Esprit d' Escalier Strikes Again

So tonight I was heading to the Justin Townes Earle show at a local church. This church has a sprawling campus and it was dark and I was trying to find my way. When I pulled in the parking lot I was surprised to see ..nothing. No cars at all. I did spy a map though so I stepped out of the car to look and was startled by a man walking out of the shadows-it was Justin himself. I recognized him immediately (and what a long tall drink of water he is). He nodded and said, "Hey" and, though my mind was racing, chattering squirrel like "holy crap it's him holy crap it's him holy crap it's him" I said..nothing. Now I can think of any number of witty rejoiners:

"Your CD means so much to me, thank you."
or
"Your CD was the first one I played in my new place."
or
"Happy Halloween."
or
even "Hi."

but then..nothing.

AAAGGGGHHHH

I Did It

So, I voted. I did my duty but I gotta say voting absentee does not give me the same patroitic hard on as voting in person. I like voting-all the small ceremonies, the senior citizen poll workers, how every place I have lived does it differently. With absentee you get none of that. Not even a "I Voted Today" sticker.

Well, I did. I voted today.

Random Question #746

I just got back from the rock n' roll show and at this particular bar they have a girl in a wee skirt in a swing above the bar.

Now that's....how shall I say? A singular job. Wonder how one applies for that exactly..

Freudian Slip? I'll Say!

You know when they say, when moving into a new place, check all your appliances to make sure they work before you need them? Yeah, I didn't do that so found myself shivering when the temps dropped and the furnace didn't work. (Blankets, blankets and more blankets!) When the maintenance guy showed up he quickly diagnosed the problem. Now, I know what he actually said but I swear, with his accent (English was not his first language) what I heard was, "You need a heated coupling" and all I could think was,

"Dude, you don't even know."

Found Poem

"Free Refrigerator-Stopped Working Yesterday".

God, I love the free page on Craigslist!

One of Those Cosmic Questions

I am on a quest. A quest for a dust ruffle. Dust ruffles are key cause they hide the prodigious amounts of crap under the bed. I have been involved in several longterm relationships and during those relationships I had a dust ruffle. Yet, somehow, when those relationships ended I was dust ruffle less (kind of like when I married we had 4 crockpots yet when we divorced I was left with none).

As much as I hate to come down along stereotypical gender lines (that's old school in the bad way) I gotta say if I am the one with ovaries how is it he always gets the dust ruffle?

Breeder's Cup 2008

This year, for the first time in its 25 year history, the Breeder's Cup is two days long, with Friday featuring all the filly and mare races (ladies first dontcha know). This anniversary edition is also two days strong, with some of the deepest, most talented fields ever. (When last years defending champ isn't even the favorite, that's saying something.) That, coupled with this being the first time the event will be held on an artificial surface, makes for some great TV watching. You know where I'll be.

Song of Bernadette

"There was a child named Bernadette
I heard the story long ago
she saw the queen of heaven once
and kept the vision in her soul"


150 years ago in a grotto outside a small village in southern France, the fourteen year old daughter of a miller and a laundress, while out gathering firewood, saw a vision. A vision she described as "a small young lady". The girl's name was Bernadette Soubirous and the lady revealed herself, after 16 visions, to be the Virgin Mary.



"No one believed what she had seen
no one believed what she heard
that there were sorrows to be healed
and mercy, mercy in this world"



Though many people accompanied Bernadette no one else ever saw the vision. The lady told Bernadette to drink from the spring in the grotto and when Bernadette dug with her bare hands, a spring was revealed. During the 16th vision Bernadette was holding a lighted candle which burned down and though it was in direct contact with her hand for over 15 minutes, she showed no evidence of a burn. This was also the vision when the lady, after questioning, claimed to be the Immaculate Conception and since that is a phrase unlikely to have been known by an uneducated peasant girl, it was taken as proof her visions were legitimate.



"So many hearts I find
broke like yours and mine
torn by what we've done
and can't undo"



At Bernadette's request a chapel was built at the grotto which eventually grew into the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world. Despite Lourdes' tiny population (15,000) in France only Paris has more hotel rooms. Uncomfortable with all the attention, Bernadette joined the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction at 22 and spent the rest of her life as a nun. She died in 1879 of tuberculosis.

"I just want to hold you
come on let me hold you
like Bernadette would do"

In the 150 years since Bernadette dug up the spring, 67 cures have been verified by the Lourdes Medical Bureau as "inexplicable" after the Catholic Church's rigorious scientific and medical examinations failed to come up with any other explaination. Because of this and because when her remains were exhumed in 1909, 1919 and 1925 they were found to be intact and incorrupt (still true today as well) she was canonized on December 8, 1933 as the patron saint of the sick, the family and of poverty.

