beet

New Art by Teddy Schapiro

2011-06-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

I visited my buddy Teddy Schapiro yesterday. Picked up 30 drawings. I've posted some here before. His style has since simplified into a black and white, thick and thin lined graphic a la caricatures from the 60s, which is consistent with Teddy's interest in toys and pop culture of that era. Thematically, there are a lot of "Toys as Best Friends", his signature fascination with women, feminists, lesbians, Kafka, and his curiosity about death and the trappings of funerary culture, including this rather grim "morgue shot." In a way, he has focussed on some point in his development and decided to simply strip-mine that phase of his emotional development. I enjoy the free association, the automatic drawing frame of mind, the freedom of it. At times they seem glum and claustrophobic, but in another way imaginative and an escape into the mind's interior, as opposed to a vista in the countryside. Anyway, here are 3 of them. I'm selling them for $25 ea. I have 27 others. I sold the entire last batch I had, so act quick! You can find me at the 25th Street Garage fleamarket (where I met Teddy in the first place).

Bicycles

2011-03-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

I got these a while back. Thought I might take them to the Greenwich CT ephemera show, but I think I'll just keep 'em...

THE HIDDEN TRUTH BEHIND FAMILY PORTRAIT CAMPAIGN POSTCARDS:

2010-08-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and peoples of the internets, I picked up these political campaign family postcards at the Allentown paper show. I can't stop looking at them. They are a creepy reminder of the fragility of the human spirt, as well as a creepier reminder of American ambitions, which are: You got your basic human beings overcompensating for their weaknesses by joining forces with the megalomaniacal Satan, Prince of Darkness to conquer and rule other people. This in turn reminds me that no matter how hard we try, how far we go, inside we're a weak karmic-biological mess: moist to the touch, in a mildly off-putting way, with a specific odor that triggers the instincts of large, toothy animals to kill -- yet we are afflicted with a cruelly ironic need to cuddle.

So you cover your weakness with that charcoal suit and power tie. You look into the mirror, gazing into your own eyes with that smile meant to project utmost confidence and say, "You are a winner, Sir! Go run for public office!" But no matter how much hairspray or hair tonic, deodorant or cologne, any amount of shaving...wherever you shave... or starching of clothes, me and you is just people. People too often under the influence of a certain prince in red, with a forked tongue, horned head, tail with a spade at the end, who roams this earth on a shopping spree for sinners' souls...

See, Satan, gains control of an average feller's mind and tells him he is better than all the other fellers. That is why they run to rule, rule to run, rule to rule, and sometimes run to run. They want your money as bad as TV preachers, they want your devotion as if they are the Lord above. In the meantime, they prey on their fellow man's fears, weaknesses, and sinful appetites. Depending on which course will bring the most political gain, they alternately seek reward or retribution for themselves and the general populace over human behavior that always has been, and always will be, creating demons and false idols along the way. Sure, we all meet our demons. Most of us in the depths of our souls. But some meet them right there the media spotlight for all the world to see.

EXIBIT A is in the above 1967 Arlen Specter for Mayor campaign postcard. The first question is: Why must a politician put his entire family on a pedestal when running for office? Why must two 8 year olds in uncomfortable wool and polyester church clothes shout "Yay for Daddy!" instead of shouting "Get me out of these itchy things!"? Because. Because the devil makes their daddy's ass do it. And you will see in some of the other cards, the complex netting the devil has woven to capture souls.

[By the way, a pencilled note on the back of this card put there by a previous owner says that Arlen Specter lost this race. I wonder if this photo was the tipping point in voters' minds? -ed.]

* * *

EXHIBIT B:

This postcard was made the year they invented hairspray, and was in fact the inspiration for the John Waters most sinfully embellished movie titled "Hairspray." There's also an underpinning of baroque drama in it all...or in shall I say, they are opposite of the cast of Dangerous Liaisons. Such a quandary: Although embarking on a quest for power, these people, if they were ever allowed in the French court would have been laughed out, or even executed for such profound buffoonery. Luckily they are American. Allowed to wallow in their professed innocence. And they are kind of sweet... Refreshingly not aristocratic, in that powdered wig sense. Perhaps they are just regular folks...NAW! ARE YOU KIDDING? Has the devil once again placed his cloak of deceit over your eyes? Wake up, Leviticus!

Although the kid with the crewcut is completely captivating, in reality, he's simply race trained. His dad has just said, "now put on that 'good-boy' smile we talked about," and turning to his wife said, "You, too, Gertie." Little do we suspect that overgrown cherub is in fact the class bully, leaving a trail of crying, pants-wetting wimps strewn around the elementary school playground after every recess. But there it is in a postcard, mailed out for thousands to scrutinize. If that there James R. Cavanaugh (with such a nice, tongue-tickling Eerish name) produced this smiling little kid, what will the city budget look like?

This card also reveals the family "dark side," and her name is Gertie... Is his wife completely world-weary or what? Don't worry, Gertie, next year valium will be all the rage. And the attire for that little girl on daddy's lap? Holy cheesecake! ...do you see that?... Uh... I can't see that passing muster in today's pedophile-phobic environment. I mean, it looks like -- and I'm just sayin "looks" like -- he's ever so subtly lifting up his little girl's skirt as some kind of practical joke! I think I know what the city budget will look like now: Completely transparent. The other daughter is speaking to the camera in a secret, evil code. She's saying, "when I'm 17, I'm splittin' to Vassar. But first I'm gonna reach under my baby-sister's dress and pinch her ass!"

It doesn't end there. Upon further examination I discovered the similarities in the smiles between Gertie and son...you see it as plain as I do, don't you? Their lips, their eyes, their bewitching wiggling noses. Fer sher: They house spirits of darkness. The knowledge of evil. Now look at the son's ear. Now look just above it: the pin on Gertie's blue dress. That is a huge clue: 'Tis the ring of the dark Lord Sauron, secret suitor to "Mrs. Cavanaugh" and father to that loathsome bastard in a pint-sized suit! Folks, before you is not simply the offspring of an aspiring Philadelphia politician, 'tis non-other than the son of evil, Daemien, the Beast as prophesized in the Book of Revelations!

Ah, whatever, you say. Life goes on. As for the politics of James R. Cavanaugh, he is fighting on the side of the workers, with the Retail Clerks and Upholsterers' International Union. Or is he a typical Philadelphia mobster embezzler? Oh, but his PR team is pumping him as a watchdog to a corrupt democratic city hall. I can't find any wiki entries to verify the outcome of his life one way or the other. Perhaps he just lost and continued working with the unions. A pro-union Republican, back when that might occur. At least in local politics. At any rate, the internets bear no clue of the kid, but just be aware, evil can spring up anywhere!

* * *

EXIBIT C MY TEETH:

Lud Zupancic gained notoriety for his brief but torrid campaign against Fluoride and his familial involvement with the KGB. Running soon after our nation's water was first supplemented with Fluoride, a batch of water went hideously awry causing an apparent outbreak of lock-jaw and zombification. That's right, thousands of average Pennsylvanian volks were rendered zombie-slaves to their teeth. In this shot, though they appear to be a family with just very attractive teeth, the teeth of the Lud Zupancic family are indeed ciphers of their souls, and most certainly calling the shots, dragging their helpless bodies from dentist to dentist, sink to sink, toothbrush to toothbrush, tube to tube, in search of bigger and bigger doses of Fluoride, and sometimes even forcing them to watch sports. That is why they call Fluoride "the elixir of evil."

Of course, the Fluoride manufacturing lobby loved it. "Fluoride today, Fluoride tomorrow, Fluoride forever!" was the cry. There was a civic Fluoride holiday complete with a parade of marching zombified tooth-slave people dressed as toothbrushes and streamers made of floss, ironically held in Carbon, PA. Pennsylvania was soon nick-named "The Whitest State in America." It was impossible to stop. No insurgency could ever get off the ground due to the zombification Fluoride was able to cast over it's victims.

Part 2 of the Lud Zupancic saga is Carbon my friends... or rather a simple carbonated beverage (that contains a glut-load of sugar).

While touring a Coca-Cola bottling plant in anticipation of a whopping campaign contribution, the deeper, inner "Lud Zupancic" was growing sick of his zombified state. Pushed to the brink, Lud Zupancic attempted suicide by diving into a large vat of the world's most popular synthetic beverage.

"I was emersed in all the bubbles and the sweetness and the caffeine," Lud Zupancic recalled years later with a slight lisp, "I was prepared to meet my maker. Just floating in that dark, rich, sweet froth, gathering my last thoughts on earth. I had just mustered all my will to step foot over the guardrail of that factory ramp and leap into that gurgling vat of Coca-Cola. All the while, I was saying in my head, 'here I am oh Lord my God! Take me! Take me away from this Fluoride Beast! Take me to that special place you made just for me, Lud Zupancic.'"

Ah, but the devil is a tricky bastard! No sooner had Lud Zupancic re-gained his wits, dog paddled to the top of the vat of Coca-Cola and re-gained his breath at the rim of what an observer might say the largest Coke-float ever, then Beelzebub waltzed right over to his big tattooed arm in the form of Lady Wantsalot. You see, the only antidote to King Fluoride was to bathe in Coca-Cola. Lud Zupancic was suddenly aware that he may be the only fully sentient human being in the state of Pennsylvania. What power! What awesome power! But what would he do with it? With whom would he share the conquest? When he got home later, he called his brother Cvetko back in what is now Slovenia.

"Cvetko, my brother!"

"Ah, yes, my brother Lud Zupancic!"

"Cvetko, my wife, my son, my daughter, my peoples in my town, my superiors, my governor, my..."

"What, Lud Zupancic my brother, what do you want from me on this very expensive long distant call that makes me now awake at such an hour?"

"It's just... it's just..." Led Zupancic suddenly broke into tears over the telephone. He cried over their mother's death, the milk Lud Zupancic and his brother Cvetko would steal as a childen from their baby sister's bottle which eventually caused her to have rickets. How bad he felt leaving their small village festering in ticks and poverty and insurmountable amounts of incomplete paperwork that filled the streets of such inconsequential socialist villages, the endless yet useless piles of diplomas from free education, unbearable hum of vaguely intellectual conversation, the constant splash of refugees diving after cargo ships on which to escape to unknown ports. Yes, this ambiguous pain that hit poor Lud Zupancic like a ton of bricks was homesickness. He missed the old country. He love the old country so. But here in Pennsylvania they had cars. He promised his brother a car if he would join him in the states.

Mr. Zupancic's brother Cvetko, detecting the severe urgency in Lud Zupancic's voice (and also looking forward to driving something besides a Yugo) schemed a way to get from his poor village, to the USA. He bribed a local bureaucrat the equivalent of $3.97 for access to the eastern block. Armed with a pocket knife and a story that was all heart, he traded his pocket knife to a Soviet bureaucrat for his citizenship in the great Union of Soviet Socialists. By bribing a Soviet immigration judge with a small, shiny trinket he had bought from a street vendor in a brief visit to Kosovo for the equivalent of 29 cents, he gained access into the Soviet air force. A Soviet aircraft pilot to whom he slipped the equivalent of 8 cents, was able to sneak him onto Soviet spy plane. Aboard this great craft, some 70,000 feet over Pennsylvania, with his last possession, a stick of gum, he was able to bribe a paratrooper into giving him a his jumpsuit and parachute. The paratrooper gave him only the briefest instruction, and in one quick nudge Cvetko was out the hatch. It was a glorious free fall, then a soft, angelic glide strapped to a parachute over the lush land of Pennsylvania, until he landed on the hood of his brother's gas-guzzling sedan.

Little did Lud Zupancic know, but his brother Cvetko was still bitter over the mutual love of their life, the svelte Ancka Svetandrojcek. Though Cvetko originally arrived with the best intentions, he quickly was overcome with long past romantic jealousies and jealousy of the bright red color of Lud Zupancic's Galaxy 500. It also occurred to him that this was a prime opportunity for an aspiring communist spy. On the first eve of his arrival Cvetko and Lud Zupancic drank to their health and happiness. However, inside his government issue long-underwear, eluding the scrutiny of his cleverly bribed superiors, was a hot and hearty 127 proof national beverage of their native land, much able to mask the taste and smell of high octane Fluoride mint toothpaste. He got Lud Zupancic all hopped up on the zombifying drug once again. Lud Zupancic slipped into the back of his "Lud Zupancic" soul as if the sweet freedom of that glorious Coca-Cola bath had never happened. Cvetko gained complete control over Lud Zupancic, Mrs. Lud Zupancic and the children of Lud Zupancic, thereafter heartlessly controlling the entire family under an oppressive Fluoride fist, providing the KGB with numerous inane details of life in Allegheny County.

Enter Dottie Tassel, a 22-year-old Pittsburgh steel-worker's daughter, exotic performer, and most importantly, mistress and stylist to J. Edgar Hoover. On a visit home she noticed something peculiar. Her father's neighbor's brother Cvetko seemed to be the only person in town with bad teeth. "Why, who would go around with those nasty brown things pointing all this way and that?" she was quoted as saying by an FBI informant, "it's simply uncouth."

This immediately brought the entire family under suspicion. Several inquiries were made as to the motivations of Lud Zupancic and his brother Cvetko. Although it was at first a small domestic, covert operation, Hoover made sure no amount of money was spared. The UPS man was in fact an FBI plant. The phone company tapped wires. In after a brief time, endless amounts of Pentagon resources were spent monitoring the activities of this family of Fluoride zombies and their one sentient uncle. The conclusion: The uncle was a misfit. And to Cvetko? Disappointed in the vacuous whiteness of Pennsylvania, the watery beer, the soggy pretzels, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Mister Rogers, Cvetko caught the next garbage barge out of town, and was off to freedom in New Orleans, where he made a living by playing his concertina in the streets with a sage monkey (to whom he eventually married) and a string of indigent, tap dancing street urchins of color, to whom he taught a vast repertoire of Slovenian minstrel song and dance bits that eventually gained the attention of the one and only, Louis Armstrong. But that's another beverage altogether...

* * *

EXIBIT 4:

Fancy Eastern Liberals. Just look at them. I'm not even spending time on them. Them and their hippy-hair, snazzy striped sports jackets, poofy peasant blouses, Gay-liberation inspired Stars-and-Stripes cut-off shorts. Women in pantsuits! Go on! What was he running for? Pot dealer or massage therapist? On the back of the card has this plea for 1973:

ELECT THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC CONSTABLE IN CHELTNHAM TOWNSHIP HISTORY!!

The double exclamation may as well have been "fat chance" in parenthesis. Well, don't count this north-of-Philly follically deprived dandy out for the count. Nay, Harvey Portner went somewhere...check THIS out. I didn't say somewhere fabulous... just somewhere.

* * *

EXHIBIT [BAN THE JACKSON] 5:

"My daddy's the most famous racist in the whole USA!" Yes, the family of Alabama's own George C. Wallace. Talk about sins of our fathers! Being the son of George C. Wallace must be like being birthed from something that just farted. Watch: That little zeppelin he's holding will now burst into flames. (Oh, the party favors at those klan rallies.) His mother has just been infiltrated by a satanic spirit and presently has stuck her index finger through the back of his scull to insert a soul sucking, mind-controlling, barcode reading computer chip.

The wiki entry for boxer-turned-politician George C. Wallace reads part like the education of an imbecile, and part like a story to end all stories. I will refer you to the actual wiki entry, but to give you the gist... While early on in his political career as a circuit court judge, he appeared to be somewhat liberal: "He was the first judge in Alabama to call me 'Mister' in a courtroom," recalls one Afro-American Lawyer.

However, after apparently deciding to ride the populist surf of racism, in 1968, Wallace decided against having Happy Chandler, former baseball commissioner as a running mate for president because Chandler had years previous been in favor of the Brooklyn Dodgers hiring Jackie Robinson. Of course, most of us remember George C. Wallace most fondly for this ole chestnut:

"Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

As for the enemy, hippies, he told this (anti)Christ-like parable: "If some anarchist lies down in front of my automobile, it will be the last automobile he will ever lie down in front of..."

Just think about it: There was this cracker out there running for president, started his own party and in 1968 gained 13.5% of the vote, the best run for any post-WWII non major party candidate, and his politics were to the RIGHT of NIXON! The would-be assassin's bullet, shot by another whacko, the Milwaukee-born loner Arthur Herman Bremer, left George Corley Wallace wheelchair-bound, and the historical event inspired the film "Taxi Driver." (: Always a silver lining ;)

As bizarre, and unfortunately violent as George C. Wallace's story may have been, it apparently inspired son-of-the-south, George C. Wallace, JUNIOR to follow in his father's footsteps. Hmm. Look at that picture once again... the soul-sucking, chip implanting mother... with parents like this, I doubt even a social worker could turn him around. Predictably enough, Junior grew up to be a Southern-fried Manchurian Candidate. He ran a successful covert campaign to thwart the popularity of Neil Young through his secret authorship of "Sweet Home Alabama." It caused such stress in the lovable pothead Neil Young's psyche that he consequently put out the worst record of all times titled "Trans." Junior ran and gained more visible offices under both the Democratic and Republican Banners, but with the historical climate of the nation firmly planted against racial segregation, Junior's national popularity always seemed just out of reach.

