I Will Rock You

My partner and I at work spend a great deal of time talking about our feelings, love and mostly music when we go outside for his smoke breaks.

Music-wise, we challenge each other with questions like … top 5 Beatles songs, or best rock voice, or most personally influential albums … and the one we always ask (like two old men who always repeat themselves) is which top 5 albums where all the rage during your teen years.

So, for better or worse, here they are.

Styx Grand Illusion
Boston Boston
Framptom Comes Alive
Queen News of the World
Van Halen’s first

The list brings tears to my eyes – for a lot of reasons. Like trying to dance to Come Sail Away at senior prom. I am thinking of this because I just borrowed Boston from someone and work and … It’s been such a long time ….

What’s in a Name

God only knows, but I was talking with my wife about pet names this morning and wanted to pass along the Hall of Famers that my Grandma had for her toy and miniature poodles.

Cupcake
Choo Choo
Emily
Mister
Bon Bon (a mini)
Je Paul
Poppa Touhy
Pierre

By the way, she had these all at the same time. Quite a sight to see them all pillowed around her on the couch. On a related note, a guy I work with recently told me his young son named their pet gerbil Wood Piece.

Amazing Colossal Keith

My good friend Bertrand asked me to come up for air and post a little "Alive and well" message.

I am so ridiculously busy my Blogging has totally lapsed since my trip to and from Houston. In a nutshell, here's a summary of recent events ...

1. Oyster incident in Houston

2. New staff photo (see below) not my best side


3. Figured out what made me tick and then quickly forgot. In the dark again.

Anyway, I hope to be back in the saddle soon. P.S. Almost forgot. Met a new gal. She's cool with my giant diapee. How great is that!

ADDENDUM: My wife Belinda pointed out that she did not pick up on the movie play going on. The photos are from The Amazing Colossal Man and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Glen, the poor radiated fool who grows so big, ends up in a giant diaper. Probably Fruit of the Loom, but still a giant diaper. See movie poster.

Baaaaaad Tooth Fairy

Holy shit, I don't believe it. We actually forgot to put a little coinage under our son's pillow last night for his tooth. We are bad fairies.

I will be in Houston for the rest of the week and not posting again until next week.

Catch Phrases - A Little Word Play

Drying out still after a day at the water park yesterday so not much to post today, but I did want to throw out a few phrases/lines that have caught my ear over the past few days.


Fluff me - from a Happy Meal box

"Aura of merit" - from a book on the First Crusade

"Subsequent poop" - my wife Helena talking about Otty

I guess these are in the spirit of a grad school game we used to play that involved claiming odd phrases we'd hear (or make up) as thesis titles. The one I still love is: Tides of My Hair.

The tide is out by the way. Almost all out.

Wife's Fluid Legs

Between bedroom adagios and banana wangs, I guess I have a bit of a pattern going so in keeping with the theme ...

At the Poetry Reading
by John Brehm

I can't keep my eyes off the poet's
wife's legs—they're so much more
beautiful than anything he might
be saying, though I'm no longer
in a position really to judge,
having stopped listening some time ago.
He's from the Iowa Writers Workshop
and can therefore get along fine
without my attention. He started in
reading poems about his childhood—
barns, cornsnakes, gradeschool, flowers,
that sort of stuff—the loss of
innocence he keeps talking about
between poems, which I can relate to,
especially under these circumstances.
Now he's on to science, a poem
about hydrogen, I think, he's trying
to imagine himself turning into hydrogen.
Maybe he'll succeed. I'm imagining
myself sliding up his wife's fluid,
rhythmic, lusciously curved, black-
stockinged legs, imagining them arched
around my shoulders, wrapped around my back.
My God, why doesn't he write poems about her!
He will, no doubt, once she leaves him,
leaves him for another poet, perhaps,
the observant, uninnocent one, who knows
a poem when it sits down in a room with him.

Knock Knock. Who's There? Banana Wang

Okay, we have been devouring childrens' books now for 7 some years, and never, NEVER in all that time have I seen anything like this.

I give you the Banana Wang.



Can it even be an accident? The pic is from a joke book we picked up at a garage sale. Whit was reading it to me last night at bed time, and most of the jokes were terrible, but this, this was funny as hell.

Holy Terror - Night Crazies

Tug-o-pup is becoming a very popular game here. It is part of his night crazies. He also has morning crazies. Big bursts of puppy energy and dashing and darting and jumping and yipping. Alas, the pictures just can't capture all the tear assing around the room that goes on in between these shots. I try and try to get him on the move but I might as well be blind. If only my reflexes were better ... A beautiful moment tonight while out walking Otty. A woman came up to us in the park with a frizzed out Jack Russell girl (3 yrs.) and there was a little tension between the two dogs so the woman picked up her dog and offered its butt to Otty for sniffing. I am not sure I will ever be a dog person.

New Poet Laureate

New poet laureate announced today.

Green Mountains x 2

Two translations of the same haiku by Santoka Taneda.

The first comes from John Stevens' Mountain Tasting,

Going deeper
and still deeper—
the green mountains

the second from For All My Walking, Burton Watson.

the deeper I go
the deeper I go
green mountains


I read the second version as a little too explicit with its elbow nudge .. get it, get it? Deeper into the mountain, deeper into myself. JS's version pushes the idea to the same place with more subtle language methinks. Both wonderful books, bringing more (and different) Taneda poems into English.

My Classical Bedroom or Sex with Bach

Here’s a peeve of mine.

Classical music is often torn apart, sliced, diced and packaged on CDs according to moods, time of day, etc. Mozart for Midnight, Beethoven for Breakfast. Lute for Camping. Night Moods. Brunch with Bach. Woodwinds for Debate Club Parties.

I am making these up but I imagine you have seen such compilations. I suppose it’s a good way to sample classical music and enter the flow, but … this weekend I heard Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess on the radio and quickly requested it from the library – the only available CD with the track on it was something called Bedroom Adagios, 2 ½ hours of the most sensual music. I felt very young checking it, taking it from the librarian without looking at her, but I really really wanted to hear the track. It is gorgeous.


On the CD cover is a fluffy bed with the fluffy white sheet turned down, inviting lovers just like me and my wife Chelsea. I can almost see my wife and I, feeding strawberries into each others’ mouths. Laughing as the whipped cream gets on her nose. Stopping a long kiss long enough to see the red bird on our window ledge. And then both of us crying during sex. And waking up hours later, looking longingly at one another, and crying again.

I am not sure why CDs like this bug me. Does it cheapen the music (and experience) a little by concept-packaging it like some artificial ambience designed to fit these intimate aspects of life, by offering up a soundtrack, or someone’s idea of a soundtrack, for such personal matters? Besides, who can really hear music over all that moaning, and crying, and laughter. A the flit flit of tongues slurping whipped cream.