The Mayonnaise of the Month Club

Art Brut - "My Little Brother"

2007-07-09T20:22:00.000-04:00

Directed by Zak Mechanic

Three Words That Get Stuck In Your Head

2007-06-20T11:34:00.001-04:00

1. Tom Tancredo. The alliteration is a barb. Tom Tank Credo. Tom Faith-in-War. Ugh.

2. Unwieldy. Although I've always used it as an adjective, my tongue is having difficulty wrapping itself around the lack of an "ly" ending.

3. Doctorow. Cory, do you come from a line of poor practitioners? (And E. L., those initials can't be taken seriously unless your last name is Fudge.)

Homesick for Travel

2007-06-20T11:30:00.000-04:00

I'm getting homesick for travel, for places to shine despite their normality. Buying groceries in a May Berlin drizzle, knowing the next few days will also be cold and wet. Homesick for the apartment we always went in and out of in the rain, and how that added to its value. How it only had a paper lantern in the sunless hall, but slabs of paneless glass in the other two rooms: kitchen and bedroom. If you could even call the rooms those names—the bedroom contained a studio and a dining room, with empty plastic beer cases as chairs. The kitchen doubled as a garden, the bathroom with its narrow fogged glass window doubled as a greenhouse.

Homesick for lying on the lawn of Vienna's greenhouse, leaving to buy a chain-food lunch (low funds) and then back to the grass. The worst seats in the Budapest Opera. Having to carry beers inside because of rain. Living with four Italian dudes and taking the bus to Nerja on Tuesdays, outnumbered by British girls. Buying store-brand espresso at the Realejo Supersol, but being force-fed Illy four times a day. Rolling the clichéd cig-after-the-morning-coffee because the tobacco just happens to be there. All the things I never planned to do.

Maybe it's something (or lack thereof) from infancy that makes me miss being swaddled into a city by my host, playing follow the leader, ducking into the subway seemingly at random, having to watch for an eyebrow pop or head nod as the stations tick off, and following again through the crowd as tunnels are chosen and we eventually emerge I don't know where. Not having to deduce atmosphere and vibe from façades, guidebooks and a peek in the door (fun as that is), just following locals into pre-certified spots—for the view, the music, the terrace, the crowd and always a drink.

I'm happy enough to improvise completely, but there also can be something cozy about using the guidebook just because Dad brought it along, transferring key information and Plan B's onto a half-sheet of paper, folding it into a pocket and consulting it on the sly. Good has come out of the practice: my brother and I have found places we wanted to stay and have another, we've found people able to point us to hookah bars and we've even found places so Scarface-cool it's a miracle the book didn't adulterate them. (Did we really find any of this? Does a good guidebook let you find or just feel like you're finding, and is there a difference?) And all of this guidebook-led business works because my brother and I can chill without forcing too many interrogatives onto the evening, spend more time settled in conversation (argh! spending time, I can't stand the expression), or, at least, wander as much as we want, holding options besides what we stumble upon.

Donald Livingstone and the Battle of Culloden

2007-06-20T11:29:00.001-04:00

Culloden Battlefield
Photo by Citril

Adapted from "Incidents of the Jacobite Risings", by Alexander Carmichael, LL.D., The Celtic Review, Vol. VI, July 1909.

Chapter 1 – Silky Smooth, Hard as a Rock

At eighteen years of age, Donald Livingstone of Bun-a-mhuilinn, Morvern, member of the Livingstones of Achnacree, Benderloch, a stout, strong and hairy fighter, known as Dombull Mollach, Hairy Donald, and later simply as Hairy D, dealt death at Culloden for Scotland under the command of Prince Charlie Stuart, Laird of Ardsheal, beside the Livingstones and Carmichaels of Lismore.

Before the battle at Culloden, a sibyl predicted nine Donalds would fall carrying the blue banner of the Stuarts. At Culloden, Donald Carmichael fell first, followed by seven obscure Carmichael Donalds. After the last, Donald Livingstone leapt from his duties of anonymous slaughter and groin spearing into legend. He picked up the blue silk banner, ripped it from its pole and wrapped it around his body. Just as he realized he couldn’t swing his sword with his arms pinned to his sides, he took a musketball in the chest. Down went the ninth Donald, jamming his knee on a pointy rock. The silken banner had stopped the ball, but the force of the shot left him dazed. That is, until something deep in his brain stem picked up the Vibration of Impending Doom. His eyes popped open and he saw a riderless horse, out of control, trampling the bodies and charging straight for him. He rallied his sense of touch and managed to grip the bridle sprang as the horse roared by. Pulling himself atop the empty saddle, he hauled off from the redcoats, cursing them as a bunch of high-caliber idiots with low-caliber guns.

Two English troopers saw his mount and exit, and though they should have known better after so virile a display, set after him. The first caught him rather easily, as Donald’s horse had started to sweat blood from exhaustion. The trooper swung his sword, which Donald, deflected and countered with a downward slam that clove the trooper’s skull to the chin. The delivery of such a slice is enough to make any man feel supremely mannish, let alone a man who’s just wrapped himself in silk so fine it can stop a bullet, and indeed, Donald at once secreted an oil of mangrease from the secret Livingstone man-glands in his quadriceps. A second later it hit the nostrils of the second trooper, who turned and fled.

Donald now had to deal with the what-to-do-with-the-dead-guy’s-horse issue. He could easily have hopped on it (it stood about the same height as the bloodsweater) and let the exhausted steed wander until it had a heart attack, but Donald was a man’s man. He considered that he might encounter a bloodied-up brother-in-arms who would want a ride, and because in those days two real men never shared the same horse, Donald had to have a second horse ready. He led it along and sure enough, right around the first knoll, a familiar voice called out. Donald hopped down and found a neighbor, cut up and pouring blood. He jammed a handful of leaves in his friend's wound to stop the bleeding, sealed it with a ring of birch bark, then boosted the patient onto the tired horse. Donald probably interlaced his fingers and had his friend step first on his knee, then into his linked palms, and then raised the man to the saddle with a pop of his biceps (a maneuver akin to the volleyball bump). Palms to buttocks assistance didn't come into vogue for another 15 years. They rode on.

At the first stream, the duo dismounted, tied the horses to a tree using vines, and let the animals have a drink. Donald and the wounded neighbor (we’ll call him Randy) climbed up into a rock outcropping to hide.

Soon, a troop of cavalry rode into a clearing below the horses, far below Donald and Randy, searching for the last scraps of the Stuart and Livingstone forces. The two horses began neighing like Puritans, hoping to make a horsey friend. The British soldiers heard the neighs and concluded “Ambush!” They turned and fled, and soon Donald and Randy were on the road again.

Like standard-issue fugitives, they traveled at night and slept by day. There were some close calls with the soldiery, and only the daring courage and resourceful actions of Donald Livingstone prevented the pair’s capture and execution. The specifics of what he did, exactly, have been lost since Donny Livingstone XIV fell asleep in his castle bed with a cigarette, but we know whatever Donald did, it was courageously daring and actively resourceful. So resourceful, in fact, that he inspired the idea of the television and a TV show about a Scotsman named MacGyver, an idea that survived for centuries until humanity developed the technical capacity to realize the dream once and for all.

