The Birthday Blues

 

So here I am, trying as hard as I can to celebrate my birthday July 26 71 years old [me and Mick Jagger I might add].  But I am ailing, people, and it has been this way for weeks: in my private parts that I won't make public, a very small irritation, but annoying as hell.  I have been to see my primary care physician, the emergency room, two immediate care centers, and Beck's homeopathic pharmacy in Lincoln Square, and none I REPEAT NONE have been able to solve it.

I had to cancel a trip to Milwaukee to stay at one of my favorite hotels on Earth, St. Kate, and go see two favorite baseball teams, Cubs and Brewers.  I had planned it for my months, and now, I am losing money on the deal because of this damn ailment.  I also had to cancel a trip to the Museum of Post-Punk and Industrial Museum in Chicago, where I am sure a celebration was waiting for me, with ice cream and candy and a punch in the belly [from the post-punk group The Birthday Party]. 

I share birthdays with some of my favorite people, by the way.  Mick Jagger [81], Stanley Kubrick, Aldous Huxley, Carl Jung.  And, two years ago, Sinead O'Connor died, very tragic life.  I wrote a short story about it, The Death of a Birthday Cake, and I love it, though it's apparently unpublishable.  

So, I tell you, once this stupidity is over with, I am going to take off to Milwaukee, Colorado, and points beyond, spend money on hotels, and eat lots of ice cream and candy.  You gotta live through mortality, I guess, so might as well have fun.  Just wait for five hours in an ER, and observe people who AREN'T having that kind of fun, and see what I mean. 

 😉😉😑😠😖😛

Maybe whilst I am sitting around here waiting for the urologist or somebody like him, I might, just might, finish this goddamn story I have been dawdling over: The Texas Stars Go to Ground [working title].  I read from Zelda Rising, my novel, at Pete's Pizzeria and Bake Shop on Granville this past week during two slices for one day, but had to leave early because of pain.

But I'm kind of wondering why I am so drawn to reruns of the Jodi Arias trial lately.  Something about the mix of raw sex, Mormonism, and splattered blood [like in this DH Lawrence novel I'm reading The Plumed Serpent, ritual pagan murder in Mexico].  I wonder if my subconscious is working out some sort of fiction around it: maybe I will tell it my Chicago guy Zelda Rising voice ["so you know what she does, my friend, after playing like sex kitten for him, she goes and stabs him 27 times then slits his throat like that sign they used to make in Mormon temple rites to indicate what would happen to people who wouldn't keep secrets, or something like that"].  

Poor Jodi, crying away on the witness stand.  Was she faking it like her telephone orgasms or did she mean it, either crying for herself or dire mortality in general?  Maybe I should write her a jailhouse letter or buy one of her drawings she sells online.  And no, unlike Gacy, she does not paint clowns.  

 👆👇👈👉✋👎👃👽

 My music listening has been pretty much around this Beatport subscription service I'm on, lots of progressive house deep trance dance music.  Wonderful sound on these Beat headphones I have.  I had to repurchase them when I ruined the charging mechanism on the previous version, silly me.  

👀☺💝🎂🎂🎂😜😛

Maybe it's a good thing I didn't go to Milwaukee, because the Cubs are playing pretty pathetic ball of late, typified by one Gold Glover and one Potential Gold Glover both losing the ball in the lights at Comiskey Park yesterday during the Cubs Sox series that has always annoyed me, for some reason.  The Brewers are hotter than a BBQ Brat and could potentially sweep the Cubs.  It smells like that August swoon from my favorite Cubs team of all time, the 1979 version, would go through.  Everybody was thrilled in Chicago [except for Sox fans] until everything fell apart from August 1 and after.  The Hiroshima Toyo Carp, last I checked, were 6 1/2 games behind in the Japanese Central Pro League.  The Trinidad Triggers ... why can't I find the standings in the Pecos League?  AI CoPilot is only showing a list of zeroes, so much for it taking over the world, or whatever. 

 

Hanging Out in Babymetal Bliss

 

I returned from my summer jaunt into Colorado Monday, slept till 4 pm, and prepared myself mentally and spiritually to attend the Babymetal concert next night at the Aragon Ballroom.  It was your typical magnificent spectacle of precision dancing and heavy metal music raising the rafters of the old auditorium.

In past years, I’ve bought the VIP package that allowed me into the venue early with a spot right at the lip of the stage.  But this year, for economy sake and a desire not to listen to lame opening bands, I opted for the regular general admission ticket.  It worked out better than I had planned.

