The Memingless Mean

Taggged by Luminiferous Ether with the Meminingless, err, Mannigles, ummm, Meaningless Meme. Hah! I managed to get it right on only the third try! Here we go... The Meaningless Meme!

1. Five names you go by:
a) Ed
b) Daddy
c) Papi (or maybe it's spelled poppi, I'll have to ask Cinderbelle.)
d) Dog Park Guy (most often spoken in dog).
e) Sir (a sure sign you're getting old.)

2. Three things you are wearing right now:
a) My moose hat (okay, I admit I put it on just now so I could say I'm wearing it.)
b) Flannel lined jeans (hey, it's Wisconsin!)
c) Sea horse print boxers.

3. Two things you want very badly at the moment:
a) Somebody else's bank account.
b) To think of one other thing.

4. Three people who will probably fill this out:
a) Jess Wundrun
b) Gomonkeygo
c) Pagan Sphinx

5. Two things you did last night:
a) Played a gig with The Reptile Palace Orchestra at the Mabel Tainter Center For the Arts in Menomonie, Wisconsin.
b) Had a post-gig soak in the hot tub in the Menomonie Country Inn & Suites.

6. Two things you ate today:
a) An omelet at the Norske Nook in Osseo, WI.
b) Roasted, salted cashews from the Menomonie Food Co-op.

7. Two people you last talked to on the phone:
a) Sparkly Seacow's friend Violet's mom Felina.
b) Some guy named Todd who called to talk to my lovely and talented wife.

8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow:
a) Work on the damned bathroom, unless something else comes up.
b) Take the dog to the bark park.

9. Two longest car rides:
a) Madison, WI to Key West, FL with a 12-year old and a five-year old.
b) The five-minute drive to the bark park with an excited dog moaning and barking in my ear.

10. Two of your favorite beverages:
a) Beer. Particularly a nice, bitter IPA.
b) Fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice.

And finally, a clip from a favorite movie.
Since vampire films seem to be all the rage right now, here's a clip from my all-time favorite in the genre: Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre.

Tag, I'm it.

I've been tagged with the "Seven Things" meme. First, The Quaker Agitator got me, then, probably because I was slow in getting to it, Luminiferous Ether got me. I guess, technically, it ought to be Fourteen Things, but I'm just not that interesting. I had a difficult enough time coming up with seven things, and I'm not even going to claim that they are seven interesting things.

Here are the rules:

1. List these rules on your blog.

2. Share seven facts about yourself on your blog.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

And away we go...

1. I once played softball with Jonathan Richman. You know, the singer/musician. It was back in the eighties sometime. A lot of the local “punk rockers” used to get together at the local elementary school playground on Sundays for some informal softball, beer drinking and fun. Richman and his band were playing in town and joined in the punk rock softball game. They were nice guys, not bad softball players either, but it’s a good thing they stuck with their night jobs (musician joke.) If you’re not familiar with Richman as a musician, you may remember him from the film There’s Something About Mary.

2. I don’t like the Beach Boys.

3. While a member of Appliances-SFB, some of the musicians and/or groups we opened for included: John Cale (he wasn’t particularly friendly), Bauhaus (kept to themselves, didn’t meet them), The Mekons (nice people), Sonic Youth (pretty rude and full of themselves, they seemed to believe that no good music could possibly happen outside of New York), Hüsker Dü (pretty nice guys), The Replacements (they were pretty drunk), Siouxsie and The Banshees (kept to themselves, didn’t meet them), Snakefinger (didn’t meet him, either), Soul Asylum (nice guys), Big Black (nice guys), The Butthole Surfers (didn’t meet them), The Violent Femmes (seemed pretty full of themselves), The Meat Puppets (nice guys) and more. We were scheduled to open for Joy Division, but Ian Curtis committed suicide the day before their tour was to begin.

4. I have a piece of marble that was once part of the Taj Mahal. When I was in elementary school, a friend of mine went to India. The Taj Mahal was under construction while he was there and he nabbed a piece of it and gave it to me when he got back.

