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June 29, 2006
A small something
This blog has been neglected lately—partly due to mysterious technical problems that just as mysteriously went away—and is likely to be neglected more in the upcoming days. But I wanted to post a small something just to plant a flag that says I’m still here.
After a sluggish start, I’ve finally started getting into the World Cup. I was fairly amazed watching Brazil play Ghana the other day. Ghana manhandled the U.S. team and continued to play well against Brazil, yet still lost 3-0. Brazil could just as easily have scored 10 goals if they’d shared the ball and, you know, focused a little bit. They carved up Ghana’s defense like that Ronco knife carves up tomatoes.
The upcoming holiday weekend presents a quandary: wholesome outdoor activities versus the rare harmonic convergence of the World Cup and the Tour de France. Wiffle ball & hot dogs versus semi-understood European sporting events. What oh what shall I choose?
Meanwhile, I wanted to share this WC anecdote from correspondent Stewart, for no other reason than it amused me:
I wouldn’t miss a match—but as we don’t have cable, we have to watch it on the Mexican channels—which means you don’t have to listen to commentators. Although, during the Portugal/Holland game—containing the most fouls in the history of the WC—the Mexican commentator said, “Welcome to the jungle!” in English. Very funny.
Which reminds me, Axl Rose—now sporting what appears to be a headful of yarn—was arrested this week for biting a security guard. Amazingly, it appears that alcohol was involved.
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June 23, 2006
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
But this was just too good to resist:
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June 21, 2006
Me & the Devil, Part 3
“That’s us,” I said.
“That was Earth. Number One turned millions of bits of himself into single-celled organisms—he can do it any number of times without diminishing himself—and waited to see what would happen. The idea was that he wouldn’t interfere, but there were times when he couldn’t help himself.”
“Such as?”
“Well, he didn’t like the dinosaurs very much. Big, dumb brutes were not what he had in mind. So he… made an adjustment.”
“There’s one mystery solved,” I said. “This conversation is making me thirsty. How about some of that brandy?”
“Good idea,” answered Lucifer, handing over the bottle. “After that, the mammals started to take over, and when you apes showed signs of intelligence, he became very interested. But you weren’t developing as fast as he would have liked.”
“How could he be impatient?”
“I asked that very question myself once. He said he found that by observing limited beings, he had begun to develop a sense of time. And to him everything moved very, very slowly. So in order to move you along, he decided to create an opposition.”
“Evil.”
“No, we had no concept of good and evil… it was you all who came up with that. This was meant to be… call it a counterforce. The difficulties it created for your ancestors would cause them to adapt and advance.
“Number One created a portal between our world and yours, and chose a number of siblings to make up the group. He chose me to be their leader.
“So I came to Earth and for a long time I hated it. Your world was difficult to live in, full of discomforts, and your ancestors, well… sorry, but they were quite stupid and brutal, not to mention foul-smelling. That made my job easier, though. And in time things began to change. When apes began to develop the first crude forms of music, art, poetry, we were stunned. We had never conceived of such a thing. And the way they treated each other… the brutality was still there, yes, but also its mirror, love and affection and devotion. It was like one fed off the other.
“I discovered a certain fondness for the early humans, and I also discovered something else, something very interesting. The more time we spent on Earth, the more we began to see things differently from our creator. We started to have disagreements with him. And as a result of this, we found that we had autonomy. Number One couldn’t control us. He could destroy us if he wanted to, but not control us. It became a question of judgement… how to exercise your freedom without crossing the line. Many of the siblings displayed faulty judgement and were destroyed. And it was these errors in judgement, for the most part, that you came to think of as ‘evil.’
“Finally, those few of us who remained came to an agreement with our creator. None of us would interfere with the experiment anymore; we would let it play out on its own terms. We’ve only violated the agreement a few times.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“World War II was a big one. How do you think Adolf Hitler went from being a failed artist to almost ruling the world? He made a deal with one of us. So Number One gave the other side a few breaks to even things out.”
“Why didn’t he just zap Hitler with a lightning bolt or something?”
“Good question. As I’m sure you’ve heard, he works in mysterious ways. Who did get zapped was the sibling he’d made the deal with. And that’s why I keep out of things these days.”
“So how do you keep yourself occupied?”
“I have a lot of interests. Music is one. I played in a pretty famous band at one time, but after awhile I couldn’t stomach the music business anymore.
“I travel around. I go to concerts. I look for girls. I have a good time. This is a fun planet, you know. The place where we were before, it was no fun at all. Brandy, please.”
I handed him the bottle; he tilted his head back and poured a good portion of the contents down his throat.
“Could we talk about the question of free will for a minute?” I asked.
