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God Bless the Oddballs

“Sleep late down South, look up my former mentors
 Live off Yankee winters, be a landlord and a renter” – Tom Petty

Rip Torn is gone. The news blips in on my text message exchange with Miller. Rip defined a particular VHS playback chunk of my 4304A days back on 23rd Street in Noe Valley. The Larry Sanders Show was in my wheelhouse, so to speak .. like saying I’ve seen Goodfellas a few times. There are  productions that impress as a whole, and within that select group fewer that can be stripped down to their minimalist parts. A line here, an expression there. Such was Torn’s effect on (and affect in) Garry Shandling’s 1990’s masterpiece ensemble. Nevermind the comedy that constituted the bulk of the show. Torn could deliver raw pathos with a pained grin and carry entire episodes as he did in 1995’s “Arthur After Hours.” He was a consummate line-blurrer, a real-life drinker who could convey the same brilliantly on screen. “Sanders” was funny because it was about serious stuff — about vanity, and ego, and the damage of self-love. You can’t laugh like that without involving some hurt, and that hurt was always on Rip’s face. His “real life” exploits were more legendary than the screen performances. For a certain post-Sanders stretch it wasn’t uncommon to read about him being extracted from his car, from inside a Connecticut bank lobby, where he’d crashed through after hours, bottle in one hand and gun in the other. The man had a particular flair.

So yeah, God Bless the oddballs indeed. Rip Torn’s passing comes on the heels of my seeing yet another brilliant non conformist perform for the umpteenth time in recent months. What makes a man stop over in a Sacramento hotel for one night, the day after the Fourth of July and following a week by the Tahoe shores, to catch another man in a giant cowboy hat crooning Merle Haggard covers? Not sure, but it’s got something to do with that Rip Torn elusiveness. Dwight Yoakam is, to use an overused word, an enigma. Never has one possessed such an affinity for talking while revealing next to nothing about himself. He is, in one sense, an ageing sex symbol on stage in tight jeans still evoking female squeals with each leg twist. And in another breath he’s a balding, paunchy, brilliant character actor who could perhaps have had Torn’s career had he not been so hugely multi-talented. Add to that a phenomenal songwriting sense, fiery past romances with Hollywood starlets, and a particular mercurial bent that sees him both fawning over his loyal following and eyeing his guitar technician with a look that could kill after being handed a mis-tuned Martin. It’s hard to look away for fear you’ll miss something. He was late to the Crest Theater stage in Sacramento, laying the blame on ‘technical difficulties’ and news that a 7.1 earthquake had just shook his home base in Los Angeles. And then he did some shaking himself to a packed if relatively small venue. Why would a guy, worth $45 million according to the Internet, choose to spend his days touring the country by bus blasting tunes to intimate crowds, after having sold 25 million records? You’d have to ask him, and still run the risk of having no answer many words and hours on.

It isn’t lost on me that both these guys share southern roots, albeit from different areas of the country (Rip was from Texas and Dwight from Kentucky.) I don’t have many Kentucky references not involving bourbon, but when I think of Texas I think of my Uncle Marvin. He shared my same July 6 birthday, occasionally wore a Stetson and rode a motorcycle, and would look at me with a particular grin and say “shidddddd Riggy ..” or “gall-damn you, Rick, you are one funny nephew ..” Once, at my dad’s country place in Geyserville, California, Uncle Marv observed my father struggling with an ant problem on the back 40. Many thousands of the angry, biting creatures were spilling over from numerous hills that had sprung up in the vegetable garden. When my father’s more conventional methods failed to curb the situation, Marvin retreated to the garage and came back with a large gasoline can, poured it out over the colonies and set them on fire with a match. My dad, a city boy, was taken aback by the raw carnage and multitudes of inflamed ants curling crispy and reaching skyward in vain. “Well shit Dick,” Uncle Marv reasoned, “it’s either you or them ..” He was a big country music fan, as would be expected, and I made him mixtapes bridging the gap between Yoakam and Johnny Cash. One time I recited all the words to Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” for him in a single sitting, to his great amusement. No great trick for me, but worth the merit points with Uncle Marvin.

Johnny Cash’s people were from Scotland, not far from where my mother grew up. So you see, it all fits together. Something is calling me toward a tour of the South. It’s as ill-defined in my head as a Dwight Yoakam personality sketch, but I’m thinking of flying in and renting a car. Maybe a modern-day equivalent of Bo and Luke Duke’s ’69 Charger .. but this remains to be seen. Somewhere between states I’ll lift a glass to Rip Torn and Uncle Marvin. This seems like plenty to go on for me.

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