Blue Man Grope

I feel your pain and it's starting to hurt, so wouldja just get better already?

I had eight and a half hours of airtime this weekend- three two-hour shows as DJ and one show as engineer/producer. I was so impressed with myself that I took my own picture so that you, the reader, could admire me as much as I admire myself. Actually, I was trying to examine the sunburn on my scalp but I won't post those pics... suffice it say that next time I go for a drive with the sunroof open I will wear a hat.

Anyway, six hours of music is about seventy-five songs- plus the 30 minutes I picked up from the 6am DJ who overslept- usually I post and narrate my playlists, but this is 75 fucking songs- who the hell would read that? Better yet, who would write it?

Me. But without the details this week.

First, Zendo Soundsystem. DJ Ras-Bob usually mixes it up with modern flavor, but my groove music collection tends towards the WayBack Machine and the Mothership Connection- (and a few cuts from South Park):

Cameo- Word Up
Funkadelic- Freek of the Week
Talking Heads- I Zimbra
Curtis Mayfield- Little Child Runnin' Wild
Master P- Kenny's Dead
Average White Band- Schoolboy Crush
Papa John Creach - Enjoy
Red Hot Chili Peppers-If You Want Me To Stay
Funkadelic- I'll Stay
Steve Hillage-Unzipping the Zype
Parliament- Big Bang Theory
Little Feat- Spanish Moon
Big Brother & the Holding Co.- Funkie Jim
Tower of Power- I Gotta Groove
Grace Jones- Inspiration
P-Funk All-Stars- Funky Kind( Knock it Down)
Isaac "Chef" Hayes- Simultaneous
Marvin Gaye- Come Get To This
Troublefunk- Woman of Principle
Kool & the Gang- She's a Bad Mama Jama
Rick James & Ike Turner- Love Gravy
Ray Manzarek- Begin The World Again
Stevie Wonder- Superstitious
George Clinton - Kredit Kard
Chris Spedding- Breakout
James Brown-Living in America

Saturday I spent four hours in gridlock and barely made it to the station in time to host Songs From the Big Hair, our weekly 1980's show. I had the pleasure of being assisted by my "trainee" Fontaine, who added some fresh air to my stale records. I used the air-quotes because Fontaine has been a DJ at another station for many, many years- in fact, she trained me as her summer substitute over a decade ago... by the end of the program she was running the show while my assistant Eric and I set up the studio for our musical guest - the wonderful Lauren Kendall - who played four fantastic songs on keyboard, voice and cello accompanied by her man Blake on percussion. Not only did they sound great, they also came prepared with gear and good-natured humor that helped soothe my white-knuckled nerves. Kudos to musicians who carry microphones with them- special thanks to L&B for the cables and to Fontaine for the tunes!

Big Hair:

Danielle Dax- Inky Bloaters
Gary Numan- Engineers
King Crimson- Model Man
Fleshtones- Girl From Baltimore
Opal- Magick Power
Crack The Sky- Lost in America
Dead Kennedys - Viva Las Vegas
Bad Brains- Re-Ignition
Sonic Youth- Hotwire my Heart
Siouxsie and the Banshees- Arabian Knights
XTC- Wake Up
Tom Tom Club -Genius of Love
Mission of Burma- That's When I Reach For My Revolver
King Crimson- Elephant Talk
X- White Girl
Tupelo Chain Sex- The Revolution Will Be Televised
Snakefinger- Kill the Great Raven
Talking Heads- The Great Curve
The Soft Boys - I Got the Hots
Keith Le Blanc - But Whitey/Einstein
The Cramps - Garbageman
The Blasters - I'm Shakin'
Pere Ubu - We Have the Technology
Magazine - The Honeymoon Killers
The Fall - Copped It
Pixies - Tony's Theme
Dream Syndicate - That's What You Always Say
Run DMC - Mary, Mary
Udokotela Shange Namajaha - Awungilobolele

By the time I was finished with Lauren's show I was exhausted and starving, having not had a chance to eat all day, so I said fuck the diet- I got myself some fried chicken and went home, did bongs and watched the Sci-Fi channel. Maybe it was the weed, but does Sci-Fi's original programming consist entirely of monsters eating bikini models? I didn't even notice when one movie ended and the next one began- all I know is that if you hike in the rain-forest wearing a g-string you will be eaten by dinosaurs.

