B.H. Party Vulcan's Halloween Extravaganza

Um...so...most days in the Emergency Room are absolutely crazy. From the time I arrive at my desk in the morning until the moment I dart out the door in the afternoon, there seems to be no end to the constant stream of patients.

When Sonia and I do get a break, every once in a great while, B.H. Vulcan winds up with a new super awesome outfit.

Halloween Robo-Vulcan

I wanted to be a robot for Halloween. But time and cardboard boxes wouldn't permit, so I drew Vulcan this little number, complete with Boombox and Casio Cordless Phone.





Over the last year, Vulcan has been a Prom Queen, a Hula Girl, a Pizza Chef, a Fisherman, an Angel of Fitness, the Easter Bunny....

Here's a link to the FLICKR SET

For Sally and the Jim

I found the crown jewel last week, the junior high note of all notes, in a box full of old school papers.

The note was meant to be included with an "I'm Sorry" Hallmark card (you know, the tall and skinny ones filled with deep thoughts) that I bought for Mark S. (the most popular boy in my junior high) after I punched him in the nose during study hall one day. He had been making noises at me from P.E. on through two classes and I couldn't take it anymore. So I punched him. I felt awful about it. I'd never done anything like that before and it took me completely by surprise. What's worse, the junior high dance was that night and Mark decreed that none of the boys could dance with any of the girls because I had punched him in the face. Tragedy. It was all a tragedy. awesome.




The other dancing incident referred to in the note:

7th grade. My friends Jenifer and Alix came over after school one day to help me make up a dance routine each of the songs from the brand new record by The Party (a singing group featuring now non-famous members of the 90's Era Mickey Mouse Club). Three-fourths of the way through the album, as Damon sang the stirring chorus to the song "Ton of Bricks", my moves morphed from the running man to a popular cheerleading move, where I brought arms in and one of my legs up in the air. Unfortunately, the other leg couldn't handle the great force gravity as I spun around and buckled beneath me. I had broken my knee-cap. In two places. I think it was at that moment that I lost my love for Disney produced Pop Music.

In any event, Mark (the boy I would later punch during study hall and therefore ruin one of the two Jr. High Dances my 8th grade year) and his best friend Shane were outside shooting hoops in my driveway/half-court basketball court. Jen and Alix were shrieking and Shane and Mark ran inside. Alix called her mother, who was a nurse and lived just a block away. I remember that my outfit did not match and my hair was quite the mess from doing the "Roger Rabbit" and how mortified I was that Mark was in my living room.

The next day, our 7th grade volleyball team played in the State Sectionals. I remember how ashamed I was that I should miss so important an event because of a freak dancing injury. A freak dancing injury that did not even occur on a glowing dance floor in the midst of throngs of jumping hip kids, but in the confines of my woven-wallpapered, dusty-cornered, museum-like living room.

Wearing the pants in Vulcan's family is like....

*B.H. Vulcan celebrates Columbus Day*

So...the Bingram is having us write a simile as the clincher for each essay from now on...

This Cristobal Colon weekend, my homework - which I actually worked on between a barrage of Migraines and Chest Pains during the Mealtime Madness in the ER yesterday - was to create a simile for each of the following phrases:

Studying for an exam
The cold rainy day
The look on my friends face
Buying textbooks
Our first date

Here are my creations:

Studying for an exam is like filling your head with cotton and pulling it out through your ears.

The cold, rainy day was like the melted sludge at the bottom of an ice cream bowl.

The look on my friends face was as bright as the gleam on a flying V guitar.

Buying textbooks was as emotionally and mentally draining as watching a Lifetime Movie starring Meredith Baxter.

Our first date was like the maiden voyage of the Titanic, totally sunk.

I know. I would have dated myself by saying Meredith Baxter Birney.

***************************************

Before the BOSSA NOVA

A gentleman walked into the office and sat down. I noticed he had a very distinct accent which seemed to match his brown and white tropical shirt. I don't know why, but I took out the cd that had been playing on my computer (Organs in Orbit) and replaced it with Astrud Gilberto's Finest Hour.

I started working on Mr. O's chart and he sat there, feeling a little nervous, making a few awkward jokes about health insurance and airports...then he stopped.

He leaned forward and looked up at me and said "Bossa Nova?"

I smiled and said "Astrud Gilberto".

He stared for a moment at the wall and then up at the ceiling and then back at me and smiled. "Brazil! You know, Hooooowayoooo?(Joao Gilberto) This was before the Bossa Nova. This was before the ROCK N ROLL! This was the music of the country. The old country, none of this: (insert crazy horn noises here). I used to see THIS little girl (I'm assuming he meant Bebel) running around naked under the piano. We would sit and write and play. I was a musician, you see."

