Brad Zellar

Fri, 28 Mar 2003 15:48:24 GMT

Moving Day

Sorry for the inconvenience, folks, but for reasons that are entirely unclear to me, City Pages is moving its weblogs to an offshore site where we can more easily protect the boatloads of cash that we're generating from this revenue-producing juggernaut. From this point on you'll find my usual incoherent spew here. Be warned, however: my best work (sic) is behind me. Also be sure and check out the virtuous and decidedly more lucid work of my colleagues. The advantages of this new system, as I understand it, is that it will allow us to blog from home, which essentially means that if my employers thought I was wasting a lot of their time on this enterprise, they --and you-- are going to be unpleasantly surprised to discover how much of my own time I'm willing to waste. Please adjust your bookmarks accordingly.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 17:27:41 GMT

The Best Website On The Planet

Every once in a great while you stumble across something on the Internet that reminds you how much your world has been transformed by this medium. As a lifetime library rat whose idea of Paradise is a place crammed to the ceiling with boxes of books and sounds and images and curiosities, there is nothing so satisfying as bumping into someone in cyberspace who is obsessively working away at a crazed and impossible blueprint for my personal Elysian Fields. Whoever is behind Speckled Paint is building --has built-- a wondrous Babel bazaar full of art, photography, advertising, medical curiosities, weird science, and all manner of splendid anomaly and exotica. It's the most visually stimulating and exhausting website I've ever come across, and I can't recommend it highly enough. The writing is damn curious and entertaining as well, even if it necessarily takes a backseat to the incredible archive of images. Here's a characteristic example (and you'll have to go to the site to find out the second thing alluded to in this entry):

I overheard two things on the radio that I would like to note for further thought at another time. Firstly—though not necessarily in an organized sequence—a BBC reporter acknowledged in an almost wistful way that: "It is easy to be blinded by the gee-whizery of it all."

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 16:54:00 GMT

War Is Just A Racket

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

--Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. Speech on Interventionism, 1933.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:26:20 GMT

You Never Hear About All The Good Things He's Done

Saddam Hussein: He always was a friend to the Motor City.

Tue, 25 Mar 2003 23:10:42 GMT

Fool Me Once

From today's CNN war coverage:

The residents of Basra, an important center of Iraq's Shiite population and Iraq's second-largest city, staged an uprising after the Persian Gulf War of 1991. But without backup from coalition forces that had driven Saddam Hussein's regime out of Kuwait, hundreds of thousands were killed.

The New Gods: An E.M. Cioran Sampler

Since things continue to get worse from generation to generation, to predict catastrophes is a normal activity, a duty of the mind....In history, we are always on the threshold of the worse....That is what makes history interesting, what makes us hate it, and be unable to detach ourselves from it.

We may be sure that the twenty-first century, more advanced than ours, will regard Hitler and Stalin as choirboys.

There is no point in being a monster if you are not also a theoretician of the monstrous.

Man, that exterminator, has designs on everything that lives, everything that moves: soon we shall be talking about the last louse.

I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.

Cow's urine was the only medicine monks were authorized to use in the first Buddhist communities. One cannot imagine a more judicious restriction. If we pursue peace, we shall reach it only by rejecting whatever is a factor in disturbance, whatever man has grafted onto simplicity, onto his original health. Nothing exposes our failure better than the spectacle of a pharmacy: all the remedies desirable for each of our ills, but none for our essential ill, for the disease of which no human invention can cure us.

Disgusted by nations, I turn to Mongolia, where it must be good to live, where there are more horses than men, where the Yahoo has not yet triumphed.

--E.M. Cioran, The New Gods. 1969.

Mon, 24 Mar 2003 22:40:59 GMT

Here Are Some Nights, Here's A Dream

Almost a dream, anyway. The best I can offer: It's the middle of the night and I'm driving through the completely empty streets of the city and I come to a red light at this intersection. There's a cop car right there on the opposite side of the intersection, parked along the curb, facing the green light. I sit there at that red light for what seems like fifteen minutes, and during this time I don't see another vehicle pass through the intersection. I sit there for a few more minutes until I figure there must be something wrong; the stop light must be broken. It's three o'clock in the morning and I have no intention of sitting there until the sun comes up. I finally just run the red light, and the cops immediately pull me over and stomp my fucking ass.

I've been living in a crouch for weeks. Sitting alone one night I listened to Skip James followed immediately by Mahler's Ninth Symphony, and I wondered if perhaps this was the first time in the history of the planet that anyone anywhere had played these two recordings back to back. It certainly seemed to be in the realm of possibility, and if I got even more specific I increased the odds: Skip James' 1931 Paramount sides on Biograph, followed by Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's recording (for Deutsche Grammophone) of Mahler's Ninth. Yes, surely I had made some kind of gloomy history. There could be little doubt. Sitting there on the floor of my cluttered room I had, in fact, become a sort of obscure pioneer. How was this any different from the exploits of those lunatics who plodded across the ice at the top or bottom of the world just so they could say they'd seen some nothing that nobody else had ever seen? Who's to say? You plant your flags, I'll plant mine.

I've got nothing. I've got fifteen minutes of nothing. Eight hours of nothing. No, not that unspeakable Budweiser lamp, not that plastic pineapple drink glass, not that Hair Bear Bunch lunch box, not that bleached out Colt 45 tee-shirt, not those gawdy three dollar sandals, not that Army Surplus store Desert Hat with the chin strap, not those truck stop sunglasses, not that gesture where you put your index finger and your thumb to your lips, squint your eyes, and pretend to inhale. Not that belt buckle that folds into a pot pipe, not that big leather wallet that's connected to your belt loop with a big chain, not that fake Mexican accent, not that CB lingo routine, not those barbecued pork rinds, not that big can of Foster's Lager, not that big, ironic peace sign necklace. No, no, please, no, anything but that.

And please don't cry "BINGO!" when you have nothing but "I-N-G." Don't sit there mulling over those sad days when you were forced to gag down wax-paper cartons of warm milk that had been sitting there for hours unrefrigerated in the coat room of your old kindergarten class. Come down from there right this instant. Turn down that stereo. Tie your shoes. Blow your nose. Straighten up and fly right. Wake up and smell the coffee. Don't talk with your mouth full. Look at me when I talk to you. Wipe that smile off your face. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Show your grandmother your new braces. Apologize to your sister. I will not have you talk that way in this house. You are not going anywhere until you take off that ridiculous hat. What do you have to say for yourself? I'm not going to ask you again. Put down that Submarine gun and come out with your hands in the air.

That should be Submachine gun.

My wife told me that I have some work to do, and I don't exactly understand what she means, even as I recognize the apparent general truth in her words. I spend an inordinate amount of time splayed on the floor, the position in which I am most comfortable, my head rocking at the margins of sleep. I have spent years becoming this man. Slowly becoming this man splayed on the floor, staring at the dim, dusty astronomy of my skull. I fully understand that one small half-turn of something in my head and I could be lost forever.

At least it's not like the old days, when I had wee beasties in the floorboards, full-throated bastards, every one of them, belting the old tunes long into the night. With nary a pound of flesh to spare, and nothing on what you might call the gainful side, alone I'd sit with tears welling in my eyes, bare- and slight-chested as a rubber chicken, staring into a fire that was there only in my dreams, rocking myself like a porcelain doll. When the whiskey ran away with my tongue I'd join the wee beasties; I've a lovely tenor, or so I've been told a time or two, but my old landlady had little tolerance for popular song, particularly in the small hours, and she wasn't bashful about going after the ceiling with a broomstick.

A Letter Found In An Old Biology Textbook

Listen, Leonard, it's true what you've probably heard by now. It's one of those things that happens around here that you can't believe. You remember what happened some years ago with Neil and the compost pile, well this was a worse deal all around. Mickey had the .22 and the hog came at him and somehow got him off his feet and the rifle discharged and Mickey got it right in the ear. We haven't figured it out yet, and I don't suppose we will. Dwight's running for mayor, and he was on the television last night giving a speech and waving his arms around and shouting like a madman about the fact that we've given the Indians such a hard time in this country. Tom Keck, who Dwight's running against, pointed out that to the best of his knowledge we don't have a single Indian in this town, and Dwight shouted, "I rest my case!" It's always something with our people, Leonard, but you know that better than anyone. How's Oslo? Thanks for the postcard of the statue. Never heard of the fella. Ma wishes you'd write her a letter now and again so she'd have some idea what you're up to.

Eternal Lacrimation Is A Sorry Occupation

The whisper of the old crone had been crawling in the King's ears for weeks. By now, he figured, the madwoman's words were burrowing in his brain. A sneeze carried to him from a distant chamber --the Queen had a cold. A moment later he heard clapping, a snatch of a cheerful tune. The odd bird he had married would dance and sing alone to her heart's content. Bodies stacked like cordwood outside the walls, and the daft Queen remained the picture of happy oblivion. The woman never seemed to sleep. The King heard her solitary revels long into the night. She was getting wine from somewhere, he was sure of that.

