One of those guys for whom every rep of every set must be accompanied by a long, high-volume groan.

The sort that typically goes along with…other types of activities.

Now, lots of people, including me, find that some kind of forceful exhaling when you’re lifting weights is helpful. And usually, the music — the radio’s always going in the gym — is loud enough to mask it.

But let me reiterate: this guy was REALLY. REALLY. LOUD.

He groaned his way through “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” “Buttons,” and “Baby Got Back.” (The station calls itself something like “your feel-good connection.” Um. Yeah.)

Finally one of the other folks in the gym kind of looked over his way, chuckled, and said, “Damn, boy!”

“What?” the guy demanded. “You mean I’m supposed to be SILENT through my set?”

The other gentleman shook his head cheerfully and said, “Nah, nah, nah, bro. You make your noises.”

“Yeah, well,” the guy said, “it helps, you know — sometimes it SCARES ‘em into movin’ — UUUUNNNHHHH!!”

I believe the “‘em” referred to was the guy’s muscles.

For a little while, things got quieter. There were some commercials on the radio, people talked quietly about holiday plans.

Then the music returned: “Life is a mys-ter-y, everyone must stand a-lone, I hear you call my name, and it feeeeels like ho-ome.”

I realized that there was another voice singing along with Ms. Ciccone.

I looked around to see who it was.

Sure enough, it was Groaning Guy, who, it turns out, is possessed of a totally awesome falsetto.

(N.B.: Not Groaning Guy.)

I honked, and she sort of glanced back at me with this odd expression.

Immediately, I started wondering, wait, did I have a stop sign? Was it my fault we almost had an accident? I didn’t. It wasn’t. But I was ready to blame myself, just because of the way she was looking at me. You ever feel like that?

What I really wanted to tell you about, though, was Steve Earle’s cover of Way Down In The Hole, which will be the theme for Season Five of The Wire. He strips the song down, keeps the beat subtle but insistent. I’m calling this the “One Day At A Time” version. Maybe it’s just because I’m conflating Earle with Waylon, the character he plays on the show, but this version really makes me think of the quiet strength it takes to keep those particular devils down in the hole. And now that I’ve read this interview, I think maybe my interpretation isn’t that far off.

Cranked, specifically, with the soothing sounds of Mr. Al Green. It was so nice to hear unexpectedly that I felt compelled to share.

Gosh, it’s good to be home. Right now I’m listening to a fantastic mix created by signifier. One of the tracks — “Reviewing the Situation” by Sandie Shaw — unexpectedly reminded me of my parents. That phrase was part of our family language. I knew it was from a song, but I’d heard Mom and Dad sing-quote it long before I heard the actual song.

I didn’t write anything on the Katrina anniversary, but New Orleans has been on my mind a lot lately. I just read Heart Like Water: surviving Katrina and life in the disaster zone by Joshua Clark. What’s struck me about the book most are two things: the incredible black humor that many folks used as a survival strategy (I’m very sympathetic to this, as it is one of my strategies of choice in times of devastation as well), and Clark’s willingness to show the ways in which he was an asshole as well as the times when he comes off heroic. Here’s a passage:

The horror that falls through my fingers. The screams a few blocks away you cannot hear. We spend most of our waking hours grasping what is out of reach, on the news, in books, on the phone. Yet it takes an explosion lighting and shaking the night sky to give us a hint of what is happening beside us. But then true fright comes not with explosions and screams but with their silence, when the things and people around us cannot scream, when even the insects do not call, when we must cry into the night instead.

And when civilization returned to our neighborhood, when the insects sang again, I went to those areas that tragedy did not miss, and groped at their experience, wanting to suffer it.

I still think a lot about the time I helped gut a house, when I met Matt. I didn’t write much, I only posted photos. But I remember standing in the back bedroom, where clothes, furniture, and household goods were piled high enough that it was hard to find a steady place to stand, finally getting the closet door open and realizing how much more was there, everything waterlogged, everything ruined. Breathing through the mask we had to wear. Not thinking about what else might be inside until I saw the rat.

Yeah. Anyway.

How’s your September so far?