Who Asked Me?

In the Coen Brother’s film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s book “No Country For Old Men” the murderous yet oddly principled hit man Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) grows annoyed with a folksy gas station proprietor and makes the man call a coin toss for his own life. Cognizant of danger but unaware of the specific stakes, the man protests that he “didn’t put nothing up,” but Chigurh corrects him. “Yes you did,” he tells him. “You’ve been putting it up your whole life. You just didn’t know it.” Multiple metaphorical layers can be inferred; the guy’s done nothing wrong beyond leading an unexamined life. That he calls ‘heads’ correctly and the stakes of the coin toss are never revealed is in keeping with this idea and he’ll continue to keep ‘putting it up’ unconsciously until death revisits. It isn’t oblivion itself that’s incomprehensibly chilling, but the indifference with which it arrives for us all. “Well done !” says Chirgurh after revealing the tossed coin, lending an air of absurdist levity to what’s transpired. That part, of course, only happens in the movies.

There’s been a low and persistent cloud cover hanging over New York for what seems like a month now, interrupted every five or six days by sunny respite before returning. I took a cab in to the city yesterday to wait on the cable guy at a friend’s apartment, and sat silently in the back seat watching ‘Taxi TV’ with the window cracked just enough to let the air circulate without too much rain getting in. It seems like cab drivers have grown less talkative over my years here, but the odds point to me. The novelty of ‘being driven’ has subsided with space and time between me and my car in California, and novelty is the mother of all conversation. I handed the guy a twenty and walked about a block in the light, washed-white drizzle to my destination. Inside I turned on the AC and got busy waiting for the cable guy while staring out through rain-beaded glass at the drippy urban landscape. About two hours later, he arrived.

“What brought you to the Big Cesspool?” the guy asked, making his own clever play on ‘Big Apple’ while staring at a non-functioning light on the cable modem. He was maybe fifty and heavily compact, sweating profusely despite the air conditioner, and apparently out of breath every time he rose from kneeling to study the connections. I gave one of my few standard answers which was enough for him to continue with his back-story. He grew up in and hated New York, preferred Oregon where his four kids and seven grandchildren lived, was studying to become a psychologist, and writing a book on his experiences installing cable in the Five Boroughs. “Nobody’s written anything like it,” he told me. “You wouldn’t believe what you see going in to peoples’ houses every day.” I knew the inevitable anecdotes were to follow soon, but was more concerned about the way my friend’s cheap Ikea entertainment console buckled like a Mexico City high-rise in an earthquake every time he braced himself on it to stand. The stories were disappointingly mild, including an extended, rambling tale about a guy who kept pristine litter boxes and an elaborate, empty bird cage in his apartment while owning neither cat nor parrot. “Those are the ones you got to look out for,” he advised, and I hoped he was embellishing with an embalmed closet corpse for his book. Fortunately it was a quick fix, and he was out the door shortly after we segued in to a cheerful chat about Bundy and Berkowitz. I’ve seen some shrinks in my day and would put this guy solidly in the middle of the pack. Outside of his ‘Big Cesspool‘ comment, which was good enough for my daily round of existence-questioning, he left me feeling more or less the same as when he’d come in.

I headed for the subway home late that evening after watching half a Giants game on TV. It was being played in San Francisco and shots from the blimp revealed a dramatic sunset just above a horizontal layer of chunky fog. My new iPhone arrived earlier in the day and I listened to some tunes on it while checking out the cool purple light bathing the Empire State Building; tribute to the Rangers or some other local sports team currently engaged in post season play. I’m bothered on some subconscious level by Apple despite owning the products and a small amount of stock. Something about the overly simplistic and aesthetically pleasing packaging, self-consciously clean design, fan-boy enthusiasts doing ‘un-boxing’ videos on Youtube, and cult-like Ashton Kutcher celebrity worship doesn’t sit right with me. But I needed a phone and am not above the occasional binary illusion that I haven’t been putting it up my whole life. Back home in Brooklyn, I ate some cold pasta and went to bed.

