Saturday, December 27, 2008

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Angel Trumpets and Devil Trombones

My dad had a trombone in the attic when I was growing up. I didn't really want to play it, but my parents had pretty good reason to think that I wasn't the kind of kid that would stick with an instrument.

The trombone was good to me. I'm not sure I would have made it into a music program for college with an instrument that more people play, and I certainly wouldn't have had the opportunities that I had.

Mozart said the trombone is the voice of god. He could have been right, but for this project I like the trumpet better.

Alex Schecter recorded a few tracks for us today, on a song (Emptiness Swallows Heaven and Earth) that I posted for the first time in any form today. I left the studio before we had a chance to reference the mix on regular speakers, and there are going to be some adjustments that need to be made, but it's going to be great.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

And I’ve become what I thought was dumb (dumb).

If I were truly paranoid, I'd probably think Doug Martsch was thinking about me a lot. There's something in the way he captures his contempt for other people's shortcomings that matches up with my fears of what people think of me.

Best not talk too loud, you're not as smart as you require of them...

Most of my fears are entirely irrational. In middle school I always raised my hand to read aloud, hoping to prove I wasn't illiterate to my classmates that surely thought that.

Summers home from college I could feel myself losing my faculties, I sensed myself talking slower, almost as if I was out of practice. It's an unsettling sensation I had again a few days ago.

Here's a clip of Elliott Smith covering Built to Spill:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw0WcjNjzy8






Thursday, November 6, 2008

November 4th, 2008

The first pass of Election Day canvassing started at half past nine. The goal was to knock on every door in Lakewood belonging to a person who the campaign had identified as either a 'soft supporter' or 'sporadic voter' three times before the polls closed at seven-thirty.

Campaign headquarters can be strange places, at least on the Democratic side. They seem to pop up in storefronts that can be had on the cheap, places where the plaster is falling off the walls onto floors that are unfinished. Everything is temporary, they're furnished with card tables and folding chairs, and in my experience they never have cable television.

The rabbit ears on the portable TV couldn't pick up PBS, and the networks were still airing soap operas as I tallied the numbers from my second pass in the afternoon. My only sense of how the day was unfolding was first person. Very few people answered their doorbells. I had walked past only one polling location, and it was quiet aside from a car full of college kids who were ambushing a stranger in the parking lot to take a picture of them getting ready to cast what I'd assume were their first presidential votes, instead of 'cheese' they proclaimed 'Obama'. If I had to guess, I'd say the photographer was about to cancel one of their votes. Part of me had hoped to see an unprecedented turnout, and part of me feared long lines could cause some would-be voters to have to abandon their efforts.

Earlier in the campaign season I developed a few voyeuristic habits while canvassing, nothing criminal or immoral. It started with looking for political bumper stickers on the cars in the driveway, and progressed to looking for a network logo if the news was on the television. After talking with hundreds of voters, knocking on thousands of doors, and walking down half the streets in Lakewood, I developed a pretty keen eye for picking up political leanings based upon such things as the type of Halloween decorations on display or the movies on a bookshelf. On November 4th, nothing gave me much sense of how things might be going.

As uncomfortable as we Americans can be with strangers, averting our eyes to the ground as we pass one another rather than giving a smile, there is a refreshing solidarity among the supporters of candidates or causes during campaign season. Many nights, walking home from the campaign headquarters someone I'd pass on the street, or waiting at a bus stop, would say Obama's name out loud after seeing my shirt, or a button on my jacket. Usually I wouldn't even break stride, I'd just say his name back, or clench a fist and raise my forearm a little.

On my third pass, when I saw an elderly black man walking to his car, wearing the same 'canvasser' button that I had on, I called out to him. I hungered for news, his experience at the polls, or maybe even something journalistic, though I knew that the news would be holding their exit poll results for a few more hours. What he told me had something entirely different to do with the day. As I crossed the street to greet him, a police badge clipped to his belt caught my eye, and after exchanging pleasantries, he pulled back his jacket to show me a faded blue shirt with the insignia of the Capitol Police embroidered on the left breast. Years earlier he had guarded not only the chambers of Congress, but the members, at times having been assigned to Strom Thurmond as a bodyguard.

