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Today I heard Sniff And The Tears great song "Driver's Seat" on the radio. It came out around 1978 and was a minor hit, but one that made an indelible mark on me. I always freak when I hear that song. It has one of the great chord progressions and snaky guitar lines in new wave history, some crazy weird melodies and a blistering guitar solo. It's one of those songs you think is a private pleasure, one that didn't really hit with others the way it hit with you, and then you start hearing it around, like it's having a mini-revival, and you feel pleased. I first noticed this revival on the last Pearl Jam record -- one of the songs subtlely copped its progression and put a different vocal melody over it (I forget which and I'm too lazy to go find out). Then you hear it in a store playing on one of those satellite programmed playlists and then you hear it on the radio and then you think sometimes good taste prevails. It's nice when good taste prevails, 'cause it doesn't happen a lot. Hearing it on the radio on the way back from lunch was the start of a strange and beautiful afternoon and evening. When I returned to work, I sat outside the office having a smoke and looking into the endless blue sky and tried to find my dad up there. I don't believe in heaven or any of that shit, but I really wanted to find him, though I couldn't really, not in a tangible way, not in the way I wished I could. I wasn't overly sad that I couldn't. It was more of an "oh, well" shrug kind of feeling. But sometimes, even as a full-grown man moving into the heart of middle age, I wish he was around. He was great to talk to in a way that was unique to us and I miss that. He was a tough, but sensitive guy. He knew how to deal with things.

Later, I took my dogs for a long walk around the neighborhood and was happy about the longer days and the still cool evenings. A huge moon was hanging over the dusk and it was that magical kind of time. I like walking around the neighborhood and checking out the houses and imagining the different lives lived in them. It was really quiet and peaceful in a way that seems more rare these days. Chaos seemed far away. The war seemed far away. Dissapointments, both personal and universal seemed far away. It was the best kind of evening that summer can offer. I hope your summers are full of them.

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Why are all the tortured heroes named Jack. There's Jack Bauer (sp? rhymes with power) on 24. And Jack Shepard (get it, he's the taking care of the flock) on Lost. And there's Jack O'Neill, the tortured protagonist of my unpublished, and underappreciated (even I don't really love it) novel, Altitude Sickness. What is it about Jacks? I'll tell you what: it's a strong but not ostentatious name. It inspires confidence, but it's approachable. It's got a little bit more going for it than a John, or Jim or Joe, but not too much.

Anyway, I just watched the two-hour season finale of Lost and I'm glad I did. I had just hours early had a conversation with a colleague about how there's nothing good on TV anymore. I was thinking of how disappointing Lost has been for the past season and half. The show, though, and TV perhaps, reedemed itself with this Holy Shit! two-hour finale. It's one of the episodes of television I've ever seen. Jack, the heart of the show, had a brilliant story line, the script was completely flipped and the ending was completely spooky and powerful. I don't want to spoil for those who've Tivo-ed it, but I'll say Matthew Fox, who plays Jack was truly commanding as an actor in a way I haven't seen since his heyday on the late, great Party of Five. A great TV star. The theme of the finale, like all great TV themes, is ultimately trite, but it was executed in such a way as to win you over to it's message, which is, of course, that you don't have to be stranded on a god forsaken island to be lost, or found. Poor Jack, seems he will remain lost. The feelings evoked will ring true for anyone who has felt the loneliness of losing a love. Now, we viewers are left to hope there's redemption for ol' Jack, because, well, in the end, like the rest of the Jacks, he deserves it.

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Anthems. Often bloated, self-indulgent, histrionic by definition, sometimes overly earnest. They linger in our consciousness and along the radio dials long after they should have been dead and buried. Timeless, often guilty pleasures. Hook-laden, sing-a-long manipulations. Here are some of rock's most majestic moments, I don't care what anyone says, from punk to today.*

