Number 5, from where the sound of bass reverberates.
Missed Connections
I watched you at Peet's, long hair messy and gorgeous, as you hunted through your purse for crumbled bills.
On my home planet, you'd be worshipped as a goddess. Cities would erect statues to you and poets would compose sonnets about your eyes and elbows. Eventually, you'd be voted too perfect to exist and would be hunted down and killed.
Maybe that's why I moved here.
PS: I had the double-shot with soy milk and you smiled at me as if you were thinking only someone from outer space would order that. And you were right.
Feel free to rip me to shreds... as long as you've never done anything stupid.
I went to the grocery store -- not my usual grocery store, but the one painted to look like tinker toys. Usually when I go to the tinker-toy store, I park on street level. But it was crowded, so I had to go down into the garage. Where I parked next to a pillar.
When I came out with my groceries, my mind was going in a million directions. I had a thousand things to do. I wanted to get home and make dinner. I wondered if there was time to go to the gym.
So I backed out. And turned the wheel hard.
A second later, I heard a crunching sound.
Because of the pillar. In the place I never park below the store I rarely go to.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And I pulled forward, fearing the worst.
Got out to look at the car. There was a big, ugly dent in the front fender. And what looked like dozens of streaks of white paint.
It looked horrible.
I stood and stared at the bumper, which had been pristine (although dirty) five minutes before.
I wondered how bad it really was, trying to figure out if the bumper had become detached anywhere.
And how much it would cost to fix it.
And whether I needed to call my insurance company.
A guy came over and looked at it with me. He told me about how he'd backed into a pole himself a few months back. "Maybe you can just bang out the dent and repaint it," he said.
He walked away and I kept staring at the dent, feeling stupid.
And then...
I heard a "pop" sound. And the dent in the bumper reversed itself. So all that was left was the white paint. Dozens and dozens of stripes of white paint.
And I licked my finger and ran it across... and the white paint came right off.
So I drove home and got some paper towels and very gentle spray cleaner. And more than 95% of the paint came off.
I'm left with a few small scratches and a very small area where the paint from my car was peeled completely off.
The next day, I told the story to someone. At the end I shook my head, remembering how stupid and horrible I felt at the time... and how lucky I was that it turned out not to be so bad.
In a split second, I realized that this was an important metaphor -- a sign from the universe. Message received.
(Thanks to Peter's Power Pop blog for the song and the cool-ass video -- perfect for the waning days of summer. Wish I could claim the retro-cool points, but I'm one of the people who'd never heard this until yesterday.)
And finally, the Kickstarter campaign to fund Michael Gramaglia's Graham Parker docDon't Ask Me Questions just ended -- they raised more than $50,000 (three grand over their goal). And if you missed my Graham Parker story, read part 1 here and part 2 here.
If Ali Handal didn't exist, I'd be tempted to make her up.
She writes cool songs. She shreds on lead guitar. She sings in a cool, sexy, sultry voice.
Yup, Ali Handal is a rocker chick in all the best senses of the phrase.
She's also smart and beautiful. (And her cat has his own section on her website.)
She might have been the female Billy Joel until she heard Led Zeppelin at an impressionable age and decided to become the female Jimmy Page.
In the past few years, she's made three albums, had songs placed on numerous TV shows and movies (Daryll Hannah strips to one of Ali's songs in the movie Dancing at the Blue Iguana). And if you've seen The Price is Right any time in the past few years when they've featured an electric guitar as a prize, Ali was the one shredding like a madwoman to demonstrate how great it is.
Performing Songwriter described her as the love child of Ani DiFranco and Jimmy Page, adding "Handal has the guitar chops and fierce voice to knock you on your butt."
And, as if that weren't enough, she does an epic cover of the Knack's "My Sharona," reimagined as a slice of Blue Cheer-esque heavy-metal blues-rock.
So, if you're in L.A. (or want to be in L.A.) this weekend, Ali's playing at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills. She's opening for the Fab Four (possibly the best Beatles tribute band in the country).
Best of all, if you get your tickets direct from Ali, you get her set, the Fab Four and a copy of her new album. Go. Buy. And I'll see you there.
I don't remember a lot about kindergarten. But I remember this.
The wave of political correctness hadn't washed over the school yet, so we were sitting "Indian style." In a circle. On the carpet.
And our teacher asked us to all say what we wanted to be when we grew up.
It was the usual stuff -- fireman, football player, astronaut, doctor.
And then the question came around to my friend Dan. "I want to grow up to be David Bowie," he proudly announced.
Our teacher seemed momentarily flustered. She turned bright red. She almost asked a question, then stopped.
As an adult, I imagine what her question might have been. Early or late period Bowie? Bisexual Bowie? Nine Inch Nails wannabe Bowie? Fashion Bowie?
Or maybe she'd ask if Dan wanted to be a musician. Or a singer. Or to marry Iman. Or if he really just wanted to tour with a mime or convince Mick Ronson to take arranging instead of songwriting credit.
And why had our teacher blushed? Was there some hidden desire connected with Bowie? Some wild backstage antics from long ago?
