Hi Def

 

Geckos

Friday, M Ward released his latest album, a collaboration in the form of a trio with Howe Gelb and Mark McCausland (a.k.a. McKowski) . The new band calls themselves Geckos and when I first gave it a listen Friday morning I was instantly enchanted. The songs have a mystical dreamlike sound that has a bit of what Jelly Roll Morton called "The Spanish Tinge." I listened to the digital stream twice through on my way to Norman, Oklahoma Friday evening.

Saturday, as mentioned in yesterday's post, I stumbled upon Guest Room Records on Main Street in Norman. After browsing the aisles a sudden thought hit me...maybe they would have the new Geckos album on vinyl. Surely not, after all, this was just released yesterday. But sure enough, I was stoked to find they had one copy of the LP in their new release bin. I'm telling you Guest Room Records has  great stock. The version they had was the transparent red vinyl edition. Finally got to spin it on the turntable last night. Greatness. This is one of my favorite releases in awhile. Great haunting music. Great artwork and cover design. This is a great album. 

 

Guest Room

 

College towns always have the best record stores. While visiting my son at OU we stopped by Main Street and discovered Guest Room Records. Great quality selection. I bought one album. Then left and walked down to Apple Tree Choocolate for chocolate and a Mexican Coca-Cola.

Then came back and bought two more records. A great shop. Highly recommend if you find yourself in Norman.

Muzzling

 

The Road Again

I've read this book five or six times since I discovered Kerouac in college. On The Road struck me like a bolt of lightning. Kerouac's beat jazz rhythmic prose was a revelation. I consumed as much of Kerouac's works as I could. Honestly, The Dharma Bums is my favorite work of his but On The Road wasn't too far behind. 

It had been probably a decade since I last read On The Road. I picked it up by happenstance. I had loaned it to my son last year and found it on his night stand after he packed up for college. I decided to give it another go. I was interested if it would still hold up now that I'm in my fifties. Or would it be another one of those cases where something from my past just seemed trivial and dumb.

Glad to say it does indeed hold up. I greatly enjoyed getting back into it. Kerouac's prose is still fantastic. And after so many reads you pick up more and more little details passed over on earlier reads. And I understood more.

That being said, there are some problematic moments in the book to say the least. Dean in Sal's own words is indeed a rat. Their treatment of women is terrible. Their adventure in Mexico in the little town of Gregoria is almost unspeakable. 

So yeah, those observations do taint the book a bit in modern eyes. It's still an enjoyable read. But if I had to choose, go with The Dharma Bums.   

F4

An F4U Corsair was spotted by my son at a recent air show at his college campus airport. I always loved the Corsair since watching reruns of Black Sheep Squadron when I was a kid. The gull wing design was slick but was designed for utility, not aesthetics. Sharp looking plane. 

Nice Shirt

 

Believe

The Believer came in the post last Friday. Always a good day when The Believer arrives. Very few publications have opened my eyes to new creative endeavors like this one. 

Blah

Listened to The Smiths on my way to work today knowing that I was heading to a total beatdown of a “professional development” day. Such a waste of time. There could be really effective PD but it’s not usually what we’re forced to sit through. Blah. 

White Rock

It had been awhile since we had made a bike ride around White Rock Lake. The lake is one of my favorite places in Dallas. An urban oasis in the middle of the city. We had been really busy on Saturdays with our son’s band activities, which we loved, but now that chapter has closed and we have time to return to White Rock. 

Alignment

Nice shot of The Moon and Saturn from my driveway the other day. 

First

 

Cool Jets

 

When Michigan came to play OU, a lot of private jets made their way to Norman. Some of their pilots let Jackson take a look. 

Streaming Killed the Video Store

This is a true statement. 

Yes, the convenience of streaming services is very handy. But I often spend an hour scrolling for a movie or show to watch on all the various services to which I subscribe only to give up and watch a DVD or BluRay I already own.  

And way too often I can't find the movie I want to watch on any of the six streaming options I have. Invariably the movie I want is on one of the few services I don't subscribe to. 

So, much to the chagrin of my wife who likes to clear out clutter, I have begun buying or putting on my gift list my favorite movies in physical form. I had pretty much stopped buying DVDs or BluRays several years ago. Everything seemed to be on the one or two streaming services that dominated back then. But now? Everything is fragmented into dozens of services. Complex contracts cause movies to appear and disappear from your streaming service of choice with frightening regularity. 

So, forget that. I'm buying my favorites. The only danger is a complete format change (ala VHS to DVD) that makes my current collection obsolete. Let's hope that doesn't happen for awhile.

I do miss the anticipation of going to the video store, browsing a well stocked aisle, checking out and going home with a movie. I don't miss late fees or having to go out of your way to return a movie. But man, I miss the Friday night visit to the video store.  

Hawk

Saw this hawk on our back yard fence the other day. He (or she) looked to be stalking the various rabbits and squirrels that sometimes hang out in our back yard. 

Comebacker

Finished The Comebacker by Dave Eggers last night. This is the fourth short story in The Forgetters series. This won't take you long to read but it is powerful. This is my favorite of the series so far. I have two more on my stack. And apparently there's another one soon to be released. Eggers says that hopefully they'll someday become a complete novel. This story made me feel sad and happy at the same time. 

The Power and the Glory

I actually read this back in August but am just now getting around to a quick review. Some consider this Greene's masterpiece. I'm not so sure. I liked The Quiet American and Our Man in Havana much more than The Power and the Glory. It was a page turner and kept my interest. But I couldn't relate to the motivations of the main character in any way. It is a super depressing story, almost oppressively so. I just didn't find the final twist believable. So I have contradictory feelings about this book. It kept my interest but I didn't particularly care for it. It wasn't a slog to read but I doubt I will ever revisit it.  
 

You're right, have fun

Ideally I would follow the same course. However, I find it too easy to be drawn offsides and I hate when I allow myself to be drawn in to stupid arguments. They are rarely productive. It's like the old saying: when you're wrestling a pig everyone gets muddy, no one wins and the pig likes it.

I must admit a weariness of living in a situation where I'm surrounded by those who's world view is so different than mine. If I moved just a few miles to the west it would be a different story. So often I have to keep my views to myself since I know sharing them will do nothing but cause anger and rancor. 

I have hope that someday my situation will change, that I will live among those who share many of my core values. I'm not naive enough to expect to live among those who agree with me on everything I believe in. I wouldn't want to live in an echo chamber. Not only would this be impossible, but it would be boring. But on the basic issues of empathy, acceptance, inclusivity, racial equality, gender equality, compassion for immigrants, sensible gun reform, mental health reform, vaccines, economic equality and more, I wish I could be around more people who were at least close to the same page as my views. 

The Old Burma Road

This book was written by my Great Grandmother based on stories told to her by her husband, my Great Grandfather. Growing up, there was a stack of these hard bound books on the shelf in the upstairs room of my Grandparent's house. For years, they were just a part of the background scenery. It took far too long for me to ask about them. 

The story goes that my Great Grandfather had worked in the oil fields of Burma for British Petroleum in the 1920's. After he married my Great Grandmother she thought his stories from those days could be made into a fictional novel that would be their ticket to some success. They used a publishing house in Kansas City to self-publish. Based on the quality and the design of the covers it looks like they spent some good money to have these made. It was finally published in 1941. 

But the book didn't sell and was a disappointment to my Great Grandmother. It's believed that she never wrote anything of length again. 

A few years ago, when my Grandparents were downsizing and selling their house, I asked if I could have a copy. They said take as many as I wanted, they had been sitting on that upstairs shelf for fifty years. So I grabbed a couple as family keepsakes. 

Last month I finally got around to reading the novel. I'm not sure why it took so long for me to delve in. 

It's not a bad read. The writing is in the highly fraught and dramatized style popular in the pulp novels of the 20's and 30's. The dialogue does seem dated and stilted. But the story is compelling enough to keep your interest. Unfortunately, casual racism does persist throughout the book, reflecting common attitudes toward people of color by Americans and Europeans living in Burma in the 20's. The attitude of the protagonists is very colonial and dismissive of the Burmese natives. Those who are not white are often portrayed as greedy, scheming, and harboring malicious intent. At best, the indigenous peoples are described as simple minded and incapable of sophisticated thought.

At the same time, there are very progressive descriptions of Islam, Buddhism and Christianity. Native religions are treated with respect and tolerance. It's a strange contradiction to see the fairly enlightened and positive way Islam and Buddhism are treated in this book.

The highlights of the book are the landscape descriptions. Another contradiction, at times the writing seems contrived and cliche. But the landscape is described throughout the novel so impressively it reminded me of F. Scott Fitzgerald. How can one paragraph be so beautifully written and the next so clunky? The descriptions of markets, jungles, villages, fruits, vegetables, flora and fauna bring an air of authenticity to the story. This makes sense as my Great Grandfather had actually lived in Burma for a number of years.

So, it's doubtful I would recommend this book to someone outside the family. The value for me was it provided a small connection to my great grandparents. My Great Grandfather died long before I was born and my Great Grandmother died when I was very young. It's quite a feat to write a novel and I appreciate the effort involved. It has always been my goal to someday publish a novel. Seems to run in the family.  

Traveler

Got in the mood for some Kerouac the other day so I re-read Lonesome Traveler. While I was reading it I learned that a new Kerouac documentary will be released soon. Who knows, maybe I had heard the name in the air and decided to give Jack another read. Lonesome Traveler is a collection of short stories and most are pretty good. I did find one or two kind of tedious. Sometimes stream of consciousness can become a boring mess. But most of the stories are good and fun to read. After finishing I decided to give On The Road another read, for the fifth or sixth time! Been awhile since I've read it so it will be interesting to go through it as a middle-aged adult. 

They say not to meet your heroes. In the last several years I've seen some YouTube clips of old interviews or television appearances of Kerouac. He often doesn't come off very well. The most infamous clip is his appearance on Firing Line with William Buckley in 1968. Kerouac is drunk, bitter, rude, reactionary...and just a few months away from an early death at age 47. Despite all that, his intelligence and brilliance appears in quick flashes here and there. There isn't a lot of footage of prime Kerouac. After all, the work that put him on the map was released almost a decade after the events of the story took place. 

Most accounts say that Kerouac's last years found him living with his wife and mother in St. Petersburg, Florida. He apparently spent most days watching TV, drinking all day long and becoming more and more embittered as his legacy became hi-jacked by shallow hippies and trendsetters. He had once aspired to be a Bodhisattva or Buddhist saint, helping people in small ways as they make their way through the challenges of life.

Instead, as he spiraled into deeper and deeper drug and alcohol abuse, he reverted to a conservative and reactionary Catholicism. He claimed to be a Republican. He spoke out against Viet Nam war protestors. He seemed a far different man than the beatific traveler of The Dharma Bums. His family said he was in great physical pain in the end as his body failed him due to his alcoholism. He died young, only 47 years old. 

Sometimes I wish I hadn't searched for film of Kerouac. The Kerouac Myth is much more appealing than the reality. But I'm going to compartmentalize. For me, Kerouac's works are a mix of fiction and the real and I will enjoy them at face value. I will think of a young Kerouac, imperfect as we all are, making his way through life and observing it's glories with wonderful prose.  

 

 

First Game

Braved a flood in Dallas to drive up to Oklahoma to catch the season opener with my son.