soundtrack

INPUT
My iPod is the soundtrack to my live. I also have a very few other trusted sources. I tolerate no other music- unless it is that periferal, ambient buzz that is backround to life in public. The instant the character of that noise becomes decidedly teenagery (not to exclude well-crafted Pop, Rap, and Thrash) or too 'Southern fried' I make my objections known. I can tolerate Jazz or Reggae for about fifteen minutes at a time. The thing is; I don't think there's enough yodeling, bagpiping, Gregorian chanting, accordion playing, dense German techno, dittys from the Pirates of Penzance, Nordic supergroups, Japanese girl bands, Chinese opera, organ, harpsicord, french horn, tuba... I mean!, There's a cap on the number of times a person is going to let "China Grove' invade their neurons, and I have definitely surpassed it. A long time ago. And Easy Listening is anything but. Commercial radio is designed to milk the life out of a song (placing no value judgements on quality here) over the period of a year and then continue to sell it as something connected to a memory. Sure, 'Snowbird' by Anne Murray is a lovely song. But it deserves about four listenings through out one's life, not four hundred. I have my own Anne Murray memories, thank you. Green Day was good for about a hundred listenings- but they're over. See what I mean? Repetition and familiarity are wonderful things, but just due to the enormous stock of it we really should be rotating a little more heavily.


OUTPUT
Of course I uploaded a bit today. My recent rampage through the Virgin megastore's 'Going out of business' sale netted new fruit, over-looked gems, and discs I had previously thought twice about. I am so distraught about that particular Time Square vacancy that I can bearly enjoy my phenomenal savings. My soundtrack required purging of about two hundred songs that had reached their expiration date. The occasions to dick around with itune windows and make crucial, almost hisorical decisions are few. They require the ability to hear what one is doing and my family can drown out the train that runs through our back yard. freight. So after a month and a half of my (puny) nano running the same nine hundred songs I began feeling a little self-conscience. That's because I play it at work, real loud. I'm still teenager that way. But I aim to keep the program fresh and varied. It is because of my clumsy transition into the new age of gathering music that I had bearly enough time during the age of the CD to replace all the bagpipes and yodeling I had on vinyl. But if my future includes enough time here on my ass, gathering the proficiency to reharvest it all from the tubes, by Christ's wounds Building 120 shall ring with Latvian sheep calls.

AUX
I managed the online purchase of replacement needles for my turntable (in the house for a month before the needle grew legs and wandered off). It's silver plastic and looks like a launching pad. (I lament the loss of wood cabinetry too). I've decided that vinyl is a little too tactile a listening experience. The packaging is certainly an art form in itself, never successfully replaced by the little four inch pages of tiny print and godawful artwork in CDs, but honestly, records are a nuisance to unsheathe. And constantly jumping up and down to flip sides- records definitely warrant the excersize I didn't ask for. I'm not married to my vinyl but it plays it's part in my soundtrack, which is basically this;
Home: All CD players have taken the modern option to stop working two years out of the factory. The power cord to the boombox went missing as well. So the three hundred pounds of LPs and CDs cannot be played. But as I've said, we'll be hooked with vinyl again in a matter of shipping days. And I can listen to my itune library from the family computer, but it fails to understand that I need it to jump the ten feet into my laptop and from there into gigantic speakers that can really rock my world. So Home is more or less a repository for the hundred pounds of CDs that rotate to the
Car: No cable recepticals- it's a one disc changer that doesn't like cold weather. I can't tell you how many times I've nearly lost my life wrestling with 'ERR'. So I bide time listening to WMPH or WRPM... WPSI... WOMG, whatever- Delaware doesn't keep tidy airwaves. But when the player deigns to function properly, I treat myself to my favorite purchases. Being Michael's
passenger involves an entirely different playlist, but he has a six disc changer so I usually have one of mine loaded. And I trust him, (in the way you trust anyone who still listens to Stevie Wonder).
Work: I bust the tunes. I shake my groove thang. I do wincing Richard Butler impersonations. I do the Hokey Pokey AND the Boney Maroni! (laquer fumes play their part). I make people shout detailed instructions to me over the Laibach cover of 'Jesus Christ Superstars' [sic], (choral,it's loud). I do have a Db threshold and it lowers as the years pass but I have the din from propane blasters and chain saws and heavy equipment being driven through a noisy carpentry shop to drown out, (not to mention the conversation of LAssholes who just think they invented cinema). I chose my current docking station the way I choose all audio players; going through the store cranking all systems to MAX. It ensures prompt sales help as well. I don't mean to be dismissive or anything, but if anyone at work should be the DJ, it's better me than the guy with the Milwakee boom box that looks like a Jeep who doesn't even bother to turn the volume down for crappy FM blathering. I've devoted decades to musing over the term 'radio personality'. I do have pity for people who don't enjoy dance music, it's their sorry lot to be located anywhere near me. But hey!, I 'dance my eight (and four more) 'n skate! "Yall can buy ear buds, or go to hell." So there. I'm sensitive- but, ultimately not.

