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The precious! The precious! 

I started writing this a few minutes ago, noting how I'd spent all this time trying to write a big Chicago Retrofit Guide entry, only to crap out a couple of times, and how this was both caused by and yet also accelerating this decreasingly vague sense of unease and disconsolation I'd been feeling. . . then the blog page began to send me weird messages, then crashed, and so the blog entry I actually HAD succeeded in writing was destroyed, just like that. 

Damn you, universe. 

This blog entry has become my own personal unobtainium. It's elusive, it's shiny, it floats in some kind of pocket-sized gravity-free zone I have on my desk, and I will kill anyone or thing in order to get it. You have been warned.

Speaking of "Avatar," here's some kick-ass comedy that has nothing to do with that movie, unless you're a game fish of some sort, and these chunky southerners are like your Sky People come down to do you in. Only here bad things happen to them. Hilariously!

Less hilarious, but still worth checking out: The original Hammond audition performance of Bruce Springsteen's "If I Was the Priest." 

And that's what I've got for you today. I'll finish the Chicago piece, I swear, soon. Ish.

Some people call me the space cowboy/some call me the gangster of love...

Too many years have gone by, too many enforced re-re-re-listenings of "Jet Airplane" and "Rock 'n' Me," what we have come to learn about the Steve Miller Band has long since subsumed how we felt at first listen. But shake off the tarnish, drop .99 (or possible $1.29, it seems to go back and forth) download "The Joker" and marvel again over that impossibly simple chord progression, the down-to-the-bone instrumentation (drums/bass/acoustic guitar/slide guitar lead) and the bizarro world described by our greasy swain of a narrator. Who reveals himself as such in the next breath, in which he observes that....

Some people call me Maurrrrrrice/'Cause I speak of the pompudice of love.

Pompudice? That's not even a word. I just checked.

What in the what? Who is this dude strutting through the speakers? What does he want? Is he even remotely serious about any of this? Or...wait, here it is in the chorus....

I'm a picker, I'm a grinner/I'm a lover, and I'm a sinner, playing my music in the sun/I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker/Sure don't want to hurt no one...

So much funky attitude. So much left to the imagination. So few chords and adornment, so much wit and charm.

I just downloaded "The Joker," along with a score of other SMB favorites, and I've been spinning on it ever since. Wondering how this guy got to be so successful while simultaneously being so odd and offbeat; wondering how such unlikely success either signalled, or perhaps caused, him to sprint rapidly to the mainstream, slamming out pop hit after pop hit through the mid and late '70s, abandoning all his groovy street cred and becoming (I'm not even guessing here, given his notorious mastery of the entertainment biz) massively and quietly wealthy.

The cruel fact is that most of what makes Miller famous is actually the least of his work - the lazy days of riding the swift current of mainstream arena rock. But check back to his early years, right up through the smash "Fly Like an Eagle" album in '76, and the news is much, much better. You could download a score of these suckers and be extremely happy about it. Especially if you've never heard early SMB, or paused to think that this guy might have actually had something serious going on there. He did.

Read more to find out what I got, and why:

A bonus story from the 2009 files, published in The Oregonian in June, and now reprinted in tribute to the Rose City Rollers and the new documentary, "Brutal Beauty," about their exploits. The movie premieres in Portland on Saturday, January 9 at 7 pm. Tickets are $10 at the door.

Peter Ames Carlin - The Rose City Rollers Should Kick Your Ass

What Heather Petty loves the most is when she gets to be the jammer.

That's the roller derby's equivalent of a quarterback, the woman at the center of the action; the one who gets to move the fastest; whose entire purpose is to out-skate, out-fake and out-muscle every other woman on the track.

"It's like, you're the ball," she says. "You sprint full-out, hitting and weaving and going all-out in every imaginable way. It's like track meets boxing meets wrestling. All on skates. And you get to hit people."

Petty's cheeks glow and her blue eyes grow electric. And it's not just the roller derby competition that fires her up. It's everything else about the Rose City Rollers league, too: The epic personalities; the aggressively slinky clothes; the interwoven strands of athleticism, wickedness and sisterhood.

