Little Willy has been awfully quiet; perhaps he prefers to let his guitar do the talking. But I believe he is the first of us to complete the fourth cycle of twelve years and begin the fifth, and I would like to wish him many happy returns of the day. Stephen won't you please come home? Your room's clean and no one's in it.

Rock n roll granny

Saw Patti Smith on the Jay Leno show yesterday, doing "Gimme Shelter". Did she really sing "love is just a fuck away"?

His Master's Voice

We took publicity photos last weekend. Note the un-lacquered horn.

Limbo

The new pope has unwritten the first circle of Hell. Dante’s Limbo seemed like an alright to spend the afterlife, though on re-reading Canto 4 of the Inferno, I noticed that, like Mel Gibson, Dante favors ancient Romans over ancient Hebrews. That’s OK, it’s his book. I do however prefer the teaching we are all born in grace, rather than in sin, making Limbo theologically unnecessary.

The Mad Maggies will be playing a short live set on KRSH, a Santa Rosa radio station with a broadcast radius of 500 yards, this Thursday the 19th at 8:00 PDT. Fans who like to listen to music played through a computer should be able to tune in through this link:

http://www.krsh.com/listen.html

I’ve been reading, somewhat at Firestone’s suggestion last summer, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. So far I’m up to the Flour Riot of 1837. What surprises me most is that in 1980, when the book was published, the idea of a counter-history of the invisible and the unrepresented was so novel that Zinn has to continually justify it; nowadays that’s the stuff of freshman history class. It’s a little tiring to read about so much injustice, rapaciousness and oppression on my morning commute though. I guess I could read the morning newspaper instead.

We love those Easter eggs--Mary Sue Easter eggs; people are making the switch. 'Cause using real butter makes Mary Sue better and you've never had it so rich.

You said a mouthful.

My old tuba teacher, Sam Green, died last week. He played in the Cincinnati Symphony for something like 35 years, and taught at the University for over 50. His style was from another time: both his corny, nervous personal manner and his big, vibrato-heavy tuba playing. Yet he was the begetter of Blood & Stone, and anyone who knew him who would smile in recognition when I said I was one of Sam’s students. The cliché for an original like Sam is that when they made him they broke the mold, but in fact he was the mold.

Things I learned about the Ronettes on the occasion of their being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

I had always thought, based on those incredibly nasal voices, the Ronettes were from Philadelphia, but apparently they are from Spanish Harlem, NYC. (I may also have been misled by the fact that they recorded for the Philles label.)

I had wondered what their ethnicity was under all that make-up: black? Puerto Rican? Sicilian? The Bennett sisters, Ronnie and Estelle, are mixed-race, black and Native American mother and white father, while cousin Nedra (the cute one) is African-American. (I know, I know, race is a social construct not a biological one.)

Phil Spector is on the Rock-&-Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee, and till now had black-balled the Ronettes. They made it in this year because he was otherwise engaged with his current legal difficulties.

Oh, did anyone else see the Switzerland Invades Lichtenstein story?

Last night there was a 4.2 earthquake, which is considered moderate. I’ve experienced really small earthquakes that just feel like a truck driving by or the cat jumping on the bed and in December there was a minor one that made me think that the neighbors had crashed their car into our house. The one last night felt like a meteor had landed in the yard. Norman ran to the door to see who was shaking up the house. By the time I thought of standing in the doorframe the quake was already over, but I went and stood in it anyway just to see what it was like.

The movie The Science of Sleep has a scene in which a piano gets stuck in a staircase. Unlike Tanta Dori's, it falls down the stairs, though miraculously it's still playable.

Where are they now?

Entertainment Weekly reports that the Stooges have a new album due out next month. Rock Action and his brother Scott will be joining Ig; MIA are Dave (OD'd on alcohol) and James (he's gone straight.)

Tuna or Turkey?

