Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Snow (Hey Oh)" (2006)

Runnin’ through the field

Where all my tracks will be concealed

So how’s the weather where you are today?  

At the 2 or 3 Lines World Headquarters campus, we’re up to our ass in snow.  (Speaking of our ass, we’re freezing it off as well. ) 

As Charles Dudley Warner famously said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”  (You probably thought that Mark Twain famously said that, but he didn’t – that quote came from Warner, who was a close friend of Twain.)

My favorite weather-related quote comes from Oscar Wilde:

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.  

True dat.

Here’s a really annoying quote about the weather from the 19th-century English polymath, John Ruskin:

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

I call bullsh*t on John Ruskin.

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I referred to Ruskin as a “polymath,” which is a term used to describe someone who is learned in many different fields. (“Renaissance man” is another term used to describe such a person.) 

Ruskin was an influential art critic.  But he also wrote on geology, mythology, crystallography, ornithology, and economics .  

Ruskin was also a talented draftsman whose three-volume treatise, The Stones of Venice, contains detailed drawings of many Venetian structures.  (Ruskin thought Venice’s architectural heritage was at risk, and wanted to preserve it – at least on paper.)

John Ruskin’s drawing of
the Ducal Palace in Venice 

Ruskin was no fan of industrial capitalism, which he believed polluted not only the environment but also the soul.  He championed many things that are now viewed as standard elements of the modern welfare state — like universal education, a minimum wage, and urban green spaces.

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Law students take classes covering a broad array of legal subjects.  

But the explosive proliferation of laws and regulations over the past several decades have made it impossible for lawyers to be legal jacks of all trades.  Just as most doctors focus on one part of the body, most attorneys limit their practice to one particular legal area – whether that’s corporate law, or patent law, or family law, or criminal law, or something else.

As lawyers get older, they often find themselves narrowing the breadth of their practice in order to deepen their knowledge of their speciality.

One of my law partners formulated a succinct description of how a lawyer’s practice tends to become increasingly specialized as time passed.  “We learn more and more about less and less,” he used to say, “until we know almost everything about almost nothing.”

That’s it in a nutshell.  A legal jack of all trades is almost certainly a master of none.  Even John Ruskin would have to specialize if he were a 21st-century lawyer.

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“Snow (Hey Oh)” was the third single from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2006 double album, Stadium Arcadium.

Stadium Arcadium was recorded at a Laurel Canyon house known as “The Mansion,” which was owned by record producer Rick Rubin.  

The first album ever recorded at “The Mansion” was RHCP’s best record ever, Blood Sugar Sex Magik.  Others who have recorded there include Jay-Z (“99 Problems”), LCD Soundsystem (“Drunk Girls”), and System of a Down (who recorded both the Mezmerize and Hypnotize albums there).

Click here to listen to “Snow (Hey Oh).”

Click here to buy “Snow (Hey Oh)” from Amazon.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – "My Friends" (1995)

My friends are so distressed

And standing on the brink of emptiness

Can you believe it?  2 or 3 lines is TWELVE YEARS OLD today!

They say time flies when you’re having fun.  And they are right, aren’t they?  Because it feels like those twelve years have flown by.

Of course, each anniversary of my wildly popular little blog is a good news-bad news thing because every 2 or 3 lines anniversary brings us closer to the end of 2 or 3 lines.   

Think about it.  Every 2 or 3 lines anniversary brings us closer to the end of me, right?  And make no mistake about it – without me, 2 or 3 lines is nothing.

To paraphrase Louis XIV, “Le 2 or 3 lines, c’est moi!”

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I know that all you loyal 2 or 3 lines fans “are so distressed and standing on the brink of emptiness” thinking about that awful day when 2 or 3 lines is no more – which explains why I chose the lines from today’s featured song that are quoted at the beginning of this post.  

Please know that I am doing everything I can to put off my personal end of days.  I always buckle my seat belt before driving my car – especially if I’ve been drinking – and I get a colonoscopy every five years whether I need one or not. 

I’ve reserved a cryogenic tank three 

down from Ted Williams’ cryogenic tank

Of course, taking precautions like those will only keep the Grim Reaper away from the door for so long.  So I’ve arranged for my brain to be cryogenically frozen post mortem transplanted into a donor body when science has advanced to the point of making such a resurrection possible.  (I’m thinking I’ll pay the extra charge for getting my brain transplanted into a young female body – that sounds like it would be fun!) 

I can’t wait to meet Ted Williams!

