Author Archives: Brick Wahl

Red Queen

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A couple weeks ago I confessed on a thread that I had no idea what football player beat up who. And I really did have no idea, I’d missed the whole appalling thing. Which meant I had no idea what these people on this particular thread were all raving about. And they were raving, words gushed out in the hundreds, the thousands, torrents of angry words. Flabbergasted at my ignorance, they turned on me, fairly outraged that I could so be out of touch. I apologized and sputtered something about not being an NFL fan. Neither, it turned out, were any of them…though, apparently, that was quite beside the point. It’s all over the news, they said. So I apologized and said I don’t really watch the TV news. Neither did they, they said…except this time. Well, I’ve been busy. It was a feeble excuse, and I could almost see them rolling their eyes and sighing. They threw themselves back into heated discussion. So and so should be jailed. So and so should be fired. So and so should sue them for everything they’ve got. I quietly slipped away. The Red Queen was coming, a blind and aimless fury.

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Flashback

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Kim Kardashian you’d expect but nude photos of Vladimir Putin on the web? Wrestling a Siberian alligator no less? For real? Does it matter? I miss the Weekly World News. TMZ is so unimaginative, naked movie stars and tacky selfies. Aliens meeting presidents and reptile man Elvis and naked Putin wrestling an alligator, now that is news. Waiting in line at Ralphs was exciting then. Now a supermarket check out line is the inevitable fifteen things that drive men wild and those pictures of Princess Di. It’s just not the same. You’d think the Koch brothers would bring it back, the Weekly World News. Fill it with lies and conspiracy theories and recipes from other galaxies. How do we slip them some mind fuck acid? Grace Slick just missed dosing Richard Nixon. His mind was nearly psychedelicized. In some alternative universe it happened that way. Time really did come today. Nixon in the White House, grokking with the protest kids. Freaking to Country Joe and the Fish. Give me an F, he says. Spiro does, and a U and a C and a K as well. What’s that spell? What’s that spell? What’s that spell?

But no, we got Watergate. And nattering nabobs of negativism. And the Koch Brothers. TMZ. Kim Kardashian’s naked ass. Sometimes I think we’re in the wrong universe.

Richard Nixon on brown acid at Woodstock.

Richard Nixon out of his mind high at a Grateful Dead show. Don’t eat the brown acid, they said. But Nixon went to China, and he ate the brown acid. Chou En-Lai wasn’t so sure, but Mao dug it. Feed your head, Nixon told him, feed your head. Mao did, and went for another swim.

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Herman Riley again

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Lockjaw and Prez made him pick up the saxophone. This was New Orleans. There was a teenaged “Iko, IKo”, the very first. By ’63 he’s in L.A., playing Marty’s every night, and players—Sonny Rollins, everybody—dropping by, sitting in. Steady work with Basie and the Juggernaut and Blue Mitchell. Twenty years with Jimmy Smith. A million sessions for Motown and Stax, and first call for a slew of singers—that’s where you refine those ballad skills, with singers. Live he slips into “In A Sentimental Mood” and everything around you dissolves. There’s just his sound, rich, big, full of history, a little bitter, maybe, blowing Crescent City air. He gets inside the very essence of that tune, those melancholy ascending notes, till it fades, pads closing, in a long, drawn out sigh. You swear it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard, that song, that sound, and you tell him so. He shrugs. “It’s a lifetime of experience” he says, then calls out some Monk and is gone.

LA Weekly, 2006

Herman Riley, with John Heard on the bass.

Herman Riley, with John Heard on the bass.

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After the crash

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I was looking at a photo essay of abandoned buildings in Ireland. They’d had quite a tech boom there for a while, then came the crash. You know the story. And while I stared at bittersweet pictures of Ireland I couldn’t help thinking of stretches of Southern California. It was just after the our own crash, in 2009, way out in the distant suburbs, the ones that sprang from nothing in the nineties and oughts. Though unlike emerald Eire with all its rain, out there in the high desert or Inland Empire or Temecula the unwatered lawns withered and died. You could drive through a tract of beautiful homes and tell the abandoned places by the dead lawns. Dead, dead, dead, green, dead, green, green, dead, green, dead, dead…..you’d see the lone green lawn on a cul de sac and wonder how eerie it must be to live there.

Empty houses seem more than foreclosed. It’s like whole a family was snuffed out. Streets of them, just gone. Ghosts.

Dead lawn, Temecula.

Abandoned yard, Temecula.

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Bulgarian women

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Last nite at Cafe NELA, out back. The guy said do you know what it’s like walking on an ice-covered street holding a Bulgarian woman’s purse? I said no, I didn’t. Well, he said, it ain’t easy. Then he went to get another beer.  He was a big guy, strong, stoned, intense, funny. Went all the way from to Sofia for some chick. That’s a long way from Highland Park. She showed him all the crazy places, the crazy people.  Listened to the crazy music. Wound up holding her purse so she could cross the street in spiked heels without toppling. He slipped and slid behind her. Never dropped the purse. You don’t do that for just any woman, I said. No, he said, you do that for the experience.

