Posted 3:17 AM by sport

Pre-op testing for surgery I'm having next week has me a little scared. Apparently my EKG was "irregular." I don't even want to KNOW what the chest X-Rays show. Hope I'm not dying… it's not a good time for that.

Some web-related stuff here, mostly (though I'm hardly an avid surfer). Upcoming weeks look to be very busy whether I'm dying or not, so - lest I forget - I wanna mention a few things.

Before I get to them, can anyone tell me what is said in the recorded announcement that comes on when you try to "star-69" a missed phone call? If it's your cousin Isidore, the message goes: "The number of your last incoming call was…" etcetera. You recognize the number, sigh "Ah jeez, Izzy" and that's that. But if it's a telemarketer or other annoyance with a block on the number, you hear "************ is unavailable or private, and cannot be reached by this method…" etcetera. I cannot make out the first part of the message. It sounds like something got cut off. It's garbled. I wanna know what and why this is and how it's permitted to continue, especially when "star 69" costs extra, so you figure they'd try to put a sort of coherent message up there. Near as I can interpret, it sounds like "peturnican call is unavailable…"
Botanical call?
Ptarmigan-tall?
Pretend I can crawl?
Pre-tourniquet pall?
Copernican oil?
Discerning Bacall?
McStrosey Oreeney?

Anyway…
Since I don't want to pay money for "blogspot PLUS" or whatever it's called, I can't put fancy hyperlinks in here like all the other blogs do. So just copy/paste these urls, fer cryin' out loud. They're worth the trouble, I think.

Rollicking Roentgeneer Jim Gray sends an exciting site… I was hoping something like this existed:
http://www.foundmagazine.com/

I myself found this one… a real bull's-eye find for tonsorial sensualists like me:
http://www.ebarbershop.com/

But here is something at least as fascinating as inspecting the personal ephemera of strangers… at least as significant as the pleasures of the barbershop: the story of a man named
WILLIAM JAMES SIDIS.

I'd heard of this guy many years ago in one of those Felton/Fowler or Wallace/Wallechinsky books collecting offbeat factoids, peculiar whatchimahoozits and obscure jimmycrackcorns. The basic, accepted version of his story can be found here: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a991210.html
(Boy genius - raised by driven parents - viewed as a curiosity at best - horribly alienated - cracks up - amounts to nothing - dies fairly young)
The story is more fully fleshed out in a chapter of Ken Smith's highly recommended book "RAW DEAL."
http://www.blastbooks.com/RAWDEAL/Sidis/fr2sidis.htm

It is obvious from all accounts that Sidis the child was probably the most shocking specimen of all-around genius on record. It's also clear that he was the object of awe, gawking curiosity and resentment (add eventual mockery and ultimate obscurity); everyone agrees that he turned his back on the life of a public braniac as soon as he could manage to do so. The general perception of his later years (meaning his post-teens up until his death while still in his forties) breaks down into two versions: either he "shorted out" or he turned his back in contempt. The former is the common view during the guy's life: the masses, who loathe "intellectuals" and idolize sports figures and other charismatic morons, want to believe that a genius child is an accident of nature… a monster. The latter is more appealing to folks like me, who respect the "Atlas Shrugged" contempt of denying those same masses the satisfactions of the freakshow and the potential benefits of such a mind applied to the common good. One notable point often mentioned to make fun of Sidis-the-failure is a book he published (supposedly his one laughable "achievement") concerning the hobby of collecting mass transit transfers. I found this magnificent; nothing appeals to me like the diligent pursuit of the utterly meaningless.

Just as those masses venerate the sexually-charged, power-laden, violence-tinged, money-stinking myths personified in sports stars, movie stars or pop stars, they detest the stereotype of the nerd. They are so desperate to distance themselves from the allegedly asexual, weak, passive, valueless dork of common myth that they create überdorks as a defense mechanism. Urkels and Horshacks are the court jesters they pretend to love even though the character, more freakishly dweeby than their deep-seated fears about themselves could ever be, is nothing but a eunuch punching bag. Currently, the genuine "revenge of the nerds" at Columbine (et al) has contributed to a vision of them as tortured (and who wouldn't wanna torture these fags, haw haw) outcasts who live for black clothes, Dungeons and Dragons and vampire novels. They're ready to snap… to go "postal" (another current-day archetype of the despised dweeb… impotent civil service worker seething with revenge fantasies) at any time.

These newer clichés provide at least an attractively dangerous component to the mix, replacing the old ones wherein the nerd was a bespectacled (from "reading too much") goofball who collected stamps, listened to unhip music and masturbated all the time. As if anything's wrong with any of those fine pursuits! The nerd may have bowled… bowling was seen as dorky until reclaimed by hipsters, who than made it safe to bowl again… but that's as close to athletics as he or she ever got. Loser. My point:
Sidis collected TRAIN AND BUS TRANSFERS? Jeee-sus! Dork of dorks!

Well, I LIKE model train layouts and comics and stuff like that. I have little patience with obsessives, but I'd rather be bored by a model train fanatic showing me a cool layout along with all his deadly dull yammer than be bored by a fucking junkie with nothing to show or share or say. I'd rather hang with a bunch of Trekkers in a bar than a bunch of bikers. But believe me, most people who'd run screaming if I said: "let me show you the Captain Picard poster I hung up in my train room" would get all fascinated (and possibly aroused) if I claimed that I finally quit heroin after it made me wreck my favorite Harley. I do not lie when I assert that, quite apart from the relative merits of their music, I'm sure I'd have a better time chatting with John Tesh than with Keith Richards.

This is why the idea of Sidis throwing it all away and only collecting transfers appealed to me. The clueless scorn of those effete douchebags at The New Yorker (who ran a "where are they now" article on the adult Sidis that aimed to humiliate him as a pathetic loser) is delicious to me as an example of how disgusting and evil and WRONG the "hip" usually turn out to be. This is high comedy. For even if Sidis was the washout depicted, what right did they have to mock him? What reason other than sheer cruelty? And, from this evidence, what could possibly justify the elitism of a magazine as eager to bring down this one already damaged person as any schoolyard bully had been?

Groupthink!!!!!!
So Sidis captured my attention… is this a hero for that "Objectivist" part of me that insists my own happiness is all I need achieve? Is he a martyr for that sentimentalist side of me that mourns a lone man driven to doom by the mob? (Don't you feel like a chump when you read some work of philosophy or ethics or psychology and think: "yeah, makes sense?" and then read a different one and think the same thing? Except they're kinda fundamentally opposed? What are you, stupid? Easily persuaded? Decide, damn you! Right? Choose! Right?)

Looking into the Sidis story online has yielded surprising results. It now seems that the guy did NOT go nuts, did NOT turn his back on pursuits of the mind and did NOT loathe the human race that shunned him. The intense publicity he received as a prodigy did turn him against publicity and fame with a fervor, but evidently he'd developed a philosophical approach based on the Native American cultures he admired (mind you, this was long before hippie appropriation of Indian lore, so put the horseshit detector on standby one minute). It told him to shun the limelight and use his talents to benefit others anonymously. Apparently he published brilliant works, -under many pseudonyms- on a wide range of subjects. These books, articles, essays and pamphlets - which are only now being tracked down and accredited - apparently comprise a shockingly visionary body of work.

It's all here:
http://www.sidis.net/

Now, this is new to me, and I dunno if these Sidis-boosting people are fanatics of the L Ron Hubbardite sort (yech), misguided admirers like some of those who took to Charles Fort's satirical/skeptical/sciosophist work (yay) and warped its woof, or whether they're simple obscurantists or even hoaxers. I think they are smart and sincere. I also think that - even if all the big claims don't really wash - this version of Sidis has checked MY oil but good. It's nice to get one's cranky prejudices shaken up by something better and higher. Maybe this "new" Sidis embodies the same qualities I supposedly admire in my hero, Ives, and maybe all my own bullshit needs to be readjusted toward a healthier and smarter view of living this life, now that I'm gonna have 2 kids to edjumacate. Whatever it is, it excites the mind on a bunch of levels.

Bear in mind also that even in the cheap "revenge" terms under which I was enjoying his story, the new version's better: he withdrew from the public eye, but not the private passions. He overcame a need for credit (success) and respect (fame), and still made work designed to illuminate our understanding of - and thereby improve our experience of - life. His reputation outlived that of every asshole that called him a has-been, and for totally BENIGN reasons! Wow. He was a better rebel than I thought I wanted him to be.

