From Outta the Ether

I still exist. I think. Some famous frog said these processes imply each other. Maybe it was that frog that used to hawk Golden Rice Cereal or whatever that shit was called.

Maybe. Anyway, this is just one of those pointless entries in which I tell you I know I've been gone & all that but I'll be postin' pretty soon. Which is true. I think.


My complication had a complication which has made it difficult to find time to maintain this chronicle. But the job I'm on will be over by the end of next week. I should be posting some time around then.

I even have some shit I've written out, but it's longhand incoherent, and I don't have time to decipher or transcribe it at the moment.


I thought you'd be happy to hear that. All my friends. (My imaginary friends esp., as there are way more of them than the flesh & blood kind.) I hope it'll keep you from doing something rash like slitting yr. wrists or buying Cubs season tickets or spaying &/or neutering yourself or gargling w/ Drano. Trust me: that stuff tastes like ass.

I know how important I am to you, and I apologize for making you wait.


Buuuuuttttt seriously, folks....

I Am a Diehard Cubs Fan & I Think Michael Barrett Is An Asshole Who Let down His Public & Reduced the Concept of Sportsmanship to the Level of a...

...bad sitcom joke.

That is all.

Thank you.

But My Dog Ate (& Then Regurgitated) & Then Ate (& Then Regurgitated) & Then Ate (& Then Regurgitated) My Homework

To anyone (anyone?) who might've wondered why I haven't been updating for the last two months or so, I would like to say that I do plan to update more frequently now that a number of crises have passed. I had this wicked bad case of the clap plus a gall stone, so I kept havin' ta piss, like alla time, but whenever I did, horrible searing lances of pain would shoot all up & down my rod & my staff.

And I know you're thinking that a shotta penicilin should've cleared that dose I had right up--& I did too--but turns out--somehow--I am allergic to penicilin. Funny I didn't notice it before. But so I did go to the free VD clinic, and but they did gimme the shot, & then I went into anaphylactic shock & my throat swelled up to the approximate width of a 200 year old sequoia & then they hadda use the paddles on me & I said stop paddlin' me I'm not into S&M. Hahahahahahaha!!! But they didn't think that was funny.

Anyhoo so I went home sans penicilin. They gave me some other sorta antibiotic antiviral whatever the fuck the clap is pills and said it might take a coupla days for me to really feel better. So I went home & kept havin' to leak & then scream & the asshole couple who live next door to me had the, um, well, er, uh, the gall to complain about the noise!

So ya know what I did to those assholes? (My neighbors, I mean.) After they stopped banging on the wall, but I didn't stop screaming, they finally came over & pounded on the door. But I was ready for 'em. I opened the door & becuz I kept havin' to piss alla time, I opened the door & pissed all over them!!!! Ha! That showed 'em!!!

Unfortunately I couldn't appreciate their cries of disgust cuz I was too busy rolling around on the door stoop & shrieking like Mariah Carey. And once the pain had receded enough for me to hear them tellin' me they were gonna go call the cops! And I said Mark & Cynthia, you just go ahead & call 'em, cuz then I'll tell them about all that PCP you ingest & plus sell to others for the purpose of ingesting.

(And now that I think about it was prob. stupid for me to go pissing off, and on, somebodies who habitually abuse PCP. But I musta caught 'em at the end of a "high." Cuz they didn't rip my head off then crack it open & then drink the juices that might flow from it as 'tho it 'twere a grapefruit. Nope, they didn't do that.)

And they backed down a little but where I finally got 'em to shut the fuck up & go away was when I threatened to narc 'em out to their grandkids who are always comin' over to check on 'em. Fuckin' octogenarians. I hate 'em.

But I screamed & fainted on & off for several days & then finally I passed the stone & now I'm all better & I'll never have intercourse of any form, not even simulated, w/ the other party (whom decorum forbids me to name) again. Or be fucked by 'em. So there.

Anyhoo this all fucked w/ my workload as you can well imagine, so to catch up on my lost income, I've been aggressively soliciting work. (But not sex. Never again. I've learned my lesson.) And that's made it hard for me to update my blog real regularly.

Plus oh yeah I forgot something. My computer crashed. And got fixed. And crashed. And got fixed, And crashed. And got fixed. Several times.

Pretty quick, the "geniuses" (not a lame attempt @ sarcasm--that's what they call 'em @ the store) at the Apple store on Mich. Ave. knew me not just on a first name basis but so well that I felt entirely comfortable updating them on my struggles w/ the clap & alla that--regularly.

So I was lacking my regular computer & therefore my internet access--as well as well as to other computin' resources--was strictly limited. And thus so no bloggin'. And I've written more about that. And I'll put it up soon. And I've got more Hawaii/Zappa stuff too. (Not too long till that trip to HI. will've been a year in the past for fuck's sake.) But in the interest of actually updating some time this year, I'm gonna end it here.

Oh yeah. And it's also comin' up on the second anniversary of the birth of this here blog. I've got some stuff I'd like to say about that as well. And if any of you multitudes of readers have nominations for categories like Best Use of Real Good Grammar &/or Grammas, Most Excessively Boring Entry, Best Guest Star, (Harold Washington really wants your vote, but then so does Belmondo,) Most Excessively Pissy & Unprovoked Attack on Some Undeserving Famous Person, or Best Pissy & Unprovoked on Some Deserving Person, please lemme know. Remember: your vote matters.

So long for now. Hope all is cool where you are...

La-La Land

Crumbs on the armchair this morning when I wake up. Don’t know what they came from. Weirder: I don’t know where they come from. I fucking never sit in that chair.

Frequently there are crumbs all over the rest of the room and all over the rest of the apartment, but that makes sense. I sit & eat pretty much everywhere else at some point or other. So like I’m wondering if maybe these crumbs sorta replicated offa all the other crumbs. Prob. assexually—maybe through budding or something?

Hard to imagine a crumb fucking another crumb, but who knows? You never see them moving, let alone fucking, and while they’re small, you’d kinda expect that once in a while you’d notice the movement—maybe even some sound… Oh crumby, crumby, you’re so crispy & tight, you make it risky & right… You, crumby. You, Crumby. You, Crumby. Ooo Ahhhh ya…

And if they are replicating, are they going to claim more & more territory, taking over places to which they are not indigenous, like, well, like this chair?!?!

How did they get in here?! I guess I might not’ve noticed as I’m not in here alla time & plus sometimes when I am I’m asleep or watchin’ something real engaging on TV or once in a while I’m drunk.

It’s kinda fucked up ‘tho. I mean, maybe one day I’ll wake up like Gulliver: trussed up & surrounded by a mass of sentient crumbs who’ll stand there & watch the captured giant struggle. I bet some enterprising crumb would really clean up on that spectacle, eh? (Except crumbs prob. don’t like the phrase “clean up,” since giants like you & I always say stuff like that just before we sweep ‘em up en masse.)

