Summery, Hot Und Sweaty

I've been playing around with my new D-SLR, a toy for boys and girls. Thank you, thank you to L., Monsieur Crosby, and cats Edgy and Obi.




*

The schedule for this year's Central Park Summerstage has been announced, and boy is it a doozy. Aside from the likes of Sonny Rollins and Sharon Jones and her Dapkings taking to the stage to play freak-out jazz and nu-soul, there will also be a reading from Junot Diaz. What's great is that most of these concerts are free of charge.

Now, I don't know about y'all, but I know where I'm going to be on Saturday, August 16 from 3pm to 8pm. That's right--I'll be front row, center to see three of my favorite bands on a single bill: BLACK DICE, BATTLES, and GANG GANG DANCE. How sick is that? Also, did I mention that this is a free concert?

Man, you have to love New York for stuff like this.

[D|R]

No! It must be finely manicured!

This is the quote of the day by Mr. Rivera, in reference to the type of moustache I hypothetically scribble onto his book cover image of I, the everyman character in Stephen Dixon's book of the same name, who peeks out from beneath a cut-out capital I. But, as he informs us, I is not I; I is the person in which he is writing the stories. He prefers the handlebar to the bush. I fake this gesture on purpose, as the I who seeks to rile him as he reads said stories. If I wanted to deface Danny's "I", that is Dixon's "I", I would draw a Tom Selleck-style moustache onto I's clean white upper lip. Danny puts my papers into tidy piles. His I does not like stray paper or hairs. His eyes are black pools flanked by palm leaves. His lashes jut out like a Jersey shore jug handle. They brush against frames and cheeks. Unflitting as flames, his I's are felt ink.

Notes:

I, it should be noted, am everywoman.

A jug handle is, contrary to popular belief, not a reference to the act of boob-holding, but a type of ramp or slip road that changes the way traffic turns left (when driving on the right). Instead of a standard left turn made from the left lane, left-turning traffic uses a ramp on the right side of the road. Signage can appear to be haphazard and confusing to out-of-state drivers.

Keep the Faith

Lonely, I'm Mr. Lonely
I have nobody for my own
I am so lonely, I'm Mr. Lonely
Wish I had someone to call
on the phone

Last Friday I caught the opening of Harmony Korine's latest movie, Mister Lonely, at the IFC Center. The film, the first from Korine in a number of years, centers around a down-on-his-luck Michael Jackson impersonator eking out a living on the streets of Paris. One afternoon, while performing at an old folks' home, Jackson (played by Diego Luna, who starred opposite Gabriel Garcia Bernal in Y Tu Mama Tambien) is visited by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. "Marilyn," delicately portrayed by Samantha Morton, urges "Michael" to move to a commune, comprised entirely of celebrity impersonators, located in the Scottish highlands. There, she insists, the inhabitants are free to be themselves, and the path to youth will exist for eternity. The irony, of course, is that the characters, under their own volition, exist as a product of others' creative imaginations; as a result, their identities are stripped and entirely subsumed by the musicians and actors whose traits they try so desperately to perfect. Mimicking celebrity, it seems, has its price.

Elsewhere, in the rain forests of Panama, a German priest, smartly acted by Warner Herzog, oversees a group of nuns--flying nuns no less--who are able to escape death because they fervently believe that their faith is strong enough to carry them to safety. This seemingly unrelated narrative thread adds little to the film's overall theme--anything is possible if you believe in yourself--since it succumbs, at one end, to cynicism; at the other end, to pure sap. I'm not sure if Korine was trying to comment on the nature of religion or human fallibility, but it's hard to come up with a reason for why he chose to address these themes at such an angle.

To be fair, the film has some funny--no, brutally funny--moments, but I was expecting an effort with a lot more edge from the artist who wrote the screenplay to Kids, and who directed Gummo, a disturbing look at Midwestern disillusionment. (Both films are not for those who deplore violence, and who also happen to like domesticated animals.) It is this humor, at times dark yet playful, that is a fixture in Korine's work, and which prevents Mister Lonely, already so strangely close to a conventional Hollywood offering, from becoming a complete loss.

It's always disappointing when the best thing about a movie is its soundtrack, and so it goes: J. Spaceman (of Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized) and Sun City Girls have written terribly effective mood pieces for a film that, given its focus, rises and falls with the characters' attempts at redemption. My personal favorite is Sun City Girls' "Circus Theme," which reminds me a great deal of Firewater's "El Borracho."

So, on a scale of one to four graduate film students, I give Mister Lonely a rating of two.

Links:
Trailer--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ufN1RxFu-4
Review--http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/movies/02lone.html?scp=2&sq=mister+lonely&st=nyt

[D | R]

Crazy 80s

The other night, I was trying to stump my darling by asking how many obscure and semi-obscure Eighties bands she had on her iPod (quite a few, it turned out). It got me thinking about all sorts of bands, many of which I didn't even like or I knew only glancingly, whose names are nevertheless lodged in the nether regions of my brain (or the netherlands, as they are known in Holland). Wither Run Westy Run? Scruffy the Cat? Ed's Redeeming Qualities? The Wolfgang Press? The Screaming Blue Messiahs? The Woodentops? The Hoodoo Gurus? Aztec Camera? Concrete Blonde? Stump? Shriekback? The BoDeans? The Del Fuegoes? The dBs? Icicle Works? Romeo Void? Lets's Active? The Feelies? Christmas? Phranc? The Wonder Stuff? The Go-Betweens? Is Greg Kihn's love still in jeopardy? O Motels, can only the lonely still play?

Panix

I'm sending the new Portishead record, Third, through my ears right now, and can surely say that I've never felt so creeped out listening to music. This album, which bears very little of the signature trip-hop sound which made Portishead famous, sounds positively psychedelic, with fuzzed-out guitars, organ stomps, and Beth Gibbon's mood-dulling vocals push, push, pushing me into my myself.

If I were to describe what this album sounds like to a stranger (perhaps you are one), I would use the following phrases: panic room, negative space, and Christ, I'm suffocating in my own presence.

Seriously, I feel uncomfortable.

*

The fine(r) folks over at McSweeney's are having a sale this week: today, all items in their store are 30% off; tomorrow, all items will be 20% off; and all items on Thursday will be 10% off.

I think I'll treat myself to a couple of books by Stephen Dixon which, as a bundle, are being sold for a grand total of $15. Go forth and help our struggling economy!

http://store.mcsweeneys.net/

[DR]

Not the North Fork

LM (Montauk Morning)

Apropos Appropriation

Hey, Archie McPhee! You ask, Who is Senor Misterioso? Well, if you weren't such a gringo, you'd know that he's Dr. Jose Gregorio Hernandez, future patron saint of Venezuela and a lesser deity in the syncretic cult of Maria Lionza.

Amazing what you learn while staring into the window of the Botanica San Antonio. But if the blessed Dr. Hernandez can do double duty as a Catholic and cult saint, he can certainly fill in as a hipster icon.

{gc}

Pinsky Tells It Like It Is

It's all about that last line, friends:

Frequently asked questions about poetry

I Don't Wanna Be a Pinhole No More

I just met a camera that I could go for:

Dowloadable Pinhole Cameras.

For, you know, photography, nudge nudge wink wink say no more.

Use Your Lightning Bolt!

At long last, the perfect storm of the literary and the geeky, all for a good cause.

I think I might actually do this. After all, there will be, you know, girls.

I would make this the Video of the Day, but I can't quite figure out how to do that.

{gc}

Selections from Cane

Oracular.
Redolent of fermenting syrup,
Purple of the dusk,
Deep-rooted cane.

Georgia Dusk

The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The settling sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night's barbecue,

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
Soft settling pollen where ploughed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.

Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of fromer domicile.

Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footprints of the swamp.

Their voices rise . . . the pine trees are guitars,
Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . . .
There voices rise . . . the chorus of the cane
Is carolling a vesper to the stars.

O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.


Evening Song

Full moon rising on the waters of my heart,
Lakes and moon and fires,
Cloine tires,
Holding her lips apart.

Promises of slumber leaving shore to charm the moon,
Miracle made vesper-keeps,
Cloine sleeps,
And I'll be sleeping soon.

Cloine, curled like the sleepy waters where the moonwaves start,
Radiant, resplendently she gleams,
Cloine dreams,
Lips pressed against my heart.


--Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

In Heavy Rotation (Deep Spinner)

1. Thom Yorke - The Eraser - [XL; 2006]
2. Daft Punk - Alive 2007 - [Virgin; 2007]
3. Against Me! - New Wave - [Sire; 2007]
4. The Black Keys - Attack & Release - [Nonesuch; 2008]

Refuse to listen at yr own peril.

Tragically yours,
[DR]

New American Tragedies

During one afternoon a couple of years ago at City College, while taking a study break in the English majors' lounge, I decided to look through the department's collection of literary journals, some of which dated back some thirty years. I could not help but wonder, as the name of writer after unknown writer passed over my eyes, whether, in time, another young man would come across my own work in some journal, and whether he would take a brief second to consider my life, my desires and impulses, my place in a world that measures its citizens by the weight of language. A grief then came over me, not because I feared that I would one day join the ranks of minor, forgotten writers (there are far worse identities to be had, to be sure), but because it occurred to me that so much of the writing life, this true circus, is about glorified failure, ready-made.

*

All of this is to say that I haven't written a single line of creative work since December 2007, which leads me to a certain preoccupation: Will the urge to write, once seemingly natural and ingrained, return? Will it be a matter of time before pen is set against paper, or will I have to relinquish that title, dear writer, I've worked so hard to develop?

*

Outside, somewhere in Prospect Park, parents are cheering their well-trained children, dressed in clean, multi-colored uniforms, running on the basepaths--perhaps at the expense of their own lives.

*

I should clarify that second point: I wrote a line of poetry just yesterday. It is only a line, a brief and not altogether good one, which, for the sake of readers not aware of the concept of failure, I shall keep to myself.

*

And now, a chorus of seven Vespas, so foreign, in a formation normally the domain of fighter pilots, on the road just beyond her third-floor window.

[D - R]

Drown

Junot Diaz has been awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a rich, funny, and full work that examines the Dominican immigrant experience and the ways in which the past refuses to release its hold on those who insist on living in the present.

Diaz, who arrived in the United States as a young child without knowing a word of English, is the second Latino to win the prize; the first such author was CCNY alum Oscar Hijuelos, who won for his sex- and drink-riddled novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, published in 1990. (This book would later be adapted into a film and, uh, a Broadway musical.)

While I do not know Mr. Diaz personally, I still feel quite proud that, in a country which insists its Latino immigrants are little more than border-jumping thugs, he has been able to reach this level of professional success.

The winners in poetry:

Robert Hass, for Time and Materials
Philip Schultz, for Failure

Congratulaciones, Junot, y mucha suerte!

[D | R]

W.

Isn't a bit early for this?

And who, I wonder, would you cast?

Just another karaoke hit...

Six o'clock already
I was just in the middle of a dream
I was kissin' Valentino
By a crystal blue Italian stream
But I can't be late
'Cause then I guess I just won't get paid
These are the days
When you wish your bed was already made

It's just another manic Monday
I wish it was Sunday
'Cause that's my funday
My I don't have to runday
It's just another manic Monday

Have to catch an early train
Got to be to work by nine
And if I had an air-o-plane
I still couldn't make it on time
'Cause it takes me so long
Just to figure out what I'm gonna wear
Blame it on the train
But the boss is already there

All of the nights
Why did my lover have to pick last night
To get down
Doesn't it matter
That I have to feed the both of us
Employment's down
He tells me in his bedroom voice
C'mon honey, let's go make some noise
Time it goes so fast
When you're having fun

Six Degrees of Everything

Last night, I saw one of the most enchanting (in the fullest sense of that word) and enigmatic films ever, Wojciech Has' The Saragossa Manuscript (1965). It's playing this week at BAM--I can't recommend it highly enough, even thought it's three hours long and has an utterly puzzling ending. It's at once more accessible and more mysterious than Last Year in Marienbad (which was the last movie I saw before this... all I need now is another viewing of Memento and I'll be fully Meta).

Thursday night, my friend Jennie invited me to the NYC Ukulele Festival to see her beau's band Dreamboat. They were delightful (in the fullest sense of that word, too): sort of what Combustible Edison would have sounded like in a pile-up with The Squirrel Nut Zippers and The Style Council.

Wednesday night, I was reading David Halberstam's fairly brilliant and densely textured history of the Korean War, The Coldest Winter. In 1967 Halberstam, working as a foreign correspondant, was kicked out of Poland after writing an article criticizing the first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, Wladyslaw Gomulka. He took his Polish wife of two years with him, the utterly gorgeous actress Elzbieta Czyzewska... who just happens to be one of the stars of The Saragossa Manuscript.

A sleep trance, a dream dance,
A shared romance,
Synchronicity...

{gc}

In Memoriam MLK (and K.L.O.*)

from Parturition
by Mina Loy

I am a circle
Of a center of pain
Exceeding its boundaries in every direction

The business of the bland sun
Has no affair with me
In my congested cosmos of agony
From which there is no escape
On infinitely prolonged nerve-vibrations
Or in contraction
To the pin-point nucleus of being

. . .

Pain is no stronger than the resisting force
Pain calls up in me
The struggle is equal

. . .

Relaxation
Negation of myself as a unit
Vacuum interlude
I should have been emptied of life
Giving life
For consciousness in crises races
Through the subliminal deposits of evolutionary processes

. . .

LIFE
A leap with nature
Into the essence
Of unpredicted Maternity
Against my thigh
Touch of infinitesimal motion
Scarcely perceptible
Undulation
Warmth moisture
Stir of incipient life
Precipitating into me
The contents of the universe

Mother I am
Identical
With infinite Maternity
Indivisible
Acutely
I am absorbed
Into
The was—is—ever—shall—be
Of cosmic reproductivity

Rises from the subconscious
Impression of a cat
With blind kittens
Among her legs
Same undulating life-stir
I am that cat

. . .

The next morning
Each woman-of-the-people
Tip-toeing the red pile of carpet
Doing hushed service
Each woman-of-the-people
Wearing a halo
A ludicrous little halo
Of which she is sublimely unaware
I once heard in church
—Man and woman God made them—
Thank God.


* Kitties’ Lady Organs

The End of History: On Baseball & Memory

Every year around this time, with the opening of a new season of Major League baseball, I cannot help but to think of possibility and promise. I also think of those times during my childhood when life was little more than launching tennis balls over chain-link fences with a wiffle bat, trading baseball cards with Nelson ("Do you have Don Mattingly?"), visiting the Stadium to watch my beloved Yankees, or trying to find a left-hander's mitt that felt just right. It all sounds like nostalgia, sure, but to me baseball is far larger than training one's eye on the trajectory of a curveball, tight and sharp; the game, rich with contradictions and history, is representative of life as an adult: the brute force of the daily grind versus the grace and candor of time spent with family, loved ones.

*

I'll never forget the first time, during the early 1990's, when I walked through the gates of Yankee Stadium. I remember gasping at the sight of the infield, the empty seats, and the famed facade, a hold-over from the Stadium's early years, when names like Ruth, Mantle, Maris, and DiMaggio held significance not only over the rest of professional sports, but over New York City itself. It all seems so much smaller on TV, I thought to myself as the Yankees warmed up on the field prior to playing the Milwaukee Brewers (then still a team in the Central Division of the American League), and of course the Stadium was much larger in real life than it could appear on television or in the mind of a little boy.

On that evening, whose warmth I still feel every single time that I hand my ticket to an usher at the Stadium, I heard for myself the thunderous crack of bat meeting ball--"that's a home run!"--and was witness, for the first of many chances, the home team managing to eke out a win in the early summer, in what would be another hopeless season (the Yankees would only win about sixty-five games that year).

Oh, to feel that wonder again.

*

My Dad accompanied me to a Yankee game once and promptly fell asleep. His verdict? "So boring!"

We haven't seen eye-to-eye since.

*

During my sophomore year in college, I decided to take a summer job at Shea Stadium, home of the Mets (just like the "Cathedral" in the Bronx, the ballpark in Flushing is due to come down after the end of the current season). It was one of those thankless jobs, one of many that young people take in order to make some money during the time between semesters, in which I was charged with selling bottles of Coca-Cola, hot dogs, popcorn, ice cream, lemon ices, and, if lucky, cotton candy.

With my Mets jersey, to which a button with the price of a soda ($3.25) was attached, I walked into the stands and belted out my tired refrain:

Hot dogs! Get yer hot dogs, heee-ah!
Ice cream, ice cream! Get yer ice cream, heeeeeee-ahhhhhhh!

The most I ever made during a game that season was $50. The least I ever made was $3.00, when I was told to sell lemon ices during a game in which a massive rain storm passed over Shea. Needless to say, the stands were empty when the skies cleared during the sixth inning, and I walked around trying to sell ices to the fans that decided to remain, over and over. Over and over I walked, the ices melting, melting...

*

Yankee Stadium, like so many other fields before it (Seattle's Kingdome and Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium come to mind), will be razed at the conclusion of the 2008 season, will meet its fate with crane and wrecking ball. With it will go the memories that I've accumulated over the years: the yelling, the tears, the pure joy that could only be the product of the perfect game that is baseball, of a creation that, in some ways, is more about myth than reality.

*

A new season has begun. Will my team reach another World Series, or will I have to keep making excuses for a collection of players who make upwards of $200 million?

*

I know I am more whole, somehow more alive, when I am holding a ball in my left hand, its red seams tightly wound and crisp, staring a batter down into oblivion.

[D | R]

Dogs schooling babies

CLOSE THAT!
CRAWL!

Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week

The Spring 2008 issue of The One Three Eight is now live (more or less).

Send "Get Well" wishes to my dear Myella, who is stuck in the hospital tonight instead of hosting a fabulous dinner on Roosevelt Island! (Insert very sad face here)

{gc}

kitty pitties

yes, i'm a dorky new-mom, i'll own it. but do note my stealthy silence a la national geographic. (ummm, but you can stop watching once they run into the closet: they don't come out.)

Pop Matters

The fine folks at Fence--following the model that Radiohead used last year for In Rainbows--have announced that they are accepting subscriptions to be paid at whatever price level that readers decide is appropriate. I might just have to drop a shiny gold $1 coin for this one...

http://www.fenceportal.org/support/

*

My brother, Steve, did really well in his interview at Hunter College, and has been accepted into the MFA program at the school. Congratulations, Steve!

*

I was listening last night to the 25th anniversary edition of Michael Jackson's landmark Thriller album (released in 1982 on Epic), and was taken by how fresh the songs sounded despite the massive changes in pop music since Quincy Jones set the tracks to tape. And did anyone remember the 3-4-5 listing of "Thriller," "Beat It," and "Billie Jean"? Seriously, you just can't fuck with that shit.

Sick, sick, sick.

*

Anti-pop Consortium, once disbanded, has reformed. Hurrah! for underground, progressive, weird, and simply strange hip-hop. Their video for "Ghostlawns," taken from Arrhythmia, is the GMC Video of the Day.

[ d | r ]

Threefer Thursday

1) Two of my poems, "Sea-Change" and "Ghazal (Not Guzzle)" will appear in the Fall 2008 issue of Big City Lit.

2) Did I mention that I saw the Mountain Goats at Webster Hall last week? I saw the Mountain Goats at Webster Hall last week. They played my favorite song. What more can you ask?

