8/02/2006
The tie that binds
It's going to be a great day. At this time of year, I don't put my
shirt and tie on until I'm right across the street from the hospital
on my bicycle, and I remove them as soon as I leave hospital property
on my way home. This morning, my tie slipped out of my bike basket,
and I didn't notice that it was missing for two blocks, after which I
had to go back and retrace my steps (pedals) to pick it up from the
gutter.
It had been run over a couple of times, but it's a dark brown tie and
diagonal stripes (you may remember it from the second season
of "Barney Miller"), and the tire marks merge with the pattern so
well they can' be seen at all unless one scrutinizes closely and
intentionally.
That, for me, augurs well for the the day
shirt and tie on until I'm right across the street from the hospital
on my bicycle, and I remove them as soon as I leave hospital property
on my way home. This morning, my tie slipped out of my bike basket,
and I didn't notice that it was missing for two blocks, after which I
had to go back and retrace my steps (pedals) to pick it up from the
gutter.
It had been run over a couple of times, but it's a dark brown tie and
diagonal stripes (you may remember it from the second season
of "Barney Miller"), and the tire marks merge with the pattern so
well they can' be seen at all unless one scrutinizes closely and
intentionally.
That, for me, augurs well for the the day
7/24/2006
Music reviews
Here are the latest music reviews from our very own Love Whip:
William Lee Ellis
God's Tattoos
Yellow Dog Records YDR1343
www.yellowdogrecords.com/wle
His guitar speaks back to him ... like a burning bush. God turns up pervasively, but as an inspiration rather than a subject. Is that difference clear? They're not songs about faith, but songs written to express the beauty of visions Mr. Ellis has had, and he happens to express himself with acoustic guitar in a powerful acoustic blues style style rooted both in East Texas and the Piedmont, with strong seasoning hints of Scotch Irish hill music. It's a very thoughtful record, a theme record, with the soft, introverted voice of a sensitive man sharing important secrets about Life and Beauty with his lucky listeners.
The titles say a lot: "Snakes In My Garden," "God's Tattoos," "When Leadbelly Walked the River Like Christ," "Search My Heart," "Four Horses," "Perfect Ones Who Break," "The Call," "Cold and Weary," "Here I Am, Lord Send Me," Jesus Stole My Heart," "The Missing Moon and Stars" and "Dust Will Write My Name."
Eddie Turner
The Turner Diaries
Northern Blues Music NBM0036
www.northernblues.com
Hendrix-like in vocal approach, but more into blues and swing. Still fully psychedelic. Power trio. Certainly rooted in blues. Blues fans and rockers alike will turn it up, replay individual cuts and otherwise make every effort to immerse themselves into this record. Jazz fans will find it palatable or better.
Drink Small
Blues Doctor: Live & Outrageous!
Erwin Music
www.drinksmallblues.com
If you know Drink Small, ten you know him as the best live blues guitarist vocalist out there and, man, I mean he is out there. "Live & Outrageous" indeed; the man solemnly told me once that he'd invented rap, then proved it off the cuff for the next twenty minutes. He pushes blues, he sells it as a frame that will hold any canvas from any other genre of music and do it convincingly, as in the Roy Acuff number on this CD re-issue of a mid-'80s cassette release which he prefaces by assuring the audience, "If you turn out the light, you'd swear I was white. If you hear me in the dark, you'd think I was Roy Clark." Okay, you're never really going to mistake Drink Small for Roy Clark, but if you haven't heard him, then you're mistaking someone else for the best solo or small combo blues performer on the road today.
He knocks them out wherever he goes. Where he goes is usually a Southeastern coastal circuit, centered around Columbia, South Carolina, but he makes it to Memphis and New Orleans once in awhile. He is pure T hell at festivals, because everyone's afraid to follow him. It's impossible for anyone to show the audience a better, bluesier, more authentic time.
Delaney & Bonnie
Home
Stax Records STXCD-8626-2
www.concordmusicgroup.com
"Bramlett was at a hotel bar with Stephen Stills, with whom she a was singing backing vocals. The pair got into an argument with a very drunk Costello who called Stills an "old tin nose" and, later, Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant nigger" (for which the clearly not-racist Elvis later profusely apologized). Unable to take further abuse, Bramlett punched the Englishman and knocked him out cold ..." That incident may qualify as Bonnie Bramlett's greatest remaining claim to fame in 2006. Jeez, backing vocals for Stephen Stills back in '79? That was a long way down from being one of the most emulated female vocalists in rock, a woman behind whom Eric Clapton and Dave Mason were happy to play.
Home was the first album (1969) by more-or-less hippies Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett and a fluid backing band. Recorded on Stax, "The Voice of Black America," it is, in retrospect, evocative less of Memphis or Muscle Shoals than of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Capitol of Southern Soul and Shag Dancing Nostalgia. While achieving this ambience seems like small reward for a record that included the talents of Booker T & the MGs, Leon Russell, Isaac Hayes and William Bell, it is actually a rare treasure of a package.
Quite simply, one does not find releases like this often, and it captures the best of 1969 very, very well. One tires of the Creedence, Beatles and Stones singles from that period that still crop up on specialty FM stations, as they are too familiar. This is a random, yet extremely lucky find from the patchouli, sweat and pot-scented record bins of that day. Thanks to Concord Music Group's CD re-release and re-mastering of this record, with added cuts, one doesn't need random luck. You can and should go right to it.
Janiva Magness
Do I Move You?
Northern Blues Music NBM0033
www.northernblues.com
Everyone's going nuts over this one. Play any song from this album for guests, and they'll perk up and want to examine the CD case in detail. Who is this woman? She is a young blues singer with remarkable control. She gives the impression that there's always more waiting, that the next phrase may be even better than the last. She is a true interpreter, and her takes on these perfectly chosen and various eleven songs are all unique. Attitude-wise, she describes herself as a "Hussy," which we can interpret as "one who flaunts her sexuality regardless of how disturbing that may be to all those she comes into contact with."
Her full band instrumentation stays behind her. It is her record and she is the star and focus of each cut. This factor actually requires some getting used to, and some significant pondering. So many blues songstresses, early on, sound dominated by the male musicians around them. She does not. She absolutely does not. And that's as it should be. A honey of a hussy of a release.
