Today Wuz A Good Day

DUHN nee nur, duhr nee nur NURRRR!!!

So my dad and step mom were just here and it was fucking awesome. Everything I talked about they were interested in and understood, no subject was taboo, and the truth about the world actually counts toward having a good time.

After meeing QC and Asenath for mere minutes, they already adore them and understand completely how kewl they are.

Then we walked around Elmwood and every house and garden had "a soul," unlike the robot caves in suburban Boston. The streets were clean, my work place was interesting enough for questions and pictures, and eating at the Saigon was for my dad one of the "best eating experiences" he can remember. (He had the Mango Curry duck.)

Then we drove over the skyway as my dad gasped at the beauty of the grain elevators, GM plant, and my stepmom at the hundred of sailboats/yachts. On the way back the sun was setting. We had Scotch and watched Arrested Development (Job in the banana suit). My dad perused my book collection and borrowed several. He's "looking forward" to reading my dissertation.

WTF? Someone wake me up! Oh wait, I don't have to because I actually got a good night's sleep for the first time in a week, hit the sack at, oh, 9:30, and waking at 7.

DUHN nee nur, duhr nee nur NURRRR!!!

Okay, Okay, an "Occasional Lounge-Like Quality"

And I'm NOT saying Leonard Cohen '"is" a lounge lizard. My argument is that he sometimes has a notable lounge-like quality to him, which is often his own parody of one, but not always; AND, moreover, that while his lyrical skills are clearly that of a great poet and not those of an ersatz sentiment, his vocals are often delivered with the sang-froid of a lounge lizard--sometimes quite poorly. To quote Randy Jackson, he's "pitchy."

I include here quotes from reviews/blogs etc., just to show that my views are not isolated--even if we are all wrong.

1. "'Always,'" the Irving Berlin chestnut, is another matter: Cohen delivers it in a lugubrious lounge-lizard moan, complete with a spoken intro that sounds like Barry White revved down to 16 RPMs. It's difficult to tell whether Cohen's tongue is in his cheek on this one, but either way it's one of his most surreal tracks ever." -- David G. Whitis, "The Future"

2. Question--All of the following adjectives have been used to describe you; are any correct?

bard of the bedsits apocalyptic lounge lizard
durable hipster Jeremiah of Tin Pan Alley
legendary ladies man amiable gangster
existential comedian poetic playboy
spin doctor for the Apocalypse emotional imperialist
grizzled prophet restless pilgrim
damaged priest the Godfather of Gloom
hippie icon patron saint of angst
the prince of bummers

Answer — "All of them." From an interview by Ira B. Nadel

3. "The acoustic guitar of lounge-lizard easy-listening inspired 'Bar Noir' bings to mind the more laid back barfly tunes of Tom Waits or the flat vocal delivery of Leonard Cohen in its slick sardonic restraint, all dimly lit jazz stages and curling smoke from discarded cigarettes, while a femme-fatale in 50's garb snares some poor unsuspecting private eye into her film-noir existence of half-truths and deceptive glamour." Review of Alex Fergusson's The Castle, by heathenharvest.com

4. And this from a random blog, responding to YEARS of Cohen criticism--as with Bob Dylan--that Cohen is not much of a singer, though he might have become a better one around Death of a Ladies' Man.:

"I think what makes Death of a Ladies' Man my favourite Leonard Cohen album I've heard so far is the way it firmly disproves the notion that Cohen is a bad singer, or not a singer at all, in a way I'm Your Man, The Future and the career-spanning (but Ladies' Man-omitting) The Essential Leonard Cohen all fail to do. I love, adore, lionize Cohen's 'mature' voice, that dry croak that gives his later albums a disproportionate amount of their weight...This is part of Cohen's appeal, part of what sets him apart, and it's not as if he's unable to be visceral, it's just a different kind of viscerality. But on Death of a Ladies' Man, possibly due to writing all of the songs with Phil Spector, he's actually singing there with the songs (I have no idea how to actually describe this) - his performance on 'Memories' alone should absolve him of the need for any defence of his ability to sing (to say nothing of the glassily exuberent 'Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On' or the shattering, final title track). I mean, he may have lost it since, but he did have it at one point, and he was great at it. It's just an aspect to his talent that has been overlooked."

