100 candy-colored, acid freaked-out, monkeys.

Remember, I started out as an English Major...

I've sometimes thought that life (specifically my life) is like a novel.

I've read lots and lots of novels.

When I was much younger, life seemed sort of like a Charles Dickens novel. Lots of colorful characters, multiple plot-lines, little surprises along the way. Nice neat ending.

Later it seemed more like a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Time travel, circular time, sequences out of sequence. No clear cut ending.

Which then morphed into Philip K. Dick land. Unreliable narrator. Reality as fog. Bizarre happenings. Time slips. Paranoia. Justified Paranoia.

And now I'm convinced that there's a room somewhere, a room with 100 monkeys on acid and they are madly typing away on old Remington typewriters. Our lives are the resulting output (the rambling, shambling chatterings) of 100 candy-colored, acid freaked-out, monkeys.

The monkeys are having the time of their lives...

I Wonder

I wonder what's going to happen next...

Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, George C. Scott

Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats - the final game...

"How can I lose?"

"Fat Man, you shoot a great game of pool."

Dreams

I got onto this line of thinking from something Bruce Springsteen said in a documentary. He was talking about writing and recording his great album "Born to Run." He said that the songs were mainly about two things:

1. What happens when your dreams come true?

2. What happens when they don't?

And there is something about that album that makes you think of the times you've connected, and the times you've missed connecting. And it's kind of great and kind of sad too.

And actually there is just one answer to both questions: You make new dreams!

Two Kinds

It turns out there are two kinds of socialism.

Taking money from rich people and giving it to poor people is the bad kind.

Taking money from poor people and giving it to rich people is the good kind.

A Really Large Number

This is all just a con game.

And the "confidence" has taken flight.

I know I live in a bubble, there isn't a Wal-Mart anywhere near me, but in my daily sojourns I must report that the NATIVES ARE RESTLESS. Confidence is vanishing and has as much value as one of those sub-prime mortgages, or one of those wacky credit default swaps.

What happens when no one believes? In anything?

I guess that's when the new game begins. Once upon a time...

UPDATE: Our political landscape has entered the Woody Allen "Bananas" phase. From today forward our new language will be Swedish, and everyone must wear their underwear on the outside. Check out this interview. This woman gives "clueless" a bad name. Scary Funny.



UPDATE NO. 2: Ok. This is freaking ridiculous. Pity. Finally, you have to pity the poor woman. There's that "deer in the headlight" thing going on. Everyone knows what it's like to try to bluff your way through something you have no clue about. But jeez, she's right, Alaska is right next to Russia! So what's the problem?! Holy shit!


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Thorn and Rose

The Lovely Carla and I collaborated on a video. It's gonna be part of our performance piece premiering at the Ravenswood Art Walk in a couple weeks. It's kind of slow and stately. Not as slow as Andy Warhol's famous 8 hour Empire State film, but still in this jump-cut, over-saturated media world this is a little contrary.

The Lovely Carla provided the inspiration and embodies the whole thing. I wrote and tracked the music (my grand opus!?), and pointed the video camera. Thanks to the sun and the beach and the flock of seagulls for all their assistance.

It's too long for YouTube, so I posted it at our MySpace site. If you have some time, and patience, give it a try.

There's text that goes along with the visuals. This will be the background for some foreground antics from both of us - live in real time. The main refrain: "Everyone knows, there's a thorn with every rose."

Thorn and the Rose

We all Woke Up and Found Ourselves in "Shaun of the Dead"

T.S. Eliot wrote about The Hollow Men:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.

John Robb writes about The Hollow State:

It is merely a shell that has some influence over the spoils of the economy. The real power rests in the hands of corporations and criminal/guerrilla groups that vie with each other for control of sectors of wealth production. For the individual living within this state, life goes on, but it is debased in a myriad of ways.

And Wall Street's Men of Power and Influence put a gun to our collective head and tell us if we don't give them lots and lots of money, right now, they will MELTDOWN, I SWEAR!

Woody Guthrie once told us:

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

Are these people freaking kidding? This is all totally insane. I say: Let it melt. Let it melt...

Then lets make a new world.

Money Ate the Money, Honey!

Why do we paint and write, and put on plays, and dance and sing and play music?

So we have less time to think and fret about all the other crazy ass shit human beings do!

Anyway, this morning I'm thinking isn't it interesting that recent history seems to be showing us this picture:

CAPITALISM DEFEATED COMMUNISM!

AND THEN

CAPITALISM ATE ITSELF!

Shit Pile America!

I've been bouncing around the blogosphere this morning and it's all abuzz with the big 700 billion dollar bailout plan floated by the same people who basically stood by and watched Wall Street bankrupt America. This is certainly not my area of expertise. Check out this narrative from an insider if you are interested.