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Hemingway

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There’s a storm somewhere off Baja, and the air over L.A. is damp and listless and hot, and everywhere is the sound of overheated air conditioners and little else; people, pets, even the birds are still, no chatter, nothing. Words linger, form little phrases that string themselves out into long, lazy sentences full of conjunctions and commas that seem to wander nowhere in particular until stumbling onto a period. Remind me not to use such long sentences in a heat wave. When it’s humid, think like Hemingway. Short sentences. Drunk.

I love this town

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A wedge of Canadian geese just did their morning commute overhead from the Silver Lake reservoir–that’s why the grass is so green there–to the Los Angeles River behind me. Honking frantically. What a cacophony. They’ll come back a little less noisy at dusk heading back to the reservoir. I love the sound, and their ragged V’s are always perfect against the sunset. The sunsets have been lovely. Last night the sky to the west went from a gorgeous pink to a beautiful orange that filled the whole front room here with its light. Almost spooky. We went out onto the sundeck and watched till it turned to shades of grey and into black, and the lights in the hills came twinkling on and a last bunch of geese flew past, heading home.

And I wasn’t even stoned.

I love this town.

Canadian Geese (and a couple coots and a mallard) in the L.A. River.

Canadian Geese (and a couple coots and a mallard) in the L.A. River.


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Falling down

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So last night I’m heading down the front stairs, a bag or two for the recycle bin in each hand, and there’s no moon and no lights on and it’s pitch dark and I forgot there was one last step and bam. Nothing broke, recyclable or me. I picked myself up, went on down to the bins, did a few things in the car, smarting a little, came back in, popped a couple Tylenol, tooled around the house doing chores, wrote an essay, reworked a couple more, straightened out the place and got ready for bed. Then I noticed I had a bruise the size of a dinner plate. Realized it hurt. Took a couple more tylenol, and went to bed. I woke up today a little stiff and sore and the bruise was gorgeously purple. Very impressive. Then it dawned on me….I’m 57 years old and need to stop hurting myself. I’ve been hurting myself my whole life in all kinds of stupid ways, falling, slipping, bashing my head, slicing myself, everything and anything, and it’s time to stop. I mean I bet I’ve fallen on those steps half a dozen times. I’ve fallen so many times in my life–I have one functioning knee–that I fall like a stuntman. I fall without dropping what I’m holding. I fall and catch my glasses at the same time. I fall and get right back up like it’s nothing and didn’t even hurt, no matter how much it did. One time my knee gave out while on me while I was holding a cup of coffee and in half a second I was on the floor in a heap but didn’t spill a drop of coffee. It was a wedding reception, I remember, with all these people in suits and finery staring. It’s a skill I learned after probably hundreds of falls. A stupid skill, but a skill. So the next moonless night I decide to walk blindly down our treacherously charming old Silver Lake stairs–people were much smaller in 1932, and had tiny feet–I’ll take a flashlight. And only carry one bag and not four.  And try not to be such an idiot. It’s taken me fifty seven years to figure that out. And while this is a subpar blog entry, I just wanted to have it here so when I’m all laid out in traction trying to use the computer with one unbroken finger I can remember the promise I made myself, laugh, and hurt all over.

OK, time for more tylenol….

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You write about them

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(2014)

Wow, it’s been over six months since I pulled a Bill Holden. Scar isn’t much, apparently I heal well. And while bashing your head open on a coffee table is a bit traumatic, and bleeding all over is a drag, a sticky clean up, the experience now seems kinda cool. Being on my knees on the floor, a handful of blood and the first lines of a story popping into my head. Trying to staunch the bleeding with a compress and the rest of the piece coming together as I’m laying there. It was a trip. I wouldn’t say I’d do it again, but it was a trip. Life is full of crazy experiences, you take them as they come, and you write about them.

William Holden with cool scar. Mine was in the middle of my forehead, longer, and real.

William Holden in Stalag 17 with cool scar. Mine was in the middle of my forehead, longer, and real.

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Talking to Inanimate Objects

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My wife just busted me talking to bowl of nectarines. Not as a group, either….I bitched at several on them in turn for taking too long to ripen up. Thought they are talking their sweet time. No pun intended. I turned around and she’s looking at me. So who are you talking to?.  Umm…a nectarine? Sure, she said. Sure.

My wife doesn’t talk to inanimate objects. Apparently the Sioux don’t hold conversations with things that cannot actually talk back. Oneida either. I can’t imagine not talking to inanimate objects. It’s so natural. Someone told me it’s an Irish thing. I just googled Irish talking to inanimate objects and several items came up, mostly about why talking to inanimate objects will weird out your English date. The guy, a little drunk, was bitching at the furniture. The girl gave him one of those looks. The dining room table, he said, was snickering behind his back. Inanimate objects can be cruel. I don’t think the rest of the date went well. No little bit of heaven for Clancy that night. She probably went and married an Episcopalian. Episcopalians don’t talk to inanimate objects. Then again they’re pretty inanimate themselves, so what would be the point? An Episcopalian and a table holding a conversation wouldn’t exactly be Shakespeare.

Anyway, I stopped talking to the nectarines till my wife left the room. Then I looked back at the bowl and said you guys got me in trouble. They just sat there, unripe, and said nothing.

 

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