Sesame Street - Two Little Dolls

"There’s always rules [in life], but usually they’re not spelled out; everyone has a slightly different idea of what they are, there’s all these ambiguities, it’s sort of complicated and then people break them all the time anyway. Life is this endless game of trying to figure out what the rules are and nobody quite understands. Then, [with bureaucracy], you create this imaginary situation, totally bounded in time and space, where everybody knows exactly what the rules are, people actually do follow the rules, and even people who follow the rules can win — which is very unusual in real life." from here

The Pointer Sisters - Jump - Maxproms deel 2 31-12-12 HD

I had Jump for My Love in my head today. Thinking about time passing and how I used to be able to jump up and down throughout a whole show. I had some white pumps back in the 80s too.
The Europeans seem to really like Pointer Sisters.

I just realized I was conflating Nickel Creek with Nickelback.

Nickle is what I called my son when he was a little kid, or Nickie Pickles.  He turned 24 last Sunday, completing his second 12 year phase.  On his birthday I was at Pickathon, part of my week of excellent music.  There were at least two people who were also celebrating their birthdays there at Pendarvis Farm.

I like to think of his birthday as my birthday--the day I first gave birth.

The week of excellent music started with the J T Wise Band's downtown lunchtime concert.



Then I went with two of the Grgich sisters (one of them is in that video) to see Lucinda Williams sing to the elephants at the zoo.

(In line with a Noah theme, the zoo was the location of my aforementioned son's bar mitzvah party 13 years after he was born.  We had a DJ who quite possibly could have been named Rockin Robin.  I recall the highlights of that event being Weird Al karaoke, the Chicken dance and this song which is one of my ATFs:



)

Lucinda didn't sing my favorite songs of hers from the time we both first got to LA that she describes in this article.




I got married that year Lucinda's breakthrough album came out.

Today would have been my 26th wedding anniversary.   At Pickathon I saw Jonathan Richman who provided the dance music for that event in St. Helena California.   Back then, he played La Bamba and this:




Sunday at the Starlight Stage under a half moon he talked about Israel and Gaza, sang a song with the word hazon in it.

At two different points during festival the both Jonathan and John Doe were seated within feet of me but all I did was dance.  Tommy Larkins was at the other side of an empty bar, but I didn't approach.  I was there for the music not the men.  In addition to Jonathan, Tommy and John Doe, I saw the rest of X, a guy covering Elvis (Costello) and Colin Hay at KBOO's late night open mic, and the Sadies-best rock band in Canada.




In further nostalgia, last night I went to see Purple Rain, and recalled how I listened to my cassette of Controversy when I first came to Portland around the same time I was listening to Wild Gift, My Aim is True, and The Modern Lovers Live.  I'd forgotten the themes of misogyny/violence against women and the Kid's turmoil over playing the song written by the women in The Revolution. 




Just now, looking for a Sadies video I came across this--something new about the moon dedicated to mothers:



My week of amazing music will hopefully end tonight with the singer songwriter who brought me to the Laurelthirst Pub--Little Sue a mother herself.

Hot summer nights can be chilly

A mom writes about a man eating a preserved head.

I'm trying to see black and white, polka dots and stripes, or grey
no one or the other.

The world is both random objects falling from the sky and planned destruction.

Indian women save seeds and walk to heal while
oil is burning in Tripoli.

A poem I like

KEEPING SOUND TRACK
by Buddy Wakefield

Keep allowing the next life to be offered to us daily

via live streaming satellite by entitled white
rabbits and tragedy addicts

dragging their fingernail

file

cabinets

across records of the damage your nerves have done.

Call them inglorious preachers of a sensational game.

Tell them sensations and games are at the root of
why they are walking so inefficiently,

warped 45s with credit card swagger charging up
a sad sad path

like Ray Charles singing Seven Spanish Angels to
the bottom of the barrel in

broad daylight.  Stop congregating in the valley
just because an echo sounds good when it agrees
with itself.

If I was an abused welfare mom we'd be a better match. But I'm not.

Yesterday was Pi day.  I got to have some peach pie with fat free ice cream with Dina and Summer.  I had just finished reading Lit the night before which got me thinking about sobriety, prayer and miracles.  The presence of grace was a theme in the movie Philomena that Dina and I went to see  as well.

Of course as is typical with me thinking about sobriety led to a desire to to get drunk and last Tuesday started at the New Orleans tapas place and ended at Chopsticks II.  I flirted with a derelict but made it to bed alone.

The second book I picked up at Powell's with Mia last month is The Executioner's Song.