And like maybe the crumbs are gonna take over the world. Maybe they’re already building weapons of mass destruction. Little tiny, uh, dirty bombs, say. Even if a dirty bomb was like really small, it’d prob. still fuck you up pretty bad—& maybe even a few other giants like yerself.

And even if you survived the explosion, you’d be exposed to all that radiation which might make yr. kids be born w/ penises or vaginas in their foreheads or something. Which so long as 2 people w/ corresponding organs met, might not be such a bad thing. Or worse maybe yr. kids could come out just like one of those mutants who worship the bomb in Beneath the Planet of the Apes or like Bernie Mac or something.

I suppose the crumbs could poison you too. I mean they couldn’t poison yr. building’s water supply or anything, ‘cuz that’d be like a person singlehandedly poisoning the Atlantic ocean. But I bet they could poison yr. glass of water. I bet.



Anyway, disturbing phenomena aside, where were we w/ this ongoing (albeit @ a glacial rate) Thing-Fish/Hawaii biz? Shit, man, I haven’t even arrived in Hilo yet? Holy shit! Ah well, you gotta move forward no matter where you are…



Ah, McCarran Int. Airport, with its bright lights, plush colorful carpet and slot machines sitting right in the fucking boarding lounges. So even if you’re just passing through, waiting for a connecting flight, you can take a pull and soak up some of that Vegas ambience. And feed the gluttonous local economy.

On this trip I noticed that in some of the less populated parts of the airport, the people who mind the slots weren’t keeping a very close eye on things. (Would you, if you didn’t have to?) All of the machines have these black stickers with gold colored lettering that inform you that it’s illegal for minors to gamble, etc. And like here and there, that’s exactly what you see.

(Reminds me of when I was 14 and stopped telling the guy at the gas station that the carton of Marlboros I was purchasing was for my bedridden mom. Slow as I am, it didn’t take long for me to understand that he didn’t give a shit and was in fact hoping that I’d shut the fuck up & be on my way. A pack of cigarettes was 96 cents + tax, which at that time was 4% in Michigan. So yes, that’s right, you got ‘em for 1 U.S. dollar. Makes it easier for everyone involved—no change required, though upon occasion, I fucked the whole thing up anyway by paying for the things with a coupla handfuls of change. Lean times between paper route paydays. Ah, youth…

Good thing I went through the hell of quitting because nowadays a paper route wouldn’t hack it. These days you’d need a trust fund to keep yrself in tobacco.)

Anywayz, back in Vegas, I headed on over to the next terminal. Here, as I mentioned in a recent entry, I inhaled a humble meal and encountered that Dawberesque fella. (Not like Pam Dawber, in case you forgot or fell asleep during that Tale of Two Dawbers. More like that guy from Coach.) Which pretty much brings us up to date.

But finally moving this narrative forward… I found my gate and my shoulders were sore from hauling around my 200# backpack. So there I sat, or rather slumped, for about half an hour before I hopped my next connection to Honolulu. Now this was a long flight—6 hours, to be exact, which, I know is like nothing if you frequently travel overseas, but I don’t. Generally speaking, I’m pretty lucky—or unlucky—if I get out of Chicagoland.

Halfway through the flight, my iPod crapped out. Not that it had been doing me much good for the last few hours. I’d been playing it, sure, but I’d reached the point where I was just too fucking restless and strung out to appreciate anything. I was dazed but wired, which is a lousy combo.

During the flight, I might’ve taken some comfort—or rather been occupied with the lively antics of my neighbors. Directly next to me was a Hot Asian Chick™ but she was attached to this Ultrabland Young Professional White Guy® and they were just the cutest, boring couple who made with little boogums nose pinches n’ shnuggly putcher head on my sho-ol-derrr twitterpating, and where usually I’m benevolent toward young love, here I was trapped between it and a wall. And I was burntout.

I was outta music. I was outta Bukowski—two books had seemed like enough to get me to Hawaii—and the rest of my books were in my checked luggage. So, though the flight attendants were atypically frisky, (I guess that’s SOP for these Hawaiian flights, where it’s reckoned that everyone’s gonna be so thigh-grindingly happy that they’ll be lookin' fer laughs,) I was mostly stuck with the airline magazines featuring Hot Hawaiian Chicks (patent pending) in grass skirts and leis and with tiaras made outta flowers and such and lotsa ads and boring puzzles and instructions for inflating yr. seat cushion.

(A necessary redundancy, since, does anyone really pay attention to those little high school drama class mime productions the poor flight attendants give? I know I don’t. If it really came down to it, I’d probably still be trying to remember if I should put the oxygen mask on myself or the applecheeked toddler across the aisle from me as I sputtered out my last, tortured breath.)

But so anyway, I'd finished inspecting my barf bag for the 97th time when the steward announced the inflight movie. I’ve never paid for 1 of these things. They’re usually some shit I don't want to see anyway. But this time I was ready to shell out. Until I found out it was that movie about the guy who’s such a Red Sox fan that he repeatedly shits on the hot chick who’s after his luuuvvv. (Not to disappoint you, but he doesn’t literally shit on her.)

I didn’t avoid it because I don’t like baseball. As anyone who’s read very much of this blog knows, I’m a pretty serious fan. (Even given recent developments—i.e. the bungholian White Sox World Championship. No offense, Ozzy Guillen, ‘cause yer pretty cool, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the rest of those guys suffering from some sorta chronic oozing boil problem. Signed, one pissed off Cubs fan.) So nope, it wasn’t that.

Maybe yer thinking that my dislike of the White Sox carries over to the Red ones too. Nope. I extremely happy when the Sox came back to hand the Yanks their asses in the ALCS in 2004. (Derek Jeter: ugh, my ass! Creepily, that blank smile stays on his face as his amputated posterior is passed back to him.)

And I was even more ecstatic when they swept those asshole Cardinals! I cackled insanely when they cut to Tony LaRussa’s pale kisser, looking, for all the world, like a deflated balloon fulla wet caulk, as his boys were also handed their asses. Hahaha!!! (Lest you think me harsh here, I would have to say that it’s less the rivalry between the Cubs & Cardinals that makes me insult their Team Manager. It’s more the un-sportsmanlike way in which he talks smack about other teams.)

Holy shit, did I laugh! The Red Sox! Beat the Cardinals to break a 50 year draught! How appropriate is that? And they did it with style.)

But so OK. I didn’t mind that he was a Red Sox fan. I didn’t even mind that the movie looked deeply stupid. Nope. What got me was that the chick was played by Drew Barrymore, for whom I have this abiding affection and lust. (Almost as fierce as the fire that burns within me for Elizabeth Elmore.) Even in a fictional type movie I wouldn’t want any guy to treat her like shit.

And what really made me wanna use my BarfBag was the fact that the baseball fan was played by Jimmy Fallon, who whenever I see him, makes me feel sorta like I just ripped off a hangnail. Repeatedly. For as long as he’s on the screen.

