All Day Music

“Anyone is happy who confidentially awaits the fulfillment of his highest dreams.” - - From You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe

There’s the chorus of a song that you haven’t heard in ages and it brings back those days when you were young and conquering the world. You can feel the warm summer breeze of thirty years ago and taste the cold beer and feel the excitement of dusk before a party and all the possibilities it portended. You can recall in your bones that hunger mixed with confidence and that unfettered joy. There were easy laughs with the boys there was the clean shirt and shampooed hair and the trust in yourself that would dissipate with middle age to be replaced by wisdom with tinges of cynicism. But back then there were so few defeats suffered and so much surety that the whole wide world existed just tonight just right now just in this beer and this anticipation and in that girl you were going to meet that tonight.

All that came from that one song and it felt good. There is comfort in nostalgia even as there is sadness in the recognition that that special time is no more and never will come again. You have aged. Young in spirit and healthy you are nonetheless a far older version of that young happy man. Long married with grown children and able and happy to find pleasures in simple ways. You had spent some years trying to go back trying to relive your youth and being frustrated that it was lost. Those places you went are gone and the people who were there have moved, aged and in some cases died. You are lucky that today at least provides comfort and you can still dance and run and love and work and have a partner to laugh and live with.

You hear the chorus again and already that memory has faded a bit. Not what you mentally remember of it but what you emotionally feel. That too has passed. You look outside and see a very pretty young woman walk by. A sigh and a realization that she was who you would have danced with perhaps talked with and maybe even kissed on that long ago Summer night. She could even have been a girl you dated for a time before one or both of you eased or broke away for a respite from romance or to be with another better prospect.

How lucky you feel that one of those beautiful young women from the past — the very one you fell madly in love with — loved you too. That she is the one you spend your days with now. It can be difficult to squarely face the fact that you have been lucky. That there is no room in your life now to complain about bad breaks in life. That and that any misfortune you had was and is far offset by the bounty of good fortune you’ve enjoyed. It can be hard to accept that you got what was coming to you and that it is good. Now you wonder why. Why did life smile so broadly at you and give you so much and why do you still ache for that Summer night of your youth? What is its appeal? How do you accept the simple fact that it is where it belongs in the long past and you are here where you belong in the present. Here. Now.

Today is not always an easy place to live. Especially when you have so many yesterdays and not so many tomorrows. It was far easier to accept today when it felt like it was a starting point rather than a destination.

And what of some other things that Summer night suggests? The beer you guzzled for one. That was likely not the first of the day and would certainly be followed by many many more. Maybe it was a night when you were too drunk to chat up a girl and ended up being helped home and passing out fully clothed on your bed. There was a lot of that too. There were a lot of sotted evenings with slurred words and mysterious behavior that would not be remembered the next morning or ever. What did you say — for example — that one evening to a friend who never spoke to you again? At first you couldn’t understand why you’d been shunned but then you realized it must have been — as the cliche goes — something you said. Exactly what is perhaps best forgotten, the damage you did being bad enough.

You moved out of town only a few weeks later and that friend died of cancer not many years later. But you must remember that in addition to the glories you exalted in the madcap revelries and the soaring heights, you also spent many a morning with a battered body and painful head and empty wallet and plethora of regrets.

You have to remember all that you were or today you are nothing. You must complete the picture. You must love yourself. But this you can only do by accepting all of who you were and are. Accept it enjoy it be it.

A Summer night decades ago as the sun was receding and a breeze cooled a hot day and a beer went down smoothly and you headed for a party….

If Nothing Else a Daily Commute Provides Fodder for the Writer (Or a Father for the Writher)

I'll keep on moving
Things are bound to be improving these days
These days-
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend
Don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them
-- From These Days by Jackson Browne


And so I go. Forward is the only direction I know anymore. Standing still is not an option. There is a pain in the psyche that can only be alleviated by laughter and insight and love. All else is pointless.

Dancing and probing and looking and forever the gerund of my mind.

I'm entering into a barren period in my writing  -- can feel it. It's a time when eking out a sentence seems a monumental task and creating an entire paragraph feels impossible. Some people speak of writer's block and others say there is no such thing. I am very firm in my conviction that I have no strong opinion on the matter. Indeed -- and here I at last get to a point of sorts -- I think that holding opinions can be highly overrated. Far too many people too often feel obliged to have opinions on any and all matters of the day both the critical and the trivial. The convenience  of the internet with its access to myriad viewpoints and the ease it provides to make comments has exacerbated the spreading of ill informed opinions.

It's actually quite healthy to say: I don't know. Or: I have no opinion. It can save you time and it can limit the spread of pure unadulterated poppycock.

There I said it.

Yesterday I got on my morning train and opened my book and opened my mind and started to read. At the next stop a man of about 3,000 pounds dropped his enormous body into the seat next to me. With this prodigious weight coming down I practically flew up into the air. I settled back down to Earth and the seat and found that his enormous bulk was intruding onto my space. I felt claustrophobic and so went in search of another seat. This morning I again had to move at the second stop this time because a duo I've come to call the gum chewers brigade sat across from me. They are a couple, perhaps married, perhaps living in sin (as bible thumpers used to say) who immediately upon having sat down break out the gum and start chomping. The energy from the man's vigorous chewing could light a skyscraper. In any event the resulting noise is cacophonous. Even with my iPod pounding against my ear drum the sound is as apparent as a jack hammer. And should I at anytime look up I am subject to the sight of his large maw working furiously. How exhausting it must be to chew gum with such vicious intent.

Other than that my morning commutes have been wonderfully uneventful of late and free of undue discomfort. This is largely because I come into San Francisco early enough in the day to avoid the teeth of the morning commute. Lamentably I travel home at the peak of the evening commute and am thus subject to all manner of horrors that make fighting in a war seem like a day at the beach. Okay all right that was a gross exaggeration and a shining example of hyperbole. Apologies all around. Suffice to say that making my way home -- as previously chronicled here -- is a daily struggle. It's a wonder that most commuters don't go stark raving mad. Perhaps many do.

Today's return trip started on MUNI. I've eschewed the early evening trolley owing to a preponderance of tourists on that line at those times these days. So I take the number 30 which goes through Chinatown meaning the bus is often redolent with mysterious odors some deriving from raw chickens others from raw fish and still others from sources one dare not ponder. Today there was a junkie on the bus one of those serious addicts who tries too hard to seem straight. Overly polite overly informative overly chatty until teetering precariously into obnoxiousness before falling face first into annoyance. He was accompanied by a bemused much younger woman whose drug of choice must be of a mellow variety. She seemed to barely tolerate her partner and yet they are likely fitful lovers who quarrel as much as they make love and do both badly.

The ride was otherwise tolerable, aside from the usual swinging purses and backpacks that sometimes knock my book flat or poke me in the head. One is always on guard on crowded public transportation. The mindless far outnumber thieves and malcontents. Keeping a sharp eye out for the criminal element is easy stuff. Anyone who is at all street savvy can pick em out a mile away. But who knows which sir or madam is going to step on your foot or emasculate you with their suitcase.

So onto BART and a seat and a comfy ride to the strains of Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow on ye olde iPod. In days of yore one could not imagine traveling with their favorite music least of all stored in an object that fits comfortably in the front pocket. The only music we could travel around with in my youth was the transistor radio and at that we listened to what they played and endured commercials and babbling DJs in between. These are the good old days.

Stopped at the gym where I was unable to run. A recent doctor visit revealed that I have achilles tendonitis and must start physical therapy next week. Nine days without running has me feeling morbidly obese. The stationery bike is not the same though lifting weights was a welcome tonic.
Now I'm home and so is the wife and a three-day weekend looms with the World Cup quarter finals as an entertainment option. No substitute for proper English Premier League footie but it will do until the new season commences next month. Life generally provides one thing or another to look forward to along with several delights to enjoy in the here and now. Can't be bad, can't be bad.

This May Not End Well But You'll Like It - My Favorite Roman Polanski Films

BEWARE! SPOILERS FOLLOW

I only recently came off a Roman Polanski binge having watched all of his films that have gotten so much as middling reviews. Polanski is often forgotten when great directors are discussed perhaps because he has not been especially prodigious and he has thus far made but one movie that is certain to be forever remembered as a classic. Moreover he does not have a particular style or genre that he has made his own. Plus the man's name will forever be linked with a notorious multiple homicide in which his wife was a primary victim and a nasty sex scandal of which he was guilty. Oh and let's not forget that both of his parents perished in the Holocaust. But none of that should obscure the fact that Polanski is a damn good director who for 50 years has been cranking out some wonderful motion pictures.

There is a pattern to Polanski's films the discussion of which is a spoiler in and of itself so you are now fully warned. There are no happy endings, at least among the eight films that make up this list of my favorite Polanski films and the several others that I watched. The main character either doesn't live happily ever after or doesn't live period. While Polanski has taken a lot more than his fair share of knocks in life he has also been an internationally celebrated success since the early 1960s. The horrible childhood memories of living in Nazi occupied Warsaw and the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the notorious Manson family are more than enough to make a bitter cynic out of any person. But Polanski's has never seemed angry or morose. Indeed his movies reflect a passionate artist who is meticulous and inspired. The endings may not be happy but the films are not somber or dark or even pessimistic.

Polanski succeeds as a director in large part because he uses excellent source material and often collaborates with top notch screenwriters like Robert Towne. Billy Wilder suggested that it is the screenplay that makes the film more than the auteur and Polanski's work is a strong supporting argument for that contention. He is clearly working from strong scripts.

