Organizations are like zoos

We were talking about work while we were getting ready to go there...

We need a new computer. The one we have the Smithsonian wouldn't even take...and Sue can't get her personal email at work. They--the IT powers-that-be where she works--have blocked access. It's work, and their reasoning is you're not supposed to do personal business there.

But email has become such an important way we stay in touch in life, and personal life and professional life do overlap now. There's no denying it, there's not getting around it; life has gotten faster and more complicated and people will find a way to get around the system to do the things they have to do in life. A progressive organization might as well have a system in place that truly reflects the people who work in your organization. A happy employee makes for a successful organization.

Such a controlling attitude...such an old-fashioned attitude...treating mature, intelligent professional adults like children. As if they all will take advantage of the situation. And some will take advantage; of course they will. That's human nature. But we tend to dumb down, and instead of cracking down on the slackers and the people who abuse the system, we make everyone follow the least common denominator.

Anyway, this reminded me of the time I was hired as a writer for a pretty prestigious software company. And on my first day, like everywhere, I put in my order for the office supplies I'd need to perform my very important function for that company: pens, pads of paper, and pencils. That's really all I need to do my work. Anyway, I also put in an order for a pencil sharpener, since I tend to use pencils. I just like the old-fashioned way of putting words down. It forces you to really think about each word. (An aside: one time someone I worked with admonished me for using pencils and not pens, insinuating that I was afraid to make a statement. What an idiot.)

Anyway, at this particular software company that is still around but not doing that great, and once I finish this story you might understand why, when I asked for the pencil sharpener I was told by the department administrator, some crusty old bag, that I couldn't have one because she had one and only she could have one.

You mean, I said, if I want to sharpen my pencil I have get up from my desk, walk down the hall to your desk, which sat out in the hallway outside the director's office, by the way, and sharpen it there?

Yes, was the answer.

You're kidding. Do you know how many pencils I sharpen in a day?(I should have just asked for a bunch of mechanical pencils, but you know how these kinds of arguments kind of take on lives of their own.)

I still had to go to her desk.

So I went out to someplace like CVS and bought a little battery-operated pencil sharpener. The look on that crazy woman's face was priceless.

My point: human organizations are some of the most bizarre inventions, and they force humans to behave, or allow certain human to behave, in very bizarre ways. We don't act human. Instead a lot of people tend to behave like animals in a zoo, like those crazy baboons with the blue butts who sit around on monkey island, masturbating in the open and throwing their feces at each other. That, to my way of thinking, pretty much sums up just about everywhere I've ever worked.

Whizzin!" opens Thursday April 24

(If I recall, Urinetown is also being spoofed in this show, too, hence the name....)

Ryan Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans are proud to announce the Boston premier of their latest hit musical,"Whizzin'!"

An adult version of the beloved classic, "The Wizard of Oz", "Whizzin'" tells the musical story of troubled teenager Dorothy Gale, as she travels over the rainbow, far from the dull, sepia toned trailer parks of Hyannis to the deep, dark recesses of her own VERY colorful mind.

It's a musical, magical place called "The Land of Id" where all your favorite characters reside! There's a pill popping Glinda, some VERY gay Munchkins, an agoraphobic Tin Man, a painfully insecure Lion, a cell phone addicted Scarecrow ... even the sociopathic Wicked Witch of the South End flies in for a spell!

Chock full of terrific new songs, (plus a few standards!) "Whizzin'!" just can't be beat for all out entertainment! The show boasts an all-star cast of Orphan favorites, including Afrodite, Penny Champagne, Megan Love, Olive Another, Billy Hough, Ryan Landry, Cheri Amour and returning to the Orphan stage, Boston favorite Rick Park!

So grab your basket and get on board for the sassist, silliest, sexiest sensation of the season!

As they say in Revere, "Whizzin'!" is a pissah!"

"Whizzin'!" will be presented at the Machine Theater from April 24 through May 24 with performances Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. Advance tickets are available for purchase through Theater Mania 1-866-811-4111 or online www.theatermania.com. Tickets are $28 for general seating, cash at the door. For more information, visit our website at www.GoldDustOrphans.com and now check us out on MYSPACE!

