Spitball Army

“There will be devastating consequences to our economy if we do not hold a secret meeting at the exact same time as the debates!”

“Does my deceitfulness make you angry, Jim Lehrer?”

Next week sees the release of a new album by James Taylor, entitled Covers.  Yep, JT has recorded an album of songs written by other people.  This is his second album on the Hear Music label, a branch of the Starbucks lifestyle corporation.  His prior release was a live album, also containing some covers, and a very healthy portfolio of re-recordings of songs that he’d already recorded at least once during his career.  Prior to that, he released a Christmas album (James Taylor at Christmas, covers again, for the most part), which was preceded no more than two years earlier by yet another Christmas album which was released exclusively to Hallmark greeting card stores.  Before that, The Best of James Taylor was issued on CD in 2003.  You have to go back to 2002, and his October Road, to find the most recent batch of original songs by James Taylor.

This really hurts me.  I grew up with Sweet Baby James, Mud Slide Slim, Gorilla and JT as prominent soundtracks to my life.  I had his and Jackson Browne’s albums on the turntable or cassette deck frequently and learned all of the lyrics, as both of their voices occupied that vocal mid-range that I could easily sing along in without much effort or error.  Ironically, Browne has just this week released a new album of original material.  But, that older, original stuff of James’ has settled deep within my consciousness, and can immediately make me feel good, albeit wistful: “Sunny Skies,” “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up On the Jukebox,” “Secret O’ Life,” “Captain Jim’s Drunken Dream.”  That stuff is choice.

So, I cautiously opened James Taylor’s Covers CD when my review copy arrived in the mail, already acknowledging my disappointment at the absence of original songs.  My opinion of the album only worsened when I read the song list.  Track number one: “It’s Growing.”  No, I thought to myself, it can’t be.

James’ sister Kate Taylor recorded a self-titled album in 1978.  I purchased it on vinyl while I was living in Cambridge (and amassing a weighty passel of possessions to keep me tethered earthward – see yesterday’s post).  On side two of Kate Taylor was a little ditty with a slight and pleasant bounce, and positive lyrics about a slow and steadily growing love.  It was called “It’s Growin’.”  It was and still is one of my favorite songs on the record, but not necessarily for the depth of meaning in the words – the ideas and sentiment are straightforward and simple.  It just feels good going into my ears, as odd as that sounds.  And, for me, it had an added luster, as the backing vocals were quite clearly provided by one of my favorite singers and Kate’s brother, James (who had also co-produced the album).

I didn’t know this at the time, but “It’s Growin'” was a cover of a Temptations recording taken from the 1965 album The Temptations Sing Smokey.  The song was co-written by one William Robinson Jr. (otherwise known as Smokey) and Warren “Pete” Moore, and hit #18 on the Billboard Hot 100.  You can imagine that this record was probably hanging around the Taylor house or playing on the radio while James and Kate were growing up, along with a single of Otis Blackwell singing “Handy Man” (James’ cover version of that song gave him a #4 Billboard hit in 1977).  Somgs of that era have provided a wealth of material that James, and Kate, have borrowed from repeatedly throughout their careers.

The Temptations’ original interpretation of “It’s Growing” is smoking (pun intended) and has a “g” at the end of the title.  Kate Taylor’s removal of that extra “g” announced that hers was to be a folksier version of the song, and had the additional freedom of not laboring under the Motown yoke of being either “The Big Sound” or “The Sound of Young America.”  To her, it was just a song that she loved, and her rendering of it shows that clearly.

Like a snow ball rolling down the side of a snow covered hill
It’s growing
Like the size of the fish that the man claims broke his reel
It’s growing
Like the rose bud blooming in the warmth of the summer sun
It’s growing
Like the tale by the time its been told by more then one
It’s growing

I queued up the James Taylor Covers CD and pressed Play.  Everything about his recording, with the exception of the added brass and tinkly piano part and added-back “g” at the end of the song title, is basically a carbon copy of his sister Kate’s take on it from thirty years earlier.  Or, from another view, a cover of a cover of a cover.

