No one out here seems to know how to pronounce "Schuyler". What's up with that?

When actors from a TV show I really love appear in other projects, I'm always compelled to watch, for better or worse. Thanks to my abiding love for (the late, lamented) Gilmore Girls, not to mention my enduring crush on her, I've suffered through some pretty terrible movies for the sake of the beautiful and talented Lauren Graham. On the other hand, Scott Patterson's new sitcom on the CW, Aliens in America, has turned out to be surprisingly engaging, even a bit subversive, if not in the same league as the other comedies on my current Awesome List (to wit: The Office, which breaks my heart as frequently as it cracks me up; 30 Rock, whose wicked smart and incredibly dense episodes more than fill the void left by Arrested Development; and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is just fucking funny, though its season is now sadly over).

I've always found Alexis Bledel, the youngest Gilmore Girl, to be rather modestly talented, and her roles outside the show have betrayed a lack of onscreen charisma; nonetheless, it was because of her presence that I recently watched a movie called I'm Reed Fish. It's a pretty standard indie quirkfest that also stars Jay Baruchel (of Judd Apatow's short-lived TV series Undeclared, the follow-up to his equally short-lived Freaks and Geeks, which in case you didn't know is one of the best shows ever). Baruchel, with his skinny limbs, sunken chest, pasty skin, and hipster doofus hairdo, looks like he might have been hired as a low-rent Zach Braff, but is actually a lot more likeable and a lot less douchey than the Braffster. I went into the watching experience with zero expectations, which may be why I actually found the movie kind of charming, though I'm not saying you should watch it. You could get pretty much the same experience by putting Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite in a blender, plus there's a "twist" that the screenwriter clearly thought would lift his film above the indie pack, but which merely deflates its emotional tension.

Baruchel was good as the titular character and Bledel was a dud as his fiancée, but the standout performance belonged to Schuyler Fisk as his erstwhile sweetheart, newly returned from Texas to their quirky Northern California town. The only thing I'd ever seen Fisk in was The Baby-Sitters Club (shut up), which she made as a pre-teen, so this was my first time seeing her as an adult, and she was kind of the anti-Bledel, lighting up the screen with some serious presence. Baruchels' character was supposed to be torn between his two loves, but to the viewer it didn't seem to be much of a contest, unfortunately. I'll definitely keep an eye out for Fisk in future roles.

Anyway, what I really wanted to bring your attention to, gentle (and patient) reader, is not Schuyler Fisk's acting, but her singing. I was sort of peripherally aware that she'd been putting a music career together, in a "that girl from The Baby-Sitters Club movie plays music now? That's kind of weird. Is she doing the acoustic-y singer-songwriter thing? I can't imagine that's going to be any good" way. I have a low tolerance for acoustic-y singer-songwriters as it is, with their solemnity and their introspection and their mellowtude and their acoustic-yness. An acoustic-y singer-songwriter needs to be pretty awesome to catch my ear. So I was quite surprised to be watching an indie movie with zero expectations about anything and to have Schuyler Fisk sing a song in that movie and turn out to be pretty awesome.

Like I said, I'm not recommending you rent the movie, but I am recommending you watch the scene with Schuyler singing on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=YhpuI8-Ew7g. I've watched it a bunch of times and I cry every time, not because it's a sad song but because it's a really good song, and because her voice is really lovely and pure like a church bell ringing across a wildflower meadow on a May morning, and because she smiles so sweetly when she sings. I'm a little bit in love right now.

Ever have those moments when you feel like you’re in a movie?

I love those.

In contrast to my recent weather-related entry, Portland has been enjoying some truly lovely autumn days of late. Yesterday we had about as perfect a fall afternoon as you’re likely to see: seventy-five degrees, cloudless blue sky, golden sun dripping like honey from orange- and yellow-clad trees.

As I walked home, swishing through piles of dead leaves strewn across sidewalks and grinning at fat pumpkins on doorsteps, the sun sank below the rooftops and the air cooled slightly, not unpleasantly. I’d been listening to Cat Power on my mp3 player, but as I turned onto my street the album finished, and I decided to walk the rest of the way just listening to the sounds of the neighborhood. I wrapped up the headphones and stuffed the player into my bag, and while looking down I very nearly walked into a black cat sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. It sat there black as ink amidst the orange and yellow leaves, tail neatly wrapped around its body, regarding me coolly with emerald eyes. Halloween cat!

