stormville

Spam Poetry

2012-01-20T09:40:00.001-05:00

This is an actual comment received on this blog. Formatting and spelling are exactly as I received it.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Game Theory and Loud Family Lyrics":

Drop in on us at the moment to

come by more facts and facts

in the matter of Drop in on us

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the matter of

O'Reilly books color code for book spines

2012-01-06T08:51:00.002-05:00

LINK

From Edie Freedman, Creative Director, O'Reilly, on 13 January 2011:

Web Design/Development: Teal
Programming: Magenta
Perl: Turquoise blue
Java: Dark purple
Apple: Light purple
System and Network Admin: Dark blue
Windows: Royal blue
Security: Yellow
Oracle: Orange
Data: Bright red
Mobile: Grassy green
Linux: Warm brown-red
In a Nutshell references: Rust red metallic

As topics morph and/or grow, we may introduce new colors and retire others. For example, you'll find some Data titles in the Programming group (we will change the color to our relatively new Data red when we reprint those titles).

-Edie Freedman, Creative Director at O'Reilly

Stormville's editorial comment: The perceptive reader will note these are Borgesian categories.

The William Faulkner Foundation First Novel Award

2011-10-29T14:29:00.003-04:00

In 1949, William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. With some of the money he was awarded, he set up the William Faulkner Foundation. One of the things the Foundation did was award an annual prize for Notable First Novel. Who won this prize, you ask? So did I. Most people know that Thomas Pynchon won it for V. But finding a list of all the winners? The Internet failed me. (I feel like Herbert Stencil or Oedipa Maas). I even came up empty from a search of the usually reliable New York Times archive.

Faulkner died in 1962, leaving his papers to the University of Virginia. The papers are in Charlottesville under the name "Linton Massey Papers" (Massey was a friend, archivist and biographer of Faulkner). UVA has a very useful guide to the Massey Papers online that lists the award-winning authors from 1960 (the first award) through 1968. (More on UVA's Faulkner collections here.)

Matthew Hunte, in a great 2010 blog post, 75 Notes For An Unwritten Essay on Literary Prizes, says the Faulkner Foundation Award "was discontinued in the by the [sic] early eighties when the foundation ran out of money." Seems like Hunte himself isn't sure when the Faulkner Award was ended. (Foundations are basically required by the IRS to give their money away).

In 1980, the Faulkner Award was revived in name as the PEN/Faulkner award. It was first awarded in 1981 to Walter Abish for How German Is It? and has been given annually ever since. A list of winners is here.... except for what looks like one inexplicable omission, Ha Jin's 2000 win for Waiting. (Oddly -- the U. of New Orleans web site says that Rick Barton won that year for A House Divided. Yes, it's another mystery.)

Okay, my dozen readers! Anyone know any of the other winners? Anyone near enough to Charlottesville to do some legwork and figure out the other winners?

William Faulkner Foundation Notable First Novel Award winners

1960 A Separate Peace - John Knowles
1961 Stowaway- Lawrence Hall
1962 A Long and Happy Life - Reynolds Price
1963 V. - Thomas Pynchon
1964 Powdered Eggs- Charles Simmons
1965 The Orchard Keeper- Cormac McCarthy
1966 The Origin of the Brunists - Robert Coover
1967 A Hall of Mirrors - Robert Stone
1968 A Fan's Notes - Frederick Exley
1969 ????
1970 What I'm Going to Do, I Think - Larry Woiwode
1971 ????
1972 Geronimo Rex - Barry Hannah
1973 ????
All other years????

Gödel, Escher, Bach: The movie trailer

2011-06-29T22:50:00.003-04:00

In a world where a² + b² does not always equal c², one man seeks to change this.
Will Escher confuse him with impossible geometry? Will Bach charm him with a moving symphony? Will Gödel do whatever it is he does? Will Harry Potter make a lame cameo appearance?
Coming this summer:
Megan Fox as the Girl of the Golden Braid of Eternal Youth
Leonardo DiCaprio as Kürt Godel
Stephen King as MC Escher
Donald Trump as Johnny Bach
And a surprise appearance by Tim Curry as Pythagorus the evil wizard in
Gödel Escher Bach -- the Quest for the Golden Braid

These voices are crying out...for vengeance.

Essential Logic "Popcorn Boy" lyrics, or 32 Years is a Long Time to Wait

2011-04-08T00:39:00.005-04:00

Okay, guys. This is the best I can do. I'm counting on you, Internet.

Corrections and suggestions in the comments.

Author - Lora Logic, 1979
iTunes Link

---------------
You tell me to think about popcorn x x
Popcorn has gone to New York
And he said we had to stop and get some popcorn
And he said that this was right
This could be bright
In his x having world
So he claimed

So he claimed
Sometimes we mistake you for eye and eye and for an eye and fuzz

I like xxx
Your pressurized brain
Your ugly little may of
Slides slides in back
Slides slides in back
Slides slides

So if the time flies
Got no living giving
Your wipers and your x and
And you

Well you're such a lucky boy
Well you're such a lucky boy
Could it be mine
Could it be mine
Could it be mine
Will you ever hear the chorus
Can you never find the fight
Yeah yeah yeah

Cherish your ways of excellence
Welcome body
Ravish your trays of excellence
Outcome body

Your girlie
She wears a woolite xx
So she can play the flirt
She wears a woolen dress too
So you can see right through
She xx you're daring like a flirt
She murders the leisure which is your state like church

He's lost he's lost his selfish love
He's lost he's lost his selfish love
He's lost he's lost his selfish love
He's lost his selfish love
It's love
It's love
It's love
It's love
It's love
It's love
It's love

Lora Logic as a mom with 2 adorable kids!

16 Must-Have Android Apps

2011-04-02T14:47:00.018-04:00

I've been using Android for about six months now and I've tried out a lot of apps. Here are some I find essential and some that are just best in their class.

Apps that should've been included with Android

AK Notepad

Free
Probably my most-used app.
Allows you to sync your notes with the cloud.

CalenGoo

$6.43
Far, far better than the buggy included calendar app.

Orientation Lock widget

Free
A necessity. The auto-orientation flipping can be annoying.

Advanced Task Killer

Free
You need a task killer with Android to preserve the battery and to kill apps that are hung.

Google Voice

Free
Attention voice mail haters - Google Voice transcribes your voice mail! Never listen to another message! It also makes amusing voice recognition mistakes.

Music

Both of these are better than the awful stock music app.

TuneWiki

Free
It displays the lyrics of songs synchronized with the music! Awesome!

MixZing

Free
It plays songs in the order the musician intended, not alphabetically like the stock music app.

Social Networking

These probably don't need to be listed, but I do use both all the time.

Twitter

Free
Wonder if this quirky service will take off?

Foursquare

Free
Doesn't work as well to identify places near your current location as the iPhone app, but still essential.

Password Management

mSecure

$4.99
For higher security, I choose a different password for every site. So I can't do without a password app.

Dieting

Calorie Counter by FatSecret

Free
Best thing about - You can point the phone's camera at a bar code, scan it and it identifies the food with full nutritional info. It's also easy to look up foods by keyword search or food type.

Cons - The app is a bit flaky. Sometimes it just refuses to work.
Also, you need access to the Internet to view your food diary.

Calendar Widget

Pure Calendar Widget

$2.11
Great quick way to check today's appointments without opening the calendar app.

Maybe not must haves, but I like and use them a lot

Kindle

Free
Read books downloaded from Amazon. They have a lot of free public domain books, and of course some for sale. Syncs your place in the book with other Kindle apps you have.

Audible

Free
Books on audio. Good for subway riders because it needs no net connection once the book is on your phone. (Note - the audio books are not free).

V Cast Song ID

Free
The best and fastest of the song ID apps.

Shakespeare (Kontent Design)

Free
Puts all of Shakespeare (plays and poems) on your phone, so it's usable when offline.
Cons- no search.

How to disable the annoying sliding popup on nytimes.com

2011-01-10T16:57:00.004-05:00

On the New York Times web site, there is an annoying sliding popup that shows when you get to the end of an article. Here's how to disable it. (If there's an easier way, please add it in the comments.)

NOTE - This only works on Firefox.

1. Install AdBlockPlus (ABP) LINK

2, After Firefox restarts, ABP will ask you to install a "filter subscription." You can skip this step unless you want to block other ads.

3. Install ABP's Element Hiding Helper LINK

4. Firefox will restart again.

5. Visit a New York Times article. Scroll to the bottom and let the annoying sliding ad come up.

6. Click on the ABP toolbar icon - it looks like a stop sign. Select "Select element to hide."

7. Place the mouse cursor in the top margin of the popup. There should be text on the bottom that begins with "div, id: upNext".

8. Click the mouse.

9. You should get a dialog box saying:
Element hiding rule
nytimes.com###upNext

10. Click on "Add element hiding rule".

11. You can now browse the NYT's web site free of sliding popups!

iPhone 4 vs Droid X

2010-12-23T11:09:00.022-05:00

January 14, 2011: Updated with more!

(This post is forever "under construction")

I have owned an iPhone 1, an iPhone 3G, and an iPhone 4. This fall, I moved to a new office in downtown Manhattan. Suddenly, I was unable to make or receive phone calls in most places. Also, 3G service got terrible. So basically, my iPhone became an iPod Touch with a steep monthly fee. So I gave it up for a Motorola/Verizon/Google Droid X. The Verizon service has been great. Here's my personal take on what's better about each one.

Where Droid beats iPhone

(New!) Flash

This is a big one. The Droid runs Flash. Without Flash, lots of sites just don't work, or don't deliver their full content. I've read Steve Jobs's reasons/rationalizations for not supporting Flash on iOS, but it runs on Android, and so far the world is still in one piece.

Verizon cell and 3G service

Verizon's network is a joy to use, reliable all over Manhattan and there when you need it.

Screen

Droid's screen is larger, making web surfing a lot more pleasant.

Sync with Google

Droid syncs out of the box with Google contacts (iPhone can be set up to do this).

Organizing apps

Droid keeps your apps in alphabetical order.

(New!) Widgets

I like the wide variety of widgets Android has for customizing the home screens. Some of my favorites -- One-touch calling, TweetDeck, bTunes, Facebook, and Pure Calendar.

Where iPhone beats Droid

Calendar app

On Droid, the calendar app has odd bugs - it scrolls in unpredictable ways, and switches your view without warning. iPhone's calendar app just works and is much easier to use.
UPDATE - CalenGoo for Android (about $6) is pretty good. Why are the apps that come with Android so god-awful that we need to pay to replace them? I think it's because Google doesn't make any money directly from Android, so they just make the apps "good enough". Apple's reputation is riding on the user experience of the iPhone, so they take care to make it great.

Calorie counting app

Edibles for iPhone is better than anything on Droid.

Front camera

iPhone's front camera is indispensable for taking pictures of myself, whether for uploading an avatar or for vacation photos.

Built-in music app

iPhone's iPod app is much better than Droid's Music app. Droid's app skips, plays album tracks in alphabetical order (!) instead of the artist's order, and loses album art when loading your music. On the Droid, I would recommend MixZing (free). bTunes ($1.49) is also good; its interface is a clone of the iPhone's music player. UPDATE - These apps don't support podcasts, so on Android you need.. guess what.. another app.

iTunes Store

Android has no built-in music store. [UPDATE - A friend told me that Android has the Amazon MP3 store. Not very obvious, but it is there.]

New York Times app

Both phones have one, but on the iPhone, you can update all sections of the paper at once, while on Droid, you must update them one at a time. This is significant because my newspaper downloading time is a few rushed minutes in the morning before I get on the subway.

Push notifications to the home screen

iPhone has them, Droid does not. Result: I often miss text messages, and I don't get Foursquare or Twitter messages as easily.

Backup

The iPhone backs up data and apps to the Mac out of the box. Droid's over-the-air backup doesn't seem as trustworthy.

Game selection

There are far more games available for iPhone than for Android.

Uploading photos

On the iPhone, photos sync with iPhoto out of the box.

New, cool apps

Many apps are first (or only) on iPhone. For example, the Chase bank app that allows you to deposit checks on the iPhone by photographing them - not on Droid.

User Interface and navigation

I would give a slight edge to the iPhone due to its lack of hardware buttons. On Droid, the buttons hide functions and force you to guess where things are.

Killing Tasks

On the Droid, you have to constantly manually kill open programs or the battery drains quickly. iPhone does not have this problem. [UPDATE] - Tom, in a comment, says that Advanced Task Killer can do this on a schedule. I wasn't aware of the scheduling feature. Thanks! Still, this should have been a built-in OS feature, not an app.

Equal

App stores

Both have good app stores.

Still camera and video camera

Very good on both.

App updates

Both can update apps using wireless, which is convenient.

Bread and butter apps

Many apps are the same or equivalent on both platforms.

App reviews

Both app stores have user reviews.

Sorry, Droid! You have geeky cool, but when it comes to real use, the iPhone wins. ~~I may well be in line when the fabled Verizon iPhone comes out.~~ UPDATE - Well, the Verizon iPhone is out, and I'm eligible for an upgrade in two years. So I'll be sticking with my Droid X for a while.

Mind The Gap - audio

2010-06-07T23:03:00.004-04:00

"Mind the gap" - audio I recorded 27 May 2010 from the London Tube:
LINK

musical thoughts: there really should be...

2009-08-10T22:58:00.003-04:00

There really should be more Emily Dickinson in rock (like The Schramms' "Of All the Souls"). And there really should be a rock or punk cover version of Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" (are you reading this, Nick Cave?)

The Google Book Settlement

2009-08-07T13:19:00.002-04:00

Many thoughtful voices are raising questions about the settlement, which still requires court approval. Here are two recent articles, each of which contains links:

The Register 8/5/09 Link

O'Reilly Radar 4/17/09 Link

I think it is beneficial for the books to be digitized and be searchable and available to the public. I do, though, have qualms about granting Google a monopoly. I would love to know what my readers think.

Twitter follower number is wrong

2009-07-20T21:48:00.001-04:00

Twitter says I have 180 followers, but I looked at my followers list and I really only have 150. Is anyone else seeing this problem?

Delacorte Theater in Central Park (Shakespeare and other) History of Productions

2009-06-14T13:56:00.009-04:00

I was having a friendly argument with Mary Beth about whether all of Shakespeare's plays have been produced at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. So I went looking for a list of the New York Shakespeare Festival (later renamed the Public Theater) productions in the park... couldn't find one online. So I made one. Turns out all of Shakespeare's plays have been presented in the Park, except for The Two Noble Kinsmen, attributed to Shakespeare and John Fletcher. ('Kinsmen' was produced at Lafayette Street's Public Theater in 2003.) Starting and ending dates of each show are not all correct. Corrections, comments welcome.

1962 (first year of Delacorte Theater)
Merchant of Venice
The Tempest
King Lear

1963
Antony and Cleopatra Jun 13
As You Like It July 11
The Winter's Tale Aug 8-31

1964
Hamlet June 10 - July 4
Othello July 8 - Aug 1
Electra (Sophocles) Aug 5-29

1965
Love's Labour's Lost June 8
Coriolanus July 13
Troilus and Cressida Aug 10

1966
All's Well That Ends Well June 16 - July 2 (the play's New York professional premiere according to the NYT!!)
Measure for Measure July 6 - 30
Richard III Aug 3-27

1967
Comedy of Errors Jun 8
King John Jul
Titus Andronicus Aug

1968
Henry IV Parts I and II June 11 - Aug 3
Romeo and Juliet Aug 7-31

1969
two shows
Peer Gynt (Henrik Ibsen) July 8 - Aug 2
Twelfth Night Aug 6 - Aug 30

1970
The Wars of the Roses Jun 21- Aug 22
In repertory -
Wars of the Roses Part One, Wars of the Roses Part Two, (a retitling of Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3) and Richard III
Marathon production given twice - June 28
Wars of the Roses and Richard III

1971
Timon of Athens Jun 29 - Jul 18
Two Gentlemen of Verona Jul 22 - Aug 8
Cymbeline Aug 12-29

1972
Hamlet June 20
Ti-Jean and His Brothers (Derek Walcott) Aug
Much Ado About Nothing - Aug 17

1973
two shows
As You Like It June 21
King Lear Aug 1

1974
two shows
Pericles June 20
The Merry Wives of Windsor Jul 31

1975
Hamlet Jun 18 - Jul 19
Comedy of Errors Jul 24 - Aug 24

1976
Henry V Jun 24
Measure for Measure Jul 28

1977
The Threepenny Opera (Brecht/Weill) Jun 28 - Jul
Agamemnon (Aeschylus) Aug

1978
All's Well That Ends Well Jun 29-
Taming of the Shrew Aug 3

1979
Coriolanus June 28
Othello Jul 27

1980
only one show
The Pirates of Penzance (Gilbert & Sullivan) Jul 15 - Aug 24

1981
The Tempest Jun 26
Henry IV Part 1 Jul 31 - Aug 30

1982
Don Juan (Moliere) June 14- July 17
A Midsummer Night's Dream Jul 30 -Aug 28

1983
Richard III Jul 1
Non Pasquale (rewrite by Nancy Heikin and Anthony Giles of Donizetti's opera) Aug 9 - Sep 4

1984
Henry V Jun 29 - Jul 23
The Golem (H. Leivick) Aug 3

1985
Measure for Measure Jul 10 -
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Rupert Holmes's adaptation of Dickens's unfinished novel) Aug 3

1986
Twelfth Night July 2
Medea (Euripides) Aug

1987
Richard II Jun 27
Two Gentlemen of Verona Jul 30
Henry IV Part I Aug 22

1988
Much Ado About Nothing Jul 9 - 31
King John Aug - Sep 4

1989
Twelfth Night Jul 9
Titus Andronicus Aug 12

1990
Taming of the Shrew Jul 12
Richard III Aug 16
Romeo and Juliet Sept

1991
Othello June 21-
A Midsummer Night's Dream July 30 - Aug 11
The Tempest Aug 27 - Sept 8

October 31 - Joseph Papp died at 70

1992
As You Like It July 9
The Comedy of Errors Aug 16

1993
Measure for Measure July 19
All's Well That Ends Well Aug 15

1994
The Merry Wives of Windsor Jul
The Two Gentlemen of Verona Aug 18

1995
The Tempest June 22 -July 19
Troilus and Cressida Aug 4 - Sep 3

1996
Henry V Jun 30
Timon of Athens Aug

1997
Henry VIII Jun 13 - Jul 9
On The Town (Bernstein/Comden/Green) Jul 31 - Aug 31

1998
Skin of Our Teeth (Thornton Wilder) Jun
Cymbeline Aug 16

1999
The Taming of the Shrew July 1
Tartuffe (Moliere) Aug 22

2000
The Winter's Tale July 6-16
Julius Caesar Aug 8 - Sept 3

2001
Measure for Measure Jun 17-28
The Seagull (Chekhov) Aug 12-26

2002
only one show
Twelfth Night Jun 25- Aug 11

2003
one show
Henry V June 26- Aug 10

2004
one show
Much Ado About Nothing Jul 1-Aug 8

2005
back to two shows
As You Like It Jun - Jul 17
Two Gentlemen of Verona Aug 28 - Sep 11

2006
Macbeth Jun 28 - Jul 9
Mother Courage and Her Children (Brecht) Aug 21- Sep 3
Peer Gynt (Ibsen) Oct

2007
Romeo and Juliet Jun 7 - Jul 8
A Midsummer Night's Dream Aug 23- Sep 9
Hair (Rado/Ragni/MacDermot) Sep 22-24

2008
Hamlet Jun 17-29
Hair Aug 7 - Sep 14

2009
Twelfth Night
The Bacchae (Euripides)

2010
(both plays in repertory)
The Winter's Tale
The Merchant of Venice (first time at Delacorte since 1962)

2011
(In repertory)
June 6 - July 30
Measure for Measure
All's Well That Ends Well

CROSS-REFERENCE

All's Well That Ends Well - 1966, 1978, 1993, 2011
Antony and Cleopatra - 1963
As You Like It - 1963, 1973, 1992, 2005
The Comedy of Errors - 1967, 1975, 1992
Coriolanus - 1965, 1979
Cymbeline - 1971, 1998
Hamlet - 1964, 1972, 1975, 2008
Henry IV Part 1 - 1968, 1981, 1987
Henry IV Part 2 - 1968
Henry V - 1976, 1984, 1996, 2003
Henry VI Part 1 - 1970
Henry VI Part 2 - 1970
Henry VI Part 3 - 1970
Henry VIII - 1997
Julius Caesar - 2000
King John - 1967, 1988
King Lear - 1962, 1973
Love's Labour's Lost - 1965
Macbeth - 2006
Measure for Measure - 1966, 1976, 1985, 1993, 2001, 2011
The Merchant of Venice - 1962, 2010
The Merry Wives of Windsor - 1974, 1994
A Midsummer Night's Dream - 1982, 1991, 2007
Much Ado About Nothing - 1972, 1988, 2004
Othello - 1964, 1979, 1991
Pericles - 1974
Richard II - 1987
Richard III - 1966, 1970, 1983, 1990
Romeo and Juliet - 1968, 1990, 2007
The Taming of the Shrew - 1978, 1990, 1999
The Tempest - 1962, 1981, 1991, 1995
Timon of Athens - 1971, 1996
Titus Andronicus - 1967, 1989
Troilus and Cressida - 1965, 1995
Twelfth Night - 1969, 1986, 1989, 2002, 2009
The Two Gentlemen of Verona - 1971, 1987, 1994, 2005
The Two Noble Kinsmen - Not yet produced
The Winter's Tale - 1963, 2000, 2010

The Hackensack River

2009-03-23T14:44:00.001-04:00

The Hackensack River at New Bridge, River Edge, NJ, May 2004

Click image for larger size

Lux Interior, 1948-2009

2009-02-06T10:23:00.002-05:00

Brilliant and creative when performing, friendly and approachable off stage. I saw The Cramps more times than I can count, probably every time at CBGBs. So sad another symbol and mainstay of that time is gone.