Chapter 2 – Donald Gets Wet

The planet Earth continued its orbit around the sun, and soon enough the leaves fell from the trees and the days shortened. Donald’s patience withered and shortened as well, though physically his body parts remained the same size or lengthened due to a process of ongoing improvement involving vines and choice stones from streambeds. Donald went everywhere seeking news of the fate of Prince Charlie. (Here the Livingstone family will note the persistence of genes. As any friend of a Livingstone will vouch, they’re all insufferable Prince fans). Donald found no news, however, only baby-killing English soldiers, and friends and family reduced to eating flannel to survive the winter. As the first snow fell, Donald sprouted a new coat of nose fur.

Hairy D set his mind to swim from Morvern to Mull to dig up news of the elusive Prince. Some say at least one of these places is a sea island, and others that the two settlements are on opposite shores of a great lake, but not so great that Donald couldn’t have just walked around the edge. None yet has claimed the “two islands in a lake” hypothesis. At any rate, a study of Donald’s exhumed remains states with near certainty that salt water was involved, so let us accept the sea island theory. On several occasions, people on passing ships saw his thick, oily coat and mistook the flapping Donald for a seal, and shot at him. A bullet even grazed his ear, whereupon he raised his entire body out of the water, kicking only with his toes, and presented himself, a man living in the era before swim trunks, to the shocked passengers. (And if they had shot him, his pelt would have put a seal to shame as well as yielded a fine umbrella sleeve.)

On the second night of his swim, the current of the sound of Mull carried him beneath a British warship, and he had to frogkick for all he was worth to avoid getting entangled in the mess of iron chains and junk another daring Scot had secured to the bottom of the vessel to slow it down. Donald managed to pop out on the port side of the ship, where two Englishmen stood wishing on Orion’s belt. If he hadn’t coordinated his swim with the moon’s holiday, he would have certainly been spotted, as at the very moment he rose, the pair tossed a coin into the water which landed a pig’s length in front of him. He would have been seized with a large hook and made to perform tricks invented during the plague years, then shot in the shoulder as soon as his central nervous system began to fold.

Donald landed in Mull, shimmied up a tree and darted from treetop to treetop until plopping down in the center of Drum-Fionn, in the neighborhood of Tobermory. He promptly delivered the news that from above, high in the trees, he had spotted two British warships towing two defeated British warships, and from there extrapolated that a French war vessel had stuck it to the Brits on Loch-nan-uamh, then sailed away into the black night (employing a hit and run tactic that only works on a big Loch). Clearly, this meant the Prince had escaped. This set off a great excitement, of either celebration or rage, and everyone drenched themselves to a falling-down stupor. Donald was first to hoist a glass and last to fall face-down, which he did on the fifth day of song into a mudpuddle of his own design.

When he woke up three days later, Donald decided to nurse his hangover by swimming back to Malvern. This time, on the third night of the crossing, Donald found himself between a fleet of herring and an angry whale, which tooted its mean horn and smacked its tail on the water and displayed an air of macrofrumpiness. The whale opened its mouth and made its final approach on the herring, and Donald concluded it would be final for him as well if he didn’t do something straight away, having sense enough to know that Jonah lied and whale stomach acid can cut a cow in half in a few seconds, let alone a hairy yet human Donald. As the whale’s baleen began to suck up Donald’s heel like a gas station car wash, he corkscrewed his body with all of his rugged rippled musculature and rolled out of the mammal’s esophagatic fury.

Raisined but not too tired, Donald crawled ashore in Malvern the next morning and found the situation worse than he could imagine, with bad music to boot.

Chapter Three – A One-Man Silk-Wrapped Army

British troops had taken over the village, all the way to the water line, their only directive being to create misery for the Livingstones. For this, the British wits employed tickle torture and a forced diet of jelly and shellfish. Donald’s only option was to remain hidden to all, even his own clansmen, and wage a personal guerilla war from out of sight. And as British troops began dropping by the pubful from poisoned beer, V.D., or simply doors bolted from the outside and flames, everyone knew Donald had made it home.

It was then arranged through a series of stick-scratchings in wet sand that Donald would slip through the woods on the next moonless night, as per superstition, and retrieve the banner of the Stuarts from the British Troopers’ latrine. Hairy Donald, ever the amphibian, elected the water route. He crawled up a sewer pipe, knowing that the pipe would be invisible in the total blackness that surrounds anything buried underground, especially on a moonless night, and he thanked the Romans all the way. Although his only report of the search and retrieve mission was that his timing could have been better, Donald returned with the blue silk banner wrapped around his body as it had been when it saved his soul at Culloden. He concealed the banner in a well-ventilated safe house for a week, then set off for Appin after horsejacking a British trooper (stabbing him in the liver just to watch him die). Of course, Donald repeated the flag wrapping on the ride, for aerodynamics mostly, and the persistent legend of his swift ride has yielded supersonic flight and a man on the moon.

Chapter Four – Donald Raises Himself to Chief Beef Supplier

In Appin, Donald delivered the reeking flag directly to the Stuarts’ point man, a grizzled old saltbag who had long since lost the ability to raise his knobby head. His muscles had simply given up, especially the upper deltoids that had once inspired comparisons to dock ropes and fodder for Prankster chronicles. With his lost capacity up top, the top Stuart gave off the reek of a broken man. He was by no means broken, however, and delivered a handshake as firm as the day he sold his first cartload of crossbows to his future wife.

Next, Donald gave his hot horse to James Stuart (Seumas a-Ghlinne). In this way, he hit James back for the bag of barley James Sr. had sent to Donald’s father the year before. Not only was it the right thing to do, it introduced Donald to the world of barter exchange.

Donald liked swapping goods so much that he became a supplier to the Scottish resistance, herding together scrappy cattle that had wandered through broken fences, putting them through a rigorous training regimen, and selling them to local officers to feed their men and move heavy objects. His training methods eventually were exported to America and became the NFL. Donald conducted all his business with a daredevil courage and honesty that boosted the morale of the cows, then the officers, then the men, leading to a saying that preempted Napoleon’s “An army marches on its stomach”: “Whoever eats my meat wins” (later spruced up as “Happy cows make bloodthirsty warriors”).

He continued this trade for many years, always in a kilt. This is no small matter, as Donald eventually made a name for himself as an innovator in ways to evade and circumvent the law against the kilt and tartan. Most of his methodology has recently been adapted into the Valentine 1 radar detector.

Donald died peacefully on his own front porch, legs splayed wide, seated on a stool wearing only the kilt, at the age of 88. He will forever be remembered as a man of humble nature. Indeed, until they washed his body, no one had ever seen the mark left by the bullet which the Stuart banner slowed to sub-mortal speed on the plain of Culloden. His name will forever be remembered as Donald Livingstone of Bun-a-Mhuilinn, Domhull Mollach, Hairy D.

I am in Maine

2006-08-03T13:00:00.000-04:00

That's all.

