Pretty quiet at the Spartan Bar these days. Mr. Blood must be home for the holidays, or something.
In any event, I wish a Happy New Year to all the kids. In the coming year, I hope to be a better person and to spread a message of Peace, Love, and Magic throughout the world. Feel free to join in, wherever you are.
jim p

Ahmet Ertegun, Annapolis class of 1944, passed on today without ever having signed the Spartans.

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Since I’m on the subway forty-five minutes a day each way and am also sort of broke, I have been spending my commute time with books I own but haven't read in a long time. This week it’s been Berlin Alexanderplatz, and the copy I’ve been reading was left by Lee Preston when he visited us in Switzerland, inscribed with his name and the price of the book in deutsche marks. Jim, if you want it back I’ll return it when I’m done, though it’s a little worn from four readings and twenty years on the shelf and in boxes. I also have the Fast Fun copy of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, which may also be due for an underground re-read.

Decorating

This weekend we got a christmas tree and decorated it, hung a few garlands around, etc. The kids take care of most of it. Jessie spent the whole time singing "The Girl with Faraway Eyes". I thought it was a good choice.

Full Moon

The Japanese I learned see the Man in the Moon as a rabbit, pounding rice for mochi. He still looks like Jackie Gleason to me.

I think that Mumbai may be in the future, I forget how the International Dateline falls but I think it may already be the 2nd in India, in which case it’s not too early to wish Jimmy a happy birthday or if I’ve gotten it backwards then I can be the first. Happy birthday Jim. We’re all brothers on tomorrow.

Ubu Graib

Wow, beautiful and Ig-worthy. Everything but the peanut butter.

You know speaking of torture and performance, I've long been struck by the resemblance between the masked victim at Abu Graib and that world-consuming conquering swine without a conscience, Pa Ubu. Maybe if I'm in DC sometime we can do a performance of Pere Ubu in the 21st Century (and invite Iggy).

A Civic Duty

Given that I can bike over to the White House at my lunch hour, some friends of mine and I like to express our opinions on torture to the president. In carrying on Iggy's legacy, sometimes we try to challenge the audience in new, and physical ways. I gotta right.

Is it ignorance?

I have seen and heard quite a bit of Tom Waits over the past week, as he does the US promotional tour for his new 3-disc album. Many reporters, personalities, and others are fawning over him. I am baffled. Waits is performing a hackneyed, trite, act that is an extremely weak and entirely derivative imitation of Don van Vliet, an actual original American Artist. Waits is well aware of this fact, although he does not seem interested in sharing it with his interviewers or the general public. Thus in Waits' case, it is not ignorance. For everyone else, I guess that I just don't know. Thus I have also rendered myself ignorant. Rats.

Juhu Tara

Indi rescued this very little, frisky fellow from traffic last week. He's two months old, flea-ridden, but otherwise healthy and very sweet. Small guy, big mouth.

Once a Moron, always a Moron

I broke my toothbrush last night while brushing my teeth. I'm not quite sure how I did that.

Happy Birthday baby, Mr. Blood.

Don't need a cure, need a Final Solution

I went down to the Bottom of the Hill last night to see Pere Ubu, because sometimes you have to stand by what you believe in. The show was unfortunately not without mishaps. David Thomas (not Dave, svp Jim), now bearded, has always been cranky about audience members calling out requests. He was drinking rather a lot on-stage, somewhat at the expense of his good cheer (beer then brandy, not so dandy; ask a man who knows) and smoking Camel bullets, in a public place in California no less. He grew increasingly grumpy with the crowd, with false starts of songs, guitar boxes not working, tuning instruments and fixing drum pedals, with monitor hum and feedback, interruptions to his between-song patter and almost anything besides applause from the audience. The band did not seem entirely good-natured either, though they played well; better, I thought, on the more recent material. Robert Wheeler definitely holds the prestige theremin/EML seat with distinction, though I find the current bassist and drummer more heavy-handed (or more rockin’, if you prefer) than Tony Maimone and Scott Krause.

Mr. Thomas became particularly incensed when someone shouted what sounded like, “I have to go to work tomorrow, motherfucker” or anyway someone called him motherfucker. Finally some asshole from the audience started shaking the mike stand. David fired back: “How dare you! Have you been through what I’ve been through? Have you crossed the threshing floor?” The asshole kept talking shit while the band played, pointing at David and then at the drummer, who threw a stick at him, to which he responded with a bottle. The drummer jumped off the stage while the band kept playing, the asshole went down and a few seconds later the drummer re-ascended the stage with blood on him and finished the set, quite the trooper.

I didn’t think they’d come back for an encore after that, but indeed they did, first with the “AM radio” song that closes St. Arkansas and then with “Final Solution”. They started to play “Sonic Reducer”, but when it breaks down to the guitar in the opening, Keith Moline’s guitar clipped out. That was the breaking point for Mr. Thomas, who stopped the song and didn’t want to restart it, a disappointment as I particularly like the recent Rocket from the Tombs version. Instead they launched into “Street Waves”, and as the band hit an open-ended noisy section, David began to rail the audience again. “Fuck you! Fuck all of you! What do you think we are? Do you think we’re trained monkeys? Fuck you all!” et cetera et cetera and then it was My babysitter, my babysitter and out, no more he’d had enough.

Last time I saw Pere Ubu I felt I was seeing a cult band in twilight; last night’s anger and frustration are perhaps another side of the same thing. But if they come back to town I suppose I’ll go see them again, even at a small club on a Monday. Sometimes you have to stand by what you believe in.

