skirblog

black dog

Hey, hey mama, its oldies week now that the skirblog is back and operating as per usual. Man I hate to say it but its bad to be back. The gree-yind is awful once you’ve been away. First thing I notice back in lovelee downtown SF is the trademark atmosphere of constant sirens screaming continuously throughout the day esp though at lunch time. I guarantee you that if you poke yer head outside from 6th or 7th Street down to Embarc, esp. at lunch time, you will hear one piercing siren after another panicking traffic, splitting ears, racing toward what exactly? You mean to tell me there are that many emergencies A DAY in downtown SF alone? If so we are in worse shape than I thought.

Speaking of screaming sirens… I was treated by some radio station, I think KFOG (which has found itself programmed into the ol’ vehicular FM's coveted slot six) to one giant heaping helping of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” the other day.  And I have to tell you it was quite an experience. It’s probably been years since I heard it, start to finish, and have been able to gain some distance from it since the OLD DAYS when you heard it, like the panicking sirens, at least three or four times a day, and it was part of the landscape, a big part mind you like a mountain or such, but there all the time, but now perhaps I could listen to it with fresh ears, like maybe I was hearing it for the first time like maybe I was some missionary or explorer coming across the Grand Canyon or N. Falls for the first time, and holy fucking shit can you imagine? The Falls, The Canyon, The Black Dog? I could only marvel at the extreme heaviosity of it, the outlandishness of it, and yes its gi-goondus balls. Sorry but that’s what it has. But why try imagine myself into that virgin listen when I have the perfect test subject living with me? The kid!  I says, hey kiddo, you should take listen to this,” and I laid the Black Dog on him. Even though he may be a bit young and a bit too media savvy, and of course into the rap and hiphop and such nonsense,I could see various wheels turning, various switches being activated. Next thing I know he’s downloaded Black Dog and has it on his “my penguin” space, which is kinda like a myspace for kids. Take that you flippin’ rappers.

But I’m not done sweating to the oldies, no, I’ve been on a weird trajectory musically this past year, you may remember starting with re-discovering a lot of the vintage PIL way, way back, and then via Don Letts, allowing the evil DUB to take over my brain for quite a while. The DUB is still holding tough, the King Tubby of course, and now the Augustus Pablo, and that had me thinking, “hey, what about our good old friends the Bad Brains?" They could reggae and dub out with the best of them, when, of course they weren’t destroying all that stood before them, basically inventing speed core and a bunch of other punk sub genres. They’re back apparently, and have released "Build a Nation" which I have yet to hear. It’s the original lineup and Mr. Jennifer has a lot of strong and sage things to say about it and the Bad Brains over at Pitchfork, a lot of having to do, still, with being a black band playing punk, and how race does and doesn’t matter.  But first off was little Limewiring and iTuning to get back on the Brain's program.  I hate to say this for fear that Darryl Jennifer (he sounds mighty pissed in the interview) will come and KILL ME or something, but you’ve gotta sift through their catalogue pretty carefully because they put out a lot of crappy shit mixed in with a lot of brilliant shit. The best example of this is on  the great “I Against I” release which while including the title track and “Re-Ignition” also sports some of the most middle of the road jazz fusion-y crap you’d never want to hear.  But who gives a goddamn cause all I do is play “I Against I,” and "Re-Ignition" over and over and over again. Better to pick up their infamous “cassette only” ROIR release that’s been avail on CD for like 100 years already that’s all killer and no filler. We may venture into the new one yet, I will report.

Black people dominate the skirblog’s entertainment dosage this week, not only the Brains, but two DVDs: I Think I Love My Wife and Black Snake Moan. The former a Chris Rock project, and at its core, so squeaky clean and nice that you’re gonna wonder what Rock is suppressing to make this film, or is he trying for a total re-branding of himself as a family film dude?  It is Rock himself who saves this from becoming total pap, he lets small, classic Chris Rock bolts fly every once in a while, (not often enough), and Rock can crack you up by just saying the word “chicken.” There were some interesting race type things in the film, and yes, like the Bad Brains, Mr. Rock still has to contend with race every day.  Which will have me digress for a sec. to another film, Waiting.

