"They gave me a sneer and a guitar pick, and a yellow dandelion."

"I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God."
--John Cash.

Look here. About a month ago, I left for Dublin on the southbound train from the Portadown station hours before some strike or another that would hit on Tuesday 28 March, and checked into an airport-side hotel in Dublin in happy anticipation of a flight home via Paris on that same day.

And that very Tuesday morning found me at the Dublin Airport staring at the word "Cancelled" next to my Air France flight.

"What I can do is book you for the same flight tomorrow." said the sweet young thing at the Air France counter after handing me a government-funded mimeograph that explained how there wasn't a whole lot I could do about any of this.
"But what if the strike is still going on tomorrow!" wailed I, good-nature falling apart like a set of EuroDisney mouse-ears left in the rain.
"At this, we would say 'C'est la Vie.'" she replied. "Do you wish the ticket or not?"

So it was WEDNESDAY, March 29 that found me racing through the Parisienne Airport with a scant twenty minutes to catch the plane that would take me home to beloved San Francisco. O it was horrible! Every ugly American impulse to complain, to speak loudly, to demand to see management pounded in my veins. One of the security men actually made a bit of fun of my whimpering. But then...they held the flight for us! And they booked all of us in first class.

When the flight attendent came by for the first meal, he asked my wine preference. "Oh, red wine please" I said. Can't do white. "Very good," he replied. "2003 Merlot or 2002 Pinot Noir?" And then two bottles were flourished for my perusal. A choice of wines on a flight! I wanted to stand up and kiss him. I wanted to say "Condoleezza Rice is so f*ckin' outta line, man. France rocks!" Instead I said "Let's start with the Merlot and see where the flight takes us."

And with a meal of fresh salmon and a glass of a pleasantly brash Merlot, I turned to the inflight entertainment. And that's where I finally saw Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon going to Jackson -- and Nashville and Vegas and San Quentin -- in Walk the Line.

I should have written this film up long before. But fortunately, Duke De Mondo has taken care of all that for me:

The line Walk The Line walks most perilously is the one atween Selective Portrayal an Fuckin Slander. The flaws it presents; took a buncha pills an did some shaggin around; are sparks in the furthest flung corners a the gargantuan fires Cash scorched himself within. The virtues; he was a good lad wrote a good song; are further still from the pulsatin brilliance of his true beauty.

The flick, y’unnerstann, is shallow an predictable where Johnny Cash had the depth a the Mariana’s Trench an the unpredictability o’ an erection in a convent. It’s enjoyable an emotional an touchin, most certainly, but when the credits roll an the real Johnny an June are rippin the speakers apart every which way, a fella can’t help but reflect on the disservice it does to the man.

The True Story Of Johny Cash. Here it is;

Johnny Cash Live At Folsom Prison.

Johnny Cash Live At San Quentin.

Bitter Tears.

America – A 200 Year Salute In Story And Song.

Johnny Cash Sings The Ballads Of The True West.

Songs Of Our Soil.

American Recordings III – Solitary Man.

When those records’ve eaten into your every wakin moment till hardly a note passes your ear ‘thout facin comparison wi those incendiary, astounding, achingly beautiful pieces a work, then most likely you can assume you know as much as there is to know.

Records like shots a blazin fuck to the back a the brains, records about life an about justice an about redemption doesn’t come as easy as the cold turkey montage would have a fella believe. Records that sound like the rumble a the Earth’s gut one minute, an like the opium sanctity a sleep the next.

Records serve as teachers an pupils, records to feed the hunger in the dream-space, y’unnerstann.

Whoever he was, this man Johnny Cash wi the feet all scorched an blistered on account a the heat o’ those dunes, whoever he was, ain't much sight of him in Walk The Line.

Just found myself in the Duke's link list this weekend. So I'll have to repay that courtesy with lots and lots of visits to Mondo Irelando.

Diary of Johann August Sutter

January 28th. [1848]

Marshall arrived in the evening, it was raining very heavy, but he told me he came on important business. After we was alone in a private Room he showed me the first Specimens of Gold, that is he was not certain if it was Gold or not, but he thought it might be; immediately I made the proof and found that it was Gold. I told him even that most of all is 23 Carat Gold; he wished that I should come up with him immediately, but I told him that I have to give first my orders to the people in all my factories and shops.

(Could have been this morning at the Union Square Post Office. Why don't more people file their taxes online!?! Image from sfmuseum.org)

So it's goodbye Molly Durkin, I'm sick and tired of workin'
And my heart is nearly broken, but no longer I'll be fooled;
And as sure as my name is Cooney, I'm bound for Califooney
And instead of diggin' mortar I'll be diggin' lumps of gold.

Well, I landed in Castle Garden, sure I met a man named Burke
And he told me remain in New York until he got me work.
But he hasn't got it for me, so tonight I'll tell him plain,
For San Francisco in the morn I'm going to take a train.

Trains. Trains are a whole other story! But as we've finally managed to work it back to music, I'm bringing this series of posts to a close. But remember: keep 72 hours worth of food, bleach, and fresh water in the house. Check those flashlight batteries and discuss alternate transit strategies with your household today. At work, they recommend that all employees keep a change of frillies (or male equivalent thereof) and a toothbrush and toothpaste at the office for unexpected overnight stays. That's not a bad idea either.

Oct. 15 OAKLAND (Moore) 5 San Francisco (Reuschel) 1

1989 World Series

Known variously as the Bay Area Series and BART Series (for Bay Area Rapid Transit), the 1989 Fall Classic opened in Oakland, and Athletics ace Dave Stewart was brilliant, tossing a complete-game five-hitter to shut out the Giants, 5-0.

