Mommy Party

All the GOP presidential candidates want to follow in the footsteps of the great St. Ronnie.

Well, good luck to you, fellas. My 2007 Ronald Reagan calendar (a gift from my friend Maitland, who provided captions to accompany each month's photo) reminds us that those are some big-ass shoes to fill:






















"I'm not gonna eat this. Instead, today, I'll have ice cream for dinner."
























"That damn Hough fries my bacon. Who does he think he is?"
























"Okay, that's a wrap. You go home now, dear."


Reagan Calendar Pt. 1

Red Hot

I'll spare the non-Portland readers any more indulgence for awhile after this. But I can't resist another Blazer post, as I've discovered a couple of great snapshots of Blazermania, 30 years apart:

Spring 1977

Spring 2007


It can't ever get as good as it was when I was 15 years old, can it? When a world championship won by the home team was followed by a surreally good celebration parade downtown, one I got to play hooky from school to participate in. Followed the next season by several months of absolutely impeccable basketball that Hall of Famer Rick Barry called as good as Russell's Celtics, the Sixers with Wilt, and the Lakers with Wilt (and he would know, since he played against all those teams.)

It can't ever get that good again, can it? Not after seeing the Walton team quickly disintegrate due to injuries; after years of being overshadowed by flashier, cockier big-market teams; after seeing another couple of championship contenders get no further than a series of heartbreaking close calls; after enduring all the jokes about the Jail Blazers and Bowie over Jordan (who, truth be told, would've likely been unhappy playing in a smaller market, and having to share the spotlight with Clyde Drexler, in Portland.) And certainly, for me, not after decades of adult disillusionment.

Right?

"Greg Oden will make you forget all about the Walton years," was a comment I read in the last couple days. We'll see. For me, it would take something of a dynasty to overshadow the magic of the Walton years and the heartbreak of all that came after. A tall order, but the team's sure off to a good start toward that pot o' gold.

Lowe Level

At left is the cover of Nick Lowe's new CD, due next month. He's becoming a psychedelic Bertrand Russell right before our eyes.

Down here in Palookaville, it's time for another excerpt from my (hopefully) coming article in The High Hat about his distinguished career:

The Beast In Me (The Impossible Bird, 1994) Vocal influences on the Lowe style include Cash, Lennon, Costello, Nat Cole and...Cliff “Ukelele Ike” Edwards? Sure seems like he's listened to Ukelele Ike (or at least Jiminy Cricket) after hearing his wonderful vocalizations on this track. Lowe looks back knowingly on a young adulthood filled with sex, drugs and rock and roll; plus a painful divorce, alcoholism, and lowered commercial expectations. With, as always, an unusual willingness to face what his pal Elvis called the deep dark truthful mirror. Lowe has a knack for gazing at his inner demons in an illuminating and musically compelling way. Again with only vocals and guitar, he delivers a summation of his "Beast" with sublime eloquence: “Sometimes it tries to kid me that it’s just a teddy bear / Or even somehow manage to vanish in the air / And that is when I must beware.” Absolutely first-rate singing and songwriting, and perhaps he was never better.

Time I Took A Holiday (Dig My Mood, 1998) Later Lowe wants to sell us on the value of hard-earned and/or badly needed comfort. Of course, it must include some attention to his baby’s arms. This is feel-good music for grownups; pure pop for people who want to "go get cooked.” Nice piano playing and, as usual, skilled vocals.

Let’s Eat (Stiffs Live Stiff compilation, 1978) An early example of how Lowe could tear it up as a live performer. A good potential advert theme for a restaurant, although with Lowe’s history of sly lyrics, you can wonder if the desire to “chew chew chew chew” is a carnal as well as a culinary one. Released the same year as Talking Heads' classic LP More Songs About Buildings and Food, produced by Brian Eno, which brings an interesting thought to mind: as Eno looks down the shrinking list of performers he hasn’t yet produced, maybe he should consider Lowe.

Nothing But Net

John Canzano:

This city owns the NBA patent on outrageous and unbelievable. And now it owns the first pick in the draft, along with four second-round picks, and the sudden ability to dream big again. Which is why when it was revealed at 5:54 p.m. that Portland owned the pick of the college litter, I immediately didn't think of Paul Allen or Zach Randolph, but about all the suffering and carnage in the recent franchise past, and in turn, all the deserving fans who finally got a wonderful moment to call their own.