I am not in a position, by skin color or age, to truly comprehend the realities of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, from the Civil Rights movement to Vietnam, the height of the Cold War to the assassination of JFK. I know that November 4th, 2008 was only evidence of progress, and far from a culminating event, but when Ohio was called, and the map turned from white to blue, along with a shiver up my spine, I felt a renewed sense of pride in my country and countrymen.


Monday, November 3, 2008

Shake It Off (not a Mates of State post)

Ten days ago or so when I went to see President Clinton speak, I got there an hour early and ended up in the front row. Actually, I ended up behind the barricade for a few minutes when the organizers needed a little help setting up canopies in what was a strong wind coming off Lake Erie (another kid and I were selected by the Secret Service).

I knew it would be different for Barack and Bruce Springsteen yesterday (John Kerry ended his campaign four years ago in Cleveland, with The Boss, and drew an estimated 50,000, and Kerry certainly didn't inspire like Obama does).

We took the train downtown, which is important to this story for a couple of reasons. The first is that we by chance met Joe from Saint Ohio on the platform. They're great, so open them in another tab and listen to them while you read the rest of this.

The second reason is that it gave me the title. Besides Barack's rally, there was a home Browns game. We had hoped to beat a few people to the rally by taking the Waterfront line to the Rock Hall, which meant we went right past several parking lots of tailgating football fans. For a second it looked as though one particular fan was mooning us, but it turned out she was just urinating behind a bridge pylon, hidden from view from her friends, but aimed right at a packed train.

I really wish I had video taped the walk to the end of the line, which I read one estimate that had it at a mile (I personally would have guessed much longer).

In the end, we didn't even make it to the security gate, but ended up in an overflow area from which we could still see the stage, as well as a jumbotron. I didn't get any pictures worth posting, it was dark by the time things really got underway, and Bruce and Barack were between us and the world's brightest light. Here's a couple that I found this morning:





The speech was more policy than I would have expected 36 hours before the polls start closing. My favorite moment however was when Barack asked for a show of hands of those making less than a quarter of a million dollars a year, and told Bruce not to raise his.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Old Brown Shoe

Ramona victimized my favorite pair of shoes a few months ago. She ripped out one of the tongues, and made it her baby. She had to have it under her chin while napping.

I kept wearing the shoes like my second skin, until Barack did them in last week with a cracked sole.

I knocked on 55 doors yesterday, and 82 tonight.

Starting with tonight's canvass, I'm not resetting my pedometer until after my last Get Out The Vote effort on the 4th.

Visit BarackObama.com to find out how you can help.

P1010473

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Pinkertons!

We packed up the dog and headed for Danielle's parents' house yesterday, we were over due for a visit, but we also wanted to make a final pitch to her mom for Barack.

I don't know if we were successful, we were up against a lot. Danielle's great-great-grandfather was once the mayor of the town she grew up in, and his legacy is calling in the Pinkertons to break a strike of steel workers. It's not just bloodlines, a sign with the ten commandments on it is displayed in the front yard, and abortion is a big issue.

On our side, we took Sicko as a discussion starter.

My mother-in-law works in a factory, her last annual raise was a nickel an hour, and the employee share of her health insurance went up significantly, leading to take-home pay that is not only less than last year when adjusted for inflation, or the cost of living, but less in terms of the actual dollar amount on the check - all this while the owner has recently bragged about record profits.

One of the extras on the Sicko dvd is about Norway, a reaction to the Sean Hannity's of the world crying about the horrors of socialized medicine, European socialism in general. Danielle's mom and I talked about education, in particular, the free higher education of many European countries. She worried out loud about where employers would find cheap labor if everyone had an opportunity to earn a college degree.

How did the workers of this country, those who see their paychecks go down, come to have concerns for their employer's ability to find cheap labor when they themselves are unable to take a hot shower, or cook on their stove for having fallen too far behind on their gas bills and it having been shut off months ago.

Friday, October 24, 2008

A fluff piece.

According to the latest filing with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday night, the McCain campaign's highest paid employee for the first half of October was celebrity make-up artist Amy Strozzi ($22,800 for two weeks), who travels with Governor Palin.

