Category: doom

The cattle STILL have brucellosis.

Thanks again to Small Peculiar for introducing me to Warren Zevon’s full range. Like everyone else I knew those three songs, and I’d seen him play with R.E.M. way back when. I was reminded of this gem because Iced Borscht brought up Kid Rock. Mr. Rock made the mistake of mashing up “Werewolves of London” with “Sweet Home Alabama,” thus unintentionally recreating the classic “Play it all night long.” Another live version is below for your enjoyment. There really ain’t much to country living, he’s right.

Play It All Night Long (Live)[audio https://bemyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/5fc13-17-play-it-all-night-long-live-version.mp3|width=180|titles=”Play It All Night Long (Live)”|artists=”Warren Zevon”]

How I killed my blog

You aren’t reading this. Once, you did. Here’s why.

In 2001 I started a LiveJournal entirely as a social networking tool. My friends were all signing up. We had a lot of fun sharing a circle of friends on LJ, and most of us ended up at least reading if not posting every day.

The social network expanded rapidly, and I made new connections. And I wrote more. I have a background in journalism and I’ve always written compulsively. With the spigot open, things sputtered out: personal confession, satire, sociopolitical conversations, culture, an avalanche of ephemera. It was mostly a good time, although the madness of myself and others provided some spectacular low points as well. (None of the madness has been removed. Good thing you’re not reading it.)

A few years into this I had a decent audience for someone who hadn’t tried. At best estimate the thing had 300 regular readers. If I wrote something interesting or challenging or unusually annoying I always got a few comments. Even a couple of my literary heroes showed up to say nice things about my writing. And the writing got better. There was a deadline feel to working on that LJ. I would think: “what should I write today?” rather than “should I write?”

Like others, I messed around with syndication and linking other services. There were all these ways you could stuff your LJ and photo service and other crap into one feed, but those weren’t popular in this case. A couple of times I started up a separate blog intending to put longer stuff there but didn’t use it enough or try to promote it really, and it sat there. This should have been a warning.

I never wanted to leave LJ, despite its “uncool” teen-angst image. It was a great platform for us, and a decent place to write. I had a built-in audience and a lot of daily reading for myself. But LJ started to get weird. Its ownership got passed around a few times, and the infrastructure and policies looked wobblier every day. When it was inhaled by an opaque Russian company it was looking like a worse and worse place to do anything a person might care about.

So, I made a WordPress blog and slurped up all the old LJ posts into it, and kept going here.

Whoops!

The social element is gone. Comments are rare and telegraphic. If I send a link to a friend I’ll get friendly and useful responses. Syndication to Facebook gets comments there. When comments are enabled on the syndication to the old LJ I get some responses from my friends there. But in general the thing is just dead. Traffic is awful.

As a result, I don’t write as much either. I never had too much invested in a big audience (good thing, because I didn’t have one!) but without any audience at all… Well, it’s like doing a late night shift on a radio station nobody hears. (Another story.) It’s boring and a little depressing.

I wasn’t the only one to abandon LJ, but it looks like most of the others went to Facebook for ephemera and socializing. That makes sense because the whole world is on FB, and because people don’t like uncool things (LJ). A lot of LJ’s benefits, like semi-anonymity and great filtering for audiences, are gone. But if your friends aren’t there, it’s not a social network, so, that’s the end of that.

Part of me wants to go back to LJ, but it’s not the same thing now. Mostly I want to keep the energy going with my own little thing, because I want to write and I need to control where it lives. Perhaps enforced write-every-day discipline would help.

In any case, I trashed something useful. LiveJournal was a good audience of friends and strangers and a wonderful conversation space, where I learned more about public writing than I had working full-time at a newspaper. Where did we go wrong? In any case, I met a lot (more than 50) of great new people I still have to talk to.

Anyway that’s how I killed my blog. If you’re reading this, something must be terribly wrong.

The Listen! Watch! Eat! Year-End Wrapup 2012

Here at Listen! Watch! Eat! we’re so excited for the end of the year roundup that we can hardly type. Thanks to all our audience for being around for the roller coaster ride of 2012, and we know you love the list as much as we do, so let’s get right to it.

MUSIC

Real talk: Pig Leg owned this year. Topher T.’s rich, growling vocals never sounded tougher, and the twin-guitar assault of the Laughlin Twins dropped a Television-quality buzzsaw all over Leggsy and Bags’ rolling unguent beat. No one could have predicted than an offal joke band could go from food truck to headliner in such a short time, but the ‘Leg won our hearts long after they’d left the giblets behind. We’ve heard an advance copy of their upcoming “Uncured” album and you already love it. Trust us.

Anyone who spent as much time as we did at the Rusty Rooster knows how much Garry Turgenev ruled this year. If we said “it’s just slap bass and spoken word” there wouldn’t be many takers, but anyone who goes just once understands. Garry’s branching out, too. The few of us who caught him jamming with Uncle Aloha at the Sausage Festival know he’s got a few more tricks up his sleeve. Stay tuned closely to this station—and to Garry—for a kick-ass year.

This isn’t a big Krautrock town, but we have a treasure. You know who we mean. It’s Leverkühn, who ripped us all a new one this year when we least expected it. Thursday nights at Balder’s was a pop-up temple of the Teutonic. Hissing backbeats and unexpectedly laminated malignancy oiled the groove for some Faustian noodling and snapped-down wrenching worthy of Neu! Don’t be intimidated by Euro-styled hair and apparent ennui. Grab this schnitzel next year.