The results were similar in Game 2. Mike Moore and two relievers limited the Giants to four hits and one run, while the A's tallied four in the fourth inning - highlighted by Terry Steinbach's three-run homer - on their way to a 5-1 victory.

(Logo from Baseballliving.com)

Earthquake hits San Francisco

A powerful earthquake has rocked San Francisco killing nine people and injuring hundreds.

The number of dead is expected to rise significantly. The two tier Bay Bridge and Nimintz freeway both partially collapsed and rescuers are waiting to recover bodies from cars crushed by the quake.

The epicentre of the quake, which measured 6.9 on the Richter scale, is thought to have been Loma Prieta, 10 miles north of Santa Cruz on the San Andreas fault.

A massive rescue effort is now underway in what experts believe is the second biggest earthquake ever to hit the United States.

Officials have reported "unbelievable damage to infrastructure" with collapsed bridges and freeways, fires, shattered buildings, gaping cracks in roads and land slides.

Tremors from the quake, which lasted 15 seconds, were reported 400 miles away in Los Angeles and 200 miles away in Reno, Nevada.

The quake struck at 1704 local time (18 October, 0004 GMT), as people were making their way home after work. Traffic was brought to a standstill and many homes left without power.

Fans waiting to see the baseball World Series match at Candlestick Park were also caught up in the quake. Supporters ran onto the pitch as the whole stadium swayed.

(Image from the sfmuseum.net)

U.S. Geological Survey Intensity Map for the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake

The highest concentration of fatalities, 42, occurred in the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct on the Nimitz Freeway (Interstate 880), where a double-decker portion of the freeway collapsed, crushing the cars on the lower deck. One 50-foot (15 m) section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge also collapsed, causing two cars to fall to the deck below, leading to the single fatality on the bridge. The bridge was closed for repairs for a month and one day, reopening on November 18. While the bridge was closed, ridership on Bay Area Rapid Transit and ferry services soared.

Wikipedia Entry on Loma Prieta Quake


(Embarcadero Freeway blocking Ferry Building from the city, 1960s. Image from shapingsf.org)


(Where the Embarcadero Freeway once stood. Image from Mike Humbert's Idiosyncratic Guide to San Francisco)




"The Bay Area is so beautiful, I hesitate to preach about heaven while I'm here."
~Billy Graham

"You are fortunate to live here. If I were your President, I would levy a tax on you for living in San Francisco!"
~Mikhail Gorbachev

"Somehow the great cities of America have taken their places in a mythology that shapes their destiny: Money lives in New York. Power sits in Washington. Freedom sips Cappuccino in a sidewalk cafe in San Francisco."
~Joe Flower





From the San Francisco Chronicle, September 2, 2005:

In 2001, a FEMA report ranked hurricane damage to New Orleans as one of the three most likely catastrophes facing the country (the other two were a terrorist attack on New York City and an earthquake in San Francisco).

"Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time."

Heros and Icons: Harvey Milk

But banking bored him, and the gay Greenwich Village milieu that he slipped into was full of scruffy radicals, drug-addled theater queens and goofy twentysomethings fleeing Midwest bigotry. Milk befriended or had sex with many of them (including Craig Rodwell, who would help lead the 1969 riots outside the Stonewall bar that launched the gay movement). By the early 1970s, Milk had moved to San Francisco, enraptured by its flourishing hippie sensibilities.

The few gays who had scratched their way into the city's establishment blanched when Milk announced his first run for supervisor in 1973, but Milk had a powerful idea: he would reach downward, not upward, for support. He convinced the growing gay masses of "Sodom by the Sea" that they could have a role in city leadership, and they turned out to form "human billboards" for him along major thoroughfares. In doing so, they outed themselves in a way once unthinkable. It was invigorating.

(From Woodmere N.Y. to San Francisco CA. Harvey Milk and Market Street in the mid-70s. Image from sfgate.com)

A long, long time ago, let's say 1976, in a place very far away (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), a convent of Roman Catholic nuns lent some retired habits to a group of men performing their version of The Sound of Music. Three years later, those habits resurfaced in the streets of San Francisco's Castro district...
(From Sistory: A Blow by Blow History of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence)

Despite the characters' rueful and frequently baffled quest for romantic fulfillment, there's a giddiness in the very fabric of the Tales; it's the rush of liberation, an elixir familiar to any misfit who ever relocated to San Francisco, including Maupin. The author, who remembers himself as an "uptight, archconservative, racist brat" during his Southern youth (he even worked briefly for Senator Jesse Helms), came to San Francisco at the age of twenty-seven and came out of the closet shortly thereafter. His work as a journalist made him privy to all manner of gossip about society high and low, and his participation in the emergence of a new kind of society-a sort of republic of pleasure-fed his desire to write.

Literary Bent.com site for Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City

SF Pride Parade: Official Site and 2006 Registration Entry Form

While his first three tries for office failed, they lent Milk the credibility and positive media focus that probably no openly gay person ever had. Not everyone cheered, of course, and death threats multiplied. Milk spoke often of his ineluctable assassination, even recording a will naming acceptable successors to his seat and containing the famous line: "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

Candlelight March for Harvey Milk, Market Street, November 27, 1978

"There was cowboy Neal at the wheelOf a bus to never-ever land"

San Francisco in the middle 60's was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive, in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction. At any hour, you could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. That we were winning. And that I think was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense. We didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail.
-Hunter S. Thompson

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."
-Ken Kesey

Tarnished Galahad: The Prose and Pranks of Ken Kesey


(Scanned from private collection.)