Obstacles to Writing

2006-07-20T22:37:00.001-04:00

I sat down at the computer to write to her, and something in the air or me convinced me I’d do my best thinking on my back with my body from head to waist sinking into the folded-in-half floor mattress waiting to be picked up by the quickest Craigslist bidder and I lost consciousness in a second and a half for an hour and a half, waking up a minute and a half ago to complete lack of sound, light and sweat-free skin but managed to fit the cord into the computer to connect to surround sound the opening of Pandora, specifically Bernie Worrell, against all odds like a blind man with a sand wedge, asking the question the affirmative answer to which led me to lie down to gather my thoughts in the first place. And after he asked Ain’t She Sweet for the last time as I wondered how I ended up back where I started, a slice of Prince fell on my plate to inform me I’m just a sucker in the dream factory.

How to Make a Basic Budget

2006-07-07T23:45:00.002-04:00

I need to bring down my need to's. Why nots and sounds goods have been creeping up due to a surge in how abouts. The recent run on could go for's has left me unbalanced, but if I put down a few let's pick ups and keep saving 15% of my anothers for a rainy day, I should be close to can swing it.

Apollo Sunshine and the Mixed-Up Pipeline

2006-07-05T05:57:00.000-04:00

* (The Beat Kitchen, Chicago. A sticky Saturday, cold beers drafted to fight for neutral body temperature sit on the counter and are occasionally curled with the urgency of government work. A sloppy saucy cheeseburger appears with lid flipped before JEREMY BLACK, Apollo Sunshine drummer and summertime beard wearer. On the horizon, Renaissance man JESSE GALLAGHER pours himself out of the picture and into the questions of a curious lady. Guitar tenderizer SAM COHEN, head half hidden beneath a rind of ringlets, stakes his claim to a stool sheathed with the hide of the very beast with which MR. BLACK is preparing to fortify body and mind. Without plans to, MR. COHEN and THE STRANGER (who would never disclose that, in the platinum backwater of Katonah, he manned the baritone sax while MR. BLACK steered the high school jazz band from the drum kit) clear their schedules and become absorbed like cholesterol in the application of a condiment rainbow to the altar of meat and the tracings of MR. BLACK’s blade until THE STRANGER delivers an invitation to conversation applicable to both the growing yellow-orange paste and recent rumors of an instrumental Apollo Sunshine album being recorded, on-again, off-again, in the ensemble’s Leverett, Massachusetts farmhouse and making its way down the ol’ rusty yet disarmingly lubricious pipeline.)

THE STRANGER

I wouldn’t want to think you’re mixing it up just to mix it up—

MR. COHEN

No, we mix it up to inspire ourselves and ideas just come. We’re not the kind of band that’s so involved in the machine of the music industry where there’s anyone telling us, “It’s time to make a record…” or what we should do with our record. We make a record, and then we play, and when we have an idea of what we want to do next, we do it, so it’s entirely what we feel like doing. We’ve talked all along about recording an instrumental album at some point. Also, we have an engineer friend of ours who lives out in western Mass, where we’re living. We’re in our last few months out there now, so we’re like, “This would actually be really good this summer; he’s got that tape machine, the board, we’ve got the house, it would be perfect timing to do the thing, so…”

THE STRANGER

So you’ve just been following an idea—

MR. BLACK

And not even knowing what the idea meant, being like, “Ok, yeah, we’re gonna record a breaks record and that sounds cool, but what exactly are we gonna do? I don’t know.” And then we just kinda went in there. We have maybe like twelve or thirteen tracks, but who knows if maybe four of them will end up on the record, or just pieces of them. We’re just going to keep recording nonstop until the end of the summer and take all the shit we have and try to put it together into something that’s cohesive. It’s totally open.

(THE U.S. OPEN files a trademark infringement lawsuit against APOLLO SUNSHINE.)

THE U.S. OPEN

As a—

(MR. BLACK bats away the fraternity with a French fry.)

THE STRANGER

You’re not reaching for something, but just seeing what happens.

MR. COHEN

Some of the stuff, we lay down a bunch of tracks on it, and it starts to go somewhere, or have something, and it’s, “You know what, now I’m hearing vocal ideas, so save this one for the next record, this will be a song. And then this other one, scratch that, and then let’s get back to that one.” So you really have no idea what’s going to happen, and then the tape starts rolling…

(THE TAPE starts rolling from atop the Jungfrau.)

THE STRANGER

How closely related are recording and playing live?

MR. COHEN

They’re getting further and further apart. Nothing we’re recording right now we could do live. It’s involved. I’ll be playing pedal steel and guitar, and Jesse will be playing bass and keyboards, and we’re sort of building it up from really sparse ideas that are coming together. So that’s the kind of thing where you can build an amazing piece of music, and then with three people, you can’t play it.

THE STRANGER

You might be doing two different things, but it sounds like the approach is the same. You have some bands that go out and make a disc, and then just try to play it again when they’re live.

MR. COHEN

Yeah, I don’t even remember what our album sounds like anymore. So yeah, even though they’re two completely different processes, I guess the underlying theme is that we’re shooting for some spontaneity and trying to surprise ourselves in everything we do. So when we go live, we just rock as hard as we can, and in the studio, just get as creative as we can.

(The trio rocks into a recently vacated booth, citing the “Move your meat, lose your seat” statute.)

MR. BLACK

Our last album was definitely more of a live thing. A lot of that record was done live, in the studio, even vocals and shit. There were overdubs on a couple songs, but for the most part, a lot of it was captured live.

THE STRANGER

So that’s also the answer to how you keep your show fresh. Do you have a set list tonight?

MR. COHEN

Probably not tonight, I’m not even expecting anyone to come. If they do show up, I’ll run somewhere and scribble out a set list.

THE STRANGER

Do you have any pre-show rituals; you all huddle up, say some magic words…

(Traffic jam of silence)

If they’re secret, you can say they’re secret.

MR. COHEN

Yeah, they’re secret. They’re secret to us as well.

THE STRANGER

Was there an extensive hazing ritual you had to go through to become members of the band?

MR. COHEN

No, everyone was in there from the beginning, so—

THE STRANGER

So if you were to bring on someone else, would you haze them terribly?

MR. COHEN

Well, really the only position that’s available right now is for castrato, so that would be the hazing in itself. But then I’d feel obligated to keep him around, you know?

(He scrambles to the nearest laptop and puts out an All Points Bulletin for castrato candidates. His email box maxes out, rolls over and croaks under the pressure of millions of photos of questionable legality.)

Maybe we’ll just outsource the castratos.

THE STRANGER

(swerving) Is place a big part of your music? Because you have Katonah, and it’s very kind of, I don’t want to say eclectic, kind of surreal, like the town of Katonah—

(HARVEY K. ARAMOR strides out of the Murder Mart, crosses the sidewalk, tosses a copy of Barron’s on the passenger seat of his Ferrari F430, gets in, raises his cup of coffee to sip and learns MANNY failed to properly attach the lid as the hot brown cascades into his khaki crotch.)

MR. BLACK

Eclectic is fine.

THE STRANGER

And where’d you record Apollo Sunshine, was that in Boston?

(THE STRANGER receives forty lashes for improper research.)

MR. COHEN

We recorded that at a couple different studios, actually, we started it at a place in New Jersey, no, actually, we first started it in Boston, and the session tapes got all fucked up.

(THE TICKER flickers to life.)

THE TICKER

That Story Also Available on the Internet (SAI) ^2.32 (and on and on and on)

MR. COHEN

And then we had to start over in New Jersey, and then we finished at the producer’s studio, in Philadelphia. We were just rocking out.

