i walk into katz’s deli - complete w/ documentary and order up. i ask for a pastrami on rye.
great sandwich. that’s my review.
it’s expensive, but it’s in a 120 year-old cafeteria and that’s precious. enough.
i’m sitting at the back with a photo of a celebrity and a bald guy grinning down at me, looking at the expanse that is katz’s. it’s a really a big place. i think i could fit, like, five and a half GBMs in that place. i’m also feeling a little cocky because i got a clean bill of health from the bellevue gang. that’s why i walked in here today. i have my health. however, the rest of my life could use a little work……
i’m thinking….everything’s in the toilet. that’s the bad news.
it hasn’t been flushed. that’s the good news.
feeling good about your life and your chances, punk? (i do a very bad clint eastwood impression inside my head) remember, you’re doing better than a dead guy, steve.
you’re doing better than a greedhound who got his comeuppance either by a major financial adjustment or by becoming a skinjacket for a martian lizard. i shudder. i think about this week out at fort tilden and my conversation with that lizard. i remember how i was locked in to that voice and how i could have had my spine torn out and munched up by those teeth. then, for a few moments, i wonder if my suirvival lumps me in with a hapless president that i can’t help but keep ragging on.
i learned a few things from that lizard guy.
he told me this;
if you need to measure your life against another, always use ken lay (an evil dead guy who met a lizard) or george w bush (who the lizards don’t even want to grift, let alone wear) as your guide. otherwise, just thank the eighth-electro-plasma ocean of the ninth dimension,.
the wonderful thing about putting a link to the above group of words is that when you do the google search, it’s got nothing to do with anything else on the entire internet other than what you read here. it’s like having a “vanity link.”
does anyone out there have a vanity link?
why not a pastrami review
lizard rendezvous and the sensible 4X4
if you look at the upper right hand of the above photo, there, at the end of the road, you’ll see a vehicle. it’s a late-model chevy SUV but i didn’t know that until i walked to it as i headed to my own car a bit further along, in the parking lot.
i climbed down from where i took this pic after eating a chicken sandwich.
it was the end of my “visit to a good place.” i wouldn’t be able to go here this wednesday because of my visit to bellevue, so it was good fortune that i went here today.
as i approached, i noticed the guy i had met who looked like omar sharif and sounded like eduardo cianelli. he smiled and revealed little, razor-sharp teeth.
“not wearing the dentures today?” i said.
“long time no see….no….i just had lunch, so the other teeth are in the glove box”
“lunch? out here?”
“not here…i was in manhattan an hour ago. we met with an AIG guy. i got him to skim some of that bailout cash - boy, that’s a doozie of a hustle, let me tell you - and i had a trainee waiting for him when he visited the washroom at tavern on the green. his last words to me were, “it’s days like these that i think, maybe, my shit isn’t gonna stink, heh-heh-heh.” my guy was waiting for him and we barred the door the moment he entered. his last words to him were,”mommy…” my guy was fast but sloppy - i just noshed a little. i trained him well, but apparently he caused a little bit of ruckus when he left through the kitchen. that was great, though - i was even able to skip out on the check. humans are so dramatic, especially when entrails are involved.”
he went on to say that he knew i was looking down at him because he has the ship up there that was looking down at me. he said that was one thing that was the same about them and us. there’s always someone else watching.
when i asked him who was watching them, he said he wasn’t sure, but figured they “were inhabitants of the eighth-electro-plasma ocean of the ninth dimension.”
“what the hell is that?” i asked him. i was very impressed.
