jerry & elaine (instant winners)

"It's exhausting being with you."

--Elaine Benes to Jerry Seinfeld, "The Red Dot", Seinfeld (Third Season)


I have come to realize, in the midst of my Seinfeld jones, that Eve and I have become Jerry & Elaine.

We dated a long time ago, it didn't work out, we went our separate ways, and now that we are both adults with our own separate lives... we're best friends.

And there's always that underlying tension...


*/*


I stumbled upon the Jerry & Elaine connection over breakfast on Sunday. Bro Man and I had just finished making avant-garde music a la Captain Beefheart and decided to grab a bite to eat at Andre's. I'd called Eve and asked her if she wanted to join us.

As we sat inside (an unusual arrangement for us, but all the tables outside were taken by one big hungry family) Bro Man and I talked about my Seinfeld obsession. Bro Man has always been a fan of the show, and he was gleefully volunteering Seinfeld-related trivia when Eve showed up and sat down next to us.

"Hey, you made it!"

"Yeah, I got your message..."

"We were just talking about Seinfeld."

"Oh, I can't watch that show," Eve said.

"You don't think it's funny?" Bro Man asked.

"No, it's just that... it's painful to watch sometimes. The whole lying thing..."

"That's what makes it funny," I said.

Suddenly, I took a big step back from our table in my mind, and I realized something that could conceivably be the gist of an episode of Seinfeld.

"Hey guys," I said. "Do you realize that we could be stand-ins for the Seinfeld cast?"

Bro Man and Eve looked at me and smirked. This was the kind of stuff that I liked to come up with, and they then looked at each other and smirked some more.

"All we need is a Kramer. Maybe I should've called Down Low."

Bro Man suddenly figured out what I was implying. "Oh, so I'm George, huh?"

"Of course you are," I said. "I'm Jerry, Eve's Elaine, and you're George. You're the black George."

Eve giggled. Bro Man gave me a "yeah yeah yeah" kind of look but it didn't bother him to be compared to Mr. Costanza. After all, he loves the show and has watched it longer than I have.

But then I thought about Eve and I, and how the Jerry & Elaine thing really is quite an accurate description of our current relationship.

I ordered my usual breakfast order and made small talk with my friends.


*/*


Later on in the evening, after Bro Man went home, Eve came by and we watched TV, ordered pizza, and shot the shit about life in general.

As of late, she and I have been hanging out, spending down time with each other. She gets lonely, I get lonely, we cleave to each other's lonliness and we also keep our affection and passion at an arm's length, lest we give in to lust and find ourselves back in the same situation as in January of this year.

I always wondered why Jerry and Elaine could never make it work, and after watching the show regularly for the past few months, I see it is because they are both immature.

They have so much in common, and yet they cannot reconcile themselves to each other. Eve and I are the same way: we can make things work with other people for long periods of time, but we cannot merge together and work as a functioning couple for the life of us.

She was in a relationship with Dick for nine years, and it worked out because Dick never had any motivation or ideas of his own. He was content to take the backseat to Eve, and she was more than willing to run the show.

I, however, am fiercely independent, and sometimes I am scared when Eve feels the need to take the controls and call the shots. In turn, she sometimes feels like I don't take her seriously, that I see her as a piece of ass, or nothing but a pretty face.

While I have learned (over time) to defer to Eve in certain respects, I also find that it is almost necessary for me to be there, to take over for her in case she drops the ball. She used to resent this aspect of my personality, chalking it up to my need to always be right as opposed to my need to be helpful. Nowadays, she is more willing to let me call some shots, so long as I am not leading her down some insane path that only I can tolerate.

Last Friday we went out to see my old guitarist Mikey play at The Troubador. Mikey is now a singer, and his band is a cross between Oingo Boingo, System Of A Down, and Mr. Bungle. I asked Eve if she wanted to come with me, and she agreed.

We had a great time, watching the band, talking with Mikey's girlfriend afterwards as she informed us of her mission to save all the bunny rabbits in L.A. County. Eve liked the band so much she asked for a CD. She and I have never been out on the town like that, and it felt great.

Of course, feelings do rise to the fore, emotions of love and trust, of hurt and betrayal, and we have our petty jealousies and grievances. I think she tends to get overly embarrassed whenever I start talking in conversations because she thinks I am constantly joking; conversely, I sometimes feel like less of a man when she demands to pay for drinks and food.

We have our issues.


*/*


One thing that I've always loved about Eve: extraordinary things seem to happen when she and I are alone.

The following may not seem that extraordinary, but in the proper context it is definitely noteworthy:

The pizza guy came with an order for us, but he forgot to give us two sodas. He only gave us one, and we decided to split it.

Eve opened the cap on the 1-liter bottle and said, "Hey! We won a free liter of Coke!'

"Get out of here," I said. "Really?"

Eve showed me the cap. Indeed, we were instant winners.

"In all of my years of drinking sodas, I have NEVER won anything from the cap," I said. "Seriously-- this is the closest I've ever come to that."

"Same here," she said, excited by such a random event.

"Here, you keep it in your purse. You can redeem it at any retailer."

Eve read the label and figured out that the odds of winning are one in five.

She and I are always at odds with other people, and when we work as a team she and I can accomplish so much. And yet, our emotions make us complicated, our feelings for each other are confused and sincere and utterly tragic.

I recall once, long ago... she and I were out late-- I had snuck her out of her house on a school night. We walked the streets of Northridge near her house, and she flicked a finished cigarette butt into the air. It landed on the ground in a most unusual manner: vertically, as if placed on the uneven pavement of the road by human hands, standing up and pointing to the sky. It was not a shared hallucination or a flight of fancy-- this was real, and we were the only ones around to witness it.

I guess that's what love is and what it can be: a conspiracy of two, with only the other person's word to verify and back up any claims made.


*/*


I wonder what will become of us. Will she eventually meet a man (or a woman) who will satisfy her every need? Will I meet Ms. Right and settle down? And if we do, will she and I still be friends? Will the tension still be there?

Or, will we end up discovering that there is no one else out there who can reach either of us, and that we are better off with each other than apart?

I am reminded of an episode of Seinfeld that left me speechless. It's the one where Jerry's current girlfriend decides to make him mad, just to see him show an honest emotion. This leads to Jerry exploring his emotions and getting in touch with them. He has a conversation with Elaine and tells her everything he has ever felt about her. This jars her, and she takes some time to think it all over.

Then, George decides to reveal to Jerry everything inside of him. The intensity of George's revelations (which are never shown on screen) shock Jerry so much that he reverts back to his repressed, smug little self.

Elaine shows up near the end of the episode and says to Jerry, "Let's go for it. You were right, everything we ever wanted is right here in front of us. Why not?"

And, of course, Jerry callously shrugs it all off. Elaine is disappointed. Jerry goes back to the comfortable insularity of being Jerry Seinfeld.

My jaw was open when I saw that episode. I was horrified. It was so devastating and cruel. And yet, it was entirely realistic in its blackly humorous depiction of shallow people who choose to hide their feelings in order to protect themselves from rejection and failure. Jerry is painted as returning to a "normal" state of mind, but really-- he regressed and stepped backward instead of forward.

For that one moment, I hated Jerry Seinfeld. And then, I realized that I hate him because I can relate to him. I have done that, I have been in that situation, and there but for the grace of God go I.

I wonder if Eve and I will ever go through something like that again. Lord knows, we've already had our respective moments with each other. Both of us have rejected and been the rejecter. I think we are evenly matched, but maybe it's time for us to lay down our arms.

It's easier said than done. And until it gets done, I am content to watch DVDs with her while eating pizza, smoking cigarettes, and making conversation.

I mean, even if we can't bring ourselves to admit we care for each other, maybe we can make our moments together worthwhile anyway.

The odds are in our favor on that one...

shallow

I've been obsessed with Seinfeld ever since March.

A co-worker made a copy of some of the recent DVDs from the first season, and shortly after that TiVo was installed in my office, allowing me to catch up on the hit TV show in reruns on TBS.

I liked the show when it was on the air but I never got too into it. The shows were always funny but something about its tone caused me to shy away from being an avid viewer.

But in the wake of my recent epiphanies about narcissism, Seinfeld has proven to be highly entertaining and relevant.

First, there's Jerry Seinfeld himself: relentlessly snide, smug, hypercritical and neurotic. He is shallow and vain, amused by his own wit and bemused by the world around him. Jerry, as a comedian, gets points for self-deprecation, but it is a symptom of his insecurity and not done as a healthy ego check. He is solipsistic and petty, and yet he also comes off as relatively normal when compared to the likes of...

