I spent all day grading things. Well, until about 4 p.m. Then I had lunch. And then I went out for a bike ride, because there was about two hours of light left, and I didn’t want to spend all of the day inside.
It was a day that required a wind jacket and full fingered gloves. But the roads were quiet, and so were my tires. Past a certain point, at a certain speed, the hum of the Continentals takes on a different pitch. It can feel effortless, for a moment, and sound pro. It’s neither of those things, but you’re willing to fool yourself.
Only I didn’t do that today. It was just nice to be out. I did two laps of one of my regular circuits, a route designed to allow me to be within about six or seven miles or so of the house at all times. Just in case the sun set more quickly than anticipated. Because, websites and Farmer’s Almanacs notwithstanding, that great ball of hydrogen may have a mind all it’s own.
But you know what? I got in 25 miles when I somehow thought I’d have to go in after just getting 15 or so, but my lovely bride had a Zoom call, so I wasn’t worried about holding us up for dinner, and so I finished that second lap. It was 25 miles, and still technically daylight when I got back in.
Technically, I say, because I never mounted or turned on my headlight.
I was wearing light clothes, and we’re now suddenly in that time of year where the temperatures change quickly when the sun disappears, and I might not yet be mentally prepared for chilly weather, so I came in with no complaints.
I am deep back into the grading of things which must be graded. Students were reading a piece written by a colleague and new friend in our department on privacy issues around social media platforms. Some of of the student commentary is thoughtful to profound. They’re taking it to heart, which is gratifying.
I started working on this after midnight last night and should wrap this up late Wednesday. Maybe Thursday, if I must.
I did step outside for a break, and found some lovely flowers brightening the backyard.
It is warm and sunny and beautiful in the second week of October, and this can’t last forever.
But it should.
Let’s return to the Re-Listening project. I am listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. This silly little feature here, then, is where I write about it, to pad out the site. These aren’t reviews, but it does make for a good excuse to put up some good music here. And the Re-Listening project will do both this week, with a 2001 release that I picked up around 2006 or so.
It’s a tribute album, and a solid one at that, honoring the great Hank Williams. I think of this almost exclusively as an in-my-car CD, which is where I listened to it, but that also makes it a bit eerie, given that its Hank Williams. But each track is inspired by greatness by the same man.
It’s an interesting mix, some of these efforts pay direct homage to the original artist, and some are done in the contemporary performer’s style. Just take a look at the track list, it’s a who’s who.
I Can’t Get You Off Of My Mind – Bob Dylan
Long Gone Lonesome Blues – Sheryl Crow
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – Keb’ Mo’
Your Cheatin’ Heart – Beck
Lost On The River – Mark Knopfler
You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave) – Tom Petty
You Win Again – Keith Richards
Alone And Forsaken – Emmylou Harris
I’m A Long Gone Daddy – Hank Williams III
Lovesick Blues – Ryan Adams
Cold, Cold Heart – Lucinda Williams
I Dreamed About Mama Last Night – Johnny Cash
Dylan, who rarely does covers, leads the thing off. Sheryl Crow yodels. Keb’ Mo’ is Keb’ Mo.
Beck is returning to his roots, and it’s beautiful and haunting. Particularly if you’re driving a lonesome highway. And that’s before you remember, “Your Cheating Heart” was the first posthumous release.
I am not a Tom Petty fan, in particular, but his cover of “You’re Gonna Change” is a standout. The Songbird took over “Alone and Forsaken.”
Hank Williams III, for the first 10 years or so of his musical career, did anything he could to distance himself from his father and grandfather. It makes sense, I suppose. When you see him, and you hear him, it’s obvious why he was initially hesitant to go that direction. He is the spitting image of sound and likeness.
Trey is back to doing metal and punk, with some country tinge, I think.
That’s one of the songs I’m always looking forward to when this CD is playing. That, and “Lovesick Blues.”
This record came out some 48 years after Williams died, of hard living, at just 29. The tribute genre was certainly a bit tired by then, but it’s difficult to imagine who could have done this better, or who got left off the playlist. It’s a fine thing, “Timeless,” and if it turned on another generation to The Hillbilly Shakespeare, then it was a project well undertaken.
It’s a record worth having for passive Hank Williams fans, and a good way in for people unfamiliar with his incredible, and unfortunately abbreviated catalog.
What’s next in the Re-Listening project? We’ll find out together, next week!
Welcome to Catober, where we daily highlight the kitties, because once a week isn’t enough. They also get their own posts in October, because they slipped that into their contract when we weren’t looking. So, I’ll take turns highlighting each cat. Tomorrow we’ll have some amazing Phoebe cuteness. You can see the full collection of lovely cat poses right here.
I’m mid-thigh in grading things. Fortunately not hip deep, and only that deep because I stayed up far too late — even for me — grading stuff. And so today I graded stuff. Tonight, I will grade other things.
At this rate I’ll be grading things all day and night tomorrow. I believe I have it paced out so I can finish grading on Thursday. Just in time for this weekend’s stuff to start rolling in for grading next week …
Whoever set this schedule up deserves a talking to. Me, it was me. I deserve a talking to.
Here’s a video I shot on yesterday’s bike ride. There are a lot of fields turning a beautiful, bright yellow just now. I might have caught these just a few minutes too late in the evening for the color to really pop. Still lovely in their own way.
Since it is the beginning of the month, we should check in on the mileage. September was a good month, my best September ever, and it turned into the fourth most miles in any one month, be they ever so humble. And we can see the progression through the first nine months of the year on this neat little chart.
The blue line is this year, the red one is last year, and the steady green one is a simple what if projection of doing 10 miles per day. I’ve been trailing behind that, sadly, since mid July. Now I’m making progress and I’ll be back over the green line before you read this.
And there are some humble, yet cool-to-me milestones coming up on the bike. You’ll be underwhelmed.
I’ll be whelmed.
That’ll be the extent of it.
Let’s get back to the Re-Listening project for a brief update. This is the one where I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. At some point, I figured I could write about it to pad out the site with a bit of content — share some videos and the like, but these aren’t reviews, because no one cares. So let’s get to it, so I can get caught up. (I’m only behind by three albums, I think.)
We’ll return to 2006 or so, when I picked up a copy of Live’s 1999 record, “The Distance to Here.” It was the band’s fifth studio album, it went platinum in a month, debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 chart, topped the charts in three other countries, and settled into the top 10 in a half dozen more. They promoted three singles from the record, all which became at least moderately successful on the Alternative Airplay chart. But it never really worked for me. This is the last Live album I bought, and by the time Ed Kowalczyk left the band a decade later, I had no idea.
But I have two things here. This works a whole lot better now, for me, than it did back then. It could be a small doses record at the very least. And one or two of these tunes could be sticky — which is sometimes good and sometimes “get out of my head.”
The other thought was centered around this show at a concert. I saw the band at a festival when they were touring on this record. They closed their set with this song, and they were working out the instrumentation so that, one-by-one, the band slipped away off the darkened stage. Then there was only Kowalczyk, and the whole sweaty crowd was singing along and he stopped strumming his guitar, they kept singing, and he waved and walked off. It was better than this version, which came about some years later, but similar.
Kowalczyk rejoined the band after a few years away. And then he fired the band. They were all, as I recall, southeastern Pennsylvania high school classmates who got their break soon after, and became a 10-years-later overnight success. And now, they’re taking turns suing each other or some such. Kowalczyk is touring with the name, but all new band mates. They just came off the road from a midwestern swing last week.
In the next installation of the Re-Listening project, we’ll try out a pretty decent tribute album I’d entirely forgotten about — which is entirely the point.
And now, back to grading. And next for you, more Catober!
My in-laws had this steakhouse in Manhattan that they went to for years and years. It was quite the classy old New York charm. One of those places that was hard to get into. But the in-laws knew a guy, and so they could walk in like stars. They took me there once or twice, and I was glad for it. But the place closed — landlords, man — and then re-opened in some form elsewhere for a few years, but it wasn’t the same, so my father-in-law found himself a new place.
It was two years ago, as far as I know, that they found a new place to call their steakhouse in the city. I’m not sure how they came upon it, but my lovely bride took her parents in for a show and they went to this place. They raved about it. Insisted I had to come with them into the city to go to this place. Full of history, and also the food.
Keens traces its roots back to the 19th century, when the owner’s first joint, a theater man, turned it into a hot spot for the players who trod the boards, and the people who made the plays happen. Many of the walls in the old rambling building are filled with quirky headshots of actors and actresses, most of them forgotten by all but the true connoisseurs. The real item, though, is this.
(Click to embiggen in a new tab.)
That’s supposedly Abraham Lincoln’s playbill. Ford’s Theatre, 1865, the night he was assassinated. The story goes that someone found it after he was shot and picked it up. It passed through a few hands and when Keens took on what is essentially its current form just after the turn of the century, someone found it on the property.
So the second floor has the Lincoln room, and this wall has been devoted to the theme. Here’s an undated article that most likely over-romanticizes the story.
There are framed photos of Lincoln, an image of John Wilkes Booth, a quality reproduction of Booth’s mother that he kept, an 1862 playbill of a show Booth was headlining in Boston. And then there’s this poster, dated six days after Lincoln’s murder and six days before Boston Corbett killed Booth.
Another feature are these pipes. Keens says they have the largest collection of churchwarden pipes in the world. The story in the menu says they once were ordering 50,000 of them every three years. Apparently there was a sort of coat-check style system, and some people left their pipes there. And here are some of the famous ones.
Ted Turner, Stephen King, John Kennedy, Michael Jackson, Jackie Mason, Joseph Heller, Redd Foxx, Arthur Ashe and more have pipes in that case. That one sits right by the door. This one is by the host stand, it’s obviously from a different era.
Please excuse the glare, but in that case the pipe warden placed the spit covered clay pipes of people like Babe Ruth, Will Rogers, Albert Einsten, J.P. Morgan, and many others.
A closer look at Teddy Roosevelt’s pipe. The tradition here started in the early 20th century, so that’s presidential spit on a hard clay pipe that was imported from the Netherlands.
Once upon a time pipe smoking was considered beneficial for dissipating “evil homourse of the brain,” so naturally this was a big thing. The pipes have these thin stems, so they were too fragile to carry, hence the storage and, presumably, the regular big orders the place put in.
I’m guessing MacArthur might have brought and left his own. Looks a bit more ornate, and fits the personality.
Keens’ site says the membership roster of the Pipe Club contained more than 90,000 names. That’s a lot of smoke! And here’s another presidential pipe.
I assume this is the former vice president Adlai Stevenson, not Stevenson II, who was a senator and UN ambassador.
There’s a display case with some signed pipes just thrown in it. No mounts, no labels, just chaotic. This is for a lesser tier of Pipe Club members, I guess. Regular folks pipes?
Just stored on the ceiling. In every possible space.
It’s a steakhouse, but the menu says “legendary mutton.” And when the first woman won the legal right to go into this place in 1905, she sat down and ordered the mutton. She’d been waiting on that. It’s also the first item on the menu. I got that. I was not disappointed.
I was, in fact, too full for the giant desserts, which were giant and delicious.
I’d visit Keens again — that meal was delicious! — but you’re buying.
I have been asked by the house’s executives to get right to the important part of the day’s activity, which is, of course, the most popular feature on the site. So we will go directly to checking in on the kitties.
Phoebe is usually the driver of this, because she knows she is very photogenic. Just sitting on the landing of the stairs, look at those pretty eyes.
She does not want to share the mail, however. Sometimes she gets mail, but she’s convinced all of it is hers. She sits on it.
Oh, sure, she lets us have the bills, but she keeps the bulk mail, magazines and the like. She’s not supposed to be on the counter, but our cats are jailhouse lawyers, and they’ve figured out that if you’re sitting on a bank mailer, you’re not sitting on the countertop.
Poseidon is no better about countertops. And here he is, different day, same counter, sleeping on a box full of produce.
He’s waiting to see what’s inside. He loves trying to chew on some of our veggies. This summer he discovered corn stalks. Corn stalks are bad for cats, so we have to hide them. And we have to hide them when he’s not paying attention, because he remembers they’re in the fridge, or stored away here or there. He remembers long after they’re gone. He’s probably dreaming about corn there.
And when there is no corn, he might switch between pouting about it, and trying to charm you into getting some for him.
But we, of course, tell him no. He’s never one not to try, though. He’s a persistent little so and so.
The cats, you see, are doing well, and they thank you for your interest.
I had a nice cool swim this afternoon. It was a 1,720 yard swim. They’re getting a little faster of late, but there’s only so much improvement of which I am capable of. I know it, because I can still shave chunks of time off in pretty decent increments. Probably it’s the cooler water.
Also, I’m swimming enough to know when my arms will stop protesting and just do the work. And I’m close to knowing lap lengths just by feel.
But to demonstrate my ability: this is the summer where I’ve finally started to swim in a straight line.
More or less.
Let us return to the Re-Listening project. Here, I am listening to all of my old CDs in the car, and I’m playing them in the order of their acquisition. I’m also writing about them here, because we need the content. These aren’t reviews, because they’d be woefully out of date and I’m no critic. They are, however, sometimes full of memories, and a good excuse to post a few videos. These songs are from 2003, from an album I got in 2006 or so, of the overnight success, Howie Day, who was, in fact, a seven-year overnight success.
“Stop All the World Now” was the second album and, the major label debut, for Day. Critically, it got a lukewarm reception, but it went platinum in 18 or 19 months, and the third single, “Collide,” which you heard on the radio and in TV and movies a lot, was certified gold. And, two-plus decades later, it holds up as a pop-rock record.
And it’s full of hum-along songs, tunes you pick up quickly on the first or second listen and want to come back for a few more times. This is the fifth track on the album, and it fits that bill with an instrumentation that feels simultaneously earthly and ethereal, which seems a feat.
It is also of it’s time. But, there’s a small window on the musical calendar where rock was in an ebb and alt was disappearing and singer-song writers with some indie-pop sensibilities could fill some airspace and some evenings. I don’t really know what that means, except that I do, and it also sounds right.
This was the first single from that record, the first time a broader audience heard him. It was August 2003, and this sounds like that. I don’t remember the first time I heard that song, but I do remember the work I was doing late that summer.
I was doing interviews and producing a documentary on an upcoming tax referendum. (The tax went to a statewide special ballot vote that September, but this is Alabama and so it didn’t just fail, but failed spectacularly. The director of the state Board of Education was in tears on TV that night.) Also, at about that same time I was busy covering Roy Moore being removed from the bench as Alabama’s Supreme Court Chief Justice. Being Alabama, he got another shot at the bench, largely on the same religious rhetoric that got him kicked off the first time.
Probably I picked up on Howie Day a little bit after that. Sharp-eared listeners might have found him on the “I Am Sam” soundtrack, which we featured here a few weeks ago. He covered “Help!”