Polanski takes on a variety of subject matters in various settings. Just these eight films alone represent such diverse times and places as Los Angeles in the 1930s, Scotland in the middle ages, Poland during WWII, England in the late 19th century, and contemporary London, Paris and New York.

Polanksi's films are not dominated by setting, character, music or atmosphere but are a blending of all these elements and more in whatever way best serves the story as a whole. While his films do not end happily for the characters they do for the audience. None are depressing and all are in some fashion or another memorable. I can't wait to see his next, Venus in Fur.

Chinatown (1974). "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown." The hero of our story, Detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) lives to fight another day but evil triumphs in this '70s version of film noir that turns the genre on its head. Evil is personified by Noah Cross (John Huston) who has fathered a child with his daughter (Faye Dunaway) and wouldn't you know it he lives and its his daughter who takes a fatal bullet. Chinatown has surpassed greatness and lives in the rarefied air of classics, a status it richly deserves.

Tess (1979). It's got tragedy written all over it. You really want the title character (Natassia Kinski) to be able to settle down and experience a true they-lived-happily-ever-after denouement but you can also sense that's not happening. It's a shame. She's a nice kid and has continually gotten jacked around by men, a gender notorious for its lack of kindness toward women. Tess does not make it easier on herself suffering as she does from the dangerous flaws of honesty and pride. The ravages of fortune and the hectoring of one man gets to be too much and she finally commits murder. The film ends with her capture and the information that she was subsequently hung. Truly one of the most beautiful tragedies ever filmed.

Repulsion (1965). This is a brutally honest film about a woman who totally flips her lid and kills two people. So no one's perfect. A young woman (Catherine Deneuve) lives with her sister in a London flat. She has a good job, a suitor and is drop dead gorgeous. But she's also got serious emotional problems that spin out of control when big sister goes off on vacation with her boyfriend. Two men, including her beaux, enter the apartment at various times and neither makes it out alive. It's a brilliant examination of someone first teetering then going completely over the edge.

The Ghost Writer (2010). You talk about the bad guys winning....I'm going to trot out a tired old cliche and aver that this is a criminally underrated film that should have been showered with awards. Ewan McGregor plays a journalist who is hired to ghost write the memoirs of a Tony Blair like former British PM. He slowly begins to uncover some serious political chicanery and for planning an expose he is the victim of a rather untimely "accident."

MacBeth (1971). You may have heard of this play and its author, one William Shakespeare. You may also be aware this is one of his tragedies and tragedies do not, by definition, turn out well. One can make the case that MacBeth gets what's coming to him. This is one of the finest adaptations of a Shakespeare play I've ever seen and I can't wait to get a gander at its new Criterion edition coming soon (Hey Criterion! Send me a copy and I'll say nice things about it and you. Promise.)

Rosemary's Baby (1968). Let's put it this way: an innocent woman (Mia Farrow) gives birth to the devil's baby. Bleak enough for you? Oh but there's more. By the end of the film she seems perfectly ready to raise satan's spawn, she has given in to the forces of darkness. Rosemary's Baby is spooky. Mostly because it seems so real -- not that I believe for a second in a prince of darkness (well aside from Dick Cheney) but the tone of the movie suggests reality as horror not fantasy as horror as marked by the titular character's shout of "this is really happening!" while in a supposed slumber the seed is being planted.

The Pianist (2002). Okay well at last we have a hero who survives, is on the winning side, continues a successful career and no devil is born. Yeah that's nice but then again he did have to make it through the Holocaust so it's not like we're dancing in the aisles as the closing credits roll. Adrien Brody stars in the true story of a famous Jewish Polish pianist whose life is one of millions ripped asunder by the Nazis. All manner of horror is visited upon him and his family and friends and neighbors in Warsaw. He lives but to have gone through such horrors hardly suggests a victory.

The Tenant (1976).  Polanksi is the star as well as the director in his third film about apartment dwelling gone bad. Very bad. It follows Repulsion -- set in London -- and the New York based Rosemary's Baby. This is set in Paris and the evil villain seems to be the apartment itself which sets the tenant in the same direction as his predecessor in the apartment -- taking a swan dive out the window. It is eerie, strange, atmospheric and like most Polanksi films, brilliantly executed.

Items I Can't Live Without and Thanks for Asking

Got the below email the other day. I re-print it in full except of course I have redacted the name of the company which will get no free publicity from me. Rather than reply directly to them I have chosen to do so right here. By the way the subject line of the email they sent was "Awesome Blog!" I much appreciate such kind words though I'll bet dollars to donuts that they've never taken a peak at it beyond finding that it existed and getting my email address.

Hi there Richard, 

My name is Alexandra, and I am the community manager for REDACTED. We are a new company that ships awesome REDACTED in custom wooden crates! Our crates hold all sorts of items that will please any guy--and instantly make you the best gift giver ever!

