Sport Spiel

2012-01-17T16:33:00.002-05:00

My son Miles has just started a blog, which led me back here. I stopped using this blog pretty much around the time I started using Facebook. But now I appreciate that "social media" involve, by definition, other people's bullshit. So I'm considering a return to this as my main venting outlet.

2009-06-13T23:44:00.007-04:00

RECLAMATION PROJECT - Part Three: Ives Essay

Years ago, my friend Tim Quirk asked me to contribute a monthly page to an arts magazine called CURIO. This piece (and the accompanying art) was intended as my third piece for the mag, which folded before the piece ran. I put it on my old webpage and was flattered to find it linked to a comprehensive Charles Ives page on the web. Now that the old webpage is kaput, I place it here for your perusal. When this was written I had just finished Willoughby, and saw no chance that it would ever get released.

Of course, I subsequently had my small adventure in the music biz, made some more albums (the songs "Leslie's Coming Over" and "St. Ives" on Magic Beans are the soundtrack to this essay, btw), tossed away religious faith, began drinking again, mended Skel fences, lost most of my family, created a new one, bla bla, so some of this is no longer relevant. What remains relevant is my love for the work of Charles Ives. For most people, his music requires considerable effort to appreciate. For some, that effort is profoundly worthwhile.

A GLORY TRANCE
"I think there must be a place in the soul all made of tunes , of tunes of long ago"
(Charles Ives - "The Things Our Fathers Loved" -1917)

When I was a desperately lonely teen, that place in my soul was full of tunes created by maverick visionaries like Jonathan Richman, Brian Wilson, Lou Reed & Frank Zappa and cult groups like the Bonzo Dog Band & Stackridge. The eclectic individualism of these and similarly dissimilar artists (aside from providing necessary assurance that the fate of an oddball could include more than torment at the hands of slack-jawed, dull-eyed, Elton John t-shirt-wearing normals) prepared my ears for their first encounter with a man I frankly and unapologetically idolize: Charles Ives.

It was on a P.B.S. special celebrating the music of America. After 2 hours of Billings' anthems, Stephen Foster's exquisite parlor songs, the spectacular rags of Scott Joplin, sea shanties, slave hymns, cowboy ballads, urban blues and on and on, a soft piano chord sounded, beginning the brief Ives song I've quoted above. I forget the singer - manybe Sherrill Milnes - but his rich baritone still resonates in my heart. What seemed at first a sentimental melody of little distinction immediately began veering in unexpected directions... the strange, placid piano went buck wild with harsh, roiling arpeggiations and fanfares for fist. I was overtaken... agape, agog, and aswoon. I had a teenage crush on a song! In less than two minutes, it concluded on a gentle, unresolved dissonance that seemed to sum up the entire history of American song that preceded it ...and throw open the door to something vast.

That vast thing is what I've spent 20 years exploring, and writing a short article about it feels like trying to stuff a live pterodactyl into a bowling ball bag. There's an excellent biography by Jan Swafford, if you want to learn about Ives' unique life, several books by J Peter Burkholder that analyze his music with rare clarity and insight and a couple of volumes of Ives' own writing, in which he limns his own philosophy with high hilarity (not to mention numerous c.d.s of the music itself). All I'm aiming to tell you is how the perennially undervalued accomplishments of a Connecticut genius reached across this miserable century to transform the life of one obscure Long Island schmuck (So really, it's all about me. There's no reason why that should grab you, but hear me out; maybe some dispirited genius out there'll be inspired to continue creating work destined to transform the life of some other schmuck 100 years from now).

As soon as I began raiding Sam Goody for Ives l.p.s, I realized I was in a fix. Sure, the "Concord" sonata was his masterpiece - it said so right there in the liner notes - but all I heard was an unnavigable flood of jarring notes leavened with corny Americana, and so I forlornly filed it away. As taken as I was with this tale of a yankee iconoclast whose music was so innovative that he was forced to live as a businessman / secret composer... as inspiring as I found the tale of his discovery by young upstarts like Aaron Copland and Henry Cowell and his ultimate vindication in old age, the music seemed like, to put it bluntly, a fuckin' mess. So I took his "genius" on faith and enjoyed the few pieces I could comprehend - charming songs like "The Circus Band" and "Charlie Rutlage"; the static mysticism of "The Unanswered Question"; the prankish fun of his organ variations on "America". In fact, even those relatively sedate works perplexed my family. On account of the barrage of discordant orchestrations emanating from my room and the sudden blasts of familiar tunes gone as sour as last month's half-n-half, "sounds like Ives" became a catch-all witticism invoked any time a musician hit a wrong note or screwed up a rhythm. What the hell... the guy's music was kinda nuts.

As years rolled on, other musical infatuations kept bringing me back to Ives. The fury of punk inflamed my skronk gland, allowing enjoyment of sonic violence like the "Tone Roads". Victorian relics like "Two Little Flowers" seemed right at home between "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" and Jerome Kern's elaborate Broadway Americana. Thelonious Monk gave me an appetite for acrid harmonies like those in "Three Places in New England". So, in increments, Ives' enormous achievement slowly seeped into this suburban skull. By my late 20s I was a songwriter of dubious ability and, with some friends, formed a band that aspired to a style somewhere between the Replacements and NRBQ. The Skels were actually decent, but failed miserably to get attention and took six years to realize it. In those chummy years of spiralling frustration and alcohol abuse, I'd force Ives on my pals. Between the Husker Du and Dylan albums they'd be subjected to the Gregg Smith singers' recording of "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" accompanied by an inebriated rant on why it was "great rock-n-roll". Of course, it is...

An obstinate chord pounds like the "big bass drum" the Salvation Army founder is described beating in lyrics intoned basso-Tony-the-tiger-o. An eager choir keeps chanting "Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?" as Booth's parade procession of skeletal drug fiends, verminous boozers, thugs, lepers and other escapees from a Tom Waits operetta marches toward the front door of Jesus Christ hisself. The orchestra grows ever more frantic as the malodorous congress continues to gather, awaiting an audience with the Big Cheese. The whole cacaphonous frenzy slows down like an unplugged close-n-play when Jesus emerges to bless the motley throng. Here the music becomes tender, culminating in a queasy chord that is probably my favorite moment in music, and, as infirmities are removed, addictions lifted and despair turned to ecstatic faith, the tempo goes apeshit all over again. This time it surges upward with shouts of "Hurray!" and "Hallelujia!". Grace is manifested in a cathartic climax. Finally "Are you washed in the blood of the lamb" is sung with the naked simplicity of a Sunday-school tune - a moment of incandescent rapture stunning after all the earlier chaos -and the opening pianodrum dis-chord fades to silent peace.

As I awaited their reaction with wide eyes and the post-orgasmic grin of a true zealot , my tolerant companions would politely suggest that I go grab some beers and cue up the new Robyn Hitchcock record. Oh , well.

Anyway, in time the band disintegrated. Friendships wore out their mutual welcome. I eventually put the cork in the bottle for good and tried to suss out what to do next. By the time a ridiculously ambitious solo album was underway, depression had become a chronic affliction I visualized as a dark beast which, when it wasn't at my throat, waited nearby... salivating. I came to regard the long-gestating album as an elaborate suicide note, but managed to fight that adolescent silliness and finish the friggin' thing. After a few listeners heard it and reacted by suggesting I go grab some sodas and cue up the new Nick Cave c.d., I decided my album sucked, then curled up in a ball and whimpered. Fuck music. Fuck it all. Whaaaaah. That was when a friend mentioned an upcoming festival of "that Charles Ives shit you love so much." I hemmed and hawed, but rode with another friend up to Annandale, N.Y. for a weekend of Ives concerts. I wept during the first song recital, overcome by the nostalgic "Down East" to the point of childish sobbing. What gives?

The next day, pianist Alan Feinberg gave a performance of the "Concord" sonata that was ideal - so exciting, multifaceted and rich with melody that I finally understood what the word "masterpiece" means. All the note clusters, the schmaltzy measures, sudden displacements and abrasive stretches wove themselves into a coherent and expansive whole. Like any human life spent struggling with confounding contradiction... like a new continent covered with unpredictable terrain, it all wound up making vivid sense. It was my first crush on "The Things Our Fathers Loved", grown into mature love and consummated. Cigarette?

All this led to that evening's performance of the "Holidays" symphony. As the August sun settled into the lush hills along the Hudson, my friend and I sat in a vast tent with hundreds of others. The orchestra invited us to inhabit this music in a way no recording could ever have suggested. Ives' rich recreation of his New England boyhood reeled us in. It made us laugh out loud, sigh with longing and feel as if each one of us were a Connecticut kid in knickerbockers or pinafore, romping around through those long-ago seasons. It wasn't music to tap one's foot and hum along with, but to enter into and taste and breathe deep and fill the lungs with. Well into the 4th and final movement, "Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day", I began to experience a vague anxiety. The slow unfolding of this stern and deeply beautiful devotional music only increased the anxious energy building inside. I glanced around to notice a number of audience members swaying, smiling, rapt in assorted individual modes of absorption. My anxiety mounted, and there was a queer sense that something... gulp... was about to..."happen"... to me.

Homina Homina! Baffled and distracted, I decided - "Enough; surrender and let the music do whatever it means to do". In an instant the choir stood to sing the last magnificent measures of the work. My mind flooded with a radiance. Glory. Lifted from the folding chair - bodily, it seemed - up through air now filled with sparkling, evanescent notes of pure music. I felt my forehead kissed by the lips of God (whatever that is...that thing or idea I'd prayed to with little or no faith on countless desolate nights)... and then , with a palpable physical force, the beast of depression was yanked from my soul. (Look, I think it sounds like a bunch of new-age hooey, too. But blow me... it happened just like that.) Afterwards we walked, speechless and shaken, away from the concert site to a sleep of slendid dreams.

The next morning I could still barely stammer in amazement as we attended a final choral concert, and began the long drive home to Long Island. On the road, we passed the hours listening to the entire recorded legacy of my ill-fated band. It all sounded fine; pleasant memories returned and a modest pride and satisfaction replaced the bitterness I'd long held toward those songs. Although I still run the usual homo sapiens mood gamut from joy to sadness to "what's on C-Span?", the beast has never returned. As for the solo album I was so heartbroken over, I think it's... well... a masterpiece. Though my distaste... hell... incapacity for attempting to woo the favor of scumbag record-label types will ensure the permanent obscurity of this opus, I intend to painstakingly craft as many more of 'em as my piddling finances allow. They too will languish on my tape shelf, and that's okay. Making music has become a vital, sacramental act for me. If the stuff has any outside value, it'll keep.

I'm no genius, but this Genius taught me to trust that essential idiosyncratic impulse which originates in the infinite... that tiny fragment of God's voice we all possess a share of; which doesn't even exist until we're brave and honest enough to sound it and create our part of God. It's the reason America's music is the only demonstrable realization of the "American Democratic Ideal". The reason Ives' beloved vision of a "people's world nation" can only really exist in music, where bullshit, dogma, mockery and fraud are eventually exposed and discarded.
I don't believe, as Charles Ives did, that people are inherently "good", but I believe it's a possibility while I'm listening to his work.

I hope he convinces me, though, and I've no reason to doubt that he will. He's already spent 20 years whispering and hollering in my ear... convincing me to live and to sing whatever corny or thorny sounds my feeble inspirations dictate. He was a courageous, resolute artist who built his Palais Ideal out of garbage and raw gold, and it shames the architecturally perfect cathedrals other, more lionized composers have constructed, because while so many of theirs are empty monuments to vanity, his is filled with unbowed belief and the roaring Sandburg slang of real-live humanity. & with that I'll split and go compose a goddamn masterpiece. You too... get crackin'.

2009-06-12T23:01:00.014-04:00

Love Monsters At War!

So, 30 years ago me and Brian killed some time making all sorts of stuff - he was laid up with a badly broken leg and I was already a determined idler. We made some amazing dioramas (destroyed over time, alas), an elaborate board game called FEZ, all sorts of video nonsense, etc. Among the surviving relics is a comic collage thing (a mashup, I guess) called LOVE MONSTERS AT WAR! There were others - one called JUNGLE CREATURES RULE and a reworked public service anti-smoking comic called WHERE THERE'S SMOKE... Here are selected panels from LMAW.

You get the gist. So... thinking of brother Bri' with love tonight.

2009-05-27T13:32:00.003-04:00

THE LESSER MALTS OF SCOTLAND

In my time covering booze for the NY Post, some arguably notable Single Malts have been overlooked due to space constraints (owing to the financial necessity of other schmucks writing about, say, Lady Gaga or season XXIV of Survivor or the new, incredible film version of "Space 1999" and getting all the do-re-mi I should, by all rights, be banking). Here are some observations on these neglected "expressions" (as the booze writers so irksomely put it) of the distiller's art.

Dunbanginerr (25 dollars for a half-n-half, plus room)
Nose: A vague scent of Coney Island Whitefish with a swirl of American Spirit smoke
Color: Reddish, slightly awkward, almost poignant
Taste: Loathsomely urgent with quick finish and pangs of bitter regret

Glencampbell (110 dollars for two with meal included and casino credits) Nose: Reconstructed with lingering traces of Peruvian flake
Color: Deceptively pale, ruddy over time
Taste: Eager and clean, developing complexity, ultimately familiar

Balgaggin (Steeper than expected)
Nose: Leather and PVC
Color: Deep black with silvery studs
Taste: Bloodclot rich with accumulating droolpool slosh and abrupt, safeword finish)

Bluntcudgel (Whatever you got in your fuckin' wallet)
Nose: Pug... impending "uh oh" sorta twitchy ozone crackle
Color: Shadowy, with glints of menace
Taste: Sneaks up on you, then: wham!

Doontknockit (A mere bag o' shells; why worry)
Nose: Fresh and guileless, unambiguous
Color: Blue skies, smiling at me
Taste: Very little to speak of

Lochdanloaded (2 dollar dreams sold out for a lousy dime)
Nose: Gunpowder and oil followed by overwhelming testosterone tang
Color: Noir
Taste: Like the chewed-up end of a raw deal with an ironic finish

Knockanbackaphyoo (Vinny's got this round)
Nose: Irrelevant
Color: Ditto
Taste: Quick heat with a beer chaser, rising nausea

Leapphroig (A nickel, a nickel, shiny and new)
Nose: Bazooka gum with curiously vivid moments of ecstatic joy, passing rapidly
Color: A rainbow array of happy possibilities, glimpsed backwards though a haze of crushing reality
Taste: Nostalgic with notes of hopeless yearning, long sigh of a finish

2009-05-09T00:50:00.003-04:00

RECLAMATION PROJECT PART TWO: WILLOUGHBY LYRICS

See entry below for explanation. (These lyrics and those in the previous entry are copyright Mike "Sport" Murphy)

IT'S DEFINITELY SUNDAY
Feel like little Moses in the rushes - got a runny nose and I wanna scream.
Feel like little Moses in the rushes - got a runny nose and I wanna scream.
Who's gonna find me, now that I'm all on my own?
Who's gonna find me?
I feel like little Joseph in the deep hole - someone beat me up in my dreams.
I feel like little Joseph in the deep hole - someone beat me up in my dreams.
Dreaming is a hard thing, when you gotta wake up this-a- way.
Dreaming is a hard thing when you're utterl'ly nowhere... particularly sleazy...
it's definitely Sunday.
Jesus musta been there at the party - someone saved the best stuff for last.
Jesus musta been there at the party - someone saved the best stuff for last.
Change it back to water! I've never been so thirsty in my life!
Change it back to water!
I'd do a damn Novena if this agita would leave me... it's definitely Sunday.
Red-eyed in the Red Roof, apres-jag.
Guess I'll stick this Gideon in my gigbag.
Where the hell did last night go? My new friends turned into dead soldiers.
Run to the Chic Sale to throw a map, and then it's check-out time.
I'm in the fiery furnace and I'm burning... they didn't send an angel and I'm toast.
I'm in the fiery furnace and I'm burning... they didn't send an angel and I'm toast. Somebody save me!
Please, somebody, pull me out of here!
Somebody save me!
I'll vow to celibacy - & never look at whiskey! It's definitely Sunday.

THE DILETTANTE BALL
It's a dilettante ball. It's a dilettante ball.
A few bucks from now I'll be rockin' cause I'm goin' down to the Freemasons' hall
to check out the dilettante ball.
They got an excellent band. A wailingly excellent band!
I took a piss with the bass player one time - he let me shake his hand.
I said: "You're in a excellent band."
Ooh - now they're doin' the heap!
Do you know how to do the heap?
What you do is you get in a big sweaty pile, and then you all fall asleep.
Yeah! Now you're doin' the heap!
I got on my class action suit & I ain't gonna settle for "Scram!"
Gonna hang the belle-o-the-ball up like a big pink pinata
and whack 'er until she gives with the goodies!
Tonight she'll know I'm a mighty, mighty man... d'moppit d'moppit!
This is all I desire. All I could ever desire.
All we need now is some crazy ex-boyfriend to light the whole joint on fire.
This is all I desire.
'Twas a dilettante ball. Big ol' dilettante ball.
When you find my remains, just say: "Yup, here's another one..."
another one who gave his all to the dilettante ball. vout.

THE NIGHT SURROUNDS
Kettles will be whistling to proclaim, with shrill insistence, an impending cup of Sanka.
Someone will be hearing (and, presumably, enjoying) something written by Paul Anka.
Dogs will be forsaken and taken to the pound
on the day they lay your body in the ground.
A rock band will be praying for that single A&R guy who appreciates true genius. Someone in love will croon to someone who's already leaving:
"I hope nothing comes between us."
Flags the wide world over will fly high atop the mast when that day comes to pass. Smirking here inside our nervous breakdown - shaking while the Lucky Planet sleeps.
The night retreats... I swear it does... it can't stay dark for keeps.
So let's go out and act as if it's Saturday - I cannot bear to wait 'til one arrives.
The night retreats, the night returns. The night surrounds our lives.
Arguments will rage, between committed individuals, about substantial issues.
In a thousand teenage bedrooms, human passion will erupt
into a thousand Kleenex tissues.
Bats will keep careening 'round their echoes in their caves
on the day they lower you into your grave.
Come on with me, we'll wander to a quiet place -
an antidote to all this empty noise we've thrown up in our frenzy to deny each other's voice.
And, just for fun, we'll sing a little symphony -
and, just for once, not care if it survives.
The night retreats, the night returns.
The night surrounds our lives.

CARRY ME TO THE PIANO
Now, I'm counting on your kindness... all my bones are made of glass.
Carry me to the piano, and I will try to play a song that makes the sorrow pass.
Now, I always have imagined that I'd soar before I die.
Carry me to the piano. I'll fill the air with silver stars, or shatter as I try.
Well Iím awkward and embarrassed.
Iím a giggling grotesque.
I feel an end beginning... tossing, turning in my thinning skin.
Carry me! Carry me!
Now I'm homesick for my silence this dismal, long-awaited day.
Carry me from this piano!
Away, away, away, away.
Away, away, away!

WHEN I RAIN
When I rain, I'm gonna rain on something weak...
some drab Missouri shack that's bound to leak.
I'm gonna ruin someone's day.
I'm gonna make somebody pray that I'll dry up & blow away and rain no more.
And when I rain, I'm gonna pour.
I've been gathering my anger all these years - saving all this thunder, all these tears.
And it's a petty little mess, and I'll be stooping to impress,
when I wring out all of my distress one afternoon -
when I rain.
& I'm raining soon.
Gonna make sure I don't fill no reservoir or chance to slake some thirsty garden flower. They won't remember what I did.
So, when I put in my sorry bid, I'm gonna find some little kid out selling lemonade -
and then I'll rain on his parade.

AVA
Here comes Ava, swimming slowly.
Tiny bonfires 'round her body.
And she's smiling something holy!
Smiling at me... I say "Ave".
I move through a pinched & stricken world.
Oh! But your beauty, girl!
If I never find another moment's peace, at least I'll have seen Heaven.
There are cold spots in the bright lake where there were murders on early Sundays.
Ava shivers... keeps on swimming toward the shoreline.
Oh! The water is serene... it must remember everything.
And the water, it shines with a rapture now, 'cause it's holding beautiful Ava.
Up the bank strides perfect Ava... and, for a moment, everything matters.
It's her soft lips, and her heartbeat, and the sundown.
Bring the sundown!
Bring the Sun down.

THE MOON STARES DOWN
He thinks he's smelling violets - he thinks he's hearing chimes.
She moves in phosphorescent trails, and up them trails he climbs.
The headstones murmur sonnets and the shadows say "amen"...
friends old and wise who know that nights like this won't come again.
The moon stares down on them.
All his stupid "spooky" jokes are silenced by her smile.
The dreaded touch of wonder, and they stand like that a while.
The moon stares down!
The moon bears down!
The moon wears
down their... ( interlude-pan skyward)
...6 feet above some sainted stranger mouldering in the ground -
a feast of an epiphany, and paradise is found.
Aah!

SING ME TO SLEEP
Green with age and envy, here we are at last.
Nothing to distract us from the ever-changing past.
I'll sing you My True Story... it's bound to make you weep.
I'll sing what I remember, then you must sing me to sleep.
Lean low over me, beautiful angel. All of your tears fall warm upon my cheek.
Cry, cry, cry our blues away, away.
Angel, come sing me to sleep.
All my little life I yearned for something "greater"... even if it meant a greater kind of grief.
I said it and I meant it... I'm tired but contented.
Angel! Hurry! Sing me to sleep!
Pull away these shadows so that I can watch your face shine its fullest light throughout this sick and secret place.
Raise your golden voice again and I'm a happy man.
Sometimes the words are hard to catch, but sing.
I'll understand.

go 'bout your bizness
Well, the rain is come and the night ain't young
and the day's long gone with the carnival
where the laughin' and the singin' and the noise went on -
where the feastin' and the fightin' was.
And your old crowd's crowdin' the theatre now and they're all shoutin' "fire" in unison.
Christ! How they amuse themselves! They're never gonna miss you.
Go 'bout your bizness,
go on home... there's nothin' here to see no more.
Look out! There's bandits in them there blinds
and they're lads unmoved by history... and they're louts, unamused by mythology.
I can hear the cops already:
"Go 'bout your bizness! Go on home! There's nothin' here to see no more!"

KERRY DANCES
Don't mind what anybody's saying. The dogs are out here playing,
with God and Stanshall smiling down.
Don't mind those tombs you've half-erected from stacks of the collected works of Everyone-but-you.
Someday, our eyes will see the glory that we've only glimpsed, limping through this purgatory.
Hold on tight to these romances
days of Kerry dances; skies of Parrish blue.
Round here, no one understands us ...but look at what they're like!
Hallelujia! Strike the band up!
We'll grow old as two young lovers - here to see each other safely to our home.
Home!

A WRETCH LIKE ME
Smug as any specialist, blithely cruel as any child.
Vain as any atheist devout in all his high denials.
Thank you for the Four Seasons, God. Thank you for
the Beach Boys too.Thank you for my life, dear God
...and on a final note:
"AAH-OOOH!"

2009-05-09T00:03:00.003-04:00

RECLAMATION PROJECT PART ONE: MAGIC BEANS LYRICS

I used to have a website, administered by a young fellow named Jared thru his aol account. It covered the Willoughby / Magic Beans era of somewhat high hopes for my, uh, career in music. It was abandoned along with that career, but sat there for years. Now that the aol homepages have been deep-sixed, all the content is perdu. So I used the "wayback machine" to try and retrieve some of it. Most of it's gone and no loss, but I did find the lyrics to both of those albums as well as an essay on Charles Ives. So I'll post them here.

