If Tennessee Floated Away, Would The Other 49 States Notice? (Bizarro World Weather, Nashville Waterworld, and the Tennessee Complex)

We interrupt this (really mostly unplanned) posting moratorium ‘cos I just wanna say, WTF?

Having survived Hurricane Elvis, the Great Ice Storm of 1994, and – even more up close and personal than I like to think about very often – the 2003 tornado that tried to eradicate Jackson from the planet, there’s not much about natural disasters that comes as a surprise anymore. I’ve seen lots of crazy whacked out weather down here.

But this weekend was like Bizarro World Weather down here. In almost 22 years of living in the same house (and a hop, skip and jump from the same tornado siren at the fairgrounds), I am pretty certain I have never heard that thing go off five (at least five, it might have been six) times in a 24-hour period. And I’m absolutely certain I’ve never heard it blare for TWO HOURS (could have been three, definitely two). Having really only fairly recently gotten to where I’m not practically hyperventilating and paralyzed anymore when the thing goes off, it was better than it would have been a year or so ago, but still – decidedly on edge for a very long period of time.

At the time of that two or more hour siren, they were also evacuating the thousands of folks down at the Beale Street Music Festival (i.e., MudFest) on Saturday night. And then last night, people in the crowd were acting like jerks and booing when headliner Three Doors Down had to be canceled and couldn’t make it down here because they were having trouble getting from Nashville to Memphis, because of the flooded mess this state is right now. Nashvillians John Hiatt and Alison Krauss’ BSMF sets were also canceled due to the flood situation, as was a Dierks Bentley show in Knoxville on Sunday night, seeing as how Bentley was in his flooded basement with a bucket just like most everyone else in Nashville. (Why the Beale Street Music Festival hasn’t yet been moved to a different weekend in May after all these years is beyond me, since it almost always rains and storms that weekend, and either doesn’t rain at all or hardly rains the rest of the weekends in May. Seriously.)

And while things are fine right here where I am in the center of the city, they definitely are NOT around the whole region in general. It was kinda bad enough in Memphis and Arkansas and North Mississippi, with all the flooding (in places I’ve never seen flood before) and storm damages and, sadly, several deaths. The tornadoes that did come through (mostly hitting the more rural areas) were terrible with horrific damage – but the rain itself just gutted the entire Mid-South. It just kept on coming down, and coming back again and again, and it wouldn’t go away.

And Nashville, poor Nashville, is practically totally under water and now the Cumberland, which was 19 feet on Friday, has a flood stage of 40 feet, and was currently 55 feet last I looked at the news – the river’s on the verge of completely swallowing up downtown Nashville. I spent most of Sunday reading friends mentioning that co-workers had had to abandon their homes, neighbors had totally lost their homes, just about everyone I know up there has water in their basement (and rising in many places), and many of my friends discovered on Sunday that they now own lakefront property all of a sudden.

I saw a photo snapped not far from where an ex-BF used to live used to be (officially I never lived there but technically I did), and at first I thought well, we’d have been all right probably because the living space was actually on the second floor. Then I remembered how small the building was and how low those ceilings were. If this had happened 23 years ago, we’d have been like those other people clinging to their roofs or the top of their vehicles waiting to be rescued. (Consequently, that same ex moved back to Nashville a few years ago and texted me last night, lamenting the thousands of dollars in musical instruments, equipment and other gear currently swimming around his basement – according to his neighbor, that is. He was in Chicago this weekend, so he hasn’t yet seen it for himself.)

And it’s not just Nashville. One of my two little hometowns an hour to the west is being besieged by an overflowing Big Sandy River (and though I haven’t seen photos, I’m sure the Tennessee River is flooding the other end of county at the beach and beyond), and judging from the conditions in this photo that was sent to me in e-mail last night:

… if I was still in high school, I would have had to had a boat to get there on Monday morning. That building in the photo is NOT “out in the sticks” out in the county – it’s very much inside the city limits – and really isn’t all THAT close to the river in question, so presumably nearly every business on that side of town was fighting the same watery madness.

Most things south of Nashville in Middle Tennessee are apparently a wreck as well, including this house. She was supposed to leave for NYC in three weeks, they have no renter’s insurance, and they’ve lost everything.

Levees are leaking and breaking all over, sinkholes are developing everywhere (including still in West Tennessee as well as Middle Tennessee), people and animals are stranded, drowning. So many roads closed and it’s bad all over, but Nashville itself has kinda turned into one gigantic lake with thousands of little islands around.