Now I could have waited at the end of the general admission line in the humidity and heat that stretched out to reach the entire block, but instead went over into the cool of the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge across the street, where I paid a 10 dollar cover charge to listen to a 1920s-40s swing band who were just setting up while I sipped on my club soda.  But the doorman told me I could come back later: I was easily identified by my red Hiroshima Toyo Carp Japanese baseball hat that I always wear for the girls [they hail from Hiroshima and have been known to appreciate the fine sporting art of baseball], so no problem returning to the Green Mill later.

I went back to the Aragon then, where the line had diminished so that I could walk in pretty smoothly and easily.  The crowd was thick and vast, full of black t-shirts and massive studded boots: I was the only one wearing a red Hiroshima Toyo Carp baseball hat.  Now, I had been apprehensive when it came to finding a prime place in the crowd to view the girls, but did fortunately set myself up on the top of some stairs near a bar, at stage left.

I only had to listen to one start up band, called JinJin of something along those lines, with a woman singer who shifted from a longing ballad voice to a metallic shrill shriek as the band surged behind her.  They did this formula repeatedly, with a tedious sameness.  What a contrast to the might and magnificence of Babymetal.

The group never lets me down in their concerts and this one was full of the pulsing light flourishes and soaring music and song I’ve come to expect.  They’ve been at it for 15 years and are currently enjoying a new record contract deal that sees them expanding their popularity.  The dancing of the three girls was precise and, in a strange way, charming: the choreography mirrors the street moves of a heavy metal concert audience: the clapping, the outstretched arms, the body thrashing.  Momometal, Moametal and Sumetal are truly heavy metal ballerinas in that sense, as if The Rite of Spring were being performed in a mosh pit.

For this show, I was particularly impressed by the stature and bearing of the lead singer and dancer Sumetal [Suzuka Nakamoto], who throughout a rigorous worldwide touring schedule, has forged herself into an imposing figure who takes over the stage with a forceful panache.  She struts across the floor, she kicks up her right leg and holds it there for a micro second, she poses a regal bearing then comes back to earth with a smile and wave of her hands.  It’s like a Mick Jagger or Robert Plant in their prime, only more nuanced in the discipline of the choreography.

I have had curious encounters with Suzuka at past concerts [she gave me the fast eye one year when I was standing at the lip of stage after noticing my magical Hiroshima Toyo Carp hat, and no, I am not a delusional fan boy on this one, I have video proof] and I do believe this year she did take notice of the hat, but in this case, I am not so sure, as I was at a greater distance.  But who knows, it’s all part of the fun anyway, though it does add a kind of a spiritual collective unconscious angle, especially considering that Seiya Suzuki, a former Carp player, is tearing up the league this year in RBIs, playing for the first-place Cubs.

Yeah, me and Babymetal, it’s been quite the trip.  I walked out of this concert in a drenching rain that actually felt pretty good after all the heat and sweat in the Aragon.  It reminded me of when I first witnessed the group at House of Blues in Chicago 12 years ago, the best rock concert I’ve ever seen.  I came out of that concert into a downpour as well, so it had a certain redemptive baptismal feel this year, and I don’t know why, such is the mystery of this group.

Anyway, I ended up going back to the Green Mill across the street, where I enjoyed old-fashioned jazz swing music that reminded me somewhat of the tune Antoine Roquentin hears in Sartre’s Nausea novel, a relief from his existential quandary, as I sunk into the dark green cool womb of the interior.  People were dancing, the band was pepped up, time seemed to mean nothing.  Later on, a woman scooted into the booth where I was sitting [apparently the same one that Al Capone used to favor] and introduced herself, later calling over a tattooed woman who claimed to be the photographer for Babymetal.  I really should have asked for visual proof, but was still feeling enchanted by the evening and just let it go as another synchronicity in a chain of similar instances that mark my experiences with this extraordinary group.

*********

In Trinidad, Colorado, I took in several minor league baseball games of the local team, the Trinidad Triggers.  Unlike major league games, you really get a feel for what playing hardball really means up close: the spills, the hits, the sounds.  At one game, there was even a bench clearing incident when a Triggers player came off of third base to slam into the catcher at home plate, triggering [so to speak] a shoving match.  The Triggers are fairly mediocre this year, but drew a large crowd for the Fourth of July celebration, though I opted out of that to take part in the local First Friday art walk: lots of neat local art and artists, not to mention free food.

**********

As for my novel Zelda Rising, I brought it along to two local art workshops, one in Trinidad focused on promoting creativity, the other a writing workshop hosted by the University of New Mexico in Raton, across the border.  Both were interesting and involving, though judging from my questions and my participation, one of the UNM hosts told me I could have taught the class, what with my experiences in professional editing and writing.  Maybe, but I am still not satisfied with the progress of the novel and need to think of new approaches to get it out there, once I get this baseball bum persona out of my system.  A few days ago, Lee Elia, a former manager of the Chicago Cubs, passed away: he was known for a rant where he castigated fans for being unemployed and only attending day games because they didn’t work: he claimed 85% of the world was working, and the other 15% were at Wrigley Field raising havoc.

