Roads Wanted...

Although I have a general course pretty much mapped out for 1/48/50 (more on that later), I have started compiling a list of specific highways I'd like to be able to say I've driven when all is said and done, which began with this short article, from skyscanner.com.

5 Dangerous Road Trips to Take On in the United States

IN SUMMER'S FINAL MOMENTS: Whole Albums to Travel By

Those rare musical treasures that require no song-to-song cherry picking, no fast forwarding, no selective exclusion from playlists. They are their OWN playlists...each a greatest hits package of brand new material. You know...desert island albums. In the case of 1/48/50, whole urban areas, entire counties, fully one half of any state even, may be traversed on the power of a single inspired album playing all the way through.

So good, in fact, they require no two cents thrown in by the likes of me.  Just listen.  ;-)

"RUBBER SOUL" by The Beatles

"THE RIVER" by Bruce Springsteen

Three Things That Always Stir Restlessness

1) Holidays here.


2) One more year.


3) One less year.

Happy 2015!

Reason #28 to Live Nebulously

Seriously, I know I've been kind of fixating on robots and drones this summer, but how could this not lead somewhere bad...?

How is this not part of a (our) dystopian future?

At what point does (will) this thing start thinking on its own?

Reason #25 to Live Nebulously

He seems like a nice guy, and he's obviously talented...and one might be moved to consider what he has done a technological innovation, but the longer I watch this story, the more skeeved out I get. This might very well be the start of something that shouldn't ever start.

CNN: Man 'hears' colors, claims he's a cyborg

On Roads While On the Road...

One of the biggest allures of this extended road trip will be...well, the roads themselves. No joke. I've always been fascinated by roadways, Interstates, state highways, country trunks, service drives and 7th Avenues alike; not just their construction and the equipment with which they are constructed (a rite of passage for every little boy and, I'd wager, more than a few little girls...), but also how they intersect, and where, what they cross over, and go under, how many miles they go, and with how many lanes. I enjoy thinking about the thought that must have gone into putting it all together, the careful considerations involved in the creation of an efficient system, which, when you consider the level of traffic burdening it these days and how smoothly it continues to function (for the most part), it can surely be argued our roadway system is. Once on a vacation when I was a kid, my dad said of our Interstates, "If the Russians ever invaded, we'd be done for. They'd have no problem getting everywhere."

And as I posted on this page more than a year ago, I've always been fascinated - as well as a little tripped out (in a pleasant way) - by the concept of direction. North, south, east, west...each point of the compass evokes a different emotional and psychological response in me, each has its own complement of memories and expectations.

When I was a kid, I loved globes and maps, and I still do. But that old Rand McNally road atlas doesn't hold a candle to the likes of MapQuest or Google Earth, or any form of GPS navigation. These things breathe new life into the process of traveling long distances to places I've never or rarely been. Rand McNally never bothered with many of the little details that seem standard issue with GPS. I like knowing that the overpass I'm racing under for just a fraction of a second is actually 275th Avenue, for instance. Or that the little shoestring running diagonally off to the southwest is Everett Road, or that the little body of water I catch a glimpse of through the trees as I shoot past at 75 miles per hour is Holcomb Lake, or Tanner's Pond, or whatever. Do I need to know these things? Not at all. Will I remember any of them ten years from now? Probably not. But in the moment, for the moment, they help complete the picture; they aid in familiarizing myself with a new region.

Plus, I will never be reduced to angry tears trying to fold up my GPS.

For a long time, I thought I was a lone dweeb when it came to all this roadway business, but have found there are others, many others in fact, a whole community of highway fans out there, building websites devoted solely to cataloging the roadways in their areas and posting pictures of certain routes, in various states of construction. They are called (er, call themselves...) 'roadgeeks'...and to be honest, I don't know if I feel better or worse for this fact.

At least, there was a thriving community online at one time.  A lot of the sites I've found are old, as in c.2002-style old. Some haven't been updated since the mid 2000s, and some, of course, are simply dead links through a search engine - "Error 404 File Not Found".  But those that have survived, even if they've grown moldy, offer pictures and interesting stats, and in some cases the history of certain stretches, which I find particularly interesting. Like names provided me by GPS, I like knowing when roads came to be, what determined their routes, why they may have been changed or re-routed over the years. In my own adopted hometown, I'm anxious to learn about a re-route of Highway 53 known as 'the by-pass'. Lamentably, information about its construction is hard to come by. Again, I don't know why I want to know; it's not going to affect my life one way or another to ever know. I just want to.

I guess I do believe highway history completes a chapter in the story of our development as a nation and society that should never be overlooked. It could be said our roads are almost as intimately connected to our evolution as a species as are our modes of transportation.

JULY 2010 - There's not much to this pic on the surface, just a state highway (63) running southward through a pastoral stretch of north-central Wisconsin. But look a little closer and consider: everything you see here, from the grade down the little hill, to the roads and driveways intersecting along the way, to the the placement of the signs, the power lines, even the painting of the yellow and white lines that keep cars in the correct lanes and tell us when it's safe to pass...none of it happens by accident. It is part of a carefully thought-out (hopefully!) and on-going process that helps to ensure safe and convenient travel for our ever-restless species. If I ran for the highest office in the land, I would so be the 'Infrastructure President'. 

;-)

Reason #22 to Live Nebulously

Manager?  **sigh...** Reality show? ... This story - and all its elements - was pathetic and distressing from the begining.  Now that TLC/Oxygen/et al. are trying to get involved...ewwww.... Put me on a highway, please... :-/

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/28/us/meeks-manager-threats/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

Three Things That Always Stir Restlessness

1) Good dreams

2) Bad dreams

3) All my dreams, past, present and future

Three Things That Always Stir Restlessness:

1) Birdsong just before first light

2) Dandelions covering a lawn

3) Graduation announcements in the local paper

Three Things That Always Stir Restlessness:

1) The sound of a lawn mower somewhere in the neighborhood, anytime after 11 a.m.

2) The smell of freshly cut grass

3)  Lilacs in bloom

The Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#68) "Melissa" by The Allman Brothers Band - This song is just plain haunting to me; like a stairway landing in an abandoned house...or the music you'd hear there...

Or maybe the music out in what's left of the back yard...

Or the mailbox on the corner at the end of the block...

Or the fields you pass on the highway leading out of town...

"Crossroads, will you ever let him go..."

#69) "I Ain't Living Long Like This" by Waylon Jennings - Waylon Jennings might not have been the best country artist ever, but he was one of the coolest. And one of the luckiest, for that matter, when considering the day the music died...

But mostly one of the coolest. There was never anything about Jennings to really stand out, yet his impact on country music remains as significant as anyone's. He never did anything to grab for attention, and in this way never resorted to any stereotypes. He just kind of did his thing, and you never knew what he was going to say or sing next. There are routinely surprises in his songs, things you wouldn't expect from any country artist, and some of his ballads (Outlaw Shit, and Hank Williams Syndrome, to name a few) are introspective and smart and pretty moving without trying too hard...that is, without trying to be something they shouldn't be. 

Even at 64, Jennings was taken too early. So I guess I actually do think he was one of the best country artists ever.

I Ain't Living Long Like This was written by Rodney Crowell, but its driving, 18-wheeler rhythm and 'outlaw' subject matter is quintessential Waylon nevertheless. The best part of this song, befitting Waylon's deceptive simplicity, is the vulnerability, and humor, of the outlaw it concerns itself with.

"I tried to run but I don't think I can / you make one move and you're a dead man, friend..."

#70) "Screaming for Vengeance" by Judas Priest - In case I get stuck between towns in the middle of the night, I'll have this to keep me awake.  Also, this ferocious thrash was pretty ground-breaking for 1982.

"Hey listen don't you let them get your mind..."

#71) "Time" by The Alan Parsons Project - When I was in 8th grade, I brought another kid to tears of laughter when I started singing the refrain of Time by Alan Parsons.  This was 1986, or so; music and media were not nearly so readily accessible as they are today. It was unusual that we both remembered this 'old' song, surely having heard it very second-hand on our parents' radio once or twice, or on a jukebox somewhere when we were much younger, and the fact that I knew the song well enough to sing it, and hit that long, uprush of falsetto, had this kid in stitches.