1. Do the Strand- Roxy Music
Greatest glam-rock anthem? Glam isn't really epic, indulgent, and self-important in the way Cream taught rock to be all that, but this is epic Glam. Long, weird, funny, sing-alongy. Awesome. I know, you're saying, what about Garry Glitter's "Rock and Roll"? But, being played ad naseum in sports arena's isn't enough... not for me.
2. London Calling - The Clash
Greatest punk anthem? While the Sex Pistol compressed every song into a two-minute anthem, The Clash went old-school here: epic, sprawling, earnest. It's their "White Room" moment as they tried to expand the musical horizons of punk.
2.(tie) Stranglehold and Sweet Emotion -- Ted Nugent and Aerosmith
The kings of the early cock-rock era. Ted, no surpise, is a little more explicit, while Aerosmith might have something more on their minds than erotic asphyxiation, though I'm not entirely sure. I know, you're all saying "What about 'Dream On'?" What about it? That song sucks.
3.Don't Fear The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
Probably the greatest heavy metal anthem of all time. Sinster, gorgeous, epic. Like a classical music movement. An entire movie in a song. I would have said "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath, but that song is bigger than this. I'll save that for when I do my most important songs of all time list. For pure cheese metal, let's give it to "Run To The Hills" by Iron Maiden.
4. Green Grass And High Tides Forever - The Outlaws
Their homage to Lynard Skynard takes the "Freebird" playbook and goes further, deeper, and outdoes the masters. The intro itself could stand on its own as a masterpiece of histrionics.
5. It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Want To Rock and Roll) - AC/DC
The greatest bar-band anthem of all time? Dude, the bagpipes...the bagpipes.
6. Love Will Tear Us Apart Again - Joy Division
The greatest post-punk/goth anthem of all time? The bleakness envelopes you in stark, nearly dance music and sets an eery transition to New Order and, well, the rest is history.
7. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out -- The Smiths
Does this need explanation?
8. Slipping Into Something - The Feelies
In the early days of modern/indie/alternative rock (circa 1984) there wasn't much you'd call an athem (beause REM didn't do that), except this song. Remember it during Something Wild when Ray Liotta's character is tracking down that other dude (the actor who was in Speed with Keanu) who looks like the other dude (who was in Lost Highway), both of whose names I can't remember, though the second other dude is a better actor.
9. November Rain - Guns N Roses
Probably the greatest hair-metal ballad of all time. Super cheesy, super rockin'; if the coda doesn't get the hairs on the back of your neck raised, you're not alive.
10. Mountain Song - Jane's Addiction
Greatest anthem of the new indie era (born circa 1988) mix of guilty metal pleasures and some other alterna vibe that only Jane's perfected. They kept it perfectly placed just two notches north of cheesy on this one.
11. Alive - Pearl Jam
The grunge era's only true epic? Earnest, histrionic, great bridges, can't help but sing along.
12. Let Forever Be - The Chemical Brothers
Massive hooks, sing along choruses, runs a shade too long. The electronic music anthem? Special nod to DJ Shadow's Entroducing album, which could be read as one long anthemic song, or an opera of samples and beats.
13. Champagne Supernova - Oasis
The superstar of the Britpop mid-90s movement. Long enough to be totally stoned by the end of, which is one of the measures of a good anthem.
14. Rebellion (Lies) - Arcade Fire
Earnest, striving, heartfelt, emotionally pulling....The only real anthem of the new millenial indie-movement?

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I'm seeing a pattern. The songs tend to deal with death, decay, longing, the end of something, sometimes, literally, a rope. A lot of them seem to evoke a hangover of metaphysical proportions. The kind where you're picking through the ashes, trying to make sense of the wreckage, of a day, a relationships, a life, or an era.

*Were I including the halcyon days of disco, Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" of course, would top the list.

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I've been in New York for the past few days. I've been to New York many times and lived here several times. I came there after college in 1986 and stayed a couple years. Returned around 1990, stayed a shortwhile and did a stint in the summer of '93 with the New York Daily News -- the hottest summer on record at that point. I had poison oak from head to toe and was staying on the 23rd floor of a tenement adjacent to Morningside Park on about 123rd Street. It was the summer one of my heroes, Charles Barkley, nearly singlehandely won the NBA championship but came up a little short against Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and the rest of the Bulls. It was one of the most epic battles I've ever seen one person wage against great odds. Like the movie 300 epic. I really identified with Charles at the time. He's just 6'4", played power forward, and was relentless, pure will. It was the story of a mortal taking on the gods and the mortal nearly winning. If his bonehead point guard Kevin Johnson wasn't such a bonehead, they might have won. Charles played great in every game.