We look forward to seeing you at the show and thank you for your support!!


Gold Dust Orphans
387 Ashmont Street
Dorchester, Massachusetts 02124

Chickamauga

Chickamauga's where I've been
Solitude is where I'm bound

Bob Dylan wins a Pulitzer

Bob Dylan received a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”

He is the first rock musician to receive the award. Previous musician recipients are John Coltrane, George Gershwin, and Thelonious Monk.

I didn't know the Pulitzer gave out this award. I thought it was all about journalism. News reporting. Dylan is one of the greats, but it seems odd for him to be put in this crowd. Words are words. Music is something different. Still, it's pretty cool, even though it seems the Pulitzer crowd needs Dylan more than he needs them.




Roland Scherman took a pretty good picture of Dylan, and he didn't get a Pulitzer.

Although he did win a Grammy for it. The shot was used for the cover of Dylan's greatest hits album.

Although the Grammy people spelled Scherman's name wrong.

He sent the statue back, asking that his name be spelled right.

They didn't do it, though...



Scherman also took some pretty good images of Dylan at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival.

Here's a young, scrawny Dylan arriving at the festival. Yes, that's a bullwhip he has slung over his shoulder. What's that all about. Obviously some sort of statement, but at a different venue other than a folk festival, say a honky tonk in the south or someplace like west Texas, young Bobby would have left with that thing knotted around his neck. Or ceremoniously hog-tied and flung out the door.

But the folkies were duly impressed....




And here's a really good up close and personal image of Dylan and Joan Baez on stage together.
















Finally, it's the early songs that still just resonate. If I wasn't going to be cremated, the words, "Hey Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me" would make some nice words on a tombstone.

I've loved this song from the moment I heard it. I would love to meet the Tambourine Man. What's weird is that voice coming out of that young face.

Loss

Two University of Rhode Island students were struck by a vehicle Sunday morning on Boston Neck Road in Narragansett.

URI sophomore, Mary Ellen "Molly" Offer, 19, was transported to South County Hospital and later pronounced dead.

Holly Maganzini, 20, was also struck by the vehicle, and was transported to South County Hospital and then to Rhode Island Hospital for lower extremity injuries.

My oldest knew the two students. I told her that this is how you get old.

I told my other daughter who is about to get her license that this is what parents talk about, that we've lived through this and when we tell you to drive safe it's because we've lived through things like this, and it's only experience that teaches you about these things.

There are friends and family who suddenly woke up to a loss. It's one of a parent's worse nightmare, losing a child....like this...

It's just short of one, having one barely escape something like this, and having the other one die.

It seems a lot of life is hurt and pain, dealing with loss. It's a lucky person who hasn't. Or doesn't, who leads a charmed life.

And it's how you deal with it that makes all the difference, but sometimes the loss is too great. I remember the nuns used to tell us when I was little that God would never give you a burden that you couldn't carry. Bullshit. The nuns were full of bullshit. That was just their way of guilting you for feeling human. For being human. For hurting. They'd admonish us, Jesus died for you on the cross, the least you can do is...(you fill in the blank.) That's all bullshit.

Sometimes the hurt is too deep. And we've yet to develop a medical treatment, a surgery, to repair the damage.

When I was little a friend's little sister was troubled. And when she was a teenager she ran away from home. Not far. In the end we learned it was only a few blocks away, and just up the street from where I lived, they found her frozen to death in the trailer of a moving van where she had sought shelter.

I'll never forget the look that from then on was on the mother's face. A blankness and a numbness and, yes, an emptiness, because something was gone from inside her, something we can't see but it's still there, as tangible as her daughter once was.

Don't tell me time heals all. Don't tell me we're given burdens that we can carry. Sometimes they crush us.

I think that's why I love the book No Country for Old Men so much. Some might say I'm getting older. I don't think so. I think I'm getting smarter. And there are so many times when I want to just sit real quiet and play music.

I've blogged about this on more than one occasion now, how Baxter found me floating face down in the water, miles from shore, and handed me a guitar saying, here, you need this. (What he was doing way out there is still a good question.) I clung to it like the piece of driftwood it was, and floated to shore.

