Happy birthday to my big brother--one of them, anyway.
To the one who used to threaten me with grave harm if I told on him to Mom and Dad--which I always did anyway. I knew which side my bread was buttered on.
To the one who told me he that the reason he ate so much ice cream was that it cooled off his tongue after all the spicy foods he ate. I don't think of it as lying so much as having a creative way of understanding cause and effect. (Also, after I learned the truth, I developed a healthy distrust of what was told to me by authority figures.)
To the one who played wiffle ball with me in the backyard--even if I suspect he was changing the rules as we went along.
To the one who introduced me to the music of the Moody Blues and all the great 70s drug music.
To the one who will still engage me in debate on any and every socio-political issue, debates I may later analyze to see what makes good argumentation and what doesn't.
Happy birthday to Thombo the Clown.
Well, something I wrote was cited in a book, anyhow.
The book is Spiritual Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced Twelve
Music Icons (Relevant Media). The chapter on Bono was written by Steve Beard, of Thunderstruck fame. He cites this article on Eugene Peterson in the course of it.
I'm really rather excited about this.
Hank Bordowitz has thought long and hard about this question: "If U2 were a book, which book would they be?"
Blame Creedence Clearwater Revival. Bordowitz, the man behind The U2 Reader: A Quarter Century of Commentary, Criticism and Reviews, also gave the world Bad Moon Rising: The Unauthorized History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. As he was working on the latter, a fellow music journalist told him such a book could become "the rock and roll version of Bleak House."
So if John Fogerty and Co.'s dealings conjure comparisons to a Dickens novel (one about a lawsuit that drags on until everyone associated with it is dead), what work of literature does U2 call to mind, Hank?
"The Fountainhead. It has to do with success by sheer force of will."
Read the rest here.
include:
reading St. Augustine sermons
doing the dishes
doing the laundry
checking jimski's marvellous site every few minutes
calling a friend to see if she'd managed to kill that wasp she was trying to kill yesterday
turning down an invitation to dinner: "no, no, I have to write"
creating a Radiohead mixtape
eating garlic cheese bread
updating this weblog
Today when I look in your face may I recognize the one I love.
Nothing has gone the way I planned. Nothing was ever going to.
So you are not who I thought you would be. Neither am I.
When I hear your voice, may I remember I love that voice.
You will not not say what I would say, or what I would have you say.
Your words may grate, contradict, bore.
I will picture your face while I listen, your true face.
When I say your name may you hear how I love you.