He had a headache. The smoke from the pyres had fouled his lungs. There was nothing to do around the damned place but walk; he'd had it with horses. All of his old chess partners were either dead or in exile. What a dreadful life, he thought. So boring, even with all the dying. His lunatic son served no one but God, and had burned every book in the castle. Not that any of them had been worth a damn. God Almighty, how he hated writers.

If he could keep any of his enemies straight, if he could pinpoint which of the scoundrels had planted so many crazy ideas in his wife's head, he'd have the guilty party flayed and strung up from a tree. At the risk of offending God he had already banished his son --he'd heard stories for weeks that the wrong-headed fool was wandering in a sack cloth and living in the surrounding woods. By God, the King felt pinched and set upon from all sides. There wasn't a damn thing left to eat in the place but roasted meat and stale bread. His one daughter had run off to Brussels with a rock and roll musician.

The King didn't have a single hobby that could sustain him. He'd been an obsessive counter for years, but he was even tired of counting. He'd saddle a horse and ride right out from under his miserable life if he wasn't such a poor horseman and so damnably overweight; what a mess he was --he wouldn't doubt he was carrying 20 stone on his tortured frame.

Listen to that: now the foolish woman was laughing herself sick. He went to the door of his chamber and listened. Oh, something was entertaining enough, by God, in this dark and baleful world. Not another sound beyond the lunatic raving of his wife. If he could find anyone left to do the job he intended to have the Queen's head cut off first thing in the morning and her body dragged deep into the dark woods by oxen. He would have her buried; it was the one concession he would make: he would not have her body flung upon the stinking piles of the common dead.

The King made his way to the North tower and gazed out at the wreckage time had made of his kingdom. He could see the bobbing torches borne by the roving bands of marauders. A stinking, sickening cloud hung low over the wretched scene. The loud guitars and absurdly booming bass of anarchy blasted from the portable stereos in the impromptu trailer encampments that were scattered throughout the dark woods, each of them, it seemed, more squalid and libertine than the next. The King was weary beyond words. There was no end to his misery. His campaigns of righteous vengeance had bequeathed him a kingdom of resentful refugees. He needed a new line of work.

There was no one left to talk to, no one he could trust. Even the ghosts had stopped talking to him; they now avoided the area around his chambers altogether, having apparently grown tired of his labored breathing, his ceaseless monologues, and the sorry spectacle of his rambles in the wee hours. He wished like hell he had joined his old friend Ruckert, who had bought himself an Airstream Trailer and was now armed to the teeth and living in the desert somewhere. While the King sat there in his dark and drafty castle, surrounded by death and complete anarchy on all sides, Ruckert was probably watching his Wolfhounds couple and drinking a cold Budweiser. Ruckert had been the smart one. The rest of the old gang had either hung or gone to the chopping block.

The King lit a candle and took a piss from the small window next to his bed. He could hear his feeble offering rattling in the leaves below. The fires were still blazing in the woods, and the music was raging louder than ever. The fleeing servants, he imagined, had already stripped the place of everything of value, and he imagined that the marauders would come for him soon enough, their murderous rage now driven by little but habitual stupor and boredom. They were welcome to what was left of him. He would content himself with the knowledge that he had been a King, and that was surely something. That for damn sure still counted for something in this world.

Mon, 24 Mar 2003 20:23:09 GMT

Persecuted And Punished By The Pen: Life During Wartime

Iron Writing Styles Or Boys' Pens, --What They Are, And To What Purposes They Were Turned

This was an instrument of brass, wherewith writing was executed in Ancient times on a white ground, that is on wax tablets, just as our merchants are used to write nowadays on wooden memorandum books or billets....

Accordingly with these writing styles, as a very painful form of death, those condemned to die were often stabbed. This is attested by many authors, and these the most trustworthy, as by Suetonius, Life of the Emperor Caius in these words: "Wishing the Senator's destruction, he suborned men to assail him as he left the Senate House, and suddenly inveighing against him as a public enemy, to stab him with their writing pens and pass him on to others to be yet further mangled." Also Seneca, "Erixio, a Roman Knight, was within our own memory stabbed to death by the populace in the Forum with their writing pens, because he had killed his son by flogging." The same likewise is witnessed by the Acts of St. Mark of Arethusa, where we read, "From one crowd of boys to another was Mark tossed, swinging to and fro, as they caught that noble body on their sharp pens or styles"; likewise the Acts of St. Cassian the Martyr, "Hereupon the holy man was questioned by the persecutor and asked what knowledge or special skill he had that he must teach the boys their letters....Then stripped of his clothes, and with hands tied behind him, he is made to stand up in the midst; and the lads being called in by teaching whom he had become odious, they were given leave to do him to death. So they, learning what injury they had received, and burning to revenge themselves accordingly, proceeded some to batter him with their tablets, others to strike him with their writing styles. And in this scene of martyrdom the weaker the hands engaged, the heavier was the pain of the vicim, as death was the more protracted.

--Rev. Antonio Gallonio, Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs

Most wretched and foresaken among men were those unfortunates who were condemned to merciless flaggelation with rods and diverse instruments of injury being either smooth or prickly. Thus scourged to within an inch of death's portal these athletes of Christ were encumbered with spades and compelled to dig each his own grave trench, even whilst being buffeted and boxed about the head by the assembled heathen. Nor did this indignity conclude the suffering of these wretches, for the Devil Worshipers had yet further torments in minde for these mangled Christians, namely that their skins be torn and rent by pottery fragments and iron claws, and their bodies stretched to the fourth or fifth hole of the stocks. At which they would suffer to have scrawled upon the tablets of their lacerated flesh with writing instruments all manner of lewd blasphemy and scurrilous profanity, until such time as their debased bodies resembled a catalogue of affronts to the Glory of God. Even death, alas, could not bring an end to the debasement of these piteous souls. Their tortured spade-work notwithstanding, they would be dragged through the streets and cast into the sea.

--Fr. Anatole Foeder, A Briefe Catalogue of the Divverse Wayes in Which the Soldiers of Christ Have Suffered at the Hands of Unbelievers. 1591

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 02:22:20 GMT

WAR!

I feel safer already.

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 22:40:39 GMT

Double Dee and Steinski, The Payoff Mix, The Lost Lesson: James Brown Meets the Academy of International Poets

Help me, somebody.

Listen while I talk on against time.

There is something,

something urgent

I have to say to you.

In this head the all-baffling brain.

Surely some revelation is at hand.

Nobody is asleep on earth,

as all the Heavens are a bell.

Let the boys bring flowers in

last month's newspapers.

History has to live with

what was here. The things which I have

seen I now can see no more.

I have seen the best minds of my generation,

starving, hysterical, naked. Somebody

loses whenever somebody wins.

Life, friends, is boring.

We must not say so.

Let us go then, you and I.

Excuse me while I kiss the sky.

Watch me rise and go.

Watch me work.

The season's ill. And nothing

happened: day was all but done.

It was winter. There was a certain

slant of light. It got dark early.

Not to be born is, past all yearning, best.

Death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

I have wasted my life.

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 00:22:04 GMT

Emperor of the Son, Empire of the Senseless, and Manifest Density

Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the dogs of war.

--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy

On the poor souls for whom this hungry war

Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head

Turning the widows' tears, the orphans' cries,

The dead men's blood, the privy maidens' groans,

For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers,

That shall be swallowed in this controversy.

--Shakespeare, Henry V

Now the onely way to avoyde this shipwracke and to provide for our posterity is to followe the Counsell of Micah, to doe Justly, to love mercy, to walke humbly with our God, for this end, wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man, wee must entertaine each other in brotherly Affeccion, wee must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities, wee must uphold a familiar Commerce together in all meekenes, gentlenes, patience and liberallity, wee must delight in eache other, make others Condicions our owne, rejoyce together, mourne together, labour, and suffer together, allwayes haveing before our eyes our Commission and Community in the worke, our Community as members of the same body, soe shall wee keepe the unitie of the spirit in the bond of peace, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as his owne people and will commaund a blessing upon us in all our wayes, soe that wee shall see much more of his wisdome power goodnes and truthe then formerly wee have beene acquainted with, wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us, when tenn of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when hee shall make us a prayse and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantacions: the lord make it like that of New England: for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake; wee shall shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into Cursses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whether wee are going: And to shutt upp this discourse with that exhortacion of Moses that faithfull servant of the Lord in his last farewell to Israell Deut. 30. Beloved there is now sett before us life, and good, deathe and evill in that wee are Commaunded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another to walke in his wayes and to keepe his Commaundements and his Ordinance, and his lawes, and the Articles of our Covenant with him that wee may live and be multiplyed, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whether wee goe to possesse it: But if our heartes shall turne away soe that wee will not obey, but shall be seduced and worshipp other Gods our pleasures, and proffitts, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, wee shall surely perishe out of the good Land whether wee passe over this vast Sea to possesse it;

Therefore lett us choose life,

that wee, and our Seede,

may live; by obeyeing his

voyce, and cleaveing to him,

for hee is our life, and

our prosperity.