By 1968, though, Bill Fuller’s attention was firmly focussed on one of his greatest dreams yet: building an Irish village in Galway Bay. While he was doing this, the American rock promoter Bill Graham flew to Ireland in a desperate attempt to obtain the lease on The Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco. It was easier than Graham had imagined. Fuller was waiting for him when he arrived at Shannon Airport at 8am, ordered a bottle of bourbon, shook hands on a deal, finished the remaining shots of liquor and then announced that he was going back to work on his building site. By 5pm, Graham was on a flight home, all set to turn The Carousel into the legendary rock venue, the Fillmore West.

We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest, of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high watermark...that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
-Hunter S. Thompson

But as Garcia said, you know, the '60s ain't over till the fat lady gets high. And that means that whatever it takes to get you high: sometimes grief, sometimes it's prayer, fasting. I prefer a joint.
-Ken Kesey

"riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening"

"It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness of the late afternoon of time."
-Sal Paradise, On The Road



(In the road ... Bob Donlin, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert La Vigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti outside the City Lights bookstore in 1956. Photograph: Allen Ginsberg/Corbis as reprinted in the Guardian.co.uk)

"Jack Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million Levis to both sexes."
-William Burroughs

About Levi Strauss & Co.

Sunflower Sutra, Allen Ginsberg

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
....sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
....Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
....box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
....pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
....of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,
....surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
....machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
....sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
....stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves
....rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
....on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
....shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
....dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
....memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem...

The mad road, lonely, leading around the bend into the openings of space towards the horizon Wasatch snows promised us in the vision of the West, spine heights at the world's end, coast of blue Pacific starry night—nobone halfbanana moons sloping in the tangled night sky, the torments of great formations in mist, the huddled invisible insect in the car racing onwards, illuminate.—The raw cut, the drag, the butte, the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass—orangebutted west lands of Arcadia, forlorn sands of the isolate earth, dewy exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and the gopher the level of the world, low and flat: the charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route.

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

AMERICAN BARBARISM: The Apostle of Estheticism Exposes Our Sins, San Francisco Daily Chronicle, March 30, 1882

A scene of considerable excitement occurred yesterday afternoon when Oscar Wilde ventured out in search of Celestial handiwork. In company with a lady and an escort, he called at a Chinese store on Sacramento street, below Kearny. No sooner had he been seen to leave his carriage than a general rush took place, and in a moment the street in front of the store was utterly impassable, and it required the bear-efforts of Officer Curtis to prevent the spectators from precipitating themselves into the store.

(Image from sfmuseum.org)

"It's an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world."
-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, 1891

San Francisco City Search: Wilde Oscar's

"49 square miles surrounded by reality"

~Paul Kantner rock band Jefferson Airplane


(Image available for purchase at art-posters.net)

"I will sing in San Francisco if I have to sing in the streets, for I know that the streets of San Francisco are Free."
~Luisa Tetrazzini, San Francisco's all time favorite soprano, on the occasion of breaking her New York contract

"One is the loneliest number"

U2's 'One' Voted Britain's Favorite Lyric

LONDON - The Irish band U2 has given Britain its favorite song lyric, according to a survey released Monday.

ONE more sentence and I'd be quoting that one in full.

Also, I promise the full story with picture of Bono and Johnny Foley's seismic-retrofitting remodel job. Maybe tonight. Oh! And speaking of seismic retrofitting:

I never will forget Jeanette MacDonald...


(An affordable fixer-upper, Just three mil on the market.)

More Metal Fret-Wankery on MySpace

Part of the fun of the John Matrix Blues Quintet is seeing what genres its members consider themselves. The current choice of "Death Metal / Afro-beat / Psychobilly" starts out on the right track and then just becomes a mockery of every earnest MySpace band's desire to pigeonhole their music in the proper category so that it will come to the attention of the hordes of American teens taking a break from snapping incriminating cellphone-cam shots of each other.

Before this I believe the JMBQ saw itself as "House / Psychedelic / Disco" - a delightful trio of styles right there.

Two new tracks: The Nib Atrocity and Shoelace Metal Symphony. I detect a Pink Floyd influence myself. Or perhaps Aker Bilk.

The responsible parties for this music also contributed to a round-table discussion on Chick Flicks over at BlogCritics.org. It comes as a pleasant surprise that Duke "Chicks Dig Whinin'" de Mondo is a bit of a romantic:

But if we are to assume, as Sir Fleming did, that two flicks are being presented to yours truly, and that I know nothing about them save for the fact that one's called some shit like Zero Degree X and the other's called Two Folks Love For A Time, I'm gonna go with the fella meets the lady and the lady likes the fella but woe! He's married to some filthy whore treats him like a bag o' busted bladders. Dump that ho, I'll say, and get with that woman writes you songs and then sings them to you but pretends they're covers of Sheryl Crow b-sides cause she knows you got a ring on yonder finger.

Also, such a motion picture is more likely to feature Kirsten Dunst and be written and directed by Woody Allen.

But the Duke also warns:

But if the rest of the flick sucks, well, don't matter how many montages it's got all about he misses her, she misses him, maybe they should put their differences aside and get filthin' again, it ain't gonna save it.

"'Cause they'll be rockin on BandstandIn Philadelphia P.A."

Kids today! They don't know how it was. They don't know!

Back in my day, one week away from your usual online routine usually meant a bare hour or so to clear out the email box and delete the invites to those enticing online casinos, the charming solicitations from various and sundry ladies of alluring names -- I'm reminded here of the Tom Waits line in 9th and Hennepin: "All the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes" -- and that whole medicine show of various pharmacopeias of invigorating strength and vitality to add inches to your life. (Which were probably useful products to ingest before a virtual night on town at the Texas-Hold'Em online casino with the lovely French Crueller by your cyber-side.)

And now there's MySpace. 24 hours away from this little virtual social network, and you will return to a pile of friend requests, messages, event invites, and bulletin board readings that will make you wonder if the Luddites had the right idea all along.

