Inez Andrews and The Andrewettes -Mary Don't You Weep (LIVE)

Music is an ageless palace that is always built on what had come before. 

Roxy Music - Virginia Plain - Top Of The Pops - 24th August 1972

Top of the Pops, baby! The brand-newish Roxy Music with a "hit" from their first LP. Nice video. With Eno on stage! 

The Update, October, 2021 Edition

Real news about what is actually happening on the ground in America almost never reaches me here in paradise. I have family, friends, friends/ former work mates, childhood friends, and Facebook friends, that are spread out all over the demographic. There are a couple that I can tell are on thin ice; most seem to be doing okay; and a couple have made a great financial success of their lives. In any case, whether by FB or by e-mail, most of the news that comes to me is sanitized. The negativity has been deleted. Bad news has been obscured by things ranging from the general “fog of embarrassment” to the “clouds of denial” that prevent people from admitting that America has turned into a shit-show. Bless their little hearts, but no one want to harsh my mellow by telling me that they themselves are beginning to worry about their own financial security.

The news from all media sources also paints a rosy picture, unless it's Act-of-God stuff, like floods or fires. I would get my own in person update once every year while my father was alive. I could see that prices were starting to skyrocket, while wages were stagnant for most working people and hours were being cut to avoid handing out any benefits. My last trip to California was in 2018, and I could see that the homeless problem had become a permanent installation all across Southern California. Those unfortunate people had given up on ever “getting back on their feet.” They were banding together and building semi-permanent tent-like structures, complete with gasoline generators to power some electric lights and a TV or two. My hotel was close to one that occupied a grassy area about thirty feet by 250 feet. It was made of heavy tarpaulins that were held up by sturdy tent poles. Most of the inhabitants were wearing clothes that they appear to have been wearing without interruption for at least eighteen months, and the skin of many was covered with a blackish sheen of filth.

They are outdoors because of an intersection of corporate greed and government favoritism for corporations and the rich. Rents have gone up beyond all reason, pushed by the irrational exuberance of the housing market. Investment funds have been buying up all of the rental properties and empty houses since 2008. “First and last, plus a month's security” on the deposit means moving in is beyond the means of an increasing number of Americans. For a one bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood, the move-in rate can easily be almost $4,000.

The government's part? For people squeaking by, working two jobs (29 hours apiece), sharing apartments, one red-light traffic ticket can be the end. The county demands something like $400 or $500 immediately, within two weeks or something, and people don't have it. There is no making a deal to pay it off. Pay or we double it. Now it's $1,000, and those penalties will continue to accrue. Don't pay and they suspend your drivers' license. Try to drive with no license, that's another big ticket. So they lose their jobs, because it's Southern California, no car, no job. That red light, and its photo-driven, automatically created ticket, was the end of the line for a lot of people. Next stop, homelessness.

My updates over the last couple of weeks have been truly alarming. They have been much more “white-line of reality” than the usual. The drama in the lives of my pre-divorce family, and many of our friends, is disturbing. Note that my last trip was in 2018. Everyone seemed happy. One young (forties) friend was buying his first house; my own sons were doing well and living rather prosperous lives; my ex-wife, well, she would not see me, of course, but reports were fine; people were working and making a living, and their relationships seemed to be working out okay as well. But this has been an interesting three years in the interim, hasn't it?

Perhaps too interesting. Everything in California has reached crisis levels. Lake Meade is empty, for Christ's sake. The drought, the fires, the homelessness, tuition, prices in general, rents! COVID!!! With its lock-downs! Stay at home all the time with your family, shoulder to shoulder. Figure out Zoom. Teach your children. The stress has been unbearable. By now, fault lines are clearly visible everywhere. (Figuratively, of course. The “Big One” has not manifested itself. But the giant, apocalyptic earthquake is always in the back of everyone's mind in California.) Finances, personal relationships, work arrangements, it has all been stretched to the limits. Rubber bands are beginning to snap.

And guess who's not helping? Politicians! The Democrats are doing just what I predicted they would do: almost nothing. Certainly not fighting for our rights and our dignity. The Democrats all seem almost inert, except the few who are actively helping to ruin the country. Billionaires! They are all in their own big contest to see who can suck the most money out of the economy. (Here's a clue: why are billionaires in a space race? Wait and see who gets the contract for a new fleet of several thousand hyper-sonic missiles.) Republicans! What a bunch of corrupt morons. And the all time champion of NOT HELPING AT ALL, “ladies and gentlemen! In the Red Corner, hailing from Jamaica, Queens, the 45^th President of the United States! Donald . . . J. . . Trump!!!”

