Catless

by 21 Comments

Yeah. That, alas — for the first time in twenty years.

We’d known the day was coming, known it for months now. A sad realization, to be sure. But not the same sort of sadness as to find it suddenly so…

Katie lived longer than the other two indoor cats we had — somewhere around 16, maybe 17 years. We can’t be sure because she came to us fully-formed, as a stray. This was when we lived at our previous place, the rented house on the west side of town: deep in the heart of college-student apartments, but on a very large block at whose center was an old, heavily treed forest which butted up against our back yard. Like other strays who visited us over the years there, she (and/or her mother) possibly had belonged to a student who left for a summer and just “released” her into the wild.

In any case, one day I came home from work one day to find The Not-Yet Missus eager to tell me of the epic animal-kingdom moment I’d missed: this mottled tortoisheshell cat had appeared from nowhere and simply leapt, in a single fluid movement, to the top of the wooden fence surrounding the artificial pond in the back yard. Striking enough, just that much. But what elevated it to the level of a National Geographic feature was this: the four-foot-long blacksnake trapped, writhing and whipping about, caught in the cat’s jaws.

[Read more…]

Share

Midweek Music Break: Warren Zevon

by 18 Comments

In a music-rich culture, how do you decide what (and whom) to listen to in the first place? And what keeps you listening to it, over time?

My kid brother and I have had this pervasive and often subconscious back-and-forth influence on each other ever since he arrived on the scene. (Well, that first year was sort of blurry for me. Kindergarten, y’know. (“You’re leaving me where? By myself?!?”)) He has numerous stories about borrowing my stuff, from wherever I thought I’d stowed it securely, when I was looking the other way (i.e., often); he claims that the music he found on these occasions influenced what he listened to. (The books supposedly influenced what he read and, no doubt, the whole thing influenced how he sneaked.)

For my part, I haven’t always had an easy time “getting” the music he listened to. Some of it, like Pink Floyd, came along just a wee bit too late to make much of a dent in my awareness. But even obvious greats with whom I should have been familiar — The Who, for Pete’s sake! — didn’t click at first.

I think the problem was that I’d early fixated on melody in music (although I couldn’t and still can’t explain what melody is). No doubt, the hearing thing played a role: if I couldn’t reliably make out the lyrics, I at least had to like listening to whatever-it-was, as background to whatever I was really paying attention to. (Hence, for example, my early Herb Alpert fascination.) Once I’d listened to it a few times, okay, then I could move on to the lyrics. But if the sound didn’t strike me right, I might never care about the lyrics at all.

The first honest-to-gods musical bull’s-eye which he scored in my consciousness was Talking Heads. Even with them, I remember saying something like: I really like their music, but none of their song titles ever appear in the actual lyrics. He stared at me for a beat before answering, as tactfully as he could, That’s not true. So much for trying to fake my way through an assertion about lyrics which I didn’t, like, actually know.

Then we have the case of Warren Zevon. It may be the one recommendation whose failure with me has most surprised Little Brother.

I sympathize. On the face of it, what a natural fit: the guy wrote witty, sardonic, outright mordant (and often macabre) songs. Just look at some of the song titles, and know that the lyrics fall into line behind them:

  • “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner”
  • “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”
  • “Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School”
  • “You’re a Whole Different Person When You’re Scared”

Yet he also had a side capable of great tenderness. “Hasten Down the Wind,” anyone? And over the course of his career, he befriended and worked with some artists I flat-out loved: Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Jackson Brown, Neil Young, Bryan Setzer, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris — if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear the guy had been rummaging around in my head.

But somehow, a taste for the guy’s music itself always eluded me. Consequently, I’ve never listened to Zevon enough to “get” him. This breaks my heart as much as it may break my brother’s. (He’s been trying so long, and he’s so… so earnest about it, y’know?)

Well, Little Brother, tell you what. I’ll take this as a personal challenge, nay, mission: over the next year, I’ll commit myself to “getting” Warren Zevon. And I’ll check back with you about it in 2012.

In the meantime, here are a handful of Zevon selections that have already begun to grow on me, on the off-chance that some of the rest of you might not have encountered them.

