It's Boogata, Baby

Monday night on a cold Bay Area late-night groove and the Xmas tree still shines brightly and the fire glows its artificial light and the children sleep gently and it's time for midnight frolicking with the spirits cuz the Sharks were tied and the Warriors were clinging to a three-point lead but miraculously both teams clutched out stunningly with the W's taking down the mighty Celtics and Nabokov single-handedly stopping the now Gretsky-less Coyotes and buzz buzz buzz some chex mix and some boogata and the Giants sign Mark DeRosa and 12 million for a 35-year old with twentysomething homers and I'm 200 pages into the Gram Parsons bio and it's GP and the Byrds and Gene Clark and the International Submarine Band and Porter Wagoner and The Louvin Brothers and Lee Hazlewood and Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash and George Jones and Waylon Jennings on the turntable and it's baseball in the backyard and ping pong in the basement and cards in the dark room and chicken in the kitchen. Where is my flash of insight on the Aleksander Hemon novel? I consumed it and enjoyed it but I failed to reach that state of incantatory bliss promised by eastern tastemakers. Bosnian immigrant in Chicago doing the big existential crisis interwoven with a murdered Jew a century previous and we have quirky meditation on the dual consciousness of the refugee in search of a better life but who can never find a real home in the land of the free as he's too haunted by the ghosts of the motherland. Darkly funny and originally delivered but transcendent? I wanted to love it but honesty is a bitch. Jimmy Wood, why do you lead me astray? Far better than Netherland but it's becoming painfully clear that Mr. Wood and I live in alternative literary universes. I'm going back for chex mix, and some more Vic Chesnutt, a man on whom you can depend, if only on vinyl.