Merdre merdre

Pere Ubu is playing tonight, "headlining" at 11:00 or 11:30 on a Monday night at The Bottom of the Hill, a club like TT's in Cambridge. I'm undecided whether I'll go or not, but it's certainly the shitre.

Flo Roessler posted these pictures on the St. John's alumni website of the young Bronco Brunner and of the irrepressible Miss Cobb dining with Tom Petty.

Interesting Facts about Yams

"In yams, female plants are octoploid or hexaploid, males all tetraploid - a discrepancy that renders yams sterile."
- Matt Ridley, "The Red Queen"

"My mama loves me"
- Leroy

--Knock, knock

--Who's there?

--Dog.

--Dog who?

--Dog sitting on a banana peel.

[Courtesy of Sue Auerbach, Short Hills, NJ]

Proposed double feature

Two reccommended movies I’ve seen recently:

The cast of Portrait d’un Asssasin (France, 1949) includes Erich von Stroheim, Arletty (the freaky love-interest from Les Enfants du Paradis) and Latin bombshell Maria Montez, whose resume includes White Savage and Gypsy Wildcat. The opening could be by Camus: a motorcyclist shoots a woman he believes to be his wife because he fears his own death. The victim turns out to be a femme fatale who urges daredevils into deadly stunts, such as the impossible “double looping”. Elvis and Barbara Stanwyk remade the movie in 1964 as Roustabout.

Victimas del Pecado (Mexico, 1951) features two rival pimp/nightclub owners: one wears a zoot suit and employs Pres Prado, the King of Mambo; the other wears a white cowboy hat and has a mariachi band that follows him wherever he goes playing a mariachi train song. This may be because his club is called the La Maquina Loca, perhaps, though probably not, a reference to Witkacy’s Szalona lokomotywa. The zoot-suit pimp forces one of his girls to throw the child she had by him into the trash can. Suffering, redemption and some brilliant Afro-Cuban dancing follow.

THC Poisoning

The head of a local pot club brought in her dog to Juliana’s clinic. Apparently the poor dog was in a THC-induced coma. This seems strange to me, since I had always heard that THC is not effective when eaten raw, and dogs lack the opposable thumb necessary for smoking.

PS--I did consider the pot brownie possibility. But chocolate is more toxic to dogs than marijuana.

Sis Liked His Hair

Druid and Spartan, courtesy of Peter Norton and the St. John's alumni website

Out of Tune

Just an update on the Class of 1981 St. John's College reunion. Many people were there who had not been on the original list. I will probably forget some of the names, but I will try...
Dave Neumann (and friend)
Maggie Argent
Buffy Bowser Affsprung
Jessica Wasserman (with kids)
Lisa Cobb
Nick Kennedy
Matt Hartzel (and spouse)
Anne O'Malley Cullota (and spouse)
Warren Spector
Peter Norton
Kurt Schuler
Rachel O'Keefe (and spouse SF '82?)
Kathy Abrams (and spouse and teenagers)
Dan Van Doren
Ben Smith and Anne Kates
Honor Bulkley
Joe and Barbara Roach
us (Jim and Ellen)
I'm sure there were more but I am spacing it out.
We had a seminar on Antigone with Peter Kalkavage. It was fine.
The whole event was pretty nice, or at least I can say that everyone was very nice to me.
At the dinner the every-fifth-year classes give toasts. Anne O'Malley said a few things about how old we were, and I led an impromptu rendition of "St. John's Forever" from the back row. I had to teach Peter Norton, Kurt Schuler, Dave Neumann, and a few others the words. It seems that Evan Cantor and the members of the Spartans are the only people who realize that song lyrics are the true narrative of the human experience and should be retained. Evan was not there, so we were, perhaps as tradition demands, Out of Tune. In any event, it cannot be said that no Spartans performed.

I did not come back on Sunday morning for the "informal" memorial service for Brother Robert. A more formal service will be held in November, I believe. I will go if I can, and I assume that Warren and P. Gilbert will be there.

On the whole, I recommend attending these events, although that is easy for me to say since it is only a 30-minute drive. I personally consider the entire class of 1981 to be members of my family. Naked and mewling we came into this world, and all that.
2011?
peace,
jim

Mortality & Morbidity

Juliana has Mortality and Morbidity rounds this morning. I like it: it sounds like a 300-level Existentialism class or Jane Austen's lost goth novel.

Ice Cream for Crow

Was walking by the Gateway yesterday. A crow pecked at a stick of kulfi dropped and oozing slowly on the black asphalt. Its black beak was smeared with tan cream. I was momentarily struck frozen by the peculiar sight. As it cocked his head and eyed me defensively, "Ice Cream for Crow" ignited from memory.

I had hoped to get Back to Mono, the Phil Spector boxed set, for my birthday in 1991, but no one gave it to me and so I bought it used yesterday for $18. It has all the beloved Ronettes, Crystals and Darlene Love hits as well as obscurities like Darlene Love's version of “Chapel of Love”, “I Love How You Love Me”, covered of course on These Foolish Things, and a song a man accused of murder may regret having released, the disturbing, “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)”. The set only runs through the 60s, basically just past “River Deep, Mountain High”, so no “Imagine” and no “Rock & Roll High School.” However there is a bonus CD of the Christmas album, my vinyl copy of which diligent readers may recall was warped last Christmas.

It appears there is to be no Spartans reunion this weekend, although, as Paul Hartt would say, Maybe there should be.

