Another Dumptruck To Unload My Head

Check the date in the line from this movie... "June twenty-ninth. I gotta get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be 50 pushups each morning, 50 pullups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight."

Sometimes people's acts wear a little thin.

You go along for years and years and everything is just fine and then you have to sit back once in a while and say "...know what? I don't really care for that shit right now." And maybe it was building up for a while and you just didn't notice. Maybe you get tired of explaining yourself to some intransigent dolt over and over. Or maybe you just don't care what people think of you after a while. It is also possible, or more likely, they may be thinking the same thing about you. So comes a time when it's different. Things have to be different.

I don't do a good job on my friendships. I let them slide sometimes. They go out. It's like I know a lot of people and everything but there aren't any real close friends. No confidants. Nobody I'd make a fund raiser for. Nobody outside of family I'd cry for if they croaked. That's true in my walking around life and my internet associations. I can have fun and talk to people and participate but I'm not ever really excited about it. Sometimes people's acts wear a little thin.

It's like my wife says sometimes, I'd make a great hermit. Being solitary never bugged me. I never get lonely. I never have. So people come and go and if they aren't here where I am they're somewhere else and it isn't any more significant than that. Ever just want to look at someone and say - you're just so full of shit. But if you do that it's over. Really over. So you don't. Plus I never get bored. I don't understand bored. People saying they wouldn't want to retire or anything because they'd get bored. What the hell. I never have enough time to do the things I want to do and work is just a big bother.

The plain fact is that people come and go in your life. I mean you hang onto the family you chose (spouse, kids) and that's the most important thing of anything. But the family you didn't get to pick can basically sometimes go spinning off into the cosmos and, outside of the nostalgia thing, the grief is pretty over after a while. Bad thing is it's been the same thing with friends for me. Maybe it's the ones I pick. I mean - the one guy I was best man for stopped having anything to do with me because I used to beat him at games once in a while, can you believe it, and the one thing you don't do is beat him at games. So yeah my picks haven't probably been the smartest.

You know people get in their cars and their life is so ordered. There's clean sheets and they like their coffee just so and they're in charge and they're picky as shit about every little detail and they know everything better than anyone around them and I just don't get it. Can anybody really be that together? Does anybody want to be? Oh yes in the building trades we see those types a lot. "I want iron balusters on my staircase but I like the white poplar can you get me a picture of white iron balusters and bring a sample to my office..." Er... no, because there's no such a thing as a white iron baluster unless you have it painted and do you want that meeting before or after you go to Cape Cod and do your nails?

See what I'm talking about? I have a mean streak. She's being very nice and just doesn't know how it works and really hasn't done anything nasty or petty to me but I go right off the end of it and characterize the poor woman like that. Nasty that way I guess.

So all this isn't really a lament as much as it is a heads up. Summer's here and the time is right, etc. If I drop people like a diseased limb they shouldn't feel bad. They're really not missing anything. I make acquaintances not friends really. I haven't found one person who could do it and probably I never tried. I know hundreds of people from all parts of my life - maybe thousands and we talk and laugh and shake hands and sit and drink and everything but I'm not sure. There's places nobody is allowed. I never ask for help. I try to give it but I'm usually too dumb to see you need it. There's no "go to" person. But I never thought of having one. No harm, no foul.

Where's This Been?

This morning I'm turning left on my arrow and the guy coming right at us from the other direction decides to blow his red light and turn with us. I pull immediately in front of him - hard - and he brakes harder and leans on his horn. We get caught side by side by a train. He's glaring at me from his SUV, I'm laughing and pointing at him from my MINI. He buttons down his automatic window and yells something that was probably pretty stupid like "This is an SUV, jackass". I really didn't hear him but it was kind of along the lines of "I have a big car" or something. I say, very calmly but clearly, "you had a red light you rolled right through and you give me the horn. What's it like in that universe you live in?" He swore some more and gave me the finger. I didn't feel like it this morning, so I just smiled. Normally I'd get all pissed off and really spoil a good part of my day hatin' on him, but I was in a good spot and even he couldn't ruin it. It's ok. Tonight when he's all alone he'll realize what he did but I'll still be a jackass in his mind. Oh well. Can't explain it, just wasn't interested in his shit this morning.

