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January 17, 2004
"THE BEAT OF THE TRAPS"
Well, they put up a taco stand where the record store used to be Now I sit there eating nachos but still listening to AC/DC It's almost time for the "Power Outage"* the Spanish cook said it's quarter to three I find it awkward to rock with a mouthful of cheese but it's all the same to me [chorus]: 'Cause it's the beat of the traps The sound of one ass-slapping listen, perhaps you'll hear the whole town clapping There's a party tonight that everyone's crashing: It's a tent in my pants and I still look smashing Don't talk to me right now I just took Ecstacy I think I've done this before but who knows what the effects can be** Now I'm gonna climb an antenna Connect the wire right up to my yarbles The Who were called the High Numbers Led Zeppelin were once the New Yardbirds 'Cause it's the beat of the traps The sound of one ass-slapping etc. [uncomfortable-sounding yelp] [guitar solo] I like my music as I like my pizza: Fast n' sloppy & hot There's gotta be some tanginess on top of the meat like sauerkraut on a brat I guess I can't really blame ya if you don't wanna dance with me I do the "Funky Retard" and the "Horny Vicar" and the "Polar Bear Stuck in a Tree" 'Cause it's the beat of the traps The sound of one ass-slapping etc. [Pensive instrumental bridge] [The accompanying renewed sense of purpose] Now I sit back with some top-shelf whiskey and some bottom-shelf records I own A little Jim Beam and a little Jim Page and I reap what Bob Plant has sown Back in the day I used to bang my head Just now I banged my knee on a chair I thrashed in pain on the beer-stained carpet like I used to thrash my hair [chorus 2x] FOOTNOTES: * Daily AC/DC block on Chicago's 97.9 FM ("The Loop") ca. 1999 ** Loosely adapted from Dr. Dre
January 16, 2004
Spheres Collide; The Fabric of the Universe Gets Ripped to Shreds and Magic Marker'd with Obscenities
Turns out my professor is related to Richard Hell. Seriously. Bert's a practicing psychoanalyst, as well as a prof here. His interest was mildly piqued one day when I was walking with him, explaining how the Sex Pistols et al. ripped off his nephew when they "invented" punk fashion. "Ah, the Sex Pistols." But he also had the odd expression that people get when you talk about their in-laws, or bad TV they don't pay much attention to. Forget punk -- I imagine Bert in his idle time mulling over the beatniks in terms of Durkheim, or whatever -- some genuinely useful mode of analysis lost in the marathon between the modern social sciences and counterculture...not to mention that gibbering, steroid-psychotic last-minute entry, popular post-structuralism. Too much speed, too much theory, too few results. You think about this, walking under the cold slate sky, dead ivy and nicotine vapor. The chair of Bert's dissertation committee at Harvard was himself a patient of Freud. If Bert psychoanalysed Richard Hell and then turned the notes over to, like, Rick Moody -- now, that'd be a great read. Bert working on chapters of his diss with Ram Dass when he was still called Richard Alpert and the total hippie population in the U.S. was less that that of Davenport, Iowa. Bert referring to Timothy Leary as a colleague without fake modesty or even the recognition of the option of irony.
January 14, 2004
Gullible's Travails
A few made-up stories with which I successfully fooled poor Mike O'Flaherty recently: 1) My dad inadvertently killed Larry Carlton of Steely Dan, his childhood friend, with a metal garbage can lid; 2) Scientists recently developed a prototype car made entirely from hemp. He believed me until he suddenly realized, "Wait a minute -- how do you make a combustion engine out of plant fiber?"; 3) The guy who played Ernest (as in "Ernest Goes to Jail," etc.) was actually a classics scholar pursuing his academic career at UCLA when his side-hobby as an actor suddenly took off. I think next I'm going to try to fool him with the real story behind Ray Parker Jr.'s hit song "Ghostbusters."