These are the registered attendees from the class of ’81, pulled from the St John’s alumni website:

Paul Cree
Peter Norton
Jessica Wasserman
Daniel Van Doren
Elizabeth Bowser Affsprung
Kathy Abrams Bindert
Matthew Hartzell
Jamie Whalen
Joseph Roach
Barbara Roach
Margaret Argent
Anne Culotta
Rachel O'Keefe
Kurt Schuler
Robbyn Jackson
Warren Spector

Another day, another way.

On this day 223 years ago ...

Thinking About Brother Robert

Brother Robert was my essay advisor, and I remember how he elucidated a French term in Proust for me. When Mr. Swann first becomes involved with Odette, she is wearing a corsage of catleyas, which gets bumped in their carriage ride. Oh, he says, they’ve slipped, you’ll get pollen on your dress, here let me, and afterwards he uses the expression “faire le catleya” as a sexual euphemism. Brother Robert explained to me that the expression has a little extra spice because the catleya is a type of orchid that looks like the female pudenda, and then drew me a charming little pencil sketch.

Brother Robert did not give me much specific advice on my essay. What I remember him saying was, “This is fine. You just need to write some more.” At the time this seemed unremarkable. Now I realize he was right. I did need to write more.

Here's a hastily composed birthday poem for Tracy:

Tracy Tracy
She's our drummer
She's very fast
And even funner.

The monks’ residence was at the top of the hill, overlooking the vineyards. Peter rang the bell, and one of the brothers waved us in. “What can I do you for?” he said rather heartily. “I’ve come to visit one of the brothers here, Brother Robert” Peter said. “That rascal!” the brother said, pounding his palm with his fist. “No one is allowed to see him!”

“Oh”, said Peter. He had come by train from New Jersey.

“He died two days ago.”

Euler (again)

So what dirt was Mira able to find about the man on the ten-franc note? I work with a man whose first name is Euler. He pronounces it "Yuler", not "Oiler", perhaps because he is Phillipino.

Juliana's car was broken into right in front of our house. The thief stole her radio and left behind a Soy Jerky wrapper.

Found A Job

I'm working in the Financial Aid Office of the California Institute of Integral Studies. It offers majors in programs such as Women's Spirituality, Consciousness and Transformation and Drama Therapy. When I told my father about it, I could actually hear the sound of him shuddering over the phone.

Monsoon Flower

... the "sticky" feeling on your finger is the clutch of hundreds of tiny harpoons, each on the end of its own little thread...
- Richard Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale"

Arrow

Is his name because he's long and pointy.

His cry is piercing - yet pleasant.

He dives right into the heart of everything.

Sometimes it seems like he's trying to crawl up my nose.

Unemployed Reading

I've been reading "The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico" by Bernal Diaz, ca. 1557 since I have a little time on my hands while I'm looking for a job. I would call it easily as enlightening and far more entertaining than Thucydides (though that could be a translation issue).

The first thing that you notice about our house is the light. Or, that is to say, if you came to visit it might not be the first thing you'd notice, you might think oh this is Johny's new house, or you'd pet the dog, but if you were thinking about buying a house as of course we were when we saw it for the first time, the first thing you'd notice is the light. I'm not sure if it's the time of year or the location in the East Bay or the house itself, but the first time I saw it I thought oh yes when people talk about some place having great light this must be what they mean, it's really very distinctive and pretty. We have a skylight that you open with a special pole, and I really like opening the skylight with the pole, except we've been leaving it open because it's been warm here, otherwise I'd be opening it and closing it and opening and closing it all the time. But warm isn't hot; it was 106 in Woodland last weekend, but only 82 here. It's foggy in the morning some days and then a bit warm in the afternoon, not too hot to walk the dog but hot enough that he's sort of tired and panting by the end. I guess me too. Then cool in the evening. Our house isn't very big, at least not for a house. We have a living room a dining room a kitchen a bedroom a bathroom and then another room, but it's still smaller than our other house, and we have things like the Farfisa and Juliana's enlarger that we don't know what to do with, which is not including the pink piano that we really don't know what to do with and is still in the other house, which we haven't sold yet.

In the old house the cats lived upstairs, and Mingus came down when he felt like it, Cosmo when Norman was outside and Tim entered a sort of Norma Desmond period when she never came out except for meals. This house has been divided into a cat half and a dog half. The southern half, with the living room, dining room and kitchen is Norm's and the cats have the northern half with the bedroom, bathroom and the other room. Tim seems to have overcome her agoraphobia or concern for paparazzi or whatever it was has actually been out enjoying the sunlight, whereas Mingus, who is not afraid of Norman and prefers to take his meals in the kitchen has been spending long periods of time under the covers in bed.

One of the rooms, the living room, was already green, and Juliana has painted the bedroom and bathroom each a different green, and the dining room she wants to paint one of the same greens, I forget which one. I'm not very good with color names, and Juliana always gets mad when I try to identify colors because I don't say them right, but the bedroom, even though it's just one paint color, it's called Goat's Beard on the paint can, is different colors in the room. It's that famous light. In the corner that's not so well-lit, it's sort of olive, almost like the cover of the Brothers Twain album, but the back wall with sun on it is much yellower, maybe like a goat's real beard. Anyway I'm not very good with describing colors, but the house is mostly different shades of green and white, except the back room where we stashed all our stuff which is the blue of a malted milk bird's egg and the kitchen which is all white. The kitchen, like I suppose the house as a whole, is beautiful but small. It seems more like a kitchen you would want to hang out in than cook in except that I do want to cook in it. It has a lovely old-fashioned gas stove with a warmer and everything, but there's no counter space and little storage space. I had to give away my stacking bamboo steamers since there was no place to put them, but I never used them anyway.

