Just a quick link — here is a decent article on Louisville Mojo, a great local web site that has grown quite a bit in the last year or so. Turns out, I have two (tenuous) connections to it. One is Michael Briedenbach, with whom I worked at Corvus, and the second is Chuck Burke, the founder and el presidente of Louisville Mojo and also had a hand in Dance of Shiva, a wildly popular BBS here in Louisville in the early 90′s where I was a member. They had newsgroups there! It was all very exciting. BBS’ing was very much a “community” sort of thing, and it’s taken a while for the Internet to finally find it’s foothold in the culture to support communities. That’s all really, just thought I’d remember them good old days.

I was tipped off to
Retro Crush’s 50 Coolest Song Parts by the venerable Memepool yesterday. It’s a pretty good listing of the cooling “parts of songs” ever. I’m all for listing stuff, but certainly not taking them as gospel. My stance on this is ever-so-bluntly pointed out by Retro Crush listing a Phil Collin’s song as the “#1 Coolest Song Part” ever. EVER. I couldn’t hardly agree more with Mr. Jackson Cooper‘s assessment: “Bullshit, I say.”

The end result might very well have been “bullshit”, but the whole notion of “cool song parts” is still wickedly valid. I think about cool song parts all the time. The #2 song on that list — “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who — was a prime example that was the first song I associated with “cool song parts” when I read the title of this well-conceived and ill-concluded list. As I was chatting with Jackson, I noted “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sat in the car [with Kelly] and had her just listen to that keyboard solo [and resulting scream from Roger Daltrey],” and then stated “Kelly — this is what the end/beginning of the world will sound like.”

I know a cool song part when I hear one — there is something about the perfectly placed drum solo, the rising crush of an orchestra, a well placed lyric or perhaps a “ROCK!” that sends a shiver up my spine. It’s almost like I’m scared, excited and incensed all at once — such is the sway that music has o’er me. It’s not like I’ve always had this reaction to music, though. I clearly remember the first time it happened, and it was a bit of an odd circumstance for a revelation.

Cue wavy fingers of a man going back in time…

Well, I was working at Dairy Queen, washing dishes on a weekday night, possibly winter (winter fits the story, anyway). I was in my late teens, early twenties.

It was late at night, and we’ve got the radio tuned to some family-safe radio station — probably 107.7 WSFR — the best hits of the 70′s 80′s and today, played in a pseudo-random order, but with a very small sample of songs.
Considering the length of time I had worked at this restaurant, I’ve heard just about their whole playlist at least a hundred times over (all Jackson Brown songs are inexplicably played with twice the frequency, I don’t know why).
I know all the lyrics to every hit Kansas and Boston ever had — you know the one about “I done the rancher’s daaaaughter, and I sho’ did hurt his priiide”. Yeah, LOVE IT.
So anyway, it’s safe to say I’ve heard every hit song from the 70′s by now including Springsteen’s “Born to Run”.
There I am, attempting to scrape day-old burnt gravy out of the bottom of a stainless steel container.
Greasy Adidas Samba’s on my feet, black pants, apron and ball-cap, red shirt, pony-tail at the time.
…And that song comes on and, at that moment, I finally pay attention to it or perhaps, we paid attention to each other, I don’t know for sure.
But that opening of that song (the audio of which is sadly missing from it’s entry on that list) just grabbed me and I listened to the lyrics of hope and desperation on “mean streets”.
Streets that i’ve never tread, but the lyrics hit home, and hit home hard.

"Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
`cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run"

"Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
I want to guard your dreams and visions
Just wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims
and strap your hands across my engines"

His voice rising in intensity like a man trying to race up the stairs of a subway tunnel. The decrescendo of the middle of the song with Clarence’s sax going bum bum bum bu-bu-bu-bu-ba-bum. The dark before the dawn, and then that explosive rip of “The highway’s jammed with broken heroes…”
And i couldn’t help it — I let the dish fall in the sink, and I put my hands on the edge of the sink, and I just started to cry.
Not tears of sadness necessarily or even joy. Not the uncontrollable sobbing of terrible weight — just enough to know that I had been bested. Bested by a song that had hit me right square in the chest.

I think that might be where it started. A particular piece of music — just like these little chunks on the list — can hit me like a ton of bricks.
Like I said, a shiver up my spine, usually, but some things hit me right square and cut through all this flesh and bone and emotional defense, and POW. Right in the kisser.

So, yeah, from that point on, I’ve been a fan of Bruce Springsteen.

