Dear Friends,
I can’t believe that it’s almost been a week since we have been here. The time is going by so strangely. One day is fast and one day is slow and when you string them together, it just seems like it hasn’t really happened at all.
Yesterday I went to Farmington again. Rhondi sent me there because Costco was not able to ship us toilet paper and we were sort of running low. Apparently may be another run on the stuff. It could be from the situation with the dock workers here on the east coast. Who knows.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the constant fear mongering happening in the world. People up here in the sticks seem to buy into a lot of the Fox News type of information. Godless Liberals are the scourge of the land, or so it seems. Little do they know…ahahahahaha.
*****
Today will be another Friday. My heart is with my kids back in Phoenix. Both my children and my students. I am missing them all right now. I’m not sure what is on my agenda other than possibly some plumbing (got a wax seal that needs to be fixed) and some writing.
*****
I will say this, though. The air is so fresh and clean here that I don’t really want to come back to the city. I feel so good right now. Maine is pretty great in this particular department. Even if it is missing someone that we are all missing terribly.
*****
I’ve been watching Bad Monkey. It’s a pretty entertaining show and I’m curious to see how it wraps up. Vince Vaughn is always kind of the same guy, but I like that guy. The supporting cast is excellent, too. Zach Braff is a trip in this one. Well worth a spin if you like a decent mystery. Lots of twists and turns.
*****
I was watching Weeds one night a while back and there was this song on the episode that I instantly fell in love with. I liked it so much that I rewound the show and listened to it again, then watched the credits to see if I could find out what the song was. I couldn’t.
Every episode of Weeds had one cool song on it that would come at a pivotal moment about ¾ of the way into the show. The music coordinator did a rad job, in my opinion, on that show about “Nancy” Botwin” (Mary Lousie Parker) who started selling weed after her husband died.
Because I was so taken with the song, I looked up the episode online and found out that the song was by The Mountain Goats and it was called “Cotton.” Within a few days, I had purchased We Shall All Be Healed, which had “Cotton” on it, and it didn’t leave my CD player for along time.
I probably drove some people crazy at that point trying to share the virtues of this band I had just discovered. They were very different than anything I was listening to at the time (and still are kind of out there on their own). I wasn’t convinced at first about John Darnielle’s vocals, but they grew on me when I listened to his excellent lyrics. The guy is a great lyricist.
“Slow West Vultures” and “Palmcorder Yanja” are two really excellent songs and they start off the record. I have it on vinyl now, too, after buying it at one of their shows I attended at the Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix. I really enjoyed the band live and have seen a couple of different incarnations.
“Linda Blair Was Born Innocent” is where the record really starts humming for me. I like the nod to Redd Kross that this song brings as well as the way John Vanderslice, who is still one of my favorite interviews, made the band sound with this recording. My buddy, Alex, also recorded one of their records, but this one has always sounded fantastic.
“Letter from Belgium” is one of my all-time favorite songs. It is either about a mental hospital or tweekers. “We are all here, chewing our tongues off, waiting for the fever to break” is a fucking ridiculously good line. Hell, the entire song is filled with great lines. As I listen to it now, I can remember driving back and forth to work at the prison and listening to this a lot.
“The Young Thousands” is another one that makes me feel a lot of different things. Given the recent events of my life, the song makes me feel a little sad. “There is someone waiting out there with a mouthful of surprises” is a great line. Darnielle has a real knack for writing songs that speak directly to my soul. I love that about him. “The are brighter things than diamonds coming down the line. Here they come, the young thousands.”
“Your Belgian Things” is just kind of there, but “Mole” is super interesting to me. I like how the protagonist sees the world from the vantage point of a mole. The guitar line is so simple but super pretty, too. “Out in the desert we’ll have no worries/Out in the desert just you and me/I came to see you up there in intensive care/out in the desert we’ll live carefree.”
“Home Again Garden Grove” is another one that I really like a lot. It starts off with some big, swirling acoustic guitar. You can totally here how Darnielle was into some metal as a young man. This one betrays his youthful headbanging and exposes him to the world as a repentant rocker.
“All Up the Seething Coast” is another one that I don’t really get much out of when I listen to it. ‘Quito” is a mover, though, and I like it quite a bit. It’s got a really interesting sound going on and I’m not sure where it came from, to be honest. It might be a cello or some other stringed instrument.
“Cotton” comes near the end of the record. Again, this was a thing of beauty in how it was used in Weeds. The music coordinator deserves a great big pat on the back although I don’t see one listed on IMDB. Joey Santiago from Pixies did at least some of the other music for the episode, so that is pretty cool.
“Let it all go.”
“Against Pollution” is one of those songs where you listen to it and think, “This could be true.” It is a song about questioning one’s faith (or maybe just questioning the strength and purpose of faith. Beautiful stuff.
“Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of” is a fitting ender. It’s a pretty fun little song. “I come from Chino where the asphalt sprouts.”
Poetic to the end.
*****
See you tomorrow.
The AI forest
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