5. I went to El Salvador in 1995. The war had been over for less than two years when I was there. It was an eye opening experience. I’ll never forget visiting the town of Cinquera. The town had been used for target practice by the air force and was still pretty devastated. Bullet holes everywhere, bombed buildings, traumatized people, a downed helicopter lying in the town square. When my group arrived, someone started ringing the bells in the town square to greet us. Upon closer examination, I discovered that the bells were unexploded bombs whose innards had been removed. Right on the cases it said “Made In The USA”. Our tax dollars at work.

6. During my career working in a record store (remember records?), I had the opportunity to meet such personalities as Natalie Merchant (she wasn’t very nice to us lowly store employees due to the fact that we failed to provide her with the proper brand of bottled water), Karla Bonoff (she was nice), Celine Dion (she was also nice) and Tony Bennett (he sang a few songs, signed a boatload of autographs, then his management whisked him away. His people kept the masses away from him - get your CD signed and move on, sort of thing - but he was courteous.)

7. I have been face-to-face with a wild wolf. I was 18 years old and on a backpacking trip on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I was walking with a couple other people and we had gotten pretty far ahead of the rest of our group. Carrying a 40 lb. pack sort of discourages conversation, so we were pretty quiet. We went around a bend in the path and right in front of us was a wolf heading toward us on the path. At the time, the rangers said that something like one in 10,000 visitors sees a wolf and that most reports of wolf sightings are actually coyotes and foxes. I’ve seen coyotes and foxes, and that was no coyote, nor was it a fox. It was very big. Anyway, we almost walk right into this wolf. We stop, the wolf stops. We look at each other for what was probably less than 5 seconds, and the wolf just sort of melted away into the woods. On that same trip we saw lots of foxes. They weren’t very shy. Also a fair number of moose. One night a (Gaggle? Herd? Murder? School? Passel?) of them ran through our campsite. It sounded kind of like a stampede of elephants. In the morning there were moose tracks everywhere. Since then, I have discovered that meese can be downright nasty. We were lucky they didn’t stomp on our tents.

It's going to be difficult to find seven people to tag who haven't already done this, or who don't object to memes. So, if you're tagged and don't want to do it, don't feel like you have to.

Tagging:

1. Cinderbelle

2. Gomonkeygo

3. FranIAm
4. Pagan Sphinx

5. Jess Wundrun

6. Dr. Monkey von Monkerstein

7. Matty Boy

Tagged

* The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.

* Each player answers the questions about himself or herself.

* At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.


It's taken me entirely too long to finish this. I don't know what's wrong with me. I think I made it more complicated than it needed to be. Oh, well.


1. Ten years ago I was:

I lived in the same house I'm living in now. My daughters were nine years old and two years old. Appliances-SFB, the band with which I had played for 17 years, had only recently fizzled out of existence and I wasn't playing any music at all. I was working as a cabinet maker for the same company I was working for when I got laid off last November due to the crappy economy.


2. Five Things on Today's To Do List:

- Take daughter #2 and neighbor kid to school.

- Go to new (temporary?) job. House painting with brother-in-law.

- Take dog to dog park.

- Go to Veseliyka rehearsal (8:00 pm.)

- Go to Madison Media Institute for recording session with RPO (10:00 pm.)

- Pick daughter #1 up at her job, drive her home (11:30 pm - no busses run at this time and I don't want her walking home alone at that hour) and return to MMI for remainder of recording session (ending at 1:00 am.)

Oops. I guess that's six. Messed up again.


3. Things I'd do if I were a billionaire:

* Pay off all my debt.

* Fix all the stuff in the house that is falling apart and add a sauna (pronounced SOW-nuh, not SAW-nuh.)

* Set up a multi-purpose music rehearsal/recording studio near my house so I can play music any time without bothering anyone and without other distractions.

* Buy a few toys (basses, guitars and other musical instruments, a restored Volvo P1800, maybe a motorcycle and a Piper J3 Cub airplane. Oh, and a bunch of spud guns, too. That should be about it.)

* Indulge my lovely and talented wife in whatever she would like - probably stuff like new knitting needles, yarn, some sheep, a new guitar and clothes that aren't always from a second-hand shop. I suppose she'll also want either a restored VW Beetle from around 1967 or a restored Volvo 240 wagon with a manual transmission. Oh, what the heck, I'll get her both!

