Life on the farm is kinda laid back,

ain't nuthin an old country boy like me can't hack:)

Today's House

http://www.weichert.com/37015118/

For you, special price:)

Today's Verse: 28 March 2011

Elusive celebrity
Untouchable star
Flickering shadows
Conceal what you are

First you're discovered
Then you're exposed
Fumbling to cover
What everyone knows

You think it's a secret
But nobody cares
The lies you believe
At night in your prayers

The seventh veil slips
No suspense no surprise
The mystery vanishes
You were hypnotized

Listen to me
I'm your true friend
This is the future
This is the end

I love how you don't know despair!

Songs for the New Depression: In Wisconsin

This is my attempt at a Woody Guthrie-style labor song.  Does anyone remember Michel Coss's nuclear protest with the refrain, "We want sunshine/We want wine/We want babies that do not whine"?

Though time rushes by, some things stay the same
The scoundrels are back at their usual game
They tell us the working man’s always to blame
They’re playing that game in Wisconsin

Thy tell us, “Sorry, that’s the way that it goes
We don’t have enough for you regular Joes.”
Well, we’ve had enough of their sorry-but-no’s
Yes, we’ve had enough in Wisconsin

It true that we all have to make do with less
But they tell us that we cannot ask or request
For what’s rightly ours, ‘cause the bosses know best
That’s what they say in Wisconsin

It isn’t just money, it’s a question of pride
They think with one loss we will just turn and hide
But we’ll all stand together on the working man’s side
Yes, we’ll stand together in Wisconsin

The fight for our rights has only begun
But we must be united for this to be done
For we are all strong when we work as one
And we will work as one in Wisconsin

Some people tell us we must stand alone
That each one must fight and win on his own
But that’s certainly not what history has shown
Let’s all fight and win in Wisconsin

Inside

Lost in the thoughts,
that rot.
Stinking stuff, that never ought to have stuck around.
Lost wheels, spinning in shit, slipping uselessly, never forward.
Never back, never nowhere, rotating, dum, dum, dum.
Was there a good one in there somewhere? Sometime? Tomorrow?
Of course!! But it is lost right now.All in the mix.
The soup turned brown.

Famous Last Words

We the living keep occupied
Punch your ticket, enjoy the ride
The pleasure’s finished before it’s begun
You can’t remember if it was fun

Tiny insights flash and go
And disappear before you know
It doesn’t matter when you’re through
Because the dead just want to screw

Those special moments
So quickly gone
Don’t mean a thing to
Those who’ve passed on

Maybe you think when you’ve lived
You will love and you’ll forgive
Catch your breath and say thank you
But the dead want is to screw


The ambitious seek out strife
Toil and triumph make up their life
Other people turn to art
Or think that books will make them smart

Maybe if you wrote a novel
Life will not seem quite so awful
You could express your point of view
But the dead just want to screw

We all seek honor
To be loved and admired
But none of that matters
Once you’ve expired

You can be gentle, good and kind
Which can give you piece of mind
However many good deeds you do
All the dead want is to screw

Spartans Tonight

This turned up along with Jim Preston's hair.  Sorry I'm not better with the scanner.

Thoughts, Feb. 15

Last winter a neighbor's goofy dad was visiting and tried to engage me in a debate over whether or not there was a multiplicity of infinities or not. I declined the invitation, of course, since I was only walking the dog and throwing the frisbee, but took some time to reflect on the matter. It seems faro;y clear that the idea of one infinity violates the whole concept of infinity, as, if there is one infinity, then there are an infinite number of each of these raised to an infinite power every single time forever including even tomorrow morning and yes I would like some eggs!

But on the other hand, some things are less elusive than Infinity. Reality, for example, completely circumscribes Denial. There is a boundary.

My sister-in-law and family will be moving into the house I grew up in, and she has been going through a lot of stuff that I left there, kindly offering to send treasured boyhood possessions.  We were talking on the phone yesterday as she was in my old room and said, "There's a whiskey box here and I don't know what's in it, but it's marked, 'Jim Preston's hair'".  It was of course James' hair that I bought at Reality Auction.  I hope you don't mind James, but I told her she could let it go.

We learn from Dottore Ghiberti that Mr. Starr was ordained as a Russian Orthodox priest last week.  He is evidently still teaching at the Santa Fe campus.

Loosely adapted from Sonnet 55:

A statue that’s erected for one madman’s dreams
Can yet be torn down by U.S. marines
While there’s this song
You’ll last beyond
The statues that are built for kings and queens
Oh we can climb
Outside of time
While there’s this song

The mighty heroes who are now forgotten
Their great ideals and all the wars they fought in
We have this song
But they are gone
Their bodies in the ground, unmourned and rotten
Oh we can climb
Outside of time
While there’s this song

The great men in their tombs and mausoleums
Their portraits gath’ring dust in the museums
Can’t last too long
They have no song
For them there is no more of “carpe diem”.
But we can climb
Outside of time
While there’s this song

I finally, at the age of 51, heard "Blue Jeans and Moonbeams".  It's not as awful as I had expected, though it's certainly not very good Beefheart.  It's strange that both he and Bryan Ferry covered JJ Cale's "Same Old Blues".

Drink & Drive

A seasonal song for New Year's Eve:

When I'm with you
I've never felt so high
When I'm with you
There's no time to wonder why
It's a short time we're alive
Come on, drink and drive

We're going 80
And you say let's go faster
We're going 90
Doubled over with laughter
Too fast to stay alive
Come on, drink and drive

We're falling forward
And the world is falling back
We're falling forward
'Til the moment of impact
We're can't come out alive
Come on, drink and drive

Just a thought

I wouldn't particularly recommend the movie 'Bad Santa' unless you were in the mood for a something that cuts a little close to the bone.

The Captain passed away today.  Oddly enough, I'll be meeting with some people this weekend to discuss playing tuba in a Beefheart tribute band.