The Miles Davis Quintet
The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions
Prestige Records PRCD4-4444-2
www.concordmusicgroup.com
Those were the days, back when there were so many peaks to scale, and many scales to peak in small combo jazz. Those were the days when a quintet could astound listeners by finding strong, brash harmony between two instruments instead of sixteen, when the front and back lines of the band blurred, and could blur in more, better equipped studios, when it took a couple of days to make a record that would last forever, and Miles Davis was, to those in the know, king of this strange new world. There were thoughts that could be thought best or more easily with his music playing in the background. It was cool. It still is.
This is a great collection of first or second take masterpieces, and it's mandatory for a jazz CD collection not only for the recordings, but for the liner notes. When you obtain a set like this, you experience a level of music criticism higher than that found in most full length artist biographies. The booklet accompanying this four-CD set is a gorgeous, highly insightful and instructive work. Again, a must for the serious jazz collector. And cool.
Walter Trout and Friends
Full Circle
Ruf Records RUF1117
www.rufrecords.de
After thirty five years in the music business, five years since his last studio record, blues-rock guitar legend Walter Trout here reflects on the sounds that influenced him and the sounds through which he influenced others. Lending hands here are John Mayall, Coco Montoya, Jeff Healey, Guitar Shorty, James Harman, Richie Hayward, Junior Watson and several other luminaries from American and British blues royalty. The tunes are, well, typical of British blues, as is true of any Mayall alumnus going back to those true blue roots.
The guitar work is stellar and precise, though the vocals are, after all these years, still failing to evoke the natural, easy passion of real blues. Oh well, that's a hallmark of British blues, and, though it sounds artificial, it's dead center of a real tradition, Other, better vocalists, including John Mayall himself, add more distinctive, real flavor to the record.
All in all, this is as good a British blues CD as you're likely to find this year. It is a fine, current anthology.
William Lee Ellis
God's Tattoos
Yellow Dog Records YDR1343
www.yellowdogrecords.com/wle
His guitar speaks back to him ... like a burning bush. God turns up pervasively, but as an inspiration rather than a subject. Is that difference clear? They're not songs about faith, but songs written to express the beauty of visions Mr. Ellis has had, and he happens to express himself with acoustic guitar in a powerful acoustic blues style style rooted both in East Texas and the Piedmont, with strong seasoning hints of Scotch Irish hill music. It's a very thoughtful record, a theme record, with the soft, introverted voice of a sensitive man sharing important secrets about Life and Beauty with his lucky listeners.
The titles say a lot: "Snakes In My Garden," "God's Tattoos," "When Leadbelly Walked the River Like Christ," "Search My Heart," "Four Horses," "Perfect Ones Who Break," "The Call," "Cold and Weary," "Here I Am, Lord Send Me," Jesus Stole My Heart," "The Missing Moon and Stars" and "Dust Will Write My Name."
Eddie Turner
The Turner Diaries
Northern Blues Music NBM0036
www.northernblues.com
Hendrix-like in vocal approach, but more into blues and swing. Still fully psychedelic. Power trio. Certainly rooted in blues. Blues fans and rockers alike will turn it up, replay individual cuts and otherwise make every effort to immerse themselves into this record. Jazz fans will find it palatable or better.
Drink Small
Blues Doctor: Live & Outrageous!
Erwin Music
www.drinksmallblues.com
If you know Drink Small, ten you know him as the best live blues guitarist vocalist out there and, man, I mean he is out there. "Live & Outrageous" indeed; the man solemnly told me once that he'd invented rap, then proved it off the cuff for the next twenty minutes. He pushes blues, he sells it as a frame that will hold any canvas from any other genre of music and do it convincingly, as in the Roy Acuff number on this CD re-issue of a mid-'80s cassette release which he prefaces by assuring the audience, "If you turn out the light, you'd swear I was white. If you hear me in the dark, you'd think I was Roy Clark." Okay, you're never really going to mistake Drink Small for Roy Clark, but if you haven't heard him, then you're mistaking someone else for the best solo or small combo blues performer on the road today.
He knocks them out wherever he goes. Where he goes is usually a Southeastern coastal circuit, centered around Columbia, South Carolina, but he makes it to Memphis and New Orleans once in awhile. He is pure T hell at festivals, because everyone's afraid to follow him. It's impossible for anyone to show the audience a better, bluesier, more authentic time.
Delaney & Bonnie
Home
Stax Records STXCD-8626-2
www.concordmusicgroup.com
"Bramlett was at a hotel bar with Stephen Stills, with whom she a was singing backing vocals. The pair got into an argument with a very drunk Costello who called Stills an "old tin nose" and, later, Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant nigger" (for which the clearly not-racist Elvis later profusely apologized). Unable to take further abuse, Bramlett punched the Englishman and knocked him out cold ..." That incident may qualify as Bonnie Bramlett's greatest remaining claim to fame in 2006. Jeez, backing vocals for Stephen Stills back in '79? That was a long way down from being one of the most emulated female vocalists in rock, a woman behind whom Eric Clapton and Dave Mason were happy to play.
Home was the first album (1969) by more-or-less hippies Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett and a fluid backing band. Recorded on Stax, "The Voice of Black America," it is, in retrospect, evocative less of Memphis or Muscle Shoals than of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Capitol of Southern Soul and Shag Dancing Nostalgia. While achieving this ambience seems like small reward for a record that included the talents of Booker T & the MGs, Leon Russell, Isaac Hayes and William Bell, it is actually a rare treasure of a package.
Quite simply, one does not find releases like this often, and it captures the best of 1969 very, very well. One tires of the Creedence, Beatles and Stones singles from that period that still crop up on specialty FM stations, as they are too familiar. This is a random, yet extremely lucky find from the patchouli, sweat and pot-scented record bins of that day. Thanks to Concord Music Group's CD re-release and re-mastering of this record, with added cuts, one doesn't need random luck. You can and should go right to it.
Janiva Magness
Do I Move You?
Northern Blues Music NBM0033
www.northernblues.com
Everyone's going nuts over this one. Play any song from this album for guests, and they'll perk up and want to examine the CD case in detail. Who is this woman? She is a young blues singer with remarkable control. She gives the impression that there's always more waiting, that the next phrase may be even better than the last. She is a true interpreter, and her takes on these perfectly chosen and various eleven songs are all unique. Attitude-wise, she describes herself as a "Hussy," which we can interpret as "one who flaunts her sexuality regardless of how disturbing that may be to all those she comes into contact with."
