James' Birthday Battle: Beer VS Robots

A message from Tremendous Mike - Robot Command:

SIMPLE HUMAN --- On this Cosmic Holiday, the 35th Birth Anniversary of the James, the Robot Army will travel from the far reaches of the Galaxy to celebrate (and to take over your feeble green planet). IT IS YOUR SOBRIETY THAT MAKES YOU WEAK. PREPARE YOURSELF. PREPARE TO BE PURIFIED.

(James' arch nemesis, the Koala Commander, has sent Vulcan as a beacon of peace in these trying times.)



Vulcan's Message from the Koala Army (presented with a wrapped box of sacred chicken): "We shall join you in your fight against the Robot scourge. We will bring a funnel. And maybe a bottle of Jack Daniels. And maybe a few Chilton County Peaches. And a good mix tape. Happy Birthday to the Jim."

Marble Staircases, Mini-relapse, and Michael Griffith

just spent a billion hours with my mother writing Thank You cards for wedding stuff. It took 1 husband being out of town, 1 cute puppy, 1 smallish MS relapse, and one strong cup of coffee to coerce me into doing such a thing. Yep.

1. James is in Cincinnati for the weekend. He has found an apartment for us. He's found a two bedroom apartment with a marble entranceway, 15 foot high ceilings, hard-wood floors, a balcony, a butler's pantry, two fire places... and heat and water are included. Sounds like a dream.

2. Mini-relapse/Restification Summer Edition - came on about two weeks ago. Have had another atrociously boring week and a half off where I couldn't do much (numbness, fatigue, blahblahblah), but My Darlings, I did read two rather wonderful collections of short stories.

A. One is by V.S. Pritchett (1900-1997), a Brit who wrote wonderful dirt about the upper class and made the lower class human. His last works were published in 1989, another collection. I couldn't imagine writing anything interesting when I'm 89 years old. I barely do it at 29. Dear lord, I hope I will still be able to see then...and hear...and that I'll be able to eat my soup with dignity.

B. The other collection is actually a novella and a few shorter works by Michael Griffith.. He is actually teaching a workshop at the University of Cincinnati this Fall, a workshop that Jim will be taking. Mr.Griffith's works seem to be mostly based in and around Baton Rouge. His stories are about communication between people, the chain of communication that links them all, what makes them act out, what makes them dry up. all brought upon by the way affect each others lives, no matter how small this way might be. But it's not just that. There's a delightful cloth of something dirty and dark draw all the way around and through. "Bibliophilia" about an aging Librarian forced to do rounds of the stacks, hoping not to have to carry out the moves she learned in Bouncer School on young lusty teenagers. There's also a young Egyptian hydrologist or soon to be in any event. He would love to be anything else in America other than an Egyptian hydrologist. His list of all of the wonderful occupations he sees goes on and on. I started thinking, why wasn't I an ice sculptress, or a laundress, or a flipper of burgers at Harry's place? I might have to sneak into James' lectures this fall. Do you think I could just go as James, you know, give him a day off. I'd have to grow a beard and most probably wear a tie and dress pants. Nope. My dress pants are French Wide Cuff (therefore they'd never believe it) and I'm not a big fan of shampooing my face. So no. James will just have to sneek a tape recorder in.

So...my dear ones. The lease starts on September 1 and if I get a job before that, we could be moving up to the Ohio-ness of Ohio rather soon. Holy crap, Birmingham. I am moving away. How does that feel? full of Joy and sadness and relief and awesomeness and dreams and light. I'm so full of the future that I'm just about to burst.

I'll start back to work on Monday, just to see how it goes. I'm sure it will be fine. I miss the ER a great deal when I'm away from it. I know that it must seem strange, but I do. I'll be glad to get back. After Monday, dear lord, call me, bombard me with emails, anything to get me out and seeing you before I leave this fair city. I've still several movies to see at the Alabama this summer. A few shows to see. Lots of coffee to drink etc...etc...etc

All my love,

Sara Leah

How Vulcan is celebrating the 4th

I hope to watch James Cagney awkwardly dance through "Yankee Doodle Dandy". Then I shall retire early. What are you kids up to?

Happy Birthday Leah!

Hurrah!

Chronicles from an ER on a Monday

Dear Lady in a wheelchair who won't stop eating the hamburger,

There is no one out to get you.

But I will say this. If you don't stop waving your greasy fast food bag in the air, insisting that your life is in danger...it will be...very very soon.

