Jason Toney

Notes on the Daytime Smoker

For the daytime smoker, the cigarette is a pause button. An Official's Time-Out. A reprieve. What you notice about the daytime smoker is that when they aren't on that break, they are generally balls of kinetic energy. They wear their agitation on their faces. The lines furrow on their foreheads. In the midst of conversation, a deeper, darker, internal discourse is happening. It hides just behind the smile or the eyes or in the tap-tap-tapping of their feet and hands. Something worries them. But the moment they find themselves outside, a small carton in one hand, a lighter in the other, the tension starts to dissipate. When the daytime smoker takes that first drag, his or her eyes flutter. She kicks her head back. His hand falls slack. Something resembling but not quite relaxation sets in. For that five or ten minutes in which she focuses on just the act of breathing -- of inhalation and exhalation -- there is a calm. It is fleeting, however. You can watch the angst re-enter his body as the cigarette shrinks in size. With that final ash and smash of the butt into the ash tray or under the shoe or flick into the street, she has resigned herself to this day and what she must do. And the pressure of those duties will build again until that next smoke break. 

Potent Quotable: Calamity Physics

"...never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, the depth of content, the universal themes. And I don't care what those themes are — they're yours to uncover and stand behind— so long as, at the very least, there is courage. Guts. Mut, in German. Those around you can have their novellas...their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you...you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last."

-Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, Penguin Books, 2007

Flashback Friday: Just as Long as We're in Love

Just As Long As We're In Love

Terry Callier

This is from his wonderful 1973 What Color Is Love? album and is so gorgeous it makes me weak at the knees. Callier has hippy tendencies which sometimes put me off him a bit, indulging in rambling nine minute songs about drugs and generally being a bit of the cliched New Agey folky in his lyrics, but he has an incredible voice and this tune is pure ear candy due to the baroque production of Charles Stepney who worked similar magic with Minnie Riperton and Earth, Wind & Fire. If you're having a bad day this is the musical equivalent of a hot bubble bath, let it wash over you and all your cares will float away.

- Swoon, The Number One Songs in Heaven, 07.01.04

one line: From the Mouths of Babe Merchants

To say you're not a feminist is virtually the same thing as saying you're a racist.

- Christie Hefner in this month's GOOD Magazine (which is chock full of GOOD stuff, obvs.)

Speakeasy: Neighborhood #9 (Power Out)

Reconstruction delays have left fissures in once close-knit neighborhoods, so in an attempt to reconnect New Orleans residents to desolate areas still awaiting rebuilding, a local artist named Robert Vicknair founded Neighborhoods, a program that transforms gutted houses into art galleries for a night. The first Neighborhoods event—there have since been two others—occurred in the decimated Lower Ninth Ward in June, 2006. Inside the shell of a house, a few feet from a levee holding back the Mississippi River, about 80 visitors with flashlights shone their way through the exhibition. More than a year after Hurricane Katrina, the power was still out.

- Reclaiming Katrina, GOOD Magazine, 08.09.07 (and in the current print issue)

one line: A Literal Art House

Inhabitable collapsible structure made of cardboard becomes a shelter able to provide an address to a defined group of unsheltered homeless persons, by means of radio devices, proposing a way to integrate them to society.

Song For Sunday: Give A Little Rilo Kiley

I'm going through my Amoeba purchases and audio blog downloads for the week and while there are several gems, this one, as Rilo Kiley tends to do, just smacked me right in the face.

Give A Little Love

Rilo Kiley

Tuesday Afternoon Secrets: 8 Things Better Left Unsaid... Edition

Carolyn and Smokler both tagged me to do this and since I'm crabby today, I figured I'd bust it out now and say things better left unsaid.

The Rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.*
5. 8 is a magic number. Not three.**

1. You will never hear me utter an "Awww." - I don't have an overwhelming upswell of emotion at the sight of babies, animals, or just about anything. Look, there have literally been trillions of lifeforms on this planet that have lived and died. The mere appearance of another one isn't going to astound now. I don't dislike these seemingly "aww-worthy" things but if your kid or pet is a little ass-hole, they don't get a cute pass just because. Unless, of course, they spontaneously generated, came from outer-space or brought the process of teleportation (so I can avoid the damned 405) into existence by their mere birth. That's some Oooh-Aaaah shit right there.

