Bus Stop

I don't own a car.  Which means I use public transportation quite a bit. Trains and buses.  It's not a bad way to get around Chicago.  I recommend it.

I discovered this ad for Canadian Club at a bus stop.  For some reason it really resonates.  It made me laugh out loud - which is a good way to get your space at a bus stop.  

The ad is a window into an era that I vaguely remember - it's supposed to be around 1965 - no, I mean, as a kid, I remember that era vividly, I just rarely conjure up the picture.  Whoever came up with this got the details right!

This does not make me want to start drinking Canadian Club.  That kind of hard liquor just makes me go into a Linda Blair-like convulsions - spinning bed, green projectile - but this did bring me back to another time, another place - there was a generation of people living like this, an upwardly mobile business class that built the suburbs.  Those guys and gals are pretty much gone.  They laid down the gauntlet - one we never needed to pick up.  

This is just nostalgia. It's an advertising gimmick.  There ain't no going back, and drinking that rotgut will only give you a headache.  Still, this is a world I knew.  I was there - wondering what the fuck it was all about - was this really the world?

Chuck D. Tells It

The title of Public Enemy's latest release tells it all with a pithy little question addressed to all of us biding our time in the Terrordome.  Rhetorical or not, it cuts to the chase:  

"How to Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?"

ZaZen Wednesdays

Back in the old days, when I was just a little tot, there was an ad campaign for Prince spaghetti. They put forth the idea that Wednesday was Prince spaghetti day.  Not sure how many families actually adopted that idea, I know we had spaghetti frequently, but I'm not sure if it was always or ever on Wednesdays.

Lately, Wednesday has been Zen meditation day.  So yes, it was back to the black cushion and the blank wall for us.  I'm sort of getting into this pursuit, or really non-pursuit of nothingness, which as they say is the same as something-ness or maybe not.  So there really is no pursuit of anything. And that's what we seek by not seeking.  Or something like that.

Anyway, my take away from the session last night: the real world is our teacher.  Even if  reality is not real and it teaches us nothing.  Got it!

Light, Shadow and Movement - What else?

Calvin Tompkins writes about art.  I read his biography of Marcel Duchamp a number of years ago, and ever since I've appreciated his sensibility.  So I was very intrigued by his write-up of the video artist Paul Chan.

And then of course, even if you live in the hinterlands, you can find something on YouTube that gives a little glimpse of what Chan does.  I especially like the idea that the technological junk we have created somehow rises up to some higher realm, whereas the humans, well we just fall.

Death Cab for Cutie

Peter V.  drummer in the Telepaths writes about Death Cab for Cutie.  He got me interested in these guys, love their name, and I finally checked them out on YouTube.  Their new disc is Top of the Pops, so they probably don't need anymore exposure, but I think this  8 minute opus is quite good.

Trickster Makes the World Go Round

We've been working on new music.  We finally posted a new song at the WWSP site.  It's called "Tricks on the Brain."  That's Sara on bass and backup vocals, Carla wrote the lyrics and sings lead, and I play guitar and percussion.  The working title for our next digital download - Shadow of the Marigold.  We're only about 10 new songs away...

Same Old

"The same old questions.  The same old answers." - Samuel Beckett - Endgame 

Friendly Tribes

Just remember, you are not alone.  Even when you are alone.  There are the 6 tribes in your inner elbow, and 2 in your gut.  According to the Scientists, (man are they a kooky lot!),  the bacterial cells resident on and in our bodies out-number our human cells 10-1.  Without them we'd be a hell of a lot more lonely and dead too.  Without them we just couldn't digest the world.  Does that make you feel dirty - sharing life with tiny bacterial micro-organisms? It's okay -  you are dirty. That's life.

Why does Superman get up in the morning?

I just purchased my next Klosterman "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," but I'm still digesting his Led Zeppelin inspired "IV."  According to the great Kloster Man the secret to success is not good looks, good luck, or smarts; no the key to success is having an ARCH ENEMY!  

Of course, he is absolutely right.  Think of any Superhero and the Arch Enemy looms like a shadow, the doppelganger - a dark presence who is always spurring the hero on to greater heights of Super-ness.  How many celebrities and Superstars are driven on by their unthinking tormentors from their high school days?

I think Chuck's right.  My own personal Arch Enemies (Sniveling Weasel and Big Chief Totem Pole), have spurred me on to great new successes. So I suppose a "thank you" is in order. But of course, the Arch Enemy is the last person in the world you would ever thank!  And as Dark Man likes to say - "So much to do, and so little time!"

The All Zen Channel

The last two Wednesdays we went to a Buddhist temple and did the Zen thing.  A black cushion and a blank wall.  I'm not new to meditating, but I found the Zen way difficult at first.  My half lotus was more like a full pretzel, and usually I meditate eyes closed, but the Zen way requires eyes open, turned to the wall.  Reminded me of Catholic grade school, that's what happened when you were "too excitable."

Last night, it was all so much better.  I knew the drill, found that the "Burmese style" (kneeling with cushion support) more to my liking.  The two hours sort of flew by.  Finding the stillness, the emptiness, what a strange pursuit - it's contrary to everything else we know and do.  

Then it was back home to watch the second half of the Lakers/Spurs game.  If you just saw the result in the paper this morning, nothing special, Lakers won a close game.  But if you watched the drama unfold, it was mind-blowing - the Lakers were down 20 points in the third quarter, and then Kobe Bryant emerged.  

I'm thinking in the rush of the game, in those moments of pure concentrated action, Kobe is totally there in the moment, it is a pure Zen of the highest degree.  That's why it's fascinating to watch him play.  There's the blank wall, the black cushion, and then there's Kobe Bryant floating to the basket like some Zen butterfly.  Perfect.

Appetite for Destruction?!

Blogger is acting sort of weird this morning.  Sometimes technology is not our friend.  That's kind of the story of the modern world.  The machines we have made are making hash of the natural world.  There must be a balance - but not sure if we've found it yet.  In the meantime, our sleek inventions hum along, gobbling up everything in their path.  Appetite for Destruction!

R.E.M. - Living Well's the Best Revenge

  Love those glasses Michael! First it was Arcade Fire in an elevator, now REM in a car, what next, the E Street Band in a phone booth (do they even have phone booths anymore?).

"It's Getting Heavy." - Wayne Coyne, Flaming Lips

Went to the Green Festival Saturday over on Navy Pier in Chicago.  Listened to some smart people talk about the dire straits we find ourselves in at the moment.  The planet is in crisis. Too many human beings running around the planet acting as if they own the place.  Wasn't it Sitting Bull who told us that a man can't own the land, the sky, the air, the plants and animals?

No one listened to that wise old Indian at the time.  Maybe some folks are starting to listen now. Anyway, there are glimmers of  hope.  We are clever monkeys.  Maybe self-preservation will motivate us to live more responsibly?  I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Major changes need to happen in a short amount of time.

The Lovely Carla is hoping for some great transformative consciousness that will propel us to a new era.  I like the vision, but I'm unsure of how you get from here to there.  Maybe we can somehow channel the greed, the selfishness, the ego - to trick ourselves into doing the right thing in spite of ourselves?

Anyway, it was a necessary trip.  No one man or woman is gonna solve this one.  It's gonna take a lot of really smart people to kind of carry this through, and then everyone else is gonna have to jump onboard to try to make this work.

Otherwise, I guess our legacy will be that we overran the place, trashed it, killed everything on it, and split.  Not very inspiring. 

Picture Worth a 1000 Words

Ornette Coleman.  Free Jazz.  The Quarter Tone Pitch.  Harmolodic.  Sound Grammar.  Something Else!!! Change of the Century.  The Shape of Jazz to Come.  

Maybe a Cartoon World is Better?!

Takashi Murakami has a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum.  He lives in a cartoon world.  His work has been derided by some as representative of "infantile capitalism."  He has been influenced by Warhol's consumerism.  See also - Japanese Manga & Anime.

Anyway, I found this to be a telling detail about him:  "His mother impressed upon him that he owed his existence to the chance that the sky above her native city, Kokura was overcast on  August 9, 1945, thus diverting the B-29 to its secondary target, Nagasaki."

Pirate Mics

I play in two bands. Who doesn't? And last night I sat in with a third. My brother's wacky outfit, The Banana Street Band. They hole up over at the Flat Iron Arts Building in Wicker Park. Third floor. What a show. I plugged in my Telecaster and jammed with these guys. Talk about intensity. My brother is channeling the ghosts of Leadbelly and Allen Ginsburg, their guitar player is channeling some Polish gypsy poet from a century or two ago, and their drummer is channeling some hipster beat master from god knows where. I got to kind of ride the storm, playing lead lines around their torrent of sound. 

My brother's latest obsession is building microphones.  He's assembled these vintage parts from the 40's and 50's and made totally unique mics - he calls them Pirate Mics, (you might find one on Ebay!), they even have a skull and crossbones logo.  We all used these little crappy amps, (you could fit the lot of them in a small closet) and somehow it all sounded exactly right.  I mean this was rough, totally unpolished, pure and spontaneous, all feeling and intensity.  What a trip.  The sounds swirled around that big drafty old building conjuring ghosts and laying down some kind of sonic map.

Magician

Robert Rauschenberg cashed in his chips at 82. He and Jasper Johns defined for me what an artist was and could be. Rauschenberg did it all - sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking, performance. As someone commented - "he made something from nothing." That's magic. A great magician decamps.

8 Years Flashed Before Our Eyes!

Were they divine, were they crappy, were they otherwise? The "Bush Era" is croaking to a close. Took us all down a notch or two. At least.

Here's one pop cultural historian's take:

"In November 2000, the United States held a presidential election and nobody knew who won, so we just kind of made up an outcome and tried to act like that was normal. Less than a year later, airplanes flew into office buildings and everybody cried for two weeks. And then Enron went bankrupt and then the U.S. became a rogue state, and then The Simple Life premiered, and then gasoline became unaffordable, and then our Olympic team lost to Puerto Rico, and then we reelected the same unqualified president we never really elected in the first place. Later there would be some especially devastating hurricanes and the release of a horrible movie titled Crash." - Chuck Klosterman - April, 2006 from his collection of essays titled IV.

UPDATE: I found this via Glen Greenwald quoting G.K. Chesterton's Heretics, and, well, I don't know for some reason it seems apropos:

"It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself."

Catch the Wind

Nothing stands still. For instance, this country (if you can talk about countries as if they are one thing) isn't what it used to be. Sometimes it's hard to tell. All you see is what it was, can't quite tell what it is, and certainly don't know what it's gonna be. So there's hope and wonder and a sort of dread all mixed up in that.

So knowing what I know, and having seen what I've seen, I sometimes doubt whether things could work out as well as I sometimes conjure up. Then again, I can sometimes get carried away, and I know for sure that because some things are so bad, that change is in the air, and things could actually be so good. Destiny like a pinball game.

I have to try not to let what I know, get in the way of what is, and what could or will be.

And then what happens happens and then we all decide what happened and what it means - and already we are behind the times just trying to catch the wind.

The Chicago Blues

I grew up in Chicago Land at a time when Chicago Blues was still alive. I mean, it's alive today too. Buddy Guy is still keeping the flame going, but when I was in my late teens and early twenties most of the Chicago originators were still alive. I had a great friend, I'll call him Poppa John who was a lilly-white, red-haired, long drink of water, who was an absolute blues fanatic. He was also an amazing blues harmonica player in his own right. We used to go to clubs all over the city chasing after the blues legends. Sometimes Poppa John even got up and jammed with them too.

Some of the great blues cats we saw include: Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Hound Dog Taylor, Howling Wolf, Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Son Seals, Carey Bell, Furry Lewis, Bukka White, James Cotton, Junior Wells. Also this guy - J.B. Hutto. I caught him at a Wise Fools show. I'll never forget him - he played an old Airline guitar, a crappy Montgomery Wards model (later made famous by Jack White of the White Stripes), he was wearing one those funny hats you see Shriners wear. He was quiet, friendly, but had a sort of other-worldly thing hanging about him.

Anyway, I thought about him this morning and well of course there's a YouTube! Unfortunately, he isn't wearing the hat.

Singing about the Abandoned Ones

Awhile back, I read an article about the broken friendship between Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffant. I then wrote a blog post about it.

And then, well, surprise, surprise I couldn't let the thing go, or maybe it wouldn't let me go, so yes, I wrote a song about it, which I called "Godard." You can find it over here. Check it out. It's kind of catchy, and also kind of silly, and well, maybe that's why I'm happy with it.

By the way, the cigarette is just a prop. I do not encourage anyone to take up that nasty habit! Stunts your growth, don't you know?! But the hat is another matter altogether. I highly recommend you go out today and buy a hat just like that one!

Hail, Hail Freedonia!

Matt Yglesias kind of sums up the latest twist of the worm in our never-ending, soul destroying, Iraq debacle: "Now our guns are aimed at the Sadrists because they want us to leave. And naturally, we can't leave until we've achieved "victory" defined as killing everyone who wants us to leave."

Got it?

And then there's this from Atrios: "Watching Bush speak you realize he's a really dumb person who thinks everyone in the room is even dumber than he is."

Question: Is it possible these two things are somehow related?

A Thin Line!

Chuck Klosterman writes about music and Pop Culture. He's a funny and perceptive dude. I just read his profile of the speed-metal band Metallica in the wake of their very funny documentary, "Some Kind of Monster," which was made and released a couple of years ago now. The movie is a real hoot. Enjoyable all around. A nice companion piece to "Spinal Tap." My favorite line from Klosterman: "But sometimes the difference between self-actualization and self amusement is less than you think."

New Years Day

"The job of art is to chase away ugliness." - Bono of U2

U2 is so big, so successful, so good, I sometimes just forget about them. I mean, their music is burned deep into my my cells, my chromosomes, my DNA by now. I used to play some of their records - yes, the original vinyl kind - over and over at top volume for years and years.

I'll never forget, I once owned a Pontiac Fiero, probably one of the worst cars ever made, it had a mid-engine design, which meant that if you hit a patch of ice at high speed, it would tend to spin clockwise, it would literally start spinning like a top. It happened to me twice, high speed, on different highways.

Anyway one time the Lovely Carla and I are cruising, we hit a patch of ice on an overpass and nearly careen over onto another highway. Instead we hit the guardrail, hard. And come to a smoking stop on the side of the highway. We were both wearing seat belts which probably saved us. But Carla was literally knocked out (when she came to, she remembered nothing of the accident). Her head had bounced off the passenger side window. I hit the steering wheel, my chest got the worst of it, I was stunned, but with all my faculties in tact.

Anyway, it was one of those times where everything was in slow motion. I could see we were out of control, spinning, hitting, bouncing. We came to a dead stop and the only sound is a buzzing in my head, my synapses crackling, and U2's album "War" is blasting out of the cassette player, the music just washing over us. It was like a movie. Carla is out, I'm stunned, and the music is filling up the universe.

They way I remembered it, the album just played over and over, for hours? Couldn't be right. Until the police came. A cop finally turned the music off. And then our lives started up again.

Global Warming, Evolution and Condoms!

Don't fret Democrats. It's all going to be fine. We've got the Super Delegates coming to the rescue. And there is no Kryptonite in sight. And as Kevin Drum reminds us, we have global warming, evolution, and condoms on our side!

