Things to Do in Bayonne When You're Dead Saturday, September 13, 2003

Another day with the elves. How come on TV remaking your apartment and life only takes one day, just like "A Christmas Carol"? At any rate, I'm once again astonished and grateful and woozy from a migraine. So I'll say goodnight. More later, I promise.

@ 10:44:00 PM, ,

The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends

Which is what the title of my 9/11 post should have been. This is the problem with not editing anything. The words, from one of the greats:

The Farmer and the Cowman

Andrew:
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends,
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
One man likes to push a plough,
The other likes to chase a cow,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends.

Territory folks should stick together,
Territory folks should all be pals.
Cowboys dance with farmer's daughters,
Farmers dance with the ranchers' gals.

All:
Territory folks should stick together,
Territory folks should all be pals.
Cowboys dance with farmer's daughters,
Farmers dance with the ranchers' gals.

Farmer:
I'd like to say a word fer the farmer,

Eller:
Well, say it!

Farmer:
He come out west and made a lot of changes

Man:
That's right!

Will:
He come out west and built a lot of fences,

Curly:
And built 'em right across our cattle ranges.

Cowboy:
Why don't you dirt strangers go back to Missouri where you belong?

Will:
We got just as much right here!

Farmer:
Shut up!
The farmer a good in criticism
No matter what the cowman says or thinks
You seldom see 'im drinkin' in a bar room

Curly:
Unless someboy else's buyin' drinks

Andrew:
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends,
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
The cowman ropes a cow with ease,
The farmer steals her butter and cheese,
That's no reason why they cain't be friends

Men:
Yeep yeep!

All:
Territory folks should stick together,
Territory folks should all be pals.
Cowboys dance with farmer's daughters,
Farmers dance with the ranchers' gals.

Eller:
I'd to say a word for the cowboy--

Curly:
You would!

Eller:
The road he treads is difficult and stoney
He rides fer days on end
With just a poney fer a friend

Annie:
I sure feelin' sorry fer the poney!

Eller:
The farmer should be sociable with the cowboy
If he rides by an' ask fer food an' water
Don't treat 'im like a louse
Make 'im welcome in your house

Ike:
But be sure that you locked up yo' wife an' daughters

[They all offend themselves at the same time and fight]

Girls:
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
One man likes to push a plough,
The other likes to chase a cow,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends.

GUN SHOT!!

Eller:
Ain't nobody gonna slug out anythin'. This here is a party!
Break it up ya' two ol' fools. Alright Andrew sing it!
Dum-dah-dee-um-dum-dum!

Andrew:
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends,

All:
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
One man likes to push a plough,
The other likes to chase a cow,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends.

Curly:
And when this territory is a state
An' joins the Union jus' like all the others
The farmer, and cowman and the merchant
Mus' all behave theirselves and act like brothers

Eller:
I'd like to teach you all a little sayin'
And learn the words by heart the way you should
I don't say I'm no better than anybody else,
But I'll be damned if I ain't jist as good!

All:
I don't say I'm no better than anybody else,
But I'll be damned if I ain't jist as good!

Territory folks should stick together,
Territory folks should all be pals.
Cowboys dance with farmer's daughters,
Farmers dance with the ranchers' gals!

Jonathan Schwartz on the radio; Steely Dan last night. I was in a mood all day, which didn't lighten at the prospect of a show. A dopey argument in the restaurant that spilled out onto the line outside Roseland. But then I discovered Mrs. Wrong Turn Journal and I were among the Beautiful People. Our tickets, which I had gotten free from the band, who are very gracious, let us onto the Mezzanine at Roseland, far above the cattle packed onto the dancefloor. We soon discovered that the real place to be on the Mezzanine was in the tables along the very edge, not standing along the rail behind them. We asked if we could sit down at one of them. The security guy answered with a look. If you gotta ask...

