Changesdorsey

For the last ten days I've been on a David Bowie bender.

It all started when Math Rock played a couple of Bowie tunes from the early Seventies during a "Super Monkey Ball" late-night video game fest (of the kind I haven't had since I last visited Klaus; it was decidedly awesome). Anyway, I think he played "Rock and Roll Suicide" and "The Man Who Sold the World". I was all "This is Awesome." Math Rock was all "It's David Bowie." I was all "I know that, but I didn't know that David Bowie was this Awesome." (I'm paraphrasing.)

In reality, I've had some run-ins with David Bowie before. During college Klaus and I had a serious fling with "Let's Dance." If I'm remembering correctly, we had a plan in place to perform "Under Pressure" for some dorm lip-synch show, Klaus as Freddy Mercury. All he needed was the moustache, but I would have had to have worn something like this:



So it was a no-go. In addition, I was passingly familiar with some of Bowie's classic period via my ex-wife's copy of "Changesbowie." I seem to recall listening to that while driving to the Somerville VFW to pick her up after a night of drinking. All I really knew about his early period, however, was that I dug the song "Young Americans" and "Rebel Rebel." Everything else I could have taken or left.

But for some reason - maybe it was the Super Monkey Ball - I was tempted to figure out just what Bowie is up to. The day after I spent like four hours doing research on the web. The iTunes store, Amazon, Wikipedia, everything. I boned up. Did a bunch of research. Was intrigued by the Brian Eno connection, so I bought ""Heroes"" on the iTunes store, and ordered "Ziggy Stardust, et. al." and "Aladdin Sane" with my most recent Amazon.com credit card reward certificate. Sweet. I learned the changes to "The Man Who Sold the World" and the riff from "Rebel Rebel."

I tell ya', I've been on a bender.

I've also been frigging bored. To tears.

I managed to get some work done today somehow. My heart wasn't in it. I think I'm basically committed to going on the job market this year, and though this will require a bunch of work of me between now and September 15th, I think it's basically in the bag. (Hopefully.) But I've just been dang bored. Bored when I'm by myself. Bored when I'm around others (no offense; it's me). I'm not sure why this is. Maybe I'm in a rut. I perhaps need to get into some sort of groove. Or something like that. Anyway, something has got to change. I don't know what the prescription is. Perhaps I need to start experimenting with mind-expanding drugs. More likely I just need to get some exercise. Possibly some jazzercise. But the thrill is gone. Bored bored bored.

In conclusion, Klaus Kinski as Luke Skywalker?

When the words were touched with sorrow.

Anyway, in other news, I should tell the story of my Dad's pop music tape.

Sometime in, oh, 1987 or so, my Dad must have been frustrated at the state of the radio, or something, so he listened for days and recorded a bunch of songs that he liked from regular rock/pop stations onto a cassette tape that supplanted the radio while driving in the car. The thing about this tape was that it had all these different songs, you know, typical mid-Eighties stuff. "Your Wildest Dreams" by the Moody Blues. "No One Is to Blame" by Howard Jones. "Sussudio" by Phil Collins. "Higher Love" by Steve Winwood. "Lady in Red" by Chris de Burgh. There was also, I'm not kidding, "Rock Me Amadeus". But, be quite honest, to this day, merely driving around to that blasted tape has caused me to smile every time I hear one of those dang songs. I heard the Moody Blues tune driving home tonight. I wonder whatever possessed my Dad to make that tape and play it over and over and over? Surely he could have just bought some tape and played that. And that would have even had a few decent tunes on it. Oh well, live and learn. I suppose we all did things in 1986 that we regret now.

I wonder if I can get that tape somehow...

But when I kissed the cop down at 34th and Vine, he took my little bottle of Love Potion No. 9.

It's been an indecisive day. My current condition (still recovering from surgery), combined with my new condition (possible problems with the ol' ticker), conspired to make it so. I had a doctor's appointment at precisely 8 fucking AM today, which took a reasonably long time, but it still left me on campus with very little to do from 9:30 on. I had heard that there was some sort of beer-thingy going on at the campus bar tonight, so I desperately wanted to go to that (stir-craziness, the explanans). So I figured I would be on campus working and whatnot from, oh, the morning until 6ish, when these beer-thingies usually get started.

How wrong I was.

The beer thing apparently starts at a jovial 8:30. So do I sit here and wait? Or do I go home? Does my current condition compel me to take a shower to wash off any grossness from the day? If so, do I really want to go all the way home to shower and come all the way back for the beer thingy? Or is there some closer shower that doesn't cost a $25 summer rec fee to use? And am I getting hungry?

It was the last question that led to the biggest adventure.

I decided that I desperately needed one of those $0.75 bags of peanuts from the vending machine on the 2nd floor. That would just about do it. Cure the grumbling, as it were. Add bounce to the ounce. But when I went all the way downstairs to get said bag, I discovered that I had imprudently squandered the necessary quarter on a game of "Police Academy Training" at the gameroom. Chastened, I went back upstairs.