Let’s start with “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” (originally from 1991’s Mr. Bad Example album; this is a solo acoustic performance in 1994):

[Lyrics]

Next, “Sentimental Hygiene” (from 1987’s  album of the same name):

[Lyrics]

Finally, a selection from 2000’s Life’ll Kill Ya (released a couple years before Zevon’s diagnosis with the mesothelioma from which he’d die in 2003) — “Don’t Let Us Get Sick”:

[Below, click Play button to begin Don’t Let Us Get Sick. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:04 long.

[audio:dontletusgetsick_warrenzevon.mp3|titles=’Don’t Let Us Get Sick’|artists=Warren Zevon]
[Lyrics]

Happy birthday, Little Brother — the family’s very own, our one and only excitable boy.

Share

Midweek Music Break: The Fleetwoods

by 8 Comments

The Fleetwoods were one of those groups more successful than one-hit wonders — they had several hits — but they never quite broke through into super-stardom, either. They seemed to be here, and then not-here.*

The group seems to have formed almost by accident:

In one version, high-school students Gretchen Christopher and her friend Barbara Ellis had been trying to organize an all-girl vocal trio in the late 1950s, in their hometown of Olympia, Washington. They’d already been working on some songs but felt they needed a third voice to complete their “sound,” whatever it might turn out to be.

Gary Troxel, a boy in their class, played the trumpet; Christopher and he were waiting for her mother to pick them up after school one day, when he started humming a jazzy little tune he’d been thinking of. The story goes that Christopher (as Wikipedia puts it) “recognized that it was based on the same chord progression as the song she had been writing.” They invited Troxel to sing with them and, well, instant history: their first hit song.**

The title of the whispery number: “Softly, Softly.” Billing themselves as Two Girls and a Guy, they performed it at a couple of school functions, changing the name somewhere in there to “Come Softly.” They tape-recorded it that way, all but a capella — their only accompaniment the jingling rhythm of Troxel’s car keys — and Dolphin Records eventually picked them up.

Dolphin Records seems to have been haunted by nomenclature: the group was renamed The Fleetwoods — supposedly — by picking the name from a phone book; the song was retitled “Come Softly to Me,” although that phrase occurs nowhere in the lyrics, because the company thought “Come Softly” a bit too suggestive… and the label itself shortly had to be renamed from Dolphin to Dolton, because a Dolphin Records already existed. Whoops. Details, details.

After “Come Softly to Me,” the trio charted something like ten more songs. Of these, The Missus’s personal favorite is “Tragedy”:

[Below, click Play button to begin Tragedy. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:43 long.

[audio:tragedy_fleetwoods.mp3|titles=’Tragedy’|artists=The Fleetwoods]

Lyrics:

Tragedy
(by Gerald H. Nelson and Fred B. Burch; performance by The Fleetwoods)

Wind and storm (wah-ooh)
Gone’s the sun (wah-ooh)
From the stars (wah-ooh)
My dark has come
You’ve gone from me, whoa, whoa,
Tragedy

Oh, come back (come back)
Have me here (right here)
Hold me love (my love)
Be sincere
You’ve gone from me, whoa, whoa,
Tragedy

Like smoke (like smoke) from a fire (from a fire)
Our love (of love) whoa oh oh whoa
Our dreams (our dreams) have all gone (all gone)
Above (above) whoa oh oh whoa

Blown (blown by wind)
Kissed by the snow
All that’s left is the dark be-ee (below)
You’ve gone from me, whoa, whoa, tragedy
Whoa, whoa, whoa tragedy

The Missus has told me a few times of the first occasion on which she heard this song. She was both young and old enough at the time to be swept away by the title, the lyrics, and the whole sound. Melodrama in her soul even then!

As for “Come Softly to Me,” numerous other artists have covered it. Here’s an hypnotic interpretation by The Roches, from their 1985 Another World album:

[Below, click Play button to begin Come Softly to Me. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:02 long.