Sincerely,

Ineda Latte

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WATCH THIS

Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus
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YUM!!
LOBIO on MiddleWestMeals

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Have you been here yet?
GREEN CUP BOOKS
Bookness Galore!

Birmingham's First Annual Bloom's Day Celebration

4pm at J. Clyde's on June 16th, 2008

Featuring passages from Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegan's Wake soaked in Guinness and irish whiskey.

Happy Bloom's Day!

No full Irish breakfast this morning of sausages, rashers, toast, beans, and black and white puddings (which was offered in Dublin in 2004 before the 100th "Bloom's Day anniversary"of the fictional events described in James Joyces's book Ulysses). I broke my water glass getting out of bed and stumbled to make some brae burn apple yogurt for breakfast. A rather long train made me late for work and I have a roaring hangover from the small bit of wine we had at James' family's Father's Day Gathering yesterday. Seeing as today is an Irish holiday, I guess that in the very least I got the roaring hangover right.



This last December, Jimmy Joyce came to visit the Emergency room.



He gave B.O.B. the Frog a present (which contained a bar of lemon soap and a lucky potato)(B.O.B. was very upset because for the moment he did not have pockets to carry them around in).

This evening, James, Leah, and I will find a few pints and some poppyseed cake in a quiet place and read a bit of James Joyce's masterpiece. And then Jim will sleep with his feet next to my head. And Bloom's Day will be at an end.

PS - DETAILS! I need details about the Flaming Lips show at City Stages AND the Mark Kozelek show in New York. Come on! Spill the beans!

Jaimers

is right now in her 17th hour of labor. Jaime is my best friend. She's been my best friend since 7th grade and she's having a baby. Right now. At a hospital over 500 miles away from where I sit at this very moment.

Excuse me while I freak out a little. I've tons of friends who've had babies. Heck, I helped to bring Canaduh's little girl, Indiana Scarlet, into this world. But, this? This is Jaime. This my best friend, my Shirley, my Diana. She's the Dino to my Jerry. She's the straight man with the great looks and good sense. And yes. I just compared myself to Jerry Lewis. Under the right circumstances, most of my friends would say that's pretty accurate, especially if there is a robot, a fingerpuppet, or a Mark Kozelek within 50 feet of me.



I've always done my best to keep Jaime up on whatever I'm listening to (which really means that since we were kids, I've commandeered the radio whenever possible. Sometimes that didn't work out and thus I know all of the words to "Cheeseburger in Paradise".) and get her out to shows when she'd come down to visit. One night we went out to the Nick to see the Goodies. It was really the first time I'd ever seen that light in Jaime's eyes. You know the light. Here's the best way I know to describe it:

Go to a Flaming Lips show. As Wayne Coyne walks out with a strobe light attached to his chest/People in Furry Bunny Suits run out into the audience/the whole audience throws confetti in the air at the beginning of a song, turn around and look for the light. This certain type of smile. The wheels are turning and there is warmth in that expression.

That is the smile that crept across Jaime's face as Holiday Childress took the stage in bowler hat and three piece suit. I've been to hundreds of shows over the years and that particular show is in my top 10. I've actually seen better Goodies performances, but to see it with Jaime, for her to enjoy it so much, made it something extraordinary.

Wednesday! Wednesday!

I'm not sure how cool I am with produce distribution in the Emergency Room, but I just couldn't pass this up.



Sheila, our director of Nurse Education got it from her neighbor's garden.

Bloggy Blog Updates:
E* is BACK!
Yesterday - E about Andrew Bird!
Andrew Bird will be playing at Birmingham's City Stages this Weekend!
(Andrew Bird's Armchair Apocrypha is a definite driving soundtrack for me. It always reminds me of mid-day errands in the rain, especially up and down the streets of Southside.)

Chris Mitchell posted about the new set at CBS 42 featuring photography by one of my favorite local blogger/musician/picture-takers Brian T Murphy.

Tonight:
We are celebrating the birthday of Wade Hulsey!



(He's the guy in the background who is apparently so elated about the convo at T&A's house that he's fallen asleep.)(Sorry, Wade, that's the only picture I had of you on my computer.)

Wade has been cooped up for a couple of weeks, recovering from knee surgery, so we're totally excited to get him out and feed him lots of thai food.

Hurrah!

Mark-Paul and Me

Dear World,

Why is Jason Collett trying to be Bob Dylan for the first half of his newest album?