By contrast, Randy Scheunemann, McCain's Chief Foreign Policy Adviser, made under $13,000 over the same time period.

In my opinion, these things aren't the things that should decide a person's vote, but I don't think that's what McCain wanted us to think a few months ago when he was running his 'Celebrity' ads.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

This comes from the ladies at Bust magazine.


Give some thought to voting early (you can find out where at VoteForChange.com). Voting early does a number of things, most importantly ensuring you will get a vote. I say this because I recently read that one of the largest counties in Ohio only ordered as many ballots as they did in 2004, despite the predictions of a record turnout.

Voting early will also help reduce lines for other people, and hopefully help discourage them from leaving before casting their ballot (I've talked to people on my canvasses that waited as long as 3 hours to vote in 2004).

"I felt like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest"

A long time ago I posted a blog about childhood vision problems and Dennis Kucinich, which I linked by UFO stories. It got picked up by some UFO enthusiast webpage, and my blogspot blog briefly went from a dozen or so views a day to several hundred.

The subject line is a quote I read the other day from a pilot in the 1950's who received orders to fire on a UFO. I read it on cnn.com, I'm not UFO crazy.

Below is the complete interaction between Barack Obama and 'Joe the Plumber'. It's not an ass-kicking, but I couldn't come up with a better title, what it is is Barack clearly laying out his rationale for his taxation plan in terms that make a lot of sense.





Sunday, October 12, 2008

Do you think Barack Obama is circumcised or uncircumcised?

I didn't think of that question myself, David Sedaris did.

Some of the most compassionate, thoughtful, and loving people I know are Republicans. I know the people in this video don't represent all Republicans, nor do I believe in any way they could be convinced to vote for Barack Obama.







Regardless of political affiliation, I hope you found that disturbing.

If you are a supporter of Senator Obama, please consider adding Barack's myspace if you haven't already, and putting him in your top friends. In past elections I've discounted the value of yard signs, and even canvassing, but I recently heard a report on NPR about how both are helping Obama in areas where race may be an issue, because people see it as their neighbors vouching for him.

Also, I recently set up a fundraising account for Obama/Biden. The money goes directly to the campaign, and not through us in any way. I set the goal at an incredibly reasonable total of $250.00, to encourage small donations.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

John McCain’s words from his book, Worth the Fighting For

"I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. I was sixty-two years old when I made the decision, and I thought it was my one shot at the prize."

I'm sure very few people find themselves in the position of running for president completely devoid of personal ambition, and ambition in itself is not an inherently bad thing.

In fairness to Senator McCain, he does go on to say that he believes he has the experience, both political and military, to do the job.

That said, I want a president driven by the desire to create a better world, not one who mostly wants to satisfy his ego.

I took the picture below last night, I first read the quote online on another blog, but wasn't convinced it was accurate until I saw it for myself.

Friday, September 26, 2008

$700,000,000.000.00, or getting richer, quicker?

I like Woody Guthrie. I'd probably like riding around in box cars, and even in times of prosperity, cooking beans over a campfire appeals to me, but I'm not saying 'bring on the depression'.

That said, I can't get behind this bailout yet, and I'm not sure any amount of details will change that, because I'm not sure new rules could be implemented in a way that fundamentally changes how business works.

As I understand it, we're in the situation not because of simple greed, but because of complex greed. The more I read, the more it seems that Wall Street operates on the same principles as the 'no money down real estate' schemers that run infomercials in the middle of the night.

The companies we're trying to save seem to have an atrocious history of trying to make money out of money where nothing else exists. They're not investing in people or business, they're not investing in anything that helps society.

We've built a financial industry where we can sell stocks that we don't own, that we can control massively more commodities than we can afford to purchase, that we can hedge our investment gambles with insurance policies on them.

I for one am beginning to believe we need to invest that money in something real, real jobs, real education, real energy solutions, real health care, real infrastructure, and not just grease the squeaky wheels of a financial system that seems to be most concerned with making the rich richer.

2:25 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit -

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The Fundamentals of our Economy are Strong

If John McCain wants to spin this signature line from his speeches into some sort of comment on how innovative and productive the American worker is, rather than considering the fundamentals of the economy to be those measurable areas of it such as job creation, unemployment rates, inflation, let him.