I stopped typing. At least I think that was when I stopped, I may have stopped minutes before that, the rhythm of the words I was typing slowed as the stories flowed out of this man's glistening eyes. All I could think of was an open window looking out on the splendors of Brazil, a wide window with a baby grand piano just under the frame, a man in a chair with his arms wrapped around a guitar, dark hair, calm voice,....

"Aha!" Mr. O leaned down again, tilting his head with his right ear closer to the music. I heard Stan Getz's warm phrasing over strings.

"Getz?" I pushed the medical consent form across the front of my desk towards him. He absentmindedly scribbled his signature in the lower left corner of the page.

"Jobim! He was always hanging around. This was before the Bossa Nova, you see. And he always wanted us to play Jazz! (hands up in air) Jazz!! (hands higher) Jazz!"

I gathered the printed forms together. My heart was caught in my throat. I wanted to ask him so many things. I wanted to walk away from this desk and sit down next to him and ask him to tell me stories. I want to have more than this momentary glimpse through this bright and beautiful window.

Instead I asked him how he liked Birmingham. He said he had always lived in cosmopolitan areas. Birmingham? He nodded. He approved. He mentioned meeting a few men from a jazz combo that played around town. Ray Reach? Cleve Eaton? He wasn't sure. He liked them though. He went on to tell me about his time in London where he worked as an associate producer for EMI. "They paid me just to listen!" He motioned with his hand toward his ear and cocked his head and grinned.

Mr. O stood up as I stood up. He smiled with his eyes crinkled and quiet. I put out my hand. "Thank you. It's been very nice talking with you. Thank you for sharing so much. I really enjoyed it." He took my hand with both of his and nodded his head, then he let go and turned and walked out of my office. The musical timeline in my head raced around and around. Brazil? Astrud? Joao? Bebel? Miúcha? Jobim? I turned to my computer and sat down with a sigh. Astrud hummed along in the background, guiding me back to that open window, to the blue, blue sky and beyond.

The Rumours Are True

It's been a good 4 years since I last wrote a power paragraph. I've spent alot of time, lately, writhing on the floor (seriously) trying to come up with thesis statements and topic sentences. I'm not used to this. I want to write something bigger, something better than a power paragraph.

So I've come back here to exorcise those demons.

New things:
- School (One english class) (it's killing me)
- Taking a break from Skybucket (I know. But it had to be done. Can't do work and school AND Bucket.)
- MS Diet that I'm checking out by Naturopath Ann Boroch
- The latest John Vanderslice record - Emerald City (beautiful!)

(don't eat the Astronaut Ice Cream)

Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Illinois

Never Gonna Dance

"Though, I'm left without a penny,
The wolf was discreet.
He left me my feet....
And so, I put them down on anything
But the la belle,
La perfectly swell romance.
Never gonna dance.
Never gonna dance.
Only gonna love.
Never gonna dance."


I've fallen in love with the sound of Fred Astaire's voice. I sit here in the office at the Cancer Center, legs crossed under the desk, feet tapping, 5th cup of Joe of the day grasped in my 2pm tired hand, fan blowing in my face reminding me that tomorrow I'll be sitting in cool car air all day instead of the broken air conditioning here in my department, and suddenly, over my left shoulder, I hear someone sing to me...


"Have I a heart that acts like a heart,
Or is it a crazy drum,
Beating the weird tattoos
Of the St. Louis Blues?"

We recieved "Swing Time" in the mail a couple of weeks ago....
Jim said that he could tell when a dance number was coming up....not because of the splendid opening banter or a bowing big band intro, but because I would pull the covers up over half of my face and start convulsing...(I'd like to say right now that I have no memory of said seizure but do know that in my mind, at the moment such things may or may not have occured, I was taking Ginger's place as Fred's very capable dance partner...)

"Have I two eyes to see your two eyes
Or see myself on my toes
Dancing to radios
Or Major Edward Bowes?"

Tomorrow, we're driving up to Illinois for Jaime's wedding. Our first big trip together. As I'm typing this, Jim is at his house, checking the list of things to pack.

(Light dress shirt for Saturday afternoon outside wedding featuring hayride) (CHECK)
(Casino Clothes for eve of wedding on a riverboat outside of ST. Louis) (CROSSED OUT)
(Walking shoes for back pasture of Miller Family Farm and Streets of Chicago) (CHECK)

"Though, I'm left without a penny,
The wolf was discreet.
He left me my feet.
And so, I put them down on anything
But the la belle,
La perfectly swell romance.