The Past That Never Was (and the Future That Never Will Be)

I used the bridge that Jimmy wrote for "Hard Times"  to seed a new song:

Oh how I long to see again
The home I left behind
Where every hand’s a friendly one
Where folks are good and kind

There neighbors help each other out
We’re all one family
I’ve left the past that never was
For a future that never will be

It's hard to recall
Easy old days
Sunshine my love
Disappears in a haze

Oh dear mother weep no more
Please do not cry for me
I’ve left the past that never was
For a future that never will be

Oh now I work for principles
Of love and hope and change
We’ll build ourselves a world that will be
Beautiful and strange

We’ll fight for justice, freedom and
For equality
I’ve left the past that never was
For a future that never will be

It's hard to remember
But it hurts to forget
I was born in December
And I'm not finished yet

Oh dear mother weep no more
Please do not cry for me
I’ve left the past that never was
For a future that never will be

Juliana's New Car

What’s that coming down Cornell Ave?
That special ride the other girls don’t have?
Hey, hey, it’s Juliana’s new car
Why look, it’s clean and spotless
It’s going to make every Hot List
Lookee there, it’s Juliana’s new car

Now even a crude vulgarian
Tips his hat to this veterinarian
When he sees Juliana’s new car
She drives by so perkily
The very pride of Berkeley
Watch out now, it’s Juliana’s new car

It’s really super duper
Her brand new Mini-Cooper
It’s really very sporty
And it goes 140

She’s the crème de la crème
She’s our favorite DVM!
Coming by in Juliana’s new car
As she cruises through the city
Taking care of every dog and kitty
My my my, it’s Juliana’s new car

All her patients at the VCA
Bark, mew and shout hooray
When they think about Juliana’s new car
They wag their tails and purr
Want her for their own chauffeur
Take a ride in Juliana’s new car

It’s really super duper
Her brand new Mini-Cooper
It’s really very spiffy
And it goes 150

And even when it’s stormy
She can take a ride with Normie
How else, but in Juliana’s new car
She can ride with her Akita
Visit Boo-boo and Chiquita
Here she comes, it’s Juliana’s new car

Hey hey hey, Juliana’s new car
What’d I say, it’s Juliana’s new car
Good gosh a’mighty, Juliana’s new car
Yeah, Juliana’s new car

Cannonball Flower Season

Happy birthday, Jim!  I wish we were all together.  It's cold and wet in Berekeley.  I could make some fondue and maybe even scare up some Valaisanne and we could sing all the old songs.  I hope you have a happy day in Mumbai!

Oh man, I had a terrible dream last night that James was using junk.  Don't do it Firestone.  Choose life.

A profile of third-floor type James Schamus. It's nice to see he has his film students read Plato.

I remember too

1985, it seems like a square root or something, I know before it was one year and after it another, and yet it doesn't really reside in temporal sequence.  I remember that James was working at Hasbro and came up to visit and get away, and I think we bought the big black-&-white TV then that only seemed to get Maude.  I remember that we lived in the basement on St. Stephen Street that didn't get any sunlight and all the houseplants died, and I'd never lived in a place with cockroaches like that, having only lived in the roachless worlds of 1) the suburbs 2)  college and 3)  Switzerland and yet 1985 doesn't seem much further away than living in Jackson, than watching The Flintstones after school as a kid, than the last time I saw Jim or even Jim, less than a year ago.  I'm not sure if this addled perception of time is a benefit of a aging or a result of drug use, if it be love or just confusion.

Skinny Guys are nice too?

Some say yes.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Annie and I are doing a little cleaning and thought we would share some of the less dusty fruits of our labours.
Merci a tout!

the day after diwali

http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/obama-addresses-india-inc/174038

18:15, the colon hangs above my naked head and attentive ears

Happy Birthday Johny

love you

Very boring

People in love can be very boring
Over and over with the same stupid stories
People in love are so painfully dumb
I’m afraid that’s exactly the bore I’ve become

People in love always tell such clichés
Enough to fill up five Kate Hudson screenplays:
Her eyes are like stars, her lips are like roses
Pearls for her teeth and piggies for toeses

But I love her smile and I love her laugh too
I shouldn’t go on, but golly I have to
When she wrinkles her nose she becomes kind of elfish
Not to share such a wonder would be selfish

People in love are seldom good company
Being around them isn’t much fun for me
But I’ve become just what I abhor:
I’m a man in love. I’m a bore.

People in love can be very tedious
If they’re so happy why are they the neediest?
People in love are so tiresome
And yet that’s the bore I’ve become.

People in love talk quite stupidly
In baby talk, all Betty Boop-ily
“Papa wants baby, do papa do”
But now I talk just like that too.

People in love are utterly terrible
Watching them smooch is completely unbearable
But I’m in love with a girl so adorable
I have to admit I’ve become quite horrible.

I’ve tried to be detached and clinical
But I’m too happy to be very cynical
Now I’m a Pooh though I was an Eeyore
I’m a man in love. I’m a bore.

Laura

Listen to and download Robert Wyatt singing the theme to the beloved and inscrutable Gene Tierney movie here

This is the Magnetic Fields movie Tracy had mentioned many months ago. Apparently I can be heard but not seen in it very briefly.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39849523/ns/today-entertainment/

In memory

http://www.tmz.com/2010/10/16/barbara-billingsley-dies-jerry-mathers-leave-it-to-beaver/

Today's Verse: 15 October 2010

Goodbye breakfast. Tears and snot
Bear away the fruit, crust, crumbs
Of deluded endeavour
On a shallow, idle stream
(T'es déguelasse. -- C'est quoi déguelasse?)

