Conan the Barbituate

And then there was the other night when I had the dubious honor of watching the remake of "Conan The Barbarian", an experience from which there is no recollection of the names of actors , directors or the gaggle of scribes who cobbled together the flimsy, inferior script. If there is such a thing, the film is a species of inept mediocrity, as there are examples of unstellar film making that at least have a level of technical acumen on display; "American Gangster" , directed by Ridely Scott and starring the quizzically droning Denzel Washington in a portrayal of an African American mobster, had at least a good look and was paced to the degree that one stayed in their seat, kept their eyes on the screen, curious to see how the other wise melodramatic tangle of film cliches turned out.Plus, New York City was used well in this movie. Lovers of architecture got an eyeful of vintage skyscrapers; "American Gangster" was mediocre drama, but it was a first rate postcard. "Conan", on the other hand, achieves only the least likely outcome, making you sing the praises of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who starred in the original film. Arnie's Conan was a lumbering force of a nature, a hulking mass of perpetually raging masculinity that slayed, raped and pillaged with the singular emphasis for hurt and destruction that the new Conan, by an actor who's name I cannot (or refuse to)remember, does not. The new Conan looks like a beef fed River Phoenix, with a face that is inward looking mass of narcissism; his two expressions are a smug leer and a grunting face that resembles nothing so much than a five year old boy's impersonation of The Hulk roaring "SMASH PUNY HUMANS". The violence, if one were to advance a theory as to how on screen dust ups, slashings and unrestricted carnage are a needed purgative for an audience's pent up aggressions, is piecemeal , weak, knock-kneed and , really, stupid. I felt stupid for watching it. I still feel stupid. That admission, of course, only confirms what some of you think of me and the long sentences I fill these posts with, but so be it. Alas, this time I am the fool for thinking that once, just once, I could appreciate this kind of movie as though I were still ten years old watching the after school action movie on Channel 7, wedged between dialing for dollars and the 5 o' clock local  newscast. It's way past 5 o'clock.

On the Golden Days of Rock Criticism

There was a vast and intimidating pile of rusted bed springs crammed into a cold cement room in the basement of my frightening apartment building that I was told to get rid of in order to satisfy some delinquent rent hanging over my head from six months ago; to help me do the job I decided to contact J.R. Young, a former writer for Rolling Stone who had been living in total obscurity in a town in Oregon whose name cannot be divulged due to profound lack of interest.

Young responded immediately and promised to come right down. My call had been the first he’d received since Walker Hickel had resigned from Nixon’s cabinet. “You called at the right time,” he said. “I’ve been trying to write about the new Leonard Cohen album and it’s been driving me insane for about four decades. Can you send bus fare?”

I was standing like an extra from The Road in torn blue work gloves, a filthy pair of industrial overalls and goggles in front of the room full of bed springs when Young arrived. We stared at the red flaking coils in endless rows before us – they extended outwards like teats on the belly an enormous metallic sow. Our slightest movement forward sent greasy dust motes dancing in the air – motes like notes from a fuzztone guitar played by some stoner nobody who got to make an album for Warner Bros. in 1971 because his manager also had a piece of Edison Lighthouse’s publishing, we both thought simultaneously.

We both lifted a set of bed springs out of pool of slimy standing water, producing a piercing shriek from the shivering coils. “So…what about Leonard Cohen,” I said, picking up the thread of an ancient conversation that, in fact, we had never actually had.

“Cohen is a serious writer,” Young began after a slight and rather formal throat-clearing. “His lyric exhibits the discipline and economy of academic poetry, which is both a hindrance and a virtue to his work in the folk-pop music idiom. A lot of people place what he does in opposition to Dylan, which I think is something of a mistake. When Elena Dilbaum finished her master’s thesis on the latter works of Swinburne, she thought of calling up her ex-boyfriend Seamus so she could listen to his copy of Songs of Love and Hate again, but she knew it would only throw her into a spasm of existential self-dissection…”

I knew Young had fallen into his zone of rock criticism-as-fiction, that discursive, absurd yet unmistakably sweet place where the early school of Rolling Stone writers sometime lingered to shake off the confining effects of commenting on the aesthetics of guitar solos and drum fills – a development I expected and in fact thought would aid us in clearing out the filthy, tentanus-infused bed springs by virtue of the wry, tongue-clicking humor they would bring to this fundamentally unpleasant activity. I realized that mulling over these unsolvable critical issues involving criteria of a hopelessly insular nature would slow down our efforts to clear out all the junk in the cellar but quickly reminded myself that I would have probably done nothing to remove it at all without the ability to simultaneously follow Young down the labyrinthine twists of his mind in pursuit of that micro-inch which separates brilliant insight from utterly useless grad-student mind-wanking dross. That’s just how it was.