"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" - Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"

"he who kisses the joy as it flies/ lives in Eternity's sunrise" - William Blake

2009-01-25T14:11:00.002-05:00

As an experiment, I'm going to post here some of the little blurts I write about music on last.fm -- called "shouts" in the last.fm universe.

The Fall - No Bulbs from The Wonderful & Frightening World of The Fall
I love the melodic stuff from when Brix was around.

Liz Phair - Glory from Exile in Guyville
The guitar seems to have an unusual tuning -- any musicians out there?

Liz Phair - Dogs of L.A. from Whip-Smart
another weird guitar tuning. And bonus points for name-checking both Super 8 and Abe Vigoda.

Liz Phair - Stuck on an Island
"I tried to bend it back into shape with a rake for a crowbar"

Who makes The Fall?

2009-01-13T18:44:00.000-05:00

Almost gone but not dead yet

2008-02-16T13:14:00.001-05:00

Travel agencies
Paper telephone books
Rolodexes
VCRs
Audio cassettes
Personal letters
Pinball machines
Newspaper stock tables
Seesaws
The LP record
Telephone booths

What did not exist when I was a child

2008-02-16T13:06:00.001-05:00

Technology

The Internet
Personal Computers
Video Games
DVDs
Color TV
Fax machines
Email
Cell phones
Digital video recorders
CDs
MP3 players
Digital cameras
Microwave ovens
Camcorders
Pocket calculators
Answering machines
Voice mail
Smoke detectors
TV remote controls
GPS
The computer mouse
Flat screen TV
HDTV
Plug-in phone jacks
Commercially available robots
Digital clocks
Set-top boxes
Satellite phones
DNA testing
Human genome sequenced

Medicine

Anti-depressant drugs
Bypass surgery
Soft contact lenses
Laser eye surgery

Material Culture

Stick-on stamps
Post-Its

Media

Cable TV
CNN
24-hour TV
Fox TV Network
Movie ratings
American Idol

Travel and Transportation

Amtrak
Car seat belts
Child car seats
Hybrid cars
SUVs
Bike helmets

Companies, Stores, and Brands

Amazon.com
Facebook
Starbucks
Microsoft
Google
Apple
EBay
Diet Coke
The Gap
Home Depot
Borders Books

Software Development

Databases
Java (programming language)
Ruby (programming language)
Visual Basic
HTML
JavaScript

Business and Finance

The Euro
NASDAQ
ATMs
Paypal
Debit cards
Floating currency exchange rates
Competition for local and long distance phone service

Sports

Baseball playoffs
New York Mets as champions
Designated hitter in baseball

New York City

The Metrocard
63rd & Lexington subway station
McDonald's
An African-American mayor
A Jewish mayor
Battery Park City

World Politics

US-China diplomatic relations
Israel-occupied West Bank

US Politics

Electoral votes for Washington, DC
The vote for 18-year-olds
US Congress televised

Fashion

Designer jeans

Culture

Women in high corporate positions
Casual Friday
Department stores open on Sunday
Liquor stores open on Sunday
Bottle deposit laws
Recycling
Earth Day
Indian casinos
Atlantic City casinos
Martin Luther King Day
Punk rock
Disco music
Hiphop
Rap music
Reality TV
Snowboarding
Skateboards
Rollerblades

At the Supermarket

Microwave popcorn
Disposable diapers
Seedless watermelons
Nutritional labels

Pandora's Box

Crack cocaine
AIDS
School shootings

Other

Zip codes
800 phone numbers

What I remember that has gone

2008-02-16T12:41:00.002-05:00

I was born in 1957 and have lived in New York City for most of my life. This is a list of things I remember that are gone.

Material Culture

Carbon paper
Typewriters
Dial phones
TV antennas on top of houses
Mimeograph machines
Super-8 film
Stamps you needed to lick
Clothespins

Media

The Long Island Press
The New York World-Telegram
The New York Herald Tribune
Afternoon papers
TV station late night signoffs where they would play the National Anthem, then the screen would go blank
The 45 RPM single
Video rental stores
The Ed Sullivan TV show
Cigarette ads on TV and radio

Travel and Transportation

The gracious experience of flying
Flying with no security check
Highway rest stops with restaurants, not fast food places
Free maps at gas stations

Companies, Stores, and Brands

Woolworth's
Brentano's
Sam Goody's
Alexander's
Gimbel's
Korvette's
Schaefer beer
Chock Full O' Nuts coffee shops
Digital Equipment Corp.

Technology

Floppy disks
Computer punch cards
Minicomputers
Lotus 1-2-3
The Wang word processor
Adding machines

Business and Finance

Paper stock certificates
Fixed exchange rates
AT&T's telephone monopoly

Sports

The American Football League
Winter Olympics and Summer Olympics in the same year
A heavyweight boxing championship that meant something

New York City

The subway token
The 15 cent fare
Gum machines in the subway
The Automat
Airline offices on Fifth Avenue
The Board of Estimate
The Board of Education

World Politics

The Berlin Wall
The USSR
Communist Eastern Europe
The Cold War
Apartheid
Yugoslavia

Other

Using quarters to do the laundry
Milk delivered in bottles
Elevator operators

De-Lurking

2008-02-11T15:51:00.000-05:00

Fred Wilson is the Stephanie Klein of VCs.

Game Theory and Loud Family Lyrics

2007-07-12T12:29:00.007-04:00

These have vanished from the official site so I am posting them here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Game Theory

Blaze of Glory

Release date: 1981

The band: Scott Miller, Nancy Becker, Fred Juhos, Michael Irwin

Producer: Scott Miller

Something to Show
Tin Scarecrow
White Blues
Date With An Angel
Mary Magdalene
The Young Drug
Bad Year at UCLA
All I Want Is Everything
Stupid Heart
Sleeping Through Heaven
It Gives Me Chills
T.G.A.R.T.G.

Something to Show

I never wanted to be tough
To leave as easy as I came
Don't use your option to be cruel
If lousy chess moves is my only crime
I always seem to fall in love
When no one wants me sending valentines
You didn't see us laughing our way through the misery
Ten years isn't such a long time if you've got something to show
And my appreciation has gotten strong since having no one
Could you live alone if you were haunted?
Can you really cut the ties that bind...
And float out on the waters to discover no one's throwing any lines
You didn't see us holding on through the insanity
Failure isn't such a bad thing if you've got something to show
And my appreciation has gotten strong for having someone

Tin Scarecrow

You're a last minute change, a name that didn't ring a bell
Pencilled in over a page full of geeks from the ranks
Like a Tin Scarecrow looking for a heart and a brain
From the very first wizard you could promise a lifetime of thanks
But everyone knows that you staked out your position
You carved out a name before God guided your hand
Now you're the way of the vacuum
Another human being's freedom in the suck bag
Turn around and take a look at the republic for which you stand
Because everyone knows but nobody says,
Everyone knows but nobody understands
I think I must know exactly what you're thinking
It's just the sleepyheads and me and I can do pretty much as I like

White Blues

Dawn of the dead
Close your mouth 'cause it won't be fed
In this brave new world you're on your own, they said
But don't think twice if you make some mistakes tonight
There's time enough to find your place
(What you want and what's at stake)
There's room to bend before you break
and miles to go before before you wake
White Blues Now! It's all trash now
White Blues Now! Throw it all away.
Oh, Mr Kurtz, man, we love you so much it hurts.
You've shown us what it means to self-assert
you win our fights
you keep the cliffs of Dover white
and you've put surprises in our dreams.
One tense moment's all we need
to dig a grave of sand and weeds
And write on it who fails and who succeeds.
Here lies another case of stepping on too many faces.
They drove him uptown, they ran him around
They plowed him six feet under
thought he never lost an inch of ground

Date With an Angel

Well I've got a date -- a date with an angel
I'm going to pick her up down at Central High
And all of the boys there are going to hate me
'Cause I know that she's caught their eye.
Yes I've got a date -- a date with an angel
Oh, we're not lovers. As a lover I'm through
And she doesn't kiss me. She thinks it's disgusting
Oh, I think it's disgusting too.
So, can I see you Saturday, what does it matter?
I get lonely and I just want to call
And I'll admit, I get a little angry, when they say it's wrong
Well I say don't admit to anything. Anything at all.
Well I've got a date, a date with an angel
We're going out on our town again
I want to keep my arms around her forever
But she wants to be home by ten.
Now listen, I've got a date, a date with an angel
Oh we're not changing too much of the world.
But even though the world keeps trying to change us
No one's going to unstring my pearl.
Oh, they say you drive your life at ninety miles an hour
And if you climb, you're going to fall. They ask you
"Hey! Aren't you looking at the boys now, getting your heart broken?"
Well I say don't admit to anything, anything at all.

Mary Magdalene

They say the losers come to you,
And you'll appreciate all that they've been through
Franz Kafka says we're on trial
You say one day we'll all look back and smile
Yes, I've heard of the straight and narrow road.
Some say we're selling out our moral code.
Some say that in these troubled days
It's the only job that pays.
Well, Jimmy's gone to Sunset Strip appealing for survival
And Johnny's gone to Carolina with a stack of Bibles.
I never know which side they want to see.
Will you be their mirror when they cast their stones at me
'Cause sometimes I feel just like Mary Magdalene.
I followed every voice that called to me.
I've got to say so much for destiny
As spiders build their webs in my shoes.
Lord, this must be the blues.
Well Janey says you've got to find the perfect path to follow
And Jeannie says you'll never find no ground that isn't hollow
No more curtains to hide behind, it seems.
Will I cast a longer shadow when he shines his light on me?
'Cause sometimes I feel just like Mary Magdalene

The Young Drug

People thought they'd taught you gratitude,
But you say you need more latitude for all they throw at you
People say the future's bright for you,
But you think what they say won't make it true
The future's black and blue -- it's not 1962
Your little sisters turning harder core
It's only one obsession out of many more
The young drug is illegal in your state
The young drug but you take it anyway
It's so big they just don't know who to blame
People say you drive to dangerously
And you pretend they've got a point to see. With kind apology
People say cocaine is wrecking you;
Someone's got to keep a check on you.
They all have lectured you. But no one ever got through
You thought you knew about what's right and wrong
But there's a law that you've been breaking all along

Bad Year at U.C.L.A.

She packed her sweaters and took a ride
And wrote "you lose" between all the lines of the L.A. Times
And should you follow her car upstate?
It's a long drive up and a long way down off the Golden Gate
It fits as good as your clothes
You're wondering if pain so beautiful should earn a happy ending or so
You wish she'd let you know
What will you do now for fun in bad weather?
Will you be lonely forever and ever?
It's a bad year, the hard liners say, for tragic heroes at U.C.L.A.
You look so cool with your young man's charm but you're so distracted
The world leans on its boyfriend's arm
You spend too much time chasing clouds away
And you wind up working in someone else's rainy day
It's so tough. You need a little push: You need a little stroke
A punch line that's more than just a bad joke a toy you never broke
What will you do now for fun in bad weather?

All I Want is Everything

I kiss her lips lightly and dress for the moment
If she finds that she's too cool for me, we both know she'll be gone
She goes out of bounds, she spends too much energy living things down
Don't ask me why I look so happy even though I'm never satisfied
It could be love (she says that's a flaw) but I don't ask the moon
Just stay with me always and leave me alone
So much grief gets wasted on me
'Cause I'll be back for action every time it comes in fashion
She destroys me because she loves me
It's like a wire around my neck; it's making me a nervous wreck
I push away but still I cling. All I want from her is everything.

Stupid Heart

You know I'm so glad that you made me wait
But if I wait one moment more I'm walking out the window
I'm giving up the keys
I've got your name in giant letters painted on my ceiling
Bungling my head on the floor, could you still ask for more
I don't want to go where the money goes; I wouldn't be happy with fame
I want you to love me.
Yea, I want your airbrushed clothes to sell out tonight
You could make suicide so easy
Nothing seems so scary, no nothing ever hurts when it's cold
You are my seven precious digits
Dialing you, my stupid heart beats loud as the rings
Don't my words mean a thing

Sleeping Through Heaven

As I walk among my small regrets
From the valley of the shadow where do I get?
With all my intents and purpose, I'm looking for some level surface
I turn to you. I know this tension doesn't go away.
But I will look it in the face today.
See in color though they show me in gray
So I put my shoes on and pay my debts
And get hours ahead of all the tears I can forget
With my arm around your back
I will play the deck no matter how much it's stacked
And we could have some say in what we take as real
Grab this town like it was no big deal
But everyone's afraid to break the seal
So I drive home past the closed up stores and homes
That each look sadder than the one before
I want to go bang on every door
and say "Wake up, you're sleeping through heaven"
And I don't care who knows, I don't know who cares
If you don't want yours then let me have my share
I can turn my back on the younger man
Who thought he was breaking ground for some fatherland
With an eye toward toppling ten pins
Grew up so fast, it made his head spin
Picked lonely fights and showed an ugly face to all concerned
Stood up and took it on the chin by turns
In troubled waters as his bridges burned
I'm afraid of streets when lights are out
And I'm well aware that an up is a down
But for all these lessons I'm learning, I know I can't stop the yearning
I want you tonight. I guess that some would say my life's a mess
But you have let me show some great success
(Or maybe I'm too dumb to stay depressed)
Everyday I want it more
I used to be to glad to stay home being bored
I want to go bang on every door
and say "Wake up, you're sleeping through heaven!"

It Gives Me Chills

I could say I like to say your name
but to you it's just the same
I could say you make me so afraid
I don't want to -- still I stay
Is it okay that I don't know what to do
I know I like you
Though I don't trust the way you change my will,
Ooh, it gives me chills
Daytime, daytime, you're just like physical sunshine
And nighttime, nighttime, you're just too real to be real
I think I am going to try
(Then I held you and -- ooh)
I knew that life couldn't get any better
And I didn't care when I felt myself rolling down that hill
Ooh, It gives me chills

T.G.A.R.T.G.

The girls are ready to go
And they want you to go say hello
Things were different a long time ago
But it's you now
Who's keepin' it slow now
That you're really in control
The girls are ready to go
And this time it's winner take all
It's the real fun to have and to hold
Come on inside 'cause outside it's cold
This is the time to hit a new low
'Cause if the girls are ready to go then go
The girls are ready to go
What you feel counts, and not what you're told
Those fine eyes are searching your soul
When they catch you, they pierce to the bone
And you know too much restraint can hurt you so
The good times are ready to go
If you stay home
You'll miss the whole show
You were so shy a long time ago
Now step on the pedal and go
It's your show to get on the road
And if you're ready to go then go
'Cause it's true no one tells you if you miss your cue
You know that it just won't do
It's not you
Never get a distorted view.
If you know how you've got to go collect what's due
It's tried by so very few
Plans you change do no good
If they're not carried through
The girls are ready to go
And this time it's winner take all
It's the real fun to have and to hold
You know you've got to go on and pay your toll
The good life is ready to go
What you do counts and not what you know
The fine wine is ready to flow
Take a drink now and stop saying no
Cause playing hard to get is getting old
And if the girls are ready to go, then go

Game Theory

Pointed Accounts of People You Know

Release date: 1983

The band: Scott Miller, Nancy Becker, Fred Juhos, Michael Irwin

Producer: Scott Miller

Penny, Things Won't
Metal and Glass Exact
Selfish Again
I Wanna Get Hit By A Car
Life In July
37th Day

Penny, Things Won't

I try not to say I love you
just because it's something so many say
and I think we've got the chance
for something that you just can't get the easy way.
Well I'm not the perfect person
I just go through what I have to every day.
And the pavement's not so stable here
that you might never think to walk away.
'Cause Penny you're just a girl that I know and I'm just me
Don't ever find words for that look in your eyes
And I like to believe I'm the only one who sees
It's all the faith I keep sometimes and I can't watch it leave
I don't mind trying harder everyday, oh no
'Cause Penny, things won't always be this way
Ah, when we're close
I get fooled into thinking it's all planned
That if we aren't sure
That someone's going to take us by the hand
But getting lost is easy
And you know they'll leave you stranded in the rain
Wishing you'd made that one right move
Oh, Penny, can you keep me from that pain?
Cause I'm sitting on fences
Lost in my old why's and wherefore's
And I trip over promises made too soon
Worried I'll end up kicked out your door
But you know I'll be there knocking
And asking you for more
I don't mind trying harder everyday, oh no
'Cause Penny, things won't always be this way
oh no no no
We pick a direction and take it as far as we can go
And we wonder sometimes if we've done the right thing
Kills me just to think we'll never know
Sometimes I want to drop it but I can't let it go
I don't mind trying harder everyday, oh no
'Cause Penny, things won't always be this way
I don't mind trying harder everyday, oh no no no
'Cause Penny, things won't always be this way

Metal and Glass Exact

Don't take her places she's been
She knows how to lose like some people win
Oh, she's at a high point when you're alone
Waiting in lines and answering phones
She likes to drop a few names and places
With a soft laugh at your faces
And you're changing your bases
Ways that no amount of time erases
She likes metal and glass exact
She can afford to have metal and glass exact
What's that she thinks that you've said
She takes off her clothes and marks you in red
It's all in good fun, you do what your told
Until you find out it's her highest goal
In her bedroom, disconcerting,
Lined with royal blue curtains
It looks so inadvertent
But it makes you that much more uncertain
She likes metal and glass exact
She can afford to have metal and glass exact
She sits still risks losing her shame
Paying the times and shifting the blame
Decendent of generals fighting in wars
All smiles at the cameras no common cause
Yea, the kind that leave you falling when your
Engines are stalling and it
Gets your skin crawling
Open every night you hear them calling
She likes metal and glass exact
She can afford to have metal and glass exact
She likes metal and glass exact
She can afford to have metal
and glass and glass exact

Selfish Again

I wrote a note to Ray
And said don't come round today
You know I hate to have to aim to please
The jungle days are gone
I'm feeling like King Kong
And maybe you're a little bit like me
I know
We won't find it if it doesn't show
At least until we learn to keep our expectations low
I cross my fingers twice
And throw out all advice
And someday I might lose it all that way
The room is made of wire
The telephone's on fire
With open eyes a scare comes into play
And I do
What appears to be the thing to do
That accidentally sacrifice the many for the few
It's good when it's good and it's bad when it's bad
And sometime it goes nowhere
It's good when it's good and it's bad when it's bad
And it might seem like I care
But I'll be selfish again
Like the weather
Well Ray gave me these lines
And learned a few of mine
And we worked hard to hear the angels sing, sing
It's up and then it's down
But he never liked the ground
And now he isn't careful with his wings
I don't see
Why he had to go depend on me
He tells me all the time that all he wants is to be free
Well it's good when it's good and it's bad when it's bad
And sometime it goes nowhere
It's good when it's good and it's bad when it's bad
And it might seem like we care
But we'll all be selfish again
Again and again and again and again and again and again
Again and again and again and again and again and again

Life in July

Black and white
Don't believe them
Guiding lights
I don't need them
If you really want to be my friend
Keeping in-
Side the margins
Got to say
Is your calling
Never making moves you can't defend
Though they say that winter's cold
I'll find myself known and older
Though they say they'll make demands
I'll find myself some ground to stand on
These are words I'll never understand
Always making plans for
Life in July
Life in July
Life in July
Life in July
Life is thorns
But I don't feel them
Please take care
But now you need to
Find someone who
Tells you that she can
Oh it seems
To work so neatly
They might go and
Say I never signed and
It's no longer in your hands
And all your friends have taken wives
You think it's time to change their lives
And though they say they'll make demands
And find myself some ground to stand on
These are words I'll never understand
Always making plans for
Life in July
Life in July
Life in July
Life in July

- - -

Game Theory

Distortion

Release date: 1984

The band: Scott Miller, Nancy Becker, Fred Juhos, Dave Gill

Guest musicians: Michael Quercio, Ernie Smith, Gordon Beadle, Michael Stoaks

Producer: Michael Quercio

Shark Pretty
Nine Lives to Rigel Five
The Red Baron
Kid Convenience
Too Late For Tears

Shark Pretty

"Crows" line by Nancy Becker and Dr. George Becker

Close out sound and sight
Crows are on the moon tonight
I am nearly beaten down
In cold water nearly drowned
Nearly told the way I do is wrong
My eyes deceiving all along
My my my honey hug me, hug me like you know
Like you know, 'cause they say we don't know
My my my baby pet me, pet me like you know
Like you know, 'cause they say we don't know
And I say we do so I say we do so
Blue and green the light
Sharks are in the sea tonight
Oh such pretty saboteurs
Say you'll never know for sure
But when I say I'm in love with you
I mean that's something always true

Nine Lives To Rigel Five

Side by side slide by space and time
The Neil Armstrong telecasts of Nineteen Sixty-Nine
Proportion distortion I saw in those shoes
And I learned a kind of ego that I doubt I'll ever lose
It's nine lives to Rigel Five, nine lives to Rigel Five
And I've waited nine lives for Rigel Five
With nothing to say when I arrive
Joan Jones proposed that we leave our homes
Like runaway gnomes in the twilight zone
They said, baby, when you're grown it all means more
I said, let's get out the twister game and get down on all fours
It's nine lives to Rigel Five...
Well I know a problem that physics can't resolve
A cover that acid won't dissolve
A place that's just too far, I think, for us to go
Now is right to have a hope so strong
For real-time answers to real-world wrongs
Oh Susanna if you've got to cry for me
Send me back to Alabama with a banjo on my knee
And nine lives to Rigel Five, nine lives to Rigel Five
And I've waited nine lives for Rigel Five
With nothing to say but goodbye

The Red Baron

Oh, wish I knew where you'll go
Oh, you're making plans, I know
So do just as you have to do
But ask when you get there
Would I have pledged my life? I do
Who's going to drive away the loneliness?
Who's going to justify the ugliness?
Who's going to give us our inheritance?
Who's going to say we once were innocent?
Oh, decisions made too fast
Seem to be the ones that last
So tell me life is short
And don't explain a thing
I will never ask you more
Now my friends are asking if I got what I was wanting
Such a high ranked jerk since moving out of town
Handing down the sky when what they wanted was my shoulder
No one's got that kind of patience when you're down
One day you 'll ask me why I hang around
Oh please, stay the way I hate you, stay the way I hate you, can't you?
Who's going to drive away the loneliness?
Who's going to justify the ugliness?
Who's going to give us our inheritance?
Who's going to say we once were innocent?
Who's going to nullify the carelessness?
Who's going to finance our deliverance?
Who's going to have a little sympathy?
Who's going to say you can't do this to me?

