Irritants and Adorations: The Back-to-School Edition, Part 1

Adorations

1. Bumping into long-lost friends the quaint, old-fashioned way (i.e. not on Facebook). Recently I was heading out from Corner Bakery and heard a dear old friend from my Willow Wildcat days shout out: "Ross And Roll?!" How she knew it was me beneath the tennis-ball-fuzzy faux-hawk and Magical Mystery Era life-size walrus suit is beyond me. But maybe it's just that some of those friendships forged on the tetherball courts and solidified over readings about Ishi: Last Surviving Member of the Yahi and during recorder practice are simply rock solid. It was great to see this old friend and to share a brief chat while the children heaved their pennies into the fountain and then darted for the sea turtles.

2. Wailua Wheat. Before I succumbed to this crippling TMJ-ish throbbing pain in my jaw and cheek and teeth, which came about as a friendly byproduct of this nasty head-cold I've now had the pleasure of being acquainted with for just shy of a week, I had embarked on a sunny, season-long sojourn that I'd gleefully dubbed: "The Summer of 1000 Corktails." This pirate-like, swashbuckling drink-a-thon involved trying out all sorts of stuff I normally don't drink. To boot: wine, campari bitter nastiness, gin and juice(wut up Snoop D-O-double-G?!), random concoctions (cf, this FB status update: Ross And Roll created a new cocktail: 14 parts Malibu rum, liberal dumping of mango infused vodka, 1/2 a banana, fresh pineapple, some sweet cream, ice...I call it "I'm a single daddy for three zany cherubs, it's 8 pm, so let's drink!"), etc, and c., and you get the point. Anyway, it always came back to good old frothy beer for me. And this Wailua Wheat is a doozy. It tastes like a cross between really good golden ale and a glass of fresh-squeezed passion fruit juice. Totally worth your while if you can still snatch some up at Bev Mo. It will make you think of Hana and trade winds and of course waterfalls and the old man and pog juice and the "Island Breakfast of Champions" which is Spam Musubi and a Budweiser tall boy and those potato chips w/ the colorful green/orange/purple bag and Ryan Summons winging over to Maui and not changing out of his board shorts for seven days and pitching plans for a bar with you while you watch the catamarans come and go like the tide and yet Summons somehow, as if like summoned by the FTA, getting all cleaned up: a simulacrum of the Abercrombie model that'd become his bread-and-butter, for the flight home.

3. Home James, and Don't Spare the Horses. This is this great short film on one of the Wholphin DVD's, put out by the incomparable foax at McSweeney's. Along the same lines as Charlie Kaufman's films or the Pirandello play about the characters seeking their author, HJADSTH (based on Antoine Wilson's same-named short story) seeks to explore and then explode a bunch of cool stuff about artifice, art, originality, falsities, truths, fiction, fabrication, drunken elation, scripted lines we speak over and over for maximum dramatic effect and gusto, & c. I can't do it a whole helluva lot of justice, other than saying please find this thing on the interwebs (or call me and I'll loan you my copy) and watch this brief (31 minutes! You'd easily squander such minutes on a Chelsea Lately episode!) and brilliant film. It'll get you head-scratching and thinking and smirking all day.

New Project Entry #1

I'm wondering if Air Supply ever feels a bit bummed that they're now playing joints like The Torrance Civic Center? Or maybe, in a weird way, is it a step up from the Concerts in the Park circuit they've been floating around for the first part of the 21st century? Sure, some have back-stage laminates and champagne and intricate lighting and stage set-ups, but what's better than some Kettle Korn and Bounce Houses and a soulful take on "All Out of Love" for free? For free, I exclaim! (That's gratis, for those playing along at home).

Incidentally. Do you think A.S. still gets a vicarious thrill out of belting out gems like: "And I can make all the stadiums rock!"? Even if said stadiums are the Torrance Civic Center? Questions for the ages, I say.Now to the main point of this entry: In an effort to nurture my OCD and stay focused, I've resolved to listen to all my CD's in alphabetical order over the next few months. The goal is to provide thoughts, queries, new takes on old favorite songs, correlations between unlike objects such as Tom Jones' "Greatest Hits" and Slash's Snakepit's 1st three albums. (Don't think I own any of these, actually, but closer attention digging through the crates and bookcases may reveal differently),etc.

First up is, as luck would have it, NOT Air Supply. While I have it scratched and scorched somewhere on CD, it definitely no longer has a plastic case and it has not been alphabetized.The first "real" entry will cover AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds" and Air (that trendyish 90's band Beck championed), All Night Radio, and today's favorite Anthrax."Don't you know I'm the man. I'm bad. I'm so bad I belong in detention" Indeed.

Testing 1, 2, 3

Yeah, boy