--John Winthrop (17th Century American Puritan), City Upon A Hill

The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any other nation; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of them, and still less with all antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future only; and so far as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity.

What friend of human liberty, civilization, and refinement, can cast his view over the past history of the monarchies and aristocracies of antiquity, and not deplore that they ever existed? What philanthropist can contemplate the oppressions, the cruelties, and injustice inflicted by them on the masses of mankind, and not turn with moral horror from the retrospect?

America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminiscences of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement. Our annals describe no scenes of horrid carnage, where men were led on by hundreds of thousands to slay one another, dupes and victims to emperors, kings, nobles, demons in the human form called heroes. We have had patriots to defend our homes, our liberties, but no aspirants to crowns or thrones; nor have the American people ever suffered themselves to be led on by wicked ambition to depopulate the land, to spread desolation far and wide, that a human being might be placed on a seat of supremacy.

We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our national declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other lands, that "the gates of hell" -- the powers of aristocracy and monarchy -- "shall not prevail against it."

The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High -- the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere -- its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens, and its congregation an Union of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions, calling, owning no man master, but governed by God's natural and moral law of equality, the law of brotherhood -- of "peace and good will amongst men."

Yes, we are the nation of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement. Equality of rights is the cynosure of our union of States, the grand exemplar of the correlative equality of individuals; and while truth sheds its effulgence, we cannot retrograde, without dissolving the one and subverting the other. We must onward to the fulfilment of our mission -- to the entire development of the principle of our organization -- freedom of conscience, freedom of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits, universality of freedom and equality. This is our high destiny, and in nature's eternal, inevitable decree of cause and effect we must accomplish it. All this will be our future history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man -- the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity?

--John L. O'Sullivan, On Manifest Destiny, 1839

The United States is no longer preparing for war; it is prepared for war, and has been prepared for war for a long time now. Denial may have been a possibility at some point in the last six months, but it doesn't serve any purpose now. Some time in the next week we'll all be hunkered down on our couches watching the bombs fall on Iraq, but America's transformation from John Winthrop's "City Upon a Hill" to Hank Williams' "Mansion on the Hill" was completed years ago, and anyone who doesn't believe that is living in a cave that is more inpenetrable than any Al-Qaeda hideout.

If this thing stays on predictable schedule, come Saturday legions of fat potato patriots and flat-faced flagutantes will be gathered around their pre-game buffets, spooning Swedish meatballs and cocktail wieners onto their Party Warehouse-clearance Desert Storm paper plates. Blenders will be whirring with non-stop daiquiri action, and everyone will be waving their little party-favor flags and roaring like it was the "Miracle on Ice" all over again.

"Do we even have a name for this war yet?" someone will inquire.

"Operation Enduring Fuck You!" someone else will shout, to a raucous round of laughter.

"If Operation Desert Storm was the Mother of All Battles, what does that make this war?" a guest will wonder.

"Slutty, Meth-Scag Daughter Of All Battles!"

I'm not quite sure what the soundtrack to these parties will be, but if you put a gun to my head (an increasingly likely scenario) I'd guess maybe Shania Twain or Hotel California.

At the end of the party the flags will be heaped on the table next to the fondue forks and crumpled napkins. On Sunday everyone will go to church and then stop off at the car wash on the way home, and by Monday morning every fly-by-night tee-shirt entrepreneur in the country will be doing a bang-up business.

This war is a pure methamphetamine-television spectacle for millions of dead ass couch potatoes who are bored with reality tv, and many of these people wouldn't recognize reality if it said hello to them in the street.

Come on, you might ask, Do you really think that poorly of America?

Yes, I do.

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 19:41:44 GMT

Things Coming Up Missing

A familiar theme in the life of a beleaguered man. He couldn't even tell you how much time he had spent digging through cupboards and boxes and closets, running his finger along his crowded book shelves or racks of records and CDs, thumbing through his file cabinets or rooting around under furniture in search of some missing item or another. Something, generally, without which he was unable to proceed as a normal human being --assuming, of course, that even under ideal organizational circumstances he would ever be able to function as a normal man. It got worse, though; it was definitely getting worse as he got older. The hunt for an obscure pamphlet on Egyptian urology or an early manual on hearing aids, for instance, might consume an entire Saturday afternoon, and if fruitless could stretch into the wee hours of Sunday morning. These wild goose chases were, of course, increasingly fruitless --were, in fact, by their very nature fruitless-- and often as not he would find himself after a number of hours wondering what had prompted the search in the first place.

It was unhealthy, he knew that, unhealthy to have so much stuff and absolutely no system of order or organization. One year he spent almost an entire week tearing up his house in search of an old Kodachrome snapshot of a G.I. in full combat uniform with a Santa Claus ventriloquist dummy on his lap. He wanted to use the photo on the annual Christmas card he would never get around to sending, but in the end he gave up the search, and could no longer be certain that the photo in question was not simply another figment of his imagination.

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 16:50:54 GMT

Back From The Dead

Or at least back in the Blog Saddle after a week spent climbing silos and water towers. Spring is the shittiest season, I don't care what any of the addled old poets and song writers say. It's a synonym for mess in my book, and a prescription for fucked up blood chemistry. When the temperature hits 60 degrees I have to essentially rewire my brain and peel myself off the floor to flip "Astral Weeks" on the turntable. Any kind of excursion from the house involves navigating a disgusting obstacle course of moldering dog shit. The bottom line is that the transition from winter to spring sets off all these brush fires in the circuitry of my brain and makes actual consciousness all but impossible. But, hey, I'm a blog warrier, and I know I'm being counted on to blaze a meandering trail of bread crumbs for my colleagues here at City Pages. Which brings me back to the place I started from on this hobbled journey, back to Samuel Beckett's blogger's credo:

Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind...

And back to Walt Whitman:

Where is what I started for so long ago, and why is it yet unfound?

Rest assured, of my nonsense there is no end. I may fall off the blog wagon from time to time, but I'll always climb back on, and I'm going to be here babbling in my dark and obscure little closet in cyberspace, whether you --the fiercely imagined you-- give a rat's ass or ever even bother to come knocking on my door. Whether you even exist I'll continue to muddle on. I blog, therefore I am.

So: Hi ho, Hi Ho, It's Off To Work We Go. Eenie Meenie Minie Moe. Fe Fi Fo Fum. Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle of Rum. Tra-la-la Boom-dee-ay. Ollie Ollie Umph Phum Phree. Hickory Dickory Dock. Cockle Doodle Doo. Duck Duck Gray Duck. Ba Ba Black Sheep. Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie. Hip Hip Hooray. Ki Yi Yippee Yi Yay. Abra Cadabra. Yabba Dabba Do. Gabba Gabba Hey. Hey Bo Diddley. Hey Diddle Diddle. Diddy Wa Widdy. Da Do Run Run.Yodel Lay Hee Hoo. Rock A Bye Baby. Be Bop A Loo La. Rinky Dinky Doo. Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ra. Abba Zabba. Razzle Dazzle. Fiddle Faddle. Shazzam. Supercalifragilicious. Rin Tin Tin. Ping Pong. Ding dong. Sing song. Hop-A-Long. Humpty Dumpty. Higglety Pigglety. Piggly Wiggly. Boo Hoo. Bow Wow. Wowee Zowee. Hubba Hubba. Zippety Doo Da. Snap, Crackle, Pop. Talley Ho. Tee Hee. Ho Ho. Ha Ha. Hula Hoop. Pitter Patter. Chit Chat. Kit Kat. Augie Doggie. Steeple People. Bible Bangers. Bouncing Babies. Bubble Bath. Freedom Fries. Good, better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better and your better is best. Now I lay me down to sleep. Don't take any wooden nickels. Don't let the bed bugs bite. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Mon, 10 Mar 2003 00:50:07 GMT

Funk Is The Thing

A groove is never the same thing as a rut, no matter what the dictionary might tell you. It can never be, not in my world. A groove is funky, a step just far enough outside the ordinary to feel good, to feel both outside yourself and outside the rest of the world in the best possible way. Rolling alone, your body making music. In a rut you sink down far enough that you can barely hear the music anymore, and you start to lose the sense that you're even a part of, or visible to, the rest of the world. Apart, rather than a part. A groove is funky. A rut is a funk. Funk's only negative connotation is when it's preceded by that "a," and followed by a period, or, in unusual cases, I suppose, by some other punctuation mark. Virtually any other way that "funk" could be used or permuted, at least by me, would be a positive indicator regarding the topic or topics under discussion.