I am old enough that I vaguely remember the major flood Nashville had in the 1970s, but that was nothing compared to this. There are places up there that have never been under water in my lifetime – or probably for hundreds of years, or ever. It’s just stunning.

All of this coupled with the fact that three members of my family were in Nashville on Saturday – and had already planned to stay in a hotel overnight (good thing) – but trying to get them out of there Sunday was a bit daunting, especially when – after hearing road after road after road was closed or closing, and downtown was closed in all kinds of places and flooding, and most especially when authorities up there were practically begging people not to drive, all of which I was texting with every new closure or warning I read about – after encouraging them to stay put, they left anyway. They couldn’t go what would be the usual route back on I-40 West (we already knew the main highway off the interstate was marked as flooded by the Highway Patrol, and knew most of the other alternatives were probably little better.)

It took them a while to get through downtown, but once they made it to I-65 North, things were okay to Clarksville and beyond. But I pretty much held my breath until I knew they’d gotten out of Nashville, and still until I knew they’d made it home.

And Nashville, poor Nashville – later Sunday morning, friends and others were Tweeting that the waters in their basement were starting to recede. And then around noonish – just like the weather and news folks had said it would – the rain and sirens and everything else started up again.

People are going to need serious help to put Nashville and Middle Tennessee back together again. It’s such a mess, but you probably heard that already.

Or maybe you didn’t – because apparently much of the national news has mostly ignored what’s happening in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, as well as the rest of the damage in West Tennessee and our neighboring states. Little blips here and there, but you know, it’s not like when some other cities have gotten decimated by Mother Nature and you can’t get away from it on the news and in your newspaper, no matter where you are.

And it’s kinda doubly puzzling because some of those cities I can think of that have had their disasters plastered on TV and other media for days at a time – the hurricanes and floods and such that have happened in those places, they happen fairly often. What’s happening in Nashville right now has never happened in my lifetime (and I’m getting kinda old, you know) – we have some rural flood zones with relatively small area dotting the state, but a national emergency-type flood of this proportion is just unheard of.

It’s kinda like the (cough) “straight line wind” storm dubbed Hurricane Elvis that paralyzed Memphis for weeks in 2003 – I recall one of our city officials commenting at the time that a hurricane that wound up not even materializing and hitting one coastal city got more national coverage than Hurricane Elvis did. People died, the city was in pieces (including parts of the city that had never or rarely seen such kinds of damage), the whole city was mostly without power in 90+ degree weather for weeks – yet unless you lived fairly close by, you probably had no idea what was going on down here.

What, do we (Tennessee in general) need to switch deodorants or something? At this point – and after this many crises that have gone mostly ignored – it’s enough to give an entire state a complex.

Aunt B. writes about the current situation and similarly puzzling lack of interest here and here, and the fine folks at The Nashvillest have done a stand-up job gathering and providing information during this awful time up there. Honestly, The Nashvillest and Twitter, as well as the Internet in general, have become invaluable resources for sure time and time again, and kept a lot of folks in the loop and informed that would have otherwise not been.

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And finally – yes, there was supposed to be an Alex Chilton post in March and no, you weren’t imagining things. As I kinda said the day I posted the last one (about Doug Fieger), the Alex post was nagging at me so much it was going to make me sick if I didn’t post it that day – and then I never posted it. Because I haven’t finished it. Because for some reason, I can’t. There’s a personal piece to that post that I’m struggling with – maybe it’s because I’ve told the story many times before, but this will probably be the last time I ever tell it. Maybe I’ll finish it and post it soon. Stay tuned.

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EDITED TO ADD: What a beautiful and horrific photo at the same time @brittneyg‘s place:

Nashville Submerged

Home, Home Again – But Not For Long

So I am home, but not for long. I am exhausted to the max, but in a good way. I should have just gone straight on to bed early last night, but didn’t. Now I’m up again, but that’s OK, I think (think) today is going to be a fairly easy day.

All and all, great trip. I met in person some wonderful folks I have “known” for a while and a few more, and we just had a great, great time. Other than the fact that I lost my MP3 player and some other stuff I can’t quite remember what was in the bag at O’Hare, and the fact that my foot is about to fall off, it’s all good. I almost broke my foot a few years ago but didn’t quite break it, and it has given me a ton of trouble ever since, and nowadays the other foot and ankle gives me a little trouble too because I don’t walk quite right anymore because of the bad one. Consequently, the bad foot and ankle have a habit of swelling up to Supersize with things like lots of walking in airports and stuff. I didn’t notice it until I was waiting in the St. Louis airport yesterday for my connecting flight, and then it was like, whoa! The other one was swollen too but the difference was between looking at an almost normal foot and ankle compared to a gargantuan deformed one. It really hasn’t bothered me that much (and has gone down a little), probably because when I am really tired, my feet always hurt anyway. I’ve felt better, but I’ll live.

