This story begins in my childhood. Now, as most of you know from reading my words, I’d always wanted to be a radio-broadcaster, followed by a baseball player, a fireman, with a lingering interest in the arts.
As it turned out, I did end up becoming a print journalist & a for a number of years & a radio announcer briefly, but then I burned out with those career choices and decided to try other fields, whether they have proved successful or not, I’m not totally sure, even with the current job i hold.
While growing up in suburban Chicago, Saturday afternoons was always a great time to sit back, relax & enjoy what was on WGN television. I was an avid fan of old films, particularly though, the old Shirley Temple movies, that featured both her & Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. There was always a basic plot to the film, most times kind of silly, but then came the scenes in which young Shirley & Bojangles would be a-hoofling & a-dancing atop staircases & across wooden floors. I knew right away that I wanted to learn how to do that.
Tap-dance. It was the single most thing I really wanted to learn, but when you’re a kid, you have so many aspirations, so many dreams, so many goals that well, they get put off until you realize one day while you’re combing over all of your old ideas, that, well, bingo! You find that long-lost rusted needle in the haystack from 35 years ago, still shining for you to take to take a hold of & utilize to the best of your ability.
It was easy to become a tap-dancer, so I thought. I did start out as the minimalist finger-popping, hand-stomping counter table top dancer, tapping out rhythms with my index, middle and ring fingers on both hands, with the thumb & pinky fingers eventually joining in for the bigger dance routines. Some folks were amused at first, but then it was dubbed as noise & I had to find other places to bang out my rhythms, mostly on floors or desks or wooden benches at school, college & my apartments.
Sometimes I added hand-clapping and singing to my minimalist dancing routines, to give it a little flavor, an extra spit of spice in the numbers. Then, about 10 years ago or longer, I was talking to my mom about taking tap & she wanted to take it with me. Like me, she had always wanted to learn to dance that way, but for some reason or another decided not to.
Then about a year ago, as I was changing music styles, I went from learning vocals to throat-singing, the idea to tap-dance started to come around again. I was traveling to a sound poetry festival in Portland, Oregon, as a participant. The year before I had been a cell-phone participant, but this time, I was going full steam ahead, as I did a lot of text-based sound-enunciated related poetry & pieces.
On the following day, Sunday afternoon, I toured the Columbian river & Gorge with the festival’s host & organizer mARK oWENS, his wife Maria & David Braden, a computer-based performer. When driving back to the Portland airport to drop David off, I mentioned to both mARK & David that I had desired to become the world’s first tap-dancing throat-singer, they both laughed out loud & one of them remarked that I was “crazy.”
Well, here it is, eight months later & my craziness is about to be fulfilled. And I couldn’t be any happier, excited & thrilled about the prospect.
Saturday, April 30
Friday, April 29
Hello Kitty Goes Home For Good
At my desk at work for months has sat a Hello Kitty wind-up calendar. Hello Kitty was a culture phenomenon that I stumbled upon by accident, just like many things in my humble life.
It all started around 1995, in San Francisco, when I was walking around with my friend Robin in Japantown & before we stopped into the local Denny’s, we waded through a local open air mall & looked around. Lots of kiosks with trinkets galore of one type or another. We kept walking along until I stepped into a shop that was selling Hello Kitty stuff.
I inquired about Hello Kitty & the man behind the counter told me that Hello Kitty was so very beloved in the hearts of many, many, many little girls all around the world. So after hearing that, I decided to buy myself a Hello Kitty white cotton tee shirt. When I returned to San Francisco the following year, I posed with a statue of Hello Kitty , that was passed around by my friends all across the world, via the internet. It was among my favorite shirts until early September, 1997, when due to a stress-related crisis, my right shoulder popped out of its socket & the emergency medical team had to cut the shirt I was wearing at the time off of me. Of course, I just happened to be wearing that one.
About a year later, I bought a replacement shirt, this time a gray cotton tee, which to this day I still wear from time to time, despite the tightness it creates upon my chest. When I first my funny pal Isabel online on June 18, 2000 & then later during the late summer in person in London, England, Hello Kitty was a great bonding tool for us, even though she didn’t know anything about her. So, to break the ice, I sent her a Hello Kitty hand-puppet. Isabel was intrigued, amused & most of all, hooked on everything Hello Kitty.
But it was in London, when my most memorable Hello Kitty experience occurred. I was sightseeing in the Soho district, when I passed by a gay pub with a dozen or so men standing around, drinking and talking. As I passed them by, all of a sudden they stopped what they were doing, looked at me, then at my Hello Kitty shirt & all of them, as if on cue, cooed to me in unison, “Ooooooooooooooooo, Hello Kitty!” and then laughed. I turned strawberry red as I continued walking past them.
Over the years, through friends mostly, I’ve received lots of Hello Kitty items, such as the Hello Kitty toothbrush from my number one social mechanic, Turtleneck, who didn’t want me to be brushing with a Barbie toothbrush (that’s another story for another time). Then Suzy Q bought me a Hello Kitty doormat in late 2002, for my new basement apartment, which my crazy landlady always insisted on washing it herself without asking me! I picked a few more Hello Kitty trinkets here & there, mostly stickers & wallpaper.
Sometime in 2003, my former musical partner & FBI-fearing friend Lew Brickhate sent to me in the mail a pink Hello Kitty bag, in which I house my cell phone & other accessories.
I think one of the oddest & perhaps saddest experiences I had with Hello Kitty was with my 2nd vocals teacher, Miss Lexlax. She always felt uneasy & freaked out while in my presence & even asked me one time, “What galaxy are you from?” she never could comprehend as to why a man would get into Hello Kitty to begin with. Neither could I, but marched onward.
Finally, I did disprove that strange theory as I did find a man with a Hello Kitty briefcase riding on the El in Chicago one night. My heart skipped a thousand beats & I smiled from ear to ear. In my most relationship with Evelyn, for a time when we talked online, she used to use a screen backdrop that featured Hello Kitty with falling hearts & she even bought a Hello Kitty purse.
My influence on her was apparently pretty strong, at least until the end. Keeping that in mind, I decided to take home the Hello Kitty wind-up calender & let it enjoy its proper surrounding, at home in my apartment, along with everything else. Upon my desk now, is an empty space where Hello Kitty used to standing front of the petrified potato chip, like a rider-less horse in a presidential funeral procession.
There’s also a sad face on Baby Papoose. The pink stress pig has turned sideways in protest, Howard the fossilized fish has turned diagonal, while Creuella the tarantula & Groggleman the scorpion have both curled up in a fetal position, hiding behind Howard. Who will they all talk to & get into orgies with when I go home tonight with their former playmate forever?
It all started around 1995, in San Francisco, when I was walking around with my friend Robin in Japantown & before we stopped into the local Denny’s, we waded through a local open air mall & looked around. Lots of kiosks with trinkets galore of one type or another. We kept walking along until I stepped into a shop that was selling Hello Kitty stuff.
I inquired about Hello Kitty & the man behind the counter told me that Hello Kitty was so very beloved in the hearts of many, many, many little girls all around the world. So after hearing that, I decided to buy myself a Hello Kitty white cotton tee shirt. When I returned to San Francisco the following year, I posed with a statue of Hello Kitty , that was passed around by my friends all across the world, via the internet. It was among my favorite shirts until early September, 1997, when due to a stress-related crisis, my right shoulder popped out of its socket & the emergency medical team had to cut the shirt I was wearing at the time off of me. Of course, I just happened to be wearing that one.
About a year later, I bought a replacement shirt, this time a gray cotton tee, which to this day I still wear from time to time, despite the tightness it creates upon my chest. When I first my funny pal Isabel online on June 18, 2000 & then later during the late summer in person in London, England, Hello Kitty was a great bonding tool for us, even though she didn’t know anything about her. So, to break the ice, I sent her a Hello Kitty hand-puppet. Isabel was intrigued, amused & most of all, hooked on everything Hello Kitty.
But it was in London, when my most memorable Hello Kitty experience occurred. I was sightseeing in the Soho district, when I passed by a gay pub with a dozen or so men standing around, drinking and talking. As I passed them by, all of a sudden they stopped what they were doing, looked at me, then at my Hello Kitty shirt & all of them, as if on cue, cooed to me in unison, “Ooooooooooooooooo, Hello Kitty!” and then laughed. I turned strawberry red as I continued walking past them.
Over the years, through friends mostly, I’ve received lots of Hello Kitty items, such as the Hello Kitty toothbrush from my number one social mechanic, Turtleneck, who didn’t want me to be brushing with a Barbie toothbrush (that’s another story for another time). Then Suzy Q bought me a Hello Kitty doormat in late 2002, for my new basement apartment, which my crazy landlady always insisted on washing it herself without asking me! I picked a few more Hello Kitty trinkets here & there, mostly stickers & wallpaper.
Sometime in 2003, my former musical partner & FBI-fearing friend Lew Brickhate sent to me in the mail a pink Hello Kitty bag, in which I house my cell phone & other accessories.
I think one of the oddest & perhaps saddest experiences I had with Hello Kitty was with my 2nd vocals teacher, Miss Lexlax. She always felt uneasy & freaked out while in my presence & even asked me one time, “What galaxy are you from?” she never could comprehend as to why a man would get into Hello Kitty to begin with. Neither could I, but marched onward.
Finally, I did disprove that strange theory as I did find a man with a Hello Kitty briefcase riding on the El in Chicago one night. My heart skipped a thousand beats & I smiled from ear to ear. In my most relationship with Evelyn, for a time when we talked online, she used to use a screen backdrop that featured Hello Kitty with falling hearts & she even bought a Hello Kitty purse.
My influence on her was apparently pretty strong, at least until the end. Keeping that in mind, I decided to take home the Hello Kitty wind-up calender & let it enjoy its proper surrounding, at home in my apartment, along with everything else. Upon my desk now, is an empty space where Hello Kitty used to standing front of the petrified potato chip, like a rider-less horse in a presidential funeral procession.
There’s also a sad face on Baby Papoose. The pink stress pig has turned sideways in protest, Howard the fossilized fish has turned diagonal, while Creuella the tarantula & Groggleman the scorpion have both curled up in a fetal position, hiding behind Howard. Who will they all talk to & get into orgies with when I go home tonight with their former playmate forever?
Thursday, April 28
“That’s One Of The Fringe Benefits Of Being With A Writer”-Mourning For Evelyn>Act Two
As many of you know by now, I am already at a loss for Evelyn. I would have thought by now she would have moved on & left me alone to meditate, but no, so here I go again, dealing with another troubled & disturbed young woman.
Evelyn read my journal entry & of course didn’t agree with what I wrote. Interestingly enough, she didn’t waste anytime finding someone new to crawl around with. It’s called rebounding. Yet, she remains cruel-hearted with cruel intentions in mind.
I believe she is doing what so many other disgruntled people do when they can’t have their way; they resort to wiping out any memory they had in a previous relationship & put the entire blame on the other person, thereby shirking the responsibility off their shoulders & then turn around and tell her new heartthrob something like, “yeah, well he was a jerk anyway.” That’s what she told me about her first boyfriend early on, yet she’ll probably deny that too. Oh well.
The very idea of gutting a memory is shocking to say the least by using false pretenses and fear as vices. Stalkers use the same methods.
Last night, she popped up on my IM (instant messenger) & decided to get even, by sending me a link of some photographs of her current heartthrob, which I never bothered to look at. Again it took her 40 minutes to play around until the 41st minute when she told me what it was. Ahhh, some things never change.
I don’t get it. She has someone new, why does she want to hurt me? One possible answer could be that she feels she is the only person in the world who is misunderstood & to have someone write about her in such an exclusive & personal sort of way frightens her, as well as excites her too, in a twisted sort of way.
Now of course, she probably wouldn’t admit to such things & continue to be in denial of such actions, but I do respect her opinions (somewhat) & she can say whatever she likes. This is of course a free country & she can say or write whatever she feelings like saying or writing, just as I do. More so, my friend, the Minister of Sinister says, “That’s one of the fringe benefits of being with a writer.”
But in speaking in all seriousness, here’s what I need to tell you Evelyn, whether you read this or someone you know reads this or anyone out there who reads this who could feel like Evelyn at times (bet that makes you feel special, doesn’t it, Evelyn?); it’s over between us. You have someone new. Go enjoy him. Stop wasting all of your efforts on me.
You’ll get as far as a cold, dead body lying on a slab tucked inside a drawer at your local morgue. Whatever we did in our time together, just put it away. Stop trying to air your resentments toward me, no matter how angry & hurt you may appear to act. Revenge might be sweet for the moment, but it will come back to haunt you when you least expect it. Wishing harm on someone just because you are angry or hurting doesn’t resolve the issues at hand.
If you want to speak to me civilly, I will be civil to you. If you want to call me, I will talk to you. If you want to meet face-to-face & work out our differences, I will meet with you, name the time & date. If it’s really attention you are after, I will go onto Ebay & order you a mirror. I will gladly help you if you need help, but please stop this immature behavior. It’s doesn’t represent who you really are. The more you behave like this, the more you will destroy your self-worth & self-dignity.
I don’t want air out our squabbling in public, as this isn’t a column in the New York Post or The Chicago Sun-Times & I don’t want it to be seen on some comedy program in the near future either. We aren’t celebrities. We are just two people who met online, fell in love & the split up due to irreconcilable differences. No one wins in these situations, as much as you might believe otherwise.
Just take what you have and move forward.
I have.
It’s about time you do.
Evelyn read my journal entry & of course didn’t agree with what I wrote. Interestingly enough, she didn’t waste anytime finding someone new to crawl around with. It’s called rebounding. Yet, she remains cruel-hearted with cruel intentions in mind.
I believe she is doing what so many other disgruntled people do when they can’t have their way; they resort to wiping out any memory they had in a previous relationship & put the entire blame on the other person, thereby shirking the responsibility off their shoulders & then turn around and tell her new heartthrob something like, “yeah, well he was a jerk anyway.” That’s what she told me about her first boyfriend early on, yet she’ll probably deny that too. Oh well.
The very idea of gutting a memory is shocking to say the least by using false pretenses and fear as vices. Stalkers use the same methods.
Last night, she popped up on my IM (instant messenger) & decided to get even, by sending me a link of some photographs of her current heartthrob, which I never bothered to look at. Again it took her 40 minutes to play around until the 41st minute when she told me what it was. Ahhh, some things never change.
I don’t get it. She has someone new, why does she want to hurt me? One possible answer could be that she feels she is the only person in the world who is misunderstood & to have someone write about her in such an exclusive & personal sort of way frightens her, as well as excites her too, in a twisted sort of way.
Now of course, she probably wouldn’t admit to such things & continue to be in denial of such actions, but I do respect her opinions (somewhat) & she can say whatever she likes. This is of course a free country & she can say or write whatever she feelings like saying or writing, just as I do. More so, my friend, the Minister of Sinister says, “That’s one of the fringe benefits of being with a writer.”
But in speaking in all seriousness, here’s what I need to tell you Evelyn, whether you read this or someone you know reads this or anyone out there who reads this who could feel like Evelyn at times (bet that makes you feel special, doesn’t it, Evelyn?); it’s over between us. You have someone new. Go enjoy him. Stop wasting all of your efforts on me.
You’ll get as far as a cold, dead body lying on a slab tucked inside a drawer at your local morgue. Whatever we did in our time together, just put it away. Stop trying to air your resentments toward me, no matter how angry & hurt you may appear to act. Revenge might be sweet for the moment, but it will come back to haunt you when you least expect it. Wishing harm on someone just because you are angry or hurting doesn’t resolve the issues at hand.
If you want to speak to me civilly, I will be civil to you. If you want to call me, I will talk to you. If you want to meet face-to-face & work out our differences, I will meet with you, name the time & date. If it’s really attention you are after, I will go onto Ebay & order you a mirror. I will gladly help you if you need help, but please stop this immature behavior. It’s doesn’t represent who you really are. The more you behave like this, the more you will destroy your self-worth & self-dignity.
I don’t want air out our squabbling in public, as this isn’t a column in the New York Post or The Chicago Sun-Times & I don’t want it to be seen on some comedy program in the near future either. We aren’t celebrities. We are just two people who met online, fell in love & the split up due to irreconcilable differences. No one wins in these situations, as much as you might believe otherwise.
Just take what you have and move forward.
I have.
It’s about time you do.
Wednesday, April 27
Va-Va-Voom Speeds Toward The West: An Occupational Hazard-Act 2
I'd first met Va-Va-Voom under the Old Black Devil regime, whence I first arrived for my first & only interrogation session onto Devil's Island. The mere fact that I knew another inmate in the facility, brought me into a better area of the prison. Not that my skills were lacking, they weren't, but as I stated I got in because I knew another inmate in Old Black Devil's network of slaves.As I sat there with my pressed pin-stripe suit & matching black leather shiny patent shoes, I looked around inside Old Black Devil's office. Without warning, a rather large & rotund dark-skinned man stepped inside as Old Black Devil went running out, amid the chaos of another near prison riot. I asked the man if it was always this disorganized around here. The man shook his head & laughed like Barney Rubble and said, "It's always like this." This was the day I first met & would get to know Va-Va-Voom.