3) Richard Widmark passed away at age 93. Lead in the obit? His star-making role as the sadistic killer Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death (1947), memorably alluded to in Don DeLillo's White Noise. In case you've never seen it, he ties Victor Mature's mother to her wheelchair with a drapery cord, and then pushes her down a flight of stairs while he giggles fiendishly. Highly recommended (the movie, not pushing helpless old ladies down flights of stairs).

{gc}

March Madness

We come to love this newness that repeats itself
like a virus. Just remember, do not kill the golden goose.

How the Romans Celebrated:
XCIX Bottles of Wine on the Wall, XCIX Bottles of Wine,
And if one of those bottles should happen to fall,
XCVIII bottles of wine on the wall...
And the ditty never ends for the ancients did not use the number "zero".

Tonight, the moon is a giant golden egg, or a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup I licked all the chocolate off of.

Emily and I once entered an egg-toss competition at Gold Key Lake. She was annoyed at me for underthrowing her. We lost in the final round when I overthrew her and it cracked on her forehead.

Hideki Matsui may be replaced as my new favorite baseball player by Japanese-Iranian Yu Darvish, a 6-foot-5 whirling dervish known as baseball's rebellious 'Elvis'.

"There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know...she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron."

Sprung Rhythm & Blues

Latest evidence of my wanderings can be found over on Flickr in The Ides of March.

There was something on NPR the other morning about some guy who has written a verse novel about werewolves in Los Angeles. I turned it off in disgust, I'm not sure why.

I was walking through Sheridan Square yesterday on my way to see Last Year in Marienbad at Film Forum when I saw the first harbinger of spring: the street festival. I did not, however, buy cheap socks or enjoy $1 Thai food.

Remember the advice of Jolie Holland, friends:

Springtime, springtime can kill you
Just like it did poor me
Don't you see we're all hurt the same way
So get out, get out of your house.

{gc}

Happy Easter, Bunnies!

Ain't That the Truth, Sister

Recognize the Poison of My Heart

I was going to write about The Kills' latest album, Midnight Boom, until I read that Portishead, a band which, along with the likes of Tricky and Massive Attack popularized a sub-genre of electronic music known as trip-hop, had released the video for "Machine Gun," their new single (released in advance of their forthcoming record, Third--their first full-length recording in ten years). The song, propelled by Geoff Barrow's flurry of sixteenth notes played on and distorted through a drum machine (lending the track something of an industrial feel), is slightly different than what one might expect to hear from this group, even though Beth Gibbon's strangely inviting voice is still quite present.

Third is out on April 29 via Mercury.

[dr]

alien sightings

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Two Poems by Linh Dinh

Caption

Before photography, people didn't exist.
Blow it up, I'm in the doctored details

In this picture, and this one, I'm in
Each photo, in the cool blur, in the

Brown cloud, my tiny head redrawn,
My splayed limbs cropped. I hammed.

I'm telling you, I've slept many times
With near celebrities. True, I'm lying

Face down, here, in the mud, my pants
stained with too much clarity. My bones

May dissolve in a toxic tub, but long
As this photo shall last, I won't fade.

*

Not Quite Symmetry

Broke, I'd like to borrow your lower half,
Wear it for a day, to make some coins. I'd

Love to enter you, snug, but not through
The usual channel. You can invade me,

Feel my convexity, as I'm ventilated
By your absence, there, in the crotch.

My eyes shaded by your eyelids, I'll
Conform to your nose's architecture,

Breathe this life through your nostrils.

--as published in the March 2008 issue of The Brooklyn Rail

MFA! MFA! MFA!

Anywhere But Here (2007); acetate, wood, wheels, rope, spray paint.

My brother, Steve, has applied for enrollment in the MFA in Painting program at Hunter College. He's passed through the first round of the screening process; his formal interview with the art department is today. Please wish him luck!

Bling Bling Clink Clink

Congratulations to Reagan and Benny from your GMC friends and family! Pass the Bombay Sapphire...

America: the beautiful, the bad and the ugly

The beauty of the suburbs is that you're not stuck without a place to say, buy condoms in an emergency and you can often see the stars. The bad thing about the suburbs is that you're stuck. The good thing about the car is that it enables us to travel far distances in order to say, have sex (and experience scenes such as the one in this famed Ruscha photo). The bad thing about the car, besides oil, is that it relegates us to our individual, private spheres (and makes us lazy and fat, thus creating the need for more roadside Waffle Houses--a vicious yet delicious cycle). Road trip anyone?

The Fall of Man

Like so many New Yorkers, I've been trying to make sense of the sex scandal in which Eliot Spitzer now finds himself, and which has left New York in something of a political limbo. At first, I reasoned that the scandal was about the widening gap between our private and public lives, as well as the puritanical view of sexuality so prevalent in this country. But then it occurred to me that I was being far too easy on the disgraced governor, and that the issue was much larger than the role conservative value systems play in our lives. What is actually important, I concluded, is that Mr. Spitzer, a politician who rose to power on a platform of integrity and a seeming desire to end corruption from Wall Street to Albany, abused his power and took advantage of the faith given by constituents--wrecking not just a promising political career, but also humiliating his family in the process. (His wife, Silda Spitzer, has appeared at both of the governor's press conferences this week; she was seen earlier today with heavy eyes; it was clear that she had been crying.)

I should say that I am surprised at these developments, but given the nature of the allegations and his take-no-prisoners approach to crime as attorney general, I should have seen it all along.

[d\r]

Of Mice and (Other Four-Legged Critters)

Dinosaur BBQ, the Grand Marquis Coterie's dining establishment of choice, was recently inspected by the NYC Department of Health, and subsequently received a number of stomach-churning citations, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility's food and/or non-food areas.

• Evidence of rats or live rats present in facility's food and/or non-food areas.

At eighteen violation points, the restaurant missed the threshold of twenty-eight points, which would have triggered an official "Notice of Violation." According to the Department of Health, "(t)he violation point total is above the average violation point total of 14, for all NYC restaurants on their most recent inspection."

So, who's up for some ribs?

*

"Forty years of solitude would have been enough." - Jorge Luis Borges on Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

*

The GMC Video of the Week is "Nasty Dan," by Johnny Cash. Featuring Oscar the Grouch, it is pretty much the best thing ever. Also, I'd like to think that the song is about me.

Thanks to GMC Category A member, Marquis de Modig, for this week's selection. High five!

*

I'm totally rocking the unironic ironic moustache right now. Photograph evidence of said facial hair configuration is not forthcoming. My apologies to all interested parties.

