skirblog

cage days ch. 2

 

Health Drink

 

Already they're complaining about the heat: Pittsburgh trapped-in-an-airless, windowless, corrugated aluminum-box-heat. Slow heat. Busted AC heat. But it was only weeks ago cold. Cold that my exhalations turned instantly to frost and icicles hung from my beard. It seemed as if overnight everything white melted, homes showed suddenly their green lawns, roads divulged their potholes and flaws. I could still conjure the mountains of snow that were everywhere the day before, the sheets of ice, the bundled forms digging their cars out from thick blankets of winter. I could only marvel at the now dry streets for their lack of snow; never so happy to see cracked asphalt. Yes it was suddenly weirdly hot, perhaps unseasonably warm, but the streets were passable, the boots hopefully put away for good. (You never really put the boots away in Pittsburgh until well into Spring. Pittsburgh could throw a nice March snowstorm at you faster than you could eat a kielbasa).

Of course my lot at the Cage didn’t appreciate the thaw. Last week it was the frozen tundra, the black slush, the horrible PAT buses spraying salt and gravel from their chained tires. Those in need of a drink had to trudge the permafrost in their ever-present boots, if they were smart enough to put them on, or wearing their ridiculous tennis shoes, wet and heavy with slush by the time they got to the bar. Hey, I grew up in this snow. I was raised in Pittsburgh snow, and can tell you flat out I never accepted snow and freezing cold as part of my life, which is akin to saying I didn’t accept Pittsburgh as part of my life because bad weather and Pittsburgh were intertwined. Why? I thought? Why does anyone live there? But we adapted. We trudged to school in almost any depth of snow. It would take over three feet of hardcore snow on the ground for Pittsburgh to postpone school. Even so, each snowy morning we would listen eagerly to the radio, waiting for our school to be announced on the snow closure list. My school, Whiteman School, was announced alphabetically next to last, right before Zelienople, and if you waited through the list to hear it, you’d be were guaranteed to be late, which was unnecessary anyway because Whiteman school was never closed due to snow. Maybe three times in the 12 or 13 years I attended Pittsburgh schools did they cancel classes due to snow. Pittsburgh was not for the weak or frail. Pittsburghers trudged to the mills in all weather and their kids trudged to school. Trudging was expected. I wasn’t weak or frail, but would have loved not to have to trudge anywhere including to school every morning, then sit in wet, waterlogged boots the entire day, sweltering in overheated classrooms next to boiling hot radiators until it was time to trudge back home.

Upsides to winter? There was sled riding (one of the top five most dangerous activities kids take part in, including working at sawmills, hanging off the sides of riverboats, and attending Pittsburgh public schools. I once collided head on with a parked car), snowman building, snow piss artwork, snowball fights and wars, and to be honest, quite often some fun sliding and skidding and beautiful mornings of soft, quiet white. But mostly it was freezing and annoying and dangerous and my first winter back I thought I was the dumbest fuck out there for choosing voluntarily to come back. Why on god’s formerly green earth would a person move back to the snow? California had no such nonsense. Except earthquakes. People said they would miss the seasons if they moved to California and to those people I wished them a nice, deluded life. Fuck seasons.

But your family is all out there in Pittsburgh.

“Yes, of course.” And I loved my family, but love did not conquer weather.

So finally an early spring day came without snow; a thaw; a day with pleasant sounds of icicles melting, with warmth, with a feeling of renewal, of rebirth. We made it! We hibernated and trudged and finally crawled out the other side. But the day was also unseasonably warm, and so also came the complaining. Suddenly no beer was cold enough to quell the heat-crazed thirsts of the complainers. Suddenly our dank atmosphere was oppressive, was no match for the humidity that lay over the city like a nasty, wool blanket. "Hey this beer is warm." “Is your AC busted?”.

Thompson was the first to complain about the heat, I know because I wrote it down. I wanted to get a record of the first heat complaint for posterity. I wanted confirmation that the complainers, who were incidentally those who shrieked endlessly about the bitter cold, were now, just a week later, complaining about the heat.

Thompson was a skinny, squirrelly, Don Knotts kind of man, one who normally did not bother me too much, so I was surprised that he was the first heat complainer. I had others pegged for that honor, maybe Mickey from the Giant Eagle; Jimbo, the Quail, or one of the several postal workers who graced us with their presence.

"Man," Thompson said flopping his skinny elbows down on the bar, "You know what I'm saying? I mean, I don't want to complain, but... "

No response from me.

" ... but it is as hot as a mother out there, Jesus."

"Is it?" I said.

"Oh come on, what are you, kidding me? You know it’s hot out there," he said, lighting up a cigarette. It seemed to me that a cigarette would just add to the heat.

"Thompson," I said, taking out a pen and scratch paper, "I am writing this moment down. I am noting this because you are the first of the year to complain about the heat. Congratulations." But I knocked twice on the bartop to let him know I was just breaking his balls.

Thompson frowned, which was unusual for him, normally a patient and jovial guy. Perhaps my little riffing offended him, so instead of collecting the money he had set out on the bar, I knocked twice again to indicate that Health Drink number one would be on the house. He brightened considerably, and when I set the drink before him, he slurped happily away.

Thompson purportedly lived and worked nearby, although exactly where nobody knew. In the winter he was one of the dedicated who trudged across the harsh Pittsburgh permafrost and get himself a drink. God only knows he could have simply stayed at home and had one from his own stash, but any alcoholic worth his salt knows that prospect is even crazier than trudging through the snow.

For the duration of the winter Thompson complained about the horrible cold, the wet blizzards, the fucked traffic. Yet day after day, week after week, he sat before me. His drink, in lieu of just guzzling vodka straight from the bottle, which is what he told me he did at work, was to have me fill a tall Coke glass with ice, pour vodka almost to the top, then at the last moment add the tiniest dab of cranberry juice. He once heard that cranberry juice was supposed to be good for your kidneys, so he undoubtedly felt this miniscule pink addition to his giant slug of vodka would stave off any upcoming failure of his poor organs. Alcoholics often mix their drinks this way to guard against death. This triple, slightly pink vodka he called the “Health Drink.”

The Heath Drink was by no means a vodka and cranberry either, which would have been one-third vodka and two-thirds cranberry, have a rather nice, deep-red color, a lime, and have some small nod to something healthy. Thompson’s Health Drink was only the slightest bit pink – ideally, you should only be able to see one lone strand of cranberry curling its way down the center of the glass, like the bloody spit of a gingivitis sufferer. Any accidental redness indicating too much cranberry had been added would result in some quick and rather loud slurping, then a curt request to top the fucker off with more vodka.