All I really needed was a nickel. Five damn cents. After an hour of increasing hungriness, I remembered: Mr. Officemate keeps a whole pile of chump change in his desk! Woohoo! A little petty larceny later, I hurry down the elevator to try my hand at those peanuts. Dashed again! Some fool had pushed in the "Money Return" button until it stuck in the "Return" position. Putting change in the slot was a useless gesture, as it fluttered uselessly to the steel-encased return chamber. But I needed those peanuts. So I worked at the button, attempting to loosen it. Pushing, pulling, inserting keys into, etc., etc. Finally, success.

Dashed again again! The machine was unplugged.

Dare I trudge all the way over to the Old Student Center, and its lone vending machine, in search of these Greek Tragedy-like nuts which are always within my sight but never my grasp? Yes! After nearly doubling over with hunger, I finally reach my goal. A plugged-in, non-tampered machine. I insert a nickel. YES! It registers. A quarter. YES! The readout proudly declares: .30. Another quarter. NOOO! It falls through to the bottom. But wait. What's this? The register reads: .55! Hah! Karma repaid! A quarter returned and read! Finally, I reach a .75 readout, while retaining $.30 in change (it happened again, with the aforementioned nickel). A bag of peanuts: check! An extra nickel with which to repay Mr. Officemate: check!

And that's when I saw the three full bags of free bagels from the Co-op.

There's a city where the damned call home.

Well, the last post didn't exactly trigger my self-censorship button, so I had to do a little "editing." Oh well. That's what vitamin V does to you, I guess.

Finally finished the second draft of my new Chapter 1. Hopefully I'll be able to do a final polish this week before sending it to the C'tte. It's basically toothless, and pushes all the interesting problems off until the next Chapter. But that's the way the boys wanted it, so whaddya gonna do?

Drinking on the 4th? Yes? No?

Cut back up to the cathode ray.

I'm sitting here on a lovely Sunday afternoon wondering why the hell any honest, forthright, non-bone-to-pick, non-dogmatic, individual would claim that Radiohead's Pablo Honey is not a fine record. I've written on this before, but it just astonishes me. Is it a generational thing? These young pups who were but sixth-graders during the 1993 music watershed? Maybe. But deep down, I think it's just dishonesty. A refusal to look at the record just as a record, and a dashed good one at that.

So it's been a while. I've been mostly confined to my apartment recently, having recently undergone a specific surgical procedure for a specific problem. To put that in slightly less vague language, my doctors tore a gigantic hole in my left ass-cheek and didn't sew it up. It's not like they screwed it up, this was the proper procedure, but it does have the tendency to make one not endeavor out of doors all that frequently. I went to a bar on Friday night, and that turned out to be something of a mistake - Saturday was spent groaning and undergoing Vicodin withdrawl. Which, by the way, is some serious shit. I can see how people become addicted to this stuff. Going through Vicodin withdrawl is *exactly* like feeling intense pain in exactly the places you were taking the Vicodin for. So, basically, my ass hurt. My throat hurt (related to the surgery). My shoulder hurt (unrelated to the surgery, though cured by the vicodin). That sucked ass. I'm back on the drugs today, though...woohoo!

This is going to continue for about three more weeks or so. Freaking joy of joys I've also watched more movies than I care to admit. Here's my confession:
1. Being John Malkovich
2. Young Frankenstein
3. Chinatown
4. Donnie Darko
5. Soylent Green
6. Real Life
7. The 39 Steps
8. Ponette
9. Body Heat
10. The Thin Blue Line
11. The Party
12. After the Thin Man
13. Innumerable 4th Season Simpsons Episodes (with commentary)
I know there are at least a few I'm leaving out. But that's a lot of damn movies in a week or so. I've also gotten a little bit of writing done on the dissertation, but not as much as I'd like. Basically working on that thing makes me incredibly exhausted. I think it's the vicodin, but mainly I'll write or edit, like, ten pages, and then fall asleep for two hours. Sucks.

My biggest dilemma is that the 4th of July is in 2 days, and I've been invited to at least one bbq. I'd hella like to go, and I'd hella like to drink an assload of beer, preferably out of some sort of metal can. Failing that, out of some old leather boot. Failing that, out of a pressurized tube connected to a metal container full of beer. Failing that, licked off a puddle dropped on a clean kitchen floor. Failing that, dirty floor. Basically I'd like to drink some beer. But the problem is the Vicodin! Vicodin is a no-no with boozeahol, especially booze out of a metal can. (Some say this is false, but my diabetic ass ain't takin' no chances.) So that means I'll have to skip the drugs for a day in order to get 4th-faced. But can I deal with the withdrawl? Can I? It's a soul-searching dilemma. Just like the soul-searching that needs to be done by those homodox (is that the opposite of heterodox? whatever...) for the sake of homodox haters of Pablo Honey.