Last Monday I took T to a concert for her birthday. So the gift was over a month after her actual birthday. Timing was never my strong suit.

Dar Williams, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin-Carpenter and Patty Griffin all shared the stage, and it was amazing. If you enjoy female neo-folky-singer-songwriters, there was a whole lot of talent up there on the stage. If you don't enjoy such things then you'd probably better stop reading and go search the internet for hotel-heiress video footage. This was their last of 30-something shows, having been on the road since September.

The only two of the four that I really knew about were Dar and Shawn. I'd heard of, and been recommended to the others, but had never gotten around to them, thinking that Patty was too country, or that Mary Chapin-Carpenter had too many syllables for me to refer to her on any kind of regular basis. Dar of course was adorable and incidentally, knocked up, which was a surprise to me. I truly enjoyed her performance, mostly because it seemed she was pressured to sing, instead of doing her breathy, cute voice that carries her through most shows targeted at her fan base. Shawn was perfect. It turns out that listening to her live is a little like hearing a studio recording, in a good way. Every intonation, every note, every word was spot-on perfect. She is a polished performer, and I personally love her guitar style. Mary, or as the others referred to her, "Chapin," was genuine and confident and put up some of the most intricate finger picking of the evening. The only problem I have now is that she has too many albums for me to go out and comfortably buy at once. I'll likely need advice before starting on that venture. Patty was a surprise to me. She's a tiny red headed woman, plays a huge guitar, and has the sweetest voice imaginable, when she's holding back. On some songs, however, her voice is a weapon, filling the theatre with a power you wouldn't have thought possible.

They played requests from each other mostly. The sequence went: Chapin, Patty, Shawn and finally Dar. They played each other's songs, their own songs, harmonized with each other, and spent a whole lot of time talking about each song before playing it, which is one of the things I love most about folk music. Chapin called it a "guitar pull," but I mostly thought it was three hours of amazing music.

Since it was the last show, they were relaxed and in good spirits. Dar was actually putting on makeup for some period of time, and Shawn kept using some "Mr. T" keychain to tell us things like,"Quit yo' jibba-jabber!" Of course there was some hugging and gooey girl-love at the end, but it was well worth it, if only for the encore. They came back out, and sat down with a vaguely familiar and very catchy guitar riff. The song went like this:

You are my fire
My one desire

And they went on to sing the whole I Want It That Way masterpiece, which must have been a little difficult with all of us laughing our heads off. It was beautiful.

Matty sez I have a bad blogging ethic. This, after I pointed the finger his way for a 3-week hiatus on his part. In my defense, I have posted more recently than my little buddy. If only to talk about how I had nothing to talk about. Much like this entry. At least nobody's sponsoring a paid account for me to do this. Man would I feel the pressure to blog then.

Anyway.... back to lurking on my own page....
E

Holy Cat! It's been a while since I've posted. Blogger even changed its interface. I just realized why I haven't done this in a while: I have practically nothing to say. Any topics you'd like to see? Hit me at docnorrisatcomcastdotnet.

I'm sitting in my living room, minding my own business, trying to watch the news when they show up. Who are these fat, unattractive people? Why the fuck are they yelling at me? I don't need a mattress. I do not want to see their funny-looking kids. I do not want to sleep like a baby. Why is this irritating commercial on every 5.6 seconds? I swear they break into regular programming to show us these frenzied, obese and loud people. I'm thinking of buying a mattress that I don't need from anyone but them, just to be punitive. Obnoxious bastards.

Have you been watching the explosions over there in Iraq? Are you getting a warm sense of patriotism from watching arabs vaporize? How about our dead and wounded? You're thinking about them, no doubt. Oh, and that statue of Saddam, tumbling down... even though it took the media approximately five hours of uneventful coverage, they showed us the clip of it falling forward and then snapping off dramatically. It was like the dictator himself was dismembered and dragged through the street that day. You could vicariously taste the freedom we've given that horde of shoe-throwing arabs. Those, of course, must be the good ones, because we're busy vaporizing a whole batch of others daily.

What a perfect plan, because while you're all paying attention to that, things like this are happening right here in our country. Oh yes, there's a little bone to throw at those of you who buy a Prius, but absolutely nothing in there about the gas hogs my neighbors drive, and well, drilling in the arctic? Can't be all that bad, could it? I mean, we'll have to give those poor beset oil companies nearly $20 billion dollars to tempt them, but that's stimulating the economy, not that you were paying attention, anyway. Because of the war.