George Costanza, the narcissist's narcissist, a pure and complete example of the self-centered persona-projecting egotist. George goes into a rage if his sense of self is violated in any way; he takes insults personally and plots revenge for the pettiest of reasons; his only pursuit in life is to gratify his many selves.

Elaine Benes, Jerry's ex, is just as vain and shallow as Jerry, which is why they were involved in the first place... and it also explains why they are no longer a couple, being that they are so much alike. This met-my-match chemistry keeps their relationship tense, as if the two are locked in a draw and both are unwilling to lay down their arms.

Finally, there's Cosmo Kramer, who doesn't appear to be a grade-A narcissist like the other three, until a close examination of his motives is performed. Kramer's insensitivity and singlemindedly maniacal pursuits are the proof we need to confirm that he is merely a variation on the type of immature ego that drives his friends to act out their weird psychodramas as they do.

Watching Seinfeld in the wake of my recent narcissistic forays has helped me to see what my main problem is: I have too much ego attachment. I function best when I put my ego to the side. I am a better person for letting petty grievances pass, for ignoring the silly absurdities that cause people to snap into ego defense mode, as if their very honor depended on the outcome of some insignificant row.

I still possess a massive ego, but I've gotten better at detaching myself from it when I need to, and usually I need to detach myself from my ego quite often. Social situations, one-sided conversations, misunderstandings, online communication... I've improved my tactics and streamlined my philosophy so that I can minimize my outrage over any sort of affront to my sense of self.

These are narcissistic times, and this is a narcissistic city. I feel like I am now more comfortable with my shallow side. I used to abhor being seen as shallow until I realized that, in several key respects, I am shallow.

A deep person would not have let an online stalker derail his progress. No, a deep person would've recognized immediately what was going on, and would've made decisions according to what would eradicate the conflict as opposed to fueling it.

I'm a smart guy, but I'm not wise. Solipsists and narcissists are often extremely intelligent but lack any sense of wisdom, of having learned a lesson. Well, I feel like I've learned my lesson for sure. I have proof of it, but rather than exploit it for the sake of a blog entry, I will keep it to myself. Suffice it to say, life is strangely balanced, and my theory that my personal existence unfolds like a novel in progress has been proven to me once again by the cosmos.

I have Seinfeld to thank for helping me come to terms with my shallow side. One of the few episodes I saw during the original run was the infamous last episode. I think that episode changed my view of the show and has allowed me to embrace it in reruns.

Of course, diehard fans hated the last episode, which saw our four protagonists getting their comeuppance for their pathetic lives and the damage they've inflicted upon everyone within range. I loved it, absolutely loved it. And watching the reactions of fans as they railed against the final episode the next morning was very rewarding.

I think that, with me, it's all about building up my ego so that I can tear it down. I think I subconsciously get off on it. And when someone like my online stalker eggs me on, it's out of a love for the fenceplay that goes with certain conflicts that I consent to getting mixed up with such folk.

I am OK with tearing down my own ego, but I'm only OK with someone else tearing it down if it toes my personal party line. Usually, to reclaim my own sense of self, I resort to self-deprecation but (as with Seinfeld himself) it's only a defense mechanism to help repair the damaged image in the mind.

I think I'm making some progress. I'll never be a completely selfless person, but I also think there's hope for a scoundrel such as myself.

Wish me luck.

absurdity revisited

A few weeks back I posted briefly about Thomas Pynchon and his love of the cowbell, tying it in with smaller issues (The recent SNL-Blue Oyster Cult sketch) and larger ones (switching identities in the Age of Narcissism).

I profess that I myself have always loved the cowbell. It's yet another trend that I started before it became popular, much like ripped jeans as a fashion statement or the stage posturing of Eddie Vedder. I'm always five years ahead of my time, but it took 13 years for the cool factor of the cowbell to come into its own.

Back in high school, I used to practially beg A-Dogg, the drummer in our band at the time, to go into long, drawn-out drum solos that culminated with one lone cowbell shot. It was hilarious to us.

But now, with people sporting T-shirts that say MORE COWBELL, it seems that the cowbell's time has come.

The only use of the cowbell that I disapprove of is by fans of the Sacramento Kings. I hate their team with a passion, and they use the cowbell to distract rival teams during basketball games.

Key to the overnight cowbell craze is Christopher Walken. A frequent SNL guest, he was hosting the show on that infamous eve when the Blue Oyster Cult sketch aired. His character's demand for "more cowbell" was comedic gold.

And now? He's running for President in 2008.

One online forum (World Net Daily, I believe) conducted a poll of who would vote for Christopher Walken. 46% said they would vote for him; 30% said they "gotta have more cowbell"...

Another site (whose link I can't remember) said that, if he is indeed serious, his slogan should be "America needs more cowbell"...

These are absurd times that we are living in, my friends. Truly 'pataphysical, completely absurd times...

hangover

The gig last night was a success.

I am very tired.

I've discovered that Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band is the crucial ink between the worlds of visual art and rock music.

I finished a painting and will start another one tomorrow.

My head hurts.

Have a nice weekend.

who says you can't fight back?

Cindy Sheehan, the woman who is protesting for the entire month of August outside of President George W. Nixon's Crawford Ranch... you are an American hero.

Give 'em hell, Cindy!

music to my ears

Finally, a personal post from me!

Not really too personal, not like past entries...

I was looking over some of the old ones yesterday, especially the ones around the holidays last year, and I was somewhat surprised at my candor, my willingness to let people into my world.

This post will be personal, but in an acceptable manner.


*/*


I ran into Evan, our drummer in the Holly Golightly Band, a few months ago. I was at a rehearsal for the now-defunct ICON when he showed up at the rehearsal space. He was there to practice with his new band, Ninefinger. I hung out for a song then went to look for the guys from ICON.

Ninefinger invited me to see their show at the Lava Lounge in Hollywood. I couldn't make it that night but I told them to keep me posted on future gigs. Well, they must've thought I meant it literally, because Evan called me a few days later and asked me to join the band.

The drummer that Evan was filling in for had left, so after the Lava Lounge gig was done the bass player (who was close friends with the drummer) vacated also. Evan brought me in and I got along well with Josh and Mike, the respective guitarist and singer of Ninefinger. We rehearsed and prepared for the show this coming Thursday.

Josh and Mike are big guys, roughly the same age as me, and have been playing as Ninefinger for about three years. Josh moved here from Rhode Island, Mike from Arizona, and they met around the time they both arrived. The music they make is unabashed grunge-era rock: Josh cites Nirvana as his biggest influence and favorite band of all time, "the reason why I started playing guitar in the first place", as he puts it. I'm not sure what Mike's influences are, but his voice has a tinge of Glenn Danzig chased with Scott Weiland from STP.

Because they are not native Angelenos, they have an easygoing demeanor and only want to make music, possibly even get some exposure for it. They don't have egos, they don't have unstable living arrangements, and they are both motivated to get this show on the road.

Oh, and they rock, too. Josh's guitar work is strong without being flashy, and Mike is the kind of lead singer that most bands need: he's good-looking, charismatic, can sing in key, and (most importantly) he's shockingly humble and down-to-earth. He has nine fingers-- he lost his right index finger in a construction accident back in Scottsdale... hence, the name Ninefinger.

They were extremely grateful to Evan for filling in for their absent drummer, but even at the first practice I could see that Evan had not really changed much: he's a cool guy and fun to play with, but takes direction badly and brings his personal dramas into the rehearsals. He never contributes to the band financially, eternally claiming poverty-- yet he has enough money to go to the bars in Studio City every night.

It's a shame, really, because only five months ago I went over to Evan's to grab my DAT machine and noticed a 180 degree turn in his lifestyle. His apartment was clean and well-kept; his attitude was positive, his eyes gleaming... he had his new girlfriend move in with him, and she was laying her feminine touch on him. I was genuinely happy for the guy, and he seemed like he was ready to take life by the horns and do something with his time.

Then, when he asked me to join the band recently, I went over to his place to receive a copy of the songs I needed to learn. The girl was gone-- she'd moved out, and the place was once again a disaster area. He seemed less bouncy, maybe even a tad bitter, and he was extremely scatterbrained.

Oh no, I thought to myself. This isn't good...


