Slaughter on Eleventh Avenue

Today while wandering aimlessly (trying to break in a new pair of sandals) I happened upon the elevated High Line which runs along the west side of Manhattan from 34th street down to Gansevoort Street. The High Line was built in the 1920s to spice up the manufacturing industry in New York & to make 11th Avenue safer for traffic, since the rail had run at the same grade as the street, which had affectionately come to be known as "Death Avenue." Unfortunately the Great Depression hit & the project turned out not to be as lucrative as had been expected. The rail was abandoned in 1980 (its final delivery reportedly was a cargo of frozen turkeys) & left for vegetation to run amok. I first saw aerial photos of the High Line at an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art a few years ago but wasn't sure what I was looking at. This long trestle of wildlife splintering a landscape of looming skyscrapers. It literally looks like one of those surreal Scott Mutter posters (eg, man with briefcase walks across lake towards a giant escalator). From a sidewalk vantage, the High Line is completely undistinguishable. It blends seamlessly into the warehouses and ironwork. At one point while following the line I thought I had lost it, only to realize I was standing directly under it. Apparently there is talk among city bigwigs of developing the line into a public park.

Some photos of the overgrown trestle can be seen at the Friends of the High Line site.


Incidently, this photo & others like it are evidently reversed - because the Empire State Building appears to lie west of the tracks, which isn't the case. The camera must be pointed north because the tracks end at 34th Street - meaning if you stand on the tracks at the far northernmost point looking south, you wouldn't be able to see the Empire State Building, which would be 45 degrees to your left. Just sayin'.

Jingly Underpants

As I was walking up the West Side today, a guy with a scarf wrapped around his head suddenly turned & spit contemptibly at two girls walking ahead of me. They looked at each other in shock, then laughed at the strangeness of it. Might have been racially motivated, since the girls were Asian. Might have been a raging misogynist on the loose. Might have been completely unexplainable. Never a dull moment in New York.

There's a joint in the East Village called Maia Meyhane where they feature bellydancing on certain weekdays. Drinks are steep ($6 for a bottle of beer). The food is Mediterranean (I didn't try any since I'd already stopped at Lucky's Burgers & sampled their special sauce). The bellydancing didn't commence until two hours after their website claimed it would. The dancer was gorgeous & snakey & had a flower in her hair. However there were several photographers orbiting her at all times, flashes & floodlights getting in my eyes. Recording the event was evidently more important than enjoying it. A duo onstage provided the music, with the sounds of traditional Middle Eastern instruments sampled onto a Korg keyboard. A curious anachronism. After the dancer fled offstage, I left, unaware if there were to be any following acts. Walking to the subway, I reminisced about the more lowkey bellydancing I used to watch in Boston. There are probably better venues here, just a matter of finding them.

A man stepped into Lucky's Burgers while I was eating, glanced around at the radioactive yellow-orange interior, muttered "this place is a farce" under his breath, then stomped out.

Heatstroke

Saw a play at the Interart Annex called The Brothers Size. It's a modern tale set in Louisiana of a recently released convict, torn between his responsible older brother & a not-so-responsible pal from the pen. According to the program, the story draws heavily on Yoruban mythology, something I know next to nothing about. Each of the characters apparently have Yoruban counterparts. The storytelling was powerful, the direction sparse & imaginative, & the acting riveting. What else do you need? The only thing that made me cringe was a distracting line of dialogue which went something like "when they come looking for you, I will deny you three times." This was presumably thrown in so the audience would go "ooo, biblical!" but I don't see why this was necessary. The story was strong enough on its own. There were also a few puns centering around the title, the purpose of which eluded me.

Finally watched The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It's honestly not that bad of a film, apart from being a user's manual for terrorizing a child on all possible levels. The occasional special effects were laughable, whether or not they were intended to be. But it isn't nearly as dreadful as the critic's reviews culled from Rotten Tomatoes would lead you to believe. Each one mentions the JT Leroy hoax prominently & I get the feeling it would have been an entirely different scenario had the hoax not been exposed until after the reviews were in. Those reviews probably would have gone on at length about how courageous & unflinching the film is. We'll never know.

It's been ninety degrees out for the last few days. There is no air conditioning in here so I've been running to the sink to douse myself in cold water every ten minutes. Otherwise I'm camped out in front of the window fan & praying for rain.

Tuba or Not Tuba

Tonight was the fabulous Tubapalooza extravaganza at Zebulon in Brooklyn. I invited everyone I know in the NYC area & none of them showed up. Tuba haters, all of 'em. Zebulon is decorated with jazz vinyl album covers like classic Miles Davis & Thelonious Monk, so presumably it's a jazz club foremost. In the back there are two bathroom doors: one marked "ladies" & the other marked "women" at the top & "men" at the bottom. Watching those who have had a few try to figure out which bathroom to use must be a secret source of amusement to the bartenders. The doors also have frosted glass panes in them so that you can see the silhouettes of those inside conducting their business.

