I found a documentary about the Pixies on Netflix WatchNow the other night. Being of the right generation to appreciate such a thing and the right degree of lacking other plans, I decided I would have a look see. The movie was called LoudQUIETloud and it was really, really boring. That doesn’t mean it was bad. In fact, it might have been too good. A documentary is journalism, after all, and the measure for good journalism is accuracy. What became painfully clear through the watching of LoudQUIETloud is that the Pixies, an absolutely brilliant band that defined an era of musical innovation, are four of the most boring motherfuckers you will ever have to spend two hours with.
It was either Peter Buck or David Byrne who famously said of the Velvet Underground that only a thousand people bought the first album, but each one of those people immediately went out and started a band. It was that observation, almost more than the Velvets themselves, that started a whole genre of Rock N’ Roll. In my day it was called Alternative, but Avante Garde, Punk (including proto and post), or New Wave it always boils down to the same thing: Music that was so shocking and so ahead of its time that it is more influential than successful. This has been such a strong trend in the pop era that it constitutes a third leg of modern culture, beyond music and into TV (Arrested Development), film (The Big Lebowski) and new media (TBTL). And certainly there were people who were ahead of the curve before the advent of mass media, but that ends up being a different discussion. The point is, Rock N’ Roll is the context we started with and that is where this post is going to return and the splitting of the monolith into a trinity can be called at the late sixties. The division of labor was thus: The Beatles make you fall in love, The Stones get you laid, The Velvet Underground makes you try something kinky.
The Pixies were of the Velvet Underground lineage. A roaring force that only a few heard, but those few immediately started bands of their own. Though they clearly had their roots in things that had come before, Iggy Pop, Elvis Costello, Joy Division,Husker Du, The Pixies had a sound that was so original and consistent that their essential “Newness” was undeniable. On the other side of their career, their influence was just as powerful. Bands like Weezer, The Strokes, The Old 97s, Spoon, Franz Ferdinand, none of these acts would have a foundation to stand on without them. We know this because Kurt Cobain said so. When they broke up it was with almost no explanation. The band just ceased and the members went onto other projects that didn’t have as much impact.
Then there was the inevitable reunion, which is what LoudQUIETloud chronicles. The movie does answer some lingering questions about the break up. Some part of it was that Kim Deal wanted to have more creative influence and resented the strict control Black Francis had over the proceedings. But more important was that the Pixies were simply four people who, in spite of making amazing music together, simply couldn’t communicate. The bond they had musically didn’t seem to translate into a bond personally. And it never did. That is where the documentary starts and where it stays. Anytime the band isn’t on stage or rehearsing, they are sitting around not talking. Two hours of four people not talking. As individuals they lack interest as well. Black Francis wanders the screen, expressionless. Kim Deal is a basket case in the way that anyone who is mildly depressed and has read too many self help books and been in too many programs usually is. Joey Santiago has a family and David Lovering tried his hand at being a magician which is as close as any of them get to having a personality. All of this flies in the face of Pop mythology. We have come to expect our geniuses to be tortured and their interactions to be full of high drama. Drugs and weird sex and life endangering misadventures is what we are supposed to get from our rock stars. With the Pixies we just get awkward middle age which, from all appearances, seems to be an extension of awkward youth.
Don’t see LoudQUIETloud. Not because it is poorly done, it’s fine. But just because these are not compelling people. Buy every album, get the box set, see the next tour. The music is what matters.In this case, it is the only thing that does.
I found a documentary about the Pixies on Netflix WatchNow the other night. Being of the right generation to appreciate such a thing and the right degree of lacking other plans, I decided I would have a look see. The movie was called LoudQUIETloud and it was really, really boring. That doesn’t mean it was bad. In fact, it might have been too good. A documentary is journalism, after all, and the measure for good journalism is accuracy. What became painfully clear through the watching of LoudQUIETloud is that the Pixies, an absolutely brilliant band that defined an era of musical innovation, are four of the most boring motherfuckers you will ever have to spend two hours with.
It was either Peter Buck or David Byrne who famously said of the Velvet Underground that only a thousand people bought the first album, but each one of those people immediately went out and started a band. It was that observation, almost more than the Velvets themselves, that started a whole genre of Rock N’ Roll. In my day it was called Alternative, but Avante Garde, Punk (including proto and post), or New Wave it always boils down to the same thing: Music that was so shocking and so ahead of its time that it is more influential than successful. This has been such a strong trend in the pop era that it constitutes a third leg of modern culture, beyond music and into TV (Arrested Development), film (The Big Lebowski) and new media (TBTL). And certainly there were people who were ahead of the curve before the advent of mass media, but that ends up being a different discussion. The point is, Rock N’ Roll is the context we started with and that is where this post is going to return and the splitting of the monolith into a trinity can be called at the late sixties. The division of labor was thus: The Beatles make you fall in love, The Stones get you laid, The Velvet Underground makes you try something kinky.
try it, you'll like it
The Pixies were of the Velvet Underground lineage. A roaring force that only a few heard, but those few immediately started bands of their own. Though they clearly had their roots in things that had come before, Iggy Pop, Elvis Costello, Joy Division,Husker Du, The Pixies had a sound that was so original and consistent that their essential “Newness” was undeniable. On the other side of their career, their influence was just as powerful. Bands like Weezer, The Strokes, The Old 97s, Spoon, Franz Ferdinand, none of these acts would have a foundation to stand on without them. We know this because Kurt Cobain said so. When they broke up it was with almost no explanation. The band just ceased and the members went onto other projects that didn’t have as much impact.
