Unseen Power of the Picket Fence

Sunset overlooking Albuquerque from top of Sandia Peak. I took a cable car up with a customer.

I finally made it to Atlanta on late Thursday/early Friday after a cancelled flight and many delays. Our office is in the suburbs near Duluth, GA. It is strip mall hell but it is right in the middle of what appears to be the largest Korean community outside of Los Angeles' Korea town or Seoul itself. All the signage around our hotel is in both English and Korean. I dragged some coworkers to a fairly fancy Korean place for dinner. Some of whom had never tried it and it met with some success.

"Who loves not women, wine and song remains a fool his whole life long" - Martin Luther

Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

A.E. Stallings

This poem on a card convinced me to subscribe to Poetry magazine. I am in my third time zone in three days. I'll let you know when I catch my breath. Somtime this weekend in Atlanta I imagine.

"Please Be Patient With Me"

View from our room in the Holiday Inn (Rock Island). It's always fun to cross the Mississippi several times in one day.

I liked the Stroh's sign.

I am not sure if Mr. Xu's style is as renowned as he seems to think it is.

The Wilco show on Wednesday in Davenport rocked but it was a little puzzling. Apparently all shows at the Adler Theater must end by 10:30 pm on the dot. There is some kind of curfew in the vicinity of theater as cops were dispersing the crowd immediately upon exiting from the building. Anyway, there was to a slight delay during final encore because of a fight breaking out so the show seemed a bit truncated. A minor bump in an otherwise kick ass performance. I will be looking forward to trying to see them again when they head back this way.

I will try and update more on the midweek Quad Cities extravaganza. I almost forgot about the Richard Thompson show at the Englert on Tuesday. (Watching and listening to Thompson play guitar with the full band was chilling. He is that good.) His new album, Sweet Warrior, is available.

One of the surviving roses from the bushes next to our house.

Nothing too exciting this weekend some general housecleaning, grocery shopping, and lawn maintenance turned comedy of errors as I yanked out the starter cord and tried to get as much grass cut as possible before the engine died.

Finished Salty this weekend. It wasn't bad but the Thailand setting made me want to read some more of John Burdett's Bangkok series. The third and latest featuring police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is Bangkok Haunts and is the latest addition to my Summer Reading list. I am on the library hold list for it. So if you have it checked out please read faster. I would like to take it on the road with me.

I am preparing for another extended road trip to Ohio leaving this Saturday for almost a week with two days at home followed by a brief and out of the way stopover in New Mexico for four days then straight to Atlanta for three weeks. I will be ready for a break or a breakdown when I return.

Looking forward to Richard Thompson tomorrow night followed by Wednesday night with the incomparable Wilco in Davenport. When it rains it pours. Feast or famine. All that stuff.

"Her name was Lola, She was a showgirl..."

Friends of ours welcomed home a new family member. Meet Lola.

Have a good weekend all. Just leaving work now at 7pm due to procrastination and some Office Space like copier issues.

"PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean? "

Now Playing

I have been listening to this all morning. It is worth hearing. A couple of new and some older songs are on their myspace page.

I also picked up the Stax 50th Anniversary compilation from Record Collector (who are apparently relocating to Linn St.) which was a bargain at under $20. The Stax Blog is streaming songs from the double cd including Booker T, Staple Singers, Otis Redding, and Isaac Hayes, etc...

Summer (To Be) Reading List (so far):

Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard (This is a sequel to The Hot Kid. )

Hurricane Punch by Tim Dorsey (Way over the top series that is pure fun to read. Crime fiction on acid with serial killer Serge A. Storms as the hero. This is the 7th or 8th in a series.)

Salty by Mark Haskell Smith ( I just started this one. I enjoyed his last two Moist and Delicious, perfect beach entertainment.)

Truck: A Love Story by Michael Perry (A birthday gift I still have not gotten around to yet. It is the first one to be queued up after returning library books. Excerpt here.)

I am attempting to make an effort (concerted or not) to reduce the stack of acquired books that are piling up around the house at an alarming rate. It is difficult as I keep adding to the stacks. I stopped by the Bookend yesterday and was fortunate just to leave with only a Peter De Vries novel I Hear America Swinging (hardback edition and set in Iowa so a must buy) and a paperback version of Confederacy of Dunces. They were charging 3 bucks for all you could fit in a plastic grocery bag because they too were in the process of relocating. I could have easily filled one up but did not. Yes, I do realize bibliomania is a disease.

Nighthawks at Denny's in Santa Fe

Wandering around the Ped Mall in downtown Iowa City during Art's Festval this weekend.

I made it back home Friday. It was good to see everyone out and about on Friday night for the live music and a birthday gathering.

I bought a copy of Don DeLillo's Falling Man in DFW airport. Not sure if I can recommend reading a 9/11 novel on a plane but I was out of books to read and it caught my eye. I am enjoying it more than his previous two efforts so far. I finished Murakami's After Dark and recommend that as well. I found it as a cross between his ultra-surreal and more linear narratives, a distilled but more accessible version of his Hard Boiled Wonderland & The End of the World.

No more new book purchases for me for a while. I need to catch up on backlog of reading material piled up around the house.