{"id":215,"date":"2005-02-19T22:07:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-19T22:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/culture\/music\/bottle_in_front_of_me.html"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1970-01-01T05:00:00","slug":"bottle_in_front_of_me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/2005\/02\/19\/bottle_in_front_of_me","title":{"rendered":"Rather have a bottle in front of me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Waits<\/a> is featured on this week<\/a>’s American Routes<\/a> public radio music show (archived here<\/a> — real audio link<\/a>). There’s a great interchange where you can’t tell if Waits is totally screwing around with the host, or just being himself. Here’s the clip<\/a> (10 second ogg): <\/p>\n

\n

Q: I don’t want to misquote you, but I think I saw you once said something like “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”
A: Oh right right right…
Q: Very succinct and poetic line.
…
A: Mmm… Um, I read that on a bathroom wall.
Q: Oh — did you really?
A: Uh huh. Yeah.
Q: But it strikes me it’s also somebody that sang that at that time that maybe — drinking was probably pretty important to you at that point?
A: Oh, well, I haven’t had a drink in like fourteen years.
Q: But… I… when you said that, my guess would be that you probably were, unless you were totally playing a character…
A: Oh, yeah, I was drinking in those days, yeah, sure.
Q: Yeah, yeah. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Apparently, the “lobotomy” quote, often attributed to Tom Waits<\/a>, is actually written by Atlanta physician Randy Hanzlick<\/a>. But it’s entirely plausible it got to Tom Waits via a bathroom somewhere. I’d believe it. <\/p>\n

Update:<\/span> a commentor points out that Hanzlick himself actually got the quote from graffiti on a bathroom wall. The plot thickens. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Waits is featured on this week’s American Routes public radio music show (archived here — real audio link). There’s a great interchange where you can’t tell if Waits is totally screwing around with the host, or just being himself. Here’s the clip (10 second ogg): Q: I don’t want to misquote you, but I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}