DESIRE

I just purchased Bob Dylan’s album Desire.

So, am I going to write about a record that’s 20 years old? No. I’m going to write about a record that’s 34 years old. I’ve never been sure why people like to use their ignorance about “older” music as a badge of their youth.

“Uh, that was before my time, tee-hee.”

“Well, the pyramids were before your time, too—but you’ve heard of them, right?”

“The Pyramids? Uh, I’m not sure. Was their lead singer from Egypt?”

Anyway, the sound quality of Desire isn’t that great compared to modern records, but the feel is superior. Modern records tend to use a computer to correct and construct every little nanosecond of sound, resulting in an antiseptic blandness with lots of shine but no soul. Of course, I’m not talking about ALL modern records because I don’t want to sound like a denture-chewing dude in a rocking chair—I’m talking about all that “please-love-me-MTV” crap. In recent memory, bands like The White Stripes, The Hives, and Flogging Molly have created organic-sounding stuff with plenty of heart, and I mean four pumping ventricles. But I’m getting sidetracked.

Desire is full of thoughtful, catchy songs that often feature an international flavor, though I suspect it will take me a few listens to like the ones where Bob is singing along with a girl. I just think the tunes would have a grittier feel if he took the babe out of the mix. Even on the love songs, she’s kind of destructive. I’m sure she has good intentions, but she’s way too sweet and wailing for my taste.

So far my favorite tune is Isis. It’s about a guy who leaves his woman and goes searching for something on the edge of the Earth, but then returns to discover he had it pretty good all along. An age old story that is often true.

Mission To Mars

Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin thinks humans should go to Mars, and a few people in the U.S. government agree with him. I guess McDonald’s is running out of places to build new restaurants.

What would we do on Mars? All the stuff we love to do would be impossible there. I mean, could we experience hours of profitable joy polluting the
Martian water? There is no water—bummer. Could we revel in a few fine afternoons obliterating the sweet crimson air? The Martian air is already an obnoxious mix of unbreathable gases—once again, no real fun.

Okay, how about war? Could we start a good ol’ war with someone? Maybe a bunch of little green people just aching to feel the iron boot of humanity crushing them with a certain warped sense of rationalization? (Note: see American Indian). But there are no green people. Damn. All right… How about starting a bunch of wars with EACH OTHER in an attempt to secure some kind of slippery yet valuable natural resource, like OIL? Well, there is no oil—not unless some astronaut spills a quart of Castrol all over his space-shoes.

Face it, Mars isn’t that great. We might as well just keep ruining the Earth.

READ OR DIE

I notice when Time Magazine interviews a celebrity, the interviewer often asks the question, “What book are you reading right now?” And the celebrity always has an answer.

So obviously the average celebrity is more literate than I suspected. They’re also more literate than I am—I wish I were continuously immersed in a literary masterpiece, but I’m not because I’m too occupied with other things, like surfing the net and practicing my Olympic ice skating routine.

Damn, I keep falling on my ass. It’s so hard to type and skate at the same time.

Anyway, all this guilt about the books I’m not reading has caused me to seek a solution, and here it is: I’m going to start lying about my book-reading activity. Because I want to be just like the average celebrity, only without all the drama, and divorce, and cocaine.

Now, what book should I pick? The trick is to sound smart but not pretentious, fun but not stupid, cool but not phony. And how many books fall into this category? This plan sounds like it will require some research, and that idea doesn’t grab me.

I suppose I’m theoretically reading Les Miserables, I mean since 1988 or so. I just can’t get past page 7500. Apparently the protagonist stole a loaf of bread, and an epic novel was born. I can only imagine the size of the resulting volume if the guy had swiped a Cadillac.

Another solution to this whole book-reading problem would be to actually read more books. Yeah, maybe I’ll try that instead.

STRESS RELIEF

World famous bodybuilder Pam Shealy sent me this. I liked it so much I had to post it. It’s a technique designed to relieve stress.

1. Picture yourself lying on your belly on a warm rock that hangs out
   over a crystal clear stream.
2. Now, picture yourself with both your hands dangling in the cool
   running water.
3. Birds are sweetly singing in the cool mountain air.
4. No one knows your secret place.
5. You are in total seclusion from that hectic place called the world.
6. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade
   of serenity.
7. The water is so crystal clear that you can easily make out the face
   of the person you are holding underwater.

Yeah, I can totally imagine this working. I can’t wait to try it out.

Online Dating Hell

People today have more ways to start a romantic relationship than ever before. People today have access to online dating, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, email, text messaging, cell phones, and online chat. But does any of this stuff make the process easier?

I’m not an expert in this field, and no one is asking me to appear on Oprah. I did test the digital waters a bit before I met Jill, and I’ll say there are certain aspects of meeting people that technology has improved. But in the end, here’s the problem: Until you actually meet someone, you haven’t met anyone.

I “met” a girl one time in an AOL chat room. We agreed to meet at a bar in Belmar. She told me she was 31, never married, no kids. So I walk into the bar, and a woman asks me my name. I tell her, yeah, I’m Joe—but I’m thinking, uh, who the hell are you?

This woman was not 31 years old. She says, “Well, my friends tell me I look like I’m thirty-one.”

Honey, you’re friends are lying.

She finally admits to being “around fifty.” Okay, I suppose 60 is around 50. Put it this way, she had a grandson who was living with her—when he wasn’t busy sailing with the U.S. Navy.

Anyway, it was a real short date. She had to go home and watch The Golden Girls.

The Roar Of The Crowd

I was thinking about some of the different national bands I’ve seen over the years, and how the crowd at each show reflected the personality of the music. Here’s what I remember:

Flogging Molly – The crowd was friendly. For a relatively punky band, there were a surprising number of adults mixed in with the kids. Of course, FM writes thoughtful songs with adult themes that are still very slam-danceable. The band has a very warm stage persona—it’s like you’re partying in Dave King’s living room. A real fun concert. One of the best show I’ve ever seen, if not the best.

Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica – This was a long time ago when I was, uh, younger. The crowd was hostile. To whom? Mostly each other. Beer bottles were flying around the parking lot like bombs. Everyone had an attitude the size of a monolith. If someone had blown up the building very few intelligent people would have died. But I can’t deny it was fun.

Cake – Pretty mellow crowd. Everyone was pleasant enough, united under one large, culty banner of CAKE.

Iron Maiden – Supposedly, Iron Maiden’s music is more “cerebral” than typical metal—but glancing around The Garden State Arts Center, I didn’t see too many atom-splitters hanging around. Mostly, I remember one guy screaming at the top of his lungs, “IRON MAIDEN, IRON MAIDEN.” Then a blurry-eyed girl who’d obviously sucked down more than a few fermented beverages interrupted him and said, “It’s Iron FUCKING Maiden.” And then she puked all over the lawn. At $7.00 per beer, that was pretty expensive vomit. The band was real good, though, and played a fun show that didn’t coincide with the vibe of their moronic audience.

Motorhead – The audience is rowdy but not hostile—just people having fun. They draw more young people than you might think, I mean for a bunch of guys who’ve tasted dinosaur eggs for breakfast. There’s a lot of slam dancing and just plain slamming. Lemmy is a blast, and his warts are fookin’ amazin’.

The Kings Of Leon – Jill wanted to go to this show, and like a fool I obliged. The crowd was composed of kids who were thrilled to be at their first concert. They cleverly spent most of the night texting their friends to brag about it. They tossed a lot of beer and soda into the air while the band tried to look interested. The band failed, but few seemed to notice. It was a real dopey night.

FOOL

I just finished reading Christopher Moore’s latest novel, Fool.

Fool is based on Shakespeare’s play King Lear. So I guess you could say Moore lifted much of the story from the Bard, although the Bard lifted much of his story from someone else. Apparently, Shakespeare stole most of his ideas. Kind of like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.

Then again, can anyone really “steal” a blues song? Because they all sound the same. Actually, there is that one song—no, no, wait, that’s right, it sounds just like all the others… Rock and roll was born because the blues got boring. Chuck Berry wanted to be a blues singer, but Chess Records thought his “uptempo” stuff might sell better. And Chuck thought he’d get more girls if he could keep them awake.

Still, the blues can be great for about 20 minutes. After that, well, you might want to put on a little Death Metal. There’s nothing like the sweet sound of the Cookie Monster singing along to the roar of a kitchen blender.

Look, I love the blues. I love the Cookie Monster guy. I have nothing but tidings of great joy for everyone, blah, blah.

By the way, Fool is a great book in the Shakespeare/ Moore tradition. This means it’s full of sex, drugs, and violence. Of course, I’m counting the various spells and poisons as “drugs”—I mean, nobody is snorting cocaine. At least not right away.

Seriously, Fool tells the story of a razor-witted court jester trying to hook up with a lover lost at the hands of a cruel king (sort of—sorry, Chris, that’s the best I could do.) It’s funny, and it’s got a lot of heart. You will laugh, even if you have no idea which friggin’ lord or nobelman or princess is related to which duke or earl or whatever. So check it out.

Just A Lot Of Smoke

The federal government is planning to regulate cigarettes, and I’m wondering how this will work. Will each manufacturer have a limit placed on how many people per year they’re allowed to kill?

“I’m sorry, Mr. Marlboro, but you’ve killed 500,000 people this year. So you’ll have to stop selling cigarettes until next year.”

“What? Are you sure? Because we’ve done some research and, uh, a lot of those people WOULD’VE DIED ANYWAY. I mean, they could’ve been killed by cheeseburgers! Or maybe Botox injections!”

“Well, I suppose you have a point—”

“You bet we do. Plus, our accountants noticed you included a few people who got drunk and fell asleep with lit cigarettes and burned down their houses. Now, were those deaths really caused by SMOKING? Or were they caused by alcohol and stupidity?”

“Hm, you make a compelling case, Mr. Marlboro. I suppose we can allow you another 100,000 deaths.”

“Whew, thanks! You guys are the best… Hey, uh, did I mention that campaign donation I was planning to make? Maybe a million dollars or so—”

“Look, we’ll give you another 200,000 deaths. But that’s it. After all, we’re still busy fighting the War On Terror.”

“And we appreciate that effort. U-S-A! U-S-A!”

“Right.”

Thought For The Day

The road to success is littered with non-believers.

So take that, all you non-believing wankers.

Heaven’s Gate

I dreamed I died and went to Heaven. I got to the gate and there was no one there. I saw a keyboard and a monitor screen. The screen said PLEASE ENTER YOUR LOGIN AND PASSWORD.

I didn’t know either, but there was a link that said CLICK HERE IF YOU FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD. So I clicked and saw a message that said a new password had been sent to my email address. I tried to access my email but I kept getting a JAVASCRIPT ERROR. So I clicked on the link that said CONTACT US, and it brought me to the CUSTOMER SERVICE PAGE. The page had a form I could fill out—they would only respond via email.

Okay, bummer. But since I had no where to go so I decided to hang around. Finally someone came to the gate.

He was a friendly looking hippie dude. He smiled and said, “Hi, how you doin’? Sorry about the trouble—we just put in a new system and no one knows how to work it.”

“Oh,” I said. “I was starting to think I was in Hell.”

He laughed. “No, no, everything works great over there.”

“Uh, why is that?”

“Well, that’s where all the ‘technology people’ are.”

Right.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check my Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc.