didja ever see the Star Trek blooper reel?

it's not required viewing, without which contemporary life has no meaning. lots of actors blowing lines, or doing a crazy dance at the end of a hard shoot.

but one image stays with me.

the little pneumatic noise that the sliding doors make is overdubbed. and since the 60's, automatically opening doors can be found at every Safeway or Home Depot. a little slower, but you can pretty much count on them to open.

the fast sliding doors on Star Trek were pulled open by two guys. reading a script.

and Captain Kirk has never walked up to those doors when they didn't open.

William Shatner has.

but he knows he has to act like he' s sure they're going to open. no slowing down. no forearm in front of his nose.

he has to run right into those closed doors, often nose first. and you see it on the blooper reel.

in later episodes, he seems to puff out his chest, captain style, every time he delivers a crushing exit line and strides purposefully towards the doors. better the chest than the nose.

but it's really painful to watch.

partially, I think, because it reminds us of relationships we've had.

but other life theatres feel like that too.

I swam at the health club thursday and friday, got a massage friday. changed guitar strings, watched CrazyHeart and did scales all the way through, did my hand exercises. I looked at the set list and went over what I was most likely to blow, did some playing Saturday before the show. warmed my voice up in the lower register...this summer, warming up by getting the high stuff to where it sounded good just meant my voice blew out sooner at the actual gig.

I did what I could.

but I had no idea what I was going to have for the ReJuveniles gig at the Little Bear yesterday. both in terms of vocal accuracy and stamina, and physical stamina.

no idea.

I knew from rehearsal it would be more than I had for the last Little Bear gig. I sat for the whole show and didn't sing a note.

pre-operation, I would use up a week's energy credits on screaming, jumping, and turning up my self even louder than my amp. always worth it. it's such a confluence of symbols, feeling like I owed it to myself, the band, the audience, the music, to the amazing combination of miracles that makes life in general and my life in particular a reality.

I think we are all made to shine. at the Little Bear, I want to burn.

but the last few times, there have been these doors.

I was fine at rehearsal wednesday, three gigs ago...saturday, at that gig, I blew out my voice within half an hour. the doors didn't open, and my nose has smarted ever since.

there was probably a small pool going at the summer's Modniks gigs...when is the voice going to go? I got 45 minutes...

yesterday was the first time we wrote down the usual Scott songs on the set list, and I didn't start out in a chair...stood up from the first.

and, from the first, I knew there was no point in half assing it. toning down the beginning of the night, to save for the end...can anything really be saved? more, is anything really shown, to myself, is anything accomplished?

I'd love to have felt like saying, look, I'm back, I know I can do this.

I didn't.

but I puffed my chest out, delivered my lines, and headed for the doors.

I always sweat during those Little Bear gigs. no long sleeve shirts, no matter what season.

but there is a new kind of sweat I've gotten the little I've stood up over the past weeks for a gig.

it kind of says...yo...Dude...sup with the standing? what are you trying to do with us here?

it was there from the first yesterday.

breathe. look ahead on the set list. watch the audience. be ready. watch for the energy credit card to come back declined. watch your balance.

Lloyd , the sound guy, felt shittier than I did yesterday, I guarantee. he has pain to surmount, and also pain medication to surmount. he always gives us everything he has...some weeks, we're the only act he comes in for.

yesterday, he wasn't getting the breaks.

the stereotype of a professional musician is that they fuss with the sound guy til they get the sound they want. my experience has been, fuss all you want, but you won't get more than you're going to get, and you end up pissing him off in the bargain. if a man's home is his castle, a sound

guy's PA is his ferrari. you're given a ride for a price, but he's damn proud of his wheels, and it's his world.

I'm worse than any of them when I do sound.

so, no, it wasn't going to be a day when I heard vocals great. and it takes more than I have not to respond to that by singing louder.

about three songs in, I noticed the yodels creeping into my voice that happen before it goes out altogether. that didn't happen throughout a whole night of rehearsal a few days before.

it's like when someone requests a song you kind of know, or used to do, and you start into it will full involvement, heading for the doors, never knowing when the next line just won't be there.

you guys behind the doors, wake up!!!

but then, if Kirk forgets to do a line and hits the doors early...only himself to blame.

the other piece is that everyone in the band, all my friends in the audience, and most everyone else, knows exactly what I'm doing. if I managed to do some physical stage thing, or some vocal piece, some guitar lead, and I'd look out...I would see as much worry as I saw appreciation. yeah, Scott, you made it through that one...but how far are you going to be able to go?

really helpful.

I've noticed through the summer that, if I get to back off vocally for an unlikely short amount of time...only low stuff for like ten minutes...that my voice will start to kind of come back from the Shmenge brothers yodel mode, and I'll have a little more to work with.

Jim had planned the set with just such breaks in it.

so at the end of set 1, I had a little to give to the finale, which felt reassuring.

set 2 seemed less of, will he make it, and more of, now how exactly can we rock this place?

sound a little better, body kind of looser, voice surprisingly enduring.

in practice, set 2 had been presented as a great time to do our favorite more difficult thoughtier softer stuff. not dead slow, but not the mindless garage rock that still gets people out on the dance floor smiling.

ReJuveniles fans...the Juveniles we play for...have always given us our head about our soft folk underbelly harmony stuff. and with me experiencing a power brown out, I've been incredibly grateful that they do.

but one of the things I feel it's important for the band to deliver in that venue is the Dance Rush.

people dance. when they went on the floor to Sounds of Silence, yesterday, I kind of got a message from the audience. we're so with you...but...can we dance tonight?

any DJ will tell you, only one thing creates the Dance Rush.