My notions of "funk" or "funky" are ridiculously broad. To this day I've never heard a definition of "funk" as I understand it that gives me any kind of pleasure. It's not just James Brown, but where James Brown comes from. It's the music of my bones, and my understanding of it stems from the discovery of a thread, a connection, a common bond between all sorts of otherwise seemingly unrelated music. And that common bond is something intangible, something about the way the music stirred things up in my head and sent mysteries and unexpected directives roaring through my blood. Other music gave --and gives-- me pleasure. Other music could make me dance. But no other music gives me funk pleasure. You can talk about "the one," the churning rhythms, the scratch guitar, whatever, but funk is one of those things I know on a purely sub-head level. So, sure, James Brown is funk, and he may well have virtually invented the music that most people consider "funk." But he didn't happen in a vacuum, and funk was out there before "Out of Sight" or "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag." Sun Ra at his skankiest is decidedly funky, and much of his best music I would characterize as straight funk. The Minutemen were a funk band in ways that the Red Hot Chili Peppers could never dream of. Pere Ubu was a funky band. Much of the African music I love, and most Afro-Pop is straight funk. Art Ensemble of Chicago? Funky. Funk. Ditto for a lot of the jazz I love: Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, late-period Miles, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, Horace Silver, Larry Young, and Herbie Hancock. Grant Green was funky. Wes Montgomery, much as I love him, did not have a funky bone in his body. The Meters, of course, were a funk band. Gang of Four were funky. The Roots can be a funk band whenever they want; they know funk. Some of the old Harry Smith mountain loonies were plenty funky. So is Marion Williams, and so is Boz Fucking Scaggs.

I've spent more time than I really care to admit trying to find the ultimate source of funk music, the well that James Brown drank from, and in the process I have accumulated literally hundreds of regional funk 45s. But discographical information is hard to come by for a lot of these records, including such basic information as dates and personnel. I've determined that I'm never going to find the Holy Grail, and in the process my own definition has only gotten broader all the time. I do know, though, that there is a clear distinction between funk and soul, and funk and disco, and funk and lots of other things that I know in my gut are not funk. And I also feel pretty strongly that a lot of the stuff that gets marketed as products of the golden age of funk doesn't personally do anything to get the juices jangling in me the way the real deal does. I'm thinking here of anything much from the late '70s on. Synthesized keyboards ruined funk just as surely as they ruined African pop. That's just my opinion, but after a certain point --when you get to later P-Funk, the Brothers Johnson, Earth, Wind, and Fire, Commodores, etc.-- you have a bunch of guys who are doing their damnedest to dress the part while essentially ploughing a field that somebody else planted. The music became all groove-trance and bottom, and paved the way for all sorts of great stuff that came later. But it still wasn't funk, at least not in my book. For the real deal you have to dig deeper; you have to be willing to go beyond "Star Time" and George Clinton, to the mostly anonymous bands who were churning out funk all over the country, usually without the benefits of major labels or national distribution. Here's a brief primer:

The Unknown, Pad Out. O A Records, Dallas.

Louis Chachere, The Hen. MJC Records.

Herb Johnson Settlement, Damph F'Ain't. Tox San Records.

LeRoy and The Drivers, The Sad Chicken. Duo Records.

Frank Penn, Gimme Some Skin. Penn's Records.

Tommy Bush, Skin It Back. Cal State Records.

Brother Soul, Cookies. Leo Mini Records.

The Illusions, Funky Donkey. Showtime.

Eugene Blacknell, Gettin' Down. Seaside Records.

The Mohawks, The Champ. Sir J.J. Records.

James Polk and the Brothers, Just Plain Funk. Twink.

Prepositions, Funky Disposition. Movement Records.

Salt, Hung Up. Choctaw Records.

Uncle Sam, The Big Apple. Le Cam.

Robert Lowe, Put Your Legs Up High. Eastbound.

Spittin' Image, J.B.'s Latin. Masai Record Company.

Granby Street Development, Jelly Roll. New Faces '69.

Reggie Sadler Revue, Raggedy Bag. Aquarius.

Bad Medicine, Trespasser, Pt. 2, Enyx Records.

Thunder and Lightning, Bumpin' Bus Stop. Private Stock.

Brother Byron, Booty Whip. Alma Lee.

The Stereos Combo, Stereo Freeze, Pt. 1. Hyde Records.

Soul Vibrations, The Dump. Vibrant.

Arthur Jackson, Philosophy of Chopp Funk. A.J.'s Records.

Fabulous Caprices, Groovy World. Camaro.

Soul Tornadoes, Hot Pants Breakdown. Magic City.

Lunar Funk, Slip the Drummer One. Flashback.

Al Brown, The Whip, Pt. 1. BM Records.

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 22:11:25 GMT

Listening to Roscoe Mitchell's Sound

From a street riot at high noon to a prowler with the tiniest pen light in a dark house at midnight. A few little squeaks and tremors and footfalls, then a moment of silence that precedes eruption, shelves coming down, pots and pans tumbling down the stairs. A fiddle sawing in the furnace room, rising in the floor vents. The rattle of collar tags on a stray dog going down the back alley in the fog. Whatever the day's ingredients, jazz always seems to come out of the oven at the end. A blessing after a day of nothing but words, rolling at me like fastballs pumped out of a pitching machine, one right after the other, blowing right over me, my head roaring like a garbage disposal, just shredding these words and pushing them down into the darkness of forever gone.

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 21:49:55 GMT

I Like My Words In A Crowd, But...

what happens if you give each word a little more

privacy, its

own

Montana?

Thu, 06 Mar 2003 21:39:24 GMT

So You Want To Be A Beauty Queen

The Talent Competition:

You do not have to stick to the traditional talents such as singing, piano playing, and dancing. Alecia Rae Masalkoski, Miss Michigan 1986, made national news and caught the judges' attention with a karate kata (martial ballet) number that included stomping through 100 pounds of broken Pepsi and Coca-Cola bottles and putting her foot through four inches of concrete --certainly a less than traditional talent presentation for a Miss America contestant.

Miss Montana 1949 galloped onto the stage at the Miss America Pageant and caused quite a stir when her horse charged off the stage into the orchestra pit (the use of animals in the live talent presentations is no longer allowed).

Polly [Peterson Bowles] judged a teen pageant in which the theme from Ice Castles was sung by a dozen contestants, some of them back to back. It was also played by two pianists. Hearing the same song repeated fourteen times in one night is a bit taxing on the judges' nerves....In addition to the theme from Ice Castles, avoid selections from Kismet, Cabaret, and Showboat, and do not use "When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "For Once in My Life," or "You Light Up My Life."

Another stereotyped talent is baton twirling. There is a myth that all pageant contestants are baton twirlers. Actually this talent is somewhat rare. To win as a baton twirler, again you must soar above the anti-twirler bias.

Calorie-Cutting Tips:

Beware of beer, the diet destroyer.

Ignore candy vending machines that beckon to you.

Eat a dill pickle to squelch your appetite.

Concentrate on Your Leg Muscles:

Bob Barker says that it is the legs that determine the winner....Inner thighs that jiggle are point stealers. Heavy, untoned legs are especially noticeable is you are standing next to another contestant with long, shapely legs.

You Must, You Must, You Must Increase Your Bust?

Michael Grade of the British Broadcasting System asked a panel of Miss America representatives on the Phil Donahue Show, "When was the last flat-chested queen?" The fact is that there have been beauty queens in recent years who have had very little in the bust area.

Love Your Audience:

Remember that the audience is part of your pageant experience. Love that audience. Keep telling yourself how much you love them. Tell them how much you love them by your smile. This applies during the pageant, while riding in a parade as a titleholder, or walking down the street as a private citizen. Love people and your smile will sincerely show it. Show people that you love them, and they will love you back.

From Becoming A Beauty Queen, The Complete Guide, Barbara Peterson Burwell and Polly Peterson Bowles. Prentice Hall Press, 1987.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 23:10:27 GMT

Not Sleeping

Some nights you'd sit there tracking moonlight across the floor, or studying the garage roof next door as if it was a radar screen. Your mind on a very low flame, a few tired words alternately see-sawing in the silence or surfacing through the waves of static. You'd sit there barely conscious, but the moment you'd try to climb into bed and close your eyes the whole chorus would convene again with a vengeance. The variety show of hypnagogia. Channel surfing long before the advent of cable television and remote control. So random, stuttering, and relentless was your consciousness in those hours that you would make an exercise of trying to isolate a particular fragment, and then attempt to concentrate your mind on the fragment's origin, trying to trace it back, if possible, to its original source. Sometimes it would be a line from a book or a television commercial, other times it might be something you'd overheard in school, or a snippet from a song or a random conversation. You would find yourself obsessing about an outrageous pair of shoes you had seen on a complete stranger in a grocery store, weeks earlier.