My first few months working on Devil's Island was anything but pleasant. The constant outbursts & suicides I witnessed before my very eyes, made me wonder if I had come to the right side of the prison or not. Va-Va-Voom was considered on of the model prisoners at that time among others back then. More appropriately put, he was a high-paid glorified slave to whatever Old Black Devil wanted him to do. His reward? Belittlement & harassment, which he gladly accepted. Apparently he knew no other way.
Over the next year or so, I watched Va-Va-Voom slowly sink from model prisoner to shit-worker, a commonality among the many prisoners jailed on Devil's Island. Can't please the Queen? Well, it's off you go into solitary confinement. Eventually, Va-Va-Voom was placed into the minimum security release program, the one I was in, basically which meant we weren't responsible for too much, just basic rules.
Va-Va-Voom & I didn't get along all that well, come to think of it at first. We had a lot of in-fighting & battles going back and forth, such is the case on Devil's Island. The greatest battle, however, came out of a purely innocent birthday rap song I had written for the late great Pops W. within the song, I had invoked something that mentioned all the prisoners, Va-Va-Voom included & it went like this; "Now Va-Va-Voom please stay out of my way, 'coz you always got something silly to say."
That provoked Va-Va-Voom into challenging me to a rap song battle, which I gladly accepted wholeheartedly. I gave him a few weeks to produce his song. Well, he kept at it, asking me if I had written mine & asked me to give him snatch samples of mine. So I did, only I gave him what he wanted & not the real stuff, as I waiting to lay it on him good & thick when the time came down to the actual match.
Pops W & Shabookie, another late-great shit-working prisoner who could belt out a good tune almost everyday, told me Va-Va-Voom might not have written his rap song & might just do it freestyle. I thought it might have been a little of both, as Pops W & Shabookie, later told me Va-Va-Voom was shitting bricks as the day for the match edged closer.
On the day of the match it was called off. In other words, Va-Va-Voom punked out. Later, I provided copies to both Pops W & Shabookie, who were delighted in what I had written. After that incident, we got along famously, always tossing barbs at each other, but it was routine now.
But then it was last spring when an incident occurred in the prison, that brought us together even closer, including another inmate in our sect, Miz Lou. It seemed that another inmate named Johnny Vegas was always getting ahead of others, making the workload seem like a breeze. What we discovered was he wasn't doing his work properly & we complained formally to our immediate prison captain, Josie Peppermint.
Shortly thereafter & mysteriously, Miz Lou was reassigned to another part of the prison system and much as we were all persistent about this issue, to this day, nothing has been done. Johnny Vegas was winning accolades from all of the top cops in the prison system, even winning the coveted title of model prison of the year. Va-Va-Voom & I knew otherwise. The other wardens & drill sergeants continued to stick it hard to Va-Va-Voom & boy did he know it!
They claimed he wasn't working hard enough or pulling his weight around the prison, all the usual gripes, "Oh how you're not like Johnny Vegas!" Josie Peppermint exclaimed.
Later on, he re-merited himself when he earned the Model Prisoner Of The Century Award, when he resurrected an inmate holiday party & coordinated all the events. He even asked me to provide the entertainment, but I kept turning him down flat many times, because I wanted to see him succeed on his own, which he did with flying colors. Yet Josie Peppermint was constantly at his heels, always rankling him, pushing & shoving him. How much could any one man take?
But now, Va-Va-Voom belongs to the ages. Just as Pops W, Shabookie, Captain Whackencracker, Dinosaur Jr. & Botox Frankenstein escaped, so goes Va-Va-Voom with two months left before freedom rings.
It is no coincidence that I didn't change the dates on all of my calendars here today in my prison cell, from April 26th to April 27th, as I am still mourning over the loss of Evelyn. It's been a bad few days. Let us hope the rest of the week shapes up into something salvageable.
Godspeed, Va-Va-Voom!
(You lucky bastard!)
Tuesday, April 26
A Closer View From The Crow's Nest: Tales From My Apartment>Act One-Howdy Neighbor!!!
Sometimes, the worst thing about living in an apartment complex is your neighbors. Sure they can appear all nice & friendly on the surface, but on the inside, look out! They have all the deviant desires of a school kid getting revenge by going to the teacher & tattle-tailing about something they couldn’t resolve on their own. My own workplace is like this, but I’m rambling.
Having moved from one suburb to another past summer was a real relief for me. Granted I had to pay a higher rent for a bigger place in a virtual one suburban transit bus area, I still really appreciate the quietness of the building. In fact, that’s what my landlord told me when I looked at the building to begin with, that it is a quiet building.
Humph! I remember my first few weeks of living in the building when at 8 am on a Saturday morning; there was live band practice on-going in one of the lower apartments in my building. Those drumbeats so clear, it was music to my ears, but probably someone complained & I never heard it again.
Then yesterday morning, I received a call for my landlord, telling me that my downstairs neighbor Annie, who lives directly below me, called him to complain about me playing my boom box a little too early for her delicate ears at 6:30am.
Well, housewife Annie, whose round as a medicine ball & wears a snot-green bathrobe every time I see her at night on her backside porch chain-smoking like a chimney in heat, couldn’t you have told me? You see me practically every night! Was it so hard for you to come up to me and say something like, “excuse me, your music is too loud for my virgin ears at 6:30am, I don’t get up until 9am to watch television, feed & take care my children & chain-smoke like a fiend until my live-in lover comes home & knocks boots with me until all hours of the night, could you please turn it down?” How is it that my throat-singing practice doesn’t bother you, but the music emitted from my boom box does?
Then there’s Loner Larson who lives directly above me, a divorced man who has to be in the know about all of his neighbors, kind of like a tapeworm that feeds off of everyone else’s spit & blood in order to survive. I remember meeting him a few months ago when the mice population exploded in my apartment & joking about it with him. He was not amused & seemed to feed off of my dilemma.
A few weeks before I left for New York City, just as I was emerging from my car & about to walk up the steps, up comes Loner Larson who engages me in conversation. Of course, the first thing he asks me about the mice. Then he looks into the backseat of my Saturn & asks me, “What’s that all about?”
I say, “Sorry?” (Very loudly).
“You know…” his voice trailing off.
I respond, “Pardon?” (Much louder than before).
“Your car’s backseat,” he mumbles.
“Oh,” I reply, “the storage locker I have is way overstuffed in the basement is so my car’s backseat acts as a second storage space.”
“Oh,” he coldly remarks and walks off.
It worries me that I have this kind of man living above me, after all, stupidly I told him I was going to New York City, wanted to know when I was leaving & returning. I even had an elaborate plan in the works, in the event the man decided to go peeping into both my car & my apartment. It’s called 9-1-1.
Then there’s the Wisconsin couple that lives in the apartment building opposite to me. The woman is very nice. Had a great, yet small conversation with her while retrieving my mail last November. However, her boyfriend doesn’t like me looking or talking to her. I believe that the proper terminology for his actions is defined as possessive jerk. Strange how I always find this in others outside the state of Illinois It also seems that this action appears to be in the genes of every Wisconsin male.
My former love Lyn, also from Wisconsin, of many years ago, before she dated me, used to date a lot of possessive jerks. Then, as she said while dating me, that I spoiled her because I was so nice to her. After we split up for good in the middle 1990s, she ended up hooking up with a possessive jerk. Married him too. Well, I guess if being verbally squandered was her desire, than so be it.
Lastly, there’s the really nice retired lady who let me use her phone when I accidentally locked myself out of my apartment this past winter. My front doorjamb was broken to begin with. It took the landlord a few weeks to fix it, after the fact.
I went around knocking on doors, but she was the only one who answered her door. Every other door I knocked upon didn’t bother to answer their door. Too busy watching television, I guess.
I had left my cell phone behind in my apartment, thinking I would be able to get back in, when I realized that that the backdoor’s security lock was on, your basic latch over the door & I couldn’t get back in. she was kind enough to make me tea, let me use her phone & engaged in lively conversation about my life & hers. Every time I see her now, either I’m going to work out at the gym or I’m going to work, she’s coming back from somewhere, we always wave hello to each other & exchange pleasantries, without being suspicious of each other.
What in god’s name has happened in this world we live in that we can’t even talk or be civil to our neighbors anymore? Is everyone a suspect these days? Are we all that scared of saying hello or what’s up? Is it so hard to strike up a little talk or conversation without looking so paranoid?
Having moved from one suburb to another past summer was a real relief for me. Granted I had to pay a higher rent for a bigger place in a virtual one suburban transit bus area, I still really appreciate the quietness of the building. In fact, that’s what my landlord told me when I looked at the building to begin with, that it is a quiet building.
Humph! I remember my first few weeks of living in the building when at 8 am on a Saturday morning; there was live band practice on-going in one of the lower apartments in my building. Those drumbeats so clear, it was music to my ears, but probably someone complained & I never heard it again.
Then yesterday morning, I received a call for my landlord, telling me that my downstairs neighbor Annie, who lives directly below me, called him to complain about me playing my boom box a little too early for her delicate ears at 6:30am.
Well, housewife Annie, whose round as a medicine ball & wears a snot-green bathrobe every time I see her at night on her backside porch chain-smoking like a chimney in heat, couldn’t you have told me? You see me practically every night! Was it so hard for you to come up to me and say something like, “excuse me, your music is too loud for my virgin ears at 6:30am, I don’t get up until 9am to watch television, feed & take care my children & chain-smoke like a fiend until my live-in lover comes home & knocks boots with me until all hours of the night, could you please turn it down?” How is it that my throat-singing practice doesn’t bother you, but the music emitted from my boom box does?
Then there’s Loner Larson who lives directly above me, a divorced man who has to be in the know about all of his neighbors, kind of like a tapeworm that feeds off of everyone else’s spit & blood in order to survive. I remember meeting him a few months ago when the mice population exploded in my apartment & joking about it with him. He was not amused & seemed to feed off of my dilemma.
A few weeks before I left for New York City, just as I was emerging from my car & about to walk up the steps, up comes Loner Larson who engages me in conversation. Of course, the first thing he asks me about the mice. Then he looks into the backseat of my Saturn & asks me, “What’s that all about?”
I say, “Sorry?” (Very loudly).
“You know…” his voice trailing off.
I respond, “Pardon?” (Much louder than before).
“Your car’s backseat,” he mumbles.
“Oh,” I reply, “the storage locker I have is way overstuffed in the basement is so my car’s backseat acts as a second storage space.”
“Oh,” he coldly remarks and walks off.
It worries me that I have this kind of man living above me, after all, stupidly I told him I was going to New York City, wanted to know when I was leaving & returning. I even had an elaborate plan in the works, in the event the man decided to go peeping into both my car & my apartment. It’s called 9-1-1.
Then there’s the Wisconsin couple that lives in the apartment building opposite to me. The woman is very nice. Had a great, yet small conversation with her while retrieving my mail last November. However, her boyfriend doesn’t like me looking or talking to her. I believe that the proper terminology for his actions is defined as possessive jerk. Strange how I always find this in others outside the state of Illinois It also seems that this action appears to be in the genes of every Wisconsin male.
My former love Lyn, also from Wisconsin, of many years ago, before she dated me, used to date a lot of possessive jerks. Then, as she said while dating me, that I spoiled her because I was so nice to her. After we split up for good in the middle 1990s, she ended up hooking up with a possessive jerk. Married him too. Well, I guess if being verbally squandered was her desire, than so be it.
Lastly, there’s the really nice retired lady who let me use her phone when I accidentally locked myself out of my apartment this past winter. My front doorjamb was broken to begin with. It took the landlord a few weeks to fix it, after the fact.
I went around knocking on doors, but she was the only one who answered her door. Every other door I knocked upon didn’t bother to answer their door. Too busy watching television, I guess.
I had left my cell phone behind in my apartment, thinking I would be able to get back in, when I realized that that the backdoor’s security lock was on, your basic latch over the door & I couldn’t get back in. she was kind enough to make me tea, let me use her phone & engaged in lively conversation about my life & hers. Every time I see her now, either I’m going to work out at the gym or I’m going to work, she’s coming back from somewhere, we always wave hello to each other & exchange pleasantries, without being suspicious of each other.
What in god’s name has happened in this world we live in that we can’t even talk or be civil to our neighbors anymore? Is everyone a suspect these days? Are we all that scared of saying hello or what’s up? Is it so hard to strike up a little talk or conversation without looking so paranoid?
Monday, April 25
Mourning For Evelyn
Disclaimer: the following story is true. The names have been changed to hang the guilty. Why? Because I feel like it. Any incident that sounds seemingly close or similar to actual places & events is purely non-fiction. Love is like that, so be prepared!
For anybody who has read my work, you would know that I base much of what I write on fact. Having been a reporter for seven & a half years plus a journalism background to boot, helps. So, when you read what you are about to read seems a little like fiction, well, it might be, it could be, but it isn’t, though you can be the judge on that.
Early Sunday morning I received a callback from Evelyn, whom I had called only hours earlier. We had been apart for a few weeks on issues too miniscule to argue about. Tonight was it. She told me not to bother to phone her ever again. She claimed to have found real & true romance. So what was I these past six years, stuffed cabbage?
I am in mourning for Evelyn, a girl that I loved
Lost her last night
In a game of Russian roulette
Evelyn & I had met the same way people meet these days, by chatting. I pushed her away at first because I didn’t feel a match between us. I found her again a couple of years later, totally by accident while online doing research. She had IM’ed (instant messaged) me & I looked up briefly to see who was. When I saw it was Evelyn, I was immediately happy to see her & we talked & talked & talked for what seemed like hours, playing a two-year catch-up game with each other.
We continued to talk over the internet for what seemed like a few years, until we decided to swap phone numbers & talk live. I asked Evelyn if she could handle that, as she was still pretty shy & she said, “Sure.”
There was a time back in the early 2000s, when I didn’t have a phone & always had to borrow someone else’s & get a calling card. That was always difficult, as it was a party line & our conversations were always cut short by one thing or another. You know how it is. The only word that ever popped out of her mouth was "hi."
I did most of the talking in those days & amazingly carried on conversations quite well, but it was like talking to a wall, except the wall would say a few words besides “hi” and laugh or giggle every 20 minutes or so. The calls took place between 10pm & midnight.
I felt like J.D. Salinger
In affairs of the heart
We were doomed from the get-go
Wore my heart on my sleeve & boy! Did it show!
There were times during our relationship, when situations got intense, so much so, that she would shut down & it would take me up to 40 minutes to figure out what was wrong. Finally after the 41st minute, she would speak up. Something about my tone of voice making her feel so stupid. This went on & on for the longest time, until I would ask her to fix the problem. She told me she would, but she never did.
She also told me a story, which seemed to make sense at the time, because it gelled everything together with her behavioral patterns. Evelyn said she had been brutally assaulted by a relative when she was younger. She could never tell anyone else, but she chose to tell me.
We talked about everything under the sun, from music to sex to education to films. I asked her at times what she really saw in me, why she chose me out of everyone else she could ever want. It was the usual response, “because you’re sweet, you’re kind & I love you.”
But love itself although kind can be lethal too. As the years went by & our relationship became more intense, she started getting a little possessive. I couldn’t actually see it in her eyes, but I could hear it in her voice. And the sorts of head games she started to play, well I knew the corner was starting to cave in slowly.
She tried a lot of attention-grabbers like stabbing her arms with paper clips, all this, just for my attention. I was heartsick & told her anytime she needed to talk, day or night, I would be here for her. I knew it wasn’t going to get any better.
Her occupation in life was in the field of animal husbandry. More often than not, I would always wonder if she had made the right career move, because at times she went way overboard with it, a little too obsessive, so I thought.
In her household, she had lots of animals too, dogs, cats & birds. She would always fuss over them & I never understood why. That was one of my downfalls I guess, that she accused me of, not understanding “her animals.” I told her to teach me to understand them. That never materialized either.
Over the past year, things in her life suddenly changed, for the better & so I went along for the ride & that’s when the in-fighting started, over the silliest of things. One of the greatest actions she accused me of was not listening to her. I suppose it was true, but on the other hand, her great faults were need, greed & selfishness. It sprouted up in our courtship so many times.
As time moved forward, we made plans to meet
But then emotion pulled the switch that let it fly
We argued over everything & nothing & in the heat of the moment, I called her a bitch
I let my true feelings speak, but it was already too late
In all honesty I felt bigger,
Because there was no turning back once I pulled the trigger
A few months ago, the situation got worse, the fighting more intense & we decided we needed a break from each other. So I didn’t call her for a few weeks. I just waited out the storm. She told me that maybe we didn’t have anything in common anymore, but I reassured her that fighting is kind of normal in relationships. I even went so far as to call her a bitch. I should have eaten my words back then, but I didn’t want to believe it for myself & marched onward.
It was when I started having mice problems in my apartment came the real blow to our relationship, as she accused me of being a murderer & how in the world could I kill such innocent & tiny creatures as mice? Furthermore, she didn’t want to hear about it from me, ever again. That hurt so much, as I needed her at that moment & she could not comfort me.
