I really did have a dream this morning where I was performing a house concert with Michael Jackson. There weren’t a lot of people there and he was kind enough to allow me to go first. I wonder this has something to do with the reason “Heal The World” keeps popping into my brain at the most inopportune times of late.
This dream surpasses the recent nightmare I shant recount in detail (but it involved Robin Williams on a tractor, among other oddities) and the other one, where I pulled two incredibly long, gray hairs from my ear, proceeding to fluff them up, using both as a warm blanket.
Some kind someone has offered to learn a bunch of Elvis’ Christmas tunes so’s I don’t have to sing along with the King if I don’t want to. Maybe I’ll get hold of that red velvet Elvis jumpsuit again and make some magic happen. Then again, maybe it’ll be more like Elvis Holiday Unplugged or something. Oh, the possibilities!
Was supposed to go to Russia this week for work, but now I’ll likely go to Colorado Springs instead. Because the latter is obviously better, right? I just wanted to wear a mink hat is all.
Hawaii happens so very soon. So soon. And there will be lobstering and lots of free lodging and kayaking and camping and helicopter rides and more! It just keeps getting impossibly better.
I think Tony Horton wears some kinda toupee. The fact I don’t know for certain is proof of how good it is.
Last night involved blowing out a tire on the highway, surviving that, swimming in a warm crater in the mountains, piling eight people into a Chrysler and eating tacos and churros for the rest of the night. It was quite possibly the Best Friday Ever.
Why do I go back to the Jiffy Lube? They’re never the best there is and they always seem to get away with charging me much too much.
If I had that pig flu, I think it was a lot nicer to me than some of the other sicknesses I’ve had. Whatever it was, though, is all but gone.
Gentlemen Broncos is crazy as everybody says, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go see it. Me and that old guy in the back of the Broadway theater laughing himself into an early grave both recommend it heartily.
Drove members of the band Fanfarlo around for a bit this afternoon in a snowstorm, watching them make some acoustic magic over at the station. I don’t think I’ll tire of that kind of assistance anytime soon and I am really, really excited to see that concert in a couple hours. I hope people come to see ‘em. It’s impossible not to like what it is they do.
Oh. It snowed. Father Winter didn’t so much storm on us as he did make us pull our scarves out again. It’s not quite Christmas snow, not yet.
On my radio show tonight, I threw on a track by Francis & The Lights called "The Modern Promise." I've been friends with it for a number of months now, but still don't tire of the way it moves, nor how that lead singer (could it be Francis?) moves so well along with it. Certain sounds just stay with you (and if you want this song and others go download it for free on his site). I don't know what I'm more impressed with when it comes to these few and this music ... how it sounds to me or that they can move like this and create magic in just a couple minutes' time?
And by this "town," of course, I mean this ever stranger land of Blog. Nobody really reads or attempts to process what ends up here. They're here for the photos and the videos. Nobody really has an opinion they want to throw out or a comment they feel worth sharing, and so the never spoken and never written stays on the inside, forever dormant. It used to be different, this place, this space ... but now those crazy tumbleweeds are seen evermore on these dirt roads. Now the most oft-used hotels are getting boarded up, forever vacant. The one horse town this is stands to lose its horse, I reckon. People are moving on and moving out, headed to the big city, searching something more. This ghost town is dying fast, offering up more ghosts than stories, more death than lives and liveliness and livelihood.
I remember when it was different, when having planted a name on this chunk of land seemed to mean something, when friends and otherwise would pop in for a spell and dive into the conversating simply for the sake of doing so. They used to jaw just to see what words would come out, they would. That was a different time, but a warmer one, a memorable one. Yes, in my day, this land meant something more than it does now. I am a grizzled old-timer, yes, and I've as many stories in me as there are hairs on a ragged coon, but I fear they may not get told anymore. I may even die alongside this trend, this shift in the winds and seasons.
I've yet to put my ear against the rail and listen for what's on the way, but this feeling in my bones is true and right. I feel a change brewing in this middle of the night.
I can have a whole lot of random crap inside my melon at any given point in time but, lately, this place seems to be hogging up all the real estate there.
One month from today is all I have to wait until I arrive on its shores ... and it seems like a very short time to wait so, well, here's to waiting. Mahalo!