Too Late For Tears

Doing the slant step in El Paso this year last
Girl don't the short of breath go out of business fast?
And from the letters that I send, you count the days
And never get past one
'cause time is something in the past
And you can blame your friends
Break like china plates, or maybe change your name again
No one stops here when they're this far
Don't lock up the breaks don't strip all the gears
Too late for tears baby, too late for tears
Don't say it's not up there written in stars
I don't want to hear
Too late for tears baby, too late for tears
Is this the voice that used to scare me when I'd call
Saying it ends in resignation after all?
And having fought so many wars
A thousand victories on the floor
Did you think there'd be a prize for thinking small?
Hiding from the man
But is he real or just a scrape with truth you didn't plan ?
Get in the car, you don't belong
Winning the hours and losing the years
Too late for tears baby, too late for tears
Don't say it's not up there written in stars
I don't want to hear

- - -

Game Theory

Real Nighttime

Release date: 1985

The band: Scott Miller, Nancy Becker, Fred Juhos, Dave Gill

Guest musicians: Michael Quercio, Mitch Easter, Jon Cowans, Jozef Becker

Producer: Mitch Easter

Liner notes: Annotated by Jeffrey Norman and friends.

Here Comes Everybody
24
Waltz the Halls Always
I Mean It This Time
Friend of the Family
If and When It Falls Apart
Curse of the Frontierland
Rayon Drive
She'll Be a Verb
Real Nighttime
You Can't Have Me
I Turned Her Away

24

And for whatever reason I wish that I had two minds
Opposite signs, parallel lines, wide point and fine
I hate admitting when you're right and I want you in plain sight
Isn't it odd? We think a lot alike tonight
And everyone asks if I'm leaving, no sir
I get around but I don't get closer
Is it because I'm 23, not 24?
And in a way I don't mind watching it get unkind
Stand where it shines, I can inspire myself just fine
I'm in the sweetest way misled, growing my hair in bed
Coffee or beer--These are a year's component thread
And everything is in terms of next time
Twenty-five thousand more miles to the dateline
Is it because I'm 24, not 25?

Waltz The Halls Always

I think I saw the movie where you learned that you can't be nice
You write the boys in your home town and sing yourself "Edelweiss"
How much did you give up that it should make me this guilty now?
Don't you tell a soul that you would be off on larger lives
But I've clamped you down
Waltz the halls always, need what you need
There's more out there than we both know
It's what it should be even though it's not what it seems
Nobody knows what it means
Spare me the sincerity, I can't use what I can't see
When all your foreign words translate in English to "misery"
You think you've forced a tough decision, I don't think that's the case
Maybe we'll both find just what we need
But we're searching at entirely different rates
So waltz the halls

I Mean It This Time

Jody were you always sure things had gone as they should go?
Does the world come on with a handshake and hello?
I don't lose a lot of sleep, and I'm not sure what this means
But at some point I stopped remembering last night's dreams
And there's a lot to throw away
As in Soviet Russia failing to watch the things you say
Give me all the gin I need 'cause I may not feel this strong
When I phone my parents and tell them they've been wrong
Please don't ask what will I do
I can't live it this way, Jody I think I'm not like you
I've seen enough to find no news to change my mind
And I'll drop out, I mean it this time
Am I standing on my rights to demand to be so free?
Is it common knowledge the joke will be on me?
Cars won't stop for me, I know, when the light for them is green
They'll ask questions later about what light I thought I'd seen
Is it right to feel so used?
I once planned ahead longer than when the rent was due
I've seen enough to find no news to change my mind

Friend Of The Family

My nerves are buzzing and working
Eyes are flashing and jerking
My feelings on the windshield
Night air as cold as chain mail
Takes me back to the first day
The little girl in you spoke to me
You know, it spoke right to me
Sweet cream dream girl
Too much, it's just like candy
I won't forget it quickly
Blind ride on highway 80
And I think it's time you learn how to drive
Say hi to the big time
Bright lemon lime memories that rhyme
White lace, bracelet charms and silent alarms
You and I work in factories
We run the big machinery
The will to try leaves slowly
The murder goes on daily
Don't give me phobias walking the cable
We'll go when we're willing and stop when we're able
I wish these cards on no one's table
And when love is crowded out I'm a friend of the family
At the funeral of our love just a friend of the family
Ah, Miss Critical, might find you're minus one now
If there's someone you love now, tell them you love them right now
Have we been cheated of three of our seasons?
How could we break off for such practical reasons?
All the right reasons
Sleep young bride to be no more
Whatever we do now has been done before
I'm going to drive out to the end of the dirt road
To a place where no one living goes
I'm going to run on foot till I can't feel the cold
And find a sunrise so beautiful
It would capture your soul
And shoot it full of holes
Well we could hate ourselves
Just like the friends of the family do
We could quit our jobs
Just like the friends of the family do
We could change our minds
Just like the friends of the family do
Step right over the line
Just like the friends of the family do

If And When It Falls Apart

Hey, Ironclad do you see me getting it bad
With your hair down in your eyes?
You don't try, the love you need is there when you cry
Oh girl it must be nice
This city brings me down, it always brings me down
Take a look around--What's going to get you through
If and when it falls apart on you?
It's come slow but now I think I know what you mean
And how it must feel so wrong
Trust your mind and when you think it's time you can
I won't ask what took so long
This city brings me down, it always wears you down
Take a look around--What's going to get you through
If and when it falls apart on you?
This city brings me down, all cities bring me down
Take a look around--What's going to stand as true
If and when it falls apart on you?

Curse Of The Frontierland

Lost to your mascara, I used to like your eyes
Still got your looks I guess I'm tired of what it all implies
A year ago we called this a good time
Nightmares of love affairs, who cares why?
It's five A.M. and we've got everything we want
And I say don't look now
Taking it while we can
Curse of the frontier land
It's no big secret, folks insist the sickness goes too far
German genius, Paris jet-set breaking down our door
They talk about us like we never tried
Old-moneyed ballroom corpses
Fuss and whine
I don't like quiet rooms but I just can't take that sound

Rayon Drive

Fair Oaks hot spot between Howe and Watt
Sell me something I haven't already got
Her name's Marie earning her PhD
Tonight I think she'd still do it with me
You come up to me so erudite, you want some senseless scene tonight
You don't know half what goes on
Live on rayon drive
21st and J, the place is okay
Fun things to talk about when there's nothing to say
Look at you three, scared of everything you see
High school and speed never agree
Now you look to be so sensitive, you want some frightening life to live
You don't know half what goes on
Live on rayon drive
Excellent taste--It's in each look on your face
A proud young member of the white race
Walk right away, I too would be bored
No memory at all of who I voted for

She'll Be A Verb

Diva while rehearsing speaks just in third person
Making sure you give her more than she delivers
Soft-core good vibrations in smart situations
Most predicted other than has been discovered
And though it doesn't seem so now
It doesn't matter what works out
If I were you I wouldn't put my world in doubt
What's this all about
She'll be a verb when you're a noun
And you've just got to laugh when she tries to put you down
She says "Don't assume" in language not quite human
She thinks, why go through it? Take all shortcuts
She says "Say what you need to say, don't waste words"
What do you think you'd do if you were her
Cinderella sine qua non
Sad conclusions must be drawn
Paint in oils how much you'll miss her when she's gone
What's going on?
She'll be a verb when you're a noun
And you've just got to laugh when she tries to put you down

Real Nighttime

Pull back the credit we take for breaking through
To the moment before we really knew
Take off the jackets and shirts and see some skin
Feel a chill of the air we were born in
Before the debate came in
The rewards are great for those who can stay
Would you all push me offside
Force me to hide from the sun?
Look at the oneupsmanship that gets you through
And you'll see that one put down is you
Shine the harsh light on the faults of those you know
And you'll find it's so bright your eyes stay closed
You better get on the first bus home
What makes it okay? So tempting to stay
Would you all turn me aside
Force me to hide from the sun
If I should run when real nighttime comes?
If I should look down off my ledge
Pare down the man who can order someone dead
To the boy who can't take the sight of red
Show the landlady who throws her weight around
As the girl who won't walk alone downtown
And you'll see it's a long way down
My bed in my room, I need some sleep
Would it be so much to ask
To please leave out of the fun?
'Cause I'm not the one
If I should run when real nighttime comes
If I should look down off my ledge
Now I don't want anything I can't afford
Just a letter from home and a lock on the door

I Turned Her Away

Stacks of things I've begun
Summer indoors, nothing gets done
Can't pick out things to wear
Reasons I had no longer there
Wide-eyed West Coast
Magic on her side
She cleaned my house and said I'd never die
She thought I'd let her stay don't believe
She thought I'd let her stay don't believe
But I turned her away
And something I don't like is closer every day
Sharp wit party Oh don't make me go
They'll be making good points and I don't want to know
Send me home counting the chances I've had
I could fill up three digits
But that's not what it means to be sad
Magazines by my side
Taking to task, hurting my pride
Drive the freeway too fast
World without cops, critical mass
Restless from L.A. to Amsterdam
Somewhere she's forgetting who I am
She just wanted to stay don't believe
She just wanted to stay don't believe
But I turned her away
And something I don't like is closer every day

- - -

Game Theory

The Big Shot Chronicles

Release date: 1986

The band: Scott Miller, Shelley LaFreniere, Gil Ray, Suzi Ziegler

Producer: Mitch Easter

Here It Is Tomorrow
Where You Going Northern
I've Tried Subtlety
Erica's Word
Make Any Vows
Regenisraen
Crash Into June
Book of Millionaires
The Only Lesson Learned
Too Closely
Never Mind
Like A Girl Jesus

Here It Is Tomorrow

Quick judger, long-time begrudger
Dialed in to the pyramid structure
Efficacious B-follows-A-cious
Something you can shove in their faces
Holding out for maximum missed time
The stereotype was right this time
Vague questions for showy answers
I think I'll take my chances
Ah, you've got me drinking in Canadian bars
Trade sad stories with the New England coast guard
Man you blew me off like there was no tomorrow
And here it is tomorrow
Here it is tomorrow
What the hell do you know?
I've seen the galaxies dance across the night sky
A billion years in one second gone by
I've sweated out, wanting every night
And I know the rules but it's not right
Lady M who never lets anything slide
A five-year-old blonde girl by her side
And I ask her "why have you brought her?"
"Young man, say hello to your daughter"
Ah, you've got me kicking off my shoes at the moon
Makes no difference if I don't get them back soon
God, you wrote me off like there was no tomorrow
And here it is tomorrow
Here it is tomorrow
What the hell do you know?

Where You Going Northern

Where you going northern?
South into town?
Longer waits, closer friends
What's come upon you?
Where you going Maggie?
Where I can't go?
But things I am extend to you
And stay around you
And always find you
It's all too true now
That you see the world just as I do
And we do the things that I say to
But one day you'll do what want to
Maggie
When I hear your name out loud
My breath drops down
To know I've come and had my time
And done so much wrong
Where you going northern?
From warm to cool
And so to cold as things must go
And that day I'll leave you
And I'll spend it crying
And I feel it coming soon
'Cause you see the world just as I do
And we do the things that I say to
But one day we all do what we have
Maggie

I've Tried Subtlety

All the kids from 916 came down
And were misdirected trying to find the grounds
The Regency Hotel
Prom royals eyeing adult-life means to excel
Down into the city-planning flats
Near Victoria Park a block they gathered at
Old masters on the door
Re-styled to stand for some political reform
Under-civilized time, older-sibling-ized crime And my car got stripped to the frame
And well it feels about the same
Lots of distance gone in vain
And darlings this one is for you
I've tried subtlety before but I will not anymore
For some looking down surveillance vans
M.I.T. grad alley cats with time on their hands
Oh sergeant, I'm sorry
In my line of work they don't teach no courtesy
Gifted children link your arms in rhyme
Better make this world while still it gives you time
Oh will you look so vain
Left to the purging jets like garbage in the rain
Wish I could with someone what I do alone
Should I just stay at home?
Should I just make the whole thing up as I go?
But what do I really know?
Lots of quickness now turned slow
And darlings this one is for you
I've tried subtlety before but I will not anymore

Erica's Word

Erica's gone shy
Some unknown X behind the why
All is some less today
Mass not conserving in the old way
Checking out with Brother Jay
I'll miss your half of me
Girl are you leaving something you might later need?
Erica's word, taking me clear and leaving me blurred
Erica's news, singing the praise and playing the blues
Pulling the rug out under my shoes
Twelve years ago
Shorthand allegiance to the long throw
Make believe and pretend
I remember when they served the same end
You always liked the photo of us
Sitting in our car
Just like we're driving
Girl it's not looking like we'll go all that far
Erica's word, taking me clear and leaving me blurred
Erica's find, blowing my hair and tearing my mind
Throwing for grabs and leaving behind
Maybe you'll find that promised love
The tingle to the touch
Girl and I hope it comes through for you in a clutch
But I wouldn't bet much
Erica's word, taking me clear and leaving me blurred
Erica's news, singing the praise and playing the blues
Pulling the rug out under my shoes
Erica's find, blowing my hair and tearing my mind
Erica's word, taking me clear and leaving me blurred
Knocking me down from second to third

Make Any Vows

If you knew this was not my world
In the way you measure lives
That while some get far through effort
All I get is exercise
Walk out a ways from the house you built up from the ground
And past the outskirts of your town
And if you're scared you might be lost, you're found
If I lost all the will you thought I'd keep
Would you make any vows on lovers' leap?
If it took all this time to find the risk
Would you sign any bottom lines?
I don't think so
Latticework without foundation
Holds as long as we agree
Question and you'll hear it buckle
All on your own suddenly
Were you meant for me?
If you were somehow I think you'd know
And things would seem planned long ago
If not maybe you'd better go

Regenisraen

Too awake for night I've come outside
Too o'clock for sleeping off, I've tried
Freezing air so good for how this is
Such the opposite of show biz
Winter houses turning on the glow
Christmas based on Christmas long ago
How could I have known where this would lead?
Something that I never thought I'd need
Regenisraen, Regenisraen
Ends a luminescent color scheme
Mustard yellow and brick red between
Coastal cities glitter on the black
The wind blows across and back
Someone knows I cry to lose a friend
Go ahead and scare me with the end
Maybe I've become a patient man
Something that I'll never understand

Crash Into June

About this time the girls are rising early
I'm going to find a way to get back someday
Living rooms I don't know why someone would leave
And though it's taken time till I discovered
Don't you put your hand in any other
They suggest piano lessons for young beauty queens
And I know just what they mean
And if I answer to a different hunger
From the one I had when I was younger
Please remember that it's still just me inside
With one thing less to hide
Crash into June ... In and out of tune
It happens all too soon
And you don't know when it's there
Such a sorry state of affairs
Arrogance is taking me to that house
And a lifestyle I can really do without
Blowing inland off the tides of shorelines gone
This is weather that implies it's too late
Days that won't keep getting longer if we wait
Please don't think that I'm the one who should be strong
I can't keep this up long
Crash into June ... In and out of tune
It happens all too soon
And you don't know when it's there
Such a sorry state of affairs

Book Of Millionaires

Been too long outside
Animal gentry too sure in your stride
Raised on small crimes
Nickels and dimes always add up in time
What's all the hurry to show yourself
When you're succeeding as someone else?
Maybe you'll make it to god knows where
Written in the book of millionaires
Taking loves a cause
Siamese cat ancestral twitch in the jaws
I'm not quick to act
Held to the ground under weight of the facts
And who's this they're letting get on t.v.
It's new and he's great and it's just not me
Go ahead and like him, I don't really care
Put him in the book of millionaires

The Only Lesson Learned

Greyhounds to home
Roads to Rome that trail from all advances
Fey retail towns
Legal grounds to block my second chances
The stone age gone, still and drawn
Ties once so long-ranging
All one by one
Come undone and leave me scared of changing
And it's not my fault I don't want to hear a thing they say
The only lesson learned is appearing okay
And I don't know who runs the show
Get me through a message
All you kids in your teens
May not mean to but you all impress me
I never try to sympathize, it's always such a strain
The only lesson learned is avoidance of pain

Too Closely

If you were late I would wait
Wait all day right here
If no one were watching girl I guess I'd wait all year
Take my time, I will
Thinking I've been owed
I've got a funny feeling one more lost cause will exceed my load
Shrinking back your rear view road
Don't look too closely 'cause you don't want to see
How it shows when I know you're not wanting me
Tell them it wasn't hard
Tell them you beat me cold
If it ever helps you through just one day, let me know
And tell me that you told me so
Everyone gets tired of being out of reach
And you won't like missing someone you've despised
Everyone has gone, Matthew Mark and John
Oh girl but we sit here trading alibis
Don't look too closely 'cause you don't want to see
How it shows when I know you're not wanting me
Don't look too closely 'cause you don't want to know
How the world is changed when you let someone go

Never Mind

New asking eyes each day
Some always trying to make me stay
And steal my love away
They won't do any harm
Something calls me back to your arms
And sounds all the alarms
Staying in line is easy, which is to say, it's fine
The things I do for you girl I never mind
I used to get my way
In everything I'd do or say
And sit around all day
Now I work nine till five
For some big day that won't arrive
But I don't feel deprived
Working a job is easy, which is to say, it's fine
The things I do for you girl I never mind
Staying with you is easy

Like A Girl Jesus

Brightness as pure as December sunshine
And like a girl Jesus she makes it mine
Without a doubt, puts herself down on the line
And like a girl Jesus she's undefined
Life without end, she ignores linear time
And like a girl Jesus she's doing fine

- - -

Game Theory

Lolita Nation

Release date: 1987

The band: Scott Miller, Shelley LaFreniere, Donnette Thayer, Gil Ray, Gui Gassuan

Guest musicians: Angie Carlson, Jefferey Layton, Lori Bauer, Michael Quercio, Dan Vallor, Mitch Easter, Jozef Becker, Lindsay Watson, Robert Toren, Eric Marshall, Zach Smith

Producer: Mitch Easter

Kenneth -- What's The Frequency?
Not Because You Can
Shard
Go Ahead, You're Dying To
Dripping With Looks
Exactly What We Don't Want To Hear
We Love You Carol and Alison
The Waist and the Knees
Nothing New
The World's Easiest Job
Look Away
Slip
The Real Sheila
Andy In Ten Years
Watch Who You're Calling Space Garbage Meteor Mouth
Pretty Green Card Shark
Where They Have To Let You In
Turn Me On Dead Man
Mammoth Gardens
Little Ivory
Museum of Hopelessness
Toby Ornette
All Clockwork and No Bodily Fluids Makes Hal A Dull Metal Humbert
In Heaven Every Elephant Baby Wants To Be So Full Of Sting
Paul Simon In The Park With Canticle
But You Can't Pick Your Friends
Vacuum Genesis
DEFMACROS
HOWSOMETH
INGDOTIME
SALENGTHS
OMETHINGL
ETBFOLLOW
AAFTERNOO
NGETPRESE
NTMOMENTI
FTHINGSWO
NTALWAYSB
ETHISWAYT
BCACAUSEA
BWASTEAFT
ERNOONWHE
NEQBMERET
URNFROMSH
OWLITTLEG
REENPLACE
27
One More For Saint Michael
Choose Between Two Sons
Chardonnay
Last Day That We're Young
Together Now, Very Minor

Kenneth--What's The Frequency?

But you can't place...if there's a bus...and you can
Face the nation...you can
Pick the game...you can...but when you know what it
Is...but when you know what
It is you're doing then you despise it...
Kenneth--What's the frequency?

Not Because You Can

If your eyes are green you will turn and stay sixteen
Never disappointed by a show of hands
And if your eyes are soft you can turn it on and off
You won't be shy when making your demands
And if your eyes are slow
You will always be a lonely woman
And not because you can
No, the time is now for deciding if you can

Shard

Close out sound and sight
Those I know are
On their own tonight

Go Ahead, You're Dying To

I'd think there'd be laws of nature
Forcing you people to get it together
You can wreck my life
Go ahead, I know you're dying to

Dripping With Looks

So into the chaff
Last laughs of the traveling class
Low tide on the sand
Sad strand of the government land
I'd not be such a disgrace to
Everything that I've been through
If I had it to do
Dripping with looks like you
Private heaven blonde
Small pond of the demimonde
Want it back to lose
Soft shoes
Always something to prove
And I'd do anything once, too
Just shut up about school
I think I'd learn too
Dripping with looks like you
Washing on a tide of
Laughs come and gone
Stranded and withdrawn
What's the news
Turns out the
Government knew
Small and private views
What did you want?
Again?