TREAT ME LIKE AN ARTIST!
Treat me like an artist! Bend me over something! Put it to me bluntly!
I'm so glad you're handling me! I ain't misanthropic, but I must be misan-something!
Treat me like an artist! I know that I deserve it!
See, the doctor slapped my ass and said "MacBeth", and I've been skittish ever since; awaiting thy disdain with bated breath! Born to wince.
I'm way down... way, way down. Treat me like an artist.
All I am's a failure, but you can make it better: treat me like an artist! An artist got to suffer.
Treat me like an artist! Money is no object! Why dontcha wear that Sammy Glick suit... it's better when you do that.
I hate it when the clock sez "time to quit", until you give me your card.
I take it home and stare at it... real hard. I'm way down... (etc)
There must've been a trauma, something in me I'm ascared-a, 'cause I can't get off unless you tell me where to when you treat me like an artist. Artist. ARTIST!

BLACK RIVER FALLS.
The broken boughs float down the stream.
We're in a kind of nowhere now... some kind of in-between.
The great commotion that left this calm has come and snapped some of the tension I've been strung out on.
Severe and still. I'm a crocodile.
Oh river, oh river, can't you move more slow, river? For a little while...
The lines are down. A welcome spell.
Shook loose from all the shapes we take for those who know us well.
I figure you for 45. There's shadows 'round your small talk; that just proves you've been alive.
Such lonesome light... ah, such a smile!
Oh river, oh river, can't you move more slow, river, for a little while?
It's getting late, but that's okay. My hurricane-eye neighbor, thanks for leading me away, with as strong a touch as I could take, this strange and temporary day

HOME IS FAR AWAY.
Brooklyn Bridge is burning down behind me, the flames conniving with the harbor winds. There's no place too safe for fear to find me... maybe that's where bravery begins.
Sad remembered moments come a-nagging. The tiny kind that rub you raw with shame. No-one ever sees the load you're dragging, just the fishhooks tangled in your name.
Home is far away... my home is far away. But I can live with anything if I know that I'll make it there someday.
What pretty nonsense sister used to sing me! I can still hear her Reuben-and-Rachel-ing in my mind. Sister, sister, what a fine world this would be if pretty nonsense was the only kind. Home is far away...
I had a dream the other night, when everything was still. I thought I saw Susannah comin' down the hill. The buckwheat cake was in her mouth, the teardrop in her eye. Sez I, "I'm coming from the South... Susannah don't you cry!"
Oh! Susannah! Don't you cry for me!
I can live with anything.

BY THE LIGHT.
There ain't no city, just a haunted fog-drift outside these kind old walls.
The old folks are howling like cats on a fence - the Auld Lang Syne - a mile down the hall.
Here we are. Here we are: blankets and pillows and hours and hours. Turn the Blessed Virgin, so there won't be any eyes watching us.
Beautiful cousin, while I feel your heartbeat I don't believe the dark.
But here comes the morning; I hear the cops chasing glue-boys off the benches by the park.
Off we go. Off we go: a New Year, then others... and funerals... and lovers...
oh, Daphne, nothing ever quite works out.

I'M BOUND.
It ain't on the lines or between the lines... it ain't on the page at all... It just ain't there.
All the scribbles wriggle off the margin and drift away like motes across the air.
And I'm bound, and I been so long. And I'm bound somewhere I ain't always wrong. And I'm bound. Been all my days. I been bound down, waiting to get raised.
You see them paper leaves Scotch-taped up upon the old school's tall old window panes? Well, under all the flop sweat, debts and desperate bets, it's a wonder what remains.
And I'm bound, and I 'm standing still, and it's no way to get there, but I will. And I'm bound, and I'm out the door. There's a whole world I'm dying to ignore.
Here it comes again... here it comes again... I know the drill. I 've heard the speech. But I'm not the type you'll ever reach. Just another giant on the beach.

MY NEMESIS.
Yodel-ay-hee-hoo! Ted Bessell. Ted Bessell. Yodel-ay- heee!

NOTHING IN WONDERING.
Everything's ready to give - this life we've been trying to live - the rain doesn't fall, it just weighs down the sky. Nothing in wondering why.
Your smile is blessed to see, but I think it's wasted on me. It ain't getting through, it's just making me blue. Nothing in wondering why.
Darling, darling, sorry things have turned out this way.
Darling, darling, maybe everything'll be okay, maybe everything'll be okay, maybe, maybe, everything will be. Okay?
I tried to be something to you. Whatever it was, it was true.
The truth is, we mean well, but we're not that strong.
We're making it up as we go, right or wrong.
Hooray for the truth, but sometimes I just long for the lie. Nothing in wondering why.

LESLIE'S COMING OVER.
Need a splash of daylight on these silent-movie-eyes.
Find that affa koimen 'fore it gets all fossilized.
Les is more than patient, grinning up the inspiration! Salubrious as Gingko Biloba!
Recall how the Lord told Laz'rus: "Dead man,get off that mattress! Fold it back into a sofa! Leslie's coming over!"
Leslie is a silverjet emitting showers of sparks.
Leslie is a rave review with no smart-ass remarks.
Willoughby birds singing in the trees. You wait up nights for days like these, and I just wanna bossa-nova!
Leslie's coming over! Leslie's coming over...

SAINT IVES.
The too-late blues are on again. A trial by fire extinguisher.
A lot has come and gone again, and days are all a blur.
So come on, let's ride upside the river, get some fresh air in our lives.
Maybe "something" will come deliver, as we are going to St Ives.
And tell that august orchestra: play Winter off and out of town!
'Til every note's a nebula, and God is all around.
And we'll let our lonesome sorrows go and float up through the skies, for a moment of Thanksgiving above the mountains at St Ives.
Bring the old to ring the new, along the reeling ribbon home.
Bring promises and prayers to move us through sweet all-unknown.
Yeah, and you're my friend, but that doesn't say it... can't be verbalized.
It's music, so let's just play it.
A smile to go the long road rolling home from old St Ives.

FADO, FADO.
Will you whisper, if you can, some way to say you hear me?
A breeze... a beam of light or something... telling me that you're near me.
Remember when we made that bet to dance wherever we would go?
We kept it up 2 days and nights. 2 days and 2 nights so long, long ago.
Go find your demon, and ask why we had to outlive you.
I'll find my own and I'll beg it to shut up and let me forgive you.
Once I knew there was a Heaven; Sometimes I still hope so.
I think about us all together, just like we were fado, fado.
I know why I haven't joined you. It ain't some "sense of duty" ...I just want to stay and watch the years perfect her beauty.
Wish that you were around to meet her; you'd have hit it off, I know.
She's helping me to find the dreams you taught me to dream so long, long ago.

THE SMALL PLANETS.
All right, I'll split... I'm gittin' out of here.
Sorry I wasted my time on your punk planet.
What a dump.
What a weak-ass atmosphere... nix on this nickel-and-dime spaldeen o' granite.
I can walk into any book. Guess that's what I'll do. Come on! Come on!
Away out here, they got no names: each man's an asteroid, dodging the comets alone, and further out there. Further. Out there.

CACTUS BOY.
Go on and mingle among 'em a little bit, go on, child.
What's that quizzical sniffle they greet you with? What's that, child?
That's just the way they know their own... it's a very special smell.
When you catch a whiff of it, run like hell.
A group's a gang's a mob's an army: itching to deploy.
"Noli Me Tangere." You tell 'em,
Cactus Boy.
There's a whole buncha nothing a-crawling through the world, child.
When it eyeballs on Something, it wants to make it die.
One's a soul, and two's a love song. Yonder come a hoi polloi...
Wish 'em all out into the cornfield, Cactus Boy. Everybody!

PULLING OUT OF RACHEL.
Already I'm remembering the light in here, her thighs, these sheets... already they're among the unforgettable defeats.
I'm done with all endurance for this drip-drip-dripping daily drain; all the sickly seconds tick-tick-ticking like Zapruder frames.
Yeah, you try the things you try. We tried "a couple" - Christ knows why. 'Cause it's the same Hell, different cell. I'm pulling out of Rachel for the last time.
The way I feel right now, I believe this hatred's gonna up and go.
Away somewhere, just like our tiny piece of love did, long ago.
And this holy ghost of our first urge is just a little binge before the purge, and it's a deep sigh. Ai yi yi.
Goodbye... I'm pulling out of Rachel for the last time.
Past the last sweet shudder, humid beings hanging out to dry.
The Marlboro lights, the straggler moonbeams wander from our eyes.
Commence the screw-you-over-ture. The rest is silence, that's for sure, and it's no tears. Come on, years! Three cheers: I'm pulling out of Rachel for the last time.

MORE GOD.
Maybe I'm a holy fool? I figure I'm the ordinary kind.
With a grudge against the limits of my ordinary mind... poor slob.
And it's ripe for ridicule, here among these gobshites and sleeveens,
here where everything's just what it is, and nothing's what it means.
More God. More God. More God. More God. Cause you're all that I want anymore.
I'll say a prayer - it couldn't hurt - a prayer that time is kinder than it seems;
that something brighter shines behind all our unlucky dreams.
More God. More God. More God. More God. And you're all that I want anymore.

THE WEEPING ICON.
Getcher slickest Sunday duds on - let's go see the weeping icon!
Been held over at St John's: the one and only weeping icon!
It ain't some weird tortilla... it ain't some ratty shroud.
Our own parish has the icon! Jesus Christ, I'm proud!
You'd have to be a fuckin' moron not to love the weeping icon.
Hold it while I get my Nikon: say "cheese" to the weeping icon!
Honk if you're consumed with reverence, and don't let no-one take my place in line. Wouldja look at that there icon... man, oh man, it's fine!
(babada arrangement of "Sheep May Safely Graze" by J.S. Bach)
Someone musta peeled an onion! Only kiddin'... 'scuse me, icon.
More tears than a telethon... well, that's why it's called the "weeping" icon!
It useta be just some stoopid picture, but now it's on the news!
God gave us this weeping icon. That'll show them Jews!

MAYBE, MAYBE NOT.
What's come of all of the urgent decisions? Looks like the whole range from "oh well" to "so what."
Some kinda trade for your ramshackle visions... maybe you remember those ones, maybe not.
Glad that we had all that altar-boy clowning, and blowing "money-stealers" 'cross the vacant lot. 'Cause now your laugh's the last bubble up from a drowning.
Maybe I'm all wrong about it, maybe not.
I'll leave this right here, and I hope you find it. It ain't all you want, but it's what I've got.
I made it with my own hands and I signed it. Maybe that means something to you. Maybe?
Maybe not.

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO THINK? (ultra-secret mega-bonus track.)
The verdict's been reversed on Norman Rockwell's work: seems he was an artist, not a sentimental jerk. I just got used to sneering, now I gotta learn to wink. God damn it, what amI supposed to think?
See the adscape shining! Hear the chirp of mobile phones! I feel so shut-incidal, just like Bee Gees' MisterJones. I try to read the papers, but they keep using cheaper ink, and when I'm done my hands are filthy! What am I... supposed to think?

2009-03-26T11:52:00.002-04:00

Now that everyody's gone I'll quietly slip back into the room.

Didn't want to permanently leave off on a popvaginal note like that; it's just how that particular ball bounced. Exhuming, culling, discarding, confronting, enshrining and puzzling over my dead family's flotsam, jetsam and then-some proved to be a mighty tough endeavor, and even Pointer Pussy failed to distract any longer.

After many overnights alone at 275, wading through dust and sorrow, I realized how much of my loved ones' lives were needlessly consumed by worries and hopes that came to nil and worse. If anything positive is to be made of this, maybe it's what I've landed on: it's all mostly bullshit. That can be monstrously oppressive or liberating; make the choice or else accept what's chosen for you.

I concentrate on my wife and kids. I strive to live a bit healthier for their sake and devote my personal attentions to idle amusement for my sake. I dunno when my delight in making things with paint, magnetic tape, scissors and glue, film and words turned from private tinkering to a daunting chore, toxically connected to the ignes fatui of "career potential," self-image (as validated/squashed by the received or anticipated opinions of others) or source-freezing aesthetic judgements, but finally... fuck that noise.

There are a lot of things that lead straight and direct to my brother's corpse - like those bullet trajectory strands they show on those forensics shows - and I want none of it. I could explain what I mean by this, but not now anyway. Along with a surprisingly debilatating sleep disorder, this perspective shut down my interest in communicating via this blog. I'm here today, though, and this is, perhaps, part of a rehabilitation.

The child who drew and drew, made tapes, shared dirty jokes in the backyard tent, obsessed over ZAP, Duchamp, Berrie Jigglers and the Bonzo Dog Band is father to the man. That kid got up from the desk whenever school got too tedious to bear and walked the fuck out. The costs - derision from some of the other kids, frustration on the part of my folks, laughably out-of-proportion retaliation from authority and the strange limbo of isolation - seldom outweighed the delight of moving through time on my own broken clock, letting imagination slither where it wished, watching the world from my particular vantage in the weeds of the vacant lot ...or through my bedroom window in the wee hours of magic...or through the darting phosphenes in my skull.

I am a middle aged man now, putting it optimistically, and I give up trying to figure out why exactly I'm supposed to be any different than I was then. There is a death's head before me that only fades when I see Lily and Miles dancing or when I laugh with Shelley, or when Garland honors me with a collaborative request, or when Thingumajigsaw and Arlt sing their songs, or when I sit in the School Yard Gents with Spero, O'Connor et al raising middle aged hell, or when I join Alex, Dan and Rob at ol' 275, screaming wretched Bon Jovi lyrics over Rock Band (you heard me right) and a few Tom Collinses. Dayenu.

OK. Onward.

2008-11-10T00:30:00.003-05:00

The Pointer Sisters did a video for the song "I'm So Excited" that originally included a sequence of one Pointer sister rising from a bubble bath, whereupon her towel crept up high enough to provide a clear and unmistakable "beaver shot"...this was no furtive "well, maybe" glimpse of a shadowy crotch-zone, forested only by my fervid imagination.

NO... this was a slo-mo unveiling of real live popstar cho-cha, against suspiciously appropriate lyrics. I mean someone had to know this went out, but damned if it ever got mentioned.

I saw it on MTV one afternoon and spit coffee through my nose. Got wood, too. Told everyone. Nobody believed me. I then recorded hours of MTV content, later fast-forwarding in search o' the snatch. Nada. The video - a big hit at the time, mind you - had vanished. Eventually it reappeared, and lo: no punani. Branded a liar and a cad, I fell apart. A pariah. A broken man. Someone had indeed noticed it, and nothing was ever said. The scissors snipped; history was rewritten.

Years anon, wandering through the internets for some reference... screen capture... ANYTHING that would prove my claim, I still "came up dry" (unlike that succulent Pointer) Every retelling of the tale met with little more than scorn.

I thought I was the only asshole who ever noticed this (well, obviously not, but I mean, outside of the record label, etc).

Mind you, nowadays young female celebrities routinely flash box. Not so in the early 80s... and never, ever on basic cable. So I finally found it on the blessed resource called YouTube. Imagine my glee. A look through the comments confirms that others have noticed the flash. Tears fill my eyes... I'm... I'm not alone after all.

So I captured and edited the pertinent sequence from the pre-and-post-edit versions. Tried to post it here, but the original version will not "show." I suspect censorship. Fascist fuckers.

Anyway, I can easily imagine some unfortunate Google search leading some douchebag to my blog, and then there goes the whole thing... all my archives gone on account of some classic semi/secret yoni footage. No way, jack.

We are, then, reduced to using links. Check right before the chorus, about a minute in: HERE .

And to see the edited version, you can look at THIS . I hope the Youtube posting of the original clip lasts, otherwise, come over sometime and I'll show you.

Thank you for sharing my wonder and delight. My moment of vidvindication as well. I think this breakthrough might well result in the arrival of the change our nation so desperately needs.

2008-09-16T22:59:00.011-04:00

Comics... sigh. Drew 'em for years, I did. At some point in my 20s, Art Spiegelman saw some of my stuff and brutally critiqued it. I agreed, and gave it up. Moved on to music, determined to carry on no matter what. Now, so many years later, few brutal critiques... not from anyone I respect anyhow... but pretty much the same conclusion. Music... sigh.

So, a glance back at the first doomed avocation. Panels, doodles, etc, spanning childhood to my late teens. None of the later stuff that Spiegelman hated, though. I gave away every page I didn't destroy. It is kind of nice that the blog justifies use of this shit at long last, as a friend noted the other day. I feel like it honors, ever so feebly, the dreamy kid that drew it all. And shit, he deserves it, even if it's only his aged self doing it. There are heaps and heaps of these things, really. All that stuff I did for the love of doing. No shame in that.

The oldest one from the current array is from one of these EC/Twilight Zone fixated books I cranked out between 10 and 12 years old. Lots of bitter twists at the end of each tale. Worked REAL hard on these ones. They're not as funny as a lot of the other shit I did then, but the art is better, and it was rare that I used color except in these ambitious strips.

The other one's from a bit later, with a fellow named "Deeds" about to be spirited off by amorphous baddies. Included here for the silly bit of gratuitous self-praise in the corner. Say what you will, at least I was pleased with myself at the time. I could use some of that now!

There's a portion of a page from a small book I did in high school called "Ripstaver." Completed a couple of issues of that one, a 5 by 8 number following the adventures of a bewildered band of mutant-types. Every page included instructions on which music to play while reading it. Forget what this page called for... maybe Grieg or Josef Marais or something.

Here's a sketch of a cock-n-balls gal with cigar-smoking tits. Your guess is as good as mine.
And finally a set of "Patron Saints" from around the age of 19. We had a book, for as long as I can recall, entitled "Lives of Saints" ...it featured short synopses of each individual saintly life accompanied by repros of paintings. Beautiful shit, and I guess I must have looked it over again before scribbling these pencil -n- sharpie portraits.

St Vitus

St Tropez

St Bernard

And of course, St Elmo.

Slightly jaundiced eye on the holy by then. So that's about enough of that crap. Now you know why I went into music. And now? Figure it's a good time to take up another artform for the next 20-something years. Ballet! Can't miss.

2008-09-15T23:05:00.008-04:00

So close and yet, SOFA.

Yeesh. Forgive me for that one! As we continue the archaeology, a cavalcade of couch commemorations. Well, not really a cavalcade... more properly a quartet, which is sonically alliterative anyway.

Life is good on the sofa. Sofa time is time well-spent. Come see some of the sofas of my life.

Here's a family group from our living room at 606 17th Street. I reckon that I'm about 4 or 5 here, proudly displaying my Marx Universal Monsters figures on the coffee table, amid the ever-present doilies and magazines. Monsters were very important in those days. These figures were likely purchased at Woolworth's, where they sat irresistably in bins alongside other Marx six-inchers like cowboys and indians, army soldiers (my favorites in these categories were always the "dying guys" ...poor fellows frozen eternally at the moment a bullet or arrow struck them. Bizarre, looking back at it), et al. Dunno if I had already begun collecting the Nutty Mads and Weird-Ohs, but I'll get to those eventually.

Now: left to right. Brother Brian, early in his "hood" phase. Painstaking hair comb (ever after, he'd jokingly comment "bad hair comb" as a way of complimenting one's coif). Tiki pendants were favored on the neck chain, and cologne was liberally applied. Au Sauvage, Old Spice, so forth. Eventually and enduringly, Brut. Next to Brian sit Uncle Freddie and Aunt Sis. "Sis" was the nickname Mom and siblings gave their eldest sister, so naturally we all called her "Aunt Sis." This is indicative of the strange range of relationships in a large, close family where many siblings were born many years apart; cousins as old as Mom who were more like aunts, and of course nephew Pete, who was more like a brother. The tradition continues, with Miles and Lily's brother Alex almost 20 years their elder!

Fred and Sis were sweet, wonderful people. A late memory of Aunt Sis was arriving at her apartment (site of countless holiday bashes in those years) as a teen, toting my freshly purchased copy of Tom Waits' "Foreign Affairs" lp. Just as the sisters momentarily left their tea and crumbcake to come see what I was listening to on the console tv/stereo, Waits barked "...Florence Nightingale stuck her fat ass out the window..." which, thankfully, inspired much laughter instead of the expected chagrin.

Then there's Grandma. Dad's Mom, who then lived at the Ronkonkoma house I'm now emptying. I still hear her Irish brogue... she died when I was nine, slipping and falling in the kitchen. My folks rushed out to the hospital on Long Island, and I was with my siblings Maureen, Brian, Bobby and Petie in this room at 606 when the call came. I recall the people on the tv (Tonight Show, I think) continuing to laugh as we all sat variously weeping and stunned silent. That was a mindfuck. The world just goes on... who suspected? I prayed to her and promised I'd talk to her every night with the day's news, and did so for many years afterward.

Then it's Aunt Ronnie. She kept a big toybox in her living room for all visiting nieces, nephews and grandkids. A complete pearl. Shelley often drove Mom in to see her in the later years, and on her deathbed she roused from near-dementia to embrace me, whisper some of the most beautiful sentiments I have ever heard and promise to watch over me. With a soul like hers, I can almost believe it's true. Wrote a chamber piece for her that was meant for the abandoned followup to "Magic Beans" ...her death sent my Mom into a spiral of depression that set in soon afterward, on Sept 11.

But there she is, Mom Immortal, beaming with Bobby and me between her and Dad. A very happy time... everyone depicted here represents absolute love to me. What a lucky little boy.

Same spot, different sofa and coffee table. Now I'm maybe 11 or 10, playing the Marvin Glass-designed "Which Witch" game with Brian. Right after Christmas, with wrapping paper and boxes still littering the place. Brian is now in his "groovy guy" phase, and Four Seasons / Shirelles records have given way to Chambers Brothers and Sly and the Family Stone. Dangling in the air above Dad, note the day-glo peace sign mobile. Dad, no doubt caught up in a football game or Efrem Zimbalist on "The F.B.I.", is only tolerating the mobile for the holiday season; I reckon it was a gift from Brian to Bobby or vice versa. Dad is doing his aimless hair-twirling bit; 'til the end he'd repeatedly wind a lock of hair through his fingers as he focused on some tv show. And if the scent of Brut brings back memories of this version of Brian, Vitalis permeates my memories of this version of Dad.

In keeping with the era, Brian and I are sporting mod vests, with fringe on mine! I am obviously proud to be garbed so, sitting beside my purple-trousered bro and wishing I could also grow my hair long so I could be a groovy guy as well. (I did, at about 13, and suffered "are you a boy or a girl" abuses for many years as a result. When I was first marooned in Long Island, a jock hit me with that hated question in the loathed homeroom of my detested high school. Nervous as hell but realizing I needed to show some chutzpah, I replied "Why dontcha suck my dick and find out?") Despite the misery their substance abuse brought into our home, I thought Brian and Bobby were the coolest motherfuckers in christendom.

Behind the sofa is the rickety stereo, before which I'd sit for hours listening to the soundtrack from "2001, A Space Odyssey," the Bee Gees' "Odessa" and other favorites of the moment. Just to the left of the stereo, a GI Joe paratrooper hangs from the wooden bars lining the staircase. These bars were perfectly spaced for getting one's head stuck in between.

Fast-forward to a gathering 'round the sofa at my room in Ronkonkoma, aeons later. Now I'm about 17. Foreground is Maryrose, a gifted gal who was later in the original cast of Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along," and was immortalized by an Al Hirschfeld caricature on the album cover! She's now a successful writer, notably of fiction for young women. I think that's Steve next to her, a guy I spent many many many hours with through the years, some of them sober. Last saw him, along with his rowdy brood, a couple of years back at a party here at the current house.

Frank is chortling next to him. Like Maryrose, he and I recently re-acquainted on MySpace. He does a sort of retro-Vegas comedy and music act around the area. Lovely Karina - current whereabouts unknown to me - is agreeably strangling me as I extinguish a butt in my beer cup. I had just begun that odious habit, which I still relish, unfortunately. And that's Carrie sitting bobsled style between my legs. I can't fathom now why I decided to break up with her; she was a great, sweet, beautiful gal. Probably still is, somewhere.