THE STRANGER

Rocking all over the globe.

MR. COHEN

Yeah. That was one where the songs were written and we knew how to play ’em, so it didn’t really matter where we were.

MR. BLACK

The basic track for Ghost was recorded at our place in Leverett.

MR. COHEN

That’s true, that one we did in the attic.

(Four hundred bent spoons rain down on the table. A nude woman materializes from beneath a napkin, which wraps around her as an apron, into which she scoops the spoons and disappears in a cloud of yellow smoke.)

THE STRANGER

So we’re talking about rocking. What does it mean “to rock”?

MR. BLACK

It’s a feeling more than anything, I think.

MR. COHEN

Yeah, to just go for it in a real way. Lately we’ve been seeing some bands that are, like, recreating this “Rock Thing.” I don’t really think that’s rocking. If someone rocked it identically like that before you, then what, who do you rock? It’s an energy thing, an output of caring, but also caring about what you’re doing.

THE STRANGER

You went to Berklee. Did the school give you that perspective, “It’s just gotta be real,” or was it mostly technical?

MR. COHEN

(laughs at the expense of his alma mater) No, they don’t teach you how to rock. Me and Jeremy majored in recording, and sort of missed a lot of classes playing shows, and got some free studio time out of it, but…

MR. BLACK

Berklee definitely is all about technique.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

Would Mr. John Scofield please present his views before the court?

(Four funk-seeking horses gallop off toward the sources of the winds to bring him back, drawing and quartering GEORGE W. BUSH’S TEDDY BEAR in the process.)

GEORGE W. BUSH’S TEDDY BEAR

I’m not much of a bear anymore, really much closer to a Glowworm.

MR. COHEN

But anything that is inspiring, or inspired, comes from within yourself.

THE STRANGER

Do you have influences outside of music where you get artistic inspiration from?

MR. COHEN

I get it from athletes sometimes, baseball players that I like—

ENRICO PALAZZO

Foul!

TUG SCROTER

Duck!

(A HARDBALL bounces off the seatback and into MR. COHEN’s pint glass, whereupon it is immediately seized by a SIX YEAR-OLD HAND and elevated to the status of founding member of a collection destined to grow for 72 years.)

HARDBALL

Scooped up I am
By the hand of a man
In the making.

SIX YEAR-OLD HAND

Shut up, you.

MR. COHEN

What else? Sometimes if you see some amazing footage of a politician saying something, like footage of John Kerry when he was just out of the Army, back in the 60’s.

MR. BLACK

I read this book last year that I was really inspired by called The Power of Now and that whole concept is basically how I feel, just being the best musician I can be. Playing live, it’s all about being in that moment, and being present, that’s the ultimate goal. But I get the closest to my present self when I’m playing music, so that’s why it’s really sacred to me that I play.

THE COSMOS

Om.

THE STRANGER

You see it in your live performance, and I think it comes through in your lyrics, too. Today Is The Day, for example. Are you conscious of that at all or is that just how it happens?

MR. BLACK

Jesse is really into that type of thing, he reads a lot of philosophy and stuff. I guess Sam does too, but I don’t write lyrics as much. I’ll write lines here and there, but that’s definitely something in our band that we’re all kinda into.

THE STRANGER

Do you think that’s part of your appeal? Do you even care about that?

MR. BLACK

Yeah, I think people can latch onto it a little bit, maybe. It reaches them. A lot of our songs are just about life, and living, and emotions, and things that people can understand.

(In his library, THE CREATOR, attempting to crack The New York Times' Sunday crossword puzzle, overhears MR. BLACK and nods, revealing an orbit-wide book, Earth Art: Life, Living, Emotions and Things That People Can Understand.)

MR. COHEN

Playing music positively inspires your life, the way you live, and then it comes back to the music.

THE STRANGER

When you were starting, saying, “I’m going to devote my life to playing music,” was there any sort of a struggle, any “How am I going to make it happen?”

MR. COHEN

I was twelve years old when I decided that. I was so idealistic then that it stayed attached to the whole concept of doing it. I’d been playing in bars for almost a decade when I hit my twenties, so by the time I was actually done with college and out on my own, it was sort of embedded that there must be a way. So you find it and figure it out.

MR. BLACK

I guess it’s lucky, but we got signed right when we graduated. So Berklee was, more than anything, a place for us to develop ourselves as a band. Because once we were out of there, even though we weren’t getting paid a lot of money, we were put into a position where we could actually put out a record and go on tour right away, which is what we wanted to do.

THE STRANGER

What’s the one thing that’s brought you this far?

MR. COHEN

Perseverance, I guess. It’s what we want to do, so you put up with everything that comes with it, because it’s what you want to do more than any other thing.

(An IMP FROM BENEATH THE TABLE presents a briefcaseful of gumballs, the Swedish royal family’s female contingent, triple chocolate liquor ice cream, man Fridays, limos with Jacuzzis in the back, hot Italian sausage, bazookas, the Brazilian women’s volleyball team, the MC Hammer lifestyle with solvency, diamond-encrusted headboard mirrors, lifetime supplies of you-name-it, Get Out of Jail Free cards and Reebok Pumps, any and all in exchange for the cancellation of the night’s show, and is roundly rejected.)

MR. BLACK

We’ve got plenty of friends who are working jobs, broke all the time, but they’re surviving. They’re making a living, and we’re in the same position but we get to make music for our living. We don’t have to be working some job.

(THE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT catches his tie in a crosscut shredder, is pulled in and reduced to a crude approximation of bruschetta.)

MR. COHEN

And there are times where it’s hard to deal with each other, with people who work for us or who we work for, or whoever, but we’d have that problem in any job.

THE GRIM REAPER

(squirming) Ooh, ooh, ask my question! Ask my question!

THE STRANGER

Do you believe in reincarnation?

MR. BLACK

I don’t know. Not so much of a believer in that.

MR. COHEN

I’ve never experienced death, or that I know of, so I can’t really say. I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation. I believe in a continuum that we’re all part of, maybe less each being comes and goes separately. It all flows together, that makes more sense to me. Everything is continued, but more like a river that is all of us, than, “I’m going to come back as future Joan of Arc,” or some shit like that. It’s hard for me to think that someone else from the past was also me, that concept doesn’t make sense to me.

THE STRANGER

Or anything was, like a bug outside.

MR. COHEN

Yeah, but the human stream is just like blood flowing in the veins of the universe.

THE STRANGER

From a purely symbolic perspective, what were you in your past life?

MR. COHEN

A duck.

MR. BLACK

Uh….A blade of grass.

THE STRANGER

(obligated) Just blowing in the wind.

MR. BLACK

Yup.

MARC SOMMERS

I’m sorry, that’s incorrect! Sam, you were a blunt object, and Jeremy, you were Rasputin.

(MR. BLACK and MR. COHEN get slimed.)

THE STRANGER

What advice would you give to anybody trying to make anything?

MR. COHEN

Find a way to limit your access to the work, set a time limit on how long you’re gonna do it. Cause the longer you work on it, the more you start to question the sound, and the more things happen to you psychologically that make you not hear the sound maybe the way it actually is. Our second album we did, recorded and mixed in three weeks because we wanted to avoid that as much as possible. Or, if you’re down with that, if you want to get all fuckin’ Brian Wilson Smile, like freak out on some shit, give yourself plenty of time—you will go crazy.

