High School Never Ends

Her CD Changer's Filled with Singers Who Are Mad at Their Dads

Even with High School (and college) becoming smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror of memory, the end of summer still makes you sad.

The back-to-school ads mock you, even if you don't need notebooks or pens.

Summer vacation is over. Even when you have no summer vacation anymore.

When I was a kid, they said everything will change when you get to college.

Well... yes and no.

"You should stop listening to that music," she said, the first week of freshman year.

And you want to ask why, but she's beautiful (and she's talking to you for reasons you don't understand), so instead you just nod.

"It's high school music. You have a chance to start over. Make yourself into something different. Someone cooler."

Because that's what she did.


So you try for a little while. You hide the old albums. You try to go along with whatever's new and trendy.

You hope she notices.

But she won't. And after a few weeks, you notice that you never see her anymore. She's always off somewhere with her new friends. Doing something cool.

Because she's still her. And you're still you.

You wouldn't have liked her in High School. You shouldn't like her in college.

If you think about it, that would stop you.

But it won't. Because you won't.

And that's the real circle of life.


Still, to paraphrase George Santayana (who, I'd like to claim, is Carlos Santana's real father, "those who do not learn from High School are doomed to repeat it all through the rest of their life."

In 22 seconds

Exactly one month late for Peter O'Toole's 78th birthday

Back to music tomorrow.

But it's late summer and I'm too hot and too tired. So I go flipping through channels on cable and up pops Peter O'Toole.

I've probably seen The Stunt Man a dozen times. It's a great movie about movies (like Inception, only without the cool special effects and dreams-within-dreams-within-etc.).

It's a movie about what we see and what we want to believe.

Every time it's on cable, I'll watch it all the way through to the end. And Peter O'Toole is amazing (he should've beaten out DeNiro to get the Oscar for this).

So this is a movie I've seen a lot.

But I'd never seen this:


If you can get past the 70s hipster style, Richard Rush is pretty great here (and very meta).

But if you really want something cool during the dog days of summer, you need a tall drink of this:

Craigslist Ads and the New Wave Songs That Love Them #5

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.

Time Doesn't Exist When You're Paranoid

Gonna Drift into that Void...

So I did something stupid.

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.)

Odds and Ends

Missing out on fragrance and taste...

A few things from the intertubez:

Via Swedesplease, it's Top Sound (with a video that pretty much looks exactly like what would have happened if MTV had made The Blair Witch Project):


From Cracked magazine (yes, apparently they're still around) with a h/t to Uncle E, it's William Rowntree's dissection of every album every made:


Stevie Ray Vaughn died 20 years ago. Here's a remembrance. And one more.

And finally, the Kickstarter campaign to fund Michael Gramaglia's Graham Parker doc Don'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.

More late-summer dreaming tomorrow.

Ali Handal Rocks

Hey, Southern California -- I'm Talkin' to You

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.

Here's a taste of what's in store:



Yeah, if Ali Handal didn't exist, I'd definitely have to invent her. Of course, I'd also give her the power to fly (but maybe that's just me).

With Nothing Much At Stake

The Rest Can Go To Hell

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.