Love Cats

I was in a polite mood, or else it wouldn't have lasted for twenty minutes, but on my attempt to purchase cat food and litter at the store last night I was accosted by crazy cat lady.

The crazy cat lady has achieved almost archetypal status, if we don't personally know one, we certainly know who they are. They are lonely, probably unkempt and smell vaguely of things people shouldn't smell of. There are degrees of crazy in the crazy cat lady categorization which seem to range between still able to sort of function in the outside world and shut-ins speaking in tongues.

My specimen didn't exactly look homeless, but looked like she had seen better days. Her glasses were five shades of fucked up and she spoke in low, slow and even tones, occasionally stumbling on her words. Her hair appeared clean, but looked as though she washed it with dish soap.

It started with me noting the sales price on the Arm and Hammer kitty litter to myself and her letting me kindly know that the clumping litter causes cancer in cats. As does flea spray and cat food, unless of course you make it yourself. You can buy the natural cat food at stores, like that one on Twelfth. I tried to go there, but I've been trying to find out how to make my own, you know? Have you seen that guy that's on Martha Stewart that talks about pets? {Slowly shake my head}. He loves animals, you can just tell. And one time he did a commercial for kitty litter and I wrote him a letter {I'm sure you did} asking him about it and how kitty litter gives cats cancer and why would he do this commercial. He denied doing it, and I didn't want to argue with him, but I saw that he did it. Do you ever watch Oprah? {Again, slowly shake my head}. You don't watch Oprah? {As if this were akin to raping one of her cancer cats}.

When I told her that I was typically at work when Oprah was on, I was kindly informed that it is played twice in the Seattle area, and where I could watch the evening edition and on which station (including the call letters). I was then treated to the tales of her two cats which developed cancer, and the various vet stories, and how she had apparently catnapped her neighbor's orange tabby, and lord only knows what else because I started attempting to block out the crazy by the sheer force of my mental powers.

I tried all my polite attempts to extricate myself from the crazy cat lady trap (including slowly walking away, to which she would slowly follow me) only to be met and bested. Bitch was good. But after twenty minutes... Let me write that again, TWENTY MINUTES! I had to firmly tell my feline queen that I had to be on my way.

Kelly Bean came up with the idea of getting cards that I could pass out to the crazies, and quickly escape by saying, "I would really love to talk to you, call me". It was my idea to put the number for recorded time message on said cards.

Ultimately, I could tell that she was a lonely lady who had no one else to talk to besides her abducted cat. I felt a little bad for her, and she didn't seem dangerous. Was there also that brief flash of recognition, that precognitive glimpse of myself as an old man hanging around the Denny's and telling the tired waitresses about how things were done in my day?

Maybe, but personally I see myself going out in a blaze of ill-advised glory, and taking more than a few people with me.


Oh, by the by... I'm taking a little time off, and I don't know how readily available a computer will be, so there may not be many posts next week (if at all). Sorry, but a full report will follow.

For Pete's Sake

Watching the local news is an act of agony for me. It makes me want to pick up something, anything, and fling it with force at the television set. Luckily, the only liftable items tend to be the cats, and I somehow realize that destroying the TV doesn't destroy the problem. And the problem? The "news" tends to be bits sandwiched in between pill commercials that are presented by the most vapid, radio-voiced morons that were apparently available. Attractive heads that can manage to tell the most awful story of death and anguish and then immediately turn with that plastic smile and tell us all a miracle story about puppies. It always feels like a skit, like a performer imitating what a bad local news anchor does.

And the "news"? Updates on the celebrities of Grey's Anatomy that are shooting a scene or two actually in Seattle, weather reports that read like missives of the apocalypse, and just general nonsense intended to terrify.

And the national news? Not a lot better. I love when the conservatives complain about the liberal media. Where the fuck are they? Why are they not bringing up the evils of the war that we're in? Why aren't they vilifying the insipid and criminal "president" that we have? Why aren't they making the connections when reporting that weather systems around the world are fucked and glaciers are disappearing to the fact that our insane consumption of fossils fuel and our pollution are more than likely causing these problems?