“Seamus cracked open a bottle of Boone’s Farm and poured two shots into juice glasses he’d "borrowed"’ from a McCarthy for President fundraiser at some professor’s house a couple of years ago,'" Young continued as if reading from an invisible sheet of paper held in front of him."‘I don’t think we are quite ready for Leonard Cohen today,’ he told Elena with the serious mien of a Pulitzer Prize committee member or a dog show judge. ‘Each line in every song is the wrung of a ladder taking us down into the Uber-Canadian angst of Cohen’s soul, informed by the Franco-Anglo tensions of his upbringing not to mention the Hebraic cantorial tradition of perpetual expiation…’

“’…Can’t we just dance by the light of the cracked Philco like we used to?’ said Elena in a voice pitched somewhere between a plea and a grumble. “Aren’t I still your Sister of Mercy and aren’t you still the Stranger with the hand full of the Holy Game of Poker?’

“’Outside Seamus’ window, a hysterical sneer poured out of a dented AMC Javelin. They both recognized Dylan’s “I Want You”: “…your dancing child with his Chinese suit, he spoke to me, I took his flute…”’

“‘Dylan kills everything!’ Seamus erupted. ‘He’s a punk playing a man’s game! He’ll have to live ten thousand years to be able to find the garbage OR the flowers in Cohen’s back yard…’”

Young continued on in this vein for a long time, enough time for the Earth to revolve around the sun and the sun to spin in the galaxy and the universe to reach some sort of reset point in the great wheel of cosmic existence. God was slamming the typewriter keys and whacking the return bar hard; we were a footnote in an endless review that was in fact Existence Itself.

We piled the rusted bed springs in a dumpster and watched the car styles and hemlines changed around us. The Soviet Bloc fell and the Republican Party developed paresis. And still Young went on, skating on blissful shoals of parable…

“’Dylan went country, got domestic, raised a litter of kids and still couldn’t give back that Chinese flute,’ said Elena, sitting on the side of Seamus’ bed at 5 in the morning as he slumbered like wet laundry on laudinum. “’I’m gonna put on some Cohen and put on some coffee and burn some toast as black as the heart of pure hopeless martyrdom…’”

AuH2O

Mrs. Haws works in the garden and the wind brings her voices. She cocks her head to the right like a sparrow, eyes darting upwards, trying to catch the sibilant mumblings of the breeze through the palm fronds and eucalyptus branches. She stands there in her floppy beige hat and her smudged yellow sun dress for a full minute, as stock-still as the array of little plaster trolls, fawns and sleeping Mexicans arranged in a semi-circle in front of her. Sometimes she thinks the voices are addressing the assembly of backyard idols and she is only standing in the way. The shadow of a palm frond falls across her sandaled feet, spiky as the wing of a great ragged vulture. There are terrible flying things in this lovely corner of San Diego but there are also angels just out of sight, in the rank overgrown spaces in the alley, where the bougainvillea spills over the sagging plank fences as if dropped from heaven.

The voices are only part of the atmosphere on these sweet days of exaggerated sun, so different from the Cleveland dreariness Mrs. Haws knew when Henry was still alive and the kids were small. That was before the war and the peace that never was peaceful and the rape of Korea and the crucifixion of Joe McCarthy, poor man. Mrs. Haws’ mind savors this last thought like a tongue flicking at a sore tooth; it makes her turn away from the trolls, put down her watering can and go check the glass jars full of water lying on her front lawn. These jars are supposed to catch sunlight and reflect it painfully into the eyes of stray dogs. There is no firm evidence that this method of dog control works but it ought to work and there have been fewer piles of dog waste on her lawn lately so there is no good reason to stop using the jars. Mrs. Haws wonders if the fluoride in the city tap water might make the reflected light more painful; even though she doesn’t really hate dogs, just mess and chaos, the thought gives her a small pinprick of guilty enjoyment.

Light and water – they are as real and solid as the cement and stucco around her. The wind is firm and capable of carrying a million million chattering voices. It has been years since Mrs. Haws has attended the Swedenborgian church down the street, but the doctrines of the great Christian teacher still shift and recombine in her mind kaleidoscopically. They confirm her certainty that the ethereal is material, solid things are not what they seem and that angels are at war with the creatures that poison our food and water and slip across our lawns at night to leave little calling-cards of corruption.