“when the hell is that, he corrected me.
then he proceeded to go all carl sagan times arthur c. clark on me. as he spoke, his voice flowing in a tuvan monotone, i wasn’t sure if i was losing interest or losing consciousness. i wondered if i was dessert and a “new jacket.” i wondered if my luck was running out.
i stared out at the ocean and the ship that i recognized from when i first met him almost a year ago (back when he was with the olive-skinned woman and i first discovered the little sharp teeth), i felt myself drifting. i looked down at maxx and he was laying down with his eyes looking up at me. he seemed calm and serene and this let me know that everything was all right. “if he ain’t doing anything about this, neither am i,” i thought.
it was like passing out while standing up.
once, there was a ny telephone company worker who was stabbed and robbed down by the fulton fish market back when it was in lower manhattan. it was like 1980 or something. he lost so much blood that when they were rushing him to beekman downtown hospital, the medics slashed his wrists and shove tubes into his arms in order to try to get more blood into his body quicker. the story made the cover of ny magazine. the guy survived and was getting his fifteen minutes in an interview a few weeks later, recounting the story from his side of the ambulance and hospital gurney. he spoke about being in a place where he saw people from places other than earth and other than life and, at one point, he was being pushed from eternity back to this plane of existence. as i listened to his story, it took me to the gurney i rode in coney island hospital on january 22nd, 1962 and the two or three days i lost back then. i understood him so much that i decided i needed to not hear him talk about it anymore, so i said i have to go now and as i rose, i felt myself grow heavy and………
i came to about ten minutes later. i was laying on the floor next to the bed i was aiming for.
it felt just like that.
that’s what happened when the grifting lizard guy spoke about the eighth-electro-plasma ocean of the ninth dimension, except instead of passing out, i drifted to places i hadn’t yet dreamed about and was people i had yet to be.
at least, that’s what the guy said later in our conversation.
i remember asking him, “so, why the chevy? what happened to the mercedes and acura?”
“what was it like when you almost died?” he asked back.
“can’t really recall,” i said. except it was like being an almost-dead telephone repairman.
he knew what i was talking about because these grifting lizards from mars can read us humans like dime-store novels. they can sort us out like the cheesy sitcoms we think are so witty. they are the shiny things that catch our eye just long enough to miss the point.
“i have to get ‘with the people’ automotive-wise,” he said. martian lizards are pragmatic.
“it looks like i have to fish in a different stream on this planet for a while. we had a great run, but things….change. if there’s no steak, you still gotta eat….”
gotcha.
as i was leaving, i turned. i thought to ask if, while trapped in that stone-eyed reverie, i was being considered as a new suit.
“no” he said, smiling that grifting-lizard smile.
“see ya” i said.
“yes. you will” he answered.
i got home just in time to watch fred and ginger, then the marx brothers.
hello, i must be going……..
from the “wooden” me and whatever follows neckxt
the doctors were talking between themselves. i was sitting on a table in front of them. the senior of the two doctors was running his hands along the right side of my adam’s apple, pressing, as if searching, for places where potential post-op cancer problems might arise. as spectator and not participant in the conversation, i can only glean a sense of “what” their “where” chat was about. his other hand moved to the left side of my adam’s apple where he pressed in the same, though less emphatic manner when he said, “you can feel it easier here because this side is not so wooden,” the other doctor’s fingers getting in on the mini-gropefest, pressing one side and comparing it with the other.
i was neither insulted nor embarrassed this. Bellevue is a teaching hospital and i’ve grown used to these moments. these past two years have had a number of these occurences, sometimes with entire classes coming to see the exhibit - my neck, throat…etc.
“wooden,” i said to myself, “that’s what this is.” i couldn’t wait for this to end so i could leave and touch my surgically-altered neck, finally able to put a name to it; take two fingers and trace them along my jugular vein whispering the word “wooden” just loud enough to know i’m saying it and not just thinking it.
it’s been an entire year since surgery and i could never explain, even to myself, what my neck felt like. i knew what the feeling was (and is) regarding my right ear. they severed the nerves to get to the nasty little cancer, so since the surgery and still to this day, i refer to my right ear as,”someone else’s ear,” but not so with the right side of my neck.
there are times i’ll touch around my neck and marvel at what a bag of goop we are.
