if you're bored wash the baseboards

I really must be bored tonight. I watched Joanie Loves Chachi on Youtube this evening. What an incredibly bad television show. Unlike some old bad tv shows that are endearing just because they remind you of being young, Joanie Loves Chachi does not. Yet I was still compelled to watch the train wreck of an episode titled "Beatlemania."

Next time I need to remember to just say no. Push the computer away. Get some sleep.

Stressed Out - Just Think About Metta World Peace

What a week it has been. Working late most days, trip to Kentucky which saw a drive home in a monsoon and a $163 speeding ticket (thank goodness I wasn't driving), and even tonight I was on the job trying to make sure something got where it should be going (the cellphone was smoking before it was over) and now to top it off it looks like I'm getting my August bout of whatever a full month and week ahead of time. But it's okay, there's Mo's birthday next week and then on Saturday I will get to bask in the great ego that is Bono and his band of Irish merry men U2. I was never over the moon about U2, but they've had some good tunes and it's not like I'd be doing anything else. So I'll be at Vandy with Mo in section H if you want to give us a shout out. I doubt this concert will be as good as Macca last year, but I'm open to pleasant surprises. I'll have some pics and a review afterwards. Until then I need to relieve the stress that has been this week. So I think I'll ponder Ron Artest changing his name to Metta World Peace. It's no Lloyd B. Free changing his to World B. Free, but it's close. I'm thinking about changing mine to Kelly Leak Was The Brother I Never Had But Wished I Did World B. Free Peace.

Beany & Cecil

Al Perry doing Fish Karma

Okay, so the title of this post sounds weird. I feel like I know Al Perry even though I don't thanks to my friend Chris who went to school in Tucson. Chris would come home for summer and rave about the Tucson music scene with Al Perry and Fish Karma at the top of his list. Enjoy this truth and have fun before it happens!

Almaville House

I lived in this house when I was 6 years old. After we moved out my granny and uncle moved into it and lived there for several years. You can get there by taking Manson Pike to Burnt Knob Road and then take a left on Almaville Road. The house sits on the left a quarter mile or so down the road on the right after a sharp curve. The 5 rooms are in disrepair, but the memories are still there like party guests that refuse to leave.

Once there was a small iron bed in which I slept. I watched a television with fuzzy pictures. The reception was terrible in a place that seemed to be nowhere. It was almost a 20 mile drive into Murfreesboro over pothole roads. My parents insisted I attend Mitchell-Neilson Primary School so it seemed like most of my time was spent riding shotgun in a Ford Gran Torino. There was nothing much to do at the house. There were no other kids around. I recall spending lots of time hiding under a large bush that was in the front yard. I had been warned about getting near the road so when I heard a car coming in the distance I tried to reach the spot under the bush where I was invisible and safe.

My family had moved so much that I knew there would be no permanence to this place. Things would change and off we would go again to another trailer or clapboard house full of bugs. I would either have no kids to play with or the neighborhood would be filled with mean children that wanted to make fun of me or beat me up. The house was painted dull light green and there was nothing but green vegetation only broken up by limestone rocks. The most memorable things from when I actually lived there was the color green and the long car rides.

The long car rides were usually my mother and me coming home in the afternoon from Murfreesboro. There was a hill on Manson Pike that if you hit it going fast enough you'd feel like you were flying. "Gun it," I would yell! Then there was Burnt Knob Road which was filled with potholes and tar patches running up the side of the knob with the old garbage dump in its last days running along both sides. Until you got to the top with its little community church and then you descend on a section of new pavement towards Stewart's Creek, one section so smooth and straight my mother would take her hands off the wheel and let the car drive itself which never failed to get a giggle of amazement from me.

When we decided to move out, my granny and uncle moved into the house which was owned by the Davenport family who lived just a few yards down Almaville. So I'd visit often with my father. Once driving back to Murfreesboro where we had moved I remember the moon rising seen from the heights of Burnt Knob and it looked so huge it could swallow the world. But the world was not to be swallowed, but I was to be stung by a horde of angry wasps one Saturday afternoon at the Almaville house which caused me to run around and around the house in a panic....the trouble was I kept running into the wasps that hadn't bothered to chase me until my world became one welt. My uncle put tobacco juice on the stings and the horror thought of this put the pain in some sort of perspective I guess.

The defining memory stick however was one pre-dawn dew morning. I had spent the night with my granny, as I often did when small. The evening spent with the television tuned only to Channel 5 CBS....I never saw my granny watch anything but this station. She would talk back to the television too. I'd re-read the few children's books in the house and once again wonder why the small American flag she had on a stick only had 48 stars. I'd pick at the guitar in the corner that nobody knew how to play. Say my prayers with my granny and go to sleep. My mother came to get me that next day, in the pre-dawn as I wrote before.

I was wrapped in a blanket and placed in my mother's arms. As she went off the porch she missed a step and we started tumbling. Stars twirled as suddenly I was wide awake. My mother fell awkwardly to keep from dropping or landing on me. Granny got me off of my mother and my mother stood swaying to her feet. She told my granny she was ok, but we both could tell she was hurt. It wasn't anything serious, nothing broken, just heavy bruising along the side she'd fell upon.

What stands out for me was two things. She did everything in her power to keep me from getting hurt. Love with a capital L. And while doing this she also showed she could be hurt. She wasn't my perfect carefree mother driving over the roads with a twinkle in her eye. She was human. I was human. We could hurt ourselves. We would grow older and frailer like granny. This was what the pre-dawn revealed to my young eyes.

Granny and my uncle have long left this mortal coil. My mother and father will go too. Just as I will. Just as the old green house on Almaville will also. Which is why we cling to such artifacts. Which is why I snapped some pictures of the Almaville house.

Let The Blogging Commence Again

8 months is just too long to let this site collect dust. So let the blogging commence again. More trivial banter about music. More nostalgic looking back at my youth while I can still remember it. More music videos like this little gem with Paul & Ringo.