Ultimately, towards dawn, you were always left with nothing but the barely-beating heart of the sleeping world. The under-hum and throb of its basic operating systems. The furnace. The ticking of the clock. The world on the back burner, as close as the modern world comes to stasis: You were left with only you and what was left of the night, the retreating darkness, shadows receding on the walls, the cruel pinch of exhaustion, the terrible reality that you were going to have to sleepwalk through another lost day. What was that they were saying about what?

Eventually, every night you would reach a point where you could not fall asleep but you could nonetheless not be truly awake. You were reduced to fumbling around, grasping, in a dense and hazy subterrannean no man's land, lost in the gauzy, impressionistic foothills of sleep. You would take a walk to try to resuscitate your sanity, to get clear thoughts moving again in your head. You moved in slow motion through a woozy, muslin-filtered border country, imagination and hallucination bleeding into reality. You heard what sounded like chanting. You heard the clanking of a cowbell. You heard the distant tolling of a clock, and a burst of faint music sucked from a car window somewhere out in the town. You heard a baby crying, then someone laughing, wretching, congested laughter. You heard a radio playing in a junkyard. You heard what sounded like a piano. You heard windchimes twisting in a backyard somewhere. You heard the barking of a dog, answered by another, in the next block. You thought of the men across town, in the slaughterhouse, exhausted on their feet in the slippery dead mess, blood bubbled everywhere, the tangy reek of animals being broken down into meat. You would go there from time to time to stand at the mouth of the tunnel that took the tired men to and from the slaughterhouse. You would stand there in the last of the darkness with a little collection can for UNICEF, and you would shake your can at the blood-soaked, broken-knuckled zombies as they plodded past blank-faced, clutching their empty lunchboxes, moving almost unconscious into the bruised light that was just then creeping into the eastern sky.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 22:23:33 GMT

My Wasted Years In Lawrence

It took me a long time to find myself. That's the official family version, at any rate. And, sure, there was a period where I really had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I married a sea bass. My dog dreamed of climbing trees and did nothing but mope around the house all day. My neighbor kept coming over to the fence for what he called "little private one-on-ones, man-to-man stuff," which basically boiled down to when the hell was I going to mow my fucking lawn. I was in the Red Owl parking lot one day and some nut threw a can of beef stew at me and hit me right in the chin. I drove to the hospital for 16 stitches and the wound left a nasty scar. My wife grew too big for her dirty little tank and basically spent all of her time swishing around in the colored gravel at the bottom, a fish's version of running in place, I guess. I'd turn off all the lights and sit there on the couch staring at her as she trance-swam in the eerie blue-lit water of the aquarium.

The dog seemed so depressed and lazy that one day I finally called this woman who I had seen on television who claimed she could communicate with animals. She didn't come cheap, I'll tell you that much; I had to fly her in from Santa Fe. And then she comes in and sits right down on the couch and says, "The poor fellow just wants to climb trees."

"You didn't even speak to him," I said.

"That was the first thing he said to me," she claimed, and then for like 45 minutes she just kept insisting that the dog wanted to climb trees.

"I heard you the first time," I said. "That's it? That's all you can get out of him?"

"That's all he'll say to me," she shrugged. "I'm sorry. Your dog has a one-track mind."

Before she left she went over and exchanged hushed words with my wife, but I was pissed by this time, and since I insisted I wasn't paying her to talk with the fish she refused to disclose what she called the "private nature" of their conversation.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 20:46:50 GMT

My Old Barber Turns His Back On the 21st Century

There's not much you'll see on a head anymore that I'm willing to do. An old barber is dependent on his regular customers, and for the last 15 years or so my customers have been dying like flies. I guess if you really want to ride the thing all the way out you'll make an effort to stay on top of the new hairstyles, but I'm one of those guys who doesn't like to cut what I don't like, and I haven't seen much that I like in the last ten years. So much of this shit is just beneath me. It's ridiculous. I'm not carving pumpkins and I'm not grooming poodles and I'm not fucking around with pony tails or braids.

I get these catalogs anymore that have literally hundreds of different goops and gels and other such bullshit that will literally wreck the shit out of your hair. I don't intend to dye any man's hair any color other than the one God gave him, and if you want someone to play with your hair you can talk to your mother or your girlfriend. I'm a barber, not a hairstylist. I cut hair --I remove hair-- and if you want more than 20 minutes in my chair you're wasting my time. Some of these guys today are as bad as old women. They'll come in here and hand me a photograph of some actor or rock star, and I just look at 'em like they're fucking off their rocker. A barber's just another plastic surgeon, you know? Like I could make you look like fucking Montgomery Clift. Give me a break. It's all I can do not to crack some of these fruit loops with the damn clipper.

If I could figure out what the hell is wrong with people I'd for damn sure be in a different racket, and maybe I'd actually have something to show for the last 40 years of my life. I've had people sit in that chair and spill their fucking guts --I'm talking stories that would make me blush if I told them to the bathroom mirror. You pick any old barbershop in this city, and if you had a videotape of every hair cut these guys ever gave you'd have a movie that would make people ashamed to be human beings. Honest to God, you wouldn't believe the garbage I've had to stand here and listen to every day. I've been saying this for years, but one of these days I'm just gonna pack up my shit and go fishing.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 18:05:09 GMT

My Brief History Of Magic (Continued)

Oh, you can be sure, I've seen some dandy cigarette acts in my time. Make no mistake. That sort of thing is, of course, taboo these days, what with attitudes about smoking being what they are. But I still remember a fat redhead --for some damn reason I can't recall the fellow's name to save my soul-- who did a masterful bit he eventually marketed to the trade with the high-falutin' title, "Ireland Simplex Cigarette Production." And then there was Ed Marlo's brilliant "Cigars, Cigarettes, and Pipes" routine, which I saw a half dozen times in the early '70s. That guy did things with a cigarette I still can't believe are possible. As I was saying, I've always admired a man who can work without fancy props, stooges, or floozies.

And despite what some of the Bible-bangers might think, magic doesn't have to be at odds with the teachings of the Good Book. I have fond memories of a fellow by the name of Joseph White, a magician who called himself "The Gospel Magical Midget," and did an entire act built around Bible stories and religious lessons. A very effective little production all around, a dynamite show, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly a holy man. Guys who could learn to perform basic routines with a Biblical theme or religious patter were guaranteed steady work at chuch funtions, socials, and Bible schools.

I still remember when "Industrial Magic" was a new concept, and guys were learning that they could use magic presentations to sell product. In the mid-'60s it seemed like every trade show, convention, sales meeting, and grand opening featured a magic act. It was damn good business all around until the bottom pretty much fell out of the whole thing. These days they hire motivational speakers or they get half-dressed broads to stand around their booths to hand out promotional materials.

I have a precise memory of the very moment magic first got me in its clutches. I was at a little carnival somewhere with my grandparents, and there was an aging illusionist who broke a slab of granite over the body of a catalepsed subject who was suspended from the backs of two chairs.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Human Bridge!" the old magician shouted, and then he swung his sledge hammer.

Mon, 03 Mar 2003 23:12:54 GMT

More Nonsense: Pocket Fragments, Part II

Sometimes, in a despairing effort to make contact with some living thing, I'd dig up the worms from the borders and lay them in a line on the lawn and kiss them one by one.

--Diana Petre, The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley

South Dakota town slogans: "We'll Do!" And: "A little bit of Nothing in the middle of Nowhere."

Eastern Montana: landscape's frozen version of the panic attack.

The crow gets wise to the scarecrow: Eventually I figured out it wasn't a man.

Yeah, that's a great idea, let's put a motherfucking tank out in front of the high school.

Oklahoma: cattle gulag, hell's anteroom.

Graffiti on the side of a burned out house: "Stay out, Tammi!"

Chester Grinwiddy, the Blind River hypnotist. "Stop Smoking!"

Town name: Black's Madness.

Urinals in the Land of Giants: the fucking American Standards are mounted four feet up the wall. I'm not an unusually short fellow, but the only way I could piss in these things was by pointing upwards and hopping a bit.

East Texas church sign: "Dr. Lyndale Truss, Sr. Pastor. Sunday: Conversations With A Lawn Mower."

The motel tampon "nap sack": first cousin to a doggy bag.

Rest stop bathroom graffiti, scrawled with extreme aggression into a stainless steel tile above the urinal: "That casino up the road is a gyp! Fixed! Rigged!"

UP motel room: everything about the place was essentially fraudulent, and yet there was something about that very fact that cemented its credentials as genuine Americana, the real (charming) deal --tricked-out rusticity; corny, over-the-top, archetypal American motifs: heavily varnished pine, shag carpeting, regional wildlife art, plastic curtains, gift-shop knick knacks. A place where Native American art peacefully coexists with Hummel figurines.

Overnight it seemed like everyone in my world got sober and became vegetarians. Liquor and meat, unfortunately, were two of the only things I believed in passionately at the time.