How did this happen? How did a website that has all the aesthetic charm of Winston Smith's description of the Victory Cafe emerge in 2005 as one of the top ten most visited websites in the world?

Because as far as I can tell, MySpace only has two things: teenagers and rock-n-roll.

And nothing good ever came from that combination.

There are points to consider. The basic template style is fairly uninspired:

Trading ’spaces
Why your MySpace page isn’t nearly as cool as Pinback’s

So they just came out with this new thing that’s pretty awesome. The local bands are all about it—not just the cool ones, but all of ’em. It’s called MySpace. Heard of it? No? Oh, man, it’s all about that six degrees of separation shit and how the whole world’s connected through technology and the democratization of art and how our generation doesn’t need fucking radio or MTV or any of that shit to get our music out.

OK, while all of that is true (sorta) and, yes, MySpace is (kinda) mind blowing, we need to back up a minute.

First, MySpace was reportedly designed by super nerds who could have cured cancer if their dream hadn’t been bringing people (and stalkers) together online. So why are so many bands’ pages either really boring or look like a 9-year-old designed them on a Speak & Spell?

And if it’s all about individuality and creativity, then why do all these bands’ fans (read: mostly young women) look so alike (read: mostly slightly blurry camera-phone pics of young women with puckered lips slathered in a dozen tubes’ worth of cheap lip gloss)? Surely, there’s more to MySpace than this...

Possibly, MySpace has already sold out to The Man:

Skate Company Builds MySpace® Army to Promote their Store

"Our customers are a moving target" says Rick Davis, one of the company's owners. "They are extremely passionate and fiercely loyal. Skating is not a sport, it's a lifestyle. If you can win them over, they will go to end of the world for you."

So how do you win these kids loyalty? Davis says "Almost everyone underestimates them. These are intelligent, savvy kids. They have been exposed to the most extreme marketing techniques in the history of mankind since their birth. A 13-year old can smell a sales pitch coming from a mile away." So what is the trick? According to Davis, there's not one. "Just be sincere. You have to be truly sincere in what you do and say. Be absolutely consumed with delivering whatever is best for your customer. They know the difference. Try to fake it and they'll leave you cold."

Fueling this MySpace marketing concept is the age old snowball effect. On the news ticker that Roller Warehouse developed, each topic delivered contains the first 30 to 40 words of the article. Each topic is hyperlinked; clicking it will take you back to the company's original blog page where you can read the entire text. On the blog page, the option to add the news ticker to your own page appears. Thus, the cycle is repeated.

There's the legitimate concerns of parents at all this sudden connectivity between the children in the family and the world:

Parents beware: Teens using Web site to build social status

On the surface the idea is fine, but like most things it has become reflective of the worst of society. MySpace has been taken over by teens and young people ("tweens") who are putting up all manner of content about themselves on the sites. We're at a perfect storm here when it comes to issues like these.

First, kids now have access to digital cameras and can take photographs of themselves and their friends that never pass through the editors of my day, namely my parents and the photolab. That means MySpace is full of photographs of risque photos, to put it politely.

What the kids of today don't seem to understand is the Web is forever. On the practical side, that photo of you with your underwear on your head using a beer bong may be kinda funny to you today, but won't be all that amusing 10 years later at your Senate confirmation hearing or your job interview for law partner.

Man! It's that old principal's threat made real "This is going on your permanent record, young man!"

And there is the equally legitimate concern that anyone using the net extensively must acknowledge:

Internet 'Friends'

'The problem is that kids have this false sense of security online,' said Joseph Donahue, a State Police investigator who works in the Albany headquarters of the Computer Crime Unit's ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Task Force.

'If they're not meeting people face-to-face, they feel like they're 8 feet tall and bulletproof. They feel nobody can bother them, but that's naïve and makes them much more vulnerable.'

What has raised the concern of law enforcement is MySpace.com. Since it was launched three years ago, the Web site now counts more than 60 million members, and is growing daily. The majority of those congregating are teenage girls, according to Donahue.

The secret to its popularity is in its simplicity. With an e-mail account, users can join up and create their own personal pages, post photographs, movies, music and share diary-like commentary with the world.

More on all stories at the links.

I started looking for MySpace stories on the blurred line between Official and Unofficial music sites as the accidental result of becoming a 'friend' of two separate Boomtown Rats sites. The second one is more informative and professional looking. Also, they invited ME to be a friend, so I'm kinda hoping they are the Official one. I also believe that the role of MySpace in popular music will rival that of earlier technologies such as the jukebox, transistor radio, the FM broadcast frequency, and the 45 rpm single.

"Sweet Little Sixteen
She's just got to have
About half a million
Framed autographs
Her profile's filled with pictures
She gets 'em one by one
She gets so excited
Watch her look at her run..."

"Under Clery's Clock at eight..."

Even without a working cellphone, my appointment was made and kept. Thanks Tom!

Well. Yes. Dublin!

And a big 'hello' to the journalism students of University of Gloucester! Now get back to your schoolwork--you have a very strict professor!

Venus and Mars: Valentines Weekend in Dublin, 2003

Husband: It's late Sunday. Mardi Gras is hours away and you're still grinding your gears on Valentine's Day.
Me: True. But you know...supposed to be resting my eyes this weekend.
Husband: Are you sure that's all?
Me: I don't want to write up that argument at the church.
Husband: It wasn't a big deal. We got lost walking there and when we showed up they were in the middle of something. And so we left without the ring blessing thing which I wasn't too hot for in the first place. There. Now it's written up.
Me: And my mother did like the gift we found for her at their bookshop.
Husband: Fifteen minutes later, I was already in a better mood.
Me: Oh, now I remember how that came about!

