Join in...

I came across one of those random blog personality-digging question things... but this one was strictly music and actually pretty intersting. So I cut out the lame questions and here goes:

1. Your favorite song with the name of a city in the title: Wilco - Via Chicago
2. A song you've listened to repeatedly when you were depressed at some point in your life: Bob Dylan - Idiot Wind
3. Your least favorite song on one of your favorite albums of all time: Wilco - Spiders (Kidsmoke) (not an all-time favorite, but it’s a tough question and that song damn near ruins the album).
4. Your favorite song that has expletives in it: Steve Earle - F the CC
5. A song you like (possibly from your past) that took you forever to finally locate a copy of: Guided by Voices - Always Crush Me
6. A song that reminds you of spring but doesn't mention spring at all: Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers - Beautiful Disaster
7. A song that sounds to you like being happy feels: the sax solo in Springsteen’s Jungleland
8. A song you actually like by an artist you otherwise hate: Eminem - Lose Yourself
9. A song by a band (whose members actually play instruments) that features three or more female members: Go Gos - Vacation
10. One of the earliest songs that you can remember listening to: Beach Boys - I Get Around
11. A song you've been mocked by friends for liking: Bob Seger - Against the Wind
12. A really good cover version you think no one else has heard: Clancy Brothers - When the Ship Comes In (Dylan)
13. A song that has helped cheer you up (or empowered you somehow) after a breakup or otherwise difficult situation: The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (the Last Waltz version)

Man On Fire

In the past week I saw two giant cupcakes having a race, battled in the Thunderdome, followed a makeshift marching band to a party in a cloud, watched a ballet of fire, heard Alan Watts speak, dance-dance-danced all night in a desert oasis that resembled an outdoor version of Jabba’s Palace and saw a 150 ft. neon blue man burned to the ground.

And most of this happened before anybody gave me mushrooms.

Where could such joyous and exciting activities take place, you ask? Black Rock City, my friends, Burning Man, a real-life Xanadu and one of the friendliest places on Earth. It appears for one week every year ten miles outside of Gerlach Nevada and then vanishes without a trace. Gerlach’s population is something like 200. BRC’s population this year came in at about 36,000. A good majority of whom I saw naked. And whether you believe it or not most of them looked pretty damn good that way.

But that’s not what Burning Man is about, it's just a pleasant side-effect. Burning Man is an experiment in community based on creativity and gift-giving. There is original art and entertainment everywhere you look and nothing for sale but ice and coffee both of which goes to charity.

It is commonly misconceived as a place based on the barter system. While the place looks an awful lot like Barter-Town, trading is actually not encouraged. It’s all about giving without expecting anything in return. Or rather the Buddhist belief that the rewards of a good deed have no choice but to come back to you.

I’m not a new-age, hippie freak if I’ve started to sound like one. Yoga hurts, I can’t imagine life without burgers and fries, and there’s not enough violence on TV, but I do think that there are better ways to live out there and Burning Man is a worthy attempt at finding it. So go.

I’d write more but I’m lakeside in Tahoe cooling off and enjoying free room and board compliments of the Hyatt. San Fran’s next. Wish you were here.

Great short fiction

Here's the best short story I've read this summer. By best I mean it really stuck out as something special. In terms of literary quality, Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," probably takes it.

But Joe R. Lansdale's "The Night They Missed the Horror Show," is one of those stories you put down excited and exhausted. Lansdale may not have the polished prose of Hemingway, or Raymond Carver, for a better contrast, but his storytelling is truly unique, lurid and powerful. Things happen in Lansdale's short stories, and this one drags you along with it as if you were the dead dog. He's a great writer in that respect, that his stories are just damn good stories with no other justification or judgement necessary. Before I oversell it, read this story now. It's short.

Here's an excerpt, but that doesn't mean you don't have to read the whole thing, lazy Internet people:

He finally focused on something in the highway. A dead dog.
Not just a dead dog. But a DEAD DOG. The mutt had been hit by a semi at least, maybe several. It looked as if it had rained dog. There were pieces of that pooch all over the concrete and one leg was lying on the curbing on the opposite side, stuck up in such a way that it seemed to be waving hello. Doctor Frankenstein with a grant from Johns Hopkins and assistance from NASA couldn't have put that sucker together again.

This one is from High Cotton, a best-of anthology with author notation. It's great if you can find it. Then there's "The Bottoms," probably his best novel and most critically respected. I also like "The Drive-In" for some really pulpy fun.

Kobe

Money can't buy you love...
But it'll get you a team of defense attorneys that will do everything they can to put so much pressure on the 19-year-old woman you screwed in a Colorado hotel by dragging her personal sexual history into the national spotlight that she'll back out of her testimony and kill the prosecution's case in the rape trial against you. (And money'll get you a fat diamond to buy off your wife.)

'Course, if that's too cynical, I still like Randy Newman's version:
"They say that money can't buy love, but it'll get you a half-pound of cocaine and a 16-year-old girl and a great big long limousine on a hot September night. Now that may not be love, but it's all right."

(edited)