Roxborough Lyric Poetry Association

Sextus Propertius Remembers Himself

2011-11-16T23:33:00.008-05:00

The dream girls, that high-end hurt,
early headache, reason for the heart's pounding,
big-breasted daughters of golden-robed memory,
Muses, first angels of the heart's making
for the sake of whose promise
virgin boys from Ireland to Eleusis
manage to keep on living.
To think of you is to remember everything.
Ay, vixens, verily.
You know who you are.
And knowing so, please condescend
To visit before evening's end,
This poor scion of a Wild Pound.
Come and we'll make some evening sounds.

Yes, draw forth out of your deep sweater, o Broads,
The long reaching fingers of the dawn
Aurora, Corina, Cynthia, Chora,
Beach mother with the showing corona,
Any girl with unreluctant eyes,
Bring out of the old Attic
That Greek music, the lilting lyre
Of worthy of willing
of wine-weakened Erato
and her lovely dancers.
And her lovely dancers.

I refuse to sing for cash or fun
The empty praise of Mars and wars,
Bad songs in bars for fancy-shirt
Athletic holes with souls
Unequal to
the white limbs
of that lovely one,
of Venus purring, of Venus demurring,

Sweat-short Venus of the alabaster limbs
Who pauses and only for a moment's pretext
Thereafter to be swallowed whole again,
Inviolate but devirginated,
Beneath the waves of pleasure from which
She came forth panting, hallowed, haloed
In the sunrise blessing of the aching sea.

Beatrice Portinari

2011-10-27T22:38:00.006-04:00

by Ronnie Swillings

i.

where it began for us,
out on those sands

the ladies with their hair
and everything

and us only to dream,
we heroes, we one man bands
singing loud for startled
sunrise,

the long un-done
always done
but never been there
boys:

God's brain-damaged messengers
of midnight.

ii.

and here we come
to speak
but not to know
or capture
anything

crying
and with a broken antenna

for to be said,
must first be thought
but we, mind-broke,
could not be felt
(we think)
within ourselves
to think it

until a stirring thing
had come
and given us
our first feeling
of a face for thought

that there might be
beyond ourselves
a self, not me or us
but Who

and like
electric dream,
she came, red lips,
green eyes
into our heart

Hamlet and Oedipus

2010-12-17T18:34:00.000-05:00

W.S. Merwin Named Poet Laureate

2010-07-02T14:04:00.005-04:00

Scranton-born American poet and Hawaiian zen master W.S. Merwin was named the 17th U.S. poet laureate on July 1, 2010.

Before the Flood by W.S. Merwin

Why did he promise me
that we would build ourselves
an ark all by ourselves
out in back of the house
on New York Avenue
in Union City New Jersey
to the singing of the streetcars
after the story
of Noah whom nobody
believed about the waters
that would rise over everything
when I told my father
I wanted us to build
an ark of our own there
in the back yard under
the kitchen could we do that
he told me that we could
I want to I said and will we
he promised me that we would
why did he promise that
I wanted us to start then
nobody will believe us
I said that we are building
an ark because the rains
are coming and that was true
nobody ever believed
we would build an ark there
nobody would believe
that the waters were coming.

"I think of poetry as an attempt to use language as completely as possible. And if you want to do that, obviously you’re not concerned with language as decoration, or language as amusement, although you certainly want language to be pleasurable. Pleasure is part of the completeness. I think of poetry as having to do with the completeness of life, and the completeness of relation with one’s experience, completing one’s experience, articulating it, making sense of it. "
--from an Interview with The Paris Review

A list of poems published in the New Yorker:

A Message to Po Chu-I
: In that tenth winter of your exile…; by W. S. Merwin

Young Man Picking Flowers
: All at once he is no longer…; by W. S. Merwin

Forgotten Fountain
: Water dripping year after year…; by W. S. Merwin

Alba
: Climbing in the mist I came to a terrace wall…; by W. S. Merwin

Near Field

This is not something new or kept secret…

by W. S. Merwin

Rain Light

All day the stars watch from long ago…

by W. S. Merwin

A Single Autumn
: The year my parents died…; by W. S. Merwin

Unknown Age

For all the features it hoards and displays…

by W. S. Merwin

A Letter to Su T’ung Po
: Almost a thousand years later…; by W. S. Merwin

See: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/w_s_merwin/search?contributorName=w%20s%20merwin

Poems in the Atlantic Monthly.

Gathering Paradise: Bill Murray Reads to Construction Workers

2010-05-03T20:00:00.000-04:00

RLPA Featured on Pods of Speech, Episode 5

2010-04-26T13:01:00.007-04:00

Local independent internet radio host/podcaster Dan McGlaughlin dedicates his latest episode of Pods of Speech to poetry.

Check it out here:

Pods of Speech #5: Poetry

While you're there, check out some of his previous episodes on philosophy, guitars, and old school video games.

Here are links to some of the poems discussed on the show:

"The Earth Circles the Sun" by Gerard Hanberry via Ireland's Salmon Poetry

"Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" by Billy Collins

"Reasons to Survive November" read by Tony Hoagland

"Wayman in Love" by Tom Wayman

"Fishing on the Susquehanna in July" by Billy Collins

"Fork" by Jeffery Harrison

"Casualty" by Seamus Heaney

"Butcher's Dozen" by Thomas Kinsella

"Perfection Wasted" by John Updike

Iconic image of woman at mining strike being chased by police (Leslie Boulton at so-called "Battle of Orgreave.")

Paul Muldoon Critiques Ke$ha's "Tik Tok"

2010-04-25T18:53:00.000-04:00

Presidents and Poetry

2009-12-14T20:58:00.002-05:00

When President Obama flew to Oslo last week to collect his Nobel Peace Prize, his in-flight reading probably did not include the British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s new poem “The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009.”

So Begins the New York Times' piece on Presidents and Poems entitled "A History of Odes to the Chief."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/weekinreview/13schuessler.html

Here's Duffy's poem:

1
ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS,
a buzzard on a branch.

In Afghanistan,
no partridge, pear tree;
but my true love sent to me
a card from home.
I sat alone,
crouched in yellow dust,
and traced the grins of my kids
with my thumb.
Somewhere down the line,
for another father, husband,
brother, son, a bullet
with his name on.

2
TWO TURTLE DOVES,
that Shakespeare loved –
turr turr, turr turr –
endangered now
by herbicide,
the chopping down
of where they hide –
turr turr, turr turr –
hawthorn thickets,
hedgerows, woodland.
Summer's music
fainter, farther…
the spreading drought
of the Sahara.

3
THREE FRENCH HENS –
un, deux, trois –
do not know
that French they are.

Three Welsh lambs –
un, dau, tri –
do not know
that Welsh they baa.

Newborn babies –
one, two, three –
only know
you human be.

Only know
you human be.

4
THE GRENADA DOVE IS CALLING.
The Condor calls from the USA.
The Wood Stork calls from its wetlands.
The Albatross calls from the sea,
on the fourth day of Christmas.

The Yellow-eared Parrot is calling.
The Kakapo calls from NZ.
The Blue-throated Macaw is calling.
The Little Tern calls from Japan, calls
my true love sent to me.

The Corncrake is calling; the Osprey.
The Baikal Teal calls from Korea.
The Cuckoo is calling from England,
four calling birds.

5
THE FIRST GOLD RING WAS GOLD INDEED –
bankers' profits fired in greed.

The second ring outshone the sun,
fuelled by carbon, doused by none.

Ring three was black gold, O for oil –
a serpent swallowing its tail.

The fourth ring was Celebrity;
Fool's Gold, winking on TV.

Ring five, religion's halo, slipped –
a blind for eyes or gag for lips.

With these five gold rings they you wed,
then slip them off when you are dead.

With these five go-o-o-old rings.

6
I BOUGHT A MAGIC GOOSE FROM A JOLLY FARMER.
This goose laid Barack Obama.

I bought a magic goose from a friendly fellow.
This goose laid Fabio Capello.

I bought a magic goose from a maiden (comely).
This goose laid Joanna Lumley.

I bought a magic goose from a busker (poor).
This goose laid Anish Kapoor.

I bought a magic goose from a bargain bin, it
was the goose laid Alan Bennett.

I bought a poisoned goose from a crook (sick, whiffing).
This foul goose laid Nick Griffin.

7
THE SWAN AT COCKERMOUTH –
of a broken heart, one half.

The Mersey Swans, flying
for Hillsborough, wings of justice.

Two, married and mute on the Thames,
watching The Wave.

A Swan for Adrian Mitchell
and a Swan for UA Fanthorpe,
swansongs for poetry.

The Queen's birds, paired
for life, beauty and truth.

8
ONE MILKED MONEY TO MEND HER MOAT.
Two milked voters to float her boat.
Three milked Parliament to flip her flat.
Four milked Government to snip her cat.
Five milked the dead for close-up tears.
Six milked the tax-payer for years and
years and years…
Seven milked the system to Botox
her brow.
Eight milked herself – the selfish cow.

9
BUT THE DEAD SOLDIER'S LADY DOES NOT DANCE.
But the lady in the Detention Centre
does not dance.
But the honour killing lady does not dance.
But the drowned policeman's lady
does not dance.
But the lady in the filthy hospital ward
does not dance.
But the lady in Wootton Bassett does not dance.
But the gangmaster's lady does not dance.
But the lady with the pit bull terrier
does not dance.
But another dead soldier's lady
does not dance.

10
LORDS DON'T LEAP.
They sleep.

11
WE PAID THE BLUDDY PIPER
fir 'Royal Bank;
twa pipers each
fir Fred and Phil,
fir Finlay, Fraser, Frank.
Too big tae fail!
The wee dog laughed!
The dish ran awa' wi' the spoon…
We paid the bluddy pipers,
but we dinnae call the tune.

12
DID THEY HEAR THE DRUMS IN COPENHAGEN,
banging their warning?
On the twelfth day in Copenhagen
was global warming stopped in its tracks
by Brown and Barack and Hu Jintao,
by Meles Zenawi and Al Sabban,
by Yvo de Boer and Hedegaard?
Did they strike a match
or strike a bargain,
the politicos in Copenhagen?
Did they twiddle their thumbs?
Or hear the drums
and hear the drums
and hear the drums?

Some Images that May Cause The Hollywood Studio Producing the film The Road to Feel a Bit Unsure of Himself and His Investment

2009-11-23T20:12:00.004-05:00

Compiled by T.J. Gillespie

A gryke in the stone
The transom grated in the sand
The cold autistic dark
The bloodcults have all consumed each other
A ham gambreled

Bored out the collet
Her nipples pipeclayed
Blowsy plumage
They were discalced
God’s own firedrake

No godspoke men
Pipsissewa
The hot black mastic
Nitty wig of ash
Rachitic

Sappers
Homebrewed woad
Consort of catamites
Sedge
Cedar duff

Kerfs
Bracken
Dry sleavings…from the buckled soffits
Yellowed dentil
Through the canebrake
Slatted light

Chert
Thick and gelid
Gold krugerrands
Middens of anonymous trash
Beneath a cakebell

Mattock
A great bolus of serpents
Jackstraw land
A brick loggia
Wooden lintel

The knurled lid
The windrows...in the wrack
Salt rime
Tidewrack
An isocline of death

Davits
Through the clerestory
Souwester gear
Baize lining
Lee side of him

Plastic pampooties
Travois of dead limbs
Dolmen stones
Salitter drying
Lampblack

Bollards
Gantry cane
Turned scarpbolts
Their crozzled hearts

Swale
Mortified loess
Bone stoven

The answer to The Hollywood Studio Head’s Uncertainty:

Cherlize Theron

New Book Alert: Assumed the Watch. Moored as Before. By Terry Fitzgibbons

2009-10-20T21:50:00.004-04:00

The RLPA is pleased to announce the publication of Assumed the Watch. Moored as Before, a dry humored take on life in the US navy by Terrence Fitzgibbons.

The USS Pelican, or the “Pelican’t” as it was affectionately known, was the craziest, most nerve-racking ship in the navy. How was that possible, though, if it remained tied to the pier essentially for two years? This account contains the musings and observations of one junior officer attempting to stay sane aboard mighty Pelican. Likewise, it includes his attempts to do the same on a different ship—this one doing circles in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Terence Fitzgibbons is from Chalfont, Pennsylvania. Upon graduating from the University of Notre Dame in 2004, he was commissioned an officer in the United States Navy. He spent his first tour as the Auxiliaries Officer and First Lieutenant on the USS Cardinal in Bahrain and the USS Pelican in Ingleside, Texas. He served his second tour as the Damage Control Assistant on the USS Cowpens in Yokosuka, Japan. After separating from the navy in June 2008, Terence studied at the University of Toronto.

He is a frequent guest at RLPA Christmas parties and an expert in late 1980s Nintendo-related entertainment.
We are pretty sure that this is the best book ever.

Check it out here:
Assumed the Watch. Moored as Before.

Click here to read an excerpt:
Chapter One: Tulips

Stadium Traffic

2009-10-07T18:54:00.003-04:00

As the Philadelphia Phillies begin their post-season today in hopes of repeating as champions, this is the poem I wish I wrote. For anyone who saw a game at the Vet or takes the subway down to Citizen's Bank Park; for anyone who grew up rooting for Schmitty and McGraw, Bake and the Bull, or Krukky and Dutch, Lenny and the Wild Thing, or Chase and Rollins, the Flying Hawaiian and Hollywood Hamels, I dedicate this:

Stadium Traffic

by Daniel Donaghy

You're on your way home
when a thousand cars
pour onto Broad Street:
the ball game's over.
No one's going anywhere soon.
It's mid-July: eighty and humid.
You smell like all the crappies in the Delaware,
wear the ache of dock crates in your back.
Your buddy lost two fingers tonight
to a jigsaw: boss said go home early,
stay late tomorrow night.
These people don't appreciate
what they have: time to go to ball games.
You get out among blaring horns
and hustlers hawking T-shirts,
walk the yellow lines like a tight rope,
arms out for balance,
all the way to the corner and back.
Broad Street still as a parking lot,
wound tight as a fist.
You pop the trunk, fish a beer
from your cooler, and pound it.
Back in your car, the radio's
recapping the game:
your team pulled one out
they would have blown last year.
You've blown the last year working
nights while your lady works days.
Night work means bad lighting,
and you've had enough close calls.
You've had enough overtime.
You've had enough.
Something has to give.
Somewhere in the distance a dog
is barking, a husband is coming home.

"Stadium Traffic" by Daniel Donaghy, from Start with the Trouble. © The University of Arkansas Press, 2009.

See also:
An interview with the poet about Philadelphia and poetry.

"I see my writing about Philadelphia as similar to the writing of other people whom we generally associate with particular regions or time periods. We call Bruce Weigl and Tim O’Brien writers of the Vietnam War. We call Dostoyevski a Russian writer, Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty Southern writers, Langston Hughes a Harlem Renaissance writer. If the work of these writers only has relevance within the context of geography or history, then it would not have lasting significance. Each writer goes beyond region and time and race and addresses fundamental issues pushing against the heart of each of us.

I hope my work pushes up against some of the same questions. In my childhood, I was given the landscape of Philadelphia. In a broader sense, though, I have been given the same range of human frailties and strengths to work with that any other artist has been given. I will always return to examine that landscape in my mind. In that sense, I’ll always be a Philadelphia writer. While my writing may be set in Philadelphia or in some other specific place, I hope the hearts alive in the writing are recognizable to readers with all kinds of backgrounds. I’m not saying I’m in the same league as the people I just mentioned. I’m saying only that I recognize their impulses."

Announcement: The Failed Novel Project

2009-10-03T18:42:00.006-04:00

By T.J. Gillespie

In order to move forward with new projects, new writings, new RLPA drinking festivals, I have found it necessary to put some old things to bed, to sign-off, bid sayonara, and give the ol' kiss-off to some lingering works. With this in mind, I am dusting off some of the old archival bits that have been occupying too much psychic space and preventing me from starting something newer. And undoubtedly better.

So, without further ado, the RLPA will see the monthly installments of something tentatively titled "The Catastrophist's Conspiracy Theories" or more banally "Trivial Matters." I'd warn against expectations ; there's a reason this project folded in on itself. So, if I may offer a regrettably inappropriate analogy about released failures: think Guns 'N Roses Chinese Democracy rather than Nabokov's Laura.