The Right Song at the Right Time.

of course, the thing that helps that along a lot is if the band is feeling kind of a rush at the same time. which they do reliably if everyone is dancing. but they also feel a rush, even if it is only fear, when they are called upon to do something they have not done before but might just be able to pull off.

people have danced at every ReJuveniles show. but I haven't felt the fifth gear kick in, the Rush, for a few shows. and I have not been able to contribute to any power shifts.

at rehearsal, I suggested that the second set have an alternate path, a dance option available.

Jim always puts all his love into the set list. to him, it's always Sophie's Choice. which of my children do I save? how do I leave this song out?

then on stage I throw a finely honed, tricky sixties classic away to do, Hanky Panky.

why they put up with me, I'll never know.

but when the dance floor filled for Hang On Sloopy...it's all about guilty pleasure for us and them, ok?...I wanted to shoot for The Dance Rush. and the revised second set, with some small audibles called at the line, was just the ticket.

by the end of the second set, we had surpassed 88.2 miles per hour, and Doc Brown would would have been proud as we piloted the deLorean back to the future.

we had fifty minutes left to play for set three, and about half the people had left.

and I was beat.

imagine fifty minutes into an hourlong aerobics class, with an instructor with abs of steel and a temperament to match. your body is loose, you're doing the stuff, but it takes a little more focus to count to three, and some sideways thoughts are starting to creep into an oxygen poor mind...YMCA is so sped up that the Village People sound like the Chipmunks, and you're imagining Alvin as the indian...

explains a lot about my onstage persona, doesn't it? I get dingy. it's fun. I try to hold it together.

but stuff just happens.

the biggest crowd management mistake I feel a band can make is to pour energy on when a group is just not in the mood for it. (the second biggest is being flaccid when they want The Rush). and I was looking at the remaining diehards, thinking, do they want Wooly Bully? do they want the Tennessee Waltz? Bohemian Rhapsody? are they ready for part two of last set, or...what?

we were going to start set 3 with Crossroads, the Cream guitar-bass-drums workout the rest of the band sits out on, and then do two new songs with lower boogie indices. but with fifty minutes to play, a high power song wouldn't have set the new ones up very well, and there was no sense in anyone sitting out. I suggested starting right out with the new songs.

we did well with them, but I might kind of aim mid tempo new stuff earlier in the night. after we did them, I still had no take on where the crowd was, what they wanted.

I asked them, and they didn't so much tell me.

so I kind of went for meat and potatoes...I did BrownSugar, Jim suggested Honky Tonk Woman which would have been too restrained after Chain of Fools but fit nicely where he put it...and Good Lovin' was just the kind of friendly jam tune to keep a fourth hour crowd's spirits up.

on the previous break, this guy I talk to every show who never asks for anything had spent five minutes imploring me to play the Star Spangled Banner.

I don't like to do that with the ReJuveniles. it can seem like a fast break up the court, but the other four basketball players are at the other end twiddling their thumbs. I had resisted so far.

we wrote down "Won't Get Fooled Again" as our old style last song, figuring that maybe if we write it, I'll get to the end of the night and be able to actually do it. it's putting the hardest five minute crunches into the end of a four hour aerobics class. and just try to fake through it. not going to happen.

so I was on the watch for something kind of special to do this time. to not only make it through the night, but still be burning a little.

in probably the only Who/ Hendrix/ Sondheim medley ever on the planet, I put the Star Spangled Banner into Won't Get Fooled Again, and added a little "(I like to be in) America". I kind of didn't hit the melody great, but at least the theme held.

I was ready to end the song...it was time...and sang the last couplet when I realized I had not given George his drum solo. arrangements deranged while you wait. so I went back around and made sure that happened, sang the last bit again, and made it to the finish line.

Cancer. Answer.

how many people I didn't know I knew shook my hand after the show, said it was maybe the best one ever, that it encouraged them to see me jumping around again, many saying they were recovering right with me from their hard times.

well, whoever it gives encouragement to for me to do it...we're doing it, and I did it, and next time will be better.

nobody goes into the arena, up on stage, to the dinner table, in to work, without having overcome a lot to get there. fire. or depression. hard childhood. money worries. addiction. disease.

I've had this thought since the cancer stuff...that part of the human condition, maybe as hard as vulnerability or mortality or Boxcar Willie, is that we're all the lab rat, and pushing one bar delivers both the beauty and fullness and love and wealth of the world, and the genuinely unbearable heartbreaks and losses and physical pains found throughout life.

and we learn when the light is blue, we'll get food, and when the light is red, we get shocked.

but way way too often there is no light at all, and we don't have any fucking idea whatsoever what is going to happen to us when we push the bar. only that we genuinely can't bear the pain, and we genuinely can't live without the love.

and that maybe the lesson we have to learn is the deep acceptance of our vulnerability that is necessary to queue up and push the bar again. and sometimes, when we can, make a little peace about doing it.

or, like last night for Me, even a smile.

the celestial reliability of seasonal change

is largely offset by the total unpredictability, in Colorado, of when it will occur.

or where. don't like the weather? drive up a couple thousand feet.

