If I should fall with grace from lofts ....

Now that everyone in America can record video at will, I give thanks for the times when unguarded moments are not captured and affixed to YouTube.

The after-party to Roy and Kat's wedding turned into one of those booze-saturated celebrations filled with instant friends, college football debates, an acoustic guitar passed around the porch. Plus, we had plenty of good red wine to liven the conversation.

People started climbing up to the decorative loft, and one of the partygoers was kind enough to boost the rest of us.

After about 30 seconds of staring down, I wanted out. Others were already planning, but some little voice told me I should ease myself over the side and hop down, even though we were around 9 feet off the ground.

A few more minutes, I could have eased down - but when have I ever been easy on myself. Facing the wall, I climbed as far as possible, then let go.

Mid-fall, I realized the floor was three feet farther than my drunken estimate. By necessity, I went limp and crashed onto the linoleum, landing in a heap on the floor as the room abruptly went silent. Without delay, I sprang to my feet in a suddenly-shocked kitchen. My estimate also didn't account for the kitchen table, which my head avoided by a foot or so.

Thanks to the morning run, I awoke on Sunday with no clue to whether my sore body come from the tumble or the new mileage on my feet. On Monday, the difference between running pains and falling wounds was much clearer.

Yet for some voyeuristic reason, I wish watch that lovely fall again and again on YouTube. Damn you, Technology.

Newman's Gone

How appropriate that I carbed up for my 15K with pasta and a jar of Newman's Own Sockarooni sauce.

The rail-skinny Paul Newman photographed earlier this summer finally gave up his ghost.

I've written about Paul Newman before, so I won't rehash much. Piercing blue eyes, devilish smile, intensely private.

As for quintessential Newman movies, there's too many to list - Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, watching him go toe to toe with Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Recently I saw The Verdict, another unforgettable Sidney Lumet film about a washed-up, ambulance-chasing attorney rolling the dice and trying to do the right thing. Slate is spot-on in its analysis of his speech from that film.

Newman was about as private as a star of his magnitude. Sure, he knew those five greenhornes from Ohio were staring at him as he walked out of a Westport, Conn. auto parts store. My parents insisted he stay until he left. I've yet to forgive them for it.

While that was my first on-the-street encounter with someone famous, that isn't my favorite Paul Newman moment.

Few people were better at a cameo, and that's where my favorite moment came from.

Newman popped into the Ed Sullivan Theatre on David Letterman's opening night at CBS - only to ask Dave, "Where the hell are the singing cats?" Newman put his smart-ass side on display during the closing credits, when he overshadowed Dave by waving from the backdrop.

Even funnier was his brief cameo on The Simpsons, when Homer tries to find a product mascot to obsess about. When he spies a bottle of Newmans' Own, the label becomes animated and says, "Homer, I'll tell you what I told Redford - It ain't gonna happen."

Posting famine

1. I’ve been busy with freelance, biking to work, mandolin and finding the company of friends. Success has been reported on all fronts.

2. I’m turning out two posts a week for WNEW.com. So music writing at this site will be scant for a while – local Nashville concert reviews will still be posted here and at nashvillefeed.com.

The exception will be one massive Calexico, TV on the Radio and Jenny Lewis review once I get Acid Tongue from Grimey’s.

3.That is all. Enjoy your weekend as much as I plan to enjoy Roy and Kat’s wedding, plus the 9.3 mile run scheduled for the early hours of Saturday.

My Vinyl Romance

Admit it – some awful thoughts trampled through your head upon reading that title. Not a chance – the details about the fairer sex and myself don't belong in the blogosphere.

Beside, the truth is the same no matter what city I land in. There will always be a planet of girls willing to ignore the messages I leave.

But I digress - the vinyl of my desire has nothing carnal to it. You might say I’m digesting licorice pizza once again.

Thanks to a lack of the new Calexico CD at Grimey’s, I bought the vinyl version – which included a handy download code.

A record plus an MP3 code. Get out the coffin nails for the compact disc. I will buy no more CDs forever … so long as the record comes with a download code.