We like to think of our crates as a survival kit. Something someone needs the most, with items they couldn’t live without. With that being said, we would love to hear what you would pack in your own personal survival kit! Whether it be your toothbrush or those chocolate-covered pretzels, we want to know what items are absolute necessities for you!  If you were only able to keep 4-5 of your must have, most essential items, what would they be, and why?

As you can probably tell, this survival kit doesn’t need to include any matches or emergency blankets, so have fun with it and get creative! In your blog post, be sure to include what items made the cut and why! Feel free to include any images in your post to show your readers and us what you absolutely cannot live without.

We love sharing our favorite posts on social, so please let me know if you’re interested and I can send along some more info :) 

Talk with you soon,

Alexandra

Dear Alexandra: First of all I couldn't live without good sized stashes of heroin, coke and meth so those would be my priorities. Of course I'd want a .44 magnum to protect whatever I've got in the chest so there's that. I hate to be without my Deluxe First Lady porn collection which is my stash of erotic photos and drawings of America's first ladies. Mrs. Coolidge in nothing but panties is the highlight of the set.

My box need also contain a death ray to exterminate those who try to use my blog for their commercial purposes. Pixie dust is also nice for those nights when fantasy is on the menu. Speaking of which I couldn't be minus my his and hers bondage equipment -- never leave home without it -- am I right? I also find counterfeit cash comes in handy. I prefer tens and twenties. A few vials of tiger's blood is a necessity to provide that special boost that us gents sometimes need. I like to have a switchblade just in case. Oh and while we're at it my favorite garrote in case I come across someone on my hit list. For light entertainment an eight track of some dirges sung by Bulgarian monks and a copy of Mein Kampf by that Hitler fellow.

What else? Spats, spurs, fake mustaches, piano wire, live scorpions, snake venom, a litle pink tutu, a codpiece, haggis, a colostomy bag, embalming fluid, an acetylene torch and a ball peen hammer. Oh yes a toothbrush.
Thanks for asking.
Sincerely Yours,
Phineas J.Peabody III
(call me PP)

Let's All Dance - Commuting With Angels

Let's dance put on your red shoes and dance the blues
Let's dance to the song 
they're playin' on the radio
Let's sway 
while color lights up your face
Let's sway 
sway through the crowd to an empty space
-- From Let's Dance by David Bowie

Skinny middle aged white guy with a long pony tail of grating hair. Wearing jeans ass is so flat there's no bulge in his seat. Wears long sleeve tee shirt and hiking boots. He's standing between two other men all are looking up at a building that's undergoing some renovation. They appear to be part of the crew doing the work. It's not yet 6:30 so they're getting an early start perhaps owing to a looming deadline. Guy with ponytail doesn't appear to be in charge but neither is he an underling. He's a basic sort of chap --or so it would appear -- neither renowned nor notorious for any deeds recent or late.

Up the street there's a homeless guy just getting up. He's slept in a filthy sleeping bag on filthy steps on a filthy street near downtown Berkeley which is itself generally quite filthy. The homeless man has scraggly black hair and a long tangled beard. He us underweight his tattered clothes hang loosely. One can almost see the odor that emanates from him. He is stretching and apparently getting ready to face another day of near starvation and embarrassment though it seems possible that mental illness would relieve him of the burden of true self awareness.

There is a young woman hurrying toward the bus station she is Asian in her 20s wearing an expensive looking bright blue blouse and light white sweater. She has on very short pants that reveal shapely fit legs. Her sandals look chic and perhaps expensive. There is a purse hanging from one shoulder and she's clutching a smart phone. The woman seems especially happy but also in something of a hurry. She goes down the escalator of the BART station smiling all the way perhaps having had an especially good evening that has only just ended.

I'm sitting on a concrete slab of a bench waiting for my train. I summon angels to capture this modern moment and make it special for all eternity. So when the train comes the man with ponytail is sitting in it next to the homeless man and the young Asian woman. I board the train and sit and watch as the threesome levitates and the train roof opens up for them and they dance.

It's a beautiful dance accompanied by a large orchestra which has appeared in the adjoining car. The trio pause only to embrace and caress one another and spit fiery balls of incandescent rock skyward.
My fellow passengers are oblivious to the performance. They sit sullenly looking at their phones or at magazines or books or their laps or sleep fitfully despite the orchestra. But at the first stop an elderly African American boards my car and immediately joins the dancers. They now pair off but constantly change partners as the dance becomes increasingly complex and beautiful.

Transcendent.

When at last the train reaches my stop the dancers descend back to the train and disappear into a mist. I am alone. And so my work day has almost begun. And so the angels glide alongside me as I take the trolley and then walk to the school and teach and laugh and write and smile and read and talk and remember the magic of my morning.....

....commute.