But instead, we moved on. The next kid wanted to train horses. For the Navy. (Oddly, that answer didn't faze our teacher.)
After school, I asked Dan why he wanted to be David Bowie when he grew up. He thought about it for a minute, then said "No, not David Bowie. Kareem Abdul-Jabar."
Because somehow, when you're five and you're new to this whole strange people-being-on-TV thing, it's very briefly possible to mix those two up.
The second summer of my working life, it rained every weekend. Rain on Saturday. Rain on Sunday.
Then, during the work week it was mostly clear and sunny.
This was a source of ironic amusement for most of June and July.
But by the time August came around, people were pissed. And you haven't experienced pissed until you've spent a hot, humid August surrounded by pissed-off New Englanders.
People who could do so took vacations (and got out of town if they had the means). Others called in sick so they could enjoy one or two days enjoying the sunshine and warm weather. But most of us gritted it out, refusing to believe God could be so cruel as to ruin every single summer weekend.
But He did.
And so, on the Monday of the week before Labor Day, with bright sunshine warming the wet grass, I went down into the subway, waited for the train, then squeezed into a crowded car.
Someone in the corner had one of those absurdly large boomboxes (which ate D batteries like kids eat Halloween candy). After the doors shut, he pushed play on the cassette deck and played this song:
After the song was done, he pushed Stop, stood up, and said loudly "Fourteen. Fourteen fucking weekends in a row." At exactly that moment, we got to the next station, the doors opened, and he exited the train, leading a mass exodus out from underground and up into the sunlight.
As I recall, it rained all three days of Labor Day weekend that year, too.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
I forget about this song for long periods of time, but everytime I hear it (like the other day in a supermarket), I stop to listen. Really, really listen.
And I'm amazed that it's not just a likable and forgettable piece of pop. So each time I hear it, I try to dissect all the wonderfully different things that make "Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling" (by the Fortunes) a Perfect Pop Song.
Here are a few:
The melody will be stuck in your head for days.
The singer's voice is specific enough to stick in your brain but general enough to blend in (combining dozens of British Invasion singers with shadings of Franki Valli).
Strings that propel the song forward without drowning it in cheese. (Arguably, the strings bring you right to the cheese border.)
The goofy, percussive tinkling.
The "bop bop" backing vocals mixed way down but still enough of a presence to lodge themselves in your brain.
The surprising sophistication of the guitar and bass parts.
Those great piano chords in the last third that signify importance and hope.
The way the song fades out just before it gets to the happy ending. The song brings possibilities but it's always up to you to choose what you do with them.
The way I always remember a horn section in this song even though you can't hear any horns.
Ears twitch from the other side of the house. He senses something, presses his body low to the ground and moves quickly and silently across the carpet.
A second later, he's in place.
In stalk posture. Whiskers forward. Poised before the window.
His DNA infused with the knowledge and instinct of big cats 50 times his size. And, like most Leos, he believes at times that he is a big cat. King of the Jungle.
He's a rescue. Found on the street, a few inches long and less than half a pound.
Goofy from the first time we saw him, he tried to curl up in his food bowl at the shelter, mewing like something from the scene of a Fisher-Price car accident. But when he first settled into my palm and looked up at me, he instantly relaxed. Totally calm, totally content, totally sweet. (And totally melting my heart even though I've always been a dog person and never had much use for cats.)
He's grown in the past 8 years -- now 42 inches from paw to paw when he stretches out.
But he's still goofy.
He recognized his reflection in the mirror quickly, but never quite understood the difference between the inside of a glass (or a cardboard box) and the outside. And he still regularly jumps backwards up in the air, disturbed by something only cats can see.
To this day, he's doglike -- he loves baths (except for the rinse cycle), plays fetch, and comes when you call him. He doesn't exactly bark with glee at the thought of car rides, but he's relatively happy to ride in the car.
Last year, he developed a urinary infection that was misdiagnosed by his old vet. This made him lethargic and he started gaining weight, eventually topping out at 18 pounds. His new vet quickly figured out the problem, gave him a course of antibiotics, and within 2 weeks his old energy was back.
So we put him on special diet food and put a bird feeder on the porch outside the living room window. Within 4 months, he was down to his bird-taunting goal weight of 12 pounds. He's an indoor cat, so he doesn't actually hunt down and kill the birds. But he'll stalk them from inside. And he'll charge the glass (or the screen) and make them fly away.
And always with a look that says "if it weren't for the window and screen, I'd be catching birds every single day!"
A few weeks ago, I was cleaning the porch and found a small dead bird. When I came inside, his whiskers were all forward. He gave me a knowing "urp" and a look that seemed to say "yeah, I killed that bird with my mind. We cats can do that, you know."
Happy Birthday, Sitka!
Update: For frequent commenter asiangrrrl, here's Sitka as a kitty, recommending one of his favorite books. (Teaching him to read was easy, getting him not to gnaw on the books was a lot harder...)
As you can see, his face has always been head-explodingly cute!
His DNA infused with the knowledge and instinct of big cats 50 times his size. And, like most Leos, he believes at times that he is a big cat. King of the Jungle.
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