*/*


So now Evan is back to his old habits. He isn't a drug abuser or a major alcoholic, but he definitely has a demon inside of him that needs to be exorcised. He is in his mid-thirties and also served in the military during the Kosovo conflict. His stories from his stint in that war are harrowing, as most war stories are, and I suspect that he bore witness to some terrible atrocities that imprinted themselves on his psyche quite firmly. I would go so far to speculate that any post-traumatic stress he is experiencing currently is having a profound effect on his drum playing.

Evan's biggest problem playing the drums is that he speeds up the tempo too much. To be fair, he keeps it steady enough, but he still gets complaints all the time. When we were playing with Holly, the guitarist in that band had it out with Evan on several occasions over his erratic timing. This is a very significant flaw in the minds of the people who are writing the songs we play, because Josh and Mike echo Holly's guitarist's concerns.

Personally, I'm just the bass player. It doesn't affect me. Yes, Evan does speed up, but I don't care. Then again, these aren't my compositions, so obviously it matters less to me than it does to everyone else. And I don't blame the others for expecting Evan to be steadier on the beat.

However, my theory is that something happened to him that scarred his psyche a bit, possibly during the war, that put his sense of timing off in a major way. He's a good drummer-- his fills are exquisite, he has a good sense of how to arrange parts, and he is enthusiastic. But coupled with the financial selfishness and his dissolute roller-coaster of a life, it only makes people like Josh and Mike look elsewhere.

And it doesn't help that he announced to us, last Thursday at rehearsal, that he might not be able to make the show that we're doing two days from today.


*/*


The same issue came up with the hair metal cover band that I am playing with-- the guitarist (who also happened to be the axe-slinger for the late ICON) doesn't have the time to dedicate to music anymore, especially with his weekend off-road racing and his desire to go back to school to learn a computer-related trade.

So Andy (the singer) and Joe (the drummer) let him have it. They really want this to get off the ground. Like Josh and Mike, they are transplants: they're both from New Jersey. Andy has a house in Santa Clarita where we can practice for free, and he only wants to make money playing covers. Not that it's his only goal, but he is hurting for cash, what with a family to feed and payments to make.

Joe is a family guy too, and they clearly love the '80's hair metal that has been on a revival as of late, what with tongue-in-cheek acts like Metal Skool making cash hand over fist. But what's endearing about playing with these guys is that it isn't ironic.

They really do love Dokken, Slaughter, Warrant, Motley Crue, Ratt, Poison, and any number of bands that ruled the airwaves in the late '80's, before grunge came around and devastated the pop cultural wasteland. I used to hate those bands when I was growing up, because I was supposed to hate them: being a half-breed Mexican/Asian kid from the San Fernando Valley meant aligning myself with hard rock, thrash metal, hardcore punk, and gangsta rap. Hair metal was The Enemy.

As I've grown older, I've come to drop my biases against popular music, especially since (now that I can play the bass with modest skill) those kinds of songs are fun to play... there's nothing simpler than a heavy metal bass line, unless it's Iron Maiden or some prog-rock influenced nu-metal group.

And that brings us to Mike, whom I will refer to as Mick so as to distinguish him from the millions of Mikes that I know. Mick is the guitarist Andy called to auditon for us last Sunday. He's pushing 40 but doesn't look a day over 30; he is tatted up and down on his arms, and sports a baldhead and a goatee-- a real goatee, not the Van Dyke cut that everyone calls a goatee nowadays... his facial hair growth is all chin, baby!

The motherfucker is sick when it comes to the git.

We bashed through "Mr. Brownstone" and "Rocket Queen" by G'N'R, we ran through "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest, and we slammed "Man In The Box" by Alice In Chains down to the ground. Mick was on point, asking us in between songs if we knew this or that song. He played "Hot For Teacher" by Van Halen note for note, but Joe said to hold off on that one because he needed to practice Alex' infamous drum parts a little more.

I know what you're saying: "Those aren't hair metal songs..." And you're absolutely right.

Mick's got energy, enthusiasm, and a wicked style, and his leanings are darker, faster, harder. He played the riff for "Stop!" by Jane's Addiction, and brightened when I threw out the bass riff to "Three Days". He expressed his wish to one day start a Ramones cover band, which echoed my sentiments a year ago. He got down with some Sabbath-- "War Pigs" of course --and jammed with me when I casually slapped the intro bass part to the Chili Pepper's version of "Higher Ground".

I like the dude's style, and so did Joe. Andy dug him too, but I can see a little rough sailing up ahead, mostly because Mick isn't into the soft hair metal stuff that Andy wants to do. He'll play it, I'm sure, but it will have to be balanced with some good old-fashioned grimy-and-gritty rock and roll.

Still, what's a band without some turbulence? I feel bad that the guitarist who brought me into the band can no longer be in it, but this line-up looks like it will be both fun AND profitable.


*/*


A similar thing is happening with Evan. He brought me in, and now (in the wake of his announcing that he will be out of town on Thursday) the others want to get another drummer.

I went one further and suggested getting a fill-in for the show. I called up The Wolf, a mutual friend of mine and Down Low. The Wolf (or Wolfie, as he is known) plays drums, and he plays them hard. About a month ago, he asked me to play bass for a band he was jamming with, a band that wanted to cover The Stooges and The MC5 and New York Dolls. I sat in and had some fun.

Now I was calling Wolfie to return the favor. I didn't have to get very far in my pitch.

"Whatever it is, I'm down to do it."

"Nice. You think you can learn 9 songs by Thursday?"

"Maybe. Is it a paying gig?"

"Yes."

"Fuck, bring it on. Why can't your regular drummer make it?"

"He's claiming that his work wants him to go to Indiana and do a shoot. He works for a film production company. I suspect that he totally blanked on the dates and didn't realize that the gig night was going to conflict with his work, because he asked us to change the night of the gig. When Josh and Mike said they couldn't, he aid he might not be able to do the show at all."

"So what did you say?"

"I straight-up said that I was going to call a drummer to fill in. All of a sudden he starts saying he might be able to fly in the day of the show, but I'm not really comfortable with that. I'd rather you play with us than him at this point, even though he knows the songs better than you."

A little back story here...

You see, in the Holly band, we'd had these types of discussions before concerning Evan. Holly was persistent in the beginning and wanted Evan to play, despite my recommendation to have someone else play the drums. She pulled rank and said it was her band and that she was the boss, so I washed my hands of it.

Months later, after finding out what kind of person Evan was, she was asking me if I would be the one to fire Evan.

I laughed at her and said, "It's your band. You're the boss. You fire him."

She didn't, although she came close to doing it when I was able to bring Buddah, the drummer I'd originally wanted to use, to a rehearsal one day. However, Buddah couldn't make the show we wanted to use him for, so it never happened. We stuck with Evan, and Holly ended up regretting the day she brought him into the group.

After Evan's bombshell, I arranged to have The Wolf rehearse with us. Last night, we drove out to Pasadena to go over the set. Wolfie picked it up fairly fast, although one rehearsal might not be enough for him to be 100%. Josh and Mike really liked The Wolf's playing, though, and so now the dilemma we are faced with is as follows:

If The Wolf wants to be our drummer, then Josh will break it off with Evan. But, who will play on Thursday? If Evan makes it into town tomorrow, then Josh wants him to play with us, but that might insult The Wolf, who is assuming that he will be in on the show Thursday night.

If The Wolf plays with us, then Evan will feel slighted... not to mention that Wolfie is still learning the songs. He is a great drummer but he might not be up to snuff come Thursday evening.

It doesn't matter what happens after Thursday-- Mike is getting surgery on his nose to open up his septum and will be out for a month, so we won't be playing any shows. But it will give us time to get the songs tight, and it looks like Wolfie will be the man for the job. But it all depends on what happens in the next two days.

I dig Evan as a human being, but I fear a repeat of some of the drama that made the Holly Golightly band such a bad trip. Wolfie digs the band and wants to play, but I fear that he will feel put off if we have him practice but not perform with us at the show.

It's up in the air, really.

Ah, music-- so simple, so uncomplicated...


*/*


So that's been what's going on with me lately. No romance, no intrigue, nothing on par with my past exaggerations and anecdotes. Just plowing through the day, running through the motions, with my focus fixed upon the road ahead of me at all times.

I mean, there ARE things happening, but on subliminal levels, intangible tiers of wonder that I am only halfway aware of, smoky wisps of energy emanating from everyone around me...

And yet, it's music to my ears.

no fair

the heartbreak in the air that I spoke of recently is starting to dissipate and crumble into imperceptible dust motes, relating to nothing and swirling aimlessly in summer dusk sunset...