I didn’t tell her then, but I will say it now. Those creatures that she spoke of so dearly aren’t so innocent. Mice are rodents that will stop at nothing to destroy crops & food, to the tune of millions of dollars per year. Did she forget that mice are vermin & were one of the original plagues that were written about in the bible?
Wanted to show her a side of me I thought she couldn’t comprehend
She understood more than I would believe
The loss of my lover, who I never touched,
Never felt her breath against my face, just words in my ear
I spoke to her before I left for the coast
Her cat died, oh how she cried and she cried
When I asked her about us, she said she still didn’t know
Mumbled something about me being 7th on her things to do list
I thought that was lucky, so I waited & I waited & clenched my left fist
We got back in contact after I asked her for a second chance, which she granted me. It was short-lived one night, when I was in the midst of a health crisis had to balance out my time between her and myself. I felt my health was more important & I chose that. I disappeared & she worried about that. When she asked me where I was, I explained to her thoroughly what had happened & what I was trying to accomplish. It was no use. She claimed she didn’t understand & click-click went the phone.
After that Sunday morning conversation I was devastated & never went back to sleep. I felt like a zombie that entire day. Saying goodbye to someone you’ve loved but never met, is a lot like carrying on an imaginary relationship with a movie star in your brain. The only difference is our relationship once so intense fizzled in a matter of weeks.
Evelyn had such elaborate plans for the future like spending time in France for a month & living on a farm with me & all of her animals. We lived separately & I highly doubted I would move were she was stationed. I wasn’t a country-sort of man, anyway. I was more of a city & suburban dweller.
Gone are the days of innocence, unwelcome are the days of suffering, sitting Shiva for a woman I never met, never held, never touched, and never kissed. It will be some of the more non-chalant & meaningful memories of Evelyn I will store inside the inner linings of my soul, right next to former my love Lyn, whom I hid away for years after-the-fact, until I felt ready & safe to speak about her to the world, without tearing into an old wound that had been sewn & stitched up so tight & complete.
As words have a way of creeping into a man’s vocabulary, so will Evelyn’s ways of saying “hush” & “hi” in the most gentlest of ways. So, too will the songs I wrote for her, just now be songs, like for instance, the song I wrote for her, simply titled, Evelyn.
Felt half strange
Like I woke up in the middle of a desert isle
Kissing hot white sand
You talk too much to the sky
She whispered to me in a sigh
I reached down to kiss her, I asked her
Did you miss me?
And then there was the funny but highly popular to this day, Oh Deer! which I had written exclusively for her. It told the story of a deer who tells what it’s like to hunt & kill humans. She was especially proud of me when I performed it at a 2003 recital & it went over so well.
Saw a deer in the glade
In the clear of the shade
As the cars & traffic raced on by
Crept closer ‘cross snow-covered ground
Made wee little sound, as she turned her head to me and said hi
In the twilight I just spoke
Told a few people jokes
At first she laughed & then she cried…
When I get sad, I usually go out and buy either a piece of sheet music or a cd. It used to be records or tapes, but the times have changed & so have I. if I didn’t feel like doing that, I chose to either throw myself into some fantastic research project or just eat a hot plate of Mac & Cheese. Lyn used to buy me Snickers candy bars when I felt sad & did things to cheer me up. Evelyn simply couldn't.
When I spoke to her this morning (last night), she was dreamy
I knew for sure I didn’t have a chance
She said at last she had found true romance
I told her to have a nice life & silenced the phone
I cried & I cried, but I guess that’s the bullet you embrace
When you love all alone
Love is so kind, yet so lethal. I should know what I am talking about. I will always love you Evelyn, wherever you choose to go, with or without me.
I am in mourning for Evelyn, a girl that I loved
Lost her last night
In a game of Russian roulette
For anybody who has read my work, you would know that I base much of what I write on fact. Having been a reporter for seven & a half years plus a journalism background to boot, helps. So, when you read what you are about to read seems a little like fiction, well, it might be, it could be, but it isn’t, though you can be the judge on that.
Early Sunday morning I received a callback from Evelyn, whom I had called only hours earlier. We had been apart for a few weeks on issues too miniscule to argue about. Tonight was it. She told me not to bother to phone her ever again. She claimed to have found real & true romance. So what was I these past six years, stuffed cabbage?
I am in mourning for Evelyn, a girl that I loved
Lost her last night
In a game of Russian roulette
Evelyn & I had met the same way people meet these days, by chatting. I pushed her away at first because I didn’t feel a match between us. I found her again a couple of years later, totally by accident while online doing research. She had IM’ed (instant messaged) me & I looked up briefly to see who was. When I saw it was Evelyn, I was immediately happy to see her & we talked & talked & talked for what seemed like hours, playing a two-year catch-up game with each other.
We continued to talk over the internet for what seemed like a few years, until we decided to swap phone numbers & talk live. I asked Evelyn if she could handle that, as she was still pretty shy & she said, “Sure.”
There was a time back in the early 2000s, when I didn’t have a phone & always had to borrow someone else’s & get a calling card. That was always difficult, as it was a party line & our conversations were always cut short by one thing or another. You know how it is. The only word that ever popped out of her mouth was "hi."
I did most of the talking in those days & amazingly carried on conversations quite well, but it was like talking to a wall, except the wall would say a few words besides “hi” and laugh or giggle every 20 minutes or so. The calls took place between 10pm & midnight.
I felt like J.D. Salinger
In affairs of the heart
We were doomed from the get-go
Wore my heart on my sleeve & boy! Did it show!
There were times during our relationship, when situations got intense, so much so, that she would shut down & it would take me up to 40 minutes to figure out what was wrong. Finally after the 41st minute, she would speak up. Something about my tone of voice making her feel so stupid. This went on & on for the longest time, until I would ask her to fix the problem. She told me she would, but she never did.
She also told me a story, which seemed to make sense at the time, because it gelled everything together with her behavioral patterns. Evelyn said she had been brutally assaulted by a relative when she was younger. She could never tell anyone else, but she chose to tell me.
We talked about everything under the sun, from music to sex to education to films. I asked her at times what she really saw in me, why she chose me out of everyone else she could ever want. It was the usual response, “because you’re sweet, you’re kind & I love you.”
But love itself although kind can be lethal too. As the years went by & our relationship became more intense, she started getting a little possessive. I couldn’t actually see it in her eyes, but I could hear it in her voice. And the sorts of head games she started to play, well I knew the corner was starting to cave in slowly.
She tried a lot of attention-grabbers like stabbing her arms with paper clips, all this, just for my attention. I was heartsick & told her anytime she needed to talk, day or night, I would be here for her. I knew it wasn’t going to get any better.
Her occupation in life was in the field of animal husbandry. More often than not, I would always wonder if she had made the right career move, because at times she went way overboard with it, a little too obsessive, so I thought.
In her household, she had lots of animals too, dogs, cats & birds. She would always fuss over them & I never understood why. That was one of my downfalls I guess, that she accused me of, not understanding “her animals.” I told her to teach me to understand them. That never materialized either.
Over the past year, things in her life suddenly changed, for the better & so I went along for the ride & that’s when the in-fighting started, over the silliest of things. One of the greatest actions she accused me of was not listening to her. I suppose it was true, but on the other hand, her great faults were need, greed & selfishness. It sprouted up in our courtship so many times.
As time moved forward, we made plans to meet
But then emotion pulled the switch that let it fly
We argued over everything & nothing & in the heat of the moment, I called her a bitch
I let my true feelings speak, but it was already too late
In all honesty I felt bigger,
Because there was no turning back once I pulled the trigger
A few months ago, the situation got worse, the fighting more intense & we decided we needed a break from each other. So I didn’t call her for a few weeks. I just waited out the storm. She told me that maybe we didn’t have anything in common anymore, but I reassured her that fighting is kind of normal in relationships. I even went so far as to call her a bitch. I should have eaten my words back then, but I didn’t want to believe it for myself & marched onward.
It was when I started having mice problems in my apartment came the real blow to our relationship, as she accused me of being a murderer & how in the world could I kill such innocent & tiny creatures as mice? Furthermore, she didn’t want to hear about it from me, ever again. That hurt so much, as I needed her at that moment & she could not comfort me.
I didn’t tell her then, but I will say it now. Those creatures that she spoke of so dearly aren’t so innocent. Mice are rodents that will stop at nothing to destroy crops & food, to the tune of millions of dollars per year. Did she forget that mice are vermin & were one of the original plagues that were written about in the bible?
Wanted to show her a side of me I thought she couldn’t comprehend
She understood more than I would believe
The loss of my lover, who I never touched,
Never felt her breath against my face, just words in my ear
I spoke to her before I left for the coast
Her cat died, oh how she cried and she cried
When I asked her about us, she said she still didn’t know
Mumbled something about me being 7th on her things to do list
I thought that was lucky, so I waited & I waited & clenched my left fist
We got back in contact after I asked her for a second chance, which she granted me. It was short-lived one night, when I was in the midst of a health crisis had to balance out my time between her and myself. I felt my health was more important & I chose that. I disappeared & she worried about that. When she asked me where I was, I explained to her thoroughly what had happened & what I was trying to accomplish. It was no use. She claimed she didn’t understand & click-click went the phone.
After that Sunday morning conversation I was devastated & never went back to sleep. I felt like a zombie that entire day. Saying goodbye to someone you’ve loved but never met, is a lot like carrying on an imaginary relationship with a movie star in your brain. The only difference is our relationship once so intense fizzled in a matter of weeks.
Evelyn had such elaborate plans for the future like spending time in France for a month & living on a farm with me & all of her animals. We lived separately & I highly doubted I would move were she was stationed. I wasn’t a country-sort of man, anyway. I was more of a city & suburban dweller.
Gone are the days of innocence, unwelcome are the days of suffering, sitting Shiva for a woman I never met, never held, never touched, and never kissed. It will be some of the more non-chalant & meaningful memories of Evelyn I will store inside the inner linings of my soul, right next to former my love Lyn, whom I hid away for years after-the-fact, until I felt ready & safe to speak about her to the world, without tearing into an old wound that had been sewn & stitched up so tight & complete.
As words have a way of creeping into a man’s vocabulary, so will Evelyn’s ways of saying “hush” & “hi” in the most gentlest of ways. So, too will the songs I wrote for her, just now be songs, like for instance, the song I wrote for her, simply titled, Evelyn.
Felt half strange
Like I woke up in the middle of a desert isle
Kissing hot white sand
You talk too much to the sky
She whispered to me in a sigh
I reached down to kiss her, I asked her
Did you miss me?
And then there was the funny but highly popular to this day, Oh Deer! which I had written exclusively for her. It told the story of a deer who tells what it’s like to hunt & kill humans. She was especially proud of me when I performed it at a 2003 recital & it went over so well.
Saw a deer in the glade
In the clear of the shade
As the cars & traffic raced on by
Crept closer ‘cross snow-covered ground
Made wee little sound, as she turned her head to me and said hi
In the twilight I just spoke
Told a few people jokes
At first she laughed & then she cried…
When I get sad, I usually go out and buy either a piece of sheet music or a cd. It used to be records or tapes, but the times have changed & so have I. if I didn’t feel like doing that, I chose to either throw myself into some fantastic research project or just eat a hot plate of Mac & Cheese. Lyn used to buy me Snickers candy bars when I felt sad & did things to cheer me up. Evelyn simply couldn't.
When I spoke to her this morning (last night), she was dreamy
I knew for sure I didn’t have a chance
She said at last she had found true romance
I told her to have a nice life & silenced the phone
I cried & I cried, but I guess that’s the bullet you embrace
When you love all alone
Love is so kind, yet so lethal. I should know what I am talking about. I will always love you Evelyn, wherever you choose to go, with or without me.
I am in mourning for Evelyn, a girl that I loved
Lost her last night
In a game of Russian roulette
Sunday, April 24
New York Tales-Act 7>Post Trip Talk>The Finale Of New York Tales For The Moment-"I Can Do It Because I Can"
last saturday night, april 16, a few hours after my gig at the bowery poetry club on the bowery, i made my way back to my host's place, vegged there for an hour or so, then made my back out again to times square, where i figured i could go see the bright lights & have a little fun being a tourist, after all, what fun is it when you can't be a tourist in a city you don't live in?
so, after a while of standing out in the middle of times square, just gawking at everybody & everything, i decided to get a bite to eat before i went back out again, touring. i was pretty hungry too. hadn't eaten hardly anything since the night before, because i was too afraid to eat, for fear some sort of spicy extract would cripple my throat & that would just about squash my chances of being able to pull off any form of throat-singing, so i decided not to eat anything & just take in water & a little champagne & a little flan, that was available at the club, courtesy of the publisher of si senor.
so i looked around, finally asking a policeman of all people where might be a good place to eat. he suggested roxy's delicatessen, which he mentioned although slightly pricey, the food was good. so off i went to roxy's & had a good decent, yet pricy meal consisting of matzoh ball soup, the ball was as big as a baseball (no joke) & a hot corned beef sandwich, which come to think of it would sound good right about now.
so, while i sat at the table having the soup & writing postcards, i noticed two young men across from me. one was on a cellphone yapping & yammering, while the other one was just looking kind of starry-eyed. they were going on about meeting someone or friends, i suspect for an evening out at the theater or maybe an orgy back at their hotel. i'd be willing to bet on the latter.
the guy yammering & yapping was off on some tangent with the person on the other end, when finally their food came. they hadn't taken more than four bites off their plates, when the guy closest to me with the cellphone told the other fellow, that they had to go & screamed at the waiter for the check. the waiter came over, gave them the check he paid it, as the waiter gave them their change & took their plates away.
i was pretty shocked to say the least, as their plates were hardly touched. i wasn't the only one who was in awe, as the other hostess & waiters were just shaking their heads, remarking about all that good food going to waste. well, it got me to thinking...
for the past six years or so, about the length of time i've been paying off my saturn, i was barely living or working for that matter, eating whatever i could find. then i discovered food pantries & my life was set. i used to go to a few places, including the ark (kosher) in chicago & a couple of churches in the evanston area.
it wouldn't have been the first time i had to use food pantries, as back in 1994, i utilized them when i lived in indiana, during a fairly long stretch of unemployment. i have to admit, i felt very ashamed to go because i didn't think i was the type of person that was classified as such to use them. but the people at the pantries told me not to be ashamed, that even men in business suits show up, feeling the same way. still, i felt terrible & admitting it now to the world in this fashion gives me some relief, no pun intended.
i learned to eat all the foods i could never stand, like peas, canned fruits & ground turkey. i learned how to make what i call hobo stew, in which you get some basic meat & add lots of veggies with them, fry it up on the stove & viola! you have a great meal.
these last several years, i 've been trying wean myself off the idea of going to food pantries, so i did do half regular grocery store, half food pantry & that has worked for a while, but i always ended up back at the pantry. not my choice, but finances sapped me pretty hard, as well as the regular amount of bills i owed to everyone else.
it's only within the last few months i can say that my life of food pantries is nearly over & for that i am very relieved. i still feel ashamed, but i know the need is there & i can always go back when i have to. the current pantry that i use near my home, i have only gone there once every two weeks or so & that has regularly & dear old mom who i am for ever grateful to, both have held me together.
i should be in the clear by june, which at that time, i hope to give back what was given to me. the folks at the food pantry told me not to worry about it, but to quote that yapping & yammering fellow at the table next to me, who wasted about $60 in food, "i can do it because i can."
most importantly, because i want to!
so, after a while of standing out in the middle of times square, just gawking at everybody & everything, i decided to get a bite to eat before i went back out again, touring. i was pretty hungry too. hadn't eaten hardly anything since the night before, because i was too afraid to eat, for fear some sort of spicy extract would cripple my throat & that would just about squash my chances of being able to pull off any form of throat-singing, so i decided not to eat anything & just take in water & a little champagne & a little flan, that was available at the club, courtesy of the publisher of si senor.
so i looked around, finally asking a policeman of all people where might be a good place to eat. he suggested roxy's delicatessen, which he mentioned although slightly pricey, the food was good. so off i went to roxy's & had a good decent, yet pricy meal consisting of matzoh ball soup, the ball was as big as a baseball (no joke) & a hot corned beef sandwich, which come to think of it would sound good right about now.
so, while i sat at the table having the soup & writing postcards, i noticed two young men across from me. one was on a cellphone yapping & yammering, while the other one was just looking kind of starry-eyed. they were going on about meeting someone or friends, i suspect for an evening out at the theater or maybe an orgy back at their hotel. i'd be willing to bet on the latter.
the guy yammering & yapping was off on some tangent with the person on the other end, when finally their food came. they hadn't taken more than four bites off their plates, when the guy closest to me with the cellphone told the other fellow, that they had to go & screamed at the waiter for the check. the waiter came over, gave them the check he paid it, as the waiter gave them their change & took their plates away.
i was pretty shocked to say the least, as their plates were hardly touched. i wasn't the only one who was in awe, as the other hostess & waiters were just shaking their heads, remarking about all that good food going to waste. well, it got me to thinking...
for the past six years or so, about the length of time i've been paying off my saturn, i was barely living or working for that matter, eating whatever i could find. then i discovered food pantries & my life was set. i used to go to a few places, including the ark (kosher) in chicago & a couple of churches in the evanston area.
it wouldn't have been the first time i had to use food pantries, as back in 1994, i utilized them when i lived in indiana, during a fairly long stretch of unemployment. i have to admit, i felt very ashamed to go because i didn't think i was the type of person that was classified as such to use them. but the people at the pantries told me not to be ashamed, that even men in business suits show up, feeling the same way. still, i felt terrible & admitting it now to the world in this fashion gives me some relief, no pun intended.
i learned to eat all the foods i could never stand, like peas, canned fruits & ground turkey. i learned how to make what i call hobo stew, in which you get some basic meat & add lots of veggies with them, fry it up on the stove & viola! you have a great meal.
these last several years, i 've been trying wean myself off the idea of going to food pantries, so i did do half regular grocery store, half food pantry & that has worked for a while, but i always ended up back at the pantry. not my choice, but finances sapped me pretty hard, as well as the regular amount of bills i owed to everyone else.
it's only within the last few months i can say that my life of food pantries is nearly over & for that i am very relieved. i still feel ashamed, but i know the need is there & i can always go back when i have to. the current pantry that i use near my home, i have only gone there once every two weeks or so & that has regularly & dear old mom who i am for ever grateful to, both have held me together.
i should be in the clear by june, which at that time, i hope to give back what was given to me. the folks at the food pantry told me not to worry about it, but to quote that yapping & yammering fellow at the table next to me, who wasted about $60 in food, "i can do it because i can."
most importantly, because i want to!
