Who Asked Me?

like they teach in class – Stones

There’s a great article in the current (March 28) issue of The New Yorker on the Barry Bonds trial, which is finally getting underway in San Francisco. It’s neither hit piece nor glowing defense, but subtly points to the absurdity of the time, breath, and millions of taxpayer dollars being wasted by the federal government, ostensibly to prove that a baseball player lied. The prosecution’s stated motivation, which also has something to do with protecting future generations of young athletes from the evils of steroids, is as big a lie as any Bonds ever told. What they’re really trying to do is put forth a message that any citizen with a fourth grade education could spot as daily-disproved bullshit: you can’t lie to the federal government.

Let’s get this out of the way quickly – of course Barry Bonds took steroids, lied about taking steroids, and is defiantly unapologetic. I won’t go in to matters of his public persona or where he ranks as a ballplayer from the Steroid Era versus those who came before him. I’ve covered this before; the second part is a baseball argument and as such can be debated in circles until soccer is officially declared our national pastime. And while his personality has appeared suspect at times, the collective indignant response that this has evoked might cause one to conclude that there’s a worldwide shortage of assholes – something I think we can all definitively conclude just isn’t the case. What’s considerably less palatable than any of this is the blatant hypocrisy on the part of those going after him hardest and claiming to be acting for the Higher Good as opposed to making money off his name to sell books or facilitate some blatant Uncle Sam posturing.

The government’s timing for the Bonds trial couldn’t be worse. They’re attempting to sell the public on the nobility of this costly pursuit while entrenched in some of the worst economic times in recent memory. They’re exposing incongruous testimony relating to a game while a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize before lifting a finger drops bombs on Libya. (Not to come down hard on Obama; he’s facing the same “not the job I signed up for” woes as all his predecessors. But squelching this exorbitant farce would seem exactly the kind of thing he foretold doing while campaigning for the gig.) And they’re doing it by utilizing Bonds’s polarizing surliness as a rich, high profile athlete and hiding behind the sanctimonious veil cloaking this perpetuated myth of the Purity of Baseball.

The New Yorker piece, written by Ben McGrath, insinuates some of this with a certain grace and eloquence that I couldn’t pull off. It’s entitled King of Walks, a fitting metaphor for Bonds’s approach to being prosecuted and nod to what I always considered a more impressive aspect to his game than than his hitting – his practiced refusal to swing at a bad pitch. The article also does a nice job of putting steroids in past, current, and potentially future perspective, referencing Hank Aaron’s use of amphetamines and the often overlooked point behind Jose Canseco’s tell-all book. At the center of it is Bonds and a between-the-lines message that seems clear, both for those who hated him and loved to watch him play. “Yeah I did what I did, but you aren’t going to use me to make your point and you sure as hell could never hit a baseball like I could.” With all the lies out there, there must be better begging exposure.

Prop comic Gallagher collapsed on stage in a coronary-like incident at the Whiskey Bone Roadhouse in Minnesota last night. I’m completely up on this news item but have only a cursory grasp of the details of the 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. The 64 year-old comedian complained of pain in his left arm and shortness of breath earlier in the evening, but put his art ahead of all else. The collapse, caught on cell phone video, came while doing his famed watermelon-sledgehammer routine. The AP version of the story includes a single-sentence reference to the routine in its closing paragraph: “Gallagher, whose real name is Leo Anthony Gallagher, is best known for smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer.” I took an advanced journalism class in high school and can safely say that all anyone need know about competent reporting is contained in that sentence.

Anyone considering a move to rural Minnesota should pay careful attention to the Gallagher video; particularly the exuberant audience approval for his routine in the seconds leading up to the collapse. It might be enough to just note that someone was actually recording this bit on his phone – the guy’s been doing it for forty years now. I was at a casino in South Shore Lake Tahoe about twenty years ago hanging around the bar outside a Gallagher show, and observed hotel security escorting a disruptive audience member out of the theater. I noted that he must have been sitting somewhere in front because he was still wearing the protective tarp with chunks of fruit all over it. It made me wonder what you have to do to get kicked out of a Gallagher show. In the realm of theater etiquette, it must be considered a fairly low-set bar.