Fanfarlo is a great little band with a great big sound that hails from jolly old England. From the time they offered up their lone album for a whole buck previous to its release to it actually being very, very good to their going about dropping videos all over the internet, I've been consistently intrigued, amused and satisfied by what they've had to offer. I don't even mind that I don't know much more about their history, either, as they're in the process of writing it ... and they're doing so pretty incredibly fast.
I've a bad habit of going about comparing the music I like to other bands that I like, but I'll stop short of doing that here. Just know that Fanfarlo has done an incredible job combining and borrowing sounds I'm familiar with from other current bands and made a pretty comfortable one of their own. Hope that makes sense. Does it have to be groundbreaking or can it simply be good and solid? I'm of that latter opinion.
Go see them when they come to Salt Lake. They're at the State Room (638 South State) next Saturday, November 14th, and, well, they want to please you. They honestly do. Won't you give 'em your $10? I certainly will.
If I were king for a day and that day was today, I'd probably have Lisa Hannigan pop by the radio station and give this valley a little performance. I'd maybe manage to slip into the concert she's doing later tonight, that one where she's opening up for David Gray at Kingsbury (managing to slip out before David does a single head wobble bounce). And maybe, since I was king and all, maybe I'd talk her into a date or something. (Hey, I'm not blind over here.) Alas, I don't have that kind of power. I sure wish I did. If you're smarter than myself, you already have a ticket. If you're broke and still smart and don't have one of those normal 9-to-5 jobs like I do, you will go see the free in-store she's doing at Graywhale @ 2 PM. Watch the below video and get a taste of what it is the woman and her band can do. It's just too bad she can't do that whole free performance inside a real live pub, eh?
Not Zeus. Not Santa with a fish tail. Not some kind of confused king precariously mixed with a drag queen. Nope ... but they were all real good guesses. I like being something or someone for the holiday that others can't quite pick out right away. The ambiguity and mysteriousness are reasons I dig on Oct. 31 after all. I was King Triton today ... from that cartoon everybody's already seen. Even though I walked like a stumbling drunk, even though I had pins poking me on a consistent basis, even though I had synthetic hairs in my mouth pretty much always and even though people pushed me from building to building like I had no use of my legs (and, to be truthful, mermen don't have legs anyway) ... it all pretty much ruled. Long live Halloweekend.
The uber-talented and plenty likable Kings of Convenience finally put out another album, titling it Declaration of Dependence. As expected, it's incredibly easy on the ears and, if there's one thing I can say about their music, it's that you only need to hear a song to end up wanting to hear more. Talk about your chain reactions. Anyway, go ahead and watch all the songs here, especially that last one, a cover of Lesley Gore's "It's My Party." I happened to grow up with that 45 record, thanks to my mom's record collection. Highlight? Trumpet solo.
The funny thing is, I never mind when the sadness stops by for a visit.
I’m not prone to wallowing in the emotion or anything and, given the choice (which usually doesn’t exist), I sidestep it for anything but the feelings it lays on me, but he’s an altogether familiar visitor. I know when he’s here and that he’s been here so many times before and that, even though he hasn’t been around for quite a long spell now, I remember how he’s prone to making me feel. I also know there’s a reason for it (and, often times, there tend to be several) and that I can go about sending him on his way once I discover and dismiss and/or solve it. Some say there’s no logic in the emotion but I don't believe that’s the case.
Besides, there are things you do (or don’t do) when you’re sad that you wouldn’t do otherwise. I do things like throwing out all my old, forgotten cucumbers and bad broccoli and stanky cottage cheese and such. I skip out on exercise. I don’t watch any movies because, when sadness is around, he certainly prefers my full, undivided attention. Oh! I tend to sleep a lot more than my usual amount, too, though it’s one of those light rests, the kind that come with a wide array of crazy dreams. Even music tends to mean more, sound better and make more sense.
You ever notice how nobody calls you back when you’re sad? That’s almost always the case.
It’s supposed to snow, maybe even tonight according to the paper. If that’s the case, I sorta hope this sadness sticks around. I'm no glutton for punishment, mind you, but it’d certainly be a waste to not be blue while snowflakes were falling from the sky. They tend to go together so well after all.