The train runs, oh I'm terrible with distances, but maybe a quarter of a mile or maybe it's more, half a mile from our house, and I suppose it's the sort of thing you might find annoying, but I don't at all, I find it sweet and sort of romantic. Juliana says it always makes her think of the Sleep Train commercial. I don't know if they show that outside of California. Your ticket to a good night's sleep. There's also a very nice little church right on the corner, Saint Ambrose, so we can hear the church bells which I always like. They chime on Sunday and then at other times I can't quite figure out, noon probably and evening. Saint Ambrose himself apparently wasn't really my kind of guy, being as he was a staunch opponent of Jews and fornication. At least that's one Saint Ambrose; I'm sure there are a few of them and maybe the church is named for a different one than the chaste anti-Semite. I have the Butler's that Stephen gave me unpacked and shall have to research.

We have a fenced-in yard so that we can leave Norman out during the day, and it's really a wonderful yard. Everyone in Berkeley has gardens more than yards. You walk down the street and everyone has rose bushes and lavender and flowers I don't know the names of, but not so much the well-tended lawn, which suits me fine since (sorry Firestone) a well-tended lawn has always seemed uncomfortably bourgeois to me but a garden, a garden is really fine. I don't know very much about flower gardening, I know a little about vegetable gardening but hardly anything about flower gardening, but we have this sweet garden both inside and outside the fence, which I'm hoping to keep healthy. I talked to the people who lived here before us, they obviously cared a lot about the garden, and they said, oh, you just need to water and weed, and then the four or so rose plants do require special care, you should spray the leaves with soapy water if they've been eaten by bugs and with water mixed with baking soda if they've been attacked by mildew. Our roses, few as they are, seem to have been attacked by both, so I suppose I shall have to mix water with both soap and baking soda.

There's not really room for a vegetable garden, which I'd prefer, but on the other hand there is fresh produce for sale all around. There are three farmer's markets in Berkeley every week, and two in Oakland and probably some in El Cerrito and Albany and Richmond too, and a really beautiful greengrocers about a ten minute walk from here, and the Berkeley Bowl which everyone tells me is the place to go and Andronico's, which is an upscale chain like Dean & Delucca's. I can't remember if my fascination with fresh vegetables started before I moved to California where they're everywhere or of it coincided with my vegetarianism, but I think the former. Maybe not but I think so. I think I liked buying vegetables at the Halle de Rives, I just like it more now. I'm like some people are with garage sales, if I see a produce stand I want to pull over. I'm glad there are so many fresh vegetables for sale in Berkeley.

Jim and I

Exploding Plastic Inevitable

Sunday morning. Went to an exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Zurich. There was a small film/music room (3 walls) in the exhibition of original film and music from the Dom of Andy and the Velvets. It had the same disturbing and exciting effect as hearing Venus in Furs the first time. I think the creator's name is Bernard Nahmann or something like that.

My new hometown

Come November, I'll get to vote on whether Bush and Cheney should be impeached. Berkeley's fun!

Read here.

Back to Mono

The College magazine reports that Spector Hall has been completed, and was named for Warren's father, Phillip. That means St. John's now has a Phil Spector Hall. Dig it! To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him.

Harriet the Tortoise, the oldest animal known in captivity passed away over the weekend. She was 175 years old, and had once belonged to Charles Darwin. This weekend we also lost Aaron Spelling.

Magnetic Fields song used in a a Cesar dog food commercial

1315 A Cornell Ave.

We closed on a place in Berkeley. We'll be moving in mid-July.

Tomorrow's Graduation Day. After that, it's Doctor Sorem.

Even we get mail

The following was sent to Tracy and me:

Gentlemen,
I am writing to you to see whether or not you are interested in reuniting your old college band for Homecoming weekend in Annapolis. Rachel O'Keefe told me about your band and it would be awesome to bring you together to play at your 25th reunion. The dates for Homecoming weekend are September 29-October 1. I don't have email addresses for Jim Preston or Peter Gilbert and I doubt the address I have for James Brunner will work so if you're in touch with these guys, let me know.
Sincerely,
Jo Ann
Jo Ann Mattson Director of Alumni Relations
St John's College


I'm guessing Peter might not be so interested in going to Homecoming, and it's a bit far for Jim. Still, it's always nice to be asked.

22 Year Itch

I finally had the chance to talk to Thurston Moore, something I’ve wanted to do ever since I found out he lives in Northampton. I’ve had a longstanding grudge against Sonic Youth because they left during our set when we opened for them in Geneva. But I do like their music, and see them when they play locally, which they are good enough to do fairly often. Friday, Thurston played a solo gig at a local gallery, then a noise duo with a guy who calls himself Gown. So I went up to him and said "You know we met over 20 years ago." He said he recognized me. I thought that was strange - but maybe he says that to everyone he doesn’t know. We chatted about Northampton, then I brought up the Geneva concert again, and could see the lights go on in his head. He realized this had actually happened, but didn't quite remember it. Since I couldn’t really needle him about something he didn’t remember, I told him I'm available if he needs a drummer for these local gigs. And next time I see him I’ll get him for pretending to recognize me. In another 22 years.

I had thought that Footlight Parade was the greatest musical ever made until I saw Gold Diggers of 1933 on Saturday. Now I just don't know.

Raw power is a guaranteed O.D. Raw power is laughing at you and me. It's laughing, baby.