I begin to suspect that all one needs of religion, philosophy, civics and self-help can be drawn from Rabbi Hillel, a Jesus precursor (just by a little bit) who gave us the famous:
"If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?"
I think the priority implied by the sequence of Hillel's saying is also important. To give the political ferinstance, why must I choose to be a "conservative" or "liberal" or "reactionary" or "radical" or "libertarian" (or whatever) under all conditions and circumstances? Everyone knows it's stupid to freeze into ideology. I think, if the new picture of Sidis is correct, he was even more amazing a man than the boy genius promised to become. And not the least of the attractions here is that my impression of this man's life, mind and personality is still fluid. The only sure thing is that his tale is remarkable. How one reacts to a question mark like him... which version is the most satisfying... can be pretty telling.

Posted 4:54 PM by sport

Just got a cd from eBay: "Metropolitan Man" by Alan Price. This Newcastle songwriter is a special case; he's not an "unknown genius" or hipster favorite, nor was he especially "influential" or "innovative." Of course, as terms of praise, those descriptives are fucked; they estimate something's importance based on its assumed relation to something else. A work works. The Shirelles count because the Beatles liked them? Nah, they were great, period. Scholars argue over whether Ives was AS dissonant AS early AS claimed!? Douchebags! LISTEN! The interesting thing about my advocating Price's music is that it's apparently conventional: no nutball instruments or harmonic oddities a'tall. "Classic rock" fans would probably take to it more easily than would avant-gardeners or novelty-seekers. It's individuality is not announced by any trappings of unconventionality.

No, Price was not an influential innovator. He's just responsible for some GREAT records. Price is mainly remembered as a founding member of the Animals (originally the Alan Price Set), one of the grittiest British Invasion acts. He left the band mainly out of reluctance to tour (to fly), embarking instead on a fairly MOR career restricted to Britain. (bandmate Chas Chandler later managed Slade - another band I adore - who likewise went mostly unheard over here) An early supporter of Randy Newman's songs, Price did well for himself in Blighty through and well beyond the sixties, but I'm pretty much only interested (here) in the stage of his career spanning 1973-75. When I was working at Sam Goody records as a teen, I met a guy named Charlie who loved the three albums Price cut in that period. Charlie and I became good friends… camping trips and concerts, me turning him on to Waits and him turning me on to Price. Those of you familiar with my older songs may recognize a few tunes written in tribute to him: "The Mighty Sun," "Wildflowers" and other references here and there. A warmer, kinder guy never lived, and we shared many happy times together before a tragic affection for the needle and the bottle did him in at the age of 33.

Three albums, the first of which is a film soundtrack: "O Lucky Man." Director Lindsey Anderson was making a sequel to his surrealist/absurdist film "If," and asked Price to serve as Greek Chorus… not only singing his own commentary on Malcolm McDowell's antics but appearing ONSCREEN singing them. The action would pause for sequences of Price and band doing a song in a completely neutral setting unconnected to the story. Later in the film Price and band temporarily figure into the story, and the effect is like Serling suddenly turning up as a character in a TZ episode. Odd, but it works. The movie is a picaresque about a young opportunist trying his hand at traveling salesmanship. It's got a very English combination of eggs-n-sausage drab realism and Swift allegory, which works better than it should over most of the long film. But it's the songs I mean to discuss.

The soundtrack album to this film is as unusually short as the movie is unusually long. Several pieces of incidental music further decrease the song-song payload. But the handful of songs is concentrated like sen-sen and just as bracing. Instrumentation is ordinary rock combo w/piano stuff, right in line with the band as seen in the film: proletarian players surrounding a stogie-chomping Price at the keys, looking, in his cap and leather jacket, more like a news vendor than a rock star. Price has a sort of "thick" voice, like John Cale, Gary Brooker or Warren Zevon, and this quality lends a further sense of grown-up-ed-ness to these cynical tunes. The melodies are sturdy, the words direct. He uses a device of opening the album with the title cut and closing it with a different version of same, which may be seen as a byproduct of the music's assigned purpose except that he does the same thing on the next, non-soundtrack album, "Between Today and Yesterday." However he arrived at this technique (used also by Neil Young on "Tonight's the Night" and "Rust Never Sleeps," the Beatles on "Sgt. Pepper" etc.), it works.

"If you have a friend on whom you think you can rely, you are a lucky man" it begins. An electric piano vamps under the close-miked vocal. It's a no-frills arrival of a no-nonsense voice. I take the implication as: If you have yourself convinced that someone else give's a rat's ass about you, then buddy, here's to you and your enviable pipe dream. Brilliant one-liners are casually flung: "If knowledge hangs around you neck like pearls instead of chains…" This very English songwright (credit for that very useful word goes to David Garland) is up-ending that most English of gasbag poets, Kipling. The fatherly advice of "If" is now the wizened warning of your barstool neighbor, who kept his head while all about him lost theirs, saw the universe in a grain of his tequila salt and it still meant bugger-all.

The song's reprise adds a new section about the round-and-round routine of living. It's not nihilistic, just world-wary and deeply skeptical, contrasted against intensified music. Between the fatalist shrug of the words and the propulsion of the music is where the magic occurs. There's hope in it, somehow, without any promises or fancies or fake rock-n-roll toughness. These versions sandwich a series of lean slices o' life.

"Look Over Your Shoulder" - an assurance, set to a jaunty melody, that happiness is always short-lived. It recommends that you enjoy it all despite wariness, and remain suspicious despite happiness. It ends on an observation regarding a young man's dream of a better life: "without that dream, you are nothin' nothin' nothin' …you'll have to find out for yourself that dream is dead." As if this isn't dire enough, he winds up the track warbling: "Deee-aaaad! lalalala! Deeeeaaaad! Lalalala!" He makes a joke of cynicism itself.
"Justice" ("next to Health is Wealth, and only Wealth will buy you Justice") - obvious enough, with a comment on folks who "trust and rely on the goodness of human nature." They are fools, but whereas the Judge views that foolishness with contempt (see Judith Sheindlin), Price views it as an aspect - winning, if not admirable - of doomed sweetness in the ordinary people to whom he feels kindred.
"Changes" - in which lyrics like "Love must always change to sorrow, and everyone must play the game" are set to the melody of "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." This is both sardonic in the obvious sense and genuinely pious: a prayer of broken faith, replaced by clarity. You lose your happy ending myth; you gain humor. For Price it's a raw deal but the only deal there is. The alternative is taking the gas pipe. It's "Is That All There Is" without the cabaret pretense and ennui.
"Poor People" - A fairly shocking dismissal of the lot of the common man. The stance is that of a Sammy Glick or a Gordon Gekko: tsk tsk… poor people are screwed by their own reluctance to go and get theirs. It's the film character's hustler viewpoint, but it's also a daring stance for Price, where he acknowledges the kernel of truth within an odious point of view. This is evidence, perhaps, of what he learned from his affection for Bob Dylan (we can watch Price hanging around Bob, absorbing all he can in "Don't Look Back") and especially Randy Newman. He takes on a role we'd rather not admit to empathizing with, and tries to turn it back around into advice for the same poor losers it dismisses. To me this aspect of the song trumps Newman, transcending mere sharp satire to include possible redemption within the small, shitty, limited world depicted. None of this nonsense really matters, he says; pretend everything's fine and it might as well be true. This IS the secret to life, I suspect.

Back when I really did have spiritual faith, I arrived at it, from absolute faithlessness, via sheer desire: I prayed consciously to nothing, begging it to convince me it was something. It worked very usefully until September 11, 2001. My blasphemies in the blog are not aimed at the faithful of any stripe, but against groupthink and the collapse of my own little credo. Humor is a countermeasure to all the not-god that comprises most of every religion; it cannot diminish faith. In a song of mine entitled "Rise" I made reference to Price's lyric here. He sings: "Smile while you're makin' it. Laugh while you're takin' it. Even though you're fakin' it, nobody's gonna know." I believe in the idea, and I believe in and admire the ingenious play of opposites Price engages in all over these tunes. He doesn't solve confusion; he just uses it. In the usually one-dimensional form of pop music, which usually sells bummers or bromides, this is a coup. The horse sense wisdom of: "A man's got to make whatever he wants and take it with his own hands" doesn't sit too well with youngsters eager for epiphanies in their tunes, but skin me if it isn't true… and, at this late date, inspiring.

