Could tonight get any worse?

Some of my friends and family tend toward the dramatic. Almost three years ago one of them posted on Facebook, "Could tonight get any worse?" While I realized their pain was real, I was able to look more at the forest than the saplings.

Yes. You could wake up in a tub of ice to find that your kidneys were intact but someone had tattooed "I am da BOMB" on your belly in highly reflective paint. You would be arrested any time you tried to fly.

Yes. You could wake up in a tub of ice to find that your kidneys were intact but someone had replaced your skeletal system with cheap, imitation Silly Putty[tm] (adding insult to injury).

Yes. You could wake up in a tub of ice to find that your kidneys were intact but someone had replaced your right foot with a second left foot, making dancing awkward.

Yes. You could wake up in a tub of ice.

It could pretty much always be worse.

But it almost never is.

Made in Japan in 1972 (in Texas (Today))

I'm not usually a music critic (though I played one in college for the Georgia Tech "Technique"). I would much rather find something I like and simply listen to it and ignore what I don't like. But every once in a while circumstances lead me to listen critically. Today you are blessed or cursed (depending on your viewpoint) with the results of such a confluence of events. (I have now met my quota of big words for this blog.)

Deep Purple's Made in Japan was released in the US a year after Machine Head provided them a breakthrough hit with the much played and much maligned "Smoke on the Water". By all accounts at the time the band was appalled that this song was their biggest hit. I always attributed Blackmore's less than stellar treatment of it on Made in Japan to this. Some sources now insist that Ritchie defended the song. I just know the guitar on this live version doesn't inspire me the way the album version does, and there are places he's much sloppier than anywhere else on this record. That said, I still love this version.

There are a couple of other things that keep this from being the perfect live album. The drum solo in "The Mule" goes on way too long. Gillan's vocals are a bit off in places on "Space Trucking" but the sheer energy helps make up for that.

Speaking of "Space Trucking" it's the longest song on an album drenched in ten minute songs, clocking in at just under twenty minutes, wandering between the roots of speed metal, thrash, and ... cello? I don't know how Blackmore got the cello sound, but it's brilliant.

I do have two more complaints. They're rather modern and absurd, but here they are:

• It should be longer (it was already a fairly long, double album).
• I really wish for video (apparently there isn't any).

As usual these guys play together as a phenomenal band, not just a bunch of great musicians. There are only a handful of bands I really kick myself for not seeing back in the day. These guys are at the top of the list for me, even ahead of Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, and the Rolling Stones.

I don't know that I could pick a favorite track here. I suppose "Child in Time" and "Lazy" might have a slight edge. I do know this is one of my top ten live album picks. I can't narrow it down much more than that because I really suck at lists. It's right up there near Blue Oyster Cult's On Your Feet or On Your Knees and the Allman Brothers' Live at Fillmore East. That means it's in my top twenty album picks overall (probably still in the top ten as I tend to favor live albums).

What is/are one/some of your favorite live albums, and why?

Riffing on the Past That Wasn't There

You're at a vow renewal where your spouse knows the bride, but you know no one other than a couple of people sitting on the bride's side. Well, and your spouse. At the reception a videographer asks if you have anything you'd like to say to the bride and groom.

Your spouse, knowing the bride and being a really great person, comes up with something sweet and adds a cool blessing. It's your turn.

The obvious thing- at least if you are me- is to just be honest:

"Hey, I don't know either one of you, but that was a great wedding. Thanks for inviting us, and thanks especially for the fajitas and cake!"

On the plus side it's honest. On the minus side it comes off rather cynically.

But if you're me then your creative side takes over; you riff and create a memory. After adding a little bit of a blessing, you gaze off into the painful, invented past, and you speak:

"I think my favorite memory of you two is the time we went zip lining. I fell and broke my leg. I waited and waited for you to come help but it was three days before anyone showed up; I almost died. Then I found out you two were so in love that you suddenly had to have a second honeymoon. I couldn't fault you for that. Y'all rock."

P.S. This is all true. Welcome to my life.

Conspiracy Theory #17: Ugly Cars and Stupid Names

It has been clear for years that the bean counters in the US auto industry successfully banished all the better stylists and brought in surplus Soviet designers who had been locked away in prison because their designs were marginally less boring and ugly than what the party leaders wanted.

While the bean counters did plenty of damage elsewhere, boring cars didn't help flagging sales at all. Some of these cars made me want to claw my eyeballs out. The recent spate of muscle cars shows at least a partial reversal of this trend.

Since the early 1970s, the Mustang just got more and more boring. Someone screwed up in the early 1990s and made one that was almost cool looking, Ford sort of fumbled forward, gradually doing a better job, finally unveiling the current herd of really nice looking Mustangs. These in turn got a response from Chevy and Dodge, who brought out gorgeous Camaros, Chargers, and Challengers. The new Shelby Mustang (despite the fact that Carroll Shelby is dead) looks like it should be a thing of beauty, something car lovers might drool over.