I weep not for the sad maidens with their heads encased in baskets, for they do not lack the ability to lift their arms and remove the wicker masks... they adore being blind, they look forward to the inconsolable night...

deflecting vibrations from every which way, I can see the straight path, the unevenly paved road, the primrose arc winding slow and leisurely, unfurling beneath my feet...

I am seen as shallow by those who are afraid to dip their toes into the river stream of eternity, for fear that they will emerge transformed and unable to reverse the ether flow of entropy, time passing and carrying us away like survivors of a shipwreck wading in tiny life rafts during a storm, these people are not inclined to let their hearts run so deep...

Spectacular and surreptitious these evenings seem, gleaming in the pearl of black atmospheric sky with glistening surfaces, and on the street monastries appear from nowhere, their mirrored windows giving off no glare, my mind crying out in protest, screaming "No fair!"

But it is fair. It's fairer than I care to admit.

I possess plans and agendas, goals and motivations, colored with crimson blood and stranded blue, ribbons unwrapped and rivers untapped for their electricity, waves of sound massaging me from the shoulders down...

(have a nice weekend)

the day the laughter stopped

This can't be...

I don't watch a lot of TV. The Simpsons is the only constant... that, and Chappelle's Show.

Well, now it's just The Simpsons: read this link and see what has me more than a little depressed.

Chappelle's Show was, by far, the funniest (and most 'pataphysical) thing on TV since In Living Color... and now...

PLEASE say this is all a hoax! PLEASE!

What about the third season? The sketches were already filmed! Can't they show them, at least?

Oh well... to quote Dave himself:

"Konichiwa, bitches!"

it's only a blog

There was a time, not long ago, when it seemed like I belonged to some little online community, made up of links to other blogs. I communicated with these people daily. It was fun.

It's not like that anymore. I changed templates and fonts a few times, even changed the URL in the wake of the stalker; most of the members of this unofficial blog community have stopped blogging altogether, while some tired of my comapny, and yet others remain unexplained in their absence; even I have cut down considerably on blogging, and not just in terms of quantity but quality-- nothing intimate is being said here nowadays.

Then again, it's only a blog.

But I miss Sahalie and Fishfry and Snake Oils and Blousy Drake and Blue 59 and Violet Butcher...

Some blogs keeps on going. Clay and Zen and Invisible Shoebox and Occult Investigator and Glutter and Grass Under Bare Feet and Ayelet still post sporadically, but not as often as before.

I've made new friends, such as Butterscotch. She reminds me of those days, the spirit of this imaginary online community that existed in my head.

But I wonder why I am reflecting fondly upon it now, when it's only been a few years since I started blogging in the first place. Not only that, but I made deliberate decisions to not get mired in a rut, which is why I changed templates and URLs and went out of my way to alienate fellow bloggers...

I just tried to get personal again, to write the way I used to write in this blog back in the day, but I deleted it all. I always suspect that I jinx myself by writing about things that are going on in my life, and ever since I started keeping my life private, things have been going in my favor.

So I can't jinx it. I just can't.

It's okay, it's only a blog-- there'll be more further down the line. You can count on it.

searching for trystero

Came across this while vainly searching for Trystero among the virtual ruins of the Google waste land:

"[Thomas] Pynchon supplied the liner notes to Spiked! The Music of Spike Jones. In his notes, he writes of Spike's unique blend of music as being 'like good cowbell solos, few and far between.'"

Spike Jones was the "Weird" Al Yankovic of his time, a novelty songster supreme, not to be confused with director Spike Jonze.

Thomas Pynchon writes dense, seemingly complicated books with simple messages at their core. He is a recluse, and I ascribe the attributes of 'pataphysics to him and his work.

"More Cowbell" is a catch-phrase nowadays, thanks to a hilarious sketch on Saturday Night Live, featuring guest Chrisopther Walken as the producer for the underrated rock band Blue Oyster Cult. Will Ferrell plays "Gene Frenkle", who plays the famous cowbell on "Don't Fear The Reaper".

I love this sketch because, as a fan of BOC, I know that there is no such person as Gene Frenkle. He exists in the mind of an SNL writer.


*/*


In an unrelated anecdote, I transferred an old song of mine from the 4-track cassette player to my computer last Sunday night. There was a cowbell section in the middle of one of the parts, one that I felt somewhat embarrassed by... only because the cowbell was TOO LOUD in the mix.

I reversed the section (using my Wavelab plug-ins) and came up with some weird sonic texture, but now that I've read that Pynchon quote I'm going to restore the cowbell section. After all, I wrote the fucking song ten years ago, and if anyone accuses me of jumping on the cowbell bandwagon I'll kick them in the coccyx.


*/*


I own a copy of a book that I discovered through an anthology entitled Writers In Revolt, compiled by Terry Southern, Richard Seaver and Alexander Trocchi.

This book is called The Recognitions, by William Gaddis.

Years later, I found the book at a yard sale, for one dollar. I bought it and read it. I can't say I fully understand it, but thanks to that book I was later able to tackle Ulysses and other dense masterpieces with some relative ease, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest notwithstanding.

One interesting thing about Gaddis-- like Pynchon, he was a recluse. No one ever took a photo of him, I suppose. This led many to believe that Gaddis, whose literary debut preceded Pynchon's by a considerable amount of time, was actually Pynchon writing pseudonymously.

I'd never read Pynchon before Gaddis, so when I finally read The Crying of Lot 49, I was intrigued by identity games going on.

Seems that the notion of Pynchon and Gaddis being one and the same was put forth by an obscure poet named Thomas Hawkins. Hawkins was a fan of Gaddis' The Recognitions, and so when he came across an indie San Francisco publication called newspaper, published by one "Jack Green", Hawkins couldn't help but notice the stylistic similarities between Gaddis and Green.

At the time, Hawkins was an aspiring writer who never was fully accepted by the SF Beat poets like Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Working as a postal worker to make ends meet, Hawkins suddenly became obsessed with finding out about Jack Green and William Gaddis.

Hawkins sent letters to Green loaded with traps and snares, but Green never admitted any complicity with Gaddis. And when Thomas Pynchon published his first novel in 1963, Hawkins took notice and began to actively promote the idea that Gaddis and Pynchon were the same person.

Add to all of this a strange sidenote: the tongue-in-cheek letters of one "Wanda Tinasky" were being published in Mendicino County and later in an Anderson Valley newspaper on a regular basis. No one knew who Wanda Tinasky was, so once again the names of Pynchon and Gaddis-- two notorious recluses --started to emerge above the fray. Chief among the spreaders of this train of thought was none other than Thomas Hawkins.

It got to the point where a man named Don Foster, who was successful at outing Joe Klein as the anonymous author of Primary Colors, was put on the trail to deduce whether Pynchon was indeed the author of the Tinasky letters, much to Pynchon's chagrin. Foster couldn't find any tangible proof linking Pynchon to Tinasky.

Then, in September of 1988, Thomas Hawkins killed his wife and left her rotting corpse in his home for almost a week, before torching the house and driving his car off of a cliff. By this time, his proposition (that Pynchon was in fact Tinasky) was met with near-universal agreement in the literary world.

That all changed when Don Foster uncovered the "smoking gun" behind the identity of Wanda Tinasky: Foster found much evidence pointing to Hawkins as the author of the letters, including the typewriter he wrote them on and several original drafts of content used in the letters themselves!

Eventually, William Gaddis died in 1998. Thomas Pynchon is still alive, making occasional cameos on The Simpsons, but in 1997 his privacy was almost violated when CNN, doing a feature on Pynchon, photographed him in public. Pynchon agreed to do a short sit-down with CNN provided that they didn't expose his identity.

Oh, and no one knows too much about Jack Green.

Imagine if Karl Rove had been Pynchon or Gaddis' literary agents... would I even be writing this right now?


*/*


Thomas Hawkins searched for his very own Trystero, the imaginary alternate postal system immortalized in Lot 49. That he was an actual postal worker is intriguing, given the labrynthine extremes to which this (mostly) true tale stretches.

That he didn't heed the cautionary moral of that novel is telling. Although there is no direct message in Lot 49, it can be inferred that the hero of that novel, Oedipa Maas, reads way too much into everyday things, perhaps in an attempt to transcend the mundane banality of her existence.

Either that, or there really is an alternate postal system.

All I know is, when I see or witness things that can't possibly be a mere coincidence, my tendency is to obsess over them for as long as I can milk them... then I laugh it off and let it go.