Estragon: I can't go on like this.

Vladimir: That's what you think.

--Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot

I was 40 miles from the nearest microwave burrito.

The world never once threw that poor bastard batting practice. Day after day nothing but gas and hard sliders.

I wish some psychologist would provide a convincing explanation of why murder is commoner among cooks than among the members of any other profession.

--W.H. Auden, The Kitchen of Life

Scared shitless that one day I would wake up a realtor.

Sitting around, painting the town, with a paintbrush I hold in my toes.

All that liberal parenting monkey business is for the birds. It'll get you nothing but a kick in the teeth every time.

He had wanted to become a criminal for a long time. He read detective novels by the dozens and watched anything on TV or at the movies with shooting in it. There was little he loved more than the feel of a gun in his hands....

--William Allen, Charles Starkweather

The Dark Ages: Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives on the stereo. Two a.m. Hitting Grain Belt long-neck beer bottles off a sixth-floor balcony with a Boog Powell Louisville Slugger.

Few persons appreciate the fact that the voluntary curtailment of sleep for an hour every night for a year is equivalent to the loss of forty-four nights' sleep of eight hours' duration....

When sleep has been limited unduly, inability to sleep ensues and becomes the bane of existence. Exhaustion of the cerebral structures leads to still graver symptoms, such as insanity....Indeed, insomnia precludes or enters to a greater or lesser extent into the causation of almost every form or mental alienation....Many of the tragedies of life are due solely to the prolonged want of sleep.

--Chambers Encyclopedia, 1879

During my insomnia I tell myself, as a kind of consolation, that these hours I am so conscious of I am wresting from nothingness, and that if I were asleep they would never have belonged to me, they would never have even existed.

--E.M. Cioran, The New Gods

Sun, 02 Mar 2003 01:21:51 GMT

Apology

I'd like to apologize for one of my last entries, "My Brief History of Magic," which I swear on my mother's life I have absolutely no recollection of having written. This sort of thing happens to me more often than it should (you could, I suppose, argue that it should never happen, and I would be in no position to argue with you); I have a name for the growing collection of words I have somehow produced without retaining any memory whatsoever of having done so: blackout pieces. "My Brief History of Magic," however, would be easily the most personally disturbing of my blackout pieces to date, in that I not only do not remember writing it, but that I can not even conceive of having written it. I am virtually certain, in fact, that it is not my work at all.

I'm really not kidding. I received an email from a friend that said, "That was a sort of strange bit of nonsense. I didn't know you had any interest in magic, or is this another of your reinventions (and by that, of course, I mean lies)?" This message seriously confused me. What the hell was he talking about? It bothered me for a couple hours, so much so that I finally called him and asked for an explanation. "I was talking about that thing you wrote today about magic," he said.

"Where?" I asked.

"On the damn thing you do," he said. "Don't make me use that ridiculous name. You know, the website?"

I still had no idea what he was referring to, and I was starting to suspect that he was somehow trying to pull something over on me. I finally went downstairs and took a look, and what I saw seriously disturbed me. I am almost prepared to swear that "My Brief History of Magic" is not my work. I know nothing whatsoever about magic, and I have almost as little interest in the subject as entertainment. To the best of my recollection I have never read a single book about magic, and though I own literally tens of thousands of books on all sorts of strange and obscure topics, I'm virtually certain I do not have even one title on the subject. I don't drink anymore --I haven't, in fact, had a drink in almost 15 years-- but I certainly remember that terrible feeling of waking up on the morning after a terrible bender and being both frightened and appalled to discover that you can't recall what you did the night before or how you made it home. Reading "My Brief History of Magic" brought back those unpleasant and queasy mornings in rather too graphic detail.

I was particularly shocked by the weird accumulation of arcana and inexplicable details in "My Brief History of Magic." I have never in my life heard of any of the people, places, tricks, or titles mentioned in the piece, and was understandably curious to know whether these things were all purely fictional or whether they perhaps had some basis in reality, even if it happened to be someone else's reality.

I did a Google search for the first half dozen or so names and book titles that appear in "Brief History of Magic," and was disturbed to learn that all of them were in fact "real," in a manner of speaking. I have to admit that I was even more disturbed than I would have been had I discovered they were purely fictional creations. It would be one thing if I had made up all of this information in a hypnagogic stupor, but the apparent grounding of the piece in historical fact, however ridiculous, implied that there had been some kind of research; a text or texts had to have been consulted, and I refuse to believe that my habitual oblivion has become so close to complete that not only could I have written some words that I do not recall having written, but also could have read some text or texts that I do not recall having read (or even having had in my possession), and that all of this could have happened at some time in the last several days, and left absolutely no traces of memory in my admittedly miserable, exhausted, Etch-A-Sketch of a skull.

I refuse to believe that. And I'm forced to conclude that somehow, while I was at lunch or away from my desk at some other point in the day, some one of my colleagues --or, even more likely, a group of them-- sat down at my desk and posted "Brief History of Magic" to my web log. I can't live with any other conclusion. I wish I could say I have a fairly solid hunch as to who, specifically, was behind this mind-fuck, but unfortunately every one of my co-workers is a possible suspect. It's that kind of place, and I now recognize that I need to get in the habit of logging off of my computer every single time I move away from my desk for even a few minutes.

In the meantime, I apologize for the inexcusable breach, as well as for that wholly inexplicable and wildly digressive --not to mention preposterous--entry on magic.

Sat, 01 Mar 2003 02:37:29 GMT

Waste of Time: Rock And Roll Hypothesis, Number 377

Lou Reed has built a long career as one of the greatest rock and roll myths. I've always been a fan, or at least had a modest curiosity about what he's up to. The unavoidable truth, though, is that the guy is and always has been something of an idiot savant, with the idiot part of the equation growing more predominant by the record. And, like I say, I point this out as someone who has bought into the myth off and on (and off) (and on) over the years. But at this point, and having spent a little bit of time reading through his Selected Lyrics with growing shame, I need to acknowledge that Lou's pretty much an out-and-out laughing stock as a lyricist --as his career has plodded along, pure, pretentious gas has moved in to take the place that attitude and decadence once occupied (front and center) in his work.

Post-Velvet Underground what really is there? Some modestly interesting stuff (and equally dated embarrassments) from the junkie androgyne early period, but no one great album. One tremendous but wholly uncharacteristic live record (Rock and Roll Animal). A fascinating and consistently satisfying stretch mid-career, marked by a new direction (and, more notably, by the bass playing of Fernando Saunders and Robert Quine's guitar): The Blue Mask (my favorite of the post-V.U. records), Legendary Hearts, and New Sensations. Followed by a bin full of spotty records and absolute flops. By the late '80s Lou's earnestness had become fatal, and he had become even more insufferably pompous and shrill, alternately --or not-- just another New York jackhammer and jackass. And this, as I should mention, is the opinion of someone who has actually bought damn near every one of his records. Still, The Raven is possibly the last straw, and leads me to finally publicly pronounce the heresy I have long harbored in my heart: John Cale has had a far more satisfying, adventurous, and consistent solo career than his old bandmate, Lou's dark legion of crippled highbrow neanderthal motherfuckers be damned.

My Brief History of Magic

Elmer Gylleck was a Chicago architect who did a bumbling comedy-magic act built around a character he called 'Dr. Clutterhouse.' Dr. Clutterhouse would come on stage clutching a briefcase and carrying an umbrella. The briefcase was possessed, full of odd spirits; ghosts would fly from it, and gunshots would ring out whenever Clutterhouse opened the thing. When the briefcase wasn't bedeviling him, the Doctor would be having table problems (he invented a wonderful collapsing table prop) or any of a number of other slapstick scenarios that were reliable crowd pleasers. Gylleck had a nice, clean act, with solid magic chops and plenty of laughs. Very influential --I've seen I don't know how many third-rate Clutterhouse knock-offs over the years.

In the '60s there was a shift, and the Clutterhouse thing sort of disappeared. There were all of a sudden these balloon workers all over town. A guy named Jim Davis was working Old Town, making thousands of balloon animals a week and drawing crowds and making lots of money. This fella was actually pretty good. He'd make giraffes, elephants, all sorts of interesting stuff. He actually wrote a useful little book on the subject --One Balloon Zoo, I think it was called. And there was another guy, Jack Dennerlein, an ad-man who also did good balloon work --tremendous birds-- and he did a book, New Twists For Balloon Workers. Don Allen was one more Chicago magician who cashed in on the whole balloon thing. He'd gotten his start, I seem to remember, as a bartender who did magic tricks for the customers, which is something I don't believe you see much anymore. Which is really a shame, because little pocket and card tricks are things that can help a bartender pick up a few extra tips, not to mention the occasional private party or corporate gig on the side. Anyway, I think Don Allen did a book on balloon tricks as well, Don Allen's Balloon Work, or, no, it was Don Allen's Rubber Circus. That's right. That's exactly what it was.