make no mistake, once they go in where your stuff is and do any fixing or cutting, nothing is ever quite the same. the best way i can explain it is this;
if you let someone stay at your house for a while, then when you come back - even if they try to keep everything just the way it was - you’ll notice a world of changes because it’s your stuff and it’s in your place.
this is the same thing. i imagined the surgeons, after spreading out and separating all of my plumbing and electric up there, snipping the wire that flashes “RIGHT EAR” in my brain whenever i touch it; cuts out the “mass” that i can only picture as something black, gooey and incredibly sinister - where all the surgeons collectively say “eeeeewwwwww” (i heard there were seven) and the head surgeon, that wonderful woman who i am forever in her debt, holds it momentarily for everyone to see, drops it into a stainless-steel dish with utter disdain, saying to her associate, “let’s file this,” then sort-of pushes everything back together, re-arranging my innards to the general area where everything “was”, pauses…., looks…, pitter-patters around there again, her head tilting to one side slightly, then another little nudge here, nudge there, much in the way hair cutters did in the big-hair era of the 1980’s just before they say yeah, that’s about right…..
“sew him up!”
sew, here i am.
this is getting play because wednesday is post-op exam time. for the most part, i don’t give as much time to this stuff as i used to, but when the little alarms go off, and so do i.
the above blank space is where i walked to the refrigerator and took out the plate that held the containers of mozzarella, olives, fried peppers, stuffed cherry peppers, dried soppresota, sliced cappicola and wheel of provolone cheese. i stepped away from this machine and listened to world music while i tinkered around my digs here. maxx sat obediently by my side and waited for his cut of the deal. i don’t feed him the spicy stuff, but he’s all about the cheeses and the cold cuts.
i just linked the info about capicola. i never knew that the literal translation of that word is “neck of pig.”
now, doesn’t that just sound perfect?
i reach to the wooden part of my neck that connects my head to my chest and sigh.
all of a sudden, an image from the lord of the flies flashes;
goodbye blue monday - food and something to read
The Washington Post
discovered the art scene in Bushwick. Not Brooklyn. Bushwick, Brooklyn. Pretty cool, huh?
and to boot, there’s some new breakfast wraps being premiered here;
starting tomorrow - saturday, 11/15 - they are;
the potato and egg wrap
the mexican breakfast burrito
and yes,
the pancake and bacon wrap.
we mean it. that last one. it’s brilliant!
all served with fresh fruit and coffee or tea
six bucks
to sleep, perchance to dream. hell yeah! do it with late-night spicy food!
i got off the keys here yesterday and went to sleep. good god, it was late. i slept like a baby and had the most lucid dreams. i saw people who i haven’t seen in years and for the first time they too have grown older. in conversation with characters in my dream i am dragged back to what? the competition that was the signature of their aggression or my insecurity? it seemed each episode was a debate of sorts, the kind of chance meeting with old friends where the conversation drifts to, “so, what have you been doing with yourself?” and becomes an exercise in one-upsmanship.
culturally, it might not be as apparent now as it was then (generationally speaking), but in a current culture of such avarice and greed as to make the grifting martian lizards sing, i’d make a safe bet things haven’t changed so much since i was being browbeaten with the success whip as i was growing up.
this is why i’m not big on reunions.
i had these dreams because of the various cold cuts i ate along with the fried hot peppers, the stuffed cherry peppers, the aged provolone cheese and the semolina bread. i’m on some kind of “run” on this stuff. i’ve written about this not too long ago here and it’s still going on. it’s about the dreams, no doubt, as well as the familiarity of a perceived link to…what? my DNA? my italian heritage? where my life has taken me up to at this point and how i feel about it? my relationship with the martian lizard people? i don’t even know what i’m talking about here, or at least i’m saying that. with all of this playing in my head, i walked around the neighborhood with maxx this rainy, rainy day and found solace in the day before. maxx and me went to the beach and took some pictures; i did what a wise person told me a long time ago; sometimes, even for an hour, you just have to go to a “good place.”
