Monthly Archives: March 2012

Monotreme

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My first words at the office today were who the hell put a fucking platypus on my monitor? Normally it’s good morning, but there was a platypus on my monitor.

I was up till three in the morning writing, come to work a few hours later and have to deal with a monotreme. A stuffed blue monotreme with absurdly bulbous eyes. Cute.

I hate cute. I’m six and a half foot tall and look like an aging linebacker and that and cute don’t jibe.

But I work at Disney. ‘Nuff said.

Once I came to work many years ago and found an eight foot Tinkerbelle painted on my wall. There was me, my desk, my computer, and Tinkerbelle. The girls had a ball with that. A big macho dude with a huge Tinkerbelle over his desk.

That’s not even cute. It’s just sick.

And while none of this is worthy of a blog post, it’s my blog so there.

Joe Bataan

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Man, I love Joe Bataan. I finally got to see him several years ago (circa 2004, I guess) at the Filipino Cultural Festival in San Pedro. All around those huge old trees with their screaming parrots was a sea of Filipinos. They were chattering like mad, averaged about four feet, and craned their necks and stared waaaaaay up at me, giggling. We got some pansit or something and watched the inevitable beauty contest. There was some important pinoy dude emceeing the thing, and some politicians, and somebody from the consulate. And there were two beauty queens, former Miss Philippine Cultural Festival or something. One was a perfect pinay virgin, prim, sinless, polite, with a sweet smile. The other was some saucy knockout, an LA girl, this smartass, hysterically funny gorgeous chick who made a risque joke and I fell immediately in love with her, of course. She had some kind of connection with the LA Raiders, had been a girlfriend or something. A wantonly sexy woman. I remember the good beauty queen was obviously offended by her.

Anyway, there was some bad singing group that opened and went on forever. Then out came Joe Bataan. Really thick NYC accent and attitude. He called himself Joe Bataan (as in ran), and not Bataan (as in on) or Joe Bata’an (as in ah-on), which is how he was introduced. What an amazing set. Great soul and funk, all the classics. A total showman, he owned that stage. I stood in line afterward to have him sign the CD I bought there….something I never did before or after. I felt like a complete geek. But he was soooooooooooooooo cool, that Joe Bataan….

(2003 or so)

Eric Ego

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(unfinished letter, 1979, rewritten about 20 years later)

“Anyway, nothing much to say except that our singer is good, but manic” and I remember him bounding about a living room, pogo-style, screaming, “and after one practice session wanted to name the band after himself. He originally was gonna call himself Eric Ego, but by today the band’s name was Eric Ego. I told him, firmly but diplomatically, that there was no chance of that. Interesting character….” This Mr. Ego had some major credibility with us in that he had actually been to London, having raced over their upon punk’s outbreak.  He’d even been at the giant Rock Against Racism show in Hyde Park put on by Tom Robinson (of “Glad To Be Gay”) where Jimmy Pursey sang with the Clash and stole the show. Eric worshipped Jimmy Pursey.  And then the local pub band in his neighborhood had been Screwdriver, who wrote the early Oi! classics “Anti-Social” and “You’re So Dumb”, and Eric had been completely enthralled by the whole cockney oi! sensibility.  We were to be the Screwdriver to his Jimmy Pursey—I even seem to vaguely recall his plans to take us back to London—to New York anyway.  There were flickers of Ian Stuart’s later fascist leanings even then, but I think Eric embraced them as well…that is what happens to former Bowiephiliac Ezra Pound freaks when they wallowed in punk.  He left—I think I had to kick him out—and last I heard he had abandoned punk, married some Italian dame of some ancient but faded lineage, had a child or two and lived out some horrible European art film of an existence in the cultural backwater of Trieste.  I guess the bottle nearly killed him in the end.  Hard to believe he was just kid from Stockton, California.

Cephalopod

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The whole cephalopod universe is so amazing. That fantastic communication system of the squid. The intelligence. Especially of octopuses. It has always seemed so sad to me that they are constrained by such a brief life. If only they could have delayed sexual maturity a decade or so….with that brain the implications are astounding. Alas, I imagine the nature of their reproduction strategy precludes that from ever happening, it’s just the one quick shot and then death. But if only…..

Sigh….

I must learn not to ruin my whole day in ruminations over critters with whom I haven’t been close enough to exchange christmas cards since the pre-cambrian.

Breathe deep and listen

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(Brick’s Picks, LAWeekly)

Wednesday at the Troubadour is the extraordinary Malian band Tinariwen, about whom every desert cliché has been written by rock critics already. All we’ll say is we are absolute suckers for these guys, and highly recommend their albums if you like your Malian sounds cut through with earthy blues and a “Memo From Turner” kind of Stones groove, or if you’ve ever felt the eerie pull of gnawa. And while we do not encourage the use of illegal substances of any kind whatsoever, if you should somehow catch a whiff of hash in the air, breathe deep and listen.

Book ‘em, Dano

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(Not sure when I wrote this, but quite a while ago, or to whom even.)