For a long time I was kicking around the idea of doing a little book of my own, something more like a history of balloon work, maybe even a historical overview of balloons in general, but to be honest with you it just seemed like too much fucking work. Steve Martin, of course, had some wild early success with balloon work. Everybody knows Steve Martin, but guys like Jim Davis and Jack Dennerlein are pretty much forgotten.

When I graduated from college I used to hang out at magic shops, great old places like Magic, Inc. in Chicago, or Eagle Magic in Minneapolis. I was never really much of a magician myself; I didn't really have the discipline to get much beyond the hobbyist stage. But I always loved the history of magic, and for a number of years I saw as many magicians as I could, and for a time I got steady, small-paying work writing patter lines for a number of magicians around the Midwest. I also did a short-lived newsletter that spot-lighted regional magicians, ran historical profiles, a patter column, and a lot of advertisements for mail order gags and pocket tricks. We had quite an impressive roster of subscribers and the thing made money on a shoestring, but it just got to be too much work for me, and I'll be the first guy to admit that work has never been my strong suit.

When it comes to magic buffs I'm kind of an oddball in that I'm happy as a fucking clam if I have no idea how a guy did what he just did, if you see what I'm saying. I don't want to know. I still like to be fooled. That's the appeal of it for me. I want to be one of the slack-jawed yokels in the crowd, shaking my head in dumb amazement. I like the history more than the how-to; the history of magic is full of tremendous characters, genuine oddballs, and, frankly, a number of guys who were as crazy as shithouse rats. I like a magician who has a spooky little something in his eyes; the very look of the guy should raise a few questions in the mind of the audience. If the guy's already got you wondering before he's even done a single trick, well, hey boys, he's got you right where he wants you.

Magic's an amazing thing. The same basic repertoire of tricks has been baffling and entertaining people for generations, and precisely because the majority of the audience feels exactly like I do --they don't want to know how all those old tricks are done. Which is why you'll still see these characters in tuxedos doing tricks with scarves and pigeons, and sawing women in half and pulling rabbits out of hats. If Joe Blow really wanted to he could figure out how every one of these tricks is accomplished with one visit to a library, but he doesn't want to. And that's a beautiful thing. That's the real magic of magic.

The other thing I like to tell people is that magic is a whole lot more than just the usual big smoke and mirrors productions you see so often these days. A great magician can still blow your mind with nothing but a quarter or a deck of cards. I remember Max Holden, a hand shadow artist who could hold an audience and mesmerize them every bit as effectively as these guys who move Winnebagos or make elephants disappear. I never did figure out how Holden did his famous "Monkey in the bellfry" number. And for my money there's still nothing better than a real professional close-up man like Milton Kort, a cups and balls fella who was adept with coins and a deck of cards. A man like that could fool and entertain an audience in even the most casual and intimate of settings.

Before I forget about it I should mention another terrific old balloon performer who just came to mind: Jim Sommers, who used to do a routine with balloon animals at the Pickle Barrel North in Chicago, and also, I seem to recall, did his own little book on balloon magic, Blow By Blow.

Sun, 23 Feb 2003 08:40:04 GMT

Blood On The Tracks

Time and the grindstone and the knife of God

--Robert Lowell, New Year's Day

Every day when I wake up, every morning when I stumble into work, every time I get in the car, I expect to hear some terrible, terrifying news --not the usual terrible and terrifying news that I can mutter over in the daily paper, but the bigger, more sinister and inescapable news that we're being promised by the hour. The media is zealously promoting paranoia and certain, looming calamity as if whatever it is that's on its way is going to be the Olympics of suffering, and when the hammer falls that's exactly how they'll cover it. You know damn well they've already had war logo and attack logo meetings, and they've probably already made their choices. Fox News may as well prop Jim McKay up in the studio to give the thing the proper treatment.

I can't stand it, any of it, it being everything at the moment. Is there anything more heartbreaking than finding your wife's catastrophe stash hidden away under the basement stairs --the cases of water and canned goods, the rolls of duct tape and packages of batteries, the whole sorry works? It tore the guts right out of me, and as I stood there staring at the sad spectacle I knew right then that this really is a lousy world.

I'll get over it, believe me. I'm a pretty optimistic guy as a rule, or at least a master of repression. But, Jesus, every day any more seems to bring another visit from the Teeth Kicker. I found out this morning that Gordon Grace, one of the formative influences on my early life, had died of some kind of meat-borne illness in a detox center in Iowa. Or something like that. The details were pretty murky, and the friend who called me with the news was likely roaring on methamphetamine. I can't doubt, however, that Gordie is dead; I've expected this news for years, ever since the day in the mid '90s when he donated his entire record collection to some church for a rummage sale. And this was an unbelievable record collection, a lifetime project and labor of obsessive love. I'll bet there were more than 10,000 records and CDs, and if I'd known Gordie was even contemplating such a move I would have killed him or had him committed. And then, a month or so later --it was Easter, I remember that much-- my mom calls me and says she saw Gordie on the local news. The church rummage sale business, it turns out, was no weird coincidence; my old mentor had found religion, and was apparently going to rollerskate from Mason City to Rochester with a cross on his back. He was at the time 57 years old, and in absolutely no condition to rollerskate period, let alone with a cross on his back. This news was disturbing, but also nonetheless amusing. My mom called me again a couple days later and said she read in the paper that poor Gordie hadn't even made it to the Minnesota border. He made it only 18 miles in fact. His skates broke, my mom said. It was just such a classic thing for Gordie to do, and the relgious kick wasn't really terribly surprising; Gordie was a guy who took things farther than the average guy. Everything. I remember he called me up one time in the middle of the night and said that he had started scratching in his sleep and had injured himself. "I'm fucking bleeding all over the place," he told me. "And I think I've seriously damaged one of my eyes." Thing was, I didn't doubt him. I never doubted Gordie Grace. He was crazy, but he was never a liar. He was also endlessly entertaining.

When I first met him Gordie was a lot older than me. He was an old hippie, for lack of a better term. He hated that word, and would take serious issue with the characterization, but it was the truth. This was the late 1970s, and we were both living in a small town, and Gordie was this dirty freak with long hair. A hippie. There was no other term for it, not at the time, anyway. I can think of other terms that would work now --fucked up, for instance. My mother called him different, which, believe me, was no kind of compliment. One thing you for double damn sure didn't want to be in that town was different. This was a rough little place where everyone busted their nuts for a living and folks around there didn't have a whole lot of patience for anybody who didn't have a work ethic and didn't like to cut their hair, which meant that Gordie was screwed. But he didn't care, and he hung around there regardless, and that was part of what was so beautiful about the guy. For about two months he tried to open a head shop downtown --The Soviet Embassy, he called it, and he put all sorts of his old mother's money into the place. He had a big, ridiculously bright sign painted, with a peace sign and a hammer and sickle, and he had all this funky thrift store furniture around the place, and stuff like Bobby Sherman (he was fiercely ironic well before his time) and Captain Beefheart and Moby Grape posters on the walls. He sold incense, of course --in that, as well as much else, I believe, he was something of a pioneer around there-- along with the usual weed paraphenalia: power hitters, rolling papers, screens, bongs. There were also tee-shirts, I seem to remember, and I think I might actually still have an old Evil Knievel shirt I bought at the Soviet Embassy. Gordie was essentially shut down almost from the beginning; turned out he didn't have any of the necessary permits or licenses or whatever it was he didn't have. He ended up taking all his inventory out on the road to county fairs and flea markets and setting up a little pirate shop on a blanket. They'd run him out of every town, but he eventually managed to unload all of his inventory.

At any rate, Gordie's real claim to fame --at least in my book-- was that he was a local music legend. He was really it, in fact, so far as a local music scene went. For as long as I could remember Gordie Grace had fronted one band or another in my old hometown, and he gigged pretty relentlessly, playing local bars, bowling alleys, weddings, high school dances, and VFW halls. He'd venture pretty far afield as well, and had a regular orbit around southern Minnesota and northern Iowa and maybe even over into Wisconsin. He was actually a pretty good guitar player, and an interesting enough song writer, but his real mark of distinction was the fact that he played anything and everything, and constantly changed line-ups, styles, and, especially, names.

I once did an interview with Gordie for a little zine, and I remember he told me that he was petitioning the Guinness Book of World's Records for recognition as "like, the guy who's been in the most bands."

"There's no way anybody out there has me beat," he said. "Nobody's even close. I can't even really keep track, but I'm pretty sure I could document at least 200."

