Walking Around With Your Head in the Clouds

I try to walk to the library everyday. The journey is about three miles round trip, which is just enough to qualify as both exercise and a chance to clear my head (which is usually pretty empty, anyhow). The walk follows a busy street, but there are sidewalks and some great architecture along the way--two gorgeous churches, the high school campus, the town hall, and a few blocks worth of old Victorian homes, some of which are well-preserved historical homes, whereas others have fallen into extreme disrepair, making it look as though every fifth house or so is haunted or infested with witches. I also pass a street where one of America's most famous traitors lived, a big cemetery, and a two statues, one honoring civil war dead and the other honoring the Italian community in town. A pretty interesting three miles, all in all.

Today I started the walk with my iPod playing my '50's-early '60's playlist, because music from that era is fuel for a project I'm working on. I stopped at a yard sale about a half-mile into my walk, and I found a book called Populuxe by Thomas Hines, which has a tagline that reads "The look and life of America in the '50's and '60's, from tailfins and TV dinners to Barbie dolls and fallout shelters." I read the book years ago and loved it, so was thrilled to get it (for a whole buck).

Now, I understand that it probably sounds terribly contrived to be taking a stroll, thinking about a project I'm writing concerning the 1950's, listening to 1950's music, and then finding a great reference book which has the exact sensibility about the 1950's (for a whole buck) that I'm incorporating in the project, but that's the way life is. I'm a great believer in synchronicity. The universe provides; one just needs to sharpen one's awareness of that fact.

But finding the book wasn't even the weird part of today's trek.

On the way home I was approaching a home that had a "apartment for rent" sign on the lawn. Many of the Victorians have been converted into multi-family homes. At this particular one where the sign was, the lawn was overgrown and the hedge was reaching out over the sidewalk. A flower garden along the foundation was sprouting onto the porch, and there were a few decorative trees and bushes in the yard that were sorely in need of trimming. The house is still gorgeous, well-shaded and set back from the street. All the house needs is a little yard work and horticultural attention.

I started thinking about a down on his luck character who offers to do the yard work in exchange for a reduced rent, and the owner of the home, a kind but stingy elderly lady who remembers when our town was in it's heyday, reluctantly agrees, but only if the man also agrees to do "some repairs" to the house itself. He agrees, and in re shingling the roof, he finds...

I know, I know. I was supposed to be thinking about the 1950's project. It's a long walk, and I'm not always the most focused of individuals.

Anyway, when I pulled even with the sidewalk-encroaching hedge, I looked down and saw there was a Ouija board laying on the grass. As if that was creepy enough, a leaf floated down from the big maple tree just inside the hedge and landed on the board.

One doesn't normally find Ouija boards taking a walk, I think. I've written before about my nebulous belief in signs and portents; I'm not quite sure what this would auger. The tip of the leaf was pointing at the "H", if that is any help.

I wonder if it will still be there tomorrow? And I wonder just what I will do if, as I approach, "Pledging My Love" by Johnny Ace playing through my headphones, another maple leaf drifts down, alighting on the board to point starkly at the "I"?

More Fun in the New World

A few appearances for September:

New England Independent Booksellers' Association (NEIBA) Regional Trade Show: Sept. 19 at 2:30, Hyatt Convention Center, Boston, signing.

Barnes and Noble, Canton CT: Sept 25 at 6:00, signing.

My Wild Life, Part XVII

I was jogging in the park near my house today. Their are some trails that cut through the woods around the park, which I enjoy because they are not well travelled so no one has to listen to me gasp and wheeze. I don't even have to listen to me gasp and wheeze, because I use my iPod to blot out the my death rattle. Plus, I sweat like Shaquille O'Neal during the playoff and who wants to see/experience that? I'm really quite unpleasant.

I like to listen to the same playlist that I write to when I jog, which currently is five hundred and fifty five loud songs. "So Far" by Buckcherry had just come on (which would be a contender for my personal theme song, if I could have one--that or "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock and Roll) by AC/DC) as I started up the steeper of the two hills on the trail when I surprised a family of deer. The buck was pretty big and bounded off to the left, the doe wasn't so big and bounded to the right. Their fawn kind of took two steps to the right and stopped alongside the path.

What beautiful animals! There arrival seemed portentous in a way I wasn't sure of at the time. Here I was, in the third month or so of a serious health kick, and I'd just read a bunch of outdoorsy Hemingway, and I'm still aching from the loss of my own beautiful animal. I'm a big believer in signs and omens, and am very superstitious. For example, my superstitions include wearing my underwear backwards on Thursdays, wearing a tiny effigy of myself on a silver chain around my neck, and saying a quick prayer to the Great Pumpkin, gourd almighty, whenever I eat yams (note: none of the proceeding is true; I'm far too superstitious to tell you any of my actual superstitions).