While the event's name suggests there would be dozens of tubas lined up to duke it out for tubular dominance, in fact there was only Beat Circus's Ron Caswell who sat in with all the bands. First round was Platz Machen, which is essentially accordionist/singer Judith Berkson backed by Caswell's mighty tuba. Berkson's formidable voice reminded me of a battery-powered moth trying to escape a bell jar. Round two was your favorite & mine, Beat Circus. For this set they traded their banjo player for a saxophonist. They were as good as always. I have no idea why those guys aren't legendary. Maybe they are. Act three was HUMANWINE, in slightly stripped-down form without Brian Carpenter filling in the gaps with harmonium, slide trumpet, brake drum, & whatnot. Their newer songs lead me to believe they have some sort of subversive demonic stage musical in the works. The audience didn't seem to know what to make of them. They listened politely (except for the weenie who yelled out "Freebird" & was promptly fed to the crocodiles in the cellar) but there was no stagediving during the waltzes like I was used to at their Boston shows. Nate the drummer is one of the most tasteful tubthumpers around, especially when he picks up the brushes.

Also I must add that between sets a bewildering selection of tunes was provided by none other than DJ Poodlecannon.

The Fantastical Beat Circus Music Show

Slept all day, thereby avoiding the heatwave. In the evening I headed to Brooklyn to see one of my favorite bands, Beat Circus, at a place called Barbes in Park Slope. Barbes is a narrow dark cellar of a space, & the seven-piece band nearly took up more room than the audience. It's the sort of place you could easily walk past if you didn't already know it was there. The atmosphere was vibrant & the crowd attentive. After Beat Circus played their decadent saloon shanties, a bloke named Howard Fishman followed with some stomping New Orleans-style brass band jive. Everyone in the bar was very encouraging & seemed to all have bands of their own. And inventive-sounding bands at that. I talked with several people whose bands I jotted down in hopes of catching in the near future. Someone passed out flat on his back on the sidewalk in front. The musicians had to step over him to haul their equipment out after the gig. Afterwards I had a couple slices of Sicilian pizza at a joint on the corner named Smiling Pizzeria.

Madhattan

You may have heard that early Wednesday morning, around four-thirty, the Mad Manhattan Stabber was apprehended in Times Square after sticking it to four people on the subway & in the Square, & wrecking havoc at a delicatessen. He was chased into a McDonalds where he was cornered by police. Hmm, four-thirty, that's roughly when I happened to be wandering through Times Square, taking in the glow sans daytime crowds. His final stabbings were on 47th Street. I think I walked north as far as 45th or 46th, then swerved left & headed for a diner on 9th Ave. Didn't notice any excitement in the least. For all I know I walked right past the fellow.

Today I went to the KGB bar in the East Village for a literary reading. It's an upstairs saloon decked out in red & black, its walls lined with a variety of Lenin, hammer & sickle-themed memorabilia. My favorite author was Carol Rosenfeld, who read excerpts from her lesbian romance novel satire entitled Birds Do It. Listening to all the readers made me realize I don't respond well to material that is devoid of wit. No matter how serious or bleak the subject matter, there needs to be that wry perspective somewhere as an ingredient, or else it just feels like emotional manipulation. Life includes humor & I don't trust stories that leave it out. I also realized, or was reminded, that I'm a lousy literary critic. Either a story excites me or it doesn't. Unless it's just technically incompetent, I can't distinguish between writing that's mediocre & that which just doesn't reel me in. And when I hear an audience wildly applauding a story that is lulling me to sleep, I just chalk it down to the latter. How can you be expected to form any sort of confident judgment when the simple fact of the matter is you are not the intended audience?

Stayed out the rest of the night in various bars & cafes in the Village, nearly finishing A Heartbreaking Work before dawn arrived (with those rosy fingers of hers).

Afterthought: I am amused by people who spell "genius" wrong.

Spektor Vision

Tuesday was Regina Spektor's in-store performance at Tower Record, free to those who purchased her lastest album, Begin to Hope. She was nervous & utterly charming, playing most of the tunes off the new one on a lavish Steinway. I couldn't see her too well unless I stood on tiptoes. The only "classic" she played was "Us." Afterwards was an autograph procession, which I joined as an excuse to meet her & talk briefly about her Boston performance at the Axis which kept getting interrupted by an intake of house music from the club next door. She signed the inner cover of my notebook journal.

Went kindleblossoming in Queens afterwards for a few hours, talking about the ultimate futility of philosophic endeavors & watching Eddie Izzard clips on You Tube. Sat in a Times Square restaurant reading from A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius until dawn. They overcooked my eggs benedict. Walked around Murray Hill & the Upper East Side as people emerged sleepily from their houses to jog or seek bagels. New York is a beautiful place at six in the morning, although the bugs are a little pesky. There's a great area along the East River where dogs bring their humans out to play, called the Charles Schurz Park. From the parapet I watched a tugboat laborously hauling a barge of dirt up the East River. Got semi-lost in Central Park while crossing to the West Side. Nearly got mowed down by hardcore joggers as well. Finally reached home around nine in the morning, wearybones & sorefoot.