Game of Chance


























Two Lukes: Maurice Lucas and Luke Walton in Portland.

Today is Ping Pong Day in NBA, a chance for my home team, the Portland Trail Blazers, to make a big move back into the NBA elite.

Bill Simmons says the Blazers are the seventh-most deserving, karma-wise, of the big prizes in next month's draft, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant.

Sorry, but no. Maybe the Sonics are #1, as Simmons writes, but the Blazers should be no worse than #3 or #4, for the painful playoff losses of 1978, 1991 and 2000 alone.

Simmons seems to think that one long-ago championship and 25 years of being "competitive" make the Blazers less worthy than his beloved Celtics, who have suffered so much these past 20 years, after obtaining three lifetimes' worth of luck and glory from 1957-87. And woe to the poor fans of Boston, who've only had the Patriots and Red Sox to get excited about.

Shit. Portland can't get no 'spect. < / chip on shoulder >

Here's Bill's take:

7. BLAZERS
(No. 6 in the Ping-Pong order)

Bad Luck -- 4
Front Office Competency -- 4
Loyalty/History -- 7
Level of Devastation -- 4
Overdue Good Karma -- 4
Tanking Karma -- 8
Rigging Potential -- 5
Entertainment Value -- 7

Final karma score: 43

Comments: They've been all over the board this decade: They were the Oh-So-Close Blazers, then the Jail Blazers, then they were so desperate to rebuild around character guys that they passed up Chris Paul or Deron Williams for Martell Webster, then they built a likable young core around Zach Randolph and Darius Miles, which is like watching one of your buddies announce that he's quitting booze and cigarettes, switching to a Vegan diet and training for triathalons ... but he's going to keep snorting heroin. You figure it out. I certainly can't. But considering the Blazers were consistently competitive from 1976 to 2001, can you really argue that their fans have "suffered" that badly because they limped through a few bad seasons with some bad guys? Probably not.

(Note: Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I miss the Jail Blazers. When's the next time we'll see a team feature a registered sex offender who wasn't even one of the top three craziest guys on the team? They made the 2006 Bengals look like a bunch of prep school kids egging houses on Halloween.)

***

UPDATE (6:20 PM):

Aw hell yeah!

Here at the office with my supervisor, another big Blazers fan, and we lost our shit as the final envelope was opened with the Blazers' name on it.

Sign on the dotted line, Mr. Oden or Mr. Durant.

I guess one never knows for sure if a player's a sure thing until they get it done on the court, so I'll reserve a little "show me" skepticism here. But with a lot of promising young talent, a talented and tough coach (Nate McMillan) and a new, crafty, aggressive GM (Kevin Pritchard), plus a rich owner in Paul Allen, damn the Blazers are in good shape right now.

White Album

Haven't heard from him lately, but it appears he's been watching a lot of Tube. Welcome back Chester Magpie, underground pundit:

"If people get into Hillary's sense of YouTube humor I think she is setting ground rules for the upcoming season. Or she'll get run over by the Bob Express and the Church Lady will go, '..snort, snort.'

And speaking of Bob (as in Dobbs and Forehead), I invite you to feel the pain and cry on your brass balls from Wally World.

I can't stop this truth. The bottom line, Alec, is that I am not an asshole. 'Do unto others...' and all those flowers in Cheney's gun.

(((((((((((((((STATIC)))))))))))))))))))

Voice of Bob: 'We interrupt this program to the sound of a bullet going thru Michael Hough's head.'"

Nearly Peerless Nick

More of getting mighty Lowe...

Basing Street (16 All-Time Lowes, 1984; b-side of single, 1979) The b-side of “Cracking Up” from Labour of Lust, "Basing" is a mini-play put to music, and strong evidence that from early on, Lowe was (like Elvis C.) too big a songwriting talent to stay only within the parameters of New Wave. He unflinchingly captures a dark urban scene here, and balances wrenching drama with detached perspective and an eye for subtlety. He understands that the truth of what might seem a throwaway gesture can at times speak louder than making a big Statement about this wicked world. (Note that when Lowe does go for the big statement, as in “What’s So Funny,” he typically tries to make sure it comes with a suitably clever conceptual twist.)

