Art Brut - "My Little Brother"

Directed by Zak Mechanic

Words Stuck In My Head

1. Tom Tancredo. The alliteration is a barb. Tom Tank Credo. Tom Faith-in-War. Ugh.

2. Unwieldy. Although I've always used it as an adjective, my tongue is having difficulty wrapping itself around the lack of an "ly" ending.

3. Doctorow. Cory, do you come from a line of poor practitioners? (And E. L., those initials can't be taken seriously unless your last name is Fudge.)

Homesick for Travel

I'm getting homesick for travel, for places to shine despite their normality. Buying groceries in a May Berlin drizzle, knowing the next few days will also be cold and wet. Homesick for the apartment we always went in and out of in the rain, and how that added to its value. How it only had a paper lantern in the sunless hall, but slabs of paneless glass in the other two rooms: kitchen and bedroom. If you could even call the rooms those names—the bedroom contained a studio and a dining room, with empty plastic beer cases as chairs. The kitchen doubled as a garden, the bathroom with its narrow fogged glass window doubled as a greenhouse.

Homesick for lying on the lawn of Vienna's greenhouse, leaving to buy a chain-food lunch (low funds) and then back to the grass. The worst seats in the Budapest Opera. Having to carry beers inside because of rain. Living with four Italian dudes and taking the bus to Nerja on Tuesdays, outnumbered by British girls. Buying store-brand espresso at the Realejo Supersol, but being force-fed Illy four times a day. Rolling the clichéd cig-after-the-morning-coffee because the tobacco just happens to be there. All the things I never planned to do.

Maybe it's something (or lack thereof) from infancy that makes me miss being swaddled into a city by my host, playing follow the leader, ducking into the subway seemingly at random, having to watch for an eyebrow pop or head nod as the stations tick off, and following again through the crowd as tunnels are chosen and we eventually emerge I don't know where. Not having to deduce atmosphere and vibe from façades, guidebooks and a peek in the door (fun as that is), just following locals into pre-certified spots—for the view, the music, the terrace, the crowd and always a drink.

I'm happy enough to improvise completely, but there also can be something cozy about using the guidebook just because Dad brought it along, transferring key information and Plan B's onto a half-sheet of paper, folding it into a pocket and consulting it on the sly. Good has come out of the practice: my brother and I have found places we wanted to stay and have another, we've found people able to point us to hookah bars and we've even found places so Scarface-cool it's a miracle the book didn't adulterate them. (Did we really find any of this? Does a good guidebook let you find or just feel like you're finding, and is there a difference?) And all of this guidebook-led business works because my brother and I can chill without forcing too many interrogatives onto the evening, spend more time settled in conversation (argh! spending time, I can't stand the expression), or, at least, wander as much as we want, holding options besides what we stumble upon.

Donald Livingstone, My Great-Great Something

Culloden Battlefield
Photo by Citril

Adapted from "Incidents of the Jacobite Risings", by Alexander Carmichael, LL.D., The Celtic Review, Vol. VI, July 1909.

Chapter 1 – Silky Smooth, Hard as a Rock

At eighteen years of age, Donald Livingstone of Bun-a-mhuilinn, Morvern, member of the Livingstones of Achnacree, Benderloch, a stout, strong and hairy fighter, known as Dombull Mollach, Hairy Donald, and later simply as Hairy D, dealt death at Culloden for Scotland under the command of Prince Charlie Stuart, Laird of Ardsheal, beside the Livingstones and Carmichaels of Lismore.

Before the battle at Culloden, a sibyl predicted nine Donalds would fall carrying the blue banner of the Stuarts. At Culloden, Donald Carmichael fell first, followed by seven obscure Carmichael Donalds. After the last, Donald Livingstone leapt from his duties of anonymous slaughter and groin spearing into legend. He picked up the blue silk banner, ripped it from its pole and wrapped it around his body. Just as he realized he couldn’t swing his sword with his arms pinned to his sides, he took a musketball in the chest. Down went the ninth Donald, jamming his knee on a pointy rock. The silken banner had stopped the ball, but the force of the shot left him dazed. That is, until something deep in his brain stem picked up the Vibration of Impending Doom. His eyes popped open and he saw a riderless horse, out of control, trampling the bodies and charging straight for him. He rallied his sense of touch and managed to grip the bridle sprang as the horse roared by. Pulling himself atop the empty saddle, he hauled off from the redcoats, cursing them as a bunch of high-caliber idiots with low-caliber guns.

Two English troopers saw his mount and exit, and though they should have known better after so virile a display, set after him. The first caught him rather easily, as Donald’s horse had started to sweat blood from exhaustion. The trooper swung his sword, which Donald, deflected and countered with a downward slam that clove the trooper’s skull to the chin. The delivery of such a slice is enough to make any man feel supremely mannish, let alone a man who’s just wrapped himself in silk so fine it can stop a bullet, and indeed, Donald at once secreted an oil of mangrease from the secret Livingstone man-glands in his quadriceps. A second later it hit the nostrils of the second trooper, who turned and fled.

Donald now had to deal with the what-to-do-with-the-dead-guy’s-horse issue. He could easily have hopped on it (it stood about the same height as the bloodsweater) and let the exhausted steed wander until it had a heart attack, but Donald was a man’s man. He considered that he might encounter a bloodied-up brother-in-arms who would want a ride, and because in those days two real men never shared the same horse, Donald had to have a second horse ready. He led it along and sure enough, right around the first knoll, a familiar voice called out. Donald hopped down and found a neighbor, cut up and pouring blood. He jammed a handful of leaves in his friend's wound to stop the bleeding, sealed it with a ring of birch bark, then boosted the patient onto the tired horse. Donald probably interlaced his fingers and had his friend step first on his knee, then into his linked palms, and then raised the man to the saddle with a pop of his biceps (a maneuver akin to the volleyball bump). Palms to buttocks assistance didn't come into vogue for another 15 years. They rode on.

At the first stream, the duo dismounted, tied the horses to a tree using vines, and let the animals have a drink. Donald and the wounded neighbor (we’ll call him Randy) climbed up into a rock outcropping to hide.

Soon, a troop of cavalry rode into a clearing below the horses, far below Donald and Randy, searching for the last scraps of the Stuart and Livingstone forces. The two horses began neighing like Puritans, hoping to make a horsey friend. The British soldiers heard the neighs and concluded “Ambush!” They turned and fled, and soon Donald and Randy were on the road again.

Like standard-issue fugitives, they traveled at night and slept by day. There were some close calls with the soldiery, and only the daring courage and resourceful actions of Donald Livingstone prevented the pair’s capture and execution. The specifics of what he did, exactly, have been lost since Donny Livingstone XIV fell asleep in his castle bed with a cigarette, but we know whatever Donald did, it was courageously daring and actively resourceful. So resourceful, in fact, that he inspired the idea of the television and a TV show about a Scotsman named MacGyver, an idea that survived for centuries until humanity developed the technical capacity to realize the dream once and for all.

Chapter 2 – Donald Gets Wet

The planet Earth continued its orbit around the sun, and soon enough the leaves fell from the trees and the days shortened. Donald’s patience withered and shortened as well, though physically his body parts remained the same size or lengthened due to a process of ongoing improvement involving vines and choice stones from streambeds. Donald went everywhere seeking news of the fate of Prince Charlie. (Here the Livingstone family will note the persistence of genes. As any friend of a Livingstone will vouch, they’re all insufferable Prince fans). Donald found no news, however, only baby-killing English soldiers, and friends and family reduced to eating flannel to survive the winter. As the first snow fell, Donald sprouted a new coat of nose fur.

Hairy D set his mind to swim from Morvern to Mull to dig up news of the elusive Prince. Some say at least one of these places is a sea island, and others that the two settlements are on opposite shores of a great lake, but not so great that Donald couldn’t have just walked around the edge. None yet has claimed the “two islands in a lake” hypothesis. At any rate, a study of Donald’s exhumed remains states with near certainty that salt water was involved, so let us accept the sea island theory. On several occasions, people on passing ships saw his thick, oily coat and mistook the flapping Donald for a seal, and shot at him. A bullet even grazed his ear, whereupon he raised his entire body out of the water, kicking only with his toes, and presented himself, a man living in the era before swim trunks, to the shocked passengers. (And if they had shot him, his pelt would have put a seal to shame as well as yielded a fine umbrella sleeve.)

On the second night of his swim, the current of the sound of Mull carried him beneath a British warship, and he had to frogkick for all he was worth to avoid getting entangled in the mess of iron chains and junk another daring Scot had secured to the bottom of the vessel to slow it down. Donald managed to pop out on the port side of the ship, where two Englishmen stood wishing on Orion’s belt. If he hadn’t coordinated his swim with the moon’s holiday, he would have certainly been spotted, as at the very moment he rose, the pair tossed a coin into the water which landed a pig’s length in front of him. He would have been seized with a large hook and made to perform tricks invented during the plague years, then shot in the shoulder as soon as his central nervous system began to fold.

Donald landed in Mull, shimmied up a tree and darted from treetop to treetop until plopping down in the center of Drum-Fionn, in the neighborhood of Tobermory. He promptly delivered the news that from above, high in the trees, he had spotted two British warships towing two defeated British warships, and from there extrapolated that a French war vessel had stuck it to the Brits on Loch-nan-uamh, then sailed away into the black night (employing a hit and run tactic that only works on a big Loch). Clearly, this meant the Prince had escaped. This set off a great excitement, of either celebration or rage, and everyone drenched themselves to a falling-down stupor. Donald was first to hoist a glass and last to fall face-down, which he did on the fifth day of song into a mudpuddle of his own design.

When he woke up three days later, Donald decided to nurse his hangover by swimming back to Malvern. This time, on the third night of the crossing, Donald found himself between a fleet of herring and an angry whale, which tooted its mean horn and smacked its tail on the water and displayed an air of macrofrumpiness. The whale opened its mouth and made its final approach on the herring, and Donald concluded it would be final for him as well if he didn’t do something straight away, having sense enough to know that Jonah lied and whale stomach acid can cut a cow in half in a few seconds, let alone a hairy yet human Donald. As the whale’s baleen began to suck up Donald’s heel like a gas station car wash, he corkscrewed his body with all of his rugged rippled musculature and rolled out of the mammal’s esophagatic fury.

Raisined but not too tired, Donald crawled ashore in Malvern the next morning and found the situation worse than he could imagine, with bad music to boot.

Chapter Three – A One-Man Silk-Wrapped Army

British troops had taken over the village, all the way to the water line, their only directive being to create misery for the Livingstones. For this, the British wits employed tickle torture and a forced diet of jelly and shellfish. Donald’s only option was to remain hidden to all, even his own clansmen, and wage a personal guerilla war from out of sight. And as British troops began dropping by the pubful from poisoned beer, V.D., or simply doors bolted from the outside and flames, everyone knew Donald had made it home.

It was then arranged through a series of stick-scratchings in wet sand that Donald would slip through the woods on the next moonless night, as per superstition, and retrieve the banner of the Stuarts from the British Troopers’ latrine. Hairy Donald, ever the amphibian, elected the water route. He crawled up a sewer pipe, knowing that the pipe would be invisible in the total blackness that surrounds anything buried underground, especially on a moonless night, and he thanked the Romans all the way. Although his only report of the search and retrieve mission was that his timing could have been better, Donald returned with the blue silk banner wrapped around his body as it had been when it saved his soul at Culloden. He concealed the banner in a well-ventilated safe house for a week, then set off for Appin after horsejacking a British trooper (stabbing him in the liver just to watch him die). Of course, Donald repeated the flag wrapping on the ride, for aerodynamics mostly, and the persistent legend of his swift ride has yielded supersonic flight and a man on the moon.

Chapter Four – Donald Raises Himself to Chief Beef Supplier

In Appin, Donald delivered the reeking flag directly to the Stuarts’ point man, a grizzled old saltbag who had long since lost the ability to raise his knobby head. His muscles had simply given up, especially the upper deltoids that had once inspired comparisons to dock ropes and fodder for Prankster chronicles. With his lost capacity up top, the top Stuart gave off the reek of a broken man. He was by no means broken, however, and delivered a handshake as firm as the day he sold his first cartload of crossbows to his future wife.

Next, Donald gave his hot horse to James Stuart (Seumas a-Ghlinne). In this way, he hit James back for the bag of barley James Sr. had sent to Donald’s father the year before. Not only was it the right thing to do, it introduced Donald to the world of barter exchange.

Donald liked swapping goods so much that he became a supplier to the Scottish resistance, herding together scrappy cattle that had wandered through broken fences, putting them through a rigorous training regimen, and selling them to local officers to feed their men and move heavy objects. His training methods eventually were exported to America and became the NFL. Donald conducted all his business with a daredevil courage and honesty that boosted the morale of the cows, then the officers, then the men, leading to a saying that preempted Napoleon’s “An army marches on its stomach”: “Whoever eats my meat wins” (later spruced up as “Happy cows make bloodthirsty warriors”).

He continued this trade for many years, always in a kilt. This is no small matter, as Donald eventually made a name for himself as an innovator in ways to evade and circumvent the law against the kilt and tartan. Most of his methodology has recently been adapted into the Valentine 1 radar detector.

Donald died peacefully on his own front porch, legs splayed wide, seated on a stool wearing only the kilt, at the age of 88. He will forever be remembered as a man of humble nature. Indeed, until they washed his body, no one had ever seen the mark left by the bullet which the Stuart banner slowed to sub-mortal speed on the plain of Culloden. His name will forever be remembered as Donald Livingstone of Bun-a-Mhuilinn, Domhull Mollach, Hairy D.

I am in Maine

That's all.

Dream Factory

I sat down at the computer to write to her, and something in the air or me convinced me I’d do my best thinking on my back with my body from head to waist sinking into the folded-in-half floor mattress waiting to be picked up by the quickest Craigslist bidder and I lost consciousness in a second and a half for an hour and a half, waking up a minute and a half ago to complete lack of sound, light and sweat-free skin but managed to fit the cord into the computer to connect to surround sound the opening of Pandora, specifically Bernie Worrell, against all odds like a blind man with a sand wedge, asking the question the affirmative answer to which led me to lie down to gather my thoughts in the first place. And after he asked Ain’t She Sweet for the last time as I wondered how I ended up back where I started, a slice of Prince fell on my plate to inform me I’m just a sucker in the dream factory.

Ever The Fiscally Conservative

I need to bring down my need to's. Why nots and sounds goods have been creeping up due to a surge in how abouts. The recent run on could go for's has left me unbalanced, but if I put down a few let's pick ups and keep saving 15% of my anothers for a rainy day, I should be close to can swing it.