Saturday, April 23
New York Tales-Act 6>Post Trip Talk>Save CBGB!!!
One of the places i wanted to hit during my weekend last weekend was cbgb. i had to, as my brother benjy wanted a shirt from there. he was in new york city briefly in the 1990s & i mean briefly, as him & my youngest brother joey were coming back from boston & passed through times square on the way back to my then-parents home in morton grove, illinois. i promised him i would, as my brother benjy is a great brother. i often refer to him the "ringo starr" of our family, as he is the only member of our tribe that gets along with everybody.
so, after i finished my gig at the bowery poetry club, that's exactly where stew (see new york tales>post trip talk-act 2>howard, howard, howard for more info on stew) & i went, directly across the street to cbgb. cbgb is a legendary club. that written statement alone is a huge understatement, as many many bands made their start there, most notably the ramones & the talking heads. even my throat-singing teacher performed there in the late 1990s with the band he was in. the club's outside hasn't changed that much, seemingly the inside hasn't either & that made me feel pretty good that since the last time i was there, 1983, that it still remained intact.
stew noticed there was a singer audition at the club, so he borrowed a guitar and signed up to try out, as i gazed around the place. there's probably only three things you can do at the club, which is drink, watch the bands & buy merchandise, which is their biggest selling point. wearing a cbgb shirt is classy, puts hair on your head (i wish) & in general, makes you look like a million bucks because you've been to a great place.
but great places don't always last, as i picked up a flyer the club was handing out. seems that cbgb's landlord the brc (bowery residents' committee) wants to shove the club out so they can build upon their homeless shelter. the fight between the brc & cbgb primarily centers around back rent & other financial situations. what an irony that is, as the bowery was once one of the most famous landmarks in the world, the ultimate skid row. of course now that yuppie-types & people with loads of money have regentrified the place, ultimately shoving out artists & residents who lived in the area, just so they could have a convenient atm, walgreen's or mcdonald's around the corner from them. how noble of them.
but this regetrification is happening all over the united states, chicago included. friends of mine who lived in wicker park & rogers park for that matter, were shoved out of their homes after realtors saw a cash crop before their very eyes. they bought older buildings, rehabbed them and charged outrageous prices to live where they formally lived. it's too bad in chicago & the surrounding suburbs don't have rent control like the way they do in new york. it's hard enough for some to make a decent living wage, another world problem that seemingly a great idea, may never come to past.
now of course, if you're a true struggling artist, you're either living at home or out on the streets somewhere or you have a job that supports your habit. not a lot of us have the old standby of a rich wife, husband, partner, girlfriend, boyfriend or relatives that can support our careers. i lucked out when i did, living in chicago with other artists in the three-bedroom apartment, we all made ends meet & supported our lifestyles, even for a long stretch of unemployment i endured before i landed my next job. ironically, that building i lived in now has gone condo. condo without parking spaces. that's a laugh! the building i moved out of before i moved into evanston (suburb of chicago), i managed to get cheap rent, a two bedroom in chicago for $550! unheard of, i know, but i received that rate, because the building was going condo.
seems a lot of people, mayor richard m. daley included don't appreciate the history of old buildings, unless of course it's a landmark or a place he hung out as a child and wants them torn down. this is not a new attitude, as many folks are like that. knock down the old buildings & build the new buildings for twice the price & just triple the rent.
yep, buildings can become eyesores, but that's just what the media does to you, television & newspapers especially, painting up a negative stance on what is wrong with a building, as opposed to everything that is so right with it. once an opinion forms in a person's mind, there's no turning back. i know that for a long time mayor daley wanted "motel row" along lincoln ave in the far northern reaches of chicago torn down & replace them with newer hotels. but those old motels add a lot of charm to the area. bands i know have stayed in those motels, as higher priced ones tend to be out of their range.
sure drug dealers & prostitutes hang out there, but they hang out everywhere, not just at motels & old buildings. it's a tried & true method of the press to focus on that. it wins influence & does changes minds of people & that's just wrong. one of my favorite sros (single resident occupancy) on the near north side of chicago, is the cass hotel. the cass is best known for the hideout of the late mass murderer richard speck, who in the late 1960s, strangled eight student nurses & hid out there. the architecture is truly stunning & the building adds a lot of character to that neighborhood, which is surrounded by a bunch of chain stores & newer coffee shops.
chains stores can do a lot to ruin the atmosphere of a neighborhood, even if it does bring money into the community & thankfully there are enough examples of neighborhood residents who have fought back & kept corporate chainstores like starbucks & wal-marts out of their neighborhoods!
but back to cbgb's. here's what you can do: i have pasted the basic information, as well as their website into my blog for you to read and check out. if you're one that believes that cbgb should stay where it should stay, god bless you! if on the other hand, if you believe that progress should never stand behind the old guard, well...hello! i can't wait to sit down with you at that great old restaurant standee just beyond the granville el in chicago on granville in & swap histories with you, honest histories, that is!
http://www.cbgb.com/save_cbgb.htm
To the Musicians, Fans and Friends of CBGB; My Landlord is "BRC"
These are the people that have control over whether I stay or go. The current money situation and legal status of the club, despite what Muzzy Rosenblatt says, is not in negotiation. It is in the courts to be decided by a judge. I am not going to cast aspersions on the representatives of the BRC, as they have on me. I only wish the problem be solved so we can both "do our thing"If you want us here, the BRC has to be persuaded that a gradual increase in rent is feasible.
Hilly Kristal, Owner of CBGB
Send a letter to The Mayor's Office asking Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg if he's prepared to say "CBGB can be closed down because they can't pay 40-50 thousand dollars per month rent to a non profit organization that is funded by the city, state and federal government to the tune of 23 million dollars per year."
Muzzy Rosenblatt, Executive Director
Bowery Residents' Committee
324 Lafayette Street, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10012
Phone: 212-533-5700
Fax: 212-533-1893
website: www.bowrescom.org
Email: info@bowrescom.org
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
Phone: 311 or 212-639-9675
Fax: 212.788.2460
Email: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
so, after i finished my gig at the bowery poetry club, that's exactly where stew (see new york tales>post trip talk-act 2>howard, howard, howard for more info on stew) & i went, directly across the street to cbgb. cbgb is a legendary club. that written statement alone is a huge understatement, as many many bands made their start there, most notably the ramones & the talking heads. even my throat-singing teacher performed there in the late 1990s with the band he was in. the club's outside hasn't changed that much, seemingly the inside hasn't either & that made me feel pretty good that since the last time i was there, 1983, that it still remained intact.
stew noticed there was a singer audition at the club, so he borrowed a guitar and signed up to try out, as i gazed around the place. there's probably only three things you can do at the club, which is drink, watch the bands & buy merchandise, which is their biggest selling point. wearing a cbgb shirt is classy, puts hair on your head (i wish) & in general, makes you look like a million bucks because you've been to a great place.
but great places don't always last, as i picked up a flyer the club was handing out. seems that cbgb's landlord the brc (bowery residents' committee) wants to shove the club out so they can build upon their homeless shelter. the fight between the brc & cbgb primarily centers around back rent & other financial situations. what an irony that is, as the bowery was once one of the most famous landmarks in the world, the ultimate skid row. of course now that yuppie-types & people with loads of money have regentrified the place, ultimately shoving out artists & residents who lived in the area, just so they could have a convenient atm, walgreen's or mcdonald's around the corner from them. how noble of them.
but this regetrification is happening all over the united states, chicago included. friends of mine who lived in wicker park & rogers park for that matter, were shoved out of their homes after realtors saw a cash crop before their very eyes. they bought older buildings, rehabbed them and charged outrageous prices to live where they formally lived. it's too bad in chicago & the surrounding suburbs don't have rent control like the way they do in new york. it's hard enough for some to make a decent living wage, another world problem that seemingly a great idea, may never come to past.
now of course, if you're a true struggling artist, you're either living at home or out on the streets somewhere or you have a job that supports your habit. not a lot of us have the old standby of a rich wife, husband, partner, girlfriend, boyfriend or relatives that can support our careers. i lucked out when i did, living in chicago with other artists in the three-bedroom apartment, we all made ends meet & supported our lifestyles, even for a long stretch of unemployment i endured before i landed my next job. ironically, that building i lived in now has gone condo. condo without parking spaces. that's a laugh! the building i moved out of before i moved into evanston (suburb of chicago), i managed to get cheap rent, a two bedroom in chicago for $550! unheard of, i know, but i received that rate, because the building was going condo.
seems a lot of people, mayor richard m. daley included don't appreciate the history of old buildings, unless of course it's a landmark or a place he hung out as a child and wants them torn down. this is not a new attitude, as many folks are like that. knock down the old buildings & build the new buildings for twice the price & just triple the rent.
yep, buildings can become eyesores, but that's just what the media does to you, television & newspapers especially, painting up a negative stance on what is wrong with a building, as opposed to everything that is so right with it. once an opinion forms in a person's mind, there's no turning back. i know that for a long time mayor daley wanted "motel row" along lincoln ave in the far northern reaches of chicago torn down & replace them with newer hotels. but those old motels add a lot of charm to the area. bands i know have stayed in those motels, as higher priced ones tend to be out of their range.
sure drug dealers & prostitutes hang out there, but they hang out everywhere, not just at motels & old buildings. it's a tried & true method of the press to focus on that. it wins influence & does changes minds of people & that's just wrong. one of my favorite sros (single resident occupancy) on the near north side of chicago, is the cass hotel. the cass is best known for the hideout of the late mass murderer richard speck, who in the late 1960s, strangled eight student nurses & hid out there. the architecture is truly stunning & the building adds a lot of character to that neighborhood, which is surrounded by a bunch of chain stores & newer coffee shops.
chains stores can do a lot to ruin the atmosphere of a neighborhood, even if it does bring money into the community & thankfully there are enough examples of neighborhood residents who have fought back & kept corporate chainstores like starbucks & wal-marts out of their neighborhoods!
but back to cbgb's. here's what you can do: i have pasted the basic information, as well as their website into my blog for you to read and check out. if you're one that believes that cbgb should stay where it should stay, god bless you! if on the other hand, if you believe that progress should never stand behind the old guard, well...hello! i can't wait to sit down with you at that great old restaurant standee just beyond the granville el in chicago on granville in & swap histories with you, honest histories, that is!
http://www.cbgb.com/save_cbgb.htm
To the Musicians, Fans and Friends of CBGB; My Landlord is "BRC"
These are the people that have control over whether I stay or go. The current money situation and legal status of the club, despite what Muzzy Rosenblatt says, is not in negotiation. It is in the courts to be decided by a judge. I am not going to cast aspersions on the representatives of the BRC, as they have on me. I only wish the problem be solved so we can both "do our thing"If you want us here, the BRC has to be persuaded that a gradual increase in rent is feasible.
Hilly Kristal, Owner of CBGB
Send a letter to The Mayor's Office asking Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg if he's prepared to say "CBGB can be closed down because they can't pay 40-50 thousand dollars per month rent to a non profit organization that is funded by the city, state and federal government to the tune of 23 million dollars per year."
Muzzy Rosenblatt, Executive Director
Bowery Residents' Committee
324 Lafayette Street, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10012
Phone: 212-533-5700
Fax: 212-533-1893
website: www.bowrescom.org
Email: info@bowrescom.org
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
Phone: 311 or 212-639-9675
Fax: 212.788.2460
Email: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
Friday, April 22
New York Tales-Act 5>Post Trip Talk>Love In Song
i believe i'm like most people, from the moment i'm awake to the time i go to sleep, i always have some form of music on, whether it's talkradio with the chimmie sing-songee, breathy deejays or hosts speaking when i'm getting ready for work, whatever i have on in the car while driving to work, cd player at lunchtime walking & when i go home from & onto wherever i'm supposed to be. the bottom line is, we seem to gravitate as human beings to varied forms of sounds, be they rhythmic voices or music.
the same can be said for remembering a city by a song that we hear when we are younger. you know what i mean, it just sort of sticks to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter & bacon mixed together. you hum it wherever you go during the day & you always remember it.
songwriters seem to have that same effect on us all, especially when they write songs about the cities we visit or live in. and come to think of it, well as far as i can tell, new york city seems to have a lot of songs written about it.
i know when i was flying to new york last friday night, i listened to the soundtrack of west side story. somehow, the passion of the music just made me feel the wonderous of joy of the vibrant city, which as some of you know, has been portrayed as a tiny dirty crowded island. it is, i suppose, but not having seen the parts that are, i can't say much on that subject, just yet.
when my plane flew overhead of the downtown area, i thought about the song, new york city by john lennon, as well as king kong falling off the empire state building to his death. in that instance, i heard the tune, new york minute, by the eagles. and so i cried, because i was at that moment, so happy to be there.
when i was a passenger on the super shuttle van, waiting to get out the times square fiasco, full of people & blaring signs, i heard frank sinatra's signature piece, new york, new york. by the time i was dropped in the village & passed by bleeker street, yep, you guessed it, i thought about simon & garfunkel's version of bleecker street.
on saturday, while riding the subway train to central park west, as we passed the varying streets, i heard simon & garfunkel yet again, this time, it was the 59th street bridge song (feelin' groovy) & duke ellington's take the 'a' train. after my performance on saturday afternoon & after i had parted ways with stewart (howard stern impersonator, see new york tales-post trip talk>act 2>howard, howard, howard). i went up to times square where virtually other new york song in my head was revived.
walking up 5th avenue, i heard judy garland & bing crosby sing easter parade, while a few blocks away walking up to the theater district, i heard give my regards to broadway. lastly, when i caught the train to 125th avenue & lexington in harlem, i heard & began to sing loudly & proudly cab calloway's tarzan of harlem. the people around me didn't seem to mind.
now i suspect other cities around the world have songs written about them too, i know chicago has a few, as well as san francisco, kansas city, phoenix, new orleans as well as foreign cities, like london & paris. nothing like new york though. as i now know that new york is probably one of the most jumping & vibrant cities i have been to in a long long time.
perhaps one day i'll write a song about new york. but you know, in a way i have already. through my stories i've been writing for the past few weeks. while thinking about this blog's subject matter, i stumbled across this song online. i bet most new yorkers don't even know their own state song. having said that, i'd like to leave you the lyrics. thanks to everyone in new york who made my life happy for that week in 1983 and this past weekend. you rock!
I Love New York
(written & composed by steve karmen)
There isn't another like it.
No matter where you go.
And nobody can compare it.
It's win and place and show.
New York is special.
New York is diff'rent' cause there's no place else on earth quite like New York and that's why
I LOVE NEW YORK
There isn't another like it.
No matter where you go.
And nobody can compare it.
It's win and place and show.
New York is special.
New York is diff'rent' cause there's no place else on earth quite like New York and that's why I LOVE NEW YORK
There isn't another like it.
No matter where you go.
And nobody can compare it.
It's win and place and show.
New York is special.