To give you an idea of how poorly conceived this was from the beginning, here's some of the pompous concepts behind the original idea:

Notes/Schemata/Organization/Chapter Ideas:

It’s about terror, war, drugs, conspiracy theories, the government, relationships, information and the media, life and death in the twenty-first century.

Operation Eagle Claw, Failure to rescue hostages from Iran
Limnic eruption

Strange phone call
- Kay’s packing
- History of relationship
- Trouble getting motivated. Rather play games than get a job
-
Meeting
Request for money
Hold something for him
Oh, yeah, Kay’s been sleeping around with a pot dealer from Norristown

Shore
Professor on beach
Whale rescue
Dolphin Massacre
Frisbee golf
Request for money
A Warning
A disappearance
Pulled in
------------------------------ So Ends part one
Occluded
Blood-dark
Chinese ideogram
Yunus Emre
Information Control
Feculent
Double Crossed
A Series of Unhappy Endings (with just a glint of accidental, meaningless redemption)

What’s the difference between chance and fate, happenstance and destiny? I suppose one sees a series of random coincidences. The other sees a series of coincidences that were supposed to happen. What about me? What did I believe? I was still foolish enough to subscribe to that outmoded illusion called freedom of choice. What an asshole.

There you have it. Look for Chapter One coming soon.

Introduction to Cartooning: A RLPA Comic Experiment

2009-06-17T21:22:00.001-04:00

10 Micro-Stories by Seth

2009-06-12T21:37:00.006-04:00

10 Stories by Seth

Not really stories, more like notes merely transcribed (and condensed and perhaps slightly fictionalized) by T.J. Gillespie

1. John Cage.

A story based on a recommendation for stories. John Cage's Indeterminancy.90 stories told in 90 minutes. (Actually there are 190 in total, but in performance, he'd read the stories at the rate of one per minute). It is an incredible work of art. I--me, T.J. Gillespie--am thoroughly in awe.

http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/

2.Peanuts and Superheroes

There are two modes, two poles of cartooning. Charlie Brown and Superman. What do they have in common? The both stem out of a young boy's feelings of powerlessness and feeling small.

3. The Loneliness of the Cartoonist

Drawing is a personal art. Writing is a solitary art. Drawing and writing a cartoon is the loneliest art.

4.Subverting the Corny

It was a popular bromide taken for truth--especially in the sixties--that the comic/cartoon was the ideal medium for fantasy. Here was a realm where the unbelievable, the amazing, the extraordinary could come to life. Thrilling Tales!

In the 1980s--and ever since really--there has grown a movement of reactionary realists who claim that cartooning is best suited for the ordinary, the mundane, the real. They are struggling to escape the shackles of genre, of fantasy for Truth. Symbolic of this movement is a legendary cartoon--rumored to be of Japanese origin--that spends forty pages on a single kiss.

5.Art School in 1980s Toronto

The parable of the Poor Bastard:

Every year a bright-eyed eager student arrives on campus with big dreams, big ideas, and big plans. While he doesn't have as much natural "talent" or "skill," what he has is work ethic and drive. So, while some things don't come as easily to this student, he makes up for it by getting to the studio earlier, leaving later, and coming in on off days. The thing is, he'll never get it. His stuff just isn't that good. He's a sucker. Moral of the story: be suspicious if you're ever on the receiving end of this story.

6. Comics and Poetry

In no other artforms is there such care in the placement and juxtaposition of images. They both beguile with a seemingly "simple bag of tricks"; there is a building rhythm of line, a piling up of ideas. A tightness of form. Consider the Haiku of Basho and a panel of Schultz. This story bores everyone but poets.

7.George Sprout and the Dangers of Self-Googling

Even in moments of your greatest triumphs, it is the chorus of boos that you hear the loudest. Admirers internalize quiet praise; critics use megaphones.

8.Mr. Downing's Critique

On the day of the big exhibition the students excitedly gathered in the gallery room. Last minute corrections were made. Lighting was fixed. Sculptures placed just-so. At last the professor entered the room and the students moved to the side, anxious for any reaction from their mentor. The old man strolled leisurely from post to post, sometimes slowing down, leaning in closely, other times squatting down low to get a different look. A few times he seemed poised to ask a question, but shook it off, and moved on. At one point, he stopped to jot something down on a small notebook.

Finally, he pulled up, straightened his collar, looked directly at the first year students, and shouted, "What the fuck have you been doing for the past month!"

P.S.: Robert Downing's Open Letter to Canada on the state of art http://www.lastplace.com/LivingHistory/endoftheline.htm

It opens like this: "I've come to realize the error of my ways and promise that Iwill no longer be a practicing Canadian fine artist. I well know that thiswill not be of direct interest to everyone. Indeed, because of what I'll say here it would be ludicrous for me to assume that anyone at all isespecially interested in me giving up a forty year calling, through whichI've expressed my love for Canada and my enjoyment of life."

9.Paris with Chris Ware
Despite the romance of the setting, Seth, feeling slightly downcast, cynical, and misanthropic, what some Parsian jazz musician might simply but accurately describe as blue, thought aloud "It's a shame, really. As hard as you work, as smart as you may be and as much as you read, and learn, and hone your craft, you eventually hit the limit of your intelligence, your ability, your skill. I wish you could make more. Make more talent."

Chris Ware,f ellow artist, traveller and dining partner, threw back his head in laughter.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" he said shaking his head in mirthful abandon. "Of course you can will yourself more talent!"

10.Advice from R. Crumb

Joe Mad, the popular nom de plume of Joe Madureira, a comic book writer who helped develop the X-Men, was fretting over the fact that his harshest critics claimed he had too narrow a focus. He seemed to repeating himself by focusing on the same themes, conflicts, characters. Feeling quite dejected one day as he opened his mail, he surprised to find a letter from notorious underground comic R. Crumb. It contained two basic points.

1. No matter what you might hear, people don't like to hear how you feel. They may say they do, but most people prefer to avoid the truth.

2. There is nothing wrong with repeating yourself, mining the same territory, as long as you dig a little deeper each go around.

Other Items of Interest:

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.09--the-quiet-art-of-cartooning-seth-comic-book-cartoons/

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/08/21/an-interview-with-seth-part-one/

North Philadelphia Noir, Part I

2009-03-24T10:31:00.004-04:00

Philadelphia Folktales V: The Latest in a Series of Very Short Fiction

North Philadelphia Noir, Part I

T.J. Gillespie

On a drab and gray day in the fall of 1995 Dante Davis, a thirteen-year-old steerer who worked the blocks of his Fairhill neighborhood, unlocked the safe in the back of the Joy-Joy Chinese take-out joint and removed a fat envelope marked “John the Baptist.” Without opening it to examine the contents, the boy nimbly stuffed the envelope down the front of his pants and ran out the back door. No one saw him enter or exit the building. No one knew that he even had access to the combination. All in all, it seemed like the perfect crime. It would be another two weeks until the police were contacted about his body.

Davis’ corpse was discovered in the early morning in a local park, face down in front of a statue commemorating an American killed during the US occupation of Vera Cruz, a forgotten monument to a forgotten war in a forgotten part of the city. It was a disturbing scene—no real attempt to hide the body was made. In fact, it was just the opposite. Someone had gone to great lengths to display what was done, to advertise the violence. He had been beaten, bloodied, and in an effort to add humiliation, stripped. But the worst part, the part that spooked Sgt. Shrunk, was the manner of death itself. The kid, Davis, wasn’t shot in the gut with a .38, he wasn’t stabbed in the throat like that girl in Kensington, he didn’t have his head split with a Louisville Slugger. No, Shrunk could handle all that. Hell, he’s seen worse. But he’d never seen this: a Sinaloan Face Wrap. Death by duct-tape.

Shrunk was an old timer, twenty years on the force, a Rizzo-man. He smoked a daily pack of Winstons, drank gin with ice, remained on the look out for Communists—“You can’t tell them by their looks; it’s in the way they talk”—and maintained a distinctly pre-Vatican Council Catholic worldview. The only thing that was out of character for him was that he harbored a secret love for modern literature, particularly the magical realism of Latin America. He confided this secret once to his former partner, Waterman, who teased, “Yeah, I’m a reader, too. What d’ya prefer, girly magazines or sports pages?”

“Sarge, you comin’?”

“Just a minute. Thinkin’.”

“Thinkin’ about what? Case closed. Drugs. John Doe. There’s been 130 muderes in in Fairhill in the last three years. Hundred and twenty-two of ‘em men. Eighty of those were between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine. Same old story. Drugs. Turf. Money. Bang-bang. Dead.”

“This one’s different.” Shrunk took a draw from his smoke. “I knew this kid. He was my C.I.”

To Be Continued.

Re: Common Sense

2009-01-15T10:13:00.004-05:00

Suggested Reading:

The Creature from Jekyll Island
by G. Edward Griffin

The Revolution
by Dr. Ron Paul

An Underground History of American Education
(available online here)
by John Taylor Gatto

Thomas Paine's Common Sense

2008-01-10T15:24:00.000-05:00

It was on January 10, 1776 that Thomas Paine published the most successful American publication of its time, the pamphlet Common Sense, which went on to sell more than 500,000 copies and, more importantly, spur on the cause for American Independence.

"He spent several months traveling around Pennsylvania, going to various bars and taverns and talking to ordinary people about their opinions on American independence. He used these conversations to develop a writing style that an ordinary person could easily understand...
It helped persuade many Americans to support revolution, and seven months later, the colonies officially declared independence." (The Writer's Almanac)

Read the whole thing here:

http://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/singlehtml.htm

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

What I am looking for in the Next President: Someone Who Knows the Difference Between Concord and Nashua

2008-01-07T13:25:00.000-05:00

[fifth in a series]

--Mark Standish, Merrimack County, NH

Here in New Hampshire people sure are talking a lot about politics lately. I guess it’s not that different from what we’re usually talking about. Seems like you can’t go anywhere—from Dixon’s Hardware down on Ellsworth to Rosie’s over on the other side of Denton—without someone mentioning the demolished house over on State St. or the logging project down around Penacook Lake. Yup, everywhere you go it’s politics.

The problem as far as I see it comes every three years or so, when some hotshot news van come cruising into town from Boston or New York or someplace worse, taking all the good booths at Varney’s Diner, yukking it up with Carl behind the counter so as me and Gertie got to wait to have our Tuesday pie or a refill of coffee. Now don’t get me wrong. I like the attention we get, and Lord knows Carl and Rosie and all the rest enjoy the business—and far be it from to complain about getting an honest wage—but it just seems like these so-called professionals, the journalists and pollsters, just don’t know squat about the issues.

Some fella the other day asked me what my thoughts are about illegal immigration. I told him that for the most part Canadians are pretty decent folk thought their taste in hockey is terrible. Then I asked him what he thought about the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen absorbing the Kimball Jenkins School of Art. He stopped talking to me after that.

A few days ago, down by the filling station on 107, downabout where Barnstead turns into Gilmanton, I was asked about tensions in the middle east and whether or not I felt safe from terrorism. I told that kid that I’m more scared of some tie-dyed hippie coming down from Burlington, stinking of maple syrup, trying to swap my five-pound lobster from Portsmouth with some Lake Champlain New Age chocolate crap. He didn’t like that so much so he asked me about Osama Been Seen Lately. So I asked this guy in his pinstripe suit if he though Al-Qaeda was out to get my lobsters and case of Smuttynose or set a bomb off at the big bike race at Laconia. The guy didn’t even know where Laconia was! And he’s some kind of expert.

When I was asked which candidate I was throwing my support behind, I had to think for a minute before I told the man, “I am not quite sure whether I have a dog in this hunt or not. I got this feeling like I don’t know whether to wind my watch or howl at the moon.” He didn’t write that down, I noticed.

In the mean time, I am hoping there’s a candidate out there who’ll earn my vote, because I don’t give anything away for free.

This Year in Language: Locavore and W00t

2007-12-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

The New Oxford American Dictionary has announced its Word of the Year:

LOCAVORE.

The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.
The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.

Runners-up:
aging in place
bacn
cloudware
colony collapse disorder
cougar
MRAP vehicle
mumblecore
previvor
social graph
tase (or taze)
upcycling

In related language news, Merriam Webster announced that w00t, a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness or triumph, topped all other terms in the Springfield-based dictionary publisher's online poll for the word that best sums up 2007.

Some also-rans in the 2007 list: the use of ''facebook'' as a verb to signify using the Web site by that name; and ''blamestorm,'' a meeting in which mistakes are aired, fingers are pointed and much discomfort is had by all.

Stereotype, Identity, and the Hegemony of Geekdom: Head of the Class as An Anthropological Study of the American Nerd

2007-12-01T00:20:00.000-05:00

Lectures on Obscure and Probably Unteresting Things, #002

Stereotype, Identity, and the Hegemony of Geekdom:
Head of the Class as An Anthropological Study of the American Nerd

Delivered by T.J. Gillespie, Philadelphia, November 3o, 2007

When ABC first debuted the pilot episode of Head of the Class in September 1986, the focus was clearly on the teacher, Charlie Moore, a struggling actor who decides to try substitute teaching while awaiting his big break on Broadway, rather than on the pupils. Moore, an aging pony-tailed bohemian, is immediately thrust into conflict with the principal, Dr. Samuels, over his unorthodox approach. The formula owes much to the success of an earlier ABC sit-com set a New York high school, Welcome Back, Kotter. That highly popular and controversial show (it was banned for a time in Boston) starred Brooklyn-born Gabe Kaplan as Brooklyn-born Gabe Kotter, a wise-cracking history teacher with a Marx Brothers fetish who returns to his alma mater to teach a group of difficult students nicknamed the Sweathogs and battles an irascible assistant principal, Mr. Woodman. Just as the popularity of John Travolta’s Vinny Barbarino and the inimitable Horshack seemed to steal the show, the engaging ensemble in Mr. Moore’s classroom did much the same thing. Except of course, there are no Sweathogs in the Individualized Honors Program. Only nerds.

Much of fictionalized vision of the American classroom seems to focus on one type: the troubled inner city school. It is a place where cynicism and apathy rule; sometimes the dangers are explicit—guns, drugs, violence, abuse—other times the menace is atmospheric. During the pilot episode, Charlie, arriving to school late, is stopped by a sympathetic assistant principal Bernadette Meara, who warns him to be careful of his first period class. “Warn me?” he scoffs, “I’ve taught at the toughest schools in New York City,” and then he opens the door as if preparing to battle. This reaction is expected; after all, this is the reality presented in movies like Blackboard Jungle, Class of 84, To Sir With Love, and continued in later incarnations such as The Substitute, Boston Public, 21 Jump Street, and most recently, in Freedom Writers. What is shockingly incongruous, and hence funny, about the opening scene of the pilot, is that when Moore opens the door he sees a roomful of students sitting quietly, books open, willing to learn. This is the other end of the spectrum, yet it works on many of the same underlying principles employed in traditional school-set dramas.

While films like Stand and Delver and Dangerous Minds center on a group of tough, jaded delinquents (often relying on stereotypical assumptions of urban minority students held by white suburban viewers), the films’ structures serve, often in cloyingly sentimental ways, to humanize the students and to inspire the viewer to sympathize with them. In this way Lou Diamond Philips’ Angel becomes the gang-banger with a heart of gold, thanks to the Calculus teaching of Edward James Olmos; Michelle Pfieffer brings out the inner Bob Dylan in a roomful of juvenile criminals; Kotter and Barbarino remind us that Sweathogs are real students too, no matter what Mr. Woodman says.

So, what of the nerds? In what ways are they stereotypical caricatures and in what ways are they humanized? When we laugh at them are we taking the role of the bully jeering at the effete intellectual? Is the nerd a stock character in today’s teen comedies the way earlier generations laughed at the boor, the drunk, the fool, and the fop? Or do we find ourselves sympathizing with the television nerd, rooting for him to not only solve the equation and get the girl, but find dignity?