So? The morning sun shone in warm intimacy
As if caressing hall and hearth
Still, in equipose, not expectant or relieved,
Just dawned on me
Like an idea
That seemed familiar
Once it's thought

So? I lied all the time
About my split personality
The bifurcation was convenient, handy
Now it's gotten out of hand and landed
Me in the soup of someone else's lunch
To which I fear I'm not invited, either of me
Don't fuck up my neighbor whispers insistently picking at my sleeve
Don't worry we mutter in unison to ourselves
We're used to it by now

So. The afternoon is brutal, crushing, possibly diseased
I'm writing this letter to the warden
I know he'll never read
The night will evening follow, I'll wander off to dream
And wake in semi-darkness, rain pounding on the street
I wish I had a happy bed
Comes rising from the deep
I wish I had a happy bed
Remember as I fall asleep

You're Like Dope

This is supposed to be like if Cole Porter wrote a song for Grace Slick:


You are uppers, you are pot
You’re purple haze and micro-dot
Oh, baby, you’re like dope

You’re hashish, you’re PCP
Magic mushrooms, ecstasy
Oh, darling, you’re like dope.

You are blotter, you’re sugar cube
You’re tequila and a bunch of ludes
Oh, baby, you’re like dope

You’re blue heaven, you’re white death
You’re mescaline and crystal meth
Oh, honey, you’re like dope.

When I’m with you dear all I feel’s
A crazy happy glow
They say that I should leave you but
To them I just say no

You’re a lid of Mary Jane
You’re a shot in a collapsing vein
Oh, baby, you’re like dope.


You’re black beauties, you are dolls
You’re dilaudid and Demerol
Oh, baby you’re like dope

You are yellows, blues and greens
Footballs, goofballs, Dexedrine
Oh, darling, you’re like dope

You’re red devils, you are bennies
You are soapers, dust and nembies
Oh, baby you’re like dope

You’re a quick poke in the leg
You fry my brain just like an egg
Oh, honey, you’re like dope

You always keep me happy dear,
You never disappoint
I wish that I could roll you up
And smoke you like a joint

You’re peyote, Special K
STP, MDMA
Oh baby you’re like dope
Oh baby, just like dope.

Songs for the New Depression: Hard Times

Stephen Collins Foster wrote a beautiful song called Hard Times. Dennis suggested I try something with the same title.

A friend called up to tell me
He was stuck in a mine
He didn’t like to bother
But he’s afraid that he is dying
Hard times are these, my friends
Hard times, indeed

I look out the window
At the street on which I dwell
Abandoned houses in a row
Like husks or empty shells
Hard times are these, my friends
Hard times, indeed

I heard a man who talked about
The things that lie between us
I thought he was the president
But he was selling vacuum cleaners
Hard times are these, my friends
Hard times, indeed

Entire cities have been destroyed
By earthquake, fire and flood
And men been made invisible
Unseen, unknown, unloved
Hard times are these, my friends
Hard times, indeed

Last Weekend

I went to Homecoming at St. John's last weekend. The class of 1980 was there for their 30th, and there was a nice wine-and-cheese reception in memory of Donald Esselborn, who we lost some years ago. The people my age seemed incredibly old, and the younger people seemed to be locked into the kind of stuff that seems like a broken record by the time you have gotten your kids through high school. The students, of course, live a blissful existence, centered around 'the nature of the good', and the schedule for the next soccer game. Everyone asked about you all, and I told them that our hearts still beat as one. The place is much less decrepit now than it was in our time.

On the other hand..

I have some leaks. There is a leak around the bathtub upstairs somewhere that has compromised my kitchen ceiling. I have not been able to isolate it. I had another leak from the roof that seems OK but the damage has not yet been repaired. The other day, all of the transmission fluid leaked out of Jessie's car and I had to spend a lot of money to get it fixed. Today, we were trying to fix a section of the wall in the kitchen that I thought had been damaged by one of the known leaks, and I found that it was actually caused by another, very small and annoying supply line (pipe) leak. These leaks are not a lot of fun. They are quite a bit like a sticky valve on your horn, in the sense that they are something that you do not really understand why you have it, when you really don't want it at all, and when you try to change it, it is still there.

drip, drip, drip

We shall, in fact, overcome, but it is kind of leaky sometimes.

Here's something we know you'll really like!

www.outofprintmagazine.co.in

Our friend Tracy, quite a swifty
Always neat and always nifty
And today she's as old as I am

We were sitting around late at night in some fantastic foreign city where we were going to be giving a show the next day, drinking and getting high and thinking about how great our show was going to be. Robert Richards was there, and Jennifer Anniston. Jimmy and James went out to get some more drinks, and it was late and I was tired so I lay down for a while until they came back. And then I was sitting in a car and I couldn’t remember how I got there, but the sun was out and it was the next day, except it was actually two days later and I’d slept too long and missed the show. I started to cry, I was so upset, and Tracy was nice and gave me her coat, since I was still in my pajamas.

The Fix Is Better Than The High

I’m sitting at a café waiting for you to show
When you get here I’ll soon be bored silly I know
But now I’m excited, oh please tell me why
Is the fix always so much better than the high

I’m thinking about you, going into a frenzy
I can’t for the life of me remember what sends me
About you, my darling, so please tell why
Is the fix always so much better than the high

What is that makes me so impatient?
Some mirage of my own creation
Why am I so impossibly naïve?
Once you’re here, I’ll be ready to leave

I’m now so worked up, I’m now so upset
It seems while I’m waiting I always forget
All the times I have wanted to tell you goodbye
The fix is always so much better than the high

I wonder ...

Whence the expression "peter out"?

After S.D. Simko

I have my directions
Written in some uncertain kind of code
I know the groves and orchards
But not the people I see on the road
I have changed my money
For the paper they use here to pay
At stores where they speak another language
Where street lamp shadows slip on the doorways

And I don’t feel like dancing
Maybe you can hold my hand tonight
No I don’t feel like dancing
All I ask is that you hold me tight
‘Cause I don’t feel like dancing
No I don’t feel like dancing any more


It is snow. It’s snowing.
Footprints running like a line of news
Or history written on lined paper:
Only insults, nothing but a bruise.
The fields here don’t quite fit
Like a map I don’t know how to fold
It’s one story. It still matters
For as long as that story’s told.

