i’ve got a bike trick. when you see me, ask me to do my bike trick. if we are on flat ground. don’t worry- you won’t get hurt. it’s not a hard trick but it is funny-looking. man, i need to get some pegs.
woo hoo! nick’s back from china (nick’s suit from raheeb’s hand-made on pleasant street). he’s so going to yell at me for not finishing the color cover art for ordem. it’s gonna be awesome. also, i checked out some scaffolding this morning and i have decided that scaffolding is definitely not a ladder. thus you can walk under it without fear. the deciding factor was this- one doesn’t climb up (all) scaffolding, but one definitely climbs (all) ladders.
oh yeah, and an incredible thing happened last night after the show at cool beans- a bunch of poets started reading, and the first was this elderly woman, and before her first poem she said “this is about the music you just heard. i was here last week and wrote a poem about it.”. !. i wish i got a copy. i’m sure i’ll see her again sometime. other poetry was good and bad. i read poetry, including handsome matt’s born dead icons poem and selections from my manifesto-in-progress. staton asked if rainbow bird of peace was dada. i was like, yo, i’ll finish my manifesto, then you’ll see what i’m manifesting motherfucker. incidentally i have mixed feelings on dada but what it boils down to is that anyone who does dada now is way lame. and jean arp i love you!
thursday i did fail on a singular plan (to put lunch in my stomach,
gratis) but not on its two pals (to chat with all (or most of) my
clark
buds, and to find a loving soul with a library card, go to our city
library and obtain this book- “
old pal with a non-old alias) and i did walk down and back, following
which all of us (plus mick chud and dc adam) sat about on a porch, and
finally, ran along to clark’s foodshop. during all of this (a grand total
of four hours), i did try (as boldly as i could) to talk with that
ultra-tough constraint which said book is continually using. our most
grand idiom was “my blood pump says” to switch with “i feel”. figuring
out what judy’s watch said was difficult too: “it’s that singular
hour,
minus
a fourth.” (12:45), or “it’s two, plus half of two, and a half, plus a
singular hand digit amount.” (3:35). good-to-look-at matt (smith) and i
did try singing off-our-cuffs translations of black flag lyrics (“thirty
dollars and a six pack is all i got…”, “i was a hippy, i was a burnout,
i was a dropout i was out of my noggin”. if you think this is a light
task, try it. try talking as i did, using good grammar, your mind
constantly scurrying to find words. as i did, you’ll talk similar to a
baby (or an animal man) for a bit, but by and by, you’ll gain a fairly
good ability to talk amongst standard guys and gals without said folks
catching on. oh, and, as i said would occur two days ago, my jazz band did
play and it was a ton of fun.
matt hallas (“good personality matt”) poses the question- “is scaffolding a ladder? can i walk under it without bad luck?”. i say it isn’t, but i’ll entertain an argument. i say it is a temporary extention of the building.
i realized only too late that i left one of my favorite t-shirts, good old pink alaska w/wolves, at the lucky dog last week. drat. i cut my hair yesterday and i feel at least 40% better. it’s astounding.
last night i listened to bach’s goldberg variations, as performed by glenn gould. really loud. if you have the wherewithall, i highly recommend playing this album very loud, so you can hear glenn gould humming to himself in the background.
return of the big weekends. friday me and timbro tried in vain to see le
tigre in jamaica plain. we got there and there was a huge ass line around
the block (no exageration). we waited, as we (tim and i) are good
waiters. we steadily got closer and closer to the door as they packed more
and more people in but our stomachs got the best of us so we bounced for
big burrito then home. samia got inside so her report is that the
bathrooms were wall-to-wall and the show got stopped after 3 le tigre
songs because the ceiling was sagging with too many kids (capacity is 300,
they had an easy 6c). transgender kids were picketing outside due to le
tigre choosing to perform at a women’s festival that is notorious (i am
told) for anti-tranny attitudes. they got inside and spoke onstage and so
in this way worked it out i suppose (being as what’s past is past). i
personally took issue but ultimately resolved issue in such a manner- a
personal beef for a long time has been the use of “homophobia” to describe
the fear of homosexuals when it should describe the fear of things
being the same (2nd part of beef being with it’s converse by
default “heterophobia”, which is never used to mean “fear of
heterosexuals”, but by association with the previous term can never be “fear of difference”). it would seem that i would have a similar problem with transphobia, but upon reflection, the fear of transgendered people is most likely the most comomon instance of the fear of one thing crossing over into another thing. so cheers.
two line items:
so cutting every person individually at a slow and steady pace) i
met years ago at the hot water music show at the space. at the time i
swallered my prime-directive-inspired pride and talked to her, at which
point a car full of yah-dudes screamed something very unpleasant (though
garbled) at me and i felt like a schlimiel (sp?). remembering that girl
does a zine, i almost re-introduced to give her one of mine (incidentally,
there’s a new ish, ass-pocket sized) but decided against it (in part) so
that i could write without hesitation about her and what an awkward scene
it was on this very page. i hate the prime directive but by and
large i abide by it. incidentally i knew i’d see people at the show
(incl. esperanto pen pal emily bloodmilk) so i
brought a mess of zines to unload but i went home with full ass-pocket of
zines intact, not a one missing. this alone is what qualifies the night as
a failure.
