AKA Abraham Bacoln

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time as well. I was listening to the album Guero by Beck a while back (read: months ago), and I found myself marveling at the lyrics. Yeah, I know, Jon, I just said the other day that lyrics are pretty low on my list of things I pay attention to while listening to music. This time I was listening, however.

Anyway the point is that when you just grab snippets of lyrics from Guero they’re remarkably Waitsian. I decided to make a little quiz and have you choose which was which, and then I never got around to it. However, having just completed The Chronological Waits Challenge I figured it was an appropriate time to do this.

I just looked up the lyrics online and snagged some from:
A.) Guero by Beck
B.) Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits

Now see I’m assuming that to anyone who is not immediately familiar with both artists that these will be pretty much indistinguishable, and for anyone that is just low-level familiar with both it’ll be the same. And of course for anyone that knows one from the other it should be easy. Or, you know, this is what I think, but my perception is tainted as this is my idea and I culled the lyrics myself.

So here you go. Feel free to comment on which you think is which. I changed the spacing to cut up the flows and make you concentrate on the words themselves.

I’ll give the answers tomorrow if I remember.

1.) See me kickin the door with my boots, broke down out in a ditch of old rubbish. Snakes and bones in the back of your room handing out a confection of venom. Heaven’s drunk from the poison you use. Charm the wolves with the eyes of a gambler. Now I see it’s a comfort to you.

2.) I rolled down the national stroll and with a big fat paycheck strapped to my hip sack and a shore leave wristwatch underneath my sleeve.

3.) With her hands tied back her rags are burnin’, calling out from a landfilled life. Scrawling her name up on the ceiling, throw a coin in the fountain of dust.

4.) I’d drag all that I owned down the dirt road to find you. And my shoes, worn-out and used, they can’t take me much farther.

5.) There’s a rumblin’ groan down below: It’s a place I’ve found. There’s a world going on underground.

6.) Walking to the other side with the devil trying to take my mind and my soul’s just a silhouette on the ashes of a cigarette.

7.) And the window is busted and the landlord ain’t home and Butch joined the army. Yeah that’s where he’s been and the jackhammer’s diggin’ up the sidewalks again.

8.) Sometimes the jail can’t chain the cell and the rain’s too plain to tell all alone by a barren well. Scarecrow’s only scaring himself.

9.) Well I slept in the holler of a dry creek bed and I tore out the buckets from a red Corvette.

10.) I’m coming over. See me down at the station by the lane with my hands in my pocket, jingling a wish coin that I stole from a fountain that was drownin’ all the cares in the world.

11.) I hung my rain-soaked jacket on some old barbed wire, poured cold rusty water on a miserable fire.

12.) Some need diamonds, some need love. Some need cards, some need luck. Some need dollar bills lining their clothes. All I need is two white horses in a line.

13.) Fourteen miles away from a landfill grave, never pawned my watch and chain to the landlord living inside my head. Never paid my rent ’til the lights went dead.

No cheating. Tell me what you think or how you did.

If you’re not a Tom Waits fan, you can stop reading as this will probably bore you to death. In fact, you all can probably stop reading as I’m mainly writing this for myself but hey, if you keep going you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I will also warn you that I do not have an impressive vocabulary regarding music, I don’t study it, so if all of this seems like a shallow dive into a very deep pool, well, I told you not to read it.

If you are a Waits fan I highly suggest you try this for yourself.

In 2006 I was driving from Portland, OR to Cookeville, TN, a 2400-mile trip that took me four days. I decided at some point that listening to my entire Tom Waits discography in chronological order would be a grand idea. Turns out it was a profoundly stupid idea because I was seriously not in the right mental state to absorb that much Waits. I got all the way to Frank’s Wild Years (1987) before I had to stop and listen to something lighthearted to cure my funk lest I stop in some podunk town and buy a shotgun and trade my Camry for a rusty Ford and run off into the woods.

I’ve been wondering for a day or two now what prompted me to revisit this experiment just recently and I honestly haven’t the slightest idea. All I know is that I was listening to Filipino Box Spring Hog off of Mule Variations (1999) and it struck me that doing the Chronological Tom Waits right then was a great idea.

To give you an idea the scope of this thing, I apparently have 349 songs that span the distance from 1971 to 2006 – a total of 21.3 hours of music. That’s … that’s a long stretch of Waits.

To further complicate things, I don’t actually listen to music very often while sitting at my computer. I typically compute in silence, especially when I’m working on a paper or something like it. Not to mention that I always have to mute my music any time I’m watching a video, and I don’t always remember to turn it back on when the video is done, since I’m accustomed to computing in silence. Also I pause the music every time I leave the room, because I intend to hear every bit of all these songs. Once again, sometimes I don’t remember to turn it back on.