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding (b-side of single, 1994) On Lowe's box set The Doings there’s his rock-band version of this song, similar to the more well-known version on Elvis C.'s Armed Forces album. It’s a decent celebration of the song sentiment, but the playing is inferior to The Attractions' inspired work on the Costello cover. Better is this quieter version, released in 1994, and it's certainly more in keeping with later Lowe. It's an impressive interpretive performance -- just a man and his guitar, and Lowe's vocals simply soar as his classic lyrics do. ("So where are the strong? / And who are the trusted? / And where is the harmony?") For the mature Lowe, a song can thrive in the quiet moments when revolutions are born, as well as in the loud moments when revolutions expand.

Failed Christian (Dig My Mood, 1998) It's a quiet late-night chat over coffee and cigarettes, with a starkly confessional tone like John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero." Lowe remembers “tears when the choir sang in harmony," and says he is “a firm believer of spirit in music” who prays "with my soul." He's against the religious instruction he can’t understand, and can't abide the blood on the hands of the church.

Without Love (Labour of Lust, 1979) His connection to the Johnny Cash inner circle made by marrying June Carter’s daughter (and Johnny’s stepdaughter) Carlene, Nick was able to sell the Man In Black on this tune, enough for Cash to cover it. Lowe’s version further reveals his gift of musical versatility, his knack for catchy melody and a wise and soulful approach to lyric writing. With the Rockpile musicians backing him, the track sounds slick and spirited.

Poster Boy

If you're one of the few who check this blog on a regular basis, you might notice that the posts are subject to tinkering. It can sometimes be days after an original post appears online that I get a final draft that I'm reasonably satisfied with.

Now that I've built up four years' worth of posts, I thought I'd start from the beginning and check my earlier posts to see if anything could be improved. So far I've found that the earliest posts hold up pretty well, with the exception of an overuse of "..." in sentences. And then as now, one of the things that probably keep me from the top level of blogging is that my opinions aren't backed up much by info links. This is partly due to time constrictions, partly due to lack of personal discipline, but in any event I hope that my words pack at least some wallop, info links or no.

When summer comes again, and the kids use the computer more, I'll probably post less. One of the things I'd like to do this summer, something that should be less time-intensive than posting new material, is repost links to some earlier "greatest hits," if you will, after I'm done relooking at them.

Lowe, Man, Lowe

Before I get fired from all my jobs and become a homeless person again -- the way my 40-hour job's been going lately, I'm only half-kidding -- I best get crackin' on finishing up my Nick Lowe article. Three more parts to go after this:

(I Love The Sound Of) Breaking Glass (Pure Pop for Now People, 1978) Another track from the heart of the New Wave boom, a time when Nick could easily employ a Steve Nieve (or a Nieve sound-alike) to add magic piano, cinching another tasty piece of pop whimsy. Nick needed “the noises of destruction” when lonely and bored, and had via rock and roll (and expert hookcraft) the power to make it happen, at least on record. This and the rest of "Pure Pop" show what advantages Nick’s “Basher” approach could have when freed of what Robert Christgau has called Elvis C.'s “fussy as Streisand” tendency.

True Love Travels On A Gravel Road (The Impossible Bird, 1994) This was released as a single on Demon Records, the first after he’d been let go by Reprise in the early ‘90s. No longer with a major label, he was still able to record and release “Bird” as a fully professional Nick Lowe offering, on his own dime, thanks to the royalties windfall he earned when perhaps his most famous composition “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” was covered by Curtis Stigers on The Bodyguard soundtrack. In a 2001 interview with CNN, Lowe said that the million he’d earned from The Bodyguard was by then gone; what remains are gem tracks like this, a touching and tasteful (and terrifically sung) cover. Though written by A.L Owens and Dallas Frazier, Lowe’s songwriting had matured enough by this point that one can believe it a song Lowe could’ve written.

Heart (Nick The Knife, 1982) After the fireworks of the New Wave period died out, Lowe expanded impressively as a singer, adding a new shade of mellow to his bag of cool tricks, while not sacrificing his gift for creating eminently catchy pop. A standout track from an album that, perhaps in relief and resignation both, was the first real public sign that he’d begun abandoning the lust to Make It Big, in favor of a more casual journeyman approach designed for the long haul.

