You could say it was an eventful week for the nation. As I write this, Iowa has finally all but gotten it’s results from Monday’s caucuses out, and honestly, I was kind of surprised to see Mayor Pete come out on top, though the top three (Pete, along with Bernie and Liz) appear pretty close, so the end result will be neck-and-neck-and-neck in terms of delegate tally. The “big” story was Biden tanking, though for folks paying attention to the story on the ground, it wasn’t as much a surprise as it’s being portrayed. The typical rhythm of the campaign heading into New Hampshire next week has been thrown off, however, so no one’s really sure how this is going to play out, which should make it interesting.

Tuesday was the State of the Union, which was kind of a weird, made-for-tv farce campaign rally rather than a constituationally mandated report, and the President was denied the typical pomp-and-circumstance boost by Nancy Pelosi stealing the spotlight by ripping up her copy of the speech after he finished.

Wednesday was the wrap-up of the Impeachment business. the outcome was pre-ordained, given the make-up of the Senate and the partisan bootlicking that’s typical of Washington today, not to say that the result was the right one by any means, but it’s over now. Again, however, the President was denied his total bipartisan victory thanks to Sentator Romney, who bucked the party and the White House’s “heads on pikes” threats and voted to convict on one of the Articles, which I’m sure will rankle the current occupant something fierce.

Oh yeah, Sunday night there was a sportsball game or something*. Apparently people were scandalized by a kinda sexy, empowering and political floor show.

For me, I spent a lot of the week at the office begging for money because the budget people can’t read contracts properly, and a good bit of time in the saddle of my bike riding along the trail, since the first part of the week was so gorgeous. It felt good, though my old man muscles aren’t necessarily thanking me just yet.

I also had a pretty good first week of February Album Writing Month, knocking out seven tunes in the first six days (at least as I write this), which puts me ahead of the game, and one short of halfway to the goal. And at least half of those are pretty good. It’s a good exercise in creativity, in any case, and I’m feeling pretty good about my output.

I am not going to speculate on the weekend, because honestly I don’t know. So there.

Anyway…tunes. Spotify’s “Discover Weekly,” as usual, throws me some neat alternative from the 80s and 90s, most of which I missed the first time around, but have really come around to digging.

1. “Battle of Who Could Care Less” – Ben Folds Five
2. “White Punks on Dope” – The Tubes
3. “4th of July” – X
4. “Dylan Thomas” – Better Oblivion Community Center
5. “Drivin’ on 9” – The Breeders
6. “Happy Hour” – Ted Hawkins
7. “Oblivious” – Aztec Camera
8. “Go Where You Wanna Go” – Echo In the Canyon Jade Castrinos, Jakob Dylan
9. “Salt Lake City” – Dwarves
10. “Escape Is At Hand For The Travellin’ Man” – The Tragically Hip
11. “This Time It’s Different” – Heart Bones
12. “Obscurity Knocks” – Trashcan Sinatras
13. “It’s A Hit” – Rilo Kiley

_______________________

* – I don’t mean to denigrate the Superb Owl in any particular way; in theory, I’m still a fan of football: the sport. The National Football League, however, with it’s overblown “‘Murica! by way of Michael Bay” garbage the last decade that totally misses the substance of the things that are truly admirable about this imperfect experiment, I really can’t be bothered to watch. Let’s just say I’d take a knee, but y’all go ahead and enjoy.

Given the tightness of the polling and sheer number of candidates, in the top tier or otherwise, anybody who claims any authority in knowing how the Iowa Caucuses tonight are going to shake out is full of it, unless they tell you they have no idea.

That doesn’t mean they won’t, or that we don’t have our preferences.

I actually kind of like the way things have shaken out, especially in the wake of the big Des Moines Register poll not getting released, due to, of all things, font size issues (seriously). As things stand, there hasn’t been a huge poll, certainly not with the cache of the Register (considered the gold standard, really), in most of a week. As such, there’s actually some small measure of mystery or anticipation about the results; I think that mystery is going to encourage people to come out, because there’s no media narrative based on the last big poll saying candidate x is running away with it, so everybody feels like they have a shot, so people won’t stay home.