No kidding - the story of our lives!

There's a new book about Roxy Music called "Re-Make/Re-Model."

Here's Andy MacKay talking about the early days of the band:

"We all thought we were doing something different to the end result."

California Dreaming

My favorite sport to watch is basketball. The NBA version. I played the game as a kid, and briefly in high school too. I was kicked off my sophomore team because I wouldn't get a haircut. So it goes.

I usually skip the regular season. 82 games is way too many. I'll keep up on what's going on via the newspaper, but I go out of my way not to watch games on TV. Until playoff time.

My LA friends may be surprised to learn that my favorite team is the LA Lakers. Phil Jackson is my favorite coach of all time. I mean, any time, any sport. I don't think anyone else comes close. Maybe Vince Lombardi? I love Jackson's cannabis-clouded, Zen Master demeanor. Obviously, Jackson left his mark in Chicago. All those championships with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippin.

Jackson has done another great job this year. He's got Kobe Bryant, the closest thing you can get to Jordan. Kobe is certainly the best player in the NBA today. But what is amazing about Jackson is how he is able to get 15 players all contribute to the cause. The triangle offense is a thing of beauty. Watch the team when Kobe sits down - that's when Jackson's approach shines.

I watched the game between the Lakers and Jazz yesterday. Should be a great series. It was a home game for the Lakers and the joint was rocking. Jack Nicholson got a lot of screen time. He's always court side, grinning like an over-stuffed Cheshire cat. I'd love to sit and chat with that dude.

How come no one ever mentions the other guy sitting right next to Jack? He looks like someone's crazy uncle. That's Lou Adler. Lou is a giant in the music industry - managed Jan and Dean, the Mamas and the Papas, Spirit, Carole King. Plus the dude directed Cheech and Chong's "Up in Smoke," - the stoner movie of stoner movies! Lou is a king. Can you imagine kicking back with those two guys, just chilling? Go Lakers!

Lost Hands and Lost Bands

Big Brown did me in. My Derby tickets turned to confetti. He made it look easy coming from the far outside post. My pick Pyro was lost somewhere in the crowd. The filly Eight Belles broke down.

My trek to the betting parlor in the bowels of the Windy City felt like an anthropological expedition. Early on the red line, there were the Cubs fans, gearing up for a day of beer and baseball. Then at off track betting, it was all wise guys and lone wolves, looking to score.

The big change, No Smoking! There were constant waves of bettors making for the exit to cop a smoke. So at least we were all breathing easy.

I was lost in my own little world of odds and combos. Trying to come up with just the right formula. No luck.

On the way back I read Simon Reynolds "Rip it Up and Start Again" - all about Public Image Limited, Gang of Four, New Order, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Rocket from the Tombs, Television, Pere Ubu, Devo - a land of lost hands and lost bands. The promised land.

Strong Finish, Fog

Ah, the life of a broken down horse player. Driving rain and thunderstorms in Kentucky yesterday. Could be a sloppy track for the Derby today, or then again, maybe not. Just another factor to take into account. Is it just arrogance to think that by looking at past performances, by weighing what we think are the relevant, critical factors, we can somehow "dope out" the winning pick?

So, what if there are waves of mud today? From my in-depth studies, only one pony has won on a sloppy track - Visionaire. It happened at Aqueduct in March. 1/16 miles. The grade 3 Gotham. He started out 9th and then somehow finished first by a nose. No more details in the Daily Racing Form because I guess visibility was down to zero. Here is the description of the winner's trip: Strong finish, fog.

Now that sounds like a a way of life too - and of course, it would take a Visionaire to find their way to the finish line in the fog!

The Amazing Karnak!

Tomorrow, the first Saturday in May, means the Kentucky Derby. This is the 134th run for the roses. It's kind of an insane race. I've never actually been there except via the TV or racetrack remote. Usually there's a bunch of real good horses, I mean way too many, tomorrow if there are no scratches, there will be 20 contenders. I don't know if running thoroughbreds is a decadent thing. I don't know if the horses actually like to run or not.

I do know that all the horses running will be on lasix and bute and that's probably not a good thing. It used to be that drugs were not part of the equation, but over the years we've continued to drug up ourselves and everything around us, including perfectly healthy horses. They've been breeding these horses for many, many years, trying to combine speed and stamina, and lots of folks wonder if we've made a much more fragile breed. The track record for the Derby is still held by Secretariat in 1973. Every quarter clocked for Secretariat was actually faster than the last, which is really unique, usually horses go slower the longer they run, Secretariat ACCELERATED!

Anyway, the Derby is also the race that made Hunter S. Thompson's career. His famous dispatch in 1970 from the Derby, propelled him into Pop consciousness, it was his first collaboration with Ralph Steadman, and well, as they say, "the rest is history".

So I just downloaded a free copy of the past performances of the field from the Daily Racing Form (it is amazing what you can get from the net!) and at first glance it all looks like Greek or Egyptian hieroglyphics. There's lots of homework to do. I actually picked the winner in the last two Derbies (Street Sense and Barbaro), but really, that's kind of like tossing heads two times in a row. It just happened!

The horse that really jumps out is Big Brown, he's never lost, he's really fast, great speed figures, kind of likes to run on the front. But he is coming from the far outside, which is a real disadvantage. He will probably be the favorite, but with so many horses you'll still get pretty good odds. Still, I'm thinking I'm gonna take a pass on Big Brown.

Okay, damn the analysis - first thought, best thought --- I'll take Court Vision!

UPDATE: Okay, after my in-depth analysis, I'm changing my pick. There is a new factor to take into account - synthetic dirt! Yes, Virginia, synthetic dirt! It seems some tracks around the country now have a new type of dirt, supposedly designed to be easier on the horses. Not sure if it's all another American boondoggle or what. Since Churchill Downs in Kentucky still has the old regular kind of dirt - I'm going with horses who have won on that type of surface. So forget Court Vision, my picks in this order - 1. Pyro 2. Tale of Ekati 3. Eight Belles. I might throw Big Brown in on some gimmicks too. I like to dance the dance. Of course, I'm not recommending any of these picks to anyone. Gambling is a vice. I just want to be on the record - you know, posterity!

Shine On Dr. Hoffman!

Dr. Albert Hoffman died Tuesday at his "hilltop home" in Basel Switzerland. He was 102 years old. Now that's a ripe old age. Good job Albert. It is fitting that he lived on a hilltop. The good doctor was the man who synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide (from ergot) in 1938. His first trip happened a a couple years later when he inadvertently absorbed some of it through his fingertips. He then intentionally tripped on a bicycle ride home. Must have been quite a bike ride.

I wrote a play a couple of years ago now that featured Albert Hoffman as a sort of mystic force in Pop Culture. Certainly much of the Sixties (and all that came afterwards) as we know it probably would not have been the same without LSD. Would Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" ever been written? Would the Beatles "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" ever been recorded? Would Jimi Hendrix have worn so many scarves and blasted the radio waves with "Purple Haze?"

It turns out the CIA used LSD as a truth serum and used real people as experimental guinea pigs. Plus the promise of some kind of trippy utopia gave way to burn out and drugged out cul de sacs. There were many drug casualties along the way - think Brian Jones, Syd Barret, Peter Green, Jimi Hendrix - Timothy Leary was the P.T. Barnum of "turn on, tune in and drop out." Was there a continuum from that to Peter Townsend's "teenage wasteland?"

Was one man's transcendence another's dead end?

Anyway this is what kind of grabbed me reading the obit in the NY Times yesterday:

"He (Hoffman) then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life.

It was during one of his ambles that he had his epiphany.

“It happened on a May morning — I have forgotten the year — but I can still point to the exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above Baden,” he wrote in “LSD: My Problem Child.” “As I strolled through the freshly greened woods filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light."