I remember two gigs, each on July 4th, one in Alma and one in Georgetown, when it snowed. the one in Georgetown was at noon.

take me now, Lord, I said. I've seen it all.

in my youth in Poughkeepsie, New York (it had "ugh" right in the center of its name), there was less weather than there was climate.

give or take two weeks, Fall fell right on Labor Day, as did Jerry Lewis (prat-Fall), as did the reenlistment of school. the change in the air, the turning of leaves, the -somewhat less dramatic than here- change in light, were all early September phenomena.

you needed a jacket first day back to school. and you needed it every day until my birthday, November 5th, when you needed a coat, and boots soon after.

not hiking boots.

huge shiny gawky geeky clunky black vinyl safe snow foot condoms, with latches designed by Meat Loaf, or Andy Warhol, or Rube Goldberg, some sadistic PVC loving foot fetishist. maybe eight of them on each boot, requiring at least one parent's full attention to fasten...try redoing them when they popped on the way to school, and with mittens on!

mittens.

boots, mittens, and an Ice Station Zebra parka. or three coats and scarf and a -nice try- knitted woolen cap.

earmuffs.

this is not clothing. this is gear. expeditionary equipment.

in Colorado, we take fascinated bets on when the first snow will fall. no bets on when it will disappear...the guy who picked "the next day" would pretty much win.

there was no first snow on the east coast when I was young. it was one snow, in installments. it would go into remission for a day or so, but from October to late April, it would move into the neighborhood and exercise Squatter's Rights. daily life continued apace, only occasionally slowed or very infrequently stopped by the deepening Ice Age.

to a kid, the snow was a medium.

like every yard, every street, had overnight been covered in tingling Play-Doh.

what was cold to a child? the coats and boots and gloves were just a gauntlet, like standing in line for a ride, the admission fee you had to pay to just get out there!

snow balls, snow men, snow forts, snowflakes in your mouth, on your eyelashes, in your eyes! four months ago, you waited for the ice cream man and his treasured Popsicles...now there are icicles on every hand, made of clean clear rain water! no need for an environmentally friendly water bottle dangling from the belt.

elation, the great Leveller of Climate! you weren't cold til' Six O Clock, when it was no longer possible to deny it was dark. and the screen door (that Dad had still not taken down) opened for Mom's none too gentle voice summoning you to dinner, and you had the sense from somewhere deep in the race that being out was starting not to be such a good idea. and you had forgotten there was such a thing as food but it was starting to pull on you as well. and it is getting a little cold out...

home.

one March, I am going to use the model of "in like a lion, out like a lamb" and, day by day, keep track of what animal the Colorado weather was really like.

there's always room for a new taxonomy, I feel.

I remember well the games that have been played with Fall here in years past. getting a bike the Christmas I was 35, and riding it that day. getting a new fall coat a few days before Springsteen played Mile High Stadium in mid September...pretty thick little jacket...wearing it to the show and freezing the whole time, wimping out and leaving at intermission...taking a walk on my birthday in 1981 in a good fall coat and marvelling at how bearable the weather was...doing the same on my 2000 birthday in my shirt sleeves.

they would call it Indian Summer down east, when there was a two week delay in chill in September...these days, it feels more like Indian Giver when some downright affable October weather is interrupted by seasonally appropriate cold.

people in Colorado really have no business commenting on global weirding. weather here is perennially weird...we have no baseline to measure by.

except this Fall.

I put the PA in the shed last Sunday, after the last gig of the summer, pulled down the aluminum sliding door and locked it...and for me, Fall was right there.

Wednesday night the air conditioner was on, as it has been...and it was bloomin' cold! last night it was off, and perfect cool sleeping weather.

I broke down and got a humidifier this summer. Air-O-Swiss. 2055D. I hadn't heard the legend of the wonderfully nurturing air in Switzerland previously...but this non-ultrasonic Air Scrubber did make the room environment surprisingly breathable...a little of the after-a-rain feeling.

I was glad I broke down. then the humidifier broke down.

because Everything I Like Must Go Away. everything that works is too good to be supported in our economy.

I won't give you the list. Ry Cooder albums. Fabe's sugar free pies. New Man clothes. the list is hundreds strong, and I won't give it to you, I promise.

the guy at Bed Bath and Beyond (store chain named by Buzz Lightyear) said that the Air-O-Swiss 2055D model was discontinued. lisa brought home an alternative.

Boneco, Air-O-Swiss' parent company (ok, who named that company?), said, no, the there was no recall of the humidifier.(their hold music was the most Swiss music I've ever heard.) we took back the alternative, and I ordered the 2055D online.

I called the online store...they were out of stock, none scheduled to come in. they called Plaston, Boneco's parent company...a grandparent then, I guess, named by some great-grandparent...

the 2055D has been discontinued.

I scoured the internet and found one. good price, too. it came two weeks later. the ad, the order, the box said "2055D"

inside was a 2055.

I tried it for a bit. not quite the same. sent it back. still haven't gotten the refund. I'm on my fifth humidifier.

so the 2055D in the bedroom now was kind of more expensive, missing some parts and didn't work when it came. ordered the parts, dinked with it til it worked. for now, I'm living on borrowed time, the humidity is creeping up, and the Swiss air is helping me.

what it does to the air is what Fall does to the light in Colorado.

even before the leaves turn gold here in the fall, the light reflects more golden off of them.

Fall light here makes the Summer light seem fluorescent, like the world has been in strip mall lighting prior. it's artist's light, portrait photographer's light, sweeter than Kodachrome.

I saw it as the big aluminum door fell shut.

maybe I just want Fall to start at the drop of the baton.

like I say, it takes a lot for me to want a summer to end.

I don't want this summer never to have happened. there was only one thing this summer I could want never to have happened. everything else was pretty darn cool.

Brian Daniell, court poet of this blog, said that this had been my second summer of love.