saturday i listened to records then late at night me and my housies set up an obstacle course around the house, then did time trials on a kids bike, and set up a cool jump in the living room. steve fischer- you did not read this. you will not get mad at me. i’m not the droids you’re looking for.
sunday me and samia and reg and oona and sean and digger (a dog) piled into reg’s mom’s car and drove north north north (5hrs there and back) to glover vt and the bread and puppet show. a bunch of good puppet shows (of the modern, activist sort) and only a couple dicey ones. my homie lydia did a show that rocked and ruled. some of these puppetistas will be staying at my house in a couple weeks and i’m really looking forward to it. radical puppet theatre! woo!
monday i slept right through my alarm and so, didn’t go to work. instead
me and jer and tim ate at the astoundingly good chef of india buffet. then
i messed around and got the triple double. this weekend i got the news
that grampa schachterle passed away. grampa schachterle lived at will’s
house and wrote a few good poems (and no bad poems) for will’s fledgling
e-zine “popshack” (which was mysteriously popular in england). he also
self-published a book called “berth for a notion” about how the entirety
of human knowledge past and present is encoded in our dna. he also spent
some time trying to develope a modern bathtub one stands up in. he ate
mysterious food and wore a union suit. r.i.p. dr. r. elmer
schacterle. 1908 – 2001
as they are distressingly infrequent, i feel i should point out a new
(indo?)china. oh man, i got those records i was waiting for, but i haven’t
heard them yet. i won’t be able to listen to them until late this
afternoon, and maybe not even then. i am delirious with anticipation. it
turns out the art ensemble of chicago is not a cd but a record on super
heavy vinyl. so you see how i’m excited. it’s so heavy and so black that
light cannot escape its pull. if it didn’t have a paper label i would
have assumed it was a singularity that someone sent me in the mail (much
the same way one would put a turd in a paper bag and light it on fire on a
doorstep).
bookish few may have noted that i’m going through free jazz
alphabetically- albert ayler, anthony
braxton,
the art ensemble of chicago… who is a good
a.d.?
i don’t want to be the farmer singing love songs about his plow, but i really like playing saxophone in a jazz band. the show last night went really well. a bunch of my pals showed up and we played really good. we played labyrinths, carnosaur, tim threw a black backpack in the back there, the seven brothers meet dracula, frog pond 1, sucks to your preposition (which is about how i love loving but in many ways despise and fear being in love), shaved fanny, jake’s big day, and get together. we neglected to play houdini’s hat comes back, which i was excited about, but then forgot. i self-consciously made myself look like a slob (no shave, ratty sweatshirt, greasy hair) but this morning had time for neither shave nor shower so i feel gross. i brought my minidisk but neglected to record, like a dope. i sold a t-shirt and a zine to a woman i had never seen before. don’t worry- there’s plenty left.
jpb: juwana buy a t-shirt?
steph oreto: thanks, hon, but i don’t need anything with rainbows, birds, or peace on it. (walks away)
samia (whispers): you should make her a special shirt.
mike leslie: yeah- one that only has “of” on it.
rainbow bird of peace plays tonight at cool beans with
plan for yesterday duly accomplished, but for the john oswald box set (+
jad fair & daniel johnston
+ art ensemble of chicago
check the ups online tracker this morning, it says delivered at 9:15
yesterday, signed for by DWELLEY. who dwelley? where my goods? if they got
delivered wrong (and they must have, becasue who at my house is kicking
around at 9:15?), i can (and will) risk the ‘elitist’ tag by saying that
whosoever recieved them is just not going to like them, and what’s more
they are worth dick to area cd resellers. this does not bode well. last night i stayed up late to watch a movie about harry houdini. good in that it was about harry houdini (who i like), bad in that it starred tony curtis (who i don’t nesseccarily dislike, but…).
a comment made by tim regarding this lloyd character (“he’s a fucking narc”) reminds me of a funny key piece of information – he is or was a store detective at media play. in other words, an anti-punk rock force. so there you go.
so the show was alright. it was weird seeing bands on a stage (vs. bands playing on the floor) and with mics on the drums and everything. i like bands on the floor so much more. i didn’t realize until halfway through the show that the reason duane wanted me there on the mic was because of lloyd. lloyd is this creepy businessman (of cafe abba / m.a.f.i.o. non-fame) who puts on all-ages shows for a yet-to-be-determined reason. it seems like he does it just so he can be in charge of something. anyway he gets on the mic and just says dumb shit like “how about another round of applause for the band?”. i don’t know- i guess it’s hard to articulate. basically, this guy creeps me out and i’d bet dollars to donuts that he’d creep you out too. so duane wanted me there to prevent lloyd from saying anything (at which task i failed).
there’s a container full of food at my house that literally has my name on it. i’m going to race home after work, eat that food, listen to those borges lectures i got in the mail (score), take a nap, and wait for the ups guy to bring me the new john oswald box set. oh it’s gonna be sweet.