(BRIAN WILSON freaks out on some shit.)

BRIAN WILSON

Do I dare to eat a peach!!!

MR. BLACK

I would say limitations are a key to making good art. Limit yourself, limit your palette.

(THE LIMERICK raises a glass, where COGNAC sits on its ass.)

THE LIMERICK

Jeremy plays drums in the band,
Post-show he bolts for the van.
The ring on his finger
Says, “Black doesn’t linger
To satisfy market demand.”

(THE COGNAC heads south.)

MR. COHEN

For most musicians, this isn’t a problem. The budget takes care of it. We have no problem limiting our palette because we only have our gear, and it’s half broken. Our engineer is the same way. He’s at the same level as us, as artists, his gear is finicky, but then everything’s cool, it’s raw and dirty and you don’t get this vibe that Sting walked out and we walked in and laid down some bullshit.

(STING presses a red button on his desk and leans into a gray metal grille.)

STING

(face matching the button) Find out who’s been laying down bullshit on my equipment!

(The office door swings open and STING is presented with THE HEAD OF BRIAN WILSON.)

THE HEAD OF BRIAN WILSON

Perfect.

THE STRANGER

That’s true, too, you get the truth across by using what you have.

MR. COHEN

Even a very produced record can be a piece of documentation on where you are, as long as it’s honest. This record we’re making is sort of produced, but it has a really gritty edge, because we’re making it in our upstairs.

MR. BLACK

Right next to where we sleep.

MR. COHEN

It’s a document of the album that we make when we have a tape machine in our upstairs, and lots of time, but not limitless gear, and lots of interruptions and gigs. It always will be true if you just stay into what you’re doing and just do it, and don’t get too many people to help you.

(MR. COHEN disappears to parts unknown. BRYAN SCARY and his brother MIKEY take seats at the table. BRYAN SCARY’S HAIR jigs. BRYAN SCARY, visiting home from Brooklyn, spins a slim case with a silver disc over the Formica with a jackpot grin.)

THE STRANGER

What’s this?

MR. BLACK

This is Bryan Scary, The Shredding Tears.

BRYAN SCARY

Just mastered. It’s going to come out in September on Jeremy’s label that he has with David Greene, Black and Greene. It’s a concept album, sort of symphonic pop music, lots of different styles and I played all the instruments in my bedroom, then gave it to Jeremy and David. They got copies of that version and sort of revamped it, gave it a little more of a Hi-Fi sheen, and Jeremy played all the drums on it.

MR. BLACK

We got the guy who produced our last record to mix it.

BRYAN SCARY

Brian McTear. Sounds pretty awesome.

THE STRANGER

So we’re looking for that this fall. Well, Mr. Scary, you’re just in time for the final question. What is the role of absurdity in society?

MR. BLACK

That sounds like a Bryan Scary question.

BRYAN SCARY

It’s more like, what’s the role of society in absurdity? You have to think about it like that.

THE STRANGER

And Jeremy—most absurd episode of the past 24 hours?

MR. BLACK

Meeting Bruce Springsteen.

BRYAN SCARY

(eyes fall on table) You met Bruce Springsteen?

MR. BLACK

I met Bruce Springsteen last night.

THE STRANGER

Did he have a strong handshake or a weak handshake?

MR. BLACK

He didn’t shake my hand. I was like, “Hey man, that was a really awesome show.” He was like, “Thanks a lot.” I also got to meet LaBamba and Pender from the Max Weinberg 7. They were a sick horn section, they were amazing. That was absurd. And the buffet they served was absurd.

THE STRANGER

Everyone’s a fan of the absurd buffet.

MR. BLACK

It was the green room, and there was a line of sick video games that you didn’t have to pay for, like Buck Hunter and all the good shit. I don’t know if it was a Springsteen thing or if it was the venue.

THE STRANGER

Springsteen travels with a trailer full of video games…

MR. BLACK

Yeah, maybe. Arcade games and pinball. There were like ten different kinds of cake you could eat. I don’t know why cake, usually there’s one or two cakes, and there were pies, a lot of cakes, I had two different pieces of cake, a lot of cookies, it was awesome. Absurd.

(MR. BLACK gets slapped in the face with THE FEDERAL BUDGET and plummets to Earth, just in time for the show.)

THE FEDERAL BUDGET

Eat me.

(THE TAPE crashes into the village of Lauterbrunnen, flattening cottages into crepes.)

Scary, True

2006-06-30T00:26:00.000-04:00

Bryan Scary worms into your ear and wiggles for a week. And if you're lucky enough to have a Zappa bone, he'll tickle that too.

Private School Rock

2006-06-30T00:11:00.000-04:00

At Colgate, the best band on campus was named after the oft-exploited financial symptom of love, Joint Account. A farming technique made viable by customers ready to pay premiums, Free Range, delivered organic hip-hop. Third, Third Rail: a nod to the heart-stopping energy source no example of which existed within a three hour radius.

Free Kraut and Mustard Smuggling: May Fest in Lincoln Square

2006-06-16T00:21:00.000-04:00

We waited until the end to order food, until the most alcohol was in our blood, because all along we’d wanted to gorge, but, prices being what they were, we needed a conscience loophole—“I was drunk.” We waited too long.

“We’re out of bratwurst.”

“What do you have left?”

“Thüringer and sauerkraut, three dollars.”

“We’ll take as many of those as possible, please. One, two, three…” We counted out 11 tickets for the grandma in the apron. “Take a $1 bill?” She grabbed it.

Realizing how much kraut we were about to receive, she came back to double check and put an end to the argument in her head—three drunk kids or serious customers? “All with kraut?”

“Jaaaaa!!!!!!” We clashed mugs and slapped backs.

“What is this?” she must have thought, confused by her own joy. “Kids excited about kraut? I’ve been waiting all day for someone to get excited about kraut! Most people without lederhosen give it a groan, at best. But it’s so good!”

She served up four oily red Thüringers and four fur balls of kraut. Just as we were about to dig in, a guy edged in beside us, seeking mustard, silently scouting around, pumping the dry pump.

“You looking for mustard?” I asked.

“Um…”

“Hold on. We’ve got your mustard. Get this guy some mustard. Gimme the bag.” The little girl of our trio, whom nobody expected to be packing heat, turned around and presented her baby blue backpack. “Here we go now. Mustard, coming right up!”

I unzipped the bag and my accomplice pulled out an unlabeled glass jar half-filled with a sandy paste. “Mustard!” he said, holding it high. “You want some mustard? Here’s the mustard!”

“No, it’s…quite alright, thanks.” The man began backing away, mustardless.

“Hold on! Smell it!” I thrust the uncapped jar within an inch of his nostrils and whispered, “This is Rhinegeld’s German mustard with white wine.”

A low voice from the back: “It’s the secret stash…”

“Smells good,” he called over his shoulder, now three shuffles away.

“It’s right here if you change your mind,” squeaked the little girl with the big beer.

