Here is some stuff I have been truly enjoying lately:
R.E.M. Life's Rich Pageant (I.R.S. Years Edition)
and
Tom Clancy's Executive Orders
and I just enjoyed (in a yuck! kind of way) watching my senior cat, my beloved Mistah Victah, catch with his paw, bite, chew, and swallow a fly on the window pane, then lick his chops. Congratulations Mistah Victah. You still got it, buddy. Now he is licking a wooden chair, presumably to get the taste out of his mouth. Gross.

Evan concluded his 3 day mini tour last night at a house party in Uptown. The show was pretty fun. It was designed for people to actually sit and pay attention with very few distractions. The audience was very receptive and friendly. I hope that they get more interested in listening to his songs and that his CDs get more play in peoples' homes and that those peoples' lives are then enriched as mine has been. Evan was very kind about sharing his appreciation of my skills and how much they contribute to his music. Karl played well. A highlight was using a German (leading tone labeled H not B) xylophone on "Communion Song". The show was very successful and with any luck Evan will be back out there playing again before too long.

I am at Linden Hills Dunn Brothers. Evan is playing some songs by himself while we wait for some people to show up. I am playing bass with him on a 3 day mini-tour called "I know it's not rock and roll but I like it". He just did a good song about the Beatles playing a County Fair in Texas in an alternate universe. It was good. He's got such good songs. I really want more people to show up and get his music. People are so scared of walking into a room with just a guy sitting there playing by himself. Stu just showed up! Yay!


I think I will try to post to this blog more frequently. I've enjoyed posting to the new Honigman specific blog. Incidentally, there is news there as of today. Here is the link to the more specifically Honigman blog.

How stupid are people? Pretty damn stupid. Especially when it comes to movies. Let me explain.

First of all, people talk during movies and make noise and generally behave as though they were watching TV in their underwear in their living room. If I had the Michael Valentine Smith-like power to make people disappear instantly, there would generally be way fewer people coming out of movies I attend than there were going in. At some point in the last year or so I just gave up. Now I just go EXPECTING to hear two moronic teenagers laughing their asses off as Gollum debates ferociously with himself whether to betray and kill the Hobbits. If I see a movie without anyone bothering me, I am pleasantly surprised. That's one reason people are stupid. I've known that for a long time. But recently other events have showed a new dimension to movie audience stupidity.

As I write this, "Kangaroo Jack" is the #1 movie in America. Who, and I mean to say WHO?! sees the ads for this movie and says, "Oh yeah, opening weekend, baby! Must see!"? I can enjoy stupid comedy as much as anyone. I fully intend to see "Old School". I have enjoyed "Road Trip", both "American Pie" movies, and the granddaddies of the current poop joke set, "Caddyshack" and "Slap Shot". All great. But, my fellow Americans, as a first step on the long, long road to making the rest of the world stop hating us and thinking we are stupid, we must not make films like "Kangaroo Jack". And if we do make them, they must not become the #1 movies in America. They must leave the theaters within three weeks, publicly rejected and disgraced, just like "Solaris" did but shouldn't have. Are we clear?

Finally, when a good movie DOES reach a wider audience, the wider audience responds in a stupid way. I was made aware of this fact when viewing "About Schmidt" at a multiplex in Lakeville, Minnesota recently. I originally saw "About Schmidt" when it was in its first week of limited release at the Uptown Theater in Uptown, Minneapolis. People there waited in line outside to buy tickets. Then, during the film, they laughed, gasped, cried, and generally loved the movie, as did I. They seemed to respond as intelligent individuals. Then the dopes got wind of it. I take you now to the home of Jack and Jill Duhmerican.
"Oh, people say the new Jack Nicholson movie is good."
"I thought that was an art flick."
"No, honey, it's at Lakeville 18."
"Oh, well, let's check it out."
So the dopes go.

The audience reaction in Lakeville was totally different from the reaction in Uptown. There was a scene where a character is discovered lying on the floor, having tragically died. People were laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. People talk and crumple their bags of popcorn during quiet scenes that require attention and invite emotional involvement from the viewer.

I also heard ridiculous comments during and especially after the movie. Comments like "I didn't like the ending. It was a good movie up until the ending. That ending was terrible." I don't know what movie these people watched! Did they want something to blow up? I stared at the woman who said that with a derisive uncomprehending smile on my face. Her companion noticed me and I hope that in that moment she came to understand what an idiot her friend is. Another dope said "It was okay, but I don't know what the big deal was about. It wasn't that great." I want to forcibly and painfully tattoo "I am a moron!" on these people's foreheads and deny them entrance to movie theaters showing anything more complex than "The Care Bears Movie".