And this is why I miss Pete Wilson. Not the near fascist ex-governor of California, this Pete Wilson:

Pete Wilson was a local newscaster in San Francisco. He eventually left television news when the NBC affiliate he was on was dismantled (NBC then started being only broadcast on cable - a national network, only available on cable in a major city...) and began a talk radio show. I haven't listened to his show, nor can I say that I completely agree with his politics, but this is why I love Pete Wilson:

Pete Wilson would report something fairly ridiculous, and would fully and knowingly roll his eyes on the camera and sigh. A story of some mindless cow suing a major corporation instead of taking responsibility for their own actions? He'd roll his eyes as if to say, "effing people, can you believe it?" If Pete Wilson were forced to read the same constant copy of Tom Cruise's antics, he would more than likely sigh before flashing a sardonic look to the viewers. He would quite often even throw in a snide comment about how ridiculous the situation was, and that he actually just had to tell us about this.

And he just had that every-guy look to him, like he was some business friend of your dad's.

Ah Pete, you were the greatest. I miss ya.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: Driving Me Backwards by Brian Eno

All That Jazz

I remember hearing John Coltrane and being knocked out. There were all those insanely woven sax notes smacking me around and not stopping even after I was lying on the floor and moaning. I didn't stop to ask myself or try to figure out why I was so taken, I just let it be enough that the man did it for me.

Years later, checking out the Jazz miniseries on PBS, I watched Wynton Marsalis speak about the music and I couldn't help grinning from ear to ear. The man was absolutely beautiful in his love for it, just life affirming. And I realized something while I watched and listened, something I felt like I should have known all the time; that life is jazz.

I know it to be true, and it's not my job to convince anyone or push my point of view. And while I don't want to explain away the magic of this simple statement, I want to point something out. Most jazz compositions start with the basic tune of the piece, move into the band's trading off of solos and improvised pieces, only to be resolved once again with the main tune (however brief).

This echoes life in that we are born and we improvise our way through life only to be resolved in the end.

The point is, it's what you do between those recognizable bits at the beginning and end that make the world interesting. There are people that are happy to tread obvious ground, and I certainly have no place to mock, the world needs Kenny G's. But I would like to live my life like a Coltrane solo - one of those pieces where you stand agog thinking, "where the fuck is he going?" before dropping back in with the group only take off again on rusty and stellar wings. I hope to look back at the end fulfilled by the joy and the grief and the love of friends. I hope to look back at the end and think, "yeah, not too bad."

Here’s hoping…

What Can't Be Erased (Again)

So, I walked up through downtown and kept going straight where I normally turn right to head up the hill and home. I had left in the morning without a jacket as it was warm, but it began raining as I broke into the streets filled with pricey boutiques, pricey restaurants and uberhip bars. It was still warm, so the rain felt like something out of a tropical climate, something blown in from New Orleans. The rain felt absolutely right. I was heading to a record store to see one of the handful of solo acoustic shows that Jason Lytle of Grandaddy was doing around the country.

Grandaddy, as I have stated before, is now no more.

He played, and it was sweet. He added the blooping keyboard sounds vocally to his rendition of Crystal Lake. I laughed and wiped rainwater off the back of my neck. He finished up with a song called Levitz (that I'm pretty sure I've heard at nearly every Grandaddy show I've been to) that he managed to make sound so sad.

Jason was going to hang around and sign stuff. I didn't particularly care about getting anything signed, but I wanted to take the opportunity to tell him thank you for the music, and that I would miss the band.

(Also, in reference to my kind Seattle record store clerk post: I picked up a new Mountain Goats EP and the girl ringing me up excitedly asked if I'd heard anything off of it. She told me they were coming to town soon and we talked about how great they are to see live... She was ridiculously nice and gave me a handful of Grandaddy buttons.)

They gave away posters for the signing, so I figured I could have Jason sign one of those. I told him hi, I told him that we'd seen the band a large number of times in San Francisco, I told him thanks and that we would miss the band. He seemed like such a nice, sort of shy guy. Biffy brought up seeing them at This Ain't No Picnic, a show down in SoCal from a number of years back. He surprised me by remembering something particular about the show. I always think that guys in the band don't remember stupid things that the folks watching the show do...

He asked if that was the show where the band before them continued playing past their allotted time and Grandaddy finally just started playing over them. He also told us that he had gotten really drunk the night before, had fallen asleep in some ditch and woke up covered with ants.

