Shout it out louder! LOUDER!

A recent post on Jason Hartley's excellent Advanced Theory blog reminded me of a piece I'd written for Spin a year or so ago about artists remixing their old records for whatever reason. I tried to find it online but it looks like Spin.com is no longer archiving articles. Oh well. (Fortunately, Jason's hilarious recent review of a Lou Reed concert is available for immediate consumption.)

So I'm seizing the means of production and posting my draft for anyone who's interested.

Impersonating medical personnel

Just over two years ago, after we'd bought this house, I was raking leaves in my front yard when a neighbor passed by. "Hey, I hear you're a doctor," he said. "If I was a doctor I wouldn't be raking my own leaves!" I responded with typical razor-sharp wit.

Since then I've come to realize, through several similar comments, that there are many more people in my neighborhood who think I'm a doctor. I honestly don't understand how this rumor can sustain itself. I'm home all day, leave the house only for lottery tickets and beer and wear shorts and flip-flops all summer. I could see how someone would mistake me for a drug dealer, but a doctor, much less someone with a job?

A couple weeks ago a different neighbor was passing the front yard as I was bringing my son out to the car. "Now where did he come from?" the man asked. "I don't think I have to tell you that!" I said. "I know you're a doctor, but I didn't know you were that good a doctor!" he replied. I'm not sure what that meant, but I also don't think he heard me shouting "I'm not a doctor!" as he headed down the block.

Today after giving the kid some medicine for his ear infection, I remembered I hadn't turned off the garden hose out front. So I ran outside, just as the same guy was passing by. "Working late?" he called to me. I was holding...wait for it...a syringe and an ear dropper.

A fine idea for a Thursday afternoon

Anyone want to pick me up in their truck, make a quick stop at Lowes, and head on out to Windsor Farms?

Meanwhile, downtown

I wrote a pretty long piece today over on Save Richmond about the mismanagement of the Richmond performing arts center project. Usually I like to keep that side of my blogging separate from JPSV (which is strictly for making fun of the Times-Dispatch and vegetarians), but I encourage anyone interested in Richmond's downtown to have a look.

Growing pains

Frankly, if Spin would let me hire interns instead of my usual duties (in addition to reviewing Tool albums without listening to them--"Looks like a D+!"--I'm responsible for grooming Ganz's labradoodle, forwarding Klosterman's hate mail from Tom Morello to the cops, and holding Dolan's glasses while he vomits) aspiring journalists with names such as Krystal Grow and fanciful fonts on their CVs would be shoo-ins. But I guess neither Krystal nor I are gonna get what we want out of life anytime soon. I can only offer Ms. Grow my sympathies and the next best thing--anytime she wants to help me make some sense of my office, she's welcome to au pair.

Senior moments

They live for these moments, the geezers on the Times-Dispatch editorial board (above), the "Gotchas!" where they expose hypocrisy in the press (in which they, commendably, do not seem to include themselves). Today it's reliable T-D target Howard Dean, whom they take to task--well not him so much as the "commentariat"--for saying "We're going to use Terri Schiavo later on."

Let's leave the "you see! Liberals are just as bad as us!" argument lay and just concentrate on what was said. Do Ross and Co. really think Dean was saying Dems want to "use" Schiavo's death as a rallying point, or rather the fact that Republicans--and Jesse Jackson--made such grandstanding asses of themselves inserting the congress of the United States into what any decent conservative would view as a state's rights issue?

It doesn't matter how you feel about the Schiavo case; Like it or not, "Terri Schiavo" has become shorthand for a particularly weird period in American politics, and just because 3/4 of the T-D ed board is kept alive by iron lungs and IV bile drips doesn't justify a persistent vegetative state on the penultimate page of section A.

Shitty music safe for foreseeable future

Budget cuts loom, and smart people are fleeing to Wellington, but at least we'll be able to read Melissa Ruggieri's 36th "Carbon Leaf is really on the verge of stardom this time" piece in a couple weeks. Richmond's least interesting rock band gets to pretend to be famous May 6 in the inaugural show of what promises to be an especially excruciating Friday Cheers season. From Agents of Good Roots to the Spin Doctors, from a Jimmy Buffett tribute band to a Blues Brothers tribute band, from the Spin Doctors to the Samples, Friday Cheers serves up a reliably depressing mix of "heritage acts" and local no-hopers, and Ruggieri (above, right) will no doubt be right there in the front row, toasting its artistic lowlights and wondering what it would be like to be reincarnated as Pat McGee's underpants.

Meanwhile, Fridays at Sunset persists in a separate location at the same time as Friday Cheers, because Downtown Presents still doesn't think white and black people can enjoy music together. I'm morbidly curious how a Faith Evans show might go, and kudos, guys, really, for landing Seal, but could this possibly be the last year we segregate our audiences? We have nothing to lose but Cowboy Mouth.

