Archive for October, 2005

October 12, 2005 | Filed under: Uncategorized

My boyfriend has been back in New Orleans for a few days, sheetrocking his house, cleaning out the muckity-muck and fending off the smacked-out sexual predators that are apparantly roaming the neighboorhood looking for action. Personally, I’m more concerned about the few remaining residents who are parked on their porches with guns under their chairs than the horny junkies, but that may just be the New Yorker in me. I come across horny junkies all the time on the subway and at the hospital, but everyday Joes packing heat? No, thanks.

So he’s been awfully busy, but managed to send me this terrific photo. Apparantly the lifespan of your average icebox is dramatically cut short after sitting in your flooded, moldy house for a month in the searing Louisiana heat with it’s shelves full of food. Who knew? But in true New Orleans fashion, folks are decorating the abandoned appliances, to give the ‘hood a little flair. I love this!

October 11, 2005 | Filed under: Uncategorized

Re: The Perfect Album

The deed is done. All the cds have been loaded into the Powerbook and subsequently fed to The Pod; iTunes 5 has been downloaded and has a couple of nifty additions to it. The new ability to create playlist folders is such a “duh” that I’m astounded they didn’t think of it sooner. I had originally claimed to have found only three Perfect Albums in my music collection–the digital music definition of “perfect” being that the record is uploaded in it’s entirety, with compilations, concert albums, soundtracks, whole records purchased on iTunes, and best-ofs not qualifying. Further research has revealed four additions. My Perfect Albums are, in no particular order:

Prince………………………..Purple Rain
Tom Waits…………………Closing Time
Tom Waits…………………Small Change
Paul Simon………………..Graceland
Donald Fagen…………….The Nightfly
Lyle Lovett…………………Live in Texas
Ween………………………….The Mollusk
Stevie Wonder……………Songs in the Key of Life
Green Day…………………..American Idiot

I had no idea I was such a Tom Waits fan. I was tempted to knock “American Idiot” off the list, not because I don’t think it’s fabulous, but because it follows a vague storyline and there’s all that talk of it being a “rock opera”. Personally, I’ve always thought the term “rock opera” should be banned. I can’t think of a stupider name for a sub-genre. It will stay on the list unless there are any major objections. And, yes, “Purple Rain” is technically a soundtrack, but what other soundtrack can you name where every song was released as a single (except for Darling Nikki, which was too raunchy for 80s FM airwaves…it was still played late at night, though). It was too perfect to leave off. It was so perfect that I remember always having to wrestle it back from my Mom, who kept borrowing it.

Nine. Nine Perfect Albums out of…I don’t know. iTunes doesn’t count albums, which is silly considering all the ways to categorize, organize, search through, and analyze your music. I have 2197 songs in there. There’s a lot of comfort in knowing I have 6 days worth of music. If I am ever stranded on a deserted island with the ability to charge The Pod I can go six days without hearing the same thing twice (with some exceptions which are noted later).

What I lack in perfection I make up for in near-perfection. There are far more near-perfect albums that perfect ones, meaning ones that are only missing one song.

Tori Amos……………………Boys For Pele
Radiohead……………………OK Computer, The Bends
Bowie……………………….Bowie At The Beeb
Coldplay…………………….A Rush of Blood to the Head
Outkast……………………..Stankonia
The Smiths…………………..Hatful of Hollow, The Queen is Dead
Bow Wow Wow………………….I Want Candy
Cake………………………..Fashion Nugget

That’s just a partial list. There are dozens of them. What’s odd is that there still acres of space on my hard drive and on The 20GB Pod, and I can’t remember what prompted me to leave off a song here and a song there. “Under a Blood Red Sky” only has 8 songs and still, I left one off. Why? Why, in God’s name, why? And even more represented than Near Perfects are albums I have always professed to lllloooooovve, but still have, like, half their songs missing. There are way too many of those to list. You’ll just have to take my word for it. And it’s not like “Bowie at The Beeb” is his best effort.

Combing through the collection reveals peculiar patterns and musical mysteries that reveal a little bit about what makes my ears happy as well as a little bit about music in general.

Of the 85 David Bowie songs I own, none are whole albums…not even the best ofs. This is primarily due to the fact that there are a lot of repeat recordings between albums…but some songs were left off because EVEN David Bowie has a couple of clunkers. Anyway, I own five different recordings of “Ziggy Stardust” and only one is a cover. You know who else has an obscene number of repeats? The Smiths. But what’s funny about that is that those songs aren’t just plopped onto multiple albums, they actually re-recorded them. Are recording studios THAT much fun to hang around in? Do musicians like certain songs so much that they just want to keep perfecting them? Did they simply run out of material?

Back to the peculiar patterns:

7 songs whose title begins with the word “Big”, 7 that begin with “Little”and 7 whose title begins with “Black”. Only one song actually named “7”.

2 “Everybody”s 3 “Everyday”s 7 “Everything”s.

File the following under “Songwriters Are Overwhelmingly Negative”:

I own three songs called “Alone” that are not the same song. There are three songs that begin with “Do” but fifteen that start with “Don’t”. Three “Forever”s and five “Never”s. There are seventeen “I Can’t”s. Not one single “I Can”. Hmmmm…

I own 18 songs whose titles are numbers, not including phone numbers.

I own two songs that are phone numbers: “867-5309” and “6060-842”

Several songs are a call to action! “Let’s Get It On”, “Let’s Dance”, “Let’s Go Away for Awhile”, “Let’s Go Crazy”, “Let’s Do It” (also…).

All major colors are represented in the music world. Red, blue, white, black, green, and yellow all have songs of their very own. No fuschia, heliotrope or chartreuse, though.

And of course, there are the ladies. There are a lot of songs with girls’ names for titles. Some legendary, some not.

Cholly, Lilly, Julianne, Kate, Jane, Jennifa (Oh, Jenny), Judy, Beth, Eleanor Rigby (she’s just so sad), Debra, Carolina, Sally, Marianne, Polly, Sarah, Sexy Ida, Martha, Caroline, Tallulah, Tanya, Mary, Maxine, Emiline. Hey, does “Bitch” count?

There aren’t quite as many guys in the mix.

There’s Fernando, Eddie, Chuck E., Mr. Jones (One by Counting Crowes, and one by Talking Heads), Mr. Pitiful, Mr. Sellack and Mr. Zebra. There’s Ricky who lost that number, and Rudie who needs to pick up his message.

And I’m sure I missed a few along the way. Nobody’s perfect.

October 4, 2005 | Filed under: Uncategorized

This has been a harrowing couple of weeks, to say the least. Work has been insane, there’s this whole Supreme Court thing going on, my boyfriend is on his way to New Orleans to rescue his belongings and examine the extent of the damage to his beloved house, and I am overwhelmed with mixed emotions about my sweet dog (including, but not limited to: fear, anxiety, anger, exhaustion, and hope). First, I’d like to send out a huge thank you for all the kind words and warm fuzzy feelings in regards to the declining health of my dear, darling furry friend. Miss Maisie sends out a heartfelt right-paw handshake (she never did offer the left, I don’t know why) and a slobbery lick, to show her appreciation. Let it be known that she is currently being spoiled rotten, with Mary Jane candies, Laughing Cow cheese cubes, hot dogs, and the occasional turkey triple-decker club sandwich.

The biopsy came back positive (that is to say, really very negative) and Miss Maisie has been diagnosed with lymphosarcoma, which is apparently very common in dogs her age range and breed mixture. Although she looks like a too-tall, 90lb golden retriever, pretty much every vet she’s come in contact with believes her to be some sort of Collie/German Shepherd blend, which would explain a lot of her behaviors. A retriever, she ain’t.

My vet, however, cannot treat canine cancer, and The Maise and I hopped into a pet taxi (!) and headed to the doggie Oncologists at the animal hospital in Manhattan. Growing up in New York City I never learned to drive, and I knew someday it would catch up to me: at $80 r/t for the pet taxi, it certainly has. They told me what I basically already knew, that left untreated I’d lose Maisie in two to eight weeks. Unacceptable. Then the good doctor laid out a treatment plan that consisted of in-patient intravenous chemotherapy three times a week for six months to the tune of $6000,a protocol regarded as the Gold Standard for lymphosarcoma. I got a big lump in my throat, because as much as I love my dog, I simply do not have that kind of cash lying around. I can’t even afford the $240 a week to get her to the hospital in the first place! I was about to suggest that they could send me home with all the meds and tubing so I could put my nursing skills to work, but I thought better of it. Also, my mother, who I brought with me as both moral support and information filter (I tend to shut down in these situations and lose key details)cut in and basically said “Well, what about the Silver and Bronze Standards?”.

My mother does not have pets. She does not fully understand the tightrope walk that accompanies talking to vets. Maybe I’ve just been unlucky, but over the years I’ve been made to feel horribly guilty for what is perceived to be a lack of understanding on my part concerning the high cost of pet health care. You balk at the money involved and you get That Look from your vet. Those of you with pets know the Look I’m talking about. This new vet, not content with just The Look, shot back “Well, these are estimates, you know, this is not a car we’re talking about; it’s a living thing!”, which I didn’t appreciate. There was no way I was walking out of there without a treatment plan for my dog, but there was also no way I could fly $6000 for a treatment that might buy her two more years, but then again might not. The Silver Standard was out of my league, too, so we took The Bronze.

Maisie will be getting five whammy IV chemo treatments over the next fifteen weeks, along with some oral meds and some eye drops to deal with the cancer cells invading her right cornea. The good doctor says that larger dogs respond well to this treatment protocol, and I believe her. I was skeptical at first, about chemo treatments for the dog. Chemo is rough stuff–nothing like a little poison to make you better! Supposedly dogs and cats respond well to chemotherapy, with few side effects, if any. I was suspicious that the reason they take so well to it was because they cannot talk and therefore can’t tell you how crappy it really is. But actually, she IS taking to it rather well! This is Maisie before her first treatment:

And this is Maisie after!

That little shaved bit on her left front leg is where the meds go, and that glare off her right eye isn’t a camera glitch, her eye is all clouded over, but it’s looking better every day with these Atropine drops. She has gotten back the spring in her step, and is back to being the nudgy, playful, dopey lovebug that she always has been. The vet called me Sunday to see how she was doing and asked if her lymphnodes seemed smaller, and I was slightly embarrassed that I hadn’t checked, but really I hadn’t thought that a single treatment would have such an effect. The lemon-sized balls in her neck had all but vanished, and the ones by her rear legs were nearly gone, as well. If this is what happens after one treatment, I’m dying to see what happens after five! All this and no nausea, too! It’s almost too good to be true. One down, four to go.

And I feel good about it. I feel that I have done the responsible thing. When you take on a pet, your job is to be its caregiver, friend, teacher, boss and advocate. And you do these things lovingly. Maisie has given me nine years of unconditional adoration and companionship, the very least I can do is make her twilight year(s) as comfortable as possible, and let’s face it: I selfishly want to keep her around. As long as she isn’t in any pain, and isn’t suffering any indignities (dogs don’t like peeing all over themselves any more than you do), I will continue to treat her for as long as I can. No, Doctor, she is not a car.