Closer to home, PGE has paid its taxes. Have you? Maybe I just made a whole lot more than PGE, because without a doubt, I will pay more than $10 dollars this year in taxes. Oh, and as you pay your PGE bill this month, remember that the income you use to pay them was taxed. Who needs to give money to the homeless? You're doling out chartiy left and right every month. Just assure the legless vietman vet there by the courthouse that you've already given, and that his rewards should be trickling down to him, just about any time now.

But I wouldn't want to take your attention off the war. Here. Scrutinize any neighbors you might have who wear turbans. That's what "they" wear, isn't it? War is hell, people. And man, do we love it.

Stripped from the Angry Thoughts Headlines:
AS WE WATCH THE BREAKDOWN of Rumsfeld's "effect-based" military strategy, we wonder how that could happen, because it worked so well in war games.

Cynical me, I just thought the military downplayed the capabilities of Iraq in order to draw the public into early support for an "easy" campaign. So much easier to start a war if you think you'll win quickly. I had no idea I was overestimating their ability to predict, or that our brightest leaders were just simply dumbfounded that the Iraqis would do anything but come out waving the white flag, while exhibiting submissive urination.

Unless.... they knew we'd be in conflict and staged the $250M war-game charade last year to make it look like they didn't know there'd be resili-- Nope. Nevermind. I can just put that over thinking part of my brain away, now. I won't be needing it.

Hey. You. With one ear on the cnn newsfeed. Watching the war like a good little american. You've forgotten all about the economic downturn already, haven't you? No? Just checking to see if it worked yet.

Better if we all believed in the kind of world Travis Tritt lives in. Ah, the basis of all morally superior democracies: Sit down and shut up. That Travis Tritt is a real patriot.

Since when have peace demonstrators become "Anti-War Protestors?" Every news channel now refers to them with the same wording. Are they protesting the anti-war movement? Would the opposite side be called "War Protestors?" I thought journalists were supposed to have taken english classes at some point in their training. I'd like my force-fed right-wing propaganda to make sense, please.

No, wait. We'll be calling him "Porter." I actually call him "Kitty" a fair amount of the time, just because that's all we've had around for so long. Sorry Josh.

Mungo!!!!!!

Oh, the cuteness. I almost can't stand how cute this puppy is. It's also hard because we have no name yet... any suggestions?
Bring 'em on!

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.

Alright, in unison... Awwwww.
-E

So, a whole lot has happened since the happy-go-lucky days of January. Apparently now we're marching off to war. Is it the North Koreans who reportedly can fly a nuke right up my left nostril here on the west coast? No. We're going to war for my neighbors.

My neighbors seem like upstanding young citizens, they're procreated times two, and have the following vehicles: A four door sedan, a full size wagon, and an SUV. The other day I was out washing my own ecologic indiscretion (a new compact wagon) when I noticed there was another, much larger SUV in the drive across the way. A brand spanking new Chevy Tahoe. Neighbor came out and commented on the car-washing weather. I asked him about the new addition and he said he might sell off the smallest of their collection, but that they needed the fucking huge SUV you know, for the kids. They have maybe 60 pounds of combined child weight! Here I am gnawing my fingernails over buying a new car at all and they go off and buy a fourth car that drinks 13-14 MPG.

Bring on the war people, because we certainly know our priorities!

Listen.
Matt is working hard (apparently for all the right reasons) but is not terribly available for fun. So please, drop him a short line to brighten his day. I know he always lights up a little when I call him "My Little Buckaroo."

Go ahead send him an inspiring email!

Oh! Who Am I? Uh..., why am I here?

Damn uppity newcomers. I've been putting free form text on the web since I got my first account. It was 1995 and I hated the world, or at least Philadelphia. Had to type it in HTML using a terminal, running pico off a very slow vax box. You couldn't cut and paste into it because the modem line couldn't take that much data at once. I managed to do it, albeit very sporadically, and usually while under the influence. Some day I'll root around in my old drive and resurrect the things.

And then these damn articulate and prolific kids go and do it one (or more) step(s) better. I've never been the finely tuned social barometer that Matty Cakes has become, preferring to wax prosaic over the homesick details of my mostly self-absorbed life. Even Josh got up on his little soapbox for a while there, so what if the links to "Flying Cat," and "Glass Doors" are not functional. One of my first inspirations was Tess, who has faithfully slogged through every little piece of tripe I've uploaded since the mid-1990's, which I have to tell you has not been much. I've since forgotten who introduced me to Greg's site, but I wouldn't have gotten through med school without it, or perhaps it was the proximity of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, home of cheap gas and cheaper alcohol, who can tell?

So blogging has been around like, you know, forever and stuff. If you ask very politely I'll try to find my entry that gushes about "Hammy's," the offshoot of my college cafeteria. Oh! The nostalgia!