Apollo Sunshine and the Mixed-Up Pipeline

* (The Beat Kitchen, Chicago. A sticky Saturday, cold beers drafted to fight for neutral body temperature sit on the counter and are occasionally curled with the urgency of government work. A sloppy saucy cheeseburger appears with lid flipped before JEREMY BLACK, Apollo Sunshine drummer and summertime beard wearer. On the horizon, Renaissance man JESSE GALLAGHER pours himself out of the picture and into the questions of a curious lady. Guitar tenderizer SAM COHEN, head half hidden beneath a rind of ringlets, stakes his claim to a stool sheathed with the hide of the very beast with which MR. BLACK is preparing to fortify body and mind. Without plans to, MR. COHEN and THE STRANGER (who would never disclose that, in the platinum backwater of Katonah, he manned the baritone sax while MR. BLACK steered the high school jazz band from the drum kit) clear their schedules and become absorbed like cholesterol in the application of a condiment rainbow to the altar of meat and the tracings of MR. BLACK’s blade until THE STRANGER delivers an invitation to conversation applicable to both the growing yellow-orange paste and recent rumors of an instrumental Apollo Sunshine album being recorded, on-again, off-again, in the ensemble’s Leverett, Massachusetts farmhouse and making its way down the ol’ rusty yet disarmingly lubricious pipeline.)

THE STRANGER

I wouldn’t want to think you’re mixing it up just to mix it up—

MR. COHEN

No, we mix it up to inspire ourselves and ideas just come. We’re not the kind of band that’s so involved in the machine of the music industry where there’s anyone telling us, “It’s time to make a record…” or what we should do with our record. We make a record, and then we play, and when we have an idea of what we want to do next, we do it, so it’s entirely what we feel like doing. We’ve talked all along about recording an instrumental album at some point. Also, we have an engineer friend of ours who lives out in western Mass, where we’re living. We’re in our last few months out there now, so we’re like, “This would actually be really good this summer; he’s got that tape machine, the board, we’ve got the house, it would be perfect timing to do the thing, so…”

THE STRANGER

So you’ve just been following an idea—

MR. BLACK

And not even knowing what the idea meant, being like, “Ok, yeah, we’re gonna record a breaks record and that sounds cool, but what exactly are we gonna do? I don’t know.” And then we just kinda went in there. We have maybe like twelve or thirteen tracks, but who knows if maybe four of them will end up on the record, or just pieces of them. We’re just going to keep recording nonstop until the end of the summer and take all the shit we have and try to put it together into something that’s cohesive. It’s totally open.

(THE U.S. OPEN files a trademark infringement lawsuit against APOLLO SUNSHINE.)

THE U.S. OPEN

As a—

(MR. BLACK bats away the fraternity with a French fry.)

THE STRANGER

You’re not reaching for something, but just seeing what happens.

MR. COHEN

Some of the stuff, we lay down a bunch of tracks on it, and it starts to go somewhere, or have something, and it’s, “You know what, now I’m hearing vocal ideas, so save this one for the next record, this will be a song. And then this other one, scratch that, and then let’s get back to that one.” So you really have no idea what’s going to happen, and then the tape starts rolling…

(THE TAPE starts rolling from atop the Jungfrau.)

THE STRANGER

How closely related are recording and playing live?

MR. COHEN

They’re getting further and further apart. Nothing we’re recording right now we could do live. It’s involved. I’ll be playing pedal steel and guitar, and Jesse will be playing bass and keyboards, and we’re sort of building it up from really sparse ideas that are coming together. So that’s the kind of thing where you can build an amazing piece of music, and then with three people, you can’t play it.

THE STRANGER

You might be doing two different things, but it sounds like the approach is the same. You have some bands that go out and make a disc, and then just try to play it again when they’re live.

MR. COHEN

Yeah, I don’t even remember what our album sounds like anymore. So yeah, even though they’re two completely different processes, I guess the underlying theme is that we’re shooting for some spontaneity and trying to surprise ourselves in everything we do. So when we go live, we just rock as hard as we can, and in the studio, just get as creative as we can.

(The trio rocks into a recently vacated booth, citing the “Move your meat, lose your seat” statute.)

MR. BLACK

Our last album was definitely more of a live thing. A lot of that record was done live, in the studio, even vocals and shit. There were overdubs on a couple songs, but for the most part, a lot of it was captured live.

THE STRANGER

So that’s also the answer to how you keep your show fresh. Do you have a set list tonight?

MR. COHEN

Probably not tonight, I’m not even expecting anyone to come. If they do show up, I’ll run somewhere and scribble out a set list.

THE STRANGER

Do you have any pre-show rituals; you all huddle up, say some magic words…

(Traffic jam of silence)

If they’re secret, you can say they’re secret.

MR. COHEN

Yeah, they’re secret. They’re secret to us as well.

THE STRANGER

Was there an extensive hazing ritual you had to go through to become members of the band?

MR. COHEN

No, everyone was in there from the beginning, so—

THE STRANGER

So if you were to bring on someone else, would you haze them terribly?

MR. COHEN

Well, really the only position that’s available right now is for castrato, so that would be the hazing in itself. But then I’d feel obligated to keep him around, you know?

(He scrambles to the nearest laptop and puts out an All Points Bulletin for castrato candidates. His email box maxes out, rolls over and croaks under the pressure of millions of photos of questionable legality.)

Maybe we’ll just outsource the castratos.

THE STRANGER

(swerving) Is place a big part of your music? Because you have Katonah, and it’s very kind of, I don’t want to say eclectic, kind of surreal, like the town of Katonah—

(HARVEY K. ARAMOR strides out of the Murder Mart, crosses the sidewalk, tosses a copy of Barron’s on the passenger seat of his Ferrari F430, gets in, raises his cup of coffee to sip and learns MANNY failed to properly attach the lid as the hot brown cascades into his khaki crotch.)

MR. BLACK

Eclectic is fine.

THE STRANGER

And where’d you record Apollo Sunshine, was that in Boston?

(THE STRANGER receives forty lashes for improper research.)

MR. COHEN

We recorded that at a couple different studios, actually, we started it at a place in New Jersey, no, actually, we first started it in Boston, and the session tapes got all fucked up.

(THE TICKER flickers to life.)

THE TICKER

That Story Also Available on the Internet (SAI) ^2.32 (and on and on and on)

MR. COHEN

And then we had to start over in New Jersey, and then we finished at the producer’s studio, in Philadelphia. We were just rocking out.

THE STRANGER

Rocking all over the globe.

MR. COHEN

Yeah. That was one where the songs were written and we knew how to play ’em, so it didn’t really matter where we were.

MR. BLACK

The basic track for Ghost was recorded at our place in Leverett.

MR. COHEN

That’s true, that one we did in the attic.

(Four hundred bent spoons rain down on the table. A nude woman materializes from beneath a napkin, which wraps around her as an apron, into which she scoops the spoons and disappears in a cloud of yellow smoke.)

THE STRANGER

So we’re talking about rocking. What does it mean “to rock”?

MR. BLACK

It’s a feeling more than anything, I think.

MR. COHEN

Yeah, to just go for it in a real way. Lately we’ve been seeing some bands that are, like, recreating this “Rock Thing.” I don’t really think that’s rocking. If someone rocked it identically like that before you, then what, who do you rock? It’s an energy thing, an output of caring, but also caring about what you’re doing.

THE STRANGER

You went to Berklee. Did the school give you that perspective, “It’s just gotta be real,” or was it mostly technical?

MR. COHEN

(laughs at the expense of his alma mater) No, they don’t teach you how to rock. Me and Jeremy majored in recording, and sort of missed a lot of classes playing shows, and got some free studio time out of it, but…

MR. BLACK

Berklee definitely is all about technique.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

Would Mr. John Scofield please present his views before the court?

(Four funk-seeking horses gallop off toward the sources of the winds to bring him back, drawing and quartering GEORGE W. BUSH’S TEDDY BEAR in the process.)

GEORGE W. BUSH’S TEDDY BEAR

I’m not much of a bear anymore, really much closer to a Glowworm.

MR. COHEN

But anything that is inspiring, or inspired, comes from within yourself.

THE STRANGER

Do you have influences outside of music where you get artistic inspiration from?

MR. COHEN

I get it from athletes sometimes, baseball players that I like—

ENRICO PALAZZO

Foul!

TUG SCROTER

Duck!

(A HARDBALL bounces off the seatback and into MR. COHEN’s pint glass, whereupon it is immediately seized by a SIX YEAR-OLD HAND and elevated to the status of founding member of a collection destined to grow for 72 years.)

HARDBALL

Scooped up I am
By the hand of a man
In the making.

SIX YEAR-OLD HAND

Shut up, you.

MR. COHEN

What else? Sometimes if you see some amazing footage of a politician saying something, like footage of John Kerry when he was just out of the Army, back in the 60’s.

MR. BLACK

I read this book last year that I was really inspired by called The Power of Now and that whole concept is basically how I feel, just being the best musician I can be. Playing live, it’s all about being in that moment, and being present, that’s the ultimate goal. But I get the closest to my present self when I’m playing music, so that’s why it’s really sacred to me that I play.

THE COSMOS

Om.

THE STRANGER

You see it in your live performance, and I think it comes through in your lyrics, too. Today Is The Day, for example. Are you conscious of that at all or is that just how it happens?

MR. BLACK

Jesse is really into that type of thing, he reads a lot of philosophy and stuff. I guess Sam does too, but I don’t write lyrics as much. I’ll write lines here and there, but that’s definitely something in our band that we’re all kinda into.

THE STRANGER

Do you think that’s part of your appeal? Do you even care about that?

MR. BLACK

Yeah, I think people can latch onto it a little bit, maybe. It reaches them. A lot of our songs are just about life, and living, and emotions, and things that people can understand.

(In his library, THE CREATOR, attempting to crack The New York Times' Sunday crossword puzzle, overhears MR. BLACK and nods, revealing an orbit-wide book, Earth Art: Life, Living, Emotions and Things That People Can Understand.)

MR. COHEN

Playing music positively inspires your life, the way you live, and then it comes back to the music.

THE STRANGER

When you were starting, saying, “I’m going to devote my life to playing music,” was there any sort of a struggle, any “How am I going to make it happen?”

MR. COHEN

I was twelve years old when I decided that. I was so idealistic then that it stayed attached to the whole concept of doing it. I’d been playing in bars for almost a decade when I hit my twenties, so by the time I was actually done with college and out on my own, it was sort of embedded that there must be a way. So you find it and figure it out.

MR. BLACK

I guess it’s lucky, but we got signed right when we graduated. So Berklee was, more than anything, a place for us to develop ourselves as a band. Because once we were out of there, even though we weren’t getting paid a lot of money, we were put into a position where we could actually put out a record and go on tour right away, which is what we wanted to do.

THE STRANGER

What’s the one thing that’s brought you this far?

MR. COHEN

Perseverance, I guess. It’s what we want to do, so you put up with everything that comes with it, because it’s what you want to do more than any other thing.

(An IMP FROM BENEATH THE TABLE presents a briefcaseful of gumballs, the Swedish royal family’s female contingent, triple chocolate liquor ice cream, man Fridays, limos with Jacuzzis in the back, hot Italian sausage, bazookas, the Brazilian women’s volleyball team, the MC Hammer lifestyle with solvency, diamond-encrusted headboard mirrors, lifetime supplies of you-name-it, Get Out of Jail Free cards and Reebok Pumps, any and all in exchange for the cancellation of the night’s show, and is roundly rejected.)

MR. BLACK

We’ve got plenty of friends who are working jobs, broke all the time, but they’re surviving. They’re making a living, and we’re in the same position but we get to make music for our living. We don’t have to be working some job.

(THE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT catches his tie in a crosscut shredder, is pulled in and reduced to a crude approximation of bruschetta.)

MR. COHEN

And there are times where it’s hard to deal with each other, with people who work for us or who we work for, or whoever, but we’d have that problem in any job.

THE GRIM REAPER

(squirming) Ooh, ooh, ask my question! Ask my question!

THE STRANGER

Do you believe in reincarnation?

MR. BLACK

I don’t know. Not so much of a believer in that.

MR. COHEN

I’ve never experienced death, or that I know of, so I can’t really say. I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation. I believe in a continuum that we’re all part of, maybe less each being comes and goes separately. It all flows together, that makes more sense to me. Everything is continued, but more like a river that is all of us, than, “I’m going to come back as future Joan of Arc,” or some shit like that. It’s hard for me to think that someone else from the past was also me, that concept doesn’t make sense to me.

THE STRANGER

Or anything was, like a bug outside.

MR. COHEN

Yeah, but the human stream is just like blood flowing in the veins of the universe.

THE STRANGER

From a purely symbolic perspective, what were you in your past life?

MR. COHEN

A duck.

MR. BLACK

Uh….A blade of grass.

THE STRANGER

(obligated) Just blowing in the wind.

MR. BLACK

Yup.

MARC SOMMERS

I’m sorry, that’s incorrect! Sam, you were a blunt object, and Jeremy, you were Rasputin.

(MR. BLACK and MR. COHEN get slimed.)

THE STRANGER

What advice would you give to anybody trying to make anything?

MR. COHEN

Find a way to limit your access to the work, set a time limit on how long you’re gonna do it. Cause the longer you work on it, the more you start to question the sound, and the more things happen to you psychologically that make you not hear the sound maybe the way it actually is. Our second album we did, recorded and mixed in three weeks because we wanted to avoid that as much as possible. Or, if you’re down with that, if you want to get all fuckin’ Brian Wilson Smile, like freak out on some shit, give yourself plenty of time—you will go crazy.

(BRIAN WILSON freaks out on some shit.)

BRIAN WILSON

Do I dare to eat a peach!!!

MR. BLACK

I would say limitations are a key to making good art. Limit yourself, limit your palette.

(THE LIMERICK raises a glass, where COGNAC sits on its ass.)

THE LIMERICK

Jeremy plays drums in the band,
Post-show he bolts for the van.
The ring on his finger
Says, “Black doesn’t linger
To satisfy market demand.”

(THE COGNAC heads south.)

MR. COHEN

For most musicians, this isn’t a problem. The budget takes care of it. We have no problem limiting our palette because we only have our gear, and it’s half broken. Our engineer is the same way. He’s at the same level as us, as artists, his gear is finicky, but then everything’s cool, it’s raw and dirty and you don’t get this vibe that Sting walked out and we walked in and laid down some bullshit.

(STING presses a red button on his desk and leans into a gray metal grille.)

STING

(face matching the button) Find out who’s been laying down bullshit on my equipment!

(The office door swings open and STING is presented with THE HEAD OF BRIAN WILSON.)

THE HEAD OF BRIAN WILSON

Perfect.

THE STRANGER

That’s true, too, you get the truth across by using what you have.

MR. COHEN

Even a very produced record can be a piece of documentation on where you are, as long as it’s honest. This record we’re making is sort of produced, but it has a really gritty edge, because we’re making it in our upstairs.

MR. BLACK

Right next to where we sleep.

MR. COHEN

It’s a document of the album that we make when we have a tape machine in our upstairs, and lots of time, but not limitless gear, and lots of interruptions and gigs. It always will be true if you just stay into what you’re doing and just do it, and don’t get too many people to help you.

(MR. COHEN disappears to parts unknown. BRYAN SCARY and his brother MIKEY take seats at the table. BRYAN SCARY’S HAIR jigs. BRYAN SCARY, visiting home from Brooklyn, spins a slim case with a silver disc over the Formica with a jackpot grin.)

THE STRANGER

What’s this?

MR. BLACK

This is Bryan Scary, The Shredding Tears.

BRYAN SCARY

Just mastered. It’s going to come out in September on Jeremy’s label that he has with David Greene, Black and Greene. It’s a concept album, sort of symphonic pop music, lots of different styles and I played all the instruments in my bedroom, then gave it to Jeremy and David. They got copies of that version and sort of revamped it, gave it a little more of a Hi-Fi sheen, and Jeremy played all the drums on it.