Waiting is genius work. Dumb genius yes, but genius all the same. Yes it basically takes the film Office Space and moves it deftly into the restaurant setting. In fact it moves it right to the very restaurant from Office Space called now “Shenanigans” instead of “Chotchkes.”  Waiting  is much cruder, inappropriate and sexual than Office Space and all the better for it. I watched it twice in as many days and appreciated it to no end.  Of course there is a wise, old, black dishwasher in the film, (just like the ones in real life, right?) who dispenses wise old advice to the staff, including this bit to the new, rookie white kid: “I want you to close your eyes and imagine all your surroundings, take in every thing, every aspect of the world around you.  Good. Now imagine the same thing this time if you had been born a black man.”  This reminded me again of Colson Whitehead’s “Apex Hides the Hurt” where only the white characters are described by race, ie: “The white guy at the bar ordered a beer,” etc. After a while you catch on that all the un-race-described characters are black, and that this is the exact opposite of how all books usually are. A little more complicated is Black Snake Moan which is a mixed race affair and does flirt with racial boundaries and stereotypes. I will say after the film, which I liked, I wanted to know if the filmmakers were black. It seemed to matter on how I would read the project as a whole, which teeters from commenting on cliché’s and racial stereotypes to reinforcing them. I did watch some of the extras on the DVD and found some of the answers (Director, no; Producers, yes; Musicians, both, but mostly white.) So a big ‘hmm’ to Black Snake on racial lines. Otherwise you gotta see Samuel L. who can recite the phone book and be a bad ass about it, (which itself is by now a stereotype isn't it? As is commenting on the fact that its a stereotype. Oh my white guilt and love for Samuel L!) and Christina Ricci's all half nekkid and such throughout most of the film. She has transformed her body since I last saw her, and seems to want to exploit it with abandon in this film. Or is it her character? AO Scott over at the NY Times, a bunch of other reviewers pretty much savage Black Snake for much more erudite reason than I, but skirblog sez, check it out.

Apropos of nothing other than we're on a movie rant here, brings me to the battle of the ultra futuristic dytopian killer fighting babes, the babes most people had no desire to see in a movie: Aeon Flux and Ultra Violet.  Some say the same movie maybe? But not to the trained eye.  You know this by now, I am a fan of the sci fi, especially the dark future techno stuff that does poorly at the box office. I’d been stoked about Aeon Flux for a while, but leery as well having been a bleary eyed, and admittedly kinda of weirdly turned on fan of the toon on MTV, and knew a "live" version of Flux was gonna be tough to pull off.  And yes, I was disappointed, esp. by Ms. Theron as Flux, who came off rather un-acrobatic and kinda awkward to my eye.  The film was almost immediately forgettable. Too bad, and would have been even more disappointing had it not been for the unexpected appearance, seeming out of the blue (ahem) of Ultraviolet.  See, now they got that one right. You need a sleek, cool, babe fighting machine? You call Milla Jovovich, not Charlize Theron. I mean anybody knows that.  Ultra Violet is worth a closer look, a film I’m going to defend as an even more beautifully rendered dance extravaganza than any of the Matrices. Cause that’s what its come down to now in these slo-mo, futuristic fight fests:  dance.  It’s a complicated dance, angles, trajectories, near misses, split seconds, thrilling, bloody and beautiful to watch.  UV revels in this, and seems to aspire to not much more than pure style.  But set in a hyper-hypochondriac world there's some nice touches about disease and fear which reminded me of Children of Men. A must see.

Some sci fi's are so bad they're good, and others?  Well... Do I even have to say it might be best just to avoid Transformers? We wanted to see it anyway, regardless of its insane "plot" and hundreds of other irrationalities and sat right up close to it to be overwhelmed if by nothing else then the giantness of its images and loudness of its sounds. I don't know if you saw the other Michael Bay movie The Island, but there's a scene in it, a chase scene, absoultely beautifully done, where huge like railroad axles or something go flying off a speeding truck to bounce around destroying other cars on the highway. One of the best things about this scene are the sound effects, which give they whole thing a meanacing, surreal quality. So now extrapolate that scene out for about 2 1/2 hours and you have Transformers. Anytime you see at the starting titles that a film is brought to you by Dreamworks AND Hasbro, you know you are about to be toyed with, eh?

