Friday, July 30, 2010

Big Sur, California


I was 15 working for a nice family restaining their round house and some old pieces of furniture. I wasn't the best employee. Having discovered pot and secular music I was inclined to sit reading Jack Kerouac listening to tapes. Wearing my grandpa's red wings with a pair of green No Fear shorts, homemade tie dye, and an ever present flannel shirt I guess was the epitome of hippy grunge. Got the house stained, made some furniture look better, and saved up for my first car, a 1968 VW Beetle. I had an epic soundtrack.
Simon and Garfunkle - "Sounds of Silence", Violent Femmes- "Add It Up", Bob Marley- "Burnin'", Grateful Dead "77 Cornell Show", and Zep "IV".
Steven's Memorial Library wasn't stocked with a wide variety of outsider literature. After a couple of trips to Buffalo I was able to read On the Road, Dharma Bums, and Big Sur. Seeds were planted, damage was done.
I knew then I could not stay in my small upstate town. The music and books created a magical California myth in my chubby acne covered stoned head. I would listen to Goin to California over and over again. From that summer I started this weird odyssey that finally brought me to San Francisco then Big Sur. Big Sur was exactly what it was supposed to be. No regrets coyote.







Wednesday, July 21, 2010

VOD

Great Fan Video of Silver Jews' Punks in the Beerlight

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

midsummer sundays

It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, "I drank too much last night." You might have heard it whispered by the parishioners leaving church, heard it from the lips of the priest himself, struggling with his cassock in the vestiarium, heard it from the golf links and the tennis courts, heard it from the wildlife preserve where the leader of the Audubon group was suffering from a terrible hangover. "I drank too much," said Donald Westerhazy. "We all drank too much," said Lucinda Merrill. "It must have been the wine," said Helen Westerhazy. "I drank too much of that claret." 
from the Swimmer by John Cheever








Vive Le Tour!

Friday, July 16, 2010

Beets should come with a morning after note. Beets are the most terrifying vegetable known to man's psyche. Who needs that kind of scare? Something to be taped to your bathroom window "Don't Worry. You Ate Beets Yesterday."
I wonder if there is a special code in the emergency rooms. "Nothing doing champ, you just have Root 666"
People who may want to think twice about eating beets:
Woody Allen
Pregnant Women
geriatrics- they misread the waters and end things early
children of new parents
coprophiliacs

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Bukowski


Chuck and I have a funny relationship. I have to limit how much of him I read (same with Henry Miller). Somewhere in between the words is express written permission to be a lunatic drunk, an asshole par none raging at the world with no particular grievance in mind. In small sane doses I can keep the beasts at bay. I often feel alone in my affliction. Are others cursed with this? The superficial personality of some douche bag author eclipsing your own. Or is that just a cop out for being a bad drunk with out the redeeming quality of a genius talent?
Now, understand I do not require hours of Bukowski to be turned. Many times a anise liquor of a certain variety was enough. And to be fair, reading Bronte seems to have little or no effect on me one way or another. In the end I truly believe that all men have good and bad living in them. We all are capable of such great acts of kindness and love and utter acts of senseless evil. And if you have never brought that mad beast out you are only living half your life.
Now, in our older age on a softer coast it seems that the irrational idiot has but on teva sport sandals while wearing socks insisting on listening to Jack Johnson. It runs away from any kind of spirit that comes in a 1.5 oz glass. But I try not to tempt fate too often with Chuck's poems of derelict behavior of a rioting soul. Who needs that shit anyway?


barfly

Jane, who has been dead for 31 years,
never could have
imagined that I would write a screenplay of our drinking
days together
and
that it would be made into a movie
and
that a beautiful movie star would play her
part.

I can hear Jane now: "A beautiful movie star? oh,
for Christ's sake!"

Jane, that's show biz, so go back to sleep, dear, because
no matter how hard they tried they
just couldn't find anybody exactly like
you.

and neither can
I.

"Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now."
 

Friday, July 02, 2010

Appalachia

The Digital Library of Appalachia  has 10,000 song titles in their digital library as well as a treasure trove of essays, photos and artifacts, and oral history tracks.


Rye Whiskey





49 Women