American Fez

Stormy Weather

A plumped pillow of gray cloud, a thick blanket of rain and sheets of lightning: the sky is apparently making its bed. My father, in the role of butler, is pouring a brace of sparkling mojitos and a single champagne cocktail while my mother, acting housekeeper, gently drapes three slivers of silvery salmon over the steaming grille. These splendid fishes in such an atmospheric ambience will be a nice change from the food I've been eating at the restaurants in St. Disgustine, America's oldest tourist trap. Everything is prepared with cheese in Florida's most ancient city. The catch of the day isn't caught in nets, it's battered to death with slabs of cheddar and sticks of gorgonzola. Ever heard of Filet Mignon Avec Fromage? Neither had I until I came here. The cooks pan blacken everything too, even the green vegetables. Excellent desserts, though.

Oh well. Tomorrow I shall be flying home to Boston. Jacksonville Aerodrome beckons. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and, to be honest, I actually quite enjoyed my brief holiday in Saint Augustine. It's not a bad old place when all is said and done.

The Silence of the Unflushed Toilet

Palm trees are not native to America's oldest city, although you wouldn't believe so judging by the energetic palm planting policy that a tourism-hungry district authority has aggressively advocated ever since they realized that the traveler's check equaled an easy buck. Indeed, the planners and developers are eager that downtown Saint Augustine should resemble the conventional vacationist's vision of "Florida" as closely as possible. Indigenous cypress trees, meanwhile, are ruthlessly felled to create space for yet more paint-by-numbers cardboard condominiums inspired by prison block architecture which are then sold to the retired and sedated southbound segment of the population. You too can grow old and die at "Whisperin' Palms" or "Gator's Rest" or "Pelican's Nest" or "Nudist's Chest" or whichever sunny, hurricane-proof address you choose.

All this faux-tropical arboricultural activity, of course, is a great boon to the local bartenders who, shaking and stirring in the rippling shade provided by such bogus foliage, are now granted a poetic liquor license to concoct as many ludicrously colored "tropical" drinks as their coconut-shaped brains can possibly conceive: "The Flagler Waggler", for instance, which looks like a glass of foaming, kaleidoscopic toilet bowl disinfectant with Jack's giant beanstalk emerging from its iridescent depths. I've only had a few of those since I've been here, I've found they go especially well with crabsticks.

Excuses and Apologies

I have decided that Saint Augustine (est. 1565), "the nation's oldest city", may conceivably be compared to Chernobyl. So extremely high are the levels of tedium in this ancient Spanish port that they cause lethargic neurons in the human brain to actually fuse and explode, an unfortunate reaction creating great swathes of dull brown clouds formed by bored and aimless negative atoms that can only be measured with the most powerful of Geiger counters.

This is probably more than you need to know  - although this is a blog so what the Hell - but since arriving at this tiresome destination, my daily regimen has been reduced to eating numberless quantities of figs washed down with gallons of strong, black iced-coffee, then balancing on the toilet in the lotus position, evacuating my bowels for hours on end in Buddha-like serenity.

Consequently, while domiciled in this historic Floridian backwater, I have not been able to spend as much time as I would like responding to remarks made on previous posts here, or reading other people's blogs and commenting on the contents there. Don't worry, normal service shall be resumed soon-ish.

The Verbose Backing Vocalist

At this juncture in the proceedings, I would like to point out that, having already seconded the emotion articulated in the chorus, I have also been possessed by a passionate desire to unequivocably affirm, in the strongest possible terms and without fear of contradiction, that I, a transient yet irrepressible echo in the undulating wave of processed stereophonic musical reproduction, completely endorse and provide my unwavering support to, absolutely every single word the lead singer has just sung. Especially that catchy bit in verse two. And I would also like to add that, in such total agreement am I with the sentiments of this lead singer, and so extremely vociferously do I utterly concur with his thoughts and dreams, that I feel an undeniable urge to express my admiration and adoration for these fine lyrics with an ecstatic keening not heard in the world of sound since the most exotic of courtesans received the most sensuous of kisses from the most velvety-lipped of Casanovas ever to be espeically skilled in the arts of the bedroom. Now, where was I? Oh yes. I remember  ...shooby-dooby doo waaaah.

Bridge of Lions

I am currently sweating to death in Saint Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the United States; and I'm afraid to say that although this antique Spanish port certainly looks its age, unfortunately it most definitely doesn't act it: nothing to do here unless you enjoy playing golf and drinking Jack Daniels by the gallon jug-load, or just happen to be buying your first trailer home.

Your Very Own Customized BBC Shipping Forecast

And now the Shipping Forecast issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency: Hebrides, Forth Tyne, Dogger, Viking northeast 4 becoming cyclonic 5 to 7, perhaps gale 8 later in east. Cromarty, Fastnet, Humber variable 6 or 7. Boston and New England shoreline, however, murderous miserable monsoon and relentless downpour for, yup, you guessed it, forty days and forty nights, gale 12 veering all over the place. Raining cats and dogs? More like raining heifers and bison. Only a suicidal raving lunatic or the Flying Dutchman would venture out in a boat in this weather. You can stuff your seafood dinner up your unsalted, landlubbing ass as far as I’m concerned. No way am I going fishing in this weather. If you want my advice, disguise yourself as a pair of porcupines and sneak aboard the nearest Ark, that old fool Noah is as blind as two bats, so he’ll never notice the difference. This is the BBC. It's nine o'clock. And now a selection of works by Schoenberg for bass bassoon and trombone.