“Hi, pretty kitty,” I said, which is what I say to all the cats who live on my street. Then I make a kissy noise, and then they come over and demand pets, except for the couple of nervous ones who dart under a bush or car instead. But the Halloween cat did neither, and instead continued to sit there imperturbably.

Just then a large vehicle whooshed past us down the street, dry leaves madly swirling in its wake. It was an old, somewhat decrepit school bus painted varying shades of purple, and as it creaked to a halt at a stop sign I saw, scrawled across the rear in black letters, the words “Cirkus Pandemonium”.

And I totally felt like I was in a movie. A deliciously creepy Halloween movie. For a few moments I stood there goose-pimpled in the October twilight, among the orange- and yellow-clad trees, and the piles of dead leaves and the fat pumpkins, and the spooky black cat which, come to think of it, I’d never seen on my street before, and the creaky old purple school bus with who-knows-what about to tumble from its doors….

Then it was over. The bus continued on its way, the cat decided there was something more interesting across the street, and I resumed my walk home. Later I googled Cirkus Pandemonium and it turns out they’re a bunch of tattooed and dreadlocked New Age types with some serious grammar and spelling issues. Still, I’d like to thank them for that moment.

Tangentially related kitty thing: later that night I was at band practice. Michael, the guitarist, has a seal-point Siamese named Pandora who is…um, let’s say Rubenesque. She doesn’t usually hang out because of the loud noises, but that night she did and I was giving her some lovin’. While I petted and she purred, we had an imaginary conversation in which she told me that she was all excited for some Halloween hurlyburly, and I gently said that she might have difficulty finding a witch to fly with, due to chubbiness. I’m not sure whether this makes me cute or crazy. A little of both, maybe?

Incidentally, the idea of the witches’ hurlyburly comes from…well, Shakespeare, I guess, but also a book by Eleanor Estes that I totally adored as a child and used to read every Halloween.

Somebody flipped a switch

And fall...um, fell.

It's chilly and rainy outside. I want to eat SpaghettiOs and watch The Magic Garden.

BLOG!

About as often as I post something here, I post something music-related at the Wolfman Fairies MySpace page. Since I remain, for some reason, unwilling to give up the pretense of maintaining this blog, I figured I'd cross-post my latest entry.

The Donnas were in town the other night, at the Hawthorne Theater. Just a couple of years ago I counted the Donnas as one of my very favorite bands, and while I still think they're great, both the show and the new songs were a bit of a disappointment.

One of the things I admire about the Donnas is how much they've evolved from their rather humble beginnings. While the "What if the Ramones were chicks?" shtick of their early records was undeniably fun, it was not terribly distinguished, and their jailbait image and the overhanging Svengali shadow of their Kim-Fowley-wannabe producer Darin Rafaelli were kind of icky. But, refusing to allow others to define them, they kicked Rafaelli to the curb after two albums and moved away from bubblegum punk and toward the hard rock and glam metal that were their first and truest loves. Along the way their playing grew by leaps and bounds, and by the release of their fifth album, and major-label debut, Spend the Night, any thoughts of "Teenyboppers with guitars—how cute!" were supplanted by "Shit, these women fucking rock!"

In particular, Spend the Night showcased the playing of drummer Torry Castellano, whose thunderous beats belied her tiny size, and guitarist Alison Robertson, who, to put it matter-of-factly, had killer riffs coming out of her ass, sounding like a cocktail of Angus Young and Ace Frehley with a twist of Southern boogie metal. The songs on Spend the Night were uniformly great: pounding, hooky hard-rock party anthems with nary a ballad in sight. Ultimately, StN was the apotheosis of the Donnas' style, a record on which they inhabited the cock-rock universe as no women had done before, on their own terms and without any actual cocks involved.