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Some say that the number “13” is unlucky.  I think not . . . and neither will you once you’ve seen the many, many wonderful surprises that 2 or 3 lines has in store for you in the upcoming year!

We’ll kick off the year with a multi-post interview of . . . wait for it . . . ME!

That interview will be conducted by . . . yes, you guessed it . . . ME!

Yours truly is certainly the most interesting man in the world as far as yours truly is concerned.  And who better to interview yours truly than . . . YOURS TRULY!

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Click here to listen to today’s featured record, which was released on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1995 album, One Hot Minute.   (I have to admit that it is a pretty girly song.  So be it.)

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Bicycle Song" (2006)

How could I forget to mention

The bicycle is a good invention

Instead of waking up in the middle of the night so I can get to the mall early for Black Friday, I sleep in on the day after Thanksgiving and then ride my bike to my office.

This year’s ride didn’t get off to a good start.  My almost-new bike computer – it’s really just a glorified speedometer/odometer – has had intermittent issues since I bought it.  When I saddled up and started pedaling this morning, the computer was dead.

Fortunately, I had parked at a Metro station that’s very close to the store where I bought my bike, so I took it there for a quick look-see.  It was only the THIRD time I had taken the bike in so they could fix the computer. 

The technician looked it over, did his thing, and told me everything was working.  And everything was working – for a couple of hours.  The computer functioned perfectly all the way to the McDonald’s where I traditionally stop for a mid-ride repast.  

This meal was certainly a big moment for me

But after finished I chowing down and got back on my bike, the computer was dead once more.  I called the bike store and gave them what for.  

I would tell you which bike store it was, but the reach and influence of 2 or 3 lines is yuge, and a negative review from me would result in the store’s losing most its business and being forced into  bankruptcy.  

I don’t want to be responsible for the store’s employees losing their jobs – especially not at this time of year – even though they are a bunch of clueless louts who can’t get my effing computer to work!

Speaking of McDonald’s, I saw something very odd there while I was filling the tank with a double cheeseburger.

At a nearby table, a well-dressed, normal-looking femme d’un certain age was assembling a very special lunch.  It appeared that she had bought a McChicken sandwich, a small side salad, and a couple of orders of Chicken McNuggets.  I think the Chicken McNuggets ended up on the sandwich’s whole-wheat bun, as did several lettuce leaves from the salad.  (She placed those lettuce leaves on the sandwich with infinite care – it took her forever to get her customized sandwich shipshape.)  

Plus she had a small bag of Utz potato chips, which I assume she brought from home.  (McDonald’s doesn’t sell potato chips.)

I figure she spent about $15 for that chicken sandwich.  Hey . . . it don’t make no never mind to me, right?

Here’s a picture of the lady:

I hope she enjoyed her lunch

I wanted to get a closer look at her lunch, but I thought would have been pushing it:

If you think that woman was crazy, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.

My last rest stop on my post-Thanksgiving ride is always in a park in Georgetown that fronts the Potomac River.  There’s a nice view of the river and Key Bridge, and it’s good place for hitting the water bottle one final time.

A view of the Potomac and Key Bridge

As I coasted to a stop, I noticed a thirty-something woman bent over at the edge of some shrubbery. She was holding a little girl in a very odd way: she had her hands under the thighs of the child, who was sitting up with her feet dangling above the ground.  It looked almost like the child was sitting on the seat of a playground swing, except that her mother’s arms were functioning as the swing’s seat.

I thought that maybe they were playing a game, or that the mother and child were doing some kind of odd exercise or gymnastic move.  Did you ever sit on the floor back-to-back with a friend and stand up by pushing hard against the friend’s back while the friend pushed back?  This mother and child didn’t look like they were doing that, but they could have been doing some other kind of trick.

After a second or two, I realized why the mother was holding her daughter in that fashion:

The mystery is solved

I don’t know what in the hell this mother was thinking.  We were in an exposed area of the park, with plenty of foot and bicycle traffic, and she and her little girl couldn’t have been more exposed – it wasn’t like they were crouching behind some greenery so that you couldn’t really see them.

I immediately averted my gaze, and found myself peering at an of scientific machinery, which turned out to be a “bubbler system” gauge used to monitor the height of the Potomac River.

