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Happy Independence Day

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

No man is an island, but some are pretty darn fat – R. Monaco

There are many decent songs for commemorating tomorrow’s national holiday, some of them uniquely American and others simply noting the idea of independence. For patriotic pride I’ve always been partial to Ray Charles’ America The Beautiful, which gets it right without laying the bullshit on too thick. He uses the original line “may God thy gold refine” which really gets to the point; we aren’t going to do it ourselves, but on the other hand we did produce Ray Charles. Springsteen’s “Independence Day” isn’t a July 4th tune per se, but it gets to the heart of a fact to which many can attest – you don’t need a tyrannical English king to know the chains of oppression .. sometimes a family will do just fine. But if I had to pick one tune it would be the young Van Morrison’s Almost Independence Day  from 1972’s Saint Dominic’s Preview, a transfixing meditative rant starting in Oregon and working its way down the coast to San Francisco and the Russian River. Personally, I can think of nothing more distinctly American than an acoustic guitar picking the syllables staccato-style to seeing the fireworks “up-and-down the San-Fran-cis-co Bay.” Sometimes it takes a disgruntled Irishman to remind us what this country’s all about.

Getting independence is the easy part, whether it’s as an individual or a group. There’s always that energized push that comes with having made the decision to separate. It’s the space on either side of the push that’s tricky. No matter how appealing the idea of “going it alone” may seem, there’s a reason most wait a long while before pulling the trigger. As much as ‘independent spirit’ is celebrated or idealized, it also carries the risk that you’ll end up like Van Morrison, with your back turned to the crowd, mumbling to yourself over by the microphone stand. And in this idea lies the two prevailing impressions that outsiders have of this country: free-thinking trailblazers or child-like idiots. When I was twenty-four I sat next to a middle-aged Greek guy riding a train to Paris. He shared his bread and wine along with his ideas on what my country was all about. “This is what we like about America .. you are like children .. but filled with spirit.” I guess he thought he was sharing some worldly European insight, but it was kind of insulting. And looking at the state of affairs today, the rest of Europe probably wouldn’t object to Greece declaring its independence.

July Fourth is also marked by Nathan’s hot dog eating contest at Coney Island. I use the word “contest” loosely, as it’s been dominated since 2006 by the Michael Jordan of competitive eating, Northern California’s Joey Chesnut. Chesnut is from San Jose, a place in which I’ve spent little time outside of making deliveries in our company truck when I was a young man. But I like to remind people that Chesnut is from Northern California because I am too, and it’s good to see a homeboy dominate an annual event at perhaps the most iconic of Brooklyn locations. Coney Island is no Monte Carlo, and the contest is no Euro Cup.  Nobody is ever going to tag hot dog eating The Beautiful Game.  It’s remarkably predictable every year, particularly with Chesnut dominating. A skinny guy rules a test of gluttony on a  hot day in New York City. The story is then immediately transferred to the news wires and internet outlets, drawing the same predictable comments: “Only in America could such a reprehensible display be labeled ‘sport‘.” … “Everything that is wrong with this country .. we stuff our faces to the point of self-endangerment while the rest of the world goes hungry.” Personally, I find those making the observations to represent a bigger flaw in our national makeup. The contest is a mercifully short ten minutes and really no more abhorrent than the bulk of the campaigns for our two dominating political parties, the difference being that it’s intentionally tongue in cheek. And it isn’t as though we were going to be shipping crates of Nathan’s hot dogs to Somalia in the first place. I like it because it represents an homage to the dying and increasingly taboo American practice of showing we don’t give a fuck. Sure it’s moderately distasteful, but at least it’s honest. And despite global impressions, historically speaking we haven’t even been gloating that long. Our relative success and dominance occurred so quickly that the shift to self-conscious shame happened almost overnight. If you ask me, I say long live Joey Chesnut. And pass the mustard.

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Essence of Camel

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Perth at Night

Croquet lawns, village greens
Victoria was my Queen – Ray Davies

I was in Scotland last week, having arrived just in time to enjoy the full one hundred and sixty eight hours of non-stop television coverage devoted to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Elizabeth herself was a bit further south in London, floating around the Thames on a giant barge in a wide assortment of pillbox hats, offering that one-quarter, cocked-wrist wave to the millions who turned out, braving the typically bleak English weather. “A magnificent spectacle,” as American Jon Stewart put it, “that you could almost see from the inside of the car wash that is England in June.” I must be careful where I tread here, because in the past I’ve fallen in to the unfortunate habit of bad-mouthing British culture, perhaps largely out of ignorance. No doubt there’s plenty about America that throws your typical Englishman for a loop, and the closest thing we’ve had to royalty is a family of good-haired Irishmen who descended from bootleggers and drove cars in to lakes. But it’s hard to sit by idly while some poncy Frasier Crane-esque TV commentator remarks for the umpteenth time on an 83 year-old broad’s remarkable constitution for showing up in bad weather to her own party and how the whole shindig represents “the best of what Britain is all about.”

OK – screw what I said before. I flat-out don’t get the place, and I’ve been going there since I was fourteen years old. It isn’t just the English and their open-ended rhetorical questions (“wouldn’t want to do that now, would you?”), condescendingly effete posing, or assumed air of intellectual superiority while glassing each other up in pubs over football disputes and vomiting violently in daylight gutters trying to beat ridiculously early last-calls. Scotland is equally weird in its own suspiciously provincial ways. There is no greater chill available to one’s spine than passing the Half A Tanner pub in Perth at ten-thirty at night to the strains of a half-dozen blitzed Scots karaoke-ing Meatloaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”

Eye wan-cha’
Eye neeeeed cha’
But thaer ain’ nae way eem ayre ginnae love ye
So dinnnnnnn’t beee saaaaaaaad …

My mother is Scottish and I’m more than familiar with the accent. But it hits you every time as soon as you land in Edinburgh from Newark and hear the announcement “fer those passengers arrivin’ frae Nyrk.” And that’s exactly how it’s pronounced – “Nyrk” – without a vowel in sight. I consider myself rather adept at deciphering what the heck they’re saying but even I was thrown for a loop on my way out of the country when the United Airlines attendant commented “ye’ve got an un-youshyul’ sir-num..” He was commenting on my last name but I could have sworn he was accusing me of hiding a bomb in my luggage. What good are these elaborate safety checks if all you can do is nod and smile to all the questions about who packed your bags?

It isn’t that it’s any better or worse than this country, it’s just that it’s different. It’s like visiting your cousins’ house where things are enough like home to be familiar, but dissimilar enough to make you feel like you’re walking in some foggy haze. Light switches go down to turn on, the steering wheel is on the right side, and washing machines are cooler-looking and double as dryers, but less effective. There’s much talk of how English cuisine has improved in recent years, but watching the numerous home-cooking shows contradicts this notion and reveals these folks as the anti-Italians in most things food-related. I’m sure there are some fantastic restaurants in London, but in the typical Midlands home cupboards of baked beans and sweeties still reign supreme. We didn’t do much eating as it turned out; there was a stomach bug going around and it hit all of us eventually. It may have originated in the Gleneagles Hotel, where more than a hundred guests fell ill the weekend of our arrival. Edinburgh had its own health scare, and a portion of the city was cordoned off with a Legionnaires’ outbreak. “It’s always something..” Dad observed. “.. Legionnaires’ .. Mad Cow ..”  

I promised my Scottish friend Denis Munro that I wouldn’t go overboard on bad-mouthing his homeland, and with typically cheery aplomb he responded “just match every derogatory remark with a complimentary one about me.” Denis is testament to the virtues of clean living, having survived decades on plain oatcakes, lentil soup, and unsalted bread. While his distaste for alcohol is decidedly out of step with the bulk of his countrymen, he’s about as proud and knowledgeable a Scot as you’ll find, rejecting the knee-jerk logic of Scottish Independence for a more measured and genuine love of country. And I couldn’t help but observe that he’s got something there on the rare occasion that I broke away from the daily bullshit of travel; whether it was walking back to my car by the North Inch in Perth with traces of daylight still visible at eleven at night or driving to the airport early Saturday morning to the first breaks of blue on the persistently white-washed horizon. It may be a bit backwards to my clumsy American tastes, but it’s one beautiful place.

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To Build A Fire

Thursday, May 24, 2012

This is the now-retro 60’s style Preway fireplace in our family cabin in Lake Tahoe, California. Apparently these things are all the rage and can fetch in excess of $1000 in decent refurbished condition. If you look at ads from the era, they often depict a classy-looking woman in form-hugging evening wear, standing beside the contraption with a cocktail and look that says ‘Don Draper’s late getting home for dinner.’ My parents got theirs around ’69 when they built the cabin, and it’s served well ever since. I didn’t appreciate my fireplace-endowed youth. We had two at home including one in the room my father built downstairs. He himself had a fireplace in nearly every room growing up. They weren’t wealthy and like everyone else lost all they had during the Depression, but his father did manage to salvage the family Victorian on Russian Hill in San Francisco by cashing in a life insurance policy.That was how they built the Victorians – stacked with fireplaces. Many years (and some financial good fortune) later, my folks bought a place above the Russian River in Geyserville, California, and it too had a great stone fireplace and a wood-burning stove. But for pure evocative worth and nostalgic impact, nothing comes close to the funky red wonder still smoking away at the cabin in Tahoe.

I’ve always told people that it was a Sears job, but I’m not certain that this is correct. The freestanding design allows for superior heating with that radiating from the back of the enclosure. A fireplace’s worth is only ever in relation to the outside temperatures, which can get notably chilly during Tahoe winters. We used to roast hot dogs and marshmallows as kids – something that would probably not be allowed by anyone forking over the big bucks to have one of these things fixed up these days. When I was a little older and up there with a girlfriend, she sat too close on the hearth with the Guild D-35 guitar I’d just acquired and sizzled the finish right off the back of it. I still have the guitar, too, and have grown fond of the break in the lacquer where I had it repaired.

My buddy Spears told me something a long time ago that stuck with me – “Nostalgia will be the next big thing.” He may have been about twenty years off, but his vision appears realized these days with the success of Mad Men, Instagram photo settings for iPhones, Polaroid film and cameras making a party comeback, and big bucks being fetched for these modular fireplaces. It’s somewhat ironic that in an era of exponential technological advancement, people long for old inventions. And it isn’t the Baby Boomers wanting to connect with way back when shelling out for this stuff either, but young tech-savvy sorts who never sent a roll of film away for developing. I could speculate on the reasons, including a theory or two on how the faster things move, the closer the end comes in to vision. But accurate or not, it would likely come off as the grumblings of a bitter old man, so I’ll save it for another time when I’m not reflecting on pleasant, heat-emitting memories of another place.

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Apple Chigurh

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

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.

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Putney Swope Sequel

Monday, May 7, 2012

Tom Thumb, Tom Cushman, or Tom Foolery
I date women on TV with the help of Chuck Woolery 

I was genuinely bummed upon hearing about Adam Yauch’s death last Friday afternoon, and as the feeling stuck with me I wondered why. Yauch, equally well known as MCA of the Beastie Boys, died at 47 after a three year struggle with cancer. I’m a big fan, yet this didn’t explain the strange persistence of my melancholy. My Brooklyn buddy Mark knew him, and confirmed what I’d read elsewhere about his uniquely benevolent nature. “He was a gentle, sweet guy,” he told me, “but had enough mojo to keep him interesting.” Seemed like a more succinct version of what so many were saying, but I’d never met the man. As the weekend stretched out, I noted the unusual number of major news outlets and capable writers churning out thoughtful essays on Yauch and the Beasties. These weren’t just pre-scripted obits on file for a celebrity with a potentially fatal condition, but spontaneously thoughtful tributes causing many of the respective authors to reflect on their own lives. The New York Times, NPR, the BBC, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, countless bloggers and Twitter users .. everywhere one looked, laudatory sentiment abounded.

Fight For Your Right is probably, and ironically, the song for which the Beastie Boys are still best known. “A joke that went too far,” Yauch once recalled. “The song began as a goof on all the ‘Smokin in the Boys Room‘ / ‘I Wanna Rock‘ type songs in the world.”  Then Rick Rubin re-mixed the cut while the Beasties hit the road opening for RUN-DMC, and by the time they headed out again on their own tour, the single exploded. “We were drinking Budweiser on stage and playing the role of these snotty kids,” Yauch said. “No one expected us to act that way so it seemed funny. But as the record began to explode things changed. People did begin to expect us to act that way. We found ourselves playing the same arenas we’d opened for Madonna and RUN-DMC, but now they were filled with our new fan base – frat kids. I remember looking out at our concerts and seeing these huge drunken football jocks screaming the lyrics to our songs, and thinking ‘what the hell is going on here?’ But it was too late to turn in any other direction; we were caught up in the frenzy.”

Crossover appeal I think you could call it. This is what was ‘going on’ there back in 1986. The Beastie Boys were clever enough to attract both the rockheaded football jocks focusing only on the catchy chorus, and the kids sharp enough to get the joke. Though Yauch called the song ‘a goof’ it was vintage Beasties, playing on the hilarity of their self-manufactured tongue in cheek image, but still catchy as hell. “Living at home is such a drag,” they rhymed, “your mom took away your best porno mag.” (Followed by a solemn, deadpanned “busted,” completely selling the line.) The album, as you could still legitimately call it back in those days, was Licensed To Ill, and it eventually sold more than nine million copies. Packed with enough knucklehead teen bravado to choke an elephant, its real appeal was in the underlying dichotomy. It obviously took some real smarts to make something this stupid fly. “Three Idiots Create a Masterpiece,” Rolling Stone shouted, and it kind of summed it up well. Melody Maker was on the money too, noting “an unshakably glorious celebration of being alive.” If all these guys had ever done was put out the single “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” it would have made a mark. “Like a lemon to a lime, a lime to a lemon / I sip the def ale with all the fine women.” But what they’d do next was truly inspired.

It’s hard to get an exact read on how the talent was distributed among the three Beastie Boys, but Adam Yauch’s touch was all over “Paul’s Boutique.”  The follow up to License to Ill, released in 1989, was about as good as it gets and eventually ended any argument that these guys were just a phase, relying more on attitude than ability. The qualification ‘eventually’ is necessary only because it wasn’t an immediate commercial success, but it would come to be revered as a brilliant hip hop record with no less than Miles Davis noting that he never got tired of listening to it. It was difficult to process the idea that guys this young could make something this good, and from here they would only expand and mature, with Yauch leading the way on the latter charge. It’s a real trick, being able to atone for youthful missteps without becoming, well, lame. But the hooks and rhymes never abandoned the trio, and by ’94 when Yauch famously addressed their early misogyny by rapping “this disrespect to women has got to be through” on Sure Shot, it rang as true as his band mate Adam Horovitz in ’86, bragging in punked-up style about doing the sheriff’s daughter “with a Wiffle ball bat.” By the time they rolled out “Intergalactic” in ’98, Yauch was putting it even more succinctly: “On this tough guy style I’m not too keen.”

Anyway, I meant this more as a curious reflection on why Yauch’s death touched me more than I did an overview of his group’s impressive career and influence. And when I sifted through the volumes of tributes on the Internet, I rapidly came to the conclusion that 1) I wasn’t alone and 2) I probably couldn’t add anything that hadn’t already been said. I suppose this is both disheartening and comforting, and keeps in line with that dichotomous appeal. What was particularly great about the Beasties was seeing them get older along with me, yet managing to retain both their relevance and spirit. I had a close friend once who chastised me when I was in my thirties for “being in to the young thing.” The remark stuck with me for a while and caused some probably unwarranted shame. Then this morning I read a piece on Yauch by a guy named Jack Hamilton writing for the Atlantic online:

“It’s a cliché to remark that a celebrity death makes one feel old, but it’s hard to think of another artist who spent so long making us feel so young. … The outpouring of consensus grief was deeply sad, insanely moving, and totally deserved. On Friday we all lost someone in common, something we should continue to reflect on by spending a little more time intentionally being young. No sleep til.”

Not my words, but I wish they were.

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Be True To Your School

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

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.

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Great Grand Canyon Rescue Episode

Friday, April 27, 2012

I’ve been kind of sick for a week or so. It hasn’t been anything too severe, but enough to keep me locked in my house and head to an extent where these parameters have eclipsed a generally weak feeling and deep, bronchial cough. The last time I was notably sick was 2008, around this same time of year. I ended up pulling an extended stint in a Borough Park hospital after returning from San Francisco and foolishly allowing a high fever to go unchecked for five days. This current affliction pales in comparison, but interestingly they both involve Hasidics .. sort of.

Borough Park is one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities outside of Israel, and the hospital I somewhat randomly landed in was packed with more Hasids than a Supercuts offering a special on curly sideburns. I have to be careful where I tread here, because from what I’ve read these are the last people with whom one wants to, um, mess. And, as the cliche goes, I have nothing against them; it’s actually quite reassuring having a complete stranger stop by your hospital room door and offer a pleasant “may God be with you, friend,” particularly when you’re way out of your element in some funky Brooklyn care center. On the other hand, watching them wander the halls at three a.m. in those crazy, fuzzy, Michelin Man kolpic hats while you’re hallucinating and hooked up to a saline/antibiotics IV can be quite unsettling.

Anyway, the connection this time around is less tangible – it’s just that I came down with my current cold shortly after jogging down by Brooklyn Bridge Park on some kind of post-Hasidic holy day when you literally couldn’t spit gum out of your mouth without hitting one of them in the spodik (which, for the uninitiated, can be difficult to distinguish from the kolpic.) So I’m guessing that there might be some of kind illness-trigger in my subconscious linked to seeing large numbers of people in funny hats and Amish-like outerwear. As a lad growing up in Marin County, California, I didn’t have much exposure to Hasidic culture outside of the occasional sight-gag in a Woody Allen film. But I can’t imagine that a stint at Marin General Hospital would be any more comfortable for an Hasidic, having to deal with Kent Woodlands tennis moms coming down from the high of an est seminar. Not to mention that Marin people, while often affable and generally affluent, aren’t the type to offer a “may God be with you” when they pass your hospital room door.

It’s an odd thing really, that I’d grow up in a place like Marin and end up in a place like Brooklyn, particularly in the fact than nobody here really questions where I’m “from” unless the subject comes up. I can’t say that the same would hold true for many of the folks in my current neighborhood if they moved to Marin County. Checking myself at the urge to laugh at the accents when I first arrived was a quickly-acquired survival instinct, but beyond this I’ve learned that non-empirical judgement is about as useful as an Ivy League degree at a Hee Haw reunion. And that even this is a generally useless comparison demonstrates my point. I’ve met some people who thought they knew something about me because of where I grew up or how I present “on paper,” and typically speaking that was about as far as they got to know me. A funny, fuzzy hat does not the man make. Did I mention that I’ve been trapped in my house for a while?

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Spring It

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

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.

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What’s In A Name, Chief?

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

very few of us left my friend
from the days that used to be – Neil Young

Cheech & Cole – Palm Springs Fine Arts Fair 2012

Two old friends from my Monaco Labs days, Scott Coleman Miller and Heather Gordon, were in town over the weekend to remind me that I come from somewhere. Scott goes by his middle name now and Heather has calmed some from the thrill of being nineteen and in San Francisco, but each retains a certain elusive essence. “Hey Heather,” Miller asked on Saturday night in typical ice-breaking fashion, “you still crazy?!” He looked around my place at the other friendly but less familiar faces, and qualified the comment – “I’m just sayin’ that because I knew her when she was a kid in San Francisco ..” But it wasn’t necessary. It was a welcome and novel New York experience for me, not having to stop and explain the back-story of every name mentioned in a particular tale. Miller commented on Lady GaGa at one point, asking “who wakes up one day and decides they’re going by that?” The irony proved too much for me and I blurted out “you got me there, Coleman.” Giving him shit about such things wouldn’t be nearly as fun were he not an unpretentious sort, quick to guard his purity unnecessarily and point out that it is, after all, his middle name. Much as I have historically bristled at the term, Miller fits the definition of an artist, never completely at ease with self promotion but locked in unconsciously when engaged with his work. It’s taken him from experimental film to kinetic sculpture and stencil, and while this pursuit may have occasionally sacrificed material comforts and security, his stuff has legs. He was relating the down side of having pursued this road less traveled on the last night of his visit, but doing so as we sat in his suite on the twelfth floor of a swank 62nd Street hotel. The week before he was screening his film and displaying sculptures at the Palm Springs Fine Arts Fair. Not bad for a kid from Elgin, Illinois.

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Bang Bang

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

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.”

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