Thompson would pop in for two or three Health Drinks at lunch, two more at five o’clock when his (alleged) maniacal, sweatshop bastard boss unchained him from the phone (I wondered if he really did have a job), then a countless number from 6:30, when I left, to closing time at two a.m. By then he’d definitely have had close to a fifth of vodka, if not more. This multiplied by the five days a week I witnessed it, and by the two additional days I didn’t, made for a staggering amount of vodka. I had trouble imagining where the skinny Thompson put it all. He didn’t seem to have the room in him by volume alone, let alone for the toxic effects of that much booze. Maybe he had some kind of weird high metabolism like a Chihuahua, which when he smiled, he often resembled.

Thompson was a weird kind of regular, one whose arrival, though ritualistic in its regularity, continually surprised me. It surprised me that a man would choose spend all of his days free time like this, not only coming to the same place and drinking the same drink, but saying and doing the same things in perpetuity. I secretly wished that Thompson, or any of my regulars for that matter, would just one day do something different. Forget drinking a different drink, I knew that would never happen, just say something different, or, hope against hope, choose to not come in at all. Not coming in would have been a present to me, a gift; a cool drink of water on a hot, dusty day. I know that sounds strange, as I made my living from regulars like Thompson and his dollar per Health Drink tip, but his routine was disturbing to me. His massive consumption of vodka was disturbing as was his cavalier and somewhat self-mocking attitude about it all. Perhaps it was my role as enabler and supplier of the Health Drink that was even more upsetting. Would they come looking for me when Thompson finally keeled over from alcohol poisoning? From cirrhoses of the liver? Would they shake their heads and look at me like I was crazy? What did you think was going to happen, serving the guy so much vodka? “… but, but the cranberry,” I heard myself saying to a roomful of scowling judges and family members.

In spite of any moral justifications or legal innocence I might enjoy, I hated the bar regular, I hated Thompson, for forcing me to assist in his suicide.

Thompson sucked down his first Health Drink in double time, probably because it was free and he still had cash enough for two more. He ordered another and as I went to make it, I noticed that the ice cubes were melting rather too quickly in the ice bin, and that the cubes were smaller and more watery than I liked to see. This was a bad omen. Our ice machine did not perform well in hot weather. But so soon after the cold? Surely the machine had built up some cold reserves within it somewhere over the winter? I could only hope there would be enough ice for a few respectable Health Drinks, and to cover whatever meager business might trickle in before lunch. However, ice machine omens should not be ignored. Plus I guess I should have known that when the snow finally melted in Pittsburgh, that the first thought on anyone’s mind would not to be to get outside and enjoy the thaw, but to immediately find the murkiest, most humid bar they could find, and descend there en mass to celebrate Spring. Which is what suddenly happened – dozens of people poured into the Cage, as if a tour bus from the city of booze suddenly pulled alongside our curb, disgorging its packed contents and throwing the Cage into total disarray.

I was, as we say in the biz, in the weeds. I hated being in the weeds because it meant you were in over your head, that there are too many customers to handle, and that everything in your life was to be going quickly to shit, maybe never to recover. I even hated the phrase itself, first uttered to me by a pasty-faced bar manager at my first gig, one who’s fat face I conjured each time I was in the weeds. The dude wore khaki shorts all year around if you know what I’m saying, and turned orangutan ass red and produced spittle when he had something to say like “you are in the weeds.” He loved the phrase, and said it as much as he could. I’d never heard the phrase before him. When he first said it, I knew what he was getting at, but it didn’t seem to capture the true helplessness of being engulfed by a hungry, thirsty, bad tempered, crowd. In the fucking weeds was more like it, or, as I’ve heard some restaurant people say, being weeded, which if you viewed it as having a sharp object inserted near your body then being ripped forcibly out of the ground by the roots, “weeded” is indeed more accurate.

And that’s where I suddenly found myself on that Thaw, that Health Drink Day, weeded. A thousand fucking fuckers appeared in the bar out of nowhere, and I was ambushed. Drinks were soon spilt and puddles formed. Stock was nonexistent and we ran out of scotch and bourbon and rum and gin and vodka. Glasses broke, rags ran foul, cold food piled high on the service counter, waitresses glared and cursed my good name, soda sprayed wildly, the cash drawer wouldn’t open and there were no fucking quarters. No fucking quarters for the jukebox, cigarette machine, pinball machines, nut dispensers, parking fucking meters! When will one of these machines take a dollar bill, god help me? When will people leave their homes with something other than a $20 in their pockets? People poured in, the goddamned door opened and closed like a revolving, old West, Grand Central Fucking Station turnstile. All was bad, wrong, dirty and messed up. I couldn’t help thinking ahead to when those animals finally left, if they ever did, I would have to bust my sorry ass all across creation to clean everything up. But even that thought wasn’t the icing on the cake, that came when I noticed that, shit on a shingle, Christ on a crutch, we were out of ice.

I mean really out of ice. Like no-ice-in-the-ice machine out-of-ice. Being out of ice was in a category beyond being weeded, beyond being fucked – it was just sad. Sad for me, the helpless bartender who had to work in a place that refused to supply even the most basic necessities in order for bar-business to be transacted. Ice. I was not asking for a freaking dishwasher, or a blender, or a sharp knife that could actually cut a lemon, or any such luxury. Just ice. Folks, if you ever want to start up your own bar, please remember that number one on your list, before all the fantasy beers and designer liquors you would like to stock, before your great idea for the décor and name and the waitresses’ skimpy outfits, should be reliable access to plenty of ice. Because as those of us unlucky enough to work at the Cage knew all too well, your little bar-world will come to a crashing halt when the ice melts away.

And it’s not like there weren’t machines out there, simple machines really, which made plenty of ice for the various institutions that relied on it. You’ve seen them, like in the hallway of your hotel. Or motel. Sure, the Cage had one too, but unfortunately IT SUCKED, and was nothing but a HUGE PIECE OF SHIT by any and all industry standards. We all knew it too, but were helpless in the face of Lonnie, who would never buy anything new upon pain of death, or unless all crazy home repairs and remedies had been exhausted, or until said appliance literally exploded or sank dramatically into the cracked earth. Therefore I lived in fear of hot days and the whims of the ice machine. Each morning I would see my future written in the precious little cubes: was the hopper overflowing with ice, more ice pouring down on your hands to instantly replace what you had just scooped? No? Then I regret to inform you that you are fucked. Did the ice scoop dig into a deep, healthy abundance of lovely, crackling cubes, or did you feel the wet scrape of the scoop scratching the bare metal bottom of the machine? Again, we must inform you of your fucked situation; you unfortunately work in a place with an ironic ice machine, one that really only works correctly when it is so freezing cold outside that the demand for its output is minimal. When the heat and humidity strike, and cold beverages are on everybody’s mind, ice is the last thing this machine produced. At that point there are three potential courses of action:

1) Leave your post, which is never a good idea due to possible anarchist takeover and riot in the bar while you are away, and run across the street to the gas station to buy bags of ice, maybe four at a time, ‘cause that’s all you can carry, and haul the fuckers back to the Cage where they will last approximately ten minutes.

