The Moogyblog

This is a very, very strange holiday season, I have to tell you. I can't recall one in recent memory where I didn't feel less than somewhat happy and optimistic. But here we are in November 2003, with the sky overcast and a chilly rain falling outside. Later on, I'm going over to my mom & dad's house a block away (where I spent most of my life growing up, btw), and it'll just be the three of us because both of my brothers are off spending their holiday with their wives' families. Then it's back to work tomorrow--I chose to go in because I have an involved project that I want to stay one step ahead of if we're going to meet our deadline. Our annual summer camp catalog. A lot of fresh-faced, attractive kids are gonna enjoy themselves next summer. The horrors of the world don't mean a damn thing to them. I don't blame them for being thankful as they spend their holidays with their families.

What do I have to be thankful for? Well, I'm thankful that my aging parents are still among us, and that I can still expect a mountain of my mom's famous baklava and courabiedes and melamacarna and koulouria every holiday. I'm thankful that in spite of its horrid case of the measles, the economy isn't so sick that I don't have work and that I still have a steady income with which to feed myself and pay bills and still manage to entertain myself. I'm thankful that I have outlets for my creativity, and that I have a few groups of friends with whom to exercise my creativity and to socialize, so that in the grayness of the year 2003 I still feel like I'm connected to the human race, or at least that beaten-down part of the human race that still believes in peace, love, and goodwill and all that antiquated shit. I am thankful that I am not one of those fine, upstanding young American citizens over in Iraq trading their humanity and their claim to Favor In The Eyes Of The Almighty for a shot of kick-ass adrenaline in the name of the U. S. of A. I'm thankful I still have my mind, my conscience, and my sanity in what is otherwise the biggest rubber room the world has ever seen.

At least that's what I'm thankful for. I rather wonder what the sick fuckers in Washington are thankful for. That the American people haven't yet woken up and dragged them out into the shadow of the Washington Monument for the Mother Of All Whuppings, possibly. Or that this is only November 2003, not November 2004.

That is the context for this most ancient of purely American holidays this year.

Most people would rather think about good times around the dinner table with family, sipping wine and going at the roast turkey with one of those big carving knives that you need to swish with a sharpening steel before using it. Jolly, cute cartoon Pilgrims with their cute toy muskets, smiling turkeys, maybe even a couple benevolent cartoon Injuns, on mass-produced decoration.

How pretty and perfect. Now the reality. Millions of real-life turkeys decapitated, guts pulled out by cold-metal automatic machines designed for the purpose, feathers scraped off and discarded like toilet paper, to end up on smiling white folks' dinner tables and trash cans (because no one ever finishes the entire plate)...just this year. As for those nice friendly natives who were responsible for saving those Pilgrims' self-righteous asses from starvation and deep-freezing all those centuries ago...millions of those red-skinned heathen savages slaughtered and humiliated over almost four centuries. And that's not counting what those holy conquerors like Cortez and Columbus put in their trophy cabinets.

The Native Americans were here before anyone. They gave our ancestors (I'm speaking in the broad cultural sense instead of the narrow, genealogocal one) food, goods, and the offer to live peaceably together. We gave them holocaust and took their land and all the bounty in it. A lot of it in the name of The Lord. After all, they were just a bunch of dumb, godless animals who we needed to liberate from their dumb godlessness ways by way of the Scripture, and if they weren't particularly keen on coming over to our side...well, bullets are a mite more painful than bows n' arrahs. And all that real estate is God's reward for our being so enterprising and faithful and obedient to His Word. Obviously. Right?

So here we go again. Out to liberate an ancient, godless, darker-skinned race of animals--a culture which gave us the greatest of all gifts, civilization itself--to liberate, as I was saying, whether they like it or not, and many of our clean-cut Christian soldiers rather not caring either way. So long as they get to blast those M-16s from the hip just like they always used to watch Gov. Schwarzenegger do in the movies back home. So long as they get to do their little part for Herr Bush's War on Terrorism before rotating back to Backroadville, USA: plug one of those goddam Iracki Ay-rabs right in the chest or the head.

Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. That's what it means to our troops who I'm supposed to be supporting if I'm a "good patriotic American." Shoot for the head or the chest. And wherever you shoot, make sure you shoot first. I read that in a news article. An army guy said it.

Have you ever seen a guy get his brains blown out? I have, on TV. It was that famous bit of black and white film from the Vietnam War of the skinny VC operative getting it in the right temple at point blank range. It ain't pretty.