Here, the blogger protests too much--his exceptional singing proves the rule that he couldn't sing very well to begin with. I do like his singing, as we all do, but he fudges. Now Lounge Lizards are sometimes good singers (Paul Anka, Mel Torme, both jazz-trained), sometimes bad ones (various "Heya!" Rat Packers, etc.), but the meaning of the word, which dates back to at least 1923, signifies chiefly a ladies man or barfly who waits around for women; or a man who merely frequent lounges. Both are strictly speaking non-singing, but Cohen has adopted the ladies man persona the way so many crooners have and has somehow taken the cheesiness OUT of it. So the reluctance to align Cohen with loungeness perhaps derives from the fear of representing him as cheesy and ersatz, as trying to hard, which he's not. Even his parodical quality authenticates him. But he's got the jackets (check out the lapels fromt he 70s--eat your heart out Bryan Ferry [who, by the way, has also been labelled lounge]), the cozy, comfy intimacy of just this side of the piano, and the tendency to avoid those tough notes by covering it over with emphasized timbre, and--what ultimately allows him to transcend--meaningful lyrics. So think of him as a good Scotch, complex and rich, but with defininite "notes" of lounge.

Insomnia, Part II or "Blech"

Sorry--not in a good mood yet or able to write about anything funny. Feel free to skip this post, as it's more for my own diary purposes.

So I've been granted some relief from all the stress by re-waching Buffy (is there anything that show can't do?), but I got up this morning with dizziness. WTF? It didn't go away the whole day and I soon realized that it was yet another stress-related ailment, probably related to lack of sleep, but most likely not, since I have had insomnia without it. I had many stress-ailments during my dissertation writing/defense, all of which magically disappeared directly after, but my new job has brought some of that back, not to mention all the cult/family shit I've put up with lately.

So as I was going about my day, I remembered how in fourth grade we had to put on blindfolds and pretend we were born blind. This was to teach about how others have to deal with not being able to see. Today, experiencing this dizziness has given me some more "insight" into Queercat's situation. For me, it's not quite the same as being drunk, i.e. "roomspin." It's a more subtle uneasiness that suddenly hits you like a pang and before you know it you want to grab something and just be still. You close your eyes and the world keeps moving. I thought I'd include a picture. For some of you, this picture will be nothing more than a stoner poster; for others, it will make you look away. Blech.

Insomnia, Part I

Warning: Depressing Blog Ahead. No Need to Leave Comments After the Awkward Pause

So I can't sleep. I've got so much work to do for school, so many deadlines, so many voices begging for help and clarification that they all start to blend together.

Meanwhile, my step-dad, as some of you may know, is very sick. He signed his health over to $cientology and doesn't have the medicine to treat arthritis, rhuematism, or epilepsy. He recently has a seizure that left him unconscious until a neighbor found him. Where was my mom and why did she leave a near 70 year-old invalid alone? Because she was in NYC being a $cientology missionary.

Meanwhile, Falwell died, to my delight, and all the rage I've had for him, Billy Graham, the Promise Keepers' McCartney, etc. has come out in deliciously Sadean ways (See GC's blog), but I don't feel any better. It's because it always falls on deaf ears. I'm eternally the Boy who says that the Emperor is Wearing No Clothes, but even my family members who have NOT become pod people don't really understand why I have rage rather than compassion.

Now, my step-dad may die soon. It's bound to happen some day. I should be full of sorrow and available to support the very family that sold me out to the kind of hate that Fallwell represents, but I only feel rage. Sorrow and remorse becomes rage and then rage even more at having all emotions defer to rage. I probably won't go to the funeral (my step dad's) because I would only end up pulling a Bobby from Twin Peaks, pointing my finger at them all and crying, "You! You are all responsible!" It would be a debacle. Best to stay away.





So here's a toast to the death of Fallwell for whom my rage can at least be unambivalent, unmixed with the complex feelings one has for family, especially the pod people part of the family. Clickety click goes the Scotchy Scotch, a swallow, and another restless night seeing ghosts in the corner of my bedroom.