But to John McCain, I ask this:

What does the American worker look like? Are you talking about the CEO getting millions of dollars in bonuses while their company posts record loses? Or are you talking about the everyday worker who makes a tiny fraction of a percent of what the CEO does?

John McCain, how many times have you voted against an increase in the minimum wage? (the answer is 19)

Are these minimum wage workers a fundamental of our economy? These workers, who with their families make up the 47,000,000+ Americans without health insurance?

Pardon me if I don't accept your campaigns' rhetoric that since no one can be turned away from an Emergency Room, we have Universal Health Care in this country.

Is it the fundamentally strong workers who are losing their homes in historic numbers (nearly 10,000 a week). And what about those who are in homes that have lost a quarter of their value or more under the same economic policies you subscribe to?

Perhaps the fundamentally strong workers are that top 1% who receives 36% of the Bush tax cuts that you want to make permanent.

As Dennis Kucinich said in Denver, Wake-Up America!

We're closing in on the deadline to register to vote (it's October 6th in Ohio).

Talk to a friend that's not registered, and make sure they do. Talk to a friend that doesn't care the least bit about politics and give the reasons why you think it's worth taking a few minutes to register and vote. This election is too important, and recent history shows us the difference of a few hundred votes is the difference between 8 years of Bush or a better America than what we have now.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Sarah Palin's Red Meat Express

"Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except you have actual responsibilities."

Yeah, I guess it is, except most community organizers don't generate $22,000,000,00 in debt for their communities, and they don't hire lobbyists to generate $27,000,000.00 in earmarks.

Those things aren't the biggest knocks against her in my book (speaking of books, Time reported that she had a chat with her home town librarian about how to go about banning books, and when she didn't like the answers she got, she threatened to fire the woman). But I think it's a little funny that she's being presented to us by John McCain (who vows as president to veto any bill with earmarks in it) as a true reformer and little else.

With all the issues facing our country these days, just where does the need for reform in government sit with you? Before the economy? Iraq? health care? global warming? education?

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

An Obama button, on us.

Not only are we telling you about it, but we've made a donation to help fund them. Get your free Obama button from MoveOn.org.
Obama

Thursday, July 10, 2008

A bunch of Anniversary

We celebrated our 4th anniversary a few days ago. So yes, we're older looking than in our picture. I have a beard, circles under my eyes, probably less hair, but I've feared I've been losing that since I was in elementary school, a thought which I curiously share with Chris Martin of Coldplay.

We cashed out a lot of retirement savings. It's kind of a strange situation. It has to do with the Social Security Administration. The SSA is an odd place. I caught an elderly security guard checking out a middle-aged woman's derrière, and then his eye, after which he watched me like a hawk. There was a kid there too that smelled up the waiting room, and then we shared an elevator with afterwards. He didn't have to explain it, we're modest people, but he blamed it on a BK Croissandwich anyway.

The long and the short of it is that while all this money is passing through my hands, most of it just going towards our mortgage, Danielle gave me the anniversary present of a Gretsch Double Anniversary. It's a cool guitar. Hopefully you'll hear it soon, as we start a new round of recording a week from tomorrow.

Here's the very guitar, a shiny Cadillac Green 1964 Double Anniversary:

2196-1

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Poverty is sort of the new theme.

I started a photo album about it on myspace, but it's going to take some time.

Cleveland has been named America's poorest major city of the year several times already this century.

I used to teach in the inner-city, I pretty much went crazy from watching myself become a failure there. The district on a whole only graduates about 1/3rd of it's students.

I taught music. I remember picking up a student who wouldn't otherwise be able to make it to a performance, three kids in the apartment, not a bedroom for any of them, nor beds or mattresses. They slept on blankets on the floor, maybe towels.

It's a political problem, and the solution doesn't begin with thinking everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps because it's the American way. Not every start is equal, or remotely similar in quality.

The American way shouldn't be to allow people to live in projects like this:



We need to do better.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Drums and Bass

We finished tracking, and are a good ways into mixing things.