[d/r]

Rejection Guidelines

Don't blame bad timing (the "it's not you" routine
is tired). Don't invite us to send you something
else or say please try again (a video game death).
Don't say I like these but somehow they’re just
not quite there yet (Will they ever be ready?) No,
don't thank us for thinking of you. After all,
you are too busy, too good for paper and words.
Smoke our poems instead—reduce, reuse them!
Roll them up, put your lips to them, turn them
into a high. Inhale our burning ink, fill the room
with your laughter and smoke, tap, tap
our fallen images on your ashtrays.

Mea Culpa, Mea Ultima Culpa

Anyone who has been in a bookstore within the last ten years has noticed the surge in popularity of the memoir: from The Liars' Club to Persepolis and Fun Home, readers have taken to stories of drug addiction, physical abuse, sexual identity, and alcoholism - just to name a few of the tantalizing topics covered by memoirists - to the point where publishers have no choice but to respond. The troubling issue for writers, it seems, is how to tap into the demand for this kind of work without having to twist the truth, without having to stretch the details of their personal histories. Unfortunately, as publicly discredited authors like James Frey have noticed (his pseudo-memoir A Million Little Pieces, originally offered to publishers as a work of fiction, achieved notoriety after parts of the book were revealed to have been embellished), it may not be possible for the truth, that irrepressible notion so in demand by us all, to fit within the pages of a non-fiction manuscript--especially if one wants to see that manuscript sold.

Now comes word that another recently published and praised memoir, Love and Consequences by Margaret P. Jones, is fabricated; its writer has been exposed as a fraud. Jones, the nom de plume of a certain Margaret Seltzer, writes the story of having grown up in a foster home in South-Central Los Angeles, sold drugs, and was part American Indian (no one cay say that Americans don't appreciate the exotic). It turns out, however, that Ms. Seltzer grew up under entirely different circumstances, and that the details as expressed in her work were nothing more than lies.

In the end, what are our responsibilities as writers, whether or not we choose to write non-fiction? Is there room for the "truth" in the memoir/autobiography? Should readers care if writers take artistic license for the sake of creating compelling stories? And why do readers keep returning to these books?

Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04fake.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
http://www.slate.com/id/2134203/

*

The GMC Video of the Week is "Ready for the Floor," by Hot Chip. The song, taken from the band's newly-released third album, Made in the Dark, is an absolute banger, replete with slinky, hip-shaking rhythms that are sure to make the kids dance with wanton abandon. The album itself features a handful tracks that can only be described as balladry at its beautiful best, especially when set in contrast to the bleeps and other percolating sounds that are heard on songs like "Hold On" and "Don't Dance."

Besides, how can you go wrong with a video that features the lead singer as the Joker?

http://www.hotchip.co.uk/site/

*

Only twenty days and counting until Opening Day in Major League Baseball. I've got my MATTINGLY - #23 t-shirt all ready to go!

http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp

[D | R]

Footnotes on the Body

1. a spike of ice formed when water dripping or falling from another object freezes.

2. Furniture and photos are divorced from the attic. Does the movement of dust mean they are dead?

3. One thing the great poet confessed before biting into her doughnut: a good poem writes itself as if it doesn't care--never let on that within this finite space, your whole being is heavy with a need to emote infinitely. (Jenny Boully)

4. I am wet from waiting for a bus.

5. Thus, when the bizarrely costumed criminal known as _____________ appeared upon the scene later that same day, wielding a unique weapon capable of instantly ________ moisture in the air, _________ presumed he was actually _________, who had stolen __________ invention.

6. A man and his son

7. Recall the dream. The turtle does not like to be on his back
because that way he cannot carry.

8. The cries next door are both quieter and louder than before.
Somehow they made a chute too narrow for my garbage. Hoist.

9. Why should I kill myself worrying when I’ll end up just as dead? (Antonio Ricci)

10. Beluga whales craft long slow waves. The strain that follows the moan.

11. Set in post-World War II Rome, “The Bicycle Thief” tells a simple story well, relying for its impact on gritty realism and emotional verity. (Culture Vulture)

12. The man was caught lying in an alley by a citizen.

13. My icicle got stolen. It is vital for my job. Ladri. Ladri.

14. I. Spy with my little eye...

15. The chair and the bench are missing their stuffing. The holster, upholster.

16. The height of a sail, signals echo from ship to ship.

17. Marigolds! The marigolds were particularly lovely that year.

18. No need to reply to this mast of messages.

19. The yellowing of this photo. Sometimes saying the word lilac suggests a woman in white.

20. This plot synopsis is empty. Add a synopsis.

Dedo’s Notebooks

(Modigliani’s words are interspersed with those of Lunia Czechowska, who sat for one of his last portraits, not long before he died. This 1907 snapshot from his notebook is translated below.)

What I am searching for is neither the real nor the unreal, but the Subconscious, the mystery of what is Instinctive in the human Race.

He painted with such passion and fervor that the picture fell from the easel onto his head when he bent forward to try to view it close up.

I am also trying to formulate with the greatest lucidity the truths of art and life I have discerned scattered among the beauties of Rome, and as their inner meaning becomes clear to me I shall seek to reveal and rearrange their composition, I could almost say metaphysical architecture, to create out of it my truth of life, beauty and art.

This startled me. He was sorry to have frightened me and so smiled at me gently and began singing Italian songs to make me forget the incident.

We others (excuse the plural) have different rights from normal people, for we have different needs which place us above their morality. It is our duty never to be consumed by the sacrificial fire. Your real duty is to save your dream. Beauty too has some painful duties: these produce, however, the noblest achievements of the soul.

As a sitter you had the impression that your soul was being dissected.

To do any work, I must have a living person. I must be able to see him opposite me…

I can still see him standing before me now with his short sleeves and his tousled hair as he attempted to capture my features on the canvas.

Isn’t this the aim of friendship: to shape and exalt the will according to its bent, to reveal each to the other and to ourselves? Goodbye.

While I was preparing dinner, he asked me to lift my head for a few moments and by the light of a candle, he drew a beautiful sketch on which he wrote:

La Vita ~ un Dono: dei pochi ai molti: di Coloro che Sanno e che banno a Coloro che non Sanno e che non banno.

Life is a Gift: from the few to the many; from Those who Know and have to Those who do not Know and have not.

The Sincerest Form

I wish to be congratulated on my ability to hit "View Wireless Networks" fifty times before I finally manage to piggyback on to someone else's wifi (favorite wifi network name in my hood: "Fucking Pay For It." Second favorite: "We ARE Fucking Paying For It.")

*

Cat Power's version of Michael Hurley's "Werewolf Song" is a very weak sister compared to Hurley's original.

