Ol' Mommy Nature: It don't visit da' wrong door

Traveling further along in the Groundhog Day realm. It is snowing out today, it has been snowing out many a days in this past week. A blizzard in fact. I looked online at the Accuweather page to see what was going to happen next and meandering to find this prediction I clicked on a video of a weatherman doing this wacky skit where he has a box with the phrase "ol' mommy nature" on it and he was kicking it and punching it off a desk in front of the blue screen. I guess he originally had wanted to be a comedian.

 I'm woodshedding and drinking an apple cider tonic. I have this book called "Staying Healthy with the Seasons" that I trashpicked last year. It's one of those California New-Agey books about yin and yang and what season means what. Like we are in the water season, did you know that? And throughout time there has always maintained about the same amount of water on the planet, just shifting in its various states of vapor and ice and what have you. Did you know that? And we are as humans our own "earth" because we have about the same percentage of water in our body make-up, which should make us feel a connection in a way to the grandness. This is what the book says.  This book is not an old blues song.

I stumbled upon a section all about karma in this book. Karma. I guess we all have images or ideas that come into our head when we say this word. For me, I see a Zappa-like looking man named Reverend Leroy Montana that used to come into the open mic I used to go to, singing his classic, "Karma Doesn't Visit the Wrong Door" to which he answers himself, "cause if it did, it wouldn't be karma". I always thought of karma as if doing something bad to someone, it's gonna come back around. I've messed up and made bad decisions and  I think that bad things are going to get me for it, sometime, somewhere. But catch this definition from the book, I really like it,

"Karma is a process of learning from this natural law of the universe. Each life crisis has a lesson, which if we learn, we will not need to experience again. Yet, if we deny the potential learning this experience represents, the same lesson will present itself again and again, often more intensely, until we learn it."

Which, I guess, this is what I was trying to flesh out when watching Groundhog Day and writing the post before this, and then this came along....

I Sure as Heck-fire Remember You: A Lesson in Groundhog Day

So things get better in some ways. I just figured out that stealing one of those monstrous yellow Ikea shopping bags could make taking the recyclables down to the curb from my second floor place that much easier. I also started buying cat food and litter in bulk which has saved me time and money. I think I’d like to do a western movie where the bandits are named Time and Money and they ride off into the horizon together, leaving me in the dust of my sorry old town rubbing my eyes wondering what happened. 

It’s strange how I think about these things that I figure out over time. It happens here and there. I get a pair of shoes that are actually comfortable and I think about how long I went just compromising out of misinformation? Stupidity? What? It’s a strange wisdom that accrues but I’m started to relish it, as someone must have felt when he or she rounded off the points of a square to make a wheel. These realizations are my winter joys. Come spring, I’ll be laying in a park, warm and drinking wine and out of my gourd.

I watched the movie Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day and I’ve been thinking about it. I hadn’t seen it in a long while so some things now finally made sense, like when she orders a “sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist” and Bill Murray wretches in disgust. I just got that. Funny thing is a few months ago I was really jonesing for a cocktail one night after all the state stores closed and all I had was a bottle of sweet vermouth in the house, and I had that very same drink.

But anyhow, it’s a pretty intense movie underneath all the wacky light-hearted comedy (would we expect anything else from Mr. Murray?)  and I’ve been hooked in understanding its points. See, he kept waking up in the same day, even on a few that seemed like he was going to not wake up on the same day because he got the girl and they had a great night and were lying together in the same bed. He was always trying to perfect it, make it better, and learn from his mistakes on the previous days. He even started becoming a master of ice sculptures and piano. Still, same day. Then, it seems that he starts to really invest in not just the girl and his talents but the people around him, all those folks that make up Punxsutawney, PA. He starts to truly care, not to just care for conquest sake, and this is when it all started to feel right, this is when he finally wakes up with the girl and a new day. 

If you’ve seen it, remember when he looks into the news camera when he’s at the groundhog festival and says as his prediction, “It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s going to last the rest of your life!” Such a funny classic line, and fortunately, not true.