Just where exactly did Junior stand in the political spectrum? In 2005 a speech by George C. Wallace, Junior opened the national convention of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group described as white supremacists, as well as appearing as a guest on "The Political Cesspool", a white nationalist radio talk show.

Poor kid. He never had a chance.

* * *

IN CONCLUSION, A SOBER WARNING:

Tuesday calls for no alcohol followed by no pot Wednesday. Barbiturates are nada for Thursday, and crank has headed for the hills on Friday. Manischewitz is celebrating a Holy Day on Saturday, wine is only allowed in the smallest amount at mass Sunday, and I don't know why I don't like Mondays... oh... get thee behind me, Satan...

Alas, these here modern days have overtaken them-there sweet foibles of the past. So, has it become more humane for political families? Have politicians scrutinized the errs of their past? Have political strategists and spin doctors consulted the greater good? Or is it the other way around? Were political family portraits as seen in these election campaign postcards simply a "gateway drug" to bigger sins? Let's ask Former President Bill Clinton:

"What a bunch of uptight old church bitties this country become. A rock star can't even splooge a groupie! Even if his wife is a lesbian! I had to pee in a cup just to get my white house pension check! There's a 25-year-old MBA out there repainting the traffic lanes of New York City, and people are still blabbin' on about that whole Monica thing! That was her name, right?"

In short, Bill Clinton's presidency was not taken down by any policy, political act or conviction, no bill shuffled through congress, NAFTA or otherwise, no bombing of foreign territory, provoked or unprovoked, no cocaine-for-cash-for-weapons-for-the-contras of Reagan years, not even the war crimes of the Nixon and "W" years. No, Bill Clinton's presidency was brought down by his not living up to "family" expectations; that he wasn't the "family man" a postcard of this ilk might project, and that's freakin' scary. Yes, it certainly seems Fluoride is king, but there are still glimmers of a Fluoride-free world. There are a chosen few who muster the audacity to elude the ever beating war drum...

My friends, they are your not just your teachers, your priests, your doctors, boy-scout troop master, your governors... They are your ATHEIST teachers, your GAY priests, your PRO-CHOICE doctors, your PACIFIST boy-scout troop leaders, your CONSTITUTION ABIDING AND SEPARATING CHURCH AND STATE governors, your . They are you! You my human friends. You who refuse to put on that God-damned Fluoride smile, and God-dammit, even you who refuse to be happy about wearing it! Throw it away! Be free! You are healed! We are all sinners and saints rolled into one whiney baby god, capable of brilliance, capable of pooping our pants. You malcontents, you collegiate brats, you working class union ruffians, anarchists, baby-sitters, bare-assed babies, or as the French say, you freakin' buck-naked pagans!

PS... Aug 23, 2010... I sold the Cavanaugh postcard to Mr. Brainwash at the fleamarket over the weekend. He just honed in on it! If you get the chance, you should see the movie about him by Banksy called "Exit Through The Giftshop." One of the best documentaries I've seen in years. Though he's in no need of my lil' plug here, just thought I'd let you know, Mr. Brainwash presently has his work on exhibit at 415 W. 13th Street in the meatpacking district in Manhattan.

Gene Bilbrew: Picasso of Porn

2010-03-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

Just got in a new batch of vintage porn & I'd like to share...

Gene Bilbrew, like his classmate at the Art Student's League, Eric Stanton, is birthed from the age of Madison Avenue media culture that also illegitimately birthed Mad Magazine. Bilbrew, Stanton, Mad, they all share an apparent sensibility both in straight up line and color style, ie- amusement park caricaturishness and garish colors, as well as a subversive twist on mainstream advertising style. But Bilbrew's similarity to Mad Magazine doesn't bear a simple wink and nudge, but is rather located just this side of the sexual deviant wing of Bellevue. And I don't mean this in a bad way. I just mean it's "edgy". Obviously aware of his "underground" status, lettering is done in a purposeful home-made style like the afterthought $5 price tag on "ToGetHer" or "Frustration" where the lettering seems to have been done with white-out (had it been invented).

Bilbrew's women are oddly drawn cardboard cut-outs, billboards gone awry, collages made from random scraps laying around the drawing board, with dimples and creases almost randomly applied to buttocks, legs, underarms or whatnot... a seemingly mental ward folk-art fetishizing of female bulges and creases assembled into a superwoman of the mind. Compared to Stanton, Bilbrew's men look more sinister, more menacing, more lecherous, his women more depraved, wanton, and perhaps they get kickbacks from the STD clinic down the block. I feel like putting a condom over my head just talking about him! BILBREW.... It just conjures yeast.

Love the exquisitely penned lacy detailing to the undies on the left, while the corset to your right is a piece of architecture straight out of the Futurama exhibition at the '39 Worlds Fair.

This group is all from the late 50s, many printed right here in Brooklyn, by Rainbow Publishing, B & B Press and Kinney Publishing. They did not exactly run a shop with their name on a shingle... rather, they sold "discreetly" through finer retailers in the Times Square area. Publishers and retailers were constantly dodging the law, in Justin Kent's case (a nom de plume you see on a couple of these), he was held as a material witness for a month after police raids on Times Square shops! There's an interesting article by Jay A. Gertzman HERE.

The format is straight up octavo, 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches, or an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet folded, larger than the usual 12mo sized pocket paperbacks that is the format of most pulp fiction, which is mostly where you find Bilbrew's art. These were the early days of illegal porn. Before Ginzberg's Eros. When much the dirty stuff was still being imported from France!

Anyway, hope you dig these illos as much as I do... if I find out more about them at the Long Island Antiquarian Book Fair this weekend in Garden CIty (see sidebar -->) I'll add (or subtract if appropriate) to this post.

Go HERE to see what is said to be a Bilbrew self-portrait...

Greek-out with Jeffrey Cyphers Wright...

2010-03-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

MADE IN ITHICA

As time trickles through the Chambre des Deputes

The tendrils of my nose crinkle at its acrid passage

Time empties out the notion of authenticity

Time, you are a nervous imposter

You can remake yourself in the blink of an eye

Rodin pestering Phidias, Nestor attesting to glory

Time loves the one who knows love

I guess you had better guide me through the ropes

I dreamed a white robe walking to Morgantown

My broken watch weeps in a false spring

I wake bound to the railroad tracks

Emily Bronte sitting beside me on a wasp nest

We wait inconsolably in our vast ardor

As time trickles through an excess of small delay

MADE IN CHINA

Come on down to my boat, baby

Ready to flame the lawless airbrake

Ready to dazzle the bedraggled marmadukes

Ready to fray the nightie of Big Foot

Tell me about it, Hermes

Chupacabre to the rescue

Because we have yet to reinvent the past

Ink from the pen the filthy sun begging

I woke as a carpenter measured my remains

Ready to rip the bark off the stars

And claw my way in looking for grubs

A psychotropic melody strips the veneer

Scrolling down Emily Bronte’s heart

Ready for anything you can see clearly now

MADE IN CUCAMONGA*

Astarte walks through the Negro streets at dawn

I said a hey babe, you are everything you are to me

Let’s throw some darts at the imagination farmers

Taketh my hand and lead me on

Exult in your originality, phantom grafter

VISIGOTHS PLAYING AT HELL’S DRIVE-IN

Astarte lies under the stars in Bernadette’s dream

Camilla threw her javelin across the Tiber

May spins its wrecked gentians across your path

I wake in the fugitive tunnel glow

Emily Bronte [mug shot] dying for sanctuary

Deserted abruptly Time’s raft pitch and toss

This is what they say about you, Astarte

The lion, the horse, the sphinx, the dove

*Shoshone for sandy place

"Jeff Wright", as he is known to Hollywood insiders, published the famed Cover Magazine from 1986 - 2001... 80 issues! (as a publisher of a much humbler print endeavor, I'm floored!) He's a terrific poet, curator (reading series at the Bowery Poetry Club, La Mama, etc.), and general man about town. He can even be found in various East Village Gardens beckoning fairies from flowers with the sweet nectar of verse and a puff of pixie dust... or maybe the pixie dust was just in the 80s... he even has a wiki entry... so hello posterity!

Something I found under my bed just now...

2010-03-03T08:14:00.001-08:00

...I don't know what they mean, but I think I did them in my 20s...

(I had a job as a supply clerk in the basement of Butler Library @ Columbia!)

Woody Allen Parking-lot: a meandering meditation on Movie Magic

2010-02-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

During that summer my girlfriend Laura and I had split up for a few months, I was cast as an extra in a Woody Allen movie. It came about out of the blue one hot, July day at the garage indoor flea market where I sell books. The ventilation is not so great there, and to compensate, they set up these giant fans with mesmerizing hums that tend to just blow around a lot of dust and exhaust soot from the cars parked there through the weekdays. The overall effect is a hazy sleepiness that's difficult to shake, only occasionally offset by a pretty woman passing by my booth or the occasional $100 book sale. As I unconsciously scoped out potential new mates, my thoughts meandered from "what a babe" to "why bother, it'll just be a disaster like last time."

My groggy, downward spiral was interrupted by a slightly overly smiley man and a very officious lady with a clipboard who started talking to me about this Woody Allen movie they were working on, with the working title of WASP (Woody Allen Summer Project). Thinking she was shopping for W.A., I tried to sell her an Edward Gorey first edition, but as her lips moved, something resembling $500 if I set up my booth on their site at Saint Marks Church, came out, so I actually began to listen. I was supposed to show up on a Wednesday morning, and I could even make an extra $125 if I was in a scene. Then another Joe, this kind of chubby metrosexual vintage clothes dealer came and said Scarlett Johansson was going to be in it. $625 for a half-days work, and the prospect of me, chubby, depressed, recently single, perpetually broke, middle-aged loser, being in proximity of stunning Ms. Johansson? Kind of an I heart New York, moment, eh?

I drove my beat up '93 Mazda MPV chock full of books and shelves to the East Village on that Wednesday morning, where they were to stage a flea market scene in a garden along the west wall of the church. It was a huge operation. Many people with orange flags and pointers on the street instructing me to go this way and that, until I reached a sort of central traffic director who simply said, "Pull over here." They had dozens of people kind of...well...just standing around. Usually, when I show up at the flea, there's that dreaded moment of lifting and dollying things to my booth. Not here. As soon as I pulled a box from my car another and another production assistant would whisk it away. It was my glance into movie magic, where armies of production assistants just make things happen.

Another guy with a flag directed me to park around the corner. I meandered to a line of trailers along 11th street, behind the church. I imagined that was where they did make up and costumes, and the stars binged on chocolates and valiums. Another PA with a headset enthusiastically directed me to a row of checkered table clothed tables next to the trailers bearing coffee, juice, tea and an assortments of pastries, yogurt, fruit, bagels, lox and cream cheese. What appeared to be a bona fide starlet emerged from one of the trailers. We smiled at each other while she applied jam to her English muffin and I lox and cream cheese to my bagel. Her ridiculously penetrating blue eyes made my arms go limp, and the blood rush from my head. I dropped a couple bagel shavings and a swatch of salmon into a bowl of berries. I gathered my faculties and quickly ambled back towards my made-for-the-movie flea market booth before any further missteps could occur.

I lingered in the graveyard next the church trying to shake off her stupefying fog, examining rows of 17th century grave markers bearing names like Stuyvesant and Van Cortland. You know that yard by the side door of St. Marks Church, if you've been there, where you go to see poetry readings or trek upstairs to see Richard Foreman plays, or the offices of the Poetry Project. So strange. St. Marks Poetry Project is a focal point for so many friends and acquaintances. All these mignons of high culture maintaining that New York mystique, armies of wee struggling poets, artistes, meant to set this city apart from anywhere else. All of us just beating our brains out trying to make something, anything, that might culminate in a glimmer of brilliance above our work-a-day environs, while here this Hollywood production just waltzes in with it's union guys, battalions of 25 year old PAs, breakfast buffets, Woody Allens, Scarlett Johansens and random starlets, effortlessly taking over and enveloping the place in an aura of a production in production. This aura of movie magic. At that moment, as I walked towards the front of the church now engulfed in the art of filmmaking, the church seemed more hallowed by Hollywood, than by the religion that built it.

Let's examine the 4 fieldstone steps going from the sidewalk to the garden, where the flea market scene is staged. In reality, as opposed to in movie wonderland, no flea market dealer would want to participate, or they would grudgingly, because you'd have to carry boxes over 4 steps sans dolly. The WASP production magically changed those 4 steps from a nuisance to a picturesque detail. A picturesque cluster of moist New York State slate, nearly sensual enough to lick, overgrown with English ivy. And past those steps, panning across the ivy covered yard stands the lot of us: grimy, past our prime, vaguely intelligent but not enough to be employable, rather cynical, money grubbing losers, temporarily donning this tinsel magic to become colorful backdrops, like the ivy, the slate steps, the iron fence, the church, for WA and the stunning Ms. Johanssen.

The perpetually smiling art director, or production designer, whatever he was, spotted me in my pensive moment on the colonnade landing of the church's main entrance, and sort of patted the side of my arm while greeting me with my jumble of coffee and whatnot. "I see you found the food table, Mr. Heterosexual slob," I imagined him saying. He was supposed to be famous in his field, Joe, the metrosexual vintage clothing guy told me. Joe knows everything that is fabulous enough to know. I often am struck that I have no clue what he is talking about. At the flea market, he'll start saying something, and the first sentence, I'm like, "ha, ha" then almost immediately I realize I'm watching his lips move without the faintest clue about what is coming out.

We say hello and wave as I walk by his booth. Joe is already holding court with an effusive older woman from the art direction staff, and a couple gayish guys who may be set dressers, or fiddle with lights or something. They are all unfurling fabrics of skirts and shirts against their outstretched arms, their faces agog with the wonder of fleamarket discovery, compounded by the glory of it all being on a movie set. It's a feel-good environment on steroids, and I'm bathing in my post-break up rawness. Or rather, I feel like I suddenly woke up in a cold shower. They turn their heads and wave to the art director who is escorting me to my booth. I don't feel part of this environment, but I wave back in tandem with the art director anyway. Although I'm really happy to be here, to get away from the pointless obsessing of a relationship gone awry, the energy level is exhausting. I think it would be for anyone. To perform a quick assessment of the people hovering around Joe, any of them would be more upbeat than the most upbeat people I know, even Joe.

We arrive at my booth and the art director extends his arm sort of Bob Barkerish from The Price is Right, introducing me to my home, my fake book selling booth for the morning. It was an picnic tent without any sides, certainly typical of those seen at outdoor flea markets, but with varied bubbly 70s orange, green and blue Turkish looking stained glass lamps hanging inside from the structural tubing of the tent. The lamps were quite a nuisance, as they dangled just above eye level, but not above head level, so that myself, and the various other extras would continually bump our heads into them during the course of the morning. However, I suppose they were low enough to hang below the ceiling line of my tent, so that the camera 100 feet away at the end of the isle could pick up on them.

I had gone through the trouble of getting colorful art books and whatnot, so that should a camera pan across my booth, there would be all sorts of splashy colors and textures to greet the camera. I took my job as extra quite seriously. Also, should it pan across me and my goods, that would be quite decent advertising. I discreetly placed my cards throughout my booth.

I brought a few books of value. Derriere Le Mirror, a large format art magazine famous for it's big splashy Miro or Calder covers. A gorgeous early 19th century American Bible with unusually nice red, straight-grain morocco that I later sold to the Bauman's, a first Olympia edition of Burroughs soft machine in jacket. I began unpacking, thinking of placement, what would impress Scarlet Johanssen and whatnot. Perhaps being a haggard, embittered, recently Xed middle-aged slob, made me focus inappropriately to the task at hand, the rare chance to impress the likes of a Ms. Johanssen.

But there was a whole other level of this human stage prop thing, and that was the level of the professional "extra." Now, don't I'm belittling anyone's job, nor their desire to become famous. After all, I'm a writer and as we all know, writers in general spend their lives begging for agents, deals, publishers, in short: fame and money, though the fame is more approval of ones craft, not celebrity. But according to a vaguely hip 20-something guy in cargo pants who was an extra stationed to my booth, most of the extras had studied acting in school, and were poised to move up the ladder to parts with lines, and theoretically following with starring roles. Just like the jumble of assistant directors coaching them. I saw the girl from the breakfast buffet with another beautiful girl. I guess they were extras. They listened intently to another woman who I guess was some sort of assistant director giving them instructions for the scene.