Other must see motion pictures that aren't nec. films? How about some very scary, freaky new ads on the Bart train between Embarcadero and Montgomery stations?  If you’re not prepared for this, as I wasn’t (odd, isn’t it, me not prepared?) and you’re standing or sitting there trying to look bored and cool and menacing to the other passengers, or just sleepy, as is usually the case, when you see what you think are fucking video screens appearing out of nowhere outside the damn train showing some kind of moving video I don’t know what. Where am I suddenly? In Minority Report? But no, this has been going on for some time now. The dark subway wall an irresistible and formerly blank slate upon which to advertise.  Maybe the old forehead tattoo wasn’t such a bad idea after all?

But what was I talkin' about? Oh yeah, "Black Dog." Here, why not experience it again for the 1,000,000th time, and the very first time: (props to ILLS for this player. He da man!)

black_dog.mp3

No. 9

Numerology folks, this year anyway, since it is for me, my 45th. The no. 9 has always had a place in my heart (or obsessive brain…) as I was born on the 27th and the permutations of nine have always intrigued me. When I couldn’t learn my multiplication tables as a kid, somehow I got the nines, snaking around my brain like a boa, they became a kind of mantra to me. My year of birth, my ssn# all involve the nines. My sister was also born on the 27th and exactly, to the day, one year and six months away from me. Or 18 months. Next occurance isn’t ‘till I’m 54 so I proclaim this a good year, an important year, not knowing exactly how or why. Today (the day I've published this) is the 9th, 8/9/07. Hmm.  Was it a coincidence that while in  Pittsburgh on my “vacation” (who vacations in Pittsburgh? People from California I guess) I was turned onto a great delicious beer called, of course, “No. 9” from the Magic Hat Brewery in Vermont maybe? Thanks to my man Flood for that tip, and for showing me a good time at my old haunt, the Cage.

So yeah, I was traveling and away for several weeks: Pittsburgh, Niagara Falls, then LA. Each action packed and fun. Just skip over the stuff that doesn’t interest you as usual. All of it? Then what the hell you doin’ here anyway?

A note on flying. USAir? Once again, on-time and efficient, and cramped and uncomfortable. With all the talk now about flight delays and tarmac sittin’ I’ve got to come down on the side of my buds over at USAir. I’ve been flying from SFO to PIT for like 20 years now, and I’ve never (knocking wood…) had so much as a delay. They for sure ain’t the cheapest, and I’m on the phone with them annually bickering about my unusuable flyer miles and their crazy, non-linear prices, but they do what they say they’re gonna do. Sadly, they haven’t rec’d the message about how much space a human needs to exist comfortably for four or five hours. The giant fella’s in front of me decisions to recline destroyed what little space I had. The movie was jittery and the headphones didn’t work. But they got us there and back exactly on time and alive and for that I thank them

Old Pittsburgh buds: A shout to the good ol friends I got to see: Flood, the Tractor, Mag, Zyl and as a bonus M.Marcus. Apologies to those I missed. Goddamnit. My folks had a giant pile of busted and malfunctioning machinery for me to attend to, plus repairs, revamps, etc. plus seein’ a lot of my family who I’d not seen in a while including the elusive sister. All my youngest cousins now have kids, and the cutest ones ever at that. So it was all good.

Highlights from da ‘burgh:

Glass: Pittsburgh has always had a beautiful flower conservatory in Schenley Park. It’s one of the classic Victorian white frame and glass affairs that you see in major cities. This year though some extreme visionaries in Pittsburgh got the famous glass artist Dale Chihuly to install site-specific pieces throughout the conservatory, and the show there is utterly amazing. I mean beyond what you’d expect. I mean a nearly indescribable, must- experience show of importance. I love glass anyway. I’m a fondler of glass and stone from way back. I think I described here once how I coerced a very tolerant security guard at the DeYoung Museum in SF to let me touch a bunch of their glass collection while she looked the other way. Oh! So I’m pre-programmed to love Chihuly His glass is more organic and fragile for me to want to touch, since I also have a tendency to break glass. There was this giant tower of rough lavender slabs rising above an outdoor pond that did call out for a some touchin’. Basically you walk though these lush, growing environments of the conservatory, and growing amid the exotic plants are lovely, seemingly alive glass sculptures. Some are totally integrated into the plantscapes, others dominate and inspire jaw-dropping gasps and shock. It’s a major work of art, perhaps as beautiful as something like Falling Water (also in the Pgh area). I’ve got pix that I took on my phone which will have to suffice. Or you can go to his website, or the Phipps Conservatory website. I have to hand it to Phipps and Pittsburgh. They landed a major deal with that show and I urge as many peeps as possible in the area to see it.