Exactly What We Don't Want To Hear

It's been a decade of trade-offs
Of try myself or let others try
What sort of win is there waiting
For prima donnas like me to find
Standing all night in line?
It's been a decade of record stores
Hordes of failing new wave careers
What lengths we're going to just to
Exactly what we don't want to hear
With all our well-trained ears
It's been a decade of lives I've left
Twenty months behind when I've gone
If I've been missing expect the worst
That I won't be gone long
Find

We Love You Carol And Alison
All I ate was spearmint candy
Trying to change the flavor of the days
And chasing inundation only childish ways
And it shows
Oh and it
Shows
But oh this time the sugar was dazzling
Saying for once you might just join the game
And don't insist on always seeming less the same
With the smile and of the clique
Princess, in this context you're a freak
But you must see
In your crassest hour the charm still works on me
And will you take on our age's dream
We love you Carol and Alison
Oh will you take us
'Cause it's still a green land
And it still works as planned
And 'cause the glory is at hand
And will you
Take a seat
In our dream car
Oh,
I want to go
But I can't
Right at hand
These evenings turn out to be such a crapshoot
Don't be such a reason not to leave
I smoke and kiss the same in all realities
And when they ask who's giving the rides
I feel as if I promised I'd look out
For all the lonely souls who still go home without
When the shoulder upstairs gets cold
If he had his way we'd all be old
Let go
These
Evenings cozify
And then leave
You
And when
They ask who's
Giving the rides
They need you
And he's got nerve
Asking this Lolita nation to bow and serve
And will you take...

The Waist And The Knees

Cozify with the lip-tied mind
Beckmanns by the enlistment line
Got to be small when target times come
Got to be smart while acting dumb
Son I think your learning don't seem right
Sleep under the floor at night
Feeling sicko hang on sloop john
Ugliest trip I've ever been on
We'll follow those dreams we're going to have each
Small and literal, well within reach
And not a sicker fantasy dreamed of
No excuse for love
Trade all the forward brain for a needle of novocaine
Going to be reconciled and when they give you an inch
You'll take the inch with a smile
Going to get hold and no one leaves
Going to get cold and most will freeze
Going to get folded into threes
Until you bend at the waist and the knees
Oh pal Joey, we're losers we know
It's written on our hair and clothes
We've seen the rings of smoke through the trees
We're how all the words go
Ollie and Stan for all seasons we know
I couldn't face this heaven alone
Agreement made this day with the undersigned, no one twisting his arm,
Company shall be referred to as 'special friend,' and
Shall not be held
Liable for moneys owed the retired vaudeville performers guild or the
American operatic wire recording archive society, and
Shall not be held
Liable for loss due to theft, misplacement, impulse
Buying, poor sportsmanship,
Birth of multi-headed infant, hubby red-faced after
Bizarre weight-loss
Ritual, it shall be remembered by the undersigned, no
One wins by being
Unreasonable
Over the ceiling rain
And no place left that I know to drain
Cutting the signal flow
You can dress as you like there's still no place you can go
Going to get hold and no one leaves
Going to get cold and most will freeze
Going to get folded into threes
Until you break at the waist and the knees
Fire across the temple and out the rear, motor skill
And low muscle stopped,
No one knows how to make it stop, I hope I can wake up

Nothing New

I was on the outs today
Feeling hit up for a price I thought
That I'd never have to pay
Wicker old-world store displays
Sure I'll take your warm hearth autumn line
But with what for any fair exchange?
Accounting says the terms can't seem to be arranged
And girl I know it's nothing new
To find someone in love with you
And if you are so inclined
To change your mind
A thousand times then do
And I will wait for you
Second nature in my mind
Like a seven hundred dollar tab
Of unpaid traffic fines
And you can't walk the streets these days
Now I'm thinking we've all paid the price
But none too many get our way
And we give to get you till we give it all away
And girl we know it's nothing new
To find someone in love with you
And if you are so inclined
To change you mind
A thousand times then do
And I will wait for you
Nothing new

The World's Easiest Job

Turning your friends against me
Man it must be the world's easiest job
Finding a verdict of retard retard retard
Well I might be
I haven't lived enough lives for comparison
I guess I could be a little better with numbers
Numbers
Riding a frenzied ten-speed
Man it must be the world's easiest job
Fighting and flirting then re-start re-start re-start
Well it may work your whole life
I know it hasn't for me for so much as a week
Before everything crumbles
Crumbles
Man it must be the world's goddamn easiest job

Look Away

Lyrics by Donnette Thayer

They say it comes to you
Like a light in a dark blue night
Irresistible, too clean and too bright
I tried to sleep it off
And I tried to hate it off
But I don't want to wait
I just don't want to wait
Every morning another darkness falls
Holds me gently but it won't let me go
And when I say I want to get away
I mean I want to get away
Well, shine the light shine the light
I won't look away

Slip

I should have spent tonight out finding some good ledge
It's time to look at long shots, the cheap end of the wedge
You used to hear our fights half a block away
I'm wondering now which ones I could have lost to make her stay
I call a friend of mine and say haven't heard a thing
The world has made you tired, wound down the driving spring
He says you're still a child and I hope you never change
But I can't jump at every chance that's moving out of range
Second hand slow now
I don't know how
Hours got right of way
On the verge of a perfect day
The slate I got clean won't stay clean long
And the love I got over won't stay gone
But the pain of the slip through fingers lingers on
Run the blacktop circuit, find the ethnic buys
Who is going to love this place when the trade route dies
Gassed to make the coast homes, roll the windows tight
Young men it's not your concern where money spends the night
New top guns I say glad to shake your hand
Lots don't get so lucky and luck is what will stand
Find you've got no grip on anything that lasts
All you party boys had best get serious and fast
Hearts at each side go
High now then low
What will make the race?
Maybe leaving without a trace
The slate I got clean...

The Real Sheila

The word must be go easy
Showing yourself to those eyes
Criteria running high
Austere and lost? No
They're tired of themselves as I am
Watching the shows go by
Lord knows that I'm not
Exactly the boy of my own dreams
And if I were a girl with dreams
I'd have dreams as big as you please
Sheila stay home a little longer, I'm going to phone you until I do
Sheila don't let them any closer, worlds will be changing when I get through
And nobody knows the real Sheila like I do
The word must be head down
And don't know a thing you're doing
Hear what the storefronts say
And dress clothes and thrill shows
Will take you like hands wherever
The word is get on your way
Where you know you're going someday

Andy In Ten Years

Andy don't speak I hardly think
You could live with what you'd say
And you're not the kind that likes justice blind
When it's facing back your way
Andy you're banging on the keys
But you can't flesh out a tune
You can lower your sights and read your rights
But you can't get good in an afternoon
Andy you're known for saying you don't
Speak Merit-Systemese
But to make it on friends too much depends
How eager you are to please
Andy you don't know the street
If you think that's how to live
Who's going to have cried when you've told your side?
I thought you were just being negative
Andy, it's such a lonely fight
Don't make it any harder than it might be
Andy, keeping the injuries slight
Your nights alone must sink like stone
Without a star to guide
And you're not the kind that in ten years' time
Will have won more to your side
Andy your bratty kid abrasion's
The charm that gets you by
You can lay the blame and place the names
But you can't play ignorant a second time

Mammoth Gardens

Lyrics by Donnette Thayer

We were breaking in but it was an open door
And there we found the decades dancing breaking in by radio
Slingshot windows opened up the sky
Defying our defiling
We found a place where runaways could belong
In Mammoth Gardens
We would dance
We would dance
Oh, just that one time did you really love me?
Seven years ago when we left our footprints in the dust
August stars are shining and I'm still waiting for summer to come
I heard it shatter in his voice
He said you can't go home anymore
In Mammoth Gardens...
Take me back on an airplane
To the deepest shadows and then pull me down
Make me remember just how hard we used to play
Name your price, name it
You know I'll pay
For just one sunny day
To be dancing the way we danced

Little Ivory

Little Ivory
What's it gonna to be?
Come on the cherub lover
Exit the third degree
And oh Little Ivory
The sun going down
And who'll Little Ivory decide
To follow to town?
Little Ivory
So unsafe to see
Daddy's big guns shoot down
All hope of reasoning
And there'll be no locking him
Out if we please
With all of his lawyers he won't need
To use any keys
Little Ivory
March in the last parade
Up north of Johnny's town
Pulling up tracks you laid
And ivory's discovering
What gets her her way
And will Little Ivory decide
To leave it someday?
Never

One More For Saint Michael

Michael you
Don't know the half of a mess
Getting made
Down at your favorite address
Pretty seraphs
Cutting holes in us all
Checking stains in the stalls
Getting season box seats for the fall
With their challenge
To the too weak to fight
Leave them shaking
With their faces drained white
Shooting red glare
In the dawn's early light
Knocking doors in the night
Flush them out, they'll get picked off in flight
Angel gel it awhile
And take some appropriate notice
Before all the numbers are in
Saint Michael you don't need one more win
Who's that little pile of smiles?
Get away thank you I don't need a tax audit
I haven't made one ha ha half dollar all year
I'm a man in the clear
Who does not need company here
Must be old heathen Ed
In a rail stop gin bag rain tarp
Nobody bother me spree
Comic relief pee sprays down his knee
I know kids about three
More goddamn impressive than me
Boards and tin and empties of gin
And god only knows how many holes he's been in
Saint Michael you don't need one more win
Captain Jim throws the prime directive out
For the umpteenth time
It's habit for him now
Reeling wild from the stern to the bow
With T'Pring and T'Pau
I know why they call a starship 'she' now
Volunteers the man needs volunteers
It's a special mission for a special deputy
Up jump an eager pup saying
Put in put in put in put in put in put in put in
Put in a good word for me
Oh no master my teeth aren't to chatter
That's just them dry bone crack down
Right down under the skin
Saint Michael you don't need one more win

Chardonnay

I was feeling the weight of the atmosphere
And those I know aren't looking overjoyed I'm here
Daughters about fourteen order wine
And Chardonnay shows what she knows when she decides
Couldn't tell you now what clicked inside
Or why that's what I call her
Hardly floored but still reminded
That I once could want it all
I don't know any that age who've died of greed
And so was I once letting be and letting bleed
I believe David Carradine changed a lot
Eastern wisdom Kunging Fu on western thought
But was always missing that same spot
Or knew but wouldn't say
A lot of life's best things are
Farther than a zen proverb away
Hey Chardonnay Chardonnay oh Chardonnay
Hey Chardonnay Chardonnay oh Chardonnay
They can always put you down some way
But I can't see you being saved for one more rainy day
It was easy to think at the U canteen
Drunk and small-time, finishing the quarter mean
That a lot of the structure would have to fall
Haves and have-nots polarized at facing walls
I don't think I believed it all
But needed just the same
A way to deal with being shut out
Of the decent peoples' game
Hey Chardonnay...
Well it's harder each night gonna take a miracle
Gonna take Ernst Dali and di Chirico
Gonna recharge cranio-mechanical
Turning me right back into an animal
Hey Chardonnay...

Last Day That We're Young

Adds up a shame to leave it so unresolved
Shakes all the sheathing loose from the wire
Time's going to be a luxury now
In the responsibility empire
Give me some false hope I can take seriously
Set me some road blocks I can't break through
And watch what I'll risk to get what I want
I think too much I always do
No changing your side
No thinking it's time to start things over
No favors denied
No, not on the last day that we're young
Hang up the faces, Lon Chaney, your day's gone
Each one is one less chance you can win
No one can get behind what they all say
And so you lose before you begin
What was it we were always wanting?
Didn't we know we had it all?
Show me some tear-eyed beauty that disappears
Every time I might happen along
Opalesque, eye-lined, owning the day
When it comes I'll have been proven wrong
No changing your side...
What was it we were always wanting?
Didn't we know we had it all?

Together Now, Very Minor

Become the agile ones with legal means
The men who bring the message to Abilene
Look-at-me togs boxed up at mom's on the floor
The news came hard and has never been taken right
Toplevel-cleared and riding the satellite
Girl, stretch your legs and find what besides me is new
And write the obit when you do
He never ran out when the spirits were low
A nice guy as minor celebrities go
All right all together now now very minor I know
The levee view reads like life as it used to be
But coming now the only thought striking me
Is take it in well
As eyelids of evening come down
Your beautiful longing world unwound
He never walked out...
And please don't pay attention to
A thing I do or say
It's a ploy to drag you out
And take it all away
All away

- - -

- - -

Game Theory

2 Steps From the Middle Ages

Release date: 1988

The band: Scott Miller, Shelley LaFreniere, Donnette Thayer, Gil Ray, Gui Gassuan

Guest musicians: Mitch Easter, Mark Slagle, Craig Silvey, Dave Barrett, R. Dunbar Poor

Producer: Mitch Easter

Room For One More, Honey
What the Whole World Wants
The Picture of Agreeability
Amelia, Have You Lost
Rolling With The Moody Girls
Wyoming
In a Delorean
You Drive
Leilani
Wish I Could Stand Or Have
Don't Entertain Me Twice
Throwing The Election
Initiations Week

Room For One More, Honey

Flying in over Asia low
Not the one that we think we know
Will it be a better life? (I never know)
Will they understand a word? (I don't think so)
(Well all the better)
But the catch phrases (We can leave behind)
There when we go (Everything we know)

Will be the likes of
Elegance of line (And we'll all get in line)
And sense of place (It's called "this old continent")
Elegance of line (All get in line)
And sense of place (It's called "this old continent")
Elegance of line (All get in line)
And room for one more

All we see out across the land
All exists out of our demand
Will it be our new America? (We'll know our ride)
And can we invent its history? (We can say we tried)
(Well I've been wondering)
Well that's what (If anyone back home is on our side)
The brochures would imply
And we'll have

Elegance of line (And we'll all get in line)
And sense of place (It's called "this old continent")
Elegance of line (All get in line)
And sense of place (It's called "this old continent")
Elegance of line (All get in line)
And room for one more
Always one more

What The Whole World Wants

We think that it can work but it doesn't often
I think we'll look like jerks nailing our own coffins
We think that we can talk but we miss it by a mile
We think that we can joke but no one cracks a smile
Must be out of touch
They think that there's so little
I can't believe there's so much
Of what the whole world wants
All down every street
But I can't get a square foot of shade from the heat
What the whole world wants
Just outside our door
Be we don't see a day's end without needing more
We get the most we can, I don't think we've earned it
We act just like a man, I don't think we've learned it
We do it like our job and we treat it like the law
Well it must have been your little sister I saw
Must have been your little sister I saw
Must have been your little sister all along
It's bred into the bone
And we don't need our friends
They wonder how to get started
I wonder if it ends
But it's what the whole world wants

The Picture Of Agreeability

I must be almost old enough to hear the bad news
Tell me now
We can drink to Minneapolis and Vegas
It may be an almost absolute relief for us
On our way down
And everyone around
I'll walk around the city snapping pictures
Uninvolved
And wasting no one's hopes for me
No one left to look at me as if I've let them down
No longer sounding like I'm trying to change the key
I'm going to be the picture of agreeability
They'll call me the picture of agreeability
Get that original thought away from me

Amelia Have You Lost

Amelia have you lost your patience
With my attempts at conversations?
I know I've lost my chance with you
I know the words aren't getting through
So what should I do?
Amelia has the one you trusted
Grown hard and maladjusted?
But there are always reasons why
I know I can't just say goodbye
So what's left to try?
What if the whole world saw I care?
It's never kind to souls laid bare
But Amelia, I'm half undone inside, I swear
Amelia did a perfect vision
Fade under cold derision?
I'm tired of staying out of sight
But are the cold stares left and right
Just too much to fight?
Next life, I'll be the young distraught
You be the jungle man now caught
Oh Amelia, I can't give what I haven't got

Wyoming

Used to run all night on mood swings
And spill our gasoline
And play the violin behind the scenes
Felt so right to leave you losers
Why do I miss you now?
How much we give the ghost up
When we learned how to get where we're going?
Come on home, Wyoming
I know that every night you lie
And stare at the ceiling
Till you start believing it's the sky
Never knowing why
High on any sheer will measure
We run the on-time train
But we could call just one off due to rain
Sable frenzy, drunks and addicts
Do it all the time
We could always let one fall behind what we do
And pay what we're owing
Come on home, Wyoming

Rolling With The Moody Girls

All the parts and so decided
Once in some abandoned world
Hosts inside and guests invited
Rolling with the moody girls
A jostly night anticipated
First one home from boarding school
A dash from dad, the rest created
As per Hoyle's creation rules
Patterned shawl draped in a crown
Lipstick darker than her frown
And dusty jewelry hanging low down
Out of the lost and found
Now I'm rolling, now I'm rolling
I'm rolling with the moody girls
Caught without a class distinction
Prints replacing oils for now
Each new year could bring extinction
No one knows exactly how
Unfolding their defense in stages
Harshest critics can't refuse
Two steps from the middle ages
Rose details and ruby shoes
Taking on their sovereignty
Pointless as it may well be
But someone's going to have to go see
And it might as well be me

In a Delorean

I watch the mood get sober and I'm not so sure I'm over
All the times I didn't know and I didn't used to know
When my heart was breaking nightly
Was I taking things too lightly
That would never come again, that would stay awhile
And end?
Bring us in under budget, lord
We want out of the wrong
Playing safe too long
Though we're miles clear of the firefight
We can't light our pipes with hindsight
I'll re-start this life somehow, I could live it better now
Give us grace under pressure, lord
And help us watch our tongues
And make our mistakes young
In a Delorean we're all going make our mistakes young
I'd apologize the ears off
But the gloom here never clears off
I can't sit through one more day of deserving some O.K.
It's a scandal just to mention
But I don't mind the attention
It's a failing by design, Betty Ford's world and not mine
Give us some final option, lord
We mean well every one
Let us make our mistakes young
In a Delorean

You Drive

All over El Cerrito hair gets combed in tangles down
And every radio's aligned onto the finest sound
Look out for love lost when the lights are changing
All last year's cassettes together melted on the ground
All over London, England young lines take the old lines on
The weight of never making any difference almost gone
But it's a headache being right when everybody waits
To jump on you the first time that you're wrong
Across the nation every sports bar turns the pre-game on
And every regular is sneering like we don't belong
No it's not true I played a lot of baseball in my younger days
One day the diamonds were all gone
The notices I never thought would be sent out have arrived
The notices I never thought would be sent out have arrived
Why can't we throw them in the faces that say we may
Not survive?
Why can't we cruise the night alive?
You drive

Leilani

Donovan tapes play for hours on end
But the old feelings won't stay
Try though she may
Hates who she was yesterday
And so does she think that she loves someone?
Making the firedrill work twice
Always no dice
Don't think that things can stay nice
Swordfights on tables for way too long
Ended I guess in a draw
Now Douglas Fairbanks is one off the list
Singling la leilani la leilani la
Was every outing a play for you
Or did I really have fun?
Clothes on the run
Go out and make me someone
Whatever happened to that whole life?
Shootouts each chance that I saw
I hear them ask does Clint Eastwood feel lucky now?
La leilani la leilani la
And she just wants to look okay
She just wants it to be okay

Wish I Could Stand Or Have

Wish I could love the way, oh the way I lean on you
Wish I could walk away if one day I wanted to
Wish I could love a day of silence
But I'll miss you to the point of violence
Wish I could stand or have a chance without you
Wish I could love the way, oh the way I'm owned by you
Wish I could really say that I've got my own life, too
Wish I needed nobody's assistance
Wish that I could find a little distance
Wish I could stand or have a chance without you

Don't Entertain Me Twice

Lose my sense of fair play when she's here with me
Lose my sight with one more night of late t.v.
She can go a life not looking in your eyes
And I believe her when she lies
Too far gone to disagree
Houston, does the weak transmission say it all?
Wave transparent agents of the urban sprawl
Jazz musicians everywhere you look tonight
Crawl out of my skin outright
Thin film found on coed walls
She wants the formal indictment
The go and the flow of excitement
Entertain me once and then change my life
But don't entertain me twice
Go ahead, you could be just the thing she needs
Someone there to follow anywhere she leads
We can talk psychology till the alarm rings
Biology's the only thing
At this point that will kill the weeds

Throwing The Election

There's a light on the nineteenth floor tonight
They don't know there won't even be a fight
But they'll find out I've tired of all the things I've
Called my own
When they go to the final mats alone
Don't even waste the man-hours on us
We are finding no solution
Call all the boys in from the fighting fronts
We have lost the revolution
None of the soaring flight we dreamed
Is any closer to perfection
And all I want is one to fold my arms around
We are throwing the election
There's a light on in Joanie's room tonight
And she won't sleep till summer's going right
She thought she saw something that would lead her to believe
I'm the kind who'll accept the strokes and leave
Make me an offer, I don't waste them now
We have no more fixed intentions
Give all the faithful long-deserved rests
We've abandoned our dissentions
You could be one of someone's hundreds
Who'll be chosen for affection
And all I want is one to fold my arms around
We are throwing the election
I've got a feeling it's all rigged
I've got a feeling it ended a long time ago
Nobody tells me
I've got a feeling it's over now
I've got a feeling it's over now
I've got a feeling the votes are in and I got none
And all I want is one

Initiations Week

On initiations week
On initiations week
We'll be kicking out the jams
And going at our peak
Initiations, formal invitations
Flighty and fancy
All night catty and chatty
They said "Who's gonna slam?
You on the periphery
Your folded shoulders, your lives mean nothing"
They keep the quiet ones quiet
And thinking "It works fine without me
Just fine without me"
But tonight that's where every last one's gonna be
There for all the lovely eyes to see
All the lovely eyes to see
And no one's going to disagree
And we'll be kicking out the jams
And going at our peak

- - -

Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things

Release date: 1993

The band: Scott Miller, Paul Wieneke, Zachary Smith, R. Dunbar Poor, Jozef Becker

Guest musicians: Don Tillman, Gil Ray, Mitch Easter, Shalini Chatterjee, Joaquin Maguire

Producer: Mitch Easter

He Do The Police In Different Voices
Sword Swallower
Aerodeliria
Self Righteous Boy Reduced To Tears
Jimmy Still Comes Around
Take Me Down (Too Halloo)
Don't All Thank Me At Once
Idiot Son
Some Grand Vision Of Motives and Irony
Spot the Setup
Inverness
Rosy Overdrive
Slit My Wrists
Isaac's Law
The Second Grade Applauds
Last Honest Face
Even You
Ballad Of How You Can All Shut Up
Give In World

He Do The Police In Different Voices

But you can't place...
Make me an offer I don't waste them now...

