Category: Life

Don’t Microwave Lettuce

I got a sandwich from Quizno’s and it seemed strangely cold, as though the toasting process had been completely skipped. So I decided to microwave it for a few seconds just to give it some heat. This was something of a mistake, as lettuce does not respond well to microwaving. It gets limp and chewy. Bleah. I share this with you in hopes that you might avoid my fate.

In other news, I’ve discovered that I may have to re-watch all the movies in my collection, as my new Surround Sound system and widescreen TV make watching movies a completely new experience. I’m seeing new things in the background, seeing more details up close, and hearing more layers of dialogue. I watched Almost Famous last night (technically, Untitled, The Bootleg Cut) and found so much more in the film. My favorite piece of newly discovered dialogue was towards the ends where Jason Lee says “I sound like a dick!” and Mark Kozelek mutters “you are a dick.”

And speaking of the buyer’s market on eBay a couple posts back, I found an original theatrical poster for Kicking and Screaming for just $10.

Thoughts on Garage Sales

I have a lot of stuff. It’s dangerous enough being the kind of person who hangs on to random items because of an emotional attachment, but I’m also the sort of person who constantly wonders about what an item’s future value might be. Consequently I have a lot of baseball cards, toys, comic books and obscure CDs.

In a post-eBay world, what really becomes collectible and valuable anymore? It seems to me that, since the mid-80’s at least, Americans are more keenly aware than ever that the little things with which we decorate our world will have monetary value to others in the future. For example, the baseball card industry exploded in the late 1980’s as more people started to discover that big money was being paid for cards from the 50’s and 60’s – but the thing that made those cards valuable was their scarcity, and they were scarce because few people thought they were worth saving. These days, however, fewer people are throwing anything out. So what’s rare anymore? What toy, card, or comic could ever become the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card?

The temptation to keep an item simply because it might be worth something to someone else is a maddening game. I have rare CD singles by completely obscure acts…maybe there’s an obsessive fan out there somewhere who’d pay money for it?

Fortunately, eBay helps connect me with that potential obsessive fan, but what eBay giveth, it also taketh away, as there is now such a glut of stuff in their database that everything tends to get devalued. Back in the day, I could have sold a Mark Grace rookie card at a local shop for a price based on my buyer’s demand (a buyer could only travel so far and visit so many shops) but with eBay, there are dozens of Mark Grace rookie cards to choose from, so the price drops. Ebay doesn’t increase a supply, but it does facilitate a greater degree of supply fluidity. Add to that a public giving increasing scrutiny to every little potentially collectible knickknack, and you’ve got a recipe for a buyer’s market. Good luck profiting from your massive stash of stuff when it turns out everyone else stashed theirs, too.

SXSW 2007

Finally have some free time to catch up after a long 5 days in Austin for my annual birthday trip to South by Southwest, the massive music shindig. Here’s the run down:

Tuesday: I discovered that my Wednesday flight was in fact NOT for 7pm but 7AM. How I made this error I have no idea, but my boss was kind enough to let me take an extra day off, so I hurried around to get everything taken care of and tried to sleep.

Wednesday: Meredith got up at 5:30AM to take me to the airport, bless her. I made it into Austin around 10AM and slept until 1PM. Tara and I went to End of an Ear music, where I bought a bunch of CDs. After that we stopped by South Austin Music, the one guitar store I had not visited in previous trips. This may have been a mistake. As I opened the door, there it was. An Ernie Ball Music Man Steve Morse model guitar. Dammit. Price tag: $999. I said $800, and it was done. It had to be done. I’ve been looking for that guitar for a long time. Afterward we wandered around downtown, checking out Architecture in Helsinki, Jefferson Starship, Lily Allen, and my all-time favorites, The Soft Lightes.

Thursday: We saw an in-store performance by Sparklehorse, then over to Antone’s for Blonde Redhead. After that…Pete Townshend. He was playing acoustic guitar at the “Attic Jam,” a gathering of random singer-songwriters. He did a few of his own tunes and played along with the others. As someone more accustomed to playing stadiums, he was clearly enjoying the chance to play to an intimate audience. We wrapped up the night at 1AM with a show by the gorgeous sights and sounds of The Bird and the Bee.

