for the lobsters

This entry, though it’s gonna be about writer David Foster Wallace (and me, since I’m intrusive), is not an obit. Every major news outlet in America supplied one of those in the days following his death, so to attempt another would be redundant. I’m writing about Wallace because he’s blown my mind twice in the last month.

I’ve never read Infinite Jest, Wallace’s tree-killing doorstop, though I intend to do so soon. On two recent occasions—once with Marlo on a bench at Black and White tavern, the other with Travis over a burger at Applebee's (har har)—I’ve been alerted to his genius by literary people I know and trust. Bolstered by their endorsements, I pounded a fist in my brain on a table in my brain and shouted, “that settles it! I’m gonna read David Foster Wallace, that guy who wrote that freakin’ humongous book! Infinite Jest, you scare the balls offa me, but I’ll soon be cracking your spine.” Maybe he’s worth checking out after all, I thought. Maybe the hype is actually well-deserved, unlike, say, the curious praise for another Dave, Dave Eggers, and his Incredible Staggering Pregnant Ego novel of Genius, which—if I may borrow a few words from comic Lisa Lampanelli—sucks out loud. Eggers, you owe me $16.21 and an explanation.

My first exposure to Wallace’s writing came in a very unlikely way. While working at Fordham University back in September (this was a week after he commited suicide at 46), I sat around one afternoon on a plastic chair in a windowless room, bored as shit. My task that day had been to deliver mail to all the law professors, but when that wrapped at two pee em I had very little else to do so I flipped through a newspaper that I rarely understand and almost never read: The Wall Street Journal. That day's Journal ran Wallace’s commencement speech to the 2005 Kenyon College graduates on the back page. Here’s a passage:

“…our present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The real important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race”—the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing…”

Before the day was up I’d read the speech four or five times, awed by Wallace’s intellect, message and choice of subject matter. Rather than offer up a generic, inspirational speech—“many of you will go on to do great things, the torch has been passed,” etc.—Wallace spoke frankly and matter-of-factly about the world, warning of pitfalls ahead and encouraging the graduates to subvert those “default-settings” we’ve been programmed with from birth.

There will be days, he said, when you’ll find yourself in a poorly designed supermarket, vexed and impatient. The overweight woman blocking the narrow aisle with her cart (and her body) slows your progress. You snatch at seemingly random items—some you need, some you surely don’t—and transfer them to a handcart, finally returning to the front of the store after fifteen minutes spent slaloming around oblivious housewives, crying children, teens broadcasting inanities into a cell phone...but wait! Your troubles have only just begun, because now you’re queued behind half a dozen sad-faced simpletons hoarding their pathetic, non-nourishing items (which they sadly load onto the sad conveyor) as the sloth behind the register receives on-the-job training. The music bleating out from overhead—a soulless, plasticine, FM-friendly waltz of death—sucks, all the lighting is yellowed and artificial and unflattering to the skin, and you want nothing more badly than to be home, away from it all. To top it off, the check-out line is six or eight carts deep and the woman in front of you has about twenty coupons in her white-knuckled fist.

Here, Wallace argues, choice enters the equation. You can CHOOSE how to approach this situation…it’s all a matter of perspective. Our first instinct, as anybody knows, is to damn the vile scenario and curse beneath our breath. We’ve cursed it before, and we'll curse it again. Sun rises, sun sets. However, Wallace points out, it’s actually

“…within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it…”

A valid point. We spend most of our lives operating on autopilot. To approach a potentially awful situation with wide-eyed wonder (after all, we’re aLIVE!) is not easy, but should we defy all odds and pivot that scene for the better, we've succeeded in conquering the moment. On those rare, rare instances where I’ve been in a “consumer-hell” situation and marvelled at the wonderful madness of it all, I’ve known what it is to be a fully autonomous human being, ecstatic and fully sated.

I recommend you all check out the Kenyon speech, which can probably be found online somewhere.

Then I read Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster,” his 2004 essay for Gourmet magazine, which is all sortsa brilliant. He was assigned to cover the Maine Lobster Festival, an event held every July in the state’s midcoast region. As you might expect from a writer of his intellect and ingenuity, Wallace submitted a highly unconventional article, one that almost didn’t go to press.

Now, I’ve never read Gourmet, but I’m assuming it’s a relatively straightforward cooking mag for food aficianados. In all likelihood, its readers are not after dense, challenging literature...what they're after are fresh recipes (looking back at these last two sentences, I realize Wallace would have tsk tsked my journalistic passivity). Wallace’s article on lobster was a dense, challenging dissertation of the highest order. Anything you’ve EVER wanted to know about lobsters was included within—anatomy, mating habits, history in the culinary arts, brain capacity, pain threshold, preparation of, etc. Brilliant approach, for two reasons:

1) Wallace researched his ass off for this article. You have to admire the guy for his commitment to furious study.

2) His decision to cut straight to the lowest common denominator (lobster, obviously) is what separates him from many of his contemporaries. Let's face it: most writers assigned to such a festival would likely provide a detailed piece concerning the menu, venue, crowds, ambience. Not Wallace. When his brain runs off, he encourages (rather than apprehends) his spastic imagination, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of this article being about a crustacean, not a festival.

To top it all off, Wallace fades out with an open-ended ethical question involving lobsters and their ability to feel pain. Many cooks prepare lobster by dropping the still-living creature into a pot of scalding water, a process that may or may not torture the soon-to-be entrée. Wallace points out that we really don’t know enough about the inner wirings of the lobster to determine their capacity for discomfort, or whether they even "feel" discomfort in the traditional sense of the word. Though he doesn't chastise those who feast (Wallace himself is not a vegetarian), I applaud his decision to explore the issue. Once more, he's encouraging us to adopt an alternate perspective, if only for a brief while.

See ya, David. I’m gonna read your big-ass book soon.
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the piano has been drinking

This afternoon on the 4 train I finished reading Charles Bukowski’s The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps, a collection of his later poems. It failed to impress, but only cuz I’ve read enough of his prose to know what I was in for (i.e. the same old themes, this time cut up into stanzas and disguised as poetry).

To be clear, I'm not launching a polemical assault on ol’ Buk. The man knows how to write, and he’s most always—to quote Modest Mouse—a “pretty good read.” I'm hard-pressed to name a writer more approachable on a minimal, guttoral level; Buk chronicles his own failed, depraved existence with humor and self-flagellating earnestness, a rare feat. Joes from all over encounter his poems and adopt the “if that old pervert can do it, I can do it too!” credo, and why not? Buk’s just like them! We’ve all met a prospective Bukowski or two, it's just most of ’em don’t take time away from their leering and their farts to write it all down. What’s to hate about a writer who drinks mammoth amounts of beer, lives out a paycheck-to-paycheck existence and, when he does write, mercifully refrains from Updiking you with his muscular vocabulary?

He's not out to fool anybody. You know what you’re getting into when you pick up a Bukowski. There's no aces up the sleeve.

But.