Are you still right?
What have you learned?
Do for yourself
Take what you can't earn

Do you still rank?
What do you say?
Take in the slack
'Cause baby your little control trip is going away

What were you believing--that I might do okay?
(Do we end up owing something?)
What were you conceiving?
Maybe just that plants and birds and rocks and things could justify my day

He know he got to be good lookin'
He got the crystal blue persuasion
He know the thing that's gonna please ya
He is un chien Andalusian
He got the friend from many stages
He do the police in different voices

Sword Swallower

Lawrence, I feel stupid even standing here at all
(Ooh, waiting for a clue, waiting for it)
Biting nails like debutantes and waiting for a call
(Ooh, waiting for a clue, waiting for it)

I'll raise up the roof just like Martin Luther King
Sparkle and charm just like Paris in the spring
I'll swallow the swords like I'm in the center ring

Wow!
You know, I thought that you said 'want to get high?'
(Ooh, waiting for a clue, waiting for it)
As if we'd ever let that hour of opportunities go by
(Ooh, waiting for a clue, waiting for it)

I'll swallow the swords like I'm in the center ring
Raise up the roof just like Martin Luther King
I'll sparkle and charm just like Paris in the spring

Aerodeliria

Aerodeliria jet ride
They don't affect me now
Elegant Stalins nine hundred stories down

Go back to sleep, Little Susie
What would you wake to find?
Arrogant laws still hoping to draw your lines

Love is real, and'll care for you
So take all the love that's there for you
Where one gets refused
We could blow down the doors in twos
I don't think we'd ever lose

Aerodeleria light speed
What won't these kids get done?
With their ibuprofen and smoked glass to look at the sun

Door to door in the August heat
Scamming down 42nd Street
But what will we do, girl, if just one of us comes through
And I'm putting my bets on you

Look what we've gotten ourselves in
Over the falls we go
Girl, don't you know what that sound is?
Losses being cut
And mercy being asked
And "Don't hate us too bad.
We didn't know."

Self-Righteous Boy Reduced to Tears

They'd probably give their whole success away
If that would buy us just one easy day
But we'll keep breaking any helpful tie
On our old sleep-deprivation high
And tell our old lie

And yeah, yeah, where's Julie?
I've got a feeling that she's far away
I've got a feeling she was never really dumb enough to stay

Jimmy Still Comes Around

Christine and Sharon are sure
You can deadbolt the doors
But the outside gets in
At the edges of the windows and floors

And ways of wasting the day
Get pristine and passe
All the tremors before California falls away

But Jimmy's world is a big thankless job
And she goes to bed loaded with phobias that she's been robbed
And although all other boys are upstages
He's a ball lightning charge but no way to stay warm through the ice age

And Jimmy's home life's resigned
To be fallen behind
Ultraviolet head-shop ideas that seem good at the time
And every vice of the age
Is indulged and engaged
A Miami exposure bust looking for a stage

And all too often the thrill is the shock
You can argue forever just where the good part starts and stops
But in the middle it swings and it rocks
They can buy their own pool and survive all the drops off the deep end

Jimmy's on drugs again
Day-Glo sportswear, shoulders are lookin' tan
Jimmy's on drugs again
Hated us yesterday
Now he's our biggest fan
Thinks he's a stranger now
Joined the elite
But he still comes around
Still comes around on the downbeat
All right

And like their ancestors did
The adults fight the kids
And containers fight off the excitement near the cracks in the lids

Jimmy makes a big deal of the deep things he feels
Imagine his shock
When he learns it isn't real

Christine and Sharon live everywhere now
You can't lock up your sons 'cause they'll find them somehow
Ohhh, they got their work cut out saving his soul
He's the tall-pouring type and no one ever told him to say 'when'

Jimmy's on drugs again
Day-Glo sportswear, shoulders are lookin' tan
Jimmy's on drugs again
Hated us yesterday
Now he's our biggest fan
Thinks he's a stranger now
Joined the elite
But he still comes around
Still comes around on the downbeat
Down down

Jimmy's on drugs again
Day-Glo sportswear, shoulders are lookin' tan
Jimmy's on drugs again
Hated us yesterday
Now he's our biggest fan
Thinks he's a stranger now
Joined the elite
But he still comes around
Still comes around on the downbeat
Downbeat
Down down down down

Take Me Down (Too Halloo)

It was a perfect day for a suntan (Take me down, take me down)
So we sold ourselves to the sun man (Take me down, take me down)
I can only say it was different then (Take me down, take me down)
Wavin' goodbye from the air
On our way across the barrier of sound

It was a chilly day in the big time (Take me down, take me down)
So we took our act to the five-and-dime (Take me down, take me down)
And I don't want to cry as the days waltz by (Take me down, take me down)
With our worlds built in backyards
Down in splinters and shards on the ground

Take me down
Take me down to Halloo-ci-nation town
Take me down
Take me down to Halloo-ci-nation town
Take me down
Take me down to Halloo-ci-nation town
Take me down
Take me down to a loose and strange town

It was a dicey day for solutions (Take me down, take me down)
So we said we want a revolution (Take me down, take me down)
That'll break all the hearts in Stockton (Take me down, take me down)
That'll numb all the pain in Compton (Take me down, take me down)
That'll blow off the dust in Houston (Take me down, take me down)
That'll burn off the fog in London (Take me down, take me down)
That'll spill in the docks of Boston (Take me down, take me down)
That'll prove once and for all time
Ohh, we got an overactive mind of our own

Take me down
Take me down to Halloo-ci-nation town
Take me down
Take me down to Halloo-ci-nation town
Take me down
Take me down to Halloo-ci-nation town
Take me down
Take me down to
Halloo-ci-nation town Take me down
Take me down to Halloo-ci-nation town
Take me down
Take me down to Halloo-ci-nation town
Take me down
Take me down to Halloo-ci-nation town
Take me down
Take me down to a loose and strange town

Don't All Thank Me At Once

No one twisting his arm...

She says, "Oh babe, I've got a lot on my mind"
And me having been such a good soldier
And do I have to fight and win forever?
Don't all thank me at once

Idiot Son

Father, you know that I don't mean disrespect
But the house is winning
I don't want to be there when they collect
(Father) the gratis-riding days couldn't last
Smoking courtesy cigarettes and rolling up the tinted glass

You're smart enough to make the numbers appear
The way the shouts around the table want to hear
But when it's over and the life we know is done
What will you say to your idiot son?
What will you say to your idiot son?

I dreamed that I was being chased over ground
I was climbing over backyard fences on my way out of town
(I dreamed) but every place I came to was new
And my legs gave out as I cried out
"I don't think we can still get through."

And I saw real estate that I would not call land
And not a council seat would fail to understand
But on the day there's really nowhere left to run
What will you say to your idiot son?
What will you say to your idiot son?
Oww! Say this!

You're smart enough to make the numbers appear
The way the shouts around the table want to hear
But you never had an ounce of faith in anyone
What will you have for your idiot son?
How do you explain to your idiot son?

Some Grand Vision Of Motives And Irony

I try to live up to the times I've seen
But I'm feeling broke and seventeen
Reduced to things I have to do
Always the eyes, never the view

They say that you're not really choosing me
You're biding time and using me
But if that's why you're here
Girl, I don't mind
Come back next year

Wake up one day
'Cause I got no other way to make you need me
Wake up one day
And it's not your job to make things easy
Wake up one day
With some grand vision of motives and irony
And no one in love with me

I stood on tried and true philosophies
When I should've been down on my knees
You push and I feel like I should shove
And are we gonna be left with anything like love?

Wake up one day
'Cause I got no better way to make you need me
Wake up one day
And it's not your job to make things easy
Wake up one day
With some grand vision of motives and irony
And no one in love with me

Spot The Setup

What's goin' on?

I used to go out with supermodels
But it didn't make my life okay
I used to be the cold stare, don't care
Stay fresh in the Fridgedaire
I just assumed that was amore
I didn't spot the setup

I used to get A's in psychology class
But it didn't make my life okay
I used to be the point-blank, think tank
What I say or daddy spank
I just assumed that would pay the way
I didn't spot the setup

And I could always be the judge
And bear the grudge
And tell you where you lost it
And I could always be the one
Shade your sun
And steal your fun away
But it didn't make my life okay

That was my mistake
I didn't spot the setup
That was my mistake
I didn't spot the setup
That was my mistake
I didn't spot the setup
That was my mistake
I didn't spot the setup
That was my mistake
I didn't spot the setup
That was my mistake
I didn't spot the setup

That was my mistake
I didn't spot the setup
That was my mistake
I didn't spot the setup
You were a prince to give me a chance
I didn't spot the setup
That was my mistake
You were a prince to give me a chance
I'll do better next time

Inverness

At night I know
That there's someplace I can go
When there's no place in waking light
And I'll dream cliches
That I've dreamed a thousand ways
I'm not above cliches tonight
The playground viewed from blessed height

Ohh, Inverness
I bet you've never actually seen a person die of loneliness
Ohh, Inverness
All in good time

Trusting smile
That I'd die for all that while
Who stayed the night and made you frown?
Oh, poor dear
Did you let him much too near?
Let's get a pen and write this down
While there's still time to warn the town

Ohh, Inverness
I bet you've never actually seen a person die of loneliness
Ohh, Inverness
All in good time

I used all I had
I wasted my best
Ohh, Inverness
I bet you've never actually seen a person die of loneliness
Ohh, Inverness
All in good time
All in good time

Rosy Overdrive

Rosy's showtime favors some restraint
Into change, to any who she ain't
So force her to do anything but choose
'Cause she hate what she win when she bet what she lose
And she have what she hold when she red what she blue

Rosy knows life stories ain't so smart
Change her own around until it's art
Strip off truth until it feels like clothes
And she write what she see cause she left what she know
And she make for the man with the heat when it snow

Rosy sharing time
Why would you be so hard to find?
Rosy Overdrive
Why do you look so half-alive?

Rosy low-fi, no preventive cures
"Threw my youth away - now I want yours!"
Lovers too embarrassed to turn blue
What's the girl with a gun in her hand supposed to do?
Say, "It's not me. I was in 1982!"

Rosy sharing time
Why would you be so hard to find?
Rosy Overdrive
Why do you look so half-alive?
Half-alive...

Rosy sharing time
Why would you be so hard to find?
Rosy Overdrive
Why do you look so half-alive?

Slit My Wrists

I thought love would come so easily
Once I had time to spend
And who would guess
That time was not my friend
(Mother) I don't assign vindictive blame
That you'll cry when you read
No, not for trying
Just to give me what I need

But what I need is not fresh tears
I need not to feel the loss of the love and the years
What I need is not ways to go on
What I need is to slit my wrists and be gone

The more alone I felt the more the celebration grew
All the way down Van Ness Avenue
But I no longer take so lightly walking down that street
With nothing left between it and my feet

But what I need is not cut cost
What I need is a life where I've won
All the times that I've lost
What I need is not ways to go on
What I need is to slit my wrists and be gone

Isaac's Law

Keep all the tea in China
All the tin in Aberdeen
There's just no way to strike
A bargain with the cold machine

You can dance around the subject
Fight about it till we're gray
It never seems to make
The slightest difference anyway

It's all around you
You can feel it on your tongue
The taste of Isaac's Law
The taste of Isaac's Law

Never mind the architecture
Leave the details to the young
It makes for fairly decent reading
When the monkey's done

You can stand and face the music
Block an ear against the noise
Make no mistake about
The howling of your master's voice

It's in the system
You can feel it in your bones
The ache of Isaac's Law
The ache of Isaac's Law

Making time with Maxwell's demon
Take a powder, lose the doubt
There's just no way to keep
The precious stuff from running out

Keep all the tea in China
All the bones in Amon Llaw
There's just no way to strike
A bragain when it's Isaac's Law

There's no mistaking
When it's wrapped around your heart
The hand of Isaac's Law
The hand of Isaac's Law

The Second Grade Applauds

Little Joe says, "Tired of ropin' steers"
Branding and fencing off the years
Spirit warriors dance out from the pines
Dance on the graves of our designs

Give me ground rules
You know I'll obey
Go quietly down my resume
But all I want now is to throw it away
To see the second grade applaud all day
Hooray!
To see the second grade applaud all day

Causal virtue, actions neatly chained
Rule-driven heartbreak unexplained
Slips in mid-step, glass across the floor
Fine china lives to be no more

And we can't run the film the wrong way
A thousand pieces to a glass on a tray
But it would be worth any price I could pay
To see the second grade applaud all day
Hooray!
To see the second grade applaud all day

Last Honest Face

Julie Ann, look what we've done
Worn out our welcomes every one
Things didn't get done just 'cause the world knew we were near
And things weren't said 'cause they're what we wanna hear
Ahhh
Oooh

Quick to use up our finest thrills
Quick justice angels at crossed wills
Now it's more like we can't say two nice words on the phone
And baby, the trains don't run where we used to go
I guess you oughta know

I used to think of you as someone I'd come crying to
You used to put me in my place
I used to think of you as sun that would come shining through
You had this town's last honest face
Last honest face

Going through people's closet shelves
To see if it's what we hide ourselves
Selves...

I used to think of you as someone I'd come crying to
You used to put me in my place
I used to think of you as sun that would come shining through
You had this town's last honest face
Last honest face

Even You

Tell Cath and Celie that the breaking point was found
The shit came down
One too many times
To get up from the ground

Go admitting freely
That the real world intercedes
Fills its needs
Beautyless and summed
Point by point, one by one

But oh, Cindy Lee
Don't say you don't love me
Oh, Cindy Lee
Never say you don't love me

Say that you don't think
It was ever in our hands
And the firmest stands last a while
Then find higher ground, other plans

But oh, Cindy Lee
Never say you don't love me
'Cause maybe even you jump
At a chance you see
At a chance you see
Don't you know they got you
Too easily, too easily
Even you
So easily

Oh, Cindy Lee
Don't say you don't love me
Oh, Cindy Lee
Never say you don't love me

Ballad Of How You Can All Shut Up

My name is...
HOWSOMETH
How are you?
Treat me like an object
Sell me something I haven't already got
Causal virtue
Actions neatly chained
Another wasted afternoon

Come on over baby (Here comes everybody)
I can show you what it's like (Here it is tomorrow)
Why, this can't go on for another night (If and when)

Dreaming I'd been looking good in your photographs (Waiting in lines and answering phones)
(You know that, you know that) (Legal means)
Dreaming I'd be getting vertigo at last (Decisions made too fast)
(Kim Novak, Kim Novak) (A pyramid structure)

You can trash my little dream (Elegance of line)
(Wrong again, wrong again)
You can laugh at my little dream (Sense of place)
(Wrong again, wrong again) (It's all rigged)

But you can shut up while it ends (We all told you so)
(Oh baby, oh baby)
You can shut up while it ends (No one ever got through)

SHAH-RAY-LEE
The leaves change color
SHAH-LEY-NAH
Leave the leaves
Believe what you like
It's change
Change your name
Leave town

Give In World

Sha-ley-nu
Face the tears down
Look and don't avert your eyes
Take a photograph in case your memory lies
There's the cash
There's the travel
There's the life they've got for you
Do you want it just because they say you do?
Sha-ley-nu

Sha-ley-ni, Sha-ley-ni
It's a right-now world
And will you wait the long wait for me?
Sha-ley-ni, Sha-ley-ni
It's a give-in world
And will you fight the good fight with me?

See the play
Play the hit
Hit the spot
Spot the fake
Fake the count
Count the take
Take the lead
Lead the way
Weigh the risk
Risk the change
Change the plan
Plan the time
Time the move
Move the mouth
Mouth the name
Name the place
Place the blame

Learn the faces
Build the basis for a year
Rub the surface of the ice until it's clear
Sha-ley-na
Face the stares down
Face the lay down and the law
Do they know you just because they found a flaw?
Sha-ley-na

Sha-ley-ni, Sha-ley-ni
It's a right-now world
And will you wait the long wait for me?
Sha-ley-ni, Sha-ley-ni
It's a give-in world
And will you fight the good fight with me?

Sha-ley-ni, Sha-ley-ni
It's a back-off world
And will you stand some hard ground with me?

Track 20

Sorry, I don't know why I did that

- - -

- - -

Slouching Towards Liverpool

Buy it now at Alias Records
Buy it now at amazon.com

Release date: 1993

The band: Scott Miller, Paul Wieneke, Zachary Smith, R. Dunbar Poor, Jozef Becker

Guest musician: Michael Quercio

Producers: Mitch Easter ("Take Me Down"), Scott Miller ("The Come On," "Back of a Car")

Take Me Down
The Come On
Back of a Car
Slit My Wrists (Live at WNUR-FM)
Aerodeliria (Live at WNUR-FM)
Erica's Word (Live In Studio)

The Come On

I'd get away
If you weren't what I'd waited for
I'd leave today
I'd march outside and slam the door
But now I love you
And everything goes on the line
Love so fine
But you just won't take the time

Hey, don't deceive us
With no one in our world believing us
It stands between us
It's all gone wrong
Get up now
Come on

Open your heart
If you've got something left inside
Feelings for me
'Cause now there's nothing left to hide
Acting this way
We're worlds apart
Have a heart
Let waters part
Maybe then our love can start

Hey, don't deceive us
Your sleeping lasts too long for pleasing us
It stands between us
It's all gone wrong
Get up now
Come on

Give to me
All the love you feel for me
Bring to me
All the love you feel for me
All the love that's real

I'd get away
If you weren't what I'd waited for
I'd leave today
I'd march outside and slam the door
But now I love you
And everything goes on the line
Love so fine
But you just won't take the time

Hey, don't deceive us
With no one in our world believing us
It stands between us
It's all gone wrong
Get up now
Come on

Hey, don't deceive us
Your sleeping lasts too long for pleasing us
It stands between us
It's all gone wrong
Get up now
Come on
Get up now
Come on
Get up now
Come on

Back Of A Car

Big Star cover

Sitting in the back of a car
Music so loud
I can't tell a thing
Thinking about what to say
And I can't find a line
You know I love you a lot
I just don't know
Should I not
Waiting for a brighter day
But I can't find a way

I'll go on and on with you
Like to fall and lie with you
I love you too
Whooah
Whooah
Whooah

Maybe I'm too afraid
I just don't know if it's okay
Trying to get away
From everything
Why don't you take me home?
It's gone too far inside this car
And I know I'll feel a whole lot more
When I get alone

I'll go on and on with you
Like to fall and lie with you
I love you too
Whooah
Whooah
Whooah

Sitting in the back of a car
Music so loud
I can't tell a thing
Thinking about what to say
And I can't find a line

Erica's Word

Erica's gone shy
Some unknown X behind the why
All is some less today
Mass not conserving in the old way
Checking out with brother Jay
I'll miss your half of me
Girl are you leaving something you might later need?

