Daily Loaf

Routes Music is a documentary film acting as a roving music census, taking in the true musical passions (and disgusts) of the American people. We’re traveling all across the country, stopping along the way to interview local bands, take footage of live performances and chat with anyone and everyone. Learn more about the documentary here; check out all previous entries here.

“Where eeez yer pipe?”

A 6’4 security guard towered over me, glaring.

“Where eeez yer pipe?” he repeated in a thick Islands accent.

“What?” I replied, not sure he really just asked me what I think he just asked me.

“Where eeez yer pipe?” he asked again.

“My what?” I said again, still shocked.

“Yer pipe. Yer pipe.”

Now he was aggravated. I’m enjoying feigning ignorance.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, man.”

The guard switches tactics.

“Drugs?”

I smile.

“No, no drugs.”

“OK, go ahead.”

So began my very first experience at an extended-day music festival, and only my second time ever seeing the seminal jam band, Phish. Luckily, the rest of the three-day fest at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, Calif. went smoother than my entry.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was floating in a black sea. The whole earth was water. I thought…uhh, shit. The sky was beautiful, dark, space as far as the spirit can conceive…stars, galaxies, gas clouds all perfectly visible. Then a HUGE fireball (what, a sun?) approaches, nay, careens through space at my head. I dive into the water, wondering how deep I can go, how long i can hold my breath in this wonderfully dark, safe abyss of wet. And I have trouble going down. I float. Dammit! Why am I floating? I need to swim down to safety! Well then I think, Oh, I should breathe … need air … and then notice I can breathe just fine in the water. The fireball hits … and all goes dark. I am still breathing, chillin’ under water. I guess the fireball put itself out in the water. The stars shine again … Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever heard the Vietnam-era quote, “war is not healthy for children and other living things?” It is a staunchly obvious and painstakingly reasonable appeal that cuts to the ethical core and casualties of war.  I read an article this week that reminded me of it, but instead of war, the murderous culprit in this story is climate change.

A new report by the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) says that global warming already kills about 300,000 people a year.  If that projection is not startling enough– or if you have more of an economic mind, and are not much swayed by stacks of human figures—the report also says that climate change costs around $125 billion in economic losses annually.
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Fire in the desert with intermediary
ocean dips happened one day
in my summer abode.

Opposing circumstances fell with
tectonic force in this brief section
of life, she was everything to me
as I to her and uncharted emotions
found my definition of perfection.

But the same worldly force that dropped
us in
this realm of unambiguous crazy passion love,
in a matter of a few full shadow clocks had our
grasp sliced and our reach shortened even faster. Read the rest of this entry »

And we thought the Glazers weren’t paying attention.

In a terse statement on their website, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers announced just before 6 p.m today that they had fired head coach Jon Gruden and general manager Bruce Allen .

Here’s the team’s statement:

“We will be forever grateful to Jon for bringing us the Super Bowl title, and we thank Bruce for his contributions to our franchise, however after careful consideration, we feel that this decision is in the best interest of our organization moving forward.”

Maybe the move doesn’t qualify as a shocker, but it’s definitely a surprise.

This is not the way head coach firings generally go down in the NFL. The rumor mill usually churns and the community has a sense of what’s in the offing. Locally, the sports media was definitely not abuzz with the idea that Gruden was on his way out. Further, most coaches are dismissed within a few days after the end of a season. Gruden’s ouster comes 19 days after the Bucs final game, a home loss to the Oakland Raiders that eliminated them from the playoffs.

My hunch is that the Glazer family came to the decision after considerable thought and deliberation. The owners have always been a group that seemed detached from the Tampa Bay community, but you get the sense that they were hearing the Gruden/Allen-bashing that was taking place on sports radio and in other forums.

There were a lot of empty seats in Raymond James Stadium this season, even though the Bucs sprinted to a record of 9-3 (only to lost their last four games in a historic collapse). The fans have been in a generally dour mood since the season’s end, and maybe top team brass realized it and took action.

So the topic of the moment — other than speculation about who will replace the coach and GM — is: Should Gruden and Allen have gotten the axe?

If I were in the owners’ chair, I would not have pulled the plug now. The late-season cave-in obscures the notion that the Bucs 9-7 record was about what fans should’ve expected, given the team’s level of talent. The Bucs put a roster together for the 2008 season that left an estimated $35-million of space under the NFL salary cap. If Allen was relucant to spend it, then he should certainly have been dismissed.

But there’s been a lot of speculation that the Glazers, leveraged to the teeth with their ownership of the British soccer franchise Manchester United, were running the Bucs on the cheap. If that is indeed the case, then the fault lies with ownership. Allen, hamstrung by tight purse-strings, could only do so much, and I honestly think Gruden did a decent job this year with the players he had.

That said, the Gruden act had gotten pretty stale after seven seasons at the Bucs’ helm. Some new blood will be welcomed.

In the end, it appears that Jon Gruden finally ran out of the good will he had earned by bringing the long-suffering Tampa Bay Bucs a Super Bowl championship.