Back to the book in question. Near the end—the last forty pages or so—I tired of the poetry of Mr. Buk. I’ve always figured that If you’ve read one Buk, you’ve read them all. Booze, women, whores, horses, Los Angeles, stained sheets, Mahler, etc., etc. Repeat. I know the formula, but that didn’t stop me from breaking out the whine (no pun intended…ha!) today on the train: "C’mon, Buk, shake it up a bit!"

But then ol’ Buk came thru in the clutch! Yanked up the rug and sent me flying on my ass. He closed the collection with this poem, a dandy, in response to my gripe:

wine pulse

this is another poem about 2 a.m. and I’m still at the
machine listening to the radio and smoking a good
cigar.
hell, I don’t know, sometimes I feel just like Van Gogh or
Faulkner or,
say, Stravinsky, as I sip wine and type
and smoke and there’s no magic as gentle as this.
some critics say I write the same things over and over.
well, sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t, but when I do the
reason is that it feels so right, it’s like making love and
if you knew how good it felt you would forgive me
because we both know how fickle happiness can be.
so I play the fool and say again that
it’s 2 a.m.
and that I am
Cezanne
Chopin
Celine
Chinaski
embracing everything:
the sweet of cigar smoke
another glass of wine
the beautiful young girls
the criminals and the killers
the lonely mad
the factory workers,
this machine here,
the radio playing,
I repeat it all again
and I’ll repeat it all forever
until the magic that happens to me
happens to you.
...

a life in sports, part two

...
So much for chronology. I’ve forgotten a few.

2.5) Golf—the kilted feller who dreamed up this clownish pastime was a masochist of the highest order, a sick jokester. I wouldn’t wish golf on my worst enemy. Most of the golfing populace—myself included—doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing out there. Tiger Woods we ain’t. Charles Barkley we is:



I’ve never been much of a golfer. My all-time best for 9 holes stands at a laughable 46, a score Mr. Woods posted at the age of 4. That being said, I know a great deal about the game, the result of twelve years of humble service as a caddie. Allow me to relate a story, fill a little white space. Why not?

When i was 14, 15—somewhere in there—I toiled one impossibly hot summer day for a grease-haired man named Furlong. He was rich and he liked his drink and my sole duty was to maneuver his golf cart and replenish the beer when it got low. He made this very clear from the start: “Mike, I don’t want yardage or conversation, and I really don’t require any help on the greens—you’re gonna be Watcher of the Beer. Drive the cart or whatever, make sure we have ice.” Furlong gulleted inhuman amounts of Budweiser that afternoon and got hisself good and wobbly. We’re talkin’ bubbles out the mouth whenever he burped and three of everything where there once was one.

When we approached the tee box for 16, a short par-four, greasy Furlong summoned me from the cart. “Mikey,” he said, “hit a drive.” He handed me tee, club, shiny-brite Titleist. I smoked the cover off that damn ball, Bunyaned the thing into the clouds. Still unsure how it happened, really, but somehow physics and Elwood collided in impressive ways for less than one second and that ball soared straight and true, high and far, cleared an oft-unclearable bunker with yards to spare. All told, the thing probably rolled 295 or so, a robust, executive poke from a midget with a concave chest. Furlong’s bloodshot eyes nearly popped from his sockets. It was (is, probably) the greatest drive I’d ever struck, the single purest swing of my life. Furlong urged me to play out the rest of the hole, convinced I was a freakish prodigy or something.

You already know the story that follows; it’s been Charlie Brown’s since 1950. I tripped over my own ankles, missed the football entirely and posted a double-bogey six, debunking Furlong’s Mike-is-golf’s-next-white-hope theory in a damn hurry.

2.7) Roller Hockey—yup, I played this one, too. Wasn’t very good at stopping. I spent a lot of time plowing into people.

4) Running—what to say? Running was my life. Still is, in small ways. I visit letsrun.com (a community forum/news site for runners) daily, though I haven’t trained in earnest since college.

I’m sick of writing, so the entry ends here.
...

a life in sports, part one

My advance apologies for the post you’re about to skim/half-read. It’s gonna be a) all about sports b) somewhat uninteresting and c) totally narcissistic.

For reasons unknown, I actually cared about last night’s Red Sox/Rays game and tuned in with vested interest, making for an atypical Saturday evening. You should probably know that I haven’t followed professional baseball in any real capacity since the strike in ’94. Perhaps I watched because two nights prior the BoSox had rallied heroically from seven runs down to force that sixth game, or perhaps it was the fact that my precious Cubbies Munsoned all over the place during their pitiable Series bid (leading me to the BoSox by reason of vicariosity?), or perhaps I still get off on the precocious joy of sport, regardless of the players involved.

Seeing as I’ve experienced a sporting rebirth of sorts—the Bears pique my attentions in small ways, as does George Will’s Bunts, his love letter to the game of baseball—it only seems appropriate to write it all down. What follows is my life in sports, told chronologically.

1) Baseball—no florid word(s) can adequately express my adoration for this game, nor the role it played in my life from the ages of 5-12. Jerry Seinfeld once monologued about how children think of nothing but candy, and how parents, friends, teachers, siblings become mere obstacles in the way of getting more candy. Well, that was my childhood, 'cept baseball superceded candy by many, many miles. Our old house in Brookfield, IL was flanked by a modest lot—we cleverly dubbed it the “side lot”—that acted as a ballpark of sorts. My neighbor and best friend, Brian Schmidt, joined me out there every day for batting practice with splintered bat and tennis ball. The goal? Hit it high and far, windows be damned. Sun, rain, wind, snow—didn’t matter. You'd find us in the side lot, decimating great patches of grass with muddied sneakers.

Then there was Little League, of course, and then a fall league, and then All-Stars (assuming I’d played well that year), and then, upon turning 13, the modern-day equivalent of a Babe Ruth League. In between games and practices, we’d spend entire days Wiffle-balling in Fontana, WI, pausing only to cool in the lake.

My folks, bless 'em, treated me to Cubs games, humoring me by being first in to Wrigley and last out so their idiot son could gape at batting practice and bumrush the players' gate after the game in search of autographs.

Somehow—it strains the brain—I collected somewhere between 300 and 400 Ryne Sandberg cards (I’ve forgotten the exact number). Every crinkled, desperate, sweating dollar that entered my palm during those formative(?) years went towards baseball cards. Worse than any junkie, I was. Up until recently, my bedroom in LaGrange Park sported full-on Cubs wallpaper, ceiling to floor, complete with full-sized posters.

But I digress.

Back to the field. I alternated between second base and the mound, even pitched a no-hitter once. The news clipping is in a scrapbook somewhere, probably sufficiently yellowed by now. My life plan was decided from a very early age: I’d get absurdly good at this game so Ryne Sandberg, upon retirement, would insist I succeed him at second base. I pitied all the other kids who didn’t know what they were gonna do with their lives.

At 13, though, we moved to a bigger ballpark and my batting average plummeted, infuriating me. Time to move on, I thought. Time to move on, I said. Enough! Just like that, it was all over.

