I just looked up from my desk and got an eyefull. It swished a bit as it passed my desk, swished again as it walked away. And while I’m not like a freak about these things, if there were a contest it would stand a very good chance of making it into the finals. At least on this floor. Its owner will come around and talk to me soon enough. She’s very friendly. She likes tall guys. She told me so when the two of us were in the elevator. She also told me she was on her way to a spa for a deep massage. Deep massage? Oh yeah, they go over your whole body, massaging and kneading the skin and using special oils. She went on about it. The mind’s eye saw her nude and glistening. Disconcerting. Fun, but disconcerting. I don’t know what it is about women and tall guys, but it’s like all the usual rules of decorum are tossed aside. Some women will tell a tall man anything.
Category Archives: Autobiography,memoirs and confessions
Immanuel Kant
A chick one time bragged to me that her boyfriend, a philosophy major, was so smart that he found the Critique of Pure Reason really funny. She said they spent a whole weekend screwing and reading Kant aloud, laughing. That was probably the stupidest I’ve ever felt in my entire life.
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Henry Rollins
Just got an email from Concord Records about the Claremont Folk Festival. Henry Rollins is one of the headliners. Now I’ve seen Henry Rollins in some unexpected places….in particular a Miles Davis tribute party telling the MTV cameras that he we was SO influenced by Miles’ MUSIC and sounding like a steroidal eruption (the reporters ate it up), but no matter how hard I try I can’t see how he fits in at a folk festival. Maybe he was SO influenced by Pete Seeger’s MUSIC. Maybe he plays the ukulele. Maybe he’s added a twang to his spoken word. Whatever.
Actually I like Henry. He’s done really well and done it all himself. He’s got that great radio show on KCRW, and I like his column in the LA Weekly. I remember him from the Black Flag daze, way back in the last century. He even used to live in Silver Lake, right behind me, he on Maltman, we on Edgecliffe. His solo career was just underway, and he was already a bit of a rock star. We had a nice chat on the sidewalk once which he wouldn’t remember but I do (rock stars never remember). I saw him once coming out of Big Mac’s liquor store on Sunset with a bevy of punk rock babes and was impressed. But I especially remember him at the local market, where I loutishly grabbed tomatoes like they were tennis balls but he gingerly squeezed each, looking for perfection. I felt shame. I saw Glenn Danzig do the same at a different market not long after. Both had a lot of tattoos, I had none. And both knew a lot more about squeezing tomatoes than I did, tho’ now, when I carefully pick through a pile at Super King, I ought to thank Henry at least. Henry, incidentally, was a lot taller than Danzig, Danzig was more tatted. I was always hoping to run into Lemmy squeezing tomatoes, or all of Metallica or even Pat Boone during his heavy metal stage. Nope. There was Henry and there was Danzig. I’d seen Danzig at Al’s Bar with the Misfits. We talked about that over the tomatoes. I can’t remember what I said to Henry over those tomatoes. Maybe nothing, maybe I was too jarred by the sight of the way gnarly dude from Black Flag who’d smashed that mirror on the cover of Damaged and was here with that very same fist–well, same hand anyway–handling tomatoes like they were baby sparrows, just fragile little things, so easy to bruise.
And now he’s one of the headliners at the Claremont Folk Festival. One never knows, does one.
Mime
(c. 2000 or so)
Once about twenty years ago I was walking though the Beverly Center and out of the corner of my eye I caught somebody walking beside me. Glanced over and there’s a mime. This little dude, matching my long stride with a big loping gait and a idiotically serious expression, every movement I did, he did, in his little striped turtleneck and big floppy beret and whiteface. I stopped. He stopped. I turned toward him. He turned toward me. I stared. He stared back. I didn’t utter a word, he didn’t make a sound. I said if you don’t stop I am going to kill you. He said you can’t be serious. I nodded yes. He said sorry. I resumed walking and went about my business. He stood there, considering a career change.
When I passed by the spot on the way back, he was gone.
