It's drizzling and humid outside, and the windows are open and the house-fan is on to draw a breeze. Honey is on the floor next to me working on a bone in which I've inserted a bit of the provolone and nuked it. Because sometimes just plain rawhide is boring for her. And I can understand that. And that damn bone is really too big for her. But she doesn't know that. Or care. So neither do I. And pretty soon she'll fall into her morning slumber, comatose on her back, her pink belly and white neck exposed, and her over-sized feet suspended above her at all angles. And all this is a backdrop to me listening to "Falling Down," my favorite track off of Scarlett Johansson's album of Tom Waits covers, and a track I've had cycling in my head since sometime last week.

First the album: Anywhere I Lay My Head has gotten some praise from critics, but unfortunately for SJ, that praise has focused more on Dave Sitek's production and musical re-workings of the Waits' songbook than the blond starlet's voice. Which is too bad, because I do think SJ's voice, while a bit flat, works well with the mood of the album, particularly on "Falling Down." I'm not saying her voice is great. But I don't think it's bad, either. And really, is Tom Waits' voice "great?" Still there are elements of passion and strength in Waits' voice that just aren't there with SJ, and I think this is what critics are pointing out.

Regardless of what you think of SJ's voice, the album is strong. It was recorded in Maurice, Louisiana, which serves as a sort of sonic backdrop to most of the songs. Swarms of insects carry the music to your ears, where it lingers, low and heavy, with a syrupy wetness. This is an album you need to listen to naked and sweating with the A/C off and a slow-spinning fan overhead.

Not that I've done that. Twice.

I've had "Falling Down" on "Repeat-One" quite a bit over the last week (a setting I've referred to before as: OCD? What OCD?). I've been alternating between the SJ cover and the Waits original, which has been an interesting exercise (Again, it's an exercise you might only appreciate if your alphabet begins with the three letters referred to in the previous sentence). Anyway, I thought I'd put both tracks up here for a little side-by-side comparison. A note to any expensive lawyers out there: I would be more than happy to remove either of these upon request.

Okay, so first the SJ track. Some things to listen for:
1) Come from St. Petersburg, Scarlett and me ... is the original lyric, something that SJ thought might be corny in doing this song, but which Sitek, according to the album notes, thought added to the "synchronicity" of the project. I agree.
2) David Bowie's voice appears on this track, as well as on one other track on the album: "Fannin Street."
3) The banjo that comes in during the second verse was inspired by Kermit's "Rainbow Connection."

Okay, so here it is:

If you're like me (and I truly hope you're not) you'll want to press play on that sucker again and again. If that's the case, than I'd urge you to go get it on iTunes or wherever you get your music.

Now, for the original. I hadn't listened to Waits' version before hearing SJ's. But I went out looking for it as soon as I did. The track below is from the album Big Time. I don't have any notes to add on this one. But I do have a suggestion on how to listen to it: imagine you're in a dimly-lit bar holding a pint and drowning over lost love. If you can't do that, then drink half a six and stand in your living room in front of your bare windows in your underwear belting out the lyrics to your neighbors.

Not that I've done this, either. Three times.


After several listens, I think I like the Sitek/Johansson version the best. But let me qualify that: I think the Waits version has a more timeless drunken-bar-song quality to it, and it stands strong on Waits' scratchy, pain-filled voice. But the cover is, in many ways, a much more interesting recording and it's immediately catching and powerful. Of course, the lyrics are the best part of any Tom Waits song. And in this respect, both tracks are on even footing.

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I'm back. Some work was done, but not all. Dents were made, though. And that's good, I suppose. Oh, and there have been bruises. Nothing serious. But lots of little things. Like the one I got while my dad was here. He stopped in for a visit a couple of weeks ago and bought me several garden tools as housewarming gifts. Three or four mighty persuasive branch-trimming blades, a saw, and this curved blade on a pole that operates via a pulley and can slice through branches a good 10 feet above your graying head of hair. Straight through. Like nothing.

But not all the things he bought me were sharp and able to slice through bone. He also got me my first 25-ft ladder, which was the same housewarming gift his father bought him about thirty years ago. We brought that sucker home, and extended it's aluminum frame out to full length. And I shimmied up it's cool staircase to get to a broken branch in the big tree in our front yard. And with him holding the base of the ladder, and me trying to pretend I wasn't freaking out, I sawed through that dead branch with a curved saw that had teeth like a shark. And as I did it, I thought it would probably be tragic for my dad to watch me fall to my death while using the housewarming gifts he bought me. And it would have been. Tragic. But it didn't happen that way.

That's not how I got bruised.