All that is just to explain why I am just now finishing up my journey. Right now Orphans (disc 2) is wrapping up, leaving the 20-something songs on disc 3. That means it took me from September 30th to October 7th to complete this (to me) Herculean task.

Oh, let me state that I am glad as hell for my iPod and the CD player in my car. Without an occasional break from Waits while on campus or driving around I think I might very well have gone mad, comatose, developed major depressive disorder, all three, or something worse. Seriously, I love the hell out of Waits’ music (obviously) but man, the overwhelmingly melancholiac nature of his songs just gets to me in a fundamental way.

And I wasn’t even upset or down when I started this – it wasn’t the result of a pity party or anything. Quite the opposite, I mean, Filipino Box Spring Hog is one of his stompiest shoutiest songs, makes me feel like going outside with a lead pipe and a blowtorch. I guess maybe it was a test to see if I could get through it.

Okay, so what did I learn?

I learned that I absolutely love everything from the beginning of his career (The Early Years / Closing Time (1971/1973)) straight through Heartattack and Vine (1980). When I first started listening to Waits, thanks to Trey, I started out with the hard stuff, the Island Years, when he was just damn weird. After cutting my teeth on this kind of controlled insanity I had absolutely no interest in his bar ballad phase. Even as recently as 2003 or so I still wasn’t very familiar with his earlier stuff. I remember a time at a party that I heard something off of Closing Time and I thought, “Jesus, whoever this is sure is doing a poor Waits impersonation.”

I know, I know. It’s hard to admit to that kind of ignorance.

But anyway, yes, I absolutely love those albums now. In fact, I’d probably turn to one of them before any of his later stuff, with a few exceptions.

I also learned that Kathleen Brennan (his wife and co-writer on many many songs) really did help him transform himself completely. After listening to 1971 to 1980, the intense and disconcerting rush of 1983’s Swordfishtrombones is, to put it mildly, quite shocking. No wonder everyone got all freaked out upon its release. Since this is the album with which I started I never really understood what the big deal was until now.

I learned that Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs (1985), and Frank’s Wild Years (1987) work so so so much better as a trilogy. I honestly somehow had never bothered to listen to them all in a row and in one night.

Aside from a few scattered songs there really isn’t that much that captivates me from 1988 to 1999 (encompassing Big Time through Mule Variations). I mean it’s all good, yeah, but none of the albums just really grab me and shake me like the others did.

I think that if someone said, “Pick two of his albums and that’s all you can have from now until forever” I’d probably reflexively reach for Alice and Blood Money (both 2002). They seem to me so opposed and yet intertwined. There’s something about the common themes of madness and love that totally hook me.

Real Gone (2004) and I never really got along.

And finally, I am now finally suffering my way through the three discs of Orphans (2006). Yeah, I said it. I don’t really like … well, no, there are a few songs that I absolutely love. However, somehow – and this is hard to say – the rest of the songs just feel like filler. I’m quite sure that all three could be compressed into one killer album. Problem is that this perfect album would have different songs for every person, I guess. It just seems over-reaching, perhaps. I know that’s the point, it’s a gigantic mash of various styles and stories. It’s a stew of everything. I guess I just like something more cohesive; all three together just seems like a serving of leftovers. I’ve hardly listened to disc 3 at all – it’s my least favorite by far. I can stand one spoken word piece or recitation or incantation per album, tops.

Finally, the songs I really really wished I could have skipped:
– Potter’s Field, Foreign Affairs (1977)
– Somewhere (From West Side Story), Blue Valentine (1978)
– Sins of my Father, Real Gone (2004)
– Road to Peace, Orphans disc 1 (2006)
– Little Man, Orphans disc 2
– King Kong, Orphans disc 3

The songs that made me mad I was dedicated to the concept of going straight through, because I always want to listen to them more than once:
– Grapefruit Moon, Closing Time (1973)
– I Can’t Wait to Get Off Work, Small Change (1976)
– Cinny’s Waltz, Foreign Affairs (1977)
– Jockey Full of Bourbon, Rain Dogs (1985)
– Yesterday is Here, Frank’s Wild Years (1987)
– Cold Cold Ground, Frank’s Wild Years
– The Earth Died Screaming, Bone Machine, (1992)
– Goin’ Out West, Bone Machine
– Walk Away, Dead Man Walking soundtrack (1995)
– Filipino Box Spring Hog, Mule Variations (1999)
– No One Knows I’m Gone, Alice (2002)
– Everything Goes to Hell, Blood Money (2002)
– Hoist That Rag, Real Gone (2004)
– Lucinda, Orphans disc 1 (2006)
– Tell it to Me, Orphans disc 2 (2006)

Trivia:
Children’s Story from Orphans disc 3 is almost word-for-word from a bit of dialogue from the 1979 film Woyzeck by Werner Herzog. It may very well be in the original (unfinished) play – I have never seen the play itself. Waits’ album Blood Money is his soundtrack to Robert Wilson’s 2002 adaptation of the play. If you like Blood Money I highly suggest you watch the 1979 movie.