Hey where's this been? First five tracks on shuffle for the iPod. New time period. You rate it per the scale / only rule is you have to wait until the hook before you knee jerk it. You knee jerk it, you lose. I'm not sure if they're repeating yet. I'm NOT going back to look. Give me a break.

A= I'd hit it
B= Good One
C= Better than just ok
D= Meh-be
E= Yawn
F= Please no more
G= What the hell is THIS crap??

1. Proof of punk's rockabilly roots. Covered by Sid once.
2. Post Clash Jones.
3. Unexpected on the album when it came out. Think John Fahey.
4. I like quite a few of theirs.
5. Original King of the Emo kids? Yeah, but I like the guitar.

EDIT TO ADD: I'm gettin' kinda pissed at iLike (what used to be LALA) for cutting down the versions sporadically to 30 second samples and I'm thinking of going all youtube on this. If you have the same problem let me know. These guys are turning into a bunch of assholes.)

Pewpewpewpewpew

I'm butchering a chicken tonight. I watched the video. Cut thighs and legs off (2 cuts). Cut thighs from legs (2 cuts). Remove backbone (2 cuts). Separate breasts (right down the middle, 1 cut). Cut wings from breasts (2 cuts). Yes it was a hormone-free, non-antibiotic, free range, bug and worm eating bird. I'm grilling it. Lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, onion, celery salt, pepper. Come on over. I can't eat this whole damn thing.

The song known as "Band of Gold" - I'm sorry, for a moldy oldie from a generally prosaic era - has just about the strangest damned lyrics of any song I ever heard. Taken from the shelter of her mother... who she never knew. Kissed by her husband after the vows... slept in separate rooms on their Honeymoon. And she's dreaming of a time when he'll come back and love her "like you tried before." Presumably tried and failed? Why "tried", exactly? Separate rooms? You never knew your mother but she sheltered you. Um. What the hell is this drunken crazy lady TALKING about???

A guy walks into my office yesterday introducing himself as a commercial realty guy been in the business over 20 years and hands me his card. Something about his name strikes me as familiar. I ask him where he went to school. High school / college - no match. grade school? Paydirt. Turns out I went to school with him in 4th grade. Strange? A little. Also turns out my youngest daughter dated his son when they were in high school and though not dating any more are still friends. In fact I'm a "friend" of his son's on Facebook. Now THAT's weird.

So I'm on the committee of this 40th reunion next year. I made contact with our old drama teacher and we had an absolutely great talk on the phone. He sounded very glad to hear from someone from those days. Our group's big claim to fame is that Rocco Sisto (Sopranos, Donny Brasco, Carlito's Way, NYPD Blue / note the high school he graduated from heh heh) was in that "troupe" (bleh I hate that spelling) with us all and we were a pretty deep well to pick from, albeit just a bunch of teenagers. So I'm contacting some of the folks from that group that were in my class ('71) to maybe have a little reception for the old guy (the teacher, not Rocco) at my place next year when the reunion is on. And I come upon a woman who was in a bunch of plays and crews and whose son is a working actor in NY. My memory serves well. She was a funny, though shy person, who was more than competent and went on to be, from all accounts, a wonderful teacher. She's contacted everyone of us through Facebook and everything looks nice and happy. From which I got one "I'll get back to you" and two stone cold silences in response to my attempts to get her to think about joining us at my little shindig. Nothing. Nyetski. Admittedly it isn't until next year, but this was a friendly and gregarious and conscientious person once upon a time with whom I had no bad experiences - that I can remember. I want to be able to have a good response from the old crowd before i mention it to the old teacher of ours. There's time and maybe it will clear up later but I'm confused.

It happened in 1997. How the hell did I miss this?

/ America?

In the classic style of debate you begin with a declaration (RESOLVED) and then the participants explain why the resolution is affirmed or denied. If you know anybody who would be interested in this send them along.

RESOLVED: The American experiment is over and has failed.

