Movie Dog
My oh my Movie Dog has been a long time away from the slivery screen (ouch! remind me not to project on splintered wood again!) But what with the DemoSuckFest all over TV tonight, it seems a perfect time to vacuum the shelves at BlockBuster. And what is the first gem in this crown of thorns? The Station Agent.
Not perfect but what a wonderful film. The plot in a nutshell:

When his only friend and co-worker dies, a young man born with dwarfism moves to an abandoned train depot in rural New Jersey. Though he tried to maintain a life of solitude, he is soon entangled with an artist who is struggling with a personal tragedy and an overly-friendly Cuban hot dog vendor.

Absolutely fantastic performances from Patricia Clarkson and Peter Dinklage as the artist and the dwarf. It is low-key but extremely engaging. If you have, or want, a quiet movie for a quiet evening, rent it. Thank me later.

Yikes!
Sharon Stone on Letterman tonight. This woman is not aging well. There is the saying "Never look a gift horse in the mouth" because the recession of the gums gives the age of the horse. Let me just say, never look a Sharon Stone in the mouth.

But then again, she's not famous for showing her teeth.

Stupid But Fun
I finally realized that I don't have to sign my actual name when I buy groceries at Trader Joe's and use my credit card. The last three times I've put my vittles on the card I have been "Trader Vic" (not really but close enough), "Arrrgghh, Matey!" and once, just once, the traditional "X."

It's stupid but it's not like I spend time thinking up clever names to sign on the little electronic signature gizmo. Speaking of which, I do like the message the box gives when one has passed his card through the slot: "Swipe Accepted." So, like, it's okay to take stuff?

Name that Meme!
I'd like to call the Berger incident "WaddleGatge" after the idea of hefty bagman Sandy filling his trousers with documents and walking out. But my influence in the blogosphere is vanishingly small. There are greater crosses to bear.

A Berger To Go
In all the brouhaha over Sandy Berger's pants-suffing incident, I think there is an opportunity for someone more musically gifted than I to rewrite Barry Manilow's "Mandy." Along these lines perhaps:

I remember just by chance
You stuffing papers in your pants
...
Oh Sandy! You came and you took without speaking
And you hauled it away, oh Sandy!

I see also that goggle-eyed melon-head David Gergen (who is a pompous jerk - I speak from personal experience) has now become a reliable DemoBot with his defense of the indefensible. Remember, always judge people by their intentions because you know the intentions of your political party-mates is always pure while the other guys, even if they succeed in doing great things, always do things for EEEEEEvil reasons.
And read Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Annointed. He does the topic more justice than I ever could.

Dagnabbit!
I owe posts I owe posts I owe posts. Heads will roll.
Hmm. New Blogger posting interface. I like it.

Sometimes it pays to shut up and just listen
So, there was in Greenwich Village with a bean and chicken wrap nestling steadily deeper into my belly and the sudden necessity to stand and deliver. Deliver introductions, fill the interstices between the truly talented people and try to keep the audience on my side. Not that I'm taking sides mind you!

First to play was a trio of lovely ladies who took their group name from an old folk song: "Three Sisters." Which, of course, they performed wonderfully. It's in the folk tradition so let's just say that there wasn't a happy ending to the tale told but greater unhappiness was in having a song so well performed come to an end. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't get their names so that I am able to give them the credit they're due. Their vocal harmony was glorious as was the flute accompaniment. I will track down their names so that I can post them soon.

Next came Tania Eshaghoff (that's a link, click it, click it now, this will still be here when you come back) who played piano and had a violinist to accompany her. Wow. First, as you can see if (IF! -Ed) you visit her web site, Tania is one of the most exotically gorgeous women it had ever been my pleasure to witness. It's probably not fair that a woman this beautiful is also so fabulously talented. I will not cut and paste huge gouts of description of her CD "Dancing With Souls" so follow the link. Not just that, buy the disc. I'm sure it will be a revelation to you as it was to me. I'm listening to it even as I write this.
She plays the piano out of a fusion of Persian musical traditions with her Western musical training. She plays with a dense, flowing, polyrhythmic verve that is, well, entrancing. The violin accompaniment was subtle and flowed through the bright drama of the piano like a stream twisting through gem-laden rocks. I am unable to do her music justice in words. It really must be heard.