2) Have some brown-noser get in his car, probably half-drunk, for which you would be liable, and run down to the Giant Eagle and buy as much ice as they could, if the Giant Eagle even had it, which they probably didn’t since they operated much the same way the Cage did; but if they did, have the brown-noser haul it back to the Cage in his hot car, where most of it will melt, and where it may last you for 45 minutes.

3) Refuse to serve anything on ice.

This was my preferred solution, and the one I choose on that first hot day after winter. I was in the weeds anyway so what the hell, right? It was a fun option really, because it put the whole bar in “disaster mode.” In disaster mode everyone gets a nervous air of excitement about them every time a customer, like Thompson for instance, orders another “Health Drink,” and I say, “Sorry, I can’t make anything on ice. Do you want a beer or something straight-up instead?”

“You can’t make anything on ice?”

“That is correct.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

“I am not. Ice machine is fucked. No ice.”

“No ice.”

“Got cold beers, though... sort of.”

“Cold beers?”

“Sort of.”

“But no ice.”

“Correct again.”

The reasons why a regular like Thompson would not turn tail and run to the bar around the corner, which undoubtedly had ice, were complex. Since he was a true regular he first tried to imagine what a Health Drink would taste like without ice and would there be some kind of discount for its ice-less state?

“No.”

And would having a drink in a bar in disaster mode be fun?

Probably.

So as my luck would have it on that first freakish, hot day, while in the weeds and being weeded, a shitty, busted ice machine actually enhanced business in a backward kind of way. And as business enhanced that meant more drinking and more people to serve without ice, and I had to stop and chuckle at that. And my stopping and chuckling caused a tone shift in the bar. People stopped their clamoring and looked at me like I was crazy. Why wasn’t I panicking? Why wasn’t I running my ass off? Has the lack of ice affected my brain? Was I suffering from heat stroke? Hallucinations? Since it was crazy to attempt to tend bar under no-ice conditions, I might as well go with it and enjoy myself. I took a deep breath and exhaled. I imagined I could see the frost. I happily wiped up all the broken glass, cigarette butts and French fry husks that were covering the bar, and lay flattened cardboard boxes on the floor to soak up the puddles of spilled beverages and melted ice. I could see that there were people three-deep who had been waiting eons for a drink, but instead I located Thompson. I caught sight of him sitting calmly at his space at the bar, wedged in between people neither of us would ever see again, his empty glass before him, a serene smile on his face. A regular, I thought, a friendly face, now that’s how it’s done. Patience. You know you’ll get a drink, you know it will one day cool down again. Or heat up. I approached him and pointed to him and said, “Thompson!” and he said, “Health Drink.” I scraped the last, slippery, miniscule slush I could muster from the bin into his Coke glass and hit him with a gigantic Health Drink number three, mostly booze, and not so cold, but Thompson wasn’t complaining.

“Thompson,” I said, “where do you put it all?” and I knocked twice on the bar to indicate that this disaster mode Health Drink, was indeed on the house.

“Anywhere it will fit,” he said grinning, sweating, “as long as you keep ‘em coming.” And he raised his glass to me.

And I knocked twice again on the bar, this time for his continued good luck.

 

cage days ch. 1

Well, a friend was nice enough to ask, and I thought maybe it was time to throw some of these chapters up into the solar wind... so here is chapter 1 of my book, "Cage Days." (formatting is a bit goofed up, and for that I apologize...)

 

Cage Days,
(a liquid novel...)

c. 2009-2011 Lee Skirboll
All rights reserved

 

Chapter 1:

Root Beer Schnapps 

 

Lording over the Cage was our giant, round mirror, warped and flawed by the ages, clouded by years of smoke and a thousand sad, alcohol-imbued sights.  At one time it reminded me of the mirrors in the paintings of Degas, back when I was studying such things, but those lofty visions were quickly replaced by the reality of working at the bar, the “Cage,” and fears that the great mirror would come crashing down, (who knew how Lonnie, our owner, had it fixed there); or by apprehension of my own reflection in it – an image that I didn’t always recognize.

After banging open our front door in what seemed like a deliberately rough way, this guy came in, and before he even made it to the bar, ordered himself a root beer schnapps from across the room.  I loved the across-the-room order, implying as it did that I drop everything and serve this imperious guy.  The red flag was the root beer schnapps, something for kids, like candy cigarettes.  Who drinks root beer schnapps?

But this guy was no kid. He was a big, fat biker carrying his helmet and gloves, sporting a bushy Yosemite Sam type mustache and huge, stupid grin who of course would order a root beer schnapps, whose goofy mustache literally spelled out the words “root beer schnapps” in a knee slappin’ Yosemite Sam kind of way.  “Root beer schnapps,” he said again, and banged down his motorcycle helmet, gloves and keys, goggles, jackknife, rabbit’s foot, cheroots, Zippo, and he might as well have said “sarsaparilla.”

I turned to scan our shelves and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror: I too was a big guy, also with a beard, although more trimmed and less menacing then this biker’s.  My long hair was tied into a ponytail which I wore beneath a trucker hat, something I’d just started doing as a bartender. On first glimpse I always thought I was fatter than I thought I was; then from there the rest of the picture didn’t add up either, the beard, hat, that ‘aint me, I usually thought.

But it was me, and if I looked into my own eyes and studied them intently I would eventually recognize myself, though I didn’t necessarily have time to do this each time I passed this omnipresent mirror waiting on bikers and such.  The trucker’s cap read, “US Ink,” a cherished item I nabbed when I worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, no, not as a writer, which I should have been, but in classified advertising, a low totem pole and low self esteem position in any newspaper.  Anyway I liked this US Ink hat because the image of an ink truck fascinated me: the ink tanker pulling up, hooking up a hose to the building and pumping ink like it was transfusing a dying patient. Black blood. Fuel.  And who doesn’t like the word, “ink?”  I rolled it around in my mind like a sweet lemon drop about to go sour.