N.B: The BBC Shipping Forecast seems to lost much of its allure in these days of digital radio, especially for those of us who remember the crackling, bleakly evocative delivery of conditions from some North Atlantic limbo back in the days of World Service Shortwave

Surfin' Clacton-On-Sea

For those of you bemused by my esoteric reference to the music of Hank Marvin yesterday, think British surf music without the sun, waves, or girls. Pointless? Pretty much. Hank, lead guitarist of The Shadows, was also "sideman" to the White Cliff of Dover.

The Long-Winded Bluesman

By the way, Jeremiah, a fine specimen of the genus Rana Catesbeiana, known in common argot as the North American bullfrog, happened to be a rather loyal and extremely agreeable companion of mine; not quite, perhaps, what purveyors of children’s literature might deem “an inseparable friend”, since Jeremiah would often, for example, retire to a nearby swamp to pursue his interests in the more experimental manifestations of entomological gastronomy, but it could be said, without fear of contradiction, that Jeremiah and I had, beyond all doubt whatsoever, forged the most definite and unbreakable bonds of mutual esteem for each other’s qualities as an acquaintance of great importance and respect. Indeed, my own concern for Jeremiah’s personal well-being reached such an extent that I would regularly invite him along on my excursions to the classical ballet. On such occasions, Jeremiah would usually hop around on the floor in an amusing and cheerful imitation of the dancers. Afterwards, sharing a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc in the marbled foyers between the richly gilded statues of David Bowie and Hank Marvin, I would attempt to engage Jeremiah in a critical discussion regarding whatever performance we had just witnessed, but Jeremiah’s series of what must have been highly perceptive croaks fell upon ignorant ears, since his peculiar idiom and dialect were not familiar to me, nor for that matter, I imagine, was my own language comprehensible to his fine ear. Still, behind those wise old bulging eyes of his, I knew that Jeremiah was a cultured and loving soul who only wished only the very best for those around him. To the fish that swim in the impenetrable depths of the deep blue oceans of this world, including but not exclusive to Pacific and the Atlantic, to these fish - especially the Haddock, Ling, and South American Hoola Shark (his personal favorites) – to these fish I happen to believe that Jeremiah wished enormous and eternal joy, and that such special greetings were also extended by Jeremiah to persons such as myself, whom he knew well, and also to people like you, whom he had never met and never will. Yes. Jeremiah wished us all joy and happiness, as indeed do I.
Now, where was I? Oh yes: I woke up dis mornin' ....

The Procurers

The others had left for the night. In the unusual, relentless silence of the abandoned office I felt like a character in one of those post nuclear-apocalyptic films in which everyone else has disappeared. Except he was there, of course, fossilizing in his cubicle as I knew he would be. They always decided that I should be the one to negotiate with him, to plead whatever case needed to be made. He would just be condescendingly opinionated with me, it was agreed, whereas they’d all get a face full of enraged spit and phlegm. He had a soft spot for me, apparently: a blind spot, the others often joked. None of that bothered me much either way since I liked Karen and didn’t want to see her get axed so I promised them that I’d speak to him after work; which was now.
“I think we should give Karen another chance.” I told him from across the room.
He said, "You know your trouble, you don't live in the moment. Too much thinking, not enough action. That's why I'm top man now and you are still who you are."
I hate being criticized by a half-human half toad whose motto is 'I belch and fart therefore I am'. But that’s the way it is. How he had risen to a position of such eminence was a mystery to me, lost in the folds of Time's great diaper and secured in place with an enormous safety pin.
“Firing her is going to kill her,” I said flatly.
“ Justifiable homicide.” He replied. “Listen; she's a menace to business; she's the reason accountants leap off window ledges. She’s too old. We need fresh juice.”
I bit my lip. At the death, I suppose I’d always known she’d get canned. She was the type. She had that look about her: the scrap heap beckons.
"Don't worry, I'll do it gently,” he continued. “I'll mumble something about how it was really our fault for hiring her when she didn’t have the proper experience. She’ll be okay. Women always are."
What did he know about woman, this frog-faced oaf who kept an industrial strength wife at home drugged up to the eyeballs with department store charge cards and unlimited Prozac?
One last try: “We’ll never find someone else for the same money.” I said.
He sniffed. “I could throw this paperweight out of the window and hit a zillion other girls who fall to their knees for the opportunity.”
“I suppose, but.”
“Sympathy.” He explained, “Is like the vampire. You have to stake the bastard before it starts feeding on your mind. You don’t want to end up like one them, do you? You know what I mean.”

