A Darkness on the Edge

What it meant to me finding Bruce Springsteen on a Lou Reed album.

First, there is the violin and cello playing a five-note rhythm, around and around. There are little chirps of violin up and down. Then a synthesizer creeps up, with just one or two notes. Someone is laying heavy on the keys, like Fuck all this classical bullshit. The violin and cello continue. Then a guitar, an electric guitar, picks up the violin’s cry to mellow out the struggle. A bass, big stringed beast, fumbles in, quiets everything besides the violin. They are going to pull us through whatever the fuck this is. Then Lou Reed starts singing. And then it gets ugly.

The song “Street Hassle” closes the A-side of the 1978 album which bears its name. There are three parts: “Waltzing Matilda,” “Street Hassle,” and “Slipaway”. Each section has its own theme: Matilda is about a woman and a male prostitute, Hassle tells of a woman dying at a drug dealer’s apartment, and Slipaway relates the loss of a male lover, presumably from the POV of another man. In the writing about this song, Slipaway is often thought to be one of the most autobiographical bits Lou Reed ever allowed to be recorded, presuming it to be about his breakup with a trans woman, Rachel Humphreys.

Sandwiched between parts two and three is what we might call 3a. Hassle (part two) ends with the aforementioned death, and mournful lines about how some people can’t find their own voices and so they follow something, and that is bad luck. The violin and cello we heard at the beginning come back, but they wear the guise of an electric bass. Deep and low. It’s taking us down. The electric guitar comes in-line with it, then starts to fall out of step, saying uh-uh, uh-uh. Reprimanding. The violin returns, soaring. A cacophony of voices decay to a drum, a heartbeat. A sign of life. A new voice comes on, reassuring. “Well hey man that’s just a lie….”

The usual joyous, roadhouse, getting drunk and racing cars voice of Bruce Springsteen comes on like morning truth after a one night stand. The dream of the road meets the realities of the city. It’s heartbreak.

Wait man, that’s just a lie. It’s a lie she tells her friends. There’s a real song, a real song she wouldn’t even admit to herself, bleeding in her heart, it’s a song lots of people moan, it’s a painful song, with a lot of sad truths and life’s full of sad songs, a penny for wish, and wishing won’t make it so, where a pretty kiss, where a pretty face can’t have its way, though tramps like us we were born to pay.

“Street Hassle: Part III” as transcribed in Pass Through Fire: The Collected Lyrics

Slipaway comes on, with its plain naked need for love, like a sheep’s bleating in the field for an absent shepherd or a bee’s mad buzzing for lost flowers; it is the best part of the album, if not the entire Lou Reed Arista era. Lyrics so plain, simple, raw, that Reed didn’t even include them in his first book of lyrics, Between Thought and Expression. “Love has gone away, And there’s no one here now and there’s nothing left to say. But, oh, how I miss him, baby….” What else could you say? I miss my love.

In college at UCSD, I was, musically speaking, in a hodgepodge of media: a mix of tapes, albums bought as cheaply as possible from used record shops, and a few CDs. I bought my first CD player with the first student loan disbursement. I got a Columbia House 12 for a penny deal under a fake name. (Hope the statute of limitations has run out on that.) I was experimenting with Lou Reed, unsure of where he would place in my head. I bought Street Hassle on cassette from some big open wire-frame bins upstairs in the school bookstore. I already had an x-teenth generation LP of Velvet Underground and Nico, which lead me to eventually get a “Best of” on CD. (Best of? Yes, it exists.) But at the time, I was deep in the tank for Springsteen. We had Born in the USA on vinyl in the house growing up, and his videos in constant rotation, on a friend’s cable MTV and on late night “Friday Night Videos” on the public channels, were like golden tickets to a future I wanted very badly. Nebraska was one of the first CDs I bought at a store. The jewel case still has the “Best Value” sticker on it.

Bruce’s dark searing mood on Nebraska was pointing me in a direction I wasn’t sure of. And it didn’t help that his other albums, even the menacing Darkness at the Edge of Town–which he was recording when he ran into Lou–didn’t match what he was doing there. It was a one-off, a come on. Could that road even be trusted? I mean, this was the Racing in the Streets guy, the Rosalita Come out Tonight guy. (As I got older I did see the darkness and despair sewn in. I don’t need a lecture.) Nebraska was, shit… I took my brother’s job while he was at war and he came back, became a misfit, and now I might have to arrest him. That’s grim. That’s 10x “hide beneath your covers and study your pain.”

So maybe I’d give solo Lou a try. Horns and loud guitars. He called back to my all time favorite Velvets song, trashed it, and went barreling on. Like stripping off an old jacket and looking for new skin. This was a dude who knew what he was doing. Even the sarcastic “I Wanna be Black”, hell, I was a fucked-up middle class college student! And I didn’t want to be that, either! If he was kidding or lying or pretending, I wanted to go, too. Maybe I’d just be following him because I had no voice of my own, and this would be bad luck as he prophesied, but I was going to go as far as I could. I became a Lou Reed devote.

And then Street Hassle, the song. Part 3a. Bruce was here, in the deep darkness, too! The voice of my dreams and desires. And then it all clicked. What I wanted as a kid, what I wanted as a young adult. The mystery and pain of love tempered in the simplest lines. Oh. Oh, baby.

Come on, let’s slipaway.

penn jillette: the rock

Through one of those weird internetty trails of story to story to page to page, we found out that Penn Jillette has a podcast. We dig it.

The podcast is a snippet of his 1-hour daily radio show (very annoying setup to actually listen, but that’s corporate America for you; have to know the demographic) — 1-2pm Central — from a station in NYC (though he lives in and broadcasts from Las Vegas. It’s maaaaagic!). We don’t mind so much. Another of our favorite podcasts, Studio360, does the snippet thing, too. And, after tuning in to the actual broadcast, man oh man are we glad we just get the 10-19 minute snippet! That radio station is noi-sy!

Anyway, we are enjoying his podcast. During a recent show, we found that he did a series of Ford commercials with little tricks in them, most famously is the balls in cups trick, except done with clear glass cups. We never saw the commercials live, of course. So, again, in one of those oddball internetty ways of the world, we had to find them online. And thus, theoretically, pay to see what we are getting for free. Whoever can figure out that economic system will win a Nobel Prize.

YouTube has all the commercials. Including the balls in cups one that got Penn and Teller kicked out of the Magic Castle in LA.

myspace: the phone

Holy spit.

Yesterday, we talked about myspace and identity (see the danah boyd link). Then, while checking on something for Ed, we came across some information last night that sorta blows our socks off. There are going to be myspace telephones.

We admire this sort of convergance. In the back of our minds, we always wondered what the other side of a major media conglomerate owning a ppopular social networking site would be. Whoop, there it is. Earthlink and SK Telecom (South Korea) are putting together mobile phones that integrate fully with myspace. One can only assume that they work equally well as cellular phones. Or perhaps they land in our other favorite topic, mobile VOIP.

When we saw the mock-ups on benbarren’s flickr pages, we thought for sure they were just idle sketches. Because they look really neat. But surprise of surprises, that is what they really look like. Check out Helio, the company that is putting out the phones. We’d like ours in black, please.

We love the colors

We admit it: it’s not always the shape of coporate logos that get our attention. It’s the colors. We love the colors. Oh sure, recognize the shapes when they are plasterd across a Corprate States of America flag, but we always return to the colors.

So boy howdy were we please to find someone had gone through dozens and dozens corprate identies to pick apart the colors of their icons.

Presentation Zen (who we could’ve sworn we had linked before with their “how to find pictures and images“…) has a nice page on where to find quotes for presentations. Or websites. Becuase quotes are the colors of language. (Okay, that was a stretch.)

children of the corn maze

Last night on American Idol (yes, you will now endure the next few months with periodic updates. Deal with it), there was a set of sisters from Spring Grove, IL. They boasted that they had the world’s largest corn maze in their town (Google concurs). And, wouldn’t you know it, it is a dedication to the 1985 world chamption Chicago Bears. (“It was 20 years ago today….”)

Man, we wanted to get a good view of that one. Sadly, though, the maze was not up (corn not in season, maybe?) when Google Maps flew over and took its pictures. The official address of the maze is 9407 Richardson Road. It’s all brown. So we just have to take the Richardson people’s word for it (more info). It appears that they change around their maze every year, which is pretty neat.