Case Study 1: Archetype
One of the interesting points that seems to arise in any discussion of HOTC is the common—and erroneous—assumption that Arvid Engin is the nerd of the show. What is so funny about this is, of course, that they are all nerds. Viewers of the show, both fans and critics, and the other characters of the show seem to view Arvid as “the nerd” because he is the most traditional, stereotypical image of the nerd as portrayed by popular media. With his pocket protector, glasses, ill-fitting pants, his love of math/science/computers, Arvid is a direct descendent of "Revenge of the Nerds" archetype: physically clumsily and socially awkward. Dan Frischman, an actor who seems born to play Arvid, shows an eerie similarity to a young(er) Lewis Skolnik, the iconic nerd played by Robert Caradine. (The influence of Revenge of the Nerds and its three sequels cannot be overstated, and is much deserving of its own lecture and critical panel.) But just because he looks like the Platonic ideal of Nerd-ity, doesn't let the others off the hook.

Case Study 2: Cyber/Tech/Obscure Knowledge Nerd
Dennis Blunden represents a new kind of nerd that didn't exist before the 1980s: the techno-sexual, computer hacker nerd. The kind of nerd that, in the 80s, would have been talking RAM and ROM, hacking and “phreaking,” and today writes code and blogs, plays on-line games, and knows the difference between black hats and blue hats. One must remember that the 980s was the golden age of computer games (Mario, Spy Hunter, Frogger, Tron) and the moment when the p.c. became mainstream. Matthew Broderick in War Games is one of these nerds. The thing is, to other nerds, these hacker nerds, rebellious by nature, are kind of cool, kind of dangerous. The fact that Broderick would eventually play the most popular kid on campus (Ferris Bueller), undermines the inner nerd of his War Games character. This type is also closely related to the Gamer nerd, comic book nerd, Lord of the Rings Nerd, Dungeon and Dragons nerd. Blunden is also a member of two other stereotypical nerd subsets: the overweight nerd and the sarcastic funny nerd.

Case Study 3: The Immigrant/Child of Immigrant Nerd
Jawaharlal Choudhury is known to most of us in attendence simply as the Indian kid, which is clearly unfair. Typically Asian, although they may be African, Middle Eastern, Brazilian, or simply ambiguously "other," the foreign nerd displays an intense drive and social awkwardness that is seen as coming from parental pressure/cultural identity/or a outdated (and possibly racist) idea that they are more intelligent, better behaved, more motivated. Perhaps the most famous example of this type of character is Long Duk Dong, the heavily accented and hypersexual exchange student in Sixteen Candles.

Case Study 4: The Freakish Child Prodigy
If the rest of the class was made up by 26-35 year olds playing teenagers, twelve year old Janice Lazaratto was played by an actress who actually looked twelve. The highwater mark for the prepubsescent genius is either Gary Coleman in The Kid with the 200 I.Q. or Kurt Russell in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, both of which ranked as my two favorite movies at age eight. For fans of drama, Jody Foster’s Little Man Tate is a serious exploration of these themes. These characters are clearly nerds, but the nerdness can be excused, or at least understood, by their emotional and physical immaturity.

Case Study 5: Yuppie Nerd
Tony O’Dell’s WASPy Young Republican character Alan is the type of nerd that hasn’t been seen lately. A rip off of the Alex P. Keaton mold, Alan could only exist in the 1980s where being financially driven and overtly ambitious, while maybe not cool, was not social suicide. Undoubtedly the jocks and punks have mocked him, but Alan and his (love of conservative politics aren’t his flaws; it is his arrogance, his egotism, and his materialism. He is, certainly, a nerd, but it is not his nerdiness that defines him.

Case Study 6: Art/Literature Nerd
Most high school geeks forgive female nerdness because, well, they are just glad to be in the presence of an actual breathing girl. Red headed Simone Foster, attractive in the 80’s Age of Ringwald kind of way, is one of the few female regulars. Simone is particularly appealing because she is marked by a certain sensibility. Poetic, philosophical, sensitive, she seems as if she were the type of girl who’d play the cello or write poems in imitation of Rilke or, most importantly, listen to something you’d say without rolling her eyes. For most teenage nerds, Simone is the ideal woman, and for most mature, college graduate nerds, she has a lot of qualities we (I include myself in the first person pronoun here) find interesting. But I know a lot of pretentious fifteen year olds who resemble Simone and you know what their classmates call them? Nerds. Granted, they are the kind of nerds that can become very cool later in life (like Tina Fey), but not necessarily (Diane Chambers from Cheers).

Case Study 7: The Anti-Nerd Nerd
Any serious discussion, and I wonder if there is any other kind, of Head of the Class must eventually deal with the problem of Eric, clearly the red herring. Almost everyone cites Eric as the example of the cool intellectual, the bad boy who had the street smarts to balance the book smarts, the anti-Arvid. Leather Jacket. Cool (in the day) rock and roll haircut. He smoked (I'm sure) and didn't break out into hives around girls. Except that he is quite possibly the biggest nerd of the bunch, the poseur who tries so hard to distance himself from his classmates that it can’t help but seem, especially in retrospect, to seem pathetic. Why try so hard, Eric? Why fight who you are? Eric, more than anyone else, seems to be lacking self-confidence, afraid of the judgment of his peers. Eric is an interesting character as he is the most aware and the most resistant of the label “Nerd.”

The only non-nerd? Darlene, the rich girl. The problem is that almost from the beginning Darlene was overshadowed by the celebrity of the actress Robin Givens. It becomes almost impossible for the viewer to construct a nerd identity for Darlene knowing that off screen she was getting freaky with Mike Tyson. Come on, that girl in high school? Who is buying that!

Ladies and Gentlemen, you have been more than indulgent, and while I would certainly like to talk about the change in cast, Janice’s suddent departure for Harvard, Dennis Blunden’s weight loss, Howard Hessman’s return—presumably back to a radio station in Cincinati—as well as the addition of Rain Pryor and a Scotsman, I think we should save that for another day.

I could also easily spend another day discussing how HOTC's groundbreaking episodes in Russia singlehandedly brought an end to the Cold War. While Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Gorbachev are often credited, Kremlin documents indicate that it was the 1988 Head of the Class two part episode "Mission to Moscow" that may have done the most to tear down that wall! Another time perhaps.

As you can tell, I can proudly say that I woud the biggest nerd of all for writing this much if it weren’t for your attentive listening. I thank you.

Addendum:

See the premiere episode in its entirety here:
http://video.aol.com/video-category/head-of-the-class/103174

Your Thanksgiving Sports Moment of Zen

2007-11-22T20:23:00.000-05:00

by Bob Herpen

LaSalle wusses out
Malvern steps in; no matter
The Prep conquers all

The RLPA is Proud to Present...

2007-11-19T15:38:00.000-05:00

Our newest contributing member, Bob Herpen. Bob has returned from a long sabbatical in Japan, needing to shed the trappings of ego which come from the chosen career of erstwhile voice of some as-yet-created minor-league hockey team in the wilds of Nebraska or Alabama.

Still the bard of the blue line, the bucket, the end zone and the baseball diamond, he'll bring a decidedly Eastern literary perspective to the world of sport through the magic syllables of haiku.

It's a two-for-one in his first foray where angels fear to tread.

"What I'm thinking at work on a dreary Sunday while sneaking furtive glances away from the Giants-Lions game at the Eagles-Dolphins contest on the next TV over from my desk"

Andy Reid’s play chart
Is really post-game meal ads
Crab fries half price now.

"If I really did what my heart desired"

I'm shipping up to
Boston; tired of Philly's act
Now Go Celts and Pats

The Transfusion: Or How to Drink Her Off Your Mind

2007-11-12T11:58:00.000-05:00

By Paul Cassidy

This recipe requires an empty stomach and one sick day. It's a little something I like to call "The Transfusion." Start of with one bottle of an expensive vodka, Stolichnaya, Skyy, Finlandia, Chopin, any of your top shelves will do. You will also need two lemons, a sharp knife, a cutting surface, two bottles of dry vermouth, one shot glass, a silver professional-class shaker, one red/white lapel carnation, a cigarette holder, expensive cigarettes (Dunhill or Nat Sherman), a bag of ice, one case of canned, yes canned, economy beer, ten really good CDs of varying moods and artists, and a bacon,hamburger, and onion pizza.

First you open a can of beer. Drink it as fast as you can. Then, from your CDs, put on the one that is the most blue. Drink another can of beer as you go. Then go to the kitchen and load the shaker with ice and place your favorite martini glass in the freezer.

Next, fill the shaker 4/5's of the way to the top with Vodka. Here's the secret, do not hold back. Think big. The ice should crackle as the Vodka slips in around it: this should fill you with a warm sense of anticipation, not unlike a full one hundred piece symphony orchestra tuning up as the conductor strides on stage.

Splash a little vermouth around the entire apartment, try to get some in the shaker.

Finish you beer, open another, turn the CD player UP.

Shake your martini. Dance from room to room in the apartment as you shake. This is an opportunity for you to make the drink your own, to express yourself. Invite any roommates present to join in with the phrase, "Hey, want to help me shake it?"

Place shaker on counter top. Finish Beer. Go to your room, put on the closest thing you have to a tuxedo. Any dark suit will do. Don't forget the shoes! Don't worry if there are not comfortable, soon you won't even notice.

Ascend back into the kitchen. Cut yourself some lemon wedges. It’s best to get this out of the way while you’re reasonably sober--nothing ruins "The Transfusion" like an actual late-night transfusion.

Remove your favorite martini glass from the freezer. It should have a nice frosty promise to it. Place wedge either in the top rim of the glass or just right in, it really doesn't matter. There will be plenty of drink, either way.

Pour out your martini and place the shaker on ice, preferably in one of those buckets you can steal from a hotel. Definitely steal the stand if you can.

Drink your martini. Have your cigarettes ready. Remove the pin from the carnation and do your damnedest to get that son of bitch to stick to your jacket somehow. Anywhere's fine so long you can see it. I've actually resorted to just taping the petals on with scotch tape. It made for a festive confetti-like appearance.

Enjoy a cigarette.

Finish your martini.

Here I would have a slice of pizza. Remember you’re laying a base for further drinking.

Have a straight shot of vodka, chase immediately with economy beer directly from can. You're eyes may water a bit here.

Pour out another martini. Change CD. Turn up music still louder. The CD selections should be going from most blue to most upbeat. (Women go the other way. Oh yes, this drink is for men only.)

Have another slice of pizza with your next martini.

From here, you'll be incapable of and adamantly opposed to, following directions of any kind from anybody. This is good. The drink is working its charms. From here you can take the drink in any direction you like. Think of yourself as an artist, and "The Transfusion" as you medium. There's really no limit to the variations and altercations that will follow. It’s a drink about freedom. About the self.

The heart of the drink is the bottle of vodka. Don't neglect it! You must finish it before going to "bed" wherever that happens to be. If police lights appear outside--chug the vodka, clean finish it. A hospital bed is preferable to a jail cell, plus nurses love "The Transfusion."

Best of luck and enjoy.

Let me know if you need a copilot on this one!

An Arbitrary Rating Scale for Prospective Authors Ranging from Best to Worst. Where Do You Rank?

2007-11-09T14:15:00.001-05:00

By T.J. Gillespie and Paul Cassidy

Do you like to write? Are you drunk? Have you been in a fist fight in the past few days? Are you working on a secret manuscript that may be a) the Great American novel b) challenge the nation's obscenity laws c) change the way we use language? Use this rating system to gauge your potential!

1. Drunken Irish Novelist (Joyce. O’Casey. Behan. Flann O’Brien. Paul Cassidy. Let it be known that Dylan Thomas makes a compelling case for great Drunken Welsh poets.)

2. Expatriate Novelist Writing in a Second Language, Preferably French (Some could argue that this is a narrow field, we prefer the term elite. Beckett. Conrad. Nabakov. Joyce, although writing in English, gets points for teaching himself Norwegian to read Ibsen. Automatic disqualification: French novelists writing in Irish.)

3. American Recluse. (The mystery. The mystique.The aura. Salinger. Harper Lee. Pynchon. Cormac McCarthy. Sean Connery in Finding Forester. Extra points if small town locals keep your secret and deliberately misdirect the fawning tourists and get them lost. See the residents of Cornish, NH.)

4. American-Jewish Novelist (Roth, Bellow, and Mailer. Some great new ones: Jonathan Safran Foer and Myla Goldberg. Arthur Miller and Paul Simon don’t count? Dorothy Parker had a Jewish father. There’s Shell Silverstein.)

5. Dr Seuss

6. Christmas wrapping paper.

7. Dan Brown. Is your writing better when accompanied by illustrations? Is Tom Hanks your favorite actor? Are you paranoid about Masons and albinos? Do you like codes and words that look the same upside-down and right-side-up? Do you think France is cool?

8. NY Times Sunday Magazine. Pictures are nice. The Ethicist is interesting. William Safire still kickin’ curmudgeon-style over language. There's a pretty decent crossword for people who are still into that.

9. Dr Phil. I should note that I am judging him solely as a persona not as a therapist and certainly not as a writer. God, I hope no one thinks of him as a writer.

10. John Grisham. I think I saw part of the movie version of The Firm. Tom Cruise was in it. And Julia Roberts maybe. I think the receptionist at my dentist's office likes him. He is often features in Parade! Magazine.

How would you rate the following:

New England mystery novelists who solve crimes while on vacation

Female novelists (spinsters-only division)

Tough Guy pulp fiction writers who may or may not be writing about their own criminal pasts

Jerry B. Jenkins

Southern Writers (particularly Southern Gothic)

Reggae bands

Alcoholic novelists who die young and/or violently (or poets who drown)

Corsons Inlet by A. R. Ammons

2007-11-05T21:15:00.000-05:00

The bay at Strathmere, July 2006

One of the RLPA's favorite places in the world is the Jersey Shore, and in particular, that barrier island of Sea Isle City. It was with a sudden surprise and delight that I came across a poem titled "Corsons Inlet" in the Vintage Book of Contemporary Poetry.

You can read the whole of "Corsons Inslet" at the Poetry Foundation archives:

Here is the opening:

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning
to the sea,
then turned right along
the surf

rounded a naked headland
and returned
along the inlet shore:

it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,
crisp in the running sand,
some breakthroughs of sun
but after a bit
continuous overcast:

the walk liberating, I was released from forms,
from the perpendiculars,
straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds
of thought
into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends
of sight

You can read more about A.R. Ammons here.

What I am Looking For in Our Next President: A Return of the Fancy Dress

2007-11-03T21:54:00.000-04:00

[fourth in a series]

by Sir Percy, English fop.

If any of you corn-fed Colonials put down your blunderbusses and fried pork parts long enough to inform yourselves about civilized people, you may have been surprised that the House of Lords has voted to discontinue the use of ceremonial robes and powdered wigs and instead conduct its business in the American tradition of business suits. What’s next—the prime minister donning a green flight suit and a “Blue Wolf” fighter pilot helmet and landing on the deck of an airline carrier?

That is why I blame James Madison, the first American President to choose long pants over breeches. And that is why I can only hope the next president reverses the coarsening of sartorial sense and restores the powdered wig, short pants, and a daring sense of elegance!
If it was good enough for Washington and Jefferson, by jove it ought to fly for an Arakansan.

While certain candidates may brag of the Rabelaisian wit of a Henry Drummond or act as if they were a flashing hussar of debate like Colonel Sibthrop, none can claim to have the panache of say, the Marquess of Rockingham or Earl Cathcart. Americans, I know, pride themselves on quaint notions of egalitarianism—I even heard of an absurd jest called “Casual Fridays,” which is surely an imaginative tall tale from your frontier West. Still, I have seen Presidents in sweat suits, khaki pants and polo shirts; others, worse still, in sneakers and dungarees.

Now I know the odds are against finding an American in a Belgravian tailor’s shop, I continue to dream of ermine robes and perfumed miniver! You were once took pride in being called a Yankee Doodle Dandy, so America, when you pull that ballot, stick a feather in your cap and hope the vice president is a member of the Macaroni!

Then again, cold indifference is the pleasure of hereditary titles—truth be told, I simply don’t care what you do.

By the way, do you happen to have a little extra? My snuff box is a bit light at the moment.