Why did it happen *right then*? When I know I’ve heard that song a million times? I’m not entirely sure, but I think I know myself a little better now.

As a reminder to myself, and others, I present thee with a list of June birthdays of import:

• June 1 – Katy Dixon, Jeanette Wilson
• June 14 – Chuck Pearsall
• June 23 – Kelly Wilson

A happy birthday to one and all on that list, and to others I may not have mentioned.

Note: There may be many I have omitted, but I consider it a major milestone in my life to go a full year without forgetting someone’s birthday. That milestone, as of yet, has eluded me.

I was reminiscing with Charlie today about the Achewood strip from Friday, and commenced to remark upon one of the many things from this particular strip of which I derived great pleasure.

To quote:

Top of my list of favourite things about the strip is the capitalized “S” in satisfaction. Owing to the idea of the fourth inalienable right [editor: the other three being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], reserved especially for the South — “Satisfaction” from grevious appellations.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking as of late regarding the duality of love and war and the tendency for a person to choose one or the other, sometimes for the sake of the one not chosen. I must save this thought for later.

A conversation between Jackson and I today:

ben: have you ever wanted to chase tornadoes?
jackson: shit yeah.
ben: as have i
ben: but for the time being, here is your vicarious link.
ben: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/33345

This would serve as a good point to remind my faithful readers of my “themes” options you can find at the bottom of any page. One of which is the “tornado” theme — in honor of the season.

Today, after the batteries on my Nomad drained themselves playing early (read: good) U2, I decided to tune into WOXY up in Cincinnati via their internet audio stream — but it appeared to be down. Checking out their site, I learned that they A) stopped broadcasting on the web May 13th and B) had been sold back in January!!

Ever since I first tuned in to them back in early 2003, I had been smitten. I kept up-to-date with shows in Cinci, as well as good music in general. While it wasn’t perfect, it was still very independent and played good music. 97X was owned by Linda and Doug Balogh, who had solely owned and operated the station since the early 80′s. Being in their mid-to-late thirties at that time, they are now pushing 60, and would like to find time to enjoy the spoils of their labor. As mentioned on Sledge’s (a WOXY DJ) blog, they very well could have sold the radio station in ’96 or ’97 for triple what they received in the sale this year, but they decided to fight the good fight against behemoth corporations. (Don’t get me started on the 1996 Telecommunications Act which allowed corporations even greater ownership percentages in radio markets, please. It also started the broadband internet revolution, so it’s not ENTIRELY bad.) So alas, one of the very few family-owned/independent radio stations has gone off the air.

There were initially some indications of attempts to salvage 97X as an internet-only stream, but after some calculations it would seem that was made impossible by the RIAA‘s insistance on royalties for web broadcasts. Yay, way to stifle independence in radio. I hope thee choke on your foie gras.

For futher reading, check out Sledge’s blog, and his comments on the sale of 97X. Also, oh-so-apropo, PBS’s Frontline will be airing a broadcast entitled “The Way The Music Died” tonight at 9 PM. I’ll be watching, as should you. Oh, and it should be noted that the image used in this article is in fact, not related to WOXY or radio, but the cover image from Matt Fraction‘s great comic with the same title as this post.

Charlie and I attended the Greater Louisville Bonsai Society‘s “Beginner Bonsai” Course at the Bon Air library. For $40, you got a very nice little bonsai tree, expert instruction, potting and basic trimming and forming. Pretty cool stuff, and an excellent introduction to any sort of gardening, as you can do it indoors. Humble is the name of the game here, folks. Bonsai is fascinating to me because of the humble grace and artistic qualities of the crafting of the tree. It’s one thing to plant some pansies in your front yard — but to craft yourself a beautiful miniature tree! Well, perhaps that is a little too obtuse for some readers, but I dig it and you don’t have to, and I guess therein lies the beauty of bonsai. In any case, I would suggest viewing the Bonsai gallery.

I’ve always had a thing for strange things — ghosts and UFO’s and all sorts of odd things. Early memories of Halley’s Comet and space shuttles and stuff soon gave way to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, V, and the paperback cover of Whitley Strieber‘s Communion
that used to freak me out. Recently, it’s been more “realistic” interests such as cryptography, ciphers, The DaVinci Code or The Rule of Four. All of this stuff has always just been there — like some subcurrent.

