More ass than a toilet seat sees in a month!

RIP Harvey Korman

Hedley Lamarr: Meeting adjourned. Oh, I am sorry, sir; I didn't mean to overstep my bounds. *You* say that.
Governor William J. Le Petomane: What?
Hedley Lamarr: "Meeting is adjourned."
Governor William J. Le Petomane: It is?
Hedley Lamarr: No, *you* say that, governor.
Governor William J. Le Petomane: What?
Hedley Lamarr: "Meeting is adjourned."
Governor William J. Le Petomane: It is?
Hedley Lamarr: Here, sir; play with this. [hands the governor a paddleball]

Hedley Lamarr: There might be legal precedent! Of course, landsnatching...
Hedley Lamarr: [flipping through a law book] land, land... "Land: see Snatch." Ah, Hailie vs. United States. Hailie: 7, United States: nothing. You see, it can be done!

Hedley Lamarr: Gentlemen, please rest your sphincters.

Taggart: I got it. I got it.
Hedley Lamarr: You do?
Taggart: We'll work up a "Number 6" on 'em.
Hedley Lamarr: "Number 6"? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that one...
Taggart: Well, that's where we go a-ridin' into town, a whampin' and whompin' every livin' thing that moves within an inch of its life. Except the women folks, of course.
Hedley Lamarr: You spare the women?
Taggart: NAW. We rape the shit out of them at the Number 6 Dance later on.
Hedley Lamarr: Marvelous.

Tennis lovers, now that I have your attention, do two things: one, tune in to the French Open, which is happening right now, and two, start writing songs, because I have news...

Flicks worth your time

Contempt - Godard's Cinemascope tale of a marriage falling apart. The best looking movie I've seen. Bardot is Bardot, Michel Piccoli plays the hipster I wish I was, and Jack Palance is "that American thinks he's a god." Listen to Silkworm's "Contempt" to get you in the mood.

Fanny and Alexander - caught the Bergman epic last week, and after a slow start was duly impressed. After investing 3 hours in the theatrical release, I'll wait until fall to get the 5 hour TV version. Swedes had it good when that guy was around.

Claire's Knee - One of Eric Rhomer's moral tales, this flick is about a middle aged dude's desire to touch the knee of one Claire, a stone fox teenager on holiday in what I think is lake Como. A little too much unnecessary dialogue, but there you have French film - introspective. People looked better in the 1970's everywhere.

All That Heaven Allows - watched this Douglas Sirk melodrama last night and it was damn good for the full 90 minutes. Richard Yates must have loved this flick since he cribbed a lot in his work. As the film version of Revolutionary Road will likely suck, get back to the burbs with this.

Unreal World

Half way through a collection of short stories by Steven Millhauser entitled The Knife Thrower. So far the following may or may not have happened. A knife thrower impaled a willing volunteer from the audience as his final act, a man married and lives with a large frog for a wife, young girls have formed a secret society that meets nightly in the woods and rituals involve nudity and fondling, a man caught with a married woman is brought to his end by a duel with the cuckold husband, the fad of flying carpets entices neighborhood boys to seek the heavens, and a genius crafter of automatons captivates an excited town.

My two previous Millhauser novel reads have been rewarding: Edwin Mullhouse was the story of a legendary comic book author who died at age thirteen, and Martin Dressler - a Pulitzer winner - was the story of the rise and fall of a wondrous hotel developer.

Millhauser revels in sideshow entertainers and the art of conjuring. He is not limited to descriptions of technique; he is adept at creating characters of true emotion and harsh scenes of terror and delight. I should have bought more of his books at Half Price.

Archive find: read your West

It is fitting that one hundred years since the birth of Nathanael West there are no major literary celebrations planned, no InStyle-covered fetes thrown by Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson to mark his career as a studio screenwriter, no Bloomsday-like readings of his works scheduled in libraries, and no public memorial of his fateful death in a car crash in the derelict border town of El Centro, CA, when west was a spry thirty-seven years old, legally crossing the Mexican border from a hunting trip with his wife, also killed in the wreckage. In his lifetime West sold about five thousand copies total of his four novels, which because of miniscule word count and lack of heft, would not garner the publicity or praise doorstops like Middlesex or The Corrections receive these days. West was not celebrated when he was alive, so why should we care a hundred years on?

Whether one has read it or not, The Day of the Locust, West’s final novel, is the metaphor we in Northern California have chosen for our brethren in the south. Here West depicts Hollywood and the Southern Californian as a loitering loser who hangs around the afterglow of the famous few and “had come to California to die.” West likens the inhabitant of the southland as a participant in a masquerade, and there are few among us now that would doubt things have changed. Perhaps those in the state’s south would like to ties us to the kind burnouts of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, but nothing written about a town and its industry will impact a northern reader like The Day of the Locust.

West, New York born and educated at brown thanks to a forgery of his transcripts, is remembered as a California writer the way William Faulkner is, and this is shameful. The two peers and hunting companions found steady employment in Hollywood’s studio system, but West left us with a masterful record of his time here with Locust, whereas Faulkner cashed his checks and jumped the next train to Oxford. Seeing Faulkner’s name in the credits for “The Big Sleep” causes a cringe rather than a smile. There is nothing of Faulkner’s art in this classic; every reader knows his collective body of work is light years beyond his cash and carry endeavors. West’s film writing was confined to movies few have seen or want to see, and he remains uncelebrated in Hollywood. That his books sold poorly was testament to his approach; he found ideal material among his companions and poked fun with a sharp stick.

If one believes that narratives are more relevant records of a society’s lifestyles, attitudes, and mores than history books, then the blueprint for the lower third of our state is Locust. Fans of a California split in two or three need only a handful of novels to make their case rather than a master cartographer, and the 405-south crowd won’t shake West’s depiction any more than Mississippi will elude Faulkner.

Pissed Jeans

I miss the Laughing Hyenas. I really do. Sure, Easy Action brings Brannon's voice, but the weirdness and power are missing. I pulled out Love's My Only Crime the other night and four bandaids later, I limped off to bed. Some folks have it, and some make you suffer.

Which is why Pissed Jeans may be Brannon's mutant hate child. To paraphrase Amherst Emily, they bring the dark slant. I sing along like it's the Looking Glass's "Brandy," and they ain't gonna make any 70's AM radio comps. But they touch a distant place in the rot corner of my teeming consciousness, and it's a spot that needs the occasional massage, or poker prod. Repetition, repetition, and groove groove groove, if your idea of groove is pounding the living shit outta the neighbor's cat at a steady tire iron beat. Even the slow atmospheric numbers work for me, like "The Jogger,"which, like several of their spurts, takes kidney shots at the bourgeois world I inhabit. I nod. I hate them too, and myself, probably, but I dance, and as disturbing as that image might be, it's the release that keeps me out of the papers. I gardened today with Pissed Jeans blasting on my Ipod.

I wonder if that would make them uncomfortable.

Loose Balls

I haven't read many sports books, but Loose Balls, the story of the ABA, is arguably the most entertaining this side of Snake: The Kenny Stabler Story. Delivered as an oral biography edited in near seamless fashion, this is one outrageous story followed by one ridiculous character for 440 pages. I could not put it down. Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rick Barry lawsuits, the Oakland Oaks, Marvin"Bad News" Barnes, the rise of the Iceman, the glory of Dr. J, the height of Darnell Hillman's afro, the arrogance of Charlie Finley (yea, that one), the incompetence of most league officials, the absurdity of most owners, the ongoing high jinx in the bars, locker rooms and taxis, and the fights, my lord, the fights- it's all here. If you threw the NHL together with the ABA, you'd have yourself a full fight card every night. Cold cocks, referee attacks, coaches hitting players, players hitting fans, fans hitting mascots- blood flows all over these pages.

I remember the ABA, but I still didn't know that Larry Brown was considered one of the finest point guards of his time, that Doug Moe was a prolific scorer with both hands, that Wilt Chamberlain "coached" one year but missed a number of games while servicing the ladies, that Bob Costas got his start as the 22-year old voice of the Spirits of St. Louis, a team so wild that Maurice Lucas, later an enforcer for the Portland Trailblazers who once squared off with Chocolate Thunder himself, Daryl Dawkins, in a title game (it terrified me as a child, as no one was getting between those two), was considered the voice of reason, or that Moses Malone was once skinny. It goes on.

If you're tired of cliches and agents and pitch counts, I can't recommend this enough. Pro sports used to have real characters and real possibilities beyond who might win. And let's face it- that red, white and blue ball was the coolest. Still is.

A wife, two cows, and a pig

Knut Hamsun’s On Muted Strings is a sequel to Under the Autumn Star. It takes place six years later and concerns our friend Knut, who has been idling and wandering to no great accomplishment. He decides he wants to return to see the Captain and his fair madame, so he sets off to the country.

He’s wearing a long beard now, and he’s 50. He’s gray and he’s lost some of the ardor that he showered on dames when he was younger. He meets Lars his old companion from the first book who is now living on the Captains estate. Lars wants Knut to grow up, telling him needs what he has; a wife, two cows, and a pig. That’s what went for comfort in the old Norway, but Knut has other ideas. He’s busy observing the Captain and his wife as their marriage disintegrates.

She can’t conceive and starts to lose it. She first resists then balls an engineer from the city. The Captain’s no slouch; he puts the blocks to a young married maiden from a parsonage. Fan receives the shit and madame flees to the city to have her gash surveyed by the engineer on a regular basis. Knut follows her and works with the engineer to keep tabs. He returns to the Captain, and she soon follows, at first cheerful and apologetic, then overcome with morning sickness; she has a bastard in the belly. She flees and drowns on an icy river. This exit was very apropos, considering the set-up Hamsun weaves as people, nature, and action combine.

Knut the character in this book is more developed than in the previous. He is, at 50, in full understanding of life’s limits. Life at that age is playing on muted strings. Up next is Hamsun’s Pan.

This is a borderline masterpiece and yet, due to "label difficulties," it has never been (and probably never will be) released. Dig into your savings account and put this out in a beautiful gatefold design, granting the world something it desperately needs to get its hands on. You will be a proud label owner batting 1000% (you can retire like Rocky Marciano), and I'll get to hold the vinyl in my hands instead of this ugly CDR.

Will Ball For Work

Knut Hamsun’s Under the Autumn Star is a brief, startling read. It concerns a wanderer named Knut who is on the lam from internal demons. Idling about his rented cottage to regain his senses he meets a former mate who intends to paint the house and procure work around the countryside. Knut joins him and becomes a hired hand, oddjobbing around and apparently – Hamsun is cryptic here – balling a few of the maidens he assists.

We know little of the character Knut’s background at the novel’s start; only later are clues to some unknown wealth and privilege brought to the fore. He tags along with another man to fell trees and the madam of the household takes a shine to Knut and he starts pining for her. He enjoys the role of servant to the people who don’t know he is of some stature. He tries to forget about her by taking another job but then seeks her out again. She is off to the city, and Knut returns to find her, smarting up the wardrobe and encountering known faces in cafes and other haunts of his past.

This is my second go around with Hamsun. Under the Autumn Star is the book I should have started with last time, because the frankness and pure modernity of a writer straddling the 19^th and 20^th centuries who didn’t give a fuck about balls or other regal nonsense. The scenes describing work, want, lust, and nature in Under the Autumn Star are the opposite of the 19^th century book, and the insight into the complicated and harmed mind of the narrator is something DH Lawrence approached in minor characters only – I’m thinking of the city crowd the Brangwen girl ran with in Women in Love. This book is first rate – will do my best to round out some more Hamsun soon.

75,000 Oregonians Can't Be Wrong

Everybody has a theory about Obama's running mate- Webb, H. Clinton, Richardson, Edwards, Gore, Hagel, Biden, Brown, Clark, Sebelius, Daschle, etc. Who's your pick and why? I'm going with the current occupant, because he's a bad-ass cowboy.

Quitting-But does it mean anything?

Ain't had a whole lotta time over the last twenty years for singalong, mid-tempo, anthemic punk rock soundtracks for disaffected youth, but damn if every few years I pull this out and it ain't a put the brain by the roadside and punch your fist drive down the 580. Kick off the ska numbers and you'd have yourself a 12-song classic (well, at least for the genre), with almost every tune instantly hummable. I even had a moment of wistful gazing when the ode to Op Ivy, Journey to the End of the East Bay, took me back to an 80's I can barely remember. Strummerisms abound, but the songs are more consistently catchy than any Clash album, with no annoying half-assed commie rantings to distract the bliss of your morning commute. Let the haters hate- it's Rancid, children, can you dig it?

Rolling Stones records

Lists are stupid, so here's another one- the top ten Rolling Stones records in terms of my pleasure as of May 14, 2008-

1. Sticky Fingers

2. Aftermath

3. Beggar's Banquet

4. Exile on Main St.

5. Between the Buttons

6. Let It Bleed

7. Some Girls

8. December's Children

9. Tattoo You

10. Goat's Head Soup

What Movies Have You Stolen?

The Ballad of Cable Hogue - Good lighthearted Peckinpah here, starring Jason Robards as an ornery old coot, and Stella Stevens sporting the best tits in screen history outside of Bardot in Contempt. Great supporting cast in this nonsense western, and a funny David Warner as a horny preacher.

Shampoo - Still my favorite movie. Warren Beatty co-stars with his hair, and the goddess Julie Christie makes me randy. Jack Warden is a riot, and in the 24 hours the film covers, Beatty has sex 6 times I think. Viva old Hollywood.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - this flick from last year was hyped as Sidney Lumet's swan song, but it's not that good. I Blame Ethan Hawke. Kudos for many shots of a nude Marisa Tomei, who looks delicious. Lumet's best recent movie is still Q&A with Nick Nolte's best role ever, and the funniest race dialog outside a Larry David sitcom.

In the Mood For Love - loved it when I saw it in the theater, and it sill holds up. Wong Kar Wai can direct the fuck out of a movie, and slinky Maggie Cheung is a stone fox. The lead is Tony Leung, the best actor of my lifetime hands down given his diverse catalog. A great movie for those who love cigarettes too.

Wild Bill - I dug this 1995 western based on Dexter's Deadwood and will watch it tonight when it finishes downloading. Jeff Bridges stars with honey Ellen Barkin as Calamity Jane.

I just read that Buffalo Tom dude's take on Exile on Main St. in that 33 1/3 series and I can now say that I know more about this record than I did before but it's still not as good as blabberers say it is. Yes, aural doors were opened, yes- but it still ain't no Aftermath.

Ron Wilson

The Sharks fired coach Ron Wilson today, and I'm all atwitter because I don't know how to feel about it. Over the last four years, the Sharks have won more regular season games than any team in hockey. In 2004, they lost in the conference finals, and over the last three years, they lost in the 2nd round, each time in six games when they were favored to win. Hell, Avery Johnson just got fired, and he won a billion regular season games. Expectations become everything, but what if you think your team is better than it is? You could argue that the Giants lost the 2002 World Series because Dusty Baker pulled Russ Ortiz with a five-run lead in the 7th before Ortiz had given up a run. Keep Ortiz in and maybe the Giants cruise to victory and everything is different over the past five years. If Patrick Rismiller clears a puck off the boards instead of up the middle, maybe the Sharks beat the Red Wings last year and, well, you know how it goes. How much is the coach to blame? Should regular season count for everything because, as Billy Beane says, the playoffs are a crapshoot, or is that just baseball where fewer teams get in and the season is longer? Do we show up for months in front of the tv because we only care about virtually holding the trophy at the end, with failure to get that thing hoisted grounds for unemployment? I enjoyed the Warriors this season, and not watching them get crushed by the Lakers in the playoffs didn't take away from the enjoyment I had watching them beat many great teams over the course of the season. Is it all expectations?

I don't fucking know. All I do know is that the last time one of my teams won a championship, they were playing in Los Angeles, so the asterisk is bigger than god. I was a teenager when the Raiders beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl and at that point I felt surely that winning was my birthright. In everything.

Life has proved otherwise.

The Fishing Report

Caught:

1 new gate lock
2 pancakes
4 handrolled BaliShag cigarettes
2 sunburns
3 cans of Coors (Tuna did not release)
1 ham and cheese
1 burrito
5 nightcrawlers


Still at large:

Trout

Oh young soul who did not shoot ye romantic wad on the Replacements in the glorious year of no lord 1985, hear me now- this record does not stink of '85, and does not celebrate incompetency or hot chops. My li'l neophypte, Tim is the best greenie entry point, the major league debut that had me blurry and shaken in the giddy days of Newport surf and sun. Tim is the cleanest way to enter the underachieving world of the Replacements, because it's the clearest compromise between their dual aspirations of gutter and arena. This is the anthem record, and the big songs come in many sizes. "Bastards of Young" rides the resentment hinted at in Let It Be and lays it at the feet of the boomers. "Left of the Dial" champions college radio while delivering a wistful love yearning melody, a nearly impossible combo that may be the best pop offering since "I Will Dare." "Here Comes a Regular" is the moody ballad in which Westerberg pretends he's the boy at the factory pub who desperately wants to move on and feel special. For all his later faults, Paulie Whisper did poignancy beautifully in a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time players context. Side 1 is one solid tune after the next delivered in multiple styles. Nothing transcendent, but try not singing along. I hated the record when I first got it because it wasn't punk, but I was wrong as usual. This doesn't have the big highs of other placemat offerings, but it's their most consistent album and the easiest to absorb on first listening. It is also the record I got the most pleasure out of in this middle-aged reconsideration, whatever that means.

Everybody loves Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash except me. I always thought it was a generic genre exercise in which our heroes tried to muscle up with the hardcore scene but were exposed as match sticked-armed suburban wannabes. This was before Paul was secure enough to sneak out the melodies, and when Bobby flew high and strong. Stupid lyrics and stupider riffs, this still has its moments, and even a whiff of what was to come with "Johnny's Gonna Die, " no matter how embarrassing it sounds now. I loved the cover and the spirit and the possibilities, but I never found myself pulling this one out, even in the glory days. Having listened to it twice in the last two days, I feel better about my 22-year old self. Fun but insubstantial- can you live with that?

I'm doing the quality parenting thang with the kids watching Pokemon and me crankin' open the newest from Anderson Valley, the Imperial IPA this time checking in at a whomping 8.9% on the richter and with nothing to say I say this to you having made my way through the entire Replacements catalogue up to but not including Don't Tell a Soul, the greatest disappointment in my record buying life when I returned from Asia a brown spider and found that Paul Westerberg had sold his ass to a whisper. They've just reissued the first four upchucks from your placemats of yore, and since I haven't taken a trip down that lane of memory in time longer than I can recall I thought well hey hey hey what the hey, let's just see what all the fuss was about when certain histrionic scribes were calling these ragamuffins the greatest thing since Almond Vanilla Cream Cheese Spread on a Toasted Cinnamon and Raisan bagel.

What strikes me is Westerberg's voice- other than the spirit and the legend and fuckall attitude, it's the best thing about the band. Plenty of these songs don't travel, but that voice could kick ass in a time capsule. I remember late afternoons in college with Hootenany blaring and me half-naked on the vinyl couch with a head full of Schaefer and this sounded like the perfect companion of my drunken dreams. I didn't think you were allowed to play out of tune or trade your instruments or have the first-class gonads to drop "Treatment Bound" on a record album for sale to the general public. They were my instant heroes, the band I'd been waiting to hear my whole life. Today only a few songs grabbed, like "Take Me Down to the Hospital," "Color Me Impressed," "Heyday," the aforementioned ode to booze as cure and "Mr. Whirley." Once it was the perfect fuck you to a world I hated, and for that I remain grateful.

I was that loud asshole screaming the praises of Let It Be as the greatest record of the 80's, and while it may not be all that, the assinine stuff sounds even more assinine but the good stuff passes middle-aged snuff. "I Will Dare" is a goddamned triumph of pop music, and that Mr. Ambition could not recognize its genius and chose the way of Tom Petty strum ballads for his solo career is a testament to the fact that genius can not recognize itself and generally needs a bullet in the head after the creative window closes. "My Favorite Thing" is wonderfully complicated and catchy for all its punk fury, and the ballads still move, if not quite as weepingly. "Androgynous" is charming, if you don't listen to the lyrics. "Answering Machine" is just a riff without a full band to kick in, but what a fucking monster he got out of a guitar and a voice and a little tinkering. "Unsatisfied" remains the perfect closer and the ultimate slacker anthem, as a nation of overeducated and underappreciated (in their own minds) suburban hipsters pumped their fists and cried their eyes out alone in their studio apartments while dreamin the big dreams that will never come true. Tommy and Gary and some of the others have their juvie charms, and maybe they act as foils for the purtiness lying around them. I don't know. I hear an amalgam of twentysomething yearning covering its bases by pretending not to care, but what a winning formula. It takes ya back, and that ain't always such a sad and pathetic thing.

Later, the rest of the early catalogue, even two on Big Daddy Major.

First, the best TV ad campaign in years. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjmdpI_NSyk

Second, I can't find these bands music anywhere except ordering direct. Can anyone help me out? - Eddy Current Suppression Ring, UV Race, The Pink Fits, Changing Holes, Cheap Time (new lp), Lover!, The Black and Whites, Black Time, The Scrags, Ho Chi Minh Howlers, Haciendas, Hex Dispensers, Turpentine brothers, CoCoComa.

Not even Soul seek!

You calling me fat?

Alice Walker is a Horrible Mother

And there's an article here to prove it.

Chickens coming home to roost. Reaping what you so.

It's news like this that makes me think there may be a God.

Who you pickin'?

PP Horse               Jockey                Trainer              ML
-- -----               ------                -------              --

1 Cool Coal Man       Julien Leparoux       Nick Zito          20-1

2 Tale of Ekati       Eibar Coa             Barclay Tagg       15-1

3 Anak Nakal          Raphael Bejarano      Nick Zito          30-1

4 Court Vision        Garrett Gomez         Bill Mott          20-1

5 Eight Belles (f)    Gabriel Saez          Larry Jones        15-1

6 Z Fortune           Robby Albarado        Steve Asmussen     15-1

7 Big Truck           Javier Catellano      Barclay Tagg       50-1

8 Visionaire          Jose Lezcano          Michael Matz       20-1

9 Pyro                Shaun Bridgmohan      Steve Asmussen      6-1

10 Colonel John        Corey Nakatani        Eoin Harty          4-1

11 Z Humor             Rene Douglas          Bill Mott          30-1

12 Smooth Air          Manoel Cruz           Bennie Stutts Jr.  20-1

13 Bob Black Jack      Rich Migliore         James Kasparoff    20-1

14 Monba               Ramon Dominguez       Todd Pletcher      15-1

15 Adriano             Edgar Prado           Graham Motion      30-1

16 Denis of Cork       Calvin Borel          David Carroll      20-1

17 Cowboy Cal          John Velazquez        Todd Pletcher      20-1

18 Recapturetheglory   E.T. Baird            Louie Roussel      20-1

19 Gayego              Mike Smith            Paulo Lobo         15-1

20 Big Brown           Kent Desormeaux       Rick Dutrow Jr.     3-1