The man turned his back on legitimate, unspiked (well, wine), unroofied German mustard, an hour before the closing of May Fest, directly below the Maypole in Lincoln Square. But don't worry, plenty of Chicagoans can still spot the real deal. Our jar, the only jar of mustard in a fifty-yard radius, started to draw a crowd that previously had been united only in thought: “I could use some mustard on this thing.” They crushed around the jar on the corner of the table, elbowing for a turn with the plastic knife.

“We need more.” I pulled the pump out of what had been given up as an expired tub and dropped it in an empty stein. Peeked inside and, sure enough, there was a tract of mustard down there. I turned the tub over and started to play it like a bongo, but with urgency. What came out was only enough to do justice to one Thüringer.

Another peek. “There’s still mustard in there! We gotta get that mustard out!” I began pounding the tub up and down on the table like a monkey frustrated by a coconut. Taking on the role of fire chief, I demanded a “big, sharp knife” from the counter manager. He took stock of his liabilities, and, luckily for both of us, didn’t hand it over.

“Keys!” Keys appeared in my hand and I jabbed at the tub’s heart. The plastic merely folded. More force! More power! More German! Ja! “We’re in!” I sawed the tub open and four knives descended. Mustard blitz. Let ‘em have it. We still have the secret-secret stash.

Thüringers inhaled, we scraped the remains of our kraut onto one plate and dumped on mustard from our second jar. At the same time, sauerkraut piled up behind the counter. No one wanted it. A surplus?

I caught the eye of the lady in the apron. “I’d love some kraut, but I don’t have any more tickets.” She paused, then nodded in receipt of the password. Two heaping plates of kraut, free kraut, appeared in front of us. But don’t think they were free.

Being able to ask for kraut—to say you want it, you love it—isn’t easy. It’s a privilege that’s earned. It’s two or three times a week over the course of a childhood, probing the kraut, throwing it, pushing it around, hiding it under mashed potatoes, in napkins, in the dog’s stomach, finally forcing it down, in tears, then eating it with ketchup (blasphemy!), then fearing that your parents might find out you actually like it (they’ve been there too…), then, the true milestone of your sixteenth birthday, a whole-hearted welcoming of the kraut. You try it with beer and fully pop through to the other side as a lifelong kraut fanatic, and soon you’re reading every word on the packaging of every brand in the supermarket, trying to engineer the perfect combo of kraut, mustard and beer, speculating on the ratios of no less than seven flavors like a Bavarian Willy Wonka.

And maybe, just maybe, if you happen to have returned from Germany within a week of May Fest, you can slip a silent German accent on your request, only perceptible through the efficiency of the movement of your lips. Then, smile with a crinkled nose and a benevolence in your eyes nodding to the fact that, far enough back, you and the kraut dealer are probably related, or at least had relatives who suffered through the same bad winters, defended raids and raided, held onto a scrap of ground, and, at some point, decided to scrap the scrap and move to America because accepting the conditions at home had become a less appealing option than starting from scratch.

If, upon recognizing an asymmetry in the kraut market, you can pull off the above maneuver and make it look easy like walking on a barrel, then you, German-American, have earned your free kraut. Just make sure you’ve brought your mustard.

---

[I recently talked (pre-May Fest) with someone about how it's hard to get in touch with your German-American heritage. It is tricky, but I think I've finally done it.)

One Step Closer

2006-06-16T00:16:00.000-04:00

Nobody published my story while it was current, so I present it to you (see above). If any mustard fans out there need it for a mustard fan club magazine, I can always make a few touch-ups to broaden the appeal.

Back when I said I had kraut on the brain, this is what I meant.

Chicago - Lakeshore Path

2006-06-13T00:09:00.000-04:00

(lately it's been nice)

Camino de Chicago, the Lakeshore Path,
Rollerbladers, bikers, spandex ass
Joggers, walkers, dads behind strollers,
Golf carts with lazy park controllers.

Where are you starting today?

For Montrose Beach I’d impeach most plans,
But there’s 18 miles of land
To pick from, pick one, show up, start
Practicing any of the motion arts.

Photo by MerlinsMan.

The Future

2006-06-08T01:01:00.000-04:00

To the seven, six, five, four, three, two and one year-olds out there: I know you can do better than we did. (Eight year olds, step off. You got nothing.)

The Future

Preface – In the Future

In the future there will be cars that fly. You will not walk, you will fly by jet pack. In your house you will press a button and talk into a speaker next to the button. You will say what you want to get and a robot will bring it to you.

The planes will go a million times faster, and you can get from New York to California in five minutes.

It will make your brain wild with tacky new clothes, new inventions, and much, much more.

Four kids journey to outer space!

Chapter 1 – Ventures to Outer Space

When they wake up in the morning they will take one pill that has different flavors of foods. Then they unplug their vacuum and start vacuuming—except they call it pounding! After they pound they get on their jet pack and go to school or work.

Their worst enemies are clouds and rainstorms. They do not like it because it messes up their jet packs.

If their jet packs run out in the rain, they have special shoes that have little rockets on them.

There are not fifty states, but there are one million because the states are only six acres big. Only one to five houses on a state and one town. The town has one store which is divided into little sections that sell things like jet packs or food pills.

They wear weird clothes that are red or brown, and they have buttons that are able to change things into anything they want.

And now is when the story begins because that is just the start.

One day four kids went to get new jet packs because it had just rained. When they got them they saw that they were MAGIC, but they didn’t believe it. They asked the storekeeper if they could test the jet packs. The storekeeper said, “Yes.”

One kid’s name was James. When he started his new jet pack he went straight up, and he disappeared into outer space. Then, one by one, they started their jet packs and disappeared like James.

When they went up they saw James on a planet just like Earth. When they landed, they saw lots of familiar things.

Then Sally yelled, “Maybe it’s heaven!”

What they did not notice was that it was Halloween. Then Sally saw a kid dressed up as an angel.

Then Sally yelled again, “It is heaven!”

As you may have noticed, it wasn’t Halloween on Earth. That got them even more mixed up. And you know that you go trick or treating at night and it was day there.

Their pocket calendars said it was a day ahead.

“Let’s get out of here!” yelled James.

So they went to the edge of the planet and stood on their heads, started their jet packs, and flew right back down to Earth. Whichever side their head is pointing to (up or down) is the way the jet packs go. The jet packs that they have at home (the type that is not magic) have four buttons that have arrows on them that point forward, backward and to the sides.

When they looked at the ones on the magic ones, they saw that they said they were going to the right! Not down!

The storekeeper had forgotten to tell them that if you tell the jet pack to go down it will go right. If you tell it to go up it will go left.

They looked on the jet packs to see where they were made. Then they jet packed over to where the jet packs were made (with their old jet packs). They were made in a factory called ABRACADABRA.

The company made magic things. James, Sally, Guthrie and Melissa went in.

They said, “How do these magic jet packs work?”

The storekeeper said, “They run on special dust found inside of the sun.”

James said, “Can I see some of the dust?”

The storekeeper said, “Yes.”

The storekeeper was wearing gloves and was holding an iron thing that had an iron handle and a big iron thing on the end like a square pancake. And on that it had a big basket.

The storekeeper said, “You must never touch it with any part of your body.”

“Ok,” said Sally, Guthrie, Melissa and James.

Chapter 2 – Poison Pills for Guthrie

One day Guthrie was eating his pill. Then he noticed something different about the pill. It was blue, but it was supposed to be pink.