Brooklyn Heist

Couldn't get to sleep so I scrammed early in the morning & headed for parts unknown in Brooklyn. The smell of cut grass hit my nostrils as I emerged from the subway in Brooklyn Heights. Followed Montague Street to the promenade, with its panoramic view of the Manhattan financial district, Statue of Liberty, & expanse of Brooklyn Bridge. One of those moments when it occurs to me exactly how immense this city is, helicopters flying beneath the tallest buildings. Habitual early risers were out jogging or walking their dogs. I browsed through the stacks of used books at Heights Bookstore just after they opened, then had pancakes at a Montague cafe. Grabbed a handful of maps from the visitor's center, then wandered around downtown Brooklyn for a bit. Caught the subway for Prospect Park. Climbed a hill with a perky Statue of Liberty in view behind me, & found the storefront that was used as Harvey Keitel's cigar store in the film Smoke. It's now a Western Union. Walked up the west side of Prospect Park, lavish houses on the left. Poked my nose in the Brooklyn Public Library to the north of the park, sat in an easychair reading Lovecraft's "The Horror of Red Hook" from a collection of noir stories set in Brooklyn. Story interrupted by a hefty man snoring two chairs away. Took the bus that ran along Flatbrush Avenue, which returned me downtown. Crossed back to Manhattan & walked past a crowded Wall Street, still heavily under guard. Followed Broadway to City Hall, where I stood in the park, neck craned, watching nerveless windowcleaners dangling off the side of the Bank of New York skyscraper. Got home in the early evening, finally able to sleep.

A Crafty Quill

Went to a fiction writing exercise in the Village this evening. We were given a series of prompts centered around a televised event which we were inviting five friends over to watch, then told to freewrite based on our answers. Not much time was given to answer, so a lot of hasty free association was involved.

Event: Championship beanbag toss.
TV: Five inch pocket television.
Room: The laundry room.
Proudest feature of room: The hum of the dryer lulls me to sleep.
Embarrassing feature: Unsightly mound of lint under the ironing board.
Who are you inviting: Sedgwick the diving instructor, Lorraine from the grocery store line, Nick who hangs out in the 7-11 parking lot, Sue the undertaker, Coral the aquarium cleaner.
Time: Thursday of October at 7:43 pm.
Weather: Rainy, gloomy, fizzly.
Food: Pistachios & yogurt. No one brought food, they're cheapskates.
Drink: Bananaflavored milkshakes. No one brought beverages, they're freeloaders.
Who annoys you: Sedgwick the diving instructor because he always hijacks the bathtub & no one can use the facilities. I invited him because he's got the best CD collection.
Who do I like best: Sue the undertaker. She's really good at canasta.
Who do I know a secret about: I once saw Lorraine spit in the coffee pot at work.
Who always complains: Coral always gripes about the weird objects she finds at the bottom of the fish tanks.
Hypochondriac: Nick complains of persistent rugburns.
Pet: Ernie the eel. He does party tricks. Likes to leap from shoulder to shoulder. Lives in a tank which Coral eyes with occupational distaste.
Silverware: Toothpicks & napkins.
Location of food: Balanced precariously on the arm of an easychair.

Something unexpected happens: Luther the cabdriver rings the bell, wants to know who left a stick of dynamite in his back seat. He seems to have a Mentos addiction.

Where is everyone: Sedgwick is floating in the bathtub, Lorraine is snooping through my fridge, Nick is hanging out in my driveway, Sue is in the basement, Coral is cleaning out Ernie's tank, Luther is on my stoop & he won't go away.

What's happening ten minutes before the game: Everyone seems to have split to different sections of the house. I was kinda hoping we would, you know, all gather in the laundry room & watch the tournament together. Might have known this would happen. I think Coral has the hots for Sedgwick. Sure, he looks shapely in his wetsuit, but he's no match for me intellectually, what with my encyclopedic knowledge of beanbag toss. I just hope she comes to realize this before it's too late. After a witty Mentos commercial the tournament begins. I invite Luther in & the two of us crowd around the set. Norway starts the first round, heaving their beanbag like a big fluffy rocket.

The power goes out: Ha! My mortal enemy the electrician thought he could interfere, but his dastardly scheme failed because my portable television is battery-powered. Luther & I crowd closer to watch Finland lob the second beanbag. I hear a cry from the cellar where Sue the undertaker was practicing taxidermy on a squirrel & pricked her thumb in the sudden darkness. Lorraine then gives a followup shriek as Ernie the eel lands on her shoulder. She falls backwards into the argyle-powered dishwasher which roars to life, catching a thread from her sweater in its mechanics. Nick comes rushing in from the driveway, stubs his toe on the little metal doorstop shaped like a dachshund, & lets out a stream of gargled curses. Sedgwick, floating in the tub, uncertainly calls out "everyone okay out there?" As Lorraine is sucked into the dishwasher, Ernie escapes by flipping himself onto Coral's shoulder. Panicked, she dashes blindly through the dark interior, plowing nosefirst into the lavatory door which bursts open with an ugly crack. Ernie the eel is propelled forward, landing in the tub wherein Sedgwick floats. There is a sizzling noise & the smell of bacon. Luther pops another Mentos. "I think something happened to your lights," he says. "I'll light a candle," I reply, fumbling for a match. "Isn't that the stick of dynamite I brought in," he inquires, adjusting his eyeglasses. I glance down. "So it is."

Bloodsport & Burlesque

Sat in a restaurant in Chelsea eavesdropping on my table neighbors who were discussing movies. They reached the consensus that DaVinci Code was great but Napoleon Dynamite sucked. One of them did his best to defend Dynamite, but was ultimately shouted down by the others who insisted the film simply had no merit. They also discussed the financial status of Jean-Claude Van Damme, how much he raked in for his various movies & so forth.