ON/OFF
Music turned on for me in Kindergarten with "I Want To Hold Your Hand". Scarcely a day has passed since then that I haven't wanted to know what my friend's older sister was listening to, or hitch-hiked many miles to hang out with someone who couldn't grab up new music fast enough, or turned the volume up to the tippy-top of any given municipality's written laws. As a painter I'm filled with jealousy about the accessability of music. People don't contrive such detailed plans as I to ward off the glimpse of an ugly painting (although I plan that too). We've whelpt two younguns on every brand of deserving music out there- they can sing along with Blue Oyster Cult. The oldest is drumming for a program (at the 'school of rock') of Woodstock hits. He made his debut at the tender age of three singing in the Gramercy Park Hotel Lounge with the incomparable Phyllis Love. He did 'Hey Big Spender" and "Now I Know My ABCs. The youngest is learning a dance routine (the only boy in his class) to that scarecrow song from The Wiz (he's in fourth grade now; he knows all about Michael Jackson). And he treats us to recitals on the violin (at home) and the recorder (in the car). On the Steinway, he is capable of haunting, Varese-like compositions. The oldest never really stops drumming. Both sing their little hearts out. They'll do 'Food, Glorious Food" for you in a hearbeat. That's our legacy. I admit that they are now as trusted a source for new music as any other. The down side? They don't have an off switch. They want to sing and dance at the most inappropriate times. Really now, there's more to life than all this gaiety. There's.....?

serial smartalec

This is what facebook has turned me into. Hopping from wall to wall, depositing my little 'bon mot's hither and tither. (I hear the words 'pre-existing condition' faintly in the tumbling dryer) The opportunity to comment on the lives and itty chat of my fifty or so [close] friends has proved irresistible- and I crack myself up. Like this one to a comment referencing a well-know Clinton'is'm; 'Get back here and wipe this blue-baiting, political turd off my wall!' Or this one to a friend who expressed insecurity with the fb challenge being circulated to list 25 things about yourself that people may not know about you; "google 'Wilhelm Reich character armor' ". I suppose this challenge is to prepare one's self for the Barbara Walters Special Report we all know we deserve. So here are mine. I;

1. have many shoes, buy many shoes, but can only really appreciate shoes on other people.


2. hate praise because I don't think people really know what they're talking about.


3. only wear sunglasses so I can look where I don't want to be caught looking.


4. part my hair dependent on whether I am to be the driver or the passenger.


5. rank correct punctuation over having a good heart.


6. care doodily-squat about 'art'.


7. am quietly jealous of almost everyone.


8. absolutely DO wash my hands frequently during food preparation. I wanted you to know.


9. feel bad when I pull an asshole move in traffic. Something else is in control.


10. just found out that in near sixty years of marriage, my mother has NEVER known my father to have vomited. I'm heavily impressed.


11. have vomited few times myself', almost always tractable to the consumption of duck eggs.