New York is diff'rent' cause there's no place else on earth quite like New York and that's why I LOVE NEW YORK
the same can be said for remembering a city by a song that we hear when we are younger. you know what i mean, it just sort of sticks to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter & bacon mixed together. you hum it wherever you go during the day & you always remember it.
songwriters seem to have that same effect on us all, especially when they write songs about the cities we visit or live in. and come to think of it, well as far as i can tell, new york city seems to have a lot of songs written about it.
i know when i was flying to new york last friday night, i listened to the soundtrack of west side story. somehow, the passion of the music just made me feel the wonderous of joy of the vibrant city, which as some of you know, has been portrayed as a tiny dirty crowded island. it is, i suppose, but not having seen the parts that are, i can't say much on that subject, just yet.
when my plane flew overhead of the downtown area, i thought about the song, new york city by john lennon, as well as king kong falling off the empire state building to his death. in that instance, i heard the tune, new york minute, by the eagles. and so i cried, because i was at that moment, so happy to be there.
when i was a passenger on the super shuttle van, waiting to get out the times square fiasco, full of people & blaring signs, i heard frank sinatra's signature piece, new york, new york. by the time i was dropped in the village & passed by bleeker street, yep, you guessed it, i thought about simon & garfunkel's version of bleecker street.
on saturday, while riding the subway train to central park west, as we passed the varying streets, i heard simon & garfunkel yet again, this time, it was the 59th street bridge song (feelin' groovy) & duke ellington's take the 'a' train. after my performance on saturday afternoon & after i had parted ways with stewart (howard stern impersonator, see new york tales-post trip talk>act 2>howard, howard, howard). i went up to times square where virtually other new york song in my head was revived.
walking up 5th avenue, i heard judy garland & bing crosby sing easter parade, while a few blocks away walking up to the theater district, i heard give my regards to broadway. lastly, when i caught the train to 125th avenue & lexington in harlem, i heard & began to sing loudly & proudly cab calloway's tarzan of harlem. the people around me didn't seem to mind.
now i suspect other cities around the world have songs written about them too, i know chicago has a few, as well as san francisco, kansas city, phoenix, new orleans as well as foreign cities, like london & paris. nothing like new york though. as i now know that new york is probably one of the most jumping & vibrant cities i have been to in a long long time.
perhaps one day i'll write a song about new york. but you know, in a way i have already. through my stories i've been writing for the past few weeks. while thinking about this blog's subject matter, i stumbled across this song online. i bet most new yorkers don't even know their own state song. having said that, i'd like to leave you the lyrics. thanks to everyone in new york who made my life happy for that week in 1983 and this past weekend. you rock!
I Love New York
(written & composed by steve karmen)
There isn't another like it.
No matter where you go.
And nobody can compare it.
It's win and place and show.
New York is special.
New York is diff'rent' cause there's no place else on earth quite like New York and that's why
I LOVE NEW YORK
There isn't another like it.
No matter where you go.
And nobody can compare it.
It's win and place and show.
New York is special.
New York is diff'rent' cause there's no place else on earth quite like New York and that's why I LOVE NEW YORK
There isn't another like it.
No matter where you go.
And nobody can compare it.
It's win and place and show.
New York is special.
New York is diff'rent' cause there's no place else on earth quite like New York and that's why I LOVE NEW YORK
New York Tales-Act 4>Post Trip Talk>Morale Booster
"charles gave an excellent reading and throat-singing at the si senor celebration…"---diana senechal, editor & publisher, si senor
now, let me tell you something, dear friends. doing poetry readings can be nerve-wracking at times, especially if you've never graced a particular stage, but to do it another city totally, well, that's the end to all ends.
it was a first time for me this past weekend to perform in new york city. i'd already conquered austin & huntsville, texas, philadephia, pennsylvania, los angeles, venice & san francisco, california, lafayette, indiana, portland, oregon, chicago and the surrounding suburbs of illinois. but new york city, new york? wow, i was nervous.
it's like one of those things you don't really prepare for. i mean of course, you can practice & practice until you think you're ready & then you go and perform & you screw something up. i decided for this performance, this time to try something a little different & that was to write a brand new poem especially for the event. i haven't done that sort of thing in years.
i used to do that when i'd perform on radio programs & i'd write something tailored for the radio audience. in radio you can do that, people tend to use their imaginations & you can dress however you like, nobody will see you except for the deejay, the engineer & the entourage you've brought with you.
in person, it's a different story. people can judge you based on the way you look alone, as in shape & clothes one wears & forget the rest of what one performs. one of my vocals teachers used to ask me to take off my fish hat when we were in a lesson because it made her laugh all of the time & she couldn't concentrate! little things like that can make or break a voice without the voice ever having been broken to begin with.
other things can throw off a performance too, such as being at the event on time, which that afternoon, was looking pretty grim for a while, while waiting for a train down in the subway & those can seemingly take f-o-r-e-v-e-r! it was about 1:30pm when i decided to grab a cab & get to the bowery poetry club. for me, being there on time was extremely important.
my other nerve-wracking & major problem was the fact that it took exceedingly longer than usual to warm up my throat, due to the double whammy & combinational facts that my host’s apartment was saturated with extremely high humidity & once i hit the street, my throat met with cold, windy conditions. ahhhh, spring in new york, how lovely, i thought.
in between walking through washington square park, taking the train to central park west & catching that cab to the bowery, i did my utmost best to push, pull, tug & tweak my throat-singing up until I got it to sound semi-perfect.
The show went off without a hitch. Everything seemed to work fine. The other performers were great & the musicians sang funny songs with funny lyrics.
After the show, as i hung around & spoke to the other performers, exchanged & autographed my two spoken word & music cds; errorwrist: nine muses of error in underconstructualism & my wife is the universe caw! caw! caw! caw! (both by the way are available for $10 each. for more information, email me at: sid_yiddish@hotmail.com) with the other two musicians, virgil shaw & felix constanza, each revealed a secret to me.
virgil told me that if his guitar-playing didn’t sound so rusty, he would have invited me on the stage to throat-sing, while he strummed along. felix wrote in the booklet of his former band granfaloon bus’s recording entitled lucky curtains, “enjoyed you charles. you gave me confidence.”
later on that evening, as i caught a train from grand central station back to my host’s apartment, i saw an elderly chinese man stroking an er-hu (two-string chinese violin) in the subway. naturally, i began to throat-sing along with him. at some point, he looked up at me, mumbled something unintelligible (probably, something to the effect of, “hey, get your own space!) & kept on playing.
it didn’t matter much to me. i was happy. the chinese man, virgil, felix & diana all made my weekend complete!
Wednesday, April 20
New York Tales>Post Trip Talk-Act 3>What Kind Of Meat Is That?
as i write this story tonight, i am wearing what has become a most beloved & sentimental piece of clothing, cap, rather. i am of course speaking about my fish hat. years ago at a rummage sale at a church in evanston, illinois, i was trying on hats & of course i beat out someone who wanted a really nice stetson hat that was reasonably priced, but of course there was one problem, it didn't fit me. alas, the man who wanted the hat, got it & it fit him just perfectly. next to that hat was a fish cap, the front of the fish in the front, the middle part its fins atop the hat & in the back was its tail. the man said it seemed to go well with me. he was right. so, from that day forward, it became a part of me.
i wore the hat to readings, to work, on trips, on public transportation, basically everywhere. it became my lucky hat. now, that seems kind of silly, but it's true. some guys i know wear lucky socks & lucky boxers (underwear) to interviews & on dates & it supposedly gets them something...anyway, this hat became my good luck charm right away. people who i had rough dealings with in the past suddenly became nice to me. clerks were nicer to me. even bosses who treated me like garbage were all of a sudden, nice to me. even little kids would come up and kiss the hat, as if it were some holy object.
then i started to decorate it with pins of expression, mostly anti-war buttons & started to get the hat autographed. the first signature i received on the left fin, was that of parisian pianst jean-michael pilc, who asked me, "where did you get that hat?" that's been a regular question over the few years i've worn it. next, the golfer tom lehman, signed the right fin & told me how much he liked the hat. my former jazz vocals teacher jackie allen was the next person to sign it. she gave me her signature right below the fish's left eye & finally, legendary folkie arlo guthire signed the right side cap brim.
it's gotten sweaty & dirty over the years i've owned it & even a woman i dated last fall, told me i should frame the hat. that was her way of saying, don't wear it anymore. she liked mice anyway. so be it.
in 2002, i travelled via greyhound bus to the west coast & the southwest to visit friends & family & everytime something went wrong, like say a runaway bust in northern nebraska by four state troopers who had nothing better to do on a saturday evening, a bunch of guys sitting on the back of the bus, said, "let's blame it on the guy wearing the fish hat."
in airports, people stop & stare at my hat. homeland security people smirk or pull me out of line, all because i am wearing this hat, frisk me & check my bags thoroughly. i think that's called profiling. thankfully, nothing like that occurred this trip out. for some reason, it always happens in the state of arizona, where illegal aliens & extra-terrestials are prominent, & my parents & an ex-coworker of mine live there as well. could that mean something? well, maybe, but i'm going off on a tanget here...
i remember on saturday night, standing in the middle of times square, just staring at the sights, when eventually i decided to go and buy some trinkets for a friend at home who picked me up from the airport on sunday. so, i went into a shop that was selling the i love (heart) NY white cotton tee shirts, along with other shirts, when a man inside the shop stopped me.
he was thunderstruck by my hat, just in absolute awe of it. "what kind of meat is that?" he asked.
i told him it was a bass & then proceeded to give him a short history about the hat, explaining the autographs and other things about it.
he looked very quizzical & then said to me, "How much do you want for it?
i told him nothing. then he started giveing me dollar amounts, beginning at $50. i kept telling him, that i wasn't interested.
Then he said, "$500. that's my final offer."
i told him, "No, sorry, it's not for sale," walked over to pay for the shirt & some postcards at the end of the counter.
as i left the store, he looked truly disappointed that he wasn't getting my national treasure. but he was polite about the whole affair as i left his shop, wishing me a nice evening.
should i have sold my hat? nope. not ever, not for $50 or $500. this hat is me, my one link to true personal statements.
then again, if he had offered me $1,000, i might have taken the bait!
i wore the hat to readings, to work, on trips, on public transportation, basically everywhere. it became my lucky hat. now, that seems kind of silly, but it's true. some guys i know wear lucky socks & lucky boxers (underwear) to interviews & on dates & it supposedly gets them something...anyway, this hat became my good luck charm right away. people who i had rough dealings with in the past suddenly became nice to me. clerks were nicer to me. even bosses who treated me like garbage were all of a sudden, nice to me. even little kids would come up and kiss the hat, as if it were some holy object.
then i started to decorate it with pins of expression, mostly anti-war buttons & started to get the hat autographed. the first signature i received on the left fin, was that of parisian pianst jean-michael pilc, who asked me, "where did you get that hat?" that's been a regular question over the few years i've worn it. next, the golfer tom lehman, signed the right fin & told me how much he liked the hat. my former jazz vocals teacher jackie allen was the next person to sign it. she gave me her signature right below the fish's left eye & finally, legendary folkie arlo guthire signed the right side cap brim.
it's gotten sweaty & dirty over the years i've owned it & even a woman i dated last fall, told me i should frame the hat. that was her way of saying, don't wear it anymore. she liked mice anyway. so be it.
in 2002, i travelled via greyhound bus to the west coast & the southwest to visit friends & family & everytime something went wrong, like say a runaway bust in northern nebraska by four state troopers who had nothing better to do on a saturday evening, a bunch of guys sitting on the back of the bus, said, "let's blame it on the guy wearing the fish hat."
in airports, people stop & stare at my hat. homeland security people smirk or pull me out of line, all because i am wearing this hat, frisk me & check my bags thoroughly. i think that's called profiling. thankfully, nothing like that occurred this trip out. for some reason, it always happens in the state of arizona, where illegal aliens & extra-terrestials are prominent, & my parents & an ex-coworker of mine live there as well. could that mean something? well, maybe, but i'm going off on a tanget here...
i remember on saturday night, standing in the middle of times square, just staring at the sights, when eventually i decided to go and buy some trinkets for a friend at home who picked me up from the airport on sunday. so, i went into a shop that was selling the i love (heart) NY white cotton tee shirts, along with other shirts, when a man inside the shop stopped me.
he was thunderstruck by my hat, just in absolute awe of it. "what kind of meat is that?" he asked.
i told him it was a bass & then proceeded to give him a short history about the hat, explaining the autographs and other things about it.
he looked very quizzical & then said to me, "How much do you want for it?
i told him nothing. then he started giveing me dollar amounts, beginning at $50. i kept telling him, that i wasn't interested.
Then he said, "$500. that's my final offer."
i told him, "No, sorry, it's not for sale," walked over to pay for the shirt & some postcards at the end of the counter.
as i left the store, he looked truly disappointed that he wasn't getting my national treasure. but he was polite about the whole affair as i left his shop, wishing me a nice evening.
should i have sold my hat? nope. not ever, not for $50 or $500. this hat is me, my one link to true personal statements.
then again, if he had offered me $1,000, i might have taken the bait!
Tuesday, April 19
New York Tales>Post Trip Talk-Act 2>Howard, Howard, Howard
on saturday morning, april 16th, approximately, 11am or thereabout, i was picked up by my friend stewart, whom i introduced to my host as a howard stern impersonator. yep, that's right, a howard stern impersonator. yet, to me, he's always been stew (short for stewart).
i met stew nearly 18 years ago, through my own fanzine, cops hate poetry. i reviewed a few of his vinyl albums back then & he sent me a truckload of information, to boot. at that point in my life, i was traveling, while still living at home & publishing a fanzine & that's pretty much all i cared about. my college career was on hold indefinitely, as i had just been booted out of western illinois university in macomb, illinois, for failing to make minimum educational requirements.
as cops hate poetry forged ahead, so did my friendship with stew. we had a few things in common, like both of us being beatles fans & his birthday falls a week before mine, for starters. when cops hate poetry went on hiatus for a few years between 1988-early 1990, i began to freelance & stew sent me records of his to review for the journal i had been writing for at that time.
in early 1991, i want to say, i can't seem to recall at this point & will correct the date if i am wrong, i interviewed stew, along with my host (mykel board) a few months later & both interviews ran in the same issue. i did see stew in 1989, when i visited philadelphia, while meeting a penpal (stayed there too) & met another artist, who i would end up staying friends with for many years to come, named scoats. he drew two comic strip characters named gloveman & pinky (as in baseball glove & pinky finger) & published a fanzine titled caves & cucumbers, which often published my poetry & varying words from one of my characters, swami harold.
the last time i saw stew before this past weekend, was in 1990, when i picked him up at o'hare airport in chicago & walked him over to his next plane, for which he was flying to moline, illinois to shoot a television pilot. what happened in the airport within two to three minutes was phenomenal, but i'll get to that shortly.
but back to present day. after we left my host's apartment building, we exchanged catch-up stories & he asked me what i wanted to do. i happened to mention something about jack kerouac & washington square park, so he suggested we walk through it. there was a fair there, with vendors hawking all the usual sorts of items, including tee shirts & food, most of it, while i wanted to try it, i couldn't as most of it was very spicy & i didn't want to mess up my throat, as i was planning on performing in the afternoon & one of my pieces incorporated some throat-singing, so you get the idea, right? no spicy food for me.
as we walked through the tents, people stopped & stared at him, & whispered to each other until, one space we stopped at, a new york post information table, where the man behind the table asked him if he was howard stern.
that's the same exact thing that happened at o'hare airport in chicago. people stopped & stared & chanted "howard, howard, howard." the same thing was happening here too. we continued walking through the tents & that's all we heard, but he was used to it. so used to it by now.
we continued to wander through the district until we took a subway to 72nd street & central park west, where we got off, took a few photos of each other & walked upstairs, walked past the dakota building, where yoko ono lives, john lennon was murdered & across the street, was strawberry fields, the portion of central park that was dedicated to lennon's memory & also, the imagine circle, where dozens upon dozens of people where taking photographs, like them, that's what we did too.
as we were taking photos, i noticed even more people were staring hard at stew doing double-takes, the old doppelganger effect was in full force here & i didn't think it would disappear anytime soon. i told stew that taking pictures here, reminded me of the time i was at abbey road in london in the pouring rain, yet there were approximately 50-100 people there taking photos.
when we finished, we took a walk around the park & then headed off to a part of central park he had never been to. as we walked, i noticed four teenage boys with their bikes perched upon a rocky mount, and heard one of them in his thickest brooklyn accent exclaim to the others, "no, that can't be, it's howard stern!" then they started to chant that old familar mantra, "howard, howard, howard." then i heard another one say, "naw, dat's not him, it's just someone who looks a lot like him." they didn't seem to be too sure of themselves, as stew & i smiled at each other & walked onward.
when i realized the time, i told him we had to get back & grab a subway to the club. as we walked toward the station, i noticed he carried with him an a brown manila envelope. i asked him what he had in it & to my amusement, he said, color pictures of himself, in case anyone wanted an autograph. he said it happens a lot & he always signs them with his own insignia, in the event someone were to sell it on ebay & someone else would realize that it's not the real howard stern.
quite a clever guy, stew is, as i asked him to sign a photo for me. he did & signed it, "to charlie, from not howard." it hangs proudly on my refrigerator now.
