brainsplotch

Monday, we took the train from Liverpool to York. I can at least say I passed through Manchester and Leeds on the way to York. York itself is an ancient city with Roman walls still circling it. The walls are accessible for walking and offer a tremendous vantage point. We also toured York Minster, which was incredible. Not that I am any expert on the grand cathedrals of Europe, but York Minster ranks right up there with ones I have seen like Westminster and Notre Dame.  We also walked down the Shambles, a winding street the resembles Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter books. It plays up the similarity, with a few Harry Potter/magic-themed shops. It's just a tad touristy. (Like we somehow aren't tourists, too? I really should quit with this elitist attitude). We retired to our hotel, where there was an open mic music event taking place downstairs. The music was, shall we say, of varying quality. (But I respect anyone willing to put themselves out there). We had a few cocktails t...

Every shower in every hotel or airbnb varies in size and to what degree a PhD in engineering is required to either a) turn it on, b) get the hot water to work without giving oneself third degree burns, or c) both. Negotiating how to get to and from every train station and whether walking is an option: this is an adventure. Realizing unequivocally that Europe's public transportation system is a thousand times better than the United States' and that isn't likely to change in my lifetime. The "see it, say it, sorted" public service announcements at the UK train stations will be in my head for awhile. Aside from the first few episodes of Dept. Q on Netflix when we were relaxing in our hotel our first night in London and some of the Isle of Wight festival whilst in Liverpool, we have barely watched any television here. That said, it's gonna drive me nuts if I don't find out if the heart attack victim survived and woke from her coma in the emergency 999 reality ...

Backtracking to London... We had a whirlwind stay in London. Our one full day, we walked across Hyde Park to the Victoria & Albert Museum and spent almost the entire afternoon there. It was the one major museum we didn't make it to in 2023, so it was thrilling to get there this time around. The collection of artwork and sculpture there is astounding, and one can almost feel the presence of ghosts from the Victorian era in the old building, which also still bears the visible scars of the blitz during the Battle of Britain. I wore my Brandi Carlile t-shirt and we bumped into some American Brandi fans at the V&A who were in London primarily for the concert. These fans invited us to a pre-show get-together at the Gloucester Arms. (We considered it, but didn't end up going). After we finished at the V&A, we walked back across Hyde Park to our hotel, charged up our phones a bit, grabbed dinner in the Aubaine Restaurant adjoining the hotel, then trekked back across Hyde Pa...

As I write this in our room at the Hard Day's Night Hotel (don't laugh--it's actually much classier than the name might imply, though does have a definite Beatle theme), we can hear loud dance music pumping outside. It's Saturday night in Liverpool and this place parties louder and harder than any city I've ever experienced. And I mean the entire city centre. Every pub and restaurant blasts music and people are everywhere drinking, singing karaoke, and in some cases wearing dressy, shiny clothes. Glowering bouncers/doormen stand out these places looking menacing. In my first day ever in Liverpool, I'm trying to get a grasp of the place, but am not successful so far. Not to say that this is a bad place at all, but it operates at a frequency that I am not attuned to yet. I'll have to see if it calms down at all tomorrow, which is a Sunday.  After wandering around the area surrounding the hotel and not finding a restaurant that didn't look crowded, insanely...

If you think TSA is stressful, just go through the security checkpoint for the Eurostar from France to England: find Hall 2, present ticket to intimidating, uniformed French authorities, go up escalator to Hall 2, wait in line, scan passport, go through gate, cram all belongings into baggage, scan passport again, send baggage through x-ray, hope you didn't forget to take off your belt with metal buckle (I did), pass through body scanner again and pray. Success! Thank British authority. Take several deep breaths of elation and relief. Then pray you can find all the stuff you hastily crammed in your luggage. When you find them, take several more deep breaths of elation and relief. In conclusion, pretty please with sugar on top: rejoin the EU, UK!

