My 86th Favorite Song of All-time

…and my 86th favorite song of all-time is:

“Steam Engine” by My Morning Jacket

Just an epic, heart-on-sleeve barn-burner from the most interesting band active today.  C’mon, do me and yourself a favor and watch the whole thing.  You won’t regret it:

 

Son:  “Did you always want to be a jeweler, Dad?”

Father:  “I might have wanted to be an artist.  I don’t know.”

Son:  “Why not?”

Father:  “Because I’m a jeweler.”

—from Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

(quote appears in both the film and the novel by Jonathan Safron Foer)

My 87th Favorite Song of All-Time

Click here for an explanation of this list.  Or click here to see all previous entries.

…and my 87th favorite song of all time is:

“There’s an Arc” by Hey Rosetta!

This song exemplifies all the reasons I am way in love with Hey Rosetta!  Mainly, the incredibly heartfelt lyrics that are often about atypical subjects (here, it is not a song about lost love or the like, but about seeing a friend of yours, who you’ve known your whole life, grow up into an unhappy person, and having difficulty reconciling that with your memory of them as a happy child.  Please note the literary but accessible way lyricist Tim Baker pulls this off) coupled with soaring, transcendent music that often ends in a nearly-unbearable crescendo.  I’ve included the studio version, an AMAZING live version done in Tim Baker’s house, and the lyrics.

 

 

 

Don’t you swing like a child,
in a tree,
on a tire,
in 85?
There’s an arc that your feet will ride
on the way between hate and that Sunday fire.

You look so serious.
Why you look so serious?
The night is serving us,
but you look so serious.
And this could be our reward–
this could be it!
This simple Friday night,
where you’re loosening your tie,
but there’s a tightness in your eyes.
You look so serious.
Why do you look so serious?
The night is serving us,
and we’re deserving it.

And this could be our reward!
This could be it
(this could be all we’re owed,
all we’re owed, all we’re getting)
cause if we swing like a child
then we’re always colliding
this time of night,
but our arcs, they could align
(we could align! we could align!)
and over gravity
up comes this kicking child,
this kicking child.

Deconstructed

even through the glass darkly
even on the disappearing page
even with expert testimony to the contrary
even in the fallen logic
even with Victoria’s Secret exposed
even in the NHL
even when sex fails
even as the canon obliterates
even at the abandoned construction site
even as burlesque
even with poison in the baby formula
even with the sequel canceled
even though the food smells funny
even though they joined the NRA
even as we suspect him of knowing more than he’s saying and saying more than he knows
even among the funeral directors
even in January thaw ozone heat
even with Harpo silenced
even with ice in the forecast
even with Republicans in Congress
even with sixty-seven channels for the price of one if you act now
even if you never act
even asleep in a limousine with chocolate seeping on her breast
even as we speak
even without Rogaine
even with the recovery of the black box
even after the celebrated divorce
even as the crow flies
even for Steven
even in manuscript form
even in flames
even on a cross in Jerusalem
even without statistical significance
even as the pages burn but the words fly away
even behind the filthy moaning curtain
even as the list grows
even though you lied to me
even though I lied to you
even painted on a turtle’s shell
even when read against the text
love
deconstructed
is
still
love

My 88th Favorite Song of All-Time

…and my 88th favorite song of all-time is:

