the sticking point

Keep it down...and don't bogart the Kools!

Emailed from Hoye this morning.

Meet My Son.

On Wednesday, as I had (typically) four Microsoft Word docs open on my screen -- and was working on all of them, my office phone rang. I glanced at a number I didn't recognize on the Caller ID, and let it go to the machine. Mrs. Sticking Point and I had been in nearly continuous contact all day long (this fact is going to be important a few paragraphs from now), via IM, email, and telephone. This call wasn't from her, so...I let it go.

A few minutes later, I wondered if the adoption agency would ever call me at work, or if they'd only try the house. Checked the voicemail. I heard the following message:

Hi Tommy, _____ from S-C. This is an important call, I have some good news for you. Please call me as soon as possible at 212-###-####. Um...I don't have a work number for...telephone number for S----, and I did leave a message on your home phone. You can reach me, again, at 212-###-####. It's Wednesday afternoon, the twenty-ninth of September at quarter of five. I'll be at the agency until six or six-thirty; or you can reach me tomorrow morning. I'll be in at nine o'clock. Between nine and ten would be the best time to reach me. OK, so GIVE ME A CALL...'k, bye.

Whoa. The cliche parade: my heart raced...I began stammering...I stood up...I sat down.

As I listened with the receiver in my right hand, I began typing out a one-handed smoke signal instant message to my wife. I think it looked something like this:

sSWEETI E CALL _____ CALLED FROM SPNCE! SHE SAYS GODD NEWS IMPROTNTA! CALL NO W!

But I think it was less clear and more frantic looking. Like I was cobbling together a ransom note! And then I got the auto response that the darling wife was away from her computer. I grabbed the phone to call her, and had to restart after mis-dialing three times. I took a deep breath and said it aloud: "OK...9 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 6 - 5 - 4..." She wasn't at her desk either. I muttered spoken language's quickest-ever "dammit," and called the social worker back.

"Is this the call we hope it is?"

"Yes."

She told me our referral was in, and went right into the basic details: It's a baby boy. He was born on June 13. His name is Jung Ho.

This is it, I thought. This is the start of it all being real. I grabbed the sheet of note paper that was next to my computer, and jotted down the info. So, to the Sticking Point family scrapbook, I will now add this sheet of paper, which contains the names of six writers I'd recommended for work, their phone numbers, and the first few facts I ever learned about my child.

She asked if I'd be able to get in touch with my wife, and when would we like to come and review the documents. We could do it today before 6:30, or sometime tomorrow (Thursday) after 3:30. I assured her that we'd definitely be up there today. S. is working in our other building, just up the street, and we've been in constant contact. "I'll get in touch with her and call you right back, " I told her.

I dialed S's work number as quickly as I could. Left a message to call me ASAP. Tried the cell, left message. Called the office number. Hung up on the machine. Tried cell. Hung up on the machine. Figuring that wherever she was, she was simply unable to hear her Coldplay ringtone, I just kept dialing it and hanging up on the outgoing message.

This went on for five, ten...two minutes before I'd had enough. I shut down my computer and ran out of the office with my cell phone in my left hand. I was heading up to the S's building to get her.

When I got to her desk, she wasn't sitting there. I wandered around the floor for a minute and couldn't track her down. I was going over in my head how cool it was going to be to poke my head into an office, ask to "borrow" her, and then share the amazing news I was by now bursting to tell her. I sat down at her desk, with show outlines and Weekend Update jokes printed out in small piles, and called her cell phone another time. In a second, I heard "Clocks," by Coldplay drifting from the desk drawer. Shit!

We'd been in near-constant contact all day long...but at the moment of truth, she was AWOL.

I called our friend SOC at his desk downstairs, and found the wife there. I asked if he'd please send her up to her desk. He was all light-hearted about it, laughing. I must have sounded like a real jackass when I said, "No, this isn't funny. It's important." (Melodramatic douche.)