And I don’t feel like dancing
Maybe you can hold my hand tonight
No I don’t feel like dancing
All I ask is that you hold me tight
‘Cause I don’t feel like dancing
No I don’t feel like dancing any more


Even with my eyes closed
I know this place that might have been my home
The woods where trees are still scarred
With my name that’s carved in like a poem.
I barely fill my coat up
The sleeves are empty as the twilight sky
Heading to the empty
House where I last saw my father cry

And I don’t feel like dancing, &c.

Today's Verse: 12 August 2010

My pillow smells like butter
It's a comfort when I lay
My head down to sleep

Last night I dreamed I was dead. I was in a big institutional building, and I had two choices: I could either simply cease to exist or I could stay in the building. Most people just choose to stop exisiting, because staying in the building is kind of boring. Mostly you just have to stay in your room. However you can get extra privleges on the grounds by earning points, which you acquire by getting testimonials from your friends. "Oh," I said, just before waking up. "I hate being dead."

The secret film was filmed secretly!

Peter Fernandez, 83, who helped introduce the United States to Japanese animation in the 1960s by adapting the series "Speed Racer" for American audiences, died July 15 of cancer at his home in Pomona, N.Y.

Mr. Fernandez, a voice actor who was also a writer and producer, gave voice to fast-talking action hero Speed Racer and wrote the English lyrics to the catchy theme song that can still cause many now-grown fans to bust out a line from the chorus: "Go, Speed Racer, go!"

A former child actor who had worked in radio, Mr. Fernandez was specializing in English dubbing of foreign films and animation when he was asked to adapt "Speed Racer," which first appeared in Japan as "Mach Go Go Go."

"The only instructions I had was to 'Americanize it,' which meant I could name all the characters and write the dialogue the way I wanted," he told the Houston Chronicle in 2008.

The 52-episode series debuted in 1967 and featured voice-overs by Mr. Fernandez and three other actors who took Speed Racer and friends on adventures in the Mach 5 super-car.

Naming the characters was the most fun, Mr. Fernandez often said. He called villains Cruncher Block and Guts Buster, and he delighted in writing such lines as "The secret film was filmed secretly."

Mr. Fernandez was born Jan. 29, 1927, in New York City. When his father's import-export business failed during the Depression, he started modeling at 7 to bring in money.

As a teenager he appeared in several Broadway shows, including Lillian Hellman's "Watch on the Rhine" (1941). During World War II, he served in the Army and was assigned to the Pentagon, where he worked in communications, his wife, Noel, said.
ad_icon

After the war, he sold stories to pulp magazines and acted in radio, television and film. The Los Angeles Times called Mr. Fernandez a "new-found film star" in 1949 after he appeared in the movie "City Across the River" with Tony Curtis.

In the 1960s, Mr. Fernandez segued into dubbing and wrote scripts for two animated Japanese imports, "Astro Boy" and "Gigantor," which led to "Speed Racer."

The series experienced renewed popularity when it aired on MTV in the 1990s. In the 2008 live-action film "Speed Racer," Mr. Fernandez had a cameo as a radio announcer. He continued to work as a voice actor and director until about a year ago.

Prone to exclaiming "jeepers" in interviews, the kindly Mr. Fernandez would try to explain the enduring popularity of "Speed Racer" by pointing to children's fascination with cars and the show's emphasis on Speed's family relationships.

He also admitted that he "always tried to get across a subtle message of some kind about decency or fair play."

In addition to Noel, whom he married in 1978, he is survived by three children; a brother; a sister; and nine grandchildren.

Today's Verse: 17 July 2010

Old fat bald
I've become a cliché
I resemble myself less
Than I fancied I did
In shocking youth
Now my ejaculations wild
Seem perfectly sane
Irrelevant
My identity is reduced
To a small pyramid
The base the length of a finger
Squeezed in the center
Of my face
Now I'm the spirit
Shuffling through the attic
In the dark
Dim and searching
Still lit but fading on the page
Losing shape and distinction
I'm not bored
Or afraid
I'm mildly disturbed
By the way things work out
Even when you're
Enlightened
Fulfilled
Satisfied

Motherfucker's Day

Mother is dying once again

While we are driving
The old rotten hen
Won't lay anymore
Who laid plenty then
Felt slayed by each one
And pained every time
Betrayed by the moment
She desired the cock

That old rusty cock's
Paralysed
Wagon's busted
Back broken
Recessed
He won't lay a finger
On her now

We're very far away
Feeling her dying
It's agony
See him holding his breath
He cannot believe what is happening

Mother is dying all over agin
Sucking him
Into a hole
Leaving him
Empty and crazed
And seething to murder
Wh0's already dying
With him deep inside

There's nothing we can do about it

Tuli Kupferberg

Wave your freak flag at half-mast. Oddly enough, I just listened to the first Fugs album the other day (I have your old copy James.)

Dance Where You Are

Dance where you are
In Berlin or Kandahar
Dance in Lackawanna
Ghana or the Cote d’Iviore
Oh yeah—
Dance where you are

Dance where you are
Whatever’s in your repetoire
There can be no style
That's too wild or too bizarre
Oh yeah—
Dance where you are

Dance where you are
To tuba and guitar
Or to a marimba
Or kalimba or sitar
Oh yeah—
Dance where you are

World Cup

Congratulations, Switzerland! If I knew the Swiss national anthem, I'd sing it. But help me out, Spartan brethren: Didn't Spain beat Germany in 1982, the summer we watched it in the Nautilis? A-and the Spanish workers partying all night, and "Viva Espana"? The man down the street who sells poutine says Italy won that year, and disturbingly, Wikipedia seems to favor him over my increasingly unsteady memory. Was it all a crazy dream?

