t h i r d | e l e m e n t

Man, what is going on around here? I'll tell you what's going on. We're boxing up everything in the house to move to a place that's big enough to accommodate us and the new house goblin, Madeleine (aka Maddie, aka Miss Fuss, aka Squeaker, aka Doodlebug, aka Priss, aka Monsters, aka the Barracuda, aka Snorlax, aka Grunty). The new place has a nursery for which we have big plans -- a pink stripe, a cherry blossom, and some dashing curtains.

( &c. )

Welcome home, Madeleine!

Everyday with Rachael Ray has a circulation of just under 1.7 million. Rolling Stone has a circulation of 1.4 million. More people want to read about meals and entertaining than they do about the mixture of music, politics, and postured subculture symbolized by the late 1960s.

I think it'd be fun to hang out with Rachael Ray, despite her weird fingers and grill that sometimes reminds me of the Joker. She's not as hot as Giada di Laurentiis, but she seems like she'd be a lot more girl-best-friend raucous. Girl drinks like a fish and smokes (gnarls, but grounded), so you know it's going to be a bar night, and then some buster is going to come up to the both of us while we're ordering negronis and earn himself a fat lip instead of an autograph.

He's quite a talented fellow.

Saturday nights I DJ at Eastside Lounge. It's a pretty populist mix with morsels of weirdness thrown in to keep people on their toes -- last night I played Deniece Williams, Depeche Mode, Crystal Castles, and the Klaxons, for example. The floor is usually full from midnight to close, and everyone's a sweaty mess of good times, booze fumes, and the joy of music.

I guess I reached a few people on a level heretofore unexplored in my career, however, because they were copulating on the dance floor. The staff has caught people going at it in the bathroom before, and I've seen a few cars rocking in the parking lot after a particularly vigorous set, but this is the first time (I know of) that I've sent people into that groove on the floor itself. The details were... disgusting... but now I have a new merit badge.

I've got a new lunchtime game shaping up. With the wee one on the way and me working at two different bars, I don't have a game night anymore, so some of the guys at the office and I are starting a lunchtime campaign of Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved. Ostensibly, the setting was going to be "Shining Albion," an idealized England, timeless in its culture and at the height of its power, a mostly idyllic pastiche of Western fantasy hallmarks.

We did some preliminary character creation today, and in one fell swoop it's changed from "Shining Albion" into "Perfidious Albion." We'll see what comes of this.

Well, it seems they've caught the guys responsible. While this doesn't fix anything, it's good to know that Mark will have his day, albeit posthumously. Thanks to all for the kind words in what was a pretty ugly time.

Our house is full of various items that deliver a payload of scent to the immediate vicinity. We have a can of air freshener that purports to smell like "Spring Rain." We have candles that smell like "Sea Breeze." Even the carpet freshener has the vague but positively denotative "Fresh Scent."

I don't want these. I want a scent that makes my house smell like a bookstore. I love the way bookstores smell. Printed paper, binding glue, and a hint of coffee. Bookstores are full of new books, and each new book is an anticipation of a story as yet unknown. It's the smell of potential. It makes me want to read and write.

Please, someone, figure out how to capture that scent. I'll pay you $5.95 a can for it.

Excerpted from the Mercury News:

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Police announced today a tip line the public can call if they have information about who killed Mark Achilli, a popular businessman and former bar owner who was gunned down Friday in broad daylight outside his townhome.

The number is (408) 399-5733.

The Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department released no new information about the suspect or motive. But in a statement, police said that a multi-agency task force has been created to assist in solving the town's first homicide in five years. The task force comprises police from Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Santa Clara, San Jose, the FBI and the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office.

Two witnesses provided a sketch artist a description of the shooter; both renditions were released Tuesday.

The suspect appears to be a white man, or a fair-skinned Latino, with dark hair and eyes, and about 20- or 30-years old. One witness saw the suspect wearing a baseball cap before the 11:40 a.m. shooting. The second witness said the suspect had taken off the cap after the shooting.

The witnesses also told police the shooter was last seen wearing a black shirt, black pants and was carrying a black bag with a shoulder strap.

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This was my uncle Mark. If you know anything at all, please call the authorities listed above.

Free parking! Doors at nine! I believe the drink special is a PBR tall boy and a shot of Jager for $6.

See what happens when I leave this thing to stew in limbo?

Aimee and I are engaged and expecting. The wee person is due May 26th. Regrettably, the names Agamemnon Torpedius, Gaius Julius, and Faust Van Halen have all been vetoed.

It's a bad time for music. Consider what modern music has working against it: Things like the Fray, Nickelback, Gwen Stefani, and Sean Kingston fester near the tops of the charts. Some studenty band called the Plain White T's has slimed that song every freshman plays in his dorm while he's ineptly fingering his guitar into heavy rotation. Kanye West has rereleased Daft Punk's "Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger" with some illiterate rant over it and called it a new song. 50 Cent's new litany of rape threats and ignorant boasts will spatter the shelves in September.