This, of course, led to the question of what they'd do next. While not a huge stylistic leap forward, the follow-up album, Gold Medal, nonetheless continued the Donnas' evolution. Robertson traded in her signature Les Paul for an SG, giving the band a leaner and meaner sound. Bassist Maya Ford contributed notably more complex lines, and singer Brett Anderson, whose limited range had always been the band's major weakness, displayed enough control of tone to indicate that she was working to stretch her boundaries as a vocalist. And even if the group was as yet unwilling to abandon their lyrical preoccupations with put-downs and partying, their songwriting as a whole grew more mature, retaining the hooky riffs and melodies while showing greater versatility in style and mood. (On the almost Beatlesque title track, acoustic guitars make their first appearance on a Donnas record.) On the whole, Gold Medal was an even stronger album than Spend the Night, and I personally had high hopes for its follow-up, expecting the Donnas to evolve even further.

Unfortunately, the new record, Bitchin', while by no means bad, is a retreat to the safety of their established style. The songs are similar to but less distinguished than those on the last two records. They've slowed their tempos down, which contributes to the overall feeling that they're getting tired. Granted, "tired" is not a word I could accurately apply to their show last Friday. These women are very good at what they do, and their performance was spot-on. Anderson is a charismatic frontwoman. Robertson was a writhing mass of sweat and hair as she effortlessly tossed off riffs. And no drummer in rock is more fun to watch than Castellano, as she tosses her befeathered blonde mane from side to side and shouts the song's lyrics to the heavens while furiously beating her kit. (When the band appeared on TRL a few years back, some hip-hop artist who was there—can't remember which one—remarked, "That drummer puts her back into it, man", which: word.) But something about the whole thing seemed…perfunctory. I'm thankful that irony has never been a weapon in the Donnas' arsenal, but it's hard not to wince when Anderson shouts out, in all seriousness, hoary rock-singer clichés like, "How's everybody doin' tonight?" and "Are you ready to rock, Portland?" For all the sweat and excitement in the air at the Hawthorne, I felt like I caught a whiff of staleness as well.

The Donnas have worked hard to become as good as the '70s and '80s artists they admire, and they've succeeded. The question now is, can they continue to grow beyond that? Can they become something greater than that which they sought to emulate? Or will they settle for complacency and a slow descent into irrelevance? It occurred to me that, in a little over a year, the Donnas, all of whom were born in 1979, will begin turning 30. If they continue with their typical pattern, they should be working up a new record around then. Will facing down the barrel of that particular gun move them to consider their legacy? I, for one, will be waiting. And listening.

Happy Morrison Liberation Day, everyone!

"L.A. Woman" is on the radio and I just realized that today is Morrison Liberation Day. I haven’t thought about that for years.

Morrison Liberation Day commemorates the date on which Jim Morrison shuffled off this mortal coil (or shuffled off into hiding with Elvis and Amelia Earhart, if you prefer). It was invented by two friends of mine, Missy and Ann, who hailed from a podunk town in western Pennsylvania where they were the only people who cared about music and art. I met them when I, along with my then-bandmates, moved to Camden, New Jersey, in 1989. Most of us only lived in Camden a short while before fleeing across the river to Philadelphia, but it was a very intense while. Someday the events of that time should really be committed to paper (or disk, I suppose), but….

Anyway. Missy and Ann lived with my bandmates Brenden and Aldo and my future girlfriend Sherri in a dark five-bedroom house that was literally in the shadow of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Like, if it had been a couple of yards to the south, it would have been under the bridge. The Ben Franklin, besides carrying 7 lanes of car traffic across the Delaware between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, also carries the PATCO Speedline, a train that ferries South Jersey commuters to and from their jobs in Philly. Because the house was near the end of the bridge, the train, on its way up from ground level, passed directly by the second and third stories. Every time it did, it rattled the house, and its occupants, to their bones. Remember Elwood’s apartment in The Blues Brothers? Like that.

I mention this because one of the highlights of the Morrison Liberation Day celebration in 1989 was lobbing water balloons at the Speedline from the roof of the house. I don’t think anyone actually succeeded in hitting a train, but it was fun to watch the faces of the riders as we tried.

Other traditional MLD activities include:

1) Listening to the Doors.
2) Smokin’ the ganja.
3) Drinking 40s of Olde English 800.
4) Saying things like, "Morrison, man…that dude was…ooh, watermelon!"
5)Watching feral cats copulate in the yard.