2) Basketball—never really made any headlines playing basketball, but I certainly enjoyed playing. My first exposure to the game, if I remember correctly, came in 4th, 5th grade while on the playground at recess. I was far too small and weak to shoot correctly, so I began instituting the “shove,” an aesthetically painful two-wristed heave at the backboard. Wasn’t a very adept ball-handler, nor did I possess the height to hang out near the rim, so I chillaxed at the three-point line and waited for someone to pass it my way (they never did). While attending St. Louise de Marillac, I played on the 5th and 6th grade teams, accomplishing very little offensively (eight points scored in TOTAL) but a great deal defensively (dozens of steals). I was quick. I was fast.

Seventh grade. So many kids showed an interest that my junior high held a tryout. Very big deal. Three days and everything, even notebooks so they could write things about you. The lycra-shorted coaches, in a display of unimaginable cruelty, assigned me to the “A” squad, which is kind of like telling a kid to join in on a Miles session after three weeks of horn lessons. No question about it: I was the worst guy on the team, and by a significant margin.

Wasn’t ’til church league at St. Francis (this was in high school) that I came into my own and developed a wicked three-point shot, which became my bread ‘n’ butter. I still didn’t know how to drive the lane or handle the ball with any real proficiency, but I could shoot the lights out from the arc. During one game I had twenty-one points, all threes.

p.s. As an aside—cuz this is funny—my buddy Scott and I once played a one-on-one game to 1,000 in his driveway. Took over one full month to complete. The final score? Scott: 1,000, Mike: 996. This is where the story ends.

p.p.s. Ah, wait. Before I move on to sport #3, there’s one dig/jab I must administer, 'case he’s reading: Danny, my younger brother and a FAR superior baller, to this day cannot defeat me one-on-one. So, like, take that.

3) Swimming—Greg, a buddy, talked me into coming out for the freshman swim team at Lyons Township, a ludicrous idea. I lasted about one week. Fourth practice in, some muscled dude ‘bout twice my size, a captain or something, informed me I’d be swimming the 500 (not sure exactly how far this is, but it sounded like a damn long way) at the upcoming intersquad, so I peaced out, never to return. No Speedos for me, no siree.

Part 2 coming soon…
...

ever laugh so hard that you

Dear The Onion,

Are the letters to the editor really as short as they appear in the paper, or are they edited for

Deborah Geiff, Pueblo, CO

capitalism explained

I’ve pissed away roughly one-thirtieth of my life on a paint-chipped bench, waiting. That’s a lot of time! I’m exaggerating that 1/30th statistic, of course, but not as greatly as one might suppose. From the ages of 13-15 (my early caddie years at LaGrange Country Club), sitting was the name of the game. I got very good at sitting. Very good, I say, because while sitting I learned and mastered many indispensable card games/life skills, including but not limited to:

hearts
spades
poker
how to curse

Loopers (slang for caddies) sleep less than your average truck driver. I'd rise terrifically early, rub the night from my eyes, pedal my bicycle in hellcat fashion past the manicured lawns of my Burtonian suburbia, chain ‘er up in the rear parking lot and jog through that Midwest dew over to the cold, unforgiving wood of the caddie picnic tables. After scouting a proper squat for my khakied bum, I'd cheek it on a gym towel—my makeshift cushion—with chin in palm, as if posing for a Rockwell or something. That’s just the way it was, day after week after sepia year. Very Sisyphean.

We sat for varied amounts of time, our waiting period mostly determined by caddie rank. The little craps—that was me, if we’re still groovin’ in ‘97—claimed “B” caddie status, meaning that we were the lowliest turds in the sewer. “B” caddie status carried with it lots of non-responsibility. Synonyms for “B” caddie: seat-filler, virgin, guinea pig, ashtray, (sacrificial) lamb, chum (not chum the buddy, chum the bloody shark bait). There were like a million of us, meaning that our chances of getting out on the golf course—or “on a bag,” in caddiespeak—at any given moment were 1/1,000,000. We sat there politely and longed for pubic hair, careful not to make any sudden movements that might agitate the sharp-tongued piranha (caddies with pubic hair).

Let’s ascend a rung. Assuming you’d done alright as a “B” and didn’t fuck anything up, you might attain a swell promotion of sorts (see: slap on back and firm, bone-crushing handshake) after ‘bout two years and become an "A!" An “A” caddie assumed a role not unlike that of an office manager. You now hovered somewhere in purgatory—certainly not a monarch but not really a boot-licking minion, either—cuz now there’s someone beneath you to humiliate. “A” caddies instructed the “B” caddies when and where to piss and what (the aforementioned urine, sometimes) to eat/lick off the pavement. Ever play Asshole, that one drinking game where you try to get rid of all your cards quickly as you can? “B” caddies=Assholes, “A” caddies=vice-Assholes. Perfect analogy. There were far less than a million “A” caddies, meaning that your odds of securing work on any given day catapulted from 1/1,000,000 to about 1/10, just like that! A swell promotion.

Then, should you crawl thru five hundred yards (and four years) of shit-smelling foulness I still can’t even imagine—that’s the length of five football fields!—you emerge, half-naked, gasping and free, an “Honor” caddie at long last!

Ah, the “Honor” caddies (13-yr-old me bows reverentially). These guys were gods, immortals! They rocked fully-realized facial stubble, drank heroically, chawed on chaw, spoke of women’s bodies as conquistadors speak of golds and spices and measured in at 5’8", 5’10"—Herculean, impossible heights! You’d be a damn fool to speak in their presence. They slapped us around, caned our behinds, ridiculed us until we ran home crying for our mothers. They were bad. They were fierce. There were only about a dozen of them. They carried two bags, one per shoulder, and we carried none at all.

A typical day at LaGrange Country Club:

So now it’s 5:50, sun's still cowering away somewhere, everybody’s cold as shit (our breath is the frost) and the caddie count is as follows: “B”: 1,000,000, “A”: 18, “Honor”: 12. Our caddiemaster (funny term, to be sure, if you haven’t heard it before), a gruff ex-jock named Brian (Coach “K”) Kopecky, barrels into the shack, gruffing under his breath. He’s dragging behind him an industrial-sized garbage bin swelling with a million multi-colored golf tees, each tee sporting a different Sharpied number across the top of it, right across the fat part of the peg where you place the ball. The “B” caddies scamper over like the idiots they (I) are (were—er, are) and select from the pail, drawing one tee apiece. This is the Lottery Of Lotteries, but the Shirley Jackson kind, not the hopeful, optimistic kind. You select a tee with 31, 509, or, God help you, 112,242, forget it—you’re not getting work today. Go home! Cut your losses, pick your nose. That precious Sharpied number becomes your identification number for the next eight-odd hours, a prison badge of sorts. On any given day, 15 or 20 “B” caddies might secure a bag, meaning the other 999,985 unripened tweens pedaled their asses over there for nothing.

BUT we (I) were young and awfully stupid, cuz we’d inevitably snatch up a 41 or 284, or, Christ, a 612,349 and stick around anyway, ignoring logic, precedence, everything. We’d gamble money we didn’t have on card games we didn’t know how to play. We’d listen to tall tales of booze, coke, pregnation and incarceration, mouths agape. The “B” jocks aged ten years in a matter of weeks.