So the great insight (the oneness of the universe) that later John Lennon and George Harrision so famously promoted after they took LSD, came to Albert Hoffman when he was child, long before his first trip. Beautiful. Shine on Dr. Hoffman!

There is a way, is there a will?

According to Robert Kennedy Jr: "North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone produce enough harnessable wind to meet all of the nation's electricty demand. As for solar, according to a study in Scientific American, photovoltaic and solar-thermal installations across just 19 percent of the most barren desert land in the Southwest could supply nearly all of our nation's electricity needs without any rooftop installation, even assuming every American owned a plug-in hybrid."

The Wild Bunch Rides Again!

I always wanted to be a cowboy. My mom has a picture of me with cowboy hat, six gun, blowing candles out on my 6th birthday. It never really came about. I once went to a dude ranch, and I was the only kid who fell off his horse.

I never knew I wanted to be a Telepath. It's become my little band of brothers. It's kind of like being in the Wild Bunch (does that make me Ernest Borgnine!?). We are kind of a gnarly lot, and we like to make an unholy racket. Some bands like to sound good, we just like to SOUND!

Anyway, we had a rehearsal last night, which is never really a rehearsal, instead it's more of a sonic blood-letting. We like to play loud. Reminds me of Iggy Pop talking about when the Stooges went into the studio to cut their first album, they cranked their amps to the max and wailed. John Cale, who was producing at the time, thought they were totally nuts, that was not the way to record an album.

The Telepaths are in that mold. "Brutalist architecture." That's how Cory our bass player described our sound last night. We all took that as a compliment.

"That's my pig." - Roger Waters

Okay, this is hilarious. Roger Waters closed the Coachella festival in California last night. Giving a "greatest hits" Pink Floyd show without the Floyd. The other Pinksters can't stand to be on stage with the man. Here's the grand finale as described by the AP:

But Waters' biggest prop was an inflatable pig the size of a school bus that emerged while he played a version of "Pigs" from 1977's capitalism critique, "Animals."

The pig, which was led above the crowd from lines held on the ground, displayed the words "Don't be led to the slaughter" and a cartoon of Uncle Sam wielding two bloody cleavers. The other side read "Fear builds walls."

The underside of the pig simply read "Obama" with a checked ballot box alongside.

As Waters drew the song to a close, flame bursts exploded on the sides of the stage and the swine floated into the night sky. Waters said sadly and comically, "That's my pig."

Go, Go, GTO!

Wow, I came across Kim Morgan's blog, Sunset Gun, via James Wolcott from Vanity Fair. Movies, music melodrama. Indeed. She's definitely got something going on there.

Anyway, I love her list of top ten car movies. And yes, I can heartily agree that "Two Lane Blacktop" is a masterpiece. I just recently saw it on a fresh new DVD.* Anything with Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton is gonna be up high on the list. But Monte Hellman pushed the car movie to the absolute brink. The best ending ever!

And who else could drive like Steve McQueen except Steve McQueen?

Of course, I'm thinking Warren Oates' other great starring vehicle should be on the list, even though, it's not primarily a car movie, but still - there's nothing like the mad fever dream brilliance of Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia." Warren has a great scene in a car talking to a severed head. Now that's entertainment - and so much more! And what about "Repo Man!?" I mean it's got Harry Dean, and it's about repossessing cars and the ending is one of the great car rides of all time!

* I originally saw Two Lane as a teen on a rare trip to the cinema with my father. That was when he was a high-energy, bundle of nerves kind of guy - I can't imagine now how he was able to sit in a dark movie house for 90 minutes without jumping out of his skin. Still, my dad was a total movie freak, he connected me to stuff from the 40's and 50's - On the Waterfront, The Westerner, Treasure of Sierra Madre, Gunga Din, Beau Geste, Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, Shane, and then opened me to the edgy stuff in the 70's that made such an amazing first impression on me - Mean Streets, Two Lane Blacktop, The Long Goodbye, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, Junior Bonner, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, The Godfather. When I see a movie now, I see things through his eyes too...

"You've got no regard for the thing you don't understand..." - Spoon

"You've got no fear for the Underdog, thats why you will not survive!"

Naked Lunch's Dad

"The function of art and all creative thought is to make us aware of what we know and don't know we know. You can't tell anybody anything he doesn't know already." - William S. Burroughs

For the Emptiness

We played some music last night, getting ready for a show on Saturday. It was just two of us. One guitar, two voices. We played in an empty theater space, in the middle of a set for someone else's show. Almost two hours of originals. For some reason, everything was aligned. The sound was perfect, the guitar was smooth, like butter in my hands. Our voices were on key and in harmony. The seats were empty, the building was quiet, except for our hopeful sound. I don't think we've ever sounded better. It was some kind of breakthrough performance. For no one. For the silence, the emptiness. No tape machine rolling. These sounds vibrating out into the night.

"It Ain't Necessary..." - Bob Dylan

Sara, our bass player in WWSP, came by last night to lay down some bass and vocals on a couple of new songs we are working on. Some good new stuff.

Not a bad way to spend an evening. Better than TV!

"Rock is about a micro-moment. It's not even about a year - it's about, like a day. These songs are time-coded with a date on them. Rock does not feel separate from its time, which I don't feel about jazz, classical, any other shit. It was disposable stuff, and whatever these people did to make themselves important in the eyes of eternity, the stuff only works if it got under your skin in the moment. I hear it and smell the day I heard it." - Richard Meltzer

Cheaper

"Everything is cheaper than you think." - Neil Young


AND ON ANOTHER NOTE:




"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness– and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they’re selling– their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." - Arundhati Roy

How Mushrooms Can Save the World!

Spring in Chicago. The greenery, the birdies chirping in the trees, the lake blue and dazzling. Spring is hope and hope springs eternal.

Nature is a teacher. A hard teacher. If we are to survive as a species, we need to start listening to the teacher.

Check this out. The Lovely Carla turned me onto this...

Can you believe it? Mushrooms might help us save the world! BIO-REMEDIATION! Let's give it whirl!

Successing Ourselves to Death!

Successing ourselves to death. I'm thinking that's our global malady. Too much of everything is killing us, killing the planet, and in the process we are over-loading our little noggins, and can't really adequately process all the information swamping our senses. Plus, in a strange subtraction by addition - the more of everything we have makes everything less and less.

"Fear of Being Stuck in My Mind."

I'm still stuck on the latest New Yorker. There's a great little article by Nick Paumgarten, about elevators, that didn't seem all that promising, but is actually quite good.

I learned this: "Loading up an empty elevator car with discarded Christmas trees, pressing the button for the top floor, then throwing in a match, so that by the time the car reaches the top, it is a ablaze with heat so intense that the alloy (called, 'babbitt') connecting the cables to the car melts, and the car, in a fireball now, plunges into the pit: this practice, apparently popular in New York City housing projects, is NOT ADVISABLE."

Later in the article - a man with elevator phobia is quoted thusly: "I don't have a fear of dying in an elevator, or of the elevator losing control - I have a fear of being stuck in my mind."

I understand.

Unprecedentedly Deep

I just checked out the latest New Yorker, great stuff, and came across Jonathan Franzen's "Letter from the Yangtze Delta." A good read. One striking fact: Shanghai is now approaching 20 million inhabitants.

Here's Franzen writing his first impression of this gargantuan megalopolis: "It was as if the gods of world history had asked, 'Does somebody want to get into some really unprecedentedly deep shit?' and the place had raised its head and said, 'Yeah!'

Little Blue Globe

The Lovely Carla watched this movie, "The 11th Hour" about our global crisis. Yes, the globe is in crisis and it is late in the game, really, really late. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Anyway, it's supposed to be a real good movie.