*

Green Mountains Review say they liked "Honeymoon W/Smoke" and to try again. The Indiana Review just says keep trying. So it goes.

*

After seeing El Orfanato (by myself, alas), my sincere desire to make horror movies is stronger, and farther out of reach, than ever.

*

Currently in rotation:

The Mountain Goats, Heretic Pride
Gogol Bordello, Super Taranta
Ben Webster, At the Renaissance
Mahler's Sixth

*

A limousine driver, whose name I cannot remember, once said:

"The most important thing is concentration. Like, when you write a poem, you concentrate on the freaking poem, right? When they drive, most people do driving, twenty-per cent; good-looking girls on the side of the road, thirty per cent; and then coffee--of course, very much coffee--twenty-five per cent. What I am doing--fuck everything else--I am focussing on driving."

{gc}

The View from Here

Winter Tash

Let It Snow

Just found out that I don't have to trek over to Teaneck to teach; thanks to this fabulous winter weather, the campus of Fairleigh-Dickinson University is closed.

This might be my first true Snow Day since, oh, 1978.

In honor, I reproduce Louis MacNeice's most anthologized poem, "Snow."


The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes --
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands--
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Cold Spells

I would like to be congratulated for being the last person in the known universe to have acquired a high-speed internet connection, which is pure genius. I can now download all sorts of songs, recipes, and instructions for constructing ray-guns without having to wait for what feels like weeks.

*

Cat Power's version of "New York, New York" (simply "New York") makes me tremble: If this is emotional tyranny, then I don't want freedom.

*

cold-drill, the journal of the MFA program at Boise State University, has accepted "This Medicine May Cause Blurred Vision" for publication.

*

After seeing Il Postino again (with Laura, this time), that terribly sweet film about love and exile, I remain convinced that poetry does have some sort of purpose, that it does, indeed, have a place in the lives of the [un]common, the now.

*

Currently in rotation:

Sons & Daughters - "Chains"
Bruce Springsteen - "Radio Nowhere"
Paul Westerberg - "High Time"
Asian Dub Foundation - "Naxalite"

*

The poet, whose name I cannot recall at the moment, says:

We love what we cannot know...

[d | r]

Tragically Poet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P3FLz3Ky08

Winter Trees

The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing.
Memories growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.

Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery,
Truer than women,
They seed so effortlessly!
Tasting the winds, that are footless,
Wasit-deep in history.

Full of wings, otherworldliness.
In this, they are Ledas.
O mother of leaves and sweetness
Who are these pietas?
The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but easing nothing.

Sylvia Plath

(Paradise Pond at Smith College, Plath's alma mater and home of her manuscripts, letters, and general memorabilia.)

T. Rex Tuesday?

the new improved Honda Accord coterie needs to reunite over cornbread

and certain crispy fried tomatoes

and beer

what say ye? meet me at the bar at 5:30...

Top Dawg!

Today is a good day. My favorite hound won Best in Show at Westminster...Uno is the first beagle to ever win the 100-year-old canine competition.

No longer an Underdog--Uno beat out two neatly primped poodles, a top Sealyham terrier, a sleek Weimaraner, a lively Australian shepherd and a sprightly Akita.

"He's perfect, he was a 10," Jones said. "He does cuteness well."

Precocious as he was precious, Uno celebrated by chewing on the microphones of reporters who tried to interview his winning crew.

A toy poodle that began the night with 108 best in show prizes stood in Uno's way.

Formally known as K-Run's Park Me in First, Uno came into this competition wagging his white-tipped tail with 32 best in show ribbons overall. He already had become the first beagle to win the hound group since 1939.

Uno breezed in the 15-inch beagle category Monday morning, then took the group several hours later. So while other dogs tried to reach the final ring Tuesday, Uno went on a brisk walk around Manhattan and took a nap beneath his warm, fuzzy blanket.

But when it came time to show, Uno was as ready as ever. He looked around and soaked up the cheers while parading around the ring, the ovation becoming more thunderous with every step. When he made his final stop in front of Jones, Uno went to town. Rather than rely on his golden brown, pleading eyes, he began baying over and over.

Years from now, it'll be known as the "ah-roo!" heard 'round the ring.

The Most Dangerous Direction

reindeer hair and burnt juniper form ribbons tied to the mountains

at night the Duca leave their deer in a sheltered enclosure to protect
them from the cold and wolves

before healing others they must first heal themselves to prove they are
true shamans

the peaks of the mountains rise up behind the hunters

Tsuyan has a second soul
the back of her tent will be cut
to let her body out

the animal has been wounded but it is too late in the day to go after him

the ancestors penetrate the past lives with the present

she appeases the forces of nature by sprinkling tea in all corners

the communists destroyed our idols
so I learned how to tie magic knots
they bound the rivers and mountains
where the ancestors reside

the duca resorted to abstraction

the tea is a nutritious soup with milk and butter and spiced with a salt
which the reindeer cannot resist

her headdress is decorated with rooster feathers, a suit of armor

when all the stars are out it means that the ancestors are present
she strattles the drum as her spirit joins the others waiting for her

a demon has removed an arrow

she points the stick at someone
the message is whispered and veiled in mysterious metaphors

if it is wounded it will go hide in the trees
if it doesn’t snow the dogs will follow the trail

salt preserves the sweetness and connection
the babies are tied to their kin

no shaman has been able to pacify this unpredictable demon

her remains will be hung on a tree
nestled in a house for immortals
her things will be placed nearby within reach
thus she will continue to watch over her people

the hunters have to choose between heading for the pass or going
through the valley

they study the shoulder blade of a charred lamb

the oracle was right
the moose is still in the snow looking up
the dogs pull at its fur

the hunter stabs its back begging for forgiveness
her trance is over

the bone marrow alone is enough to feed a man for an entire day and
the meat for three weeks

otherwise the ghost of the moose will leave black tracks on their trail a curse

the camp moves on as dictated by the reindeer
the most dangerous direction is north

the sun never warms it
the winds rise from it

and the black sky of the dead circles the mountain

{lm}

"Shopping" Poem

I am looking for a map and one more day.
I am looking for a friend in a land of mines.
I am looking for a man with dish-pan hands.
I am looking for a truffle in the Piedmont dirt.
I am looking for a crop circle inside of the mall.
I am looking for a beagle to take home the blue.
I am looking for a bridge that is pretty in the fall.
I am looking for a sign of movement in the wood.
I am looking for a license plate that starts with EVR.
I am looking for a ferris wheel that glows in the dark.
I am looking for a snowball to pour sugar over and lick.
I am looking for a kettle filled with oolong and darjeeling.
I am looking for a set of ten fingers and twenty warm toes.
I am looking for a cat named two-bit to comb its matted fur.
I am looking for a variety of fruit with flesh that sticks to the pit.