Erica's word, taking me clear and leaving me blurred
Erica's news, singing the praise and playing the blues
Pulling the rug out under my shoes

Twelve years ago
Shorthand allegiance to the long throw
Make believe and pretend
I remember when they served the same end
You always liked the photo of us
Sitting in our car
Just like we're driving
Girl it's not looking like we'll go all that far

Erica's word, taking me clear and leaving me blurred
Erica's find, blowing my hair and tearing my mind
Throwing for grabs and leaving behind

Maybe you'll find that promised love
The tingle to the touch
Girl and I hope it comes through for you in a clutch
But I wouldn't bet much

Erica's word, taking me clear and leaving me blurred
Erica's news, singing the praise and playing the blues
Pulling the rug out under my shoes

Erica's find, blowing my hair and tearing my mind
Erica's word, taking me clear and leaving me blurred
Knocking me down from second to third

- - -

The Tape of Only Linda

Release date: 1994

The band: Scott Miller, Paul Wieneke, Zachary Smith, R. Dunbar Poor, Jozef Becker

Guest musicians: Ken Stringfellow, Shalini Chatterjee, Mitch Easter

Producer: Mitch Easter

Soul Drain
My Superior
Marcia and Etrusca
Hyde Street Virgins
Baby Hard-To-Be-Around
It Just Wouldn't Be Christmas
Better Nature
Still Its Own Reward
For Beginners Only
Ballet Hetero

Soul Drain

Disconnected
Unsuspected
There was nothing up our sleeve

Raised our glasses
Took the classes
Till we honestly believed

Came with flowers
Stayed for hours
Took it all the way to bed

Pat and Vanna
Joe Montana
All the Star Search rage, we said it was a good game
We shrugged and played along
We gave our glad endorsement
But now it just seems wrong

Cry the cold rain
Down the soul drain
It's that special time of year

Find a snowstorm
I might get warm
'Cause the weather's worse in here

Grab the ice tongs
Sing the fight songs
'Cause my finger's off the pulse

Tea with Donald
Lunch with Ronald
I was not myself, I was a good accomplice
An ideal go-between
I stood up under torture
But now I'm coming clean

My Superior

Girl, the camera just loves you
But I'm not sure I do
It looks at less than meets the eye
And what an outright lie
I took the first effective view
And turned it into you
I stared directly in your face
But failed to see a trace

Not quite true romance
My superior and I
Facts fall down wanting every time we try

We kiss and fix whatever's wrong
But I don't stay kissed long
It's work to get things straight and then
To lose it all again

Not quite true romance
My superior and I
Can't fall down wanting every time we try

Show me that surface where the eyes meet the image
I'll show you where the hook went in
Small expectations greet the lies and spiders
Filling in a window frame
Long pretty god-boys lurk in corners
Looking murder in the face again

It ties our hands behind our backs
And drops us in our tracks
It gives us slumber party chills
And undermines our wills

Not quite true romance
My superior and I
Facts fall down wanting every time we try

Marcia and Etrusca

Marcia throw your latex gloves away
You've touched the world now, I would say
You don't need to stand for anything more
Marcia, than the Kleenex on the floor

Dino and Elijah fly into the battle zone
Marcia and Etrusca sitting bravely by the phone
Love them like you'll never live without them
And then leave them on their own

Marcia throw your latex gloves away
You've touched the world now, I would say
You don't need to stand for anything more
Marcia, than the Kleenex on the floor

Dino and Elijah in the hundred year crusade
Marcia and Etrusca watch their photo album fade
Hold it like you'll keep them there forever
And then let them not have stayed

Hyde Street Virgins

Right down this street we learned not saying what we mean
To charge the rebel mind but not offend the queen
And found for all our trouble that there's no in-between

The dullest thing to cut you leaves the deepest scar
The place there wasn't for us in the joy-ride car
And if you'd ask me now I'd say we've come pretty far
To be as nowhere as we are

Hyde Street virgins
Rock and roll
Had our secrets
Now you know
We just look for things to make us go

I used to hear, "Don't let rejection wear pride thin."
Advice to use with invitations pouring in
And there we were with more pride saved than we'd ever spend

I don't recall the day that Lake Geneva froze
The goal became to never leave a thing exposed
But now I want to frame it so that each nuance shows
As it starts to come to its close

Hyde Street virgins
Rock and roll
Had our secrets
Now you know
We just look for things to make us go

Baby Hard-To-Be-Around

She gave it to you something bad
Arose above suspicion
You caved in to the T.V. ad
You should have asked permission

She's baby hard-to-be-around
I'll tell you all about her
She'll make you hate the life that you are living without her

She goes as deep as Jacques Cousteau
It's you that's getting phony
She doesn't crawl and say hello
She's not your little pony

She's baby hard-to-be-around
I'll tell you all about her
She'll make you hate the life that you are living without her

You don't know the family secret
All comes out at midnight
Think you'll be the first to shake it
You'll be in bed by ten
(Think again)

You don't know what you're crying for
I'll tell you where it's going
She's baby hard-to-be-around
And baby it's showing

It Just Wouldn't Be Christmas

Here comes that can-do agenda
Banging that old baby grand
Who wouldn't sign up just to shake that hand?
Guess I'm not much of an hombre
Don't stack up quite all the way
For the man's work of doing what you say
Your lucky charm apologist
Your company convention hall rented comedian
Working the room, surfing the tedium
Coming in nights with a rag and a broom

Guess it just wouldn't be Christmas
No fun if we couldn't shout
What a deal we got selling someone out
Guess we'd be nothing without it
Sworn to uphold and defend
Faked it so long it's like I comprehend
You should have owned me while you could
Harvested a cottonfield, filled up a uniform
Fleshed out a war
Shared a drink afterward
Gone in half on a Cambodian whore

We talked to hundreds of successful people
We asked them how they get around the
Lines we jam to
Walking their families through
This is the science of losing by one
When they blow smoke
In our face why we choke
This is the point of sweating what's done
This is science of losing by one
This is the way we won't have to depend on things,
we've only just begun

Here comes that badge of distinction
Flashing and slashing away
Just like it still got you the time of day
Guess it just wouldn't be Christmas
Guess it would only be winter solstice, graceless, goalless
I see myself in twenty years
Begging for Avalon, pending my trial
Watching the gavel drawn
We've got the luxury just for a while
That we can can tell you get lost in style

Better Nature

Bought culture
Got some liquor with a video
Fly falling
Never know who's on the ground below
Turn my better nature

Rust farmer
Drinking in the old scenario
Safe harbor
From the thought I had a week ago
Turn my better nature
Thinking I bought culture

Press me Shiralee, there's no such home free ride
(press, distress me -- half way to)
Drive me Shiralee, drive some way outside
(drive, revive me)
Home's just too far gone home

Abstraction
From a class I took in stereo
Lost traction
But I think I might have started slow
Turn my better nature
Buckled under pressure
Thinking I bought culture

Press me Shiralee, there's no such home free ride
(press, distress me -- half way to)
Drive me Shiralee, drive some way outside
(drive, revive me)
Home's just too far gone home

Bought culture
Though I lost it quite a while ago
Still thinking
Maybe one last thing I might outgrow
No more better nature

Press me Shiralee, there's no such home free ride
(press, distress me -- half way to)
Drive me Shiralee, drive some way outside
(drive, revive me)
Home's just too far gone home

Still Its Own Reward

There are ways if they'd asked
I'd have told the world to treat you
At each stage you could take what they'd throw at you

I don't want to believe
That this time they really beat you
See you there looking not meant to make it through

But don't you find it's on your mind
With friends all going places?
And even though they told you so
Was that sufficient basis?
And when you lose across the board
Is trying still its own reward?
Still its own reward

Could I have been there to
Feed you pieces of survival
Drag it out till we thought of that as the norm
And at the first sign of strength
Turn into your fiercest rival
Condescending to come in a pleasing form

But do you size up in their eyes
How much they'll feel your leaving?
And even though they told you so
Were words much worth believing?
And with the fall you're headed toward
Is trusting still its own reward?
Is trying still its own reward

I'm sorry, I've seen a whole lot of bad advice go by
You don't worry about yourself and baby why should I?
Is baby gonna die?
Is baby gonna die?

Don't you find it's on your mind
With first impressions ending?
And even though they told you so
Was there much worth defending?
And when it's not your own accord
Is living still its own reward?
Is trusting still its own
Is trying still its own reward

For Beginners Only

I've considered suicide
But there's really no point, after all there's only one of me
Come on baby, let's take a ride
Let's get out of this joint there's another place we ought to be
These days everyone's going insane
But I'd rather not go 'cause I've already been there
Don't need to feel that much pain
So I'm taking it slow medication don't agree with me

I've had a talk with the dogs of war
Now it's never too clear when they tell me what it's all about
Heard a hint of what's in store
So I'm living in fear but the future seems to be in doubt
My friends all buy small arms,
And they sell they sell them with style 'cause there's always a rebate
Mercenary boys got plenty of charm
But slaughter with a smile is a service I can do without

Take me downtown, take me 'round the block
Take me anywhere, long as it's somewhere
Show me how to begin 'cause I know that
This game goes to beginners only

Thought I had a date with Lili Marlene
But I got stood up, now I guess she's never gonna show
Sitting in the car in the driving rain
Feeling so fed up with the music on the radio
These days everyone's knocking romance
And it seems out of place in a town with a club scene
But I'd rather do more than dance
If I could find one face that I thought I'd like to get to know

Take me downtown, take me 'round the block
Take me anywhere, long as it's somewhere
Show me how to begin 'cause I know that
This game goes to beginners only
To beginners only
To beginners only
To beginners only

I've considered suicide
But I've given it up, better leave it for another day
Spillin my guts on the three by five
Gonna light them on fire, gonna watch them till they blow away
Been living on borrowed time
Just like every one else in the whole bloody pawn shop
I'll figure out how to make it mine
Then you better watch out 'cause the usury is gonna stop
Stop!

Ballet Hetero

I could be someone you'd love more than me
I'd have thought it was strange,
But there's not that much of me there to change

Save your life, while it fits under the knife
Look what you counted on
The very first fairy tale up and gone

And it weighs on us now, precious and overgrown
We've lost our old skill at being left on our own

Since when have we been such shrinking violets?
What came to push us around?
What's there to threaten our code of silence?
There's not as far to fall near the ground

Please don't cry, I know you're passing me by
But I don't let down my guard
And believe me, I'd only try too hard

Momentum fulfilled, fault in the viewer's eyes
Path unperturbed as if we should apologize

Since when have we been such shrinking violets?
What came to push us around?
We'll die defending our code of silence
There's not as far to fall near the ground

The little deuce coupe
The fox on the run
The fugue state aphasia
The ego dismantled

The kiss in the fourth grade
The sex in the bathroom
The theme varied slightly
The four-county crackdown

The Heisenberg threshold
The virgin conception

- - -

- - -

Interbabe Concern

Release date: Aug. 20, 1996

The band: Scott Miller, Paul Wieneke, Kenny Kessel, Dawn Richardson

Guest musicians: Jozef Becker, Ken Stringfellow, Nina Gordon, Shalini Chatterjee, Anton Barbeau, Shelley LaFreniere, Gil Ray, Don Tillman

Producer: Scott Miller, except "Uncle Lucky" produced by Paul Wieneke and Scott Miller

Sodium Laureth Sulfate
North San Bruno Dishonor Trip
Don't Respond, She Can Tell
I'm Not Really A Spring
Rise of the Chokehold Princess
Such Little Nonbelievers
The Softest Tip Of Her Baby Tongue
Screwed Over By Stylish Introverts
Top Dollar Survivalist Hardware
Not Expecting Both Contempo and Classique
I No Longer Fear the Headless
Hot Rox Avec Lying Sweet Talk
Uncle Lucky
Just Gone
Asleep and Awake On The Man's Freeway
Where They Go Back To School But Get Depressed
Where They Sell Antique Food
Where The Flood Waters Soak Their Belongings
Where They Walk Over Sainte Therese

Sodium Laureth Sulfate

That's it
Without the

So you've got a new girl, better tell us all
About her
well, we met--
No, we were thinking of lascivious detail
well, she's a little like
Tendon-slash dimension crash entropica
Cryogen magenta kevlar ebola

Still there's more, and when you try to
Specify, it's not so easy
I know, there's emotional--
Concern for how--
in gentle moments, that's when she's a
Sharing, caring
Warlike, warlike, warlike, warlike
Wave equation, beta radiation beam
Quadrophonic gin and tonic fever dream

Cell-disrupting, will-corrupting vertigo
Exponential, existential horror show

And what about the way they say she treats you?
jealous friends, wasn't true
And do you see a way to gain some control?
shiver fits when it's cold
And the zero times she calls me back refine my soul

My girlfriend's got sodium laureth sulf-, sodium laureth sulfate hair
My girlfriend's got sodium laureth sulf-, sodium laureth sulfate hair

North San Bruno Dishonor Trip

You know the drill
Demerol economy
Drunk on civil rights
You know the drill
Demerol economy, see a stranger
Spike his drink with piss and danger
Then who'll have the male psychosis? Not us!
Then who'll hate world around them? Not us!
This is how our cherished legends take shape
But from our favorite stories can some
Truth escape?
No thank you, older brother, we don't rape
No thank you, goddess nature, we don't rape
No thank you, ancient wisdom, we don't rape
Thank you

Don't Respond, She Can Tell

I cross the room like a dancing architect
A daddy waltz on the tops of my shoes
A dealer in women's short attentions
I'll have a cousin who grew up in the same town as you

I'll joke around with an unloaded weapon
You drink until it's in line with your taste
Look out the window, they're burning the ricefields
I'll run for office some time
People's choice, foe of waste

Maybe I say the dull things I say
Maybe they reach her through the air
Maybe I'm thinking of it as a task
Maybe it really is a task, and I'm not up to the task
Maybe the answer is don't ask

Don't respond, she can tell
Don't respond, she can tell
Don't respond, she can tell
Don't respond, she can tell

Be prepared to play down first impressions
Respect the weight of the sounds in the room
Be on the prowl for a thoughtful provider
I'll hate for not giving me even more
Love in bloom

Maybe I see the things I look at
Maybe I look right past what's wrong
Maybe she thinks in terms of sets of boys
Maybe she knows the set of boys, and I'm not in the set of boys
Maybe the signal is the noise

Don't respond, she can tell
Don't respond, she can tell
Don't respond, she can tell
Don't respond, she can tell

I'm Not Really A Spring

Look at all these kids acquiring shame at such a tender age
A lifetime free of bitter days in store
Self-effacing, model social lives
Don't people ever slowly rot inside their own world anymore?
I don't pitch the case for isolation
But there's one 'okay' and then some other 'okay'
For the sake of the people you tell

Hi, I'm Silent Steve--or Chatty Charles--I'll take requests
What kind of numbers do you think i'm going to need?
Find who want to test themselves and come on like a sharpened pencil
Work inside the lines of someone's greed
I can't sit and make myself want nothing
But I won't go knocking doors to find out
How many tickets to me I can sell

They think I'm banging Anabelle and it's not going well
Stop this line of questions, I can't really say what I mean
Think I'm bragging, Anabelle, and it's not show and tell
Stop this documentary, I'm not really a spring

Making nice to girls, not knowing they'd prefer a thoughtless bastard
Widening the old discrepency
Something pulls your body, draws your lips like an electromagnet
How could I suppose it might be me?

Still, every eighteen months I wonder
Why don't we just, if we're so free to,
And what would stop us from getting right up
And have we been so easily satisfied for so long?
Except each eighteen months or so I think again
Why don't we say "thank God there's still time"--
We were just lying down, but they'll say that we fell

They think I'm banging Anabelle and it's not going well
Stop this line of questions, I can't really say what I mean
Think I'm bragging, Anabelle, and it's not show and tell
Stop this documentary, I'm not really a spring

Rise of the Chokehold Princess

Fairly slow she'd moved in world wrestling spectacle
League surrender, weak gender, stage name
Shoulders bare mean nothing audience-wise
And they want that shoulder down
Royal gown, nylon inner-seam
Abrasive to the skin no real princess wears
I was unprepared, I didn't know the feeling
What it was there, all I was, in you, ringing true

Now she shines in column-inches on the page
It's a perfect rage, it's a perfect rage
They can fire their warning shots across her bow
They can't show her how, they can't touch her now
Me, I left the league last year, and the time was right
Rating point scam, TV-cam low-res
She lets its own static, right-there audacity
Be the glamour here
Pixel smear
I was unprepared, I didn't know the freedom
None had quite seen, I was not the same
I simply couldn't be there, touch what's not me
See what seen eyes see, without me

Such Little Nonbelievers

Uncriticizable you
Unadorned, therefore not poorly adorned

We're fighting smiling irish, they say that we
Look good in uniform, and mais oui!
So good you couldn't pry the cold dead fingers
Of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders free
We're action at a distance, we're forces
They say we're cute when we're mad, and we are!
So cute there's not an animation product in Japan
We don't outsparkle by far

Don't try to tell me we weren't inches away
From turning the tables and using what used you and me
Courtney, such little nonbelievers, aren't we?
Courtney, are you sure all your problems were me?
Courtney, I think we missed our chance to be free

You're finding focus now, your big project is
Finding the perfect way to leave me
And everybody needs their own big project
Time that's set aside for something stress-free

Will you be eating ice cream three meals a day?
Will tango music play? Will he be better than me?
Courtney, such little nonbelievers, aren't we?
Courtney, are you sure all your problems were me?
Courtney, I think we missed our chance to be free

The Softest Tip Of Her Baby Tongue

I was wrong to keep myself at all
To keep myself at all
I didn't know how your kisses felt
Until I saw you kiss someone else
Now how will I ever try
Child lips as I shiver sigh
I didn't know that the sun was there
Till I stopped going out anywhere
Most thrilled which is still depressed
Softest sleep which still isn't rest

Bank parking lot ten to one
Face, T-zone dry, work gets done
Loose, under things, underplay
I wished myself here, I might wish myself away

We should be steel tipped and baby-warm
In some gone age's deluded norm
Its embarrassments all somehow
Seen as flair
Is it too late now?

Still stayed in touch, perfect drone
Blue caravan, right at home
Pinned, native tongue, what we mean
Wild nature knows how to grind like a cruel machine

Screwed Over By Stylish Introverts

If I'd walked out to China Beach I wouldn't think to ask where you would go
If I lay down on China Beach my mind might wander out towards Mexico
If I was getting good at being loved my guard might come down very slow
And someone for all we know might be
Keeping conscientious track of goals that need attending
While others are relaxing

You let me know that calling just because I'm lonely is completely rude
You could work this into a lecture to the starving not to beg for food
You need a world without my manicured complacency offending you
And a certain someone
Who would never steal unless you ended up with something that he wanted
Who would never slap a girl around, unless she made him angry
Who would never screw you over, if there weren't some slight advantage
Or snap your last thread of self-respect, all other things remaining equal

Top Dollar Survivalist Hardware

Top dollar
Survivalist hardware
Top dollar
Survivalist hardware
How did you come to this sorry impasse?
Top dollar
Survivalist
Survival
I'm a fighter
Use kung fu each time I can
Not that I like it
Not that it's really what I am

Where does the line between
Defended
And defensive
Stand?
Tour Eiffel, Napoleon
Names and places that are living on long
Do me a favor, forget me quick when I'm gone

Alexander lived in times before the Duke of Earl
The Greeks all told him that he threw the discus like a girl
He didn't have a healthy outlet for his anger
So he took over the world

L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction prot?g?
Couldn't stand to watch his royalties get taxed away
Now big celebs are walking round who think he's Jesus
What would David Koresh say?

Tour Eiffel, Napoleon
Names and places that are living on long
Do me a favor, forget me quick when I'm gone

This is when it all stops being fun, Madison
This is when they don't care where you're from
This is when there's no one last dry run, Madison
This is when you do or do not come

Tour Eiffel, Napoleon
Names and places that are living on long
Do me a favor, forget me quick when I'm gone

This is when skin burns if there's hot sun, Madison
This is when the slow horse thieves get hung

Top dollar survivalist, survival, servile, vile

Not Expecting Both Contempo and Classique

Admiring paper on my wall
How many really take the time?
There may not seem that much creative latitude
But that's the challenge of design

The curves intuitively know
Which aspects of nouveau to save
Without succumbing to the full devouring will
Of Aubrey Beardsley in his grave

I'm not expecting that I'll end up with you just because I need to
I shouldn't count on having air around me just because I breathe
I've thought about it for awhile now and I'm okay with things not being okay

I'm trying to mean that I don't care
I'm learning not to be around
I'm on my feet, I'm on the phone demanding answers
Maybe I'd better just sit down

I'm not expecting that I'll end up with you just because I need to
I shouldn't count on having air around me just because I breathe
I've thought about it for awhile now and I'm okay with things not being okay

I No Longer Fear the Headless

This was some new form of bold expression
My first thought was run and hide
They're so in touch with their dark side

They don't glow at night from radiation
These are myths the press concocts
They don't get off on who it shocks

I was closed-minded before
Show those freaks the door
Now all I want is more
I no longer fear the headless
I no longer fear the headless
I no longer want the headless to die

It's not what they do to get attention
Every day's not Halloween
It's just the San Francisco scene

Who cares who's from the grave?
They're not so depraved
Just built to misbehave
I no longer fear the headless
I no longer fear the headless
I no longer want the headless to die

Uncle Lucky

Lyrics by Paul Wieneke

Uncle Lucky and Ray
Went overboard yesterday
Ran a boat out on the haze
Thought contraband runaways

Uncle Lucky and Wade
Hooked up with some renegade
Convenience store as barricade
More losing cards overplayed

Didn't they hope to rise?
Didn't they hope to stay and
Didn't they hope to
Mark their stand as a castaway?

Uncle Lucky and Slate
Motivated to agitate
Innocents auf interstate
No ethics to haul in freight

Miles to change
Miles stained all along the gone

Cat-track outback, Pontiac hi-jack,
Fishshack flashback, jaw slack gun rack
Come back when its all gone wrong

Didn't they close their eyes?
Didn't their notice the train and
Didn't they hope to
Mark their stand as a castaway?

Uncle Lucky and Ray
Lost overboard yesterday

Just Gone

That's last year there
Still around in February
Doesn't see his shadow, baby
Doesn't know to leave

There'd be a touch
That would take him through sedately
But it feels like reaching lately
It isn't coming free

And all advice is ways of saying "let it go"
Some form of "smile, the world has found a way around the issue"

Go how you want to
Say it in a goodbye letter
Doesn't seem like waiting's better
It doesn't take us in

I'll take it well
Find quiet ways to gather
Close around me what I'd rather
That there would have been

And there's been water at my neckline, I sank low,
And it was all that I could do to keep myself from swimming

Form your thoughts now
It's going under, baby
And where it goes I wonder, baby
Can it just be gone?

Asleep and Awake on the Man's Freeway

I'm asleep and awake at the same time
Not a drunk driver
Just a driver
Just here for the brand new licorice asphalt
Get off, out of courtesy, you Elm Street crawlers
And leave crazy men room to die

Must be the approach of light speed, I see ends before the starts
What it's like in prison, then the good and bad reasons for laws
The excuses, then the outcomes, then the cause

The car, her hand and me without her,
The car and not her hand,
The miles per hour, and not the miles, and not the hours,
The wheel and not the right or left direction,
The wheel and not her hand,
The freeway, not the place the freeway goes,
The driver, not the man

Where They Go Back To School But Get Depressed

And will this be our second chance, our secret better lives?
Adjusted freedom, somewhat less unsupervised
And did these girls show interest as I walked across the lawn
Or hint that in the broader sense I should be moving on?

