Like so many of the other musician’s I’ve written about here, Chris Rea is a survivor. His wisdom and depth are hard-won, and there’s as much sorrow as joy in his music.

He’s a superstar in Europe, but never broke big in the U.S. After a lengthy life-threatening bout of pancreatitis, he decided to quit making pop music designed to maximize his income, and returned to his first love, the Blues. In 2005, he released ‘Blue Guitars’, a mammoth project combining his painting with 130 new songs on 11 CDs. I don’t have it, because it’s so damn expensive, but it’s supposed to be incredible, and I hope to end up with it eventually. He’s said that he’s retiring for health reasons, but I hope that’s premature.

In the meantime, you might try ‘Blue Jukebox’. And here’s the ‘Blue Cafe’ vid, from the album of the same name.

And let’s not neglect ‘Nothing to Fear’, with some mind-melting slide guitar work and an Arabic theme.

And ‘Cry for Home’, which is about the African slave trade and its connection to the heart of American music and culture. Deep, rocking blues.

His early masterpiece is the album ‘The Road to Hell’. Los Blues Guys performed it, and I may re-master the tape that survives of one of those performances. In the meantime, check out Chris’s version.

He’s one of the most soulful slide guitar players alive. And there’s a Texas connection, too. On ‘The Road to Hell’, we have his song, ‘Texas’. I like the conceit in the video that it’s possible to drive from England Germany to Texas, if you just want it bad enough:

It rocks much harder than ‘Road to Hell’, incidentally.

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Last year when I was at Conestoga, I went across the street to pick up some stuff at Vann’s. Vann’s is this discount market that has an unusual supply of esoteric foodstuffs as well as more pedestrian goods.

While I was standing in the checkout line, I started looking at the magazines. Little did I know what lay there that could strike dread in the heart of a vicious crank like moi.

See, there were these teen magazines. By that I mean magazines that were ostensibly aimed at teenagers, but would actually appeal to the “tween” crowd. (Tweens are ten to fourteen-year-olds. They’re considered a separate demographic. Ain’t marketing wonderful?) What caught my eye in the magazine I actually bought was a collection of small pictures at the bottom of the cover. Pictures of – sweet nattering Jesus – Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan.

You know, there are some things that just should not be sold in Barbie-pink to eleven-year-old girls. And two of them are Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan.

Even a year ago, before the endless rehab trips and the jail sentence for driving while being a massive asshole, I thought it was inappropriate for these “celebutantes” to be paraded on the pages of a kids’ magazine.

In a two-page splashy spread (wow, there’s a choice of words) the fabu editors gave chatty dish about the “feud” between these two appalling examples of femininity.

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link

Ain’t technology grand?

I love historical fiction, especially good swashbucklers. Possibly my favorite novel in this catergory is The Burnished Blade by Lawrence Schoonover a novel that starts the day Joan of Arc burned in English occupied France and stretches all the way to fabled Tebizond in the Eastern Empire. I can’t reccomend it enough. I’m glad that no one has ever tried to make a movie of it, cause, frankly, the only thing that would do it justice is large cast mini-series and a hundred million dollars.

But my second favorite historical novel is, without a doubt, The Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger.

And this one, they made a movie of.

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Thirty years ago (or, as those of us of a Certain Age tend to phrase it, “Back when he was funny”), Steve Martin had a couple of standup routines involving forgetfulness.

One of them* went like this:

You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. “Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?”

First: Get a million dollars.

Now you say, “Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You.. have never paid taxes’?”

Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language:

“I forgot!”

How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don’t say “I forgot”? Let’s say you’re on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, “I forgot armed robbery was illegal.” Let’s suppose he says back to you, “You have committed a foul crime. You have stolen hundreds and thousands of dollars from people at random, and you say, ‘I forgot’?”

Two simple words:  “Excuuuuuse me!!“

Yes, my Official EOB Post Day is Thursday.  And yes, this is Friday.

What happened?

Well:  I forgot.  (Excuuuuuse me!!)

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The estimable John Scalzi, having started a firestorm by mentioning, some time back, that teenage writing, or most of it, sucks, has written a thoughtful expansion and explanation on the subject. So I read it, and started thinking about myself as a teen and a writer. I wrote, but I didn’t think of myself as a writer. I wanted to act, see (just like my current household teenager). Art was my father’s thing, and my brother’s; writing was my mother’s. Theatre was mine. But I wrote, pretty much to have something to read when the library and the spinner racks at the drugstore failed me.

I knew I sucked. I don’t think it bothered me particularly–the only person who ever saw any of my stories was the daughter of family friends, who would come with her family for dinner or a party and barricade herself in my room with my latest ouevre and read furiously. But Karen Beecher not withstanding, I was pretty clear on the fact that I sucked as a writer (as I suspected I sucked at doing any number of things–confidence wasn’t my o’erweening flaw). Since I didn’t intend to be a writer when I grew up, I didn’t worry about it much; the fact that words came easily to me was helpful when I wanted to make extra money editing my peers’ papers in college, and that was pretty much it.