H.M.O F.A.Q

I swallow just two pills every morning: a multi-vitamin supplement for my own personal benefit, and an exclusively prescribed tablet that takes the edge off my extraordinary personal magnetism, which I’m sure you’ll agree is very public spirited of me. Some hypochondriacs I know gobble down so many various types of pills per day that I imagine they must also consume a daily ration of cotton candy to prevent their stomachs from rattling about when they walk down the street. But not me, oh no. I stick strictly to my aforementioned spartan regimen of single vitamin boosters and charisma-reducing agent, each swallowed in conjunction with a tincture of Napoleon brandy mixed with a drop of Old Zesty Zeus' Achin' Bones Remedy. These minor medicines, mood-enhancers, and pick-me-ups are all my Apollonian body demands to fortify itself against the physical and mental rigors which every single hurly-burly second spent in this challenging modern world confronts it with. I suffer from no chemical imbalances that require correction. I harbor no neurosis that needs to be neutralized. Oh no.
Now, I really must rush; I have an appointment with Dr. Samarra (the Maugham one, not the O'Hara version - look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Symposium

“Now that I’ve washed my hands of Susan" Graham said, "I’m going to get them absolutely bloody filthy again with Beatrice. Really filthy hands I’m going to have by the time I’m finished with her.”
He spoke without enthusiasm, standing, his back against the kitchen wall, in the manner of one who having refused a blindfold faces the firing squad with bleak satisfaction. Not for the first time I reflected that Graham possessed a mind like a medieval dungeon: a dank and gloomy chamber of horrors where innocent thoughts were stripped naked, beaten and flogged, chained and manacled, then hung upside down on the cold stone wall of his brain until they starved to death.
“Yeah, I think I’m going to have a shot at Beatrice.” he repeated, fishing for a response.
“She’s rather difficult to get a hold of.” I told him, having a certain amount of experience in that sphere of activity myself. “Never at home.”
“Well I’ve got her cell number.” Graham replied with satisfaction. “She gave it to me.”
“Yes, but she never answers any of her phones. Too afraid it might be one of her creditors. Or the bank or whoever. She never listens to her messages for the same reason. You sort of have to get lucky and bump into her some place before you can get lucky, if you see what I'm saying. But anyway, I was under the impression Bob was doing her at the moment.”
“Somebody said she’d finished with him.”
“Yeah. Probably. That sounds about right. They don't last long.”
“What’s her story anyway?”
“Convoluted to say the least. This past year alone she was sleeping with somebody called Martin for a while, and Andy and Tom had her as well. Then there was this guy from Spain, but that didn’t last long. Jimmy fooled around with her for a week or two just after that. Then she went to Wisconsin with Mike in February and when they came back she was suddenly all over this MIT scientist or whatever he was. Tom again, of course in the middle of last month. And finally there’s obviously Bob as you know. A couple of others too probably. And I suppose I’m in there as well somewhere at the New Year's Party she threw.”
“A pretty crowded dance card, then.”
“And it's a pretty bloody slippery dance floor, let me tell you. Lube everywhere.”
“She lives with her boyfriend, doesn’t she? I wonder what he makes of her screwing the rest of the country like that.”
“Must get some sort of perverse gratification from the situation I imagine.”
“He seemed alright when I met him. Nice guy. I liked him.”
“Me too.”

More Miserable Media.

"Why Isn't Anyone Going To The Movies This Year?" enquires the front page of May 13th's edition of Entertainment Weekly, the issue whose cover also features a photograph of the lead corpses from the extinct television waste-of-time Everyone Pretends To Love Raymond But Actually Calls Him A Schmuck Behind His Back: The words "Ray's Last Laugh" are printed beside their picture in block orange typography. Well, I'm glad at least he's getting one. I never did from watching his show.
Frankly, I would elect to closely observe an aged, wrinkly and constipated elephant straining at stool rather than suffer even five minutes of Star Wars: Revenge of the Shit (sic). But that's just me.
Predictably, the magazine concludes that Neflix is to blame for the box office slump. But the real reason, of course, can also be found on the EW's cover: "Orlando Bloom" screams the big pink headline, "Will His New Epic Make Him A Big Star?" Who cares? But judging from the picture that accompanies the article, this new epic most certainly will make him look like a complete and utter total douche-bag.
Is it any wonder that no sane person wants to lobotomize their brain up like a dried prune by drowsing through ninety-minutes of flickering dross in some sticky-floored, cola and burnt popcorn scented cinema.

Good Value?

The latest copy of Harper’s includes a subscription offer insert advertising a cover price savings of 82%. Readers taking advantage of such rates will therefore be paying roughly a dollar per magazine, which I personally think is still rather expensive since I only read about thirty cents worth of each issue.
Harper’s used to be a worthwhile thumb-through-while-soaking-in-the-bath-type-periodical, especially the opening “readings” section and the famous “index”. But the editor, Lewis Lapham, has recently transformed his formerly eminent magazine into a whiny, agenda-ridden collection of stapled assertions. No wonder the publishers are desperately slashing subscription rates. Even the most actively liberal of my lefty acquaintances now regards Harper’s as preposterously predisposed to attack anything that might be even slightly construed as vaguely supportive of our current administration and its allies.
Lapham, in his “Notebook” for May includes the US Air Force in a gang of internationally celebrated ogres that boasts the likes of Torquemada, Stalin, Hitler, and Vlad the Impaler among its number. Now I may happen to enjoy the notion of Donald Rumsfield contracting a truly mind-bendingly permanent case of sphincter-grindingly painful constipation. However, I don’t believe that he’s all that bad. (Lapham also adds much-maligned Lucretia Borgia and poor General Haig to his list of evildoers, so I guess he doesn’t read very much up-to-the-minute historical biography.)