Her full band instrumentation stays behind her. It is her record and she is the star and focus of each cut. This factor actually requires some getting used to, and some significant pondering. So many blues songstresses, early on, sound dominated by the male musicians around them. She does not. She absolutely does not. And that's as it should be. A honey of a hussy of a release.
The Miles Davis Quintet
The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions
Prestige Records PRCD4-4444-2
www.concordmusicgroup.com
Those were the days, back when there were so many peaks to scale, and many scales to peak in small combo jazz. Those were the days when a quintet could astound listeners by finding strong, brash harmony between two instruments instead of sixteen, when the front and back lines of the band blurred, and could blur in more, better equipped studios, when it took a couple of days to make a record that would last forever, and Miles Davis was, to those in the know, king of this strange new world. There were thoughts that could be thought best or more easily with his music playing in the background. It was cool. It still is.
This is a great collection of first or second take masterpieces, and it's mandatory for a jazz CD collection not only for the recordings, but for the liner notes. When you obtain a set like this, you experience a level of music criticism higher than that found in most full length artist biographies. The booklet accompanying this four-CD set is a gorgeous, highly insightful and instructive work. Again, a must for the serious jazz collector. And cool.
Walter Trout and Friends
Full Circle
Ruf Records RUF1117
www.rufrecords.de
After thirty five years in the music business, five years since his last studio record, blues-rock guitar legend Walter Trout here reflects on the sounds that influenced him and the sounds through which he influenced others. Lending hands here are John Mayall, Coco Montoya, Jeff Healey, Guitar Shorty, James Harman, Richie Hayward, Junior Watson and several other luminaries from American and British blues royalty. The tunes are, well, typical of British blues, as is true of any Mayall alumnus going back to those true blue roots.
The guitar work is stellar and precise, though the vocals are, after all these years, still failing to evoke the natural, easy passion of real blues. Oh well, that's a hallmark of British blues, and, though it sounds artificial, it's dead center of a real tradition, Other, better vocalists, including John Mayall himself, add more distinctive, real flavor to the record.
All in all, this is as good a British blues CD as you're likely to find this year. It is a fine, current anthology.
7/18/2006
Tunes and Toons
Enjoy this classic high-school humor from Whip's very own Latin II book, and then check out his latest record reviews at http://daddyvoice.150m.com/july05on.html
More kick-ass Whippery can be found at Whip's Database. Link below and to the left. Be sure to come back to Loonville to post comments!
7/13/2006
Sick of This, Part Three
OK, right after July 4th, I e-mailed a note to someone I'd dated in '05. Verbatim, the note read:
"The fourth was tough. A year ago, we were together. It's not that I'm trying to conjure up memories. They just surface sometimes. We walked down your mother's street and worked on getting that shared, couple pace down ... Last night, out of the blue, I had this overwhelming and thorough memory of that, and of holding your hand and putting my arm around your waist and feeling you beside me a year earlier.
"I'm not asking for or expecting anything from you. The last thing I want is for you to feel obliged to write back. Please just know that someone, once in awhile, thinks about you and that the thoughts are positive, and then hit that delete key and get on with your life, which I hope is happy and healthy.
She wrote back three times in a day to remind me that 7/4/05 was not all as wonderful as I remembered, what with her dad being sick and what-not and discouraging me from contacting her, and finally, in the third note, telling me that, although I bring out a toxic, hateful worst in her, she has occasional positive memories of me, too.
I wrote back and apologized, noting that twice (meaning when I sent the e-mail above and a couple of months ago, when I purchased two used bulldog books and a 2007 bulldog calendar and had them shipped to her), "I have failed at not being in love with you."
That e-mail from me accidentally carried a signature that sent her to this blog site, where she recognized herself as the bit player,"Rhonda (last year, with the bulldog)," and wrote back to tell me I was crazy for disparaging church people and dog people and people taking meds for mental illness, suggesting that my father, who called me and told me he was going to commit suicide over the disrespect I'd shown him by marrying without his permission and then died of natural causes (cirrhosis and alcohol-induced diabetes) a few hours later, and whose birthday, coincidentally, was July 4th, might still be alive had he just been on antidepressants, and then the blog site comments began.
"Anonymous said ... Gee I am seeing a pattern here with the food and restaurant experiences among many other things, so when do you think that maybe it is YOU and NOT the 'crazy' women you date? And well, lumping all of the 'crazy' women you date in Loonville together and then thinking 'Gee, why do they take this personally?' Hmm, I wonder? All I can think is you are addicted to these types of women for some very sad reasons. C'est la vie in Loonville!"
"Author said ... When you follow the blues, sometimes it catches you. Hell, yes, I've had those same concerns and worried about myself and done repeated soul searching, but then I get up and go to work and pay my bills and contribute to the community and get good comments here and elsewhere, as well as "sad" ones like this.
"The pattern is in this town and the sadness is in the therapy available to people I'd rather see well here. 'Coincidence' is something you missed the first half of. Pre-existing conditions of paranoia about government agencies, severe, ongoing back problems requiring heavy pain meds that string them out and confuse them on top of the mood meds, and the specific bizarreness regarding toothbrushes, conditions shared by all the women in these certainly sad narratives, point to a 'first half' for which I was not present.
The rational mind, then, looks for what was present, and where, when these conditions coagulated. That would be the therapy in this town.
"How awful and how sad am I for being present for its repercussions? Can they, literally, take these anecdotes by reading them as personally as they take their prescribed antidotes by ingesting them?"
"Anonymous said ... My question then is this: Why on earth would the 'rational mind' keep going backwards in life to revisit the very same 'crazy women of Loonville' that he USED to date? I am guessing that it is comfortable to this 'rational' minded person, and that it is as always self serving to keep going back to the familiar so he can continue to criticize them as opposed to say moving forward to the
unknown where he might actually find a woman who is not dysfunctional in his eyes, which by the way are few and far between, but then how would he answer to his own demons? That is a tough one. So it seems
the comfort zone provides better material to write about. And I am also guessing he tells these women he is still in love with them because he doesn't know what true love is and sadly never will unless he changes."