She gets upstairs, and I stand up, and forget all that I'd been rehearsing for the past half hour. "It's good news. It's here. I mean, what we want. It came." It was supposed to be so much cooler than that.

We bolted. In the elevator bank at 1633 Broadway, I told her the three details I knew: gender, birthdate, name. Then, the slowest taxi in New York City got us to S-C at 6:00.
(On the way, we took a picture of ourselves with her cell phone. I thought we should commemorate the event.)

I'll just add some random notes about the rest of that evening, because some of it is private and some of it I simply don't remember, because it was ALL a blur.

Sitting in the waiting room, I told S. I hoped the social worker was as excited about this as we were. I just didn't want her to go about this in too business-like a manner. It was HUGE for us, Day One of our family, and I didn't want it to be devoid of feeling. Here's how that turned out: When she came down the hallway and stood in front of us, she smiled, then giggled, then actually snorted with glee.

The room where we conferred wasn't what I expected. It wasn't the type of room, it would seem, where good things happen. Couch, two arm chairs, three side tables. Box of Kleenex. I've been in too many rooms like it in my life, and I'd never left one smiling. It reminded me of a side-room at a funeral parlor.

We learned all about our baby, our son, and at alternating times me, my wife, and our social worker got choked up and cried.

We were handed seven photographs, taken in mid-August. That's him, that's our son. (Do I keep repeating that? It is still boggles my mind.)

We learned, from the pages and pages of medical and developmental notes that this little one is perfectly healthy, is an "eater" who loves his bottles, and doesn't sleep for too long.

The cab ride home found us giddy and still a little stunned. Our next step was to provide all of this information to the world's foremost international adoption pediatric medical authority, who would look everything over and give her assessment of the baby's health and medical outlook. At which point, we'd give the nod to move forward with the process of adopting Jung Ho. So, we had the taxi drop us off at out neighborhood Kinkos, where we made all the necessary color and B&W copies for the doctor. (Holy crap. I hadn't been inside one of those places in about seven or eight years. What happened?! It was so thoroughly, bone-chillingly depressing in that place, that if I weren't Xeroxing paperwork about and photos of my brand new son, I'd have drowned myself in a bucket of toner. The place was like a DMV, but with less of a party atmosphere.)

All I can remember of that Wednesday night was making phone calls to the immediate family, and shooting them some of his photos in emails. I don't even know if we ate dinner.

His picture is in a frame on our mantle. We check in on it every four minutes or so. Every time I look, I laugh. I think that he has a great sense of humor in his expression. He is also (and those of you who talk to me next week are going to hear this plenty) freakishly handsome. It's ridiculous, how handsome he is. How could a human be so damn beautiful?

Listening:
Deanna from the album Best Of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds by Cave, Nick And The Bad Seeds

"Sing, Michael, Sing..."

London Calling (25th Anniversary Legacy Edition) - The Clash (Epic)

I didn’t get London Calling in a very punk rock manner. I was sick, and my mother bought it for me. I was almost thirteen.

One Sunday, in the winter of 1979, the big, fat edition of the Daily News came with its weekly Sam Goody sale circular, and London Calling was priced to move at $6.99. (That’s seven bucks for a double LP, a perfect combination of the Clash keeping their record affordable for the workin’ man, and…well, it being 1980.) I planned on taking the bus two miles up Kimball Avenue to Cross County Shopping Center and getting myself a piece of that action. And then I started sweating.

Shortly after getting dressed for my trip to the record store to answer London’s call…I started to feel like crap. Here’s the thing about my childhood illnesses: My temperature would go through the roof. I rarely sneezed or sniffled, but when the thermometer came out of my mouth, it would be redlined from end to end. It wasn’t unusual for my temperature to go as high as 105 or 106. (One time, I was rushed to the emergency room to sit in a tub of towels doused with isopropyl alcohol. They never told me how high the temp was that night – I just knew that the fever and the alcohol were certain to make me burst into flames.) With the high temperatures came delirium.