Bukowski once said something to the effect that anything you ever wanted to learn at University could be learned in one day at the horse races. I don’t have the quote in front of me, but you get the gist.

To further that sentiment, I’ll maintain with a straight face that anything you ever wanted to know about capitalism can be learned in four hours at a caddie yard. Those 12 “Honor” caddies controlled 90% of the wealth. They wooed LaGrange CC’s high-end clientele, lived lives of privilege and extravagance, slept with scores of women (or claimed to, anyway) and worked far less hours than their counterparts. No one attempted to unseat them, for fear of “dumpstering,” a very real phenomenon in the shack. Dumpstering is when you take a kid and throw him in a dumpster. The “A” caddies earned modest amounts of cash, which they folded neatly into their billfolds and later deposited into savings accounts at the local bank. “B” caddies scraped and conned and hoarded and deceived, attempting to eke out a proper living.

That’s capitalism, baby.
...

the pretty lines told me to do it

Let’s discuss that damn graph CNN featured during the Palin/Biden debate.

This empty visual commanded the bottom quarter of the screen (see attached image). To the left, a nifty inform-a-box announced that the ensuing lines—which rose/fell along an axis throughout the debate—represented the opinions of “Undecided Ohio Voters.” Uh. Dare I ask: how many undecided voters? Twelve? 400,000? CNN omitted that minor detail. Silly me, I really oughta keep my mouth shut. They probably know what they’re doing.

Two bipolar lines (green for "men," yellow for "women") leapt about in fits of shocking whimsy. Swell! Let’s genderize the hell outta this thing! Thanks, CNN, for simplifying this terribly confusing debate. My frail little brain wouldn’t know what to make of all this discussion nonsense otherwise. While you’re at it, why not add a few more lines? “Black,” “white,” “bigots,” “humanitarians,” “southerners,” “northerners,” “believers,” “non-believers,” etc. Or howz about we just throw the most liberal person in America and the most conservative in a room and arm each of them with a buzzer? Fastest finger wins!

The Palin/Biden debate was not about graphs. I should have spent more time listening to the WORDS being uttered by the potential LEADERS of our floundering COUNTRY, but the pretty graph monopolized my attentions.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

The graph meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. That little green line—the “men”—shot up when Biden uttered something or other about issue x. Right on, "men." Now, what does this fluorescent protuberance mean? Are these 12 or 400,000 voters agreeing with him on issue x, or did Biden’s wayward commentary serve to draw them ever closer to what’s-her-face, their original leaning? The two axes were never defined. I have no idea

1) who’s manipulating the lines
2) what the lines represent

On the plus side, it took the thinking out of it for tens of thousands of toothless Americans. Shoot, Myrtle, look at that line! It spiked way the hell up there when he said that last part about the health care and whatnot! I think Biden’s on to something…

CNN, you suck.
...

pop-culture pilgrimage, part two

Enough lies. I’ve placed one hand square on the Bible, right on the fat part. This all happened.

Spring ’03—midway thru my semester abroad in Galway, Ireland—I jetted to England, home of shepherd’s pie and John Cleese and yellowed teeth and London Pride ale, which I sampled (see: drank prodigiously) on the flight over. The steward, addressing my query re: taste/quality of London Pride, gruffed at me that Pride puts hair on the chest. Since I don’t shy away from passive-aggressive challenges very easily, I ordered one up, man that I am. Beer tastes delightful when it’s free, and in ’03 those rinky-dink flights in Europe hadn’t yet imparted the Nazi no-meal policies of our American carriers, meaning that we could sup and drink to our belly’s content without financial consequence. And sup and drink we did. By we, of course, I mean myself.

The short flight from Dublin dumped me off in London, where I was slated to meet with up with one of my high school buddies. I rubbed my chest hairs and surveyed London with eager eyes, quite happy to be alive and out of Chicago. Europe suited me. Still does. Writing this entry pains me in small ways, because I’m in here and London is there.

Anyway, I got antsy and booked a train to Liverpool to visit the land of the Beatles, ringing Greg to inform him that I’d be returning in three to four days. Seven hours later I’m in Liverpool's Lime Street station, giddy and anticipatory. I footed about, drinking it all in, wondering if everybody in this town owns a blue-collared shirt. One might call Liverpool the Detroit of the UK, as it's a place reeking of petty crime, rotting dreams and desperate nostalgia. I loved it immediately.

Let’s fast-forward past the boring stuff.

Here’s what happened to me:

1) I met Allan Williams, first manager of the Beatles (and the man who brought them to Hamburg!), at Beatle mecca The Cavern Club. He was slugging frightening amounts of red wine and spilling all over the place. First thing he slurred at me was so ironical it made me laugh out loud: “Get a…get a feckin’ haircut!” This coming from the manager of four mops who threatened 50's crew cut sensibilities! Looking back, though, I suppose I see his point. At the time my hair was hovering somewhere in the seven- or eight-inch range. I looked like a goddamn hippie, the worst kind. When the night ended and they blinked lights for last call, Allan—sans proper judgment, sans equilibrium—was still burping about, so I guided by arm that unsteady man to his abode, which was only a few short blocks from the Cavern.

2) First night in town I popped into the Jacaranda, a small club the Beatles played during their formative years. I wasted no time befriending an older man named Bernie Evans, who went to school with Paul and George long before anyone cried at the sight of them. He owned the club, if I remember correctly. Bernie sniffed out my fanatical Beatle lust (which I made no effort to hide) and offered to take me downstairs into the old playing space. The basement was not available to the general public—to open it up, Bernie keyed two heavy doors and led me down a flight of dimly-lit stairs. First thing I noticed were the walls (pictured above, filmed below), all heavily painted in wild colors. These murals, Bernie said, were painted by John Lennon and Stu Sutcliffe (original Beatle bassist) in the summer of 1960. I freaked. 1960! These murals preceded their Cavern Club days! I took a few pictures, thanked Bernie, stalked into the night in search of more adventure.



3) Saw Strawberry Fields, the old Salvation Army house.

4) Saw Penny Lane.

5) Saw Mendips, Lennon’s childhood home.

6) Spent two hours on a park bench overlooking Mersey River.

7) Last morning in town, I journalled at a patio table outside the Cavern Club, killing time before my noon train. Fore I could even get a full sentence down, a sleek, black car rolled up from the seeming nowhere and pulled to a stop in front of the venue. Then a stout man in a very nice suit stepped out of the rear door, followed by two men with cameras. The first man posed in front of the Cavern bricks for a series of photographs. I watched the shoot, thinking, “you know what, I’ve seen that man! Who is he?” Then it came to me: Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers! He’s the dude who sang “Ferry Cross the Mersey.” Maybe you’ve heard it. Anyway, I went up and introduced myself to Gerry (pictured above, at right, with Dusty Springfield and Brian Epstein), posed for a photo. Then back to the car and he’s gone, a fitting ending to my Liverpool adventure. Four hours later I’m in London, the world in my palm.
...

pop-culture pilgrimage, part one

“There comes a time in every music obsessive’s life when he knows he has to prove it. The only solution: a pilgrimage. The idea behind the proud tradition of the pop-culture pilgrimage is that, by going to the places where one of your heroes grew up, achieved notoriety, died, or was buried, you can certify your fanship. Once accomplished, you can offer up quantifiable proof to the world that you love your idol entirely.”