I ain't nothing but a man in love

Today I heard "Modern Don Juan" by Buddy Holly for the first time in many years. Man, that's a great song.

Apollinaire

I went down to the Piraeus to catch the second show
Watching the crowd, I felt like a real wise guy
Then Rachel and Suzie came in and said, ah Johny
Don’t you want to go outside and go get high
Well I did but I didn’t because all of a sudden I got confused
I thought I’d just seen heading up the stairs
Smiling almost laughing to himself
The ghost of Apollinaire.

The lights dimmed and I went to get myself a drink
I felt like lying down though I wasn’t tired
Behind the bar the TV was showing last night’s news
It looked like half the city was on fire
“Hey change it” somebody said “put on the game”
But everything they showed had the rocket’s red glare
I couldn’t look away but I could see
The ghost of Apollinaire.

And the band was playing and a couple kids were dancing
But all I heard was a seashell roar
And the room began to fill with light until it felt
Like pushing your cart at the grocery store
And my tongue felt numb and suddenly I couldn’t talk
Laughing and scratching, crawling and gasping for air
And I looked around but I had somehow lost
The ghost of Apollinaire

I could see right through the ceiling and the stars were turning backwards
Trying to uncount the last hundred years
I dreamed I was at home in bed and everything was OK
It was just reflected through the barside mirror
I woke up and thought I was on stage playing in the band
And realized I was just sitting in a chair
Smiling almost laughing to myself
Like the ghost of Apollinaire.

Today's Verse: 28 May 2010

My beard is naked
As a finger
In a cool dark room
Fluorescent
As a shadow
On the moon

Today's Verse: 13 May 2010

Makeshift
String, twigs, any old strut
Hang it
Low down
Deliberate
Home, habit, hobby construct
Uniform erection array
Imperious
Till the accident
Or just plain
Decay

An den Kritter

I almost let the day close without wishing many happy returns of the day to the delightful Mister Leach. Let it flow with you, Stephen. Let it show with you.

Later today, 4.30

Though liquor is quicker,
it's blood that runs thicker.
Sometimes
the answer is 'four'.
Ariston men udor.

Today's Verse: 30 April 2010

Waves of burlesque contort the air
Carry away
The atmosphere
That whirrs, clicks, spits, groans
Around my head
Taunt my ear holes at attention
Mock menace my defenseless temples
O! mysteries of summer lawn
Before I knew I was a faun

Maggie posted a couple of new recordings here. "Twine Time" has a sort of wacky tuba solo.

There's a deep bitter river

There’s a deep bitter river
That runs underground
Oh, I’ve been to its banks
And stared all the way down

I’ve been down to the river
So dark and so clear
And its waters are frightful
And as bitter as tears.

I looked down in that river
And felt a cold in my bones
Though I wanted to run
I felt myself turned to stone.

And I saw a baby
All swaddled in white
Rise up from the river
And dissolve into light

And I saw my mother
On the opposite shore
Till a thick fog arose
And I could see her no more.

And I heard a trumpet
That blew from a cloud
And I heard a voice call me
So deep and so loud

And I looked in the sky
And saw fire and smoke
And I felt myself shiver
As the voice above spoke

It said, “You must cross through
This river so black
And once you have started
You cannot turn back.

So go down to the river
Go down and dive in
Though the waters will scald you
And blister your skin.”

I must dive in the river
And go all the way down
Though I’m too scared to swim
And afraid that I’ll drown.

And where the river takes me
I know I must follow
Though the water’s so foul
That I can’t drink or swallow

There’s a deep bitter river
That runs underground
Oh, I’ve been to its banks
And stared all the way down

Thoughts 4/14

You take a step.
You take a breath.
You take a chance.
You take the time.
You take a shit.
Oh, no you don't!
You give a shit.
It's just a fact.
You almost never
take it back.

Why bother?

I could press my only good shirt
And pretend to flirt
But why bother?

I could put a suit and tie on
Try to dress like Lord Byron
Why bother?

Why bother when the global warming
Is going to make the whole thing moot
I doubt I'd be very charming
Underwater in a scuba suit

I could work on my coiffure
Get a manicure
Why bother?

I could sing a nice serenade
Slightly dumb and cliched
Why bother?

Or I could try to write you a sonnet
Aw, but then dawgone it
Why bother?

Why bother when Iran and Korea
Are going to drop a bomb on our heads?
Why bother when the only thing to fe-ah
Is the fear that we'll all soon be dead?

I could be the guy who brings roses
Quite a metamorphosis
Why bother?

I could stay in your favor
On my good behavior
Why bother?

I could even act adoring
When you're so boring
But why bother?

Why bother when the War on Terror
Always remains at Code Red?
Should I fear exploding underwear or
The fact that I can't use the head?

I could say I'd love you forever
Quite a noble endeavor
Why bother?

I had occasion to say today, "Soak it up, Miss Sponge. I'm a-gonna love squeezing you dry."

What next?

I think that we should write a pop song. I think that that would be super. I think that we should choose a theme, and write the song, and that it would be the best. No bullshit, just write a pop song. I was in a room the other day, painting, and singing the St. Matthew Passion with an old buddy. No limits, no limits. We could do it. It would make a good story :)

Today's Verse: 16 March 2010

If Shakespeare had been Jesus
We would worship irony
And all those priests
Would we disgrace
Who lacked guile and subtlety
Being chaste would be a waste
Whose surfeit we'd deplore
Sensation pricks the mind to seek
And finding seeks for more
If there were sin
It would lie in
Dull hypocrisy
And special pains
Would be retained
For making life a bore

If Jesus had been Shakespeare
His sonnets mayn't be written
The tragedies might be sermons
We'd hear but wouldn't listen
He'd drop the pen, he'd quit the stage
Perhaps he'd try to lure
The virgin queen to partnership
With vows of chasteness pure
And how they'd reign, how they'd rule
Supreme in separate spheres
But that's another history
Unsuited to our years

