I don’t know why I bother to meditate. Whatever you put out into the ether will come back to you. I really believe that and I meditate on it.

Then I go an do something like this.

Here’s my brief email exchange with WBGO Jazz 88 Sunday morning disc jockey Dan Karcher:

—–Original Message—–
From: [me]
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 9:00 AM
To: Dan Karcher
Subject: A bit of personal history

Good morning, Mr. Karcher. Are you, by any chance, a percussionist?

—–Original Message—–
From: Dan Karcher
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 9:00 AM
To: [me]
Subject: A bit of personal history

Yea, how did you know? I though all my records were out of print!

—–Original Message—–
From: [me]
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 9:10 AM
To: Dan Karcher
Subject: A bit of personal history

I can tell because only someone who is a percussionist himself would inflict drum solos on a defenseless audience. Every Sunday morning it’s the same thing. Percussion solos are hard to take normally. On Sunday mornings, they are a particularly cruel form of punishment.

Now, was that nice? I attacked something that’s dear to him. I honestly had no idea he was a drummer (much less had albums out) but it’s his own damn fault. He’s been provoking me for a long time now.

My Sunday mornings are sacred to me. A hot cup of coffee, The New York Times, a Suzie Q and WBGO. I don’t want to hear any of that contemporary smooth jazz shite and I don’t want any goddamn drum solos. Some Stan Getz would be nice. A few Ella Fitzgerald songs. Wes Montgomery.

But he kept pushing my buttons. So I feel bad about setting him up like that but he’s been doing this for a while and he had it coming. How selfish! [Of him. Not me.]

Do you like loud guitars? If you do, keep your eye on your local art house cinema for a documentary called It Might Get Loud. It’s a pretty good time.

Three virtuosos, Jimmy Page (representing the 70s), The Edge (the 80s) and Jack White (90s) sit in a circle on a sound stage and talk about guitars. Their favorites. Their first. Their playing techniques, influences and secrets. It’s a master class for those who care about that sort of thing. There’s some history thrown in for perspective. Some blind Black blues players are discussed. The usual suspects.

My caveat is that this is for people who love guitars. I went with Nurse H who, when not saving lives in the hospital, sings in a Led Zep cover band. (Bustling Hedgerow. Get it?) She might have gotten more out of the film than I did.

There’s some discussion of Zep, U2 and The White Stripes/Raconteurs and some biographical stuff. [Did you know that Page started out as a studio musician for hire and played guitar on the theme from Goldfinger? I think that is so fucking cool.] It’s mainly a lot of playing sequences and slow, loving camera pans of guitars. It’s got one of the most beautiful title sequences I’ve ever seen.

It’s worth the price of admission for two scenes; watching Jimmy Page joyously play air guitar to Link Wray’s Rumble and explain why it’s such a great song. Also, White and Edge watch, with big grins on their faces, as Page spontaneously rips into the riff from Whole Lotta Love. It looks like Edge is thinking to himself, “Ho. Lee. Shit. That’s Jimmy Fucking Page playing Whole Lotta Love three feet in front of me. How lucky am I?”

At the end, the three of them sit and play an acoustic version of The Weight. It’s a soft touch.

I have a great recording of Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter’s I Get a Kick Out of You. In one stanza, she sings:

Some, they may go for cocaine
I’m sure that if, I took even one sniff
It would bore me terrifically too
But I get a kick out of you

I also have two recordings of Sinatra singing the same song and in one version the lyric was sanitized to:

Some like the perfume from Spain
I’m sure that if I took even one sniff
It would bore me terrifically too
But I get a kick out of you

In the second recording, it was changed to:

Some like the bop-type refrain
I’m sure that if, I heard even one riff
It would bore me terrifically too
But I get a kick out of you

The perfume from Spain?! Give me a break! That doesn’t even make any sense. Since when is Spain known for its perfume? Unemployment, maybe. But not perfume. Porter would NEVER have written such a pedestrian line. It takes all the punch and dark glamor out of the song. I almost wish I hadn’t noticed.

This morning’s ear worm while brushing my teeth at 5:25 a.m.: The theme from The Wild Wild West. My God. What is WRONG with me?

Beautiful dreamer,
wake unto me;
Starlight and dewdrops
are waiting for thee.

Shhhh! Stop making all that racket dragging your eyes across the screen! You’ll awake him from his beauty slumber.

Most people don’t accessorize when they sleep during their commute but this guy is a dedicated, professional napper. He’s fragile and needs a sleeping mask and ear plugs. To me, it’s a bit over-the-top.

I’ll bet he has a leopard print sleeping mask at home and wears a frilly little pink something to bed. Tee-hee. It’s a shame that Hammacher-Schlemmer doesn’t manufacture a portable sensory deprivation chamber for him.

Good night, sweet prince. When you awake, you’ll be in the magical kingdom of Manhattan.

Over the weekend we rented I Love You, Man with Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. It’s about a guy who has a lot of acquaintances, but no close male friends. Hijinks ensue when he sets out on a series of “man dates” to try and make some friends. It’s suppose to be a comedy but I found the whole thing a bit unsettling. It hit too close to home and felt more like a documentary than a comedy.

A lot of New Jersey is horribly over-developed. Do you guys know what a bash and build* is? The state real estate PACs bury their hands deep inside the local politician’s pockets and tickle their balls, so they generally get whatever they want. There are, however, some really beautiful tracts of land that were set aside as nature preserves. I can’t imagine how this was allowed to happen. Perhaps someone was light on a bribe one week.

We like to take walks in the nearby woods. (3-Year Old Daughter calls it “The Jungle.”) There are some walking paths of varying lengths that take you on a twisty stroll through the trees.

I am so torn between this life and the life I live(d) in New York. I love them both equally but for different reasons. Admittedly, it’s a happy problem. And don’t worry. I hang on my cross for plenty of other things that carry a lot more weight than this. But it is a conflict, nonetheless.

Just look at them.

I’m not trading this for concrete and asphalt. I know people have been raising kids in the city for many generations, but The Daughters and Mrs. Wife seem genuinely happy here. Remember: Happy wife. Happy life.

So here I’ll stay. When I think about it, it’s really not such an unbearable banishment after all.

* Someone buys a small house—usually a cape or a bungalow—demolishes it, and erects a garish multi-million dollar vertical monstrosity in its place.