—John Sellers, author of Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life

I pilgrimmed, once. Sophomore year of college I said ahhhhh the hell with it and hemorrhaged $1100 in total on a round-trip coach ticket from O’Hare to Stockholm (connection in Amsterdam) to visit the boyhood home of neo-classical metalist Yngwie Malmsteen (above, heavily photoshopped).

I packed light, fast. No time for superfluities. Tees. Jeans. Socks. Deoderant. Maybe a toothbrush. There were probably boxer shorts in there. I’m not a very good packer. Flight was like any other. We made it all right, no deaths. I got out of the plane and looked straight up. Stockholm! The hostels were all stuffed up like rush hour trains, people falling out the windows. The desk people shook their heads at me, one after the next. I got very irritated whenever they shook their heads. Soon I grew tired of walking and started to sweat. I wished one of them would nod at me and hand me a key, but everywhere it was the same.

Much later a very nice woman with a Bed & Breakfast offered me a decent rate, so I said, “okay.” She removed a key from a large beige envelope and told about the rules. I thought about her rules and said, “okay,” and placed my pack in a wardrobe closet in the bedroom. Then I walked. And then I walked a little further. Yngwie’s place was very far from the Bed & Breakfast. His house is back in a field behind two fences that were built to keep livestock from acting out. It's still there, see for yourself. I hopped the fences. The second one was barbed and it left a small hole in the leg of my jeans.

Closer now, so close. Yngwie! This was a trip twenty years in the making. I grew up with Yngwie (pronounced ING-VAY). My father reared me on Yngwie. There are guitar players and then there is Yngwie. Yngwie is very hard to spell if you’re not careful. Nobody is faster than Yngwie (see vid below!). The man plays very quickly. To me, that’s why he is greatest. All his albums are perfect, but the best is 1985’s Marching Out. Yngwie fuses classical and metal better than Miles Davis fused jazz and rock. I have two Yngwie posters stapled on the wall over my bed. I’m admiring both of them while typing this. They’re very extreme.

After jumping the fence that left the hole in my jeans I encountered a very little man. He was not the most handsome man I’d ever seen. He said nothing at all. He glared at me savagely. I thought this was not good. The omens were foul. “Something the matter?” I said. No reply. I pressed on, one eye peering backwards so as not to be stabbed and one trained the right way, so as not to trip.



A few moments later I made it to the childhood home of Yngwie Malmsteen, metal savior. I stood there in the dirt looking up at it. My mouth was open all the way. I nearly cried. The home is made of wood. The roof is grasses.

Now’s the point in the story where I admit I never went. I don’t know shit about Yngwie Malmsteen. This story’s funnier than the one I was going to tell, though, so that’s gotta count for something. Who travels to Sweden for something like that? And for Yngwie?

Next installment: my real life pilgrimage (no lies). Liverpool, England. Spring ’03.
...

top 17 Onion headlines ever until infinity (or, the first 17 tonight that made me laugh out loud and then also a funny infographic about Sarah Palin)

Happy 587th, The Onion. Raise your flutes, people. To the Zweibels!


17) Amazon Recommendations Understand Area Woman Better Than Husband

16) Darwinists Flock to Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain

15) A Gentleman Never Discloses Who Sucked Him Off

14) Aging Pope Blessing Everything In Sight

13) Everyone Involved In Pizza's Preparation, Delivery, Purchase Extremely High

12) Canucks-Blues Game Goes Into Extra-Puck-Time Or Something

11) Fucking Yankees, Reports Nation

10) Kevin Federline, Wife Divorce

9) Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence

8) (advice column): Ask The Stage Directions To Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

7) Eight-Pound Man Removed From Woman's Vagina

6) Trophy Wife Mounted

5) Insane Clown Posse Gets Ride To Concert From Mom

4) In Search Of A Better Life, Teen Moves Downstairs


3) Space Jam Actor Larry Bird Spotted At Game 2 Of NBA Finals

2) Special Olympics T-Ball Stand Pitches Perfect Game



1) Man Has Sex At Woman

..................

Rumors Swirl Around Palin

Ever Since Sen. John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, the press has been abuzz with rumors about the former mayor of Wasilla, AK. Here are some of the more persistent rumors (I'm only including one of the eight):

In addition to the five children that the media are aware of—Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig—Palin also has nine secret children: Frag, Moss, Scoot, Skiffer, Minnow, Plow, Snatch, Twiglet, and Drum
...

you know, when i drink alone...i prefer to be by myself

So, a hypothetical:

Every single rock band from the last, say, 45 years convenes for Battle Royal on a desolate farm in southern Kansas. Bare-fisted war. Only one band will survive, though it’ll probably lose its drummer. Let’s cut straight to the action:

Mike: “John, Carl, what’s going on down there?”

John (shouting maniacally, fingers in ears):

“Crazy scene, Mike! See for yourself! Let me pan a bit. For those of you viewing at home, we’re standing on Earl Douglass’ farm in Chetopa, Kansas with every post-’63 rock band. All of ‘em, even the super shitty ones. The Battle Royal you’re about to witness will be a fistfight to the death, no holds barred! Carl and I have seen a few of the heavyweights already. Mike, if you don’t mind waiting a moment, let’s get around this fencing to the south wheat field. More room to move about.”

(lengthy pause, unsteady camera)

“Alright, Mike, we’ve stumbled upon a few of the favorites. There’s Relf and his Yardbirds over there in mod boots smoking their ciggies cool as you please, and that looks an awful lot like—why, yes it is—Henry Rollins (left) and Black Flag spitting through curled lips. One o’ dem honkin’ gobs just missed Tony Iommi! Ozzy Osb—what the…wai…Mike, Ozzy just dropped to his fours and lapped it up, asking Rollins if he’s got any more! This is shapin’ up to be a real show!

“To my left—please pardon the video quality—you’ll see an out-of-focus figure nodding in the corner. Carl thinks it's Scotty Weiland, though it's awful hard to tell from this distance. Someone better get him up, whoever he is, and pull that needle outta his arm. Johnny Lydon was that face you saw just a moment ago...yesterd...SHIT!…he just…my apologies for the colorful language, everybody, but Johnny just called me a scrotal wanker and…dumped a full can of Schlitz over my head, the f—oh, and Jello Biafra, hello Jello.

“Up ahead on those crates you’ll notice two poorly-tressed fellas sporting Detroit tees, probably some shitpunk band who hitchhiked from the gutter outside their garage or something. We’ve seen more than a few forgettable acts this afternoon, Mike, all cut from the same cloth as those Michiganers. You ask me, they’re dead money. This ain’t no kiddie scuffle. That’s David Peel passing out joints from a sandwich bag and grinning a lot…not sure if he knows what he’s getting himself into. He keeps talking about the dope smoking a pope, which seems a little backwards to me.