I woke up to some of Tim Luntzel's playing almost every day without realizing it for the longest time. He played on a lot of Bright Eye's I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, and my alarm is First Day of My Life.

I'm really particular about bass playing. I used to be a bass player, I'm not sure I like my own playing that well. I've come up with a few things that stand the test of time, but I think I'm too obvious. I don't really care for busy bass playing for the sake of being busy. In my opinion there's kind of a fine balance between contributing something additional to a song and overplaying, especially when people who aren't talented enough to breakout of some conventions try to be flashy.

Danielle and I were in the car listening to the I'm Not There soundtrack when I heard the greatest electric bass playing of my life, on Mira Billotte's version of As I Went Out One Morning. When we got where we were going I looked up the player in the liner notes, it was Tim. I tracked him down and got him to agree to record for us.

He recorded direct at a friend's house in NYC, we then sent the signal through a vintage Ampeg set-up at Metrosync, mic'ed with a Neumann U87 as well as something that I can't remember, but I don't think we used it in what we've mixed so far.

I hope Tim will play on everything I record for the rest of my life.

We also did drums on three songs two weeks ago. I had high hopes that an old friend would be able to play, but it didn't work out time wise. Paul Samuels helped us out, and it ended up being a great fit. Paul is primarily a jazz drummer, he teachers in Oberlin's jazz studies program.

For the most part we mic'd things in a very minimalist way. If you search youtube for 'recorderman' you'll find some videos of a guy demonstrating a two mic technique for drumset. Trying in part to capture the feel of old jazz records, we set up our overheads according to the directions (one over Paul's right shoulder, and one more traditionally above the hihat). We did add two other mics, one to each the kick the snare, giving us the option of adding reverb to the latter independent of the rest of the kit. For 'In Small Portions' we also set up a pair of room mics in opposite corners of the tracking room (which is quite large). I kind of wanted the sounds of the drums on Elliot Smith's Everthing Means Nothing to Me, although the style is a quite different, as Paul played with mallets. That song is the hold up to finishing the project, as it's going to require some intense mixing.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Document

This is for history. It may bore you, but there is a present at the end (but if you just read a bulletin from us, you already got it).

We spent April 13th at Chicago Sound Lab with Chris Bober. He's a brilliant guitarist, technical mastery and incredibly interesting compositional ideas. Tasteful too.

Chris and I were friends in high school, my dad drove us to see Morrissey in Detroit when I was 16. My brother lived with him a bit during college, and they played together in bands.

We ended up doing all the electric guitars for the EP in four hours. Chris went to school for jazz studies, studying guitar performance. With the exception of a second, more rhythmesque part under the solo on Love Poem everything was created on the spot, with every take quite different from those before it. I don't think we really took more than 4 or 5 passes on any part, and with the exception of one tiny punch-in, everything was recorded in one go, in large part because the parts were improvised and while they could be recreated, there wasn't really a point in figuring out what had been done.

All the parts save one were done with my G&L Legacy, which is a stratocaster in all respects but name, G&L was Leo Fender's last company - the L is for Leo. We ran it into only two amps, a Valvetrain 205TB for the cleans, and a Carr Hammerhead for the more gritty parts, and used only a single effect, a Lovepedal Morph (a fuzz pedal with both germanium and silicon transistors which can be blended), and that only with the Carr.

I had a few second thoughts about the Carr prior to the session. It's a pretty high gain amp, but voiced in what can seem like a sort of classic rock way, but in my listening leading up to the session I found a lot of its tones in late-era Beatles stuff, if it had been around, it could have been used on much of Let it Be.

CSL is a cool place. It's a pre-WWII building, the tracking room has an exposed brick wall, and they have a vintage SSL board that must have at least 48 channels - it's huge. We ended up recording the amps in the live room instead of an isolation booth, hoping to give the sense that the recording was being done in a slightly more natural way than the reality of hundreds of miles from, and six weeks after, all the acoustic guitar and vocal parts were finished. We're really pleased with the results.

Someday this might help someone writing a 33 and 1/3rd, if all goes well.

Here's your present:

I don't know much about John Peel. He had a radio show that bands played live on, and sometimes you could buy the recordings afterwards (I treasured my Cure Peel Session in high school).