To affirm: The divisions that exist in the general society today are so toxic and severe that the country has ceased to exist as a united community capable of solving its problems and/or defending itself. In this and the preceding two Presidential administrations people have become more and more comfortable with vocalizing the idea that the death of prominent public officials would not be unwelcome. No reconciliation or co-operation seems possible or likely between blacks and whites, liberals and conservatives, or even amongst neighbors. The facts of its history are angry fuel for debate, accepted scientific conclusions are challenged on the basis of faith and the effectiveness of our schools is and has been falling behind the rest of the world because of it. Charity is given lip service and the accepted trend in society has turned more and more to self-protection as a trump over group survival. The less fortunate are ridiculed, aid to them is viewed suspiciously and the divide between rich and poor continues to increase. The cumulative condition of these and other aspects of modern American life have left the United States of America a nation in name only, held together by a facade of unity and the weight of its military power presented to the world. In actuality there is no longer a country here beyond its basic functions and proximities

To deny: The action of democracy is always messy and loud. It has been this way since the start. That voices seem angrier is merely a result of the abundance of new social media that prevails in the culture, and a shift to people being more comfortable expressing their opinions. There have always been extremes on all sides of an issue and these newer social networks have merely given those extremes - which have always existed - a ready platform and pulpit that never existed before. But the appearance of a lack of civility and common purpose only seems more prominent because those extremes are always the more sensational picture to watch. In times of crisis the American people, despite their differences, always band behind their President regardless of his party and work to fix their problems. America exists and remains as it has always been; a little loud, probably too brash, and forever free. Our freedoms are based on our ability to dissent, to protest, to argue, and to campaign for what we believe in. This can be frustrating at times, but it will always lead to a vibrant society. beneath the surface of discord great advances have been made and there is no reason to expect that to change any time in the future. America is not finished or over, even by a de facto measure, but in tune with its heritage and bound to keep it alive.

Affirm or deny.

Chirp!

"The only real problem people have is that we don't know where we are. You consider that you have enemies. You make plans to harm them. You argue violently about a piece of clothing or a haircut. You throw a food wrapper out a car window. You refuse to accept an apology. You willfully stop talking to someone just to teach them a lesson. You feel you have to instruct everybody. You watch for insults. You are your only concern. People make war. People rape. People steal. People would have others obey rules they themselves feel above. If you look at him the wrong way he will attack you. If you wear the wrong color shirt in that neighborhood you could die. If you are the wrong color skin you can't live on this street. And while all this is happening, in reality we are on a little crumb of dirt and mud, spinning in a vastness so large we can't see how or where it ends. Our sun in the sky is one of a billion trillion. Take a spaceship to the moon and when you look back it's a speck of blue dirt you've come from. And deep down inside that speck, which itself is lost in the incalculable vastness of black, dark and wonder, someone thinks they have enemies. Is making plans to harm them. Is arguing over a haircut. Is stealing. Is killing someone with the approval of the state. Is watching for the slightest insult. If we remembered where we were, compared to the magnitude of everything else known or seen, we'd value perspective, and get the hell out of each other's faces."

Sir Mudkip Farqhuar


"If you really did actually see yourself living on a teeny tiny little planet in the middle of the great big universe and that you're one big rock away from the atmosphere being sucked off into the sun you wouldn't be such an asshole."

Mitch

This I Believe

Running out of valuable posts and I think it's the weather. I want to be outside, even if only to smoke a cigar. Being outside is good for you. Eh I don't know. Here's what I believe...

1. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. There was no conspiracy.
2. President Bush did not plan 9/11. That's probably the dumbest thing I ever heard.
3. Heroin was not brought back from southeast Asia by the CIA to kill the anti-war movement. Heroin was in America before any of us knew there was such a thing as southeast Asia.
4. There's no such things as ghosts. Sorry, you're mad at me now, right? Show me the science.
5. President Obama is not a commie socialist Muslim born in Burkina Faso. Please.
6. Crop circles are done by very creative people. Not aliens or forces or fields or stuff that comes out of the ground.
7. The Bible is not literal truth. It is not meant to be a science book or a history book.
8. There are such things as UFOs, and until they are identified they are unidentified. If they're unidentified how can you assume they are alien spacecraft until they actually get identified?
9. There's no such thing as alien spacecraft. In case #8 didn't fill that void for you. Where's the science when science says it can't be?
10. Free Credit Report dot Com costs $19 a month. The caek is a lie.
11. The Earth is much older than 6000 years. Unless you want to take a balloon ride to the moon that will actually only last a couple of minutes.
12. Evolution happens. It's how we figured out how to breed dogs, stupid.
13. The pyramids were built by Egyptians. Not engineers from the planet Mongo.
14. Legitimate author's agents do not charge a reading fee. Clue 1.
15. Nobody is going to try to take away your guns. Calm down for God's sake.
16. Glen Beck doesn't actually believe any of his shit. But the money is too good to walk away from.
17. Michael Moore probably smells bad.
18. Little pills will not make your dick bigger. Little pills will not make your dick bigger.
19. You did not just win the Spanish lottery.
20. People text while sitting at a party because they are actually jerks. Anything that's better than whatever company they're in ought to be where they are at instead.
21. Leonardo da Vinci is not speaking to us through his paintings about anything. They're paintings.
22. In the ghost hunter television shows the noise you hear in the dark at the end of a long hall is a noise someone is making at the end of the hall.
23. News reports that the market is up or down for any specific reason are always a lie. Stocks of companies that make pins do not tank because Greece can't pay it's debts.
24. The BP oil catastrophe is the first time I can remember gas prices not skyrocketing at the pump because of an oil disaster. If a tanker carrying one twelfth the amount of crude oil already lost crashes on a rock gas goes up a dollar a gallon the next day. Something is off.
25. There is not and never was anyone named Xenu.

Welcome To My Whirl

I've taken the bull by the proverbials on this class reunion thing and trying to make contact with folks who were not part of the mainstream. We'll have our share of cheerleaders and stage wonks and ath-uh-leets. I am having some luck in at least finding some, the next question is getting them to respond. I'm talking about people who were a bit outside the usual in one way or another. I have a list of people I'd like to find who seemed to have gone their own way all along. I want them at my table. Wish me luck.

I may go into a period of no blog work for a while or I may not. It depends. May have a temporary priority shift any minute now. Let's just say a lot of slugging-away work finally paid off and I seem to have opened a water gate somewhere. If no entries for a while, blow us a kiss yeah?

Found this at a bookseller/buyer store last weekend. Sold $20 worth of books and bought it for $10. Walked out with $10 I didn't have and a very cool book. This is not L. Ron Hubbard the phonyass science fiction hack who invented a fake religion, scammed thousands, died in hiding and ruined any number of families because he was a fraud and a jerk. This is Elbert Hubbard who is no relation and started the Roycrofters. And it is very cool. He was quite the libertarian, turns out, but unlike the pie-in-the-sky naive dreamers that own that mantle now he was a realist. Do like much.

The real fun part about working on a 40th reunion is the amount of people who can't remember why they didn't get along with you and are just happy to be alive and remembered. I'm tired of the complaining (that I also did) about the facade that can exist in these situations, and am really starting to enjoy the "we better have a good time now cuz who the hell knows if any of us are here in 10 more years" attitude and am eating it up. Seriously. Yes there are folks who put on the needy face or what have you but the real cool thing are the folks who "get it" and are ready for a good time, recognizing that when all is said and done we're all bozos on this bus. (pretty neat how I put in a Firesign Theatre reference there eh?)

Had dinner at my youngest daughter's new place with her guy the sports fan this past weekend and had barbecue pizza! That was pretty amazing and she made it from scratch I guess. She also made a pizza that had avocado and veggies. I do not like avocado at all but I never say never and it was very good too. It's in the genes, this cooking thang. Played Scattergories, which I had never done before. That's not a bad game! Even if I did just play it for the first time because I live in a box.

OK with the rain and gray skies already yeah? I had to cut my eighteen-inch tall grass between thunderstorms Saturday. At least the tomatoes and peppers are growing furiously out in the garden. So far my 16" cedar border, a bit of catnip planted in one corner, and my diluted habanero pepper spray around the border of the garden after each rain is keeping the rabbits and squirrels out. We'll see once the fruit gets out. Damn squirrels and rabbits took one of every three tomatoes last time I planted a garden. Now it's war.