Just a story, Mar. 15, 2010

About two years ago, when we were doing the big push to finish the poolhouse before Memorial Day, we had a serious drought in the region. As a result of the drought and perhaps other factors, a large number of squirrels had found themselves in the fetid pool, unable to find an exit. As the weather warmed, the ripeness of the detritus began to reach a level that could be sensed on a step-by-step basis as one approached the actual pool. It is rare to experience space olfactorally, but it can happen, under such intense conditions. Many questions arose as to how to handle the situation, so eventually I got a few buckets and garbage bags, and went down there early in the morning and used a skimmer to extract the bodies into multiple layers of plastic bags, tied them up nicely, and took them home to my garbage cans. I had learned in the restaurant business that there were some jobs that were so nasty that the boss had to do them himself while nobody else was looking. It was a nice sunny morning, though, and they didn't smell anywhere near as bad as they did when the garbage men took them away a few days later. I would contend that you have to practice if you want to know how to have fun doing that kind of stuff. If it wasn't any fun, I wouldn't have bothered. We opened on time, although we have not yet scheduled the body-painting festival.

which miracle?

Ellen moved out today. It has been difficult. An old friend said to me once, "I don't know how you do it.?", to which I responded, "It's different for me. I work without a net."

Anyone up for a little game of 'guess the reference'?

Well well, I just learned recently that the Paca-Caroll favorite, "Pogo Dancing" is by Chris Spedding, not Nick Lowe. How the rest of you must have been laughing at me all these years!

Our Town

Thw Spring production at the Washington Latin Charter Skol (WLCPS) will be 'Our Town', the Pulitzer-prizewinning play by Thornton Wilder, set in the fully segregated northeast, and a true monument of modern American art. I believe that I have been tasked with the construction of the ladders, lanterns, and tombstones, but any further stage direction would be more than welcome. As usual, thanks in advance, hermanos et Tracy, y todo il mundo.

Get away. Live free.

Orange denotes security and signifies men working on the highway are vigilant while they work.
You don't get orange for free, except in nature which gives with one hand and takes right back with the other.
Like living in the moment: the culmination of everything that's come before and the single point of departure for everything that follows.
So when you say "let this love last forever", you're asking for what already has happened to happen again, and keep on happening, for every moment to be the same, for time and change to end. Like repeating the same note.
For the men working the road, it goes on forever, till quitting time. They get out of the sun, cool down, have a drink, something to eat, and figure out how to fill the hours before sleep -- that infinity before work resumes again.
They too love and lust.
When they're naked, their vigilance relaxed, maybe viewed, maybe viewing, eyes brimful of glee or mirth, they're like fires lit on hilltops in the dark -- signalling.
The flame is orange yellow from a distance. As you approach you perceive different colors of the spectrum, especially blue and red. They line its black heart.
It's a hungry road and a thirsty road, and, unlike the way to heaven, it's curvy as hell. It'll take you where you're going but it won't set you free.
Doesn't have to, you are already.
Free to moan.

Anecdotally, Mar. 4 2010

I've really got to catch up on this whole Magnetic Fields phenomenon. Considerable Buzz, as far as I can tell.

It has occurred to me lately, that remembering some times back in Buffalo, that there were a lot of nights that ended with someone saying, "Well, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." Sometimes it was said with a bloody nose, and sometimes with a bloody fist, but somebody usually had to say it, just for the tradition. I often watched, usually in agreement with the sentiment.

I had a reunion of sorts with Stephin and Clodia, playing on a few songs this weekend, in both Oakland and San Francisco where the Magnetic Fields were playing as part of the Noise Pop Festival.

And Tracy, although I did not see the movie you'd mentioned, apparently my horn (but not my face) makes a brief appearence in a clip from the last Zinnias show at Now and Then. You may recall it; you took some double-exposed pictures that night.

O intrepid driver

O intrepid driver through the snow
That falls profuse and heavy on the land:
The memory of thy days in Buffalo
Shall guide thee still to destinations grand.
For wisely thou hast furnished all thy wheels
With motive shafts, to give them added force.
Thy Subaru the tempest hardly feels,
But makes its way undaunted like a horse.
So, whether thy friend Paddy thou wouldst see,
Or wouldst take faithful Bruno to the vet,
The nets that sullen Time propels at thee
Shall not ensnare thy feet, or make thee fret.
For, as thou takest Virtue as thy crown,
Thou hast no need to fear the season's frown.

Anecdote, Feb. 25, 2010

In Texas, at least during the period from the 1960's to the 1980's, and evidently before that, there was a rather strange and subtle importance placed on personal appearance and style. Naturally, in such a culture, wakes and other remembrances of newly deceased persons were held with open caskets. I remember being warned by my parents before my grandmother's wake, that everyone would talk about how good she looked, and, unsurprisingly, 'good-looking as ever' was one of the most common comments that I heard at the event. At the time, in Denton, there were no bars, only private clubs, but I was able to buy a one-day membership at a place near the funeral home to get away for a while. I drove her green Oldsmobile out of Texas. It was a very nice car. On a good day you could almost drive it with your eyes closed. I wouldn't recommend it, but some have tried.

Winter Break

We're finishing up our 'snowmageddon' break, which makes me think back to Annie's first winter break at christmas, which makes me think back to my freshman winter break back in Buffalo in the snow. It was about a month long, and I would spend a few hours working through the Theatetus before heading out into the snow to meet my old buddies and start the festivities. I did a pretty nice job on the Theatetus, but could not quite pull it into an essay before the deadline, then freaked out and handed in something like a verbose outline right at the end of the year. I remember one time during the vacation that we ran out of beer money and went and gave blood to pick up a few bucks. There was a lot of snow. Not like the year before that, which was the blizzard of '77. Good times.

