What's Up This Weekend?

Security
_________

Midnight
Watched your favorite comedy shows
Tired
Ready to run up to bed

But instead
The involuntary
Nervous system
Directs feet
Across
Cold ceramic
Kitchen floor
To activate
Security alarm
Even though
Unmonitored
Since disconnecting
The phone

If the little habits
Used to gain control
Of the chaos
Are breached
The screech
Will only be shared
By you and your intruder

Thursday, tonight, Daycreeper and The Lindsay are at Bourbon St., The Spikedrivers do the happy hour at Rumba, Adult Fiction is at Treehouse and Victorian's has national act Larry Keel and the Natural Bridge, accompanied by locals such as One Under, Cowboy Hillbilly Hippie Folk and others. By the way, Vic's made the unfortunate decision to change its name to Shrunken Heads.

Friday, Derek DiCenzo returns from the road to do his thing at Dick's. Six Gallery is at Ravari and Treehouse has Terribly Empty Pockets, Bookmobile and Kyle Sowash. Jesse Henry & the Royal Tycoons do the happy hour at Thirsty Ear. I will be begin the evening with The Randys at Rumba's happy hour and then later I am MCing the SoHud Music Collective show at Skully's with The Floorwalkers, Joey Hebdo and The Max Power Trio. They all get together at the end for some Led Zeppelin numbers.

Saturday, I will be out scouting bands for Comfest and it doesn't look like I'll be missing much.

Each night before you go to bed my baby
Whisper a little prayer for me my baby

mark

What's Up This Weekend?

It is a cruel irony that the only obvious indication observable by everybody, other than polar bears, that global warming is real is the fact that it creates huge storms that dump tons of snow on us. Unfortunately, that irony is lost on most tea baggers, Republicans and the rest of the intellectually challenged in our country who, inexplicably, don't also believe the sun circles the Earth. The sad thing is that this lack of public enlightenment will probably actually hinder the effort to pass effective energy legislation that will just result in even more snow! My driveway is 120 feet long up a hill and don't even think about parking on the unplowed wasteland that is my street. Snow shoveling is a bit of Zen experience but enough with the fro-Zen already! My BMW refuses to navigate through the stuff so I've been using the front-wheel drive Saab even though it acted like it was choking on any amount of moisture and died on me in the middle of the freeway and downtown traffic a couple times before I was able to clear its throat. Driving it on all these snow days has been quite the stressful adventure. I can't tell you how relaxing it is to drive that car after my brother finally figured out what the problem was and got it fixed. Positively endorphin-producing. The only fun I've had with this "global storming" is knocking down the icy stalactites off my gutters. One was at least 7 feet long and when I hit it, the shovel clanged like it had hit an iron pole. Most of them came down like a tinkling glissando across a xylophone. It's fun being a bull in an icy china shop.

Thursday, tonight, Wet Darlings at Circus and Daycreeper and Washington Beach Bums are at Oldfileld's on High.

Friday, The Kyle Sowashes and Ghost Shirt are at Carabar, Oldfield's on High has The Resisters and the Maryannes, Rumba has The Floorwalkers, Thirsty Ear has a Beatles tribute with Miss Molly and the first evening of the Lost Weekend Record Store's 7th anniversary show at Ruby's includes Fort Shame, Mors Ontologica, Main Street Gospel, Bush League All-Stars and finishes with New World Vultures.

Saturday. Lost Weekend continues with Mt. Carmel, Nick Tolford and Deadsea among others. Jesse Henry & the Royal Tycoons are at Rumba, The Loyal Divide and Town Monster are at Skully's, the happy hour at Thirsty Ear has Heidi Howes followed by the Josh Krajcik Band and Dr. Kenny Delicious. Eric Nassau, the Tin Hearts and the John Turk Trio are at Vic's.

Tuesday, quite the line-up for the Alana Howard benefit at Rumba including the Spikedrivers, The Floorwalkers, the Andy Shaw Band, Matt Monta and the Hot Coal Band, Joey Hebdo, Wet Darlings and others.

Walkin' in a winter wonderland. mark

What's Up This Weekend? Special Valentines Day and 4th Anniversary Edition

I was listening to Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac" on CBE as I parked in front of the dry cleaners. He was telling the story of Irish poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde, who had gotten himself incarcerated for two years at hard labor on the charge of "gross indecency". Keillor read Wilde's flamboyantly rapturous and beautifully poetic love letter written from prison to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. In the cold isolation of the "deepest abysses", his passion seemed to burn like a pure white hot flame. "Pleasure hides love from us but pain reveals it in its essence." Listening to the reading of this letter was one of those moments when you just sit in your parked car until its over. I remember the nagging feeling that I was missing some connection to me in the reading of that letter. It wasn't until I laid my head on my pillow that night and descended into the mental twilight where my mind blissfully wanders so freely, that it came to me. The theme of the triumph of love over pain and separation in Oscar's letter was the same theme of my most recent Valentine poem, the synchronicity of which compels me to share it with you at the bottom of my musical almanac along with a copy of Wilde's entire letter for your Valentines Day reading enjoyment. I would attach a scan of the pencil and watercolor painting that illustrates the poem on each of the Valentine cards but one of the many traditions associated with the annual production and dissemination of my little art project includes a prohibition on sending them to men. Oscar would not have approved.