“Mom!” called Guthrie. “My pill is blue, not pink!”

His mother ran downstairs and said, “Honey, honey! Did you eat it yet?”

“Yes,” squeaked Guthrie nervously.

Guthrie’s mom said, “Quick, hop into the car!”

“Where are we going?” asked Guthrie.

Guthrie’s mom was in such a hurry that she didn’t answer. She ran into the doctor’s waiting room.

“Doctor, doctor! Get me in right now! HELP! Guthrie has swallowed a blue breakfast pill!”

“Okay, he’s empty now,” said the nurse.

Guthrie and his mom went into the room.

The doctor said, “Well, look who’s here. It’s old Guthrie!”

Then Guthrie noticed that he couldn’t talk.

The doctor said, “The only cure to this is a rare operation. The operation is called ‘the inserting of the laser.’”

Then Guthrie wrote down: “Lasers, yeah man!”

But the doctor meant that they were going to cut him open for an operation with a laser. Bad news for Guthrie!

Then the doctor said, “Can you be brave enough to stay here from next Sunday to next Friday?”

“Yeah,” wrote Guthrie, now figuring out what the doctor meant. He showed what he wrote to the doctor. Next, Guthrie wrote, “Do you have to cut me open and operate on me with a laser?”

“Yes,” said the doctor.

Inside, Guthrie was really saying, “Oh no!”

Guthrie was back to normal in no time at all. The four kids were all happy together again, too.

THE END

About the Authors

Brett is seven and a half years old and lives in Goldens Bridge with his parents and his sister and two brothers. Brett enjoys playing with his yellow lab, Kayla. He likes to sled surf and ride his bike. Sports that he plays are soccer, street hockey and baseball. Reading is also one of his favorite pastimes. [Still into sled surfing. Books are kinda cool, too.]

Thea is almost eight years old. She has a little sister, Emma, and a best friend named Dustin. Thea likes to write stories and draw pictures. [Noble.]

Hot Dogs by Thea

2006-06-06T22:15:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, Thea and I invented our own language. Bam!

Her hot dogs rock. And not just because I've had kraut on the brain lately.

Lincoln Square's May Fest - Notes

2006-06-05T17:53:00.000-04:00

America has a lot to thank Germany for. We saw the way they consumed at their festivals, then took the idea and applied it to everything, riding it all the way to the world’s strongest economy and greatest national wealth.

We had intergenerational slurred conversations. “Nobody’s bought me a beer yet,” said the wobbling seventy year-old lady. “Nobody’s bought me a beer yet either, you can be the first,” said the object of her romantic interest, a twenty-three year-old German-Italian.

They priced the beers perfectly. The first one is painfully expensive, but if you get the large glass of the strongest beer, the price becomes affordable as soon as the glass is empty, so you go back for another, spurred by the dollar refill discount, and by the time that’s done and you're buying your third, you know it's a good deal.

Renters inevitably ran into property managers. The property managers silently computed and filed away each renter's odds of puking in the stairway, as to know who to curse this morning, depending on the size and location of the mess.

Sandal wearers can comment on the puddles of black beer water making moats around the bar.

Cops wore bulletproof vests in case a beer maid exploded out of her bodice.

Please, God, spare the soul of the man who loaded French’s yellow onto his bratwurst.

Thoughts While Waiting For The Zurich-to-Chicago

2006-06-04T15:14:00.000-04:00

Square in the path of the jet lag stun gun,
Headed for a pillow filled o’ subletter’s shunned,
Shaken shook-off dead skin mess,
Maybe hints of perfume, hair of seducer chest.
Back to the full flight, US-bound plane
Calibrated to tighten screws again:
People I see look like people I know,
The average waistline, I’m way below,
From a full-pockets blazer he sighs out stress—
I don’t want to be in America yet.
Unisex-dressed women, sporty, sloppy men,
Do we need to rehash fashion again?
Flatter yourself, then share it around,
Guys, don’t expect fishnets with your cuffs on the ground.
No off-the-shoulder sweater’s getting wedged behind a headboard
’less you wear that denim with the measure you were set for.
I don’t know, speculating a bit—
Surely much more gets zipped zippers unzipped.
But remember, if it weren’t for the opposite sex,
We’d all be big and plain-looking, like government checks.

Photo by thecolourblue.

The Clean House

2006-06-04T11:39:00.000-04:00

Matilde, Machuge, Machichi,
The Clean House sweeps you easy,
Orders your head like Virginia’s hands
To remember and forget like jokes demand,
White and color, OR and ocean,
Snow and sunglasses, bad apple tossin’,
Super-subtitles, glances of admiration,
Facial contortions, Arctic exploration,
Laughing till kissing, back again,
Can opener blaming, lack of a friend,
Storm cloudy skylights, Jobim-blue skies,
Silent primal moments, euthanize,
Borrowing women, obvious daydreams
Explained, “Just my imagination…”
Ruhl peels back skull seams:
It’s like coming off sedation the morning after
As you reexamine your prescription for laughter,
X-ray your glow and ask, “Who asked for this task?
The perfect joke day is coming up fast.”

(Saw The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl last night. Here's more info for those who haven't seen it: Windy City Times review)

The Clean House, Sarah Ruhl, Goodman Theatre

Granada Rhymes: The Rest

2006-04-27T22:22:00.000-04:00

Rise Up
You can get hash or arrested on Elvira tonight,
Drop juggling pins, your pants too tight,
You can grow dead dreds as a farm for your food
Or go digging through the trash in a fancy mood.
You can lead a pack of dogs, lie with ‘em all day,
If you rise, philosophize, (didja hear what Franklin say?)
You can show your palm to tourists,
Piss in your bed,
On your cobblestones, I mean,
And you can seal off your head
‘Cause books are too heavy for the life you do--
But for a week can I be a trustifarian, too?

Free Cocktail
Pick up a drink ticket, get a drink,
Stick it in your face, help to fuel the race
Of relaciónes públicas here in Granada,
Nights like it no hay nada
Whether tapas or tequila’s your thing.
Bring a backup liver, quaff a bottle by the river,
Cupid’s here and totin’ full quiver.
Won’t be hard to find your smile
When you shake it Spanish style,
Doesn’t matter where you’re from or what’s next.
‘Cause next to nothing beats las noches
In the good life living showcase
Called Granada when your heart’s in effect.

Overstocked
Hanging from the ceiling, ham, Serrano ham,
On the backs of playing cards, under the dresses of shrunken widows
Clogging sidewalks, trailing mothball perfume,
The fake friendlies with tickets in hand,
Bubbling by fountains, bouncing group to group,
Bouncers pounding eyes into people in line
Who put on special shoes, blew this week’s pay just
By strolling in with a debit card,
German beach behavior, Albayzin real estate scams,
Police four-deep in a minivan, blue light special, ham.

An illegal job quenches appetites
So long as your tastes are lean:
No cannolis, discoteca drinks
Or magazines obscene.

Twins
Ice cream is helado, hope you eat
A hell lot of it, hit Los Italianos,
Put banana and chocolate
On a cone, within a cup if you fear
Dropping your investment or a
Jacket smear, ‘cause a cone’s known
To drip while a cup’s conservative;
A cone’s got wild crunchy style,
A cup what you paidforgives.