RLPA Unconventional Book Review: A Model World by Michael Chabon

2007-11-03T21:43:00.000-04:00

A Review of Michael Chabon’s Short Story Collection A Model World Using Michael Chabon’s Prose as Poetry

“S Angel”

Easy flirtation
Had always struck him
as an end in itself

and one that did not particularly
interest him.

“A Model World”

The truth was
He belonged to that large brotherhood of young men,
Often encountered in Academe,
Who are obsessively careful about
Two or three things—
The arrangement of socks in their drawers,
The alphabetical order of their jazz albums,
The proper way to make a Bloody Mary—

And slobs
In every other regard.

“Blumenthal on the Air”

Friendship is different
in another language;
A foreign friend doesn’t have
to understand what you feel,
And I don’t expect it.

It’s enough
If he understands what you just said.

“Sometimes,” he says,
“It irritates me to see you
made a fool.”

“But then I rememerber
that you’re an American.”

“Millionaires”

Once in a while
You see a waitress like that,
Crying at the back of a restaurant
Or in the hallway by the phone,
Staring down
At a monogrammed matchbook
In her fingers, and consider for a second or two
The untold hardness
Of a waitress’s life.

“More Than Human”

His father
Didn’t know of the constant delight
His sons had taken in him
Or the legends and fables
That had grown around his name.

How impossible was the life of a father!

“Admirals”

It still sometimes seemed to him
That the things that had happened before he was born—
Pearl Harbor, hieroglyphics, catapults,
The day his parents fell in love—
Were equally ancient and interesting,
Cryptic and
Gone.

From the archives (June 1, 2006), a previous review of Chabon:
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
by Michael Chabon

Not recommended.

Mysteries of Pittsburgh is the first novel written by Pulitizer prize winner Chabon; two of this other books, Wonder Boys and Kavalier and Clay are widely celebrated. This is a typical coming of age novel about a young man, Art Bechstein, who is facing the summer aftter college graduation. It opens rather slowly, but gets more interesting as the story progresses and more eccentric characters are introduced.
How do you pronounce his last name? I'll let him answer: "That's 'Cha-' as in Shea Stadium, '-bon' as in Bon Jovi."

The Wind and the Walls

2007-11-01T17:27:00.000-04:00

Psalm 55:

"Day and night they go about upon the walls thereof:
mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it.
Wickedness is in the midst thereof:
deceit and guile depart not from her streets."

I wandered too far outside of the walls of my own head, on 109th and Amsterdam, near St. John the Divine.

"Hey Dan! Where are you these days?"

"Hey man, I wish I knew! I can't find a sign around these parts to save my life!"

Couldn't tell what I was dealing with exactly,
feeling some damp wind blow through me like a foul red line breeze near two a.m.
Stumble drunk on a subway grate, the man, trying to preach to me.

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

Your Favorite Celebrities Get Real on Fame, Relationships and Having it All.

2007-11-01T16:25:00.000-04:00

Samuel L. Jackson

"I be walking down the street right after Pulp Fiction came out and people would just scream at me lines from the movie, like, it's crazy.
"What just happened is a f****ing miracle
and I want you to ACKNOWLEDGE IT"

"I want the wallet that says Bad MotherF***er!"

At First It got me a lot of play I mean, ha ha, like, A LOT OF PLAY, I mean like (starts laughing to himself) a lot (starts laughing harder) I mean so much (starts laughing harder) it got to the point where I had to be like YO (laughing uncontrollably, weeping) I killed so many...I mean so much time.

I had to stop lettin' the ladies say certain words and the color green just got me to be like, you know how you always wake up in different countries, joe public knows all about that !!!!!

(Starts turning the blender in his kitchen on and off) I mean look at all of this stuff.

Sometimes I have Mohammad and Juice drive around L.A. and…

you know we got this game where we…we pick up random homeless men and, you know shower and shine, shine and shave or – wait is it, yeah shit shine and shave, whatever I think that was one of my lines from TripleX, Vin Diesel be gay did you know that, he always sitting down in interviews because that motherfucker is SHORT, doesn't want people to know that though,

we – yeah anyway in the news the next day let's say there are five of them and we give 'em like ten grand a piece, shit is crazy, sure enough next day I see on the new like "5 homeless men found dead in East L.A. from apparent heroin overdoses"

I'm like, you get to feeling like, you're God.

Sometimes I just look at myself in the mirror and say
"I am God"
just over and over and over and over and over and over
or hire out of work actors to just you know ATTEND to me,
worship me you know, gold nail polish, the works.

I had NIKE make me these special (motions with his hands) Travolta had like two operations so he could use 'em right, truth serum works good but you lose mobility.

You get to feelin' like, you know, yeah.

Tom Cruise

The Bridge to Total Freedom is directly related to the Thetan and his environment also known as his Mind, which is important when you work in film, you just HAVE to keep it in mind.

If you can understand the Affinity, Reality and Communication triangle then it's just like, you know it leads you to - I was on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and I realized there that y'know, boom, Affinity, Reality and Communication that's like my motorcycle: the Ducati Hypermotard 1100S, it has the SAME ENGINE, HA HA HA, as Jay's bike that he just took to Sturgis, the Harley Davidson 1978 1100 Roadster and it dawned on me:

"ARC triangle = KRC triangle." Affinity, Reality, Communication is Knowledge, Responsibility, Control. You know?

The Sisters on the Green

2007-10-31T18:38:00.000-04:00

“A1” she said “like the sauce”

Ring…

46 States plus the District of Columbia…Yengs Garden delivery ‘till 11PM…Cannondale…- “oh”

Lintel, Sill ease back from Jambs like a kiss in a dream in the light banquet in heaven.

Somewhere near Alpha Centauri I danced with God like a mad mad madman after eight or nine belts at the bar in Lahinch to an Irish reel.

“It’s so good to see you”

Elbows and hungry hands.

The lites are three windows into That Happy Land.

This is the most important moment in the history of doors.

She let me in the what for the private and you, through the window and at parties in the rooms downstairs, but not for everyone.

In the eyes across the room.

No - for me in the closest wool near the air around your heart, love, swings gently for me alone, on a hinge.

The sisters on the Green are starting the Third Sorrowful Mystery.

Real Art Is..

2007-10-27T10:17:00.000-04:00

2007-10-23T19:05:00.000-04:00

Dan McGlaughlin’s Interview with
Davide Hegel
The 28 year old
Head Casting Director on
The Emmy Award Winning Soap Opera
All My Children

Dan McGlaughlin:

(26, fat, feebly knocks at the door with horror and trepidation) Um…(inaudible)…is’zis…(inaudible)

Davide Hegel:

Hello.

D.M.:

Are you…

D.H.:

You must be Dan, nice to meet you please come in have a seat. So Dan, you’ve been with ABC daytime for about, uhh, let me see, okay five episodes now?

D.M.:

Can I…

D.H:

You can just put your lunch on the coffee table for now, is that from the truck in front of the building on 66th?

D.M.:

(cough) Yeah.

D.H.:

Oh…( Dan situates himself in the chair, and noisily puts his white plastic bag containing his Styrofoam clamshell on the nattily dressed, young casting director’s coffee table, ruining it.)…

D.M.:

I spilled some coffee, it’s just a little bit…

D.H.

No don’t worry about, don’t worry about, DON”T WORRY ABOUT IT hah, hah…What’d you get?

D.M.:

‘Scuse me?

D.H.:

For Lunch?

D.M.:

Cheese steak.

D.H.:

They make those there?

D.M.:

I told’em to make me one, they made me one. ‘Snot onna menu.

D.H.:

Oh yeah, ha ha, you know people who know people, right?

D.M.:

I don’t know him.

D.H.:

…

D.M.:

…

D.H.:

So it looks like you’ve been doing a lot of supporting cast work on our show.

D.M.:

Background work. Carrying clipboards.

D.H. :

Uh, yes, You’ve been – let’s see what was you’re character’s name?

D.M.:

Recurring Hospital Orderly Number 7.

D.H.:

Yeeeesssssss…So how do you find the experience of working with us so far?

D.M.:

It’s good I bring a book to read.

D.H.:

Excuse me?

D.M.:

For the, you know, (Points to the left with his finger).

D.H.:

Well let’s just look at your resume. It looks like your face has filled out a little since you’ve had these headshots taken, when were these taken?

D.M.:

Oh no, look it’s just the angle, see, the angle that the pictures were taken.

D.H.:

When were they taken?

D.M.:

Oh I’d say, maybe…It’s 2007?

D.H.:

Yes. It is the year two thousand and seven. That’s what year it is Dan.

D.M.:

(Counting on his hands, his left hand palm up all fingers extended, his right fist palm up, thumb and index finger extended) seven, six, five, four, three, two – shhhhhugar – seven, SIX, fivefour, THREE – 2003? I think?

D.H.:

And you’re still “Mountain biking, Juggling, Running Marathons, Mountain Climbing, Translating Online Articles into French and Italian for Lonely Planet, Playing Amateur Soccer, Skydiving, Shooting Bows and Arrows…”

D.M.:

Huh?

D.H.:

Your resume, under "Miscellaneous skills"?

D.M.:

Oh, OH yeah. Yes. Yes I’m still doing, I still do those things. All of them.

D.H.:

Isn't it called Archery?

D.M.:

What called Archery?

D.H.:

Shooting Bows and Arrows, on your resume, isn’t it called Archery.

D.M.:

Yeah, it’s called Archery, that’s what shooting Bows and Arrows is, Archery, you don’t shoot the bows though, actually you USE the bow to shoot arrows, it’s important to know that. It’s actually one of the first things that they teach you. That.

D.H.:

Do you go to a shooting range, or a, what’s it called…

D.M.:

No, you had it right.

D.H.:

Had what right?

D.M.:

The name, it's called a shooting range. Y'see they use the same name for a place where you shoot arrows with a bow and a place where you fire a gun. It can get kinda confusing so that's why when you call an operator and you say "Can I have the number for the local shooting range?" They made it, I think they made it a law, or at least it's a rule, that's what it is it's a rule for all telephone operators to say "Guns or Arrows, sir?" or "Ma'am" Politically correct and everything nowadays.

D.H.:

Uh...Well, I think in the digital age we live in now people probably just look it up on the Internet.

D.M.:

Yeah, that's probably what they do.

D.H.

Do you, uh, go regularly?

D.M.:

No I go to Central Park to do it.

D.H.:

You shoot a bow and arrow in Central Park?

D.M.:

Well, of course not, THAT’S illegal. I train there.

D.H.:

You train there?

D.M.:

Yeah like, lift weights and stuff to stay in shape for my acting career.

D.H.:

You lift weights in central park?

D.M.:

…Yes.

Anomie.

2007-10-23T13:54:00.000-04:00

Today mother died, or yesterday I don’t know.

I read, actually.

Out with the Old, In with the New.
I’m not asking you I’m telling you.
I respect that coming from you.
Sarcasm is New.

“Police report said that they caught the guys there, it was dark, I think it might have been a monastery
or something
but it’s just all crumbling”
(draws on his cigarette)
“since the aristocracy been displaced
and them blue-bloods don't own it no more.”

I lost my place in the book.

“When I come back will he still be here?”

No we aren’t reading that book.

It said “Je ne sais pas.”

Pas pas pas.

Without God and immortal life all things are lawful then, they can do what they like.

Alyosha’s crying in the book.

I’m reading.

One Book, One Philadelphia Title Chosen

2007-10-19T10:45:00.001-04:00

From the Official Library Site:

The One Book, One Philadelphia Selection Committee has chosen Dave Eggers' What Is the What to be the featured selection for this upcoming year. What Is the What tells the true story of Valentino Achak Deng, who as a child witnessed atrocities of civil warfare in Sudan and became one of the so-called Lost Boys. In order to enlighten readers and stimulate discussion dealing with both East African culture and history, as well as issues of violence in the world and within our own city, two thematically related companion books for families are also suggested: Brothers In Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan, by Mary Williams, and Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard, by Mawi Asgedom.

What I'm Looking for in the Next President [Second in a Series]

2007-10-18T17:03:00.000-04:00

The most important issues to me are stylish facial hair and solidness of build. I firmly believe that this country needs another Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland or William Taft. Why is it that since the election of Woodrow Wilson, all of our presidents have been in relatively good shape and haven't had a single whisker? My vote's going to the first candidate to sport a mutton-chops-to-mustache beard, especially if he adds other presidential accoutrements to his wardrobe, such as a set of epaulets and a shiny saber.

While we're at it, I believe that any man fit to rule the free world must be solidly built; a man's man. I don't mean someone who can run a marathon, chop wood or walk up the stairs without losing his breath. I'm looking for a candidate who enjoys greasy, fried meat sandwiches, heavy, dark beers and the telling of a good tale. Grover Cleveland was immense; a giant among men, who spilled effusively from his desk chair in the Oval Office. At the age of 49, Cleveland married the 21 year old daughter of his law partner and best friend. That's how manly this guy was: his best friend gave him his daughter as a sacrifice. Ask yourself this: who would you rather spend a weekend with - Teddy Roosevelt & U.S. Grant or Calvin Coolidge & George Bush the First? The answer is self evident, of course. You would chose the former because you know that you'd be in for 72 hours of bawdy fun. Calvin Coolidge isn't going to take you to a cock fight, that I guarantee you.

Your average president doesn't accomplish much during his tenure. Maybe he'll indiscriminately carpet-bomb a 3d world country, maybe he'll temporarily adjust the income tax rate and, if he's lucky, maybe he'll get to appoint a king-judge to the Supreme Court. If the next president wants to be remembered, he should look the part so his portrait stands out to those touring the White House 100 years from now. Zachary Taylor will always look presidential, grasping his saber, staring furiously at the artist as if to say "If you don't finish this picture in the next ten minutes, you'll be lucky to limp out of here, Mary."

That's what'll get my vote: an honest attempt to grasp immortality.

-The Grand Moff

The Super Exceptions: SuperGroups Reconsidered

2007-10-13T12:48:00.000-04:00

In my recent diatribe against the excesses found in supergroups I ceded that there can be something incredibly exciting about collaboration. However, I think there must be some kind of distinction between these kind of one-off projects and true supergroups.

Let me present three different scenarios:

1. If one evaluates the merits of a supergroup simply on the talents of the individual members than it would be pretty difficult to discredit The Dirty Mac, one of the most impressive line-ups in rock history. In 1968, The Rolling Stones, in between recording Beggar’s Banquet and losing Brian Jones to “death by misadventure,” Mick and the boys decided it would be great fun to sponsor a freak fest, videotape it, and air it as family television entertainment. The result was the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus and a band, Dirty Mac, that is often referred to simply as The Supergroup. Centered around bandleader and rhythm guitarist John Lennon, lead guitarist Eric Clapton, Kieth Richards on bass, and drummer Mitch Mitchell (of the Jimi Hendrix Experience), this group sounds pretty super.

Here is the video of them playing “Yer Blues.” Clapton’s work is particulary impressive.

2. Likewise, Philadelphia music blogger Jim Taggart at his excellent Rehearsals for Retirement site, suggests an even more impressive line-up and the video footage (which he confidently titled "Hey,TJ this wins!) to back it up.

Bob Dylan, Neil Young, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Roger McGuinn, G.E. Smith, Steve Cropper, Anton Fig (from Dave Letterman’s band), Jim Keltner, Donald “Duck” Dunn, and Booker T. (but no M.G.s) come together and play an all-star version of Dylan’s “My Back Pages.”

It does, certainly, look like a winner.

3. In a provocative online essay entitled “R.E.M. vs. U2: Who was the Best Band of the 80s?” Slate music critic Dan Kois suggested the following musical dividing line: “Throughout that decade and the early 1990s, a fierce rivalry existed between R.E.M. and U2—not in real life, mind you, but in my head. Among certain floppy-haired music nerds in that era, you were either an R.E.M. person or a U2 person.” Personally, I never thought it had to be an either/or situation. For most of my floppy haired music nerd high school years, I moved back and forth between the two without the slightest worry. “With Or Without You.” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” Joshua Tree. Out of Time.

Then in 1993, the same year that I would graduate high school, they came together perhaps to settle the debate once and for all. On January 20, 1993, Michael Stipe and Michael Mills of R.E.M. joined U2’s Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton to form a supergroup of sorts, Automatic Baby, (a name that melded their two latest discs: Automatic for the People and Achtung, Baby) and performed “One” at the MTV Rock N Roll Inaugural Ball for the newly elected Bill Clinton.