Some years later, long after the ol’ gang had split up, I threw an MLD bash for some friends and co-workers, and it was fun, but…well, let’s just say ain’t no party like a Camden party. Missy and Ann, if you’re out there, Happy Morrision Liberation Day, and I miss you. Also, can I have my bong back?

Space is cool

I totally saw the International Space Station and the space shuttle Atlantis last night! It was awesome! Why was it awesome?! I don’t know!

Okay, I’ll stop talking in exclamation points now. But yeah, the weather guy on the news yesterday was like, hey, you can totally see the space station and the shuttle tonight if you look 25 degrees above the western horizon at 10:35. And I was sort of pessimistic about it, because 25 degrees is pretty low, and I live in an area with a lot of clutter—houses, big trees, power lines, etc. I toyed with the idea of walking the two blocks over to the bluff, where I’d be free of the clutter, but I figured the West Hills across the river might still be too high. Plus I’d just come back from band practice and I was tired.

Anyway, I was finishing a cup of green tea and thinking about getting ready for bed when I glanced at the clock and saw that it was exactly 10:35. Just for the hell of it, I stepped outside onto the porch and looked toward the west. It being so close to the summer solstice there was still some lingering daylight, so I couldn't see any stars, although Venus was huge and bright, not far from the waxing crescent moon. Then, as if on cue, two tiny but brilliant lights came streaking into my line of sight. Dudes, they were bookin’. Apparently they travel at like 16,000 miles per hour? Damn. That’s fast.

I have no idea how far apart they were, but they were on the exact same trajectory at the exact same speed. It was a really cool thing to see. In just a few seconds they disappeared behind the trees, and I ran down the block to get a better view. I managed to catch sight of them again, moving toward what appeared to be the south-southeast. And then they were gone.

I didn't quite get goosebumps like I did when I saw Comet Hale-Bopp in '97, or the partial solar eclipse in the Northeast a few years before that, but it was still one of the coolest things I've seen in the sky. If you’re interested in trying to see them (or I guess just the space station when the shuttle’s not up there) NASA has a webpage where you can find out the dates and times to look.

The Pros and Cons of MP3ing

My commute to work is not terribly long: it’s a 10-minute walk from my house to the MAX station, a 10-minute ride on MAX, and then another 10-minute walk to work. Add in a few minutes’ waiting time for the train, and it takes me about 35 minutes all told to get to work. So, not terribly long. Still, it’s nice to be able to listen to music on the way, especially if the weather’s really crappy and I decide to take the bus instead, which means less walking but usually more waiting, since the buses always seem to be running late.

I have a portable CD player, but it has a tendency—a very, very strong tendency—to skip a lot, especially if I do anything that involves any sort of motion. So last Christmas, I asked for and received an MP3 player. Notice I said “MP3 player” and not “iPod”. I specifically did not want an iPod, not only because they, like Macs, cost significantly more than anybody else’s products, but because those annoying commercials for Mac make me never want to buy anything from Apple. They also make me want to punch that goddamned scruffy-faced hipster pitchman in the nuts. But I digress.

Because of the whole skipping issue with the CD player, I went for a flash-based player rather than a disk-based one, which means no skipping but also a lot less space. My Sansa e260 only has 4 megabytes of memory, but since I have no intention of being one of those people who store their entire music libraries on their players, that’s fine. The Sansa is also black, and has black wires and earbuds (gross word), so when I see everybody—frakking everybody—else with their white iPods, I get to feel like less of a sheep.

For some reason it took me a while to get around to loading it up, but it’s about half full now. My original intention was to fill half of it with music I already owned, and the other half with downloaded stuff. I’m still feeling uneasy about the whole downloading thing, though. I mean, I clung to buying LPs well after their demise became a fait accompli, and moved to CDs only reluctantly. I still miss the more substantial…thingness of the LP. And downloaded albums have no thingness at all. I did, however, recently download my first album, so I could see how I felt about it. And then I immediately burned it to CD. (By the way, it was Lady Sovereign’s Public Warning. Highly recommended.)