Talk about fiddling while Rome burned. Actually, Nero probably got a bad rap there. It is highly doubtful that he played a musical instrument while that fire raged. Our own bunch of Nero-equivalent, self-absorbed politicians are the ones who are definitely fucking around while the entire country burns to the ground. We are watching them in real time, as we lose every hard-fought gain from over two-hundred years of the blood, sweat, and tears of ordinary working people.

And who speaks for these ordinary working people? Who can you point to? I mean, I love that little Greta Thunberg, but she is a narrow reed upon which to hang the hopes of all of humanity.

My own update is a clean bill of health, with no negativity to delete. I'm still doing my part for peace, love, and brotherhood, still teaching Thai law students how to discuss the law in English. It is important that they learn how to converse with lawyers from neighboring countries about Vietnamese law, or Malaysian law, etc. English is the lingua franca over here, so my skills are still needed. My health is good. At my age, of course, I could drop at any moment, but the docs tell me that it is unlikely. All of my tests and numbers are good, and I submit to regular observation. I have a terrific, roomy condo, and a wonderful Chinese-Thai wife. I have friends who are decent, interesting people. Anyone who says that they have no regrets is lying, but I am content.

I have no bucket list. I've seen plenty of the world, and most of the United States. I do have a reading list, but I try to keep it short, because, you know, things happen. (This second? 1493, by Charles Mann. Next up? The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Gracher.)

Best wishes to all of you poor devils who still live in America. The trends are not good. May your luck hold out forever. Or, if your luck has already run out, may God have mercy on your soul.

Ma è un canto brasileiro

You need to give this song a chance to get rolling, but, after you've heard it, if it did not completely blow your doors off, I'll eat a bug. 

Lucio Battisti is the name. 

(Early 1970s. He died about ten years ago.) 

Nina Simone: Pirate Jenny

Ms. Simone gives this song the proper level of fury. Parental Advisory!!! Cover your food! A storm is coming. 

Death's Call

It was a long time ago, but the pope got shot back in the 1980s. I'm pretty sure that it was the 1980s. It was that Polish pope that everybody but me liked. I woke up to NPR on the clock radio, as usual, “Morning Edition,” and they were talking about it. The pope remained, infuriatingly, alive, but it was exciting to think that the world could continue to generate such wonderful news while your city was blissfully asleep. Discovering who had died overnight became my first article of business every morning. The practice is usually disappointing.

Most often, no one newsworthy has died at all. There is always the chance that the recently deceased will be someone that you liked, loved, or at least respected. Then you must begin to feel bad within minutes of waking up. The rewards, however, can be great. Perhaps someone like Justice Scalia has died! Your coffee is suddenly more delicious; there is an extra spring in your step. You can wear your red socks to work and plan on pizza for dinner, because it has just become a holiday!

Or, thanks to our social-media addiction, it may be a friend of yours. We live in a web of instant human interaction that is vast and efficient. Wherever in the world you happen to be hanging your hat, you will be notified within hours of the death of someone that is close to your heart.

This happened to me the other day. Social media isn't my first stop in the morning. I'm past my second cup of coffee by the time I look at Facebook. I'm old fashioned. I read the news first. The New York Times comes first, although I do try to keep my exposure to the political news to a minimum. I'd rather read the stories about how that bully-ghetto girl Dasani did up at the private school, or that new batch of homo denisiva bones discovered in a cave in Mongolia or something. What kind of house can you buy for $350,000 these days? What awful painter has become the new big thing in the art world? Then I go over to Facebook.

It's usually just more of the same, but a couple of days ago there was a big surprise. My friend Sandy was dead. I hadn't heard anything about any particular disease, so I think that it was one of those “sudden collapse” kind of things. A stroke; a heart attack. Whatever, Sandy was gone. He was five or six years older than me, so you can't say it was a shock.

(Sandy in the middle; number three on the right.) 

Sandy, Santo, was one of the very tough boys in my town. I don't remember him from the old days at all, due to the age difference, but I don't think he was a bully about it. Many boys in my town just loved to fight, and the decent ones kept the muss to other fighters. He grew up fine. He was in construction, and he became a general contractor with his own crew. He used to show pix of his jobs on FB, but I haven't seen any for a while. Maybe he had retired. He did big restorations, inside, outside, hardscaping, all around the house. He and his crew did beautiful work. Interestingly, coming from my very racist town, his crew was all black. From the looks on their faces, it seemed like he was a decent boss.

I was happy and flattered to know him. We got along fine, even though there was a vast chasm separating our politics. You know how it is: you just try to avoid the subject.