The show was close to the one at Jones Beach a couple weeks ago. Which is to say mostly oldies. I found myself getting into them more this time around, maybe the new perspective. I could appreciate a bit more the little changes and flourishes they put on the tunes. "Light edits," I guess you could call them, but they made a big difference. Still, I suspect that I'm always going to appreciate Steely Dan more on record than live. I think I'm getting too old and cranky for shows in general, too suspicious of crowds, too anxious to get home (and write about what a lousy time I had).

Halfway through we moved to the back of the section--we were right underneath a speaker and my earplugs weren't helping in the least--and we ended up leaving early. We were both a little ragged around the edges. Today we tear down the temple some more.

Last night, I received a very nice note from a friend who lives very close to Philip K. Dick's grave site. We had similar feelings about "Three's Company." Thanks for reading, and writing, and I promise to write something longer about all that. As soon as phantoms of Priscilla Barnes stop swirling around my head...

@ 1:42:00 PM, ,

A Close Watch Friday, September 12, 2003

Johnny Cash and John Ritter died today, and as you know, whenever a celebrity dies the physical remains release a flood of blogotron particles in the atmosphere. They then react with the musculature of the human finger, forcing digits toward keyboards.

In that spirit, I liked Johnny Cash. I haven't listened to his music in quite some time, and the world hasn't exploded. The Sun stuff, the rockabilly, moves me more than the mid and late career stuff, where he was coasting on persona, if not schtick. In other words, I'd rather have him when he was half Elvis and half Hank than when he was half Nick Cave and half Danzig. Still, the guy sang "Ring of Fire" and "Ghost Riders in the Sky," which would get him into anyone's heaven.

John Ritter was fascinating. Or, rather, "Three's Company" was fascinating. Someone I know described the movie "Bring It On" as being wholesomely sexy, the same way Beach Boys songs were. I kinda sorta know what that means, and to the extent that I do, I think "Three's Company" is also a good fit. It had the jiggle moments, but buried the sex under slapstick and general good feelings. Nothing really bad ever happens to anyone; nobody's nasty or spiteful; there are no jokes about jacking off or going down on someone. I don't think "Three's Company" is necessarily funny, but it's interesting in those terms: a more or less unsmutty sex farce. (Although I remember my voice dropping five octaves when Priscilla Barnes walked out in a bikini once...)

There's a longer post in all this, which hopefully I'll sort out after I've sorted everything else out. Be excellent to each other.

@ 1:59:00 PM, ,

It's a Ring-a-Ding World Thursday, September 11, 2003

From Frankie, of course. And who would deny it?

A long day, heavy with history. Bobbies and Mounties on the streets. Not a cloud in the sky. Appalling words in the office. But that's democracy, baby.

It's a ring-a-ding world. Let's hope it's still here when the sun comes up.

@ 10:08:00 PM, ,

Beautiful Dreamers

Outside my window, kids are reading the names of dead people. This morning I had a repetition, as Dr. Percy would call it: an 8:30 appointment at my allergist, which is where I was precisely two years ago. Back then, the receptionist told me a single-engine plane had hit the World Trade Center. I flinched for a second: Mrs. Wrong Turn Journal-to-be was there. I remembered how the Empire State Building, which I passed on the way to the office, had taken a hit in the Forties and come through just fine. Then I got downstairs and saw the smoke. Somebody said eight planes, somebody else said Pentagon. I never knew I cared about the Pentagon.

My wife-to-be made it through that day unhurt, and watched the tower fall from Exchange Place, where there is a statue of a valiant Polish officer being bayoneted in the back. That very night, a friend of mine told me he knew where they were coming from but they should've found a better way to stick up for the Palestinians. I ate two pizzas and slept for twelve hours.

Much in the meantime. Wars and rumors of war. Weddings and babies. And opinions. Oy, the opinions. I remember going out to eat last year on the anniversary and hoping nobody brought up politics. I hoped that, in fact, every goddamn time I've talked to anybody in the past twenty-four months.

