Post Show Blah

Well, I had a decent show. Boiling it down, I moved about $40 worth of vinyl and took home a load more than that. Sadly, I took home most of the vinyl, which is conflicting. I want to get rid of it, but then I wish I had some more hot stuff for the next one. I want to do a next one, but then I don't. I would probably want to just go and buy shit. Crazy. I had a disc that was pretty rare, and moved it for about 60% of what I was asking. I felt good. Then the guy threw it on ebay and sold it for over $200, which was about 4 times what I got. So I feel like a schmuck. Then the car blew a head gasket (or possibly the head) and that pretty much kills that car. Oh well.

Record Show's a coming

I typically find no desire to post what I am doing, or to even ramble on about what I think about something in particular. Seems to be a thing women do. But I am about to plunge into a record show again. It has been over a year. I love going to the things, although deep down I wonder how long I can enjoy this hobby without it being a distraction from other shit, like writing stuff. But I have too many lp's, and it is time to start dumping. Truth be told, I typically buy a lot of the discs I do with the idea that I can probably make money dumping them. I have. I have toyed with a blog that would chart my rise into capital gains tax status with some of the things I have sold off. But a show comes up next week, and I have to cull the herd. Maybe I will write about that. We shall see. I hope to write about something that I really feel the need to write about soon, like the metal feet. But this is something, no? Oh, yeah - mom's in the hospital, and I worry this is the end run.

Torch Dropped

I am not an athlete. I know this about myself. Now, I do wish I were more athletic in general, but I have come to understand that I do not aspire to be an athlete. A musician may or may not show the same dedication as an athlete. It takes practice to get to Carnegie Hall, but a guy who gets bombed every weekend and plays the ukulele at 3 AM is still a musician. I was a musician and still pick up and play things, but I am not an active performing musician. Anyone could be into sports. That does not make you an athlete. An athlete is different. I think nothing is more exemplary of the peculiar nature of an athlete than this past summer’s Olympics, in which the world was enthralled by the dedication and perseverance of…well, I don’t remember his name. But lets call him that guy with the metal things for feet. He had suffered some mishap that resulted in the loss of his feet, and he competed in the Olympics with a pair of springy metal things. The world was inspired and, as I just said, enthralled. Count me out of the world for this one. Here’s the thing: say one afternoon I was shopping at Von Maur and riding the escalator when I began to feel faint, and then I fainted, falling on the escalator. Not down it, but just falling back. And I was wearing shoes with too long laces. As the escalator reached its end where the steps go flat and into the floor, they catch my laces and suck my feet into them, mashing my feet up to the ankle into a pulpy shredded mess of blood, flesh, and bone. I briefly snap back into consciousness, shrieking an un-Godly howl, but promptly go into shock and unconsciousness again. Some time later - days perhaps - I awaken in the hospital, where an emotionally flat doctor, I think from India, informs me that my feet have been amputated, but as they were able to do this below the knee I should be able to walk again with prosthetics and much lengthy rehabilitation. I am not sure what might go through my mind at this point. Maybe I might wonder, “Where’s my underwear?” But I am pretty damn sure I would not first think, “I have to run in the Olympics.” And for pretty good reason. That being running in the Olympics after getting your feet cut off is mental. Without feet, one would still wander the planet into a ripe old age, even bouncing around on what look like a pair of leaf springs from a 67 Firebird. I might think something like “what am I going to do for a living in ten years?” If a violinist got his hand cut off – say the fingering hand – I think they would be universally practical and sell the violin. They might take up percussion, or slide guitar, and still play music. But they wouldn’t probably start asking Dr. Bombay for the bionic hand and an audition at Julliard. Just a guess. I don’t rule out one day that being an option. I hope so, yet I worry that the re-attachment point would be less suited to stress, maybe resulting in the fake feet sheering off mid marathon. People who go deaf can benefit from cochlear implants, so if you love listening to the ballgame on the radio, there you go. But a true athlete will hear none of this, nor will their parents. Olympic athletes and their parents – who don’t just stumble into Olympic training programs with their kids accidentally – regularly, subject themselves to rigorous and stressful routines. These routines often involve your child not living with you anymore while in grade school, intense workouts that delay sexual development, social retardation when around people not involved their sport, obsessing with their physical appearance, and familiarity with sexual predators. But, they don’t worry about paying off student loans, so maybe that is good. After the Olympic competition period of their lives has passed – sometimes by 15 - they can have reunions where they swap stories of their depression, psychiatric counseling, drug and alcohol abuse, how they are coaching some kid now and those special competitions way back, like the one where they had a group encounter with Usain Bolt. And they can remember that guy with the metal feet. No, I am not an athlete, and with age I grow more uncomfortable with every wistful Bob Costas report that I am pretty sure is supposed to be inspiring to me, but only makes me think of the Ottoman Empire raiding Christian villages for young boys to be taken and turned into efficient killing machines that would then turn around in 20 years and kill the village. The ratings for the Olympics have been trailing off for the past couple of decades. The novelty of seeing them may have gone the way of networks telling us the program we were about to watch was in color. Their height seemed to parallel the economy running low in the past, like Tarzan being wildly popular in the depression. But they were up again for this year's. Times is tough, but I did watch more this year, what with the women’s volley ball camera angles and the guy with metal things for feet.