Then there was the inevitable reunion, which is what LoudQUIETloud chronicles. The movie does answer some lingering questions about the break up. Some part of it was that Kim Deal wanted to have more creative influence and resented the strict control Black Francis had over the proceedings. But more important was that the Pixies were simply four people who, in spite of making amazing music together, simply couldn’t communicate. The bond they had musically didn’t seem to translate into a bond personally. And it never did. That is where the documentary starts and where it stays. Anytime the band isn’t on stage or rehearsing, they are sitting around not talking. Two hours of four people not talking. As individuals they lack interest as well. Black Francis wanders the screen, expressionless. Kim Deal is a basket case in the way that anyone who is mildly depressed and has read too many self help books and been in too many programs usually is. Joey Santiago has a family and David Lovering tried his hand at being a magician which is as close as any of them get to having a personality. All of this flies in the face of Pop mythology. We have come to expect our geniuses to be tortured and their interactions to be full of high drama. Drugs and weird sex and life endangering misadventures is what we are supposed to get from our rock stars. With the Pixies we just get awkward middle age which, from all appearances, seems to be an extension of awkward youth.
Don’t see LoudQUIETloud. Not because it is poorly done, it’s fine. But just because these are not compelling people. Buy every album, get the box set, see the next tour. The music is what matters. In this case, it is the only thing that does.
It was an album with boobies on it. GROUNDBREAKING!
There are folks who will certainly disagree with me on this point, but, they’re wrong. There are some pop culture artifacts that do totally lack in irony or kitsch value. I don’t care how many T-shirts Urban Outfitters has printed up or how many college classes have critical discussions about them, there are some bits of modern detritus that simply are not nor ever will be funny, valuable, or interesting. The particular thing that I’m thinking of right now is the ever ubiquitous “Sixties Band Photo of the Band That Didn’t Make It.” This is one of the most useless objects in the world and it is currently cluttering a used record bin, a Goodwill store, a parent’s basement somewhere near you. The format is almost always the same. The band members are arranged, some kneeling some standing, some looking at the camera, some not. They are always in some natural location. The shot up from low in the grass is very popular, but they might also do the one where the band is lingering on the bank of a stream or congregated around a large tree. One member of the band is always wearing a strange hat. No one smiles. They have looks on their faces that say, “It’s tough being the arbiters of the kind of hard truth encompassed by our music.” All of these bands inevitably fall under the category of Mountain. You could be looking at one of these photos and almost certainly it could be Mountain. You’d never know. I had a friend who used to tell new people at his job that his boss had been the drummer for Grand Funk Railroad, just to watch the new kid ask the guy about it. It was hilarious. The guy settling your insurance claim could be the guitar player for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. You’d never know. The guy taking the money at the toll booth might be the base player for Little Feet. You’d never know.
This man can and will save you from Anaphylactic Shock.
David Lee Roth was an EMT in New York, for a time, and the only time Van Halen was memorable was during the David Lee Roth years. As a side note I would like to say that considering the number of rough nights that guy must have survived, he is exactly who I want to see looking down at me when I have called for an ambulance. Tangent.
The point is I hate these photos. There is something essentially wrong with their continued existence. At least in the public sphere. This stuff is, by virtue of the band’s failure to live up to the iconic poses they struck on the album sleeve, personal memorabilia. It is an artifact of someone’s youthful ambitions lingering impotently in some total stranger’s junk box, in an attic or a closet. It belongs in the sphere of private archeology. Yet there they are, at the garage sale for public perusal, whether said public cares or not. Someone’s lost moment of withered, curdled, and temporary triumph flipped face forward by a casual fingernail making it’s way to the back of the collection in search of something more salvageable.
This hate is of course merely an extension of my resentment for my own personal memorabilia. I know that. I acknowledge the fact of it. I have no sense of nostalgia. I lack the nostalgia gene. I hate the crap that lingers. The little bits of life that accumulate as it molts its way to the grave. Ticket stubs for movies or concerts, letters, souvenirs of places I’ve been, gifts from people I used to know, drink with, sleep with whose phone numbers I don’t even have anymore. If something hangs around for longer than a year without a stated purpose then it has to go. Otherwise I will stumble across it in some drawer. I hate that. Some people love nostalgia, trips down memory lane, but it all just feels like weight to me. These things make me feel heavy, laden. For some reason my mind always turns these things to whatever painful moment lies to either side of the minute the object first came into my life. If it is from a relationship I remember how it ended, the things I said and did that hurt that person and that I will always regret. The stray ticket stub brings me back to a year and all the tragedies great and small that year may encompass. Letters are like memory shrapnel grenades, full of references to other memories lying in wait inside the memory of the letter itself, and, inevitably, one or two broken promises hide there, too. And God forbid I should find something from my childhood.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but it is my suspicion that a lot of people feel this way. People who had childhoods that they regret, whether they were abused or poor or just cruelly tossed about by fate in some way. I think for us, the only way you can survive and be healthy is by believing that you are not your history, but instead you are what you make yourself anew everyday. That life is always in the making and never finished until the last gasp of air leaves your body. I sincerely look forward to waking up everyday. I love a brand new day. I love every unwritten moment of my future. What happened yesterday is only what set the parameters for today. And today is all that matters. Tomorrow is a promise that you can’t count on. Arsonists are the criminals I understand most. Of course, all I’ve been talking about is the past and I am working on a memoir. This is acknowledged bullshit.
