Straight.com Case strips it down: an interview with Ms. Case on her career and recent accolades. It's interesting that she notes that Blacklisted is the record she picks as her first mature piece - while I personally adore everything she's done, the songs on Furnace Room Lullaby are the ones I respond to most strongly.
Oh, man, having a houseful of senior citizens certainly can keep one busy!
Viv's folks have been visiting for an eventful two weeks and went home today. I love them dearly and miss them already. It's good for my noggin to be around Spanish speakers.
In other news, Karel's gonna get a visit tomorrow afternoon; I found out circuitously that Caleb Schaber is a) from Indiana and b) in Iraq picking up work as a stringer; and we saw Bryan Singer's Superman tonight, which I did enjoy.
Also, I am up past my bedtime.
NYT: Star Trek Fans, Deprived of a Show, Recreate the Franchise on Digital Video. Now Playing to Wired to the NYT.
He kept getting closer and closer and closer until he first perched on the rearview mirror and kept ducking his head in to drool on me with his large beak. then he hopped onto the hood of the car and kept up the smae thing. We did give him some granola bar.
When we stopped feeding him, he attempted to peck at a parking decal on the windshield.
Well, I dropped in on my pal today to pick up a guitar of mine he's been using lately and bought a dining table from him.
He's a sweet, caring man with a strong musical gift who seems to have made it to the threshold of middle age without realizing how his appreciation of marijuana sets him up for extended bouts of depressive, smoky bouts of unemployment. I have no idea how to help him; it's clear his depressive and sensitive nature pre-exists the pot but he really lurves the green and it does him, as far as I can see, no favors.
Tomorrow at early-thirty I'll begin helping my neighbor build a retaining wall between our properties.
Today I heard that a dear friend who has, um, some responsibility issues, is getting evicted from his apartment.
Moments ago, as Viv and I emerged from our car after wheeling to the drive and carport, we were struck by the ungodly ruckus a great mob of airborne crows were raising. I remarked to Viv that the crows must be worked up by the encroaching cloud cover, as we have noted with interest the wave of bird life that overtakes our hill when a squall line comes through.
Something seemed different tonight, however. The center of the sound seemed to shift from moment to moment and from every direction, crows were streaming toward this shifting center. As the focal point passed to the south I noted a particularly large crow headed for the center of the pack from somewhere near my yard. As I watched this crow, the bird's wings appeared to move somehow more slowly than the birds I took to be in the distance. Just as I was musing on this, the bird banked sharply and my error of perspective was revealed in a flash of white.
The spread tailfeathers flashed against the dark clouds as the bird braked and banked. It was a fully-grown bald eagle running like hell to escape a growing mob of crows. As the eagle wheeled closer to the treeline, I exclaimed to Viv. The feathered dogfight had dropped beneath the trees, probably about twenty feet above the ground in the area where the birds ducked out of sight.
I have often been bemused and somewhat heartened by the sight of one or two crows doggedly climbing to harry a hawk or eagle. In my experience the bird of prey generally climbs rapidly beyond the reach of the smaller birds and glides away, the crows breaking off their attack at that time.
Viv and I continued to follow the center of the birds' attention as it traveled in an arc around our position, until it finally emerged across the street. The eagle's distinctive plumage was clearly visible; I involuntarily shouted "Get some altitude! Climb!" as the bird and fifty or sixty crows vanished again to our north, in the direction of a large graveyard.
As the sound of the crows' hue and cry faded into the distance, the rest of the birds in the neighborhood began to twitter and call and hoot and whistle with frantic vigor.
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Well into summer, I can see that our neighbor's fruiting trees will yield a generous harvest of Granny Smiths and that his sickly, aged cherry tree is doing just fine, with a batch of plump cherries at every juncture where the tree still fruits.
My own fruit trees are not nearly as happy. Three large cherry trees are fruiting, but the fruit is only about the size of the pit and is being gleefully devoured by the bewinged dinosaurs that frequent the area. A smaller apple is not apparently fruiting.
The largest of the cherries is comparable in size to the untended and grand cherry back at the apartment building, which produced bushels of fruit even under sustained corvid assault. That tree also produced a volunteer seedling that grew from a sprout to a fruiting tree of twenty feet in the ten years we lived there.
That reminds me, I need to swing by and pick a peck, for eating and for planting. I bet I could get my old landlords to let me dig up the smaller tree, come to think of it. Word is that they are not renting the vacancies - just letting the leases lapse to ease sale prospects, which I believe will mean demolition.
That makes me pretty sad.
Back to cherries: clearly, this calls for research!
Readersheds.co.uk, in which the gentle mens folk of Granbretagne share views and opinions on a 'shedload' of one another's garden sheds.
Well, after a couple weeks using the kindly-provided Nokia 6600 I find myself really, really missing the Treo and getting it fixed or getting a new one has clumb plumb up my list. Let's hope my cell provider refrains from the kind of fuckery recently inflicted on Agent Cooper.
In our backyard, there is a five-foot pole that arcs to create a hook. We've hung a birdfeeder from it and have enjoyed watching the local critters - many varieties of bird and several squirrels. On Wednesday i had the unpleasant duty of doublebagging the remains of one of the squirrels, apparent moments after the little guy's head was flattened by a passing motorist.