Something about being here now remind me of that time, maybe it's because I've been reading the tabloids everyday. One of my jobs at the Daily News back then was to track down the blind cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the guy behind the original World Trade Center bombings. He was staying in a safehouse in Jersey City. After plying the buildings superintendent with beers and smokes, I got the license plate of the car he was using (there was some concern he was going to go on the lam during an extradiction process, I think.) and the apartment number he was staying in. I went up and knocked on the door, thinking I'd ask him for an interview or something. I got firmly escorted out of the building by a couple of very large, dark-sunglassed men. No shit. Before they kicked me out, though, I jammed the door with part of my cigarette box so I could get back in -- I think I had forgotten to get the apartment number or something. It was a summer I'll never forget and I have dozen war stories just from those few months -- like illegally purchasing M80s in Chinatown to blow something up so we could recreate the damage Met baseball player Vince Coleman might have caused when he tossed on into a crowd of people at Dodger Stadium. When my internship was done, one in which I managed to get a couple of lede stories in the paper, I always thought I wanted to come back to the Daily News, but life moves on.

But, thank God, the tabloids don't. The stories are all pretty much the same, year after year, and the continuity of the way the tabloids cover the city -- The Post and the Daily News and the Newsday at the time -- provides it with the feel of being a long-running soap opera. In a good way, even. The New York tabloids, sensational though they may be, lend the city a sense of civic urgency that we don't always feel in the diffused environment of Los Angeles.

There always seems to be a story around every corner in New York and the tabloids find a way of elevating what might seem mundane to a heightened level that has the effect of keeping you engaged in the city, like it's a character in a great and never ending novel. I think it's the way they turn every person who makes the news into a player in the city's drama. It's still all about the Donald and Elliot Spitzer and Micheal Bloomberg and there's always a sex-fiend lunatic either on the loose or recently caught. But these aren't pols and business people and criminals in the tabs; they're stars in a show that never gets cancelled (enough analogies yet?). We don't do that in Los Angeles. Nobody really knows the names of our pols and our developers. They don't feel like an integral part of the fabric our lives they way they do here. We don't tune in everyday to the soap opera of our civic life. My friend is always saying it'd be genius to start a tabloid in LA. I wonder if it would work.

On another note, I'm staying down in the East Village, way down, neary the Bowery and Alphabet City, areas that used to be considered a little dangerous when I lived here and now it's just coffee shops, bakeries, upscale restaurants and pubs and beautiful young people everywhere. What the hell do they do here? How do they afford it? What are they trying to do with their lives? What are their dreams? These are the things you wonder when you sit on the corner having a coffee and a smoke. Manhattan feels like a millionaires' playground. A place to go out to eat. I don't get the sense that there's anything that vibrant happening culturally here, nothing on the streets. The single most inspiring things I've seen in three days was some young, black dude screaming down Broadway in the middle of traffic doing a wheelie on his skateboard. That was truly epic. The second best thing was the cat in Tompkins Square Park, which was prone to riots when I lived here, but is now a place where dog people and their children hang out (which is cool with me), who was testifying: "You gotta live you're own life, baby, it's not too late. I mean liberties is decreasing, epidemics is on the rise... We need a few good men to serve, who aren't afraid to stand up and speak the truth." And who could argue with that? But, you know, he was preaching to toddler being wheeled past by her nanny.

As far as the age-old New York versus LA debate here it is: New York kicks our ass in the quality and quantity of baked goods available. LA's consistently doing better coffee. The cities could learns something here from each other.