"Author said ... Reasons for trying again? Enough romanticism to see past the illness and into the souls of women I fall in love with. Enough egotism to believe I can ride it out until they get well. Enough faith in humankind to be absolutely certain that today's chemical therapy will be looked back on in a few years with the same abhorrence that we now feel for that fellow who received a Nobel Prize in the '40s for performing lobotomies with a device resembling nothing so much as an ice pick, inserted in mental patients' noses get.
"Gluttony for love that makes me take chances on known problems in order to pursue not just a present and possible future, which is what one gets dating strangers, but a past, present and future.
"Do I know what true love is? Hmmmm, it's hard for that one to not be subjective, isn't it?
"Do I know how long a doctor treating physical ailments could go on 'treating' them without any progress and with all of his patients 'coincidentally' developing the same new infections before losing his or her license and being sued for malpractice? I have a pretty good idea that after no more than six months, that physician would be lucky to find a job as a shoe salesperson. Do I know how long how many women of my acquaintance and, sadly, attempted affection, have received 'treatment' from the same mental health care provider in this small town and, in addition to retaining each and every aspect and degree of the illnesses for which they're supposed to be receiving professional care, have also all ended up convinced of constant, malevolent government agency surveillance, terrific back pain that must be treated with more and more numbing meds and some weird attitudes about toothbrushes? I have a pretty good idea that it's been far too ridiculously long."
And then there was another wee bit of e-mail correspondence from her:
"As it is very unhealthy to be partaking in this drama I am calling a truce, on my part, cannot speak for you. So no more comments from me or 'Rhonda' as I will not indulge your fetish for criticizing anyone and everyone from churchgoers, dog owners and people with legitimate pain issues ... which maybe one day you will have a chronic pain problem and will be more sympathetic although I doubt that as you have already proven that you yourself have some serious mental health issues and yet you show NO sympathy whatsoever for anybody else with said issues ... then again, denial is a strong emotion.
"So write away ... after all the only people I assume are reading this crap are your circle of other dysfunctional 'friends' (and I use that term quite loosely). Criticize me all you want ... and hey, even use my REAL name since your pseudonyms are not that creative ... write your opinions about everyone else in the world being so far beneath you that you have to suffer by being affected by their craziness. Poor you! Hey you lay down with dogs you are gonna get fleas!
"So keep telling yourself the half truths you like to believe and live in your own created Loonville, but I am guessing you will die all alone in this world because you would rather be right than loved. I give up ... I am letting go of the anger ( because I have considered the source and it is not worth getting upset over), I am not getting pulled into your little web of lies (like the editor that doesn't exist), not going to entertain you by reading your Blog to see what nasty things you have written about me or the world, I don't care what you obviously think of me (especially this schizo-attitude of 'I have failed at not being in love with you' but I can write disparaging commentary on my blog about all my past crazy girlfriends, 'Rhonda with the bulldog' being one of them because I am a writer!)
"My goal here is to live an honest life with peace and happiness not one filled with such negativity and hatred that you seem to be so filled with. It really saddens me to see a relatively intelligent man as yourself going down such a negative path. A pity really. Maybe one day you will wake up from your Absinthe/Salvia/Yopo seed smoking fog and see that the world actually can be a beautiful place if you let it be.
"I do have one regret that I feel the need to apologize for as it has truly been bothering me and that is the comment I made about your father. I do apologize for saying what I said. That was very low ... and sadly that is the kind of space you put me in ... and I do not like how I feel there. That is why I will not continue to read your Blog or be in contact with you. I never would have said that kind of statement before ... I feel it is equivalent to me telling MY mother 'Hey you aren't my real mother!' I would NEVER do that because it is so shamefully hurtful I could not bring myself to inflict that on her. I should not have commented on your father either. So for that, I do apologize. It was cruel and came from a very angry and mean spirited
place in me ... one which you obviously bring out and I try my best to not be that cruel of a person.
"So take care and keep on keepin' on in that crazy world you like to dwell in. Oh and by the way smoking Salvia or any other 'legal' hallucinogenic is so much better than taking Prozac! Guess you didn't see the news story about Salvia causing that young man to kill himself. But hey, it is legal! So I bid you adieu ... and I do wish you more happiness in your life ... you seem to need some."
... and then I responded to her and said that she'd made it clear that I brought out a bad side of her and would leave her be, but gave her proof of the editor's existence and told her she'd caught me at a particularly bad time with the jibe about my father, as his birthday had just passed and my July 3rd date had sent me a "my blood will be on your hands" note after I'd gotten tired of waiting for dinner and having government surveillance vehicles pointed out to me from her porch and window and had my beret used to clean the TV screen and been nipped by the goddamn dog enough times and gone home.
By the way, she's OK; I saw her ex-husband leaving the County Mental Health place earlier this week, which meant that she's alive, at least, and that he had, as is his habit, driven her to her weekly appointment with the therapist who'd advised her to clean people's toilets with that same husband's toothbrush a few years earlier.
That's the way life is here in Loonville. I later found out that she had attempted suicide, using, with an irony not diminished by the fact that she'd used the same method over a dozen times over the years, pills prescribed by the goddamn doctor who was supposed to be curing her mental illness to do so, and that sure as ever-living fuck never happens with herbal passionflower or yerba mate capsules. Anyway, that response apparently incited the anonymous "Rhonda with the bulldog" to end her "truce," because the following blog site comment then appeared:
"Anonymous said ... The 'ones' that get well unlist their phone numbers, block his email, issue restraining orders and ultimately flee this idyllic paradise to 'Get Well.' The remainders commit suicide. His path is strewn with death and decay. Author epitomizes 'Creep,' a desperate evangelizing atheist, hates love, believing in nothing but his own cum. This format is his cheap variation of his own therapy for his suffocating perversions."
"Author said ... There are neither restraining orders nor suicides, other than the 15th suicide attempt in a series by someone I never knew had tried it even once when I started seeing her or when I left her house, aggravated, prior to that 15th attempt. I think that note is a bit excessive in tone, bringing up new, cheap shot issues in a maddened frenzy that is not justified by any comment that precedes it. This must be someone who's desperately clinging to the chemical therapy I'm so against, attacking me for attacking the prescribed cotton candy fog of those damn pills."
