I haven't been able to watch the news for the past thirty-six hours. It's just too much to handle. Guns are evil fucking things, and when evil fucking people get their hands on them, then evil fucking things happen. Tragedies too intense and immense for anyone to be able to being to deal with. I can't even being to imagine what all of the people in Blacksburg are going through. I...What the hell else can anyone say? Words are the most powerful tool I can imagine, but even they fail sometimes.
I hit Schoolkids today because, for reasons I can't entirely explain, I felt a strange need to buy the album "A Nod Is As Good As A Wink to a Blind Horse" by the Faces. (Allmusic has something to do with it, and after discovering the divine Big Star because of the site, I decided to grab another album they seemed to keep recommending) You might not know who the Faces were, because rock and history is constantly tortured and distorted by the so-called Classic Rock radio stations. The Faces were an English band that grew out of the Small Faces. The lineup included Ron Wood, who would go on to replace Mick Taylor in the Stones, Kenny Jones, who would join the Who after Keith Moon died, Ian McLagan, who did session work for Dylan and Springsteen and the Stones after the Faces broke up, they were produced by Glyn Johns, who worked with most everybody who is anybody in the rock pantheon. The front man was a guy named Rod Stewart, who you might have heard of.
After buying the album, which I have yet to listen to, I felt the need to buy Stewart's "Maggie May" off of the iTunes. (I also bought "Same Old Song" by the Four Tops, which was kind of the theme to the magnificent film "Blood Simple" and Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale", which just plain kicks ass.) The song is so damned good. How the hell did Rod Stewart go from that kind of genius to being, well, Rod Stewart? It's kind of like how Stevie Wonder went from "Superstition" to "I Just Called To Say I Love You" (although Wonder is far better than Stewart and we should all spend more time thinking about just how great his 70s masterpieces are)
I also bought the re-issue of the Ben Folds Five album "Whatever and Ever Amen", one of my absolute favorite albums in high school. My copy was irredeemably scratched, plus this version has a bunch of sweet bonus tracks. I'm still pissed off that I had to miss their show at the Cradle in 1999 because I was forced into being a "junior marshall" for senior night. The band broke up the next year, and I never saw the local heros.
On Saturday, I was at Schoolkids (there's a pattern here, if you look closely) and finally replaced my purloined copy of Radiohead's "Kid A" album. I have no idea why you would want to know this or why I am telling you this. I think I still don't really have any idea what I'm doing with this blog thing, other than killing time and emptying some of the words that are always cluttering my brain. I do have to watch myself a little though- I've discovered that one person actually reads this damn thing, and I'm in danger of repeating my insights in conversation that I had already blown here.
The Braves won tonight- Smoltz is still the man. The Nats (who we beat) wore VaTech caps tonight, so I kind of wish we could have won last night and lost to them tonight. One thing I do love about baseball is that the Nats were allowed to wear the VaTech caps. It seems obvious that a team would be allowed to offer such a simple tribute, but I guarantee you the NFL would never have let something similar occur. After Pat Tillman died, his former teammate Jake Plummer wanted to wear a sticker with Tillman's number on his helmet and the NFL wouldn't let him. Another example- on Sunday baseball withdrew the league-wide retirement of Jackie Robinson's number for any and every player who wanted to wear number 42. In the NBA, Jerry Stackhouse (a hated Tar Heel, but apparently a very good person) who wears the number 42 as a tribute to Robinson wanted to wear the name "Robinson" on the back of his jersey, but David Stern and the Brass turned him down. Further proof that baseball is the one true pro sport. Now if only the AL would get rid of the DH and purity was returned throughout the sport.
The post title is from the first lines of Brendan Behan's song "The Auld Triangle" (Also known as "The Royal Canal") The Pogues recorded a great version of it, and Dylan and the Band played it on the Basement Tapes (it's not on the official ones, but I have it on a two-disc bootleg. I really need to get the complete bootleg, which I think runs to five discs) There is no real reason why I typed it in the "title" space.
Oh, Keith- I just checked Wiki. The Mission Hill pilot aired 9/24/1999.
It's time for another top 5 list.
Something easy.
Top 5 Western Films
1- The Searchers
2- The Wild Bunch
3- Unforgiven
4- My Darling Clementine
5- The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, edging out Red River
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