Sandy was the oldest of four boys in his family. They were a mixed bag. Number three was my age, and he never bothered anybody that I heard about. He was one of the band guys, played guitar and sang. I liked him, although I never got to know him.

(Number two in Vietnam. Look at the size of those hands!)

Number two was the terror of the town, and the family too, if they want to admit it. He was big, mean, fast, and as tough as nails. He also had an impulse control problem. Sandy and number two had a physical trait than ran in the family. Their father, and their uncle Santo (namesake!), both had enormous, powerful hands. The father, and the uncle, and Sandy, and number two, made fists and it looked like they were holding bowling balls. They knew how to use them, too. They were good "from both sides, from the left or the right.” Unlike Sandy, number two was a bully, and he had a group of friends that most of us tried our best to avoid. Especially if it was after seven o'clock or so, because by then they would have been drinking.

Number four had a chip on his shoulder, plus he knew that no one would mess with him because of number two. I also tried to avoid him.

I knew Sandy on line for ten years or so. Not just exchanging comments. We did chat occasionally. He even left some messages on my blog. I liked the guy a lot. He was a good friend to a huge number of guys and girls that he remembered from grade school on up, and from adulthood as well. Everybody loved him. He was actually “larger then life.” He even made a small corner in his life for a nothing little wise-ass like me, politics notwithstanding.

About an hour after I had read the news, I was doing the dishes and this came into my head:

The great and the small

All answer death's call,

On the day when the sun never sets.

If you've had your time,

Children, women, and wine,

Just shut up, that's as good as it gets.

I'm sure that Sandy wouldn't be complaining, if he were here to let us know how he feels about the whole thing.

God speed, Santo. You had a good run. You helped a lot of people, and you were a good friend to many. A life well lived never really fades, as long as somebody remembers.

Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht - Pirate Jenny (Sung by Lotte Lenya)

Lotte Lenya singing in English! 

This is what the housekeeping staff at your nice hotel is thinking while they smile at you in the hall in between rooms that need making up. 

Tip generously, my friends! It may buy you some mercy. 

Surabaya Johnny

This song sounds great in the original German. It also sounds great here, in English. It's not an easy song to wring the correct emotion out of, but Ms. Faithful does a wonderful job. 

For German, you can look for the first version, by Lotte Lenya, who absolutely kills it (this one includes the German lyrics so you can sing along). Ute Lemper's version is also great. 

Nostalgia For Dead Comedians

There are many kinds of comedians. There are joke tellers; story tellers; physical comedians; comedians who do impersonations; comedy dancers; expression comedians; comedy magicians; comedy jugglers. There's a lot of variety here. People like to laugh, and from an early age there are many other people who live to make them laugh.

The ranks of the dead are full of geniuses in every category of comedy greatness. The lists in every category grow daily, as a result of the unforgiving nature of the human condition. We lost our greatest living joke teller last week. That would be Norm MacDonald.

First, a bit of clarification. There are two major categories of joke tellers: short form and long form. Short form joke tellers include Milton Berle, Rodney Dangerfield, Henny Youngman, and Soupy Sales. “Take my wife . . . please!” They don't come much shorter than that. Berle had a memory that would make every elephant on earth blush, then bow to him and say, “master, thou hast bested us by a long shot.” Berle remembered every joke that he had ever heard, I mean stole, I mean heard. He had a million jokes at the tip of his tongue. Berle was on the Howard Stern show in the 1990s, and Houch was obviously a fan. “I bet you have jokes on every imaginable subject. Can we try it? I'll throw a topic at you and you tell the joke.” Berle was game. Howard says, “motherhood.” Within a millisecond, Berle says, “young woman is walking down the street. A cop comes over and says, 'lady, do you know that one of your breasts is hanging out of your blouse?' Woman looks down and says, “damn! I left the baby on the bus!”

Maybe that's Catskill humor. Maybe that was an anti-Semitic remark. When the maybes start stacking up, it's best to quit while you're ahead.

Norm MacDonald was a long form joke teller. Five minutes was a typical length for one joke. All the while, Norm would be building tension with cute bits, funny bits, awkward bits, dialog sections, sly side-eyes, and by the end, even the people in the joke are often crying out for the punchline. Then he'd drop it, and it killed. Norm was a genius.

He's not the only one. Comedy heaven is full of them. We have been fully capable homo sapiens for a long time now, and I'm certain that there were comedians among us long before even the appearance of language. Old Og, pretending to drop a rock on his foot, jumping around holding the foot in his hands and making faces. Or Og, pretending to hit his head on a branch while walking in the forest. I'd bet on it. You could get laughs with those visual jokes today. Those people had our brains, so of course they could laugh. They also had tough lives, which traditionally has caused humans to seek relief in comedy.

