My mom's smile

(That's all.)

I will only say this once

Macs are better.

Case in point. When working on something at your computer that you don't want your family members, house guests or coworkers to see - for example a, uhm, birthday surprise, yeah that works - you need only one hand to push any one of a number of key commands (apple + tab, apple + m (for righties), apple + w, apple + q) to hide your, eh, work.

On a PC this is a two handed ordeal, and usually a two step one as well (alt + f + oh shit, does this program use eXit, Quit, or Close, fuck, caught red handed).

As an avid mac user I have come to start thinking in mac key commands.

One time I couldn't find my car keys. I said to KC, "I wish I had an apple + F command for my life."

KC isn't big on key strokes. She asked, "A fit to window?"

I took this as a bit of a slam on the size of my ever-expanding gut and spat back, "No a find command, a-hole."

Recently, I gave my boss the old apple + q. It felt good. He is a hopeless PC user. I would like to make a t-shirt with the apple graphic and the letter q, but I now have no money for such things. (Imagine a sad faced emoticon here.)

Stihdjia

I recently drove up to Ithaca to visit a gal I knew in high school. She is a prodigious talker. If there was a competition for talking like there is for hotdog eating - she would win, hands down. I arrived in Ithaca close to 11pm and she talked pretty much constantly until 4am.

The next morning she was waiting for me when I woke up. When I finally crawled out of the guest bedroom she unleashed all the things she had been wanting to say while I slept. Later, as I was leaving (she had a haircut to get to) she just couldn't stop herself. She talked faster the closer I got to the door. When her mom gave her the gabby hand signal (you know, thumb to four fingers like a crocodile mouth) she turned to me and said, "Sorry, I just hate it when my friends have to leave."

In some people this rampant talking might be annoying. But in Emily, my friend, it is simply charming. She may not have brevity but she sure makes up for it in gravity. Suffering, oppression, love, sex - there is no catty gossip. There are no blanket generalizations. She relays experiences and stories in copious detail as if to protest the stereotypical nature of language itself. In short - she most definitely calls it like she sees it. That is to say; precisely as she sees it.

In a my encounters with Emily over the past few weeks I have come to love her dearly. She is the kind of gal who would stand defenseless between you and a dragon saying "bring it on big boy." If you were, that is, to somehow find yourself face-to-face with a great dragon, as I was when I went to see her.

I have a couple other friends with this noble way about them, Liz, Danielle, my sister. They are brilliant, all of them, floating atop dragon fire with speech, while calmly restoring your sense of worth and peace with knowing glances and small hand squeezes.

I myself am a watcher, a thinker, a writer. I only unbridle my feelings in great moments of tragic passion. I dance like a madwoman alone in my living room. I belt out some knee slapping, twang banging country music in my car. I write the things in my blog I wish I could say aloud. I hide my deepest feelings in stanzas and iambs. I push my most visceral repugnances and sexual desires into canvases. And, well there is sex, though, that only comes along once in what seems, for me, a great while.

I guess you could say I am broken like a horse. I direct all my longing to run free and be myself into the most subjugated of possible avenues: running circles around a track with a crop to my backside and a little man on my back. But I do so love my wild friends with what Neko Case would call electric-wire-tongues.

Perhaps the most endearing thing about these friends of mine is that they have no idea how great they are. Could it be they think their honesty and righteousness a weakness? I do remember Emily talking herself into a few cauldrons back in our high school days.

For some reason these women look at me as if I am wonderful. This, I try to understand, but it takes a lot of conjecture and postulation. Perhaps they think me strong for being able to put all my emotions into a ball. But this isn't greatness. It is the only way I know how to survive when I fight the dragons alone, waiting with my sword, after years of preparation - waiting to find the one weakness I can exploit.

But really, sometimes, most times, I would rather just let it all out.

Yet another amazing cultural document brought to you by the good folks at Camel

I was a bit surprised when I received a package from Camel Cigarettes in the mail today. I opened the fancily constructed box to find three more boxes. These were boxes of matches featuring scantily clad ladies. I am not sure if this was an attempt by the fine folks at Camel to reach out to me, a potential Camel smoker of the queer persuasion, but I felt oddly appreciated.

It is far more likely that some guy in a bar who was hocking free smokes mistook me for a dude and checked the "send copious amounts of free matches with shamelessly misogynist images on the cover" box next to my name, but still, one can dream . . .