For years while office working, I often daydreamed about being part of that 15%.  And now’s the time, I guess.

Trinidad Triggers in Peril??????

 

Walking into Trinidad Mutiny coffeehouse and center of the universe here in Trinidad, Colorado, I noticed a man wearing a Cubs hat, just finishing his work and getting up to leave.  I talked for him a bit: he’s out of Iowa but moved here for the change of pace and the nice weather.  Then we began talking the Trinidad Triggers minor league baseball team here, you know, who play on a glowing-green field and the backdrop of Fisher’s Peak in the distance.

                  After he left, I thought, yeah, it’s about time for a blog update on my current occupation of baseball bum, at least, for this summer into fall. 

                  It’s been sort of erratic, actually.  It started in April at Brewer’s Stadium, watching the Brew Crew beat the Cincinnati Reds, but ever since then, not much.  The weather has been too cool in Chicago for either Cubs or Sox, though, as usual, I watch baseball slovenly on television, lolling around with the sound off and the music on, enjoying a brisk spring that saw the Cubs push into first place, thanks to an improbable center fielder who leaps and runs like a gazelle and has a nice, quick bat.

                  On the South Side, we learned that the new pope is a White Sox fan.  He signs baseballs, he wears the hat, he cheers along with the Vatican crowd while he’s riding around in his popemobile as they chant “White Sox, White Sox.”  Too bad organist Nancy Faust isn’t around to accompany them.

                  But most of my attention has been focused on the Trinidad Triggers here.  Their season has had a few rough patches, to say the least.  They currently stand at 7-16, 14 games back in the Mountain North division of the Pecos League and have endured such notable failures as a 32-11 [!] loss on the road.  Other day, they fired their manager and a notice went out on Facebook that the team was “teetering on extinction” if attendance didn’t pick up, which caused the kind of depression I suffer when the Cubs go into a skid, as they are undergoing now.

Some of this dire situation might have to do with the demise of their mascot from last year, Triggy Trigger: mascots carry great cosmic significance in the game of baseball, for example, I blame the expanded role of that damned Cubs mascot for the team’s recent slump, what else could it be?

Since most of the Triggers games are at night, I suspect some of that low attendance has to do with the iffy, cool night weather we’ve been having here of late: I’m hoping the traditional Fourth of July game and festivities improve matters.

                  My own experiences at the two games I attended were odd.  The first game was in the middle of its fourth weather delay while under a lightning watch that threatened to fry players on the field.  The second game was on a very pleasant evening though attendance was light: I enjoyed some really tasty tacos while watching the Triggers offense explode as they were facing the North Platte 80s.  But around the third inning, a fastball caught the home plate umpire in what looked like the shin under the knee, leaving the poor guy writhing on the turf.  Another delay of a half-hour ensued, though I stuck out this one until the ninth inning, with the Triggers’ offense again perking up to win the game.

                  Though I haven’t attended as many games as I would have liked, I greatly enjoy the games at Central Park field.  Hell, they were playing next to the train tracks in the 1880s and I would hate to see that tradition put to an end.  Where else could I go for those tasty tacos, after all?

 

 

I’ve been attending a couple of writers and creatives workshops in the area while I’m here to try to find my mojo that has been lost to me since I published Zelda Rising.  A workshop on Creativity and Selling Your Works was fun here in Trinidad, and tomorrow I am going to nearby Raton, New Mexico, for a writers conference sponsored by the University of New Mexico, who happen to be the keepers of the DH Lawrence shrine in Taos [Lawrence stayed in that area for a couple of years, where he attempted to start an artists colony: his ashes may be encased in a statue of the Phoenix up there in the mountains, though that is in a mild dispute, according to the biography DH Lawrence by Brenda Maddox I am currently reading].

I’m also trying to write a long short story about a Texas country and music band and Roxy Music, but it’s only meh.

 

 

My music listening on this trip focuses mainly on the dance house progressive techno outlet Beatport lately and its DJ service.  Pay 12 bucks a month and glom onto most of their catalog, like Ladytron, Matt Masters, Freerange Records, Torn [Drum and Bass] and Ewan Rill, just to name a few.  I’m listening through some Beats wireless headphones that have a kind of a mediocre reputation in the audiophile community but are better than what I would have thought: a sweet bass response, for example. 

