Pye in the Face

Slowly, slowly we’re improving our lot around these here parts. The weekend before last Janet, a neighbor and I cleared out on of the basement room, which is actually about 80% “finished” (drop ceiling in place, drywall and mudding done, painted) with the exception of carpeting. We then proceeded to turn it into an office, complete with a wireless printer and two separate business landlines for Janet and myself, and I’m beyond happy that we did so.

Above my desk there’s a photo collage I made last year one day when my internet was out. It’s a Concord collection featuring high school friends only, and using my new printer I plan to make “Best Buddy” and family versions. To the right of the window is the “Gord Wall” where I’ve hung some of my Dad’s plaques and accreditations and I gaze up at it whenever I feel my attention span waning. His inspiration for going back to school? My Mom getting pregnant with me. The man went from a steel mill monkey to a marketing executive with a college degree in a little over a decade and is my professional inspiration.

For several years the room had been crammed with a disassembled pool table, furniture and a ton of other things no one had gotten around to dealing with. We cleared out the adjacent utility room, put in shelves there to make better use for storage, consolidated and moved everything out and then set up what is turning into a pretty sweet space. The couch you can see is a big pullout so the room will eventually serve double-duty as a guest room. We don’t like to confine elderly relatives or anyone above the age of 40 to the Winchester. So you can breathe a sigh of relief, Sully. I wish I’d taken “before” pictures as the transformation is complete and amazing. Above you can see my little corner of productivity and below you’ll gasp in awe at Janet’s. This is where the magic happens and the Pye siblings bring home the bacon.

The rug is comprised of these floor tiles we found at Canadian Tire and I am picking up another batch today I ordered so that we can finish off the entire room. We were only able to do half as they didn’t have enough in stock. Sam the neighbor who now works with me will be setting up the right hand desk this morning which is actually the other half of mine until he gets his good one from his old place in Ottawa. The window looks out onto the lake and the air which drifts in and then gets distributed by the fan is good for the brain.

It’s a big space so there shouldn’t be a problem with background noise if we’re both on the phone at the same time. Notice our office assistants and particularly Shepherd’s new anti-bark shock collar which is like the size of a car battery. I have since removed it as it seems to have served its purpose rather quickly. There’s definitely no danger of Shep becoming a Spiderman villain, to put it mildly. The middle of the room is currently reserved for DVDs, a dog bed and some EZ-chairs. We may eventually put a TV and a conference table in here as well. Lotsa room.

And of course everyday after lunch we break for a rousing game of “Shepherd Checkers”. The blue chair you see above is Boss’ favorite and I moved it in near me especially for him. The room stays nice and cool so the puppies love it and the rest of the basement looks great as we sorted, cleaned and consolidated it all at the same time. This time next year I think it’s safe to say that the large room outside of the office will be carpeted, ceilinged, wired up and playing host to a home theater, dart board, bar and an inter-family lake pool league. It’s coming together. Slowly, slowly catchy Rhuby.

About 5 years ago, WFNX polled the city of Boston and asked them what their favorite home cooked Beantown rock song was. Now that is a tough question (italics used for dramatic effect), but the people rose to the occasion and voted “All Going Out Together” by Big Dipper as their undisputed #1. Think about that for a second, because Boston’s bred indy bands like the Pixies, Throwing Muses, Mission of Burma, etc. and being chosen as the top song EVAH is testament to the band’s legacy within the town of beans. My friends and I have been listening to the Dipper since high school, we know some of them personally and one of us is even acting as a roadie at their reunion show at the Middle East on April 26th. I’m playing with the idea of flying down for this as I’d most certainly be backstage and most certainly be the happiest kid on the planet and possibly even the Milky Way.

I’ve seen a lot of bands play at the Middle East over the years - Breeders, The The, Jonathan Richman, Grooveasaurus, Gord Downie, Luna - and it’s a wonderful location to see a show. It was an even better location when my friend Adam worked the bar there and used to slide me Harpoons and get me gooned just for showing up. My point is, what a great choice for the Big Dipper Reunion. I like the Paradise and everything, where it was first rumored to be happening, but my preference is that slice of Heaven in Central Square. And not (there’s that emphasis again) spending an hour on the Green Line to the wilderness of BU and Comm Ave.