Never gonna dance.
Never gonna dance.
Only gonna love.
Never gonna dance".

I've driven this trek up to Browstown so many times that it should be a blur, a tunnel of travel...but I find that as I slip over the state line into Tennessee, burn through Nashville, up to Clarksville, over through Bowling Breen, Kentucky, to Paducah and then to the Land of Lincoln, I still take in the scenery bit by bit, dreamily eyeing lakes and fields and rolling hills, captivated. I'm sure I'll tug Jim's sleeve and point ten thousand times tomorrow. He'll smile and take my hand and nod. I wish that he could see these things through my eyes, with my heart... and maybe he will.


"I'll put my shoes on beautiful trees.
I'll give my rhythm back to the breeze.
My dinner clothes may dine where they please,
For all I really want is you.

And to Groucho Marx I give my cravat.
To Harpo goes my shiny silk hat.
And to heaven, I give a vow
To adore you. I'm starting now
To be much more positive.
That's....

Though, I'm left without my Penny,
The wolf was not smart.
He left me my heart.
And so, I cannot go for anything
But the la belle,
La perfectly swell romance.

Never gonna dance.
Never gonna dance.
Only gonna love you.
Never gonna dance."

"Never Gonna Dance"
music by Jerome Kerns and words by Dorothy Fields

Window.

The picture I painted, a window with a girl sitting in the sill, bland face staring out into the black, was not meant to be a statement of my teenage loneliness and sadness as my therapist mother analyzed so quickly with such a short and sure declaration.

In truth, I had sat there so many moments, resting in the white uncomfortable brim to the night, watching the stars through the limbs of the tallest tallest trees, watching the warm summer air lift leaves and set them down again, as if shaking hands. I sat there with my weathered paisley journal, feet tucked into the corner, the top of my head pressed upon by the frame. I was too tall. In time, I turned and stretched my legs down to the floor of the balcony, a balcony not meant for men, not meant for a girl of 14 to walk upon. The covering, the barrier against nature, felt chalky underneath my feet, and I gingerly approached the railing. I leaned out, resting my elbows upon the white-washed wood, knees against the hard, safe boards. How could anything be so quiet? How could the world be so still? I heard nothing but the slight sketching of leaves, a car rumbliing, miles in the distance. I saw a streetlamp below, the gleam of our tarred summer gravel street, the grass, sidewalk, lawn. I inhaled the smell of oil, the sweet of cut grass, the dream of this moment. My loneliness here was not a prison. Here, upon this porch of sorts, it was the moment of freedom I'd awaited every moment of the day. The real pang of loneliness and despair was felt while roaming the halls of my school, or sitting quietly in sunday church. I went back again and again, no matter where I was to this, this moment, this quiet air. I turned back to my window, the golden light reflecting off of the crumbling green pastoral wall paper, the creamy ivory of my french provincial chest of drawers, the faint whisper of Natalie Merchant and her 10,000 Maniacs floating across the room. In I climbed, sorrowfully leaving the night behind, one leg, one head and shoulder, then the other leg. I closed the window, crawled under the covers...lights out. So, would start another day and another, but no matter the headache and heartache of events and conversation... I would always have this place. This quiet place of my own.

Mountain Girl

"Does anyone remember
Does anybody care
The days we danced together
With feathers in our hair
Rivers ran together
To sing a crystal tune
Stones skipped on the water
Circles around the moon

Oooh hey yea yea
When the full moon shines
The mountain pines are swaying
Oooh yeah yea
Close your eyes and listen
To the guitars playing..."

English 102. I chose that class because of you. I could have picked any one of them, I had the scores. I had placed far above the rest...

But when you smiled and looked over at me, guitar in hand, legs beneath you on that green wide blanket of grass, I looked down and pulled a blade, quietly, between my forefinger and thumb and repeated what you said with a smile. "That's funny. Me too. I'm in that class too." I brushed the hair out of my eyes and looked up into the blue midwestern sky. I chose to give my thin poker face to the sun, rather than let it settle onto your surprised expression. This little crush. My dear friend.

You would become my dear friend, transforming from a tanned and tattooed mystery into an easy smile and a gatherer of my thoughts. You gathered them and held them within the chords turned out from your guitar.