As to the writing - it was all a question of simplicity. You know that book - The Old Man and the Sea is just shy of 30,000 words and is a story about an old man who went fishing. It isn't a million things that flow in to a hundred ideas. It's about a guy who goes fishing - and not over a period of time but that one time he went fishing. An entire 30,000 words on a guy going fishing once. That's a beautiful thing.

5 Things You'll Kinda Regret Later

When I look at pictures people took of me at various stages of my life I sometimes have to cringe, not because of my general unpleasant visage alone(which there isn't anything I can do about, sorry to the eighteen people who have dropped my link over the years and never looked back - I don't actually blame you) - reason enough - but also and mostly for what the heck I was wearing or stylin' on about. Or thought I was.

You can already imagine what someone in my age bracket might be talking about. Scruffy afros on white guys. What they used to call "elephant bells" (ridiculously huge bell bottom flares on your jeans that hid your shoes). Wide lapels on your dress shirt. Etc.

And, for the women in the audience, you may be old enough to already understand what I'm saying when you look back at pictures of yourself in high school with that big hair. Jesus, what were you thinking??

But here's the thing - while they were going on they were what you did. That was the thing. Somebody on a mountain said "I want to see guys with puffy, curly hair the shape of Antarctica six times bigger than their face" and there it was. While it was happening - it was hot.

We came to recognize later, as our viewpoint matured and we became less and less influenced by what other people were doing and more established towards what has been classical (if you're not there yet... wait for it. It'll happen), that the stuff we did that was considered irreproachably cool looked dated and ridiculous as time moved on. WHEN it was happening, though, to suggest that was tantamount to high blasphemy. You'll get that too if you haven't already.

So, recognizing that I'm not going to get any agreement from folks who are already too busy trying to keep up or in the middle of it and unable to see how stupid they actually look, I present 5 things you're going to kind of regret about five or ten years from now when it dates you as an old fogey stuck in the past or at least the victim of a high fashion crime as everything under your feet has shifted in another unexpected direction, leaving you standing there looking like an idiot if you don't get a move on.


The extra long toe. Stilettos will probably never leave us - thank God. But when exactly it became fashionable for shoe designers to extend the pointed toe on a woman's shoe into the next county is not calculable. You can't give the excuse that "if you want to wear the extra high heel you have to balance it out" because there are PLENTY of stilettos that make that a lie. I'm not talking about the point, I'm talking about the exaggerated length. Check me later, but a few years down the road they're going to look silly. Now - I'm not saying I have a "fashion sense." I don't. But I do have a sense of history. And I lay money this is doomed.



Need I even mention this? This is one of those things that - even these guys in this picture - when they hit middle age, are going to not only cringe when they see themselves but some will even go through millions of pictures deleting all memory of this. The principle, I think, is that more more outrageously "sick" the statement, the more truly stupid it's going to look later. This is what I'm saying. It would be blasphemy - if you are part of this look now - to even suggest how dumb it is.


Because you're never going to see a bank teller or a real estate agent or probably even a teacher with this stuff in their face. Women are going to recognize that the kind of guys this attracts aren't worth their own spit when real life sets in, and plane travel is severely compromised. plus it will look ridiculous on you when you're a grandma. Trust me.


Using the grandma test again we can eventually see where this is going. Even beautiful young women grow old. In fact a lot of people can more or less expect a similar fate to their own grandparents. Just take a look. Some day you're going to be old, and this is going to simply look balls-out stupid. When your tits have fallen to your navel, your face is three shades of purple before makeup, your teeth are false and your ass is huge, a fifty year old tat, dulled and lost in some of the folds of skin that have developed, is going to look not very cool. I have actually, in my travels, heard a young person say "no tattoo is the new tattoo." So I'd be careful out there.


The 21st century version of the oversized afro. In ten years this guy is going to look at this and absolutely cringe.

What always counts is what's inside. Why hide behind a gimmick you're going to hide from in just a few years ahead?

Help Me Out Here - Or Not

I didn't put up my iPod random 5 Monday for a very stupid reason. I know I said "whatever comes up" and I have done so even when it may have shown that not 100% of my picks hit the sweet spot and - according to some - there are, after all, vast holes in my brain.

