Yo La Tengo offers a holiday present. Download the whole show here.
Yo La Tengo would be in the inner orbit of bands rotating through the two non-permanent spots of My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game even if they weren't Kind folk.
So you're going to do a Yo La Tengo cascade tomorrow, K said at what we hope is the penultimate but is probably the last Thursday Night Pints of 2013 after I said Holyfuck! at a tweet that offered the above. Yup, I said. Giftmas shit was all over the bar, crappy Giftmas rock played every other song on the muzack, not a single unexpected song in the playlist. Nothing, said L, reminds me more I hate Bruce Springsteen than his fucking Christmas song. True that, I said, getting up to buy a pint for me and two squat tumblers filled to the sixteenth with ridiculously priced amber Nyquil for my friends. At the bar, waiting, I looked at the empty fourth chair at the table that used to be filled by D, when I got back K and L were talking about D, how the next time the three of us see each other we're more likely to be wearing Show Respect Clothes than drinking in a Georgetown bar. Well, fuck, I said, sitting down. Peace, D, said L. Clink.
- Harder not faster.
- No one in Yo La Tengo is going to read this shitty blog, but just in case, Thanks! for your generosity with your music.
- I fail a hundred times for every time I succeed so who am I to harangue, but be Kind, motherfuckers, it's not as much work or mandatory shit-swilling as legend suggests.
- Barring KABOOM! music & poems alone this weekend (if anything, besides possible template watershedding).
- A friend has gone into my coding and says she thinks I can now change templates even if I still can't change anything on the template currently used. It'd be a throw the switch see what happens moment. She says she doesn't know whether the Apply to Template button which doesn't work now on my current template will work if I change templates, meaning if I change template and can't alter its appearance I not only will never get back to this green again, I will be stuck with whatever defaults the template I move to, and all subsequent templates, default to.
- What to do, what to do? Tune in Saturday to see either change or not, and everyday! though if I do it it will be this weekend, unless it's next Wednesday, or...
- Never mind, I'm not going to throw the switch, who am I kidding, fine metaphors abound.
- A reminder for regulars, perhaps news to newbies, a dark type on light background version of this shitty blog exists here, it was created during a domain name/Blooger crisis this past summer, now used as back-up for the upcoming Blooger crises, whenever, whatever.
- There are multiple new sites in blogrolls, please visit when they float to the top with new posts.
- There are multiple old sites in blogrolls, please visit when they float to the top with new posts.
- Please let me know if you are Kinding me and me not you.
- Thanks for reading.
- I-Glasses. New Tom.
- but mostly she's just itching to kick. New Brad.
- Arcology is not the scholarly study of arks.
- Freddie Mercury's home videos.
- Prunella's 2013 playlist.
- Randal's 2013 playlist.
- Both have excellent taste with the unfortunate exception of Alice in Chains, a band of Soundgarden level suck.
- As Kindly put as I'm capable.
- At the Executed Murderer's Grave. A poem by James Wright, D's favorite poet.
- A Secret Gratitude. Ibid.
- In Response to a Rumor that the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling West Virginia Has Been Condemned. Ibid.
- The Blessing. Ibid.
- D sent me the Wright poem below in an email over the summer, no doubt for a reason.
THE JOURNEY
James Wright
Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind the town,
We too were swept out, out by the wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.
Wind had been blowing across the hills
For days, and everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything we saw, even
Some small children scampering along a road,
Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.
We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,
And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.
I found the spider web there, whose hinges
Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,
Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging
And scattering shadows among shells and wings.
And then she stepped into the center of air
Slender and fastidious, the golden hair
Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,
While ruins crumbled on every side of her.
Free of the dust, as though a moment before
She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.
I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped
Away in her own good time.
Many men
Have searched all over Tuscany and never found
What I found there, the heart of the light
Itself shelled and leaved, balancing
On filaments themselves falling. The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins, and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who surely
Will bury their own, don’t worry.
