No, Mr. Bond, I Expect Your Dreams To Die

Announcing...

I'm very happy to announce that my book of essays No, Mr. Bond, I Expect Your Dreams to Die will be available later this month (as both a paperback and an ebook).



For more information on the book, click here. And if you're on Facebook, please "Like" the book page here.

Without A Reason Why

From the Department of Wonderfully Bad Mid-1970s Videos

Start with a song from a martial-arts exploitation movie.

Starring George Lazenby, the guy who stepped in as James Bond in the movie Sean Connery thought was too sappy.

Then recruit a former prog-rock band whose first album featured a slightly rocking version of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."

Then film a video where the band is inexplicably playing in front of a desert highway. And intercut with scenes from what seems like the worst Holiday Inn gig ever.

And add a scenes where the band boards a stairway that should lead to a plane (that isn't there) from a company called Pariah Airlines.

Oh, and drown the whole thing with tons of echo & reverb.

What's not to love? (And, not surprisingly, this was huge in Japan.)

In the Middle of Our Street

From the days where gloves with the fingers cut off were all the rage...

Hopes and dreams, kids. Hopes and dreams.

In Which We Fight Off Rival Gangs And Take Total Possession of the Hill

Like There Was Nothing Ever Wrong For the Rest of Our Days

One day when you think back on this room, you won't be able to recall what it looks like.

Or if you do it will seem small.

Impossibly small.

But maybe it's just that your world was small. Impossibly small.

Until you pushed against it.

Broke through a membrane.

Realized there was more going on than the things you saw every day.

Maybe you sensed something not quite in sight.

Something that made you think you could see the lines. If you looked quickly. Or turned to the right angle.

Shafts of light. Passing between us. Connecting us all.

And the light's colors would tell you something.

Would tell you the relationship. The prism of feelings.

And sometimes. When you closed your eyes. You were right.

It was all... right there.

Highways and the Byways

It rained.

For the first time in a generation.

It wasn't supposed to rain.

It was supposed to be a charmed event.

But it rained.

That's not totally correct. It poured.

She wasn't there. And I thought at the time that was why it was raining.

That the rain was her absence. That only her return would make things right.

But the problem wasn't her absence. It was my inability to see that she was the problem.

So that night, with the celebration, with the crowds.

Came the rain.

It lasted for years.

I couldn't see it back then. But I could feel the cold wind. And the raindrops.

More Weird Stuff From 1979

There's a story that goes with this... I'll share it later.

But, for now, enjoy this splash of out-of-time weirdness from Ron Wood's 1979 solo album Gimme Some Neck, a then-unreleased Bob Dylan song.

Cars

The girl at the convenience store checked IDs.

She couldn't have been more than 17.

A song came on the radio. She didn't know it. But she liked it.

"It's old, huh?" she asked.

I turned around. There wasn't anyone else in the store. So I guess she was talking to me.

"Yeah. It's old enough to be your Dad."

Years earlier, I would have been buying candy bars. Or the 99-cent fudge brownies.

But it was hot. And I was thirsty.

So I was buying water.

Nice cold water.

Thinking about how a song could be 35 years old. Not just old enough to buy beer, but old enough not to get carded.

By the 16-year-old clerk. Who knew enough to know it was old.

Old enough to be her dad.