I literally have not had a second until now to write anything in here about Paris. Where to begin? It was I who sprung the idea of staying in Montmartre, based solely on its history of being a bohemian artist enclave and its association with Toulouse-Lautrec, the Moulin Rouge, and other luminaries such as Picasso. But I never gave much thought to the geography of the place or where it was situated in relation to the rest of Paris. I really didn't know or never registered that it lies on the northern edge of Paris and is separated geographically and even psychically by an incredibly steep bluff that is only accessed by hundreds of steps (or a funicular, if the steps are too daunting).  Montmartre is a funky, vibrant place full of winding, narrow cobblestone streets. Some parts are more touristy than others. Our little apartment is at 6 Rue Poulbot, three floors above a tiny restaurant called Chez Plumeau. We can hear talking, laughing, and the clacking of cutlery until well into the...

We are sitting at a seat that is divided from the other seat by a table, so there are awkward glances at the people in front of us. I figure they don't want to be bothered with conversation from a complete stranger, so I'll leave them alone.  Most people are entertained by their phones these days, anyway--including me. [Just west of Reims, now]. This is the fastest train I have ever been on. I am trying to imagine if Amtrak was this fast. It would be amazing. But that would require the U.S. to actually invest in infrastructure and public transportation. Arrived in Paris and took a wild taxi ride from the train station to our little place in Montmartre. I even attempted French with the cab driver, which I suppose he appreciated even though he could tell by rusty-ass French was awful. But he got us here and we have a stunning view of the city.

First of all, I'm sorry I haven't posted any pictures here. I'm never sure how they'll translate from my phone to the blog--as in, will they be too enormous in size--so I don't do it. I might try when we get home. Busy day yesterday: took the train from Halle to Leipzig to Chemnitz. Avery's class had a field trip to the State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz (SMAC) that I keep wanting to call "SLAM" for some reason. We had permission from his professor to tag along, and we tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. We got to meet some of Avery's friends/classmates, including Lena (or Lena 2 or dark-haired Lena, as I now think of her) and the very talkative and deeply philosophical Oskar (not entirely sure of the spelling) who bears more than a passing resemblance to a young, 1969/1970 Elton John--not that this is a bad thing. (I have to say that German college students dress much more smartly than their American counterparts. Nice to see Doc Martens and...

It's such a relief not to be in the U.S. and to be able to miss Trump's banana republic-level, wasteful military parade.  I am trying to avoid world news, in general. But it's hard when it just pops up on my phone. I was fascinated by a five-story empty building across from our tram stop on Merseberger Straße, in which the upper level appeared to be occupied exclusively by pigeons, who flew in and out of the open windows. Avery took us to a university building--the uni seems to have buildings scattered throughout the city at various locations--that has a room on the lower level that is basically a student hangout and (sort of) crash pad. It has a printer that Avery and other students use, a few sofas that look as if they were salvaged from the sidewalk, various drinks that can be taken in an "on your honor" monetary donation. The whole crazy quilt set-up made me nostalgic for the days of being a carefree young student.

[On the train to Chemnitz with a gaggle of archaeology students]. After sleeping until 9 AM and lazing about in the airbnb, we eventually took the tram up to the main (?) MLU campus in Halle. Met up with Avery and wandered a bit, looking at various university buildings. Avery went to class and L. and I went to our favorite Halle coffee shop, 7 Gram, which happens to be directly across the street from B12 Musics, which is a excellent record shop. So we drank iced lattes and then, on my request, popped into B12. I bought Siouxsie & the Banshees' Kaleidoscope (on CD), which was a fortuitous find since I have been in a S&tB mood recently. B12 had so much good stuff that I could have easily gone crazy, but resisted the temptation. The clerk who rang me up was the same guy as 2023, the one who enthused over my Namanlos purchase. Good to see he's still there. I assume he owns the place. Avery met up with us shortly thereafter and we wandered further north into the city and sa...