Tonight was Molly Crabapple's Burlesque for Choice at the Lucky Cat Lounge in Brooklyn. My favorite performer was Lady Satan, who came onstage dressed as Joan Crawford, wielding a dastardly coathanger, & rather psychotically disrobed to Danzig's "Mother." Also eyecatching was an auto mechanic in the Rosy the Riveter mold named Little Brooklyn whose instruments of flirtation consisted of some hubcaps & a wrench. By the end of the evening the organizers had raised $1500 in raffle money which will be going to Planned Parenthood to fight the South Dakota Senate ban on abortion.

Smutty Nose

Tonight was a smut reading at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, a kinky little joint built into what looks to have once been a boathouse. A railing prevents wobbly patrons from toppling over into the boat dock. The Galapagos is located in Fucking Williamsburg, which is like saying South Boston or North Cambridge. The smut wasn't really any smuttier than your standard garden variety literary reading. Those who read fell somewhere in between not dreadful & not terribly exciting. The best one was a story about meeting Luke Skywalker at a convention in Vancouver ("Wow, Luke fucking Skywalker!" "You can call me Mark," said Mark Hamill. "Huh? Oh I get it. Code names."). Couldn't hear the last reader very well because the audience by that point was talking too loud. I sat at the bar beside a poet from Arizona named Francesca, also a recent arrival in the city, had a six dollar beer. The prices here are going to take some getting used to.

After the smut reading was an amateur burlesque show, hosted by a "middleaged man" named Murray who looked & sounded suspiciously like a woman with a fake mustache. I watched the first two dancers, but by then it was getting so crowded I couldn't really see anything, so I left. It occurs to me that I don't believe I've ever seen any "bad" burlesque. I imagine it's possible, but I certainly haven't seen such a thing.

I got to hear a genuine hipster scoff. This happened outside a pizza joint in Fucking Williamsburg. The tightly t-shirted utterer of said scoff was reacting to one guy filming another guy on a bench who was blissfully rocking out on an acoustic guitar, blond mane flailing. I was not two feet away when the scoff occurred. I've witnessed some scoffing in my time, but this was something to behold.

Stenciled periodically on the sidewalks of Fucking Williamsburg is the phrase "I [heart] sweatshop workers."

Greenwich Morning

Sat writing in the Cedar Tavern where the ghosts of Jack Pollock & Billy DeKooning weren't because the original Cedar Tavern was torn down & turned into condominiums. Someone probably has a poltergeist in their kitchen who splashes mayonnaise all over the place. I've been trying to practice writing in noisy locations. It's a muscle to be developed. I want to destroy the crutch of "I can only write under these conditions."

Walked around the Village until dawn with friend Kindleblossom & watched the morning sweep in over houses I wish I lived in. Conversations on stoops. Had breakfast at a wayside diner along with plenty of other people who were still up as well. Pretty easy to distinguish between the still ups & the just getting ups. Has to do with a certain coherency in the facial expression & rigidity of posture.

I suspect taxi drivers of communicating in secret taxi horn codes. There is never just one lone blast. If you listen closely there is usually a rapid succession of honks, all of varying lengths & textures, followed by distant answering calls. An entire conversation is taking place, I swear.

Rainy Day, Dream Away

The West End Restaurant near Columbia has removed all of its Beat Generation memorabilia from its walls. I sat near the open window eating a Cuban pork sandwich and watching it rain - everyone scurrying for buses & awnings. Then I wheeled a barrow of coins to the bank and was helped by a teller named Charisma. Commerce Bank doesn't take out a percentage when you bring in coins, which is an encouraging policy.

I thought it would be a good idea to ride around on the buses to stay dry and see a few things. And might have been, if not for the deadly trio of rain, construction, and rush hour. I bailed out on Fifth Street and ducked into the Museum of the City of New York where they had an exhibit on New Yorker cartoons pertaining to psychiatrists' couches. I got in for free because it was nearly closing time and had fifteen minutes to take everything in before they booted me out, so it became a little like that scene from Band of Outsiders where the characters race through the Louvre at breakneck speed. There was an exhibit on trade in New York, showing dioramas of the East River wharves in the 1800s. Seeing all the ship rigging and wooden barrels made me feel I missed my era.

More wandering in the rain. In Chelsea I saw a sign which read "for Time Machine, ring 2nd floor bell." Something about New York instinctively makes me want to eat healthier. Often find myself grabbing apples from corner delis. Some people smoke cigarettes on rainy streetcorners, other people eat apples. Maybe some do both.

Haven't found any good leftover furniture along the sidewalks yet. I'll keep an eye out tomorrow. Stands to reason there should be some good loot in Morningside Park territory. I'd like to find a halfway decent table and chair for writing purposes, and the thought of actually spending money seems laughable.

Box of Corn

Alright, not so impressed with the New York library system so far. It seems to be quicker to subway around to the various locations to collect what you're looking for than to rely on the interlibrary loan system. Fortunately this is a lot easier to do in New York than it would be in Boston, where the public transportation system is more limited in comparison. Also disappointed to discover they only had one of the CDs in the Bonzo Dog Cornology box set. I did pick up a collection of Harold Lloyd shorts on DVD and a documentary on Magritte.

I sat for a while in Bryant Park, daringly reading in the shade of a tree. A pigeon did his business a few feet away, which made me glance up nervously. The pigeons here are street savvy. I imagine they coo in a Brooklyn accent. "Hey, you gonna eat that or what?" Buses passed heading for exotic-sounding places like Eltingville and New Dorp.