That’s it. Orphans is almost done. I can see my driveway from here.

So this guy Steve Thomas (and that may even be his real name) did some fantastic – no, wait, mind-blowing designs for interstellar travel based off the look of those old WPA national park posters.

For example:

You can see and purchase all of them in his Zazzle shop.

I am seriously contemplating just how many I can afford to put up in my place before I look like a world-class sci-fi dork.

Well, it’s only a quarter after two in the afternoon but I’m already pretty sure that this is the coolest thing I’ll see today: Leslie Levings’ Beastlies – a series of tiny little creatures all lovingly handmade. You can even buy them at her Etsy shop as they’re created. Since there are currently only two listed I’m guessing they move pretty quickly once they hit the sales floor.

I wish I had the inspiration to create continuously like that, and with such consistent quality.

I decided to make this a real Saturday morning by watching some of the best old Looney Tunes there are – the Bugs / Daffy / Elmer trilogy.

Rabbit Fire
Rabbit Seasoning
Duck! Rabbit, Duck!

If you can watch all three of those without laughing out loud once then we’re no longer friends.

Anniversary dinner

Originally uploaded by Brother O’Mara

My parents just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary and my contribution was to cook a nice lunch for them. I don’t really have much to say about the food other than I thought it was great, they thought it was great, therefore it was great.

Apparently Angie said something something something about me not posting something something enough, but I don’t remember what it was that I was told she said. I’m posting these recipes because I want to, not because I’m scared of her.

Because I’m not.

Peach-glazed chicken thighs:
2 large peaches, peeled and chopped
6 chicken thighs
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper (freshly-ground, duh)
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp honey
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 large peach peeled and sliced
2 tbsp sliced green onions

1. Mash 2 peaches in bowl with fork. Add chicken, toss to coat. Chill covered for 2 to 6 hours, stirring occasionally.
2. Bring chicken to room temperature, drain, pat dry, season with salt and pepper.
3. Heat the oil and cook the chicken skin-side down for 5 minutes until brown and crisp.
4. Turn the chicken.
5. Bake chicken at 350 for 15 minutes or until cooked through. Drain.
6. Heat (in skillet) the chicken over high heat until it begins to sizzle. Add the honey and toss to coat. Cook for one minute or until the honey begins to brown and stick to the bottom of the skillet.
7. Stir constantly.
8. Add vinegar and peach slices and stir to loosen any brown bits.
9. Cook for a minute or two, then plate.
10. Eat.
11. Wait, no, make sure the following has been prepared before you sit down:

Grilled red potato salad:
4 lbs new potatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste (what else would it be for?)
12 oz sliced bacoln
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup coarsely-chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 cup crumbled feta cheese

1. Boil the potatoes until tender. Drain. Let cool. Halve.
2. Put potatoes in dish, coat with olive oil, add salt and pepper.
3. Grill for two or three minutes per side.
4. Cook BACOLN until crispy (which goes without saying as flaccid bacon is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord) and then set it aside to de-grease and cool. Reserve 2 tbsp of the drippings.
5. Cook the onion in the drippings until nice and soft
6. Stir in vinegar, olive oil, sugar. Cook that stuff until the sugar is dissolved.
7. Add onion to potatoes. Crumble bacoln. Add that to the potatoes as well.
8. Add parsley. Toss to mix.
9. Put it on a platter and top it with the feta.
10. But first, make sure you’ve prepared:

Pea salad with pecans and bacoln:
20 oz now-thawed-but-previously-frozen baby peas
1 cup chopped celery
3/4 cup chopped pecans
2 green onions, minced
1/2 cup sour cream (don’t buy the cheap stuff)
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp garlic salt
more salt and pepper (to taste, yes)
6 slices bacoln cooked, crispy, and crumbled.

1. Stir all those things together and eat ’em.

NOW you can enjoy the very same dinner I cooked.

(but I made changes to these recipes but I’m not going to tell you what they were so that you can never steal my secrets)

(also I like just kind of arbitrarily dividing the steps of the recipe. It’s how my mind works, and if the divisions make sense to you then you should probably seek help)

Congratulations, Mom and Dad. Here’s to 40 more!