Odilon And You

If you had encountered the painter Odilon Redon in Paris circa 1885 strolling along the boulevards, and had you beckoned him over to join your fashionably alfresco table at the Dome, inviting him to share a bottle of absinthe with you and Fifi, your prostitute-cum-model-cum-lover, chances are that Redon would have replied, “Thanks but no thanks. I’m going back to my studio by myself to draw some weird plants with human head blossoms on them using the blackest stick of charcoal I can find.” Ten years later, though, mired in middle-aged conventionality, you find yourself wandering around a small exhibition of Redon’s latest canvasses accompanied by your highly respectable and rather bored wife. You are surprised to discover that the reclusive artist is now working with color – and how! Your memory vaguely recalls Redon begging you to pose as Saint John, and the few sittings you did for him as that character. Lo and behold! Here is the painting: your body rendered in vibrant olive with a vivid blue sky-drape obscuring those confidential sections of your anatomy. Amazing … but wait … isn’t that Fifi as Dante’s Beatrice? The face that launched a thousand circles of Hell? Hmmm. She looks good imagined in daffodil yellow like that, you think, the picture stirring fond memories of your youthful bohemian past. Alas, standing irritably beside the gallery door, your stale brown wife is pointing sternly at the street outside; her thick gray legs encased in dull blue stockings. The moral of this story is: Paint hay while the sun shines, but use scarlet gouache for the hay and plum pastel for the sun. Apply the paint with a palette knife.

Snipcock & Tweed

How many ways can a publisher repackage a collection of V.S Pritchett short stories? The answer seems to be very many ways indeed. Pritchett is beginning to resemble one of those popular rock groups that can boast not only a Greatest Hits selection but also a The Best Of ... compilation; and even a The Very Best Of ...; appearance of this latter CD obviously being rather a big shock to those fans who had invested in the original - and apparently inadequate - plain old "The Best Of" CD.
Later, of course, the definitive Five Disc Box Set and the Unreleased Recordings arrive in your local record store, quickly followed by Live in Outer Mongolia 1973 and so on.
No doubt we can soon expect a fellow authors "Tribute To V.S Pritchett" book, in which Ian McEwan, Nick Hornby, Martin Amis and others rewrite the master's stories in their own inimitable styles. Jeanette Winterson covers The Camberwell Beauty. We can only hope and pray that such a travesty never sees the light of day on the book store bookshelves.
Personally, I have Pritchett's Collected Stories loaded into my reading table carousel. Good stuff

Note: The title of this post comes from an old Private Eye joke.

I, Poet

The New Criterion announces its Sixth Annual Poetry Prize: "The winner will receive $3000 and the winning manuscript will be published by Ivan R. Dee, Chicago." As always, submissions are required to be "poems that pay close attention to form."
Consequently, I am pleased to report that I have already finished composing my own collection of verses, and will be entering them into the magazine's competition with fingers-crossed via the next post. So for all you admirers of sweet poesy out there, here is a quick sample of my work that you can recite to your friends and family as they lounge around the hearth:

Ode To Form

AAAA A AAAA AA
BB BBBBB BB
AAAA A AAAA AA
BB BBBBB BB
CCCC?
AAAA A AAAA AA
BB BBBBB BB
AAAA A AAAA AA
BB BBBBB BB!
CCCC?

Perhaps it isn't the most romantic, metaphor-infused lyric the world has ever swooned over ... but the form, well, the form makes the ragbag poetical efforts of Keats and Byron look like the most meandering and confused excesses of those wild-eyed and frothing-mouthed Victorian scribblers whose lunatic ravings have been the cause of their straitjacketed confinement in Bedlam.
Pantheon of Poets, here I come!

Say "Cheese"

As depicted on Anglo-Saxon tapestries, manuscripts and coins, the early English kings appear to have been a particularly gloomy collection of crowned heads. Ethelred the Unready, for example, as portrayed in the ‘Chronicles of Abingdon’, frankly, he looks more like Ethelred the Agonizingly Constipated to me: perhaps this has something to do with the giant asparagus he is clutching to his royal bosom? Or perhaps Ethelred has merely been immortalized as ‘Jack’ in a traditional production of Jack and the Bean Stalk in which the reigning monarch must always play the title role. You’d think he’d make more of an effort to smile for the benefit of those poor smelly peasant children in the audience, but I guess not. So perhaps Ethelred simply did not have enough time to compose his kingly expression properly before his picture was painted. And like a goofy wife in a holiday snapshot who blinks when her husband’s camera flash unexpectedly explodes, maybe his Majesty’s surprised expression is purely a case of Ethelred being unready for his close-up.