Had lunch in the St. John's Annapolis coffee shop yesterday in between press conferences and hearings on the repeal of the Death Penalty in Maryland. Saw Peter Kalkavage helping a student with his essay on the Sophist. Had nothing of value to offer on the subject, and was paid accordingly. Saw the campus dog (Kady?) and discussed W. Spector, the dog, and the dorm with her handler. I had the turkey club sandwich, while my friend opted for the tuna sub, in deference to his health-related dental deficiencies. He was, however, able to obtain not one, but two, extra pickles, which he seemed to enjoy immensely. We did not make much of a scene at the Senate hearings. We were just there as citizen support. The Death Row exonerees who were there thanked us for coming, as if I was suffering in some way by enjoying an early Spring afternoon carrying a message of peace and love around Annapolis, and having a sandwich to boot! More people should try being as lucky as I am, it is quite fun. As for the rest of you, will that be tuna, or turkey? Tufurkey?

Howie Zowie

Last Friday I went to an Alumni Seminar on a couple of Borges stories led by Mr. Zeiderman. He sort of looks like Jerry Springer now.

More Jodorowsky

I rented Jodorowsky’s first movie, “Fando y Lis”, a black-&-white from 1968. It shows its Bunel, Artaud and Fluxus group roots a little more plainly than “El Topo”, but still has the rambling non-structure, the archetypal images and plenty of good old-fashioned weirdness (old ladies maliciously squeezing canned apricots, a man taking blood from a woman’s arm with a syringe then drinking it from a shot glass, e.g.) There is also a documentary on the disk from which I learned that Jodorowsky made a Hollywood movie with Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif and Christopher Lee; that he started but never completed a film version of “Dune” in the 70s; and that he invented the mime-trapped-in-a-box cliché for Marcel Marceau. The film also has one of the best commentary tracks I’ve ever bothered to listen to, in which he shares in his heavily-accented English such observations as, “Always I have a big...a good feeling about castration. No?”

By the way, the Blogger people made me open a Google account to access this site. I'm not sure why but I suspect everyone else will have to as well to be able to post.

Fresh Ideas?

My friends and I did our waterboarding simulation at the big Peace March in Washington last weekend. It went pretty well, and we plan on enhancing it some and doing it again in March. One of our goals is to provide images that help illuminate the anti-war and anti-torture effort. This is important, as demonstrated by our success in getting a nice, big picture in the Washington Post, etc. Of course, once an image is created and disseminated, you have to come up with a new image to move forward. Nobody is going to pay any attention to something they have seen a hundred times before. I'm posting to ask for help from my creative old friends in generating fresh ideas for actions and images. My vision is to bring forward the idea of "Blood On Our Hands", and to humanize the effects of war. One idea I have is to make a video of a simulation of someone blowing up their own hand by placing it over a small explosive device. Another idea is to use buckets of blood and gore, and allow viewers to accept that we all have blood on our hands, and that we can move forward as humans with the humility and restraint that such a condition must imply. Another idea is to apply bloody handprints in appropriate places, such as Joe Lieberman's and John McCain's senate offices. If any of you have any good ideas in these directions, please pass them on to me. As you know, we aren't just playing around here. Ain't no Fal-De-Ral, if you know what I mean.
Don't you know that it's the children we're killin' ?
jim

I dreamed I was lying in bed, as I was, and that the shadow of the Angel of Death passed over me. That was scary.

Campus dog

http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu/?newsletterW07b


Reminds me of the time Mike Coss said a dog "followed him home" and it turned out to tbe the governor's.

Well I'm back and I didn't get to the book on pigeons, though I did read I married a dead man by Cornell Woolrich and she really did marry a dead man, two in fact, though she says she didn't kill either of them. My hernia, as I believe is the rule, was caused by intestines poking through a hole in my stomach lining and didn't reach down as far as my scrotum. Fixing it up did require cutting down low in the same general area, though I wasn't in the hospital for even half a day, as one never is these days. Mostly I was at home, trying to avoid lifting things, sneezing, laughing or having the cat jump on me.

That rock-&-roll nurse, she just kept making it worse, a-shooting it to my head. Have you heard the new Dolls album? Well it's not a Dolls album at all, how could it be, it's David Jo's first rock album in 25 years. But hey, guess what, Sylvain Sylvain plays on it, and he co-wrote most of the songs.