Drip of defeat

Well, this is irritating. My three-month-old espresso machine, which I finally learned to operate with reasonable competence, just started shooting water out of the base, which is not at all what I had in mind at all when I went downstairs for a break. Now the trashcan is filled with wet paper towels, and my heart is filled with aching, because I have to send the darn thing in for service. Back to the ol' Black and Decker.

A friend of mine bought a more expensive espresso machine, a Gaggia in fact, and it broke, too, though not before it finished out its warranty period. I'm beginning to wonder whether these machines aren't too temperamental for home use.

Exquisite corpse

Who knew that teaming a convention center with a biotech park downtown would create the ideal business environment for IBI, a company that makes its—ba-dum-dum—bones putting on medical seminars complete with cadavers? I think Bill Pantele is being a bit shortsighted here—there's finally a business perfect for downtown and he wants to chase it away?

Sorry dudes, but when you throw an easy pitch, you don't get to complain about the other guy knocking it out of the park. (Incidentally, I remember reading a fascinating article on the cadaver/medical seminar biz a few years ago but can't seem to dig it up online. Larissa MacFarquhar, maybe? Anyone remember?)

Moreover, Philip Morris, the main tenant of the biotech park (located just a few doors down from the Tom DeLay Center for Ethics, presumably), is in an excellent position to supply IBI with dead people simply by selling names of its customers. Clearly, the mistake we've made in marketing our city is that we've been trying to sell only the idea of dead people with monuments, cemetaries and battlefields. City Council should have been on this years ago, if you ask me.

More stadium

In today's Times-Dispatch, Mark Holmberg has a column about the Diamond and the neighborhood around it. It's not bad for him (mentioning the homeless? Check. Bringing up blue collar past? Check, please. Misusing the term "begs the question"? Bad copy editors! Bad!), but it takes the estimable John Sarvay to tease out Holmberg's larger point: if a minor-league stadium is such a surefire economic booster shot, why is the North Boulevard area so grotty?

You won't see me--oh, wait

News of interest to my fellow geezers: The reunited Dinosaur Jr will play on national TV for the first time Friday night, on CBS' Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. Despite the presence of a real (as opposed to American-style "My great great grandfather was from GlasGOWWW") Scot in our house who likes to cheer on compatriots such as Ferguson, we haven't seen this show yet. That's because it's on at 12:35 a.m., an hour that might as well not exist when you have a kid. Nonetheless, I'm fairly sure the schmaltz-spices combination in my system from yesterday's hot chicken will keep me up through Sunday 3 p.m., so I don't think this'll be a VCR job.

Further geezing: I have been listening to the Dino reissues on Merge more than anything else in the last couple weeks.

Nashville poultry

I try hard not to judge anyone's lifestyle, but seriously, vegetarians, you are wasting your lives. Two sublime examples from one day in Nashville make it pretty hard to accept the argument that you're living just as well as the rest of us.

ITEM: Hog Heaven Alex Pappademas tipped me to this fine establishment on the edge of Centennial Park near Vanderbilt, and since I've all but abandoned hope of getting a story out of GMA week, I spent the morning typing up notes from the days before and then headed over to try some Tennessean barbecue. I tried the pulled chicken, which is served on what's called cornbread in these parts—silver dollar-size corn pancakes. The sauce is white, more tangy than spicy. I chose greens with vinegar and cole slaw as sides and was very happy. I kept glancing from the screened-in dining area and thinking I should go check out the park on such a beautiful day but decided to just keep eating instead.

ITEM: Prince's Chicken Shack Trying to find Hog Heaven's address led me to some forums on Nashville food, which led me to this recent article on hot chicken, a local specialty. So before heading out to a night of top-flight Christian entertainment, I made my way to the north side of town and this shack, which would properly be known as "Prince's Strip-Mall Tenant" but who's keeping score? The decor is an unusual combination of country kitsch (folk art chicken paintings, pew-styled booths) and Southern gangsta (posters for artists such as Pistol, who I assume sells hundreds of thousands of records but have never heard of). I got the medium-hot breast quarter, which indeed comes on bread. I was on my own and couldn't figure out how to eat a bone-in sandwich so I opted to just eat it as if it were fried chicken. Which it was, just so spicy that it burned away the outer layer of my frontal lobe and momentarily freed my frozen sense of smell. It was terrific. I had to ration out my lemonade and cole slaw to keep my mouth somewhat cool but never at any point did the spices' heat overwhelm the fine flavor of everything on my plate.

Both of these meals broke the strict budget rules I've set for these trips, and my bloodstream is now probably 30 percent schmaltz, and I'll probably have a heart attack at the Dove Awards tomorrow night and go out in a way no one should. It will have been worth it.

Still traveling

Traveling a lot

If only...

Now can someone please find a way to make drummers' windchimes explode?

The lighter side of death circuses

I can't endorse the name of the blog this comes from, but you gotta be impressed by the tactics.