most days are like this.

analysis

A thought I haven't thought through. I'm not charismatic, exactly, but I have a goofy side, a mode that maybe comes across as immature or silly, moments when I just don't care what people think, or I do, but I choose not to process any negatives. So what is that about? Is it rooted in having to be the responsible one? Do I occasionally fend off being uptight and serious all the time by coming up with the most random larks? Is that why it has become harder over time to be passionate about anything? Without competition or a sense of gravity or someone needing me to do something, I get complacent. Is there a touch of the martyr in all of that, and assuming there is, I know I resent it a bit.

The National review

One of the best places to see a band in Chicago is at Schuba's. With a capacity of about 200 or so, there is a nice intimacy to the setting. The room has decent acoustics, a bar in back, and I have always found the crowd there to be polite. And they waste no space; the band actually enters the room via a door leading onto the street; exiting their tour van/bus, taking three strides over the sidewalk, through the door, up 4 steps and gathering around their respective instruments. Any more low key and it would be a friend's basement.
We (J & K, George, Mike S) staked out a spot near the back, which is to say about 30 feet from the stage. It was the early show, so the opener was Talkdemonic, a 2-piece from Portland whipping off tight little tunes devoid of lyrics but heavy on drums, synthesizers, and electric violin. They were decent; though I didn't pick up the CD it would probably make good background music after a long day.
After a ten minute break the six guys calling themselves The National ambled up on stage. Lead singer Matt Berninger is a commanding presence on stage, alternately surrounding his lanky frame with a halo of smoke and then straining himself to full height, tilting his neck back and singing up into the rafters as if the devils he were conjuring via his tortured musical protagonists had somehow slipped upwards on their way down to hell. They played a good mix of material from their albums, probably a breakdown of 20/30/50% from their first to most recent. Requests for the piano-driven "Karen" led to Berninger quipping that he "had to forget how to play the piano for Karen". They finished up with the song that drew me to the band a couple years ago, "Available", off of Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers. Catch them while they are still playing the small venues; maybe they'll never get popular enough for the bigger places but they deserve to.

Beck review

Beck at the Riv. The house was packed. And hot. At least I had the sense to skip any attempt at style and wear shorts, even though I was chilly when I walked out of there; a small price to pay for not overheating. The opener (McRory?) was this guy decked out with a couple keyboards strapped to his side like a gunslinger, drum pads all over his body, and effects pedals wired into his arms. Basically a high-end street performer with the demeanor of someone who got nabbed off a corner and thrust into the spotlight; book him for your next party.
I got to the venue first, ironic since I was coming from furthest away. Secured a good spot in line, which was for nought since nobody else showed up until the doors had already opened and the last of the line had already entered the building. Side note, why do I only get chatted up by girls (explicitly) waiting for their boyfriends (girl with sprayed metallic denim purse in same situation as me; good spot in line, no tickets on hand).
Anyway, ask me for a set list and I'll be vague; I have gotten really lousy with song titles. But he played a lot of the popular stuff, and threw in a couple of his slower Mutations/Sea Change songs, which was nice. There was an interesting little acoustic set during which the band sat on stage and had dinner, leading to a little jam where the instruments they played were the empty glasses and bowls and whatever was sitting around on the table. I guess that's what I expect from a Beck show, a combination of energy and quirkiness, and that's what we got. Overall, a good show.
Now, I just want to send some luck out to my friends who are flying into the teeth of Hurricane Rita for a wedding in Houston this weekend. Stay dry, or at least on solid ground.

stray thoughts

Here comes the rain, a little late.
The foundation is going in next to the old house. All things change, all things change...
Talked to my grandfather who turned 77 yesterday. He seemed to be in good spirits. He has picked up on the "find yourself a girl and settle down" theme. If only it were as easy as that.
Going to the Beck show tonite. Haven't been to a concert in what feels like ages, an uncharacteristic dry spell.
Where is my passion?
Have been on a cleaning kick lately. The place got too cluttered. Went through the closet and disposed of a Gap jacket I have had for 15 years, grey, worn through in the cuffs, zipper broken; in college Gabe dubbed it the "grampy-gap", suggesting that it gave off the impression of a rumpled old man. The name stuck, everyone called it that. I violated a fashion rule, I think; the moment that an article of clothing is so associated with you that it gets a nickname, you should dispose of it.
If everyone in the world would just shut up and listen once in a while, we would all get a lot more accomplished.

house photo status

I'll pick up on the house photo series soon. In the meantime...have had to drive past the old house a few times today. They have ripped out all of the vegetation in the side yard and have started putting some ugly yellowish siding up.
I suppose it's only a matter of time before they knock down the garage and break ground on the flat they are going to build in the side yard.

ceiling details

A couple detail shots of the bedroom ceilings. Imagine taking the time to pattern an entire ceiling this way; that was pretty much the whole second floor of the house. Looks like potato masher and comb for these patterns. I liked the comb version better; it was more soothing, less like having a thousand little stalactites hanging above you.

bathroom radiator

Upstairs bathroom. Isn't that just the cutest little radiator ever!?

bathroom

The sink and toilet are not original, but the bathtub is. It was moved once to refinish the outer portion (it was painted black for a long time) and to fix the floor. The original pull-chain toilet with the occasionally leaky tank mounted near the ceiling wasn't replaced until the late 80's or early 90's. Despite its' quirks, I was kind of sorry to see it go; I didn't miss the sink, though, one of those dual faucet affairs where you alternated between hot and cold.

back view

The view out mom and dad's west window. Top of the back porch roof, green deck tent, and garage. Pussywillow bush/tree branches on left, maple in center, dwarf apple tree on the right.

mom and dad room

Mom and Dad's room; window facing south and closet. They had a huge four poster bed that was a good trampoline. The posts themselves had rounded tops about the size of a bowling ball; they could be removed and to this day I don't know how we got through our childhood without ever bonking each other on the head with one of those things. I think they rearranged the room once in 27 years; the furniture was heavy, chiseled directly out of petrified trees.

attic stairs - underneath

Why include a shot of the underside of the attic stairs? Simply for the sake of explaining that the back of the closet in J & J's room was opened up, so that one could crawl to the back and look up to see what you see here. Why this was accessible I have no idea, though I imagine that you could perhaps hide someone in the space if you absolutely had to. Or stash valuables in such a nook. I don't recall ever finding one of those hideaway spots in any of the floors (and yes, houses of that era had such places; I specifically recall a bunch of us neighborhood kids running around through an old house waiting to be torn down and being exultant at finding just such a feature, though sadly there was no treasure there).

J & J bedroom

J & J's bedroom, predominantly. I had it for the year I moved home while saving up to buy the condo. At the end it was John's room. So many stripes in this picture; it's enough to make you dizzy. Better than the crazy forest wallpaper, though. Items that passed through this room included bunk beds, tyco race track, He-man castles and toys, an array of Cubs/Ryne Sandberg memorabilia (when it was Jason's room), enough "best of the 80's" CDs to bury someone with, a couple fish tanks, and various other objects that my siblings and I threw at each other.

radiator

The radiator in my old room. Underneath, the land of lost coins and matchbox cars. Soon after we moved in, my dad constructed protective boxes for our bedroom radiators, made of plywood and window screen. Once we were old enough not to burn ourselves on them, the boxes went away. We would have tie pins full of water underneath to keep the house from getting too dry (poor man's humidifier). They were a good spot to sit and look out the window, weighed a ton, and thankfully were never noisy.

my old room

My old bedroom. For a while it was orange. Then it was blue. Did I unconsciously know I would end up at U of I (where the school colors are orange and blue), or was it mere coincidence?
This shot focuses on the corner where my 30 gallon fish tank rested for years. The two kissing fish lasted the longest. Guppies, neon tetras, mollies, platys, zebras, and suckerfish (proper name? I don't remember. The long skinny ones that eat the algae) were also prominent residents.
When my sister inhabited the room she went with the purple and black accents. Before the move, it became the office and baby toy room.
The windows face north and east, respectively.

stairway - cutaway

Shot from the foyer looking at the stairway. Notice how a section of the wall has been cut away; it may look like it was designed that way, but it wasn't. It was an almost immediate change to the house upon moving in, necessary to allow furniture to be brought upstairs. In the end, it wasn't a drastic enough change; it became necessary to set up scaffolding outside and take apart a window to get my parents' entire bedroom set up to their room. (Their bedroom set is made of wood, very heavy; substantial enough to keep a fireplace going for an entire brutal winter). The cut in the wall later served as a good spot to peek around on x-mas morning, as we kids would crowd the stairs trying to ascertain the extent of our holiday loot while waiting for mom and dad to wake up.

backyard beastie

Looking out the back door...and then a dragon appeared and used its' fiery breath to torch the deck!

alarm

After the garage was broken into (and the bastards made off with my Dad's Harley, among other things), we put in an alarm. Of course, we would often forget to turn it off before going in to the garage, so the horn for it could be heard blaring about a block away on occasion.

kitchen - hallway

Looking from the foyer down the hallway toward the kitchen; back door visible all the way at the, um...back. Originally the hallway wall was fitted with white metal cabinets from the floor to about a foot or so shy of the ceiling, with a yellow laminate countertop running the length of it. The area in the kitchen, where the cabinets were later added, was bare; for many years the dinner table was there. The floor was tiled for years, until the tile was finally removed to reveal the wood underneath. It wasn't in the best shape, but they sanded and varnished it to the point where it looked decent.

stairway railing - detail

The sturdy railings at the bottom of the stairs. How many times did we bump against them, sit on them, climb over those railings while chasing each other up and down? They were like pillars sunk into the earth; they never budged. The woodwork detail is not unique; I have seen it in at least one other house (I don't remember exactly where, though). Originally, the wood was stained darker, but my parents carefully stripped the varnish and sanded it to reveal a lighter shade that better delineated the texture of the wood.

living room - detail

The original light fixture(?) in the living room. It was painted a few times; it ended up a sort of metallic blue, but it was also gold for a long time. It added a little character to a room that was generally rather plain, with the exception of the x-mas season when the tree would go up and dominate the space.

this old house - intro

The next few posts will be a photographic journey through the rooms of the house in which I grew up. It was in my family's possession from 1977-today. It was big enough, had a good yard to play in, was built sometime in the 1920's (we think), and survived all attempts by myself and my siblings to destroy it. I'll miss this house.

magma

First Tuesday of the month, 10:00 a.m., time to do the tornado siren test. But in my head, I thought "volcano siren". Is this a sign that natural disasters have become so pervasive that I immediately think the worst? Do we actually need a volcano siren here? I would hope not, but the way things have been going, I'm not taking anything for granted.

and then two

Two political posts in a row? Not typical for me. Two open seats on the Supreme Court? During the tenure of Bush the Lesser? Our civil rights are about to go "poof".

Hindsight

Hindsight. They say it's a bitch. I say it's a Bush. To me, the best hindsight will be the ass of our fearless leader in January 2009, officially removed from his throne room in the (white) frathouse. It's a tragedy when you don't see it coming; it's negligent manslaughter when you do. Yes, people should have gotten out of New Orleans, but some just couldn't. So thanks for cutting the funding for flood management, dismantling FEMA, and depriving the country of the personnel to handle such an emergency, you arrogant asshat. The word "quagmire" seems even more appropriate now as we view the pictures of an historic marshland crumbling away. Was it folly for New Orleans to even exist? Maybe, but that is the triumph and potential tragedy of the human spirit; the Panama Canal was folly; reversing the Chicago river was as well, but they were big dreams that worked and in the end we celebrated our ability to conquer nature for our own benefit. So it seems hypocritical to criticize the existence of the place, though I suspect that if more of its' inhabitants were upper class and white there would be far less of such talk.
Go back to the ranch, Georgie-boy. Get on your bike, and the next time you crash it, try to impale yourself on something. It's the Christian thing to do.

captured moments

"Summer Skin" - Death Cab for Cutie (2005)

Squeaky swings and tall grass
The longest shadows ever cast
The water's warm and children swim
And we frolicked about in our summer skin

I don't recall a single care
Just greenery and humid air
Then Labor day came and went
And we shed what was left of our summer skin

On the night you left I came over
And we peeled the freckles from our shoulders
Our brand new coats so flushed and pink
And I knew your heart I couldn't win
Cause the seasons change was a conduit
And we left our love in our summer skin