When The Going Was Good

Abroad, I am an enthusiastic and unabashed tourist, possessing a limitless appetite for those ancient and inimitable sites habitually name-checked in the historical narratives of the biography of planet Earth. Yet there exists a certain species of traveler who maintains an abhorrence of conventional sightseeing that borders on the pathological: I only want to go where the locals go, they whine, to see how the real people live. Very well. Fine by me. You can spend your entire vacation in hospital being treated for cholera and malnutrition if that’s what you want. Takes all sorts to make a world, I suppose. Personally, I’m off to see the Roman ruins and then I’m going to fling a few coins in the glorious fountain. I’ll be picking up the tab at Ristorante Delicioso while you’re picking the fleas out your hair in some rat-infested backstreet slum. Suits me. Guess I’ll see you back at the hotel in a week’s time then. Arrivederci Killjoy.
Mind you, there is a particular sphere of sightseeing based tourism that leaves me colder than a British Airways in-flight chicken dinner (Economy Class). I refer, of course, to the sit-and-gawp guided bus tour, or the decrepit Olde Towne Trolley Tour that every American city seems to offer nowadays. Really. People might just as well stay at home and watch it all on video. In Boston we herd our visitors like sunburned, ‘Cheers Bar’ souvenir-laden cattle onto the so-called “Duck Tours.” During these brief but expensive excursions conducted via road and river, lazy tourists conserve whatever energy their obese bodies contain for pillaging the shopping malls by boarding amphibious vehicles that lurch around the city streets before finally flopping into the Charles for a quick motorized paddle through the polluted water. Meanwhile, the maniacal driver has been undergoing some hideous mutation from unctuous tour guide to full-throttle, fez wearing performing monkey, encouraging his rictus-grinned passengers to scream “quack, quack” at innocent passers-by.
I don’t know. If you are planning on taking a trip to Boston, might I suggest the John Singer Sargent murals at the Public Library, or the mothballed Harvard Museum of Natural History, neither of which are accessible by Duck.

Beating the Economy Blues

If your job is gradually becoming obsolete thanks to pesky advances in computer and robotic science, why not move to one of those Historical Re-enactment Villages? - Hey presto! - You are suddenly miles AHEAD of the technology curve again! Boost your employment PROSPECTS, your EGO, and impress the BUSTY MILKMAIDS by taking your CAR with you! Make that bearded FOOL with the HORSE and CART feel like a BIG OLDE LOSER as you ZOOM past him at sixty miles per HOUR. And why not put him out of a job by delivering all those sacks of corn and barley so much faster than he ever could with his rickety, silly-old-twerp method of donkey transportation.
Yes! Living in a Historical Re-enactment Village can provide many "get rich quick and be a big shot" opportunities for the truly ruthless entrepreneur!
So grab your jerkin and knee britches, smear some mud on your face and enroll in The Past TODAY!
I certainly have. Inspired by those hardy fellows who tramp around fields in Lexington and Conncord dressed up in knee breeches, tricorn hats and frock coats re-enacting thrilling scenes of the Revolutionary War, I am starting my own "creative anchronism" group to re-create famous battles of the Ancient World. I'm calling it Trojan War Action Team (T.W.A.T).
So far T.W.A.T membership is in the single digit, and I reckon if it remains at this easily manageable number there should be absolutely no problem constructing a Trojan Horse big enough to fit everybody inside when we do the Siege of Troy.
Also, since T.W.A.T members are afraid of looking silly in our authentic ancient Greek robes and sandals, all battle re-enactments will take place in my apartment: The Siege of Troy will take place in the living room, with my couch acting as the walls of that great city, and Thermoplyae is in the hallway after lunch.

"The Play's The Thing"

Unlike those epicurean boulevardiers at the Social Affairs Unit Blog, I rarely attend theatrical performances of any kind. I am not a perfumed, mincing dilettante who eschews the unpalatable realities of the real world in favor of the red-nosed and orange afroed, ludicrously pantalooned whimsy of the so-called “stage”: Tartuffe? Krapp's Last Tape? Frankly, I would rather sit on a cold toilet and stare at the floor in strained, bowel-evacuating silence. My kind of drama is presented on the streets of the city. My Shakespearian soliloquies are the lusty cry of the fishnetted harlot and the mordant curse of the grizzled homeless man.
While the effete contributors to the Social Affairs Unit Blog are pinching and scratching each other in a desperate struggle to claim that complimentary ticket for Evita, I am observing the shuffling soup kitchen and the blue-toned junkie through my special opera glasses. Yes, I may look strange swaggering along the dangerous backstreets of the city slums in my bright white spats elegantly sported over shiny black patent leather shoes, my swirling stain-lined velvet cape, and silk top hat, but at least I care, and the poor, starving, rickets-ridden common rabble respect that. And anyway, last time I went to the theater it cost me nearly four hundred bucks if you include dinner – so bugger that!

Have You Seen This Child?

Interestingly, the reconstruction of Tutankhamun's head created by "the French team" actually bears a strong resemblance to images of those sexually ambivalent, heavily eye-lined lead singers of 1980s British pop groups. I am thinking especially of the fellow who sang "Tainted Love" and other synthesized hits of yesteryear. It is unfortunately just too, too bad that the acclaimed modern-classical composer Philip Glass was unaware of the boy Pharaoh's washed-up gay crooner connections when he was scoring his much loved Egyptian-themed opera, "Akhenaten", since Glass's operatic muse obviously draws so much valuable inspiration from the spangly detritus of 80's youth culture. How the New York maestro's famously repetitive chords would have soared had they accompanied the pouting arias of this fabulous queeny king of the Nile rather than the dull and moody monotheist that Akhenaten was. What a masterpiece the world of trendy music has surely lost.

The Folly of Youth

The girl who was easy when I was growing up was named Claire, and she flounced around in the traditional easy girl outfit of too much make-up and shiny tight clothes as if she were auditioning for the role of cartoon Jezebel in some vacuous teenage sideshow. According to local legend she’d caught a case of crabs so often she probably qualified as a public beach: “the tides out!” we used to snigger whenever Claire wore an especially short skirt.
Mind you, although we considered Claire to be the public beach, even such a pebbly shore has its charms to the adolescent mind, and the other girls we knew seemed to be merely a collection of dreary car parks by comparison.
Anyway, predictably, one spring afternoon quite similar to today, Anthony Cooper and I decided to persuade Claire to accompany the pair of us that evening to a secluded area nearby that everyone called Streaky Wood.
To our great amazement she agreed, as long as we provided a tent to protect what remained of Claire’s modesty from Peeping Toms, and also something to drink. Naturally, we had absolutely no idea that she meant alcohol drinks, and we spent a considerable amount of time selecting what we judged to be the sexiest of carbonated juices.
But that particular faux pas as it turned out was the least of our problems. The only tent we could lay our sweaty hands on was an ancient replica plastic wigwam with fake buffalo hide texture and crazy totem pole face printed on it that we found in Tony’s father’s garage, groundsheet not included.
If I remember correctly, I actually spent the evening watching <i>The Dukes of Hazard</i>.

Electronic Doomsday

A thoughtless God idly flicks through the minutes of your brief life on the abacus of Time, counting each doomed second out loud in a dead language down to the last moment of breath: decem, novem, octo, septem, sex, quinque, quattuor ... "et in Radio Shack ego" - you know what I'm sayin'?

A Fish in the Bower

Torrential rain and relentless wind provided natural theater for this past weekend, ripping through the foliage of the tree that shades my bedroom window like a crazed chef dismembering a head of lettuce. Each morning the sidewalk was covered with a shiny new Persian carpet woven from Spring’s multicolored petals, leaves, and tangled, broken black twigs: how tightly the remaining blossoms must have clung to the arcing boughs as the tree shook its fists at the bellowing sky.
On Sunday, deep in storm-inspired thought, I strolled along the riverbank as the zillion-piece string orchestra in my head performed a rather sentimental and lachrymose soundtrack to accompany my perambulations. Here I came across a willow demolished by the weather. Its roots were still firmly planted in the ground but the trunk had been torn and twisted, and then thrown across the river pathway as if hit by a thunderous lightning bolt, forming a barrier across the path so that cyclists were forced to dismount and circumnavigate this shattered obstacle by carefully negotiating the muddy bank with their bikes held high over their shoulders.
For some reason, at least seven feet from the water’s edge, like some sort of piscine open-casket funeral, I discovered the dead body of a large fish cradled amid the willow’s roots, its gloomy eye staring miserably at the receding clouds above. I could not begin to guess how the fish had managed to beach itself so far up the bank or come to rest in its arboreal tomb, but add a pilgrim’s hat, a lobster, a model of old Ironsides and a picture of Paul Revere to this odd scene, I thought, and you have an American version of those surrealistically representative tableaux that John Piper and others used to paint for the Shell Oil sponsored 'Guides to Britain.' (But in Boston’s case obviously sponsored by Citgo Petroleum, since their famous neon sign that hovers above Kenmore Square would undoubtedly comprise part of the tableaux)

NB - The example of a Shell Oil Guide to Hampshire I've provided was painted by Keith Shackleton.

News From Nowhere

I often think it would be a great gift to the ears of mankind if the media's political pundits and opinionistas were suddenly denied the gift of speech, and henceforth were revealed as the grunting and screeching and knuckle-dragging hairy baboons they really are. Mind you, they'd still probably just film themselves picking the fleas out of each other's scrotums and pressing their red baboon buttocks against the camera lens and then beam the results into our living rooms every night.
They're nearly as bad as the Prophets of the New Ice Age; not that I am one to disparage the cherished beliefs of environmental scientists, but could many of the world's climate problems have something to do with the fact that we no longer make sacrificial offerings to Apollo? Personally I think they can. It seems that our extensively educated environmental scientist friends have overlooked such highly important ancient ceremonies, such vital rituals whose fundamental indispensibility was plainly obvious to even the most ignorant of primitive savages.
I mean, the Sun God looks down on Earth from his palace in the clouds and what does he see? Do his eyes witness the devout vision of a beautiful virgin draped across a stone altar with the sacred dagger of Helios hovering above her breasts and the golden goblet of Rezzo placed below to catch her dripping blood which will then be drunk by his arch Druid? No he does not, and he's understandably very annoyed about it. Hell, he doesn't even see see a single puny fatted calf with its bony throat slit.
What he actually sees are obese pink heretics rubbing sun block factor 100 into their unholy flesh. No wonder there is famine and floods and 24 hour on-the-spot news coverage everywhere all the time.