Some of you may have seen a famous videotape of a portly, gray-haired Pennsylvania politician (a Republican, if I remember correctly), having been caught red-handed doing things he oughtn't have done with the taxpayers' money, offing himself with a .38 revolver in the mouth during a press conference. I haven't seen it. I would have nightmares.

One instance was a dirty commie murderer getting his due from the benevolent US-backed South Vietnamese. The other was a coward crook politician who obviously thought himself too good for jail, so he went out like a gentleman.

Either case, it wasn't us who pulled the trigger. Or anyone we knew.

Meanwhile, half a world away, as you're reading this, the sons and daughters of people you know--perhaps your own--are aiming their rifle barrels at the heads and hearts of men, women, and children who just want them to go away and let them live in peace. Like you would if foreign monsters in camo and helmets, jabbering furiously in a language you don't understand, were prowling your nice, safe neighborhood full of curvy streets and clean ranch-style homes. You might even fight back. I would.

But not in Iraq, oh my, no. The slightest raising of voices or wrong move, and from each soldier it's thirty rounds in quick succession, and a string of shouted words you always taught them never to say if they wanted to get into Heaven. Who gives a fuck? This is payback for 9/11, towelhead mofos!

What do you mean they weren't involved in 9/11? They're fucking Arabs, what difference does it make, you goddamn liberal pussy, get out of here before I blow out your fucking Saddam-loving brains too.

Incidentally, I picked a lousy time--Thanksgiving--to pull out my collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, the product of another nation in another century, who at the time was also in the liberation/nation building business in the Middle East and beyond. Great stories all. Except for two things: Doyle's seeming pathological aversion to dogs, and his fixation on people or creatures (mainly dogs) getting their brains blown out. It seems to be his preferred method of literary death...the very phrase just sounds so disgusting in it's matter of factness that he uses it every time. Maybe that's what he was grabbing for...revulsion. But maybe not. Maybe Sir Doyle really dug that imagery, the way that porn fans like to have whatever part of the proceedings that they dig played over and over...at least three times, at least once in slow motion, with dubbed-in sound effects. On at least one occasion it was our dear friend Dr. Watson who was behind the gun, doing the deed to a malnourished, abused Mastiff which was in the process of attacking one of the good guys. Okay, it's a clear case of defense, but the guy shows no indication of remorse or even sickness to the stomach. Somehow, I can never think of the valiant Watson in a completely positive light after that. I can't trust that anyone with a gun who points and fires it at other living creatures, whether man, woman, child, dog, or turkey, is a force of good, no matter what The President says. Some of these people, I wonder whether they see all this warmongering as a kind of sexless porn.

Support our troops? Only to the extent that I care about their humanity and consciences their lives which have been perverted beyond the breaking point by the maniacs in power, and want to get those troops back home into a safe and sane environment. They're in a tough position. I don't blame them for being on the brink of cracking up over there. But it's hard to Support The Troops when they talk and act like common criminals. "No fair. It's self defense. They're shooting at us too." Bullshit. We invaded their God-forsaken country, remember. It's like robbing a bank and shooting a pregnant teller for hitting the alarm button. And then shooting everyone else in the bank for good measure. You think the cops would buy self-defense as an excuse? Or better yet, Ashcroft or Scalia or Bush Jr. himself? You'd be a frizzy-haired, smoking corpse before you could say "Energizer, OY!" The only reason we get away with it is that the sherriff in this town and all his deputies wear black undies.

So yes, I Support The Troops. I do not Support What The Troops Are Doing. I want them to not be halfway around the globe blowing out the brains of Iraqis, but rather here, with their families around the Thanksgiving table, being thankful that they are alive and that they still live in a free country, and that they are not the ones who will have to answer to The Almighty when their time comes.

Fanciful, but it's a nice thought.

Next Thanksgiving I hope to be thankful that our country has been returned to the people, that the malignant worms who have hijacked it will have been run out of town, and that we will have started making an honest effort to demonstrate to the world that at heart We The People really do believe in, and are capable of practicing, the lofty ideals of our Forefathers that define what it truly means to be American. And I will be VERY thankful for that. I'll thank the Good Lord for it, in fact.