The show, again, was fantastic and The Abbey is a pretty great place to see live music in Chicago. Other than that little idiot who made us leave the venue entirely too early and before everyone in the band had come out after the show.

I kinda hate now that I understand I could have met up with Tatiana for dinner or something Saturday night, dang it. But since it was such a last minute trip and was kind of a whirlwind one, I just wasn’t thinking much ahead of time other than all the must-do’s. Hopefully there might be a next time for Chicago later in the year, though.

But here’s the REAL scoop… remember I said I’m home, but not for long? Guess where I am going Wednesday? L.A.! Yep, I’m going to see the Hoodoo Gurus AGAIN on Wednesday night. It was another opportunity that turned up that I just couldn’t pass on, things with work are working out where I can go (and Thursday’s my day off anyway), so here I go again! It just so happens I have an old friend who is from Sydney but has been living in L.A. for several years now who also was going to the show, so hopefully things will work out there (‘cos lord knows I don’t have enough $$ left for cab fare at this point, but we’ll see).

This is going to be an even more whirlwind trip ‘cos I am actually going to be there barely 12 hours, but when the opportunity presented itself, I just couldn’t pass it up. And I never get to do stuff like this or go much of anywhere anyway, so this is cool. About ten years ago, the band was playing what was then intended to be one of their last dates in Australia, and almost all the American fans went down there for the show, the band and their manager threw a big barbecue for everyone who had come in from all over the world, and all this great stuff. I wasn’t able to go and was miserable. So all of this this week almost makes up for that. I’m thrilled, really; too tired to maybe show it right now, but I am.

So this week’s going to be a super hectic one (especially because I am going BACK out of town again for a very short trip on Saturday), and I’m probably going to just collapse next week when it’s all over with, but it’s all good. For a whole bunch of last minute stuff, it’s not turned out so bad (yet – knock on wood nothing happens like my plane is severely delayed Wednesday, god, that would be awful).

If you wanna see some pictures taken of the Chicago outing, click here. Someone needs to stop me from waving every time a camera’s out, I look like a big dork. And to shut my mouth. And I seriously was not drunk until the very end of the evening, heh.

It’s Always Bittersweet

I probably shouldn’t be posting because I am pretty drunk. The last beer I had before leaving the pub next door to the venue pretty much did me in. I just got back to the hotel a little bit ago, and unfortunately I have to leave for the airport shortly. But that’s OK.

The show was FANTASTIC and everything I could have hoped for. There’s a rumor they even played one song because I asked for it and that info was relayed by some friends of mine that were following them around.

I got to chat with their manager, who I have “known” via e-mail for many years, so that was great. Great, great, great. He is such a good person and always has been.

Unfortunately, even tho the guys in the band have spent a fair amount of time meeting and greeting after the shows at all the others thus far, there was some little sh*t kicking people out early on at this place. I realize now I should have put my foot down (or even prevailed upon their manager) to leave us be because we were waiting to talk with the band – the one in particular I wanted to speak with a bit, I know saw me in the audience – but we let that little idiot run us out anyway, I dunno why.

Oh well, there will be a next time later this year, hopefully. And if nothing else, I just never thought I’d ever see the Gurus play on these shores ever again, so that alone made it all worth it.

I’ve got to get packed and ready to go to the airport so ’til later… man, I am pretty wasted. This should be a fun day.

My Kinda Town Apparently, Woohoo

I had to keep quiet for a few days because I didn’t think it was gonna happen, and frankly, I never dreamed in a million years that this was gonna work out at all, and was fully prepared prepared to be depressed about it and mopey indefinitely. But for some reason, my usually rotten luck and karma turned around and things started falling into place this week at what was really just about the VERY last minute.

Let me back up here…

My favorite band in the world besides The Replacements, the Hoodoo Gurus from Australia, announced last fall they were going to be touring the U.S. in March. My original plan when I heard about it was that I was going try to make every show east of the Mississippi I could, and maybe another one or two western dates depending on where/when. I thought I was going to be in a position to be able to follow them around the country for at least a bit, at least on this side of the country.

Alas, when the time came around, not only were things not the way I had predicted by now where I could be in a position to travel like that, but no dates were scheduled at all here in the Southeast. The tour is very small and brief, and the closest they were coming to the Southeastern U.S. was Chicago.