For the same reason that throughout Dan (Destroyer)Bejar's latest, Trouble in Dreams, he stumbles all topsy-turvy in the drunken shadow of David Bowie. Not that David Bowie's shadow is particularly drunk.


(I'm a terrible drunken ghost!) Maybe Dan Bejar just got it drunk so it would tell him all it's secrets.

I enjoyed Dan's last album, Destroyer's Rubies, so much more. Maybe because of the production seemed so much more...I don't know...lush? It was full of sound, full of landscape, a landscape full of color and texture and light. Trouble in Dreams just seems so bare. I need to give it a few more turns, I think.

Back to Jason. Idols in Exile was disjointed and jubilant. Each song had it's own unique subject drowned or enveloped within an intense emotion. Each was a glipse into a day in the life and no matter how bi-polar those days were, each one, each song, viewed on it's own was valid and beautiful in it's own way.

So the new record. The first half is so rolled up in the Dylan with rambling vocals and low-grade sound that it is actually incredibly boring. But the second half. Beauty.

Once when I worked in the record store in Illinois, there was a young man who often came in to buy records. He thought he was Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Zach from "Saved by the Bell") and had an obsession with Chris Farley. Once he bought the Dukes of Hazzard soundtrack and discovered when he arrived home and gave it a listen that it was not exactly the same as the TV show theme song. He kept calling me about it over and over and over. Each time he would call, he would watch the beginning of his videotaped episode of Dukes of Hazzard, watch it to listen to the theme song and take note of the rather large "Yeehaw" sound at the end and then listen to the record, which did not include the yeehaw... Each time I explained that although it is different on each recording, one would not change to accomodate the other at any time, no matter how many time he played them side by side. "How can I make them change, Sara?"



"Magic, Mark-Paul."I replied. (We called him Mark-Paul, even though his real name was Joseph.) (He truly believed that he was the actor.)

He called me fifteen times that night. The next day he brought the soundtrack in and exchanged it for another one, reasoning that it was defective. I let him do this two more times, reasoning with him each time that there was nothing defective about the actual recording and just because something is one way on TV, it don't mean that it's the same on CD. He finally gave up. He brought the Dukes of Hazzard soundtrack in to the store one last time and I told him that he could exchange it for another CD. After two hours of deliberating (with an ice cream break in the middle) he brought me the Poison Double Live CD set. "Mark-Paul, I told you that you could exchange it for something of equal value. That cd set is almost double the price."

"I know, Sara Miller. I know. I just want half of it."

Marriageness: The Beginning

We are now on the third morning of married life. I look at the clock - 5:59am. I jump out of bed, flipping on the lamp, exclaiming "OH MY GOD! I'm going to be late for work!" The Jim exercises his new rights as a husband by completely ignoring my freak-out and pulling my pillow over his head and going back to sleep. Smart boy. (My clock is set 10 minutes fast and it really only takes me about 15 minutes to get ready for work and about 45 to get to work. Therefore I had about 10 minutes of free time to properly freak out, frantically make breakfast, and search for my keys, earrings, and shoes all over the apartment.) I made it to work on time. (Jim is probably smiling in his sleep right now. He knows me very well indeed.)

On the way home from the Redmont on Sunday, Jim and I picked up She and Him (the new Zooey Deschanel & M.Ward record) and Broken Social Scene presents: Kevin Drew. I wish I'd had time to really listen to them. Instead, the Jim and I have spent the last two days either stretched out on the davenport watching old movies (The Thin Man, Auntie Mame, Vivian Leigh in Anna Karenina) or playing the Bed, Bath, & Beyond version of Supermarket Sweep courtesy of our multitude of gift cards! Hurrah!

Pictures! I know! Pictures to be posted of the ceremony and receptions! And of crazy, drunken Bocce Ball Bachelorette Party!!! Hurrah!

Looking Back - HFAGS Dec 2006

Hope For Agoldensummer will be playing at Workplay on Friday, May 16th with The White Oaks. Their latest album, Ariadne Thread, was released in late 2007.



Here's a short chachipiece from Dec 2006, brought along by Hope For Agoldensummer's previous album i bought a heart made of art in the deep, deep south.

Laying down the gun....

This morning as I mindlessly packed my little bag for work, I pulled the Hope For Agoldensummer album from the towering stack of cds sitting dangerously close to my bed and slipped it into the inside pocket. I had to bring it with me, because every time I've taken a moment to daydream in these last two days, every minute wonderfully wasted, I hear "Laying Down the Gun" and it has been building and building and building into a frenzied triumphant chorus.