Shadows on the Wall

We have acquired new window blinds from, judging by their rustic design, one of those Pottery Barn integrated lifestyle superstores, or possibly the eBay dungeons located deep in the heart of the Forbidden City.
The blinds are horizontal slices of gleaming chestnut attached to each other by slender strands of taut scarlet cable, simultaneously rising, falling, or tilting when manipulated by an intricate pulley system and two twistable rods. Alas, it seems to me after only two attempts that you need to be a Master Puppeteer to operate the damn mechanism, equipped with a supple wrist and skilled in sleight of hand. Otherwise something suddenly snaps and the blinds immediately roll up tightly into themselves like wooden clingfilm as the backlash from the unleashed cable smacks you in the forehead.
Oh for the rip-roaring, devil-may-care simplicity of medieval living. Back in those halcyon days of muck and straw the only home décor the average squire required was a blazing fire, thirty stinking mastiffs, a rickety meat and mead table, a few captured flags pinned to wall and the severed heads of his enemies stuck on poles and displayed on the castle ramparts. I blame women.

Westminster Wrongdoings.

When peace came after World War One everyone knew that a Germany crippled by reparations would be a dangerous Germany, yet crippling Germany with reparations was exactly what the Allied Governments decided to do.
(Alarums. Enter Hitler stage right with German people carrying spears)
You can almost bet your last flag that, given the chance, Governments of every political hue will do the wrong thing. So why do people vote for them? Beats me.
Alas, there will always be lunatics who deck themselves out in ludicrous straw boaters and color coded rosettes and then stand on the side of the road with placards urging you to vote for some rictus grinned oaf promising to be tough on crime and promote education; and so, observing the cheering idiots from his podium, the Machiavellian bastard can justify his evil lust for power.
The problem is, of course, that career politicians make political decisions rather than sensible decisions. Back in the good old ancient days when everybody was both farmer and warrior, the local tribe would send their delegate to a designated Sacred Grove to meet with other tribal delegates. Here, reasonable decisions would be made and then everyone would return to their tribe and till their soil and milk their cows and live in the peaceable kingdom. At least they did until the Vikings arrived: a warlike, pillaging and raping horde of bearded blood-drinkers from whom all politicians are directly descended.
Like the American people at the last US election, when the British people go to the polls they will be faced with zero choices, no decent selections, just Tony Bleugggh and his Cardboard Cut-Outs or Howard the F*** and the Addams Family. God help us all.

Girlfriends Called Puma

Last night I dined alone in one of those faux olde-tyme Boston restaurants whose tavernesque booths are built of poorly polished brass fittings and oak veneer. Here they serve deep fried scrod swimming in an ocean of treacherous ketchup over a seabed formed from drowned french fries. An enlarged, blurry black and white photograph of an olde tyme Boston butcher stared down upon me from the wall. One of those straight-backed Edwardian men with vigorous hedgerow side-burns and an elaborate moustache balanced on his upper lip beneath a circular straw hat. A disapproving figure from another age, he stands erect behind his counter flanked by sides of suspended beef strung up by their feet and he stares directly into the camera, obviously content to chop and slice his life away amongst the hooves, feathers and blood until he himself dropped off the hooks. After dinner I strolled over to the windswept concrete piazza they call Government Center. When my friend the Edwardian butcher was still alive this officious area was known as Scollay Square: a scandelous theater district that teemed with turn-of-the-century urban riff-raff when the moon was full: thieves; prostitutes; organ grinders and the organ grinder's monkeys; tiny hunchbacked children chasing balls along cobbled streets; crossing sweepers; lamplighters; patent medicine salesmen; street singers and all the usual human detritus. Alas, the once thriving square is virtually devoid of people now, and here, alone with your thoughts, in this former mecca of melodrama, you may audition for the role of yourself. "Don't call us. We'll call you" the hovering seagulls seem to say. And so where, I wondered as I trudged back home along the cobblestones of Beacon Hill, can I experience one of those authentic grasp-a-flaming-candelabra-and-stagger-backwards, wide-eyed and consumed with awe sorts of romantic moments that I have seen replayed so often in the theaters and playhouses of the world? Where is the whiplash-figured Ice Maiden with raven tresses walking her snow leopards on a golden, pearl-studded leash? Where the rosy-cheeked milkmaid with her ample bosom? Where is my stylishly printed invitation from Kublai Khan to attend a twenty-eight-course banquet thrown in honor of Marco Polo? These are all pressing questions, it seems to me, that desperately need answering. The British composer Philip Heseltine, alias Peter Warlock, had a girlfriend called Puma hanging off his arm. With a name like that she obviously did not need an alias of her own. It must be nice having a girlfriend called Puma. She sounds so much more exciting than those Christines, Matildas and Hermiones that stagger around the city in their flip flops. But then Heseltine alias Warlock stuck his head in the oven at the age of thirty-five. He is famous for putting his cat outside before gassing himself. Perhaps possession of a girlfriend called Puma had something to do with that. In which case I'll take the Matildas and the Hermiones and thank you very much. Anthony Powell wrote that Heseltine-alias-Warlock was "simply tired of the business of living" - which seems an unlikely diagnosis to me for someone with a girlfriend called Puma. However, Powell also decided that Heseltine alias Warlock always appeared to carry within himself an air of "things about to go horribly wrong." So maybe having a girlfriend called Puma might have something to do with that. But Heseltine-alias-Warlock was a great friend of fellow British composer Constant Lambert who drank himself to death. And both of them were associates of E.J. Moeran - yet another British composer - who drowned after deciding it would be a good idea to go for a walk along a seaside pier during a gale. Neither Lambert or Moeran, as far as I know, had a girlfriend called Puma. So what have I learnt about girlfriends after taking the lives of the great composers into consideration? Well, as long as I don't write any string quartets in the next year or two I should be able to invite a girl called Puma out for a nice candlelit bowl of milk without being too concerned that I might suffer an early death before the nachtmuzik performs its final coda.

