Who is Emily?

We watched the Doors movie by Oliver Stone, and if there was every a movie designed to give you an earworm, it's that one. (Okay, Walk the Line gave you an earworm too, I spent weeks with "Jackson" in my head, great song, love June) So I've got "Riders in The Storm" in my brain with it's repetitive little doo doo doo doo rhythm. And the words "Girl, you gotta love your man. doo doo doo doo" He repeats that twice, so I guess it was important to him. But anyway, aside from the drug induced, pseudo-shaman gestalt of the entire song, who is Emily and why does she have to die? "Sweet Emily will die." Jim sings. He sings it seriously and with belief, because he's got this non ironic pseudo shamanistic gestalt thing going down. So Emily is a goner.

Last Friday we drove into San Fran and had the iPod shuffling and it decided to play The Band. That song where the devil and Carmen are walking along, and then she has to go leaving you with the devil, and Fanny needs help so you have to take a load of Fanny and put the load on me. That song. Cassandra Wilson does a totally gorgeous version of it. Anyway, there's Emily again!!! Here she is "young Emily." Emily certainly was getting around the West Coast scene, and I imagine that she may have been sweet and young but by the time Jim Morrison got done with her apparently she was dead.

So who is Emily? I think she is some sort of Beth in Little Women type figure, a sweet young thing you have to kill off to provoke an excess of emotion in your audience. It's one thing to kill off the old codger living in the shed up the lonely rural road and another to kill off some sweet young blonde thing. As Oscar Wilde said, you have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Dorrit. I will ask my friend who is a Bob Dylan expert if Emily ever got to the East coast on her mission to be a tragic figure and report back.

And another thing I wonder, here in Sacto, all the homeless people have bicycles. Which is great for them, but they also have the child towing devices attached to the back of the bicycles. With no children in them. So where are the children? If you are riding your bike towing your tot and you pop off for a pee, when you come back is your bike there and your kid on the ground behind it?

Guns for Sale

This is a picture of the Sacramento Armory, a place where you can buy guns. It's on J street, across the street from a camera store, a florist, a yoga studio and a See's Candy store. J street is the main drag in Sacto, about 10 years or so the homos moved in and started making cute little boutiques and now it pretends to be a "Destination" in the same way that you'd pop down to SoHo to shop or hit the stores on Montana Ave in LA. But here in the state capitol we can also buy guns until 6:00 pm on Friday.

On Friday we drove down to San Francisco and the Freeway notice boards were flashing information about a CHP officer being shot to death by some guy in a Nissan Maxima and informed us that if we saw the Nissan Maxima we were to call 911. This is the 5th officer shot to death at a traffic stop in California this year.

Last week's Sunday NYTimes reported that there has been an increase in homicides in certain, mid sized cities. So while overall, the national crime rate has gone down in the past ten years, homicides by gun shot are going up, particularly in places like Washington DC, Detroit and Philly. Meanwhile, gun laws have been relaxed. IN fact the number of licensed gun owners in Philly has gone up enormously in the past twenty years, from something like 700 to something like 200,000. People are getting shot for "looking at me the wrong way," "disrespecting me," "looking at my girlfriend." Stuff that used to just get you in a fist fight.

Not to mention the complete assholes in the world. Recently a group of men paid a 14 year old to shoot one of their pregnant wives by giving the kid a gun and promising him 500 bucks.

Dick Chenney's recent "accident" points out how easy it is, even for experienced gun owners to make mistakes. I'm reminded of the scene in "His Girl Friday" where Roz Russell says "What's a gun for, but to use? You had the gun in your hand, what's it for but to use?"

If everyone's got a gun, then they're going to be used. You can't tell me that more police officers wouldn't be alive today if guns were harder to beg, borrow or steal.

News Flash!!!!

Someone* informed me that those quails were in Al Queda!

No wonder Chenney didn't hold fire!!!!



*Scooter Libby, he's the best source.

Signs: Tower

This is the original Tower of Tower records. Now that you've seen it, you don't have to make a pilgrimage to Sacramento to see the lowly beginnings of a multinational conglomerate. Several years ago, I was forced to go to Vermont and so, as long as I was there, a pilgrimage must be made to ice cream Valhalla - Ben and Jerry Land. This was before they were bought out by some multinational conglomerate that produces toilet paper and genetically engineered soy beans. There were cows. They were on hills. So imagine green rolling hills artistically speckled with black and white cows. Very pretty. Very soothing. Very, very I've had too much THC so give me some butterfat with my sugar. This is what America is all about, two entrepreneurial pot heads making butterfat sugar for other pot heads, making an entire empire of cold cream cash, and then getting bought out by a multinational conglomerate that opposes all you value.

Signs: Dancing

Aren't these people having fun?

Quality Quail Hunting

Dick Chenney shoots "fellow hunter."
Accidentally.
Doesn't it sound like he shot a "fellow traveler"?
What were they doing on that remote ranch "shooting quail"?
With an ambulance "on call" no less.
Sounds like a typical administration PLAN for a FELLOW TRAVELER, if you ask me.

Spring

Not to sound like a snotty Californian, but we've been having a warm spell and so the magnolias and plum blossoms are out. While we have news of record snows in that Noreaster on the east coast. Snow was always fun in the city, everything got very quiet until things were dug out.

In Cold Blood

I recently read Capote's "In Cold Blood," which I had never read before and I was totally blown away. The language is so beautifully crafted, the story so intimately told. It was as if you had an angel in your ear, whispering the inner thoughts of those around you, always in stunning language.

At one point, Capote is writing about the friends of Herb Clutter, who perform the solemn task of cleaning the house where the family was murdered. They drag the bloodied mattresses and artifacts out into a back wheat field and start a bonfire. And the friends watch the flames and smoke and think of their friend and their mortality. Here's a quote:

How was it possible that such effort, such plain virtue, could overnight be reduced to this -- smoke, thinning as it rose and was received by the big, annihilating sky?

Just imagine standing in a wintry Kansas field and how the sky streaches above you as you stand on the plain, grey and ominous, for as far as you can see, unbroken by anything except the occasional tree that only points out what a spec you are.

I was so overwhelmed by the sky when I first went to Iowa that I felt naked and uncovered and quite panicky driving from the airport to Iowa City. The sky on the plains is a weighty thing.

These birch trees are so beautiful with their white branches against the sky.