PriorBlog

There is a big article in Rolling Stone about China and Tibet, that as a former Party Secretary of Gansu Province, I find quite disturbing.

I have always been bothered by the bumper sticker romanticism applied to the notion of a “Free Tibet,” or more recently “Save Tibet.” Do the operators of these vehicles favor military intervention on behalf of the native Tibetan population, or are the stickers there to express an opinion and nothing more, save for maybe a rally every five years on this side of the globe. What is pleasant to think about, to hope for, is not the political reality of a truly autonomous Tibet, but the idea of a mysitcal place far away in the Himalayas that, were we to ever get off our asses and venture to, would bestow upon us, in the words of Bill Murray’s grounds keeper character in Caddyshack, “total consciousness.”

Or something like that.

Take, for example, this description of Tibet in the Rolling Stone article:

“…Lhasa was the capital of a remote kingdom where a long line of Dalai Lamas presided over a civilization infused with spirituality, perpetuated in more than 6,000 monasteries and protected by the snow-capped Himalayas. In their sacred land, Tibetans built a distinct and mystical culture, a matchless experiment in faith that permeated their lives.”

Over here there’s been an experiment in bad faith, in thinking that with bumper stickers we are really doing something for these people, when in reality the stickers are a collective admission of fantasy. I don’t see how this fantastical talk of the Tibetan people helped them. As a fantasy people, they really don’t need to have a homeland. As long as we have pictures of monks, they will always be instantly accessible to our imagination.

Not surprisingly, the article goes on to lament the beginning of a decline in influence of the Dalai Lama in his homeland. It’s all the fault of the Chinese, of course, who don’t understand that Tibetans need to be under the collective leadership of a lama. After all, what is the point of having political rights for these people when it’s so enchanting to think of the wisdom of the Dalai Lama spreading across the magic land and “permeating” everybody as they work their over-time shifts as noble serfs for the monasteries.

From the article:

“With the quality of world leaders declining in recent years, the Dalai Lama has become even more important,” says Robert Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia University. “He is one of the few morally inspiring leaders left.”

A leader elected by whom?

The problem with the Dali Lama, according to Rolling Stone, is that like the current Panchen Lama, when the need arises, a new Dalai Lama won’t be “chosen through an ancient process of reincarnation, in which the soul of the dead monk is rediscovered in a young boy.” I need not remind you at this juncture that to question the efficacy of governance that this selection offers is to admit you have no soul. It was a great system, just ask the exiled leader.

The truth of the matter is that there is a long history of the Dalai Lama being installed for political purposes. The position was set up by the Mongol, Altan Kahn, in order to consolidate the Mongols with the Tibetans in 1578. Dalai, is actually Mongolian for “Oceanic.” Altan Kahn was a real sweet guy, especially to the Chinese, who he often massacred. In one of those rare ironic twists of fate, the monks responsible for, as Rolling Stone puts it “crisscross[ing] Tibet’s rugged landscape, consulting oracles, visions and markers in the sky or in the waters of Lake Namtso,” chose Altan Kahn’s great-grandson to be the next Dalai Lama. I guess the criss-crossed into Mongolia by accident. Or what about in 1750, when Qing Dynasty China installed the Dalai Lama? Etc., etc..
But this old man, the current Dalai Lama, the one that the world is so in love with, he’s the real deal I guess. I’ve heard that he is threatening not to be re-born again to stave off the Chinese from chosing his successor. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him born again on the big screen though, most likely played by his buddy Richard Gere. The story of too little too late.

Last weekend at brunch the topic of Dan Treacy of Television Personalities came up. My friend Jay (not rackrat Jay) mentioned a rumor he had heard that Dan had recently been released from a floating prison. I was intrigued and decided to look to the internet for more information.

Years ago, I was a really big TVP’s fan. The first time I saw them play was in 1992 at TT the Bears. Those were the days. I was still pretty new to Boston, and the shows would last long past the time when the buses stopped running, so afterwards I would have to figure out how to get back to my dorm late at night with only a vague sense of which direction to go. I also didn’t quite know what to do with myself before the music came on. I remember either the night of the TVP’s show, or a Miracle Legion show, I got to the club early, and ended up killing a few hours wandering aimlessly around Cambridge in the freezing cold. Basically, the shows I went to, were sandwiched between miserable experiences physically, psychologically, and socially, with the exception of the time I went to see Bob Mould in Providence with no return trip home, but luckily befriended Jon Manders, who later convinced his roommate that I was an old track rival/friend from Pennsylvania (which was partially true, but not as true as the fact that I was a complete stranger two hours previous), and I got to crash on his floor.*

Aside from the misery, or maybe in some way owing to it, the shows were usually great. I remember nervously checking the time as the TVP’s were setting up. It was getting late, and as excited I was to see them, I was also getting ready to accept the fact that it would be a very long and confusing walk home. At the time I was only familiar with two TVP’s songs that I had recorded off of WXPN’s radio station before they turned into NPR. There was a deejay named Kirby that I really liked, and I would tape his shows, and then edit out the songs I didn’t like.

Usually at rock shows, I like hearing songs that I am familiar with, but that night, the new songs, well new to me, blew me away. TVPs were so much more than I expected them to be. In particular, I remember very clearly hearing “I look back in Anger” for the first time.

I look back in anger, I look back at you./
I look back in anger at you.

Treacy’s voice was so childlike, and yet the lyrics were so incredibly bitter. I thought it was all wonderful stuff. I was hooked and then they came back to the states a few months later and I kind of followed them around. I even worked up the nerve to say hello to Jowe Head at one point. I think I even freaked him out, to tell the truth. Because, over the course of a week I saw them play three or four times, the last show of which was in Providence. As usual, I got to Providence way earlier than I needed to, and proceeded to walk around the town with my copy of An Introduction to Analytic Philosophy, which I ended up reading on the steps of the Dunkin Donuts Coliseum. I was wearing a pair of excessively short blue shorts that day. I don’t know whatever possessed me to buy them, but for some reason I thought that they were okay in a weird way. I was awakened to the fact that they weren’t when two boys, no older than twelve, began throwing stones at me. I didn’t know how to respond. I was a lot older than them, so I couldn’t really fight back. A well-timed passing of a police cruiser ended the torment. I pointed out the little bastards, and the cop picked them up, but I feared they would only get a slap on the wrist, and in retaliation for my getting them in trouble, they might soon take to the streets again, this time with older brothers, maybe 14-15 years old, which is why I was at the Dunkin Donuts Center, because I could sit quietly hidden behind a giant slab of concrete reading Quine.

Now, I bet you’re saying to yourself, this idiot probably doesn’t understand a word of analytic philosophy. What a poseur. I wouldn’t mind throwing a few rocks at him myself. For your information, I did pick up, after spending about five or six hours with my nose in that book, and sitting like a zombie for a semester in a subsequent class, what the words empirical and tautological meant. You may notice me sometimes using these words in an effort to make you think that they are just the tip of the iceberg, but in reality my understanding of philosophical concepts is more comparable to that melted ice shelf I was reading about in the paper today.

Since the reading wasn’t all that enthralling, I ventured back to the club and decided to just wait for it to open. What I should have done was gone and bought a decent pair of pants, but anyhow, hanging out outside the club hours before the show and who should I bump into but Jowe Head, who tried to be nice, but I could tell, he thought I was a psycho stalker. Again, if I had been in a decent pair of slacks, maybe he wouldn’t have been so worried about me, but I felt very discouraged at this point, I had scared one of my favorite performers.

The Providence show was the last time I would ever see the TVPs, and it provided me with what I remember as one of those truly TVPs moments. In between songs there was a great deal of banter with the audience, lots of jokes and laughs, everybody was having a good time, so much so that before one song late in the set, as Dan approached the microphone, the audience smiled as one would when expecting a punch line from a great comedian on a roll. That’s when he told us that he had been addicted to drugs and alcohol for years and that when he got back home he was going to try and fight it because it was ruining his life. Sucked the air right out of the room. I thought it was one of the most brilliant things I ever saw.

There are some TVP videos on Youtube. The first one I watched, a few months ago actually, is from around 1980, for a song called The Painted Word the title song of the first TVPs album I was able to find in a Boston record store. The next one is from a more recent album, it’s called All the Young Children. In the beginning of the video we see Dan in a darkened studio with a hat on laughing about how young he looks even those he’s forty-five. Then we see the song start up, and the video shifts to some urban wasteland type place. Dan looks extremely young for his age. I watched the video a couple of times, freaked out about how young he was, until I realized it was a kid from some band called Dustins Bar Mitzvah doing the singing. The kid looked kind of like Dan.

Sadly, from reading Dan’s blog, it turns out he’s not in such great shape lately. There are all sorts of information about fluid on the brain, getting MS, needing new kidneys and stuff like that. He also uses his webpage to viciously lash out at any and everything he doesn’t like. It’s pretty obvious that he’s really miserable often, however, and maybe it’s awful of me, but I am really enjoying reading the entries.

Here are some from July 17th:

July 17

help

look i am not joking..will some nice young lady please be my new girlfriend…
i am desperate for comfort.. i am good in the kitchen ,quite tidy
…not particularly a monster in the trouser stakes..
but i do pen the occasional good tune……(please no freaks
…i am willing and capable to be gay but riGht now i would like a LADDDDDDEEEEEEE……X
(I AM AVAILABLE FOR CHILDRENS PARTIES) AND HERES EDWARD WITH HE WEATHER…July 17

first bt cut off my phone…now noboby calls me..
not an ex girlfriend,,,boyfriend….
oh i give up…i am a sad lonely 45 year old……….July 17

i am so bored this morning..call me an idiot..but here is my number///
…if anyone wants to come and see my paintings and etchings
and lend me a tenner til wednesday
…domino pay day…i think its errr,,, £8,ooooo something
…..make it after 121..30daylight hours///x

There are also a few entries in the beginning written from jail. How many blogs have that?

Another interesting tidbit that I found from the website was that Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, and Blondie all went to one of their shows at the Wetlands. I was at one of those shows, but I don’t remember seeing any of them there, although it was crowded, so you never know. I think you know what I am getting at here. From here on out I will be telling people the story about how I saw the TVPs with Debbie Harry and Kurt Cobain.

*Bambi has been on my case about naming names here, because GOD forbid, some potential employer might come barging in here and discover that their potential employee smoked percocets with me in 1988. I’m going to try to keep all of the information about people whose full names I mention laudatory. All of the jerks I know will get made up names. To the people google searching Manders (I know you are out there), I think it should be mentioned that when I crashed on his floor he was a month into his freshman year of college, but had already polished off a complete bookcase of philosophical books, which hung precariously over his bed. When I asked him the books, he offhandedly mentioned something about his high school history teacher allowing him to write papers on classical philosophy to keep him interested in class. With the exception of Andrea Brady, Manders is the smartest person I know. Although, to be fair, Brady and Manders wouldn’t stand a chance at beating Scott Heim in Trivial Pursuit.

I have been very busy lately, too busy to hang out here and stuff.  I am gearing up to get really busy, but before I do, I think I am going to kill some precious time to tell you all about the BC-FSU basketball game I went to last night.

As we all know, to make things interesting, BC’s coach Al Skinner, kicked the leading shot blocker in the nation, Sean Williams, off the team last week, along with Akida McLain.  Then the Eagles went to Clemson and got whupped this past weekend.  That sucked, so much so that I think that Bambi’s (At my wife’s request, I am no longer referring to her by her real name here.  Too many creeps and weirdos are google stalking her.  I’ll change her name elsewhere in PriorBlog when I get the chance, but like I said, I’ve been really busy.) boss, a season ticket holder, decided to give up her tickets to last night’s game.  Luckily for me, Bambi nailed them.

This is the same way that I got to see BC beat Michigan State earlier in the season, so it was the second time in the same seats for me.  The seats are pretty good, but I like to get a little closer to the action, and move to the concourse behind the basket for the second half.  One thing that bothers me about the seats: one of the other nearby season ticket holders, always rides Sean Marshall really hard, making comments about how “stupid” he is and stuff like that.  When she was doing this at the Michigan State game, I really wanted to turn to her and tell her off, but I was prevented from doing so because I am a coward.

Last night about 30 seconds into the game, Marshall did make kind of a dumb foul, and wouldn’t you know it, you know who was off to the races, muttering and grumbling about Marshall’s alleged stupidity.  Again, I wanted to say something, but since this was my second time around with this woman nearby, I knew she was a season ticket holder and she was probably friends with Bambi’s boss, so if I did lay into her, it would probably get back to my ticket source and I would never get free tix ever again.  Plus, don’t forget my cowardice.

Anyhow, since he knew I wouldn’t stand up for him. Marshall played really well in the first half to shut this woman up on his own, although he did pick up another foul.

My buddy Paul and I headed behind the BC basket on the concourse for the second half with the game knotted up at 41.  On the way to our spot we saw former BC hoops stars Billy Curley, Mark Molinsky (90% sure it was him), and Malcolm Huckaby (93% sure it was him).  Being so close to Huckaby and Curley for the start of the second half gave the game a nice touch of heritage.  Considering that the theme of the previous week had undoubtably been exile, seeing the old stars benevolently watching from above, was to wonder whether they were not attending the game like the rest of us, but rather tending, in their Olympian way, to the fate of their progeny, blessing them, with just the gentlest touch from above.  The kids on the floor, seemingly dispirited during pre-game warm ups, needed it. 

About half way through the second half BC was down by 7, thanks in large part to Marshall having to sit with four fouls.  He came back into the game with about five minutes to play.  BC was two posessions down for awhile.  They’d score to get within two, and then Al Thornton, FSU’s star, would score to get FSU’s lead back to four.  The clock was ticking.  Then, with FSU up by a bucket with about a minute and a half left, Shamari Spears came up with a big steal for BC.  Now they would finally have a chance to tie the game. 

But they didn’t tie the game, they took the lead on a three pointer by Tyrese Rice.  It was the culmination of an incredible game for Rice, who time after time took the ball right through the FSU defence for acrobatic lay ups.  Each time he drove through the lane, I would think, “what the hell is he doing?” and just as I completed that thought the ball would find itself in the net.  Of the twenty-six points for Rice last night, about twenty of them were of the breath-taking variety.

Both teams then traded buckets to make the score 81-80 BC, with the ball belonging to Florida State for the final twenty-seven seconds.  There was a time out.  FSU was sharpening the death blade, making sure it would go straight through the heart.  Again they went to Thornton, who took the shot, but this time Jared Dudley was all over him, and Thornton missed.  BC got the rebound, and Marshall was fouled with seventeen seconds to go.

Marshall missed the first free throw, and even though we were far from the anti-Marshallite in the first half seats, I knew she was revelling in her misery, probably happy when you cut right through it, at this failure, although she must have been somewhat brought back to earth by him making the second shot, to give BC a two point lead.  FSU then got fouled on their end of the court, and the kid on the foul line, I forget who, I just remember it wasn’t Thornton, made both shots to tie the game.  After squandering a few seconds BC finally called time with five seconds left.

When they got back on the court, the ball was inbounded to Marshall, who drove to the right side of the court way out in three point range.  As he began his shot, in the chaos, in that frenetic pace which is so lethal to the intentional object, it appeared to me as though every Florida State arm was raised around him, even the guys on the bench.  Later I was to read that he was merely double teamed, but later is never as exciting as the poorly apprehended present, and Marshall, in his white uniform, like a lone birch in a forest of oaks, got the shot off…

As the ball was in the air, there had to be a flicker of tension up in the seats where our dear friend the Marshall hater was sitting, the great roar of her inexplicable hatred brought toe to toe with that of her own hopes, with the hopes of the rest of the crowd, with the hopes of Malcolm Huckaby, Billy Curley, Mark Molinsky, with those of Sean Williams and Akida McLain even, with the grand and everlasting communion of BC basketball fans.  The ball situated itself into the net with such perfection, that if all of the artists in the Louvre had been given an eternity to do so, they would undoubtably fail to reproduce an arc of such extreme transcendence.  Swish.

While I was doing all that I could not to cry, Marshall ran into the crowd, and was hoisted up by the arms of the student body.  His jersey had been cast off, his tatooed arms swung mightily, leading the chaos like a conductor. 

“If when we have Sean Williams I ever say:
“Ah, malinger on, thou art so tall!”
Then may you double- nay, triple team me,
Then will I perish, then and there!
Then may the final buzzer sound, recalling
Then from your service you are free;
The clock may stop, the 3-pointer falling,
And time itself be past for me!
Go BC!”
–Goethe (as translated by David Prior)

Here is an odd series of coincidences, or at least, odd to me.  A friend of mine, the eminent webdesigner Michael Borum, recently got a job at Oxfam.  When I heard about this I was reminded of a person I used to know named Noel Duncan, who worked there a while back, so I wrote to Borum today to see if he had met him, but no dice.

Later on I was thinking about a story from the summer of 1993.  Jeff Gagne (aka “The Whackmaster,” “Gagoo,” “The King,” “Dr. Gaggles,” “Gagnification”) and I were working as temps for Tower Records, where our job was to build cd racks.  This was back in the day when CD’s had gone from coming in a cardboard box to not coming in a cardboard box, and the change required a wholesale reshelving of the Tower stores in Massachusetts.  My dream was that someday when I brought Hazel into a Tower Records, I could point to the racks and say to her, “You see those CD racks there?  Do you know who built those racks?  Your daddy did, that’s who.”  But Tower went bankrupt about a year ago.

Anyhow, that summer, Gagne and I, along with other assorted flakes and misfits, toiled away with key wrenches and prefab wood, setting up racks and goofing off.  We did Burlington, we did Cambridge, and finally, we did overnights at the Newbury Street location.  It was a pretty boring job, and everyone was punch drunk with sleep deprivation.  For the purposes of this story, I need to introduce you to two of our fellow “rack rats.”

First, there was Eager Guy Whose Name I Forget (hereafter known as “Egon”).  This guy was really into esprit de corps, if that’s how you spell it.  He really took to the term “rack rats,” in fact, he may well have invented it.  While everybody else was sleepwalking through the night, he would take time at least once an hour to smile, whip his fist in the air and exclaim, “Rack Rats!” or “Proud to be a Rack Rat!”

There other guy I remember a little better, his name was Jay, and he was in a band called Super Model that always played out with another band called Space Humpin 19.99.  He had a very dry sense of humor, which made the job a lot easier to deal with.  I wish I could remember his jokes, but this was 13 years ago.  Plus his humor invoved a lot of kinesics, so even if I could remember them, they would suck coming from me. 

One early morning, while Jay was in the bathroom stall, he decided to do a promote his band.  Taking a sharpie, he created a giant swirling tag for Super Model and Space Humpin on the inside of the door.  I can’t recall with any certainty, but I think that Jay was a student at one of the art schools, and this tag of his, very recognizable, could be found throughout the hipper parts of Boston and Cambridge circa 92-94.

Unbeknownst to Jay, Egon had also decided to tag the bathroom stall.  You had to look hard to find it, but surreptitiously scribbled below the toilet paper roll in number two pencil were the tiny words “Rack Rats.”

There was this guy there who we rarely saw, who had something close to a glam rocker’s hairstyle.  We were told he was some type of higher up.  He was unfriendly, and didn’t think too highly of the Rack Rats.  It seemed as though he had a permanent scowl on his face.  A former Rack Rat had been caught stealing CDs earlier in the summer, and this only fueled his flame.  I think he hated us all from the get go.  His name might have been Darrel, but for all I know that might have been the name of the guy who looked vaguely like Bob Seger, who was responsible for driving us back and forth to Burlington and stuff.  That guy was actually pretty nice, but let’s just say for the purposes of this story that the first guy was Darrel.  When Darrel saw the graffiti in the bathroom stall, he hit the roof.  That night, when the Rack Rats arrived at work (truth be told, I wasn’t there that day, but Jay told me the story [and told it better than me, so if you see him, you can bug him about it]) Darrel had us all lined up and began his interrogation.

“WHO’S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GRAFFITI IN THE BATHROOM STALL?”

You can imagine the fear and trembling overtaking Jay at this moment.  See you later, job.

“WHO’S EVER RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GRAFFITI IN THE BATHROOM STALL, STEP FORWARD OR YOU’RE ALL FIRED!”

As Jay described it, just as he was lifting his leg to step meekly forward, Egon bravely jumped forward, and with his eyes filled with tears admitted that he was the one responsible for the graffiti.  Darrel fired him on the spot kicked him out of the store for good.  That was the last anyone ever saw of Egon.  He had no idea that Darrel was most likely refering to the Super Model Space Humpin graffiti.   It wasn’t until a few days later, when the toilet paper ran out, that one of the Rack Rats who had just taken a dump noticed Egon’s tiny contribution to the stall.

For some reason I wanted to bother my co-workers with this story today, but I thought it would really bore the shit out of them, and so I did my best to keep quiet with it.  But, I was curious to see if there was any information about Jay’s old band on the web.  Super Model is too common a term to get anything from google, and Space Humpin 19.99 only returned one link.  I guess some deejay on WMBR has a website called drivingthedeathcar.com.  He played a song in 2001 called Space Humpin 19.99 by a band Lifter Puller.  I went to the guy’s home page and noticed that the site was named for James Dean’s car accident in 1955.  There was even a little picture of the wreckage.  When I first saw the picture I notice a young male figure walking in front of the car, who I, in a second of confusion, thought was James Dean. 

It reminded me of these lines from a Frank O’Hara poem about James Dean:

“Your name is fading from all but a few marquees, the big red
calling-card of your own death. And there’s a rumor that you live
hideously maimed and hidden by a conscientious studio.”

The first time I read them I was really impressed with them, so much so that I showed them to Noel Duncan, the Oxfam guy mentioned above.  I was vaguely creeped out by it, the notion of a fading marquee inserted into my own mind, when my memories, more and more propped up by google searches, fade as well, when all that remains is a single link.

Sniff sniff.

But one thing I will never forget…

RACK RATS!!

I was originally going to post about why I think I still might like Hugo a little better than Proust, but since that would take too much thinking, a post about basketball scandals and phone conversations I have had with baseball players… 

I am still trying to come to terms with Sean Williams’ departure from the BC basketball team.  I have been going to the blog section of google to see if the reason he got kicked off the team will turn up.  It’s not the rumor mill I had hoped it would be.  A lot of people are saying that BC should be alright.  I still think they are pretty good (not as good of course), but I think it will really hurt them next year.  Williams was getting better and better. 

Al Skinner must be hurting right now.  I feel bad for the guy.  Great coach with a lot of years on him now, his teams are getting better and better, and now a major setback.  I have to give him credit for doing it, even though it hurts.  I really hope he stays at BC.

On a lighter note, I was thinking about great baseball players I have known, and thought my readers would be interested to learn that I have spoken to not one, but three baseball players on the telephone.

1. Mark Fidrych– My roommate Brendan and I found him in the phone book when we were in college and called him.  He was in the middle of dinner.  A little kid answered and handed the phone to him.  He answered my questions, but I got the feeling that I was bugging him, so I relented after a question or two.

2. Steve Yeager– I answered some ad in the paper about a job selling baseball cards door to door.  Yeager was involved with the company, and after I sent a resume in, I got a call from Steve telling me I was “hired” and that I would soon be getting a kit in the mail.  It sounded like he thought the idea was as bad as I did.  We didn’t say too much.  It was weird answering my phone and having Steve Yeager on the other end of the line.

3. Rawley Eastwick– I was working for a real estate agency (In actuality, it was a front for money laundering, selling illicit percocets, racial profiling, prostitution, racketeering, and making death threats [What's funny is that you probably think I am making this all up.  I'm not.].) and calling some management companies for leads.  I called some place and ended up in Rawley Eastwick’s voice mail.  The voice mail instructed you to call another number if you were looking for listings, but I decided not to hear that and called back ten minutes later.  This time Eastwick answered the phone, and I asked if it was the Rawley Eastwick.  He was.  The strangest thing was that I had just seen one of the ‘75 World Series games on teevee two nights before and he was pitching.  Eastwick was super friendly, I felt like he even wanted to get to know me.  For instance, when I told him how I used to see him play at the Vet all the time, he said, “oh you’re from the Philly area, where abouts?”  After the phone call I thought about inviting Eastwick over for dinner or to a Red Sox game or something, but not long after that I was fired from the job for not embezzling money well enough or something and that meant I no longer had his phone number.

4. Grady Sizemore– I am almost not putting him on the list.  I bought Indians tickets last year because for a while it looked like I might be in Cleveland, but that didn’t pan out.  Anyhow, the Indians ran this promotion in which Grady Sizemore called fans with a prerecorded message.  Not a big fan of the prerecorded cold call, but since it was a baseball player, I didn’t get mad. 

The main reason I started posting here was to cut down on the excess of bullshit that I began filling my friends’ inboxes with. I started to notice that, when certain people would send me an email, I would respond with lengthy essays that they most likely wanted nothing to do with. A lot of times I hear myself saying something, and I begin to think, ‘Will you just shut already.’ Other times I’ll be rambling on and notice Bambi retreating into an impenetrable Zen like calm, as though she is sitting right there next to me, but the world around her has ceased to exist. To get back to the emails though, because they offered proof, like a litmus test would, of an imbalance of my blathering on and on in relation to a “c u later” or something, PriorBlog was started as an effort to purge myself of this bullshitting with the hope that I would appear as normal as possible in polite conversation, on and offline.

Last night Bambi and went to see our friend Michael Lowenthal read from his new novel, Charity Girl, at Brookline Booksmith. It should be noted that Lowenthal is very charming. However, it is also important to note, that virtues* do not necessarily beget happiness. Oftentimes, it is just the opposite. Let’s say, for example, that Lowenthal, in an effort to be his charming self smiles at some moronic thing I say, the same type of thing that would allow Bambi to float on off to her other-worldly Shangri La. In this instance isn’t Bambi better served by not being charming, since I eventually catch on and stop bothering her?**

As Lowenthal began reading from his new novel last night, I was struck by a feeling of ‘I should never talk to him again,’ because it quickly became apparent that he’s a genius, and that if anybody would be bothered by bullshit, it would be a genius. I had read his novel Avoidance a few years ago, and came to a similar conclusion, but the distinction between charming man and printed work eventually worked itself back into my way of looking at him, to the point where I completely forgot he was brilliant, and found him suitable for boring to tears with my plans for a taxonomy of farts, or my reasoning behind being in favor of reinstating the poll tax.

I haven’t been able to get to Charity Girl yet because Bambi got to read it first, but the first chapter, which he read last night, was chilling in light of what the book is about. Not a single detail is misplaced, every little incident, from the snarling of a string to the loitering of an aggressive cad, played a part in well constructed sense of doom. This was my favorite thing about Avoidance as well, the way Lowenthal created a feeling of intense dread, to the extent that- horrible as it sounds -I almost wanted the main character to be completely condemned in the end, just to enjoy Lowenthal’s ability to wallow in it all. His pull is akin to that of film noir. It’s all about the dread. Something bad is going to happen, not because of a character flaw, but due to circumstance, and in a lot of ways, this ambiguity makes things more interesting than tragedy, because even if the character does get off the hook#, you’re still left with the sinking feeling that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a good person or not, you’re just as likely as anybody else to get crushed with a falling piano later in the day.

To me, this formulation leads to a broader social context of morals than the more individualized hubris of a tragic individual. When the arbitrary takes precedence over the willed, everybody, despite the array of individual wills, is subsumed. The issue then becomes not individual, but political. I bring this up not to comment on the political nature of Lowenthal’s work, but to show what I think is an interesting and effective conduit from the aesthetic to the political. As much as I would like to delve into political commentary, I have to stay to the sidelines, because “everything’s a fucking joke to [me].”

I guess this means taking a break from Marcel for a while.
* Although I think in a classical sense, being charming would not be equated with virtue, never the less, with apologies to the Platonists in the audience, for our sake, let’s agree that charm is a virtue in a modern sense, in fact it may very well be the virtue of the modernity!##

** Or has Bambi learned what Lowenthal is still yet unaware of, that beyond the limits of being charming one finds oneself having charmed a blabbermouth who will never ever go away?

# In a way, unlike tragedy in which the protagonist is forced to die, in film noir, as in Avoidence, the protagonist is forced to live, but again, I’ve only seen 4 or 5 of those movies, so I can’t speak with any authority on them, or anything else for that matter.

## Where else can you get bullshit like this?###

### All over.

The other day my brother-in-law Matt was going to come over to watch the football game (the Eagles lost), so before he showed up I decided to grab some beers at the local packy.* Halfway there I decided to go to a nearby beer superstore type of place, the type of which I usually only go to before going to Clark’s, because Clark knows quality beer from crap. I thought, you know, why not get something special? When I got there, the choices of good beer, as opposed to the usual Sierra versus Sam, really threw me for a loop and I ended up getting a variety pack of Mendocino Brewing Company Beers and a sixer of Brooklyn 55 Pennant Ale. At a later point in time I will probably recount my experience with the 55 Dodgers, but for now let’s just say that the 55 Dodgers Pennant Ale, or whatever it’s called is good, but packs a wallop. The Mendocino, however, is even more hard hitting, and right now, having had one and a half, I am worried about actually posting this thing because, well, I am slightly plastered.

Tonight, you see, is knitting night. Bambi is out of the house, so I can do whatever I want, which means I am playing Statis Pro Baseball (something I am NEVER allowed to do when she is around) and drink 7.0%/8.0% beers.

I pitted the 1978 Blue Jays versus the 1978 Pirates. Originally I was going to have one of the Pirates lesser pitchers throw to even things out a little, but when I saw the Bert Blyleven card all I could think was, ‘here’s a hall of fame pitcher, who’s not allowed in the hall. If he wins this game, he’s in. But if he loses, he’ll never get in.’ So the pressure was on.

The Blue Jays pitched Jim Clancy, but it should be noted for Jays fans, Jim Clancy was not exactly Jim Clancy in 1978. Either way, Clancy held his own until the third inning when Bert Blyleven of all people hit an RBI double to score Phil Garner.

Other future managers in the game included Clarence “Cito” Gaston and Tim “Just Back from Nam” Johnson. I put Gaston in there for the Pirates, but Johnson sat.

The first beer I had was called “Eye of the Hawk.” I have to say, I think it was too strong to be good.

The Jays put a lot of runners on, but couldn’t get any runs. Meanwhile, Clancy looked to be tiring in the bottom of the fourth. Willie Stargell led off the inning with a single. Then Clancy bore down and struck out Dale Berra, Cito Gaston, and Phil Garner. What impressed me was that Clancy didn’t have his best stuff. He had to battle to get each guy.

In the fifth Frank Tavares led off the inning with a double, but an alert John Mayberry pointed out that Tavares missed first base on his way to second. The Jays got the out on an appeal play. There was chaos in the stands of Three Rivers. People wanted Blyleven in the Hall, but he would have to earn it!

I have to pee some of those beers out, but before I do I should tell you that right now Bambi’s iPod is on shuffle and Bright Eyes has just come on who she loves and I hate. I think he’s overly earnest, she thinks he’s cute. I think every one of his songs seems rushed, as though he is a hurry to establish his importance. He sounds like somebody who would love to be compared to Dylan. If Lloyd Bentsen were alive he would say, “Bright Eyes, I listened to Dylan, I had most of his albums. Bright Eyes, you’re no Bob Dylan. You’re not even Elliott Smith.” Oh uh, now Bright Eyes is forced to scream to get his point across. He just used the term “pawns in the game”. This is the first time I have ever heard this song. I swear it came after I made my he wants to be compared to Dylan comments, but you’ll never believe me so I’ll just enjoy the moment myself. Okay, off to pee, and when I come back a story about Bob Dylan comparisons and a guy who hated me.

But before I tell you about the guy who hated me (and why he had every right to), let me just tell you that the Blue Jays have tied the game on a solo homer by John Mayberry! 1-1 in the top of the sixth.

Anyhow, many years ago, an old girlfriend and I were coming home from some concert or party or something. I forget what we were doing or where we had been. All I remember is that we were kind of heading towards breaking up, and since I wanted to push the issue, I decided to pick a fight with her friends who were nice enough to give us the ride home.

Another song I don’t like came on the iPod so I decided to listen to some Steve Ballerene. Since I can’t figure out how to convert m4a’s to mp3’s you might have to have iTunes or an Apple or something to properly download it. Either way, give a listen while you can, because when Steve finds out that I am putting up his music without his permission there will be hell to pay. This is one of my favorite songs.

Bottom of the sixth. Stargell up for the Pirates. The pitch… Long Drive… Deep… Gone!! Pirates take back the lead 2-1.

We’re back in the car now, and I tell the people driving us home that Christianity is far more impressive than any other religion, not that I really believe this, but I was certain that it would cause an uproar. I was drunk, gimme a break. At least I was right about causing an uproar. They dropped us off about a half mile from home and we fought until her doorstep, where we promptly broke up.

Blyleven sacrifices home an insurance run in the bottom of the seventh. Pirates 3 Blue Jays 1.

A few months later, when we were friends again but not dating, and she invited me to a party. While I was there, a guy was listening to Neutral Milk Hotel, so I told him I had been listening to that album a lot and really liked it. In response the guy got in my face and started telling me that no, I didn’t get it. NMH was going to be the next Dylan. I told the guy that there was no reason to get upset, I liked the album too.# But he kept on pressing the issue. Didn’t I get it? The next Dylan?

I thought the guy was going to punch me for not liking the band enough. I had to back away even though one of my favorite songs on the album was coming up. That’s when my ex-girlfriend Malone, always with a keen sense for where and when “drama” was breaking out, showed up and ushered me away.

“Do you realize who that is? It’s the guy you picked a fight with over Buddhism and Christianity!”

He was looking to get me back via Neutral Milk Hotel. Oh well.

The Jays get two on to start the top of the eighth, but Mayberry hits into a double play. In the top of the ninth, Blyleven secures entry into the Hall of Fame by getting Dave McKay to line out to win the game 3-1.

* In Massachusetts this is not an ethnic slur, it means package store, which means liquor store.

# As the years have passed I have grown to a much greater appreciation of the album in question “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea,” maybe as much as the guy who wanted to argue with me about it.

I remember when I was a kid, we had a snowday at school and so Brian and Brett Lofgren and I decided to trek all the way through the woods to the Bryn Athen Cathedral where they had the best sledding in four counties.* When we got there, the snow hadn’t really been packed down enough for good sledding, so we turned around and walked all the way back. All in all we must have dragged our sleds four miles through the snow.

It wasn’t that big a deal until we got back to the Lofgrens. While we were out, some embattled state staffer named Budd Dwyer gave a press conference which culminated with his pulling a gun from a manilla envelope and blowing his head off on live teevee. By the time we had returned, the televsion stations were replaying the scene repeatedly up to the point just before he shot himself, where they would stop the video. This was equivelent to torturing a fourteen year old boy.# What made the situation worse was the next day in school, almost everybody else in my class had seen the suicide except me.##

After the suicide a number of jokes circulated, such as:

What did Budd Dwyers’ wife tell him before he went to the press conference?
Now don’t go shooting your mouth off.

There was also a joke about his head “popping” off, which I was reminded of earlier today when I heard about that Saddam Hussein crony, whose head, I guess, popped off during his hanging. There have been a lot of heads rolling since the war started. It’s like a general theme. In the future, the Geist in the zeitgeist will be headless, much like the one that plagued Ichibod Crain, or Crane, whatever.

That’s one of the many reasons why I am opposed to the death penalty. Can you imagine pulling the floor from beneath some dude and the next thing you know his head has popped off? It happens so fast, the relationships of causes and effects, so much so that I would hope to imagine that you couldn’t help but feel responsible. I mean there’s no excuse like, ‘He had a skinny neck,’ or something like that. When that guy’s head pops off, no matter what he did to’deserve’ it, you’ve gone too far.

And there are those who will say that he gassed a bunch of people, and that is pretty gruesome and nasty as well. If you’ve seen the pictures, or heard the stories about what it was like to be in one of those villages that got gassed, it’s absolutely horrific. By the time the gasser is apprehended and brought to the scaffold though, he has become a different person. It’s one thing to murder a person filled with enough venom to gas a village, it’s another to kill a scared old man with a skinny neck. Just like it’s one thing to go big game hunting and shoot a murderous rampaging elephant and another thing to blow away zebras at the zoo. I know this is being idealistic, but I think it is far less idealistic than thinking that the death penalty in any way shape or form absolves humanity of some type of evil. For the record, I hate idealism in general.

FORD COMMERCIAL / MY MISTAKES

I was rewatching that Ford commercial this weekend, and it turns out I was wrong about a number of details. For one thing, it seems like it takes place at night, but when they open the barn doors, the morning light comes streaming through, as if to signal some type of divination. I also noticed that there are a number of welders and other worker guys milling around as the giant metal thing is placed on the truck. One final note, I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I do know that in my memory, I recalled the truck driving out of a red barn in the end, but it is really a barn-esque building made of what apperas to be corrugated steel.

At this point not even I can trust anything I say.

Or maybe Ford changed the ad after they read my entry making fun of them in an effort to make me look bad.
* Unfounded exargeration to give story a rural nostalgic feel

# For Brian Lofgren and I, a similar instance of feeling jilted by the media had occured late in 1980 when we both received the record “The Phantastic Phillies” for Christmas. At the end of the Phillies World Series Victory Parade, the players and coaches all gave speeches in a packed J.F.K. Stadium, the most memorable being Tug McGraw’s, “All through baseball history, Philadelphia’s had to take the back seat to New York city. Well, New York City can take this World Series and stick it! ‘Cause we’re number one!” When the record came out, McGraw’s speech, a priceless thing to have an audio recording of in those days before VCR’s and so forth, had been crudely edited to “”All through baseball history, Philadelphia’s had to take the back seat to New York city. Well, New York City, today is our day.” The record’s other drawback is that it purports to have all of the highlights of the 1980 season, but in 1980, local broadcasters were unable to do the post season, so basically, once the playoffs start (side two), the record becomes Harry Kalas pretending to announce the games live, while it’s painfully obvious that he’s in a studio somewhere with piped in fan noise.

## The happy ending to this part of the story is that years later, thanks to Youtube…

It is wet. but it is nice for running on trails. There is an Adubon (sp) Sanctuary behind Franklin Park that I have always wanted to check out, because it always appeared to me as hidden and unused behind American Legion Highway. Today was my chance. It’s not so great, there’s a lot of trash and all, but today it was good for three reasons. One, the sign on the outside fence says no tresspassing. Two, it was muddy, and it’s always fun to run on trails when they are muddy. Three, there was nobody else there. It would be a good place to run if it stretched out a little further. I only got about a mile, maybe a mile and a half tops in there.

The best places to run around my neck of the woods:

1. Arnold Arboretum

2. Larz Anderson Park

3. Franklin Park

4. Jamaica Pond/Emerald Necklace

5. Stony Brook Reservation

6. That Route that goes along the Orange Line

Worst place to run:

Hyd Park Ave, although I think it would be cool to have a Hyde Park Avenue Mile Race Sponsored by BearingPoint!

Here is an excerpt from a letter to the editor in the Roslindale Gazette this morning:

“To suggest that the aggression in the Patriot Act is nothing to worry about since we are not terrorists misses the point. Consider that earlier this week, the entire Lao community of Roslindale was summarily shipped to Guantanomo Bay.  I am speaking, of course, of our good friend Alfonse Johnson, who was a valued member of the community.  What makes the situation even worse is that Alfonse made a living stitching together little Lao worry dolls that bear a striking resemblence to the prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon Him).  We all worry what will happen to Alfonse once he settles into Gitmo and begins handing out those little dolls as tokens of friendship as he did when he first moved to Roslindale.”

Last night I hastily put together a quick post which advocated an expansion of the second amendment in order to facilitate a coup by the type of people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts in exclusive urban neighborhoods. I say hastily because I was at a crossroads where I wanted to add something to my little website, but at the same time, the computer’s battery was running low, and I didn’t want to deal with getting the charger out. To date, it was the quickest post that I have ever written, although it’s not as though I haven’t had those thoughts swimming around in my head for a while. After the juice went out off the computer I went to bed, where I tossed and turned for a few hours before the police came. Their helicopters woke up the entire neighborhood.

At first I thought they were coming for me, so I told Bambi what I had done, and gave Hazel a kiss goodbye, thinking as I did so that I would probably never see her again, since visitors are not allowed at SuperMax, no matter how cute.

I tried as best I could to prepare myself for the inevitable, but I have to confess when the front door was blown off, and the storm troopers came roaring up the stairs, I was pretty much a mess. After the dust had cleared enough to produce a dramatic effect, Mitt Romney breezed through the door surveying the condo with an imperial air about him. This imperial air mixed ominously with the aforementioned dust, and caused some bronchial spasms to Romney, who, it should be known, suffers from a debilitating form of asthma, the type of which renders him unsuitable, in my opinion, for the presidency.

Romney managed to sputter out the name of Alfonse, who, it turns out, had overstayed his visa. Alfonse, who was poking his head out from the room he rents from us, made an attempt to escape, but he was quickly netted and thrown into a large box with a few other illegal Laotians. The surge of relief that flowed through me when I realized it was Alfonse they were after can be compared to the feeling of being struck by a bolt of lightning, more specifically that type of lightning that zaps one with the feeling of absolute and unequivocal joy and leaves no burns.

After the police left (it turns out that Alfonse will be responsible for paying for the damages to their entrance [more joy!]), I found that I slept very soundly, and today I am in a very good mood.