I know I cashed in a lot of love coupons this summer, and that my life looked a lot like the table in the Baileys' living room, after Mary asked Bedford Falls for help. ("I bust-a the juke-box" said Mr. Martini)

I'm grateful.

but the corner into Fall is one I want to turn.

kind of like when you get a ticket, and the next day it sure feels good that this is no longer the day that happened in. same consequences...but it was yesterday.

in the morning, in bed, if I put my right arm up over my head, I can feel for a bit exactly the same as I felt before the tumor grew and I had the operations and radiation. I can't, for that piece of time, tell that anything had happened.

otherwise, pretty much, yeah.

when I was having the radiation, I felt like the treatments were a debit I had to overcome and get through. now I feel that the radiation incurred a condition that my body has to recover from.

every index is up every day. but the debit is still there in each symptom.

now, I know that now I am comparing myself to health. that's huge. the possibilities included a lot more options than health this summer. somewhere from many to all of my precious connections to life were threatened. and, note well, the threat has not passed for certain.

so I get to whine that I'm not 100%. but I'm 100% alive, and 105% thrilled about it.

but healing. I'm tired. I ache.

I see the radiologist Dr. Davis on Tuesday. we'll probably pick a date in late October for my first scan.

I'm too contrary to worry about it. I have my health til someone takes it away. healthy until proven malignant. I'm quite content with living in my present life, with its present worries, and projecting that all will be well in all future scans.

the cancer was last season. I got through last season. it's Fall now. what shall I wear?

summer

something isn't right when you find yourself saying, my God, how am I going to get through the summer?

musicians say it more than most folks. maybe people living in Las Vegas or Durango. maybe people living in Taos or Morrison, tourist havens (like Golden seems to be moving towards becoming.) maybe ski resort business owners, for whom the seasons consist of winter and three weeks in July-August. (I remember a gig in Alma on July 4th that it snowed. what season is it? well, where in Colorado are you?)

I said it in April, May, June, July this year. what do I do? do I cancel all my gigs and sessions? just hang for six months without income or musical joy? how will I get through this summer?

the blessing and curse of these days is that they come and go. and summer is nearly over. and I kind of made it.

today seems particularly fulfilled, particularly healthy, particularly congruent between me and life.

I've been working a lot. too hard. a week ago Saturday, I had off, and just went...I am not only Kentucky Fried, but Extra Crispy. I must not do this to myself.

that was the week before Wednesday - Acoustic reJuveniles rehearsal in the early afternoon, gig with sound with the Modniks at night , Thursday - set up the PA in Golden for Lost Alamos and rehearse all day, Friday - all day rehearsal with Christy and night gig with Lost Alamos, and Saturday - eight hours of Woodstock.

the point is, I'm doing an occasionally adequate imitation of my former self.

I've gone from, how am I going to get through this summer, from dealing with the possibility of losing both singing and playing music from my life, to being able to make some improvemants in the PA, the studio, and the stereo that I have wanted to make for decades. from a threatened global minus to a real solid plus.

it's not entirely objective. I think I needed to do it a little too much. I think I'm enjoying it as I always would have, but with a hurt angry desperate edge as well. I don't have to stay in fear and worry and negativity! I am not helpless! I am not vulnerable! I do have control!

yeah, dream on.

it took the best tricks of a team of geniuses to get me where I am today. a conspiracy of miracles, and the focused will of many caring blog readers to shield me from what could have been.

I refuse to be anything but healthy until I am proven otherwise. but the first scan is going to be at the end of October, just before my birthday. it will be great to have that to celebrate.

but I will have five years of too frequent reminders that I am vulnerable as hell. and even after that, the chance of cancer recurrence doesn't go away any more than the chance of a tree falling on me, or The Eagles doing another album.

I've seen hell freeze over. just like intimacy, living is vulnerability.

but today, only a fool would budget a lot of energy worrying about disaster. the list of things I got through this summer...some with some small amount of style...is striking. and I know a batch of people who, from the start of it through the worst of it, would feel silly grateful to have been me.

I'm one of them.

and from the end of March, if I could have had the Great Editor take these months out of the final cut...I would have insisted on keeping the full director's cut of the movie intact.

a summer that could have ranged from a 7 all the way to a 10 instead had some 3 to 4 areas. but never dipped below the axis.

these days, the kind of thing I enjoyed and got through for awhile, I'm pretty much just enjoying.

Bonnie said, are you going to keep your blog going after you're done being sick?

I've been infrequent in my visits to it, and I kind of apologize. I'm still getting mad pleasure from what I am becoming able to do again, and doing too much of it. in the next months, I'm getting away for awhile with each of the girls...heaven knows they deserve it for what they have been going through, and it won't hurt me a bit. and I'll be trying to keep the musical plates spinning happily on their sticks, like the guy on Ed Sullivan.

but I'll write.

so...what are the other most intelligent things you've ever heard said, Scott?

as if I'd know. "buy Casio stock" in 1965. "invest in Starbucks" in 1992.

but here are some of the ones that get me. no, you won't learn anything about my health in this entry. except, perhaps, mental.

a few from Tom Lehrer, Harvard math professor and genius satirist who released three albums in the 50's and early 60's and has not released an album since.

he was asked why.

"Political Satire became redundant when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize."

he was asked why he doesn't play concerts anymore.

"I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. Everything I did is on the record and, if you want to hear it, just listen to the record."

In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them all...but you can't say 'girl.'

Many people today spend a lot of time bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if you can't communicate, the very least you can do is to shut up.

Maybe just on the same topic...or maybe just as bright...is what Willis Alan Ramsey, who recorded one record in the early 1970's replied when asked when he was going to record another:

"Why? What was wrong with the first one?"