I remember way back in 1988 or so my high school band director told me that he didn't go to movies anymore because television had ruined people's ability to shut up and be considerate while watching filmed entertainment. I remember thinking that on that score at least, he was a sad, embittered old man. But now I find his words on this subject (and several others I won't go in to here) ringing down sagely through the years. And I am not a sad old man. I am not even all that sad of a young man anymore. I'm thirty-one and happy most of the time, especially when I go my financially imperiled small local theater (three screens) on a Tuesday night for a late show and I'm the only one there. Heaven. Idiots.

Had a great weekend. But on here I'm only going to talk about the sad part.

We were driving along County 42 in Burnsville and saw a turtle in the middle of the road. We pulled over and I got out to move him out of the road. I saw that a part of his shell was broken and there was blood near him and I thought he was dead. But then I saw him move. After checking for cars, I went out and picked him up. We started driving to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in St. Paul and it seemed like he was going to make it. He was bleeding severely at first, but it seemed to stop. But then, when we were actually in sight of the center, something burst inside the poor little guy and he just gave out. His limbs and his head came all the way out of his shell and didn't retract even when I gently touched them. I could see something I thought was his liver. After looking at this site on turtle anatomy I am pretty sure that's what it was. He started bleeding again and by the time we got in to the center I think he was almost gone. They told us with injuries that severe they would probably have to euthanize. It was very sad and it made me think about a few things:

a)Were we just doing it to make ourselves feel good?
b)Did we actually help him in any way?
c)Wouldn't it be more meaningful overall to campaign for some kind of environmental regulations on road construction?

And here are my current answers:

a)No. It actually was an hour and a half cut out of time with important people. We really did it because we had a vision of saving his life and seeing him released back in to a cool wetland somewhere.

b)Maybe. Of course he would have died within ten minutes or so of us seeing him if we had not intervened. We were his only chance at living. He would have been hit by another car and mutilated. But perhaps if we had just set him down in a nearby wetland he would have healed on his own. This seems unlikely, but I worry that even though I held him in my hands and tried to have my arms act as shock absorbers, it was the jostling 40 minute car ride that caused the fatal inner pressure and grisly explosion. What seems most likely is that his death was either marginally more or marginally less uncomfortable than it would have been.

c)Maybe. However, I think of the parable of the man standing on the beach throwing washed up starfish into the ocean;

There are thousands of starfish all up and down the beach and a second man comes up to him and says, "You can't possibly save them all. You need to do something on a larger scale. In the long run what you are doing doesn't matter!" The first man answers, "It mattered to that one."

I am not a politician or even a lobbyist. I give to PETA. I always vote and vote green. I even write to my state and national legislators for some things. But I think I have accepted that I am not the person who is going to change humanity's unslakeable lust for automobile travel. Given that, what we did was a good course of action.

My newest song, Milestone Mo-tel just went up at mp3.com. (Click on the title there to go hear it.) I am excited about it. I think it's really good. I noticed my songs got 3 plays yesterday. That doesn't always happen. It makes me wonder if that was because I am posting here. If you read this and go to my site, send an e-mail to memphis@memphisevans.com, and say you went there because you saw my blog. That would be cool. I imagine this blog getting buried underneath all the thousands of others, but maybe not. Well, gotta go teach. See ya.

Just returned from a baseball game with my folks and some of their friends. I am a huge Twins fan and enjoyed their extremely nerve wracking 15 inning victory over Atlanta. I actually screamed my lungs out when Tom Prince was safe at home on Cristian Guzman's double in the bottom of the 15th. THAT RULED!! People should not use obscenity to excess at baseball games. Three guys behind us were doing so and I was sitting right next to my mom and her friend. It was an unpleasant aspect of an otherwise superb baseball experience. After the game, my mom told me they had a bottle of Jack Daniels. Had I known that during the game, I would have ratted them out in an attempt to get them removed. When I was about 20, I dropped the idea that there is anything wrong with using a higher authority to get something done, i.e. tattle. What a game! Rescheduled two guitar lessons to go to it and I'm so glad I did. See you later, whoever might be reading this. Don't forget to visit memphisevans.com. There might even be a song or two about baseball.