When you get out of the hospital, let me back into your life

I'm going to be having hernia surgery tomorrow, so I'll be away from the Bar for a few days. I have some Raymond Chandlers, a book on pigeons, a couple of crossword puzzles, some Marx Brothers movies, a "Sgt. Bilko" DVD and, I hope, a big handful of codeine to entertain me while I'm recovering.

Jodorowsky

The Castro Theater in San Francisco will be showing “The Holy Mountain” and “El Topo” this weekend not, as could be wished, as a double bill but on separate days. When “El Topo” played in Geneva there was a Fast Fun outing with Jim Henry that I could not attend because of Landwehr practice, and I have never been able to locate either film on video or DVD. However if I don’t have band practice on Sunday I should probably go visit Grandma, and then there’s also a Lubitch retrospective at the Pacific Film archive in my new hometown. Decisions, decisions.

Laying Right Here in My Favorite Place

Just a little shot from yesterday's "Shut Down Guantanamo" demonstration in DC. This photo was on page 3 of the Washington Post today, and the accompanying article can be found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011100964.html
Don't worry, I'm in there somewhere.

Happy New Year

Been traveling with Mira and Jai without much access to the web for the past three weeks. So greetings from Switzerland (not much snow, but we ski-ed anyway). Saw Mary and John too, who are pretty well in Geneva. Saw Matti in the Bernese Oberland. Also got fogged in in London for 3 days - which was fun: losing control (of my schedule). Guess it would have been a bummer if the children hadn't been with me. Regarding 2006 reading, I'm sorry to say that I never made it past Volume 2 of Gibbon, but did very much enjoy Dawkins' "The Ancestors Tale" and a book called "The Red Queen" by Matt Ridley about sex, genes, and evolution. Finally, "Cutty, One Rock" was very nice and very reminiscent of some of my growing up in Joi-zee.
Love on ya, as Dame Bowie used to say. (Speaking of which, Mira got turned on by Lou Reed's Transformer at a New Year's Party so I got her the CD -- makes a papa proud.)

Actually Mr Blood hasn't been out of town he’s been at home; since I work at a school I get the week between Christmas and New Year's off. However my computer is far too weak to post to the Bar, so I have to write my postings at home and then actually upload them from work. So now today on New Year's Day I'm writing at home and I'll post it from work tomorrow, Tuesday, which would be today to the reader or perhaps even yesterday or last week. I've spent my week reading, walking the dog, binging first on Atlantic r-&-b and then on James Brown and eating cheese, since my sister-in-law sent me a big box of cheese for, we'll say, the holidays. I went into San Francisco a couple of times, including once with my sixteen-year-old niece, with whom I saw Casablanca at the Castro Theater, the Brattle Theater of the West. The only other time I've seen the movie on the big screen was at school, when Arthur Kungle stood up and sang along with “Le Marseillaise”. I also did some stuff to sell my house in Woodland which, huh-uh (Tracy-like sigh), we still haven't sold after six months, though we're in contract and should close soon. That will be quite a relief, as I'll then be able to buy a working computer which will not only be able to upload posts to the Spartan Bar but will also perhaps replace the four-track as the primary Brothers Twain recording device.

I don't specially have any New Year's resolutions, though I have already started the sort of project one resolves to at New Year's, viz. studying Hebrew. My goal is to be able to read the Bible, which I suppose needs no further justification to any Johnnie. I've already hobbled through the first two sentences of Genesis, which takes me up to the big breath brooding over the waters.

I’d like to mention a few books I've read recently (in addition to Berlin Alexanderplatz—thanks again to Lee Preston). The Obscene Bird of Night, by Jose Donoso, is the sort of nightmarish and compelling vision I thought modernist novels were supposed to be before I'd actually read many. Not only does the narrative voice switch throughout, the main narrator appears to be different characters, or who knows maybe they're all the same, and at the end of the book he gets written out of the book like the last Hanukkah candle going out.

I've also been trying to find translations of all the books of Juan Carlos Onetti; The Shipyard and Body Snatcher are probably the easiest to find. The book jacket calls him the Uruguayan Camus, a comparison that for once seems ever so slightly apt, that is if you subtract the programmatic existentialism. The books mix European modernism with James M. Cain hard boiled-ism for a kind of feverish tough-guy nightmare, kind of reminiscent of later Orson Wells.

Finally I just re-read Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, and that would be my strongest recommendation, since it combines greatness with brevity. It's about a man who goes to a small town in search of his father, whom he learns is dead. The man then finds out that everyone in the town who's telling him stories is dead too, and somewhere in the middle of the book he disappears as well and there are only these stories being told by ghosts blowing around on the page. That hardly does it justice; go read it yourself.

Let me join Papa in his commitment to the Spartan ideals of peace, love and magic, not forgetting of course to offer libations to the gods and Ace Shadow. Here's to better things ahead in '07.

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.