Saying Goodbye California Sun, Hello Midwest - New York Times

Sam Cannon and Velia Dayton left Los Angeles two years ago when they and their two young children outgrew their two-bedroom rental apartment. Even with a budget of $450,000, they quickly discovered they could not afford anything less than 70 miles from Mr. Cannon’s office.

“The idea of living in the middle of the desert in a prefab 1,200-square-foot home, stretching ourselves financially and driving three hours a day, wasn’t appealing anymore,” Mr. Cannon, 34, said.

So the family moved to a suburb of Detroit, where Mr. Cannon’s parents live, and he took a job at an Internet marketing firm. They bought a brick Tudor-style house for $310,000, near good schools and a 15-minute drive to his office.

Mr. Cannon and Ms. Dayton do miss California’s “culture and excitement and food,” he said. “We’ve been spending two and a half years trying to find good Thai food and still haven’t found it yet.”

They still talk about trying to get back to Los Angeles. But, he lamented, “housing isn’t getting any cheaper there.”

I might have to back this up later, but for the most part, generalmentally mas o menos, I think the musicians these days are better poets than the poets (quite often more horrible, as well, which is really saying something because although I love good poetry, nobody gets sicker than yo at the sound and sight of bad poetry, and there is no dearth of the stuffy). I don’t mean to throw another perrenial middle-aged complaint about the state of modern and/or contemporary letters in American and/or Alaska on the slushpile, because there are folks out there kicking fat fucking ass at it–more than I can read–so I just focus on the good life liven with fucking fantastic poetry and don’t waste my time bitching about the shit; no, I just mean to give props to my people like Mike Doughty, Jeff Mangum, and Thom Yorke just right off the top of the cabezamono, there. Let me do the same for my po peeps while I’m at it: First and Foremost Far and Away, it’s my boy John Rybicki. I always kind of liked Frankie O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, but that may be the nostalgia and hunger talking. Hey, I’m coming back here. I really do have to run. But Rybi’s man enough to carry the mantel solo. If Capital-P Poetry ever did need saving, he’d be the man for the job. He could do it. But that’s not our concern.

We’ll think of this bit here as a defense, or justification–declaration? explanation?–of this category, K?

18 NoVamember Hawaii Oh-5
Back With Proof
[This’ll do it, I say.]

The King of Carrot Flowers, Part One

When you were young
You were the king of carrot flowers
And how you built a tower tumbling through the trees
In holy rattlesnakes that fell all around your feet

And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy’s shoulder
And your dad would throw the garbage all across the floor
As we would lay and learn what each other’s bodies were for

And this is the room
One afternoon I knew I could love you
And from above you how I sank into your soul
Into that secret place where no one dares to go

And your mom would drink until she was no longer speaking
And dad would dream of all the different ways to die
Each one a little more than he could dare to try

Jup, among the betterestites every sung from a lung -> ->

There’s a red house road
and lies beyond it
something like a chicken
coup not
sure though.

I go overdose
and the ghost of my brain
goes to yours
and something
comes quite
clear.

Smoke is her name
but she’ll grow.
Can’t stop the rain
or the snow, no.

Am I talking ’bout
the medicine, the legal thing
you eat when
you are
sick?
Am I falling out
of sight design beyond the red house road I
move too
quick.

She’s got real big bones,
and a gorgeous home,
and between her, um ,
and me there’s something quite good I love.

Smoke is her name
but she’ll grow.
Can’t stop the rain
or the snow.
I dream, dream, dream
but don’t look.
Look, look, look, no I
dream, dream, dream
but don’t look.
Love, love, love.

She’s a buzzing bee.
She’s a person see,
between you and me,
someone I want bad
but can’t have.
I’m an overgrown
little wanting boy.
She’s my only joy.
And covers come between us to clear.

Smoke is her name but she’ll grow.
Can’t stop the rain nor the snow.
And I dream, dream, dream but don’t look.
And I dream, dream, dream but don’t look.
And I dream, dream, dream but don’t look.
And I dream, dream, dream but don’t grow.