What I do is turn off the sound while watching Whoopie Goldberg on The View in the morning and listen to tracks like Annihilate, Dystopia, Ether Mind, and Into the Abyss.  Starbucks and a muffin and gibberish from rich woke Hollywood stars complaining about the Trump Doll on a shelf in the bedroom here.  Now that’s entertainment!

Our Red Hat

 

 

 

Hi, Bob.

Thanks for the meeting today.  You know I’m always glad to sit here with you and talk things out while we’re looking over Lake Michigan together, watching the waves come in and break on the shore over and over again, kind of like the way my thinking is going these days.  Where I can tell you, my professional therapist, what’s been bothering me, lately.  Sure beats the usual office and couch routine indoors, am I right or not?

Anyway I had to see you today because, this time around, it has to do with me in this different hat here than the Chicago Cubs hat that you wanted me to start wearing for our therapy together.  But, Bob, let me tell you first that this is not a Cincinnati Reds hat, even though it looks that way.  And that’s causing me hassles like you wouldn’t believe these days.

I’m telling you, Bob, I did the best I could to get out of what you called my basement rut.  Started climbing out of it more often, instead of spending most of my time staring into the computer screen at AI anime manga and that online magazine Japan Girl World.  You told me it looked like I was turning otaku, which at first to me sounded like some piece of sushi, but then you’re telling me it has to do with guys in Japan who stay indoors in front of the computer screen day and night like I was doing, alone with their AI anime manga and all that.  Well, Bob, I figured, if it was that bad, it was that bad, know what I mean?

This is all not to say that I think the Chicago Cubs therapy plan you put me on wasn’t working out or anything.  You know, you’re right, even though I go through my “severe ups and downs” like the team’s gone through over the years, I can still be in a beautiful place, like Wrigley Field.  Sitting out in the sun and looking at the ivy on the walls.  The fans all around me, with their clapping and shouting and singing.  Eating hot dogs and nachos.  And getting into the game on the field too, even if I don’t know much about baseball rules and keeping score and all that.

But I couldn’t be at Wrigley Field all of the time, could I?  Sure, your Chicago Cubs therapy was a good thing during the season, like I say, but it wasn’t like I could totally leave my basement or anything during the offseason.  Even if I did get into watching reruns of Cubs games and all that on the computer, I still wasn’t exactly ready to go to bars or coffeehouses or on dates yet … so yeah, I kind of slipped into the world of AI anime manga again and …

 … that’s where MetaShe comes in, which is why I had to visit with you today.

Now, I know you told me I also had to get out of myself, to start make friends with fans of the Cubs.  All well and good, Bob, but you ought to have heard them after they saw me switch from the Cubs hat to wearing this hat.  Saying stuff like:

“So why you got the Cincinnati Reds hat on in here now?”

So I tell them: “This is not a Reds hat.  It is the hat of a Japanese baseball team.  The Hiroshima Toyo Carp.”

But it’s like they never listen to me.  They just keep going on and on and on with the: “What are you thinking?  You going around wearing that hat?  Who do you think you are, Charlie Hustle?”

Well, I didn’t know who the hell this Charlie Hustle was, so I tell them: “Doesn’t sound like someone who ever played for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.”

And they keep coming back with stuff like: “Lose the hat.  You look crazy in it.  You keep wearing it and you’ll end up in some Big Red rubber room.”

“How many times do I have to tell you,” I say. “Hiroshima Toyo Carp.”  And, Bob, it just goes on: blah and blah and more blah.   So, you tell me, what’s a guy to do?  I’m just plain getting sick and tired of listening to everyone and everybody saying I am now a Cincinnati Reds fan.

So look, I know it’s been a while since our last meeting out here … but it was just time we got together again, mainly because of MetaShe.  Yeah, a woman name of MetaShe is the real reason this all got started, with the new hat and everything.

I was completely taken in by her, Bob, when I first saw her dancing and singing on my screen.  Staring into the face of all that beauty … rising out of cloud banks while thunder bolts are wrapping around her, with sparkles of fire in these good-looking almond eyes and bursts of colored lights from off her rainbow-painted fingernails … you know how AI, they say, is taking over the world, well, you ought to see MetaShe, like, she’s way, way beyond even that.  She’s what you might call a Japanese metal music ballerina, more real than real to me.

