Exhaustion

That's how I feel... as does the rest of the family.

Just spent the last four days at the National Water Polo Junior Olympics. Kyle's team did well... they went in seeded 41 out 48 teams invited, and ended up 21st in the nation! They had the biggest leap of seed-to-finish. Our friend Joe's team was seeded 6th and finished there as well. [btw, another friend Blake was in Lincoln, NE, over the weekend for the track and field JO's and finished sixth in the nation as well...] Very cool.

Of course, not cool was Kyle getting rolled for a brutality call in the last game. In an attempt to swim the ball away from a defender, he was grabbed on the arm from behind, and when he stroked forward, he had his hand balled into a fist... and the ref mistook it for an attempt to cause harm. So he was rolled for the game (and will miss the next USA Water Polo-sanctioned game... thank goodness it was the last game of the tournament). Thankfully, his team was able to go undermanned for the last four minutes of the game.

He had a pretty good weekend... and we saw some great teams. But we're tired now, and I'm back to work... sigh.

Random Life

Yeah, it's been a while. Life gets in the way. So freaking sue me.

Some random thoughts:

Kids at eight are a pain... this I remember from Kyle and now Jack is there.

Kids at fourteen are a pain... this I'm finding out now.

I remember age two being a pain as well (so the last time we had the double whammy of both kids being a pain was back in 02 ... funny, I think that's when Lisa and I did a short period of very successful couples therapy).

Club sports take a toll on family, time, energy and the wallet (JOs are this weekend, and I cannot wait for this to be over).

The Dark Knight was exactly that... and excellent.

The first ep of Generation Kill was pretty cool, the portion I saw.

Expectations suck... that's what I got out of therapy. I don't know. Maybe I had expectations under control for a while there, and now they're back. Or maybe they never went away, and they're just higher (worse?) now. I don't know.

I think I need more drugs.

That last one was a joke.

I think...

The Power of Song: Handlebars

OK, like I said last week in starting this series, Kyle and I have been listening to music a lot on the road to polo lately.

Last Friday, we heard this for the first time (sorry if it's old news to you... it's new to us):

"Handlebars" by the Flobots

A gentle plucking (arpeggios?) of an acoustic guitar sets up the chord progression. Then as a soft bass comes in, the singer begins (as if through a telephone or over a taped message):

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars

And at this point, there's a drum fill, and a syncopated beat kicks in, and the singer begins to rap:

Look at me, look at me
hands in the air like it's good to be
ALIVE

I've felt that childish joy (just not as often now that I'm 45).

and I'm a famous rapper
even when the paths're all crookedy
I can show you how to do-si-do
I can show you how to scratch a record

Haven't felt this per se, but it still has the youthful exuberance and bravado (a la Springsteen's "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)") that I can relate to.

I can take apart the remote control
And I can almost put it back together

[now at this point, on first listen, we thought it was a comedy piece (especially as the vocal sounds a little "Weird Al"-ish here)]
The narrator can take something apart, but he can't put it back together... destroy, but not create. Is this a statement about childhood? or is it a statement about this narrator?

I can tie a knot in a cherry stem
I can tell you about Leif Ericson
I know all the words to "De Colores"
And "I'm Proud to be an American"
Me and my friend saw a platypus
Me and my friend made a comic book
And guess how long it took
I can do anything that I want cuz, look:

And I'm feeling a shift toward adolescence (with the cherry stem, and Viking history). Now the first time I heard this, I heard the "De Colores" reference (which is a song Lisa teaches in her two-way immersion language academy), and then I heard that the narrator was "proud to be an American"... which gives me a good feeling (multicultural knowledge coupled with patrotism)... but the reference to the Lee Greenwood song... well, that threw me. Now I see the beginnings of a dichotomy, between understanding and jingoism. But then the lyrics go back to childish pleasures (as the adolescent years often do swing from the adult to the childish and back again).

I can keep rhythm with no metronome
No metronome
No metronome

And with this stanza, we can hear the faint buzz of a distorted electric guitar creeping into the background.

And I can see your face on the telephone
On the telephone
On the telephone

After the first "telephone," we hear a muted trumpet come in... just as we realize that he's now talking about doing the impossible (had he said "cell phone" I wouldn't feel this way, but he didn't [no matter what the video shows]).

Look at me
Look at me
Just called to say that it's good to be
ALIVE
In such a small world
I'm all curled up with a book to read

The rapping is becoming a little more urgent, and the tone moves from childish joy to another kind of joy: complacent arrogance. And he begins to rattle off all the things he can do, each a little more outlandish than the one before:

I can make money open up a thrift store
I can make a living off a magazine
I can design an engine sixty four
Miles to a gallon of gasoline
I can make new antibiotics
I can make computers survive aquatic conditions

Then he moves from what he can do, to how he can do it, becoming a packager of product (only the product is him)...

I know how to run a business
I can make you wanna buy a product
Movers shakers and producers
Me and my friends understand the future

And with this "understanding," we hear his arrogance begin to run out of control:

I see the strings that control the systems
I can do anything with no assistance

And now we're back to the chorus (if there is one), and that buzzing electric guitar is now pushed to the fore, giving the music a harder, angrier edge, folding in nicely in tone with his megalomania:

Cuz I can lead a nation with a microphone
With a microphone
With a microphone
And I can split the atom of a molecule
Of a molecule
Of a molecule

And as the instrumental break begins, we hear that trumpet come in again, and it (rather than the guitars) take over the solo. The calm melody line of the trumpet, on first listen, makes you expect the narrator to pull back from his messianic tendency, but...