MR. BLACK

We got the guy who produced our last record to mix it.

BRYAN SCARY

Brian McTear. Sounds pretty awesome.

THE STRANGER

So we’re looking for that this fall. Well, Mr. Scary, you’re just in time for the final question. What is the role of absurdity in society?

MR. BLACK

That sounds like a Bryan Scary question.

BRYAN SCARY

It’s more like, what’s the role of society in absurdity? You have to think about it like that.

THE STRANGER

And Jeremy—most absurd episode of the past 24 hours?

MR. BLACK

Meeting Bruce Springsteen.

BRYAN SCARY

(eyes fall on table) You met Bruce Springsteen?

MR. BLACK

I met Bruce Springsteen last night.

THE STRANGER

Did he have a strong handshake or a weak handshake?

MR. BLACK

He didn’t shake my hand. I was like, “Hey man, that was a really awesome show.” He was like, “Thanks a lot.” I also got to meet LaBamba and Pender from the Max Weinberg 7. They were a sick horn section, they were amazing. That was absurd. And the buffet they served was absurd.

THE STRANGER

Everyone’s a fan of the absurd buffet.

MR. BLACK

It was the green room, and there was a line of sick video games that you didn’t have to pay for, like Buck Hunter and all the good shit. I don’t know if it was a Springsteen thing or if it was the venue.

THE STRANGER

Springsteen travels with a trailer full of video games…

MR. BLACK

Yeah, maybe. Arcade games and pinball. There were like ten different kinds of cake you could eat. I don’t know why cake, usually there’s one or two cakes, and there were pies, a lot of cakes, I had two different pieces of cake, a lot of cookies, it was awesome. Absurd.

(MR. BLACK gets slapped in the face with THE FEDERAL BUDGET and plummets to Earth, just in time for the show.)

THE FEDERAL BUDGET

Eat me.

(THE TAPE crashes into the village of Lauterbrunnen, flattening cottages into crepes.)

Scary, True

Bryan Scary worms into your ear and wiggles for a week. And if you're lucky enough to have a Zappa bone, he'll tickle that too.

Private School Rock

At Colgate, the best band on campus was named after the oft-exploited financial symptom of love, Joint Account. A farming technique made viable by customers ready to pay premiums, Free Range, delivered organic hip-hop. Third, Third Rail: a nod to the heart-stopping energy source no example of which existed within a three hour radius.

Free Kraut and Mustard Smuggling: May Fest in Lincoln Square

We waited until the end to order food, until the most alcohol was in our blood, because all along we’d wanted to gorge, but, prices being what they were, we needed a conscience loophole—“I was drunk.” We waited too long.

“We’re out of bratwurst.”

“What do you have left?”

“Thüringer and sauerkraut, three dollars.”

“We’ll take as many of those as possible, please. One, two, three…” We counted out 11 tickets for the grandma in the apron. “Take a $1 bill?” She grabbed it.

Realizing how much kraut we were about to receive, she came back to double check and put an end to the argument in her head—three drunk kids or serious customers? “All with kraut?”

“Jaaaaa!!!!!!” We clashed mugs and slapped backs.

“What is this?” she must have thought, confused by her own joy. “Kids excited about kraut? I’ve been waiting all day for someone to get excited about kraut! Most people without lederhosen give it a groan, at best. But it’s so good!”

She served up four oily red Thüringers and four fur balls of kraut. Just as we were about to dig in, a guy edged in beside us, seeking mustard, silently scouting around, pumping the dry pump.

“You looking for mustard?” I asked.

“Um…”

“Hold on. We’ve got your mustard. Get this guy some mustard. Gimme the bag.” The little girl of our trio, whom nobody expected to be packing heat, turned around and presented her baby blue backpack. “Here we go now. Mustard, coming right up!”

I unzipped the bag and my accomplice pulled out an unlabeled glass jar half-filled with a sandy paste. “Mustard!” he said, holding it high. “You want some mustard? Here’s the mustard!”

“No, it’s…quite alright, thanks.” The man began backing away, mustardless.

“Hold on! Smell it!” I thrust the uncapped jar within an inch of his nostrils and whispered, “This is Rhinegeld’s German mustard with white wine.”

A low voice from the back: “It’s the secret stash…”

“Smells good,” he called over his shoulder, now three shuffles away.

“It’s right here if you change your mind,” squeaked the little girl with the big beer.

The man turned his back on legitimate, unspiked (well, wine), unroofied German mustard, an hour before the closing of May Fest, directly below the Maypole in Lincoln Square. But don't worry, plenty of Chicagoans can still spot the real deal. Our jar, the only jar of mustard in a fifty-yard radius, started to draw a crowd that previously had been united only in thought: “I could use some mustard on this thing.” They crushed around the jar on the corner of the table, elbowing for a turn with the plastic knife.

“We need more.” I pulled the pump out of what had been given up as an expired tub and dropped it in an empty stein. Peeked inside and, sure enough, there was a tract of mustard down there. I turned the tub over and started to play it like a bongo, but with urgency. What came out was only enough to do justice to one Thüringer.

Another peek. “There’s still mustard in there! We gotta get that mustard out!” I began pounding the tub up and down on the table like a monkey frustrated by a coconut. Taking on the role of fire chief, I demanded a “big, sharp knife” from the counter manager. He took stock of his liabilities, and, luckily for both of us, didn’t hand it over.

“Keys!” Keys appeared in my hand and I jabbed at the tub’s heart. The plastic merely folded. More force! More power! More German! Ja! “We’re in!” I sawed the tub open and four knives descended. Mustard blitz. Let ‘em have it. We still have the secret-secret stash.

Thüringers inhaled, we scraped the remains of our kraut onto one plate and dumped on mustard from our second jar. At the same time, sauerkraut piled up behind the counter. No one wanted it. A surplus?

I caught the eye of the lady in the apron. “I’d love some kraut, but I don’t have any more tickets.” She paused, then nodded in receipt of the password. Two heaping plates of kraut, free kraut, appeared in front of us. But don’t think they were free.

Being able to ask for kraut—to say you want it, you love it—isn’t easy. It’s a privilege that’s earned. It’s two or three times a week over the course of a childhood, probing the kraut, throwing it, pushing it around, hiding it under mashed potatoes, in napkins, in the dog’s stomach, finally forcing it down, in tears, then eating it with ketchup (blasphemy!), then fearing that your parents might find out you actually like it (they’ve been there too…), then, the true milestone of your sixteenth birthday, a whole-hearted welcoming of the kraut. You try it with beer and fully pop through to the other side as a lifelong kraut fanatic, and soon you’re reading every word on the packaging of every brand in the supermarket, trying to engineer the perfect combo of kraut, mustard and beer, speculating on the ratios of no less than seven flavors like a Bavarian Willy Wonka.

And maybe, just maybe, if you happen to have returned from Germany within a week of May Fest, you can slip a silent German accent on your request, only perceptible through the efficiency of the movement of your lips. Then, smile with a crinkled nose and a benevolence in your eyes nodding to the fact that, far enough back, you and the kraut dealer are probably related, or at least had relatives who suffered through the same bad winters, defended raids and raided, held onto a scrap of ground, and, at some point, decided to scrap the scrap and move to America because accepting the conditions at home had become a less appealing option than starting from scratch.

If, upon recognizing an asymmetry in the kraut market, you can pull off the above maneuver and make it look easy like walking on a barrel, then you, German-American, have earned your free kraut. Just make sure you’ve brought your mustard.

---

[I recently talked (pre-May Fest) with someone about how it's hard to get in touch with your German-American heritage. It is tricky, but I think I've finally done it.)

One Step Closer

Nobody published my story while it was current, so I present it to you (see above). If any mustard fans out there need it for a mustard fan club magazine, I can always make a few touch-ups to broaden the appeal.

Back when I said I had kraut on the brain, this is what I meant.

Chicago - Lakeshore Path

(lately it's been nice)

Camino de Chicago, the Lakeshore Path,
Rollerbladers, bikers, spandex ass
Joggers, walkers, dads behind strollers,
Golf carts with lazy park controllers.

Where are you starting today?

For Montrose Beach I’d impeach most plans,
But there’s 18 miles of land
To pick from, pick one, show up, start
Practicing any of the motion arts.

Photo by MerlinsMan.

The Future

To the seven, six, five, four, three, two and one year-olds out there: I know you can do better than we did. (Eight year olds, step off. You got nothing.)

The Future

Preface – In the Future

In the future there will be cars that fly. You will not walk, you will fly by jet pack. In your house you will press a button and talk into a speaker next to the button. You will say what you want to get and a robot will bring it to you.

The planes will go a million times faster, and you can get from New York to California in five minutes.

It will make your brain wild with tacky new clothes, new inventions, and much, much more.

Four kids journey to outer space!

Chapter 1 – Ventures to Outer Space

When they wake up in the morning they will take one pill that has different flavors of foods. Then they unplug their vacuum and start vacuuming—except they call it pounding! After they pound they get on their jet pack and go to school or work.

Their worst enemies are clouds and rainstorms. They do not like it because it messes up their jet packs.

If their jet packs run out in the rain, they have special shoes that have little rockets on them.

There are not fifty states, but there are one million because the states are only six acres big. Only one to five houses on a state and one town. The town has one store which is divided into little sections that sell things like jet packs or food pills.

They wear weird clothes that are red or brown, and they have buttons that are able to change things into anything they want.

And now is when the story begins because that is just the start.

One day four kids went to get new jet packs because it had just rained. When they got them they saw that they were MAGIC, but they didn’t believe it. They asked the storekeeper if they could test the jet packs. The storekeeper said, “Yes.”

One kid’s name was James. When he started his new jet pack he went straight up, and he disappeared into outer space. Then, one by one, they started their jet packs and disappeared like James.

When they went up they saw James on a planet just like Earth. When they landed, they saw lots of familiar things.

Then Sally yelled, “Maybe it’s heaven!”

What they did not notice was that it was Halloween. Then Sally saw a kid dressed up as an angel.

Then Sally yelled again, “It is heaven!”

As you may have noticed, it wasn’t Halloween on Earth. That got them even more mixed up. And you know that you go trick or treating at night and it was day there.

Their pocket calendars said it was a day ahead.

“Let’s get out of here!” yelled James.

So they went to the edge of the planet and stood on their heads, started their jet packs, and flew right back down to Earth. Whichever side their head is pointing to (up or down) is the way the jet packs go. The jet packs that they have at home (the type that is not magic) have four buttons that have arrows on them that point forward, backward and to the sides.

When they looked at the ones on the magic ones, they saw that they said they were going to the right! Not down!

The storekeeper had forgotten to tell them that if you tell the jet pack to go down it will go right. If you tell it to go up it will go left.

They looked on the jet packs to see where they were made. Then they jet packed over to where the jet packs were made (with their old jet packs). They were made in a factory called ABRACADABRA.

The company made magic things. James, Sally, Guthrie and Melissa went in.

They said, “How do these magic jet packs work?”

The storekeeper said, “They run on special dust found inside of the sun.”

James said, “Can I see some of the dust?”

The storekeeper said, “Yes.”

The storekeeper was wearing gloves and was holding an iron thing that had an iron handle and a big iron thing on the end like a square pancake. And on that it had a big basket.

The storekeeper said, “You must never touch it with any part of your body.”

“Ok,” said Sally, Guthrie, Melissa and James.

Chapter 2 – Poison Pills for Guthrie

One day Guthrie was eating his pill. Then he noticed something different about the pill. It was blue, but it was supposed to be pink.

“Mom!” called Guthrie. “My pill is blue, not pink!”

His mother ran downstairs and said, “Honey, honey! Did you eat it yet?”

“Yes,” squeaked Guthrie nervously.

Guthrie’s mom said, “Quick, hop into the car!”

“Where are we going?” asked Guthrie.

Guthrie’s mom was in such a hurry that she didn’t answer. She ran into the doctor’s waiting room.

“Doctor, doctor! Get me in right now! HELP! Guthrie has swallowed a blue breakfast pill!”

“Okay, he’s empty now,” said the nurse.

Guthrie and his mom went into the room.

The doctor said, “Well, look who’s here. It’s old Guthrie!”

Then Guthrie noticed that he couldn’t talk.

The doctor said, “The only cure to this is a rare operation. The operation is called ‘the inserting of the laser.’”

Then Guthrie wrote down: “Lasers, yeah man!”

But the doctor meant that they were going to cut him open for an operation with a laser. Bad news for Guthrie!

Then the doctor said, “Can you be brave enough to stay here from next Sunday to next Friday?”

“Yeah,” wrote Guthrie, now figuring out what the doctor meant. He showed what he wrote to the doctor. Next, Guthrie wrote, “Do you have to cut me open and operate on me with a laser?”

“Yes,” said the doctor.

Inside, Guthrie was really saying, “Oh no!”

Guthrie was back to normal in no time at all. The four kids were all happy together again, too.

THE END

About the Authors

Brett is seven and a half years old and lives in Goldens Bridge with his parents and his sister and two brothers. Brett enjoys playing with his yellow lab, Kayla. He likes to sled surf and ride his bike. Sports that he plays are soccer, street hockey and baseball. Reading is also one of his favorite pastimes. [Still into sled surfing. Books are kinda cool, too.]

Thea is almost eight years old. She has a little sister, Emma, and a best friend named Dustin. Thea likes to write stories and draw pictures. [Noble.]

Hot Dogs by Thea

Once upon a time, Thea and I invented our own language. Bam!

Her hot dogs rock. And not just because I've had kraut on the brain lately.

Lincoln Square's May Fest - Notes

America has a lot to thank Germany for. We saw the way they consumed at their festivals, then took the idea and applied it to everything, riding it all the way to the world’s strongest economy and greatest national wealth.

We had intergenerational slurred conversations. “Nobody’s bought me a beer yet,” said the wobbling seventy year-old lady. “Nobody’s bought me a beer yet either, you can be the first,” said the object of her romantic interest, a twenty-three year-old German-Italian.

They priced the beers perfectly. The first one is painfully expensive, but if you get the large glass of the strongest beer, the price becomes affordable as soon as the glass is empty, so you go back for another, spurred by the dollar refill discount, and by the time that’s done and you're buying your third, you know it's a good deal.

Renters inevitably ran into property managers. The property managers silently computed and filed away each renter's odds of puking in the stairway, as to know who to curse this morning, depending on the size and location of the mess.

Sandal wearers can comment on the puddles of black beer water making moats around the bar.

Cops wore bulletproof vests in case a beer maid exploded out of her bodice.

Please, God, spare the soul of the man who loaded French’s yellow onto his bratwurst.

Thoughts While Waiting For The Zurich-to-Chicago

Square in the path of the jet lag stun gun,
Headed for a pillow filled o’ subletter’s shunned,
Shaken shook-off dead skin mess,
Maybe hints of perfume, hair of seducer chest.
Back to the full flight, US-bound plane
Calibrated to tighten screws again:
People I see look like people I know,
The average waistline, I’m way below,
From a full-pockets blazer he sighs out stress—
I don’t want to be in America yet.
Unisex-dressed women, sporty, sloppy men,
Do we need to rehash fashion again?
Flatter yourself, then share it around,
Guys, don’t expect fishnets with your cuffs on the ground.
No off-the-shoulder sweater’s getting wedged behind a headboard
’less you wear that denim with the measure you were set for.
I don’t know, speculating a bit—
Surely much more gets zipped zippers unzipped.
But remember, if it weren’t for the opposite sex,
We’d all be big and plain-looking, like government checks.