Segway riding: While busy complaining to various restaurant managers about our shitty meals in more than one Pittsburgh estab., (we ate badly but for free all over Pgh.) we spied a little booth offering Segway tours of the area. F. has had a big jones to ride one of these for a while now, so we signed up. OMG how much fun was that? The Segue is like the Mac of electric scooters. After about five minutes of futzing around with it, you are suddenly gliding around without effort. There’s really no maneuvering at all, you almost just think about stopping, going, turning, and the thing does it. It becomes part of you in a way and you start to imagine a life without walking.

Speaking of a “jones,” I turned the kid onto the great, “Basketball Jones” the other day. That was a pervasive song from my childhood, listening to it on the “new sounds of 13Q” radio in Pgh. 13Q was an AM station I believe and asked us all to answer our phones “I listen to the new sounds of 13Q” in case one of them were calling and we’d get a prize. Never won the prize, though did annoy all callers to the skir-mansion in those days. “Fox on the Run” by Sweet was also a big one, that hearing now can transport me immediately back to my kid-room, tghe clock radio to which 13Q was endlessly tuned, which is now the guest room for our visit. ELO, BTO, Heart, all on the radio again. So here’s to my friend, Tyrone Shoelaces of the great East Westchester North Stars.

Not all was lost culinar-ily in the ‘burgh. The giants at Mineos still have the goods, still walk the good walk. Pizza unlike any other. To my mind it is the best you can possibly eat. Many disagree and brutal pizza wars ensued, me finding shelter on lower Murray Ave, hunkered down in a dangerous place near Napoli and Aiellos. Spies up Forbes dropped coupons from circling copters and we were issued slices from Village Pizza and it wasn’t half bad. Exlnt grease quotient, foldable, New York-y. But seemingly a whole different food group than Mineos where I found temporary shelter once again. I had ordered two large pies to bring back to safety. The guy goes “you want them to go?” and I’m a little surprised by this, as I’ve never been asked that of a phone pick-up order. But the guy says he knows my cousin, Big Jim Skirblog who apparently often comes in and destroys a few za’s while taking in the pleasant surroundings. Jim is a famous triathlete by the way, so he can eat two flippin’ zas and whatever else he wants cause he’s in shape. Me? I shudda stuck to 3 maybe four cuts, but what you gonna do? And for breakfast and lunch the next day.

At one point we made it to a border crossing and after some consternation about our papers were allowed access to the New Dumpling House only three or fours doors down from Mineos. This place was undergoing its own civil war, doing battle with itself, offering both Japanese and Chinese food. Most of us opted for sushi and were extremely pleased at how well it was done. I was bullied and coerced by the sassy waitress (resistance is futile) to sample the “live scallops.” Live scallops? Formerally live and now just on the half shell, same as Venus. And they were delicious.

Niagara Falls: As gaudy as you want it to be, or as lovely. Rushing water. What could be better? I think I’d read that rushing water releases a lot of negative ions, or Ozone or something, which is very calming to the humans and other primates. Why else are we so drawn to this place? At the falls you can get pretty close over in Canada, and cool was the spot where the water just goes over the edge. Calm then violent. Then the obligatory crush of tackiness and commercialism busting out on all sides. But we’d expect nothing less, and I was looking as forward to the gift shoppes as I was the falls. Had dinner at the Skylon tower rising over everything to revolve and serve sliced prime rib to the people. Filled up on beets and cold crab legs. Could not get a flippin’ drink made with the proper amount of alcohol anywhere in PA or Canada. Giant casino across the road and I somehow won money playing the dollar slots, so I got to treat everybody to a crappy breakfast and even crappier lunch on the way home. Border crossing was anticlimactic: only a driver’s license needed for Amerikkan citizen, after we fretted and worried about our lack of passports and birth certificates. Hard questioning by agents as to “how are you all related?” “uh, um, what?” But they let us through and back again.

