GRABBINGSAND

A Week’s Worth, originally uploaded by Jan Tonnesen.

Six men. Two beers. On a weeknight in July, they all met at a picnic table on the patio of the almighty Highlander.

In this second episode of the sure-to-be award-winning Sub-Optimal Beercast, Tony (The King of Beers), James, Garrett, Seth, Rusty and my humble self discuss the limited flavor merits and successful marketing strategies of Bud Light and Miller Lite.

It’s like a wine tasting, only without the cheese, civility and culture.

Grift’s post about Max Blumenthal’s culturally tone-deaf and presumptive idiocy inspired me to write a much too long comment about Toby Keith.

That much too long comment then reminded me of Marty Robbins and the awesome power of his signature song. I have to say, it is always good when your train of thought can start at “Beer For My Horses” and end with a song like “El Paso.” I can’t explain it, but “El Paso” rarely fails to send a subtle chill down my spine. It’s a story song, the kind of thing that went away when Tom T. Hall retired. But more specifically, it’s a murder ballad. A damned good one.

One night a wild young cowboy came in,
Wild as the West Texas wind.
Dashing and daring,
A drink he was sharing
With wicked Felina,
The girl that I loved.

So in anger,
I challenged his right
For the love of this maiden.
Down went his hand for the gun that he wore.
My challenge was answered in less than a heart-beat;
The handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor.

Just for a moment I stood there in silence,
Shocked by the foul evil deed I had done.
Many thoughts raced through my mind as I stood there;
I had but one chance and that was to run.

Get that? The girl that he loved. Earlier, he admits that his love is one-sided. He’s just an admirer. Never-the-less, he calls the man out and plugs him before the fellow can even reach his pistol. Didn’t even bother to take the affair outside!

And the whole story is told in a gorgeous three-part harmony that occasionally dips and slurs like a drunken ranch hand … or like a dying gunslinger.

I’ll be humming “El Paso” for the rest of the afternoon. To see why, give these videos a look and listen, one from either end of Marty Robbin’s too short career.

Eight seconds can be a very long time. For a rodeo champion, it can seem like an eternity. For John McCain, it might as well be forever.

The question asked and the answer given have been discussed so much already, but that delay just kills me. And the eye-roll! Dear God, the eye-roll!

An update of sorts.

Number One. I have my original .com domain back.  Turns out there is a grace period and I was still in it.  I’m still more than a little annoyed that my registrar saw fit to allow a squatter to keep my site warm during my brief expiration period, but it is good to have it back all the same.  (And I would have never looked into the existence of any kind of grace period if Dan (of Dan And Sally) hadn’t reminded me of such.  So the credit is mostly due to him.)

Number Two. I’ve restored most of the post-related images.  Nothing but text is minimalist and somewhat chic, but an illustration or two never hurt anyone.

Number Three. I’m sticking with the .org.  I’m redirecting the .com traffic over here.  I like the fact that this domain is basically unexplored territory.

Number Four. I’m rebuilding my blogroll, starting with the locals.  If I’ve missed you, fret not.  I’ll link to you shortly.

… but not quite.

I have made a tactical error, basically. Here’s what happened …

When I registered grabbingsand.com so long ago, I was hosted by a friendly little company called LogJamming. It was run by two guys, just a pair of geeks who had the bandwidth. They established themselves by hosting Wil Wheaton’s blog, so I figured they could host mine. Nice fellas, too. Need support? Just find them on AIM and say so. They did all of their registering through a company called TwentyBones. So called because they’d register you on the big Wide World of Web for just twenty bucks. A deal at the time.

After some time, I left LogJamming, but I stuck with TwentyBones. Soon enough, they were bought out by a company called DomainMonger. I figured it hurt nothing to leave things as they were, so I let it stay. Their re-registration was just as inexpensive, after all. The last time I logged in to their website? 2005. And there’s the problem. They didn’t have my updated credit card info. They didn’t have my GMail address. And since I hadn’t given it a thought it three years, July 2008 arrived without me noticing that my domain was going to expire.

So grabbingsand.com expired. There is a search engine squatter where my blog used to be. The vultures, they move fast.

But all is not lost. I’ve backed up every piece of data from the old site. It is amazing what you accumulate over four or five years, even virtually. I had about 400MB worth of photos, mp3s and assorted nonsense. I’ve also managed to pull a complete backup of my previous WordPress database. The only problem is that it is pretty big, weighing in at over 8MB. That’s a lot of posts, but I’ve been doing this in one way or another for nine years.

So that’s why you’re looking at a rather skeletal blog today. If you’ve been a regular reader, I thank you, and I beg your patience. With any luck, I’ll be able to set everything back to mostly normal before the weekend is out.

(You know what the best thing about this seeming misfortune is? I didn’t freak out. Not all that much, anyway. Had this happened a couple of years ago, I would’ve railed and ranted, scaring the cats and making my wife wonder what happened to her sensible husband. But as it was, I saw what happened, muttered “You gotta be kidding me” a couple of times, then just went to work on finding a way to fix it. Maybe this means I’m growing up. Or something.)