On my first day of classes at Redwood High in the leafy Marin County suburb of Larkspur, the principal greeted incoming freshmen with an orientation speech that made note of what he referred to as “Redwood’s many notable alumni.” “Robin Williams comes to mind,” he remarked, adding that the comedian (and then television star) had lettered in track. I was half-hoping for some wiseass sitting in the back to interrupt with “name another!” Williams, while undeniably famous, has always seemed a little too needy to me. I’m not sure that the school’s roster of glory-garnering graduates was as populated as the principal suggested that day, but in the numerous years since my own graduation it’s climbed steadily. Particularly impressive is the list of more notorious Redwood grads, ranging from ex porn stars to the American Taliban himself, John Walker Lindh. I had the pleasure of exchanging emails a few years back with my former English teacher, who had Lindh as a student. I believe “intense” was the word she used to describe him .. yeah, go figure. And now another name can be added to that conspicuous pantheon: seventeen year old Max Wade.

Wade, who grew up in Tiburon and attended Redwood, is being charged with the theft of celebrity chef Guy Fieri’s bright yellow Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder. Had the charges ended there, he might be something of a revered teen celebrity himself. The car was lifted in spectacular fashion last year from an exotic autos dealership on Van Ness Avenue, where the thief allegedly rappelled Batman-style from the roof of the showroom to the floor below and made off scot-free with the $200,000 ride despite being recorded by surveillance cameras on the Golden Gate Bridge. This isn’t some rusted-out ’87 Honda Accord we’re talking about here, but rather a banana-toned, mid-engine, grand-touring midlife crisis mobile. For this act alone, and independent of the other charges (which I’ll get to) you’d have to tip your hat to the kid. He did everything right and in spectacular fashion, including his choice of victim – an annoyingly self-styled, spiky peroxide haired celebrity chef who chose not only to drive this abomination, but adorn it with personalized plates reading GUYTORO. Sorry Guy-Toro, but we seem to have misplaced your glowing Lambo.

I read about the story when it happened, enjoying it immensely but thinking “how can they not find this thing?” Wade allegedly kept it in a storage container in Richmond, along with a trove of assorted goodies including assault rifles and cellphone jamming devices. Police also found a mix of fake identification cards including the one Wade had in his possession when arrested, bearing the name of Frank Agnello Gotti – an apparent reference to reality television personality Frank Gotti Agnello, the grandson of mob boss John Gotti. Oh yeah, they also turned up a full San Francisco Police Department duty uniform with badge and belt. Assuming that Wade committed the car caper and gathered all of this booty himself, he might officially qualify as my nominee for Hero Alumnus from my old school. Unfortunately, there’s more to the story. Detectives made the storage facility discovery after tracking Wade down in connection to the Ninja-style shooting of two other Marin County youths in Mill Valley, who were attacked while sitting in a pickup truck by an assailant on a passing motorcycle in black leather and helmet. Fortunately they survived with only minor injuries, but if this part of the story is proven true it will definitely take some of the shine off this kid’s anti-hero glow and nudge him closer to the John Walker Lindh camp. Personally, I’m glad to be returning those jury summons notices I still receive in Marin with my Brooklyn change of address card, because this doesn’t sound like something that’ll be hashed out in a few days’ time. Wade, while only seventeen, is being charged as an adult. I can’t condone the more violent accusations if validated, but I’d still pick this guy’s table over Robin Williams’ at a cross-generational Redwood High reunion.

I’m gettin’ old
anything can happen now to anyone
-Bob Dylan

I haven’t had anything to say for a while now and some would argue it’s been longer than that. But I did have this photo, taken from my roof last weekend, and thought it a good excuse to post something. Actually, I did several starts and stops on the topic of death but figured why indulge that tired instinct? In my barrel it’s like shooting fish. What does it say about me, that this is where my thoughts turn entering the season of re-birth? Then I read an article on Buddhism that made me feel less alone. It asserted that many new mothers experience an intense connection with both their own mortality and that of their newborn child shortly after delivery. Of course some others don’t, which got me thinking about Ronnie Montrose.

