I thought I'd tell a fun anecdote about our hopefully lame-duck Senator Joe Lieberman(?- CT) and perhaps shamelessly plug the best breakfast in the state.

I accompanied a lovely redhaired sack of wet rats(at the time I was enamored, but my colossal failure to make any real presentation was probably a blessing, if you know what I mean)to O'Rourke's Diner in Middletown. Dates come and go, but O'Rourke's is here to stay, and that's where my fond memories of the occasion lie. For workingman's prices truly gourmet breakfast can be had in an authentic antique metal box-car diner. Fifteen dollars will get you coffee(it's good- not the best, but in this case easily overlooked), various fresh-baked breads(scones, cakes, oddities like grape rye)and a main course. Brian O'Rourke, the Godfather of Middletown, gets really creative with these. If typical breakfast is not adventurous enough try a trout and peach remoulade with a smoked salmon and gruyere omelet served with crab risotto. Yikes. Everyone is super friendly and the food is rockin'. I always leave with at least a long giddy giggle.

Redrats and I met here and began the eating breakfast ritual. Perhaps ten minutes pass when a gaggle of journalists convene outside the restaurant. Soon, the cameramen show up. Now, the gadflies. Naturally all in the joint had eyes trained heavily on the front of the diner. The front door opened.

Enter Senator Papsmear.(footnote below)

The air was electric. Spines were erect, pencils were scribbling every utterance that could be heard. Handshaking became a contact sport. Next to us a family consisting of a comely late-thirties blonde woman with three seemingly equally-aged peach-fuzz-haired children- each of them wearing a UConn sweatshirt- was 'installed' at a table. Most of the activity was centered around this Potemkin family. I spoke with Joe and said some bullshit about honest debate. I should have mentioned the conflict-of-interest problem with government, but oh, well. I think I did make the news on Channel 8 and I guess they got me saying the Iraq issue would hurt him. He probably wasn't planning on me being there; a Lieberman campaign sign has hung in the window of O'Rourkes for some time now(also easily forgiveable).

There were so many little details that remain strong in my memory. Politics is like a drug, an electromagnetic drug that simply requires its presence to affect others. The Channel 8 reporter, a silver-haired gentleman with caked-on foundation(it couldn't cover his bloodshot nose)had his cameraman usurp Redrats' seat quite aggressively to film the Potemkins. The Waterbury-Republican lady, a forties-ish young version of Barbara Starr, wanted to get snippy with me about my antiwar stance but such a thing wouldn't fly and the possible debate rightly was avoided. Goddamnit, the only thing I can't remember is what I ate.


FOOTNOTE- A friend I have not spoken to in some time told me of this moniker. His wife had their first child, a girl, and they promptly disappeared from everyone's circle. He is a law student with interest in entertainment law as pertaining to video gaming(and he'll gladly kick anybody's ass in Marvel vs. Capcom anytime- get this- I beat the living piss out of him in Madden so he erased it)and sees the Senator as a huge opponent of First Amendment rights. The name I gave was his addressee.

Let the nothing blogging commence.


Repetitive-motion injuries are a huge caveat for musicians. So, if you practice an arrangement of Paganini's Fifth Caprice on guitar, playing the thing over 500 times in a night from midnight to 3:30 in tempi ranging from quarter-notes equalling 80 through 124, you're going to be sore the next day. Well, duuuh. Especially if you've got 13 lessons to teach. God bless violinists and their advice on remedy(morning stretching and cold compresses at night are a religious devotion).

If a person had serious issues with certain everyday occurrances most people take for granted and needed help, would he or she really want to turn to the blogosphere for aid? I've seen forms of rhetorical evisceration USMC drill sergeants would wince at and I would not want to raise such ire by displaying any delicious weaknesses. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to start a dialogue on courtship.

I'm intimidated even in writing about it. I wouldn't even know where to begin other than to say all aspects of this subject resonate fear through my all. I'm not even sure what it is I'm afraid of; I do know I have not known for so long I have overrationalized my fear. Mostly I just beat myself up.

