Horrible Rodent

Horrible rodent, you've got a lot of nerve coming in here with teeth bared and bringing us your rot. It's a gloomy kind of Sunday in this city of ghosts and all the raindrops have been collected and sorted by the gleefully damaged. Unearthed bloodworms lay strewn about the town square where we sit on cinder logs, swinging buckets between splayed legs, and watch the buses lumber past like domesticated animals. The cold sun is concealed by coughing clouds and a tremendous wingspan, accompanied by an unholy flapping. Insects emerge from the pores of the city, clamoring for food. The organ grinder's monkey goes around the square taking donations for the funeral.

Here comes Tom Mustard, lost in deep smoky wonderbout, his skull trapped in a balloon. Up to his old tricks again, it seems. Time to feed the parrots and teach them dirty words. He knows what makes the clock tick as well as tock. They say he once released the hounds on his own daughter. Imagine that level of disassociation. Electroplated memories in the sawdust cellar. Surrounded by the smell of fermenting money. No one raises their head as he strides past and disappears down an alley which leads presumably nowhere.

There's a pawnshop on fire down by the broken drawbridge. Someone pawned a grenade and evidently the heat from the store room radiator was too much for it. Ladies conceal blades in their garters but gentlemen prefer bombs. Lethargic firemen carve salami on the running board of their truck. They've given up the fight. Meanwhile traffic signals go dead within a vulture's radius and faces go grey as gauze. Across town the funeral is over and all the mourners gone home to sleep or play cards.

Belief & Technique For Modern Prose

Jack Kerouac's List of Essentials:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. Youre a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Come Back to the Fold

Come back to the fold, precious one. Perhaps we acted a little hasty before but we're hoping for a little exchange of forgive and forget. We miss your charming company, your enthusiasm and youthful vigor. We feel it's time to bury the hatchet somewhere far out back where it won't be dug up again soon. We just want you to be comfortable here again, as before. Look, we've saved all your precious things, your knickknacks, your paddywhacks, your dog's bone. We kept your room just as you left it, just as you'll remember it, the good memories as well as the bad. We've even taken the surveillance equipment out of your bathroom.

Weekly playlist

Charles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um
Kyuss: Blues for the Red Sun
Bernard Herrmann: the Essential Bernard Herrmann
Gentle Giant: Octopus
King Crimson: Red
Van Der Graaf Generator: Godbluff
Porcupine Tree: In Absentia
Beach Boys: Pet Sounds
Super Furry Animals: Fuzzy Logic
Chopin: Grand Fantasia on Polish Airs
Air: Pocket Symphony
Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
The Dukes of Stratosphear: Chips from the Chocolate Fireball

Walk This Way

Having left my antigravity boots at home, I waited at this crosswalk for hours, unsure of how to proceed, before finally opting to walk around the block, thereby avoiding the situation entirely.

Tragedy of the Common

After forty minutes of cooling my heels in the impossibly clean lobby of Mongoose Studios, I was led into an inner office decorated as tastefully as possible under the circumstances in a theme of oak and raccoon. There I was introduced to one E. Winston Monocle, whose handshake felt like reaching into a bucket of moist grapes. His hair looked like it was combed back with black shoe polish, his wormy lips strangely vacant without a cigar clenched between them. He settled back in his chair facing me across the imposing span of desk and asked to hear my pitch.

I cleared my throat for my big moment, as rehearsed. I told him it was about a spy named Rance Gladwell who works for a covert organization, so covert not even the CIA was aware of its existence. He's like James Bond, only instead of suave and sophisticated he was an incompetent fool.

"Maxwell Smart," he interjected with a dubious squint, "Inspector Clouseau."

I shook my head, no that's the thing because it's not a comedy. See, he's this totally incompetent being who makes a muck of everything he attempts. He's sent to Lisbon on an important assignment, the details of which we never learn, but before he even gets started he forgets his plane ticket, lose his suitcase with top secret papers inside, is unable to locate the embassy, and basically spends the whole mission tangled in bureacracy. He's a sad, unfortunate person, with expert training and a good heart but he can't do anything right. The kind of person who goes to the grocery store for cereal only to discover they're invariably out of his favorite brand. Elevators close in his face. Taxis already have a fare. It rains when he's forgotten his umbrella. See, it's not an action picture, it's a character study of a decent man betrayed by the little things. Foiled by the fine print, as it were. The terrible human sadness of it all.