I’ll take the memory of my first time, please, and thank you, Kate.  And, James, though I’m not necessarily wanting more of the “funny, earlier” stuff, please give us some new songs of your own.  Even if they are only about the blissful life on your western Massachusetts farm.  Beggars can’t be too choosy.

[audio:Temptations___Its_Growing.mp3]
“It’s Growing” (1965) by The Temptations

[audio:Kate_Taylor___Its_Growin.mp3]
“It’s Growin'” (1978) by Kate Taylor

[audio:James_Taylor___Its_Growing.mp3]
“It’s Growing” (2008) by James Taylor

Addendum:
[audio:Smokey_Robinson_and_the_Miracles___Choosey_Beggar.mp3]
“Choosey Beggar” (1965) by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles

From Culture11:

Everyone Loves Rachel
How an ultra-liberal Air America host won over the other side.
By Cheryl Miller,  September 23, 2008

“Rachel gets her own MSNBC show. Happy now?”

That’s the question Keith Olbermann asked in a post on the liberal blogger clearinghouse DailyKos. For those not steeped in the world of liberal punditry, the response might’ve been: Rachel? Rachel who? But at DailyKos, of course, everyone already knew. The Rachel with a new show is Rachel Maddow (rhymes with “shadow”), the wildly popular Air America host and frequent MSNBC panelist. And her fans were more than “happy” — as MSNBC host Keith Olbermann put it in his post on the Daily Kos — they were delirious. One “Maddite” wrote poetry in her honor: “Unto us a star is born … the Everlasting Progressive, the Princess of News.”

The hype seems to have been warranted. “The Rachel Maddow Show” is a bona fide hit, topping the ratings on MSNBC and leading in the key 25-54 demographic. The critics, too, have been kind: “Smooth as butter [and] hot as sliced bread,” raved Slate. “Thumbs up!” declared TV Squad. Looks like everyone is mad about Maddow.

It’s no mystery why Maddow has become the darling of the progressive blogosphere: She’s one of them. Aside from the minor fact that she doesn’t actually have a blog, she otherwise fits the bill quite nicely. She’s young. She wears those black hipster glasses (or did — before MSNBC’s makeover squad got to her). She worked as a barista. And most importantly, she’s an unabashed geek who loves talking (and arguing) about policy: Before taking up hosting duties on Air America, she wrote her dissertation about AIDS and served as a prison-reform activist. Meanwhile, her academic credentials are impeccable. Want to send a liberal into a swoon? Just start quoting from Maddow’s résumé. She got her B.A. from Stanford! She was a Rhodes Scholar! She has a doctorate in political science! From Oxford! (Trust me — no liberal can discuss Maddow without mentioning the D.Phil.)

Or as Spencer Ackerman, a reporter for the Washington Independent, succinctly puts it: “The progressive movement likes her because, in every significant sense, she’s part of it.”

But Maddow isn’t just another left-wing pundit. In many ways, she’s the perfect representative of the new media elite — a hyper-professional, Blue-State meritocrat straight out of central casting. “Everything about her radiates competence and a deft, bright careerism,” wrote Rebecca Traister in the Nation. Indeed, it’s surprising how little controversy Maddow — an ultra-liberal, openly gay woman — has engendered. But, for the most part, the conservatives who love to hate MSNBC respect — even like — Maddow. All their ire is reserved for the network’s old, white guys: Keith Olbermann and (to a lesser extent) Chris Matthews.

Read the full article here.

The last several years have revealed a resurgence of interest in music delivered via the 12-inch, black vinyl, needle-in-the-groove, turn-over-the-platter-midway format.  Not that there have been huge numbers of vinyl records being sold.  They have only been huge in a relative sense, and with the sales of the dominant compact disc format on a steady decline, any jump in sales within the music industry looks significant.

