Them Gourds

Hallelujah.

One of my favorite bands in the world hits the Neurolux tonight. Seeing the Gourds always makes me a bit homesick in the best possible way. And with some road time under their latest record, Heavy Ornamentals, this show should be a wowser.

See you there.

Turn the Lights Out

The new record from The Ponys is available through emusic.

I downloaded it this morning and so far so good. When I saw these guys play live a year or so ago, I enjoyed it and thought that they had a good chance at a fresh direction in indie rock. This record proves I wasn't just talking crap.

Check it out.

Back to the Yard

The temps rise, the sun comes out, the blooms begin, and it's time for more yardwork.

It's a strange overlap this time of year. I'm still a bit ski-obsessed, but I'm riding trail on the IF and doing 4-hour road rides through the farmland of Eagle and Emmet. And as I peel away the layers of oak leaves from the pin oak in our front yard that I swear drops all year long, I find flowers already blooming and green signs of life popping up everywhere.

Cathy's still in Ashville for a work conference. She seems pretty impressed by the city, so I expect the itchy feet and restlessness to return for a while. We'll see. Spring in Boise can be pretty great.

It's a chill weekend at the homestead. Hard exercise and long naps to balance out the yard work. This springtime ain't so bad.

Done with raking. Off to the lopping!

Metal for St. Patrick

Austin metal gods The Sword hit the Neurolux tonight. That along with Pat and Sarah's annual St. Patrick's Day party could be a dangerous combination.

God Grew Tired of Us

I saw this film last night as part of a fund raiser for the IRC Boise. It was wonderful and sad and inspirational.

The film follows a handful of the lost boys of Sudan, male children displaced by the war and violence in Sudan over the last decade and a half or so.

They most of them were routed from their homes in the middle of the night by militia who killed their friends and family. Many escaped and headed to Ethiopia, and then Kenya, where they stayed in refugee camps for ten years or more.

Some of them made it to the US with the help of the IRC and other agencies, and this film follows their progress here.

See it if you can. It should be an inspiration to us all.

Notes on The Road

Late last night I reached the end of Cormac McCarthy's new novel, The Road. It was a terrible ending, filled with dread and death and a foreboding sense of facing the unknown in a harsh and violent world. But, somehow, it was hopeful, pointing toward a thin thread of humanity and compassion in the face of the end of the world.

I'd been anticipating this book greatly, looking forward to again entering a dark and awful world as created by one of my favorite living novelists. I hoped for a return to the nightmare worlds of Blood Meridian, and The Road did not disappoint.

This was different, of course, pitting a father and son against the apocalypse and its effects on their fellow men. Frightening, depressing, and often seemingly void of hope or good, this world no longer seems fit for habitation.

By the end it hadn't changed much--except maybe to get worse--but McCarthy finds in close human interaction that which he cannot in society. That there is hope anywhere in this novel, let alone at the end of it, is testament to both his abilities as a writer and his faith as a human.

I expect to return to this subject in the future, as this is a book that refuses to leave my mind. But for now, get hold of this and read it if you've got the patience and the stomach. It's not a terribly long read, but it's one that demands your attention and your willingness to go places most of us would rather not.


Update, 3.12.07 9pm
Perhaps the theme that held me so rapt with fear and interest and revulsion was the presence of a total innocent in this wild hell. The boy in the book, the son, had been born into the post-apocalypse. He had no memory of the world as it was. To him, all had always been destruction and fire.

There were no trees that did not burn and fall to the ground. There was no water free of the threat of poison. There were no other good guys. All other humans were to be feared, mistrusted, even killed.

That a horrible fate could befall this character was a constant possibility. The evils in this book are no trifles, and they loom around every turn along the road through the wasteland.

It is through the innocence of and threat to this character that the place of McCarthy's novel gains its huge ability to affect. It's not just a description of a charred landscape, it's the end of all future, the destruction of all the past. It's a lack of a hope that never existed.

But still, that's not the whole story. Somehow we find beauty and hope in this place, through these people. That's an amazing feat in itself.

SXSW Again

Yep, it's that time again.

Wanna be really pissed that you're not headed to Austin this week? (Or wanna gloat some more about the fact that you are?)

Check out the band list at the SXSW site. That'll get the ol' mouth agape. Really, it's just too much to even think about.

And if that ain't enough for you, here's the encyclopedic listing of all the daytime parties. Sheezus.

Neon Bible

The new Arcade Fire album has hit the shelves of your local record store, and in my opinion, it's worth the trip. I've been excited for this record, so while one may think I'd be biased in favor of it, one would be wrong. I was just as excited for the new CYHSY release, but have held off on the raves. That one's good. This one's more than that.

The Arcade Fire have built themselves into more than just a band, and this album will further that mythic status. Big, powerful songs, full of hope and crushing emotional turmoil at the same time. Win's voice is strong as ever, here more buoyed by that off Regine Chassagne. They work well together.

Front to back, this is a powerful piece of work. Even the clunker lines of the overblown arrangements (there are some of each) do not detract from the whole.

I'm only 3 listens in, so I'll defer further examination until later. For now, though, this looks to be a record that will stay in the heavy rotation for some time to come.

AF Tomorrow

The new record by The Arcade Fire comes out tomorrow, and I'd be lying if I denied being giddy as a schoolgirl about it.

Early leaks have been promising, if not overwhelming, but I believe the AF works best in the long format. So I'll wait for the whole shebang before forming opinions.

Here's a couple bones:

There was a wonderful article in the NY Times Magazine about the band and the road to recording and playing the new record. A great piece.

And here' s the Pitchfork review, as well as a link to download the album's first track.

See you at the Rx tomorrow.

AP Update

So far, it's gone as well as can be expected. Or better.

Tony was out of the hospital and at home by 8pm Friday night. And he was out walking around the hood the next morning.

Apparently the possible negative effects of the surgery can take up to a few weeks to emerge and make themselves known, but the docs are confident and Tony feels good. So for now, that's good enough.

AP: Last Time's the Charm

Today, Tony goes in for what we all hope is to be his last surgery. It's a big one, a 12-hour procedure wherein the doc will bombard a tumor wrapped around his brain stem with intense radiation in hopes of wiping it out or at least keeping it from being able to grow.

And it's big not only in duration or in how nasty it sounds. The repercussions here outweigh anything he's yet come up against. There's a very good chance the vision in his good (left) eye will be damaged, and he'll suffer loss of some peripheral or outer vision. There's a lesser but still good chance that he'll lose vision in that eye altogether, ostensibly rendering him blind. And there is a far lesser but still present chance that he will not wake up from this surgery.

Of course, we hope for the best. We hope he comes out of this at the end of a very long day looking and feeling as he did yesterday, vision intact, brain freed from the ravages of foreign bodies. But no matter what happens, we hope that he survives it, and that from here on out he can build his life into something he hasn't had for over a year now: A life free of surgery and MRIs and putting everything on hold so he can battle health issues. As he'd be the first to agree, it's high time to put this behind him and move on to building a new life.

Even if that life is drastically changed, even if he's not in Boise, moving on and forward is the thing.

Think good thoughts and send them toward Idaho.