12. make all of my most embarrassing purchases at the same drug store. What they must think of me!


13. want to die- I'm just not in any great hurry.


14. would ideally subsist on organ meat and crackers.


15. am not afraid to cry, but think I probably cry too much, and now am afraid to cry.


16. have reoccurring dreams about parts of my body falling off.


17. have no greater aspiration than to be the answer to a crossword puzzle clue (three vowels & the coveted 'z').


18. adore being quoted.


19. have what other people call talent, which expressed in monkey terms is no more than a talent for pulling bugs out of fur.


20. hope my children will never leave me alone.


21. have only one word for 'snow', and it's not 'snow'.


22. haven't yet committed to an underwear type.
23. wouldn't be caught dead without eyeliner. To quote my friend Teesh; "What are humans without eye make-up?"
24. can't let it go. Human is an adjective, Teesh, not a noun!
25. think all my facebook friends are amazing people- and that's a testament to me, for sifting through and grunting at all the worthless dullards who mistake me for a smiling guy who would be the requisite smile-and-nodder for all of their narrow experience and damnable opinions .

Here's what it takes to be MY facebook friend; I love the old-fashioned pretense of being introduced- it's how we used to do things before Jerry Springer made it acceptable to shout across two lanes of traffic, "yo!, let me ax you somethin'...". The details of our lives are only slightly available after you've brought us a house-warming gift. User names including the fractional 'boi' are on everybody's radar. And, Profile pictures are key to knowing if old friendships are worth resurrecting. You might think twice about making so deeply a shallow person your own fb friend but consider this; What depth of pedestrian, lunchroom chatter would your wall succumb to without my pithy commentary? Don't answer, the question was rhetorical.

New Deal

Hey!, I didn't get my ass kicked this year! It was by no means an easy year, but the low was never as low as taking cold showers in the dark. How was that possible?

