Fredo Don't Live Here Anymore

Today, as I was putting on some vinyl, I heard the news on the radio: Gonzales to announce his resignation.

Then I put on the record: Vanilla Fudge's first album that starts with "Ticket to Ride." This evening when I arrive home I'll put on the other side with "Keep Me Hangin' On", which reminds me that the nightmare doesn't end when the sinking ship leaves a few rats.

Third Stone from the Sun

93 million miles never seemed so close. I think this is fodder for some great psyche lyrics.

Like White on Rice

#'s: Iowa imprisons blacks at more than 13 times the rate of whites. I guess residents have to resort to white on white crime.

(Justice Department stats: from 1976-2005: 86% of white victims were killed by whites; 94% of black victims were killed by blacks. The blather about "black on black crime" is simply that. Residential segregation has a greater impact on crime statistics than anything else and there exists no inherent moral flaw that racists will ascribe to the African-American community.)

I'm Just a Singer in a Rock'n'Roll Band

As many things as I've collected, I've shied away from amassing many band/concert t-shirts.

The trend started early, when I bypassed t-shirts celebrating "Long Distance Voyageur" or "Broadsword and the Beast" as my friends enthusiastically scooped them up.

To whit, I can offer a brief roster of the rock t-shirts I now have: Bettie Serveert, Olivia Tremor Control, Tortoise, Clem Snide, Jennie Stearns, Elephant 6, and most recently Akron/Family.

I don't know if that selection reflects on who I am, but it is a sign of how NOT to chart a successful music career. Collectively, those bands have sold about 100,000 albums and been together for about 50 years.

I gave up trying to forecast the success of bands when I saw Mazzy Star in 1990 and predicted them as the Next Big Thing. Yeah, I know... Mazzy who?

Words that go bump in the night

Sometimes I awake before sunrise, and is often the case, a phrase lodges itself in my head and I mull it over endlessly and tediously. The phrase the other morning was "Mayberry Machiavellians."

I had read a quote with that phrase in a blog and it dovetails neatly into Carl Rove's arrogance the week preceding the November 2006 elections. In unrelated web probing, a recent link sent me to Rove's wikipedia entry where it reports that after several stints at colleges over the years (some enrollment appeared to be simply an attempt to reduce his chances of being drafted to serve in Vietnam) Rove never collected enough credits to graduate.

His explanation for why he didn't graduate? He was short the foreign language requirement and a math class.

Come to think of it, I don't think Otis graduated from college either.

For every silver lining there's a cloud

Hmmmm.... let's see. I lived in New Orleans in the '90's, upstate New York in 2001, and now Minneapolis.

Does anyone notice a pattern here?

Strange Fruit

Mrs. B went to an anti-racism workshop and brought me home a t-shirt that advocates the cause. On the first day I decide to wear it, my four-year old son K refers to a young boy who was riding with him on a carnival ride as a "black boy."

Wha? I say to him. I told K that we refer to a boy as a "boy"- not as a "black boy."

K backpedals and says that he meant the boy was riding in a black car. I didn't entirely believe him.

Sigh. It starts so early. I'm blaming that damn YMCA bus where he also learned the word "booger" and a bastardized version of "Play that Funky Music, White Boy."

Cousins by the Dozen

Best quote from the recent North Carolina family reunion came from B'rer Fred:

"Family- it's just a different kind of hate."