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I'm turning into my mother. Not in a Mike Penner kind of way, but rather in the way that after years of quietly, or not so, making fun of our parent's neuroses, we wake up one day and find that we are but a bundle of those inherited ticks. See, my mom won't fly. I used to think this coincided with banning smoking on airlines, but I now recognize it for what it is: a completely rational aversion to hurtling through the air in tin can. I'm flying to New York tomorrow and I'm dreading it. It's not, however, a fear of dying in a plane that gets to me. I understand the relative safety of flying -- or do I? I'm always interested in those statistics, such as you're more likely to die from a lightning bolt than get attacked by a shark (I surf). Hmm...that wouldn't be because the vast majority of humankind doesn't spend most of its time bobbing in the water, would it? Likewise, we're told flying is exponentially safer than driving. But don't we drive exponentially more often than we fly, thus increasing our chances of having an accident. I know, I'm stunning you with my powers of deduction here. I'm just trying to say, statistics can tell highly subjective stories, despite having the cool veneer of fact about them.

The point is, though, that I don't like to fly in a severe way that I haven't felt until recently. I can't even believe I'm doing it. It has something to do with a lack of trust. Not in the plane or the pilots, but in myself. How will I be able to sit there for five hours and not go bonkers. That's what I'm really afraid of. That'll I'll be THAT guy. The one hyperventillating, breathing into the bag and talking to himself.

Besides that, I have become quite a hypochondriac. My doctor thinks I'm crazy because I inevitably go see him about something only after I've suffered through the worst of it and finally have the stength and will to haul my ass over to the westside to see him about whatever it is that ails me -- and I'm usually fine. Fine enough that he suspects there was nothing wrong with me in the first place (was there?) and almost feels bad about charging his outrageous prices, but understandably justifies it by the fact that I'm probably wasting his time. Like the time I thought I was bleeding out my ass. Turns out I had eaten beets the night before, and coupled with a touch of stomach flu, well, what would you think? I didn't know beets did that, probalby because I'd never eaten them before. They're a vegetable, right?

What seems to be happening, though, and I'm sure this is a function of age, or sobriety, neither of which I recommend if they can be avoided, is that I'm losing trust in my body. I feel mortal and vulnerable in ways I never did before. I used to be the guy would stay up partying all night and then go snowboarding all day and then party more and...well, never really thought water was all that important. I once played in a soccer match, a final in a tournament, with a badly pulled hamstring that had turned most of my leg black and blue. I just popped Advil like candy and soldiered on until I got thrown out for fighting. I played a Rugby match once after staying up all night drinking and doing blow. I scored a try (a touchdown, basically) the first time I touched the ball. I also got thrown out of that one for fighting.

I'm not saying this was a better way to live, but sometimes I miss the trust I had in my physical nature. Or maybe it was just bravado. I'm sure it wasn't attractive, but with age, I often wish I wan't such a baby. I've done Outward Bounds, gnarly portage trips in upper Minnesota and climbed a 14,000 mountain drunk. That was stupid, but I never questioned my capacity to do it. When I was done, I didn't celebrate by hydrating and resting -- I ate a huge hot fudge sundae. I did a marathon on about four weeks of training and finished in the top third. And immediatley had a beer and cigarette. I don't mean this to sound like some form of frat-boy boasting or self-mythologizing. None of this was heroic or even necessarily worthwhile behaviour. I'm just trying to put into context how alien that former being who was me now feels. These days, you couldn't pay me to go camping, unless by camping you mean day hikes in gentle rolling hills with a lush lodge to come back to for a comfortable night's sleep. And the next time I run, I'm sure it'll be because someone is chasing me.

Which isn't to say that by turning into my mom, I mean I'm becoming weak like my mom is. My mom isn't weak at all. She's actually one of the strongest people I know. But she is neurotic and, well, so am I. My wife, on the other, hand, is pretty much utterly fearless and makes fun of me. She tells me to look at these things as adventures. Which is the problem. Disney Land terrifies me. Way too adventurous.

It is what it is. And it ain't all bad. In the sum, I could do a hell of a lot worse than being like me mum, who, despite her neuroses, is a kind and compassionate hero in my eyes. So, stay tuned to the news tomorrow. If you hear about a New York bound jetBlue flight touching down in Salt Lake and some lunatic being led off in cuffs because he freaked out on the plane, well, that'll be me.

My mom'll understand.

