Puddles of My Podcast - Episode 26

It's a bit of a hectic week this week, my Puddlers, but that doesn't mean I can't bring you some high quality podcasts as well as columns (hopefully).

Today I bring you another installment of Puddles of My Podcast.  In this, Episode 26 of Puddles of My Podcast, I welcome Miles Debas of Snakes Say Hiss and Paul Sicilian of the Tony Castles.  In this installment, Paul, Miles and I discuss the 2010-2011 Boston Celtics, Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals, and debate over the best storylines of the upcoming season. We also play a game of "thumbs up, thumbs down"; decide what movie you would take Kevin Durant too; and Paul and Miles each give us their all-time starting NBA starting lineup with some surprising results.  This podcast is not for those weak of heart, or not interested in the NBA.  Needless to say, I enjoyed this podcast very much and I recommend that you listen to it.

Stay with me Puddlers, I got more coming.

Can't Start A Fire Without a Mark

Hey, all my Puddlers.  Sorry for the lack of activity this week.  There were two podcasts that I was supposed to record, but they both needed to be rescheduled.  However in the coming two weeks, we will have podcasts with Erik Gundel of Motel Motel, a secret podcast, and the NBA Season Preview podcast with Miles Debas of Snakes Say Hiss and Paul Sicilian of Tony Castles, both Boston Celtics homers whose bands are both playing the CMJ festival this week.  There will also be an ongoing special project as part of the blog that you will have to stay tuned for.  I think some of you will be pretty (slightly?) excited about it.

Also, what you all should be tremendously excited about his my 2010-2011 NBA Preview column that will be going up on Monday.  I go through every team in the league, tell you why you should care about every team and then predict what their fate will be.  I'm a pretty humble guy, but this is the best piece of fucking writing that you will ever fucking read in your miserable, self-involved lives.

Now, speaking of CMJ and other assorted topics of life, Mr. Mark Jack is here to deliver his weekly column to you all. In this post, Mr. Jack ruminates on a variety of things, but most of all some poignant theories of walking around listening to music and the nature of history.  This main is articulate and concise.  You should all tell him how much you love him.

OK, my Puddlers, now I step aside and leave you with Mark Richard Jack to lead you to your weekend.

Lower Dens and Walking History

Mark Jack

So, you made notes on American History. You walked with your ears pointed at inward angles, with your ears stuffed with nascent, floral stuff, and wondered as the world passed like a movie and you thought how easy it would be to make a movie of one long, smooth tracking shot of the world - if only you had the right soundtrack...and a decent camera. You made little notes on our expectations and fears and, well look...

Maybe no one else feels this way, but I love a good walk with soundtrack. My whole approach to the personal music player is in some way enhancement and/or complement to the world as visual experience. Now, I do like listening to the various sounds of the world sometimes, but I find music to be a useful (almost) way to approach a life lived amidst so much that is not readily, personally identifiable. The anonymity of the city, as it were, becomes personalized movie when a good album is running alongside a world that, because it is muted by headphones and notes, is more vibrantly visual. Of course, certain music is required for the experience, and not just good music. There are plenty of albums that I adore and yet will not listen to while walking. Recently I found a beautiful album, or rather, my friend Kieran over at his blog, Big Head Stevenson, alerted me to it, that lends itself perfectly to a cinematic stroll.

I don’t think I am necessarily revealing a hidden gem, but the Baltimore based band Lower Dens and their album, Twin-Hand Movement is a near perfect walking album.

They’re playing a number of shows at this years CMJ, so if you are in New York today, you can still check them out. I haven’t seen them in concert yet, though I’ve heard they’re fantastic. Of course, what really interested me about this album is the way in which the beautiful melodies, small and repetitive, almost ephemeral, combine with driving but not obnoxiously insistent rhythms to move ones ear-budded mobile mood. I don’t really want to go into an in depth review of this album, and I don’t think anything would be served by such a move. This post is more a review of sountracked walking--I’ve got to develop a better term.

So if I can offer some advice: buy Twin-Hand Movement and go for a walk. Feel the world around you and create a vague narrative that creatively compliments the visual and auditory experience. Seriously, it’s either that or get those fucking earbuds out of your soil head and be in the world as it is. Not that I am in any position to speak of any thing as it is - as if it does remain constant. Look, how we inscribe ourselves in/onto to the world is never a permanent act. We write ourselves into history, over and over again. If we do not pay attention to the material around us, the streets as sentences the people as paragraphs or punctuation (depending) then we confine ourselves to boring footnotes at best. The prevalence of the iPod is not something that is necessarily damaging of the societal fabric. Trust me, pick up this album and go for an observant stroll.

