Thursday, 1:53 p.m.

I am filthy. I smell like stale coffee and slightly scalded milk, I have whipped cream smeared suggestively on my thigh and a sticky substance that I hope to Jeebus is chutney on the back of my arm near my elbow. Although the day is a balmy and overcast 57, I have been sweating like I live in Alabama for the better part of the day. I wish I could say I look windblown or tousled or tumbledown, but the truth is, I look sweaty and blowsy and disgruntled, because I am.

The sum of today's nutritive intake is comprised of the following: six shots of espresso, most of them liberally doused with hot whatever-milk-is-at-hand foam but at least one of them straight with no coddling, and half a boysenberry muffin. The result is that my skittering heart is far outpacing both my shaking hands and my stuttering intellect. It feels like there is a beast in my chest, poised to leap forward and consume the drink that I am mixing like an automaton. I can't remember the name of it, or who it belongs to. I plan on handing it to the hopeful patron waiting at the end of the counter, whether or not it belongs to them. It may even make them stop staring at me.

One more day of this and then blessed rest, loosed from captivity.

This, my friends, is why you tip your barista.

Admit it, you always wanted a MONKEY

I freely admit that I have questionable taste at times. It is very, very rarely indefensible, but today I was embarrassed in my own home, by iTunes.

You see, I have a playlist of guilty pleasures. Everybody's got 'em. Some contain, say David Archuleta and Michael Buble, some the Spice Girls, and mine... Well, mine's got a little song by the Barenaked Ladies. They write some subversive stuff, even if they are the worst kind of earworm pop. Anyhow, I purchased If I Had A Million Dollars at 11 p.m. one lonely evening and added it to my g.p. list. And this morning, when I went to buy a song or two to flesh out my radio show, iTunes #1 recommendation for me was HOOTIE AND THE BLOWFISH. I couldn't believe how quickly I recoiled. It was like I'd been stung by a bee. Then I realized that it was a fairly accurate assumption, since my guilty pleasure playlist also contains this gem:



By the way, Huey Lewis and the News are NOT on my list of guilty pleasures, because I feel NO shame in loving that man or his music.

All the cool kids are doing it

It's shameless self-promotion time, kids! Did you know that if you go to the Raven Radio website, you can listen to this week's shows? It's for true! And, coincidently, I just did my show, so if you really love early jazz and pop, or if you're missing the sound of my voice (aww...), you can go to the program schedule page, and click on Anything Goes, and there I'll be. Well, as soon as Steve turns over the archive. But tomorrow, probably. I think.

And for the radio geeks 'round these parts (yeah, I'm lookin' at you) here's the playlist:

On The Street Where You Live - the Swingin' Fireballs
Ain't Cha Glad - Benny Goodman feat. Jack Teagarden
I'm Telling the Birds, I'm Telling the Bees - Jack Smith (with piano)
Give a Little Whistle - The Victor Silvester Orchestra
Delta Bound - James Dapogny Chicago Jazz Ban
Piccolo Pete -Ted Winges Band
Goody Goody - Billy Randolph and the Highhatters
Don't Bring Lulu - Jan Garber and His Orchestra
Radio Rhythm - Fletcher Henderson Orchestra
The Cream In My Coffee - Nat King Cole Trio
Ja-Da - the Famous Castle Jazz Band
I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire - Bon Bon and his Buddies
Kansas City Kitty - The Rhythmic Eight
Glad Rag Doll - Ted Lewis
Sugar Babe, I'm Leavin' You - Blue Steele and his Orchestra
What'll I Do? - the Zzymzzy Quartet
Up A Lazy River - the All-American Jazz Band
Whoop & Holler Blues - New Orleans' Own Dukes of Dixieland
The Bell Gal's Careless Blues - Emma Barrett
City of A Million Dreams - Fidgety Feet Jazz Band
Swing It, Mr. B! - the Swingin' Fireballs
One O'Clock Jump - the Count Basie Orchestra

Here's some cool stuff to listen for: a marimba, 40's style electric guitar with a 30's style muted trumpet, weird DJ talk about mics in the studio in the 1920's, a Disney tune, me squeaking my mic by accident while talking. Well, that's not cool, but it's in there. Also, if anyone finds out anything about Thelma Terry or Mary Longfellow, please let me know. I'm kinda interested in them.This right here is Thelma Terry.

Does enchantment pour out of every door?

I am in a bit of a romantic mood tonight. The weather is delightfully mild this evening, and the moon is full and low over the mountains. My street is rife with blooming honeysuckle and roses. In short, there is not really a reason in the world that I shouldn't be walking arm in arm with some handsome chap, my skirt swaying as we stroll. Perhaps if we walked long enough my shoes would begin to pinch my toes and I would take them off so I could step on the cool grass. An older couple holding hands on a bench by the water's edge would smile at us as we pass, remembering when they were newly in love.

Well, there's no reason for this scenario not to come to pass except that there's, you know, no beau and no dress and no sweet couple on a bench. It's just me, slightly beery from a drink with a friend, in the stained shirt that I wore to work, humming On The Street Where You Live.

I opened a window to let the scent of honeysuckle in, though. My mom told me that when she was growing up, no one planted honeysuckle near the windows of houses where there were growing girls, because the scent of it is supposed to induce naughty dreams. I don't know about the naughty part, but I can see why they thought it might bring on dreaming. I'm kind of in a fog of them myself, and I'm not even sleeping.