“Asleep at the Wheel” by Working For a Nuclear Free City

Just click on the video and let your mind wander…

In Defense of Heartbreak

In the absence of strong emotions (feelings and events) I must attempt to create some; after all, I’m an artist, silly, and what is an artist to do with comfy stasis?  Like the static on a forgotten television which is ceaselessly changing yet ever the same, fuzzy jumping dots never wrote no poetry, mister, and a solid waterfall is beautiful but sees no beauty.  Oh, I can work up a good head of anger, sure, at things like traffic lights and long lines, but anything righteous is long gone, replaced by news radio and cozy lunches with friends on their office lunch breaks, and plastic chess with people I know I’ll beat, and diet fucking soda.  Oh sure, it’s nice to be out of the struggle for a bit, the pain and the hunger, the loneliness and the crude jokes, but a little heartbreak would be nice, a few tears over something besides an Almodovar film, hell, buddy, something more real than reaching for another Q-Tip by my bedside and another round of Bloomin’ Onions at the Outback Steak House.  I bought a CD today (because I still buy CDs) that had an old song of ours on it, in an ill-conceived attempt to feel that pain again, but it’s too long gone now, too long gone (too far away for me to hold); hell it’s been over a decade since I was hurt like that.  I ended up jerking off about you and going back to reading Maxim.  Sure, man, sure, I’m elated all the damn time in my current life, elated and pleasantly pleased and happy as birdshit and I could go on being elated and lifted-up and as clear as a damn Scientologist till the day they bury my grinning corpse, but I’d trade all the joy in the world for one more drop of genuine exquisite sorrow, cause the light gets blinding without any darkness (and a coin won’t buy you dick ‘less it’s got two sides), so come on, bitches, break my heart, I need it as bad as you’re gonna need the guilt.

My 89th Favorite Song of All-Time

…and my 89th favorite song of all time is:

“House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals

You just can’t deny the creepy-sad-enlightening nature of these lyrics coupled with this music.  I’ve always meant to explore The Animals further but have never gotten around to it.  Anyone a big Animals fan out there?

Click here to watch the video on YouTube!!!

My 90th Favorite Song of All-Time

Click here to learn about this list.  You can also click on the link in this entry that says “100 Favorite Songs” to see all the song’s entries.

First, a re-cap of the first ten:

100.  “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something
99.   “Jack & Diane” by John Mellencamp
98.   “Hotel California” by The Eagles
97.   “American Pie” by Don McLean
96.   “Don’t Stop till You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson
95.   “Nuthin’ but a G Thang” by Dr. Dre
94.   “Bushwick Blues” by Delta Spirit
93.   “For the Workforce, Drowning” by Thursday
92.   “Fish Heads” by Barnes and Barnes
91.   “Shimmer” by Fuel

And the 90th…

“Rubber Biscuit” by the Blues Brothers

Sometime, at some unrecollected moment when I was very young, my mom and maybe my sister and I, sat around our old kitchen in Newville, listening to this song on a first-gen “boombox”, and I know that at the very least, I laughed my ass off for about a dozen consecutive plays of the song.  I remember it was a cassette tape that my mother had of the band playing live; in fact, it was undoubtedly the version in the YouTube video below.  Although it was something we only listened to on a few occasions, I still often recall it fondly.  Usually, odd, unfinished chunks of language remind me of the verses.  And biscuits always make me think of it.  I will say, it is much funnier without the video attached; although they are clearly a talented band, my child’s-mind’s-eye made it much more entertaining.

My 91st Favorite Song of All-Time

My 91st favorite song of all-time is:

“Shimmer” by Fuel

I’ve had the pleasure of having been in love once with a really amazing woman (this one) who, once we broke up, became (really!) one of my best friends.  Now, during that transition time, we had some rocky moments (mostly, I was a damn mess) but we worked through it because, I think, we somehow knew that we’d always have a connection, even if it wasn’t romantic.  And so it came to pass that we may be one of the few couples in the world to have an unofficial “we’re broken up” song, “Shimmer” bu Fuel.  I remember first noticing that we were kind of both singing it to each other when we took a trip to Florida, only a few months after our breakup.  Every time I hear it, I’m there, in that balmy, humid Southern night, in a ramshackle pickup truck outside a convenience store, waiting for her racist uncle to buy us a case of beer, singing the saddest song in the world to a woman I still loved, one way or another.

Hibernators

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video I Made From a Trip to Presque Isle Today, Set to Doves song “Jetstream”, with a Little Help From Tracy Chapman

Soooooo now I’ve lost 40 pounds.

OK, let me get this out of the way, just to make myself feel better.  For the record, these updates I make regarding my weight loss/ getting healthy thing are not meant as “look at me, please keep telling me I’m great and congratulating me” exercises in “fishing” (although compliments are accepted); I feel the need to say this because I hate compliment fishers.  Although, of course, just about every other blog entry I write is a from of fishing; why write things if I don’t want people to tell me how good it is?  But that’s another subject entirely.