Here’s the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) explanation of how a bubbler gauge works:

In a bubbler system, an orifice is attached securely below the water surface and connected to a pressure-sensing device by a length of plastic tubing.  Pressurized gas (usually nitrogen or air) is forced through the tubing and out the orifice.  Because the pressure in the tubing is a function of the depth of water above the orifice, a change in the water level of a stream or lake produces a corresponding change in the pressure in the tubing.  Pressure sensors, such as mechanical manometers or electronic pressure transducers, convert the pressure in the tubing into height of water above a set datum level referred to as gage height.  Graphic recorders, digital punch-tape recorders, or electronic data loggers record the gage height either continuously or at preset time intervals, usually 15 minutes.  Solar-recharged batteries power the electrical equipment. . . .

Gaging-station operation changed significantly in 1982 with the introduction of data-collection platforms (DCP's).  The DCP collects gage-height data and transmits it to the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) that relays the data to a ground station and then to USGS offices for dissemination. 

A schematic diagram of a bubbler gauge

(Does the USGS really think that “gauge” is spelled g-a-g-e?)

It all seemed like an awfully complicated way of doing something very simple.  

A sign on the kiosk had instructions for anyone who wanted to know just how high the Potomac was.  Having some kind of digital readout that made that information instantly available to passers-by would have been too simple.  Instead, you were instructed to send a text to a government e-mail address along with an eight-digit code that identified your particular location.

I sent a text – don’t ask me why – and never got a response.  Why am I not surprised?

And why couldn’t the government have saved a lot of your money by installing something like this instead:

If it ain't broke, etc.

A simple stick with some numbers painted on it would work just fine, although it doesn’t come equipped with a satellite transmitter.

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“Bicycle Song” was a previously unreleased track that was added to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2002 By the Way album when that album was made available for download from iTunes and other online retailers in 2006. 

Here’s “Bicycle Song”:

Click below to order the song from Amazon: 

Red Hot Chili Peppers -- "Dani California" (2006)

Getting born in the state of Mississippi

Papa was a copper and mama was a hippie 

A Mississippi policeman for a father and a hippie for a mother?  No wonder the heroine of "Dani California" had problems fitting in.

Dani California certainly got around.  She broke rocks in an Alabama prison, broke the law in Louisiana, and robbed a bank in Indiana.  Dani tried to make it to Minnesota, but was shot down by a North Dakota lawman before she got there.

I'm guessing Dani California wasn't her real name.  The song never places her outside of the Central Time Zone, but you have to think she made it to California at some point.  Otherwise, her moniker doesn't make a lot of sense.

"Dani California" is a single from the RHCP's ninth studio album, Stadium Arcadium, which was released in 2006.  It was a top ten hit in the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, and most European countries.  It only made it to #57 in France.  (What is it with those people anyway?)

Was Dani California based on a real person?  Many people believe that she is a composite of a number of past lovers of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' lead singer, Anthony Kiedis.  (We'll refer to the band as the "RHCP" from here on.)

Dani is also mentioned in the title track of the RHCP's previous album, By the Way:

Dani the girl 

Is singing songs to me

Beneath the marquee

Of her soul

In 2007, Showtime debuted a new television series titled Californication -- which just happens to be not only the name of the 1999 RHCP hit single that was featured in the previous 2 or 3 lines, but also the title of the hugely successful album of the same name.  (Click here to read that post.)  It sold five million copies in the U.S. alone, and over 15 million copies worldwide.

Californication DVDs

Not surprisingly, the RHCP lawyered up when they heard about the Showtime series.  Click here if you'd like to read the complaint they filed against Showtime and the producer of the Californication series.  (I can't imagine why you would want to read it, but some of my readers are very odd people.)

The case was settled out of court.  Litigation is very expensive, and it's difficult to justify spending the kind of money you have to spend to go to trial unless you have an open-and-shut case.  In addition, it's not clear that the band would have been entitled to much in the way of damages even if they had prevailed at trial.

The RHCP certainly didn't invent the word "Californication."  Time magazine had used it in 1972 in an article about the fears of non-Californians that the rapid population growth and resulting urban sprawl, traffic, and other problems that were beginning to rear their ugly heads in California would spill over into their states.

Oregonians were particularly anti-California.  The creator and executive producer of the Showtime TV series claimed that he had gotten the idea for the title of the series not from the RHCP album, but from the "Don't Californicate Oregon" bumper stickers that were popular in Oregon in the seventies.

However, the Showtime series also featured a character named Dani California, which makes you wonder whether the producer doth protest too much.  (As far as I know, Oregon cars weren't sporting Dani California bumper stickers in the seventies.)

