Goodbye 2013

It's astounding (time is fleeting) how quickly 2013 passed. Once again, though, I have a sinking feeling that it was yet another "lost" year... Marked by stagnation and obstruction. Another continuation of the "noughts" brought to you by a political party that thinks it is more important to spite the first black president than it is to move the country forward. I sure hope that 2014 is a better year, but it will entail a lot of work. November will soon be upon us.

As a side note, this last post of the year is the first I've composed on my phone. I don't think it will become a trend with me, but it's nice to know that I can use my phone to do more than watch porn.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Faithful Departed

Reading about a proposed "Pogues" musical written by David Simon, creator of The Wire, I read that Phil Chevron had been collaborating with Mr Simon. On October 8th, Phil, born Phillip Ryan, succumbed to esophageal cancer at the age of 56. As is typical, I was preoccupied with work for the entire month of October and was unable to keep abreast of current events. I learned about Phil's death in November, in the course of a conversation with my brother Vincenzo.

Phil Chevron's career with the Pogues began when he produced the Ennio Morricone inspired, Jem Finer penned A Pistol for Paddy Garcia. He then joined the band as a guitarist, beginning with the Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash album. Prior to his career with the Pogues, Phil was a founding member of The Radiators from Space, a band which had the distinction of releasing the first Irish punk single, Television Screen:





The album T.V. Tube Heart followed, with songs like Sunday World covering the same theme as The Jam's News of the World:





Enemies was another standout track from the album, an angst-ridden but tuneful lament about not knowing who has your best interests at heart:





In 1979, the band shortened its name to The Radiators and released their second album, the critically acclaimed Ghostown. The album is more sonically complex than the first album, with influences ranging from rockabilly to show tunes. It's also extremely dense lyrically, with numerous literary allusions cropping up in the course of the album. If there's a song that could claim the "title track" mantle, it would have to be the mind-boggling, Joyce inspired Kitty Ricketts:





They're Looting in the Town is another outstanding track, one which begins by contrasting the piety of the laity with the rapaciousness of the clergy:





Another standout song, recorded in the 80's, but added to later pressings of the album, is Under Clery's Clock, a song about a same-sex rendezvous, fraught with the same danger as that which ensnared Oscar Wilde:





In Phil's tenure with The Pogues, he contributed perhaps the greatest emigration song ever written to the band's repertoire- Thousands are Sailing, from the album If I Should Fall from Grace with God, is a tearjerker, perfectly capturing the ambivalence of emigrants who "celebrate the land that makes us refugees". Here's a version with Phil handling lead vocal:





The other magnum opus Phil contributed to the Pogues repertoire was Lorelei off the Peace and Love album. Lorelei is a sublimely beautiful song about a drowning man resisting the charms of the eponymous Rhine siren. Here's a live version by Phil from 2004:





I've saved my favorite Phil Chevron song for last, the epic Song of the Faithful Departed, from which this post (Phil was secular) derives its name. I covered the song in a previous blog post- suffice it to say that it is chock full of literary allusions (covered in that other post) and addresses a society confronted by religious hypocrisy:


The girls from the kips proclaim their love for you
When you stumbled in they knew you had a shilling or two
But they cursed you on Sundays and holy days
When you all stayed away

And when you slept there naked light bulb blinded your shame
The shadows on the wall took all the blame
And the Sacred Hearts picture compassion in His eyes
Drowned out the river's sighs


The original version of the song is a new-wave epic:





The song, which has taken on the status of a standard in Ireland, was covered by trad stalwart Christy Moore, who seems to be taking his cues from an acoustic version which was the B-side of Kitty Ricketts:





Finally, here's a version of the song which Phil performed with some guy named Declan:





Phil's sendoff must have been quite the occasion, being attended by luminaries of the literary and music worlds. Phil left a legacy of amazing music behind, songs of great erudition, wisdom and compassion. He will certainly be missed by his fans, but there's no more tristesse afflicting him. Rest in peace, seanchaí.

POSTSCRIPT: Once again, I am shocked that Shane MacGowan has outlived a colleague... first Kirsty MacColl, now Phil. I love Shane, but it's stunning that he has buried two collaborators so far. I hope he lives past one hundred!

You Have My Gratitude!

I am grateful to Batocchio of Vagabond Scholar for including me in his annual Jon Swift Memorial Roundup this year. Thanks also go to Tengrain of Mock Paper Scissors, who seems to be embarrassed by his nickname "Patron Saint of Small Bloggers"- he put in a good word for me with Batocchio.

I see that a number of the folks on my blogroll also made the grade, and it warms the cockles of my heart. High fives and a group hug to everyone!

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Big Wheel!

Consider, if you will, the Marx toy company Big Wheel, best described by Alison the Heavy Metal Waitress as "A red piece of plastic, until you leave it out in the rain, when it becomes an orange piece of plastic"... an inexpensive plastic tricycle that had special "spin out" brakes on the rear wheels. I had a Big Wheel as a kid, I imagine most of the people in my age cohort in the states had one. It was a pretty sweet ride, all told.