No more Halle puns, I promise. I just slept 11 hours, which I desperately needed, in this lovely little airbnb on Huttenstraße on the south side of the city. Yesterday, Avery guided us through the cemetery across the street, which fascinatingly contains a section of Soviets who died, or at least were buried, in the aftermath of World War II. The all have the hammer and sickle on their grave stones. In fact, we spent most of our first day here walking, which helped prevent falling asleep and further throwing off our sleep schedule. It's hard, but I've learned you have to do it. We finished off the evening by looking at some of the Martin Luther University campus and then dining at Avery's favorite Middle Eastern restaurant.

Bear with me, because I'm running on fumes. We landed in Frankfurt without incident, but then had a mini-adventure when we discovered we couldn't take the train to Halle directly from the airport, but instead had to take train from the airport to the Frankfurt hauptbahnhof, and THEN transfer to another train that would stop in Halle on its way to its final destination, Berlin. This all added an extra level of intrigue, but we got it done.  I am completely demolished right now, having barely any sleep for the better part of 30 hours, so I'll continue tomorrow.

We just boarded our plane from Detroit to Frankfurt. So far, everything has gone smoothly. All in all, it seems like a calm day at DTW. We did have a mom and dad with a young child in front of us who somehow it would be okay to put a small child's bed in front of the emergency exit. No bueno. Looks like the flight attendant was able to have them trade seats with somebody else. Problem solved. And with that, I will sign off for now.

It all started in about 1986 or 1987 when I leafed through a friend's copy of a Rolling Stone history of rock 'n' roll (I can't remember the exact title or edition). There was a group photo of five or six scowling young guys in front of either a crumbling stone chimney or large boulders, half of the guys were white and two (or three--if it was the Da Capo era) were Black. The accompanying caption identified these guys as a band called "Love."  Around this same time, I flipped through a book called The Doors: The Illustrated History, which includes a promotional Q&A with the four Doors, they type of fluff that was common in that era and that bands likely hated having to do. One of the questions was something like, "What are your goals?" Jim Morrison's answer was essentially, "To be as big as Love." I had to find out more about this band called Love. A year or two later, I found myself at Jocundry's Books (R.I.P.) and on the shel...

Scratch Bob Mould off the list... It's embarrassing for me to say that, after almost 39 years of being a fan, I finally saw Bob Mould play live. I never saw Hüsker Dü because they broke up a year after I became a fan. I probably had multiple opportunities when Bob went solo or when he was in his band Sugar, but it wasn't high on my priority list. It wasn't until his recent career resurgence on Merge Records--and a further deepening of my HD fandom, that seeing Bob became a must.   I had tickets to see him in March 2020, but I don't need to tell you what global shit show caused that concert to be canceled. So, five years later, I finally caught him and his cracking band consisting of Jason Narducy (bass/vocals) and Jon Wurster (drums). Of course, Bob adds his slashing buzz saw guitar and anguished vocals to the mix. Since there is apparently a law that makes Lansing a live music black hole, we once again had to make the 1 1/2 hour drive to Bell's Eccentric Café in K...

On Tuesday, April 29, we saw Johnny Echols perform with the band Baby Lemonade (doing double duty as both themselves and the band Love) at Bell's Eccentric Cafe in Kalamazoo. (Because Lansing apparently isn't allowed to have cool shows like this--we have to drive an hour-and-a-half elsewhere. But I digress). I never saw Arthur Lee perform in his various 1990s/2000s tours and shows, so when I saw that Johnny Echols was venturing on a tour with Baby Lemonade--and that one of the stops was in Kalamazoo--I knew I absolutely had to go, or I might regret it for the rest of my life. A day before the show, I saw a Facebook post about the Echols tour from a "virtual friend" (writer Dan Epstein) who is "real life" friends with Baby Lemonade's guitarist Mike Randle. I mentioned in the post that I'd be at the Kalamazoo show and Mike replied that I should seek him out at the show and say "hello." I wasn't sure what the logistics of that would be, bu...