"There is no low self-esteem in this building," Petty says, gesturing toward the women on the track. "No one feels fat today. They're not worried about their zits. I'm a confident person, right? But this is breathtaking."

Particularly for a young woman just making her own way in the world. It's tougher out there these days. And while some people look for meaning at the office, or at church, or at home with the spouse and kids, Petty has found it somewhere else: in a diverse community of women whose faith in themselves is so strong they understand exactly why a 27-year-old first-grade teacher can, and should, reinvent herself as a roller derby goddess called SoulFearic Acid.

Hit the Read More button, or else it might hit you...

First blog topic of the year, to start in a day or two: Guilty pleasures of the past reconsidered: The secret joys of Chicago, Steve Miller and the Doobie Brothers, and more,

But first, a message from our sponsor, as per Publisher's Weekly:

S&S Gets the Jersey Boy

Zach Schisgal, at Simon & Schuster's Touchstone/Fireside imprint, nabbed North American rights to a Bruce Springsteen bio by rock biographer Peter Ames Carlin, who's written about such heavies as Paul McCartney (Paul McCartney: A Life) and Brian Wilson (Catch a Wave). Simon Lipskar at Writers House brokered the deal and the book, per S&S, will trace Springsteen's life from his working-class roots in Freehold, N.J., through his life as a superstar and cultural icon.

First things first: Here's a really funny look back at the career of the Beatles, from the year 3000. Check out the frog emperor.

More reviews of PMAL popping up hither and yon, along with stray mentions as in this marijuana culture piece in Seattle's City Arts magazine.

The end of the year always puts me in mind of Dennis Wilson, whose sad, glorious, star-crossed life ended this week in 1983. A great songwriter in his own right, and the brother of Brian. Amazing.

In case you didn't infer this already, from the Bruce-centric postings of these last few months, here's the news: The next book is already up and running, or at least in the early stages: A biography of Bruce Springsteen, also for Simon & Schuster. Much more work to come on that one. It may take a little while. But there it is, and if you have any thoughts, ideas, suggestions or sources to pass on....well, by all means. Reach me, as ever, at: peteramescarlin@gmail.com

And on that note. . . . Happy 2010.

The following is the exact content of a note left on the car of our (absent, generous) hosts here in Berkeley, California:

"Just in case you hit (or bump) the BMW in front of you know that I have both your VIN and plate numbers to report to police and insurance as a hit and run."

I'm sure you feel the magic cast by its anonymous author. The paranoia. The self-righteousness. The self-involvement that precludes any rational knowledge of civic behavior, let alone the requirements of the court system. For instance, does he/she really believe that seeing one car near yours at one point in the day means that the owner of that car is responsible for any and everything that might occur to your car even if it takes places minutes or hours or days after they leave....well, you can see where this is going.

But can you see where it came from? Can you write a brief work of fiction and/or psychological analysis to describe the persons and/or situations that led up to the writing of that note? Or what happened after the note was written? 

If so, write it up. Send it me at: peteramescarlin@gmail.com. The winner, chosen by pac.com's editorial board (ahem) will win, well, something. To be negotiated, ranging from a kick in the crotch to (yes) a brand new BMW. Which assertion does not mean you, or anyone, will actually win a BMW. But it's pretty to think so, isn't it?

Enter now. The deadline is midnight Dec. 31. 

Drove to California for the holidays, dreams of sunshine and eucalyptus and Cali-tastic high temps in my head, and now we're here and it's raining and cold and there's a broken Radio Flyer wagon just outside the window.

Life is so different in my blog filter. There it's all endless sex and fancy watches. Gucci handbags and advanced degrees. High-salaried jobs working for Google at your own kitchen table. Last week I was introduced to Olga, my mail-order Russian bride. Now, I'm all for Russian brides, though I think I'd have mine Fed-exed in order to save on the travel wear-and-tear. But Olga? My bride is apparently 57 years old, bulbous, red-faced and muttering angrily about Stalin. As well she should, I guess. Maybe a new handbag and a watch will improve her mood.