Recently, Charlie at work piqued my interests in such things again, as he is also an observer of these mysterious, wonderful and fun conspiratorial ramblings and skeptical science. It would seem that all of our conversations, whether they involve Neal Stephenson‘s Cryptonomicon, or perhaps the Masons (which bring into light Alan Moore‘s From Hell and Gary Spencer Millidge’s Strangehaven), or perhaps the edges of science itself in the form of Nikola Tesla, are connected in one manner or another with some facet of our lives in very odd and conspiratorial subcurrenty sort of ways. Jack White, of The White Stripes (a favoured band of us both) has a bit of a thing for Nikola Tesla and his brand of high-voltage fruitcake science. We both in one manner or another have family or friend connections to the Masons or the Ordo Templi Orientis — both of which are real, actual, secretive organizations filled with tantalizing mythology and years of history. I could go on and on – and if I was a conspiratorial theorist worth my salt, I certainly would! But, alas, I am not — I’m just making a point that this stuff is terribly interesting.

So, just recently, on This American Life specifically Episode 265 titled “Fake Science”, they did a piece on Art Bell, the proprietor and host of Coast to Coast AM. I played a bit of it for Charlie and my surrounding office-mates (specifically the part where a man claiming to be “the Anti-Christ” calls into Art), and this morning, Charlie introduces me to Mel’s Hole. Mel is a man who discovered a hole in Ellensburg, Washington that he claims is at least 80,000 feet deep and might be a portal to another dimension. I cannot and will not attempt to explain further here, but suffice it to say you can listen to the saga by checking out the Mel’s Hole Audio site which has a number of Art Bell broadcasts with our man Mel Waters.

Art Bell and Mel’s Hole is just terribly entertaining to me, and I don’t claim to believe much of any of it. But, some unexplained mysteries of this world, some odd correlations or connections are just too interesting not to explore! I love it, and I can’t get enough of it. I’d suggest if you’ve got a little time, just poke around, you’ll find something.

In the last week, since we had been on vacation (and though we had ample Internet access) I had not kept up with Achewood, one of my favorite web comics of all time — even outpacing Penny Arcade by a far sight. Well, in the last week the author/artist/artiste of Achewood, Chris Onstad has really hit close to home with ol’ Ben.

“It’s like someone sold the mineral rights to my childhood to this man,” I tell Geoff, “and he’s dosing them out to me in the form of a cartoon strip each weekday.”

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, Pinewood Derby cars (and how those damned pre-cut models were all so fab, but then our Troop outlawed them because it took away the spirit of the whole father-son Pinewood Derby car team thing — yeah! That’ll show you, you rich bastards with your fancy cars.), “your momma” jokes — wow. I’m stunned at the creativity of this man, but at the same time I fear when this time in my life will be over. When the artists of my generation have mined the Transformers and He-Man for all their comic worth. Think of the (old) children, Onstad! Conserve thy funny lode.

This morning, we met Gary and Mayumi in the lobby of our hotel and headed out to Perry’s Smorgy to get some breakfast. As this is our last day, we will certainly miss Smorgy and all that it gave us for the low low price of $5.95 for an all-you-can eat buffet. After breakfast, we headed down to Kuhio Beach to be taught the ancient are of surfing ($25 a head — not terrible). The statue of Duke Kahanamoku greeted us with open arms, and after a brief introduction to our surfboards (this is my surfboard, there are many like it, but this one is mine), we headed into the ocean. Much to our surprise(s), none of us was completely horrible — the surfing is the easy part! The swimming through the waves is what is tough! Wow! Even Kelly, the practicing swimmer was getting tired. Nonetheless, we all had an absolute ball, and we were tired and happy at the end of the hour. There was a photographer in the water snapping our photos, and your could get them on the CD for a bit of cash at the end of your “ride”. Mine and Kelly’s photos were uninspired, but Gary and Mayumi had some good shots taken and so they had a CD made. Hopefully they’ll get on the web here soon. Gary and I sat around chewing the fat about our respective home country baseball leagues while Mayumi and Kelly slept and baked (respectively) on the beach. Gary, Kelly and I took one last sojourn into the sea before bidding it adieu. I faced south, took a handful of sand with one wave washing ashore, scrubbed my hands together, and with the next wave rinsed them clean. My way of a handshake with the sea, to show respect. We bid our fond farewells with Gary and Mayumi, made a stop at an ABC store for some last-minute gifts and a sea kelp musubi (rice ball), and headed back to the hotel. That’s where I am right now — in about an hour, we check out. In 4 hours, we board a flight home to Louisville. I’m sad to have to go.

P.S. Photos from Polynesian Center will be up tomorrow, and we didn’t have a chance to take photos at the beach today.