So, do you now start to understand why I call this one of the best nights of my life? Here were artists I'd never heard before and I was overwhelmed. And then I got to meet Jake Armerding. If I didn't tell the story of my discovery of Jake before, I won't hesitate now.
I listen to streaming radio through iTunes and one of my favorite stations is Radio IO Acoustic. One fine day I heard Jake's song Ithaca which struck me as a pretty good song. So I tracked down the MP3 version available on Amazon.com, downloaded and listened to it a few times. Not just pretty good - damn good in fact. Good enough to get me to buy the disc. And I played it for friends, a couple of whom are the animus deii behind the IC benefit. They went the extra mile and got Jake to appear. So I got to meet him. I'm sorry to act like a drooling fan-boy but I think this is just so cool. To find someone's music on the Internet and then end up meeting him. This is part of the whole new world of music that the net represents and I couldn't be happier. But I digress.

I told Jake of the songs I particularly liked ("Ithaca," "Adonai," "Little Boy Blue (North of North Dakota") and he played them all. And others besides. He is a terrific musician as well as a talented song writer. My only gripe is that he beat feet out of the club before I could my CDs signed. Speaking of which, thank you, Tania!


There's more to this story but I find myself running out of blog steam this late evening. I will cobble together yet another installment tomorrow. Serial blogging. Hmm. There might be something to this.

One night in New York
I am hugely remiss in posting this. OK, not in posting this but in taking so long to post this.

On June 9, I had the distinct and unalloyed pleasure of emceeing a benefit for Interstitial Cystitis at the Sidewalk Cafe in New York City. My brother-from-another-mother Paul and his lovely wife Ana set up the benefit and were trusting enough to allow me to stand up in front of people I don't know and try to connect.

It wasn't easy. But it was one of the best nights of my life. I had the chance to find some wonderful music utterly new to me and to meet the amazingly talented Jake Armerding of whom I have posted before. Not easy because getting up in front of a crowd and trying to be entertaining when I have next to zero expereience at it, is tough. If I had ginned up the nerve to try my hand at standup at the hundreds of Chuckle Huts that have open mike nights, it would have been easier.
Not to mention, IC is a delicate condition. I'm not sure that those who suffer really want to listen to someone making jokes about ... allow me to quote ... "(A) bladder and pelvic pain disorder effecting millions of men, women and children throughout the world. With symptoms of frequency, urgency, and/or pain,(which) diagnosis can be elusive." Just damn. This breaks my heart. There are afflictions which have a kind of public face, even breast cancer is now in the ken of the general public and there's little hesitation, I think, for those who have it to talk about it. But IC afflicts in ways that are not even a little part of polite conversation. No wonder diagnosis is elusive if it's something that one would rather not discuss. So, with a tear held back - because I detest the idea that anyone would have to suffer in silence - I try to be entertaining on stage. I came up with one bit that even now I know I didn't perform very well. Imagine Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" with a doctor presenting a diagnosis of "I see" and you'll have the flavor of it. I am appreciative of the kind response of the crowd to my fumbling effort at humor.

Oh, and of course, the first time I actually say "Interstitial Cystitis," I botch it. D'oh!

My next post will delve into the artists and why you should support them. I seem to have yakked about myself enough in this post that I think the artists deserve some real bloggy love all to themselves.
(to be continued....)

If you'll excuse me...
I'm going to sleep now. I couldn't fall asleep last night and now that all the foofaraw of the day is over, I lack the mental acuity to properly blog my wonderful trip to Nuevo Jork. Tomorrow, gentlefolk, tomorrow.

Just damn!
To steal a line from the estimable Dax Montana. It seems that Jack Ryan, running for a senate seat is tangled up in a bit of divorce imbroglio with his wife the delicious Jeri "Seven of Nine" Ryan of Star Trek: Voyager fame. I won't even Google up a link because if you don't know what she looks like, that rock you've been hiding under is probably preventing you from accessing PoW anyway.
But here's the deal: She says he has hauled her everso bite-able ass to sex clubs all over the world where he wanted to have sex with her in front of other people. This leads me to two inescapable conclusions. First, I am never in the right place at the right time. And second, no duh! If I were married to a woman who looked that good, I'd want other people to know that I was the one who was doing her too!

And I say that with the utmost respect of course. Jeri, once the papers are filed, (makes the thumb and little finger "call me" gesture), OK?