Enjoy your meals, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving.

hay all'

no kidding, I really am this drunk that I can't be sure that myu usual impeccxable typing is perfecr. nywayu, I just got back from Ledo's loubge with a friend of mu oler brother's who I ahavenm't seen in about 13 years. ledo's if you're not fropm around here, is a friuendly neighborhood pub jsut north ofg where I live on Hoigh Sr. anyhow local crowd pleasing troubador Chris Logsdon was doing his usual TTuesday night gigf there playing oldies to a horde of shitfaced college kids which was kind of amusung, and I downed about 4 beers which is more than I've had at one sitting in ages, so obviously I'm a pile of jello her eas I type this. Nothing to make you feel like an old fart like sittinbg in the backl ogf a bar surrounded by hotties and theoir neanderthal boytoys who are almost half your age. Ugh. Anyway it was good to see my buddy again after all tese years, last time I saw him I was going into my senoior year of high schooll. It was weird telling himn that I'm gonna be 30 in March, and he telling me that he has a daughter in high school. My how we've grown. This is a guy that used to be in my brother's junor high and hiugh schoiol circle way back when i was a toddler, back im the late '70s and early '80s, one of those guys who I credit for getting me interested in muisic all; those years ago, cuz they alwayts used to party in the attic of outr house spinning all those old Aerosmith and Grabd Funbk and other classix rock LPs before they wer considerd classic, and they used to have a kinda punk rock band when I was but an inpressionale little snot. Ity's good to knoe that some of the things from backj thenm are still around, that some things are constanmt oin this unstable quickly changing world. On a side note that reminds me, I found the website of Sonia Monzano, the lady who's played Maria on Sesame Street since before I was fucking born, and I shot her an email telling her how cool I always thought she was and how life wouldn't be the same withoyt her living next door to Big Bird and all that , I mean it too. I always liked her more than anyone on the street...even thgo Susan and Bob have been there from the beginning, I'd be crusghed if Maria disappeared after having been there so long. Anyway, what are the chances that she even read my email? Busy lady. O well...one can hope. All right I need to lay down. gotta work tomorrow like usual...hopefully next post I'll be nice and sober and you won't have to deciphber mty butterfingered typing. As those little ignorant barbie dolls would say, "I am so fucking drunk! wooo hooooooo" ALright I'm outta here.. till next time.

I just spent some time writing what was going to be a Moogyblog entry about my feelings on the war in Iraq and what it's done to us as a country (summary: I'm mad as hell about it) but I checked myself, thinking that it was probably too extremely angry for a family-oriented blog like mine. I worry about angry emails condemning my lack of "patriotism," or worse.

Maybe I will post it sometime. Perhaps it will just be anonymously. And not here.

But I will say that it's not a good feeling to be so deeply offended inside, and to be afraid of recriminations for expressing it.

peace

hey all

Wanted to mention what a productive day yesterday was. The frollywoggers came over and we spent almost 6 hours recording tracks for our demo CD. The whole professional gambit, you know...microphones and cables all over the place, rack gear, overdubs, the whole thing. We recorded onto my Tascam cassette 4 track, but you'd never guess that listening to it...the way we recorded the tracks (especially the drums, which had fairly heavy compression), they have a sort of glowing-warm, mid-70s feel to them, even if the songs themseves are more '90s indie pop. I have a very good feeling about this band and these songs. Especially a number Jodi wrote called "Something Stupid"...that one has HIT SINGLE written all over it. Not that that's what we're looking for...we are, after all, a DIY indie group. But it could be.

Stay tuned, we'll let you know where you can get a copy of the CD.

I was going to continue with the demise of TV as we know it, but I want to offer up a second pairing of doomed local institution and doomed communication medium:

1) After almost 70 years, out-of-town supermarket conglomerate Penn Traffic, in a seeming effort to me-too Federated Department Stores (is this how retail conglomerates entertain themselves??), has misunderstood, mismanaged, and mismarketed Big Bear—the Midwest's original supermarket chain and arguably the inventor of the modern supermarket, not to mention one of Columbus' bona fide success stories—right into the ground. A dozen or so Big Bear stores will be offered to longtime archrival Kroger, the rest will simply disappear. And I thought the closing and tearing-down, when I was about 10, of the very first Big Bear store, on West Lane Avenue across the street from the Ohio State University—where my family did all its shopping, where my older brother worked...an old, old building with idiosyncratic character out the wazoo—was a tragedy. Now a bunch of out-of-town bozos have come in and destroyed yet another Columbus landmark. But who cares, right? They cashed in. And they have a whole warehouse full of other "retail food properties" in other "markets" anyway...what's one ailing appendage matter? Just hack it off. Viva capitalista!

2) A recent newspaper article was hailing the FCC ruling that would allow people to transfer their home phone numbers to their cell phones...kind of a universal phone number that would travel with the subscriber anywhere. No more multiple phone numbers to remember. Noticeably absent, from what I could gather, was the provision that would allow cell users to transfer their numbers to their regular wired phones. I also noticed a very definite attitude in the article that essentially said, Well, who needs wired phones anyway? They are, like, so twentieth century, dude. Everybody who's anybody is going wireless, maaaaan. Ugh. I still think cell phones are trendy accessories for yuppie wannabes, narcissistic teenage airheads with too much access to their parents' credit cards, and the unimaginative masses who still think that reality shows are "real" and that TV commercials help them make informed choices. Call me a Luddite. Yeah, and I'm a proud Luddite, goddammit. You'll take my canary yellow Western Electric 2500 Desk Set from me only when you pry...well, on second thought, let's not mix messages here. Anyway, in this day and age, dogged devotion to "obsolete" technology can be positively subversive, one of our only remaining ways to say FUCK YOU to the Techno-Media-Industrial Complex. It doesn't make any money for Nokia or Ericsson or Verizon, after all.

It actually reminds me of one time when I was out having a smoke break with the son of one of the rich guys who owned my last company. This was a real privileged kid, went to boarding school, had a nice car and nice clothes, was really technically savvy, as much a heartthrob with the girls as I was not, was used to jetting all over the place all expenses paid for summer break, you get the idea. (One thing I learned from knowing him is that cigarette smoking bridges the social chasm between rich snots and quasi-working-class louts...both of us can equally easily get lung cancer and die a slow, painful death. See, we really are more alike than different! Isn't that comforting? Anyway, I somehow I got along reasonably well with him, but I'm not going to let that get in the way of a few good anti-rich-people jabs, am I?) He was totally a cell phone dude. I remember actually having to explain to him how a rotary dial worked...trying to describe how you put your finger in the hole and spun the thingy around to dial a number. He just couldn't picture it. He'd never even seen or used a rotary phone! And he actually wondered aloud, arrogantly from the tone of his voice (you know, that male adolescent sneer that makes me cringe, the kind that sounds like it's saying the word "dude" no matter what it's saying), why anyone in this day and age would be dumb enough to use such Cro-Magnon technology.

Dude. My parents still have all rotary phones in their house—old Western Electric ones, ghosts from the Bell System era—with one token touch-tone Conair trimline clone in the kitchen for those damn menu-tree systems that have all but erased human voices from the telephonic face of American business. Old phones are cool. And if you drop one, it won't explode into a million little injection-molded faux-brushed-aluminum plastic pieces, forcing you to plunk down another $50 at Best Buy. You can actually go inside with a screwdriver and fix it on the outside chance that it even needs fixing. You cell phone pussies want the telephone equivalent of a Humvee? Go on eBay or (gasp!) to your local Goodwill and pick up an old Bell System 2500 for $1.50.

Today's rant concludes. More later.

Don't worry, everyone, I'm not going anywhere. I wouldn't abandon all you nice folks! But two things are. They're taking a long hike into oblivion within the next year or two.

One is the F. & W. Lazarus Department Store in downtown Columbus.

The other is analog television.

A business I haven't frequented in years and a mass medium I haven't used regularly in years. The local versions of both have been particularly useless to my daily life. Seriously, who among you truly believes that your typical local news is really news? That local TV stations have anything really worthwhile to offer besides the weather forecast and a rundown of the scores?

And the downtown Lazarus is an ossified dinosaur that still inexplicably has a few living shreds of muscle on its frame as it contemplates the traffic slithering by. A few nondescript old ladies can be seen on any given day, poking around on one of six nearly deserted floors, indifferently perusing dusty merchandise that will never be sold. Three layers of overhead lights, each one older than the one hanging below it, hum lazily. Ding-ding! Ding! the '40s-era pager system announces, paging....who? Would you believe that at one time this store had a need for four separate parking garages for its customers? It was indeed Columbus's version of Macy's when I was a tiny glob of precocious protoplasm.

Ironic, now that Federated Department Stores, who owns both Macy's and Lazarus, has decided to phase out the 150-odd year old Lazarus name by first changing it to Lazarus-Macy's, and then....what? Will it become a Macy's proper, or will the place simply go out of business, to be torn down or converted into trendy downtown loft apartments for hip early-thirtysomethings who want to be within walking distance of both the Short North and German Village?

The downtown Lazarus is all but dead anyway. So why am I lamenting its passing?