The audiophiles at work have gotten to me. Analog has a warmer, more rounded sound than either the compact disc or the MP3. Nor is it intentionally loud like digital-only releases.

TV on the Radio. Jenny Lewis. Blitzen Trapper. It’s like 2006’s favorite albums all over again, but on a more listener friendly format.

Then it turns to revisionist history. Saturday’s Sidewalk Sale at the Great Escape yielded copies of Songs From the Big Chair (always a good record after meeting a nice girl), Diesel and Dust (“Dead Heart” is the greatest song about indigenous people ever) and Bruce Springsteen’s much maligned Tunnel of Love (Don’t you get it? He had to change course after Born in the U.S.A).

Even better, a two-album Groucho Marx set stood out among the crates. One of these years I will go out on Halloween with a grease paint moustache and eyebrows, so a chance to bone up on the man’s classic material is essential.

The Groucho album might have lacked an MP3 code, but I know that one will never be reissued on CD.

Unintended side effects

I can let my car sit and not worry. I can cross busy Clarksville Pike in the most unorthodox fashion possible, so long as I avoid bodily harm. I can almost get run over in the working parking lot.

These are the lessons from four days of bicycle commuting. There are more.

It turns out all the bicycling has been physically healthy but mentally taxing. It constantly draws out memories of all the places I used to ride and walk in Columbus. I forgot how regularly I rode the bike or walked - to the Pig Iron BBQ, to Dave's house for Monday night music sampling, down to Longview Barber Shop, to Comic Town on Morse Road, to my parents house in Gahanna.

This isn't just bleary-eyed nostalgia.

I catch sight of the dreary highway and industrial development outside my window plus the sometimes hostile streets beyond it, and and lose all interest in the casual walking or biking once so deeply ingrained in my routine.

Cheney in Tennessee, Gas Supply Spent ... the Most Unlikely of Coincidences

Dick Cheney traveled to the Volunteer State to open up a reenactment of the Battle of Chickamauga, the unbelievably blood one recounted in Ambrose Bierce's visceral short story. How he opened it, I have no clue but I have some theories:
1. He looked at the Northern reenactors and said "Go f___ yourselves."
2. He indiscriminately shot a Northern reenactor and swore it was a deer, then urged the Confederates to charge.
3. He insisted Saddam Hussein's tortured spirit was behind the hurricanes which have dried up the state's gas pumps. Then he told the Confederate contingent that the Northern boys had been hoarding gasoline.

Seriously, I imagine what Tennessee has endured is remarkably similar to the gas crisis of the 70's. We won't have a decent supply until early next week; I almost broke with my bicycle commute this morning - then I realized it wouldn't take much for the weekend to eat up the Corolla's half-filled tank.

However, I'd like to see Cheney open fire when his limo can't fuel up on the way back to Air Force 2.

Empty pumps, stinging quads

Few disasters excel at getting me back on the bicycle the way hurricanes do. With gas jumped up to 80 cents in a few hours. Every station within five miles of my house had a different price per gallon. If they had gas at all. I almost wish Ike knocked our power out instead of sealing our pipeline connections to the Gulf Coast.

When stations ran dry on everything except Premium grade priced close to $5/gallon, I knew the time to start the two-wheeled commute to HealthLeaders had begun.

At six miles each way, it's hardly the two-mile jaunt from Morse and High to 5257 Sinclair. Three intersections on the route are moderately dangerous, one could be comfortably labeled as a cyclist's deathtrap. But once I pass those obstacles, I can cut onto the 3-mile bicycle path which swings close to work, and trade impatient traffic for oblivious joggers (aka, me at 5 p.m.).

The morning commute has moments of peace, but the ride home falls somewhere beyond harrowing. I even travel on roads labeled as Bike Routes, although the city cheaped out by adding some easily ignored signs instead of actual bike lanes.

From now until daylight savings kicks in and knocks the sunset to 4:30 p.m., I'm back on two wheels. I even considered fixing a sign to my backpack that says, "Say No to Price Gouging." However, it's hard for the gas stations to gouge when they have no product left.