The Midwestern Bottleneck

Okay, so, I am so happy to be going to a place with a live music scene, interesting speakers and an art scene in general. Here are some must-sees for the first few weeks of my Lawrence homecoming:

Daniel Libeskind, Architect/Designer of the Freedom Tower
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
7:30 PM Woodruff Auditorium - Fifth Floor Kansas Union

John Cuneo, Illustrator
Monday, Sept. 25, 2006
Hallmark Design Symposium Series
6 p.m., Wescoe Hall (Free)

Poetry Reading: Professor Emerita Elizabeth Schultz
Friday, Spetember 28, 12:15PM
Spencer Lobby (Free)

Calexico / Oakley Hall
Saturday, Sept. 30, 9 p.m.
The Bottleneck, 737 N.H., Lawrence
$14

KU Women's Soccer vs. Texas
Friday, October 06, 2006
04:00 PM | Jayhawk Soccer Complex
$4

KU Women's Soccer vs. Texas A&M
Sunday, October 08, 2006
01:00 PM | Jayhawk Soccer Complex
$4

Kurt van Dexter
Monday, Oct. 9, 2006
Hallmark Design Symposium Series
6:00 PM, Alderson Auditorium (Free)

Kaki King (pictured at top)
Monday, Oct. 9, 9 p.m.
The Bottleneck, 737 N.H., Lawrence
$10

David Sedaris
Friday, Oct. 13, 8 p.m.
Lied Center, 1600 Stewart Drive, KU campus, Lawrence
Cost: $20 - $36

Brazillion Pictures, animation production company
Monday, Oct. 23, 2006
Hallmark Design Symposium Series
6 p.m., Wescoe Beach (Free)

The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder
Friday, October 27, 2006 07:30 PM - 09:30 PM
Crafton-Preyer Theatre, Murphy Hall
$$

Jolie Holland
Sunday, Oct. 29, 9 p.m.
The Granada, 1020 Mass., Lawrence
$10

One for the family photo album

Iniquity is the essence of sexy. Inequality is the essence of despotism.
(I said that.)



Every relationship is about power. One person is always going to be the stronger one, the richer one, the more attractive one, the better endowed one, the more creative one, the leader, the harder worker, the more responsible one, the more honest one. In most relationships this creates a power teeter-totter where one partner's good qualities balance out the other's. While your mate is thinking, "I can't believe this rich, beautiful, cool person loves me," you are in turn thinking, "I can't believe this funny, smart, caring person loves me." Or at least, "I can't believe she wants to fuck me." And that is so goddamn hot.



A few days ago I stumbled across an ad posted by a domme, as in a dominatrix, looking for a submissive.

As a young person the only sort of nuance in my intellectual stance on sadomasochism came about when I was trying to decide what was more laughable: being a sadist, being a masochist or being a switch.

But now I am older. I answered the personal ad.



I don't know if we will ever actually meet. But, here is what is great about S&M. I have the opportunity to have a relationship with a woman who is attractive and creative, who knows what she wants and who communicates her needs very very clearly. (Yes!). When I don't fulfill her needs, instead of internalizing problems and waiting for the right moment to bring things up, she hits me, hard, and I know to do better next time. (Yes, Mistress!). In turn, she is looking for me to be willing to do whatever she asks simply because it turns me on to satisfy her. Sweet deal, if you ask me.

S&M or no, if I like someone enough to have sex with them there is a 100% chance that I am willing to do just about anything they need or want me to. All you have to do is ask. But that is just me.

There are a couple of key exceptions. I will not do anything that is physically unhealthy (cutting, burning and fecal-oral contact in particular). I will not do anything that has the potential of harming either of us psychologically.

Besides that, if you want me to call you 'master' and ride a horse naked while shaving my big toe and kissing a baseball bat, you got it. Know in turn that I may ask you to wear a red hat and smoke a cigarette in an old-fashioned, long filter while alternating between reciting poetry and kissing the back of my neck.

I digress, back to the leather stuff.

I am trying to understand the societal hang up about BDSM. I think it stems from confusing symptoms with a disease. The disease is abuse of power. The symptoms are at times bondage, corporal punishment and humiliation. But, if a person happily subjects themselves to being tied up, beaten and degraded as a testament to their willingness to satisfy another person, that is a completely different situation. There is no abuse of power in that type of relationship, in fact all of the power resides in the bottom.