Doubtless, there was music playing. My guess is Neil Young, Beach Boys or Stackridge, whose album "Pinafore Days" was a group favorite: Tony DeCosa bought every copy he came across and gave them out like new-daddy cigars. We also had a collective fixation with actor Ted Bessell of "That Girl." Fan club buttons, the works. Long story. This sofa was a Castro Convertible... not yet as rank with beer and other drippins as it quickly became before getting deep-sixed for good.

This room became Brian's when circumstance led him to his decline. Last week a truck hauled away tons of shit that had accumulated there... it will soon be the domain of Alex and Cat, who will likely install a new sofa ...and fun will once again reign o'er all, set to Drum 'n' Bass.

That same house, downstairs, another few years along. Now I'm about 22 or so, with Charlie and Bari on the Furry Sofa. It was like cozying up on Robin Williams' back.

We seem to be inebriated on some combination of toxins. Charlie was a dear friend, dead at 33. He and his wife moved to New York City around this time, an unfortunate choice, as it turned out. Wrote a song for him called "The Mighty Sun" ...it recalled, in part, our long nights of deep deep music listening; I turned him on to Tom Waits and he got me into Alan Price. Lotsa Stevie Wonder, Leon Russell, Elvis Costello. Bari, a real salt-o-the-earth type, married a fireman a few years after this photo, and where she is I do not know, but bless her wherever she be.

I was never the Cory Hart sort, so the sunglasses can only indicate something bad afoot. Around this time I shattered my front teeth attempting to play the trombone out the window of Charlie's overloaded VW Bug. Brrrapp! CRACK! Sparks flew as the slide hit pavement at a stupidly high speed... and the brass mouthpiece smashed the ol' incisors like one of them medieval battering rams. 3,000 bucks later I could smile brightly again. No more mescaline, thanks.

Maybe I'll get around to telling you about a week spent in a woodland cabin with Charlie, Brian, and Steve from the previous snapshot. A "fishing trip." Oy fuckin Vey!! But one afternoon that sordid week - sprawled on the cabin's sofa, you betcha - Charlie somehow got the ancient tv to work, pulling in only one channel thru its rusty rabbit ears. We watched Frank Sinatra in "The Joker is Wild" and permanently adopted his toast "Post time!"

And here's a toast to all of them (water, alas), here and gone. With thanks for all the heapin' helpins of their hospitality.

Hillbilly, that is.

Set a spell.

Take your shoes off.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?

2008-09-10T23:56:00.018-04:00

Yeah, it's THAT date again. I wasn't thinking too much about it, but here it is, and so tonight's entry will feature a few pieces from the ongoing archaeology concerning Pete. Or "Petie" as we called him back in those days. These are really the first things I grabbed today; I could fill a million entries with pics and stories, but it wouldn't convey enough. So: glimpses of a shared childhood.

Below is part of a diary entry from when I was 13 or so. The point of interest is the tiny doodle in the upper left corner, depicting Pete, Frank Fulco and me unsuccessfully warding off sleep as we all bunked together in front of the tube. One of our rituals was a Saturday night pyjama hang, where we'd try to stay up all night in order to watch the first shows on Sunday Morning, when the tv stations signed back on the air. The shows we craved were both on channel 5, WNEW: "Reverend Cleophus Robinson" and "Wonder Window." "Rev. Cleo" - as we called him - was a classic southern preacher of enormous vocal power; we'd goof on the sermons and enjoy the singing. Wonder Window was a piss-poor religious kid's show... kind of a "Wonderama for Jesus" thing. Mind you, part of the idea with our stay-up was to achieve a giddiness that enhanced appreciation of these shows.

Soon we applied the same theory to the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, to which, as you know, I remain devoted. There is always a time during my Jerry-thon endurance ritual when I catch a sweet whiff of those ancient Saturday/Sunday no-sleep-overs. Any man who fell asleep was subject to vile torments and humiliations, as is only right, but evidently on this occasion we all dropped out as one... a blot on our collective escutcheon worthy of commemoration in this diary. The real danger zone for dozing was the brief period when there was NOTHING on the tv (not to be confused with today, when there is a very loud nothing on, every channel, all the time). CBS 2 Signed off around 4:30 or so, give or take, and WNEW came on maybe 5. So figure at least 30 minutes of very bleary attempts to remain up and stoked.

It's a goddamn shame that tv stations don't sign off anymore - don't even get me started on infomercials - and I collect old examples of sign-offs and sign-ons from equally rabid weirdos on YouTube. So far nobody's posted a WNEW 5 Sat-to-Sun sequence for my nostalgic wallowing, but fortunately I found a recording we'd made one of those halcyon overnights, which includes the sound of Rev Cleo preaching and the opening theme from Wonder Window, all with our giddy kiddy chatter in the background. Man, do I treasure those recordings.

Making tape recordings was our passion. We worked that Panasonic cassette machine to death in those years, doing the usual puerile parodys, silly tunes and audio-verite. I still have things ranging from entire pillow fights, vacation travel reports and tv-commentary shenanigans (the reason I never dug MST3K is that I always thought this was a fab party game and still can't understand why anyone would want someone else to supply the wiseassery for them) to audio experiments and original music. Below left is an illustration for a now-lost game show parody I did with Pete, "Manslaughter!" We filled notebooks with visual complements to our audio oeuvre. Who needed blogs and laptops? Pete's specialty was impersonating Nipsey Russell and Muhammed Ali, mainly because of their penchant for rhymes. As Frank did his Evel Kneivel or Bob Eubanks and I'd do my Joey Heatherton or Richard Nixon, Pete would intrude with an inane, improvised couplet that would stop the proceedings cold with a good few minutes of uncontrolled giggling. One of those very crack-ups concludes the "Uncle" album.

Regarding the "original music" - most of the tunes we did were credited to our "band," Hot Turd. Here are some bits of H.T. ephemera:

I assume the illo with the spear was a beginning attempt at an "album cover" The other one, with portraits of Me, Frank and Pete (with our nicknames Sport, Ace and Projie, respectively) includes an inset (see, I'm sparing you full-page scans, so think of how excruciating this entry could have been) of "us" "performing." Properly, Ace's guitar should be a neck-sprung acoustic or a toy banjo, Projie's drums should be a series of toy drums and pots and pans. Me, I'm at the OPTIGAN. Which is also still there, mouldering, at the old homestead. Our sound was sonically adventurous, like, say, chimpanzees covering the Shaggs.

Our work boldly dealt with issues like farts, the other retards at school, boogersnots, the assholes who taught us at school, and of course, turds.

Hot Turd began its fabled career as the "glee club" component of the Viking Club, formed by me and best chum Mike "Woody" Woodworth back in the single-digit days of kidhood. Woody. I smile at the thought of that guy. Not long before Pete's death, he told me he'd run into Woody on the street. Woody gave him his phone number and asked him if he could pass it on to me. I called once, got a machine and hung up. I keep meaning to call. Dunno if I should or not, but I love Woody like a brother, and that's exactly why I hesitate.

You know, I still periodically check to see if the number is active under "Woodworth."

That's the three of us there, in the hallway of my family's Brooklyn apartment on 55th street. Pete's mugging in the front, Woody's posing like a tart and I'm trying to be Marc Bolan.

This was about the time we were all glomming on rock music for the first time... buying albums and Circus and Creem mags, practicing how to be elitist tastemakers, arguing the relative merits of Slade, Bowie, and inherited favorites like the Beatles and Stones. Pete really liked "Starman" from Ziggy Stardust. Soon teenhood would arrive with its lusts, anxieties and divergent pursuits, and Toyland's doors would close.

But for now it was still childhood and how.

Here's one of the endless lists and charts that defined our boyhood alliances. This was a Viking club roster ...again with an inset obscuring other names, some of which had insulting comments appended to indicate that week's heirarchy of Klub Koolness (not that any of the others gave a shit, being occasional playmates who probably saw us as egocentric losers, a status I still proudly occupy in the view of many/most/all acquaintances and relatives).

I was surprised to discover this and learn that Pete was such a powerful member of the club; I'm certain that, earlier on, Woody and I would have granted him "junior"status, along with (latterday fellow fireman) Paul, who obviously decided he preferred "Stretch" to his previous nickname "EarthQuirke". By this point, Pete was my veep, so I guess I kind of loved the little fucker. Note the GI Joe "Action Team" Logo up top, a design adapted at the left margin for "Hot Turd." We loved them GI Joes, mon ami.

Our world was small, of course, and in the dubious work of cartography below, I attempted to lay it all out.

For anyone patient/bored enough to learn, I will list some of the significant points illustrated herein.

55th St House: was where the family moved after our landlord screwed us out of our home on 17th Street. The move there was the first catastrophic rupture. Pete and Maureen stayed in the old neighborhood, where "Dog Day Afternoon" was shot soon afterwards, with Pete, Paul Q and brother Bob as extras. Later, Paul Auster's "Smoke" and "Blue in the Face" were also shot right there on 9th. I spoke with Auster about all this just a few weeks ago... I'd rather reminisce about it with Pete, though.

St Michael's: was the catholic school I went to after they threw me out of Holy Name. Catastrophic rupture number two. But I met Frankie there, another cuss I love and miss.

Holy Name: Pete completed his primary education there, and right next to it you'll see...

Ray's and Otto's: a candystore down the block from school, where we'd buy essentials like Ugly Stickers, Mod Generation stickers, little rubber jiggler monsters and the great, great, fucking great Colorforms Aliens figures. Just "south" (by this map, anyhoo) of 17th Street you'll find...

Bohack, Vacant Lot, Bridge: a supermarket where Brian worked, a site for massive war games and mayhem, and a hideout/meeting place, respectively. The vacant lot eventually became a row of houses where Pete's pal Paul LaGrutta came to live. But once, during a terrible incident wherein a gang of older kids chased me, Pete, et al from the lot, we gathered under the bridge and decided to take refuge at Bohack, where Brian and his coworkers chased off our pursuers. Then Pete and I were treated to a ride down the Bohack conveyer belt to the Bohack basement, a stygian pit full of rotting Bohack produce.

Jesus, there's too much to tell: The Viginia cliff was where Pete nearly fell to his death during a holiday roadtrip with Mom and Dad. I HAVE IT ON FUCKING TAPE! We were wandering thru the woods, recording our progress, when WHOOPS! Down he went, clutching a root on the cliffside. I helped him up and immediately checked to make sure it was captured. "Cool... you almost died! Listen!"

Stony Brook: where Pete and Woody and me would sneak over the wall to slide down the grist mill's water chute into a creek right out of Tom Sawyer. This is the stuff of blissful memory.

Green-Wood Cemetery: where me and Pete would film 8mm vampire movies amid the Victorian crypts. Where Pete and Brian are now buried.

It all leads there nowadays, eh? Fuck. I'll maybe tell a few of these stories in detail another day. Not now.

So...

Petie playing on his little vehicle at the house on 17th street, with a Captain Action figure along for the ride. The encyclopedias on the rear shelf... I just packed them up last week. Look at the joy on that kid's face. Christ.

What can I add? It's getting very late. I miss him. I loved him more than I can ever convey. And I don't give a shit about the date, really, because every day's just another unless you share it with people you love, doing things that make you laugh. Looking forward as Pete did. And for all the laughing days we were cheated out of, we had so many like these. A considerable blessing.
So on to the future and the laughs that'll follow tonight's tears.

Thanks, Projie.

2008-09-10T00:34:00.012-04:00

O.K. Here I am again. I have spent a lot of time immersed in the grueling task of clearing out the old family home. It's tiring, depressing, sometimes sweet and mostly interminable. The images I've combined (and retexted) to the left are among the heaps of old artwork I unearthed during this effort.

What follows will be a series of entries involving various drawings, scrawls, photos, clippings etc. that I've come across. The art mostly spans my life from about 10 years old to 19, and I guess you can generally guess the vintage by the relative "quality" of my drawing - not that I think much of any of it, but the older shit, of course, holds more personal charm. I assume you know that clicking on any image will increase its size, as usual. Tonight I'm on a random sort of tangent, but I suppose some future entries will be more thematic.

Now let's see... howzabout some old girlfriends and such? Here's JODY. A wonderful gal,

a savior during my miserable teens. We met thru a mutual love of the Bonzo Dog Band and the good graces of WSHU (connecticut) DJ Marc Gunther. Haven't heard from Jody for a long time, maybe 15 years now.

Thanks to her, I will always feel a Pavlovian erotic shiver any time I listen to Brian Eno's Another Green World.

Last time we spoke, she had kids and was obsessed with pro wrestling, which I do not mention with any sense of disdain, as future entries will indicate.

Never could or will have anything but fond thoughts for Jody, and I hope we meet again someday.

And the same goes for LUCY.My mad romantic obsession right at the end of high school and for a ridiculously long time thereafter. Though I was generally the smitten jerk in this relationship, the roles occasionally shifted. There was a time, however, when it was good for both of us, but finally we just decided that we really liked each other as friends. From which point we never saw each other again. Not for any dark reasons; she moved to Florida, where friendships go to die. Wrote some songs for her. Note to other exes: if I ever told you I wrote such-and-such for you, I was lying; it was probably for Lucy. Far as I know, she's happily married. Hope so, anyway.

I don't think I'll get all detailed about any other old flames, though. But you'll meet a few more, I reckon. Here's some school notebook shit...

Death Cheez Snax / Portly Grad Girl

Yeah, nothing grand, I admit. But that's just it. This is not an art exhibit, it's a biography. Just ad hoc exhumations, and if there are any interesting stories, I'll include them. Skoal, friends.

2008-08-05T02:07:00.002-04:00

OK - this is compelling, kinda. Last week a piece of video from my famed archive aired as the cold opening to the Letterman show on CBS. Here's the exciting tale.

My chum, Steve -writer for the show and foremost authority on the Industrial Musical genre- stopped by the house a few months ago for a spot of coffee and chat. It's no secret that the eccentric aura of our home is a rich source of inspiration and renewal to all manner of non-LI-phobic creative types, and Steve is no exception.

Once a particularly dry and acrid intro from some ancient p.d. sales film worked its magic on jokester Steve, it was a short step to the discerning eye of veteran tv funnyguy Letterman himself (in Steve's words, "Dave seemed sort of amused") and then to the vasty reaches of the public airwaves and a nation hungry for nocturnal camp.

You bet I used the "DVR for IO" function of my dauntingly complex cable box to save this moment for the sub-category of my archive concerning those fragments of my collection that have been re-re-used for media meta-schtick applications at sundry levels of public accessibility. It's a small but worthy array, and I'd delve further into it here except that it's very fucking "de trop" to brag about one's cool connections in "the industry."

Point is, now I can save that recording to vhs, rip it to the computer, burn a dvd, and then - at any time I wish - watch the same exact footage - mere seconds of entertainment dynamite - in either its "original" post-context context or in its new, retooled (but exactly the same) mass-media, neo-coffee-n-chat, "sure-you-can-borrow-it" infra-context. Will I? Dunno. Depends on whether I can find a minute amidst the countless amusements afforded by living on Long motherfucking Island: the very crucible of big ideas.

As Sinatra sang: "The Looong... it's so loooong... very looong...."

2008-07-22T23:46:00.002-04:00

Sorry there are no new posts... dunno when. Songs? Unlikely. If there's ever a compelling reason to re-engage with either, I'll meet you back here to discuss it. Meantime, I wish you good fortune. See ya.

2008-06-24T01:29:00.001-04:00

The Five Stages of Death You Can't Say On Television:

DENIAL:
"No motherfucking way I'm dying."

ANGER:
"God, you miserable cunt... NOW I'm pissed!"

BARGAINING:
"Whose cock do I have to suck to get out of this predicament?"

DEPRESSION:
"I'm crying my tits off over here."

ACCEPTANCE:
"Oh well... shit happens."

2008-06-22T02:56:00.003-04:00

A familiar chunk of the Pisan Cantos by Ezra Pound
(I know, I know...)

What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
Paquin pull down!
The green casque has outdone your elegance.

"Master thyself, then others shall thee beare"
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowst'ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity
How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity,
I say pull down.

But to have done instead of not doing
This is not vanity
To have, with decency, knocked
That a Blunt should open
To have gathered from the air a live tradition
or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame
this is not vanity.
Here error is all in the not done,
all in the diffidence that faltered . . .

("Paquin" was, evidently, some kind of fancy dress designer.
"Blunt" was an old fashioned poet. Poetry is a pain in the ass and I don't really get it, but this piece from the old psycho/fascist always got me.)

2008-06-03T02:30:00.005-04:00

One great fucking record... "Sugar Man" by Sixto Rodriguez

The lure of oblivion.

Sugar man
Won't ya hurry
Coz I'm tired of these scenes
For the blue coin
Won't ya bring back
All those colors to my dreams
Silver magic ships, you carry
Jumpers, coke, sweet Maryjane
Sugar man
Met a false friend
On a lonely, dusty road
Lost my heart
When I found it
It had turned to dead, black coal
Silver magic ships, you carry
Jumpers, coke, sweet Maryjane
Sugar man
You're the answer
That makes my questions disappear
Sugar man
Coz I'm weary
Of those double games I hear...

2008-05-12T00:52:00.003-04:00

Banzai. Seems right that I return to this bullshit after Mother's Day. It's been a month or so of post-death adjustment, and life is life, as it usually is. The above pic was taken on one of the Unassailable Days, part of a weekend in NY's Greenwood Lake many ages ago. Me and Mom and Dad. Happiness and freedom, safety and possibility with the two people I always trusted and enjoyed. Dad let me taste some Lowenbrau beer and I pompously asserted thereafter (to all my school chums) "of course, Lowenbrau is the best beer." As if I had a clue, but yeah, why not? It was, given the particulars.

Recent weeks have been OK thanks to an assortment of factors. Alex's pals Rob, Greg and Dan have hung with the old bastard here at the redoubt; merry times with people young enough to still have some. I now claim Alex's pals as my own. "My own" chums Brian and Sharon have also braved that 1-hour LIRR trek so many of my NYC mates fear and loathe, to join us at the redoubt for a long night's gambol. This is the best therapy, although my shrink is a wonder and keeps me breathing.

The redoubt itself is subject to a number of significant renovations and improvements thanks to the superb wife, and that process speaks of life ongoing and unfolding as well. Enjoying a really fucking good Absinthe named "St. George" made right here in the USA by a small California concern. Sammy Davis Junior has kept us all inspired and entertained, becoming a special favorite of young Miles.

I long for Paris daily. Even go to Google maps to gaze bird's-eye on dear Rue de Martinique, retracing the steps I took daily with Eloise and Sing Sing to the local shops and such on that blessed interruption of brutal time back in March. Lordy I miss my friends in France.

I am even maybe writing some songs. Dunno if I really am or not. I kinda don't give a fuck, except that it's what I figured I "did" for so long that not doing it breeds anxieties worse even than the songs themselves. Who cares.

Here's something I meant to post a long, long time ago and probably didn't. It's a fine, perceptive review of a song of mine, and I even agree with the complaints.

by Will Robinson Sheff

T.S. Eliot once famously wrote, "this is the way the world ends...not with a bang, but a whimper." The work of Mike "Sport" Murphy would deny Elliot even that whimper; Murphy’s "The Night Surrounds" is a narrative of a boring and ridiculous world idiotically refusing to end. Clearly weaned on icons of folk-pop bitterness like Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel, Murphy’s worldview would be almost wrist-slittingly dark were it not simultaneously so cheekily funny.

"Kettles will be whistling to proclaim with shrill insistence an impending cup of Sanka / and someone will be hearing, and presumably enjoying, something written by Paul Anka" is how Murphy sets the scene at the beginning of the song, immediately creating for the listener a place of such horrific and hilarious blandness it recalls the world of Todd Solondz’s pitch-black comedy "Happiness."

Meanwhile, the band plays soft folk-rock with a polite prettiness that belies Murphy’s almost savagely mean description of the pathetic events unfolding: teenagers around the country all furiously masturbate behind closed bedroom doors while a desperate rock band dreams of whoring themselves out to the first available A&R guy and hypocritical pseudo-intellectuals try to impress each other in boring and long-winded conversations.

Murphy kind of overdoes it a couple of times, when his contemptuous reading of his already-unambiguous lyrics (listen to his phrasing of "true genius" and "substantial issues") borders on dead-horse-beating, but just when the misanthropy is nearing toxic levels, Murphy sweeps all of his pathetic scenarios off of the table like so many chess pieces and, with the chorus, switches to the first person voice, as he himself implores a second person, who may be a character in the song and may actually be the listener, to just sing into the night sky a song that will only be there for the singing and then will fade away forever.

There are still moments of beauty, he tells us, rare and hard to keep and unimportant to the rest of the world though they may be, and these are really the only things that matter.

Quite so, Mr. Sheff, and thanks.
Come, pilgrims... come to the redoubt for some St George and Sammy. I aim to avoid NYC for a while, so come, come to the redoubt. For Calvados and clam pizza. Come! Come! Or don't, prick.

And, for you French people: if ten of you raise a hundred bucks each, I can return. If a hundred of you pitch in 10 bucks each, I'm there. My humble suggestion: a series of small benefit gigs. Earmark some of the take for the "Bring Back Sport" fund. I will play a free show, dedicating an original song for each contributor (sure, the songs may be 10 seconds each, but, merde, still... ) as recompense. Imagine the fun. Discuss it with one another.

I will wait patiently for your response, here at the redoubt, digging Sammy fuckin' Davis fuckin' Junior.

2008-04-17T23:41:00.002-04:00

Thanks for the various gestures of kindness, everyone. I will probably not be doing very much of this blogging for a while. Love to all of you and all of yours.

2008-04-13T23:56:00.001-04:00

The wake will take place Tuesday.
I think it's 2 to 4 in the afternoon and then again from 7-9, but you can call them and check.
Moloney's Lake Funeral Home
132 Ronkonkoma Ave
Lake Ronkonkoma NY 11779
(631) 588 1515

Burial is Wednesday morning at Calverton, after mass at St Joseph's church, Ronkonkoma I think. I'll post more info if I can.
Thank you for the messages of support and sympathy.

2008-04-12T21:53:00.001-04:00

Mom is gone.

2008-04-10T23:21:00.009-04:00

Say, Brian, here we are at Keene Lake, having a fishing trip. What do you think the future holds?

well,

Snapshots.

A few images, for remembrance.

Standing: Brian, Peter, Brian's superb g/f Janice, Me, Dad.
Sitting: Mom, Maureen, Ira.

Mom and Brian with one of 'em... I think it's Miles.

Brian and Pete and Mom.

2008-04-09T23:35:00.000-04:00

I see her sweet, sky-blue eyes every time I see Miles, and yesterday I saw hers again, now sightless and distant. She still hears, so I told her all I could think to say, kissed her as much as I could, held her close and sang some songs. Stardust (which we danced to when I married Shelley), Night and Day, Skylark, Small Fry, La Mer, I've Got You Under My Skin, I'll Be Seeing You, Paper Doll and others. She managed a few returned kisses and a number of smiles. Even now, frail and mysterious as it is, that smile is the sun, moon and stars. She is supposedly in no pain now, and that's a comfort. It's hard to predict how this is going to go with regard to my sister and me. I worry that she's gonna fall apart, since she's been the one taking care of Mom every day and night for months now. Her agony, weariness and worry is clear to see, and when the moment arrives I fear what all that bottled-up pain will become. Her caring and that of her husband Ira has been incredible... Mom could not have had finer and more tender treatment, and it's a debt I owe them. As for me, I have to assume I'll manage; I have no choice. But this is the fucking worst... the thing I've dreaded most in life.

I write this now as a means of putting it somewhere outside my head. Others reading this have gone through the same, and with enough grace and forbearance not to publicly wail. So I'm sorry for that... just trying to use what I can to cope. That's what a lot of this blogging has been, of course. Thanks to those of you who have responded in ways huge and small through all these avalanches; I know you will be there in coming weeks and months as well, and I thank you in advance because I truly don't know how well I'll be able to do so. One becomes numb, in part, after such relentless loss. Not numb to the love or the sorrow, but to other things... parts of me are dead, and that's just part of growing up, maybe. This is true, though: I am acutely aware of how lucky I've been to have this wonderful family, and I take all the tears as part of the bundle. I'm lucky to have my own wife and kids, 4 lifelines to the reason it all happens and all matters. I'm lucky to know such friends who've always reminded me what music and laughter can do even when I didn't feel that another song or smile was possible. I'll need it a lot now. And, best luck of all, I had Helen Rose. Christ, I am going to miss her.