He seemed like a very sweet guy. I thanked him again and shook his hand goodbye, stepping into the vaguely tropical evening that was heavy with moisture. I was glad that I got to say goodbye, and still feel a little melancholy knowing that the band is done.

I also highly recommend the final G'daddy album, Just Like The Fambly Cat. It's good stuff...


Confidential to the CBGB group: Congrats on 7 years and going strong! I love all y'all.

Just Roaming

I was wandering around the storage rooms in my head, and thinking about how memories are archived up in there like some big and nifty warehouse.

I remember something in particular which starts shotgunning open all these other files, sending a flurry of memories raining down, like old triplicate forms blown by fans.

I begin to worry a bit about the sections of said warehouse where memories begin to morph with other people’s stories, or complete fictions to begin with.

I worry that sometimes I can’t tell. I worry about what happens to my past when my memories become corroded.

I start to think of that section of the warehouse as becoming overrun by strange, organic material, slowly melting formerly strong foundations into something completely new.

That’s kind of exciting…

Then I think that my head will begin to look like this if I continue to obsess over how my brain functions:

Sorry, that was weird.

Next time I’ll tell you about meeting Jason Lytle at Easy Street.

Large Rooms

I was walking home and thinking about the impending move that will eventually happen, and how disorienting it should feel to know that you will not settle into the home you are in. We (and by “we", I mean me, I'm just lumping you into my experiences. Lucky!) have gotten used to this quasi-nomadic life of moving from home to home.

I think about families raised in the same small apartment, say in New York, where they live for their entire lives. I wonder how they do that and not begin to feel claustrophobic, how they don't begin to feel smothered by the walls and the belongings that make up the place that shelters them from the outside.

I think, generally speaking, that we (again - lumping y'all in) tend to jump to larger and larger places. It's difficult for me to remember the cozy feeling of me and Biffy's tiny one bedroom in San Francisco. I only remember that stifling, claustrophobic feeling at the end, like I was in a moldy, but somewhat comfortably furnished prison cell.

And then I wonder, 'cause this is how my mind works, if we who were raised in the American west have adjusted to so much wide open space that that's how we feel comfortable.

But then, like a bad dream remembered the next morning, I think about large rooms that I've been in and how they begin to make me feel uncomfortable as well. If I'm in a room that feels too large, I begin to feel as I can only assume that those people who fear leaving their houses must feel, like there is not enough to keep me contained, like I may actually pull apart in all directions.

But then I began thinking about how beautiful it was to hear the Dead doing And We Bid You Good Night all a capella and sweet.

Apparently my mind likes to derail itself in mid thought process...

Looms Large

It's those weird, brackish weeks, it's the in between days, it's the onset... Summer has the door pushed open a crack, trying to connive spring into giving up the room. And people are all goofy - egging summer on and letting spring know that it's time to vacate, bitch!

I worry for folks that the bottom may fall out, that spring may hold tight and let loose with some more rain and a couple of those days that you expect to be dazzlers, but end up so cold that your nipples would break the sidewalk were you to fall down. And people get weather crazy up here, pushed no doubt by the weather reporters on the local news. We're having a few days of unseasonably warm weather (high 80's in some places - not big shakes having spent a number of summers in Southern California), and the grinning idiot faces of the telecasters actually called this system, "the first heat wave of the year". They touted it to a degree that you expected houses to explode and small animals and babies to burst into flames if you didn't keep them iced down.

But, I gotta be honest, it makes me feel like a younger man this warm, oncoming summer weather. I am reminded of desperate, sweaty hikes to Bidwell Creek to bask in the heady combination of cold water and hot air. I am reminded of shady porches and beers and cheap and grilled food and heavy laughter. I am reminded of the refusal to give up the day as there is still a glimmer of light in the sky so late.

I'm a little giddy right now. All of the cold and blue water surrounding this city is continuously calling for me to get in. And I'm trying so hard to ignore the warning voice in my head, telling me that come August I'm going to be so sick of attempting to sleep in a hot and stuffy room that I will curse summer and its coconut scented air for ever coming. I just want to float on this happy, seasonal feeling right now.

And here is the audience participation portion of the post: What is your favorite summer album? Which album, which band makes you think of summer?