Yes, it’s been a while since my last post, and I’ll tell you why: because our house flooded. We awoke last Tuesday to find our kitchen cabinets saturated and the whole front half of our mid-mod-60s-pornstar-abode inundated with nearly two inches of water, the result of the hot water supply line under our kitchen sink’s decision to part ways with the rest of the sink plumbing, citing, one supposes, irreconcilable differences. So the last week or so has been a non-stop and beadless parade of insurance adjusters, contractors, and water mitigation experts. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a water mitigation expert. Anyway, compared to the floods that many of our neighbors just down the road have experienced in the last year, it’s pretty minor, but it looks like the next few months are going to be a long, slow slog of negotiating with the insurance company, talking to contractors on the phone, and trying to decide if everything really does smell like mildew, or if it’s all in our head, or if maybe the insides of our noses have started molding.
The worst part so far has been the fact that, in order to dry out the trim and baseboards and tiles and cabinets and so forth, the water mitigation fella set up about 8 industrial-strength fans and a pair of clanking dehumidifiers, and then, on his way out the door, said “By the way! Keep these running non-stop for about a week!” Oh. So we’ve been living mainly in the rear, dry portion of our house, making occasional forays into the kitchen to raid the larder or wash a load of underwear. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of foraging in your own house. Don’t turn that light on! The patrols might see it! It’s preparing us nicely for the impending apocalypse.
You know, I teach Don DeLillo’s White Noise pretty regularly (and am pretty excited about this new volume) but living with the noise of those fans for a week has changed the way I’ll approach it next time, I’m pretty sure. I’m normally all about the mystery and romance of ostensibly chaotic noise, the fact that the noise isn’t just noise, it’s signal too, all of that. Even the fact that our house is so close to the interstate that I can hear a truck driver swear when his worn-out Willie Nelson tape finally snaps hasn’t robbed that steady rumble of its mystery. But something about this fan noise—one of them is a deluxe model and sounds like someone miked Andre the Giant’s death rattle and put it on a continuous loop—has drained the romance for a while. If things don’t change soon, I’ll be opening a can of vulgar-Marxist whup-ass on White Noise next go-round. Oh isn’t it sweet, I’ll say, that when Jack and his family go to the supermarket, he “realize[s] the place was awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension.” Isn’t it nice that he has such deep thoughts about things! Maybe DeLillo should come to my house and listen to the fans for a while and then he can write another book about thoughtful rich men in which he totally rips off the plot and themes of Love in the Ruins! And then my students will applaud, not for me but for the security guards who have just shot me with tasers.
Big ups to Larry Ferrari, pictured here, for his advice and his down-off-ledge-talking. To his credit, his reasonable, calm, barely terrifying advice was not all what Contessa and I had been led to expect from Sally and Gorjus, who painted gruesome, Bosch-style portraits of a flame-beareded prophet of doom whose counsel would be too awful for the ordinary human mind to grasp, advice whose first syllable would leave us a pair of blasted, gibbering wrecks who shriek in horror whenever we drive past a Home Depot. To his further credit, he was a lot more realistic about what needs to be done than Homer. You know Homer? The little guy with the giant hat that lives in Home Depot’s Super-Easy Home Improvement 1-2-3 You’re Not an Idiot Are You, Idiot? Well, Are You? line of books? Looks like Andy Capp’s sober brother? I hate that guy. His expectations for me are so far out of line with my actual abilities that he makes me feel a little ashamed.
Tidbits:
Don’t forget the Jujitsu for Christ book club at the end of this month! Beg borrow or steal a copy, ASAP, and get to reading! Unless you’re the sort of person who thrives on regretting that you missed wonderful things. And if you’ve already finished, keep track of what you wanna say.
I went to buy the new Centro-Matic record this weekend, only to find that they were already sold out at the appropriately if unimaginatively named Compact Disc Store (where you can buy the new Cortez Del Mar record, though!). That’s a good omen for Will Johnson and the boys, who will be bringing their fuzzy southwestern indie-rock to Baton Rouge later this month. You can download MP3s of “Calling Thermatico” and “Triggers and Trash Heaps” at the CM website, and/or you can stream the whole album at their label’s site. I think it sounds great—maybe their best yet. I liked Love You Just the Same a lot, but I liked the way it sounded better than I did the songs themselves (with a few notable exceptions, “Flashes and Cables” of course among them). Fort Recovery seems to have that elusive combo of atmosphere and hooks that makes me happy.