I have been trying for a few weeks now to see if I could work it out to get to Chicago. The fact that I live in a city where we might as well not even have an airport for all the good it does us didn’t help. You can get on the SAME plane in Little Rock or Nashville that is also going to stop in Memphis, and pay anywhere from $200-500 more if you board it in Memphis. But that’s a rant for sometime next week.

Anyway, I had been playing with schedules and fares for weeks and trying desperately to make something work. I had even looked into Amtrak and Greyhound but those schedules weren’t working either. Driving was always an option, but that’s an awful long drive by myself to a very big major large city I have never been to, and probably without much sleep if I made the drive… and all expenses totaled would have probably been around the same ballpark figure as any half decent priced airfare would have been.

I really gave up any hope of going weeks ago, but things started falling into place and presented an opportunity again this week where I might be able to go. It was a slim chance, but a chance all the same, and from last weekend to this past Wednesday, I was desperately searching and trying to make things work and make all the pieces of the puzzle fit.

On Wednesday, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place and voila. I’m headed to Chicago on Saturday afternoon and will be seeing the Hoodoo Gurus play Sunday night. I’ve been waiting for this for nearly ten years, since their last U.S. tour got abruptly canceled, and I haven’t seen them play live in 13 years, I think. This has been SUCH a long time coming and I am still pinching myself in disbelief after having lost all hope. I can’t believe I am going.

A good friend of mine I have known thru the Gurus grapevine all these many years that is a local is going to be kind enough to pick me up and cart me around, some friends from the same bunch from New York are going to be there, and another pal I know from Nashville and his wife are going to be there, too. This is just going to be an exceptional weekend.

I have decided it was just meant to be. My friend the local wound up with an extra ticket to the show since the friend that was originally going bailed. I thought I was going to have to kill myself to get to the laundromat because my washer/dryer is broken, but when I looked for what I was planning to wear, I was shocked to find it was clean. First the travel arrangements but then everything ELSE fell into place, too. It had to have been meant to be.

By the way, word has gotten around that they are hoping to come back to the U.S. later in the year, so hopefully there will be some Southeast dates scheduled – Atlanta probably, hopefully Memphis or Nashville – that time around. And if that happens, I WILL be making an effort to get to every show.

But for now, I’m just pleased and bouncing about how this weekend has turned out. I can’t stop giggling and I’ve got 40,147 things to do between now and Saturday afternoon, but that’s OK. Sunday night I will be exactly where I want to be after having waited 10 and 13 years, after having had to miss not just one but TWO potential trips to Australia, and everything else I have had to miss out on that could have been for the past decade, if only there’d been a way.

Needless to say I’m going to be busy-busy for the next 24 hours, but I have absolutely nothing to do for 24 hours once I get to Chicago – I originally wasn’t planning to be there more than one night but as things fell into place, flying in Saturday was the only option – so I’ll have my laptop and likely be liveblogging or at least Twittering while I’m bored and holed up in the hotel with nothing to do Saturday night… ’til then!

The Hoodoo Gurus – That’s What I Like

I am hearing through the grapevine that there’s a very good chance the Hoodoo Gurus may well be touring the U.S. come around March, which thrills me to no end since they’re (A) one of my three very fave bands of all time and (B) they haven’t been here in the States since… 1994, I think. Wow, that was a long time ago! There was a scheduled tour in 1997 that got postponed and then canceled. So anyway, yeah, it’s been a very long time.

I’m not absolutely positively without a doubt for sure it’s gonna happen but it sounds like there’s a pretty good chance at least. The rumor is that they will also hit the South by Southwest festival in Texas while here.

If it happens, I’m pretty certain Memphis will be on the schedule and hopefully Nashville as well. Jeffraham, Chez Bez and lovely wife – and anyone else who’d be into it – I’ll assume y’all might be up for it? That would be really cool, especially if they make Nashville too.

As for me, even though I’m pretty much broke as a joke right now, I SHOULD be in a position by then where I can afford to do exactly as I always planned if they hit these shores again and hit every show possible, and the only ones I’m probably ruling out are anything between the West Coast to, say, Austin and Lincoln/Omaha – anything eastward from Texas and Nebraska on is gonna be fair game. Exceptions to that westward rule would be Salt Lake City and Portland, both of those would be an easy hit for me. In the meantime, I think I probably know either another Gurus or Replacements fan, or have friends and family, in almost every city they’re liable to play in so this could get fun. Some of you Gurus and ‘Mats folk that haven’t heard from me in a while, you’re probably gonna soon, heh heh.