No, any weight loss updates I give now are really just me kind of being in disbelief about this whole thing.  I just can’t believe how quickly and effectively my workout plan and diet have taken effect, how great I feel, and frankly, how happy I am with the way I look.  It literally feels like I started this last week.  OK, that’s enough of an intro.  Long story short:  not fishing, but I can’t very well just ignore this.

OK.  So.  This morning I hit 40 pounds lost (in 106 days, or roughly 3 and a half months).  I swear, I’m not starving myself or over-exercising.  I’m just burning more calories than I consume every day.  I do not cheat.  At all.  That is one of the keys, for me.  Whenever you cheat on a diet, all kinds of bad things result.  Now, of course I eat things I like from time to time, but what I’m saying is, I have not on any single day since I started my diet had a surplus of calories on any given day.

This might not seem as amazing to some of you as it does to me, because I have not been a *fat* person my whole life, and/or you may not have ever perceived me as super fat.  And in fact, I have been lighter than this as recently as 2007 (although that did not last for long), but there is something about this particular weight loss that feels especially astonishing to me.  I think it is the fact that I’m a non-smoker and was able to really exercise.  I love physical activity and look forward to every single moment I spend in the gym, so most of this experience has actually been really fun and gratifying for me.  That makes it much, much easier to lose weight.  I don’t watch the clock and wait until I can stop.  I don’t skip gym days  (I make a plan for the entire month of which days I will go, which days will be cardio, which will be strength, and I don’t waver from it.  Ever).  I’ve had to get used to being a little hungry a lot of the time, but that’s OK.  You are not supposed to be full 100% of the time.  You do not have to eat within 15 minutes of the moment you feel hunger.  You don’t starve yourself, but you allow yourself to feel the hunger, to acknowledge it and after awhile you manage it a little better.  And this, in turn, gives you even more energy.

There I go sounding like some certified personal trainer or something.  Look, I don’t know jack about this stuff.  All I know is how I just did it.  And I’m rambling because it’s so exciting.

So anyway.  I now weigh 150 pounds, with the ultimate goal being 140.  When you see the pictures of me (which are at the end of this entry and are painfully vain and pretentious) you will probably say, as many of my co-workers have, Stop!  You do not need to lose more!  So that is part of the reason for this entry, too.  I shall explain to you those ten pounds.

I seem to have, blissfully, reached a weight where, fully clothed, you really can’t see my belly.  I mean, you can, but it doesn’t jump out at you.  I am happy with this.  I’ve lost all the weight I want to from the rest of my body, all I need to eradicate is what is left of my belly, which I am estimating to be ten more pounds worth.  It might look OK clothed, but I want it to look good nekkid, which I assure you, I have not yet achieved.  But now that I am at this point, I will no longer be so focused on weight loss.  The focus will shift to general fitness and strength training.  I can look a little scrawny at this size, so a build-up of the muscle is in order.  The belly fat will (so goes my completely uneducated plan) fall off as I proceed with this new tactic.  Everything else has worked so far, so I see no reason this should not.  Oh, and I can now start breaking even on calories, as I will need to meet or exceed my daily caloric intake to start building the muscle.  I am babbling again, but I didn’t plan this entry out and I really don’t feel like organizing these points.

In addition, I would like to address the phenomenon of folks, after witnessing my weight loss (and perhaps knowing my history with addiction) telling me You have amazing will power.  Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth.  First, someone who had to go to rehab twice to learn how to not drink every moment of every day, and then take pills that attach to the pleasure receptors in your brain in order to stop smoking cigarettes, has some epically horrible will power.  What I have in spades is obsession.  I will out-obsess you on anything.  Granted, it changes over time.  Read this blog entry where I explore this concept.  So, while I thank you for your will power compliment, it’s really obsession, which, depending what I am investing that personality trait in, is often a very negative trait.

So expect more entries about my progress moving forward (I just said ‘moving forward’ and I hate when people say that) as it is so very exciting for me, and hopefully I will actually see some of you soon!