Then this extra named Harry entered my booth. He was quite jovial and didn't seem to be as concerned about the professionalism as the cargo pants guy, the two girls and the assistant director. "I was a tuna fisherman for a while," he told me. "Then, I was a cop. Now, I just want to do something fun in retirement." So here he was, 78 if a day, long Italian nose with kind of a bulb at the end. He wore a mostly white golf shirt, with red and black triangles and whatnot, deco-style, the type that Joe probably sold for $75. Harry no doubt picked it up at Sears ca. 1947 for 50 cents. At first glance, Harry seemed to be the kind of guy who was most comfortable holding holding a martini, while telling wife jokes. It was one of those "whoa" moments where you're looking at the guy telling you his life story and you realize: Jeez, the guy is straight out of a Woody Allen movie! No, wait. This guy IS in a Woody Allen movie, and like, I'm like so gratified that Woody Allen put up this huge production just to entertain me, Joe Maynard, for like 4 hours on a Wednesday morning, I could just pee myself, and if I did, another PA would just direct me to one of those trailers and give me another pair of pants to wear, anyway. Probably nicer than the jeans I came in with.

A few other people came in the booth. The art director lady that was in the other Joe's booth looked through my Lartigue book. If you don't know Lartigue, he took a bunch of photographs of his family in France when he was around 10 years old in the circa 1910s. Because they were quite wealthy, and had hobbies like tinkering with horseless carriages and flying machines, the photos are quite amusing. He spent the rest of his 80+ years on this planet promoting and selling his photos from this brief slice of his life, culminating in a thick, oblong book meant to look like the family album that it is. He designed the book himself around 1960. So I told her all that, and offered it for $225. She said she'd think about it.

I turned around to put a loudly colorful Miro book face-out at the front of the booth, when I noticed the two lovely extras planted themselves in a sort of bored standing position in front of my booth examining the lower shelf facing out to the isle. The girl from the food table sheepishly smiled at me. It was an adorable smile with a hint of pink gum line above her brilliant pearly, orthodontically perfect teeth. "Hi," I said through my crooked, coffee-stained accidents. I thought it was an incredibly smart introduction. Straight forward, unpretentious and absolutely dull in that sense that if you are immersed in the fabulosity of movie making, there is no need to say anything to compete with it.

Harry clocked my efforts. Now too self conscious to continue, I retreated into my booth putting empty boxes under the tables.

"Quite a number of pretty young things, eh?" Harry commented over my shoulder.

"What a gig you've got going," I said. "Is it like this every movie?"

"Yeah. If I were 30 years younger, that one with her hair tied back..."

"It's torture."

"So what, are you single? Married?"

"Just broke up."

"Ah, that's too bad. Get over it. Look at her! Look how elegant she is. Her chin, her nose, so delicate. Now, that's a classically beautiful dame."

She was. 25ish, a bit more worldly, than the other, like she had been to a prestigious eastern college, or kicked around Europe for a couple years -- at least spoke French as a second language. She was slightly darker, hint of freckles, an elegant neck, and her eyes also quite piercing as they darted around the ersatz fleamarket.

"I'm partial to the other one I met in the food line," I said nearly inaudibly fearing she may hear.

He smiled like he was my grandfather or something. "You never got to date that cheerleader in high school, did you?"

Two other attractive women suddenly appeared in entirely too much make up. What I mean by too much make up is even an understatement. You've imagined too much make up, now quadruple it. It was immediately apparent that they were "in" the movie, and made up for the camera. The two pretty extras eyed them with casual smiles, everyone in the courtyard seemed to face them, or if they were turned away seemed to be in tune with their movements. One was about 20-something, the other pushing 40, both small, about 5'2", thus substantiating that saying that they really are smaller in real life. The older one was wearing some sort of leopard patterned tights with high heels, huge sun glasses. The younger one was just plain foxy. I've learned from IMDb, that they were Evan Rachel Wood and Patricia Clarkson.

They went through the stuff in my booth, both of them picking up this and that, and slipping in and out of fake southern accents. Though I was flattered by their attention, I was also hoping for their patronage! But with the accent thing, I realized they must be priming themselves for their scene, so I didn't want to be too intrusive. They left my booth and continued down the row of vendors with a couple guys humming around them with I suppose light meters, sound meters, or something. Then they disappeared. Tech discussion broke out among the crew.

This laid back hippie type, about 50 or so, shoulder-length hair, introduced himself to me. Let's call him Henry. "So I'm the foreman. If you need anything, if anyone asks you for anything, just let me know. I've got some paper work here." He held out a clipboard. "This paper says that you have set up your booth and will be paid said amount, and the other is a SAG agreement that as a freelance extra you'll be paid $125 if they use you in a scene. If you're in two more movies, you'll be asked to join SAG -- and don't worry: You'll be in the movie and get that 125."

Turns out he was a creative type as well, but the steady paycheck sort of made him happy and lazy, according to his own account. That too is part of the movie magic spell. A subtle paralysis that comes over you with all the fabulousness. Like everything you do, say, touch or shit is golden.

Henry told me it was his last movie, that he was retiring. Pension and all. Perhaps he'd become an artist again. That or go to the Caribbean. Mexico. Somewhere warm with a beach.

When Henry left, I saw the two pretty extras had been looking around my booth. The breakfast buffet girl smiled. Harry kept staring at the other one until he started talking to her. I'm sure it was all very gentlemanly, but in a hushed tone. She seemed to like his attention. Well, if the old man can do it...

"Are you an actress extra?" I asked immediately choking from the awkwardness. "I mean, do you do this as a job."

"Do I pay my rent with it?" she said. "Yes."

"They pay well?"

"$160 a day."

"Really? They're paying me a lot more -- oh, sorry. No one likes a bragger."

"Well, it's one of those things you do when you want to be an actress," she said. "You just don't want to get too comfortable in it, though, or you're just be a career extra."

I introduced myself. She introduced herself. She was Cassie. From Tallahassee. Her parents were hippies. She'd been studying acting as long as she can remember. Played Julliette in high school. She also waited tables at a barbecue place not far from the flea market. I told her about our little garage flea market, how the smiling man and lady with the clipboard picked a handful of us for the movie. Cassie picked up some disbound chromolithograph pages that were a from a 19th century children's alphabet book. The C and D pages were especially of interest.

"Your names sake?" I inquired, assuming "C" for Cassie.

"No," she said smiling. "I like the other side."

It was "D" for Darkie, with a minstrelesque black man in what resembled an Uncle Sam suit, top hat, etc., and spectacles...I guess that would be an Uncle Tom Suit. I told her it was $20 but she could have it for $10. I didn't want to be a push-over. But I should have just given it to her.

Woody Allen walked past. He was short, older than that frozen image of him in Annie Hall. He seemed kind, lacking in any gregarious gestures that one might expect from a show businessman. A couple assistants pointed him to a monitor that had black metal light shield around it. He said a few things to another assistant who in tern shouted instructions to everyone else. Apparently, there was too much motion on the street outside the gate to the churchyard. A PA or two cleared people from the sidewalk in front of the church. The two made up actresses appeared again. They said something to me, but honestly, I couldn't tell you what it was then or now, what with their pretend accents. I also felt like we were in parallel universes and just happened to exist a few feet away from each other, without ever really being able to communicate.

Cassie and the other girl took their mark about 5 feet from in front of my booth. Harry took to his decided pose looking down into my glass case. The board snapped, the scene began. The actresses looked at books on the shelf facing out of my booth, then walked down the stone isle towards the camera. Then it was over. A new murmur of activity. The union guy came by to remind us to do exactly what we had just done once again, which for me was absolutely nothing. Everyone took their marks again, Harry, Cassie and the other girl, the two stars, and the whole thing was repeated. Then Woody Allen muttered something to a guy with a megaphone, "10 minute break everyone, then the next shot."

I still hadn't seen Scarlet Johanssen. I was a bit disappointed. However, Cassie and the other girl were quite lovely. I began considering whether a fat old fart like myself had a shot at a gorgeous young thing like her. But wait, she came back into my booth again. I told her about the things in my glass case on the table, the William Burroughs first edition and the like. She once again picked up the Darkie Chromo.

"Are you at the flea market every week?" she asked.

"No every week," I said. "I do these antiquarian book fairs, but I'm at the flea once or twice a month."

"I go there all the time, I've never seen you."

"I've never seen you either, and I find that more remarkable."

There. I'd done my duty: flirted.

"I'll look for you next time I go," she said smiling.

"Everyone listen up!" said an assistant director with a megaphone. He explained the next scene. At the opposite end of my isle, they were setting up a shot where the girl played by Evan Rachel Wood, meets a young love interest. About a second after his explanation the scene started. The Union guy, Henry, gestured for me to step out of the booth. When I was near him, he said to just get in line behind two other people and another guy would signal for me to walk through the scene past the two stars. "Just don't look into the camera," he said.

Now, I'm not proud of this. It was no doubt counter productive to the movie cause, but I could not help but turn and face towards the actors, and incidentally, towards the camera while walking past them. I mean, there I was walking along and, 'Hey, there's a big fucking camera poking in my face!' But aside from that, I felt I should be looking at what the actors were holding, which was an antique handkerchief. Partly, because at the flea, when people are scouting around, people always look at what other people are picking up. If someone else notices it, it must be worth something. That's the psychology. But in this scene, I'm certain it appeared, I was just facing the camera.

The take was finished. Henry instructed everyone to get back to where they were, lined up all of us who were walking past the actors, and said to do exactly the same thing.

In the next take, I was in a quandary, but I did exactly the same thing. I faced the camera again! And the next take again. And the next take, the fourth, I actually wondered if I was fucking up the whole works, as the other shot was done in only a couple takes. But they would tell me, wouldn't they? I reasoned with myself. So I did it again. No one said anything to me, but I had this vague uneasiness.

Then an assistant director announced the scene was done and thanked us all. We could go home now. I started packing, Harry, the cargo pants guy, the two pretty extras, all said good bye. I told Cassie again I hoped to see her at the flea. It was all very brief and the extras dispersed. As I packed, I started thinking about the money sunk into all those extras. 35 or so paid extras just in this scene, times $160 comes out to $5400. Then about 12 or so vendors at $500 each is $6000. Quite an expensive minute or so scene.

A couple weeks went by. Sure enough, on another hot summer day, Cassie showed up at my booth. The other young girl she was with was a bit surprised by Cassie and I being so familiar. I explained to her about the movie. Somehow, it came out that Cassie was 18. Wow. I had the hots for someone nearly 30 years younger than I. Someone who, if we were in a primitive culture, could be my grand daughter.

"I didn't realize that," I said. "You're just so beautiful, I had no clue how old you were."

"Oh, men..."

"Here, just take the print." I said. "A gift."

"You sure?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "It was kind of a special day, and I'd like for you to have it. After all, they paid me more than they paid you."

And off she went. That beautiful young thing.

The Weeks past. Fall set in, the rich people returned to the flea after their summer absence in the Hamptons. It was closing in on Christmas. Laura and I had gotten back together. I was broke. It was cold. There are a few celebs that frequented the garage. One is this supermodel Helena Christiansen. I didn't know who she was when I met her, although, I certainly noticed her looks, but everyone else filled me in on her fame and fabulosity. That first time she came in my booth she had bought some Edward Gorey first editions. She's hard not to spot what with her Euro-supermodel-fabulosity. Her 8 year old son is usually with her, and they sweetly examine everything together. When they had checked out my Gorey books, she turned the pages with him and they remarked on Gorey's rare twisted humor. She bought 3 of them, 2 signed, for a tidy sum of money, for which I am ever so grateful.

A couple weeks later, I had these two Jersey guys in my booth. They often set up and sell pulp fiction paperbacks, porno, sci-fi, rock posters and such.

"Come on, cut me some slack here!" the one was saying holding up a paperback copy of SIDEWALK SIN. "The corner's all bent and the back is stained like somebody came all over it!"

And suddenly, there she was: all six feet tall of Helena Christiansen. This elegant being from the parellel universe, with her son in tow, and hopefully (forgive me, I'm not greedy, just perpeturally broke) with money. And I've got these two clowns in my booth chiseling away and talking splooge in their Jersey accents.

I was temporarily paralyzed. Just then, Ms. Christiansen dropped a bag in the isle nearly at my feet, and every guy within a 12 foot radius jumped to pick it up -- except me. I just stood there frozen with one of those one size fits all uncomfortable smiles. She thanked whoever it was for picking the bag up, politely smiled at me and walked in my booth. I remained smiling. The two bushy-browed Jersey guys hovered around her with their crooked smiles while I hoped to God they wouldn't say or do anything else more embarrassing.

At that exact moment, I heard from about a foot behind me, "I really like my Darkie." I turned around face to face with Cassie, no make up. I felt all soft and fuzzy noticing a zit over her eyebrow. She had her jacket unzipped and beneath was wearing a silk top that resembled a slip. She looked so young, so sweetly flat chested. I suppose it was her innocence clearly contrasted against Ms. Christiansen's worldliness, but I realized, in the nicest way, she was way too young for me.

"Glad you like it," I said.

She didn't break her step, just clocked the whole situation with the Jersey guys, Ms. Christiansen and all, waved her mitten good-bye from at sort of hip-level disappearing into the crowd.

. . . .

Recently, the smiling production design guy was walking through the flea market.

"Remember me?"

I looked at him quickly trying to reference all the ambiguous faces and names I meet at the flea. Was he a John? Michael? Definitely not a Helena Christiansen.

"The Woody Allen Movie!" He said emphatically with his usual smile.

"Oh, yeah."

"Seen it yet?"

"I didn't know it was out?"

"Months ago," he said. "Unfortunately, I don't think you made the final cut.

"Oh, well," I said. "Maybe I'll netflix it..."

So Laura and I netflixed it. I have to say Laura and I, because I don't want it to seem like I'm just cringing at something I'm a bit close to, it's much the opposite. I've always enjoyed Woody Allen, especially the early funny ones. I had no real expectations, I was just curious about how it turned out. However, Laura and I were stunned that "Whatever it Takes", or any movie, could be as bad as it was: Not funny, nor dramatic, nor clever, nor innovative, just a bizarre failure.

First, the overall wit of the film did not have any consistency. Like it wasn't quite biting satire nor laugh out loud funny. More like a bunch of kids in a class as a group project decided to do a Woody Allen Movie and they each threw in different random "Woody Allen" cliches. It had the cranky older, neurotic Jewish intellectual. The young love interest. Lots of didactic dialogue. Lots of New Yorky stuff. However. Larry David, though I know it may be part of his schtick, was so charmless, disbelief was never suspended, and at some points just you wonder why he decided to act.

The basic plot is that a small town Louisiana cheerleader runs away from home to New York City, where she immediately shacks up with the charmless Larry David who hurls continuous insults at her. He's so caustic, and is so misanthropic, especially towards her kind, why would a young hottie move in with hairy old that? It's just 90 or so minutes of mean spirited attacks on cardboard cut-out of a clueless middle-American Shiksa, as if some sort of Bush era lefty anger therapy session. Any humor or satire is short-circuited by bitter, blunt, witless insults. The coquettish "domolestic" scenes of the scantily clad blonde showing off her panties and cleavage while changing channels on the old man's couch, are just way too much information. Sooner or later the unfortunate image of wrinkly, charmless, hairy-necked LD struggling to achieve orgasm is gonna pop in your head, and no matter how hard you try to make it go away, it'll stick there like the old man splooge on her smooth, under-aged ass. If she were just tied up, beaten and raped mercilessly for 2 hours, it would have been more honest -- and at least it would have an edge.

But let's not blame everything on poor charmless Larry David. Evan Rachel Wood put on such a memorable (unfortunately), cloying southern accent throughout, within moments you just want to make her go away. It seemed she was playing her part slapstick, while Larry David was playing deadpan. In the end, they had no screen chemistry whatsoever. Just annoying verbal cacophony. Laura and I soldiered on watching gag after gag fall flat until...

I think the decisive moment arrived when Evan Rachel Ward went to see some sort of punk rock show with a guy she met on the sidewalk. The name of the band on the marquee was "Anal Sphincter." We both laughed.

"Nice zinger, grampa!"

"Maybe you audition for Regis and Cathy Lee!"

In the morning, after Laura left for work, I made breakfast and settled in front of the TV to watch the rest. Mainly, to see if perhaps I may have snuck on screen, egomaniac that I am, but also, just out of some sick curiosity about how bad it could get. At some point, you have to ask yourself, how hard is it to squeeze out a middle-brow, vaguely funny feature, anyway? Well, apparently, harder than one would imagine.