PS. The popular hipster site Stereogum has recently honored the fifteen anniversary of R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People by commissioning a tribute album and essays about each song. The album is available for free and legal downloading and some of the comments--but by no means all of them--are interesting.
Go here: http://www.stereogum.com/drivexv/

Judgment:

Clearly each of these bands has the talent, the pedigree, the popular and critical love, but can any of them truly be considered a supergroup? I would argue no. In the first place, each of these collectives is temporary, lasting only one night, one performance, and one song. Secondly, none of the music here is new, meaning that there is no actual composition going on; they are, at that precise moment, merely the world’s greatest cover band. Had the Dirty Mac peformed something other that “Yer Blues,” a standout track from the Beatles White Album or had Achtung Baby truly collaborated on a song that highlighted the individual talents of those two bands, we would really have something memorable.

Certainly they are better than Eiffel 65 and Oysterhead, but then again, they aren’t exactly doing the same thing.

Then again, I could have brought up these guys.

Big News on the Cheesesteak Front

2007-10-13T11:38:00.000-04:00

It began on October 2, when Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani met with Joey Vento, owner of Geno's--"English Only"-- Steaks at Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue. Rudy told the reporters, "Whenever I'm at Geno's, I order in English." Obviously.

Now, no one can mess up a cheesesteak order like John Kerry who foolishly ordered his steak with Swiss(!!) ("It will doom his candidacy in Philadelphia," predicted Craig LaBan, food critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, "In Philadelphia, [Swiss] an alternative lifestyle."

But there is some Philly fall-out after Vento announced his endorsement for Rudy on Fox News. (Check out the announcement here.)

In another interview Vento told a reporter that Mexicans carry disease into the U.S. because they "play and drink out of the same water." In interviews, Vento has maintained that his own ancestors were disadvantaged because no one ever forced them to learn English on arrival from Italy. He also sports a tattoo of the confederate flag. Vento says it's an homage to the old cartoon character Johnny Yuma, the rebel.

Oh, sure Johnny Yuma, everybody's childhood friend.

In other news....

Rick Oliveri, scion of the oldest cheesesteak dynastic family, has won a temporary victory in the form of an extention of his lease agreement. This allows him to remain in business at the Reading Market until May.

To recap the saga so far, here is the Inqy's take:

"Olivieri, 42, part of the third generation of the South Philadelphia family that claims to have invented the steak sandwich, has been operating in the market without a lease since July 31.

Market management announced in early July that they would not offer Olivieri a new lease. Instead, as part of what was described as an attempt to bring a "fresh face" to the market, management announced that they would offer the space to Tony Luke, the South Philly restaurateur who built his name - and a stellar Zagat survey rating - on roast pork sandwiches.

Then the fireworks began. Olivieri sued Reading Terminal Market Corp., contending his ouster was the result of his work as president of the market's merchants group during protracted and often-difficult negotiations over a new master lease for the 72 merchants.

Market officials denied that the ouster was retaliation, maintaining that Olivieri tried to reopen lease talks on issues that were settled and that they assumed he was not interested in renewing his lease. The market sued Olivieri in Common Pleas Court to force his eviction.

Bernstein consolidated both suits and will try them jointly June 2. That date is also well after a new mayor takes office and has the authority to remake the market's board of directors."

One of the better reads is the list of questions frequently asked about Rick, found at his website.

Here are some highlights:

Q-Has he done anything to embarrass the City or the Market?

A- On the contrary, he has often been used as a spokesperson for the Market and the region's tourism industry, even being selected by the Sister Cities Program to represent the City and its most famous sandwich in Ax En Provence, France, several times.

Q--What about Rick being a "trouble maker" in the Market?

A- He makes cheesesteaks for his customers and helps generate business for his fellow merchants. He is, sadly, perceived as a trouble maker by some outside the merchants, including the Market Board Chairman and General Manager. The lawsuit goes into detail.

I just like the fact that these two questions are frequently asked.

And some good news:

Then the premier of http://www.cheesesteaktown.com/ which bills itself as the leaders of the search for the city's best sandwich. It actually does have some interesting bits on Philadelphia celebrities, historical spots, the Seven Wonders of Philadelphia, and of course grub. Best pool player ever? Willie Mosconi. Best stoodge? Larry Fine. What about the murder of Massa the Gorilla or the mystery around Old Baldy? Check it out.

Oh, and two Roxborough spots, Chubby's and Delasandro's, are tipped as some of the best in the city--although the debate still rages on here at the R.L.P.A.

2007 Phillies Season Comes to and End

2007-10-07T17:07:00.001-04:00

While the Phillies lost three consecutive games to the Colorado Rockies, they were an exciting team to watch all summer long. One of the more interesting moments in a very interesting season occured in Denver's Coors Stadium earlier this year. During the game, play was interrupted by a violent storm that began to get the better of the grounds crew. That's when the Phillies ran out of their dug-out to assist with an out of control tarp. What follows in an incredible moment that is spontaneous, generous, and good in a summer when many sports headlines were none of those things. The Denver crowd seems to appreciate the visiting club as they cheer and applaud our Phils.

Free People Read Freely

2007-10-02T16:40:00.000-04:00

The American Library Association is celebrating Banned Books Week,

Some good news: For the first time in years, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain have been taken off the list.

ALA: Banned Books Week Official Site

2007-10-01T14:42:00.000-04:00

A short Introductory Poem

I was just asked this morning, by my new boss
What's so great about me
but not in those words
he used "asset"
I said
I'm so magnetic
I'm bipolar
Everyone in the room laughed
uneasily.

Happy Birthday John Coltrane

2007-09-23T13:47:00.000-04:00

To read more about this jazz genius of Philadelphia and also see what he has to do with robots, sainthood, animated notation, Woody Allen and more, please see:

http://jazzinsaintlooey.blogspot.com/

Monday Night Football

2007-09-17T17:02:00.001-04:00

Photo Essay: Eagles Fans

2007-09-17T16:49:00.000-04:00

Related: A overly maudlin montage of Philadelphia sports low and occasionally highlights.

The Eagles Fight Song (Short) and (Long)

Philadelphia's Original Sports Blog: Monday Morning Mehta

Some of the More Ridiculous Items Being Sold to Fans of Supergroups and Other Rock Bands.

2007-09-14T21:50:00.000-04:00

These are all absolutely real and available for purchase immediately. Some make more sense than others. I will not reveal exactly how much time was wasted compiling this list, but it is embarrassing.

Poison flask. Highly logical as all members of band are recovering alcoholics and their music makes me want to drink.

Nothing says Happy Holidays like this Black Sabbath stocking.

Anybody even remember this guy? He sang back up for Gloria Estefan, but I guess some people love his heart, soul, and voice.

Perfect for feeding time. Especially if you are serving the carcass of a deer you just killed with your bare hands.

If you've already gone for the Black Sabbath stocking, this is the perfect complement.

What time is it? Time to rock out to White Snake!

Barbara Streisand luggage. Seriously. She's selling it for hundreds of dollars.

Cuddle up under this soft and delicate Megadeth throw blanket.

Black Sabbath scented candles. What on earth could they smell like?

3 Doors Down license plates. I have to believe that they ONLY come in Mississippi.

No comment.

Superbad: Self-Indulgent Noodling a la David Coverdale.

2007-09-14T17:29:00.000-04:00

By T.J. Gillespie

Are these ridiculous idiots a supergroup?

A quick glance at many of the most commercially successful “supergroups” in rock and roll history should have most music fans sticking their fingers to stop up their ears. Consider this list: Velvet Revolver, Audioslave, Emerson Lake and Palmer. Then there’s these guys: Mike + the Mechanics. That pretentious plus sign alone should end the debate. Shall I go on? Asia, anyone? I never knew White Snake was considered a supergroup (and after viewing their line-up I am still not convinced), but other than a marginally hot chick (at least sluttily hot in 1986) dancing on the hood of a car, what have they ever done? Oh, that’s right. They sold over 8 million records.

Supergroups, despite the fact that they may boast an assemblage of talent, a grouping of individual masters at the supposed height of their abilities, often fail to create anything remotely interesting. They remind me of the 2002 U.S. Basketball team, you know the group that still billed itself as the Dream Team even though Jordan, Barkley, Bird, et al had all retired. Instead they found themselves built around Raef La Frentz and Andre Miller and finishing sixth behind well-known round ball powerhouse New Zealand. Constructed around the vanity of its players, supergroups sacrifice imaginative creation for the sake of individual ego and the results are almost always disappointing.

The worst of the lot actually do something worse than simply bore us; they cheapen the reputations and damage the legacies of their members. Who, other than Linda, would choose Wings over the Beatles? Well, that one is too easy, but there are others that still beg the same question. Steve Vai, what are you doing in The David Lee Roth Band? Steve Jones, you were a Sex Pistol and now you're in a band with the back-up replacement drummer of Guns ‘N Roses? Seriously? Jimmy Chamberlain, you recorded Siamese Dream and Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and now you write tunes for Sebastian Bach? Granted, Billy Corgan is a control freak who has never been the same since he went bald, but he's got to be better than anyone from freaking Skid Row.

What supergroups invariably offer are excess, self-satisfaction, and the smug air that surrounds people who take themselves way too seriously. This is worse than the occasionally ridiculous pairings that seem to spontaneously occur during live performances. As absurd as it may be, Jay Z being joined on stage by Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow (which really happened; listen to “Beachchair” ) is kind of a one-time thing, a musical anomaly that makes for an interesting concert happening. In fact, this is the kind of rare spectacle that makes live music so magical. I’d like to see Eddie Vedder jump on stage to join the Who or Bruce Springsteen join U2 in an impromptu rendition of “People Get By” as he did in Philly during the Irish band’s last go around. The guys on stage seemed to love playing as much as the stunned audience, who never expected it, loved hearing it.

The embodiment of all that is wrong in a supergroup has to be the band Oysterhead, which I nominate as the worst ever even though I’ve barely heard any of their music. What I do know is that its constituent members individually have a tendency toward all the worst elements of music, but in the realm of this side project find themselves operating without restraint. Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio’s masturbatory guitar solos make sense, if nothing else, in the context of his main band’s patchouli-scented jam sessions, but who wants to hear him paired up with Stewart Copeland, the petulant, juvenile drummer of the Police who is more famous for taunting Sting into fistfights than keeping the time? Is anyone ever in the mood for a ten-minute prog-rock drum solo? Ever? And the only thing worse than an extended drum break is of course the bass solo. Enter Les Claypool of Primus fame. Yes, the band who had a hit with the song “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver.” That's art.

In the clip below, “Army’s On Ecstasy,” the band seems to bring out all the bad clichés of the supergroup. You have Stewart behind a 30 piece drum kit like he is auditioning for a Rush tribute band, Les working his bass and belching the kind of lyrics one would expect from a man who titled an album Pork Soda. Getting off relatively easy here, Trey as he simply bores us with another interminable display of virtuosity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZnMx_hWUik

Oysterhead, to this listener, is the worst of the so-called supergroups for two real reasons. First, and most significantly, they commit the cardinal sin of self-indulgence. Rather than using the group dynamic to reign in narcissistic impulses, these three reinforce each other’s worst qualities. Secondly, while no one (other than my brother Andrew) would ever mistake Ted Nugent’s Damn Yankees’ hit “High Enough” with musical innovation, Oysterhead has been surprisingly spared of critical condemnation (and the ridicule they deserve). Allmusic.com actually praises, “[T]he trio succeeds admirably at finding the common ground between their seemingly disparate styles.” Yes, disparate styles that can be described as smooth jazz influenced British white boy reggae, teenage funk-punk, and Ben and Jerry’s fueled Grateful Dead style improvisation. Is this really something we want to blend? Rolling Stone raves, “From complex workouts and creative manifestoes to bluesy backgrounds and hummable pop tunes, Anastasio's jam-band finesse, Claypool's energy and Copeland's superb old-world skills meld convincingly.”

Looking at the evidence, I suppose the question might be, are there any good supergroups?
This is a question well worth examining…To Be Continued.

Oysterhead: What do you think? Are these guys the worst?

When Considering the Supergroup...

2007-09-08T23:00:00.001-04:00

You might want to think about why your old tapes sound better than some of your newer downloads.

Kerouac Continued: A Musical Tribute

2007-09-07T19:30:00.001-04:00

The following musical selections were inspired by the live and writing of Jack Kerouac. They have been provided for your listening pleasure.

"Hey Jack Kerouac" by 10, 0000 Maniacs

"The House That Jack Kerouac Built" by The Go-Betweens

"Le Pastie de La Bourgeoisie" by Belle and Sebastian
(featuring the lyric "“Wouldn’t you like to get away? / Kerouac’s beckoning with open arms / And open roads of Eucalyptus, westward bound.” )

"Stuck Between Stations" by The Hold Steady
(Featuring the lyric "There are nights when I think Sal Paradise was right: Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together." This track was also the first cut on T.J. Gillespie's Best of 2006 compilation disc.)

"Pretty Girls Make Graves" by the Smiths
(Title comes from a line in Kerouac's Dharma Bums.)

For more check out this personal essay about Kerouac at the Smithsonian Magazine.

**Please note: links to music will expire in seven days. Here is a quick disclaimer: None of the files linked here were uploaded or hosted by me. The links are not tested and are found simply by searching the net. I don't take any responsibility for the usage of the files you may find. Any music file you acquire following provided links, use only for your own evaluation purpose, and delete it within 24 hours. If you like anything of the music presented here, please buy it.

A Short Essay on a One Time Favorite Thing: Book

2007-09-05T17:01:00.000-04:00

The first of a proposed series of things we used to like a lot

On May 31, 1996, as Timothy Leary, that crazed Harvard professor turned countercultural guru, dying in front of a video camera, was repeating the question "Why not?" over and over again, I found myself meandering through the overstuffed shelves of a bookstore in San Francisco's North Shore. As a college English major who had spent consecutive semesters reading Blake and Coleridge, I hastily climbed Coit's tower, rode a cable car to the wharf, and photographed the crazy curves of Lombard St. so that I might be able to get to the tourist landmark that interested me most: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's little shop, City Lights Booksellers and Publishers.

I made two purchases that day: paperback copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Actually, come to think of it, I made several purchases that day, the rest all concerning alcoholic beverages. I recall walking up Columbus Boulevard, alone, crossing Kerouac Alley, and having a seat at the bar in Vesuvio, once a gathering spot of the Beats. Today they offer things like eco-friendly cocktails and organic wine coolers, but ten years ago, I was drinking steam beer and reading the romance of the wanderer in the warm darkness of a tavern. When you are young (Kerouac seems to be writing for adolescents the way Salinger writes about them) and far from home, you begin to see yourself as more adventurous, more rebellious, more dangerous than you probably are.

Today, on the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication, I must admit that the book doesn't have the same appeal for me that it once did; the style is a bit dated, the plot a little thin, the characters self-centered, self-destructive, self-aggrandizing. Critics may snidely remark that it is really his only accomplishment, making him a literary one-hit wonder, but truth be told, it is not even my favorite of his works. (That would probably be Dharma Bums.) Still, the fact that it doesn’t quite affect me the way it once did is not necessarily the result of the book’s deficiencies, but is, more likely, a reflection of the changes in me as a reader.

As a freshly turned twenty-0ne year old walking through the streets of Northern California, I was seduced by the same things that appeal to most young readers: the frenetic motion, the exciting possibilities of the open road, the importance of passionate friendships, and the appeal of excessive consumption of booze, sex, music, drugs. (What exactly are Bennies? Where can I find them?) Now when I revisit Dean and Sal, more often as a teacher reading the critical essays of seventeen year old writers, I no longer get a kick out these bohemian bodhisattvas looking for kicks. Instead, I see the novel as unconsciously elegiac, unrepentantly pessimistic, and as a result it never fails to make me feel lonely.

Like Cormac McCarthy’s lamentation for the death of the American cowboy (and the West) at the hands of a creeping modernity, Kerouac is documenting an American landscape that would disappear shortly after his famous scroll manuscript was published. Eisenhower’s National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 would forever change the way Americans see their own country. The small rural lanes and the old fashioned two-lane state roads (most famously celebrated in Route 66) would never unfold themselves and beckon with offerings of brotherhood.

Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together, indeed.

"Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?": Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Holy Bop Pilgramage

2007-09-05T13:25:00.000-04:00

September 5, 1957: Jack Kerouac's On the Road Published.

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 2, Ch. 8

"In America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it ... and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen." --Part 5.

See related Posts from our archives:

Allen Ginsberg reads "Father Death Blues"

Annotated Reading: Jack and Jazz on sister site I've Got the St. Louis Blues.

The original scroll manuscript is currently on tour. Follow the adventures:

http://www.ontheroad.org/

Seal

2007-08-31T14:42:00.000-04:00

Photo Essay II: The Unusual Traffic Signage Found in Sea Isle City, New Jersey

2007-08-30T17:55:00.000-04:00

All photographs taken by T.J. Gillespie

Query. Story. Response.

2007-08-29T12:44:00.000-04:00

Editors at JP Press
50 Evergreen Street
Unit 25
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

Dear Editor of Quick Fiction:

Please read the following story and then tell me how awesome it is.
Then offer me money to publish it.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Sincerely,
T.J. Gillespie
SASE enclosed.

“The Hitch”
By T.J. Gillespie

“Whoa, boy, what do you think of her?” asked the driver, nodding his head toward the passenger window. “She’s a real firecracker, that one.”

A round shaped woman wrapped in a worn, red winter coat, coughing fitfully, rounded the corner of Fitzwater Street and headed into Whitman’s Hardware store. He didn’t mean her, did he?

The teenager, unsure of how to respond, crinkled his face and said, “Well, I don’t know…I mean…” and never finished his sentence.

The driver, offering his passenger a cigarette, repeated his query at the next intersection. This time the woman, in her late thirties, was carrying a bag of groceries. She reminded the boy of one of his mother’s friends; she looked like the type of woman who played pinochle or attended Knights of Columbus raffles at the church basement after Mass on Sundays. The boy turned his nose in discomfort and squirmed in his seat. He didn’t want to look at the woman or the driver.

“You must be a real lady killer, eh? Yup, real popular with the girls, I bet,” the driver said with a wink.

It was the nineteen fifties, when men wore hats, women wore aprons, and it was not unreasonable for my father, then just a teenager, to hitchhike to work.

“You know, what?” the driver began again. “I woke up today with this huge problem that just won’t go away,” he said looking first at the boy and then down to his feet. “This big, uncomfortable problem. Maybe you can help me with it.” His last words were a statement, not a question.

The boy, silent, stared straight ahead.

“What’s that?” the driver asked, taking his arm off the wheel and turning his face close to the boy. “Did you say you have the same problem?”

The boy, my father, unlocked his door, opened it, stood up and got out. Without looking back, he slammed the door behind him and said, “Thanks for the ride, mister.”

Dear Mr. Gillespie,

Good God, no.

Sincerely,
Quick Fiction Magazine.

MTV Names Poet Laureate?

2007-08-28T19:22:00.000-04:00

In breaking poetry news...seriously...MTV networks has named its first ever Poet Laureate. The choice? New York Post-modernist John Ashbery, critically acclaimed, sure, but not quite the poetry-slam, hip-hop, spoken word style one would expect for the Generation Z crowd.

See more at the official site: MTV U.

Or read the NY Times' take on it: An 80-Year-Old Poet for the MTV Generation

For help with Ashbery's style, read Slate.com's article: The Instruction Manual: How to Read John Ashbery.

Read some of his poems, or even better, listen to the poet himself read his "Philosophy of Life" here. You can even hear the audience laugh.

This Day in Lyric Poetry...The 258th Birthday of Goethe

2007-08-28T12:13:00.000-04:00

"German poet, novelist, playwright, courtier, and natural philosopher, one of the greatest figures in Western literature. In literature Goethe gained early fame with The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), but his most famous work is the poetic drama in two parts, FAUST. Like the famous character of this poem, Goethe was interested in alchemy. He also made important discoveries in connection with plant and animal life, and evolved a non-Newtonian and unorthodox theory of the character of light and color, which has influenced such abstract painters as Kandinsky and Mondrian." Continued here.

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."

"Children and apes may think it great, /If that should titillate your gum, /But from heart to heart you will never create/ If from your heart it does not come." (from Faust I)

Goethe famously contributed with his friend Fredrich von Schiller on a little literary journal whose aims were not that different from this humble endeavor.

Bonus feature:

Five cent review:

The Sorrows of Young Werther
Goethe

A novel about the "excess of feeling," this eighteenth century novel was a literary sensation. It inspired an overnight fashion trend: yellow pants for men! Napoleon read it nine times! The great philosopher Schopenhauer said that not only would every reader recognize himself in this novel, but every reader would understand himself better after reading it. Plus, it was Frankenstien's monster's favorite novel. (It also inspired a bunch of lovesick German teenagers to off themselves. It became an international phenomenon and is still studied by psychologists as the first example of contagious suicide. And they say video games are dangerous!)

Jesus Goes Hollywood

2007-08-27T20:28:00.000-04:00

By T.J. Gillespie

With the recent success of Mel Gibson’s biblical epic The Passion of the Christ ($200 million and counting), a number of major studios have been scrambling to produce their very own religious themed. “Jesus is very in,” said Jerry Talent, a high-end producer backed by MGM studios, “The bible is hot and God is very right now.” Here are a few of the most hotly anticipated releases:

Jerry Bruckheimer’s David and Goliath: The Reckoning.

From the production team that fathered such hits as The Rock and Con-Air this Old Testament classic is the ultimate underdog action flick. With Tom Welling (star of TV’s Smallville) as the titular shepherd boy turned warrior king, “D&G” promises lots of amped-up guns, high-tech explosions, fast talking bad guys, and super hot babes. This isn’t your mother’s first book of Samuel! Maxim Magazine rates it four stars. Look for July 4 opening. Directed by Michael Bay.

Jet Li is Jacob.

We all know the tale: Jacob wrestles with the Lord and becomes renamed Israel, father of the 12 tribes. Well, jump ahead to modern day Hong Kong where director John Woo “reimagines” Jacob, son of Isaac and father of Joseph, as a kingpin in the Chinese Triad. Using all the hallmarks of his patented “gung fu” style, Woo’s take on the third and final patriarch brings a gritty realism and more than its fair share of “heroic bloodshed.” Co-starting Bolo Yeung as Esau. Currently in post-production.

Unlucky Lot

Although the studio remains mum, look for Roman Polonsky to return to the director’s chair for this unconventional examination of Genesis’ tragic figure. Living in the shadow of his uncle/brother-in-law Abraham, forced to leave his home in Canaan and pick up some real estate in Sodom (Gomorrah was well watered but housing costs were over inflated), Lot finally thinks he’s found happiness until a couple of locals decide to rape some angels. The climax comes quickly: death, destruction, loved ones transformed into pillars of salt by the wrath of God. Think you know how it all turns out? Think again.

Some cynics are suggesting that Polonsky was particularly attracted to some of the more salacious scenes in the script involving a drunken Lot (See Genesis 19:30-36).
Sure to be a hit at the festival circuit.

Woody Allen’s Waiting for Ezekiel.

Tapping into his old bag of tricks, Woody reclaims his title as the king of neurotic Yiddish humor and existential angst as he presents this serio-comic look at one of history’s most pessimistic nebbishes. Living in exile in Babylon, Ezekial, played by Allen himself, begins having terrifying visions of his own death by giant Gentile breasts. Dismissed by his therapist (Tony Roberts) as merely paranoiac hallucinations, Ezekial begins to realize that he is in fact experiencing divine warnings of doom, played up for laughs of course. The New Yorker raves, “This ribald yet sensitive film is slightly better than Curse of the Jade Scorpion but not as good as Mighty Aphrodite.” Scarlet Johansson and Diane Keaton co-star.

(Note: I originally wrote the opening paragraph on Sunday April 4, 2004, back when such an idea seemed relevant and slightly funnier. I finished the rest of it today when such an idea seems irrelevant and slightly less funny.)

Contest: Alternative Rock Hits of the 1990s that have been translated in and out of Japanese by Google Translate.

2007-08-26T21:05:00.000-04:00

The First Ever R.L.P.A. Contest: Identify the following song titles and their respective artists.

For Example: “It is not possible to touch this” is of course MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.” Some of these will be much easier than others.

Leave your guesses in the comments. The first to correctly guess all thirteen will be the winner. If no one gets all of them, then, after a reasonable amount of time a winner will be announced and awarded a fabulous prize. Some are easier than others. Good luck.

1. Smell likes the mind of a teen
2. Friday as for me there is love
3. Loss of my religious belief
4. Uniformity it is better than the real
5. When our friends supply success, we hate that
6. Old female of back of counter of small village
7. March of ant
8. Star explosion of champagne
9. False plastic wood
10. It flies the bullet where the butterfly has been attached
11. Hairstyle of Demon
12. Intelligent Robot of paranoia
13. The half the life which is fascinated

Note: This idea was blatantly ripped off of Daneil Byndas who did the same thing to the Beach Boys.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/11DanielByndas.html

Photo Essay I: The Flora of Ft. Washington State Park

2007-08-25T17:00:00.000-04:00

All pictures taken by T.J. Gillespie. Click to enlarge.

Draft Application Essays for Teaching Position

2007-07-24T21:11:00.000-04:00

by Daniel J. McGlaughlin

What are your three (3) most important reasons for wanting to be a teacher?

What very deeply troubles me is “anomie” or the alienation that runs through the whole of modern culture – you see it’s the sense of man becoming thing. George Steiner has another name for this: the “Reification” or thing-ification of man.

I am the result of this process, relinquishing my freedom of thought because it’s just much easier to just be entertained. My students and I are cut from the same cloth, the cloth of modernity: iridescent rags, tricked out to catch the attention of the moment. The church of chuck taylor and tie-dyed hair, you see.

How much do you want to know about your students in order to be helpful to them?

I don't care, I really don't care.

What three (3) things do you most want to know about your students?

I want my students to have dignity, precision and eloquence.

What do you need to know in order to begin your lesson planning for a class?

I need to know which sparknotes I HAVE to read in order for me to sound like I actually know more than my students.

What four (4) key components do you believe you must include in your plan?

1.) How you can spot criminals just by looking at'em. Yeah.
2.) Halo 2
3.) Halo 3
4.) Q &A

When you think about your students, in what major ways do you most want to influence their lives?

10 years from now, when they're all flipping burgers or incarcerated, I want them to be able to turn to their coworkers, or the person that they have to turn tricks for in prison to avoid being killed by neo-nazis and think to themselves "I don't think that I learned anything in that class."

List and describe two (2) core teaching strategies you most utilized in your classroom.

1.) Deceit
2.) Obfuscation

In 3000 words or less, what do you think are the "Most Important Qualities of an Outstanding Educator?"

3000 Characters of Less? – the Most Important? So not just important or really important, but the most important qualities of an outstanding educator. Well let’s just define our terms, why don’t we?

Outstanding is an adjective which means prominent, conspicuous or striking. An educator is someone who is a specialist in the theory or practice of education. Now I am not a prominent or conspicuous person skilled in the theory or practice of education, I am a frivolous and easily distracted 26 year old that has spent his more tender years in a furious dissipated wander from the movies to the library to all of those holes in the wall whose names I never knew or never bothered to remember where college kids sit in the dull amber semidarkness and fill the air with their horrible music and the smoke of their cigarettes and the din of their appalling wit. While I got drunk and stoned trying, in my desperate and idiotic way to alleviate the burning, inescapable stigma of my own sins.

But I have learned a few things.

And I think that I could reach a lot of these pups, mired as they are in a culture that is essentially demonic in value, origin and practice and at least suggest an internal dynamic framework for appraising their lives and what they think that they want out of it that is wholly different in its aspect and appreciation, rooted in the teachings of mother Church.

I would never say that though, I would lose my job.

You see meaning has to do with purpose, value and importance. It’s usually the focal notion that we use to appraise and order life, as we know it. What’s important to us? Why do we want the things we want? Do you really need a SideKick 3?

My years of blinding stupidity and rampant self-destructive behavior, though they were wasted and I will ask God on my deathbed to give me that time back, have borne fruit.

These trenchant insights along with firm guidance are what I have to offer as an outstanding educator.

Somewhere in Roxborough

2007-07-17T22:12:00.000-04:00

The paved road is now
woods,
and what was is no more.
The tree pumps its blood
for maybe
a century,
then falls with a thud.
Sitting on the bench beside the street,
I heard those years ago
fold
like centuries into the
dough
of a single moment
rising.

Best Names in the History of Jazz, Part One

2007-07-06T00:51:00.000-04:00

Buzzin' Sparrow Harris and His Hits and Bits Revue
Oscar Celestin's Original Tuxedo Orchestra
Rock "Pigmeat" Markham
Sugar Foot Snowball
Ferdinand Joseph La Mothe (aka Jelly Roll Morton. "Jelly Roll" being slang for male or female genitalia and thus an early marketing decision)

And the winner:

Stalebread Lacoume's Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band (featuring a player called "Family Haircut")

These are all absolutely 100% real.

I am currently in St. Louis, Missouri and studying jazz at Washington University. While much of the material is not RLPA style, you can read more jazz facts at the following:

http://jazzinsaintlooey.blogspot.com/

I´m the type of guy...

2007-07-02T00:23:00.000-04:00

So man, I´m the type of guy who goes into a bookshop with his roomate´s laptop to write an essay about why he wants to go to medical school and be a doctor and all, but winds up sitting in a big leather chair with some jasmine green tea reading "Catcher in the Rye" and then writing an imaginary dialogue about not really wanting to be a doctor but instead wanting to go away somewhere like an old hermit where it´s sunny and beautiful and all. But then, right in the middle of the sunny part, some baggy woman comes into the bookshop and sits down in the next big cushy chair over and passes out with her gums open, and one by one the employees and managers try waking her up saying, “Ma´am, wake up, you can´t sleep here, Miss, wake up...” and she just keeps lying there half-dead with her mouth open. And pretty soon they´re putting gloves on and taking her pulse and checking if she´s breathing and calling the paramedics, while I´m sitting there not pecking away at my roomate´s laptop about why I want to be a doctor until finally everyone has to leave and I head to the bathroom but have to wait, again, because all the homeless guys are in there, either homeless guys or guys that stand there at the urinal with their pants down talking into their cell phones about how they´re at this bookshop with the paramedics and some half-dead lady with her mouth open and all. And I never finish the imaginary dialogue, and I never write the medical school essay - I just wait in the bathroom with homeless guys and guys on cell phones with their pants down talking about paramedics in bookshops with half-dead, gape-gummed women. Then I go home, or something. That´s the kind of guy I am, I swear.

Philly mayor John F. Street gets iPhone [as City is on pace for 411 murders]

2007-06-29T23:55:00.000-04:00

By RUBINA MADAN, Associated Press Writer
Mayor John F. Street was among the first to get a coveted iPhone on Friday, waiting in line, on and off, for almost 15 hours and forced to defend the effort when a passer-by asked about the city's skyrocketing murder rate.

Street, who said he had been waiting in line outside a downtown AT&T store since 3:30 a.m., was among the first group to enter the store when the high-tech device officially went on sale at 6 p.m. He paid for his new phone with a credit card amid a scrum of media.

"It was worth the wait," Street said. "I'm a gadget guy."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070629/ap_on_hi_te/apple_iphone_mayor;_ylt=AjAAZxopZb03sstayphadQkDW7oF

Mayor Street missed the deadline set by the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA) for the City to submit a proposed version of the 5-year fiscal plan because he was playing a marathon game of “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” on his new Nintendo Wii.

Street said he would continue to work off the 1991 5-year plan and just change around some “numbers and graphs and stuff. Now get the [obscenity deleted] off my nun chuck controller!”

When pointed out that the city may lose millions of dollars, Street shrugged before commenting, “Hey, What can I say, I am a Nintendo guy.”

While much of City Council was discussing a new report from the RAND Corporation that said city support for the arts is not as healthy as in many other cities, Mayor John Street spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to order pay per view events from his cable provider.

