In completion of my weekly creative challenge.

For Lindsay, who gave me these prompts:

Micky Dolenz, an avocado, and "you do and you'll clean it up."

  G
You fake it till you make it
G
You fake it till you’re there
C                    D
It’s like an avocado
G
You don’t know what’s in there

G
You’re really really green but
G
You’re really really good
C                       D                     G                                  
If you can just align the coulda should with the grain of the

A
Wood

                  C                      D                  G
Like Micky Dolenz you persisted till you could

The lie is well intended
The lie is made of gold
The liar can lie down with the lamb I am told
It’s just a funny story
It’s just a little fib
And you’ve been telling stories since the hour you crawled out of the

A
Crib

D                        Am
And even at the pearly gates
     D                           G
As your performance demonstrates
      C                D              G
It’s perfectly all right to ad-lib

You break it and you bought it
You do and you’ll clean it up
And if you start the drinking game you’re draining the cup

You have a penny, leave a penny
Leave it all behind
Cast off all your possessions and embrace the intended

Design

As you’re defying entropy
And we’re pretending not to see
The emperor’s shiny behind

I have to hand it to you
But I can’t reach that high
It was a noble effort
A remarkable try

You nearly told the truth once
You nearly sold the bridge
You had us in the desert
Hanging half off the grid

   C             D
A colony of artisans
        G                        D
Who couldn’t play the drums
          C                       D
We’re standing by the highway now
       G
And rapidly running out of

A
Thumbs

A broken tale of lightning strikes
For what it’s worth, it struck you twice
And finally you’re stricken

Dumb

I was in Wisconsin for 24 hours on Sunday into Monday-- Racine, to be exact.  My hotel was right on the bank of Lake Michigan, which is surprisingly blue... like Caribbean blue. 

Racine is like Wilmington in that it was probably a sad, falling-down place for decades until someone decided to throw a ton of money at it, and now it has a super-cute main drag, similar in vibe to Market Street in Wilmington, or maybe more specifically the Riverfront. Lots of shops, eateries, businesses, parking, people walking around, all that. And it's CUTE. 

Even th Milwaukee airport is adorable, mostly because of the people in it. Everyone is soooo friendly, inclusive, soft-spoken, quick to smile and say hello. Where the Philly airport (and every other airport) is LOUD with announcements, machinery, moving walkways, beeping carts, cops on Segways, yelling kids, and families whose default vocal conversation volume is SCREAMING, it's easy to get numb to the noise.  But Milwaukee is quiet. 

Always Get a Shoe Shine

I forget where I read it, but someone said in their list of life tips to "Always get a shoe shine by the old guy in the airport."

I may have only gotten two or three shoe shines in my life, and they were awesome, and my shoes appreciated it.   Two weeks ago I wanted to wear my ancient Doc Martens to work and Matt offered to shine them up, and I took him up on it. They look great! What a difference!  I bought those 10-eye black Doc boots from Buffalo Exchange (used!) in 1996 or so... so they're at least 21 years old. (My boots can drink!) After Matt got done shining them up, they look like new damn boots! I can't believe it!  I really need new soles though-- they are worn flat to the point where they are slippery and absolutely unwearable in the wintertime. 

ANYWAY, this post is not about my Doc Martens though, but instead about me getting a shoe shine in the Milwaukee airport right after I landed, shining a totally different pair of boots. My flight landed around 1pm, and it was gonna be about a 30 minute drive to Racine and I figured there was a good chance my hotel room wouldn't be ready for me by the time I showed up at 1:30, so I tried to take my time. As I wandered through the almost empty airport, I saw a shoeshine guy on the out-side of security... which seemed strange, but OK.  The shoeshine guy had a TV in his booth and he was watching the game, and I felt bad for interrupting him, but he invited me in.  As soon as he invited me in, I could tell something was slightly off... but I didn't care. He cheerfully and eagerly invited me in, and I was gonna stay. 

The old guy, probably in his 60s, looked much older. He was very shaky, couldn't speak clearly... but he managed to say that he had just had a stroke and was just coming back to work. In a moment, his son appeared and took over the reins, somewhat embarrassed for his dad. Once I assured the son that I was comfy with Dad and was happy to be there, the three of us had a great time. We talked about the stroke a little bit, and how Dad couldn't bear to stay cooped up in the nursing home with "people with no purpose no more."  He was a shoe-shiner, and he took his craft seriously... it was his life's work. Even though he couldn't wield the tools as adeptly anymore, his son helped out when he needed to, and they managed to give me a great freakin' shoe-shine in 30 minutes... and a great chat. We talked about traveling, weather, the 24-hours news cycle and how it's killing the country, and food that is unique to this side of Wisconsin. 

