this one's from back when cars and songs on the radio still meant something

[and because it came up on shuffle tonight]

it's sometime after midnight on a cold, starlit evening in 1990 and i'm flying westward at 90 mph across the barren new mexico desert in my brother's pristine '72 lincoln mark iv [why? don't ask].

cigarette in my left hand, big gulp between my legs and thoroughly sick of the three eight-track tapes that came with the car, i'm scanning the empty AM dial for something--anything--when the auto-seek locks onto some obscure country station somewhere featuring a song i'd never heard before but which has me from note one.

when the signal suddenly fades just as the guy's bringing it home, i slam on the brakes, slew sideways across three lanes of I-10 to a screeching, smoking halt and reverse at high speed back to where it comes in clear again.

if you're one of those people who has never understood country music, i urge you to listen to this track all the way to the end, because it comes about as close to perfect as any country song ever recorded.

and unlike me, you won't have to sit in the middle of a deserted freeway to do so.

notes on christmas passed

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much as i love it, austin's always been artificial--it was this fun place where my brother and sister followed me down from east texas for college, and where i would spend eleven years of my life, but it was never supposed to be where my mother would end up.

* * * * *

when we were kids, she'd come in after a long day at work with her arms full of groceries and ask our slack, lazy asses sprawled in front of the tv what we wanted for dinner. we'd usually each come up with something different, and more often than not she'd accommodate us by whipping up three different meals with seemingly effortless ease, all served steaming hot at the same time. we naturally took this shit for granted.

this year as always, she promised to cook for christmas-eve dinner the full, traditional thanksgiving spread i rarely make it home for anymore. i'm a little concerned when i get in on the 22nd and realize that she hasn't yet commenced the usual preparations, and when the 23rd passes without much progress i wonder if maybe she's no longer up to the challenge.

i needn't have worried--by the time i rouse my ass outta bed on christmas eve, she'd been up for hours cooking and it was all done to perfection, complete with three different pies for dessert.

* * * * *

all my drunken good intentions to look up old friends went--just like the last trip, and the one before that--by the wayside; instead, shackled by the enforced sobriety necessitated by family proximity, i reverted to my normal shut-down self and stuck close to home and hearth for the duration of my time in austin.

it was ok--we had a good time.

* * * * *

watching some ironic i-hate-my-family holiday special, my mother snorts and says to no one in particular, "hell, i'd lay down across a railroad track if i could spend another christmas with my mother and daddy."

if life follows its natural order, i imagine one of these days i'll say pretty much the same thing.



sober update: good god, and to think alcohol used to cheer me up.

i really should get out and walk more often

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last-minute as always, head over to century city shopping center for the annual ordeal, see all the cars tryin to stuff themselves into every available entrance like ten pounds of shit into a two-pound bag, say to myself "hell, no," park on an off-street half a mile away and make my way back to the place on foot.

two hours later, heading empty-handed back down a cold, corporate stretch of santa monica boulevard toward my little truck--reminded once more why i hate malls and everything in 'em--i'm brought up short as i cross a side street and come across this modest white frame structure that in twenty years of driving up and down santa monica boulevard i'd never noticed and that by all rights shouldn't be there anymore.

scanning across the facade, my eye finds its entrance and it stops me in my tracks


i wasn't expecting zen perfection, especially here. and "barn" rings a bell, but i can't place it--all i can think is, god, i wanna get inside this place.

it's locked-up and dark--all i can do is whip out the iphone and snap it for posterity and later googling.

[tell you the truth, at first i figured some evil genius must've bonsai-ed that spindly tree to grow in just that way and then killed it at the apex of its development, until i came across the following picture from last summer online--guess it's still alive after all]


turns out 10300 santa monica boulevard was the live-work space of a. quincy jones, a modernist architect whose work i've long admired. he and his wife bought the barnlike building back in 1965, and he remade it as both his studio and their home. he died in 1979, and she's lovingly kept it just as he left it ever since.

until just last month, anyway, when she [or, more likely, her estate] finally sold it for a paltry $2 million.

for context, here's a macro-shot of the mostly-prosaic exterior


which almost completely manages to hide what's going on inside


i fully expect to drive by in a couple months and see this building torn down and replaced by something far more profitable-per-square-foot; the romantic in me hopes not.

[apologies for not bothering to link--it's an easy google if you're really interested]

a black day in guttermoralityland

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i'd always figured the spammers would pay no more attention to this little blog than has most everybody else; sadly, i was wrong.

apologies, commenters, for the new red tape.

the angry blogger, part 3

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[part 2 to come--sorry, i'm feeling a little tarantino-ish.]

you know that old, hackneyed serenity prayer the alkies cling to--the one that importunes god for the ability to accept that which one can't change, the balls to change that which is in one's power to effect, and the smarts to know which is which?

well, if i were suddenly granted three wishes by the universe, that would damn sure be one of 'em.

from as far back as i can remember i have railed endlessly and impotently against all the idiots out there, since that's easier than facing down the idiot in here

[which self-awareness puts me at least a half-step ahead of all those other angry bloggers, right?].

gobble gobble

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when i was a kid growing up in tyler, texas, it was a backwater place basically known for three things: roses, oil money and greenberg's smoked turkeys.

if we were lucky, one of our rich relations would favor us with a greenberg turkey at christmas, and when that happened i can't tell you how special it was because there are few things in this world my family loves as much, but in those lean days we would've never dreamed of splurging on such a luxury for ourselves.

in the ensuing years--especially since oprah named them one of her favorite things a few years back--greenberg's has gone from regional delicacy to coast-to-coast phenomenon, and deservedly so. i'm tellin ya, if you haven't had one, you haven't lived.

these last several years, i've always made sure one of these glorious birds preceded my arrival at my mom's house by a day or so, so as to be perfectly thawed in time for christmas dinner.

well, today it suddenly occurred to me that i'd forgotten to go online and order this year's turkey, so in a last-minute panic i called greenberg's from my car, prepared for the inevitable disappointment.

to my surprise, the phone was answered on the first ring by a live person [and no indian accent, either--that familiar east texas twang washed over me like warm bathwater].

i explained the problem, she pulled up my record immediately. "got it, hon--same order, same address?"

i said yeah, started fumbling for a credit card, asked if she could wait til i pulled over. she said, "aw, don't worry bout that--when the bill comes jest send us a check, and yew and your family have a merry christmas!"

i miss east texas sometimes.

quote of the effin' decade

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last week, the president sat down with steve kroft for his third (i think) snow job appearance on 60 minutes since his election. among many extraordinary utterances, this is the one that most made me wanna throw shit at the tv:

"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street."

oh, really, mr. president?

[believe it or not, there was a time when i might've actually bought that statement--last year before the election, as much as i thought [hell, knew] how wrong this guy was for the job, i at least held out the hope that if elected, his ultra-liberal ass would be compelled to throw the corrupt money-changers outta the temple.

ha--even i can be a pollyanna sometimes; i managed to forget for a minute that, no matter which side of the aisle a politician's on, it's first, last and always about the money.]

rather than the pretty words our president says, let's look instead at what he's done, shall we?

i could lay it out for you--hell, my jaw's been on the floor since he named tim geithner as his treasury secretary--but matt taibbi's done a far better job of documenting the whole ugly mess than i ever could, so read him instead. and i mean, every word.

i tell you, when disillusioned liberals start writing pieces like this, you know it's getting pretty bad.