***
"She Died of a Fever"

We were back on Grafton Street and walking toward O'Connell Bridge. Suddenly the bulk of my husband's presence was no longer keeping pace with me. I turned to see what snagged his attention.



Husband: Well hey! Where do they keep the ones like her?
Me: In a plastic surgeon's office in Beverly Hills.
Husband: Can we grab a picture of this?
Me: Oh goodness. Let me deconstruct this moment of 'culture' if I may. That happens to be there courtesy of a company called Jury's, which is in the hotel business. So what you see here is the local variant of the grass-skirted hula girl icon designed to evoke pleasant associations in the visiting male psyche.
Husband: Well yeah!
Me: O come on! What person would walk around half-exposed like that in damp weather? No wonder 'no-one could save her!'

On my last visit, my camera was not handy to catch a charming shot of a local youth reclining on the barrow of cockles and mussels, smoking a cigarette and using the ample cleavage at arm's reach as his ashtray.

***

"The faces seem familiar,
And I know those songs they're playing."

My husband has a hard time keeping track of me in the crowds on Grafton. He's actually even approached another woman of my build and color, thinking she was me. But we negotiate the obstacle course from Jigsaw to Bewley's and other stops. I've been fighting a sore throat from my week in England and want something to sooth it. My husband remembers that he's forgotten to pack something indispensible for our weekend of romantic abandon. Both needs are met easily.



At one of the record stores, I find a copy of The Book of Invasions by Horslips. It has been recommended by those who would know as one of the first albums to move along to after the double CD of greatest hits. Much later in the day, I'll accidently buy the same album again from a different store. That copy is later given away as a gift.

I buy clothing wantonly. There's even a temptation to buy slacks, which I never do, because they look as if they will not require hemming.

Living in a tourist town ourselves, we easily ignore the more aggressive vendors of the usual in t-shirts, postcards, mugs, and china figurines. We do not even consider joining our fellow Americans on one of the tours designed expressly for our kind.



It's funny how my world goes 'round without you -
You're the one thing I never thought I could live without.
I just found this smile to think about you;
You're a Saturday night far from the madding crowd.

***

Merrion Square





***

After three years, it is hard to remember what day we visited the museums and galleries. It seems improbable that we did all of these on Sunday, but our Saturday plans swerved into an unexpected direction at midday.

The day before, on February 14, 2003, Hans Blix had delivered his latest report on Iraqi compliance with Resolution 1441 to the UN Security Council. In part he said:

How much, if any, is left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programmes? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed. Another matter - and one of great significance - is that many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for. To take an example, a document, which Iraq provided, suggested to us that some 1,000 tonnes of chemical agent were "unaccounted for". One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented.

We are fully aware that many governmental intelligence organizations are convinced and assert that proscribed weapons, items and programmes continue to exist. The US Secretary of State presented material in support of this conclusion. Governments have many sources of information that are not available to inspectors. Inspectors, for their part, must base their reports only on evidence, which they can, themselves, examine and present publicly. Without evidence, confidence cannot arise.

If we'd picked up a copy of the Guardian that morning, we would have seen the following article:

A case for war? Yes, say US and Britain. No, say the majority

Britain last night insisted it would press ahead with framing the resolution. An official said it was unlikely that a draft resolution would be circulated over the weekend. Instead, it would be pushed back until Tuesday at the earliest. "If you slap down a piece of paper right away, it doesn't look like you were listening."

The French and Russian foreign ministers were given rare applause in the council chamber yesterday when they demanded more time for inspections, in striking contrast to the stony silence that greeted hoarse and irritable insistence that time had run out from Colin Powell, the US secretary of state.

Me: I had forgotten that the march was today. I saw them organizing a bus for the people in the village to get to London last week. They'll be travelling from all over England for it.
Husband: They were already covering it in San Francisco before I left.
Me: Do we have anything scheduled this afternoon?
Husband: We do now.
Me: Alright. Let's go.

Next: "When we got to Yankee land..."

Venus and Mars: Valentines Weekend in Dublin, 2003

Valentine's Weekend 2003 was the one. After a week of work on a transatlantic project that still looms in office legend, I was off for the usual extra day or two in Dublin. But this time, after much persuasion and the fortunate alignment of a three day US holiday weekend near the traditional day for romance, I had convinced my husband to join me.

For me, it would be my fourth visit. For him, the first time travelling outside the United States. For both of us, the last time visiting this place in the pure, heedless state of tourism: knowing no-one and no-one knowing us.



As the advance scout, I had already discovered the Georgian on Baggot Street. The Harcourt Hotel, of my first visit, is fondly remembered for several reasons -- one of them being its appearance in Patrick McCabe's The Dead School and therefore part of the personal Horslips walking tour for me -- but it was one long trek to and from anything. And though closer to the action, the Comfort Inn on Talbot Street was an experiment not repeated. So the Georgian, where you go outside to get back inside, where a double set of Winchester Mystery House stairs misleads you every time, and where suspiciously rounded humps in the carpet seem to shift location during the night, won out in the end.

And in 2003, registering at the front-desk with a man in tow, I was rewarded with a vast, top floor suite and a high wide-mattressed bed fitted out in soft white linen and down-filled duvet. And a shower of unimaginably warm and ceaseless water. That first afternoon, I lost one of my earrings in the bedding.

It was a shame, actually, that we had so much sightseeing planned for the weekend.

The next day we followed the advice of the taxi-driver and set off to find the Church with the relics of Saint Valentine. Apparently, we were told, they'd bless our wedding rings for us at the place.