Mrs. Haws catches herself ruminating, which takes her over the line from vigilance into excess speculation, and she has no time for THAT. She agreed to visit at least five neighbors this afternoon and spread the word about Barry Goldwater’s campaign for president. Joe McCarthy was murdered but Barry is alive and leading the fight with his handsome granite chin set square, a solid man in a dissolving world. She walks over to the blue and white AuH2O sign in her yard and pushes its spikes a little deeper into the dry soil.

The wind is picking up again from the North, scooping up fragments of sound from Mission Valley and blowing them past Mrs. Haws’ good right ear. The glint of one of the water-filled jars catches her eye – it feels like a paper cut, sharp and quick. She catches a string of words blowing by:”howcanyoustandforallthisnonsenssssssse?” The question passes through her and melts back into the air in the heat of the pure, sweet sunshine.

Annointed Ones Convene

"I love tropical fish" was the last thing McMagnet thought before a cross eyed mackerel crashed through the store window and slammed into his face, effectively rendering him stupid. In the window, offset by a confused population of city folks who though that this was their day to enjoy the splendor of dying of chill in the freezing vapors of Skyscraper Canyon, stood You Said It Man. He had on leotards, blue and green, some name brand bun-hugger underwear on the outside, a big belt he stole from his sister's walk in closet , a sweatshirt that said "Zag nuts" on, and an old bath towel tied around his neck in an idiot's desperation grab for a cape. ''Have no fear, You Said It Man is here" was what You Said It Man said .  You  Can Say that Again Man came from the store's back room and said " I'm hungry like Wolfman Jack" ; be peeled off his form fitting shirt and revealed tattoos that did their best to make the best of rather raggedy looking skin.

McMagnet crawled to the backroom , stood up and left the store through the alley entrance. He'd just past the dumpster when he saw a spinning galaxy of birdies and stars burst around his skull. He spun around and made note of   Stenchman climbing from the dumpster.

"You idiot" yelled McMagnet, "Jesus in Jack's Pants, that hurt."

Hearty Sausage Crumbles

The Roto-Rooter man came to the house at 2711 1/2 Paradise Lane, Lemon Grove, California for his service call, right on time. He knocked on the door; it opened and what he saw made him insane.

“I’m gonna give you a haircut, hippie!!” he said as he ran back to his truck to get the necessary tools. A teenager named Ched stared at him from the doorway, dressed in a t-shirt that said GET IT TOEGTHR, grinning like a bowl of disarranged alphabet soup. His eyelids sagged, pulled to earth by the weight of the long brown hair dangling to his knees. Ched had been listening to “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” over and over for 27 hours and was finally starting to understand it, which took every kilowatt his befogged brain could muster. He swore he would stop after three days.

The Roto-Rooter man attached an electric shaver to his drain-scraping tool and rushed back toward the house. His buzz-cut scalp gleamed in the California sunshine like a concrete patio surface. The flesh of his face seemed to be pulled inward by sheer force of his psychic rage, as if it were made of foam rubber, until his white, vein-flecked eyeballs stood out of his skull on stalks. Saliva trailed out his distended mouth and his overloaded larynx shivered from clotted words of savage outrage.

Ched thought that the Roto-Rooter Man looked like the Weird-O car model he had been building that morning: Digger or Davy or maybe Freddie Flame-Out. He stared at the onrushing lunatic, who leveled the whirring razor at his face, ballistic missile style.

Behind him, Ron Bushy thudded mightily on his snare drum as Eric Braunn stabbed at the treble clef and Doug Ingle caressed the undulating vertebrae of an insectoid melody. Ched thought he saw a stray note roll between his knees, so he bent down to catch it. The Roto-Rooter Man lunged forward, slicing off the tip of Ched’s left ear before he collided with the family afghan hound, a huge animated rag mop with a dripping nose and big teeth. Man, dog and razor became a single ball of screams, flying hair and chunks of meat for several seconds, or eternity.

Eventually, Bushy finished his drum solo. The album ended, Lyndon Johnson quit and the next decade dawned. Ched stood up. He was 62 and the house was demolished. He looked behind him and saw a pile of very old hair and some yellowed bones.

“What the hell was that?”

He rubbed his head: “Shit, I could use a hair cut…”

And then this happened.

I hate this shit" is what Normal Grain said last night. He was drunk and reading the funny pages with his feet propped up on the kitchen table, a dinette with the boomerang pattern Formica table and the dull metal trim around the side that was supposed to make the stuff look sleek and jet age, but only look dull like a soapy film in a wash basin full of brown, tepid water.

Normal Grain slapped the newspaper with the back of his hand and craned his neck to stare at the backside of Marcus Garvey, who was over the sink , staring out the kitchen window and into the neighbor's backyard, observing one sweaty man carry boxes into the detached garage from the house, one after the other , back and forth. Marcus Garvey was on his third Benson and Hedges when he turned around and noted that Normal Grain was talking, drunk as a vacuum packed goose, wobbling in the rickety chair as he rustled the pages of the newspaper.

"This goddamned shit fucks up my shit" said Normal Grain, "I mean, you get to reading some lame Steve Roper comic strip adventure in which Mike Nomad gets buggered yet again by some East Lansing squid monger and then they go and change the artist and the writer and then the paper drops the strip altogether, leaving all the emotional investment you've made just hanging there  like pink Cootie Grope waiting for Knuckle Sandwich of Destiny to lay a five spot on ya..." He slapped the newspaper again in a motion that was too broad, too sweeping for the chair. the back legs , thin metal stalks, bent smack dab in the middle. Normal Grain fell backwards, his feet kicking the coffee pot over--a river of hot scalding coffee, brewed by Marcus Garvey in th wan hope of sobering up his sotted roommate, poured on to Normal Grain's already lumpy visage.

"Yeah, I hate syndicated comic strips too" said Marcus Garvey,"they make me want to sharpen a spoon and take a shiv to work."  He looked back out the window and made note of what was coming out of the garage, small robots on training wheels with industrial light bulb eyes and mechanical fingers resembling tiny, jointed lawn rakes driving around in manic circles and loope-de-loops,  ramming into each other as best their speed allowed; sparks, blips , insect squeals mixed nicely with the the sweaty man's choice of tunes on his vintage 1982 Ghetto Blaster, "Groin Pull Goes Lunar", a squalling morass of guitar hysteria and big band music.

"I am a lizard for love" said Normal Grain. A chunk of the ceiling gave way, falling on the kitchen table; as the dust cleared, the resident Death Ray from the apartment upstairs was revealed appearing angry, it's one red eye glowing red as an insane hen.

Intimations of Immortality

“When I die, I want it to happen while I’m reading. I want to fall into an open book in my lap and sink down into the white spaces between the black lines of type. That’s where Heaven is…”

Dalt sat on the metal guard rail at the foot of The Lot, staring into the smeared fuchsia sunset. A ray of golden light was playing off the silver can of Coors in his hand. The roar of the sea was like a fuzzy wool blanket of noise and the air temperature was no temperature at all.

Suz sat next to him, hooking her bare legs behind her so that the sharp edges of the rail pinched them. It helped to keep her awake.

“What book?" she asked. "I’d like to fall into Catcher in the Rye, or maybe the Mammoth Hunters…”

“Robert’s Rule of Order,” Dalt said. “Absolute peace and stability. You could float in it forever. God is in the details and that’s where I want to be: the really fine print…”

Dalt sipped from the can. Suz scratched an itch she had forgotten about. They watched the sun get sloppy as it dissolved into the waves, all runny hot yellowness. They were silent for a long time.

“My Dad is Poppin' Fresh,” she finally said in a meek, slightly cracked voice.

“Huh? What is your Dad doing?”

“No, I mean Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy – the little cartoon guy on the TV commercials. They based him on my Dad. He worked for the ad agency.” She gulped softly. “I never told you that…”

Dalt almost lost his cool. He turned and looked at Suz as if she’d give him money from a country he’d never dreamed existed.

“That’s insane,” he said in a voice as flat as the beer he’d been drinking. “I met him once, remember? When you had to get bailed out that time. He did seem a little fat and soft…”

“Squishy,” she shot back. “You've never heard him laugh – I mean giggle. People used to love my Dad. I think they wanted to roll him into a big ball and poke him all day long. Can you imagine?”

There really wasn’t more to discuss. “What have you been reading?” Dalt finally said.

“A telephone book I found in my parents’ attic when I cleaned it out last year. It’s amazing – like a book of spells. There is a power in names. You can control anything if you know its name…”

“What if you died while reading it, Suz? What if you fell in there?”

Suz squeezed her legs under the rail. She was as awake as she had been in weeks.

“I’d just swim around in the letters and numbers. I’d get inside a zero and float forever.” Then she giggled, like a big finger was making a big dimple in her stomach.

Spork was behind the wheel of the JESUS HATES YOUR STUPID FACE bus gazing upon the assorted locals, interchangeable egocentrics. He squinted and pretended he was a bottle cap flung by a proper thumb and forefinger , spinning toward a crashing wave getting foamy like porn drool on the impacted sand. When I die I wanna fall into the Dewey Decimal System he thought, there's a place for me somewhere in this land of trace elements.