2. And on top of that, I kind of abhor sentimentality - Okay, abhor is a strong word and I don't subscribe to the idea that all kinds of sentimentality is insincere because I know some genuinely emotional people but, I just can't co-sign on it. It's like this, you know in the trailers of The Pursuit of Happyness when Will Smith is in the bathroom and he's holding his son close and he's got his foot on the door and he's just bawling his eyes out? That's the point when I decided I didn't need to see the film. That, to me, plays like "Let's celebrate desperation and sadness!" "See this movie so you will cry too!" Whatever. I ain't got time for all that. Don't get me wrong, I cry during movies. Terms of Endearment, The Color Purple, and Rudy, just to name a few. The difference, however, is that in all three of those movies, I don't feel manipulated by the experiences. Whether the scenes in them invoke sympathy or ebullience, what I react to is that genuine expression of humanity and not a mawkish (Thanks, Tracy!) attempt at such.

3. I don't like Adverbs - This, too, is extreme. I don't hate adverbs but I dislike their use by someone to imbue someone else's experience with one's own interpretation. For example, if I'm dancing, just say I'm dancing. Or, give me a metaphor or simile of what I look like to you when I'm dancing. Don't say, "When Jason dances, he dances happily." How the hell do you know how I feel when I dance?  I try, in my writing of real events, to not give real people emotions or thoughts that are creations of my own mind. To do so, in my opinion, makes them characters in my own life. I'm not going to tell you how you feel. Hmmm, maybe my problem isn't really with adverbs. Also, note, that of all this stuff, I fully accept that this may be a really irrational way to look at word usage but it drives me crazy more than I'm willing to convey for fear of hurting feelings.

4. I don't like the sound of my voice - I wish it was deeper. Particularly when I get excited, I get shrill. That's very not gangsta.

5. I'm making peace with being at the point where I don't know what "the kids are listening to these days" - just a couple years ago, I would've been mortified with not knowing what the current top hits are but these days some songs go through their entire hit cycle without me having even heard it. I think I'm at peace with it, though, because my music catalog is still so on point and current and I'm much much better at knowing what pop stuff matters and what doesn't.

6. I'm becoming less and less tolerant of immaturity. Emotional immaturity.

*I'm not going to tag. I'm also not really sure I followed the rules for this but I'm crabby and don't care.
**I'm saving two for later.

Bonus: A previous secrets post that was protected is now for all to see.

Vox Hunt: En Fuego

Show us something on fire. 
Submitted by Allishandra.  

Arcade Fire 5

A roaring inferno of sound at their hottest during Coachella 2005

On Falling (in love and otherwise)

It shouldn't come as a surprise that at an Irish wedding, I went down like a sack of potatoes. Not five minutes after helping out a bridesmaid who had drank herself into circular thinking and walking, I was on the ground outside the Women's Cultural Center in Montclair having missed a step. With my legs sprawled out and in my new shirt and nearly taking out Felicia in the process.

Open bar is a dangerous thing.

I didn't dance nearly enough at the Balvanera nuptials. Lacking a willing partner and my own rusty swing and samba partnering skills were my achilles heel. The bride and groom, however, having first met in a ballroom class got their swing on to a little Zoot Suit Riot. Not to mention that the first dance was Somersault by Zero 7. There's a reason why I like these people.

The traditional Irish Wedding Blessing hit me in all the right places. It goes...

May your mornings bring joy
   and your evenings bring peace.
May your troubles grow few
   as your blessings increase.
May the saddest day of your future
Be no worse than the happiest day of your past.
May your hands be forever clasped in friendship
And your hearts joined forever in love.
Your lives are very special,
God has touched you in many ways.
May his blessings rest upon you
And fill all your coming days.

And after 48 hours in San Francisco, having seen about half of my favorite locals, having helped two friends create a new family, and having eaten my face off, again, it's becoming increasingly clear that this place will one day be called home.