Lucifer shook his right wrist, revealing a very expensive-looking watch. “You know, I’d love to, but actually I have to meet someone.” He winked at me and reached out to shake my hand. “Good talking to you. Here, take the bottle, and just so you don’t feel cheated—”
He waved his hand and suddenly we were enveloped in a cloud of dark, sulfurous smoke. When the smoke cleared, he was gone. I started walking toward my hotel as the dawn broke, sipping brandy and wondering whether to bother telling this story to my friends.
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June 8, 2006
Me & the Devil, Part 2
The night air was humid but relatively clean and I felt my head begin to clear. The moon was bright and, of course, full, casting a grayish-white glow on the Bringer of Light as he handed me a cigar. We lit up and started walking, our cigar tips pulsing orange in the darkness.
“So there is a God,” I said.
“That’s not a good word,” he answered. “Too mechanical. Too many associations. What we call him would translate into English as something like ‘Number One.’”
“Number One?”
“You know, the First Consciousness. The Prime Mover. That sort of thing.”
“Wait…did you say ‘he’?”
“Well, this language of yours is very limited in some respects. If I say ‘it,’ that sounds like I’m talking about an object or an animal. Keep in mind that this is an infinite being of pure consciousness we’re talking about here. Number One is well beyond any idea of male or female, but to make things simple, let’s just say ‘he.’”
“He’s been around forever?”
“Yeah, he wrote the very first song.” said Lucifer. “Sorry, bad joke. Actually….” He paused thoughtfully. “It’s hard to say. He can’t remember a time when he didn’t exist, but then who can? Our best understanding is that he came into being at the same time as the universe, but there’s no way of knowing for sure.”
“So he didn’t create the universe?”
“No, he did not create the physical universe. But when he became conscious, there was no other life anywhere. He was alone with his thoughts for a very long time—in your terms, maybe millions of years, maybe billions, maybe trillions. He had no concept of time. Time belongs to limited being like us.”
“Us?”
“I too am a limited bring. Number One created me, and should he ever wish it, I can be unmade.”
“When were you created?”
“As I said, Number One was alone…and then, somehow, he discovered that he could split off small parts of himself and turn them into other beings. Physical beings. That was when he made me and my siblings.”
“The angels,” I said.
“Mmm, that’s another bad word. You picture guys with wings flying around in the clouds. We weren’t guys. We didn’t look like human beings, not remotely. We didn’t have wings. And the place where we lived…well, he made a place for us. There’s no good way for me to describe it to you. Think of it as another dimension that was essentially inside of him, so that we were continually in contact with him.”
Lucifer’s cigar had gone out, and he stopped for a moment to relight it.
“But he made a mistake when he created us. Well, he came to think of it as a mistake. He modeled our minds after his own, and so eventually he grew bored with us. He wanted something truly different, something he wouldn’t be able to predict.
“And so he came up with an idea for an experiment. We would find a place, and he would start life there according to a set of parameters, then let it develop on its own.”
He paused to let this sink in. It took me a minute to process the implications of what he’d said, and then I realized….
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June 6, 2006
Me & the Devil, Part 1
In honor of 6/6/6, I decided to finally type up a story I wrote a while back (pre-Katrina, in case you’re wondering). It’s a bit long, so I’m breaking it up into parts, which I’d recommend printing out and leaving in your bathroom for a rainy day. Now, without further ado…
Me & the Devil
(Part 1)
Last summer I ran into the devil down in New Orleans.
Oh, I didn’t know it was him at first. After a night in the French Quarter, my lame-ass friends had crashed out too early for my taste, so I decided to go out for a drink on my own. After a few minutes I found myself in front of a strip club with a big marquee and all sorts of enticing-looking pictures outside—naked bodies creatively piled and daisy-chained. But once I got inside, the place looked completely different. It was a rundown dive with one pale, pot-bellied stripper dancing halfheartedly to faint piano jazz.
I was about to turn on my heel and get out of there when I saw the coolest-looking guy I’d ever laid eyes on sitting alone at the bar with a whiskey glass and a bottle of scotch. He had long black hair and a black goatee, and was dressed all in black leather. Usually that stuff doesn’t impress me—it’s indicative of somebody who’s trying too hard—but this guy had an aura about him like he wasn’t trying at all. He was that cool. So I thought, if this place is good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.
I sat down a few seats away from him and looked around for the bartender. Seeing this, the man in black gave a curt whistle. A moment later the bartender, a skinny old guy who was so drunk he could barely walk, appeared and I ordered a tall glass of whiskey over ice.
“Thanks,” I said, laying my money on the bar and nodding at the man in black. “Thank you too.”
He raised his glass and said, in a voice with a Scottish burr, “Here’s mud in your eye.”
We each took long pulls on our drinks. “So,” I said, “does this place have some special charm that I’m missing?”
He shrugged. “It’s quiet,” he said. “I was in the mood for quiet.”
I nodded. “I’ll shut up then.”
This made him smile. “No, that’s OK,” he said. “I could do with a little company, actually.” He patted the barstool next to him, so I picked up my drink and moved there.