I was at a party the other night and it came up that, during my youth, I had been a fat geek. At which point , my friend Sarah said, “I just can’t picture that.” Which is great. That is good. If I said, “I was a fat geek when I was a kid.” And everyone just kind of nodded like that much was obvious and then moved on to a new topic, then there is a great deal of hard work that would have been for nothing. But the fact is, I was a fat geek.
Now, I suppose that it could be something you just left behind and pretended that it had no bearing on your life. And if I were a part of an older generation, that might be my preferred route. But older generations were repressed to the point of functional alcoholism and mine is confessional to the point of public embarrassment. (for us, functional alcoholism is a lifestyle choice, not a necessity.) Also, having overcome that childhood as a tubby outcast, it is now part of my story. The survival, conquering, and reform of my body and my public image is part of what makes me tougher than most. But this brings us to the next problem.
Nowadays, everyone claims they were a nerd. Everyone claims they were a geek and an outcast, unloved and abused by their peers who didn’t understand that they were just different. I think, on some level, in spite of the statistical impossibility, people actually believe this about themselves. I think youth is a time when you feel unsure and insecure and even the prom queen feels that deep down inside. It becomes easy to look back and remember only the sense of internal conflict that comes along with puberty and simply forget that you expressed it by dumping the contents of your cat’s litter box on the pimply girl with bad teeth during a public assembly. These days, the former prom queen rewrites her personal history so that she was the pimply girl and, most of the time, I would bet that the prom queen is entirely unaware that she is even doing it.
There is a reason it has come to this rewriting of personal histories on such a grand scale. The tech age, the rise of Sci Fi on TV, the ascendance of video games and comic books, porn. We live in a time when Geek Culture is what defines mass culture. These days the nerds are the Masters of the Universe and the only ones still making money. All of the jocks who went to business school are villains too lacking in self-awareness not to complain about losing their bonus on the cable news shows. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs debuts a tablet computer and gets more press than the President (who also gave a speech that day, apparently) and spends a week being compared to Moses. All of this started with John Hughes, to give both credit and blame where it is due, and now twenty five years later, our high schools full of Blaines have become a world of would be Duckies. All of that is fine, we all want to be on the winning side and one of the best things about nerds is that they tend to be forgiving welcoming people who are more willing to look the other way at whatever horrible secrets a person’s past might hold. Even terminal popularity.
There is one thing though, and this brings us back to the party, because the question people always immediately ask and that Sarah asked is “Are there pictures?” And this is when you get to lay the smack down on all the wannabes. I have shown this picture to only two or three people in my adult life. (not counting a different situation which is tough to explain, weird shit goes on in acting school.) One of these people was a woman I was with for eight years, another is the woman I married, I think a very old friend. The first woman said she could only recognize that it was me because of the moles on my neck. But now, I am coming out. I am going to let my geek flag fly, with apologies to the posers because, like a true geek, I hate it when people feel bad. But still, kids, the truth is the truth. And now the truth will be seen…
in all its horror.I was around 13 or 14.
Yes! That’s right! In your face! I was fat and unpopular and it sucked to be me… wait. that isn’t cool.
Oh well, too late now. Anyway, there you go, Sarah, photographic evidence. “Enjoy” doesn’t seem like the right word.
Hey People! So much going on for your entertainment pleasure in the rollicking world storytelling. Which means that I am getting ready to plug my show tonight. BUT Before I do that I am going to plug someone else’s show. Why, because I’m like that. And because this looks like a great time. And because it features Kevin Allison who is a friend to children, small animals, and people who tell embarrassing things on stage.
Podpourri is an extravaganza of new media luminaries. These are people with podcasts, blogs, innovative radio projects, online comics and animation, all kinds of cool shit that makes the internet not just a place for procrastination, but a place of meaningful procrastination. These are the people who make the internet a little more of a cross between the New Yorker and Playboy circa 1968, to balance out all the times that it is Swank meets InTouch. Then they take it all and put it in a blender with video and audio and cutting edge design and pour out a whole new kind of brain booze. From here I will let the graphics talk, except to say that I will be there tomorrow, front row center. You know, to meet people who do a better job with new media than I do.
See this show.