In a Sexy Way
If she makes your eyes pop, yell guapa!
If she makes your heart stop, yell guapa!
If she makes you bust a grin, yell guapa!
If it looks like a sin, yell guapa!
If she’s got fishnets and a frilly skirt, she’ll hurt
If you don’t yell guapa!
A messy eater and her friends will never look your way again
If you walk by and don’t yell guapas!
If she’s headed home at dawn on a muscleman’s arm,
You better honk the horn and yell guapa!
If she’s 80 and can dance and you lack romance,
Might as well take a chance and yell guapa!

Never Satisfied, Always Satisfying
The mirador sky gets bored with blue
And clouded specks of white
And yellow rays of typical shine
And black blue-black of night,
So it puts on skins of salmon pink,
Shades of belt-laid welts,
Plays with the red of cut kings’ heads,
Purple of puddles of popsicle melt.
Grey of a Viking sage’s gaze
Cut with golden idol fire,
Magenta of a Manhattan punker
Twisting in bed with a Baptist choir.
The snotgreen of an omphalos-seen sea,
The orange of Cheez-Wiz carrot puke
Drained from the pipes of an Irish plumber
In the Dome after ‘Cuse beat Duke.

The Offering
Our graffiti, I’ve never seen ‘em
Throwing it up, bubble letters,
Angry locked scrawls too,
What discos lack in hip hop’s
Where the walls come through
Big like Jeter, never seen it sweeter
Than Niño de las Pinturas,
Aerosol can depleter,
Reunites color and stone, fresh air and art,
Thought loops with the new,
Surroundings play a part,
The city the frame, cans can’t drain
Like this without God’s hand
Twisting the wrist.
(Check it out here)

Breaking Bread
How much bread can you eat in a day?
Go broke, you’ll have the answer in 24 hours,
A swollen doughboy gut, sweat stinking of flour,
A crusty cracked grin, pair of crusty drawers,
Trust me, breaking bread stores’ doors is
For the poor, Jean Val Jean style, keep
Your hands to yourself, your crummy
Slice swiping guile fails to fool,
You can’t trick a baker, butter him up,
He drives a hard-rollin’ bargain, he’s a sour
Dough-box guarding miser, your local yeast riser
Goes whole weeks without a scheizer.
Think you can cut him out of half what’s in his profit chest?
He’ll crumble half of you in soup, soak up the rest with what’s left.

Teamwork
I live with four Italians, they know how to live,
Serving coffee on trays, prepping beds to give
The ladies a frame shaking overnight visit,
U2 on repeat, wonder what is it
Making them run around in black briefs—
Black briefs alone—
When the females are gone, only hombres home,
Or what sends ‘em to Zara for pre-party clothes,
What makes them show off their craps, calling, pinching the nose.
They watch porn in a group, forget about the oven
But it always comes out perfect, screw American curmudgeons.

And of course, the obligatory limericks:

In Granada, fine pleasures abound
You’ll relax if you look underground
Every ice cream shop doubles
As what gets men in trouble
When their wives get to scooping around.

In Café Fútbol at the end of the verse
Pierre begged coins from a woman with girth:
"A coin please, madam?"
“Not today, sorry, I am,
But I’ll let you fill up my purse.”

Johnny Alhambra worked with a hammer
But his true gift was Arab-king scammer:
Built the best door of the land
For Princess, hid key in hand
And promised no one would ram ‘er.

At the beach I don’t know where to look
My eyes won’t stay tied to my book
So I pull on my shades
Hide my wide sweeping gaze
‘Cause you have to watch ham while it cooks.

Have you checked out the tube after 12?
It’s worse than my uncle’s top shelf
They don’t hide a thing
Except maybe a ring
And a shred of respect for the self.

Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Albayzin, Poems, Limerick

Overload

2006-04-27T22:19:00.000-04:00

I can't do this one-by-one posting thing, no matter how hard I try. To save everyone time and effort, I'm dumping the rest of the Granada poems here in one big, sloppy splat of a post. Plus, I'm leaving the country in four days. That's where my focus is, or at least where I want it to be.

Swollen

2006-04-23T15:20:00.000-04:00

Granada doesn’t want your automobile,
She wants your feet to feel
The rocks, the cobblestones,
Your heels to wobble, your ankle bones
To groan as you ascend the Albayzin,
Your knees to realize what it means
To be a city bursting seams
With poets’ dreams and myster-schemes.

Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Albayzin, Walking, Mirador, Rocks

Calling All Wallets

2006-04-20T00:22:00.000-04:00

Economics in Granada revolve around the phone booth,
Paste a poster on the glass, hope business cuts loose,
Unreported antics putting Tyco to shame
‘Cause shafting the state is the law in Spain.
Rip a tab with a number, the classes begin:
German, English or Italian,
Arab tongue twisters, harmonica, too
Cheapo ceramics, Spanish for prudes,
(Did we mention apartments, houses, closets to rent?)
Basketweaving with a dude and his trusty scent.
You can learn to dance flamenco,
I’m sure the teacher’s fair,
Grab a Turkish bath discount,
No comment on the hair.
So if you want skills or just people to screw
Slap your ad inside a phonebooth, make scam dreams true.

Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Apartment, Spanish, Economics, Law

Back On Top

2006-04-19T00:14:00.000-04:00

Each day I get more serious about my hairdo,
I gel through twice, afternoon and night,
I want ripe spikes to swipe an eyesocket clean,
A mullet by fall, greasecurl waterfall,
Ooze dripping down the back of my shirt.
The stuff stiffens, my posture can’t give in,
Why not toss in a highlight or ten, then
Trim the neck well (stay away from that rat tail)
And angle my bangs till they tango with my unibrow.
Leave my burns buzzed low so when I wobble to and fro
Home, on sight they end threats of a fight.

Granada, Spain, Andalucia, hairdo, Mullet, Gel, Unibrow

About Time

2006-04-12T00:54:00.000-04:00

Every clock in Granada is always wrong,
Every half-hour walk is a minute long,
What’s planned for tomorrow gets done in a week,
A siesta’s not siesta when springs don’t squeak.
Either way—a couple hours a day
Set aside for play or a tapa tray,
Sun, drink, a cig to think
Of anything but something,
You ask, “What is this?”
Blink.

Scene From a Balcony

2006-04-09T19:38:00.000-04:00

Enriqueta Lozano—a teeny tiny street,
Look outside the window, blank wall treat
But a tree climbs higher, it’s over the wall,
You can touch it from the balcony, spring-scents call
You out, you see people couple meters below,
Ancient crooked backbone shufflers, mopeds swerving to pass,
A greaser with his girlfriend and his hand on her ass,
Dogs barking like they’re boiling, they never were trained,
Last night’s liters of Alhambra, rolling, clinking, drained.

---
Cafe Futbol in Plaza de Mariana Pineda (home to the above-mentioned street) serves the biggest ice cream cones in town, especially if you go right before they close, when it's time to unload excess inventory. I know because I used to live above the place. (From Puerta Real, follow the Ganivet portico until it opens into P. Mariana Pineda.)

Granada, Spain, Andalucia, Enriqueta Lozano, Ice Cream, Alhambra, Café Futbol