And really, until people start huddling in corner in school gym and church rec halls in a few hours, everyone does, as there’s not been a single damned vote cast.

As for my predictions, I would love to see a strong Warren showing, because Liz is my candidate, and in spite of her being down in recent polls, she’s got a hell of a ground game in Iowa, and has for a long time now, and I kind of think that matters. She may not win the evening, but exceeding expectations is important and will give momentum.

And who comes in first, in the scheme of things, is only important in terms of momentum – with four tightly packed top-tier candidates, I expect that final delegate counts are going to be pretty evenly distributed amongst Sanders, Biden, Warren, and Buttigeig, and a real possibility for Klobuchar to make a dent as well. I don’t see any of them dropping out this week; the top tier will remain in the game through New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, at which point, we’ll know a lot more.

But right now? It’s anybody’s game.

As I tap this out, I can say that it’s been a really uneventful week, following a pre-determined pattern.

Wake. Paperwork. Scan Headlines. Reheat leftovers. Read. Pass out. Repeat.

Part of this is because I’m still not feeling great; likely lingering con crud, but who knows, given what the kids bring home, and what I might have run into this weekend on Ted’s birthday march. I’m 99% confident it’s not coronavirus, because I’ve only had IPAs this week. Ba Dum Tish.

Still, the energy level’s been low, and depression’s creeping in, probably because the sun hasn’t really shown itself around here since Monday. I got some decent hikes along the river in earlier in the week, but by Wednesday, it was too damned cold. On some level, I think I expected this, as Sunday night I made a huge pot of red beans and rice that I’ve been working through as lunch (and occasionally dinner) all week. It’s been delicious, though kind of boring. However, it makes for easy, healthy calories to keep the body filling out forms to earn my wage while I’m in this funk.

While all this is going on, my subconsciousness is working overtime chewing on and rehashing existential concepts and attitudes – getting all philosophical and shit, sometimes annoyingly so. Not complaining; I think I might have come to some clarity on some things, but I can’t entirely trust that the brain is operating at peak efficiency or optimisticity. We shall see.

The weekend’s looking pretty quiet – I think I’m going to go support one of my open mic’ers, killer songwriter Keely Burn, play acoustic Sunday at The Castle’, but otherwise, nothing specific on the agenda. I’m likely to start thinking about FAWM, as that project ideally starts on Saturday.

This works for me.

Anyway, some tunes. As indicated by this post’s title, I’m identifying quite a lot with #5 on this list, but there’s some neat pop/punk/alternative/ska/etc going on here, and I’m kinda digging it:

1. “Give It to the Soft Boys” – The Soft Boys
2. “Battle Scar” – Max Webster
3. “Sunless Saturday” – Fishbone
4. I’se the B’y” – Great Big Sea
5. “Birth, School, Work, Death” – The Godfathers
6. “Universal Heart-Beat” – Juliana Hatfield
7. “Apollo 9” – Adam Ant
8. “Here for the Beer” – The Sloppy Boys
9. “Story of My Life” – Social Distortion
10. “Everything” – The Dollyrots
11. “Working In A Coal Mine” – DEVO
12. “Son of A Gun” – The Vaselines
13. “Somebody to Shove” – Soul Asylum

Con crud is kind of a thing. But I’ll persevere, thanks to rest, sinus meds, and Nyquil. As I said, Marscon was awesome, and the dissonance of coming back into the normal world after living in con world for a couple of days is always challenging, especially when you’re having trouble breathing through your nose. But, that’s life.

I’d recap the week, but honestly, it hasn’t been all that exciting. Work, cook dinner, sleep. Oh yeah, move a couch (friends are moving and had an extra one they weren’t using, so they passed it to us to replace our ailing old Ikea model), and hit the Gamestop for cheap XBox 360 games, since my son managed to get one cheap second-hand.