I got bruised with both feet firmly planted on earth. I got bruised because that pulley tool really cuts through the branches, brother. I mean, it really slices through that shit. It makes me think of when I make eggs, and I lift the glass top off the butter dish and I take a dull mini butter knife from the drawer and slice me off a dab of the true stuff and put it in the no-stick All-Clad egg-making pan. When I do that, when I put that little knife through the butter, it goes through easy, like nothing. Because metal through room-temperature butter offers no resistance. And so it was with the pulley device. I lifted that thing up above my head and wrapped it's sharp metal claw around the base of the low-hanging branch whose leaves had, for weeks, been rubbing against my head every time I took Honey for a piss. And I didn't expect it to be like that, like dull metal through room-temperature butter. Like nothing. And so I really put some muscle into it. And the blade sliced through the wood like it wasn't there. And it threw me off balance. So I put my leg back to keep myself upright. But my calf found a low, brick wall in its way, and the halted momentum of my leg against that wall propelled me backward toward the ground. But I don't go down that easily. It's the ninja instincts, see? They're hard to stop. And so there was a bit of gymnastics as I twirled around so that I wouldn't fall flat on my back. And as I did that, the front of my leg dragged against the sharp corner of the brick. And brick corners are very good at a great many things, and one of them is removing human flesh from shins, from ankle to knee. And as I lay there on the ground cursing gravity and sharp sharp blades, my dad said "Are you alright?" And I looked down at my leg and the first thing that came to my mind was, I wonder where the hair went? And I stood up and walked over to the brick wall and inspected it and there it was—a patch of leg hair.

The bleeding took a minute, but it came. The red filled in the long strip of removed flesh nicely.

"You think I should put alcohol on it?" I asked my dad.

"Only if you want to dance," he said. I laughed.

Instead I decided to use hydrogen peroxide from the bottle I had just acquired about two weeks earlier when Honey ate some mushrooms and I called my vet in a panic after reading about Amanitas and how they sometimes grow under conifers. And there are a great many of those types of trees in my back yard. So could those shrooms have been akin to a Death Cap? My vet said it's not likely and it'll probably be okay, but in the same breath she calmly advised me to induce vomiting. Right, I said. How does one do that, again? Evidently, the "easiest" way is to make them swallow a teaspoon full of the hydrogen peroxide. And if this is the "easy" way, then I'm not sure I want to know the "hard" way. Because that shit didn't work on Honey. I gave her a good and plenty serving of a hydrogen peroxide cocktail. Then another. But she never vomited. She shook her head a lot and made gagging noises and probably thought why oh why is my daddy trying to kill me? — but she never tossed up those shrooms. Luckily, the shrooms she ate weren't Death Caps, and she's still alive with no noticeable gastrointestinal issues, aside from the rotten, angry flatulence, which she quietly manufactures late at night while chewing on rawhide in front of the TV.

So I used the peroxide on the scrape instead of the alcohol, and I can attest to the fact that while it may not be reliable at inducing a puppy with an iron stomach to vomit, the peroxide did a good job cleaning that scrape. And it also made me dance a little, though probably not as much as the alcohol would have.

Since the scrape, there has been a steady, consistent trickle of bruises registered on my body, from the black knot on my ankle where I dropped the flashlight, to the little blue ball on the back of my right hand where I wrapped it against the corner of my truck door, to the hole in my big toe where I inexplicably found a tiny glass shard Saturday morning after taking off my blood-stained ankle-sock. Then there are the innumerable bites and scrapes from Honey's playful, four-month-old teeth and nails. Loose-leash training requires constant encouragement in the form of yummy treats, which get inserted into puppy mouths at regular intervals like some serrated pez dispenser. It's exacting and hazardous work, training puppies, and it tends to leave your fingers dry and leathery.

But I don't mind. I really don't. Bruises have always been strangely comforting to me. Bruises and sore muscles. There's something about a body damaged and beginning the process of healing. It's vindicating—proof that you have lived hard enough to hurt yourself, which is the only living worth doing, really, isn't it? And the hurt is a reminder of that having lived. And it feels good and full and sweet, like something earned. And I can hear it now. All of you who minored in Psychology are thinking ... hmmm, he really is a masochist, isn't he? Tsk, Tsk. Whatever. That's not interesting. I mean, who isn't one of those? But you know, here's the thing ... here's what's got me worried: real bruises don't happen to me anymore. Sure, there are all these superficial bumps and scrapes. But the substantive bruises? The ones with consequence? The ones that make you stand up and take notice of your life? I don't get bruised like that anymore. Because for the most part, things are comfortable. Room temperature. And that's what we work for, isn't it? Comfort? So we can feel ... what? Insufferably numb? Pleasantly bored? Nothing? It doesn't matter which turn I take, I always end up here. In a place where there are fleeting moments of feeling that come less and less frequently. And for shorter periods of time.

And so I think I need to fall down some more. Get bruised up a bit. Because I'm working on changing things, brother. One bruise at a time.

link to this | comments (7) | File:  Chewing