So, I’m excited, and I really really hope this turns out to be for real this time. I’d guess this will probably be the last time the Gurus play over here collectively as a group, and I couldn’t go to either of the two Mecca gatherings in Australia, so I’m NOT missing anything I don’t have to this time. Maybe I won’t be able to make all the shows I’d hope to, but the Southeast is a given as well as Texas and most of the Midwest, so I’m stoked. It’s been a loooong time since I’ve had the opportunity to give in to rabid fandom and I’m gonna make the most of it for sure!

Updates as I hear stuff…

Your Feets Too Big

Thursdays are my day off. Thursdays are good.

Going to see the Tim Lee Band from Knoxville play here in Memphis tonight, hopefully – should be an excellent time!

I’ve been having a little minor (and, of course, in jest) war of words lately online with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Jo Walker. Josie and I were the only two females in the bunch I ran with in college – one of several different groups of folks I hung out with but this gang was the closest and included some of those famous for their appearances throughout my blog over the last nine years such as KC, Greg, Duncan, etc. I wound up part of the group because KC and I had known each other since we were little kids; Jo sort of became osmosed (is that a word?) into it ‘cos she was related to 50% of the guys in the group and everybody, really, but me and a couple of others were related to each other anyway somehow someway, mostly cousins and then a couple of sets of brothers. Jo wasn’t related to KC but was related to Greg (cousins), who was related to KC (cousins again), so in a way it was like everyone was related to everyone else and truthfully at some point I think we all forgot that some of us weren’t related to each other. Well, except for those of us who were dating at the time, of course.

Anyway, Jo eventually wound up marrying Stevie Kane, another of our group (and who I almost got smushed into a pulp with when we almost hit a concrete wall head-on many years ago driving back from lunch hour in Memphis, another momentous event documented here many years ago in this blog). I’m still not quite sure what turned that around where she agreed to marry him since she wouldn’t speak to him for fifteen years after he killed her pet fish and burned her apartment building to the ground (two unrelated incidents), and she used to say things – whenever it was pointed out that Stevie Kane was single and available – like “Over my dead body,” and so on and so forth. But anyway, yeah, they’re married and it’s weird but it’s all good.

Being Jo Walker’s friend, while she may be one of my favorite people on earth, has always been a great big thorn in my side on some levels. Why, you ask? Well, for one thing, we look absolutely ridiculous together. Josie used to model a long time ago (rolling eyes). She’s nearly 6 feet tall with insanely long legs, and even though I don’t think she has a speck of Native American blood in her, we have always referred to her as the “Indian Princess” or “Indian Goddess”. She’s that tall, about as big around as a toothpick even after having now gone through childbirth, legs up to her neck, long flowing black hair that always just looks just so, and naturally dark skinned so she never has to lay out or set foot in a tanning bed, she has a perpetual great tan. Miss Thang is perfect. I, on the other hand, am 5’2″, unforgivingly average, very much a white white girl, and might have a good hair day one day a month. There was never another more tremendously unmatched pair on the planet than dumpy short little old me and Miss Amazon Indian Goddess.

Then there’s the music thing. Way back in the day, I only knew of a couple of other chick drummers in the general vicinity besides Josie. Now, you’d look at her and never think “chick drummer”. She’s a great one though. This makes me sick for two reasons. The reason she is a chick drummer is because she grew up in a house with the very same thing that was in my house, at least part of the time, growing up – a drum kit. Like my dad, hers was a drummer too. Unlike her, I chose to ignore the drum kit and never bothered to learn how to play. Which is the second reason it makes me sick. I coulda made some sweet money over all these years as a chick drummer.

Of course, on the flip side of that, all you have to do is say two words to Jo in order to send her into paroxysms of vitriol and words that bother my virgin ears – MEG WHITE. (I happen to like Meg White just fine, for the record, but you take your life into your hands mentioning her around Josie.)

Anyway, way back in the old days when everybody used to flop at Scott’s old apartment in West End, which was small to begin with, sometimes it was even harder to find sleeping space because not only the twelve or thirteen of us in our little group, as well as any assortment of dates and girlfriends and boyfriends, would be crashing there as well as, sometimes, most of whomever had been at whichever club that night. As well as, sometimes, whatever band from out of town had been playing at whichever club that night. Sometimes it would just be wall to wall people crashed in every available chair (not many) and the couch (only one) and the floor and you’d have to watch where you stepped if you had to make one of those middle of the night sneaks to the bathroom. This was always especially fun if you’d had too much to drink that night and were, indeed, trying to get to the bathroom to throw up or something.