I slowed my pace and tried to sound a little less like a rapidly deflating Moon Bounce, not wanting to startle the deer any more. The parents had stopped their flight to keep an eye on junior; when I was at the crest of the hill. I turned back and all three were rejoining on the path. Awwww.

It took me awhile to figure out what the appearance of the deer family in my life meant, omen-wise, but I think I've got it:

The bucks and dough will always flee from me, but kids will enjoy watching me suffer.

Or maybe they were just a particularly sparkly point of beauty in an overall great day. Who knows? I hope I'm having yams tonight.

BONNY
2/14/92-8/14/08
Rest in Peace

Actually, we don't really know when Bonny was born. She'd been an abused dog; my wife got her from the humane society. She had relatives that worked there and said that she might make a good dog for us. They'd taken her from a home where she'd been locked in the closet with a half dozen or so of her puppies. The puppies, thankfully, were all adopted prior to Kim going to meet her. She was our Valentine's Day gift to each other soon after we got married.

They were wrong about her being a good dog for us, though. She was the best.

Quiet, gentle, and friendly, Bonny weathered all manner of changes with us--new homes, new jobs, new babies, life and death. In great health for most of her relatively long life, this year was a bit of a struggle for her, she had developed a number of ailments that meant that she would not be with us much longer.

A month or so ago I took her out for one of our midnight walks, and somehow she slipped the leash. I live next to a very busy street (even at midnight), and in the past her infrequent escapes would be major cause for alarm, and I would typically give chase as soon as I knew that she was "off the hook", usually catching her in an open field about a half mile down the road when she was too tired to run anymore. I was always amazed at how my fury and rage at her unwillingness to stop would give way to thankfulness that she hadn't been squished by a passing semi the moment I scooped her up in my arms.

Anyway, a month or so she got away. You'd think I'd be able to outrun an arthritic, 112 year old dog (human years) with kidney problems, but not so. She was off like a shot, the Bonny of old, and down the hill before I even knew she was gone.

I didn't take after her that time, I just sat down under an apple tree in my yard. About twenty minutes later she came bounding up the hill, a look of pure joy on her face as she slathered me with her tongue. This was a dog who had not been able to get up the stairs for the past few months, leaping and dancing around like she'd discovered the fountain of doggy youth (and not sewer run-off, like usual). She was spry as a puppy when I brought her inside and gave her a treat, although about ten minutes later she zonked out on her bed and slept straight through until morning.

She looked about as happy as I'd ever seen her after she returned that night, about as happy as she when we first brought her home and she realized that my wife and I weren't monsters who were going to lock her in a dark closet.

I didn't realize it at the time, but now I know that I was every bit as happy as she was.

Goodbye, Bonny.

Oprah Loves Zombies

Well, sort of. Generation Dead is on her recommended reading list, along with the spectacular book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by the very reputable E. Lockhart and a number of other cool books.

Check it out here.

Zombies Take Manhattan, Part Two

My wife and I went on a scavenger hunt for Gen Dead posters in Manhattan yesterday. We found zombies all over the place!



The person on the left may or may not be a zombie; he wouldn't leave the frame when my wife was taking the picture. I think Duffy behind him is trying to squeeze his ego back inside his skull.



We liked this one, with the parking signs pointing right at Karen (yes, I think of the cover girl as Karen). Then again, I think of my coffee pot as "Trixie" and my lava lamp (the pink one) as "Bubbles".

Remember: a free Generation Dead T-Shirt to whoever sends in the best picture of a poster from Seattle! The campaign starts there today.

At Fates Hands

I’ve gone a little crazy with CD purchases lately, mostly trolling through the used Cd bins. A trip to Northhampton got me the first Byrds boxed set, the new B-52s album, and the Damned’s Phantasmagoria, which you might have noticed was the first (admittedly intermittent) “Album of the week”. Yes, I already had the vinyl, but the CD had two remixes I didn’t have. That version is out of print, and it was only seven bucks!!! What was I supposed to do? Not get it? Hah? I’ve also been getting a lot of neat Pink Floyd related stuff, like The Body from Roger Waters and Ron Geesin, a weird 4 song sampler from a recent David Gilmour show that was on PBS, and the Zabriski Point soundtrack, which I’m dying to listen to because it has a whole bunch of “lost” Floyd tracks. I also picked up a CD reissue of the first Sweetwater record, a CD from a German prog band named Jane, and the just released remaster of Perfect Symmetry from Fates Warning.