I wanted to dream about the g-string models-sans dinos- but I barely had time to sleep at all before I had to rush back down to the studio at 6:30am to fill in for he-who-shall-not-be-named, who had * ahem* overslept.
Then, of course, my own weekly show.

The New Breakfast Snob:

Raput & The Sepuy- Up, up and away
The Scramblers- Mister Hot Rod
Circle Makers- Circles
Eleanor McCovey- Whisper and a Prayer
Victor Banana- Stall Genie-Gooseneck Hollow
King Crimson- Thrak
West of Eden- Hide and Seek
Rosemary Woods- Everywhere I Go
Clann an Drumma- Visedail
Velvet Underground- Sunday Morning
Fiona Joyce- Cry Over You
Siobhan Skates- Short a Penny
The Kinks- Village Green Preservation Society
Grace Slick & Paul Kantner- Ballad of the Chrome Nun
Loreena McKennitt- Caravansrai
Claanad- Why Worry?
Briege Murphy- The Sea
The Stranglers- Midnight Summer Dream
Marianne Faithfull- Witch's Song
Pentangle- Springtime Promises
Jethro Tull- Fat Man
Jefferson Airplane- Rock Me Baby
Little Feat- Fat Man in the Bathtub
Slick & Kantner- Fat
Captain Beefheart- This is the Day
PrettyThings- Goodbye/Going Downhill
Graham Central Station- Ole Smokey
10 CC- Sand in my Face
Mike Watt- Against the 70's
Tom Verlaine- Always
King Crimson- Ladies of the Road
PJ Harvey- Workin' For the Man
Can- Soup


Now for my next trick: some serious nap inaction.

Craters: Favorite and Otherwise

This is one of my favorite Martian craters. It's known as the Happy Face Crater.
Every planet should have one.

Here's a sequence showing a small new crater- the image on the left was taken by the Viking spacecraft in 1976 and there is no crater evident:

In 1999, there is a crater. It's a punk-ass crater as far as planetary impacts go...it's unlikely the tiny meteorite responsible would have even made it though Earth's atmoshpere.

By 2006, it's faded a bit. It seems that Mars has enough atmosphere to cause erosion, but not nearly enough to stop meteors.

We are kinda spoiled on Earth, having an atmosphere and all...not only does ours allow us to breathe, but it also shields us from all but the largest of meteors.

If it were not for meteors, we wouldn't have dinosaurs in Chicago:


I didn't know it when I took this pic, but I think I may have photographed a meteorite in this snapshot- above and to the right of the brontosaur skull:

One day in the distant past, a dinosaur much like the one fossilized above may have looked into the afternoon sky and seen a bright streak much like the one in this photo- only the light in the sky kept getting bigger and bigger...

The rest is pre-history.

Shows

It's just a microphone, don't be shy...

Two radio shows this weekend :

Sat 3-5 PM EST , Songs From the Big Hair -the 80's show:
All I have to do is play two hours of Eighties music. How hard can that be?
Too difficult for me, apparently...tomorrow's 80's show has a 1979 theme- a lot of great records came out that year - ones that influenced the "new wave" "no wave" and second generation punk to follow.
Bill Nelson, XTC, NY Gong, Wire,Gary Numan & Tubeway Army, the Clash...these guys were doing 80'S music in1979- my kinda 80's music anyway, which involves loud guitars and angry, socio-political lyrics... well, sometimes anyway- my tastes are wide and fickle...I'll be playing real- life vinyl LP 'record albums'-the younger reader probably has no idea
what a 'record album' even is... think of them it as a read-only Zip disc the size of a small frozen pizza; like a pizza it is packaged in a decorative cardboard sleeve; like a Zip you just don't see them that much anymore...I'm tempted to microwave an album right now, just to see what happens.

Has anyone out there already done this to a record?

I nuked a light bulb once. Highly not recommended.

...I don't think many of the bands I'll be playing have video- I didn't even own a TV between 1985 and 1990 so I never saw many vids...I miss not having a TV.

If they do have videos, I imagine they'll eventually show up here on this great new 1980's video source- I'm not sure exactly who runs this site...I suspect it's what the guys who really sang on the Milli Vanilli record are doing today, not being able to have a proper 'reunion' and all...but I might be wrong. Anyway, that record sold a zillion copies so whoever they are, they know what they are doing.

