My 2 year old was in the shower with one of her baby dolls and a cup we use to wash her hair and she uses to fill up and dump out.
When suddenly with impish twinkle, she jams the cup on the dolls head and screams, "Baby Buckethead!"
I find myself in the unlikeliest of predicaments.
I do not want to tell my friends how great parenting can be, for fear that their experience will not be so swell and make them feel lesser.
I do not want to tell my friends how awful parenting can be, for fear that their trials will not be so great, and I will have poisoned their outlook.
For myself, I can have anything I want... and I don't care for it anymore.
I am impossible to shop for.
Presents are hopeless.
Though I enjoy the people that wish to give me the presents immensely, for the sheer notion that they wanted to try.
Sure, there are some things I will try when curiosity intersects opportunity... but nothing that I want enough to go out and actually get because I am somehow driven to posses them.
I do not have access to every album or music file that I have ever coveted.
However, this leaves open the door to the magic that happens when I chance across a hearing of one of those tunes.
I have not read and do not own every comics collection that could possibly fascinate me for hours/days on end.
I have not watched every movie that would reduce me to guy-grunts.
I have not read every book that would make me put it down at times and sigh, "damn".
And that is fine.
They are still out there.
I leave open the chance for happy surprises and thrilling encounters.
I want to learn more of the unknown.
I want experiences.
I think I want the knowledge of things without possessing the things themselves.
I want to lease life, and always trade it in for the newest model.
I adore reading and returning library books for free.
Listening to college radio makes me nostalgically giddy (really surprised the program accepted that usage; I was all set to change it to "giddy with nostalgia" but I digress - and need another shot of that Very Old Barton 90 proof 6 Year - which isn't really all that old, but I am round the bend now).
I am delighted by both of my daughters' imagination and emerging sense of humor.
I am high like an idiot when browsing a good selection at a liquor store... and drunk shortly thereafter.
Did you ever hear the one about what a car and an elephant have in common? The four year old busts out with that on the way home and I can't stop laughing until we're in the garage. Just wait until she finds Nantucket on the map.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn has passed.
I will remember him, fondly, for "One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich".
I don't remember much of the book.
I remember the girls.
It was high school, hot, almost summer in a SW Arizona Honors English class.
I would have kicked my academic coasting into lowest possible gear, except for the girls.
Damn it all if most of the fine young ladies of my zoning district weren't also smart as whips.
Which only made the situation completely implausible.
High school boys become idiots around girls they are attracted to. We can't help it.
Watch any movie ever made about teen angst and you will bear witness.
So, on top of that phenomenon, the girls are smart... like, MENSA smart to boot.
Which only made the intelligence gap more profound.
And here I was, reading Russian authors, way before I'm old enough to drink Scotch and smoke cigars and put on airs, surrounded by girls with powerful intellect and disconcertingly comfortable with the awe inspired by their recently sprouted womanhood.
At which point, the teacher, breaks the class into groups to analyze dear Ivan's twenty-four hours.
I don't know if she hated me that much, or was trying to give me a shot, or hell, maybe it was just dumb luck.
I was assigned for group-mates, the three quickest-witted, formidable, and striking femmes of the class for the literary dissection.
And just to be cliche... they were one blonde, one brunette, one redhead.
I got their phone numbers. I got to hang out. I got access, proximity, and time for the dumb-assedness to wear off and be myself around them. We never did date... any of them, but I did pick up three new buddies... smart, hot buddies.
Looking back on it with some perspective, that was plenty.
So, Alex buddy; thanks dude... really. You made high school suck just that one bit less.
It's always a tricky course to navigate when a performer sets out to cover a song written and performed (usually made famous) by another artist.
A good cover version requires that the artist performing it puts their own stamp on the work without getting the key elements all wrong... they must be careful not to destroy the soul of the original.
Somebody hearing the song without knowledge of the original version should not immediately suspect that this piece doesn't sound right for the current artist.
Here is something I've become aware of where the cover stands on its own and yet does right by the original:
Havana Affair by the Ramones, then covered by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The music should still be good judged by itself... and not just a poor version of something that is only tolerable because it was previously famous... and only interesting in the way that freeway drivers rubberneck when passing collisions.
My beef is that modern, young country music seems to be infatuated with rock anthems... yet is consistently unable to pull off anything other than a tragic spoof... a compact car sandwiched between two eighteen-wheelers.
They get the words right, and the music is recognizable... but it seems that they have no comprehension of the meaning behind the song... why it was important enough that it got enough recognition for them to be aware of it and want to do their version of it in the first place.