So I decided to pass on the movie. Predictably, the couple next to me hopped right on it. The young lady was especially enthusiastic, though the guy put up no fight whatsoever, and both of them giggled and squirmed through the entire fucking thing. That was a very long two hours in the middle of an already long 6 hours near the end of a very long day.

Ah well. At least I had that flight crew, who were in full vaudevillian swing. One particularly Gay Flight Attendant© was acting as MC, dropping in-jokes at fellow crew mates, (thereby provoking many a conspiratory chortle,) and hefting repeated comedic hand grenades at us passengers, leading to further mirth.

Best bit: “If you’ve enjoyed yr. flight we hope you will consider traveling with ATA to yr. next destination. [Professionally slite paws.] And if you haven’t enjoyed your flight, we, Pan American Airlines, apologize.” Haw haw haw! I about burst my appendix laffin' at that one, and they were still tryin to resuscitate the kindly-but-sour old guy in front of me when I got off the plane. Hope he was OK.


It’d been beneath us for some time: a hazy Pacific blur. It was without feature, other than sharp spikes of white light, but the color itself was so beautiful—a warm, striking blue with a hint of fertile green—that you didn’t want for anything else to look at. There seems to be a peculiar, almost unearthly light in Pacific shades. They carry an incredible feeling of vastness with them—nothing like the Atlantic, which to my hereditarily landlocked eyes, still doesn’t look much different from a Great Lake.

And for me, during this flight, the Pacific was well-named. It was calming, but not numbing. Summery, relaxing and alive. Looking at it, I felt exhilarated by the experiences might lie ahead.

For hours, we’d been surrounded by the shifting clouds of high altitude flight. I was surprised when shapes began to emerge from the mist below us. It may sound like a cliché to say that they looked like a mirage, but they were undeniably dreamlike. At first, there were just spots of golden color that might have been islands. But as we gradually descended, they became solid. Now you got terrestrial greens and dark browns and later, there were buildings. Almost all of them were white.

I was pretty sure we’d come down to earth, so to speak, if not touched down, when I saw a cruise ship tooling through the water beneath us. There was something kind of bizarre about it: air meets water meets earth—like that old schema of the Four Elements. Except there was no fire. That showed up later, dude.

srgtse

Humanly Possible

Sometimes, when I travel by myself, I get this exhilarating sense of possibility. In a completely different context, I feel like I could be someone other than my homebound self. I hope that maybe I’ll be able to take at least a small part of this new, less jaded person home with me later. For some reason, during a solo trip, I often find myself assessing my whole life—maybe it’s the metaphor of travel. I'm generally a pessimist, but I am uncharacteristically optimistic in my self-examination shit when I fly.

And then, like I said before, there are the people I meet along the way. And many of them seem to be going through the same process.

There’s often this peculiar, very transient bond formed between people who are traveling alone, almost confessional, in the Catholic sense. Some people will reveal intense, very personal shit to you—in part, I think, because your connection is so transient and therefore safe. Also, maybe, because traveling by yourself can feel lonely at times.

And then your plane lands, and you just say goodbye without a glance back. And that’s it.

For better or worse, I tend to keep my own shit to myself, but I frequently get caught up in listening to other people. I don’t know why. From Phoenix to Vegas, my neighbor was a young woman on her way to pick up her daughter. She was blond and a bit on the heavy side. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she had intense blue eyes and a likable smile.

She asked me if the mp3 player I was carrying was an ipod. Though I recently got a newer one, this was a “very old” model—3 or 4 years old! —lacking even a click wheel, let alone a color display. (Or let’s be British and say colour. I feel like being British today. I am part British, y’know. How’s that for exotic?

As far as I know, I have only one lone ancestor who indulged in that mythic shtick of stowing away on a USA-bound boat. He was British. I picture him as some sorta Dickensian waif with a Cockney accent, a tubercular cough, soot stains on his face and his few possessions tied up in a rag that dangles from a stick.

Anyway, British. How lame is that? A pretty dull gene pool have I. I am whitey, hear me squeak. But OK, at least this fella—my great grandfather to be precise—was paranoid. That’s vaguely interesting. For his entire life, he thought The Law was gonna smoke him out & deport his ass back to ol’ Blighty. (As we British call it.) Ha! Whatta dumbass! Like The Law even knew or cared that he existed!

(Though it’s probably not cool to speak ill of dead ancestors, so allow me to say just kiddin’ Gramps! No hard feelings! Thanks for forebearing me. Or something.)

Anyhoo, back to my colorful (oops! Dammit! Colourful.) aeronautical companion… She played—no, fooled—no, fiddled—no, toyed—no, screwed— no, fucked—whatevered around w/ my ipod a little and was moderately impressed by how much shit you could fit on the thing. (Those non-double entrendes that sound like double entrndes are really starting to piss me off, by the way.) It was a 40gb model, (my new one's a 60 gb,) which is no longer the largest as ‘twas in hoary days gone by. It’s supposed to fit 10k songs, according to Apple’s advertising copy, but I just ran outta room at 9700 or so songs.

(But I guess you can’t necessarily fault them here. Song lengths vary. My ipod holds some tracks that are in the vicinity of 1/2 hour—like, for instance some electric Miles Davis from the 70s. Disc 1 of Zappa’s Thing-Fish—which, not to ruin the suspense, I did finally add to my library—is nearly an hour long because I imported each of the 2 CDs as a single track. I really should go back & do the same thing w/ a buncha other CDs, like Sgt. Pepper’s or The Perfect Prescription by Spacemen 3, where continuous song suites end up having all these annoying 1 second gaps. And BTW I have at least one song in my library that’s that’s over an hour long—stoner metal juggernaut Sleep’s “Dopesmoker.”)

Then this young woman showed me hers. Her mp3 player, I mean. And it didn’t hold anywhere near 10k songs in & of itself. But so she unveiled her big surprise with an arrogant competitive flourish, (which was kinda endearing in some small way). You could swap flash chips in hers, each of which could hold, like, a thousand or so songs. You could just carry a handful of ‘em around and you’d have your whole record collection with you too. And if more than 1 person as sharing the thing, each of them could bring their own pile of chips, making it like you had several individual music collections available to you at any given time.

OK that didn’t seem real competitive to me when you consider that I’m the only 1 who usues my player, & I don’t have to carry around the chips nor stop to swap ‘em. Ha! But then I remembered that there’s at least one advantage to the flash chip—you can run with the player or just hop around in general. If you try dancin’ around like the nimble shadows in those ipod commercials with any Apple player besides the nanopod, yer probably gonna find the thing locking up faster than a Flint, MI. merchant at sunset. Still, my newer ipod doesn’t skip nearly as much, & I like having all the shit in 1 place, so I’m stickin’ w/ it.

One musical gimmick seguewayed into another. She and her boyfriend were eagerly waiting to buy a new satellite package—once the dough for a new satellite-capable home audio system had accrued. Soon, she said, soon.