as i walked and clicked, i wondered why i don’t write about scrapbar;
“you know so many stories about that place. it really must’ve been something. you ought to write a book.” people would say. “that place holds a lot of history”, they’d say.
i meet people i never or barely knew from that time. many say the same thing. “i was there a bunch of times and always walked out of there trashed. now, well, you know……..”
that’s the signal that they grew up, got married and had kids and that their kids are in the backyard here, playing one of the all-age shows we put on between 4 and 9pm. that’s another reason we’re revamping back there - it’s for movies, kids, outside performances in the warmer months - a whole bunch of reasons.
and that’s where i go…i’m in natural “pitch” mode. i’m so excited about the future here that the past weighs me down, though once i get going about scrapbar, it generally takes a gag over my mouth to shut me up. if i ever wrote a book about those experiences, maybe i’d entitle it, “i survived scrapbar. did you?”
maybe if i write it, i’d have to acknowledge how it might have been a bit of a horror story. after all, it near killed me and it was “part of the math” that killed a lot of people.
the same way i had to “learn” that someone’s suicide note addressed to me didn’t make me responsible for this person’s death, scrap bar was a mere component in someone’s tragic decision. the environment at the time, the mid-late 1980’s was a “bi-polar culture” - the highs were really high and the lows…..you know what i’m saying.
i’m not a doctor and i might be talking from a perch of a madman, though i’m almost sure i’m not completely crazy, but i remember my world then and well……i was pretty nuts and as they say, birds of a feather tear it up likewise. of course there were sane people back in that time - there always are; some - but if scrap bar held the wake for punk and the coming-out party for metal by way of MTV (which is what i believe, artistically) then yes, this place was an irish funeral and an irish wedding on blow and dope running concurrently at a time that it was the place “you had to go to.”
there was so much showbizz and rock’n'roll going on in such a small place, that if this age of paparazzi-hungry behavior tried to get in the doors there, they’d simply push all their targets out the back. besides, my security would make it most difficult for them, as they were close friends from third street and were staunch believers in privacy. scrapbar was posers, punks, glams; overdress and underdress and rockers and suits and strippers who didn’t hook and hookers who didn’t strip; artists and bullshit-artists, con-artists and performance artists; grifters and thieves and drug dealers and sports-celebrities and celeb-celebrities and bankers and bikers and gangsters and undercovers and overcovers and feds and soldiers and officers and tourists and tourists and actresses and scumbags and rapists and whores and saints and authors. the little basement held the biggest of the best and worst who went to be seen and unseen. that’s why it fit me so well and i was in perfect harmony with the vibe of it. i knew who everyone one was before i knew who anyone was. i made perfect sense in that place. scrap bar was my bi-polar dream-come-true.
btw/ i’ve never been diagnosed. i’m not on psychotropic drugs. i’ve never been. i’m making this up as i go along, so…….
goodbye blue monday and the meaning of life and brunch
no. i can’t tell you the meaning of life (maybe i can, maybe i can’t), but i can tell you that the first test for the cordoba garage theater, or whatever i named the sculpture garden behind goodbye blue monday, will be Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.
this will occur next sunday, november 23th, at 8pm.
we will be testing out our old-fangled equipment, featuring the “projecto-table”, an extraordinarily leap into the future-past, where you can project eight millimeter, super-eight millimeter, sixteen millimeter, VHS, DVD and whatever else, all from the same table.
another piece of intriguing information;
this saturday night there’s gonna be music inside and outside -
7:00 PM - 09:00 - Paradigm Refrain Jazz 8pm
8:00 PM - midnight - indoors-
AdreienneAnemone
Dearest
WalterSickert and the Army of Broken Toys
9:00 PM - midnight - inBackyardTheater -
Palmyra
Tape and Wire
Glad Hearts
Kenneth Ishak
breakfast wraps start this weekend 11/15 - for starters;
eggs, black beans and salsa wrap
potato, peppers and eggs wrap
pancakes, butter, syrup and bacon wrap
all served with fresh fruit and coffee or tea
six bucks - saturday and sunday.