It turns out that there are a lot of corn mazes in the United States. The most well known of the Victorian garden mazes is probably the one from The Shining (though it doesn’t exist in America). No, in America, we don’t do just shrubbery mazes, we like corn mazes. Like, a lot. There are 2 in Texas, and we don’t even hardly grow corn!

Anyway, the sisters from Spring Grove were good singers, and they made it “to Hollywood”.

technology will save us! gmaps

As we’ve mentioned before, we wonder what technology and innovations the taquitos will live through. Nice to know that they (as a generation) have a positive view of tech. Ah, idealism. We remember when we thought technology would do away with gas-powered cars, too.

Perhaps we have mentioned our love for Google maps and its remixes (or mashups, whatever). Here is a blog about different gmaps sites. And, best of all, how to make your own mashup.

And if you don’t like technology at all and want to stay completely organic, Consumer Reports has a guide for what you should buy organic and what you shouldn’t.

making it work for you

After Hamachi didn’t work for us to network a printer, we were disappointed and a bit downtrodden. Though we still have the network up at home, it doesn’t function like a regular network (least as far as we can tell). But regardless, we are still trying other things.

One thing that looks promising is Bonjour. Now, Bonjour is something that popped up under Processes in our Task Manager and ZoneAlarm a while ago, and we could never quite figure out what the heck it does or who put it there. We believe it is attached to iTunes in some way. And we did figure out that crippling it crippled our access to the Internets. Which saddened us greatly. And lifehacker says an actual download of Bonjour (different from say its embedded cousin in Itunes, perhaps?) can help us set up networked printers. Joy! Ask Metafilter also has some interesting lines on how to share information across computers in-house.

Edit: Yes, iTunes 5.0 and beyond installs Bonjour without your knowing it. Both Bonjour and iTunes talk to the Internets separately, as evidenced by their separate ZoneAlarm calls.

Also on the networking tip, lifehacker has a handy slice of info about how to set up subdomains on a server.

It would be passe to say now that GoogleMaps (Double True!) is a killer app. But we’d say it anyway. One of the things we love about it is being able to link it into our web pages. Exploration Age has a nice tutorial about how to add Google Maps to any web page.

It would also be passe to gush over Firefox. But we just came across yet another extension that makes us squeee like little girls. X-Ray for Firefox. With a simple right click you can see the markup of a page. Shazam. For little hackers like us who learn by watching, this is amazing. Kids these days have it so fucking easy. Back in my day we had to view source if we wanted to check markup!

And, if you can’t make it work, if you can’t get it done yourself, you can always ask a favor of someone. Favorville is a neat web community that allows people to ask and offer favors. Rock.

poems for kids, diamonds for no one

We have had the Children’s Poetry Archive on our screens for longer than we can remember. Find poems by name, by poet, or even by subject. What a great way to sing or play with your children through language.

Meanwhile. fguide (“the ultimate guide to the US Economy”) gives 10 reasons why to avoid diamonds altogether. We are not big fans of diamonds, we admit. They are cultureal products that have been beaten into the hearts and minds of consumers to equate love with outrageous spending. How else can you measure who wins at love if you don’t keep score? And what better way than by the size of or amount spent on a diamond? They’re a girl’s best friend, you know. Chief among the reasons (for us, regarding economics, anyway) to avoid diamonds is that their resale value is for shit. If they were truly worth something, then resale value would be much higher. As it stands, the only value in diamonds is from jeweler to consumer.

Actually, we do admit that the pricing structures of jewelery in general baffle us. How, for instance, can a site like say, xaxe.com, where we recently purchased a beautiful pearl and coral necklace, sell items so much lower than other sites? (is it just that they are in Beijing? Yeah, we got a package from Beijing; that was interesting.) Often, similar items are sold on one site quite inexpensively, where on others it is through the roof? Do a search on Froogle for Freshwater Pearl, for instance, and see that the same items are priced with outrageous price differences. (There’s a $130 diff. between the low and high prices on this double-strand of black pearls.) What gives?