Now to plug my shit! Tonight is the Creek and the theme is Bad Habits! This is our killer line up:
Mark Sam Rosenthal,
Sue Gardner,
Giulia Rozzi,
Jennifer DeMerritt,
Daisy Rosario
and Andy Ross
With Cyndi and I co-hosting PLUS! GODDAMMIT! PLUS! a mystery guest drawn from the hat. And to prove what I say, here is video of one of our past mystery guests: Kathleen Miller.
Allen is pissed. But it’s the middle of the day and he is sober so instead of starting a fight with an entire fraternity and throwing furniture through the window of a retail establishment, he is refusing to look at me and being snarky and passive.
“Well I hope Sarah enjoyed her tour of the poverty sideshow. I hope she got lots of good pictures of other people’s misery. I’m sure that will help her on her final.”
This is directed at me, but he is staring towards the door of the coffee shop with a forced smile plastered across his face. I have seen this guy spit in the face of men twice his size and get up smiling, genuinely, after they punch him.
Allen is pissed at me because I took Sarah, a mutual friend and a photo major at Washington University, down to my hometown and its surrounding environs so she could take some photos. Sarah is not from around here and she wanted to head down to some of the more blown out parts of the state to get some documentary style shots. Sarah has long dark curly hair, a curvy figure, and a smile that looks like she is seducing anything and everything that might drift into its paralyzing tractor beam. I didn’t mind showing her around. Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to happen there and nothing did. But I enjoy her company. Aside from being cute, she is smart and funny, and I’m willing to do her a favor.
Allen, who is likewise a towny from a background of poor, ignorant, violent criminals, regards this as a sort of class betrayal on my part. We are both friends with many of the Wash U students, but we are also keenly aware that we are not part of their club. We have each had our run ins with getting into fights or bed with our social betters, depending on how the night turned. We both feel out of place even though we were born not that far away. But for all we have in common, we have clearly hit an impasse in how we view my trip down south with Sarah.
“Nothing is as much fun as a trip to the zoo, I suppose.”
And, weirdly, Allen is being a girl about it. The man is a classic car mechanic with a nose that has been broken more times than an Indian Treaty and suddenly he has become Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I understand his feelings. I don’t feel them as deeply, because by this time I have cut off all contact with the vast majority of my family. This is not something you should attempt unless you are sure you can grow that scar nice and thick. Allen still lives in his Grandmother’s house. If everything outside the city limits burned to the ground, I would regard it as an opportunity to start this failed experiment over. Allen would have more mixed feelings.
But that isn’t the whole of it. I had something I wanted out of this. I wanted Sarah to take a photo of this one building. And up to this point, I have not put into words what this building means to me.
It is the office of a feed and tractor lot on a back woods stretch of highway called Cherokee Pass. The building is barely big enough for two aluminum desks, some filing cabinets, and there is a door that I assume leads to a very small bathroom. I know this in spite of the fact that I have never known the place to be open, because the building is almost entirely glass. It is a coming together of a bare minimum of white and green siding arranged at a jagged angle as a cage for plate glass, the roof larger than the base and angled so as to point slightly higher than the horizon. Spreading out from the roof is an awning that cuts another ambitious reach out over the gravel parking lot. The entire structure seems to be pointing up and away, towards the future.
Of course, that future never came. Someone built this thing out in the middle of nowhere southern Missouri and pointed it at a destiny that it never had any chance of keeping up with. It is a carport for a space car, surrounded by John Deere tractors that someone seems to have given up trying to unload. But it is a sign that someone had a different idea than what came to pass, it wasn’t always going to be methamphetamine and random shootings. There was clearly a belief on somebody’s part that the rising tide of fifties and sixties American prosperity would lift all boats. I picture a round faced guy with store bought suit, a perpetual smile, and a thinning hairline, standing in this gravel parking lot with his hands on his hips and hope in his heart. That guy’s dream was utterly doomed, but just from the fact that he had that dream, it makes me feel like something else was once possible out here, something else had a fighting chance. The place is a time capsule from a future that never happened. I want a picture of it. Maybe it will make me feel like a psychic from another dimension. Who knows?
I don’t tell Allen this. I suppose I should come up with something. Before I can, Sarah walks in with a set of proofs from our trip. She sees Allen and hits him with her best sleepy eyed smile.
“Allen! I haven’t seen you in weeks. Get your butt up and give me a hug.”
Allen stands up as instructed. His face turns a bright shade of red and his demeanor goes from put out housewife to “Aw Shucks” cowboy. Then Sarah shoves him back down into his chair and announce that he has to stay and have a look at these shots she got. Allen sits back down as instructed. Face still red. It might be permanent. I look at him, waiting, but he won’t make eye contact.
Doesn’t matter what I was going to say anyway.
Allen is pissed. But it’s the middle of the day and he is sober so instead of starting a fight with an entire fraternity and throwing furniture through the window of a retail establishment, he is refusing to look at me and being snarky and passive aggressive.
“Well I hope Sarah enjoyed her tour of the poverty sideshow. I hope she got lots of good pictures of other people’s misery. I’m sure that will help her on her final.”