You Don't Wanna Be That Guy Pissing in the Corner of the Bookstore

“I’ve learned that life is one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Flanders was dead.” - -Homer J Simpson.

You don't wanna be that guy pissing in the corner of the bookstore.

There was one once. At least one that I know of. There could have been people pissing in corners of bookstores for centuries all over the world for all I know. Hell it could be an everyday occurrence now.

My first job — I was a junior in high school at the time— was working in a bookstore. One day I overheard a story about how someone had recently been caught peeing in the corner. I never saw the aftermath and don’t know any other details. All I know was what I heard which — again — is that a guy pissed in the corner of a bookstore. When you’re 16 years old working in your first job and surrounded by people two, three times your age you don’t ask a lot of questions aside from those necessary to do your job right.

But imagine the trajectory of a life that leads you to peeing in a bookstore. Somewhere along the line your brain had to have gone haywire or you had just gotten unimaginably drunk. My freshman year in college in the dorm there was the story that this girl had slept with some guy in said dorm and in the middle of the night he awoke to see her squatting over the floor just a few feet from the bed peeing. The bathroom was only a few feet further away. But when you’re that drunk --maybe especially if you’re 18 or whatever….

Many BART stations have areas that positively reek of piss. These are, one imagines, the result of drunks who can’t find a bathroom or the homeless. I’ve seen homeless women peeing in the street and on an outdoor BART platform. Men of course will piss anywhere. Just the other day in broad daylight there was a guy peeing in the parking lot of an Assembly of God church. The thing about it was that he seemed for all appearances to be part of a crew that was doing some work there. The idiot just couldn’t be bothered going inside or finding a secluded spot. Maybe he had prayed to god to make him invisible while he pissed and it didn’t take.

But still the notion of a guy pissing in the corner of a bookstore is something I’ve never been able to shake several decades on. That seems especially egregious. For one thing books are sacred. I don’t know that he peed on books but just the idea that he was peeing right near them is sacrilegious. About the only worse place to take a whizz would be in a grocery store or in a crowded place like a theater.

I always imagined the guy as being fairly old and someone who’d been jacked around by life and couldn’t handle misfortune and so he went screwy. It happens. Some people can’t take a punch in life. One bad break and they snap. I’ve had some tough blows but somehow am resilient or stupid enough to just get back in the game. Ya know how many matches I missed in my soccer career through injury? Zero. I generally miss about as many days of work. I just show up. Around where I work people are always sending out mass emails asking for someone to cover a class. Flu. Cold. Friend in town. Fishing trip. Hangnail. Bad dream. Any excuse not to show up. Me, I like the work and believe in doing what I’m hired to do. It’s not in my job description to not come in because I had a crappy night. Vacations are another matter. I’ll take what’s coming to me.

Anyway I got sidetracked again. It's weird how some things stick in our minds for dozens of years. Too often it can be something said to us out of anger or insensitivity or ignorance. It can be hard to shake resentments once they fossilize. But there are also images that stay with us from what we see or --  like in the case of the peeing man -- something we hear. I can see some of the details of things my dad told me about as if I had been there. The question is why some things stick.

I guess a guy peeing in a bookstore is evocative. For me of course its not only the picture of him in flagrante delicto but as I said earlier who the poor sap was. To get to that point in your life....Like the guy on the BART train yesterday walking through the cars angrily calling out Curtis. He was wearing tattered clothes that along with his misplaced threats to an absent opponent suggested a sad story.

Maybe its just not worth thinking about. Either you can do something to help people who pee in bookstores or people who yell on subway trains or you can help the mentally ill in general or you just have to put your head down and plow forward with life. What you want to do for sure is to be thankful that you aren't relieving yourself in public and make sure there's nothing that will send you down that road. Many of us are more vulnerable to mental and emotional issues than we realize or care to acknowledge. In fact a sure sign of a loon is the conviction that there's nothing wrong. My mom went off her nut and there was no convincing her that she was anything but fine. I've always been saner than I thought. I've frequently expected to be found certifiable when in truth I've actually been managing just fine (or so I'm told).

Odds are I'll never piss in the corner of a bookstore. You probably won't either. But if you do, maybe its time to see a doctor.

Ziggy Hitchhiked on Acid And That Was Me 40 Years Ago a Mostly True Story With Lots of Gabul Fabbing

Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Wierd and Gilly,
And The Spiders from Mars.
He played it left hand, but made it too far,
Became the special man,
Then we were Ziggy's Band.
-- From Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie


In the middle of bad acid trip and hitching down highway five on a hot Spring day in 1974. The decision to drop LSD before thumbing back from Chico to Berkeley seemed fucking crazy as I watched cars that looked like metal monsters zoom past me. Especially since I was hungry, had no money, no beer and no one with me. Bowie's Ziggy Stardust was flowing up and down my brain although the lyrics were looping around themselves not making any sense and my thumb at times looked like it was the size of  a football and the heat felt like it was frying me and my shirt -- oh my fucking god my shirt -- it was a light gray with white buttons but it was pulsating -- I swear to god. I couldn't tell the difference between my sweat and my breath which was a weird thing to think about making -- as it didn't  -- any sense. No sense. Then a cop pulled over.