HEY SO A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CALLING ME ABOUT MY MYSTERY AND ASKING IF I’VE FIGURED IT OUT AND I JUST FOUND OUT MY PARENTS DIDN’T LEAVE THE STUFF SO MYSTERY IS STILL ON OKAY GOTTA GO FIND MY MAGNIFYING GLASS AND PIPE BYE

I have never in my life seen a Thomas Kinkade painting that I liked. There’s something super-saccharine and kind of grossly Gatlinburg about them. They just rub me the wrong way. Then a year or two ago I read this LA Times article about what a jackass Kinkade really is – pissing on a Pooh statue? Seriously? But nothing will top the fact that this man who is known for his garish cabins, waterfalls, lakes, mountains, and otherwise generally outdoorsy (and radioactive) scenes is now offering a Nascar painting. Yes, now there’s a Kinkade for both the missus and the mister. I suggest putting the Daytona one over the television and the cabin over the couch.

In news that isn’t making me want to throw up, I’m sorry I haven’t been taking as many pictures. I’ve been using film lately and I’m not as adventurous with my shots when I know it’s going to cost me money every time I push that jolly candy-like button. Also I’ve been spending more time outdoors going bouldering, which I would go so far as to say is my new hobby. I’m trying to get as much of it in now as I can since I don’t know where I’m going to end up after I graduate and therefore I don’t know if there’ll be a place to climb.

For those that aren’t in the know, and I honestly don’t know where you fall (yes you), bouldering is rock climbing with the emphasis on the technical, not on the altitude. That’s fine by me, since I’m scared of heights anyway. I get to go out and wear out my body (and turn my fingers into hamburger since all we have around here is sandstone) and be able to drop once I’m exhausted without worrying if the person belaying me is paying attention and so forth. Plus I get this great feeling of accomplishment when I chose a problem, a route or traverse that’s too hard for me, or so I think. Then I work at it all day and if I get it by the end that just makes me feel fantastic.

I have to thank my old friend Alex for getting us into it, and I mean us because there are a few more of my friends that have been going just as much as I have. I used to love going to the rock climbing gym but I never felt proficient or even that I was getting better. Alex is a great teacher and therefore I’m learning and getting better every single time I go out.

Past that it feels like I’m spending a huge chunk of my time reading Don Quixote. It’s fun, but time-consuming. I’d rather be bouldering.

Or setting Kinkade paintings on fire.

FACT:

When I went to my front door this morning there were things sitting outside my door. These things were, in no particular order:

1. A plastic shopping bag containing the following:
1a. Dry shampoo for cats
1b. Flea powder for cats
1c. Flea spray for cats
2. A plastic tub, formerly used to hold some sort of Italian pastrycookie things, containing the following:
2a. Cat litter
2b. Hopefully nothing else

So! No note! Here are some facts:

A. My parents have been known to leave things for me on my front porch.
B. My parents own two cats

Therefore I do not think it was my parents. THEREFORE MYSTERY.

MYSTERY I TELL YOU.

For all of you who are interested (raise your hands if you don’t mind – let’s see, that’s … two) school is back in session.

–Final semester of college? Check.
–Only twelve hours? And one of those classes is independent study? Check.
–Reading the entirety of Don Quixote in the original seventeenth-century Spanish (ugh)? Check.
–Two econ professors in one day referring to marketing majors as “those people with crayons and coloring books”? Check.
–No class on Fridays? Check.
–Drizzly nasty rain for the past two days perfectly coinciding with the first two days of class, signaling an official end to summer, not that I did anything but work anyway? Check.
–Condescending yet amusing professor (again, econ) saying, “This is the only undergrad class they’ll let me teach. I love teaching undergrad. It’s like kicking puppies.” Check.
–Overwhelming sense of well-being and joy even though it may appear as though my list is filled with kind of negative things? Check.
–Overwhelming desire to get this over with and get out of town? Three check marks. Maybe four.

But seriously I’m really excited – I have three professors who are all very entertaining and actually enjoy teaching, which means that unlike previous semesters I won’t be bored out of my mind. I only work M/W/F which means that when I get out of class on T/Th I can actually go do things before the light disappears. And no class on Fridays means that my loving and lenient boss won’t mind if I take the occasional three-day weekend to go do something fantastic.

The rest of the plan, just so you know, is to graduate in mid-December then spend the end of the month enjoying the holidays and saying goodbye to all my friends, and then come the new year I’ll be going off to my new job, wherever it may be. I have an idea or three.