Speaking of the music: How do you know when the Magnolia Electric Company’s tour bus has rolled into town? Here’s how: no matter how happy you are or what time of beautiful Spring day it is, it is suddenly an autumn night—cue the spinning watch hands and falling calendar pages. You are always driving in the rain behind a wind-wobbled semi, so it would be hard enough to see the road even if you weren’t crying, but of course you are. Even if you’ve never been to Illinois, you’ve always been there and you’re never getting out no matter how fast and how long you drive, because you’ve got to follow that semi and he’s lost just like you but he’s crying twice as hard. Pretty soon the downward spiral you’re caught in is going to wrap so tight that you’re both doing doughnuts in the parking lot of the flophouse you were running away from in the first place, all buzzing neon and molding wallpaper and ambiguous shrieks coming from rooms you can’t find. It’s shedding bricks like dead skin cells but none of them land on the people who deserve it. On the other hand, there’s some pretty good stuff on the classic rock station, so the night’s not a total loss. Jason Molina brings the bleak and blighted broken-heartland indie-rock to the broken-hearted in BR tonight when the Magnolia Electric Company plays the Spanish Moon. I saw them once before in Knoxville, where the openers were a pair of terrible neo-new-wave-dance-punk bands—not so terrible on their own merits, but badly matched with the headliners—so I’m hoping that Harlan and the Heavenly States will set the mood a bit better. I’m going on the record now as saying that “Farewell Transmission,” which you can download from Secretly Canadian here (plus a bunch more of their stuff here), is the best song recorded so far this decade. Feel free to debate this, but you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
That is all for now.
so sorry to hear about the floody house. and REALLY sorry that you have those giant fans in there. they do take white noise to a whole ‘nother level.
aside from the terrible things happening to your oh-so-wonderful house, this is another great post!
gosh, where to start?
Jason and MEC were in jackson monday, but not to play a show. they REALLY, REALLY like to stay with the diplomat when they’re driving through, because his house is pretty damn awesome, and comforting to traveling bands. (he took them to Keifer’s for food, and then to Don’s, to marvel at the wonderment/awfulness. i was, alas, asleep by 10 – in anticipation of working last night’s 7-band bill, including This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb, who totally own.)
what do the dogs think of the roaring fans?
the image of larry ferrari as a flame-haired prophet of doom was only (slightly) appropriate in the week immediately following Katrina. the man had chainsaws for hands, i swear.
centro-matic not playing jackson is annoying. will played with bobby bare jr. about 8 months ago, and jaxxie cooked them slap-yer-mom spaghetti, and we told him (will, not bobby) that he was welcome back anytime, and i guess, well, they were too busy. or something. we had kids drive over from shreveport for that show, though. and it was a solo gig.
prof – you and contessa coming up for OUR spanish town parade? Mal’s St. Paddy’s Day Insaneness Attended by Thousands of Middle-Aged Green Ladies Who Aren’t From Mississippi? Huh? Are you?
all red stickians: do not miss Great Lake Swimmers, who play at Chelsea’s on 3/23. bring your attention spans. they are magnificent.
out.
Oh, my! I am breathless with horror and hilarity. Of course I hate what has happened to the Furious Bungalow, but it was worth it to get that description of Larry Ferrari. Or rather, the meta-description of him, as your experience with him was not in the, shall we say, apocalyptic vein.
I am downloading this “Farewell” tune, but it shan’t match the glory of “This Year,” compadre.
I laffed out loud (yes!! LOL!) when you got shot by tasers, by the way. Not just at that wonderful image, but at the idea that there may be a world where one is tasered by security guards for kicking up a ruckus about Don DeLillo (at your local thrift store, right now: 1,000 copies of Libra!) (aside: Have you heard about the movie he hath wrought?).
Larry has been a tremendous help, let me tell you people—tremendous. Three cheers. Gorj, I admit that my judgment about “Farewell Transmission” was formed in the years before my Mountain Goats mania really got revved up, so if I had a single elimination song-off tournament, it might not go the distance, but golly, it would sure come close. As far as the last MG record goes, I actually prefer “Up the Wolves” to “This Year,” though it’s not fun in the same way that “This Year” is.
Jaysus, we’re going to have to rain-check the Jackson St. P’s parade until next year, as the recent moistening of the Fury abode has put me in a dark, soggy hole at work. I am totally going to pass myself off as one of the Diplomat’s good friends at the show tonite, though (Diplo: we only met once and briefly, but I think we both know it was magical). Sorry that folks are skipping Jaxxon on the New Orleans-to-Austin route—hope they swing back thru soon. Are you coming down for any of the GFL shows?
UPDATE: Just found this at Mountain Goats bassist Peter Hughes’ livejournal page:
As far as what to expect: well, you will hear some things you haven’t heard on a Mountain Goats record before. The occasional horn, for one thing. There are a couple songs that don’t sound much like anything the Mountain Goats have done before, and at least one that doesn’t sound much like anything that anyone’s done before (I’m at a loss, anyway). But all of that is a little misleading. I’d say that if anything, this album will be more like a Mountain Goats album than any of the other records I’ve been a part of, just in the sense that I think it’s going to be very true to what we’ve become in the last five years.
A FUCKING UNSTOPPABLE ROCK MACHINE.
Uhhhh … right. But the songs as a group are as good as any John’s ever written, a few of them right up there with the absolute best of the best. And it’s mostly very quiet actually. Scott kept calling it “a root fire of a record.” You know, like, after the blaze has swept through, and the forest reduced to ash, and everything on the surface is dead and still, but underground the roots of the trees continue to burn. We didn’t start the fire. It was always burning since the world’s been turning. Sorry, what was I talking about? How much I hate people?
This news, it is good.
Terrible news about the flooding!! I know all too well the phenomenon of, “do I really smell that or is it the inside of my nose that smells funny?”
Larry was kind enough to come over and put the stamp of “yes, I faintly smell that. No, whatever it is will not kill you,” stamp of approval on my house.
RE:GFA
Unfortunately, we won’t be making it down there due to excessive work stuff. I’m busy making voodoo dolls of my many bosses, and Jaysus has taken on yet another set of responsibilities over at the Logo Shack.
So sorry to hear about your personal tragedy. with the great joy of homeownership comes, of course unfortunately, even greater responsibility as well. God now I sound like some 60 year old old fart. But I just know that if I stay in my current abode beyond a total roof replacement something else big is gonna wrong again in the next two years. I’ve already replaced the HVAC but it was 30 years old so that’s no great shock.
On a musical note, I finally got around to renting the Junebug DVD. It’s one fo the first times I really enjoyed Yo La Tengo. Darren will shoot me but they rate in my 10 top 10 worsts shows I’ve ever seen, a gig at Slim’s in San Francisco back in about 1990. I knwo their live fundraising call in your requests shows are WFMU are awesome, but I have found their recorded efoort spotty in the past. Still props when props are due.
BTW, I’ve been enjoying the Cortez Del Mar and it features in my Currently Feeling: Songs sidebar over at TNA.
best of luck climbing out fo the slough of despond . . .
Prof…the house will rock again soon…new, improved, and mold free.
And that guy Homer—and Bob Villa, too, for that matter—wow. Intimidating types, they are…
Bulb…thanks so much for the props on the CDM songs.
Anyone know of anyone that would be willing to build a Cortez webpage? Our web-designer flaked out, so we’re back to square one… Just looking for something simple, sleek, and, well, cheap. Like me, except for that “sleek” part.
Aww, now I feel bad for the whole “master of doom” thing. Also, he is going to be mad at me when he reads this.
Floods suck. Mildew is worse. Tasering is funny. Yay for “Up the Wolves”.
That is all.
Well, Sal, I was exaggerating maybe just a leetle bit, of course. It’s what I do. Any excuse to talk about being reduced to a gibbering wreck, I just go for it. I should probably get that checked out—there may be a physiological reason for my symptoms.
Scott, I work with an incredible young designer, who (unlike me, i.e. old, old fart) is very savvy in many ways. He will work for money but won’t skin you.