Wandering around 14th Street, I encountered the world's skinniest man outfitted in tight black lycra and PVC boots. He looked like a biker stork. I passed two or three playgrounds for dogs and a children's garden (though I spotted no children growing there). I was even smiled at by a few women in the East Village. That never happened in Boston, where eyecontact is banned with penalty of jailtime. I spotted a high ratio of attractive older women here (hub of the MILF scene?). There also seems to be a high tolerance for diversity here. Not necessarily out of virtue, but because there's so many people crammed in here & no one has the time to spare for intolerance.

Oh, I also met a peanut-sized shitzu named Snorkie, whose human was struggling to stuff him into her handbag.

Squeegee

Not a lot of activity, city-wise. Mostly just walking around locating the groceries and laundromats. Walked all up & down Amsterdam & Broadway looking for a squeegee on a stick - you know, where the soap is stored in the handle. Finally found the last one at a pintsized market on 125th Street. I'm incapable of washing dishes without a squeegee on a stick, so a heavy sigh of relief was breathed.

Having visited New York often in the past, I'm not really feeling the frenzied need to find out what's around every corner and above every subway stop, the way I did when I first moved to Boston. It's more of a relaxed Arthur Fonzarelli feeling. "Hey, I live here now, no hurry."

I do have my NYPL library card already, let it be known. I've got my priorities on straight. I've already ordered a box set of the Bonzo Dog Band & plan on heading midtown tomorrow to pick that up & give this library system the onceover.

The Big Onion

Day one of the New York experiment.

I've been keeping my eye out for signs. Am I on the right track here, was moving from Boston to New York a good idea, have I displeased the deities, have I innocently flapped the butterfly wings that will lead to catastrophic results further downwind, that sort of thing.

So far the unsupervised annoying wriggling kid seated next to me on the Chinatown bus puked up his cranberry juice at my feet. A little got on my bag. It's a classy way to enter a new city with stomach acid scars on your bag. Then there was a flash thunderstorm over Astoria that lasted all of five minutes, while the sun never stopped shining, which gave the effect of one of those old solemn religious paintings. Afterwards venders in the street were standing ankle-deep in water as they grumpily packed up their wares. Finally, back at the pad, a glass of 7-Up spontaneously cracked of its own accord with a sharp "pop," but held its contents. Unsure of what had happened I lifted the glass, resulting in a puddle of 7-Up. I suspect either poltergeists or telekinetic tomfoolery.

We're off to a baffling start.

A Fistful of Ink

Thursday's featured authors at the Brookline Booksmith were Steve Almond and Daphne Kalotay. I came in midway through Daphne's reading, and so missed much of her tale of familial psychosis at a wedding. Steve read from his epistolary collaboration with Julianna Baggott, entitled Which Brings Me to You. The concept is of a series of letters exchanged between a lust-tinged couple determining whether or not to get involved with each other. Steve's excerpt concerned one such letter which the male character penned while in a vulnerable state of inebriation, and a followup letter recapping his comi-tragic exploits in attempting to recover the first letter from the postal service. Pepper spray and a dinner roll were involved.

I've heard Steve read a few times now, both fiction and non (which in his case are not far removed), and he has always been excruciatingly entertaining. And I admire his daring. I plowed through his first collection of short stories called My Life in Heavy Metal, which is much more nuanced than its title might suggest. Emotionally his stories are a punch in the chest. As a writer he has an impulse to charge fearlessly into squeamish territory. And he knows exactly how to defuse tension with humor, which is how he pulls it off. He has no trouble blurting out things which others wouldn't dare mention out of politeness or fear or lack of notice. And there are some withering realizations. "There is a point you reach when you are just something bad that happened to someone else."

Almond has been in the news lately for resigning his post at Boston College in protest of Condoleezza Rice being invited to be the graduation commencement speaker. He addressed this hastily during the Q&A portion of the evening. He'd expected to come under fire from the rightwing, but was disappointed that the leftwing didn't use the publicity as a launchpad to attack Rice and expose her dishonesty. To those who applaud his efforts, his response is "well, thanks, but that doesn't really help the issue."

"Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny."

Tonight guitar legend Allan Holdsworth played a set at Johnny D's. Cover was pretty steep, especially for those in the crowd with their heads craned to watch the ballgame on the corner television. The guys beside me were discussing the span between Holdsworth's thumb and pinkie. Behind me an older fellow in a bandanna was lamenting to a silent father and son how cheap tequila used to be in Mexicali back in his day. Aside from the waitresses, there were no single women in the entire joint.

Here is my relationship to jazz: I love practically everything from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane. After that it gets a little dicey. Mahavishnu Orchestra were really good. And some of Tony Williams' stuff. But by and large, post-Coltrane jazz sounds very safe and sterile to me. There's a certain danger aspect to Charlie Parker hunched on some cellar bandstand struggling not to keel over into the kickdrum from all the heroin in his blood. The sound of those acoustic instruments being emotionally pummeled and sucked into the cheap little microphones gave it such vitality. Once electricity - particularly electric keyboards - were introduced to the equation, it just doesn't seem to contain that same sense of rage and despair. It just contains a lot of notes.

Alright, so Holdsworth. Indisputably a great instrumentalist. But the music never seems to start until he steps on the fuzzbox and starts playing runs. Before that it's nothing more than a string of arbitrary "jazzy" chords. In a way it reminds me of heavy metal in the late eighties where you had a lot of stock guitar riffs (generally derived from Ace Frehley) and throwaway lyrics about boobs and authority, and the musicians in the audience would wait patiently for the interlude, at which point the guitarist would kick the singer aside and whip through his arsenal of heavily practiced twiddly bits. Afterwards you'd think, if that's the exciting part, why bother even having a song around it? Holdsworth is in a class far above all that, of course. I'm familiar with him primarily through his 1985 album Metal Fatigue, which features a placid singer who always made me think of the sort of featureless crooners you find in Holiday Inn lounges in places like Iowa. And the music wasn't too interesting until he was booted aside and Holdsworth took over. There was no such singer present tonight, however. The trio was comprised of Holdsworth, one-time Zappa drummer Chad Wackerman (whose name still makes the adolescent in me smirk), and Jimmy Johnson on bass.

For a supposedly cerebral form of music, the response to showmanship was noteworthy. It seems pretty easy to get a roar out of the audience by using a handful of gimmicks. Usually a lot of fast runs culminating in a high repetitive figure will do it. Sweeping arpeggios high on the neck are also reliable crowdpleasers. The drummer too can get the crowd excited by a lengthy fill featuring a fast circular pattern on the toms. Meanwhile the bassist can grab a lot of attention for himself by deploying a few fleetfingered hammer-ons, especially if done while quickly ascending or descending the fretboard.

I generally found the music to be meditative. I would pay close attention to the intricacy of certain sections, then find myself sooner or later drifting off into abstract thought. I don't think that was the same as being bored.

Smut for Dummies

Circlet Press has just unleashed The Erotic Writer's Market Guide upon an unsuspecting public. It contains plenty of helpful advice about writing erotica, submitting to markets, fighting self-censorship, the use of pseudonyms, tax tips, and of course lists of hundreds of paying publishers and magazines in the field of erotica. (And yes, as a matter of fact I did help to edit it.) Grab y'rself a copy and start getting your homebrewed smut out there to the world. It's doing no one any good hidden at the bottom of your sock drawer.

Might vs Write

The, ahem, best American fiction from the last 25 years has been established for us by the New York Times. Awfully decent of them. Beloved by Toni Morrison comes in over the finish line in first place. Delillo's Underworld and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian come in hot on its heels. And twenty-two ran. I haven't read Beloved, and now I'm strangely tempted not to. Underworld is a good'un, though I think I prefer White Noise. It's more concise, more of a deft rabbit punch of satire. But it's Philip Roth who dominates the list with a total of six novels. I guess that means that while Morrison wins for speed, Roth triumphs for pacing. Or something.

I get awfully uncomfortable when literature merges too closely with athletics. The sight of scorecards in the literary arena makes my neck constrict. I think the urge to determine a first place comes from a bad place in the American psyche. The word "bully" comes to mind.

The Modern Library's list of 100 best novels gives me a similar twinge, although I'll admit I do glance at it occasionally when looking for something new to read. And the discrepancy between the board's list and the reader's list is telling. There's a suspicious amount of Scientology and Objectivism heading the reader's list. And high atop the board's list is Joyce's Ulysses, which, though one of my favorite books of all time mostly because of the sheer magnitude of it, isn't one I'd necessarily recommend to all that many people. Whereas book number two, The Great Gatsby, is more likely to affect a greater amount of readers.

What I'm feebly getting at (I think) is that making a list of the year's best whatevers can be constructive - but numbering the list is not.

Them's Good Grammar

The singular they: I'm all for it. I use it frequently. I've heard no other eloquent alternative suggestions, except possibly to recast the sentence in a way that avoids the need for it. But that isn't always effective. I'm going to continue to use it when I see fit, and I don't want to hear any whining from the Prescriptive wing. I'm not going to gripe that your he or she is about as eloquent as a frog fart, so you can just as well keep respectfully silent when I bandy about my singular they.

Can one be a Prescriptivist and still embrace Shakespeare and Joyce? I'd like to hear someone reconcile that.

I caught a split infinitive in the New York Times today: "While Mr. Jackson began to routinely rotate through different teams of advisers in the 90's..." I don't particularly care - why shouldn't the English split an infinitive just because Latin was incapable of doing it? Out of reverence? I just wonder if this is a case of ignorance or defiance.

I stand in favor of defiance. Why should we be bound by arbitrary rules some ornery schoolteacher came up with three hundred years ago? There's no order to English - it's the result of linguistically raping and pillaging every other language it came across in its spread. Why pretend it was carefully constructed in some germ-free laboratory? Embrace its chaos. That's what makes it such a great playground for writers.

Bang a Jong (Get It On)

Alright, so I just finished reading Erica Jong's seminal Fear of Flying, inspired by hearing her speak recently. I read it once eons ago and considered it a firmly raised middle finger to moral stodginess and a spirited celebration of freedom. This time, while still regarding the sexual and emotional candor as laudable and the Isadora Wing's contradictory impulses well-examined, I found that the actual prose and dialogue became increasingly more frustrating as I read. All the gobs of literary allusions come across like unabashed namedropping - as though Jong is eager to impress us with an inventory of her bookshelves. There must be an average of at least one literary reference per page, and Isadora gets awfully smug when a character doesn't catch one of her referential quips. Not to mention the dollops of self-righteousness where the narrator gets to tell off the assorted pompous characters who engulf her on her journeys. Jong repeatedly sets up straw men in order to knock them down and the whole thing reeks of a rigged fight. Example: the snooty bastard with the docile wife on the train who starts a conversation with Isadora about the collapse of standards in education for no other purpose than to get his feathers ruffled when she vehemently disagrees with him. The scene is conveniently placed in the story to occur exactly when she has set off on her own and needs to prove her newfound independence. It feels staged and I don't buy it.