It's a Columbus institution, that's why. The place has been there for almost a century. Riding down there on those old bulbous, green-vinyl-and-sparklies-uphostered GMC buses with my mom was a big part of my childhood. And it has character to spare. Lazarus is one of the few links downtown Columbus has with its storied past. The Neil House is gone. Union Station is gone. All replaced with soulless skyscrapers and a butt-ugly convention center. I wouldn't be surprised if they someday raze The Clock Tavern (currently called The Elevator, and it has the original "Bott Bros. Cigars & Billiards" stained glas over the entrance, but to me it will always be The Clock) to make way for some modern pseudo-facsimile "inspired" by the general look of late-19th-century architecture.

And Columbus perpetually wonders why nobody anywhere will take it seriously. In our efforts to play-act at being a "major league city" we tend to fall into the trap of mistaking outside appearances with the infrastructure underneath. You can't hire one of Les Wexner's many friends to design you a "real" big city, even if they lovingly hand-chisel every crack in the sidewalk or spraypaint every rust stain from every storefront sign. New York City wasn't designed by some rich developer in five years and hyped on the local TV station (which happens to be owned by one of said developer's cronies). Columbus is really big on superficialities, though. A sea of plastic people living in plastic suburbs while the center of town rots away and nobody seems to comprehend why.

The other mistake of our city leaders is that they're very susceptible to the latest fads in city planning. Back in the late '70s and early '80s the buzzword was modernization. Tear down absolutely everything over fifty years old and replace them with modern, gleaming concrete BOXES! At the north end of downtown we have the Nationwide Plaza, dominated by a skyscraper that looks kookily like a giant early-70s transistor radio. Complete with an extended antenna and an external glass elevator that might pass for a volume slider. I know that Columbus used to be chided as "the city with a hard-on" back when the LeVecque tower was the only skyscraper within fifty miles...but to have a quarter-mile-tall Zenith AM-only pocket radio as your welcome mat to the center of town?

To be fair, the building is home to local top-40 station WNCI. But it's an FM station.

Anyway, so modernization was big then. Then it was revitalization of old decrepit neighborhoods into yuppie havens--witness The Short North and German Village. Then it was the Disneyland/movie backlot approach of creating whole communities from scratch that look like they've been there since yoru grandparents' time. Can you say Easton? For those of you who don't live around here, that's a gigantic shopping mall/neigborhood/business complex/amusement park/ego trip on the northeast side dreamed up by Limited founder Les Wexner. He also owns Victoria's Secret. It has little streets with pseudo-quaint names and fake storefronts and fake old-fashioned red phone booths and all that crap. Five years ago it was a vast swath of undeveloped land.

Easton is one of the poseur developments that helped to kill Lazarus, by diverting consumers from downtown out to the 'burbs.

To be continued...

hey all

Just a quick note to let you all know that I am still lurking about, albeit chronically tired and stressed from shortness of cash and general too-much-shitness. I actually did manage to write part of a post a couple of weeks ago, but it's sitting in my Drafts folder waiting to be completed. It's gonna have to wait for another day.

In a nutshell here's what's been happening:

The Twiggy show at Fat's Billiards went well...better than I expected. For my part I flubbed a couple of solos and popped a string just as I was going into the guitar-wanker finale of our set closer, but I heroically marched on and finished the song one fret down. Amazingly the whole thing hung together quite well. My guitar tone was reasonably good. I didn't even go out of tune much until the string popped. Everyone else, not to ignore them, did very well too...we were a rockin' unit there. The crowd ate us up. A couple of Floorians showed up. My boss and her S.O. showed up. Turns out he's an ex-hippie who played keyboards--a Farfisa Compact Duo, just like mine--back when hippieism wasn't retro-kitsch. We all got good and sloshed.

Since then we had a couple of good rehearsals, wrote some new material, and kinda shuffled our sleepy way through a middling practice last night. Must be the weather.

On the Floorian front, we've had a few jams at the Party House, both to try out new guitarists and to work on a new live-in-studio psych-out jam called "Tripserver." The last couple of times, we hooked up with Philip Park, local guitarist extraordinaire (ex-Haynes Boys, ex-Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments...he even has an entry on www.allmusic.com...just like me :-). The boy has this kickass blonde '72 Fender Telecaster that's as authentically beat-to-shit as Stevie Ray's Strat, and just as amazing to play. But it's even better when he's playing it. It's truly an honor to play rock 'n roll in the same room as this unsung genius.

Tonight after work I'm stopping by Muzak Go Round in Gahanna to pay off and pick up that Tascam mixing board that I've had on layaway for the last two months. The due date was supposed to be last Saturday, but I didn't have any cash...literally. They were nice enough to hold on to it till my next paycheck, which went through at midnight. Yay. I'll have a 16 channel console to play with tonight. Then I'm gonna go straght to bed.

more to come...