After 30 minutes of intensive work, they charged me $12 for the shoe-shine, and I gave them $40. 

My boots look damn fiiiiine, and my heart feels good, too. 

Swingin'...

In other news entirely, my favorite lunch spot in Philly is 30th Street Station, outside on the swings.  I get a cup of coffee and a bagel and/or a sammich/salad from one of the many shoppes inside, and plop my arse on a swing and all is right with the world.

They have two different types of swings-- one where your feet can touch the ground, and ones that are more like giant recliners where your legs are totally off the ground. So today there were people sitting on the big recliner swings, but their swing had stopped swinging... and since their feet can't touch the ground, they have no way to swing again. So as I walked by them, I gave them each a push and they both smiled and laughed. It made my day. :-)

Shut up and post this, Jill

Anyway, I think I'm just gonna post this, otherwise I'll just drag it out, adding letters but saying nothing. So... post!

Took a 1-hr bike ride today. I feel like myself again.

A tiny ditty in completion of my weekly creative challenge. It's very short and trivial in structure but I think it's a good song that would not be enhanced by further elaboration.

Written in response to prompts from my dear old friend Anne Galvin:

"Schrodinger, a cat, 'how'd that work out for ya?'"

Strictly speaking, I cheated a little on the character, but hey, representation matters.

G Dm Am7

I went to a lecture by Schroedinger’s cat
And she said
History is written by the lucky and the fat
My sisters, half my sisters, statistically anyway half, they’ll tell you
Don’t worry
This is fine

And the other half… (silent verse)

And this, yes this my kittens
(And her gaze became imploring)
Is the reason I never ask:

“How’d that work out for ya?”

People get confused. They think the monster is the man...

In fulfillment of my creative challenge for the week. And by the bye: it's Thursday everyone. Where's your installment?

People get confused
They think the monster is the man
They think the man is a scientist
But he's really just a hobbyist

And the monster is confused
He never really thought it'd come to this
Just a scare, just a little kiss
Just a clever ruse

But they made him the mayor of this fucked up town
And the cops want to drive him around
And I hear a giant sucking sound

Oh my Frankenstein
You used to be a friend of mine
We had dinner parties all the time

Until the villagers came and took you away
And dressed you in a cape
And crowned you king

You thought it would be fun
But then you stepped on everyone
And the bastards cheered you on
It's about time someone got something done

I don't understand
This is not the second life we planned
This is not the second life we planned
This is not the second life we planned
This is not the second life... we... planned...
Oh my Frankenstein

The ideas that I put into your mind

Of course, it's also probable that my being super crazy UNproductive makes the contrast that much clearer.

That wasn't meant as a put down. At least not one aimed at all of you.

On the plus side, your posts about writing and productivity are very motivating. I need to be making more. I need to be completing more.

At the end of the day, I think that's the biggest problem for me. I finish so very few of my projects. I pick nits endlessly, lose my motivation somewhere along the way because I've grown bored with the project in question (and because I have ideas for three new projects), and then I drop it in favor of the project du jour.

It's a bad cycle, and I do it ALL the time.

The only reason that I'm still clinging to my book idea with bloody fingertips is because I've got so much invested in the character over so many years.

Frustration point: I know what the solution is. I've heard it countless times on countless podcasts about writing: Just make slow and steady progress to spit out that first version of the book. If that's one sentence a day, that's fine. It's progress, and it's measurable. And you need to know, in advance, that it's going to suck. Writing is REwriting and all that.

What's more, I've learned that I actually enjoy revising old writing. I never finished my one attempt at NaNoWriMo, but I find myself dropping into the book and editing a chapter here and there occasionally. For no real reason - it's not like I'm planning to ever let it see the light of day.

And Inktober? Yeah, I'm way behind there too.

I have no excuse. All of you have WAY more going on in your lives and you're making progress while I do the equivalent of clicking through cable channels.

Okay, that's enough self flagellation. It doesn't accomplish much. I have to get to work while there's still daylight, but tonight, I need to get some work done.

What does this "2" on the list of posts in my "network" mean? How do I get rid of it?

I've gone down and loaded all the posts that this page will let me post, but the "2" doesn't clear away.