"Built a box together
Filled it full of songs
And buried it on the mountain
Beneath a pile of bones.
Then we said goodbye forever
to the hell that was our home
and set out across the flatlands
for 40 years to roam"

You gave so much to me. You gave me the confidence in my faltering love for the music of my childhood. From one chorus in passing of an old America tune, we ventured on, pulling the dusty records from the forgotten coat closets in our memories, playing them on brilliant running Autumn days, playing them until I recognized their cherished tone in so much more. I remember when you first played Blue Mountain for me. The churning guitars and earnest croon of Cary Hudson and company harkened to mid-day journeys down freshly oiled gravel roads, the seasoned wind burning across the prairie and into our way, windows down and arms extended. I could put all of those memories into a rolling contemporary recording and I remember how much that meant to me at the time. Today, ten years later, these days and discoveries of college have turned into heartheld memories of their own.

"Oooh hey yea yea
When the full moon shines
The mountain pines are swaying
Oooh yeah yea
Close your eyes and listen
To the guitars playing..."

Thank you, dear Friend. Though many days and many miles may seperate our traveling souls, tomorrow when Cary takes the stage and begins to sing, I will see you on Scott Field. I will be transported once again.

-lyrics from Mountain Girl, Blue Mountain - Dog Days
Blue Mountain on Wikipedia

Chicago

"Say-rah?" rumbled from the kitchen. I peered around the corner, hand resting on one of the million couches in the living room. When he recognized my face, his lit up. "How you doin', girl."

I rambled across the room and into his arms. Hello Ralph. "Hello, You," I sang. My heart sang too. Tonight would be great. Tonight would be beyond anything we'd seen so far.

John stumbled past, shirt in hand. "Does this go together?" Chuck struggled with the futon. Derek seperated posters and gathered 45s. I grabbed a soda out of the fridge and sat back on the couch closest to the kitchen. Chuck came to sit beside me and I took his shoulder in my palm, the stress flowed, muscle to hand and out into the day. The sun streamed in through the multitude of windows and we all sat back for one moment...one full and quiet moment before the storm.

I was always one for a rainy day. The slight showers of the morning left the streets damp and the buildings perspiring. John's brow was the same. He hoped that there would be no more rain. With the barbecue set up outside the Hideout, the chairs and tables and benches, some under tent, most open air. We pulled up to the venue and spilled out of the car.

OUTSIDE THE HIDEOUT

Sean Michael McCarthy & Emily Oddo

Honky Tonk Barbecue

Brooks Porter

Emily Oddo & Charles Ciba


INSIDE THE HIDEOUT

MLE

DJ Andy Dyson & DJ Brian "Agent 45" Poust


Eli "Paperboy" Reed & the True Loves

Hermon Hitson

Ralph "Soul" Jackson & MLE


Adam Fitz & Ralph "Soul" Jackson

The Legendary Roscoe Robinson

Roscoe Robinson

Taylor Hollingsworth & the Spidereaters / Dead Confederate

DEAD CONFEDERATE

The lights went out. I clutched my Rebecca-tini, pulling sugar from the rim of the glass up to my curious lips, and squinted as Charlie Brown frantically ran past. A hum of the guitar still traveled from the stage, the slow crawl of the Dead Confederate set edged to a halt. The darkness and the rumble of crowd conversation prevailed.

We sat illuminated moments later, wagging our heads and allowing the distortion to take its part in the conversation again. It was the conversation, the smoke and lights and rock and roll.

TAYLOR HOLLINGSWORTH & THE SPIDEREATERS



Taylor, striped shirt and easy smile. I followed Sarah up to the stage. I couldn't help but reflect on a night in Austin over a year ago. Travis and I stood side by side, much as we were at this moment, smiling at each other and back at Taylor's flailing sweaty head as he bent over his guitar. Macey. Brian. Dim orange light and crowd of friends in an off-street mexican restaurant. Tonight we stood, under crunch and curses, beers in hands and grins on faces, watching this son of Birmingham burn bright again.

Welcome Home Mister.

Sara Sunglasses

The glasses are holding the sleep in and keeping the day, this dark and dreary Thursday morning, out. It seems silly to fight darkness with darkness...but sometimes that is just what has to be done.

Subterranean Homesick Alien

Leaning up against the back of the bench, my legs crossed, my eyes squinted in the misty morning air, I clutched my discman and turned to gaze out upon the patterned blue. We were crossing from Maine to Nova Scotia. To my impatient heart this was the longest ferry ride in the whole wide world. This was the longest morning. I closed my eyes again with the slow somber roll of the ferry engine. A breeze rushed through the summer skies and my hair fell onto my face, touching my cheek. As I brushed it away I looked up:


"The breath of the morning I keep forgetting. The smell of the warm summer air. I live in a town where you can't smell a thing, you watch your feet for cracks in the pavement."


