I'll be cohosting a nightly Iditarod show broadcast live on Radio Free Palmer (89.5 in the Mat-Su Valley) every night at 6:30pm Alaska Time/7:30 Pacific/10:30 Eastern.
Click here for more information and for the latest podcasts.
The Iditarod starts today. Or Tomorrow. Depending on how you look at it.
The race has a ceremonial start in Anchorage today. Mushers and "Iditariders" go 11 miles through downtown Anchorage and out into the woods on ski and bike trails.
About 15,000 people come out to watch the mushers live. It's packed shoulder to shoulder downtown, but if you move 10 blocks away the crowds are much more spread out. And if you go into the woods where the bike trails are and the locals hand out cookies, hot dogs, and pastries, you can go a few hundred yards in between clumps of fans.
There's a lot you might not be to know watching the event on TV. The first thing is the total will and concentration of the dogs -- their controlled bursts of energy and the quiet intensity of their breathing.
The second is the complete and total joy of the mushers. (As much as this comes through on TV, it's a million times more intense to see it live.)
The third thing is how happy the crowds are. Yes, this is a weird event with its own customs and rituals, but it's also an event that fans can feel is theirs. Mushers mingle with fans freely in a way that's unimaginable for the top competitors in any of the larger professional sports.
Today is just for fun.
No one keeps track of today's times because they don't really count.
The real race begins tomorrow in Willow (about 70 miles away) and the winner will likely arrive in Nome 9 or 10 days later.
It's hard and it's cold and it's long. And the people and dogs who run this race are amazing and disciplined and tough.
If the sky that we look upon... [Originally posted August 22, 2011]
In the early 1970s, Paul McCartney was vilified for recording and releasing a series of wimpy songs (and insanely uneven albums).
During that same period, John Lennon struggled to find his own voice, careening from the stark primal scream of Plastic Ono Band to hopeful hippie anthems ("Happy Xmas"), unashamed rockers ("Instant Karma"), odd anthems ("Imagine"), and sappy mystic anthems ("#9 Dream"). Not to mention Sometime in New York City, about which the less said the better.
When the Beatles broke up, Lennon was freed from the need to compete with Paul McCartney for leadership of the biggest band in history. But he drifted, trying to find his voice (which, he famously tried to disguise in whatever way he could because he didn't like the sound of it).
So tonight, with wispy clouds passing overhead and a cool breeze blowing in off the water, I find myself thinking about a John Lennon song. It's not his best song, not his biggest hit, and not even a song he wrote.
But, somehow, while recording an album of oldies with Phil Spector, Lennon was able to shrug off the need to be the voice of his generation long enough to deliver his most relaxed and confident vocal performance since the Beatles broke up.
New Leap Day Bonus: This is the second song I'm learning to play on guitar, and I love the distinct sound of the strings being muted -- which counterbalances the difficulty I have playing a song with more than 3 chords.
If you're keeping track at home, the first song I learned is John Lennon's "Working Class Hero," which only has 2 chords.
The song is filled with place-specific lyrics that underscore a point in time when the zeitgeist was stretching and seemed like it could go in any of a number of directions (the waterfall at Paramus Park, "I said hi, she said 'yeah, I guess I am,'" a sax solo that sounds like it's channeling a Big Bopper song, and the idea that TV stations sign off at night after playing the National Anthem).
And while it's certainly all over the place, it has its charms... and in today's fragile world, sometimes that's enough.
This would be Dean Friedman's only hit -- and it appeared on Cashman & West's Lifesong label (which also had a huge hit with Henry Gross's "Shannon," possibly the best and sappiest ode to a lost dog ever).
Also, according to Wikipedia (which must be right cuz it's on the internet), this is the only song ever to appear on Billboard's Top 40 singles chart that contains the word "Paramus."
And, thanks to the interwebs, here's a little ditty from Half-Man Half-Biscuit, 1987's "The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman":
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