I mean, I don't think I have the smarts to uncover all the hoaxes, no matter how badly disguised they may be.

Better to keep that information inside your head... or better yet, write about it in some esoteric code. That's the smart way to approach it.

Isn't it?

machine broke down

I had a physical breakdown on Friday. The intense heat combined with my party-as-you-go ethic and a lack of proper hydration, coupled with lousy sleeping and eating habits, caused me to nearly collapse as I left work. I felt exhausted and lethargic, but once I got back home and relaxed everything felt better.

*/*

The consequences of my lessening blog output is that I have millions of things that I want to write about, things that have happened to me over the past month or so that are craving to be expressed somehow. I don't think, however, that I should be blogging them. They are way too personal to blog.

*/*

Because of my physical breakdown, I ended up flaking on a lot of plans that I made with various persons. I had rehearsals to attend, a trip to Magic Mountain, a visit to my family, a swimming party and a BBQ to entertain, and my little episode nixed them all. But I'm glad it happened: I've been biting off way more than I can chew lately, and it was beginning to show.

*/*

Like a bad Method actor, I wonder what my motivation is. What gets me up in the morning? Is it the promises of the new day, or the betrayal of the old ones?

*/*

One of my bands is playing in August. Finally, a live show to get me out of the rut that set in from the wasted Spring and the heat rot of the broiling Summer.

*/*

Mercury goes into Retrograde again, very soon.

*/*

I am not unhappy, but I am running away from something, what with all the rehearsals and band auditions and animation business and shows to go see and projects to revive... I think I am avoiding true intimacy, with the people around me. It's easy to schedule people in for lunch, spend some time, and move on to the next thing, because it itemizes people in my mind... I am not so much interacting with them as I am scanning them, with some imaginary price-tag scanner.

*/*

It's nice and cool inside the office today. I think I'll stay in and think about what impels me to be such a busybody.

metamorphosis

Last night, after dinner, after company left and I was lying down on the couch, with my head tipsy from red wine and my mind reeling from THC, I had a weird thought.

For some reason, I thought about how long I'd been in my body, as "me". And then, after reminding myself that it's been 31 years, I wondered why I have never been anyone else.

And that's the weird thought.

Why have I never been anyone else? No matter who I tried to be or aspired to be in my life, I have always been me. No surprise, I guess-- it wasn't an epiphany or a revelation...

I thought of it as a weird thought because there is a built-in presupposition that I can be anyone else. I haven't tried to be anyone else since I was 16, when I wanted to be a disciple of the Jim Morrison & The Doors cult. And, of course, I failed miserably, but that's a good thing, because the world didn't need another Jim Morrison.

The thought, as it crossed my mind, also assumes that I have a choice in who I want to be, like I could deny my own nature and self and become something that I am not at will.

People reinvent themselves all the time, but do they really change their identities, or do they merely transmutate their core egos?

When I was 16, I was reinventing myself. I think I've reinvented myself in various ways over the years, but not radically.

Am I reinventing myself now? Or is there a part of my psyche that is expecting reinvention to come along?

i was a jesuit in a former life

While vainly Googling my Christian name, I decided to go past the usual entries that I find (Ambassador to Gabon, Sugar Regulatory Advisor, etc) and found a link to a site about Jesuit saints.

According to the link, my namesake lived from 1519 to 1575, and he "taught philosophy and theology before he entered the Society at some of the more celebrated universities of Europe: Salamanca, Paris and Louvain. He had studied at the universities of Alcalá, Paris, and Louvain and became one of the important architects of the educational program for the Jesuit schools..."

He also "published in Italy a catechism for the 'very ignorant' and another for the 'less ignorant.' The general structure of catechisms were influenced by the catechism of Peter Canisius. [His] work ran through many editions and translations well into the seventeenth century and were even used with the indigenous peoples in New France..."

I also did some Googling using a Spanish variation on my first name, "Diego", because apparently the Jesuit was also known by this name.

Interesting stuff. But I don't have time to go into it all.

Have a nice weekend, folks!

heart smarts

Things are in a state of perpetual heartbreak.

These days it's easy to see it on the faces, in the eyes, emanating from the bodies of innocent bystanders that we pass on the sidewalk. No doubt they are feeling the reciprocation from us, from you, from me.

'Heartbreak' is the only word that I can ascribe to this condition that seems to permeate Los Angeles lately. I'm not going to bother to go online and find the definition and then regurgitate it here. I'm just going to go by how it sounds in my ear right now.

The heartbreak I speak of is rooted and centered right behind your eyes, below your brain and abutting the sinuses and esophagal passage. It's also in the shoulder area surrounding the neck, as well as in the small of the back and the outer ankles.

On a less tangible level, it's an emotional cocktail consisting of indiscriminate parts from different bottles, chased with an acceptance of the situation that somehow doesn't feel right. The thing you cannot ever put a finger on, whatever is on the tip of your tongue, that hunch... it gnaws and nibbles at you like the solution to a riddle veiled behind a mental event horizon, the shoji screen of your soul...

I'm not sad. I'm not depressed. I'm heartbroken, but I'm not in tears. It's not disappointment, it's not being let down... but it is a form of sorrow.

A sense of sadness, but really only a trace, a fraction. Sometimes it feels nice, like a slight buzz.

Nothing happened, nothing brought this on, it's just there. It has been there, and I can feel it in everybody else, whether they are aware of it or not.

I'm going to try and use this for my weekend, as fuel maybe to propel me onward into the unpredictability of everyday living, the way we can be doing something mundane and ordinary and yet accomplishing more than if we ran at it full bore...

My feet aren't touching the ground, but I don't have enough momentum to just fly away. I'm hovering.

velveeta

MSN has a link to the 43 cheesiest songs of all time. And indeed, they are quite cheesy.

I know the words and melodies to 36 out of the 43 songs listed. I know every song in their Top Ten, and what's more-- I'm not ashamed.

I don't know these songs because of a love of kitsch. I'm not a very kitschy person. I like these songs because I grew up listening to them on AM radio as a kid. My parents had 45s of many of these hits.

Unlike my current taste for hair metal, a genre that I absolutely LOATHED in its heyday, I have always loved these sappy songs.

Yes, they are cheesy... but I like cheese, hold the irony. These songs, as maudlin as the can get, are finely crafted disposable pop gems that topped the charts at one time.

I would even go one further and say that there are some glaring omissions to the list.

For example:

-Leo Sayer is listed for his disco romp "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" but there's no mention of his syrupy, soggy ballad "When I Need You".

-There are no songs by Styx, Journey, or Loverboy on the list. Also conspicuously missing: Engelbert Humperdinck.

-Phil Collins' "Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)" is NOT a cheesy tune. It's a great fucking song is what it is. Yes, it came from the '80's, but compared to "Sussudio" and "Two Hearts" (or even "One More Night") this song from the movie Against All Odds is a tour de force for the former Genesis drummer.

-Songs like "The Candy Man" and "The Sound Of Music" don't count-- they belong in another category, really.

-Certain songs are listed because of who performed them. Is Donna Summer's version of "MacArthur Park" cheesier than Richard Harris' mid-'60's take? Hell no. Likewise, what's the real reason why Donny Osmond's version of "Puppy Love" was chosen over Paul Anka's version? Is it because he's an Osmond? Yes. But let's face it-- Paul Anka's face should be on Kraft Singles packages all over the States.

-Chris De Burgh's "The Lady In Red" is a beautiful ballad, no matter what other people say. It does everything a love song should do: captivate your heart and make you look at the woman you are standing in front of with a renewed illumination.

-Where is "Every Time You Go Away" by Paul Young? While we're at it, why is most of Hall & Oates' catalog missing from the list? (For those who don't know, Hall & Oates wrote and recorded the original version of Paul Young's hit)

-They gave Stevie Wonder's entire In Square Circle album a pass. I love Stevie but that album sucked big time, especially "I Just Called To Say I Love You".

-"She Believes In Me" made the cut but not "Through The Years"? And why no Bryan Adams? I heard "Heaven" at a Thai restaurant last night, and realized that it is so cheesy that the lactose-intolerant have to be warned prior to the song getting played on KOST 103 FM.

-They listed Lionel Ritchie when he was with The Commodores. But they ignored solo dreck like "You Are The Sun" and "Hello" and "Penny Lover" and... wait a minute, the middle-eight to "Penny Lover" is actually pretty good. But they should've at least thrown in "Dancin' On The Ceiling".