On Measurement

Did you ever feel like you were a subject in a lab that all kinds of scientists were measuring with all kinds of rulers and scales, and think to yourself, 'If you would all just give me a minutes' worth of peace, I might be able to invent a ruler that could measure myself.' Of course, it would not serve any purpose in the measurement of any other person, but I had no interest in that anyway, at the time of the thought. I am not sure when it happened.

A Hundred to One

I was going to write a book about the US Senate called '100 Haircuts', but I decided to get one instead.

Thanks, more than Praise

I drink more than I should, smoke even more. and don't have a lot of money in the bank.

I don't play my cards very carefully, because I always want to see the end of the hand.

I have a few friends, and am very glad to see them on occasion.
Jim, Johny, Peter? What is your name?

Brainw(e)ave

John Waters MUST do the Sarah Palin bio-pic, and soon!

They came in pairs

once up a time when they worked too much and did not meet a lot of girls.

Anecdote, Feb.4 2010

We started the trip when I was 6, on a flight from San Francisco-Montreal-Paris. I don't remember the first leg, but we landed in snow in Montreal about midnight, and had to change planes. My dad wrapped my little sister in 'the Lufthansa blanket' and carried her to the next plane. The blanket made the complete journey around the world over the next 18 months. After we had taken off for the overnight flight from Montreal, a cheese snack was served, and I informed my mother that the odor of the cheese would not be acceptable to the children in the cabin. She was sympathetic, but had little appreciation for the terrors in store. Both of my sisters and I proceeded to retch violently for the first few hours of the flight, until we were all exhausted. I can't remember falling asleep, but I remember waking with an empty, crumpled, barf-bag under my head which I held up triumphantly to my mother. Once we got to Paris, we made our way to a large hotel, with a great deal of luggage. I strode directly to a large marble surface, so as not to soil the carpets, bent over, and retched the remains of any previous life onto the floor. The family spent the next few days nursing themselves on hot cocoa with skin on top under duvets somewhere in the hotel. And we will always have Paris.

Today's Verse: 4 February 2010

Trust has a price in the marketplace
But it doesn't in my heart
In the marketplace
You buy a man
Measure him in hours
Everything he may comprise
All that may within him lie
His breath, his come, his blood, his bile
Belong to you a little while
In the marketplace
You buy the guy
You've got him by the hour
Together you're an enterprise
Together a transaction
Aspire to what you've bargained for
You may get satisfaction
In the marketplace
You stand to gain
Or lose or come out even
You think you know the risks you take
You think that you can choose them
I wasn't there when Jesus died
I didn't watch him suffer
That was for free I understand
As was the final supper
In the marketplace
I bought a man
To serve me and to labor
Soon after that I felt I'd slid
Adrift in lassitude, and savoured
Reason come undone and all asunder
My mind became a fragile pane
Of clear transparent wonder
Everybody's out to lunch
The matron has absconded
I don't recall what was agreed
The terms and the conditions
I've lost the contract and the man
Who told me what was in it
And now I find me face to face
With commitments I've engaged in
But can't determine which was me
And which was him
And what makes up the difference
Instants aren't mathematical
Passion doesn't speak in hours
While I burgeon and hallucinate
Exploding like a flower
Passion's lessons you can't teach
Trust must play its part
Which has a price in the marketplace
But it doesn't in my heart

Aphorism, Feb. 3, 2010

While we are quick to note the peaks of the world that we have scaled, would like to scale, or have failed to scale, how many dare to acknowledge the peaks of their own imaginations left unexplored. or unexplorable.

Anecdotal. Feb. 3, 2010

Have been working with my student on the complex plane and Euler's invention of complex exponentiation. I remember having offered a fairly lame disquisition on the nature of Euler's e on this blog at some time in the past, and have had considerable opportunity to revisit my thoughts during the past year of teaching the material. There are a couple of numbers that are considered 'transcendental', two of them are 'e' and 'pi' and Mr. Euler, of the 10-Franc note (unless I am mistaken) connected the two of them in the majesty of his mind in what is known as Euler's formula (one of many)
e^(pi*i) +1 = 0.
Which may be the most elegant masterpiece of all of human history. I really like it.

Verse, Feb. 1

If someone said to you 'come with me',
would you think there was a place that they wanted to be?
And if someone said 'I think I see what you see',
would you think that they saw what you wanted them to see?

If I told you that I would call you in a month, maybe,
would you think that I was just a big baby?
Or was I just being really stupid and lazy,
which is always an easy way to avoid being crazy?

So if you called and I answered "I'm here",
and you were surprised that I was suddenly so near,
then you would just have to trust that you have nothing to fear,
and I'll only try to say things that you need to hear.

Semi-anecdotal, Jan. 31, 2010

When I was with my mother last weekend, I read her the poetry that we had written to each other, various friends and relations, and had some discussion. She was a farm girl from Iowa, born in 1930, whose mother was a gifted enough musician to play piano for silent films, given a few chord changes. My mother asked me, "what is it like when you are together personally, when you communicate at this level already?"

What could I say?

I told her that our hearts just beat as one. That we are always there.
I couldn't say much more at the time, so I choose to say it now.

And that when I am with my brother Jim then we just ride out out the traffic jams of Mumbai and we roll on through the night and we never understand fear because we have rolled across the alps at 100 mph with all of our lovers and we always trusted each other to the death because we have put our blood on the stage together and anything other that was just a misunderstanding, or failure of elucidation of vision. There was never, ever, any question of competence from either side.

And that when I am with Johny that we are operating at a lower frequency, one that we can't expect the others to understand, but that we are working on a complete understanding of, that we have not yet found a western explication of.

And that when I am with Peter, that I am always knowing that there are so many things that are well understood by those that came before us, that we both umay understand, but are so damned hard to explain.

And when I am with Tracy, how well I understand that it is not the same thing to be a woman than a man, and that I am not really capable of understanding more than that. Noone ever gave to us what she gave us, and we should be eternally thankful for teaching us so much about herself, and about womanhood.