Jimmy Boy

I recorded some songs with the Mad Maggies this weekend. Even in the age of Pro Tools, some 23 years after "Believe you Me", there's still a lot that can be covered with a cymbal crash.

The financial aid staff of the Santa Fe campus were out here visiting (in case you forgot I work for a student loan guarantee agency) and I got to have lunch with them. Do you know what tuition alone is at St. John's this year? Thirty-five thousand dollars ($35,000). Man, I remember when President Weigel announced that the cost would be going up to $6500.

Albino Burmese Python

Yesterday Juliana removed blood from the heart of an Albino Burmese Python.

Jenny kiss'd Me

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.

The Uighur has learned his first new song in about seven years: the theme to "Wallace and Gromit".

It appears that Chaitzel the cockatiel has not been telling us that he's a weeker, but rather that he is a Uighur, a Chinese Muslim. When I asked him about it, he replied, "I'm a weekie little birdie", so there you have it.

Remembering Euler

Yes, Euler lives on, even beyond his likeness on the Swiss ten franc note ... Mira's writing a report for her 7th grade math class on the great man and his achievements. For some reason, "Euler's e" is one of the disconnected bits of St John's knowledge that lingers stubbornly in my brain pan -- enigmatic, portentous, threatening to slip off into oblivion but somehow tenaciously hanging on -- Why?
Any stories, gags, riddles, insights, explanations concerning Mr Euler and his e are most welcome. Paper's due next week.

Ray Davies

Am listening to the new (first) Ray Davies CD, "Other People's Lives". It has a 70s FM radio sound, and at first listen, I found the lyrics kind of hackneyed and trite, but that cranky, quacky, inimitable voice redeems all. There are a couple of nice lines in the liner notes as well: he describes the pleasure of singing "run, run, run, run, run away", and having to shout at the band to slow it down in "Is there life after breakfast".

Yams

Dennis told me his son ate his first solid food yesterday: yams. I was of course reminded of the famous graffiti in the Paca-Carroll bathroom: YAMS

Another tuba picture

Maggie takes lots of them.

What I Forgot To Say About Asparagus and Showtunes

I forgot to say about asparagus that you can also stir fry it with garlic, ginger, rice vinegar and black bean paste, if you have it, as I did on Saturday. A quick, hot stir fry till the asparagus just firms up quite suits its fast-goes-fast nature.

Stephin has a new album out. It takes a little getting used to, though it has very nice auto-harp on it. But I really like the cover.

More asparagus

I've been reading Tender Buttons and thinking about asparagus some more, and there's so much to say that I'm not ready to say it yet. It seems clear that GS did care about asparagus, since the very last sentence of Tender Buttons is, "The care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus, and also a fountain" and remember in the section Stephen quoted she said, "Asparagus in a lean in a lean to hot. This makes it art and it is wet wet weather wet weather wet" so the care makes asparagus and the asparagus makes it art, it doesn't have to be asparagus but if you eat asparagus you can see that it's true, that the care makes asparagus and the asparagus makes it art, and it is wet wet weather wet weather wet and whether it is wet weather or it is really a fountain, anyway there is a lot to say about asparagus.

But I haven't just been thinking about asparagus, I've been eating it too. I saw a picture of an asparagus quiche and so I made one Saturday. It was in fact the first quiche I've ever made, since I spent the 70s in Ohio and the early 80s apprenticing under Chef James L. Preston, who for all his food-as-performance ways never made quiche, and by the time I was back in the United States nobody made quiche any more so I never bothered to learn. But mine this weekend was very nice, I'm not very good at fluting the crust, but I made it with smoked Gouda and a little ground chipotle so that it had a faint but delightfully misleading smell of bacon. And now it's cold and raining again, wet wet weather wet weather wet indeed.

But what if Djivan Gasparyan is not a man who has never known happiness, but rather a consumate showman, whose specialty happens to be the longing that devours one's entrails? I am reminded of the woman who told me that The Bridges of Madison County was not fiction but a true story, that it had to be true "because it's so beautiful".

Spreading the Tuba Gospel in Austin, TX

A friend is/was starting a magazine, and needed content, so I wrote the following. I don't know if it will see print, however; he has now moved on to another project-- something involving magic crystals in happy water. So,


Asparagus
Ariel: I go, I go.
---Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene One---

When Prospero the magician commands his servant Ariel to speed on a fateful errand, the “dainty spirit” responds, “I drink the air before me, and return or ere your pulse twice beat”-- admirable celerity, especially considering the play’s steamy setting in “the ‘still-vex’d Bermoothes…” For the Vikings, velocity was defined as the ogenblikke, the blink-- or the twinkling-- of an eye. In ancient Rome, however, haste was expressed by Augustus’ delightful motto, velocius quam asparagi conquantur: as quickly as cooking asparagus. And this, as any cook knows, is very quickly indeed. A few minutes too long in the pan kills both flavor and texture. In fact, time is of the essence in transferring the vegetable from garden to kitchen, as it loses sugar immediately upon being harvested. Therefore, the Romans established a relay system of runners and chariots to hurry the precious spears from the Tiber to the Alps where it could be preserved in snow. (That is why, if asparagus must be stored, some cooks recommend treating the stalks like flowers, cutting away the bottom ends and placing them upright in a vase of water, refrigerated.)

Curiously, the plant which makes for kitchen flurries in the Spring requires cool, almost cold, patience, to propagate. Once the crowns (which come to you as desiccated, dead-looking brambles) are settled in their rows, the resultant trenches are filled in slowly throughout the first year; the spears this year, if any, are mere wispy things, and mustn’t be touched. The second year passes the same way, and only on the third or fourth year can one harvest, with restraint. Happily, a well-established bed can then produce for twenty years or more. Thus, a better epigram for asparagus might be festina lente, or “make haste slowly”--- symbolized by both the Dolphin and the Anchor.