That’s really about it; I’ve been keeping tabs on the Impeachment trial (if not seriously locking in to live coverage), and watched “All The President’s Men” Wednesday night, because it felt appropriate. I honestly don’t know what’s going to come of it; I hold out hope that a few will break party lockstep and allow additional witnesses; getting John Bolton on the stand might actually move the needle, though I’m not seriously expecting partisanship to be overcome by any sense of right and wrong when it all comes down to it; thanks to McConnell, it’s going to end up in an acquittal. My best hope at this point is that all this goes on long enough that the President has to give the State of the Union on February 4th while still actively on trial. That’ll at least be interesting.

I don’t really have anything lined up for the weekend; weather looks decent for Saturday; I might try to get a bike ride in on the Capital Trail; it’s been a while since I’ve been in the saddle, and the trail looked really inviting as I drove alongside it on Route 5 last weekend.

As for tunes, Spotify wants me to discover a bunch of modern indie this week, before taking a turn toward original Al, with dips into the 80s. Not a bad listen, really:

1. “Vampire Alberta Blues” – John K. Samson
2. “Judy Staring at the Sun” – Catherine Wheel, Tanya Donnelly
3. “Illegal” – Tim Heidecker
4. “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” – Lucinda Williams
5. “Ninety Bucks” – Craig Finn
6. “Happiness Is All The Rage” – Promise Ring
7. “I Only Want the Sky” – Michael Leviton
8. “California Man” – Cheap Trick
9. “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota” – “Weird” Al Yankovic
10. “Life During Wartime” – Talking Heads
11. “National Shite Day” – Half Man Half Biscuit
12. “The Death of Pop” -The Rub

The following exerpt from this article at Poltico on Thursday once more describes a common theme I’ve seen pop up in primary coverage a lot, and in particular in the last week:

…Stephens gushed about a different candidate: Elizabeth Warren. The Army veteran cited her health care plan and said he “like(s) a lot of the things Warren is saying.” He also praised Bernie Sanders’ policies.

But then Stephens added that the country “would never vote for a woman and a liberal that’s been branded a socialist.” So he’s planning to vote for Biden.

That theme, of course, is the very common refrain from voters that they personally think the idea of a woman as President is wonderful, it’s just that the rest of the country isn’t, so they’re going to to strategically vote for another old white centrist guy. Ipsos/Daily Beast’s poll from June 2019 bears this out, and is often cited in conjunction with this idea; in that poll, when asked about a female president, 74% of Democrats say they were comfortable with a woman in the White House, but only 33% said they thought their neighbors would be. Another poll from October shows similar responses.

In the end, the data illustrates a common concern among Democrats: beating Trump is the primary goal above all else, and many seem to be worried that a woman wouldn’t do as well in the general as a man would, so we should gear our primary voting toward the safe choice. Once again, the spectre of electability rears it’s head.

I say that idea is bullshit.

It’s the primary season; we’re still two weeks away from anybody officially caucusing or voting for a candidate, and the race is, at least in the top tier, wide open. The primary isn’t the time to second-guess what everyone else thinks; throw your support behind the candidate you most favor: if you like Warren or Sanders’ policies the best, go ahead and vote for them in your primary. Even if they don’t become the candidate, your expression of support will, if nothing else, drive the narrative and help shape the party platform and the policies pursued by the eventual nominee, even if it ends up being a centrist like Joe Biden. The primary is not the time for sacrificing your deeply held principles on the altar of electibility; we’ve got the general election for that, and by supporting the candidate that inspires you, it’s more likely the eventual nominee, whoever that is, will hew closer to the positions your candidate espoused.

Look back four years, and compare the Democratic baseline position on universal health care or publically-funded college. Back in 2016, Sanders advocated strongly for those positions, and in the end, Clinton worked some of them into her platform when she was nominated. In 2020’s primary contest, even the most conservative candidates in the race support some form of public funding for health care (that’s what the “public option” or “Medicare for all who want it” is) and public funding for career training, college, and even student loan forgiveness, even if those candidates don’t push it to the extent or degree you prefer. The needle moved left, and that’s because people showed their support for those ideas on the primary ballot.