I used to have a voracious vinyl habit, back when I lived in Massachusetts.  There were several great places to find vinyl records of both new and older recordings.  But that was 25 years ago.  When I went to Cambridge last Fall, I ran across only one store that had a vinyl selection worth spending an idle afternoon browsing through, and I did not spend more than half an hour doing so.

The store, In Your Ear, occupies a basement on Mt. Auburn street, right near the heart of Harvard Square.  There was so much used vinyl – multiple copies of many titles, and what seemed like endless rows of classical music – that I was overwhelmed.  The two guys working the store seemed overwhelmed, too, wedged in behind a small sales counter that was piled high with boxes of new vinyl arrivals.  Even more boxes full of records were piled around the counter on the floor, creating a sort of retaining wall leading toward the door and the dank stairway that led up to the bricked sidewalk.  My lasting image of them performing the Sisyphean task of examining the constantly-arriving used records that continued to pile up, stuck at a small desk in a dark corner, hunched over their work like a pair of Bob Cratchits, is admittedly romantic, but not far from the truth.  Only a person of average or less-than-average width could maneuver the narrow path through the chest-high racks of vinyl records that had, most likely, belonged to college-age spendthrifts like me at one time.

Reading Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running recently, I gasped while reading a passage describing his vinyl obsession and his experiences – so similar to mine – while entertaining that obsession in the Boston area:

My time at Harvard was over at the end of June, which meant the end of my stay in Cambridge.  (Farewell, Sam Adams draft beer!  Good-bye, Dunkin’ Donuts!)  I gathered all my luggage together and returned to Japan at the beginning of July.  What were the main things I did while in Cambridge?  Basically, I confess, I bought a ton of LPs.  In the Boston area there are still a lot of high-quality used record stores.  When I had the time I also checked out record stores in New York and Maine.  Seventy percent of the records I bought were jazz, the rest classical, plus a few rock records.  I’m a very (or perhaps I should say extremely) enthusiastic record collector.  Shipping all these records back to Japan was no mean feat.

I’m not really sure how many records I have in my home right now.  I’ve never counted them, and it’s too scary to try.  Ever since I was fifteen I’ve bought a huge number of records, and gotten rid of a huge number.  The turnover is so fast I can’t keep track of the total.  They come, they go.  But the total number of records is most definitely increasing.  The number, though, is not the issue.  If somebody asks me how many records I have, all I can say is, “Seems like I have a whole lot.  But still not enough.”

In Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, one of the characters, Tom Buchanan, a rich man who’s also a well-known polo player, says, “I’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable, but I’m the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage.”  Not to brag, but I’m doing the same thing.  Whenever I find a quality LP recording of a piece I have on CD, I don’t hesitate to sell the CD and buy the LP.  And when I find a better-quality recording, something closer to the original, I don’t hesitate to trade in the old LP for a new one.  It takes a lot of time to pursue this, not to mention a considerable investment of cash.  Most people would, I am pretty sure, label me obsessed.

If one is inclined to take these poll results as fact…even after figuring that 100% of the undecided voters go for Obama, and that the 5% margin of error leans totally in his favor, Alabama would still not have a clear winner with the resultant 1% edge given to Obama.

I guess I’m not surprised, but still speechless.

McCain posts lead in state poll
52% back GOP candidate; 25% favor Obama

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The Associated Press

MOBILE – A statewide poll shows Republican John McCain with a big lead over Democrat Barack Obama in Alabama. But as the election draws near, many voters are undecided about their choice.

A random telephone survey by the Mobile Press-Register and University of South Alabama Polling Group found 52 percent backing McCain and 25 percent Obama. Another 23 percent were undecided, supporting someone else or didn’t answer.

The numbers showed a drop for McCain and Obama from a March survey by the newspaper and USA. In that survey, 57 percent supported McCain, 30 percent backed Obama, and 13 percent were undecided or supporting someone else.

Read the full article here.

Rachel Maddow, she of the new self-titled Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, breaks the current economic mess down for those of us who respond to simple ideas.  And concepts related to food.

The Rachel Maddow Show, still in its inaugural month, airs weeknights at 9:00 ET on cable network MSNBC.