This is directed at me, but he is staring towards the door of the coffee shop with a forced smile plastered across his face. I have seen this guy spit in the face of men twice his size and get up smiling, genuinely, after they punch him.
Allen is pissed at me because I took Sarah, a mutual friend and a photo major at Washington University, down to my hometown and its surrounding environs so she could take some photos. Sarah is not from around here and she wanted to head down to some of the more blown out parts of the state to get some documentary style shots. Sarah has long dark curly hair, a curvy figure, and a smile that looks like she is seducing anything and everything that might drift into its paralyzing tractor beam. I didn’t mind showing her around. Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to happen there and nothing did. But I enjoy her company. Aside from being cute, she is smart and funny, and I’m willing to do her a favor.
Allen, who is likewise a towny from a background of poor, ignorant, violent criminals, regards this as a sort of class betrayal on my part. We are both friends with many of the Wash U students, but we are also keenly aware that we are not part of their club. We have each had our run ins with getting into fights or bed with our social betters, depending on how the night turned. We both feel out of place even though we were born not that far away. But for all we have in common, we have clearly hit an impasse in how we view my trip down south with Sarah.
“Nothing is as much fun as a trip to the zoo, I suppose.”
And, weirdly, Allen is being a girl about it. The man is a classic car mechanic with a nose that has been broken more times than an Indian Treaty and suddenly he has become Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I understand his feelings. I don’t feel them as deeply, because by this time I have cut off all contact with the vast majority of my family. This is not something you should attempt unless you are sure you can grow that scar nice and thick. Allen still lives in his Grandmother’s house. If everything outside the city limits burned to the ground, I would regard it as an opportunity to start this failed experiment over. Allen would have more mixed feelings.
moved next door.
But that isn’t the whole of it. I had something I wanted out of this. I wanted Sarah to take a photo of this one building. And up to this point, I have not put into words what this building means to me.
It is the office of a feed and tractor lot on a back woods stretch of highway called Cherokee Pass. The building is barely big enough for two aluminum desks, some filing cabinets, and there is a door that I assume leads to a very small bathroom. I know this, in spite of the fact that I have never known the place to be open, because the building is almost entirely glass. It is a coming together of a bare minimum of white and green siding arranged at a jagged angle as a cage for plate glass, the roof larger than the base and angled so as to point slightly higher than the horizon. Spreading out from the roof is an awning that cuts another ambitious reach out over the gravel parking lot. The entire structure seems to be pointing up and away, towards the future.
Of course, that future never came. Someone built this thing out in the middle of nowhere southern Missouri and pointed it at a destiny that it never had any chance of keeping up with. It is a carport for a space car, surrounded by John Deere tractors that someone seems to have given up trying to unload. But it is a sign that someone had a different idea than what came to pass, it wasn’t always going to be methamphetamine and random shootings. There was clearly a belief on somebody’s part that the rising tide of fifties and sixties American prosperity would lift all boats. I picture a round faced guy with store bought suit, a perpetual smile, and a thinning hairline, standing in this gravel parking lot with his hands on his hips and hope in his heart. That guy’s dream was utterly doomed, but just from the fact that he had that dream, it makes me feel like something else was once possible out here, something else had a fighting chance. The place is a time capsule from a future that never happened. I want a picture of it. Maybe it will make me feel like a psychic from another dimension. Who knows?
I don’t tell Allen this. I suppose I should come up with something. Before I can, Sarah walks in with a set of proofs from our trip. She sees Allen and hits him with her best sleepy eyed smile.
“Allen! I haven’t seen you in weeks. Get your butt up and give me a hug.”
Allen stands up, as instructed. His face turns a bright shade of red and his demeanor goes from put out housewife to “Aw Shucks” cowboy. Then Sarah shoves him back down into his chair and announce that he has to stay and have a look at these shots she got. Allen stays seated, as instructed. Face still red. It might be permanent. I look at him, waiting, but he won’t make eye contact.
Really doesn’t matter, what I was going to say, anyway.
Get him a scotch and he's ready for the ad business.
I originally published this post one year ago and I decided to revisit it and see how I had done…
I have no intention of quitting smoking. It is my experience that no one actually does quit smoking, at least not by the Tom Brokaw definition. Everyone who says they have quit smoking continues to sneak the occasional cigarette, bumming them, off of me usually, or even getting themselves a pack because its the weekend and we all know that nicotine consumed on Friday or Saturday night, like calories during the same period, does not count. The possible exception being those that quit and then become anti-smoking zealots who harangue the rest of us endlessly. Those folks might stay chaste when it comes to tobacco, but I really couldn’t say what their personal habits are like as I make a real effort to never spend time with people who suck.
However, what I have always said when people ask me if I will ever quit, is that I intend to smoke for as long as I continue to enjoy it. And I have stopped enjoying it. I have been experiencing shortness of breath, fatigue, a definite downward turn in mood with the first cigarette of the day and the pain of the monetary cost has finally become too much to justify. Something has to change.