[audio:comesoftlytome_theroches.mp3|titles=’Come Softly to Me’|artists=The Roches]

Lyrics:

Come Softly to Me
(by Gretchen Christopher, Barbara Ellis, and Gary Troxel;
performance by The Roches)

Mm dooby do, dahm dahm, dahm do dahm ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm ooh dahm

Mm dooby do, dahm dahm, dahm do dahm ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm ooh dahm
Mm dooby do

(Come softly, darling)
(Come to me, sta-ay)
(You’re my ob-session)
(For ever and a da-ay)

I want, want you to kno-o-ow
I love, I love you so
Please hold, hold me so tight
All through, all through the night

(Speak softly, darling)
(Hear what I sa-ay)
(I love you always)
(Always, always)

I’ve waited, waited so long
For your kisses and your love
Please come, come to me
From up, from up above

(Come softly, darling)
(Come softly, darling)
I need, need you so much
Wanna feel your wa-arm touch

Mm dooby do, dahm dahm, dahm do dahm ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm ooh dahm

(repeat to end)

_________________

* “They” continue to perform — in various combinations of original personnel and replacements… singing their original hits.

** A different but more complete version of this story, suggesting that Troxel and Christopher have squabbled over who deserves how much credit, appears at Troxel’s site. That site also contains this tidbit: the license plate on one of Troxel’s restored antique cars — a 1932 Ford Roadster — reads NDOBEDO. Ha!

Share

Perfect Moments: Two Beautiful Women, a Certain Amount of Booze, and Maybe I’ve Got a Story…!

by 13 Comments

In the mid-1990s, boy, was I ever confused, perplexed, and probably (by many measures) in need of adjustment. Especially about my writing.

Here’s what my quote-unquote oeuvre consisted of then:

  • A non-fiction Op Ed memoir(ish) piece in a regional edition of the New York Times.
  • A published mystery. (Depending on who I was talking to at the time, I sometimes called it a published novel, with an exquisite inner — and yes, entirely maladjusted — sense that this actually made a difference.)
  • Opening chunks of a sequel to the mystery, for which my publisher made an offer I could refuse.
  • A short story, published in a literary magazine in Massachusetts.
  • A handful of “completed” short stories.
  • A larger handful of incomplete short stories.
  • Several completed non-fiction pieces, of the essay/”creative non-fiction” sort.
  • Some software reviews and how-to articles in a few computer/Internet-related techie magazines.

Oh, and I’d also done one complete draft — one — of a, well, a novel I couldn’t otherwise categorize. I’d gotten feedback from several advance readers of that draft: difficult, disturbing feedback, for the most part (or so it seemed to me). Feedback which praised the writing as writing but left the readers dissatisfied, wanting more. Wanting to understand what it was they had just read. Wanting me to decide what sort of book I meant to write. Did I think of it as a “literary” book? Then perhaps I didn’t need to work on it much more. Or did I want people to read it and recommend it — did I want people to enjoy it? Ummmmm, well… (Followed by a certain amount of uncomfortable silence, throat-clearing, and scuffing of feet.)

With that feedback in hand, I’d begun a second draft. And then stopped, about halfway through.

[Read more…]

Share

Perfect Moments: “I Shot ’im, Paw.”

by 15 Comments

The house in which The Missus and I live now is over twenty years old, as is our immediate neighborhood. But the area in general has only recently started to get built up. Real honest-to-gods wildlife, not yet squeezed out by housing and new roads, can still be spotted here and there — foxes, a rare deer, hawks and eagles, armadillos. We’ve heard reports of coyotes (although we haven’t seen any in the ten years we’ve been here), and a snake may show up from time to time.

(One particularly heavy rainstorm drove some rattlesnakes up to our elevation. But that was very, very unusual.)

Before moving here, though, The Missus and I lived over on the other (older) side of town. A wooded area abutted our back yard, true, but it was enclosed by shopping centers, apartment complexes, and the like. We had a good number of feral cats, which we caught, neutered, and re-released. But otherwise (and not counting everyday North Florida fauna like opossums, little lizards and frogs), nada.

Except the raccoons.

[Read more…]

Share

Midweek Music Break: Haunting Songs

by 34 Comments

I noticed a few months back that The Missus and I have a favorite way to describe certain music. Haunting, one of us will say, and the other will nod. A very haunting sound. Haunting lyrics, aren’t they? And so on.

The ingredients which go into making a song haunting, vs. all the other ways it might be described? Beats me. (Meant to ask The Missus this morning but forgot. I’ll check with her later.)