Man That I’ve Become (Dig My Mood, 1998) Is the greatest Johnny Cash-like song not recorded (as far as we know) by someone named Johnny Cash? Cash covered “Without Love” and “The Beast In Me,” and I wonder if the Man In Black gave this one a shot during the latter part of his American Recordings sessions. On Lowe's version we again see the artist's refreshing gift for exposing the down and dirty in plainspoken and clever terms. He strikes a chord of empathy for the old fart who wants the damn kids to get off his lawn. Complete with Jordanaires-style backing vocals and a skilled rhyming of crumb and become. Also, what along with "Failed Christian" on Dig My Mood seems a telling glance at Lowe the apostate: “He won’t go to church / ‘Cause his faith’s all gone / The sweet singing of the choir / Will only drive him home.”

Something To Say

It's Triple Crown time again, kids. And that means another thrilling installment of Interesting Horse Names™:

Captain Americam
Longstreet
Oh Semite Sam
Marciamarciamarcia
Quite A Butt
Tiger In The Woods
Carl Lewis
Free to Sin
Bettor Watch Him
Boogiemanball
Bagger Vance
REO Speeddragon
One Sock Wonder
Whatwerewethinking
Bettocracy
La Bomba
ICU Later
Your Hour's Up
Ten Downing Street
Oliver Twisted
Skip N Go Naked
Potato Chip Man
Sleazebiscuit
Thunderestimate
Cher Bono
Subcultural Girl
Too Drunk To Call
Mr Ed

Yes, there's a racehorse out there named Mr Ed. He's a nine-year-old gelding from Ireland who ran last weekend at Uttoxeter Racecourse in the UK.

I would've thought there might've been some sort of moratorium on that horse name, for obvious reasons.

Take This Waltz

My daughter, who in April earned her drivers license and got her braces taken off, has one more performance at the high school before she graduates next month. On Friday she'll be singing, doing comedy bits and serving as one of the emcees at the school's yearly May Day show. She'll also be doing a "Senior Waltz" with her dad, dancing along with more than a dozen other parent-student (or student-student) couples to an instrumental version of "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music.

I've never waltzed before, never really formally danced before (hippie-like gyrations on the dance floors of '80s music clubs don't count), and even for this simplest of steps (march, box step, twinkle, spin, rinse and repeat) I'm being challenged here. It's a busy week for me -- getting stories done for The Oregonian along with working overtime at my horserace wager call center job, Saturday being Kentucky Derby day -- and I won't have any opportunity this week to formally practice at the school with her.

Fortunately I did get one formal practice session in last week, and got a list of the steps to practice on my own and with her at home. Plus she's done the May Day waltz before (last year as junior class princess), so I think I should be fairly okay, as she will be an able lead. And even if I do mess up noticeably, the happiness of having a "farewell to childhood" dance with her should compensate plenty.

***

As for my son, he's suddenly taken a liking to tennis. After getting his mom last week to buy him a tennis racket, yesterday he printed out the Wikipedia entry on the rules of the game. He's inspired by the Cartoon Network show The Prince of Tennis, the English-dubbed version of a Japanese anime cartoon. I can imagine this kind of inspiration is just what the show's producers had in mind, to get kids like my son who weren't active in sports (although in my son's case, it hasn't made him overweight -- he's as noticeably thin as his dad was at age 11) out doing something that provides a healthy workout.

He and I went to the high school tennis courts on Sunday for the first time, with me borrowing his mom's old racket. I hadn't played tennis in 25 years, not since a PE class at Portland Community College. But I found that I hadn't lost my ability to serve overhand or maintain an easy back-and-forth rally. Still need to develop a passable backhand, though.

It was a lovely spring day, and for a first-timer, I thought my son did quite well. He was more pumped than ever about tennis when we were done, wanting to take lessons and go out for the middle school team at the first opportunity.

This is good news for me as well as him. At least for awhile, perhaps until he can kick my ass defeat me on a regular basis, I will have a good excuse to go play tennis and get some exercise myself. Since I started writing weekly freelance pieces for The O, I haven't had much chance to work out at the gym. I intend to get back to my gym routine once the school year ends, and once I change my freelance schedule later this month, to where I'm not required to write articles every week. But in any event, it's good to have another avenue -- a free, fun and family one, at that -- to burn some calories.