Louis, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

There is not, as you may know, a Denny's in Juneau. I find this a travesty of epic proportions, because I really needed one the other night. It probably seems strange to you, dear reader, that I might require a purveyor of sub-class breakfast platters and burned, bitter, weak urn coffee, but there is always a specific set of circumstances that necessitates such a thing. In this case, a quirk of scheduling had us leaving Juneau a scant twelve and a half hours after we arrived, lipstick and upright bass in tow. We were promised to play for a going away/birthday party for the Condom Lady, and it was exciting. What it meant in reality was that we could look forward to two hours of sleep at most. There were whispers of an afterparty (hey, if you're gonna live like a rock star, then fucking do it) but it never materialized. I would have preferred to not try to sleep at all, but that wasn't in the cards, because there was not really a place to stay awake. You know, like a Denny's.

I have never had breakfast at Denny's at breakfast time, unless you count 4:30 a.m. from the wrong side of day. I have spent plenty of time with my ass planted in a booth, drinking $0.99 coffee and making inside jokes with the closest friends I've ever known, but it has always been in those dark hours that most folks over the age of 26 or so completely eschew. There is a certain camaraderie that can only develop in the haze resulting from sleep deprivation and too much cheap caffeine on top of too much cheap booze. Things develop a humor that isn't present in the cold light of day. Why were we so insistent that we refer to C. and O.'s cats as the loincloths? How many rounds of sugar packet hockey did we play in Spokane? That guy in the scarf, did I really give him K.'s number in the vain and misplaced hope he'd call her, even though her area code was two time zones away?

It wasn't to be. After the wrapping of cables and the hauling of the Beast and her accoutrements, I regretfully smooched a few lovely cheeks and said goodbye to a new friend that I really had hoped to get to know better - you have to respect a man who schools his friends in the fine art of Murray's heavyweight - and let them disappear into the fog wrapping this town like a noir film. Stella disappeared as well, folded back into a square of satin and a handful of bobby pins, and left just me mournfully in her place. I would have given a lot for low diner lights and a pile of unidentifiable fried bits with extra salt, slightly hysterical laughter and companionably close shoulders rubbing once and again as I forged another memory without context. I would have given a lot for the chance to let a new comrade or three into my heart.

I guess this is the price of being in the limelight. People fade into and out of the shadows, and the only evidence is a blurry photograph of you smiling at one another like soulmates, if only for that impossibly small heartbeat.

I wish I Twittered, cuz this isn't really a whole post.

It is sort of a live blog, though.

I love the opening ceremonies. My favorite thing so far is when they were cutting from the Marshall Islands (nice crown of spiky bits, dude!) to the Cayman Islands. The announcers says, "We got a message asking us not to cut to commercial during the Cayman Islands' march so the folks back home can see them on T.V. Even though they're not anywhere close to each other in marching order, here you go Cayman Islands. Your Olympians." Then they showed like six grinning, humble looking athletes unabashedly gawking at the crowd and waving at the cameras. They are my Olympic Pets for the 29th Olympiad.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I remember my eleventh birthday with distinction. We had returned to the States after living overseas for more than two years, and we had moved to Kentucky. I was in utter culture shock. The kids at my middle school - an unknown entity to a child schooled by DODDS (Department of Defense Dependent Schools) - considered me so alien as to eschew talking to me at all. I was reading vampire novels and listening to punk rock and New Wave music (thanks, big sisters) while they were hoarding their meager cash for Now or Laters and the new Madonna tape. (It was True Blue, if anyone is wondering. It contains the masterwork Papa Don't Preach.) There were no kids my age at my party, because I didn't really have any friends yet, having only been living in the U.S. again for three short months. Instead, my mom's boyfriend's sister, who we called Tia Carmen, brought her two much younger kids along, Bhuj and Carmencita. Please don't ask me how Bhuj got his nickname. His real name was Diego, after Carmen's maiden name. His dad called him Boner. I am so glad I was as innocent a child as I was.

Anyhow, Tia Carmen baked me a birthday cake with a sparkly pastel unicorn on it. To a child enamored of Anne Rice novels and my eldest sister's Dire Straits albums, this was unspeakably lame. I can't remember any of my gifts, except that my mom bought me a grown-up ring, my very first piece of real jewelry. It was 10 karat gold and had the world's tiniest diamond chip striving valiantly to shimmer. It remains to this day one of the best pieces of jewelry I have ever received, much better than the opal ring I had to put on layaway in a store so my ex would know exactly which to buy, much better than the thermos he purchased the Christmas I thought I might get a gorgeous handmade silver necklace. I don't have it anymore, the ring. So much of my childhood was lost in the constant shifting that occurred in my life. I can still see it, though. The memory remains. It was a concrete token telling me very plainly that the time for letting other people rule my thoughts and emotions was done. I was a whole and separate person. It didn't sink in for a while.

Cap'n Jack won't soon forget this birthday. Flying hundreds of miles away and not being asked to eat vegetables for a whole weekend go a long way towards creating an epic in the long tunnels of reminiscence. I didn't pass on such a substantial baton for him; I am not quite ready to take the step my mother made. Perhaps next year, when he is twelve. Until then, I cling to the tiny warm ball curled in my exhausted arms eleven years and five days ago. The first night we spent holding each other was one of the sweetest I've ever known.

Oh yeah, and we saw Billy Joe and the Dusty 45's. Billy Joe told my budding pyro the secret of the flaming trumpet. Then Jerry showed him the weird sounds your hands can make after you play guitar for (mumblemumble) decades. Rock and roll has claimed my son's soul. Thank God.