I mentioned that I didn’t listen to the radio much, as I already had too fucking much music, was pretty much perpetually listening to it, and I kinda hate talk radio. Well, yeah, sure, she said, but see, the plethora of music stations aside—and she assured there was one hell of a plethora—they really needed the hookup, because the recently isolated Howard Stern was gonna be coming back real strong with a new satellite program. And she, her boyfriend and her mother were all rabid Howard Stern fans.

(I’m pretty much sympathetically neutral on this Howard Stern jazz, by the way, I really have only a little firsthand experience of his shit and mostly know him through hearsay.)

As is always the case w/ me and strangers, I found myself fascinated by her stories. Like the sex therapist, she was a trifle fixated on herself. The difference though was that she was not nearly as egotistical. She was lonely, trying to be courageous, and, while strange, (very strange even,) entirely likable. Bearing in mind that it was she that gave her stories life— the words she chose, the tone of her voice, her gestures, and the shifting of her facial expressions— here’s a grotesque simplification:

She was headed to Vegas, where her ex-husband lived. Sadly— and maybe with a trace of remorse—she told me she was going to get her young daughter and bring her back to Phoenix.. Student of human nature that I am, I began compiling a scenario in which she’d somehow fucked up. (Drugs? Reckless youthful abandon?) Now, I imagined, she was making an effort to get her shit together and to be with her daughter.

Could be I was wrong. What do I know? I can’t even get my own shit together. But like, that’s a big part of my job— sizing people up as quickly as possible. I ain’t no expert. I ain’t clairvoyant. But I like to think that, after all these years, I’ve developed some skill for reading people.

Anyway, the ex- was an abusive creep, In hopes of avoiding any ugliness, she’d planned to show up while the ex- was at work, She’d pick get her daughter and then get right back on the next flight to Phoenix. Her mother worked for ATA, so she’d been able to plot this thing with tactical precision. Her only worry was that the ex- might’ve taken a day off.

I liked her. After we said goodbye, I felt bad that I couldn’t’ve done more for her somehow. There are millions of sad stories out there…

C is for Captiousness

Recently baseball icon Sammy Sosa declined an offer by the Washington Nationals of $500k non-guaranteed contract. The Nationals were the only club to express any interest in signing him, so by turning down the offer, Sammy implicitly retired from Major League Baseball, for the time being anyway.

You may not be interested in baseball, and even if you are, you may wonder why I'm giving so much thought to a declining and not particularly well-liked player like Sammy. Still, as a diehard Cubs fan, I want to put ongoing subjects aside (again) and take a moment to say goodbye to Sammy. Well, actually I don’t want to say goodbye to Sammy—‘tho I’m not sorry to see him go. It’s more along the lines of a feeling of obligation. Which is stupid.

For those of us living here in Chicago, there really isn’t hell much to say about Sammy that hasn’t already been said. Some people still love him. Some people hate his guts. I don’t love him or hate him. Now. I have had my moments on either side of the coin. Which is stupid.

Like a lot of people, I did love Sammy. In a way, he was a personal hero, which I didn’t realize at the time and which surprises me as I write this. I loved the stupid little hop he did when he hit one in the air. I loved the way he waved at the crowd when he ran out onto the field. And I knew my feelings were based on atavistic bubblegum silliness, but I couldn’t help but get caught up in them. Which was stupid.

It took a long time for my feelings toward Sammy to curdle. Some people’s feelings did so more quickly. Others still believe. I’m somewhere in the middle. Truth be told, Sammy just makes me sad, and he doesn’t even do that so much anymore. I didn’t watch him blunder through the senate hearings on steroid use in baseball, and I was neither pissed nor amused when his ability to speak English suddenly atrophied. Which was, of course, a stupid and obvious copout.

Speaking of atrophy, seen Mark McGwire lately? A lotta people have said that the homerun race between him & Sammy healed wounds caused by the 1994-95 player’s strike. The spectators were more than a little brassed off that they’d not only lost a World Series, but had their faces rubbed in the conglomerated scorn of the Major League Baseball biz. But here in the light of goodwill were two guys competing for a historical marker. Lotsa dingers were hit, and lotsa gosh-shucks speeches were made. Here were these two humble, but incredibly talented fellas striving for excellence within a great historical human endeavor. At least, that’s how it was presented to the public. Which was stupid.




Naturally, idiotically sentimental baseball fans like me fell for it. We do every time. We’re the same people who thought that Sammy’s big friendly grin—the visual equivalent of a friendly Labrador lickin’ your face—meant that he was a good guy. Which was stupid.

Baseball, like any other commercial endeavor, functions most effectively when you can put a face on it. And in Chicago, that face was Sammy’s. We loved the ’98 Cubs for making the post-season. We recognized the fact that it was a team effort, but Sammy was our leader. He wore the shirt w/ the big team captain’s C on it, didn’t he? And while that was almost poisonously unfair to the other players and the management, it did make it more fun—more old-timey. We fooled ourselves into thinking we had a hero. Which was stupid.

Stupid, but understandable. By ’03, when we got really close, Sammy was on slightly shakier ground. There were rumblings in the clubhouse—rumored tantrums & other prima-donnisms. The C hadn’t changed to a symbol for “cancer.” Yet. But Sammy was lookin’ a little less lovable. The C continued to haunt him, and us, in the form of a corked bat and its attendant accusations of cheating. But he was still our not-so-secret-weapon. When he went to the plate, you saw the other guys really sweat. He gave us what we wanted, but if we hadn’t’ve been so close, I’m not so sure we would’ve all been so forgiving. Which was stupid.

Then Sammy got stupid. During the 2004 season, he camped out on the disabled list with one ailment following another, and some of them seeming potentially disingenuous. (Sneezing fer chrissakes!) This was all going on while Sammy was in a slump at the plate. He was swinging at every goddamn thing in sight, which was a symptom of the offensive disease that seemed to be plaguing the entire team. It was ugly. We’d gotten so close the year before. Some of the people who’d loved him were already calling him a pussy. They were booing him every time he struck out, and that just seemed to cause him to retreat even more. Was he hiding on the disabled list? If so, that was stupid.

(Now I’m starting to sound like Jeff Foxworthy or maybe more like one of those obnoxious speeches people make at political conventions. Which is really, really stupid.)

There were more rumors. You heard that Sammy basically told the other team members that he couldn’t carry their weight. They needed to get off their asses. But you never heard Sammy say anything like that in public. Then Dusty Baker told the press that Sammy’d done a really modest thing: Recognizing that his struggles were hurting the team, he’d volunteered to take a lower slot in the batting order. Not long after this, Sammy complained in an interview w/ the Hoy! newspaper that he hadn’t been consulted about the change. He created this discrepancy that nobody could ignore. Which (you guessed it) wasn’t very smart.

