We live downtown, which often behaves like a small village. We occasionally shop in the suburbs, which feels like an intense, overwhelming urban onslaught.
We were proud card-carrying CostCo members. After a few years, the fervor faded. We swore off big-box services and concentrated on supporting the new Stop & Shop in our neighborhood.
Then a coupon came in the mail and at a vulnerable moment, and next thing we know, we are beholden to BJ’s.
Like it so far. It seems about a third smaller than the Post Road CostCo, especially in the height of the ceiling, which makes it feel less Orwellian as a shopping experience. At CostCo, I used to clutch my cart as if I was steering a space module. It was an intense, disorienting experience. As a store, it felt like Tron.
We would recover from a CostCo shlep by eating at a Chinese restaurant down the road, or buying crafts at another shop, but nothing comforting was immediately nearby. The North Haven BJ’s, by contrast, has several comfort zones, including Barnes & Noble and the Rave cinemas, within walking distance.
Stop & Shop is still our neighborhood market, where we wave to friends and drop change in jars to support school sports teams. BJ’s (or CostCo, when we could handle it) is the fantasyland where a large bottle of vanilla costs just $7, where we can afford the charitable impulse of birdseed for the feeders in our garden, where we can buy a bag of frozen broccoli large enough to serve an icepack for an elk.
Downtown’s got scale. We use a bag or cart to shop. Further out, it’s madness.

Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways

The Mister Punches came to an outdoor “Polar Bear” show in a horsedrawn coach, which they said they borrowed from some Amish friends. They stayed in there and played a set to scare the horses.
Speakers blared out the back. The canvas roof billowed. They did 14 songs in 17 minutes. Then, having destroyed a couple of centuries of civilization, they were gone.
How can we remind ourselves this fantastical spectacle really happened? They left behind a scythe.

Larry at the Bullfinch, instrumentalizing… The Ten Eel ensemble, a hipster collegiate a capella group, at Hamilton’s, opening for Pont… The Foogahs at D’ollaire’s, with Eh? Shepherds…

Call home frantically all day, leaving messages. Watch a lot of kung fu movies.

The Essential Danzig came out on Sony’s The Essential… series Oct. 25. Glenn Danzig has had a good year, especially compared to that year when a zillion people viewed that video of him getting decked by the roadie of an opening band he’d pissed off. An all-new album, Deth Red Sabaoth, got positive reviews, his time in The Misfits and Samhain continue to inspire tributes, and… well, I never really could stomach the guy so I’ll stop right there.
I will, however, draw your attention to the 49th issue of Roctober magazine, which features two separate interviews with Danzig (a wide-ranging one from this year conducted by Roctober founder Jake Austen and one from 1999 with the cartoonish Canadian arts connoisseur Nardwuar), plus cartoons about Danzig, and lots of freaky love for the Misfits—all part of a much grander special “Livin’ in the ’80s” concept issue.
Roctober is one of the few remaining old-school fanzines of the sort which have filled my basement to bursting. There’s crucial, unique information to be found here, popcult factoids which aren’t well archived anywhere—including here, where updates on past articles or ongoing additions to such worthy projects as listing every Sammy Davis Jr. appearance of masked rock band or Alvin & the Chipmunks project ever can be crammed into filler space on random pages. Each issue carries hundreds of record reviews, dozens of rock-themed cartoons and interviews with talents so long-lost you probably haven’t heard of them. Where Danzig shares equal billing with The Knots and Boyd Rice.

Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds—North America, Britain, and Northern Europe
By John Bevis (MIT Press, 2010)

There are several introductory essays and notes on methodology, then a closing article on “Other Methods of Collecting Birdsong” and a conventional list of dozens of birdsongs which sound like English phrases (such as the red grouse’s “go back, go back, go back” or the hermit thrush’s “why don’tcha come to me? Here I am right near you”). The main show is a 65-page list of spelled-out birdcalls. These include:
“Kik” (common term)
“Kik-ik-ik”(merlin)
“Kikikikikik-kik-kik-kik” (moorhen)
“Kik kek gep krui tik pit kviu kve tchif tchuf” (water rail)

That this book would be published in 2010, using the print medium where most birdcall enthusiasts would opt for field recordings on their cellphones, I find just charming. There are pained paragraphs about the inefficiency of the English alphabet in capturing the tone and precision of birdcalls. But “Why bother, then?” doesn’t ever enter into the endeavor. That’s because Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds (the first call of the title coming from the black skimmer, the other from the lazuli bunting) makes a strong case for birdsong as music, as art, as poetry, open to special notation and interpretation. The book’s design, which sets the text in soft italics and illustrates it with zen-calm nature photography, clinches the concept.

Doing another of my Play in a Day projects tomorrow, Friday Jan. 6, 2-5 p.m. at Never Ending Books, 810 State St., New Haven. Eleven have been staged so far, and each announcement of the next brings flurries of emails from friends and strangers alike.
My stage pursuits are a topic for another page.
What I want to celebrate here is the ongoing good works of Never Ending and Roger Uihlein, who founded the place over two decades ago. It’s a storefront that operates like Alice’s rabbit hole—you fall in and the most bizarre things happen. I’ve done (and seen) theater there for years. Both I and my daughters have held birthday parties there. Many bands have played. Book sales and clean-ups have occurred. A New Year’s party onetime.
Roger, I and others have been brainstorming new projects for the place, including a kid-only coffeehouse cabaret. But just existing, with the bursting bookcases and stained rugs and tweeting radiators, is Never Ending’s most fantastical achievement. Long may it Never End.

Pixy Stix
Watermelon ring pop
Green-on-green striped candy canes
A caramel-apple lollipop
Blue raspberry rock candy
Three grape-flavored Dum Dum pops
A Goetze’s Bulls-Eye. Classic!
The usual jawbreakers and fireballs.

That was a long party at Millie’s mom’s a few months back. In some minds, it’s still going on.
A lot of legendary things happened at the bash, including a six-hour jam session in which two guitarists featured prominently—“Pop” Bash of The Mental Place, and the industrious Frankenjoe of Danger on Vampire Trail. The axemen dueled for hours, antagonistically at first and then copacetically on a magical riff that seemed to arrive from nowhere.
Now the magic has dispersed. Pop and Frank each claim that the riff sprang out of their own fertile scalps. (Both men are bald.) The riff rift began when their respective bands debuted new songs at the annual holiday punk marathon in Santa’s basement, and a couple of tunes were suspiciously similar. Pop accused Frank of lifting his riff, and Frank accused right back.
No lawsuits yet—given the financial straits and mixed-up priorities of both TMP and DoVT, nobody’s got the cash to record for a while, and such disputes don’t get ugly until royalty payments rear up. But this a real grudge happening. Don’t expect a shared bill maybe ever again.

Shattered Helmet at the Bullfinch, with that guy who calls himself Lost Tunnel doing an acoustic opening set… The Disappearing Floor, apparently some sort of dance-party reference, plus Secret Warning at Hamilton’s… It’s a winter-gloomathon at D’ollaire’s with What Happened at Midnight, The Clue in the Embers and While the Clock Ticked…

I call home to tell them I won’t be there for the holidays. Nobody’s home.