Another gripe - far too much ink is wasted on her continuing struggle to write. There are few things more tedious than listening to a writer lament about not being able to write. I have very little patience with writers writing about writers writing, or such as in this case, writers not writing. That approach is very limiting in scope and smacks of self-importance - the tortured artist syndrome which is mostly of interest only to fellow tortured artists. It seems like a relatively recent phenomenon. To my knowledge, authors prior to the twentieth century rarely made writers their central characters (Knut Hamsun's Hunger being a singular exception) they just wrote about people.

It's easy to imagine how Fear of Flying burst onto the scene in 1973, kicking down doors which had long screamed for kicking down. And that aspect of the novel is still very potent and reason enough to keep it alive. Isadora Wing is at her best when being brutally honest with herself and at her worst when trying to convince us of how clever she is. It sounds strange to say it, but I think she suffers from having read too much during her formative years. Balance is a healthy thing. Once in a while you really should just put down the book and go outside to skip some stones.

The Dresden Dolls Ain't Nuttin Ta Fuck Wit

Friday night was the Boston CD release party for The Dresden Dolls' new album Yes, Virginia... at the Orpheum Theatre. As an emotionally-stirred Amanda Palmer remarked while surveying the nearly packed 2,800-seat theatre, they've come a long way since trying to lure audiences to come see them play the coffin-sized Lizard Lounge. (If that paragraph doesn't sound like archetypal newspaper article fodder, I don't know what does.)

The audience, it should be mentioned, consisted of a high volume of striped clothing, bowler hats, guys in dresses, pagan princesses, pancake makeup, elves, living statues, and strangely enough, even some normal streetclothes now and again. The nefarious Dresden Dolls Brigade lurked outside in the alleyway, drawing chalk figures on nearby surfaces and generally behaving outlandishly.

First act on the bill was Porsches on the Autobahn - essentially a DJ, some highly caffeinated guys in suits armed with mikes, and a steamer trunk's worth of props. Their shtick seemed to be campy kung fu dancing and German translated badly into English. The only song I caught the lyrical gist of concerned the urge to have sexual relations with a girl's retina. During the final song the Dresden Dolls pounced onstage for some high energy boogying.

Inscrutable swordswallower Tyler Fyre played master of ceremonies between sets, introducing sideshow attractions such as a floozy who did a striptease while swinging a hulahoop and a frizzyheaded mad scientist and fraulein duo who told fractured fairy tales, then hurled toast at the audience.

HUMANWINE was the second musical act, bringing their wineriddled gypsy punk manifestos to the masses. Holly Brewer looked so diminutive when she first stepped onto the vast Orpheum-sized stage, but when the band exploded into "Big Brother," her formidable lungs let no one down. Drummer Nathan Greenslit must have bribed the soundman, because every nuanced brushstroke was audible, not to mention a kick drum like a heart seizure. They offered us "Rivolta Silenziosa," "Script Language," "Fattest Thin" (the stomping ogre singalong), and a few new numbers that sounded like a progrock band getting ambushed by razorwielding hoodlums. Amanda and Brian joined them onstage for the finale of "Wake Up," banging on a hodgepodge of bangable things.




Alright then, the Dresden Dolls. This seemed like a dressed-down event for them, though the trademark bowler hat and striped stockings were present. They opened the set with "Sex Changes," sort of the aural equivalent of a drill through the groin. In the best possible way, of course. The set list was heavily tipped in favor of the new album, which is to be expected, and we were treated to scalding versions of "Back Stabber," "Dirty Business," and "Mandy Goes To Med School."

"Coin-Operated Boy" was gotten out of the way early on, and included some deadly doublebass peddle action during the interlude. Surprisingly nothing caught fire during a hyper-accelerated "Girl Anachronism." In fact, at the end of "Necessary Evil" an overenthused Brian toppled over backwards, knocking equipment left and right. Amanda took the moment to introduce him as "Brian Viglione on the drums and the floor."

There was a round of cover tunes as well, notably Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam," the Maurice Sendak/Carol King ditty "Pierre," and Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love," which they intended to record for a friend's wedding, but ended up struggling with the harmony. After a few amusing false starts they nailed it on the fourth attempt.

There were guest appearances as well. Holly Brewer crept out of the shadows for some soaring backup vocals on "Delilah" against a rather apocalyptic backlighting. The Dolls also brought onstage a cluster of feather boa-toting thirteen-year-olds known as Sparkle Motion Girl Authority for a schoolgirl rendition of "I Love Rock and Roll." They fucked that one up too, but I doubt anyone minded. They fuck up charmingly.

Amanda introduced the encore by bemoaning the lack of energy at modern day concerts, notably audiences who watch with arms folded and heads nodding, as though in fear of expression. "Something died in the nineties." And she admired the energy issuing from the crowd on Brian's roadfood Iron Maiden CDs. (Brian flashed devil's horns.) With that they launched into "Sing," during which they were joined onstage by a HUMANWINE and Girl Authority chorus for some quality group ahhing. Many contributing audience members did their best to make Amanda proud. A sappy yet stirring way to end the evening.