I would like to think that I learned something from trying to be a rock-and-roll star

Aphosirsm, Jan. 31, 2010

'They'll never replace the cowboy. No machine could stand the abuse.'
American cowboy saying, not to be attributed here.

Anecdote, Jna. 31, 2010

It must have been about 1964, when a man who was some sort of uncle from my mother's side of the family pulled up in front of the house in Berkeley in an old station wagon full of stuff with an ultra-modern fold-up bike stuffed against the back window. He said, "When I see boys like you, I always give them a hug!" and he gave me a nice hug. He was short and stocky and somewhere between Jewish and Irish. I don't believe he even stayed the night. I said to myself when I met him, "well, there's an option."

Anecdote, Jan 30, 2010

A friend of mine is in the hospital with a large pulmonary embolism and a gastric bleed. He is blind, and just has a thumb and forefinger on each hand, and can't walk. They put a filter up in his vena cava yesterday to catch the clots. He lay on a stainless steel table all day while they did it. Later, he said, "I'm doing better now."

Aphorism, January 27

If you are in too big a rush to stop and think, then you are in too big a rush.

Anecdote, Jan 27, 2010

When I was living in Nebraska in 1978, I had the opportunity to be standing in the near vicinity of a train derailment, as the train approached me. I stood still, and processed the images as fast as I could. I saw a cloud of dust, as the first cars crumbled upon each other and some coal cars flipped. The following boxcars rolled out of the cloud of dust like oversized, oblong, dice, while I calculated tbeir location and wondered how sure I was of my calculations. Later, all was still.

Verse, Jan. 25, 2010

A bird flew through my chest the other day,
and left a hole where once my blood had been.
A gaping chasm, ripped from hope and flesh,
The tattered edges fluttered in the wind.

I marveled at the beauty of the bird,
and at the grossness of the wound it tore.
It caught a breeze and carried on it's flight
toward some sweet nest on some exotic shore.

I shouted 'No! You cannot fly like that
Through hearts without a care for how they mend.
You have to exit back the other way
To touch this man and make him whole again.'

The bird had heard my cry and wheeled around
to hear a moment's worth of my lament.
It said, ' Well put, I've felt that way myself.
So sorry that this time your chest was rent.'

And then the bird flew on, it's song unchanged,
while I stood still, to think about my state.
Then stuffed the hole with flotsam best I could,
and set my teeth, and held my head up straight.

What lesson could I take from this sweet gash?
When should I smile and simply take the blow?
How could I learn to turn this to my good?
Who should I blame, or will I ever know?

For I have been the bird that flew right through,
and left a broken carcass in it's wake,
and wheeled back to assess the wounds,
and then took wing to seek another fate.

Can birds fly ever wing-to-wing, as two
or will the winds identify their paths?
Can two wounds ever stanch each other's flow,
or would that only be two lesser halves?

So sing on, bird, and sing on sweetly too!
And wound, I beg you, sing your sorrows well!
For on the earth we are but dust that blows,
and we live neither in Heaven nor in Hell.

today's anecdote

I won't go through all of the iterations of the anecdote, non-being, nothingness, and the various connections between each of them, but I will consider it a unique experience to be able to write the post after the comments nonetheless.

I spent the weekend with my parents and one of my daughters at Deep Creek, where some of the band shared one of my honeymoons. At one point during the weekend, my parents and I had a brief discussion about what it was like to grow up in a house where one of the highest compliments ever offered was "well, maybe, you're not all bad."

Today's Verse: 22 January 2010

The old man's quite an asshole
The old man's quite a shit
He fills a tub with spittle
And takes a bath in it

Aphorism of the day Jan 21, 2010

Don't make no difference, baby.
'Cus I know that I can always try.
There's a fire inside of everyone.
etc.

Magnetic Fields documentary

I just saw this in Pitchfork magazine:

"A new documentary will be released this spring about cranky, erudite Magnetic Fields mastermind Stephin Merritt. Directors Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara (of Chickfactor magazine) shot the as-yet-untitled film over ten years, chronicling Merritt's career and personal life, neither of which he's been particularly eager to discuss in interviews.

According to a press release, "Included is the backstory of Merritt's first musical forays, his development as a writer-- from proofreader and copy editor at Spin to becoming one of Time Out New York's most dynamic scribes-- and his response to charges of elitism and racism."

The film will screen at the Mezzanine in San Francisco as part of the San Francisco Film Society's SF360 Film+Club screening series, with an official premiere to take place at an unnamed American film festival this Spring. After the screening, there will be a Q&A with Merritt, Fix, and Merritt's bandmate and manager Claudia Gonson. The previous night, the Magnetic Fields will play at Oakland's Fox Theater, and they also have a show scheduled for the night after the screening at San Francisco's Herb Theatre."

But will they include Johny Blood?

Today's anecdote Jan 20, 2010

One time we went to a party and the dudes there didn't want to play the music that we brought, so instead of shedding any blood that night, we scheduled a rematch and we served only bourbon on ice and we taught them how to dance even though we didn't know how and at the end of the party somebody lay on the floor and was whipped with a belt by a half-naked transvestite. Nobody asked for a re-rematch.

Today's aphorism, Jan. 20

If one of your old friends, who was the valedictorian of his engineering school, doesn't seem to be able to remember your name or how to spell, don't wait more than a year to do something about it.

Today's Aphorism, Jan. 19, 2010

If you want to fly, then you will have to spread your wings.

Today's Aphorism, Jan. 18, 2010

One afternoon in the Neauveau Palais des Exhibitions, outside Geneva, I unloaded a truckload of beverages with an older fellow named Georges. He was a nice fellow who had taken some lumps, but we both had it in us to do the job in rhythm, quite nicely. When we were done, we stood by the side of the truck, and he said, "How will we do it, Jaamze, how will we find a way to give ourselves?"