Then, when I checked for more about her on the Web, I ended up finding out that she was from Hiroshima Japan, of all places.  Then I guess you can say I must have mashed it up with your Wrigley Field therapy when I started following the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

Now this Hiroshima Toyo Carp I’m telling you about, Bob, it’s a professional Japanese baseball franchise that plays in a small baseball field, what you call a bandbox, just like the Chicago Cubs.  I don’t know how they kept the Cincinnati Reds from getting on their case for … what do you call it, “trademark infringement”? … but in 1973, the Carp took on the exact look of the American team for their hats and uniforms when they were hauling in trophies as this dynasty called the Big Red Machine.  Maybe the Carp thought all that winning would rub off on their own team, if they wore their gear.  And I guess it did work for a while, but, after the Carp fell into last place in 1993, they were pretty much like Japan’s version of the Chicago Cubs, you know, up and down in the standings, mostly down.

So, even though you and me, we bleed Cubby Blue … these days, I have this thing about the Hiroshima Toyo Carp I’m talking about.  And, that’s why I had to get away from these people and meet up with you here where we sit together, at Navy Pier.  About some Japanese metal ballerina I can’t keep from dancing my mind away.

Which brings me to the concert where I saw her last week, Bob.  At the House of Blues, you know, that place over by Marina Towers.  And let me tell you, does she have the fans or what: you should have heard them in there, roaring away in one, way insane voice when the show starts off, with a silhouette of MetaShe on a curtain that’s shining as white as new snow.  She’s waving her hands, she’s bending herself up and down at the waist, all in time with this massive full-metal music from her band playing somewhere offstage.

Then the curtain opens and there she is, bursting out on stage fast, like she’s riding on top of some wild explosion.  You should have seen her, Bob, her wearing a silver vest of spangled mirrors that’s catching splashes of coloured lights from off a spinning wheel on the ceiling of the stage.  She’s also got on this headband full of jewels and all these silver-black crepe ribbons tied into her black hair … and, I’m telling you, that ruby skirt of hers, it was just blazing away like some shimmering red cloud of sparks.

Then they show her band behind her, a bunch of guys in, you know, those weird Japanese masks, with the mouths wide open and the bulging eyes?  The metal music they were making, like you could almost see the notes splintering the air.  Swirls of drums and cymbals, the bass player strumming like mad.  Crowd chants of “MetaShe, MetaShe, MetaShe”.  Her knee-high, starry-purple platform boots doing snappy kicks on the stage, carrying her body in a spin across it.  Waves of hands from off the crowd shooting up into the horned finger salute toward her and the band.  People pounding their feet in a surge until it feels like shock waves off an earthquake that just hit below the floor, like that.

But you know what happens then, Bob? … you know what brought me to see you today? … what happens was, the drummer whaps the sticks on the skins to call the song to a halt, and that leaves MetaShe standing there, smiling, pumping her fists that are raised above the crowd.  She’s looking over the crowd, left and right, and then she comes to the center and there I am, in my red Hiroshima Toyo Carp hat and … she stops … and …

… our eyes meet.

 

            The baseball hat of my team.

            Our eyes meet under the brim of my hat.

            Back home. Back in Hiroshima. What is this place again? America, Chicago?

            My hat from Japan I wore for her.

            Why the hat on that man?

            The hat worked.

            Smile.  Dance.  No baseball.  No father and mother and friends at games.  No, America, Chicago now.

            It really worked.

            No cheering, laughing, at a baseball game.

Beautiful.

            Tired, too many airports, strange city streets, dance, sing, scream now.

            And her voice cracked.  But it never cracks, not from her.

            No friends from school now.  No reading my book in bed.  No sleeping in hotel rooms.  Smile.  Dance.  No baseball in Hiroshima.  Keep up the dancing.  I learned: six years old: dance and sing in Hiroshima.  Perfect.  Perfect dance, perfect sing.   Not home now.  In Hiroshima.  After this Chicago, a place called Ohio.  In America.  Not Hiroshima.  Ohio America.

            She must feel the hat.

****

Yeah, MegaShe, she’s really got to me now.  Ever since that night at the concert, after our eyes met like that, she’s been in my head, I mean, to the point where I’m actually hearing her.  It wasn’t like she was just looking at me, it was like she was saying something to me.

And what’s even weirder is that, it’s in Japanese, but also like, it’s in English:

I felt scared but I wanted him with me.  He said he loved me and only me and wanted me too.  No parents at home this day, we are left alone in my bedroom with the pink-and-white sheets on my bed.  He kissed me on the lips: he took off the girly baseball hat I had worn all day, kissing me.

Letting me in on her secret life here, Bob:

Then my tan jacket with the crest of my school that has the crown of a queen on it, he took off; then he set free the knot in my tie and took off my favorite white shirt and he felt for the clasp on my back from the bra and snapped it off.  I was showing then my breasts that he began to kiss: one then the other one.

Like, who is this guy with her?