"We've been around-we fall, we fly
we mostly fall, we mostly run
but every now and then we try
to mend the damage that we've done

tonight, tonight I just can't rest
I've got this joy here inside my breast
to think that I did not forget
that child, that song of Bernadette"

Although he now says the Lothario, ladies man image was more persona than truth, it's true poet and singer Leonard Cohen has written many things about love but to my mind none are as pure of heart as his "Song of Bernadette" (featured in the italics). The marriage of the story of the simple peasant girl, with her sweet message of hope, with the song's protaganist's plea is both poignant and striking. The singer is not saying 'love me', lots of songs do that, rather the more selfless, 'let me love you'-let me be your solace-a more starkly naked plea to be sure. The open acknowledgement of sin is pure Cohen and also can't fail to strike a chord with anyone who has behaved badly in love ("we mostly fall, we mostly run") which is really all of us, isn't it? And who among us doesn't long for an incorruptable love or, because that's not possible for the non saint, a love at least suffused with mercy and kindess?


This post goes out, DJ style, to a friend with my most fervant wish that he finds a Bernadette of his own.

Egads! It's High School All Over Again

So last week I had a friend over and we were in my living room bonding over our mutual love of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow (yeah, their political beliefs dovetail nicely with my own for the most part but I also think they're just really good writers and TV personalites) when I heard a knock on the door across the hall. So, curious me, I looked out through the peephole and saw one of my neighbors from upstairs-a blonde former sorority girl 'I have a dolphin tattoo' type. She was in what I assume were sleep clothes, determinedly knocking away. Then another neighbor came in from outside. They apparently know each other and began chatting away, first about the neighbor whose door they were continually knocking on (the apartments aren't that big, I'm pretty sure he wasn't home) then about me! The second one asked the first if she had met me and the first one shook her head dismissively then said something low that made them both laugh.

?! Dissed in front of my own door by two people I've never even spoken to based solely on my observed comings and goings..yeah, feels a lot like high school.

The high school feeling was increased by my inability to find another person to go with me to the DBT show next week. I bought 2 tickets with confidence that in my music loving crowd I'd be able to find someone to go with, no problem. Unfortunately, that has proven not to be the case which is causing serious prom flashbacks. See, at my school you paid on your prom tickets all year long and at the beginning of the year I had a boyfriend, at the end I did not. And I couldn't scare up a friend to go with, even my brother said no. So, I went to prom stag cause I wasn't not going to go. And it's not like I'm not going to go to the show cause I'll have to go by myself-at this point if I waited for accompaniment to do something I wouldn't get out much. It's just making me think about high school, which, when you're 40, is not much fun.

Really? That's How it's Gonna Be?

So I had been living in my new neighborhood (The Highlands-where all the cool kids live) for all of 5 hours before I saw my college sweetheart.

Now, I knew that was going to happen at some point-Louisville has gotten bigger but not that much bigger, in some ways it seems very small. But yeah, it only took 5 hours.

Gee, that never happened when I lived in Alaska...

Ernest Tubb is Not My Boyfriend

Why the clarification? Well, my keys are on an Ernest Tubb keychain (given to me when my friends Les & Lisa moved to Nashville) and every time I need to surrender them-car dealership, hardware store wherever-the person will inevitably ask, "Is that your boyfriend?"

I mean every time.

What is up with that? I know it's a joke (Ernest Tubb has been dead since 1984, not that I think that people are actually recognizing his picture) but why don't they say "Is that your grandfather?" or "Friend of yours?" Why go for the boyfriend?

It's not that I don't like Ernest Tubb-he was a true country pioneer, a great American success story and yes, I do know the words to "Walking the Floor Over You" his biggest hit, but let me categorically say, for the record, Ernest Tubb is NOT my boyfriend.

Make Mine a Double

Given the ups and downs of the last week in this country, when Wall Street seems less like the financial hub of the nation and more like a roller coaster ride, I think I speak for many when I say we can all use a drink. We've had a National Day of Mourning and a National Day of Prayer why not a National Drinking Game? Everyone should tune in to the Vice Presidential Debate tomorrow night and whenever Governor Sarah Palin says the words "Alaska", "lipstick", "strong", "hockey" or "mom" everyone take a drink. This will accomplish two things-offer welcome relief from a stressful time and make her seem ever so much more presidential.