Long Live Whimsy: American Sunrise

As it did 10 years ago, the sun rose today on America. The sun also rose on small people with small minds consumed with nothing but hate, destruction and disillusion that a society like the U.S. could not only persist, but prosper. It's been the same since the first day of an American sunrise and will carry on as long as American sunrises continue. Though the dialects, rhetoric and geography changes, the fact remains-- haters gonna hate. 

They hate because they don't understand that filling yourself with destruction leaves no room for whimsy and absurdity-- a heart's space to beat and soul's space to breathe-- space that is absolutely necessary for creation. Because at our best, we're a people consumed with elegant creation-- moving forward and doing better. Destruction, at its core, is clumsy and backwards. Once destruction becomes your primary motive, you've already lost. 

Today is a day to remember what's been lost and celebrate everything that carries on. And that includes the absurdity of sports fandom. The goofy, gloves-on hatred of Big 10 football. The one-foot-on-the-floor passion of fantasy teams. The insanity of the Hat and the ineptness of the Reverend. It's important precisely because it doesn't really matter. It's the essence of a heart's space to beat. 

And a decade from now, we'll once again take a moment to enjoy another American sunrise and dismiss those who spend their entire futile existence trying to shout down the dawn. 

Long live whimsy. Long live sports. Long live all of us. Hallelujah in the present tense.

Glossary song "The Flood" from their upcoming record Long Live All of Us. from This Is American Music on Vimeo.

7th Ward Roosters, Flightless Angels of Death

"Run, chicken, run. Don't you lose your breath. Chickens don't get no life after death."

The New Orleans Times Picayune was covering a murder and a news story broke out. Apparently, there is a substantial population of feral chickens across several New Orleans wards that has grown post-Katrina. Blown out of their coups during the storm, and then afforded plenty of places to hide and squat amongst some still un-recovered parts of the city, they apparently have thrived.

From the Times Picayune, Michale DeMocker

Here's a short chicken lesson, brought to good residents of New Orleans by the wise musings of one Frank Costanza: 

"You got the hen, the chicken and the rooster. The rooster goes with the chicken. So, who's having sex with the hen?"

"They're all chickens the rooster has sex with all of them."

"That's perverse."

Hens are largely docile creatures. They cluck, but generally don't crow. They lay delicious eggs for omelets and, once captured, they can be fried, smoked, baked, stewed or broiled into delicious bits and pieces. 

Roosters are the tweaked-out redneck boyfriends of the fowl world. They're over-caffeinated 7 year old boys with razors strapped to their wrists, and they will put a blade in you for even the mildest of perceived offenses. If they are captured and cooked, they taste a bit like a well-oiled softball mitt. What they lack in size, taste or intelligence, they make up for in wily, fluttering, kamikaze spastic fury. They take no notice of friends nor foes or hands that feed them versus those that wring their necks (though, historically, these hands have been pretty interchangeable).

Given the opportunity, the uptown coyote may eat your baby. The rooster will cut him just to watch him bleed. 

There's this urbanite perception of the noble cock climbing triumphantly to the top of the hen house, puffing out his brilliant chest and issuing a single proud reveille to start the day, silhouetted by the rising sun. Then, clearing his throat, hopping down and going about his business of makin' the love (and more tasty chickens). 

This is a lie. Roosters are sick sadists who engage in a U.S. Panamanian campaign against the unjust oppressors of their brood. From the earliest cracks of morning light till well into the brunching hour and even then sporadically through the day, they let loose with this psychological warfare. You've never known true pain until you've had a hungover morning begin pre-sunrise with incessant, unstoppable crowing. Every shrieking syllable finds its way into the parched cracks of your abused brain and then explodes and reverberates against the membranes...that should go over well in a place like New Orleans.

Between the coyotes, foxes, feral chickens and wild parrots, New Orleans is turning into the model for the modern urban ecosystem. The greatest menace, without a doubt, the rooster.

There Ain't No God In Mexico, Ain't No Comfort In The Cane

I generally believe something needs moving parts to have a soul. That would explain why my iPod still has a clickwheel. But sometimes, these electronical devices do something that makes me step back and rethink that theory...because Pandora smacked me in the face this morning with a sweaty, bearded Waylon Jennings belting out some Billy Joe Shaver lyrics in "There Ain't No God In Mexico."

I don't have an extensive record collection and despite my general luddite tendencies, I've never fully bought into the "it sounds better on vinyl" belief. I really don't believe it for music that was recorded on modern, digital equipment. But, I do lend some credence to the idea that things should be heard in the context of their own time. Music of the 50s, 60s, 70s was recorded with the intention of putting it on vinyl, with all its crackling imperfections. Listening to these albums this way is the reason to have a working turntable. To be able to hear the thing in all its non-remastered, non-digitized glory, the same way people heard it when it was first created, generates a connection to the era from which it came.

All this and more is why I own "Waylon Live" on vinyl. I mean look at the cover art. That's how babies are made, right there-- hairy-chested, mustachioed indestructible redneck babies whose piss smells like straight Dickel for the first three weeks of life. Just touching this album cover is not recommended for pre-teen girls, as it might accelerate them into premature womanhood and virgin pregnancies. I haven't listened to it in probably three years. But yes, Pandora, it's time to break it back out. I need some Waylon.

"Down the road a-ways I've heard said there's a new day comin'. Where the womenfolk are friendly and the law leaves you alone. Well, I'll believe it when I see it and I ain't seen it yet. Don't mind me, just keep on talkin'. I'm just looking for my hat."