Today, my dental technician-

Mocked one of my students ("her brother and sister are better").

Kindly pointed out that my lips look "de-laminated."

Jerked my jaw into place with assassin's force.

Asked me continuous questions WHILE HER FUCKING HANDS WERE IN MY MOUTH.

Made my gums bleed in three places.

Hummed.

"Whatever happened to rock n roll radio?"

“He smoked constantly despite tuberculosis, emphysema, and repeated bouts of pneumonia; he was an alcoholic who, when unable to write, would sometimes start the day with martinis at breakfast; he rarely exercised, and ate red meat at every meal if he could help it.”

Is the pursuit of art a greater good than a pursuit of happiness? Are they mutually exclusive? If you’re Richard Yates, those are probably stupid questions. If you’re a writer worth a damn, you don’t have a choice anyway, so shut up and pass the bottle. The booze feels warm in your stomach, and that’s about as much as we need to say on the subject.

I’ve read plenty of literary biographies in my time, but if you believe Blake Bailey’s A Tragic Honesty, there wasn’t a bigger asshole or a greater artist than Richard Yates. In 20th century terms, the man was old-school all the way down his tweeds. He smoked five packs of cigarettes a day and called it heroic. He drank constantly and called anyone who wouldn’t match him drink for drink a “fucking pansy.” Going on the wagon meant switching to beer for breakfast. He hit on every attractive woman he ever met, and cursed fat women as an abomination before his eyes.

He demanded realism from every word in his fiction; a misplaced semi-colon exposed a lazy hack without craft. When asked by editors to soften his characters or their predicaments, he refused, stating simply that life is invariably sad. He fought against sentiment (“What a crock of shit!”) and loathed post-realists (“What a load of crap!”). His literary heroes were Flaubert and Fitzgerald, but it was the latter’s golden years that haunted his dreams, even when The Crack Up described his life. His books were usually out of print, despite cries of injustice from his far more successful friends like William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Ford. His masterpiece is Revolutionary Road (though some argue for The Easter Parade), the sharpest evocation (this side of Gatsby) of the disparity between a man’s private hopes for himself and the crushing reality of his life. Everyone wants to feel special and better than his circumstances, and the mental gymnastics required to sustain those necessary illusions cannot prevent the world from intervening. Time after time, Yates shows how a man’s yearning is not enough to prevent him from being who he can’t help but be. It’s the difference between who we hope to be and who we are that makes his work so poignant, even wrenching, because you can’t help but painfully recognize yourself in his characters, and it’s a mirror that will not distort itself to your wishes.

His own mirror could not always have been welcome. He charmed everyone before insulting them, and smashed far more relationships than he maintained. Given his frequent drunken rages, it’s a testament to his good moments how many pledged (and delivered) undying loyalty. He lived in squalor most of his life, hunched over his desk with a cigarette jutting from his mouth, cockroaches crackling under his desert boots. His apartments terrified his children. And yet, he kept writing - even at the end, when he needed oxygen tanks to breathe and skipped back and forth between drags on the tank and his smoke.

Americans like their endings happy, and Yates’ books all end badly, which might explain in part why despite the desperate pleadings from members of the literary elite, Yates’ nose is still pressed up against the glass of academic acceptance into the canon. Given that professors are more apt to discuss theory than novels, Yates’ realistic storytelling probably leaves many without the stylistic innovations or structural experimentation to play with. So be it. But if anybody’s reading in fifty years and if genetic engineering has not yet spliced its way around the vagaries of the human heart, people will still be reading Richard Yates.

Phil, we hardly knew ya...

I like reading about geezers far more than twentysomethings, middle-aged whiners (too close to mi casa), or, for the love of Christ, children, so J.M. Coetzee's Slow Man about a 60-year old who gets run over on his bicycle, loses a leg and then requires care, intrigued. How long will it be before we're all taking care of parents? What indignities await? What uncomfortable revelations? Will anybody tell the truth in the final years? Old age too often steals dignity and prohibits fun. Some of the desires go, but not all of 'em, and what a cruel bitch of an evolutionary design to keep one from the good stuff at the end.

The slow man of the title falls for his nurse, of course, but she has other needs, like getting her son into an expensive private school and keeping her daughter from ending up preggers. The dance is to see who can get the most of what he/she wants/needs, and who would you bet on, a feisty 40-year old Croat mother of three or a lovestruck lonely man lusting after a nurse's calves? Elizabeth Costello, the title character of a previous Coetzee novel, makes her appearance here as a crusty and wizened old broad who appears out of nowhere as the crane of fate and a straight-talking soundboard and matchmaker to our quietly suffering hero. The trio set, the plot plays out, but it's Coetzee's ruminations on care, aging and the regret of paths not taken that make this worth the time.

Is Coetzee really the master the Nobel committee deemed him? After reading four of his novels, I ain't entirely convinced, but I like all of them, and Disgrace delivered big on both readings. This one won't woo the masses, but it's five hours I was happy to spend.

What I Learned On My Trip To Portland

Any nation that demands its air passengers remove their shoes and confiscates toothpaste relinquishes all claims of greatness.

Nobody drinks on airplanes anymore. I received multiple and repeated angry stares when I ordered my second Heineken, and I could not see anyone in my section with anything stronger than a cranberry juice. Considering I once watched an entire cabin of Finns get filthily blathered on a morning flight to Athens, I assume by 2009 we'll be reading how Finland has surpassed our GNP.

There is a bar every half a block in Portland. A brewpub lies on every corner.

I had fries for three consecutive meals, and each batch was crispy and salty and righteously delicious, and twice I put my head between my legs and cried, Why Barclay's, why not?

I kept noticing a face I never see in the Bay Area, and when I tried to describe it, I couldn't past 'haggard' and 'weather-beaten.' Later, I figured it was not a singular Oregon face, but that the Bay Area lacks a variety of honkies.

What ever happened to the stewardess who got into the job to party?

Side projects suck, but this one doesn't. I don't know why I have such a soft spot for Danny and Dusty's The Lost Weekend, but the two lead singers for Green on Red and The Dream Syndicate got together with members of their own bands and the Long Ryders and made a perfectly endearing party record for your enjoyment. Find it in the fun bin and have yourself a $1.99 time. Just make sure you pull the needle before the obligatory cover of Knockin' On Heaven's Door, that nightmare every troubadour with a pseudodeathwish feels compelled to play to illustrate his edgy stance on death.

Joe Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic is one of the most entertaining and provocative rock books I've ever read. Enter Naomi is a completely different animal. It reads like a love letter to a long lost punk rock crush, with some memories about the good old days of SST tossed in. Naomi Petersen was the photographer who took all of the those great shots of the Minutemen, Blag Flag, Meat Puppets, etc., and if Carducci is right, everybody fell just a little bit in love with her, but nobody really felt like treating her right. She drinks herself to death at 38 in 2005, and nobody notifies the old friends, most notably, Carducci, and so we have this book. It started as an email to get folks to recognize her contribution to that time in music and get her work out there. Thus, this is a plea, not criticism. The tone is far less angry and polemic and far more poignant. The man has lost track of somebody he once loved and now he's lost her, and the words are ways to express the pain and purge the hurt.

The book highlights how hard it was to be a girl in that most masculine of scenes, and it illustrates how completely devoted the SST crew was (if you buy all of it) to the work. Carducci argues that something like that is impossible now. Everything is too easy, when you can download anything for free. The result, is watered down mediocrities and art that falls further and further from the human heart.


At 25 clams, the price for this book is an outrage. Typos rule, the prose is third-rate, and pictures take up close to half the 200 pages. That said, throw the guy a bone. He lived it, he's hurting, and many of those photos are gripping. I was surprised by how badly this was written, but I was strangely moved by it. I've been listening to My War a lot lately, and thinking about what life must have been like in the trenches for a young woman at some of those sausage parties I used to go to at Fender's back in the day. Naomi must have had balls. It's SST from the inside and what happened after, and while the whole thing feels patched together and blended into book form without a whole lot of care, there is poignancy here.

December Reading Roundup
How to be Idle- Tom Hodgkinson- this started promisingly: "There is nothing so perfect as pinball and a pint at 11:00 in the morning." Subsequent to that, the best this ode to loafing can offer is some fine quotes by other people- the author's insights are minimal, and somewhat hypocritical, considering he edits a magazine and finds time to write a book glorifying the pleasures of doing nothing. I smell a rat.

Babylon's Burning- Clinton Heylin- From the Velvets to the Voidoids, Heylin's earlier tome documenting, well, what the title says it does, was an enlightening and riveting read. I filled in some gaps and even sought out some of the bands the man championed. The new one, sadly, does not continue the tradition. At over 600 pages, it's overstuffed and lacking focus, as the first 400+ pages cover a few years in painstaking detail, and most spend far too much time on the likes of Siouxie and Sid and Joe. Sorry, but the story has been told. Heylin loves Wire and The Buzzcocks and Pere Ubu and Television, so clearly, the artier tip of the punk thang is where he lays his puffed out hat. And that's fine, as he explicitly states he'd like to tell the "real" story of that time, in what appears to be a direct cannon shot at one Simon Reynolds, whose recent Rip It Up and Start Again meticulously captured all things post-punk from 1978-1984. Heylin did not like the man or his take, and this appears to be his riposte. So be it. That said, the problem with all these pages is that if you've been paying attention for the past twenty years, so little here is new. Jon Savage's England's Dreaming does the British punk thing better, and Michael Azzarad's Our Band Could Be Your Life does the 80's indie American with far more understanding and insight. I found myself skimming far too often, and with far too little guilt, as every page seemed to have a lengthy quote from Steve Steverin, the Banshees guitarist. Look kids, that is not a good thing. Take the big pass.

The big winner this month is Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, a can't-put-it-downer, even at a whopping 500+ pages. Weiner's thesis is simple: we shouldn't be shocked by Mr. Tenet's slam dunk- the CIA has been fucking up everything from its inception. The glory of this book is that Weiner does not stuff what should be a magazine piece with analytical filler, the bane of most political books. Instead, he tells stories. Starting with the agency's origins in a world torn asunder by WWII, Weiner walks chronologically through the great foreign policy crises of America's post-war era. The stories are gripping and aggressively depressing. One director after the next desperately tries to remake the agency in his image, protect his own reputation and ego, and lie to the president to protect his turf no matter how much it hurts the country. Allan Dulles is particularly brutalized, but Weiner is ruthless. Fiasco after fiasco illustrates the sickness inherent in the beast, while director after director fuels the public image of the hyper-efficient and mysterious spy service systematically wrecking those who dare cozy up to the Soviet bear. Sadly, the boys kept getting it wrong. This acts as a history review of American foreign policy over the last 60 years, a disheartening dissection of a broken US institution, and a laugh riot for the boys in those Paki caves. Put this one by your bedside, and good luck with those sweet dreams.

I gave up on CNN a long time ago, but you have to turn in somewhere to get your election results, so I found myself occasionally flipping over to Wolf muttering, "The best political team on television." You have to wonder-

Bill Bennett? Didn't his moral crusade go up in a ticker tape shower of video poker losses?

Ralph Reed? Doesn't getting in bed with the dark lord of Abramoff preclude one from pontificating on family values in front of a live television audience?

Soledad Somebody or Other? Get this woman a brown paper bag before she explodes all over your screen.

Bill Schneider? The last poll before New Hampshire had Obama with a 13 point lead, and you still want to giddily cum all over a pie graph delineating the lesbian vote in Carpet County?

Anderson Cooper? Geraldo's heir apparent, the man who never saw a beige flak jacket or a danger photo op he wouldn't throw himself in front of, asked relatively short questions and got out of the way- is Armageddon upon us, Ralph?

John King- always solid

That Cafferty dude- a grouchy liberal- at least he doesn't come straight from central casting

Will somebody explain to me why Donna Brazille gets a spot as the voice of the Democratic Party on every single program ever aired? Does she have dirt on every producer in tv land, or are they just knocking off two 'underrepresented' groups with one body?

Have they finally put Carville out to pasture? Is he consulting for the Clintons, or have they fallen out with each other?

Any night I don't see Mary Matalin is a sign of television progress.

Can anybody recommend a channel for the next one? I tried to turn the sound off and crank up Dead Moon, but the wife was having none of it. Something about the sonorous sounds from David Gergen's trap...

8 more years?

Goddam The Circumstance

Help me figure this out; how does my man Edwards get the nod? The eloquent black gentlemen looks ready to steamroll, and the broad is set to implode. There are no black people in NH as far as I can remember (last visit was 1994). I don't know what B.Ob's health plan is, but I doubt it's as comprehensive and universal as Edwards'. How does Johnny win? South Carolina? Nevada is Richardson, right? I'm not paying attention.

On the other side, I don't know anything at all, but I think it's great they're afraid of Huckabee, who is nuts but also cares more about those in the 30-50k HHI range than any candidate. Onward Xian soldiers.

It's the first big storm of the season, and my newly raked grass looks like a suburban New England street shot- that glance out the back window almost sent me to google for leaf blowers. It's an afternoon for fireplaces and Gram Parsons and Modern Drunkard, and maybe later an imported porter to block out the knowledge of my leaky windshield. It is winter in California, and I still don't own gloves. Can't stand skiing, and couldn't find romance in a lodge if you spotted me two Swiss blondes and a room key.

I always assumed the appeal of winter came from giving you a cheap excuse to do nothing indoors, and nobody could tell you to go out and enjoy the beautiful weather. I live in fucking California- I can enjoy it any time I want, so shut up already. Rain is one of the few guilt erasers here in purpose-land- unless somebody drops a "let's clean up the garage" on ya, you're free to watch afternoon tv or read magazines that list the top ten best reasons for getting drunk with far less eye-raising. The flip side is that you can't march the littl'uns out the front door to get 'em out of your hair. Thus, your cozy couch drunkard reading gets interrupted every two minutes with demands of other varieties, most of which involve stickiness. The sounds of Teletubbies are your soundtrack, and even sticking it to Jerry Falwell in the grave is little consolation. So I'm off to play another game of Battleship after I change another diaper. The wind is shaking the shutters, and I'm counting down til the cocktail hour. That's about as close as it comes to a winter wonderland in Piedmont, CA.

I went to see X the other night at Slim's, as another couple had tickets and wanted to revisit their youth. I'm not a big reunion guy, but I took the bullet for the team and went to the bank for babysitter money. We were supposed to meet at a bar called Wish south of market, a district with its own nostaligic value that has closed the great haunts of my youth- 20 Tank, Paradise, Hamburger Mary's. So we follow the street numbers and it becomes clear we're headed to the changed name of an old standby- El Bobo. I lost my t-shirt but retain the memories. Good times. The place is browner now, in decor, and the music guitarless dance. The bartender had the requisite naify chic, and my drink was served with the proper disdain. We made our chitchat and headed over, the line outside for ticketholders a block down 11th. The girls went for smokes and I tried to recall the few shows I'd attended at Boz's place- Monoshock opening for Mudhoney, Jack Logan, the Dragons, Uncle Tupelo- a shaky list at best, which did not bode well for the next hour. We snaked our way in, and it was packed tighter than my lower back. Two minutes after getting our drinks, they raised the video screen and all four original members of your early LA punk heroes appeared looking remarkably spright. John Doe seemed to have come directly from makeup at a movie set. Billy Zoom's hairline had taken some sliding steps back, but his impish smirk delivered all of its intended contempt. DJ Bonebrake was grey and hatted and Exene wore the appropriate ridiculous getup, a hairdo that matches my two-year old daughter's who can't sit still in a barber's chair, and 50's lady girth. And they sounded exactly like they did when I saw them all those other times 20-25 years ago, and again I was bored. I appreciate the dueling harmonic vocals, but I don't love 'em, and the songs never hit past the eardrum. I can see why folks dig these guys, and I can see why they would hold a particular place in people's memories if they grew up in that time and place. They just never made their way inside my shriveled heart. But hey, let's face it- there ain't a lot of room in there.