Daytrotter.com is sort of a similar thing, only you can download the the music for free. They just posted 6 songs Death Cab did for them. There's a lot of great stuff in the achieves too.

A little piece of nonfiction (for Indiana and N.C. Democrats)

Our second home is the dog park, but this isn't really about dogs.

We love them (dogs), and we spend a couple evenings a week cooing over puppies, and trying to catch the action with our cellphone cameras that never take the picture quick enough.

Another thing about the dog park is that it brings together people who wouldn't otherwise ever meet. Lately, we've spent more time there talking to people our parents' and grandparents' age than our own. Some people show up in luxury SUVs, others in beaters missing hubcaps, but everyone has a common interest, and everyone talks.

I chatted with a guy wearing an Obama precinct captain pin a couple of weeks ago. Ohio is a swing state, but our home town is as blue as Vermont. Dennis Kuchinich is our Congressman, and he's loved here. This guy wasn't even a registered democrat until this year, and it turns out he put up six Obama volunteers for the week leading up to the Ohio primary, and he's now in Pennsylvania working to get out the vote. The guy's big issue is the war, and in particular, the $12,000,000,000.00 a month drain on the economy it is.

Health care is probably my number one issue, and truth be told, I've read great things about Hillary's plan. Among others, Elizabeth Edwards is a big supporter of Hillary's plan, though I don't believe she's endorsed either candidate. That said, we're supporting Barack.

We'd be happy to vote for Hillary in the general election, but not only do we think she'd have a tougher battle for the White House, but that if she was elected, it would likely be an administration of more gridlock and polarization. Our next president is going to have unprecedented challenges, and we need someone who has a chance of uniting and mending what is now a very fractured country.

Should you find yourself thinking about oinking like a pig

I think I read something once about how of all the senses, smells makes the most lasting impressions on people.

I believe most people fall into certain categories, myself included. I drive a VW wagon, am writing this on a Mac and so on...one of the things people like me do is entertain toddlers by oinking like a pig at every opportunity, and I did just that last week.

We’re headed to Chicago this weekend to finish up recording the guitars for our EP. Under the guise of going to my favorite guitar shop to buy a few last minute things, I snuck out from babysitting to the record store to surprise Danielle with a few new albums to listen to on the ride. On the way I tasted something for the first time since I was probably four or five years old. It was a little salty, and a little fiber-y, and immediately recognizable.

I’m a little disappointed in what I bought, but a couple weeks ago we struck gold with Thao’s new album. Check out Bag of Hammers.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

We Stopped at Perfect Days

Seven or eight weeks ago I started re-recording the songs that this project started with. I had a lot of reasons for this.

For the past couple of months we’ve been in and out of Metrosync, a studio that was originally built in the 1940’s for live radio broadcasts of big bands. The Beatles played live for northeast Ohio from what would become the studio’s tracking room.



Danielle added her voice a week or so ago, we’ve been trading germs all winter, and a time finally worked out when she wasn’t extra nasally.

We’re done with our parts, but we have some tricks up our sleeves, so the recording will go on. In a month we’ll be in Chicago with our friend Chris Bober who is an amazing guitarist, and hopefully in May my favorite drummer in the world will add to a couple of songs. I hadn’t planned on sharing anything until everything was completed, including mastering, but I changed my mind a few days ago.

We just uploaded a new song, We Stopped at Perfect Days. It isn’t the most complex song by any means, but I like it, and more than that, I love what Spacey Casey Prestwood (who has been in Rocky Votolato’s touring band, among other great groups) added with his pedal steel so much that I decided not to sit on it. The final version of the song will be quite different...but this is where it stands right now.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Baby, it's cold outside

This is ice, not beveled glass.





The big box in the back is our composter, it's great, you should get one too, if you do, adding worms helps a lot.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

"Pray for More Dead Kids"

The following is from an AP article about Brianna Denison, you can read the whole thing here.

...Outside the memorial service, several members of a fundamentalist Kansas church faced off against more than 150 counter-demonstrators.

The standoff, which occurred during a fierce snowstorm, ended peacefully when police escorted the three protesters associated with the Westboro Baptist Church away from the convention center, Sgt. Chris Lange said.

