Benny Jay: Mr. Cub

My younger daughter’s sitting at the desk in my bedroom, studying for a psychology test; my wife’s on the bed, writing Christmas cards; I’m in the chair, reading a book….

Or trying to.

My daughter decides it would be better for her if she tells me all about her material, like we’re having a conversation about the five senses – taste, smell, touch, sight and the other one. Can’t think of it right now.

I’m nodding along, pretending I’m paying attention, when actually my mind’s wandering from here to there and I wind up wondering: When was the last time I got high?

I’ve been wondering about this a lot lately — probably cause so many years are passing and I want to keep from losing memory of things that happened in my life.

I can tell you when I started getting high – freshman year of college.  I can tell you when I basically quit, sophomore year of college. But since I didn’t quit cold turkey — for a few years after that I’d have a joint every now and then — I can’t precisely tell you when I had my last joint….

And this isn’t easy — we’re talking about things that happened almost thirty years ago….

I momentarily zap back to earth to hear my daughter say something about the “sense of smell” and then I drift back in time….

Was it with Milo? That would have been spring, 1982. It was a warm night. We were sitting on the front porch of the two-flat on Roscoe street. Me and Milo – and Roger. Milo’s old buddy. We were talking about baseball. The Chicago Tribune Company had recently bought the Cubs, and had hired some hard-ass named Dallas Green to run them. Green had announced that he wasn’t going to pay Ernie Banks to come to spring training.

And Milo was pissed. I mean, really pissed. As he vented, he passed a joint.  There had to be joint. Back then there were always joints.

But was I smoking it?

Milo was ripping into the Tribune and Dallas Green. Said he was never gonna buy their worthless rag of a newspaper or watch Channel 9 or listen to WGN radio either. Said Ernie Banks hit five-hundred-something home runs for the Cubs. Said how many did Dallas Green hit for the Cubs. Mother fucker never even played for the Cubs….

I tried to interject a point or two, but Milo was on a roll.

He said Ernie Banks is Mr. Cub! And if Mr. Cub wants wants to come to spring training and do nothing but shake a few hands, he’s earned that right. Cause he’s Mr. Cub — as in Mr. Mother Fucking Cub! So fuck the Tribune. Fuck Dallas Green — and fuck the Cubs!

And the joint was going around — there had to be a joint going around….

And then Roger said: Well, the Tribune does have a fiduciary responsibility to its stockholders….

When he said that, we just about died laughing cause 1.) his voice came out of nowhere — `til then he’d been sitting there so quietly we’d forgotten he was even on the porch and 2.) fiduciary sounds very funny, especially when you’re high. You say it: fi-doo-she-airy. See what I mean? It’s a big concept, too. Who knew Roger had such a sophisticated vocabulary. Hell, I’m not sure Milo or I could have come up with fiduciary – and we’re the writers and all. Okay, now we know it. In fact, every now and then Milo will slips the word into a blog bit he’s writing — like a tip of the hat to Roger. But back then? We didn’t know about fiduciary….

But was I stoned?

“Are you listening, dad?” asks my daughter.

“Yeah,” I say, snapping out of the past and returning to the present.

“I’m talking about kinesiology.”

“I know….”

“Oh, I have that,” says my wife, looking up from her card writing.

“Everyone has it, mom,” says my daughter.

“I know, but I have it too….”

Pause. I’m thinking – the woman’s been married to me for a mighty long time cause, whoa, that sounds like something I’d say.

My daughter leaves the room to brush her teeth. My wife goes back to writing her Christmas cards.

“You ever hear from Roger?” I ask her.

“Roger?”

“Yeah, you know – Milo’s friend….:”

“Why would I hear from him?”

“Didn’t you know his wife?”

“No….”

“Good guy, Roger. He was a schoolteacher. He used to teach at a school for pregnant girls — remember?”

“What makes you think of him?”

“I don’t know. Just thinking, I guess….”

All The Bells & Whistles

The 00s: A Short List of Good Records from the Last Ten years (Pt. 7 [& 8] — Two Favorites)

Radiohead, Kid A

Don’t you love Kid A? It’s amazing, isn’t it? Let’s go listen to Kid A.