i gotta sleep - see you soon
jim jones did more for unsweetened Kool-Aid than you’ll ever know
is it nostalgia or historic bad taste? as i remember it, there was a perfect-pitched ring of “aww, fuck”- horror, along with “what were you thinking?”- incredulousness to it. i bought munchies and set myself up for the thirtieth-anniversary special that’s probably going to be shown a whole bunch of times on MSNBC- this was a gift for doing time watching olbermann and company. the commercial heralding this event was appointed days before the presidential election. i don’t doubt CNN is gonna do one, channel 7 and maybe even Fox. hey - 913 dead americans in the middle of a jungle - that’s gonna draw.
i wonder if they got the idea for survivor from this.
initially, i was going to suggest this as something that might be a great idea to watch, as it’s a stupefying, horrible and tragic story. the nagging question throughout the show for me, was just how lost should you be in order to find yourself in Jonestown, in the middle of guyana.
this is the result of the celebrated kool aid joke. the bits of bright colors, the whites and reds, the oranges and yellows - they’re bodies.
as i drive around my brooklyn world, particularly when i’m at the corner of meeker and humboldt where i buy the “good” wine for goodbye blue monday (or when i’m rolling down the humboldt street exit from the BQE), i look at the old police station that had been vacated for what has to be 40 years. i see that there’s renovation going on in that building lately. this is the place i’m talking about;
and if you’re driving off the BQE, it looks like this;
that car in the pic is mine. you might even be able to see maxx in the passenger seat.
so, from jim jones to humboldt street. what’s the link?
what else can it be? it’s jeeeesus!
in 1971, in order to graduate from high school i had the choice of going on a catholic retreat somewhere on long island, or a “christian awakening” held in that police station you see above. it was called st. paul’s cursillo center. it started in that building in the mid-1960’s and it was run by a guy named fr. doug brown- and what began in a beat-up old building in brooklyn has grown into a movement that’s spread all over the country and is a particularly hot ticket if you’re spanish or vietnamese, for some reason….. - (those are the language options on the site in the archdiocese of galveston.)
i didn’t even know there were catholics in galveston.
now, i’m not saying that mr. jones and fr. brown were the same. heaven forbid!
and i’m not saying that there is or was anything wrong with christianity other than what the people who hijacked the author’s teachings about two thousand years ago did with it. i can run-on with the opium of the masses stuff, the war and god stuff, the everybody is right stuff; that there’s no escape and we’re all going to hell in a handbasket; that stuff sbout 72 virgins, the fluffy white beard fella, being nuzzled safely in the arms of the virgin mary, the “there is no there, there” and even my beloved big math - all of it;
i think i’m doing my best to get away from the point. it seems a lot of us need or crave something or someone to give us direction, a reason to be, or whatever. my high school offered/forced this on the seniors and after three days of sequestered christianity. when it was over, i got off the bus that deposited me near my home, walked up the stairs, greeted my parents and dropped off my clothes. when my parents asked me,”how was it?” i announced that i was going to a bar.
“spare some change for an old altar boy?” there’s some film trivia for you.
i was doing that when they said it in latin, so, uh, et cum spiritu tuo, right atcha……
i knew someone else who went to this thing and signed onto another one. then another. eventually he went into a seminary.
i guess that’s what makes horse races; of course, that’s a reason for the old glue works.
chances are there wasn’t one outside of Jonestown.
but how could i be talking about this when general motors is three bucks a share?
jesus, what a bargain!
what? everything’s not fixed yet?
i’m back to normal (ha!). it only took 48 hours. i turned on the TV this morning, got the weather on NYone and turned it off. i didn’t even watch moral orel last night, though the stop-motion claymation show is brilliant. watching an episode, i can’t help but think these are the base republicans that called obama a terrorist. oh, not “all” of them, but there’s a bunch of truth there, wandering around in Moralton. i was disheartened to learn that there will be no more new moral orel episodes. 44, it will be - you can see lots of them right online.
