Happy Halloween

Strays

Stray thoughts:

Buffy



Cowboy Bebop


Donnie Darko


Tarot


Pyannies


Hygiene


CG


Halloween

But is it Manly?

It’s another foggy, grey day in Santa Barbara. Yesterday the sun never came out at all. Of course, with Hurricane Wilma - the latest in the alphabetical onslaught that has ravaged the planet this season - bearing down on Florida, I don’t have much room to complain.

I heard that the next hurricane of the season will be named using Greek letters, since we’ve burned through our alphabet already. That reminds me of Stephen Wright’s question: “Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?”

I wonder if they had a similar song in ancient Greece. Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon Zeta Eta Theta Iota Kappa… Man, that song would have a strange melody.

A grey day is a good excuse to be lazy, especially on a Sunday. I’m watching TV, switching back and forth between NFL football and Grand Prix ladies figure skating. I’m trying to figure out which one is manlier to watch. Traditional logic might suggest football is the manly man’s choice of Sunday television entertainment. But think about it. Is it more natural for a heterosexual male to want to watch a bunch of sweaty men smash into each other or watch graceful women spin around in little revealing costumes?



The truth is I don’t really care which one people think is manlier to watch. There are entertaining aspects of each. I do what I want.

Last night I spent a large part of my evening listening to a bunch of selections from among 200 versions of Adios Nonino by Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla. Check out this haunting tango. Be sure to listen to some of the orchestral versions.

Speed Bump

The continents have been conquered. The industrial revolution is over. So why are so many Americans still getting up at dawn and clocking the majority of their waking hours away. Why do we march to such a frantic drumbeat? Can’t we slow down? Haven’t we earned it?

In the 1930s, life in America was a struggle for many people. The average salary was $1,400. Luxuries that most of us take for granted today were scarce. People did what they could to make life happy. Movies were a popular escape. And people gathered around the radio to listen to stories, and of course to music.

Ah, music. It’s hard to picture the world without it. Its diverse styles can evoke countless moods from listeners. But among music’s myriad vibes, I believe the romantic ballad is most responsible for the proliferation of our species.

Look: a crescent moon is setting on the decade of the 1930s. And there’s a young couple parked at the overlook. Bing Crosby is singing a soft, quiet melody on the car radio. Thelma’s dress has slid up, and you can see the tops of her stockings. Biff is fumbling nervously with the clasp on her bra. Please, don’t let this lovely song end.

That’s why it’s difficult to believe that the song Over the Rainbow, which the American Film Institute recently named the greatest movie song of all time, was nearly cut from The Wizard of Oz (1939). Studio executives at MGM thought the song was too slow.



Too slow? Shows what executives know. When Harold Arlen and lyricist E. Y. Harburg, composed the songs for The Wizard of Oz, I think they knew the potential impact of a beautiful ballad. As a songwriter myself, I have a feeling that they knew full well that they had a classic on their hands when they finished composing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Some songs simply feel like they were always there, just waiting to be uncovered, rather than created.

Earlier this week, I played a solo piano gig at a local retirement center. When I play with The Roman Glowlights, we usually throw a few ballads in each set. At this solo gig, it was obvious early on that the old folks preferred the slow stuff. So that’s what I played for most of the gig. The polite, elderly audience was enthusiastic and appreciative at the end of each of the old standards. In the middle of the songs they were rapt. Silent. And as a chorus would resolve, I could hear a few frail voices singing along: “It’s love, this time it’s love, my foolish heart.”