That old saw attributed to Bill Clinton back in 2003 goes “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” There may be some truth in this truism, but I’d argue (as Peter Hamby did in May in Vanity Fair) that every time that Democrats have been successful in recent history (Carter, Clinton himself, Obama), it’s because the Democrats chose the inspiring candidate, not the safe one. Just ask John Kerry, Al Gore, or Hillary Clinton how their elections turned out.

There will be plenty of time for pragmatism in the general. The primary is the time to vote with our hearts; to eschew compromising one’s ideals. By giving up our ideals in the primary, we’re guaranteeing that we’ll be holding our nose in the general when we “vote blue, no matter who.”

I know I’d rather vote my principles and take a chance that in the general, I’ll not have to feign enthusiasm in the voting booth.

Marscon is, without question, always a great time for me. It’s a chance to see friends, make music, and try to shake off the stresses of mundane life for the weekend. This year was no different, though moreso than in other years, it was definitely a working vacation, with me playing seven(!) shows, in several different capacities: as myself, as part of The Blibbering Humdingers, and sitting in with Dimensional Riffs, and working to establish my “brand” so to speak as a solo artist and move some merchandise.

All in all, I think I played well, especially for my inaugural solo show at my “home” convention (Thanks Butch, for giving me a shot!), which, in spite of being scheduled for 10am on Saturday, brought out a pretty big crowd of fans, supporters, and curious con attendees. People seemed into it, laughed at the right places, and sang along with stuff I wasn’t sure they actually knew.

My place in this community is an interesting one, having started as strictly a fan, moving from observing from the fringes of the filk circles to playing along, to joining up with an established group, to sitting in with all kinds of other talented folks (and becoming known as “The Guy in EVERY Band™) to sharing my own music in informal settings, to finally getting solo gigs and being presented as an artist in my own right at the con-closing Round Robin performance. I am, honestly, homegrown Marscon “talent”. The community has watched me make this progression, and have backed me all the way, which is tremendously appreciated. I am truly honored to have come up through and been part of this community of artists and fans.

I was delighted to spend my weekend receiving unsolicited comments and praise from both my fellow performers (all of whom I admire greatly) and from fans, who really seemed to dig my stuff. Marscon fans bought up my entire back stock of World’s Okayest…” CDs. It was, okay, a small print run, though I am truly honored and humbled that people liked my stuff enough to take it home with them.

It goes without saying that I really enjoyed spending time with my friends, old and new, both in socializing over drinks, and for more experienced musicians sharing their perspective, constructive criticism, and advice (thanks, especially, Valentine Wolfe, Mikey Mason, and Jonah Knight for your input).

So yeah, it was a great time, as always, and also uniquely special, as my creative output was embraced by the Marscon community. I truly love and appreciate you all, which has, over the past decade or so, become such a huge part of my life.

Other observations:

♦- You should definitely try and get hold of Jonah Knight’s latest project, Songs of the Faithless, which turned out really great, and not just because I played a part in making it. There are a ton of great performers on this one, presenting some excellent music and songwriting.

♦- One of the things I found particularly amusing this weekend was the bonding between my lovely spouse, and the spouses of some of the other performers this weekend; I’m glad you all found each other, and I look forward to seeing those t-shirts you were talking about!

♦- If I’m going to bring local craft beer to share, I probably need to bring a bit more than I did.

♦- Three words: Queen of Nebraska.

♦- It’s not every day you see two men deep in conversation, mansplaining to one another, and it’s certainly not every day you get to participate in improvising David Attenborough-style narration in response to it!

I’m sure there’s a bunch more I could talk about, but there always is. Thanks once again, Marscon for being what you are.

I’ll be entirely honest, since last friday, it’s been a hell of a lot of week, for a number of reasons which I won’t burden you all with, but I’ve been kind of on edge and in a low-grade threat posture all week; it’s been tough to relax and let go. Taking Friday off to stretch the already long weekend out another day (and give me time to pack for paragraph #2) is going to be enthusiastically welcomed.

