Fn Golden

I got the idea to remix some of the Rod Blagojevich wiretaps. Here’s my first song. Anyone who can direct me to downloads of un-bleeped versions will have my eternal gratitude.

Mark and I had a great weekend. I made a little movie of us flying a kite that my mom sent.
Kites!

My grandmother, Jean Nicholas, died on May 22, 2010. She was 85 years old. The wake and funeral were held in Rahway and Colonia New Jersey, where she lived nearly her entire life. Numerous friends came to pay their respects. I learned so much about my grandmother these past few days that I didn’t know before. Her obituary is here.

She was so quiet about her accomplishments. I knew vaguely, that my grandmother had worked at a bank. I learned this week that my grandmother started out as a teller and retired as the vice president and treasurer of a major regional financial institution. I knew that she liked shopping, crosswords and mystery novels. I didn’t know that she’d been so active in her community, volunteering at a hospital, teaching at her church, and serving on the board of a major charity for mentally handicapped citizens.

She’d had so many great adventures as a young woman. My grandmother’s friend Ms. Rand told us about the “anniversary trips” that my grandparents took each year with two other couples. I never knew that my grandmother (who always wore a suit and heels) had traveled to Africa and South America.

I also enjoyed speaking with Jean’s friend, Gladie and her husband Al. Gladie and Jean became friends in seventh grade, and always lived near each other and maintained a close friendship. Gladie told us the story of how my grandparents got together.

Jean Walker graduated from Woodbridge High School in 1942. She met her future husband, Pete Nicholas, through Bud Wallace, an old boyfriend of Gladie. Pete and Bud worked together in a factory in Rahway.

Pete had moved to New Jersey from Cherry Valley, a very small town in upstate New York, when he graduated from high school. He bought himself a busted old Ford and said, “I’m going to the city.” Jean and Pete hit it off immediately and started dating. My prim British great grandmother, Kathleen Walker (known to friends as Kitty), disapproved of the relationship, describing Pete as “somewhat shiftless.” Nonetheless, Jean and Pete stayed together. Soon, Pete was deployed to Italy during World War II.

In my grandmother’s house, we found a box of photographs from the war. Among them were several notes and letters my grandmother sent to Pete while he was overseas. Below is one funny example. Written on the back of the above photograph, it reads (in handwriting unmistakably my grandmother’s): “Last, dearie, if you don’t like this, tear it up, throw it away, do anything. But don’t write back and tell me I look like hell, because I don’t want to know!”

My grandmother suffered a lot in the last years of her life. She lost most of her memory to Alzheimer’s disease. Along with that, she lost many of her hobbies, including reading novels and reminiscing with her many loyal friends. She also had congestive heart failure, which put her in the hospital frequently. She spent the last weeks of her life on a respirator, conscious and in distress. In some ways, her death was merciful. Her life did not have much to offer to her anymore.

She was a fascinating, funny, stylish and warm person. She’ll be so missed.

The firm where I work recently launched a new website. It’s pretty slick. You can check out our home page: jackowiaklaw.com, or see me here.

I wrote a new little ditty yesterday. Toy piano! Wood block!

California, China or the Moon

Joanna Newsom’s music is really rewarding. Repeat listens reveal themes and variations, recurring motifs, playful subtleties. And her music becomes more meaningful and more beautiful to me the more I learn about it and understand it. So it’s going to take me a while to dig into her new triple-disc opus “Have One on Me.” So far, really, I’ve just been listening to the amazing “Good Intentions Paving Company” on repeat. I’ve basically got down the lyrics, which are funny, sweet, surprising, tender. I’m starting to understand how the quivering, soulful chorus works with the slow spare parts. And there are genuine thrills in this song, especially that achingly beautiful last passage:

And I know you meant to show the extent
To which you gave a goddang.
You ranged real hot and real cold, but I’m sold
I am at home on that range.
And I do hate to fold
Right here, at the top of my game.
When I’ve been trying with my whole heart and soul
to stay right here in the right lane.
But it can make you feel over and old.
Lord, you know it’s a shame
when I only want for you to pull over and hold me
until I can’t remember my own name

Point is, I’ve had this album for about two weeks, and I’ve learned to love one song–one song out of 15! The rest still sounds quite rambling, meandering, disorganized. I know that once I find those other entry points, there is going to be overwhelming beauty to this music. But it takes work, or at least conscious attention.

At the same time, I have developed a new found love for pop music, especially the radio-ready hip hop on the local FM station B96. The other night, I made Mark listen to the radio with me while we played cards and I tried to explain to him the pull this music has for me. Let’s take the song “Tik-Tok” by Kesha.

Everything about this song is really obvious and immediate. The lyrics are about drinking, making boys buy you drinks, and partying until you get kicked out of the club. The vocals lack any substance or texture — they’re completely mechanized and auto-tuned. But the song writing and the production! You can’t detract from the talent it takes to write a confection like this one. I’d love to be as talented as whoever wrote “Tik Tok.” This song is engineered to hit all of the neural centers that make pop music appealing: that chorus that just leaps out of the mix! That buzzy synth counter melody! That bridge with the thudding beat! It is all insanely and immediately pleasurable. It takes no work to love this song. And sometimes when I’m leaving the office that’s exactly what I need. Yes, I could listen to Kai Ryssdal and probably learn something, or I could listen to Joanna and get some lasting pleasure out of the music. But sometimes I’d rather have an ice cream cone than a complex three course meal. Sometimes, you just have to brush your teeth with a bottle of jack.

I saw St. Vincent in concert at the Metro tonight. It was a really neat show. She’s such an awesome guitar player, and the band brought a lot of dynamics. Her voice was even sweeter and clearer than the album. My favorite parts were her solo cover of Nico’s “These Days” and her stripped-down version of “Paris is Burning.”

I like it. The guitar on “Neighbor Riffs” sounds like Mac McCaughan. “Swim” has catchy energy like that first Futureheads album. “Twin Peaks” is sweet and nostalgic and kind of makes me think of college.

What I like best about it is the song titles, because they’re like the dumb song titles that I use. You write a song; you start playing it with your band; you call it “Zapper” because one of the guitar parts sounds like lasers. And then the name just sticks, even though the lyrics have nothing to do with lasers. A lot of the song titles here are like that: “Harmonix” for a song with lots of harmonics; two dissimilar songs called “Fast Jabroni” and “Slow Jabroni” that have nothing to do with Jabronis. I dig.

There is a commercial for Perdue chicken where some member of the Perdue family talks about the healthy diet his company feeds its chickens — no hormones, etc. Then he turns to a chicken that is obviously a rooster and says, “and no candy, Gladys.” I’m vaguely insulted every time I see it.

Farmers everywhere writhed when they saw Italian figure skater Samuel Contesti’s faux-country look. Jazz hands don’t harvest the wheat, Samuel.