“All told, Mike, nearly two million bands made it out, based on our rough estimations. Ian Curtis (pictured) and Shannon Hoon, bless ‘em, there they are—reunited with their respective groups. Good to see them both. Here comes Mick Ja—nope, at second glance that’s Steven Tyler. My mistake. Let’s see, lessee, who else. Rivers Cuomo. He’s gonna get his ass kicked. G.G. Allin to my right, nude and covered with feces. Good Christ what a stench…he appears to be breaki…G.G. just punched out six people, Mike, and we haven’t even started! Hard to bet against him. He showed up sans band but with a troupe of sixty intoxicated, bloodied teenagers in tow. Nice to see Chris Martin shaking hands with Jackson Browne—that’s a gesture of sportsmanship you don’t typically see at an event like this. Good for them.

“We’re about to get things underway, Mike, so I’m gonna send it back up to the booth in just a moment. Before I go, though—remember, viewers…this is bare-handed warfare. No guitars or blunt objects allowed. The heavyset guys—Black Francis, Meat Loaf (left), that one fat drummer who tours with McCartney, John Popper, since it appears the pre-weight loss Popper showed up—these are the guys to watch for. Back to you, Mike!”

Place your bets, people. Who’s gonna walk away from this slugfest? I’ve plunked fifteen dollars (roughly one-fifth of my life savings) on.......
































GEORGE FUCKING THOROGOOD AND THE FUCKING DESTROYERS

Fuck yeah! They’re great! George wears a cobra snake for a necktie! He drinks alone! He can’t make the rent! He takes his drinks three at a time! He’s had the same haircut for thirty years! He tucks his shirt into his jeans! His key don’t fit no more cuz his woman changed the locks! Best friend is Johnnie Walker! Built a house from rattlesnake hides!

George Thorogood (the badass to your right) was born in a jukebox.

I know nothing about the other Destroyers, but if they’re even 1/8 as tough as Georgie, this fight’s gonna be over in ten seconds flat and I’ll be retiring to a small Irish village with all my winnings (the payback on my Georgie bet involves many, many zeros), where I’ll raise a few dozen sheep whilst drinking green tea and when the air chills I’ll mount my trusty steed and retreat to the nearest town (35 miles away) for peat, kindling and potatoes and if you want to contact me you better have a piece of paper and a quilled pen and a book of stamps. Destroyers, live up to your name!
...

damn you, sartre

This has not been a pleasant Wednesday.

I’ve spent most of the afternoon brooding over my past, and it’s all the fault of one man: Jean-Paul Sartre (pictured). See, I grabbed Being and Nothingness off my bookshelf this morning, thinking I might as well move in a philosophical direction after the minimalist, observational musings of Richard Brautigan, whom (who?—not quite sure) I finished reading yesterday.

To preface, I’ll readily admit that I understand exactly 18% of Jean-Paul Sartre’s writings. He speaks in densities so inpenetrable that I’m usually more prone to flip the page than annotate the margins. Ever’ now and then, though, I stumble across a passage or two that coaxes a few watts out of those dusted-over bulbs in the musty corridors of the brain. Today was one of those days.

I’m sardined on the 3 train, trying vainly to temper my hatred for the grossly overweight people occupying 1.5 seats to either side of me, when snapbam I encounter Sartre’s chapter on the nature/being of the conceptual past. Sartre muses about the relationship (if any) between our previous "lives" and this, the elusive "present" (consider: as I type in real time, the entirety of this entry becomes immediately relegated to my ever-bloating past, if we’re gonna get precise/anal about it...in fact, during the milliseconds spent trying to analyze the current, vaguely tangible moment, said moment slips away into the folds of history, rendering us temporally impotent). Sartre breaks down time in a very Hawking-esque sort of way, self-debating whether past events play a part in determining the nature of our current Being. Dumb question, you say...of course the past "you" was you, just in a different stage, when you were of a different mind. All those moments of your past have created and developed this current "being" that stands today. Well, sure.

However, I think the definition of Self, big S, leans on our assessment of a difficult either/or: “is” or “was?” Are we, at 25, the same people we were at 13? Again, you'd think such a question elicits an easy response, but I'm not so sure, because I'm not referring to flesh and bone. Did the Mike Elwood of present, typing away on this blog, walk to school on Sept. 17, 1996, all those years ago, or was that somebody else entirely, another figure (an idea, almost, and someone completely intangible) taking up that space in time? That guy—the guy who stumbled time and time again, thought of no one but himself, took most everything in his life for granted—was that really me? Was that me committing those embarrassing, regrettable acts? I hope not. I'd like to think it was the work of another. If we wish away painful memories, does that then render them harmless/irrelevant since the act has passed, never again to be repeated (Kundera might have something to say about that, but that's another post)? If there was a way to relieve myself of the ugly people I've "been," life would make more sense.

So I’m supping on Mr. Sartre’s grey matter like the wannabe intellectual I am, nearly forgetting that the two largest women in Crown Heights are threatening my rib cage/vital organs in very serious ways.

We’ve all got demons. I’ve got plenty. My inability to leave past lives—my past selves—behind me ranks as perhaps my most glaring flaw. Being a non-Christian, I know of no receptacle for all this guilt I shoulder. My question: fellow non-Christians, where do you stow your guilt? Where do you lock it all up? I’d really like to know.

Sorry to beat dead horses, but to finally address the question I raised in the is/are debate, I've concluded thusly: I don’t think that was me. That 13-yr-old couldn’t have been me. It's much too difficult for me to entertain thoughts to the contrary. Those choices at 13 (an arbitrary age, but you get the idea) don't align with my current cerebral anatomy in any way. You'll notice I'm employing desperate measures to mentally acquit myself, guilt-ridden chap that I am, but what's a guy to do? My struggle: I’ve got the fattest heart in the world, though somewhere on the timeline that heart got soldered to the poorest decision-making skills this side of, er—let’s just say they’re the worst.

Action and motive coexist in varying stages of perpetual divorce.

Those ten words pretty much sum up my life.


(ed. 9/23. Realized my first stab at it wasn't very clear, so I took a few mins. to clarify some things. I know that defeats the whole concept of "blog," but I'm too OCD to let it sit there in the original state.)

(ed. 4/14/09. Reading over this entry, I'm realizing that it makes no sense at all. Clearly, I'm no philosopher.)
...

stinkin' up fordham law

Want to hear about my weekend? I stayed up way too late.

On second thought, I’m not going to tell you about my weekend. Instead, I’m going to tell you about my shirt.

Saturday: Artsy warehouse party in Brooklyn. My attire (head to toe): Who tee, long-sleeved shirt with buttons, grey boxer briefs, cargo shorts, brown belt, no-show black socks, black and white skater shoes that I purchased for seventeen dollars and ninety-nine cents at Target. Fore the night was up I sweated through the whole damn getup, even the belt buckle. We danced like this was our very last shot at dancing, as if dancing as we know it would end forever at 5 a.m. Pictures turned out wicked awesome. Lucas’ animistic camera was on acid or something because it snapped up more than a few forehead-slap pixie dust whizbang photos that oughta be bound up proper and made into books for coffee tables.