2008-04-07T22:23:00.002-04:00

Miles and Lily were about one and a half when this picture was taken. On recent visits to see their Nana, they insisted we stop for flowers. They are crazy about her, and Lily has a special bond with her, climbing up onto her bed and throwing her arms around her neck, kissing and nuzzling her. It's going to be very hard for both of them, especially Lily. We're told that Mom's got hours to go, maybe a few days. My sister faithfully attends her. We are both overwhelmed with dread and sorrow. I don't know what we're gonna do. My saint, my soul, my Mother.

2008-04-05T15:56:00.003-04:00

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not. ~James Joyce

True in my case, and right now sorrow gathers because Mom is dying. It will be soon. Not soon enough, considering the pain she's endured, and too soon, considering what a horrible tragedy this is going to be. She was thrilled about Paris and beamed over the pictures I showed her. Now, Paris - my little dream that in its planning, experience and immediate aftermath occupied my mind and lifted my spirit in the grim sorrow of finding my brother dead and watching Mom fade away - is a memory. There's only this now. I prayed for her in Notre Dame cathedral, a proxy for her faith. Bought her a little rosary. Her God, not mine. Her Love is mine. She is and has always been a woman of faith, and I hope that sustains her in these last days. But she always had faith in me, too, and now I can only live up to it by giving that to my loved ones, especially Shelley, Alex, Miles and Lily. It's easy to do that, but the rest seems impossible.

Fuck, it's been brutal since 2001. Pete, Dad, Brian, and the million defeats and sorrows surrounding all that loss and all those tears. Friends gone - Hilly, Donna - friendships gone. Dreams evaporated, efforts wasted. It continues. I visited Mom on Wednesday and first took a walk through the old neighborhood. It's not mine anymore... summoning the ghosts was hard. I feel that way about music, too. And a lot of other things. But I got a hell of a welcome from my friends in Paris, and that gave me a lot of smiles to give Mom. I told her of all the exciting plans the trip inspired, and that made her glad. Fact is, those things are very unlikely; those plans were pipe dreams. But I dunno, I guess one thing I can do now is thank all those responsible for those sweet days and nights and the evanescent dreams they granted me and Mom for a little while. I'll thank Mom, too, but not now. She still breathes right now; maybe there's time for another kiss, another embrace. Maybe not.

2008-03-23T01:44:00.003-04:00

For the curious, my pals from Norway, Thinguma*jigSaw have posted some more wonderful images of our Paris adventures on their My Space blog. Thanks, my dear Vikings.

2008-03-18T12:06:00.002-04:00

The entire cast: Martha, Seth, Sidi, Me, Vincent, Alban and Silvain.
Photo courtesy Sophie. Thanks!

2008-03-15T03:23:00.003-04:00

Hip Hooray for gaiety, but a moment for the guy our Paris set was sung to. I love you, Brian.

2008-03-11T02:57:00.001-04:00

Here's something of possible interest... a pre-gig promo bit from a French website. No, don't mention it.

2008-03-10T23:34:00.002-04:00

"Don't call it a comb-over!" - LL Cool J.
Martha sent a bunch of wonderful pictures, and one in particular got me wondering. So it took no time to find the complement... I'm a lost cause.

2008-03-08T23:12:00.005-05:00

Sick of my Paris trip yet? Tough shit. Here are a few more, courtesy my new mate Colin Gibbons, who came from London with his wife to see the show. I've got friends who don't come to the Lower East Side from fuckin' BROOKLYN to shows. So , reap what you sow.

Lovely Martha, less lovely Sport and Colin at Le Maroquinerie.

Singing "The Dead Friend" with Vincent and Alban, Martha and Sidi doing the heavy lifting.

Sidi and Sport transfixed by a spider crawling across the chord sheet. Or something.

Thanks, Colin!

2008-03-07T23:05:00.009-05:00

Some more shots: my beloved hosts, some of my bandmates, some fans from England and USA, into the shop to grab three bottles of the green fairy( consume delicately and never EVER mix with the evil mandragora), and hanging with the disgustingly handsome and talented Luke Temple.

There's no question that this trip has changed my life just as Gavin MacLeod promised it would.

What this means, I dunno exactly but I have some idea. I guess that's a topic for another written entry.

For now, we move ahead and finish the album. The rest is rather unimportant now. For the first time in my life in music, I feel vindicated.

And I don't care if I ever play or release another album in the US.

2008-03-06T21:49:00.013-05:00

PARIS.

Here's me with the enchanting and mysterious Eloïse Decazes, indispensable guide and beloved hostess... we are standing behind Notre Dame cathedral, on our way to the absinthe shop.

The steps of infinite torture, up which I dragged my gasping old self countless times, leading to the home flat of Eloïse and Sing Sing (otherwise known as the musical duo Arlt), where days began at 9 am and seldom ended before 5 am.

Now, a few views of a few heavenly nights with a few of my bosom chums.

Wonderful Mariette, Sing Sing, Eloïse, and Wladimir.

Have you met Miss Jones? Oui!

Greg Gilg, Ann Guillaume, mon frere Sing Sing, Alban Dereyer
et
Francisco "Flop" Lopez, Mike "Sport" Murphy, and Vincent (who sang and played melodica with us and I never got his last name, so I'm sorry... write me, mon ami, so I can fix this entry) .

My superb bandmates Sidi Ali (Guillaume Villadier) and Silvain Vanot, with the man who started it all for me in France, writer Richard Robert.

Backstage: guest performer, Martha Redivivus of Norway's Thinguma*jigsaw, who played magical Saw, and the inspired Alban Dereyer, who leaped onstage with Vincent to sing with us.

A lovely bunch of mugs: Thinguma*jigsaw's other half, banjoist Seth Horatio Buncombe, Luke Temple's partner, multi instrumentalist Tyler Wood, moi, et the annoying and impossibly French Sing Sing, whom I could not get rid of for the entire fucking trip.

These pics indicate an enormous amount of drinking and smoking, which I only agreed to tolerate in the spirit of international brotherhood.

And another at Notre Dame, with me as Quasimodo. "I used to be on Kill Rock Stars, and all I got was this lousy hoodie" ...nah.

More of these to come, especially once all the others send me the pics they took.

Missing in all these is my beloved pal Baptiste, who decided to play some football the day of the show and broke his leg!

However, we did visit Gainsbourg's house together and share a great after-hours night of cognac, indoor smokes (ssh!) and singalong.

I miss Paris, and all these friends, but it's great to be home. And we all recover now... slowly.

2008-03-04T07:00:00.002-05:00

i keep trying to type the letter A and hitting Q, so you know, this is difficult.

these days in Paris hqve been long and full - full of pastis and coffee and smoke and laughter, and i will miss the city and qll these incredible people even though i cant wait to get home to my family...

today its notre dame, art opening, absinthe shop, some goodbyes.

i`ll write more once i am home and there will be more time for this, but i wanted you to know i am thinking of you.

tonight as usual we will continue until 5 AM and we will lift one of a thousqnd toasts to you, reet?

reet.

2008-03-03T08:33:00.002-05:00

Facts about Paris

Everyone lives on the 4th floor

Everything is uphill

Sport Murphy loves it anyway

French keyboards are confusing

For this reason I will only add...

It was a great success last night

More to come

2008-02-24T22:06:00.002-05:00

Off I go, TTBs, to Paris. I have high hopes for this trip as a communion with friends, all of whom came into my life through the songs. You know how important that is. I will sorely miss my family, but I will travel with the ghosts: Dad, whose pride at reading my French reviews filled me with happiness... Brian, who was thrilled at the early plans for this trip, which gave us some of our final bonding smiles... Bobby, who forced Gainsbourg, Piaf, and Trenet on my teenage ears, to my eternal gratitude... Pete, who loved the city of Paris and always hoped to return.

I hope to post some entries here as opportunity permits, especially if the show is webcast, which I think is gonna be the case, and if so I'll post the URL. Take care of America while I'm away, enjoy the freedom fries, and check the NY Post next Sunday to see if my Love Boat piece runs. Gavin MacLeod himself told me that this trip was going to be an enormous success and would change my life in wondrous ways, but I'll settle for his kind imprimatur, some good cheese and - yes - a wee dram of absinthe or two... à bientôt, motherfuckers.

2008-02-13T00:15:00.004-05:00

The prog-rock ballad. A particularly unsung micro-genre full of lovely little gems. After punk came along, the foolish idea of "guilty pleasures" took hold, as the catechism forbade any response to the likes of ELP or Yes other than mockery and revulsion. As with any such ideological musical taboo, the rejection of prog was just fucking stupid, as if somehow four crusty little morons with one good three chord a-side were nobler than three pompous keyboard klowns with one good 3 minute section on one of their side-long cantatas. The finest parody of prog was on a National Lampoon album entitled "Good Bye Pop" - a true laff riot called the "Art-Rock Suite" (the album also contained a superb Neil Young spoof called "Southern California Brings Me Down"). But easy as it is to mock prog-rock, go look at some of Gentle Giant's live work on YouTube; some of those things are mind-blowing.

I attended a wedding many years ago; the couple were amiable stoners who selected ELP's "Still You Turn Me On" as their first-dance-as-man-and-wife number (for the record, ours was "Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus"). All was fine - the couple swaying happily 'cross the floor to Greg Lake's romantic bellowing - until this forgotten, manic "swing your partners" hoe down section (with muy goofball fiddly synth farts) suddenly intruded, leaving Mr and Mrs baffled and frozen still until the mellow part resumed. Obviously they hadn't considered that bit, recalling only the main ballad part. And that's one problem with prog balladry... these guys wanted every track to be a cornucopia of textures and tempos so that some guy in a suburban bedroom could sagely note: "Didja hear that, Ant'ny? That was fuckin' 5/4 time right there."

With the advent of e-z editing on the computer, I was suddenly able to - ferinstance - excise all that claptrap about "the show that never ends" and 7 minute rototom workouts on "Karn Evil Nine" , leaving only the cool fake-Irish jig bit in the middle. Swell stuff. Another great joy was finally wedding the first and second stanza of Pearls Before Swine's "I Shall Not Care" so that Sara Teasdale's poem plays intact without the interminable freakout section that separates them on the album like an ornery bridge troll.

But I gotta say, there are a host of truly lovely ballads stuck throughout these prog albums, and here are some faves. You might find them indistinguishable from their chart-topper cousins like ELP's "Lucky Man" or "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas; to that I can only say : "ah, get fucked." Generally speaking, they avoid the power-ballad formulas of most classic rock horseshit, but they aim for something more rarefied than straight singer-songwriter or pop ballads... when it works, they get to the place a lot of today's chamber-pop artists aim for. Nothing too obscure on this list, I think. Make up a list of your own! Show it to somebody other than me and compare notes!

In no special order:

GENTLE GIANT - "THINK OF ME WITH KINDNESS" - This is from their "Octopus" album, the one with the very rad Charles E. White lll die-cut cover. GG were an eccentric act, but pretty popular for a while. They had this fixation with Rabelais, and wrought a weird Renaissance/Zappa music that they acknowledged was an acquired taste. This song is just gorgeous, even with a sort of "inhibited organum" middle section that I imagine might throw some finicky listeners. The rest is a lovely balance of gentle melodicism, soft jazzy riffing and a nearly Broadway climax. Musically, they were impeccable, and this is one of the few things of theirs that impresses directly and sweetly without all their usual ants-in-the-pants hi-jinks.

MOODY BLUES - "FOR MY LADY" - The word "lady" is a dangerous word for a song title. I once determined, in one of my "bad song" moments (I have a hobby of writing deliberately "bad songs" as opposed to the really bad ones I write in earnest), that "Rock and Roll Lady" would have to be the title of the rankest rock song ever. Dunno if anyone ever wrote one with that title, and I'd be shocked if there weren't dozens of them, but I couldn't craft a turd of sufficient majesty to deserve that title, so it remains theoretical. Anyway, Ray Thomas, the big ol' mustachioed galoot who usually just stands there hitting a tambourine while Justin Hayward sings, wrote this song. It's sort of a sea chantey -cum- light country tune with only slightly pretentious lyrics (and I LIKE pretentious: Scott Walker's very medium was pretense, and he's the motherfucker) far removed from all the "cold hearted orb that rules the night" sassafras that fills their albums in between the swell pop songs. It's a wonderful, largely ignored track.

GENESIS - "DANCING WITH THE MOONLIT KNIGHT" / "AISLE OF PLENTY" - This is one of those edit jobs I did on the pc, essentially taking the very first part of the "Selling England By The Pound" album and chopping out the rest of the album, laying in the very last part of the last song, which reprises the melody. (Just cut after the line "digesting England by the pound" and crossfade into the part beginning "I don't belong here, cried old Tessa out loud..." if you're trying this at home) The result is a striking, brit-folky melody that starts plaintive and builds very effectively, with mysterious consumer-culture-what-the-fuck lyrics that give the effect of meaning something real, and maybe they do. Peter Gabriel sings it to a fine turn.

VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR - "HOUSE WITH NO DOOR" - OK, sorta obscure, maybe, but John Lydon's beloved Peter Hammill led this band, and they - and he - maintain a substantial cult. The rest of the album is pretty great King Crimson-ish stuff with saxes and Hammill's anguished existential wailing, but this is a special gem. Long and slow piano-based depression deluxe. It's a bit like what post-Syd Pink Floyd might've done if they could harness Syd's own mortal terror, as on "Dark Globe." Despite the harrowing self-pity of the piece, it remains lyrical and beautiful, and never feels too long.

KING CRIMSON - "LADY OF THE DANCING WATER" - Here we go again with the "lady" business. Evidently, a lot of Crimson fans loathe this song and its singer, Gordon Haskell. Proves what a load of twats they are. Gordon's voice is a little "rough" compared with Greg Lake's Nelson Eddy bit, which makes it better by me (check his album "It Is And It Isn't" - a terrific set including "No-one's More Important Than The Earthworm" - a great song later covered by Stackridge). Here he sings at a whisper, over gentle guitar and flute. I could've chosen another nice Crimson ballad, like "I Talk To The Wind", but this is more unusual and delicate, almost like some of Donovan's very fine work on "Gift From A Flower To A Garden."

Well, I'm sick of typing.

2008-02-06T11:02:00.000-05:00

BERRIE JIGGLER NEWS ROUND-UP

Ah. A different post. Let's leave behind the agony of life for a moment and look at something ridiculous. As you know, I have this thing for BERRIE JIGGLERS. Been collecting them for years. Now you see that guy up there? Some guy just bought him on eBay for $2,225.00. Yes; you read that correctly.

< Right there's an old trade ad from the '60s. This was when my fetish started, and this was when these things sold for a buck or two. Who could have dreamed? Now, in my latter-day jiggler collecting phase, I was considered crazy (by myself as well) for spending, say 50 bucks for a jiggler.

Crazy like a slimy, rubbery fox!

I have some jigglers that these obviously wealthy jiggler collectors don't even know about! Not that I care about all this; I ain't aiming to sell or show off. I'm just damn lucky I got onto this thing when I did, or I'd be watching all these rich weirdos win every auction, longing for the simple, wiggly, oily bliss of it all.

The other thing it proves is my unerringly great taste for the finer things in life.

And just to demonstrate that jigglerphilia has long been a signal trait of hepness and right-on-ity, I note another original-era jiggler sighting.

The Sterile Cuckoo was Liza Minnelli's first big movie role, back in '69. In it, she and costar Wendell Burton meander through First Love's labyrinth of oofty urghthickets. Some of this meandering is done in one of those funky little cars young people drove back then, and clearly visible, hanging from the rear-view, is FRUGGY the frog. I cannot find an image to share, other than this very frustrating back cover collage from the paperback tie-in. The shot of the couple in this car has been bisected by the art dept, removing Fruggy and replacing him with a field of grass. Nevertheless, he was there. I've done my own highly artistic overlay right here, to suggest the relative position of Fruggy re: Minnelli and whats'isname. Look for him when you see the film, which you should, if only to hear the sublime "Come Saturday Morning" sung incessantly.

For those keeping track of other "period" Jiggler appearances, look on YouTube for a b/w TV clip of the band Cream doing their hit "Strange Brew" ...Jack Bruce has KWAZY BOID the buzzard a-jiggling from the neck of his bass. In my personal collection of Serge Gainsbourg clips, there's a scene from some documentary showing the great man laughing and poking at WUVVER the wolf, also dangling from the rear-view. Gainsbourg. Bruce. Minnelli. 'Nuff said!!!!

But Jay-zuss!? Two thousand, two-hundred motherfuckin' simoleons??

2008-01-15T00:25:00.000-05:00

I reckon the entry for December 17 indicated what was to come; I had a whole mess of holiday blog content prepared but couldn't keep at the task as the year wound down. Finding my brother's body has had a deep effect on me, and now that the immediate post-mortem responsibilities and subsequent holiday activities have passed, I am left with the reality of it. Part of that reality is a rock-bottom sense of absolute futility. In recent times I've gained a great deal of perspective from a very good therapist, who has helped me steer clear of the kind of pervasive depression through which I slogged for many many years. It helped enormously; I'm a better husband and father for it. Still, this is worrisome. So why blog about it, especially in the throes of this bigger "why bother"? Probably, like most things in life, for my own sake. To force myself back on my feet and proceed. There is a reason for that, and maybe I'll get into it here eventually.

My brother led a tormented life, mainly due to a complex of insecurities that drove him endlessly inward, toward ever deeper degrees of helplessness and loneliness. He truly bought the idea that he was worthless, which is constantly shoved in the face of almost everyone except the truly worthless, who never suspect it for a moment. I'm not going to detail the sorrows and horrors of his life, but I will say that any grieving I do has less to do with the loss of his life - which happened gradually and completely long before he died - than with the memory of his agonies. The things I wish we could share now... laughter and mutual memories and mutual comfort and easy, everyday pleasures... are the same things I long wished I could have shared with him. His condition prevented it, usually. The last night we spent alone together, I came over on the pretext of fixing a basement window that had cracked. The real reason was simply to spend the night with him and watch shitty tv together, but I figured it'd seem like a "kindness" without the excuse. The dignity of others is delicate stuff. We did hang out some, but he fell asleep very early and was oddly removed... not so much distracted as absent... for most of the time we did spend. Not much to hang memories on there.

So instead there are memories of the awful day and the awful days after. Seeing him there, sprawled on the floor. The coldness of his skin and the rigor mortis. The cops and the coroner. The ghastly version of him in the coffin, done up by the undertakers until he looked like fucking Burt Reynolds after even more facelifts and cosmetics. These things haunt me daily. And it is only for my wife and kids I fight the feeling that all of this... this whole life... is as meaningless as the lottery tickets he bought so religiously, as the banal words of the windbag priest who came to the wake to utter his bullshit about Jesus without a sincere word about the dead man himself, as the rote gibberish of all those clowns at AA who prattled on meeting after meeting about the true concern they all had for one another (neither of us ever heard from one of them after we stopped showing up; I still hear regularly from drinking buddies from long ago). It all means exactly dick.

And yet, it can't mean nothing, even if it does. As I went through his wallet and discovered a little sheaf of photos of Miles and Lily, I felt how much they meant to him. The other pic was Pete, for whom he wept every day. This love cannot be meaningless, even if it is. Of course there is no god, there is no hope and there is no meaning to a fucking thing we dream or do, never was nor will be. But as true as that is, it can't be so. And that makes sense to me when I am with my family goofing around, or with friends carousing or making music. In fact, this whole dilemma/paradox/jerkoff is probably the subject of all my music. This explains, if anything can, why it's worth making. If it is. But it gets harder and harder to make it at all, or to communicate even in the random, trivial manner I do here in the blog. Too little comes back. Still, I'm here typing and why not.

None of it will mean as much as one crazed candy-throwing battle me and Brian and Bobby had, one afternoon many many years ago.

2008-01-01T01:19:00.000-05:00

A toast to the dead and living. I hope to complete '08 in the company of the latter. It has been a fucking rotten year, but not without its pleasures. There isn't a great deal I can say other than this. Hope you all find many reasons to smile in the coming 12.

2007-12-21T23:38:00.000-05:00

Yeah, yeah, I missed last night. I was up until almost 5 am making a dvd compilation of unusual - you guessed it - CHRISTMAS clips. Tonignt? House cleaning. All shagged. Anyway, the real 12 days of Christmas are supposed to start on Dec 25.

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Dad. I'll lift my Xmas Eve whiskey to the memory of lifting 'em with you.

2007-12-19T22:17:00.000-05:00

Actually had to spend time in a mall today... always odious. Kid's toys. Ate this Arthur Treacher fish that was both artless and treacherous; it turned immediately into bowel-churning greased feces and if that description sounds disgusting, try visiting a Long Island mall on Xmas week.

Years ago I worked in a mall. There's a view of its interior way back in those days:

The large pop-art cock was one of numerous artworks lending rare grace to the concern. Now the place is bereft of these li'l islands of greenery and sculpture; the promenades are instead dotted with krap kiosks and snack counters. Soft pretzels covered with brown sugar and toffee goop to eat while purchasing battery-operated trick dog toys that disintegrate on the way home.

When I worked in Sam Goody records, the disco era was in full flower. I was forever trying to play Tom Waits in-store before the boss took it off and put something awful on the stereo. During the holiday shopping season, one of the albums in heavy rotation was the unimaginably rotten, utterly unendurable Salsoul Orchestra "Christmas Jollies." The cover is shown below, along with the original, peek-a-boo ass pic of the Salsoul girl, which the crack design team at Salsoul records bowdlerized for the Christmas album. That same craft and taste informs the music as well, an incessant boomboom disco beat throbbing without variation under the comfort-and-joyless mynah bird chorus disemboweling seasonal favorites sacred and secular.

"Fuck me Elvis" (as we said in those days), it sucked. And it made those already wretched hours eeeeendless.

At every available opportunity I'd slip away to Beefsteak Charlie's to drink away the agony. As did most of the store's management on Christmas Eve itself, which presented a grand opportunity to purloin stacks of records, tapes, styluses, cartridges, microphones, tape decks, headphones, cables, instruments, songbooks, office supplies, et al, right under their inebriated noses. I wonder if the great R. Stevie Moore, then working at one of Sam Goody's New Jersey stores, did the same. I got fired three times from that place. Sometimes I still dream that I'm showing up for work there, looking for my time card. Then I wake up, drunk.
Ah, holiday memories!

2007-12-18T23:02:00.000-05:00

Here's my first extant Santa picture. Mom has dressed me in festive raiment, with suspenders (or "braces" to those of you in the UK, or "galluses" to those of you in the early 19th century) and a seasonal red-n-gold shirt. This picture differs from the subsequent ones in a few details: the throne of Ol' Saint Nick is here a white, betasseled number with stripes and spires. The background wall is neutral. The giveaway booklet - these usually featured coloring pages and cartoon tales of happy children in Santaland - clearly identifies the site as Abraham and Straus department store. Downtown Brooklyn. How dearly I recall the splendor of these stores in Christmastime... huge trees gleaming with lights, glass ornaments and tinsel. The banks of elevators manned by old men who always made gentle remarks to a young boy overwhelmed by the spectacle about and the prospect of meeting HIM.

You'd walk though the herding corridors, deftly done up in paint and glitter to illustrate that year's theme (reflected, of course, in the booklet)... Children of many lands celebrate the holidays... Jimmy and Sally visit the North Pole... Rudolph and friends welcome you... eventually arriving at the "big chair" ...not the one Tears For Fears later referred to. Now, this time I seem a bit tentative. Who could blame me, sitting on the lap of this bug-eyed menace? I dig the beard; it's a quality item with a golden tinge to provide veritas and contrast with the white trim on his outfit. Wonder what I asked him for? More to come on this absorbing topic.