We’d been so close. It had been so long. And now we were so close to being close. Injuries had fucked us up, but down the stretch, we had a shot. It was pissed away. In fact, there was a whole lotta pissin’ goin’ on. The fans were pissed at the team, the management, the owners, and or each other. The team was pissed at the fans, the media and each other. The management was pissed at the team, the fans and the media. And everybody, to the extent that they gave him a thought now, was pissed at Sammy. Which was stupid.

One guy doesn’t piss away a shot at the championship. One guy can’t even cause a world war. (Surprisingly, I just heard that Hitler had some help!) All we were doing was turning him into a scape… uh, well, never mind… Anyway, when Sammy was off the DL, everybody bitched about his performance. When he was on it, everybody bitched about him deserting his team. Which was stupid.

Actually, some people pointed out the absurdity of these circumstances. Some of them were calm, rationale spirits who, to their credit, refused to get caught up in the hate. They looked at things as they really were. Others, who were reminiscent of Elvis fans, still loved Sammy blindly. They ignored the cork. They ignored the fact that the rumors were confirmed—Sammy did throw tantrums. He’d practically do it on camera, if you asked him to. They still loved him. Even now, when the friendly grin was a thing of the past. When Sammy seemed less like a cheerful Labrador and more and more like a yippy little terrier that snaps at everything in sight. Which was stupid. And sad.

Because now Sammy was pissed at the media, the management, and his fans. All of them. I’m not sure if he knew or cared that some of them still loved him, or if he stopped to think about why those who no longer loved him had stopped. Which was stupid.

Oh yeah, and Sammy was pissed at his teammates. The clubhouse atmosphere was even uglier, you heard. Now people were talking about a “clubhouse cancer,” and that C on Sammy’s jersey was starting to sorta look like a Scarlet Letter. You heard that he was throwing more tantrums, making more accusations that the other guys weren’t doing their part. As though the endeavor that they weren’t supporting was him, not the team. You heard that he wasn’t showing up for team exercises or meetings. When Sammy skipped out of the last game of the season and then lied about it, well, rumors stopped being rumors. It was almost like he wanted to get caught. Which was stupid.

Or maybe not. We wanted to get rid of Sammy, & he wanted to get rid of us. He came up with a quick fix, and people were almost grateful. At the very least, no one was mad. No one was surprised. We were relieved. It was like one of those awful romantic relationships that just won’t fucking end. Thanks to Sammy, it did. He provided the last nail in the coffin of something he and the fans had built together: a sand castle phantasm. A pretty comic book picture of a guy who never existed. And I’m guessing it hurt Sammy as much as the rest of us to find out that this guy didn’t exist and never had.

I’m not saying that a human being named Sammy Sosa doesn’t live and breathe. That, obviously, would be stupid. I’m saying that Sammy Sosa was a guy like any other. It’s such an obvious dumbass cliché: an incredibly talented person is, in the end, just a person. And people want to be loved and to be cool. Those are human constants and always have been. Go read Beowulf, where the ass-kickin’ hero is right upfront about the fact that he’s in it for the glory. (And the money.) These people get seduced by alla that bright lights, big city yammery that you’ve heard about 5719 times before. So I won’t bore you or insult your intelligence any further by restating it.

Baseball is just one arena for the acting out of another human constant: we need people to whom we can look up. We put ‘em on pedestals, and they tear ‘em down for us, and we all enjoy every minute of it. We both love and hate ‘em when they spit on us from above and we revel in the sight of the smug bastards falling on their faces and humiliating themselves. And they have similarly schizoid feelings toward us. Everyone gets hurt in the process. We all lose something. So why the hell do we do it?

A lot of people say they don’t do it, but I think they’re lying. I have no proof, but when someone tells me it’s just a game, or just a business, or just the way things are, I think they’re trying to convince themselves of something they want to believe. It’s easier. You don’t get hurt that way. But you do get older. Which is unavoidable.

I Saw God and/or The Reputation

Recently, some of my friends pointed out that I can't seem to write anything that doesn't prominently feature scatology; sodomy; violence toward &/or humiliation of celebrities; (often combined w/eulogies for has-been celebrities;) absurd transformations of people into objects like paper airplanes, hieroglyphics, etc.; cannibalism; &/or images of decay & death, including (but not limited to) frequent encounters w/ the walking dead. They pointed out how often—very often, these days—these themes not only interrupt my ostensible subjects, but frequently shanghai them, beat them senseless & then dance on their carcasses.

My friends seemed sorta concerned about their observation, but mostly just pleased w/ themselves for mapping out part of my psyche—smug bastards. The only thing they couldn't figure out was if I was unconsciously inserting (snicker) these themes, or if I knew I was doing it—and if I did, whether or not it was a matter of choice.

Well, I don't know about all that. You may think I try to fit these things in. The truth is, they just seem to come up in the writing. I guess that's where I am right now, & rather than try to rein in that part of what I write, I figure it's best to let it run its course. Whether it's tedious or boring, it appears that I (& whoever, if anyone, reads this) am (are) stuck in this territory for the time being.


OK so I don't try to fit that stuff in. But I will absolutely admit that I do try to fit in Elizabeth Elmore whenever possible. What's more, I wouldn't mind trying to fit into Elizabeth Elmore. She's that much of a fox. (And Liz, if you're reading this, I mean no disrespect. I am just overmastered by my passion. Nor am I a creepy stalker type. I'm too humble—too much of a scruffy hangdog type to do more than admire you from afar.) And recently, something that relates to Liz actually happened to me.

January 7th saw something like a dramatic yearly astronomical event: The Reputation's annual post-holiday show at Schuba's tavern. Sadly, the last time I'd seen them had been at the previous year's shindig. Since then, I've had to live on the records and my memories. ('Tho I'm still not reconciled to the second album, it hasn't left my iTunes library just yet. I mean, this is, after all, The Reputation.) I always try to make their shows, but lately the timing's been bad. It's been one fucking weird year. So I was amped, cleared my calendar & was ready for the party.

I got to Schuba's early. I waded through the obnoxious Sat. night singles crowd, heading for the back room, whereat I received a hand-stamp in red ink. (After I left the show, a beloved female acquaintance said, "Weeagh! What the fuck happened to yr. hand?" I looked down & saw a large brightly inflamed spot. I said, "Weeagh!" Then I realized it was my "stamp." Either I sweated a lot, or the guy minding the door was being a little lax w/ the hand-stamping.)

I think I've been to Schuba's since the last gig. If it did happen, I guess whatever I saw must not've been that memorable, right? Up until about a year ago, I went out to see live music around once or twice a week, work permitting. These days, it's not unusual for a month to pass w/o my going to any of my old haunts. (The Empty Bottle, Metro, the Riviera, etc.) I'm not sure what's changed. I am a year older, I'll admit. (Fucking calendars.) But more important, I think, is the fact that it was a weird year, as I said. It's sucked, because live music has always uplifted the quality of my life—esp. in the last decade or so.

