How Low Can You Go?

41-21. Football score?

Nope. Division I basketball.

Here's the link.

Ever Hear Tom Waits Sing James Brown?

Thanks to Coverpod, I have.

The most recent podcast plays the following playlist:

James Brown's Papa's Got A Brand New Bag performed live by Tom Waits
I Don't Want To Grow Up by Petra Haden and Bill Frisell
Rosie performed live by The Wandering Sons
(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night by Shawn Colvin
Ice Cream Man by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Downtown Train by Everything But The Girl
Johnsberg Illinois by Jason Falkner
Ruby's Arms by Frente!
I Don't Wanna Grow Up by Eddie Spaghetti
Somewhere (from West Side Story) by Tom Waits

Hey Rex! Your thoughts?

Video Blogging In The New York Times

Thanks to Sunday's New York Times, I know more about video blogs, or vlogs. Amanda Congdon and Andrew Baron have been producing a vlog called Rocketboom for the past 14 months and have quietly achieved an online viewership of roughly 100,000.

Simply put, Ms. Congdon reports, in a slightly quirky way, events and newsworthy items from around the globe. Mr. Baron produces the show out of his one-bedroom apartment. And what had to have started as more of a fun project and excellent way to goof around than a vision for making money, has now become a very serious money making experience.

It is estimated in the article that they could sell advertising at the end of each show for a fair price of $8,000, or $2 million a year. TiVo has, in fact, recently signed a deal to list Rocketboom in its directory giving the creators 50 percent of associated ad revenue. With the added publicity of The New York Times and TiVo, this goofy little side project is certain to just get bigger and bigger.

Well done, video bloggers. I've checked out Rocketboom and like what I've seen so far.

Here are the links:

TV Stardom On $20 A Day

Rocketboom

Union Station

Baby Got Book

Go here to play the video. Priceless!

HNT - Checking My Christmas Stocking

My wife wants to upgrade to a king size bed this year. I want like anything for us to be able to afford that. Money is tight. I wonder if one will fit in this stocking.

Driving home tonight, my car made some funny noises. And not "funny ha ha." I sure hope that whatever the problem is, that it is not too expensive. This stocking could use a cheap answer to that.

The dream job that I want was taking applications before, but not now. That was going to be my shot at making more money for my family. I'll still keep my eye out for any changes but now I need to expand my search. Anyone know of any good jobs with good health insurance in the Nashville area? I could use one of those in this stocking. My family deserves for me to be a better money earner.

Aside from good ole American money anxieties, all is well. Everyone is healthy and no one lacks for love. I continue to check the stocking for any lucky breaks all the same.

Have Match, Will Set Fire To Giant Straw Goat

I think at this point, the only way to keep it from being burned is to stop building it.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Vandals set light to a giant straw goat Saturday night in a central Swedish town, police said — an event that has happened so frequently it has almost become a Christmas tradition.

It was the 22nd time that the goat had gone up in smoke since merchants in Gavle, 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Stockholm, began erecting it to mark the holiday season.

(Click here for the rest of the story.)

For Many, Chez Is Someone Else's Word

chez (shā) prep.
At the home of; at or by.

I'm sipping Sam Adams and listening to Tracy Chapman on KCRW.com. There's a person who hugs me through her music. I've been sick for a week now and I have worked each night regardless of the weakness in my bones and the stuffiness in my head. I've endured and tolerated and accepted and smiled, and my wage is my reward. The wage is for me and it's for my circle of people for whom I have boundless love. I sniffled, sneezed, coughed, and hacked my way through a work week, and now, listening to Tracy Chapman on a chilly Saturday night, I am feeling renewed and am breathing easier.

This interview/performance is beautiful. Tracy certainly inspires and challenges people to be better without really seeming to look us in the eye about it. It just comes through in her compassionate tellings of people in need. As I typed the last few sentences, she spoke of a book she recently read entitled The Midnight Disease by Alice Weaver Flaherty. It's all about writing and its associated pathologies, the need to write and its relation to hypergraphia and depression, both suffered by the author. It doesn't necessarily resonate with me; I don't feel depressed and I will be looking up hypergraphia in a few minutes, but that need to write is something that I feel almost always. And I'll be reading this book as soon as I find it at my public library.

Listening to these songs, I remember Alice. I first met Alice when working at a record store on Nolensville Road in the early '90s. She would stop in a few times a week and make my life a bit more interesting. The best we at the store could figure was that she was homeless and not a recipient of much love in the world. Maybe she had a place to sleep, but I imagined that she made use of her days just walking up and down the streets, stopping into various stores and interacting with people in the only way she knew how. There were times when we would have to ask her to leave our shop. Alice would ask questions of us that didn't seem to have any relevance to anything at all, and sometimes she would take quite an acerbic tone and go into a tempered rage.

While we knew that we liked her and were curious about her state in life, we would at those times have to ask her to leave if there were customers about. Alice would just mumble something about how we were no good and leave for the day. But she always came back and we were cautiously happy to see her when she did.

Some years later, I read a heartwarming scenarios in the paper around Christmastime about a woman who had wandered into some Nashville bank and stated that she had some money being held for her. The loan officer she spoke with, who might normally might have just blown her off, felt some compassion for this woman who did seem disheveled and mentally hurt, and did some digging around.

I forget the details of the story, but it ended with him finding her relatives who had lost touch with her many years before when she had traveled by bus en route to visit or live with them in North Carolina, but for some reason she apparently got off of the bus in Nashville and had been here ever since. It was one of those stories that only seem to run around the holiday seasons. Her face was in the paper and it was my Alice from those almost daily rants in that Turtle's record store where I spent so much of my early twenties. There was now a Chez Alice. Whatever her new place in life, it now came with the warmth of a roof and a reunion with her family.