LA/Orange Co. Inlaws this time with a trip to Ditney Land planned. You may undoubtedly remember from last year that we “strangely, did not hate Disneyland” so planned another sojourn there. Personally I was hot to get back on Space Mountain and the Indiana Jones ride, as last year I was silently suffering from claustrophobia and anxiety (and some leftover back problems) and felt pretty uneasy on many of the rides, esp the ones that go slowly underground like Pirates of the Caribbean. Lexapro has changed all that for me (I actually fell asleep on the plane across the country, something I’d probably never done in my life before. I can’t tell you how monumental that was for me – air travel being a giant source of anxiety for basically my whole life, suddenly gone.) I had a blast not being uneasy on Pirates or even the Haunted Mansion even when it stalled half way through due to mechanical difficulties and poor kiddo and I were being haunted by the same pop-up ghost from a tombstone over and over again. Unfort. my son was not as anxiety-free for that. We tried to work the “fast track system” better this time, but still didn’t get a pass to Space Mtn until like 8:30 at night! Had to make due with eating a giant corn dog, drinking an $8 cup of beer and settling down to the stomach churning California Screaming Coaster and its upside down Mouse Ears loop. Corn dog tried to come up but stayed inside the body thankfully. Good coaster that, esp. since I’d been rained out of the wonderful Thunderbolt back in Pgh. Loved the Soaring California ride, again anxiety free; bought a “Grumpy” hat, walked about 1,000 miles on aching feet, finally to get to Space Mtn and it was BROKEN! WTF?? about 100 of us were shouting. I was crestfallen and defeated and tried my best not to devolve into a tantruming baby, and was a bit curious how angry and frustrated I was about it. Head hung low I realized the only thing that could cheer me up was walking through the park gnawing on a giant turkey leg over in Frontier Land. And that giant turkey leg was just about good enough to do the trick. Smoky and juicy, fit for a King Henry the Eighth.

Got to see my old bud The Pickle in LA who took us for a rather hilarious tour of Hollywood, pointing out non-existent places and people and getting us lost. Done as a true local, we loved it! Great to see you Mark. Then there was the very odd, jury-is-still-out, “Pageant of the Masters” a tableaux vivant show down in Laguna Beach. What is it? Well, lets just say that for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, people, artists and brilliant stagecraft folks have decided to recreate famous works of art using painted backdrops and real people costumed and painted so that from a distance, the whole thing looks exactly like the referent painting. Like Degas ballet dancers, the dancers are women posed and unmoving so that from we were sitting, you couldn’t tell if it really was a painting or not. There is no arguing that it is very artfully done and that the illusions are flawless. I’m just not sure about the project as a whole. To be sure there were easily 5,000 or more (white) people packed into the outdoor amphitheater in Laguna Beach and we hear that it’s sold out all summer. Yet I was wondering just what it was I was seeing during most of it. Look it up here.

As a capper on a lovely Orange Co. stay we made it up to San Pedro where my brother-in-law docks his sailboat. A thrill for me as we all know, Pedro being the home of the Minutemen, and in the recent film about them, Mike Watt is seen driving around the town. Actually a pleasant enough place, and we had been clued into an amazing sandwich shoppe called I think the Beehive, or maybe Busy Bee Market? To be sure a sandwich lovers dream place. The whole store is devoted only to the art of the sandwich and nothing else. I’m not talking some high falutin ‘Wichcraft type place, or even your fabuloso Genova Deli over in Oaktown. This place is an unpretentious working person’s deli counter surrounded on all sides by everything you need to compliment your sandwich, row after row of chips and cookies, and case after case of cold beverages. You go and tell them what you want, and they slice and construct it to order, dipping what needs to be dipped, slathering what needs to be slathered. I had me some mortadella and provolone, while others had meatball, or salami and swiss, or roast chicken  and avocado. We took ‘em down to the boat to enjoy, then took the boat out to sail. Skirb was even allowed to pilot the thing for a while using wind power and his own questionable sense of direction alone. And I did not wreck or maroon us.

So I’ve wasted much of your time and I’m sure left out a lot of what I should have included and included a lot which I should have left out, but we’re back now, and will be reporting again on all things skirb. Will let you know if in this 45th year nines rule, or we’re all just divisible by three.