OK.  So.  I took some pictures of my new self because I am a vain bastard, but also because I think that me talking about this at such length, you’d probably expect some.  This first one here is pretty goofy, but I really wanted to get a good one wearing this orange shirt, because I love wearing orange shirts but it’s really tough to pull off when you’re fat.  Aside from looking like a doof, I think I can finally pull the shirt off.  All the ones after it are totally rad but soooo artsy fartsy.  I love them.

My "confused English professor" outfit I wore to the symphony. Yes, I took some of these last night because I knew I'd be hitting the milestone this morning.

In a parking garage last night

My 92nd Favorite Song of All-time

And my 92nd favorite song of all-time is:

“Fish Heads” by Barnes and Barnes

A lot of people seem to know this song from some kind of show called Doctor Demento (I don’t know what that is), but I know it as being from the comedy songwriters Barnes and Barnes.  This song takes me back to the age of 17, and Tom Nickel’s basement, with a coffee table made of Mt. Dew bottles, incense and tie dye, Ken Kesey books, his mom yelling at us all the time, and me being in love with this woman.    It is a very specific memory, and a unique and short-lived time in my personal history.

 

Erie, Night

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reading the latest issue of TIME magazine, I was intrigued by an article about YouTube, and was so blown away by some of the stats (and some of the writing, which in a few sentences manages to encapsulate what would take me a paragraph; let’s hear it for journalists!) that I felt the need to share it here.  This is two small excerpts from an article by Lev Grossman:

For every minute that passes in real time, 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.  You can turn that number over in your mind as much as you want; at no point will it stop being incredible.  Sixty hours every minute.  That’s five months of video every hour.  That’s ten years of video every day.  More video is uploaded to YouTube every month than has been broadcast by the Big Three TV networks in the past 60 years. 

There’s never been an object like YouTube in human history.  It gets 4,000,000,000 page views a day, which adds up to 1,000,000,000,000—that’s a trillion—a year.  It has 800,000,000 users who watch 3,000,000,000 hours of video a month (that’s 340,000 years).  Human civilization now generates massive quantities of video footage simply as a by-product of it’s daily functioning, much as some industrial processes generate toxic slurry.  Before YouTube there was no central catchment for all that video; now it drains into a single reservoir, where we as a species can pan through it and wallow in it endlessly.

 

I was a dog on a short chain but now there’s no chain.

The moon goes up, the moon goes down.  This is to inform you that I didn’t die young.  Age swept past me but I caught up.  Winter has begun here and each day brings new birds down from Canada.  Yesterday I got a call from the outside world but I said no in thunder.  I was a dog on a short chain but now there’s no chain.  I can feel the ground rise to meet my feet as I shuffle to-and-fro.  The earth connects to me now.  Overhead everything swirls into the pre-addressed envelopes I pay my bills in.  Nobody knows me but nobody doesn’t know me.  Check out that perm on that lady, check out that slab of meat in the window.  Everything is calm even if you think it is not.

My 93rd Favorite Song of All-Time

My 93rd favorite song of all time is:

“For the Workforce, Drowning” by Thursday

The band Thursday is often associated with young, silly emo kids.  But that’s weird.  They’re an incredibly smart band, extremely talented musicians, with lyrical content that goes beyond just “socially conscious” and becomes brilliant human commentary within the framework of our existing culture.

Take “For the Workforce, Drowning”.  I’ve never heard another song in my life about the soul-deadening effects of life in our modern, cubicle workforce.  The song touches on many elements of this cattle-chute life: anonymity-inducing technology, a financial system that keeps us from ever really getting our feet under us, the effect of professional boredom, modern life adding up to many people wondering just when, really, their life will start.

I’ve included two videos; they both appear to be live videos, but the first one os the studio audio overtop images of the band playing the song live, while the second is an actual live video.  The lyrics are after the second video; they are astonishing.

 

 

 

 

Falling from the top floor, your lungs fill like parachutes, windows go rushing by; people inside dressed for the funeral in black and white. These ties strangle our necks, hanging in the closet, found in the cubicle; without a name, just numbers on the resume stored in the mainframe, marked for delete.

Please take these hands, throw them in the river! Wash away the things they never held! Please take these hands, throw me in the river! Dont let me drown before the workday ends.