Earth Day
I remember the first Earth Day. I was in 7th grade and the river ran all these pretty colors, the sun a gorgeous orange, and the mountains weren’t there at all. I read all about the rallies next day from newspapers blowing by. We walked home coughing and looking for cool beer cans, and broken glass sparkled everywhere in the sun. That orange sun was kinda creepy, though, a goldfish upside down in a bowl floatin’, as the Captain put it, but the even oranger moon was nothing but cool, beautiful even. Our eyes had stopped stinging by nightfall, and our coughs quieted away, and we’d breathe in the rank night air and stare up at that big pumpkin moon and scarcely realize that it didn’t have to be orange at all. And if someone tells you that nothing has improved in the decades since, that no one cares and man is doomed, just look at that dull white moon.
Blizzard of towels
(weirdness at the Playboy Jazz Festival, 2008)
But the best thing I saw all weekend at the Bowl was late yesterday when I went into a restroom to wash up. There was a guy maybe my age, rather clean cut, very fit, at the sink washing his hands. He then went to the towel dispenser. Pulled a towel. Then another. Then another and another and another and soon , completely oblivious to me maybe three sinks down, he began pulling them out in a frenzy, wild eyed and a big crazy grin from ear to ear. There was a blizzard of towels, they over flowed the sink and fluttered to the floor..a hundred, two hundred towels easy. Suddenly he realized I was there, water running over my hands, staring at him dumbfounded. Oh sorry man, he mumbled, and pointed at the dispenser….they don’t let you rip one, you rip one and another one and ohhhh, he shook his head sagely and said It’s a conspiracy, man, and walked off and disappeared around the corner.
Bob Sheppard at Hollywood and Highland
(2012)
Hey y’all….if ya wanna hear a great saxophonist, I mean a seriously great saxophonist up there with all the seriously great saxophonists, then check out Bob Sheppard at Hollywood and Highland tonight (that is, Tuesday, July 24). It’s a free gig, 7-9 pm, in that trippy interior courtyard with the Intolerance elephants overhead and tourists everywhere, shuffling and staring and wearing stupid tee shirts they picked up on the Boulevard. It’s utter madness outside, demented superheroes and people who will never wash their hands again after touching John Wayne’s bootprints and once we saw a police chase at 5 mph, a hundred police cars with lights flashing proceeding ever so slowly down Hollywood Boulevard and the lady running out of gas right there in front of the Chinese Theatre and tourists rushing into the street to touch her car and as she emerged cops pleaded through bullhorns for the people to stay clear of the vehicle, the suspect might be armed, but it was Day of the Locust, baby, nothing could stop grandma from getting that photo. The suspect emerged, unarmed, exhausted, and laid down on the pavement. Superman rushed into the street to pose in front of the scene. Metropolis was safe from evil again. A Michael Jackson impersonator moonwalked past. Spiderman watched, then slunk into the shot.
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Inside the courtyard just steps away all was bliss. I can’t remember exactly who was playing (might have been the Clayton Brothers) but the music swinging, the wine good, the vibe perfect. The music is almost always swinging, the wine good, the vibe perfect. Or at least fun. Bob Sheppard is one of my favorite sax players in this town, and when he launches into a solo the melody goes places I can’t follow because it’s so over my head but I love every second of it, I just wait till he comes flying back into the head and you can hear the tune again. That is the art of improvisation, man, a very swinging improvisation. He always has the best players, too, heavy cats, dudes on his level. Basically, there’ll be two sets worth of state of the art jazz, and he may or may not make it easier for the folks to dig, who knows, but it ought to be the real thing, pure and unadulterated and uncompromising. We’ll see if he takes it outside for the folks. Maybe he’ll take it outside for the folks outside, wander out to the Boulevard blowing those crazy scales for Spiderman and the Michael Jackson guys. I’d pay to see that. But wouldn’t have to because it’s free.
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I wonder what ever happened to that car chase lady. It was the most pathetic car chase I ever saw. I mean you could have pushed that car faster, all its tires punctured, and gas running out right there where just a couple weeks before giant inflatable robots stood for some movie premiere. I remember we came out onto Hollywood Blvd after a one of these Tuesday night gigs and saw them, looming. Then around the corner there was another giant inflatable robot in reserve, just in case. Just in case what I’ll never know.
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Anyway, we’ll be there tonite. You don’t see Bob Sheppard’s kinda jazz that often anymore, at least not outdoors in front of God and everybody. It’s mostly singers doing standards nowadays. That’s what people want, singers doing standards. It’s comforting. Me, I like an edge sometimes. Well, most of the time. Anyway, if you ain’t doing nothing head over to Hollywood and Highland tonite. Hell, it’s free. Parking is three bucks, cheap. A ten spot will get you two glasses of wine and a mess of cheese and crackers and fruit, or just sneak in some hooch and save the bread. The night will be gorgeous and you can hang and listen and talk and check out the ladies, so I’m told.
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And say hi to Spiderman. Actually, don’t. You’ll have to give him money.
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No commas
No commas. No idea why, but there’s no commas. A whole email without any commas. It’d probably be a bad idea to write my Great American Novel this way. Anyway, feel free to parse.
We have to go the Omaha Steaks store on Pico which is next to Norms which we go to commemorate the Norms we used to go to at Sunset and Vermont and have the 99 cent breakfast because we were that broke back then like when we used to go to Greens Soul Food on Yucca on all you can eat chicken night which I think was Tuesdays and get more than we could eat of the chicken and sneak it out when the lady wasn’t looking but that Norms was demolished and replaced by a Kaiser facility 25 years ago at least and we get all our meds there now plus been to doctors upstairs and we haven’t been to that Green’s since 18th Street took over that block but the gangs there are long gone now but I don’t know if Greens is even still there and then after we eat cheap at Norms we’ll drive east on Olympic with our boxes of gourmet burgers we got for half price or even less and take them up the stairs and put them in the freezer and change clothes and socks because I love fresh socks and then we’ll pop into Jax I imagine around 9 pm which I think is what you asked so if you and friend are there we’ll see ya. OK?
Hands
(email, 2010)
The photographer Joe LaRusso took this shot of me today. Well, he took a bunch but for some reason this was my favorite. Damn, I got big hands, I never realized that. That’s a 16 oz cofee cup, and that size 15, 6 mm wedding band looks like something from a cracker jacks box.
An editor brought me and the photographer together to discuss a project (which sadly never got off the ground) that had me writing a couple essays for a collection of LoRusso’s boxing photos. We’re talking and talking at this little coffee shop on Santa Monica Blvd. and I look up and LaRusso is taking a pic of me on a little digital camera. Takes a couple more. He shows me a couple, they looked cool, actually. The guy was good. He keeps shooting as I’m talking and I made a crack about giving the finger and then the guy starts taking shots of my hands. Hence this. To be honest it’s my favorite pic of me for some reason. A lot of muscle in those mits. They are huge. I had never really noticed that before, being that they are part of me. Funny how a writer spends so much time watching his hands dance across a keyboard, but never actually sees them. I stare at my hands but see words. But I stare at this picture and I see why gloves don’t fit.
I’m no musician
(comment posted at International Review of Music, 2011)
Musician? I’m a musician now? Where did that come from? I mean, I played drums for years, yeah, but I was one of those drummers for which the term musician was quite a stretch…. I didn’t even know Don knew about that.
Had fun, though. Girls, drugs, parties. Not to mention tearing down on stage as the next band is trying to set up and my guitarist is backstage somewhere doing something fun or illegal.
Oh, and the violence, bar room brawls, a night in jail, kicked over drum kits, getting dusted and playing with my hands (a lotta blood), taking on a dozen cops (they won), a lot of funerals (none my own), turning down a chance to be a porn star (I love that story), who knows what else. A helluva lotta fun.
But it never once occurred to me to call myself a musician.
Of course, how I became a jazz critic I will never understand either. It wasn’t my idea. Nice perks, tho’. Plus you get all kinds of jazz credibility without having to be a, well, musician.
Brick Wahl 