So it was Tuesday night last night. I love Tuesday nights. No responsibility nights. Nothing to worry about nights. Deadline is six days off. I’ve already scheduled everything—bills, whatever—over the weekend. Already did the bigtime job search thing Monday morning. So Tuesday night there’s nothing. Almost never go out on Tuesdays (summer excepted). Fyl cooked up a light dinner. Eat a lot of light dinners. I found a bottle of Giant Chicken wine. (Well, it has a big rooster on the label, but I can never remember the name so it’s just Giant Chicken). Polished off half of that. That’s a lot for me. Then cracked open a good bottle of port. I’m old enough now to enjoy port. (You have another seven or eight years to go, but it happens.)  Looking through a drawer in the coffee table here, behind a stack of Playboys (seriously, a stash of Playboys, somehow I get a free subscription) and I found half a joint. I’ll be damned. Some stoner must have dropped it at my birthday party. They take out the zines and clean their pot on the centerfolds. There’s always an expanse of white ass in the center that makes it easy to see the seeds. This was explained to me. Anyway, I fired it up. Yow. Pharmaceutical grade. The hockey game got very confusing but quite beautiful.  Poured another glass of port. The game ended. Fyl switched to Star Trek.  Cool, my favorite ever episode. Frank Gorshin painted black on one side, white on the other chasing some dude who was white on the one side and black on the other.  Their bi-coloration was unusually vivid this time. I was really getting into it. Settled back on the pillow. So sweet, baby. Closed my eyes just for a second. Opened them. Jack Lord said book ’em Dano. Some guy in a flowered shirt and a lei around his neck. What the? Hours had passed. It was like 2 in the morning all of a sudden.

Seizure meds have made me such a wimp. I love to drink, but man, what a lightweight I’ve become. So I rarely do more than a couple glasses of wine. Open a bottle and it sits there a couple days. Or maybe it’s just that I ain’t used to this new pot. It’s all so potent now. Or maybe it’s both. Whatever. Book ‘em, Dano.

Big dude clothes

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(email, 2010)

Amazing! Big dude clothes for free!‏

Attention big but not too tall dudes who are cheap:

There is a big closet full of beautiful shirts, jackets, vests and the like that Fyl’s uncle will no longer be needing (ahem).  It’s probably 15 jackets and maybe 50 shirts. We trashed the beat up stuff, and this is all fine and even unworn things. I think there’s a suit or two in there as well. And a gorgeous leather jacket. Plus some way slick vests. And I think an air force uniform even. Basically the dude had class. And liked to eat. Everything is free. That’s right….all the clothes are free. Big guy clothes are never free. There is a whole industry built on little guys gouging big guys with overpriced Pakistani clothes that look stupid and shrink instantly. But this is nice stuff. Classy stuff. And free. All ya gotta do is pick it up. The perfect gift for that sadsack in your life. A nice blazer, ya know, makes the man. Look at me. I was the guy standing outside Home Depot that no one would hire. Then I traded in my wife beaters for a sport coat and look at me now, I’m the freaking Cary Grant of jazz critics. It could happen to you, or your loser brother, or even a dumpy bass player. A whole life changing wardrobe for free. Whatever remains will provide new trombones for the San Bernardino Salvation Army band.

See ya……

Brick

Postscript:

A very hip restauranteur took them…we delivered them for the price of a dinner that very night. Showed up in front of his place there with armloads of the things. Dump ‘em on the floor there, he said, in front of the kitchen. So we did. It was a vast pile of clothes in plain view of all the beautiful people. Not like he cared. He started excitedly pawing through them. You’ve given me my wardrobe for the next two years! He strutted about in one of the blazers, it went well with his spattered chef’s shirt.

His girlfriend nixed the loud Hawaiian shirts. Not on your life she said, threatening arguments and withheld favors. He gave in, and off to Goodwill they went, to thrill some porcine hipster. But then what do chicks know from fashion anyway?

Ants

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(2004)

This morning in front of our place on way to work I stepped over a column of argentine ants (the omnipresent little black fuckers). I stopped, briefcase in hand, and reached down and stuck a finger gently in their midst. They swirled about it, confused. Once some had clambored aboard, I stood up and stared at my digit intently, hoping one would bite me, as I read late last night that they actually do have a tiny, if ineffectual, bite. They never bit. Then I happened to notice a neighbor staring at me…. The life of an amateur myrmecologist is a lonely and misunderstood one.

Valentine’s Day

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They say
this was where Ray-
mundo Chandler drunk
and wrote and thunk
he oughta write some more.
What for?
Come on
Lay on the floor,
the hardwood floor.
See
out that window there,
LA unfolds in the sun,
a golden poppy that one
could pick and it would wilt
like the wine I so spilt
on my shirt.
Come on,
Flirt
here on the floor.
The nuns across the street
are long gone.
There are movie stars there now
in limousines and
silk suits and great legs.
Tonight we’ll hide in the hedge
and throw eggs.
But now
From this old wood floor–
see the ceiling above?
Love.
That’s what the day is for.

(1990’s)

You could wipe your hands on them

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I was at a party at a westside club a couple years ago. One of those afternoon things, cheap beer, hot dogs, loud music, old friends, good times. The place was Liquid Kitty, a sweet little watering hole on Pico. I’ve known the owner since Ye Olde Days, maybe a quarter century or so back. We were both thin and had lots of hair then. Now he is thin and has lots of hair and every once in a while he books a bunch of Ye Olde punk bands from Ye Olde Days and they play all day long in the joint to a crowd half full of Yo Olde Geezers and half under thirty types who think we are soooooo cool. You knew Darby Crash? Was he just like the movie? You opened for Black Flag? Wow!!!!! I always want to point out that was over thirty years ago and shame on them for not coming up with their own musical rebellion like everyone else did before them since the days of ragtime, but I refrain. They’re so cute. And clean. You could wipe your hands on them. And they’d let you.