“The IFC Championship is this weekend in Las Vegas!” beamed an excited Street. “Global Domination II. That is some serious bare-knuckled no holds bar excitement. I love the steel cage match!”

When asked if he believed one of Philadelphia's signature industries is in danger of losing its luster to newer places, such as Charlotte or Denver, the mayor simply tore his shirt into pieces and made animal noises. In between the Mayor’s guttural “Boo-yeahs!” Council members pointed out that one significant problem, according to RAND, is the lack of a single office in City Hall to coordinate arts programs.

Street responded by saying, “I guess I am just a punching, kicking, throwing, choking, arm bars, ankle locks kind of guy!”

By the way, Street is picking Brazilian Jair “Sorriso” Goncalves to win by knock-out. “Stone Cold mortal lock.”

Mayor Street spent the last fourteen hours on line trying to book tickets to the Spice Girl reunion tour that plans to kick off in December 2007. While community leaders were planning an education and employment summit, Mr. Street, dressed in a Union Jack tank top, was watching a bootlegged copy of the Girls’ 1997 landmark film Spiceworld.

“I love that Melanie Chisholm. You probably call her Sporty, but she’ll always be Mel C. to me,” said the Mayor during a telephone interview.

While 45 percent of Philadelphians are not working or are looking for work—Philadelphia ranks 96th out of the 100 largest cities in this measure—Mayor Street confidently predicts that the return of the Spice Girls should help employment figures.

“Listen, I have every album from their debut Spice to their 2000 swansong Forever. I even have their European single “Let Love Lead the Way”. I got that on E-bay.”

While Democratic nominee Michael Nutter has argued that getting the number of people who have graduated from high school, college, and advanced degrees programs up to equal the state's level would raise the city's potential tax base by $1.8 billion, or 10.5 percent, Mr. Street would only say “Zigga Zigg Ah!”

Allen Ginsberg, "Father Death Blues"

2007-06-09T18:53:00.000-04:00

A beautiful little poem that is worth hearing. Especially if all you know him for is Howl (or U2's video for "Miami," quite possibly the worst song in their catalogue.)

Announcement

2007-05-13T01:29:00.000-04:00

The Chestnut Hilll Local Announces Fiction/Poetry Edition

Open to residents of CH, Mt. Airy, Germantown, East Falls, Roxborough, Wyndmoor, Laverock, Glenside, Jenkintown, Erdenheim, Flourtown, etc.

Limits:

Fiction: 3,000 words

Poetry: One typed page

Must be received by June 1

Publication date: June 14

Send to

The Chestnut Hill Local

8434 Germantown Ave

Philadelphia, PA 19118

Beside the white chickens

2007-04-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

Who stays long
Enough

To see Sunday's
Bouquet

Browning with
Petals

Beside Monday's
Grave

Beauty

2007-04-10T19:24:00.000-04:00

By The Grand Moff

He
Spins
Circles
On your roof,
Distorting bug-boys.
His will-to-this, his will-to-that.
What you done you Beatlebum? Where’s your gun? Where’s your gun?
Open wide the gates, let loose the pups of whore and cry havok! Paint the world with your face.

Death
Drives
Alone.
The horsemen
Kids along on top.
No sleep, no sleep, sing us a song.
Lift high your voices, Famine, War, Pestilence and Fame!
Push the shiny, red, candy-like button. Fire walks slowly today. America!

Then:
One,
No, two,
Wake from sleep
Not too gently now.
A tribal ululation startles.
Rough shove from behind, sting of palm on her bare, pink back.
Tearful acquiescence, mother-to-be-or-maybe-not-now stumbles on pin-numb feet.

“Sit
Down.
Listen.
No, stand up.
Five little piggies,
Stink of your sweat’s driving me mad.
Think you run the place, that’s your problem. Jesus sent us.
Today’s my day.” War rambles red. “One, two, three, four, five. All good children go to heaven.”

“Why
Us?”
Laughter,
Arrogance,
Pull the (don’t) trigger.
Happiness is a warm gun… Bang.
A fountain of vermilion mist hits the carpet.
High, piercing shrieks shatter eardrums, the paramour hairdresser drops in slo-mo: face -> floor.

Two
Strand
Rope cord
Circles necks.
Piggies move, they choke.
Heiress and her sponge-lover flee
At least they try. The creepy-crawlers chuckle, follow.
Plush grass underfoot, pierces like needles on soft flesh, reek of fear, sweat, screeching cicadas.

No!
One
Hears them.
Buck knives out!
One slip, they’re on her.
Seventeen three-inchers, quick! quick!
The Pollock piggie gets it good. Phosphors flash aloud.
Not enough, my peche Rasputin? Raise high the chamber flag, to bring it crashing down.

Three
Down.
/Cut scene/
Beautiful,
We save her for last.
The Woman Clothed in the Bright Sun.
/We change perspective, acid fresh killer to angel/
“Please! No! I want to have my baby!” Jesus Christ, please don’t kill me. I want my mommy.

Not
One
But, two.
Say good-bye.
Hand over soft skin,
Moving from chest to mound of life.
Quivering lips know what to expect from demon youth.
A silver flash through pinkest flesh taps crimson deposit. Metal salt over teeth, tongue.

We’re
Done.
Clean up.
Write it down.
It’s Helter Skelter.
Predatory, like wolves, dead eyes.
Circle, attack, feed, flee, nothing left here but gristle.
Satisfaction, confusion… The moon is out, a whisper of heaven, where we’ve all gone.

Scenes from Historic First RLPA Meeting, Murphy's Pub - March 27, 2007.

2007-03-28T18:18:00.000-04:00

Preparation...Apprehension

Headliner

Essentials

RLPA and MVP fan

Autographs, Etc.

Victory

Lectures on Obscure and Probably Uninteresting Topics, #001 – "The Hermeneutics of Mr. Belvedere."

2007-03-28T17:28:00.000-04:00

[Karaoke version of Belvedere theme song plays. Reading follows.]

"Streaks on the china,
Never mattered before,
Who cared?

When you drop kicked the jacket,
As you came through the door,
No one glared.

But sometimes things get turned around,
And no one's spared.
All hands look out below,
There's a change in the status-quo.

Gonna need all the help that we can get.
According to our new arrival,
Life is more than mere survival.
And we just might live the good life yet."

It is perhaps no surprise that the writer of this poem also composed the Cheers and Punky Brewster theme songs, and "I Believe in Me" from Fame. In the following lecture, I propose three hermeneutical perspectives on Mr. Belvedere: first, Belvedere as savior; second, Belvedere as civilizer; and third, Belvedere as Antichrist, the Son of Destruction.

1. To begin, Mr. Belvedere is a shadowy, if not shady, figure not unlike the ninja – familiar yet dark, just beyond our reach, enigmatic, enticing, masculine yet not, in theological terms "a coincidence of opposites." With the metaphysicians, epistemologists, and mist-shrouded mystics we ask: “Who is Mr. Belvedere?”

The sketch is simple enough. In 1985, Mr. Belvedere, an urbane, hermaphroditic English butler, is hired by the Owens, an all-American middle class family headed by none other than Bob Ueker. The family is overstretched, busy, profane. They live in Beaver Falls, PA - just outside Pittsburgh.

The show runs for six seasons, and although Mr. Belvedere still lives large - if sometimes hibernating - in our collective minds, he never was or will be even remotely successful. Not a single episode ever threatened to reach even the exceedingly low bar of a top-30 show. Not even with the TGIF time slot.

It is in the series finale, appropriately, that the height of the Belvedere mystery is thrown at us. In an act that defies all we suspected, Belvedere gets married and moves to - of all places - Africa. I propose that few, if any, English butlers of Belvedere caliber have emigrated from someplace near Pittsburgh to Africa. As if Belvedere's marriage isn't enough for us to handle, there is Africa - Africa?! Why not England? There was no answer.

Then, in a moment of revelation, it clicked: Belvedere as the sitcom Jesus. Belvedere was a crusader all along. Such crusading, ahead-of-his-time episodes included the socially conscious Aids-from-a-blood-transfusion episode and the courageous Scoutmaster-inappropriate-touching episode (something we would have suspected more of Belvedere himself; something I myself suspected at every moment of the show).

Salvation came near to Beaver Falls, PA; now it was time for the Dark Continent. Belvedere, that unlikely and yet so likely savior, that toppler of the status quo, cleaner of dirty china, etc., was out to bring the "good life" to the "drop kicked" poor of Africa. "Go and make disciples of the nations," said Jesus. "No one’s spared," says Belvedere's theme song.

2. If Belvedere is redeemer, the Son of Man, why is he an English butler? It smacks of Old World, British Imperialism of the kind that any crusading 1980’s sitcom writer would scorn with the vehemence reserved for the Crusades or the Inquisition. Why would the unwashed masses of Pittsburgh, etc., need an English butler to set things right? Returning to the text of the introductory poem, and as I hinted previously, Belvedere is the agent of civilization.

I would expand on this point, but it is basically self-evident, and point three is more interesting.

3. My third and final point - Belvedere as Anti-Christ. As tempted as I am to proclaim Belvedere as Lord, or at least etiquette god, the following five incontrovertible points lead me to believe that he is the angel of darkness.

The British attempt to civilize people has always been a front for a nefarious and diabolical goings-on.
A familiar title for the Anti-Christ is "Stranger from the East."
The devil is a fallen angel; angels are sexually ambivalent; Belvedere's first name is "Lynn."
Jesus was born in a shitbarn; the devil is a gentleman; Belvedere is a "china cleaner."
In the Family Guy Video Game!, Mr. Belvedere is Peter Griffin's nemesis. Peter gets hit on the head throughout the game and constantly thinks that Belvedere is real and has kidnapped his family. Peter destroys half of Quahog looking for his family and revenge on Mr. Belvedere. He follows a spotlight in the sky that has an outline of Belvedere. “Lucifer” means “light bearer,” the star that fell from heaven.

I could go on… but in the interest of time and decency, I will conclude with the recently released – in January 2007 – and never-before-heard extended version of the Belvedere theme song.

[Closing thanks and sheer musical wonder follow.]

Some Surprising Revelations about Philadelphia’s Mayoral Candidates

2007-03-22T17:46:00.000-04:00

1. Bob Brady—Not only has U.S. Representative Bob Brady omitted his city pension and his ties to the carpenter union on an important financial disclosure form, but he also failed to alert the media of the fact that he has, at least for the last twenty-four years, been a flesh eating zombie. When asked by Luzerne County Judge Patrick J. Toole, Jr. if he had ever vacationed in Haiti, a visibly shaken Brady admitted that as a confirmed naturalist, he took an educational trip to study the hyla tree frog (Osteopilus dominicensis) in 1983. A spokesman for political challenger Tom Knox astutely pointed out that the poisonous secretion of the frog is often mixed with human remains to create the so-called Zombie Powders used by bokor sorcerers that rob men of their “Ti Bon Ange,” or good angel, which is common voodoo-speak for soul. Brady laughingly dismissed the charges as “patently ridiculous,” but when given a small taste of salt Representative Brady stiffly made for the exits claiming he needed to “lie down in a grave and think a little bit.”

2. Tom Knox—Knox, a “rich elitist” who milks his sad-sack, Angela’s Ashes-type childhood in maudlin advertisements, has said that he has never read a book for pleasure in his entire life. Shockingly—and very tellingly—he claims to have never heard (let alone seen an episode) of Gilligan’s Island.
( This has been well documented. Please see: http://willdo.philadelphiaweekly.com/archives/2007/02/tom_knox_unawar.html)

He’s also never eaten a cheese steak, listened to “rock and roll, whatever that is,” or seen the color orange. In addition, he has never worn jeans, smelled a flower, chugged a beer, tasted chocolate or felt the emotion anger. Also, he hates Eskimos and the Japanese. And he lights fires for fun.

3. Michael Nutter—Former City Councilman Nutter has made a name for himself by being a vocal leader of the smoking ban. He is a gentleman and a scholar and a myspace friend to everyone’s favorite Philadelphia literary community, the Roxborough Lyric Poetry Association.

Therefore, we the editors of the RLPA, can assuredly state that there is absolutely no truth to the rumors that Nutter is addicted to huffing aerosol paint cans and paint thinner. Furthermore it is preposterous to suggest that this non-existant addiction started when Nutter was a high school junior attending St. Joseph’s Preparatory School where he began taking an interest in graffiti and model airplane flying. Nor did he ever use the name “Nutty B” as his tag and he certainly couldn’t have masterfully used chiaroscuro and bold use of color to beautify much of Girard Avenue while hiding his darker side. And contrary to the Knox campaign’s suggestion, he is not and never has been a kleptomaniac or a self-abuser. Certainly not.

4. Chakka Fattah—An experienced lawyer and a U.S. Representative serving Philadelphia and parts of Cheltenham township, Fattah has had a long career raising “killer roosters” to supply the demands of the city’s underground cock fighting circuit. He has been known to design and manufacture his own brand of lethally pointed steel “gaffs” and a razor-edged blade he affectionally calls “Slasher.” Discovering the sport on a trip to the Mexican Riviera with this wife, local television personality Renee Chanault Fattah, he has been raising his own breed, a mixture of Red, Dom, and Warhorse lines. In his defense, the sport is legal in Louisiana and in the Olney neighborhood of Philadelphia. On a personal note, he secretly prefers Kerri-Lee Halkett’s newscasts on Fox29 to those of his wife. This last point is not really scandalous, but may be of interest to those readers who speculate into the private lives of local newscasters.

5. Al Taubenberger. He’s actually—and we’re not making this up—Republican!

The Explicit Set of Warnings and Demanding Conditions

2007-03-20T17:05:00.000-04:00

Found on the Bathroom Pass of Mr. Gillespie’s High School English Classroom during the 2006-07 School Year

If you borrow this pass to visit the lavatory, you are expected to keep this manila folder in your possession at all times. You have been fortunate enough to be given the freedom and trust to leave the comfortable confines of room A-108. Do not violate these privileges. Do not use this pass in any location other than the upstairs A-pod lavatory. Do not eat this pass. Treat this pass with respect. Revere this pass as you would a sacred relic. Think about this pass’s feelings. How would you like to be tossed carelessly on a sticky, stained floor, a floor redolent of mud and waste? No, I don’t think you’d like it very much at all. Handle this pass gently, with care and consideration. Tell it a joke. Pay it a compliment. Tell the pass that it looks good today; ask it if it has lost weight or if it has been working out lately. Sing the pass a lullaby. Ask it how its day has been going. Confide in it. Tell it your secrets. This pass is the exclusive property of Mr. Gillespie. Any rebroadcast, reproduction, or other use of this pass without the expressed written consent of said teacher, Major League Baseball, the English department, or Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is strictly forbidden. Mr. Gillespie maintains all domestic and international rights to this pass. If you steal, damage, rip, fold, bend, break, mangle, intimidate, threaten, embarrass, bully, write on, deface, discolor, edit, change, correct, modify, lose, misplace, taunt, tease, mock, forget about, sell, trade, leave out in the rain, leave out in the sun, accidentally microwave, hand over to your HOOF, drown in a bathtub, feed after midnight, burn or even attempt to light on fire, run over, give to a dog, ignore, harass, throw away, or in any other manner, real or imaginary, possible or impossible, begotten or made, even in manners not described here or even invented yet, then you are in violation of classroom Policy One, Article One. This will result in immediate cancellation of all lavatory privileges. It will also disqualify you from ever receiving the respect of Mr. Gillespie. In addition, it will also, most likely, affect your critical paper grade. I won’t like you. I’ll start spreading rumors about you. You may be banned from all NCAA sporting events. Like Mark McGuire and Pete Rose, you’ll never go to Cooperstown. Your peers will think less of you. Your parents will be ashamed. Your pets won’t approach you. Strangers—people you don’t even know!—will see you on the street and turn and walk the other way. Town elders will force you to wear a stitched, hand embroidered letter of scandal across every article of clothing you own. Babies will cry when you come near. Your vocabulary scores will plummet. Your hairstyle will suddenly become very, very unfashionable. Your taste in music will become laughable. Entire websites will spring up overnight to document your social failures. You will experience mysterious joint ailments. Your best friend will steal your Winter Ball date and go on to get married, have beautiful children in a respectable suburban neighborhood outside a lively, dynamic society while you, bitter and alone, cure yourself for foolishly, perhaps naively, leaving a bathroom pass behind while you were still in high school.

