S**t Out of Luck

So I’ve watched two not-so-good Clint Eastwood films in the past week – “Heartbreak Ridge” and “TheDead Pool” – and come to the conclusion that I run like Clint. At least I think I look like Clint as I plod along, slow and determined-like, though I’m not 6-foot-4 and built like a tank. And I’m not wearing maroon sweat pants and a white T-shirt, so I’ve got that going for me.

I’ve seen both films before and felt like watching again to refresh my memory. How did these stack up in the Eastwood pantheon? Not well. The first, from 1986, has Clint as an aging Marine who atones for his past screw-ups – in the Corps and in his failed relationships – by whipping a ragged recon bunch into a kick-ass crew who prove themselves in Grenada (remember that incident?). The latter (1988) is an installment – the last – in the Dirty Harry series. That’s where “shit out of luck” comes from. It’s Harry Callahan’s catchphrase in this entry. That should tell you something right there. It never caught on the way “Do you feel lucky?” and “Go ahead, make my day” did in earlier Harry films.

OK, so nobody’s out of luck today. Well, except for whoever lost the flash-card with the lizard picture on it. That was the final find of the day. I was picking up some trash after my run, mostly because I was drawn to do so by all the trash along the bridge walk, and I continued on to the street between the bridge and Seminary. It bothers me, the amount of trash strewn along the bridge. Well, the vastness of the trash on all our streets disturbs me, but it’s particularly noticeable to me here. Anyway, The last bit of trash I picked up was this card with a picture of a lizard on it. I thought maybe it was from one of those matching games or something.

Well, it turns out the card is a little more special than that. Near as I can determine it’s from a Peabody Articulation Deck, a set of flash cards based on the Peabody PictureVocabulary Test. According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know, hardly a scholarly source, but I’m not doing scholarly research here), the PPVT is “an untimed test of receptive vocabulary for Standard American English and provides a quick estimate of verbal ability and scholastic aptitude. It was created in 1959 by two pioneers in special education, Lloyd M. Dunn and Leota M. Dunn. The current version lists L.M. Dunn and his son D.M. Dunn as authors.”

The PPVT uses pictures on pages in flip books or easels or whatever. The PADs appear to be the same idea but in card format. From the Pearson Assessments website:

Ten colorful playing card-sized (2.5" x 3.5") decks help students address speech, language, and hearing problems. Use them in dozens of fun-filled games and activities to target 18 of the most difficult English consonants and blends. Also ideal for bilingual instruction and expanding vocabulary. Each deck helps students master a separate sound.

OK, I’m wracking my brain now for a memory of Pearson Assessments. I know I’ve seen that before. Anyway, I’ve found cards for Old Maid and similar games before (though not Stratego), but never a piece of an educational instrument. That’s pretty cool. Interesting at least.

Nasty underwear I didn't even touch.

Today's Stats

Temp: 73 degrees F

Distance: 3.17 miles

Weekly Total: 7.83 miles

Treasure: 22 cans; 1 steel can; 2 beer bottles; 1 pair underwear (left where they lay) (why is underwear a pair?); 1 lizard card (Deck N, Peabody Picture Collection, 1983); some trash.

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):

Everybody Wants toRule the World – Tears for Fears

Saint Mary of the Woods (live) – James McMurtry

King Tut – Steve Martin

Alcohol – Barenaked Ladies

A Kiss Before I Go (live) – Ryan Adams

And It Stones Me – Van Morrison

Exit – U2

Love of My Life – Santana (Feat. Dave Matthews)

Tied Up – Billy Squier

The Promise – When In Rome

Bridge Bonanza

I don’t recall the prezact order in which I found Monday’s goodies, but I’m pretty sure most of the haul came from the County Highway 10 bridge over the BNSF classification yard. I know the license plates were and I think the wrench was found there, too. The washcloth was along South Henderson Street, not far from the curve before the western base of the bridge. The pennies, I’m not so sure. I did pass up two identical washers, roughly penny-size, on the bridge. The cans covered the route.

For those of you who stumbled on that first sentence, “prezact” is a word coined by a friend (and undoubtedly scores of others unknown to me) that unnecessarily combines “precise” and “exact.” Prezactamundo is another variant. It usually takes the adverbial form, “prezactly.” I like it because it combines the American common-usage “exactly” with the Swedish usage, “precise,” pronounced “pray-cease.” Picked up on that back in 2004 on my Rotary Group Study Exchange to Sweden.

Anyhoo. I really dig finding cool stuff like the license plates and usable stuff like wrenches and washcloths. Pennies, being money, are useful, too, though cans are slightly more valuable – but not much. Once I found the license plate of a co-worker at The Register-Mail. I knew her tags and returned the plate to her daughter, also a co-worker at the paper. The two found Monday are old and unknown to me. One has a sticker from 1997, so I’m guessing it fell out of the garbage or something. It is but a half-plate from a farm vehicle. The sticker on the other marks its expiration in 2010. Guess nobody’s missing those.

I’m kind of wishing I’d kept better track of the wrenches I’ve found while running. This is at least the fourth, counting two adjustable wrenches, one ratchet handle and this open/box-end combo. I think I have another such of a larger size, but I’d have to research that. I’ve also picked up a couple screwdrivers and a couple pairs of pliers in my travels.

None of that stuff is very exciting, but the tools and art and articles of clothing (some of them anyway) are useful so that’s getting stuff for free – kinda like presents from mystery benefactors. I’ll take that.

Today's Stats

Temp: 72 degrees F (80 at the finish)

Distance: 4.64 miles

Weekly Total: 4.64 miles

Treasure: 2 pennies; 1 open/box end wrench, 3/8” Craftsman; 1 wash cloth (light blue); 1.5 license plates (1 car, .5 Farm vehicle); 17 cans.

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):

Reality – Newsboys

Comfortable (live) – John Mayer

Poor Poor Pitiful Me – Warren Zevon

A Last Request (IWant Your Sex Part III) – George Michael

Light In Your Eyes – Sheryl Crow

Just Like A Pill – Pink

O Mary Don’t You Weep (live) – Bruce Springsteen With the Sessions Band

Give It Time – Eric Lindell

Tell Her About It – Billy Joel

Just Stay Here Tonight – Augustana

Hearts – Yes

Daughters – John Mayer

Top Jimmy – Van Halen

“The Devil had nothing to do with this next song”

I’m a journalist. I was an English literature major. My mum was an English teacher. My ex-wife worked in the library. It’s no wonder I have issues with censorship. I don’t think we should need stickers on album covers to warn us of the content of the lyrics – yes, even such simple “warnings” smack of censorship to me. Frankly it’s a little like the surgeon general’s warnings on cigarettes and alcohol – feel-good efforts that I doubt have little effect. (Know any pregnant women who were about to take a swig from a bottle of Jack or a drag on a Pall Mall until she saw that little reminder of the likely ill effects on her unborn child? Yeah, neither do I.

Oh, I suppose some naïve, cave-dwelling parent might notice the “Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics” sticker and nix Johnny’s birthday gift idea, but we all know Johnny’s already heard it. And I think you should judge for yourself. Listen to the songs. I’ll tell you, it was an eye-opener when I shuffled through a handful of tunes on my oldest daughter’s iPod when she was a senior in high school. One song about oral sex rather shocked me at first (my baby was listening to this crap), but I realized I’ve got songs on the subject by AC/DC and Billy Squier, so it was nothing new. Kids are aware of more than we want to acknowledge. Ignorance is bliss.

The censorship theme of the Styx album “Kilroy Was Here” is part of its allure to me. I find it to be a brilliant concept album, a musical extension of “1984” and “Fahrenheit 451.” It was at least topically timely. And ironically the new live album, “Caught in the Act,” served for me as a link from the latest Styx music – “Kilroy” – to the band’s older catalog. Which led to the raid on my brother’s left-behind music collection before I headed to college after the summer, where I found a nice mix tape of Styx music from several of their earlier albums.

Random photo to convey the Philmont connection: my
camper and staff Philmont Guidebooks and a couple
other Phil-books, one a brief history, one on trails.

Oh, the connection? Well, it hinges on a song introduction by guitarist James Young (Track 5, Disc 1):

“Is everybody feelin’ kinda loosened up? Anyway we’re feeling loosened up. And last year, the state legislature of California was so loosened up that they decided  that some records, including ours, had backwards, satanic messages on them. But we can honestly and sincerely say as we stand before you this evening that the Devil had nothing to do with this next song, from the Paradise Theater album, a song entitled Snowblind.”

OK, self-indulgent reverie: When I googled “The Devil had nothing to do with this next song” to confirm it was Young who uttered the words and see if I could find any other history about the stage banter, the first hit was an excerpt from the book “TheGrand Delusion: The Unauthorized True Story of Styx.” The second was my blogfrom Jan. 7, 2011, in which I quoted that bit as the title. Mostly that means that the quote doesn’t come up much on the ’Net (6 times, to be precise). But it’s pretty cool to see your work pop up in Google searches, especially when you weren’t expecting it.

“Some folks say he’s a lot like me”

What is it about goofy camp songs that gets in our blood and embeds so powerfully in our memory?  I don’t know what year I first heard “Slew Foot,” the song about a marauding bear with supernatural  speed and leaping ability. But I chalked it up to Scout camp fun and never really thought about it much. 

But it stuck there in my subconscious. So when I saw it on the track listing for James McMurtry’s 2005 CD “Childish Things,” I was floored. As I recall, I first saw it on a preview, a month or two before the album’s release. (Why do we still call them albums? Is a CD an album? Perhaps so.) I played the sample track and realized it was indeed the song I’d heard at a Philmont campfire as a camper – pre-staff days.

Here’s what I’ve learned since:

1. If you Google “Slew Foot” you’ll get a slew of hits about a hockey play that involves a player tripping up another player with his skates – a dangerous move that can lead to serious injury.

2. If you Google “Slew Foot Bear Song” you’ll get references to a 1950s Johnny Horton rockabilly song. I had no idea. That version ain’t bad. There are others, too.

3. Google “SlewFoot Bear” and you’ll come up with what I assume must be the base inspiration for the song: “The Yearling.” From Wikipedia: ”A subplot involves the hunt for an old bear named Slewfoot that randomly attacks the Baxter livestock.”

Anyway, I was pretty jazzed that one of my favorite musicians had a rendition of “Slew Foot” on his new album. Give it a listen, it’s a pretty fun tune.