Rachel Miner as "Dani California"
in Showtime's Californication

By the way, the titles given to the novels that the main character of the Californication TV show had supposedly written (God Hates Us All, Season in the Abyss, and South of Heaven) are also the titles of Slayer albums.  And individual episodes of the show were named after songs by Bob Seger ("Turn the Page") and the Sex Pistols ("Filthy Lucre") and the Martin Scorsese movie about the Band's final concert ("The Last Waltz").

Of course, people who live in glass houses are the pot calling the kettle black.  "Dani California" sounds suspiciously similar to Tom Petty's 1993 hit, "Mary Jane's Last Dance."  (Both songs were produced by Rick Rubin.)

The video for "Dani California" is very entertaining.  It simply shows the group performing the song on stage, but there are a number of costume changes.  

Flea channeling Bootsy Collins
in the "Dani California" music video

The band's various outfits provide a sort of illustrated history (in chronological order) of different pop music genres -- beginning with rockabilly (think Elvis) and progressing through the British Invasion (think the Beatles), psychedelic rock, funk (Parliament/Funkadelic was obviously the inspiration here), glam rock, punk, Goth, hair metal, and grunge (as personified by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana on MTV's "Unplugged").

Here's the music video for "Mary Jane's Last . . ." -- oops, I mean "Dani California":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

Red Hot Chili Peppers -- "Californication" (1999)

It's understood

That Hollywood

Sells Californication

We're going to try something a little different today.  Pay close attention, boys and girls.

1.  "I Wonder as I Wander"

"I Wonder as I Wander" is a Christmas carol that folklorist and singer John Jacob Niles wrote in 1933.  It's based on a song fragment he heard a girl sing at a meeting of evangelical Christians in an Appalachian town.  

I mention "I Wonder as I Wander" because it is an apt description of how the typical 2 or 3 lines post is created.  There's a lot of wondering on the part of the author, and there's even more wandering.  

Click here to listen to a performance of this song by a children's chorus.  

2. Portemanteau

The literal meaning of the French portmanteau word portemanteau is "it carries the cloak."  The plural of that word, of course is portmanteaux.  

3.  Portmanteau

A "portmanteau" -- I'm not sure why the "e" at the end of the first syllable of the French word disappeared -- is a coat tree or coat rack:  

It also means a type of luggage that opens into two equal halves:

4.  Portmanteau words

A "portmanteau word" is a combination of two (or more) words or morphemes (semantic units that may or may not be stand-alone words) into a new word.  For example, "brunch" is a portmanteau word that combines "breakfast" and "lunch," and means a meal that has certain characteristics of both.  (FYI, "brunch" was first used in the British humor magazine, Punch, in 1896.)  "Spork," "infomercial," and "turducken" are other examples of portmanteau words.

Some city names are portmanteau words -- e.g., Texarkana (which is divided by the Texas-Arkansas state line), Calexico (a California city on the Mexican border), and Mexicali (a Mexican city on the California border).

The names of "supercouples" are often turned into portmanteau words -- "Billary," "Bennifer," "Brangelina," and "TomKat" are examples.

"Frankenword" is another term for a portmanteau word, but usually connotes a somewhat awkward or clumsy one.

Don't confuse portmanteau words and syllabic abbreviations, which are words formed by combining the initial syllables of other words -- e.g., "Nabisco" (originally the "National Biscuit Company") or "SoHo" (a New York City neighborhood located south of Houston Street)

5.  Californication

"Californication" (a portmanteau word that combines "California" and "fornication") was originally used in Time magazine several decades ago.  It had nothing to do with sex per se -- rather, it was a pejorative term used by residents of other states (particularly Oregonians) to describe the unbridled growth and development of California in the fifties, sixties, and seventies.  

"Don't Californicate Oregon" bumper stickers began to appear on the cars of Oregon residents who didn't cotton to California-style urban sprawl and traffic, and were afraid that immigration into the state (particularly immigration from California) would spoil the idyllic way of life enjoyed by residents of the Beaver State.

6.  Californication

Californication, which was the Red Hot Chili Peppers' seventh studio album, was released in 1999.  It was produced by the legendary Rick Rubin.

"Californication" is track six on the Californication album.  It's not really about California as much as it's about Los Angeles (especially Hollywood), and it doesn't have much good to say about it.

"Californication" is about the gap between reality and the myths that Hollywood has sold to the rest of the world.  The movies are full of special effects and computer-generated imagery ("CGI").  But the unreality of southern California goes well beyond the world of the movies.  L.A. is also the plastic surgery capital of the world, and if you live there, it's no big thing to "pay your surgeon very well/to break the spell of aging."