With my plate-full of eggs and potatoes, a glass of orange juice and my 3rd mug of coffee, I sat to watch the thing in its entirety. There was a scene in the apartment, where the ERW and LD were talking about fate, their differences etc., and it occurred to me that this was some half-assed attempt at a more comical Eugene O'Neill play. I never really was a fan of Eugene O'Neil, nor did I ever see the connection between WA and EO before. But now I do. This scene drew me in. Laura's comments about how this was nothing more than a pathetic old man's wet dream aside, these scenes with Larry David speaking to the camera were perversely fascinating. The didactic monologue. Left leaning philosophy-lite. The grimy urban texture. Stir in a quantum physicist's theories of Chaos, and you have nice cup of cinematic warm milk served by a teenage girl in panties. Larry David's wise old man character, said to have been nominated for a nobel prize, is saying stuff that stoned kids in a college dorm say at 4 am after a few hits of acid and a half-dozen joints. Only to their advantage, they have that sparkly patina of youth on their side to detract from the mediocracy of what is coming out of their mouths. There's no sparkle of any kind on Larry David. Just a cloying, dull curmudgeon that won't shut the fuck up.

Now if ERW, the young hottie were saying the same lines, which a kid from Louisiana who is adventurous enough to run away to New York City could certainly come up with -- perhaps after having first heard them from a Woody Allen Movie she saw on HBO when she was 12 -- it would have produced a modicum of sparkle power. However, her lines are dumbed down even dumber than the dumb "smart" lines of LD to the point of being simply unwatchable, and let me remind you: not funny.

One notable detail was that LDs apartment had a wall of empty barrister cases. I realize this may have been for visual effect, clean cinematic lines or some crap having nothing to do with furthering the character or story, but since when does a New York intellectual have a house full of empty bookcases? It could have been a funny plot twist (lord knows this film could have used one). LD could have had a tantrum burned all his books, SHE could have burned or thrown out his books, or better, HE could have burned them all after being converted to philistinism by young, fresh pussy. So, ironically, I was hired as an extra to play a bookseller in a movie that was censoring the portrayal of books.

OK, I'm getting too worked up here, but at the 47 minute mark (I took some notes over my eggs), the film is flying high with its Eugene O'Neill philsophe remarks, the grimy urban texture, empty bookshelves, etc. Suddenly, the mother, played by Patricia Clarkson appears out of no where portraying an 1850s lilly-white plantation heiress! Oddly, everything else is so joyless, she brightens up the screen immediately with the sweet relief of non-sequitor physical comedy. But whenever the camera is not fixed on her, the dull charmlessness, which is the expected texture of this film now, takes over.

At nearly exactly the one hour mark, is my scene. Sadly, you can only barely see the back of my folding shelves behind the two actresses are walking through the flea market, but at a point when the main male love interest is talking to the Evan Rachel Ward character in the flea market, I clearly saw my profile, my head of salt and pepper disheveled hair disappear behind the actor for a split second, then I am magically photoshopped out of the scene. There is no "Joe" coming out the other side of the actor's head. I'm certain it was because I was looking back at the camera and probably fucked it up... I don't know. Anyway, whether or not it I fucked up, I was in one of the worst movies ever made, but at least I was in a Woody Allen movie.

I have more notes, but let me just summarize:

Lilly-white Baptist Patricia Clarkson, although she is two-dimensional, her slapstick approaches watchable. For her to accomplish watchable in this movie, she must be a genius. So... Lilly-White, the first chance she gets, turns into a polyamorous avante-guard photographer after getting laid by a guy who tells her pretentiously that he writes, "on the aesthetics of photography." I mean, give me a break! Who says the AESTHETICS of photography, unless you're a complete pretentious douche. At least not in conversation.

At some point, Ed Bigley Jr., playing the father literally barges through the door of the set in his first scene appearing as if he hadn't been given any direction at all. He continuously flip-flops between comedy and drama. Not as if he's blurring the line, but simply as continuity problem. His character is so unreliable, it doesn't allow other actors to bounce ideas or textures off him. He's a dramatic sink. To make matters worse, his character, a Bible-thumping jock from the south suddenly confesses to being gay over the briefest of conversations at a bar. Its like an overheard party conversation where someone says, "Yeah, those football jocks with their tight ends and such are just a bunch of closet cases. The first chance they'd get, they'd probably go gay..." Yeah, right. And that's the whole pathetic level of this movie. A bunch of really simplistic assumptions about middle Americans, and dullard's fantasies about what one does when exposed to the likes of New York fuckin' City. Rather than cutting through and illuminating bullshit, it simply piles on another layer. And lest we not forget Whatever Works is a comedy...that's just not funny.

You'd think there'd be someone pre, during, or post production saying, hey, this sucks, but apparently there wasn't. Laura and I had a lengthy discussion more recently wondering how a director who made Vicky Christina Barcelona the year previous, could follow up with Whatever Works? Was W.A. now senile? (I'm sorry, that's a terrible thing to say, but seriously...). Was it acting out to dissolve an unwanted contract? Was it a pay-off to unions to film one in New York? Close. I just read, for the purpose of writing this piece, that he was looking for a quick script to dig up during the writers strike that was happening while this film was in pre-production. He had originally written this script in the 70s for Zero Mostel. But with the strike, he needed a quick scipt to work on and drug this gem into the open air. So basically, this film could be crucial evidence of how important well-seasoned writers are. I can see it now in history of film classes in the NYU MFA dramatic script writing program for generations to come as the prime example that the film is only as good as the script.

But what about all that hub-bub in the Hollywood take-over of St. Marks Church, or anywhere else around town WASP may have filmed? All that movie magic that went to my head during my 4 hour stint as an extra? The lovely extras, famous director, the stars? Well, I now know first hand, it doesn't amount to anything. It all just boils down to the quality of artistic intent. I'll take my oddball Richard Foreman production, and second tier poets at the Wednesday night St. Marks reading series over "Whatever Works" any day. I'm sorry Mr. Allen. At least you know your next film's gonna be better.

Adieu, Joe Maynard

PS. I forgot to say, Scarlett Johanssen was never in it. (other Joe, you liar!)

Boiling An Egg by Tsaurah Litzky (cont. from Jan 31 post)

2010-02-10T15:06:00.000-08:00

I managed to stay invisible during my next two classes, political science and biology, which was very good since I hadn’t done the reading for those classes. When my school day was over about noon, I went to the Sugar Bowl Luncheonette just off campus on Albemarle Rd. and had a chocolate malted. I needed energy, my morning adventure had knocked me out. I was glad my new job did not start until tomorrow. I went back on campus to the library, caught up on my readings and studied commonly used phrases for my French class on Thursday. Ou est la salle de bain means Where is the bathroom? Avez –vous quelque poissson means do you have some fish?

I did not get back to Manhattan until five. When I opened the door to my new apartment I was greeted by a smell I had not noticed before, a sour smell, a mixture of dust, dirty sweaty clothes and vinegar. My apartment door opened into a small room rectangular room which led rail road sytle into my kitchen. The kitchen consisted of a refrigerator, sink and a stove set against the wall plus my bathtub. The tub had a white enameled top so it could be used as a table and it was set on the horizontal to create another room, my living room. The only furniture in the living room was the battered green studio couch I was using as my bed. Two windows at the end of the room looked out on the fireescape and the backs of other tenements. The cardboard cartons holding my belongings were yet to be unpacked and were piled in a dismal clump in the center of the room.

I sank down on the studio couch and immediately an errant spring poked into my bottom. I fell asleep the night before without making the bed up with the sheets I had brought from my family home. A vision of my mother and father standing outside our house as I drove away in Eddies car floated into my mind. (My brother had refused to come outside to see me off. When I went into his room to kiss him goodbye, he yelled “Traitor,” and buried his head in his pillow.) My parents were standing at least two feet apart, my mother was looking at the receding car with an anguished expression on her face, my father was looking at his wristwatch. If I stayed with Eddie we could end up like them, a scarey prospect. The weird smell was even stronger in this room, maybe it was a ghost, the residue of someone who had lived their life alone here. Suddenly I was hugging myself and rocking back and forth. What had I done? What would happen to me now? I felt cold and empty. My stomach was growling. I was very hungry. If I was home my mother could make me cinnamon toast or a cream cheese omelette. In planning my adult life I had not realized I would have to cook for myself. I didn’t know how to cook.

My mother did all the housekeeping, all the cooking. If I offered to help she chased me away, told me to go study. She had to keep herself so busy to keep from falling apart. Hortense was not my father’s first mistress.

I could get a slice from the pizzeria on the corner of Bleecker and W.3^rd. but I had to start to take care of myself. Now or never! I had an idea, I would boil an egg. I had seen my mother do it plenty of times.

I looked in the cupboard above the sink. There was some silverware, an old white enameled sauce pan with rust on the bottom and a few dishes in the blue willow pattern. I would boil the egg in the saucepan and eat it on buttered bread on one of the dishes. I took the small roll of bills in my book bag and went out, being careful to lock the door with my new key.

I walked down McDougal street passing Ali’s Souvlaki and the Café Wha with a sign outside that said “Dave Van Ronk Mondays, Open Mike Tuesdays.” Next to Café Wha was a small grocery with a blue neon sign in the window that said Emilio’s. I went in and brought a dozen eggs, a loaf of Wonder Bread, a stick of butter and a quart of milk from the woman behind the counter. She was very fat with three chins but she still managed to smile as she put my purchases into a brown paper bag and gave me a quarter for change.

On my way back up the stairs the bag ripped open between the second and third floor. At least only four of the eggs were broken.

Once back inside my apartment, I discovered that no matter what faucet I turned, the water ran only cold. I scrubbed and scrubbed the saucepan in the cold water using the bar of soap I had brought with me from my family home. I was trying to get the rust spots out. Finally I realized the eggs would be protected by their shells. I filled the saucepan nearly to the brim with water, set it on one of the burners on the stove and dropped the egg in gently so as not to break it. I turned the burner on and went to sit on the couch wait for the egg to boil. Soon a noxious smell filled the room. It was gas. I had not thought to buy matches. I opened both windows and went back out to Emilio’s. With my quarter I brought a box of 300 wooden matches.

Back upstairs I turned on the burner and struck a match under the pot but there was still no flame and the gas stink spread out into the room again. I had turned the wrong knob. I tried again and got it right. I watched the egg in the water until the water was boiling merrily and the egg was bouncing from side to side. When I went to sit down on the couch, I noticed a big crack on the ceiling right above my head that looked like hammer. If the plaster cracked it could fall down on my head and kill me while I was sleeping. I could sleep with the pillow over my head but then maybe I would suffocate. I got up, moved the cartons out of the way, pushed the couch to the opposite wall so I would be safe when I was sleeping. As I was pushing it, I noticed some little black beads rolling across the wooden floor. I looked closer and saw they were ugly black bugs. I realized they were the famous New York City cockroaches that all apartments in Manhattan were supposed to have.

Then I went over and checked the egg again. The shell had cracked open and the egg had oozed out into the water making a white and yellow mess. Boiling an egg was quite complicated, a very big deal as Holden Caulfield would say. I took care to turn off the flame, picked up the saucepan and went out into the hall to dump the contents in the toilet.

The toilet was filled with such a thick coil of brown feces , maybe the last creature in there was a horse I dumped the egg mess on top and gingerly pulled the handle. To my relief a loud gurgle came from somewhere inside the plumbing and it began to flush. I went back into my apartment, rinsed out the pan and started all over again.

My stomach was growling like a starving dog. This time I kept the flame lower and I stood over the pot watching as the egg boiled in the water so if it started to crack I would take it off the flame. I recited the Jabberwocky poem five times. It was the only poem I knew by heart, to make sure the egg boiled at least three minutes because I knew hard boiled eggs were also called three minute eggs.

Then I turned the flame off and dumped the water out in the sink. There was my egg, whole, perfect. When I picked it up to peel, it was so hot it burned my fingers. I remembered seeing my mother peel eggs under running water in the sink. I picked up the egg, cracked it on the side of the sink and started to peel it. My fingers were clumsy and whole sections of the egg came away with a shell. In the end, the egg wasn’t oval any more but a kind of mis-shapen square.

I took down one of the plates and a tarnished spoon from the cabinet. I washed and dried them on my sweater. I used the spoon to butter a slice of the Wonder Bread and put the bread on the plate. I put the egg on the bread and mashed it with the spoon to make an open faced egg sandwich. I sat down on the couch to eat my dinner. From my vantage point against this wall I could see more sky out the window. It was twilight. I could see clotheslines strung from the fire escapes of the other tenements. I could see towels, shirts, aprons and bloomers waving gently like welcoming flags. I balanced the plate on my knees, picked up bread and took a bite. I had never tasted anything so good.

Tsaurah Litzky

The Art of Teddy Schapiro

2010-02-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

Teddy Schapiro is another fleamarket buddy of mine, though I haven't seen him around in a while. Everyone at the flea knows him. He collects home-made mickey mouse art, antique toys, graphics on funerals and funeral homes, psychiatry and mental hospitals. He sold a dozen or so of these automatic drawings to me about 5 years ago. He has mounds of these, all on 9 x 12 inch cardstock. I really love the free associations, the whimsy, what have you. Teddy, though he may appear to be some sort of outsider art, actually went to Cal Arts, studied under Mike Kelly, and was actually on the cover of the gallery guide early in his career in the 80s. If you are a bonafide art dealer, hey...here's an untapped resource in Mr. T. I can sell these to you for $25 each, if you'd like one.

Long-Life Poem by Henry Fireater:

2010-02-06T13:32:00.001-08:00

I know Henry through books. When I had my shop, fleamarkets, fairs. He's out there. And now he's in here. Ex boxer. Irishman. Consumate New Yorker. A classmate of Vito Acconci. Nearly got thrown out of art school for doing a performance involving walking around shroud in an actual sheep skin from a butchershop while a transistor radio blaired 1010 wins news radio through the class. Someday he will write an explanation of that, and you will see it published here. For now, I am to remind you that the above poem is the copyright of Henry Fireater.

My Adult Life. by Tsaurah Litzky

2010-01-31T12:01:00.000-08:00

I began what I hoped would be my adult life in the same year that President Kennedy urged Americans to “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” and then did us in with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. It was right after the summer that Ernest Hemingway committed suicide that I made my big move, in the September when 1010 WINS New York was constantly playing Patsy Cline singing “I fall to pieces.”

I left my family home in Canarsie Brooklyn and moved to Manhattan, to my first apartment on McDougal Street between Bleeker and W.4^th.My grandmother, who lived with us, covered all the mirrors in the house and sat shiva for me as if I was dead in an attempt to shame me into moving back home but I vowed never to return.

Our family life was a shambles; my father had a mistress named Hortense. On the rare occasions he was at home evenings, he and my mother had screaming battles. My fourteen- year-old brother was always in his room, door closed, reading comics and masturbating to Playboy magazines. I don’t know how he got them but he kept them under his mattress. My grandmother, who was eighty-seven, spent all her time shopping for and cooking Kosher food for us because she believed good food would fix our fractured family. As a result the refrigerator was crowed with kasha varneskes, brisket and stuffed cabbage that no one in the house had the stomach to eat except for her.

I was entering my sophomore year at Brooklyn College and eager to take my life in my own hands. I found my apartment I had found through the New York Times, $32 a month for a forth floor walk-up with a toilet in the hall that was shared by the other 3 tenants on the floor. I used money I saved from my babysitting jobs for the first month’s rent and security deposit. Through the want ads I found a part time job afternoons as a file clerk at Capitol records on Forty-fourth Street in Manhattan. I could subway into Brooklyn for my classes in the mornings; go back into Manhattan for my job afternoons and then down to McDougal Street to do my homework in the evenings. I had it all planned out.

My boyfriend from the neighborhood, Ed Goldstein, drove me and my few cartons of possessions over on a Sunday evening. Later he became a Hare Krishna and an amphetamine addict. He wanted to stay over, and make it with me on the studio couch left by the former tenants that was to be my bed. We had been going together three months but I was already beginning to tire of him, especially the way he always pulled out of me always a minute too soon, peeled of the condom and said, “that was great, did you come too?”

I sent him home, unpacked, arranged my clothes in the closet, and packed my book bag for tomorrow’s classes. I fell asleep dreaming of Paul Newman. Eddie and I had just gone to see The Hustler. In the dream Paul Newman was inside me and his cock was as big as a pool cue.

The alarm clock woke me at 6:30 am. My first class was an early one, art history at 8 o’clock. After waiting ten minutes for hot water, I washed my face in the cold water from my sink. Then I dressed, grabbed my book bag and was out the door. I walked over to Seventh Avenue to catch the subway at 12^th street.

On the downtown number 3 train, the only other people in my car were an old Orthodox Jewish couple. The bearded man was wearing a big, black hat, his long white prayer curls peeping out from either side. The woman had a kerchief on her head and a long wool skirt that fell below the tops of her shoes so that her ankles could not be seen. I took a seat at the opposite end of the car from them and got out Xeroxes my professor had given us at the end of last weeks class.