So this album doesn't astound like Pet Sounds or Innervisions; it SATISFIES. It satisfies so fully yet so modestly that the art is easy to miss. Through the years it has remained a favorite, and I don't have to make allowances for it (like a fair amount of the other stuff I enjoyed at the same time) as I get older and more dark-spirited. It reveals more, in fact. It was a good-sized success for Price, and he was emboldened to tackle the more autobiographical "Between Today and Yesterday." This time he didn't have the handy device of serving as commentator within a fictional framework. Now he had to account for his words as directly confessional. Much of it isn't too far a cry from the previous album's "My Home Town," with music hall Britishness backgrounding glimpses of nostalgia and regret, but without the filmic context it all feels closer to the bone.

"Jarrow Song" was a radio hit. This was probably the peak of Price's career in pop terms. In it, Price refers to a march on London undertaken by poor North Englishmen looking for work in the '30s. This was his father's generation, and Alan eventually places himself in the tale, imparting the broad sense of lives turning over into generations without sacrificing intimacy: "My name is little Alan Price; I tried to be nice all of my life. But I'm afraid that up to date it doesn't work." It's the nugget of the "Yesterday" side of the album, which also includes a piano/vocal take on the title cut. I'll get to that masterpiece later, but presenting the song as a plain acoustic ballad here and a huge orchestral showpiece at the end of the "Today" side works masterfully, even if it sounds like a pat framing device as I describe it.

Throughout Price's music there's the same sense (to Americans) of England one gets from much of Ray Davies' work: the black and white drear of Tom Courtenay's "Billy Liar" as viewed by a modern Dickens, along with that "son of a blue collar man" thing that Springsteen used to mine. To this Price adds an especially wary version of the confessional. The heart on his sleeve is just inches above an unmistakably clenched fist, which is another thing he's honest about. He's damaged, and not at all coy about saying so, nor vain about it like some preening Trent Reznor who acts like a messiah for discovering squalor and hatred. He is lost, but he's shit-sure that you ain't any more found. He bears witness only to what he's truly KNOWN, and he speaks his hopeless wishes out loud to the rain and the brick walls. As with most survivors of poverty who've found some success, he romanticizes the bad old days even while recognizing that they were impossibly harsh. Side one is full of this yin-yang.

Side two is, of course, the same grim view, uncushioned by the comforts of memory. Songs like "City Lights" are desolate vignettes of loneliness and despair coexisting with compassion and hope. This is, of course, how many real people live their real lives. The wolf sits, big and mean at the door, but the bluebird still sits on the windowsill. It's TRUTH in song: as rare a thing as can exist. His voice cracks as he tries to convince himself to believe, and tries to suppress that same belief lest it blind him to the ever-present dangers of life. There are no dim recipes for living (ya gotta be strong, you gotta be this, ya gotta be that) or platitudes of any pop-music sort (don't stop believin'!). You go on trudging from can to can't. That's all. Setting this view to music is victory enough in my view; setting it to music that makes the spirit soar and smile is art. In "City Lights" Price delivers lines like: "The city eats the children up and spits them out before they're almost grown." This reads as an unremarkable near-cliché, akin to lines in "Poor People" like "No use mumbling… no use grumbling… life just isn't fair." It's how (and when) he sings these lines that lifts them into poetry. I think of those basic bits of parental "you'll understand when you're older" wisdom that sound hoary, and too obvious to kids. Stuff you roll your eyes over for years and years until one day in the middle of life (or later) you go "Aha!" Price delivers many "aha!" moments. I also note that the "before they're almost grown" line sounds like some strange-ass syntax, but I hear it as a reference to Chuck Berry's "Almost Grown." In other words, the teenage angst rock music is itself built on can not apply to kids who never really get to be kids or teenagers.

Nobody knows the infinite variety of deviations, derailments, booby traps, temptations, lies, crimes and shocks to the system that an old lady knows. She's seen how truly similar they all are. The "fragile" granny has raised many boys and girls, and attended the raising of many more; nothing is novel to her eyes. She's weathered storms that would wreck many a hardy young narcissus, but comes on as meek as a kitten, wise enough to protect your vanity by never letting on how fucking naïve you really are. The poses of rockdom are all ridiculous, once seen in this light. More than anyone I've heard, Price has the granny overview and the smart youngster's respect for the cost and value of that wisdom.

I embrace this album for the beauty of the music and performances, but also because I know something about a soul stuck between today and yesterday; it's a feeling of being perpetually on the brink of your own life, even as it slides on by. The cover art depicts a weeping teddy boy, grappling with all this as his dreams shrink away across a sky glimpsed through a window.


Since I can't examine every song now, I'll skip right to the title track. It is one of my all-time, motherlode, killer-diller, Katy-bar-the-door super mindfucks. The first time I played it for my brother Brian, he wept cascades and demanded I turn it off, only to demand its reprise immediately and repeatedly. We sobbed, just like Charlie did when he'd play it. Sometimes Price seems like a compelling drinking buddy, drawing you in with vivid tales and rowdy asides. In this song he climbs into your fucking soul and rips up every scab there.

Unlike "O Lucky Man!" - in which the title song's two versions featured different sections and "feels," the two versions of "Between Today and Yesterday" are the same musically, lyrically and "feel"-wise. The first is stark and the second is orchestrated, but apart from the sophistication (and the baggage) suggested by the orchestra, the main difference is implied by the song's placement on the album's two sides. This is one illustration of what made lps such a different experience than cds; the work is in two "acts," and some artists consciously used this in the construction of the work. Here, Price brings it in as the third song. This makes the first two songs a sort of prologue, holding back this powerful tune until we're situated in the world of Price's father (and his own childhood… of course, childhood begins several decades before our birth, in the form of the circumstances and family lore into which we arrive. Parents and other significant adults surround our early experience with vivid discussions of their earlier lives, and it's easy to underestimate the ways in which that shared world shaped the environment we're in and our view of it. A 20 year-old is facing tomorrow with about 40 years of experience, helpfu and otherwise).

"You'll never see his mother's face or feel his father's hand…" Price begins. This is a valuable device when used in confessional songs: the blockade. First off, Price creates a third person distance ("his" mother) even while creating personal intimacy by addressing "you" directly. The result is a powerful emotional tension unachievable with a straight "me, I" perspective. Still, there's never a doubt that Price is talking about himself. The evasions of art. Then, in this lyric, he starts by telling you what you missed out on. It's a ploy like "I never believed these Penthouse letters until it happened to me…" but it disarms our complacent expectations and promises something bona fide. By telling us we'll never see his mother's face, etc., he's reminding us of how unique each person's memory of home is: we all know that it s impossible to convey the exact flavor of our deepest loves and cherished memories. (This inability to communicate is precisely the human tragedy, just as "Poor People" was the secret of life, and ain't you glad you read this now?) In this way, Price makes omitted specifics communicate the universal: we have to fill in the details, so we fill them in with those we know. That's where the hook sinks into your heart.

"Who can you show when you succeed in never-never land?" is the second line. I'm not gonna get into line-by-line analysis, but this one should be noted. Since Price clearly considers the pop music world "never-never land, " in the reprise he seems to be making that reference to his own (dubious, in his eyes) success. But this first version is - we can assume by virtue of placement - his father's song, not his own. In England in those days, poor people lived "on the never-never," a slang term that refers to what are now called "rent-to-buy" stores. You take home a piece of furniture or an appliance that you'd never be able to afford on your pitiful wage, and "pay it off" in weekly installments plus interest. Plus INTEREST. This usurious arrangement usually results in repossession or, at best, eventual ownership of a now-devalued object for which you wound up paying ten times normal retail ("Poor people stay poor people…" "…only wealth will buy you justice").