I don't see anybody very high profile anymore. The last time I did, it was Neil Young, & the show was really, really weak. I've seen him 3 other times in both solo folksy & blisteringly loud rock arrangements, & he's usually pretty great. But this time the show felt perfunctory, and the ticket prices were downright usurious. Mostly I stick to lower profile, often local performers. And lately, 'tho I listen to additional other stuff at home, (Hank Williams, Miles Davis, Sly Stone, Robert Johnson, & C.,) these tend to be purveyors of a limited range of electronica, metal, "avant noise," singer-songwriter acoustic guitar stuff, & most frequently, free jazz & punk/garage rock.

I've found utterly transcendent & utterly disappointing moments at performances of all the above listed types of music. But it's the free jazz & punk/garage rock shows that provide the lion's share of intense experiences. Sadly, the charlatans outnumber the geniuses, so disappointment is more common. Especially at the free jazz & rock shows.

I know that I've recently maligned contemporary rock music, esp. as it travels under the moniker "garage." I dislike that term because it's so clearly a marketing label. Suddenly, a year or 2 ago, we were told through magazines, newspapers, TV & radio, that there was a "garage revival" at hand. ("Garage revival." Doesn't that sound like a rummage sale put on by fundamentalist Christians? Maybe to raise money for some new pews? "Pews!" HAW! HAW! HAW!) I'm pretty sure that there have been plenty of bands playing basic straightforward rock in & out of garages all along & all over the place. I don't think we need a revival, because in terms of rock n' roll, the garage has always been w/ us.

The Reputation are kinda anomalous as far as my taste in music goes. They could be located in the garage—or at least, that's where Elizabeth Elmore may've formed her first set of calluses, playing w/ the other very young members of her Champaign, IL. band Sarge. Today, Elizabeth proudly hawks her own T-shirts, CDs etc., like any other self-respecting indie rock figure. From what I understand, she's always followed a D.I.Y. esthetic, which I take to be Criterion #1 if you're going to be admitted to The Garage or The Pub or The Trailer Park or The Condemned Warehouse. Or any of the other archetypal places where kids w/ a genuine love of music get together & try to achieve a collective 4/4 rhythm & link a coupla bar chords together. That's the beauty of it, right? Anyone can do it. It's at least 50% attitude. And Elizabeth has plenty of that.

Now understand, I do not mean to say that The Reputation play "dangerous" rock music. There's too much of a pop sensibility there—too much of a focus on melody and not enough on danger. Danger in rock is mostly an absurd but enjoyable convention, unless you're at a GG Allin show, or Altamont or Woodstock 2000, or the type of late Stooges performance that's amoralized on Metallic K.O. (Lester Bangs famously called it the only live rock album he knew of "where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings.") And while events of this nature sound good on vinyl, I'm not sure they'd really be fun to attend, unless you're fond of rape, murder, & other misc. violence. (Whether it's yr. own or someone else's rape or murder is basically a matter of luck & therefore beside the point.)

Anyway, I don’t see any reason why a love of melody or of unironic joy or heartache should be damning qualities for a rock band to have. If you like The Beatles, say, & you've been busy sneering at sentimental stuff, then you're obviously a hypocrite. Probably a pussy too: "Sentimental" is a cheap shot label, frequently used by "cynics" to cover the fact that they just made water in their pants because someone was expressing an authentic emotion. The horror! Maybe that qualifies as a kind of danger after all.

When an emotional expression is real, which, I'll grant ya, is rare, it's a great pleasure, which is probably the most important reason why I go to see The Reputation, in spite of the fact that there is not a single other performer of this sort whose shows I attend. It's power pop—another stupid label. To the extent that it has any applicability: Power because on the one hand, it's usually played w/ kinda loud electric guitars. Pop because it's hooky—and because no one would ever call it dangerous.

I am not dangerous. (Unless I'm on the job.) I do like some pop stuff from the 60s-80s. Buuuutttt... I don't like much of the contemporary pop stuff I've heard. (Which isn't much, 'cuz I never listen to the radio unless the Cubs are playing.) But I never regret it when I do get to see The Reputation.

Anyway on the night in question, the Schuba’s crowd was pretty dull. The atmosphere was something like what I imagine an office Xmas party to be. The opener, The 8th Grade, hit the stage promptly, no waiting around, like punctual schoolboys. They then embarked on a adequate, but bromidic set of amalgamated "alternative" toonz.

The singer/rhythm guitarist had short curly hair and was handsome in a clean-cut, sexually irrelevant way—the cheery sort of fellow who leads his church youth group but then goes out to "rock" on the weekends. He did have one song that featured the repeated use of the word "fuck," but, like, the band’s delivery was too arch & cutesy pie for you to feel real threatened. Or interested.

About the only unusual thing about this band were its two lead guitars! You don't see that shit much these days, do you? (Beloved female acquaintance: "Do they need 3 guitars?" She doesn't pay attention to that sort of thing when she listens to music. A buncha the rest of us: "No!") One guitarist had dreds & was clearly this band's idea of a sexy bad boy. He played a lotta squealy high register solos. They were OK, but not worthy of the glee he seemed to find in them. Don't get me wrong: genuine glee is cool. Just this guy's seemed a little self-conscious. My fave band member was the other guitar player, a skinny slob w/ a dorky Prince Valiant hair cut. He really did seem to feel the music—unselfconsciously. And for my money, his solos were better too.

Suffice it to say that they were McBarband in a post-"alternative" soft-core emo maybe sorta way. They were maybe playing in a style that's similar to The Reputation, but like, they couldn't carry The Reputations jock strap. As it were. Oh yeah, this wannabe-heroin-chic chick in a low-cut sleeveless black shirt trundled about clickin' off pix of the fellas plying their rawk. She was one of those aggressively thin women—sorta like the heroin-chic queen of yore, Kate Moss—who look like they'd snap in two if you pushed 'em. She’d squat down low—lookin’ for all the world like some humanoid woodland critter stoppin’ to deposit its spoor,) extending long legs everywhichway around her, so as not to block yr. view. Good thing it wasn't that crowded yet, or she mighta fatally sliced someone w/an errant kneecap.

Ah well. No accounting for opening acts, right? Which is probably a good thing, because the second act, Baby Teeth, actually gave The Reputation a run for their money. As in, Elizabeth had to fight (only a little) not to be upstaged. And she gracefully, if ruefully acknowledged this when she took the stage later. These guys were a last minute fill-in for some other act, but they hit the stage running.

Get this: only 3 guys this time. One plays bass & sings spot-on harmony parts. Another plays the drums, actually adding some personality to the thump-thump 4/4, and providing a second harmony part to the main vocal, delivered by a guy who's playing a bevel of old-school analog synths—a small Roland being the only 1 I remember specifically—sometimes one synth w/ each hand at the same time!!! Holy shit! And these weren't mere acrobatics. No ho. These guys had songs. And they sang 'em like they meant 'em.

Sure, it was all very theatrical—operatic even: All three band members wore white T-shirts & pants. The music hadda Ziggy-era Bowie glam feel to it which was fed by the frontman's warbling delivery. His features shifted in a histrionic, downright protean manner. These guys were performing, sure, but they were in the zone, and as they moved further into it, they grabbed you by yr. balls & dragged you along w/ 'em.

Speaking of balls, remember how I said I'd like to fit into Elizabeth? Well, failing or in addition to that, I really wouldn't mind being her guitar strap. To caress that lovely breast… No, all you soulless Cro-Magnon types, it's not huge. But it—they—both of them are beautifully shaped, and I can only dream of being that strap allowed to caress, gently slide over the cup of Liz's breast, slick w/ the sweat of passion she must find in her music. (Not to mention the heat of the stage lights.) I could sculpt her unseen nipple—exquisite, I'm sure. Most of all, 'tho, I could simply embrace Elizabeth—as an object, sure, but one that she trusts. (I know I can't hope for love.) Oh but wait, we're getting off the subject again...

Except we're not! Not really. I mention the guitar strap because, well, pretty soon Elizabeth was climbing up those steps to the stage. (Schuba's does not seem to provide its performers w/ a backstage area.) Her blond hair shone w/ what might've been a streak of copper. Hard to say if it was an added highlight or just an effect of the light, but I thought I'd spotted such a tint earlier. (More about that later.) On stage, she was resplendent in a brand spankin' new pair of blue jeans & a black sleeveless shirt. (She loves those things, & they do show off her shapely arms—toned, but not too creepily muscled.) There she did break out her ax. It looks like a custom job—the wood being, uh, red—and it does bear a strap. Annnnnddd... said strap does tend to fall across the velveteen (as I imagine it) surface of Elizabeth's left breast. (Sigghhhh...) So see w/ the strap thing? I do have some sense of logic, however roundabout!

OK, you're saying, I get it. But what you really want to know is what Elizabeth did w/ her ax, once she'd plugged in & ordered her guys to attack. Well, it took a minute or 2 to get to that because Thax Douglas appeared. Thax is this large, soft-spoken bearded fellow who sometimes appears at Chicago rock shows to pay tribute to a band w/ some specially tailored pseudo-Beat poetry. It’s always kinda cool when you get to see him. Anyway, he came up & gave The Reputation its beautifully nonsensical tribute. (He'd already provided one for Baby Teeth, which means they must be gettin' big round these parts.)

And thennnnn Elizabeth showed you she was a regular human being by exchanging some Johnny-n-Ed or Dave-n-Paul type chitter chatter w/lead guitarist Sean Hulet. (Who, by the way, looks suspiciously like recently departed & greatly missed NYC guitar impresario Bob Quine—which is to say he's fat, balding & always wears glasses. Hmmmm.... Maybe Bob just wanted to cut all the high profile horseshit & get back to the real music he'd always loved. Yeah. Maybe. But I doubt it.)

The subject for yukkin' here was how drunk they'd gotten at last year's show—they even did shots on stage!!! To all you distinguishing drinkers out there who want to immediately hop on the next big thing—potato vodka & single malt scotch having lost their hipness sometime back—I sadly do not know what The Rep were sluggin'. Of course, Elizabeth does speak of how "whiskey had fucked w/ my head" in "She Turned Your Head." But we have to assume that's a dramatic convention, since while I do think Elizabeth's pain is genuine, I cannot imagine her having so little self-respect as to creep around in the dark like some drooling gutterpup, surveilling her on-again-off-again paramour's (it's unclear if they're on- or off- at this point) place to see if little Miss Sally Loosepants was showing up to service him.

A friendly chortle or 2 was had at the expense of the humble, quiet bass player, Greg Mytych, a bearded, kinda handsome guy, who appeared to be unselfconsciously into the music himself. He had declined the previous evening's invitation to go out drinkin' w/ his fellow male band members. (Elizabeth made it clear that she was hurt by her own exclusion. What's wrong w/ these heartless, sexist bastards?) Seems this fellow tee-totals or at least samples spirits in considerable moderation. Sean Hulet made the following, disturbing revelation: "Dude, I'm 61!" and went on to say that if he could still get shit-faced, this snot-nosed punk better grow a pair! Nothing wrong w/ rockin' whilst agin', but I mean, fuck man, couldn’t you have kept that shit to yerself? I was already feeling old!

Ever wily Elizabeth suggested that they turn the tables on the usual band rowdiness by forcing shots only on this hapless guy. That did not happen, but he did toss one back w/ the band at the appropriate moment.

But so then they cut loose w/ "Either Coast," starting the show w/ the same up-tempo rocker that begins the first record. Man, did it kick! It was louder and more aggressive than you hear it on plastic—downright rock, baby. Light on the pop. That's the way I like it, 'tho I also dig some of those heartfelt ballads. Elizabeth went light on these for some reason. No "Uselessness of Friends" w/, among other things, that brilliant couplet, "won't waste my mind on things that can't remain/same latent flaw keeps coursing through my brain”—a brilliant interpolation, I’m sure you’ll agree, of the ol’ United Negro College Fund slogan.

And worst of all, there was no sign of "For the Win." I did notice that no keys were in sight. Elizabeth sticks to the ax, mostly, but when it's time to really tug at yr. heartstrings, she slides her dainty posterior behind some keys & machine guns you w/ one of her sad songs. I remember wondering, somewhere in the mist of my disorientation, whether she'd been keeping up on her piano exercises. It's easy to let that shit go, I know, esp. when you have another instrument you play.

The absence of keys didn't hurt in at least one respect: we were spared the crappy "jazzy" vamping that ruins so many of the songs on the second disc, To Force a Fate. As a composer & arranger, I like how Elizabeth does interesting things w/ rock/pop idioms. Subtle interesting things, of course: the melodies & the hooks are always there.

The ding-dong moodiness of "The Stars of Amateur Hour," for instance, is cleverly linked to a discordant arpeggio, thus creating a pretty wicked sense of dynamics. This song, one of my personal favorites, was kicked out & revved up by the band, thankfully. The delivery was spot-on, and aside from that the song provided one of the high points of the evening for me, as my party all toasted the lines "...a certain inept licentiousness/ an artless gluttony for squalidness & heated promises." By far, it's one of my favorite Elizabethisms, and I was touched that my friends made this gesture to me. (While they like 'em, my friends mostly think I'm a little overenthusiastic about The Reputation.)

Aside from the downright bizarre "Bottle Rocket Battles," inspired arrangements are mostly missing-in-action on To Force a Fate. The MOR jazziness ain't very creative, and in fact drags the material dangerously close to adult contemporary gruel. Now "Bottle Rocket Battles" features a chanting pair of voices, one male & one female, on its verses, which is set against beautifully sung choruses. This song captures the same sort of emotional and creative tension that marks "Amateur Hour." That it follows an entirely different path to pop glory is admirable. That it rocks is cool: It's a barn-burning thrash-out on the verses. (Sort of.) And then it settles in for some tense chug-chuggin’ guitars on the choruses. It was another welcome piece of the set list.

