pedestrian saga

HST suicide for real? Can’t even form a complete sentence about it, it’s got me so flabbergasted! After all the self-inflicted madness he actually did survive?

Funneled naive anger at 16 into his worldly tales of fear and loathing. Copied Steadman drawings in red and black and blue ink and called myself Jann Weiner. Bought hilarious HST biography for a buck in downtown Chicago and felt like I’d robbed the store. Curled up with Better Than Sex atop my coarse hostel blanket with the windows open on Bologna and laughed and laughed at politics I didn’t understand. Vivid.

HST RIP? Couldn’t be!

Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m doing here. Then I leave my living room and go see Ted Leo + Pharmacists play El Rey, and I remember, “Oh, yeah. Right.”

Think I’ll run off and be a Pharmacists groupie. Chris and Dave are totally hot. Picture Pete Townsend, very still, on drums and Harry Shearer in Spinal Tap on bass (’cept without the faux leather and with THE MOST incredible helmet of curly hair. And even stiller! I mean, the guy barely moved the whole show. How did he DO that? He is a god. I worship him.)

Thanks to my mentor in all things Ted Leo, I was very familiar with the music and immensely enjoyed the live renditions of “Me and Mia,” “Counting Down the Hours,” “Biomusicology,” “Shake the Sheets,” “High Party,” and “Ballad of the Sin Eater” (and a bunch of others with titles that escape me).

Preshow entertainment– studying a raunchy make-out session in the doorway to the balcony, speculating on what lies beneath the opening act’s acronym, U.S.E., and critiquing their mess of a presentation, and otherwise yucking it up with some great guys from Burbank.

Then at one point during the show someone yelled out that Hunter S. Thompson was dead…

Argh! My rational mind recognizes that V-Day is just another holiday manufactured to feed parasitically on a nation of consumeristic zombies. But my emotional mind inevitably attacks my rational mind, pounds it to the consistency of a thick porridge, and the next thing I know I’m heaving sighs and craving chalky hearts. (Not really. I hate those.) Over the past week it seems everywhere I turn I encounter yet another fool schlepping a bunch of amputated, pesticides-laden flowers to their lucky love. Even my favorite trusty ol’ non-commercial radio shows paid heavy tribute to the holiday. And then it should be acknowledged that this big bowl of mush gets by with a little help from her friends (and her Grammie and Grandpa)– Valentines via USPS, and I am Silly Putty in your hands!

So as I was admiring these suggestions for unorthodox valentines and movies about love, I compulsively set about compiling my own list. Pedestrian Saga Presents… (more…)

It’s WBFD, playin’ all the hits since ‘76. Overcast tonight with 75% chance of showers. Tomorrow’s forecast: sunny and warm and clear…

as an unmuddied lake! As an azure sky of deepest summer, oh, my brothers!

Spent today trying to quench the fire burning deep in my gut with some gooey Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and cheap red wine, but the ice cream only mutated the feeling into a tummyache and the wine just drew the fire up into my lips and face. Choked down sobs listening to Sarah Vowell tell the story of Johnny Cash and June Carter’s romance and watching the “Soapy Anderson” and “Sex, Lies and Ed’s Tapes” episodes of Northern Exposure. (God, years later I still love Ed Chigliak. And Chris Stevens. Sensitive artists, thinkers, très *hot*…)

(God, this is très pathetic…)