Next he put his fingers of his right hand down into the waist belt of my American-style jeans and then my jeans fell.  He knelt down and kissed me on my stomach then, sliding my American jeans down to around my ankles.  I stopped him there: I sat on my bed with the pink-and-white sheets and took off the jeans from my ankles and then took down my panties from my ankles.  I did a giggle to him and I said “you must remove your hat first”.  He took off his uniform but not the hat.

Bob, this guy, you think he’s … no, it couldn’t be.

He was so hard, so hard in his athlete muscles.  I thought he would be hard for both of us.  Him naked, except the hat.  I laid my back on the bed with the pink-and-white sheets: He went on top of me then with the muscles like cords of strong rope.  Then he pressed himself into me and I could feel his hard inside.  We shook and shook but his hat stayed on.  Then he went deep into me and I could feel the break and the wet of the blood that was red like the red hat of our team.  I was thinking: the hat stayed on his head and now I will stain the pink-and-white sheets so I cannot put them on my bed again and I also have stains on my belly between his belly and his chest.  Then he came away from me and tipped his hat.  I loved him so much, but he was saying goodbye.

Me?

And now, tonight in Chicago in the United States, I have found him.

*********

So that’s why I’m here to visit you, Bob.  Because, considering the recent turn of events and all of that between me and MetaShe, I have to ask you: do you do couples therapy?

**********

The design of the life-sized statue of comedian Bob Newhart, currently on display on Navy Pier in Chicago, is said to encourage guest participation by sitting down on a couch next to the famous TV psychologist Robert Hartley in bronze and interacting with it.

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago, Newhart achieved fame with his comedy record The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart before turning to starring roles in two comedy sitcoms: The Bob Newhart Show that ran from 1972 to 1978, portraying the famous TV psychologist, and Newhart from 1982 to 1990, where he played a Vermont innkeeper.

In a unique and surprising ending to the Newhart show at the time, Bob was to wake up in bed with his wife from his earlier show and discover that his role as the innkeeper was a dream all along.  In other words, two televisional Bobs became as one.

And, of course, Newhart himself was an avid Chicago Cubs fan.  As he once put it: “Being a Cubs fan prepared you for life.  You knew you were ahead, but you knew you were going to blow it.”

 

BLOG 18: Willoughby! Next Stop, Willoughby!

 

Even though I was nervous as hell about flying, my trip to Albuquerque to see the Japanese Metal Ballerinas called Babymetal went well in late November 2024. See, I had had bad experiences at security several years ago on Alaska Airlines during a trip to Portland to watch Japanese woman wrestler Maki Itoh: Starting with when I began following the band Happy Mondays and the Baggy scene out of the house rock music hybrid coming from Manchester UK [aka “Madchester”] in the early 1990s, it’s got to be loose-fit shirts and pants for me. So when they made me take off my belt and my shoes, it caused much embarrassment and snickers out of security.  But this time, no such problem with United Airlines, who whisked me through without incident.  Still, things were crowded, even for a Thanksgiving Day.

I also hate turbulence and on this trip, I ended up in an uncomfortable middle seat on the three-hour flight.  No problem with turbulence here though, and the landing went smoothly.  Albuquerque has a nice, convenient airport too: unfortunately, my hotel did not deliver on the promised shuttle, what with them giving their driver the day off for Thanksgiving, forcing me to cab it.

The hotel itself was part of a vast office complex and convention center area, mostly empty during my stay because of Thanksgiving.  Made me feel like I was in that old Sixties garage rock psychedelic song Caverns of My Mind: all those wide boulevards and towering brick edifices with shining company names at the top and the massive convention center next to the hotel that looked like a concrete statue of the Japanese turtle monster Gamera.

For Thanksgiving dinner, I had a burger at the bar that was not a turkey, turned out pretty tasty, as I talked Thanksgiving football with the friendly wait staff.  That would change in the next several days, when other wait staff were grumpy about being made to work on a holiday, not to mention that breakfast for a couple days was an inadequate, microwaved breakfast burrito.

Night of the concert took me by Uber to one of those areas that look like company office warehouses, to a place called Revel Entertainment Center, a large, windowless blockhouse.  It turned out to be one of the better venues where I’ve seen the Japanese Metal Ballerinas over the last 10 years, with an expansive restaurant and bar area featuring several outlets for various foods [I had a rather satisfying Mediterranean salad] and a friendly fellow bought me a Coke at the bar, though he acted rather strange after I told him I didn’t drink alcohol, congratulating me while obviously loaded and fidgeting around, typical of the reactions I get at bars whenever I mention my sobriety.

There was also this old-fashioned self-portrait photo machine booth against one of the walls.  The Japanese Metal Ballerinas had earlier noticed it, were fascinated, and took their pictures taken inside it.  Do they have those booths in Japan, I wonder? 