It comes down to how you arrange the proposition. Either: We, as a nation, are flawed, but.... Or: ....but we, as a nation, are flawed. To put that more clearly, we have a choice between: Yes, we were attacked, yes, we suffered horrible losses, yes, the people who did this are awful. But we are flawed and worse things than 9/11 happen at sea and much of those things are our fault anyway, so we should be introspective and penitent, not warlike. Or the other: We are haunted by our past because God is just, as Jefferson warned us. And yet who else are you going to look to to save the world? A bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels? Beijing? Tierra del Fuego?

This, I think, is the subtext beneath the arguments for and against the war and everything springing from it: Half the country thinks there is a cancer at the heart of this society, Western Civ as well as this nation, and life will be a lie until we confront it and cut it out. Everything we've done while it's been growing, democracy, culture, all of it, is beside the point; it's like a talent show in the terminal ward. You sit there under the bunting and applaud, but in embarrassment and sadness and sympathy more than appreciation. The other half think we're the doctor on rounds. Maybe the doctor drinks, maybe he's an old crank, maybe a know-it-all who treats his staff shabbily. But without him nobody's going to get any better.

So what would it take to bring the two halves together? Two years ago, it seemed like war would do it, but apparently not. If Ming the Merciless showed up with his earthquake machine and death rays, he would have a cheering section. Friendship and love don't work, either, since I still grit my teeth when politics comes up in conversation and friendships no longer hold against abstractions. I think the road runs through Rome, but that's an argument for another day.

How about respect? If one half of the country says to the other half: We are all products of a singular country and a singular culture, one achieved with sweat and invention and libraries of ideas and the blood of the committed and innocent. Can we agree to assume the best of the other side, in fact to assume us to be all part of one struggle? And may we further assume that we all have the same black mark on our soul that consigns us to act out of a combination of weakness and high principle, that commits us to the struggle but keeps tricking us into slackening when strength is needed most?

Sure, comes the answer, from everyone, including me, to my shame. You first.

@ 10:23:00 AM, ,

Trains and Boats and Planes Wednesday, September 10, 2003

A long day with lots of terrifying paper. I arrived at the office to learn that someone was subpoenaing all the paperwork related to a story I had edited. It was a long edit and the e-mails had flown fast and fierce on it. Did I say something incriminating in one of them? Drip drip drip, sweat onto my glasses. Then our charming corporate counsel told us to exhale: We weren't getting sued. Somebody wanted our paperwork as part of a lawsuit against somebody else.

Then the mortgage refinancing with our equally charming attorney. Mrs. Wrong Turn Journal and I spent an hour signing our names. As the minutes clunked by, her handwriting got better, mine got worse. By the end it looked like my wife was signing to become my legal guardian, not the co-owner of the apartment. ("He's just got to make some sort of mark on the line, Mrs. Wrong Turn Journal. I understand he's got, ah, difficulties...")

Arrived home for some good news. Another story I edited, one that was just as much of a bear but I ended up wanting to hug, had Made a Difference. I'll wait till the follow-up runs before talking about it: I heard a rumor there are journos in the audience, and I don't want us getting scooped.

Now even scarier paper: Secret Thing. It's coming, it's coming. As usual, my bad guy is turning into a good guy. Maybe I should write my stories from the other side all the time. Hmmmm....

Tomorrow, a longer and even scarier day. Stay tuned.

@ 8:47:00 PM, ,

Is It Love or Is It T-Rex?

Just had a chance to fully dig into the wunnerful new blog my buddy has put up. He makes a great argument for the new White Stripes record. (And neglects to mention what a great vocalist he was in his own playing days.) Check it out.

@ 3:38:00 PM, ,

El Alamo

Edward Teller is dead. He led an expansive life, a 20th-century life: born in Budapest, refugee from the Nazis, part of the "Hungarian Conspiracy" that created the A-Bomb, later father of the H-Bomb, outspoken anti-Communist, driving force behind the Strategic Defense Initiative. His popular legacy, for all that, will be his caricature as Dr. Strangelove.