Happy holidays, stay warm, and help someone else stay warm.

(I just looked up hypergraphia. I like to write, but I'm not even on the same planet as those who suffer with that disease. Not yet, anyway.)

Theron Sexy, But Flux Sucks

You don't read the word "suck" in the newspaper very often, do you? Thanks to London Free Press and its headline writer for making me smile.

Happy Birthday To Me, Happy Birthday To Me

Kodak z740

Now, on to the instruction manual...

"Don't Let the Record Label Take You Out to Lunch"

This song is by Jeffrey Lewis and is as spectacular as anything I have heard. I became aware of the new song by him on WRVU. The radio show is called Alphabet, is hosted by Ashley, and you can hear it every Tuesday morning from 6 - 8. It joins Nashville Jumps as one of my favorite radio programs. And, as always, you can go to WRVU.org to listen to archived shows at your convenience.

Here are the cool, cool lyrics to "Don't Let The Record Company Take You Out To Lunch" as found on Goatees.net

And here is his website. He's a comic book artist and musician living in NYC. I've seen him described as folk-punk. Please, listen to his stuff and be fulfilled.

I'm Too Sexy For Spring Hill

'Sexy' offensive in Spring Hill, officials say
from The TENNESSEAN
(click here for the whole story)

"The city's sign ordinance says you can't have any lewd language," he said. "I know it's the name of a product, but people objected to the word 'sexy' on the sign."
White said a woman called him and said she had her child in the car with her when she saw the sign.
"She said she didn't want to have to explain to her 6-year-old what 'sexy' was," White said.

'Prude', however, is a word she had no problem explaining.

Four Lines Friday

`Cause baby I'm just a scared and lonely rider
But I gotta find out how it feels
I want to know if love is wild
girl I want to know if love is real

-Springsteen Born To Run

Do Your Ears A Favor

Friday mornings from 8-10,listen to Nashville Jumps on WRVU 91.1 Nashville. If you are not in the Nashville area, go to the link and listen online.

Three years ago, I discovered this show and it has been awesome to me ever since. Pete Wilson plays the best in Jump Blues, a genre that I had never heard of until I stumbled onto it. It's a kind of jazz/swing horn based blues that was popular back in the '40s. This is not your my-baby-left-me-and-I've-got-the-blues blues. It's fun and it's sexy and it moves.

Listen in the morning and report back to me. You'll dig it.

Mission Statement? Sure, I Got One Of Those.

Much like the pre-couch hopping Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, I find myself sick, self-medicated and assured that my thoughts should be everyone's thoughts. It is, yes, my mission statement.

Tonight, I worked my nine hour shift and just like so many nine hour shifts before it, I didn't get rich. I did, however, spend ten minutes talking with a good and valued friend of mine. She, like my wife, is my friend because I don't think hearts get more special than hers. Her compassion for others is overwhelming and her general kindness to people is reaffirming.

It's as easy for me to say "life's not fair" as it is for someone else to say, "who ever said it was?" But each day I see so much rudeness by so many people who, if they would just slow down a bit, would know that there really is no need for their behaviors. Selfish people get their way at the expense of others by complaining and throwing tantrums wherever they go. The squeaky wheels bring me down.

And all the while, there are nice people just trying to make it in life, being walked on by the brash, who happily infantilize those who are there to help them. It's a big world, people. We can afford the time and space to be nice to one another. I have friends with more sadness than they deserve because they are just emotionally beat up all of the time.

I remember once, several years ago, my dad and stepmom had my brother do some volunteer work in a soup kitchen for the homeless. That is just one of so many good parenting decisions they made as they raised their children in this world. My brother, now a young man, is a man I am proud to know. He has success in his work and makes a good living, but he is defined as a man with a good heart. He cares for others and his sincerity really shows.

I'll be vague about my job but will share that I often juggle the different needs of several customers at once. It's unavoidable that to satisfy one, another will feel mistreated. There's no way around that. I employ a sense of empathy and kindness, but typically I am just treated as if I am subservient and not worth a kind word. Does that get to me? Sure. But I only mention it to remember that after 9/11, it was not the case at all.

I suppose that we were all in a state of shock, but it seems that everyone I came into contact with knew what life was all about. I was there to help, and they were appreciative and grateful. We were all one people and we were nice to one another. I noticed that and hated the reason for it of course, but loved the kindness that was occurring.

It didn't take us long, however, to get back to bitching about waiting ten minutes for a free ride to our hotel, yelling at restaurant hostesses about not getting an immediate table on a Saturday night, or cutting someone off in traffic to get somewhere we don't want to be in the first place.

Maybe we all need to get some time in helping out in our local soup kitchens and homeless shelters. We need to say thank you a bit more sincerely to the people who help us out in our daily routines (the grocery store cashier, the waitress at the diner, the parking garage attendant). At the very least, we need to hug our loved ones a lot more. We need to hug for the sake of hugging.

To my friend at work, I'm grateful for our friendship. Everything you do is worthwhile.

To my wife, I am everything because you love me. I'm gonna give you a big hug tomorrow.

And to my village of parents, I thank you all for raising me to be who I am. I've certainly got my struggles and I tend to dwell on my perceived failings a bit much, but the important thing is that I like who I am. For that, I credit you all.

(In the movie version of my life, this is where Bob Sugar fires me and I go on to start my own company.)