Montrose, who died last month at the age of 64, played guitar and fronted the band “Montrose” whose first album (“Montrose” of all things) was seminal in guitar driven hard rock. He introduced a young singer named “Sam” Hagar to the world. Ronnie’s death was linked first to cancer but revealed yesterday as suicide. According to his wife he had struggled with life-long clinical depression stemming from feelings of self-doubt. This got me thinking about what a chemical coin-toss life is. Here you’ve got two guys, Hagar and Montrose, fronting the same band in 1973. One adds an extra “m” and a “y” to his name and goes on to rock stardom and platinum tequila sales while the other beats himself up unnecessarily and eventually takes his own life.

While I’ve argued before for Hagar’s odd genius, it was Montrose’s guitar work on that first LP that changed the face of rock music. His open riffs on tunes like Rock Candy, Make It Last, and Bad Motor Scooter influenced guitar players from Eddie Van Halen to Angus Young. It wasn’t like the man toiled in obscurity: he worked with Van Morrison, Boz Scaggs, Herbie Hancock, and Edgar Winter on the classic cut “Frankenstein.” He never assumed a permanent post in the spotlight as Hagar did but you have to question how a man of his apparent sensitivity would have handled the scrutiny and occasionally misplaced “hack” label that rolls off Sammy like water off a duck with good hair.

It would be easy to apply the old “glass half-full” adage here but that would be horseshit of the first order. Whatever caused Montrose to put a .38 caliber gun to his head, it was a bit more than simple pessimism or myopic glass-level estimations. Still, you have to envy the Sammy Hagars out there who either manage to keep it simple or find something worthwhile in themselves to cut through all the crap. As Sam wrote and sang on that first album:

Make it last, long as you can
It’s so much easier when you understand

Pretty cheesy in the big lyrical picture but well put for the subject at hand. And set to Ronnie’s elegantly fat, power chord driven guitar progression, it’s pure poetry.  Hagar always had a great voice (which he’s kept to this day) but without that guitar on the first album it may have never been heard. Something for the Red Rocker to consider when he’s whistling a happy tune.

Just finished re-watching the excellent HBO series “The Wire,” five years on from its conclusion. It had me re-examining how readily we accept, and even embrace, cinematic violence. Violence in The Wire is both prevalent and plentiful, but it is nuanced. It’s difficult to imagine an equally effective version of the show without it.

Chris Partlow, Marlow Stanfield’s henchman and second in command, kills in introspectively brutal fashion, looking his victims in the eye when possible, and giving careful consideration to the moment after pulling the trigger. The one notable exception is when he ferociously beats Michael’s father to death with his bare fists, knowing he molested the boy and suggesting that Chris may have fallen victim to the same as a child. But his other murders are often near-surgical and with thought for the target. The execution of Proposition Joe midway through Season Five comes close to justifying the use of “.45 caliber” and “humane” in the same sentence. “Close your eyes,” Marlow gently instructs the fat man as Chris takes careful close-range aim, pointing the gun down at the back of his head. “Relax .. breathe easy.” Though a sympathetic character, we accept Prop Joe’s death as inevitable when it comes. It’s distasteful and saddening, but also part of the game. Chris is merely a functional extension of Marlow’s quietly determined ambition. There is no malice or affectation, only necessity. The same can’t be said, though, of the death of Joe’s nephew Cheese, who sells his uncle out carelessly.

Cheese is executed in similar fashion a few episodes later – a close range bullet to the side of his head courtesy of Slim Charles. But the effect of this scene is entirely different, and Charles’ decision to draw and fire is both impulsive and appropriate. Cheese is killed while in the middle of a thoughtless rant, with the simple explanation “that was for Joe.” When Slim is described immediately after as a “sentimental motherfucker” by an older member of the drug cooperative, it’s more than simple comic relief – it’s an accurate assessment. Unlike Joe’s killing, time is taken for a pull-back showing Cheese twitching slightly in postmortem neurological reflex. It’s the last real-time murder on the show, and the gratuitous cutaway shot not only emphasizes the vengeful act, it’s a darkly humorous nod both to the violent nature of the series and the dimensions of real violence. When this stuff happens in life it’s without benefit of writer or second take, and is anything but cinematic. Finality and brutal reality always trump context.