Sun Jan 7 , 7 am- The New Breakfast Snob-
This is my regular weekly show and I play a truly eclectic mix from my own collection, usually loosely based on whatever my prevailing mood is...and I'm always happy when I'm on air- I've even had my heart shattered while I was on air and lived to laugh about it- I have a feeling Ima gonna feel like rockin' tomorrow morning- I usually play more gentle material but I feel like tearing shit up - overall it's actually been a good week and that makes me crave guitars. Loud-ass guitars.

Last night: Reunion of friends old and new.
5 Americans, an expat residing in London and a Nottingham lass, also currently from London, who I found to be very well-spoken and quite charming.

Combined, I have known these 6 people for a total of 120 years and one day. I love them all.
Some of the best times I have ever had were shared with the people in this picture and that includes last night.
We started at Richmond' best pizzeria. This is my second Pizza Event in the last few days- a big thanks to all my friends for the great pies . Susanne sent me pie on New Years- now today- ! I think pizza pie is my new favorite food, as it will henceforth always remind me of good people.



Some long-simmering issues from the Colonial period were finally laid to rest to the satisfaction of all parties, but I will use this blog to get the last word on one thing:
-American football is much better than soccer. Soccer is like ice hockey played on grass, without fights involving sticks, which is the best part of hockey.
I'm not sure if anyone plays hockey anymore- there are rumours of 'professional' leagues, nothing confirmed.

Of our group I am the only non-drinker and the only non-smoker. Nottingham Liz had gone 18 months without "sucking a fag" but decided to have a cigarette after meeting us.
Richmond has that effect on people- or maybe it was the company.

By last orders, she'd smoked an entire carton of Benson & Hedges as well as two packs of Marlboros- she truly understands the spirit of American indulgence.
I had twenty-five cups of coffee and a gallon of water. I may never sleep again but I sure as hell am gonna pee ten times in the next hour.

As we were settling up to leave the pizza joint, one very young waitress who had overheard our huggy, laughy crew re-living old times looked at us and said: " twenty years from now I will having reunions with my friends".
I think this was a beautiful thing for her to say. If you can have happy reunions with friends you've known for twenty years, well then, you've had a lucky life.

On a famous staircase at the ultra-posh and historical Hotel Jefferson, where our Limey friends were staying. Ever seen Gone With the Wind? Then you have seen this very staircase.
We went back to their hotel for continued drinking- by this time I had switched to the hard stuff-soda. The sugar and caffeine rocks my world.

I forgot the flash on this. I think my friend in the foreground looks pretty in this pic , but I always think she looks pretty.

My friend with the shorts on was in great peril of exposing his 'bits' to a camera-wielding blogger, which is never a good idea. (Trust me, it's not)
This is the Men's room adjoining the hotel bar. The urinals have motion detector devices that emit a burst of rosy air freshener when you approach them so you don't have to smell your own urine while you void. I have never before seen such a thing, but I assume the stall-toilets have the same feature- something I wouldn't mind having at home. For the cats too.


Wed. night was also a good night. A young child picked my name out of a jar containing those of all in attendance at a new friend's home - I was pick #1 and was given my choice of any cookie or brownie I wanted from a heavily laden tray of chewy fudgy goodness.

Having a sweet kid tell you you can have any cookie you want is a good feeling- and yummy too.

Matter

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

As a child, one of my first enduring loves was for dinosaurs; paleontology to be more precise- I loved my trilobites just as much as my allosaurus ; can't have archaeoptyrx without having 'T.Rex' first (archaEopTyRX, see?), and did you know that some scientists used to speculate that Rex actually had a form of rudimentary plumage, although I think it that idea has been abandoned...

For a period, I refused to watch movies that featured dinosaurs alongside humans- hogwash! I would declare, full of childish indignation- everyone knows the dinosaurs were extinct for millions of years before homo sapiens walked the earth...sheesh. Insufferable fucker, I was.
Was?
At least nowadays I can enjoy movies where dinosaurs eat people without ruining it for everyone else by shouting out how there is no way you would ever see a mastodon and a pterodactyl together in "real life".

When I was ten, I read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller ; it profoundly changed my thinking, suddenly it dawned on my young mind that not only was man trying to destroy himself, he was going to fail, and he was going to use that failure as inspiration to try harder at the next attempt at self-destruction and so on...

