October 2004 Archives

The Angry Liberal reminds us how the polls looked in late October, 2000. Read all about it in all-new Edgewise post.

A thought or three about one of the many subtexts of Tuesday's vote, now up on Edgewise.

And a long line of 
  enthusiastic 
  neatly dressed
  retirees.

They're pressing toward the front.
And now they're strip-mining the table
 saying:

   tell me
   sell me

         how to stop time.

It's another Monkey Vortex Monday. Now playing: two minutes and twenty seconds inside the mind of the most powerful human being on the face of the earth. It's a Bill Cassel / Christian Crumlish script, starring the aforementioned Christian Crumlish, plus Eileen Dahl and the infamous M. Smith. And it all adds up to an all-free, all-mp3 experience the kids call: Sympathy for the W.

OK, OK. So I haven't written a feature-length movie about returning to New Jersey. But I ask you this: has Hollywood bigshot Zach Braff ever written a song about Yu-Gi-Oh!? And more to the point, has he ever written one in both the faux-classical and faux punk-folk traditions?

No? I didn't think so.

Now me, on the other hand....

Lyrics:

Everybody's playing Yu-Gi-Oh!
Yu-Gi-Oh! is what folks like to play
and when the cards are --
-- the cards are flying
folks are playing
Yu-Gi-Oh!
Yu-Gi-Oh!
Yu-Gi-Oooooh....oh!

Faux-classical and faux punk-folk recordings...coming soon.

ed note: turns out, not everyone is Yu-Gi-Oh! savvy. So in case yer excessively puzzled by this here entry: Yu-Gi-Oh! is a card game, much like Pokemon. Or pinochle. But more like Pokemon. Now Zach Braff, Zach Braff I explain to no one. He can go to hell.

Bonus MVRT episode this week -- a few highlights from the third presidential debate set to drums n keys. It's a little number we like to call "You Be the Judge (Oh Yeah)" -- now playing....

At every gas stop along the way, he pulls out trash with his wallet.
A scrunched up sheet of off-white paper
and a smaller one – a post-it.

Out, up for air and then he
bends over to close a hand on them
and pull them back up
off the shadow stained concrete where they fell.

He straightens himself out a bit.
He slaps his pants.
And then he pushes them back down.

Back down deep.
Into place.

Back in high school I was lucky enough to have two excellent friends who were also great musicians -- Heroic Imp and SKP. They'd jam, and I'd make up some words -- insta-tunes, written and recorded in one night. And that right there was my introduction to the idear that writing and recording music is good for the brain.

Post-high school, sometime around 1987, Imp and I were at his Jersey City pad, most likely suffering an MSG hangover. He took out the 4-track, guitar, bass, and drum machine, and we wrote up a little homage to country-singing-legend-and-sometime-movie-star Mac Davis.

When we were done, musta been after midnight, we switched on the tube and there was the man -- Mac himself -- in North Dallas 40. Imp recorded a sample on the spot and then went back to his Tascam to work it into the tune.

The result has been on a cassette in various closets for 17 years or so. But this weekend I finally figgered out how to turn cassettes into MP3s -- surprisingly easy once the plug is in place. Easy and kinda like magic.

Thus it is, that all these years later, Mac Davis rides again. Giddyap!

Press Play to play.

playtime: 2:07
file specs: a scant 1.9 MB

It's Monkey Vortex Monday. In today's installment, Croatian malcontent Rodney K. puts our longstanding feud aside for one minute and 45 seconds -- just barely enough time to bust it Poet-Makes-a-House-Call style with: Welcome to the City of Wetumpka -- another all-new, all-free, all-MP3 MVRT experience, brought to you by the good people at BackMan. BackMan: equipping the backs of our Presidents with noticeable, rectangular objects for more than thirty years.

Reality catches up with the President. Get the skizoop, here.

In the next two weeks I'll be making the (fairly freaky styling) leap to door-to-door political volunteering in my hometown and in a battleground state. If you've the itch your own self, and you're curious how to look into that sort of thing, take a stroll over to edgewise, and read all about it.

Talking with her about her brother's death
years back now. And it's the first time we talked.
  She just had a kid
    first kid
    last month
  my son's almost four
    good guy
    big boy.

Their house looks the same
even the table
even the carpet
  and I tell her that.
The house even smells the same.
But you can't say the house smells the same.
Or ask if the sofa's still covered in plastic.

I think of him often. I tell her that instead. 
I tell her he meant a lot to me, which is true. She says thanks.
And then I use the word "maudlin." I say: "Sorry to be maudlin."
But it's the wrong word. And that's what sticks with me later.
  It's not maudlin.

Her brother's dead.

If it's Monday, it must be Monkey Vortex Radio Theater -- back with an all-new segment: The Sequence of Things. With script and music by yers truly and starring Bee Nisbet and M "'n M" Smith. Plus: the MVRT debut of featured backup vocalist Shonny Vortex!

And there's funk too. Oh yes, there's funk.

Some pithy debate shpiel, here. Quite literally. Packed with pith.