In college, I won an award for a snarky essay about how terrible the atomic bomb was. After the ceremony, I skipped out on my sister and father, who looked as proud and awkward as Joe Gargery meeting Pip in London, to get psychoanalyzed on a bench in Washington Square Park by a girl I desperately wanted to bed. My treatment of them was as shabby as my treatment of Teller and his accomplishments.

As belated apologies, from one Magyar to another: Béké Lengjen Nyugvó Poraik Fellet.

For the rest of you out there, békességben. i.e., peace out.

@ 11:42:00 AM, ,

A Bouncing Baby Blog!

My Dendrites are firing over this one!

@ 10:53:00 AM, ,

Seven Nation Army

Friends, like reporters in Asia, send notes after you go to sleep. Commenting on my recent music apathy a friend suggested I check out the latest White Stripes record. (He has a blog, too, but I've lost the address.) I actually do have the record, and I enjoy it very much, the single especially. I bought it on the basis of a review that said something to the effect that "be careful how you listen to it the first time, because you'll never get to hear it fresh again, like you'll never get to hear The White Album fresh again." That overstates its virtues, but it's a good piece of work.

At the same time, the band's vibe creeps me out occasionally--I can't tell if the naif thing is for real or not, or if those two are, for lack of a better word, just dumb. I had the same problem with Victoria Williams the first time around, too. She's an alt-country singer, for lack of a better genre to squeeze her into, and has a high, squeaky, kiddish voice. It grated on me until I saw her live and heard her schtick between songs; that's who she is, she's genuinely that squeaky and innocent. So it all came together.

My interest in Warren Zevon is turning into a Warren Zevon song. I think he could make some hay with the lyric: "I bought your anthology because I heard you died."

At any rate, thanks to the reporters who worked furiously through the wee hours, all for nothing. There's some joke in there about "accidentally, like an editor" but I can't figure out what it is.

@ 6:38:00 AM, ,

We Are All Made of Stars Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Another dopey evening. A misunderstanding eats up an hour, TV takes a couple more, and now I'm piddling away the rest before bed. Birthright, pottage, etc. Better stuff tomorrow.

@ 11:19:00 PM, ,

As Likely as Birds to Fly Out of This Thing

A bright golden haze on the jog track...a bright golden haze on the jog track. A windy, long-sleeved day. Lots of wonderful Walker on the ride in this morning, far too much to report. Do me a favor: Just read "Love in the Ruins." Then we'll talk.

OK, just one graf.

Here's the oddity. Max, the unbeliever, a lapsed Jew, believes in the orderliness of creation, acts on it with energy and charity. I believer, having swallowed the whole Thing, God Jews Christ Church, find the world a madhouse and a madhouse home. Max the atheist sees things like Saint Thomas Aquinas, ranged, orderly, connected up.

I am reminded of this because I had a nice chat this morning with the only other guy crazy enough to get in at the crack of dawn--a fan of the most aggressive, outre punk rock known to man, but the sweetest, most personable guy you'd ever want to meet. I, on the other hand, am generally unpleasant but listen to sentimental music. I'm not sure if this is a contradiction, or the answer to its own question.

What else is going on? I tarted up some of the stuff I'd already written for the Secret Thing and noticed with alarm that my partner is rapidly assembling boots, spikes and pitons for the ascent of Secret Thing #2. I've got about 119,000 words to go on Secret Thing #1, so I'd better get cracking.

In other words...more later.

@ 9:30:00 AM, ,

Mr. Blue Sky Monday, September 08, 2003

A long day but not busy. I waited until 3 o'clock for a story going tonight. Not much fuss over it, some rumbling over the lede but I felt absolutely no attachment to it, so I breezed through the editing. If I hadn't gotten home at 8:30 it might've been a perfect day.