Puddles of My Podcast - Episode 18

Well, my Puddlers, its going to be another heatwave weekend, so watch out for those psychopaths as they emerge out of the woodwork trying to stay cool.  And since it is going to be such a hot weekend, what better thing to do than to wade in some Puddles of Myself- er, rather Yourself.

Anyway, like I promised (I always live up to my promises) we have a podcast up this week.  In this Episode 18 of Puddles of My Podcast, I welcome basketball enthusiast as well as the bassist and singer of the Tony Castles, Paul Sicilian.  In this latest installment, Paul and I discuss LeBron's Decision, the NBA Finals,  playing the clarinet, Paul's musical history, the legacy of Dwyane Wade, the best Celtic of all-time, the genesis of the Tony Castles, their upcoming album and tour with the Tom Tom Club, and 2010 NBA Predictions.  This podcast was a few months in the making so please sit back with a cool glass of water or beer in front of a fan or air conditioner and feel cooled by the sound of two grown men talking about basketball and music.

Bachman Turner Overdrive

My friend Andrew Freimuth once drew a fantastic Dilbert cartoon at a party we had at our apartment.  I believe that it beats out many actual Dilbert originals.

There is not much new to post tonight.  However, there is a new Puddles of Myself Poll up on the sidebar of the page.  This poll is brought to you by The Gates, airing Sundays at 10:00 PM on ABC.

I have been working hard at a variety of projects as well as killing time in the lunch room at my regular work job. I'm polishing up my manuscript of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt, as well as drafting sketches to submit to Saturday Night Live (don't ask me how). See, those stupid screen shots we put up on the blog weren't just a threat.  We can actually do  it.

However, later this week we will have a full-time NBA podcast with Paul Sicilian where we break down the NBA Draft and what went wrong in the NBA Finals for the Boston Celtics as well as ramifications for the NBA and NBA legacies going forward.  That should be a good one.

Also, I will be doing a podcast with Ted Robinson of Forest City. Ted plays guitar and writes some of  the shortest and most poignant songs you'll ever hear.  Ted and I will hopefully discuss the project that Puddles of Myself and Forest City will be working on together, which is tentatively called "Forest For Yourself: A Tale of Two Bottles".  This project will be the presentation of free tracks from the upcoming Forest City album that will be available on this blog.  You can follow track by track and then download the whole album.  You will also be able to provide a donation.  More details will follow in the podcast itself. That is a podcast I am looking forward to very much.

I'll also try to get you a column on my thoughts on the NBA (as if you didn't get enough in the most vain Puddles of My Podcast episode to ever be recorded.). And next week I want to explain to you all the glories of Blitzen Trapper, who are one of the most underrated bands playing today.

But now, another excerpt of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt.  We have reached Part III of the novel and we now return to the first person perspectives of the O'Donnell family.  The funeral and burial are over and now the family members return to their home in order to empty out the house for sale and to return to the problems of their individual lives.  No wonder I am trying to write sketches for SNL.

As always, my Puddlers, enjoy:




James

“I can’t believe you did all of this, Aunt Erin.  We could’ve handled some of it.”

    “Please, James,” Aunt Erin says to me.

    I want to say something about responsibility and about mom being my mother and that I should do better, but instead I don’t say anything.  I smile and I put my arm around her little body and pull her close.
    “I love you, Aunt Erin.”

    “Thank you, James.”

    I let her go and look around the kitchen.  There are about a half dozen aluminum catering trays filled with food.  There are plenty of plastic cups and plates and untensils all wrapped and stacked on the counters.  She has two liters of soda and also plenty of beer.

    “That was a nice service.  They have a good cemetary out there in Calverton.”  Uncle Connor is sitting at the kitchen table.  The fading grey light comes in from the skylight.  Behind him against the back windows there is a little red and purple from where the clouds are breaking and letting the sun through.  He drums his fingers on the kitchen table. “And Douglas and his family have always had a fine business at that home.”

    “I don’t know how with that crook of a father of his and the faulty hearses they used to send around.” Dad walks in with the bottle of Sark the girls found him with last night.

    “He wasn’t a crook, Ben.” Uncle Connor says.  I can see him want to smile.

    Dad grabs two tumbler glasses.  He turns to Uncle Connor and points a finger. “Revisionist.”  He puts the glasses down on the table and unscrews  the Sark cap. “Scotch?”

    Uncle Connor shakes his head and looks at Dad. “I don’t think so, Ben.”

    I watch Dad meet Uncle Connor’s gaze.  Dad turns away and pours himself a glass.

    “Well, I think so.” Dad says. “James?”