-And finally, they chose "Keep On Loving You" By REO Speedwagon, and ignored "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore", possibly the guiltiest pleasure I have ever encountered in a pop tune. "Can't Fight" is one of those songs that makes you feel ashamed for liking it so much. It's the kind of song that I deliberately sing out of tune, because to sing it on key would be scary to everyone within earshot.

Mind you, some of the songs that made the list I cannot stand. The Celine Dion song is a good example-- that song makes me want to cough up gall stones. Billy Ray Cyrus? I need not explain that one. And Kenny G is the Anti-Christ.

But, I digress. I could do this all day long, really.

So tell me, dear Blogsters: what songs did MSN leave off the list that YOU think deserve to be there?

I'll be waiting... in the dark, naked by the phone...

the way i think

Over the weekend, a friend from high school whom I will call Laurie took it upon herself to help me edit and transcribe the remaining parts of my novel. Naturally, I thought she was mad to take on such a task, but then again what am I going to do about it on my own?

Laurie is a friend of Eve's, and she works at a museum and is an avid reader. I trust her editorial judgement because she has no intention of rewriting my novel for me-- rather, she truly wants to help me condense it into something accessible to the masses.

So far her notes on the novel make sense. She asked me if she could be "brutal" and "ruthless" and I allowed as much. Her brutality, however, is the kind I can accept: she is only concerned with readability and understanding, not semantics or the process of writing. In the past, I've had dear friends read my text and they all provided valuable advice and commentary, but Laurie is determined to help me shape it thematically. She recognizes the themes thanks to her knowledge of me, my life, and the way I think.

And what is "the way I think", by the way? I pondered that last night when Eve came by my apartment. She needed to use my shower because her tub was backed up. She made it worth my while by helping wash a few dishes, providing me with gas money for my car, and making me a sandwich. Then, we watched X Files on DVD and drank Newcastle, as is our tradition.

After watching two stellar episodes from the first season, the subject of conversation drifted into magic and science. I told her that I seem to have an innate dysfunction for believing in the supernatural or paranormal. My fascination for such things stems not from belief but from curiosity-- I am totally beguiled by all unexplained, irrational phenomenon.

I postulated to her that the reason I engage in creative arts is because those outlets-- writing, music, art --are the closest I will ever come to "casting spells" or invoking magic. When it comes to those outlets, I find myself reaching in and digging from inside of myself, from some unknown source within my psyche.

When I draw or paint, I rarely have it mapped out or planned ahead. It comes automatically, and I do not question its origin. I simply go with the flow. The same with my music, which owes more to chance and accidental juxtaposition than anything composed traditonally.

Writing is another activity where I seem to shut off my rational mind and draw water from a subconscious well.

But for the most part, the "way I think" is in a rational, objective mode. If it were not for arts, I might be socially conservative, ideologically right-wing, and emotionally simple. Only when I allow my mind to run free, without restriction, do I ever come up with anything worth reading or hearing or watching. The minute I begin to impose order upon my carefully-crafted chaos, I get bored. So I need help with that aspect.

Mind you, if it were someone else's work, I'd be able to edit and analyze objectively. I am an exception to myself, in other words. I am good at helping others achieve their creative goals but cannot transfer that same enthusiasm to my own works. This is why I have fun in the bands I'm in-- I am not required to be "creative" in the classical sense; I am only required to do my part and to compensate for anything lacking.

Rigbht now I am starting to read a book called The Professor And The Madman by Simon Winchester. It is about the true story of the making of the first Oxford English Dictionary, and the extraordinary circumstances from which it originated.

That's all for now. Maybe there will be more from me later.

danger fix

In Los Angeles, there are thousands of rock bands, and all of them need bass players.

That's where I come in. But I'm only one man-- I can only play in so many bands at one time. Luckily, band line-ups in this city shift like tectonic plates beneath the desert paradise, but most of the time these change-ups have little impact outside of the Hollywood/Sunset Strip rock epicenter.

After not playing live for seven years, 2003 saw me back in the saddle. Holly Golightly recruited me for her band and that got the ball rolling. Somewhere in the middle I ended up doing bass tracks for Holly's friend Ellen; auditioning for Holly's friend Deborah, for a band that she has yet to get off the ground; joining ICON with my buddy Buddah towards the end of my tenure with Holly; trying out for a band called Funkin Pie that I hooked up with through Mikey, Holly's guitarist and former boyfriend; joining Ellen's band full force in the wake of Holly's departure, and hesitating to join Funkin Pie because I had too much on my plate during the holiday season; watching the band with Ellen implode due to in-fighting between Katie the violinist and Ellen; playing with a hair metal cover band thanks to the recommendation of Angel, the guitarist from ICON (a band whose fate is now in limbo)...

...and yesterday, I got a 2-for-1 Special on band membership: while getting ready to audition for one, I was invited to join another!

The first band is called Ninefinger, and it was by kismet that I even met them: I went to an ICON rehearsal at Sound Arena in Reseda and ran into E, the drummer from Holly's band. He was there rehearsing with Ninefinger, who he had just joined. He had been referred by Mikey, the guitarist who referred me to Funkin Pie.

I sat in on their rehearsal for a song or two and dug their sound: a sonic mix of Fugazi and Live, two bands that radiate sincerity and earnestness in their music.

Weeks later, E called me and informed me that their bass player bailed. I was asked to fill in. I requested a CD of songs and rocked it on repeat in my car over the Fourth of July weekend. Then I got a call saying that Wednesday we were convening for a get-together, to try each other on and see what transpires.

I got off of work extra early and hung out at my boy Down Low's place. When I showed up, Low's buddy The Wolf was there. Low, The Wolf and I used to jam out years ago-- The Wolf is a drummer, and a rather good one at that.

The Wolf asked me if I was playing in any bands, because the group he was currently in was looking around for one. After I consented to give them a try, he gave me directions to their lockout and warned me that the singer, Gio (sounds like "Joe") can be a bit of a prima donna.

I am used to that, having paid my dues in plenty of bands with divas for singers.

What made this invitation so tantalizing was the prospect of covering songs that I truly love from bands like The Stooges, The New York Dolls, Kings Of Leon, Gun Club, Television, Sex Pistols, The Modern Lovers, Velvet Underground, and Sticky Fingers-era Rolling Stones. The Wolf gave me a CD of a Johnny Thunders anthology and told me stop by after the jam with Ninefinger, if I still had the energy.

I had a feeling that energy wouldn't be a problem.


*/*


What's great about being a musician is that, no matter how many band facts you know or how many album liner notes you memorize, no matter how many bootlegs and compilations and obscure one-off curios you find, there is always a gap to be filled in your personal musical canon.

There are two things that I hold dear to my heart in the rock universe:

(1) Sloppy garage rock-- I can't get enough of that messy stuff. Slightly out-of-tune guitars, barely-in-time chops, wildly out-of-control histrionics... there's plenty of hyphens to be added to the stew.

(2) Tragic rock 'n' roll burnouts-- from Jim Gordon to Roky Erikson to Syd Barrett to Arthur Lee to Bradley Nowell, I have this romantic fixation with musicians and performers whose personal demons either consumed them alive or bandied them about throughout their turbulent existences.

Johnny Thunders embodies both of those virtues... if you can call such attributes "virtues".

I knew of Johnny Thunders from The New York Dolls, one of the most influential '70's glam rock bands ever. They sounded like The Rolling Stones to the tenth power, as if Mick & Keith had decided to damn the torpedoes and go full-on lipstick-and-heels drag.

The New York Dolls are one of those handful of bands whose legacy drifts into unlikely waters. You can see why groups like Poison and Motley Crue dug The Dolls and Thunders' solo work, but it's surprising to hear that The Dolls were Morrissey's favorite group when he was growing up. Nothing in his work with The Smiths suggests this connection, and the only solo album of his that even flirts with glam is Your Arsenal, produced by the late Spiders From Mars guitarist Mick Ronson.

Imagine Guns 'N' Roses with an ounce of humility. Imagine if L.A. punk band X were a group of cross-dressing junkies (in singer Exene's case, that's not too far off the mark). Imagine if The Black Crowes had never heard of Mountain, Uriah Heep, or Bread. Imagine The Dead Boys and The Sex Pistols joining forces with The Damned to create the sleaziest rock group in history.

That's The New York Dolls, and at its center was Johnny Thunders.

