Really, this is too cool.
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I’m feeling a bit depressed today and I realize that listening to “Baba O’Riley” isn’t exactly helping matters, even though it is quite an excellent song. The version I’m listening to is a demo Peter Townshend did for his Lifehouse Chronicles project.
I find listening to demos of well-known songs an interesting proposition. It can be hit or miss in terms of adding to my appreciation of the song and the artist. For example, I have a Doors boxset with some demos on it that are just bland that I much prefer the studio versions, but in this case, because Pete is such a consumate musician and perfectionist, every song is similiar enough to the studio versions that I want to continue listening. And the differences are ‘different’ enough to keep my interest. That plus the songs that never made it to Who’s Next.
Anyway, like I said, I’m a bit depressed today. Not in a “The Whole World Sucks I Must Assume The Fetal Position In Bed” way, but in an “Eh, What’s The Point of Working When There’s ‘World of Warcraft’” way.
The good thing is I know myself well enough to know which Well of Angst this cup has been drawn from. The Fetching Mrs. Bixby is out of town this week for the first time in several months and I usually get a bit down when she’s gone. It’s not usually a big deal, I can shake it off with a good beer or three the first day and this time of year is her heaviest travel time anyway, you’d think I’d prepare myself mentally for it. Usually, by the second or third trip of the season, I’m all, “Oh you were gone?” about the whole thing, but see, I just passed my 41st birthday on Saturday and she left on Monday. Couple that with the first set of shitty days here in Portland and the start of some REALLY boring shit at work and I find myself feeling ENTIRELY too sorry for myself.
Don’t get me wrong. I fully enjoyed my birth DAY and party with the family and friends on Sunday, but to go from a day surrounded by people you like being around to the next where the person you cuddle with in bed is gone for a week, you’d have to be made of stone not to feel SOMETHING.
The gifts were quite good. Everyone knows me only too well and I got no less than three gift certificates for book stores. I also got the aforementioned Lifehouse Chronicles, an extremely excellent bottle of wine and a couple of cigars, AND tickets to see Ron “You Can’t Fix Stupid” White at the Schnitz in November. All in all, absolutely NOTHING to feel anything other than happiness about.
You know, writing this entry has made me feel better. Hey, thanks for listening!
It’s been like this all day.
Sally and I have been passing off Tucker to each other in a vain attempt to get work, any work, done. Resistance is futile.
Meet Tucker the cat. After the cruise, we just felt empty. After all that luxurious indulgence sailing around the Carribean, we came home and realized the best way to feel better was to get a small, hyperactive, heavily-armed furry animal. A very cute small, hyperactive, heavily-armed furry animal.
The bastard knows he’s cute and feels no remorse in using it against us. The four of us and Daphne the dog are quite outnumbered.
As you might imagine, Daphne the dog is NOT amused!
“Damn you, Roger! Spamming the shit out of everyone for no good reason and sending me to 404 hell! HELL, I say!”
Sorry, he says, sheepishly.
I was trying to embed a video I had uploaded to YouTube, at least 5 different times, but all I got was a blank entry and a fucked up page format. Not so much to be informative of my doin’s these past few weeks, but just to see if it can be done. Apparently it cannot. At least not right now. I need to do more research on the matter and right now I have other things more pressing. The notify code I use to inform you of my infrequent postings seems to ignore comment tags around your email addresses. Again, sorry about that.
If you want to see what I WAS trying to embed, here is the link. It is some footage taken of us after we had boarded the cruise ship and were walking around in awe of the oppulence like some slack-jawed yokels from the deep south.
There were a lot of photos taken of the sights we saw and the places we visited with a couple more videos from that trip two weeks ago that I am still — STILL — in the process of organizing. I will update you all (all 3 of you anyway) when I have links up at flickr and YouTube. The notes I’ve taken will be transcribed into scintilating entries that will keep you on the edge of your seats. Well, at least IN your seats.
Okay, maybe you’ll read them in your spare time, between working and looking at internet porn. (Like you don’t!)
From Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men, page 33:
It looked like those farmhouses you ride by in the country in the middle of the afternoon, with the chickens under the trees and the dog asleep, and you know the only person in the house is the woman who has finished washing up the dishes and has swept the kitchen and has gone upstairs to lie down for a half an hour and has pulled off her dress and kicked off her shoes and is lying there on her back on the bed in the shadowy room with her eyes closed and a strand of her hair matted down on her forehead with the perspiration. She listens to the flies cruising around the room, then she listens to your motor getting big out on the road, then it shrinks off into the distance and she listens to the flies. That was the kind of house it was.
At the risk of playing Captain Obvious here, I love books. I love reading them, and I have a deep and abiding respect for the people who put forth the effort to write them, even the books that suck. It’s not easy to sit your ass in a chair every day for hours at a time, alone, pulling ideas out of your head and organizing them in a way that will entertain a few people and if you’re lucky, a lot of people.
It is a craft. When it is done well, the words lift you from the page and transport you to those places the writer has created out of whole cloth as easily as getting out of bed in the morning. Robert Penn Warren is a master at his craft.
The book was made into a movie, winning the Best Picture Oscar and Best Actor for Broderick Crawford in 1950 . Another movie is coming out this year with Sean Penn in the lead. I haven’t seen the first movie and I look forward to this new one with hope that the lyrical poetry of Warren’s language is captured in some small way.