I don’t believe in quitting things, unless you are one of the small percentage of people who have a compulsive addiction to substances. If you find it impossible to control yourself when it comes to chemical alterations to your brain, you may need a strict set of rules and a regimen of behavior modification in order to stay clear. This is a smaller percentage of the population than the enrollment at twelve step programs would lead you to believe. Those places are over populated with people who simply need an excuse for their lives to be all about them. The twelve steppers offer a religion of the “me” that attracts people addicted to self absorption much more than it attracts people who are truly addictive. This is also why the various rehab groups have become great networking spots for the entertainment business and there are a lot of folks in that business who are twelve stepping their way to the next big deal. So, unless you are one of the few people who have a legitimate problem with addiction or if you are a health nut who is determined to live forever, another compulsion I will never understand in spite of my own gym habit, I see no reason to go around quitting things. People who set up arbitrary rules for themselves are only looking for excuses to break them and that is not quitting, but rather a sort of self directed oedipal complex. Being your own mother makes masturbation a sketchy exercise. Which is not a judgement. If breaking “the rules” makes that cigarette taste a little better for you, then I say you save up your Camel Cash for the Camel Paddle and go to town. But for myself, I don’t quit things. I never quit taking drugs. I just simply no longer had twelve free hours to dedicate to hallucinating and pot began to bore me. But I never said, “I quit.” I simply got more involved in other things. That is not quitting, that is losing interest.
Now, I am beginning to lose interest in smoking.
Nothing moves product like subtle (?) overtones of domestic violence.
I am no masochist and as I said above, my love of cigarettes is dependent wholly upon whether or not I am still enjoying them and I am not. I no more believe in being a slave to habit that I do in being a slave to arbitrary disciplines you are not going to stick to. Any alteration of one’s behavior has to be realistically based on what your genuine desires are. I enjoyed smoking and there are times when I still do, but on the whole it has become drudgery, an irritating little compulsion that leaves me feeling slow and a little soiled. But I know that there are moments in my life when a cigarette will still be a welcome reward. When I have a show, when I have written something that I am particularly proud of, when I am out with friends, these are going to be times when a smoke will make me feel that light and cool sensation, that lateral slide into calmness that only the nicotine aficionado truly understands.
So, I have come up with a set of behavior modifications that fit with my actual goals, which are to enjoy my life as much as possible and die well before any long slow decline into insanity and incontinence can get rolling. Basically, the new rules are these: All of the above circumstances are fine for smoking. Why? Because I am going to anyway. When smoking is not allowed is when I am bored, can’t think of anything else to do, or am merely walking from one place to another. That is smoking not for enjoyment but out of laziness and a lack of creativity. I can be lazy and uncreative, but I will be damned if I am going to be reminded of that fact every hour and a half. The other stipulation is this. I will no longer spend more than twenty dollars a week on cigarettes. In New York, that comes to two packs. I have been spending close to eighty or a hundred a week and, frankly, I can no longer stomach it. Cigarettes are finally wandering into territory where the extravagance should be shameful, especially in an economy that has so many suffering and uncertain about how they will come by the basics. In that situation, if you are spending a hundred dollars a week on a drug habit, well, that is a little colder than I can muster up. Not to mention the fact that this economy is no picnic for me either. Honestly, I could use that extra sixty to eighty dollars that I used to burn.
"Men who smoke Gay Boys..." why did this brand fail?
So, no, I have not quit smoking. But I have lost a certain amount of interest. It has become inconvenient and less enjoyable. It has become a symbol of my own laziness rather than a reward for my industry. That has to change. Or the cigarettes will have to go.
… And the answer is: I have stuck by this. I have neither quit nor have I returned to my previous level of in-take. I still reserve smoking as a reward for industriousness and a treat when I am out. And, while 2009 was an extremely industrious year, I smoke less when I am drinking now. Not to toot my own horn, but I would call this a success, both in healthier living and self-awareness.
TONIGHT! I will begin a monthly guest appearance with New York’s rowdiest meanest hardest drinking storytelling improv rock n’ roll storytelling band. No commas. BTK are doing a year long engagement at Under St. Mark’s, every second Monday, with Adam Wade as an opener. I will be doing a featured guest spot at each show. Me and my harmonica and my history of irresponsible behavior. Follow the links for all the info you will ever need. Then watch this video. Then read the story I am posting today which is actually about someone else’s irresponsible behavior. I, for once, get to play the sage. This may never happen again.
I call this story Stupidity is its Own Reward.
There is no such thing as Karma. There is no reincarnation, there is no hell, there is no divine judgment. If you are a prick in this life, then you are simply a prick. That’s it, end of story. All there is, is the choices that you make and the consequences you live with.
Hitler killed six million jews, two million in Gypsies, gays, communists, and Catholics, and I don’t even know how many died in the war he started. He was a miserable human being who lived his life in hate, fear, and rage and then blew his brains out instead of face the wrath of the world he had so offended. He was not reborn as a slug or a naked mole rat. It may be satisfying to some to think that his soul still exists, that his conciousness is now serving out a sentence in some kind of well designed Nazi version of damnation. That he is now a doormat outside the great synagogue in the sky or that he is currently nailed with railroad spikes to a front row seat at Hell’s reparatory production Fiddler on the Roof. Or if you believe in a universe without glib irony, that he perpetually burns in one of his own ovens from now until the end of time. It’s a nice thought. It would be deserved. It would be cosmic justice.
