My hotel, a good movie, a near sighting of Fred Armisen

Checked in a couple to the hotel. Gracious people, he had a hat. She was blond and Jerry Hall to a certain degree (height, cheekbones). He donned a raincoat and a goatee. What was the hubbub next door at Crystal Ballroom, they asked.

Heck if I knew. Portlandia only films in the rain. But wait...

It was a Portlandia episode in the rain. 

So on my break, I walked up the rain-slicked street and nearly fell on my ass to see if I could get a part...

Carrie and Fred weren't there. A co-worker had seen Fred in an orange vest on the street earlier and a guest told an amusing anecdote about being in the same elevator with Demetri Martin.

Joe Swanberg's Drinking Buddies is swell. Unfiltered indie like the style of brew the brewers brew to give that dark beer high and the greasy food that provides its crusty aftermath. Solid acting from the laconic, mildly-depressed bourgeoisie (Ron Livingston) to the Rabbit Angstrom-ish, highly-metabolic narcissist (Olivia Wilde). A bearded fellow by the name of Jake Johnson brings your heart. Anna Kendrick, loved her in Pitch Perfect, is worth rooting for here. Go Anna!

Truly, American cinema has an uncertain relationship with raw emotion, aside from Cassavetes, but this is subtler, Bergmanesque. I'm so grateful that movies such as this are getting made full stop. My niece would like to add: Anna Kendrick is a bad ass! Go Anna!

From the rock journalism cutting-room floor, circa 2005:

Mariner's Revenge is an accordion-driving (sic) tale from the belly of a whale that lasts over nine minutes. There are some supreme, sea-driven moments where revenge is the only way out.  

The Easter Parade

Richard Yates's The Easter Parade is so grim and unrelenting that I defy anyone to recommend it to someone in real life.  Seriously, aside from Margo Tenenbaum — a severely depressed character from a neat-looking (stylistically), but wholly sterile film — who do you recommend it too?

I have a first edition. It looks like this (see left).

The prose is cutting (i.e. razor-sharp, hurtful).

Actually, I think my friend Ralberto, who I went to college with would like it. And probably Gavin Butler (Guthugga Pipeline, Happier Hunting Ground, Coburg, et. al).

Behind every dirty fighter is a clean pair of underwear

An essay of mine was published on page 46 of the dying goose recently.

The despondent dishwasher

Jeff worked too hard washing dishes to come to the museum and see a substandard Frank Stella. The milk crate appeared under his bottom as his body slumped to the floor.

Driving on the rim is good

Thomas McGuane's tenth novel, Driving on the Rim, is in the vein of Twain; surefooted sentence-making concealing what is otherwise a disoriented Oldsmobile 88 rambling through eccentric farm land.

“But wait!” you can almost hear McGuane cry. “I'm not even driving this Olds!” And this would be true insofar as it's one of his characters driving it, Berl Pickett, a country doctor. 

Can you defer artistic responsibility upon your first-person protagonist? I'm saying that you can by saying it here first.

The ride is jarring; Berl has a form of topographical narrative disorder. We like where he is taking us, but never sure of the conditions, or if this is the best route.

The author hasn't used first person since 1978's Panama — not everyone's favorite. In fact, critics gave him hell for Panama, a little unfairly, I reckon because I loved the sad, funny story about the price of fame starring a burnt-out case with a brain fried so dearly on cocaine that he can't remember his dog's name. Panama was loosely autobiographical, while the new one isn't. In fact, B. Pickett, is about as far from T. McGuane as H. Humbert is from V. Nabokov. 

For much of the novel, Berl's practice is the door and window into this ailing community. But do we need the hangnails? Lot of people coming and going and Berl seems to record them all. I don't recall The Wire having this many characters. Over the long haul, the complaints seem to bury the plot.

Though McGuane never divulges Berl's age at present, we know he's socially immature (old men are often this way), and we can assume he's old enough to know the proper advanced age to write a memoir regardless of circumstances (I considered it at 28 but I was pretentious). Berl's not so old that he requires a testosterone deodorant as a precursor to amorous pursuits because that would be horribly tasteless, yet in McGuane's hands probably really funny.

