You dirty 'ol egg suckin'.......

You've gotta be kidding me. (thanks, Marlee)

 

Eight Miles High....

Nothing really to report today other than pointing you to a fantastic new blog I've been reading a lot of lately. Flight Level 390 chronicles the life of Dave, a commercial airline pilot. What I like best about his writing is that he's not bitching about his employer or telling stories about various drunken escapades in the seemingly endless amount of cities pilots find themselves in.

The writing is predominantly focused on actual flying and the issues that can come up during various stages of the trip, from pre-flight maintenance to landing and de-planing and of course, things that occur during the course of a flight. These are issues that we as passengers never really witness or even think about, but he brings them all to the forefront. It's really quite interesting. As an added bonus, Dave occasionally snaps some absolutely superb pictures from the flight deck.

In the end, all we want (and rightly so) is to get on the plane, be as comfortable as possible, arrive safely and get off. These people make it happen and I encourage you to check out some of the writing here, as it may be a bit of an education, too. Good stuff.

 

Take Me Back Home To The Free State Of Jones

The last few days provided a very necessary respite from the treadmill. Yes, I know I was just on the Vineyard. Yes, I went to Hawaii a few months ago, too. Philadelphia in May? Hardly a vacation mecca. But Squam Lake in central New Hampshire is about as good a place as any to really get away from life's paces. Why? Because nothing happens there. Really. Nothing. And that, my reader(s), is an absolutely beautiful thing.

We stayed in a 100 year old-plus cottage with electricity, but little more. Situated on an island on the lake, it truly is the same place that others stayed in 80 or 100 years ago. How do I know? Because there were amazing diaries there, in spectacular condition and kept by inhabitants who stayed there at the time. The logs contained passages from, for instance, the summer of 1929 - and almost each passing year afterward. You know what? Other than loon hunting, they did pretty much the same stuff we did - relaxed, looked out at the beautiful, quiet, blue lake and complained about the mosquitos! There were drawings, records kept of things that were cooked, explanations of why certain people couldn't make it that summer. There were children's names, written in those awkward, early-learner block letters. One particular entry was about how the family, for the first time, took a motorized vehicle up to Squam from their home in Massachusetts. It took them 11.5 hours. This weekend, it took us two.

The swimming - just divine. No jet skis allowed here. Perfect water. Very quiet and serene. Just throw an inflatable raft out there and lay on it and look out at the green, rolling hills, which hover around the dark water like a protective shield from what we see on the news every night. Those hills provide an sweet, enveloping comfort. Yep, this is exactly how they did it in 1905. The picture at the top there is taken from the only shower in the cottage - outside! Just take a look at the view. From the shower! It should probably be enlarged for it to really be appreciated. I'll post a slide show soon. Real good medicine. As a nice added bonus, the bald eagle has made a return to the Squam Lake region, setting up shop with it's recently born eaglet on top of the tree in the middle of the lake.

Oh - also snapped this shot a few days ago here at home. Seems we have a new family of deer in the woods behind the house. This is one of two very young kids - no bigger than an average size dog. It's pretty neat to see them horseing around and running after each other. Good stuff, indeed.

 

Weekend IPodding

The Youngbloods: Grizzly Bear
The Cars: Candy-O
Guided By Voices: Hot Freaks
Tool: Swamp Song
Drive-By Truckers: When The Pin Hits The Shell
Jayhawks: The Man Who Loved Life
Haynes Boys: Jackie
Doug Martsch: Instrumental
Screaming Trees: More Or Less
Kinks: Here Come The People In Grey
Peter Tosh: No Sympathy
Martin's Folly: Giant On The Beach
Fairport Convention: Who Knows Where The Time Goes

 

I'm A Mog: Half Man, Half Dog. I'm My Own Best Friend!

As I was reading through various articles regarding yesterday's bombings in London, I came across this gem from an article on Boston.com:

Blair, flanked by fellow G-8 leaders, including President Bush, read a statement from the leaders. "We shall prevail and they shall not," he said.

Whoa. Must have taken hours upon hours of painful re-writes and spirited negotiation for the gang of eight to come up with that heavy-hitter. I guess they ruled out "You know, these terrorists really suck" or "Syria's really gonna get it now."

Looking at the quote again, I couldn't help but immeadiately think back to the 1980s, to that complicated work of art which moved a nation to laugh, to cry and to hug: the movie Spaceballs. Now, I hope beyond hope that Spaceballs did not inspire the quote above, but the similarities are indeed strange. Take the following quote from Dark Helmet, indisputably one of the great villians of modern film:

"So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

Now, I'm not a leader of any nation, but I do believe Blair should have copped this line verbatim and spat it out to the press yesterday, of course reversing the "good" and "evil" in the sentence. While we're on the topic of Spaceballs, might as well throw this bit of dialogue in, too:

Ship's Voice: This ship will self destruct in twenty seconds. This is your last chance to push the cancellation button.
Skroob: Cancellation button? Hurry.
[They all slide down a ladder. They run to the center of the ship.]
Dark Helmet: Where is it? Where is it?
Sandurz: It's gotta be here.
[Sandurz opens a panel to the self-destruct cancellation button. It has a sign on it that says, "Out of Order."]
Sandurz: Out of order?
Dark Helmet: Fuck. Even in the future nothing works.

 

Some final words on Rick Crawford before I try to put this behind me. Rick's sister Barabra somehow caught wind of my recent posts here and left the following message for me in the comments section:

"I read your words about my brother and I am so moved. Rick touched so many people.

Rick wasn't feeling well earlier in the week and went to the emergency room. Because there is no family history of heart disease, he was so young and in good shape, he was diagnosed with acid reflux and sent home. The autopsy revealed chronic heart disease that had probably been progressing since his 20s. His arteries were 90-95% blocked. His chloresterol was not high, but he was a smoker and life can be very, very cruel.

Thank you for your kind words."

So some of the pieces are coming together. At first glance of this message, I felt so infuriated that a team of professional caretakers in an emergency room could so badly mangle a diagnosis. Acid friggin' reflux? But upon a couple of quick internet searches and conversation with Stephanie, both of us pretty much realized there's little way, other than a cholesterol test, to initially detect chronic heart disease. Think about that. It's really quite terrifying. Clearly you can test low on cholesterol and still be walking around, a timebomb just waiting to go off.

I would imagine it obvious, of course, that more in-depth testing for an individual could point the way to proper diagnosis, but if there are no initial upfront signs, and it appears there were none in this case (although I clearly don't know all the facts here), you'd be hard pressed to get our healthcare system to provide extensive testing for someone who's not displaying the symptoms. That's just the way it is in America and I have no desire to get into the healthcare issue. No matter what caused the problem, be it not taking care of yourself (eating/exercise), smoking or simply bad luck or a combination of it all - the cause of his death doesn't really matter much to me. He was a good guy and Barbara nailed it when she said life can be so very cruel.

They can map the human genome but they can't tell when someone has blocked arteries? All I can do is shake my head in bewilderment and mild disgust.

In other, much lighter news, imagine to this? Holy crap on a stick.

 

Don't Be Afraid To Care

First off, the mystery picture below was a hair clip. The first guess, by Rob, got it correctly. Nice job, Rob. Let's hope you didn't recognize it right off the bat from so much personal use, eh?

This was the first weekend in quite a long time where I had very little to do. The past few months have been a whirlwind of weekend plans - drives here, parties there, commitments everywhere. All good, but I really needed a full weekend to just be in my own element for a while and I got one. Nice.

Of course, it ended up being a double-edged sword. It allowed for plenty of time for me to assess and then reassess the death of my friend Rick Crawford (see post below), something I probably didn't really need to think more about, since it's been at the forefront since it happened. It actually reminded me of the great John Cusack movie "Better Off Dead" where Cusack is driving in his car, fresh after being dumped by his girlfriend and every song that comes on the radio reminds him of the girl and/or the breakup. I'm not sure why, but the only song that I can remember from that particular scene is "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates (points for anyone who can name a few of the other songs that came on - it was a pretty funny scene).

Anyway, not to make light of the tragedy at all. My point is that it seemed like everything I did or saw reminded me of a particular moment with Rick. Or worse - reminded me of something Rick won't get to do anymore. Like holding a baby. Or hearing a great, great song. Both of which I did this weekend. The good thing is that I had a few exchanges with some common friends and it's was nice to just talk about everything and get it out there. It's still hard to even believe. I keep expecting to see another blog post.

Anyway, coinciding with my weekend of relaxation was the Live8 show. Upon scanning the lineup, I have to admit I wasn't terribly devoted to tuning into every last second of this, except for my curiousity in seeing the reunited Pink Floyd. So I tuned in occasionally and most of the time wasn't captivated all that much, especially in light of the horrific coverage by MTV & VH1, who felt it was necessary to break into mindless VJ chatter halfway through songs! Let me tell you something, as a music fan, I despise when TV or radio cut into music like that. It definitely didn't happen when they broadcast Live Aid. It's just inexcusable. I forgot where I read it, but in the many reviews of the show afterward one writer nailed it when they wrote (paraphrasing) that this may have been the event that moved MTV to "old guard" status and pushed the idea of watching live events on the internet into the mainstream. AOL covered the entire events, all locations, without brainless VJ drivel and apparantly hit a home run with it, as many accessed the shows via their browsers.

