BENEFITS OF INFANTS

What I'm Listening To: "Da Da," by Alice Cooper. And it's really creeping me out...

I went into DC last night with Mathilda to see Neil Gaiman. Met my sister Emily there. Neil was doing a reading/signing at a Methodist church down the street from Politics and Prose, which was too small to hold everyone who was going to show up. And I've seen a lot of people in there.

So Maddy was good up until Neil was about to come out. Then she got fussy. And because she was rubbing her eyes and being cranky and I believe my parental rights do not extend to ruining the evening of people around me, I took her outside, planning to go back in when either A) she calmed down and dozed off, or B) the reading was finished.

What happened was A) she didn't calm down and B) Neil read an hour-long story.

The Politics and Prose people were all very nice during the whole thing and one of them mentioned that it was obvious Maddy wasn't a Methodist. I'd have to say that church did not seem to agree with her. Maybe going down to Georgetown and getting her picture taken at the M Street stairs isn't such a bad idea after all.

Neil started signing around 9:00 and I went back in with Maddy to get our stuff together. We were at the back of the church so that I could dash out with Maddy if (and it turns out, when) necessary. The line was being started from the front of the sanctuary, so we were going to be one of the last groups called if we stayed. As I was deciding just how stupid it would be to stick around with the fussy kid (who had calmed down at this point) an announcement was made that people with infants could come to the front of the line.

Politics and Prose is the best bookstore in the world. I have never seen that done before.

So we went up to the front and I got my copy of The Wolves in The Walls and my MirrorMask poster signed to Maddy. I thank Neil and the bookstore folks and we were on our way. A very nice man who turned out to be the Harper Collins artist rep help us get the stroller down the stairs so that a Potemkin replay did not happen.

Politics and Prose is the best bookstore in the world. And Neil Gaiman is, as always, generous and kind and all-around the best. This was my fourth time seeing him and I'd go again in a second... though maybe Maddy may not tag along until she's a bit older.

YOU'LL HAVE TO SING LOUDER THAN THAT TO STOP A WAR

I still have confetti in my hair. And on my person. And in my car. And on my wife. And in my digestive tract, because I drank at least one piece that landed in Jamee's beer.

We drove the two-and-a-half hours to Charlottesville to see The Flaming Lips tonight. Just got back and will be crashing shortly. Worth the trip and the only thing that would have made it better was if Chaps, who serve the best milkshakes in Virginia, was still open after the show.

We were showered with confetti, we sang along, and though nobody was molested by a panda, a good time was had by all.

And when Mathilda is old enough for science projects, we're building a confetti cannon.

The test is over...

9/11 MIXMANIA

What I remember most about that Tuesday morning was wishing that WTOP would talk about something other than Michael Jordan returning to basketball. I was working from a government contracting association at the time and I was at work when the news came and one of my co-workers went from office to office saying that a plane hit the World Trade Center. I thought it was a Cessna or something. Then they said another plane hit. And then my boss said "They've hit the Pentagon."

We stood in the director's office watching the news on a crappy tv. I decided that I no longer wanted to work there anymore when one of my co-workers started making jokes about the people we saw jumping from the towers. The decision was cemented when our director made the comment that our revenue would be increasing soon because military spending would start going up.

Jamee called for me to pick her up at her office after the first tower fell. She works in Falls Church and could see the smoke from the Pentagon from her window.

We took backroads home with everyone else because we believed the beltway wasn't safe. We heard the second tower fall on the radio as we sat in traffic. It normally took 45 minutes to get home. It took us two-an-a-half hours and we didn't know then just how many people wouldn't be going home.

We lived ten minutes away from Dulles airport and the skies were quiet for days. When flights started again the planes were flying low and the first one we heard gave us the creeps.

In October, we were visiting a friend in Arlington. It was at night. Getting back to 395 we took a wrong turn and got lost. When we found an exit back to the Interstate, we weren't quite sure where we were and as we went up the onramp, The Pentagon rose in front of us. We could see the wound in its side. And though we only really saw it for a brief moment, the image is stamped in my memory.

That is what I remember. Here is my mix:

1. "While You Were Sleeping" - Elvis Perkins: I love this song and in a perfect world it never would have existed. It’s probably my favorite thing that I’ve heard this year and I’ve been hoping to be able to fit it into a mix, and the 9/11 mix was perfect. I like how a new instrument comes in with each verse and it builds to the point where he seems to explicitly sing about his mother. Her name was Berry Berenson and she was a photographer and an actress. She was the widow of Anthony Perkins and her sister was Marisa Berenson, who was in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. And she was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11 that hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

“Were you falling, were you flying, and were you calling out, and were you dying?”

2. "Gimme Shelter"- Rolling Stones: I know it's about drug addiction, but the feeling of overwhelming paranoia and unease that I get from it made it seem to fit early on in this mix. I think the day after I put it into the mix, I heard versions of it in the trailers for both The Departed and Children of Men.

3. "Labyrinth" - The Cure: The Cure seems to be finding their way into all (both) of my mixes so far. This track is from their self-titled 2004 album and seems to be fairly obviously about the post-9/11 world. Nobody does gloom and anger quite like Robert Smith and company.

4. "Helpless" - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: I just recently picked up the three-disc Nick Cave b-sides set. I mainly wanted to get his cover of "Knoxville Girl" that I've been trying to find for a few years. It was disappointing, but I liked this Neil Young cover. I could have used the original, but felt like if I have multiple versions of a song, I should go with a version that someone else would be least likely to have. And because I ended up getting my sister-in-law's name in the draw this time, I know she has the Neil Young version, but not this one. Whether or not she likes it is a different story.

5. "Waiting for a Superman" - Iron & Wine: A kinda sorta hardta find cover of one of the best songs off of The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin. I might be wrong, but I think there was an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man where New Yorkers where asking him why he didn't do anything to stop the attacks. What I do remember correctly is that here in the real world the first teaser poster for Spider-Man was pulled from theaters after the attacks because the World Trade Center was reflected in Spidey's eye. I bought mine that August and I don't think I want to know what it's worth now. Not that I'd ever sell it...

6. "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" - The Flaming Lips: And now I'll contradict my earlier statement about going with the harder to find version of a song. This is the album version of "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song." I've got the itunes exclusive Long Version, but there was beginning to be an issue of time, so I ended up jettisoning longer versions of things in favor of more songs. However, this one still ended up on here twice...

7. "War Again" - Oingo Boingo: Though at this point I think they were just calling themselves "Boingo." So what if it's about the first Gulf War.

8. "I Ain't Marching Anymore" - Phil Ochs: ...I mean, this one's about Vietnam. Phil Ochs is my favorite 60s era protest singer and nobody seems to remember him anymore. Stephen King describes his music as having a sort of "baffled anger" and think that feeling comes across in thin, probably his most famous song. Dylan considered him a genius.

It's a shame that some people are only remembered, or even known, because of how they died.

9. "War Pigs" - The Flaming Lips: Because the Black Sabbath version is way too long (and I don't have it). I started worrying that there's way too much Lips stuff on here, but it all seems appropriate, and as both my wife and my sister pointed out, they have a ton of songs that would be appropriate for a mix like this. This version is from "Later with Jools Holland." Play it loud.

10. "Mohammad's Radio" - Warren Zevon: The week of the second anniversary of September 11 sucked. We lost Zevon on the 7th and Johnny Cash on the 12th. (And because they always go in threes, John Ritter died too. I don't have any John Ritter songs. Heck, I don't even have any Tex Ritter songs.) This one is from the still-not-on-CD live album Stand in the Fire and it seemed like it should be here.

11. "September When it Comes" - Roseanne Cash with Johnny Cash: This one is on here mainly because of the title, and I felt like whatever Zevon song appeared here should be paired with a Cash song. And I just now realised that track 11 has "September" in the title.

12. "Where Do the Children Play?" - Cat Stevens: I felt like I had to put a Cat Stevens song on here. I tried to avoid putting anything explicitly religious on here, though there's Christian imagery in the Cash song and the Zevon song has Mohammed in the title, so I pretty much failed there. I wasn't quite sure which Cat Stevens song to use and this one just defaulted its way in here as a placeholder. And then I listened to it and it seemed perfect.

13. "New Dawn Fades" - Joy Division: Because if you want a downer, you can't go wrong with Joy Division.

14. "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (In Anatropous Reflex)" - The Flaming Lips: This is from an NPR broadcast earlier this year and it may as well be a differnet song that the album version that shows up previously. The first version is supposed to be exciting and get you gung ho and ready to kick some ass. And this one is the reflection after everything goes wrong.

15. "Day After Tomorrow" - Tom Waits: Why does being against the war mean you have to be against the troops? This showed up in one of the encores at the show we saw in Akron and it's beautiful. I just wish the title didn't make me remember that godawful movie...

16. "Peace/And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" - Ronnie Drew: The Pogues' version of "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" is probably my favorite song of all time (The version that closes the Rum, Sodomy, & The Lash album, not the truncated b-side that shows up on the Red Roses For Me remaster). It kills me every time I listen to it. No kidding. So why did I go with this one? Well, it's two minutes shorter and I like the poem at the beginning. And because Dubliner's singer Ronnie Drew is one of Shane MacGowan's heroes, I figured it's OK. It goes at the end, because really nothing can follow it.