“Its right there son,” the biker said breaking my reverie, pointing to the bottom shelf which held the grenadine, cherry brandy, crème de menthe, and other college kid, or old person liquors.

“Oh yeah,” I said.  In the couple of years I’d been working at the Cage I’d never once poured a root beer schnapps for anyone, and oddly the bottles that I never used I kind of erased from my consciousness, probably only have room for so much up there in the brain.  This particular bottle was incredibly dusty and old, and I made a mental note to wipe it down if the mood to clean ever struck me, which it rarely did.

I paused for a second to consider the proper glassware. I liked to serve a drink in something close to its proper glass, even though nobody in the Cage could have cared less.  We possessed maybe 10 shot glasses total.  Lonnie, our owner, had a bug up his ass about them for some reason and would never order more.  “Use what you got and after that, fuck ‘em,” was his philosophy when it came to shot glasses.  What was left was a mismatched collection to be sure, each with its white, marking line at different spots on the glass.  Some shot glasses looked huge and held nothing, while others looked puny and held a lot.  But that’s barware for you.  That left the “rocks” glass, which was a good, solid glass, and became our de-facto shot glass since Lonnie wouldn’t buy us real ones.  You could pour a nice shot in the rocks glass and it traveled quite easily to its destination without the waitress spilling most of it. Lonnie bitched about this glass as well, saying we were giving away the store, but what the hell did he want us to do then?

I sized up ol’ Yosemite and figured he would neither appreciate nor comprehend the root beer schnapps in the rocks glass.  To him this would reek of elitism and snobbery and that is a very bad place to go with your freeform, roving biker drinking root beer schnapps on a sunny afternoon.  So I slapped one of our precious 10 in front of him and poured out a nice over the line shot for him.  Nothing says “tip me” louder than pouring one over the line.  If I saddled up to some bar somewhere and the guy, the bartender poured me a shot on the line I would be so completely humiliated and dumbfounded that I would not be able to drink in peace.  Over the line, is on the line if you get my meaning.  So I poured one that ol’ Yosemite could really get his whiskers into.  A shimmering sweet, root beer smelling shot, which he raised to his lips and… took a dainty little sip.  Now that threw me back a loop.  I expected him to throw that bad boy back.  A sipper!  I looked again at the bottle and saw it was only 40 proof, half the strength of regular vodka or whiskey. Jesus where do these guys come from?

 “Hey barkeep,” he said still licking stray drops of root beer from his mustache hairs.  “Can I axe you something?”

I nodded in a way barkeeps nod that could be yes, could be no.

“Tell me,” he said, “what are you, some kind of Jew?”

I heard an audible “clunk” as my space-time continuum shifted noticeably to the right. I knew I only had seconds to respond to this, because a question like that, asked by a person like Yosemite, throws the delicate power balance of a bar, essentially its law and order, into temporary disarray.  Without the power balance, or more accurately, the power imbalance, whereby the bartender holds a majority of the power, and the customers hold little or none, there would be nothing to stop macho, swaggering, alcohol-fueled men, men who already writhe with pent up aggression, lust and competitiveness, (and women too, lets face it) from taking over.  There are unwritten laws, or codes that have been operating in bars forever to hold this at bay.  Some of the codes are spatial, like a customer will never touch the bartender, or break the imaginary plane of the bar by reaching over it, or god forbid, coming behind the bar like matter and anti-matter colliding.  Other codes concern how money is handled, and appropriate questions you can ask a bartender about his personal life.  Questions like, “are you some kind of Jew,” were certainly not kosher in these parts, and would be read by me anyway, as confrontational.  I was at least smart enough to know that if somebody is in your bar challenging the power imbalance, they probably have more in mind than sipping sweet, root beer flavored schnapps in the middle of the day.

“Are you some kind of Jew” is a little gem of a question. Literally the answer would be either “yes” or “no” depending on whether in fact you were a Jew or not.  Since I was Jewish, then the most honest, quickest and to-the-point answer would have been, “yes.”  Then if I was smart, which I am not, I would have wiped my way down the bar, checked on the coffee drinker at the other end, and hightailed it into the kitchen, back alley or basement for a bit of a breather.  However my mind tends to wander.  Suddenly I am 11 years old and swimming with my younger sister in a motel swimming pool in Margate, New Jersey, when a group of pale, sunburned kids suddenly surround us and ask, “Hey did you kill Christ?” They seemed to seriously want to know and splashed water at us to prove this. 

“Obviously not,” I responded.

“But the Jews did,” They sang, “The Jews killed Christ. And you’re a Jew, aren’t you?  So you’re a Christ killer. Christ killer!” they sang again, splashing away.

This was maybe the first time I was aware that I looked Jewish.  That people would assume I was a Jew just by looking at me.  Was it the nose?  The skin tone?  Well my sister and I got out of there with our horns and hooked noses intact, but we were upset and humiliated having been bullied in this way.  In Pittsburgh we lived in a predominately Jewish neighborhood, the type of place, I would soon learn, that doesn’t exist in too many cities out there.  Sadly, at the time I hadn’t yet studied my Jesus Christ Superstar to the extent I had in later years, so I was not as well versed on the specifics of who may or may not have killed Christ.  If I had, we and the bullies could’ve have had a nice, poolside discussion about Pontius Pilate and hand washing and the complicity of the Jewish priests.  But no, it was just chlorine mixing with our tears at that point.  So my point is if a root beer schnapps drinking biker wanders into my potentially volatile power imbalance and randomly asks me if “I am some kind of Jew,” my first reaction is not to offer back the most timely and accurate response.

For instance asking a person, are you Jewish? is the kind of simple phrasing that could easily be a genuine desire to know, yet you still have the problem that, as people like to claim:  in America, we don’t ask each other what religion we practice.  But closer to the truth is that America, a country that likes to think it was founded on the precept that we don’t ask each other what religion we practice, we ask all sorts of prying and personal questions every chance we get because we are nothing if not the nosiest fucks out there and cannot stand NOT knowing what religion a person is, due to the fact that we have constructed many elaborate theories as to why people act certain ways based on their skin color, eye shape and whether they killed any messiahs or not, and we are continuously conducting field work on the subject.  So if I ask you if you are a Jew, it is mainly because I’m working on a bunch of Jew theories right now, and I normally don’t get too many chances to see or speak to any real, live Jews, so when I do get one in my sights I’m apt to start conducting some serious Q&A. 