I've said it before
And I'll say it again: Bill Clinton was the most pole-driven president this country has ever seen.

Splain it to me, Lucy
Life delivered me of one of those face-wobbling "daaaahunyn?" moments (I don't think it translates well to the written word but if I demonstrated, you would know what I mean) as I was adding a book to my Amazon wish list. One of the options in the "Priority" section is "Don't buy this for me." To quote Moe Syzlak, Whaaaaaa?
If it's on your wish list, why would tell people not to buy it for you?

Sometimes life doesn't even make nonsense.

Tipping Points and Modern Life
I write my posts, in almost all instances, on my G4 15" PowerBook which is connected to the DSL modem by a Linksys wireless router (802.11b). Which means that if I so inclined, I can take the machine out onto the deck and blog in the sun and the lovely fresh, Father's Day air. I don't do this often but the fun fact of modern life is that I can if I want to! OK, I concede that running a wireless net in the house is getting to be less and less of a Big Thing. Verizon is even offering a "free after rebate" wireless router to those who sign up for DSL service (I'm guessing that they charge $99 for the router which actually costs about $60 and make up the money on either the float between purchase and rebate or the people who never get their rebate together).

The mere fact of the wireless connection is not the point. The point is the prevalence of the wireless. I have a neighbor who runs a wireless network called, I kid you not, "wonderland" which I have actually logged onto and loaded a web page. It's not a strong signal but it's enough for me to surf through. Before I get to the next step in this little, virtual parade, I have to ask why my neighbor does not encrypt the wireless signal? I imagine that my wireless could be used as I've used my neighbor's except for the fact that I set up the WEP encryption as soon as the connection was up an running. WEP is easy. Why does not my neighbor do this? I know the answer not.

The final step, for blogging purposes today, is what happened to my brother Festus the other day. He has a new house in a Southern City That Shall Go Nameless (SCTSGN in the future) which is, for all intents and purposes, a second home. The house does not have land line phone service since both he and Miss Kitty have cell phones. So he doesn't have internet access at the place unless he steps over to one of his neighbors. Until he discovered that someone on the block has a wireless network set up. So if he needs to access, mostly just getting e-mail instead of the marathon blog-reading sessions of which we are both quite fond, he can step out his front door and connect.

Have we reached that tipping point in wireless access where small-scale WiFi points are popping up all over the country like mushrooms after a spring rain? I hope so. Cell computers. E-mail in the ether. There is so much to love in the world today.

An Insect Jihad
The trees are shagged with brown-leaved, dead and broken branch ends courtesy of the Al CiQuedas!

Now the bastard's are using teenaged bugs (to steal a line from Dave Barry).

Morona
Madonna Louise Ciccone, who would more aptly go by the name above, has decided to go by the name "Esther" as part of her study of Jewish mystical tradition. (I like the mysticism. -Ed) This may be part of the "Reinvention" tour but it seems to me that given how many times she's "reinvented" herself (she once threatened to "dress (me) up in her love" -ugh), she is as polymorphous as an amoeba.
So let me suggest, between the multiple personalities and the utterly synthetic nature of her quest for spiritual enlightenment, a better new name for her: Polyester.

If I ever commit suicide...
No, I'm not contemplating anything even remotely like it. But if I were, I'd like to leave a suicide note that was actually irrelevant to my death but stirred up the honey wagon anyway.
Something like: "I find I can no longer live in a world where Vin Diesel is a major star. Jesus! Take me now!"

Please feel free to comment with your suggestions of trouble-making suicide notes.

Why, oh why!
We lose the Great Communicator and who is still plaguing the free world with an upcoming book? The Great Cum-on-you-cator, Billy Clinton.

Heywood J-Lo Me
OK, it's a weak take on "Heywood Jablomi," but I grow increasingly horrified at a world where press attention is lavished on this marginally talented alleged singer/actress/dancer/serial marrier.

Congratulations Jennifer. With your third ring, your life is now a circus.

Another bad pun for Atlanta's finest Grouch
If you don't hire a decorator to coördinate your tchotchkes, you'll wind up with everything but the kitsch in sync.

But one dumb joke before I go
The teacher says to little Johnny, "Can you define 'metaphor?'"
"Sure," said Johnny, "I wanted to meet a '10' but I only metaphor."