Come on out to the acoustic open mic at AJ's Music Cafe in downtown Ferndale on Tuesday, July 7. I'll be filling in as host while John Finan is on vacation. Show runs from 8 till 11 (last act at 10:45), and sign-up starts at 6 p.m.

AJ's Music Cafe
240 W. Nine Mile, Ferndale, MI 48220
(248) 399-3946

Edit 8:25 p.m. 7/7: I'm actually not there. It's a long story, and I'm not ready to go into it now. Sorry.

I woke up at 4:11 a.m. to a distant BEEEP. I was almost asleep again when I heard another distant BEEEP. I stumbled out in the dark to go check my cell phone, clear at the other end of the house. There was a missed call at 2:53 a.m.; I did not hear its little tune then, but then it occasionally forgets to play that tune, somehow. (I'm overdue for a new phone, see.) But the phone's display said the missed call was from a private number, therefore it was from someone I did not know. So I turned off the phone and went back to bed, resisting the urge to bring it to bed in case it was a distant family member in trouble with the law or something.

So why am I mentioning this? *shrug* Who knows. Things aren't likely to get much more interesting here in the next little bit, either, because I'm spazzing out with preparations to go up to Blissfest on Friday. I have a kitchen full of camping gear that needs packing; a car that needs maintenance; a mother who needs attention; grass that needs cutting; and an open mic that needs hosting. (I'll post about the latter separately.) Coincidentally, all that goes along with a decided lack of stuff to write about here in LJ.

There's a chance I'll post something from the trip in the middle of next week, like I did last year (on July 15 and July 16, to be followed up from home on July 24 and July 26). I'll still be up north, probably in Marquette awaiting the Hiawatha Music Festival. Depends on what else is going on. Being surrounded by all that natural beauty makes turning on the computer seem kinda pointless.

This is the 50th anniversary year of the film Anatomy of a Murder, which starred Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, and George C. Scott, and was directed by Otto Preminger—legends all. It was filmed in Marquette County, Michigan, and is about the biggest thing that ever has happened there (even bigger than the Ott Lake Ramblers' debut and only show there in 2000 or so).

Detroit's PBS station is showing Anatomy '59: the Making of a Classic Motion Picture on Monday at 9 p.m.

But if you were in Marquette yesterday, you could've gone on a tour of the film set, or actually, the county courthouse used in the film. Film classic turns 50. Edited to add (6/30/09): There was also a symposium on the film at NMU on Monday.

I didn't see the film till a few years ago (thank you Turner Classic Movies) but I was quite taken with it. It's really cool to see places you know in movies, but it doesn't happen often because Hollywood almost never comes to places I know. Even fifty years on, things like the courthouse and the park up in Big Bay look a lot like they used to.

Shortly after I succumbed to the phenomenon that is Twitter, I was introduced to #haikuday.* Dave from the Clay Adams Band started it—the general idea is to write and post haiku on Tuesdays. Early on, it was sometimes called "haikusday," which in a way rhymes with Tuesday, but it has been standardized to "haikuday."

The few of us who've been doing it aren't very rigorous with the theory and practice of haiku. It's just fun to put a Twitter kind of thought into seventeen syllables (as if 140 character wasn't enough of a limit). I've been trying to keep the nature angle in my contributions, but I can't claim to have that little leap in the last line that marks a fine haiku. It's not like we spend all week composing, at least I don't. It's kind of a spur of the moment thing. But there's no wrong way to do it, really; if one wanted to compose a really good one, that's perfectly fine.

One week, Dave tried to get #haikuday into the "trending topics", that list of hot subjects on the right side of the Twitter web interface. He posted something like a dozen haiku in a half-hour, and there were a couple others, but that wasn't enough. It's hard to break through on days when Iran and Jon & Kate are in the Twitter hive mind, I guess.

Anyway, that's one way I've found Twitter to be fun, and a way to make it a little more interesting than "I had cereal for breakfast" kinds of Tweets.**

* Put a # in front of a word, and it becomes a "hash key". It's not an official feature supported by the Twitter overlords, but it's frequently used to classify by topic.
** Clearly, if you're going to mention your breakfast cereal on Twitter, you should be eating Shredded Tweet.

One more straw: Warren Cracking Down on Street Basketball... apparently we now have a terrible law enforcement issue in that young people are putting portable basketball hoops in the neighborhood streets and ... playing basketball. Traffic may be impeded! Noise may be made! This is an outrage!

You know what the outrage really is? How the city government has, over the last few years, passed laws repeatedly that limit what people may do in Warren. This year they revised the noise ordinance so that "quiet hours" are now from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.; formerly they were 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. They've changed the ordinance governing lawn maintenance, so that grass must be no higher than six inches, instead of nine as it was just a few years ago. It is no longer acceptable to use a portable metal fire pit, as my friend Leslie used to have for wood fires when she lived here in the early part of the decade. The last three to five years have seen a continual effort on the city council to over-regulate the residents.

None of these efforts is making Warren a more desirable place to live. People are not moving into the city; the population has been declining for years. It's not enticing new economic development in the city. Aside from the mayor's hare-brained scheme to entice General Motors to move its world headquarters from Detroit to Warren, there's been virtually nothing done in the way of economic development during his administration.

You hear a lot of people complaining about rumors of what the President Obama might do that will restrict the rights of citizens. I submit we have to look at all levels of government to understand the full weight of all the restrictions. I have no problems with federally mandated improvements in auto gas mileage. But the picky little things imposed by local officials make me want to dump tea in a harbor somewhere.

Lawsuit: Groups go to court to stop wolf delisting (from the Marquette Mining Journal, June 16, 2009) ... five groups are following through on their notice that they would sue the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service over their plans to remove the Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan populations of the gray wolf from the endangered species list. Delisting the wolf turns species management over from the federal authorities to state governments. Officials in the states involved say they have no plans to allow hunting or otherwise change management plans. On the other hand, opponents are concerned that things may change, with at least one spokesperson saying that "This is a species that was driven to the brink of extinction on the states' watch." Federal delisting happened last month; the opponents are seeking an injunction forcing a rollback of that decision along with pressing their suit. Wolf populations have rebounded from a very small number of individuals in far northern Minnesota in the mid 1970s, to over 4,000 wolves now found in the Lake Superior region.

The esteemed scientific journal Cracked delivers the answer in 7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable. Now, when I tell people of this, their first response is "Gawd, is Cracked still around?" But it is, at least online. I read this article a year or so ago, and rediscovered it recently elsewhere on the Web. It's funny, it's snarky, and (I almost hate to admit this) it might be a little bit right. I don't know if you think the 21st century sucks, but you might think that after you read it. You might also end up thinking about turning off the computer and going outside, or something rash like that.

This somehow reminds me of a quote I haven't seen in a while, which I'll paraphrase here: "A life? Sounds cool. Where can I download one of those?"

1. Don't shout HELLO! at me when I walk in the door. Let me get to the counter, at least.
2. Turn down the radio. Especially if the walls and floor are highly reflective and echo-y. Even if it's The Beatles.
2a. Also, if you're going to have the music that loud, try to make both the left and right channels play in the room. Yes, it's a pain. But it's Beatles, and the stereo thing been a known issue for over four decades.
3. If you're going to put cute sayings on signs on the walls, make sure they're actually cute. It's a fine line between "cute" and "annoying" and it's all too easy to be way the other side of it.
4. If the customer ordered a combo, help him/her out by handing over a cup and pointing out where the chips are. Especially if he's apparently confused because the music is too loud and you've shouted at him already.
5. Double sized bags of chips: Not really all that cool. Calories per serving of 150, good. Two servings per bag, not good unless you have a friend. Yes, it was only a dollar. I'm still complaining.

On the plus side, the sandwich was pretty good. I just might have to have it delivered next time, though.

* Twelve Mile & Orchard Lake Rds. in Farmington Hills.

This is the most awesome Blissfest logo that I've seen in all the years I've known of the festival (which is only, like, 12 or 13 years, but still):

It was just announced Friday. They'll have it on T-shirts. Hope they save me one in my size.

My crack (unpaid and long-suffering) research team came up with these:

Dave sent me a link to an article in Business Week When GM First Messed Up, written by a noted auto industry journalist. While Dave and I often joke that the decline started with the end of tail fins in the very early 60s, what GM was doing in the late 60s and 70s really set the stage for GM's market share decline and today's bankruptcy. Pride goeth before the fall, as they say.

On a more family oriented note (well, ok, it's a bird family), a co-worker sent me this link: Lovebird Peregrine falcons found nesting on Durant Hotel downtown Flint and chick Maize is born. I guess little Maize doesn't have a little bruddah named Blue. (It's a University of Michigan thing.) This led to the following fictional conversation:

Majestic (the mom): "Now, eat your dead mouse like a good baby falcon."
Maize: "But Mom, I want Chee-tos!"
Majestic: "Maize, we are falcons. We don't. Eat. Chee-tos. You're not leaving this nest until you eat that mouse."

Or, y'know, something like that.

It's Camp Day at Tim Horton's. All coffee sales are being put toward the Tim Horton's Children's Foundation in support of their network of summer camps for kids. Lest you think this is all for Canadian kids to go to camps in the far north woods, there's a camp in Campbellsville, Kentucky. So go get a coffee already!

For those who are too far from Canada to have a Tim's, it's a chain of donut shops named for a prominent Canadian hockey player from the 1950s into the 1970s. Tim's is Canada's largest restaurant chain, according to Wikipedia, and has over 500 locations in the northeastern U.S. too.

It started yesterday. The sky was blue with fluffy clouds that looked like paintbrush strokes or feathers, and the temperature was kind of cool for here, only in the 60s. That's good up north weather. My mind turned to camping and pine trees and music festivals, specifically Blissfest, near Cross Village, MI, July 10-12, and Hiawatha, in Marquette, MI, July 17-19.