January 12, 2004
LANGUAGE IS A HEAD COLD
Recent reads: There's a part in Stephen King's "On Writing" that cracked me up, where he quotes a few of his all-time favorite similes from hard-boiled detective novels. My favorite is: "It was darker than a carload of assholes" (George V. Higgins). Also came across a line in Jim Thompson's "The Killer Inside Me" that Stanley Kubrick ripped off almost verbatim in The Shining: "'No, baby' -- my lips drew back from my teeth. 'I'm not going to hurt you. I wouldn't think of hurting you. I'm just going to beat the ass plumb off of you.'" Finished a bunch of hefty Greek stuff recently: Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Plato's Apology of Socrates, and a couple of Aristophanes plays. Also reread The Odyssey (Fagles, 1996). I *highly* recommend this translation -- I think I read the Lattimore translation a long time ago -- the language in the Fagles version is staggeringly beautiful, and the introduction, footnotes, maps, and glossaries are immensely helpful. Working on Rousseau's Second Discourse right now -- the work that gave rise to the study of the social sciences as we know it. Also been enjoying bits and pieces of the new Lester Bangs book.
LET ME HOLD FIVE BOSS pt. II [take one]
[The live footage abruptly ends. It’s followed by an interview segment, very uncomfortable and thankfully brief. MC Dope Sick and DJ Crackhead are sitting against the Joan Miro sculpture “Chicago.” It appears to be summertime (the occasional tourist walks past in shorts and t-shirt), but the musicians are dressed in mangy down jackets and seem as though they’re both freezing.] MC Dope Sick: Can I just say something? Interviewer: Sure. DS: Fuck Joan Miro. Interviewer: Okay. DS: (turns around and looks at the sculpture for a long time) This isn’t Chicago. This is a European motherfucker ripping off African people. Because African art is supposed to be “abstract” and “primitive.” You want to know what’s abstract and primitive? The cinderblock. There should be a giant cinderblock here. Paint it all happy, I don’t give no fuck. Interviewer: There’s a Claes Oldenburg sculpture a few blocks from here that’s a giant baseball bat. DS: Then there should be a giant basketball net here, missing the net part and with the backboard all covered with graffiti. To me, that looks like abstract art. This to me is art that’s European and African made for people who want to keep both at arm’s length. DJ Crackhead: Mellow, the destroyed basketball net is an existential figure lurching across a plain, Giacometti in the ghetto. DS: We’ll see which lasts longer, the baseball bat sculpture or the destroyed basketball net. All that will be left for future civilizations to find is cinderblocks and cockroaches. That’s all some of us have now. That’s existential, mellow. Future civilizations will think they must be religious idols or something because they’re so prevalent. Interviewer: Why a cinderblock though? DS: Because it’s what this sculpture doesn’t have the nuts to be. They’re both made of the same thing: concrete. But the cinderblock is European, American, African, and Chicago all rolled into one. European because of the design, you know, function and form. American because we have the audacity to use it anywhere besides factories and prisons. I grew up with the cinderblock. All I’ve ever seen is cinderblocks. I had a favorite one I used to stare at when I was fucked up. The projects are built from cinderblocks. That’s why when I went to jail, I didn’t feel so bad – jails are made from cinderblocks, too. I felt right at home. Maybe if it weren’t for my drug problem I would have joined the military and seen a lot more cinderblocks. Maybe I’ll make some money from my record and buy one of those CHA homes made from cinderblocks. What’s a cinder? A piece of burned wood. There’s not too much wood where I’m from. Like my DJ said earlier, the destroyed basketball hoops look like burned trees, and it makes you feel like your area was once a forest that was consumed and the hoops are the remnants and the cinders got compressed into blocks and made into buildings that you live in. I was mugged with a cinderblock one time. They’re weapons. You know, there are villages deep in the jungles in Vietnam that are completely made from weapons the Army left behind? Cradles made from sawn-in-half bombs. Missiles pounded flat into roof shingles. They toast each other with tank missile cartridges filled with rice wine. [CONTINUED]
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