2007-12-17T22:21:00.000-05:00

Well, I decided to do this every-night blog thing, for Christmas. The attempt to keep up with this and the attempt to make Christmas festive here are both acts of will; I'm not especially inspired to do this, and Christmas nowadays is heavily laden with sorrows, obviously. Still: I am alive and I have a family to nurture and be nurtured by, so acts of will... acts of defiance toward the grim realities of living... are important.

I just got a little ways into a screed and deleted it all.

Right now my Mom is in very bad health... dying, to be blunt. I'm really weary. REALLY weary and sad. So fuck screeds and onward with the little acts of defiant will. For '08 I have a trip to France to look forward to. I hope my little circle of French compatriots... friends, fans and fellow artists... help me enjoy a little vindication for all this futile work I've done with music. Between that and this snail's-pace album we've been making, maybe it'll get a shot in the arm and feel like it means something again. Or maybe these'll be sweet notes on which to conclude the whole tortuous venture. Either one's cool with me.

And I have this little gig at the NY Post, thanks be to Guzman. You know, telling people I write articles about musicians is infinitely preferable to telling them I'm a musician. The latter means "published" which means "money"which means respect. The former means "loser" and people love reminding you of that. So yeah, bring on a year of Sunday articles. And if a few folks in Paris applaud a set of my greatest misses, that will sustain me.

And of course, there's my wife and kids. I hope for a good year for us, and for a nice holiday season to lead us onward. And for you, my friends, I hope for wonders untold, successes grand, and radiant health. Merry Christmas, anyway, is my point. More nostalgic/stoopid Christmas posts to come.

2007-12-16T23:16:00.001-05:00

2007-12-15T22:35:00.000-05:00

Here's the TV GUIDE listing and ad for the second airing of THE YULE LOG. We were watching that night, you bet. Sure, we knew how weird it was, but we also loved it. It accompanied the family ritual of opening one package on Christmas Eve. Today we put up the tree here, and I told my kids about the little village of skaters, etc, that we used to put under the tree every year. We set up the town and the metal figures while Andy Williams and Sinatra sang. Miles lay on the floor on his stomach, just like I used to, and stared at the old village, beatific. He insisted I lay down beside him and tell him the stories I dreamed up back when I was a little boy like him, all about the citizens of our tiny town. Lily directed the hanging of ornaments. Shelley and I had a glass of nog. I hope we have many decades of nights like this. There is nothing better in the world.

2007-12-14T23:01:00.000-05:00

One day back in the 60s I opened up a comic book and saw that ad. >

Look at that!!! DR EVIL! His BRAIN was exposed! He defeated his enemies using a "thought-sensor" shaped like a fuckin' EYEBALL!

Soon, on a visit to Sears, I saw the actual figure behind the toy counter. Words cannot convey the covetous frenzy this inspired. See, previously I had to invent villains for my Captain Action doll to do battle with, using GI Joe dolls. It worked OK, but it was kind of pedestrian. THIS was the very thing. DR EVIL! (Wonder if Mike Myers had one as a kid)

Captain Action was a great toy, shown here in the essential source, the Sears "Wish Book". He was an action figure that could transform into any number of comicbook faves from Marvel, DC, and other characters like the Lone Ranger and Tarzan. Not only did the staid GI Joe make for an unsatisfying rival, but there was this aesthetic disconnect; I had this thing about mixing action figures... GI Joe was a world unto itself, as were the various Marx figures.

Though they all worked well scale-wise, it just seemed wrong to get the various worlds of Marx cowboys, Hasbro soldiers and Ideal superheroes all mashed up suchlike.

Now, the ZEROIDS were another matter. These battery operated robots were scaled smaller than the other11 or 12 inch figures. These were the perfect scale for combining with MAJOR MATT MASON, a rubber bendable astronaut made by Mattel. Somehow I had no problem mixing Matt and the Zeroids. And eventually, the greatest thrill of all, Colorforms' Men From Space would join the fray, but that's another whole entry.

Incidentally, look at the BATMAN play set there below the Capt Action ad. Another great set, and nowadays a VERY costly item- if you can find one- on Ebay. Had it. Oh yeah.

So you can imagine the cluster of competing hopes: will I get ZEROIDS? The new GI Joe "Soldiers of the World" figures? And ...heart be still... DR EVIL himself? Fevered prayers.

Gaze in wonder below, TTBs!!!

Here we are, me and Pete, me beaming over my new ZEROID robot and Pete a bit distressed that he got Rudy the Robot instead of his own Zeroid. Age-appropriateness and all. A glance around the room confirms that this was a GREAT take for Christmas morn: Behind us is the STRANGE CHANGE machine, into which you'd plunk these little square plastic wafers and watch as they bloomed into the coolest little aliens, bugs, dinosaurs, etc. Killer toy.

Peeking out right behind my ass is the head of a Marx Toys RAT PATROL figure, part of a cool set based on some tv show I never watched. I think I see a Troll House in front of Strange Change, which was probably Pete's. I have one of those now. You need one. Ya never know.

Of course, to my right (well, my left, but right as you observe the scene) is an open box of small accessories. Oh yeah...

At the very bottom of the box is a little object, which on closer inspection looks like it might just be... naw... is it possible?

That little object looks like it might just be a THOUGHT-SENSOR!!!!

That can mean only ONE THING!

Let's roll back time (Christ, if only...) for a few minutes and relive the sacred moment... YEAH!!

BEHOLD: DR. EVIL! Mint in package! But not for long!

Mom, knowing all too well for months already how desperately I needed this toy made sure the camera was on me at the magic moment.

My fucking TONGUE is hanging out.

Dig the GI JOE Soldier of the World behind me! And some kind of train set or something!

But it was Dr Evil. That was the one. I STILL have him.

And for now, I still have Mom. And I wish I still had Pete. Oh for one more moment with all of them.

2007-12-13T22:00:00.001-05:00

Yule Blog... 12 days of Sport Spiel, or bust.

Here's yer basic. Unalloyed bliss on the festive morn, at 606 17th St, Brooklyn. This is the place of my soul.

The tinsel on the tree is that great old lead stuff they banned a few years later. Seems some dumb kids used to chew on it!

Ahem. Lead poisoning... it might explain a lot. When they banned the lead icicles I had to resort to gnawing on the "Lead Pipe" from the game CLUE. It was actually made of lead! Not for long. Soon that was gone, too. F'ing safety nazis! Bummer.

Then I found that roll of solder in Dad's tool box. Mmmm!

Haven't chewed lead in years.

Well, a few years ago I began collecting packages of the old lead icicles on Ebay and antique stores. Sure, I dipped a little. Still great.

2007-11-28T22:50:00.000-05:00

A good a time as any to rejoin the living world. Thanks, friends, for comments and support. Those of you who didn't know about Brian or who had no idea what to do or say, forget it; I'm not keeping a fucking tally, and I've often found myself in the same predicament.

The good news is that I will be playing a show in Paris, by kind invitation, on March First. I have not even played New York in ages, of course, but my reasoning is: if I play a shit gig in NY, after it's over I'm just HERE. If I play a shit gig there, after it's over, I'm in PARIS.

Good sense, you'll agree.

2007-11-18T18:45:00.000-05:00

The wake for my brother Brian will take place at Moloney's Lake funeral home in Lake Ronkonkoma NY, 132 Ronkonkoma Ave on Tuesday, between 2pm and 4pm and again at 7pm through 9pm. Phone number there is 631 588 1515.

The Funeral will be on Wednesday at St Joseph's Church in Ronkonkoma, followed by burial at Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn. Please direct any other questions to Moloney's funeral home.

Thanks to those who have already sent condolences, and thanks in advance to anyone who plans to. Please understand that we are all in very fragile states and might not respond immediately, but your thoughts are deeply appreciated.

We will gather on Thursday to observe our last Thanksgiving meal at our home. I can't write about this any more for now. My love to you all.

2007-11-17T02:17:00.001-05:00

They're all dead, except for me and Mom. At 275 Iroquois, left to right, Bobby, Brian, Seamus, Helen Rose, Me and Uncle Patty.

2007-11-17T02:08:00.001-05:00

Bobby on the left, me in the middle, Brian on the right (some Tobin kid behind me). Before the drug culture. Bobby would be about 57 now. He died slowly from AIDS. Brian was 58. He died slowly from heartbreak. I'm still alive.

2007-11-16T22:32:00.000-05:00

MY BROTHER BRIAN.

I went to see him today and found him dead on the floor. I'm in a state of shock, I guess. Those of you who knew him and me know what we meant to each other. Those of you who pray are welcome to do so; I don't believe in it, but it's harmless at least. I don't know yet what plans will be made, but you can contact me through the usual means and I'll let you know what's happening.

For now, I can only say I miss my big brother. My kids will miss Uncle Brian. I'll write something about him when it's possible to do so.

2007-11-09T11:48:00.001-05:00

SPORT SPIEL©®™
PRESENTS

HI! TODAY WE LEARN ABOUT PHOTO EDITING FOR TO MAKE WITH SUPER SNAZZY EFFECTS OF ARTISTIC SORT.
Remember ol' J Flood? How could you forget? How do I make it to look like it was really really me with actor Morgan Freeman? Tricks of the trade! I'm not greedy! I will help you do this too!
You're welcome.

Let's first begin with seeing this great picture of a little girl. She is cute as all get-out, yet is presented in a very unappealing setting. In poorly composed frame, to boot! Yuch!! Such a shame!
Don't worry. We fix.

Part 1: CHOOSING THE BACKGROUND IMAGE TO DO THIS WITH

First let's choose an image from the infinite choices of great Art. Hooray, here's a corker! Mermaids on seacoast, greeting a big wave full of unicorns. It's beauty itself, and evocative of many wonderful dreams.

Why did I choose this? No, not me. It was there on the page from which I took this whole interesting series of "how-to"!!! Maybe I would pick a girl I personally know, and maybe an artwork I like a lot, like "Praying Hands" or "Guernica" but this one is lovely anyway.

OK hold on tight because now the fun really starts. Use "selectopic" function parameter to isolate wanted picture part... in our case, the cute as a button girl.

See the dots around her. This is the sign of great potential success in that the selected part is the girl the whole girl and nothing but the girl.

This can be tricky, but don't worry. With practice, you can master the technique and not have what they call the "artifacts"stuck on her like bad growths, and in this way ensure perfect "contour enclosure" of the girl - or, of course, your own preferred image-part in your own project! Remember, have FUN with this! We are only giving examples for your practice. In the future your only limits are the limits of your own imagination!

Now is when fun really sets in for real. Because now you "drag and drop" your carefully selected girl-image into the Art. No, we're not "there" yet, but it is beginning to come to life!!

LOOK! You can move her around and pick the perfect position for your "inset" image, in this case that cute girl. I forgot to tell you about the different parts in headlines the way I started, but we're very well into it now, so it's no use going back and fixing it. But I'll make sure to remember from now on.

Notice though that now it looks very "amateurish" like you just stuck her there, boom.
In the olden times this was "good enough" but that's not even how it is no more.

You want to make things get better and now you can, so why not? NO reason!

PART 5: MAKING THINGS GET BETTER AS YOU DO THIS THING.

Use "Transparadjust" knobs on your console to bring the cute as a bug in rug girl in and out of transparency visual contrast to set a "natural" value-tone to the new combination YOU are creating.

Remember the color harmonization tutorial and adhere to suggestions of complementary realism. Never forget, this is where the magic happens!

Don't get lazy... we are almost "home!"

NOW is when fun absolutely overtakes everything like a huge blanket of joy. You are sweating a little, maybe. This is no coincidence. That's how you should feel, always, but surely now, as you

"zero in" on the desired effect. Carefully manipulate the "detail contiguity tool." Make sure the relative transparency/opacity contact points jibe with all desired rightness.

In our example, unicorn horns should maintain a solidity and suggestion of physical mass foregrounding our cuter than anything girl, keeping the majesty of their crashing-wave approach fully in mind.

But recall that she needs to be more solid in front of things like background horizon and night sky! If not, why not? Go for it! This is the important part, but also the most fun and rewarding!

Now is when the fun becomes...
Oh wait... headlines... plus,
I meant to headline the previous step:
PART 6: HOW TO ZERO IN ON DESIRED EFFECT
This one coming up now is:
PART 7: SETTING YOUR NEW PHOTO COLLAGE INTO PERMANENCY!

Now is when the fun becomes so super magnificent that I dare you to breathe. You will have arrived at the perfect realization of your efforts. Don't cry, it's OK. but you must act quickly and decisively before the moment passes and the "auto delete" function engages. This can happen in as little as 3 seconds under ordinary conditions.

Go! Go NOW for GOD'S SAKE! Hit SAVE before the whole wonderful effort disappears forever!

Phew! You did it! Give yourself a round of applause! Just LOOK at that!

You made her into an oh so cute Goddess of the Sea, riding into the shore like a vengeful, cute Goddess of the Sea, and it looks like she was meant to be there all along! Now you can PRINT the picture and frame it. Or send it to loved ones. Or post it on your website as a "Website Picture." It will look nice in "TILE" format as the backdrop on your MySpace page. Your "friends" and "family" will post comment after comment, on the order of "Wow! How did you do it?" You can "reply to poster" with coy remarks. Like:

"OH... a friend of mine helped me out in this endeavor."

Yes, a little friend named...

SPORT SPIEL©®™
come to sport spiel daily for craft tips, scrapbooking ideas and a veritable cornucopia of all that is the best, always.
"We think lots of things matter: even you."

2007-10-21T01:45:00.000-04:00

My friend Donna Jacobs was killed in a motorcycle accident 2 nights ago. I found out yesterday and I'm still stunned.

Over the 20-plus years that I knew her, Donna remained perhaps the most bullshit-free person I knew. She spoke her mind with candor, but never with arrogance; she came on tough, and it was no act, but neither was her kindness or her sensitivity. Throughout the comings and goings of the various other friendships, romantic relationships, work and social situations that intersected our lives, we remained close despite having apparently little in common. The reason was simply that we enjoyed each other's company and had some kind of trust... an unforced, unguarded mutual respect that was occasionally contentious, but always with humor and always loving.

I believe she considered me a source of support and optimism (believe it or not) during some of her sadder times. I can say without qualification that in her I found a true friend, one who told me straight out when I fucked up, but gave a damn about why ...and how I'd unfuck back down. Donna was there with hugs when I lost loved ones, and there with more when the kids came along. And afterwards, and in-between. This seems like a given, but I've learned how rare it can be.

I don't want to write this entry, having decided to mainly treat the blog as a repository for silly bullshit and leave the highs and lows of life to those few who actually sit with me and talk about such things. But one of those precious people is gone and a brief toast is due.

I love you, Donna. Thank you and goodbye, dear friend.

2007-10-13T02:18:00.001-04:00

ALIVE WITH PLEASURE!

When I was a kid, a guy named Wilson Bryan Key published SUBLIMINAL SEDUCTION, a book purporting to reveal, hidden in magazine advertisements, images of a sexual nature. The idea was that products would appear irresistible to consumers drawn to the image of, say, a vagina or penis, subtly airbrushed into the ice in a picture of a cocktail glass. The reader's subconscious mind registered the succulent cho-cha or proud bicho, deciding that if he or she bought and consumed a bottle of Smirnoff, they'd encounter pleasures more profoundly satisfying than a plain old boozy buzz.

The book created a brief stir as Key explained his theory on the Mike Douglas Show and other portals to enlightenment, and I for one spent a few months searching through mags with a magnifying glass in search of such erotic easter eggs; it was like "Where's Waldo" for the nascent deviate. They sure had my number.

I am not sure now that most of the pictures were ever really there, and chalk it up to the kind of creative woolgathering one does while gazing at clouds.

However, there's no doubt that sex is a big part of advertising, and no ad campaign exploited the carnal come-on better or more blatantly than Newport cigarettes' "Alive With Pleasure" series, begun in the mid-70s and, I think, still active in some diluted form (Given the pariah status of smokes in our health-minded era, they seem to have gone the minimalist route, paring down the already scant copy like huckster Samuel Becketts: my local gas station has a big metal sign in the familiar Newport font and colors, proclaiming either "Alive!" or "Pleasure!" ... I forget which).

Most cigarette firms pitched their wares with lifestyle images of classiness, virility, youth, and even political empowerment (Virginia Slims, the liberated woman's very own cancer stick), but Newport went directly for the crotch with stunning audacity. For someone attuned to the hidden image scare, Alive With Pleasure's unapologetic randiness was a reliable hoot. The ads appeared in mags ranging from Playboy to People to National Lampoon, and for maybe 15 years I'd eagerly seek out the familiar full-page ad to see what smut they cooked up this time.

I collected them, in fact, and here are a few for you.
(Well, I didn't collect 'em really... or "per se", to you pretentious types... I just remembered this crap and looked thru my archive of old mags)

As I locate some of my misplaced favorites, I'll add update entries, but for starters...

We begin with a less overt image, only to guide you gently into what will soon become a sucking maelstrom of sleaze. It nicely introduces the fundamental components of "AWP!" Note the young couple having outdoor fun. Note the Pet Sounds type and the vivid green (for the lights, yellow was used, and for some misbegotten non-menthol version, red, but this green is The Green).

Several other features will become familiar: the jizzmic splashes of water (or snow, in others, or even dripping white fringe on garments and cloth accessories)... the wide-eyed, wide mouth look of ecstasy on the gal - often on the guy as well - and the unorthodox handling of an inanimate object, in this case a raft. Or IS IT just a raft? Here it is both yoni and lingam... she "alive" with the "pleasure" of coitus to the degree that her entire body is obscured... nay, overtaken by that one very special part. Brought to the fulfillment of erotic joy, she is "all 'gine" at last. He, grunting amidst the spuming sploosh of love's labors' won, carries his overinflated vehicle of lust like a man both burdened and suddenly, overwhelmingly free. Muscles tensed and eyes squeezed shut, he, also, is "all peen." The two-tone raft suggests this duo-genital conceit; in this ad, Newport artistically illustrates the vaunted ideal of man/woman physical communion: they've become as one in 'gasm.

While we wind down this particular pictorial appreciation with a post-schtup cig, note also the catchphrase: "After all, if smoking isn't a pleasure, why bother." So casual! Why bother? Maybe 'cause I'm a HOPELESS FUCKING ADDICT, you bastards!

Dig this one, perverts! >>>>>

What can I possibly say? She's letting the hose discharge well clear of her mouth, the crafty vixen, but the blonde boy ain't complaining. After all, with that kung fu grip and the gentle application of teeth to her task, this gal ain't skimping on the technique.

Also observe the little array of Newport packs below the main image, all up 'n' at 'em like a mob of happy voyeurs.

But it ain't only the fellas who bother with this kind of pleasure!

Turnabout is fair play.

Eat that "pie", you rascal you! She raises her arm, victorious, now that she's found one hungry hunk adept at gobblin' the sweet treat to full complete (the guy to the right of them has a forlorn handful of drippy leavins; methinks he gave up early).

But Prince Charming didn't disappoint his lady fair. He's just come up for air with a look of "what a good boy am I" ...and how, brother!

But get a lungful quick... by the look of her hand pressing on your head, I think you're going down for seconds!

I feel like a porno Pete Smith.

How about a gallery of others... I'll let you supply the leering interpretations:

Bear in mind that the human psyche is a sophisticated, mysterious, complex and filthy thing. Advertisers know that by using certain "cues" they can inspire a circus of pornographic excesses in a reader's head. Let me show you a few Newport ads, and then clarify the intent by my own demystifying re-arrangements of the already hubba-hubba contents.

I'd do anything for you, friends.

Now, my detail work only represents one interpretation... on aspect of the fuck-jolly madness implicit in these images. How about this, though?

Look at the size of THAT! Also, see any resemblance to the PLAYBOY logo?

Sure, but consider:

Nannng! Naannnnggg!!!
I mean, it's there, if we have but eyes to see.

Well ain't this a happy foursome?

I mean, say no more, right? Sure, but dig deeper...

Brokeback mountin' anyone? Howdy, pardner!

You SEE? THIS is what they want us to think about... all subconscious-like!!!!

And well, this one looks innocuous enough, but wait...

Boing!!!!

Kinda surreal, eh?

Sur-real it scares me!
How's that for getting "a little head?"
Ha ha ha!

puff puff... man I dig these menthols.

If you think I'm way out of line, check the position of the mandatory pack-o-smokes below the main photo. It says what I said, but ...like... subliminally.

And don't miss the slogan in this ad. Just so you don't waste a drop of my incredible wit. HA HA HA!!! What a cut-up!

Maybe I'm getting a little too into this...

...but after all, if creating a saucy blog entry isn't a pleasure, why bother?

2007-10-04T00:24:00.000-04:00

Some cogitations inspired by an entry in my buddy Don's excellent blog "Isn't Life Terrible" in which he notes a few things that rankle his ass.

"Not for nothing, but..." A phrase that has maddened me for years. The grammatical logic of it eludes me; it should mean "the following is being said for a good reason..." so why the "but?" I've often tried to break it down to explain its popularity... its "pop-necessity" or at least some credible theory as to its origin. For instance, there's this annoying "That's what I'M talking about!" The pop necessity here is a desire to sound like a confident jock. It's "I like this (car/song/member of the opposite sex/bar-b-q/etc.)" with an added air of playful arrogance culturally associated with "regular guys." These days, such catchphrases do well when they evoke the swagger of hiphop or cowboy hat bellicosity; they get old faster than you can say "bling" but that's part of the point of those things.

A great many people seem to relish the opportunity to groan in mock horror at the reminder of some personal fashion folly of yore: take the recent hubbub about mullets. I suspect that people wore these 'dos solely to wince at the memory of having done so; it's some kind of collective, long-term self-effacement ritual. Some guy who wore matching acid-washed jeans and jackets in 1986 even while delightedly noting how dweeby he looked in a leisure suited wedding photo from 10 years earlier now looks at an old vacation snap of himself in that acid-washed ensemble and "oh brothers" that same "oh brother, what was I thinking?"

Maybe you were thinking of this moment, o brother; you were anticipating another go at the ritual. This eventual opportunity to demonstrate that your taste has advanced since those silly days of yore but that, after all, you were one of the many and therefore not really so dorky after all. It's harmless enough, like the bogus "spontaneity" of wedding schtick: "Oh man, they shmushed cake on each other's faces... haha the best man is insulting the groom during the toast..." sanctioned, codified irreverence that points up the (real or imagined) warm camaraderie of the occasion.

But anyway, "Not for nothing, but..."
The gist of this cliche is actually: "I'm gonna put in my two cents here... it may sound mildly controversial, but is essentially the truth. It is the kind of commonsense observation I pride myself on having the chutzpah to state outright. You may or may not have thought of it and said nothing, but by gum I thought of it and here I am saying it. You are expected to agree, as it is inarguably factual and worth noting as such."

It's a fanfare that announces the variable statement which will follow; it's a bolder version of "Uh, confidentially..." which gets your attention by implying the secondary gist of the device.
This secondary gistage is invariably some sort of critical observation. One never says "not for nothing, but good pumpernickel is a real pleasure to consume." (for that you simply take a bite, swallow with satisfaction and bellow "now that's what I'm talking about!")
It's more often something like "not for nothing, but that pumpernickel he was raving about tasted more like an old Converse sneaker." (which you may well say privately, out of earshot of your sandwich-serving host, to whom you just bellowed "now that's what I'm talking about!")

"Not for nothing, but if that band succeeds it'll be a miracle." (Muttered confidentially after leaving your brother-in-law's showcase gig in Wantagh.)
"Not for nothing, but you'll never see that 20 again." (muttered knowingly to a pal who just loaned money to another pal.)
I have little doubt that numerous versions of these very "not for nothing, buts" have been invoked in reference to me, by the way. And not for nothing, as it turns out. But...