Blissfest's lineup this year includes Kathy Mattea, Mountain Heart, Loudon Wainwright III, The John Jorgenson Quintet, That 1 Guy, Sara Lee Guthrie & Johny Irion, Jorge Miquel Flamenco, Pat Donohue & Howard Levy, and The McDades. I have to say, this sounds way better than last year's lineup to me.

One week later at Hiawatha, the main-stage acts include Tangled Roots, The Stairwell Sisters, Josh White Jr., Pat Donohue, Lucy Kaplansky, Rhythm In Shoes, Cafe Accordion, Feufollet, and Mamadou Diabate. I've learned from my contact that we have secured a campsite already, so for us the festival kind of starts on Thursday the 16th. (That's important, as Hiawatha is located in a park and campground, where Bliss is in a big empty field.)

I even have my vacation time scheduled for them both. Now I just need to schedule time for camping gear shopping. I might splurge on an air mattress for under my sleeping bag this year. I have to start relearning the mandolin for Hiawatha — last year I hardly had the guitar out of its case.

(Note: I realize that by now, anything I write online may be trawled and transmitted to someone who will then spam me, so let me say that these are just my favorites; it's not as if I think the other ones are no good but I have core groups of friends who go to these two and not the others.)

Thirty-six hours, now, of listening to right-wing Republicans talk trash about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and I've come to the conclusion that those folks — Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell et al. — all need to Just. Shut. Up. They're embarrassing America with their facile schoolboy insults. They're contributing nothing useful to the debate. They're stupid because they say these things without realizing that they're being hypocritical to a laughable degree. And they are roadblocks to government because they absolutely refuse to even look like they want to work together with the Democrats in Congress.

I take my hat off to John McCain, who had the only reasonable-sounding quote I found yesterday among Republicans in reaction to Sotomayor's nomination. Now, maybe it's the media's fault, and they should be trying to find moderate Republicans to get quotes from. I know they're out there. Somewhere. But please, can we make the loudmouth bullies be quiet for once?

I'm supposed to have the day off. But it was scheduled at the last minute, and I made the mistake of saying I would check messages. Of course, something came up that needed to be done "ASAP." Back when I was an editor, I learned that "ASAP" is not a deadline, and that you needed to give actual dates when you had work that needed to be done. Sigh. On top of that, I had a question about the task for the editor, and I haven't heard back, and the office closes at 2. So it's looking like "ASAP" means "Tuesday" in this case.

Anyway, so I'm working. Connecting to the network is taking so long, though, that I'm getting house chores done at the same time. It's multi-tasking but on a very slow scale.

My back is doing better. This weekend might be OK after all. Even with the work I'm doing, I still really have today off, and I have the holiday off on Monday. Life is good.

... except my VPN connection to work just crashed. The technology is not yet mature. I just wish it wouldn't throw temper tantrums, y'know?

I haven't had much to say lately, because most of what I would say would be liberally punctuated with "ow" and "ouch." The ol' back has decided to go Out wherever it decides to go periodically, and has left a tangled wreck of musculature around my spine in its place. It has done this once every one to three years since about 1985, and it has always gotten better before so I expect it to the same soon this time, too. I did go to the doctor yesterday, and got a prescription for a muscle relaxant—unfortunately, the instructions say to only take it before bedtime, which is usually when the back is loosest, but I am having faith for now. Progress is being made; it's just always too slow when my back is concerned.

I spent the weekend either in bed or on the couch. I never thought that could get boring, but boring it got, even with the TV on. So I went out Saturday night to see Tracy Kash Thomas at Trixie's, because I figured I could sit home and be miserable or I could go out and sit and be miserable and have a coffee and listen to good music, and maybe become less miserable. It was a good choice; Tracy is talented and smooth, and she and her drummer are cool folks too.

OK, back, you have this week to get better. I don't want any of this pain around for the holiday weekend. Got it?

I am now on Twitter as songdogmi. Anyone want to follow or be followed? I promise my Tweets will be witty at least some of the time.

If for some reason anyone has a link to charliemonterey.com, expecting it to go to my music site, please replace it with http://www.geocities.com/woodenmusic or, if you prefer, http://www.myspace.com/charliemonterey at your earliest convenience.

( Why? )

I promised ferndalealex I'd post an alternative to the National Day of Prayer. Here's what I had in mind: National Day of Reason. Quoting from their website:

This observance is held in parallel with the National Day of Prayer, on the first Thursday in May each year (May 7th in 2009). The goal of this effort is to celebrate reason—a concept all Americans can support—and to raise public awareness about the persistent threat to religious liberty posed by government intrusion into the private sphere of worship.

The Day of Reason also exists to inspire the secular community to be visible and active on this day to set the right example for how to effect positive change.

Unfortunately, the list of events page shows the day hasn't quite taken off yet, as there were announced events in only a handful of states. But it's a start.