{lm}

Girl in the War

Peter said to Paul you know all those words we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go
But now talking to God is Laurel begging Hardy for a gun
I got a girl in the war man I wonder what it is we done

Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
But I got a girl in the war Paul the only thing I know to do
Is turn up the music and pray that she makes it through

Because the keys to the Kingdom got lost inside the Kingdom
And the angels fly around in there but we can’t see them
I got a girl in the war Paul I know that they can here me yell
If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell
If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell

Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
But I got a girl in the war Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain


--Josh Ritter

My Baby Done Left Me (I Got the Grand Marquis Blues)

She rolled away this morning
she didn't even say one word
Oh she rolled away this morning
she didn't even say one word

Was it something I said girl
or something you heard?

I feel like screamin' and cryin'
but that wouldn't do no good
I feel like screamin' and cryin'
but that wouldn't do no good

She took all my money, 
you know I knew she would. 

I never had the GM blues
as bad as this before
No i never had the GM blues
quite as bad as this before

My parking spot's empty now
people I can't rest no more

My baby done left me
out in the cold
My baby done left me
yeah out in the cold

They swept the street behind her
as she got up and rolled

My baby done left me
and she won't come home
My baby done left me
no she won't come home

I said where you going baby
she said I'm free to roam

A Diminutive Poem

I. Purge

“With so much nausea and diarrhea, I thought for two days that I was dying,” said an unidentified Chinese man after eating a frozen dumpling.
“They tasted bitter. I felt dizzy some 30 seconds after I had them and collapsed," said an 18-year-old boy. Five minutes later his 51-year-old father's body started twitching.
The 47-year-old mother could not walk or talk.
“My whole body was paralyzed and my eyes kept watering,” she said. “I don’t want to buy frozen food anymore.”

II. Remember

Japanese researchers have implanted a semiconductor camera inside the hippocampus of a mouse’s brain. The mouse recalled the trauma of his birth and a blue light appeared on a screen. The mouse, now with a mighty headache, will be allowed to walk soon. He does not yet have Parkinson's.

III. Absence

It is the end of January. The mixture of moisture and cold air did not climax enough to produce snow this month in New York City. It was the first time in 75 years. Perhaps there will be a dance of flakes in February. Hold out your tongues.

IV. Bloom

In a frequently fractious farming town, riots broke out yesterday when suspects were arrested for the illegal sale of flowers.

V. Flash

Pandora’s heart beat so fast and loud, that it seemed for a moment to drown all other sounds.

VI. Hope

Should she open the box?

{lm}

And Now, Some Good News

The editors at The Strip, the new literary journal of the graduate creative writing program at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, have been kind enough to accept four poems for publication, including "Narrative," Call Me Father, Call Me Wanting," "The Cartographer," and "Trust."

Now, if I can just get this life business sorted out...

[dr]

The End of an Era

I regret to inform you all that the Grand Marquis breathed its last breath yesterday. It put up a good fight but finally gave up and was officially pronounced dead at 12:02 pm. It took me as far as the beach and went peacefully while parked in the Brooklyn sun. It will find its new home on Monday in junkyard heaven, where the proceeds for its organs and scrap metal will be donated to Cars for Kids. In the meantime, I wish I could have it towed to Raccuglia & Sons Funeral Home, to be paid respect and for a final viewing. I would drape daisies and rosaries over it, and the car radio, if it were working, would play Brown Skin Lady and You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore, concluding with the soundtrack to The Royal Tennenbaums. We would smoke cigars as we listened. The MC would of course be GC, and he would ask if anyone would like to share any memories, the family would greatly appreciate it. After the mass, everyone would follow the white stretch limo stocked with Courvoisier to the junkyard, where Lionel Richie would deliver a tear-jerking elegy, titled "The Power and Girth of My V-8". Following a post-funeral luncheon at my house, the crowd would disperse, and I would proceed to join the downtrodden straphangers with my head up, knowing that it is in a better place and is not suffering anymore. I feel guilty saying this but it will be replaced, hopefully next month, by a 12-year younger, shorter black model that gets kick-ass gas mileage. I will miss it. I will miss its heavy doors that I sometimes had to kick closed, I will miss its windows that never opened when the cops pulled me over, I will miss its cocky old man outbursts, I will miss the junk in its trunk. It had a solid sense of humor. It had irony. It wanted me to tell you it loved you all, and has left something for each of you. For Gregory, it has left its plush back seat and joystick. For Reagan, it has left its disco ball and bevy of double-lined plastic bags. For Danny, it has left its cigar lighter and car radio face plate. For me, it has left its flaccid hood ornament. To honor its memory, I will have its signature three-lined insignia that was once on its grill tattooed on my ass.

Sigur Ros' takk: a found poem

track titles
icelandic | english translation | english pronunciation

takk | thank you | tahk [long a, as in "father"]
glósóli | glowing sole | glow-soul-ih [i as in "hit]
hoppípolla | hopping into puddles | hopp-ee-poddla [both o's are long, as in "aw". a is short in "man"]
með blóðnasir | i have a nosebleed | meth blothe-nasir [th as in "breathe". a is long as in "father"]
sé lest | i see a train | s-ye lest [ye as in "yet"]
sæglópur | lost at sea | sie-glope-urr [sie as in "tie". urr as in purr, r's rolled]
mílanó | milan | milano [accent on first syllable]
gong | gong | gong
andvari | zephyr | andvari [accent on first syllable. both a's are short like "man"]
svo hljótt | so quietly | svo hl-yote [o in "svo" is long as in "saw"]
heysátan | haystack | heys-ow-dan ["ow" as in "owl". a is short as in "man]

Poetry Book Titles...

We must choose carefully how we title our collections. Can you add to this list of sample book titles, boys and girls?