Not knowing the first thing about it, I started picking and strumming, read part of a book (because I have a really, really short attention span and couldn't have gotten through the entire thing on a bet) and two years later it's the one thing I cling to, and I can't explain where my mind goes when I play. Sometimes I wish I did, but mostly I just want to leave sleeping dogs lie, and not worry about where I go because if I find out it might be taken away. It's a secret kept from me for a reason.

I guess I'm saying we all deal with loss in our own way. Sometimes it can be pretty destructive, even self-destructive. Other times we don't deal at all. You kind of hope these people can all get through it in the end. There's no guarantee though.

The 48 Hour Film Project

From the site:

The 48 Hour Film Project is a wild and sleepless weekend in which you and a team make a movie—write, shoot, edit and score it—in just 48 hours. On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete. Then it will show at a local theater, usually in the next week.

In other words, a whole bunch of crazy filmmakers with all the assorted people that go with making a movie (actors, camera operators, make up artists, gaffers, and best boys and girls) write, shoot, and post prod a movie.

They did their insanity this past weekend. Now their going to screen their work at the Kendall Square Cinema starting tomorrow night.

I got the word about all this from the Young, Innocent Irish Lass, Ashley James, who was in Frog Pond Films entry, Complicated Arrangements. If there's any voting involved, please vote for Complicated Arrangements because Ashley is a very nice, hard-working actress and if she's involved it's gotta be good...

A day to be a bum

It's just one of those days when I wished I could have just stayed home all day and played guitar. It's not that I'm not thankful for my job; most days I like it, like coming to the office, like the people I work with. It's just that some days I just want to be a bum. I think a bum is a noble goal.

Trailer for sale or rent
Rooms to let...fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes

I'm coming up on some kind of breakthrough, down there on the fret board, and I don't want it to slip by. I've been sitting on the same plateau for some time now, and I don't do well on plateaus. I've learned to take deep breaths and wait out the time, but all in all I like climbing.

Sylvia

We should all have dogs. It should be put in the Constitution. It's not just a right, it's an obligation Why just think: you and I and Nelson Mandela and Yassir Arafat and Meryl Streep could all meet at Club Med and what would we talk about? Our dogs, Leslie. Our dogs.

Isabelle Eberhardt: The Oblivion Seekers

It's one of Sue's favorite books, and I can see why. It pretty much sums up Sue's (and to a greater extent, my) philosophy on life. I don't want to own property. I want to rent so I can pick up and leave when I want to. I don't want to cut grass on a beautiful Saturday, and I don't want to be financially responsible for fixing the toilet. I've done all this in another life, and looking back, I hated it. It never was me. It was just me doing the stuff I thought I was supposed to do, because everyone else was doing them.

It's true: I really want to live out in the middle of the desert with a (loaded) shotgun by the door, with Sue, my dog, a guitar, some books...

When I finally cracked the book, it took me about two nights to read it.

Isabelle Eberhardt traveled mostly through North Africa alone, among the tribes and the French soldiers there.

Here is the essence of her life's philosophy, from Penciled Notes:

A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that is was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out! To the one who understands the value and the delectable flavor for solitary freedom (for no one is free who is not alone) leaving is the bravest and finest act of all.

Later, she writes:

The healthy wayfarer sitting beside the road scanning the horizon open before him, is he not the absolute master of the earth, the waters, and even the sky? What housedweller can vie with him in power and wealth? His estate has no limits, his empire no law. No work bends him toward the ground, for the bounty and beauty of the earth are already his.

And finally:

To have a home, a family, a property or a public function, to have a definite means of livelihood and to be a useful cog in the social machine, all these things seem necessary, even indispensable to the vast majority of men, including intellectuals, and including even those who think of themselves as totally liberated. And yet such things are only a different form of slavery that comes of contact with others, especially regulated and continued contact.

Now that's country: Robbie Fulks

Boston was in sync with the universe today

It was a beautiful day in Boston, and it seemed things were working out today...the universe was in sync....

I plowed through a lot of work this morning and suddenly found some time on my hands, something I haven't had for a while...sometimes I'm too busy to attend to some of the really important things in my life that might get me out from behind this desk...

...but...reaching into my pocket to check....yes, I had two guitar picks with me, I jumped on the T and headed up to Daddy's Junky Music...maybe play a few guitars...look for that digital recorder that I don't know why I want...hope that the salespeople weren't pushy today, because they sell on commission there and I know what I'm looking for, if I want help I'll ask for it, and no I don't need another credit card...and hoping that the number of Berklee students present would be at a minimum, because Berklee students suck...they are the most selfish, self-centered, whiny bunch of show-off babies---worse than musical theater actors--and they really make the time spent there a real hassle.

...and the world was in sync with me today....

I was going through the gates at Park when a Cleveland Circle train was pulling into the station, right there at the bottom of the stairs....no fighting through a crowd of meandering commuters....and what the?...a seat?...no effing way...sigh...

Easy train ride...going past Berklee suddenly a punked-out woman was walking alongside me...she seemed awfully interested in me...what?...do you want to help me save a whale? she asked...I started laughing, and I heard her say, why are you laughing?...do I look like someone who wants to save a whale?...particularly that not fifty feet away was a perfectly good drunk/drug addict who could have used her help...that's what I love about liberals and do-gooders: They care more about the whales and the baby seals than their fellow humans.

Hot damn...I slip into Junky Daddy's and not a salesperson notices, not even the greeter by the door...and in the acoustic room is a older Latino man with a woman, and neither one looks like they go to Berklee...and he's playing some sweet classical riffs, too...nothing fancy, just nice....

I check out the geetars on the wall...there's a pretty Ibanez that I pick up; it's nice and solid but you know, it just doesn't sound right. I look around. Gibson...no, I'm really not a Gibson man...Taylor?...uh, no thanks...there's the old standby: a Martin D-28, retailing for about $2,800, on sale for $2,100. The other guy is sitting on the bench, and since there were no stools, I plopped down on an amp and played Good Friday. Then Angel Mine. I sang under my breath.

The other guy said the guitar sounded good...at least I think that's what he said...we started talking and from what I could gather from my broken Spanish and his broken English, he lived in Somerville in a big room with a lot of guitars and a piano, and he thought I was Bruce Springsteen. Nice. He left and I noticed a gorgeous Gibson and thought, it's so bonita...and expensive...$4,100 on sale for about $3,200...it sounded so rich and then I plugged it in and played some more.

Slipped out. Saw the Latino guy in the subway station. Waved. Got off at Arlington because it was such a darn nice day and had some time to walk and get some exercise. Crossing Boylston I thought what a nice city Boston can be when the weather's nice and the people aren't so cranky. Almost bought an ice cream cone from a truck until I noticed a cone was $3.00. Ah, right, tourists will pay that, I guess.

Up on Tremont I helped a blind woman cross the street, because I was feeling so damn good...

Birds of a feather

Sometimes I swear people are put into our lives for a reason, though I actually hate typing those words...I don't believe there's an angel behind every bush or that every little moment and detail of life has reason and purpose (I think all and all the universe is pretty random), and although I think the universe is way more connected and complex than we can ever imagine, I don't necessarily believe in fate...I think it's a matter more of like people have a tendency to be in the same actual geographical spot and from our individual pov we see it as something bigger and grander than it is...kind of like God or Plato's Cave.

...Though I do tell the story of a point in my life when I was so emotionally wracked I suddenly noticed I had two key people in my life with serious physical disabilities, and I realized that the way they were--one in a wheelchair, one a multiple amputee--was exactly the way I was on the inside, and that they figured out how to get along in the physical world handicapped (I'm sorry folks, that's probably the un-pc way of saying it, but there it is; physically challenged, is that better?) and I would have to do the same thing in the emotional world..btw, Dick Hoyt and his son weren't in my life; I just think he and his son are awesome individuals...

...but all this is starting to pay dividends in my acting, I'll tell you that...or just in life, because despite my disclaimer above, it ALL is connected...

anyway...people in my life....