My first personal experience with young, modern country getting it wrong was hearing Faith Hill's rendition of "Piece Of My Heart". I had been indoctrinated into the Janis Joplin version. I heard an interview with Faith Hill later where she claimed her producers had actually not allowed her to hear Pearl's classic before she naively recorded her version.
I felt as if some stranger had just defecated all over the Mona Lisa.
And yet, country artists are repeatedly drawn back to, not their roots (western cowboy, hillbilly, and Irish ballad) in the way that rock performers reach back to blues, but rather country reaches forward and across to rock.
It has always seemed off to me... maybe because it's not going back up it's family tree, but changing trees altogether.
The latest example I've become aware of is Carrie Underwood performing "Paradise City", "Sweet Child O' Mine", "November Rain" and "Patience" by Guns'n'Roses.
To keep with the changing trees metaphor... she totally George of the Jungle'd it. "Look out for that... tree!"
I do not care to imbed it here... but you can find it for yourself on Youtube... if you have the urge to rubberneck.
You twisted bastards. You're going to look, aren't you?
Fine... here's one of her better desecrations:
For my next little guitar noodling self-lesson, "Don't Forget Me" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
The girls love the Youtube video for Anthony and John freaking out and spinning.
I dig the non-speed metal application of hammering-on and pulling-off, fantastically on display throughout and in the outro solo.
The wife and I got a sitter last night and decided to stroll the Music Row honky-tonks, tourist-style.
The downpour began just as we'd parked in an outdoor lot, a few blocks over from Broadway.
Our first attempt to escape the precipitation netted us Printer's Alley and the Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar.
Just past the nude karaoke sign of the Brass Stables, we encountered our first raging drunk, stumbling his way toward a dumpster, which he attempted to lean against and pan-handle us, but his tongue couldn't get a handle on his pitch.
The Boogie Bar was dead and the $10 cover charge act wasn't going to be on for two hours, so we made our way over to Music Row proper.
A short-ish stroll to Layla's Bluegrass Inn later we arrived for the last 45 seconds of an energetic hillbilly act, and got our drinks to mind us over for the 20 minute changeover.
I've caught the last seconds of that band twice now, and really should go a smidge earlier sometime.
We were discussing a move to another venue when the rain went from downpour to apeshit.
We ordered another round and a real fire-cracker, Jerry Lee Lewis style, piano-man began a barrage.
Brandon Giles and the Tricky Two had some good originals and tasteful, spirited covers that played true.
The rain ended, our drinks were empty, and it was time to pick up the kids all too soon.
Just not soon enough to save a ringing in my ears.
I'm getting to aged for this honky-tonk business.
Easiest fall-off-the-bone pork baby-back rib prep ever.
Place 2-6 rib racks on foil-lined baking sheet with at least a small lip.
Pour a cup of BBQ sauce on the ribs.
Optional: pour additional 1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce on ribs.
Cover ribs with another sheet of foil and seal edges with the lower sheet.
Bake on middle rack of 250 degree (F) oven for 2 hours 30 minutes.
Optional: after removing ribs from oven place meat-side up on charcoal grill (small amount of low-heat embers), baste with additional BBQ sauce, then close lid for 5 minutes.
No pics of this one yet, as ribs were reduced to bones within minutes.
My 4 and 2 year-olds can now navigate youtube to go from video to video... of BUCKETHEAD!
He is their absolute favorite and they run around in a circle screeching, "It's buckethead! He's silly cuz he has a bucket on his head! He's playing guitar really fast!" the whole time.
They now want me to wear a bucket on my head while I play.
Sorry to disappoint them, but re-purposed KFC hat or not, I can just not make my fingers move that fast.
I only discovered him for myself recently.
I'd heard, during the wait for Chinese Democracy, that there was a guy who replaced Slash who wore a bucket on his head while he played, and that's as far as I got.
I'm liking the stuff he does on his own, but not so much his G'n'R era stuff and his versions of their old material.
He's technically competent doing Slash's solos, it's just not... you know... he didn't write it.
But doing his own stuff... well... shit. He may wear a bucket, but he's got some soul; when he's not doing the overly technical speed-shredding.
So I'm glad I found him, and glad that he's out of GnR now, so that I can like him.
Her hair reminds me of the last time my fingers hurt this bad trying to play this song.
The first song back I attempted, over and over today:
I pulled out the guitar from the closet today.
Fingertips are now very red, tender, and slightly swollen.
Takes me right back to high school.
I want to get my callus' back.