Besides, someone on 51st Avenue North beat me to it with a cloth "Fat Cat Oil" banner, depicting a Steam Boat Itchy-style cat with a gas pump in one hand and gun holding up motorists in the other.

One Rock on a Connecticut Road

Uncle Frank times his daily bike rides so he hits Long Island Sound around sunrise.

A rock in the road just ended those dawn excursions for the near future.

Stone did what a car never had. Thrown from the bike, he messes up his shoulder severely, broke his collarbone and several ribs, nearly punctured a lung. My mom’s brother just lost his sole release from living with their mother (Grandma is 84 going on 139, to say the least). Worse yet, a driver reported it to the police earlier that morning, and nothing was done. Cyclists are always the last to know.

After all my close calls in Nashville and Columbus (Munich and Chicago were pleasure rides), I could sympathize. An alert cyclist pays attention to everything motorized in his/her path, but the road is always hostile to the self-propelled.

Being half Italian (at Ellis Island, Pagliaro become Palmer, in case you wondered), I had to get in touch with my injured uncle. Blood and bicycling were the only things we had in common, and it never felt more important than now. I wrote a little note and sent a copy of Brian Wilson's latest disc to Connecticut in hopes that some new tunes from Frank's favorite band provides some solace.

Uncle Frank is the second Palmer sibling to undergo a debilitating bicycle injury.
Twenty-two years ago, my parents’ friends invited Mom for an evening bike ride.

“Mom doesn’t ride a bike, does she?” I remember asking Dad.

Three hours later, I got a better answer, as Mom was carried to the living room couch, her knee a tangle of bandages and gauze, her expression pain pained despite the medication. Riding a man’s bike, she panicked on a patch of sand in the road, wrecking both the bike and her knee.

Mom never bothered to have those frayed ligaments fixed. In the morning, she walks with a distinct hobble that the untrained eye might attribute to not being fully awake or stretched out. However, I remember when she didn’t walk that way.

Uncle Frank will probably ride again, but at 53, I bet the damage caused by a single rock lingers in his bones for the rest of his days.

Stop Reproducing for a Minute and Listen Up

Four days, two more pregnancies. I’m talking about friends, not pregnancies I caused. There’s no record of those, and if any existed, they would be sealed.

More to the point, none of those imaginary heirs would be impending.

The couples from the past three weddings I attended either have a little one or await one’s arrival. A high school buddy’s wife had their second daughter in early spring. Nothing unexpected there - the timelines might be a little shorter. At least we know they're not having children in an attempt to save the marriage.

I could easily write it off as a symptom of being in my early 30’s. But now women not paired off or in less formal arrangements with their men have due dates. Given her militant hostility toward marriage, I never expected one to have children under any circumstances. When you’re seventeen, you know hormones will get the better of someone. At 31 (or in the case of my one female friend, 42), those raging hormones calm down quite a bit.

Old buddy Jim emerged from the black ops woodwork last night (no, he's not pregnant), we agreed on how far from that state we both were. The right lady arrives, then absolutely, kids are on the table, in the attic or playing on the front lawn. Until the time arrives, they'll have to stay distant, but just above the horizon.

9/11 Camaraderie

In a week of rekindled friendships, this morning's call was the least expect yet perhaps the most necessary.

Court Squires shouted from Philly just as I arrived at work and brought me back to the terrible morning seven years ago. Everyone owns a 9-11 memory - mine happened to be a working one, when a lazy, post-deadline day twisted into a frantic, immediate journalism and a story dictated to Dennis Laycock via the Columbus Police media room phone.

It was a strange shared moment. A newsroom of groggy reporters roused to life by the biggest news story they ever faced. I came back from a morning smoke to a suddenly enlivened newsroom buzzing about "a small plane accidentally crashing into the World Trade Center."

Court and I both knew immediately plans don't accidentally crash into symbols of American financial power that extremists already tried to destroy. A few minutes later, another plan wiped away all the speculation.

Without Court's call, I might have slinked through this day having never thought about that chaotic morning.