It gets worse. It hits a comical rock bottom as of today. Apparently, MTV (still pretending to have something to do with "M") has a show about horny teenagers on it called The Hills. It's impossible to discern whether this is a reality show or prescripted fare involving said horny teenagers, but whatever the formula, it's rich with drama and petulance. Somebody on the show was dating somebody else or something, and now he's dating one of the other prostitots on the show and hates the first one or something. Whatever -- if you've been in high school, you've been there yourself, but now it's suddenly broadcast-worthy. Anyway, the tramp festival, not satisfied with its D-list celebrity status, pretends to have talent and drops this steaming pile. Remember when Yaz's "Situation" was its own song? Of course you don't -- that was 20 years ago, and MTV's short attention span doesn't reach back further than eight minutes, so the fact that this is already a pre-existing song won't occur to anyone who hears it. One of the adolescent hookers from The Hills delivers the standard lackluster, overproduced vocal of MySpace-grade poetry that's radio's stock in trade, and a few minutes into it, her gel-headed choad of a boyfriend decides he's a rappist and erupts into tumescent self-worship, extolling the virtues of his VIP spot at "the club" and... well, I don't know. It's all gibberish. I'd be doubled over with mirthful tears if I didn't know that these people think this is a real song and that it's going to be all over the place in about two weeks.

Listen to it here.

Has music just given up?

You knew it was coming. Come drink our drinks and hop about on the dance floor.

This is one of my favorite places in Atlanta. It's on Irwin Street, where it intersects with Krog Street. I love the abandoned feel of it all, the idea that it once had a far greater purpose, even if that purpose was simple commerce. It's not entirely wasteland -- just off to the right is Rathbun's and Krog Bar (where affected hipsters can purchase a two-dollar Schlitz for six dollars, and hope everyone sees them and savors the delicious irony). The other side of the corrugated red barn is some sort of warehouse, because it's got security guards posted.

Perhaps my favorite feature is the trestled crosswalk that leads to nowhere. The windows don't let you look in or out, and the rust that normally signifies neglect is almost an afterthought, because there's simply no reason to take the walkway anymore.

The collapsed wall in the foreground is the most melancholy feature. It's built solidly, brickwork on top of mortised stone, but even that proud construction didn't save it from the anonymity of abandonment.

The whole area is sad and proud, but that quickly disperses into the gentrified smiles of Inman Park. It's an island of obsolesence.

Briefly, and imagined, there was a scent of home. This wasn't home, though; this was somewhere else, somewhere hundreds of miles away. It might have been home once, and one day it might be again, but it wasn't now. Pieces of conversation, the inevitable feeling of family, the comfort of knowing the shape of the place exactly, all of that came in the false dawn of the scent.

Music Monday? That sounds like it's going to become a feature. Don't worry. It won't. Unless it does, in which case, I've lied to you. Whatever the result, here's some nifty musical stuff of which you should be cognizant. No, it's not all new, so quit acting so cutting-edge.

I always thought that staccato guitar-strum thing in "Tear You Apart" sounded like that bit in "Bela Lugosi's Dead," and this proves it. The addition of Joy Division seals the deal.

Who: A Plus D

What: Love Will Tear You Apart (She Wants Originality)

Continuing my love affair with the wonderfully voiced and perfectly produced Rihanna, there's this treatment of UMBARELLA ELLA ELLA ELLA HEY. Dang, it's so infectious, I'm even typing like that.

Who: Divide & Kreate

What: Umbrella (Divide & Kreate Remix)

Catchy song plus nostalgic Johnny Quest-style animation equals big fun.

Who: Peter, Bjorn, and John

What: The video for "Young Folks"

What's this Friday? Why it's the Morrissey show at Chastain, of course. I'll be there with tears in my eyes and gladiolas in hand. Sounds like about a dozen of us are going.

There's a grilled cheese sandwich on the sidewalk outside, perfectly square, without crusts, smashed into the pavement. Two steps away, in the street, a few shreds of a can of Steel Reserve have been pinned into the asphalt.

The last time I drank Steel Reserve, things got ugly. I was somehow enticed (or convinced myself) into a canvas laundry bin on a deck at a sixteen-room cabin. Naturally, people took the opportunity to launch the laundry bin off the deck. I ended up with glass in my hand. Later that night, I took a pair of fireplace tongs and attempted to tear an animal pelt from the wall, which I had likewise convinced myself was the flayed skin of Stevie Nicks.

Now, I'm just sunburned.

I won five dollars today because I knew which strain of hepatitis Pamela Anderson has.

I should probably give this money to the local SPCA. I'll do that very thing. Pay it forward!

Dang, if I ain't hooked on the Rihanna single.

I think she might be my new Britney/Xtina.

Hah, just kidding. That's Kelly Clarkson.