The performance worked out well for me; he was one of the cool kids, and my social status was elevated as a result.

Nowadays, Time means much more to me than fodder for gym class clowning. If I really sit and listen to it, it sweeps my mind completely offshore. Doubtless this was the point. There had never been a song like this when it was released in 1980 (Project, indeed...), and hasn't really been one since.  Almost makes me feel guilty for making fun of it so heartily.

Almost. ;-)

"Who knows when we shall meet again, if ever  / but time keeps flowing like a river (on and on), to the sea...to the sea..."

The Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#50) "14 Years" by Guns N' Roses - Not only is this not much of a road song, it might very well be considered the anti-road song....all that 'the road' is not. Nothing good is going on here - no high spirits, no joy, no wanderlust, no revelry; an urge to escape from something surely, but no opportunity to do so, at least at the moment. In the moment this song creates, you got a real mess on your hands.

In researching it, I discovered something I never knew in 22 years: Izzy Stradlin sings lead, not Axl Rose. I had no idea! But it doesn't change anything; the song is still one of G-n'-R's more emotionally complex numbers, a haunting portrayal, in my mind, of the deep-rooted anger that divorce can bring. I say divorce, because that's how the song has always read to me. It's significant that it's 14 years on trial here, not 2 years or even 5, nothing that could be dismissed as a come-and-go relationship, a mere break-up, but well past a decade of (presumably) marriage that crashes and explodes in an acrimonious fireball. We can all spare a year or two...but 14 years? That's when the best you can probably hope for from anger is that it cools down and crusts over into regret.

I've always liked the wicked piano riff too. And though it may not be a road song, on the album (Use Your Illusion II), it leads directly to one...a monster, in fact:

"Don't get back 14 years, in just one day..."

#51) "Yesterdays" by Guns N' Roses - Not much to say, leaving town, baby...leaving town, getting out. Because yesterday's got nothing for me.

"Some things could be better, if we'd all just let them be..."

#52) "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" by Tom Waits - Also not much of a road song, but a deceptively simple lament of the sorrowful reality that is the adult world. I really like singing along with this. My voice is almost as smooth as Tom Waits'. ;-)

"I don't wanna live in a big old tomb on Grand Street..."

#53) "So It Goes" by Tom Waits -  From the early years, when Tom Waits (who looms large in my musical consciousness, mind you) could still carry a tune, So it Goes is quiet and folk-oriented, speaking nothing of the long experimental miles he would travel musically in decades to come, instead speaking its truth within the framework of a singular emotional moment. Always makes for powerful stuff.

"And so it goes, nobody knows how to get to the sky..."

#54)  "Ship of Fools" by Bob Seger - This song does away with the bare bones roots rock Seger made himself famous with, and takes an intriguing allegorical approach to the subject of identity, and - I think - solitude and how the two relate to one another. It leads to a tragic (or not so tragic, depending on your point of view) finish, and twenty-five years later I've never been able to figure out just what is being said.

But I keep listening; all told, I think I've spent more time trying to interpret this song than any other, and somewhere lost on a long highway with miles before and miles behind is the perfect place to try figuring just what's going on in the song, and my life. 

And how the two relate to one another.

"Well he stood there like some idol, and he listened like some temple, and then he turned away..."

The Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me On 1/48/50 (cont...)

#23) "Theme from 'The Jeffersons'" - Yes, the television show.

Among the great TV theme songs of history, The Jeffersons ('Movin on Up') stands head and shoulders above the rest, as does the show itself, for that matter. Some of my earliest, and most pleasant, memories involve watching this 70s hit from my mother's lap, laughing when she did without knowing why.