Now I, of course, had girlfriend rights to the one bed in the house, but more often than not I was mad at him anyway, so most nights I usually wound up either sleeping out in the papasan chair that was out on the balcony curled up with Evan, who was always out on the balcony. Or I’d be sharing the couch with Jo, which was actually a pretty big couch and not bad for sleeping on even with two people, as long as you didn’t mind someone’s feet in your face. So, in essence, I am pretty familiar with Josie Walker’s feet.

Which brings me to the point of this entry about the gorgeous and perfect Jo Walker, former model, super chick drummer extraordinaire, almost 6 foot tall Indian Princess/Goddess.

Let it be known that Jo Walker has got some bigass, ugly, size 9 or 10 (?), boatlike feet!

Hehehe…

Got My KISS Records Out

What to say, what to say… what does one say after spending a wondrous evening watching one of this country’s greatest bands ever play? My ears are still ringing. Let me tell you, my fourth row center Cheap Trick tickets were outstanding, best seat in the house unless you were in the same place in the first three rows, I guess. I loved it. What a good show. There was a little less old stuff than I would have liked, my fave song of all time of any band ever didn’t get played (“Downed”) which was kinda a bummer, and there were a couple more old standards rather conspicuously missing from the setlist (“Clock Strikes Ten”, for one), but even with the much-missed tunes it was still a great night… highlights were an incredibly loud “Need Your Love” from the Dream Police LP and Robin Zander did an absolutely beautiful rendition of “Voices”… and Rick Nielsen and Tom Petersson – inventor of the 12-string bass, no less! – my god, the whole show just rocked.

Anyway, it was just a really cool show. My guest had his hands on for a half second and almost walked away with the KISS Destroyer LP Rick threw into the crowd during “Surrender”, and between us we walked away with five Rick picks, so it was a pretty good Trick take, also bought a cool new t-shirt (as if I needed any more, but anyway). Unfortunately the slot machines in Tunica managed to suck forty bucks out of me before I left town (tho I had hit $50 each on two machines, which kind of makes that suck even more), but it was still a fun night anyway, I hadn’t been down to the casinos in some time so it was fun.

But you know, what is it about great shows… you get so wound up and then – usually, unless you’re somewhere with bunches of slot machines anyway and that $40 didn’t last very long anyhow – you get out so late there’s nothing else to do and you’re just wound up bigtime (or in the case of a Hoodoo Gurus show, wound up for months afterward…). At 3:00 this morning I was still wound up and nowhere near ready to hit the hay, tho with daylight peeking thru the windows now I am finally starting to wind down. I’d be tempted to drive to Gadsden, Alabama tonight to see ‘em again, but the weather’s so crummy and gasoline so high, plus I’m out $40 anyway, I guess I won’t. Last night was great and probably can’t be topped anytime soon… a good present.

I’ve been so sleepy this week (actually I’ve been sleepy for a long time and I guess I should really get some blood drawn and make sure everything’s OK but you know how we medical folks are) I haven’t really had the energy to do some stuff I wanted to this week with the site, tho the motivation is there and actually I have some new page prototypes on the ol’ hard drive, just a matter of fine tuning. Some very nice photos from an unexpected source have given me the kick in the butt to get some things done, just a matter of staying awake long enough to do them. Stay tuned, maybe I’ll get creative before the weekend is out…

Glad some folks have enjoyed the little trip back to 1983/1984 – to my horror, it seems some of the ones that have gotten the most enjoyment out of it are the ones that shouldn’t because they have no room to talk. Like from people who used to write me letters around that time whining about how Buffy So-and-So thought they were a dork or Muffy So-and-So broke their heart and blah blah… some people shouldn’t throw stones, before one comments on what a stuck-up airhead teenager some people around here might have been, some people should first remember, ‘cos I do, what they themselves were like in high school. So there.

On another and more serious note, I guess you may have heard or maybe not, about the tragedy in our fair city this week when a Memphis firefighter killed his wife (who he just married on Valentine’s Day), set their house on fire, then opened fire on the emergency personnel who had come to put out the blaze, shooting and killing two Memphis firefighters, one Shelby County Sheriff’s deputy and wounding another person. Yeah, you read that right… I’m sure the last person a member of the fire department would have thought they’d have to be worried about going to, another firefighter’s home. You know, this world we live in today is really messed up and there’s a lot of crazy stuff that goes on, but to me this really took the cake… if it ever someday gets to the point where fire and law enforcement personnel are afraid to come help us when we need it, folks, we’re all in big trouble. Not only are the families of these people who lost their lives so tragically undoubtably in the midst of extreme grief and pain, but I can imagine the wives and husbands and other significant others and families of every firefighter, law enforcement officer, and members of emergency medical personnel in this entire city are grieving as well, whether they knew the dead or not, as well as being scared to death for the lives of their loved ones. Memphis itself is a city under a pall right now, frankly. One of my “brothers” is a paramedic, in a more rural area, thankfully, but jeez, crazy stuff can happen anywhere, that’s been obvious all over, so now I find myself knocking on wood a little harder these days, keep my buddy safe.