If you want to talk Telecasters and Stratocasters I have lots of informed commentary, but when guys like Paul Krugmen and Atrios tell me this deal stinks to high heaven I kind of give them the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe I simplify? That is my stock in trade...

The Big Money Boyz having been making oodles of money with money for years. The old fashioned way of making money, by doing work, providing real services, manufacturing goods, etc. was oh so old world.

The greed and corruption was a self-supporting vicious circle floating on a shit-pile of toxic waste (bad debt). The whole house of cards started collapsing, and the amounts of money at risk world wide turns out to be multiples of staggering.

This is the kind of thing (Black Swan) that could change our lives for a long, long time. And now, people in high places, are asking for the power and the money to make it all right. The same greedy bastards now tell us we must trust them to fix it.

And as John Robb reminds us, most of us were left out of the decision loop. The average American didn't reap the benefits, (Robb: "From 1974 onwards, the rewards of productivity growth (economic expansion) went exclusively to the capital markets and not into income growth for individuals. This was likely done, although the mechanism is unclear, under the assumption that the discipline of capital markets produced better investment decisions than individuals.") but will pay the piper.

Iraq, Katrina, Bailout. There does seem to be a pattern here.

Dancing on Needles

I've been engaged with some real sleaze-buckets. The dregs of the dregs. Real bad actors. Who knows maybe they are just a figment of my imagination?!

And they make me laugh, and make me stronger. And whatever they were trying to accomplish, I say "Hah! What fools! And thanks for showing me the way!"

Sometimes it is amazing and awe-inducing to see the depths of degradation a human being will gladly sink to. So very instructive. It is evident in the larger context and in the smaller context too. And then, well, we live in the context of no context.

Anyway, an interesting subject kind of came up in this context. Who is it that actually writes this blog? Is it dumps? is it sunny? Is it the one called "which one is dumps?" Are these words the result of the existential battle between two mythological characters: dumps and sunny?

Is it all the doing of the nameless flesh and blood apparition that fuels up on coffee and types into the void?

Is this "I" that "I" refer to just a fictive construction? Is every "I" a lie? Is this all just a fruitless branch of Epistemology or just pissing in the wind?

How many sunnyjimmy's can dance on the head of a pin? And once you get them all up there, is there any room for dumps?

I imagine the ideal blogger. "I" am not that blogger. I mean I'm not even sure I exist. Although I do believe God exists and he is the ideal blogger. But I imagine being him, and just like those Arthur Murray dance lessons, I tentatively try to follow the steps.

Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn -

I'm feeling happily apocalyptic this morn. Not sure why. I mean if it all comes crashing down around our ears, my bag of bones is just a vulnerable as the next poor joker's...

Still...this feeling of sunny euphoria is real. Maybe it's the coffee??

Here's the anthem as per Michael Stipe and REM:

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Was 30 Years of "Progress" just Vapor?

The myths we live with, the happy figments of our imaginations, sometimes run up against hard realities. That's when things get interesting. Party time!?

So, can we park "free market capitalism" and "trickle down economics" in the eternal dustbin of history?

As always, John Robb at Global Guerillas has a mind-opening take on what's happening to our global economic system. He and James Howard Kuntsler are two of our most perceptive observers - with highly polished axes to grind.

How about this from Robb:

"Would we have been better off if the benefits of massive productivity growth over the last three decades had been shared with hundreds of millions of Americans? Of course. In fact, it is hard to see any other way, other than an open decision making process, which would be able to deal with the growing complexity of the modern world -- from globalization to technological change to growing instability.

Can this be error be corrected? Probably not. Most Americans have fallen deeply into debt (mirrored by the US government) in an attempt to maintain lifestyles (or an illusion of progress). They don't have the financial resources for any meaningful decision making power left and worse, there isn't any recognition that a concentration of decision making was even a problem in the first place. In fact, given that most of the last 30 years of American economic investment is now vapor, it's hard to imagine us avoiding economic catastrophe."

Morning Diagnosis

The Lovely Carla tells me this morning...

"You are too much of...something."

She is so right...

And for some reason, (which I can't explain*), I think of this song..."take a load for free...and put the load right on me."

*Actually now that I think of it, I can explain why I picked this song. "Too Much of Something," made me think of Dylan's Basement Tapes song, "Too Much of Nothing," which he recorded in clouds of Mary Jane smoke in that famous Pink house with the Band.

I googled "Too Much of Nothing" on YouTube and came up with Peter, Paul and Mary. I just couldn't pull the trigger on that, so I searched "the Band" and picked one of their all-time best songs in this live performance from 1969. So there.

As the Lovely Carla says, "too much!"

Visualize Victory...

Go visit Art & Clairvoyance. Kris Cahill Presents the essential picture...