E. Winston Monocle folded his hands into a pyramid and peered across the desk at me. "No one wants to see people fail at mundane things, kid. It reminds them too much of themselves. Remember, we're in the business of helping them forget all that. If you're going to fail you have to do it on a grand scale, where the stakes are high. No one wants to see you louse up a convenience store robbery, they want to watch you shot down while burgling the Louvre. See what I mean?"

But the tragedy of the common, I protested.

"Pales next to the tragedy of box office poison."

But wait'll you hear what happens when...

"Forget it, kid. Anything else on your plate?"

There wasn't, I was forced to admit. Many eggs, one basket. He rose and thanked me for only wasting a few minutes of his time. I'm not sure what I mumbled in response. Before shooing me out of his office he offered a kindly suggestion that perhaps this wasn't the right industry for me, that perhaps I should give theater a try, where I could experiment my face off without anyone getting hurt. His office door sounded unreasonably heavy as it shut behind me. On my way out I spit on his receptionist.

Em-Bov

If Madame Bovary was alive today she would likely be first in line to join one of those Sex and the City tours of New York. Certainly she'd be a member of Oprah's book club. Wonder what she'd make of her own tale? Would she weep with approval at her own tragic demise? Or more likely grow impatient with the lengthy prose & return her copy to the bookshop in favor of some twilightian vampires.


Flaubert's masterpiece does contain one of literature's great quotes: "Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to while we long to make music that will melt the stars."

Romeo's Blues

Romeo sat on the sofa waiting for Juliet to come home from her bridge club. His rump formfit the sags in the cushion, his eyelids dropped from insomnia, his frayed bathrobe had seen better days, though not in quite a while. He aimlessly fondled the TV remote, dismissive of the Cheeto dust under his fingernails. He clicked past a golf marathon, a documentary on WWII battleships, and paused on a crime drama with a jazzy soundtrack. Recognizing he'd seen this particular episode before, he made another cycle of the channels before giving up and shutting off the tube. Maybe he'd give a call to the grandkid, find out how archery practice had gone. He located the cordless receiver under a bag of onion bagel crumbs. He glared at the taunting keypad. He'd forgotten the number. After a good ten minutes spent rummaging through a drawer looking for Juliet's address book it occurred to him the number was programmed into the speed dial. He let the phone ring until voicemail answered, at which point he forgot why he was calling. He hung up without leaving a message.

His powers of recollection, he had to admit, were getting to be an issue. Underwater light in the murky tank of his brain. "You should write down your memoirs while you can," Juliet had suggested. "People might be interested in that whole 'faking our own deaths and fleeing the country' thing." Maybe, but he couldn't muster up the enthusiasm. Verona was worlds away. His adopted land of America had treated him decently. He'd settled down, rose to a respectable rank in the labor union, invested in some real estate. Juliet had squeezed out a couple pups, joined the beautification league, licked a fairly severe illness. A few years of travel after the nest emptied, nothing overly ambitious. And then the gradual succumbing to inertia.

Sleep was his greatest diversion of late, putting in a good 10-12 hour shift most nights. The Institute had diagnosed apnea, which sounded to him like an exotic vegetable. They'd rigged up a snakey network of electrodes to his skull which measured the amount of REM sleep he was getting. Very little, as it turned out. Oozing with concern, the doctors offered to sell him some contraption that clamped over his nose and mouth and would ostensibly improve his nocturnal breathing. He quickly lost interest on learning his insurance didn't cover the cost. To be honest he didn't object to sleeping all the time, though Juliet had booted him out of bed due to his herculean snoring. During this exile he fashioned a sort of fortress for himself on the sofa and quickly adapted to sleeping in an upright position. Nothing to complain about.

Were those headlights flashing in the driveway? Bridge club must be over. Romeo noticed the TV was off and switched it back on, having forgotten why he'd shut it off in the first place. His creased face was illuminated in the moony glow of a wafflemaker commercial as he waited for the familiar scratch of a key in the deadbolt.

"Waffles sound good," he thought.

Weekly playlist

Miles Davis: Milestones
Duke Ellington: Okeh Ellington
Johnny Mercer: Capitol Collectors Series
King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King
Charles Mingus: Pithecanthropus Erectus
Bernard Herrmann: From Citizen Kane To Taxi Driver
Radiohead: In Rainbows (bonus disc)
Dexter Gordon: Our Man in Paris
Porcupine Tree: The Incident
The Roots: Game Theory
Hoagy Carmichael: Ole Buttermilk Sky

Weekly playlist

Porcupine Tree: Deadwing
Charles Mingus: The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady
Outkast: Aquemeni
The Mars Volta: De-Loused in the Comatorium
Thelonious Monk: Monk's Dream
Dexter Gordon: Go
Duke Ellington: Money Jungle
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Johnny Mercer Songbook
Evaline: Postpartum Modesty
Regina Spektor: 11:11
Muse: Black Holes and Revelations
The Residents: Not Available

The Disappearing Mayor

Someone spiked the donuts. There's no other explanation. Everyone who partook are staggering in seasick parabolas on the church lawn, eyes crossed, tongues swollen, and complexions like paint thinner. Meanwhile some wastrel in Bermuda shorts hoisted himself up the marquee pole and with toothy chomp sanses the serif off the "J" in "Hang Ten With Jesus."

Nothing's been the same in town since the mayor disappeared. Not a word to anyone, his car engine left running, laundry still in the dryer, secretary's pen still poised for dictation. Everything's gone downhill since then. The master keys to the post office have been mislaid, though no one can afford stamps anymore so it hasn't really been noticed. Trash piles up uncollected, roadkill left to rot, traffic lights blinking out lyrics to popular showtunes in morse code. Professionals can't afford office space so everyone works out of the parking lot of a boarded up tarpaulin factory.

"Sure, it's gonna hurt," says the Belgian dentist, hunched over his hapless patient in the back seat of his Volkswagen. "Who told you otherwise?" He gives a little prod for emphasis with a rusty retractor. "Strange place for a snakebite, I must say." Before starting the procedure he knocks ash from his cigar into the sanitizing bowl balanced uncertainly on the drink tray.

Here comes a wily character wheeling a stolen shopping cart loaded with back alley prosthetics. Times are tough, even for black marketeers. Hardly a leg to stand on. At least you can still buy cheap fish tacos from the stand along the highway, at least when the old seadog's in port. Which is admittedly not that often these days. But the locals set their lips firmly and tell themselves when there's a down there's an up, or when there's a back there's a forth, or when there's a will there's a way, or whatever will help to keep their spirits up. It's that kind of town.

Weekly playlist

Curtis Mayfield: Move On Up
Cannonball Adderley: Somethin' Else
Gentle Giant: Three Friends
Al Green: Very Best Of
Fairport Convention: Liege & Lief
Joni Mitchell: Hejira
Bing Crosby: His Legendary Years
Public Enemy: Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black
Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star
OutKast: Stankonia
GZA: Liquid Swords
Chopin: Concerto #2 in F Minor
Shostakovich: Symphony #5
The Only Doo-Wop Collection You'll Ever Need

Wildwood

With its seasonal average of four million beachcrazed visitors, Wildwood in the summer is far from my ideal locale. In the off-season, however, the eerie streets & empty boardwalk provide for fertile photographic prowlings. The retro-futuristic Doo Wop architecture as evident in the numerous Jetsons-esque motels has not yet been completely obliterated in favor of condominiums. This was the atomic age -- neon parabolas, flying saucers & rayguns. There is something rather melancholy about a future that never had a chance to happen. Where are the jetpacks we once were promised?


The boardwalk in the off-season.




Interior of the Doo Wop Museum.


The Caribbean, quintessential Doo Wop architecture.




The Starlux Motel.


Sunrise over the Atlantic.

Weekly playlist

Captain Beefheart: Safe as Milk
Sly & the Family Stone: Greatest Hits
Small Faces: Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake
David Bowie: Aladdin Sane
Lightnin' Hopkins: Aladdin Recordings
Regina Spektor: Far
Be-Bop Deluxe: Live! In the Air Age
Marvin Gaye: What's Goin' On
A Tribe Called Quest: Low End Theory
Apples in Stereo: New Magnetic Wonder
Muse: The Resistance
Can: Tago Mago
Ice Cube: AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
Ghostface Killah: Fishscale
Eric B & Rakim: Paid in Full
Run-DMC: Raising Hell

City Island

City Island, located off the coast of the Bronx, between Pelham & Eastchester Bays. Known as "Cinema Island" due to its use as a filming location for Long Day's Journey Into Night, Royal Tenenbaums, Awakenings, Margot at the Wedding, & The Groomsmen, among others.


Boats in Eastchester Bay.


The house from Long Day's Journey into Night.


The City Island Nautical Museum.


Our waitress threatened to cut off a local's fingers after he mouthed off to her. I played it safe and left a generous tip.


Pelham Cemetery.