I am definitely looking forward to this weekend, as it’s Marscon, a welcome escape from the “real” world where I get to indulge some nerdy passions, spend time with good friends, and pretend to be a rock star for a couple of days, which is generally pretty good for my self-esteem.

As you’ve probably already seen from the pinned post, I’m going to be pretty busy, playing something like half-a-dozen sets as myself and as part of various ensembles, as well as sitting in on a couple of panels, and maybe finding some time to eat, sleep, and have somebody buy me a drink (hint hint). It’s going to be a working weekend to be sure, though I’m trying to build in some time for relaxation (Saturday afternoon/evening looks promising at this point, but we’ll see). I’m also hoping to sell out my initial print run of CDs (which feels likely, as this event is the largest concentration of “fans” of my stuff you’re likely to see) and make this weekend a profitable one as well.

This week was also Open Mic week, which was quite successful after a few months of steady, but smaller crowds. We had a lot of great performers and few divas, and we ended up running a bit past regular ending time (as long as people keep drinking, Karl’s happy to keep the place open). This was a relief, since a good friend was running a competing open mic across town (don’t worry, there’s plenty of room for all of us!), and I was worried about splitting the audience. Also, my set was actually pretty great, which felt good, because I purposely built it from the tunes that I’ve been struggling with nailing in my rehearsals this week. This bodes well for the weekend.

I’ve also, of course, been watching the news, what with the impeachment articles being sent over to the Senate (along with the potentially damning new evidence that’s come to light), this past week’s debate, which had a lot of nice substance (which is being ignored in favor of largely overblown drama), as well as the really cool news that my adopted home of Virginia has become the 38th (and last necessary) State to ratify the Equal Right Amendment, which is long past due, and I’m confident will beat the various legal challenges about timing (which are interesting to look at in themselves from a history/govenment nerd perspective) and become the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution.

Anyway, that’s probably more than enough promo and small talk; let’s get this wrapped with some tunes spit out of the Spotify. Surprisingly Canadian this time out, but sure, why not:

1. “Love Is All Around” – Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
2. “And if Venice is Sinking” – Spirit of the West
3. “Dead Skunk” – Loudon Wainwright III
4. “Nobody Smokes Anymore” – Robert Ellis
5. “Rock N Roll Girl” – Paul Collins, The Beat
6. “Rush” – Big Audio Dynamite
7. “Having an Average Weekend” – Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet
8. “Hannah Jane” – Hootie & Tghe Blowfish
9. “Bedbugs and Ballyhoo” – Echo & The Bunnymen
10. “Sing to Death” – Prima Donna
11. “Nothin’ Feels Right But Doing Wrong” – Sarah Shook & the Disarmers
12. “Chancellor” Gord Downie
13. “West Coast Town” – Chris Shiflett

As you see above, I am all over the place at Marscon next weekend. It’s going to be fun, but it’s going to be tiring, being, as I am increasingly known, “The Guy In Every Band™”!

Y’know, this week’s been primarily about figuring out how to be a productive member of society again after being off the grid in holiday limbo for two weeks. I’ve mostly fallen back into things, pushing documents around and being bureaucratic and stuff. I also spent a bit of time keeping my eye on the HR repositories, as it’s about that time for the results of annual evaluations, and more importantly, the impact those things have on salary, to hit the street. When it did finally hit Wednesday afternoon, the news was generally good; I got a decent enough bump; I’m not entirely unhappy (and $diety knows I could use the extra cash flow), and my boss was quite complimentary about the contribution I made this year, where I took on a couple of new responsibilities that ended up becoming a bit more than other duties as assigned and consuming a lot more of my time.

It’s a living.

Beyond that, there isn’t really much. I’ve been hiking (discovered a new trail I didn’t know about in one of my usual park haunts), reading, and…yeah.