But I think there’s a dark(ish) sound, in the first place, maybe with some eerie instrumental hook — strings often seem to play a part — and the vocals might be artificially vibratoed. The dominant pitch needn’t be creepy-low; I think, for example, that some of Loreena McKennitt’s high-pitched quavering music might be called haunting. (There’s one, “The Mystic’s Dream,” included at the foot of this post.) Maybe it’s got something to do with minor keys or blue notes (possibilities I’d entertain more seriously if I had any idea what the terms, y’know, meant).

Anyway, here are a handful of examples from the oldies stack. The first is “Any Day Now” (1962), performed here by Chuck Jackson.

Any Day Now
(by Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard; performed by Chuck Jackson)

Any day now I will hear you say “Goodbye my love”
And you’ll be on your way
Then my wild beautiful bird you will have flown oh
Any day now I’ll be all alone (whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa)

Any day now when your restless eyes meet someone new
Oh to my sad surprise
Then the blue shadows will fall all over town oh
Any day now love will let me down (whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa)

Oh my wild beautiful bird you will have flown oh
Any day now I’ll be all alone

I know I shouldn’t want to keep you
If you don’t want to stay-ay
Until you go forever
I’ll be holding on for dear life
Holding you this way
Begging you to stay

Any day now when the clock strikes “Go”
You’ll call it off
And then my tears will flow
Then the blue shadows will fall all over town oh
Any day now love will let me down ’cause you won’t be around

Don’t fly away my beautiful bird
Don’t don’t fly away

My second nominee du jour would be Johnny Rivers’s “Poor Side of Town,” from 1966:

Poor Side of Town
(Johnny Rivers)

How can you tell me how much you miss me
When the last time I saw you, you wouldn’t even kiss me
That rich guy you’ve been seein’
Must have put you down
So welcome back baby
To the poor side of town

To him you were nothin’ but a little plaything
Not much more than an overnight fling
To me you were the greatest thing this boy had ever found
And girl it’s hard to find nice things
On the poor side of town

I can’t blame you for tryin’
I’m tryin’ to make it too
I’ve got one little hang up baby
I just can’t make it without you

So tell me, are you gonna stay now
Will you stand by me girl all the way now
With you by my side
They just can’t keep us down
Together we can make it baby
From the poor side of town

(So tell me how much you love me)
(Come be near to me and say you need me now)

Oh, with you by my side
This world can’t keep us down
Together we can make it baby
From the poor side of town…

And finally — in a completely different vein — we’ve got Janis Ian’s big hit from 1975, “At Seventeen.” (Since this is pretty much just acoustic and vocals, I offer it as an example whose hauntingness derives from the lyrics and the performer’s voice rather than any studio effects.)

At Seventeen
(Janis Ian)

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
and high school girls with clear skinned smiles
who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth

And those of us with ravaged faces
lacking in the social graces
desperately remained at home
inventing lovers on the phone
who called to say Come dance with me
and murmured vague obscenities
It isn’t all it seems at seventeen

A brown eyed girl in hand me downs
whose name I never could pronounce
said Pity please the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve
The rich relationed hometown queen
marries into what she needs
with a guarantee of company
and haven for the elderly

Remember those who win the game
lose the love they sought to gain
in debentures of quality and dubious integrity
Their small-town eyes will gape at you
in dull surprise when payment due
exceeds accounts received at seventeen

[instrumental]

To those of us who knew the pain
of valentines that never came
and those whose names were never called
when choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today
when dreams were all they gave for free
to ugly duckling girls like me

We all play the game, and when we dare
we cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
that call and say Come dance with me
and murmur vague obscenities
at ugly girls like me, at seventeen

What songs haunt you? Is it just their subjects? What is it about their sound?

Share

Real-Life Dialogue: Wardrobe Culling Edition

by 8 Comments

[The scene: a suburban home in North Florida, USA. He has stayed home from work on this day to prepare a guest bedroom for painting. In this guest bedroom is a closet, and in the closet are His clothes. All of them. Woven shirts, knit shirts, jeans, suits, ties, socks, underwear, shoes… It’s not a particularly big closet. It makes sense, on this occasion, to go through the stuff folded or hanging in there, putting aside usable-but-old stuff for Goodwill donation, throwing away unusable-and/or-old stuff, and just generally… organizing — since He will have to completely empty the closet for painting, and then refill it when the painting’s done.]