By making the exact same song serve as his signature as well as his father's, Price is asserting both pride and humility. Pride that he is like his father and the other people of his hometown. Humility that for all his efforts to succeed and to grow, he sees himself as nothing more than a working-class Geordie tricked up in fancier garb (the orchestra/fame). Maybe even a little bit fake. I could belabor points like this for paragraph after paragraph, but I'm only trying to suggest the richness and craft of Price's work. The real impact of this song has nothing to do with such subtextual, "maybe-so" stuff; it's the raw emotion. In the piano version it's the nakedness that hits you, and in the orchestral version it's the desperation Price projects from the gorgeous colors of his symphonic backdrop. I can't choose between them.

Each begins with that sense of sorrowful reminiscence over the beautiful melody: a straight up ballad with little Ray Charles blue tinges in the piano part. The chorus gives us the simple, agonizing fact that "between today and yesterday is like a million years…" and once he's said this aloud, he grows increasingly pained. Eventually he gets to a frantic, screamed "Beware! The mirror on the wall gets less friendly with passing time!" It's blood-curdling.
"Enough! I said Enough! Just draw the shade!"
Maybe it reads as melodrama, but it sounds as frank as any performance I've ever heard. In fact, it is palpably NOT a performance. It is a human being in absolute agony, somehow turning that agony ecstatic through the temporary power of the artistic act. (His temporary release is made permanent and sacramental by giving us the song on a recording through which we can repeatedly relive this moment. It's why I love artists even though so many seem like nothing but pose or product. There's no doubt that a lot of music …even great stuff… is just sales fodder, but some isn't, and when that happens, wheee!)

The music reaches its climax on the closing lines:
"Please! Let me drink black wine!
Yes, I know it's the ending."
Despair.
He ends it all with a cracked whimper, a ninth that just hangs there in the air a moment, then floats to the ground like a dead leaf. For me it is so exhausting that the only cure is to hear it again. It lifts me up and slams me to the ground. Through it all, the orchestra plays much the same role as it would in a film, adding layers of shading behind the foreground action. It ain't just fancy dress or showy dressage; in the final emotional surrender of the second version, it sounds triumphant. That this collapse should sound like a triumph is nothing unique, of course. That's the kind of legerdemain that keeps us thrilled about music. But Price pulled off a good one, I'll tell ya. The implosion we're witnessing is producing the glory of that orchestra: it's the massed might of one weak human soul, revealed at a catastophic moment when modesty, self-protection and etiquette no longer matter.

Now, "Metropolitan Man" is new to me as an album. Charlie hepped me to the galloping "Papers" years ago: a great driving rock tune about what a total bunch of nonsense comprises the daily journals. After much entertaining sarcasm, Price confesses that he does love the naked ladies on Page 3 of the British rags. "Fools' Gold" is a tender post mortem on the career and friendships of the Animals, kicked off by some quietly stunning solo organ work (not the kind of "solo organ work" I'm usually on about, nyuck nyuck). The final tune, "Drinker's Curse" is a deliberately whiny barroom ballad with enough wee bits o' discord to please any fans of early "Piano Has Been Drinking" Waits. Naturally, Charlie and I often played both tunes during our frequent 12-rounders with Bacchus, but I gotta say; all these years later, Alan's merciless take on the narcissism of the alcoholic (not that I'd know) holds up truer than Tom's romanticism and high low-theater. As for the rest of "Metropolitan Man," time will tell which other tunes stand out, but I'm grateful for my rejuvenated interest in Price's work, and all the pleasure this fresh listen has yielded.

It all makes me want to revisit Alan Price albums to which I gave short shrift in my callow youth. All these words are just recognition that there is work that you have to grow into. As much as I dug Price in my 20s, the years have deepened my appreciation of his legitimately adult rock music. It's a scarce commodity, especially welcomed by an aging music fan, not to mention its Arne Saknussemm utility to an aging songwright. In the astoundingly insipid musical landscape these days (and I'm not just talking about shit like Christgau's pick Justin Timberlake or Fifty fuckin Cent), anyone hungry for SONGS might want to look into Alan Price. If I had a pint of Newcastle Brown right now, I'd toast him. And Charlie O, too …you are missed, amigo.

Posted 4:58 AM by sport

I'd better keep this brief; it's always a mistake writing email in the state I'm in, so blogging must be that much more dangerous. So... briefly....

A few Cuervo and Tropicanas: cool and delicious... as dense as I needed and as refreshing as I wanted. A little absinthe as a topper... the best use of that drink discovered thus far. I know the ceremonial thing is irresistable (probably the main reason I ever dug that hoax, cocaine) and moderation is usually the byword of pisslings, but a few KER-POW tonguefuls of the green fairy will do rare wonders, once one's been set up with liberal doses of trusty tequila. No need to overdo.

Before I got up to hit the loo and dash this off, I lay supine next to a beautifully slumbering Shelley (featuring Miles and Lily). My head was - still is - softly swaying in the agave/anis haze like some slo-mo replay of an already half-abandoned polynesian afterthought. On the TV screen is a VERY young Candy Samples, involved in an unlikely linguo-dildactyl mammembrace with some bearded blue Rondo ala spunk who was probably tragic history by 1972. Candy looks superb, especially though the faded and scratched 16mm film, set to jerky muzak approximations of tunes such as "Just Like A Woman" and Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"

I am tastefully daubed with genuine Hai Karate cologne. It smells like the first ride in God's brand new Ford Gremlin with a bouquet of Farrahhead orchids sitting in the back seat next to the hot samosas.

I'm hard as times in '29. Diamond Cutter.
I'd fuck a knot in a tree. I'd... I'd...
I feel SOOOOOO FUUUUUCKING GOOOOD.
And that's all for tonight...
never let is be said that I only write bummers.

Posted 2:33 AM by sport

Instead of blogging I should be emailing friends, just to see if I have any left. By now there is almost no contact with others… no phone calls, email messages, visits… nothing. The nerve!
A few kind folks kept emailing me to see how things were going, until my lack or replies (or maybe the content of this blog and what it suggests about my mind) sent them packing.
This former social butterfly is cocooned, awaiting his metamorphosis to a daddypillar. I would wager the current readership of this blog comes in at about 2 regulars and 6 ever-dwindling occasionals. So for these stalwarts, or for the (entirely superfluous) record, or for the sake of simulating a conversation with somebody… anybody… in the outside world, here's what's been going on.

Shelley, after a number of very scary incidents, was placed on strict bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. Since this has been going on we've had no big incidents, and things seem to be going well. She is still suffering various woes: weakness, nausea, etc, but nothing unusual (all-consuming and depressing, but all within the normal range of possible bummers, all at once), and the kids are well. We saw them on an "anatomy scan" last week. All the specs the doctors check for come up "normal" …which makes this the only time in my life I've thought of that word as anything other than an insult.

Miles Peter Murphy is a rambunctious lad with a certain raffish style and a firm gaze. His interests include spinning in the amniotic fluid like a friggin' Whizzer and ramming against the walls of his room like the cartoon guy in the "Take On Me" video.
Lily Roberta Murphy is a thoughtful lass of rare elegance and sophistication. When not cocking an eyebrow at the antics of her brother, Lily gargles melodiously. Her main complaint about gestating is the lack of reading material.

These may seem to be sexist sketches of the kids, but so far this is how things seem to be. So wife and children are reet and my folks are also in reasonably decent health of late. The urgencies of recent life seem to have quieted down for a bit, so I won't complain about cabin fever. Bored at home all day is better than anxious at the hospital all day. However, one does get a little stir-fried. So… what to yammer about? TV again? What else is there?

**MANDATORY KULTURAL KOMMENTARY **

Just caught a bunch of a new production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" on channel 13. This old warhorse, silly as it is, contains the snappiest work of that clammy little twat, Andrew Lloyd Webber. I devoured the original album when it came out; one of my Holy Name teachers played it in class and it captivated me like nothing else save "The Point" and the Bee Gees. Two friends and I attended a production in London almost ten years later, and I starred in a local production 6 or seven years after that. I now view it as an especially interesting piece of "eternally contemporary" theater, in that the hoary fable it's based on can always be staged in a way suitable to the fads of a given era, thanks to the simple music and nebulous message of the piece. In the early 70s it was imbued with the vibe of the Jesus/Hippie craze, which also brought us "Godspell" and hits like "Spirit in the Sky" and "Oh Happy Day." By the time we got to the West End it had become an exemplar of the burgeoning "pop musical" trend that was to hold sway for 20 years and counting. These are hambone operettas reliant on repetition and melodrama, with lotsa flash, Vegas "class" and over-emotionalism. Public Domain sources for plot are also the norm. This new, televised version seemed to have a strong homoerotic undercurrent, with much "Rent" posing, male groping, pec ("-toral" not "-ker") baring and "American Idol" vocal delivery. Jesus Christ Superstar: a cheese for the ages.