Not all my faves are cynical. this one is from "Ode to a Grecian Urn", by Keats:

""Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

heavy.

The Thirtieth Anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, in October 1997, was as much poetry as music...what to do while the bands set up...a San Francisco poet named Diane DiPrima said something I'll never forget:

"The only war is the war against the imagination. In that, all other wars are subsumed."

kathy suggests "e=mc squared." that and the double helix, I suppose. but it seems to be getting farther from the category of things I've heard of being said...

what's world class bright about both of those things is genius model construction. we have the data...what model does it suggest about how the world works? to consider the double helix, you have to first visualize it...to find the relationship between the energy given off by matter in an atomic reaction and the constant of the speed of light (squared), you have to first be open to the thought that energy, mass, and the speed of light could be related.

heady stuff. but not a pithy observation about the art of living.

I'm kind of fond of "why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip? to get to the same side."

ok, I'll risk being thought egoistic and obscene to boot (my chances of avoiding so being thought of seem slim anyway) and include my joke about my dad:

when I was 8 years old, my dad said to me,

son, I'm no fool. I know whatever I say, you're going to masturbate anyway.

turned out to be a self fulfilling prophecy...

I can't believe a human could write these Tom Verlaine lyrics...he has tons of amazing ones

Janie says her heart is just a watch for telling time

goodbye

her hands upon my face turn these hours into days.

also "watching the corners turn corners"

also "new czar in the nothing regime"

ok, I'll throw in :

"I don't know why you're wishin and hopin'

when we could be kaleidoscopin'"

I'm kind of fond of Richard Thompson's :

"you got to ride out in one direction

until you find the right connection."

I think that justifies all sorts of extremist behavior...

lisa suggests, "War is Over if you Want It"

that is a gift that keeps on giving...

from recent religious works, I like a couple from the Star Wars Episodes 1-3...going for nerd cred here...

"Your focus determines your reality."

and when Qui-Gon, Anakin, and Jar-Jar land on Tattooine and go off into the desert to seek money to repair their space ship (which has always seemed stupid to me...you don't call Yoda and ask him to front you a few francs? you ever seen where those guys live? they must have some money stashed away somewhere...)

anyway, Jar-Jar is afraid of the desert. "oh, no, no, don't go out there, me'sa get robbed and crunched!"

Qui-Gon replies, "Jar-Jar, we don't have anything of value. That's our problem."

ain't perspective a wonderful thing?

I'll make it worse by including a rule I have:

when you're solving a problem and looking for causes, don't forget to consider the things you've been doing to solve the problem.

or, doc, I did what you said and used the leeches, but I still feel tired!

or, I'm taking the Prozac, but I'm still depressed!

there's a case to be made for Frank Zappa's "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."...except that I don't consider that a counter indication. dancing, good. talking, good.

among my wierdest guilty pleasures is watching, and having a fairly complete knowledge of, Friends.

I didn't want to. I've never seen an episode of "The Simpsons" I've seen one episode (twice) of Seinfeld and found no likeable characters either time. I thought Friends would just be 90's yuppie scum pandering.

which it was.

but my girlfriend liked it. so one day when she was not around (I have to have some pride, I suppose) I came in partway throughan episode ,several seasons in. Chandler was moving in with Monica, but she couldn't stand the thought of his barcalounger in her apartment. they fought. hilarity ensued. she saw the light though, and the next time he came over, she had a square taped on the living room floor that signified the only exact place she could stand to envision the chair sitting.

"You know what this means, don't you?", said Monica.

"Oh my God," said Chandler, "they've killed Square Man."

that (and Being John Malkovich) was my introduction to the Gen-X penchant for sideways.

sideways kind of does it for me.

I think it's the first episode where Rachel asks Phoebe to help her move.

she says, "I really wish I could help you out, but...I don't want to."

I think that's one of the dumbest smartest things I've ever heard said.

I count on losing 98% of the readership with this one.

perhaps the second proto-rap record ever made ("Hey, Little Girl" by The Syndicate of Sound being the first) was "Let it All Hang Out" by The Hombres. it had numerous mystical spoken moments ("Saw a man walk upside down, tv's on the blink, made Galileo look like a Boy scout, sorry 'bout that, let it all hang out.")

but the one that puzzled me was, "How does that mess your baby up, leg?"

since I am the person designated to think about these things, as all normal folk have better things to do, I said to myself...what phrase is he thinking of?

how does that mess your mind up, baby?

I can't tell you how many years it's been since I uttered that phrase. more likely to ever have been said by me was Nancy Sinatra's "How Does That Grab You, Darlin'?"...and I don't think I ever said that.

but using lyric calculus, we look for the first derivative which would be:

"how does that mess your baby up, mind?"

which gets us halfway there. and isn't unheard of...I've sung, "Mamas, don't let your Cowboys grow up to be Babies."

but the second derivative could well substitute another body part for "mind":

"how does that mess your baby up, leg?"

it's a Sixties thing. you wouldn't understand. lord knows I don't.

from the Reader's Digest: "Much of what is considered progress is more accurately the passing of various ideas in and out of fashion."

then there are the inadvertent wisdoms of commerce...I was always fond of "See Other Side" - good advice in any situation.

"This Page Left Intentionally Blank"well...it was blank...til you wrote on it...

if I ever join a punk band, I really want it to be called "Intentionally Blank"

Tom Lehrer says his 1040 form had a box mark, if blind, check this box. he always wanted to put a mark about three inches away from it.

the Zen guys do pretty well.

asked the meaning of life, the Master replied, "when hungry, eat; when tired , sleep."