"I would like to suggest that, beginning now, today, you start to Visualize Victory. Every second you spend matching to the victory you’d like to Become, is precious time spent NOT matching to cynicism, defeat, war, hatred, suspicion, pain, depression. Imagine life as you’d like to live it. Be ready to change your own attitudes, yourself. Change of any kind always begins with the spirit, it begins within." - K.C.

Market Meltdown?!

Well, I guess these are the Financial Wizards who make money disappear!

I finally get the whole Wall Street thing.  Don't know why I didn't get it earlier.  I mean, I spent a lot of time at the race track betting on the ponies.

These guys in their shiny suits, pulling down their big time bucks were just a bunch of big-time bettors laying big money on the sure thing.

Never understood that strategy - all the bettors flocking to the window putting their money on the horse everyone else was putting their money on.  I've seen way too many 2/5, 3/5, 4/5 and even money horses get caught in the stretch!

Another vanity project.  

And when the Bankers start acting like high-rolling crack addicts hasn't the whole capitalism schtick kind of jumped the shark?  And tell me again, why do those money guys get to walk away with big fat checks when the bets come in, and all those little guys in the heartland have to reach in their pockets to bail them out when the bets go up in smoke? 

Nice racket.

"You are forgiven..." - Pete Townsend

I'm recovering from one of those glorious r&r nights.  Stayed up late playing music at the Red Line Tap.  WWSP lives!

Here it's raining.  Three straight days of driving rain.  Is it time to start building an Ark?

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Wes Anderson and his superb use of r&r songs in his movies.  Here's one of my all time favorites.  The Who's "A Quick One While He's Away," in "Rushmore," a movie about two friends in love with the same woman. There is the friendship, betrayal and then reconciliation. Here's the battle.

How many rock songs are about forgiveness?



And here's the Who doing the complete opus. One of their great performances.

Like a Hurricane

I have to credit the Lovely Carla for this scenario.  I just added a little color...

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a hurricane that would chase George W. Bush around everywhere he went? It would be his constant shadow. Chase him all over tarnation!  It would always remind him and us, what a complete wreck he has made of everything around him. 

Sort of like King Midas with a twist. In this case, everything "W" touches turns to a stinking pile of shit. And maybe the voices of the dead, those that suffered for one man's vanity, the civilians (men, women, children), the soldiers from all nations, would swirl around in that big old wind, and haunt the man until his last dying breath. 

But of course, maybe he wouldn't even notice. Yeah, probably not.  His fate is to be him.  I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone, even my worst enemy.  Ok, maybe my worst enemy.

The Movie

I love when I'm on the road, and music finds me. I sometimes feel like I'm in a Martin Scorsese (especially his early stuff) or Wes Anderson (pretty much every movie he's made) movie. Those two guys are the absolute masters of finding rock songs and marrying them to striking images. Those are the movie moments that totally imprint on my brain matter - bring some kind of transcendence.

Anyway, in the jimmydumps/sunnyjimmy movie that I'm in, I was on the road yesterday, making the long city trek from my humble abode to my brother's rehearsal space in Wicker Park. A long excursion through the cityscape. Always a trip. I found myself in a hipster joint on Milwaukee in the middle of hipster heaven. A place called Earwax. Which might not sound all that appealing, but really is.

On the music box they were playing Bob Dylan's "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." This is one of those unlikely Dylan masterpieces, I doubt whether he ever did it live. Wonder what those session cats in Nashville back in 1966 thought when Dylan pulled out reams of lyrics? Anyway, it's sort of a long, ploddy song, that takes flight. And the obscure and mysterious lyrics just send me to another realm. Love it.

With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,
And your basement clothes and your hollow face,
Who among them can think he could outguess you?
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns,
Who among them would try to impress you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

And the little hipster boys and girls in Earwax, with their cool tattoos, and nose rings, and skinny pants and cool cat smiles, what did they think of me, the old beat dude with the guitar slung over my shoulder, with this big shit-eating grin coming over my face as the the organ swells and the shimmering guitars washed over over me. And the girl at the counter had a Mona Lisa smile too.

I kind of felt like I sprouted wings and floated to other lands. And it was all alright. Yes, it was...

Sex, Drugs and Big Oil

It's been obvious for a long time, if you put people in government who don't believe in government, you get government that basically works as a feeding trough for big corporations. Welcome to your modern Republican government.

And if the people who are supposed to oversee industry, let's say the people who give out contracts to the oil and gas industry, are from the oil and gas industry, don't you set up a pretty obvious conflict?

It turns out some of our fine government employees ( over at the Interior Department) really were in the bed of Big Oil. And they were partying like they were roadies for Motley Crue or something. Jeez, kind of gives sex and drugs and rock and roll a bad name.