He was small town local cop from whatever the hell little city this was I'd been let off near by a friend who was visiting an uncle in the town. The cop got out of his car and looked about nine feet tall and a thousand pounds and had tusks and sunglasses that reflected the universe and I was more in awe than scared. I put my arm down. It felt futile to hitch with a cop approaching me.

Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan, he could lick 'em by smiling
He could leave 'em to hang
Here came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan.

"Hey there son," he said in a voice that sounded like 12 echoes reverberating through the whole Sacto Valley. The cop was trying to seem friendly, he even smiled but it was awkward and had he just turned into a pig in front of my eyes? No way he was like a pig cop which was too weird given how some people referred to cops as pigs back then. I said something to him like "glthchplfllg." I hoped it sounded intelligible and not insulting and he was growing as he approached me then shrinking to the size of a turnip and I was freaking out but what could I do standing there with a cop approaching me and cars careening past with waves of steal flowing out of them.

"Son, you know you can't hitchhike on the highway?" The words swirled around outside my ear and zipped through my brain yet somehow registered. I hadn't mentioned that I was tripping on acid to him, had I? But he knew. I knew he knew. Why play this game with me? I was going to jail for drugs for trippin' in public. I was toast man, toast. I was also thinking how Nixon was president and that he was an asshole and this cop and Nixon were probably friends. Both pigs and assholes and pig assholes and I was just about to go to jail forever. My dad would not understand and I was never coming down from this acid trip which was now starting to mix with bad reality to be really really bad -- I was fucked.

"Sorry officer I didn't know there was a law about that. I thought you could hitch anywhere." I got that out and it sounded coherent and I couldn't believe I'd done it. I was so fucking relieved.

"Well you can't. You can be at on ramp gabul fabbing roxtlyem schlpooopm...." I had started to lose what he was saying and it was freaking me out then...Then. He searched me. Thank whatever that I wasn't holding though I'm pretty sure he was checking for weapons. As if. "Gabul fabbing...nxchpuky, there son, okay?"

Then he told me that he should bring me in as in arrest me -- implication: he's a nice guy -- but that he wasn't going to be a hard ass with me because...again I don't know, I was just trippin' off the fact that his hat was growing straight up and had reached a cloud. Why didn't he feel this happening? And had he been talking to me for like two days and was I over their on the overpass watching this conversation or was I here the whole time and holy hell I would never get acid from Ned's friend again; hell I would never ever touch the stuff again. Ever. That is if I ever came down from this trip. Hell no I wouldn't so much as have a glass of wine with dinner if I ever managed to come down off this. And why did he keeps saying "gabul fabbing nouyiexch pglifft"?

So where were the spiders while the fly tried to break our balls?
Just the beer light to guide us.
So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands?

Next thing I know I'm sitting in the backseat of the cop car which is weird because its like a cavern inside and I was looking at me from somewhere else. It was in reality (whatever that is) a really short ride though for a second I think he's taking me all the way to Berkeley. The giant pig cop drops me off at a place where I can hitchhike and wishes me a nice day and shit and I thank him a whole lot and he speeds off and I wonder did I say anything really bad like calling him a pig and guess I didn't because he was nice to me and is my hair sweating, is oil coming out of it? Where am I? Is this me hitching or am I watching me and if I am where is my body I can't find my body and am I in it? Oh I'm not so sure and there are trails coming off the passing cars....

Then one stops. It's a big van. The door on the side slides open. "Hi"  comes from these shrill girlish  voices and it's a bunch of young queers. "We're going to San Diego!" they trill. "Come on in." "Uhh no thanks I'm just going to Berkeley." The door closes and the van is gone.

That was too weird in normal circumstances. Trippin' it was utterly outrageous. If it really happened. Who could tell. But San Diego sounded normal, so I think it did.

Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we were Voodoo
The kids was just crass,
He was the naz
With God given ass
He took it all too far
But boy could he play guitar.


My arm goes back out with a thumb up and it looks like its elongated. The sun is changing colors and why did I drop acid in the morning a morning I was going to hitch 175 miles? It was a few minutes or a few hours or maybe a few months later that another car stopped. Two guys in the front each several years older than me. They say nothing as I get in and tell them I'm going to Berkeley. "Your lucky day we're going to Oakland so you're set."

I finally felt relaxed as they pulled onto the highway. Finally feeling fine except I couldn't tell if someone was sitting next to me and it was me sitting next to me. The guys up front were talking as if I wasn't there or at least as if they didn't give a rat's ass if I was hearing them. From what I could gather in my psychedelic state they had shared a woman the night before.