Now is it plain to the sane that I should be sick of this shit, that all this makes it clear, not that I am the fucking Lex Luthor of Loonville Lovin'‚?, but that the therapy isn't working? Where do I provoke these comments from "Rhonda with the bulldog?" Where is all this death and decay, where are the suicides, where's my belief in nothing but my own cum and where are my suffocating perversions? For that matter, where, in her heavy correspondence and commentary here is her "flight" from Loonville, to which, as it is described in these voluntarily read pages, she repeatedly returned, and where, in her hateful, hurtful messages is the "wellness?." To me, this is one more sad example of the state of this town.
Yes, goddamn it, I do have fond memories of "Rhonda with the bulldog," and I would love to be in touch with her again, and in touch with any of the other excessive number of government-program-quack-drugged-victims here that I happen to have run across and dated because the Loonville Law of Probability inevitably leads me to them because they are everywhere, because of the very conditions I'm pointing out here.
So, yes, I am sick of this shit, and of being reviled and rejected by the women I meet in the community I live with when I go up against the system that is providing them poisons and not doing their minds a bit
of good.
7/11/2006
The Road to Hell is Paved
A workplace colleague, horrified by my ongoing series of dating disasters, offered to do some matchmaking for me, stating that she knew a charming half English, half Greek woman with a lovely English accent. I asked her if she had anything in a half Dutch, half Chinese woman with really tiny wooden shoes.
7/03/2006
Sick of This, Part Two
This morning, I made a nice entree pasta salad with beer-broiled flounder and called Annie to invite her over for a 1 p.m. lunch of that and ice cream. She called at 12:55, at which time, having given up on hearing from her at 12:40, I was just finishing lunch, and she suggested that maybe I'd like to pack the pasta salad and take it to a church potluck picnic with her. I dislike all churches, but reserve an especially high level of vitriolic, vehement hatred for hers; The Church, or, as I like to call it, The Church of the Walking Wounded.
Many years ago, when I was dating Annie, before she was diagnosed, I attended church with her. You see, it was her birthday, and I'd tried to buy her a thoughtful gift and be nice and do everything one is supposed to do, and then I asked her what else I could do to make her natal event, which happened to fall on a Sunday that year, special.
She told me I could go to church with her. I reminded her that I considered church congregations to be slack-jawed, superstitious mobs of like minded, no-minded morons and that I did not, on my own, wish for one instant in their company. She reminded me that I'd asked her what else I could do for her birthday, and off we went to the cheaply constructed, hexagonal frame building with the skylight over the sanctuary gummed with years of sap from the tall, skinny pine trees near the building and crap from the birds that made their homes on the upper branches ... the very phlegm of God, reserved for just such ridiculous clusters of contemptible idiots as was promised by the shark smiles and fake squeals of how-did-I-get-through-the-week-without-you delight echoing noxiously through the parking lot as shallow, needy people greeted one another with what they sincerely hoped was a good imitation of the fellowship they'd heard so much about.
We entered through the library, devoted mainly to liberal and arts periodicals, and I was surprised to be grabbed in near assault-level enthusiasm by an effeminate man in ambush near the door. He was part of a receiving line awash in fellowship and aslosh, judging by the malevolent tang in the air, in residue from successful men’s room encounters in some bar probably called “The End Zone,” but without sports paraphernalia or big screen TV sets tuned to ESPN, the night before.
As soon as that bastard turned me loose, I was mauled by a character so similar, he could have been having his rectum stretched in the very next stall during the starry, mimosa filled previous evening, then another. The whole goddamn receiving line was made up of extroverted gay men reeking of the little inconveniences resultant from destroying one’s ability to close one’s anus with any certainty or confidence, then fermenting acid-Ph semen there overnight, then standing in a church lobby and pressing against a hundred or so entrants.
Served by a husband-and-wife ministerial team with rhyming names and nary a college degree, the church also featured a Lucite podium in lieu of a real pulpit and an overhead projector / transparency rig instead of a hymnal. Said hymnal included, to my certain memory, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Try to Remember,” “Inch by Inch” and “The Impossible Dream.”
I strongly suspect it included “YMCA,” too, but we didn’t have to join hands and sing that one the day I attended services. No, our blessings were limited to a sermon backed up by a television remote used as a prop so that Renee and Penee could explain how walking God’s path was like watching TV, and how it was necessary to sit through the commercials along the way and not channel surf, or else some of Life’s lessons would otherwise be missed and one would come back as an armadillo or some damn lower species that’s probably not overly given to homosexuality, and that would be a shame, so sit through those commercials, boys and girls, and then there were prayer concerns from the congregation, announcements, silent prayer and a swaying, handholding version of the church anthem, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” and then a stampede for coffee and the glory holes that I was pretty sure were in all the men’s room stalls.
I am no homophobe; I simply do not want to know as much about anyone’s intimate life as I ascertained quickly, whether I wanted to or not, about these people. The whole congregation wasn’t gay. Some were just recovering junkies, recovering Catholics, unemployed actors in search of attention, recovering alkies, slumming Unitarians, mental outpatients and zealot tourists who were confused and had
gotten the wrong address out of the local phone book. It’s just that the receiving line made that impression and smelled that way … bad planning on the part of the Church Newcomers’ Committee, especially if they ever expected me to contribute my good flounder pasta salad to one of their flyblown goddamn potlucks. That shit was not in the cards.
Church potlucks. That’s where they film all those commercials about children being filthy little beasts who need to be hosed down with anti-bacterial sprays before they’re let near civilized adults or anything civilized adults will come into contact with. I’ll be a ring-tailed son of a bitch if I’ll let children pet stinking dogs that asshole Christians just will bring to potlucks in the park and then wipe their snotty noses and then paw my food as it congeals under a hot sun and swarm of flies and is offered to these church members like pearls to swine. Fuck them. They need to go to Hell right now, hands joined and an earnest version of “The Impossible Dream” on their lips.
I wanted, for some goddamn reason, to spend time with Annie. I did not want to tag along to a potluck and see those assholes from her church. By the way, the church's ministers slyly assign their members to “church families,” which are supposed to function as effective little support groups for their members, which is cool as long as they’re supporting problems like trauma over which dress to wear or lost sleep over whether or not Jesus was Jewish, but those fuckers dropped Annie and pretty much blocked her calls as soon as she was committed all those years ago.