Ground-breaking in its day, The Jeffersons portrayed a successful African American family whose patriarch was a loud-mouthed 'black Archie Bunker'. Much like All in the Family, from which it spun off, The Jeffersons was a smart and funny examination of our prejudices, ever optimistic that finding humor in them might lead to healing. It was very of the times, admittedly a bit precious by today's standards (although that fact is perhaps a whole other blog post), but the theme song, sung by Ja'Net Dubois, who played Willona on Good Times (another juggernaut from the Norman Lear era of television) is pretty bad ass for any generation. Loud and bombastic, on the far side of sassy, exuding as much jubilation as any church choir in its throes, it was born in an age when theme songs not only established the premise of their show, but geared the viewer up for what was to come every week, kind of like the person who comes on stage and warms up the audience before the star steps out.

Not only do they not write 'em like this anymore, they don't write 'em at ALL anymore, sadly. Television theme songs have been deemed an unnecessary interruption of viable ad space, and with very few exceptions, they're either non-existent or trimmed way down, sometimes to a three-second banner (a la Frasier).

As to where I actually found a copy of this song: back in the infancy of Napster, when it was still technically legal, if not entirely ethical, I got my hands on every TV theme I could think of, the actual broadcast versions, and to this day, periodically take a trip down memory lane with all of them.

The Jeffersons theme remains the only one worth jammin' out to, certainly the only one worth bringing on a road trip.

"Fish don't fry in the kitchen/beans don't burn on the grill..."

#24) "Under Pressure" by Queen - This song is one of those rare gems whose whole is worth more than the sum of its parts, and that's no small feat, considering the parts include Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. Musically tight and emotionally dramatic without ever going over the top (even when Mercury's voice soars into the stratosphere), Under Pressure ranks in my Top 10 greatest songs of all time, sporting one of the greatest lines of all time, as well:

"Love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night."

#25) "The Dope Show" by Marilyn Manson - Once at work a few years ago, this song played on the radio, and a co-worker who had a past as a stripper, said proudly, "This was one of the songs I used to dance to!"

On the surface it makes sense, but it's just a little too on the nose. If I could choose, I'd rather watch a woman dance to something a little more off-beat ... maybe The Jeffersons theme?  (Just kidding...er, sort of...;-). And I wonder now, as I did then, if this girl knew exactly what The Dope Show is about, the indictment it serves our society.

Does she need to know? Not necessarily. There's an undeniable greasiness to this song that lends itself well to the manufacture of sexual tension. But if you're going to co-opt someone else's art as a medium in your art, even (or especially) for something as elemental as stripping, you ought to know what you're getting yourself into. The mediums should sync up a little.

Yes, sometimes I do wonder if I over-think things...

"They love you when you're on all the covers/when you're not, they love another..."

#26) "Against the Wind" by Bob Seger - This isn't Seger's greatest song, nor my favorite in his library, but for better or worse, I'm at the right age for it; I get this song in a way I couldn't have when I was 19 and far more moved by it than I am now. It's the ideal song with which to drive parallel to an unending horizon at a high rate of speed and really think about your life.

And somewhat to that point, interesting side note: since hearing it for the first time when I was very young, probably age 10 or 11, Against the Wind has always evoked a very specific image in my mind. This image was (re)created, virtually identically, in the movie Forrest Gump. It happens at the end of the running scene. Gump is making his way along the exact same shoe-string road, through the exact same featureless valley with the very same buttes in the background that, for whatever reason, I imagined as a kid whenever this song played.

And what do you know? Against the Wind is the song that's playing in the scene.

LIVE FROM MY HEAD - This scene, a YouTube still frame of the movie Forrest Gump at the end of Gump's '3 years, 2 months, 14 days and 16 hours' of running, depicts a tableau startlingly similar to that which I always imagined as a kid when I heard Bob Seger's Against the Wind, right down to the hue of the daylight.

Coincidence? Of course; how could it not be? But the similarity was uncanny enough for me to actually gasp out loud when I saw the movie for the first time. I mean, seriously, I always pictured that very road, and from that vantage point.

To be honest, I like thinking the director had the same vision for the song as I did; that, without realizing it, he or she placed that song in that shot in the film for the same reason I would have. I prefer to think of the otherwise chance occurrence as evidence that Henry Longfellow was right: music is, in various ways, the 'universal language of mankind.' 

Has it really been 20 years since Forrest Gump was released?

"I've got so much more to think about/deadlines and commitments/what to leave in, what to leave out..."