Sunset over Eastchester Bay.


"I meant your other left."

Philadelphia

Philly skyline after the storm.


Christ Church, in Old City.


Elfreth's Alley.


A Spanish conquistador's helmet.


Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River.


Swann Fountain in Logan Square.

Hitch a Ride to Rockaway Beach

Baffling seagull behavior. They stand expectantly on the edge of the shore like lawn ornaments pointed at the sea, waiting for fish to crawl onto the beach and into their hungry maw. Ah, but as the wave sweeps in they aboutface and flee in terror on frantic spindlelegs. Never expected the ocean to rise up and come for them. The wave soon loses its ambition and retreats back into the sea. Relieved at their narrow escape, the seagulls straighten their feathers and return to their post at the edge of the shore, certain the defeated wave is unlikely to attempt another sneak attack.


9/11 Memorial, Tribute Park



Neponsit is a quiet upper-middle class residental neighborhood. A little too quiet, it turns out. Seven in the evening and not a sound but crickets and the distant rush of waves. No one is coming home from work, foraging in the kitchen for dinner, watching TV in the darkened living rooms. No children play in the yards or ride in the streets. Bicycles lie discarded in the intersections, as though the riders were seized by talons and carried away. The entire town must've been evacuated in the dead of night, screen door still swinging in the breeze.


Warning: submerged objects

Sands Point

Manhasset Neck, Long Island -- or "East Egg," as F Scott Fitzgerald renamed it in The Great Gatsby. Home of the Old Money.


Castle Gould, built by the son of railroad tycoon Jay Gould. On completion, Mrs Gould didn't like it so it was converted into a stable.


The Hempstead House -- one of Fitzgerald's "white palaces glittering on the water."


Site of Gatsby-style lawn parties.


Rocco Road.


Bootleggers' Cliff.


The Long Island Sound.


Jay Gatsby wooed Daisy Buchanan on this bench. As far as you know.

Weekly playlist

The Bonzo Dog Band: The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse
Frank Zappa: Uncle Meat
Gilbert & Sullivan: Greatest Hits
Mike Keneally: Hat
New Order: Low-Life
Apples in Stereo: New Magnetic Wonder
Van der Graaf Generator: H to He, Who Am the Only One
Serge Gainsbourg: Histoire de Melody Nelson
Sly & the Family Stone: There's a Riot Goin' On

Weekly playlist

Gentle Giant: In a Glass House
Mike Keneally: Wooden Smoke
Snow Patrol: Eyes Open
Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, Vol 1
The Incredible String Band: The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
Frank Zappa: Freak Out
David Bowie: Diamond Dogs
Genesis: Foxtrot
Mars Volta: Octahedron
Bob Dylan: The Basement Tapes
The Kinks: Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

Foggy Empire

Weekly playlist

Talking Heads: Fear of Music
Emerson Lake & Palmer: Tarkus
Firesign Theatre: I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus
Prince: The B-Sides
Faith No More: Angel Dust
Benny Goodman: Greatest Hits
Van der Graaf Generator: Pawn Hearts
The Dead Weather
Tommy Dorsey: Sinatra, Vol 1
Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers
Brian Eno: Another Green World
Ray Charles: Anthology
Brian Wilson: Smile

Weekly playlist

Public Image Ltd - Second Edition
Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Peter Gabriel - (3)
Frank Zappa - One Size Fits All
Steely Dan - Countdown to Ecstasy
Marvin Gaye - Gold
REM - Reckoning
Squeeze - East Side Story
Michael Hedges - Breakfast in the Field
Julie London - Time For Love

Weekly playlist

These tunes make the day go by quicker:

Apples in Stereo: The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone
Gang of Four: Entertainment!
David Bowie: Station to Station
Sufjan Stevens: Illinois
Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick
REM: Murmur
Steve Hackett: Voyage of the Acolyte
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall
Jellyfish: Spilt Milk
Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain
Regina Spektor: Far
Pere Ubu: Dub Housing
Soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

15 Books

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - A Conan Doyle
2. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
3. Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
4. The Haunted Road - Margaret Sutton
5. Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh
6. Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon
7. Notes from Underground - Dostoevsky
8. Big Sur - Kerouac
9. A Supposedly Fun Thing - David Foster Wallace
10. The Trial - Kafka
11. The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton
12. Harpo Speaks - Harpo Marx
13. Journey to the End of the Night - Celine
14. Ask the Dust - John Fante
15. The Code of the Woosters - PG Wodehouse