So, no matter your religious beliefs, I hope you’ll all join me and the rest of the motley crew that hangs around here at the Zone and say a brief prayer, in whatever manner you wish, for these folks. Thanks and later…

Would You Like to Do a Number With Me

Well, it warmed up a bunch, so that’s one good thing, except it seems to be awfully chilly a bit again today. Having a three-day weekend should make me happy, one would think, but actually I’m the middle of one of these edgy impatient attention deficit disorder deals where nothing is making me happy and everything’s driving me up a wall… too much to do and not enough time is part of the problem I think, the other thing is I brought work home to do this weekend that I don’t want to have to screw up my nice three-day weekend and do, but sigh… just might as well get over it, I guess.

Also didn’t help matters that I drove all the way over to Marion, Arkansas yesterday only to find my intended destination closed for the day, due to a family emergency, the sign said… which shouldn’t irritate me so but man, that just kind of put a downer on the whole weekend as that was something I really had my heart set on getting done.

So, I’ve just been like Miss Poster Child for the Severely Annoyed ever since. You wouldn’t believe how many chores I have to do around here, and I suspect none to few of them will get done this weekend…. sheesh, I still have Christmas presents that need to be put in their places and stuff. I think I will just go back to sleep…

I had this thought about making a web contest of sorts out of this but then thought, oh, that’s a really dumb idea, but the fact remains that Cheap Trick – yes, Cheap Trick again – is coming to one of the casinos down Tunica way on Friday night, March 10th – great b’day present for me – and I really want to go, and have no one to go with. Dying to go ‘cos not only have I never been to a Trick show I didn’t just love, but even tho he’s nearly 50 now Robin Zander can still make me weak in the knees. (giggle) KC is still in the U.K. with no signs of ever coming back, Greg will be in Canada in March on business, JJ is – well, I don’t know where he’s going to be in March but he says he can’t go – one other prospect (who has crap taste in music) flatly refuses to go, and I’ve thought about some more folks but can’t think of anyone else who would really dig going as much as me, I don’t think the Camden crew would be real interested. In any case tickets go on sale 01/28 and I intend to get two, so I’ll entertain any and all offers, tho it’d probably be a good idea if you live in the Memphis area anyway at least but not absolutely necessary I guess, all friends, enemies, exes, people I don’t know, male, female, whatever, welcome to apply, people I already know and at least somewhat like of course get priority… I’m just not coming up with anyone off the top of my head who I think would really like to go, so I’ll listen to anything, I just may not agree to it, but hey, hit me with your best shot if you’re interested. If I don’t get a better offer I may have to take Duncan D. with me, which would be much akin to getting all my toenails pulled out sans anesthetic, so I’m hoping someone more interesting and much less annoying will save me from that fate. Honestly, an evening of Cheap Trick, slot machines, and the sheer joy of being in my stunning company, I don’t know what more one could want. (snicker)

BTW there’ve been a bunch of pages updated around the site so you might wanna check out the What’s New page sometime. I don’t know that there’s anything particularly astounding but at least I did change some things finally. So, ’til later…

In Fact It’s a Gas

Hello, sorry for the lack of updating, I am just, in a word or two, way too busy right now or working too much and way too tired. Sorry. I’ve been catching up on a lot of long-procrastinated personal matters offline and just haven’t been online at length all that much, except on eBay which is pretty much where I live now when online, but I’m not complaining – vintage Barbie stuff is keeping me from having to go out and look for another second job, so that’s a good thing. I found a virtual pot of gold I’d been looking for, a great big batch of excellent condition vintage Barbie clothes, in a little antique mall over in Marion, Arkansas, last weekend, but messing with, as in identifying and cataloguing and scanning and uploading and so forth, that stuff takes an incredible amount of time (still better than working at a “real” job tho) so I’ve had to let most of my other online stuff sit a while, sorry, plus, no offense, but I just haven’t been in the mood.