* Travel.

* Determine how much money I need to keep in order to accomplish all the items above and so I won't have to worry about future income; seems to me one should be able to live quite comfortably on the interest if you kept, say $100,000,000 which would probably leave well over $800,000,000 to use charitably.


4. Three Bad Habits:

* Only three? Let's just say if you look up the word "loser" in the dictionary, you'll find my picture. Were it not for the generosity and tolerance of people such as my lovely and talented wife, I would most likely be homeless by now. As it is, homelessness is only an eye-blink or divorce away. I suppose I had better get rid of that Packer lamp, after all.

Okay, okay. The rules.

* The Sackville-Bagginses. Oh, I guess they're bad hobbits, not bad habits.

Start again.

* I have a difficult time motivating myself to do the things that would ultimately be the most rewarding.

* I'm a night person. I don't think that's really a bad habit, but our society seems to think it is. Unfortunately, the net result of my natural inclination and the societal expectations is that I'm chronically sleep deprived.

* I'm organizationally challenged. What does that mean? It means I have a difficult time keeping my life in order and getting to all the places I need to be at the time I need to be there. I've seen doctors about this. To the best of my ability to understand it, it seems that there are people whose brains are wired such that it is easy for them to be well organized. Then there are people like me, whose brains are wired such that they find it to be a supreme effort to keep everything organized and under control, and from time to time everything comes crashing down around them. In many other countries, this would not be a problem, but our culture is not very understanding of those of us who aren't able to compartmentalize their lives in the manner that has been dictated as "normal." We are understanding of the fact that there are people who find math to come easily and people who find math to be difficult, the same is true for spelling, athletic ability, musical and artistic aptitude, but people like me are called lazy, selfish, we don't try hard enough, or we have developed "bad habits." Of course, nobody seems to see anything at all wrong with the people who are compulsive about time and organization. I actually once had the experience of meeting some people for dinner, arrived a few minutes early and not only had they already ordered, but they had already started eating! Why? Because their time is so valuable that they can't bear to wait for anyone. What are they going to do with all that time they save? Win a Nobel Prize? Probably watch more television. Rrrrrrrrr....

* I'm sure I've missed a few, ask my wife.


5. Five Places I've lived:

* Monroe, Connecticut.
I lived there from the time I was born until I was 9 years old.

* Midvale Heights, Madison, WI
The house my parents moved to when they left Connecticut. My father had been offered a partnership in an advertising firm in NY which was reaping huge profits as a result of the Vietnam war. A life-long republican until shortly before that time, he was uncomfortable with the concept of profiting from an immoral and illegal war (sound familiar?). Rather than accept the partnership, he opted instead for a teaching position in Madison, WI at Madison Area Technical College.

* Township of Middleton/Verona, WI. When my paternal grandmother was no longer able to take care of herself, my parents bought a two family house in (Middleton phone number, Verona zip code), WI, using the proceeds from the sale of their house and the sale of my grandmother's house. Almost immediately after my grandmother's house was sold, she died, so she never lived in the house my parents bought so she could live with them. A couple of years later, my mother's parents moved in. At that point in my life (early twenties), I was trying to establish my independence and I moved out for what was to be the last time soon after my grandparents moved in.

* Willy Street neighborhood, Madison, WI
The first house my wife and I bought together. 900 square feet, 2 bedrooms, built in 1888. A very nice house, nice neighborhood, but not enough room for a family (the first owner had 12 children in that house and no bathroom - information courtesy of Elizabeth Miller, Historical Preservationist.) We also had a neighbor with what I think were serious mental health issues who decided that we were evil people. That, along with the space considerations, was enough to get us to move.

