You think you know a person and then, suddenly, you don’t. Life plays those games.
I was up at 4am, dancing in the kitchen. I adroitly avoided the vodak until after summarily shoveling a container of pineapples and strawberries down my face. Antioxidant to counter the toxins, which were relatively minimal. I could not sleep and found the battle harder knowing that one false move, one stumble, one random burst of noise from whatever wayward action I might perform, anything like that could have the angry landlord calling the cops on me. I guess there is no sense worrying about this day to day, or night to night. It could happen any time, any hour, any moment. Or it might never happen. Just like any of life’s perils.
Someone told me yesterday he thought I resembled Kaikhosru Sorabji. If I knew this person better I might have told him to go fuck himself. I expect to get to know this person better so I might keep that zinger in my butt pocket. This and another moment yesterday formed a confluence of triggers to remind me of something a college friend once said. He was from El Paso, where cow tipping was the adolescent prank du jour. I thought of him yesterday when a referer_spam URL showed up in my access_log’s referer_url field. The URL linked to a Blogspot profile for someone whose profession was said to be “cow tipping.” That was the only piece of information this person wrote about themself on this Blogspot profile page.
This El Pasoian college friend said that in the 9th or 10th grade a school teacher told him he bore a striking resemblance to Lyndon Johnson. At the time he did not know what LBJ looked like. He went to the library to find a picture. He saw a photo of LBJ and, in the direction of the teacher who commented on the resemblance, said “Go fuck yourself.” I thought that was funny, though I could not disagree with the teacher’s assessment about the resemblance.
LBJ was nothing if not distinctive looking. In his later years he let his hair grow long and he retired to the seclusion of his ranch in Buttfuck, Texas. A picture of him accompanied his obituary in… either Time or Newsweek. I should find it to see if my memory aligns with its reality. I remember him sitting in a chair in the middle of a field, looking down into the camera that captured his visage. He had basically told Washington and government to go fuck itself.
As a gumshoe student of 20th century presidents I remember his speech where, unbeknown to anyone but himself and Lady Bird, he would announce that he would not seek nor would he accept a nomination for another term as “your president.” “I will not seek, nor will I accept…” The words flowed like bitter candy through the hot mouth of an exhausted child.
No fewer words changed America and the office of the presidency in the 20th century more than those. It is a finely-hued moment from Oliver Stone’s Nixon that shows Nixon sitting in a chair watching that speech. Recognizing the significance of the moment as few others would he almost stands up, but settles instead for merely adjusting his position, waking up to the previously unthinkable possibility of trying again to become president himself. He rose from receded resignation to the prospect of triumph, and he reached the latter.
Pictures of him on winning the reelection are particularly joyful, I think, especially considering the joylessness of that individual.
Nixon and The Beatles convene to form some of my life’s earliest coherent memories. In Laos there were no English-language radio stations, but the records they played were all American. This was how I first heard The Beatles ask “HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE?” I thought they were directly asking me that question. I felt like a beautiful person as a child. I no longer do.
The Beatles had disintegrated in 1970 but for years after it seemed they were constantly in the discussion of all things. “Ringo Starr will now be making movies” was a frequently repeated portent, and his later marriage to Barbara Bach formed a bookend of sorts to contain the progress of that early memory. He was, as the other bandmembers often commented, the most important Beatle. It’s true, too, when you watch videos of the band the others are constantly turning around to get their cue from Ringo. He was their cock and balls.
George Harrison commented in later years that he never understood why people always asked him “How could you do that to Pete Best?” in reference to how unceremoniously they dumped him and hired Ringo, skyrocketing to fame within weeks. Hearing Harrison talk about it made it sound like a global scandal with implications that reached into the hearts and households of every living creature. Harrison simply said that “the record shows” that Pete Best was simply not a good fit for the band. I don’t remember Harrison saying this but it was never a secret that Best could drum circles around Starr, or pretty much any drummer on the scene back then. He was just that good.
But he was good looking, and as a drummer he was just too good. It was like Buddy Rich backing up a grade school marching band. The Beatles had a lot of good and amiable qualities but their My00zikal Skilz and technical chops were not first among them. They were raw buskers. Paul I don’t think reads music even today.
Neither did Pavarotti.
I read butt.
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Page 181 comes from The Tenty-Three, a Promise Falls novel by Linwood Barclay. Did I not recently do the 181 from a book called Twenty-Two? Who can remember…
Page 181 details Gale’s discovery that Naman’s Bookstore was firebombed and destroyed. With no context I take Naman to be of Arab descent. He comments that whoever did this said he was a terrorist.
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Starting to think I should have watched more than 20 minutes of yesterday’s press conference. I don’t buy a lot of media accounts of such things but he did seem weak and unhinged in what I saw. I would not have thought he would carry on so long. It sounds like Washington is looking at this guy and saying “This can’t last.” It might be the ultimate in defacement of the office if he only lasted a few months. That would please his supporters, I think, as it would give them more fodder to decry the thicket of the swamp that even a “great man” such as DJT could not drain. They do consider him a “great man”, you know. It’s kind of crazy. It’s more than kind of crazy.
Talk about Nixon and his joylessness, this president is only getting started and his paranoia is blossoming like mint in a Texas back yard.
There are a lot of beautiful women at this library today. All women are beautiful, of course, but I don’t always notice it and when I do I don’t really care. I remember being chided on this years ago, when I made what I thought was an explicitly and obviously sarcastic comment about “ugly women.” I suspect the chider got my sarcasm but who the hell knows. It could be one of the impressions of me that waits to rise up from the gallows of memory when our minds are all cataloged and indexed.
I thought of some of these online-only exchanges last night, whilst skimming postings from the old “What Are You Doing?” board. There was some sweet, eloquent stuff in there. I didn’t realize that one of the quotes used by a web site in India was attributed to someone whose path I crossed at the ridiculous hell.com project. He is still doing his thing, Mr. Horvath, but I saw no mention of hell.com on his resumé. It would not appear on mine, if I even had a resumé. I could take a cue from that violinist of yore and just. make. stuff. up.
Oh, wait, I did do that. Haha:
resume_mark_thomas_january_2013.pdf
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It is time for food to enter into this dizzy, sleep-deprived vessel.
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Oh Jeez, I just found Woody Allen’s New Orleans Jazz Band on Spotify. Memories of Michael’s, which used to be on East 50-something street. Woody Allen played there weekly for decades until the place closed, and I think he took his show to a hotel restaurant nearby on 57th Street. Does he still do that? I used to see him around the East Side, taking his daily constitutional with Soon-Yi. He is about the size of a toothpick.
The band just shouted “PLAY THAT THING!”