I’m not immune to this kind of research either.  Bartending has led me to several rich lines of inquiry regarding the behavior of my fellow humans.  Why do so many black people drink Heineken? Why do so many lesbians drink microbrews? Why do so many Jews drink Canadian whisky?  Why does this kind of curiosity manifest itself as racism in some people and anthropology in others? (I’d met a number of anthropologists over the years, as my mother decided to earn a PhD in the field when my sister and I were in our teens; a pursuit, in the 1970s in Pittsburgh, PA, that was by no means encouraged or supported by anyone but my patient father, and of course, her selfless, low maintenance children… Anyway Yosemite wasn’t far from the type.  Grizzled looking guys most of them.  Beards were mandatory.) Some say all anthropological pursuits are inherently racist, and yet there I was:  self-styled dive-bar anthropologist doing field work there in the dank.  As such I could then allow that ol’ Yosemite had become as “interesting” to me as I was “interesting” to him.  Conversely it also meant that Yosemite had become some kind of anthropologist as well, so I should have answered in response to his original query “What are you, some kind of Jew? with, “what are you?  Some kind of anthropologist?  That would have been funny.  But I didn’t ask Yosemite if he were some kind of anthropologist. Among other ills, I tend to suffer from an acute lack of comeback ability.

“Are you some kind of Jew?” was still hanging out there, as Seinfeld would say, like a big matzo ball.  So I wiped down the bar, put the bottle of root beer schnapps back on the shelf, sticky and dusty as it was.  I turned back to face him but had nothing to say.  I was afraid.  I was afraid of him and unsure of my control of the power balance when really challenged.  I did not want to be confronted or tested or splashed in a swimming pool, I didn’t even want to pour drinks for people in a bar or wipe anything, or clean anything.  I just wanted to lord over my tiny domain, rake in tips and spend my hard earned money in other bars, tipping other bartenders in their domains.

Of course he who hesitates is lost.  Suddenly the door banged open, and in walked Jimbo and Nate Dog, two irritating regulars who I was never more happy to see.  They were both adjuncts of what we called the “Oy Vey Mafia” at the Cage, a group of Jewish loan sharks and toughs who often gathered in the bar to celebrate some festive occasion or another, like when one of them was released from prison, or had just beat a rap or something like that. Jimbo and Nate Dog were hangers-on to the core group, errand boys, or maybe just friends of the main guys, but close enough that they would require my undivided attention.  They also posed a complicated bar-problem for me, as Nate Dog and Jimbo, when seen together created a rare, yet problematic construct known as a “paradoxical drink-buying pair.”

Paradoxical Drink Buying Pairs a) refuse to let anybody buy them a drink, and b) insist on buying drinks for all those around them.  If two such people enter a bar at the same time, a paradox develops where each insists on buying the other a drink, and neither will accept a drink from the other, quickly resulting in a locked causality loop from which it is difficult to emerge.  A bartender must act quickly and decisively to break the loop if any business is going to get done.  It is not a random decision either, choosing one person over the other can result in tip retaliation for weeks to come.  In these cases I would normally default to the “whoever spoke first rule” – whoever orders drinks first will be the one to pay – a simple rule that has saved me countless hours of listening to two blowhards attempt to impress each other and the whole bar by buying each other a drink.

However Nate-dog and Jimbo presented advanced levels of difficulty since neither of them actually spoke their order aloud.  They were nodders, gesturers, regular drink drinkers, and I’d have to know who shifted, nodded or eyeballed me first to know whose money to take.  If I didn’t look carefully I have to default to the “who has their money out” rule, which in this case would always be Jimbo, or the “who is the better tipper rule,” which in this case would also be Jimbo. This was kind of unfair to Nate-dog, who’s personal style dictated that he never, ever let his money touch the surface of the bar under any circumstances.  He always waited until being asked before handing over any cash as his lifelong goal was to one day receive a drink on the house.  Jimbo, on the other hand, threw what seemed like an unending supply of crumpled bills haphazardly around the bar top like annoying fall leaves.  He trusted me to take the proper amount and throw the correct change back on the pile. At that moment though I didn’t have the luxury of time, so I grabbed the money for both their drinks out of Jimmy’s pile, earning a disappointed look from Nate-dog, but I had other things on my mind.

Yosemite was sitting by the window munching on his own mustache in a wholly distasteful way, and I needed to some how address him. 

“Hey Lee,” Jimbo said, peering at himself in the mirror. He hunched and shrugged his shoulders, played with his belt and crotch, sniffed and snorted and combed his slicked back hair. “What do you know?”

“Well Jimmy,” I said.  “What do I know?  Hmm.  That’s a good one.”  I was talking too loudly and my voice sounded dumb and unnatural.  “A good question.  I’m getting a lot of good questions in here today, that’s for sure. Yep. Today must question day. Is it? Is today question day?”

The two looked at me like I was insane.

“What the fuck?” Nate-Dog said, taking out a toothpick and working it around.

“You guys ready for another?” I said even though I had just served them. “Here, its on the house.” And I slapped another Coors Light in front of Nate-Dog and poured Jimmy another Jamison’s. This got their attention. I rarely ever comped these two, even though they both, especially Nate-Dog with his hidden money, lived for the day when a free drink would come their way.

“Thank you sir!” Nate-Dog said.  Jimmy took a sip of his new one, and pushed his half-finished old drink toward me.  I emptied it into the sink with a pattering of ice.

“For instance,” I said taking a breath, “The gentleman down at the end of the bar there was just asking if I weren’t a Jew?  Or how did he phrase it? Was I some kind of Jew or something?” 

Both Jimbo and Nate-Dog looked at me for a second, then looked down at Yosemite.

“Now why the fuck would somebody be in here axing you that?” Nate-Dog said.  “That’s just ignert.”

Jimmy adjusted his neck in the mirror.

“I don’t know I said,” starting to regret saying anything.  “Seems like a weird question to me.”

“I’ll say it’s a weird question,” Nate-Dog said, “that is a damn weird question.”  He got up and moved one seat closer to Yosemite.  Yosemite just kept smiling to himself.

“Say there friend,” Nate said addressing Yosemite.  “What you drinking over there?”

Yosemite did not respond.

“Lee,” Nate Dog said, “what’s that he’s drinking?”

“Root beer schnapps,” I said.

“Root beer snaps?” Nate-Dog said laughing.  “What the hell is that?  Jimbo! You ever heard of… what was it?”

“Root beer schnapps,” I said again.