Welcome to the Working Week

I was going to begin today's blog entry with a quote from the German philosopher Emmanual Kant, but I don't think I will now since I flicked through all his works this morning and discovered that he hasn't quoted me once! Call me over sensitive, but I think philosophy should be a "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" kind of intellectual discipline. Apparently not. So that's the last time I bring Critique of Pure Reason on vacation with me.
Meanwhile, I am re-entering the fray at work by designing an entirely new pack of Tarot Cards for one of my hippy-dippy clients. Here is an interesting list of the cards I have completed so far:

1. The Stupid Fool - This card usually represents the genre of person who will be having their fortune told and will believe every word of it. Reversed: A stupid fool is easily parted with his money

2. The Scorned Woman - Look out!! This card signifies that your life will become a living hell for the next three weeks. It is always reversed.

3. The Seven of Cigarettes - Obviously you smoke too much and should consider quitting. Reversed: Pot is illegal and the Gods frown upon it, as do I. Please remove yourself and that horrible substance my interestingly decorated caravan at one. And please try to avoid knocking the crystal ball over as you leave.

4. Death Decides Not To Take A Holiday - This card actually means the same as the original Death card in the tarot pack; I just like the name a lot more. And the picture on the card is better too. Reversed: Death goes on a walking tour of the Swiss Alps wearing uncomfortable shoes.

5. The Five of Computers - Everything is going to break. You will not be able to connect to the internet. Perhaps you should consider upgrading your equipment. Reversed: Spam.

That's all I have so far. Obviously you can't really tell an accurate fortune with only five cards, but then most people's lives are pretty much the same. Anyway, if you do go and see a fortune teller, here is quick tip: Have your cards read but don't pay. You can justify not paying by pointing out that the clairvoyant did not know that you were not going to pay, and therefore can't be very good.

St. Gingivitus Dance

The Halitosian concept of Dental poetics with reference to Dante and the Tooth Fairy remains both Molarized and Fangesque - especially where meaning is Plaqued and Flossiomatic: a Fretwork paradigm that is implicit - even Gummed - within the so-called Spitosphere. Obviously a "brush regularly sans whitening" metaphor for our time.
Compare: "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth," and it's colloquial equivalent, "Bite Me."
The subtext here, of course, is "Filling" - Gold? Perhaps.

Phew! Only just back from my vacation and already it seems as though it is going to be one of those over-excited kangaroo with St Vitus Dance who gets hit in the face by a boomerang kind of week for me. I hate these kind of weeks, and there are always one or two every year. You know the ones I mean: these mad elephant with a club foot stampeding up the wrong way in the fast lane of the world's busiest highway kind of weeks. Very similar to the enraged wasp who stings himself while taking part in a bee lookalike competition kind of weeks. Or as some people refer to them, the Swiss Family Robinson all wearing Last of Mohican wigs while trying to build a hut on Robinson Crusoe's island with nothing but the clippings of Bernice's bobbed hair kind of weeks.
There are a few people who are kind enough to have links to this nonsense on their own weblogs. Sometimes people click on these links and are transported here - what the Hell must they think?
One moment they are reading something highly interesting and thought provoking, and hope to find something similar and equally interesting at Stephenesque. Wrong!
But what the hell. If all the world's a stage, then today I am wearing the Mask of Comedy.
But I shall also find time to slip into:
1.The Headband of Tragedy.
2.The Boxer Shorts of Pornography.
3. The Socks of Science Fiction
4. The Shoes of the Spaghetti Western.
5. The Shirt of Low Budget Independent Film.
6. The Trousers of Bedroom Farce.
7. And a really nice Grand Guignol jacket with fancy stitching and a blood stain on the collar.

Baggage Carousel

Returning home yesterday evening from a brief vacation, I exit the aeroplane wearing a sombrero with a leather donkey stuffed under one armpit, and a day-glo plastic parrot perched on a giant bottle of tequila under the other ...
... No, not really. I lie. But I definitely felt as though I were. I was actually wearing an extremely tasteful combination of linen trousers and a short sleeve shirt, but even such an elegant outfit as mine certainly feels like a sombrero, leather donkey and day-glo plastic when returning to damp, windy dreary and overcast Boston from sunny and palm tree-lined tropical idylls.
Still, there are people who actually do lurch around the arrival gates of international airports clad in sombreros and stetsons with disfiguring sunburns and armfuls of poorly manufactured souvenirs animals. For some reason, these ugly travellers always seem to be the peole who complain tot he airline staff, repeatedly returning to the departure desk and engaging the custodian in animated conversation about the five minute delay, then huff back to their spot of the airport floor trying to contact their travel agent on an ancient cell phone. How hard it must be to take someone seriously when they are wearing lobster shaped flip flops and their face happens to be redder than their ludicrous footwear?