****TANGENT****
While people do subject Shakespeare and others to constant "updating" and lame-ass point-forcing, it's always goofy despite what the Times says. And it doesn't work at all for Broadway shows. We're used to "Richard III" as nazi (or contra or teddy bear or whatever wrongheaded high concept is underway), but a Broadway confection doesn't and shouldn't have the time-earned solidity to bear such tinkering. We're talking zippy plots, not eternal verities: can you imagine an "Oklahoma!" set in Kosovo? Why would you? It's a topic too large to cover here, but the same principle is at work in "Golden Throat" recordings. We can laugh at Tony Bennett butchering "Eleanor Rigby" because rock music is reliant on "cool" and Tony's version was anything but. However, Tony is a great singer anyway, and we have established a collective affection for him, which allows the episode to seem funny. Now, Rod Stewart butchering "I'll Be Seeing You" is not funny because first of all, he's ruining a truly GREAT song, not some pop artifact beloved (and run into the ground) only by boomers. Secondly, he just plain SUCKS and always has. Liking him in the first place requires a deterioration of aesthetic standards severe enough to preclude any appreciation of the song, the genre, singing or music itself. Such charmlessness can not provoke amusement, only boredom.

Rock fans in general misunderstand other kinds of music almost COMPLETELY. Their views are far more ridiculous than the long-mocked dismissals of rock by people like Mitch Miller and Steve Allen. Those were philistines of a sort, but most rock listeners (and their hiphop or electronica successors) don't even rate a three-syllable epithet. But they are not the only chowderheads about. A similar effect to the Rod-ruins-standards syndrome occurs when, on two recent cds, "jazzmen" or country musicians take on Brian Wilson. The former ply a trade as useful in modern life as that of a candlemaker: a fine trifle for entertaining tourists in resort towns, but t'ain't nothing that really matters (mind you, I mean these biz-jazz dicks with the soft-funk rhythms and shiny 6-note chords that offer as much savor as a ricecake. I'd never, ever put down the noisome Knitting Factory brigade of cat-stranglers, not with my appetite for musicians kicking up a repellent ruckus. They are my kind of jerkoffs). The latter SHOULD embrace the archaic and anachronistic, but insist on sounding "contemporary" …which, in the world of current-day country, means to try and sound like some mid-70s Asylum Records act. An even blander Glenn Frey? Oh man.

How did I wind up on this subject?
Yikes… digressions inside digressions!

***RETURN TO TOPIC***
Anyway, back to "Jesus Christ Superstar." Now, the production I was in represented another kind of "fromage pour tous les âges" …the crummy-but-earnest suburban amateur musical. See "Waiting for Guffman" if that world is unknown to you. My buddy Pat Redding dared me to audition, knowing that I'd always wanted to act onstage but feared my own incompetence. Turns out I was right, but what the hell. I got the lead based on my singing voice and perhaps my long hair (at that time I was also pretty skinny). My dance audition was ludicrous, but the director had ideas for the Jesus role which - thank Thalia -n- Tepsichore - didn't include a dancing messiah. Pat landed the part of Judas, a much cooler role, well-suited to Pat's Burt Lancaster presence. I was persuaded to lighten up on the smokes for the duration of the show, and was tutored in vocal support and proper breathing. I soon forgot these techniques, but trust me: for those shows my voice sounded as good as it ever would. From the evidence of videotape, however, my acting and physical grace started out woeful and plummeted to the infinite depths of "yee-owch" from that point onward. By now I'm a sort of latter-day Larry "Bud" Melman, minus the popular appeal.

**NOSTALGIA-LACED-WITH-BILE SECTION**
In those days I lived with a scold of a pill of a shrew named Sandy, who gradually taught me just how monolithic hatred can become. Apart from carping endlessly about my participation in the show (methinks she wanted me to spend that time working a THIRD job so we could move to a nicer slum as she attended grad school… Lesson: fuck the work ethic; it is always a tool for achieving someone else's happiness), this bundle of joy shouted "Turn it down… I have to get up early tomorrow!" from the bedroom as Jim, Willy and I listened to our very first record for the very first time. Each JCS rehearsal was a blessed excuse to get away from her, resulting in cherished memories of a drunken Judas, an inebriated Jesus and several blotto apostles tearing off many a ripe chunk of night and chewing it down to a pulp. These were some of the happiest times of my life. Along with my nightly carousing with the beloved Redding lads and company, one post-performance binge with Peter and LaGrutta down at Lake Ronkonkoma will remain one of the treasured jewels of memory. Lesson: It ain't the big event, it's the incidentals, so turn away from the spectacle and enjoy the boon company while you can. Your favorite people leave the soonest.

(Eventually, of course, I got out of that relationship and formed a band called the Skels. This doomed, musically dubious escapade was in effect a dating service for dweebs. It brought me Shelley, so that's reason enough. Pete met and married his own scold of a pill of a shrew, named R*gan Gr*ce. He died just as he was developing the clarity to leave her and - one assumes - find his own equivalent of my Shelley, in whose love and goodness I find a counterweight to the bitterness I reveal so uncomfortably and regularly here. Anyway, as the wealthy fire widow wallows in an obscene delusion of status bought and paid for by Pete's blood and his mother's tears, I celebrate one night spent under the stars, sucking stogies and cheap beer with these best buddies. I was still dressed as Jesus the C and LaGrutta was just beginning to perfect his Tony Soprano persona. Pete still loved me. Hours of easy laughter beyond any estimate of worth. Paul is now wedded to Julia, who's a complete delight.)

**FROM CRINGE-WORTHY TO QUEASY-MAKING**
One of the odder sidelights of doing that show was a sexual proposition I got from a couple. They were true "Jesus Freaks" in the Bernie Taupin "Tiny Dancer" sense AND the Rick James "Super Freak" sense, and wanted me - in full King of Kings drag - to introduce my loaf to her fishbasket as he watched in reverent awe, presumably rubbin' his rosary. Some "Prince of Piece" I turned out to be… I declined. Lesson: when stuck with a less-than-tolerable partner, don't miss a single opportunity to engage in deviant sex with others. Your future story will be a far better tell, and you'll feel vindicated anyway once your mismatch collapses. Seriously, there's no way I could have done it.

**BRUTAL SELF-ASSESSMENT #3306 (yawn)**
Reflecting on that performance (me as JC, not my non-performance with Jim and Tammy Boinker), I acknowledge that mine is a talent eminently suited for local bar bands and local musicals. Painful as it is to admit, my awkward, idiosyncratic "gift" is unfit for the big time. Many have learned this for themselves early enough to move on to productive lives including weekend hobby artiste-hood. Not me. Lesson: ah, nothing useful. I should have enjoyed these things more while I could, without the anxieties of wanting to do something "real" that led to my regrettable career. Ah jeez. Every stream of thought flows toward that same sewer. Can't unbreak that shattered snowglobe, so let's play a tender lament and quickly bail.

**PHILOSEMITIC OBSERVATION**
One disturbing aspect of the new, televised JCS was the way the black-trench-coat-and-hat chorus/crowds, who initially seemed like a fashion designer's idea of "noir" extras, became silhouettes of apparent Hassidim later in the show, taunting Pontius Pilate to crucify the bastard. It was so blatant I was stunned. Again, though, this Jew-hatred is right in line with the times we live in.

**RUDY GIULIANI SEZ: **

"President Bush has asked me to head the United States delegation to a conference on combating anti-Semitism, held by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which begins tomorrow in Vienna. The meeting is a direct response to the worldwide surge in anti-Semitic violence. Last spring, physical attacks against Jews in France were occurring at a rate of 8 to 12 a day, with 14 arson attacks on synagogues in a two-week period. In Russia, signs reading 'Death to Jews' were placed along highways and rigged to explode if anyone sought to remove them."