Somewhere the sun is shining. Santa's en route and a younger, less aggrieved Russian bride is in his sack, bearing free samples of Viagra and Cialis, Gucci bags and a Rolex just for all of us. Either that or a sparkly new Radio Flyer.

Happy holidays. 

David Bauder of the Associated Press writes a cool story about PMAL, along with the LA Times' longtime rock critic Robert Hilburn's "Cornflakes with John Lennon," a set of memoirs about his experiences with and among some of the rock world's biggest names, including the aforementioned John WInston Ono Lennon. Bauder also spoke to Paul for another story right around the time he was reporting this one, and asked him about PMAL. Here's what Paul had to say:

And while McCartney said he's grateful that people are interested enough to write a book about his life, he doesn't plan to read it.

"I'm living it, not reading about it," McCartney said in an interview. "There's always something that I'll see that isn't true and I'll either worry about it and say, 'Oh, God, people are going to read this and think it's true because it's in a book,' or I'm just not going to be a part of it."

 

So there we have it.

Also to be had:  Suzanne Vega's review in the New York Times Book Review. This is a bit tougher going, at least for us authorial types, given that she seems a bit lukewarm on the book she's reading. I could present some kind of point-by-point defense-slash-refutation on some or maybe most of her beefs . . .oh I feel a parenthetical coming on. . .

(For instance, I'd disagree that the book turns entirely sour at the end, if only because the admittedly tart observation she quotes -- the part about Paul's ageless cute one pose, seen most vividly recently during his extremely ill-advised appearance on Brit reality show 'The X Factor -- is followed by an un-quoted, un-referenced and yet literally climactic 1,000 words or so about Paul's far-more-cool-and-adventurous work on "Electric Arguments." The book ends with a direct quote from that album's lyrics -- Everywhere a sense of childlike wonder! -- that is meant to describe Paul and what strikes me as his truly ageless self... the artist working somewhere out on the horizons of his own imagination. That's what matters to me about him. That's what I was trying to describe, while also finding a way to reconcile that beautiful Paul with his at times less-appealing self.) 

. . . okay, that's over. Anyway. Vega didn't see that part. Nevertheless, she read the book and put some thought into it and her response to it. And though she came away less happy than other readers, I'm honored she took the time and made the effort and wrote something so thoughtful and interesting.

An unidentified caller left this message at my office the other day. He doesn't care about golf either, and has a whole other perspective on Tiger's original sin. He didn't leave his name or number, but all of these words are his. I wish he'd call me back so we could talk more. I like how he thinks.

Hey, that was an interesting article about Woods’ world turning against him? Yeah well, what world was his world? The world that subscribed because he got money, that they’ll do anything for him? Or is it the world where he rejected his own heritage. because you got to remember that if you got even one ounce of black blood in this country you’re considered black. You can’t be the other race.

But for a lot of blacks who pay attention and know what this world is about, particularly in this country, when that fool chastised Rev. Sharpton and Warren Ballantine, 1480 early in the morning, from 6 am until 1 pm, black radio, when they defended him from that crazy white woman who said they needed to lynch him, and he came back and tried to dress them down in public, you know, that tells us right there and then that he had already went there. He took the lower standard of humanity, and that’s the white world.

So nobody turned against him, he turned into what y ‘all created, and he became one of you guys, so you know. So re-write it. Peace out.

I’d leave my number but y’all never call back. So, yeah. We knew that. Black people already knew that. A lot of people who defend him, like Charles Barkley and all that, all of them love white  women, too. And you know there ain’t never been no black women around him? Not even his maid! Not even the people who do his toilets!

Check it out! Be a real reporter! Peace!

 This just in from the international desk: PAUL McCARTNEY: A LIFE will be published in China, sometime in the near-ish future. 

This edition (in 'simplified Chinese characters,' which still doesn't mean I'll ever be able to read it) joins translations already coming in: Brazil, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands and I think one or two other places I can't remember right now.