How, then, do we process the violence in a show like The Wire? It’s a circular argument – are we a violent society as result of violent depictions, or are such depictions reflection of who we are? And why are violent films so popular? I’d argue that there is a cathartic effect inherent to cinematic violence unavailable to most of us in real life. It seems more justifiable in The Godfather, Goodfellas, or Unforgiven, where it adds to the narrative and dramatic intent. In this sense it isn’t the graphic nature of the depiction that’s important, but how it fits. Personalizing violence, as in The Wire, could be argued less damaging than the pulling back from it in lesser productions. Yet I can also understand the stance of those unable to watch it under any circumstance, even within the context of quality work. As the kid Dukie remarks in The Wire, observing the corpse of one of Chris Partlow’s victims locked away in an abandoned row house, “There ain’t no special dead. There’s just dead.”

If I should fall from grace with God
where no doctor can relieve me  – MacGowan

I saw Steve Earle play the City Winery on Varick Street Monday night, a fine coastal transition the day after flying in from San Francisco. He opened with a geared-down version of the Pogues’ If I Should Fall From Grace With God and noted that he likes to play it that way because “you can’t hear the fuckin’ words when MacGowan sings it.” Earle has a point, but as with most of his points it gets you thinking “yeah, but ..”  Shane MacGowan wrote the tune and his reckless, toothless, sobriety-free delivery embodies the grace-falling theme. I was much more bothered that he consented to its use in a Subaru spot, of all things, than by having to give it multiple listens to discover that he’s as good with the pen as he is poor with the drink. Earle speaks from some familiarity, at least, having teamed with the Pogues for Johnny Come Lately on his Copperhead Road album. But as a live performer he sometimes makes the cardinal mistake of over-talking his songs. After finishing his great ode to Townes Van Zandt, Fort Worth Blues, he couldn’t let it sit. “That last line there is what you call poetic license,” he explained “I say that ‘Paris never was my kind of town,’ when in fact it is precisely my kind of town.” This was met with hearty, in-the-know applause from the crowd, most of whom probably had no connection with Steve’s Parisian affection . Seeing an artist live forces one to reconcile his idea of the work with the real person. Yeah, great to know that you dig Paris, Steve. But I’ll never listen to Fort Worth Blues the same way again.

Getting older can sometimes be an exercise in protecting the things that meant something to you the first time around. I was in Specs’ tavern in San Francisco a few Christmas Eves back, ordering a round of Irish coffees while Fairytale of New York spun on the CD player. I dig the song, but its seasonal poignancy can wear a bit thin if you’ve spent any time in Irish bars around December in New York and heard it rival Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl for most over-played jukebox tune of all time. The young, thoroughly inebriated guy next to me felt the need to share his emotions, having just discovered this melancholy Pogues tune that makes mention of Christmas Eve, on Christmas Eve. “This is the greatest fuckin’ song ever,” he slurred earnestly. “Yeah, it’s pretty good,” I offered, not exactly dismissively, but enough to set him off. “You just don’t get it man,” he told me,“you just don’t get it.” I smiled and said “Merry Christmas”, then returned to my table. What was I going to do, point out that I prefer the provincial poignancy of Sally MacLennane or note that I do relate to the truthfulness of the trade-off lyrics between Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl when he says “I could have been someone” and she retorts “well so could anyone“? Life is short and Irish coffees cool way too fast.

And so it is that I return to New York, which isn’t a bad place to return to, again. I caught the Super Bowl during the flight on the small screen in front of me, sharing some peanut brittle with a generous, slender, blonde divorcee sitting to my left. The next day I exited my apartment for a run and picked up on the conversation between the local fixtures hanging outside the corner bodega, all of them sporting victorious Giants blue. “Yeah .. it might not have looked like it on TV .. but if you watched the way they hit – I mean really watched the way they hit – that’s all you needed to know about how that team came together at the end.” I pulled my thermal hat down to better warm my head and began to jog. Sometimes all you need is a sentence or two, and you’re good to go.