I'm thinking I might need to fortify myself with some wine or chocolate and watch the thing myself. One thing she mentioned that kind of whapped me upside the head. Since I've been on the planet, the population has basically doubled in size. There's something like 6.65 billion people frolicking about this little blue globe right now.

Man. You'd think one of them would have a good idea how to get us out of this mess we've found ourselves in.

Chicago's Finest

I spent some quality time on headphones recently, listening to all kinds of music. One disc that totally re-asserted itself in my consciousness is Wilco's "Yankee Foxtrot Hotel." It has rightly been hailed as a great record. It also has a great back-story in that the record company originally rejected it. No good reason given. It sat in limbo for almost a year, and then Nonesuch released it. It was considered one of Wilco's best, and propelled them into the forefront of great, edgy bands.

It really is a superb collection of music. Jeff Tweedy sort of reminds me of a Midwest American version of Ray Davies. Less flamboyant, less whimsical, but intelligent, sensitive, with a good melodic sense. On headphones it really zings you with all kinds of unique sounds. Wilco takes a song then deconstructs it. It lets some of that deconstruction serve as a counterpoint to good basic rock and roll.

I know a million discs have come and gone since then, and Wilco has released a couple of great discs since. But "Yankee Foxtrot Hotel," really does stand up as a great disc for the ages.

This is a clip from the documentary, "I am trying to break your heart," filmed during the making of the record. It's got some great shots of Chicago as well as the first cut from the disc.

Rabbit Holes!

I disappeared down a rabbit hole, chasing rabbits, real and imaginary. A somewhat satisfying and mystifying adventure. That's how it goes.

So I've been off the "internets" for a few days. Which is not a bad thing. But I'm back. Regular posting should commence!

Kiss Me, Stupid!

Watched Billy Wilder's very wacky 1964 movie, "Kiss Me, Stupid," last night. It's one of the great lost movies, about a lost time too. Dean Martin plays an Italian singer named Dino. It's probably one of his finest performances, he's basically playing the Rat Pack lothario he had a reputation for being - not bad casting. Kim Novak is great too, although supposedly her role was originally written for Marilyn Monroe, which would have been perfect. Still Novak is quite good in the role. Also, Peter Sellars was originally cast to play off of Dino, which would have probably propelled this into instant classic status, but he had to take a pass after having a mild heart attack and Ray Walston, the martian from the TV show, "My Favorite Martian," tries to fill his shoes. The movie is a real oddity. Superb. The DVD version we saw was a pristine print, glorious black and white. Of course, they don't make them like this anymore. They didn't really make them like that then either. But Billy Wilder and Izzy Diamond truly were movie making geniuses.

Euphoria in a Breath!

I heard a story this morning on the radio about this drug NARCAN. It's shown to be successful in saving people from a Heroin overdose. There is some controversy about whether this drug should be distributed to users or not. A simple answer would be a question, "If it saves lives, why not?

But what really caught my attention was the discussion of how the opiates in Heroin connect with a receptor in the brain that induces euphoria, but this same receptor also sends a signal to the body to breathe really, really slowly. What happens sometimes is that the body actually just stops breathing. Thus a pleasing high turns into the Long Goodbye.

The thing that intrigues me is the idea that maybe breathing slowly in and of itself can also induce euphoria - without any deadly side effects. Isn't this the secret all those Yogis and Swamis and Buddhas and other assorted holy men and carnival barkers have been talking about for centuries?

Sit in silence and BREATHE! Slowly, attentively. Euphoria is right around the corner. Don't need no stinking drug pusher man, don't need no stinking witch doctor shoving pills my down throat! It's simple, clean, and free! By George, I think I got it!

Over-Stoned!

Maybe I should turn this into the Rolling Stone network. Just kidding. Man, I have Stones on the brain. I was paging through Guitar World magazine and came across this quote from Keith Richards from 1997. I know there might be something wrong with me if I start looking to Keith for wisdom, but there it is, and whatever the dude has going, well, it seems to be working for him just fine.

"The blues are probably the most important thing that America has ever given to the world. From Leadbelly to B.B. King to Buddy Guy and all the stops in between - it's just such an amazingly flexible form. It's a musical form that just seems to be inexhaustible in its potential. It speaks so deeply because we all probably come from Africa, we just went north and turned white. But if you cut anybody open, bone is white and blood is red. It's kind of deep you know? And I think maybe the blues speak to us in that way: ancient bone marrow responding to the source." - Keith Richards

UPDATE: Keith may have the blues, but one suspects that posing for this picture by Annie Liebovitz featuring Louis Vuitton luggage probably paid for more than that vintage Gibson guitar.

The Munch Plays a Stone

I'm still sort of stuck on the Stones. I watched some You Tube stuff last night, checking out some of their songs, kind of breaking down what Keith Richards and Mick Taylor were doing back in 1970. Some great stuff, but really beyond analysis. It's kind of like trying to dissect a cat to figure out how it ticks. By the time you get through analyzing all the parts, all you're left with is a dead cat.

Some of the best Stones songs are just too damn simple. They should not work, they should not be great. In their case, a great band, a great song, is truly the sum total of the parts, it's the collected energy where the magic resides. The accumulation of little pieces somehow adds up to a greater thing.

This brings me to the forgotten man, a guy who has played with the Rolling Stones since 1993, Daryl Jones. Daryl nicknamed "the Munch" replaced the original Stones bassist Bill Wyman (Bill couldn't take it anymore!). Daryl has also played with some of the greats including Miles Davis, Eric Clapton and Madonna (!) I was interested to see if Daryl was going to get any screen time in Scorcese's movie. He did, as he should. The guy is a killer bass player.

Of course some of those original bass lines written by Bill Wyman or Keith Richards are indelible. Daryl really gives the current Stones lineup a great foundation. Some of the songs in the movie really move, some of that is because of the touch of "the Munch!" I mean after playing with Miles, there ain't nothing these English boys can throw at him that's gonna throw him!

Daryl is billed as a "sideman" but he really should be billed as a Stone, except that would probably bump him up to a higher pay grade. Remember Jagger majored in Economics - it ain't gonna happen!

Old Glorious Reptiles, and I like Them!

We checked out the new Stones movie, "Shine a Light," yesterday. I'm thinking the story of the Stones is kind of like a story in one of those nature documentaries where we follow the life of a sea turtle. The mother turtle lays thousands of eggs, and the eggs that don't get eaten by the fish, the ones lucky enough to actually hatch into little baby sea turtles, who somehow escape the birds of prey waiting for them on the beach, those last few stragglers who inexplicably survive to become mature sea turtles, well those lucky, plucky soul survivors are The Stones. Think of all those others who just didn't make it, or flamed out, or faded away, or lost their mojo.

Crusty old beasts up on stage, flailing away as if their lives still depended on it. That's what Martin Scorcese captures (16 cameras, superb sound) in all their glory. These are old road warriors who wear every moment of their existences on their bodies. Keith Richards is otherworldly, almost reptilian, Ron Wood a sort of dessicated scarecrow. Charlie Watts still reminds me of Harpo Marx, sardonic grin, silent, with a powerful drumbeat. And then there's Mick Jagger. He defies time and nature, even as he shows all the lines and scars from a life well-lived (those lines on his face are mainly laugh lines!). Mick is still an extra-ordinary showman. His schtick is still (as once characterized by John Lennon) superb "fag dancing."

If you love the Stones the movie is for you. If not, not. In a big way. It's a concert movie. Almost two hours worth of music. And really I agree with Scorcese the music is the thing. The music, the songs, stand the test of time. Great rock and roll, put over with style, bravado, panache. The Rolling Stones are an essential band in the history of rock and roll. "Let It Bleed," may be the greatest rock and roll album ever recorded (apologies to the Beatles "Revolver," Dylan's "Highway 61," and Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Lady Land") and "Exile on Main Street," "Sticky Fingers," and "Beggars Banquet," are high on the list too.