Asparagus is traditionally the harbinger of Spring, and this may have something to do with its reputation as an aphrodisiac. (Tradition also holds that “sparrow-grass” is consumed by the heat of St. John the Baptist’s Day in late June, much like a young man’s ardor.) More likely, the vegetable’ s sexual possibilities were suggested by simply observing it grow: the spears shoot from the earth in an undeniably phallic fashion. Madame Pompadour, Mistress to King Louis XV, believed in its potency and perhaps had recourse to it in restoring her lover’s flagging interest. She favored it with a sauce containing egg (perhaps a Hollandaise or Mousseline, still standard accompaniments,) another archetype of the Season and obvious symbol of fertility. Louis’ great-grandfather, the Sun King, so prized the plant that he had special greenhouses constructed solely for the purpose of growing it. Arial views of his palace at Versailles, with its splendid Salon de Venus, suggest a fascination not with male, but female, anatomy, however. Architecturally, asparagus is decidedly more reminiscent of the Chrysler Building. (And musically, it most resembles the machismo-drenched tangos of Astor Piazolla: sweet, somewhat musty, suggesting menace and wholly consecrated to the Flesh.)

In his diary, Samuel Pepys, who must have been aware of the vegetable’s reputation, records an intriguing episode for April 22, 1162 which reveals something of asparagus’ internal logic. That day he had taken leave of his wife (“which we could hardly do kindly, because of her mind to go along with me,”) and trundled off to Lambeth. (At the time, Lambeth was home to taverns of questionable repute.) There, Pepys and his (male) companions feasted on “buttered eggs,” in unknowing tribute to Madame Pompadour’s later insights. At Lambeth, Pepys met his friend, Dr. Timothy Clarke--- “a very pretty man and very knowing”--- and together they journeyed to Guilford, where they spent the afternoon cutting “sparagus” in the garden for their supper. It was, says Pepys, the “best that ever I eat in my life” save one. Pepys concludes suggestively, “(s)upped well, and the Doctor and I to bed together, calling cozens from his name and my office.”

Gertrude Stein, no stranger to fleshy pleasure, and who ate amply when there was ample to be had, but knew how to starve with aplomb, had this to say about asparagus: “Asparagus in a lean in a lean to hot. This makes it art and it is wet wet weather wet weather wet.” I couldn’t agree more.

My most memorable asparagus encounter comes in the form of a dream. I dream of a Body buried in my backyard, beneath the furrows of the well-tilled bed. When Spring comes, bright tendrils exude from the soil, the palpable fruit of the Body’s own dreaming. Upon examination, I find that they are composed of tiny leaves of very fragile writing-paper, inscribed in disparate hands, the memoirs of long- forgotten lives. They crumble at my touch. Flocks of hummingbirds, drawn by a secret magnetism, descend on the harvest in droves. When they sip from the prolix blossoms of the Body, they are at once struck dead, and drop by dozens silently. Their little corpses strew the ground with scraps of vibrant color, like candy wrappers, or so much scat from a busted pinata.


Flowers from the Dustbin

Life Stinks: Pere Ubu, The Modern Dance
The first time I saw Pere Ubu perform they were playing a steakhouse in Albuquerque. The restaurant itself was an eerie dump shaped like a wine barrel, what Venturi would call an architectural “duck“, a fast-frozen specimen of Eisenhower Americana on the low end, creepy as an undertaker’s smile or Slim Whitman’s blue yodel. This was in the late Eighties, when other “legends” with weaker resumes and none of Pere Ubu’s brilliance could fill stadiums, but Ubu seemed to have fallen on perpetually hard times. Embarrassingly, all of their amps and drum cases were rejects, each clearly marked “Foghat” in silver spray paint.. I asked about their choice of venue, and I was told curtly that they were happy being paid in beef. They did not look so very happy, but they were clearly very hungry. The second time I saw them, they suffered the indignity of opening for the Pixies-- a fine band, but hardly worthy to play Christ to Ubu‘s Baptist. I caught them again a few years ago, and they seemed somehow to have resigned themselves to permanent cult status, performing alone in a standard-issue “punk“ bar on a weekday night. Oddly, the band seemed unfazed by the mediocre reception they received, mostly from kids too young to know any of their material and too absorbed with their own pretty costumes to pay attention to what was a rare, inspiring performance. At one point a heckler took on singer David Thomas between tunes, and Thomas calmly dressed the rascal down over the PA, with words to this effect: We are geniuses. I, especially, am a genius. If you don’t understand us, get the fuck out. The lout, oblivious, kept squawking until Thomas, with borrowed cash, refunded the cost of the ticket, remounted the stage, and kicked off another set of incredible power and innovation. (And justice rolls down like water…)

Pere Ubu was named for the grotesque title character in Alfred Jarry’s proto-surrealist play, a too- recognizable bufoon whose most perspicacious articulation was “merdre” ---”shittt”. They emerged inauspiciously from Ohio in the mid-Seventies, their unnatural habitat the dying mills of America’s onetime Tire Capital. Ubu’s earliest singles practically stank of urban decay, with songs like My Dark Ages, Heart of Darkness and Final Solution: a lacerated, leave you with lockjaw sound, desperate to the point of danger. Free jazz a la Ornette Coleman was enjambed violently into psychotic surf punk,, the whole black stew pervaded by Thomas’ aberrant, sometimes alarming, warbling. But it was their first album, The Modern Dance, that drove the point home.