He was a famous artist named Ad Reinhardt. I had to take an art elective. I choose the class he taught, Oriental art, because of my mother. She had a small collection of Rose Medallion China, which she had brought piecemeal at flea markets. The china featured stately court scenes painted in shades of pink and green with accents of gold. I thought I’d spend the semester looking at images of pagodas and fine ladies in elegant kimonos drinking tea.

Ad Reinhardt had other ideas. Last week, during our first class of the semester; he announced the oriental art we would be studying would be the art of ancient Asia. He had spent some years in Asia and the xeroxes in front of me were color photos he had taken of the ruins of Ankor Vat in India; huge sculptural friezes filled with copulating couples. They were certainly more interesting then the ladies strolling in gardens on my mother’s ornamental plates. Reinhardt said we should study the photos for homework and we would talk about our impressions in class. I looked at the heaving buttocks, breasts big as watermelons, male members the size of baseball bats. As I gazed at these tableaux of passion, I felt a moistening between my thighs, a certain rising heat that I loved. I didn’t think I could talk about this heat in class. I was too shy. I glanced up from the page I was looking at, trying to distance myself from the source of my arousal.

Right in front of me was standing a huge, fat man wearing a red ski cap, his raincoat open. One hand was holding on to the pole next to his head, the other was grasping his thing, jerking it, pulling it up and down. It was so swollen he couldn’t get his big, meaty hand around it. It looked as big as the specimens at Ankor Vat and made Eddie’s little thing look like a toothpick.

On the purple tip there were a few glistening drops of white creamy stuff. I knew enough to know that this meant very, very soon a big jet of that goo might shoot out all over me. I grabbed my stuff and galloped wildly to the other end of the car. I plopped down in the seat next to the old couple.

They looked at me distinctly annoyed. I tried to explain but couldn’t get the words out.

“He, er, he….”I gasped, pointing to the end of the car, ‘He …” Their eyes followed the direction of my arm but the man was gone. He must have slipped into the next car. The couple continued their discussion in Yiddish, ignoring me. I tried to compose myself; I took long deep breaths like I was meditating. The conductor announced, “Atlantic Avenue, change here for the Long Island Railroad.” There were only a few stops left before Flatbush Avenue, the Brooklyn College stop. I had better look at the pictures and think about what I could say in class.

As I gazed at them again, all I could think was that the frenzied figures feeding on each other, sucking flesh into every orifice looked like they had gone mad and it was the end of the world. Suddenly, I was conscious of a silence next to me. The old couple were staring, their mouths open, at the papers spread out across my lap. He grabbed her hand and they ran as if the devil was chasing them to the other end of the subway car. They stood there, silently facing the door and got off at the next stop.

I got to class five minutes late. Reinhardt looked at me disapprovingly. He was a tall, dour man who wore a black suit and black shirt and no tie. Several semesters later he died of a heart attack. The rumor going around campus was that he suffered it while in the saddle with a female student. As if to punish me for my tardiness, he called on me first one to share my impressions of the pictures of the ruins.

I told him I thought that the frenzy of the colossal mating figures looked like they had gone crazy, driven out of their minds by their giant orgies of flesh and it was the end of the world. Then I added another idea that just popped into my head, “Angor Vat,” I said, “could also be seen as the beginning of the world, the carnal labors of the first creation.

“Sophisticated ideas,” he said, “Surprising in an undergraduate.” His lips curved up slightly in what might have been taken for a smile.

My next class was English literature and composition. The assignment from last week was to read The Catcher In The Rye. I had read the book but I was still shaky from the occurrence in the subway car and, I couldn’t remember all that much of what I had read. My adventure on the number 3 train was like the kind of thing that kept happening to Holden Caulfield, but I definitely didn’t want to talk about it.

When I got to the room I slumped in a seat at the back and pretended I was invisible, maybe it worked because my English professor didn’t call on me, not even once.

Tsauah Litzky

Tsaurah Litzky and I go back a ways. I enjoy her writing and friendship immensely. I've published her in almost every project I've done. In print Beet, Pink Pages. She's been anthologized in Susie Bright's Best American Erotica several times, and has been teaching writing at the New School for several years. She also has a longer piece published by Susie in "Three the Hard Way" a group of three longer pieces of fiction. Here's what you can buy on amazon.com

Yeasty Yeti...

2010-01-20T13:06:00.000-08:00

A poem by Gary Heidt:

Besides writing, Gary Heidt is also a literary agent and performs in the band Fist of Kindness

Snow

2010-01-19T05:30:00.000-08:00

Nostalgia can be triggered by almost anything. The snowstorm this past Christmas week did it for me. New York City is rarely motionless, but this storm made it nearly so, even if briefly. Since I couldn't really go anywhere anyway, I just kept looking out the window and writing down all my memories of snow. Mainly, those brutal winters in Michigan -- one time so bad, my mom, a nurse in a kidney dialysis unit was driven to work by the police on a snowmobile.

I almost feel like adopting some Orville Redenbacher voice here... Just snow and sand in that little town battered against Lake Michigan in the dead of winter. White, more white, except nearly all the people in Benton Harbor were black.

They called cocaine snow in the movies at the theatre downtown. The same one that occasionally curtained off the screen for live evangelists, call you down the center isle to give your heart to the Lord. Everyone so excited, you start to cry. They give you a "Living Bible" on your way back out into the snow. And there you are looking back at the theatre from the rear window, Chains on tires, spitting up sand and snow into the red of tail lights. Was it real? Was I "touched" by the Lord? Or was it just 2 hours sheltered from the cold?

Besides that theatre, not much else. The Y. We went there with Dr. Allen, our neighbor. He ran 10 miles a day. Even in the winter. One hundred laps around the indoor banked track that overlooked the basketball court. The Red Rooster closed down. Used to like to look at all the gum stuck up under the tables when I was little, our parents rattling coffee cups against saucers above, windows frosty with the steam of cooking. Soon just another empty diner next to an empty hotel, abandoned factories, mom & pop stores with vacant windows through which is seen an occasional odd shoe or hanger.

"Clarence's Taxi: Here to take you There!" painted by hand on the side of the faded turquoise Checker cab grining from between a mound of snow and Clarence's office, which was about a quarter of an abandoned gas station, mostly covered in plywood and leafless shrubs, next to the railroad tracks where I once ran away from my mom.

When anticipating snow, the clouds accumulate overhead. Clouds always seem to promise something new, like fortunes in tea leaves, but mostly just look like snow in the sky. So there's that dread every November, you plead with the sky, "C'mon! One more green weekend, one more chance to toss a football without gloves. Then the air turns milky, and the gods dump on your head. Convoys of dumptrucks with plows, dumping huge mountains of sand and snow in the parking lot of the shopping center outside of town. We sled. Crashed like cars, often and everywhere. If it weren't for the snow, you could see that car would be on the sidewalk. Silly snow. Almost slid into someone's living room in a car once. We'd bounced off another car, and went sliding in circles across someone's front yard, ever so slowly, like ballerina. Only the evergreen shrubbery repelled us away from their livingroom window. For a brief second, you could see through the glass a little nativity scene on the window sill and one of those bronze wagon train clocks on the mantle that everyone seemed to have back then. I bet they had Brazil nuts and M & Ms in little cut-glass bowls on a coffee table, had I the time to truly examine. In a blizzard, stop lights forego their red to yellow to green routine. Sometimes they flash red or yellow over and over, other times just die, if you can even see them through the vertical white lines of a wet storm.

Lake Michigan gradually freezes. The iceline moves out further and further from shore each morning, till you can just go wonder out, take a nice, long walk through all these frozen rises and troughs. Seems waves just freeze right there. You can climb right in, Iike a surfer stepping in and out of frozen time.

Snow glazes over everything. Pathways through the woods lost beneath a vague, shimmery surface like frozen cream of wheat. The sound of crust breaking with every step vibrates up your legs, through your body to your ears. It's the only sound due to some sort of felt-covered effect: The hush of every sounding vibration in the air having lost its way. A riot absorbed in the snow: ribbetting frogs, chirping crickets, an occasional misdirected bird.

One Friday morning in Benton Harbor, I ran away from the car into the snow. My mom was yelling and I was just sick of it. Disappeared in the quiet felt. Walked and walked through several padded alleys and lightly trafficked roads. Took relief from the snow in a phone booth. Remember them? Called some friends. Cruised around as the snow accumulation grew thicker and thicker. I think it was Steve...a long time ago...I forgot his name to be honest. I just remember he was funny, glasses, drove a blue Camaro with big speakers. Smoked pot for 4 days listening to hard rock and Martin Mull. I think we played Yachtzee. Once the snow started, there was no where to go. Just snow.

Stuck at Steve's place, you could look out across the flat fields outside their house. Dead prickly corn sticking through the snow. A cyclone fence. A barbed wire fence. A picket fence directly in front of the house. Each surface capped with white afros. An intersection a hundred feet away. Two roads meet and fade into the white. Straight lines. Roads laid out in quarter or half-mile squares out here. No need for more. Just farms. After a couple days we were stir-crazy enough to drive over to Tony's, sound track of Blue Oyster Cult and a joint.

Tony's family had a horse, or a mule or something in the barn around the side of the house. Don't know how that thing survived the winter. The doors were closed, but damn. It's not like it was attached to the house or anything. Maybe the snow just covered the barn, turning it into an igloo. Like on PBS: they can birth babys and shit, it's so warm. One spring, I shovelled about 3 feet deep worth of shit out of that barn. Got paid ten bucks. Maybe that horse's shit's what's keeping him warm. A fresh steamy one probably heats up his stall for 5 minutes. If he just keeps eating enough and shitting enough...well, I'm no economics professor, but I bet that's how the damn beast keeps warm.

Things can just come up and smack you out of the snow. Like during that sophmore class retreat up north, when my horse ran me into a low branch and I woke up in the snow. For a second, no memory, just looking up through a snow tunnel to the gray sky. Walked back to camp and Cindy told me to go to the bathroom. In the mirror my nose was to one side and streaks of blood radiated from the center of my face. Quickly, before my face thawed, I just popped my nose back in the middle and walked outside. The cold froze my face again into a painless calm.

At the end of the weekend, we couldn't go home cuz of snow. Our whole class, a hundred or so of us, just stuck in a big, T-shaped cabin up north, under snow. It was a Seventh-day Adventist school, and they sent us up there on some sort of religious brainwashing campaign. But they only had like 3 days worth of programming. Then we were snowed in and they had to improvise. Our teachers organized a talent show. Lord knows, you wouldn't want an idle mind, in all this snow! That really pretty blonde exchange student from Australia sang "You Light Up My Life" -- horribly! We would have never known what a truely horrible singer she was if not for snow. Snow ruined her mystique. Almost as bad as pee-pee pants in second grade. Like one minute, she was this Olivia Newton John fox, and the next, just a really bad singer. "High school," she must have thought, "ruined by snow."

Cindy and I "parked," in snow, behind the Lakeside Tavern. The windows steamed white within the otherwise white backdrop outside. The only colors, her flush cheeks, neck and blue eyes. Our body heat and breath radiated outward but was trapped by the glass. You look up and it's crystalized on the window, like a wanna-be snowflake that was never free to be so. The artist formerly known as Steam never became Snowflake, like a frustrated catipillar unable to escape a cocoon.

Another time she made snow angels. She was a snow angel. Girls are snow-angels, boys are snow monsters, who get to kiss girls in the snow, tongues slick, red and hot licking the sky for snowflakes. Snowflakes melt on her tongue. Not the otherway around. Like saliva didn't freeze on her tongue. Then there was that acid rain scare, and you figure: acid snow. Evil lurks everywhere: Satan in the mind, polution in the air.

In head on collisions on an icy highway 31. A strangely common place to end one's life. Visually very logical. One's mortal vision is obscured by an act of god (snow, of course). Two drivers, human error results in a collision of fates. People's souls disappear in the whiteness. People are often thrown significant distances through windshields, sailing through that whiteness. That horrid ultra-serious death tone that takes a grip on a community after a road death, conjuring flashing red emergency lights whenever you blink. The sort of week-long paralysis that comes with sudden loss. People saying things like, "but for the grace of God." Imagining yourself evaporated into the white sky. A classmate, like Galen Velting resting in his open casket, a motocross t-shirt, half of his face wax and everyone trying to recall the last joke he told.

Ironically, the very first time I saw real snow was in Southern California. It was our last day, or last week before we were supposed to move with the Macks to Illinois. Bob Mack and my dad had just finished Med school together. It never snowed in California. I had only heard of snow from movies, TV and the Dr. Schivago record cover. My dad gave me a black mitten so I could examine the snowflakes better. Each flake was different. Really. My dad told me we were moving to a place, Chicago, where it snowed all the time. Like the north pole. He was right. We went to an amusement park in Chicago with my grandma called Santa's Village. They said it was the North Pole. They even had a candy-striped pole with a sign at the top that said "North Pole." Must be so! They had snow, and they had fake snow. One was cold, one was poison, my grandma said when I tried to eat it. There was poison in Snow White somewhere, too, but the connection's hazy.

The first day I went back to school after running away, I was pretty much wearing the same clothes I ditched my mom in 4 days earlier. I guess she had called the police. Turns out Cindy's folks were called, and a dozen other friends of mine. People I didn't even know that well, and certainly didn't know she knew. Imagine all that going on during a snowy weekend like that. All that snow whirling around, and all these phone calls and household conversations. Parent to parent, parent to child, child to parent, parent to parent. All these conversations, and she never even suspected I was at Steve's. Nor was I aware enough to consider myself even hiding. We were probably cruisin' around the farms going like ten miles an hour in the snow with Blue Oyster Cult going full steam, coughing our heads off from mounds of pot, and there was Mom coming out of a phenobarbitol stupor going, "where the fuck is he?" (I'm doing drugs, mom!)

Apparently, she'd gone through some Bible class notebook I had in the backpack, which I had left on the car seat in my haste. Everyone in the class was listed, so I guess she just spent the day going through that list. We'd had some assignment to confess a sin or something. I had written a rather sensational account of smoking pot and going to see Ted Nugent -- on a snowy night, even. After the show we spent the night in a college dorm with a bunch of other "party people", as they said back then.

Snow. Snow. Snow. It just goes and goes...

So she sent me to a Seventh-Day Adventist boarding school way, way up north. Made Benton Harbor seem like Miami. Upstate, like that class retreat, snow could be 8 feet deep. If you were on the first floor, you looked out your window at snow. It would have been flush against the glass, if the actual heat of the building didn't make a slim little 6-inch gap. Suicide was rampant. At least attempted suicide. It may have been a way to pass the time. Everyone just immobilized, no where to go, nothing to do. Chapel every morning, and often the evening too. Jesus, snow, God, snow, the Lord, snow, Savior. Jesus, snow, God, snow, the Lord's will, icicles, Savior. Slice my wrists. Jump off the building. Nothing. Land in snow. Blood flow frozen. Knock on a window to get back in the dorm. At morning chapel, one kid confessed he jerked off. Like just right there in front of 400 schoolmates. One girl confessed to being devil possessed. Now I can see, they were just bored due to snow. Drama to pass the snow. I'm certain.

On Mondays, we had ski night. That was fun, and a good use of snow. The snow at night under big floodlights that turned the white mountain into a dayglow, plutonium mountain. Swoosh down the hill, then up the lift. Down, then up. Then back on the bus at 10pm. Snow mesmerizes you driving at night. Each flake comes right at you. Little kamakazis. Wee suicidal faeries. A tiny elf cap on each one. So that was ski night.

And in the mean time, you're a kid, and you try to joke around. Try to have fun. I mean, I'm sure there were a few people who really liked it up there...way, way up there. Let me think... No names come to mind, but some people really are into being snow-bound and force-fed Jesus and hell for months on end. What were their names? Who was an example of someone just made for that envioronment? No names come to mind, but I'm sure they're out there.

There were girls, sure, but I wasn't quite hip to how it all worked yet. Everyone was German, Swedish or black. I was Italian. My nickname was nose. Suppose I looked like an ogre. At one point, my nick-name was Horshack. I would have preferred Vinnie. I went to a movie, "To Sir With Love," I think, in the gym, with a girl who I thought was the prettiest girl in school. We walked across the blanketed white campus. She was blonde and about a foot taller than me. She told me she wanted to be a missionary in China. Somehow, I found that perplexing. Through the whole movie I thought about her in China. Became completely detatched from the moment, absorbed in the image of her in China, all six foot two blonde of her, wee Chinamen and women scurrying around beneath her like mice. I didn't try to hold hands, kiss her or anything. I don't think we said another word to each other when I walked her back through the snow. Like I was seeing through her, past her, into the future and realized we were so different, I couldn't even begin a conversation. I was probably thinking about her in China the whole next day, too, asking myself, when I should have just asked her, why China?

On the suicide topic, lets see... how many were in winter? English teacher. OK. That was in the spring after all the students left. The hemopheliac kid who slit his wrists, that I heard about the following fall. Beat-off Baker. Jumped off the roof into the snow. Didn't die, not even injured. There was almost a murder. The black kid from Detroit who'd found his dad chopped up in the kitchen chased another kid around the dorm with a meat cleaver. Odd to have that around in the first place, since everyone up there was vegetarian. There were other suicides. One of my brother's classmates hung himself he was like 12. Well, it may not have been as much of a suicide as one of those auto-erotic asphyxiation incidents. It was one of those "youth problems" in the late 70s. A friend's mother, who went to college with my dad in Tennessee. I think that one was in the winter. Car exhaust in the closed garage. Southerners shouldn't move up north. It's just too bleak for their crackery spirits. In snow everything matches. No primary colored football jacket can cut the uniformity of white. It's practically sublime, the whiteness of the snow, effortlessly overtaking tacky, clashing color with a single sweep of a storm front.

The Adventists are into work, and into health. Everyone at Cedar Lake Academy had a 3 to 4 hour after school job. There were two campus industries. The picnic furniture factory, and the Choplet factory. I worked at the Choplet factory. Choplets are vegetarian meat. Basically, patties of wheat gluten canned in soy sauce. Wheat gluten is dough with the starch boiled out of it. I'd walk through the snow a half mile or so past the edge of campus to this cinderblock factory. Walk in the door, and there was a little locker room. Hanging in there were my overalls. I took them off the hook and stood them on the floor in front of me. They were caked in starch and stood there by themselves like a paper-machiette statue of myself. I walked over to a shower area and threw them in, softening them a bit, they'd go from that chalky starched color, to the color of wet blue overalls, I then climbed into the wet overalls and went into the steamy main line of the factory.

This is how the factory worked: First, they had this meat texturizer. This really pretty "townie" girl with only two fingers on one hand shoved dough through this hole in the top, and the dough went through this grinder. Apparently one day some had gotten stuck, and Rick Papendick told her, not very wisely, to just push it through. She and Rick wound up dating and maybe even got married. Memory's fuzzy. Long time ago. Fade to white.

Anyway, after it was texturized, the dough was put through this little chopper thing, like what they use to make frozen hamburger patties. Then there's this long, long conveyor belt that goes through a long aluminum vat of steaming water that runs nearly the length of the factory. All along the approximately 100 foot long route, frothy, white starch is boiled out of the little patty and rises to the top of the long vat of water. It bubbles over the top of the aluminum trough in big white globs onto the floor and over the course of the day accumulates to about a foot deep of what looks like Elmer's glue all over the factory floor. My job was to then squeegee all that white goo into a big hole at the back of the factory. The patties were then packed into cans with soysauce, labelled, and trucked off to Seventh-Day Adventist health food stores across the country.

A couple times, they had us go door-to-door witnessing. Adventists are also notorious prosteletizers. I wasn't even sure if I believed at this point. They took a dozen of us to town in a van after school. The sun was already down. It was a small town, and apparently used to this. The first door I knocked on, I started the schpeil that we were taught in Bible class to the weary looking man in long underwear and suspenders holding a can of Schlitz. He interrupted me. "I'm watching TV. You're welcome to join." His wife, without a word, put a plate of brownies on the coffee table and returned to working in the kitchen. I watched TV for 45 minutes, saying almost nothing. I can't remember what was on, I just remember being embarrassed for having intruded upon these nice people so randomly. At the end, he said, "Just tell them we talked about The Lord's Prayer." I thanked him for letting me duck out, then shuffled out into the snow, and back to the corner where I was to meet the others.

Things didn't always slow down in the snow. Especially for our neighbor, Dr. Allan, an Osteopath, a surgeon, and one of only two doctors who catered to the impoverished black population. He was perpetually late for something or other. Barrelled through the snow in his red Dodge Dart to his office, then to the county jail, where he was the house doctor, or to county hospital, where he did his surgury, popping amphetimines the whole time while criss-crossing the county. Infact, he took us to school a few times and the black carpetted floorboard was covered with little white pills. He just grabbed a couple pills off the floor when he needed one. Or asked one of the kids to hand him one if it was out of his reach. "Say, Maxie, can you hand me that little yellow one by your foot?" He was real absent minded. So absent minded, that one day he backed out of his garage door when it was closed.

He took us hunting in the snow once. He wasn't Adventist. Adventists didn't have guns, as a rule. Conscientious objectors, and all. I got a rabbit in my site, but I couldn't shoot it. The mark of a true Adventist. I shot a tree instead, just to see what it felt like. I'd never eaten rabbit, nor did I want to. But Dr. Allen shot one, grabbed it by it's legs after, ring of blood on the snow, and we cleaned it in their newspaper-covered kitchen. Blood everywhere, pulling, grunting, a tug-of-war trying to get the skin off the damn thing. Then I remember we just wrapped up all the newspaper, and their kitchen was as white and shiny as if we'd never been there.

Snow fights took all day. After a while kids changed teams out of boredom. And the memory of which team you were on shifted from year to year. No names of teams, but somehow, from 3rd grade to about 6th, the packs of warriors picked up where they left off from the previous year. Though drifting from team to team according to whim. There was as much snow in my snow suit, as there was outside, compacted into hard, tight packs like concentrate. If you had time, and could take your mittens off, bare hands made really hard, tight snow balls, stuff them in a pocket for later use, often forgotten and dripping to the floor once inside. My mom may wake from slumber to yell about that, but mostly she just slept, if she wasn't working. She played piano sometimes: 'I can't help falling in love with you.' You'd be walking in the snow, the wind whistling up the bluff from the lake, whooshing around the house about strong enough to knock your feet out from under you, and gradually, you'd hear her from the living room playing that song. It created a faint warmth in the air, because you could imagine her in there, at the piano, in front of the fireplace, and you only had a few more steps to the door.

Sooner or later you realize snow is a long, persistant torture from November to March. All that white, no green. Limiting movement, shrinking your horizons, your range of emotions, snow is "the man." You just get so sick of looking at it you just want to murder it. Or maybe just cry. Spring really means something up there.

In spring, snow melts alongside the sagging canvas domes over the tennis courts. A spot around the side of the house stays white through April, though early flowers blossom on the sunny side of the house in March. The wetness on the carpet beneath the coat rack, where you hung your wet coats, kicked off your wet boots all winter long, begins to ripen with mildew. Slushy streets. The salt clinging to the lower edge of the car. Rust. The winter a disappearing glacier. The most dreary and monotanous point in the year. As slow as watching snow melt. Trickle down effect. The poor snowman, the shrinking man. Time drifts until the drift is no more. If I'd known the dream would melt like snow, I'd have told myself not to go. The rivers flow with the blood of snow, especially in Michigan. Go, snow. I hate your guts and we've always hated you.

At the end of the semester at Cedar Lake Academy, the huge icicle at one corner of the dorm goes from looking like a solid 2 feet wide column from the roof, stratight into the snow, to being a spindly 18 inches at top, and nearly reaching the ground, then to like a foot wide, 8 inches and so forth. Finally, by the last day of school, just gone. I drove back to Benton Harbor with the Gustafson's. Me, Sonja, Eric, each with a footlocker or two in the back of the stationwagon. Drove up the road, exited campus, looking out the car window to the remaining snow along the shoulder of the road, a long thin white stripe where the ploughs pushed it back all winter long, battered with pocks from rain, gravel, black splotches of soot along the shoulder 6 inches high, 6 inches to two feet wide, snaking along at an inconsistent distance from the road, brown grass starting to turn green in May, the cinder block choplet factory, drove past Rick Papendick perhaps walking to his girlfriend's house, still in snowmobile boots, his parka unzipped. Slept in the car while the Gustafsons talked about getting summer jobs. Dreamt about beach grass, or moving to my Dad's in Tennessee.

IT'S NATIONAL CLEAN UP YOUR DESK MONTH...

2010-01-13T10:26:00.000-08:00

According to the US Census Bureau, 80% of the work involves 20% of the papers. So I took a picture of everyone's desk in my building...very little paper to be found...

Hal Sirowitz...coming up short...short poems...on...

2010-01-04T16:19:00.000-08:00

Relieved by her orgasm –

at least I knew she was still

breathing.

Orgasms galore –

next time hoping she lets us

touch one another.

Don’t ask for whom

her body tolls – just help

with the ringing.

Casting a vote on sleeping together,

I placed my right hand over her breast –

she abstained.

The bird was caught in the rafters –

My hand was caught on her breasts –

Only my hand was removed.

She killed the fly –

she killed any attempt at conversation –

she could only kill the fly once.

Hal is... well, many of you know him as....

Author of Mother Said...

Author of Father Said...

...and...My Therapist Said...

As the biggest thing to hit Norway since Knut Hamsun...

As the poet laureate of Queens who we LOST...LOST, I say... to Philly!

As someone we miss here in the city, but oh well....wish him well there too...

Paved With Good Intentions

2009-12-30T06:08:00.000-08:00

By Ron Kolm

We’ve just left

Your best friend’s house

And so far

It’s been a pretty good day.

“Hey, I think your buddy

Has the hots for me,” I joke.

Out of the corner of my eye

I see you pop open

The glove compartment

And fool around inside

Coming up with a surprise:

A stainless-steel can opener.

You aim for my eyes

And I grab your wrist

Just in time

But I can’t disarm you

With only one hand

And I need the other to steer.

We’re skidding

On loose gravel

As I pump the brake pedal

Trying to slow us down

Until we finally come

To a complete stop.

“You really don‘t have a clue,

Do you, Ronnie.” you hiss,

Sliding back onto your side of the seat.

“I’ve been trying to tell her

About our problems in bed --

Now she can find out for herself!”

When he's not getting poked in the eye, Ron Kolm is busy organizing a gazillion projects at the same time. For instance, I met Ron when he was busily organizing events with the performance poetry group most active in the 1990s, The Unbearables. He also has been gathering submissions for the wee Public Illuminations Magazine for what (?), some 30-some years. (PIM is the first "zine" I ever saw and liked when someone handed me a copy ca. early 1980s at a Black Flag gig in Knoxville, TN!) His huge archive of Downtown New York lit was purchased by the Fales Library at the NYU. He'll always be a point man, living reference, keeper of the faith for that sort of stuff. Oh, yeah, and he's a fantastic poet, and occasionally churns out a longer yarn if you coax him just right.

"Morning After" Santa, ca. 1911:

2009-12-25T09:44:00.001-08:00

What Was Funny Then...Cartoon Gag Postcards ca. 1905-1960

2009-12-22T14:39:00.000-08:00

This post is here because I've always been a huge fan of Sam Henderson from the 90s zine days, & in general, his kind face cropping up around the hood in the so-called hey-day of Williamsburg. Sam's comicbook, The Magic Whistle has always been a favorite of mine. It mines the field of gags that you may find in Playboy, Mad, or even just The Family Circus. His humor is at times oblique and at other times poop-in-your-pants funny...and is often just about poopy pants. To push it all to another pondering level, he has a whole sub-genre of his own work that shows a gag, then has a caption that begins, "it's funny because..." which is funny because...

Anyhoo... Sam recently posted some 50s cartoon postcards on facebook. When I mentioned that I had a butt-load of these cards somewhere, Sam suggested I post mine. Today, though I certainly had other things to do, I looked...and looked. Well, I couldn't find the motherlode of exactly that type Sam was looking for, but as is often the case, I got sidetracked into a pretty decent sampling of things that...well...here. A brief overview of the cartoon gag postcard industry over a 50 year span (John Williams soundtrack please):

First tenant of the trade: Nothing is funnier than a wife joke. Period.

Unless a poem about women with dubious morals.

If that isn't funny enough: FAT Women...perhaps even a fat MAN! (by the way, I think the women are the most Sam's "type" ...of postcard)

Here are a few more of the 50s-60s era "Sam type":

These last three are my favorites of today's seach: "I'm Blowing Myself"; "Pooping Baby"; "The Old Cow Has Sagging Teets"... I don't know why. I just can't stop looking at them.

...I guess they're funny because...

Jose Padua: melanbucolia awareness...

2009-12-19T06:26:00.000-08:00

Country Life

For lunch today I ate another ham,

egg, and cheese sandwich with whole

wheat Wizards of Waverly Place bread.

It’s a meal that neither thrills me nor bores

me because I am never bored, even by food,

though there are times when, like a cow

chewing grass beside the highway, I am

a little less than thrilled, and am a little

bit smelly. It’s been said that you are

what you eat, which today would make

me a pig, covered in cheese, with an

egg in its mouth. If the smell keeps

those delicate people who eat people

away, I’m all for it, but other than that

I don’t see it doing me much good.

-Jose Padua

Parade

That terrible beauty that waves

its hand to you from a float in a parade.

What is this sinking feeling, I get?

Why, if I return the gesture, is my smile

forced and false? Why do I feel that

we’ve gotten smaller, that there is

nothing but distance between me

and her sparkling white crown?

-Jose Padua

Listen

Bad poetry I can listen to all

day. I can laugh at it, or let it

bore me, keep my feet planted

firmly on the ground while I reach

out for a glass on the table

or something to scratch my back

with. But when it’s good all day

is too much. I just want a little

of it, and then I want you to shut

up. I want you to leave me alone.

-Jose Padua

Jose's sardonic sense of humor is sorely missed in this city and lost (apparently) to rural Virginia... He and his wife Heather Lynne Davis do a great blog:

http://shenandoahbreakdown.wordpress.com/

Tim Tomlinson on failures to communicate...

2009-12-18T04:54:00.000-08:00

Breakfast

In Heartbreak a half hour till sun-up

the barman dances with his best friend’s wife

to George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex,”

a loaded handgun tucked into his

beltless jeans. Opposite the jukebox

the game of 8-ball in the green felt glare

stops on a sloppy break that sends the cue

ball rolling between the legs of a bride

from Indiana whose husband is

interested, he tells the barman, in some

breakfast. That gets a laugh from the few of

us still hearing in English. The barman

says, “Well, could all use a little breakfast.”

The couple laughs like they heard some kind of joke.

FIVE-LINE POEMS

Walking Home

On Sterling Place

I walk behind a man

walking home. He waves

to nine people who wave back.

This is, like, New York.

Belief

tonight

you no longer believe

things will change.

Tomorrow,

you might.

Failure

the failure

of your ex-wife’s poems

pleases you.

your own –

that hardly matters.

Questions

you have learned

not to ask questions

when they cry in your bed—

questions

have answers

Tim is a great writing teacher. Was mine! I took his workshop in the 90s when I first started writing, you know, seriously. He now part of this New York Writers Workshop.

http://www.newyorkwritersworkshop.com/

and here's an interview with Tim:

http://www.webdelsol.com/Algonkian/interview-tim.htm

Land & Airscapes of Ernest Hilbert...

2009-12-17T05:05:00.000-08:00

The Envelope, Please

Thank you, oh, thank you (hold up statuette)

Thank you (breathe) so much. This is just too much.

I couldn’t have done it without the drugs . . .

And the booze. It took a whole lot of sweat

And tears. Mostly sweat. It’s such

A huge, huge honor to be here. It sort of bugs

Me that it took so long, but here I am.

I’d also like to thank the drugs. Wait, did

I say that already? Okay. The booze?

Right. Well, man (sob), I had fun (slam

Award on podium), and they were really good

Drugs. I’d also like to thank (ignore cues)

Fans, friends, you at home, dealers, mom and dad,

But most of all I’d like to (cut to car ad).

Diary of a Sex-Starved Communist

Something churns me from sleep.

I float and circle in a clogged toilet

Of 2AM and a pile of notices.

I watch streetlights click white and buzz.

Turned out of my lumpen mattress,

I wander bleak square footage.

Each step creaks like a bent hull.

A mass moves, so huge, we can’t see it,

Only feel it tug us against ourselves.

Too much coffee, just enough grief,

Or not enough, hard to figure.

I know how the world works, or did.

It labors to a time when we’re equal

And love each other in turn as family

Should but never seems to.

Piles of pamphlets and books drag me

Along like hooks in my skull.

This evening I wonder what do I give?

A good man against tyrants, a tyrant

Against time, I sit at the window

To watch pearled remains of clouds

Bank desperately against a crowded moon.

The Day He Became Omnipotent

While Trying to Read at the Airport

First I sought those

I despised on sight

And destroyed them.

Then I sought those

I wished merely to spare

(So few seemed worthy),

The quiet woman

Reading a good book,

Smiling boy at the coffee stand.

I spared no one.

Bonehead

For Andrew Hallman

The sunset took hours to drain off and left

The sky an ocean of azure and ash.