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I just came from an event at Skylight Books at which Pleasant and Iris and S.A. Griffith were given certificates of merit and achievement or something like that from the City of Los Angeles. At first it might seem odd that two unrependent doyennes of the undeground would receive formal recognition from the city, but it was entirely right and entirely fitting and somewhat keeping with Eric Garcetti's attempt to keep a veeneer of bohemia about him -- he is the councilman for the Eastside, after all. Full disclosure: I've written about these two before, for last year's People issue (http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/punk-rock-royalty/13243/). Sorry, I don't know how to embed links yet. Anyway, the event was so beautiful and inspiring and again reminds what a treasure these two are (sorry, S.A. I don't really know you, but thought you were great, too). It's not just that they are beautiful and wacky and punk rock in the truest sense, but they are also damn good. Listening to them read from various collections of their poetry, I was struck by how good they were and how poetry, which can seem so anachronistic and useless at times, mostly because we don't make time for it, can be so moving. Theirs is the best sort of poetry, sure it's lyrical, but it's direct, and raw and funny, and makes you go: yes, exactly!

Iris and Pleasant write about an LA that is somewhat nostalgic in its raweness and grittiness, and they often employ a neo-noirish style, but it's an LA that still exists. As Iris said last night, "I don't care what they do to Hollywood Boulevard, it'll still always be Hollywood Boulevard." It's a curious thing for me; I wasn't here for the heyday of LA's punk era in the 80s, but lots of my friends here were fixtures in that scene. I kind of get to relive it vicariously through them, and through the writings of people like Plez and Iris. They make me believe in Los Angeles in ways that we sometimes don't anymore -- as, perhaps, the last truly bohemian city in America. As the city continues to get scrubbed clean, and become more expensive, I hope it holds onto that aspect of its character and doesn't lose its soul. It's hard to imagine it could with people like these gals and that guy still writing about it they way they do and still living it the way they do. They have a weird affect on me. They make me feel mild and inspired at the same time. They make me realize that there are far more valuable things than the brass rings and wealth and security. There is, after all, life. Their readings and their obvious love for each other -- I mean what a wonderful and fruitful relationship they've had with each other -- were so touching my friend, LA Weekly contributor and writer Caroline Ryder, and I, were moved close to tears at times.

Plez and Iris are such a part of the landscape here, like the Hollywood sign or something, that we tend to take them for granted, but please, please, check out their many collections (Skylight has good selections). I recommend Pleasant's "Princess of Hollywood" and Iris's "Two Blocks East of  Vine." And, while you're at it, check out their lives. For a minute even, it could inspire you to be brave.

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There is a conspiracy to keep me from sleeping. It's widespread, it's deep-rooted, it involves man and animial, and I have my theories about it. Where to begin?

Let's start with some general background. I live in Silver Lake, the other Silver Lake, the one that's still more like Highland Park than Pacific Palisades, the one way east of the Junction and south of Sunset. My immediate neighborhood is one of those places people who write such things would use as an example of the amazing polyglot harmony that can sometimes exist, against all odds, in this factured city, etc., etc., yawn, yawn. That aside, it's kind of true. On my small block are several Asian households, many Latino households, a smattering of gay households, a couple of young, hipstery type of renters who seem to be the types that are in bands you've proably heard about, and a few standard-issue white folk like me (like I am, to be grammatical).

We all seem to have one thing in common: dogs. This is a dog-loving neighborhood. Everybody, it seems has them, often, like me (or, like I do, to be grammatical) in multiples. There are a couple differences between me and my neighbors, though, when it comes to our dogs. They tend to have small, yappy ones; I have medium-to-large ones. Oh, and here's the main difference: I don't leave my fucking dogs out barking and yapping all...night...long. You know why? In the close quarters in which we all live (this is the densest precint east of New York City, I'm told), I'm afraid it'll keep people up. I know a crazy, quantum leap in logic and judgment there, huh?

Alright, so there's the general background. Now, let's get specific. Because it isn't just the neighbors with the dogs; it's the universe that doesn't want me to sleep. Here's how it happens -- and I'm going to switch now to the royal "you" for the purposes of, hopefully, greater reader empathy.

