just to be alive, just a’one more day

Today’s post is about immortality, of a sort.

When my mother was a teenager she dug up a clump of the little blue wildflowers that grew on nearby Bucky’s Hill and transplanted them at the edge on my grandparents’ yard.

My mother is gone, a victim of an untied shoelace and the balance-inhibiting affects of port wine. Bucky’s Hill is gone, a victim of real estate developers who bulldozed the land flat and filled in the neighboring peat bog in order to drop down a rather prison-like condo complex on the site.

The little blue flowers in my grandmother’s yard have thrived and spread over the past four decades. From mid to late April, the side of the yard by the driveway becomes a cerulean carpet of tiny blossoms, a memorial far more suitable for my mother than any inscription on a slab of cold granite could ever be.

When my wife and I moved into the new house in 2004, I brought some of the plants with me, as a sentimental gesture in honor of my mom. I tried planting them in several locations around the yard, but with no success. I assumed that the soil up here on the hill just wasn’t suitable for that type of plant, and gave up trying after the fourth or fifth round of failures.

Yesterday, my wife and I were out on the patio surveying the storm damage and how our perennials were faring in the cold, wet weather, and my wife called for me to check out something in the bed where the lilies and bleeding hearts are planted. It was a solitary little blue flower, peeping up through the mud and the husks of last year’s annuals. I certainly didn’t plant it there, yet there it was – a random wonder in a random universe.

electric eels – Cards and Fleurs (from God Says Fuck You, 1992) – A swell bit of Cleveland proto-punk that begins like a fever dream and ends like a punch in the nose.

Los Abandoned – Como la Flor (from the Los Abandoned EP, 2004) – My wife has a cluster of friends in LA who keep her abreast of the local pop and punk scenes, and occasionally send her CD’s of bands she might enjoy, which is where I first came across Los Abandoned’s excellent brand of bilingual punk pop.

Here’s the video for their equally outstanding “Van Nuys Es Very Nice”:



100 Flowers – 100 Flowers (from 100 Years of Pulchritude, 1990) – Originally LA punk pranksters The Urinals, following a Maoist-inspired name change and a switch to an art punk sound reminiscent of Wire, The Fall, and/or The Minutemen.

I’m floating in a beam of light

I try to keep my life as uncomplicated as possible, but occasionally I find myself riding a gamma ray laser to the heart of a distant neutron star on a mission of inescapable importance, my head pounding as my relative mass brushes up against infinity. Even though I’m traveling at 99.9999999999% the speed of light, my target is so remote that my custom soundtrack mix CD will loop itself, twice.

Only for you, wife. Only for you.

Class Action – Blast Off (from Tribute to Flexipop, Vol. 7) – More excellent and rare 80’s synthpop culled from the wonderful Flexipop library of bootleg compilations.

Girlschool – C’mon Let’s Go (from Hit & Run, 1981) – My wife, a woman who (rightfully) responds to my residual affection for heavy metal with much eyerolling, is rather fond of Girlschool. I’m not sure if that’s due to a sense of gender solidarity, or because of the MST3K connection (this track was on the Zombie Nightmare soundtrack), or because the band largely avoids the ridiculous genre clichés of their all-male counterparts.

The Pillows – Ride on Shooting Star (from Fooly Cooly OST 1: Addict, 2004) – Has anyone else noticed how much Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. cribbed from FLCL? Consider it noted and remarked upon, then. The lack over overlap between anime/manga fans and superhero fandom works in some writers’ favor.

it’s a trickle-down theory

The pressure tank on our water heater sprung a leak last night. My wife called her very handy father. Her father called a plumber friend. The plumber capped off the feed until we could pick up a replacement tank, which was installed this morning. Our cats had a blast playing in the artificial warm water pond created by the leak.

I sat on the cellar stairs watching all these events unfold, and came up with today’s theme in the process.

The Frogmen – Underwater (from Rock Instrumental Classics, Volume 5: Surf, 1994) – Crow T. Robot was right – surf music makes everything better. This track bridges the gap between early rock’n’roll instrumentals like Dave “Baby” Cortez’s “The Happy Organ” and the guitar-driven surf rock of Dick Dale and his imitators.

Split Enz – Six Months in a Leaky Boat (from Time and Tide, 1982) – A dizzying new wave sea shanty that reminds me of Sparks’ “Angst in My Pants,” minus the neurotic tongue-in-cheek humor.

Chumbawamba – Drip, Drip, Drip (from Tubthumper, 1997) – Danceable anarchism, as opposed to Crass’s “caustic enough to strip paint off steel” variety of anarchist expression. If the system has to be smashed, there’s no reason it can’t be done with a degree of pop sensibility.