A Slow Song
by Joe Jackson

Music has charms they say
But in some people’s hands
It becomes a savage beast
Can’t they control it
Why don’t they hold it back

You see my friend and me
Don’t have an easy day
And at night we dance not fight
And we need the energy
If not the sympathy

But I’m brutalized by bass
And terrorized by treble
I’m open to change my mood but
I always get caught in the middle

And I get tired of dj’s
Why’s it always what he plays
I’m gonna push right through
I’m gonna tell him too
Tell him to
Play us
Play us a slow song

It’s late - I’m winding down
Am I the only one
To want a strong and silent sound
To pick me up and undress me
Lay me down and caress me

I feel you touch my hand
And whisper in my ear
Ask me how I’m feeling now
And I want to get near you
But I can’t even hear you

But this is a fine romance
If we have to be so demanding
We need just one more dance to
Leave here with an understanding

And I get tired of dj’s
Why’s it always what he plays
I’m gonna push right through
I’m gonna tell him too
Tell him to
Play us
Play us a slow song

Orangie

Yeah. It sounds like a name a five year old would give to her goldfish. But if you knew him like I know him, you'd see it fits. His full name is actually Eric Tostenrud, after an orange-haired kid I knew in grade school. And often he answers to you cute little orange bastard.



He ran away from one of those 'Don't let the cat out!' houses a few blocks away, and eventually found his way to my door, hungry and frightened. His life is really good now and he knows it.

I've heard it said that when married couples talk about their children at parties, the single people bring up stories about their pets. Yeah, I'm using the almost limitless potential of the information superhighway to post pictures of my cat. There are plenty of blogs and websites about weightier topics. Meanwhile, Orangie is on the Web.

Screening

I fall into a category that health professionals refer to as ‘suggestible’. If I’m taking a medication, I can’t look at the list of possible side effects or I’ll most likely start to experience them. So it was with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation that I approached the portable folding tables that had been set up in Borders bookshop for mental health screening yesterday.



I came upon the scene by accident. The bookshop is a social hub and includes a café. I usually plop down in one of their comfy leather chairs with a magazine for a quick rest when I’m out walking around town. Yesterday when I walked into the store, I immediately noticed that there was a lot more activity than usual. That’s when I saw the tables.

A large banner hung on the front of one of the tables. It read:

Mental Health Screening
How Are You Feeling Today?
Test Your Moods Here

Already, my mind was working. “Hmm. What is my mood today? Do I have one? Do I need to choose one?”

Then I saw a row of cards on the table. Each standing card had a category printed on it in bold letters. There was a stack of literature by each card category. My eyes scanned the categories from left to right. My mind was busy trying to choose one for me. Despite my best efforts to simply observe the scene objectively, I was being drawn into it.
Were the categories arranged in increasing severity? Did they include the entire spectrum of psychological maladies?

Here’s what the cards read:

“BIPOLAR DISORDER”

“POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS SYNDROME”

“GENERAL ANXIETY”

“DEPRESSION”

“SUICIDE”

“ESPANOL”

I privately selected Espanol as the category that most fit my mood for the afternoon. I wandered past the table to take in the rest of the scene. “Refreshments Provided By Trader Joes”. Volunteers had clipboards and nametags. Hmmm, that volunteer is cute. I wonder if I should try to flirt with her? Would she immediately start to try to categorize me? Maybe I should try to speak in Spanish to her? I don’t know very much Spanish. I still want to keep Espanol as my category though, if that’s O.K.

Beyond the tables, there was a large television and DVD player on a cart. On the screen, a distinguished-looking woman wearing a lab coat spoke. I couldn’t hear what she was saying though because my iPod was blasting Groove Salad in my ears, wrapping everything I saw in a surreal soundtrack. Folding chairs were set up in front of the video presentation. Most of the chairs were full, but nobody was watching the video. The participants were all busy filling out screening forms on clipboards.

I noticed that all of the participants were middle-aged women. I don’t think that means that middle-aged women are more likely to suffer from mental illness, or that they are more likely to be curious to know if they suffer from it. I just think it means that they are more likely to take the time to participate in a mental health screening in a bookshop on a Sunday afternoon in California, while the Oakland Raiders play the San Diego Chargers on network TV.

I got a magazine and took it over to the comfy chairs in the café, near the screening. A woman with a face and body a lot like Jabba the Hut was poured into the chair across from me. Her face was shaped like a pyramid, with the corners rounded, slightly. It was about two feet across at the chin, and about six inches wide at the top. Her Zippy look was accentuated by the fact that her hair was cut short, with boyish bangs that stuck out from her forehead.



She was talking so loudly to the guy in the chair next to me that I could hear her above Groove Salad, which was turned up to the equivalent of being in a nightclub. The guy sitting next to me was nodding politely. He had his shoes off. He wore argyle dress socks with his jeans. The woman was saying how she hated the food out here in California compared to New York. “You can’t get a good steak!” she shouted. “Am I right!?”

Eventually, the guy left. From time to time, I would glance up from my magazine to look at the woman. One time she was staring at the book she was reading. Her face was comically contorted in concentration. Her brow was slammed down over her eyes and her lips were jutting out. She looked like a boxer dog trying painfully to pass a leftover steak that its master had brought back from a restaurant. A New York steak, no doubt.

Later when I looked up, she was fiddling with a huge magnifying glass that had appeared from her large purse. Her face was even more contorted. Her mouth was twisted and her lips looked like those of a grouper who has swallowed a spiked puffer fish and is trying to cough it back up. There were some attachments on the magnifying glass, perhaps for propping it on a desk. She was having trouble with the attachments. Her mouth was open wide in a silent scream.

The last time I looked up, she was holding the thick magnifying glass up to her eye. Her face was still warped and throbbing in concentration as she gawped down at the pages of the book, as if straining intently to crap out giant East Coast steaks and other massive intestinal blockages. But now, from my perspective, the scene had taken on an even more Terry Gilliam-esque flavor as the huge glass lens magnified one eye and part of her face. She moved the glass around, making her eye bulge and distort.



I decided that my psychological screening was complete.

I went home and fed my cats.

Sunday School

"This country was not built by nervous nellies and Sunday school teachers but by bold marauders, dodgers, Sooners, buffalo hunters, forty-niners..."
--Garrison Keillor



I'm quoting Keillor out of context. And I'm using his words to make a different point than the one he set out to make in his letter published on Sunday, October 16, 2005 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

But speaking as someone who fits more comfortably into the second category than the first, I wonder when we'll take the country back - or at least get our voice better represented.

Bill Maher said on his October 7 2005 episode of HBO's Real Time: "George Bush does have a diverse Cabinet when it comes to race. They've done a pretty good job: Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, so forth. But, you know, I don't think race makes someone as diverse nowadays as how you think about religion. And there's no secular voice. There's no voice of me in this Cabinet."

Don't get me wrong; I think the message of Jesus is rock solid. He taught compassion and tolerance. His was a message of love and enlightenment.

If he were here today, who knows what means he might employ to spread his message.

A talk show? Nah, too corporate. He was a man of the people.

Maybe a rock band. What would Jesus call his band?

MC JC and the Dudez Divine ?

Three Days Later ?

Barabas' Last Laugh ?

50-Foot Jeebuz ?

Jesus Jive and His Bethlehem Five ?

Baby Jesus and Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine ?




Christ's teachings and Christianity are not the same thing. And even if they were, they don't belong in the Oval Office.

"Poor Jesus. Betrayed first by a kiss and then by a religion" --Tom Robbins

"If Jesus Christ could come back today and see all the things that have been done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up." -- Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)


Vote for Al Swearengen in 2008

Play/Pause

With two weeks to go until the Halloween weekend, I thought I’d post a few picks for seasonal DVD viewing. Sadly, over the years, the trend in movies for the witch’s new year has moved away from atmospheric, darkly romantic tales to one-dimensional slash fests. But fear not; dense, story-driven, moody flicks with a Halloween theme can be found.

So while neighborhood children are busy egging your house and putting foul things into your mailbox, you can sit comfortably in your easy chair with your feet up. Spectral phantoms dance in the flickering shadows at the corner of the room. Where's that DVD remote? I just need to turn on the lights for a moment. I think I lost my . . . uhhmmm . . .

Donnie Darko (2001)

Donnie: I made a new friend today.
Dr. Lilian Thurman: Real or imaginary?
Donnie: Imaginary.



Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Love never dies.

Van Helsing: Mr. Morris, your bullets will not harm him. He must be beheaded. I suggest that you use your big Bowie knife.
Quincey P. Morris: Well, I wasn't plan on getting that close, Doc.



Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Heads will roll.

Young Masbath: Is he dead?
Ichabod Crane: That's the problem. He was dead to begin with.



The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Jack Skellington, king of Halloweentown, discovers Christmas Town, but doesn't quite understand the concept.

Dr. Finkelstein: Sally, that's twice this month you've slipped deadly nightshade into my tea and run off.
Sally: Three times!



Enjoy the show.

Strawberry Fields

Last night I had one of those dreams where you ‘wake up’ in the dream. I thought I was awake. And I started telling some friends about the dream I just had. But I was still dreaming. For all I know, I’m still dreaming now.

Eventually, it will be impossible to tell the difference between the artist's dream and the audience's reality. You don’t believe me? Consider this computer-generated art from The CG Society. The pink girl above and iguana below are not photographs. They are digitally created artworks.



The iguana looks very real to me. The girl in pink is about one tech-generation away from being completely convincing. Maybe to an iguana, the human picture looks real, but the iguana picture looks totally fake. We're probably just a few short years away from having completely convincing CG actors in movies. "Hey usher, the iguana in the seat next to me keeps stealing my popcorn. There, he did it again! Did you see that? He does it with his tongue!"

In David Cronenberg's film eXistenZ (1999), Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Allegra, a game designer who creates a virtual-reality game that taps into the players' minds. To play the game, users plug a game port directly into their spinal cord. Part of the game might include you unplugging the port, thinking the game is over. You're back in your familiar living room. But think again. You're still in the game.

Allegra: So how does it feel?

Ted: What?

Allegra: Your real life. The one you came back for.

Ted: It feels completely unreal.

Allegra: You're stuck now, aren't ya? You want to go back to the Chinese restaurant because there's nothing happening here. We're safe. It's boring.

Ted: It's worse than that. I'm not sure... I'm not sure here, where we are, is real at all. This feels like a game to me. And you, you're beginning to feel a bit like a game character.

.

Ted: We're both stumbling around together in this unformed world, whose rules and objectives are largely unknown, seemingly indecipherable or even possibly nonexistent, always on the verge of being killed by forces that we don't understand.

Allegra: That sounds like my game, all right.

Ted: That sounds like a game that's not gonna be easy to market.

Allegra: But it's a game everybody's already playing.

Coffee

I’ve been in the studio until after one o’clock in the morning many nights the past couple of weeks, working on a new album with The Roman Glowlights. On those nights, I often don’t fall asleep until almost three o’clock. Strong coffee with breakfast is part of my daily chemical cycle. Mornings after a late night at the studio, I’m barely able to function until I’ve had a cup. So it was with great disappointment that when the coffee grinder spun down, I heard the sound all too familiar to all cat owners.

It sounds like stepping on a child’s soggy pool toy, over and over, very rhythmically. I can usually avoid scrubbing a big spot on the rug and wasting a lot of paper towels if I can sprint to the scene with a magazine, sliding it under her delicate, whiskered nose before a half can of Purina Country Style Dinner returns to daylight for a curtain call. Cats are usually very much in control of themselves. But when the need to throw up seizes them, they simply stop wherever they are and give in to it.

As a force of habit, I called out “No puking!” as I rushed across the room. I was too late. Ellie was on a windowsill behind my baby grand piano. The area is completely inaccessible. I spent the next twenty minutes squeezing my body back behind immovable furniture, into places that have not benefited from the presence of a vacuum cleaner since the Clinton administration. Without the much-needed benefit of my friend the caffeine molecule in my blood, I twisted and contorted. There are certain kinds of spiders that seek the places that people do not disturb. I fear them. And I saw them. Why did I even get out of bed that morning? I filled a plastic grocery bag with sopping, reeking paper towels. I couldn’t face a trip to the garbage cans in the alley, so I simply tossed the bag out the door of my cottage. I made coffee. But I never quite regained my equilibrium, and all day the front of my face felt the way it does just after you sneeze.

When I left my house for the studio, I was running late and stepped over the bag near my front door without even noticing it. The session went long. The songs are sounding good. Driving home from Montecito and through Santa Barbara at 1:30 a.m., I didn’t see any other motorists. I had to park a couple blocks from my house. The fog was thick. I was cold and tired. When I saw the white plastic grocery bag at my doorstep, I felt almost embarrassed, even though there is rarely anybody near my place. The bag looked stark and intimate in the night. Opossums or raccoons had shredded through the contents. I guess protein is where you find it. I left the mess there on the doorstep to deal with it the following morning. Inside, Ellie was asleep on the gas stove, warmed by the pilot light. It’s all just survival and comfort for her. I kissed her warm ear and went to bed, where I watched re-runs of The West Wing until three.

In Some Small Dive

"Doesn't weather like this make you want to crawl into a bar and stay in there until about Labor Day?" - David Letterman

Dissolving Solids

“You would not recognize me. Mine is the face that blooms in the mirrors of dank washrooms as you grope for the light switch.”
-- Donald Justice

Recently, I was having a battle with something that television commercials politely refer to as “household odors”. I think it started when one of my cats fell into the toilet while on his way up and out the bathroom window. A lot of clean water sloshed and spilled back behind the toilet. Living alone, I don’t spend more time cleaning than what’s necessary to keep my place sanitary enough to survive in. So the place behind the fixture probably doesn’t get scrubbed as often as that area does in many family homes. When that spot got soaked, the funk of the ages began wafting up to haunt me. My entire house smelled like the men’s room at a Texaco gas station in Yuma.



On three occasions over three days, I scrubbed back there. Eventually, the god of olfactory unpleasantries retreated to Mount Olympus, where he no doubt is not among those at the feast. The final step was to purchase a large box of baking soda to leave open on the floor behind the porcelain. While at the store, I also decided to buy a solid air freshener. The bright green gelatinous substance inside smelled strong and sweet, like watermelon candy.

Over days and weeks, I wondered how long the air freshener would last. Would I need to replace it? Would it simply lose its scent? Should I try some other ‘flavors’? Yesterday, I picked it up, moving things around as I watered a plant. I was surprised to see that the solid substance had mostly disappeared. It was dissolving into nothing. I’m not used to seeing solids dissolve into the air. It struck me as somehow nightmarish. Broad, curving swaths of the stuff were simply missing. There was something macabre about it. There was a hard white plastic core up the middle. Decaying flesh hanging off a skeleton.



That night I dreamed that I was fighting with some kind of magician. He was wearing a tuxedo. We were in a small room with a tiled floor. We struggled and wrestled. Eventually, I struck a massive blow to the top of his head. He fell to the ground and compacted himself into a metallic sphere about the size of a tennis ball. All of his features and clothing were represented across the surface of the sphere. I put the sphere into my mouth and went outside to show my friends. They were on a veranda, overlooking the countryside at sunset. I felt the sphere begin to shrink and dissolve in my mouth. I spat it into my palm. It continued to dissolve into the air, decaying the way the solid air freshener did. I got on a small airplane and flew to Yuma. There was trouble with the plane after we landed. The people I was traveling with told me that I would need to get a ride home with a man who had been the comptroller for a bookshop where I worked for a short while. The man is currently a piano student of mine. He’s a very nice guy and a dedicated student of music. He’s one of the few men I know who wears cologne. It’s something old school, like Old Spice. I’m always aware of the strong, pleasant scent when I’m teaching his piano lesson.



Eventually we will all be dissolving solids.



“When god lets my body be
From each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom
the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing
a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes
will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow
Into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass
their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea”


-- e.e. cummings