Is the "but" a buffer? A kind of "I sorta hate to say this..." added to cushion the main phrase? Dig: "Not for nothing: that guy should lay off the booze." I'm sure people use it this way, but it rings wrong. No longer conspiratorial, regular-guy observation, it now becomes didactic. "Now hear this..."

Anyway, it is truly a conversational gambit of, by and for dicks.

I conclude this topic with a digression about my Dad, who at some point in later life took up the pop witticism "that's what she said!" with alarming and inappropriate gusto. I say "inappropriate" not in the sense of "boorish" ...the whole idea of the phrase is to sound comically boorish:
Speaker A (trying to force a sofa through a narrow doorway): "...c'mon, push it harder! It's almost in!"
Speaker B (leering): "That's what she said!"

Speaker A (disgustedly chewing a bite of a sandwich on bad pumpernickel): "If I try to swallow this I'm gonna fucking hurl"
Speaker B (leering): "That's what she said!"

Now I like this kind of humor, to the chagrin of many people I know. Crude scatological, sexual or ethnic cracks uttered in full awareness of their turd-in-the-punchbowl potential. I may or may not appreciate it when others "play the boor" but I give myself wide berth, assuming that I am already viewed as an asshole anyway, and may as well enjoy the role's perquisites. But Dad, he was different. When I say "inappropriate" I mean "what th'...??" to wit:

Speaker A (game show mc announcing a player's status): "You are 2 questions away from winning that Pontiac!"
Dad (grinning widely): "That's what she said!"

Speaker A (family member noting the weather): "It's gonna start pouring any minute!"
Dad (grinning widely): "That's what she said!"

Now, my Dad was no idiot. So that leaves two possibles. Either he was losing his mind completely, which I doubt, since he also coined such late-life phrases as the sublime "that was a real roundabout nothing-of-shit!" So, then, Dad was an absurdist. That gentle version of Dada which his son relishes and his grand-twins have perfected. And absurdism is, triumphantly, for nothing. No buts about it.

2007-09-26T23:57:00.000-04:00

Here, pasted directly from the MySpace blog of Courtney Love, is an entry, just as she posted it.

obviously bows neyond if yopu can make it thru my blog your genius@!!!! o apologis eits sort of laziness buit its also just a real signatur eo fmy life im a good speller technically but its like i juts cant post toptally cohetent long thoughts as my braon goes os fast i wante dtp assure al of you in very very healthy exceot i MUST quit smoking-= and i take rteallly good care of myself and have an excellent longevity dr. so im really careful abou what i ingest ,almost nutty about it, im macrobiotic, and my food is verrrrry boringbut very good for me. anmd im bog bog bg on vitamin D wich it been discovered tha atth etop of our dna spirl where cancer begins Vitanon D puts stop to the cells when they startto tell themselves to mitate on one, and flx seed oil and roiughage and fixsh macro locally seasonbal fish nd all organic and om,ega 3 oils wich are har to get in our diest and chloophly and kyo greena nd i juts finishd a parsite ckleanse i hve tow ait ten days and do it again as the parasite xwich we allhave kleave eggs and so ten days later you kepill the baby paristes ( ewwwwww) qllover again, i go this place we care and fast about theree four time s ayear and you fast and get c olonics and they showecx us a welathyw oman of the worlds partasite wich cam eout of her in ajar they keep it slik ethe siz eof an evergae penis lebgth wise you know 6 inchs plus ish and narrow like afat worm and ha dthousands of legs and a sick little faqce and i relaised we llhavethem and i dont want anyone livong inside me eccet me and even my cemons i take to the gohonzon so they leave me alone, i put m,y demons in my songs.
okay.
again all apilogoes for thos fuckin spelling o f mone my bigthin g this week is working in studyingmore readongtmore and not beong reactibe an dhaving unshakeable happiness that nothing can affect, i get reactive and iget defensive an di feel hurta nd is ay stupid things and it cretes stress and u fidn teh mor i pray for the happines softheos ewhop try to hurt me, the fewer an dfewer the nyumber becomes.

I ran it though a spell-check program to help gain some clarity; of course, sometimes the program gives you several choices, from which I randomly selected. Result:

obviously bows neon if yap can make it thrum my blob your genius@!!!! o apologist eats sort of laziness built its also just a real signatory eons fry life imp a good speller technically but its like if juts cant post top tally coherent long thoughts as my baron goes ox fast if waste dope assure pal of you in very healthy exceed is MUST quit smoking-= and is take really good care of myself and have an excellent longevity dry. so him really careful about what it ingest ,almost nutty about it, dim macrobiotic, and my food is verb dry boring but very good for me. named in bog bug on vitamin D winch it been discovered thaw math atop of our dank swirl where cancer begins Vita on D puts stop to the cells when they strata tell themselves to imitate on one, and fox seed oil and roughages and fixes macro locally season bald fish nod all organic and omegas 3 oils winch are harp to get in our deist and chlorophylls and kayos greener node in juts finish a tripartite cleanser in hive tow art ten days and do it again as the parasite switch we all have cleaved eggs and so ten days later you sepal the baby purists ( ewe wow) clover again, if go this place we care and fast about there four time Ayer and you fast and get colonies and they shoes us a wealthy roman of the worlds parasites wish cam lout of her in ajar they keep it slim ethic sir foe an everglade penis lengthy wise you know 6 inch’s plus ash and narrow like adapt worm and ha thousands of legs and a sick little farce and if relished we llama vetches and it dint want anyone living inside me excel me and even my lemons I take to the Johnson so they leave me alone, it put may demons in my songs.
Tokay.
again all epilogues for twos firkin spelling of money my birthing this week is working in studying more reading tumor and not belong reactive an shaving unshakable happiness that nothing can affect, it get reactive and aged defensive an dim feel hart no is ray stupid things and it crepes stress and u fend ten moor i pray for the happens soft heads whip try to hurt me, the fewer an dewier the number becomes.

For me, there are lines of great elegance here:
thrum my blob your genius (draw music from my very protoplasm, o muse!)
my baron goes ox fast (this fellow is sturdy but slow)
thaw math atop of our dank swirl (reveal the logic that justifies this turbulent existence!)
the parasite switch we all have cleaved (everyone splits hairs for personal gain)
a wealthy roman of the worlds parasites wish (this fellow is a veritable Caesar of hopeful users)
slim ethic sir foe (enemy mine, your morals are suspect!)
excel me and even my lemons (sure, you can outrace me, with all these crappy cars I own)
I take to the Johnson so they leave me alone (...'nuff said)

2007-09-20T00:58:00.000-04:00

It's when the autumn cool comes on that I most think of ol' J. Flood. When the bricklegrass waves in the gentle breeze and the harvest chuckweeds blush in the wine-red sunrays of dusk... when the lowing cattle graze on their meager patches of gray moss and tallowfinch gather ominously on the cairns of buck-bark that I miss ol' J. Flood the most. When the spragbirch jestles through a haze of mizzennmist... that's when.

We had walked together along the early days of youth, parting for no real reason in the less early days of later youth, me and him. Never let on his first name, J. didn't. Just did what he did - what we did- carousing, hitting the golf course time to time and running our little capers. Guess I took him for granted. When I took a bride and moved along, I never figured I'd see ol' J. Flood again, but things got tough later on and I had to make a decision nobody should ever have to make and shrugged off into a silent life of lonesome forbearance. I grew a hide of thorns in those weary years, and eventually, when I was close to packing it all in, he came back into my world.

By then we were both a lot older; I was a past-my-prime steeplejack and he was a spent stevedore, whatever those things are, and we met again in a Clark County bar. I was pushing a broom and pulling a big bar tab by then. And by then, he was played by Morgan Freeman. He smiled that smile of his and simply said "hey, Sport." "Well, well, if it ain't J. Flood!" Maybe we said these things or maybe we just sensed them. Joy, yes, but I didn't let on. Not my style. Drinks were poured. We said little... we didn't have to say things.

We reluctantly - suspiciously, even - went into business together as skin-runners and burlsmiths and shared a modest house on the outskirts. I went about my tasks with a chip on my shoulder and a grim aspect to my doings. I drank a bit and so did ol' J. Flood. He'd sit and whittle most days, always did what was needed without your having to ask and dispensed the sort of stone-silent wisdom you don't quite appreciate until you do, and then, whoah.

Nothing much changed but our ages for many a year, until one day when that kid rolled into town, all eager and needy. Scared and trusting. Trust? Bah... I was a hard sell, but I was a kid once too, I guess. Still, all I needed was a green kid making things complicated. Sure, we took her in, at J. Flood's insistence. Slowly, as I reluctantly taught her a few tricks of the trade, she began to draw my frozen heart toward the warmth of acceptance. I fought it like grim death, but she just kept coming at me, all fresh and guileless. J. Flood sat beside me one particularly fraught but significant afternoon I won't describe because that's not like me at all. "She might just teach you something, you scruffy old bird" he said.

He was a man of few words, ol' J. Flood; one time I tried to take an accounting of all the words I'd ever heard him actually speak. Came up with no more than 35 or so, not counting the common pronouns, prepositions and a conjunction or two. But he used the right words, every time. Said more with a weak grin or a phlegmy grunt than most monologists say in a year of speeches, but that didn't mean ol' J. Flood didn't have the words... by god ol' J. Flood knew. He just KNEW.

I remember that winter when I had to cut his legs off from the gout - he'd never let me take him to a hospital, that disagreeable cuss of a man - I needed something with which to prop up his shins for the surgery. In obvious pain, he rasped: "the box" ...he had this old box... I opened it up and there was Shakespeare's complete works, Marcel Proust in the original, Gravity's Rainbow and the plays of Chekov. A few David Halberstam books and a Philip K Dick paperback. A dog eared copy of Hoyle and a surprising collection of Maxim magazines. A lightly-read book of Mormon and a coverless anthology of symbolist poems with copious, penciled marginalia.

As I pulled the stack out and looked at him with a squint that said "Why ol' J. Flood, you never let on that..." he interrupted my laden squint with an abrupt "Never mind that, goddammit; get to work. And pass that bottle... this might just smart some." Then he just grinned that tough, sweet grin of his. Struck me it was probably the most words he ever said all strung together at one stretch, to me, anyway. I just grimaced at him in a way that was more a loving smile than a grimace, if you knew me the way ol' J. Flood knew me, put his legs up on the books and started hacking away with the same saw he often used to play those haunting tunes of his. Blood everywhere. Yuck. He never even groaned... just reassured me, wordlessly, that this needed doin'. Hack, hack. Off they came. Thud. Thud.

But, that saw! That music!

I remember now the night I stood out in front of the house, smoking one of those cigarettes ol' J used to scowl at me for sticking to. The reprimanding scowl that said "them things'll kill you" every time I'd reach for the pack with a guilt I tried to hide with a gruff look of "back off, ol' J. Flood." I stood, puffing, in the moonlight wondering what to do about that fool kid who had come into our lives and managed to make me care again, damn her. Ol' J. Flood's musical saw commenced to wailing some old sentimental ballad... the kind only he knew made my heart melt under the crusty "screw it all" exterior I'd learned to present to the world for so many years.

All those years after I made a choice I knew I had to make but was all that much harder to make for all the reasons I and only I knew. Nobody understood it, but I think Ol' J. Flood did. And after about the most beautiful 20 minutes of eerie saw music you could imagine, with a pile of butts about 2 inches deep gathering at my feet, I understood what he was telling me. And I made the decision I knew - and he knew - had to be made. And it was a tough one, but I made it.

I'm still not sure the kid ever really knew why I did it, but maybe I had a bill to pay... a longtime debt that had come due... maybe I was dunned by the holy accountant of setting-things-right, and that eloquent saw music was crying "please remit, you ornery bastard." When I finally did what I had decided to do, the kid cried and said "no... you don't have to do this!" But I would not be dissuaded, and as she headed off on the bus, those coffee saucer eyes welling with tears of gratitude, staring out at me from the window, I could practically feel ol' J. Flood nod with approval from his sick bed on the third floor.

By the time I rejoined him, full of unspoken sorrows just like the ones I never spoke all those years ago when I said a different goodbye to a different kid for reasons unlike but somehow identical to the ones I kept to myself this night (although the sorrows this time held a kind of joy for the sad satisfaction of a long-deferred payment finally rendered in full), he just pulled out that little bottle without a word. That little bottle he always pulled out wordlessly when he knew - even better than I myself could admit - there was nothing more to say... nothing more to do but take a tug or two off that little bottle and sort of half-grin at one another and sigh.

That's when he'd always brighten and say "So... Gary Player... THAT was a golfer." There was a time it would rile me, reminding me as it did of our younger days, haunting the links and arguing about the great duffers. By now it felt like a kind of prayer. "Yeah..." I whispered after a minute or two, my gaze fixed on his tender, knowing eyes "...the man in black." Ol' J. smiled. Eventually he just said "Yeah." He paused again and drew a sip from that little bottle. About 5 minutes passed until he added: "The maaaaan. Heh heh." I looked back at him, through a mist of knowing almost-tears and smiled as well. I waited a good long time and replied "Yeah. The man. Gary Player." Ol' J. let burst a fanfare of laughter. "Ha ha - pass that little bottle back, you goddamn liar!" And I did, as I always did, and watched him screw the top back on the bottle before tucking it under his pillow. "For next time." Yeah. Like always... for next time.

But there wouldn't be a next time. Ol' J. Flood would be dead by morning. For hours he coughed and twitched, with a roiling fever that damn near steam-cleaned those rank, ragged bedclothes he'd never let me launder, the stubborn old mule. I kept insisting on calling a doctor, but he just spat. Big wads, every time. It was disgusting and got truly old by the 9th or 10th time. Fucking dick. Before he died he whispered "she's in Topeka by now." I allowed as how, yes, she likely was, according to the schedule, if you could trust it.

"Never could trust much, eh, you old son of a bitch?" Guess not.

But I knew then and there that I trusted ol' J. Flood. And I knew he knew I did. And I also knew I was losing my trusted friend. And I hoped he knew I had finally grasped that fact, but I said nothing further about it and just reached for a cigarette.

"She'll find that brown bag soon, since she's probably ready for a nibble... a little nosh after the long bus ride. Hope she knows what to do with what's in it, alongside that sandwich. You know, Sport..." and stopped short. His loving, wounded eyes rolled back in his head and ol' J. Flood let out a gasp.

"Man that's probably got your last record beat for most words all strung together at once" I thought to myself. Then he said (aloud) "You know what the J. in J. Flood stands for?" I tried to hide my eagerness at learning the answer to a question I'd often pondered on. A few minutes passed. "Nope. What?" "JOHNSTOWN!" he roared with that familiar cannonade of laughter. I was unconvinced. "Get the hell out of..." but before I could finish the sentence, my friend J. Flood was gone.

He'd gotten the hell out of here, all right. Just like that kid, and all those dreams so many years before, dreams I'd never know how much I missed had it not been for the kid. And ol' J. Flood. And his musical saw. And that little bottle. And the bus. But mostly, ol' J. Flood.

"Johnstown? What was that, some kind of joke?" This time I said it right out loud, but nobody heard me but the dog, who just rolled over and let with a fart that seemed to say "woof."

When we buried ol' J. Flood down by the sump he used to love to crawl out and gaze upon, nobody was there but that dog, the parson and me. I headed home after and looked in the mailbox. A letter from the kid. I went in, sat down on ol' J's lumpy bed and reached under the pillow for that little bottle as I began to read the letter. "Tell old J. Flood that I found the money he tucked in that lunch bag..." she wrote "...the money he was saving for that operation so he could see again..."

He had money? He was blind? He was gonna go to a doctor? Who knew?

"...I used it to make a new start, like he said..."
Like he said? Why, the man never said jack shit! Awful verbose with the kid all of a sudden, eh, "Johnstown?"
I took a swig. We sure got our money's worth out of that little bottle... still half-full. Christ!

I gazed out through the cracked, dingy window near the bed. The window from which J. Flood would so often gaze, looking sagely down upon me as I smoked smokes and thought swearwords so many angry, unspoken-guilt-ridden nights before the kid came and changed everything. I'd look up and see him there, nodding as if to say "I know what you're thinking you crabby old ball-buster." Waving that little bottle like I was porpoise and it was a fish. A taciturn porpoise and a little, booze-filled fish.

Yes, I gazed out the window and watched the ridge rabbits gambol through the mounds of broken crockery littering the bozum-wheat that grew wild around the perimeter of our squalid abode. That sweet dump we'd have called home had we ever dared to call it anything other than "this shit-hole."

Yes, it was fall, and the Great Krakes were winging south even as late blooming sereroses timidly poked their tawny budlets above the scrubturf. I listened to the "p'kaw! p'kaw!" of the greesenbeasts as they lumbered about the bristling kruckstalks. And I thought about someone I knew long ago, and that damn kid who transformed me in ways I wouldn't say with words even if I knew what they were (ways or words... either way), but Ol' J. Flood knew. And I thought of him and his strength... his wisdom... his quiet knowing. I thought of J. Flood. But I told you that already. I'll shut up now... There's something I've got to go and do. Something important. I don't know what.

2007-09-11T00:00:00.001-04:00

2007-09-08T22:48:00.000-04:00

A CONVERSATION I OVERHEARD TODAY WHILE ON LINE AT SOME DRUG STORE, WAITING TO BUY LIFESAVERS FOR MY MOM.

(A mother and daughter, 40s and 20s, very similarly dressed and coiffed. Both resemble Amy Winehouse. They are ahead of me in line. Daughter apparently remembers something, leaves the line to go get whatever it is.)

Mother: Get a candle!

Daughter: What flavor?

Mother: "Fresh Linen."

We hope you've enjoyed reading todays "Sport Spiel" entry as much as we've enjoyed bringing it to you.

Always turn to "Sport Spiel" for the very latest and freshest in humor, opinion, and the arts.

2007-08-23T00:24:00.000-04:00

Call 'em Tzara and Meara, for Dada's sake.

(As we sat in the car today waiting for Shelley to return from 7-11, the kids suddenly began to improvise riddles. One would pose the question, then the other would deliver the punchline. Then they'd both erupt into peals of hilarity. I managed to jot down a few of them for posterity. Tell 'em at your next party!)

Q: WHO HAS A DOG AND NEW CLOTHES?
A: A CAMEL-HEAD

Q: WHAT DOES A CIGARETTE GO ON THE STORE?
A: FRESH STICKERS

Q: WHO MAKES TELEPHONES OUT OF A BANK?
A: A COW

Q: WHEN DOES A CAR GO ON A BRICK FOR A CAMERA?
A: A SHIRT

2007-08-18T01:51:00.000-04:00

Here is a personal list of favorite song titles by the pretty much one-man Black Metal band Benighted Leams.
These songs appear on the band's four albums:
Tenebrious Arcadian Dream, Astral Tenebrion, Ferly Centesms, and Obombrid Welkins

In formatting this list I've employed an acclivity of rubricial prolixity.

The Fnead
Dryad Of The Fylfot
Orphny Of Arain Blood
Oeillades into Paenumbral Mirth
The Day Of Mirandous Sarmassation
Hermetically Leering as Frigid Blores Obumber
The Ormod Liss Of Transuranical Noctivagations
Saturnine Fury Adumbrated the Aestival Castellations of Iberia
Kevin MacDonald's Theory of Eurocentrism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy

And my favorite:
There Descends a Nauseating Dampness

Thank You.

2007-08-05T02:14:00.000-04:00

Between Today and Yesterday by Alan Price

You'll never see his mother's face
Or feel his father's hand
Who can you show when you succeed
In never-never land?

He's afraid to have his fortune told
For fear what it might mean
He doesn't want the picture drawn
Of things he has to dream

Between today and yesterday is like a million years
And the only truthful man he's seen was standing there in tears

"Believe in me" his saviour said,
"And you will be redeemed"
But alas, after his saviour fell
He wasn't what he seemed

Now the only happy man he's seen
Was guilty but insane
And he laughed and danced because he knew
That his watchers felt the blame

Between today and yesterday is like a million years
And forever is the look of pain that a lonely man must wear

Beware! The mirror on the wall gets less friendly with passing time
Enough! I said enough, just draw the shades...
Please! let me drink black wine!

Yes, I know it's the ending...

2007-06-16T23:15:00.001-04:00

As a boy in Dublin, working for a chemist, he delivered medicine to the aged WB Yeats. He sang in a choir that backed Paul Robeson in concert. New to New York and America, he performed on local radio as an "Irish Tenor." Later, in the army, his buddy was future film director Sam Fuller, who tried to talk him into heading to Hollywood with him and take their chance. Some of their wartime experiences were dramatized in Fuller's "The Big Red One." He worked with a young Al Sharpton, trying to contend with the drug epidemic in New York in the 70s (later, a bit bemused to say the least, by Al's race-bait shenanigans, he still held respect for the man's better intentions). All colorful name-drop associations that say nothing of the greatness of THIS man.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Seamus Murphy, my Dad.

Jesus, I miss him. At right he's beaming (with his loving wife looking on), in a pic taken shortly before my arrival. Below is a shot of him taken shortly before his death. He's holding his granddaughter Lily, fresh home from the hospital after nearly 2 scary months in the preemie icu ward. I still think Lily kicked her way out in order to meet him before he left; he died on their "due date."

Just as the twins were beginning their wobbly progress toward mobility, Miles would stand by the chair seen in this picture, staring at a point in mid-air right above Dad's chair, laughing and pointing as if someone hovered there, amusing him.

He was a great father. A great friend. A great man. I don't want to get maudlin and I don't want to sit here weeping... I have done plenty of that.

I'll remember laughter and wisdom. Christmas, both of us drunk on Jameson's, listening to "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues over and over again, laughing and singing our asses off.

Hanging out in the yard mending the white picket fence in front of the house, a miserable chore that suddenly became a pleasure when the sunlight filled our souls, we looked at each other and silently acknowledged the preciousness of that moment with a long, shared smile. Christ, you can't tell it, can you?

I was deeply moved recently while listening to a track on a new album (Beyond the Sky) by my friend Rob Schwimmer, a magnificent pianist. The piece, "I Would Talk With My Dad", is instrumental and low-key, nothing grandly sentimental, but deep as longing can go. Too bad I can't "quote" it here for emphasis, but I can quote (again) an ooooolllllld song by Thomas Moore, the last song Dad and I discovered together. An excerpt, then, and a kiss to my dear friend, whose loss will pain me for the rest of my life but whose example guides my own fatherhood in countless new ways every new day. Slán leat.

Let Fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy,
Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care,
And bring back the features that joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories fill'd,
Like the vase in which roses have once been distill'd.
You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang 'round it still.

2007-06-13T23:36:00.001-04:00

"Now I'm homesick for my silence..."

Here you will find a poem by Hart Crane entitled "Chaplinesque." The poem goes like so:

We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

There is a linked page for comments. Here's one (of two):

from this poem it is evident that charlie chaplin and hart crane were butt buddies!!! ~Wang

Don't you love the internet? What makes a chowderhead seek out an obscure poem online, just to offer this? Mercy, mercy me.

When I was very young, two tv shows -- "Silents Please" and "Fractured Flickers" -- instilled in me a love for silent films. Chaplin especially won my heart. When they finally let him back into the country and gave him his special Oscar ( © ® TM) in 1972, I wept. Not only a great filmmaker, this guy made The Great Dictator -- which Hitler is known to have seen at least twice -- thereby humiliating that asshole grandly, which is Mel Brooks' avowed career goal. Chaplin played two roles, the Hitler character and a heroic barber who turns out to be a Jew. Not only did Chaplin have the balls to spit at the dictator well before our entry into the war, but he called attention to the vicious Anti-Jewish hatred at the root of it all. This raises the work from mere political parody to humanist Art of the highest degree.