Had Gallagher died, the prop comic torch would likely have been passed to Carrot Top, his red-headed, anabolic steroid-using disciple. Say what you will about prop comics, they don’t come with much pretense. You wouldn’t catch either of these guys making indulgent, feature-length documentaries like Jerry Seinfeld, lamenting the loss of his diamond-cut comedic timing while returning to stand-up from his obscenely lucrative television career. This overtly needy personality trait is central to the psyche of many a comedian. Observe Orny Adams in the above-mentioned Seinfeld doc if you’ve ever thought it might be fun to know one of these guys personally. Prop comedians, on the other hand, are fully aware of the space they occupy on the comedy hierarchy, and it takes a certain resiliency to forge ahead, cognizant of this ranking. There aren’t many lining up to replace Carrot Top when he’s gone.

Johnny Nitro is dead. This news arrived via the Internet and SF Chronicle website on the final morning of what would end up being a nostalgia-centric Presidents’ Day Weekend. Nitro was a blues guitarist who fronted The Doorslammers, the house band at San Francisco’s oldest bar and North Beach mainstay, The Saloon. He played solid, crunchy leads and twelve bar progressions in the fashion of a classic working man’s musician – one who’s been at the form so long that it’s ingrained in his DNA. People wonder how some musicians make it look so easy. The answer, invariably, is that they’re at it day in and day out, night after night after night. Johnny Nitro played those licks so many times it sometimes looked like he was doing his taxes or tapping an Anchor Steam. But when he wanted to, he could really tap that Steam.

Nitro died Saturday night in his room above the Saloon. According to the Chronicle, the bar patrons broke in to spontaneous applause when the paramedics wheeled him out, his body covered by a white sheet. I’m familiar with the crowd that frequents The Saloon, and the account seems plausible. I used to go there as a young kid, just prior to and for a while after hitting the legal drinking age. It isn’t the kind of place to order a Cosmopolitan or ask the bartender if they have ground nutmeg behind the bar. We’d typically pull in at the end of the night when the place was packed with sweaty, generally older revelers, cutting loose on the small dance floor in front of the band. I was never much of a dancer nor the type to get louder and drunker as the evening pressed toward last call. I drank, yeah, but somehow my intake wasn’t hitched directly to my volume control. By Nitro Time I could usually be found leaning against a wall, sobering up on a nursed Budweiser and fielding shouted questions from the 40ish guy standing next to me on my size and weight. “WHAT ARE YOU .. ABOUT 210, 215 ..?” This was always another curiously observed alcohol side effect – the tendency for smaller guys to hone their Incredible Human Scale carnival act.

Those Johnny Nitro days faded in to something else, and then something else again, and by the time I was 24 I was ready for a third something else, so I followed my girlfriend who had made a move to Italy. This takes me to part two of Nostalgia Weekend, and watching the Amanda Knox movie on Lifetime TV Monday night. Knox wasn’t my girlfriend, but a current day Seattle native and twenty-something serving time for murder in an Italian prison. Her guilt is a matter of some debate and despite watching the movie I’m patently unqualified to make the call. But having lived there I will say that I wouldn’t want to depend on any government run branch for anything, much less put my fate in the hands of the Italian legal system. Like Knox, I was a language student at Perugia’s Università per Stranieri, or the “University for Strangers” as I was fond of incorrectly translating it. I’d like to think that, unlike her and even then, I had a certain prematurely instilled sense of caution, perhaps linked to that same instinct to be a Budweiser-nursing wallflower at the Saloon a few years prior. But having lived some years since, I can see where a few unfortunate twists of fate might have landed me erroneously imprisoned in an Italian cell. Life is funny that way.

What struck me more than the sensationalized nature of the production or the fact that they were allowed to shoot on location (slip the Italians a few bucks and they’ll re-zone the Vatican for you) was what an impressively beautiful place Perugia is. It’s the Umbrian capital and has a recorded history dating back to 310 BC. The cobblestone streets of the Old City wind through ancient Etruscan arches and in to all reaches of the town, with spectacular views of the Italian countryside. And I lived there. Reflecting on this yesterday and while in email contact with my ex Saloon Days buddies Myers and Miller, I queried as to why, at the time, they didn’t alert me to the fact that I had the world on a string (not my exact words.) They responded that my world-strung days were still within reach – a nice gesture but not the desired reply, which would have been that, like then, I’ve still got it but am unaware. This led to further discussion on who has what by which and where and the nature of human perception. Or, put another way, how I could be in Amanda Knox’s shoes and she in Johnny Nitro’s.

