August 2005 Archives

God help me, I think I'm in love.

I'm in love with Faulconer's Hardware.

I know, I know... it'll never work. I'm a 42-year-old English teacher with a wife and two kids. Faulconer's is a locally owned hardware store. But man, whenever I go in there, I begin to dream... no, no, let's be honest: I fantasize.

In my fantasy, instead of being there to pick up the piddling little things I need, I imagine myself rising to a great challenge: not just putting up a shelf, or buying a small screwdriver for the kids' video-game paraphernalia, but adding a new bathroom, or extending the deck, or adding a patio. Visions of masonry nails and drywall dance in my head; I feel the need to try on coveralls, to stick my hands into the bins full of roofing nails and let them run through my fingers, to examine brass plates, to compare woodscrews with machine screws. My vague and timorous notions of how these things are done are replaced with a clear and unyielding confidence in my skills; I'm no longer a desperate jury-rigger, but a knowledgeable builder. No longer do I toil in the soft and gauzy realms of language, where tones and meanings appear, change shapes, and vanish without tangible evidence. Instead, I stride purposefully through orderly rows of nuts, bolts, and washers, each measured, machine-tooled, and tucked into a drawer with scores of its brethren. Everything is solid, practical, and full of meaning.

It's a fantasy that others share, though perhaps in other ways. Some yearn for childhood, when Mom and Dad held the uncertainties of adult life at bay, and arranged the tiny bits of your life for you. Some yearn for the Golden Age, that simpler time when tradition was unchallenged and choices were less necessary, not to mention far less numerous: just 12d or 10d, slotted or Phillips.

But in the end, they and I must return to the real world, the world of today. It's not entirely unlike the fantasy world--I have screwdrivers, and hammers, and tape measures, after all, and I can put together furniture and basic fixtures. I can even operate a radial armsaw or a pneumatic staple gun. I know well many of the features of that uncomplicated existence. But I live in a twisting, dancing world, where decisions must be made in milliseconds and situations change at the drop of a vowel or the shift of a tense. Sometimes it's thrilling to visit a place where the ground underfoot is solid, and calm, and old. But it's not my life.

And that leaves me with a rather unsettling question: is a trip to Faulconer's more like a vacation, an affair, or just a long perusal of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue?

3:46 AM

I'm back. The PUs (Parental Units, that is) are inhabiting their new domicile. I spent the week helping them, occasionally unloading a few items from the truck, but mostly opening boxes, unwrapping stuff, putting things in cabinets, hauling away trash and cardboard, and occasionally putting together items like beds or computers. In return, I got to borrow the car every night (Thanks, Mom & Dad!) and went out to play with my Chapel Hill friends.

The week's highlight was probably Tuesday, when I had dinner at the Spotted Dog (formerly Spring Garden, formerly Bullwinkle's) with Ginny & Flyboy and Tony Plutonium & Jenny Slash, then accompanied the latter two to the Cat's Cradle to see the Knitters.



(Note spiffy new attempt at adding graphics to the journal--who knows, I might try it again...)

This was my first trip to the Cradle since it moved to its current location near the Artscenter in Carrboro. I think it moved there in 1994 or something, which tells you how long it's been for me. The Cradle is Chapel Hill's legendary music club from time immemorial, or at least the early 70s. It used to occupy a spot off an alley on Rosemary Street. The other side of the alley housed Tijuana Fats (now Henry's Bistro), and the street-front part of the Cradle's building was where Dip's used to be. It was there that I saw my first club show--Mike Cross, if you're wondering, probably circa 1978--and danced to many a tune by the Pressure Boys from 1981 to 1983.

This being Chapel Hill, where extinction is a way of life for all eating and drinking establishments, the Cradle's space would become Rhythm Alley (and eventually the Skylight Exchange) after owner Dave Robert moved the Cradle itself to a larger space on West Franklin Street sometime around 1984. Dave also decided to sell the club, and it wound up in the capable hands of Frank "Skeeter" Heath, who has if anything made the place more of a landmark in the past two decades. I was lucky enough to play there with Terminal Mouse, and I well remember a terrific show by Me & Dixon (which consisted of bassist/singer Don Dixon, P-Boys drummer Rob Ladd, and guitarist Rick Miller, a/k/a Rick Rock, a/k/a Parthenon Huxley, a/k/a P. Hux), but the Cradle's lease had all too short a date.

The landlords apparently decided they didn't want a rock and roll club in the space and decided not to renew the club's lease. I believe it was on New Year's Eve at the end of of 1986 that the P-Boys performed one of their best shows to mark the occasion; the climax came when guitarist Bryon "Elmo" Settle told the landlords exactly what he thought of their decision by baring a choice part of his anatomy, but it looked as though the Cradle might be closing for good.