Friday: We just happened to be passing by the Yep Roc Records party where Little Rock’s own American Princes were playing. They opened the show, with John Doe following them. We ran down the street to catch the infectious sounds of The High Strung. After that I caught up with Rob McCorkindale of The Broken West. We’re not directly related, but we’re most likely distant cousins, given the dearth of McCorkindales on the planet. We have very similar eyes. Talking with Rob behind the stage, I saw Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould signing autographs and comedian Zach Galifianakis being generally hilarious. After that we went to the other side of the river to see Ozomatli, X Clan, and….Public Enemy. PE incited the crowd to chant “F*ck George Bush, F*ck Dick Cheney, F*ck Tony Blair, F*ck Condoleezza Rice.” The only thing more amazing than getting a crowd containing families with young children to do this, is that apparently there was no community uproar afterward. That’s Austin for you. After that we checked out Perry Farrell’s Satellite Party featuring guitar hero Nuno Bettencourt. It made me so happy to see a guitar solo being played in front of a large audience. Apparently the embargo is being lifted. Or maybe Perry just exists in his own world. After that, Badly Drawn Boy and the amazing, the earthshaking…The Good, the Bad, and the Queen.

Saturday: Dirty Projectors. We saw them last year at the same venue, but this time the crowd was twice the size. Good to see. Later that night: Kings of Leon, Spoon, and Iggy Pop. Not a bad birthday.

Sunday: Slept in! Ate breakfast burritos, stopped by Cheapo Discs and bought a couple more parting CDs before hopping on the plane back to Little Rock. By the way, fly Southwest. They have a sense of humor and free donuts, coffee, and juice at their gates.

Snowblind in New York

Rather than take the time to organize my thoughts. I figure why not just ramble without editing?

Mountains of dirty snow, Park Slope parents, the amazing 2 year old who loves guitar videos, enraptured by youtube. Bought him a ukulele. Moroccan restaurant in a Kenneth Cole clothing store, Ethiopian food served up in dollops on rubbery bread with holes like fresh pancakes. Driving in the bass player’s Subaru across the Brooklyn Bridge to the trombone player’s second gig playing Dixieland in Yankee land. Her previous gig was at a guitar store/coffee shop/theatre/music venue. Opting for a live jazz trio crammed into a basement bar with the soprano saxophone up in my pie, over the ticket I paid $15 to see a singalong episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Illegal knockff handbags in hidden Chinatown rooms. Dad called: money from grandfather pays for trip and more. Staten Island Ferry: deep cold so hard it’s warm. Pigeons in the water fountain. Cross-dressing homeless guy needed a cigarette. Gluten-free meals. Hangin at the near-empty sports bar because the hip, signless speakeasy writer restaurant was packed with well-dressed guys and a hockey game? Sitting in the vintage 1975 Yankee stadium bleachers that line the SNL studio 8H. Reading a teleprompter. 48th street guitar shops. Umanov’s on Bleecker. Should I move here? Times Square Virgin Megastore blasting. Protests. Ground Zero at dusk. Cold Atlantic winds. Indian food. Vegetable lasagna. Apparently I snore. Zamboni at Rockefeller.

Laguardia air traffic = missed Dallas connection despite planned 2 hour layover. Rental car. 4AM. Sleep.

Pictures.

Assortment

Random notes:

  1. The dusting of snow we got this morning came with some sunlight. That’s rare. As I was driving down Markham, the snowflakes falling on the golf course were illuminated, giving the effect of glitter falling from the sky. This was a uniquely beautiful meteorological phenomena; I can’t recall seeing anything quite like it.
  2. You know you’re old when you have a slight backache from playing Skee Ball. Meredith and I went to Chuck E. Cheese last night for Valentine’s Day. I played nothing bu Skee Ball. For a time, I was in the zone, with several 100,000 point shots. I then promptly left the zone. And now, to quote Dan from Sportst Night, “I’m down here with the rest of you.”
  3. DeLaine and I leave for NYC today. We’ll be back on Monday night. The reason for the journey is that I told her I’d take her on a trip if she stayed clean a year out of rehab. I gave her a list of cities and she chose NYC. And this was the only weekend she said she’d probably have free this year, with school and work. Given the weather in New York right now, I’m sure we’re going to regret her choice. We probably should have gone to California. Oh well. This should be interesting. Pray for us.

