Death Wears Jockey Shorts

Wow. We took a 12 mile hike in Buffalo Peaks Wilderness area yesterday, and tho we've hiked that loop more than 20 times, this was the most beautiful day I have ever experienced. Fall colors are the most brilliant they have been in anyone's memory. There were pools on Rough and Tumble Creek with the surface covered in freshly fallen bright yellow Aspen leaves, which were continuing to fall into the pools at the insistence of a light breeze. A frightened bunny, paralyzed with fear really, came running toward us as twilight fell, a hungry ermine in hot pursuit. The ermine finally noticed us and split, but the rabbit was so freaked I could have picked him up. We saw and heard a great horned owl a bit later, lighting on a treetop and making owly noises. It was a day for (dare I say) blessing-counting. Must get out more. Here's a really interesting link to a suggested reading list from the world's top technologists. Dig it..

http://www.corporatealchemy.com/Books.htm

Gracias a Dios, es viernes.
My old friend from a very long time ago sent me a wonderful compilation of Spike Jones. Spike was very influential in my life, in an existential sort of way. The stuff is still hilarious, especially if you have the emotional tone of a ten year old boy. I find that women don't care so much for Spike Jones, and I'm not quite sure what that says, but it bears some deep thought, which I plan to give it. I hope all that deep thinking doesn't lead me to thoughts of suicide, but if it should, I can go to this URL:

http://www.geocities.com/t_ride9/sui.html

So Eddie Izzard was in Denver last night, and boy is HE funny. "Dress to Kill", which was an HBO special is out on DVD and "Circle", his last tour show comes out today. His routines have a way of working themselves into your life. His new show "SEXIE" has him sporting fake breasts and a black leather mini-skirt, and the material is brilliant, with Homo Sapiens giving Neanderthals a hard time, Greek myth writers on pot, a quick survery of the Koran, and much, much more. He has an older piece called "Glorious" which can be found on eBay via dubious copies, but it is also grand. Can't get enough of Eddie Izzard.
For something non-Izzard, but funny as well, check out:

http://www.modernhumorist.com/mh/0006/worst/

Sat quietly this AM in the back yard. Quiet and beautiful and green for a while longer, with the train whistles in the background as always in Denver. Train whistles elicit so many distant emotions, and always remind me of Woody Guthrie and his artistic heirs.
Here's a link to something thoughtful (finally) about the Dalai Lama. I fear we westerners may not have done him and his people much good. Oddly, without China's brutality, none (or very,very few) of us would ever have heard of him, and there can't be more than a tiny cadre of scholars who have any but the most "greeting card" understanding of Tibetan Buddhism, an almost incredibly complex and arcane faith and cosmology.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/19/opinion/19FREN.html?ex=1064548800&en=352001ff6b17bf5f&e

Now, that's a long URL...

As to the fall foliage (sit down, now), up above 10,000 feet things are starting to turn in some groves. Its coming late this year, usually peaking around the 3rd week in September. This may be one of those years where it all tunrs brown and falls off. The dusky yellow color of the trees that have turned would indicate a turn in that direction. Days are getting crisp and clear and that is to be applauded.
Music seems to be a theme here, so a few words on Johnny Cash. I got to see him work in a Vegas casino in the early 70's, with June Carter cash and the redoubtable Carl Perkins on guitar. Though Carl got to sing "Blue Suede Shoes", he didn't sing one of his best, and one of my favorite songs, "Boppin the Blues".
When I was a kid, Johnny Cash was played a lot on the Top 40 stations in New York. His work on Sun Records was very much a part of what made Rock n Roll the msuic that spoke to everyone. Cash had a great teen anthem, "Ballad of a Teenage Queen", which I can remember most of the words to to this day. This listened to on the earliest of transistor radios, through the pillow, as Alan Freed set methodically (and successfully) about the holy work of subverting a generation of white middle-class kids, through the music of hillbillys, black people, Italian-American doo-wop bands, and crazy people in general.
Here's a link which includes a terrific photo of Johnny Cash, published in a country music trade paper after he was embraced by the Grammys, during the period when he wasn't glittery enough for Nashville. Check it out...

http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/jsparks/2003/09/12

OK, call me naive. I knew the world of sexual fetishes was way beyond the scope of my imagination, but "Women with Catfish"? Then I relaized I had seem images of this sort of thing in Japanese Ukiyo-E
woodblocks. You have to wonder how this stuff gets into the "collective unconscious" in the first place.....

http://members.rott.chello.nl/tmarapengopie/women2.htm

Enjoy! I'm off to the mountains for work today, so I'll have a report on leaf color change. You'll want to be sitting down for that one....