• January- No great promise coming out of the gate. I spend the month "networking", which is shorthand for; documenting my calls to friends who have jobs for my weekly unemployment claim.
• February- Halfway through the month one of these calls pays off- I am hired on a film in the Boston area. Myself and seven other local artists leave our families in the lurch to work on a Martin Scorcese film over three hundred miles away. It is the beginning of three and a half months of re-furnishing my life. A week after I show up I am assigned to run the scenic shop for the set dressing department. The film is set in the 40s and 50s so this involves refinishing old furniture to look new, rendering hundreds of historically 'plausible' documents in media specific to the era, aging everything from desk blotters and lampshades to jars of pickles, and altering high-ticket rentals and museum loans (with reversible processes) to suit the aesthetic of my larger-than-life bosses; Dante Ferretti and Franchesca LoSciovo. For the uninitiated, they (husband and wife) ONLY designed settings for a slew of Fellini films ('Satyricon' among them), all of the Pasolini films, and lord knows how many beautiful films up to and including "Sweeny Todd", for which they won an Oscar the night before I started working for them. These are the "nobodies who are somebodies to the rest of the nobodies" in the credits rolling by at the end of a film to which I referred in my post last Easter. Franchesca is a tiny woman in Converse sneakers who breezes through the storage space at the end of a work day pointing out a dozen furniture choices to be made ready for their close-up by the following day. I nonchalantly struggle to keep my ear in front of her mouth so I have half a chance at sorting through the flurry of rolled 'r's and long 'e's that tax my comprehension. She interprets my vigilance as that thing where Italians get in each others faces and I'm golden with her. Ninety-nine percent of the time the upshot was "Paint it brown". Do I want to be the scenic artist on Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space" ,watching the film years later and saying " I kinda believe that spaceship is not two pie plates on a string"? Surely not. I love working on something I'm good at. This balances out the frustration of trying to run a modest suburban home with two kids and a dog.
• March- I'm finished with primaries, hating Hillary by now. I ward off sickness with my new invention; the 'Emergence-C' martini. Replacing Vermouth with a high dose of Citric Acid (favoring the Raspberry flavor), I avoid the 'sick' that takes my more sober workmates down. I've refitted my hotel room with, among other amenities, my own watercolors taped on over the existing "artwork", and an entirely new lighting plot and furniture scheme. (I do the same for my Phila. friends). I've seen those 'black light' hotel room exposes- I contrive a path of hygienic carpet samples from the toilet to the bed. I assiduously wash and/or Fabreeze everything- I have a lot of free time on my hands. My plan, however, fails to render me immune to speed traps.
• April- Franchesca rewards me with this line; "Ohh Peeetarrr, Yoo arr soo clos tooo meee." I get homesick, reassuring Michael nightly that I am not ditching him to follow my Italian hot-shots back to Europe- that through it all I am a grounded family man. The Quaker meeting here is more 'mega-church" than it is 'silent refuge'. On odd days off I visit museums, exploit New Hampshire for cheap cigarettes and Staffordshire figurines. The busloads of Belgian soccer teams that punctuate life in a Marriott parking lot in the wee hours add to my further ungrasp of reality. I return home now and again to a household that looks like it is running better without me.
• May- I am charged with planning a party for the Art Department, which with my assistant we do fabulously well; an in-shop affair, employing a warehouse of priceless antiques and 200 latex corpses from the "Dachau" scene. It is worthy of inclusion in "101 Days Of Salo". (Dante pops in). I get upgraded to a Hilton where I learn that my mattress at home is shit.
• June- I return home. Immediately I go to work on a restaurant decor on Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square. (High tone) The last people to realize that the decor is contrived to look like a century-old Paris bistro are the carpenters watching me assault their newly fitted mahogany cabinetry with chains and purposefully administered cigarette burns. The destruction of freshness is an easy fit, but I'm horrified to learn that the rest of the world doesn't operate with a twenty million dollar budget.
• July- My brain is apparently emptied of everything I ever thought was true, and I design for dinner theater again. (see; Feb. 07) Yeston & Somebodies "Phantom" this time. Nothing more challenging than creating six or more scenes in and around the Paris opera house on a thirty foot stage (with about ten feet of wing space). It didn't totally suck this time- except maybe for the part where the producer yelled at me for not being five extra people with two extra weeks. Otherwise, a beautiful production... and if it didn't sell, blame Yeston or Weber or fickle summer seniors- I did my job!
• August- I design and paint elements for a fund-raising gala for the Delaware Symphony. It pays well , the work is fun, but the event itself is a total perk. Michael and I eat tons of oeuvres, drink deeply from the open bar, accept accolades, and pal around with a dozen hard-bodied 'Circ' performers whose antics in front of my barely lit scenery give us both a bit of a rise in our finely pressed trousers.
• September- I start work on a film, in Philadelphia this time. I render hundreds of animal hides to look more like animal hides (a movie thing)- this entails unpackaging and painting a 'dead zoo' of ten or more species of animal skins that comprise the roofs of fiberglass igloos. Painted-on frost clinches the illusion.
• October- I'm laid off from ice-capades and move to a Carnival Cruise commercial featuring the World's Largest Pinata (click on photo to view). A 62' burro, now in the Guinness Book of World Records. It snow-balls into a PR fiasco when the highly attended event involving the dropping of four tons of candy from the pinata's belly is postponed by the Philadelphia police (wisely supposing that young children would be trampled to death in the crowd of +3,000).
• November- I get fresh hope for the political future of the country for my birthday. I eagerly respond to working on more commercials. Big budgets- not one foot in reality. Among other cinchy tasks, I paint the tiny luggage of an hydraulically animated groundhog pink. 'Cause it's what I do.
• December-Some 'Bollywood' movie painted the column tops in a subway station red (it's a movie thing). I painted them orange again. Now- nothing but time off. Mom-mom died this month. When she did, I hear, she sat up, opened her eyes to something beyond the room in which she lay, and reached out. What do you think of that!