On April 23, I watched Paul Schrader's most recent film, Oh, Canada. It was the first Schrader movie I'd seen since First Reformed , which I enjoyed (though "enjoy" is a relative term with many Schrader movies, since they tend to be so dark. Maybe the better term is "appreciate"). Richard Gere plays Leo Fife, an aging documentary filmmaker who is dying of cancer, and when I say dying, I mean he's at death's door. Former film students of his are in the process of filming their own documentary about Leo's life. Leo is interviewed on camera and we, the audience, are left to wonder how many of Leo's memories are real or imagined, and whether Leo was a filmmaker with leftist political principles or someone who was only perceived that way by others. We also see that Leo was a man of contradictions, like many of us are. Though the movie is based on a Russell Banks novel--and likely contains some autobiographical elements--it's impossible not to ...

I finally finished The Name of This Band is R.E.M. and I give it a solid four stars out of five. Perhaps even 4 1/2 stars. It was a breezy read. A sign of how consistent R.E.M. was during their recording career is that I found myself constantly thinking, "oh, he's gonna talk about Fables !" "Oh, he's gonna talk about Pageant !" "Oh, he's gonna talk about Document !" ...and on and on. With the exception of Around the Sun , the band never released a sub-par album, and I wanted to read what Peter Ames Carlin had to say about all of them. He's a good insightful writer. R.E.M. were, by and large, well-behaved lads and have rarely let their private lives go public. Consequently, there is little in the way of salaciousness that one would find in a book about, say, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, or--for that matter--R.E.M. contemporaries like--say--Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, or any number of hair metal bands. The craziest story is the time in 2001...

I haven't written anything in here for a long time. So what's new? Muddling by day-to-day under the Trump regime, bracing myself with every bat shit crazy executive order he makes and every certifiably nutty word that comes out of his mouth. All while no other elected official has the guts to stand up to him. Sorry, I'm not gonna provide you with any deep and nuanced political commentary, just expressing my frustration with the state of the United States. Of course, none of this insanity happening now surprises me.  So when I'm not depressed about authoritarianism, how have I been spending my time this month? I have been reading The Name of This Band is R.E.M . : a Biography (by Peter Ames Carlin). I am enjoying it a lot, and am about halfway through. It's much, much less of a slog than the last book I read. R.E.M. was good when it came to self-mythologizing, or maybe just messing with interviewers. I wouldn't call them  liars-- that is much too strong ...

I should get at least one post in for February. I haven't felt like writing lately. The one time I had the urge (Monday the 17th), the inspiation disappeared quicker than a drop of water in the Sahara. I was set to write about the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary show, but that flame blew out quickly. Maybe I'll tackle it again at some point. So, what else is new? The U.S. is still a shit show and Trump and his gangsters are ruling as authoritarians with no regard to checks and balances. All the creaks, gaps, and inadequacies of our Constitution have been exposed and exploited. Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress are essentially too afraid to stand up to Trump. So we're fucked. Listen, I know that is a very reductive assessment of our current state of affairs in the United States...or is it? I can't remember if I mentioned reading Beyond Belief: a Chronicle of Murder and its Detection by Emlyn Williams. It's allegedly the book that Morrissey used as inspira...

I write this shortly after learning that Pete Hegseth: racist, alcoholic, domestic abuser, and philanderer who isn't qualified to be your local dog catcher, was confirmed as Secretary of Defense. We live in hell. I was silly enough to believe that, on January 20, 2021, Donald Trump's political career was over. After the horrors of January 6 and selling out his supporters, I thought for sure we were done with him. Surely, the failures of his presidency would be clear and the Republican Party would cut the cancer out and move on. How little did I know. Instead, he is back. His vengeance is at an extreme level. All of his executive orders designed to inflict as much pain as possible. He has made it clear that anyone who did not vote for him is the enemy, and nobody is safe. I curse everybody who voted for him, and save even more anger towards anyone who willingly sat out this election and didn't bother to vote. I have a hearty "fuck you" for all of you. So where do w...