I had bought a new organizer for the trip. This was long before the days of the IPOD, I picked out the most travel-worthy of the music collection and filed them, flip-envelope after flip-envelope in a big black book for the car, a small shoulder bag for day excursions. I preferred walking through the visitors centers and museums, Norman Rockwell's Studio in Stockbridge, Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, earbuds in, avoiding the wandering conversation of my parents. My companion for this day and the next, the voice that I heard, that told me everything as I walked down a cold, pale hallway in the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck, NS, was Thom Yorke....


"I wish that they'd swoop down in a country lane, late at night when I'm driving. Take me on board their beautiful ship, show me the world as I'd love to see it."


How is it that out of the hundreds of CDs that I had brought along on this trip, every moment of this three week journey across the eastern seaboard and to the north seems stilted in the warbling, earnest voice of Thom Yorke and OK Computer's intricate weaving modern bell-prose of the organ and guitar.


I think of walking through the gardens of a bed and breakfast, some hazy new england morning, driving up the coast of Nova Scotia, marvelling at the rising Highlands, the winding shore. I think of collapsing after a long day's journey, curled up in a hotel bed, no cares, no worries until morning, the darkness and Jonny Greenwood, the quiet and Thom's voice.


"I'd tell all my friends but they'd never believe me, they'd think that I'd finally lost it completely. I'd show them the stars and the meaning of life. They'd shut me away. But I'd be alright..."

(excerpts from Subterranean Homesick Alien from Radiohead's OK COMPUTER)

Topper Price

-Topper-
What makes you feel alive
inside this slowing shell,
this stifled air
I dream of cutting away the flesh
peeling it apart to free the soul

He sings to bring the days
an ever after youth
with a yowl and a beautiful scream
I'm half his age and only dream
of that sort of release
that sort of return
-(01/12/2006)

At the Scott Boyer benefit a few weeks ago, as Donnie Fritts wailed and writhed at the microphone, as the forever jam blasted out into the room, two men raced to the back-up microphone. Paul Thorne took the long way around, pushing back the stage curtains, careful to walk behind the musicians onstage...he stopped, midstride as he caught sight of Topper Price swaggering across the stage, in front of Donnie, David, and Scott, stepping over cords and around amps. Topper took his place, with a sideways smile, at the microphone beside Bonnie Bramblett, and pulled out his harmonica. I turned to John and we both wagged our heads and smiled. Topper.

"Hey little girl." He tugged on one of my ponytails as I sat outside the Nick. I looked up and saw Topper's curly mess of hair and crooked grin. I had never met him before, but I knew exactly who he was. Most of my musician friends had played with him at one time or another, always coming back from a late night/early morning liquor soaked roustabout with story after story. That night, almost 7 years ago, that I first met this Force of Nature will always stick in my mind....because beyond all of the stories, beyond of the tall tales, I found some kind of magic. When he pulled out his harmonica and closed his eyes and began to play, stomping his foot, bobbing his head, the crunching blues notes became something pure and true.

Topper passed away yesterday. The Magic City has lost one of it's bright, burning lights. But the stories, the legend of this extraordinary, wild-eyed music man, will live on.

Tiny European Cars

I have a secret little page full of stars (otherwise known as bad poetry) that I've been working on for some time. Some of it is inspired by stories, some inspired by circumstance, most of it sails on memory, a glaring, crashing sea of streaming pictures. I stuff my little words in quiet corners, saving them for later, so I can pull them out one day and wag my head at my young heart's desires.

I was thinking of this last night, driving home from the Bottletree and listening to Clem Snide. I was thinking of my plain words on crumpled page and Eef Barzelay's lawn chair pondering lyrics, so simple and interesting. I say "lawn chair" because when I hear them, over his formulaic, easy construction of a song, it makes me think of sitting in the front driveway on a Saturday, leaning back in a criss-cross nylon and aluminum chair, drinking coca-cola out of a perspiring red can and watching the neighborhood cars zoom past one after another. I see the lazy, lingering stride of day but I'm thinking of something more. This is the way Eef Barzelay tells his stories. Open ended and honest. I wish that I could do the same, with such simplicity and beauty. In my last blog, I left you a small bunch of thoughts, a flash of memory of wintertime from what seems long ago. I don't know why I thought of it, or wanted to share, but there it is.