They'll live where I won't know the town (I know that everyone thinks so)
On streets I won't be strolling down (I didn't know, what do I say?)
And if I ask, they will not be (and now will anyone ever do?)
You any more than you

I'm back in class and having to
Explain where things went wrong
I'm here in someone's school assembly string-along
I move out of an usher's way, but don't apologize (I don't know my way)
My eyes don't find you as the lights dim
Someone's mother cries (I don't know why)

And nine days out of ten I'd say (I know that everyone thinks so)
It couldn't be more gone away (I didn't mean, what do I say)
And mostly I
Don't notice that there's someone there (And now will anyone ever do?)
But when I look (I don't know where, I do love you)
It's you
In a skirt
At school

In a skirt
At school

Where They Sell Antique Food

Where they sell antique food, display flesh-colored audio gear
Selling pride in the body
I can't be objective here
'Cause they point back and say
"caught you trying to sing back to life
What is long gone away, and it rots justifiably"
Flirting pointlessly
Spending that bad currency

Where the Flood Waters Soak Their Belongings

Our import LP's got soaked in the flood
I thought of how I pictured London when I was ten
And then you actually go
Occupied people with clear ideas of what in London came from the outside
LP's imported, and vulnerable, so vulnerable
To water damage
The impression of London to a ten-year-old who's never been
And the real London
In all its complexity
Are the same thing

Where They Walk Over Sainte Therese

And if we wake up we'll start someone's day
And have someone's say
Walk their walk away

And if our leg's in a cast, we'll walk slow
Go such as we go
Use shortcuts we know

And if we dead-end at Ste. Therese lawn
We'll just walk right on
Bring beer, drink till dawn

Jumping over lines of graves
Did they know they were causing our problems?
I don't absolve them, I won't speak well
Was much more done than they need to be proud of
Now that they're out of pride and need?

And when we showed up we'd learned the routines
And walked through the scenes
Knew what hard work means

And when they reran the old shows we cheered
As if we revered
What seemed only weird

And when her dad picks the phone up, the news
Burns holes in his shoes
One wager, we lose

Did she so offend there, guilelessly willing to shine if she's supposed to?
Hard to get close to, born to pass by
I want to promise it's worth holding onto
Wrong not to want to always try

- - -

- - -
Chicago and Miss Jovan's Land-O-Mat
from Yellow Pills, Vol. 4

I know I'll read like a cryin' baby in your memoirs
Age 29 is a Saigon prison and I'm the bars

Miss Jovan sees your cards and knows you played them right
Miss Jovan knows that you were looking toward the light
Miss Jovan watch you dread each night

I know I'm God's little stamp collector seen through your eyes
Someone who sends for the six-tape program they advertise

Miss Jovan knows that this was headed for decline
Miss Jovan knows that your excuses are in line
Miss Jovan loves to hear you whine

And I almost booked a flight to Chicago
And I almost got myself on a roll
But hurricanes don't blow you back
Gardening doesn't grow you back
And the devil doesn't owe you back your soul

I'm know I'm God's little health inspector
God's little dot connector
God's little lead protector
God's little smoke detector
God's little disinfector in

Miss Jovan's Land-O-Mat is here for your new start
Miss Jovan knows you bore no malice in your heart
Miss Jovan saw you working smart

And I almost booked a flight to Chicago
And I almost got myself on a roll
But hurricanes don't blow you back
And gardening doesn't grow you back
And the devil doesn't owe you back your soul
No the devil doesn't owe you back your soul

---

Days For Days

Release date: May 19, 1998

The band: Scott Miller, Kenny Kessel, Alison Faith Levy, Gil Ray

Guest musicians: Jonathan Segel, Tim Walters

Producer: Scott Miller

One
Cortex the Killer
Three
Good, There Are No Lions In The Street
Five
Deee-Pression
Seven
Way Too Helpful
Nine
Mozart Sonatas
Eleven
Businessmen Are Okay
Thirteen
Crypto Sicko
Fifteen
Why We Don't Live In Mauritania
Seventeen
Sister Sleep

Cortex the Killer

I'm out in front of awful weather,
Trying to hold together air that barely clings
My empire and any autumn
Day are getting thought of as different things

Stained clothes cleaned with agitation
Lush earth scorched with expectation

We brought compasses and felt pens,
Strong as Boris Yeltsin when he looks and sees
That in the future we'll be modern
Former lives, forgotten old world monkeys

What we've seen that's really out there
Comes sidelong while looking elsewhere

Watch these legs work, I've been looking in every doorway
I've hung out where I'm not liked
But Boston students still own early evening
Sacramento, these base feet offend your ground
I have let your people down

With any action
There's an equal faction who don't agree
With their jolly cheering sections,
Priapic erections, autonomy

Sextants swung to gauge the chances
Pace kept with wrong circumstances

All we brought home was the need to convince young children
That once, this clearly was worthwhile
And for that argument, we'd need the world
As it was then
Before our crew arrived, and it came, for us, alive

How can I say without just talking
We won't ever walk on country first or last
I'm fine to reapply the steamer
Classify the lemur, wave cyclones past

When the wind's died down completely
Is all air now where it should be?

Three

Why does the street go vertical?
Can we walk all the way to San Francisco airport?
We decided to drive up
Tickets right
With one foot outside
Can we walk all the way to San Francisco airport?

Good, There Are No Lions In The Street

We sensed a scare, but there's no scare there
Look out and, good, there are no lions in the street
We sensed a change, but the change came strange
All things get painted the right colors when we meet
Short and sweet

Will it be all that many-splendored?
Will there be return for the sender?
Will it even love us tender?
The things we've done we've only done for a little while

To be a cowboy learn how not to be an astronaut
To be a doctor learn how not to be the president
To be the center of the universe, don't orbit things

We're super fly, so the ceiling's high
Good ventilation when smoke's coming off of me
We're super clean so there's gloss and sheen
Will it remain so when cleaning is drudgery
Grudgery

Will it be what's not alteration?
Will it save the grace of a nation?
Will it come through in translation?
The things we've done we've only done for a little while

Five

Look out and good
There are no rivals worth beating
Look out and good
There are no systems worth cheating
Look out and good
There are no Walmarts worth looting
Look out and good
There are no Warhols worth shooting
Look out and good
There are no cities worth leaving
Look out and good
There are no fools worth believing

If what I had to say was true
Could I have said it in a voice you like to listen to?

There are no
There are no
There are no
There are no
No . . . no . . . no . . .

Deee-Pression

Must be the word, must be expression
The creature stirs, must be progression
Shake when I'm empty
Like a bowl full of semper fi
Hung by the chimney to signify, simplify

What wants to be what works through me
What wants to be what talks to me

And if I'm right in my impression
It's only luck, not self-possession
If to examine what we slam
Is a waste of fate
Stockings are worn by the Santa grate
To gravitate

What wants to be what works through me
What wants to be what talks to me

Gentle into that good night we could ride
The sky dark against trees bright from inside
Which lit my roof up to land on at night
Woke to the contract to see it as reflected light
Fit of depression, right
fit of depression right now
fit of depression right now

fit of depression right now
fit of depression right

fit of depression right now
fit of depression right

fit of depression right now
fit of depression right now

fit of depression right now

fit of depression right

fit of depression right now
fit of depression right

right now
right now
right now

Seven

What worlds
Work with
What words?

Way Too Helpful

You have your guides to you
And they're way too helpful, way too much comes through
Leave room
To for once in your life go home, worth unproved
And the earth unmoved
Leaving on a jet bus
Sitting next to just us
Diesel updraft, gliding on
Oakland airspace, riding the ailerons

Live a day not as if it were your last
But as if at night, and that day had just passed
Big ocean liner crashed
And all that's left of you is what your mom and dad
Understand, and lovers might
Yell in your face late at night
Which could get proved wrong in the faintest light

Maybe turned in for the pay
Maybe called to end that way
Maybe just as if to say
This strange murder is what we do all day

Nine

Why is the campus (Why are the closets)
Laid out with fields (Of the art wing filled)
Gone to seed as a buffer zone (With unseen paintings, muddy-colored)
On every side? (Eight feet high?)

Mozart Sonatas

When
Mozart sonatas play
When Mozart sonatas play it's fine
When Mozart sonatas play it's fine
Fine but we can hear his mind
Hear his genius mind
Hear the wheels of genius grind
And they ought to post a sign
Post a sign

When
Duchamp does readymades
When Duchamp does readymades we're sold
When Duchamp does readymades we're sold
When Duchamp does readymades we're sold
When he says "it's art" we're sold
'Cause the statement's bold
I can't see it getting old
We do anything we're told
Thing we're told

When
They said the Buddha woke
When they said the Buddha woke we heard
When they said the Buddha woke we heard
When they said the Buddha woke we heard
Heard but still it sounds absurd
Second-, maybe third-
Hand relay of what occurred
And we don't believe a word
Not a word

Eleven

Why is the stepping measure the terror
And the dancing measure the answer?

Businessmen Are Okay

Walking, clocking in with the residentials
It's mental, our old place is reoccupied
New is different from what we thought, more like old
More like muffler billboards when you're on foot outside

And so you're desperate enough to come around here
And curious what you're explaining away
And you think now agreements made should be kept
You've heard the prophet Elijah say businessmen are okay

Live also in the unfulfilled time
Phil is my brother's name, he's a distributor
For green mint candy, green for golf, green for growth
And sweet, so the teenagers know what it means

Do you take what is dropped like change in your hands
As what someone else thinks he's giving away
Has the arch-villain West uncurled his moustache
You've heard the wind on the Ganges say businessmen are okay
They sing karaoke

The attractive dissention in the twelfth grade
Is going to run out of dress suit legs in its way
And as if for a tasty bone the whole dog
Is going to roll on its back and say businessmen are okay
They sing karaoke

Thirteen

Why am I desperate to come around?
Why is the new renting family occupying our old place?
Rough on the rugs and the telephones
Why am I desperate to come around?
Why am I filled when I'm empty?
Why am I desperate to come around?

Crypto-Sicko

Kristine, tell me to be quiet
'Cause I've got some quiet to say
And I'm not sure I know
how to get out of its way
There's the cover of Fair Warning
Where there's punching out of lights
And I'm not sure I've done more
than call the kids to see the fights

False alarms, crypto-sicko, babes in arms
Cross displays, crypto-sicko, days for days

I've been that moon-age Dorothy
Keep the Dorothies on the path
And I'm inclined to think the lonely
learn to use a different math
When your thoughts are cornfield-focused
And you've scarecrowed off all birds
Who'll hear your crow-based riot act
as anything but English words?

Is it all right here, just not clear
Till someone makes it interesting
Wherein interests lie
Is that why parents don't tell us anything?

Fifteen

Why is this master's project
A machine no one will use
And all the seeker
Who tour our facility confused

To be either sad or cheerful
Is a power to correct them
Some worthless piece of vanity we learn to interject

False alarms (Display)
Lead the way (Day for day)
Can we walk all (Which way to speak)
The way to the waiting arms

Why We Don't Live In Mauritania

She asked why my love would last for long
What in her world I base it on
I said "what a 'girl' way to relate
Throw what works fine up for debate"
And let it go
But I'll admit I didn't know
I'd assume there's some convention
To obviate the question
And move these things along

19th Street exit with the oaks
And the head-soothing shade of hoax
No city boards in '23
Stayed up nights planning routes for me
And that's fine
But I'll admit I wouldn't mind
Letting someone do the driving
Who knows where we're arriving
Despite hysteria

That's why we don't live in Mauritania
Why we like something else going on
Why we all moved to California
And not Boca Raton

I lost my backpack on the train
It had more in it than my brain
Will I now have to learn again
How to love things, each like a friend
Same deal
But I'll admit it's lost appeal
I keep filling binder pages
That I won't read for ages
Regret it when I do

New York scenes with the way they talk
Knock me out when they jazz the rock
Cold keeps Chicago boyfriends warm
I dig how they defy the norm
The West Coast, well
I'll admit it's still the most
Hanging out near Manson slayings
Industrial decayings
Inverse utopia

That's why we don't live in Mauritania
Why we like something else going on
Why we all moved to California
And not Saskatchewan
Or Sierra Leone

Seventeen

Because whatever we've done
Was reconsidered into correctness
We're still just us

Because we left ourselves the option
To be what we made sure we weren't

Because we've righted our impressions

Because what we were hearing wasn't music
Although music was the only sound in the room

Because after all school
Meaning was still be a street transaction

Because nobody's parents invented the world

Because our old place . . . no
Because our old place is reoccupied

Because we're only ever . . .
Because we've only ever lived away from someplace else

Because what we've done . . . no
Because what we've done
Has crowded us with excess need
For us to be able to do otherwise

Sister Sleep

Girl, being close hurts
So I've called from the outskirts
With road noise at a phone booth
So we won't hear the whole truth

Bought this house, on a low bid
Where they moved out, like we did
When the needs of the renter
Pulled us far from the center

Last few holidays I was only thinking
How to get away, numb the chat with drinking
Still thinking like a son, saying something clever
They're here to push against, they won't be forever

A garment, heft me around
At arm's length, lay me out
On your chest, tuck your chin and wonder

Was it rude to sneeze? The allergist is leaving
First we do no harm, like expensive breathing
Am I saying what I'd be able to hear
Or what goes on the list ringing in the new year?

Ninety people walk
Down Haight Street, fill the block
And my job, keep my spacing even
See all ninety people
Be the even spacing

The comet brothers' friends arrive cow-eyed
Our car was dead, we ran, I swear we tried
Will sister sleep not kiss us on the mouth?
It's all we ever want from her

Hitler's icon leads the flight through space
Turns and finds its own bent lines to chase
Will sister sleep not kiss us on the mouth?
It's all we ever want from her

There's no way to a quasar
They're flung out from us too far
Just by chance, maybe not more
We can touch what we live for

- - -

- - -

Attractive Nuisance

Release date: Feb. 22, 2000

The band: Scott Miller, Kenny Kessel, Alison Faith Levy, Gil Ray

Guest musicians: Mike Keneally (guitar solo on "Nice When I Want Something"), Tim Walters (special effects processing on "Save Your Money")

Producer: Scott Miller

720 Times Happier Than the Unjust Man
One Will Be The Highway
Save Your Money
Nice When I Want Something
Years Of Wrong Impressions
Blackness, Blackness
Backwards Century
Soul DC
The Apprentice
No One's Watching My Limo Ride
Controlled Burn
Motion of Ariel

720 Times Happier Than the Unjust Man

Twenty miles walking down El Camino
I was starving for young people we know
No one calls but to weigh in against us
No one comes but to leave on the next bus

I forget who could hand out the birth rights
I forget who could break up the cat fights
I forget who adjusted our high chairs
I forget who could talk us down out of our nightmares

720 times happier than the unjust man
Dream the heaven where women fight hand to hand
Help the galley slave be all he can

I can tell that the industry's ravaged
I could steal gas and live like a savage
Sell it off if it isn't a canned good
Break the twelve-string acoustic to pieces for firewood

I can tell that you'd cut through the chatter
I can tell that the critics would scatter
I can tell by intangible somethings
I can tell by your preference of smart things to dumb things

Carve a way for the greater good
Lose the dogs at the river bank
You were kissing the summer gods, hot and rank
Choose your meal from our display tank

Eyes still adjusting
I have nothing to look at you with
But the mood that I'm in
I fill my days with work because I am lazy
The way a coward is hungry to get in any fight
That he can win

What to do now with Pallas Athena
Sharing space with the vats of retsina
What to do with two heros in one plot
What to say to two Johnnies who showed up on one spot

Something old better fall and die
When you ride in on something new
And that's the deal that's been made between death and you
That's the deal that's been made between death and you

One Will Be The Highway

Almost empty in the Fillmore
Ten or twelve who know the band look like they'll stay
But I'll be on my way
Heading back to work and days and morning

Almost grabbed you for a photo
Sprawled and laughing with the beers on empty tables
And who would not be able
To see that here was something to believe in

It's too late to be wanting anything
Besides what has to be
Too late not to see
That like any other it's a ride
And one will be the highway that it drops us off beside

We forget the need for soldiers
For the sadness when a soldier has to die
The tearful parent's eye
Bringing into focus what needs watching

How unlikely we should be here
Free to take the other's hand with little danger
Or leave it for a stranger
Uncemented by the fear of losing

It's too late to be wanting anything
Besides what has to be
Too late not to see
That like any other it's a ride
And one will be the highway this as well lies dead beside

Save Your Money

You were going past airport security
Glowing with purity
Well worth the fare that was paid for you

Past a red neon sculpture you ride
The conveyer belt sidewalk
An old married couple is blocking you

And since your jacket was bought new

Then a girl in a similar jacket
Is going to be back in an hour
Just because she remembers you

Songs you bought for your Walkman cassette
Are what younger kids get
As if they must know something that you don't know

And every white courtesy phone
Has a call and the call is for you
And if you picked it up it would say

Save your money
What you want is going to be
More than
You have got in either pocket
Wait and see

You could come into stock market gains
And redraw the terrains
That were still up for grabs in between the towns

In your dream it looks gorgeous and violet
And you are the pilot
Who's suddenly turning the plane around

And in your dream it's going down
And there's just enough vapor
To write in the sky
On the way to the ground

Save your money
What you want is going to be
More than
You have got in either pocket
Wait and see

Nice When I Want Something

Spending nights on carpets
Like the new La Brea tar pits
Fell from grace with those who say who gets into bed

Counting foreign hours
Here like Francis Gary Powers
Trying to face the charges with the face of regret
And build new wealth systems based on cigarettes

I'm polite when crumbling
And I'm nice when I want something
I don't make a move before I know who would see

Pull my leash up tightly
Get upset with me so rightly
Something here is wrong, I'm all for saying it's me
I'm all for looking nice for company

We don't smoke
We don't even smoke
There isn't even a haze of good excuses in the room
We don't die
We don't even die
We let Osiris in Egypt drag our suitcase through the gloom

We don't think this frozen
Spite is what we would have chosen
Circumstances pulled us from our nature as friends

But this is home, this is where we spend weekends

Years Of Wrong Impressions

Design your life
To live as if you're in a movie
And after three hours
Anyone is going to think
It's gone on too long

You're wondering why
I talk to you as if you knew me
But what would years of wrong impressions
Do besides distract you from
What should have been me

Maybe we'd better leave the past alone
I've had lovers and connections of my own
Waiting to be overthrown
By anyone
Do you truly believe it's all arranged
For us to get under Photoshop and change
For approval of a stranger?
Do you doubt me?
You've only heard good things about me

I'm wanting this
To be New York and we are Nico
And Jackson Browne, and
With our tambourine and
Folk guitar, no city's

Hard enough
To drive us into desperation
Or make us doubt the strength
We get from just each other
Rolling off the factory floor

Maybe we'd better leave the past alone
I've had lovers and connections of my own
Waiting to be overthrown
By anyone
Do you truly believe it's all arranged
For us to get under Photoshop and change
For approval of a stranger?
Do you doubt me?
You've only heard good things about me

I really shouldn't tell my problems to a stranger
And now I'm hoping, since I've told you,
There's still a chance to hold you

Maybe we'd better leave the past alone
I've had lovers and connections of my own
Waiting to be overthrown
By anyone
Do you truly believe it's all arranged
For us to get under Photoshop and change
For approval of a stranger?
Do you doubt me?
You've only heard good things about me

Blackness, Blackness

Wildness, wildness
Like a teenager's eyes
Could heart-struck
Mean that you would be
This careless
With one that's in your hands
Oh baby I guess I just am
Oh baby I guess I just am

Kindness, kindness
You know it suited you
Like sunshine carried
All around with you
How could you be
This glad it's turned to sham
Oh baby I guess I just am
Oh baby I guess I just am

At any given waking hour
I can in some way
Stand to see a living thing freeze
But when I'm trying to sleep there's ardor
I can't quite explain
And all that it can say is please

Blackness, blackness
Don't you know it hurts
The loudest sound is
Hands on the backs of shirts
Can you be
So sure your wrong will stand
Oh baby I guess I just am
Oh baby I guess I just am

Wildness, wildness
Kindness, kindness
Blackness, blackness

Backwards Century

I used to want to get a-
Away somewhere
I used to live in a backward century
I wish it was the future
I wouldn't care
About the fearsome effects of entropy

I look around and see only what's obsolete
The early versions of things in redesign
Two Stanford students with lap-tops on Alma Street
Are coming up with the world I want for mine
Like Frankenstein

My brain will be fed nice thoughts, and I won't care
What goes on outside my ten foot bio-cube
They'll hook me up all day in a dentist's chair
Machines will suck out the drool with vacuum tubes

I used to want it to do something bad to you
As if it was going to show you decency
I surely thought it would shake out what wasn't true
Nothing would shake but beliefs and the leaves on the trees

The universal sign for do not disturb
The universal sign for do not disturb
The universal sign for take your trouble outside onto the curb

I used to want to get a-
Away somewhere
I used to live in a backward century
I wish it was the future
I wouldn't care
About the fearsome effects of entropy

I used to want it to do something bad to you
As if it was going to show you decency
I surely thought it would shake out what wasn't true
And nothing shakes but beliefs and leaves on the trees

Backward we're going backward we're going
Backward we're going backward we're going
Bye

Soul DC

I don't want anyone
Drumming up support here
I don't want capital
Whispering in my ear
I don't want anything
Done because in your rough
Neighborhood that was the only
Language they'd understand

She plays the drums in a band
She vibrates my bones
Soul D.C. fascinating me
Overnight industry
Plastic integrity
Willful obscurity

I don't want anything
Changing my position
I don't want anyone
Being my physician
I don't want anything
I know on a Georgetown street
She can find the antiques
By the curvature of the land

She plays the drums in a band
She vibrates my bones
Soul D.C. fascinating me
Overnight industry
Plastic integrity
Willful obscurity

The Apprentice

Lyrics by Alison Faith Levy

We all have our little privacies
death-defying entanglements
vice, virtue and the other thing
slipping silently between the body and the mind

and then I lay it all on the apprentice
he can take it
he don't really know me at all
but I taught him how to fake it, taught him how to fake it
yeah

And in the morning I can have him
next to me in a foreign pose
in the evening I can sweep the whole mess away
like a shopkeeper itching to close

and then I lay it all on the apprentice
he can take it
he don't really know me at all
but I taught him how to fake it, taught him how to fake it
yeah

the flicking tongue of indecency
on the limp fingers of integrity
pulling the short hairs of a guilty conscience
into the void of lovesick reciprocity

Each match lit burns like guilt
each curtain drawn strangles our will
I shudder to believe anything will stop this endless stretch
of flag-waving and chronic misbehaving

and then I lay it all on the apprentice
he can take it
he don't really know me at all
but I taught him how to fake it
and then I lay it all on the apprentice
he can take it
he don't really know me at all
but I taught him how to fake it, I taught him how to fake it, I taught him how to fake it
and I should know how to fake it now

No One's Watching My Limo Ride

There you are where I could meet you
I could almost have you
I could almost pick you off the menu

Pour the champagne in the glove box
Work the power door locks
How much of what we wanted makes us happy?

