LOVER

wake up

I love Dave Chappelle and I love toasted pecans and I also love you.

Give 'em the old razzle dazzle

I'm inspired by another online journal all about favorite things to do in New Orleans. Valuable stuff, remembering what we love, naming our loves out loud. So here's some of mine (all of this stuff is swell to do on yr own but made better by the company of other swell fun-time folks):

- Loading up the purse w/props including Sharpees, Post-its, toys, gum and such and just wandering around town pulling pranks
- Going to the rooftop of the Omni Hotel (you just gotta head for the gilt elevators w/confidence) and sitting by the pool, dipping bare feet in the blue water, at night, with a cocktail, looking at the sky
- Standing underneath the Huey P. Long bridge at night and getting spooked running around screaming
- Eating pakoras & samosas at Salt 'n Pepper before or after a film at Canal Place
- Visiting Sallie Ann Glassman at her "Island of Salvation" for some candles & such then wandering over to Bargain Center U.S.A. to get dusty hands playing with all the fabulous trinkets
- Lake Ponchatrain to drink beers and watch waves crash & fishermen fish
- Bicycle riding anywhere anytime

- Appetizers at The Hong Kong
- The Palace Theatre for a blockbuster, maybe some candy, maybe a daiquiri
- Paying my respects at St. Roch Cathedral in the 7th Ward
- Coffee at Little Rue
- Mod dance party
- Rotary Downs at d.b.a. / Happy Talk Band at d.b.a
- 3 a.m jukebox throw down at The Saint
- Green Project & that garden center right there by the tracks on a Saturday morning
- Rocks Off to visit Colby & score some finds & then to the Comic Shop on a Saturday afternoon
- Reading magazines sitting in my glider on the porch
- Festivals! Gretna Fest, any Watermelon Fest, Oktoberfest - dancing in grass or dirt and eating greasy food.
- Circle Bar Happy Hour, even sober
- Thoth parade - hanging out at Brew HaHa and basking in the sunny love
- Barkus parade - god, what's funnier than dogs in clothes?
- Muses parade - the best throws.
- Walking/dancing w/my krewe: The Secret Society of St. Ann on Mardi Gras Day
- Walking around the Quarter/Marigny on Ash Wednesday photographing it
- Busking with The Black Bonnets
- Pal's for foosball & Pink Poodles w/Meehan
- Pelicans! On Bayou St. John
- Mimi's for wi-fi, tapas, and/or pool
- The iced coffee at Fairgrinds Coffeehouse
- Going to the track to win the funds to pay some bills then heading to Liuzza's for a Barq's & some gumbo
- Driving around looking at Christmas lights
- Hansen's Sno Bliz
- Hanging out at Virgin Records listening to any c.d. & then buying it at Magic Bus
- Running around the Fairmont Hotel
- Lenny's Picadilly for the jukebox
- Vaughan's for ping pong
- Little Freddie King at BJ's
- Going to stare at Fats Domino's house then heading over to the Octagon House to stare some more
- The dog levee!
- Picnic on the Marconi side of City Park alongside the bayou near the stables
- Paying my respects at the Pauper's Cemetary
- Getting a thermos of drinks & biking round to hop into cemetaries and do illicit things
- Doing illicit things in the car on the West Bank in the parking lot of the Penguin Refridgeration Company
- Jean Lafitte to rent a canoe at Earl's then paddling around underneath a full moon getting freaked out by the gators
- UCM Museum in Abita Springs is the bomb!
- Tromping around in the rain and even floods so long as e'one is safe.
- Riccobono's Cafe is pretty swell for b-fast
- The x-mas tree bonfire on Orleans Ave. neutral ground for NYear's Eve
- Fireworks anytime anywhere

Ok I better stop cuz I better earn the money I need to fund all of these activities.

The Wholesome Life

- Gentilly porch, Gentilly is easy
- Pathos -vs- tragedy
- Squashed crow, pretty guts
- Folding clothes
- She brings champagne! She plays bass! I heart She!
- Olives, sharp cheddar, pickles
- His Molly
- The sensitive singer-songwriter type with his dinasaur head
- Black dog phenomena
- Cesaria Evora "Amdjer De Nos Terra"
- Wed/Sat rehearsal, working around parades
- Tea, cocoa, chai
- 43 Things
- St. Roch Cathedral
- Debt consolidation
- Donald Bartheleme "Amateurs"
- A proper drink
- Sallie Ann's magic salts
- The array of renewed subscriptions fanned out upon the floor
- The Bob Warner
- Hot crab dip, it's your birthday it's your birthday
- uhK, Wendar, Meesha, JBee, Me

1-800-NOT-GUILTY!

Last night's discussion of Shakespeare is on my mind. How in the beginning of "Romeo and Juliet" the chorus gives away the ending? Is this, as I thought, indicative of true "tragedy" (ie: one knows the end result but follows the path regardless) or of "pathos" (ie: it was ill communication versus any willful act that resulted in the deaths). The context for the discussion was the entertainment value of Shakespeare, how he really wanted to make the audiences laugh! and cry! and party! So isn't it counter-intuitive to reveal the ending to the audience? The question really is, "What was he trying to do, what was the purpose of that?" Because with W.Shakes there was always a purpose.

Furthermore, I'd like to go on record as saying that "contemporary, updated" versions of his plays inevitably annoy the shit outta me. To me, the work is always first and foremost about language and his was SO contemporary, and it remains pertinent, proof of the truly prophetic quality of his talent. So to put Mercurio in a leather jacket in a hip hop club is insultingly redundant. So there, take that!

Tengo las manos sucias!

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."
- Mr. Albert Einstein

This graph illustrates what is commonly referred to as the "King Khan Future". Cross my heart.

The dreams I had all night were self-indulgent and ludicrous. Insert Charlie Brown's teacher's voice here. Upon waking I realized that my body has been invaded by a vast and intricate army of foreigners. They are outfitted in heavy scratchy wet wool suits the color of the Atlantic Ocean in January decorated with epaulets of the most absurd yellow you have ever seen in your entire life. All elegant decorations aside, these uniforms have seen better days and, well, they reek. The ragged yet noble army conscripted to parade tirelessly in such a state of disrepair is, well, pissed. They're marching 'round all of my naturally moist and ebulliant air-passages, practicing their intricate military moves, jabbing, scraping, setting small fires with the remains of their hand-rolled ciggies, leaving a wake of itchy nonsense radiating with red-hot sparkles. I hate them though I admire their specific articulation of their task. I hate them and am going to destroy them with over-the-counter pharmaceuticals the likes of which I never needed before I moved to New Orleans.

And ah the Big Easy! How you taunt and tempt me with your luscious weighty wares! Big meaty men and grapey wicked women all rolling round naked in the dewy cobbled streets! I've learned to look past such bounty in order to survive. I've learned to turn my head from the banquet of hot fresh doughy bread and juicy shiny meats, winking cups full of winking drinks and fruit and sweets all spilling. I've learned to starve myself of my compulsions in an effort to, quite simply, stay alive. After all, it's all I can do to turn the key in the ignition to get myself to the office to make coffee listen to internet radio and scan 1000 negatives while pretending it doesn't bother me that we are all so flawed we can't even be consistent in our loves and fail to love the lovable ones we should love in exchange for a dirty sordid addiction to empty wanton dreams howling up from the fearless days of youth when it was sexy, it was sexy to drink crappy booze at noon and smoke borrowed cigarettes til dawn and arrogantly insist we were going to get everything we wanted because we were the shining ones, more alive, more deserving than the bent and grayish "people" with thinning hair and failed resolutions piling up on the mountains of years of decades of centuries of history behind us.

That said, God it's a gorgeous fucking day, my bike ride to work was glorious, I love english muffins with honey and I'm looking forward to the satisfactions of a life well lived! Cheers!

med/moy

And what to say what to say when you want to say something about being sad? I miss him I miss and why and what. We're all missing someone something but it isn't always this way. You know it works sometimes for some folks it works. Right now for me it's just ... there's a clue I can't find anything for except another clue. I'm the driver that's paralyzed by the deer in the headlights. Driving in the UP of Michigan in the winter alone at night. That feeling when you know something and can't speak it, have a solution that nobody understands, have a desire you must swallow. It's isolation and hope and fear all mixed up together making my skins ache.

Velvet Underground "Sunday Morning"
Rilo Kiley "The Good That Won't Come Out"
M.Ward "Vincent O'Brien"

Oh where you going for the 250th time?
Well I'm waiting for a sign -
Well it looks just like another line.
And I'm walking backwards to the place where I come
Oh but that ain't enough no you want me to run.

Used to feel like California with baby eyes so blue
Now I feel like Carolina splittin myself in two
Now I'm walking backwards from Chicago to Washington
Oh but that enough no you want me to run
Oh that enough no you want me to run

Better watch your soul it'll leave you like 100 bucks
My friend says stick to your guns but instead I just got stuck
And I'm walking backwards looking forward to getting done
Oh but that ain't enough no you want me to run
Oh that ain't enough you want me to run

Used to feel like California with baby eyes of blue
Now I feel like Carolina splittin myself in two

Now go make yourself a holiday

The Trashmen "Bad News"
The Others "I Can't Stand This Love Goodbye"
The Robins "Whole Lot of Imagination"
Ike & Tina Turner "You Can't Miss Nothing"
Jim San and the Montclairs "You Don't Know My Mind"
The Dirtbombs "Your Love Belongs Under A Rock"
Apples In Stereo "Get There Fine"
Wedding Present "Let Him Have It"

Exhibit A, Granite City

Exhibit B, Corona

Exhibit C, Teams

Exhibit D, Dress

These are images from a treasure hunt I created/participated in with a friend of mine. The idea was to be propelled by a not-knowing - to pursue a state of openness, to search, to wind up surprised, and to drink some booze along the way. This was the game:

Go someplace. Look around. See something you've never noticed before. Photograph it. Drink in hand, analyze photograph, share ideas, unravel the clue within the photograph to lead us to the next destination. Repeat.

We played this game for appx. 3 hours. Some interesting things happened, were found. I like how different people see different things and know different words. I love Polaroid film. I love jumping fences and I love the nighttime air.

bed, bath, beyond

"She was courageous to an insane degree," Williams remarked. "I found myself drinking pure water from her spirit." Abbott said she was "like Jesus Christ and Shakespeare all rolled into one."

Though the Baroness had a flamboyant heart, she spent the last years of her life alone and impoverished, at least partly because she was incapable of compromises. She wrote,
"I cannot bow -- I can only fling myself."

shiver me timbers

OH young Bill Gates, you can update my operating system any time!

If Ever I Stop Loving

"In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions."
- A.N. Whitehead

- Fireman driving solo
- Penguin logo (won me over)
- Bluejay
- Two pelicans fly overhead, each going in an opposite direction.
- Black lab/red collar
- "S" vs "Z"
- Wig vs Mask?
- Me vs Me
- Fork calling Leonard Studios
- Getting a monitor donated to us from Mr. Bill Gates/Apple loves jazz!
- Dry porkchop
- Commemorate
- I can't keep telling you over and over again - either it's important to you or it's not. Regardless, you'll find me at Dick & Jenny's.
- Chicken shit chicken eater!
- Baby Dolls
- The new black
- Conceive/abort/conceive

I told Salvador that I couldn't stay at the hotel that night and that a former member of the Legion was offering me his room. He turned pale. The humilty of his pain made me feel ashamed. In order to leave him without remorse I insulted him. I was able to since he loved me to the point of devotion. He gave me a woebegone look, but it was charged with a poor wretch's hatred. I replied with the word: "Fruit." I joined Stilitano, who was waiting for me outside. His hotel was in the darkest alley in the neighborhood. He had been living there for some days. A stairway from the corridor which opened out to the sidewalk led to the room. As wer were going up, he said to me, "D'you want us to shack up together?"
Gently he led me from step to step. I no longer knew where we were going. A wondrously supple athlete was leading me about in the night. A more ancient and more Greek Antigone was making me scale a dark, steep Calvary. My hand was confident, and I was ashamed to stumble ast times against a rock or root, or to lose my footing. My ravisher was carrying me off.
"He's going to think I'm clumsy."