**POLITICS. FEH.**
Look at the countries named in Rudy's commentary on European anti-Semitism (which is really Jew-hatred): Russia and France. Add Germany, which is to Jew-hatred what Hershey Pennsylvania is to chocolate-themed amusement parks. These three stooges (Moeski, Lareé and Schëmpf) were exactly the international vanguard of the "USA stay out of Iraq" movement. Hmmmmm. Not that I am waving the banner for Bush's war: I supported the objective (in large part) but mistrusted the mission (in large part). I still can't make head nor tail of the thing.

I do believe that Vietnam was a debacle of astonishing proportions, and that pricks like MacNamara sent American kids to the slaughter for years of pointless engagement in a war we didn't have the will to win. I also believe that the "larger" war to contain (and then eradicate) Communism was critical and ultimately successful. I don't expect this war against fundamentalist Islamic terrorism to be neat and tidy, and I don't expect businessmen of this (or any) administration's "ethical standard" to restrict all military action to that specific end.

I expect lies, manipulations and fuckups, just as I expect to see, after a disgusting election campaign, a complete clown either elected or re-elected. But I hope this country is still standing and fairly secure when Miles and Lily are old enough to have to contend with it all, and I don't think the Left has any credible plan toward securing that goal. Neither does the Right, but they are less hesitant to kill motherfuckers, and all that motherfuckers understand is death, sorry to say. I fear another morass of "Hawk vs. Dove" nonsense like the one we had 3 decades ago, and anyone siding with the Jew-haters of Europe (and the America-haters of Europe and the Middle East) is as foolish (to use a kind word) as the Jane Fonda types of that era. Conversely, anyone condemning a sincere call from American citizens for accountability on the part of their government is no better than the cartoonish "America: love it or leave it" bozos of that era.

This means I can't reasonably make THIS or THAT statements as if I'm absolutely sure of the truth.
What an embezzle! What a ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! My political opinions are idiotic, for sure.
But I don't cotton to all the Jew-hating, and I'm not wrong about that.

**BACK ON TOPIC**
I only did one other show, years after JCS. This was a local production of Eric Bogosian's turdball, "Suburbia." I played "Pony," a rock star visiting his old neighborhood and gloating to his ne'er do well pals, who are still idling around the 7-11 store. The irony is, of course, agonizing. I again sucked as an actor, but something about the experience led me to get back on the horse musically, and so I made an album called "Willoughby," which led to all my further success. It's all in God's plan, friends.

While my acting in "Suburbia" bit significant ass, at least I didn't commit any blunders comparable to those in JCS. These included:
*Showing up late for the Last Supper, which opens act 2. The apostles had to vamp on the opening number for several minutes while Judas ran to find me in the dressing room, shooting the shit with a Roman soldier.
*Running out onstage to take my bow on opening night, forgetting that the cross was standing there and I ought to duck. I slammed my head against the thing and stumbled to the very edge of the stage, where I shrugged a goofy shrug as stars circled my skull.
*Completely blanking on my big solo number "I Only Want to Say…" as the orchestra conductor looked up at my terror-stricken face and mouthed out the correct lyric. I eventually regrouped, but it was too late to save the number.

At the cast party, I pissed in a grotto. Ave.
Then returned to cohabitational hell with the awful girlfriend.
As our relationship crumbled completely, she refused, at the last minute, to attend Pat Redding's wedding up in Connecticut. So I missed it, immediately ruining several fine friendships.

Boy, do I miss hanging out with Pat and Rob and Becker. And Pete and Paul.
Sigh.

**FAMOUS LAST WORDS**
Anyway, as I was up on the cross every performance, sucking in the faint beginnings of this gut that I now wear like a parade drum, I'd breathe deep the smoke machine smoke and ponder my few remaining lines. What - if any - similarity do the official, biblical "last words of dyin' Jesus" bear to those in the JCS libretto? Pull up a chair, pilgrim!

MATTHEW: "My God, my God: why hast Thou forsaken me?"
TIM RICE: "Why have you forgotten me?"
Here the Good Book shows more huevos than the "book." "Forsaken" seems to imply intention: "What the hell is this about, pop?" "fuck you, O my son!" A son forsook. Forsooth!
Rice is giving God the Father an out: "Yoo hoo! Dad? Remember me? Hanging here? BLEEDING? Ring a bell?" Dad might be napping… or busy with clients.
MARK agrees with Matthew on this quote, and they both go on to state that Jesus "cried out in a loud voice and gave up the ghost." This sounds, perhaps, like a southern colloquialism but it's King James all the way. The original Aramaic (as we'll hear in Mel Gibson's new version of the Passion) reads: "Jesu gave out with a yelp and then just flat-out exfluncted right up on that there contraption them Eye-talians built."

LUKE adds the famous: "father, forgive them; for they know not what they do"
RICE uses this one verbatim. A good move, that. This is one time a paraphrase might fall flat. "Father, let 'em slide for this one" wouldn't convey the appropriate drama, and "Ouch! Yeeeooow! That smarts! Hey… c'mon… you wanna watch it with the lance already!?" would be pushing the vernacular / humanizing approach too far.

LUKE goes on to include Jesus' comment to the "good thief," crucified beside him: "Verily I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in paradise." Because the little brown-nose stood up for him after the "bad thief" quite understandably said: "Hey, if you're God, how's about you get us all out of this fix?" …for which he was probably damned to eternal flame. The other guy managed to GROVEL while nailed to a fucking CRUCIFIX! And for this he gets entry into the kingdom of Heaven. Apple for the teacher. Man!
RICE omits this episode entirely, showing a lone Jesus… a Shane of Golgotha… promising nuttin' to nobody. In ignoring this incident, Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber missed the chance for a great 3-part number: "I got the cross right here…" Add the Romans and disciples and you could really work up a fancy-schmantzty piece of business like the Quintet in "West Side Story."

LUKE agrees with Mark and Matt that JC cried with a loud voice, but quotes the actual cry as: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."
RICE uses this as well, substituting "your" for "thy," a point too minor to even mock.

JOHN gives us: "Woman, behold thy son!" spoken to the Virgin Mary, and then adds: "Behold thy mother!" spoken to an unspecified disciple. The first line may be interpreted as whining, which I'm glad to see the Son of Man as guilty of as I am (I mean, that display in the garden of Gethsemane… what the fuck was THAT?). The second is a command to his disciple to take care of mother Mary in his absence. This McCartney-esque parental concern is admirable. For once Jesus impresses me as a decent fellow. A little late: "Oh, NOW you think of your mother, Mister Instigator! Mister Martyr!"
RICE has this as: "Who is my mother? Where is my mother." I'm stumped on this one. Is Rice presenting a savior as lost and bewildered as an unimprinted baby duck? That would figure. In the Last Supper, he makes Jesus sing: "for all you care, this wine could be my blood." Talk about whining! According to Tim Rice, the point of the central ceremony in the Christian Mass is "you guys don't give a shit about me at all." If that's all it takes, then where's my halo?

JOHN: "It is finished"
RICE: ditto.

SPORT: double-ditto.

Posted 3:41 PM by sport

Below I offer an email sent to me by my friend Rafi Rodriguez. Rafi's a young fellow who recently began working as a trainman in the NYC subways. The tale he shares is amazing for several reasons.

***************************************************************************

On Friday night there were major delays on the One line at 2:30 in the morning because I was saving a man's life. I had been operating down the line when upon leaving 110 St. noticed something odd on the middle track running next to the track I was on. From a distance it looked like a garbage bag, but it moved a bit and for some reason the idea that it might be a dog popped into my mind. I slowed the train as I pulled along next to the area where I had seen the moving object. What I saw was a man curled up on his side; his back was to me and he was wearing a gray shirt covered in blood. I immediately stopped the train and called control to get some EMS down there and get permission to go down and check to see if he was okay.

After control made sure all the trains in the area had stopped and were sending help, they finally gave me permission to go down to the road bed. But before I could, the man had actually dragged himself to the front of my train. The sight of him covered in dirt and blood, tears running down his face, screaming for help lit only by my headlights scared the living shit out of me. Using whatever strength he had left he pulled himself up onto the train as I unlocked the storm door in the front. He collapsed at my feet, hugging my legs and crying. He told me how he'd been stabbed twice in the back and how he had been lying there, thinking he was going to die, and how all he wanted to do was see his wife and son again.

I moved the train to the next station so we could discharge the passengers and await EMS and police. While I was making sure that all the other passengers had left the train, the man had dragged himself out of my cab and was screaming for me not to leave him, at which point I ran back to make sure he stayed awake. He kept grabbing for me, wanting some kind of human contact. So here I am sitting on an empty train with a bleeding man wrapped around my legs, and I'm just trying to keep him talking so he doesn't pass out. I talk to him about his wife and his son, I talk to him about his job. Turns out he fixes computers. I tell him I just bought a new one myself. He asked if it was a Dell. I lied and said yes. He mumbled how it's a really good computer and I made a good choice. Needless to say, in his current condition he couldn't fix my sound driver problem. But it was enough to keep him going till the EMS finally showed up and took care of him.

I never asked what happened… how he got down there, or who did it to him. I was more concerned with getting him help, but I think part of me was also afraid that even speaking of these actions might cause perpetrators to appear! Silly, I know, but it was still there. I never even asked his name, I didn't think of that …I don't know why. i just kept calling him "sir." Well, Mr. Victor Vasquez was cleaned up and taken off to St. Luke's hospital. I don't know how long Victor was lying out there by himself, bleeding in the dark, scared as all hell, just wanting to see his wife and son. I wonder how many trains passed by and didn't see him, or just didn't bother to stop. I didn't get a "thank you," I didn't even get a "good job "or a "job well done."

When, after a half an hour of taking care of Victor, I finally got my train rolling again I was met with nothing but angry people waiting for a train. They cursed at me. They threw stuff. Even the people at the station I was sitting in waiting just kept asking how long we were just going to sit there, or they just watched poor Victor laying there crying, at which point I yelled at them to get away. Nobody cared, but I know I saved a man's life last night.

*********************************************************************
What can I add to that? Only that the combination of pride (the last line, for instance), honesty (confessing his own fear and resentment), humor (the 'puter chat) and decency (the whole fucking thing) is vintage Rafi, who in his mid-twenties is as fine a man as I know. Contrast this with the all-too-unsurprising coda regarding the commuters.

Observe the human race:
Criminal scum, brutalizing a father who's only trying to get home to his family.
That terrified and agonized man, desperate for assurance and help, longing for his loved ones and raging against the dying of the light.
A mob of obnoxious, piss-ant commuters, concerned only with their own convenience to the extent of abusing the one man willing to help another.
That one man who gives a shit, trying to do the right thing despite his own confusion and fear. And doing it.
And of course, EMS on the job.

When I was a kid I rode the 5th Avenue bus each day, and one afternoon a straphanger suddenly clutched at his chest, gasped and fell down. After the initial hubbub, I noticed a good number of my fellow passengers sighing and checking their watches. An early lesson.
If I'd been in Rafi's shoes (unlikely, since he works for a living), what would I do? Probably faint like a goat.

Lesson? None here. Rafi never intended this for public consumption, but I wanted to put it here as a slice of life and a "thank you" to my friend, on behalf of all my fellow goats. In a world as horrid as this one, it's worth remembering that people like Rafi exist. It's an honor to call him my friend.

Posted 1:47 AM by sport

(sic)
I'm thinking of suing. Here are the genuine, verbatim liner notes from the new Annie Lennox album "Bare." They printed these right on the back cover.

"This is just by means of a small description to illustrate my thoughts and feelings about the particular image I've chosen for the album cover. This album contains songs that are deeply personal and emotional. In a sense I have 'exposed' myself through the work to reveal aspects of an inner world which are fragile...broken through experience, but not entirely smashed. I am not a young artist in their early twenties. I am a mature woman facing up to 'core' issues. I don't want to represent myself visually in some kind of cliched, airbrushed, saccharine kind of way. I want to reveal myself as I am. For me this is a powerful and courageous statement. I have never been known to 'toe the safety line,' in terms of how I represent myself. As an artist, I need to be authentic...to take risks...to break the mould when necessary. The 'posture' of the image refers back to the earlier days of Eurythmics with the 'TOUCH' cover, only this time I have now turned to face the audience eye to eye, as it were. I am as 'BARE' as the title suggests, though not entirely exposed. The image is timeless, genderfree, and racially ambiguous. I could be a statue, a ghostly apparition, or an Indian saddhu. The false lashes represent the artifice of 'performance.' The colour has been drained from my mouth (where the words and sounds issue from) to saturate the title with redness (signifying lifeforce and anger). I hope it makes sense to you. Love, Annie."

OK… compare that to the following, printed on copies of the deluxe "producer's cut" edition of my cd MAGIC BEANS.

Here's something in the way of a sense toward a thumbnail encapsulation of the emotions and conceptualizations yours truly brought to bear regarding the artwork adorning this compact disc. On this collection I made songs about which I feel strongly. You might say I've used the medium of music to "reveal" many ways in which I've responded to the slings and arrows of life and its impact on precious parts of my secret garden of self, which is more resilient than one might expect and even welcomes the chance to "hang a moon" in this creative manner.
I am not some combo of performer in her teens no more. I'm a gentleman of a certain age, boldly assessing crucial issues. It would do me a disservice to offer an image of myself which did not eschew fol-de-rol, the hoity-toity and the humdrum. For that would be a flibbertigibbet of "nangnang!" proportions.
In my opinion, by facing such choices as bravely as I have, I've become an inspiring and heroic figure. Let's face it, I've never been one to accept notions of the "same old same old" for granted nor "be a good boy" in the eyes of those who would behold me as either or neither.
As a ceramics enthusiast, I have to "pour the slip" carefully into "the mould" before hitting the kiln. As a scuba diver and mother I feel the responsibility to not be other than me… to boldly go… the few, the proud… with nary a taint of bullshit. For this is the cloth of which such as me are cut. From.
The "rendering" of the "painting" on the "cover" is an allusion to the halcyon Skels era with the fondly and universally remembered "Be With That" cassette J card, 'cept now it's a cd and I'm a solo act and instead of a guy with a fez and a cigarette it's a fairytale kid with his tongue protruding, as if, so to speak, he was climbing up or down a beanstalk with his tongue "sticking out." The guy/kid is/are me, but now I am in an entirely different - and I'd say generous and guileless - frame of reference, to coin a phrase.
I am gently cupping, in a sense, my "MAGIC BEANS" in my hand, if you will. It feels really, really good. Mmmm. The picture is iconic, eternal, instructive, histamine-blocking and sexually irresistible. What am I? A ring-tailed lemur, a trio of slain civil rights activists, a can of DAK ham, a bout of colitis or some fist-jolly west village leatherboy? I am all of these and more: for after all, I am large; I contain multitudes. The sack I carry represents "Sacco and Vanzetti" The Vanzetto inside the bag represents 3 bucks a pound at today's market prices. That ain't hay. I'm a little pale and peaked, feeling an itching in my nose (which I use for breathing and for smelling things) representing a possible allergic reaction to the very legumes (beans… which are good for your heart; the more you eat the more you fart) that produced the stalk (to follow a celebrity or love-object in a threatening, harassing manner) to which I cling (peaches in syrup, reprezentin' strong island, yo). It would be really fucking cool if you dug where I'm coming from.
Peace, Sport

See what I'm saying? Whoo-ee!

Posted 2:41 AM by sport

In the gloaming, 17th and 10th …a sky blue-black as Superman's hair. Everyone's just gone in for the night except for teenagers -- in suede vestments anointed with Avonic unguents -- heading off in the general direction of trouble. Over now is a usual day's happy ruckus. Ice cream bells shingshinging, waves of kidly screams from atop the King Kong truck's great see-saw crescent, fat mothers in full window-lean titspill hollering for "Ant'nee" to "get ova heah NOW," stickball bats clattering aside after 2-sewer hits, the obscure chants of little girls skipping across chalk diagrams. After another day of all that, the street quiets down, all whirring window fans and a treble polyphony of television sets… 7 available channels if you don't count uhf.

This is any random summer night. It's not idyllic; what it is is unladen. Life has not yet been dried out and done in as far as I can tell; I'm as filthy rich with tomorrows as anybody ever was. It even feels that way already, and though I am but a boy unburdened by any true vision of the dark ahead, something tells me to stay alert and enjoy all that I can take in. I dawdle alone on a street now largely abandoned, with one more important thing to do before getting inside, where for a couple of blessed months there's no homework to avoid. (Homework is the deepest insult imaginable. They want your TIME. Doesn't matter what something means or doesn't mean; they want your TIME and they want your fuckin' SMILE. They always will. They'll be at you hammer and tongs from now on, until they've used up the one and warped the other.)

I have learned a secret. The other night in front of our home …ol' 606… I caught a glint off a neighbor's car, which he parks in almost the same spot every night. A beam from a streetlamp on the opposite sidewalk struck the taillight, which then forwarded the memo to my beguiled eye. I got up close… I dunno how come… knelt at the curb, closed one eye and pressed the other one against the dark glass. With one knee on the sidewalk and one in the gutter, shifting my point of view back and forth, angling up and then down, I finally saw it: a eruption of red… nah, Red… nah. RED… a Vesuvius of candyapple refractorescence flooding my vision. Several shades of glowing red… no, many shades… countless shades… so beautiful. So… Red. Go grab your Roget's and look up the word RED. See all those synonyms and specific hues? That's what I saw… all those. I saw red. Red red red.

I was a kid with his face smushed up against the back of a car, legs akimbo, digging the sheer redness of a… a taillight.

The physical contortion was pretty uncomfortable, so I drew back to stretch and take in the ordinary sight of an ordinary night on our ordinary Brooklyn street. Lovely, but ooh that red! Another peek, then. I had to find the angle again. It had to be just right in order to get the full radiance, but once achieved… wow! Not only was this sight magical, but the process entailed a feat of pointless precision satisfying in itself. It wasn't long before Mom called and I had to scurry home, but I'd have to investigate this phenomenon further.

Unfortunately, the car was not parked in that precise spot again over the next few nights and, try as I might, I couldn't find an angle that allowed any view other than that of the bumpy glass surface of a nondescript car part. Crass reality: ever the turd in the puchbowl.

Today, though, I noticed that the car seemed to be positioned pretty much exactly as it had been the night of my carmine epiphany. It's not like I'd waited impatiently all day, but as soon as evening came on I hoped the others would wrap up the games of cocolevio…*

(*Cocolevio: books and websites - consulted in the ACTUAL present, not the "past-present" device of this entry - refer to this street game as Ringolevio or Ring-O -Levio. This may be true, but on my block I never heard it called anything but "cocolevio." Perplexing.)

…and congarilla…**
(**Congarilla: no citation of this street game could be found under this or alternate spellings. It did exist, though, and that's no lie. Confounding.)

…early so I could get a jump on the bumper. Now's the time. I can tell that conditions are better, but it all seems so dependent on what may turn out to have been a one-time-only convergence of factors. I hunker down at the magic oval.
Nothing.
Some shifting and re-angling. Bupkis.
A move of the entire body so that I'm more curb-sitting than gutter-straddling. I lean in and decide to get serious about geometry the way some guys do while shooting pool or skipping stones across a pond with people watching. Aaaannd….
FLASH! Red! Glorious Red! Look at that, willya?

There's no question but that this is the newest in a series of "passageways" I've been stumbling across lately. These are portals into different kinds of perception, which can't be called "supernatural" but are surely visionary. For example, It has come to my attention that some music should be listened to flat on one's back with each speaker placed about four inches from each ear. Classical music: long, long works with no words. I have a record by a composer named Ligeti, and that's the stuff. Not 2 minutes in, the world melts away and one's body loses all sensation. Strange sights fill the head unbidden. The trick is not to zero in on anything… just to "zero out" and let the music's essence establish itself, send out its shoots and transform all. Instead of just hearing music you can roll around in it. I'm thinking this must be similar to tripping on acid, but there is no chemical agent other than what the brain itself generates. Thoroughly reliant upon the flow of sound and my determined avoidance of focus, the state is as delicate as a soap bubble. It's a gift that I need to protect from the world and my own world-drenched thoughts.

Such as:
"Man am I gonna get beat tomorrow when I show up without my homework!"
"Why do I get boners all the time?"
"I hope Bobby and Brian ain't getting all mixed up in drugs."
"Is God going to send me to Hell?"
"How can I get hold of R.Crumb comix?"
"Why am I so weird?"
"This Sunday I'm gonna walk up and tell her I love her. I'll do it!"
"Grandma's dead."
"Man I hope my world-drenched thoughts don't invade the bubble…."
POP!

The "music trips" have already inspired related techniques for enhancing certain pleasant circumstances and for surviving certain intolerable ones.
A ferinstance regarding the latter: psychic "relocation" during the frequent administration of physical torture by the good teachers of Holy Name School. Become an abstract thought removed from the body. Stare straight into Mr. Castaldo's eyes and never acknowledge any sense of the pain he aims to inflict. Hold those books on your outstretched arms as you squat, as instructed, on the balls of your feet. And stare at the bastard.
Stare him down like he can't touch you. Let your eyes do all the talking:
All this for showing up without homework?
You're a grown man?
A grown man does this to a kid for skipping homework?
Look at me.
I'm a kid staring back at you.
You lose.

One hopes that adults like that are rarities, but one expects otherwise.
Behind this apparently precocious cynicism lies a deeper and deadlier delusion bred and nurtured by terminal romantic narcissism: one expects eventual cosmic validation that, yes, there are far weirder things than staring into taillights on summer nights. You, young seer, will prevail over the full-grown Torquemadas.
Wrong. Nature and nurture have infected this boy with toxic concentrations of pixie dust and vanity. But I'm years away from complete defeat, and we're here to celebrate possibility while we still can. Besides, it's summer.
Cue sitar!
Look into that taillight!

The gemlike kaleidoscope facets soften and blur. Hard angles reveal parabolas …these become arches and curves. I am now looking into a cavern of glowing red rocks. Let go further… a river appears… lava lite wax, bubbling. My peekaboo vantage opens up until I'm surrounded by the red world. I'm swaying like a flame in it as living things appear all around; crimson bats flap about the scarlet stalactites and lazy cherrybomb bears loll on the opposite shore of the river. The more I stare, the more I see. The less I think, the more I imagine. Holy Moses, is this cool.

That's enough. Mom is calling. It was only a minute or so, but I was lost in bright red time and it could have been 4 hours. These portals don't want your time; they want to GIVE you time. I'll be back. I walk into the living room with my head zatzing like the antenna on a bumper car. Everything's fine. The folks are watching Gene Barry chase somebody. Maureen has already put Petey to bed. Brian and Bobby are off somewhere in the vicinity of trouble but they haven't dragged it back here yet. Grandma's dead, but I believe in heaven. Gonna listen to Shep on the radio and then tell Grandma ( in the nightly report I promised to pray up her way forever onward )of my red dimension.

I'll return to the taillight in nights to come, and hit it lucky as often as not. I'll even let a few other kids in on my secret. One will simply reject it as Murf being deliberately weird as usual and what kind of freak wants to stare into a dirty car taillight anyway? Dick.
The other will see the effect, and sorta admit it's kinda cool. But I doubt he'll ever see the bats… maybe because he can't. Maybe he doesn't need to or maybe he has his own thing that I wouldn't quite "get." This is OK though. This sort of respectful acknowledgment is friendship. You walk along the riverbank with your 6-foot invisible rabbit… there on the other side you see some other person who thinks there's a stegosaurus beside him. You nod at one another, smile and keep walking.
What you don't do is turn to your 6-foot invisible rabbit and say "that idiot over there thinks he's walking a dinosaur! Haw haw!"

But there are some who do just that, and I already know that you can be very, very cautious about who you show your dreams to and still wind up with a long list of your gone dreams and who killed them.
Time taken, smile shattered. World-drenched.
Yonder come:
Sarcasm and censure; the sneer and the fallamooka.
Custom and cool.
Insult and antagonism.
The freeze-out… the crucifix.
The glory of man's imagination.
But not yet.

Someday the car will no longer be there, or I'll have grown tired of the red world, or something. I'll have absorbed it into me fully or outgrown it, never to return, likeToyland in the old song. Or It'll just drift away like summer, and even the promise I made Grandma. In any event, I'll have completed my involvement with the taillight and that'll be that. It will not have been robbed from me. I'll only tell other people about it years and years from now, when it's too late for them to ruin everything. By telling them, I'll be reminding myself of something very sweet, meaningless and gone.

I dunno what they'll make of my tale. Nothing, probably.