“Root beer snaps,” Nate-Dog mispronounced again.

Jimmy swirled his ice.  “Gimme another one Lee,” he said.

And I reached for the Jameson’s.

“Lee,” Nate-Dog said.  “Pour my man over here another one of his root beer snaps.”

I poured Jimmy his Jameson’s, opened another Coors Light for Nate, and went to pour Yosemite another root beer, but he quickly placed his hand over his glass.

“I can buy my own drinks,” he said.

Nate-Dog stood and took a wet, sloppy sip of his Coors.  He had moved  somewhat behind Yosemite now. “No one’s saying you can’t, friend, I just want to get one for you.  Lee, get him one, go ahead.”

But Yosemite’s hand was still covering his glass, and he said, “well I was thinking maybe I should just jew him out of one like you two did.”

“Alright,” I said, “that’s enough.”  My voice was shaking.  “You’re done,” I said. I felt like an asshole. Fight your own battles I said to myself.

Yosemite didn’t seem worried in the least.  He smiled up at me while still protecting his glass.

“If you’re trying to start something, I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said.

“Whelp,” Yosemite said rising from his seat, stretching, hiking up his pants.  “If you were me, then you wouldn’t be no Jew now would you?”

At that point Nate-Dog bear-hugged Yosemite from behind and held him at bay while Jimbo came up next to him pressed very close in and whispered something in his ear. Then the three of them left abruptly, Yosemite sandwiched between them.  I stood watching them walk out the door.

The screen door slammed and I noticed that Yosemite’s gear was still with me, and his helmet teetered for a second from the commotion, then suddenly dropped to the floor with a loud clunk. I knew that once those helmets were dropped like that they are never the same.

For the rest of the day I waited for the three of them, or even one of them to return.  But neither Jimbo, Nate-Dog or Yosemite showed up.  At one point I had walked around and replaced Yosemite’s helmet on the bartop, but otherwise I didn’t touch anything including his still unfinished shot of root beer schnapps.  The shot stayed where it was throughout the day. People came and went, ordered food, left me a buck or 50 cents here and there until the sky darkened, Curtis showed up and it was my time to leave. For my last act I got a rag of warm, soapy water, and wiped down the grenadine, crème de menthe and root beer schnapps bottles of their ancient, cigarette imbued dust.  In the mirror was a wavy image of myself, haggard looking; shaggy, pointy beard; five o’clock shadow; sunken eyes; holding dirty bottle and rag. I do look pretty Jew-y I thought.  Jewish ink trucker.  Nice.

Curtis and I did the cash register business and I was about to leave when Curtis pointed to the shot of root beer schnapps and motorcycle stuff on the bar.  “Is this person coming back?” he asked?

“I’m not sure,” I said, and swept all his stuff into the empty helmet and stowed it behind the bar. Then I finally took Yosemite’s shot glass of root beer schnapps from the bar and held it up. “Elijah aint comin I guess,” I said and tossed it cavalierly into the sink where I heard it crack against the stainless steel and break.  Now we were down to nine, I thought, and could imagine Lonnie’s cackling face.  I should have served it to him in a rocks glass after all.

 

end of Ch. 1

 

moon spoon june

new blog:

Moon Spoon June:

post punk opera house

Another excellent show at Oakland's lovely Fox Theater. This time it was the Pixies running through the whole of "Doolittle" for unknown reasons other than, what the hell? It's a better living than writing death notices? I dunno. I tried not to think too much about the enterprise of reforming for gigs like this. I'm cynical and my cynicism (or resistance to everything sez F) gets me nowhere, including not seeing the newly re-formed Pixies a couple years ago as they apparently destroyed Berkeley's Greek Theater.  I believe I was invited to that show but declined. I was getting sick of all the good bands who broke up getting back together as their older selves just to take us all down memory lane. Yech! I'd been mostly burned by this kind of show before: the sad reunion of Television in San Francisco saw them sloppy and unrehearsed; Gang of Four? Totally irrelevant and way tuckered out by the end of the night (not that I could play "I Found that Essence Rare" at the end of a long gig at my age... but you see, I don't attempt such!) Only the mighty Mission of Burma seemed to have a reason and the energy to come back: they were writing new songs! They wanted to rock. They fucking rehearsed and saw that they were good. Plus they stayed in pretty good shape. I mean, your humble narrator has aged and thickened and greyed and thinned, and yes, I bet if I wanted to I could get out there and start rocking again. But god help the sad geezers who've taken the stage in their fat, bald incarnations to less than hilarious results. Devo, I'm looking at you! Throbbing Gristle? Its not even fair to talk about it. The Pixies? 

Honestly, as much as I loved that band, I didn't want my excellent memories of seeing them – numerous times – including their famed appearance at Pittsburgh's The Decade, a bar where maybe 100 people, if that many, saw them play way, way back. That's when I fell in love with the Pixies and of course with Kim Deal's eyes. She was literally a pixie for god's sake with mischievous eyes and sweet singing voice and impeccable bass playing. As was evident that night and is still evident: the Pixies sound seems to be greater than the sum of their parts. in blowhard art historical terms that is usually considered sublime.  Maybe this is because they took the time not only to write killer songs but arrange them as well. Who did that back then? The whole vaunted "loud quiet loud" aesthetic was only part of it. The arrangements are key. Listen to how guitar parts come and out, trade melody duty, echo earlier riffs and later riffs, drum drop and reenter, bass takes the melody then the beat. Hell, Oliver Nelson couldn't have done it better himself.  

So it was good. And stayed good for a good amount of time. No complaints. Then, as almost always happens, the Pixies then seemed to run their course.  That's okay, know when to stop, know when to move on. Not a tragedy. That's part of the art of the game. Get out before it gets bad. Plus we still had Kim and the Breeders, and Frank Black and his many, many solo releases, which filled the Pixie void in my life, all of which I bought eagerly and loved and saw The Catholics and Frank Black and Black Francis and Charles Thompson and anything else the dude would do many, many times.  I related to the guy.  Big guy, fat fingers, about my age, my milieu. With all the good stuff he was doing, Charles in particular didn't seem to need a Pixies reunion, so I was suspicious. I'm sure he coulda used the money. I'm sure he was sick of the thousands of bands making it big emulating his riffs and arrangements and making a buck. But did the Pixies have new songs? No. Did they miss each other and were burning to get back as a band and play live? No.  So I resisted. Opted out.