    I shake my head.  “I think I’ll just stick with beer.”

    Dad sits down at the table and pulls his glass in.  He takes a long drink off it and exhales.
    “James,” Aunt Erin says, grabbing a tray. “Why don’t you get Tom and help me carry this stuff into the dining room to set up.”

    “You got it.”

    I walk out of the kitchen, through the living room where Eve is sitting with Liza and looking over a book.  Eve looks at me and smiles.  I feel the hollow dread in the bottom of my stomach.

    “Why did you hide my grandson from me?”

    “I didn’t, mom.  I didn’t mean to.”

    She shuts the oven and my mouth tastes like an onion.

    I move through the main hallway and to the front door.  I look out and Maggie is sitting on the front step with Jake.  The sun is shining red.  He still looks good and it surprises me how happy I am to see him.  Surprise isn’t the word – I always admired him and thought that we saw eye to eye in some way.  Even though I always felt that Maggie would break his heart somehow.  But he’s back and it would be like him to show up to the funeral without telling anyone.

    “Tom?”

    I jog quickly up the stairs, my feet making that soft warm thudding sound on the carpet.

    “Tom?” I ask again.  I turn down the hallway and look into his room.  Tom is sitting on the ledge of his window, legs draped out the window. “What’s going on, Tom?”

    He turns around and smiles. “I’m not going to jump.”

    “I didn’t say that.” I cross my arms.

    “You looked that,” he laughs.

    I shake my head.

    “What’s up?”

    “Aunt Erin wants us to help set the food up for the guests.”

    Tom turns his feet back into the room.  Red light enters onto his tan carpet.  It reminds me of too many summer afternoons.

    “Who’s coming?”

    “I don’t really know. Friends?”

    He nods and steps into the room.  He slides the screen back over the window.  I suddenly feel hot around the collar of my shirt.  Tom stretches up.  He looks lean and sharp.  He looks healthy and slightly sad.

    “I’m sorry,” I say. “About the look.”

    He walks over and pats my shoulder.

    “Thanks for coming up to get me.”

    He passes me and walks out into the shadow of the hall.  I follow him.

    “Who was that girl from last night anyway.”

    Tom doesn’t answer and disappears down the stairs.  I begin to descend but I can feel mom behind me.  I turn.

    “Be patient with your brother.  He needs your help just like everyone else.”

    “I know, mom. I know.  I love him.”

    “Good,” she holds her arm against my cheek. “Now where is that grandson of mine?”

    Of course she’s not there.

Two Things on Tuesday

There are two things I want to address tonight:

1.

I've been on a new fiction kick lately. After months of rereading Anna Karenina and then delving into a Tolstoy biography, the past two weeks I have been catching up on some back logged Christmas gifts of new fiction (because really Christmas is the best time to ask for what is, for most consumers, an unknown commodity). The first week of March I wafted through Jim Harrison's "The English Major." I do not mean to use waft as a pejorative term, the book is very light and reads easily. However, it is a very good road story told from a perspective that has not been seen, by me at least, in a road novel. That perspective being an elderly man. What this narrator is looking for is not much different than any other protagonist in a road story, a new beginning, a better understanding of one's country and why one feels an attachment to it, and how all of the emotional entanglements, romances, and nostalgias of that individuals life are tied to their country - or their understanding of what they think America is. Good book.

The past week and a half I have been working on Joesph O'Neill's "Netherland." I am about three quarters through but have been compelled to comment on it from the first few pages. This is truly a fantastically written book. You will receive overwhelming waves of the Fitzgerald senisbility and mood when reading the novel - his sentences flow, digress and then resolve just as beautifully as Fitzgerald's do. There is also that almost unexplainably true sensation a reader gets when reading Fitzgerald as with O'Neill that a story is meant to be told in the wake of some significant moment that will only be revealed at the very end of the story. Now, this may seem elementary, but in the Great Gatsby, Nick has a terrific way of reeling the reader in and then letting the line slack as to why his tone and relation to the events that have occured to him are so profound and so heavily reliant on a retrospection that is intoxicating. So far, in O'Neill's story of a displaced Dutchman/Englishman in New York, the utilization of retrospection draws the reader in and places him in those shoes. O'Neill's protagonist may be estranged from his wife and child for reasons that he understands and at the same time struggles to see the truth in, but his tone and approach to the matter, with a vague sadness that points to the profound appeals and seems familiar to any reader. We all picture ourselves walking with our hands in slightly stale khaki pants, walking city streets in a mild cold in bewilderment. How did this all happen to us? And what are we going to do next?

2.