Our first dinner at the new table! Not a new table, really, just the old in a new spot, over by the window, where we can see the skate punks desecrating the church and funeral home. Mrs. Wrong Turn Journal made a delightful bowl of pasta, which we ate while chatting. A small thing, I realize, but we have always been boob-tubers: Come home, microwave whatever, eat it on the couch in front of the you-know-what. Nice to be pre-modern for a change. Let's hope it lasts.

Forgot to report: All is well in Astoria with our buddies and their newly arrived Madball. My sister had a birthday, as did my friend the physicist, who works with Vikings. Another friend's birthday is coming up, but as usual I can't remember the exact day. How's that for up close and personal? At any rate, as Dr. Percy says, "We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their faces away." A big fat smooch to all of you!

Missing Mr. Zevon a bit more. I was never a huge fan, just the hits, and now I feel bad about that--as though he were an old friend who kept inviting me to lunch and I never found time. Wherever he is, I'm sure there's a piano.

@ 10:42:00 PM, ,

Poor Poor Pitiful Us

Warren Zevon is dead. A funny guy with a great sound. So long.

@ 9:40:00 AM, ,

I Ride in Your Slipstream

A decent morning after a wheezy night, wheezy to the point that I started paying nervous attention to how many hits were left on my little disk of antihistamine. ("I know what you're thinking, punk--did he fire six shots, or just five?" --Clint Eastwood, "Dirty Harry") After I coughed up a lungful of gunk it was almost peaceful. Forget sutra-gasms, forget thundering symphonies, forget the cafes of Firenze: There's nothing like waking up the morning after a migraine, and there's nothing like laying quietly and breathing after an asthma attack.

As I said, a decent morning. A cool misty morning at the track, and music is starting to sound good again. My new philosophy: I'll just listen uninterrupted for the hour, I won't flip through the songs. It paid some dividends. I got one of my favorite Ron Sexsmith tunes, "Thirsty Love," and it sounded even better with a lead-in by Frank Sinatra: "Hot damn! I wish you love!"

A moment on the light rail. Chuckling through "Love in the Ruins"--including three extraordinary pages that I'd love to post but am afraid would give a very wrong impression--when something made me look up. There, right at eye level, a bug was clinging to the outside of the window. A tiny, tube-y little guy, with six wiry legs and stripes on his belly like a pedestrian crosswalk. His thin wings were quivering against the wind. There were a couple of speckles on the underside of his head that I imagined were eyes. I looked into them and tried to transmit some fellow-feeling: Another commuter, along for the ride.

Then the wind got to be too much. We were on a straightaway, through overgrown fields and drainage pools, and the train was moving as fast as it could--fifty miles an hour, maybe more. The rush of air knocked one of the bug's legs free. Half of his body went with it, bending like a palm against the furious current. He struggled to get back up. He flicked out his tiny front leg, searching for purchase on the window. But the wind kept knocking it loose, snarling it against it his other limbs.

He fought for a good ten seconds--a long time to me, the flicker through iPod songs; how long to him, with a lifespan of hours?--before he got his bristly foot back against the glass. Good for him! We'd be pulling into the station soon, he could take a rest.

I was just wondering if bugs had lungs, and if so, were his pumping hard with all the effort, when the wind struck him and flung him off the window, into the slipstream. Or maybe he let go: It didn't seem like the train had speeded up, and there was something almost volitional about the arc he cut through the air, like a paratrooper whipping out of a plane.

Hot damn! I wish him love.

@ 9:35:00 AM, ,

Tim Buckley and Leatherface Sunday, September 07, 2003

Quote of the day, from one of my favorite songwriters of the last decade, Jim White:

The burden of love is the fuel of bad grammar
You stutter and stammer
What a bitch to convey

The first line is what grabs me, but I suppose you need the rest of it for context. This from a haunting song off his most recent record, "No Such Place." Everything he's done is worth a listen; he's a singular voice in "alt-country"--so far afield, in fact, that I'm not sure he belongs in the category at all. Unlike the rest of the crowd, he doesn't sound like an urban neurotic with a dusty twang. (All these guys with stubble singing about drinkin' whiskey and moanin' cause their girls done left them--please. And all those fractured girls who sing like Lucinda...) Jim has a high, thin, haunted voice, and he uses it to tell spooky stories--like waking up in a cabin in the woods at 3 a.m. because you think you've heard something crunching through the woods. Imagine Flannery O'Connor writing lyrics for Tom Waits.