Lucas (to me): “Dude, you were sponsored by sweat last night.” I was. Upon return to Lucas’ place at 5:30 a.m., fatigued and semi-conscious, I exorcised the offensive article (my navy blue shirt was hit the hardest) with grand disgust and made a ball of it, neatly punching the shirt into a small compartment of my shoulder bag. It must have weighed four or five or nine pounds, like a child.

Sunday, then. Now I’m forced to go with the Who shirt. No other options, really. Can’t run home. We’re already late for a Thurston Moore/Ian MacKaye Q&A at Book Fest. Book Fest was swell. Later we watched one quality short and two lousy ones in a Bushwick film house. Somehow Lucas and I and his friend Kate wound up drinking beer and going out again, this time to a roof on the edge of the East River, where we remained until Too Late. Suddenly I come to and hey wait a second I'm five-deep into the PBR, not my usual Sunday. A mystery, unsolved for damn sure, who put these beers in my hand? After our bi-weekly ritual (pronouncing New York the Greatest City In All The Land, vigorously shaking hands with ourselves for choosing such a swell place to lay our heads at night, sighing dreamily at the skyline), we dragged over to a subway and then we rode it. Then we’re back at Lucas’ again and I haven’t brushed my teeth in 36 hours which is a bummer really and there’s the couch, so I laid on it and went to sleep.

Monday. Wake up. Shower. My towel? The sweat shirt. I actually dried my body with that dishrag, which (I shit you not) was still damp from Saturday night. Then I'm on the L train, wondering where it all went wrong, hygienically speaking. Today I delivered mail to 60 law professors at Fordham University whilst rockin’ a too-small Who t-shirt mired with sweat. Somnambulent from lack of REM, you know how it is.

Alright, guess I ended up rambling a bit—this drivel wasn’t really about a shirt but then it was really—but who cares that kid with the cart and that stupid rock ‘n’ roll t-shirt is a tragicomedy if I’ve ever seen one. And he smells funny.
...

makin' orange in provo

...later, post-college, I spent four summers squatting in a small coastal town overlooking the Pacific and vagabonded about on various systems of public transport (have never owned a car, perhaps I never will), becoming somewhat of an old pro in the process. Trips back to the Motherland involved cab ride to Coos Bay, shuttle bus to Eugene, Greyhound to Portland, flight to O’Hare (often with stopovers) from PDX. Then I’d leave Chicago and do it all over again in reverse, finally halting my travels in earth-toned, awshucks Bandon, Oregon (pictured), where nothing ever happens. Now and again I contracted an extreme case of the Itchy Feet and bussed or trained around the country with very little rhyme and zero reason.

A few memories from my long-haired days:

1) Somehow my Amtrak happened upon Provo of all places at about 3:30 in the morning and a man got on the loudspeaker telling how this is our chance to move about and stretch and smoke, you have twenty minutes. Though I don’t smoke, I followed everybody outside and for a steady while gawked at the enormity of Utah, thinking that everybody should—at some point in their life-journey—ride a train in the night through cities and towns that have never punctured their consciousnesses.

It was frighteningly cold outside. No light at all, save the orange of the cigarettes. Every now and then the ground made gravel sounds when somebody took a step, but that was it. No talking, just puffing. Provo—I couldn’t believe it! After a few minutes people started extinguishing the butts with their toes and we returned to our too-small seats and the wheels stirred and westward again, hey-oh!

2) Came to on an L.A.-bound Greyhound bus from Eugene, OR, which dumped us off without ceremony at high noon Sacramento for three hours of layover. Easily 96 degrees outside, if not 99 or even three numbers. At the time I was toting a guitar like the hippie I was but claimed not to be, and after placing my backpack in a storage locker at the station I moved in a downtownerly direction with instrument in hand, seeking shade so I might sit like an Indian and strum pleasant hippie tunes. After twenty minutes of walking I came upon a park and a nice enough tree, so I leaned back against it and played one of the six songs I knew how to play.

***This next part is going to sound made-up, but it is not.***

An old man approached the tree and began speaking to me. He was very friendly. After asking me all the right questions, he told me about himself. Back in the day, he said, I used to be in a surf-rock band. Whoa! I said. That’s excellent. What band? Swelling with pride, he answered my question with another. Have you heard “Wipeout?” I laughed. Of course. The Surfaris, I have ‘em on my iPod. Was that you? Well, he said, I’m the guy at the beginning who does the laugh. That was me. I’m Dale Smallen. He stuck out his hand and I shook it. I asked him to do the laugh right then and there but he wouldn’t, probably because he can’t make those sounds anymore. I’ll bet those old throat chords wouldn’t have handled something like that very well. After a few more words he left. That evening I Googled Mr. Smallen for purposes of legitimacy, and—sure enough—he's the guy. There was even a picture. I ran into Dale Smallen under a tree in Sacramento. He still receives royalties to this day for laughing once when the mic was on.

3) Then there was the same sort of trip as the Utah one, but backwards. I headed east from Chicago to NYC’s Penn Station on an Amtrak. The trip was supposed to take roughly twenty hours in total (I don’t remember the specifics) but ended up six hours past schedule, for some reason. Amtrak isn’t very reliable. Anyway, this was two years ago during that huge storm New York had, the one that left 22 inches of snow on the ground.

I was visiting New York to meet my friend for a thoroughly unnecessary vacation from reality (a week's stay in Amsterdam, via JFK airport), which was set to commence in three days. I don’t remember much about this train ride except it was terrifically long and there was a young man in my car who claimed to be a singer. He was very outspoken about it. When boredoms set in, a few of the more polite passengers asked him to sing, and sing he did. He busted out a Marvin Gaye meets Boyz II Men sorta thing, oh baby baby yeah get you under my covers, etc., etc. We lapped it up. Free concert aboard an Amtrak train while somewhere up ahead shovelers negotiated with the snow.
...

lou, i'm gonna crap on your grave, but with love

“Lord kill me now.”

—text message from Jes, received roughly fifteen minutes into tonight's Reed/Zorn concert from rear of venue where she had (wisely) retreated moments earlier to salvage ears/sanity and curse Reed/Zorn under breath

A proper summation. Jes came straight out and said (typed, whatever) the precisexact thought residing—like a pitiable mouse—in the honest quadrant of my brain. The other quadrants, Lou’s apologists to the death, meanwhile darted about in shopping mall frenzy seeking viable explanations for this sonic bowel movement, but, perhaps predictably, uncovered nothing—not even a lousy crumb.

Never in my ten years of concert-going experience have I been so baffled by a performance, and I say baffled because in one hour I experienced every single emotion that I’ve ever emoted in rapid-fire succession, finally exhausting all of them (exhaustion—that was the last) at the precise moment Lou disappeared behind the curtain after their encore.

Let me explain.