I Saw Regina Spektor Tonight & You Didn't

I'm a relative newcomer to the wondrous Regina Spektor. A NYC friend told me about her, then I borrowed Soviet Kitsch from the library & was hooked. I always figure I'm the last person to get into an act these days, & by the time that I do everyone else is already scoffing at them as Old Hat (see Modest Mouse). I figured this would be the same with Regina Spektor, but I still get a lot of blank looks when I mention her name. When they ask what sort of music she plays I usually describe her as the prankster daughter of Tori Amos & Woody Allen - which makes perfect sense to me, but I'm not sure how informative that is for the uninitiated.

Her show at the Axis was sold out, but thanks to my friendly neighborhood craigslist, I managed to secure a stray ticket. Axis, it turns out, is a crappy place for a musician to play. Especially one whose music is as subtle as Ms Spektor's. It's a small venue - more or less a back cloakroom to the much-larger Avalon next door. Every time a staff member opened a side door which separated the two venues, very un-Spektorish house music leaked in, which contributed nothing to the softer numbers. Ms Spektor kept her cool when this would happen, charmingly grooving along to the intrusive music between numbers. "There's a giant pink elephant in the corner," she said at one point, "but I'm just going to treat it like this is our house & the neighbors are throwing a party."

She played all the crowd favorites from Soviet Kitsch - "Carbon Monoxide," "Ode to Divorce," "Us," "The Ghost of Corporate Future," & "Poor Little Rich Boy," during which she whacked a stool with a drumstick in her left hand while playing piano with her right. She did however leave out my favorite tune from the album, "Chemo Limo." Also on the playlist was a jaunty ditty about finding a statue of baby Jesus in the window of a 99 cent store, one about a skeletal Ezra Pound asking if she could spare a pound of flesh, & another featuring Delilah reflecting upon her hirsute relationship with Samson.

For most the show I stood on a side platform (near the bar) overlooking the crowd. At one point there was a sea of illuminated cell phones held aloft, just like the swaying cigarette lighters of yore. I couldn't help ruminating that analog fire has now been replaced by the digital glow of technology.

Her opening act was a singer/guitarist named Jenny Owen Youngs who was funny & flirty, & possessor of a wicked right hand strum technique. Unfortunately she tended to remain stage left, which meant a structural column mostly blocked her from my line of vision unless I leaned far over the balcony railing. Which I did.

A beautiful show, despite the setbacks. But I'd like to advise Ms Spektor's booking agent to snag her a gig at the Paradise next time, where she can ply her trade without fear of aural competition.

Mah Jong

Tonight I trekked down to Brookline to catch the infamous Erica Jong reading from her latest outing, Seducing the Demon, which is an autobiography (of sorts) of her literary life as liberator or pornographer, depending on where you're standing. Jong was intelligent, articulate, & strongly opinionated. She steered frequently into the realm of current events, which is clearly a sensitive topic for her. The attentive audience filled the windowless basement of the independent bookstore to capacity, with many members spilling onto the stairs. They even remembered to shut off their cell phones at the outset, a surprisingly considerate gesture.

Jong mentioned "the zipless fuck" early on, perhaps just to get it out of the way. It sort of deflated any tension from those wondering whether to expect feminism or smut. A little of each perhaps? She didn't have to worry about anyone leaning over & whispering cautiously "now Ms Jong, you know this is a family program, right?" Everyone seemed to know what they were getting themselves into & I spotted no emergency escapes.

Beforehand I'd heard several mentions of Fear of Flying bandied through the crowd. Obviously that is still the yardstick she is measured by. A mixed blessing. Is the rest of her oeuvre subpar to that notorious novel, or simply not as sensational? As a prospective artist, the thought of requiring a media blitzkrieg to attract any sort of serious attention for your work is disheartening.

The writer's role, Jong claimed, is to present truths. She paraphrased Norman Mailer that if a writer isn't pissing someone off, they're not doing their job. She insisted that censorship is still alive & well, just that it's craftier these days & harder to spot. She pointed out that most of the media in the country is run by six conglomerates, who filter the information they distribute according their political agendas. She targeted Murdoch in particular.

She lamented the low number of readers in our culture, & pointed out that "if people would read Herodotus they'd realize this Iraq situation is business as usual. Historically the people in charge always go to war with pretenses of correcting injustices while really doing it for profit." She also mentioned the "death of the middle class" in which fathers have to work too much, mothers have to work too much, children need to be shipped off to child care. She suggested this is a deliberate condition, to keep people too busy for activism.

Alas, this was the converted she was preaching to. I was ultimately disappointed in the audience, who didn't appear very inclined towards critical thought, at least not the more audible ones. The chatty woman beside me seemed more concerned with critical reception of the new book than in its contents. "What are people saying about it?" I overheard several accounts of "I liked it. It was interesting." Opinions rarely seem to venture past the point of "it was interesting" these days. Maybe I'm just eavesdropping on the wrong people.

The Q&A which followed the reading was mostly pointless. Many didn't actually have questions to ask, they just wanted to snag a platform to voice their opinions, which were without exception echoes of what Jong had already said. The woman beside me did a generous amount of ahhing & nodding, as though engaged in a private conversation with Jong herself. One older couple passed notes back & forth on a notepad as if they were in school. I couldn't read what was on the pad but it looked like mathematical formulas.

A provocative evening in many ways. In retrospect, however, I wouldn't have minded a little more smut.