There is no cosmic justice.
Hitler’s only punishment was that he was Hitler. Is that enough? Nothing would ever be enough. There is no justice to be had for someone who kills eight million people because he feels kind of inadequate and has to put it on somebody else because, not only is he inadequate, but he is also too much of a pussy to face his own inadequacies. Is that satisfying? No. It sucks. Welcome to life. Hitler got away with it. With the exception of the fact that he had to be the weasely little bastard that he was. But that’s all there is.
If you hate Nazis and Emo kids...
You make choices. You make your choices based on the strength of your character, the experience you have accumulated, and the information you think to be true. Then there are consequences. Sometimes, you are a little late to work and your boss gets pissed. Sometimes, you work a shitty back-breaking job to support kids you can’t afford. On rare occasions, you rise to power, form a nightmare state, and lead a nation to the slaughter of countless innocents. Then you die.
Sometimes, you go to college, get the job of your dreams, marry the love of your life, and die while making love to said love of your life with a belly full of yummy Ice Cream.
There is of course the variable of blind stupid luck. Which covers everything from being born rich to getting cancer.
But everything else is the choices that you make.
I had a friend, Jack. Jack was a nice guy, a good friend, smart. I liked him. But Jack believed in Karma. Why did Jack believe in Karma. Because he had done something real stupid, he had really hurt someone, and he was a good enough person to feel bad about it. He was such a good person and he felt so bad about what he had done, that he had to believe that he was in for some kind of divine retribution. He could not believe that the universe would let him just get away with it.
But the universe didn’t punish Jack. Jack punished Jack.
Jack had dated this girl, Louise. Louise was a great girl. Patient and kind and good to children and small animals. I spent almost no time in Louise’s company because, quite frankly, she bored the hell out of me. She just never had anything interesting to say, so far as I was concerned. But from all reports of everyone I knew, and from Jack himself, she was a great person, a generous soul who would give you the shirt off her back and her panties if the situation was really that dire. Which means that she in no way deserved it when Jack slept with her best friend, after a three year relationship, then dumped her for said best friend, so he could establish a relationship that lasted all of three months. Because it took him three months to realize that said best friend was a high maintenance bitch who was almost insufferable outside the bedroom.
Working on a book. A memoir in essay form, as that’s what the kids are into these days. Also, when you do it in essay form you get out of the trap of having to turn your life into a trite object lesson to illustrate some ridiculous moral. That is what happens when you raise an entire generation on after school specials. We expect everything to have a Mrs. Garrett style tag at the end. “This is my entire life, and that is how I learned to just be myself!” Anyway, that is a tangent. And I like tangents, which is actually a geometric term stemming from the Latin Tangere but oddly does not share a root with Tangier which stems from the
Are you choking?
Berber name Tinji which refers to a Goddess. But, I digress.
Here is one of the chapters for the book. It is one of the lighter chapter and the first transcription of the story that won me my first Moth slam. Enjoy!
She Saved Me From Choking, In Spite Of Her Desire To Strangle Me. – from the upcoming book version of Monsters In The Wood.
Amy and I had been fighting all day. At the ages of thirteen and eight respectively, our stamina for battle was endless. We had started around breakfast, made our way through lunch, and were working our way towards dinner.
“You’re stupid!”
“You’re a jerk!”
“You’re dumb!”
We could do this for hours. In fact we did do this for hours. From Saturday morning cartoons to the primetime line-up, we followed each other around the house.
“You’re a butt-head!”
“You’re a dork!”
“You’re fat!”
Upstairs, downstairs, outside to walk the dog. We had started in the living room. From there we had covered the basement and each of our bedrooms in a roving exchange of insults. It was like one of those episodes of The West Wing where all the smart, witty, earnest characters would walk around the halls of The White House debating gun control policy or health care. The only difference was we were debating which one of us smelled more like doo-doo.
dog heimlich, no joke.
“You’re a moron!”
“You are so annoying!”
One would go to the bathroom and the other would wait outside.
“You should never have been born!”
“You should drop dead!”
“I hate you!”
“I hate you more!”
We were inexhaustible. The great conflicts of history, The British and The French Empires, China and Japan, America and the Soviets, Israel and everyone in the Middle East who isn’t Israel, these people had nothing on our ability to drag shit out.
Unfortunately, our Mother did not share our dedication to the cause. We had been a constant buzz in the background of her day, louder or more muted in waves like a mosquito the size of two very chubby children. Eventually, the very sound of our voices began to make her regret the DNA she had donated to what was clearly a failed experiment in continuing the species. Something had gone terribly wrong and mutants had been created. Mentally deficient mutants who lived only to orbit one another in an ongoing binary of mutual abuse. Sadistic little aberrations, these were her off spring. She didn’t remember drinking during the pregnancies. Was it too late to start now?
