GASTONIA TRIM

Is it something
short of
music when
a neighboring mystery,
I pictured her rod straight, in a black bra
in the arms of a chair like a plush brown
stand up bass
chases the straight strings of
a cello to some meandering, pasta-
like point
on Sunday morning?

When the warm clarinet noodles to nowhere in particular,
oil in the path of coriander,
in the blurred bounds of what a variable could be –
less music to me than what my intestines
or a sine wave unfettered by all the old ups and downs
would sound like.

Is it less really music than the timbre
in a cellphone signal,
ignitioned, hot and fresh
out the kitchen,
or recorded reggaeton shaking the windows
from the fellowship hall to the linens in the hall closet,
or small talk inside a music
box, as the shop talk of batteries bandies from gear
to gear?

Or what about when we were karaoke, Gemini with Journey,
sheepish like
singing to Woodward and Bernstein in a cavernous car park,
as mannequins in the soundtracks
of sepia photographs,

with songs in our mouths that were
almost like singing,
against sounds that sounded of music...

So we should open up the house,
Invite the tabby two doors down.
You could ask your sister if
she doesn't bring her Basset Hound.
Ask the things you shouldn't miss,
tape-hiss and the Modern Man,
the Cold War and card catalogues
to come and join us if they can,

for girly drinks and parlor games.
We'll pass around the easy lie
of absolutely no regrets,
and later maybe you could try
to let your losses dangle off
the sharp edge of a century,
and talk about the weather, or
how the weather used to be...

All my family problems disappeared overnight
We're all taking Zoloft and everything is fine
My sister's teen angst just flew out the window
Mama's so happy she laughs all the time

We used to have trouble gettin' along with each other
Mama hated daddy, I hated little brother
Then the family doctor gave us all these little pills
Now I can't believe how great we all feel

The birds in the trees all sing happy songs
Everyone is smiling, we're so glad to be alive
Even my ol' pitbull don't growl anymore
He just watches that ol' tail wag from side to side

Now I used to be so unhappy, doin' songs about killing
Taking methadone and jacking off FOUR or FIVE times a day
Now I'm so happy... I'm so goddamn happy!
Who needs an orgasm when life's so fucking great?
All my family problems disappeared overnight
Mama's so happy she cries all the time

Why are people so fucking stupid?

I am glad to see your Personal View columnist Noel Goodwin trying to combat the epidemic. It is spreading rapidly, through the increased use (or mis-use) of the portable wireless in trains, coaches, hotel bedrooms, parks, beaches, ships, by workmen doing Public Service or house repairs, and by people walking around in the streets of holiday resorts. Indeed, one firm of manufacturers is advertising its portable wireless 'for that boring railway journey.' All this does not indicate the need of music - only its prostitution, for we have to turn down, as it were, our sensitiveness and awareness in order merely to tolerate the excess. Musicians, in particular, need to be active in protest.

Arlen Specter, the stimulus-supporting, quasi-labor-friendly odd duck of the Republican Party, has moved from apostasy to renunciation. He is becoming a Democrat. When Al Franken finally gets to take his seat, we will have 60 "Democratic" Senators.

But still, perhaps, no Employee Free Choice Act. He kind of/sort of supported this important legislation in 2007, but with the threat of a knock-down drag-out showdown with conservatives in the GOP primary looming in 2010, he said he could not support EFCA. But maybe he will change his tune again. Will Arlen be willing to snub his nose at the unions who have traditionally supported him - and in a Democratic primary no less - by blocking the labor movement's number one priority? According to his statement, he says he still will not support "cloture" (in other words, vote to overrule a Republican filibuster) for EFCA, but we will see how he further twists in the wind when he has serious Democratic opposition. Changing one's view of a single piece of legislation has to be easier than changing one's forty-year membership in a political party.

Here is how the Specter tries to explain his game-changing departure from the Republican Party.

Why are all these people having sex with pigs?

There is so much going on in this Fox News segment that it makes my head hurt. This dingbat who wrote a book urging people to be "consistently adequate" and not attempt to accomplish too much in life was pimping his message on Fox and Friends. I'm not exactly sure either Vince or the Fox Friends understand the meaning of the words "adequate" and "mediocre" (seeming to mean "acceptable" and "awful" at different times), but let me not get too picky on semantics. The tone is more important. Here is the network telling its audience, "You're mediocre... Embrace it!" You're fat and ugly and basically a disappointment to everyone around you -- but it's cool. These "Hollywood elitists" are also mediocre, but they're too deluded to realize that they are inadequate at the things they attempt to do. Like, I don't know, get elected Senator from Minnesota. (What a loser!)

But you, the great unwashed, at least you know better not to try to do anything significant. Three cheers for the modest, unthinking peasant. Go America! USA! USA!











(I have to say I think Harry Belafonte said it better when he recommended, "Get an Ugly Woman to Marry You.")

Why we love Josh Marshall:

"A bit of follow-up on right-wing paranoia about the Obama/Chavez meeting. I'm just watching Andrea Mitchell interview Michael O'Hanlon about whether President Obama showed some sort of dangerous weakness in happily shaking hands with Hugo Chavez. Mitchell played a clip of the always cartoonish Newt Gingrich and then noted that conservatives are drawing the analogy to John Kennedy's famous meeting with Nikita Krushchev in which the latter sized Kennedy up as a lightweight and -- so the argument goes -- thus believed he could push Kennedy around during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"Now, Kruschev? Really? I'm not sure I can imagine a better illustration of the sort of parodic paranoia I'm talking about. We do realize that the US has the most powerful military in the world and Venezuela has little ability to project military power beyond its own borders. It's a non-entity militarily, even compared to Iran and North Korea. Will he be emboldened into calling Obama el Diablo? Maybe provocatively give away more books?"

Bolivia's Evo Morales, Cuba's Raul Castro, and Venezuela's Hug Chavez at the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America summit...

Yes, Barack Obama can raise the dead.

He can also enjoy a complicated handshake with this guy:



No more stench of brimstone, it seems.

Bob Dylan recently listed his favorite songwriters in an interview. Which of the following does not belong?

Guy Clark
Gordon Lightfoot
Jimmy Buffett
Randy Newman
Warren Zevon
John Prine