The prehistoric van, heaving with books,

Sputtered out of gas on thirteenth. I laughed,

Got out, smoked, looked around. A siren flashed,

But the cop sped past. Others threw looks

But then cruised slowly on. The city warmed

In the electric haze of spring; couples

Sauntered by, unaware of my jam—I had rolled

In front of a hydrant. Life grew loud and swarmed

From all sides. Time adds trouble to troubles.

Music erupted from a dark bar door. I strolled

Across the intersection for a quick one,

As they say, to stay the long, ruthless run.

Other booksellers will know this feller immediately. That cheerful, talkative dude from Bauman's Rare Books that is so often at book fairs. Ernie is somewhat the lit-star lately. A very satisfying collection, Sixty Sonnets, is out in book form. I also have the collector's edition of the Sixty Sonnets beer bottle, but it is not for sale. What was that you say? How much? Perhaps we're getting close...tempting, but perhaps you can find your own bottle here:

http://www.sixtysonnets.com/

By far the best fund-raising letter of the Holidays by Harmony Korine for Printed Matter:

2009-12-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

Here, this'll cheer you up: A few poems by auteur Michael Randall:

2009-12-15T06:03:00.000-08:00

LISTENING TO WAYLON

When you smell the smoke it’s clear

there’s no more time.

Young girls just get lonelier and

every year the peacock

with its tail and buzzing

batteries is dying while

the starfish, by candlelight,

stands idly by.

Barely moving inherits the earth

while the rest of us

pitch fits just to get paid. Big-headed chicks

fall first from the nest

and it seems to go: outlaw, outlaw, whore, whore,

fat whore, town drunk, troubadour.

Now you know how babies get made down

here in Texas.

THE SEVEN DAY WEEK

Sunday

Partly cloudy, chance of thunderstorms

Monday

Chicken Noodle

Yankee Bean

Tuesday

‘s just as bad…

Wednesday

Ladies Drink Free

10-12PM

Thursday

: nothing.

Friday

somehow becomes transparent

Saturday

Night Fever made Travolta

a star.

HERBICIDE

There’s all that herb I smoked in high school and then

there’s my father Herb who sold refrigerators, air conditioners, dish-

washers. Liked football games,

white belts & westerns.

Also valued for his flavor, scent and other qualities. Peaches and Herb were once

America’s Sweethearts of Soul

and although there have been numerous Peaches,

Herb Feemster

has remained a constant. Born in Anacostia, an area of Washington, DC, in

which my father sold TVs

when the maw-maws and jungle-bunnies weren’t stealing them

off the trucks, Herb Feemster

grew up knowing that Love Is Strange and also how to Shake His Groove Thing

which would have annoyed, confused and disgusted my father,

not smudging him, but certainly making the sauce

taste funny.

HYMNS ANCIENT AND MODERN

The elevator doors in the lobby

of the hotel

over by the bus station open. She’s in town

from Caracas

until early tomorrow on her way

to see her brother

in Florida. Puffier than I’d remembered

and much sadder her mother

dead and also one of her friends

and mine. I take her out

for bad shrimp creole at a fake Cajun place on

Ninth Avenue that

I’d heard was good. The food isn’t but the table’s

by the window and the sunset

silhouettes her dyed-black hair. We drink slowly

at first and I pretend

I can see the pictures of undead friends

on the tiny screen

of her camera. She’s 53 and lost trying

not to cry and when

she goes out on the street for a cigarette

she taps on the glass

and waves to me through a bright cloud of

amber.

Mike is also the auteur responsible for the much more cheerful boobsploitation flick "Girlquake", where a bunch of hot chicks come out of the center of the earth to look for their leader who apparently resides in Coney Island. Hey, did you know Jimmy Rodgers spent his last day on earth at Coney Island? Mike also does some great paintings, very cheerful and not at all like the stuff published above. You can check them out here:

http://michaelrandallnyc.com/home.html

Who WAS Jack Kerouac? (A Rhetorical Question)

2009-12-14T05:10:00.000-08:00

[This is a piece I did a couple years ago that this webzine accepted for publication but never published...maybe it's just no good. But it kind of explains what I've been up to the past few years...and you may notice it was written in "the bush era."]

I was rockin' down the highway mesmerized by 70s oldies. My gas gauge had been busted for months, yet once again, I was startled near point of death, by that fuel light shining so brightly from it's wedge between the speed and o domitors. Shining as if screaming, as if an electronic child screaming for attention from between it's round and dominant older siblings.

So down the exit ramp I rumbled, at Lowell, Mass, where the sign says there's gas, hastily decelerating as well as my overstuffed mini-van could manage, chock full with hundreds of pounds of books and shelves, the brakes in need of work. Upon acknowledging possible dangers, my neurosis perfected after living 20-some years in Brooklyn, take over, my life flashes before my eyes, my death flashes before my eyes. Such an end to such a life: ploughing through the intersection, the horns, the crash of metal, the ricochet of my van into the living room of, say, a family of five, not so unlike the Simpsons, or the Kerouacs, as this is Lowell. Regardless of which collision course physics would propel me towards, I would surely be crushed to death by my shifting load. The headline: Rare Book Dealer crushed by his own mistakes. That's a joke, son, the word is that in the Rare Book world, inventory is a synonym for mistakes. The good ones sell immediately, the rest become inventory. And such is life: whatever you have is too soon gone. What ever you want bears a heavy price. And there is another slogan and another, for this is America and we live, die, and live to repeat slogans. God Bless America. What goes around comes around. I won't even touch psychobabble.

This is where I came from: An Antiquarian Book Fair in Portland, ME. Need you know anything else? I'm in my 40s, hair gray and too long, in need of exercise and a shave. But I do my best to be charming. After a day of chatting up a few dozen strangers, some of which leave you money for your goods, most which do not, every bookman is confronted with the persistent disappointment of still owning 19 of the 20 boxes of books he brought to the fair. Then the realization hits in both a physical and metaphysical manner the state of one's existence, usually during the tedious packing up process at the close of each fair. That's when you see those who did worse nursing a cigarette at the back door reciting the following: "The internet killed this business" "Books are now ephemera" or more common for those who do not deal in Modern literature and despise the money made in that area, "books are just props for dust jackets." But for myself, I'm no old timer. I have no well-established theories on the marketplace. I don't even know what bookselling was like before the internet. But I can lend this observation: The book dealer is a mere schlepper, constantly transporting impossibly heavy dead weight, a helpless custodian of matter that is unaware of its absurd physical bulk, and the inconvenience it presents to its custodian. Ironically, these strongboxes of typography transport the weightless spirit of a man from one generation to the next. Like Lowell's own Mr. Kerouac.

There's a first in jacket of Big Sur behind me somewhere, which I'd hoped, to no avail, would have been bought by a 20-something with tattoos and a goatee. Either him, or a balding hippie who took his kids to Woodstock, 2000. But that didn't happen, did it? Rather, upon the failing of my brakes, during the slow motion reality of these moments, as the front of the car crumples into my legs, Big Sur will no doubt fly forward from its box, lodge itself in the back of my skull, or spine, or plunge through my shoulder blade like an axe into a seven-layer cake. Big Sur, Naked Lunch, 17 leather-bound volumes of Thackeray's Works, an entire brigade of travel books, and not in the least, that big-assed Joel Peter Witkin folio, will dice me to pieces and present me to the forensic team as some macabre chopped-corpse-salad in a startled stranger's living room, quite the photo op for either Witkin or Weegee. The headline reads: Rare Book Dealer Dissected in So Many Words, then 12 year old Gregory Labatt, distant nephew of Jack, successfully treated former orthodontal patient, collector of hockey cards, and 6th grade master of glib commentary, tells the Lowell Herald reporter, "We were just watching TV and voila!"

For now, I've kept the reaper at bay. I'm off the freeway and moving at a wheelchair's pace up the congested causeway of Jack's hometown. Perhaps for years, this road has been abused by delivery trucks bouncing over it's small-town potholes, their springs squeaking their cacophonous song, their loads pounding the earth a million times heavier than a battalion of kettle drums. Perhaps at one time this road snaked past Jack's house, those clamoring rigs waking holy Jack, old drunk holy Jack there passed out on a sofa, wrapped in his American flag like a very, very old and bloated old babe in a manger, old Jack that he was. Or sweeter yet, young Jack, not yet ordained as the dharma bum he would become, napping, safe to dream in one of those clap-board houses, over there, up the hill in the distance, past the new, ugly, instant sprawl, franchises that grow each year like cancerous ganglia from each and every interstate exit across the country pumping more and more toxins into innocent American hamlets, siphoning cars from the freeway, bloating bucolic valleys with spongy piles of food waste from styrofoam eateries. Oh, for those old days! Back then, when young Jack napped, dreamt away the wrestlessness cultivated in all these small towns, feeding the need to dream of bigger things: big ideas, big philosophies, big boobs, big places half-way around the globe, manners, customs and dress never seen, or more likely a comely waitress on rollerskates serving a cheeseburger topped with pungent summer tomatoes, effervescent coke in harmony with her sweet 16 lilt, just off Route 66, half way across the country, Kansas, Iowa, wherever they warehouse those midsummer wet dreams.

And what was the world at large thinking? The great war ended. Roast Beef at the corner. Communism. Yes, that great mobilizer. Suddenly the 57th parellel was so fucking important. All the ideas in the world, all the possible progress of mankind came to this one intellectual bottleneck: the cold war.

Remarkably similar to this very street. At this point in history, this street is that it's way too skinny. Traffic slithers like snails down hill and up and down again, car dealers encroaching to the left, shopping center to the right. All drivers on edge, waiting for the moment to nudge one car ahead. No Citgo, yet. Has to be Citgo, Venezuelan-owned Citgo, really, I mean the people not some dictator of Venezuela, not the international investors in Venezuela, no President Chavez won that victory for and by the people, fair and square. Even Jimmy Carter said so. Unlike Shell, which places hits upon reporters, or Texaco, that fat, flatulent bullhorn, shamelessly belching forth it's namesake, that horrid, bull-in-a-china shop state which has colonized the country from a small intestine near Crawford, declaring a majority rule by drones in ticky-tacky little twit-towns, void of culture, every house smelling new and brimming with prosperity, the antithesis to the quaint hidden by-ways of Lowell. Oh, sure, they love quaint, but only in quotation marks. A quaint bistro would be way too messy, way too flavorful. Chicken, not lamb, please. And make it white meat. Towns manicured like an elegantly dressed clipping from a magazine, newtown-bright with nothing to say, its armies pushing forward to the furthest point seen through the sites of their AK-47s, numbly marching and marching on, trampling the sweet, the subtle, killing anything that is worth putting effort into understanding, silencing witnesses by belching forth loud, stupid, obscenities from behind mesmerizing shields, evil 5-pointed Texaco logos, re-writing history, Texas-style, claiming a lone star flag blanketed Lowell's laureate, who by that time of his life could barely work up the consciousness to contemplate his own flatulence, let alone argue with history over the number of stars in the flag. Just let the old fart repeat his patriotic slogans -- might mobilize the evildoers.

Yes, from the land of Lincoln, to the Virginian hills of Jefferson, Washington and Lee, to the great cliffs and valleys alongside the Pacific, and right here in Lowell, you can watch as the new part of town, devours the old. Those over-funded tumors, fortified by so many IRA accounts, those random, thoughtless malls that are rated for investment portfolios according to how many dollars per square foot per year is made, or worse, is merely possible to be made, those impossibly moronic standards that drive the market place…what's that, you ask? What does an IRA account have to do with a mall? It's simple, I meant that literally. I once had a clerical job at Shearson Lehman, and the money for IRA accounts went straight into all those brand names, and those brand names are contained in malls, and there are huge quantities of charts and graphs analyzing profitability, strategies in turning over money, and if you are an MBA you might assume everyone knows this, and yes, by now, it's come up on NPR, PBS, and perhaps even Fox has defended Wallmart, but it goes on and on, and now the same economic strategy is hitting cultural Europe. Stupid, soulless numbers blaze the trail for the coming culture vacuum. The culture war is the war on culture. Life should be a song of subtle variations whose verses unfold in slight variants every time it is sung. So, please, for the love of culture, lets not privatize Social Security any more. Texas, even you are at risk.

And another thing, while I'm waiting to move forward 6 fucking car lengths so that I can turn off this lard-encrusted artery into the fan-fucking-tastic Citgo station, at every exit across this great interstate system of ours, one must drive further and further from these exits to escape the Styrofoam eateries in search of indigenous trees and the last and largest hill in this little holler of Lowell, Mass. Sweet God Almighty, an overdue relief to the eye after all that suburban blight. I've been through the valley, and now I see, at the hill's foot lies a Citgo, with older pumps, no steroid-bloated whipped-stucco façade, rather Citgo looks frozen in a vintage photo: 60s, or, maybe 70s remodeling showcasing sparse, smoothe metallic lines that divvy up shiny vertical planes of white enamel, the ever so softened corners of the red Citgo triangle. It's neighbor across the side-street, from an even earlier generation, perhaps Jacks, a no-name roast beef place, white clapboard, green roof and carport, welcome mat, one neon light flashing in a large picture window: "Roast Beef", "Roast Beef". There isn't even a business name that I can see.

I get out to pump the gas but a red-head kid about 16 with his name on a blue denim jump suit greets me. I'm surprised, "Full service?" "Yup." It seems my wallet only bears a twenty and 3 fives, and I have a long drive back to the city. You see, I had more cash in my wallet, but just before the fair closed, I saw a nice copy of "Out of Africa", clean, right price. I can double it. So now me broke. "Make it 20." Though, I really hope that's enough to get back to Brooklyn. "No wait. 19 and one for you." I remember the days I spent as a porter at an auction house, the faint reward of recognition, the slightly larger than appropriate tips from those like to make your day. The hope that one day you might be in their position, and look at you now…

He squeezes the bill of his cap in a "Thank you" gesture, while I collect empty water and soda bottles from the car. Just a dollar, I think smugly. From over the trashcan I see there's a Wendy's up the street, and though the cursive neon "Roast Beef" beckons me from it's clapboard shell, clapboard similar to how I imagine Jack's house, I know it will be all the money I have left and I need that money for tolls. "Roast Beef" be gone, and retreat from my mind, as if a retreating turtlehead disappearing into it's clapboard shell. Convictions be damned, I'm broke! That's my new slogan.

Anyway, I've always had a soft spot for Wendy's since I worked at one after school when I was a kid in Nashville. The Wendy's up the street from Citgo is exactly like the one I used to work in when I was a kid in Nashville. Men's Room with an "Out of Order" sign taped crookedly to the door, here at 7 pm on a Sunday, probably no different than the 7 pms on Sundays, crooked "Out of Order" signs on the men's room was when I was a kid in Nashville. I use the women's room and am greeted coming out by a portly man, regular customer, I suspect, who says, "oh, we're using the women's room, today?" "You got no choice," I say, an exchange perhaps repeated in Wendy's across the country since I was a kid in Nashville. And finally, an adorable, slightly plump blonde cashier, nearly pretty enough for the cheerleaders, but for whatever reason isn't one, takes my order with a fresh-faced smile, just like the slightly plump blonde fresh-faced cashiers I had crushes on back when I was a kid in Nashville. I feel like asking her if they get tons of people here, all looking for Jack's house. But I'm afraid to find out whether she even knows who Jack is. Two junior cheeseburgers and a chili for three dollars! God Bless America.

Get this: The manager is a Mexican Lady. Perhaps she's from the Lone Star State, finally escaped the fate of being one of the tiny brown wheels on which the west rolls. Well good for her, escaping the undertow, riding the surf of corporate colonization, alongside those doughy white suits, quick with their projections, slow in explaining the criminal activity in near every action they perform. It occurs to me that the spirit of the east (coast) is more content with itself, smug, those out west might say, while the spirit of the west is forever discontent, always expanding, colonizing looking for whatever it never had, until those nimble, simple masses, armed with their stories of Donnor party cannibalism and Mormon persecution, finally ricocheted from the wall of Pacific waters, back east to make over their origins in an acquired style that is still not theirs. Left behind out west, little pockets of liberal utopias, those pioneers who gave up and realized they were as content as the lilies in the field, there they clustered in little utopias, flowerbeds of peace, Eugene, Berkeley, Needles, fostering all manners of deliberate and earnest thought about the sustainability of mankind. Not all are liberal, some are the opposite, but regardless of how tolerant they are, or how insanely intolerant they are, whether a hippie commune or a white supremist retreat, they move a step slower than those ricocheting okies who fill mega-churches, mega-malls, mega-freeways, vote as stiffly as blocks of wood, living in the lockstep joy of a dominating mass…or am I just looking into my own past, my upbringing, a twinge of self-hatred, the nobles oblige that applies to the new non-noble power-class, the white guilt.

