Tag: Tom Waits

All quiet on the western front

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Eggs and sausage and a side of toast

Coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy

Chili in a bowl with burgers and fries

What kind of pies? — “Eggs and Sausage,” Tom Waits

Going to Interbike as a “cycling journalist” is a lot like deliberately overeating. Everything that goes in must eventually come back out, one way or another. Then it’s stand back, boys, she’s gonna go a gusher.

Outdoor Demo is but an appetizer, a trifle. It’s too hot to think, and people are either fresh from getting settled into their hotel rooms and routines and/or discovering with dismay which key piece of pro equipment they forgot to fetch with them from Podunk (MiFi, digital recorder, camera, Visa card). So they nibble around the edges out there in the desert outside Boulder City, ride a bike or two or three, gulp a beer in the VIP tent, take a deep breath.

Tomorrow the show opens for real at the Sands Convention Center. I recommend wearing Wellingtons, a slicker and a welder’s mask.

• Late update: Meanwhile, Lennard Zinn waxes rhapsodic over a $2,600 wheelset. Well, he’s waxing something, anyway. Jesus.

Tom Waits for no one

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Here’s an early present for you — the Los Angeles Times reports that Tom Waits may (or may not) produce a new studio album in 2010.

In the meantime, the maestro has already given us some good quotes regarding the writing of music. Quoth Waits: “It’s like diamond-cutting or hunting for bear or dropping out of a tree. Sometimes, it’s like ping-pong. Other times it’s like operating on a flamingo. Every song’s different. Some are like empty swimming pools, and you’ve got to be the water.”

• Extra Credit Bonus Celebrity Artist Quotage: Here’s Terry Gilliam on making movies: “Once the voices are in your head, it’s either make a movie or kill a lot of people. That’s probably what I should be doing to get money for the movies: saying, ‘If you don’t give me the money, I will have to slaughter large numbers of people to deal with these voices in my head.'” Gilliam and Waits worked together on “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” which looks seriously weird (gee, imagine that; weirdness from Waits and Gilliam).