I’m known for my peculiar taste in music, for my tendency to go for the old soul or rock and roll when seeking out new music. When I can’t find something contemporary to satisfy me, I’ll go back in time, reaching for the late 60s and early 70s and clawing around until I find gems that suit me. Such investigation has worked in my favor, bringing to my attention such long-neglected artists as Alice Clark, Esther Phillips and Labi Siffre.

I don’t live in the past. It’s just … as much as I like so much of today’s music, I know full well that most of it just isn’t real. Artifice can be beautiful, but when I find something that resonates with a rare honesty, I tend to embrace it.

So when I mentioned yesterday that I might’ve just found my favorite new album for 2008, I mean that I think I’ve found another honest artist to celebrate.

Danielia Cotton has a voice that fears nothing. If she needs to crack it to bring a feeling to your attention, then it’s going to crack. She’ll wail if the song warrants. She’ll keep low when a verse warrants, then set her voice afire through the bridge and send it soaring through the chorus.

She’s not blazing any trails here-to-fore uncovered. She’s doing quite the opposite. Her influences are obvious and proudly so. What hits me first is how much of a Mother’s Finest vibe I get from every other track on her latest album, Rare Child. Mother’s Finest’s iconic Another Mother Further is thirty-one years old, but remains one of the best albums I’ve ever heard (albeit an album that few others seem to remember). So that association alone would be enough to pull me into Danielia’s corner, but then she goes on to channel so many other damned good sounds. Etta James is in there, as well as Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, The Stones, Bad Company, Stevie Ray, maybe even some latter day folks like Shelby Lynne, Nikka Costa, Jennifer Nettles (Pre-Sugarland, especially). There’s even one track that reminds me quite spookilly of The Scorpions “Still Loving You,” a metal ballad that kept me in its thrall through junior high. If you look on YouTube, you can find her doing live covers of AC/DC’s “Back In Black.”

My only complaints about the album would be that it is simply too short — these ten tracks fly by far too quickly — and that a couple of tracks could’ve used a bit less polish. A well-intentioned producer somewhere seems to have the notion that Danielia should follow the K.T. Tunstall route, but that’s far too limiting. To be honest, I’ve no idea where Danielia belongs. What radio station is going to play an artist from New Jersey who slips so easily from Texas-style blues to old Nashville country to late-seventies guitar rock?

Luckilly, NPR caught one of her concerts for safe-keeping back in May. The forty-one minute show is just about enough time to run through all of Rare Child, and she is in strong voice throughout. Give it a listen, then go pick up the album in whatever format suits you. We’ve another six months to go before the New Year, but I’ll be hard-pressed to find another offering in 2008 so rich with promise. Maybe you’ll agree.

Photo from Shore Fire Media, Photo Credit: Chia Messina

As someone who volunteers about 400 hours of his life per year to a cause he holds dearly, allow me to say that Jonah Goldberg is a complete and utter idiot. It’s one thing to be a pundit, even to be a pundit for the sake of punditry, but quite another to be willfully ignorant for the sake of sounding superior.

Actually, that kind of behavior is what my grandmother would’ve referred to as “being contrary.”

There’s a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery … In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would “set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year.”*

No, Jonah. A national call to volunteerism, especially one with a carrot and a stick involved, would give complacent young Americans — you know, the ones whose eyes glaze over while watching MTV — the opportunity and incentive to seek a cause beyond their own. Conversely, slavery — at the very least — involves the wholesale dehumanization of a particular segment of humanity (through the deprivation of freedom) to the socio-economical benefit of another segment.

Asshat.

I could never write fan-fiction about a single television series or one particular book. Where’s the fun in that? No, I’d have to write nothing but cross-overs. So if I had the time and inclination, I’d write something like this:

Quantum Leap / Enterprise

This one writes itself, doesn’t it? The final episode of Enterprise was horrible, even regrettable. For a series that had suffered so much already, they had to go and frame the last hurrah in a contrived holodeck scenario involving Next Gen’s Commander Riker and Counselor Troi. Shameful and stupid.

So why not do this instead. Bring the whole series to a close with one last big episode, something massive and epic that will determine the course of Federation history from that point forward. And then, once the dust has settled and all of the conflict has been resolved, we cut to Captain Archer on the bridge of the original Enterprise. He looks around, surveys his crew and sees that everything is as it should be. The look on his face lets us all know that he has never felt so content. And as he cracks an honest smile, his body is enveloped in a Quantum glow.

Next, we cut to an interior shot of some kind of storage closet. Or maybe a cave. The man we’ve known as Archer is crouching over a ticking time bomb with a Swiss Army Knife in one hand and an empty roll of toilet paper in the other. At his left shoulder, looking on anxiously, is a young girl (probably blonde) with big hair. “What’re ya waitin’ for, Mac? Stop the bomb!” Former Archer glances at a pair of wires on the timer. One is red. One is blue. Looking up from his task, he says to nobody in particular:

“Oh, boy.”