"There were a couple of eggs thrown at them and that's about it," Lange said.

Members of the Topeka, Kan., church picket military funerals out of a belief that the Iraq war is a punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality. Last month, the church announced it would protest the service for Denison because it believes God hates Reno.

Church officials said they targeted the city because local law enforcement officers failed to protect church members who picketed a Jan. 26 memorial service there for a soldier who was killed in Iraq.

On Saturday, the three protesters waved placards reading "Pray for More Dead Kids," "Don't Worship the Dead" and "God Sent the Killer."...

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

I've read more books than George Washington

That's not exactly the truest thing I've ever said. Danielle, some day she will pass him.

Last night's Globetrekker was about D.C., a trip to Mount Vernon revealed that our first president is believed to have read over a thousand books. It seems like an admirable number given his other obligations.

I had a good tie-in for this otherwise useless information. It involved the need for health benefits and the movie Office Space, and to a much lesser degree wrapping up our recording for a little while.

Danielle read a bit of Michael Pollan's new book aloud to me. One of his pieces of advice is to not eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize. I'm not sure if it was his illustration, or Danielle's, but we talked about gogurt (yogurt in a squeeze tube, for those of you not familiar). The book is In Defense of Food if you're interested.

Sometimes I think I would be better suited emotionally for a slower time.

I want satisfaction, I want to know that the work I do benefits my family and my community. I want simple pleasures, but I also want real experiences.

I'm not sure how it happens, I suppose it's different for everyone, but I really think that we Americans are caught up in trading experiences for tangibles. I mean, what do so many people give up so that they can live in 3600 square foot houses? What could have been had instead of the off-white master bedroom suite with a love seat and two over stuffed chairs?

Is there a word for having a fear of regrets?

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Make sure your beef bile hasn’t been recalled.

Seriously, there is a market for bile? Bile?

This is your meat industry...

• Various weight boxes of HALLMARK MEAT PACKING BEEF SMALL INTESTINES.

• Various weight boxes of HALLMARK MEAT PACKING BEEF LIPS.

• Various weight boxes of HALLMARK MEAT PACKING BEEF SPLEENS.

• Various weight boxes of HALLMARK MEAT PACKING BEEF SALIVARY GLANDS, LYMPH NODES AND FAT [TONGUES].

• Six-gallon containers of HALLMARK MEAT PACKING BEEF BILE.

• One- and six-gallon containers of HALLMARK MEAT PACKING BEEF BLOOD, .2% SODIUM CITRATE ADDED.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Kuch and my own UFO story

I'm deeply saddened by Dennis feeling he needed to abandon his White House bid. I know he is completely unelectable, but I for one love a guy who takes his own green tea out to breakfast, and then takes the teabag home to compost it. I'm not sure there's enough idealism in politics.

Danielle and I watched a documentary on Sargent Shriver last night on PBS, ain't no party like a Lakewood party...what a great man. I think people of my parents' generation realize that, but I think JFK and LBJ get a lot of credit in the history books that he deserved, and also that Dennis and Shriver are cut from the same cloth.

My mom and I talked about Obama's win in South Carolina this afternoon, and a bit about Dennis dropping out. Her candidate bowed out a few weeks ago (Dodd). My mom has funny fears about candidates and their electability (the spell checker says this isn't a real word, with the 'a' or an 'i'). I remember her worrying about Obama seeming like too good of an actor after he did a commercial for a football game a year ago which seemed as though it might have been his announcing his candidacy. Maybe a little more of real concern, she worried about the media talking about Dennis and UFO's forever.

When I was little, there were two types of kids in my neighborhood. Maybe not really types, but camps: G.I. Joe and He-Man. I couldn't respect anyone that liked He-Man, it didn't really help that most of those kids lived in houses that always smelled like their moms were cooking goulash in a crock pot. My bestfriend kind of road the fence, but at the time he was the best of the lot. I have a distinct memory of us lying on our backs in the field part of my elementary school's playground (he went to Catholic school), and seeing what I believed were dozens of UFOs. There weren't any lights, but they moved too quick to be planes or birds, and their movement wasn't of this world. Years later I would learn I probably had a case of vitreous detachment (a lot of eye floaters at once).