9 to 5! 9 to 5!

And we’re up to our necks, drowning in the seconds, ingesting the morning commute (lost in a dead subway sleep). Now we lie wide awake in our parents beds, tossing and turning. Tomorrow we’ll get up, drive to work single file with everyday— it’s like the last. Waiting for the life to start, is it always just always ahead of the curve?

Just keep making copies of copies of copies! When will it end?

(it’ll never end, until it gets so bad that the ink fills in our fingerprints and the silouhette of your own face becomes the black cloud of war and even in our dreams we’re so afraid the weight will offset who we are; all those breaths that you took have now been canceled in your lungs. last night my teeth fell out like ivory typewriter keys and all the monuments and skyscrapers burned down and filled the sea)

Save our ship! The anchor is part of the desk. We can’t cut free. The water is flooding the decks, the memos sent through the currents, computers spark like flares. I can see them, they don’t touch me, touch me.

Please someone, teach me how to swim.

Please, don’t let me drown.

My 94th Favorite Song of All-Time

My 94th favorite song of all-time is:

“Bushwick Blues” by Delta Spirit

You probably don’t know this marvelous gem from San Diego’s indie band Delta Spirit, but you damn well should.  “Bushwick Blues” tells the story of a very brief romance that meant much more to our narrator than it seems to have meant to the young woman who, we are left to imagine, has probably all but forgotten him.  If you haven’t experienced this kind of attraction imbalance, you haven’t done enough living.  (a few of the lines mystify me; I can only guess that “when you sang a sonnet/ I hummed sweet relief” means that he’s happy she cooler or smarter than he had expected)

I implore you to watch the video below of Delta Spirit performing the song live; they really are an electrifying live act, and they play “Bushwick Blues” with a special amount of vigor  (especially a blistering finale). If you’re interested in hearing the studio version, you can stream it free on their MySpace page.  I’ve also included the lyrics under the video.

Hold on to my hand.
Never let go
(Never let go)

We were just two kids,
acting tough.
Then we grew up.
Me, not so much.
All the other guys
that you’ve seen
are nothing compared to me,
because my love is strong
and my heart is weak,
after all.

When we first met
we spoke so brief;
when you sang a sonnet
I hummed sweet relief.
Do you recall that night
we took the El
out into Bushwick?
It was colder than Hell.

So maybe there
we should have stopped
cause I’m left here feeling like a cop
because my love is strong
and my heart is weak,
after all.

To the other side of the state’s return
I met a young girl.
Well I couldn’t manage her.
Because I think of you
in every girl I meet.
It’s no relief
that sounds to me
just as sweet.

So maybe I’m the fool for feeling used.
By the way we kissed that night
I thought you knew.
Because my love is strong
and my heart is weak,
after all.

To Sleep, To Dream

When I was very young I played underneath a huge pine tree in our back yard.  It was a towering thing, the kind of tree that belongs in upstate Washington or something like that.  Birds flew from a dozen different hiding spots within it’s turquoise needles at all times of the day; it was bursting with life.

There wasn’t much grass below the tree.  It was mostly dirt, some sand (transported from my sandbox), pine needles and swaths of unidentifiable weeds.  More often than not, all I did under there was play with Matchbox cars, paving little roads with their little wheels, their imagined little drivers having life-or-death battles out on Arizona stretches of highway, where even the cops had a death wish.

But sometimes I would try to dig.  I’d dig a hole as deep as I could dig it, just to see.  I’d try to dig the tree out (I imagine I thought I was closer to success than I actually was), sometimes I’d just dig a series of holes in certain patterns—I could not tell you why.

One especially sunny afternoon I awoke from a dream that was indescribable in it’s joy.  In the dream, I had been out in the backyard, playing under the tree, when I began to dig a hole.  The hole was deep and had solid walls and was more perfect than I suspected I was capable of.  Looking at my handiwork, I decided to extend the hole in a circular trough around the tree.  It took me a long time (even in a dream) to complete this task.  When I was done, the only thing to do, to a kid too young for kindergarten, was this: to fill it with water.  Then, of course, I’d have my own moat!

Which is exactly what I did.  To the best of my memory, the moat simply filled with water, the moment I wished for it.  It was, after all, a dream.  The water was perfectly blue, not like a moat in a grayed out knight movie, but like the azure lake of a country summer day.  It calmly surrounded the hulking tree—now looking more and more like a grand wooden fortress—and I had never been so proud of myself.

What is the one and only thing I can remember doing, then?  Why, I made a boat out of newspaper and floated it across, watching the tiny ripples it made, and the reflection of the swaying pine needles above my head.

My 95th Favorite Song of All-Time

Read about this list here.

And my 95th favorite song of all-time is:

“Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” by Dr. Dre

As far as rap songs go, it’s certainly no masterpiece, but “G Thang” was the height of awesomeness during my mid-teens, before I had discovered rock.  This song (and really, all of Dre’s album “The Chronic” and Snoop Dog’s first album) bring back massive amounts of pleasant memories for me, specifically the early days of becoming sexually active, which are of course very pleasant memories (most of my first sexual encounters were in my car, on back country roads, with various West Coast rap albums playing on the tape deck.)  Just sit back and enjoy the groove:

 

Mexico City Video Project: “Sometimes I Wonder”

This here is part of a long-term project I’m working on.  Read here to learn what the project is; or click here to read about the day I discovered this band; and more still, you can click here to see all three previous videos in the project.  Now, here is “Sometimes I Wonder”:

 

All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone

There really is just too much being said about time flying by, and days ticking off, and how quick and fast and horribly brief it all is, he thinks to himself, sitting down at his computer to write.  So many poems and stories and cliches and greeting cards about it.  Nobody can stop anything.

Then, leaning back in his chair, wishing maybe he was smoking a cigarette, he unexpectedly tears up, his breath chokes a moment in his throat.  How he missed everyone so suddenly!

you try to keep people around, you try to stay in touch, you try to keep caring, but oh, life just has its way.  life just has its way.  and no matter how much people talk about it–-oh boy–-it just won’t stop being sad when people drift, drift like willful continents, into and out of your sphere so crassly, brazen, like it didn’t even matter, as if it were up to them, as if the same thing weren’t happening to every poor damned soul roaming around–

Of course he’d put on the most melancholy record he owns.  Some dirge-like rock without words, an album called All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, as he sits to remember, drinks his diet cola like a good little boy and is mindful of the volume since this is a holiday,

–anything can remind me of everyone. friends, girlfriends, flings, all the same, that summer grass, that shiny egret, this itch on my scalp, just now, just there. the jingling and glinting of a set of keys, the way she always jingled her keys, how he always kept them on his end table, coughing in the middle of the night, illuminated by the night light, looking green like an evil lizard, we spent every day together back then.  it was spring and the air lifted us, smelled of comraderie, that gaggle of hot air balloons–-how many was it? five–-we pulled over and kissed in the gloaming underneath the hot air balloons, he held my arms behind my back so I couldn’t leave, but it was for my own good–-for years I accused him of “alpha-male”ing me–-but it was for my own good, the brown of the basement, the four of us inseperable, always laughing, the high pitched sound of uncontrolled laughter, unchecked joy, your tears coming for any reason.  the big round green eyes.  the purple shit in birdshit–-that’s shit, too.  the lazy rolling enormous clouds, the warmed arm left to hang out the driver’s side window, the long drive with the windows down, your flesh just tickling, the voice over the payphone, that feeling in the tips of your toes that someone out there could actually…well, you know…and the perfume she sealed her letters with, and the trees, and the swaying branches in the lazy perfect summer wind as we talked about what it all meant, and all of a sudden I miss everyone, and I am glad of it, and I am glad of it.

Downtown Erie, 1/16/12

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s my buddy Kyle’s top ten movies of 2011 list.  Click or…I don’t know.  Something bad will happen to you.  Ever seen “The Monkey’s Paw”?  Yeah, bad shit like that.

My 96th Favorite Song of All-Time

Click here to learn about this list.