Up to you, Birdie Busch

Picture of the Day: Making the backdrop for the Philly Opry at Johnny Brendas

Old Jeans and Eskimos: What's your Vintage?

I got a pair of jeans yesterday at a second hand shop that I've calculated to be about 35 years old. I used to just go into these shops and think “Oh, I’m buying the old things,” but now I actually think about how old my vintage is. My “vintage” will be for someone down the line “crazy old” and my clothes will be their “vintage”. Time is such a peculiar thing. I have a locket of my grandmother’s grand mom from the 1800’s. This seems to be my oldest thing. Although last year I took off a dresser knob from a dresser on the trash that had inscribed in the back of the metal piece “90” as if to say the year and I know it wasn’t 1990. 

I live next to a used furniture store. When I lived in the country it was a tombstone store I lived next to, and I wrote a song about it that closes my second album Penny Arcade. I had been going through a hard time in my life and I would take walks through the cemetery and study the graves, my favorite was a man who had his big old Cadillac etched into his stone. I haven’t written a song about the furniture store but as with anything that is there to run through your head just for the fact that you see it everyday it tends to get to you, like the Eskimos and all their words for snow I have taken this store into my thoughts. 

The trash for both our buildings sits in a messy line right in between. The man who runs the store regularly puts furniture he deems unsellable out on the trash and then I decide if it’s reusable. Most furniture that comes in has had its drawers emptied but sometimes people leave things in the drawers and the man usually dumps it out into the trash. Piles of photos, undergarments, stationary. Once I found a stack of perfectly folded handmade handkerchiefs, probably from the 30’s and 40’s, and ran over to rescue them like he had put a live baby in the trashcan, and brought them upstairs and soaked them in a bucket. They were so delicate they almost disappeared in the water, when I went to stir them around it was like a layer of pudding skin. I get emotional about these finds, like it was my own family member that died and these were their things.

I am fascinated with the past. It’s interesting how some people get really into the past and some get really into the idea of the future. I’ve started to try and think about how people tend towards either and what is it in their own lives that have effected this preference or fascination. Like is a wealthy movie star who loves to surround themselves in a modern house with modern furniture trying to get away from reminders of aging and mortality? Does someone who loves old things feel afraid to let go of other things?

I started to realize that something I like about the past is that I can observe from it humans that came before me trying to work out the human condition. I can take it all in and see the things that are archetypes, timeless efforts and meanings. I feel the voices singing on the record player subconsciously saying “Ok, listen here, this is what I have to tell you” and then me listening in like it’s the words of a wise sage. We in America, do we really give the time of day to sages? Where are our huts exist to drink tea with a Wiseman? Who is your Wiseman or Wisewoman?

Pondering the past, Birdie Busch

I'm hosting a Philly Opry on February 12th!

The seed of an idea was long simmering, something discussed excitedly over coffee between Johnny Brenda’s booker Brandi Hartley and musician Birdie Busch. Brandi, inspired by a night of music she used to attend while living in Chicago called “Devil in the Woodpile” and Birdie by old television variety shows like that of Johnny Cash’s and Dick Cavett’s in the 70’s, made plans to have a night at Johnny Brenda’s that brought a lot of their co-conspiring to light. Thus we present the inaugural unarguable Philly Opry on Friday February 12^th, the night of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and the kick-off for all St. Valentine weekenders with their dance cards eagerly in hand.

Hosting and performing the night with her band will be Birdie Busch, and joining her as featured acts will be local songsmith Scott Pryor and the traveling honky-tonk harmony-tastic Sweetback Sisters. Tying them all together like the fine embroidery of a nudie suit will be  Esposito Bandito and Sneaky Cheese weaving stories of Wild West Philly and other special guests. As you may have guessed, dressing up in your finest country flare is crazily encouraged and will be celebrated upon your arrival to the revival.