I’ve also discovered that I kind of suck at social media (says the old man who’s been blogging more or less consistently since the late 90s…); in anticipation of all the stuff on my Marscon schedule for next weekend, I knocked out a relatively simple graphic to post to the usual social media things and probably print off a couple of copies to hang in the lifts at the con, to let people know where I’d be, but because I don’t know how to ‘gram or ‘face all that well, large chunks of the sides of the image got hacked off because I think in terms of widescreen and not phone screen. My lovely spouse, who’s more up on these things immediately gave me a gentle chiding (thankfully in private). I’m well aware of my limitations; that’s why I’m not my own social media director.

Anyway; not much else to say. I’ll put the Marscon schedule in it’s own post later. Here are some tunes that Spotify spit out. Decent enough; and given #12 (of 11), I’ve clearly been listening to Striking Copper‘s new record, A Trip Around The Sun, quite a bit recently; check ’em out, won’t you?

1. “Shame on You” – Indigo Girls
2. “Need You Around” – Smoking Popes
3. “Right Back Where We Started From” – Army Navy
4. “Old Old Fashioned” – Frightened Rabbit
5. “Never Say Never” – Romeo Void
6. “Kiss Me Deadly” – Generation X
7. “Hope for the High Road” – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
8. “Everywhere That I’m Not” – Translator
9. “Sometimes A Fantasy” – Billy Joel
10. “Minnesota” – Shackeltons
11. “Dream All Day” – The Posies
12. “Winter” – Striking Copper
13. “Six Different Ways” – The Cure

My year-end (mostly) Staycation™ came to it’s inevitable end yesterday.

The break was actually pretty relaxing, when I consider things. We all decided to make Christmas itself pretty low-key; the end of the year was way to hectic and crazy, with sewing projects and obligations and not as much money as we’d like and such, we didn’t even get the tree up until the 23rd, and it basically came down the Friday after Christmas, in no small part because the kitten knocked most of the lower branches off as it was. We did gifts on Christmas Eve, intending, and actually succeeding at sleeping in, which we all needed. We spent the afternoon with friends out east a bit, eating, drinking, and being low-key merry; 2019 was pretty rough on so many of my social circle, we all just enjoyed each other’s company and took a breather from things for a while.

New Years’ was likewise a low-key affair. While my teenage son did go out to a friends’ for the evening, the rest of us sat around watching some stand-up comedy on Netflix, drinking a couple of beers, and retiring by 10:30, succumbing to the siren song of slumber, or something poetic like that.

The time in-between; that week between the two holidays where nobody quite knows what day it is, was kind of a blur. On those relatively insignificant days I spent my mornings out hiking along the river, mostly enjoying nature and early morning goose antics, and doing wizard and pokemon things. I like my time in the woods, whether on feet or wheels; it’s part self-care, part spiritual practice, part stumbling upon a couple of teenagers getting to second base on the marsh walk overlook (like what happened this afternoon when I walked a couple of miles after work). Some days it’s rapid, some days it’s leisurely, but it’s an experience I’ve kind of come to depend on in support of my mental health.

Otherwise, I ran errands, cleaned some stuff, watching The Witcher and finishing Mindhunter over the course of the two weeks, and catching up on reading.

Beyond getting together with our friends as described above and venturing into the city a couple of times (where I got that tattoo for my holiday gift), the only other adventure was down to NC last Friday afternoon for relaxing evening of music and jokes and fun at bandmate Scott’s “Bardic Circle.” In spite of the rain along I-85, it was exactly the adventure I needed, just sitting around making music with my friends. That’s my other spiritual practice.

Speaking of making music, the Marscon schedule got posted this afternoon, and it looks like I’m going to be really busy (my many obligations will get their own post before long), but that’s perfectly fine, because I’ll mostly be engaging in that second spiritual practice again, and it seems I (yes me, apart from all those bands I play in) have fans who I can’t disappoint. Mostly, it’ll be hanging with friends having a laugh over drinks and guitars.

…and I can’t think of a better way to spend a weekend.