Look at me
Look at me
Driving and I won't stop

The rap now is urgent, intense, almost spat out. And on "stop" the music stops, as if obeying its master, the narrator. Then he allows it to restart and he tells us

And it feels so good to be
Alive and on top

Again, a stop, but shorter this time, just to accentuate his position "on top." And then his totalitarian ambition is achieved:

My reach is global
My tower secure
My cause is noble

[what despot didn't think he was doing it for the good]

My power is pure

And he proclaims his god-like power:

I can hand out a million vaccinations
Or let'em all die in exasperation

[God giveth, and the taketh away]

Have'em all healed of their lacerations
Have'em all killed by assassination

He can have people killed, or imprisioned:

I can make anybody go to prison
Just because I don't like'em and

And then, at least to my reading, we get a little glimpse into our own "leader":

I can do anything with no permission
I have it all under my command

Sounds an awful lot like Bush's theory of the Unitary Executive, no?

And all the time this rant/rap has been going, the guitars have become more swirling, distorted, and angry.

Because I can guide a missile by satellite
By satellite
By satellite
And I can hit a target through a telescope
Through a telescope
Through a telescope

And here's the path of our narrator taken to its logical extreme.

And I can end the planet in a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust

And the truly scary part is, every time he says "holocaust," his audience cheers. After the last holocaust, the music crescendos and falls, and the narrator immediately returns to the first image:

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars

And the acoustic plucking now drowns out the fading buzz of the distorted electric.

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars

And the song ends, full circle.

Kyle says it starts as a child, the beginning of life... and after the end, there will be a new beginning... only the cycle never ends.

And they say 14's not a cynical age.

The Word of the Day

(from my friends at wordsmith.org)

callipygian

This is a great word. When you look up callipygian in the dictionary, is this what you see?

The Power of Song: What a Wonderful World

I know, I know... the posts are beginning to lag behind life. I think that's a good thing. Summer goes on. Kyle's water polo obligations show no sign of letting up, and work is beginning to heat up.

On the frequent trips to take Kyle to practice, we're having more time to listen to and discuss music. And it's reminding me of why I love music.... so I figure at least once a week (or at least that's the plan), I'm going to take a song and ponder it, a la Nick Hornby's 31 Songs (the number one of which is, as it is in my list... but not my blog, Springsteen's "Thunder Road"). So to start off, let's hit:

"What a Wonderful World" by Joey Ramone.


OK, yes, I know. It's a cover version: Louis Armstrong did a pretty famous version in 1967 (used most effectively in Good Morning, Vietnam)... but even Armstrong didn't write it (that credit goes to George Weiss & Bob Thiele). But that doesn't bother me: some of the Ramones' greatest songs were covers ("Needles and Pins" and "California Sun" come immediately to mind).

In fact, the existence of such a well-known version is what makes this version so great. While Armstrong's is soft and incredibly lilting (and lifting), Joey' starts with a bang, crunching guitars setting up an insistent rhythm. Then a short burst of drums, another, then an almost syncopated rhythm. The guitar drops to a basic shuffle rhythm and the drums sort themselves out as well, and then his voice, as always, almost snarling, but always completely vulnerable, kicks in:

I see trees of green, red roses too.
I see them bloom, for me and you.
And I say to myself... what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue, and clouds of white.
Bright sunny days, dark sacred nights
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world...

And it's hope, pure hope. And with each chorus-line, the guitars get racheted up with power chords and the syncopated beat reenters.

Then as the power chords take over, the refrain kicks in:

The colors of the rainbow
Are so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces
Of people walking by
I see friends shaking hands
Sayin' how do you do
They're really sayin'......I love you.

The guitars and drums, swirling and unstoppable, run counterpoint to the softness of the lyrics here. To hear Joey sing "so pretty in the sky" sounds almost ironic--the "so pretty" sung over such raucous music--but remember that Joey was Punk's romantic (check out the Ramones' "I Wanna be your Boyfriend" if you need further proof). And while the tone is happy, so is the sentiment (the colors of the rainbow are on the faces of people... a truly international statement... and the casual greetings of people--handshakes and "how do you do"'s--are really statements of love).

And then, instead of any instrumental break, as in the Armstrong version, the song goes directly into the final verse:

I see babies cry while I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself .......what a wonderful world.

and that last "world" gets repeated over the next couple of bars, and the voice gets overdubbed into a chorus of "worlds". And this is where the message is driven home: there is no instrumental break BECAUSE THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME. He sees the babies, and while he can watch them grow, he won't be able to watch them "grow up"... he knows that the babies will learn "much more" than he'll "ever know." What gives him this insight, this knowledge that the kids will learn more than he'll know?

Because he knows he's dying.

Joey recorded the song only weeks before he died of lymphoma in April of 2001. He had battled the disease for over four years, he knew the end was coming, he knew there was so little time left, certainly no time for guitar solos or instrumental breaks.

And he sings the last line one last time: stopping after "and I say to myself," stopping with the guitars and the drums, and you think for just an instant that is it, this is how the song ends, this is how life ends: abrupt and unfinished. But then his voice kicks in for a final "what a wonderful world" and it's strong, resilient, and the guitars and drums come back for one last flourish before stopping the song for the final time.

No fadeouts, no chorus droning on over and over. Just a finish. Completeness. Finality.

Two minutes and twenty-three seconds. Just over a hundred words. But powerful. Incredibly powerful. In my opinion, just about the perfect combination of song, singer, production, and back-story (one that includes Joey listening to U2's "In A Little While" on his deathbed). And just about my favorite recording of all time.

But my life isn't ending... I've still got time to talk about more songs (and someday soon: Flobots' "Handlebars", Springsteen's "Thunder Road", "The Price You Pay", and "Darkness on the Edge of Town" -- and maybe "Further on up the Road" -- and so many others).

Keep your ears and hearts open.