Me: Remember that church?
Husband: I remember we got into that bad argument there.
Me: Yeah. I was remembering that too. What were we fighting about?
Husband: Can't remember. Remember the museum?
Me: Which one? The Art Gallery or History museum?
Husband: I was thinking of the Dead Animal Zoo.
Me: Remember the guys at the Cobblestone?
Husband: And that dinner after the march?
Me: Remember the march?
Husband: That was like four percent of the population there.
Me: We found that other place...not as good as Cobblestone. What was that?
Husband: We went to Trinity too. Remember?
Me: We did a lot!
Husband: You could write some of that up.
Me: I'd have to do it over a few days. That's a lot to write up.
Husband: Use pictures too.

So, yeah. Three years ago, we went to Dublin and saw some sights. It might be something I could write about over the next few posts. Not as exciting as some. But there'll be pictures.

There's a MySpace for us...

I first heard about MySpace via the Duke De Mondo, who said something along the lines of "There's a lot crap music posted on MySpace."

Then I was invited to be a 'friend' to the good folks of Drumming Up Hope back in October. I went through the motions of registering and let it go at that.

In January, the Radiators from Space -- Phil Chevron's and Pete Holidai's great Dublin punk band -- invited me to be their friend.

That got me to upload a vintage photo and make a half-assed attempt at a profile. And to browse around.

Five minutes later, I realized that there was indeed a lot of crap music posted on MySpace...and a lot of good music and a lot of music in between. There's the John Matrix Blues Quintet and their song Arnie Syndrome, for instance, which takes a bunch of my Governor's famous movie quotes and strings them out over some "metal fret-wankery" (as one commentator describes it) and basically calls it a song.

After the first 24 hours of listening to it, I've told more people about this Arnie song than I did in a month about my first Horslips album.

To be fair, if Horslips had sampled a local politician in the mix (Gerry Brown? Sonny Bono? Or--God Forbid--Ronald Reagan?), I'da had an angle.

But imagine my surprise at my coworkers' reaction when I mentioned the source of all this free music. And this forum that has expanded my musical-interest base exponentially by the hour.

Me: So I've registered at MySpace and you'll never guess...
Coworker #1: MySpace? Isn't that for kids?
Coworker #2: You saw that program on TV this weekend? About that girl?
Me: Kids? The guys who got me hooked were playing punk rock in Dublin. In the 70s!
Coworker #2: And then this other thing on the radio was talking about the kids who bully on MySpace.
Me: Okay. There's a whole section on CyberBullying with tips and resources! And it is NOT just for kids.
CoWorker #1: My friend was telling me about MySpace. Actually...his kid was telling me about it.
CoWorker #3: Hey. Ease up. MySpace is a perfectly capable and popular Virtual Social Network. One of the most popular on the net...
Me: There! See?
CoWorker #3:..for kids.

The MySpace Generation

At the same time, her boyfriend IMs her a retail store link to see a new PC he just bought, and she starts chatting with him. She's also postering for the next Buzz-Oven concert by tacking the flier on various friends' MySpace profiles, and she's updating her own blog on Xanga.com, another social network she uses mostly to post photos. The TV is set to TBS, which plays a steady stream of reruns like Friends and Seinfeld -- Adams has a TV in her bedroom as well as in the living room -- but she keeps the volume turned down so she can listen to iTunes over her computer speakers. Simultaneously, she's chatting with dorm mate Carrie Clark, 20, who's doing pretty much the same thing from a laptop on her bed.

You have just entered the world of what you might call Generation @. Being online, being a Buzzer, is a way of life for Adams and 3,000-odd Dallas-area youth, just as it is for millions of young Americans across the country. And increasingly, social networks are their medium. As the first cohort to grow up fully wired and technologically fluent, today's teens and twentysomethings are flocking to Web sites like Buzz-Oven as a way to establish their social identities. Here you can get a fast pass to the hip music scene, which carries a hefty amount of social currency offline. It's where you go when you need a friend to nurse you through a breakup, a mentor to tutor you on your calculus homework, an address for the party everyone is going to. For a giant brand like Coke, these networks also offer a direct pipeline to the thirsty but fickle youth market.

Preeminent among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose membership has nearly quadrupled since January alone, to 40 million members. Youngsters log on so obsessively that MySpace ranked No. 15 on the entire U.S. Internet in terms of page hits in October, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Millions also hang out at other up-and-coming networks such as Facebook.com, which connects college students, and Xanga.com, an agglomeration of shared blogs. A second tier of some 300 smaller sites, such as Buzz-Oven, Classface.com, and Photobucket.com, operate under -- and often inside or next to -- the larger ones.

More at the link.

"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now."

By all that is rock-n-roll, Hapa’s cover of U2’s Pride (In the Name of Love) wouldn't rate much from the critics. With the righteous majesty of Bono’s vocals replaced by Barry Flanagan’s sincere, understated delivery of the lyric and a blend of female backing vocals on the chorus, the song feels less like a rock classic and more like a communal hymn--the sort heard in one of the many open-walled, seafront chapels of the islands. Edge’s pyrotechnic guitar-work is not recalled either. Instead, Flanagan’s years of study in Kiho Alu, or slack-key guitar smooths the melody’s rough edges down to elemental form, polishing away ostentation and fire.

Like grey, featureless pieces of driftwood found in the wash of the tide, U2’s soaring tribute has undergone a sea-change in Hapa’s hands.

But if Hapa has detracted from the power and might of Bono’s stadium anthem, their version brings other qualities to the song. These -- as I describe them -- will sound like the theatrically emotional tricks of the overly-earnest. There’s the inclusion of the recorded voice of Martin Luther King Jr. himself, giving his “I have been to the mountaintop” speech, which, as the link says, he gave in support of the striking sanitation workers at Mason Temple in Memphis the day before he was assassinated.