Funny, the manager is a Hispanic woman, as well as the assistant manager. They are reminding the girl that she entered my order incorrectly. They discuss. I've no clue what they're talking about. Probably she forgot to press the button for pickles. No matter, they are more or less like and unlike the managers and assistant managers when I was a kid in Nashville. I remember the manager who fired me. I'd worked there for over a year, he, for a month, smack in the middle of his middle-age crisis, with Nashville hairspray in his preacher-hair, that silly Wendy's cap flattening his dignity, angry that I would want Sunday off to take my college entrance exam. For weeks, I told successive managers about these exams that loomed over me larger than anything I had yet encountered, but he scheduled me despite that, and no doubt to spite me, and of course I didn't go to work, but rather took the exam (even went to college), and of course he went through with his threat and fired me, and here I am, 27 years later, still annoyed that the cranky little fucker even exists.

Once served on a bright orange tray my 2 junior cheeseburgers and a chili for $3, I take my food across the dining area, feeling not so unlike the new kid in school, as everyone else seems to possess a comfort in their environment that I do not. I walk past table after table, the large man from the bathroom has joined his large wife by the window, who is negotiating the closing of a house they want from her celphone. At another table, a dweebie clique of 3 high school misfits, perhaps even late bed-wetters the way they hunch over anticipating danger from every angle, carrying the scars of abuse with them into young adulthood. I can't read their T-shirts, but if they had grown up in my time, they would certainly bear something related to Dungeons and Dragons. Look up, kids, for soon your imaginations, if not math skills will take you to high-paying jobs, and if you don't mind those cheerleaders, once they've had a kid, and are slightly plump and loose around the hips, still looking somewhat fetching in their mid-twenties, khaki shorts, perhaps even trying that Izod look, you might land them from the jocks of the world who now satisfy their sexual urges with the occasional lap dance at the V.I.P. Lounge on the edge of town. But for now, looking into the parking lot the brawny blonde jocks climb from their blue 80s vintage semi-compact.

You know, I watched the Breakfast Club, I watched Rushmore, I watched a lot of reports on Columbine, and the bowling thereof, & I even used to be involved in this fanzine subculture reading primary source material on the persecution of our more creative adolescents. But I must say, my elementary and tender underclassman years were spent in the unusually kind culture of the Seventh-day Adventists. We had no varsity teams: They foster competitive behavior, while we believed that all are equal in God's eyes, and coveting status symbols is wrong, and it's only a small step from a varsity letter to a flashy car. One should give that money to a less fortunate brother or sister or the church.

Even so, while living in a small Seventh-Day Adventist College town in Michigan during my 6th grade year, there was Cary Atherton, excessively obese, though strangely cheerful. Denny Matheson would chase Cary all around the school, before school, at recess, and after school. Sure, he could run faster than that fatty Cary, but he preferred to make a show of it, and try to get other kids involved in the spectacle. So the mob of jubilant 6th graders, Bible thumpers or not, would chase Cary into the wooded paths behind the school, out into a nearby tomato field, here, there, everywhere. Then they'd knock Cary over on the ground, pinching him in vulnerable areas, punching their kid-sized fists into his massive blubber, and miraculously, Cary came to school day after day, seemingly unphased, seemingly cheerful, even a winsome lad, drawing pictures in his notebook when he should be taking down math formulas, sitting by himself at lunch carrying on jovial conversations with imaginary friends.

About 10 years after high school, I was driving though that town and had the treat of having my gas pumped into my car by none other than Denny Matheson. I asked him how he was. He had married his first girlfriend that he had started dating in 8th or 9th grade and they had a family. I, on the other hand, was living in New York, had recently been to Europe twice, and the last thing I could think of wanting was to be strapped in a rather bland small town, even by standards of small towns, trying to feed a family on a gas attendant's salary. No offense, Denny, but, oh, to be Cary.

Back in Wendy's, Lowell, Mass, the dweeb is fixated on the jock. He envies everything the jock has. Mostly, he envies the admiration that strangers, and mostly girls bestow upon the jock. He is too envious of the phalluses of others to realize the girl who didn't make the cheerleaders has a plump little cherry, pulsating to the beat of the dweebs frightened little heart. If not that girl who didn't make the team, there's no doubt another. And a never ending mathematical equation of kinetic versus potential love wrapped in a weave of vectors, co-signs and tangents. The next Einstein will solve this equation. But for now, this is what transpires in Wendy's, 7:03 pm, Lowell, Mass:

"I know he's an asshole," says the skinny dweeb, the whole of his being remarkably focused on this single, local event, "but he's cool to me." His infectious optimism causes his two table-mates to look towards the door from their perpetual inward slouch. As the jocks enter, dweeby kid's thinking, Christ, this Kevin or Buck (or you, reader, supply the jock name) was nice to me. ME! And I don't want to screw up my chance at popularity. But, of course, when blonde Adonis walks in he barely notices the dweeb and shouts across the room to the older couple by the window. They are apparently friends with his parents. The dweeb sheepishly waves with 2 fingers over his shoulder. The jock shouts over to the couple that he just got back from Costa Rica and dreads having to wake up at 6 for work, no acknowledgement of the dweeb at all.

Costa Rica? That is kinda cool. No one from Nashville ever just got back from Costa Rica when I was a kid. Chalk one up for Lowell and the Jocks that inhabit the place. The jock who hung out with Bowles, the subterraneans wetting their feet in the foam of the Mediterranean. Yes, we know Kerouac made the football team. Kerouac was the reluctant beat alpha-male. And no matter how much you read, how much you reflect, this life comes down to a small purgatorial ring of questions: How content am I? Was I too good for the team? Or am I bitter that I never made the team? Is my discontent spirit propelling me forward into new experiences? Or am I just looking for that something I never had? Was my first love my true love that I will never again know? Or why did I marry the first ovulating bitch that unzipped my fly? Why does my car contain 800 pounds of books? Where is God in all this? Is he a jock? Is God there? Is God beyond Nietzsche, is God is not God, neither dead or alive, or concerned whether or not I play my life to the best of my ability? Is God not even watching while the content clash with the malcontent, or metal crumples into the flesh of crash victims? Does he cradle in his metaphoric arms those who die slowly, drunk, drugged, wrapped in the flag. OK. You've cracked the code. I'm not really talking about Jack at all. I'm talking about the word, which is both god and flesh. As discussed, both weight and weightlessness. The word, the book, society marching forward without a thought of its origins, destined to repeat the dumbest mistakes of history, destined to destroy that which it should treasure. In Iraq, guarding great reserves of mud while the museum is pillaged, in America, dismantling entire support structures to the arts because an artist depicts his gay lifestyle and someone has the gall to exhibit this in Cincinnati. The thick stupidity of it all, marching forward, faster, in greater lock-step, less time to think, less time for any thoughtful reaction. Now adolescents in Indiana who become pregnant are considered victims of sexual abuse and must report to the state before seeking an abortion under the pretext that they and all other youth are being protected by the state from sexual predators. Huh? The twisted morality of it all! You could write a book about it!

Into this children are born. In some classes of people, they are expected to be geniuses at 4, given computers at 3, in other classes, there are no expectations and they get a bottle of Kool-aid. In high school, Army recruiters are given the home telephone numbers of children by principals of schools, so that they can induct children into this hamburger grinder of stupidity. Denny Matheson, what clues are your children giving you about the future of our world? Oh, holy dweebs at the center of the Wendy's dining room in Lowell, Mass, what advise can I give you? What prayer of blessing can I recite? Rama, Rama!

Next week the dweeby kid, riddled by jock-envy, will pursue the accepting arms of counter-culture. Alas, he will meet a 19-year-old poet at Border's Books open mike. He reads a poem about wanting it. She reads a poem about getting it. She's majoring in American lit at the local junior college. Her male counter parts there, all the future restaurant managers, like their women with frosted hair. She calls them young fogies. She likes her men young, dumb and full of cum. He doesn't know what he likes, just knows that its that thing all the jocks envy and the thing that makes him constantly jerk off: pussy. Illusive, mystical pussy. While they walk up and down the isles of borders negotiating sex, he picks up a paperback copy of Big Sur. Once he is older, he will want a first edition in a jacket to memorialize his youth. For now, she tells him Jack was from Lowell. Her hand is in his pants at the check-out. She has a car. They have sex several times over the next week before she tires of him and stops returning his calls. Despondent, yet, now aware that the world is a much bigger place than it was last week, he reads the book. In the preface he learns the alpha-beat, the biggest icon of counter-culture, the messiah of that very sub-group that allowed a dweeb like him to finally experience what the jocks call "pussy" was once a star back at Lowell High. He got a football scholarship to Columbia. After bouncing around the world most of his life, he returned to Lowell with culture that was never really his, swaddled himself in the American flag on his sofa drinking Thunderbird and repeating beatnik slogans to anyone who would listen. Despite dying in his own incoherent blathering, not so unlike Marylin Monroe or Elvis, he joined the pantheon of American Gods, and we all know: Gods Bless America.

Tsaurah Litzky's housecleaning tips...

2009-12-13T22:39:00.000-08:00

Cleaning The Toilet

I don’t even notice

the brown grit building up in the bottom of the bowl

until it looks like the black hole of all my sins,

a build-up of lies, evasions,

the mixed messages I send out.

the excesses I take in,

that extra helping of kasha varniskes,

the spoons full of peanut butter I eat

straight from the jar at night when I can’t sleep.

Then, this morning, as I’m standing up to flush

I see the crust of blackness at the bottom of my life,

see where I am going, down into the sewers with the alligators.

I grab the new toilet brush I got at Bed, Bath and Beyond

last week when the fear of death overwhelmed me so much

I had to buy something, anything, to prove I was still alive,

I’m out of Mr. Clean so I fling open the door to the cabinet

under the sink, get the bottle of Windex, take off the cap and

pour it all into the bowl and the water turns blue,

lapis lazuli blue, blue as the Nile, blue as perfect twilight,

blue as the eyes of a magical cat.

I get to work, scrub and scrub, working the brush round and

round, leaning into it, bending my back, using my whole arm,

until the crud at the bottom of the bowl

the blackness, the blackness, the blackness begins to crack

and float around in the blu-ey water like pebbles,

little pebbles getting smaller and smaller,

some of them small as a grain of sand.

Tsaurah Litzky

Tsaurah Litzky's list of accomplishments goes on for days. A teacher of both text and yoga, and among the greater things, also a regular contributor to my old "zines" beet and pink pages, back in the print era...google her at your leisure...

2009-12-13T22:26:00.000-08:00

Another blast de la past: Amanda Nash. Edited this great erotica magazine called Paramour ca. mid-1990s. Now runs a B&B in Gloucester, MA... Amanda, I salute you! Here's her series of haikus in airports...

eero saarinen.*
impressive. but pales compared
to check-in line curves.

long wait at logan
all seats are taken. but! when
you get one, it's warm.

on the airport screens
CNN squalls anxiously.
i sip my decaf.

new york on alert.
jenny clears out. to fort bragg. (CA!)
no cell access there.

[remember earthquake in bam, iran? these are super old]

bam, iran. thousands
die. all the buildings fall down.
bam. bam. bam. bam. bam.

flying over the
ex boyfriend's building. doesn't
bother me. not much.

safety features: in
an emergency, open
the pod bay doors, hal.

psychoanalysts
sit beside me. friendly, yet
impenetrable.

one from sf:

cole valley breakfast
jen compliments the owner
toast is abandoned

* architect of TWA building at Kennedy Airport. i
spelled this all on my own without even looking it up!
aren't i smart?

12/14/09

2009-12-13T22:16:00.000-08:00

12/14/09

Just past midnight. Just woke up. Went to bed early. Laura and I were "romantic" just earlier than that, and she has since gone to her room, I have thusly affected her so... Now I'm wide awake spazzing about money, the night's events, and how I may as well write something in this new blog I just started. We watched "Last Tango In Paris" earlier. Funny how you see things when you're 19 versus when you're 47. For instance, the opening credits with all the Francis Bacon paintings. I remember how I thought Bacon was such a genius when I was in art school. Now his paintings strike me as cartoonish ads for art that you might find on cereal boxes. Peaches, our cat was on his wits end with Brando's French. He was actually curled up on the sofa next to us with his paws over his ears for half the movie. I can't say for certain, but... hey, the little guy just has good taste. Butter, really.

So the Toulouse Lautrec Limericks... I sell books at the 25th Street Garage fleamarket. There's this cool couple that often wears "swing" style clothes that comes by. While they were in my booth one of them started looking at a book on Lautrec, the other a book on Limericks (that's right, the girl was looking at Lautrec and the guy at Limericks) so voila, two great tastes that go great together. Since I put up this blog all of what, 15 hours ago, I've gotten in a few new submissions:

Here are two more TLLs from sister Tsaurah Litzky:

Monet pitied tiny Toulouse,

thought him a sex-obsessed goose,

Gaugain found Toulouse bird-brained,

not enough nipples, too many tearstains,

Henri, counting crotch hairs, didn't care.

There was once a midget painter, Henri,

who had a prodigous pee-pee,

the girls so happily surprised,

when he moved inside their thighs,

squealed oui-oui, mon amour, oui-oui!

My name is Toulouse Lautrec...

2009-12-13T06:46:00.001-08:00

My name is Toulouse Lautrec...

There once was a place called montmartre
To lautrec it seemed just like Chartres
La goulue was his muse
But poor old Toulouse
To absinthe he was finally martyred

--LP

There was a man called TL
Who thought he could paint just as well
as that chap called Monet
who daubed stacks of hay
but his versions were ugly as hell

--LP

There once was a man called Lautrek

Who thought he might like to be Shrek

But he was bearded and tiny

Not big green and shiny

So he became an artist instek

--LP

There once was painter called T'louse

Who had to wear el'vator shoes

By night he would party

With girls who were tarty

And later fell victim to booze

--LP

There once was a man named Toulouse

This joke is just begging a goose,

a horse, or a priest;

a rabbi at least

No wonder this style's in disuse

--Amanda Nash

PS:

Of all the things I'm sposed to do today and all the ways I could become distracted, for some reason these Lautrec limericks are calling to me the loudest. I have to keep slapping my hand to go back to work.

Can I do a haiku (so much easier)?

Henri the Teapot

Reknowned in red light district

How many teacups?

there once was a man who made ott

and was short as a mystery plot

but in one way he was

larger than peach fuzz

and the prostitutes called him "Teapot"

--Jed Hershon

There once was a short man Henri de

Who hung out with the girls, si, si

He got them in bed

But they couldn't find his head

And so he made art instead...

There once was a man called Lautrec

Who genetically speaking was a wreck

His parents were cousins

He saw prostitutes by the dozens

and he died at a very young age

--Matt Monahan

Addendum:

Matt Monahan at 3:40pm May 11

I think its really supposed to be AABBA

Marguerite Vigliante at 3:48pm May 11

Yes, AABBA. You could have made the last line: "And he never did play with a full deck."

A short statured painter Toulouse

could hardly reach a woman's caboose

but he grabbed a big handfull

of her derrier ample

saying "Hey I have nothing Toulouse"

--Larry King

There once was a young rich dude

who hung out in a crib quite crude

didnt care about lice

or losing at dice

just as long as his schlong was well lubed

--joe maynard

There was once a short artist from France,

Who hung out with the ladies that dance.

He made lots of posters

But what he liked most-er

Was watching those young ladies prance.

--Marguerite Vigliante

I ain't brad pitt or james dean

michael jordan, brett farve or ice t

but what I got in my pants

makes all the girls dance

cuz my parents are rich as can be

--Joe Maynard

there once was a man named latrec
who loved his frites and bifsteks
he ate them quite often
even in his coffin
while reading finnigan's wake

there once was a man named latrec

who was horny like a rabbit on crack

he screwed La Goulue

until she was through

and said next time let's just nec

--William Carney (of Les Sans Collottes)

the short dude that painted in france

got oil paint all over his pants

lap dancing was messy

"why do zee lady's all slap me?"

he said, readjusting his glasses

-jm

Voila: Proverbial Monkey

2009-12-13T06:25:00.000-08:00

I've told other creative types I know to do one of these blog things. Magazine type people, but no one has. I think people are still stuck in print mode. So this will be the new "beet", for those of you who know me from back then. The beauty of the blog is that there is no deadline, no running to the printer/xerox place, and glory halilujah, no friggin' collating! It may contain moments of self-promoting, ie- my band, my writing, my art, my bookselling biz, it may contain fan gushing over stuff I think is really cool, it may be just text for weeks at a time and all pictures at others. I have no clue. I will be open for submissions. Keep them brief and only send your best stuff. Other people's submissions may spur a stream of consciousness sub-plot for a week or month, or not. Anyway, do check in from time to time.