It was hard to sort out the circumstances and whether the woman in question was a prostitute but it was pretty clear they had enjoyed themselves had a lot of sex with her and were reliving the glory. Even stone cold sober and undrugged this discussion would have been strange to me but heavily under certain influences my mind was awhirl at what they were talking about. I was 20 and had long since lost my virginity but a threesome seemed like something from movies and not anything in real life. But it also occurred to me they were just making shit up to mess with my head. If so I could have assured them that they didn't need to do a damn thing to mess with my head given the state it was in.

Making love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man
I had to break up the band

I'd been with them for maybe 20 miles maybe 200 maybe 2000 light years when -- without checking with me if it was cool -- they pulled off to stop at a market. I'm sitting there feeling everything but the worst part is when its nothing like I'm straight all of a sudden and I know this isn't right that I'm still in the middle of the trip so feeling normal isn't at all normal and is ultimately quite terrifying and why should they have asked me if it was cool to go to a store. It was their car. Gabul fabbing. One of 'em dashed into the store and minutes later returned with a bulging shopping bag. The passenger pulled out two long necked sweating bottles of Budweiser. It was at that moment that I realized my mouth felt like the Mojave Desert. When the driver asked "you want one, man?" I do believe I was the happiest person on the planet Earth. I gladly and gratefully took a bottle and nothing has ever tasted better.

Best of all, fears of a total mid acid trip freak out had vanished. My high had mellowed instantly.

The rest of the car ride was like skimming down a water slide in slow motion with colors dancing above my head. They were talking but it all sounded like "gabul fabbing and blahs and yaks" so whatever. It was getting cooler outside as we neared the Bay Area. When we got to Berkeley I was coming down from the high and it was a soothing nestling back into Earth. Onto. Among. I don't know maybe amid or amidst. Anyway I was on Earth, even my brain was settling into a semblance of normal with very little gabul fabbing. Though still some.

They dropped me off in downtown Berkeley about a twenty minute walk from my Dad's house. I couldn't go straight there though because my mind was still spending some of its time dancing in the cosmos. I walked over to a park and bummed a smoke off some hippie and we talked for a little bit. After awhile his old lady showed up and she was really nice and I ended up telling 'em about my trip and how the acid was wearing off and I was killing time before going to my Dad's place. They thought I was a really cool dude which some people did back then when I was high. Finally they had to split and I was ready to go too.

My dad was glad to see me and gave me beer and after I showered we went out to dinner with my step mom. It had all worked out, the day I mean, and I went to sleep thinking the world was a pretty okay place if you were at all lucky.

Ziggy played guitar

I'd Like a Bag For My Banana Please

Do you want a bag?

For a banana? I was buying one banana because I forgot to bring one from home. And I was asked if I wanted a bag. For one banana. I said no thanks and put the banana in a coat pocket.

Here's your receipt.

My receipt for the purchase of one banana. Seventy nine cents.

Yes I'll need that for my files. That banana is a business expense as I'll be eating it at work so I'll be deducting it. You know what. That banana needs me, its a dependent. I'll be declaring it on my taxes. Give me the receipt. And I want a bag for it and since you now charge for bags I'll need a receipt for the purchase of the bag. Also can I get an escort out of the store? Someone might jack me for my banana. You'd better call me a cab I don't want to have to walk the remaining two blocks to work carrying a banana with or without a bag. By the way you forget to ask me if I want to donate a quarter of million dollars to save starving babies. They do that now at a lot of stores. Ask if you'd like to donate to some worthy cause as you're checking out. Maybe I wasn't asked because I was paying cash (remember that?). By the way you didn't ask how I wanted my 21 cents in change. You just gave me two dimes and a penny. Maybe I wanted a couple of nickels or four nickels. Or three nickels and six pennies. For all you know I'm hoarding nickels. What kind of store doesn't ask if you want nickels? Nickels have some heft. Unlike dimes which are so damn thin. Dimes are like anorexic fashion models. Nickels are sturdy. Another thing I missed out on by paying in cash is being asked by if I approved of the amount I was being charged. I'm going to start saying no. I want to pay less. Knock a couple of dollars off the price and then you can charge my card. Otherwise it's no dice. Speaking of annoying questions. The clerk forgot to ask the most important question of all: did you find everything all right? There's another question I'm going to start changing my answer to. Like today I would have said -- had the clerk shown the compassion to ask -- no, I had a deuce of a time finding this banana. I looked up and down every aisle before discovering that you'd hidden these bananas where no one without x-ray vision could possibly see them. It was pure chance that the monkey in your store led me to them. Really this did-you-find-everything-all-right question is a poser. Are stores suddenly concerned about the vision of their customers? Our sense of direction? Or just our intellect in general? If we say that it was particularly difficult to find the canned yak, are they going to ban us from their store for gross stupidity? That's it, they're trying to trip us up. They're going to start banning imbeciles. My advice: play it cool -- even if you couldn't find something at all act like everything is jake. No, no problems at all, it took me less than a month to find it. But hey thanks for asking and can I have a bag for this ten cent pencil and a receipt and can I make a donation to save the puppies and for the love of god keep the change.