That week in late ‘79, I spent a couple days out of school and out of my mind delirious (pulsating spiders and evil steam pipes, hissing noises dripping down the walls). On Tuesday, my mother came home from errands with a 12-by-12 Sam Goody bag for me. Obviously, I’ve never forgotten this moment. Here was the woman who disturbed most of my listening hours by banging on my bedroom door and complaining about the “shit,” or “hateful shit,” or “disgusting punk shit” I was listening to – here she was handing me a feel-better copy of the Clash’s London Calling. It was probably the last record she ever bought me, and most definitely the best.

For the rest of that high-fevered week I listened to it over and over and over and…. (Occasionally, I’d swap it out for Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Get a load of THAT one the next time you have a 106 fever and seeing your own army of hammers goose-stepping across your bedroom carpet!) I’m not going to add my own review of a 25-year-old album that’s already been named the Greatest Album of the 80s in so many corners. (Step away from the math and no one gets hurt! Think of the 1980s as a “vibe” and we’ll all be fine.) I knew immediately that they were no longer a punk band, or “just” a punk band. They were rock and roll’s best band.* They’d actually backed up the claim stated on the record’s promotional sticker. They WERE the only band that mattered. London Calling was drunk on joy and anger and self-confidence, swaggering into the room carrying an armload of rockabilly, satta, and thunderous riffs.

The initial experience of listening to it while under the influence of fever eventually faded, but the album remained dear to me. A perfect document of what I – at age 13 – thought music should sound like. In the closed-door air-guitar privacy of my bedroom, I was in the Clash. Not exactly Joe, not exactly Mick, but some amalgam of the two. (And, in my imagination, the Clash I fronted had greater appeal to the American audience. Concertgoers at those early air-guitar bedroom shows dug “Guns of Brixton,” and screamed out requests for “Complete Control.”)

The 25th Anniversary Edition of the album arrived at my doorstep yesterday, and though I’m sick of people who don’t do their jobs, people who break promises, the heat on the subway, UPS, rudeness, liars, and myriad other daily hassles, my body temperature is a comfy 98.6, thank you.

The packaging is beautiful. Think: Apple Computer-style design – foldouts, translucent slipsleeves – gorgeous. The liner notes by Tom Vague and Pat Gilbert have a wonderfully distinct British slant to them, as they should. This is a welcome correction of the abysmally wrong American flavor on comps like Clash On Broadway. The remastered sound is like that of most remastered disks we own; we won’t notice much of a difference, because who are we? Georgio Moroder? (Am I really hearing that piano, twenty seconds into “Wrong 'Em Boyo,” for the first time, or am I just paying more attention?)

I have one minor beef: “Train in Vain” should have been left off the track list, just like on the original issue. Marketing won out over purism, I suppose. Sony Legacy spent an assload of dollars to re-release this thing, and if the biggest (only?) hit off the album is unlisted I guess they’ll sell a few less copies. (But wouldn’t fans of that song first need to know that it’s not “Stand By Me,” as they probably call it?)

All of that aside, the gimme-factor of this release is not the reissued recording; it’s the included DVD and demo disk. The Don Letts-produced “Last Testament” DVD (named for the original title of London Calling) documents the making of the album at Wessex Studios and the rehearsals at Vanilla. It’s supplemented with talking head narrative from Kosmo Vinyl and latter-day testimonials from band members. A lot of this seems to have been re-jiggered from previous Letts Clash films and their outtakes, but there’s some black and white studio footage that’s priceless. Some of the stuff is so wild, it seems staged. It’s not. (Dig producer Guy Stevens trashing a chair, or bouncing like a drunken monkey as the band jams away.) It’s quickly paced and a pleasure to watch these charming, thoughtful men discuss the process. The Wessex Studio footage is raw and fascinating. Think of “The Last Testament” as a complement to Westway To The World. A worthy, valuable complement.