You're fighting off a cold, so you get yourself in bed relatively early, around 11 p.m. You take Joan Didion's The White Album with you, because you're just, at this late date, discovering her, and it's pretty mind-blowing how good she is. Unfortunately, despite one eye nodding off, you can't put it down and you've already missed your optimum fall-asleep window -- if you are awake past midnight, might as well stay up all night. You drift off, but then, at just around midnight, a persistent beeping sounds from another room. You follow the sound to the guest bedroom and discover a fire alarm going off. You've never noticed the alarm, up there on the ceiling next to the ceiling fan, before. Since there's no fire, you figure the battery must be running down. You follow the "turn this way" directions to open the damn thing, but all that does is pull the entire contraption out of the ceiling -- turns out it's electrical and not battery run. Now, of course, the entire house was wired by folks currently loitering about The Home Depot, so what's making the thing go off is anyone's guess. You finally manage to quiet the beeping, but now have a fire alarm dangling from the ceiling and a nice hole where it once was.

You go back to bed, read a little more Joan, and finally drift into an uneasy sleep, worried that the house's jerry-rigged wiring is going to spark up at any minute. Then, about an hour or so in it starts, the yappy-dog yapping. It starts slowly and builds to a crescendo of yap, yappity, yappity, yap. You find yourself surrounded on all sides by little yapping, not even real (those toy dogs are an abomination in the eyes of god) dogs. Fucking yapping and trying to howl, not quite making it, and yapping. It's driving you nuts, because it happens way too much and you can't believe people are so fucking self-absorbed and inconsiderate, and, yes, you wonder why they can't be more like you. Why can't the world be more like you? It really would be a better place, no doubt.

You lay there for awhile, wondering when it will stop. You contemplate putting on your shorts and searching for the source yapper, picking it up, knocking on the source yapper's owner's house and hurling the fuzz ball into said owner's face. You've done this type of thing before, when you were younger and, hard to believe, angrier. As you lay there, not quite summoning the energy or the anger to take aforementioned punitive action, the yapping reaches what you believe must be a climax, because it seems as if the yappers have cloned themselves and now are a Mormon Tabernacle Choir of yapping, or else other yappers have come from distant parts to join in the yapping. It's like a drum circle of yappers.

You're going to get up now and do something. You contemplate the pamphlet you're going to circulate around the 'hood that will raise conciousness about this scourge, but first you're going to find the source yapper... maybe kidnap him or her and not return it until the owners meet your demands: fluffy comes inside no later than 11 p.m.

But you don't have to get up this time, because nature has a way of sorting things out. Not always, but sometimes. For there, in the background of the similarly pitched yaps, you hear an intruding sound, one that's a little more yippie than yappy. You recognize the sound; it's the sound of reckoning; it's the sound of nature's revenge for man's abominable meddling; it's the sound of coyotes; and, finally, and dare I say, thankfully, it's the sound of death.

You lay there fully awake. You know what's going to happen, you even consider intervening -- but still, those shorts are way over there -- and then you hear it; the yips turn to frenzied laughter and the yaps turn into blood-curdling yelps. Soon, it's over. Quiet. And you lay there darkly, your daytime veneer of goodwill towards all turning into a seething morass of misanthropy, because, you know, people are exceptionally stupid and selfish... like my one neighbor who continually leaves town for weeks at a time, surrenders her house to derelict house-sitters who inevitably get arrested while her poor dog is left to fend for itself -- shitting all over the house, eating god knows what, and going slowly crazy. (Just an aside there).

Finally you drift back to sleep for a couple blessed hours until... until... those confounded squirrels that nest in the huge pine tree that looms over your house start their morning routine of knocking pine cones and all kinds of shit down onto your uninsulated roof (think of pennies dropping into a coffee can). You contemplate going online to see if there's anything under: What to do about squirrels who keep reigning the detritus of giant pine trees down onto your roof, thus preventing you from sleeping. Or, maybe just a BB-gun will do. But, finally, they stop and you slip back again into a light sleep, going a bit deeper, finally some rest and then.... the phone rings. It's 8 a.m. and your friend wants to know if you're ready to take the dogs to Elysian Park and you get up and greet your dogs, who are exceptionally glad to see you after the previous night's adventures, and, well, everything's basically okay.

It's day again.

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