The Mother Courage of Rock
She was skinny, quick-witted, disarmingly unprofessional, alternating between stand-up patter, bardic intonations, and the hypnotic emotional sway of a chanteuse, and she was sexy in an androgynous way I hadn’t encountered before. The elements cohered convincingly; she seemed both entirely new and somehow long-anticipated. For me at nineteen, the show was an epiphany.
Springtime 1976, I was living in the cinderblock building on the glorified median strip there where they split Highway 13, and one day I went over to this one girl’s apartment, she lived right by the guy who dealt me speed, and she said, “Hey, you know who you remind me of? You remind me of Patti Smith!”
Gave her a possum grin I’m still grinning.
Did I ever tell you about the time . . .
Is it boring? Does it involve a musician? Will everyone on the internet go, “Pft! Are you kidding? Is that it? Your story?”
Yes?
Congratulations. Post it here.
I made it to the Hall of Tedium on Christmas Day with my Dave Davies story:
Dave Davies wanted some tortilla chips.
Clusterflock friend Pete Ashton’s Belinda Carlisle story was a Boxing Day feature:
I sold Belinda Carlisle a book about giant squids.
I am posting this post
because to now I have posted 1964 posts. So this will be 1965. And that was a beautiful year. I was just old enough to know that I wanted to be a grown-up woman. In 1965.
At least one of those grown-up women in the movies. Or to have a hit record.
An Introduction
My car is a Kia.
I drive to IKEA.
I had Chick-fil-A for lunch.
I said
“You can take [your stress] out on my cock. She’s tough. She can take it.”
Memorandum
All:
Please disregard my recent emails. Forget about the phone messages, too. I know I sounded angry and excited, but I’ve had a chance to think things over and I don’t feel the same as I did when I said all of those hurtful words. I won’t apologize for the basis of my comments—I have a right to my own opinions, especially because they are correct—but regret your exposure to that barrage of toxicity. And the physical threats. You’ll notice I did not say “sorry.” That word is for the weak.
42 S. Deacon St. #5
There are at least fifty things about her you cannot stand. Maybe a thousand:
She is soft and smells nice. Talks on the phone all day. Makes your favorite meals without being asked. Throws your Maxim magazines on the floor when she’s angry with you. Is sad when an animal gets hurt. Loses your car keys. Asks your opinion and listens to your response as if it matters. There’s more.
fragment
I didn’t have the milk-to-cereal ratio right so I got back up.
A Few Remarks
I sat next to him for almost two years. Inches apart, in fact, but there was a wall of sorts between us. Blue tweed-looking stuff stretched over a metal frame and filled with a thin layer of sound deadening material. It was not enough to prevent my hearing his chronic wheezing and throat-clearing.
The first week was not too bad. I was kind enough to welcome him into our little dysfunctional family. Show him how to do things and avoid the obvious rookie mistakes. He was slow to pick up departmental procedures and obstinate about what he thought he knew.
At what point did I stop trying to help him? It was when he took credit for projects that were not his own, compounded by a reluctance to admit he never knew what the fuck he was talking about. He couldn’t support an opinion or back up an assertion based on his own experience–Googling an answer was his method of showing how smart he was.
A Lotta More
Before I can tell my story, I’ll need an old pickup truck. Ford or Chevy, it doesn’t matter. Not a Dodge. A little rust around the wheel wells is fine, but not so much of it that the fenders are flapping like a killdeer’s wings. Faded, powdery two-tone paint is acceptable. An old comforter covering the duct tape covering the high-mileage driver’s seat is okay, too. The truck should graze in clover and timothy up past the hubcaps. Yes, the windshield is cracked.
something I almost said today, but thought better of it
“I’m a generous guy, I’d give you just about anything except a fuck.”
This is how I’ve been feeling while on the internet this week
since my mother has been staying at my newly christened bachelor pad (in case you were wondering why I’ve been so quiet).
My thought process this afternoon
Problem: Fitted sheet is dirty.
Solution: Replace fitted sheet.
Problem: Multiple incomplete sheet sets
Problem: Mismatched sheets
Solution: Fail to give a fuck.
Tat Musing
“O, lady on bus, I think one day you will regret your cupcake tattoo.”
My friend Alison. Musing en route home.
I told Alison I’d thought long and hard before I got my own tat back in the wayback days.
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Non-anecdotes (Pointless stories)
Daryl’s post about the meaning of stories set me to thinking about non-anecdotes and their essential lack of meaning.
I posted clusterflock’s inaugural non-anecdote. And okay, yeah, I made up the category and took it from there.
The essence of the non-anecdote is the response it generates: a vague sense of ” . . . and?”
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Peter Falk || Gena Rowlands || “A Woman Under the Influence” || (1974) || d. John Cassavetes
There is a Criterion version available.
this picture of Faulkner always cracks me up
Serendipity (For Rick)
In her response to my recent “dear clusterflock” query, Carole mentioned shaking loose the serendipity.
I’m not sure this is the kind of serendipity she meant, and I know it’s not the kind I want, but here goes, just for the hell of it.
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All Rite Now
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” (Hunter S. Thompson)
dear clusterflock
When you get to a point at which you say, “Well, it can’t get any worse,” but then it does — and then it gets even worse, what do you do?
I know, I know. Go Dao. And I’m trying to get down with the Dao. I always do.
As my friend Steve used to say, “People won’t believe it.”
Think of me as Bruce Lee sitting in the pit in the scene beginning around 4:17 of this clip (from Enter the Dragon). It shows exactly how I feel tonight.
I want y’all to know this
I just went to make myself a cup of coffee, and I found in the coffee maker the empty remains of the previous brew. Hawaiian Hazelnut Aloha Noisette.
What do these people have in common?
(Aside from being mental as anything.)
I just learned via Roger Ebert that I share a birthday with David Foster Wallace.
I already knew about my natal link with Nina Simone, W. H. Auden, Sam Peckinpah, and Anaïs Nin.
from the spam
I like cake. Not that it has anything to do with what exactly you are discussing.
My Nice Nice Day
It’s like he is in my head.
sit a spell
I got on a bus last Thursday — something I haven’t done since my twenties — and headed to Houston, where I watched a majority of the footage I collected a few years ago for a costume documentary. The idea of watching all the footage had become overwhelming, so Aaron was kind enough to set aside a few days to watch through it with me. We watched at least twenty hours, maybe, and having someone there to make it through the tedious moments and compare notes with really helped. I have probably half a dozen more hours of footage to look through now that I am home, but that prospect doesn’t seem nearly as overwhelming. Once I do that, then we will figure out what happens next. I’m glad I did it. Thanks, Aaron. I hope everyone is well.