KING KONG!

I like to get out to the movies, but I don’t get to that often. I can watch movies on demand if I miss them even at the buck theater, which is now two bucks. I can do that, but I just never do on demand. A week or two later, then its just on TV. If I wait long enough, it seems that King Kong will be out – again. I saw the Jack Black one. If you saw the original then you know the story. Same basic script. And that is tough because there is something that bothers me about it. You know the part where Denning unveils Kong for the people in the theater? He says

“Behold Kong, The Eighth wonder of the world!”

Now here is the thing: Kong is a big gorilla. I mean gigantic, and that is impressive. But we have just watched these guys go to an uncharted island, fight the stone-age tribe that lives there, run into man-eating giant insects, the complete collection of Jurassic Dinosaurs, and King Kong, whom they knock out with a gas bomb, tie up, throw on a boat, take to New York, and load into a theater WITHOUT incident - and THAT is the 8th wonder of the world? How about that ISLAND? 5 minutes before, they are being attacked by dinosaurs. DINOSAURS!! Millions of years on this island, I would say they get to be 8th wonder before Kong. How about the tribe? They live on this island for 10's of thousands of years, and built a wall that keeps all these things away. Including the flying dinosaurs. How come they never fly over the wall? 8th Wonder right there. Initially, I am thinking Tyrannosaurus Rex has 8th Wonder down pat, but that wall is literally amazing. In comparison, a giant gorilla is a frigging birth defect. But they remake the movie every 20 years. Why? Because we LOVE King Kong. We do. A movie where a giant gorilla goes nuts – APEshit – in New York. We relate. Not the whole over-the-top Beauty and the Beast thing. Sure, bestiality is fascinating. But the anger, the violence, a blonde in her undies, and there is a cuddly big pet thing in there. They don’t remake it because of the story. I think the guy who wrote King Kong was a con man. It’s built on that whole con artist thing where they tell you some story and we all sit there and go, “what? Yeah sure. Ok” Think about the gaps in the story. The whole leap of faith. They catch Kong and bring him to New York City. I haven’t tried to import anything via ship lately, but I think that it is not too easy to just show up at the dock with a giant gorilla. You couldn’t import a case of soy sauce in this country. And I think wouldn’t somebody be looking for all the guys who died on the island?

“My brother was on the ship with the giant gorilla, and he hasn’t come home.”

“What? Can you wait till after the theater premiere?”

“Ok.”

That Denning character – just not a big picture guy. He gets the gorilla, and: Shit – how can we make money with this big fucking gorilla? Maybe we can bring him to a theater and have people pay $20 to ….LOOK at Kong. For how long? I think after 5 minutes that show would suck. What was the show going to be? Was he going to dance? It’s not like he could be funny…LIKE ME. He was all chained up. Maybe, I think, they were going to torture him. Its possible - people would dig that. Behold KONG, the 17th wonder of the world – then he shoves a tazer into his nuts. In the flick, this thing goes to Broadway. I said $20 because I am guessing a show was $20 before Pearl Harbor. Maybe less. I know that nowadays, even if you scored tickets at a booth, you’d be out a week at a bad motel. Even in New York, how long could that show run? A couple of months?

“Hey, I got tickets to King Kong.”

“Oh, it’s just a gorilla, plus he shits and pisses on his platform and it is gross.”

Maybe they planned to take it on the road. Two years later they would be playing Anchorage, and Kong would be so bored and fat he would sleep on stage. Then they would really have to tazer his nuts. You’d read in the paper that King Kong got sold to a roadside hick show in northern Florida. Or they would figure out he cost so much to feed they would pull over on some road in Nebraska and shoot him, throw him over the side of a hill. Big gorilla is fascinating, but come on. If they caught the Tyrannosaurus, I would be interested. I would want to eat it. There is not a lot of thinking through with King Kong, but boy, do we love it.

Damn Your Eyes

This is a rare classic slam, old Damn Your Eyes. I heard it a
few days ago, and recalled the first time someone yelled it at me, or more accurately,at a kid I was with. The yeller was an old gal herself, and my friend really deserved it, or possibly even a kick in the ass. Or both. I didn’t deserve my eyes being damned, but I did laugh at what he said. Whatever. But even then, it really hit home with me. Damn Your Eyes was a top drawer rip. There are lots of things you can say to people to let them know you wish harm on them, and think they are less than shit on your shoes, but Damn Your Eyes, now that is a cut above the rest. It expresses all of that, but it is clearly wishing a severe state of affairs on your eyes. You could just say “I hope you go blind,” which is rough. But damning one’s eyes? Now, that is calling God into the mix. You are wishing God would remove all holy protection from someone’s eyes, and tangentially the whole bag of bones. Opening someone’s eyes to evil is wild. That could be blindness, but it could also be injury. An injury birthed from Hell itself would imply a lot of nasty crap. Like, maybe they could still see, but their eyes would burn, from something like a handful of Snowy bleach. That would really suck, especially if you were young, and could live a while, but would always walk around thinking “why me?” all the time. Wishing death is pretty bad, but wishing an existence with damned eyes is harsh.

Maybe the idea was a big rip AND wishing that your eyes would see evil. Seeing evil is bad. That reminds me of the movie The Sentinel, where this chick has to guard the gates of hell. It starts showing up while she is reading a book – maybe Jacqueline Susan – and it turns into Latin to her. Her eyes were damned. Actually she was, because she tried to kill herself. People today wouldn’t buy that. Killing yourself, and not doing it right, well, then you just have problems. Not a sin. Sin is hard to buy, angels are easy. Either way, seeing into hell every day, watching out for demons trying to sneak into the world, not a gig I want.

And I think that is why I really like Damn Your Eyes. It is multi-purposed, and it is really heinous. I just was part of a film fest, and our flick failed to impress, but when I think of some of the things that did, I really don’t feel bad. I mean I did, but I didn’t as far as content and effort wise. But when I see some things that do impress people, and I think of what a lot of people tell me is good comedy, or when I think of Hotel For Dogs. Then I think too of that old gal, yelling “Damn Your Eyes!” And maybe she did mean me too.

Animal Crackers In My Soup

4/30/2008

I got a call asking me to pick up animal crackers with frosting and sprinkles, so I did. I love those myself, but I also like regular animal crackers, in the teeny box with a string. Frankly, I find those to be delish. Funny thing is, every time I see them, I think of Shirley Temple singing that song. It is a fun tune, catchy and pretty much a classic. But I think the guy who wrote it was just making shit up. Regular crackers – saltines – they rock in soup. Oyster crackers work as well, especially in a nice chowder. I'm no fan of Manhattan Clam chowder, but if I had to, I would put Oyster crackers in that. But who the fuck puts animal crackers in soup? That would be horrific. First and foremost, they are cookies. You don't get a bowl of chicken noodle soup and pop in some oatmeal cookies. You don't eat that. This guy wished they were crackers, so his song would work. Perhaps, he never even had them, and just saw them and assumed they were crackers. But I guess it is possible that people back then put cookies in soup. Man, the Great Depression was no fun. Great songs, though.

Wow. I forgot about this. Well, I am back. I never went anywhere, kind of. I just dealt with my brother dying, and some other hideous shit. Makes writing just another thing you can skip. But I have been writing again, and thinking, and moving beyond doing laundry in my free time. So, there you go. I will start putting stuff up again. I promise.