We should have known better. A few months later and a few buildings down the street, on the ground floor of the spot previously occupied by the downtown Belk store, the Cat's Cradle opened its doors once again. This was when I hit the club more often than ever; I entered grad school in the fall of 1987 and soon got a job at Record Bar, so I was keenly attuned to both the new recordings coming out and the touring schedules of the bands. More important, I was married, had no kids, and was surrounded by friends and co-workers as fascinated by pop music as I was. As a result, I saw Robyn Hitchcock, Poi Dog Pondering, the Indigo Girls, They Might Be Giants, Billy Bragg, and Brave Combo, among others. Elmo and I even got to perform there once; we opened for Black Francis (a/k/a Frank Black), who was doing a solo tour after the Pixies broke up, and we played what is probably the worst set I've ever been associated with. Damn shame, too.

But then things went crazy: I graduated and couldn't find a full-time teaching job, Kelly got pregnant with Ian, and we found ourselves heading out of town. While we were in Fayetteville, Frank moved the Cradle again, this time to its final (?) location on Main Street, hard by the tracks in Carrboro. My ability to see club shows all but vanished; since 1991, I've seen auditorium shows and even a stadium show, but the only club gigs I managed were Robyn Hitchcock at the Ram's Head Tavern in Annapolis and TMBG at Starr Hill Music Hall in Charlottesville.

So this was a real blast from the past, as were the Knitters. They're basically the legendary LA punk band X, joined by string bassist Jonny Ray Bartel and former Blasters guitarist Dave Alvin, and they play a variety of old folk and country tunes interspersed with originals in the same style. (Their name is a takeoff of the Weavers, if you're wondering.) I've never had a problem with X, but they were never my favorite punk outfit, either; I'm more of a Buzzcocks/Clash fan. In 1985, though, the first Knitters album came out, and the title track, "Poor Little Critter on the Road," seized me by the brain and wouldn't let go. There's something about a loving but knowing blend of the traditional and the edgy that I love, whether it's Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails or Wall of Voodoo covering "Ring of Fire." I never bought the Knitters' first album, but I always thought of it fondly.

And now, twenty years later, they've got a new one out (The Modern Sounds of the Knitters) and they're touring in support of it. The album's a treat--yes, I bought it after the show--but the performance was just stellar. Alvin's guitar had more twang than the entire state of Oklahoma, and John Doe's voice has the haunted quality of the best American vocalists. Exene Cervenka was a strange vision, a combination of punk goddess and church-goin' matron; she's thickened out a bit over the years, and the green short-sleeve dress she wore made her look like she might start belting "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" at any moment, but when she sang her voice energized the room. She's not a great singer in terms of hitting pitch, but she's got loads of charisma and a great sense of dynamics, and she knows when and how to use the word "fuck" effectively.

What astonished me was how hard the band rocked; with only an acoustic bass, a brushed snare drum (courtesy of X drummer D.J. Bonebreak), Doe's acoustic guitar, and Alvin's two electrics (he alternated between a classic Fender Strat and an ancient twang-heavy Danelectro), I would have expected tenderness, fun, bounciness, or maybe a plaintive cry or three, but somehow they manged to build the sound into something far greater than the sum of its parts. They could build the volume to a peak, and then somehow, without turning up the volume any louder, make the music seem louder. A dynamite show, with two encores and some choice covers: Porter Waggoner's "I'll Go Down Swinging," Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild," and Woody Guthrie's "Do Re Mi," which stayed in my head for a solid day and a half.

I didn't sweat like I did at the Pressure Boys' shows, or drink like I did at Me & Dixon, or dance like I did at Poi Dog, but it was nice to recapture a little of my youth for an evening. Here's hoping I get back to the Cradle sometime before 2015.

6:52 PM

THINGS TO DO WHILE WAITING TO HEAR FROM THE EDITOR WHO'S LOOKING AT YOUR MANUSCRIPT:

*Check your email.

*Run a load of dishes.

*Try to read a bit of Ian Mcewan's Atonement, but get distracted by the intricacies of the Justice League of America's adventures in Grant Morrison's alternate-future sequence.

*Make a cup of coffee.

*Surf by Readerville.

*Read the paper, cringe at the news from Iraq.

*Read more of the paper, perk up slightly at the news that 61% of the country disapproves of Bush's handling of Iraq.

*Check the feeder out back. Lots and lots of house sparrows.

*Tell the kids to do something besides playing Destroy All Humans.

*Wonder if you should shave today.

*Check your email again.

*Open up one of your in-progress works and think about editing it some; get distracted by your list of players for the upcoming fantasy football draft.

*Close your in-progress work and surf by Readerville again.

*Think hard: was that bowl of cereal really enough to satisfy you?

*Surf by Political Animal.

*Check your email again, as long as you're connected.

*More coffee? Sure, why not?

*Pet the dog.

*Bathroom break--that was a lot of coffee, after all...