Then a few documentaries on the Pixies came out, one about the reunion, which supports what I just said; the other about their strange synergy and legacy and so on. Very candid films, unflattering a lot of the time. Charles letting all the girth hang out, dysfunctional family dynamics, the oddness of Kim and Kelly Deal, the bizarreness of David Lovering, etc. These films though made me all very nostalgic about the Pixies, and aware of how special and wonderful a band they were, and made me damn my own contrary eyes for not going to see them at the god damn Greek Theater in Berkeley, even though I don't like seeing shows at the Greek too much, as I don't like baking on a concrete slab in the hot sun for hours, being penned in with very little access to expensive beer or bathroom etc., or listening to outdoor PA sound, I still, after seeing the films, and of course listening to "Surfer Rosa" and "Doolittle" a million times, wished I'd been there.

Then the Goblets, that famous art project/social club/zendo/band, which would be myself, Gina M and Courtney C, then snared some decent tix to see our old friends Sonic Youth play at the newly renovated Fox Theater in Oakland. Now of course the Youth haven't re-formed or revamped in any way, they've been there all along, talking the talk, walking the walk for untold years now, although my interest in them waxed and waned many times, and I had to be convinced a bit to see them in 2009 (I try to learn albeit slowly), and was damn glad I went. The Youth were remarkable and fresh and true to their mission, a pleasure to be sure; and the other surprise hit of that evening was the Fox Theater itself! A very plush experience -- one at least the Goblets were unused to in our concert going experience.  The Fox is one of many urban renewal projects just like it all around the country, where people are trying to save and restore these outlandishly beautiful, ornate old movie houses and theaters. Oakland also restored the art deco Paramount down the road to excellent reviews, and there have been similar projects in San Francisco and the East Bay that have spared no expense to get everything right. If you're an architecture buff, you love these places. If you're a history buff, the same.  But now, if you're a punk rock (and all the post punk nomenclature) buff, you can enjoy it along with those hip folks!

At the Youth show I remember thinking: this is just like the symphony and opera that my folks took me to as a kid back there in Pgh: Heinz Hall (which is no longer there?) plush, marble and chandelier, red velvet everything, old school place, which of course gives all proceedings the air of high art. Some of it is bullshit of course, the rich strutting their stuff, trying to snoot up music to unapproachable levels; but part is the seriousness given to the endeavor, the respect for the consumer of live music, and attention to their comfort.  This is what's been missing until now in the post-punk concert world.  A place that treats the whole thing with a bit more respect and intelligence than the down and dirty club, or the once proud, yet aging hall.  Not to discount the charms of both those types of places, but there's a lot to be said about the energy around going to a show at say Heinz Hall in Pgh, or Davies Hall in SF, rather than the Great American or the old Decade. Have we, as a generation finally grown into deserving the royal treatment for our Pixies and Sonic Youth shows?: the courteous staff; the clean, well appointed bathrooms (with sitting lounges even for the dudes, though no dude was sittin' there); the multiple bar areas that actually look like bars, not hospital carts or pissiors, stocked with good beer and liquor and quick service; coat checks and velvet stairs and cup holders and get this: excellent sound. All the stuff that the big kids get when they take in one of their operas or plays or symphonies.

The journey of the theater itself was much like that of a band like the Pixies: youthful grandeur, a heyday; a decline, a falling out; closed down, gone, getting older, poor condition. To bring the Fox back to life was an insanely expensive, politically tangled and near impossible task that only really happened because of the passion of a few people who kept pushing through. The Pixies initial reunion was frought with similar obstacles, yet somebody realized it was a project worth taking on and jumped through the hoops to make it happen. When the two finally met this November, Pixies and the Fox,  sparks literally ignited. Anyone, like me, who resists such reunions or such renovations should take note: sometimes they had it right in the past, ease up on the cynicism... 'cause a lot of times, what is old is more often than not, hot shit again.

cloudy with a chance of skir-bolls

Fall. A feeling more than anything, a tangy smell of the air, a change in the breeze, a new slant to the light.  Unfort. for me that also often means some of the SADS, Seasonal something Disorder which is basically enhanced depression brought on by a change in seasons.  In my case it is Fall and most noticeable by the Fall’s perceptible change in light and shadows. The last few years I haven’t had it so bad, due, I thought to my success with Lexapro. So a few weeks ago when early Fall was in the air, I didn’t worry bout it, in fact I felt pretty good.  But then, a dramatic shift in temp and light, a very marked fall feeling day, a sharp breeze, a smell of wood fire off in the distance, and I was struck low. Could have burst into tears for no reason around 4pm.  I’m not writing this for any sympathy (I’ve got other things for that. Gout anyone?) but because writing about it seems to mitigate it. Its weird cause I like the Fall. I like cooler air, and the crispness, the slight burnt smell, but it’s the light, I’ve been told that affects this. One doc told me it is impossible that I would actually notice the change in the angle of the sun, but a lot of us know it is very possible. The upside? I’m writing a freakin’ blog entry for the first time since about June?

 

What’s been happening? Mostly good things peeps! So, yeah I got laid off from the Kron. No more death notices. Are you sad? I’m not! Jeezes what a fucking weight lifted off my shoulders. No, my chest, no my SOUL. Holy Hell. I forgot about the toll it takes on your psyche, not only doing that particular job, but working under the constant threat of losing that particular job.  For over a year and many months there’d been talk of imminent layoffs at the Chron and shutting the paper down, etc. Every week new frenzied, whispered rumors, paranoid theories, wholesale panic. Then boom! Axe falls on some. Then more weeks, the same thing. And all we can do is cower in the corner and put death notices in the paper.  As per usual by Kron standards and practices, they did everything as ass backwardly and ungraciously as possible, including this bit of French farce:  They moved the entire staff up to the third floor of the building because they intend to lease out the bottom two floors to… uh, I guess whatever business is out there looking to take on new offices... the EDD? Goodwill?

So everyone moved except for my death colleagues and me.  That's curious we thought.  At first they said it was to keep us near the public entrance where we often help walk-in customers. But after a tour of the new 3^rd Floor space we noticed an alarming lack of empty desks with our names on ‘em.  “Where are we gonna sit?” we asked.  “Oh, we haven’t decided yet. There will definitely be a place for you when the time comes,” they lied, and we were chastised and pooh-poohed for being worriers and gossipers and conspiracy theorists and etc.  Pooh poohed! Can you imagine! Ever hear the one about the family who waited till the kid’s away in college then move without a forwarding address? Think that means anything?