I used to run in to people from the Midwest and East Coast in California who liked to beef about the lack of distinction between seasons. My suspicion is that they were some of the same people I’ve since met in New York who go on about freezing temperatures and having to shovel their walk. Some people like to bitch. Yeah, I’ve got one of those fancy phones like everybody else that allows me to finger-flick between the high 60s in San Francisco and five New York City degrees on the same day. But you pick your poison, as the Germans are fond of saying. There’s an Edward Hopper exhibit at the Whitney and superior take-out just blocks away. What’s a little ice-chipping from your post-jog beard in light of the Big City lights? Besides, it all looks so pretty before the cabs get at it.

Weather-talk, while one of the lower forms of chat, serves a vital purpose. It allows for polite conversation between casual acquaintances and neighbors and segues civilly into beating a hasty retreat. Without it, we’d all just be beating unadorned hasty retreats. It’s of particular use during brief elevator rides when you don’t want to come off as a stalker to the pretty girl in 6A. And it’s a good primer to actual conversation in this world of increasing online communication. Its only drawback is that it just comes in three forms: “Beautiful out,” “Hot enough for you?” and “I hear it’s going to get even colder.” I’ve resigned myself to coming across as a stalker on those days in between.

..to an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan
– Lucky Wilbury

Tuesday morning and I’m back from the holidays in California, scaling the steps at Borough Hall just off the 5 from Grand Central and elevating in to the chilled Brooklyn air. A vendor’s cart with stacked pomegranates comes in to distant focus and brings my mom to mind, who placed said fruit in my Christmas stocking. Yes I still get a Christmas stocking and in brief response to the inevitable shit-giving that this will elicit I offer an indisputable fact about my mother: she’s better than yours. She included it because I asked for one many Christmases ago, which was something I’d forgotten. Eating it two nights later it occurs to me that I must have had it going on back then. I also got the complete Larry Sanders box set and running shoes for Christmas, but cool as they are they ain’t no pomegranate.

I pass the stand and pass on my second pomegranate in as many weeks. (Above praise not withstanding, the juice tends to stain your fingertips a dark red-purple.) Further down Court Street I note the “Steak” and “Chops” adverts atop Sam’s restaurant – another old school Brooklyn establishment on my ‘to try’ list – and recall the Spencer rib eye I had at Marin Joe’s the evening before my return flight to New York. For those taking notes, yes I tend to gravitate toward places named Sam’s and Joe’s more than I do those favoring clever French idioms. Joining me for dinner that second-to-last night of 2010 were Tom Myers and Paul Theodoropoulos, former Monaco Labs Glory Days cohorts and generally pleasant company. We covered the conversational gamut from aging to early Matthew Broderick films before calling it an evening three hours later. As the saying goes, you can’t make new old friends, and more specifically two who immediately understand any “Roberta and Abdul” reference without requiring an elaborate set-up. I always anticipated challenges associated with getting older, but never figured that one would be explaining how Martin Hall used to put his pool cue away to psyche you out as you were lining up your winning shot in the Monaco lunch room.

Back in New York there’s a lot of snow talk going around; apparently Bloomberg was out of town for the first airport-closing round of storms and forgot to leave a note for the adjunct plow drivers not to take any supplemental gigs. That shit doesn’t fly here as folks have people to see and things to do. Notes were taken and adjustments made for Seasonal Storm Number Two, and as I stood at my window observing large pre-dawn flakes coming down it seemed nary a handful fell without some kind of public works vehicle scraping them off the pavement. Say what you will about Bloomberg, he rarely gets it wrong the second time around and his matter-of-fact, no bullshit approach fits this city’s mentality like a glove. I capitalize on the maneuverable streets and functioning public transit the following day to take the G Train two stops over to State Street and a small, local guitar repair shop. The young and apparently capable proprietor sizes up my axe, a time-worn Guild D-35 with ample nicks and faded varnish, and tells me that it’s more than fit for a few minor adjustments. I tell him that I was considering a new purchase, but concluded that this one still sounds too good to put down .. and he concurs. Some things, like pomegranates, are worth coming back to.