The wonder of the MP3 player is, of course, its size. Mine slips easily into my pocket. And when you slip those earbuds in, you barely notice they’re there. The other day after work I went downtown to do some browsing at Powell’s (and may I just say that having the largest independent bookstore in the world at my disposal has to be one of the top five things about living in Portland). It had been sunny most of the day, but towards the late afternoon clouds rolled in from the west, and as my train crawled over the Steel Bridge, a light rain started to fall. My player was kicking Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea. When I got off the train I flipped my hood up, and it was weird…all of a sudden, I felt like PJ Harvey was inside my head. Walking down the rain-slicked streets of downtown Portland, I felt like I was in a movie, with “The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore” as my soundtrack. And then, as I waiting to cross Burnside Street, who should walk right by me but Gus Van Sant. It was, like, this perfect Portland moment.

If there’s a downside to portable music, it’s that I tend to get very…involved with my music. It leads me to forget sometimes that I am, in fact, in public, where air drumming is more likely to be identified as mental illness. It can occasionally even be dangerous, like yesterday when I was walking home: I was listening to Sahara Hotnights, and I always get very hepped up at the end of “Only The Fakes Survive”, with its repeated chorus with the gang vocal. I love a good gang vocal, especially a girl gang one. “Aren’t you getting sick of being so polite?” ask the ladies. Yes, goddamit, I think, I AM getting sick of being so polite! And in my rocking-out, sick-of-being-so-polite state, I very nearly walked into an SUV that was backing out of a driveway. I guess I’ll have to learn to pay a bit more attention.

Un' arancia in Italia

One of my co-workers is eating an orange. Just now I walked over to the printer, not expecting to smell anything except perhaps the wart remover lately being applied by another co-worker, and passed right through a cloud of olfactory delight. I stopped, staring out the window at the gorgeous sunny day--Portland is gettin' its spring on, albeit temporarily--and that whole Proustian thing about smell and memory kicked in.

Verona, Italy, almost 11 years ago. A morning in late June. I was sitting on a bench in a piazza in the sun--the Italian sun!--with a cup of coffee, some sort of pastry, and an orange. I had bought everything by pointing at it and saying, "Uno, per favore," which was pretty much the extent of my Italian. That and buon giorno, buona sera, and grazie.

The previous evening my traveling companion and I had eaten in what was essentially a cafeteria--you grab a tray, go down a line, and pick out what you want--but it was like, the cafeteria that they would have in Heaven. Everything was beautiful, and fresh, and cheap, and really really good. There was this soup that I wanted to have, but I was a strict vegetarian at the time and I thought there might be meat in it. "Do you speak English?" I asked the signorina with the ladle in her hand. She nodded. "Is there meat in the soup?" A blank stare. "Um. Vous parlez français?" A more vigorous nod this time. "Est-ce qu'il y a de la viande dans la soupe?" A more vigorous blank stare, if that's possible. Ah, well, no soup for me. It's my own fault for going to Italy without knowing any Italian.

A true sign of my dorkiness? When I got home I learned how to ask about meaty soup in Italian: C'é carne nella zuppa? (That may not be exactly right, but it would have gotten the job done.)

This post has no point, except to say that I once ate an orange in Verona. And that I want to go back to Italy. I think I'll go see if I can find a night class in Italian....

Hello Harriet, adieu Marylou. (Sniff.)

I bought a car today! Happy birthday to me! I’ve been shopping for one for a few weeks now, and man has it been stressful. Remind me not to do that again anytime soon.

I was thinking I wanted a Honda Civic because of their reliability and great MPG, but they really are not the budget cars they once were. With the money I could afford, I was going to end up with one that was 7 or 8 years old, and every one of those I saw seemed to have close to—or in some cases, well over—a hundred thousand miles on it, and since I planned on driving whatever I bought for another hundred thousand miles, I really wanted a car that hadn’t been around the block—or, you know, the earth—quite so many times.

So I started looking at the Hyundai Elantra, which is sort of like the Civic’s slightly less attractive, less popular, less well-regarded kid sister. The Ashlee to the Civic’s Jessica, if you will. But all my research—and there was a lot of it—indicated that the more recent models are every bit as safe and reliable as Hondas, while costing considerably less. So after test-driving a few, I went ahead and bought a 2004 model from a girl who was getting ready to move to Texas for school. It only has 26,000 miles on it! My mechanic said the engine still looks new! I just took out my first bank loan ever and I am going to be totally nervous every time I drive now!