Instead of food whoring out, going, “Wow, wow, wow” over crappy, bland, flyspecked, child infested bullshit at a hot park in Whackjob County in summer with a bunch of phony, self-indulgent, shallow creeps who’ve proven they will only put up with her until she actually needs to call on them, she should have fought down the self destructive urges her own sister and mother keep trying to put her back in an institution for and spent some time with me … better company, better food, more deserving, more comfortable, less crowded, less risk of infection.
I am sick of this shit.
Many years ago, when I was dating Annie, before she was diagnosed, I attended church with her. You see, it was her birthday, and I'd tried to buy her a thoughtful gift and be nice and do everything one is supposed to do, and then I asked her what else I could do to make her natal event, which happened to fall on a Sunday that year, special.
She told me I could go to church with her. I reminded her that I considered church congregations to be slack-jawed, superstitious mobs of like minded, no-minded morons and that I did not, on my own, wish for one instant in their company. She reminded me that I'd asked her what else I could do for her birthday, and off we went to the cheaply constructed, hexagonal frame building with the skylight over the sanctuary gummed with years of sap from the tall, skinny pine trees near the building and crap from the birds that made their homes on the upper branches ... the very phlegm of God, reserved for just such ridiculous clusters of contemptible idiots as was promised by the shark smiles and fake squeals of how-did-I-get-through-the-week-without-you delight echoing noxiously through the parking lot as shallow, needy people greeted one another with what they sincerely hoped was a good imitation of the fellowship they'd heard so much about.
We entered through the library, devoted mainly to liberal and arts periodicals, and I was surprised to be grabbed in near assault-level enthusiasm by an effeminate man in ambush near the door. He was part of a receiving line awash in fellowship and aslosh, judging by the malevolent tang in the air, in residue from successful men’s room encounters in some bar probably called “The End Zone,” but without sports paraphernalia or big screen TV sets tuned to ESPN, the night before.
As soon as that bastard turned me loose, I was mauled by a character so similar, he could have been having his rectum stretched in the very next stall during the starry, mimosa filled previous evening, then another. The whole goddamn receiving line was made up of extroverted gay men reeking of the little inconveniences resultant from destroying one’s ability to close one’s anus with any certainty or confidence, then fermenting acid-Ph semen there overnight, then standing in a church lobby and pressing against a hundred or so entrants.
Served by a husband-and-wife ministerial team with rhyming names and nary a college degree, the church also featured a Lucite podium in lieu of a real pulpit and an overhead projector / transparency rig instead of a hymnal. Said hymnal included, to my certain memory, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Try to Remember,” “Inch by Inch” and “The Impossible Dream.”
I strongly suspect it included “YMCA,” too, but we didn’t have to join hands and sing that one the day I attended services. No, our blessings were limited to a sermon backed up by a television remote used as a prop so that Renee and Penee could explain how walking God’s path was like watching TV, and how it was necessary to sit through the commercials along the way and not channel surf, or else some of Life’s lessons would otherwise be missed and one would come back as an armadillo or some damn lower species that’s probably not overly given to homosexuality, and that would be a shame, so sit through those commercials, boys and girls, and then there were prayer concerns from the congregation, announcements, silent prayer and a swaying, handholding version of the church anthem, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” and then a stampede for coffee and the glory holes that I was pretty sure were in all the men’s room stalls.
I am no homophobe; I simply do not want to know as much about anyone’s intimate life as I ascertained quickly, whether I wanted to or not, about these people. The whole congregation wasn’t gay. Some were just recovering junkies, recovering Catholics, unemployed actors in search of attention, recovering alkies, slumming Unitarians, mental outpatients and zealot tourists who were confused and had
gotten the wrong address out of the local phone book. It’s just that the receiving line made that impression and smelled that way … bad planning on the part of the Church Newcomers’ Committee, especially if they ever expected me to contribute my good flounder pasta salad to one of their flyblown goddamn potlucks. That shit was not in the cards.
Church potlucks. That’s where they film all those commercials about children being filthy little beasts who need to be hosed down with anti-bacterial sprays before they’re let near civilized adults or anything civilized adults will come into contact with. I’ll be a ring-tailed son of a bitch if I’ll let children pet stinking dogs that asshole Christians just will bring to potlucks in the park and then wipe their snotty noses and then paw my food as it congeals under a hot sun and swarm of flies and is offered to these church members like pearls to swine. Fuck them. They need to go to Hell right now, hands joined and an earnest version of “The Impossible Dream” on their lips.
I wanted, for some goddamn reason, to spend time with Annie. I did not want to tag along to a potluck and see those assholes from her church. By the way, the church's ministers slyly assign their members to “church families,” which are supposed to function as effective little support groups for their members, which is cool as long as they’re supporting problems like trauma over which dress to wear or lost sleep over whether or not Jesus was Jewish, but those fuckers dropped Annie and pretty much blocked her calls as soon as she was committed all those years ago.
Instead of food whoring out, going, “Wow, wow, wow” over crappy, bland, flyspecked, child infested bullshit at a hot park in Whackjob County in summer with a bunch of phony, self-indulgent, shallow creeps who’ve proven they will only put up with her until she actually needs to call on them, she should have fought down the self destructive urges her own sister and mother keep trying to put her back in an institution for and spent some time with me … better company, better food, more deserving, more comfortable, less crowded, less risk of infection.
I am sick of this shit.
Sick of This, Part One
It should have been a peaceful, perhaps even restful weekend. On Friday night, I spoke, somewhat productively, with my roommate, had a few beers, read a couple of Damon Runyon short stories and went to bed early.
Before seven Saturday morning, I tightened bicycle brake cables in anticipation of a ride to the 'burbs later to meet with Mojo Collins about a proposed slide guitar festival and then to have dinner with a friend and his ex-wife, who I introduced more than 20 years ago and who seem to be enjoying a reunion since I put them back in touch with one another a few months back.
After visiting with them, I was to go to a big Fourth of July party hosted by friends from work, and I'd even been offered a car ride to that event, a real plus since one can't see bike tire-puncturing nails and glass in gutters in the dark and because I do hate to drink responsibly.