I suddenly find myself with a lot of creative people who have had a few setbacks...or people who started late...a beautiful woman who is looking for her inner voice and pretty much has found it as an actress...an older man, early retired because he was successful in business, but feels like a failure but gives off warmth like the sun...people so excited and driven with expressing themselves...an older man who was at the top of his game, dropped out, maybe made a few "stupid" choices in his life, but what's that mean?--only that he has regrets, maybe...but he's not bitter and is still so damn interesting and smart and sharp that he is a delight to be around...

there does seem to be a time and a season for everything (it's in the bible; you can look it up) and sometimes I think if we just stop trying so hard that things tend to fall in place...I think more important than going out and looking for things, you have to let them come to you, and more important is knowing what you want when it comes along so you know to grab it....

Going Back

Gotta love the set, the clothes, the hair...actually, it all gives me the willies, truth be told...but it's a good song, gotta hand it to gerry goffin & carole king for the lyrics...nice sweet melody that could use a bit more of an edge, that edge you get when you get older, but they were young when they wrote it, so they didn't know about that....yet...

I think I'm going back to the things that I learned so well in my youth
I think I'm returning to those days when I was young enough to know the truth
Now there are no games to only pass the time
No more electric trains, no more trees to climb
But thinking young and growing older is no sin
And I can play the game of life to win

I can recall the time when I wasn't ashamed to reach out to a friend
Now I think I've got a lot more than just my toys to lend
Now there's more to do than watch my sailboat glide
And every day can be a magic carpet ride
A little bit of courage is all we lack
So catch me if you can, I'm goin' back

Now there's more to do than watch my sailboat glide
But every day can be a magic carpet ride
A little bit of courage is all we lack
So catch me if you can, I'm goin' back

Last night on the T

Last night on the T. The Orange Line. It's crowded, and we're pulling into Back Bay. I'm standing. Hell, most of us are standing. And a woman who's been fidgeting the whole time starts to move to the door as we pull into the station. Or, rather, as we lurch into the station. It's really annoying. You're trying to keep your balance with one hand and a briefcase in the other, or in my case a briefcase and a duffle in the other, and some people just compound the discomfort.

"I'm getting off here," she said, trying to push by before the train has stopped.

"So am I," I said, stopping her. "And so's half this train," I added.

I've never understood this behavior of my fellow commuters. The door is right there. It's not like the train is that packed and the door is that far away, and even if it is, I've never seen anyone get trapped on a train. But they act like they've got five seconds to get off before a bomb is going to explode. Maybe it's some kind of weird city neurosis, kind of like claustrophobia with a bit of OCD thrown in for good measure.

But I've reached the point in my life where I just say things. I'm starting to understand about old age, not that I'm old or even feeling that old, but you just get this "I don't give a damn" attitude, and let me tell you, it feels really good.

I used to care about so many things in my life. But I hit a spot, and I just don't give a damn anymore about a lot of things.

More on the state of the music business

Shit comes in threes.

Harp magazine quit publishing. Then No Depression.

Today Folio reported that Resonance, what Folio called a "small, well-regarded independent music magazine," called it quits.

I didn't read Harp or Resonance, but the other day I blogged about No Depression, a magazine I found about a year ago; I would devour the each issue of the magazine cover to cover a couple of times. And I pretty much said the music industry has to figure out how to market, but that mags (or is the hip terminology, 'zines??) are still valuable to the industry.

The music industry has to come to terms with the new business model that includes the digital world. So do magazines like No Depression, and all the rest. Low advertising, paper and printing costs, postage, and a few other reasons are all the standard reasons why magazines are going out of business. The Web seems to be the answer, but Resonance was finally putting its edition online, and that didn't work. I'm not sure why, except a quick glance at their site showed that they basically took their magazine, turned it into a giant pdf, and made that the content. The online world won't have none of that.