A few years back, a friend of mine sent me a link to an astrology site. The site gave month by month forecasts for each sign and my friend had claimed eerie accuracy for this one. Now, I understand the attraction of astrology. It is inherently all about you. Whether it is a description of whatever traits are assigned to each sign or predictions about the future, they are YOUR traits and YOUR future. I don’t fault anyone for being into it, either. The idea that the movement of the planets affects your day to day life or the shape of your personality makes just as much sense as the idea that a guy who died 2000 years ago rose from the dead, or that if you have been bad you will return to life as a squid, or that some Asian prince returns over and over again as different people, always in the same place and always of the same race. I know rational, intelligent people who believe all of these things and I can’t prove that any of those ideas are bad ones or wrong. Nor am I much inclined to. I have no idea how the universe functions and I simply don’t care so long as it doesn’t get in the way of whatever I am up to. It is very much an artist’s mindset I guess, you have your subjects and themes and everything else is idle speculation.
At any rate I took to having a look at my friend’s recommended website. And like the bible or any other philosophy, much was left to interpretation. There were strange bullseyes. The new moon will reveal secrets about a friend and lo and behold a friend of mine went to the hospital for a drug addiction I was unaware of. And times when it was left wanting. Venus in whatever sign DID NOT improve my fucking finances. So, in many ways, at the end of the day, the only thing to recommend astrology over, say, Catholicism, was its accessibility. It was always right there, just a mouse click away, for your speculation and to offer ready context. That, and astrology seems to make no judgments about who you have sex with.
It occurred to me, though, that this meant nothing in a vacuum and context was needed. So, I went on to check out a few other sites that offered monthly forecasts in hopes of cross referencing. This yielded some interesting stuff. First of all, to every one’s credit, no one is just making shit up. Of the three websites that I visited, all were using a common playbook. Each astrologer really believed that there were fixed meanings to the positions of the planets and they all agreed on what the broad outlines of those meanings were. None of them were ever really in direct conflict. One never said that the moon meant love while the other said it meant brain trauma due to a car accident. In the macro view, they all follow the same philosophy.
He was totally hanging at that bar at the South Pole before you were, Poser.
I generally find nostalgia to be the most pathetic and sad of all emotions. Certainly, everyone experiences it, but it should be treated as a moral weakness not to be given in to, like the urge to commit infidelity or to curse at someone in the service industry. But instead, there is a large portion of our society that fetishize the condition and holds it dear as some kind of affirmation of self. New York is rife with this behavior and you get used to tolerating it, but now some tragic hack named Jon Vorwald has written an article for the Times that turns public masturbation into an act so self congratulatory and lacking in intellectual honesty that it makes the entire paper stink like the towel a teen age boy keeps next to his computer.
The article is basically a bid for authenticity. And like all such cries, the lady doeth protest too much. He takes the typical and cliched tactic of picking a neighborhood (in this case, the Lower East Side) and declares its glory days past and himself a hold out of its faded status. He is the real thing and these new people are shallow and worthless. Then he decides to speak for Lou Reed. He wraps all of this up by informing us that he has lived in this neighborhood for a grand total of six years. I don’t know the guy, so I will assume that he only sounds like an idiot. Maybe I misread the article and he is trying to be ironic, like the T-shirts that he claims have lost their charm. Would that mean that he actually likes those T-shirts?
But if he is serious, and considering the crap that the Times has published of late, like the article about Hipsters gaining weight as an anti-Obama statement, it is likely that he is, it is not the worst that I have seen. These people who try to buy their bona-fides by pretending to represent some lost and better age are symptomatic of a city whose ability to constantly change and grow lies at the heart of both its ongoing relevance and its constant challenge to a person’s sense of self and place. It is natural that some of the weaker among us would wail about what was lost rather than use this city’s boundless energy to create something new. While Vorwald’s longing for less than a decade ago, otherwise known as The Bush Administration, is ridiculous it does not rise to the offensiveness that people who are wistful for the grim old days of the 70’s and 80’s do. These people talk about how “tough and gritty” this town used to be. What they are actually nostalgic for is a time when other people were becoming statistics of violent crime, when other people were being subjected to murder, rape, and muggings, when other people were falling victim to the AIDS and crack epidemics. But don’t worry, I am sure they were all happy to make the ultimate sacrifice so that you could have an authentic experience.
Strummer thinks you suck, he told me so. Really.
For my part, I intend to keep doing what I do. I intend to keep making something new in New York City. You can catch me at Burlesque shows and storytelling shows and art shows all around this town, sometimes on the Lower East Side (maybe you have seen me at The Delancy or at The Tenement Museum) I intend to keep this ever changing city changing. I intend to wake up to the amazing new thing New York manages to be everyday. And as I head to events at The Nuyorican and I have to step over the people who weep for the missing “Radio Clash” mural when they could be putting up something new, I will do so confident in the knowledge that Joe Strummer would have reacted with more creativity.
But let’s end by hearing from Lou Reed who said, “I don’t like nostalgia unless it’s mine.” I’m sure that goes for you too, Jon.