It strikes me as ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, that as a society we can justify the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of other human beings for oil, but that we can't stomach the idea of sadomasochism. We will allow our young men to play disgusting, ultra-realistic video games where they can beat women to death while raping them, but we won't let them be openly sexually expressive towards their girlfriends or boyfriends.



I wish that for a week there was a world-wide reprieve during which no one was allowed to speak or think about morality. (Ethics and civil law are still okay.) I have an inkling that at the end of that week the world would be a very different place. A better place.

I have been criticized recently, by a person I am quite close to, for being capable of "meaningless" sex. I guess there is something morally abhorrent about the idea of meaningless, ie love-less, ie sex-for-sex's sake, sex.

I just don't believe in meaningless sex. I think being able to be intimate with someone is never meaningless. It may be fleeting. It may be imperfect. It may even be harmful, but it is not meaningless. Most of the time, in my experience, adult consensual sex is quite nice. It is compulsory sexual relationships that scare me.



Dammit, If I can't have the person of my dreams, if there isn't a long-hauler out there for me (and there might not be), then I am going to find joy and compassion and human contact where it comes. Love is great but elusive. Power is great and omnipresent. So tie me to the bedpost.



The images in this post are the work of Jenny Holzer, one of my art heroes.

Ted Baker Friggs - $398

Not to be completely obsessed, but man, I might be willing to kill for a pair of 9 1/2s of these:

Bent

Ressurection, erection, Jesus falls the second time. Jesus falls the first time. The world happened in reverse. The universe is shrinking. The sun circles around the moon. Don't worry about your regrets. Their causes haven't happened yet. There is still time to be born. Your father is come back, can I stay, and come again. Mom likes it that way. Turn that smile upside down, and give me less than more. Race yourself. Pull up your straps by the boot. Put your head off sideways. For God will say, "Let there be light." And everything will be dark again.

Fall Fashion

If I had about $3000 laying around this is what I would be wearing this fall:

Dear Soccer Moms,

Having trouble talking to your daughters about their coach's gender issues? Here is a soft introduction to the subject for young people.

Films
Mit liv som hund (My Life as a Dog) (1985)
Antonia (Antonia's Line) (1995)
Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink) (1997)
Beautiful Boxer (2003)
But I'm a Cheeleader (1999)
Fried Green Tomatoes (1992)
To Kill a Mocking Bird (1962)

Books
King and King
Aquamarine
Crush
Fnding H.F.
What Happened to Lani Garver

Ave Marion: My Miseducation

I can name the things that taught me what America is. I read A Dream Deferred in 7th grade. I watched Roots in 8th grade. I read Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in 9th grade. I read their Eyes Were Watching God in 11th grade. In 12th grade I read the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. I saw the images of the dead at Wounded Knee as a history of photography student in college. I walked around exhibits of folks like Cyndie Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, Walker Evans, etc. I heard Laurie Anderson's O Superman lying with my head in my lover's lap. And one day I turned on the car radio to "Ave Maria" sung by Marion Anderson.

I wonder, in earnest, what the rest of my education was about. Why we were asked to read text books? How is it that as a young person I got off from school for Martin Luther King day, but never sat and listened to a recording of I Have a Dream? How is it that we learned about the Scopes Monkey Trial without ever listening to the Americana music recordings about the case?

My point: my education on the whole wasn't very liberal or artsy. If it weren't for a few moments, mostly outside of class, when I connected with a work of art I would have no concept of the country or the world I live in. No concept of what it might mean to be a human, or to be black or a woman or a person who lives in anyplace other than my house and my town. Of all the things that we droned on about in school, all the gross generalizations and glossy scene setting and the outlines for Regents essays, the things that really moved me where the things that were considered peripheral; original texts, paintings, photographs, songs and moving images.

Does anyone else remember the painting of George Washington crossing the Potomac? Of course. How about the diagrams for how slaves were to be packed into ships? John Hancock's signature? These things should be the primary texts our young people learn from in school.

What I would like for my children is this. Each day they go into class. The teacher puts up a picture on the wall and introduces a subject. Then my kid listens to some folk songs, or audio recordings or watches film reels, then they are asked to write or draw or act out something about what they have learned. It works for math too, why not talk about Euclid while learning geometry? That is my dream. That my child will grow up with the image of Marion Anderson singing in front of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 75,000 people. I dream that she or he will know that Miss Anderson wasn't allowed to sing in Constitution Hall and that the bi-sexual first lady wife of a polio-stricken womanizer organized a free concert in the nations capitol so that anyone could hear her voice in beautiful protest. And when she or he stands to sing the national anthem it won't be because of some juvenile nationalistic sentiment, but rather it will be out of the sad-joy (there is a word for this in german) that comes with knowing that we are imperfect, capable of great beauty and great sorrow.

Slugs v2

The effort it must take to lubricate
the world crisscrossing forgotten
things strewn in the yard

One day two people
will pause in conversation:
What is the old gal up to?
She passed.

And they will pickup where they leftoff
talking before the short lived thought of me

But the slugs, the slugs will attend my grave
clearing away excess particles of digestables
exacting their revenge on my murdering feet

Coach

My little peanut butter girl
Worrying if she is as smart as she is pretty
Writing metaphors about me
Her best friend

She wonders if she will grow up at all
Everyone else in the fifth grade has a pet
She hears her mom crying at night
She writes me letters from her secret heart

She heals me with kindness and clever things her dad says
She plays the piano so that she can be a drummer

The next time I see her she will be so tall
And in sixth grade

Undercurrent

You rode me like a wave that never crested.
We reached land and puttered out.
And went our separate ways.

I don't think I have another go in me.

Can we adopt waves like children?
Can we buy the tide, make love to the moon?

I am treading water, waiting for the world to move me.
It needn't be a big thing, just the natural flow of moving back to shore.

Can Jesus Save Me

Do you remember the first time you read:

Miracle Ice Cream

Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.

Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow
a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart.

(Adrienne Rich)

I remember driving in that car, late night, with my oldest friend. He lamented not being able to describe the way the black hills look against the black sky. I loved him for his humanity. It may be the reason we have remained friends through all these long periods of isolation.

A night like this, nearly a hundred years ago, I laid in the dew in the grass and looked up at the gray sky. I knew. I just knew. There was only one person in the world who cared. She is still the only person who cares. I wish for all the world she was still sitting in her secret palace on California Street with our dead dog, my best friends, the two of them.

I laid in the dewy grass again tonight and the world came creeping up against my skin again in so many tiny molecules of wet cloth.

Do you remember the first time you ate a concord grape? I am waiting for the return of romantic poetry. I want to be a romantic flea. I want to watch you make love to a gentleman who feeds you concord grapes. I want to live blushed cheeks and the smell of grass on the soccer field.

Remember Mary Curtain? I catch myself too late at wondering what she is doing today. If she has found love.

There are many things I would like to say to you, but I don't know how.

After all

You are my Wonderwall.

Waking

Do any of you know the person of my dreams? S/he keeps eluding me in waking life.

I am ready. I swear I am. I know how to be good, now. I won't make the mistakes of the past. No more waiting for the other person to love me first. No more clever intellectual posturing. Oh, I am so awake I can hear my own mind humming.

I know this much about my dream lover. We are meant to live in an apartment and cook crazy vegan fare. This tastes the way the woods smell after it rains and the streams swell. We love listening to music sitting across from each other on the bare floor with the lights off, not talking. This feels like wearing converse sneakers without socks. I like to put my hands under the back of his/her t-shirt. This is like eyelashes brushing your cheek. S/he loves piggyback rides, which I give out liberally. This is like running with horses through the tall grass. All the things I have to say come flowing out in continuously lucid paragraphs when we are together. This is like the wind that sweeps you up while standing next to a speeding train. S/he knows when I am being too serious and I know when s/he is being too indignantly righteous. This is like using your leg muscles to stop your end of the teeter-totter from crashing on the ground. We love each other. We want to grow up together. This is like holding sweaty hands with your best buddy in kindergarten while crossing the street, unconscious of hands or sweat.

I am making room for you. From now on I will buy everything for two, like a pregnant woman. I will plan on growing in unexpected ways like a tree with grafted limbs. Cut me open and tie yourself to me. It won't hurt a bit.

The Lost Ingredient or The Price of Salt

About a year ago I began to radically change my diet for health reasons. I eat a low glycemic, vegetarian, mostly organic diet. And now that I am completely immersed in a different way of thinking about food I would like to share a few of my own personal discoveries.

Healthy food taste better.

There are some foods that I realized this past year I haven't tasted in a long time. Peanuts. I love them. When I stopped getting salted peanuts and switched to organic, sugar-free peanut butter I suddenly remembered what the little buggers actually taste like. Oatmeal, do you remember what real 40 minute oatmeal tastes like? Oh, it is heavenly. The crap that comes in little bags that you throw in the microwave doesn't hold a candle. Etc.

I was addicted, literally, to sugar. I was unable to maintain a blood glucose/insulin stasis. I would eat things like white bread and sport drinks to combat headaches, mood swings and cramps, not to satiate my hunger. The sugar in these foods would cause me to spike and then drop dramatically. So, I would eat more high-sugar food to combat the drop, just like a heroine addict.

I think many people are addicted to sugar and transfat. Be honest with yourself, do you like frosting because of the way it tastes, I mean really tastes or because of the endorphins your brain releases when it hits your tongue. Think about it. Healthy food does not produce the sugar high that unhealthy food does. Therefore instead of getting off you can actually taste the food. Is it spicy, is it bitter, is it savory, is it sweet, is it SUBTLE?


Healthy food makes you feel better.

Okay so there are the obvious benefits of more vitamins, less refined carbs, less transfats, less unnatural hormones, etc. But there is another psychological benefit. It feels good to do something healthy for yourself. This will sound cheesy as all hell, but I like checking out at the grocery store with my healthy food. I like putting all my vegetables and bulger and buckwheat and tofu on the counter for everyone to see. It makes me feel good to look at it all sitting there. I love it, love it, love it when the checkout person comments on the healthiness of my food. It also makes me sad when the checkout person says that they could never eat this stuff, it is so good. Anyhow, my dream is that some day a righteous, punk, artistic, queer babe will come up behind me in the grocery store and see the way I eat and know right then and there that she is in love with me. Dream on, I know, but it would be great.


Healthy food opens up social doors.

Okay, so this may sound weird, but bear with me. In addition to babes in the grocery store, I have noticed that recently there is a certain subculture forming of healthy eating. There are cool people in the vegetable aisles! These same people are often also found in the fair trade coffee houses and the new world restaurants. Now here is where it gets interesting. These people also seem to frequent cultural events, political meetings and other intellectual gatherings. They aren't hippies, it isn't a fashion, they are smart people who make educated decisions about how they interact with the world. If this sounds like the kind of friends you want to have, then eat smarter. You'll meet them all over the place when you do. It will start with an ally at work who notices that you brought portobello sandwiches for lunch instead of burgers, then it will mushroom, hehe.


Healthy food is better for the environment.

I won't go on about this. It is just true. There are a couple of books on my reading list, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Fatal Harvest Reader. They both talk about the role industrial farming plays in the deterioration of our habitat.


Healthy food is better for the economy.

Okay, if you just don't care about the other stuff at least think on this. The American farmer is a dying breed. Every year dropping food prices make farming less and less financially viable. The ONLY growing sector in the food industry in the United States is in organic food. Everything else has been on the decline for years. Organic food helps us maintain our economy by supporting farmers.


Healthy food brings the family together.

I have noticed, since I have started eating healthier that my family and friends have started as well. Now this may just be a part of a trend, but I think I have had a little bit to do with it. 8 months ago my mom would roll her eyes when I picked up the organic milk at the market. Then we talked about it. I told her that hormones fed to lactating cows are known to be a factor in an increased rate of poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, something I am currently suffering from, and she now buys organic milk and eggs on her own accord. We can eat together and talk about how our food tastes and how it makes us feel. Okay, so sometimes we try something and it sucks, but even then we laugh about it and make a mental note: no more rice flour pizza crusts from scratch.

The Greatest

My sister, the advertising executive, posted a comment to my last blog with a blurb about Cat Power's newest album, The Greatest, from her magazine.

The saga of Chan Marshall continues. Though in fact, Marshall's career as Cat Power is two tales: one of a recording artist possessed of a knifelike haunting beauty, and another of a performer so stultifying that there's little to differentiate the songs from the diffident shuffling between them.

The tip-off that The Greatest could be Marshall's finest work is that, unlike her past three albums, its effect is not quite immediate. At first blush, the pairing of this shiveringly lovely singer with a couple handfuls of loose-limbed Memphis veterans (including Al Green's guitarist "Teenie" Hodges, who co-wrote "Love and Happiness") sounds aesthetically off. More a spectral presence than ever before, Marshall's spun voice seems to ema-nate from some other dimension, one where sadness and love supplant oxygen and carbon as base elements; but the spare swing and bounce of the opening track and (especially) the second song, "Living Proof," are nothing if not earthy. Still, it isn't alchemy that resolves this fundamental asymmetry—just a few listens. Singling out songs or lyrics seems silly; the record drifts along like a rootsy fantasia shot in one take, not a note out of place. And in the end, the Memphis connection is beside the point. The Greatest is simply Cat Power music: devastating and sustaining in equal measure, mysterious, affecting and knowing. Whether Marshall's new bandmates can spark her flatlining stage show is all there is left to wonder about.

Uhm, yeah, that was . . . interesting. I seriously have a college degree and no idea what that guy was trying to say, though he used some cool words. Not sure how any of that would help you decide whether or not to download Cat Power's newest album or go to see them in concert.

So here is what I would have written about the album.

The Greatest gives words to the spirit of a broken athlete, a faultering artist, or perhaps a shy singer and invisible guitarist. It is an album dedicated to the spirit of a person who has stood at the edge of greatness, but finds themselves at the end of a mediocre career just about to fade into the other side of life.

Chan's voice is pushed so far back into the mix of the music that it takes careful listening to tease out the words from the melody. It is almost as if she is disappearing from the songs, just becoming another anonymous piece of the whole. It is haunting in the way that running into the star quarterback from your high school football team in Wal-mart is haunting. The only semblance of the physical being, the thing of beauty and joy he once was, comes through in subtle flashes when he tosses toilet paper or tv dinners into his cart.

As a general rule, The Greatest seems to be about the settling of middle life. Everything is a bit muted. The album begins with the words, “Once I wanted to be the greatest. No wind or waterfall could stop me, but then came the rush of the flood . . . it laid me down.” The second song, Living Proof, accuses, “You are supposed to have the answer you are supposed to have living proof,” without ever kowtowing tonally to the weight of such a demand, it remains mellow, but upbeat, a new sound for Cat Power. The third song, Lived in Bars, reminds me of my mother telling stories of partying in the 70’s when she gets home from a dance at the VFW around the corner. It is a slow-dance-song about younger, wilder times. There is none of the grit of earlier works like Mr. Gallo and none of the unquenchable desire of Satisfaction or Still in Love With You (both covers). But it is just as moving and insightful in its quiet reflectiveness.

The exception to this formula on the CD is the song Hate, which is a suicidal cry, "please DON'T help me." I was a little disappointed when I read the liner notes. I thought the lyrics said, "There are no laws or rules to enchant your life," pure brilliance - there is no magic in the code of our lives. But according to the notes she is saying, "There are no laws or rules to unchain your life." Still moving, but you get the idea.

This brings me to another point - don't believe the liner notes. They are often misleading. One of the most amazing things about Chan's singing is her ability to be verbally ambiguous. Did she say, "Oh Chan or Ocean?" I believe this is intentional. I have a friend who caught an unadvertised show of hers down in Florida several years back. She spent the evening singing variations on one song. My friend described it as brilliant, like the Pieta, only more ephemeral.

This is the charm of Cat Power. It is alive and it defies category. There is no refrain, no sing-a-long predictability. It isn’t timeless or reproducible. The only thing you know for sure is that they are going to do something unexpected with the sounds that they make and the way they interpret the meaning of words. The Greatest is no exception.

Of course, that was probably way too many inches of copy to get into a hip-happening zine.

Animal magnetism

Several days ago I was shocked to stand up from my computer, turn around and see a feral cat slinking its way across the living room. Pippa the Circus Dog was sound asleep behind my chair while I was writing. As I stood, she awoke and looked at the cat as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a wild cat to be prancing around her house.

The two of us peaceably walked the cat, which was skinny as a pancake, missing large patches of fur and had a tail that was broken at a 90° angle, to the back door. It has been hanging around ever since. I haven't fed the rascally looking thing. But I haven't actively tried to scare it away either.

Two nights ago Pip and I went out for late night potty break. The cat was waiting at the back door. The two of them sauntered off under a bush and hung out there for about 20 minutes. I am not positive that they were making out, but I have no way of disproving it, so that is the story that will stand.

This morning I went to start my car and the cat was curled up in the back seat on Pip's blanket. (I had cracked the windows the day before. She is extremely skinny.)

This, I guess, is how it came to be that my Heinz 57 Circus Dog has been going around with a feral cat. I am not one to judge. Hey, you find warmth and compassion where you find it.

