Whit's Blog / 1000 Recordings

And counting

Joe was acting up. Carol writes out "Joe is in big trouble," and he reads it aloud through "big" and then gets some help on "trouble." When he strings together the whole sentence in his mind, he is not pleased.

"Give me that," he says.

He writes "J o e i s" and then he asks how to spell "good." We tell him.

He puts in a period.

Then he says, "How do you spell 'so far?' "

links for 2006-08-23

• True this: The Perfect panel set.
  (tags: comics)

Branches

"Dad, your lungs would look like seaweed if they didn't have the sacks, wouldn't they?"
"Uhm, yes."
"OK." (Runs waffle around plate, collecting syrup giving waffle a screaming voice of its own.)

Lemme tell you 'bout my boy

Today, for the first time, Joe helped me up.

I was sitting in the driveway -- we had been kicking the soccer ball (that's a football for you folks who don't live among the select 300M). And I had sat down while he went pee. When he came back out, I was stiff, and I reached out my hands for his two hands, and I said, "Pull me up."

Bless his heart, he did.

The First Bite is With the Eye

links for 2006-08-12

• Overcompensating: Actual Things That Happen to Jeffrey Rowland: Weedmaster P Dreams of Trebek
  And where is the mustache? HELLO? ALEX TREBEK HAS A MUSTACHE!
  (tags: webcomics overcompensating jeopardy alextrebek)

Still The Girl She Used To Be

Chryssie Hynde is, in point of fact, The Pretenders. Don't get me wrong (ahem, sorry), the drummer she had great fun with onstage certainly mattered.

They were a pricey ticket. It was a good show. She came out easy. The crowd was happy to have her. ("This is the oldies set," she said halfway through, launching into a variety of fond memories from my Sanyo combination cassette player/FM radio, and someone from behind me said "That's what we're here for.")  On the way out, I heard another person, a female voice, comment on how she looked fit. She'd been working out.

I wish I could tell you it doesn't matter. But it WAS good to see Hynde looking good. (The poses for cellphone cams were a little strange, but so was "Brass in Pocket" as a song title.) On the other hand, what was perfect was Hynde's voice. The electric croon she and Debbie Harry kinda perfected was preserved, smoked, cured and tight. When she walked out onstage it didn't sound like much, and I thought, shame on them they mixed her down. But either the master plan paid off or they improved the mix, and her voice came up, father and farther, more and more pure, already Dolby, nothing scary and nothing extreme.

But I will say Hynde was just as scary as she ever was. And when I was listening to her on the Sanyo she was scary. Do you remember how she breathed? Do you remember the song we all thought was "Special" but turned out to be "Brass In Pocket"? Perfect. "I'm going to make you notice," she said, and lord, how true that was. I was hearing "Heart of Glass" from Blondie and "Brass in Pocket" from the Pretenders, and you know? I can't remember any other stone solid rock from woman-fronted bands. OK, Joan Jett, and Heart, but there was certainly a mean edge to the Pretenders and Blondie that felt DIFFERENT. Oh, I liked that. They were REAL rock and roll. There was an ambiguity, a clenchy unpredictability.

She had a few moments last night. I was glad I went to see her; I was glad I heard her, and all the wrinkles in her leather. But the torch is past.