Author: J T. Ramsay

J T. Ramsay http://jtramsay.com

I Miss Running

I miss run­ning. Last time I ran was the 2009 Philadel­phia Marathon. Just got to be too hard get­ting Char­lie ready on top of try­ing to get out and run in the morn­ing. Hope I can get back on track once the snow and ice melt and the side­walks dry. 

Excit­ed to get back in the gym, too! Need a work­out bud­dy? I just got a mem­ber­ship at Plan­et Fit­ness. Think­ing about MWF @ 8 pm. (Look­ing at you, Mark.) 

Charlie After Ear Tubes

Char­lie got ear tubes last week to help solve his chron­ic ear infec­tions. Turns out what every­one says is true: his speech improved imme­di­ate­ly and he’s much hap­pi­er now that his ears don’t hurt. What a relief!

Now if he’d sleep past 4:30 in the morn­ing we’d be on Easy Street.

Who Is Harry Nilsson?

Just watched this doc­u­men­tary. Only a hand­ful of artists meet a trag­ic end like this, where their fame endures long after their tal­ent burns out. My old boss at TLA Video, Adri­an Hick­man, used to play Nils­son often at the store. I did­n’t have an ear for it then, but lis­ten­ing to his voice com­plete­ly blew me away. Nils­son was­n’t just a great pop singer/songwriter; the guy was an auteur like Orson Welles, craft­ing a work so dense and poet­ic only to have it undo him.

My favorite part of the doc­u­men­tary? See­ing Nils­son at the height of his fame, par­ty­ing with the Bea­t­les and Elton John. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pho­to mon­tage as thrilling, laugh­ing mani­a­cal­ly at pho­tos that would make fans of The Hang­over blanch. Watch­ing inter­views with guys like Bri­an Wil­son and Van Dyke Parks gave me a sense that Nils­son was­n’t just some maudlin pop singer, but a guy who was liv­ing every moment to the fullest. Equal­ly impor­tant, he set lofty goals and achieved them. He did it all. He did it fast.

Maybe it’s because I’m get­ting old­er, but artists like Har­ry Nils­son appeal to me more now, just as I find myself appre­ci­at­ing vet­er­an ballplay­ers who are still giv­ing it a go long after they’ve been writ­ten off by con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. Makes you won­der how any artist made it through the ’70s alive. Did­n’t mat­ter if you were punk or posh, chances are you were doing things that did con­sid­er­able harm to your person.

Come clean and admit your favorite ’70s rock­ers here. And, yes, you can like the Adverts and X‑Ray Spex and still be total­ly smit­ten with Elton John.

In Praise of the Pork Road

One of the many high­lights of our trip to Puer­to Rico was our excur­sion to the sto­ried Pork Road. For­give the hor­ri­ble pic­ture, but it’s a whole pig roast­ing on a spit.

The Pork Road winds up a hill with pork pur­vey­ors lin­ing both sides. We hit two lechonaras and ate all sorts of porky good­ness: blood sausage, stom­ach, skin, ears and suc­cu­lent pork!

Best part? Not a tourist trap! It remind­ed me of Gilbertsville farm­ers’ mar­ket Zern’s in its heyday.

I Met Ryan Madson at Yo La Tengo

Proof that Philly’s still weird: I met Phillies’ set-up man Ryan Mad­son at the Troc’s down­stairs bar at Yo La Ten­go last Thurs­day night.

He was floored by the band, call­ing it “pure music,” ask­ing if they were on iTunes and was just an all-around sweet guy. He also shared that his dad played in a band like that in the ’70s. (Ryan, if you ever find this post, can we talk about your dad’s band?)

Me? I played it cool. You see, Ryan Mad­son is one of just two Phillies that I have a rehearsed sto­ry about their career. My Mad­son moment? 7 relief innings against the Mets. He gave up a homer to Bel­tran in the 13th, but I told him that he real­ly showed some­thing there. Gut­ting it out as a strug­gling young pitch­er ain’t easy any­where, let alone Philly, but he did it. Can’t wait until he’s our clos­er in 2012.

Yo La Ten­go? Pre­dictably great, although the cru­el wheel (pic­tured above) fell on Sounds of Sci­ence, Part 2. Ouch. Def­i­nite­ly a “for fans only” set that was a slow burn. They fin­ished with a daz­zling sec­ond set that blew Ryan Mad­son’s mind. “Does­n’t it sound like 6 peo­ple are on stage?”