Only time will tell whether this trend will spread throughout the industry.

In related news, who comes up with new car names? There are a lot of really bad or just silly car names out there, but the US Big Three aren't as bad as some of the other companies. The award for Worst Name of 2014 has to go to Hyundai for...

(drum roll, please!)

the IQ.

Seriously. I can only assume this is their take on the SMART Car (a dismal failure in these parts). All I can think of is Thor looking at someone trying to get him into this car.

"Your IQ. It's so... tiny."

And then Hulk accidentally stepped on it because it was so small he didn't see it.

"Look, brother!" Loki laughed. "Someone had a smaller IQ than the beast!"

Hulk stepped on Loki next but not by accident. "Puny god. Puny IQ."

Thanksgiving Letter for my Nuclear Family

I'm a family kinda guy. So every once in a while, I get all mushy and write a serious letter to my friends on the net about some sugary, Disneyesque kinda thang that happens at a family get together. This is one of those sentimental, nuclear family kinda thangs.

---

To my fiends (but not my enemas):

Just thought I'd share my Thanksgiving Day with you.

It started by me being hit by a quark just as I was getting out of bed. A large, very green, and not-too-theoretical one. No strings attached, as far as I could tell. It had to happen on a holiday, when I'm off work anyway, right?

It hit me right in the solar plexus, breaking several ribs and tearing some ligaments. So, instead of spending the day with my family, I was in the Emergency Room of the Georgia Tech Particle Physics Lab.

I was on the phone about noon with my brother Dave (# 381), who said that nearly everyone said to say hi. I should tell you we are the quintessential nuclear family. There were supposed to be 3 more people here this year than last year (235 by count), as we had 3 new additions to the family. I was the only one not making it.

As a PhD probed my chest cavity with a helium-filled sphere, and a masters-level co-ed stopped my bleeding, Dave described the scene. He said that the more people got there, the livelier things got. Everyone seemed to just glow. The place had gotten so hot with all the family there, that even with the windows open and the whole house fan on, sucking 35 degree air through, the walls were starting to discolor.

I heard a kid in the background scream, "Aunt Bertha's finally here!" Dave said, "Well, that's everyone but you..." I started to reply, when I heard Aunt Bertha's laugh drift through the phone. I could easily visualize the scene - all of them crammed in the giant basement we had finished as 1 big room just for this occasion, all my family, including surviving cousins, nephews, etc - anyone left from the old days in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Alamogordo - the Curies, the Raydons, the Pleughtohniums. The phone started to buzz, and I heard hollering and apparent pandemonium. The only phrase I could make out was Dad yelling something that sounded like "critical mass", when with a loud noise, the phone went dead.

Every light in the building went out. A couple of seconds later, the building felt like it was in an earthquake. Right after that, the sound of a terrific explosion shook us again. One of the attending EEs ran outside to look, and came running back in a moment later, describing a mushroom cloud off to the northwest. I alone knew the exact location.

Later I found out it was a small blast, taking out only 3 blocks, although a somewhat larger area still glows softly at night. I will visit there as soon as I am able, to leave some flowers, if they survive the hike in.

The co-ed with the tourniquet around my heart touched my face gently and asked, "What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

"Because I'll never get to taste the new pumpkin pie recipe Aunt Bertha was going to bring!", I sobbed.

I was wrong. Later, one of the profs brought me some glowing orange stuff he had found outside. It was delicious. Meanwhile, I have proposed to the co-ed (her name is Linda), and we will be married in a month.

I can hardly wait. In just a quarter of a century or so, there might be enough of us to start having these family reunions again.

Happy Thanksgiving from me & the rest of the turkeys@Roadkills-R-Us

 

Copyright 1988, 1994, 2014 Miles O'Neal, Austin, TX. All rights reserved.

The Flu: All Types Including The Martian Death Flu

The flu (short for "influenza", not "thing that goes from fireplace to chimney", which is a "flue") is a type of virus that manages- despite vaccines, soap, hand sanitizer, TV news, and school lunches- to kill anywhere from 3,000 to almost 50,000 people in the USA every year. So we should take this at least as seriously as, say, the VA system.

The flu comes in several grades- A, B, and C. The highest grade, A, goes to the type of flu responsible for pandemics. One of the fun facts about this flu is that it can be worse or milder than other forms. It's pretty much a ninja flu and has been known to hitch rides with birds.

Type B is not responsible for pandemics, merely epidemics. It wants to grow up and be type A. Meanwhile, it's merely a mediocre flu pandering to the teachers to get attention.

Type C is mildest of all, kind of the Peter Parker of flues, only with no radioactive spider in sight. Like the grade C in school, it's just sort of there. Nobody really pays it any attention. It just hangs out and wishes it had the guts to do something to make headlines.