These guys are old (which is not a sin!), and they don't act their age, (which is inspiring!), they are millionaires (they paid their dues!), they haven't written a great song in at least twenty years (they have an incredible back catalog!), and still, I don't begrudge them a thing (they have always seemed TRUE!). They are amazing. They are alive. And still true to some rock and roll ethic, where the music, the feeling is EVERYTHING.

UPDATE: Just a point of clarity. The Lovely Carla points out to me that of course, the sea turtle eggs are laid on the beach, and then at night, when the tide comes in the little ones that hatch make a charge for the water, that's when they can get picked off by the birds!

A Golden Day

We had one of those golden days yesterday. It was sunny and 60 degrees, and suddenly everyone was out and about. It was like a tribe of cave dwellers who suddenly emerged blinking into a blazing new world. We walked the lakefront, it was quite the scene -- when the sky is blue, the lake is too.

Sara our bass player came up to visit us, and we recorded some new tracks for our band WWSP in our little home studio (a Mac, a mic and Garageband!). I think we're getting even better as we go. I love the new titles we have so far: Tricks on the Brain, Lavender Rays, the Mirror. Sara tracked her bass, she has an old Fender bass that gets a real nice, deep resonant sound. She has really blossomed as a player.

Then we went over to the Brothers K Coffee shop on the corner and signed up for the open mic. There is such a great vibe at the Brothers K, it's a real neighborhood hub. A guy named Thomas runs the open mic, he's a guitarist who specializes in exquisite jazz stuff, one of his favorites is Django Reinhardt. There was also a guy named John who is kind of an old-timer, (older than me!), who blasted through a great acoustic version of the Who's "Pinball Wizard." John reveres the classics and he brings them across with panache. Plus he's got one of the sweetest voices you'll ever hear.

There was some other cool stuff, someone did an acoustic White Stripes song, a Dylan, there was a Cryin Shames song too. Then we got up, the three of us, me on guitar, Sara on bass and Carla on vocals. We put across three of our new songs. It was great, a good mix, Carla sang with confidence and grace. Everyone listened attentively. You can really feel it when an audience is with you. We finished and the audience clapped and cheered. It felt really good.

Like I said, it was one of those golden days...

UPDATE: Miles Raymer of the Chicago Reader tipped me to this great video mash up. Sergio Leone and Arcade Fire. A perfect match of image and sound. Check it out!

The Perfect Being?

According to NPR this morning, Bette Davis was born 100 years ago today!

"When they need a broad with balls, they call me." - Bette Davis

The Present Never Ends

According to an article in this week's Chicago Reader, when Del Close, improv master and impresario* lay in a hospital bed dying, he basically threw a party and many of his former students and associates came to pay their final respects.

It turns out Del was a pagan, and he invited a pagan priest and a pagan priestess to come and conduct the Ritual of the Four Elements for him.

I really like this part: "The god blesses you with the strength you already have - the strength of humor. For in the middle of a joke, there is no past, there is no future, there is only the present, and the present never ends."

*Del Close taught and inspired some of our best comic talents including: Mike Nichols, Elaine May, John Belushi, John Candy, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Tina Fey and Larry David's "father" Shelly Berman. Now that's quite the comedy cavalcade!

The World is Completely Nuts!

I guess we knew this already. I'm paging through the NY Times this morning, and I'm reading about the stock market in Shanghai. It seems there has been a huge run-up in stock prices (over 500 percent in two years) and everyone and their brother, mother, aunt and uncle have been playing the market.

Now surprise, surprise, the market is tanking (down 45 percent since October). And as the Times puts it: "Suddenly millions of small investors who were crowding into brokerage houses, spending the entire day there playing cards, trading stocks, eating noodles and cheering on the markets with other day traders and retirees, are feeling depressed and angry."

Come on people, what were you thinking? You want to blow some dough? Come join me in the grandstand at Santa Anita. I mean, at least with the ponies there are fewer middlemen! And if we get a sunny day, no better place on earth to be.

But anyway, it was this part of the story made me want to fall on the floor and laugh like a mad coyote - ""Shopkeepers, real estate brokers, even maids and watermelon hawkers are said to have become day traders. A NEW VERSION OF THE NATIONAL ANTHEM MADE IT'S WAY AROUND THE COUNTRY LAST YEAR, BEGINNING...'ARISE! YE WHO HAVEN'T OPENED AN ACCOUNT! POUR YOUR GOLD AND SILVER INTO THE HOT MARKET.'"

Kind of puts the Star Spangled Banner to shame don't ya think?!

The Joys of Friendship!

Richard Brody writes about the friendship between Francois Truffant and Jean Luc Godard in the latest New Yorker. Brody calls them "abandoned children," who each found a path via the cinemas of Paris, together watching American films by Hitchcock and Hawks.

They became the key Surfers of the French New Wave. Their first films tell the story well, Truffant's "400 Blows," and Godard's "Breathless." And one could tell even on the first viewing of each film that these two had very different ideas about what films are, and what they should be.

As Brody puts it, Truffant was an outsider, looking to get in, and Godard was an insider, looking to get out.*

I have only seen a fraction of their collective output. But I think the last shot of "The 400 Blows," is still one of the most powerful, breath-taking moments in film. And "Breathless," changed the way I looked at French films and American films too.

Truffant is gone, Godard is still with us. They started as friends and then became diametrically opposed forces in French film. They ended up attacking the other quite brutally in letters and articles, both private and public.

Godard thought Truffant was ultimately a fraud and traitor to the cause of re-making film. Truffant, I think, was baffled and displeased by Godard's burning, lacerating contempt. Truffant had the best lines, he told Godard that he should make an autobiographical film called, "A Shit is a Shit."

Also Truffant once told Godard: "Like Sinatra, like Brando, you're nothing but a piece of shit on a pedestal."

Although, I kind of lean towards Godard's demonic approach, I must say, "Good one Truffant!" He was able to insult (maybe deservedly so), three titans in one simple but cogent line!

*UPDATE: I'm thinking I'd characterize myself as an OUTSIDER, LOOKING TO GET OUT!

Oh Buddha, Come On, Let it Go!

I started my morning, sipping coffee, listening to Wilco's "Sky Blue Sky," and reading an article on the Dali Lama. I came across what was purportedly the Buddha's last dying words - "Strive on, diligently."

Boy, you have to hand it to that Buddha guy, he was sort of like Yogi Berra, always had something to say.

You might think appropriate last dying words might be: "Arrrrggghhhh!" Or maybe, "Ohhhhhhh!" Or possibly, "Oh no, not now!" Or maybe, "Oh shit!"

Was it Yogi who said, "It ain't over til the fat lady sings." I don't know, and I'm not gonna go look it up, I mean, Buddha, Yogi what's the difference?

It would be just like that Buddha Dude to still, even in his last moment, sort of encourage us, to egg us on, so to speak, for us to keep on keeping on. And what about Jerry Garcia, Captain Trips? Isn't it obvious his last words were, "Keep on Truckin."

"Okay, whatever."

Dismantling a Universe

We broke down our set yesterday. The Flaming Eyeball is history. It was kind of sad, but at the same time kind of liberating to take the set apart, stack the walls in storage, make way for the next show. We worked together with our good friends from Elefant Foot theater. I brought pliers and screwdrivers and had the task of dismantling a universe. Our set had kind of an outer space motif.

A long afternoon of manual labor. Not too hard. I brought a stack of cds and we listened to music: Sigur Ros, Morphine, Ronnie Laine. We left a nice little black box theater space, waiting to be filled by the next renter.