I have a few things to talk about, but it's 2am (now 5:30am) and I'm now too tired... so I'm just going to leave videos of two songs from the Sunnyvale / Hot Breakfast!  house concert that happened in August in north Jersey.  (Huge thanks to Anthony Stramaglia for shooting and posting these!)

This first song ("A Thing to Get Through") is brand-new, and this recording was not only the song's very first "public" performance, it was also perhaps maybe only the 5th or 6th time we'd actually played/sung it straight through... Matt and I had learned it quite literally the night before.  It was a safe and friendly crowd, so I wasn't worried about making a mistake; I was more worried about crying in the middle of the song. (You can hear me start to get choked up a few times; you can just hear things tighten up and me make slight vocal adjustments to compensate.  Or maybe you don't hear it since I didn't use a mic, and/or maube you're not that anal about vocal mechanisms. Whatevz.  Anyway, getting choked up is normal and often happens when you lose a friend and you sing a song about the loss to a room full of people who loved him.)  Andrew (the songwriter and piano player) was Paul's (the friend who died) best friend, and they were VERY tight, and kept up their friendship via email since they lived on opposite coasts (Paul in north Jersey and Andrew lived in Portland, OR).  They are both gifted writers, and I secretly pray those letters/emails get published some day.  Heavy philosophy, social criticism, music analysis and theory, knowing thyself, etc.  

Anyway, the lyrics are below the video.

Below that is Video #2 for an old song ("The Job Song" a.k.a. "Get a Real Job") by our old band The Evelyn Situation. This song was written in 1992 for two women's voices and piano and guitar as an evil polka, and has been re-arranged over the years for 2 voices/one kazoo/two guitars/piano; then for one vocalist (me!) plus a 17 piece big band (the Industrial Jazz Group), all the way to this current stripped-down version of one voice, one piano (below).  The video for The Job Song is below the first one, and the lyrics (which are wonderfully clever) are below it.  (and yes, I was super-enunciatey. I didn't have a mic and I wanted to make sure everyone understood the words. I'd rather err on the side of over-pronouncey than mumbly. I hate when I can't understand a singer.)

A Thing to Get Through - - words and music by Andrew Durkin. (For Paul.)

Flying in to Jersey 
With the winter on my mind
I got angry at a stewardess 
Who was trying to be kind
My past was up ahead, and my future far behind
mm-mmm, mm-mmm, mm-mmm

If you had a fortune
Would you have been who you wanted to be
If you had a lifetime
Would you have used it to finally get free
If you had a second chance
Could you do now what you didn’t do
Or was life just a thing to get through

Some came from the beginning 
And some came from the end
Some I hadn’t seen forever
And some I might never see again
Help me, Jesus—is this anyway to treat a friend
mm-mmm, mm-mmm, mm-mmm

If you had a fortune
Would you have been who you wanted to be
If you had a lifetime
Would you have used it to finally get free
If you had a second chance
Could you do now what you didn’t do
Or was life just a thing to get through

Maybe you are laughing
From your attic in the sky
Maybe you’re that piece of clay
That finally learned to fly
Do you think we’ll ever know
What happens when we die
mm-mmm, mm-mmm, mm-mmm

The Job Song (words and music by Andrew Durkin)

This guy with horns said, "There's a cure for your financial state: don't do the thing you love, cause good things come to those who hate. I'm a powerful man, and though I think you're a slob, if you will flatter me, I'll get you a real job."

"Give up your dreams," he said, "Yes, that's the way to have it all. Look at your cousin Neil: he's young, he's rich (he's going bald). He may be dead in a decade or two, but he drives a porsche, and yes, you can drive one, too. Why don't you get a real job?"

Having just finished school, I'd never met his type before. "You're very kind," I said, "And yes, you're right, I'm very poor. But I don't see how your scheme could help me, And so I wonder if you might not tell me more. Why should I get a real job?"

"Well, don't you want to be like the people on TV? So bored and jaded and doing something that you have always hated? Just give in! How could it be a sin? The big machine must keep on rolling on... Why don't you get a real job?

For I have here in store each numbered casket for your generation: I've been waiting with anticipation! Truth, you'll find, is on the dotted line, so be a good sport. That's what life is for!"

Anyway. 

I have to tell y'all about the new consulting gig and Matt's music directing a show and me thinking about joining a christmas carol troupe for this holiday season to make a few bucks singing in malls, but that'll have to wait until the next post of One Post Wonder.

Hello, world.