I see my friend Sunni just as she sat on her couch Saturday night, leaning back with Ralph's steel guitar, pushing her golden hair out of her eyes and picking out the all of the tiptoeing, intricate loveliness of every line as we sang the harmonies high and whispered:

"It turns out, instead of blood you've got love songs traveling through your veins. What I found were all the words you ever sang tapped into the bones of your rib cage...."

I think of the first time I saw it performed live, upstairs at the Moonlight, the tense and burning energy turning around the stage. Deb Davis and her xylo. Will Taylor wavering from side to side, cello churning. Claire's eyes are closed. She's sitting straight and tall, her face turned up into the light as she's crying out:

"Instead of stopping our hearts, we play music because we're rock stars.
We come together and we work and we fall apart...."

I listen to the song again and again and it burns brighter every time.

"I play music because I'm in love with silence and sound. Just like a machine I picked my pen...."

And all of the sudden, it stops.

The Marry Mix/ Chronicles from the ER (on a Tuesday)

I've asked my cousin Brandon to play the music for the wedding. I've been going through my stacks of records trying to pick out songs...how can I narrow it down? Worse, how can I find some appropriate happy music, beautiful music that I love for the wedding? I've realized more and more as I've organized the last years worth of music lying at the foot of my bed just how dark my palate really is. Even the upbeat music tends to be about awful things, like a twist of Magnetic Fields or a ride on the roller coaster of an M. Ward record. M. Ward, with his dancey saloon songs so full of death and disappointment, afterthoughts and whimsically damaged dreams, always makes me happy.

I wish I could write Tiny Mix Tapes for some suggestions:

"Mark Kozelek couldn't play my wedding, the spring flowers made him cheerful."

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Some guy just walked up to my desk with a baby and said "Hey! We just left the hospital and realized we took the wrong baby...so we thought we'd bring him back." He held out the baby and all of these thoughts started swirling through my head, my face froze and I stopped. "Nahhh Girl. Just kidding! Got you! Got you! Where's the food court?" His family walked up behind him as I slowly pointed the way and they all started laughing.

mothers day and other halves

My mother got some Neutrogena products, a loofah, some chocolate, and a song.



I sang with her church choir. Actually, I should say that it's my father's choir, since he is the music minister. I'm not much of a church person, even though I come from a long line of missionaries and fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist preachers, so it meant a great deal that I came (on time) and sang, standing next to my father and near to my mother on that small stage.

Mother. We went shopping, which is usually a quite life-threatening experience, and somehow through the eyelet sleeves and teal blue linen carnage we both survived.

I have to say that I suspect she might have become a Feist fan through the weekend. SHe had to listen to the record three or four times as we drove from store to store and around and around looking for parking spaces. I think I saw her nod her head a few times to the beat, though I'm not sure. She may have just been popping her jaw (she has a history of TMJ). She is definately not a fan of Broken Social Scene although I know that she does enjoy the better part of Jason Collett's "Idol's of Exile".

She tends to scoff a bit at the music I love, at least when we're in public. To her, pretty much all of it is noise. She spends her driving days listening to the sweet sounds of the Brothers Cazimero or to the soundtrack of the 1987 original Broadway production of Les Miserables. Because of her, I know every single word of that musical. Every single word, every note, every stage direction...

Because of her, I also know every word to Lewis Carroll's the Jabberwocky. This talent has come in handy many times over the course of my life, as you can imagine. Very popular with Jim. Also performed at random during parties where much alcohol has been consumed (it is to be understood that this has not happened for some time).

Thursday, Jim and I will run away to the Great Metropolis of Columbiana to get the marriage license. That's so crazy. That's so awesome. And also, Jim tells me that I must change my name...to Sikahip Eel Semaj, which is such a strange name that I don't quite understand. I guess I'll just have to get used to it. Oh. I just got it. It's his name spelled backwards. Nice. It's Monday. I'm a little slow.

Look what I made on Craft Night!

Shut up! I know. The wedding is two weeks away! Merrilee said it would be a great idea to make a little Jim puppet and have them exchange vows later on at the reception. Yes, the reception at the bottletree that I've not even sent invites out for...I'm so behind. Shut up. You won't mind a finger puppet making booth next to the half eaten wedding cake will you? Super.



I can't stop listening to this: