Work to live

My daughter took a summer job scooping ice cream in the next town from where she lives. Kind of a nice little job...kind of...not a lot of hours for not a lot of pay putting up with the spoiled brats of the upper white middle-class, not seeing her friends because she's stuck a lot of time in another town and can't get rides...but, hey, I know what you're thinking: it's a summer job, she's in high school, don't expect too much. Welcome to the working world, honey.

See, that's my problem in life: I keep expecting too much. I keep expecting that life should be enjoyable. That you should enjoy what you do, even if you're a high school student and it's a summer job.

I don't understand people who say, why do you think they call it work? I don't understand people who say, I don't enjoy my job, why should you? I don't understand people who think because they suffer, everyone should suffer, too.

Shouldn't it be that, if you're suffering, you'd want to fix it for other so they don't have to suffer, too? If you walked two miles in the snow to school, shouldn't you work to build a school closer? If you hate your job, shouldn't you work so others don't have to suffer, too.

Ah, but misery loves company, doesn't it? It's the poor, poor me side of human beings. Everyone wants sympathy.

I'd never tell my kid to just knuckle down and work, essentially exchange her life for money. That's what I do, and I don't want my kids to do it, too. I want them to learn early on that work should support their life, and not the other way around. I made that mistake. Or rather, I love my work, I just don't like my job right now. And I'm working to change that. I'm not going to suffer and expect others to suffer too.

The Namesake and The Black Book

While the rest of the United States was seeking out the big summer hit, Knocked Up, Sue and I caught The Namesake and The Black Book this weekend.

Set in India and New York, The Namesake traces the life of two generations of an Indian family and the impact, or lack thereof, of Western life on its values.

The Black Book is a suspense film on the Dutch Resistance during World War II.

Yeah, Sue and I kind of march to a different drummer.

Scoop

My daughter was the starting shortstop for her high school JV softball this year. She's been playing for a few years now. She actually likes the rough and tumble of tagging a runner out at second. She's a really good fielder, so good that when I coached her I started calling her Scoop. This season she was voted best defensive player on her team. This week she started working at an ice cream store.

The nickname still works.

My baby's back

My baby came home last night from Utah. She flew into Providence then came up to my house around 11:00. "See," she said, "I always come back."

Enjoy the gorgeous weather

Good Day Sunshine8-)

This was Al's away message today. Only she had one of those yellow happy emoticons wearing sunglasses after it.

It is gorgeous out. I had to get out. I'm swamped at work, and it seemed a sin not to get out in the sun just a little when we have such lousy weather here in the winter. In six months we'd die for a day like today.

Outdone

Now there's too many people trying too hard
Not to be outdone
They follow close behind their proud smoking gun

It's up to you and me whether to pay them any mind
Some people turn to tomorrow, and some, a bottle of wine
Remember back when there could be no wrong
It's different for everyone until it's gone

Now there's too many people trying too hard
Not to be outdone
They follow close behind their proud smoking gun
--Uncle Tupelo

Guitar gods

Musicians are great people. It seems they just want to have fun and share and make music and joy in the world.

Got this email from my buddy, Jason, today with the title of this blog as the subject line. A list of his all-time favorite acoustic guitar players that he wanted to share with me.

It's like being a kid in a candy store. There's so much to learn.

Here's Jason's list:
Tony McManus [my hands down favorite guitarist on the planet.]
John Renbourn [Brit folkie who with Bert Jansch was in Pentangle in the 60s] Travellers Prayer is some of his best guitar work.
Duck Baker
The name says it all.
Stefan Grossman
Great blues and ragtime player.
Pierre Bensussan
Great fingerstyle guitarist.
Michael Hedges
A little too new agey for me most of the time, but man the guy could play.
Tony Cuffe
Deceased fingerstyle celtic.
Preston Reed
Hedges disciple.
Beppe Gambetta
Never heard him, but heard good things about him.
Tim Reynolds
Furious flatpicker.
Peter Ratzenbeck
Another crazy tuning celticky guy.
Steve Creeder
Don't know if you can find too much about him ~ general guitar genius.
Jerry Douglas
Dobro motherfucker who plays with Allison Kraus ~ does the best version of little Martha I have EVER heard.
And just for fun
Jake Shimabukuro (ukulele god)
Give a listen.

Today's MBTA Framingham fiasco

Well, the 8:00 local never showed up. At some point a trained pulled into the platform from the east and we--all of us lemmings--just sat there for awhile. Then another train pulled in from the west. The conductor said that that train was an express and would leave before the train I was sitting on would leave. I, and the rest of the mob, hustled up and over bridge that goes over the tracks to the other side of the station. I was behind some fat guy lugging a backpack and I was so glad we weren't trying to escape some crisis 'cause the bastard would have died right there and taken a bunch of us with him.

We all clamored aboard the train and, you guessed it, it just sat there while the other train high-tailed it out of there and we limped into South Station around 9:45.

Couldn't have happened on a better day. I had a ton of rush jobs waiting for me at the office, and my manager from Detroit was in town. Thanks MBTA. You're the best.

Post show blues

Nope, not me. I've learned that there's an emotional drop-off after working on a theater production and to expect it. But more and more theater is just a part of my life, it's more on keel, and after a show is over I'm happy to get on with the rest of my life. Have dinner with my daughters like I did last night--take-out Chinese and the Chili Peppers on the CD player--or play guitar.