We (me, Matt, Kevin Niemi, and Joe Trainor) went to go see Yes (well, one of the two groups currently touring as Yes... the better one, in my opinion), and HOLY CRAP were they absolutely amazing. It was a five-piece band, and it featured an absolutely flawless (FLAWLESS!!) Jon Anderson on soaring, original-key, perfectly smooth and dead-accurate how-the-hell-is-he-73-years-old vocals, percussion, "acoustic guitar" (though his fingering rarely changed and we don't think it was actually plugged into anything) and celtic harp; Trevor Rabin on freakin' fantastic guitar, and the sparkly-caped Rick ZOMG Clearly No Arthritis Wakeman on keys and keytar. Since they had Trevor Rabin, the show had a bunch of songs off of 90125 and even "Rhythm of Love" off of Big Generator (and we all agreed that was the most we ever liked that song). The show was in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center, and it was so damn civilized! The crowd (with the exception of the one guy yelling "YES!!!") was super-enthusiastic but so respectful-- people didn't "woo" during quiet parts, and they clapped for good solos... and the Kimmel Center staff made you wait until between songs to re-enter the theater if you left to pee. (Of course, at a Yes show that could be 20 mins...) It was AMAZING and we are all still buzzing about it.

Little did we know a few hours later some fuckstick would be shooting a zillion people at a concert in Vegas. I can't wrap my head around it; I really can't.  I try, and I fail. I just can't make sense of this year. Whenever I see the phrase "President Trump" written, it seems like an '80s Bloom County joke where Opus, Steve Dallas and Milo are making fun of the 21st Century. 

Speaking of the 21st Century, we went to go see Blade Runner (the 1982 version obviously, but the Directors Cut, without the voiceover); Matt had never seen it before, and it'd been just under a decade since I'd seen it (though I was so tired during that screening that I slept through most of it). I really enjoyed it this time around. It was playing at Theatre N, which is a cute little auditorium in the Nemours building in downtown Wilmington. ​We ran into a zillion people there who seemed genuinely happy to bump into us, and it felt nice to feel liked. (Whatcha think? Is Deckert a Replicant or not?  Discuss.)

Get off my lawn

​​​​​​In other news entirely, I've decided there are some 21st Century things I just don't give a shit about, and I don't really want to learn about them or invite them into my life. The list (which is sure to expand) currently includes:

Any smart-home technology. My fridge does not need a fucking IP address. Neither do my lightswitches, lightbulbs, garage door openers, thermostat, etc. If I wanna turn a light on, I'll friggin' turn on the switch, thanks.  I trust GE to make a lightbulb; I don't trust them to have the expertise to lock down their products with the kind of internet security anything with an IP address needs today. And cars sure-as-fuck don't need wifi.  (Read the short article, and then scroll down for the related video from 2013 of a Jeep getting hacked while driving down the highway.)

Any voice-activated assistant, be it Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, etc. Screw you, you can't listen in. If I need to order more Luna bars, I'll fucking click three things on my phone. 

Facebook Messenger. Fuck you, I will never, ever install it. Ever. You already know how I feel about Facebook. I am not gonna get swept up in its bullshit, whether it's positive or negative bullshit. It's a timesuck, and I already suck at time. Besides, I'm pissed off enough about Trump and life's injustices without Facebook. (And for the love of god, please stop thinking/worrying I'm judging anyone who is on (or even loves) Facebook. I am not judging. I'm happy you've found something you dig. You do you, I'll do me. Done.)

Spotify. Fuck you, I don't give a shit. If I wanna listen to music, I'll fucking turn on my iPod, or Sirius, or WXPN. I haven't used Spotify and I don't care to try it. It bones musicians so badly that I can't possibly contribute to it. And even if it treated musicians fairly, I still wouldn't be interested because I'm lazy and don't like new things, SO THERE. 

That new-fangled Windows XP. (I kid, I kid.)

​​​​In still other news...

Matt and I have gift certificates to sensory-deprivation float-pods in West Chester. This will either be the best most awesome thing or the absolute worst possible thing for someone with crippling anxiety, but either way we're eager to give it a whirl. We'll letcha know how it goes. 

And in yet still other news...

Work is FINALLY starting to pick up. Hey, it's only October, right?  I'll be at UPenn every Friday morning between now and October 2018, and the occasional Wednesday, too. Yay. Money. This Friday I'll be there all day. If you work near Penn, maybe we could get lunch every once in awhile? 

OK, that's enough outta me.