i attempted to watch MSNBC’s countdown with keith olbermann but found my eyes and ears wandering. music is once again playing in my room. i’ve been lost in the magic, but that moment has ended. earlier today i planned my turner classic movies for the night. it’ll be a streetcar named desire. i could watch it or listen to it. it’s that kind of experience. great plays that become film can work that way, especially when they’re well-crafted. i don’t doubt that brando and leigh will eventually pull me away from whatever i’m doing (probably this), but that’s about 5 hours from now. which reminds me - if you like radio and real radio shows and you never heard of Joe Frank, it’s time you did, but that’s for you to do. he’s amazing.
at the moment, i’m listening to a movie called “the mating season”, an early 50’s version of screwball comedy, something more tied to the 1930’s. it starred a beautiful and incredibly talented actress named gene tierny -
there’s a story floating around in hollywoodland about how she and a young jack kennedy “did it” in the senate’s cloakroom in the early 1950’s. that’s so…american.
this morning, somewhere - was it the bodega across the street? - a radio told me we lost 247,000 jobs in the past month and general motors is going bust. GM has been losing a fortune for years. now it’s time to sit down and think about how to re-invent yourself, partner. escalade your ass into the future, GM. i know you can do it. the wall you need to climb to get out of the mess you’re in is constructed of the eight-cylinder engine blocks that you’ve stockpiled since 1967. a big part of america, just like General Motors, is an aging galoot who’s terrified of change. this is the lesson of this past election. change or die, GM. a lot of aging galoots were heroic in their decision to vote for a middle-aged black guy this year. my 78-year-old jewish stepfather was one of my heroes this year. he writes e-mails and listens to music through his i-pod.
on another front, maybe it’s time to start growing hemp again.
it was part of the war effort back in the 40’s. what the heck? here’s where i say something catchy like,
“hey america, got a deficit? legalize weed! your only deficit will be your short-term memory”
- it’s about as much a gateway drug as beer or wine and i’m a believer in leveling the playing field. all that other stuff, well, information, a choice and hope for the best - it’s out there …….plaster a warning on the world we live in a la raoul duke, aka hunter s. thompson;
“when you do the drug, you become the drug.”
then, just below it, add -
“prolonged exposure to yourself in this manner will render you a terrific, one-dimensional bore who just might kill yourself.”
i’ve done as much of everything i shouldn’t have done as i humanly could have.
for this i am grateful. if i were young enough and strong enough to do it all over again, i probably would. that’s the kind of guy i am.
rather this, than a world that wants to do too much for your own good.
it’s like bike lanes - they’re a wonderful thing but they give me a slight case of the willies.
this, no doubt has something to do with my age. i existed in a world where riding in between subway cars was as natural as smoking cigarettes while doing it. i flew on eastern airlinesin the early ’90’s, an airline that was in financial trouble at the time. i think i was flying to atlanta, georgia for the first time. it was the last “smoking” flight i would ever be on. the overhead compartment that corresponded to my seating arrangement read “out of order” and was held closed by duct tape. that put everything into perspective for me back then. imagine, smoking cigarettes on a plane; even more, in movie theater.
cigarettes ruled this country; the airwaves, the television - everywhere.
am i getting off the subject or was i never on one?
maybe it has something to do with not being able to grasp what happened on tuesday. obama’s victory could not be understood by a white person. i thought i understood. seeing jesse jackson weep, hearing the words of john lewis and all of the joy at grant park should have given me the hint. the stream of young black males who walked into GBM late that night seemed almost dumbfounded by the turn of events could only shake hands with us. a few of them stepped on the stage and started to chant “obama” for a few seconds, then walked off the stage, shaking hands with us all over again as they headed out. it was very surreal.
two days later, i headed to ruthie’s for meatloaf, collard greens and yams. i’ve been a steady customer of theirs for about six years or so. ruthie is a wiry, petite, god-fearing seventy-something-year-old woman. a “matriarch,” tough as nails but sweet as sugar. she was one of my proxy-moms when i was getting my strength this past year. dolores was gone about five months at this point and there’s probably a default set in my makeup that ruthie’s kind, christian way switched on. hey, mom….
when i came in to pick up my dinner it was at the tail-end of their business day, so it wasn’t busy. “hi ruthie,” i said. “hi there, darlin’…we’ll have you all set up in another minute or so..” she replied. “whenever you’re ready, i’m ready,” i said.
a moment passed.
being the eloquent master of understatement, i said;
“decompressing from tuesday?”
i thought i tazed her. electrified, she answered, “de-compressing? i can’t!…” - becoming more and more energized - “i couldn’t stop jumpin’ and screamin’. i couldn’t answer the phone - people couldn’t understand what i was sayin’, all i was doin’ was hollerin’ and yellin’ - obama! obama! - it’s a miracle. it’s a miracle” and she found herself where she was almost 48 hours ago, crazy with glee, her young crew around her basking in her glow and myself, feeling the joy of the rerun of the moment, as fresh and true as the initial one. it was here where i acknowledged in my heart of hearts that four hundred years of struggle will put you in a slightly different mindset as to the miracle of nov. 4th, 2008.
go, ruthie!
hey! you can make a movie out of our movie theater!
it looks innocent enough, doesn’t it?
who would think that these thinks are connected?
take a look at the screen behind the chair - it’s pretty impressive.
around three weeks ago when the sun shone, i walked into the backyard and saw that chair. the burn is about three inches wide and it’s burned. i got cursing real fast and furious, wondering how anyone could be so careless. “who’d do something like that, and worse, how could they do it for so long without getting caught…..by me, even? matt came out a little while after the discovery. he was mystified when he saw it. he told me that he closed the backyard the previous night and “that chair didn’t look anything like that.”
i muttered to myself for a few days after that.
i walked into the backyard a week later and saw the burned screen, then looked to the mirror
and saw a mirror with a lot of imperfections bordering on “funhouse,”
i woke up the following morning at around 8am and peered out of the back window of my loft, and there it was; the sun coming across the backyard, doing something that works like this;
<, the sun at the top point, the mirror at middle point and the chair and/or screen at the bottom point.
OR
it’s something out of an indiana jones movie;
welcome back john; the GBM presidential sony trinitron launch
goodbye blue monday dashed into the television age last night.
yesterday afternoon i drove to main drag music to drop off an amplifier for service. i also wanted to take a photo of a guitar i have up for sale on the wall there. it’s a 1957 martin;
it was pretty beat up when i found it. tom (magnets for teeth) restored it and it sounds “this side of heaven.”
i took this pic because i never had such a beautiful musical instrument, nor do i think i deserve to own one and i want to remember it, much in the way i want to remember other glowing moments whether it be ginger, joe strummer or waking up after successful cancer surgery. it’s like “whooooosh…….” better than any kodak moment, and i’m all about brain-clicking kodak-moments that pile up here, in my heart and mind.
i sure am a sappy guy sometimes.
so……..
walking out and heading back to the car, my eyes were drawn to an old television sitting atop a pile of garbage across the street. it was a classic, 13-inch diagonal sony trinitron. i ran over and grabbed it. it’s as classic as my KLH speakers and my little mac computer.
it’s a technological moment-in-time. i also got a commodore-64 computer-work station a while back, something i only heard of from computer geeks.
it was left on a street corner in a plastic milk crate. what a week. i wonder if this was the computer that i was supposed to learn DOS with, back when that book was given to me in the early 80’s. if you have no idea what i’m talking about, there’s a whole bunch of blogs before this one……..
but i digress.