The last paragraph took me an hour to write.

I've erased about five sentences here. I'm just afraid to tell you anything. I wouldn't know where to begin. Does anyone out there have raging phobias about things like this?

Joe Lieberman is besquirted!

I'm no Marilyn Manson fan but I've always respected his mind, if not his art. And I bet he's sitting pretty right now.

Does this make sense?

There is a specific connection an audience has to a live performer that cannnot be fabricated. Thus, it is in the best interests of the current leadership of the music industry to ELIMINATE live music from local settings, reducing participation for a live audience to shows by the producer's own vested ensembles in overpriced festival settings.

I don't know about your town, but all we have now are DJ's.

Due to unforeseen fallout, this famous post about the famous Sully's Pub in "famous" Hartford has gone the way of the dodo. More than famous, this has become INfamous.


Let the mystery begin.

Screw it. Here goes.

I have a friend who is rather active in the blogosphere. "I Shame the Matriarchy"(formerly "Paleofeminist")swings a heavy bat at the plate; it is referenced in Wikipedia as a mover/shaker-type blog. I was impressed(though who knows? Lots of blogs may be referenced nowadays...I'm a little behind the nanocurve)and even moved enough to attempt to post comments on her subjects. I discovered one needed a blog of their own to post.(or maybe not...there's lots of ways around everything but I'm a thirty-year-old dinosaur) So, I hemmed and hawed over justifying having a blog by making entries. I must admit I felt dwarfed by the breadth, acumen and importance of posts and posters on Antiprincess' blog(Hi!)so I hemmed and hawed some more. Nothing was done.

Tonight I am mad enough to be creative. I won't be specific as to events but suffice it to say if I came across a special interest group handing out leaflets bearing the words "Ban Marriage Now!" I might at least read it. Humans are the universe's most emotionally irresponsible beings. Most people just aren't ready.

In addition, I have been mad about the state of music for years. Theory geeks are more than welcome here; your thoughts and thinking are sorely underused in composition today(everything's a composition)and it shows in many places. General audience music is like the slowest ride at the carnival you've been riding for years and your body can tell down to how many fractions of a second when that next turn is, what concession stand you'll see coming out of that turn, how many degrees you've turned, what the ride operator looks like, etc. Many rock bands are now exploring semi-virtuosic two-guitar attack but have still not grasped the essence of a song. Film music all sounds like three scores now(one of them was "Braveheart")and has tarnished a few otherwise good or even great movies.(Long aside here..."The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, right. I adore the books and feel, aside from a few changes(Tom Bombadil, Faramir does NOT take Frodo and Sam back to Osgiliath, The Scourging...)I was awed by the movies, all. The score sucked. Flat. Out. Sucked. Perhaps the lamest moment was the introduction of Shadowfax in "The Two Towers". Flabby and ignoble. In comparison to Star Wars ad infinitum it pales because of a lack of truly memorable music. Seeing as how both Henry Mancini and Bernard Herrmann are gone, John Williams should have done the score. This Howard Shore guy is a schmutz.)

Jazz all sounds so safe now. The heady days of exploration that birthed Bird, Trane, Miles, Herbie, Chick, and countless other luminaries seem gone. Most new jazz seems a volcanic exposition of chops or some clinical, overproduced lite-sexy-funk thing. Bring back Rudy Van Gelder and his two Neumann microphones! Rap might improve if real musicians backed artists. I can't take the synthetic digital everything. They should hook up with gospel musicians.

In 662 or so years that bullshit John Cage compostion that lasts 663 or so years will come to a conclusion. The celebration of such vanities simply imply all the good music has already been written. It seems a death knell for classical music as "High Art." Sure, it's still celebrated but the genre's inflated sense of exclusivity draws a socio-economic caste-line much like golf, tennis or skiing do.

I guess I'll stop now. Maybe someone, someday, will read this and say "what a jerk." Please say so!