so go on, take a look for yourself at stew on his official website, www.howardsternguy.com he really does look like howard stern. even the real howard stern complimented stew on his looks, well, sort of. he told stew on his radio & television show that, "you look like a douche bag." but as one learns in the entertainment business, one compliment, whether good or bad, brings nothing but good publicity all around. having had the experience of being complimented negatively by the late gg allin & allen ginsberg, i can tell you it pays off. for bragging rights, that is.
i met stew nearly 18 years ago, through my own fanzine, cops hate poetry. i reviewed a few of his vinyl albums back then & he sent me a truckload of information, to boot. at that point in my life, i was traveling, while still living at home & publishing a fanzine & that's pretty much all i cared about. my college career was on hold indefinitely, as i had just been booted out of western illinois university in macomb, illinois, for failing to make minimum educational requirements.
as cops hate poetry forged ahead, so did my friendship with stew. we had a few things in common, like both of us being beatles fans & his birthday falls a week before mine, for starters. when cops hate poetry went on hiatus for a few years between 1988-early 1990, i began to freelance & stew sent me records of his to review for the journal i had been writing for at that time.
in early 1991, i want to say, i can't seem to recall at this point & will correct the date if i am wrong, i interviewed stew, along with my host (mykel board) a few months later & both interviews ran in the same issue. i did see stew in 1989, when i visited philadelphia, while meeting a penpal (stayed there too) & met another artist, who i would end up staying friends with for many years to come, named scoats. he drew two comic strip characters named gloveman & pinky (as in baseball glove & pinky finger) & published a fanzine titled caves & cucumbers, which often published my poetry & varying words from one of my characters, swami harold.
the last time i saw stew before this past weekend, was in 1990, when i picked him up at o'hare airport in chicago & walked him over to his next plane, for which he was flying to moline, illinois to shoot a television pilot. what happened in the airport within two to three minutes was phenomenal, but i'll get to that shortly.
but back to present day. after we left my host's apartment building, we exchanged catch-up stories & he asked me what i wanted to do. i happened to mention something about jack kerouac & washington square park, so he suggested we walk through it. there was a fair there, with vendors hawking all the usual sorts of items, including tee shirts & food, most of it, while i wanted to try it, i couldn't as most of it was very spicy & i didn't want to mess up my throat, as i was planning on performing in the afternoon & one of my pieces incorporated some throat-singing, so you get the idea, right? no spicy food for me.
as we walked through the tents, people stopped & stared at him, & whispered to each other until, one space we stopped at, a new york post information table, where the man behind the table asked him if he was howard stern.
that's the same exact thing that happened at o'hare airport in chicago. people stopped & stared & chanted "howard, howard, howard." the same thing was happening here too. we continued walking through the tents & that's all we heard, but he was used to it. so used to it by now.
we continued to wander through the district until we took a subway to 72nd street & central park west, where we got off, took a few photos of each other & walked upstairs, walked past the dakota building, where yoko ono lives, john lennon was murdered & across the street, was strawberry fields, the portion of central park that was dedicated to lennon's memory & also, the imagine circle, where dozens upon dozens of people where taking photographs, like them, that's what we did too.
as we were taking photos, i noticed even more people were staring hard at stew doing double-takes, the old doppelganger effect was in full force here & i didn't think it would disappear anytime soon. i told stew that taking pictures here, reminded me of the time i was at abbey road in london in the pouring rain, yet there were approximately 50-100 people there taking photos.
when we finished, we took a walk around the park & then headed off to a part of central park he had never been to. as we walked, i noticed four teenage boys with their bikes perched upon a rocky mount, and heard one of them in his thickest brooklyn accent exclaim to the others, "no, that can't be, it's howard stern!" then they started to chant that old familar mantra, "howard, howard, howard." then i heard another one say, "naw, dat's not him, it's just someone who looks a lot like him." they didn't seem to be too sure of themselves, as stew & i smiled at each other & walked onward.
when i realized the time, i told him we had to get back & grab a subway to the club. as we walked toward the station, i noticed he carried with him an a brown manila envelope. i asked him what he had in it & to my amusement, he said, color pictures of himself, in case anyone wanted an autograph. he said it happens a lot & he always signs them with his own insignia, in the event someone were to sell it on ebay & someone else would realize that it's not the real howard stern.
quite a clever guy, stew is, as i asked him to sign a photo for me. he did & signed it, "to charlie, from not howard." it hangs proudly on my refrigerator now.
so go on, take a look for yourself at stew on his official website, www.howardsternguy.com he really does look like howard stern. even the real howard stern complimented stew on his looks, well, sort of. he told stew on his radio & television show that, "you look like a douche bag." but as one learns in the entertainment business, one compliment, whether good or bad, brings nothing but good publicity all around. having had the experience of being complimented negatively by the late gg allin & allen ginsberg, i can tell you it pays off. for bragging rights, that is.
Monday, April 18
New York Tales>Post Trip Talk-Act 1>I Collect Negros
i arrived late on friday evening, april 15, into new york city. the plane in chicago had not left until at least 6pm, due to air traffic jam congestion, but i didn't know about it until we were way into the air & i was unable to call my host to inform him. the plane landed about 9:45pm, eastern standard time, well over an hour & a half late.
as soon as we landed, i grabbed my bags & went downstairs , to look for ground transportation. i realized i was already running late, so i decided against taking public transportation & instead decided to take a shuttle to his place. i called him & left him a few messages telling him i was going to be late & he called me back, telling me he would wait for me, then go get a bite to eat whenever i made it in.
what was i thinking taking the shuttle? it took just as much time to get there than it should have. one thing is for certain; the driver never should have driven into times square like he did, not once, not twice, but three times! it took forever it seemed to get out of that vortex. but i was impressed, which doesn't happen often, with all of those bright lights, billboards & video screens flashing on & off 24 hours a day. finally, after dropping off the people before me, we finally arrived to my destination into a quieter, cooler part of town, noho (north of houston-pronouced how-stun), nestled in between greenwich village & east village.
i was just happy to see my host, as i shook his hand & give him a seminal hug. i dropped off my bags & off we went in search of a restaurant to go for a late dinner & talk a bit. after getting back to his place, which was something like the width of a post office box, only slightly bigger, i remarked to myself, that his place looked a bit like a thrift store, little trinkets everywhere, from autographs like (former alabama governor) george wallace & yankee organist eddie layton, to collector books, cds, a mongolian thermos, a box of derek jeter cereal, framed pictures & letters from female fans...oh, did i mention my host is a columnist for a punk magazine? he's also a yankees fan too. considering they are in last place at the current moment, which for me, is about time, i wouldn't go around mentioning my preference for the yankees just yet this season, but i'm rambling...
his columns are often cynical & sometimes downright cut-throat, like the reputation he's built for himself, which seems to be the case for some writers. in other words, they do those sorts of things, i suppose as a way to distance themselves subconsciously, perhaps. i'm not for certain what that motivation behind it all is, but so be it.
one thing i noticed in his place was an enormous amont of afro sorts of things, in that i mean, like a little statue of a black mammy, a couple of boxes of darkie toothpaste that he told me he found in mongolia, and other kinds of stuff. when i asked him about those things peppered (bad pun i know, but intended) about his apartment, he simply remarked to me, "i collect negros." that was a pretty funny thing to say to me & when i repeated it later to friends, they busted out laughing too.
i guess i could go on & on about my host & his habits & his place, which perhaps i will at another time but for the moment i want to say this: despite the way he's painted himself as a cynical person in the past, it's not so in person. in real life, he's a nice man, a sweet caring & considerate person. yep, i know what i mean when i say this & perhaps i've ruined his reputation by stating this, but i couldn't say anything bad about a nice guy....ummm, strike that. i suppose if he chose a better baseball team, unlike those lousy yankees, he'd be much better off! here's his website, so take a gander, won't ya? http://www.mykelboard.com/
as soon as we landed, i grabbed my bags & went downstairs , to look for ground transportation. i realized i was already running late, so i decided against taking public transportation & instead decided to take a shuttle to his place. i called him & left him a few messages telling him i was going to be late & he called me back, telling me he would wait for me, then go get a bite to eat whenever i made it in.
what was i thinking taking the shuttle? it took just as much time to get there than it should have. one thing is for certain; the driver never should have driven into times square like he did, not once, not twice, but three times! it took forever it seemed to get out of that vortex. but i was impressed, which doesn't happen often, with all of those bright lights, billboards & video screens flashing on & off 24 hours a day. finally, after dropping off the people before me, we finally arrived to my destination into a quieter, cooler part of town, noho (north of houston-pronouced how-stun), nestled in between greenwich village & east village.
i was just happy to see my host, as i shook his hand & give him a seminal hug. i dropped off my bags & off we went in search of a restaurant to go for a late dinner & talk a bit. after getting back to his place, which was something like the width of a post office box, only slightly bigger, i remarked to myself, that his place looked a bit like a thrift store, little trinkets everywhere, from autographs like (former alabama governor) george wallace & yankee organist eddie layton, to collector books, cds, a mongolian thermos, a box of derek jeter cereal, framed pictures & letters from female fans...oh, did i mention my host is a columnist for a punk magazine? he's also a yankees fan too. considering they are in last place at the current moment, which for me, is about time, i wouldn't go around mentioning my preference for the yankees just yet this season, but i'm rambling...
his columns are often cynical & sometimes downright cut-throat, like the reputation he's built for himself, which seems to be the case for some writers. in other words, they do those sorts of things, i suppose as a way to distance themselves subconsciously, perhaps. i'm not for certain what that motivation behind it all is, but so be it.
one thing i noticed in his place was an enormous amont of afro sorts of things, in that i mean, like a little statue of a black mammy, a couple of boxes of darkie toothpaste that he told me he found in mongolia, and other kinds of stuff. when i asked him about those things peppered (bad pun i know, but intended) about his apartment, he simply remarked to me, "i collect negros." that was a pretty funny thing to say to me & when i repeated it later to friends, they busted out laughing too.
i guess i could go on & on about my host & his habits & his place, which perhaps i will at another time but for the moment i want to say this: despite the way he's painted himself as a cynical person in the past, it's not so in person. in real life, he's a nice man, a sweet caring & considerate person. yep, i know what i mean when i say this & perhaps i've ruined his reputation by stating this, but i couldn't say anything bad about a nice guy....ummm, strike that. i suppose if he chose a better baseball team, unlike those lousy yankees, he'd be much better off! here's his website, so take a gander, won't ya? http://www.mykelboard.com/
Thursday, April 14
New York Tales>Act Five-Late Into The Jazz Night
tomorrow afternoon, april 15th, i leave for new york city, my time in 17 years, my first time for the 21st century, i am thrilled, very very much so to return to the city that never sleeps, i'm sure its occupants do, but anyway. i am going there for good reason this time, that is to perform as part of a celebration release for issue 3 of the journal si senor.
they published one of my personal favorite prose-poems that i had written nearly five years ago entitled, late into the jazz night, whom i wrote it for, my first vocals teacher, jackie allen. i had written it in journalistic/journal-like style or what i call my orson welles period writing, based on an actual performance i took my younger brother benjy to, sunday, july 20, 2001.
as with my writing that i loved at that point, so came the love i had for this teacher. she taught me so much, everything from snapping my fingers to a beat correctly to helping me compose songs, well she did the music composing, i wrote the lyrics. she had a direct influence on how i began to look or approach song-writing, even though she knew darn well i wasn't a jazz singer!
she was more than just a teacher. she became a great friend to me and in times when i had bad days, she had ways of making me feeling better, like say a good word or two of kindness.
she saw something in me, both as a singer & a poet/lyricist, although we both knew my timing was never right, in terms of pitch & things, the other parts just sort of worked themselves out. i had jackie allen for three years & cried when i found out she was leaving, so i wanted to give her something back, which i did. i wrote a set of lyrics for her, called hips to swing, which i ended up doing at the second recital, which was her last.
the first recital was a total kick in the head, as i performed original compositions of mine, one called oh deer! (previously published in another early blog) & good morning my dear friend, which i had written about my friend, lew brickhate, who believes the fbi is after him, for what reasons, i'm still not sure! he also believes that nirvana stole a song from him when he played in a band, but that's another story for another time.
at that first recital, when i sauntered up to the stage & performed, you could hear a pin drop. it was like the audience was mesmerized by my performance, which they were. lots of friends of mine came out for that show, both co-workers & old friends. even my crazy landlady & her-then goofy boyfriend came out too! it was the biggest amount of friends i had sitting in an audience that had come to see me, because in the past i have been so used to performing in front of strangers, with no friends in the audience. but, as i've learned, that's a good way to work an audience, in that i mean, practice & invent new ways to recite & perform.
but enough of that for the moment. here now, for you to enjoy, are hips to swing & also, late into the jazz night. can't wait to write about my new york adventures when i get home!!!
Hips To Swing
When there are no more songs left to sing
Or babes with mothers with hips to swing
That’s when I know it’s time to go and do my own thing
The seeds in the ground grow at a steady pace
All the world loves a smiling face
The birds and the bees know their own place
When it’s time to buzz and sing
The winter melts into the spring
The summer cools down to the fall
The seasons become one as they flow
Like droplets in a waterfall
Boy meets girl and falls in love
They swear true alliance to the stars up above
Romance blossoms like a beautiful flower
A dance and a ring solidifies the power
To one, to one, a new life has begun
Go forth and become all you can be
When you get sad and blue, you can always talk to me
When there are no more songs to sing
Or babes with mothers with hips to swing
That’s when you know it’s time to go out and mingle
Late Into The Jazz Night
(For Jackie Allen)
Late into the jazz night, flitting with high notes and battering the lower keys, the piano man nods to his bass man, who is plucking the strings gingerly and frail.
Opening set flies off without a hitch. Ten minutes, no fifteen into the set, tall thin blonde with hair pulled back, black necklace, pressed aqua velvet chiffon dress, red-lipped smile, pale neck with jet set vocalese, blaring like miles’ trumpet cutting across 1,000 seaweed fields of ocean blue and coral green, where turtles hide in shells and play chess like old hunkered down men in city parks beneath tall shade trees and painted fire hydrants and rollerblading couples and lone bicyclists speeding against the breeze.
She is poised with microphone in right hand, floating rhythms like butterflies floating in spring gardens.
Yes, singer of throwback days of costumed ballrooms, dressy dolls, gallant gentlemen, all dressed up, arm in arm, clinking glasses, rattling silverware on plates, slicing into steaks and chops, smoking cheap smelly cigars, while laughing and talking loudly over the singer.
Some say the coffeehouse music era is back. Female vocal window dressing.
Mad students in background, giggling and glaze-eyed into conversations of high poetic intellectualism.
My, oh my, how those times don’t change, like brand new tires on a spanking blue ’99 Chrysler Neon.
Mad jazz geniuses are coming back in droves, kids mostly, bouncing, wailing and hoofling across the Americas like newly drafted soldiers sent over to Iraq.
It is not always going to be this way; it is a trend the experts decree. It will never happen the way it flew off the conveyor belts 60 years ago. It is all about money. The hip-to-cool Kurt Elling stance, with youngsters smoking jazz cigarettes and knocking down kiddy cocktails and talking about Dizz and Bird and Monk and Satch, the four real faces that were left off of Mt. Rushmore and ages and ages behind, and also the hereafter.
Where do we go from here? There is here and here is everywhere in the jazz juke joints of Fats Waller’s fiery red pits of eternity.
Hell is the only place to be, man. Hell is where it is at. The C moons, the pleasure trips, the cruiser missiles embraced for daily target practice of new and yet, unrecognizable faces, the end of the end as we know it.
The explosive birth of sound and fiery new faces of jazz, queer twists and wild jump movements for the love of man and mankind, mistakes melded into lightening bolts of half notes and quarter notes, slicking and slapping off the pages of staff sheets and into the joyous journey of the patch-cloud, checkered unknown.
they published one of my personal favorite prose-poems that i had written nearly five years ago entitled, late into the jazz night, whom i wrote it for, my first vocals teacher, jackie allen. i had written it in journalistic/journal-like style or what i call my orson welles period writing, based on an actual performance i took my younger brother benjy to, sunday, july 20, 2001.
as with my writing that i loved at that point, so came the love i had for this teacher. she taught me so much, everything from snapping my fingers to a beat correctly to helping me compose songs, well she did the music composing, i wrote the lyrics. she had a direct influence on how i began to look or approach song-writing, even though she knew darn well i wasn't a jazz singer!
she was more than just a teacher. she became a great friend to me and in times when i had bad days, she had ways of making me feeling better, like say a good word or two of kindness.
she saw something in me, both as a singer & a poet/lyricist, although we both knew my timing was never right, in terms of pitch & things, the other parts just sort of worked themselves out. i had jackie allen for three years & cried when i found out she was leaving, so i wanted to give her something back, which i did. i wrote a set of lyrics for her, called hips to swing, which i ended up doing at the second recital, which was her last.
the first recital was a total kick in the head, as i performed original compositions of mine, one called oh deer! (previously published in another early blog) & good morning my dear friend, which i had written about my friend, lew brickhate, who believes the fbi is after him, for what reasons, i'm still not sure! he also believes that nirvana stole a song from him when he played in a band, but that's another story for another time.
at that first recital, when i sauntered up to the stage & performed, you could hear a pin drop. it was like the audience was mesmerized by my performance, which they were. lots of friends of mine came out for that show, both co-workers & old friends. even my crazy landlady & her-then goofy boyfriend came out too! it was the biggest amount of friends i had sitting in an audience that had come to see me, because in the past i have been so used to performing in front of strangers, with no friends in the audience. but, as i've learned, that's a good way to work an audience, in that i mean, practice & invent new ways to recite & perform.
but enough of that for the moment. here now, for you to enjoy, are hips to swing & also, late into the jazz night. can't wait to write about my new york adventures when i get home!!!