George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars have never been better. Without a doubt the best band I have ever experienced. Just about indescribable, and transcendent, to say the least : a 20+ piece aggregation, with a guest appearance, on this tour, by the young and dynamic Lili Haydn, the hottest violin studio player in the biz, having worked with a the Stones, Sting, Josh Brogan and bunches of other people. Its a pleasant surprise to see a violinist jamming with Blackbird McKnight and Michael Hampton, two of the best jam guitarists working today. By the end of the 2 1/2 hour non-stop set ("ain't no party like a p-funk party, cause a p-funk party don't stop!), George had the band and the 750 patron packed-house grooving as one big engine, the crowd chanting melodic lines as the band moved seamlessly through every level of musical energy. He led the group through the P-Funk catalog, and wove in versions of "Sentimental Journey", sung stunningly by Belita Woods, unsung heroine of female funk vocals, and even finished up with a tour de force rendition of "Whole Lotta Shakin Goin' On", my favorite song about particle physics. We laughed, we cried, and left reminded once again that "funk is its own reward" Wow!

On October 8, Evangeline Records in England will release a 2 CD set of Lothar and the Hand People, featuring the first CD release of the 2nd Capitol album, "Space Hymn". Some of the photos in the notes were taken for Hit Parader magazine by a wonderful and little-known photographer of the 60's, Don Paulsen. His website has amazing pix to look at and for sale really inexpensively. It is cool to see pix of Marvin Gaye and the Stones and Sonny and Cher that you haven't seen before. Check it out....

http://www.greatmodernpictures.com/newpage25.htm

Yo! The Mothership lands tonight in Boulder at Colorado's best small venue, The Fox Theater. George Clinton has the best band currently playing on dis ol planet. Cannot wait!

"I'm trying to transcend all this and take it to the sixth dimension. Forget the fourth and fifth dimensions, they're probably booby-trapped. It's like the idea of, if you're going to get on the bus don't bother getting off on the first stop. Ride it for two or three stops." -recent wisdom from George

http://www.georgeclinton.com/flashversion/georgeclintonflash.htm

Check out the news section for lots of links to interviews with similar deep thoughts....

SO here is some more on Warren Zevon: Jane and I spent an afternoon "Lookin for a place called Lee Ho Fook's" in Soho. It was not raining, and lamentably, we didn't have a big dish of beef chow mein, but I have a neat photo of myself in front of the place. There are actually 2 Lee Ho Fook's in Soho, one being a commercial, English-speaking Chinese joint, and the other, a hard-to-find tiny place with no English-language sign. Somehow, I bet the obscure one is the place the werewolf was looking for, but I'll never know. I never met Warren Zevon, but his songs cut to the bone and it feels like losing a friend. He came here to Denver a couple of years ago at the urging of Hunter Thompson, to pump up a rally for justice for Lisl Auman, a young woman whose life defines being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She enlisted a friennd of a friend to help her go get her stuff from an ex-boyfriend's apartment, and it ended up 3 counties away with a police officer dead. The killer offed himself, and although Miss Auman was in police custody at the time of the shooting, she caught LIFE IN PRISON. Some of us think this is wrong, and Warren Zevon came to Denver to raise consciouness about the situation. I never thought that either he or Hunter Thompson are exactly the type of public person you want pleading your case, and she still sits in prison. Mo soon...

Well I just spent an hour writing something REALLY eloquent about Warren Zevon, but I lost it. Have a drink to Warren, now officially a fallen comrade. And listen to his albums. The albums, not the collections. Here's a neat-o political link that is beautifully researched.

Read it and weep...

http://thousandreasons.net/newlist.html

Yowsah! There went a few days. Maybe I'm losing interest in blogging, or in life in general. This really is starting to sound like a blog. Billy was mean to me again today. I think that means he likes me.... Wrestling with broadband installation. Friends in Hawaii, please let us know how went the storm and did you run out of toilet paper? Here is an interesting page if you haven't seen it. Watch carefully, it looks like something it isn't....

http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

Cool, eh?