The Tony Castles. Now all three of these guys, Gabi Wurzel, Paul Sicilian, and Willie Miesmer are good friends of mine. Gabi plays in the Muggabears, Paul a former member of Bernie Tonka, and Willie a member of Boogie Boarder, but all three have come together to make a band that is really going to do something. I am biased of course. However, if you go to their Myspace page, linked above, and listen to "Black Girls in Dresses," you will agree it is the hit single that no one is listening to yet. Forget about noise pop with little girls singing in asian, this is the music for the young and the masses. You make sure to look out (you who do stumble on this) for any next show they have listed. Ask me and I can ask Gabi.

Now, for the next installment of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt:



James

The rain is falling outside and I don’t feel like doing anything. Dad’s leather study chair isn’t comfortable but it reclines back with my weight so I can trick my posture into being comfortable. It’s been a long time since I’ve sat and admired the rain. I was never melancholy enough to do it so often. I always got the sense that Tom was that way although he never really told me so or shared so much. I’d catch him reading poems and gazing out the window when I’d come home from school or on the holidays. I think he had an artistic bent to him. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. He had to recite that for English class. Mr. Marsh. I had to do that also. I forget what I picked. I think it was one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. There were so many of those to go around. I couldn’t really enjoy it. You don’t enjoy poetry or get caught up in a school assignment if you are on the lacrosse team. That would make you look like a fag. I always hated that word.

Drops are falling on bushes, the leaves are still full on trees and they move slightly in the wind. Things are green and wet and the light is still a summer light even though it is grey, it’s not dark and depressing like the rain or grey of November or December. How considerate of mom to die in a month when the weather is still nice and we don’t have to shovel snow to get to a grave. That’s what I’m looking at. The paperwork for the funeral. She and dad had enough morbid sense to make their payments already and plan everything out in advance. Who thinks of that? I guess we all have to think of that. We all have to set up our gardens to plant ourselves in, make our advance payments for it too so that everything is neat and clean trimmed mounds of dirt next to the green of the grass and maybe a flower or two. I spoke to Aunt Diane before.

“I ordered a flower arrangement.”

“Thank you but my mom had already picked out her arrangements.”

“A sister can add her own too. That’s the way it is at funerals.”

“I guess I never noticed before.”

“Best that you didn’t. What does a young man need to notice flowers at a funeral for?”

“I don’t know.”

“You had a good mother.”

“I know.”

“We could all use extra flowers.”

Everyone sounds so sad and seems so sad. We weren’t all this messed up all the time were we? I don’t think so. I had a happy childhood. I’d like to think that people were envious of our family. I was a good brother. Maybe I was too anxious to grow up. To handle paperwork and be a man, be relied upon by a wife like Eve. I could’ve been a better brother to Tom. I tried to teach him things, to stay away from losers, the guys I hung out with on the team. I wanted him to escape too. But what is he doing now? Why does he still live on the Island? Why does he come home? Why is he at mass now? I could’ve been a better brother.

The chair rocks back and forth and I hear it squeak underneath my weight. I grip the wood of the table with my right hand and shift the paperwork around with my left. Bryant and Sons Funeral Home. Old Town Road. The name is written in script with a slight flourish of graphic underneath it. Piles of paperwork make up this world; it’s the world that I work in. Numbers, files, papers. I don’t want Tom or Liza to be in a world like that, but I don’t know if you can escape it.

“You’ll be a good husband, James.”

“Do you think so, mom?”

“It doesn’t really matter if I think it.”

“Of course it does.”

“You had your father to look at.”

“But he had his problems didn’t he?”

“And so did I.”
“You did?”

“We’re all faulted.”

“That’s only the Bible talking.”

“Well, if you think that then we all have compromises to make. We face ourselves and sometimes we have to give things up. Luckily, your father was able to do that. He gives me too much credit. I might’ve been too much of a bitch when I was younger, but he seemed to understand something in it.”

“That all seems too nice. How can it all make sense like that?”

“I don’t know if it all does make sense like that.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll be a good husband, James.”

“Mom.”

Her red cheeks. The reddishness of her hair like Maggie. The youth that remained in her face, especially in the corners by her eyes so that they still looked twenty-four. Why couldn’t dad catch the illness?

The desk lamp makes the room look gold. My life and childhood have been something out of a movie. I spin the chair and as it slows, I face the window and the rain again. Life isn’t so sad. Life is made up of rainy days and I should learn to enjoy rainy days more. I should let water drip off the end of leaves and fall to the grass to enter into the rest of the earth. I can remember taking naps in October on cloudy days in college and listening to music. I’m still young. When did I become the leader? When did I become responsible?

Come in here, James. There’s a little boy who wants to meet you.

I’m a father?