After that more writing on the wall, more dumb, ham-fisted moves like when they were clandestinely training our replacements in Houston, and accidentally put their test obits in our live system so we could see them. (Luckily we did… they were about to publish in the paper!) and when asked about them they made up the usual weird and implausible excuses.  And there was more, of course. Hey, I don’t want to give away all the Kron’s trade secrets of stupidity, cause that’s for a book or something down the road, but by the time our axe finally fell, we knew, almost to the day it was coming.  We were 'tapped on the shoulder' right in the middle of helping a poor, distraught family who’d walked in, crying, upset; unfinished obits on our screens, ushered into HR to get canned. But the lifting weight. I was free! I didn’t feel crappy or scared or depressed. I wanted to go see a movie, so after F whizzed into the City to rescue me, I took in “District 9,” (which I mostly thought was gross. Fun. But gross. A perfect antidote to gettin' canned).

I was sorry to have left the job so abruptly though.  Their choice. They said I had 15 minutes to pack my stuff and leave the "premises" and I said "That's exactly 14 more minutes than I actually need!"  I worked with good people and will miss them. I had many clients in the Bay Area funeral biz who were friends (and fiends!) and will miss them as well. I will say it hurts to look at the poor, poor Chron of late, esp. the once proud obit page. Whatta shame. It  pains me to see every error I fought so hard against all those years on ignominious display for all to see: random and improper (emotional) capitalizations (my Mother was a Veteran so show your Respect by Capitalizing As Many Words As Possible!); commas, seeming, dropped from, a helicopter, to the page below; cemetery spelled with “a’s” and “i’s;”

and a dozen or so other laughable and quite sad grammar and spelling issues that should never appear in print. I was one of the only people there who cared about it.  Why? God knows. Just took it on as a point of pride. I mean a newspaper should not be full of errors. The skirblog, sure, but not the SF Chronwinkle for god’s sake. Its just another sign that that particular media is death rattling its final throes. We’ll see if I don’t write it, the paper’s obit myself one of these days…

 

On to next phase of work, of life, which feels good, optimistic, which thanks to the awesomeness of Felicia, who’s doula biz is booming, will hopefully include more writing, and eventually teaching next year. Looking to getting my Credential finally and doing what I probably should have been doing all along: helping warp those young minds you hear so much about, so perhaps one day not every kid will hate Melville or Shakespeare or reading or writing something. Will let you know.

 

OK, there’s still media that’s not dead. Here’s notes on some of it.

 

I did rant a bit about Leonard Nimoy being on Fringe on a facebook post, and was wondering why o’ why does that guy have pop up in every sci fi thing out there? I was preeety disappointed at the Star Trek “retool” film that had to use Nimoy as a crutch. C’mon guys, you can do your own movie just fine.  The younger versions of the characters were excellent, but that old Spock dragged me down. Plus the whole alternate universe being created with the time traveling Spock and Vulcan blowing up etc, felt unneeded. I didn’t like it.  But these Lost boys love their alternative universes. Like Fringe.  I went and re-watched a few of last season’s final shows and I have to admit that Nimoy cuts a kind of striking figure as the suave techno-evil dude from the alternate universe.  So maybe its not the actor Nimoy I’m on about, but that character Spock. Fringe is shaping up to be a lot of fun. Very X-files mixed with Lost and The Lost Room and some other harder sci fi

thrown in to boot. Less aliens more agents from a parallel universe who use stuff like an IBM Selectric and a mirror to communicate across the void. Its all weird and watchable.

 

The Lost boys have missed however on Flash Forward. I may give it another chance, but after ep. One, I can’t say that I was too excited about the rest of it. It feels very exploitative of the success of Lost, down to the billboards for Oceanic Airlines and hundreds of other hidden Easter eggs just waiting to be TiVo’d out. But I think you have to earn this kind of thing, like Lost did over many seasons, not right out of the gate. The whole show is a giant Easter egg really, and the worst seems to be the un-subtle aiming for the big “date” that everybody flashed forward to: April something 2010, which is apparently the start of Nielsen Sweeps, where obviously the show itself will catch up with and be all tied in with hype and marketing and bla bla. Yawn.  Ep. One was a huge downer… more than the “cool” aspect to what went down, everybody on the planet passing out at the same moment for the same duration, all having “memories” of that future day in April when either their show will be cancelled or not, we have to imagine hundreds and thousands of grizzly, horrible deaths, many of them glimpsed during the show: planes and copters crashing all over, cars killing people in hundreds of creative, gruesome ways, surgeons botching operations, and on and on. What a mess. I’m not as worried about the story of “why,” but moreso how the world is going to clean all that shit up?

 

But if you wanna talk TV, and apparently you do… you’ve gotta talk “Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia” new contender for most transgressive, funniest show out there, beating out Larry David, Sarah Silverman and whatever naughty cartoon people love. IASIP, as it must be forever typed, is insanely funny, infinitely watchable, insane, and at times idiotic, brilliant, disgusting, horrific, dumb, genius, etc. Plus you don’t need to see them in order so you can start anywhere and have your fun.

 

Two actors from that show showed up in a little indie film called A Quiet Marriage, which was worth a look. Not a screaming comedy like IASIP, but quirky and interesting. Who’s worse? A wife who pokes holes in her diaphragm? Or a husband who doses her coffee with birth control pills? You decide.

 

Also indie kudos to good ol’ John Kransniski from the Office, who apparently spent a lot of his extra Office bonus cash to buy and film David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which until now probably was in contention for “Book most least likely to be made into a movie…” I was super, gigantic, crazy skeptical about the idea,  but they kinda sorta pull it off. A bit confused and perhaps underacted at times, but is faithful to a lot of the book, and tells its own story rather well… Maybe if he wins an Emmy he’ll buy and film Infinite Jest…. (!!))

 

Not exactly media, but an item of much beauty and joy, a piano, has entered our lives and improved them greatly. Felicia manifested this piano out of the ether, as she often does, and was I surprised when, a) it showed up and was in perfect condition, beautiful shape, seemingly brand new; and b) she figured out a way to fit in our little house, house that is more like one of those square number puzzles that you slide the little tiles around to get everything in order. I mean, I’m afraid to even bring a Sunday New York Times in lest it topple the delicate balance, yet piano? No prob.  What’s even weirder is that I am remembering so much of what I used to play, like 20 years ago when I spent countless hours figuring out the chords to “Pinball Wizard” and the “Pink Panther,” and Stones songs and bad boogie woogie. This piano brings it all out of me, it is so playable, so amenable really, what a doll.

I play a bit, the sun slanting madly out there, but I feel better already.