Now, say, media? We know media has no intrinsic value. Take the movies. The only value there is what “people” are willing to pay for them. Some will buy, some will rent, some will only watch on cable. Take Blockbuster Video. They were once the unstoppable juggernaut of video rental. And then Netflix killed their bread-and-butter, the late fee, and now Blockbuster is on the outs. We say, good riddance. (Are we still bitter about them not hiring us in our teen years? Maybe. But do we not like their cleaned up video policies? Most definitely!)

And speaking of movies, the new teaser trailer for Clerks II is online. And BigSleep666 turned us on to a great little Chinese commercial for Coca-Cola. Is it always sex that sells? Not if you have 3 ass-kicking ninja girls.

Office Cleo!

Over the weekend, we watched Clockwatchers, a Parker Posey (meow) movie we saw “back in the day”, before we were old and jaded. We were young and jaded. And we cringed at the verisimilatude of the movie to our own lives. The FreeTacos of 10 years back are shaking their drunken heads at us, even as we type this.

Central to the plot is an office thief. Someone begins stealing all sorts of stuff from people’s desks. And, true to life, wouldn’t you know it, when we get to work on Monday, our favored orange-handled Fiskars scissors are missing (insert Depeche Mode lyrics… *here*). Son of a bitch! Who stole our scissors?!

Edit: we found them.

Last week we bemoaned the end of year lists that inevitably crawl out of the muck, allowing us to relive the ups and downs of the year. We claimed we only liked the photos of year. Not true! We love the traditional Life in Hell “banned words” lists, but seem to have missed out on them this go-round. We have, however, found Lake Supior State University’s list of “banished words” (oh, those people on that lake are just *so* superior, aren’t they?). Although technically, they are more 2-3 word phrases (*now* who’s superior, huh?). Our favorite is “97% fat free,” although with “dawg” gone, what will Randy Jackson say on American Idol? Does it matter that much of his “dawgs” will have been said in 2005?

We also enjoy the linguistic voting for “word of the year”. Stephen Colbert has made his stamp on the culture. Truthiness is the word of the year. Although, we certainly do like the Cruise-lex. Hey people, do you like to get to Cruisazy? We like to get cruisazy!! (Though, admittedly, that one sounds like a cross between Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze, so buyer beware.)

confident, connected… and blue and green

The Windows95 sound, the famous 15-second piece that began the Microsoft revolution, was composed by Brian Eno. It is said that it’s his most popular and most-played piece ever.

It was no Macintosh sound, granted, which was a diagnostic letting the user know at startup that everything was A-OK: each diagnostic, we were told by a friend, chorded its own sound, and the full and complete sound let you now all was well. Well, that and the Happy Mac.

The Win95 sound went away a few years later with the intro (and new sound, of course) of 98, 2000, and XP. Serious NT (“new technology”) had no startup sound.

And now Windows Vista is in the works. So we need a new sound, right? Enter Robert Fripp. Here is a 25 minutes video (yes, 25 minutes) of a darkened studio with Fripp working out a new sound. His guiding principle? Vista is “Clean, connected and confident.” “And green and blue,” Fripp adds. Yes, and green and blue. The future’s so bright, we have to put shades on our windows.

And while we are addressing media connection you cannot escape, we wonder how much TV the taquitos should watch. Our guts says none, of course, but is this just reactionarism or is there some factual evidence behind it? This is why we love Ask Metafilter. Should a baby watch TV?

How about this: should a baby Wi-Fi internet-connected bunny? We saw a news spot about this, the Nabaztag, over the end of the year break. While we might scoff — and have scoffed — at such things, Mama Taco wouldn’t mind us not running to the compy during “family time” to check if email’s come in. Which it usually hasn’t.

One of the distant salsas in the family will love this bit of connectivity: Hamachi is instant peer-to-peer networking. We wonder how far we can take it without opening doors to bad folks.

Edit: We tried this out and it did not work at all for us. The unique address Hamachi assigns turned out to not be findable when we used its “browse” function. So the only thing we could use it for was inter-computer messaging. Which we have plenty of apps for already, thanks.

And lastly today: we have talked about addall.com, which allows you to search and compare book prices. And while we love that, we some times do need to shop for other things, besides books (although a look around the Taco Compound might make you think otherwise). We have enjoyed MySimon in the past, but frequently it does not do what we need it to do. So we are looking forward to Clipfire, which promises us to be a good comparison checker.