BUT... there is another entire set of flues, flues so insidious they spit on grades (and the grades die painful deaths). These are all variants of the Martian Death Flu. Some of you may have first heard about this in the 1980s from noted medical scientist Dave Barry, but I assume you that those of us with Martian DNA have known about it from before Dave's great, great, great, great grandfather was a gleam in the eye of an alchemist holding a test tube.

Variants you may remember hearing about include:

• Hong Kong Flu
• Swine Flew
• Bird Flu
• Gecko Flu
• Paperweight Flu
• Eastern Diamondback Flu
• Farm-raised Tilapia Flu
• H1B1 (a.k.a., "visa flu")

As the Martian Death Flu is named for its mortality rate of approximately 103 percent, there is always a panic when the latest variant is announced. Dour faced CDC spokespersons appear just before Hall-o-ween wearing bio-hazard suits and pointing flamethrowers at CNN and FOX news crews lest they get too close, utter warnings such as, "Stay indoors. Shut off your water. Try not to breathe or eat until spring." Some people die, and we all wonder how the rest of us survived.

The deaths are generally from Type A flu. Humans (even half humans like myself) are immune to the Martian Death Flu. No one knows why, and no one cares except the Martians, only they're dead.

The good news is that we now have Tamiflu[tm]. This wonder drug has, after taking 90% of the full regimen, done almost nothing to help me, as far as I can tell. But on the other side of the coin, my doctor no longer returns my phone calls so either she assumes it's my estate calling or she is home sick with Type A flu as well.

Either way, stay safe. Take basic precautions: wear a mask (preferably a full bio-hazard suit); don't kiss anyone; don't touch smooth surfaces with your skin (again, wear the suit!). This gives you a 75% chance of survival. If you want to bump that up to 100%, simply stop eating, breathing, and drinking until spring. And keep a flamethrower handy to enforce your personal space. If they would feel the heat, they're too close.

Supreme Temptations

Thinking about some of my favorite bands over the years, a couple of early Motown groups stand out- the Supremes and the Temptations.

The Supremes helped Motown revolutionize the musical landscape, appealing to both black and white audiences. Berry Gordy intentionally feminized and glamorized the ladies; it was brilliant and they changed the face of music. They had a series of hits, mainly love songs. Like many of my friends I knew every one of those hits by heart. (Roadkill Trivia: I could sing Diana Ross's parts note for note, no matter how high, until I was 20. But overnight I lost about an octave and a half of vocal range. I was devastated but I think a couple of my friends were relieved. They thought it was unnatural.

Embedded in some of the Supremes' love songs we find social insight. I loved "Love Child" long before I realized the depths there; as I understood more I loved it more.

The Temptations had more revolutionary songs. While they had some love songs they also had brilliant social commentary ("Ball of Confusion"), songs about the human condition ("Smiling Faces", "Papa Was a Rolling Stone"), and celebrations of the times ("Psychedelic Shack"). They had some of the first songs to make use of sampling. While their radio hits were longer than some (four to six minutes), some of my favorite works are the longer album versions of the same songs; these stretched to twelve minutes or more. "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" is about as poignant as it gets; there are some excellent covers (such as that of Was (not Was)) but the original is still the best.

When I was 12 or 13 my parents bought a small house next door as an investment property. The former owners left behind thousands of books and records of all sizes and speeds (yes, speeds!). I claimed hundreds of Motown and related 45s as my own. There were dozens of artists represented. I played them all, but I wore out the Supremes and Temptations discs. I pretty much reduced them to prismatic Frisbee, incapable of producing anything like a high fidelity sounds- but by then I knew them so well I didn't need to play them to hear them.

A lot more music has wormed its way into my psyche since. An awful lot of that music- from Janis to Jimi, from Skynyrd to Bootsy, from Beck to NIN- would never have gotten a second listen if I hadn't heard the Supremes and Temptations. They blew all my musical walls down.

And they sound every bit as good today as they did then.

Baby, baby, where did our love go?

Nowhere, babe. It's right here. I love you as much as ever.

Requiem: Like so many artistic stories, there's pain here as well if you look into the lives of the artists. The worst? Jealousy and rejection drove Florence Ballard (a founding member of the Supremes) to heavy drinking and destructive behavior. She was kicked out of the Supremes. She was putting her life back together when she died at the age of 32.

 

AFTERWARD

As a teen I generally preferred the Supremes over the Temptations. Over the years I would still say that, but I came to the realization that I really preferred the Temptations. I see two obvious reasons.

1. The Supremes songs are generally formulaic; most of them sound very similar. The Temptations, as readily recognizable as the Supremes, were far more exploratory musically and stylistically diverse.
2. Most Supremes songs are all "love songs", which are really songs of romance, attraction, desire, or pain. All common feelings, but just that-- feelings. Arguably the Temptations (who did their share of classic love songs) sang about the more important types of love, love that was more than just emotion. "Papa Was a Rolling Stone", "Smiling Faces", "Runaway Child, Running Wild", even "Ball of Confusion" were all love songs in the deeper sense.