Photo by thecolourblue.

The Clean House

Matilde, Machuge, Machichi,
The Clean House sweeps you easy,
Orders your head like Virginia’s hands
To remember and forget like jokes demand,
White and color, OR and ocean,
Snow and sunglasses, bad apple tossin’,
Super-subtitles, glances of admiration,
Facial contortions, Arctic exploration,
Laughing till kissing, back again,
Can opener blaming, lack of a friend,
Storm cloudy skylights, Jobim-blue skies,
Silent primal moments, euthanize,
Borrowing women, obvious daydreams
Explained, “Just my imagination…”
Ruhl peels back skull seams:
It’s like coming off sedation the morning after
As you reexamine your prescription for laughter,
X-ray your glow and ask, “Who asked for this task?
The perfect joke day is coming up fast.”

(Saw The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl last night. Here's more info for those who haven't seen it: Windy City Times review)

The Clean House, Sarah Ruhl, Goodman Theatre

Granada Rhymes: The Rest

Rise Up
You can get hash or arrested on Elvira tonight,
Drop juggling pins, your pants too tight,
You can grow dead dreds as a farm for your food
Or go digging through the trash in a fancy mood.
You can lead a pack of dogs, lie with ‘em all day,
If you rise, philosophize, (didja hear what Franklin say?)
You can show your palm to tourists,
Piss in your bed,
On your cobblestones, I mean,
And you can seal off your head
‘Cause books are too heavy for the life you do--
But for a week can I be a trustifarian, too?


Free Cocktail
Pick up a drink ticket, get a drink,
Stick it in your face, help to fuel the race
Of relaciónes públicas here in Granada,
Nights like it no hay nada
Whether tapas or tequila’s your thing.
Bring a backup liver, quaff a bottle by the river,
Cupid’s here and totin’ full quiver.
Won’t be hard to find your smile
When you shake it Spanish style,
Doesn’t matter where you’re from or what’s next.
‘Cause next to nothing beats las noches
In the good life living showcase
Called Granada when your heart’s in effect.


Overstocked
Hanging from the ceiling, ham, Serrano ham,
On the backs of playing cards, under the dresses of shrunken widows
Clogging sidewalks, trailing mothball perfume,
The fake friendlies with tickets in hand,
Bubbling by fountains, bouncing group to group,
Bouncers pounding eyes into people in line
Who put on special shoes, blew this week’s pay just
By strolling in with a debit card,
German beach behavior, Albayzin real estate scams,
Police four-deep in a minivan, blue light special, ham.


An illegal job quenches appetites
So long as your tastes are lean:
No cannolis, discoteca drinks
Or magazines obscene.


Twins
Ice cream is helado, hope you eat
A hell lot of it, hit Los Italianos,
Put banana and chocolate
On a cone, within a cup if you fear
Dropping your investment or a
Jacket smear, ‘cause a cone’s known
To drip while a cup’s conservative;
A cone’s got wild crunchy style,
A cup what you paidforgives.


In a Sexy Way
If she makes your eyes pop, yell guapa!
If she makes your heart stop, yell guapa!
If she makes you bust a grin, yell guapa!
If it looks like a sin, yell guapa!
If she’s got fishnets and a frilly skirt, she’ll hurt
If you don’t yell guapa!
A messy eater and her friends will never look your way again
If you walk by and don’t yell guapas!
If she’s headed home at dawn on a muscleman’s arm,
You better honk the horn and yell guapa!
If she’s 80 and can dance and you lack romance,
Might as well take a chance and yell guapa!


Never Satisfied, Always Satisfying
The mirador sky gets bored with blue
And clouded specks of white
And yellow rays of typical shine
And black blue-black of night,
So it puts on skins of salmon pink,
Shades of belt-laid welts,
Plays with the red of cut kings’ heads,
Purple of puddles of popsicle melt.
Grey of a Viking sage’s gaze
Cut with golden idol fire,
Magenta of a Manhattan punker
Twisting in bed with a Baptist choir.
The snotgreen of an omphalos-seen sea,
The orange of Cheez-Wiz carrot puke
Drained from the pipes of an Irish plumber
In the Dome after ‘Cuse beat Duke.


The Offering
Our graffiti, I’ve never seen ‘em
Throwing it up, bubble letters,
Angry locked scrawls too,
What discos lack in hip hop’s
Where the walls come through
Big like Jeter, never seen it sweeter
Than Niño de las Pinturas,
Aerosol can depleter,
Reunites color and stone, fresh air and art,
Thought loops with the new,
Surroundings play a part,
The city the frame, cans can’t drain
Like this without God’s hand
Twisting the wrist.
(Check it out here)


Breaking Bread
How much bread can you eat in a day?
Go broke, you’ll have the answer in 24 hours,
A swollen doughboy gut, sweat stinking of flour,
A crusty cracked grin, pair of crusty drawers,
Trust me, breaking bread stores’ doors is
For the poor, Jean Val Jean style, keep
Your hands to yourself, your crummy
Slice swiping guile fails to fool,
You can’t trick a baker, butter him up,
He drives a hard-rollin’ bargain, he’s a sour
Dough-box guarding miser, your local yeast riser
Goes whole weeks without a scheizer.
Think you can cut him out of half what’s in his profit chest?
He’ll crumble half of you in soup, soak up the rest with what’s left.


Teamwork
I live with four Italians, they know how to live,
Serving coffee on trays, prepping beds to give
The ladies a frame shaking overnight visit,
U2 on repeat, wonder what is it
Making them run around in black briefs—
Black briefs alone—
When the females are gone, only hombres home,
Or what sends ‘em to Zara for pre-party clothes,
What makes them show off their craps, calling, pinching the nose.
They watch porn in a group, forget about the oven
But it always comes out perfect, screw American curmudgeons.


And of course, the obligatory limericks:

In Granada, fine pleasures abound
You’ll relax if you look underground
Every ice cream shop doubles
As what gets men in trouble
When their wives get to scooping around.

In Café Fútbol at the end of the verse
Pierre begged coins from a woman with girth:
"A coin please, madam?"
“Not today, sorry, I am,
But I’ll let you fill up my purse.”

Johnny Alhambra worked with a hammer
But his true gift was Arab-king scammer:
Built the best door of the land
For Princess, hid key in hand
And promised no one would ram ‘er.

At the beach I don’t know where to look
My eyes won’t stay tied to my book
So I pull on my shades
Hide my wide sweeping gaze
‘Cause you have to watch ham while it cooks.

Have you checked out the tube after 12?
It’s worse than my uncle’s top shelf
They don’t hide a thing
Except maybe a ring
And a shred of respect for the self.


Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Albayzin, Poems, Limerick

Overload

I can't do this one-by-one posting thing, no matter how hard I try. To save everyone time and effort, I'm dumping the rest of the Granada poems here in one big, sloppy splat of a post. Plus, I'm leaving the country in four days. That's where my focus is, or at least where I want it to be.

Swollen

Granada doesn’t want your automobile,
She wants your feet to feel
The rocks, the cobblestones,
Your heels to wobble, your ankle bones
To groan as you ascend the Albayzin,
Your knees to realize what it means
To be a city bursting seams
With poets’ dreams and myster-schemes.

Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Albayzin, Walking, Mirador, Rocks

Calling All Wallets

Economics in Granada revolve around the phone booth,
Paste a poster on the glass, hope business cuts loose,
Unreported antics putting Tyco to shame
‘Cause shafting the state is the law in Spain.
Rip a tab with a number, the classes begin:
German, English or Italian,
Arab tongue twisters, harmonica, too
Cheapo ceramics, Spanish for prudes,
(Did we mention apartments, houses, closets to rent?)
Basketweaving with a dude and his trusty scent.
You can learn to dance flamenco,
I’m sure the teacher’s fair,
Grab a Turkish bath discount,
No comment on the hair.
So if you want skills or just people to screw
Slap your ad inside a phonebooth, make scam dreams true.


Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Apartment, Spanish, Economics, Law

Back On Top

Each day I get more serious about my hairdo,
I gel through twice, afternoon and night,
I want ripe spikes to swipe an eyesocket clean,
A mullet by fall, greasecurl waterfall,
Ooze dripping down the back of my shirt.
The stuff stiffens, my posture can’t give in,
Why not toss in a highlight or ten, then
Trim the neck well (stay away from that rat tail)
And angle my bangs till they tango with my unibrow.
Leave my burns buzzed low so when I wobble to and fro
Home, on sight they end threats of a fight.


Granada, Spain, Andalucia, hairdo, Mullet, Gel, Unibrow

About Time

Every clock in Granada is always wrong,
Every half-hour walk is a minute long,
What’s planned for tomorrow gets done in a week,
A siesta’s not siesta when springs don’t squeak.
Either way—a couple hours a day
Set aside for play or a tapa tray,
Sun, drink, a cig to think
Of anything but something,
You ask, “What is this?”
Blink.

Scene From a Balcony

Enriqueta Lozano—a teeny tiny street,
Look outside the window, blank wall treat
But a tree climbs higher, it’s over the wall,
You can touch it from the balcony, spring-scents call
You out, you see people couple meters below,
Ancient crooked backbone shufflers, mopeds swerving to pass,
A greaser with his girlfriend and his hand on her ass,
Dogs barking like they’re boiling, they never were trained,
Last night’s liters of Alhambra, rolling, clinking, drained.

---
Cafe Futbol in Plaza de Mariana Pineda (home to the above-mentioned street) serves the biggest ice cream cones in town, especially if you go right before they close, when it's time to unload excess inventory. I know because I used to live above the place. (From Puerta Real, follow the Ganivet portico until it opens into P. Mariana Pineda.)

Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Enriqueta Lozano, Ice Cream, Alhambra, Café Futbol

May Snow

Sierra Nevada’s got a cocaine problem for sure,
Sierra Nevada’s downtown with a lady in fur,
Sierra Nevada’s on the telephone, wants you to pay,
Sierra Nevada, dirty baby, why you talk that way?
The frozen cold south Spain moon scratching pimp,
No complaints, chilling like the Goodyear blimp
Over Super Bowls, he’s there every time
You look for eyes to look in, toasting wine.
He don’t care if you’re sleeping and it’s half past late,
Won’t pinch the best pincho off your tapa plate,
In the locker room he puts Alhambra to shame,
He scratches moons and pimps it, Sierra Rick James.

---

Find an overlooked mirador. (There are enough to go around.)

Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Sierra Nevada, Alhambra, Tapas, Mirador

Beach Bus

Who unwrapped the ham sandwich on the bus?
I smell that ham, stinking ham,
Ham with a rainbow on it, glazed,
Mayoed onions makes a billy goat vomit.
Bite, bite—little squirts out the end,
Bite, bite, juice squirts again,
Soaking in your pants front,
A questionable stain, explain?
You already ruined the family name.

---

Choice Alpujarras ham and all sorts of other tasty dead things can be found in the Mercado Municipal, Plaza de San Agustin, north of the cathedral.

Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Ham, Jamon, Alpujarras

Granada Welcomes You

Spring is here, Semana Santa starts tomorrow and you're headed to Granada. Or maybe you're already there. Over the next few days I'm going to be posting stuff to supplement even the most obnoxiously thick guidebook. And if you're somewhere besides Granada, I'm sure it's pretty nice there, too.

Thanks

The longer I go without posting anything, the harder it is to post. Like working out, or whatever hurdles in your life get you stuck. Even as I write this, the urge to close the browser and walk back to the orange cut and half-eaten on the counter behind me is overwhelming. All I have pushing me forward is a heart-torquing note received from someone I should talk to more frequently. From now until when my will breaks down and I need to be found again is for you.

Chris Ward - Tenor Sax

Ever since he hijacked my bari, played "Midnight Hour" and cracked the foundation of the Berklee dorm with his volume, I've known Chris Ward (aka The Warden) is a beast. Check out four of his new studio tracks below.

Lockdown: www.myspace.com/chriswardjazz

Apollo Sunshine - Concert Review

1/3 JJ Jazz Band Roots

Apollo Sunshine, Martyr's, Chicago, March 10, 2006--

Trying to explain what’s so good about Apollo Sunshine is like trying to explain which part of the cow tasted best in your all-beef frank. (Vegetarians, substitute Ben & Jerry’s.) All that’s obvious is something somewhere went right. As intangible as Apollo Sunshine is, their recent performance at Martyr’s in Chicago hinted at why the current media scramble to define their sound will soon end, and they’ll simply be known as A Great Band.

Apollo Sunshine lives in a farmhouse in Western Mass and makes music like they’re a trio of Yankee Craftsmen. Their show mixed future favorites with originally executed classics. Complex layering was subtly visible. Their set gave off a gleam of effort and practice, but didn’t try to sell anything over-lacquered. They chose not to attempt the most challenging forms, because they know that simple, flawless and neatly joined is more than enough. They’re happy to let someone else cover Cliffs of Dover.

But what good is a cherry dining room set if you can’t bring people together around a complete meal? Even a host with a prize-winning garden knows that the dinner often requires something raised by someone else. And so it was only organic that Apollo Sunshine shared Mazarin’s New American Apathy after their own Flip!, then uncapped Jimi’s flaming hot sauce, Crosstown Traffic.

Ever gourmet, Apollo Sunshine also knows that any course too big can spoil dessert. They hit the brakes on Crosstown Traffic just before merging into a jam with no local exits, stood on a second of silence (hold your breath), then powered instead into I Was on the Moon. Maybe a few in the room with telepathic iPod shuffle functions had heard the transition before and weren’t surprised. Everyone else got blasted into orbit. The change tied a chain straight to Hendrix, who towed Apollo Sunshine another inch toward the planet where the Rock Gods live forever.

It’s one thing to deliver pure entertainment. It’s another to have a habit of catching people off-guard when pure entertainment is all they’ve been expecting. Jimi set his guitar on fire. Apollo Sunshine prefers to ignite a spot in the mind that’s usually lost in the shadow of ego. Without picturing pet immolation, think of this spot as a puppy that’s been beaten and kicked since humans got names. But no matter how much abuse it takes, this spot is a puppy that wags its tail when it finds a bone of The Truth.

Apollo Sunshine doesn’t call to this spot through a disregard for future gossip and the subsequent release of heartbreaking personal details (although they take this path occasionally). They just cover you with glee like silly string, take it or leave it. Any cynic used to the former will attack Apollo’s blatantly positive lyrics (even when the lyrics aren’t 100% positive, they still carry a sparkle), but really, who can argue with “Today’s the day to act like today’s your day and you will be surprised that it is, that it is” and the aural illusion of rhyme generated by its giddy delivery? Or try, “You can say there’s more to life than this, but there’s always more to life,” for a complete philosophical rendering of the pointlessness of bashing Apollo Sunshine, or anything else, for as long as your heart works.