FILM

And by film we mean indie film, and by indie we mean local. You know what that means: Gazpacho. The single-named soup-named auteur made his usual 24 short films this year, each one a lapidary gem. “Thirty Minutes at the Drive Through” rocked our world the hardest, with an intense focus on commerce and boredom that hit us right here. Nobody didn’t like the Egg Cycle, either: four films d’oeuf in four locations in four days is a record even within the highly competitive Alimentary School. Not every town has a film scene, much less a powerhouse savant like the G-Man. Honor that shit!

The Elephant Leg Collective continues to hold it down with their film happenings at Sammy Peep’s. A late Tuesday night means two things: Irish Coffee and the Elephant’s Leg Collage on the wall outside. Despite the heavy hand of the law, the proud pachyderms screened four films at once eight times this year, to the delight of a well-warmed crowd. Our personal vote goes to the “Four Die Hards of Christmas.” Let’s hope for a less litigious year for the trunksters.

FOOD

When it comes to local and sustainable, there’s no tastier activists than the Food Bike Posse. Going where trucks cannot, these intense but charming young men have powered the Bunny Bacon BLT, Big Balut Burger, Boston Baked Bones, and everyone’s favorite Bat Balls dessert all over town. They won’t admit who the top chef is in their strictly egalitarian collective, but those in the know point to the guy they call Big Nacho. We hear with sympathy the controversy about their “No Dames” policy, but maybe the kerfuffle will give us a posse of Grrl Pastry Cyclists or even a Lunch Lady ride!

Boy, what a storm we had this year over Konys! Owner/chef Topher Ian is the first to admit his concept invites controversy. His international humanitarian focus has a laser-like intensity that shows in everything from the décor to the award-winning menu. You don’t know food in this town until you’ve had his small plates under photographic documentation of ethnic cleansing. The contrast makes a tremendous point, and the tofu/pretzel “hot wings” compete with the artisanal walnut-wrapped pork fat for piquant, energizing snap. Word has it that the atrocities video loop over the bar may give way to soul-searching documentaries, but the barberry Old Fashioned will keep flowing.

Gackers! We all say it at once after a long day or a long night. There’s no better restorative than Manny T.’s nouveau churrascaria, and since he went 24-hour it’s the only place in town past midnight. Our favorites include the toasted snout wrap, “deviled egg” of shaved kidney, and the Tuesdays-only Maw Pie Skewer. Word has it Manny is planning a Pan European Smoked Meat drive-through that might just get us over to the East Side after all.

Be sure and share your year-end favorites and opinions on ours! Hit up that comments section and join the conversation. Here’s to a great 2013 from Topher L. and the whole gang!

My travel day so far, or Nightmares of Wealth and Convenience

Going to Portland, Maine today. Yay! Early flight, 7 am, so that we’ll have a nice two hour layover before the connecting flight from Newark.

Up at 4:30. Cab called at 5. Cab to be there in 15 minutes!

Cab does not arrive. Call dispatcher. Dispatcher is evasive, yet concerned. Says cab driver is not far and is on the way.

Call again, this time 45 minutes later. Cab is “right there” and is in fact 30 minutes out.

Cab driver is a gentleman of retirement age from the Near East who is out of place here.

Cab is a minivan but inexplicably has been set up with a tiny trunk. Trunk already has several miscellaneous small boxes in it, which have to be moved for our two carry on sized bags.

Arriving at the airport, cab driver almost takes the route back out to the freeway instead of the one marked “All arrivals and departures.” When informed of this, he freezes up for a good 30 seconds and then nearly clips the center divider swerving over.

Pulling up at the terminal, the cab driver cuts off and nearly smashes another car, and then remains in the lane instead of pulling to the curb. causing the deputy sheriffs in charge to yell at him.

Entering the terminal, I discover that I somehow left the boarding passes in the cab. I place my mother in the check-in line and reprint the boarding  passes.

We reach the front of the line only to discover that they’re not taking any more checked luggage for this flight. Would have been great to know that beforehand, because there’s a security checkpoint line and we are now way past the time we should have been at the gate.

At this point the odds are terrible. The probability of failure hits 1 when I discover that I cannot find my drivers license and therefore cannot satisfy the demands of the State to board an airplane. I leave my mother in line and tell her to fly without me if I don’t show.

A search begins for the ID, in various pockets and bits of bag, at the station where I couldn’t check in, at the machine where I printed the passes, on the floor, on the ceiling, through the pineal gland’s radiant vortex into Dimension 23. I hear my name called; some kind person has found my ID.

By now I have decisively missed the flight. However, a really nice TSA lady tells me to just come through and she’ll expedite me and see if I can catch the flight.

Nope. Because the day left the reasonable universe, I have also somehow lost the second boarding pass. I head to the thing that prints the passes, hoping against hope. It refuses to give me a pass because it’s too late. 

At this point I notice that I have lost my phone. This means that I cannot contact my traveling partner, call the airline, call the people we’re visiting, or look anything up. I fire up the laptop to “Find My iPhone” but the airport wifi is clearly broken. It will not even connect to the thing that makes you do dumb things to connect.

I am now resigned. United Airlines holds the key to saving this day. Though they slay me, yet will I trust in them.

No way is anyone getting to Maine from Orange County now. I am booked on a redeye that will leave tonight and arrive there at 10 am tomorrow.

I take a much nice cab home and call my phone. A nice woman named Christina calls and says she’ll give it to lost and found.

Then I write a blog post.