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wrap my brain around cellulite Saturday, July 16 2011
At around noon today, Gretchen and I went over to Bearsville once again to go swimming in the saltwater pool recently installed by Susan the memoirist. I also brought a firewood carrying sling so I could gather a few more sticks of wood I'd been unable to cram into the Subaru on our last visit. Once at Susan's place, Gretchen headed directly for the pool while I tip-toed through the Poison Ivy field to the forest. As I was assembling my sling of wood (which ended up almost being too heavy to carry), I heard a fight erupt between one of our dogs and one of the several black Labradors at the pool. It turned out that Sally had been the victim of an incidence of gate aggression (apertures and leashes seem to concentrate doggy passions), though it had all blown over by the time I got to the pool.
It ended up being something of a pool party at Susan's, with various unknown people showing up and either climbing into the pool or nibbling at snacks that had been set up at a picnic table. I don't often see aging boomers dressed in swimwear, and I couldn't help but be alarmed at the ravages that the years can take on the human body. I can wrap my brain around cellulite, but I was more puzzled at the grotesque manifestations of varicose veins. Then Sarah the vegan (who has been housesitting in Phœnecia) showed up and, though she's my age, it turns out that she has the body of teenager. What's funny about this is that Sarah and I somehow got to talking about evangelical nudists and I said that I'm one of those people who don't think people necessarily look their best when they're naked. "Unless maybe they're seventeen," she corrected me.
This evening Gretchen and I both made meals of canned soup. Hers was a doctored-up can of vegan Progresso vegetable soup I'd discovered during a recent trip to Hannaford. Mine was a can of Progresso lentil soup to which I'd added some tiki paste to make it into more of Indian dahl, though I also ate it with oyster crackers. I also put oyster crackers in my soup no matter what kind it is.
Some years ago I heard a couple songs by a band called The Distants on SOMA FM's Indy Pop Rocks that were so great that I immediately tried to find the album to buy or otherwise download. But it seemed the songs were just early demos or something, as the band did not seem to have any web presence whatsoever. There was no MySpace.com page or anything for sale on Amazon.com (whose music store I prefer to iTunes). The other day, though, I looked again and found that not only did the Distants have a MySpace page, but they'd released an album called Broken Gold for download.
I'd characterize The Distants as alternative hard rock, similar to Cyclefly or occasionally 2006-era The Standard. The arrangements are tight and guitar-heavy, and you'll never hear a blue note, though often the riffs sound either dissonant or Middle Eastern (particularly "The Further the Earth Gets From the Sun"). The band is fronted by a female vocalist who can do much of what Robert Plant managed to do, though the sexuality is decidedly female and somewhat cartoonish. One of the weakest songs on Broken Gold is "Girl on Girl," which attempts to school Katy Perry about what real dabbling in lesbianism looks (and tastes) like. Still, there's some great stuff on here, including "The Further the Earth," "The Moth Song," a faithful cover of the Cult's "She Sells Sanctuary," and "Apparent Silence," the only song for which a video has been made. In that one, the singer looks a little like she was inspired by Bathtubgirl to go have a rock and roll romp in the desert while wearing (what else?) a white slip.
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