And my 96th favorite song of all time is:

“Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson

Hey, even the hipster rock guy can like some MJ.  I’ve never stopped digging this one because it breaks out of typical pop or R&B themes and gets straight-up badass.  This song makes me wanna dance while simultaneously telling you how it is.  You’ve just got to watch the video:

 

The Theme Was Hotels, the Theme Was the Absence of Worry

Some memories that seem somehow important:

Waking on a hotel bed as a young young boy–no older than 5–on a family vacation to Ocean City, Maryland.  I had apparently been allowed to sleep in.  I could see out of a high window (it was a high window to me then) and the sun was at it’s zenith.  I was suffering from my first sunburn, which if you remember is quite confusing.  What had awoken me was the sound of seagulls squaking.  I caught a glimpse of a clump of them flying by the window in my first few moments of consciousness.  The bed was the most comfortable and comforting thing I could imagine. The air conditioning was pumped up, and the cold air mixed with the warm sun created an elegant sensation. I was alone in the room. This is the definition of childhood happiness, and the absence of worry.

Waking on a hotel bed, trembling.  Where am I? Which hotel is this?  It is dark, and much too hot.  It smells of mushrooms and bile in here. Who is next to me?  Is it someone?  Perhaps it is her.  I didn’t think she’d return. I try to rise, but my peripheral swims with still motion, my stomach lurches, I knock the lamp over, lay back down.  The trembling rises, it crescendos, it is hot and shaky and moist in here.  This is depravity.  This is the sadness. Strangely, it is also the absence of worry.

Waking on a hotel bed, a man of nearly thirty.  I’m in town for my job interview.  The light through the drawn curtains is low and grey; it’s just past dawn.  I only slept an hour but am instantly awake.  My eyes focus and are aware. Standing before the mirror to tie my tie, I am fatter and older. I accept this and smile. I like my fat cheeks, the bulbous nose.  I earned them. I gather my things: the suitcase I bought, the journal I keep, the socks I wash myself.  Tomorrow I’ll drive home. Tomorrow I’ll be OK, I know.

My 97th Favorite Song of All-Time

Click here to read about this list.

And my 97th favorite song of all time is:

“American Pie” by Don McLean

One of the first songs that made me think about the marriage between literature and song lyrics.  16 year old me drove around, listening to the cassette and memorizing the lyrics.  I can still sing the whole thing.  The song also holds an intense emotional connection for me to the first girl I truly fell in love with.

Listen to it on last.fm by clicking here!

My 98th Favorite Song of All-Time

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And my 98th favorite song of all time is:

“Hotel California” by The Eagles

Despite officially being “not a fan” of The Eagles, even I can’t deny the entrancing power of this song.  I have no idea what it’s about, nor do I care.  Every time I hear it, I just get lost in the trippy images and sinister tone of the lyrics, and the hypnotic layered guitars.  And that part, near the end, where all the guitars intersect for that intense multi-solo blast…yowza.

Watch the video on YouTube, click here!

My 99th Favorite Song of All-Time

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And my 99th favorite song of all-time is…

“Jack and Diane” by John Mellencamp

This is one of those songs that, by the time you’re in your twenties, most of us have heard too many time to really appreciate its greatness.  On one level, it contains a beautiful simplicity, an Americana story of thrilling love gained and painfully lost (although the relationship doesn’t end in the limited narrative of the song, it is certainly implied), and on another level, it’s the sad truth of how life “levels off” after we grow up.  And it’s few words are perfect; it seems counter-intuitive, but don’t we all understand “sucking on a chili dog”?  And Diane being “debutante of the back seat” is meant two ways at once: that is genuinely how Jack feels about her—she’s his goddess at that time—but it’s also tongue in cheek: Diane is probably not a classy girl.  But it all comes down to one of the most poetic and simple and undeniably true lines in American rock music:  “Oh yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone.”  It’s the sadness of growing up, the disappearance of your dreams, and the inevitability of things being, well…OK, despite it all.

What am I to Think Now

What am I to think now,
the white scut
of her bottom
disappearing
down the half-flight
carpet stairs
to the white-tiled
bathroom?
What am I to do
with this masted mental image?
I put all my doubt
to the mouth of her long body,
let her draw my night
out of me
like a thorn.