“Red House,” Hit Liquor,* Shudder To Think

* Although more people are familiar with the Epic(-/ly )produced (almost apt!) version on 50000 B.C., I’m citing this EP as the source because not only does it have a great name and damn slickool minimalust hardboily, teasingly narrative cover art, but it came out first and I was truly saddened (that that weird relative way when something very good happens that could-and-should have happened way better) when one of the most loveliest things ever to be given was given a much deserved chance to please much more people by being released on a major label full LP, backed by publicity and promotions departments, et alli alli oxen/ in free, and in the rere chording through all that electronictry, pressure, production suits, or maybe just boredom and re-releasing a song (Epic knew that was a good one to put out on the buzz-generating mini-pre-warm-up-practice release, and that it was so good and they’d gambled so much on this esotericky band on Dischord in an era when majors were whipping up bidding wars over just such ingredient combos at a rate to shame Africa, that they’d better put it out again, polish it up and squeeze a second round out of it), it lost its soul. It’s still a great song. Just another example of the two-track demo doing a better job than the bugzillien doll hair 64 track plushed out studio with 18 karat gold rims and live minks to wipe your ass with and more math than MIT could ever know what to do with behind more buttons than a supercrazy lover/afficionado/expert/friend of push and slide buttons would know what to do with but in which we place so much faith in our sonic rivalries and zenneries, depending on your take. But it comes out about the same in the end. I’m a big big eversuckinin lover of PJ Harvey’s Four-Track Demos album. What a great thing to do. A gift. And another classexy cover. I’m out.

P.S. I was out. While there, I discovered this “hey-look!.” Hey look!, now there’s a tribute version committed. Here’s a clip from the hustle on the label’s interpaging:

The Casket Lottery, of their own accord, delivered an amazing version of “Red House”, a faithful to original yet perfect acknowledgement of the true weight and character of a classic Shudder To Think song.

Here’s a kind of tunneled-to testimonial for la Casa Roja.

Whoa! [I went from a hey-look to a whoa pretty damn fast and it’s shaping up to be a wild ride thorugh the wollies of this webderful world.] Check this> You know I just thought up that bit about the hardboiled narrative that is the packaging of that gemulous e.p., but it kind of hit me as peculiarly precise. Then co-indly stumble on this thing that connects some dots:

• Its very first sentence reads “English writer, the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh. Milne wrote many different kinds of books, humorous verses and light comedies as a staff member of Punch, and the detective novel The Red House Mystery, which was severely criticized by Raymond Chandler.” I must admit to liking Raymond Chandler and, in fact, was thinking of him specifically and exclusively–to the (oddish) point of picturing (ok, focusing in on absent-minded-to-slavish-ly) the US Drab green cover of the copy of The Big Sleep that I read, even studiend, in graduate school–all the while I was formulating, trying to put my finger on the stylistic onda of that album’s simple cover photo in cohorsion with the recording’s suggestive title.
• Mr. Raymond–or, Ray Baby, as we who are friendly with his drunken mischievious ghost call him–The Chandy Man himself wrote this very thing about Milmil’s stab [pun cultivated half-heartedly] at a riveting [pun let go] detective story: “…I shudder to think of what the boys down at the Homicide Bureau in my city would do to him.”
• And, finally, cozily embedded in the footnotes of the short essay, this apparently Finnish scholary boy leaves us with the bit of string that ties us to the very horsehitch we suspected we were heading for all along: “Rolling Stone guitarist Brian Jones was found dead on July 3, 1969 in his swimming pool at Cotchford Farms, the former home of A. A. Milne, and the setting of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.”

Full circle. I makes sense in a diabollically orchestrated way. Rock and Roll and Red and Raymond and Rolling Stones and the inescapable connectedness of evil in these near apocolyptic times. (I call it the “aprepalyptic” era as we seem to be preparing ourselves with great goods with which to face the greatest of great darknesses that we’ve been warned soon come.) You have this eerie, creepy connection, and when I remember the similar tie-in between Pink Floyd and the Wizard of Oz, it makes me shudder, I swear! Or, I would, if it didn’t bug God so much.

Okay, I hope everybody knows that I was making fun of those silly satanist theories the PMRC and every other mother in the lower 48 spent decades–and continue, for all I know–promulgating. There’s some classic ones, like, Did you know that KISS stands for Knights In Satan’s Service? And then there was some complicated and convoluted hypothesis surrounding AC/DC and the rising up of the Gay Australian Nation (GANgaroos!), or something like that. Paranoia will destroya.

But seeing ’shudder to think’ and ‘red house’ on the same page on a very different subject? I was kind of genuinely into that there for a bit. Anyway, where were we? Oh,
another nod, and here’s another coincy:

I shudder to think what might happen in the course of a nocturnal bathroom trip that must, I repeat — must, be seen in normal light.
dpsyplc, Mar 09 2004

[dpsyplc] - I refer to things like inspecting sore (red) eyes, applying make-up nocturnally when you’re going out late at night, but you partner’s not, obscure things like that.
Or if you live in a Red House over yonder.
neilp, Mar 09 2004

Another nod, coincidence, nod, super nod, and coin.

Well, that as a fun little fixation for a few minutes. But really, I used to feel so alone in the world about that song. Thank you internet for validating my existence.