The Stones concert was, natch, great. A lot of folks were complaining about various stuff not being played that night, but my thought that I pointed out was, it’s got to be a monumental task every time they go on tour to decide what out of the old catalog they’re going to play on that tour, being that there are literally hundreds of songs to choose from. Tho they did get in a few Sixties-era tunes, most of the “oldies” they played were from the Seventies and quite a bit off the Some Girls album, and I guess that all made sense since they performed quite a bit of pre-1970 stuff on the Voodoo Lounge tour a few years ago. They had a really neat stage setup too, with two stages at each end of The Pyramid connected by a long walkway, the big “spectacle” show at one end on the main stage, and then about midway through they left the big stage to go with just the band and the keyboard player down to the small stage and played a pared-down set of oldies with the audience surrounding the little stage – very cool – and shook hands with folks up and down the walkway on the trip to the small stage and back. At this point I was thinking maybe the $120 seats at the back of the floor weren’t such a bad idea, but still we had good (and cheaper) seats above the stage. While I’m not all that crazy about big stadium and arena shows, everyone oughta see the Stones once in their lifetime (and I’ve seen them twice). It really is rock & roll history – how many other bands do you know that have been together nearly 40 years? – and there’s just nothing quite like sitting in the dark with a lot of good loud music and listening to a Keith Richards guitar solo played before your very eyes. We had a good time, definitely.

Upon exiting the doors of The Pyramid we were apparently, down there on the river, getting the effects of all the tornado watches there’d been in Arkansas that evening, and while I did have a hold of it my prized G’day From Australia hat flew off my head, landing in the depths of The Pyramid parking lot. We ran to look over the side, spotted it, and then watched some lady pick it up. Leave it to one of my oldest, dearest, and most loudmouthed friends, Kelli, to come to the rescue, shouting: “HEEEEEY! THAT’S MY FRIEND’S HAT!” At which point she took off running down all the dozens of stairs to the parking lot and rescued my current favorite baseball cap. It was, all in all, a most excellent night, hat rescue, Mick & Keef, and all.

Since then there’s not a lot of news, I’ve just been super busy, what with work, eBay stuff, and some slight chaos with a particular ex – yes, the big ex – coming out of the woodwork calling out of the blue with very odd, but nice, timing. In any case if you haven’t heard from me it’s ‘cos I haven’t had the physical, or mental, energy to deal with anything but the have-to’s right now.

Or I’ve been too cold! Tho it appears to have let up as of today, we’ve had a wave of wintry weather this week, absolutely freezing, this in a time when most people in Memphis are in shorts for the duration and spending the sunny days laying out in the sun. I shut my furnace off a couple of weeks ago, which should have been fine, instead I’ve been suffering and shivering, but that’s OK – I’ve been able to catch up on a bunch of movies I had wanted to see, including my own little personal James Spader film festival (yes, this James Spader thing is bugging me still), and let me tell you, and I’m a big fan of weird and off the wall, but Crash is about the strangest movie ever made. But for now I must go, and speak to you soon – take care all…

C’mon Back to Bowling Green and Marry Me

Hello, I know things have been a bit quiet again lately… I’ve been working late a lot and falling asleep a lot, basically, so, sorry. Well, Happy April Fool’s Day I guess, I don’t really celebrate April Fool’s Day since April 1st is also KC’s birthday, who is about the biggest April Fool I know, so, happy (insert incredibly huge number of years here)th birthday, you slug. It’s also the birthday of somebody I like as opposed to birthdays of slimeballs, so, happy birthday to Toni too!

Anyway… I managed to get the worst of the wreckage of my e-mail box out of the way last week, hopefully I will get to the rest of it before the week is out and before things get revved up next week getting ready for the convergence of many many folks on Memphis and my house for the Stones concert next week at The Pyramid. In any case, I am slowly, but surely, actually making some progress for a change as far as the pitiful state of my mailbox.

Notes from the My Life Just Gets Weirder and Weirder, But In A Nice Way department… by way of my mostly-lifelong Hoodoo Gurus fetish and a very strange P.J. Proby occurrence as yet unidentified, I’d like to welcome my new and witty good pal and regular visitor to the Zone, Mr. Johnny Spampinato of NRBQ, to the ol’ Zone. A brilliant conversationalist, all around good and funny guy, and my new partner in crime, we are feeling all Scotland Yard-like lately. (giggle)

Well, I wish I had more news but I don’t, so (commercial break for our sponsors, heh) go out and buy a copy of Dig’s new CD Life Like, some NRBQ CDs, and go buy multiple copies of Tommy Womack’s Positively Na Na CD and Cheese Chronicles book to help pay his recent large auto repair bill so he will be able to tour some more, or else I’ll come beat all of you up. (snicker) Oh, like any of you have anything better to do with your money… ’til later…