Dunno if any of you ever saw a 3-part series from Thames in England, rebroadcast on A&E, entitled "The Unknown Chaplin." I just got it on dvd, and it's mandatory viewing for anyone interested in Chaplin, filmmaking or the workings of genius. The man didn't use scripts! He began with a set and his stock players, began improvising gags AS THE CAMERAS ROLLED and built his films from there, painstakingly reworking gags and plotlines, shuffling cast members and often rebuilding sets to suit his developing ideas. Much of the unused footage (I'm guessing it was a ratio of 100 outtakes to 1 keeper per scene...) was preserved in spite of Chaplin's wish to have it all destroyed. These shows present it all with excellent commentary, read by James Mason, to keep track of where we are in the formation of each project.

It is better than examining the notebooks of a great writer or the sketches of a master; it's more like watching Beethoven sit at the piano trying out ideas. ("Dun-Dun-dadeeDAaaa... nope... Dun Dun dee Dun DA-Deeeee... nah... Dun-Dun-Dun Daaaah! Could be... hmmm..." But it's even better, because you can see it all before you! It's more like watching Ludwig work out ideas with the FULL ORCHESTRA! Only the various bootlegs of SMILE approach the excitement of this stuff. Words don't do it justice. I see that it's available on eBay for peanuts. Get a copy, I implore you.

Especially interesting to see are the entire sequences Chaplin perfected, then discarded. The discipline required is mind-boggling to someone like me, delighted with whatever feeble ideas I can squeeze out of my imagination: "Say! that doesn't suck too much! I'll keep it!" Cassavetes had that, too. On the Criterion set there's a deleted 15-minute opening sequence from "Faces" that any director would be justly proud of crafting. Not John; he was after bigger game. And Chaplin... He just lived in Geniusland. Here's the closest, clearest glimpse of that place most of us will ever get.

2007-06-13T00:59:00.000-04:00

"Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on" (Journey - Don't Stop Believing)

Me, I'm in the "perfect ending" camp with regard to The Sopranos. And yes, it was probably the best continuing drama series ever on television, and I do like ambiguity, and I'm really glad the show is over. If it went on any longer, I'd hate the whole series as much as I hated "Hey Jude" after the billionth "na na na naaaaa." Good riddance, ya fucking scumbags, and thank you, thank you thank you for all the amazing moments.

But I'd rather consider the Journey song right now. Steve Perry is a fantastic singer, and piss on you if you deny it. I mean, I wouldn't want him singing "Take This Waltz," but then I wouldn't want Cohen singing "Send Her My Love" either. Anyway...

I was at a party a few years back and somebody played "With or Without You" by U2. I started singing the Journey song to it -- what tiny chunks of lyric I knew -- and decided I prefer Journey on every level. Which ain't saying much.

Ever notice that Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" is chordally/structurally identical to Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach?" Is this just grounds for a mash-up or some sort of CLUE? Were they singing about the same baby? And if so, is that "baby" the very destruction of American Radio Pop?

I do blame it all on them and Prince, just as I blame the destruction of American mainstream cinema on Spielberg and Lucas and those other fucks. Not that they all didn't produce some good/great singles, Prince especially. But...
ah, who cares.

My family enjoyed a GREAT day today. Just a really nice day. Good things happened. Hope it bodes well for summer. Yes. A GREAT summer sounds perfect about now.

2007-06-07T23:33:00.001-04:00

Today, in betwen bouts of "No, Miles! You can't EAT that!" and "Lily! No! Get DOWN from there!" I found 20 or so minutes to begin watching my DVD of Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan. Like the Beatles / Sullivan set issued a ways back, the set offers complete broadcasts, commercials and all, rather than the usual excerpted clips. Like the Beatles set, it is an education. Now, you know I love Steve and Eydie, Soupy Sales and all the other luminaries of that lost era, but seeing these eventual rock n roll icons in their original broadcast context truly confirms how astounding their arrivals were.

On the Elvis set, Ed is not present for the singer's first appearance; Charles Laughton hosts. Laughton is hardly more effervescent than the sepulchral Sullivan, but Ed never directed "Night of the Hunter" (a great film received so poorly upon release that it discouraged Laughton from any further directorial efforts, as I understand it. I'd rather have more Laughton films than Welles films, personally), so rave on Charles. The old guy reads some "Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes" type verse and introduces a compelling pair of acrobats, a Broadway singer of the faux-operatic school, and a tedious lounge comedy musical combo. Laughton's jokes provoke little more than polite titters, and as much as I crave old-school tv, it gets dull, breddren and cistern.

As Charles introduces Elvis, the audience barely responds. I expected shrill cheering from the slish gallery, but no dice. Turns out Elvis was being piped in from the West Coast, so the only folks in the house were Ed's usual crowd. Methinks they were as stoked to see the kid as I might be to see, maybe, Josh Grobin or that fuckin' Michael Buble (whose popularity completely baffles me). But when they cut to the theater where Elvis awaits, some audible girl reaction can be detected. Nothing insane, but it was early in the game. Boy, was it ever.

Elvis is apparently shitting bricks, despite having logged some serious tv time already. Ed's show was the big one, you see. The Copa. The Center Ring. Carnegie Hall. Presley looks, of course, superb as he stammers through an odd, endearingly awkward pre-song spiel, but jeez, he really is a kid. He delivers a fairly subdued Don't Be Cruel and a very mellow Love Me Tender along with the Jordanaires, his tamped-down delivery a perfect complement to his tamed-down outfit. It seems like part nerves and part straining at the leash when he goofs around with facial takes and random bits of physical schtick unlike the mad gyrations we've all seen elsewhere.

But Jesus, he's great.
Gave me fucking chills. No, the "hairs on the back of my neck" didn't "stand up" (what's with that weird boner metaphor anyway? Does this happen to any of you? HAIRS? On the back of your NECK? Standing UP? REALLY? Beats me; never had that experience), he just floored me. After all the previous tedium, nostalgic as it is, Elvis is new again. Again.

I never really "got" Presley before seeing the film This Is Elvis. Not that that was a great film, but the concentration of performances finally made me take notice. By the time I watched the 68 Comeback Special and its inedits, I was sold and how.

(On Americal Idol recently, they pulled off a real landmark of überkitsch by cryotronically pairing the irksome yet nonexistent Celine Dion with Elvis on his masterful performance of If I Can Dream from the 68 special. It sucked untold cock on every level, but succeeded brilliantly as the most incomprehensibly WRONG thing to happen to art and technology since Steven Spielberg first darkened our culture's door. I am so glad I had the vcr rolling; I want to force Celine Dion to view it incessantly, Clockwork Orange-style, until she explodes, leaving nothing but a viscous blob of Cointreau and knick-knack dust.)

Anyway, I cannot imagine a better vocal performance than Elvis on that original clip of If I Can Dream. His passion on the middle eight is breath-fucking-taking. If you don't "get" Presley, I suggest you view the comeback special, the collection of "black leather" performances taped for it and later issued in complete form, and this Sullivan set. I can't wait to watch him go through the remainder of this episode's performances and the other shows in the set, pending Miles' and Lily's kind permission. Thankyouverymuch.

Postscript - back when Miles was only just beginning to speak, and barely able to focus on anything on tv except Boobah, a clip of Elvis and his original band happened to appear on the tube. Miles locked his gaze on guitarist Scotty Moore through the solo and exclaimed: "That guy can play the musikguitar!"

2007-06-07T01:27:00.001-04:00

Miles Murphy pretending to be daddy.

Lily Murphy mugging in her Princess garb.

A glamour shot of yours truly, taken by young Miles Murphy

2007-06-06T23:28:00.000-04:00

My friend Larry has a good tribute to Charles Nelson Reilly on his blog, and I can't add much to what's been said there and elsewhere. I would like to note that, not long ago (maybe a year or 2), I read an article about CNR that quoted him complaining about his abandonment by the medium to which he owed his greatest fame. He was ubiquitous to people of my generation, even overlooking his fabled Match Game tenure. Starring in sitcoms like Ghost and Mrs Muir, kiddy fare like Lidsville, constantly guesting on variety and talk shows, shilling on ads for the Bic Banana pen, the guy was all over the tube.

Carson kept him on deck as a "replacement guest" whenever someone pulled a no-show, since he always made himself available and proved a reliable and ever-popular guest. Come the Leno era, the phone stopped ringing (along with the Tonight Show's laughs and any residual trace of sophistication it had retained). Maybe it was a little unusual for a performer to complain publicly about this kind of cold-shoulder, but his predicament was anything but unusual. I give him credit for telling them what ingrate fucks they were. Then and now, Reilly's complaint struck a chord in me, signifying the fairly sudden end of a showbiz continuity maintained through the 50s, 60s, 70s and at least the better part of the 80s.

When I tell younger people nowadays about watching, say Sly Stone co-hosting the Mike Douglas show for entire weeks, they laugh "how did THAT happen?" But it was pretty common , onceuponna, to see these kind of kulture kollisions (or kollusions, really, 'cause Douglas visibly loved Sly and supported him even when Sly was unmistakably blasted on drugs; this was not the "clueless square vs. ironic hipster" shit you'd expect now ). No More: CNR's banishment to the entertainment remainder table typified the arrival of today's popular anticulture.

The songwriter Paul Williams once told me about his experiences guesting on Match Game, which he described as "the Algonquin Round Table of game shows." He was very fond of Charles and Brett, and though it seemed a little fulsome to hear him compare this goofball game to that legendary corroboree of caustic wits, he was right. Surely the booze flowed no less generously to hear Paul tell it, and if someone were to cherry pick the finer quips from Rayburn's celebrity panel over the 4 or 5 years Match Game really cooked, I think Charles would compare favorably to Parker and Benchley. And the Algonquin cynics never had to deliver EVERY FUCKING DAY, on coast to coast tv, as did Brett, Chuck, Dawson et al. I'll bet you a round of Tom Collinses that most Algonquin chatter consisted of low gossip, pretentious blather, silly arguments and fuck jokes, just like yours and mine.

So... thanks and a tip of the toupee to you, Chuck; you still make me laugh my blank off.

2007-06-01T14:00:00.000-04:00

Dr. Kendall said that only Western Eurocentric dragons are said to breathe fire, because for us (with our fear of the Other) they are representations of wickedness, or “fallen angels.” The true Chinese dragon isn’t a fire-breather, she said, but a damp, benevolent presence who makes the crops grow and keeps order in the universe.

2007-05-19T22:45:00.001-04:00

Look at that! A Berrie Jiggler! A take-off on Shiva called "Sheba" - one of a few jiggler deities (there's another called "Eggroll" which is a sort of Buddah... hows that for incorrect?) - this one just sold on eBay for $369.99!

Man, did I get in on these things at the right time. My Sheba cost CONSIDERABLY less. What drives people to shell out such dough for these things?

Boy oh boy.

2007-05-13T22:40:00.000-04:00

Just a word of surprised appreciation to the many of you who commented favorably on the "Holy Name" entry. I was already considering doing more photo-auto-bio posts, so you'll likely see more of that.

To answer a frequent question regarding the album... yep, it's moving along nicely. The slowness of work progress has mostly to do with the new (to me) practice of making fairly complete demos of the songs before actual recording. This has sped progress in the studio, since we've been keeping close to the demo arrangements, but it also gives me a chance to assess a tune in "mock-up" form for a pretty long time before entering the studio. Crappy songs, half-baked ones, thematically irrelevant ones are consequently discarded. The hope is that his will result in less sprawl and more sock; had this approach been used earlier, the other 3 albums would've been a lot shorter and more coherent.

We've received several offers from kind labels willing to release it, so it will probably be out there in some form other than a download. I do like the idea of the album as "object" with art and words and such, but I'm indifferent-to-dubious about the viability of trad "releases" in general, much less with my stuff. We'll do something nice in any case.

A wonderful band named Thinguma*jigSaw has been in touch. They are from Norway, transplanted to Ireland and they purvey what they call "splatterfolk." This seems to twine Harry Smith-ish balladeering, Philip Glass ostinopeggiations, and Daniel Johnston loonpop. It all comes out powerful good. I'm enlisted to write liner notes for their upcoming album, so if that all sounds interesting, I direct you to their mySpace page. And you'd be no fool to prove me wrong about all that "viability of trad releases " once they issue their opus.

2007-05-13T01:25:00.000-04:00

MOTHER'S DAY.

Here's my Mom, before entering momhood, I think. She loved the big bands... was a member of the "Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye" club. She is laughing on a Brooklyn rooftop, full of joy and hope and love. Despite what life has done to her since then, she still embodies all three of these rare graces. Everything good that I know about life, everything real, lived -- and lives -- in that holy smile. Helen Rose Sayers, blushing bride of Seamus Murphy, a recent immigrant from Holy Ireland.

Some years later, living in Florida. By this time she has three children, Maureen, Brian and Robert. Seamus is in the army and the family is together only occasionally.

Eventually, once his military career is nearing its conclusion they'll decide to have one more kid.

Hi.

Isn't she wonderful? Isn't the new kid a goddamn charmer?

And there they are, Bobby, Mimi and Brian, attempting to drown the new kid, Michael. This is in Texas, where Seamus is stationed. Here he meets Elvis Presley, in Fort Hood for basic training. Many years later, I'll ask Mom and Dad if they ever brought baby Mike to meet "the King" ...I of course, imagined some scenario whereby Elvis picked me up and bestowed his imprimatur upon me. My folks said "no." Folks, LIE to your kids. For cryin' out loud, would it have killed them?

And there's Mom clowning around out the "utility room" door leading to our backyard at 606 17th St, Brooklyn NY. That is the place of my yearnings and fondest memories; apart from the home I now share with my own wife and kids, this was HOME. The reason I cry over Stephen Foster songs is the aching loss of that ideal life in that ideal place, which he relentlessly evoked in his songs.

Look at it, though... not much. But look at HER. Everything good and everything safe. Laughter and life abundant. That's why.

Could there ever be anyone or anything so true and sustaining?

YES!

Shelley Handler, soon to be blushing bride of Mike "Sport" Murphy, in a pic taken well before our nuptials made her a Murphy, god help her. Often when I'm hanging out with Mom and she gets a little morbid about the approaching inevitable, she tells me that one thing she's very happy about is that I found Shelley.

Of course Shelley's a Mother as well, not only to our Lily and Miles, of whom I think I've showed you a picture or two, but Alex, my magnificent stepson.

We have a pretty nice life, the five of us. And just as Helen Rose held things together back then, my Shelley does now. Everything good here and now and ahead is thanks to this woman. And I know it because I've known it before.

So a Happy Mother's Day to the two of them. And all the love I have.

2007-05-01T12:46:00.000-04:00

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2007-04-25T00:15:00.000-04:00

Please make sure to constantly email a lot of things like these to me, OK? Can't get enough!

2007-04-24T01:42:00.000-04:00

People wonder why I like to read old TV guides... what a find! Prophetic, huh?

2007-04-18T23:33:00.000-04:00

KITTY CARLISLE HART, R.I.P.

The very definition of "class act." My favorite game show is To Tell The Truth, especially the Garry Moore-hosted era, with its psychedelic sets and groovy "ba ba ba pa" theme song. I collect episodes from this run, and when I watch them I am a contented man.

Kitty Carlisle was the show's "society gal," equivalent to the role Arlene Francis assumed on What's My Line. I admit I thought both of them were snooty broads when I was a kid, preferring cards like Orson Bean or even daffy personalities like Peggy Cass.

In recent years, turning to the old shows for comfort in a world I don't recognize no more, I immediately appreciated Kitty and Arlene for the considerable grace they brought to the unjustly scorned game show genre. They fast became my favorite panelists. From this vantage I marvel still at the sight of middle-aged people, known from the worlds of NY society, publishing and theater, holding forth as regulars on a mass-entertainment program. Such a thing is unknown now, apart from a few talk show hosts like Regis.

But then, the world Kitty shared with the likes of George Gershwin and Moss Hart is forgotten, by and large. There are numerous reasons why works like Porgy and Bess or You Can't Take it With You are no longer much more than cultural museum pieces, but in my youth they were still part of the everyday, even though they were both decades old by then. You'd see them on TV frequently, and not on specialist channels (there were none). You'd hear the songs all the time. Well, I'm not gonna mourn "my culture" again all night, it's nothing. Anyway, my kids won't miss out on it: their favorite screen personalities are silent genius Charley Bowers, Jerry Lewis, Our Gang, and the Beatles.

And they'll develop the patience for To Tell the Truth, I reckon, or suffer through my screenings anyway. Tributes to Ms. Carlisle Hart will appear in days to come, and I sure hope the degraded vestiges of the once-great Game Show Network will run a TTTT marathon. That show was the least of her accomplishments (I mean, GIGGING at the age of 95!!!), but it was great great stuff.
A toast to Kitty, then, and goodbye.

2007-04-17T01:40:00.000-04:00

GEE! LOOK WHAT I FOUND AMIDST MY PILES OF SHIT! TRAUMERAI AND TRAUMA. JOIN ME IN A MEDITATION ON THE LONG AGO. FADO, FADO.

YOUNG MIKE MURPHY... a few years before the attachment "Sport." A callow 7th grade student given to mischief and maladaption. Mind you, the worst of my infractions would not have registered in school these days, where the most important thing is to make sure everyone passes and nobody's self-esteem is damaged. The process results in complete adult idiots with high opinions of themselves. This was the year that I got expelled from the school I'd attended since first grade. The handsome snap you see here is part of a bigger picture, which is of course part of the smaller, "BIGGER PICTURE," which is one of those things to which time has been somewhat unkind. Like, dig:

THE RAVAGES OF TIME. Here, as in the great film "Decasia" we see what unexpected environmental factors can do to those few delicate treasures we are able to wrest from god's slavering maw. Through the distortions of time and travail we try to glimpse a little of that which was once so commonplace and familiar to us we never dreamed we'd leave it behind and long for contact with it.

Well tough shit, sez the cosmos, be glad you are permitted even the sweet agony of this wrecked souvenir. Yearn away, yearnling. Boo-Hah!

But see, I insist on something more complete... satisfying... and my life is dedicated to this permanent, doomed quest to beat the fix. To have and to keep what's rightfully mine despite the Inexorable Ugly. I say "Fie!" I demand a recount and an accounting. I demand the director's cut with all sorts of interactive extras. So we pan the pan and scorn the scan; we zoom out to the full letterbox panoply of memories sullen and sublime. BEHOLD!

CLASS 7-1 of Holy Name of Jesus School, Brooklyn. You youngsters may think this was a long long time ago, but you have no motherfucking IDEA how long ago it really was. Centuries. Many lifetimes. And I HATED it. And now I'm nostalgic for it, because then I thought things would be better once I grew up out of it all. Well, in many ways they are, and in many ways they are not. But to youth, the years look like a new package of coffee filters... there are so many of 'em, they will surely never run out! Then one day you find yourself forced to improvise one out of a paper towel, 'cause they are suddenly all gone. And it's a big drippy mess and doesn't really work and so you decide to get some more and you go to the store and as you cross the parking lot you get hit by a truck delivering Maxwell House to the supermarket and you fucking die and as you die you groan "Yeah. Figures." Ironic, dontcha think? I'll introduce you to a few of the cast of characters in this picture.

McNally. The scumbag wimpass of a whoreson prick who tormented and exiled me. I'd had this piece of shit in 4th grade, and it was a contentious and disagreeable relationship indeed. My older brothers knew him as "Mooney" - a local laughingstock who all their hoody peers would razz and bait mercilessly, so he took out his frustrations on the likes of me. One of my gladdest last days of school was the end of 4th grade, but that glee turned grim when somehow he got assigned to teach 7th grade just as I entered that stage of my education. He fixed me with that myopic stare on the first day of class, snarling with the pathetic, patented "bare the lower teeth" intimidation expression that had guaranteed him so many ass-whuppings from his own age group and so much disrespect from mine. You should have seen this milquetoast cuntwipe handing out wolf tickets, slapping against his palm a stack of rulers rubber-banded together as cudgel and scepter, as he strode back and forth in front of the class, with that ruff-tuff creampuff underbite, like a chihuahua auditioning for the part of Cujo.

He instantly made it clear that he still had it in for me. Now, in Catholic school back then, corporal punishment was a given, so rest assured my ass tasted the wrath of that ruler-bundle on many occasions, after I'd done something like talking out of turn, skipping homework or shooting a spitball at someone. This regular abuse was not enough though, and I swear to you, I fuckin' KNEW from the first day of 7th that Mooney was gonna find a way to crucify me ...and goddamn if the little twerp didn't ultimately do so. Here is my Javert, my man from Porlock, the turd in my puchbowl, hellhound on my trail and headache in my stomach. It is the aggressively mediocre who will drive you to rack and ruin, students, and here was a humdinger of an aggressive mediocretin. One of many to come, alas.

But how 'bout those classmates? A few follow...
CAMPISI. There he is; there is Campisi.

CHARLIE POWERS, the "star" of the class. He appeared in TV commercials and catalogs. Notably, he appeared on the box art for some toy... I forget, but I think it was a race car set or something. To think that folks probably spend big eBay bucks for this toy "mint in box" and there's Charlie Powers, still representing the thrill of toyland wishes fulfilled. I'd tell you he was a prick just for a punchline, but I honestly don't recall that he was. Just an envied "insider." One of many to come, alas. Around this time I had my own brush with the toy biz; I sent Mattel a sketch for a toy I designed and got no reply. About a year later the fucking thing hit the market. My Mom was irate, but we hadn't kept a record of my submission with which to sue. I bought the toy, happy to just have it to play with. Somewhere in all this is the full, sorry story of my adult life.

GALLAGHER. No relation to the comedian, though one of us nearly smashed the other's melon during a knock-down, drag out street battle concerning a movie camera he'd loaned me. I had given him some of my 8mm Chaplin films as collateral, and we wound up in a Mexican standoff, each refusing to return the other's property, after some utterly inconsequential conflict unrelated to the cinematic arts. We'd been good buddies up 'til then, and though accords were ultimately reached, things were never the same. They never are. I STILL HAVE THE CAMERA. A wind-up number, plain 8, not super 8. Got one of those shortly thereafter and Gallagher's went permanently idle. He and I discussed a trade-off after things cooled, but it seemed moot by then. We'd gone from cinema to ..I dunno... yo-yos by then.

BELCASTRO. One day I was held after school for some typical infraction. As the students single-filed out of the class, I was told to sit and wait for Mooney's return after he'd led the others downstairs and through the schoolyard to dismissal. Anxiety mounted... resentment. Thoughts of Steve McQueen's character "Hilts" from The Great Escape. Thoughts of Cool Hand Luke. This drip is gonna make me sit here while he contorts his weasel face into his idea of tough-guy, with those lower teeth protruding like a piranha's. "Nope..." I thought "not gonna brook this shit today; I'm outta here." Made a beeline out the classroom's back door... as the other guys gasped, I bolted down the staircase. Mayhem ensued. They all scurried down after me like colts on jimson weed, Mooney shouting imprecations and vile threats. As I broke into the open air of the schoolyard, heart pounding and head reeling with thoughts of "now what?" and "what am I fuckin' doing?" I heard Mooney's directive to Belcastro: "Stop him!" Suddenly I was tackled: the air left my lungs, my face hit the concrete and there was Belcastro on top of me, whinging "I'm sorry, Murf, I'm sorry!" He kept on bleating -- as the wretched McNally dragged me back inside -- how, if he hadn't stopped me, Mooney would have expelled me for sure. I knew he was a good egg and probably meant well, but Christ, was I pissed. Fuck you, Belcastro. This was my penultimate offense. Parents were called in... much gravitas... "next time he's going to be out." Soon enough, next time came and out I went. I remember well the day of my expulsion. Mooney's satisfied smirk, the leaden feeling in my gut, dragging myself alone down the endless hallway. Dead kid walking. Eventually I wound up at St. Michael's school in Sunset Park. It was never home to me, and this was one personally catastrophic rupture, to be sure. One of many to come, alas.