Hips To Swing
When there are no more songs left to sing
Or babes with mothers with hips to swing
That’s when I know it’s time to go and do my own thing
The seeds in the ground grow at a steady pace
All the world loves a smiling face
The birds and the bees know their own place
When it’s time to buzz and sing
The winter melts into the spring
The summer cools down to the fall
The seasons become one as they flow
Like droplets in a waterfall
Boy meets girl and falls in love
They swear true alliance to the stars up above
Romance blossoms like a beautiful flower
A dance and a ring solidifies the power
To one, to one, a new life has begun
Go forth and become all you can be
When you get sad and blue, you can always talk to me
When there are no more songs to sing
Or babes with mothers with hips to swing
That’s when you know it’s time to go out and mingle
Late Into The Jazz Night
(For Jackie Allen)
Late into the jazz night, flitting with high notes and battering the lower keys, the piano man nods to his bass man, who is plucking the strings gingerly and frail.
Opening set flies off without a hitch. Ten minutes, no fifteen into the set, tall thin blonde with hair pulled back, black necklace, pressed aqua velvet chiffon dress, red-lipped smile, pale neck with jet set vocalese, blaring like miles’ trumpet cutting across 1,000 seaweed fields of ocean blue and coral green, where turtles hide in shells and play chess like old hunkered down men in city parks beneath tall shade trees and painted fire hydrants and rollerblading couples and lone bicyclists speeding against the breeze.
She is poised with microphone in right hand, floating rhythms like butterflies floating in spring gardens.
Yes, singer of throwback days of costumed ballrooms, dressy dolls, gallant gentlemen, all dressed up, arm in arm, clinking glasses, rattling silverware on plates, slicing into steaks and chops, smoking cheap smelly cigars, while laughing and talking loudly over the singer.
Some say the coffeehouse music era is back. Female vocal window dressing.
Mad students in background, giggling and glaze-eyed into conversations of high poetic intellectualism.
My, oh my, how those times don’t change, like brand new tires on a spanking blue ’99 Chrysler Neon.
Mad jazz geniuses are coming back in droves, kids mostly, bouncing, wailing and hoofling across the Americas like newly drafted soldiers sent over to Iraq.
It is not always going to be this way; it is a trend the experts decree. It will never happen the way it flew off the conveyor belts 60 years ago. It is all about money. The hip-to-cool Kurt Elling stance, with youngsters smoking jazz cigarettes and knocking down kiddy cocktails and talking about Dizz and Bird and Monk and Satch, the four real faces that were left off of Mt. Rushmore and ages and ages behind, and also the hereafter.
Where do we go from here? There is here and here is everywhere in the jazz juke joints of Fats Waller’s fiery red pits of eternity.
Hell is the only place to be, man. Hell is where it is at. The C moons, the pleasure trips, the cruiser missiles embraced for daily target practice of new and yet, unrecognizable faces, the end of the end as we know it.
The explosive birth of sound and fiery new faces of jazz, queer twists and wild jump movements for the love of man and mankind, mistakes melded into lightening bolts of half notes and quarter notes, slicking and slapping off the pages of staff sheets and into the joyous journey of the patch-cloud, checkered unknown.
Wednesday, April 13
New York Tales>Act Four-Trendsville USA
i'd always known growing up that new york was a trend-setting city. them & los angeles, london & paris too. whether it was jazz, poetry, literature, fashion, clothing, you name it, these four towns have it all going on, as opposed to where i live, well, it's going on, but we seem to take our lessons & learning abilities from those who have started anew.
now granted, we do have times when our city is suddenly the hottest place to be at for music & theater, but that seems to come & go and spurts. new york has all those cool buildings like the empire state building where king kong fell to his death, the pan american building, where no one fell to their death at least not that i know of, the guggenheim designed by frank lloyd wright that my good friend twitchy has bugged me to death to go and see while i am in new york for only two days (a weekend) & wall street where money dies everyday.
death i suppose doesn't have a hard time making itself known in new york, it happens here too, way too often, but i digress. trends die just as hard in new york as they do here, but for some of us, me, in particular, some of the things i saw in new york my first time out haven't died just yet.
some of my firsts in new york were, well for a start, homeless people. i remember walking along times square and seeing homeless people for the first time. in particular, a man whose feet where as black as coal. that has stuck with me for nearly 22 years.
the next first i saw was when i went to grand central station one day & a man asked me if i could watch "his telephone booth" for him. he kept talking loudly as if he were talking to someone while he rushed across the station to get something & then came back to thank me. i suppose we have the late great failure of a president ronald reagan to thank for men like him. sad but true.
another first i experienced while out there was ummmm, loneliness, not by me, but of other men & women, for that matter. i stayed in the 92nd street ymca when i was visiting/touring around new york & when i first pulled in & set my clothes down in my room & unpacked, i met a young black woman who for a purchase of a pack of cigarettes & a chicken dinner, became my unoffical guide around town. i think she must have known i was an easy target & i realized it early enough to tell her nicely that i could find my way on my own. she wasn't pleased.
the other time, same ymca, mid week, was a man who exchanged pleasantries with me in the common area shower. we spoke for a bit & i told him that i needed directions to the u.n. building. he was friendly enough, after toweling off & told me to stop by his room so he could give me directions. he was staring at me while i was showering & even though i make too big a deal of it in public, i wondered why he stared at me so hard.
little did i know what was waiting for me once i knocked on this man's door & he let me in. i remember what i was wearing that day. a pair of blue jeans & a white dead kennedys holiday in cambodia tee shirt. he came up behind me & locked the door. i didn't think much of it, if only for a brief second or so, when he told me how nice my eyes looked & started to give me directions. as i wrote them down, he suddenly got up from his chair & came over and stroked my chest through my tee shirt & told me how nice i felt. his actions made alarm bells go off in my head. i felt very uneasy & i told him so. luckily for me, he stopped. he apologized & told me he didn't mean to startle me & that if i ever felt like talking, i could stop by his room & talk, no funny business.
that was something else i learned that day. mistrust. inside i felt just awful & cried.
now granted, we do have times when our city is suddenly the hottest place to be at for music & theater, but that seems to come & go and spurts. new york has all those cool buildings like the empire state building where king kong fell to his death, the pan american building, where no one fell to their death at least not that i know of, the guggenheim designed by frank lloyd wright that my good friend twitchy has bugged me to death to go and see while i am in new york for only two days (a weekend) & wall street where money dies everyday.
death i suppose doesn't have a hard time making itself known in new york, it happens here too, way too often, but i digress. trends die just as hard in new york as they do here, but for some of us, me, in particular, some of the things i saw in new york my first time out haven't died just yet.
some of my firsts in new york were, well for a start, homeless people. i remember walking along times square and seeing homeless people for the first time. in particular, a man whose feet where as black as coal. that has stuck with me for nearly 22 years.
the next first i saw was when i went to grand central station one day & a man asked me if i could watch "his telephone booth" for him. he kept talking loudly as if he were talking to someone while he rushed across the station to get something & then came back to thank me. i suppose we have the late great failure of a president ronald reagan to thank for men like him. sad but true.
another first i experienced while out there was ummmm, loneliness, not by me, but of other men & women, for that matter. i stayed in the 92nd street ymca when i was visiting/touring around new york & when i first pulled in & set my clothes down in my room & unpacked, i met a young black woman who for a purchase of a pack of cigarettes & a chicken dinner, became my unoffical guide around town. i think she must have known i was an easy target & i realized it early enough to tell her nicely that i could find my way on my own. she wasn't pleased.
the other time, same ymca, mid week, was a man who exchanged pleasantries with me in the common area shower. we spoke for a bit & i told him that i needed directions to the u.n. building. he was friendly enough, after toweling off & told me to stop by his room so he could give me directions. he was staring at me while i was showering & even though i make too big a deal of it in public, i wondered why he stared at me so hard.
little did i know what was waiting for me once i knocked on this man's door & he let me in. i remember what i was wearing that day. a pair of blue jeans & a white dead kennedys holiday in cambodia tee shirt. he came up behind me & locked the door. i didn't think much of it, if only for a brief second or so, when he told me how nice my eyes looked & started to give me directions. as i wrote them down, he suddenly got up from his chair & came over and stroked my chest through my tee shirt & told me how nice i felt. his actions made alarm bells go off in my head. i felt very uneasy & i told him so. luckily for me, he stopped. he apologized & told me he didn't mean to startle me & that if i ever felt like talking, i could stop by his room & talk, no funny business.
that was something else i learned that day. mistrust. inside i felt just awful & cried.
Tuesday, April 12
New York Tales>Act Three-It's The Music, Man!
those were his words to me exactly, as new yorker ornette coleman, post-bop generation saxman, told me me a few years ago when i met him after a performance , at symphony center in chicago backstage. i can't for the life of me, remember what i asked him, but that's exactly what he said, "it's the music, man!" and with that, i begin, act three.
when i first arrived in new york during that second week of october, 1983, i was mesmerized by all the music around me, not just the record shops blaring their wares throughout the aisles, but was located in the sub-terrearan below, the very burroughs or subways, as they are commonly called. here in chicago, we call it the el, but from what i have seen elsewhere, they call it the subway.
as i remember waiting for a train to take me around the city, i saw all of these street musicians, subway rather, playing out their hearts & souls to the people passing them by or like me waiting. but i took interest in them, just watching & listening to them, as i could have listened to them all day, an all-day ear sucker, if you know what i mean.
but it wasn't any old musician that caught my ear, rather it was a man calling himself sailorman jack dressed up in a sailor suit, singing sea shanties. that caught my attention. i stood there on the platform, frozen in my spot in a trance, my ears at full attention, eyes aglow, listening to this man.
it was my first formal introduction to folk music, i mean, back then, all i ever listened to the was the beatles, which isn't so bad, but i digress. it would one year later (1984), when i attended western illinois university in macomb, illinois, that i would discover woody guthrie & bob dylan soon after. yes i admit it, i was a late bloomer & i am proud of that fact. anyway, i must have stood there on the platform for what seemed like hours & eventually bought one of his cassettes, which to this day, i still have, everloving his stories that he told on tape.
i often wondered about sailorman jack over the years, having only experienced him once & when the second time i was in new york city for a few hours, that was in the late summer, 1989. i wondered if he was still around cranking his music out or worse still, dead.
the kind of things one remembers on first impressions, which for me was a damn good & long & lingering memory. i still sing his songs, still remember his playing & what he did for me back then, as a young aspiring poet & *musician (*that was still off in the distance by a few years), i won't forget. it's a sweet, sweet memory.
most recently, while preparing for this trip, i did some internet research to see if i could find him and...lo & behold! he is still around, making music, 21 years after i first saw him in october of 1983. that makes me happy. very happy indeed.
thank you so much, sailorman jack, for making my ears a better instrument to listen with. god bless you!
when i first arrived in new york during that second week of october, 1983, i was mesmerized by all the music around me, not just the record shops blaring their wares throughout the aisles, but was located in the sub-terrearan below, the very burroughs or subways, as they are commonly called. here in chicago, we call it the el, but from what i have seen elsewhere, they call it the subway.
as i remember waiting for a train to take me around the city, i saw all of these street musicians, subway rather, playing out their hearts & souls to the people passing them by or like me waiting. but i took interest in them, just watching & listening to them, as i could have listened to them all day, an all-day ear sucker, if you know what i mean.
but it wasn't any old musician that caught my ear, rather it was a man calling himself sailorman jack dressed up in a sailor suit, singing sea shanties. that caught my attention. i stood there on the platform, frozen in my spot in a trance, my ears at full attention, eyes aglow, listening to this man.
it was my first formal introduction to folk music, i mean, back then, all i ever listened to the was the beatles, which isn't so bad, but i digress. it would one year later (1984), when i attended western illinois university in macomb, illinois, that i would discover woody guthrie & bob dylan soon after. yes i admit it, i was a late bloomer & i am proud of that fact. anyway, i must have stood there on the platform for what seemed like hours & eventually bought one of his cassettes, which to this day, i still have, everloving his stories that he told on tape.
i often wondered about sailorman jack over the years, having only experienced him once & when the second time i was in new york city for a few hours, that was in the late summer, 1989. i wondered if he was still around cranking his music out or worse still, dead.
the kind of things one remembers on first impressions, which for me was a damn good & long & lingering memory. i still sing his songs, still remember his playing & what he did for me back then, as a young aspiring poet & *musician (*that was still off in the distance by a few years), i won't forget. it's a sweet, sweet memory.
most recently, while preparing for this trip, i did some internet research to see if i could find him and...lo & behold! he is still around, making music, 21 years after i first saw him in october of 1983. that makes me happy. very happy indeed.
thank you so much, sailorman jack, for making my ears a better instrument to listen with. god bless you!
Monday, April 11
New York Tales>Act Two-Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself, My Name Is Charles Bernstein
please allow me to introduce myself, my name is charles bernstein. now, reading this blog, you already know that. but hearing the following story, you might not know what i really know. sounds confusing? it is! this upcoming si senor performance that i am part of in new york city this weekend (april 16, 2005) will be thrilling, if not exciting & fun to boot!
but my name, charles bernstein. confuses people, expect for me & those who know me, personally. some people believe i am another charles bernstein, the language poet or charles bernstein, the composer who scored all the nightmare on elm street films. it wouldn't be the first time that someone has confused me with them.
long ago, when i published my fanzine, cops hate poetry, i used to get letters from people who said they had performed with me. i knew it wasn't true. then, while finishing college during the late 1980s at columbia (in chicago), the language poet charles bernstein frequently performed in chicago a lot & i mean a lot. many of my schoolmates used to ask me if that was me. i told them no, but they didn't believe me. after a while i gave up trying to convince people who i was. i always knew who i was, but they didn't, thinking they did.
i experimented around with my name for a long time. i used my full name charles sidney bernstein, sid bernstein, charlie bernstein & charles s. bernstein, among other styles, both in print & performance. eventually, i decided to go back to my own name, the one my parents had christened me with, that of course being charles, as in charles bernstein.
just for the record, i was named after my father's aunt aka his father's sister: charles for celia & my mother's, father's mother: sidney for sophie. i always liked my name. but then there came the backlash from those who thought i was trying to make good on the other charles bernstein's name and suggested i change my name! change my name! that was nervy! then some suggested i use my middle initial, to which i responded, that charles bernstein's middle initial also began with the letter s. s as in samuel. so, eventually, when people asked me to change my name, i told them to go ask my parents. if my parents okay it, i will. no one has done it yet. besides, i doubt my parents would force me to change it. they seem to like it.
so goes it. in the late 1990s, i continued to receive a lot of mail from those who thought i was charles bernstein, the language poet. then in 1997, i published my chapbook, shortness of breath. sales were brisk, to say the least. i was pretty happy with that.
on thursday, january 7, 1999, an opportunity arose to meet the other charles bernstein, the language poet, who was giving a lecture & was also featured as an fellow at columbia in chicago. i decided to go, to listen to him, perhaps compare styles. well, i went. knowing what i know now, we are not alike in style. he's way more academic than i care to even be. my style is a bit more unpredictable, which in some regards can be a good way, indeed.
after the lecture, i waited my turn to speak to him, as his fans were all agaga over his latest effort. when i walked up to him, i introduced myself. i said, "charles, i am very pleased to meet you. i am also named charles bernstein." suddenly, the room seemed to stop, ever so briefly. the fact that both charles bernsteins were in the room, seemed to take people by surprise. in return, he said to me, "oh, i know who you are, i've heard a lot about you too," to which myself, him & a few other people laughed. i told him about some of my latest works, to which some of his followers exclaimed; "oh! so that was your chapbook!" i was happy that they took a chance on my work, even if i wasn't the man they thought i was.
with the advent of the internet, things seemed to get more complicated. charles bernstein the language poet has entries eveywhere. in order to find me, you have to go & look for specific things. yet, this push-me pull-you name game doesn't seem to want to stop & that's just find with me. i still get a lot of email asking me about books of mine (his), plus i get emails from people thinking i'm the composer too, which i am as well, but not him, meaning charles bernstein the film composer.
the only pitfalls i have with my name, is that at times when i have submitted my poetry to other publications, the editors fawn all over me. once, however, they find out who i am, when i tell them, eventually, that is, they treat me like an ordinary joe & for some reason or another, my poetry never seems to catch their drifts.