If there is a special place in your heart for everything from the Texas Swing dancehalls of the fifties to the eccentricities of Roger Miller, to the journeys and arrivals of American songwriters to the spirit of everlasting melodies, we recommend you come on out to this one time only affair. FEEL. HEAR. DO. Real time ya’ll. Take pictures. A thing to show grandkids of the future and weirdos who appreciate it…or weirdos ur grandkids bring

home and then will think you’re the coolest ever.  Time is a soft pretzel and our hearts broken bells ringing! Philly Opry!

Some words of wise description on the music for the night:

On Scott Pryor: “Scott Pryor is perhaps the finest acoustic songwriter in Philadelphia right now. On Theater for the Weary, Pryor’s sophomore disc, he masters folk tropes that many artists spend careers cultivating.” –Philadelphia Weekly

On the Sweetback Sisters: “Zara Bode and Emily Miller layer gorgeous girl-on-girl harmonies over swell honky-tonk melodies – the kind that make Loretta Lynn fans weep – and you just know you’re in for some hot and/or mournful fiddle. Trust us: These guys are brilliant.” -NBC New York

On Birdie Busch: “According to the geriatric tastemakers over at Travel & Leisure magazine, Philadelphia has the largest number of ugly people per capita of any city in the U.S. Apparently, no one told local girl Birdie Busch, who manages to chirp as if she were singer/songwriter in residence at Xanadu University. This brand of optimism might become annoying if not couched in the wry insinuations of Busch’s strikingly evolved lyrics, which share far more in common with Eudora Welty than Richard Simmons. a bewitching combination, to be sure.” –American Songwriter

What to expect:

Ben Franklin in Spurs

Story-Tellin and joyous yellin’

Raffles of Rhinestonedness and hand embroidered Philly-centric western wear

Cowboy Lincolns

painted backdrops to rival Oklahoma the musical

whisky rivers

Get your tickets at http://www.johnnybrenda's.com

photo of the day.

taken at a lighthouse where we played a show outside under the full moon and slept on the tower..

Serendipity, you're so dear to me..a goodnight wish

A man, who I haven’t seen for years, notices me putting up a poster in a coffee shop. He calls out my name, we exchange a few cheerful words. He invites me to sit down for tea and I decline, seeing the other walls I must put up my posters on in my mind’s eye. We exchange a few more lines, and I find that I don’t want to stop talking, but rather take up his offer for tea and enter into a long conversation that leads to new ideas and suggestions I had never fathomed.

One of the things mentioned by my friend is that the ancient hieroglyph for a city is what looks like a crude “x”, a mimicking of a crossroad occurrence. He then goes into discussing the different purposes of cities throughout time and is trying to understand a modern purpose for Philadelphia. He is much more into grand ideas than I am I think. He speaks of books about cultural waves and revolutions when,in my mind’s eye again, I am now imagining the afternoons I would sit in my grandmother’s yellow kitchen and just stare at the tree outside, how all I could do with an elderly person was to just be still. Not that my friend is not also an appreciator of small things, he even suggested that I should read Neruda’s Ode To Small Things, a favorite of his, which I may due now because of his mentioning it.

What I think this is, this being my piece for tonight, is a deliberate expression of gratitude to serendipity. I like real time. I like being brought into situations that I wasn’t planning on and having reaction met with mine and vise versa. My friend mentioned that he feels, although he does alot within the internet realm, it’s mostly him seeking out things he knows he wants to seek out, or a variation of those things. The room for a tangible 3D experience decreases drastically.

I love this chance experience. A GPS system to me feels more like a ball and chain and often on a tour I like to “spidey-sense”  my way to a place. I like the finger to the page of an atlas. Being able to locate myself on a map is more calming than seeing my circle move along a line that exists in a square screen until it tells me to turn.  I like ending up at circuses I hadn’t ever known that existed. I like stumbling into a café that turns out to have the worst breakfast ever. I like finding out by riding by on my bike that someone airbrushed the word forgive onto a chain-link fence and you can only see it from a certain distance at a certain angle.

I’d like to wish you many unplanned adventures that show you things you had never imagined or chose to seek out.  Goodnight, Birdie