I could see where the acolyte might want his money back...but...if you can eat and do nothing else while you do it, sleep and rest during it...live in the present, without acting out past conditioning...you've got a lot going for you

I like David Wilcox's, "If you come upon me neck deep in quicksand, before you try to help me, ask me if I'm done yet."

more me...the glory of a blog...

"Pathology is a sane response to an insane situation."

finally (really?) I remember coping with existentialism in college...those funsters have some words too..."hell is other people" and all...I remember my friend Dave in the 60's saying to me, "Life is meaningless" and me saying, "so what?"

...and wondering if there had been a definitive philosophical pendulum swing against the existentialists yet.

not sure there has been. but I don't think it's too wrong to think of the fifties rockers as Essentialists. it was in rock and roll I found my answer to what was taught to me as Existentialism...certainly having to contain the most intelligent things I've ever heard said.

I love what I love in such an immediate way, in heart and stomach, that larger questions just don't come up about it. and I think that was best expressed by Prof. Emeritus Richard Penniman in his definitive masterwork when he said,

"A Wop Bop A Lu Bop A Lop Bam Boom!"

new patient admissions

it's been two weeks and two days since I completed radiation!!

two weeks and two days!!

ok, ok, I admit it: I am so not back.

I've been scheduling like old Scott, the hundred percenter. no days off, two a day from time to time.

it's so rewarding.

last night, I put all the latest PA (live concert sound) stuff I've been getting and getting done to the test. did sound for The Modniks.

as if the world had not given me enough bounty by having the sixties band I always wanted in The ReJuveniles, with people I love dearly and would take a bullet for, I've somehow also found my way to this totally different sixties band with a John-Paul-George-Ringo like cast of equally loveable and compelling personalities.

bar gigs with them, for basically no money and next to no audience adulation, where I would do sound and wrestle endlessly with nightmarish stuff, ending up exhausted, were still on the short list of things to live for.

it was Bob's idea that The Modniks needed a parks and rec friendly demo, to shop when he was at places representing his other band, The Beloved Invaders, a compelling surf instrumental band with compulsive accuracy and ability. a demo that would show our willingness to wimp up, and play the most accessible stuff.

I put together a basic template for it, and Bob and Sandy tweaked it; I recorded it at my house.

there are oldies bands in Denver. not so many comprised of actual oldies, though. (one, by residence location, a Golden oldie) they are comprised of young people, with better voices and strong mainstream musical talent and good looks. they bravely confront the task of finding the songs to best showcase that musical ability and cranking them out one more time, with professionally generated passion (though, really, that never was their music.)

they don't do "Hang On Sloopy". who in their right minds would do "Hang On Sloopy"??

we do. dammit. and we are flat out tickled on the off chance we play it right and it actually sounds good.

the wimpy parks and rec Modniks, with a sit down acoustic guitar player, is something we all set out to do. but I was a lot of the push behind it.

and part of my idea was...if the band could actually hear themselves, if the audience got something more resembling musicians playing than concert sound, if it was that music in that configuration with that clarity...well, if listeners could resist that, I'd need to check into DeVry university for a new career.

the demo magically got us a dozen gigs this summer. just in time for my voice to go missing.

last night, to me, was the best live sound I've ever heard anywhere.

I'm still working on it. but my goofy cross between audiophile and PA did what I've always wanted it to.

and the audience really really liked it.

I had some restaurant food last night, often a sleep interrupter for me...I celebrated with some sugar free soda that was still plenty sweet. but I think I'm up because I'm excited. two things I have wanted all my life to do got done.

it's like being in a car with your buds and saying, I think I can get us home. turn here, keep going, this next street is it.

if the car trip lasted several years.

when home comes into sight...you feel like you did ok to sign up as the navigator.

I'm wiped.

setting up sound is a campaign. physically and mentally.

and I'm doing sound again tonight.

it's a week back, and three days forward, til I get a day off. I love it all.

but I admit it. I'm wiped. and my voice, which is starting to get some power back, ain't keeping it for long.

neck is better every day. shoulder too. but they hurt.

taste coming back into my mouth slowly. though, as I say, my reputation isn't built very strongly on taste.

all the side effects...dry mouth, sore throat...still there, in succeedingly less virulent versions of themselves.

but, as a patient, I must make this new admission...what I ain't is all the way back.

what I also ain't, though, is in the boat of many many patients you and I both know, who pray daily to be half as lucky as I am and have been. and many who have not the immaculate fortune to have a support system as caring and deep as the gentle readers of this blog.

I feel like, if Einstein had had this group of people sending out a vanguard of will, making an easier path for me through my life like the lead bird in the chevron creating the waves that make it easier to fly along the V shape, he would have lived long enough to finish the Unified Field Theory. (which briefly and inaccurately stated, would have said not only are energy and matter related, but Everything is Everything)

The Beatles hated their concert recordings. they couldn't hear, so they couldn't play to their standards. The Beach Boys struggled throughout their career to show a large group of people what they had done in a studio. CSN sing like no one else, but live they couldn't hear, and couldn't manifest in a stadium what they did in a studio.

concert sound is big. biiiiiiiig. and it features actual bass frequencies, which most people never get to hear.

the size of the bass is how most concert sound guys measure the wonderfulness of their rig. never mind that you can't understand a word being sung. and the volume is a harsh huge transistor radio, and anyone with a $200 stereo gets better sound at home than they get in the $250 a ticket seats.

so...what up with that?