And then -- and this is the part that will sound the most ridiculous as I describe it, but never fails to send an electric charge of thrill through me when I hear it -- there is a male voice -- older certainly, but strong -- that begins reciting in slow, cadenced Hawaiian a fragmant of the oral, tribal history of his people.

‘Hapa’ in Hawaiian means ‘half.’ It is often used as an adjective to modify a noun signifying some element of aboriginal cutlure touched by the post contact world. ‘Hapa-Haole’ -- half Hawaiian, half white -- describes the macaronic songs in the island’s catalog of music. “Tiny Bubbles,” properly sung with all the verses, is Hapa-Haole. “Little Grass Shack” on the other hand is pure Haole.

As their website states, Hapa, the band is "an amalgam of influences ranging from ancient Polynesian rhythms and genealogical chants to the strummed ballads of Portuguese fisherman, Spanish cowboys, and the inspired melodies and harmonies of the traditional church choirs of the early missionaries." Barry Flanagan, who left New York in 1980, is the founder. Fellow guitarist Nathan Aweau is from Honolulu. Charles Ka’upa, who provides the chant described above, is from a family that

comes from the island of Moloka‘i with another part of the family well established on the island of Hawai'i as well. He has spent the better part of his life teaching, be it History, Culture, Religion, lecturing not only at Maui Community College, Maui Campus, but on the islands of Lana‘i and Moloka‘i as well. He has also traveled to Washington D.C. to lecture at the National Geographic Headquarters, performing there as well at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian's ground-breaking ceremony.

Much can be written about what it was that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered to America. I am inadequate to this task. Instead, I believe that King’s own words speak for his life the best:

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

LPs, CDs and Mp3sIt Goes to Show You Never Can Tell

When I posted yesterday's news about this Christmas being the digital music Christmas, I made an effort to find a rock quote that mentioned the technology of the era...because that 'record machine' in Eddie Cochrane's Twenty Flight Rock was no doubt affordable and portable. And check out the lyrics here in Chuck Berry's Mississippi romance:

It was a teenage wedding, and the old folks wished them well
You could see that Pierre did truly love the madamoiselle
And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell,
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale
The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale,
But when Pierre found work, the little money comin' worked out well
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blast
Seven hundred little records, all rock, rhythm and jazz
But when the sun went down, the rapid tempo of the music fell
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

I will assume that the 'seven hundred little records' were 45s. The common currency of rock-n-roll music for a long time until album-length rock became ascendant. And Eddie's rockin Queen would have a fine collection of Sun 45s herself. Put your cat clothes on...

Ticharu makes a great comment under the post:

I currantly own over 3,ooo CDs but the writing is on the wall. Smaller is better. Full circle can't be far behind, where once again musicians will make a living simple playing live for an audience.

And it occurred to me that full circle has already been reached, in part, as the Mp3 of a single song standing alone or in the mix of many, many songs on the Mp3 player is well and truly a descendent of that 45.

Another thought: album length vinyl is actually on the rise among certain groups. I recently thrilled to finding an album from an obscure British psychedelic band called Forest that had first been released in 1971. Looking at the cover in the Brighton Record Shop, I was perplexed to see a web domain for the record label printed on the cover. After buying the album and -- so very carefully -- taking it home, I opened it up to find I had a brand new record! Re-issued obviously, but manufactured in this decade. Delicious!

"Well I got a girl with a record machine,When it comes to rocking she's a queen."

Digital music enjoys a dream week

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - There was so much legitimate downloading in the final week of 2005 that it recalled the impossible tallies research firms used in the late 1990s to dazzle venture capitalists and scare the daylights out of major-label executives.

In the seven-day stretch between Christmas and the new year, millions of consumers armed with new MP3 players (primarily iPods) and stacks of gift cards gobbled up almost 20 million tracks from iTunes and other download retailers, Nielsen SoundScan reports.

In the process, consumers shattered the tracking firm's one-week record for download sales.

A look inside the numbers shows just how unprecedented a week it was for the download business:

- Before the week ending January 1, 2006, the record for the most downloads sold in seven days was 9.5 million tracks -- set just one week earlier.

- Sales of 20 million songs were almost three times the amount of digital tracks sold in the same seven-day span a year ago.

- Fifteen songs on the current Hot Digital Songs chart surpassed the one-week record for sales of a single track.

- Rap group D4L's "Laffy Taffy" took the top spot with 175,000 tracks sold, more than doubling the mark of 80,500 downloads Kanye West's "Gold Digger" set the week of September 17.

- Each of the top 11 titles on the Hot Digital Songs chart sold more than 100,000 downloads.

For the year, the digital track sales tally reached 352 million -- a 147% increase over 2004's total of 142.6 million.

In comparison to the volume of music that is downloaded through peer-to-peer networks, those numbers may not seem like much. P2P monitoring service Big Champagne estimates that at least 250 million tracks are downloaded worldwide each week from file-swapping services.

But a dramatic rise in the tide of authorized download sales in recent weeks suggests that changes may be afoot in the consumer's relationship to digital music.

The important question for the music business is whether 20 million downloads represents the new baseline for digital track sales. A year ago, a 33% pop in download sales in the week following Christmas permanently raised the bar on weekly download volume by 2 million tracks.

Technology and distribution executives at the major labels are not holding their breath that download sales will now run at a rate of almost triple the 7 million tracks that were being sold on average in December. They say big sales of gift cards are likely creating the current volume of such significant downloads.

Yet gift cards were available in 2004, too. If the market can retain volume gain as it did last year, the numbers are tantalizing. Last year, sales fell by about 20% in the weeks following New Year's; such a drop this year would yield a weekly volume baseline close to 16 million tracks. That would put the download market on pace for sales of 750 million to 1 billion tracks in 2006.