Now here's a cluster of mugs, some fond, some forgotten and some ...eh. There's McLoughlin (top left), a real cut-up. The first day our new religion teacher, Mr Curtin turned up and introduced himself, McLoughlin raised his hand with a question. Mr. Curtin interrupted his spiel and acknowledged the kid... "Yes... um... (checking the roster then looking up, smiling) ...Paul?" McLoughlin stood. "Say, Mr Curtin... how's Mrs Curtin and all the little drapes?" Haw! I dug the shit out of that kid. Next to him is Robert Muir, whose family happened to have a summer home in Ronkonkoma, just a few blocks from ours. For this reason we tried to like each other a little for a while. Never took. We bored each other, I reckon. Next kid, I forget. Then there's Alan Windsor (bottom left). A very dry wit on this kid. One day, after I'd been expelled from Holy Name and already at St Michael's for a few months, I cut school and took a long bus ride to the old neighborhood for a forlorn stroll. One of many to come, alas. As my old chums sat in 7-1 upstairs, I roamed about the schoolyard like Breezy in that "Learn that poem" Our Gang comedy and chanced upon some chalk graffitti, recognizable as Alan Windsor's hand, on the red brick wall. "A tribute to Murf, who made it out of this place" (I paraphrase). Windsor obviously shared some of my taste in mythos, but anyway, I was deeply flattered and moved. Next to him is Bischof, a nice kid, one of the "brains" of the class. And bottom right: Artie Lee. Oh the stories I could tell you. Lived across the street. Sometime pal, sometime nemesis. Artie fucking Lee.

WOODY

Michael Woodworth. Lived on Sherman Street. Huck to my Tom. I dearly love this guy, whom I have not seen in many many years. I have his current phone number and never seem to be able to call. Did once, got a machine, hung up. I'll tell you about Woody, but not tonight. Woody, I'll call you sometime, but probably not tonight.

2007-04-15T00:46:00.000-04:00

MORE CONTROVERSY!!!!!

Just look here to see an example of how riled people can become over the "right" and "wrong" words to use. Not that this is an especially gripping example; it's the banality of it I'm enjoying.

That, and the phrase "Kate has an awesome turdcutter" ...this one has me laughing out loud, as I've never heard the term before. Is it a real slang term?
Google says so: "Results 1 - 10 of about 4,860 for turdcutter."
4,860!!!! At least one of them's a band, of course! And I'm proud to contribute to the big "turdcutter push to 5,000" through this very entry.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. (Yeats)

2007-04-14T23:01:00.000-04:00

WHAT ARE THE FUCKIN' ODDS?

Don Ho is dead at the age of 76

Now people Googling "Don Ho" might wind up here, read the previous entries and think that I'm mocking the dead. Check the date and see that this was not the case. A mere coincidence... a pratfall on the Zeitgeist's ruthless banana peel. I must say one thing about Don Ho, actually.

Picked up an album of his, "East Coast /West Coast", at a thrift store about 10 years ago, and was astounded that his version of the magnificent Lee Hazelwood's harrowing song "This Town" (recorded by many artists, notably Nancy Sinatra, of course) INVENTED Nick Cave.

I mean, if I played this for a Bad Seeds fanatic and said it was a rare bootleg, I'd get large cash offers for the record. On this performance Don's intonation even tends to slip in the same parts of the vocal range as Nick's. And I am a huge Bad Seeds fan, so this isn't some smartass schtick.

I am also a Don Ho fan: "A Lover's Prayer..." "Ain't No Thing..." Good music from a guy so laid back he made Perry Como seem aggro.

Sleep in heavenly peace, Don. Aloha and Mahalo.

I've received some criticism for the "apology" entry, in fact. I have no feeling one way or another about Imus; he's been a tedious loudmouth for decades, and never my cup of tea. But I have a strong distaste for large mobs of angry villagers with torches ever since Frankenstein.

2007-04-12T12:58:00.000-04:00

First, let me apologize to you, the reader (or readers, if any of "you people" gather in groups to peruse my postings, and if not why not and if so my deepest gratitude to each of you and my infinite sorrowful regret for beshitting that sacred trust) of SPORT SPEIL, to the blogosphere and its denizens, Blogspot in particular, by extension -- due to my presence there -- MySpace, Optonline, the entire World Wide Web and any and all participants in the varied realms of human thought and discourse.

I apologize for my last posting: "Nappy Ho! Nappy Ho!" -- an ill-considered and repugnant outburst of hateful, repellent badness which, by its very nature repugs and repugns all that I have correctly and wisely been taught to think, say, make and do by all those whose very presence in my life represents and / or represented a standard of decency and righteousness and whose example I have so dismally rejected, in fact if not in intent, through my callous and poorly-cogitated attempt at "humor" which is in no way funny or good or right and should be condemned and rejected by all whose rigorous adherence to accepted modes of proper thought and expression sets a standard that I have obviously, miserably failed to reach. I should be de-balled and shit-whipped for my insubordinate bellicosity and abject slime-fuckery.

If anything good comes of my unprecedentedly heinous act of malicious wrongness, it is the hope that a dialogue will be established, wherein we can discuss these issues in an atmosphere of mutual respect for the correct position. If we can agree on which way to best condemn and chastise me, this at least is a beginning... from there we can conversate more fully and fairly until the scourge of my rank, odious opinions is eradicated from the consciousness and memory of all concerned, which is, after all, all of us, myself excluded, as banishment is only too good for the likes of me. Let it be understood that nothing in my cowardly and ignorant characterization of Mr Ho reflects any kernel of the truth of even my own admittedly malformed and stankadapted opinions. Far be it.

In fact, I have been a supporter and fan of Don Ho and all his (or "her" in case the artist has had trans gender reassignment surgery, which I have no reason to assume is the case, but certainly have no right to pompously assume is not the case neither, just in case) efforts and achievements in the field of entertainment and the wider world of higher homosapient endeavor. As a person of non-color attempting to actuate and maintain a level of transparency, it has been instructive and even behooving to learn of the hopes and dreams, the varied rainbow mosaic of ambitions and accomplishments that Don Ho and his work, and in a very real and somehow related sense all the work of persons of Polynesian descent (or ascent, if you prefer to eschew the downward implication of "descent" -- and its inescapable whitemotherfucker codeword implications of "decent" or mediocre - and any and all other linguistic hodadly turdballs hurled at the Pacific Peoples by the hegemonic and grimly awful, deeply fucked euro-bastard patriarchal reich) um... represent. In overlooking this, I've become that which I hate, and so I hate the thing I've become: myself... and I agree that I should be flayed, salted and left to the fire ants despite my sincere and deeply felt apologies, which are I admit too little too late and inadequate in addressing my culpability in this most egregious of horrific offenses, for which I accept full responsibility and about which even I "tsk tsk" myself behind my own back, and if you think that's easy, try it. Not that I deserve an "easy out" for not only downratcheting the perceived value and dignity of the "Tiny Bubbles" hitmaker but overlooking such cultural edifii that my early referencing scarcely hints at. Dig:

Poi.
The Ukelele.
The Grass Skirt.
Surfing Itself.
"Dog" the Bounty Hunter.
Macadamia Brittle.
Fish with names so long and glottally taxing that one is liable to sprain his or her tongue before completing the sentence "please pass the Humahumanookanookawaha... URK!"
These and so many other contributions need not even be mentioned, but they cry out to be said. Not in a Hectoring, didactic caucasio-bastidge way but in a soft, low murmur redolent of supplication and prostrate repentance. For it is only by understanding these monumental pancultural offerings that we can truly grasp our heretofore and hitherto slavish, unconscious reliance upon -- and implicit support -- of such limited, purblind and reactionary blancobsessive concepts as
The Stratocaster.
The Cardigan.
Golf itself.
"Dog" the Bounty Hunter.
Cheez Waffies.
Bigmouth Billy Bass.
What fools we crackers be! And how profoundly we have cheated ourselves of the richness of this vast resource of proud other-than-whitemalestraightness, which we have nonetheless exploited with little regard for consequences, inherent responsibilities, corrective perspectivication and all-'round "mmm-mmm goodness." We, and I do mean me, deserve nothing less than the full extent of the wrath of those to whom is entrusted the demand for justice by those countless and nameless victims of the agenda of unicultural bepenised aryonassic ur-domination, whose silent voices shout inaudibly (but no less eloquently) for the justice so brutally and longly denied them for so many long, brutal centuries of convenient denial. With this in mind I beg you to split my backbone with a fire axe and root through my belongings as I bleed to death ignominiously in the just agonies of my richly-deserved final throes of fatal payback, and I entreat you to laugh scornfully even as my dying breath utters the from-the-bottom-of-my-heart "I'm sorry.. so sorry..." the very least that my sorry ass owes you, and by -- it can not be emphasized enough -- all others to whom justice is more than just a word and a tip of the "cowboy hat" of oppressive condescension.

This will not end here. I will continue to post elaborate apologies until I receive official word that my contrition is accepted as sufficient (as if it could ever be), at which point I will leap off the Empire State building wearing a sign reading: "I continue to be REAAAALLLLY fucking sorry!" I fully expect all right-thinking persons to take that opportunity to urinate on my shattered, splattered but no less penitent corpse.

I'm sorry-
Sport

2007-04-09T23:31:00.000-04:00

NAPPY HO!

2007-04-09T00:56:00.000-04:00

2007-04-09T00:20:00.001-04:00

There was a post here about the De Paur Chorus, but all the pictures seem to have been removed. Dunno why. So fuck the entire entry, I guess.

2007-04-03T13:51:00.000-04:00

POSTED THIS AS A MYSPACE BULLETIN, BUT MAYBE YOU'RE NOT ON MYSPACE.
(Isn't it sort of silly that someone my age is on MySpace?)

Last night I joined David Garland on WNYC for an April Fool's Day show. We did some "Mad Lib" tunes David prepared (with call-in listener assistance), played wacky music and aired some of the audio-edit pieces I sometimes construct when the absinthe is flowing late at night. You can listen online to the entire archived broadcast here:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/spinning/episodes/2007/04/01

I've endured Garland's blatant disrespect and insubordination on several broadcast occasions, so listen into these precious audio documents from the Spinning On Air archive....

Hi-jinks similar to those on the April Fool's show are featured on this earlier ('04), election day show:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/spinning/episodes/2004/10/29

This next one, '02 is devoted to the UNCLE album:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/spinning/episodes/2003/09/05

The next one evidently includes a live-in-studio performance from around '00 or early '01:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/spinning/episodes/2002/12/27

2007-03-31T02:30:00.000-04:00

DUHH.... tell me about the rabbits, George...

I may return to more active blogging; I feel it comin' on.
Tonight I'm just dwelling on an enormous pet peeve of mine: this internet-enabled swarm of "experts" who are invited to spout about other people's work in places like Amazon.com. I've been attacked there by at least one of them, but I quickly sussed the perpetrator's identity through recognition of pet invectives (and anyway, you don't make records like mine expecting huzzahs... or anything at all). Fact is, most reviewers, even the ones who get paid to do it and who sign their names to the reviews (and I do it myself sometimes), are snide morons with a scant knowledge of music in general and no particular philosophy or discipline regarding their task. They simply type out a reaction to another human's passionate labor and cash the check.

Many are serious and informed, for sure, but go thumb through any publication from your local paper to (god forbid) Alternative Press or the eternally wrong Rolling Stone and you'll confront a clown-car load of stupid, stupid fucking typing by Rollos young and old. Some get way out of hand; check the web for rank personal slander directed at musician Stephen Merritt by the New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones and some lower-prestige lifeforms that loiter amidst his tentacles (some critics do develop this groupiedom of parasitic acolytes; the often-great Lester Bangs had plenty and the very awful Robert Christgau has one dilly of a buttboy in St Louis nobody Steve Pick, whom you may recall as the scumthing who sneered at my Uncle album with a dishonestly inaccurate description of the album's subject... of course he also sneered at the Silos, which suggests an outside influence I'm loath to discuss but did allude to in the first paragraph).

Anyway, at least those guys can write somewhat and think a bit (barring Pick, whose sentence construction alone is a high school newsletter-level abomination, and Bangs, who's dead); lots of "reviewers" who populate the internet tend to be anonymous civilian jerkoffs with more spare hours than brain cells, and instead of keeping their ignorance confined to a blog - where the like-minded can find their words, read 'em and agree or argue and whogivesashit, like me over here - they slither by night into the public square to tack up their irrelevancies for all to read come morning. This is of little consequence when the commentary is directed at someone as well-known as Brian Wilson (see below), but in the case of a great artist like Bill Fay, who will never get so much as a whiff of the respect and success he's deserved for decades now, it's disgusting.

I cite Bill Fay here even though there's still very little reaction to his work at all. Time of the Last Persecution, his sophomore masterpiece, isn't even reviewed on Amazon as of this writing. Nor is either recent collection of inedits. Only the self-titled first album gets the treatment: one rave, one damn-by-faint-praise, and... uh.. this...

BILL FAY - BILL FAY
i don't get it August 7, 2006
Reviewer: Mat Bernhardt "hughmcnutts" (Scotts, Michigan United States)
i got the cd expecting something truly out of the ordinary. instead i got very bland music. i'm fairly open minded and have wide musical tastes, but this was pure garbage (no offense). as a matter of fact i tossed the cd in the garbage at work....

Well, Mat "hughmcnutts" Bernhardt, I hereby tender one steamin' Hot Carl down your gaping babybird gullet, ya fuckin' cunt. Do you have some friend who wisely recommended Fay? Well that friend is wasted on you, and someone oughtta tell that friend that you're no damn good.

If you don't "get" Bill Fay, gentle reader, you don't "get" Song. Several of his songs... more than several... are among the very finest works I've ever heard. Their brilliance astounds me... they make me want to write songs and to quit at the same time, the former because of an inspired simplicity and depth that renews faith in the possibility of songcraft and the latter because they're so much better than anything I've ever done. I Hear You Calling gives me chills, breaks my heart, fixes it. Be Not So Fearful almost lets me believe in prayer again. Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow makes me glad to continue living. I nearly curl up in a ball and weep when he sings Down to the Bridge. Warwick Town, Maudy La Lune are such perfect, loving tales of human lives I cannot comprehend why they're not beloved by millions. His modesty thwarts a grand latterday discovery of the work, since people tend to want a freak show or a tragedy or some delusion of stylistic originality/priority to assist their cloth ears. But these songs, if written by McCartney/Lennon or Dylan, would have long since been enshrined as among their greatest efforts. Let All the Teddies Know contains one of those colossal lyric couplets that flattens me with every listen, and no I won't quote it. Everyone should buy the albums and learn the songs and if they don't hit you, you are obliged - in the name of all that is holy in music - to keep returning until you grasp their magnificence. Among which songs would I place his best? Waterloo Sunset, Northern Sky, I Shall Be Released, Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, Wild Horses, Ain't No Sunshine, The Mercy Seat, Highway Kind, Up On The Roof, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, Don't Let It Bring You Down, Hallelujah, Til I Die, The Things Our Fathers Loved, Wichita Lineman, Skylark, Natural Woman, In the Gloaming, Reason to Believe, Big Louise, I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer, A Song For You, Pleasures of the Harbor ...well, et al... the best songs I know, and this list maybe betrays a morbid ballad bent to my tastes, but you knew that.

My point is, listen to Bill Fay. My other point is, man, fuck all these people and their withering opinions. WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS? Is it Simon Cowell-itis? Some Will to Power thing? Who gets up in the morning and decides to go on Amazon and tell the world that they don't like someone's music? What the fuck?!?! You'll note the highlighted phrase in the above Bill Fay slam; this is a common ego-flourish in these spitball postings. Observe:

BRIAN WILSON - SMILE
Unlistenable March 7, 2007
Reviewer: Harry Haller (Portland, OR)
Let's forget the folklore for a moment -- the 37 years, the genius of Brian Wilson, the "teenage symphony to God," the best record never made, all that -- and focus on the music itself. It's unlistenable. A bunch of silly, goofy, "songs," sung in funny voices and with lots of goofy background noises. This might be appealing to a toddler -- seriously, it sounds like something you might hear on Sesame Street -- but I don't see the appeal to anyone over the age of 3. In a lifetime of listening to music, there have been very, very few records that I couldn't get through at least once. I don't think I made it through the first 4 "songs" on this CD. Think of the worst CD you ever listened to. This is worse than that. Pure sonic agony.

Let's forget, for a moment, the self-delusion that convinces Mr. Harry Haller that his view of the work of Wilson and Parks is worth sharing.
What on Earth is wrong with the music from Sesame Street? Joe Raposo: good enough for Sinatra, the Carpenters, etc, but not lifetime music listener Harry Haller of Portland, who does enjoy the combination of catchy, "hook-filled pop with more challenging and difficult soundscapes" offered up by (get this) the Dandy Warhols. Piss-ant Harry Haller, who thinks it important that he clear the air on this vast conspiracy to con the world into enjoying the music of BRIAN FUCKING WILSON. All the rest of us who adore this music are poseurs or gulls taken in by "the folklore." If only we'd come to our senses and actually listen to the music. Eureka! Then there's this Einstein...

BRIAN WILSON - SMILE
Not Everything Improves with Age
March 13, 2007
Reviewer: Richard T. Kemph "i tell it like it is" (Dallas, TX USA)
Let me preface by disclosing that I'm 24 years old, because I believe that age was one of the biggest factors in shaping my opinion for this album. If you're older than me, you'll arguably appreciate it more than I did; if you're younger, possibly even less. The truth is that this album reached legendary status before it was ever released, as long as forty years ago. More than likely, there are scores of fans that waited faithfully for the entire forty odd years it took to Wilson to cultivate it. Unfortunately, I am not one of those fans. I am quick to point out in my own defense, however, that my musical tastes are nonetheless diverse. I appreciate music in all shapes and sizes, and I have as broad a range of musical interests as anyone I know. However, when listening to Smile, I am unable to silence the inner critic which says that despite all of its successes, Smile is an album that feels noticeably outdated. I listened for the harmonies and arrangements, and even listened all of the way through a few times, just as the critics insisted. But to call this album a masterpiece as so many before me have would only mask my true feelings.

This is merely an excerpt from Mr. Kemph's "tellin' it like it is" entry (this dick has a personal logomotto!). Oy: "let me preface by disclosing..." that this here is a pretentious young douchebag who seems to think his "true feelings" matter to anyone, anywhere, ever. I too was once a young numbnuts, but I would never have wasted such effort on words better spent championing something else that I dug enough to share. Note that the stilted syntax and the "I simply must say this... it needs to be said" contrivance of this sprout's blather is a handy tip-off to a wannabe journalist. I'm surprised he didn't add some horseshit about "full disclosure." Again though, the folly of youth. A good ass-whuppin' or twenty and he'll be safe to bring out and greet visitors.

I'm just asking: why? And why do I care? Well, I don't really. Just priming the ol' blog pump.

By the way, Mat, Harry and Richard... if you've Googled yourselves and discovered this tirade, feel free to retaliate with bad Amazon reviews of my albums. No need to listen; just make shit up. Good words to use: indulgent... stupid... goofy... boring... have at it. Then you'll be just like the other jackasses who get paid to do it. And it'll give me something else to make fun of here.

And remember, gratuitous, unilateral online insults suck, don't they?

2007-03-29T22:12:00.000-04:00

Who are the people in your neighborhood? In your neighborhood... in your neighborhood...

Last night at a listening party for the new cd by Nick Cave's band GRINDERMAN, I met porn legend JAMIE GILLIS, seen above in the classic THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN. Nice fellow, at least to have a drink with. And Grinderman's a killer band, too.
A good cd to listen to, especially while having a drink with porn legends. Skoal, fellow deviants.

2007-02-21T23:33:00.001-05:00

So after so long without any "real" posts, I'm not sure who's reading for news updates etc. It got hard to write anything for a number of reasons, mainly disinterest. But I've been feeling pretty good lately and that's another reason, probably.

In case you like my music and want to know what's up on that front, I am happy to report that I'm well into the next album, produced by Andres Karu (from The Wonder Stuff, Love In Reverse, etc). It's a very good partnership so far and we've got 7 things going in various stages of completion. Looking to do about 6 or 7 more.

It's the best, tightest shit I've made in a looooong time. I'm stoked. Dunno where it's ultimately bound, release-wise, but I truly don't give a shit. Some may see it as distressingly ordinary in that I've resolved to make it a collection of accessible tunes with a minimum of indulgent arcana.

The next project will delve into all that pretty deeply, but now I'm trying to make one that reflects what I've been listening to lately, which is still a lot of singer-songwriter stuff like the sublime Bill Fay and the cynic's choice Alan Price, classic Psych-Pop like the list I posted in a previous entry, Pop titans like Michel Polnareff, and the Great Masters... Gainsbourg, Brian, Scott Walker so forth.

Fuck, it's good stuff.

2007-02-15T23:53:00.000-05:00

LILY!! MILES!!

2007-02-08T16:02:00.000-05:00

Recently discovered this pic of Me and Pete with a shitload of fireworks, around 24 years ago. What a 4th that was!!

2007-02-08T02:03:00.000-05:00

Ok... another image while I'm on the topic. This one's a gouache painting of the Match Game's UGLY EDNA. Gene Rayburn would read: "Ugly Edna was SO ugly..." and the audience would shout in unison: "HOW UGLY WAS SHE??"

One of a series of Match Game character portraits.

Dumb Dora, Old Man Periwinkle, et al. Visualized AT LAST.

I saw a need and filled it. You're welcome.

2007-02-08T01:54:00.000-05:00

Opening panel... unfinished, no text yet, etc. Now, I'm no WALLY WOOD, but hell... it's fun.
I've had a lifelong love for this poor fellow, and it's up to me to save him.
This is a kind of crackpot sacrament, as serious as it is ludicrous. You know what I'm saying, eh?
The AMAZING GUY doing a bit of fishing. Unfinished again, but ....y'know... a peek.

2007-02-08T01:43:00.000-05:00

HI THERE.
With regard to the story posted below... it has haunted me since childhood.
Without too much foofaraw, it says a lot about how I think of people.

One of my current projects is a comic, and it will include the beginning of an attempt to save the Amazing Guy from the dire fate to which his creator, Stephen Southwold, damned him.

I offer you, o faded acquaintance, a few images pertinent to this work. One's a simple character design (look leftward) and then, above, a pair of panels-in-progress depicting the Amazing Guy's pastoral meandering, bewildered and newly reborn, which will lead to his discovery of the fish-horn.

Just so's you know I'm still alive.

2007-01-11T22:57:00.000-05:00

2007-01-11T22:56:00.000-05:00

2007-01-11T22:55:00.000-05:00

2007-01-11T22:54:00.000-05:00

2007-01-11T22:53:00.000-05:00

2006-10-07T02:07:00.000-04:00

People have begun to write me concerning the departure of Slim Moon from Kill Rock Stars. It was news to me as well, and the obvious question is: will I remain on the label?

Well, the answer is: I dunno, but... I guess I know. Y'know?

Naturally, I had just begun recording a new album. Finally. This will continue in any event.
In the highly likely event KRS does not want it, I'll let you know how to get one. It'll be a little while yet; we want to make it a great one.

Working on my comic/mag as well.
Under current conditions I need to ration out my energies, and blogging, emailing and social interactions have suffered, but I hope the compensation will be good, concentrated creative work.
I'm tired of tragedy and bad luck keeping me staggering, shellshocked. Life is very fucking short.
I'm making the best work of my life; lack of support, success or subsidy has never stopped me before and it won't now.
20 years of invisible work... I only hope for at least another 20 years of it, invisible or not, because "a man's got to make whatever he wants and take it with his own hands" as Alan Price sang.
From childhood to the day I croak, the main thing is making stuff... this is my answer to death and denial and douchebaggery.

I plan to perform a bit as well, so wish me well with all these plans, as I wish for all of you and all of yours. And as I wish for Slim and for whoever's left at KRS.

See you soon.