She returns home from work.

She: Did you get a lot done?

He: Uh-huh. The bags in the hall are all trash. I’ll take ’em out in a little bit.

She goes to the guest bedroom to inspect the results. She returns, smiling.

She: Didn’t it feel good?

He: Uh…

She: You know — straightening up the clothes. Getting rid of the stuff you don’t wear anymore. It always makes me feel renewed and refreshed whenever I do that.

He: Let me put it this way: there were shirts in there that I bought before we’d ever met.

She: But that—

He: Yeah. Twenty years ago.

She: Sooo…

He: Right again. I can’t say I’ve done this often enough to recognize any patterns at all.

She: [silence]

Share

On the “A” Word

by 13 Comments

[Image: “Left-Hand Rule.” For an explanation about something other than the subject of this post, see this page at the University of Maryland’s Department of Physics site.]

…or: what It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has to do with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

(Well, no, not really. The post started out to connect that movie and that book, and I may return to that intention at some point. But it morphed out from under me as I worked on it. In the meantime, one of the signal virtues of the Brain Pickings site, I think, are the “…or what [X] has to do with [Y]” subtitles on many posts. I’ve always wanted to do that; the opportunity presented itself; and, well…)

The RAMH regular who comments here as whaddayamean –short for her blog’s charming mouthful of a moniker, Whaddaya mean, do I have room for dessert? — has been mulling over The “A” Word. It is, of course, about. As in:

What’s your book about?

[Read more…]

Share

Victims of Fashion (Men’s Department)

by 13 Comments

Someone, no doubt, has taken a census of active bloggers and other social-media types, focusing on gender. I don’t know what the breakdown might be; maybe I’m stereotyping at least one sex, if not both, but I would not be surprised to learn that more women than men contribute to the ebb and flow of online conversation.

And I’m not complaining, not at all. Totally fine with it—

Well, one little corner of human existence goes sadly unremarked upon because of the gender imbalance. And because (at least in the West) gender-based cultural constraints forbid discussion of it.

I speak, of course, of men’s underwear. I speak in particular of… The Slot.

[Read more…]

Share

Emerging, Blinking, into the Sunlight

by 7 Comments

If you’ve been visiting RAMH for more than a few months, you probably know I’ve been a bit… distracted recently. And it’s probably going to happen again in a few weeks, when I again take up my rock hammer, rope, and lanterned helmet, wandering back into Seems to Fit for the Nth and final time.*

In the meantime, I’ve got some sprucing up to do — in the real world, for sure:

Heaps of printouts, notes (sticky and otherwise), fruit-and-grain-breakfast-bar wrappers, reference books, recorded but unlabeled CD-ROMs — all of that will vanish from within a dozen feet of my elbows. [Hmm. “Feet of my elbows” — now there’s a phrase I don’t think I’ve even seen before. And probably with good reason.] I’ll add things back into the daily home routine that I’d put aside; maybe I can again watch an occasional movie on a weeknight, and sleep in a little in the morning before getting ready for work. Maybe The Missus and I can play some cards. And maybe I can once again read for more than five minutes before dropping off to sleep.

I’ve also got some dusting and renewal to take care of around Running After My Hat. This won’t necessarily involve changing the look itself — replacing the “theme” — but I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve got a bunch of draft posts in the hopper on favorite but time-sucking topics, posts in the What’s in a Song and Perfect Moments categories especially.

(My erstwhile but long absent co-blogger has even knocked plaintively on my window a couple of times, signing to me through the glass, waggling granite fingers as though manipulating an invisible keyboard. He seems to long for personal expression.)

And finally, I’ll be trying to spend more time and care in visiting other people online. Yes, I know why I’ve been too preoccupied to do more than look through so many windows in passing. It couldn’t have been otherwise, and I won’t say I regret it, exactly. But I’ve missed the back-and-forth at some favorite blogs. It’s past time to go rapping on their windows, too.

____________________

* Er, well, the Nth and final time of my own choosing. After which, others will start to chime in. They may have no suggestions at all, but I don’t count on it.

Share
Verified by MonsterInsights