Putting the “Fun” in “Funeral”

Thanks everybody, for the calls, comments and text messages. I’m sorry if I didn’t reply. The weekend was long and tiring but much of it was actually enjoyable, insofar as a funeral can be enjoyable. We buried Grampa Bob in a warmup suit, because that’s all he ever wore these last 30 years. The service was non-traditional, featuring the songs “Opus One” by the Mills Brothers, “I’ll Be Seeing You” by Jimmy Durante and “Goodbye” by Julie London. We also had a bagpipe player before and after the service.

The weekend also represented probably the longest span of time I’ve spent with my relatives. Usually we’re in and out in a day during the holidays, but this kept all of us together for a good 2-3 days. Grampa Bob had six kids, and they are all fairly spectacular. None of them have, as far as I am aware, ever been involved in organized crime, chemical dependency, domestic abuse, pornography or politics[1]. We have our dysfunctions, to be sure, but nothing that would sustain more than a couple of Lifetime Television movies or ABC Afterschool Specials.

Dad, uncle Barry, cousin David and I all dug through the sizeable record collection at various points; I made off with a few dozen – mostly Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, etc. I also took a picture of my parents one year after their marriage and some century-old books: a well-worn collection of Robert Burns poems and a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

I had a lot of time to stare at the house; it’s the only house in my family to have seen my entire lifespan. It has also never had any kind of interior remodeling, so it remains frozen in all its avocado-colored, mid-60’s glory. The phone in the kitchen is a rotary with a long curly cord. The TVs live inside large wooden frames. The next time I make it up to Harrison, the house will probably be empty or sold.

For this funeral I was allowed some emotional distance, as I’ve never been very close to Grampa Bob. He was a prickly but lovable curmudgeon, but my grandmother Virginia (mom’s mom) is someone to whom I am much closer. She’s been fighting cancer for about a year now, and I imagine I will be repeating this whole process again at some point in the coming months. Maybe it will help me prepare.

1.) My father did run for office once in the late 70’s for his position as circuit judge but hey, back then everybody was experimenting. It was the 70’s.

Robert William McCorkindale

The first of three Robert William McCorkindales (the second being my father and the third being my brother) is currently residing in the Intensive Car Unit at North Arkansas Regional Medical Center following hip surgery, a subsequent embolism, and recent kidney problems. He is not expected to last very long. From what I saw he is in a great deal of pain and is beyond ready to leave. He was only semi-coherent when I saw him this afternoon; the only words I made out from him were “Oh God.”

One of the things I think I dislike most about hospitals is the inevitable feeling of helplessness that arises from watching a loved one suffer. Even worse is watching grandparents suffer, with the knowledge that death is a far more likely outcome than a return to health. All you can do is stand there, try to make conversation with your relatives, and maybe hold hands with your grandfather, who probably isn’t aware of your presence.

For dinner last night I went to my maternal grandmother’s house. She’s dying of lung cancer at 92, and has defied all expectations by getting up every day and not dying. She still has her wits about her and, at least in my opinion, gets better every time I see her. She has a sterling resilience, a strength she probably developed by taking care of her husband for about 30 years following his debilitating stroke.

Part of me envies my grandparents. They were here for most of the 20th century, the single greatest span of human advancement our species has ever witnessed. We went from learning to fly in 1903 to landing on the moon in 1969. From radio to TV to Internet. And my grandfather has made sure to leave behind plenty of McCorkindales (this is him seated at center, amid 15 of his progeny). He has 6 kids and 12 grandkids. He has outlived 3 wives, the first of which died in 1968.

Sadly, all we can do is wait. Prayers and good vibes appreciated. His coordinates are 36.23° North, 93.10° West.