Ths will be my last blog entry until Januaray. Kai and Maria left yesterday for Denver, and I’m following them tomorrow. We’ll be staying with her folks for the holidays. I’m looking forward to skiing again for the first time in at least 10 years! I think we’ll end up having to rent a freight truck to bring back all the presents they’ll give Kai 
My reading material for the flight is Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, which is currently being adapted into a film. This will be the 8th story of his that has been made into a movie (I believe the list should include a 9th - it’s my guess that The Truman Show was “inspired by” Time Out of Joint). The movie adaptations generally steal the concepts of his stories and use them as hooks, and then just layer standard action/thriller storylines on top. But I’m not a purist - most of them have been enjoyable films, even if they’re not faithful to the source material - and it’s good to see my favorite author getting some recognition. A Scanner Darkly is being hyped as faithful to the book, so I’m particularly intrigued to see how it turns out (after I finish the book, of course!).
A sampling of recent Kai moments:
- Using his fingers to form the shape of a triangle, Kai declared: “triangles are just like squares, Daddy, only pointier.”
- In a particularly affectionate moment, he said, “I love you Mommy, I love you Daddy, …and I love myself.” No self-esteem problems here.
- There’s a pizza shop down the street from our house that Kai and I go to fairly regularly. It’s run by a couple of burly Italian guys. We went the other night, and Kai was excited, so we were running down the sidewalk. He tripped and fell, and scraped his hands, but he wasn’t bleeding. But he screamed and cried as if he had broken both his legs. So I carried him the rest of the way to the pizza shop. When we got to the door, he howled through his tears, “Daddy, don’t let the guys see me like this!” He’s 3 years old and already worried about his macho image. I didn’t wait long though, since it was cold out. So he was still crying when we stepped in, but the guys weren’t around. Instead there was a high school girl behind the counter. Realizing this, Kai then felt free to continue bawling.
- Kai is very affectionate with his friends at school. The kids are usually outside playing when we pick him up, and he usually goes aorund and hugs his friends good-bye before leaving. They seem to think it’s a bit strange, but they don’t seem to mind.
- He’s supposed to nap with the other kids at school, but recently he’s decided not to nap anymore. But he’s good and lays down quietly. However, his eyes are open, and he’ll notice something like a toy block tower, and he’ll notice the blocks aren’t lined up perfectly. So he’ll say, “Miss Dana, can I straighten out the block tower?” She’ll say yes, he’ll get up, line up the blocks perfectly, then lay back down. Then he’ll notice all the kids’ shoes aren’t lined up perfectly…and repeat. (He gets that from me, by the way). Luckily, come January, nap time will be eliminated.
I want to write about what is relevant to me, what I can see in our landscape. The music brings this to mind anyway. We live in a rural area of England where the presence of the past is strong. Here, like in many parts of Italy, the past and the present exist side by side. I like my lyrics to drift backwards and forwards through time.
- Simon Jones, And Also The Trees singer and songwriter
Sometime during my first year of college (1988), I found the first And Also The Trees album, Virus Meadow, in a used record bin. I looked over the lyrics sheet and was dazzled by the strange, dreamlike imagery, so I paid a couple bucks for it and gave it a spin. I’ve been a fan ever since.
The song I picked for this week is from the 1998 album Silver Soul (the band has recently released another album, but I haven’t heard it yet). The lyrics of And Also The Trees songs are sometimes sung, and sometimes - like in this week’s song - delivered in a spoken word style. What makes this song for me is the last half, where the tempo quickens, a rhythm guitar is suddenly introduced, and the fragmentary, dreamlike narrative of the lyrics grab your attention:
I take a draught of beer from a clouded glass and look around the room:
Pawschien talking with brothers…
The men have self-made tatooed grids on their forearms
in which there are sanskrit letters.
They tell me all that they know is the obvious,
and that if I stay with them, maybe I will learn it, too.