*Take the dishes out of the dishwasher.

*Check for phone messages.

*Check your email again.

*Surf by Tony Plutonium's Half-Life and Times blog, learn that the Knitters will be at the Cat's Cradle while you're in Chapel Hill... hmm...

*Look at those draft lists again. Clinton Portis? Ahman Green? Willis McGahee? Picking seventh is a bitch.

*Watch an episode of The Young Ones from Netflix. Giggle uncontrollably when Neil says, "For some reason, I'm unable to nail the plates to the table without breaking them."

*Feeder check: house sparrows. Well, there's the one cowbird.

*Become seized with the idea that you should have completely rewritten the second half of the manuscript before sending it out, but now it's too late, too late!

*Check your email again.

*Oh, what the hey--one more cup of coffee.

6:40 PM

So I finished a book.

Hey, I'm as surprised as you.

It's a children's book I started before Ian was born--that'd be 1991 for those scoring at home. There's a magician, and a large cloud, and the Bureau of Missing Persons, and a tractor, and of course birds--lots of them, actually. I've pecked and scratched at it for years, but it had been lying fallow for so long that I'd all but decided it wasn't going to be finished. In fact, it was so far down the queue of projects that I didn't even have it listed on this site's "What PC's Working On" table.

But after I finished the first draft of A Raven for Doves, I was looking for something to take my mind in another direction, and I didn't feel like starting something from scratch, so I poked around with the children's book a bit. I'd stopped right as the bad guy was entering, so I spent a little time trying to figure out what the bad guy would sound like. I got his voice, but once I had his voice, he didn't quite look right any more, so I had to come up with a better reason for him to sound like that... and then something clicked and I wrote the last third of the book.

End result: The Amazing Q is now complete. I've made a few revisions and will doubtless make more, but I'm sending it out shortly, and my hope is that an editor will find it worth a flyer.

Surprise!

3:18 PM

"April is the cruelest month," sayeth the poet, to which I replieth, "Ha!"

Sure, April can be cold and muddy, especially if you're hoping for warm and green, but somewhere in those four weeks there's always a sign of progress from the lionishness of March to the downright kitteny month of May. April, whatever else it may be, is feline enough to be welcome in most homes.

August, meanwhile, is the beached whale of the calendar: hot, bloated, essentially immobile, and on the verge of flatlining completely. You certainly don't want it anywhere nearby, but you can't escape because it seeks you out. Wherever you may be, it hefts itself inconveniently out of the depths and sprawls there in front of your condo, flatulent and covered with flies.

"And if it's not too much trouble," it rasps through its blowhole, "Could you maybe come out in the hot sun and sprinkle water on me every few minutes?"

You know that feeling you get on Sunday afternoons? The existential dread that comes with the realization that the curtain is closing on your weekend? The nagging realization that you have a bunch of work to do, and you can't really consider the rest of Sunday part of the weekend? August is the summer vacation version of that; the school year is looming over the horizon like a thunderhead, and you're gamely driving your convertible straight toward it, torn between the need to squeeze every iota of fun out of your summer and the need to be sensible and put the top up.

And I'm lucky; there are already teachers out there cranking themselves into start-of-school gear. Target's already got their notebooks and pens in big red displays, and Ian's got his first marching band rehearsals this week. Dixon's off the hook for a while yet, but even he gets to spend the last week of August in seventh grade--a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone. Woodberry, thanks to its school year's patented Thirty-Hour Weekend^TM, doesn't have to start quite as early, so I won't have my first faculty meeting until after Labor Day. I may have a few days at the ropes course to work around, but in general I can count on spending my time as I wish during August.

It wasn't always that way. I can recall with ease the dread I felt on August 1 in Fayetteville, because it signified the start of soccer practice; from the 1st to the 20th or so, it was two-a-days and watching out for heat exhaustion and finally having to cut hard-working kids who'd dutifully shown up for weeks. And since Pine Forest's summer ran from roughly June 15 to August 15, it already seemed like a painfully short break to me.

"But Pete!" I hear some of you cry, "You're forgetting that most of us don't have summer vacation!" True. And August sucks even worse for you, doesn't it? Oh, sure, some of you are taking your beach trips now, having worked through June and July, but even so, wouldn't it have been better if you'd managed to take them before this? By this point, you're not at your best; you've been checking out mentally most afternoons (probably surfing the net, wishing something interesting would happen on ESPN.com), drinking too much coffee, resenting the fact that you can't wear shorts to work, dreading that first pyrex-beaker moment in the car at the start of the commute home... and the droning of the air conditioning haunts your dreams.

Screw the poets. We know the real deal.

Whanne that Auguste with his sweates soure
The heate of Hades on our heades doth poure
Thanne sit we in the muggy dampe and wishe
We felte notte like unto a parched whalefische.

1:51 PM