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.