While there are plenty of crows in the neighborhood and a growing contingent of starlings, these last two have more or less not chosen to waste valuable garbage-picking time on such dry, tasteless food as birdseed.
This morning as Viv and I nursed our coffee, I was standing in the rear window of the house, wondering why there were no birds clustered about the feeder. From a bush at the side of the house strolled a small black rat with rather large ears. The rat nosed about under the feeder for a moment as I got Viv's attention. She immediately began making horrified exclamations.
As we watched, the rat hopped onto the pole and quickly, surefootedly, clambered all the way up it as we shrieked in dismay. The rat peered about for a moment and then ran down the pole and across the lawn to the bush.
A few moments later, he returned and this time halted partway up the pole before climbing up and over and down onto the bird feeder. From the roof of the feeder he jumped back to the pole, edged down a bit, and then leapt onto the feeding tray.
As this was happening, the usual cast of birds and squirrels were there, but keeping a consternated distance as the rodent fed. Eventually he ran away.
As it happens, I recently finished reading Rats, a personal natural history of the rat in the context of Manhattan. One point I recalled was that if you see a rat out in the open in broad daylight, it means there's a problem in the rat population, such as a food shortage or overpopulation. A bit of googling confirmed that the rat we'd seen was of the species known as the roof rat, or black rat. The species prefers to live in trees, bushes, and attics. We have not had the pitter-patter of little rodent feet above us in the dark watches of the night, so presumably the nests are in some of the plentiful trees in the neighborhood.
Further googling regarding trapping outdoor roof rats led to dispiriting news, including the predictable problem of not trapping squirrels and birds in your newly-mounted tree-borne traps. I believe for today I will ignore it and hope it goes away, although my impulse this morning involved purchasing a BB gun.
ChatFX adds a miscellany of video effects to iChat.
I actually pitched a similar concept to a video-oriented software producer about two years ago but nothing came of it. The specific possibility I see for software such as this is not so much the predictable, silly uses of it. I see the possibility of adding an additional layer of composed meaning to the videoconference interaction. I visualize participants adapting cinematic techniques to the image - zooms, jumpcuts, wide-screen ratios, moody slow pans and the like.
Walking around in Ballard tonight, we came across the fiddler of The Tallboys. On arriving home I'm pleased to hear their own version of Henry Lee.
After a hard four hours of yardwork, for some reason I smell the distinctive aroma of pin oak, a tree that dominated the Northern Indiana woodlands of my earliest youth. The vast quantities of leaves and acorns the enormous trees deposited on our yard and the expansive, forested ravines over the back fence mulched over the winter into a slick, layered goop, and that's what I smell this afternoon.
A night ago or so I was flipping stations on the radio when I heard the unmistakable howl of Dave Alvin and the Blasters. I haven't really written about it here, but Alvin is one of my favorite songwriters and I have an especially strong appreciation of his work with the Blasters, his earliest stuff.
Night wolves moan
the winter hills are black
I'm all alone
sitting in the back
of a long white Cadillac
Somehow, although the song has apparently been covered by the likes of Dwight Yoakam, I had managed to never hear the Blasters side “Long White Cadillac.” When I stopped on the station, I was halted simply by the happy feel of hearing a beloved artist. Shortly, as happens often enough with Alvin's work, I was paying very careful, wondering attention. The driving feel of the song is in direct contradiction to the lyrics, which focus on solitude, failure, and death, and combine an existential dread with the redemptive imagery of the funeral train that provides a winking subject for many great American pop songs.
Headlights shine
highway fades to black
I'll take my time
in a long white Cadillac
in a long white Cadillac
As I digested this complex work of art, the unmistakable thought crossed my mind: “This song is about the death of Hank Williams.”
One time I had all that I wanted
But it just skipped through my hands
One time I sang away the sorrow
One time I took it like a man
At the time, our internet access was down, and thus I was unable to look into my suspicion. Imagine my satisfaction on googling the song and coming across the link above, on Alvin's website. The last line on the page containing the lyrics?
-Dedicated to Hank Williams
Man, no sooner did the DSL get restored than the server went down, pinned in some perly loop. I hate it when that happens.
And now, internets, while it's great to have you back in my house, I have plans with my wife. Please don't drink all the beer.
One of the potential benefits of living in the Northern Reaches of Seattle is the opportunity to explore the many bargain-priced eateries that cluster along Aurora. Last night, Viv and I had the pleasure of dining at the Szechuan Bean Flower House, which specializes in tofu, Szechuan style.
Overwhelmed by the menu choices, we went with a per-person dinner choice and very much enjoyed the middle-of-the road fare - in huge quantities - we received, including chow mein, sweet and sour pork, and fried rice. The specific thing that made me sure we'll return was the frantic and amused welcome we received from the host, who spared no energy in pointing out that his Tsingtao was cheaper than anyone else's on Aurora and directed our attention to the huge servings we were provided with - easily enough for a family of six.
Personally, I was also attracted by the specials board and printed menu in Chinese. Next time, I'm ordering blind and demanding five stars.