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(Green Curry With Fish Balls)

I recently got a new cookbook. Okay, not that recently, more like Christmas. Bob got it for me and it’s full of Thai recipes. Real Thai recipes.

I imagine that somewhere people are finding all these cool ingredients in their very cool cities. Things like galangal (thai ginger) and cilantro roots. I picture these people, not in groceries, but in some Asian part of their city, picking through market stalls. This is absurd, I know. I lived in New York. Chinatown was picturesque, but picturesque involved plastic buckets full of eels. Still, I can find cool ingredients. I live in a cool city (Austin) which has a large Asian population and a huge Asian grocery that looks large and gleaming, if full of unrecognizable labels, and smells like all good Asian groceries do, like it is full of something that doesn’t smell quite right to Western noses.

I look at the recipes. I want to try the recipes. I have a secret conviction that right now there is some incredible food experience that I am not having. I can’t afford to eat in all the places I want to eat, like Indonesia. The best I can do is make food that I haven’t yet eaten. But it feels like a terrible waste to spend a couple of hours making something exotic and to then eat it by myself. Untold hours of shopping. Four hours of cooking. Ten minutes of eating.

I need to find people willing to come to my house to eat.

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Here is something cool (via First Draft). The European Space Agency is looking for volunteers to spend 17 months in an isolation tank, to simulate a trip to Mars.

They will face simulated emergencies, daily work routines and experiments, as well as boredom and, no doubt, personal friction from confinement in just 550 cubic metres (19,250 cubic feet), the equivalent of nine truck containers.

Communications with the simulated mission control and loved-ones will take up to 40 minutes, the time that a radio signal takes to cross the void between Earth and a spaceship on Mars. Food will comprise mainly the packaged stuff of the kind eaten aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The goal is to gain experience about the psychological challenges that a crew will face on a trip to Mars.

Four of the crew will be Russian, and two will come from countries that are members of ESA, agency and Russian officials said at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget.

In all, 12 European volunteers are needed.

A precursor 105-day study is scheduled to start by mid-2008, possibly followed by another 105-day study, before the full 520-day study begins in late 2008 or early 2009.

Backup for the two volunteers taking part in each of these simulations means that 12 Europeans are needed.

“The selection procedure is similar to that of ESA astronauts, although there will be more emphasis on psychological factors and stress resistance than on physical fitness,” ESA said in a press release.

Men and women who think they have the right stuff can download the application form on (http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/CallforCandidates).

The next chapter from the work in progress, after the jump. Enjoy!

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Chapter one.

Chapter two.

Chapter four.

Chapter five.

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Motorcycle, squirrel, police crusier fun.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

–Ripped from a sig at AnandTech

“Around my neck?  It’s an iPodpeople.”

(via my father-in-law)

Father’s Day is the only celebratory day of the year that I’m emotionally attached to.

Giving and receiving presents for birthdays and Yule is nice, as is getting together with loved ones. Samhain is spiritual, a night I remember and honor others who are gone. Beltane is a rowdy blast. But Father’s Day is the sacred one.

I’m like most other parents, in that my universe rotated on its axis and opened like a laughing flower, when my child was born. I’m happy much of the time, but there’s a frozen place at my center. I suspect that all humans have that place, though maybe not all are aware of it.

It’s the place that knows that we’re utterly alone, trapped inside our skin; that we came from oblivion and will return to it eventually, hopefully achieving a few moments of grace in between.

I don’t know any more what it’s like to not be a father. I think my childless friends can be fulfilled and joyous, probably in ways that are no longer available to me. But I don’t know.

I’m not smug about it, because it’s also the hardest sustained effort I’ll ever make. I simply can’t imagine who I might be or how I could be happy without having Rachael as part of my life.

This is the first Father’s Day that Rachael is an adult. She and I have an unusual, though certainly not unique relationship. I left her mother when Rachael was five years old. Unlike a lot of luckier, better parents, I know what it is to live in constant fear that she would be taken from me. Frequent threats and multiple lawsuits kept that fear alive all through her childhood. We’ve both had to fight, more than once, to keep access to each other. It’s probably warped me, and I’m a stronger person for it.

I do not and cannot take her for granted, and there’s never been a moment when I wished she wasn’t with me. I know that I talk about her too much, and brag too much, and this likely bores and embarrasses my friends. I find it difficult-to-impossible to suppress my adoration.

As we grow up, we learn to tuck that sort of unrestrained love away. We clothe our sentimentality, our soft spot, in wry off-handedness and self-consciousness.

We all think our kids are magical; I understand that intellectually. But not emotionally. I like to think I’ve gotten better about mentioning unasked the magic in my life. But I probably haven’t. If you’re a parent, you know exactly what I mean. Your kids are magical, too.

My daughter melts the frozen place at the center of my heart. She is the grace in my life.

When I arrived at the Goddam Hippie Commune on Friday night, she showed me the present she’d gotten for me. It and her Yule present are the two best presents I’ve even gotten.

Happy Father’s Day!

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