No one's watching my limo ride
Am I cruising too slow?
I don't know

Drive anywhere the road goes
See the lighted windows
Lives as if in dreams, I should have lived one

Just as every night we spend here
Getting cabin fever
Looks secure and wonderful to someone

The only world that I know is the
One where I don't get you
What's to do?

Look out, she might want a word with you
And oh that wouldn't do, oh that wouldn't do
Look out, she might think the world of you
And oh that wouldn't do, oh that wouldn't do

Staying up until the sun shines
Lighting up the fault lines
Marching in like women's liberation

Then it was good and it was okay
To insist on getting our way
And the governmental cash was flowing freely

Now no one's watching my limo ride
San Mateo's asleep
I'm in deep

Controlled Burn

one to
I only
war
was waiting

I can show you the aggravation
Trip so those tripping can laugh themselves
I will go for a little space walk

I only
holy
for some
war
was waiting

I was only waiting for someone to yell holy war
I was only waiting for someone to yell holy war
I was only waiting for someone to yell holy war
I will go for a little space walk
I was only waiting for someone to yell holy war
I will go for a little space walk
I was only waiting for someone

Motion of Ariel

I can say what I want to say
I don't know if there will be time
Thought I spoke the unchangeable
Now I've seen it turn on a dime
We forget someone giving us confidence
When we were naive
Since it's mainly the confidence it took to leave

I can say what I want to say
Still I know you're going to suspect
All my reasons for speaking up
Long before the words have effect
Should I smile as you're standing apart,
As you make yourself a name
Or say that's how I think we all
End up the same?

I don't know what the radio wants when the radio taunts
I don't know what the radio wants when the radio taunts
Won't say where it's going
Just that it's our last chance not to be left behind

I don't know what walls to climb
My little one
To get away from the range of their high citadel
I don't know what songs keep time
My little one
So I will sing to the motion of Ariel

I can say what I want to say
I forget why I think it's true
Once the proof sounded obvious
Now it's seeming out of the blue
I could dole out the war-room advice
To the joint chiefs, cool and calm
I could ride my intentions like Slim on the bomb

I don't know what walls to climb
My little one
To get away from the range of their high citadel
I don't know what songs keep time
My little one
So I will sing to the motion it's going to take
To set you free Ariel

- - -

Roxy Music - Do The Strand

2007-06-22T23:22:00.001-04:00

This video is amazing. (via- Craig)

regretting the dead

2007-06-05T07:59:00.000-04:00

I don't know why, but of all my acquaintances and friends from downtown Manhattan who have died (and there were more than a handful, what with drugs and AIDS), the one I miss most often is Lance Loud (ok wikipedia entry). We were not close friends. I went to many Mumps gigs and was at a couple of the same parties as Lance. I miss his humor, what I can only describe as his luminosity. He never affected the "I don't care" attitude that was fashionable at the time. He cared.

messing up the paint work

2007-05-17T08:20:00.000-04:00

This is The Fall at their best, halfway between stupidity and profundity, halfway between pop and noise.

Paint Work (1985) from This Nation's Saving Grace

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Helvetica - The Movie

2007-05-14T11:20:00.000-04:00

Not a joke. Link (via)

Lunar Park - Stay away!

2007-05-09T07:41:00.000-04:00

Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (2005).

First off, American Psycho is a great novel, and The Rules of Attraction is a pretty good one. But oh my God, this book is awful. Ellis rips himself off, trading on the reputation, and recycling the characters and scenes, of American Psycho and his other previous books. He does a poor imitation of Stephen King in too many trashy secondhand horror scenes. Then there is some crappy, clichéd family drama and a mawkish, embarrassing "happy" ending. (Sample: "I saw my father walking toward me -- he was a child again and smiling and he was offering me an orange he held out with both hands.") The characters, including two children and a writer named "Bret Easton Ellis," are cardboard. After finishing this book I was tempted to contact Ellis or the publisher and ask for my $13.95 back.

What I liked about the book was the memoir portions (about the first 35 pages; how much of it is true I don't know) and some of the satire of suburban life. Yes, Cheever, Richard Yates, and many others have mined this territory before, but Ellis has something new to say about the suburbs, circa the 00's -- the kids all on meds, the school-obsessed parents, the six-year-olds reading Lord of the Flies in school. This book would have made a great short story.

Interesting Blogs

2007-05-03T08:41:00.000-04:00

There's a blogger named Matthew Perpetua who is writing one entry on every R.E.M. song (link); and another one (Phil Reed) doing the same thing for Talking Heads (link) (via). I am very impressed with and excited about both projects. (Come on Jeff - do The Fall!) People have started doing interesting things within the formalism of blogs; like this for example.

Some Major and Minor Characters

2007-04-30T07:11:00.000-04:00

Hello and welcome to my three readers.

Recently read: Jack's Book, an oral biography (probably one of the first of the genre) of Kerouac by Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee. It's sad, and perhaps inevitable, that the public image of the Beats, which exploded around 1957 with On the Road's publication, was very different from how they felt about themselves and their work. They freely acknowledged literary models like Thomas Wolfe and Whitman. 1957 was ten years after the events depicted in On the Road, and about six years after it was written. It required all that time for the publishing world to be ready for it. Tragically, Kerouac was never able to cope with his fame, became an alcoholic, and struggled to produce quality work in the twelve years left to him. Gifford and Lee point out that the Beats were different from the literary generation of the Twenties. They didn't leave the United States to rebel against it, but instead stayed and became invisible in the Eisenhower fifties. The Beats (with the notable exception of Burroughs) were of, and wrote of, the working class, and any kind of hipness was far from their minds. I never knew that Allen Ginsberg was such a networker -- carrying around his colleagues' poetry, introducing people, in general promoting his and others' poetry. And the world does Neal Cassady a disservice by remembering him as driving the Pranksters' bus. He aspired to be, and sought to learn from his friends to become, a writer but didn't succeed.

Also recommended: Joyce Johnson's 1983 memoir Minor Characters, which I read in the 80's. Johnson had a romance with Kerouac and is a wonderful writer.

Continuing my reading of literary biography, I turned to Joyce Maynard's At Home in the World, which I couldn't put down. If J.D. Salinger was ever a hero to you, this book will provide a bracing dose of reality when you meet the creepy, cranky, misanthropic recluse. He is deeply immersed in quackish homeopathic medicine, eats only raw vegetables and undercooked lamb patties, and lives with a series of decades-younger women, of which Maynard was one. He continues to write novels and stories, but I can't imagine what he might be writing about, or how his unpublished fiction could be any good given his pathetic lack of human contact.

Maynard's narrative has its problems. She never explains why her relationship with Salinger, or her subsequent marriage, fell apart. The reader is left to conclude that she's difficult to live with, especially since her husband seems a much nicer and more patient guy than Salinger.

Still, it's a touching and, overall, honest meditation on writing, growing up, parenthood, and being at home in the world. Maynard learned how to feel at home in the world; Salinger was at one time, and at the time depicted in this book he was not.

Reading now - Black Sun, a biography of poet Harry Crosby by Geoffrey Wolff. Will have more to say about it, but wow. Crosby is not much remembered today (would be even less so if not for Wolff) but his life is way more interesting than his writing.

A flaw in the ointment

2007-04-12T08:51:00.000-04:00

Eggcorns are spelling or usage mistakes that make a kind of sense. Link (via Language Log)
They left out one of my favorites, "card shark" (instead of card sharp -- this was referred to in a Friends episode).

Greatest web site ever.

2007-04-10T17:03:00.000-04:00

http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Johnny Hart, 1931-2007

2007-04-10T10:32:00.001-04:00

Somewhere, a buxom cave-lady is whomping a snake with a tear in her eye.

Henry James, Freud, Janet Malcolm, Jeffrey Masson, Peter Swales

2007-04-04T21:02:00.000-04:00

Daisy Miller (1879) by Henry James, In the Freud Archives (1983) by Janet Malcolm

I love Janet Malcolm's writing. It's clear and beautiful, like early Joan Didion, before Didion got all sour. On the same day I read Daisy Miller and then ITFA. From ITFA: "There are a few among us -- psychoanalysts have encountered them -- who are blessed or cursed with a strange imperviousness to the unpleasantness of self-knowledge." Daisy Miller was one of them.
Malcolm herself invokes James's The Aspern Papers -- her story is a real-life Aspern Papers.

In the Freud Archives is an intellectual romp. (The story in brief -- Jeffrey Masson contended that Freud changed his view of his patients' experiences of sexual abuse as children from memories to fantasies for self-serving reasons. The Freudian establishment of the time closed ranks against him.) I remember reading the story when it was published in the New Yorker in the 80's and being fascinated by Peter Swales, the self-taught Freud historian. Today, he would have a blog and email -- in the 70's and 80's, he did it all with Xeroxing and letters. The issues he and Masson and others were arguing over were serious issues. But Masson was naive to think his book (The Assault on Truth, 1984) would doom psychoanalysis. Freud had great insights into our inner lives. Our unconscious and fantasy lives are important. But child abuse really does exist. Sadly, it abounds. Reality does matter, but so does its effects on us. That abuse (real, not imagined) leads to later problems is now a psychological truism.

Drop City by T.C. Boyle

2007-03-03T15:11:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Drop City, the 2003 novel by T.C. Boyle. It takes place in 1970 and deals, sympathetically but not uncritically, with hippies in a commune. I liked this book a lot. Wonderful characters and great descriptions of two settings, California and the bush of Alaska. It's been fashionable recently to think the novel or fiction in general irrelevant, to consider true stories the only worthy ones. Drop City shows that the novel is alive and kicking. The novel was king because we believed it could illuminate truth, could show us life as it was really lived. Boyle in Drop City accepts that challenge and succeeds brilliantly, as does Tom Wolfe in his unfashionable novels. A novel can succeed where rafts of sociological studies fail; a point slyly emphasized in Drop City when a sociologist character's tape recorder is thrown into the fire in mid-interview.

Pilotless drone: A grammarian speaks

2007-02-08T07:13:00.000-05:00

Arnold Zwicky of Language Log on why "pilotless drone" is not necessarily a mistake. Are we talking intersective modification or appositive modification? Link

The Google Baby Hat

2007-02-07T06:13:00.000-05:00

This combines two of my favorite things, Google and baby hats.

Drone, Pilotless Airplane

2007-02-06T17:42:00.000-05:00

I know this is the new "all your base are belong to us" but I can't resist

Condoleezza Rice's Twitter account

2007-01-25T07:27:00.000-05:00

I like this.

Pavement and The Fall

2007-01-25T07:08:00.000-05:00

I work at an office and I have two stacks of CDs on my desk right now, a stack of Pavement CDs and a stack of The Fall CDs. I want to understand the bodies of work better. Especially The Fall. It's the audio equivalent of In Search of Lost Time.

Cancer as an Evolutionary Disease

2007-01-17T07:58:00.000-05:00

Fascinating article on cancer and evolution by Carl Zimmer.

Re-visit: "Little Johnny Jewel" by Television

2007-01-13T15:40:00.000-05:00

Re-visits are posts I will be writing from time to time where I will revisit a record or CD from my musical past and try to hear it anew.

"Little Johnny Jewel" by Television, released 1975, Ork Records #81975
written by Tom Verlaine, published by Double Exposure Music Inc.

(7" 45, Part one of the song on one side and part two on the other)

I feel a sense of menace as the song begins. Each pluck, twang, and drumbeat is clearly audible. there's lots of white space. The song doesn't invite you in, it makes you come to it, makes you understand it on its own terms. Assertive, proud honeyed guitars.

Really this is creation ex nihilo. It surely must have been ignored at the time of its release -- it didn't fit in with the styles of the time. Even releasing it in two parts on both sides of a 45 must have been unheard-of. Verlaine famously gave as his musical influences 1960's jazzer Albert Ayler, the Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown," 20th century classical composer Maurice Ravel, and the Twilight Zone theme.

Now little Johnny jewel
oh he's so cool
He have no decision
He's just trying to television
Oh some thought this was sad
And others thought it mad

I like the little quaver in Verlaine's voice when singing "mad" and "display" and the guitar trill during the line "the rush, the roar," it conveys the noisy grey skies over Kennedy.

The record holds up amazingly. No revisionism needed. It's taken up residence in my head lo these 30 years and hearing the real thing doesn't disappoint me.

After some gathering tension the guitar solo starts. Guitar solos later went out of favor in the punk scene when musicianship and its display was disparaged. The high part of the solo is just audible at the very end of the 45's A-side. Pause to turn it over as I think "this still blows me away." The B-side starts with the last words sung on side A, "and lose his senses" and the solo begins again. Beautiful drumming by Billy Ficca, my sometimes CBGBs buddy in those days.

The guitars call to mind a noisy flock of birds in some Bowery tree. They're unafraid to express emotion in the guitar playing (when the lyrics are so guarded). The solo is the real heart of this song.

The main theme is restated after the solo ends, there's one more verse of lyrics, some more scratchy guitar and the song ends. Who is this guy Little Johnny Jewel anyway? Some gangster they knew in those days? or is he Verlaine himself?

The 45 comes out of an uncompromising place, done truly for the art of music with no reservations and no concessions to commercial or popular taste.

Emergency Sex

2007-01-10T19:05:00.000-05:00

I just finished Emergency Sex by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson. OK, it was the title that first caught my eye (at Borders - it was in the Travel section). It's a triple memoir by three UN workers who worked in all the 1990's hot spots -- Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Liberia. There are chilling descriptions of the genocides and atrocities in Rwanda, Bosnia and Liberia.

This book changed how I see US (and world community) intervention -- the authors see it as almost purely positive. They are bitterly critical of the American decision to precipitately leave Somalia and not to intervene in Rwanda, and credit our interventions in Haiti and Bosnia with doing a lot of good. The overall tenor of the reporting in the American media is "we always screw things up." It's interesting to hear another view from people who saw these events first hand.

I don't want to give the impression that Emergency Sex is a dry political tract. It's a personal memoir of three friends. Their time in Cambodia, the book's first section, is recalled as almost an idyll, with just a little violence to spice things up.

An afterword talks about the controversy attending the book's hardcover publication. The book reveals UN officials taking kickbacks. The two authors who still worked at the UN were threatened with dismissal; they sued and got their jobs back.

Highly recommended.

Julian Cope and Armand Schaubroeck

2007-01-05T05:34:00.000-05:00

I've added Julian Cope's Album of the Month to the links - well worth clicking on. He reviews one album per month and they're not the ones everyone else is reviewing. This month it's the Austrian band Sturmpercht and their 2006 release Geister Im Waldgebirg. But for me the best thing on Julian's site is his touching musical memoir about Armand Schaubroeck. Armand is one of the primitives of rock music. His music is truly weird and actually, not that good by objective standards, but Julian senses, and describes, what's truly wonderful about it.

Children of Men

2007-01-04T23:12:00.000-05:00

Thoughtful takedown of Children of Men from Keith Uhlich in Slant Magazine. I thought the first 45 minutes were brilliant. The last 30 or so minutes reminded me of the end of The Blues Brothers where they smash up all the police cars. Quiet menace is much more scary than a shoot-em-up. The movie has definite "narrative deficiencies."

Proust's first sentences

2006-12-29T22:20:00.000-05:00

I love the first sentence of each volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. So here they all are, all together, in French and English (except for the French of Le temps retrouvé). They follow a rhythm - short, long, short, long, medium, short, long.

Du côté de chez Swann / Swann's Way

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.

For a long time I would go to bed early.

À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur / Within a Budding Grove

Ma mère, quand il fut question d’avoir pour la première fois M. de Norpois à dîner, ayant exprimé le regret que le Professeur Cottard fût en voyage et qu’elle-même eût entièrement cessé de fréquenter Swann, car l’un et l’autre eussent sans doute intéressé l’ancien Ambassadeur, mon père répondit qu’un convive éminent, un savant illustre, comme Cottard, ne pouvait jamais mal faire dans un dîner, mais que Swann, avec son ostentation, avec sa manière de crier sur les toits ses moindres relations, était un vulgaire esbrouffeur que le Marquis de Norpois eût sans doute trouvé selon son expression, «puant».

My mother, when it was a question of our having M. de Norpois to dinner for the first time, having expressed her regret that Professor Cottard was away from home and that she herself had quite ceased to see anything of Swann, since either of these might have helped to entertain the ex-ambassador, my father replied that so eminent a guest, so distinguished a man of science as Cottard could never be out of place at a dinner-table, but that Swann, with his ostentation, his habit of crying aloud from the house-tops the name of everyone he knew, however slightly, was a vulgar show-off whom the Marquis de Norpois would be sure to dismiss as -- to use his own epithet -- a "pestilent" fellow.

Le côte de Guermantes / The Guermantes Way

Le pépiement matinal des oiseaux semblait insipide à Françoise.

The twittering of the birds at daybreak sounded insipid to Françoise.

Sodome et Gomorrhe / Sodom and Gomorrah

On sait que bien avant d’aller ce jour-là (le jour où avait lieu la soirée de la princesse de Guermantes) rendre au duc et à la duchesse la visite que je viens de raconter, j’avais épié leur retour et fait, pendant la durée de mon guet, une découverte, concernant particulièrement M. de Charlus, mais si importante en elle-même que j’ai jusqu’ici, jusqu’au moment de pouvoir lui donner la place et l’étendue voulues, différé de la rapporter.

The reader will remember that, well before going that day (the day on which the Princesse de Guermantes's reception was to be held) to pay the Duke and Duchess the visit I have just described, I had kept watch for their return and in the course of my vigil had made a discovery which concerned M. de Charlus in particular but was in itself so important that I have until now, until the moment when I could give it the prominence and treat it with the fullness that it demanded, postponed giving an account of it.

La prisonnière / The Captive

Dès le matin, la tête encore tournée contre le mur, et avant d’avoir vu, au-dessus des grands rideaux de la fenêtre, de quelle nuance était la raie du jour, je savais déjà le temps qu’il faisait.

At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I had seen above the big window-curtains what shade of colour the first streaks of light assumed, I could already tell what the weather was like.

Albertine disparue / The Fugitive

"Mademoiselle Albertine est partie!"

"Mademoiselle Albertine has gone!"

Le temps retrouvé /Time Regained

[I have been unable to locate the French text of this on the Internet; will add it later.]

I should have no occasion to dwell upon this visit which I paid to the neighborhood of Combray at perhaps the moment in my life when I thought least about Combray, had it not, precisely for that reason, brought me what was at least a provisional confirmation of certain ideas which I had first conceived along the Guermantes way, and also of certain other ideas which I had conceived on the Méséglise way.

Wowee Zowee

2006-12-26T06:26:00.000-05:00

how do I start to talk about the Godlike genius of Pavement's Wowee Zowee (1995)? It often gets lost in my estimation as I constantly play Slanted and Enchanted, Crooked Rain, or Brighten the Corners but Wowee has so many virtues. Familiar Pavement preoccupations like architecture, despair, music, career, hotels, and money are evident, with complex, layered, and nuanced music. On a day when we pay tribute to James Brown and his, seemingly out of nowhere, coming up with an entire new style of music that reverberates in all popular musics, it's fitting to celebrate Pavement's complexity.

Pavement are often cited as being influenced by The Fall, and that's definitely here (complete with a "witch trials" reference), but with a good dollop of California sweetness.

I do look for new music to listen to, ever hopeful, but I don't find much.
The Over Friendly Concierge is a very nice Pavement site, very helpful for lyrics though it has a couple of mistakes -- it's "is the sedan he bought" in "Grounded", not "is this the den he bought" (and that reminds me, there used to be a wonderful site called "The Replacements Misheard Lyrics Page" - ou sont les web sites d'antan?)

Edel's Henry James

2006-12-15T19:52:00.000-05:00

I have lately gotten a desire to read biographies. I recently read T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life by Lyndall Gordon, which I enjoyed. Now I am reading Henry James: A Life by Leon Edel, Edel's 1985 one-volume condensation of his five-volume James biography. It's very good. James knew everyone who was everyone. It's interesting to see which 19th-century authors have been forgotten (Paul Bourget?), which ones are remembered but not read today (Robert Louis Stevenson) and who shines brightly (Flaubert).

A Baby

2006-04-11T17:04:00.000-04:00

Kyle 25/03/2006
Originally uploaded by rhcampbell.

I love this photo!

2006-04-07T22:11:00.000-04:00

here is my last.fm chart

nytimes.com

2006-04-07T22:09:00.000-04:00

I don't like the nytimes.com redesign. I think it's too busy, too long, and has way too many links. I think the ideal news site would be scrolling wire-service headlines that were tagged.

The Sea, The Sea

2005-06-21T23:55:00.000-04:00

The other book I'm reading now is The Sea, The Sea (1978) by Iris Murdoch. (If you are a member of my book group, please skip the rest of this post since we are not allowed to discuss the book before the meeting). I really like it.

The Secret Life of the Seine

2005-06-21T23:45:00.000-04:00

Lately I have been reading The Secret Life of the Seine (Perseus Books, 1994) by Mort Rosenblum. The book follows the river from its source near Dijon, through Paris to its mouth at Le Havre. I love that kind of stuff.