I have theories.

you take a wall mounted loud studio monitor that gives incredibly exacting sound to the best clients in the world, put two thousand of those monitors in a small amphitheatre, and the sound immediately sucks.

what's the difference?

concert sound guys put a high premium on reliability. who wouldn't, in their shoes? if the amps, speakers, mics sound good...hey, that's great...but one that sounds half as good and breaks half as often is going to be better. the "standard of the industry" in concert sound is not the best, the latest, the most accurate, but what people are used to, what has always (never) worked.

the idea that studio guys, hi fi guys, and concert sound guys all have the same goal...to reproduce sound accurately...seems to be my idea alone. mostly those three sects avoid any interaction with each other, like each was the Brahmin and the others untouchable.

but that's not the big reason, in my dreams, that concert sound sucks.

I think the big reason is half a mile of cable.

you have to put the sound guy halfway back in the audience. you haaaaave to.

at Red Rocks...try walking from the mic on the stage to the sound booth. I mean, granted , it's uphill. but you'll be winded. at least, I was.

every mic cable goes all the way out there. all the way across a forty foot stage, then all the way out.

and the mixed sound comes all the way back.

then the amplifiers are onstage...you wouldn't hoist all that weight...and the speakers are, what would you say, thirty feet high?

what if you spend a million dollars on a PA, to preserve the nature of the sound, and connect it up with industry standard sub-Radio Shack cable?

half a mile of it?

when copper forms, it forms in crystals. there are 700 crystals in a foot of copper cable. every time a signal goes from one crystal to another, it is like adding a transistor to the electronics.

(and they form out, in one direction. so every cable sounds a little better when the signal flows in the direction the copper grew, a little worse going against traffic.)

half a mile later, the best board in the world won't do you any good.

now, I am not so all fired convinced that you haaaave to put the sound booth in the middle halfway back. but if there's one place in the venue the sound sounds good, it's right there. it's a good plan to buy tickets right in front of the sound booth.

but what if, in this age of computers, the mixer itself (often digital) were sitting under the middle of the stage, and the computer that tells the mixer what to do were halfway back?

no more half mile of mic cable.

with venues as small as I play, the Red Rocks model doesn't account for much of what we know as shitty small PA sound.

those aren't usually million dollar boards in those systems, or studio monitor speakers, either.

I like my board, my monitor speakers, my antique eq's.

and I face constant pity and contempt for the AudioQuest cables I buy to hook it all together. poor deluded soul. he'll never be a Sound Man. hell, just give me a coupla JBL's, some SM57's, and a Crown amp and I'll be rocking and rolling all night long.

yeah. I've been there. I've heard it.

my main PA cables are silver, instead of copper. they are a meter, some a meter and a half tops. and one crystal of AudioQuest Perfect Surface Silver is 700 feet long.

yes, three feet of cable makes that much difference.

so I feel like my well wishing praying support system network has given me enough extension on my time on earth to have proved out my Unified Field Theory, that concert/ studio/ home stereo sound is really one quest, and that each has something to improve the other.

so I'm excited when I should be sleeping. and wiped. maybe the lone side effect of the Joy Weapon.

Christmas

the last day of radiation today was Christmas.

Christmas Day brings squeals of delight, immediate bounty, the heart's desire manifested in the real.

and the present of the completion of this treatment is continuation, all of the above and more, additional years.

but that's not why today was Christmas. a lot of the presents I can't open yet...being able to sing again, being able to taste again, being able to watch a tennis game again (and see both courts). lessening fatigue, and each day's healing accruing, rather than sitting up on the canvas only to be knocked back down again.

Christmas Day is the symbol of the rebirth of the year, is remembered for one particular birth. and the end of radiation can certainly be seen as a rebirth in my life. I feel a gestalt with the world, more of a solid part of the ongoing flow of people's lives, rather than the concern of preserving life itself.

but that's not it, either.

we celebrate on the longest night, the shortest and coldest day, of the year...it would be great if we did that because even on that day, life holds all of its promise, and there is no less reason for faith on a hard day than on a good day.

I don't think that's it, though.

I think we celebrate on the 21st...ish...because we damn well need to. because without something really great to look forward to on that day...it just seems like a global case of PMS.

I think it's genius to put the big holiday of the year right smack dab where we need it most.

that's why the end of six weeks of radiation today seems like Christmas to me. because this is the most faded out I'm going to feel. this is as bad as the side effects get. this is the shortest, dimmest day.

and the very nature of that is the cause for celebration. no more one step forward, 1.7 steps back. the sun will increase on every day...predictions of how much how fast vary, but it is certain to be just so. soon, I'll be again able to sing all the songs no one wants to hear...Feelings...There's 18 Wheels on a Big Rig...The Strawberry Roan...Don't Wait Up for the Shrimp Boat, Mama, I'm Coming Home with the Crabs...

and there was mixed rejoicing throughout the land...

no more trying to fill a sieve. everything I pour into my health is going to stay there.

it's a blessed comfort on the shadowiest day of the process.

a sort of comfort that pisses me off has come from everyone who, now that I'm coming to the end, started telling me the radiation horror stories they've heard through the grade school game of telephone line.

"my brother said that his doctor said that 75% of all patients who undergo radiation don't complete the treatment...and that 97% require the feeding tube"

so...you're telling me this...now?

Dr. Davis, who is not afraid to use actual words, said that virtually 100% of the people in his program complete. and that once completed, the treatment has "a very high success rate." and that after five years, the chance of recurrence is "virtually zero"

he's the guy who said, "most of the time, we can get this thing."

sidebar...language inflation in general pisses me off.