I gotta tell you, this three day weekend is kinda sucking so far. The Lions fall on their faces last night and get blown out by Washington, 45-31. Super Bowl hopes dashed before they could really get started. Then, I wake up early and do Wordle and don't get it correct for the first time in three years. And, worst of all, tomorrow we begin day one (of Part 2) in a Christo-fascist oligarchy. The ignorant, short-term memory-addled America electorate gave the presidency back to the failed reality TV host. I will do all in my power not to watch any of the inauguration. The remainder of the weekend, I would do myself and my mental health well by staying off social media, reading books, and catching up on movies and favorite streaming shows. Anything to numb the pain.

The Detroit Lions lost tonight, and their season is over. No Super Bowl this year. Now that the dream has died, I can finally refer to the big game by its real name and not a euphemism. As any longtime Lions fan can attest, it's always best to expect disappointment at some point and not elevate ones hopes to high. It only ends in pain. I suppose the silver lining is maybe I'll get more reading done.

Though it's always a relief to reclaim our living room after removing all the decorations from the Christmas tree and hauling it out of the house, I never fail to feel melancholy after dropping it in the pile of dead trees at the township office. Seeing this mass dumping ground of once gloriously lit and bejeweled trees signals the passing of the holiday season with a blunt finality. It also makes me ponder this strange ritual of the Christmas tree. Before I launch into this unintentionally Scrooge-like essay, allow me to make it clear that I do like having a Christmas tree, and much of what I write here is tongue-in-cheek. That said, Think about it: we have massive tree farms that grow coniferous trees for the sole purpose of selling them for Christmas. We holiday consumers buy these trees for, say, $50 to $100 (and possibly more) for maybe a month of use. These trees are chopped down and plunked in glorified buckets of water in our homes. The primitive life support buckets stave ...

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, older son safely arrived in Germany late last night and the Detroit Lions dispatched the Minnesota Vikings, 31-9 to win the NFC North Division title and a #1 seed in the NFC playoffs. First #1 playoff seed in Detroit Lions franchise history. First Lions team in the 94-year history of the franchise to go undefeated in road games. Most regular season wins (15) in franchise history. Consecutive division titles for the first time in franchise history. Undefeated vs. the three other teams in the NFC North division, regarded as the best division in the National Football League. As a little icing on top, the Lions won in San Francisco for the first time since 1975--in a game that was meaningless for the Lions. Looking a few weeks down the line, I don't even want to mention that big game that rhymes with Trooper Poll, but... Okay, forget I mentioned that. I'm too nervous for that.

We took older son to the airport to return to Germany. No matter how old he gets or how many times we've done it, it never really gets much easier to say farewell. Maybe a little easier, but not a heck of a lot easier. It's fun having him home since he livens things up so much, but he's also an adult and has to live his own life. While at Detroit Metro Airport, we encounted an invasion of purple and gold clad people: Minnesota Vikings fans arriving in Detroit for the huge Lions/Vikings game tonight. This is a particularly monumental game for the Lions, one that I think I would be better off watching alone in a padded room. I keep trying to remind myself that I have no control over what happens, and that these wealthy professional athletes have no idea who I am, nor care. By virtue of being a fan, I feel I have a stake in this game--but in reality I don't. All of this is my defense mechanism in the event the Lions lose, in which case I'll likely be sad no matter how...

2024 was challenging and the election results were disappointing, to say the least. Four more years of Trump is guaranteed to be harmful if not downright disastrous, so 2025 will not be any better from a political standpoint. That said, we can still use the year to take pleasure in small things. Enjoy books, music, movies, art, walks in your neighborhood, time spent with friends and family. Eliminate toxic elements from your life. That could include some or most of social media or people who offer nothing positive. Feel free to take breaks from the news if the news causes you distress. Remember that you have no control over how the ignorant and uninformed among us think or vote. It is of no use stressing out over them. Focus on what you can control, namely yourself and your immediate surroundings. I wish all of you who read this blog the best 2025 possible.