the sopranos, uncensored. from victor solomon on Vimeo.

Read into his private bathroom. And empathy, endless empathy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/3286392/Rush-Limbaugh-The-man-whos-always-Right.html

David Foster Wallace was a kind writer. I miss him.

These are some good links to his working memory.
http://libwww.freelibrary.org/blog/index.cfm?srch=3&postid=838
http://thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200311/?read=interview_wallace
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/david-foster-wallace

Friends you see before you a photo of this one and the other one with Charlie Louvin and that's the best thing that happened on this last trip to the MidSouth and MidAtlantic. On the 19th of April we had to get from Atlanta to Nashville and be at Grimey's New and Preloved by one pm. So up we got and did drive with the thought in our heads that we were going to have our picture taken. But not this picture. A totally decent dood named Matt on freelance service from a magazine called The Fader was commissioned to meet us in Nashville. So God be praised, we meant to look alright, hence Jeff's brownonbrownonbrown phantasmagoria and Wallace's Mr.Rogers glory. And but so arriving timely we looked around and drank beer and had our picture taken and were accosted by a twelve year old with a printout of a photo taken at Jason Groth's wedding that said atop the picture: DAKKAR SAUNA, which he shoved us a pen and said sign it. Normally one would ask: why? On earth, and so forth. But by God there was the pressmedia present so we acted like that kind of thing was common and kept stride and posture. Then and then Doyle from Grimey's comes forth and says, "You know who just got here?" I didn't. I assumed he knew that and shook my head. "Charlie Louvin," he says. "Fuck you," I said. I didn't mean it. Normally I wouldn't cuss like that. "You guys should ask him to play with you," he says. "Fuck you," I said. Which I meant. Who exactly does he think we are? Maybe he saw us handle the little kid with the photo and the autographs and thinks we're Levon Helms back up band, but we're not. So I went and hid. And Jeff was already there hiding. "You heard," he says. Collecting ourselves we decide to meet Charlie Louvin. Which we do, and he's gracious and we're less of a couple of fuck-ups than I knew we could be. Although, an aside: it's embarrassing to meet someone that you hold in the stature we hold C. Louvin and realize you've already used every exaltation and honorific when you were drunk and met Bobcat Goldwaithe a couple of years ago. But we were polite and decent and gave Mr. Louvin a copy of our new record and could breathe easier and hope, hope that he would leave before we had to play. We had an hour and a half by my watch and what were the chances that he would wait ninety minutes in the rain to hear songs he already knew weren't as good as the versions he knew? Little. Except that my watch was wrong, somehow horribly wrong and we had ten minutes and, and (Doyle again), "Did you ask him to play with y'all? Why not? He's waiting for you to ask him..." Now, to remain stable and sane I need as part of my universe for C. Louvin to not be waiting for me to do anything. Plus: is he a girl at a dance? Waiting my foot, I say, except (other Grimey's dood now) "What the hell, guys, just ask him..." So: "Pardon me, Mr. Louvin, but would you be interested in singing a song with us?" "I would love to, but I don't know..." Did you fucking hear that? So he looks at the set list and sees that we're closing with The Family Who Prays and says he'll jump up on that one. Well, it was a weird set. Lots of people, fourteen songs and the whole time just looking to see where Charlie Louvin went (note: to the roller derby tent where the rough girls in short shorts and skates were handing out blue condoms). Second to last song we played Are You Afraid to Die? and he appeared in the front, singing along. In the second verse he came up to the microphone and finished that number with us. Then he sang The Family Who Prays and we got to sing back up to him. Heavenly. A couple notes:
1) If C. Louvin would have tripped over Jeff's guitar case which I told him was in a bad place it might have been time for the whole "tulips from Holland" thing.
2) When C. Louvin first came up at the end of the first verse of Are You Afraid to Die? he made a gesture of "three", like saying, "let's turn this into a three part harmony on the fly, fellas, what do you say?" And in my mind and chest and stomach I told C. Louvin the truth: that I was incapable of any such thing. And where once that would have felt embarrassing and rotten it just felt funny and normal and I realized I am a happier person, in general.
3) The next dood, playing blue eyed soul on a cello, got a better reaction than we got singing with C.F. Louvin.
4) The phrase "Nashville moment" is unpleasant to the ear and a falsehood even when legitimate.

Now to travel backward in time we'd like to mention the first show from this trip, which was in Memphis. Some of you might know that the men's basketball national championship had been played about a week before we left Lawrence and that in the finals Kansas beat Memphis in overtime. So we went to Memphis with the intention of talking just the mildest level of shit, but liking Memphis in general and Memphis basketball in particular (I used to have and Anfernee Hardaway poster, I've been to the Pyramid) we were going to display one national championship t-shirt and remind folks we were from Lawrence and that was it. But then the opening band, they who had made some promises of great show and much anticipation did the following:
a) added a third band on a Tuesday and then let them push the start back to 10:30.
b-1) refused us the second slot as the touring band should generally play so that friends of the local don't all leave.
b-2) refused us this because they, the band, all planned on leaving right after they played because, well, it was getting late.
b-3) named themselves The Harmony Brothers which, I apologize fellas, is just awful.
And so we started the show grumpy. And after the first song, with only nine people left to watch us Jeff said, "We're from Lawrence, Kansas, home of the National Champion Kansas Jayhawks. It's great, it's great to win." After that song with seven people left I said, "We're the Mario Chalmers from Lawrence, Kansas..." and two songs later, with five of the six people left talking on phones seemingly about us Jeff said, "How did it feel when Mario Chalmers made that last shot? Felt great to me. Feels good now." So.
Notes on this show:
1) I'm sorry. I wouldn't want people to do likewise in Lawrence and when, in 2003, Dan Barone from Syracuse did do the same thing to us I didn't like it. We were obnoxious and it never got funny.
2) Our friend Trisha drove from Austin to come to the show on her birthday and we had to fuck it up. Because not only did we drive everyone out with our rhetoric, the energy was awful and we played like goons. Trisha was one of three people who stayed for the whole show and deserved better.
3) The other girl who stayed and seemingly liked us was terribly patronizing and made me feel worse than the death threats.
4) We got three threats. By email. Here's one:

