question rolled around, they were all treated to a lavish American-style Thanksgiving dinner at a posh London hotel, courtesy of the production. At the height of which which my step-bro retired to the men's room, took up a place at the urinals to do his manly thing, and was shortly thereafter startled to notice a 'squalid little man in a hideous plaid jacket'(1) a few units over to his left. The descending duck of enlightenment(2) revealed him to be none other than his host and employer, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber(3).
(1) That my stepbrother, while always impeccably groomed and dressed, stands about 5-foot-1 lends his observation a special poignance.
(2) cf. 'You Bet Your Life'
(3) cue the endlessly repeating organ scales from 'Phantom of the Opera'.
Nov. 23rd, 2001 @ 12:03 am
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| » Mulholland Drive 2 |
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::Enter your authorization code::
9874 5641 5589 7743
::That authorization code is not valid. Please hang up, or try again::
Shit.
9874 5641 5598 7743
::Please enter the number you wish to dial::
18605559876
::You have -14- minutes left::
[...]
"Hey, Warren, it's Jim... hope you're out at Rosie's Cantina doing something pleasantly sordid after an evening of art and wine and schmooze. Look, it's about 11:30 and I'm here at an all-night Texaco south of Hartford, exit 8 off Route 2; I'm fine, but the Trooper is acting up, and I need a lift back tomorrow morning to get this straightened out. I've got some warm clothes in the back of the truck so I'm good to sleep here if need be but give me a ring at the gas station office if you get in -- 860 555 6971. Thanks."
Shit.
"Hi, Ari, it's Jim. Look, I know this is an imposition..."
And so on.
"Hey, Dog, looks like I won't be able to open the shop tomorrow. Sorry it's so late. Can you cover for me? I'll check in again in the morning to make sure you got the message..."
Et cetera.
Great. A simple trip to an out-of-town movie and my neglect of Trooper maintenance basics and a gift for denying the obvious even as it's gagungging under the dented blue hood before me have conspired to make me both the sort of friend who calls you in the middle of the night for a lift because he can't keep his effing truck on the road and the sort of employee who wakes you your wife and your kid (I briefly imagine all three wailing piteously, inconsolable after being disturbed from an angelic Norman Rockwell slumber) to tell you he won't make it in ten hours hence. Not considerate. Not even competent. If I didn't feel so resigned to being a fool, this might bother me. As it is, my self-pity and an amazingly ugly green winter coat are keeping me nice and comfy even as the temperature drops.
Ah, that coat. At 6'2" and a weight that would be appropriate on the moon -- suffice it to say that at one particularly low point my waist measurement equalled my then-girlfriend's height -- a big man needs a big coat. Designers of Big Men's apparel (sometimes rather optimistically called He-Men's clothes in the Tri-State area) take note: big men don't need A) horizontal stripes, B) color combinations more appropriate to mental health care professionals' waiting rooms, or C) 4XLT sweatshirts bearing a swoosh-logo spelling out 'Pure Sweat Athletic League'. That most plus-size clothing, like most clothing in general, is manufactured in countries where being thin is more a reflection of economic realities than a matter of self-respect, 'self-respect' being a combination of internalized middle-class norms and realistic dating-type realities, rarely fails to mordantly amuse. The big green coat is a relic of the last Christmas of a failing relationship, the kind where you both spend too much to keep ahead of the guilt. It's hunter green and whisses when I move my arms and has an absurd number of pockets, none of which are conveniently placed. I rarely wear it, and it lives in the back of the truck keeping the sun and thieving eyes off my radio-show CDs and vinyl. It makes me look like something from South Park, I imagine. I'd rather shiver.
Ursa Major strides purposefully from the payphone, stripping off unwanted clothes bearing the stench of old mates, tossing them onto the tarmac until he stands at the Trooper naked, pops the hood, reaches deep within the bowels of the engine and pulls the afflicted part out as quickly and confidently as a Filipino psychic surgeon. Tossing the foul bit into the bushes, he jumps bare-assed behind the wheel, turns the engine over, it catches with a throaty defiant roar, he slams it into gear and guns it for New London and home and sleep.
Right. After trudging back from the payphone around the corner, I'm regarding the look I'm getting from the Mike the Texaco fellow as I explain my situation as slightly quizzical but refreshingly non-judgemental, given my situation and what I'm wearing. He watches me sympathetically through the bulletproof glass, and refuses payment for the cup of joe he slides me through the carrier. I retire to the truck for coffee and a nap while waiting for a phone call. Mike pops out of the booth now and again to talk records and confirm that no calls have come in. He wakes me at 3:45am with a call. "You Jim?" Yup. "Call".
Bingo, it's Ari, who, incredibly, is still awake.
Nov. 5th, 2001 @ 12:34 am
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altamont's journal