Star of the Lid, The Tired Sound of Stars of the Lid

Ambient music was born with three short pieces by French composer Erik Satie (you’ve heard his famous Gymnopedies in various commercials for detergent and ketchup and what have you.) The idea was to create music that furnished a room. Background music. He called it Furniture Music.

The concept (barely realized by Satie in his lifetime) was taken up by composer and mushroom expert (really?) John Cage, who developed it to create background music with minimal means. Brian Eno came along and made Furniture Music that, though ambient,broadened the space of the room itself in an aural landscape.

Decades later, we have Stars of the Lid, who make symphonic ambient music that breaks free from other Furniture Music by the force of its content. Nobody has ever been stunned into silence by a sofa. No ottoman ever reduced anyone to tears. No chaise longue ever sounded like God.

Two comparisons: Composer Arvo Part’s musical theory and practice, called tintinnabulation, is based on the sound of bells — an attack of sound, usually in an otherwise still setting, followed by a long decay and and the absorption of the sound into silence again. Musical form is not based around themes or rhythm. The sound of one chord, played once — attack and decay — was form enough. Silence and space became integral to the music. The other comparison can be made to the undulation of the sea — a push or a reach from someplace large, followed by diminution and retreat, only to have the music throb outward again.

For Stars of the Lid, music doesn’t define a space. It defines what’s outside a space — or what’s inside it but unseen. It’s profoundly introverted, as if the space were a person’s own internal landscape. Visual comparisons can be made to the candlelit surrealism of David Lynch, or the symbolically vast use of time by Andrei Tarkovsky. And like all of these comparisons, the music can either soothe someone to sleep or swallow them whole and bring them into a waking dream.

The tools used are mostly guitars and effect pedals, along with a cello here, a trumpet there, and found sound throughout. Of course, it doesn’t sound like this. What looks minimal on paper sounds like an entire city of vapor, an ocean of bright sorrow. It’s soaring and static at the same time. For the past ten years, The Tired Sound of Star of the Lid has been ringing, swelling, and receding. It does so even when the stereo is turned off, after silence has been turned into pure emotion. To listen to it is to listen to the entire world.

by Timothy Imse

Letter From Milo: The Aristocrat House, 1st Three Pages

Dear friends and readers:

As promised (or threatened) here are the first few pages of a work in progress. I plan to serialize the first chapter on this blog site, unless the police, Catholic church, or mobs of torch-carrying peasants intervene. The serialization will run for 4-5 days, every Wednesday and Monday. Those of you with tender sensibilities, sensitive stomachs, high ethical standards or high literary standards may wish to avoid this site on those particular days. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

The Aristocrat House
by
Milo Samardzija

“God gave us sex to make up for all the other awful things he did to us.”

Chapter 1

It didn’t take long to figure out that Uncle Rudy was a worthless human being. I discovered, early on, that he was lazy, a liar, a petty thief, a drug abuser and a habitual drunkard. He was a bully when he was drunk and mean-spirited when sober. He was also coarse and profane, a spiteful, unrepentant racist and misogynist, and completely unreliable. When it came to money, women or responsibility of any sort, he simply could not be trusted.

That said, Uncle Rudy did have a few things going for him. He was a good dancer. And he dressed well when he could scrape up the money to pay for the cheap, flashy suits he favored. And he spoke with a trace of a Slavic accent, which, as he explained to me, “Most cunts can’t resist.”

Uncle Rudy was not a bad looking man, in a raw-boned, beaky Eastern European way. He was tall, slender but strong, with a head of dark hair that he slicked back to cover a growing bald spot, and he had all of his front teeth. He fell just short of being handsome, however, by a receding chin, shifty, calculating eyes, and excessive hairiness.

As I mentioned, Uncle Rudy was pretty much of a disgrace as a human being. He lacked character, conscience, scruples and dignity, but he was all the family I had. I was 15 years old and without him I would have been alone in the world.

We were staying at the Aristocrat House, a seedy, roach-infested transient hotel near the factory district. It was a horrible place, reeking of urine, disinfectant, unwashed bodies and other nauseating odors. The rooms were small, dimly lit and sparsely furnished. The paint on the walls was peeling, the plaster was cracked and crumbling. Yellowed, fading signs on every door read “No cooking or open fires allowed.” The communal bathrooms, located at each end of the long, narrow and trash-strewn hallways were rank, stomach-churning pigsties. In fact, calling them pigsties would have been a compliment. They were so nasty that the Spanish Inquisition could have used them to wring confessions from heretics.

Despite its proximity to the local mills and foundries, I doubt if even one honest working man rented a room at the Aristocrat House. I couldn’t imagine anyone with money or a steady job choosing to live there. It seemed to me that most of the residents were damaged souls, low-lifes and losers, the unemployable and the mentally ill, people who had to look up to see rock bottom. For them, it was the Aristocrat House, the institution or the street.

As disgusting as the Aristocrat House was, it was still a step up from our previous accommodations. For the past week and a half, Uncle Rudy and I had been living in his car, a battered and rusting five-year-old Ford Fairlane that he had received as part of his last divorce settlement.

“I’ve seen worse,” Uncle Rudy said, as we walked into our room and dropped our luggage; a duffel bag, two beat-up suitcases, a couple of shopping bags, and a canvas backpack that held my sketch pads, charcoal sticks and colored pencils. Looking around, he added, “Yeah, I’ve seen a lot fucking worse.”

“Well, I haven’t,” I replied.

“That’s because you’re too fucking young and stupid to know better,” he said, as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pint of whiskey. He took a long drink and gestured at me with the bottle before screwing the cap back on. “When you get a little older you’ll find out that there’s always a place that’s worse. Anyway, this is just temporary. We’ll get the fuck out of here as soon as I get my hands on a bitch with some money.”

“Speaking of money,” I said, “how are we paying for this place?”

A few hours earlier we had no money at all. The only reason we hadn’t starved to death was that there was still a bartender in town who was foolish enough to extend Uncle Rudy credit. We lived on bar snacks for a close to a week.

Uncle Rudy ignored my question. He was standing in front of the small mirror above the dresser, absorbed in combing his hair, taking particular care to cover the bald spot on top of his head. When he was satisfied with his appearance, he stepped back, cocked a finger at his image in the mirror and said, “You are one good looking motherfucker. And don’t you ever forget it.”

I looked out of the small grimy window for a while. It wasn’t much of a view, just enormous piles of slag, railroad tracks and billowing smokestacks. And in the distance beyond the factories, shimmering like a murky mirage in a wasteland, was Lake Michigan. I thought about going out later and drawing some sketches of the dismal scene, but I was tired and decided to wait until the next morning.

“You didn’t steal it the money, did you?” I asked. I knew he stole it, of course. That’s how he lived. He preferred to steal from women. They were his favorite target. But he would steal anything, at any time, from anybody. Once, in the back seat of his car, I found an empty charity canister, one of those things you find on store counters asking for donations to fight diseases and other righteous causes. I don’t remember what cause that particular canister was collecting for, but I do remember that there was a photograph of Jerry Lewis on it.

To be continued…

Big Mike: Big Sticks And Myths

Been re-reading Dick Ciccone’s biography, “Royko: A Life in Print,” the last few days. The old Pulitzer prize-winning columnist is something of an icon for Benny Jay and me. Whenever we want to give each other’s work the highest compliment, we lie and say, “It was just like Royko.”

Neither of us will ever write anything “just like Royko,” not because — as Benny would self-deprecatingly claim — we’re mere gnats to his magnificent journalistic eagle but, I’d like to think, we’re good and accomplished enough to do what we do just like who we are. Of course, in a purely practical sense, we are mere gnats to Royko’s eagle; the closest either of us will come to possessing a Pulitzer is if we steal one from a winner’s mantel.

It’s an appropriate time to read about a human being who towers above all others. Another colossus has been in the news of late, for all the wrong reasons. Poor old Tiger Woods got the bejesus bludgeoned out of him by his bride, as even the pre-technological inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest must know by now. (By the way, the incident has now achieved the imprimatur of Urban Dictionary.)

TV news bullshitters and other balloon heads are shocked, shocked, that such a superlative golfer and pitchman would do something so mad as plow another woman. You’d think that duffers-cum-shills for sneakers and sports drinks were physiologically incapable of cheating on their wives until this moment.

Why, then, am I not surprised that Tiger got his tail caught in the wrong place?

Because people — okay, men — who are driven to succeed as much as Tiger Woods is and Mike Royko was often are walking hardons. Don’t be shocked.

Woods is the first billion-dollar athlete. Mike Royko was perhaps the greatest newspaperman of his era. Nobody reaches those levels just by planting their spikes on the green or sticking a piece of paper into a typewriter. Men who possess the single-mindedness and compulsive desire to get to the mountain-top have to be, to one extent or another, assholes.

Dick Ciccone is generally sympathetic to Royko and stands on his head numerous times to excuse his assholiness. He artfully dances around Royko’s many purported infidelities. The truth remains, though, that nothing on this Earth was as important to Royko as perfecting his column. Even his wives and kids ran far behind his fingerwork on the keyboard on his list of priorities.

That kind of hunger, that kind of greed to be great extends to all areas of a man’s life. As much as he wants to vanquish all competitors, as much as he wants to stand on other people’s heads and shoulders in order to rise above the rest of us, that’s how much he wants wield his trouser sword.

And speaking of the mountain-top, even so saintly a figure as Martin Luther King, Jr. was a master cocksman. King was equally as driven as Tiger Woods or Mike Royko to be great. We’re all still naked apes, as Desmond Morris accurately portrayed us, and — Freudians and Darwinians might argue — the top ape is the one who gets the most action.

I can’t wait until we disabuse ourselves of the notion that only “good family men” do great things. Never mind Joseph Campbell; myth kills. Now’s the time to kill myths.  George Washington never chopped down that cherry tree. The story of Abe Lincoln walking miles to return a couple of pennies to a customer he’d inadvertently overcharged was a child’s fairy tale. Bill Clinton likely did pull his drawers down in front of Paula Jones. And J. Edgar Hoover didn’t plant microphones under hotel room beds just to hear Martin Luther King snore.

Yeah, it’s talent, drive and determination that separate Benny Jay and me from the Pulitzer prize, from greatness. It’s also the fact that we’re not walking hardons. That’s the myth I’m telling myself now.

Benny Jay: Dog Crap

They have a fascinating obituary in The New York Times about a philosopher named Stephen Toulmin, who was world famous for developing ways to “relate philosophical issues to practical experiences.”

“He argued that if we want to understand questions of ethics, science and logic, we have to inquire into the everyday situations in which they arise,” according to the obit by William Grimes.

As I’m reading about his life, the dog starts to whine. What else — she needs a walk.

So we’re out the door and down the street and I got my head in the clouds not really minding where I’m going. We wind up a couple of blocks over. The dog starts to pee.

“Hey!”

I look up to see a weasley looking guy in a bathrobe standing on his front porch.

“Yeah?” I say.

“Your dog….”

I look at the dog. She’s in the middle of her business.

“What about her?” I ask.

“She’s peeing on my lawn….”

I don’t know what to say. Yes, she is in fact, peeing on his lawn. But, ugh — so what….

“She’s almost done,” I say.

“I don’t care if she’s almost done,” he says. “Move her….”

The guy’s starting to irritate me.

“Move her where?”

“I don’t care where — just not on my lawn. I pay taxes….”

Now he’s really irritating me. “Taxes? I pay taxes too….”

“Move her….”

“What about squirrels — can they pee on your lawn cause you pay taxes?”

“Don’t be an asshole….”

“I’m an asshole? You live in a city and you don’t want dogs to pee on your lawn and I’m the asshole?”

“I’ll call the police….”

The dog’s done so I head off. Pisses me off.  Keep thinking about the guy as I walk along. Always meeting jerks on the walk — this neighborhood’s crawling with them. Usually, I know where they live and I stay away. I make a note not to pass this guy’s house. Don’t pee on the lawn cause he pays taxes? Should have said “blow me.” That’s what Big Mike would have said.  Damn, I never think of the good things to say until it’s too late to say them….

My day goes on. Do this do that. Hours pass. It’s nearly midnight. I’m taking the dog on her last walk of the day. My mind’s on a million different things. The leash tightens. I look over. The dog’s going into her squat. You know, she’s gotta take a crap.

Only — get this.  She’s crapping on the lawn of Mr.-I-Pay-My-Taxes. That’s right. I swear to God I had nothing to do with it.  I know, Freud would say I was subconsciously steering the dog to this lawn. But, I swear, I don’t control this dog’s bowels….

The dog’s taking her freaking time. She’s walking in a circle. Like she does. By the way, what’s that all about?

I’m thinking: What if the guy see us? What if he comes out of his house? Will he call the cops? Maybe I should tug the dog to another lawn? But, then, why should some other guy pay for his neighbor’s jerkishness? Plus, you gotta take the dog’s feelings into consideration. How would you feel if someone dragged you by a leash just when you were all set to take a crap?

So I let her do her thing on the guy’s lawn. I get out my plastic bag. All ready to scoop it up. She’s done. I step closer….

And then I think: Fuck this guy. What a perfect revenge to have the dog leave a big pile in his freaking yard. With any luck he’ll step in it….

I back away….

Then I think: Oh, but it’s so passive aggressive. And it’s against the ethos of good dog walkers who always pick up. Does his bad behavior justify my lawlessness?

I’m looking at that steaming pile of crap and I think: What would Stephen Toulmin do? That’s the problem with philosophers — they’re never around when you need them….

I pick up the crap. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Hey, you don’t need to be a world-famous philosopher to figure that one out.

I walk to the alley, throw the bag in a garbage bin and head for home.

But the dog still has one last thing to do. She has to pee. And, get this — she’s peeing on his lawn! Out of all the others on the block.  Is this dog smart or what?

“Good dog,” I tell her. “Good dog….”

She looks up at me. I swear to God, she’s smiling….

Letter From Milo: Meet Uncle Rudy

Dear Readers:

Once again, I’m letting down my readers and partners here at The Third City. I’ve got nothing to say. I’m dry as a bone, due to a heavy schedule of cardio therapy, part-time work, rewriting a previous work, heavy drinking. sexual excesses and, of course, lack of talent and inspiration.

Please be patient, and I’ll have something very interesting ready for next week.

Big Mike, the Barn Boss of this scabby, flatulent and talentless outfit, is pissed at me. He thinks that I’m just lazy, or, even worse to his way of thinking, jockeying for a raise. As far as I’m concerned he can go fuck himself. The same goes for his buddy, that low-life bastard Benny Jay.

Those two sons of bitches are threatening to withhold my Christmas bonus unless I start carrying my weight around here. Well, they can take their $5 Burger King gift certificate and stick it up their collective asses. And that’s all I’m going to say on that subject.

By the way, I’m done with the Chicago Bulls. They can go fuck themselves, too. How does any self respecting baskerball team lose to the worst team in NBA history on their home court? It boggles the mind. I’m going back to following my other favorite team, the Columbus Blue Jackets of the NHL. As soon as I find out at least one of the players names, I will start rooting for them in earnest.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Beginning this Wednesday, the 16th, I will start serializing the first chapter my novel in progress. It’s tentatively titled “The Aristocrat House” and there’s sure to be something in it to offend everybody. It is a vile, sexist, blasphemous, and often disgusting story of a sleazy, low-life petty thief and self-described gigolo, named Uncle Rudy, who is trying to raise a 15-year-old nephew in the most unusual circumstances. The serialization should last just a couple of weeks at about 2-3 pages at a time. So, if you have a delicate stomach, religious scruples, high ethical standards or high literary standards. I suggest you avoid The Third City for a while, at least while I’m posting chapter 1 of “The Aristocrat House.”

Big Mike: My Circle On The Square

Sometimes I think I wasn’t born on this Earth, that I was dropped on it by a passing UFO from the planet Neurotica.

Maybe most people feel that way but I’m sure there are exceptions. The big shots at Goldman Sachs know in their hearts they belong here, as do Sarah Palin, Miley Cyrus, Regis Philbin, Dr. Phil, and anybody else who has achieved some level of inexplicable success and fame. This is a world, after all, wherein a billion or more people know who Tiger Woods has been biffing, what is meant by the term Octomom, and why a couple of chuckleheads named Jon and Kate have split up. Suffice it to say our standards are awfully modest.

The majority of people in the mightiest, richest, most well-fed nation in the world don’t buy Darwin’s evolution by natural selection idea. True. The Gallup organization last year asked Americans’ opinions on the 150-year-old theory and only 39 percent said they believe it. A quarter of the respondents said they didn’t and the rest, 37 percent, couldn’t say one way or the other.

I believe all available evidence supports Darwin. Had I really wanted to fit into this world (or at least this nation) I’d have typed the opposite. I surround myself with like-minded souls, of course. We titter over the benightedness of the general populace. But the truth is, those other risible fools own the world. My circle is warm and supportive — but it’s goddamned tiny. I fit in with them, sure, but that doesn’t mean I feel at home here, 93 million miles mean distance from the Sun. Sometimes I wish I possessed the happy, sleepy comfort in my surroundings that I know Sarah Palin or Dr. Phil enjoy.

But I don’t. And that’s how I ended up at The Book Case.

As I indicated a few posts back, I’m working part-time at this old-old-old-fashioned independent storefront book seller, situated picturesquely on the Bloomington, Indiana, town square.

Walk into a Barnes & Noble and you’ll have to sidestep a towering pile of the latest Dan Brown offering. You know Dan Brown — writes about Vatican intrigue, secret codes and centuries-long conspiracies with a little mushy romance thrown in here and there. He sells as many books as Sarah Palin. Enter The Book Case, though, and you’ll be confronted with a wall of Penguin Classics. Constance, the proprietor, is especially proud of her Penguin collection. She hints it may be the largest single such repository in the country. Here are a couple of Penguin Classics titles: “The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. DuBois and “Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments” by Sappho. I heard a rumor that somebody bought a copy of the DuBois book sometime last winter.

“If I was trying to be rich, I wouldn’t be in this business,” Constance says.

Merely by uttering that statement out loud, Constance has indicted herself as a certifiable nut. I think she’ll be part of my new circle here.

In addition to me, Constance has a couple of other employees. There’s Lillith, a tiny Tennessean with an endearing twang. She sacrificed a writing career and several other potential vocations in order to support her husband’s academic aspirations. She felt sure that once he achieved tenure, she could concentrate on her career. Sadly, when her husband reached the point at which he could hire a secretary, he elected to run off with said assistant. Now Lillith must spend her days ordering books to keep her head above water and hoping one day to put her university degree to more financially rewarding use.

I’d tried to reach Lillith by email a few days ago to ask her some question or another about an order. We finally spoke yesterday at the shop. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you,” she said. “I was busy pulling the drapes shut and laying on my couch in a funk.” She’s part of my new circle.

Camille also works at The Book Case. She’s built solidly and has a small hoop in her left nostril. She wears tie-dyed T-shirts and sometimes breaks out in an impromptu frug when trying to remember where she put that new book by Michael Chabon. After she gave birth to two sons, Camille’s husband decided to leave the house one morning and never return. “Haven’t seen him since,” she says with a shrug. “That’s okay by me.”

In the evening, Camille skates in the Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls league. One late afternoon near closing time, Camille sighed and said, “I can’t wait to skate tonight. I feel frustrated and I need to take it out on somebody.” She, too, is in my new circle.

Nobody really makes any money at The Book Case. If we were all that interested in wealth, we wouldn’t have time to read that new Penguin Classics translation of Sappho. We’d be reading “The Souls of Black Folk,” too, but somebody bought the only copy sometime last winter.

It’s a goddamned tiny world but it’s warm and comforting.