* Emerson East neighborhood, Madison, WI
A wonderful neighborhood. It's an actual neighborhood! We can walk to grocery stores, the library - almost anything you really need is within walking distance. The house is still pretty small (1149 square feet, three bedrooms, one bathroom and one scary bathroom in the basement), but we made it this far in the house and with our oldest in college (she's only home for maybe 5 months out of the year), I know the amount of time she lives here will only decrease, so we don't really need any more space. We have neighbors we love, so my guess is we won't move from this house until the bank takes it away, we're forced to leave the country by the ruling totalitarian regime, or we can't go up and down stairs anymore. The only drawback to this neighborhood is it is changing from an "undesirable" neighborhood to an overpriced neighborhood. In the last few years, as gentrification of Madison has spread, prices around here have skyrocketed. The middle-income people that used to be able to buy a house in this neighborhood are no longer able to do so. As a result, our taxes keep going up and every time a house sells, the new owners tend to be people with money. This trend is causing the whole atmosphere of the neighborhood to change, and not for the better, if you ask me. If we were looking to buy a house today, we wouldn't be able to afford the house we live in. I hate rich people and their rich attitudes. (Oops! I'm not supposed to say that! It's un-american.)


6. Five Jobs I've had in life:

* Record store sails clerk and manager.

* Stone cutter.

* Cabinet maker/woodworker

* Luthier

* Musician (a.k.a. deadbeat)

Tagged: Well, most of the people I can think of either have already done this mememe or they don't do mememememes. Unless I pick a few blogs at random, I'll have to go with two, and the winners are (drum roll, please) ...... Luminiferous Ether and Quaker Fruit Salad

Five Little Known Facts About Me

I’ve been tagged by Dr. Monkey von Monkerstein with the Five Little Known Facts About Me meme. Memememeeme. Me. So, here goes:

1) I have birthmarks on my stomach in the shape of the Big Dipper. Really. Okay, so one of the stars/marks is missing, but the other six are there and it definitely looks like the Dipper. Maybe I’ll have the seventh one tattooed some day.

2) I can roll my stomach. Like a bellydancer. I learned how to do it when I was but a wee bairn by using my rolling stomach to make waves in the bathtub. I've succeeded in teaching Sparkly Seacow to roll her stomach, too.

3) I used to work for a company that makes high-end electric guitars. One of the instruments that we made was cursed. Seriously. Maybe I’ll tell that story at a later date.

4) While a member of Appliances-SFB, I played at the legendary and now defunct CBGB. Oddly, it seems that just about everywhere that band played over the 17 years I was with them has either gone out of business or burned down. A-SFB was an exciting group with which to be involved. Most gigs were an experiment in controlled (or uncontrolled) chaos. Unfortunately, although we played a lot and released three albums, one of which was released in Germany, we never managed to achieve any commercial success. I choose to believe we were ahead of our time. I'd link to them, but there's not much to which to link. The albums can be purchased from Rockhaus (the third album is available now, and the first two should be re-issued any week, now). I found a YouTube video here, a review of our second album here and some poster art here.

5) I saw Jim Morrison’s gravestone in Paris not long before it was stolen. I must point out that I didn’t go to a lot of trouble to see it. It was merely coincidence that the friend that Ms. Ether and I were visiting while on our honeymoon lived about a block from the cemetery. It was something to do while walking around the neighborhood. Cemeteries in Paris are much more crowded than cemeteries in the U.S. We didn’t think it would be possible to find any particular grave without being lucky, simply because you couldn’t see more than a couple of graves from any one spot. Kind of like trying to find a building in New York city without knowing its address. Well, we found it all right, and it didn’t take much luck, either. Gathered around the grave, looking seriously bummed, were a handful of youngsters dressed as punks and goths: lots of black clothing, studded leather, spiked mohawks and black eyeliner. I felt like saying something like "Yup. He's still dead." But I didn't. The area surrounding the grave was littered with cut flowers in empty liquor bottles. While leaving the cemetery, we met a man (seemingly Indian or Pakistani, by his accent - due to my ignorance, I can’t be sure), heading the other way with a book that listed all the famous people buried there. I remember Victor Hugo was one. He asked us, in his melodic accent, “Excuse me. Do you know where is the grave of Jack Morrison?” Just follow the spray paint, dude. You can't miss it. Throughout the cemetery were graves defaced with spray paint that said “Jim” with an arrow pointing in the direction of Morrison’s grave. Unbelievable.

Now I tag Cinderbelle, Sparkly Seacow and Luminiferous Ether.