One of the classical theories of comedy is as simple as, “something happening to someone else, instead of happening to you.” Like someone slipping on a banana peel. The Greek philosophers knew that over two thousand years ago. We laugh with relief. The odds are that someone was noticing that laughter at other people's misfortune two-hundred thousand years ago. And some ancient Jerry Seinfeld noticed the laughter and figured out that he could harness that power.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if the comedian is telling a joke or a story. The punchline, if there is one, may not be enough to clear up the confusion. I guess that if there is sufficient laughter, it was a joke.

Lenny Bruce was like that. I have lost access to my records, but my collection included a couple of Lenny Bruce LPs. There's a bit on one that goes on for a good ten minutes. Lenny delivers it in his usual hipster-junkie mumble. You're listening, and there are real laughs in it, but you're not sure what the subject of the piece is. At whose expense is this bit going to be funny? Whose ox will be gored? Will it be rich people? Drunks? Barflies? Dog owners? Where is this guy going with this bit? You never find out. The bit resolves in a pseudo-punchline, which is definitely a gag line, but what the fuck was that all about? One person and one dog die in the final set up line.

The punchline? “Wow, he is tough,” delivered laconically by the owner of the dead dog.

Norm wasn't afraid to kill people in his jokes either. I have put up Norm's “Dirty Johnny” joke a few times, but they always take it down. It's probably back now, and you should look it up. Try “norm macdonald dirty johnny.” Add, “uncle terry.” Maybe try, “the hatchery.” It's up there somewhere, disguised by now due to the intense interest of the license holders, our new gods. Norm had a separate genre of “Andy Richter” jokes, and those are also very funny.

No one could tell a joke like Norm. Some of our great comedians, however, have been all over the place. Hard to pin down. Like Richard Pryor.

Richard Pryor mixed jokes, impersonations, physical humor, characters, social commentary, and story telling in his act. He did it all at the speed of light. He could make a joke about the interaction of a drunken black man and some white police funny. And he was allowed to do the one I'm thinking of on the Ed Sullivan show.

Ed always looked like a stiff, but he was actually pretty hip.

The drunk is on the corner, addressing people at random. Richard is in character. A police car drives up.

“Hey, you! Have you seen Johnny Wilson?”

Richard's drunk answers, “I ain't seen nobody since 1992. I thought I was blind till I seen you two drive up.”

That was Richard, cleaned up for TV.

Robin Williams mixed things up in a similar way, always moving as though he had just been hit by lightening. Jack Benny could get gales of laughter from a radio audience with fifteen seconds of dead air! (They had all seen him in movies, and they knew he was striking his typical pose, with arms folded and one hand on his cheek while looking off into the distance.) The Marx Brothers took whatever situation they were in to the bleeding edge of chaos, with Groucho occasionally pausing to address the audience directly through the camera. They kept themselves surrounded by an army of straight-men (and women) whose exasperation grew by the minute. Contrast the Marx Brothers with Buster Keaton, who remained silent even as the movies began speaking, so stone faced that he did not appear even to be breathing. W.C. Fields had a long and very remunerative run as a world famous juggler in Vaudeville. As age and heavy drinking took the edge off of his skills, he invented the concept of comedy juggling. He was the first to juggle cigar boxes and hats, often using canes. As the number of film studios in New York multiplied, Fields answered the call for famous names. He invented a durable character and moved from Vaudeville to films, where he could concentrate more on his drinking. (Making the drinking a part of the act was a stroke of genius.)

There are too many to name. They're dead, so they won't mind if I neglect to mention them. Now Norm is also dead.

I don't believe in a real heaven, and if heaven there was, the chances of its being rather dull are very high. I've read the Bible, and one thing you can say for sure about Yahweh, that God had no sense of humor. Unless you think Yahweh telling Abraham to kill his favorite son was funny. “Aw, come on, Abe! I was just fucking with you!” I don't care for jokes like that, myself.

Those guys and girls that I mentioned earlier, the comedians, are just gone, baby, gone. Gone like Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu. Gone under 17,000 feet of water, and that, my dear, is really gone. (Moment of silence for the sailors who went down with them.)

And a silent prayer of thanks to all of those comedians over the years who made our lives a bit easier. Who gave us hours of relief as we watched our own lives drain away and the entire world go to hell around us. How about a sincere “thank you” to all of the living, working comedians, and the writers who feed them such wonderful lines. Can you imagine the world without them? I can't.