(This post is lovingly dedicated to my wife to whom I'll just say no that that is not a banana in my pants.)

The Deer Hunter -- Stripped of Controversy it is a Magnificent Film

Never dreaming that I shall be clarifying and condensing that chronicle of simple things through which I blundered so diffidently. - - From Memories of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon.

A movie can carry a lot of baggage with it. We read the book. We first saw it with someone we subsequently broke up with. We last saw it on a day when we got some bad news. We read all about the controversy surrounding the film and didn't see it for years. We read a spoiler before seeing it the first time.

Perhaps the ideal way to see a film for the first time is to know absolutely nothing about it. Our mind completely clear of any preconceptions. Of course that pure virginal experience can still be tainted by events after the movie -- someone we respect has a diametrically different view of it or we subsequently read a horror story about the director's behavior on set.

I first saw Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) upon its initial theatrical release unaware of much of anything other than that it was a critically acclaimed movie centering around the Vietnam War. Back then a film's critical acclaim didn't mean so much to me and being about Vietnam was interesting but not a selling point. The US had only left Vietnam a few years before and movies having anything to do with the fiasco were only just beginning to be made. And in truth, while the war was a central issue to the film, less than a third of it was set there.

The Deer Hunter provided one of the most profound cinematic experiences of my young adulthood. The scenes in Vietnam -- especially of course the Russian Roulette ones -- made my heart pound palms sweat and imagination race. I wanted to see the movie a second time and never see it again. I wanted to think and talk about it and avoid it completely. I had nightmares about it.

Then came the controversy -- or at least my awareness of it. The Deer Hunter, it was said, was racist as it suggested that the North Vietnamese were sadistic stick figures who forced prisoners to play Russian Roulette. Also the closing scene where the characters sing God Bless America was maudlin sappy patriotism. Surely this was a pro war film for the right and violated my political beliefs. Now I would have to turn my back on the The Deer Hunter and decry it. Which for decades I did.

It was not until I discovered Cimino's subsequent film, Heaven's Gate (1980), a year and a half ago that I even considered re-visiting The Deer Hunter. Happily I did.

The Deer Hunter, despite the controversy that surrounded it, was highly acclaimed by critics and earned numerous awards including the academy award for best picture. While hardly forgotten today its telling that I got my DVD copy of it for under $4 and there were no commemorative special editions for its 20th or 25th anniversary or any other anniversary and I see no plans for one in the future. I can only speculate whether this is a result of  the controversy surrounding it.

The cast was top rate with Robert DeNiro in the lead and a supporting cast led by Christopher Walken (who won an Oscar for his role) Meryl Streep and in his final film role before his death from cancer, John Cazale (this was one of five films Cazale appeared in and they all were nominated for best picture with three of them winning).

The film is long but only if you look at the time of the film. If you just watch it The Deer Hunter is just as long as it needs to be. It needs to take its time in the small steel town in Pennsylvania at the job at the wedding at the bar on the deer hunting trip. And of course in Vietnam and back home again. You need to become acquainted with these American working class people as they go through their rituals and laugh and cry and drink drink drink. It is not idyllic but it is happy and it is American and there is a spirit of life to it and thus there is the incredible shock when suddenly we see the boys in Vietnam. At war. With death and fire and bullets and the enemy their new companions. The horror of capture. The rats the confinement the cruelty. Okay it was an exaggeration in reality the Russian Roulette was not done but movies should bot be taken literally. The idea of using Russian Roulette came before it was decided that the movie would be set in Vietnam. This is also a film rich in symbolism that viewers can explore in depth or ignore at their pleasure and the Russian Roulette scenes are rife with symbolism.

And that God Bless America ending is infinitely more ironic than patriotic.

The Deer Hunter is a hefty film. It weighs on the psyche. It is heavy with our culture and with meaning. It reflects the rape of innocence that war brings to a society. It is filled with loyalty friendship and the degeneration of the human mind in the face of utter horror. It is about hope and promise and love.

Cimino became a Hollywood golden boy with the success of The Deer Hunter, a sterling reputation that went straight down the toilet with the incredible budget fiasco that was Heaven's Gate as well as the tepid response to that film. Okay not so much tepid as scathing. That film has been restored re-released and hailed by many including yours truly. It's Criterion edition is spectacular and it was one of my favorite films of all time. The Deer Hunter is also a film I now revere as I am able to watch it mindless of any controversy extraneous to the cinematic experience. I can recommend it without qualification.