But, as I would cheerily point out, none of it really matters anyway because the sun will eventually explode and destroy the solar system, which will slooowlly be sucked into a black hole at the center of the universe, which will then contract for eons upon eons , crushed by gravity until it eventually vomits forth another universe which will very likely be inhabited by organisms just as wretched as humans could ever wish to be.

I started reading books that were beyond my years or just plain weird: Ellison, Burgess, wildlife guides, Burroughs, atlases,Vonnegut, almanacs, Batman comics,Heller, Illuminatus, various tombstones etc.... nowadays, I doubt that our schools would encourage or even allow such reading by grade-schoolers, but back then it didn't matter.

Often, I didn't even have to attend class.

Did you know that galaxies die? They do.

It's hard to study while galaxies are dying.
As a child, it's hard to explain this to adults without scaring them.
When I got older I had more and more classes that didn't exactly involve attendance, it was easier for every one that way.
It saved a lot of explaining.

I knew the system was bullshit and I played it so that I wouldn't have to do much of anything. I'd just write a few papers about books I would've read anyway, get the teachers all worked up and by the time they discovered what a truly fucked-up child I was- that they'd basically been conned out of giving me 'real' homework and into giving me plum assignments- I'd be whisked away to another school, soon to be standing in front of yet another group of unfamiliar children, explaining how it's better to read the glossary first when you read A Clockwork Orange, otherwise they might find it confusing.


So.

Long ago there were dinosaurs, then they died (and all the smart people knew it was a meteor, even then) and eventually they turned into oil, which we turn into gasoline -which was being rationed back then because OPEC wanted to punish the US for it's support of Israel in whatever war was raging in the Middle East at that time -Yom Kippur, I think, as if it matters.
Yeah, 1973...fuck, it really does seem like yesterday. Like last hour.

Jesus, back then I was too busy watching the nightly 'Nam body counts to understand the nuances of Middle East politics.
(I still don't understand those nuances, perhaps because there are no nuances to understand)

Plus, I was 8 years old and didn't understand a lot of things that I currently don't understand - I just have a better understanding of my lack of understanding now , is all.



Anyhow, the dinosaurs are gone and surely aren't coming back during my wholly insignificant lifetime, besides, like I said, the whole Universe is constantly going BOOM! crush BOOM! anyway, so why bother with anything- every thing's doomed to extinction, subject to be extinguished all at once or over billions of years- what difference does it make?

My 5th grade teacher asked me where I learned to be so nihilistic.

Nowhere. Duh.

I used the same line in 6th grade, in response to the same question.

By the time I was 12, I had used science and reason to soundly establish my own insignificance as well as that of everyone and everything around me. A sort of cosmic resignation sank into my spirit-didn't break it, mind you; though it might seem that way from the outside. In truth, I think I really enjoyed the awesome power of negation that comes with knowing more than is good for oneself.

Suck it up, keep on truckin' yadda yadda 'cos it don't mean shit nohow, right?

Even though I clearly understood, -understand, rather - just how empty, pointless, pathetic and unremarkable my puny existence is, I still didn't lose interest...I can't stop the stars from exploding, but it would be cool to watch one blow up.




















I have been asked, more than once, why I bother carrying on if I feel that life is so hopeless...these inquiries miss the point, misinterpreting my meaning- I never said life is hopeless.

I don't believe life is hopeless- if it was, I would be dead right now because right now all I have is hope.

I am. Therefore. Life is not hopeless.
Sum ergo whatever...

Life, however, is pointless, especially when viewed on a cosmic scale.
Can't argue with that.
We don't mean diddley-squat.
Boom!
Back to dust, wait for gravity to start forming new planets, don't hold your breath 'cos this might take a long time, Rocketman...

I honestly don't care if life is pointless. I'm a lifetime supporter of pointless causes, a pillar of pointlessness in my community, an ardent champion of Things That Don't Mean Shit-which, by my childhood definition, is everything and everyone, past present and future. I'm passionately pointless and pointlessly passionate.

For no reason.
I can't justify it.
I don't have to- I don't even pretend that any of it means anything.
Why should I?

I know it's useless, that nothing I do will ever mean anything, that my old fantasies are absurd and that there might not be any new dreams to replace them with... but so what?

I don't have the willpower necessary to give up living.
I'm too lazy to do nothing.
It's hard work, this doing of nothing. Just thinking about it wears me out.

I might as well try to do something. If nothing matters, it can't hurt to try.