I've Been For A Walk On A Winter's Day, Plus

Some music the algorithm thinks I should like, plus

Not a black crowned night heron (photo such as it is by Weldon Berger)

I Went For A Walk

I wasn’t California Dreaming, but it is winter and I did walk, so the tune was on my mind. This is Honolulu winter; the temperature was 75°F, with a nice trade wind blowing at about 10 mph. This is the first time since the last time, which was about two and a half years ago, right before I got Covid.

At that time I was taking pre-dawn walks of five or six miles, depending on the route, often pausing briefly in Waikiki to take some cell phone pics when not a creature was stirring (creatures being tourists). Not the very briskest of walks but hardly anybody passed me other than the runners.

Waikiki art museum/carpark (photo by Weldon Berger)

This time everybody on the two-mile 8:45-ish AM walk passed me, including the old, the halt, and the lame, and a few confused chickens which thought they had somewhere to go. But I have shed my foolish pride—let them pass me who may.

In the before times I would often see one or more of a family of black crowned night herons fishing toward the head of our hideously polluted Ala Wai canal. Not today, but it’s been years; I don’t know how long they live, I don’t know how that diet will have affected them, and I don’t know that they haven’t just moved along. One walk, well after dawn, probably isn’t a useful sample.

Anyway: I went for a walk. Monday Monday.

What The Dumb AI Tried To Sell Me

Last week I listened to a lot of Adrianne Lenker, solo and with her band, Big Thief. She and they have been among my favorites for some years now. This week the algorithm, which I rely on for walking music so I don’t have to worry about picking an album, decided that all I like is Adrianne Lenker and sometimes distantly related souls. Much of it I didn’t recognize, and I didn’t feel like unpocketing the phone to see who they were, but I’ve gone back to see now that I’m settled at the desk..

Among the people I recognized were Kim Deal (“Summertime”) and the quite late John Martyn (“Go Down Easy”). Martyn was an inventive guitarist, a great songwriter, with a great voice and every imaginable vice. I like them both—crushing on Kim Deal since the Pixies—but haven’t listened to them all that much recently.

The first song I sort of like from somebody I didn’t recognize was “What’s Fair” from Blondshell. I’ll likely investigate them further. Reminiscent of a thousand bands, but in a nice way if you like the other thousand, which I confess to do. The next new-to-me artist was songwriter-guitarist-pianist-torch songstress Laufey, with “Bored”. It’s a genre that moves me, and she’s going on the playlist, as is (torch-adjacent) singer-songwriter Faye Webster (“Tttttime”).

Before and after those artists were a bunch I didn’t care about or wasn’t really listening to, and then I got home. Now I have to see about cleansing the soundtrack of songs that made it go mellow.

Plus: They’re Made Out Of Meat!

So I wasn’t California Dreaming, but I was thinking about it in relation to all sorts of things, one of which was a video my brother sent me. He lives in Southern California but has not been affected by the fires or smoke or, as of the most recent communique, the winds, and nobody has canceled any sort of insurance on him.

What he sent was a video based on Terry Bisson’s famous short-short story, “They’re Made Out of Meat.” Please watch it; it’s a wonderful palliative, sort of like that apertif before whisky and cigars. At about 12 minutes long, it’ll flush what’s come before, and then you'll do something nice afterward, which may involve drinking—check your local yardarm cam—but probably no cigars.

Plus, Did News Happen Today?

(Don’t know who drew it)

Yeah, probably, but this uncredited cartoon somebody sent me several days ago seems likely to have covered it since then and will have covered it going forward. I wish I’d seen it when my lamented BTC News blog was still extant, before I sold the domain name, in extremis, to some bitcoin bros.

Coulda been a contender, bro; coulda been a contender.

Other Music

On the jazz side, friend and newsletter supporter Jack D supplied another recommendation in the person of guitarist Johnny Smith (“Shiny Stockings” live); and another thing from the soundtrack which I enjoyed and which I recommend in particular, despite the Irishness of it, to Dr. John the ornithorithologist-and-more: “The Rocky Road to Dublin” by Lankum from the album Live in Dublin. In some instances the sound is quite alike to one of my favorite ex-bands, Chumbawamba, and in some instances not (“Give The Anarchist A Cigarette”, from the Anarchy album).

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