Anyway, I did manage, through a bit of a miracle, to catch the entire Pink Floyd set. As I predicted a few days ago, their set consisted of songs that you can hear anytime you want on your local classic rock station, but I understand why bands do that. An unexpected treat was the opening song, "Breathe," which is one of their songs I do appreciate quite a bit. It was actually exciting to see David Gilmour playing steel guitar during that open and I thought the band sounded fantastic throughout. My recent mentions of Pink Floyd may have you thinking that I'm some kind of hardcore fan, but that couldn't be further from the truth, actually. In fact, looking at it from 35,000 feet, I probably only like 10-20% of their music. But that 10-20% is music I find to still be quite fresh and inventive, even today. I certainly go back to it more that I ever thought I would.

Naturally, when the opening chords to "Wish You Were Here" rolled out (third song, I believe), it was definitely a moment I thought about Rick again.

As I did my best to move on with life this weekend, two videos late Monday night on VH1 Classic really caught my eye. First was Peter Wolf's late 1980s hit "Come As You Are," where he rolls out of bed, hungover, steps out into a sunny day, and proceeds to literally hop like a rabbit for the rest of the video. Hilarious. I had actually forgotten that "Come As You Are" was a pretty good song, too. That makes two different songs both titled "Come As You Are" that I really like. Can you name different songs you like with the same title? Pretty rare.

Anyway, just before I came up here to type (12:22am now), "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas came on. Holy hell. Of course, the song itself is dated and chock full of cheesy '70s style melodrama, but I never knew they cut a video for it! As one might expect, Kansas was a band with a lot of hair. It was so classic that I suddenly felt a crazy urge to try and snap some pictures of my television during the video, in case I never see this again and need a laugh. Believe me, I've needed one these past couple of days. So, for your edification, enjoy.....

I close my eyes....


Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky....


All we are is dust in the wind.....



.....of course, it made me think of Rick. 35 years old.

 

My Mind Is A Wheel........Spinning

It's atypical for me to be sitting here contemplating a blog post at 6:12pm on a Friday evening - especially since I just returned from a quick jaunt down to Martha's Vineyard for a couple of days. However, I received some news on Wednesday that really shook me and I've been trying to comprehend, analyze and figure out just what the hell is going on right now and what it all means. The picture you see here is a guy by the name of Rick Crawford. I first met Rick when we worked together at a failed dot.com back in 2000 & 2001. I actually worked with his brother, Pete, back in the mid-1990's at Rounder Records, too, so we had a connection right awat. Upon meeting Rick, we pretty much hit it off from the start - he's a big, big music fan, plays in a band, writes a blog and we have a strangely similar odd sense of humor. Rick's posted quite a few comments on this very blog, too. He always told me that every morning, he'd get into work with his cup of coffee and scroll through various sites - news, blogs, etc - and that my blog was always on that list. Every day!

Rick had a heart attack about a week ago and died. I'm still having trouble even comprehending this. Ever since I got word, I keep thinking "Rick died of a heart attack" and it all feels like a surreal, very cruel joke that someone is playing on me. I mean, it's just totally impossible. I know that next time we all meet at Redbones, Rick'll be there and we'll catch up. We'll have a few beers and laugh, like we always do. And we'll talk about the new Teenage Fanclub album and "hey, did you see Guided By Voices on Austin City Limits?!" But it'll never happen now. Gone. Poof. Just like that. Rick. Dead.

I hadn't seen him in the last year or so. Life happened. I got married, have been traveling a lot for work and keeping up on the treadmill of life. Rick also got married and even had a daughter, who's now probably eight months old and will never know what a damn good guy this was. Will never even get to hold his hand to walk down the street. Will never even get to remember the sound of his voice. All she'll have are pictures and questions. Tragic. So sad. And totally fucking unfair.

He was roughly a year older than me. I have no idea what caused this and I'm confused. Have I already reached the point in life where I have to start dealing with this? People of my own generation? People my age? I guess I do. While it seems uncommon for a 35 year old to die of heart failure, I suppose it's certainly not unheard of and I know one thing: I'll be making an appointment for a physical real soon (it's only been a year-and-a-half, but I'm still freaked).

I still don't know any of the details, either. I don't know his family history. I don't know anything and I can't shake it: Rick. Dead. He just posted to his blog on June 17th, for god's sake. It can't be. No way.