The plan began to unravel when I got out of the shower at about 2:45, preparatory to leaving home at 3:15 to stop by a bank to make a deposit and by the grocery store for wine or flowers or something to take to Larry's house, where I was due at 5:30, as a dinner guest gift and then get to Mojo's house, near Larry's by four. As soon as
I turned the water off, I heard knocking on the front door. Hoping it was UPS bringing me those yopo seeds I'd ordered mid-month and looking forward to the hallucinogenic snuff one makes from them, I tugged on some shorts and went to the door.
It was Annie, offering to show me the new highway bypass around Loonville that had just opened that morning in return for half a tank of gas. She promised to get me to Mojo's house by four and we left my house at 3:10. Well, I've seen highways bordered by swamps before and got no aesthetic joy out of the road, but it was nice to see Annie positive and excited about something harmless and, since she'd worked for the highway department before yanking a cigarette out of a co-worker's mouth while driving a departmental vehicle (which was supposed to be nonsmoking space, being government property, but an official board of inquiry later decided would have been a shitload safer with a little cigarette smoke going out the open window than
with Annie careening all over an interstate highway while assaulting one of her colleagues), I could understand how the beauties of new pavement might not be so subtle to her.
Looking at my watch, I told her that we didn't have time to stop at the county line produce stand that marked the end of our tour, so she pulled into the produce stand parking lot and began asking me, "Don't you want a watermelon to take to Larry's?," and then, when I declined, asking me if I wanted tomatoes, then peaches, then every
other goddamn sonofabitching fruit and vegetable under the palm-thatched awning before us.
I kept saying,"No," and reiterating that we didn't have time to shop there, but since I'd been dumb enough to have handed her $25 cash back at my house for the requested gasoline, she got out of the car, went into the stand and immediately found a gay, male couple from her church to hug and annoy before starting her leisurely, melon thumping bullshit. I stood in the sun and smoked a cigarette.
You see, these fuckers on mental disability have no concept of time. They don't have to work, they've got all the time in the world to fuck around, sleep late, have to have their coffee shop coffee before they can do absolutely nothing in the morning and so on and so forth.
A few weeks ago, I watched "Dirty Filthy Love" with Annie, and her take on the film, which would be a "Sleepless in Seattle" quality chick flick if the protagonist wasn't an obsessive compulsive paranoid with Tourette's Syndrome, was that the people around this irritating, mentally ill, screwed-up mess should have just listened to him.
Yes, Dirty Filthy Love" is probably a good test of sanity, guys. Watch it with a woman you're getting to know -- If she thinks people with lives and loves and responsibilities should listen over and over again to some crazy fucker tell the story of how his wife
left him because he wanted to leave Istanbul and return home early from their vacation because he'd accidentally broken an aftershave bottle on the bathroom floor and might have gotten a microsliver of glass in his foot, then she's fucking crazy, herself, and you should either start running, keep running and don't stop to shit or be the constant victim of crazy women that I am. It's your choice. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Of course, her estimated half-pound of peaches weighed in at just less than four pounds (yeah, anybody could make that mistake), and so there was an ugly confrontation with the bewildered new arrival from Honduras at the checkout station, and we got back in her car fifteen miles from Mojo's house at 3:50.
Originally, we were to stop at my bank so that I could make a deposit, but that had to be abandoned, and I hate being late, especially to a meeting at which other participants have to think I have my shit together enough to, oh, let's say, be able to goddamn tell fucking time, and I explained all this to Annie, which made her do 70 in a 45 zone until I agreed that I'd rather be late than die in a loud car crash/ball of fire/disaster film epic, and she let me out at Mojo's at 4:10.
He was great company, positive, full of ideas (starting with moving our meeting to the cafe tables outside the Trendies-A-Plenty bookstore coffee shop, where I could smoke) and in all ways the right man to start planning this festival with. At 5:20, he gave me a ride the three blocks to Larry's house. Everything was clicking along, back on track. I yucked it up with a contented, domesticated Larry and delightful, bright Cindy and put down more beers than were really necessary to stave off dehydration. Larry generally followed directions given by Cindy, visiting him from her base in Confederate City, with the results one might expect from "generally following
directions" in a kitchen. There are some of foods I don't care for fresh, but am quite fond of frozen or canned or otherwise processed by others.
Asparagus, spinach and mangoes are on that list. I can't get the fibrous threads out of asparagus and don't give a damn about the satisfying crunch. Fresh spinach tastes like dirt no matter what,
and mangoes ... well, if they'd grow on trees pre-peeled, in chilled, glass jars of heavy syrup, then I'd have some serious mango mania, but they don't. They grow on trees or bushes or wherever the hell they grow before reaching grocery store bins in the form of sorry-ass substitutes for unripe apples with acrid, bark-thick peels.
"Oh well," must have thought Larry, at least if I make them into tricky shish kabobs, alternating slices of mango with the barklike peel still in place with unpeeled shrimp, everyone will be concentrating so much on wrestling the chitinous, clinging shells off
of hot, greasy shrimp without destroying the meat while fighting back tears of pain from having to handle piping hot shrimp fresh from the grill with one's bare fingers in the first fucking place that they won't even notice these cocksuckin', underdone mangoes. If you let them spend a little, but oh no, not enough time on the grill, mangoes develop the flavor of a boot heel that's trod on unripe apples, yet still retain their feisty, fibrous, annoying raw character.
And, of course, they caramelize just enough to make the neighboring, searing hot shrimp exoskeletons flanking them on the kabob skewers stick to your hands when you try to take them off the goddamn shrimp in order to make your meal become actual food. Oh well, my life has taught me that not all dinners lead to actually having a meal, so what the fuck. They were smoking cigarettes during the meal, anyway,
and that's an appetite suppressant for me. I smoke cigarettes; I do not eat them. Cigarette smoke in a kitchen will ruin chopped lettuce or onions for me. The company was good, and they gave me a ride to the party at about 8:30, which was great, and the party was a grand time. I stayed late and drank epically.
Before seven Saturday morning, I tightened bicycle brake cables in anticipation of a ride to the 'burbs later to meet with Mojo Collins about a proposed slide guitar festival and then to have dinner with a friend and his ex-wife, who I introduced more than 20 years ago and who seem to be enjoying a reunion since I put them back in touch with one another a few months back.