But some shows just won't go away, particularly if you're a set designer. For how many weeks was I wrestling (literally) with platforms in the dark in the barn. So what did I do last night? Around ten o'clock, screw gun in hand, I dismantled the platforms. Another theater company wants to use them now, so I'll be loading them onto my truck and lugging them one more time.

Michelle Shocked

Yes, I am a hick. I am naive and I am sincere and it's wonderfully unfashionable.

Check out her site. Check out her quotes.

The middle of the road

Every morning on my way to the train station I drive along a road, to the right is a horse pasture where I believe it's the state police who run a small herd of gorgeous horses, my favorite a black and brown. To the left looms MCI Framingham, a woman's prison.

One side, the right side, freedom. The other side, the left side, incarceration. Every morning I drive right down the middle.

Coyotes: Children of the night

Count Dracula: I bid you welcome.
[Dracula goes up the stairs. Renfield starts to follow him. Suddenly, Dracula hears wolves howling]
Count Dracula: Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.

Count Dracula had his wolves, and I have my coyotes. I heard them the other night when I was outside alone with Bob working on the set of Eternal Swim, and saw one, a small, swift grey one, running through the lights of the headlamps of the truck, and into the dark.

Let Liam Madden talk

Liam Madden is the former U.S. Marine who is criticizing President Bush and his war policy. I guess the Marine Corp. is investigating Madden for breaking some kind of rule about wearing his Marine uniform.

I don't know what Madden was or wasn't wearing. I read somewhere that he took off his name patch and a few other insignias. The military has always been a mystery to me about all its traditions and rules, most of which seem pretty idiotic to me.

But I say let him talk, and I'll admit part of my reasoning is I agree with him, that Bush's war policy has placed soldiers in a situation that turns them into war criminals. I don't want to hear about war is hell, that the soldiers knew what they were getting into when they signed up, it's a soldier's role, blah, blah, blah.

They don't know who the enemy is, there is no clear goal, it's just turning soldiers into cannon fodder, and they're going to go a little crazy. And the responsibility--and the guilt--for that falls squarely on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Ashcroft. Maybe these elected officials aren't pulling the trigger (well, except for Cheney when he goes duck hunting; sorry, couldn't resist.) But they are responsible for the deaths of all of those tens of thousands of Iraqis, and if they weren't American, every international court in the world would be going after their heads. If the leaders of another country did what the American government is doing in Iraq, they would be tried as war criminals.

Giovanni's Room II

"Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare."

Giovanni's Room

"Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden," Jacques said. And then he said, "I wonder why."

MBTA commuter story: Riverside D line

Sitting on the train way in the back car this morning reading, minding my own business when some guy starts to sit next to me. Rather, he puts his laptop case down on the seat next to me then walks to the front of the car.

What the...?

He's dressed in a blue suit, looking like a Mormon or a Jehovah Witness, or something like that.

He can't be from around here, I'm thinking. You just don't dump something like that and just walk away. Post 9/11 and all that. Who can be that dumb?

Well, I got my answer. Yep, he could be that dumb. He was a lawyer. Weld and Todd, LLP.

When he came back I just looked at him. He looked back, either clueless or arrogant, it could have been both with him being a lawyer and all.

But I got news for you, tweaker. The next time you do that, your freakin' laptop is going out the door at the next stop. And there's not a jury in the nation that would find me guilty, either.

You just don't do that, and you should know better.

Or maybe I should have said, "Excuse me..." then gone on to explain. Do you think that would have worked?

Dry Town

My baby leaves for Utah today for ten days...just try keeping a Sagittarius in one place. That's part of her allure. Hopefully I'll be there soon...there meaning right there next to her, pack on my back, going wherever...

In the meantime, I'm doing what I always do when life smacks me upside the head. I just make myself real busy, immerse myself in work and projects and music.

Well the road was hot and flat as a ruler
Good hundred miles between me and Missoula
That vinyl top wasn't gettin' no cooler
So I stopped at a Quickie Sack
Well I figured I'd need about a six of Miller
And one of those thangs so I wouldn't spill 'er
I asked the girl if the beer was in the back
She said

It's a dry town
No beer, no liquor for miles around
I'd give a nickel for a sip or two
To wash me down
Outta this dry town

So I turn right around, no hesitation
Cursed the law for ruinin' the nation
Waved goodbye to the boy at the station
But she wouldn't go into gear

He said it sounds like your transmission
You need Bob, but he's gone fishin'
His day off, he gets a long way from here
Cause

It's a dry town
No beer, no liquor for miles around
I'd give a nickel for a sip or two
To wash me down
Outta this dry town

Well back home, friends, you can get a dose of
Something strong from your local grocer
So I walked down til I came a little closer
To a place called Happy Jars

He said I keep some here for colds and fevers
And down underneath where I usual leave her
But just last night I felt a cold a comin' on

It's a dry town
No beer, no liquor for miles around
I'd give a nickel for a sip or two
To wash me down
Outta this dry town
--Miranda Lambert

Okay...but...did she kill Curt?

There are some evil people out there. Some really twisted, selfish people who basically are not too many notches above your basic animal using instincts to survive.

We're all connected, and if you haven't figured that out yet, I feel for ya. Dollars to donuts she contributed in some way.

Courtney Love and Linda Perry

Who would have thought? Man, she sounds good...

The difference between men and women

A man gets more excited when his friend buys a motorcycle than a woman does.

I called Sue and left voice mail telling her that I had some exciting news. When I told her that a buddy just bought a Suzuki 1000, she said, so what's the good news??