As for politics:

Monday, January 21, 2008

Is Arnold Schwarzenegger master of Texas?

A friend of Danielle's has a bigger interest in China than I do. He and his wife are there right now, or maybe just got back. On one of his previous trips he wrote down the words to a folk song that in large part lead to the songs I'm working on (writing, not recording) right now. Darren and his wife were asked the following questions when they spent a little time with an English class:

Is Arnold Schwarzenegger master of Texas?

I heard one of The Backstreet Boys died in 9/11 - is this true?

Do you think Alfred Noble traded in death?

Have you ever explained in front of The White House?

Can you give me a visa?

Tell more about Canadian boxing.

I heard someone disappeared the Statue of Libetry. Is this true?

Right now, can you write your family history on the blackboard?

What do you think of the movie The Big Liar?

How many movie stars are your friends?


We saw There Will Be Blood today, and were throughly impressed. The only downside was another movie-goer (I suppose in a packed theater there's always one). She had a habit of laughing at very inappropriate times, like when a character who had been deaf for years spoke...she also checked her watch with a flashlight every couple of minutes. She had one of those canes with four feet, and toward the end of the movie I was rising out of my seat to take it from her (my plan was to make her behave to get it back) when Danielle's cellphone rang. It stole all my thunder.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Space Cadet

There's been a bit of a plague over our house. The details of which seem to be more appropriate for little kids to discuss than you and me, so I'll leave them to your imagination.

You can't stop progress. I'm not sure that's true, but I wanted to say that work continues on the EP.

I've been a bit of a hermit lately, I didn't make it to any Christmas parties this year, we stayed in by ourselves on New Year's Eve, but I have been making a few phone calls to old friends, one of which and I talked a bit about how sometimes absolutely crazy occurrences have fueled amazing bands and recordings. I haven't pulled out all my crazy stops for this EP, but here's a little story with some listening recommendations.

Danielle was a big fan of Koufax (listen to Let Us Know) from way back, she introduced me to them. I'm not sure if we've missed them in Cleveland since, probably, we're discovering we aren't very good at staying on top of who is on tour (if you have a couple of extra Wilco tickets, Let Us Know). A few years ago I had a real musical experience (I know, it sounds a little kooky) at a Koufax show. I love music. I love art, books, poems, architecture and so on, but I'm not sure any of the others have really raised the hair on the back of my neck in a religious sort of way, actually, maybe architecture. Casey Prestwood was playing with one of the other bands on the bill, and sat in on a song with Koufax on pedal steel, and really just sent me reeling. He's been playing with Rocky Votolato of late (I still really love White Daisy Passing, which will always remind me of driving along Lake Champlain on the way home from an interview in Burlington). He deserves all the success and fame in the world, and he's going to appear on one song on the EP. Six different takes are on their way to our mailbox, I can't wait.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Ham-fisted

I'm fairly certain I finished my parts on the EP today...which included a punch-in on Love Poem to fix an out-of-time chord, and redoing the entire guitar part for the title track (it's a better title than song, but still a fine song).

I'm reading Geoff Emerick's book about recording The Beatles...he doesn't seem to care much for George, nor does he really respect GH's playing, which he refers to as 'ham-fisted' more than once. I think the same could be said of me, actually, I think 'guitarded' might be better.

We toyed with running some vocals through a Leslie, but after quite a bit of listening and scrutinizing, I'm not sure it's going to stick...on The Beatles theme, the idea was based on John's use of the spinning speakers on Tomorrow Never Knows.

Danielle is still recovering from a horrible Christmas sinus infection, but we're hoping she can record next week.

We saw Juno on Sunday, it was good. We've been quoting it a lot the last couple of days. Sonic Youth's cover of The Carpenter's Superstar is on the soundtrack...I've always loved the pedal piano notes on it...so I decided to add a few (3) to a little transition...and they're grrrreat - maybe my favorite thing I did today. Metrosync has an old rebuilt Steinway grand that sounds huge.

I had higher hopes for my own singing...there is some chime to the recordings we did with our friend Bob in our living room that isn't there on these recordings, but then again there is a lot that can happen to them still...