But I knew it was going to be my car when I was test-driving it, because: I was remembering how, when Hyundais were first being sold in the US, their ad campaigns said something about the name rhyming with “Sunday”; that made me think of the band the Sundays; my last car was named (in part) after a singer; therefore, if I bought this car I would name it Harriet, after the Sundays’ singer Harriet Wheeler. (WHEELer. Huh? Right?) And once she was named, she had to be my car.

I wouldn’t say I’m as big a fan of the Sundays as I am of Mary Lou Lord, although I do own Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic on cassette (hey, it was the ‘90s), and “Here’s Where The Story Ends” is still a fucking awesome song. But that seems appropriate, because no car I own will ever quite measure up to Marylou.

And what has become of her? I hear you ask. Well, her water pump went a few months back, and my mechanic told me it would cost more to replace it than she was worth. That’s when I started saving for a down payment on another car. I kept driving her, though, but I had to dump 2 gallons of water in the radiator every time I did. Then a few weeks ago we had some really cold weather, and that seemed to be the final nail in Marylou’s coffin. Since then I’ve had to take the bus everywhere, which, when you’re carrying four bags from the grocery store, is not fun.

Anyway, I will miss Marylou. She was the best car I ever had. In the 9 years I owned her, I never had to do any major repairs. She never once broke down and stranded me anywhere. And she carried me and all my worldly possessions across the frakking continent three times.

The first of those transcontinental journeys inspired a song that I think is one of the best I ever wrote. It’s sort of a response to Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”; it’s called “Mother Road”. In memory of Marylou, I present the lyrics here.

I’m shivering in the cold Nevada twilight.
I’m shaking the desert dust out of my boots, remembering how I
Stood crying beneath a New York City streetlight
When summer’s soft lover set me free with some dissembling. Now I
Would like to write a poignant line about my lover’s eyes,
But instead I’ll drive, ‘cause I’m gonna try to make Point Reyes by sunrise.

I’m seven days out of Jersey, late September.
I left with Old Glory flying high and all my debts forgiven.
I’m trying hard not to think about October.
What’s done, it stays done, and what may come’s a highway yet undriven.
The Winnemucca sand beneath my feet is cool and dry,
And the secret stars are spinning in the clear Nevada sky.

So I drive, thinking back twenty-five hundred miles or so
To deep Pennsylvania where the clouds gathered dark and low.
Just out of Youngstown lightning blazed down from heaven like a column of fire.
As the sky split wide open holy water started pouring down
And I came clean into Cleveland, cathedral town.
Walked through those doors, folks were praying to the sound of a rock ‘n’ roll choir.
And I started singing:

Mary, Mary, quite complacent. How does your garden grow?
With pretty little girlies in blue jeans all in a row.
Mary, Mary, queen of springtime, it’s autumn now, your garden has died.
Well plant your seeds and pray for redemption but I’m gonna ride.
‘Cause Mother Road welcomes her daughters with arms open wide.

I dumped my blues down in Memphis and jumped the Mississippi.
I lost Old Glory in Oklahoma City.
Saw Cadillacs rusting, sang a Lone Justice tune.
Poor Texas Panhandle groom’s got no bride to marry;
She’s living it up on the neon strip in Tucumcari.
The crows in the Canyon hanging under the moon…
I know they’ll fly soon.

If I meet the ghost of Kerouac in North Beach,
I’d like to share a drink or two, ‘cause it’s been quite a long ride
To California from a Jersey Shore beach,
But I’ve got Marylou and Rose of Sharon right alongside.
There may not be a promised land beneath the western sun,
But it’s all right, the highway’s bright, and our story’s just begun.
Can’t you hear us singing:

Mary, Mary, quite complacent. How does your garden grow?
With pretty little girlies in blue jeans all in a row.
Mary, Mary, queen of springtime, it’s autumn now, your garden has died.
Well plant your seeds and pray for redemption but I’m gonna ride.
‘Cause Mother Road welcomes her daughters with arms open wide.
Mother Road welcomes her daughters with arms open wide.
Mother Road, I am your daughter, my arms open wide.