Afterwards all of us went to Julius Menil, a cozy, Austrian restaurant on Southport in Chicago. They serve an amazing array of sandwiches, soups and desserts - I had a the vegetable focaccia and a chocolate buttercake. Highly recommended.

We had one of those great, rare dinners, a long and rambling, funny and free-ranging conversation about art, life and what's it all about anyway? What is good? Why do we do what we do? What are we trying to say? Does the universe care? What's really going on? Can we ever figure any of it out?

It was a great way to put our little artistic adventure to bed. It was all laughter and smiles even as we talked about the most important things.

Marching to a Different Drum!

Hey if the "long emergency" (no oil, no power, no internet, no electrified gizmos to entertain us), is coming, we will be ready. Last night our little drum circle during the Earth Hour Blackout turned out to be the highlight of the evening. I've participated in a few drum circles before, and sitting in the dark, with a few lowly little candles adds just the right ambience. We had an incredible turnout for this part of the evening, something like 40 souls came out to shake, rattle and roll.

We had a great "ringer," a guy named Nickolai who really knows how to drum. He was basically our Drum Captain. Then Heather (one of the actresses in the Flaming Eyeball), got up and served as our very own Drum Conductor (shades of Leonard Bernstein), and with hand gestures she brought the unholy cacophony up and down from a whisper to an avalanche.

So we sat for an hour beating away. It's something truly primal, something our ancestors did and have been doing for centuries. It brought up some genetic entity type energy to the fore. As Sonny Bono once said, "the beat goes on."

So there's the beat, the heartbeat. And that's life. It was cool to see everyone in the room perform. No fourth wall. No division. Everyone in a large circle united by the vibration. Kosmic Kool!

Anyway the Flaming Eyeball closed in style. It flamed out and then it expired. We made merry with music and fun. A good time was had by all. This morning..."there's a space, a hollow, where the other eyeball should be..."

I wonder what will be next?

Plate Spinning is Cool!

Last night was all about comedy at our little theater space. We were on the bill with Valid Hysteria, an all woman improv group. Female, funny and fearless. A dynamite combination. These woman should rule the world!

Also on the bill was Matt Griffo. Young, sharp, sort of nerdy-looking kid (anyone under thirty looks like a kid to me), armed with a ukulele and an appealing voice. Matt sang funny little ditties and made things with balloons. Matt is following in some big footsteps, but he is making all the right moves!

Ed Sullivan would have been proud of us. If only I could've booked that guy who used to spin those plates on sticks. Now that is truly a lost art! Here's a link with instructions. Come on people, let's not let this great form of entertainment die!

Tonight is our big closing night show. We start off at 8:00 p.m. in the dark. Literally. We are participating in the World Earth Hour Blackout. The Lovely Carla made this happen! We'll turn off all the lights, light some candles and do a little drum circle. And pray, (does anyone pray anymore?) for better days.

Then it's Famous in the Future, the Flaming Eyeball, and then a musical jamboree with the Banana Street Band, Sandro the Magnificent and WWSP. It should be a real interesting evening.

This is probably unfair to butterflies...

I thought of this last night as we were video-taping our play.

This is probably unfair to butterflies...

When we act, write, direct, we are playing butterflies - lively, fluttering, in the moment, the moments flying away even as we experience them.

We can also play observer, collector and critic of butterflies. Sometimes we play all roles simultaneously.

It's probably most rewarding to play. Or sometimes just to observe. But we have tendency to want to capture the moment of the butterfly. This means killing it, preserving it, putting it under glass. Beautiful but lifeless. We can imagine the life it once had; the colors, the form of it evoke the life, but still it's DEAD!

Finally there are those who will critique the butterfly. It's good or bad, it touched us or not. It says something, or it doesn't.

Still butterflies come and go. And they have a purpose. To pollinate. I think that's what art does. It pollinates. Not every flower, but still...

Once, I had wings...

I trained down to the big city yesterday for a big power meeting. Meeting with the big boys, don't cha know? The city was alive, a sunny, early spring day in Chicago. Still quite brisk, still needed your overcoat and gloves.

I had no expectations, no trepidation, no annihilations...

I love the energy of a big, buzzing metropolis. So alive, with people from all walks of life. One wonders if this way of life is fated to fade away, or disappear in a blaze of glory, or maybe just meander on just fine. There's so much talk of apocalypse, peak oil, global warming, one crisis or another. And has it always been so? The end is near!

So I found myself in one of those big vertical buildings that defy gravity. Sat in a bright and shiny office with an incredible view of the city, the lake blue and frothy. Perched like an eagle, just watching all the people scurry around down below like a bunch of crazy ants.

Above it all for the length of the meeting. Then back down on the street. Just another scurrying little ant too. But for awhile I HAD WINGS!

Intoxicating

We had a WWSP band rehearsal last night. Three of us, minus our fabulous drummer (he will be with us on Saturday). It was great to sit and play music with other folks. I've been playing guitar quite a bit, working up new riffs and chord progressions. I finally learned Hendrix's "Little Wing," one of his most beautiful songs.

I found a new thing, I fire up Garageband, plug in my guitar, and then go to You Tube and find a group of musicians to play with, it could be Cream or the Stones, or Neil Young, Elvis Costello, or yes, even Guns N Roses, and then I jam away with them. It's a great way to hone my chops. But really it's a solitary, stupid, video game kind of existence.

There's nothing like playing music with real people (as opposed to the video image). Last night it was me, the Lovely Carla on vocals and Sara on bass. It all sounded so good. We played in a dark gallery, the music kind of swirled up around us. Intoxicating. It's really the relationship between us, no one part, but all parts working together that makes it something.

And really, that's what it's about all around too, don't ya think? We all have a part to play, it's how we work together, inspire each other, surprise each other, that makes the journey all well worth it.

Brought Down by a Heavy Wind

I've set myself up for one of those impossible tasks again. It happens all the time. My life is full of impossibilities. It's probably the same with you too. Anyway, last night we starting shooting video of the Flaming Eyeball (it closes this weekend), this is part of our ritual, we put on a play and then try to capture it, preserve it, whatever.

First off, it just can't be done. It's sort of like taking your little digital camera and trying to capture the Grand Canyon. I mean you can get some nice shots, but really so much is left out of the frame. And like one of my photography teachers once said, "the camera always lies!" As I shoot I can see all that is not going to be captured.

And then, we're shooting video at the Peter Jones Gallery, which is one of the airiest, noisiest places on the planet. Last night we learned that if someone upstairs has "the vapors," and they happen to "rip one," the whole building will hear it. I mean we're shooting the second scene, everything is going fine, and suddenly a major fart rings out. We all fall down in a heap of laughter. I wonder what the "farter" thought of that response?

So, anyway, I'm feeling a little like Sisyphus, I keep rolling that rock up the ridge and well, excess gas just sends it tumbling down back down again. But of course, as any Good Pilgrim knows, we all must carry on!

A Broken-Down Idealism

I came across a phrase this morning, that kind of resonates with me: "a broken-down idealism." Kind of sums up where I'm at. Kind of like Kerouac's "beat" from "beatific."

As life goes on, pop culture's eternal nowness, our quest for some kind of suburban, consumer utopia seems like such a poor substitute for nature's perpetual creation/destruction cycle.

The old conception of "tragedy" has been absorbed into a greater absurdity. It's our quest for immortality, for a life with no pain, that renders us mute when "bad things happen to good people." Maybe we should be mute.

But absurdity is really a poor substitute. Life is not just absurd. Although it's that too. If we take the dark things away, (they never go away) we sanitize our lives of a richer meaning. Now that meaning is not really revealed to us. It just hangs over us like a pile of laundry, on the line, sopping wet, dribbling down upon us.

We laugh not at the absurdity of it all, but at the baffling beauty. The clue-less-ness that we bring to the occasion.

So anyway, is this the greatest song ever written? Morphine doing "Cure for Pain."

Love and Incomprehension

The second to last weekend of the Flaming Eyeball show. We weathered a snowstorm on Friday night and still had a great little audience. And last night we were on the bill with Famous in the Future, one of Chicago's comedy treasures. Saturday was one of our best, most vocal audiences.

Our play is a comedy, but it's really weird and hard to track with, and some audiences sit in silence. Which sometimes feels quite strange, but it's something that happens often at our type of shows. So it was good to have a comedy group before us, kind of "fluffing" the public, priming them for the laugh. It also helped that the Famous in the Future cast members stayed for our show since they really have gotten to know us, and well, you could feel they were really with us.

So Famous in the Future was kind of our laugh track. I'm thinking a laugh track, or a "designated laugher" might be a good edition for every show. It gives the audience license to laugh, "hey maybe that really is funny!?" Anyway, a very satisfying night, one of our best shows. Looking forward to the final weekend, and a big closing bash next Saturday. Our band is playing too next Saturday, so I finally get out of the tech booth and back onstage. I kind of miss being under the lights taking in all that love and incomprehension.

About Pawns and Rooting for Chaos!

Pawns: I came across this line, looking for something else: "We are all pawns in a game whose forces we largely fail to comprehend." Yes, and sometimes we are happy pawns, and sometimes we are pissed off pawns, and sometimes we are just don't know what we really feel like pawns.

Chaos: I also came across this from David Denby's (my least favorite movie critic on the planet) overview of the Coen brothers' movies. As usual, I hated the essay, but I liked the closing line: "They (the Coens) have become orderly, disciplined masters of chaos, but one still has the feeling that, out there on the road from nowhere to nowhere, they are rooting for it rather than against it."

"Rooting for chaos" sounds like some kind of mantra. Essential in a world where there are no longer philosophers who we trust to explain it all for us, instead we now have LIFE COACHES who help us "actuate our possibilities!"

So True Then, So True Now!

This is from E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post:

Listen to what (Martin Luther) King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968: "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." King then predicted this response from the Almighty: "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."*

*sunny jimmy - Personally, I'm not partial to all the God talk, although that's what preachers do, they like to tell us what's going on in the great NOGGIN IN THE SKY. Everyone seems to think they know the mind of the great creator, which is probably just some undefinable cosmic energy, not anymore substantial than a hair-ball, but let's go with "God" as a metaphor here, a stand-in for some kind of universal karmic law - EXCESS PRIDE AND ARROGANCE LEADS TO MAJOR BAD SHIT!

Who Said the Rock Could/Couldn't Act?

Think Wallace Shawn (one of America's greatest playwrights) as an evil genius in gaudy eye make-up and a frou-frou toupee. Think Buffie the Vampire Slayer as a dippy porn star. Think the Rock with a look of pure terror in his eye ("How did I let my agent talk me into this one?"). Think of an ice cream truck hovering over Los Angeles spinning into a crack in the space time continuum. Think Donnie Darko's creator offering a vast, over-blown, wild-ass ride. Does that make you want to see the movie?

Not many people saw it. It came and went in the blink of an eye. It was pummeled by the audience at Cannes. Did it kill Richard Kelly's career? I hope not. Donnie Darko is one of my all time favorites and this one might be some kind of mad masterpiece. I'm not sure, but I think it might be great. Plus it's got a superb soundtrack by Moby!

I think I loved Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales." What a kooky movie. Borders on the ridiculous, no, sometimes goes completely over the border. That's what I like to see. Someone takes a chance, does something really unique. Willing to fail. Daring to fail, and maybe somehow, improbably, pulling it off. What a great flick!*

*UPDATE: My mind was racing while I went for a run. Just why do I think Donnie Darko and Southland Tales are great films? Richard Kelly has made movies that for me are multi-layered. There's more than meets the eye. Multiple viewings of Darko has opened up a number of sub-layers for me. It's about alienation, and time and space anomalies, and spirituality, and clairvoyance. Scenes that seem to be about one thing, might actually be about something else. One of the keys to both films are the soundtracks, the use of music, which serves as a counterpoint, and opens up new dimensions to what's shown on screen. Moby, great grandson of Herman Melville, is a sublimely rewarding choice for Southland. These films are mysterious, and for me that's fundamental to my experience of the world. They are dark and funny, they use pop cultural icons and markers to make comments on some of our most profound questions. Plus they are both fun and ridiculous. I can't sum them up and just say they are about one thing. Man, that's what I love, you can't sum them up, or if you do, you miss so much, and hey, well, that's what life is like for me in all it's wacky, multi-colored aspects!

Evolution/Revolution!

Atrios (Duncan Black) a primarily political blogger based in Philadelpia, is one of my favorite reads. He's always got his finger on the pulse of what's floating out in the the zeitgeist. If you get a chance read this little post it seems to sum up the White/Black and Right/Left dichotomy oh so well.

This is definitely something that swirls around in my head all the time: "Be disgusted with the country as it was and is, while hoping for an evolution to a better country."

For Those Moments' Sake

Sometimes I read books, and sometimes I just read reviews of books. It's kind of nerdy. I know. Here's some stuff I came across from reviews of "On Deep History of the Brain" (ODHOTB) and "Predictably Irrational" (PI).

ODHOTB - "The brain of a monk does not resemble the brain of a soldier or a taxicab driver." AND "Culture is wired in the brain and cultural practices can have profound neurophysiological consequences."

PI - "We aren't cool calculators of self-interest who sometimes go crazy; we're crazies who are, under special circumstances, sometimes rational."

Plus here's two bonus quotes from famous people:

"The common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken

"Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake." - Walter Pater

On the Bus

If you want to get from one side of Chicago to another on a Sunday trek, and you are in tune with the Public Transportation Gods, there's no better ride than the Red Line to the Halsted St. bus, and then the bus for miles and miles of smiles. I kid you not.

The Lovely Carla and I were on the hunt for some creative inspiration, (a dance performance and a movie) and somehow we found the best spinach quesadilla ever. I mean it. We found it at the Kristoffers Cafe in East Pilsen.

We also caught Sara's (WWSP's bass player) dance performance called "Tradeshow." It was provocative, evocative and all about clothes, and yarn and well, it was strange and cool.

Then we got back on the bus and went off to see Gus Van Sant's great new movie, Paranoid Park. It's beautifully done. Powerful, wistful - skater punks in Portland. Sublime.

Sunday we were alive in this little subterranean paradise. On the bus - discovering little islands of sweet life.

How to Deal...

How to deal with the doom and foreboding? Serpentine! Keep moving. Spin. Never stop. Unless you're unconscious. And even then...well, do what you can.

Entropy!

I woke up with George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass," swirling around in my head. Feelings of doom and foreboding. I put the double cd in the machine this morning and listen to George's masterpiece once again. It's still so powerful, beautiful, mournful too. Maybe more mournful because George is gone - really, a long time now. The album is a Phil Spector production, made when Spector was still considered just an eccentric genius, as opposed to his image today - EVIL MUNCHKIN!

Recovering from another Flaming Eyeball show - the actors are getting better and better, Masha did some new stuff that really cracked me up. My brother's band, the Banana Street Band opened for us last night. They were really, really good. A strange, Polish Gypsy blues, with some kind of middle-eastern drone, fueled by a strange, mad passion. Leadbelly meets Polanski. I see the same weird determination and drive in my brother's eyes that I sometimes see in the mirror.

We are both on some mad Don Quixote type trip, conjuring dreams and sounds and images for some unknown purpose. So as one of the actors says in the play, "our flaming eyeball is destined to flame out." 5 shows left. I think it's good work, I'm watching it slowly disappear even as it dances before me.