Dee Dee Ramone co-wrote a song with Thunders, a tune which yielded recorded versions from the both of their respective bands. The song was titled "Chinese Rock", which inspired the name of early '80's glam superstars Hanoi Rocks; it's also slang for heroin, the drug of choice among seedy punk/glam rockers. Not surprisingly, both Dee Dee and Thunders died from drug-related overdoses-- Dee Dee OD'ed on smack, Thunders on methadone, the smack treatment drug.

After two albums that lit up the rock world but sold poorly (the prerequisite for this genre of music, it seems), Dolls singer David Johansen put down the make-up and wigs, adopted a pompadour and a tuxedo, and rechristened himself as Buster Poindexter. Remember that "Hot Hot Hot!" song from the '80's? Well, that dude used to sing songs like "Lookin' For A Kiss" and "Vietnamese Baby" while dressed in nylons and platform high-heels.

Johnny Thunders, in the wake of the demise of the Dolls, put together a band called The Heartbreakers, not to be confused with Tom Petty's classic back-up group. The band was short-lived but one of its members, Richard Hell, formed The Voidoids shortly before striking out on his own.

I know all of this stuff, and have known this stuff for a while. But much like my long-overdue discovery of Sly and The Family Stone in the late '90's, listening to Jet Boy-- The Anthology as I drove from the Ninefinger rehearsal filled an enormous hole in my musical landscape. I recognized more songs than I thought I would, and of course there were one or two Dolls standards to give me some familiarity. But the overall effect was similar to when I heard The Best of Sly Stone for the first time: I said to myself, "Why am I just finding out about this now?" and at the same time I realized that this was where some of my favorite artists stole their biggest riffs.

Johnny Thunders is the Missing Link in my rock 'n' roll evolution chart.

The true find was a song that GNR covered on their Spaghetti Incident? album, their last effort before Axl Rose went insane and the other members jumped ship. That whole album was a slew of covers, and GNR remade "You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory" in their own image.

They did a fine job. But I'd never heard the Thunders original until last night. And hearing it from Thunders, with his fractured voice and spare acoustic accompaniment, makes the song more powerful, more direct and personal.

If you had never heard The Dolls or Thunders before and I played "You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory" for you as a surprise, I doubt you would ever link the two in your mind. The Dolls and most of Thunders' oeuvre are electric and unruly; "Memory" is a ballad that sounds like the drug-addled protagonist of Neil Young's "The Needle And The Damage Done" telling his side of the story.

Recorded and released in 1978, "Memory" sounds like it was written and performed by a man on the verge of defeat, like "a man out of time", as Elvis Costello once sang. 13 years after this song was released, Thunders died on April 23, 1991.


*/*


April 23 is the alleged birth and death date of William Shakespeare. I find that ironically amusing, because while Johnny Thunders was far from a Shakespearean wordsmith, he is a bit of a Shakespeare in the way he detailed the squalor and joy of being young, high and rockin' in New York in the '70's. You see, for all the deranged lunacy of Daddy Rollin' Stone's antics onstage and off, there was that elegance, that charisma that drew everyone to him. Thunders had problems, with alcohol, drugs and women, but he was also a hysterically intense talent whose real gift-- lead guitar playing that possessed a heap of soul and transcended punk's minimum requirements --was overshadowed by the craziness that followed him wherever he went.

Like most addicts, Johnny Thunders was selfish and untrustworhy and stubborn. His friends couldn't save him, his family couldn't save him, and the one thing that did keep him going, the music, seemed to fail him as well. I am not romanticizing the pain that he put his loved ones through, nor am I glamorizing the descent into hard drug abuse that has claimed the lives of too many talented souls out there.

It's just that Johnny Thunders, the King of Junkie Rock, the man who made heroin chic before Calvin Klein did, lived his life the way he wanted to, which is part of the tragedy. On "Memory" his voice is haunting, wispy, almost feminine; in the Dolls, he looked good enough to fuck, with his pumps and ripped stockings and garish make-up; but he was tougher than all of that, scarred from life on the streets of Queens, messed up from a delinquent existence, a Grade A misfit from the get-go, not too smart of a guy... and yet, there he was, defying the odds, playing rock music to bored Manchunian shut-ins on TV, inspiring a wallflower like Steven Morrissey to shed his first name, start a band, and become the most unlikely rock star ever.

There was a lot of humility and self-deprecation in Johnny's songs. "Born To Lose" is a classic sing-along fist-in-the-air punk rock anthem, and the chorus goes "Baby I was born to lose"... For all the outrageousness and difficulties Thunders incurred, you never get the sense that he was an egomaniac or a demanding rocker. He just wanted to play his songs, do his thing, and also set the world on fire.

It's refreshing, in this day and age where narcissistic celebrities hog the limelight with their insipid tales of recovery and twelve-step programs, to hear from someone as unrepentant as Johnny Thunders. He was an old-school guy at heart, from the tone of his guitars to his bad habits. He never complained, he never whined, he never gave a fuck.

Usually, I wish my fallen rock heroes would've had the good sense to not die, but Johnny is the kind of rocker whose fate was determined a long time ago. Therefore, there really was nowhere else for him to go logically except for down. Normally, that depresses me, but occasionally someone rides the bomb that drops into The Abyss with such relish that you almost (for a split second) want to see what the fuss is all about.

Not that I ever want to do smack-- I've smoked opium, that's enough for me, thank you very much. I would never want to do heroin-- it just sounds like I'd dig it too much. If I ever get addicted to junk, everyone out there has my implicit permission to beat the fuck out of me until I get sober.

However, I figure, if you're going to throw your life away, if you're going to just allow drugs to overwhelm you until you cannot deal any longer, you may as well go all the way. Johnny went all the way. He would be 53 next Friday if he'd lived, which would've been 40 years longer than anyone expected him to live, and only 14 years longer than he actually did live.

I think what I like the most about him is the mix of vulnerability and unsentimentality. Johnny Thunders said it best when he sang:


You can't put your arms around a memory
You can't put your arms around a memory
You can't put your arms around a memory
Don't try


That chorus functions a a cautionary warning to me. It's the rock equivalent of the last sentence in J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye: Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. The message in both of these works is crystal clear-- they are declarations from individuals who have made up their minds as to how they are going to live the rest of their lives. There's power in that, even if the individuals self-destruct in the end.

Kurt Vonnegut once described smoking cigarettes as a "classy form of suicide". Many relatives of lung cancer victims would disagree, but then again it is difficult to understand why anyone would want to end their own lives, or hurt themselves so wantonly. A week doesn't go by when someone doesn't chastise me for my cigarette habit. I certainly don't want to die, but why is it so hard for me to stop? Is it an addictive personailty trait? Insecurity? Low self-esteem? A way to cope with stress? Or is it simply because I like it too much and now I'm hopelessly hooked?

I don't have the answers, but I do know one thing: once upon a time I had a death wish, and during those times I felt more alive than if I'd been quietly sitting at home, reading a book. My wish for death propelled me through the frying pan, the fire and the whole damn grill. Unlike Johnny Thunders, I never went too far, and yet I understand why someone would. Some people just want to cross the line that everyone else refuses to step over.

We watch them step over that line with a combination of fascination and disgust because we have an urge to live (and die) vicariously.

People like Thunders pay the dear price so that I don't have to follow suit. But lest you think I'm ascribing martyr status to a dead junk punker, keep in mind that Mr. Thunders would've found such canonization to be contrite and petty.

That probably explains my obsession with the Casualties Of Rock, the walking wounded who articulate our deepest fears and most excessive wishes. I like living on the edge but over time I have become timid, and hearing tales of legendary punk rock partying gives me my danger fix without endangering my actual self.

I'd like to keep it that way. That's the lesson I learned from Johnny Thunders last night: I can't put my arms around his tortured memories, so I shouldn't even bother to try. Even if I wanted, I wouldn't be able to, so at least I have his music and his words-- and not his actions --to go by.

Thanks, Johnny.

stars on 45

Saturday night I spent the evening up in Los Padres National Forest. As we watched the stars in the sky, my friends and I discussed astronomy and astrology.

When I got back into town, I'd heard the news about the comet being smashed and wondered what time it had happened, and if we would have been able to see it in the sky.

I also wondered what effect it would have on astrologers.

I was joking when I wondered that, but evidently it's become a serious affair: check this link and see what I mean.

Too funny...

eternal optimism

Hung out on Friday with Sal, an old friend from the elementary school days whom I've kept in touch with over the years.