last night, john mccain lost the election but got his soul back. not too bad a deal. from the day i saw him on the daily show last year, when jon stewart asked him if he was selling himself out to jerry falwell and the religious right, mr. mccain was honest enough to not only to admit it, but seemed ashamed of himself because of it. he did all sorts of things since being bushwacked by georgeW and company back in 2000 and it seemed he became….how do you say…obsessed with recovering what he felt was stolen from him, and he did it at any price. the only problem was that the GOP was now a party overrun with sleazoids fronted by georgeW. if you get a bunch of fundamentalists together, whether they be christian, muslim, hindu, disco, doo-wop or hippie, you’ll eventually have problems and that’s what happened with the republican “base”. neo-conservatism combined with grifting martian lizards, fronted by a dolt who believes he’s gotten orders from god that made him a symbol of “compassionate conservatism” though it was more like benign neglect, which might not have ended up to be a bad thing.
so, what of the republican party? this is about a bunch of aggressive, reactive, touchy sonsabitches who will do anything to gain or maintain power. these are bullies who act badly when they don’t get their way. that’s why you heard what you heard as the crowds got crazier and more vicious at the republican rallies (though the real scary and crazy ones are the quiet ones who speak in hushed tones in the corridors of power, e.g. cheney and co.) and that’s why i want the new president to watch his back (and front and sides).
but then again, what do i know? all of a sudden i’m a paranoid pundit. again.
goodbye blue monday had a night of music headed by buffie gilbert who billed it as an election show. i love buffie. she’s one of my favorite neighbors. this past summer proved that the bushwick music scene is coming into it’s own and she’s a primary part of it. well, i was ferrying myself downstairs from upstairs, worrying about pennsylvania and ohio, when i grabbed the new/old trinitron and set it on a 1950’s kitchen chair and plugged it in. i got static and lots of it.
did you know that when you look at static, you’re looking at atoms that are part of the birth of the universe? i learned that on PBS one day.
i went in search of an antenna. my friend jared attached a lamp’s power cord to the back of the TV and there was a picture. wow. so our little historic moment will be visible here in the store. the music was playing, so we just have the picture on without sound, looking for the magic number of electoral votes. at a few seconds after 11pm, i saw the US map with blue lights on the western states, i ran upstairs. keith olbermann was making the announcement that history was being made. moments later, john mccain appeared on the TV screen and began to speak. this was upstairs. i heard his words.
i called downstairs and instructed bottles of prosecco be opened to toast the new president.
mccain’s concession speech was at once heartfelt and a bit sad but there was what i perceived a sigh of relief in his voice, though he had to work through some pretty bad behavior by base republicans or whatever they were, in his crowd and he didn’t (or couldn’t) shut them up until the final moments of his speech. none of the broadcasters made mention of it (at least the ones i saw). the word “despicable” flashed across my mind’s eye. these are the people who sing “yes, jesus loves me; yes, jesus loves me; yes, jesus loves me…the bible tells me so,” and pay no attention to his teachings.
yea. right.
but back to john mccain. you can bet the farm that he’ll be on the daily show and he’ll be the guy who i would have voted for eight years ago. advanced welcome back, john.
then….
one of those news guys said that obama would be speaking at around midnight. i went downstairs as a solo act known as “musical monk” was setting up and some more of our friends entered the store and a sense of family seemed to hang in the air. the performer onstage was winding down a song and i saw on our presidential trinitron, that all eyes were on grant park in chicago. i asked dylan (our soundperson) to hand me the microphone we use at the soundboard and we propped it to the little speaker just below the UHF tuner on the sony and president obama’s speech pre-empted “musical monk’s” next tune. (thanks for being a good sport, monk)
obama’s words filled the air and we all listened and luxuriated in the moments. i began my bush countdown. there was a wonderful intimacy last night around the TV. it was just plain, “folksy.” the speech ended, everyone applauded, then the music resumed. after a while people retreated to respective tables and mild chatter filled the room. this was wonderful.
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