But the first tune to come up on the random Monday was a little ditty called "Time (Clock of the Heart)". And that means that... hehhehheh... I have Culture Club and therefore Boy George on my iPod. And I think some of you are going to laugh at me. Pretty hard.

It doesn't matter that this song was composed with a gay relationship in mind, I'm certain a lot of people figured that but were satisfied that it could go "both ways" on it's own. So that should handle the homophobes in the audience.

I just like the song. In fact...

I don't have any others but I happen to think a lot of stuff by Culture Club was pretty good, albeit quintessentially 80's pop wave. I mean I also like that song where the guy lets you know how he likes to be spun right round baby like a record baby right round round round (not Culture Club at all)... etc. So deal with it. It isn't like I'd ever go or had ever gone to a concert given by them - that would probably be asking quite a lot. But for just bopping around in the car or whatever there's a good list of stuff by George and his boys that was kinda... well... good. And some of it was real good.

Well look I won't make excuses for it. There it is. If there's anybody can't get past the *look* of the group at the time, just try listening without visualizing who is singing it and see what I'm saying. But there's more there than just the look, IMO, and you may or may not get it and I don't want any of your guff about it.

I think, in "Time", the chime thing is pretty genius.

Ok so shoot me...

High. School.

It’s hard to construct this thought without probably coming off like I’m some special version of humanity. I don’t want to come off sounding all superior and stuff. I really don’t. But I don’t know how to explain without just piling into it. I guess what people think never bothered me before, why should I start now? Good question.

I think there is a reason the term high school becomes a pejorative description for things. It's weird because a lot of people have good memories of high school and so it can be looked back on as kind of idyllic. I think it was idyllic for me. Looking back I seemed to have liked it. I'm not ashamed of. much.

Let me sum up my high school life for you so you know where I'll be coming from later.

1967-1968: A Freshman. Completely naive about everything. No, I mean everything. The shyness is painful and the insecurity, after a kind of tough 8th grade (there would be programs in every school dealing with what I had in 8th grade. Me? I got to tough it out) was monumental. I wondered aloud one day if I would make it if I tried out for a play. My boyhood best friend poured out a bucket of ridicule you wouldn't believe and said it would never happen. This was the motivation. I got a part. The door was opened.

1968-1969: Sophomore. Not jinxed. Did all four plays. Got laid. Let my grades slip to just making it & didn't really care. Got dumped for the first time. Grew up. By the end of this year my circle of friends had tightened to a small esoteric cadre. No dances, no proms, just hanging out in the unincorporated areas smoking weed. By years end none of my regular friends went to the school I attended.

1969-1970: Junior. Halcyon days. Did all four plays. Already an experienced and serious illegal drug user. Name it. No really - even the real bad stuff - we found a way. Very radicalized. Ten Years After. Led Zepplin. Black Sabbath. Derek and the Dominoes. Canned Heat. Mountain. Janis Joplin. Jefferson Airplane. Espoused political positions bordering on lunatic anarchism. that's not true. It was lunatic anarchism. Never a "hippie", but did have a sort of role model. Do not remember who I dated. I must have dated. Maybe they weren't official "dates" as such. I have no idea. Grades hit the skids. Parents stopped giving restrictions (they were already in their 50's and gave up - they knew I wasn't going to get killed).

1970-1971: By the grace of a radically-minded teacher we made up a self-study course that got me the one credit left I needed to graduate with. I never took the college entry test when everybody went. Did some roles on stage tripping. I didn't go out for half the plays but did work in the background. Student director, crews. I moved in my own circle inside my own world. I didn't attend the graduation ceremonies.

By the time I left high school my friends were already in college. Some away, some from home. I can't really remember anyone from my graduating class I hung around with when high school was over. I showed up once in a while but it wasn't like a lot of folks noticed. I was okay with everything. Time to move on. I went to a non-accredited college (now accredited, Columbia College of Chicago) and got some acting jobs. When ever I met someone from high school days i was friendly, but I always sensed a kind of hesitancy from the other side. That's okay. I was pretty whacked.

So ten years ago, somehow, I was asked to be on the Reunion committee. And now, ten years after that, I'm on it again. WHAT.

It's kind of funny and ironic. Sligo - a commenter who shows up here once in a while - was one of those guys I went to school with from my class. In an email the other day, talking about it, he said it's funny how many people now look at me as normal. But he's a Southside Irish wiseass and doesn't know Farco Barnes about it.

But I do think we should all bundle up that commonality, thank God or Nature or The Powers or Just Luck that we're still here, considering there's been deaths and devastation enough to go around already. There comes a time when high school should stop coloring your outlook about everything as if nothing else has happened to you in the last 40 years, don't you think? We had this singularity in our lives and we were basically children and life hadn't really happened to most of us yet so get over it yeah.

It's 40 years. At 50 years there's going to be much less of us around. I think people need to think about that.

More Outcasts and Outsiders

As quite often happens, happily, a couple of years ago I was looking up something else and caught this painting on an image search result. It caught my eye and when I looked into it I discovered something about a million times more interesting than what I was originally searching for - the details of which I can't remember anymore anyway.

What isn't obvious just by looking at it here - and just so you know - is that if you lay this painting flat on a table, fill a glass jar with water from a certain well in rural Georgia, set the jar on top of the painting, look through the water from the top of the jar, and then slide it around, all the while looking at the painting through the water as you move to just the right places, you will be - or should be - able to read the hidden, cryptic messages written by God and sent through the hands of the painter, whose name was J.B. Murray and who never learned to read or write. Oh and also he didn't start painting until he was in his seventies. So... yeah. And I think I'll stop right there.

A good place to start reading about J.B. is here, where you will find that, strangely enough, "Within seven years after Murray began his first marks on discarded materials, his art was being shown nationally and occasionally internationally, and is now included in various collections in the world." The process and chance of finding these guys and how their work establishes itself so "quickly" always fascinated me. The artistic merits of the work are obvious, and the story of how he gets discovered is just as amazing.

This is another article about him and his work.

Murray is connected, as an "Outsider" to Henry Darger, who we talked about yesterday.

____________________________

Not an "Outsider", though some contend he is if only through Outsider Art's connection to the "Art of the Insane" (rather harsh in this case), but certainly anyway an "Outcast" is one Francis Stuart.

Stuart is a writer and published quite a few things in his lifetime. Books and plays and the like. All but one, however, are either out of print or terribly difficult to find. It wasn't until just recently that Amazon had his most controversial book displayed more prominently. It used to come up on searches as just a dark line of text with few visits at all. Now you can at least see a cover photo.

Of course - well 'of course' to those who already know about him - that one book is the notorious "Black List, Section H".

The book is what is known as a Roman á clef, or a work of fiction with an autobiographical or non-fiction basis for a story, that is then skewed or twisted to varying degrees. But mostly, Stuart can bend a viewpoint better than most.

The mysterious, foreign landscape opened out beyond the white cloth, radiating from it on the geometrical as well as the mental plane, with the walls of farmhouses and barns moving in arcs of varying diameters and at varying speeds, between the front frame of the wide window and the rear one, at the circumference of circles whose center was his glass.

A steward was short-stepping down the dining car, flicking a cloth across the tables that had been cleared, and, at passing those still occupied, saying something that H didn't want to catch.

Good writing isn't so strange. Nor is the fact that yet another Irish writer is connected to the great Irish literary tradition of Flann O'Brien and James Joyce, proving once again that one of the greatest contributions given from Ireland to the world is its improvement of the English language.

But it's not the writing that makes Francis Stuart an outcast.

It's the fact that through his dealings with the IRA he spent most of the Second World War in Germany working on foreign broadcasts and general propaganda back to Ireland in behalf of the Nazis. Though claims about Stuart's anti-semitism are not founded on anything more than a scant few lines of somewhat pedestrian sentiment toward that outlook, they do persist. And there is a great debate about whether or not he should be studied at all, fearing - I suppose - some kind of subversive innuendo that will turn you into a fascist if you read his work. Much like Knut Hamsun, I guess. Yet Stuart himself admitted to a different kind of fascination with the Nazis.