Berl's story is a doozy, but the memoir could use some oil. What never is in doubt is McGuane's masterful control of language and his laconic aphorisms.

On an uncivilized associate he meets for dinner: “He must have been proud of his Panama hat because he wore it all through the meal.” By the way, I wore mine to a bbq recently and then forgot to take it off indoors while we were boogying and the next morning found it an irrevocable, misshapen heap, which made me think that I should have better manners when it comes to wearing silly hats indoors if I want to keep them together.

At 306 pages, Driving on the Rim is beefy for a comic novel, but impressively there is only one misfire: a bit of whimsy involving an uncertain breakdance to a favorite band in front of a lover's house singing “Too Much Pork for Just One Fork.”

There's not a whole lot of driving, but there is drive. Perhaps the title refers to McGuane's navigational control? Maybe his narrative could use some testosterone stick? 

Look now Bird thinks it's funny.

Henry Explains Everything

Been a crazy kooky time in the pastoral west burbs of Portland. Whilst eliminating useless files last night found a blog from months ago, I forgot to post:

Closed the book on The Ambassadors last night at the Holiday Inn Express (E Flagstaff) this despite a printer that sounded like a prairie dog was trapped in it and a customer that looked like a supporting character on an 80s TV show such as Benson. (He probably wondered the same thing about myself).

Feel that I improved my comprehension by a 1,000 per cent, even though I followed about 7 per cent of it. Still it's very compelling. A perspective like this I have not seen! What a weirdo! I could barely even follow a lot of the conversation. The words that came out of a character's mouth in reply to a fairly straightforward question simply wasn't the kind of thing you would say in reply if you wanted the questioner to make heads of tails of what you were saying.

Interesting.

Apparently two chapters were for years out of sequence confirming my suspicions that no one knows what the heck is going on here. Then again there is non-linear unfolding through time and space that serves the novel's purpose. Blah-blah. Still I am curious if people talked like this and acted like this in 1903. If so I wouldn't have lasted a minute.    

Excuse me son of gunga din or whatever you are choosing to call yourself this week

For last night's entertainment we watched Brian DePalma's Body Double as a family unit. The neighbor boy came over (I can't remember why) and had to avert his eyes when the protagonist watched the lady he was following change her underpants inside the shopping mall. Bloody good film! Then it got dark and the airshow put on a fireworks display.

"The parents were glad to have him home. But when he started getting blamed for eating all the nuts out of the Chex-mix he knew it was time for him to go."

I have plumped up or blimped out since arriving here. The scale says I am fifteen pounds overweight from what I was in Flagstaff. It is a battle of wills. Mom senses my anxiety and is baking harder and more cleverly than ever these pastries from my youth that she knows I cannot deny. I throw on a few more pounds faster than you can say cinnamon swirl, baby.

What else?

Mom tells me to keep my wardrobe closet closed to keep the moths out. I tell her okay and then I remember that there are mothballs in there to keep the moths out and decide that she just wants to keep the closet closed because she likes it closed. Stuff like that.

Listening to music and dancing a lot, dancing mainly to ZZ Top. There we go. Tres Hombres nachos from the Gales Creek Tavern.



I hurt my knee! Not sure how! Will done a neoprene knee sleeve at the Sebadoh show tonight and hike it up at the appropriate time. Otherwise, playing tunes and taking notes such as "I sometimes can't believe a band like The Clean exists."

Try and guess who said what (answers at the bottom):

1) Noses do get longer
2) I'm in love and you're in trouble!

4.44am. I like short novels. Reading a long book about a man who wrote short ones, Nathanael West. It's called a biography and it was scrupulously attended to by Jay Martin.

Tonight watched Our Nixon, a doco about Nixon's unheard tapes. I appreciated listening to these yahoos' mundanity. They were quite the cards apparently. Prompted an embarrassing recollection of the order of presidents. I guessed Eisenhower before Truman. Wrong. Dad guessed Eisenhower after Nixon. His excuse was he had had a few scotches, while I had only had a coke with my yakisoba noodles. Mom rolled her eyes. Nobody knows nothing. "Carter then Kennedy?" dad queried, pleasantly.

I showed my brother this photo from the Gaston One Horse Tavern and he lost it. "What?" He couldn't believe that there was a sign that said No chow in urinal please.

1) Orson Welles
2) Paul Westerberg

Discussion of Purdy's Malcolm (via Facebook msging)

S

I am reading Purdy's exquisite Malcolm!

P
Which ones dat? 

If only more men where like purdy.

were

S
I know! It's a short novel about a sartorially-splendid young bastard who sits on a bench and meets an astrologer who is worried about the benched young orphan and sends him to his sartorially splendid friend who at the moment is assessing him bemusedly. It is great!

Hello, it's me

Tim, of Lone Sausage fame (infamy?), fellow Spartan alum (eeeep) took umbrage at my dismissal of Thom Yorke's vocal stylings yesterday. We were listening to a PJ Harvey album in his expansive garden and I said ewww the guest singer whines like a girl. Tim called me sexist. My rejoinder was to tell him that I like it when girls do it (I was unable to pick an example off-hand). Guys who whine, it is their attempt at exquisite operatic pain, I argued and that is rarely achieved interestingly. Yorke, to my ears, comes off as a pretentious toad. I think it is Kirsty Steggers who said that a singing voice shouldn't be completely alien to your talking voice. Obviously there are exceptions. Pavoratti and things like that, but we're talking about rock. What Tim said next really taked the cake. PJ Harvey sings like a man! A nice juxtaposition, we agreed. Still there was rancor. We cut our losses and bbq'ed sausages. The light of the evening recalled Portland summers of year's past: H and I sunbathing in his mother's backyard drinking Ernest & Julio Gallo spo-dee-ooo-dee, stealing pints from the $1 beer night at the cheesesteak place and finally being launched by Mitch like a discus across the parking lot where I slid across my face several feet. This summer feeling, aside from the injuries, felt a lot like this one already. We then listened to Blur inexplicably.

We were certainly spoiled by all the great beer we drank. On top of that I had a delicious bowl of salmon chowder earlier in the day. What to say of the time in Seaside, Oregon - five days of salt-kissed debauchery and a 3-day course of U-haulery across four states, except to say that they are over and they were classic events of wicked randomness. Perhaps more to come on that for posterior's sake...er...posterity.

Old fruit news

Mango usurped pear as my favorite fruit in 2011.

Ruminations flying the Delta to Baltimore recently

Flying feels like my brain has been kicked down the street and now we're going to collect it at high speeds.

It's funny I run into the same struggle getting this gin and tonic the right consistency as Henry Miller does attempting to illustrate a horse in his engaging memoir Black Spring.

Spleens-a-go-go by Montgomery Barry

Barry and Timtam earlier this year in the snow

Barry's in the band Caravanette with Stew and Jen, drumming like Mo Tucker. He's gonna miss me when I go, but not as much as I'll miss him! He sends me hilarious emails (perhaps he will continue to do so after I vamoose). His latest one is entitled spleens-a-go-go. Down the track we'll probably learn that we live right down the road from one another in a different town while in the front row of a distinctively different Roky Erickson gig. Damn...

Hey, if you ever become a private detective, you HAVE to change your name to Shanus Verlaine. Shanus crossbreeds your own distinctive moniker with shamus, which people are always using as slang for private eye in Raymond Chandler novels; Verlaine because of the lanky, angular detective he played in "Prove It (It's a Fact)." Plus he wrote all that great French poetry a hundred years before that.

But seriously, the purpose of this (sh)email is to convey my new phone number:

***-***-****

Yrs in perpetuity,

Hammy in the Holy  

Caravanette play Mia's Lounge on June 15.

Excerpt from "an afternoon on Chesapeake Bay"

Hey, when we gonna drink these beers?

I don't know but I am getting awful thirsty.

2.04pm

Allison's got a beer.

I guess we can't have a beer until we get a fish.

What?

Who said that!

Allison already broke that rule.

She drinks gluten-free doesn't count unless we drink hers.

2.10pm

Is it okay to eat guacamole while we wait for the fish to bite?

No you should wait.

Your wife is eating guacamole.

I see.

Liqueur is spelled with two u's, ouzo with two o's

I am an awful sport.