Suede-head girls with grey eyes and clear skin,
One has a crescent scar on her cheekbone,
She looks at me with an air of smiling anticipation,
as though she’s expecting me to recognise her at any second.
Something turns inside me like a tickling thirst…
Others are watching me, too, same expression,
Then look away, laughing, shaking heads…
It’s okay, you’ll remember.
Back in the dark streets
the scent of the human night seems to hold me,
Steps muted by onion skins.
Old women sleep curled in the roots of houses,
coiled around bales and bundles of fresh herbs and babies.
Walking the wooden tunnels out of town,
All I can think is - remember your way back here -
As in the darkness, all has vanished.
Remember your way back here.
Not many bands can hold my attention year after year. But these guys have because their sound has matured and changed with each album. A fan wrote up a good summary of the phases they’ve gone through:
I think their musical career can be divided in some phases; a first one, soaked with quite typical (but very original at the time) sonorities of the cold-wave post-punk period. Sharp but never aggressive guitars, lots of chorus, delays and reverbs, powerful rhythms…The second phase of their career is a very long trip backwards into the centuries; the look (riding-boots, ruffle-shirts, vests, cut pants, scarves and long coats) and the sound both change. Keats, Byron and Shelley are awakened from their long sleep…The guitars turn into harpsichords…In 1992 Green Is The Sea is released; it is a new phase, a new musical change for the band…Within the album is placed a big piano; its chords are the basis for every song…[The 1996 album] Angelfish, a brand new musical path. Simon tells us: “Justin found this 50’s [American] guitar sound and somehow we then continued in this direction.”…Angelfish takes the listener through a long deserted street across endless open spaces; a big convertible car across the United States, town after town, leaving behind rocky mountains, dry deserts, green flatlands, muddy rivers, chaotic metropolis’ and quiet provincial towns, bars flooded with cheap beer.
Here’s the band’s official site.
I recently came across this photograph from the Cassini spacecraft. Click on it for the full-size version. And see the explanation of exactly what it is you’re looking at. If I understood it correctly, the blue area is Saturn’s northern hemisphere, and off in the distance is the moon Mimas. The dark lines are caused by shadows from Saturn’s B ring. The really bright patch near Mimas is light streaming through the Cassini Division. The tan lines across the bottom are the actual A and F rings, which are further out than the B ring (leave it to astronomers to not put them in alphabetical order).
The space photography I’m used to seeing tends to be grainy. I was amazed by the vividness of this picture.
An interesting bit of trivia is the scale of the image: 14 miles per pixel.
Another bit of related autobiographical trivia: In 1999 I was hired as a webmaster at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA, but the position was cut for budgetary reasons before I even started. It wouldn’t have paid well, but it would’ve been a fantastic experience.
I’m sure that those of you who know me well are astounded and amazed that I didn’t debut the “Song of the Week” on my blog with a Big Country song. And that I even resisted the urge for a second week. But I can resist it no longer.
This week I have for you a song that has been one of my favorites since high school: The Sailor. It is the last song on the third Big Country album, The Seer. It meant enough to me that I even sang the first half of it at my wedding reception (the first and probably last time I’ll ever sing in public).
When I started my toppa.com site, back in 1996, one of the first things I did was put up some Big Country pages (fan sites were a novelty then). I also managed the Big Country email discussion list for a few years. I no longer update my Big Country pages, but I recommend looking at the first page if you want to get a sense of why I like this band so much. At that time there were a few other fan sites as well, and we actually ended up in an email fight with Ian Grant, the band’s manager. He was threatening to go after us for copyright infringement for using the band’s logo, etc. He thought the only Big Country web site should be the official one, which of course didn’t exist yet (and wasn’t finally created until, I think, 2000). We ultimately just ignored him and he left us alone. He simply didn’t get the web at all - instead of realizing the potential for free marketing from enthusiastic fans, he just wanted us to take our sites down. The sad thing is, we probably would have done anything he wanted, except that.