"After the war he maintained that he was not drawn to Germany by support for Nazism, but that he was fascinated by wartime Germany as a dark spectacle of the grotesque and as a celebration of destruction." Which is not much different than a lot of sentiment we would hear today behind interest in things like goth, vampires and R. Budd Dwyer.

The debate rages, but the book is sometimes boring, other times astonishing, and totally worth having. If only because Outsiders and Outcasts are different than American Idol or Dancing With The Dorks.

A Theory Of Everything

This is not about physics.

I'm going to show you the kind of stuff that blows my mind. I can't explain the fascination. This is the stuff that haunts me. Taken by themselves each one of these tidbits would seem unrelated to the others. In my mind they are all the same things. Somehow. When I figure out how I will have a Theory of Everything for the universe inside my addled brain. Until then you'll just have to make everything work with the usual stuff we get.

You will notice I have linked nothing in the bits below. If you're interested you should pursue it yourself. Why take the thrill of discovery away from you?

OK. I warned you...

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Henry Darger was a janitor here in Chicago. He lived a completely unobserved life in total and abject obscurity. He had no friends or known surviving relatives, and he died in 1973 at the age of 81. There are only three known photographs of him in existence.

After he died his landlords found a book he had been working on probably since the 1920's or 30's. It was over 15,000 pages single-spaced. It was titled "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion". Bits and pieces are available through Amazon and some very strange independent book stores but it has never, to my knowledge, been published in its entirety in any one offering. The manuscript was accompanied by several hundred drawings he made that embellish the story. Some of these pieces are now in the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Musée d'art moderne de Lille Metropole. He displayed or revealed nothing of any of this during his lifetime. In 2008 a museum here in Chicago set up a permanent exhibit in his honor that recreated his living room, the place where he created his art.

There are also 10,000 hand-written pages of a manuscript titled "Crazy House: Further Adventures in Chicago".

Many of his female characters have male body parts. His headstone describes him as a "Protector of Children".
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You will never watch the Wizard of Oz again without thinking of this...

Never mind the emus and the hanging dead body in the Tin Man scene, after her house drops on and kills one of the evil witches, Dorothy asks the "Good Witch" how she can get home. Basically, she's told, if you follow the Yellow Brick Road you'll get to the Emerald City where the great and powerful Wizard of Oz will answer this question and get you back to Kansas, the name of the star. And make sure you don't step out of those Ruby Slippers. Dorothy and her accumulated friends are nearly killed a couple of times trying to reach the Wizard. They are assaulted. They are drugged. Death tugs at their sleeves for days, a traumatic thing for a young little girl as well as her rather simple companions. She finally gets into the Emerald City only to be sent on an almost impossible quest to kill the Wicked Witch of the West. Not only has she toyed with death all the while, but she must now commit murder. Executing the contract on the Wicked Witch gets her a balloon ride back to Kansas, but the balloon takes off without her. Distraught and heartbroken, she faces the rest of her miserable life in an enchanted kingdom that seems to have a fantastically arbitrary set of rules of conduct. So the "Good Witch" returns in a magic bubble and Dorothy, in tears, begs and pleads for her help, which the "Good Witch" finally gives. She says, "click your heels and say 'there's no place like home'." Dorothy clicks the heels of the same Ruby Slippers she was wearing before she took step one onto the Yellow Brick Road and does the chant and she is finally transported back to Kansas after all of this special kind of crazy.

So why didn't the Good Witch just tell her to click those heels and say 'there's no place like home' back in Munchkinland in the first place - instead of putting her through all that dangerous, insane, and pointless mayhem?
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I can understand how humans discovered wine. Natural fermentation, etc. Same thing for bread I suppose. Even the mining and use of metals - a bit of an exposed vein of iron ore was just followed into the ground; not to mention smelting as a reaction to witnessing a lava flow. We bury or burn the dead to get rid of the smell and the ugliness that ensues. There's a logical cause and effect to everything. We know the good and bad mushrooms because some dude(s) blazed that trail for us.

So explain how the technology behind the bow and arrow and the phenomenon known as applause occurs independently within various cultures that have no contact with one another and are separated by impassible oceans?