The album opens with a painfully long whine of raw feedback. Then the bass weighs in uncertainly, a tommy-gun guitar and drums follow, and suddenly we’re all along for the crazy ride. At once Thomas, shrieking and strangling simultaneously, bursts through with a heartfelt plea, or threat, to his beloved: sign my non-alignment pact. Clearly, the owls are not what they seem, here.

What results, surprisingly, is not bedlam; it is something far more startling than that. The music presses on with an obsessive urgency. The guitars are quirky, oddly-tuned, but immensely expressive. Alan Ravenstein coaxes unearthly whines and splutters out of some sort of xeno-synthesizer. Clarinets, or perhaps soprano saxophones, waft dizzily through the mix, and at more than one point the roar of jeering crowd noise, taped and filtered, intrudes. (This, despite the album’s having been recorded in a studio.) Thomas actually begins barking for some reason. But through it all, the band is tight---Rather than missing a beat, they seem to pre-anticipate beats which come later on the album. Each cut propels us further through Ubu’s blasted world--”a world to be drowned in,” as Thomas warns us.

Such intensity isn’t meant to last, however; in the penultimate song, Sentimental Journey, the long-prognosticated psychotic break occurs as Thomas reflects on an imagined homecoming. The music seems to collapse as if someone turned off its ventilator, replaced by the sound of smashing light bulbs and soda bottles thrown across a concrete floor, and Thomas, or the fractured character he portrays, whimpers and howls as if he realizes that the trap’s jaws are just clamping down for good. The bluebird of happiness, it seems, is a bus bound for hell. But when all seems darkest, the band, apparently, goes surfing: the last cut finds them suddenly riding the big wave, as if, rather than recovering from their madness, they’ve chosen gamely to plunge further into it.

Breathtaking. Anyone interested in Rock’s artistic possibilities should own this album.

A Cool Wind is Blowing: Djivan Gasparyan, I Will Not be Sad in This World
Armenians have much to be sad about. Armenia was home to Mount Ararat, resting place of the ark, and Armenians consider themselves direct descendants of Noah, who, it’s said, founded the first Armeninan. City. Byron described them as a blameless people, ”oppressed and noble.” But oppression became genocide in 1915, when they were declared ‘internal enemies’ of the Ottoman Empire. Somewhere between two and six million Armenians were slaughtered by the Turks, many during a death march which left the Euphrates river choked with corpses. Bolsheviks did their best to complete the eradication, and in 1920 the few survivors were incorporated forcibly by the Soviet state.

Djivan Gasparian was born in the immediate aftermath of these tragedies. As a child, he was entranced by the live folk music which accompanied silent films, particularly the duduk, a small wooden oboe fashioned from apricot wood. By collecting and reselling empty bottles, he earned enough money to by his own duduk, and quickly became proficient, eventually attending conservatory and rising to the level of “academician.” Later success led to performances in films such as The Last Temptation of Christ and Ronin. In all, Gasparian spent over sixty years perfecting his skills with the instrument, developing a rich, sonorous style which belies the duduk’s size.

To American ears, Gasparian’s duduk is a mournful sound, evocative of Armenia’s history of heartbreak. Its plaintive beauty captivated musician/producer Brian Eno, and in 1988 his Opal Records released internationally an album Gasparian had recorded five years earlier under the title, I Will Not Be Sad in This World. It is a somber recording, despite its optimistic title, but achingly lovely and tender. Over an ambient drone, the duduk sketches landscapes which seem haunted by the world- weary ghosts of Gasparian’s people. An old man reflects on lost love, a young girl dreams of her first kiss--- the moon rises over a desert of bleached bones: it’s like that, or another way. Armenian lore speaks of Ara the Beautiful, son of the king who ruled five thousand years ago, and who gave the land the name it bears today. Ara’s beauty so enchanted legendary queen Semiramis that she waged a war for, and against, him, and in the end Ara and his people were destroyed--- out of love. Listening to I Shall Not Be Sad somehow makes this tale easier to believe.

Gasparian has been quoted as saying that a bad person cannot be a good musician. Whether or not this is true, it seems clear that someone who knew happiness could hardly make such melancholy music--- sorrowful, but gorgeous, too gorgeous to be sentimental and too sorrowful to be taken casually. But for those times when quiet meditation or reminiscence is in order, Gasparian’s sound is a perfect accompaniment to one’s own silent movies.

UncleN'

While I was in New Jersey my nine-year-old nephew asked me if I wanted to play football with him, so for the first time in my life I voluntarily went out to toss around the old pigskin. I started with a little avuncular chatter: good hustle; oh, just a little high; sorry that was a lousy throw, and then all this advice people had been giving me, utterly of course without benefit, started to come out of my mouth: Hold your fingers like this, then you can bring the ball into your chest when you catch it; throw it a little ahead of me, to keep it away from the defender. Imagine if you can your Moronic correspondent trying to throw spirals and run buttonhooks, all in an attempt to be a good uncle.

My brother died on Tuesday. He was diagnosed with leukemia last spring. Over the summer he had chemo treatment, and in the fall he was pronouncecd cancer-free. A few weeks ago the cancer had returned. He went on vacation with his family to Arizona, expecting to begin a second round of treatments when he returned. He felt ill while there, and died before he could get to a hospital. His doctor thinks it was probably a very sudden infection that his body was unable to fight. I'll be going to New Jersey tomorrow. His funeral is on Tuesday. I guess that's it.