At times the lyrics edge towards being defined as scripture—things we really should remember but tend to forget too fast. The only thing keeping Apollo Sunshine from full-blown prophet status is that their words are memorable. And it isn’t a painful nag, either, like a slice of Muzak cheese heard in the grocery store and picked up like the flu. It’s a recurring, intoxicating dose of knowing you’ve discovered another good thing in this world. An inner loop very similar to trying to fall asleep after your first tongue kiss. A conviction that things will work out fine after all. But catchy and cleansing as their show is, nothing lasts forever. So next time they shine your way, see them and get reminded.

G-Money'$ photo ganked by me.

Technorati Tags: Apollo Sunshine, Martyr's, Chicago Music, SpinART Records, Da Bomb, Hendrix

Paranoid

Travis says:

"'explain paranoia? explain what it is? well...it's the residue of a decadent imagination, of an unchecked curiosity, it's like drinking from the most turbulent stream of your consciousness, it's the bacteria of,' and then i took a long-ass pause, like it was the end of the world coming, and said, 'post-evolution,' which was really just the articulated tip of this iceberg: it's a texture, a certain dark texture that's usually counterproductive in a pragmatic sense but never irrational or self-defeating, really, since it's usually just the prolonged manifestation of surival-mode that never extends beyond the framework of subjective possibility, that never lacks an opaque and redemptive foundation, given it's fundamentally reactionary, given it never deviates too far from some kind of genuine humanism, however tangential the means to the end are...but the essence of it, really, is this: it's the last signpost on the road to absurdity, and in that sense, it's very optimistic, and it's active, creative, passionate, the antithesis of apathy...it is, perhaps, the last hope of true liberation in an uncompromised framework, the last therapeutic embers of post-modernism burning beneath the wreckage."

Photo by foltzwerk.

El Camino de Chicago

I walk out from between buildings and see the church. For the last eight hours, I’ve been preparing for this. I cut through the small park in front of it and look up at the stone figures. I’m just a chip compared to them. I head towards the door and can read the words above it: “Queen of Angels”. At the last second, I turn and follow the sidewalk past the rectory. When it’s behind me, I know I’m halfway to the train station.

I can hear the trains coming and going. I used to pay attention, trying to time my arrival to be among the last to squeeze in. But I’ve been walking this route for a while, and now I take what I get. I can wait for the next one. It works out fine.

Strangers and I arrive at the door of the stop. Our credentials are validated and we’re let in. Usually it’s crowded, but mostly we keep to ourselves. Everyone is solemn, seemingly serving a penance. Most wear black. We’re taken past places we don’t normally see. Sometimes there’s magic out there. But more and more often, it’s words and numbers on signs.

We carry gear. Some travel light or have nothing at all, others are clearly overburdened. Most view the way as strenuous, as shown by the popularity of sitting. Some rush with a contagious urgency. Some even race, up escalators or toward empty benches. A few break the solitude with cell phones; others turn their way and frown.

We hold doors and give directions. We read the day’s page for information to help us through it. We share this help by leaving the page behind. Some of us travel in pairs or groups, but most are alone. Only a few go the opposite direction. Sometimes the same face is seen four days in a row, then not again for two weeks. Every age, every heritage is here, each for a reason. Not everyone knows that everyone has a destination.

Photo by eddieq.

Genes

In some parts of the world, a lifespan is broken into two. In the first half, people try to stay awake as much as possible. In the second half, they sleep. That’s it. They stay awake until around age 30, their growth is stunted and their thoughts uncontrollable. They usually go blind. They keep babies awake by banging pots and pans, and later with herbs. Education is a lost cause.

For the ladies, there’s a sort of ongoing feud designed to keep each other awake. Each carries a tattoo needle and an ink vial, ready to stab a dot onto the face of anyone caught sleeping. Men refuse to wed dotty-faced women. To avoid getting tattooed, the women travel in pairs, and each partner is charged with keeping the other awake. Men avoid sleep by walking in circles around the perimeter of the village. It’s hard to fall asleep while walking, but some do. When they fall, they usually break their nose or some other feature. Unlike America, a man with a bashed-up face doesn’t have the tough genes.

Photo by Lynnell My Belle.

Let's Hear It

Watermelon Man

What have you been working on lately? Leave some links/notes/self promo in the comment section so we can check it out.

Photo by Bob Jagendorf.

Granada 3

Last night I met a dentist and an oral surgeon. They were out at 3am, drinking Coca-Cola and beers. They said they had to work in the morning, and after a brief discussion of which nationalities are best in bed, they headed off to the biggest disco in town.

Photo by Arkangel.

Granada 2

Mercadona

Listened to cello on the radio while cooking my lunch today. There’s something I like about a culture that lets you take a mid-afternoon break for Yo-Yo Ma and pasta carbonara. Our apartment is decorated with parts of telephone booths. And yes, that’s a sperm bank poster above our dinner table. A lot of people ask how we got the shopping cart in here. I don’t know. I do know that the store it's from is half an hour away.

Photo by Xavi Calvo.

$5

Dr. Dre

What's five bucks? Starbucks. A week of gas station drip. Deli. A week of sandwich. Capital. Twenty temporary tattoos. Half of valet parking. A bar beer. An Oatmeal Cream Pie party. Laundry and a lollipop. The tax on on sale sneakers. A gallon from concentrate. Bum bait. The cover band’s cover. A rose, steel wool and a crack crumb. A sock full of quarters. Gnome airfare. The center of Ohio. Fifty unanswered texts. Five stripper tricks. A whim at the checkout. A walking-distance taxi ride. Jukebox occupation. Ten pounds of citrus. An hour of disagreeable work. An Indian holiday. Warm-up on the foosball table. A 50% stake in a Yankee Stadium beer. My kinda haircut. The start of a stamp collection. A night of goosebumps. A lawyer uncapping a pen. Two hours in front of the TV. The plastic on a Benz key. A row of baby teeth. Donativo. Overpriced champagne. A dirty piece of paper.

Photo stolen from a future Senator by mayopants.

Sentence Stories

She dug through the toolbox, grabbed the biggest wrench and brought it down on the spinning record.

He hoisted the flag, turned to face the grandstand and took a bullet in the nose.

She looked at the stack of receipts, the bud of the orchid and the mailbox.

He took a swig of moonshine, turned up the Holst and lowered the snowplow.

She peeked over her shoulder, tilted her plate and dropped the fish into her purse.

He jumped off the roof, flipped one and a half times and landed just shy of the deep end.

He lit the M-80, dropped it in the Guinness and slid the glass down the bar.

He opened the laptop, typed an eighteen-digit acronym and blacked out Scandinavia.

He signed the guestbook, slid off his ring and snapped his suspenders.

He climbed onto the tracks, turned north and opened his trench coat.

She ordered a Pabst, took off her sweatshirt and turned her attention to the bassist.

He finished the opera, stepped out of the shower and into a bear trap.

She dove to the bottom, searched in the seaweed and spotted her diamond in a jellyfish.

He climbed the steeple, clung to the bell’s clapper and checked his watch.

He sauntered onto the boardwalk, grabbed a stick of cotton candy and exercised confidence in the construction of his diaper.

She stopped at the river, felt the rocks around the fire pit and slashed the van’s tires.

He opened his umbrella, stirred the spaghetti and hoped for a passing train.

She lit a cigar, spun the roulette wheel and called the number pasted where the ball landed.

He fell from the airplane, tucked his limbs and aimed for a basketball hoop.

She shook the spray paint, looked down and inched closer to the billboard.

He left the baby on the grass, spat black and ran back in the burning house.

Photo by danatteo.

Jay

Although he sat listening to his favorite band on a Bose stereo, Jay gnawed at his lip. In fifteen minutes, he and Samara would converge on the Golden Angel Pancake House and share a table. A table three blocks from his bed. He forwarded to the next song on the album and pulled chapped skin with his teeth. He tried to remember what shirt he wore when he saw her last. He couldn’t remember, so he picked something he hadn’t worn in a few months. But on the chance his body’s unfamiliarity with the garment would give him an air of awkwardness, he put it back.

He settled on a stripe-based Oxford and hung it on the closet doorknob. He chose the boxers that had been present for something he’d never talked about and tossed them next to the jeans on his bed. He only had one pair of going-out jeans. The denim had begun to blister into a white spot near the bottom of the fly, and he had no idea what he’d do if it erupted into a hole.

Photo by pjchmiel.

Granada

Barcelona, so what.

Every night they bring out the firehoses and wash the dog shit down the drain. You’d think the firehose guys’ boss would tell them to respect the neighbors, but at 3:45am they’re still belting out opera. Maybe they’re giddy from the neon-green jumpsuits. Maybe they’re drunk via osmosis from passing students. Maybe they’re criminals. You can ask. I’m not about to sneak up on a Latin man holding a full-tilt firehose between his legs and tap him on the shoulder.

Photo by zota.

Business Card

Congratulations! You are holding the business card of Roland W. Billpacker. You must be a fine smelling individual, a member of any number of assorted civic organizations and a smooth chess player. Or maybe you’re just a player. Maybe your toilet runs and your sink drops drips, which is usually annoying, unless it’s dripping gold. If so, call Roland at the number listed on the reverse side and he’ll be there straight away with an old coffee can to catch that drip.

Roland is available for speeches on any subject post-4500 B.C. But, his real specialty is helping you do your thing, like an under-thought tagline. He’ll be there with the dryer sheets when you forget them, or with a quarter when you’ve a Canadian. He’ll toss a Necco Wafer in your tollbooth net, saving the quarter for the aforementioned situation.

Did you know Roland is running for judge? He’s got nothing on the blind candidate with the “blind justice” slogan, and he’s sure got nothing against blind people, so he wants you to vote for his opponent.

Roland gets up at 4:35 every morning so he can do 300 pushups before putting in his usual 11 hour day. Can you do 300 pushups or work 11 hours straight? Didn’t think so.

Roland is consistently observed, or often seen, wearing the latest in wind breaking technology. His eye for neon is second to none and he can spot a quality plastic zipper from across the street, unless it’s dark out.

In his living room stands a section of the Berlin wall. He had to steal it from a university sculpture garden with hired Swedes, but he got it all the way across the country on a single U-Haul trailer. A good bug scrubbing later and it was holding the Billpacker family dinner. But if you think he’s a man of excess, remember that he lived until age 30 in a studio apartment with only a folding chair and a tray.

And no fan of modern art or the San Diego Padres will forget how, faced with impossible odds, Roland clinched the Haydock Trophy wearing only a pineapple. A quick kneel before the Queen later and Roland was back in jail. Some will say, “Of course he didn’t give up arms dealing,” and other will say, “You mean wrestling,” but both will have been watching the wrong reruns. For although Roland has been said to bear an uncanny resemblance to his doppelganger, he’s nobody’s fool. And if he knew you still didn’t have your checkbook out at this point, halfway through—yes, you—he’d shut down every arm of mass transit within a siren’s radius of your house.

Nevermind his olive oil patent, throw his trademark on the fifty dollar bill to the wind. In this public forum, we are only concerned with his locker room antics. Mr. Billpacker is no slacker when it comes to a tightly wound towel, and more than one scoutmaster has the raspberry to prove it.

So what if, contrary to his business card distribution, he considers you destined for dust? His grandmother can still carry her own groceries out to the car. And those automatic cash register change makers, offspring of the ATM? ABP. Another Billpacker Production. Not a television time-winning acronym, but give him a couple of years and you’ll have to buy a new antenna.

This is a good time to mention that Roland is in the market for used guitars, books and typewriters that are worth more than you think they are.

In the summertime, he sits with his elbows on his knees, feet far enough apart you’d need a third shoelace to tie his shoes together, except he’s barefoot, in the grass, wearing shorts, daring you to—oh, but he caught you. And he’s already schmoozed you up and down, worked your schmooze gland and pickled it just the right way. That, fellow human, is the animal magic of Mr. Billpacker. All that and a geyser-like knowledge of tax codes, spouting off out of control around the same time every year.

He doesn’t need sweatpants to disco. Play him in dice and SNAKE EYES. Challenge him in a race to dig a tunnel across Ohio—see who wins. Pull his credit report and all you get is a Norman Rockwell painting.

He opened an ice cream parlor in November, called it The Needle Dump and turned a profit by January. He’s got everything riding on the fact that he’s got nothing to prove. His stare is steroids. His waistband is a wasteland, home to a belt notched into old snakeskin, always ready to be shed. His party dip is out of this world, yet he’s got the whole world in his hands. He even cuts the carrots into little footballs. His bid hits the sweet spot between conscience and slavery. His injured workers have their own hospital. His house has its own diamond-plated dartboard. His life has its own meter maid. You have two hours. Move it or lose it.

Photo by Sv.Vaclav.

Quail Hunting School

click to see full size

Certified, bonified and all around pizza pied at the Quail Hunting School.

After the Glass Clinking

Here’s to not knowing what you’re doing, doing it just the same,
Here’s to prowlers on the roof again,
Here’s to Nag Champa bought cheaply in India,
Here’s to skinny girls intentionally bumping into ya,
Here’s to winter slippers and toesies cozy,
Here’s to medicine cabinet dissectors nosy,
Here’s to apple cider and steam rising off it,
Here’s to a few more salutes until we quaff it,
Here’s to splatter paint tuxedos and roof-blowing bands,
Here’s to alien waiters with glowing hands,
Here’s to married camping and tent affairs,
Here’s to nude games of musical chairs,
Here’s to monster truck limos and stairs to ascend,
Here’s to delirious years till we end.

Photo by fi-woo.

Tracking The Bari

Gary Gandoviespo, party pooper.

I pass up free newspapers, ignore coffeeshop bulletin boards and never read marquees. All because I can smell a baritone sax from miles away. But finding the joints that draw baris is one thing, knowing when the bari will be on stage is another. And even then, you want to know if you’re showing up to see a local or an out-of-town special.

The easiest way is to check the lingering sweat in the air around the plantain section of the nearest Caribbean grocer. The heavier the musk, the farther he’s lugged the horn. I can tell how long he’s been on the road, where he played last night, if he prefers Red Roof to Super 8, and if he likes to high-five the bassist.

Why plantains? The potassium helps the body retain oxygen, but nobody cares about that. Bari players belong to the dying fraternity of Peel Tossers. Senate crackdown and cartoon boycott or not, there’s nothing a bari player likes more than seeing someone go ass up on a plantain peel. The plantain peel is twice the size of the normal banana peel, and coated inside with concentrated tropical oil that makes the average banana seem downright grumpy. A banana peel slip might sprain a wrist, but cross paths with a plantain and you’ll shatter a coccyx.

A little while ago I caught a whiff of something truly foul. Only one thing could account for pepperoncini decomposed so far. I took the bus straight to the Jazz Record Mart, grabbed the intercom and let everyone know Gary Gandoviespo’s embouchure had bit the dust, and that the $6 Green Mill cover was better spent on a few old 45s.

Overnight, guys started doing everything they could to throw me off. Everywhere I snorted the air – nothing. The bari players picked good decoys. Some walked through department stores, others hugged cash registers. Some took taxis. I went three weeks without having a low A rub its knuckles on my sternum. I almost picked up a copy of the Reader. Divine intervention gave the paper box a sticky handle, and I recoiled, saved. I stumbled into a suspicious breeze, but I wasn’t about to test my luck to find I'd followed a cell phone salesman to the gym.