What would Harry Truman say?
When pols compare themselves to my grandfather

by Clifton Truman Daniel
Chicago Tribune
12 September 2008

Friends and family have been telling me lately that I should say something about Gov. Sarah Palin comparing herself to my grandfather, Harry S. Truman.Presidential contenders have been doing this for years. During the ’92 election, when George H.W. Bush squared off against Bill Clinton and both of them invoked Grandpa, my mother, Margaret Truman Daniel, weighed in on the matter. In an op-ed piece, she stated emphatically that it was ludicrous for Mr. Bush to make the comparison. It was OK for Mr. Clinton, of course, because he was a Democrat.

Personally, I am happy that politicians from both sides of the aisle compare themselves to my grandfather. Through no action of my own, I enjoy kinship with a man generally regarded as one of the best presidents this nation has ever produced. However, I think the politicians should be careful, because they may be setting a rather severe standard for themselves.

It’s not enough to come from a small town, as Gov. Palin implied in her acceptance speech at the Republican convention. To be truly like Harry Truman, you have to make a major sacrifice that I think modern politicians might find restrictive: If you reach the presidency, you have to be willing to lose the job almost the moment you get it.

You can’t make decisions based on polls or whether those decisions will keep you in the White House. You can’t kowtow to your advisers, consultants, public relations people or the media. You have to do the right thing, opinion and politics be damned.
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Every morning brings little surprises for those willing to notice them.  This morning’s surprise was unavoidable, appearing right at my feet during my morning rounds.  Popping up seemingly overnight, as if from earth’s oven, was this blossom of mushrooms in my backyard, looking invitingly like a generous cluster of Nilla Wafers.  Mmmm…’nana puddin’, anyone?

After weeks without my treasured notebook (my security blanket, my rabbit’s foot), I now have no excuse for not writing more. I get discouraged whenever my daily post or posts merely consist of either audio clips or video clips. My ideal is a homegrown, thoughtful word molding, but those types of posts have not been coming lately.

Instead, I have been doing a lot of organizing, cleaning, and attempts at starting new projects around the house. There hasn’t been a lot of music playing in the background during these times.  Instead, the TV is tuned to MSNBC or CNN and I am getting my talking-heads political fix while doing something else. As a result, when I do try to write something original, I can’t completely extricate the day’s talking points from my head.

It’s not that my language or reasoning skills aren’t fundamentally strong.¹  Quite to the contrary, I believe that I am a man who can write an entire post about swimming in salt water, and never use the word “briny” except when I’m talking about a taste sensation in my mouth.²  Additionally, I seek consistency in my writing, because I know that the people who read this blog prefer a writer who doesn’t talk one way when focused on topics in Birmingham and another way when writing about San Diego or Cambridge.³

I ran into this stalling-out problem in the past, when I was a retail business owner.  Maintaining momentum demands a refreshing of one’s course, a continuous reassessment of the pros and cons of the situation.  It is something that, even though the input of others can be useful, can be done most effectively as an independent agent.  Eventually, in that retail business mileau, I had to tell the community, “Thanks, but no thanks,” for that financial black hole to nowhere.  If I really wanted a financial black hole, I’d dig it myself.⁴  So, I ended up without a retail storefront and an excess of already-paid inventory that I could never sell in my home town.  What to do?  I supposed I could put it on eBay and try to sell it for a profit.⁵

I also did seek the advice of someone widely recognized for his business acumen.  I had many questions, but this gentleman was more intent on proselytizing to me about his newly-hatched economic theories than attempting to help me brainstorm some productive solutions to my problem.  He earned the benefit of three hours of my time, just for agreeing to meet with me.  Usually, I am pretty quick with the bullshit-o-meter, but listening to him speak, it was easy to forget that this was a man who had authored two books about the topic but had never run a single successful company or retail operation.⁶  When the cloud of his rhetoric had passed, when the roar of the academic plaudits faded away, when the conference room lights went out, and after those spectral styrofoam Greek collegiate columns had been hauled back to some imaginary prop room – what exactly was this man’s advice?⁷

Whatever it was, it was worthless. That guy is crazy⁵, I remember thinking.