also, when i have written to other artists i admire, i write my name, charles bernstein, hoping they will just answer me normally, but alas they don't & they treat me like a star & breathe all over me, so-to-speak. you would think someone might get it after a while that the other charles bernstein, both for that matter would use their real names in their email addresses, while i always use the email address of sid_yiddish@hotmail.com as mine. but no, they seem to lack the intelligence to realize it. and when they realize it's not the charles bernstein, some of them get mad & resentful & treat me like dirt! even others when the the language poet comes to town implies that there is only real charles bernstein, haha. if only he knew! embarassment is lonely at the top.
about three years ago, 2002, when i performed at a coffeehouse in portland oregon, a few people showed up, thinking i was charles bernstein. well, now, by this time you all know what probably happened. when they found out i wasn't the one they had sought out, they left in a huff, hurling insults at me. then, on a return engagement for a sound poetry festival in portland oregon in 2004, the first cousin of charles bernstein's, contacted the organizer & asked him if he was was performing there, to which she confessed to him, she was also a writer & hated his guts. she was told it was another charles bernstein. and so the story goes. and what about all the lesser-known charles bernsteins? and all those with famous names? ask them about the troubles they've had!
well, i have a solution to all of this. why not just take the language poet charles bernstein of new york city & put him up against myself, the poet & prose poem writer charles bernstein of skokie (chicago), a match in other words, have an official panel of judges & let them call the contest? the winner would get to keep his name, while the loser would have to change his name. simple as that.
by the way, for all you nit-pickers out there, charles bernstein is related to charles bernstein. take that, put it in your pipe & smoke it!
but my name, charles bernstein. confuses people, expect for me & those who know me, personally. some people believe i am another charles bernstein, the language poet or charles bernstein, the composer who scored all the nightmare on elm street films. it wouldn't be the first time that someone has confused me with them.
long ago, when i published my fanzine, cops hate poetry, i used to get letters from people who said they had performed with me. i knew it wasn't true. then, while finishing college during the late 1980s at columbia (in chicago), the language poet charles bernstein frequently performed in chicago a lot & i mean a lot. many of my schoolmates used to ask me if that was me. i told them no, but they didn't believe me. after a while i gave up trying to convince people who i was. i always knew who i was, but they didn't, thinking they did.
i experimented around with my name for a long time. i used my full name charles sidney bernstein, sid bernstein, charlie bernstein & charles s. bernstein, among other styles, both in print & performance. eventually, i decided to go back to my own name, the one my parents had christened me with, that of course being charles, as in charles bernstein.
just for the record, i was named after my father's aunt aka his father's sister: charles for celia & my mother's, father's mother: sidney for sophie. i always liked my name. but then there came the backlash from those who thought i was trying to make good on the other charles bernstein's name and suggested i change my name! change my name! that was nervy! then some suggested i use my middle initial, to which i responded, that charles bernstein's middle initial also began with the letter s. s as in samuel. so, eventually, when people asked me to change my name, i told them to go ask my parents. if my parents okay it, i will. no one has done it yet. besides, i doubt my parents would force me to change it. they seem to like it.
so goes it. in the late 1990s, i continued to receive a lot of mail from those who thought i was charles bernstein, the language poet. then in 1997, i published my chapbook, shortness of breath. sales were brisk, to say the least. i was pretty happy with that.
on thursday, january 7, 1999, an opportunity arose to meet the other charles bernstein, the language poet, who was giving a lecture & was also featured as an fellow at columbia in chicago. i decided to go, to listen to him, perhaps compare styles. well, i went. knowing what i know now, we are not alike in style. he's way more academic than i care to even be. my style is a bit more unpredictable, which in some regards can be a good way, indeed.
after the lecture, i waited my turn to speak to him, as his fans were all agaga over his latest effort. when i walked up to him, i introduced myself. i said, "charles, i am very pleased to meet you. i am also named charles bernstein." suddenly, the room seemed to stop, ever so briefly. the fact that both charles bernsteins were in the room, seemed to take people by surprise. in return, he said to me, "oh, i know who you are, i've heard a lot about you too," to which myself, him & a few other people laughed. i told him about some of my latest works, to which some of his followers exclaimed; "oh! so that was your chapbook!" i was happy that they took a chance on my work, even if i wasn't the man they thought i was.
with the advent of the internet, things seemed to get more complicated. charles bernstein the language poet has entries eveywhere. in order to find me, you have to go & look for specific things. yet, this push-me pull-you name game doesn't seem to want to stop & that's just find with me. i still get a lot of email asking me about books of mine (his), plus i get emails from people thinking i'm the composer too, which i am as well, but not him, meaning charles bernstein the film composer.
the only pitfalls i have with my name, is that at times when i have submitted my poetry to other publications, the editors fawn all over me. once, however, they find out who i am, when i tell them, eventually, that is, they treat me like an ordinary joe & for some reason or another, my poetry never seems to catch their drifts.
also, when i have written to other artists i admire, i write my name, charles bernstein, hoping they will just answer me normally, but alas they don't & they treat me like a star & breathe all over me, so-to-speak. you would think someone might get it after a while that the other charles bernstein, both for that matter would use their real names in their email addresses, while i always use the email address of sid_yiddish@hotmail.com as mine. but no, they seem to lack the intelligence to realize it. and when they realize it's not the charles bernstein, some of them get mad & resentful & treat me like dirt! even others when the the language poet comes to town implies that there is only real charles bernstein, haha. if only he knew! embarassment is lonely at the top.
about three years ago, 2002, when i performed at a coffeehouse in portland oregon, a few people showed up, thinking i was charles bernstein. well, now, by this time you all know what probably happened. when they found out i wasn't the one they had sought out, they left in a huff, hurling insults at me. then, on a return engagement for a sound poetry festival in portland oregon in 2004, the first cousin of charles bernstein's, contacted the organizer & asked him if he was was performing there, to which she confessed to him, she was also a writer & hated his guts. she was told it was another charles bernstein. and so the story goes. and what about all the lesser-known charles bernsteins? and all those with famous names? ask them about the troubles they've had!
well, i have a solution to all of this. why not just take the language poet charles bernstein of new york city & put him up against myself, the poet & prose poem writer charles bernstein of skokie (chicago), a match in other words, have an official panel of judges & let them call the contest? the winner would get to keep his name, while the loser would have to change his name. simple as that.
by the way, for all you nit-pickers out there, charles bernstein is related to charles bernstein. take that, put it in your pipe & smoke it!
Sunday, April 10
New York Tales>Act One-Oh Yoko!
this coming weekend, i will be flying to new york city to partake in a publishing release party for a journal i was published in two months ago entitled si senor. needless to say, i am pretty excited & thrilled to not only to be reading, but to going to new york city for the first time in 17 years! so, i thought i would tell you about my first trip to new york city in 1983, on the highlights that has lived on, long & well with me over the years.
it was mid-summer, 1983, when i decided to take a week's vacation in new york city. i'd always wanted to go there, it was the city that never slept, where all the action was, etc. etc. i was at the time still working as an elevator operator at a bookstore. i couldn't stop thinking or talking about it, as i was so excited. when finally, friday, october 7th rolled around, my last day of work for a week.
i left the next day, saturday, october 8th in the mid-evening, via amtrak from union station in chicago & arrived the next afternoon, 20 hours later, on sunday, october 9th. october 9th was john lennon's birthday. yep, i planned it that way for many weeks. so, the moment i arrived into grand central station in new york city, i grabbed my luggage & schlepped off to the 92nd street ymca on the upper west side. once i checked in & unpacked my camera & a few other essentials, it was off i raced to the subway, to 72nd street, to the dakota building to be exact. i had a felt a few good vibes, during that time, thinking that something good was about to happen.
when i arrived there, it was a mob scene, people everywhere, hanging out in front of the dakota, as if an appearance by someone famous would soon take place. sure enough, my good vibes paid off, when yoko ono, accompanied by then eight-year-old sean ono lennon & personal assistant elliot mintz emerged from the dakota. mintz was carrying a guitar-shaped cake on a wooden cutting board & yoko, smoking a great big brown cigarette spoke to us almost immediately, telling the crowd how much she appreciated our being there to celebrate her late husband's birthday.
then sean, in silence, as instructed by yoko only moments earlier, gave someone close to me a wrapped gift, that turned out to be a cassette tape of a future yoko ono album, which i believe was, season of glass. whilst all of this was going on, i thought it might be wise if i snapped some pictures of yoko & sean & the surrounding events so my parents, friends & co-workers at home would believe me. after a few more minutes, yoko & sean & mintz disappeared & walked back into the dakota building.
other than the new york daily news, i was the only other person at the event that snapped pictures of yoko & sean. i realized that, when someone asked among the crowd if anyone had snapped pictures, to whic h i responded, "i did." i must have collected at least 25 addresses that day, for those wanting a copy of that picture i took. when i saw the new york daily news the next day, i saw the picture that their photographer had taken & it was alright, i thought.
it wasn't until after i came back from my trip & developed my photos, when i got to see my picture & realized mine was so much better than the newspaper photographer's. after friends of mine saw it, they all wanted a copy too. i gather, i must have made close to 100 prints of that photo.
i bet you're wondering; do i still have that photo after all those years? i sure do & keep it in a prominent place in my apartment, alongside of my autographs of hank ballard, carl perkins, pete best, ringo starr & sir paul mccartney! wondering how i got all those autographs? well, those are for another story at another time, but one little word of advice, just be in the right place in the right time in the right frame of mind & you will receive all that you seek.
it was mid-summer, 1983, when i decided to take a week's vacation in new york city. i'd always wanted to go there, it was the city that never slept, where all the action was, etc. etc. i was at the time still working as an elevator operator at a bookstore. i couldn't stop thinking or talking about it, as i was so excited. when finally, friday, october 7th rolled around, my last day of work for a week.
i left the next day, saturday, october 8th in the mid-evening, via amtrak from union station in chicago & arrived the next afternoon, 20 hours later, on sunday, october 9th. october 9th was john lennon's birthday. yep, i planned it that way for many weeks. so, the moment i arrived into grand central station in new york city, i grabbed my luggage & schlepped off to the 92nd street ymca on the upper west side. once i checked in & unpacked my camera & a few other essentials, it was off i raced to the subway, to 72nd street, to the dakota building to be exact. i had a felt a few good vibes, during that time, thinking that something good was about to happen.
when i arrived there, it was a mob scene, people everywhere, hanging out in front of the dakota, as if an appearance by someone famous would soon take place. sure enough, my good vibes paid off, when yoko ono, accompanied by then eight-year-old sean ono lennon & personal assistant elliot mintz emerged from the dakota. mintz was carrying a guitar-shaped cake on a wooden cutting board & yoko, smoking a great big brown cigarette spoke to us almost immediately, telling the crowd how much she appreciated our being there to celebrate her late husband's birthday.
then sean, in silence, as instructed by yoko only moments earlier, gave someone close to me a wrapped gift, that turned out to be a cassette tape of a future yoko ono album, which i believe was, season of glass. whilst all of this was going on, i thought it might be wise if i snapped some pictures of yoko & sean & the surrounding events so my parents, friends & co-workers at home would believe me. after a few more minutes, yoko & sean & mintz disappeared & walked back into the dakota building.
other than the new york daily news, i was the only other person at the event that snapped pictures of yoko & sean. i realized that, when someone asked among the crowd if anyone had snapped pictures, to whic h i responded, "i did." i must have collected at least 25 addresses that day, for those wanting a copy of that picture i took. when i saw the new york daily news the next day, i saw the picture that their photographer had taken & it was alright, i thought.
it wasn't until after i came back from my trip & developed my photos, when i got to see my picture & realized mine was so much better than the newspaper photographer's. after friends of mine saw it, they all wanted a copy too. i gather, i must have made close to 100 prints of that photo.
i bet you're wondering; do i still have that photo after all those years? i sure do & keep it in a prominent place in my apartment, alongside of my autographs of hank ballard, carl perkins, pete best, ringo starr & sir paul mccartney! wondering how i got all those autographs? well, those are for another story at another time, but one little word of advice, just be in the right place in the right time in the right frame of mind & you will receive all that you seek.
Saturday, April 9
Please Mr. Postman
last night, before going to the gym to work out, i went to pick up my mail from the post office, where my post office box is located. i've had a p.o. box for 16 & half years. i decided to get a p.o. box way back in 1989, when i wanted to do creative mail experiments, such as write to fringe-type people & organizations to learn more about their activities going under an assumed name, plus the fact i was still publishing my fanzine, cops hate poetry, plus a few other publications.
i was still living at home at that point & my eldest brother louie became a little concerned, when one of my mail art projects started attracting contributing letters from incarcerated men. so, off i went to purchase one. at that juncture of my life, where the p.o. box was located was entirely central too. it was a perfect place, right smack-dab in between college and home. whenever, i came back from school, i would stop off & pick up my mail & then catch a bus & go home. simple as that.
one great thing about having a p.o. box, is you cannot be contacted directly by someone whom you don't want to get in touch with you, like say, the fbi, cia, your local police department, creditors or someone you've fallen out with, ex girlfriend, friend, enemy or stalker. the only downfall of having a p.o. box, is you may not get your mail on time, if you have lousy mail delivery, which i have had from time to time.
though, i've never had any terribly awful experiences with having it, i can say, it did save me a mountain of headaches a few years ago, when i lived in a basement apartment, where the landlady never bothered to give me my mail on time or at all. not giving someone their mail is a federal offense, to say the least. however, back to the subject matter at hand. she used to give me my mail sometimes up to two months late! two months late! what was she waiting for, a reminder? after finding subsciptions, things i ordered online via the internet & most importantly, checks from mom not arriving on time, if at all, i decided to have ALL of my mail forwarded to my p.o. box.
to give you a rough idea of how she treated my mail, in 2002, i graduated from a local citizen's police academy & was waiting for my graduation photo i had taken with the police chief & the mayor of the city. the police department was only six blocks away from where i lived & yet i waited for three months, until i called the departmental coordinator to tell him the photograph never arrived. i told him to send it to my p.o. box instead. it arrived within one week of speaking to him! other times, i found my mail opened or varying liquid stains on it, mostly orange juice. she couldn't care less about me, apparently, let alone my mail.
so one day, i confronted her & asked for my own mailbox. she told me she couldn't do that. i asked why couldn't she, to which she responded that my apartment i was living in was illegal. i knew then, i had to get out of there, which i did on, ironically, september 11, 2004, but i will save that moving day account for another time, it's a whopper too, i guarantee it!!!
so, in my eyes, having a p.o. box is the best thing money can buy. besides, they are pretty cheap too & no one seems to want them, because of strides the internet has taken over the past several years, making people drop snail mail over email. rent is dirt cheap & besides, you get to meet all kinds of people when picking up your mail, including old postmen, the homeless & famous local people, whose p.o. boxes are synonmous with everybody.
i was still living at home at that point & my eldest brother louie became a little concerned, when one of my mail art projects started attracting contributing letters from incarcerated men. so, off i went to purchase one. at that juncture of my life, where the p.o. box was located was entirely central too. it was a perfect place, right smack-dab in between college and home. whenever, i came back from school, i would stop off & pick up my mail & then catch a bus & go home. simple as that.
one great thing about having a p.o. box, is you cannot be contacted directly by someone whom you don't want to get in touch with you, like say, the fbi, cia, your local police department, creditors or someone you've fallen out with, ex girlfriend, friend, enemy or stalker. the only downfall of having a p.o. box, is you may not get your mail on time, if you have lousy mail delivery, which i have had from time to time.
though, i've never had any terribly awful experiences with having it, i can say, it did save me a mountain of headaches a few years ago, when i lived in a basement apartment, where the landlady never bothered to give me my mail on time or at all. not giving someone their mail is a federal offense, to say the least. however, back to the subject matter at hand. she used to give me my mail sometimes up to two months late! two months late! what was she waiting for, a reminder? after finding subsciptions, things i ordered online via the internet & most importantly, checks from mom not arriving on time, if at all, i decided to have ALL of my mail forwarded to my p.o. box.
to give you a rough idea of how she treated my mail, in 2002, i graduated from a local citizen's police academy & was waiting for my graduation photo i had taken with the police chief & the mayor of the city. the police department was only six blocks away from where i lived & yet i waited for three months, until i called the departmental coordinator to tell him the photograph never arrived. i told him to send it to my p.o. box instead. it arrived within one week of speaking to him! other times, i found my mail opened or varying liquid stains on it, mostly orange juice. she couldn't care less about me, apparently, let alone my mail.
so one day, i confronted her & asked for my own mailbox. she told me she couldn't do that. i asked why couldn't she, to which she responded that my apartment i was living in was illegal. i knew then, i had to get out of there, which i did on, ironically, september 11, 2004, but i will save that moving day account for another time, it's a whopper too, i guarantee it!!!
so, in my eyes, having a p.o. box is the best thing money can buy. besides, they are pretty cheap too & no one seems to want them, because of strides the internet has taken over the past several years, making people drop snail mail over email. rent is dirt cheap & besides, you get to meet all kinds of people when picking up your mail, including old postmen, the homeless & famous local people, whose p.o. boxes are synonmous with everybody.
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