He and I went our separate ways for a spell in high school. My world view at that point in time was transforming rapidly, and it didn't have too much to do with how Sal perceived things. To break it down into simple terms: Sal was (and still is) an eternal optimist, while I was (and sometimes still am) an aspiring pessimist.

It's been in the years following high school that he and I have reconnected. Time has a way of putting the past into perspective, and I look back on the times we had together and think to myself, "Hey-- we had a lot of fun as kids!"

Of course, I don't know if he ever knew the real reasons behind my adolescent angst, but now that we're both adults, it doesn't matter. The fact is, we are both grown-up now, and those days are long gone. And in a way, it's a good thing that he and many of our friends at the time never knew the real deal about me, because it might have dimmed their budding optimism at a crucial moment in their lives.

Plus, it would've turned me into a "victim", someone who warranted pity and attention... two things that I didn't need.

Anyway, we checked out "Thai Elvis" at the Palms in Hollywood, and went to the Dresden Room afterwards for some drinks. We mostly reminisced about our youthful escapades while Sal's attorney friend from up north listened in. The combination of '50's music, coupled with good Thai dishes and nostalgic stories, had me feeling good.

The biggest difference between Sal and I is that he has always embraced sentimentality while I have avoided it. The reason is that I have always felt that I have nothing to be sentimental about, but apparently not only do I have a lot to get misty-eyed over but people like Sal are content to carry these memories for two.

In other words, I'm glad somebody was busy remembering all of that stuff, because I would've forgotten about them. Just as I consented to let Sal keep many of my old poetry notebooks back in the day rather than burn or trash them, so he also kept those memories alive.

In my drive to move forward and obliterate my past, I am finding that it is impossible to do so. And lucky for me, I have not been successful in my attempts to raze the monuments to my childhood to the ground.

Thinking back to those days, I wanted to do nothing more than die. Thus, it is fitting that I am still alive and grateful that, even in the most nihilistic period of my life, I wasn't able to go through with my plans for self-destruction.

I mean, think of all the things I'd be missing if I'd turned my own lights out.

Like Elvis Presley... I'd be missing out on Elvis...


*/*


I am an Elvis fan. No, I don't wear sideburns, and no I don't think the King is still alive...

...but I do think he's The King.

They say that you are either a Beatles fan or an Elvis fan, with no in-between. I disagree. I like both of them equally, and I see no contradiction there.

People ridicule Elvis because he died a lonely death, on the commode as his heart gave out. But his voice never gave out, like so many other rock gods who are still among us. Look at (or listen, rather) to Robert Plant, for example-- his voice is toast!

By the way: Robert Plant is a huge Elvis fan.

Elvis, despite the Jim Jones-style haircut during his Vegas years and that god-awful white rhinestone-studded jumpsuit, was a bad motherfucker until the very end. That voice... everyone can imitate it, but no one gets it right.

The original Elvis possessed a distinctive high baritone with a range from the lower E to the H over two octaves higher. He had an excellent vibrato in his voice.

Thai Elvis has performed, in the handful of times I have seen him sing, most of my favorite Elvis tunes: "Can't Help Falling In Love", "In The Ghetto", "My Way", "It's Now Or Never", "Love Me Tender", "Jailhouse Rock", "Little Sister" and a plethora of other hits.

There are also many songs that Thai Elvis sings that I was never fond of: "Return To Sender", "Teddy Bear" and "Bossa Nova" are a few.

Thai Elvis has even done songs that Elvis did by other artists, such as "Something" by... The Beatles!

But so far, he hasn't performed my all-time favorite Elvis song: "Marie's The Name (His Latest Flame)"...


A very old friend came by today
'cause he was telling everyone in town
about the love that he just found
and Marie's the name of his latest flame...


Written by the immortal songwriting duo of Doc Pomus and Mort Schumann, "Marie's The Name" has been covered by the likes of The Misfits, The Scorpions, and The Smiths, whose song "Rusholme Ruffians" is such a bite of the Elvis tune that they would cover a bit of the original in concert as an intro to their take.

I like songs that have stories, but not necesarily ballad or epic stories. A simple boy-meets-girl scenario will suffice for most pop music. But what's great about "Marie's The Name" is that the story is boy-meets-girl-who-belongs-to-another-boy-and-he-doesn't-even-know-it!


Would you believe that yesterday
This girl was in my arms and swore to me
she'd be mine eternally
and Marie's the name of his latest flame...


Elvis' voice on this song is in fine form: delicate, vulnerable, cloying... the backing instrumentation is like a hybrid mix of Bo Diddley rhythmic bounce and folksy skiffle-style acoustic guitar strumming. The melody line almost seems designed or tailored to The King's voice.

But it is the bridge (or middle-eight section) that soars, that elevates this underrated pop gem from novel footnote to a masterpiece of early rock 'n' roll artistry. A chattering piano stutter heightens the tension, the music gets a bit more upbeat, but the lyrics (along with Elvis' pristine delivery) are devastating:


Though I smiled the tears inside were a-burning
I wished him luck and then he said 'goodbye'
He was gone but still his words kept returning
What else was there for me to do but cry?


A moment of perfect heartbreak is captured and expressed, as surely as if it were photographed and printed on the front page of the biggest newspaper in the world; haven't we all been there, in that formless twilight area of the soul where our disappointment buries its face in shame as we smile and make nice on the surface?

Haven't we all wanted to crumble up in a ball as we hear the bad news, only to mask our hurt with best wishes and congratulations for those who are more fortunate than us?

Yes, we all have. I know that I have, at least.


*/*


Nowadays, a song like that would be rewritten so that the singer could get revenge on his cheatin' lover. Someone would write an extra verse, about how the guy tells his friend that his new girl was with him just yesterday, and then the two friends would conspire to humiliate the girl to teach her a lesson or something like that...

But if someone did that, then the song wouldn't mean anything. It's the pain, the sweet sweet pain, that makes the song irresistable to me. It's that aspiring pessimism that I've been hooked on since I was 14 that makes "Marie's The Name" the masterpiece that it is.

What makes the song even more haunting to me is the sunniness of the music. Like most of The Smiths' catalog, it's a happy little ditty with moribund lyrics on the top. You can dance and shimmy to it, but if your baby just dumped you then all you'll want to do is hold your head in your hands and weep. No wonder Morrissey and Johnny Marr felt the need to rip it off!

I wish Thai Elvis had played it on Friday, because for some reason it reminds me of Sal. Not that he and I ever shared girlfriends-- we did once, but it was a girl that I was already over by the time he dated her, and she treated the both of us like dirt anyway so it never came between us.

No, the song reminds me of him because of his constantly infectious attitude. Sal always acted like a man in love for the first time, and I was always feeling like a man who has been rejected for the umpteenth time. Thus, Marie could be a metaphor for our respective lives, and the song could suddenly be about young Sal telling me about his life and his happiness while I think about how my teenage years suck.


He talked and talked and I heard him say
that she had the longest blakcest hair
the prettiest green eyes anywhere
and Marie's the name of his latest flame...


Yet another reason why I'm glad to be older and wiser... now I think I get it, now I can understand certain things. Sal and I had to go different routes to end up in the same place, when you think about it.

I wouldn't say that I'm as optimistic as Sal is, but I've made progress over the past few years. I am still a danger-lover, content to lead a dissolute, unstable lifestyle for as long as I can, but the notion of growing older and settling down is friendlier to me now.

I am no longer the aspiring pessimist. Rather, I'd say that I'm an established realist. That seems to fit me now more than anything.

And that's the name of MY latest flame...

politics

I posted yesterday on one of my other blogs. I might not have time today to blog on this one, so I have linked the other for your convenience.

We're swamped with work for the next week because so many people here at the radio network have decided to go on vacation at the same time.

I might just take one myself, after everything settles down. It'd be nice to not have to come in. I like work, but if everyone else is taking time off, so should I.

Let me just say one thing before I go: people are talking about how Time magazine turning over internal documents to the Feds for an investigation into the outing of a CIA operative's cover is a bad thing for journalism and the First Amendment.

However, I say this: journalists gave up their impartiality long ago, before 9/11... hell, even before the first attempt to blow up the WTC!

The past five years have seen the rise of journalism so yellow that it should be listed on the Terror Alert Color Chart. The cover-ups, the buried stories, the accusations of 'bias' from either side...

Newsweek, Dan Rather, the Swift Boaters, the 2004 Presidential debates... all of this and more...

Read my post from my other blog and tell me if you agree or disagree with my assertion.

If I don't find my way back here before the 4th, have a happy Independence Day.