Express Lane Poems
Bounce like Rubber, Stick like Glue
Brazilian Wax
Onion Rings and Gin
Check all that Apply
Do Not Reply to this Message
The Google Bots are Coming to Get You
S.A.S.E.
I Got Your Poems Right Here
How Now Brown Cow?: Poems of the Colombo-American Diaspora
Death Death Death Death Goose
Bitch Bitch Bitch Bitch Duck
Pow right in the kissa.
Light Bathroom Reading
Toilet Paper Scissors
Remove Before Wearing
Occupied by Pi
Pet Therapy for Your Dog
Pack of Bazookas
Bail Me Out! and other aphorisms by Paris Hilton
Post No Bills
I’m Tired of Your Elbow in My Boob
Dearth of Girth
Release the Safety
Is this Supposed to Feel Good?
Raise Questions, Kittens
Punctum Lacrimales
That Night in Reno...
Prison Love Letters
The Circumference of Your Finger
Crackalack Attack

quote of the day by Linh Dinh

“I see violence as a common misfortune and, by extension, fate. It’s what awaits each one of us just around the corner. One cannot think seriously about life without contemplating the destruction of the body. Born in Vietnam, I was baptized early into this awareness. As an adult in Philadelphia, I had many opportunities to gather my bloody evidences.”

Heartbreak Mountain

Ode to WCW

The Blue Shuttlecock

so much depends
upon

a blue shuttle
cock

sliced with fore
hand

below the white
net.


The Popped Corn Kernel

so much depends
upon

a popped corn
kernel

greased with fake
butter

beneath the big
screen.


The Wood Toothpick

so much depends
upon

a wood tooth
pick

lodged between bi-
cuspids

within the pink
canal.


The Pink Snowflake

so much depends
upon

a pink snow
flake

still in Sheep
Meadow

below the red
sun.

Relayed by Carrier Pigeon

1) "It is hard to get heavy objects up in the air; a strong desire to do so is necessary, and a strong driving force to keep them aloft. Some poets sit in airplanes on the ground, raising their arms, sure that they're flying. Some poets ascend for a period of time, then come down again; we have a great many stranded planes." --Elizabeth Bishop (from her notebooks)

2) One of my paper airplanes, "You Give Me Fever," has been accepted for publication in Pearl.

{gc}

It's a Gas!

Neon, that is. Being a poet, eh.

Frank O'Hara Writes a Blurb for Danny Rivera

Danny Rivera writes poems of great mystery and longing, or so he would like you to believe. Rivera could use some time in the real world, out there with the working folk that propel this city, with the types that know a thing or two about strategizing at dominoes, about la vida profunda. He might also want to spend a few successive days at the movies, where he can take a look at characters neither dressed in wire-rimmed glasses and tweed jackets, nor with silk scarves around their necks like swans on a final visit to shore. He should sit in the back row of the Lyceum Theater on 42nd and 7th, that line of seating that never seems to get a visit from an usher, and gauge people's reactions - the slow gasps, moving as though confetti unleashed on that first victory parade along Broadway, especially - to the cowboy, the samurai, and the sad-sad bettor at the racetrack. All he has to do is observe, carefully at that, and learn to live accordingly.

In the meantime, I'll sit here, behind this green Olivetti and with poems by Pierre Reverdy in my pocket, awaiting the time that Rivera wakes up to what he already knows, to what he already feels.

one potato, two potato...

de riv in red ribbon

Why I love/hate New York.

So it's about 4:20 in the morning and I'm fully immersed in R.E.M sleep. I am slowly jarred out of my dreams (and my memory of my dreams) by some very close-sounding music and cackling. I'm confused. Are the Swedes next door throwing a raging party? Is someone blasting their TV? It gets louder. It's coming from outside, 3 stories down. But this is not the usual local teenagers yelling at midnight. I'm pissed. I stumble out of bed to the window and look down. Directly below my bedroom window is a scene out of my dreams or a Fellini movie. There are about 5 couples, dressed in dark outfits, dancing on the sidewalk, dancing some kind of strange ethnic ballroom dance, with their giant van blasting the craziest instrumental music I've ever heard, some kind of traditional Greek or Hebrew party music. Are you kidding me? What kind of music is this? The song is repetitive and strangely hypnotic. And too loud. This cannot go on. And just as I ponder shouting out of the window like an old italian widow (but realize that would be futile as they could never hear me), the music fades. And just like that, the couples rush back into their car like a chinese fire drill and speed off into the dawn.

This was not a dream.

Are these the party roosters who christen the sidewalks of those who are getting old?

The Top Musical Recordings of 2007, an Unbiased Assessment

1. Interpol - Our Love to Admire - [Capitol]

Once maligned for sounding too much like Joy Division - thanks to Paul Banks' morose vocals - Interpol has truly come into its own with this record, on which the band reveals a maturity in massive, sprawling tracks like Our Love's closer, "The Lighthouse." While the comparison's to Manchester's finest will always dog them, Interpol's newest should mark the beginning of some very interesting (important?) music.

2. Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English - [XL]

Moving away from the grime scene in which he made his name, Maths + English finds Dizzee Rascal, a rapper who describes the dystopia that is East London in all its violent, bloody glory, expanding his musical palette to include the funk and rock samples on which old-school hip-hop was founded. What remains strange, though, is Rascal's ambivalence about the gangster lifestyle - he turns from praising the murderers he knows to later questioning those same people - making it difficult to get an idea of the very young man (he's only 21) behind the microphone. What's important, I suppose, is that he still able to write and produce songs that leaves most of his contemporaries by the wayside. [Thanks to Anne for a copy of this record, which was not released on disc in the States.]

3. Daft Punk - Alive 2007 - [Virgin]

Playing out like a flawless mixtape (featuring songs from their debut, including "Around the World" to the track featured on an iPod commercial), Alive 2007 is the result of Daft Punk's most recent world tour, and it's clear that those who weren't at their shows missed out on the concert event of the year.

While I do not like the idea of live records taking a spot on these kinds of lists, Alive is just too fucking good not to be considered for one.

4. Von Sudenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions - [Domino]

Von Sudenfed includes the German production duo Mouse on Mars and Mark E. Smith of the Fall. On paper, this pairing sounds nothing but strange and unusual; however, on record, the mixture of scattershot electro-beats and Smith's seemingly drugged/drunken, off-the-cuff vocals work to great effect.

5. Bad Religion - New Maps of Hell - [Epitaph]

Once and always a stalwart of California's punk scene, Bad Religion - which for some reason finds it necessary to have not two but three guitarists - has returned with their best record since The Gray Race (not to mention Stranger than Fiction, my favorite punk record of the 90's). While their lyrics remain focused on the anti-establishment, anti-religion themes that they've covered since the early 80's, New Maps of Hell is something of a resurgence: it is loud, brash, and entirely unapologetic. In a word, rad.

Honorable Mentions:

Radiohead - In Rainbows - [TBD]

Battles - Mirrored - [Warp]

Black Dice - Load Blown - [Paw Tracks]
Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block - [V2 Scandinavia]
Kylie Minogue - X - [Capitol]

What did you listen to this year? Are there any albums that should be added to this list?