Today, while walking home from running errands, I passed by the local school and saw a couple of pre-adolescents riding some sweet-looking big "Big Wheels". These things had adjustable seats, so they looked like an adult could possibly ride one. I asked their mom where she had gotten these badass machines, and she told me that Toys-R-Us has them on sale.

Poking around the intert00bz, I discovered that there are high end adult "Big Wheels". Who knew? I imagine it would be impractical to commute to work using one of these- the temptation to continually "spin out" would slow one's progress down. Still, watching the kids doing donuts on the basketball court had me pondering a bout of arrested development.

A War on Christmas Carol

With apologies to Shane and Kirsty:

It was Christmas Eve, babe, at the Nat Rev,
A gauche man said to me, "That's central to my point."
And then he sang a song, a turgid tune by Rush.
I turned my face away, that boy just won't hush..
Got on the gravy train, no need to use my brain.
I have a feeling, that I will start to spew.
So happy Christmas, you godless heathens.
I can see better times, when I can jail you!

They've got fake wars on things, they have purity rings,
They've got teabagger rallies where Lloyd Marcus sings.
When I first lost my mind and became a wingnut,
I became obsessed by gay sex in the butt.
You were mad, you were nutty, we called MIss Fluke slutty,
When Ted Nugent was playing, the crowd howled for blood.
Obama was winning, the gays were all sinning.
We wrote for the Corner, and shilled for the right.

The checks that we lined our pockets with were coming from the Kochs,
And the comment threads were full of racist jokes!

The War on Merry

First of all, here's wishing a happy Christmas to all of my readers. I hope you had a good day with your loved ones. My Christmas was pretty 'meh', but I specifically "took one on the chin" so my co-workers could enjoy their holiday and worked an overnight double. It was a quiet night, and I got to spend time with mah preshus kittehs.

Anyway, contemplating the past month, I came to the conclusion in the quiet moments that the people who claim that there is a war on Christmas have successfully waged a war on "merry". The generic greeting "Happy Holidays" is inclusive- not only does it acknowledge that ours is a pluralistic society composed of adherents to many religions, it also encompasses a holiday season that ranges from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day (or Orthodox Christmas, if it falls after New Year's Day). The insistence that only one holiday be celebrated signals to members of minority faiths, or no faith of all, that their status is second-class. The humorless prigs (yeah, even when they claim they're joking, they look dour and angry) who are preoccupied with the fake war on Christmas are anything but merry.

Religious Christians have adopted the slogan "Jesus is the Reason for the Season". I'm going to ad that "Jesus of Cool Makes a Good Yule". In other words, Nick Lowe has released a really great Christmas song, compete with a video reminiscent of an animated Christmas special:





As a guy who had weather related travel complications earlier this month, I immediately loved the song. I could listen to it a second time, so here's a live performance by Mr Lowe:





Remember that the "merry" is just as important as the "Christmas". Perhaps the question that people need to ask these days is "What would Nick Lowe do?"

Improvised Fish Thing

It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the workplace! One of my co-workers has a second job as the manager of the clubhouse for a fraternal organization, and he has to work his second job because a client rented out the hall for a big party. Another co-worker has a couple of kids at home, and wanted to spend Christmas morning with them. I started my work-stint at 4PM Christmas Eve and will be working straight through to 8AM Christmas morning. I don't mind, everything will be quiet, and I'll be able to go out drinking on St Stephen's Day. Yeah, I've got this thing figured out.

There's one nod to tradition that I figured I'd try to make on this Christmas Eve, and that's the Fish Thing, more properly known in the NY Metro Area as The Feast of the Seven Fishes. On my way to work, I stopped at the local grocery store and picked up some of the frutti di mare, specifically four types of fish and three types of molluscs:

The "cooking" facilities on the job are pretty slim- I had access to a knife, a plate, and a microwave. I was somehow able to cook some orzo by nuking several coffee cups of water and continually soaking the orzo in changes of boiling water. Miraculously, I was able to achieve a perfect al dente texture. I then tossed the orzo with some diced red onion, hot peppers grown by a co-worker, sundried tomatoes, garlic, and anchovies. I used this pasta as the bed on which to serve small portions of the tinned seafood:

On the bottom left is a portion of smoked scallops served on a sliced baguette, while a codfish filet sits at the six o'clock position followed by (going counterclockwise) calamari in its ink, octopus in olive oil, fish "steaks" with hot peppers in oil, and fish "steaks" in hot sauce.

The meal came together extremely well for a hastily improvised, no-equipment effort. In some ways, cobbling together this dish was a process similar to the purported origins of pasta alla puttanesca, a dish often hastily assembled from canned ingredients. Cooking is an endeavor in which technique often trumps fancy ingredients- all of the fancy Himalayan pink salt in the world can't make up for ham-fistedness in the kitchen.

Buon Natale, amici!