As with the continual rebroadcast of that footage in the past seven years, I would have been fine with that.

The subsequent details, both national and personal, have been repeated ad nauseum. While my newspaper days have ended, what a day that was to be a working journalist. With the industry in shambles, we recount those world-changing days like war veterans.

Same Day, Different Trail

The long run necessitated by half-marathon training effectively wrecks me for the rest of the day. During the week, a three, four, even five-mile circuit does not preclude quickly bouncing back. But creature known as the long run lingers long after my heartrate calms and the relentless sweat breaks.

Shelby Bottoms, site of my ill-conceived first half-marathon attempt, just became my twice a week training refuge until October 11 in Murfreesboro. Leftovers from Hurricane Gustav pounded the humidity into submission – instead of the low 90’s, I started my noontime run at 71,breezy and overcast.

Not that twenty degrees or lack of direct sunlight simplifies a seven-mile run. Feet start to extend, tendons frantically remind the rest of the body they’ve not carried it this far in a while, and despite their useless, men’s nipples chafe uncomfortably against any shirt.

But in a way, I was more ready than before – the always-challenging Franklin Classic ensured it. That 10K climbed into the steep hills outside the city square, then descended for the final two. Organizers ran out of water at Mile 3, always a great sign on an 85-degree morning.

Nor did I struggle through the first three and a half alone. My friend Al told me he knew he found trouble when he expected the next sign to announce Mile 5, only to pass the Mile 4 marker instead. No blow lands harder for a runner than underestimating your distance.

As with the Cumberland River Greenway near work, butterflies make the trail. At times, the colors and crazy wing styles make the occasional monarch look quaint. Trail traffic stays thick – this loop is a favorite of cyclists, rollerbladers and lollygaggers taking in the butterflies. A converted rail bridge spans the Cumberland, opening access from Opry Mills and other points east.

But best of all, the Shelby Bottoms trail doesn’t just stop at some distant point – a one-mile loop brings it back around. Traffic diminishes into alone time for me, broken by the occasional flock of cyclists.

A storm threatened to wipe away these optimal conditions, then backed down. I walked for a bit on the final mile as my runner’s knee flared up, then finished strong and ready to collapse into my lounge chair. The sun didn’t push into the argument until three minutes before I pulled into the driveway.

The sturgeon general

Give props to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga - its river exhibits could have been lame, but they went all out, displaying rare fish and amphibians from waterways around the world.

The sturgeons were easily the stars of the exhibits, massive fish patrolling river bottom since the age of dinosaurs (in some cases). The aquarium owns two of the most impressive species, the beluga sturgeon. The pair are actually brothers who avoid the caviar harvest 30-plus years ago.

This aged fellow came from the Volga in Mother Russia. caviar now banned in the U.S. A kilo will cost $5,000 in the U.S. ... That's Black Sea Gold, people. Caspian Cocaine (belugas can live in fresh and seawater).

This aquarium junkie considers the Tennessee best of the three I saw this year (Long Beach's Aquarium of the Pacific and Chicago's Shedd being the other two).

Freshwater fish come with greater diversity than just bass, trout and perch.

And in the saltwater tanks, it's hard to forget a surprisingly riveting seahorse exhibit and the almost supernatural glow cast in the jellyfish chamber.

Plus, as you can see, the aquarium's lone rattler grew especially active when Dad Melville approached the glass, as if it could already taste a meal on the other side.

They can sense fear, and the man's eyes practically teared up with fright.

I Can't Believe I'm About to Write This

The band whose greed single-handedly destroyed Napster has sucked me in again.

This is the same band that spent $40,000 a month on a con artist counselor to keep them together.

Few bands betrayed their street level roots so completely once going multi-platinum. Yet here we are. Metallica has finally managed to put out a record without the limiting production of Bob Rock. Rick Rubin has them churning out eight-minute speed metal epics again. Goofy jingoist videos aside, this sounds more like a return to form than a pastiche of old riffs .... except for "The Day That Never Comes." The lead single is the worst tune revealed so far. The ending turns into "One."