Well, anyway, wanting to see the Japanese Metal Ballerinas up close, I had opted to buy a VIP package so I could enter early and position myself at the lip of the stage, where the young women would recognize my Hiroshima Toyo Carp Japanese red baseball hat: the group is from that city and have in the past shown their devotion to the game and their team similar to what we baseball bums take to heart and soul.

But I simply cannot stand around during rock concerts for hours as I wait for an opening group who is usually meh [this concert, it was some metal group with a woman singer who kept running her mouth about sex acts, which you would never hear out of the Japanese Metal Ballerinas].  I mean, listen sports fans, a baseball outfielder doesn’t have to stand around like that for hours: they get to go to the dugout for a break here and there, am I right?  So I had to sit down at the bar in the back of the hall from time to time, thus losing my place in front of the stage.

During the concert itself, I ended up standing mostly at stage right.  I tried waving around the Hiroshima Toyo Carp hat so one of the young women would recognize it.  I think Momometal [the word “metal” makes up part of the ballerina nicknames, thus, lead singer Sumetal, dancer Moametal, dancer Momometal] may have noticed it, but in the middle of all those lights and commotion, you never can tell.

Well, whatever, the concert was the pinpoint perfection of modern ballet moves to full-blast pop metal music, which differs from the usual brand of aggressive onslaught, what with its anthemic themes and more melodic and lyrical underpinnings.  The young women were resplendent in their full-length dresses with multi-colored shards of triangular foil that caught the reflections of the light show into twirling and spinning along on the stage.  You don’t usually hear it coming out of the darkest strains of metal music but the Japanese Metal Ballerinas called Babymetal really do excite an electric feeling of, get this, “joy”: their fans who are parents even bring their kids to Babymetal shows to join in the “fun”, another word you usually don’t hear around the metal hordes.

I enjoy these shows so much that, when they end, it usually takes me a day or two [maybe even longer] to get over them, like I’m leaving behind old pals of mine.  I’ve been following the Japanese Metal Ballerinas since they first started as teenagers back in 2014 and I felt this strange sense of an almost brotherly pride to have seen them come this far in their success.  So, sad if wistful nostalgia marked my train ride down to see my family in Trinidad Colorado.  It was eased though by the beauty of the New Mexico to Colorado route on the Southwest Chief: wide vistas of valleys and walls of mountains and mighty rock formations and flowing rivers.  The rustic Old West flavor of the train station in Lamy, New Mexico, with an ancient passenger car set behind a makeshift holiday village, made me think of how DH Lawrence and his wife Frieda and their group used to get off at Lamy for the car trip up to Taos, where he started his short-lived literary commune.

 

My month-long stay in Trinidad included a reading from my novel Zelda Rising at Mutiny Trinidad Coffeehouse, of course.  It was the section where the narrator mentions how he doesn’t like Cat Stevens:

 

And it seems that every cat person out there has to love Cat Stevens and Crystine was no exception: in one of the videos, it’s him meowing his morning-has-broken song while she’s doing this stumble of a slow waltz with her dancing cat.

 

After one of the folk musician performers said he liked Cat Stevens, I had to remind everyone that this was the narrator speaking and not me.  Well … it was a half-truth, I never much cared for his music myself, him or Seals & Croft, come to think of it: the seventies weren’t a great time for pop music, though compared to today’s crass trash, it can come off as sounding innocent and naively charming.

Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to do any other open mics in Trinidad, so I simply hung out at home.  Early December had very temperate weather, encouraging me to sit outside on the lawn, stare at Fisher’s Peak mountain in the distance, and catch up on my reading: a book by William Gibson, creator of cyberpunk, called Zero History that was well-written but went nowhere; a biography of DH Lawrence, and the journals of my new sparring partner on Xwitter, Joyce Carol Oates. 

Another very eventful holiday on the boob tube, what with this Luigi guy shooting the Health Care Executive in the back, like Uncle Fester used to threaten on The Addams Family; another Luigi who’s a pro wrestler with the gimmick of making pizzas; the California wildfire inferno; the anniversary of the Jon Benet Ramsey murder [new DNA tests will solve it any day now, as usual]; and old reruns of The Love Connection with the late, lamented host, Chuck Woolery, who went on to become a conservative radio talk show host.

We also watched the Twilight Zone.  One of my favorite episodes concerns the overworked office guy who is hassled by a boss who keeps haranguing him with demands to Push, Push, Push, and a shrewish trophy wife.  On the train ride home, he dreams that he can get off to an 1880s wonderland of the simpler, more relaxed life in a town called Willoughby.  Exasperated and careworn, he throws himself off the train one night thinking he can reach this bucolic nirvana and ends up in a hearse run by the Willoughby Funeral Home. 