[One cool still photo in “The Last Testament” shows Mick Jones crossing a street in New York. Tucked under his arms is a Trash and Vaudeville bag. I’ll try to remember to share some personal T & V stories someday.]

The demos disk, The Vanilla Tapes, were culled from long-lost rehearsal tapes that Mick Jones found in a cardboard box while he was moving this past March. The tapes themselves have a strange history; one-time Clash road warrior Johnny Green (read his memoir A Riot of Our Own!) has claimed he lost them on a Northern Line tube train back in 1979.

There are two types of demo recordings. On the first, you catch a band ripping through their new songs before the spit, polish, smoke, and mirrors of the studio rob them of passion. (See X’s Beyond & Back.) And then there’s the type you get here: learning the song and getting it down on tape before the band forgets how it goes. These are musical Post-It notes.

There are four originals, an unreleased Dylan cover (“The Man in Me”), and fifteen in-progress versions of the songs we know and love. Plus a fun run-through of their debut LP’s “Remote Control.”

There are some warm bodies among the bloodless cadavers here. “I’m Not Down” has some alternate lyrics and great playing by the guys. “Jimmy Jazz”’s instrumental doppelganger (“The Police Walked in 4 Jazz”) rings out nicely; and so does “Working and Waiting,” the “Clampdown” template. But if I never hear “Koka Kola” (here titled “Koka Kola, Advertising, & Cocaine”) in this condition again, I’ll live. Mick Jones’s C&W “Lonesome Me” actually reminds me of the Beastie Boys rarity “Railroad Blues,” at least the Beasties version is funny.

Together, the old disk, new disk, and DVD are quite a package. It’s twenty-five bucks for a lot of great music and video. Listening to those songs in my office again today, I couldn’t believe how great they still sound: beautiful, angry, and restless. I’m serious, not delirious…this music still matters.

* Put into perspective, the Stones were in Jamaica or some posh island resort re-heating the Some Girls leftovers that would become the uneven Emotional Rescue, after-Face Rod Stewart had dropped “Do You Think I’m Sexy” on our disco-loving asses, and the closest rock came to the charts was estrogen-flavored Styx (“Babe”) and a “Crazy Little Thing Called” Queen. In the midst of all this came The Clash’s hot, throbbing, skip-through-the-genres London Calling. See?

...And ye heard me laughing on the other side of thine building.

This link came from Walein moments ago.

Weird Adoption Questions, Pt. 2

I had a meeting with a co-worker this afternoon, and afterward she asked if I'd confirm the rumor that I'm adopting. She'd overheard this item in an elevator.

I confirmed, she congratulated.

I did my whole gushing spiel. No bullshit -- if you ask, I will talk. I get all Tom Arnold-on-coke when the topic of The Sticking Point family adoption comes up. (But hopefully not as stupid. Or drug-addled.)

Anyway, this co-worker gal relayed how happy she is for us, and said all the right things. She herself does these “vacations” where she travels to Ukraine to work in orphanages there.

But then she asked if the child was going to be raised bilingual. Decent question, I guess, just a bit more personal/specific than folks usually get. I said, "I doubt it. Why?"

"Because," she said, "one day he or she might look in the mirror and say, you know, ‘I look like this’ and ‘Who am I’ and want something of their own culture.”

I assured her (why was I assuring her?!) that Korean culture will be a huge part of our lives, and shared with her the fact that our friends and extended family are a melting pot.

She put me on my heels. It weirded me out a little. We have more in place to keep our child connected to Korean and Asian culture than most people do.

She also used the word “taken” a couple times, like “taken from his country.” When I asked if she was taught Celtic as a child because she’s Irish. she said, “No, silly, I’m from Philly. I wasn’t taken from the land of shamrocks.”