Not that he's singing the Ballad of Camp Crystal Lake every time out. But he uses the same ghostly quality in his love songs to keep them from lurching into boozy self-pity. It's something like the Devo cover of "I Can't Get No Satisfaction"; by the time they recorded it the original version sounded so self-satisfied the point of the song was lost. So they turned it into a spiky, clangy robot anthem--and found the truth of it again. (This observation stolen from liner notes someplace.) Similarly, the country lamenting song has become something of a cliche at this point. When Hank Williams sang "I'm so lonesome I could cry," that kind of frank howling loss was new to popular song. After the twenty zillionth go-round, you roll your eyes. Jim White finds a way to make loss sound fresh; he finds the spectre of love. Here's a taste:

Well, I was shacked up down in Mobile with a girl from New York City
She woke me up one night to tell me that we weren't alone
She said she saw the ghost of a woman staring at me
I told her not to worry, but in the morning when I woke up, she was gone

So I headed on to Florida where I tangled with some sailors
And as I lay bloody on the wharf, I cursed the ship they sailed on
Wouldn't you know, twenty four hours later that ship sank into the ocean...
disappearing like an unwanted memory beneath the waves

I guess it's cause, still waters run, run deep in me
'cause I got this crazy way...
crazy way I'm swimming in still waters

Lots of ghosts in church. I went to sleep feeling exhausted and unrevivable, knowing my body clock would get me up at 7 for mass and wishing I could just let it run down, just for one day. I was up at 7, as predicted, but I felt fine. Call it a clean apartment, call it grace. I didn't even mind Friar Tuck today.

Oh yeah, the ghost--an idea, probably for a quick-and-dirty short story. (i.e., fifty-five pages and six months to write.) Into the inbox it goes.

And oh yeah again--the title of this post. Before "The Order" yesterday we got about nine previews for horror movies, including a remake of one of the most uncomfortable movies ever, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." (Based on the same real-life murderer that "Psycho" is, by the way.) The remake is supposed to take place in the same period as the original, 1973; mistake, I think. The actors look very wrong. They've got that 21st-century cyborg beauty, all the girls are too skinny and muscular, and not a bad set of bangs or frosted tips in sight. Anyhow. The trailer opens with a van driving in slow motion through dusty Texas sunlight to the tune of...This Mortal Coil's cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren." Weirder than Nick Drake in a car commercial? Maybe. It's definitely a vibe.

Enough for tonight, I think. Have a good one.

@ 7:25:00 PM, ,

A Visit from the Sin-Eaters

An extraordinary day. A transformative day. The elves have been at work again.

Our friends arrived once again from the Last Homely Apartment in Jersey City and hand-held Mrs. Wrong Turn Journal and myself through clearing out the apartment. Mr. Elf and I had the job of disposing of four old (but not antique) chairs at which the 101st Salvation Airborne turnedup their noses. We tetrissed them into the car, drove down Route 440 and left them in the parking lot of a movie theater. The movie wasn't half as fun as that. Even if Peter Weller played the evil pope.

Returned home and performed a radical mastectomy on my bookshelves. Three more garbage bags are destined for sale someplace and the rest are in some rough order. We emerged bleary and huffing dust to discover that the females of the species had turned our moribund room into a living room. So much stuff is gone, or about to go, and it all looks so clean and free. So much space between the walls! Who knew?

Out to dinner at an old-school Italian place not far away. Charming waiter. I ate the bounty of the sea.

Now, awake and dazed and grateful; for the work and for friends in general. Time to see what the elves on the altar can do for me.

@ 7:44:00 AM, ,