I sold everything in my apartment except my records and hi-fi. With the profits, I bought a giant tub of peanut butter, threw my tunes and a blanket in the van and made a break. The plan had been to drive to the nearest casino and study the art of nickel slots, 24/7, until a Tower of Power cover band came through.

I remember rear-ending a car half a block from my house, and after that the chair. Someone had strapped me into a chair in an airy part of the state, maybe even Wisconsin. A stereo played Mucca Pazza from which the bari track had been digitally excised. I asked no one in particular what the hell was wrong with these people and four keggish men grabbed me at once. They undid the straps and said I’d finally dried out.

Turns out you can’t slip under this bari nose no matter what you try. Unbeknownst to me, my olfactory plug—which the doctors say is curled into the exact twist of a baritone’s neck—had been working overtime since the day the cover-ups began, bent on a code breaking mission of sorts. Just as I attempted my escape, the adhesive from the Sugarloaf bumper sticker on the car ahead of me floated through my open window and mixed with the fading ink of my college sweatshirt. It launched me back to the first time I saw Pepper Adams, as a Bowdoin freshman in an old barn, high on rubber cement.

From there, things went blank, totally blank, a blank that onlookers filled for me via pages of court reports, a blank involving screeching brakes and my body cruising through the windshield, grin strap tightly fastened on my sleeping face, then through another plate of glass. The front window of Ashland’s, specifically, right onto the stage, which I slid across belly down, coming to rest just as the drummer came down a bit differently on the ride, indicating a transfer of solo rights to the bassist from Neon Clipper, Pepper Adams’ protégé, who, still a bit lost in his own story, took in the applause by draining his spit valve directly into my ear, five feet below. The spit, thanks to the liberal zoning laws of that cavity, found its way to my olfactory plug and I set sail on a seven-week catatonic orgasm.

They say I’m ok now, and I know I’m fine, too, but to prevent a relapse the doctors insist I maintain a steady diet of newspapers, bulletin boards and marquees.

Photo by hadroed.

Invasion Vacation

If I had known my sister was that close to the cliff, I would never have swung so hard. As her pigtails dropped out of sight, I knew it was over. You can’t play paddle ball by yourself. You can try to beat your personal record for hot dogs eaten before sundown, though, so I set myself to the task.

It was only 10 a.m. and the pool stood empty. Everybody at the resort held morning coffee, waiting for it to uncork body and mind. I snuck into the pool bar and fired up the boiler. As soon as I dumped a ten-pound bag of dogs in the pot, the air raid siren went off. I climbed into an unplugged ice cream freezer to wait it out.

Through the chain link screen over the serving window, I heard panic in German and French and Italian. Pressure in the air flattened me to the floor, then I heard nothing. Something had gone Animal on my eardrums. I peeked over the top of the freezer. At least the boiler still boiled. I tonged out a dog and ducked back down.

The sounds didn’t start until around the 12th wiener. Quietly at first, quiet shouting and gong banging. Backfiring motors a bit louder after that, then elephants tooting and finally game show music. I poked my head up for a napkin. I got my dad and brother spinning an enormous wheel. It stopped on a pancake and an elephant took a seat and flattened them. My aunt stepped up. She spun a star, and troops hoisted her up the flagpole. Next, a geezer from the room next door. He spun an ice cube, and the crowd spun around and stared me down. I froze.

They charged. At the last second, I tipped the boiler over, hoping an irregular splash would melt at least one cornea. I crashed out of the freezer to the floor, shouldered my way through the back door of the hut and crash-ran shoulders-first across the patio, taking hot dogs in the neck and kidneys all the way.

I guessed myself into an alley, and it worked. Soon I stood alone on a dock beneath the town. I considered bumming a cigarette boat, but decided my family’s Scarab would do just fine. I hopped in, found the spare key and estimated the width of the barrel stubbed in my back.

“You think the Chinese don’t like ice cream?” a voice said.

“No, I don’t think they don’t.”

“Then why get in a freezer in the first place?”

“Shrapnel,” I said.

“Where?” he said, and dove into a corner of the cabin. A grab, a quick turn and a swoop later, I had him in a fishing net.

“Who are you?” I said, shoving the boat’s log into his chest. He removed from his inside breast pocket a gold Cross pen, and I knew he wasn’t so bad. Sixty seconds later he’d sold me an eight-digit life insurance policy.

“Looks like the tables have turned,” he said, and he was right. I really wanted to kill myself, only for not calling his bluff earlier. After signing, I’d noticed it was only a glittery Bic. I opened the spigot of Woodford Reserve next to the wheel and stuck a bucket beneath. My hostage drank Keystone.

We became rather turned around, so I leaned on the gas. Soon enough, land ho. I made him shout it until we ran up on rocks. On closer inspection, I saw they were people clumped together into the density of your average Ivy League cornerstone. I grabbed my hostage by the feet and started swinging. His Keystone sweat cut through the crowd like a Hughes bit. When his pit wells ran dry, I traded him for a hot dog cart, eating and gaining energy, chewing and spraying the mash.

I didn’t sleep until I had carved my way inland, leaving the bodies behind me to ferment a new plague. Thus began my conquest of China. I don’t know what happened back at the resort. I probably never will. China has a lot of hot dogs.

Photo by herman71.

Stainless Self-Promotion

BootsnAll published a story of mine. Hope you check it out:

Up The Needle: Underground Tattoo in Granada, Spain

(An earlier version of it was posted here on Mayopants a few months ago.)

Thanks.

Qualifications

I’m an expert at falling asleep with my clothes on, with the light on, with my hand in my pocket, the other up under my cheek, knuckle knocking my lower eyelid, the pressure giving me a black spot in my vision in the morning. I’m an expert on Vision skateboards, especially the early double-nosed Double Vision, as well as climbing onto the roofs of elementary schools using only drainpipe and hoisting up video cameras, old-style ones that record on VHS tape, and recording home videos of skateboarding on elementary school roofs. I’m a bit of an expert on Old Style beer, the Fan Can to an extent, the location of Wrigley Field more so, and most definitely Friday Night Heartburn. I’m an expert at making weekends disappear completely. I’m an expert at secrets. I’m an expert at turning my alarm clock towards the bathroom door before taking a shower so that when I step out in my towel, whatever weekday morning, I know right away how late I am. I’m an expert at neglecting perfectly good career advice and occasionally feigning an interest in the careers of others. I’m an expert at pimping my friends when I dig their work. I’m an expert at signing my checks in gel pen, at waiting four days to put them mail and at taping the flaps of the envelope down to further slow the process.

I’m an expert at last name speculation, taking a speculum to any ending and deducing. I’m an expert at recalling the first time I saw a word in a whole new way, even if the memory is rooted in a William Safire column, or specifically if the word in question is Safire, just a pph away from dignity, a shining sound mounted on a cheap frame, an inheritance hinting at a history of counterfeiters. I’m an expert at congested voice mails, in tone and syntax, unable to get my full 10 digits out without having to back up, take a sip of water and charge the ramp again. I’m an expert at twisting my eyebrows to go from amateur to expert, especially when it comes to tourniquets. I’m an expert at squinting in direct sunlight. I’m an expert at ragtag bunches of guys rolling up to new neighbors’ houses with 30-packs and a single bottle of the store’s cheapest champagne and soiling rugs with salty mud. I’m an expert at pasta sauce as the meal, 70% of it, at least, and at keeping sponges around until they deliver a coat of sappy grease to everything they touch.

I’m an expert at hopping in and out of dreams, day and night, like Prince with recording studios and beds. I’m an expert at taking jackets to bars where they cheat on chairbacks with floor. I’m an expert at thinking back to good old days and the unearned financial security that made them so. I’m an expert at telling myself money equals happiness, then lodging myself in situations proving the negation. I’m an expert at fearing how the future will tweak my head. I’m an expert at buying the cheapest version I can find of any given product. I’m an expert at forgetting to open the blinds until the sun has gone over the ghetto. I’m an expert at coughing up phlegm and holding it in my mouth until I find a surface of low enough perceived value to receive it. I’m an expert at misusing “discreet” and discreet misuse. I’m an expert at dragging values into every act that involves breathing. I’m an expert at walking by Starbucks and newspaper stands and multiplying the average purchase times 20 times 12 and congratulating myself on keeping workdays about work.

I’m an expert at banned charades such as the rusty trombone. I’m an expert at placing situations on a continuum of rules. I’m an expert at writing people off on jacket material alone. I’m an expert at consenting to ride in reckless Range Rovers, knowing that our troops in Iraq would use the marque if it had been invented here. I’m an expert at making piles out of the shrapnel of life until the carpet disappears. You could say I’m an expert expert.

Photo by williamhhansen12374.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a brick house that wanted to be a feather. And I know you’ve heard the story before, and I know you know how it ends, but we’re going to go through it one more time. You have to keep your memory fresh on such matters, because one day you’ll grow up to have children and debt of your own, and you’re going to want to be able to tell the story at a moment’s notice, either to stop tears or talk yourself out of robbing a convenience store. Especially around the first of the month when you realize not only do you have enough bills to stuff a mattress, but that you’ve crossed a threshold of porn consumption that will forever prevent you from performing improv comedy. And I mean bills of the ‘pay me now’ variety, but if you did happen to sleep upon your savings, you’d want to recall this story when your house inevitably burns down. So, once upon a time…

And speaking of feathers, the ol’ H5N1 has just hit Germany and Austria -- two countries I’m headed for in three months. Maybe it can make the other three by the time my plane touches down. Let’s go Slovakia! And don’t worry, none of us will be the first to suffocate in our own mucus. It’s a time-honored human exit.

Step Into My Fridge

Galicia

-OJ, for the Sun,
-Milk, for Madison County and its floating clump of golden butter, Colgate,
-Eggs, for Pagan fertility rituals,
-Yogurt, for energized French pilgrims,
-Falafel, for suspect schwarma joints where you wouldn't dare eat the meat, -Empty can of Cafe Bustelo, for catching freezer meltwater,
-Two bottles of Little Penguin blush, for doing things you don’t want to do, like working retail and getting two free bad wine bottles as a bonus, and keeping them, knowing that one day you’ll be glad you did, and opening and drinking them and not caring how bad they are because today is a good day,
-Half a can of corn with foil over the top, for los Italianos and their non-discriminating sauce recipes,
-Bruno’s Famous Rye, ¼ loaf, for Lincoln Square in general, the Bitburger in particular, and ¼ of my ancestry in equal proportion to the two,
-Marinara sauce, for los Italianos and their non-existent sanitary concerns, never once putting eggs in the fridge, abandoning steaks on the counter for three days before cooking,
-Spinach, for the Earth,
-Potato, for every copy of Death of a Naturalist left atop a toilet tank,
-Oranges, for the health benefits evinced by the firecracker Latin American man with shrink-wrapped muscles in front of me at the supermarket checkout buying four pounds of these fruits and nothing else,
-Carrots, for Dad’s garden,
-Bell pepper, for aesthetics,
-Apples, for doctor repellant,
-Olive oil butter, for northern Westchester kitchens with wire racks and dried mysteries hanging from the ceiling,
-Syrup, for a Sunday stomach full of pancakes,
-Parmesan cheese, for los Italianos, who sent to the garbage a half-moon cheese rind the size of a section of punch bowl every other week,
-Homemade blueberry jam, for the Stanton Farm Market on Route 12, Wendell Berry and a cozy Chenango county cottage bought and sold in the same year,
-Hebrew National mustard, for every deli that wishes it could be a Westchester deli,
-Pilsudski Polish-style mustard with horseradish, for every mustard snob from Westchester,
-Pesto sauce, for los Italianos cavorting in only black briefs at ten in the morning on a Saturday, not having gone to bed yet,
-Smucker’s Strawberry Jam, for Grandma’s house,
-Barbeque sauce, for everything,
-Bottle of champagne, for luck,
-Ketchup, for cover-up,
-Bottle of Albariño, for magic.

Photo by saseki.

Panorama

I have the panoramic photograph of the Colgate Class of 2004 sitting on my desk. Everyone together in one big stripe, everyone wearing white. Mostly, except for Heeter in a gray hoodie and Mark beside him in maroon. But they’re in the back row, so it’s excusable.

Why take a picture like this? Why were we herded onto a lawn, knowing nothing new, to stare at a man on a ladder and try not to blink for a minute? This was orchestrated. The picture makes a good gift for parents. It comes free with the first $35,000 installment. Look how small and selective this group of young adults is, of which your spawn is a member! Everyone does look pretty quick, or at least, alert. Ok, most people. A few in the front seem to be dozing.

The picture, at first, was just a mess of faces. I had a tough time finding the people I knew. A year later, I knew more, etc. But now, it’s harder to find people I don’t know. It’s a story prompter, a gossip spur. I can look at the picture and be off on a gallop of stories tied to stories within stories, multi-year drama of could-have-beens and so-glad-it-dids.

I have a lot riding on this picture. I want to see it age gracefully. I expect one day to be able to point to at least one disgraced Senator. A dozen non-inheritance-driven multi-millionaires, at least. And if nobody gets famous, I’ll take comfort knowing that my mug hangs on up to 700 walls.

The Picture

Another Disappearing Act

I've been opting for the typewriter keyboard lately, but I hereby resolve to sort through the pages and post some of it.

Diner Grill

That's him in the hat

The cook at the Diner Grill has extreme facial hair. Beards that look like air vents on an Italian sports car. Lots of downward-slashing rhombi. Man knows the value of negative space. He grabs beef patties without hygiene, he tosses buns against the flattop grill’s back wall, he dings the spatula like a typewriter bell at the end of every important sequence. When he’s caught up on everything, a second ahead of the flame, he cleans the grill. And he makes sure the boss sees him cleaning it. He crafts a metaphor for pop culture called the Slinger: eggs, beef, cheese, beef, cheese, eggs, A1 and hot sauce, condiment bottles spinning like duel-winning pistols. If you order water, he calls down the line for Miller Lite. He works when sensible people are drunk. That, cholesterol fans, is the secret of his success.

Photo by jtc354.

Probably Not True

People, in general, have a basic competency. From there, a common difference is perseverance, endurance, the ability to put two days into one, to know, upon putting down tools, that a heap of other stuff has to happen and that it must get done. Ideal work gives a focus and energy to feed the rest of life, physical and financial maintenance, interests and pursuits, relationships and spirit. And because the body runs on sleep even more so than caffeine, not a minute can be wasted. It becomes a matter of becoming. After a certain point, one acquires a sense of duty that forces changes in either behavior or conscience.

Photo by parkerkrhoyt.

Technorati Tags: Work, Tools, Fitness, Coffee, Career, Cheeseburger

The Sax and the Sweaters

I brought a tenor sax to Chicago. Didn’t touch it for three months. It sat. Tonight, I finally opened the case. Inside, as padding, I found two of my favorite sweaters. Warm ones. I thought I’d left them in New York. I’d given up on them. At first, I took their three-month absence as a punishment for neglecting the horn. But now I accept them as a reward for getting back to what I should have been doing all along.

Photo by leo59.

Technorati Tags: Saxophone, Chicago, Sweaters

P.S. - R.I.P. Richard Pryor, Minister of Education.