In the beginning there was Lou Reed and John Zorn (pic above), and the word was with God, and the word was God. They’re greeted with reverent, hopeful applause, and by my quick count 94% of those cheers are for Lou against 6% for John, and half of that 6% only because they like John’s outfit (yellow, lots of yellow). Everybody is there to see Velvets-era Lou Reed and no one will get their wish even though they secretly know it already because we’re living in 2008 and the only reason anyone sees Lou Reed anymore is so they can tell their friends they saw Lou Reed once when he was dead but before he died. That is the great tragedy, and I am as guilty as the next guy because I’ve yet to learn my lesson, five concerts and a number of dollars and man-hours later. He’s tricked me again.

Oh yeah, the performance. These Mozarts kick off le grand concierto by playing their instruments as loudly as they can. John shows us every note on his saxophone, especially the awful ones, and squeals a lot. Pint glasses shatter all over the place. Lou’s hands are shaking so bad that I wonder if he’s even fingering proper chords, and maybe he is and maybe he is not—either way, it’s so loud that we'll never know anyway so good for him. Lou is not really listening to John and John is not really listening to Lou. They are independent, separate, self-serving, oblivious, masturbatory, pompous, impressed (with themselves), impressed (that all the suckers out there with star eyes paid $75 to watch them practice), pathetic.

For a brief moment I contemplate leaving the venue. I really do. No one—‘cept for Lou and John—really seems to be enjoying themselves. Everyone there wants so badly to like the show but nobody does. Lou sounds like a washed-up ass and John’s just feigning creativity.

Ironically, their guest saves the day. Mike Patton—former singer for Faith No More, apparently, and pictured at right—joins about four songs in and beatboxes and screams things and generally acts like a howler monkey. He’s pretty impressive, actually. The two fossils really dig him, so much so that they snap outta their respective amnesias and remove their respective heads from their respective asses, re-learning their instruments justlikethat, a miracle.

Then a strange happening happens. My Lou-directed ire—still an open, pussing sore of a red hatred, even after the above scene—yields to amusement, because I finally get the joke. I’m on the inside. Consider: if Lou plays a flawless, pretty show for me tonight, he’d cease to be the Lou I know and love. Lou's got an image (rock's surly grandfather) to perpetuate. The fact that 85% of this crowd wants to impale him on his own guitar (probably that stupid one without a headstock or tuning pegs, right?) but not before flipping him upside down and shaking to get all their coins back shows that this guy still knows exactly what he’s doing. You think that shithead is gonna die knowing that someone out there finds him inoffensive? No way, man.

Thanks indirectly to Mike Patton, Lou is suddenly and violently welcomed back to Good Graces (never cared all that much for Zorn, quite frankly, so he’s irrelevant) ten minutes after I’d buried him and stomped on the grave.

But I’m giving Lou too much credit, as usual. Jes oughta be a shrink. She sussed him out in 30 seconds flat, whupping me at my own game. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to figure out what Lou’s all about and whether I even like him and she called all his bluffs before the first song ended. Since I started this thing off with a Jes-ism, I might as well close in a similar way:

“Lou is the most insecure celebrity I’ve ever seen, and it’s because his whole thing is an act—he hasn't learned to be himself.”

-JMY

[ed. 2/25: I was all wrong about Zorn. Shame on me for slighting him here. If I could write this entry again, you better believe I would've granted him his proper due. Live and learn, I guess...]

[ed. 3/22: ^ That said, the show really did suck.]
...

my nonsexual man-crush

Oh Lou. Bless you, chile.

On this, the eve of my fifth Lou Reed concert, I’m spinning V.U.—the “lost” Velvet Underground album—and reflecting on four years of crippling Velvets addiction, for which there is no cure.

Ireland, spring semester, ‘03: an art student aboard my Belfast-bound bus hands over his well-stickered discman and earbud headphones, granting me first exposure to the group. The Velvets leave nary an impression—my small, small mind can’t make sense of this crude band operating so flagrantly wide of my preferred tastes. At the time I was listening to lots of CSNY, Radiohead and Jeff Buckley like other polite Americans.

Well over a year later, at a friend’s urging, I purchase Loaded. Everything changes. I go off the deep end. White Light/White Heat and the Nico album follow, and later the self-titled. I read two key books on the band and one on Lou, all three of which I highly recommend:

1. All Tomorrow's Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print (1966-1971) (edited by Clinton Heylin)

2. Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story (Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga)

3. Transformer: The Lou Reed Story (Bockris)

Lou, being the greatest Velvet (Cale admirers might dispute this), becomes my core subject of study. I obtain a great deal of his solo material, even the godawful crap, and begin sifting thru all the rubble, trying to figure out what this dude is all about. Turns out I loathe a great deal of his post-Velvets stuff—an admission that pains and confuses me, because his work from '66-'70 is positively flawless—but something about that ol' swashbuckler keeps me coming back.

Upon moving to New York for the first time in the fall of ’06, I vow not to leave the city before meeting him in the flesh.

Well, I’ve since had the pleasure—four times. What follows is a (salivating, maniacal) fan’s notes:

a) First meeting: outside of St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn following his opening night performance of Berlin. My first Lou concert. Show ends and everybody files out, giddy and drunk. Exactly three people—myself included in the three—wait outside the exit door for an autograph/sighting. I make small talk with the elderly Norwegian guy (who, incidentally, flew to New York just for this concert) and an obnoxious girl with crazy eyes and far too much makeup. Early December and about 6 degrees outside but who cares let's say hi to Lou. Hour later this small person with a radio—his assistant, I think—pokes out and real fast she gives it straight: “If you want to meet ‘im, he’ll be out that door in about ten seconds.” We scuttle over, breathless, pathetic, lemmings all of us. Lou bangs the door way the hell open with his elbow and there he is. Signs the obnoxious girl first. I’m next. Hand him ticket and pen and speak to him, probably, “love you Lou.” Lou doesn’t like my pen. Drops it on the ground. Grabs Sharpie from white-knuckled fist of the obnoxious girl, who’s still drooling on his shoulder. Signs my ticket, grunts at me (I’m not kidding). I skip home.

b) Second meeting: one night later. I arrive after the show for another signature, this time on a Nico t-shirt, right across the fat part of the banana. He signs without incident, smiles even. I make plans for framing shirt and ticket in a nice way.

c) Third meeting: the best. Though I'm not all that familiar with her music, I attend a Laurie Anderson performance at Joe’s Pub because I figure she’ll probably invite Lou out for a track or two. She does. Lou plays a few licks, watches Laurie, plays a few more and leaves the stage. Break for the bathroom. I turn the corner and there he is. Alone. Lou’s sitting on some steps back behind the stage. Of course I approach, of course I shake his hand, of course I say all the things that fans say. Clearly overstaying my welcome, I offer one more brilliant insight before parting: “Lou,” I say, “Lou, it’s been forty years, and no one—no one—has touched White Light/White Heat. It’s the greatest album ever made.” Lou smiles, thanks me. We pose for the attached photograph a few minutes later.

d) Fourth meeting: immediately following a David Byrne concert at Carnegie Hall. I’m outside in the cold again, pen in hand, waiting for David. Lou exits. I shout: “Lou!” He looks at me funny.

I'll leave you with some classic Lou footage: