Tonight on the show the Oddballs welcome the local artist known as Not Art, whose distinctive tags can be found re-appropriating overlooked or forgotten pieces of our urban landscape. We’ll discuss the message expressed in this graffiti-based artform, and we’ll find out what’s next the elusive Not Art. To tune in just press play below. #WeAreAllOddballs
Join us for the livest new podcast to hit the internet, The Oddball Show, a collaboration between JP Lime Productions and Oddball Magazine. Tonight the Oddballs welcome John Garrett, guitarist and vocalist for the band So Sol. We’ll talk about the music scene in and around Boston (specifically Somerville), how it works being in a band with your spouse, and his new project entitled ‘Hold Your Own’, coming your way in July.
#WeAreAllOddballs
So Sol Links
Shin splints
Turning 32
Losing everything
But giving it back
To you
Writing in a Boston mind set
Letting the sunshine in
a little bit at a time
Hobbled onto the bus today
Sometimes I feel like
There’s no reason left to try
But though my pain in my legs
I still can breathe through smoky lungs
And like Yoda says and
imagine this in his accent
Do or do not. There is no try.
And just like that the Boston skyline appears and I look over to see a woman
holding a cake
And it reminds me that
somewhere and sometime in the world
There’s always
milestones and reasons to celebrate
I look up again from the poem
I have invested in
And smile
And realize that life isn’t always sunshine
And sometimes the rain is
too hard
And sometimes there’s less light
but even in the dark, the street lights guide the children home
I’m learning to embrace each minute
Because I feel blessed
To be able to write like this
Even if it doesn’t make a million
I let out the ink out of my veins
And that’s what keeps me living.
It’s 7:13 in the Am
I sit half awake on the train
There is a woman in the handicapped seat
She is using two needles weaving together a mustard colored sweater or scarf, or maybe a new hat for a loved one
Maybe it’s a newborn’s hat to keep him warm in this, the seventh of March,
She exits the train. Who else is here to fill my morning void?
I just see a lot of tired faces.
The gentleman next to me is reading the Boston Herald, I kind of want to ask him about yesterday’s Bruins game.
I resist this urge and the train tunnels out to overlook the Charles and amazing high rise buildings, sky scrapers, a beautiful morning view..
Soon I’ll exit the train and wait for the switch to Braintree
this will be the last time I see my reflection, for about five minutes
There is a girl I know named Joy I work with she never truly seems joyful,
I wonder if it’s because this train is taking us to a joyless place .
Having power in general is an awesome thing, control, influence, actual authority, to wield enough power to slow Government to a crawl, having the power to twist an issue so adeptly that it becomes the fault of the reformists for wanting to fix a problem, employing it to use victimization, religion and bloviation to drown out common sense, the power of the Republicans. They have in eighteen short months inverted their standing from a defeated, out of touch, classist, frat party of white old rich men, to a rabid reformation that is spreading because they are willing to shut down the Government to stand up for what they believe in, and we have let them. Do we as Americans have such a short attention span that we forget, these men who rail against Obama-nomics and the Pelosi-Reed Agenda and are all for changing direction, these people who tell us how sour Washington has gotten and how they can’t even recognize their own Country, these are the very same men who made it what it is. No lie, of the 15 Republican Senators who won election in 2008 with President Barrack Obama, 12 of them were incumbents, that means they had already been working in Washington for at least 6 years, it’s not like they were new to town. And of those years, what a great six years they were, during their term they passed the stimulus bill (that they themselves rail against), they lowered taxes on the rich while running up deficits, passed the Patriot Act, limited class action lawsuits, made filing for Bankruptcy harder, presided over the start of the Iraq War and the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Now these men are rallied to stop Obama and his henchmen from passing Healthcare Reform or regulating Wall Street, they are in fits to prevent him from closing down Guantanamo Bay and allowing gays to serve freely, with rally cries of “No-Bama” and “Don’t Tread on Me” they grew louder as he saved the auto industry. As Republicans fight against all these reforms, the only thing it proves is that they will do nothing but help their corporate friends at the expense of all else.
Now you may be offended at my continued use of the word “men” in describing the Republicans, but they are, of the 41 Republican Senators only 4 are women and in the house it’s just as bad, 179 seats and only 17 women, so that fraternity of old white men, hasn’t changed all that much. I’m not generalizing here, 9.5% of the members of the House are black and there are no blacks at all in the Senate, of the 541 elected members of Congress there is not one single Republican who is African American. Republicans are, despite the fact that they Parade out Michelle Bachman and Sara Palin, Allan Keyes and Michael Steele, a party of old white men that hasn’t changed. So we are led to believe that the same old party with the same old men is somehow new and renewed and won’t just act in the interests of the CEOs they’ve served for so long, that somehow they’ve seen the light, they’ve been saved by this renewed sense of Patriotism and they are filled with hope and change, well in the words of your spokes model, “How’s that whole hopey, changey thing workin out for ya?”