There’s a band of questionable repute called Built to Spill who released a popular song called “Big Dipper” a few years back, and boy do I ever wish they’d chosen a different name for the tune. It’s all you ever see online when running searches for my beloved Boston band. I did manage to find one proper video, for “Faith Healer“, and two live clips from a show at the Ritz in New York City circa 1987 - “Younger Bums” and “Lunar Module” which are both off the same album as “All Going Out…” so we’ll go with those.

If you remotely enjoyed the video then check out the MP3 for the vastly superior ditty She’s Fetching (hosted by Merge Records and fully downloadable by right-clicking) which is definitely in my Dipper top 3. She’s also got the skankiest little guitar riff you’ve ever heard. “Fetching” is still part of my vocabulary today as a direct result of listening to this song on the Sony Sport boombox I had plugged into the cigarette lighter in my ‘78 Chevy Malibu station wagon driving around Concord at 16 years of age. Blaupunkt eat your heart out.

Their catalog has been unreleased and heavily sought after for years, but Heavens, Boo Boo, Craps and are finally being re-released. They are also heavily promoting the 48 track greatest hits/anthology, Supercluster, via a MySpace profile and other online viral means. I was happy to see my very favorite Dipper song, Ron Klaus Wrecked his House, available to add to your profile and I have just done so. Click here to grab Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology from Amazon.

I have also uploaded the MP3 to my server as a special gift for you today - and I implore you to download it and see what you think. It’s a great song with gritty indy guitars, crashing drums, a complex baseline and a vocal harmony which is probably still hurts Gary Waleik’s throat 20 years on. If the style and theme of this song doesn’t remind you of college while also impressing you with its catchiness, then you probably never went to college. Or graduated high school, for that matter. For the love of God and all that is holy, listen to your old pal Dave, get your GED and do yourself a favor: Ron Klaus Wrecked his House. Glad to have you back, boys.

I commemorated the holiday this year by sleeping until 11am, finally finishing the massive Brother Fish and then cleaning up my house. As all of my clients are American, no one noticed or cared about my personal day, and I hope everyone is currently gorged on turkey and watching TV with a glass of dry white left over from dinner in their hand. It snowed up here in Portland for the first time this morning and I realized since this house was built in 2004 no one has actually lived here late in the season enough to see snow. I am going to take some photos for my folks tomorrow and I’m sure it will be as strange for them as it was for me. Raise that glass to me at this point and toast to my not freezing to death in a couple of months only to be discovered come spring sitting upright and bearded in the filthy dining room with a half-finished letter bomb in front of me.

Does anyone know who won the Concord / Bedford football game today? I couldn’t find it mentioned online. I did get one especially exciting piece of news, however. Pixie, the mother of my soon to be puppy, is almost ready to drop. The breeder sent me some adorable new photos and poor Pixie looks fit to pop. She is due by the end of the weekend, apparently, so I may be making a trip over to Seeley’s bay to see my future best friend very, very soon. Wee Shepherd Pye cometh!

It’s sad and quite a bit shitty to be sitting alone on what is usually my very favorite night of the entire year. The night before American Thanksgiving is when you’re supposed to travel back to your home town, hit a local bar or house party and get sillier than a horn of plenty with your high school friends whom you only ever see once a year on this night. When I returned from England in 1999 after about 5 years away from the Concord scene, I thought the tradition was long since dead. Little did I know the fun we had yet to have over the next 7 years. The Red House, the reunions, the Razzi. Many of my contemporaries couldn’t care less about staying in touch with their old school crew and that’s their prerogative - God forbid I should someday have a family and “normal life”. But I wouldn’t have had it any other way, and I sure miss y’all tonight.

The best Thanksgivingy passtime I could come up with for my self this evening was to sift back through folders and folders of old photos and assemble my favorites into a 60-deep Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past gallery. I hope you laugh if you were there and snicker a little bit even if you weren’t. At the very least you can watch us lose our hair. I’ll surely be tasting Jimmy’s deep fried turkey tomorrow as I catch up on work while all my American clients take the day off to stuff their respective faces. Great memories, great friends and trust me kids - there’s no way I’ll miss it two years in a row.

I’m feeling terse today. Succinct. Extremely bullety. It’s a good morning for a brain dump. A blog blathering. Should I just give ‘er? I’ll give ‘er…

- The GPS system, called TeleNav, that I have on my new BlackBerry 8800 is astoundingly accurate and full-featured. I did not expect it nor realize that the phone came with it - but I use it all the time and it kicks touchas. $10 a month.
- My baby mamma still is not pregnant with wee Shepherd. This puts my puppy acquisition date back until at least March. I don’t want to - but I may look elsewhere for a pooch. I was so looking forward to having the wee ‘un with me while I’m alone during the winter.
- I found a treadmill of all things in the garage and I wheelbarrowed it over to the main house and plugged ‘er in. It works, and I’ve set up a spare TV and DVD player in front of it so I’ll have a nice winter hamster wheel.
- My client roster is growing by leaps and bounds - 5 new contracts last month alone - and I have been interviewing local people to help me. I found a great writer and a sharp marketing whiz via the Canadian version of CraigsList and we’re having a meeting in Kingston Thursday.
- I updated Cornett’s wedding gallery with about 40 more pictures so be sure to check it out. If only to see the adorable wee flower girl, Olivia.
- I have ordered several books on Canadian History to read over the snowy months, as I moved to Massachusetts when I was 12 and never learned any at the high school level. The fact that I moved to Concord didn’t help matter much - we kinda had our hands full in the old history department.
- My keyboard popped it’s V and B keys the other day for no apparent reason whatsoever. I’m starting to think Poltergeist - tis the season. Luckily there are no pubescent girls in the house or we’d really see the crockery flying off the walls. As I am an enormous fan of the CTRL+V paste shortcut, this is driving me batty. They won’t re-attach and I am gonna have to shell out for a new keyboard. Frig.

There’s a Facebook group for my high school town, and someone added a “You Know You’re From Concord When…” thread a while ago. Obviously, the group is predominantly much-younger people, but I was curious and added my own point to the thread. You know you’re from Concord When: “Being told to meet your friends at ‘Eden’, ‘Boonyards’ or ‘Mayflower’ makes perfect sense to you.”

Someone from the class of 2004 emailed me today and asked me to elaborate, so I did. This email is extended a couple paragraphs for the sake of the blog and reprinted with express written permission from… myself.

All three were nicknames we had for secluded outdoor places around Concord where we used to “par-tay”. Eden was along the river and accessible from behind the strip mall just off Lowell road near the center where Stop n Shop used to be. I worked there for a summer until they found out I was Canadian and didn’t have my greencard yet. It’s still a grocery store but has a different name now. There was a narrow path that wound through the underbrush for a bit and came out on a nice public lawn on the riverside with a decent amount of tree cover overhead. You could also walk down to it from the bridge down Lowell road a bit.

Anyway, Eden was a huge cop magnet and we only used it as a last resort when nobody’s parents were out of town. My friend got arrested one night, fully cuffed and stuffed, for peeing on the fire after the po-po told us to put it out. “I don’t care how you do it, but put that fucking fire out!” Well, my pal got a night in the docks and an embarassing Concord Journal Police Log entry for his efforts. The worst part is, the Journal listed the charge as “indecent exposure”, with his real name and age. That could have meant a million different things, and I’m sure his grandparents enjoyed reading it over Sunday breakfast while envisioning him running through a local preschool with his pants around his ankles.

Boonyards was a field that accessible by an overgrown dirt road just over the Bedford town line on Bedford Street that extended out from the Concord center rotary. Technically it’s located on Hanscom airforce base which we learned the hard way one night when soldiers with M16s on jeeps showed up to break up our bonfire. I was off in the dark fiddling with a British exchange student and made an easy escape.

Mayflower was in West Concord technically, and you had to go through the back of Thoreau hills to get to it. I don’t think the police ever found it during my CCHS career, but we accidentally rolled a full keg down into someone’s backyard one enchanted evening. That attracted a lot of attention and I don’t think I ever returned.

Glad I could impart some history on my wee descendants. Concord was a strange place in the early 90’s era. When I got to college in 1992, it bored me to tears. I’ve had this conversation with dozens of my friends who had the same freshman year blues. We’d wonder why people in our dorm got so excited over a lame frat keg party, and the rest of the kids on our floor wouldn’t believe our high school stories. The classes of 89 and 91 especially - we’d already fucking done it all. We kept Mr. Kryple and Ms. DiCicco on antacids - that’s for sure. The outdoor spots were backups, and the tip of the iceberg. Good times.