It is also the 4th anniversary of "What's Up This Weekend?" and another of my traditions is to ask my readers to let me know who is actually reading this self-indulgent crap by simply hitting the reply button and adding a message if they are so inclined. Thank you for reading and, for those who have been so inclined, your support is what keeps me embarrassing myself each week.

Thursday, tonight, Dick's has The Boki Quartet hopefully including the lovely Betsy Pandora who I have yet to actually hear sing.

Friday, Moon High, The Songbirds and The Alwood Sisters are at Rumba.

Saturday will be a Valentines Day Eve with lots of choices. The Broken Hearts and Broken Strings showcase at the Basement features Lydia Loveless and her great new band, Two Cow Garage and many others. Matt Monta & the Hot Coal Band and Bombing Mansfield are at Bernie's. Carabar has two of the best rock bands in Columbus, The Lindsay and Bookmobile. Wet Darlings is at Ruby's, Mary Adam 12 and One Under are at Rumba and The Spikedrivers are doing a CD recording show at Skully's. Treehouse has Ghost Shirt, SPD GVNR and Mt. Carmel.

Sunday, you can spend Valentines Day with Girls, Girls, Girls, a collection of our most talented local female musical artists including Linda Dachtyl on drums, Elisa Nicolas on Bass, Nicole Rachelle on Sax/Flute, Lindsay Ciulla on Mellophone, Bree Frick on Cello, Molly Winters on guitar, and the sweet vocals of Za Unitt. Beautiful!

In the space between our stars
I see the lines of a constellation
I may not feel the warmth of your skin
But my passion is a fiery sensation

I wish the taste of your sweet lips
Could replace the flavor of a tear
There may be only silence between us now
But love is all I hear

mark


"My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. I am determined not to revolt but to accept every outrage through devotion to love, to let my body be dishonored so long as my soul may always keep the image of you. From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence. O dearest of created things, if someone wounded by silence and solitude comes to you, dishonored, a laughing-stock, Oh! You can close his wounds by touching them and restore his soul which unhappiness had for a moment smothered. Nothing will be difficult for you then, and remember, it is that hope which makes me live, and that hope alone. What wisdom is to the philosopher, what God is to his saint, you are to me. To keep you in my soul, such is the goal of this pain which men call life. O my love, you whom I cherish above all things, white narcissus in an unmown field, think of the burden which falls to you, a burden which love alone can make light. ... I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree.



"Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other..." Oscar Wilde

What's Up This Weekend?

An interesting day of work, yesterday. Started out in the morning with the suit and tie, gliding up and down the hallways of Justice, engaging in light conversations, laughing and smiling and doing what I seem to do more often than anything there; continuing cases and delaying hard decisions and painful trials for another day. Went home and had lunch with the cats as I normally do but instead of returning to my lovely office to sit at my desk, surf the Buckeyes and the Huffington Post, tap away at emails and maybe a document or two, I changed into my old jeans, hiking boots and the most durable jacket I had and drove out to my friend's farm to help him drag severed trees, butchered into 5 foot long, six inch thick segments down a slippery hillside overgrown with thorny weeds and tangled vines and then fling the logs, like a Scottish caber tosser, into a raging bonfire. He had already done most of the cutting and while he attended to other projects, I was left alone to stoke the inferno with the corpses of recently harvested plant-beings whose incredibly dense layers of cellulose represented decades of growth and serene life in this classic example of Ohio woodland countryside. As I stood watching the flames release the enormous energy contained in those wooden time-capsules, so hot that I could feel the skin of my face cooking red, it occurred to me that I've spent years dragging peoples marriages, densely packed with years of shared experiences, love and life, down slippery and thorny paths of paper and palaver and tossed those relationships into the fire on the alter of the Law. All in a day's work, I guess.

Thursday, tonight. Woody Pines is at Dick's. The Floorwalkers and Dr. Kenny Delicious are at Oldfields either tonight or tomorrow depending on which paper you believe. I tried to find out and couldn't.

Friday is a big night. I really want to see my friends Dave Baer, Joey Hebdo, Catfish and June Bug as The Lennon Orchestra bringing their dance-all-night Beatles thing up from Athens to the Thirsty Ear but I've also got to see RJD2 with Happy Chichester, Derek DiCenzo and Sam Brown at Skully's. In addition, Carabar has Flu Faker, Daycreeper and/or New World Vultures and there is a Tom Waits-a-thon benefiting Haiti at Circus.

Saturday, Wonder Twin Powers is at Ravari and Lydia Loveless does a CD release at Rumba with Micah Schnabel and Todd May.

I should be sleepin' like a log. mark