Likely to drive the download business is the fact that the number of iPods and other MP3 players in distribution have exploded in the last year. The Computer Electronics Assn. estimates that MP3 player revenue increased 200% to more than $3 billion in 2005.

Apple claims to have sold more than 30 million iPods to date, but will likely have shipped a total close to that number in 2005 alone.

Research firm NPD Group estimates MP3 player revenue at leading retailers topped $500 million on sales of more than 3.3 million units for the five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas--a 65% jump in dollar volume from the 2004 holidays. Sales of MP3 accessories were big too, topping $160 million during the five-week period.

NPD figures exclude direct sales of iPods through Apple Computer and online sales.

And for the first time, sales of MP3 players are surpassing sales of personal CD players and CD shelf systems, NPD reports.

"We have definitely moved," says Stephen Baker, VP of analyst services for NPD, "from MP3 players being a computer-oriented product to a consumer-directed product."

Reuters/Billboard

Posted in full because it's important news. As soon as one of the digital music sites I've been involved in for a while goes public, I'm buying stock.

It was written in 1843, after all...

After pulling out my small copy of A Christmas Carol for yesterday's title quote, I continued reading on a bit for the pure enjoyment of the writing. Came to the part where Marley tells Scrooge to expect his visitors on each subsequent night (it is 2:00 a.m. at this point). Scrooge awakes to hear twelve chimes on the clock and is disoriented by the sense of going backwards or far forwards in time:

“Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “That I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!”

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely colkd, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief because “three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United States’ security if there were no days to count by.

Wow! Slam! Right out of nowhere with that one! Well, who’s your daddy now, Ebenezer?

Moments of aroused chauvinistic patriotism aside, I’m quite happy that A Christmas Carol is out there as one of the seasonal classics. First of all, and most importantly for a holiday story, it can scare the crap out of you as a kid (which it did) and features no less than three speaking parts for ghosts. (TGOCF doesn’t speak…remember?) It stands relatively alone in the field of holiday fiction in its use of the macabre to make a point. The Nightmare Before Christmas now possibly running a close second.

Then there's a whole gamut of family and extended family vignettes: young Ebenezer left at school for the holiday break; the classic office party at Fezziwig’s where we can imagine Ebenezer’s friend Dick dropping trousers and climbing up on the printing press to leave an amusingly inked holiday impression for the Monday morning crew; the lighthouse keepers celebrating alone with grog, song, and companionship; that insufferably cheery nephew’s party (take me away from this, o Spirit!), and – at the heart of it -- the threadbare Cratchit household which is quite depressing if you pay attention to the details. Almost the whole economic scale there.

I believe I’ve read somewhere that Dickens didn’t ‘do’ aristocracy, and their absence in A Christmas Carol is pretty telling. Instead at the very brink of the most cheerful Hallmark moment scene of syrup and sweet, The Ghost of Christmas Present pulls back his robe to reveal two small children:

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say that were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! Are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand toward the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!”

Recommended quick read: John Nichols on “The Rebel Jesus”, Commondreams.org.

***

The other great thing about A Christmas Carol is that it has loaned itself to endless variations and parody over the years. I've seen the lot, but have a special fondness for the Jim Backus-voiced version with the song about Razzle-Berry Dressing:

"Oh Ebenezer, you've done it again!"

(From DVD Movie Guide)

and the WKRP one with the brownie-wielding Dr. Johnny Fever as the Ghost of Christmas Future:

Johnny Ghost: Bailey runs a television station in Chicago. Travis is breeding guard dogs in New Mexico. Venus owns a clothing company called "Upwardly Mobile." Jennifer married and bought herself an entire island off the coast of Sardinia. Les Nessman? The Republican whip of the United States Senate!
Mr Carlson: What about you and me? Fever and me?
Johnny Ghost: Well, Fever just sort of ... disappeared. There were rumours, of course, but really not much else.
Mr Carlson: And me? No no, don't tell me, I don't want to know. I'm dead, aren't I?

But this year, after seeing a Lifetime channel ad for some piece of fluff with a soccer mom over-extending her cellphone bill and not having enough 'face' time for the kids (I may be extrapolating on this plotline, but I'll bet I'm close...) called "A Carol's Christmas" I decided to ignore any more Dickensian tributes, homages, parodies, rip-offs and such.

Then I visited Generic Mugwump...

Now whatever little 'thing' the Duke De Mondo has going for Conor Oberst's fringe (yeah, I finally found that essay), it pales in comparison to the torch his otherwise-sensible friend Aaron Fleming keeps lit for Jeff Fahey.

It is a dark world where highways intersect with crash cymbals, and large portraits of varicose-veined eyes line the sky. Fayhey and his guide reintegrate beside a flaming Porcupine having sex with Bodger, this is indeed a mad world. As Fayhey stands looking at the chaos surrounding him, alphabet spaghetti starts to rain down from the sky. “What is the meaning of all this?” he asks the feedback. “Well,” it replies, “this is what will happen if you continue with this propensity to miss classic films at Christmas.”

And from this morning's visit to obtain these last few links, I see that the Uncle Duke De Mondo has had a change of heart and given us a Holiday themed Mondo Podcast #14.

Why, that even beats of bowl of razzle-berry dressing!

"I awoke in California, many miles from Spancil Hill"

The last of my Euros is paying for a bit of time online, but I'm coming home tomorrow and will repay all the kind visits from Brownie, Count Screwloose, Guy Wonders and others.

My 72 hours in Dublin can't rival the Duke De Mondo's, but a last minute inspiration and a good (new) friend got me to the Phil Lynott statue. Pictures may not be the best, but they were taken.

All in all, a fantastic trip.

More to follow.