Aside from the pumped up volume, there’s one other difference I noticed between the way the band sounds live & on plastic. I don't want to criticize Elizabeth, but her singing is not quite as assured when you hear her in person. The very clear and emotive vocals heard on both albums become kinda sorta squeaky on stage. I think that may be a consequence of having to make yourself heard above The Rep's Wall of Sound. (Such as it is.) No matter how much vocal they put in the mix. Still, Elizabeth isn't the only distinguished musical artist to rely on an overdub or two (maybe even a little processing) when recording. Look at late-period Beatles fer chrissake!

But OK, it wasn’t all flowers. Every experience has to have a low point… During some of that amusing banter between Elizabeth & Sean, he starts talking about the White Sox. Man, can this guy kill a party or what? I'm out trying to enjoy myself. I don't need to hear this shit. Sorry, Sox. You can have yr. Series—and I earnestly congratulate you for that. Really. But you will never have my love. That lives in Wrigley Field.

Anyway, this is Chicago, & there are matters of tact re: this whole baseball thing. 'Tho I deferred to silence out of respect for Elizabeth, I was glad to hear that the rest of the crowd did not. More of them than I would've expected booed, & Mr. Hulet looked a little taken aback. Could this be The Reputation's Metallic K.O.??? Would we soon hear the breaking of beer bottles against Sean’s guitar strings, or worse yet his cackleberry skull???

"I got 2 words for ya," he sez: "Dusty Baker." That's all he's got? Sure, Dusty sucks ass, but we already know that. And Ozzie Guillen is approximately 10,317 times cooler, but hell, in spite of Dusty's sucking, we still came to within an angel's downy pubic hair of the 2003 World Series & despite his incomprehensible handling of the pitching staff at the end, he didn't single-handedly blow 2003 for us either. Appropriately, this bit of raillery drew nothing but half-hearted grunts.

Still, indirectly, his words drew blood from me: There are but few things I truly love in this sadly misshapen world. I'd shrugged off the basic dilemma this fellow put before me: How should I react to a minion of beloved Elizabeth slandering the beauty of north-side baseball? But it broke my heart to see Elizabeth nodding at the foolish, bandwagon-jumping (I suspect) sentiments of her underling. "I kinda like baseball now," she said

Damn it Elizabeth! If only we could watch baseball together... You'd see that yr. love for the game is a good thing, but currently misdirected. Ah well... When the Cubs take the World Series this year, things will be different.

Anyway, all in all, I can't complain. And I haven’t even told ya everything! I saved the best part for last: During a break between bands, I went over to the bar to get a beer. The waitress was steering clear of me, I think because when she'd come around once before, I'd told her I didn't want another beer yet although my glass was like 80% empty. I was trying to pace myself. It doesn't hurt to be sorta drunk for these things, but I didn't want my senses to be too blunted, nor to make an ass of myself before the good shit went down on stage.

(For a moment during the show, I was worried. A guy's voice calling out from the crowd, and Elizabeth squinted angrily out into the crowd & said my name! "Steve, is that you?" She was not amused. Was it my voice??? Had it gotten away from me? Was I that drunk? Fortunately, it wasn't me. It was some other Steve.)

Anyhoo, I headed to the bar, waited in a short line, & then the bartender gave me one of those double handed points—kinda like he had 2 six-shooters. Y'know... like those guys in discotheques did in the 70s. It looked like he’d practiced it pretty rigorously, so after I got my beer, I gave him a healthy tip, and headed back into the crowd. I nearly bumped into a short woman who was right the fuck next to me. She had sensible shoulder-length hair that appeared to hold a red tint. I was too disoriented to notice much else, and so I did an actual spit-take when one of my friends asked me how come I hadn't asked Elizabeth for her autograph after nearly colliding w/ her. And that's how I saw that hint of copper up close.

Damn it! That close & I didn't get to talk to her. Probably just as well. I don't think I could've come up w/ much more than monosyllables anyway. I'll just have to continue to love her from afar...

Elizabeth, Elizabeth! (The tip of the tongue taking four steps.) What can I say? How could I ever show you the depth of the love I feel for you as a woman & as an artist?

My female friends tell me you are self-involved. I would say they are wrong, but for an abiding respect that leads me to, uh, extend only the truth to you. Still, why shouldn't you be self-involved? You are magnificent.

My female friends tell me you would've been one of "the popular girls" in school. Of course you could've, if you'd wanted to! W/ yr. beauty?! W/ yr. intelligence!?! They point out that you may have exaggerated yr. apparent intelligence by delivering indecipherable lyrics like "...I'll stay far away from you ground the things we set aloft & burned them through a wasted premise: 'we'..." So I asked them how they could call these words pretentious if they couldn't even figure out what said words meant! Ha! That shut 'em up! (‘Tho truth be told, I think I was restating their criticism when you get down to it.)

My female friends say that you only tell yr. side of the story in yr. songs. Well, OK, I said as much back there in my celebration of the first Reputation record. What they miss—and I told 'em this—is yr. sensitive side. Vindictive as those songs may seem, they come from a deep personal pain, & as such, here are some promises I want to make to you, Liz. I will probably never meet you, but if the opportunity springs up, I will...


-protect you from drunken singles bar louts, like the ones who are no doubt ogling you in "The Stars of Amateur Hour;"
-not simper about how you've caused me so much pain, (even if you ever do,) nor, esp., call you a "slut," like that asshole milquetoast from "Misery by Design;"
-if we are courting, (even in an on again/ off again way,) allow the "tail end of [any other woman's] ass slip up [my] stairs," & not just because I'm not sure how there can be anything other than a tail end to someone's ass, (I might've gone w/ "ass end of her tail" if it were me, but you're the gifted one around here,) but also because I would be zealously loyal till you told me to get lost; not like that jerkoff in "She Turned Your Head," I mean;
-not "underestimate" you when I am unable to explain something to you like that "Alaskan" chump;
-not perpetrate whatever misc. wrongs yr. former paramours commit vs. you on the second record, To Force a Fate; (sorry, I don't know what these may be as I rarely listen to the thing;)
-and most of all, I will watch out for "late night spills" & never ever ever ever use you sexually to make myself feel better like that shithead from "For the Win." Not once.



I think we can see what the problem really is here, Eliza- beth: My female friends are really fucking jealous of you! Which is understandable. I mean, as the Song of Songs sez, "...thou art fair, my love; thou hast doves' eyes w/in thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are ever shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate w/in thy locks..." (4:1-4:3)



Ah, Elizabeth! What more is there to say? I'm exhausted. As always, I got nothin'.

Except that I had a great time at the show, as usual. And that I really love yr. record. The first one. And that I have a genuine & abiding love for the band & esp. for Elizabeth.







No matter how dorky she is.