This claim was, of course, specious on many levels. Gordie really had played in only one band --his-- but it is true that that band had a number of different line-ups over the years. And incarnations, shall we say. The thing was that Gordie had gotten in the habit of changing the name of his band for virtually every gig; eventually, in fact, he did change the name for every gig. It became his trademark. He always managed to attract young local musicians who were just learning to play, and he was incredibly demanding of their time, and equally tight with his money. I played with him for awhile, and I think he'd pay me maybe five dollars for a show. I didn't really care, of course, and nobody else much did either. We were all just happy to be playing in a band. It wasn't so great, though, to have to constantly rehearse and learn entirely new sets of songs --in often enough entirely different styles-- from week to week. Over the years Gordie's bands were often wildly experimental, to the extent that he was always losing whatever local following he had managed to build up. He would inevitably respond to these wholesale betrayals by reconfiguring his band once more and playing nothing but popular top 40, country, and classic rock fare for a few months. Gordie really did have an amazingly deep pool of songs to draw from --thousands of covers as well as a ridiculous number of originals that were all over the map in terms of style.

To his credit, Gordie was an incredibly knowledgeable and passionate music fan, and he always did his homework and kept abreast of new stuff that was coming along. He was also quick to embrace new styles; "Not because they were fads," he claimed in that old interview, "but because I considered them authentic."

"I have played punk rock," he said, "and I don't suppose there are many guys my age who could make that claim [Gordie was at the time, I think, 55]. And I don't mean that I've just played punk rock songs, but that I've played punk rock. There's a difference there, right? I have been a punk rocker."

I really think he was telling the truth. He could be genuinely original, even at his shittiest. I remember one time he enlisted this fat kid who couldn't have been more than 15 to play saxophone with his band. The kid seriously couldn't play, and I remember when I pointed this out to Gordie he said, "That's exactly what I want him to do. I want a guy who seriously can't play." During this mercifully brief phase, the band would all just pound away while this kid blew serious noise through his horn. I once had an old board tape of this particular incarnation absolutely destroying "King of the Road," and in the quiet sections --Gordie at the time said "this band's gonna have a lot of space, and then we're just gonna keep blasting rockets off into it and blowing them up"-- you could hear the drunks at the bar bellowing at the band. Another time, with an entirely different line-up, Gordie spent a couple months playing some particular Rush album in its entirety, which actually, I believe, went over just fine with the locals.

The business with changing the band's name, though, was, as I said, Gordie's real stroke of genius. I was too young to really appreciate the brilliance of it at the time, and nobody down there ever seemd to pay much attention to it, but when I sat down and did my interview with Gordie I was amazed at how much thought he had put into the whole thing.

"I always did that on purpose, to a certain extent," he told me. "There are just so many good names, and it's always been a hobby of mine to sit around and make 'em up. When I first started a band I was like 16 years old and I had this list of something like 100 names, and I could never quite make up my mind. So for a long time we would just go down the list and try a different one once in awhile. They were all such great names, and I kept coming up with more, until eventually we started changing it with every gig. We were always just playing around here, so it really didn't make much of a difference. The locals didn't seem to care, and sometimes it may even have benefitted us to a certain extent; it kept people guessing, and when we played out of town we might actually draw people who didn't realize they'd seen us before."

I told Gordie that someone had told me that he had recently played a gig as "Kool and the Gang."

"Yeah, that's true," he said. "Except we used the correct spelling; we were 'Cool and the Gang.' I actually thought of the name before I'd ever heard of 'Kool and the Gang.' It was on my first list. We were 'Flock of Seagulls' one night as well."

Somewhere I have a long list of some of the band names Gordie has used over the years, but after I got the phone call this morning telling me he was dead I spent a couple hours digging around in my basement but couldn't find the damn thing. Off the top of my head, though, here are some of them:

Mamster. Gunilla Hutton. Sneaky Beano. Fudge Riprock. Mammy. Shitsicle. The Dog Creek Deacons. Kennesaw Mountain Plowboys. Will Diddley. Butt Cheek Hickey. The Dayglo Dickey. Pardon Me. Rubber Gal. Champion Pig. Pardon My French. Pardon Me, Amy. Spatula. Count Spatula and the Spooks. Dad Says. Bluto Rangen. Nestor and the Barbecue Gods. The Devil Randy. Orestes. Rump Roast. Party Barge. Keg Tramp. Shrook. Dick Eagle and the Apes. Sergeant Who? Poseidon Adventure. Blind, Crippled, and Crazy. Ed Asner. Slime Trumpet. Schleimtrompeten. Fantasy Island. Hollywood Squares. Pumphouse. Blood Sausage. Divining Rod and the Rack-Em-Ups. Petticoat Munchkin. Step On It. Ouch, That Smarts. The Barrow Show. Don't. Won't. Can't.

I asked Gordie if there was ever any thought about settling on one name, and he said, "I can't say that there was." When I wondered if there was one name out of all the names he had used that was a personal favorite, he allowed that such a question would be impossible to answer. I also asked him if he really believed that simply changing the name of his band made it a different band.

"Oh, no question," he said. "Of course it does. Let's say you're in a band called 'Rush Creek,' and you change it to something like 'Shitsicle.' Do you honestly think for one minute that that band is going to think, act, or play the same? Sometimes from one night to the next just changing the name of the band would take things in a completely different direction. There was one time --this was before I started changing the name for every gig-- where we were calling ourselves 'Garden Variety,' or some damn thing like that, and it was strictly a moldy-oldies deal, a complete snooze; we could literally sleep walk through the sets, but the money was good and we were getting lots of gigs. But I got bored one day and changed the name to 'Muffalo' and we totally caught fire and became an entirely different beast. That was probably my all-time favorite band."

For the last couple years every time I'd go back down to visit my parents I'd check the local paper to see if maybe Gordie was playing someplace, but he pretty much disappeared after he got religion and sold all his records. I'm told that he lost touch with God a short time after his rollerskating debacle with the cross, but he apparently never found his way all the way back. I don't know how this sort of thing happens to people, but it seems to happen to a lot of people I know. I heard some years ago that Gordie had moved to Mason City permanently. He had a sister who lived there, I know, who sold real estate, and his mother had moved down there as well before she died.

I didn't do a very good job of keeping in touch with Gordie after I left town, and I've always felt sort of bad about that. I certainly never properly conveyed to him my gratitude for all the ways he helped to point me in new directions, and he really was instrumental in shoving me out of town. There was no way, he always said, that he was going to let me stay there and become one of those people. Not more than a few months ago I was going through some books and I found an old dog-eared copy of Naked Lunch that Gordie had given me back in high school. I never really did make much of the book, but I always liked to page through it to see Gordie's enthusiastic notes in the margins; on virtually every page he had scrawled stuff like, "Wow!" and "Far out!" and sometimes just a string of sloppy exclamation points. I pulled that book out this morning and sat down on the couch and turned its pages once again. On the bottom of one page Gordie had written, "Too far is never far enough!" Fuck, that made me happy, even as it was breaking my heart.

Wed, 19 Feb 2003 22:19:15 GMT

Genesis

Once upon a time, when there were only a dozen lakes in Minnesota and Paul Bunyan was still nothing but a gleam in God's eye, there lived in the north country twin brothers, Esau and Jacob, sons of a local priestess and a legendary slaughterer of beasts. The slaughterer of beasts spent great stretches of time away from his family, wandering in the wilderness of the north and slaying animals from morning until night, until he was insensate from the iron-rich reek of gore and his entire body was stained with the blood of horribly debased creatures. Over time he became a stranger to his wife and twin sons, as well as becoming a feral curiosity and, eventually, a mangled and dubious regional myth. As the brothers grew to be young men they developed contrary attitudes toward their no-account father; Esau was swarthy and red-headed and had inherited his father's wanderlust and zeal for slaughter. Jacob was a more mild-mannered lad, and was regarded by the local folk as a something of a mama's boy and a dandy. He was interested in homeopathy, and spent his days foraging for medicinal herbs and dreaming of a career as a midwife. Jacob nurtured a festering resentment towards his father, and vowed to avenge the deadbeat's abandonment of his wife and children. The brothers eventually became bitterly estranged over this issue, and there was an ugly incident in late adolescence in which Esau conspired to flay his brother and feed his fat to the fire. The mother of the boys got wind of this plan through a blind local seer who lived along the banks of a dirty river, and banished the brothers to a kingdom in the south, where they were each given a territory on opposite sides of a great river. There the brothers lived into old age, and there they each built around them sprawling, wholly undistinguished cities of equally dim vision, governed by petty concerns and a burgeoning sense of civic pride that was as ridiculous as it was unjustified. Esau made a great fortune in the slaughter of beasts, and assembled around him a coterie of cigar-smoking cronies who built railroads to carry the meat from the slaughterhouses out into the world beyond. Jacob devoted himself to more gentle and genteel pursuits; he smoked a pipe, and fancied himself an art collector and a wine connoisseur. He spent his late years attempting to write a novel of self discovery, which was a miserable failure. After his death his sons devoted themselves to ruining the city of his dreams.

--From Francis Xavier Hodgson's Legends and Lore of Our Great Cities. Dotson and Struther Publishers. Chicago. 1927.