PERFECT SYMMETRY, Fates Warning 1989


The new CD comes with a bonus disc of demos and a bonus dvd of concert footage. I’m one of the stars of the dvd!

Well, not really. But I think my jaw hit the floor when I looked on the back and saw that some of the concert footage was shot in New Haven, because I was at that show! How cool! A chance for a rendezvous with the much younger me!

The footage was shot in 1989, and in 1989 Fates Warning was second only to Iron Maiden in my personal pantheon of rock gods. Like Maiden, they had endured after the potentially devastating loss of their first singer, John Arch, who stayed on for one more album than Maiden’s Dianno did, departing after the brilliant Awaken the Guardian. Fates came back with Ray Alder and No Exit, an album that got them some Headbanger’s Ball play on MTV with “Silent Cries”, and also had an eleven minute opus in “The Ivory Gate of Dreams”. Their music was riffy but intricate, and the lyrics were introspective and interesting. Perfect Symmetry picked up where No Exit left off in terms of it’s subject matter, with guitarists Jim Matheos and Frank Aresti writing songs about loneliness, alienation, and growing up. PS was the seventh CD I ever owned, the first of their releases that I didn’t own on vinyl.

I watched the concert while on vacation in Maine. I think I saw myself a few times—I think that’s me, the hulking blond brute headbanging and pounding his fist in the air near the front of the stage by Matheos. It’s hard to tell, as there are a number of hulking blond brutes, with hair equally as medieval and long as mine was. I wish I could remember more about the show beyond thinking it was great—not the details of the show as much as the details of my own life from that time period. What was I thinking? What was I feeling? Was I worried about a test or a term paper? Was I going out with Kim the next day? What story was I working on? When was the last time I’d been home? Had I switched majors yet? As I started to scrutinize the footage looking for my younger self I started to worry—what if I looked right in my younger eyes and didn't recognize me?

I don’t even know for certain who I went with, which is terrible. I have a pretty good idea, but I don’t remember. I do remember who I went with to my second Fates Warning concert, though. I remember this because I never made it to the show. My roommate Freddy and I borrowed a car, a VW Rabbit, from a guy that lived on our floor, filled the tank and went. We were about halfway to New Haven when the car started acting funny, so we pulled over and noticed something we should have noticed before, namely that the car was a diesel. Oops! Freddy called his dad, who performed one of the most amazing feats of mechanical might I’ve ever seen—he actually removed the gas tank so he could drain all of the engine-destroying unleaded fuel, replaced the now-dry tank, and poured in a gallon of diesel. We drove back to the dorm, handed over the keys, and held our breath for about a week. Our friend never mentioned having any issues with the car.

I think I was supposed to carry that story to the grave with me. Sorry, Freddy, wherever you are! I miss you, man!

Watching the concert again, I remembered that I thought Ray butchered “The Apparition”, one of my favorite John Arch songs, but that he was devastating on the newer material like “Nothing Left to Say” and “The Ivory Gate of Dreams”. The video evidence seems to corroborate my sometimes Swiss-cheesy memory. Strangely, I own guitar picks from both guitarists from this very show. Matheos’ tossed his to me after one of the acoustic breaks in Ivory Gate of Dreams (this would have been a perfect video moment, alas, the camera’s eye did not witness it)and I found Aresti’s on the floor after the concert. One is blue, one purple—I don’t really know whose is whose--they are pictured below, along with a couple other hard-won picks from my collection:



In the video, a mosh pit breaks out every so often, and a few people dive on the stage and are promptly rushed off by the bouncers. The footage is dark and a little grainy and it is hard to make out any faces other than those right in front of the stage, but from time to time a shaggy Great-Pumpkin like head rises out of the mullet sea and I think that it might be me.

This hazy apparition makes me wish that the dvd had one extra bonus feature—the ability to transport the viewer back in time. What would I say to Young Danny, in the moments between when he’s banging his head against the stage? What would I say to alter the course of his life, which, a few moments before writing this, led to me scanning the Perfect Symmetry DVD for proof of my youth?

I’m reminded of one of Matheos’s lyrics from the album, from the song “Chasing Time”:

I’ve watched in silence
As a stranger within me grew.
Detached and distanced from the day
While youth’s precious years flew.

It doesn’t take me very long to realize that I wouldn’t say anything to young Danny. I’d offer no cautionary tales, no wisdom of ages, nothing that would bump him off his current trajectory, floundering and directionless as it is, awash with heavy metal music, comic books, and static acts. I wouldn’t change a thing.

But maybe I would shoulder my way through the crowd, throw my own fist in the air, and bang my head alongside of him.