ridin' the holiday rollercoaster

been a few days since i really had time to post. holidays are always a mixed bag for me, emotionally-wise, and this one's no exception. my ex-father-in-law started dialysis today after experiencing complete kidney failure on christmas eve. an admirable cat -- one of eight kids, grew up on a ranch in west texas, at 15 he was stringing phone lines up in the dakotas, lied about his age and enlisted in the airforce, supported his infirm in-laws his whole married life until they passed, retired from the military and went to work for the postoffice for 30 yrs, raised his grandson too from young times 'cos the boy's parents weren't up to the task, then took his son in when _he_ had substance-abuse related illnesses. went back to work not long after his second retirement. at a time in their lives when he and his wife figured they'd be relaxing and traveling, they're still working hard taking care of other ppl. this man might have had a selfish thought at some point in his life, but you'd never know it to look at his track record. when they checked him into the hospital i'm sure he was scared, but he was asking the nurses to make sure they had a teevee in i.c.u. so he wouldn't miss the cowboy game and told the minister that he missed church on sunday 'cos he was ashamed he'd run out of seasonal ties. a good man; keeping him in my thoughts this week.

spent most of the holiday w-e chillin' at home, as a result of which my leg is feelin' much better. the gel-padded bike gloves my sweetie got me have mitigated the effect of the crutches on my hands, so jammin' tonight should be a relative breeze compared to the last coupla weeks o' misery. still have to wear das boot for another 3-4 wks, but can feel the swelling and stiffness beginning to subside.

friday night we were honored to be guests at the me-thinks' "mustachio 7" party, for which the mbrs of haltom city's masters of self-deprecating bullshit and high-octane rockaroll, along with a few of their friends, annually grow elaborate molestachios and dress up outlandishly (coupla '70s leisure suits this yr, along with host / pussyhouse art criminal ray liberio's great white hunter and his co-conspirator calvin abucejo's turbaned indian) to enjoy libations, toonage, and um, fun 'n' fellowship. got to meet the _real_ entrepeneur behind their label "indian casino records" (visiting from the pac nw) and sample some of his home brewed beers. it was just nice being around a buncha folks who have known each other for yrs 'n' yrs and have a certain ease between 'em. sir marlin von bungy favored me with a cd-r of some tracks the me-thinks have cut for their long-awaited double e.p., but i promised him i wouldn't write about 'em...yet.

saturday night we spent at the home of jazz pianner titan johnny case and his wife kitty (who, like my sweetie, works in special education) with a buncha ppl young 'n' old. was talking to one cat a few yrs older than me who recalled his teenage fascination with the sound of jazz chords that led him to pick up gtr (in the same way a fascination with the sound of hot lixxx 'n' feedback motivated some of us). for the last five yrs, he's been studying the sitar with a teacher he met thru the d/fw indian classical music circle, and he enlightened me with fascinating tidbits o' info such as the fact that in a classical indian raga, the _sequence_ of notes in a scale is what defines the piece (rather than a set of chord changes), and that the order might be different in a descending scale than it is in an ascending one. and these cats will take a structure that simple and embroider on it for 30 minutes or more. interesting stuff. also talked at length with a young cat, the son of a local muso, who's attending film school in bozeman, montana, of all places, and wants to make documentary films. he told me about one piece in particular he'd done, an int w/a retired navy seal he'd met at the local vfw in bozeman that i'd be curious to see if he could ever find a way of doing something with it.

was thinking about my kids last night, having seen all of 'em (rather than just the middle one whom i still see _fairly_ often) at the hospital on sunday, and so last night i went and borrowed an acoustic gtr from wreck room wizard o' sound andre edmonson and sat around after my sweetie hit the rack trying to remember some of the fingerstyle stuff i learned in between putting down after i got back from korea in '83 and picking up again around '90 or '91, as well as some of the songs i usedta sing my kids when they were little (which the middle one has asked me to tape for 'em, which i may do someday). not something i'd ever do in public, but nice to give that set of synapses a spin after not doing so for a real long time.

earlier in the evening, we went to pick up a (late) christmas present for middle dtr's b-f and use a gift card my sweetie's li'l sis sent me at half price books. the vinyl racks were kinda picked over, but we found a vid of to kill a mockingbird, an intact paperback of catch-22 (to replace the disintegrating one i co-opted from my middle dtr a few months back), and a coupla budget-line cd's that include the complete charlie parker dial sessions (on four discos!) and the complete savoy master takes -- basically all the best shit that bird ever waxed. mr. parker of k.c.'s late-'40s innovations (exploring the harmonic possibilities implicit in tin pan alley songcraft and subdividing the 8th-note dance beat of swing into an idiom typified by flurries of 16th notes, paving the way for trane's "sheets of sound" and later, 32nd-note fusion insanity) became the template for jazz in the '50s until ornette and cecil and ayler arrived to take it to yet another level of abstraction. like ellington, i can listen to this stuff endlessly.

now that i'm all done working for this yr, i'm looking fwd to some downtime spent with friends and family, nye dinner at fred's and the ph7-confusatron show at el wreck, and avoiding all the amateurs who get garrruuunnnk and try to operate motor vehicles once a yr. it's been a good yr, all in all, but da-a-amn, it sure went fast.