tina

My would-be mother-in-law. That beige thing in the coffin only reminded me of her. She didn't have a phone to her ear, didn't beg for a kiss. She sometimes fought cancer, sometimes didn't. We have a strange mix of seasonal cards ..and sympathy cards, flowers and baskets. She was a nut about Christmas, it's hard to do another one without her. She enforced the 'all occasions captured on film'. Who steps up to be that obnoxious? She had a tough childhood, widowed at an early age , two kids to rear. Not easy. Tina rocked [once you got a few Bartel&James in her]. She wanted to be loved, maybe not realizing how many people did. A lot of criers at the wake, just what I'd want. God bless Tina.

what are you doing right now?

Smack Dab is drinking beer in his underwear. Smack Dab is in his underwear, drinking beer. Smack Dab is blogging about nothing, feel free to ignore. Smack Dab is listening to old vinyl; Sparks/ "Indiscreet" at the moment. Smack Dab is wondering where his neighbors are going all gussied up like the Botswanian royal family. Smack Dab is wondering how to 'send a chrysanthemum', and why he would do that. Smack Dab is new to 'facebook' but totally sucked in. Smack Dab is wondering how his friend Kelly has over a hundred friends while he only has twenty-five. Smack Dab is not a 26 yr. old gorgeous blond female, that's why. Smack Dab is watching his kids play Wii games- out of context they appear severely autistic. Smack Dab is hoping his rosemary plant survives the winter. Smack Dab is musing over the term 'picture window'. Smack Dab is imagining the heightened paranoia officially pardoned turkeys are feeling right now. Smack Dab is tuning out you-wouldn't-believe-what-kind-of-racket. Smack Dab is impressed by how Tori Amos got away with stealing Kate Bush's act. Smack Dab is wondering if Thanksgiving in an Indian casino is any fun. Smack Dab is staying away from the kitchen today. Smack Dab is staying off the highway today. Smack Dab is almost finished posting. Smack Dab is watching another neighbor with a leaf-blower- out of context he too appears severely autistic. Smack Dab is almost ready to stand up and "dance this mess around". Smack Dab is wondering what '44' is doing right now. Smack Dab is contemplating drinking beer in a pair of pants. Smack Dab is contemplating putting on a pair of pants. Smack Dab is pushing 'SAVE'.

letter to the editor

Have faith, "...losing respect.."(Nov.15). You are witnessing yet another "revision of American history"- this one not as intent on glorifying narratives from the past as it is on creating new ones which all may be privileged to participate in, comment on, and hold up as an example of ourselves for the future. Without dismissing your perception, nor confirming or denying the truth of what is written as history, I point to the last administration as a clear example of greed, secrecy, and unchecked power attempting to present- as history- a narrative of wealth and opportunity few of us have realized. I have as deep a regard for the Presidents you have mentioned- their role in shaping the freedoms we enjoy cannot be understated. Felled cherry trees and log cabin bunk-mates aside, many of these freedoms have come at the expense of peoples of other nations as well as of our own. To ignore suffering and injustice where and how ever it occurs for the sake of national pride is a "glorious history" I do not celebrate. The feeling of the country right now (!) as we face economic and global uncertainty is that, with this new President, we are offered a chance to acknowledge our failures and move forward. Maybe we do this as a collection of fractured self-interests, as sniping partisans of one party or another, as people who resent other people for their language and culture, but I have greater hopes for our nation than that. We are constantly in the process of determining one just law to place ahead of the last to ensure that failures from the past are not perpetuated or revisited on citizens of this country whose advantages, despite the language of our founding documents, are fewer probably than your own. There's a lot of glorious history out there. Much of it from civilizations at points similar to our own who could never have predicted their own demise. But I remain hopeful that given this new opportunity, with the transparency in government we need in order to participate fully, with an understanding of other nations as people not so unlike our own, and with an earnest regard for the planet that supports us all, we will succeed.

joe the DemoIndePublican

As I predicted (see May 2007;"Buzzed"), he is just not funny anymore.