Crackpot

My Own Private Beatles Concert

The picture you're looking at is basically what every girl I "work with" imagines herself doing with the goalie of a certain sports team. Every single time the team gets a day or two break, he comes home and opens up his garage and washes his SUV, which is BMW--sans shirt, glistening muscles. The girls rush to the windows and scream and cry, just like the girls did for the Beatles or that androgynous singer on American Idol.

Once again (sigh), the goalie has had to complain about all the bothersome noise. Once again (double sigh), out boss has had to bring this up during the faculty meeting. It's actually preventing our diurnal activities from moving forward, such a big problem it has become.

Thanks alot, goalie. I finally get away from the jock-ridden halls of every educational institution I've ever been in, and there you are weilding more power with brawn than a thousand nerds could hope to muster by uniting their bee-hive minds and writing one big killer essay.

Crapped the Floor

The recent Sopranos episode was the worst I've ever seen. They let some co-executive producer write it and what did he do? He invented Tony's "gambling problem" and then decided to destroy his relationship with a long-time business associate with whom he most enjoyed a glass of Scotch. So I'm thinking, "This is all just a ruse, right? The writers are fucking with us, and they're going to do something amazing that will turn it all around and make it make sense." But no. What actually happened was **SPOILER* Vito's goth son is in standing in the shower at high school, getting picked on by the jocks, and he just CRAPS on the floor, jsut like that. Standing there. Then he steps on it. The jocks yell "Ewww" and run away. The end.

I propose we use "Crapped the Floor" the way we use "Jumped the Shark."



In other news, a student cleaned the board in my classroom today. This completely cliched act almost made me burst out laughing. I didn't ask her to do it, either. All I need is an apple on the desk.

Additionally, the show Work Out completely rocked my world recently. Besides the tragic story of Doug's passing, which I rank right up there with Pedro's very famous reality TV death, a brief side storyline brought together Jesse and a gay Iraq war veteran who happend to serve on the panel who decides if your misconduct gets you kicked out of the army. He told the story of a gay man whose troop accepted him and who the panel decided was OK, but then a higher-up canned him anyway.

I have not seen a SINGLE text that has brought together the two most 2005-election-contentious issues. You have your war documentaries here and your gay stories of the street or the home threr, but they are never conjoned. Anti-war Democratic candidates do not ever make the link. They're "separate" issues, apparently, even to Barney Frank, it seems. All it took was one random gay military side character in a B-channel reality show to say, "Yeah, the morale's gone down over there" in the same conversation as, "They kicked him out anyway" and this speaks volumes and volumes more than Brokeback Mountain and the latest NPR expose about funding or hidden death-toll statistics. As long as the war is talked about in purely DC-political or economic or nationalistic terms alone, and the gender politics are bracketed out, then that Elephant in the Room is going to stamp us all out. I refuse to express more outrage at the war or at global warming than I do at lack of gay rights. This is why Marxism and feminism never really "married," pun intended. This is why I'm not going to see the fucking 60s boomer Bread and Puppet Theatre do its "zany" Bush send-ups. I'm sick of those Vermont hippies because they, too, bracket gender out. Oh, maybe they'll have some abortion skit, but that'll be it.

Finally, I want to put forth a film that I like, and I am somewhat nervous to do it. It's, er, um, United 93, the story of the plane that crasked in Penn. on 9/11. Okay, wait, wait, stop, just listen. I saw that other film, the one with Nicholas Cage. Rather, Asenath and I "saw" it in 10 minutes by scanning through it and predicting everything. United 93 is completely different. There's no orchestral melos, first of all, and there's no exaggeration of heroism in the individualistic sense. Yes, they make all those who died into heroes--that's inevitable--but it's the pacing leading up to the end, the final crash, that's so amazing and makes the falws forgivable. Time is out of joint: we see the hijackers as they board and silently prepare, glancing at eachother nervously, but then we quickly cut to workers in the control tower who are beginning to freak out about all the off-course planes. There is no overstated or overacted line in the whole movie. It's mostly quiet bafflement, Altman-like murmer and overlapping dialogue, and general de-centralized character focus. Call me crazy, but I think it's a great fuckin' film, and perfectly sensitive to the victims without sentimentalizing anyone or anything, bereft of exalting anyone to heavenly status. In fact, there's a marked absence of meaning anywhere in this film.