Action Story

Margo hustled into Keith’s office as fast as she could move her 240 pounds. Donny followed with his hand on her bouncing back. Once in, he slammed the door.

“The barrel,” Donny said, pointing out the window, towards the ground ninety-nine floors below. “It’s the only way out.”

Keith moved from behind his desk to the center of the room in two large strides. “Mr. Albright, please!” Margo cried, grabbing fistfuls of his jacket.

Keith put his hand on Margo’s shoulder and she sank to her knees. He squared his body to the office door as it began to shake. The molding fell from the frame.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Donny said as he threw a metal barrel marked “EXIT” against the office’s wall of window, spiderwebbing the glass. Green smoke seeped under the door. Donny picked up the barrel and tried again. It broke through and arced out of sight, trailing a thin wire clipped to a cleat on the floor.

Voices in the hall chanted to a battering ram's rhythm. Margo shook her head side to side, eyes clamped shut. Her arms remained locked around Keith’s right calf.

“Don’t be stupid!” Donny shouted, falling backwards out the window, a wrist descender clipped to the wire. Keith removed a silver disc from his pocket, scratched an “X” on it with his diamond pinky ring and winged it out the broken window. The door exploded into a finely graded cheese of wood and sparks.

A man in a green leather suit, surrounded by leopards. “Gimme the new Prince CD,” he said.

Keith shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t got it.”

Photo by jvonr.

Last Time

When was the last time you…

Turned down eating ice cream with a beautiful lady because of what the one beside you would think?
Saw fifteen ways to die compressed into a 30-second dance?
Got splashed with soy milk?
Let the absence of underwear distract you from the future of America?
Watched two ladies accept the fate of being mowed down by four men doing the final line dance from Footloose?
Willed flying, flaming batons into existence?
Eavesdropped on prayers?
Were held at squirtpoint by tag team water pistols?
Accidentally followed the words “interesting” and “profound” down a rabbit hole of interesting and profound thinking?
Questioned whether it’s really apple juice?
Listened to a lobster?
Made love out of nothing at all?
Allowed a milk crate and a hurt foot to express the hardest part of being human?

For me, it was last night with the Neo-Futurists. Under the alias “Lobo.” Too much light makes the baby go blind. Rock on.

Photo by me.

Technorati Tags: Neo-Futurists, Too Much Light, Chicago, Theater

Downtown

(I'm next door.)

My hair is getting greasier,
Wax, actually, rubbed in thick—
Had to be sharp for downtown work,
Had to briefcase dance, the downtown jerk.
Just kidding, I enjoy full days,
Gets me out of bed, forces finding ways
To make the most of minutes
And stay productive,
What is luck? Trying to find me
But the buck’s seductive.
Want to teach private school next fall,
Only want my back against a chalkboard wall.

Wacker Drive photo by sgoralnick.
Technorati Tags: Chicago, Teaching, Temping, Rhyme, Money, Work

Citizen Journalism

I want to rig up a typewriter
A light post and a scrolling screen
Mounted atop the light post where the
Light used to be
And place it on a West Utica
Street corner and
Let people peck and type with one or
Ten fingers, spilling
What’s left of West Utica,
Lighting the words on the sign.
And maybe we can find a way to
Save what they say
Because they say people
Have a lot to say.

Details of jockeying
For tables at spaghetti night,
Brewery chopper parking and staring
Contests with cats.
Cans of deicer turning blood back from fingertips,
Bosnian refugees and Italian pride,
Sudanese credit.
Plans for townhouses, empty factories
That don’t seem so big after all.
And how if we could get
Just
One
Rapper
In a Utica jersey, things might finally start
To pick up.


Photo by Mojesto

Technorati Tags: Utica, Citizen Journalism, Pro-Am, Typewriter, Upstate, Word of Blog

Westchester, 1

Trying to make sense of my past.

Nature Preserves

Hard-won dollops of land, polka-dotted with horse dung, bounded by dirt roads and residential parcels given names, trailheaded with gray weathered map cases, scored by cross-country skis in winter, domesticated with benches and wooden fences maintained by someone, cratered by exposed foundations and root cellars dug by the same people who built the thousands of stone walls.


Photo by geekone
Technorati Tags: Westchester, Nature Preserve, Katonah, Mt. Holly, Pound Ridge, Trails

After Work

Rocked out forty hours in the Loop,
Final eight wrapped in a navy suit.
The El gives views within apartments lit
By shaded lamps or candles, here I sit
Rolling, elevated, up the track,
Prejudging drunken fratboys in the back
Of our car, they brought on a pole—
Showing off the evening’s goal.
It’s Friday night, how to pass the time,
Suggestion creeping up my spine
Stops at heart and brain, more exists
Than mixing up a vodka-liver twist.
But soon as I rustle, restless, I’ll return
To puking in the bathtub—Colgate form.
Knowing’s half the battle, used to say
The G.I. Joes on TV, here to stay
Memories of childhood fun,
No responsibilities save one:
To keep the wonder open, burning bright,
Hence reevaluation of Friday night.
Camino-style, trying different lives
(Could quip ‘bout cycling wives)
And not knowing which holds my future, day or night,
I keep Ecclesiastes’ verse in sight.
Might be Proverbs, no Bible scholar here
But I remember a window, crystal clear,
Just sitting, little chilly, on the couch
Beneath its open shutters, looking south.
Inertia floods the head with where you’ve been,
Upon stopping short a moment, eye within
Turns naturally back, I’d like to think,
But I’m lacking moments on the brink
Of species-wide potential, but I’ll try
To find a tiny scrap of answer, again, why
I’d like to live a million different ways—
And of this suit? There’re numbers on the days.


Photo by ElectricSprout
Technorati Tags: Chicago, Poetry, Rhyme, Colgate, Wonder, Alcohol

Point C's

Seth Godin talks about Local Max, Point C and Big Max. Evelyn Rodriguez talks about the same, relating it to pilgrimages, both real and metaphorical. I'm with her 100%.

Here are three Point C's from my Camino:

1.

I was already well behind the other walkers when I left Tosantos. Although I'd enjoyed a long breakfast and conversation, I'd also used my Spanish to make a bus reservation for a Dutch woman going home with tendonitis. My brain was primed for failure. The cold drizzle and empty trail didn’t help.

The pain behind my knee began as I descended the Montes de Oca. As the pain got worse, it hijacked my thoughts. I feared not finding a bed in Agés. I feared having to rest for a day or two. Within minutes, I’d convinced myself this was the start of a condition which would keep me from ever reaching Santiago. I prayed for a way off the mountain and I prayed for a stick to help me.

I forgot about wanting a stick and they appeared. Walking sticks, leaned up against the trail marker. Stripped of bark and smoothed, they washed my head clean. I returned to thinking only about the day’s goal: a bed. The stick that would carry me the rest of the way literally volunteered itself by falling away from the others. This stick brought me closer to something. And as I left the mountain and the forest behind, a wind let me know everything would be OK by how it made the grass move. Not bending, not swaying—playing. I made it to Agés and slept in a fairytale cottage.

2.

The flat and endless wheat fields of the Meseta can lure a walker into complacency. Leaving Agés, I wasn’t there yet. The stick got me to Burgos. There I took a rest day and bought a knee brace to help the tendons. The next day, San Bol, pure magic. And then promptly into the dark.

I left San Bol late, as I had done from Tosantos and Agés. The best refuges set a breakfast with coffee, pastries, and more importantly, cheer. This day brought me close to heat stroke, but not quite there. Gifts of chocolate and an apple, plus two liters of water when I needed it most, kept me moving. It could have been counted as a warning for what to look out for, if I'd only known. Arrived in Itero de la Vega just before the shops closed and avoided hunger by chance.

The next day I might have been unconsciously trying to make up time, walking fast. Whatever it was, I got my first blister.

And in typical first-time-no-clue fashion, I decided to pop said blister late in the day with distance still to go. This led to acute pain with every step. Nothing like the throbbing and heat of overworked muscles. This pain was repeated tetanus shots under the toenail. I decided to stop for the night at the next town, Villalcázar de Sirga.

But: 1) This town had no refuge. 2) This town had no cash machine. 3) I had no money.

I met a man from France who told me he had a room in a casa rural, a rented house and I could split it with him. A good enough deal. In the cathedral, a friend (bound for the next town) loaned me money for the room. We shared the house with an impromptu couple.

Soon, the owner came by. He said we could share the room but we couldn't split the price. This doubled the cost of my bed. I was back in the hole. It got later. The owner suggested I walk across town to the four-star hotel and try to get money there. Obligated, I set out at 10pm through dark streets to find the hotel and make a deal.

I walked slowly, hoping not to wake the blister. Eventually found the hotel and went inside. Without much negotiating power, I agreed to pay the owner a commission plus his cost to Visa in exchange for a charge to my credit card, the amount of which he'd give me in bills. After paying for the ability to pay, I walked back to the casa rural and paid.

(This wasn't very different from most of the towns on the Meseta. Pilgrims are a captive clientele, the towns are small and price gouging is rampant. Highway robbery on Europe's oldest highway.)

After a much later than usual night, I arose later than usual the next morning. Four kilometers down the road, Carrión de los Condes and the start of the longest empty stretch of the Camino. Seventeen kilometers without water.

Most people sleep in Carrión, get up early and finish the seventeen kilometers before the sun gets angry. I slept an hour down the road, woke up late, and began the empty stretch at 11am. Sitting duck.

The blister pain became muted, replaced by fatigue. A new flavor of suffering. I ate lunch just after the halfway marker, squatting in the shade of a bush in dry streambed. Soon after, the delirium began. As noted, I dug through a costume box of thoughts, trying all of them on. Luckily I stuck to the path, putting one foot in front of the other. I made it to Calzadilla de la Cueza around 4pm.

After a few more hours of irrational behavior, I found myself vomiting on the front steps of the only restaurant in town. Heat stroke or not, this is clearly Point C.

Then things started getting better again. I made some notes of the experience. I found out I like dried figs. I made a new friend, Jean-Francois, an actuary from Quebec traveling for a year on a severence package and giver of the figs.

And even though there was much pain and disappointment in the next few days as well--a slow, lonely post-puke day, a late arrival in Reliegos, baby steps the morning after from overworked-Achilles pain--things were good, I ate well and found old friends in León. Ascending further and farther, I climbed off the meseta, first to Astorga, eventually to Big Max Rabanal and the monastery.

3.

Possibly my lowest point of all came the day before the biggest max of all. My longest day preceded my arrival in Santiago. Never has my body been so exhausted as when I arrived at Monte de Gozo. There was heat and there was dehydration. I have no idea why I didn't vomit. I was ready to. I'd like to credit a fine extracurricular education as the only reason I kept my food down, but I was probably just too tired to puke.

What I like about this point C, what was near absent in the first and grudgingly present in the second, is faith. I knew I'd be in Santiago the next day, if I had to dig my fingernails into the pavement and pull.

I gave up on my sandwich--an amazing sandwich--gave up on thinking, didn't shower, didn't care for my feet, didn't change out of my clothes. I don't even think I took out my sleeping bag. I just put my body in a horizontal position, set my alarm and accepted my fate. Even if that meant aiming for the wastebasket beside my bed in the predawn hours.

And when I woke up, things were good. I'd passed through Point C in my sleep. It was early, but I had to keep going. I put on my boots, headed out, crossed the bridge into Santiago and let it all begin to sink in.

Photo Credit: Machuca

Technorati Tags: Pilgrimage, Camino de Santiago, Spain, Walking, Hardship, Point C

P.S.- This post wasn’t without a point C of its own. Somewhere around when I added the Technorati Tags, the first third of the post disappeared. Gumption near zero, I at least had a way to put the loss in perspective and rewrote it.

Trip Awards

I am posting these with hopes that someone, somewhere might relate to something listed below. A lot of this references the day-by-day posts, still more sets up future character sketches. But for now, I'm just putting it out there, as is:

Golden Heart Award: Anja, Casa de Anja, Agés
Adrenaline Injection: Vomiting on front steps of restaurant
What Was I Thinking Giving Away Fruit Award: 17k empty stretch
Best Interpretation of Eddie Murphy’s Delirious: Pulling into Monte de Gozo
Sweat Lodge Award: Top bunk in Viana
Hottt Heartburn Nights: Los Arcos, top bunk
First Blister Popped: 6k outside Villalcazar
President of Camino de Santiago Blister Buster’s Assn: Stefan from Munich
How Did I End Up Here? Award: Chapel in the attic of Tosantos refuge
Native Moment: Isabel’s nude with inner tube pool jump, San Bol
Divine Intervention: Meeting the walking stick, Montes de Oca
Extended Siesta: El Burgo Ranero, till 5:45pm
Top Secret Business: Orange drop, Reliegos
Rocky Moment: Finding Stefan’s note, leaving San Nicolas
Theme Song: Ultreia
Someone Grabbed My Pen Award: Bell tower in Grañón
Friendly Rivalry Award: Roncesvalles vs. St. Jean
Didn’t Know What He Was Getting Into Award: Gary, South Africa. Runner Up—Barcelona DJ in Leather Sandals
Depth Charge Award: Two nights in Rabanal at monastery
Power Day Award: Rabanal to Ponferrada
Hobbit Trail Award: Climbing from Villafranca to La Faba
Ralph Waldo Emerson Award: Elia from Burgos (walking home), “The truth is, people are a lot freer than they think they are.” 2nd—Gabriele w/stroller
Iron Chef Award: Monks at Rabanal. 2nd—Marcel with perfect pasta timing as I arrived in Rabanal. 3rd—Red pepper pasta, me, Nájera.
I’m Only Here ‘Cause I Have To Be Award: Navarette private hostel
Now That’s Home Cookin’!! Award: Sidería Luis, Astorga. 2nd—French garden party, Burgos
Grandma Knows Best Award: Veronica, Paris Brit, strategic chocolate giver
Everything the Bible Warns You About Award: Miriam, Ribadiso
Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World: The Sun
Wrong Season Award: My black-sweatered shoulders. 2nd—Pollen like snow in Burgos
Stand By Me Award: The Walking Stick & R.I., it's craftsman
Angel Award: Jose Luis, Tosantos
Cartoon Character Award: Gold-tooth Gabi from France, “Tré Bon!”
Much Stronger Than The Rest of Us: Giuselle, 74 year-old tumor-beating French woman
Advancement of Learning Award: Parroquial Albergue, Ciraqui
The Sage: Brendan, North Shields, UK
You Never Know Who Has Kids Award: Miguel from Germany
Precocious Pilgrim: Andreas, 2 years old, Italy
How It’s Done Award: Blues & dark chocolate, Sarria
Life Is Good Award: Waking up to Marley, Estella.
Water Bottle Roulette: “The Black Hose”, Amenal
“Eh, tio!” Award: Tio Pepe orange en route to Reliegos, saved my spirit
Ok, No More Excuses Award: Andreas, Germany (Gotham Writers’ Workshop)
David Cross Doppelganger: Jean-Francois, Quebec
Monopoly Man: Scott from Idaho, real-estate tycoon and mall-on-bridge builder
The Whole Way Award: Magda, Belgium (continually crossing paths from Zubiri to Santiago)
Banned in 38 Countries Award: My shorts (unwashed the entire time)
Didn’t Quite Make It Award: Razor. 2nd—Army sweater, ditched in Zubiri
Dead Weight Award: Month’s supply of contacts
Unprecedented Display of Spirit: The Achilles tendons (Nathalie’s first, mine second)
Holy Trinity Award: Grañón>Tosantos>Agés
Learned My Lesson Award: Over-exuberance at the Fountain of Wine, Irache
Jim Carey Uncontrolled Facial Features Award: Adan, Poland
Has To Be Undercover Award: Bradi, Poland
I Can See Where They’re Coming From Award: Pays Vasco
Best Friend: El Camino
Big Shiny Smiles Award: The vonBeckman twins, Ingrid & Noelle
Highway Robbery: Casa Rural, Villalcazar
Anti-Ambassador Award: Italian bikers
Forgot About That Award: Having a massive, carry-a-pocketful-of-tissues headcold the entire time
Fish and Loaves Award: My checking account
AKA Award: El Bambino del Camino
You Could Say That Award: “Vision Quest”, Jed via email
Awkward Trailmate Award: 50+ Czech students
Los Latinos Award: “Las Flechas!” trio, Sarria to Santiago
Death-by-Shakira Award: The café I’m sitting in, Fuco Lois, Santiago
Cow Kicked Over The Lantern Award: On rooftop with Jordan and Medhi, Granada
Surprisingly Absent Award: Funk-deprivation rashes
Smackdown Award: Beta Micoter Antifungal cream
Trench Warfare Award: Radio Salil Cream
Is Dr. Seuss the Founder? Award: Farmacusí S.A.
MacGyver Award: Vaselina Pura
Go-Getter Award: Mountain at 6:30 a.m., leaving Villafranca
Lost Somewhere Way, Way Back Award: Personal Hygiene
Temporary Ego Eliminator Award: “Georgia On My Mind,” Logroño
Outrageous Statement Award: “Big, beautiful and curvy” –Brendan’s t-shirt, Viana
Déjà vu Award: Lavacola to Santiago
Tightrope Reserved For Hunter S. Thompson Award: Monte de Gozo w/exhaustion
Scary Side of Spirituality Award: Knights Templar at Monjarín [And, bonus]: Why You Gotta Say That? Award for California Quake/Tsunami Scare
Secret Stash Award: Computer room in El Burgo Ranero. 2nd—Lavacola school computers
Abusive Relationship Award: La Meseta
Locus of All Possibility: Finisterra
Crusher of All Preconceived Notions, Even Putting Loss of Virginity to Shame: El Camino
Unsung Hero Award: Safety pins
Madison Avenue Would Be Proud Award: Brazil, the brand
Saw The Best and Worst Of Award: National stereotypes
Never Have I Ever: Gotten up in the middle of the night to piss so much
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Free at last!” Award: Astorga to Rabanal
Nationalities I Was Assumed to Be: English, Irish, Canadian, Italian, Israeli, German, French, Spanish, U.S. (correct)
Great Music Honorable Mention: San Bol; break en route to La Faba
Ancient Vibes Award: Tosantos Chapel singing. 2nd—San Bol chapel.
Starting Parting Words: “Let it happen. When you just let it happen, that’s how you end up in Santiago.” –bespeckled Roncesvalles hospitalero, in candlelight.
Thoreau Prize: Carola from Germany
Evangelist Award: Figs
Morning Glory Award: Principe Cookies
Awkward Encounters Award: Santiago Bus Station
Human Zoo Award: Casa Manolo, Santiago
Middle School Dance Award: My Facial Hair, where the moustache, the burns and the beard get close but never hold hands
Milk Carton Award: David, Boston (lost without a trace)
Don Juan del Camino Award: Victor (Sara—un beso; spraypainted everywhere)
Business As Usual Award: Santiago
Full Metal Jacket Award: Roncesvalles bunkhouse
Moral Dilemma Award: Santiago Bus Station beggar
Milk Carton Runner Up: Dick from Holland, last seen with mammoth blisters
Sandwich Artist Award: French couple, Grañón
Bow Down Before the One You Serve Award: English language
Powered by Entropy Award: Cigar-smoking French woman
Surprised I Can Kind of Understand Award: Why people join monasteries
World’s Greatest Travel Agent Award: God
Long-lost Friend Award: Being Awake at Night
Better Than They Make Him Out To Be Award: Early morning
Resistance Is Futile Award: Dandruff
Most Often Overlooked Award: Dirty glasses
Oreo Award: Knee brace/sock tan. 2nd—Watch tan
Planet Kryptonite Award: Calf muscles.
Should Only Be Used By Females Award: Showers. Runner Up: Spandex

Here we go again

I spent the time between my last post and now moving my life to Chicago, IL. Act 3 of my Camino will be posted day by day, so hang around. Thank you and thanks to everyone who's said they've enjoyed the posts so far.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost

Technorati Tags: Pilgrim, Camino de Santiago, The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

Poema del Camino

Found this written on a wall, with French and German translations painted beside it:

Poema del Camino

Polvo, borro, sol y lluvia
Es Camino de Santiago.
Millares de Peregrinos
Y más de un millar de años.
Peregrino, Quien te llama?
Que fuerza oculta te atrae?
Ni el campo de las estrellas,
Ni las grandes catedrales.
No es la bravura Navarra
Ni el vino de los riojanos
Ni los mariscos Gallegos
Ni los campos castellanos.

Peregrino, Quien te llama?
Que fuerza oculta te atrae?
Ni las gentes del Camino,
Ni las costumbres rurales.
No es la historia y la cultura
Ni el gallo de la Calzada
Ni el Palacio de Gaudí
Ni el Castillo Ponferrada

Todo lo veo al pasar
Y es un gozo verlo todo
Más la voz que a mi me llama
La siento mucho más hondo
La fuerza que a mi me empuja
La fuerza que a mi me atrae
No sé explicarla ni yo
Solo el de Arriba lo sabe!
—E. G. B.

Technorati Tags: Poema del Camino, Pilgrim, Camino de Santiago

Holiday Diversion

What's it mean? I don't know. Apparently it's BlogDay.

1. Fun in China

2. Fun in Japan

3. Fun in London

4. Fun in Portugal

5. Fun everywhere

Technorati tag: BlogDay 2005

Who Is Carl E. DeReynier?

Carl E. DeReynier always looked older than his age. In January 1944, under fire near the Gustav Line, his left hand and chest encountered a choice selection of shrapnel. DeReynier received care before the others, as the medic respected his elders. Soon after, Private Carl came home with a Purple Heart and a colder glove.

DeReynier returned to his fiancée, Johanna. She worried the marriage wouldn’t be official without a left ring finger on the bridegroom, but the priest assured her that the middle would rise to the occasion. During the ceremony, rings proved a recurring problem. DeReynier dropped Johanna’s while attempting to put it on. Guests saw it as a symptom of nerves (the bolder dropped the phrase “shell shock” after a few drinks), but DeReynier’s failure to find the fallen hoop resting in plain view suggested a vision problem. That, and when given the kissing go ahead, he grabbed Johanna’s head and lowered his lips onto her nose like a longshoreman working in thick fog.

DeReynier first experienced the inside of a tuxedo at his wedding. He found it so exhilarating that, using new glasses, he cancelled plans to return to school and applied to work in the shop from which he had rented his outfit. Gio, the knobby Italian owner, hired DeReynier only after a two-hour diatribe against his family, beginning with the Gallic Wars and moving forward to DeReynier’s sock selection, failed to curb the young man’s passion. That he and DeReynier made a great sales team disgusted Gio. DeReynier’s salary was doubled to goad him into taking more days off. When that failed, Gio made him a full partner.

While balancing the books on New Year’s Eve of 1956, Gio realized yearly profits had tripled and his heart popped. DeReynier became the sole proprietor of Gio’s New York and Gio’s widow set to work preparing the funeral. She figured Gio should be buried in a tuxedo, but couldn’t find one in his closet. She rushed to the shop and through the door bearing her late husband’s name, pleading in broken English for a tuxedo. The transaction consisted of, “Tuxedo, for tonight,” and a name and address written on an index card. The clerk handed over the tux with his eyes on the clock and his mind on his girlfriend.

A week later, DeReynier mailed an overdue notice to one Mrs. Unintelligible Signature at 17 East 27th street but received no response. After two months of weekly notices he hoped would also be ignored, DeReynier walked to the address on the card and served a hefty overdue fee to a messy Italian woman with whom verbal communication was impossible. It was only when frustration forced him to get up from heavy sign language negotiations at the kitchen table that he saw Gio’s photograph on the mantle and immediately set to calculating how to bill an eternal rental.

Catalog Shopping

LL Bean Traveler Fall 2005: Two bags in one, because you always come back with more than you left with. Unless you pop in Vegas, meet muggers, lose luggage or have it lost for you, rental car starts itself on fire (faulty wiring) or maybe you just parked the hot muffler on a pile of dead leaves. You could give away, stuff unwanted gifts in a supermarket charity dumpster, hand to a bum or a hobo an extra wool sweater or two, throw your walking stick off the end of a continent, burn your sweaty drawers, get caught in the latest natural disaster or subway bomb.

24-Hour Kiosk

There’s a slave who works in Mariana Pineda,
The plaza, that is, for people confused
By the dropping of names like Mariana Pineda
But if you’re true to Granada, the name isn’t new
To your ear, run in fear from the plaza Pineda,
Mariana between those two words, I forgot,
For the slave in the plaza Mariana Pineda
Is due for release and he’s looking for you.

Don’t ask why, you can’t reason with a newly freed slave,
But you can invite him inside for a drink
And each raise of his glass is a save of your ass,
A piece of it saved, say the least, feed the beast
Yeasty brew till your wallet is through,
You might get out of spending a lifetime or two
With a couple of shackles stacked where you lack shoes
Singing Mariana Pineda the blues.

Underground Tattoo in Granada, Spain

Next to a sizzling barbecue on a rooftop in Granada, Spain, I worried about losing my life. I was here because an acquaintance had promised free food. Now, I cursed myself for not seeing the set-up. My hosts looked like they’d thrown people off buildings before. At the very least, I’d walk out robbed. Andrés, from Chile, had the build of a dark ages blacksmith and a smile as big as a banana. Juanito, small and intense, eyes hidden beneath a Boston Celtics cap, focused on salting phonebook-sized slabs of beef.

Reaching to shake Juanito’s hand, I stepped on his dog’s tail. The dog yelped and ran inside. On cue, a painted ball of muscles, sweating oil, took the dog’s place beside me. In his ears, around his neck, on his fingers and wrists: Gold. The man could have anchored a battleship.

“Where you from?” he said, eyes rolling in different directions.

“New York.”

“Turkey,” he said, pointing to his muscular neck with a muscular finger. I imagined what people would say about how I died. Thrown off a sixth floor balcony. Anything less than ten floors is an embarrassment. No matter. Instead of grabbing the back of my collar, the Turk offered me a piece of meat. The big softie. And as it seemed, he wasn’t that tough, either.

I went inside with Andrés for beer and saw the photo. A topless woman tattooed from sternum to spine, save the nipple. Andrés caught me peeping and claimed it was his girlfriend. Nervous again, I apologized.

“No,” he said, “My girlfriend did it. If you want, she can do one for you.” Damn rusty Spanish creating awkward moments with tattoo salesmen. “Right here.” Make that unlicensed, in-house tattoo salesmen.

Andrés slapped a padded table and I noticed everything I’d missed. The mirror lined with tattoo photos and stencilled designs. A rack of crusty inkbottles. A plastic practice leg wedged in a most uncomfortable position. A saxophone case?

“Needles,” Andrés said, freeing it from beneath crumpled napkins and clothes. My beef chunk dripped grease. The dog licked it up to the beat of Cypress Hill. Hash smoke blew in from the terrace. This is how tattooing is supposed to be done.

A week later, I showed up at the apartment. Joining Juanito and his girlfriend Katia on the couch, I asked when the next tattoo session would be. Juanito rolled up his sleeve. “Tonight,” he said. “I’m putting colour in this one.” This one was a Polynesian sun god stretched across his right tricep. He said it was Tangaroa, but nobody in this hemisphere can be sure.

Soon after, Andrés and Candice arrived. Ski instructors at the Sierra Nevada, they have the money and the recklessness needed to fuel a cornucopia of counterculture pursuits. Candice wore a spiral of ebony in her left ear, plugged through a penny-sized hole. She sat down with Juanito and began sketching on a grocery receipt. After brief negotiations, Juanito didn’t want colours anymore. “It looks metrosexual,” he said, opting for black stripes and shadow on the sun god’s points.

Within twenty minutes, the chaos of before disappeared. Fluorescent light flooded the makeshift studio. Candice even opened a new box of latex gloves and a new roll of paper towels. A wheeled table held the instruments—new needles in teal shrink-wrap, towels, swabs and other white and shiny bits. From medieval leather pouches, Candice removed two tattoo guns and tuned their buzz to the same pitch. She gave Andrés a kiss and clapped.

“Juanito!”

Juanito, shirtless, tripped slightly as he took The Seat. Candice slapped his arm, swabbed it up, made some final adjustments and promptly received a phone call. She answered, gloves on, instructing the caller to buy two bottles of rum, two bottles of Jack Daniel’s and a block of hash. Meanwhile, Juanito popped stomach zits. Order complete, Candice said goodbye in four different ways and got down to business. The gun buzzed and fell. Juanito’s eyes rolled to the sky as a drop of sweat slid from his pit.

Luckily for Juanito, Candice became a model of total focus. Juanito entered a trance as well, captivated at last by the mural of exploding bubbles covering the wall. Katia watched from behind. They formed a trinity of faces at peace—Candice, maskless, moving her chin and hand in synch; Juanito, staring a few thousand miles east; Katia, centred above, head of dreadlocks, wide-eyed behind crossed arms.

I wouldn’t let Candice tattoo me. She stifled half of her sneezes and tallied one mid-painting cough. She let my boots within five feet of the needles. She’s visited Brazil. When her friend dropped by, Candice stopped working for the obligatory two kisses. Yes, she has an autoclave and a five-year-old diploma on the wall, but the scar slashing diagonally across her forehead reeks of unsatisfied customer. That or a moped accident, but both stem from a lack of control.

More importantly, there were too many mysteries. What else have the leather pouches held? Where’s the sax? Who was the golden Turk? Earlier, while making room on the couch, Katia pulled a small, red safe from behind the cushions and placed it on the coffee table. An unexplained safe never helped me feel safe. Within it, the reasons why I wouldn’t get inked. The business here is more than skin deep.

Coming Up

I'm going to post some stuff from the past four months mixed in as we move along here, just because.

Back from vacation

I know, it's exciting. Spent one amazing night camping on my old turf in Ward Pound Ridge Reservation (sweet spot hint: Milestone) and four nights with the three other males in my family in Quebec. Magog. Great town, great lake, great food. French style. We stayed in a bed and breakfast (four guys in a bed and breakfast?) owned by a government-employed wine taster named Raoul. Our last night we had a big fancy French dinner with all the other guests, Raoul and his wife Jacqueline. Raoul served up wild wines, including a 1996 Margaux minx (still waiting on the name from my brother, who kept the empty bottle). It floored us.

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