After visiting with them, I was to go to a big Fourth of July party hosted by friends from work, and I'd even been offered a car ride to that event, a real plus since one can't see bike tire-puncturing nails and glass in gutters in the dark and because I do hate to drink responsibly.
The plan began to unravel when I got out of the shower at about 2:45, preparatory to leaving home at 3:15 to stop by a bank to make a deposit and by the grocery store for wine or flowers or something to take to Larry's house, where I was due at 5:30, as a dinner guest gift and then get to Mojo's house, near Larry's by four. As soon as
I turned the water off, I heard knocking on the front door. Hoping it was UPS bringing me those yopo seeds I'd ordered mid-month and looking forward to the hallucinogenic snuff one makes from them, I tugged on some shorts and went to the door.
It was Annie, offering to show me the new highway bypass around Loonville that had just opened that morning in return for half a tank of gas. She promised to get me to Mojo's house by four and we left my house at 3:10. Well, I've seen highways bordered by swamps before and got no aesthetic joy out of the road, but it was nice to see Annie positive and excited about something harmless and, since she'd worked for the highway department before yanking a cigarette out of a co-worker's mouth while driving a departmental vehicle (which was supposed to be nonsmoking space, being government property, but an official board of inquiry later decided would have been a shitload safer with a little cigarette smoke going out the open window than
with Annie careening all over an interstate highway while assaulting one of her colleagues), I could understand how the beauties of new pavement might not be so subtle to her.
Looking at my watch, I told her that we didn't have time to stop at the county line produce stand that marked the end of our tour, so she pulled into the produce stand parking lot and began asking me, "Don't you want a watermelon to take to Larry's?," and then, when I declined, asking me if I wanted tomatoes, then peaches, then every
other goddamn sonofabitching fruit and vegetable under the palm-thatched awning before us.
I kept saying,"No," and reiterating that we didn't have time to shop there, but since I'd been dumb enough to have handed her $25 cash back at my house for the requested gasoline, she got out of the car, went into the stand and immediately found a gay, male couple from her church to hug and annoy before starting her leisurely, melon thumping bullshit. I stood in the sun and smoked a cigarette.
You see, these fuckers on mental disability have no concept of time. They don't have to work, they've got all the time in the world to fuck around, sleep late, have to have their coffee shop coffee before they can do absolutely nothing in the morning and so on and so forth.
A few weeks ago, I watched "Dirty Filthy Love" with Annie, and her take on the film, which would be a "Sleepless in Seattle" quality chick flick if the protagonist wasn't an obsessive compulsive paranoid with Tourette's Syndrome, was that the people around this irritating, mentally ill, screwed-up mess should have just listened to him.
Yes, Dirty Filthy Love" is probably a good test of sanity, guys. Watch it with a woman you're getting to know -- If she thinks people with lives and loves and responsibilities should listen over and over again to some crazy fucker tell the story of how his wife
left him because he wanted to leave Istanbul and return home early from their vacation because he'd accidentally broken an aftershave bottle on the bathroom floor and might have gotten a microsliver of glass in his foot, then she's fucking crazy, herself, and you should either start running, keep running and don't stop to shit or be the constant victim of crazy women that I am. It's your choice. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Of course, her estimated half-pound of peaches weighed in at just less than four pounds (yeah, anybody could make that mistake), and so there was an ugly confrontation with the bewildered new arrival from Honduras at the checkout station, and we got back in her car fifteen miles from Mojo's house at 3:50.
Originally, we were to stop at my bank so that I could make a deposit, but that had to be abandoned, and I hate being late, especially to a meeting at which other participants have to think I have my shit together enough to, oh, let's say, be able to goddamn tell fucking time, and I explained all this to Annie, which made her do 70 in a 45 zone until I agreed that I'd rather be late than die in a loud car crash/ball of fire/disaster film epic, and she let me out at Mojo's at 4:10.
He was great company, positive, full of ideas (starting with moving our meeting to the cafe tables outside the Trendies-A-Plenty bookstore coffee shop, where I could smoke) and in all ways the right man to start planning this festival with. At 5:20, he gave me a ride the three blocks to Larry's house. Everything was clicking along, back on track. I yucked it up with a contented, domesticated Larry and delightful, bright Cindy and put down more beers than were really necessary to stave off dehydration. Larry generally followed directions given by Cindy, visiting him from her base in Confederate City, with the results one might expect from "generally following
directions" in a kitchen. There are some of foods I don't care for fresh, but am quite fond of frozen or canned or otherwise processed by others.
Asparagus, spinach and mangoes are on that list. I can't get the fibrous threads out of asparagus and don't give a damn about the satisfying crunch. Fresh spinach tastes like dirt no matter what,
and mangoes ... well, if they'd grow on trees pre-peeled, in chilled, glass jars of heavy syrup, then I'd have some serious mango mania, but they don't. They grow on trees or bushes or wherever the hell they grow before reaching grocery store bins in the form of sorry-ass substitutes for unripe apples with acrid, bark-thick peels.
"Oh well," must have thought Larry, at least if I make them into tricky shish kabobs, alternating slices of mango with the barklike peel still in place with unpeeled shrimp, everyone will be concentrating so much on wrestling the chitinous, clinging shells off
of hot, greasy shrimp without destroying the meat while fighting back tears of pain from having to handle piping hot shrimp fresh from the grill with one's bare fingers in the first fucking place that they won't even notice these cocksuckin', underdone mangoes. If you let them spend a little, but oh no, not enough time on the grill, mangoes develop the flavor of a boot heel that's trod on unripe apples, yet still retain their feisty, fibrous, annoying raw character.
And, of course, they caramelize just enough to make the neighboring, searing hot shrimp exoskeletons flanking them on the kabob skewers stick to your hands when you try to take them off the goddamn shrimp in order to make your meal become actual food. Oh well, my life has taught me that not all dinners lead to actually having a meal, so what the fuck. They were smoking cigarettes during the meal, anyway,
and that's an appetite suppressant for me. I smoke cigarettes; I do not eat them. Cigarette smoke in a kitchen will ruin chopped lettuce or onions for me. The company was good, and they gave me a ride to the party at about 8:30, which was great, and the party was a grand time. I stayed late and drank epically.