I define language inflation as the use of a word of lesser value to do the work of a word of greater value.

"well, how was your first trip on the time machine?" "interesting"

interesting?? there is enough of interest in any three snowflakes to keep a team of geniuses spellbound for the rest of their lives. how about amazing, nonpareil, fascinating, singular?

it isn't cooler. it isn't safer. live, feel, say, dammit.

Christy uses the word "fabulous" constantly. people in her world are often "excellent." when things are unbelievable to her, she calls them unbelievable.

occasionally, "so how was the drive over?" "it was fabulous!" but ya know what? I like that worlds better than "Spock Talk".

Dr. Davis uses the potent words. no stagflation there. and it gives me a lot of hope. but some of that hope is hoping that he's giving fair value dollar for dollar...not using "virtually zero" when a truer truth would be, "pretty darn good".

(by the way, PMS in my private vocabulary is short for "Pretty Much Sucks". it gives me access to a demi-universally understood term)

but the point way back there was: I'm the luckiest guy who ever ran this particular gauntlet. it is much much worse for many many people, and only this bad for not very many at all.

it helps that we were only focusing on one side of the neck. also, the docs and techs seem to think that I have a real resistance to the radiation, due to genetics and health habits and such.

little of that falls outside of the category of luck, to me.

I just hope that I don't generate genetically advantaged, healthy living strengthened cancer cells as well. I hope they're slackers. beatniks. Gen-X-ers. I hope they've spent the last six weeks going, we just want to live, but it's too much damn trouble. I hope they've been reading Sartre.

I hope they've been little Redd Foxx cells, crying out, this is it, Elizabeth, it's the big one!

I'll take the karma.

I brought Dr. Davis' and Dr. Nemechek's staffs full sugar lisamade chocolate chip cookies to celebrate.

they gave me a pin in commemoration. it says...courage.

in the misty mist or the dusky dusk...though others have displayed far more than I had to...I'll take the pin too.

kathy took a picture of it...I'll try to post it.

Tom Sawyer

never once asked Huck Finn, so, how you feelin' today?

what a stupid question when you're ten years old.

how'd you sleep? what do you mean, how'd I sleep? I ran until I dropped, in an unimaginably uncomfortable position, totally lost consciousness for ten hours, woke up and started running some more.

how's your diet? are you eating ok? well, I've been thinking of playing around with my ratio of Ring Dings to Devil Dogs, see if that helps me feel any better...

are you getting enough exercise?

I don't know what it's like being ten now, in the world of XBox360...that might be a valid question. when I was (not) growing up, and probably even more for Huck and Tom, it is like asking, are you getting enough air? motion was the medium a kid's life was carved out of.

how's your regularity?

the other kid would look at me and say, "what's wrong with you?"

I'm pleased to report that, in my present circle of playground buddies, that question would still get the same response. but though I forget which movie (one with old people becoming young), I remember well the last line spoken by an octogenarian character:

"I'm going to the bathroom.

wish me luck."

I said to myself, n.b. this is what's ahead.

at thirty, we might have greeted a friend after a spell of absence with some form of, so, how you doin'? how's it goin'? how you feelin'?

good, good. fine. hangin' in there. I'm ok.

13 seconds tops.

in ensuing hours of conversation, there might be a short roll call. "did you hear about Doug, he got drunk and was in that horrible car accident...can't believe Jerry Garcia is getting grey hair, what's the world coming to? so Johnny Carson died, pretty weird..."

the point (as if I needed one, because this is my medical blog, thank you very much) is that reporting about my health these days takes a long winded computer supported wordstorm.

better still, I need the model of the NYSE.

"at closing today, sore throat was up 1 and 3/8, shoulder pain down a half, SCM made a solid gain in the morning but finished even. panic selling led to a precipitous drop in vocal ability, while fatigue continues its steady growth."

I am so on the downhill side, seeing the end of the woods if not out of them. the worst predictions did not come true and seem increasingly unlikely, and I have not yet cancelled anything during the radiation for not being able to do it.

so I think it makes plenty of sense for this to be a fine time for me to say: I have been losing ground in a batch of major indices for what seems like a long long while, I feel the worst I have since the radiation started (by a little), and I'm more than a little tired of it.

ouch, dammit!

can I have just a moment, instead of always being grateful that I "only" lost this instead of that, to say that I notice I'm not a healthy ten year old, a busy thirty year old, a nicely working fifty seven year old anymore?

I'm not a hundred percenter anymore. some stuff will never come back. and I don't know how much.

and however long it is til I can taste food again, and dry mouth goes away, and the scar hardly shows, and the lymph swelling stops giving another layer of turkey to my neck, and I can turn my head comfortably and I can lay comfortably and I can sleep uninterrupted and the cough goes away and an hour and a half five days a week isn't spent going to radiation, and I can leave town for a few days, and I can go outside without sunblock 2000 and radiation dermatitis cream three times a day, and I am only as tired as I make myself, and exercise makes sense again, and I can go back to low fat food, and I don't feel some kind of odd radioactive debility, and I can sing again...

well...I could never really sing...

but, however bloody long that takes is still too bloody long.

the girls have been amazing about adjusting their lives to living with a spook. but they are ready for me not to be a dimmer more fragile version of me as well, I suspect.

it is the very fact that I have five treatments left, a weekend, then two more, that this six month health phase of my life is going to start phasing out in just a week and a half, that makes it possible for me to take a second and say...this has not been my favorite movie, and I'm ready for it to have a happy ending.

and tighter editing.

ptui.