“My name’s Jim,” I said, extending my hand.
“Lucifer,” he responded.
“Mind if I call you Beelzebub?” I joked.
He frowned. “I always hated that one. So inelegant. Satan’s OK, but on the whole I really prefer Lucifer. You can call me Lou if you’d like.”
I looked over at the stripper in the corner. She was oblivious to us, gyrating slowly, off in a world that hopefully was treating her better than this one was.
“I suppose I should tell you that I don’t really believe in you,” I said.
He shrugged again. It seemed to be a characteristic gesture, not a Frenchman’s world-weary shrug, but an I-honestly-could-care-less-what-you-think shrug. “Suit yourself,” he said, and stared into his drink, stirring it absentmindedly with one finger.
I took a big gulp of whiskey. My stomach felt pleasantly warm, but the rest of me was suddenly a little chilled.
“Are you fucking with my head?”
He turned now and looked into my eyes. His were intelligent, penetrating…and cold, bottomless black.
“No, I just don’t feel like playing those coy games anymore. After a hundred years of therapy, I feel like I can admit to people who I really am. Certain people, anyway.”
Now it was my turn to stare into my drink. “You’ve been in therapy?”
“Oh, ever since it was invented, yeah. I had a lot of issues to work out.”
“I thought you enjoyed what you do.”
“Look, I know the kinds of things you’ve heard about me, but really I’m just a guy doing a job. A job I was chosen for a long, long time ago.”
I thought back to what little I knew about theology. “That’s right, you used to be with God, didn’t you?”
“I could tell you some stories.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I looked around the room. The stripper was now dancing facing the wall, and the sight of her flabby ass sent a wave of nausea through me.
“I guess you’re not really interested,” Lucifer said.
I turned back to him. “No, I am, honestly. It’s just….” I paused. “I think this place is getting to me.”
He glanced over at the stripper, who had stopped moving altogether and was slumped against the wall, apparently unconscious.
“Yeah,” he said, abruptly lifting his glass and dumping its remaining contents down his throat. He wiped his mouth and grinned at me…devilishly. “Let’s get out of this shithole.”
He walked around behind the bar, grabbing the best bottle of brandy they had and a handful of cigars. He slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar, tossed some coinage in the general direction of the stripper, and headed for the door. What could I do but follow?
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June 4, 2006
Steven Seagal Plays the Blues
It’s true, you know. He’ll be playing a concert at the Fillmore this week—apparently in a kimono—and were I a man of means, I would make the trip just out of sheer freakshow curiosity. And who knows, maybe I’d be surprised. Seagal makes a case for his blues credentials in today’s interview with Aidin Vaziri:
Q: These are original songs?
A: Well, I had to do a couple of covers because on the album I had the whole Muddy Waters band and I wanted to show respect to them, so I did a couple of songs by Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy.
Q: How did you get those guys to play on your album? Did you use rope?
A: I’m friends with all those guys. I live in Memphis. I’ve been in the blues for some 30-odd years. I know them all.
Q: Nobody knows this. It’s like breaking news.
A: I hate to tell you this, but a lot of people know it. I’ll give an example, OK? If I played with B.B. King a hundred times that many times around the world, do you think anyone might have seen it? And I’ve played with a lot more cats than B.B. King all over the world. Lots and lots of times. Believe me, there’s a lot of people out there that know.
I am fascinated by the question, “If I played with B.B. King a hundred times that many times around the world, do you think anyone might have seen it?” Is he saying that he actually did play with B.B. King a hundred times, or is that some kind of zen riddle, like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Seagal, as we all know, is a self-styled Buddhist sage, which leads to this exchange:
Q: As far as you know, are you the only blues-playing Buddhist?
A: I’m sure that’s not true at all. There’s probably hundreds of thousands of blues-playing Buddhists.
Imagine that, a veritable army of string-bending, kimono-clad Buddhists. I picture them holed up in the jungle with Seagal as Col. Kurtz (as you can see from the picture, he’s well on his way to Kurtz-style girth). When trouble is brewing somewhere in the world, the Buddhist Guitar Army parachutes in, gets the warring sides to meditate together, lays an ass-kicking on any holdouts, then plays the blues all night. Tell me, what problem couldn’t they solve?
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June 3, 2006
Wu-Tang Forever (College Ave.)
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June 2, 2006
Sometimes...
…poetry pops up where you least expect it, like in the men’s room of a cafe in Alameda.
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June 1, 2006
Happy Birthday, Norma Jean
Norma Jean Mortenson, a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe, would have been 80 today. What can I possibly say about Marilyn that would be new? That she was the living embodiment of movie star sex appeal? That 44 years after her death, her image continues to evoke desperate yearning in any man with a pulse? That her short, tragic life should serve as a cautionary tale for every woman who's ever considered making a living off her beauty? Never mind all that; the look on this guy's face says it all:
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