Whoever the fuck you think you are if I find out you play in memphis again I'm gonna fuck you up!!! You got some fuckin nerve saying that shit here. If you werent at the hitone with all those goddamn pussy bitches youd have been drug to orange mound and shown what this city can do. DONT EVER COME BACK HERE!!!! oh yea and your music really sucks,grow some balls

4-b) one of the threats suggests shooting us and the other promises castration. This one seemed to offer the best of both. I refer you again to note 1 of this section.
5) Mostly people in Lawrence have been congratulatory for getting a reaction like this. They make some comment like they would love to have been there and/or done something similar. This seems not right to me.

Ohkay. Happy Birthday again Trisha. Thank you Grimey's New and Preloved, thank you Moody and Jeremy and East Nashville. Everybody do your best. You're all very good and I thank you for the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsCrHKx-Lq4

Here's the corona of the sun: . Also (if you want more if you have to keep taking) there are photos of the corona taken by the lovely Wendy Carlos at her website. Wendy not only chases coronal broadcasts as if there were something to hear back there, but also made the scariest album I've heard since when I was ten & my teacher Mr. B recorded his voice through an insectile vocal distortion rig reading a story about Decepticon violence. Now that I think about it, it may have been an oblique prophecy of Sept. 11, though which one God Himself knows only. But how scary is the Wendy Carlos album Heaven & Hell? I played it for the sweet-natured five year olds at my lunch table & faith in the material existence of demons (or as they called them, "wishes") was divined in both. O, Wendy, how are these transmissions like a friends face hardly seen?
I have new things to apologize for. It was an untruth we weren't playing anymore, but I didn't know that until just before I wrote that we wouldn't. You see, I read about the crowd at the Coliseum & became so engorged with envy I quit the band for Jeff. I felt it was my right as his friend & occassional alibi. & without him how could we go on?
But now we're back & better than ever. Unless you really liked how we used to be. In which case: we're back. & with our back, we bring a gift. August 25th at The Jackpot Saloon & Music Hall we will release our new album, brought to you by the good people of Marriage Records & the much better people of me & Jeff. We make great look entirely inappropriate for the occassion. Or, as the testaments of Jeneut the blind state (O, to be alive in 1142): Be aware that, in some cases, different symbols have the same meaning, & the same symbol has, depending on the context, different meanings.
&how.

one. I imagine people who say, "I can help" when other people get blue on those first people's watch. I imagine them because they're imaginary.
second. Driving home Illinois had that tit cloud sulfur sky except instead of one robust extirpator it was a universe of them & within each was a funnel & Zeus herself. I wasn't worried about dying, just being thrown dozens of feet in the air caught again by mother gravity & crushed into a firestone/Carolla wrap with a Stolz tapas.
third. I'm decided to not believe in the things I do wrong. Not that I don't believe I transgress, only that I have made my mind up to make fantasy of the transgressions. Every sin is a Santaclaus, thus&so.
for I have gotten this far with originally plus I have things to say about fatherhood man I could write an essay about ways of not reaching across the table. I imagine calm rational dialogue because that shit is imaginary. & jiminy there's but just the one real for real. Nobody tell you different.

So our month of playing often is over and now we're retiring.  Wallace came down with pleurisy and Jeff broke a rib.  There was croupe in the public pools, the wildflowers we napped amongst were full of botulism.  As W.C. Fields says, "Maybe and maybe not."  We did better in Georgia than the Brian Jonestown Massacre who we saw that movie in Nashville.  Hands Down Eugene are a spectacle and a delight.  The Pilot Light in Knoxville, Regina, Bubba, Chris Scum, Trish - all were gems.  The New Street Gallery in Decatur - our friend Meshekai  who booked us late notice and let us stay in his house.  We watched a documentary he made, we drank fresh orange juice and I acted poorly and without forethought.  You've met me and know.  Athens and good Chris Smith.  We took the REM tour and saw all of Michael Stipe's homes.  The bamboo was nice.  The tour went sour when Jeff was devastated by a wave at Virginia Beach.  He dislocated his shoulder and broke his collarbone and later drowned.  Then we found out the Minus Story was playing on the sixth at the Jackpot and you don't recover from that.
So now Jeff's dead and we're not going to play again in Lawrence until his ressurection on Halloween.  All of him might not come back, but I heard Mark is going to go as an engorged clitoris dressed as an eel.  In the shopping mall of my heart, it's always Black Christmas.