And it truly mangled my soul to see that Kasey's team lost in 4 overtimes to North Carolina last night in the championship. The ouzo at the greek tavern didn't help me commiserate either.  I was following the match on the Twitter and donning my Maryland visor with avuncular pride. It's really hard for me to be a supporter of a team because the emotional investment makes me die a little each time, win or lose. For eleven years in Australia I was completely ambivalent to a fan's life of sport. Ironically I read both A Fan's Life and A Sport and a Pastime while there and even though the sport in the latter is sex, well I forgot what my point was. H emailed me to say he was reading it the other night. I don't love the book. He had been drinking whisky.

I don't know if it was the greek liqueur, my horrendous sleep schedule from the holiday inn, street-facing placement of my new bedroom (Johnny Boy is moving in and I am giving him my bedroom because it's bigger and he wants to set up his drum kit) or the lacrosse match or or the pacers game, or or or all of the above, but I awoke in the middle of the night paralyzed by the world and darned if I could exit the bed to relieve myself of the water and the terror of my own existence!

Anyways, I am so glad that I flew back east to see her play.

I sent a text

Im too destroyed for mias 2nite. Gonna chill instead and I would suggest u all do the same.

Maryland, Home of the Battle of 1812

Visited family in Maryland for the first time in twenty years, which means my next visit will be when I'm sixty. Stayed long enough for my phone to die and my camera and my iPOD to die also. A little power is all that is needed to revive them however. My phone battery is in my carry-on, but I am not too fussed about that. It died in the middle of a text to tim-tam. I do wonder if it sent. Took some snaps of Baltimore. Had a great time. Saw my niece play lacrosse. Kasey tends goal. This is really quite significant. Those ladies are undefeated and number one, watching them is a blur of speed and power. They have very good traction and only slip when they are tripped. 

Here's a photo of me with their star Katie, who looks a lot like my high school girlfriend, a celebrated Olympian with unreal thighs. 

They're currently in the Final Four at Villanova atop Syracuse at half 7-4. We ate crab claws dipped in spicy green chile sauce before the game. We drank beer in the rain before, during and after the game. Also vodka tonics (That was when the sun was out). It was rather muggy. There was a huge tailgate party afterwards, then we went and saw some of my sister's boyfriend's brother's world-class taxidermy.

Me and my other niece, I have two, they are twins, spent my last day at the Baltimore Museum of Art. We witnessed a great many things. I fell in love with the Matisse. 

We stared monumentally hard at Rodin's monumental thinker. 

The classical art and the children were like seraphs with beautiful perfect skin, yet their hands were strangely misshapen. Matisse's women hilariously reminded me of my brassy grandma. Afterwards, I had a telltale ale to make up for missing E.A.'s grave.

Don't understand why the Mona Lisa is such an attraction when Picasso's such as this exist 

Not to be outdone dad caught a rockfish.

On eloquence

Russel Westbrook, on his season-ending knee injury (never to be mistaken for Gore Vidal):

I want to play in every game as long I'm able to walk, but this time I wasn't able to walk around like I'm supposed to

Found this inscrutable note to H scribbled on the back of an old worksheet

Thomas Bernhard's The Loser is like if Oregonian sportswriter Dwight Jaynes tried to shoot a music video from the free throw line.

Good evening

Foxygen are a badly named bad band with a really good single called No Destruction. The rest of the album is a stinker. I wanted to text timtam and tell her that the album gave me an aural stomachache because for 16 hours my tummy hurt. It was my ears this time that were hurting. I had downloaded it and went on a bike ride that was cut short from the peppering of wind and rain that I got peppered with. I expected the album to be better , it is awful and then I went and sold it back from where I bought it for half of what I paid and bought another record, Nite Jewel's debut album, which compared to Foxygen is literally the greatest album of all-time and I mean that Nite Jewel's Good Evening is that amazing, in so many ways. 

Those are her shoes on the right and her getting sandwiched by Alex and me above. She didn't love the idea of getting her picture taken with us back in Austin in 2012, but who would? It was nice. We were cool.

I gambled and I lost today on music which almost never or rarely happens, but it sure feels like a win in how Nite Jewel redeemed my faith in music again. The reason it took me so long to get this album is because her last album was good, but I kind of need things to be remarkable these days. Did I mention that on my bike ride I have never seen so many prairie dogs running their little asses off to get to their hole?