First and foremost publishers have to prove to the labels that they are needed, but that's not easy. What they need are hard numbers. I can't give hard numbers off the top of my head, but because of magazines like No Depression (and Performing Songwriter and American Songwriter) I actually went out and bought CDs of artists I read about in their pages. And I will continue to buy more CDs because I like the quality I get, but I'm never paying full retail price because they're way overpriced and I'm too smart of shopper to pay that. I'll buy on sale or used. CDs are not going to go away anytime, soon. Times are still in a transitional phase, so there are still uses for CDs as revenue generators--even in ways not yet thought of, but the labels have to figure this out, too. How about this, A&R head of your major label:

CDS ARE OVERPRICED, YOU'RE JUST RIPPING OF THE PUBLIC, WE KNOW IT, AND THE TRUE LOW COST OF A CD MAKES IT IDEAL FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES.

There, do you think they'll get that? No, they won't. Blind, deaf, and dumb. And richer beyond belief. You actually can have too much money. It changes you. But that's a topic for a different blog. No wonder people steal music.


My Tour Filter is packed with bands I'm tracking. I'm a huge Lucinda Williams, Cowboy Junkies, and Steve Earle fan, just for starters, all of whom I've seen in concert a couple of times. There's where you're money is, or good chunk of it. I keep saying it, too: ticket sales, t-shirts, beer. There's where you're money is going to come from. (Of course, when I write that, I think, the labels and promoters will jack up the price of admission to the point where Major League Baseball has gotten, where you can't afford to go. Greed, greed, greed.)

But I'd drive a hundred miles to see Chris Knight, who I first heard about in No Depression. You can't tell me there aren't others like me. Maybe not huge numbers to fill a stadium like, oh, say Faith Hill and her Hollywood hillbilly husband, Tim McGraw, but that's the size of your market. Too effing bad if you don't like it. The world is changing, and you got to get creative. Labels and magazines both....

The Design Police

"Creative types" such as myself, and I'm not sure I know what that even means anymore...I used to know and all the cachet that went with that title...well, anyway, we have certain sensibilities that when something goes against those sensibilities our teeth just grind. Unoriginal work is usually at the top, with cliches or anything that smacks of laziness on the part of the right side of the brain included on that heap. And if anything doesn't hold our attention...did I say hold?...I meant to write if anything doesn't rivet our attention, making our jaws go slack, we usually see good reason to criticize, usually with a minimum of tact.

Anyway, this little site put out by the Design Police gives a handy little kit that makes our job a little easier.

Thanks to Jen for this.

Corporate Country Sucks

Yes, it does. But check out the video to see why country music itself doesn't have to.



Sue tells a funny story, about talking to an old boyfriend of hers (hmmm...she's had a few) in Sri Lanka, and he was dating someone who he really liked but there was one little problem with her: she liked country music.

Well, country doesn't have to sound bad. Here's corporatecountrysucks.com, a site that tells the whole story....wonderful songs and songwriters and artists rooted in America, that's really what country music is....as American as jazz or the Corvette.

Look for the videos on YouTube and free podcasts on iTunes.

Austin City Limits Music Festival

A potential vacation/road trip...maybe Sue's sister, Stacey, could fly in...B might be on his big road trip on his big bike...Juan C could be introduced to his hick roots (yes, bro, you got 'em; we all got 'em).

I've just been needed a break so bad lately, and while this festival is in September, it would work just fine. I know I don't belong in the East anymore, much less the Northeast. I've been told to get my butt out where there's sand and cactus, farther west to Arizona or New Mexico. Arizona maybe; I heard it's a little more working class. I just don't do trendy.

Sara Tavares

The music, the painting, the book, the whatever, is so important...but I love knowing where it comes from. Here's Sara Tavares telling where her "it" comes from....on LinkTV

Measure for Measure

L posted this blog from the New York Times on her Facebook page today, and I picked it, printed it out, and put it in one of the stalls in the mens room here. Usually there's reading material in there, but it's always printouts of the current news on the Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins. This is supposed to be a creative environment, but with the emphasis on truck and car accounts, plus this being a mix of marketing, strategy, delivery, and creative, the testosterone, frat-boy attitude tends to prevail. This is just me spitting in the wind, and no matter how many times it's come back to hit me in the face, I still can't seem to stop.

But, who would turn down just a little creative process advice from Susan Vega??