I emailed my wife most of this, and she really crystallized my feelings:

I guess you could say that the baby won't be different from everyone else…the family will. We will be a Korean-American family, all three of us. We intend to incorporate Korean culture and heritage into our FAMILY not just the child.

Our son or daughter will have plenty from Korean culture…but it will also be our child, and we speak English….

3000 Miles From Pedro

My lovely wife, who refuses to accept the beauty of "Pluckin' Pedalin' and Paddlin'" nevertheless emailed me the following important info:

SOUTHPAW
SAT. 10/23
MIKE WATT
Augie March
Bust
$12
buy tickets

That night will be game one of the 2004 World Series, but since I fully expect the Yankees to be scattered on golf courses around the country that weekend, I'm going to get a pair of tix for Watt.

Going Home

The following was posted on Luna's official site last week:

On October 26, we will release our seventh studio album, Rendezvous, on Jetset Records. This will be Luna’s final record. We will tour the United States and Europe over the next six months, playing our last shows in 2005.

Tour dates will be posted when they are confirmed, at this point it looks like we’ll be on the road in the U.S. from November 1-24, with more dates in the States and Europe in January and February, 2005.

They've been an entirely different band since Britta came along to replace Justin Harwood. And once Dean began rooting her (or whatever they call "fucking" in New Zealand), they've hardly even seemed like a band. (There've been twice as much Wareham-Phillips product in the last few years as Luna releases.) So, there you go. Yoko has finally broken up the band. One of my all-time faves bites the dust, and it was ugly down the stretch.

What's the international symbol for body-cavity search?

Boing Boing (and Wonkette and others) posted today about the military's visual-language Iraqi survival guides.

I sent the link to my visual-minded graphic designer pal Rolyn. His response:
"I bet if there was a picture of a bunch of soldiers getting onto a plane, the Iraqis would be pointing to that picture a lot. 'PLEASE LEAVE!' ...Or a picture of an American soldier fucking himself."

"It started right after a gig…I threw up my guts…fever flamed right up.”

The Secondman's Middle Stand - Mike Watt (Columbia-Red Ink)

Those opening lines make it clear from jump: for Mike Watt, this time it’s personal. In the years since 1997’s Contemplating The Engine Room, the demi-god bassist (from hardcore’s legendary Minutemen) has sampled severe pain and a taste of his own mortality, thanks to an exploded abscess down in his nethers. The illness, the surgeries, and the recovery process inform the three pieces of Middle Stand’s avant rock opera.

It's tough to shove the heartfelt, sincere work of a talented man wrestling with death and salvation under the sharp focus of a CD review (and on a freakin' weblog, at that!), but here you are... Does it rock? Yeah. But, differently. Watt uses his fuzzy-thunder bass style to sub for a lead guitar, and it works well in context with Pete Mazich’s Hammond B-3 and drummer Jerry Trebotic’s jazz-meets-John Densmore fills. High points include “Beltsandedman,” a lounge-y, down-tempo hymn to Watt's early post-op "geisha boy" steps around his beloved San Pedro, with airy background vokes from Petra Haden. The Minutemen-esque “Angel’s Gate” is all train-rolling rhythm and fun keyboard swirls; My favorite, “Pluckin’ Pedalin’and Paddlin’” has the bouncy slow groove of a post-punk "Saturday in the Park."

I get the feeling this will one day be the kind of fully-orchestrated concert centerpiece that will define Watt's post-Minutemen career; his very own Lifehouse or Smile. The sophisticated thrash, spoken-sung lyrics, and sometimes lounge-y arrangements will be amazing performed live. The Secondman's Middle Stand is enthralling and challenging, exactly the kind of record that rewards repeated listens.

The more you know. An online diary of the recording of Secondman's Middle Stand is available on Mike Watt's Hootpage.

It rubs the lotion on its skin.

Have you heard "Lotion," by the Greenskeepers? Check out the video now, before the major movie studio issues the inevitable C & D order.
[Thanks to Brian Last Stop for the link.]