Behind the curves

My little sister is a big awesome ADVERTISING executive for a big awesome arts and events magazine in a big awesome city. She has told me, numerous times, to let her know if there are any concerts I want to attend in the city because she could get me tickets and write them off as business expenses.

Since I am moving back to Kansas in a month I decided to take her up on her offer. I asked her to get me tickets for DeVotchKa and Cat Power who are playing a couple of weekends from now at separate venues.



When she was trying to pilfer free tickets from her "connections" one of them said, "DeVotchKa, that band was so two years ago. I don't handle them anymore." How a band could be two years ago without having disbanded or died, I'm not entirely sure, so I took the feedback in stride. I insisted that I was a fan of their new work, which is true seeing as how I just discovered them about a month ago.

Then my sister said, "Oh yeah, Cat Power, we cover them a lot in the magazine. Isn't that some kind of country music." No. Cat Power is Cat Power and I love it. There is no reason to put it into a category. It is transcendent, end of story.

But this sent me on a little bit of an unknown artist odyssey this week. I was embarrassed that I didn't have something more obscure or radical on my mind as an ideal concert going experience. So, for the past three days I have been downloading free music from little known bands on myspace. This has been a great way to pass time between writing chapters in my novel. Not only am I ahead of a musical curve, that admittedly may never crest, I can chat directly with the musicians who are, for the most part, queer women with guitars, accordions, cellos and so on and who are excited to have a fan from outside of their regular stomping grounds.

So here are some of the rocking musicians I have found on myspace this week:



Bluebook (pictured above)
This one-woman band consists of Julie Davis teasing her upright bass, vocals and other soft instruments into haunting and playful melodies. My favorite song is Invertebrate, which is free to download. The lyrics are smart and available from her myspace site.

The Jen Korte Band
This two-person group consists of Miss Jen Korte singing and strumming her acoustic guitar and the occasional percussion-al accompaniment of Morgan Coley. I like all of her songs, which again are free, but I am particularly fond of her version of Wonderwall because I have always felt it was a good song, but I don't enjoy the way OASIS sounds, so kudos Jen for reinvigorating a previously doomed song.



Main Squeeze Orchestra
Okay, so I am a little behind the curve on this one. But, if you are looking for something different. Really different. Check out this all-girl, NYC based, all-accordian group. Their free version of Love Will Tear Us Apart is so unbelievably post-modern it hurts.

Ud
Ud seems to defy definition. It is an odd, sometimes tonally off, Americana reassemblage. I like it. This is yet another one-woman show run by Brigid Mcauliffe, with guest appearances from instruments and friends. Arching Down is on my playlist.


Why do we like to see musicians before they are huge megalosupernovastars?

First, the combination of musical abilities and underbelly-rocker personalities make them sexy.

Second, it is blissful to see people of great musical talent up close.

I remember the first time I saw Neko Case with my good buddy, Nick. His sister called us from Indianapolis and said that we had to see her, that she was amazing. She just happened to be playing at the Bottleneck a few nights later. Holy cow. She WAS amazing. We were 5 feet from her. It was intimate. At the time she was this sorta shy, a wee-bit frumpy, knock-kneed gal. She looked like any other person on the street (at least in Lawrence) but she blew us all away when she opened her mouth. A far cry from the photos of a skinny, dare I say almost anorexic, knockout on her current publications. I don't say this to be judgmental, just to set the before she was famous scene. There were about 20 people total there that night. Some people were playing pool instead of watching the concert. I don't know Neko Case, I don't want to go through her trash or read her diary. I like her damn music. It is wonderful. We talked to her after the show while she hocked her own t-shirts.

When we left we felt as though we had been part of a small handful of people who had seen this amazing singer give a fantastic concert. We immediately tattooed our free Bloodshot Record stickers to Nick's car and my art-school supply tackle box. We were in awe of her (her band is pretty damn good as well). We listened to her cd for a year pining for the day we could listen to her sing again live because, as you can probably guess, the CD really didn't do her justice. And we did go to her concert again, three times at the Bottleneck before she outgrew it and moved on to be a headliner at Wakarusa Fest.

So, I can't wait to take some trips to catch these gals in person because it is worth a little digging to have a night when someone stuns you with what they can do. You know it isn't just singers. Actors, athletes, lovers, children with their amazing outlook on the world. These are the things that make life feel great.