Excerpts from Lady Jaye's Diary: Volume Two

2007-03-20T17:00:00.000-04:00

Lady Jaye's Attempts to Seduce Duke Aren't Working for Some Reason

That Duke is driving me crazy! What does a hot, single, deadly assassin and master of disguise have to do to get some attention around here? I swear, there’s nothing covert about what I am doing!Just yesterday at 0600 hours as we were leading our infiltration and demolition teams into Destro’s MARS (Military Armaments Research System) base, I made sure I hit took the ropes right in front of him. I was wearing my black Lycra cat suit, the one that Barbeque says makes my ass looks so tight (If only he weren’t taken. Meow. That Barbeque is, pardon the pun, so hot!). Well, there I was hugging the rope, asking Duke questions about my ascent position, about my new crossbow, about his eye-line—anything! And do you know what he did?! He spent the whole time on his communication wire talking to Dial-Tone about the new interior design improvements in the fitness center back at HQ. I tell you, that guy is dedicated. It must have been a security concern or something. Apparently, the new furniture, how did he put it?, is very "Flying Star School Feng Shui, like totally Y2k Bev Hills." I don't know what that means, but Duke certainly laughed when he said it. That must be some kind of code. Hello, Duke, hot M16 Qualified Military Personal right above you and ready for action! But no, you’d rather talk shop.

I just don’t get it. Back at the barracks, I knew I couldn’t play coy. I was showering back in the officer’s quarters when I heard Duke and Shipwreck come into the locker station. I rushed out and loosely draped a low cut dress around my top, very wet, very sexy I must say, and I asked Duke if he'd zip me up. Well, he was rubbing a topical disinfectant on Shipwreck’s new tattoo—a red macaw inked on his left shoulder--and he didn’t even look up at me! At ease, soldier. He’s so dedicated to his men that he doesn’t even see what he’s missing--me! Anyway, I planned to gather my things real slowly so I’d still be there when they finished their showers, but after forty minutes I didn’t want to appear desperate. A girl has some pride, you know! What could they have been doing in there? He’s so dedicated to hygiene and health. Well, that’s a Joe for you. Work comes first.

There’s always Snakeyes. He is soooo quiet and sooooo mysterious. That’s totally sexy.

Excerpt from Lady Jaye's Dairy: Volume One

2007-03-19T19:46:00.000-04:00

Lady Jaye Struggles With the Difficulty of Balancing a Career in Covert Operations with a Sexually Satisfying and Emotionally Rewarding Personal Life

I swear I am through with army men. I mean it this time. I know, I know, I’ve said it before. After the messy break-up with Sergeant Stalker and the whole Beachhead thing. What a creep that guy was. He never wanted to take off his green ski mask, even in bed. Said it made him feel too vulnerable. But isn’t that what a girl wants? A guy who can handle a 84 pound .50 cal Browning with f.p.s. in muzzle velocity at a cyclic rate of 550 r.p.m and then cuddle after tender night of love?

Ok. Sometimes maybe it’s my fault. I guess I rushed things with Flint, pushing him to get too serious too soon. I thought we wanted the same things—he was a Rhodes Scholar, Army Ranger, Special Forces English major; I went to Bryn Mawr, did my masters work at Trinity in Dublin, was an expert marksman—but I guess what seemed like commitment to me felt like pressure to him. I took him home to the Vineyard after only one mission together, but he swore, as we stood there in front of Cobra-La's ice dome in the Himalayas, that he’d love me forever. It’s just that he couldn’t be expected to defend human freedom against a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world AND change diapers at three in the morning. This is the price we Joes, we Janes, pay. It’s a lonely calling.

Oh, I know, you’d think that being one of the few women on an elite military force that I’d have my pick of handsome, fit, intelligent officers. Hell, I thought that too. That’s why when Col. Sharp suggested a promotion from the Intel. Department to the “American's daring, highly trained special mission force,” what else could I say?

What else but the obvious: “Yo Joe!”

Haiku for Cpt. Lou

2007-03-17T10:12:00.000-04:00

Rubber band-ed beard,
Shirt undone, and gold chain shines.
O Captain of Mine!

The Shocking Truth That I, T.J. Gillespie, Share a Number of Striking Similarities with Elvis Presley and Jesus Christ

2007-03-16T15:50:00.000-04:00

As Discovered By Reading an E-mail Forwarded By a Co-Worker With Whom I Have Never Actually Spoken.

1. Jesus said: "Love thy neighbor." (Matthew 22:39) Elvis said: "Don't be cruel." (RCA, 1956)
T.J. said: "Don't be cruel, your honor, I was just trying to LOVE my neighbor." (Washington, DC. Appellate court. The United States vs. Gillespie, 1999.)

2. Jesus is the Lord's shepherd.
Elvis dated Cybill Shepherd.
T.J. has pleasured himself to pictures of sheep and Moonlighting reruns.

3. Jesus was part of the Trinity.
Elvis' first band was a trio.
T.J. has two brothers, whom he calls Timmy and the Holy Spook.

4. Jesus walked on water. (Matthew 14:25)
Elvis surfed. (Blue Hawaii, Paramount, 1965)
T.J. enjoys peeing in the ocean. (Sea Isle City, NJ 1974- present)

5. Jesus' entourage, the Apostles, had 12 members.
Elvis' entourage, the Memphis Mafia, had 12 members
T.J.'s entourage, well, wait, he never was that popular.... See numbers 1-4 for evidence.

6. Jesus was resurrected.
Elvis had the famous 1968 "comeback" TV special.
T.J. keeps moving away, but damn it all if he isn't "coming back" for Thanksgiving.

7. Jesus said, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." (John 7:37)
Elvis said, "Drinks on me!" (Jailhouse Rock, MGM, 1957)
T.J is drunk right now!

8. Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights.
Elvis had irregular eating habits. (e.g. five banana splits for breakfast)
T.J. is feeling a bit irregular, presumably because of his eating habits. (e.g. 40 days and nights of Good ‘N Fruity candies, pork rinds, and “stuff he found in his car.”)

9. Jesus is a Capricorn. (December 25)
Elvis is a Capricorn. (January 8)
T.J. is a Capricorn (December 22)

10. Matthew was one of Jesus' many biographers. (The Gospel According to Matthew)
Neil Matthews was one of Elvis' many biographers. (Elvis: A Golden Tribute)
T.J. is currently writing a biography on Kerri Matthews, America's porn queen. (Pretty, Pretty Please, with A Kerri On Top: A Golden Showers Tribute.)

11. "[Jesus’] countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow." (Matthew 28:3) Elvis wore snow-white jumpsuits with lightning bolts
TJ's countenance resembles a bloated Elvis high on Quaaludes and the Word of the Lord.

12. Jesus lived in state of grace in a Near Eastern land.
Elvis lived in Graceland in a nearly eastern state.
T.J. is graceless and stateless (living sinfully and clumsily in a Philadelphia limbo.)

13. Mary, an important woman in Jesus' life, had an Immaculate Conception.
Priscilla, an important woman in Elvis' life, went to Immaculate Conception High School.
TJ one day hopes to meet a woman, important or otherwise, and he doesn't care how immaculate the conceivin' is.

14. Jesus was the Lamb of God.
Elvis had mutton chop sideburns.
TJ had a Gyro for lunch while watching Beverly Hills, 90210 reruns.

15. Jesus' Father is everywhere.
Elvis' father was a drifter, and moved around quite a bit.
T.J.'s dad, as Scooter Libby revealed, is an International Spy, keeping one step ahead of the human hounds that would have him caged.

16. Jesus wore a crown of thorns.
Elvis wore Royal Crown hairstyle.
T.J. just got a haircut last night. A bit severe, we think (and he drinks Crown Royal whisky!)

17. Jesus H. Christ has 12 letters.
Elvis Presley has 12 letters.
T.J. "H." Gillespie has 12 letters! (Uncanny, I know!)

18. Jesus is often depicted in pictures with a halo that looks like a gold plate.
Elvis' face is often depicted on a plate with gold trim and sold through TV
T.J.'s face is often depicted on wanted posters in the post office.

19. Jesus said: "Man shall not live by bread alone."
Elvis liked his sandwiches with peanut butter and bananas. T
.J. lives on bread alone. But his beer comes with peanut butter and bananas.

20. Jesus was first and foremost the Son of God.
Elvis first recorded with Sun Studios, which today are still considered to be his foremost recordings.
Ok, so TJ has absolutely nothing in common here. But he does bear a striking resemblence to John F. Kennedy's secretary named Lincoln Abraham.

Your Book Report Needs More Trigonometry

2007-03-16T14:41:00.000-04:00

--“Reviewing last year’s state standard assessment scores, we are pleased to see a dramatic increase in our students’ writing scores. Clearly, our 'Writing Across the Curriculum' program is working. Students are writing not just in English, but in almost every subject in the school day. That is why we want to take those lessons and apply it to our students’ math scores. Ask yourselves, English teachers, history teachers, art teachers, ‘What I am doing to help my students achieve in math?’ And more importantly, what are you doing to help raise our state mandated standardized test scores?”
-Administrator at a suburban high school, Pennsylvania, September 21, 2004

Revised English Final Exam

Remember to show all work. Calculators may be used. Cell phones, slide rules, and Cliff’s Notes may not.

1. If William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 and died on April 23, 1616, and he was approximately 28 by the time he had an established name in London, then how many years of productive writing did he have left in him? If he finished his career with 38 surviving plays, how many would he have to average a year? Also, in terms of blockbuster success, how much bigger was Christopher “Tom Cruise” Marlowe than William “Billy Bob Thornton” Shakespeare? Please put the answers in terms of percentage of gross domestic box office receipts (1592-1593 season only).

2. According to apocryphal wisdom Charles Dickens got paid by the word, but as we know this is a bit misleading. Since his novels were published in monthly serials, it may be more accurate to say that Dickens was paid “by installment.” If the cost of the average published book was 31 shillings and six pence and the cost of one of Dickens’ monthly issues of Nicholas Nickelby was just one shilling, how much cheaper would it be to buy all twenty issues of the monthly serial than to purchase the collected book form? Please give your answer in 1920’s devalued Deutstche marks.

3. If y=mx+b is the rule for slope intercept, please graph the meteoric rise and calamitous fall of the American Dream as embodied by the unfulfilled desires of Jay Gatsby. You may use scrap paper.

4. If James Joyce departs Paris for Zurich on a train at 11:00 am Greenwich Mean Time, and Ernest Hemingway leaves Barcelona for Paris two hours later, what is the probability that they will eventually meet drunkenly at the Café Odeon in Trieste? Also, Café Odeon is now a Starbucks (true). Rounding to the nearest hundred, how many literary landmarks are now franchises of large multinational corporations? Answers forged in the smithy of your soul are unacceptable.

5. If Samuel Taylor Coleridge is out of his gourd on a weeklong laudanum bender and hazily combines the trochaic meter of “Xanadu” with his best buddy Willy “What’s it Worth” Wordsworth’s “I Wander’d Lonely as a Cloud,” what fraction best describes the proportional difference in syllabic count? Now, if Hip Hop impresario Dr. Dre were to remix the poem with a backing track sampled from 1970’s R&B hitmakers Earth, Wind, and Fire, how many beats per minute would be required for the majority (56%) of the swing voters in Minnesota to proclaim the song “Bangin’ Hot”?

Almost

2007-03-16T12:48:00.000-04:00

A suburban street. TV's leaving sounds in empty rooms, and the falling sun behind the neighbor's yard. I can almost say "yes." Almost.

What is it, though, that keeps reading forgotten poets and prophet fools, keeps reading so as not to forget? Tonight, they speak of "divine fires" and a "tall building," and "time that howled above us like a wind."

Tomorrow. Dawn. The sun creeping through window shades, and dishes already in the sink. And I have already forgotten these things.

Tostitos for the Journey: A South-Philly conference on the spiritual life.

2007-03-15T23:44:00.000-04:00

These two questions gave rise to wanderings, and "after all their wandering, they did not say, 'It is futile' (Jer. 18:4):"

1. If Miller High Life is "The Champagne of Beer," what is the ambrosia of high life?

2. If Satan were a green dragon, and you were an aspiring Catholic monk, would you rather drink a six-pack of Miller High Life or read a book entitled, "The Universe is a Green Dragon."

To answer these questions, I set out, like Basho, on a foot-journey of truth. First, I uncovered the mystery of that Hellenic grandmotherly dessert word, 'AMBROSIA':

am·bro·sia (ăm-brō'zhə, -zhē-ə)

Greek & Roman Mythology. The food of the gods, thought to confer immortality.
Something with an especially delicious flavor or fragrance.
A dessert containing primarily oranges and flaked coconut.

[Latin, from Greek ambrosiā, from ambrotos, immortal, immortalizing.]

From this discovery, I stumbled, like a drunk Japanese man at the foot of a green dragon, onto the following book review on amazon.com:

"Whenever I read this book I feel like I'm sitting outdoors under the starry night sky by a campfire, listening to two people talk about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Within the framework of an imaginary conversation between "Thomas" (based on Thomas Berry) and "Youth" (representing youthful mankind), Brian Swimme's UNIVERSE IS A GREEN DRAGON tells the miraculous story of the vibrant existance of our universe. In masterful storytelling style, Swimme spins a tale so poetic and electrifying that the story inside this book begins to seem much more real than much of the rest of "real life". As Thomas explains to the Youth, "To develop the power of cosmic sensitivity is to understand that to be in reality means dissolving the universe, absorbing it into your new self. To be is to dissolve and draw up, to BE dissolved and drawn up. The universe is a hard yellow candy, to be sucked on and swalled until it dissolves, and, in that moment of dissolution, we emerge. A hardened mind cannot respond to the presence of the moon. The moon's riches cannot be tasted, so the moon can not show itself. The interaction between the rigid person and the universe is superficial, because the sensitivity is dim." I feel invigorated after reading any part of this book... refreshed with a new vision of the true splendour of this enchanted universe."

Now, dear reader, if your are still reading (which you should not be), I will speak to the "true splendor" of my quest's discovery: While it is true that a certain Midwestern monastery is even now reading, as its formative text, "The Universe is a Green Dragon," the universe is NOT a green dragon. I repeat, "The Universe is Not a Green Dragon," not even according to crazy Japanese men like Basho. Thus, Miller High Life, whether ambrosia, elixir, or cheap drink of fools, is nearer to the heart of Christ, and by extension, the monk, than any scaly fire-breathing reptile might ever hope to be.

And so, finally, St Ambrose's words echo down to us through the un-green monk St. Anselm:

"Come then, my Lord God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you. Lord, turned in (incurvatus) as I am, I can only look down; so raise me up so that I can look up. Let me see your light, even if I see it from afar or from the depths. Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to this seeker. For I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor can I find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in desiring you, and desire you in seeking you. Let me find you in loving you, and love you in finding you.

Yours in the high-life journey,
Hermano Piccolo

An Ode to the DeliDinger by Grand Moff Tarkin

2007-03-14T15:00:00.000-04:00

Indeed, Lord Vadar, this is a weapon far more insidious

than either our originally planned battle-station or

your foolish religion.

Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this sandwich.

We shall call it the DeathDinger: the essence of ham, turkey,

cheese and bacon, gilded in sour dough and forged in

inch-deep molten butter. Flight support includes a full

contingent of julienned, fried potatoes and a suspicious

looking piece of parsley. There are those who believe that

the bright splash of green is connected to rebel forces,

working outside the political process to destroy all we hold dear.

Rest assured, we will deal with the parsley soon enough.

Arterial plaque and cardiac arrhythmia:

far to remote to make an effective demonstration.

Minor nausea, cold sweats and the back of the mind

feeling that all-is-not well will have to suffice.

No, Lord Vadar? I underestimate the power of the Dark Side?
I believe you will find that it is you, who underestimates a great, many things.

2007-03-13T15:28:00.000-04:00

The day dawns at a busy Philadelphia law firm. Garfield, and another man, somewhere, asleep until whenever, is happy - happy to let the sun rise, simply, without doing... anything.

Retired and Happy,
Garfield and the Other Man