Does this make me a stalker?

Further investigation on the web has revealed that Jack is still living in Lussy-sur-Morges; that he is married to Evelyne; and that he has an 11-year-old son named Jerome. No update on his hard candy habit.

Jackula

Jimmy's mention of Saugy sent me to the web, and of course he has his own website. Two things worth noting:

1) He looks exactly the same.

2) The brother's been playing for Celine Dion.

Check it out:

http://www.jacquessaugy.com/

Am I wrong or is the opening of "Turn the Lights On" from the new John Cale the same as "Maybe I Will"?

Cat on Holiday

Off to Austin

Well I'm heading to Austin TX tomorrow to play some polka and try to find Roky Erickson. Unfortunately, I can't get behind the wheel of a car, due to a mishap twelve or so years ago on the road between Juarez and Albuqueque, NM.

Another Song fur den Heimat

O my country tis of thee
Woeful land of misery
Full of all the sorrow I can make
Land where all of my have hopes died
Lost my self-respect and pride
It's my Homeland of Heartache

There's no white house there, no front porch
The whole front lawn has all been torched
The flowers in the garden are all fake
I've no desires no demands
From the republic for which it stands
From my Homeland of Heartache

I'm lapping up a bitter sauce
Full of wretchedness and loss
All atop a big self-pity cake
I start to choke, can hardly swallow
What a tasty little wallow
It's my Homeland of Heartache

I knew a girl, she showed her breast
They took her away, it's probably best
They stripped away everything they could take
Is that justice? Who can tell
I just know there's an awful smell
In my Homeland of Heartache

Back in school again so I decided to go up to 209 Randall again, I’m not sure why. It was night and guess who was lying on bed asleep? James’s first roommate, Robert Richards. He was last seen in New York, since he figured he could just read the 100 Great books on his own time. I would have thought he’d be in jail by now.

Do you know how The Peloponnesian War ends? "He [Tissaphernes] therefore decided to go and see them at the Hellespont in order to protest against what had happenned at Antandros and to clear himself as best he could from what they had to say against him with regard to the Phoenician fleet and other matters. He went first to Ephesus where he made a sacrifice to Artemis..." that is to say, it doesn't end at all. As Firestone said, Kafka didn't finish The Castle so I don't see why I should. But there is a surprise ending: in the last book Athens becomes an oligarchy. All that Pericles's funeral oration stuff about a democracy creating the best soldiers because they understand what they're fighting for and Athen's freedoms being a beacon to the world are out the window when they start seriously losing battles. Once the empire's in danger, it's the power of the strong over the weak. Same as ever, but it's still sad.

Crescent crescendo

While at band practice yesterday, executing a lovely crescendo, it suddenly occurred to me that the word “crescendo” is probably related to the word “crescent”. Crescendo= sound that is building or getting louder, crescent = the shape of the moon while it’s getting fuller. Sure enough, there’s a Latin word cresco, crescere, crevi, cretum meaning to grow or swell, present participle crescens, crescentis. But what about a moon that’s going from a half moon to a new moon? It’s still crescent in shape, but it’s not growing, it’s shrinking. My dictionary has the word decrescent as an adjective, meaning waning, but not as a noun. And if memory serves, the moon waxes on the right and wanes on the left, but usually when you see a crescent (such as on the Turkish flag) it’s on the left, meaning it’s really a decrescent, or would be if that were a word. Maybe the delightful flaky French roll should really be called a “decroissant”.

Another good bit in Thucydides I found in Book VII.44, when the Athenians wanted to attack Epipolae in Syracuse. (I believe that's in Sicily; the Penguin edition has such poorly drawn maps as to actually be more useless than no maps at all.) They found they couldn't breach the line by day so they decided to attack at night. However it was a complete failure, a terrible rout, because there was a lot of confusion in the darkness. "But it was the singing of the paean which did them as much, or even more harm than anything, because of the uncertainty caused by having much the same paean sung on both sides. Thus when the Argives and Corcyraeans and other Dorian elements in the army started singing their paean they produced as much panic among the Athenians as the enemy did." I had thought that a paean was a hymn of praise, but it's clearly a battle song here.

Out of Thin Air

Alright, here's a song I wrote over the weekend for Homeland Security and the hostages at RISD:

You know out of sight is never out of mind
Wherever I look, whatever I find
Whatever I see it's what you're just behind
All that I see has rendered me blind

You're hiding you're hiding
I'll find you ma chere
I'll find you I'll get you
Right out of thin air

You say I can't see you, you say it's forbidden
I no longer care if you did or you didn't
You said that you wouldn't, I thought you were kidding
Once I have found you, you'll still remain hidden

You're hiding you're hiding
I'll find you ma chere
I'll find you I'll get you
Right out of thin air

Tough Row

Oh wait, I get it now: "You're getting killed by what you don't know (= yourself)". I'll sharpen my pencil and tune my ukulele and see if I can write a song for Homeland Security this weekend. It's too bad Tom Ridge isn't the Secretary any more: his name rhymes with bridge and smidge and ligitig (-inous). I'm not sure what you can do with "Michael Chertoff".

So cool!

Not only is the NSA tapping any and all overseas phone calls, but apparently Homeland Security can open any packages sent through the mail. You know that Tom Ridge must've been, like, the biggest Brothers Twain fan in the whole world!

New Year's Greetings

Just got John Cale's new "Black Acetate" from a friend in Zurich. Very nice at first listen. Very frisky, like he was in concert two summers ago.
Do the hucklebuck