7.  "First-born unicorn"

"First-born unicorn," a line from "Californication," appears to be a reference to Dorothy Stratten, the 1980 Playboy "Playmate of the Year," who was murdered by her estranged husband after she left him and moved in with Peter Bogdanovich, who had directed Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, and several other movies.  Stratten was 20 years old when she died.

Dorothy Stratten

Bogdanovich, who was 41 at the time, later wrote a book about Stratten titled The Killing of the Unicorn.  I haven't read the book, and I don't know if it explains why Bogdanovich refers to Stratten as a unicorn.  The unicorn is a legendary creature that is a symbol of purity and grace, and I assume that Bogdanovich felt that it was a fitting metaphor for Stratten.

In 1988, Bogdanovich -- who was then 49 -- married Dorothy's younger sister, 20-year-old Louise Stratten.  (It has been reported that he began sending her expensive gifts in 1982, when she was a 14-year-old junior high student in British Columbia, where Dorothy had grown up.)  They got divorced in 2001.  

Peter Bogdanovich and Louise Stratten

Dorothy Stratten is the subject of a number of songs other than "Californication," including two songs by Bryan Adams.  (Both Stratten and Adams are natives of Canada.)  

Two movies about her brief life and death were produced in the early eighties.  Jamie Lee Curtis portrayed her in Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story, which aired on NBC in 1981.  Bob Fosse directed Star 80, a 1983 theatrical release that starred Mariel Hemingway.

8.  Mariel Hemingway's breast implants

In the 1982 movie, Personal Best, Mariel Hemingway portrayed a college track star.  If you've seen it, you know that Hemingway had an athletic figure with very small breasts.  

Mariel Hemingway in Personal Best

Before appearing in Star 80 the very next year, Hemingway had breast augmentation -- she didn't go for stripper-sized implants, but her breasts are significantly larger in Star 80 than they were in Personal Best.  Hemingway later denied that she got the implants for the movie, but you have to believe that she got them in hopes of giving her movie career a shot in the arm.  (Hemingway's implants later ruptured, and she had them removed.)  

Après les implants

I'm going to get on my soapbox for a very brief rant.  It's astonishing to me that beautiful women like Mariel Hemingway feel the need to have breast augmentation performed.

Apparently there were males out there who didn't think Mariel Hemingway was attractive and sexy because her breasts were smaller than average.  In my opinion, she didn't need breast implants -- those men needed brain implants.

9.  Californication (part two)

That's enough wondering and wandering for one 2 or 3 lines post.

Next time, we'll introduce you to the Showtime television series that's also titled Californication and discuss another Red Hot Chili Peppers song that seems to be very relevant to that show.

Here's "Californication":

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from Amazon:

Red Hot Chili Peppers -- "Suck My Kiss" (1991)

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

Chicka chicka dee

Do me like a banshee!

When I made out my 1991 Christmas wish list, I asked for a compact disc player.  CD players had first appeared in the United States in 1983, and had become relatively common by 1991.  

I'm not what you would call an early adopter by temperament.  Plus I had about a zillion LPs.  But eventually even I could read the handwriting on the wall – CDs were here to stay.  

Here's a picture of the JVC XL-V241 compact disc player I was given as a Christmas gift in 1991:

I was also given two CDs.  One was the digital version of the Beach Boys' 1966 album, Pet Sounds – the greatest pop album ever recorded.

The other CD on my Christmas list that year was Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the fifth studio album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which had been released a few months earlier:

I didn't know it at the time, but the album's producer was hip-hop pioneer, Rick Rubin, who not only produced a number of notable rap and rock albums, but also Johnny Cash's late albums.

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I asked for Blood Sugar Sex Magik primarily because I thought "Give It Away" – the first single from that album – was silly!  It was a unique song – just as intense and heavy as Rage Against The Machine's music, but much catchier.  (It doesn't pound you into submission like a RATM song does.)

Blood Sugar Sex Magic wasn't a one-trick pony.  The next single, "Under the Bridge," had a completely different sound, as did the very underrated "Breaking the Girl" – it's 6/8 time signature gave it an irresistible rhythmic momentum.

But there can be no doubt that the ultimate kick-ass song on this album is "Suck My Kiss."  I can't think of a more in-your-face song.  It's loud and relentess, but also playful.  I'm guessing Beavis and Butthead loved it.

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By the way, this is 250th 2 or 3 lines post.  At our current pace, we'll get to the 500th post in 2013 and the 1000th in 2016.   

Click here to watch the official music video for "Suck My Kiss."  (Man, these dudes have a lot of tattoos. 

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from Amazon: