Exile on Main Street

I grew up with a bad impression of the Rolling Stones. By the time that I was listening to rock radio (mid 70s), the Stones put out a series of albums that I never really got too into. The classic rock stations played what were undoubtedly classics, but definitely not their best material. It wasn't until the 90s that I finally heard Beggars Banquet (1968), Let it Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971), Exile on Main Street (1972), and Goats Head Soup (1973) in their entirety. Six years, five amazing albums. In 1972, on the days when they had it together, the Rolling Stones were definitely one of the best rock n roll bands that the world has ever known.

For the past few months, i've had Exile on Main Street in constant play on my mp3 player. It gets better every time that I hear it. All of these songs are off of that album.

The first video is "Lovin' Cup" from a rehearsal session, but the audio is from the album, i think. You never really know exactly what you are getting on YouTube.

Next "Rocks Off"

"Let it Loose" is audio only.

A fan photo montage set to "Soul Survivor".

Finally, "Sweet Virginia" from a 1995 performance in London.

the value of completely bogus information

Being a teacher, I take an interest in all of the always-trendy stories about what is wrong with kids today. For anyone not following the story, it appears that civilization has been on a steady march to hell for the last several thousand years or so. About time that we did something about it!

I teach mainly middle and lower-high school. My students this year range from grade 6 to grade 10. What amazes me every year is how high a number that my students birth year is. 1994-1998? That isn't possible, you'd still be a baby if you were born then. By the time my students were school aged, they most likely had both computers and internet in their homes. They have never known life without it.

Far from thinking that this is a bad thing, I am a little envious. I love what the internet has done for my ability to find music, movies, news, information--virtually anything. When I was in, say, 6th grade, I was still riding my bike to the local library and photocopying encyclopedias to get information for reports. Better exercise, and arguably more fun, but not quite as informative. Radio and magazines (with a little tv) provided all that I knew about music and bands. Six or seven tv stations, and no vcr until high school, determined my film choices outside of going to a movie theater.

If you had an argument with your friends about trivia, it could last for months until someone managed to find proof of something one way or another. Whole relationships could be labeled by a long-standing disagreement about some obscure fact. Not anymore, now you can settle most of those disputes in seconds.

The internet has also led to the downfall of fun, but bogus information. It used to be possible to fabricate all kinds of tall tales with little fear of being found out. I'm not talking about the political kind--that is still alive and well--but instead, things like girlfriends in Canada, or setting some record, or seeing something that no one else knew about. How much fun is it to go through all of the trouble of making up some completely bogus story, only to have your work decimated within an hour of releasing it? Not much.

So, that is the real fear for kids today. They have gotten really bad at telling bogus stories. Now, someone pulls off a good bogus story, and it makes national news, back in the day, half of our lives were bogus stories.

This photo was taken during the year that i studied at a Trappist Monastery in a remote, mountainous region of Austria.

just delete all of your emails

I spent a lot of time consolidating 5 email accounts into one place. I got rid of a ton of old mail as I went. It got to the point, where i didn't care what the mail said, as soon as I saw the who and the what, i deleted. I probably got over-zealous in my deletions. And then it happened--actually nothing happened, of course.

I'm exaggerating my efficiency. I got it down to about 200 emails that I was keeping. Many were kept with the excuse that it was the only place that I had someone's email address. With google and freindster, anyone who wants to, or is ambivalent about, being found can be found. The problem, i finally admitted to myself, was that I'd forget those people completely if i didn't have that little shred of evidence that they really had existed at one time many years ago. Searching through my 'contacts' folder takes me on a trip down memory lane that I would almost never go down for any other reason. It would be almost like deleting the actual person. Sometimes I'm ok with it, other times I feel too sentimental to click the button.

Another bunch of still-around mail was work or education related. Stuff that I kept imagining would be important someday. Or that I'd need to research. Or that I'd try to hold someone to their word on someday. I decided that i'm the kind of person that just doesn't care enough to bother. I only do it out of some kind of warped work-related guilt.

If it was important, i would have responded right away, not waited 2 years. If something was decided, then someone either decided to take care of it, or they didn't. If it slipped my mind, and was important to the sender, they'd ask again, or tell me again, or say it in person. If i'm hoping that an email will make someone trustworthy, i'm putting my trust in the wrong people. Add to that my truisms of living on the road:

1. don't let anyone owe you more than you can walk away from
2. don't depend on anything or anyone so much that you can't walk away from them at any time (immediate family excluded)
3. be prepared, and able, to get yourself (and family) to another continent at any time 

So, after all of that hand-wringing about email, i decided to move my base email to a (yet another) potentially more stable and long term platform. This forced me to go through all of the emails that i'd skipped a decision on the first time. I got rid of almost everything. I delete nearly everything that comes in now after reading it once. If I don't act on it or move it somewhere within a couple of days, i delete it. 

I've also recently started using the same concept with my paperwork and computer files. If i really need it, i should either do something with it, or act on it. I really don't want to be the historian of any organization. I filled two big garbage bags of papers that I was saving for numerous bad reasons. I even dumped out notebooks full or well-organized meaningless pieces of paper. My hard drives are loving me. Tons of random nonsense have been rightfully sent back to free disk space.

It seems like a silly reason to feel good. But it does feel good. I'm on about week 4 now and by the end of our break, next week, I should be close to free of all useless information!

P.S. could you email those instructions to me again?

I was looking for a cartoon with someone buried under paperwork. But I got stuck on this one! I think that it would work.

can you keep your head?

Until a probably much-too-old age, I remember thinking that everyone who gave you a greeting card actually put a lot of thought into the message inside of the card that they sent to you. This bewildered me a bit, since so many of the messages were so lame.

As an aside, driving home from work the other day, there was a Hallmark advertisement on the local radio station. It must have been a ten minute song, because i thought, several times, that jingles seem much more appropriate for radio. The point of the overlong song was that no one throws away a Hallmark, because no one throws away a memory. I'm still kind of wishing that I could throw away that memory.

Anyway, for my 8th grade graduation, a few of the cards that i received contained the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling. My first thought, before reading the poem, was that I knew that I was supposed to have read, and enjoyed, a number of his books, which I hadn't managed to get around to.

If you don't know anything about Kipling, his Wikipedia entry is a decent read. It amazes me how much some people can get done in a lifetime.

Another aside. I remember having a fascination/repulsion with the Just So Stories. It is one of the first story books that I remember. I thought that it was supposed to be a science-type book, and therefore all 'true', but it seemed not very believable. Lol, future genius there.

Assuming that I'd be disappointed, I read "If" anyway; I've never forgotten it. The poem contains best advice (too rarely followed) that I've ever received. Back before google, I did keep the card with me for years so that I'd be able to read it again.

31 years after graduating 8th grade, I still read it to try to remember how i'm supposed to be.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son! 

A Break from the Rain

We are finally getting a little break from the constant rain. Christopher and Alexa used the opportunity to let off some steam in the yard.

Not for You

This is a repost from my now defunct music section. I've added the video of the rehearsal for SNL. My students from BPHS might recognize the lyrics, which I wrote on the board one day in 2007. The song, I believe, was written about the loss of privacy that stardom brought. I always thought of it as a tirade against hypocrites who had forgotten everything about what it meant and felt like to be young/free/your own self. They claim to value young people while manipulating them and controlling them for their own, often ugly, purposes. Many aspects of the Chicago Public School system definitely qualified.

May 15, 2008--One night in boulder, colorado, Brent, Margo and I stayed in and watched Saturday Night Live. The sole reason was to watch pearl jam as the musical guest. They probably played two songs, but i only remember Not for You. It blew us away. I can still feel how much it awed me when i think about it now. I bought the vinyl because it came out before the cd. I had to commandeer a friend's turntable and living room for the afternoon.

I still love the performance. While I know that there is a lot more to it, I think of it as the perfection of banging.

**one year, almost to the day, update
The SNL version of the pre-show performance of Not for You gets pulled by the great folks at SNL regularly. I've included an even better version from Pearl Jam 20. Take your pick, they're both awesome.

Dad, Want a Smoke?

Tonight, Alexa sat and ate dinner with me. After i finished eating, I went to make coffee. Alexa demanded that I make her a 'baby coffee.' Talk about a commercial waiting to be made.

In honor of her second birthday on Halloween, Lex got to use a real coffee cup. We mixed everything together and then sat on the front porch, yelled things at the dogs and drank coffee. For the record, she actually drank Milo. I have no idea what is actually in it, but the commercial says that kids love it, and that it's good for them!

It was absolutely beyond cute (for me!). Then i realized that she is going to be hardwired to drink coffee. On one hand, the idea of 20 years of drinking coffee together on her 22nd birthday is pretty sweet. On the other, well maybe there isn't another hand.

I was surprised when Wikipedia informed me that candy cigarettes are still being made. Both of my parents smoked, so of course it seemed like the grown-up thing to do. The candy cigarettes were mediocre tasting, at best, but they were awfully cool. Somehow, i remember Camels, but couldn't find a photo. These look familiar and give you the idea.

From a societal point of view, this seems like a remarkably bad idea now. We also did other great things back then, like:

• standing up while our parents were driving (seat belts or car seats?)
• sat in station wagon jump seats (seat belts?)
• played in a Chicago alley and neighborhood relatively unsupervised as a toddler 
• played in new construction sites (usually pelting each other with 'dirt balls') 
• just riding a bike to a friends house to play (no date required)

There were a plethora of other similar dangers awaiting us. The point, if there is one, is not that riding your bike is like 'smoking' cigarette candy. 

Instead, I'm willing to bet that my kid's will think back in 30 years about all of the crazy things that they did when they were children. Then they will input their children (my grandkids) into their protective bubble suits and make sure that the tracking chip that they had implanted at birth is operative. 

That said, i'm in for a shock when I go back to America. The Philippines is pretty much like what I remember the late 60s/early 70s being like back home. Remember throwing your fast food trash bags out the window on the highway? Still proudly practiced here. Doesn't even have to be the highway, anywhere is great. I'm one of the only people with garbage actually inside of their vehicle. 

Li'l Red Riding Hood meets Dizzy Red Riding Hood

"Li'l Red Riding Hood" was a #2 hit for Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs in 1966. Dizzy Red Riding Hood is a 6-minute Betty Boop "talkartoon" from 1931. Both are very enjoyable on their own; the combination in this video from YouTube is fantastic.



Alexa comes to my office at least once a day to demand that we watch "aaa-oooooo". We almost have our dance routine perfected.

It is interesting how people react to the cartoon. First I found a blog with a disturbed-by-Betty's-antics author:

Disturbing Cartoons: 'Dizzy Red Riding Hood'

"Disturbing? Yes, in my opinion!

This is one of Cartoonland's most risqué situations, as we find Miss Betty Boop IN THE BED with Bimbo!!!

Well, not actually in the bed, folks, but on the bed, showing her legs to a wolfy Bimbo.

What happened during the fade out between the bed scene and the following scene with the two playing with the moon??

Nobody knows......"

Nobody knows, indeed. Next, I found a much more interesting take with some interesting background on the animation and style:

John K Stuff: Dizzy Red Riding Hood: "Dizzy Red Riding Hood

This is one of the great Betty Boop cartoons. It was done before they started tracing model sheets of her and stiffened her up. From 1930 to 1933 the cartoons are almost all really good." 

In the end, I hope that everyone can agree that Betty is amazing.

Truth, and why we ignore it.

While trying to read up on the dark side of Pythagoras, I came upon a quotation by P.C. Hodgell.

That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.

I just started, but I can't come up with a situation where this should not apply. I can think of a lot of justifications for not applying the idea, but none that hold water.

Next, I started thinking about how many aspects of my life would be in a shambles if we started applying Hodgell's concept universally. The question really becomes, as usual, what do I do about it?

What do you do about it?


**October 2011 update. I found this image when searching 'truth' on google. It is taken from the myspace profile of Truth  Check them out!

Dream On

The first video ended with a Dream On teaser. Here is the rest.

Starting Over--Again

I'm trying out blogger. We'll see how it goes.

For my first post, a video from Aerosmith playing Unplugged in 1990. This is One Way Street off of their self-titled debut album. I played it about 10 times while I was watering the grass this evening.

a few letters can make a big difference

I've been spending some extra time trying to get my classroom finished. As I taped letters to the wall, I realized that the message wasn't quite appropriate. A few additions here and there, and everything looked a lot better.