Back at “square one” I landed, feathers ruffled⁸, with the gnawing realization that I was going to have to work this one out for myself – a concept that I was for before I was against it⁹, before I ridiculously tried to get someone else to tell me what to do.  So, as when I soldiered on past uninspired attempts at reform⁸ in that business situation, I’ve found that when I get similarly “stuck” in my attempts at writing good cogent posts, the best approach is to just knuckle down and do it.

The lesson?  I guess that a blog writer is sort of like a “retail business owner,” except that you have fewer actual financial responsibilities.¹⁰  That reality, alone, should make it an easier job.

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I realized, at some point this summer, that if I swam six times a week, on average, that I would “use up” a pair of swim goggles about once every three months.  It’s the chlorine effect.  The damage would begin its work by yellowing the head strap, then the rims around the eyepieces.  By the time the eyepieces began to turn yellow, they would also start developing a permanent fogging, and what once was seen clearly through the lens would turn milky, as if viewed through a semi-mature cataract.  After a couple of goggle replacement runs, I figured out the TPD (temporal pattern of degradation).  I then went ahead and bought five pairs of goggles at once, rather than having to go out and find my preferred goggles every three months.  (I really hate shopping.)

About a month into the first new pair of goggles, my swimming pool switched from a chlorine filtering system to a saline system.  I knew it was coming, as there had been notices posted around the building, but if any of the pool staff knew when it was coming, they were keeping that secret well under wraps.  So, the Monday after Labor Day, I went for a swim and was surprised upon submersion with a mouthful of briny water.

Thrilled, I think I swam an extra few laps that day.  I told myself that the salt water made me faster in the water, that my hair was soft and happy with its new lease on life.  I imagined myself to be swimming at the ocean on a particularly calm day with no waves.  Was it my imagination, or was I floating easier (though floating’s not a particular problem of mine)?

I came home from my swim and dove in headfirst to the interweb, hoping to find the pros and cons of the new saline system.  I came across some whopping falsehoods.

Falsehood #1: Salt water doesn’t sting the eyes.  Wrong!  If you have done any swimming at the beach, you know this just ain’t true.  And that morning, thinking in the back of my mind that I could now swim without goggles, I went halfway across the pool underwater with my eyes wide open.  OUCH!  I’d call that a sting.

Falsehood #2: Now the pool is chlorine-free!  Apparently not.  A saline pool requires the use of a stabilizing chemical that holds chlorine in the water.  Remember, chlorine is one of the two parts of a salt molecule (NaCl: sodium chloride).  The resultant chemical that’s pushed into the pool water, sodium hypochlorite, is the same as that produced from a traditional chlorine system.  Keeping a pool’s chemical balance is an art, in fact, and the widely fluctuating pH levels in a pool, be it a chlorine or saline environment, are what generally cause eye irritation.

Some webbers mentioned that a saline system can destroy metal pipes with corrosion, and that the salt eats away the grout that holds the pool tiles in place.  I guess it is just a matter of time before we see if these claims are true.  Another internet writer mentions that he was considering installing a saline system at his home pool but, as his next-door neighbor is a beekeeper, he will probably opt out.  Turns out that all of that salt in the pool attracts bees!

The Downtown Y where I swim is the second YMCA pool in the greater Birmingham area to switch over to saline (the first being at the Mountain Brook branch).  I do hope this proves to be a successful venture, and that the other pools are able to follow suit.  It’s truly quite refreshing.  And I like the idea of possibly saving money on swimming accessories, though it appears that I’m set for awhile with my supply of goggles.

Epilogue:
Driving home, later that week, I received a text message on my phone:  I think we passed in the locker room just a few minutes ago!

I replied (at a stoplight): What?!  And you didn’t say Hey?

The response:  You were wet, like a dog, and you were engaged in a conversation with someone.

Correction:  Like a salty dog.