In my imagination, Trinidad Colorado sometimes feels like my Willoughby, even if it does have a Walmart and no Japanese Metal Ballerinas. 

 

 

 

 

 

Checking Out

 

The tired eyes of J. had fixed on one can of red beans at a grocery store.

This can of beans rested on the lower shelf of three levels of shelves holding baked, chili, garbanzo, white, black, etc., etc. beans.

J. studied the can that showed a small hill of red beans in a white bowl with a brown biscuit next to it.  He kept staring at this can of red beans, as he picked at his long grey beard that he never cut or trimmed and whose tip was brushing the lid of a can of black beans on the shelf below the can of red beans that fascinated him.

Then J. began to wonder about the count of the red beans in the white bowl.  He could not help it: he felt a need to start counting them himself.  One bean first, two beans next, followed closely by three beans, and then there were four, etc. and etc.

He eventually arrived at the conclusion that 46 beans were probably in the white bowl, though he knew, much to his frustration, that he would never be able to count the beans on the other side of the small hill because he could not see them on the photograph.  Still, it made him wonder if the same amount of beans he had just counted was on the can next to it.

So he started eyeing that can.  Again, one bean first, two beans next, followed closely by three beans, and then there were four, etc., up to 46.

Soon after this count, his special friend, R., pushed his shopping cart to roll past three rows of canned vegetables across from the shelves of beans.  R. saw what J. was doing, stopped rolling his cart, and began to drum all the fingers of his right hand on the handle, fussily.  He let out three deep sighs and shook his head three times too.

“And what do you think we are doing here?” said R. to J. “Are we now so positively enthralled over a can of beans?”

J. turned his thin and pale face, heavy with his greying beard and thick eyebrows, to R. and said gruffly: “Don’t interrupt me when I’m working, will you?  I’m busy here because … don’t we all have to work?”

R. sighed, deeply again.  He said: “Well, we all don’t have to work looking into a can of beans, do we?”

“It’s not … it’s not just one can of beans.  I have already made a count of this one can of beans and, for all I know, there are also 46 beans on all the other cans, don’t you see?”

“And can’t we see you’re working on nothing that means anything to anybody but you?  Look at the way you’re staring into it: I wouldn’t be surprised if a copy of the bar code was all of a sudden stamped on your forehead.”

L. closed his eyes and said: “And can’t we see into the fact that the number of beans on this can …”

“The number of beans on the can only means as we’ve said many times before that your workaholism … oh, you’re, so, so pathetic, kneeling there in front of cans of beans like you’re praying to Mecca.”

To that, J. opened his eyes so he could grab the second can of beans off the shelf, stand up, and shake it toward the face of R.

“Look at this, will you already?” said J. “They do not look like any cans of beans I have ever seen.  In this can of beans, I detect the existence of being in the rational plane, I’m telling you.”

“You’re impossible,” said R.  “Did I mention how I hate this working of yours?”

J. closed his eyes again and said: “Can’t you just … why can’t you just leave me alone so I can investigate if these cans of beans hold to my theory of variations that exists on the rational plane, that even something as seemingly self-evident as the count of beans on this one can could hold the key to some manner of vital variations on others.  There are 46 beans on these two cans, but who’s to say there isn’t 45 or even 44 on one or even two of the others?”

“Give me that can of beans, hand it over,” said R.  J. did so.  “Now I’m going to put this can of beans in my cart even though we certainly don’t have any use for it in my dinner plans and I am going to buy it so I can make sure you won’t look at it anymore, is what I am going to do,” he said.  “Maybe now that this one is out of your mind, you’ll stop looking at the others.”

“That’s not going to stop my inquiry,” said J. “You should know that by now.”  He started to slowly bend down again so he could kneel and continue counting the beans.  But before he could do that, R. had pushed the shopping cart into J., collapsing his legs.  Flaying his arms about, L. fell sideways into the basket and then found himself flipped over onto his back, landing on top of the groceries in the cart.

“What is this?” he yelped as R. wheeled the cart away from the shelves of beans and down the aisle, quickly.  “What do you think you are doing?”

“I’m doing what I should have been doing years ago,” said R. “You’re such a basket case and you know what means?”

“Take me back to my beans,” yelled J.

“No.  It’s straight through the self checkout for you.”

BLOG 17 Of Coffee Warehouses, Edible Eels, and Reflections in Black Leather Shoes

 

My last blog about the music group Front 242 was one of my best, matter of fact, somebody actually called it “outstanding”.  But that was just one guy, the rest of it was a shrug into the void.  So, in a bad state of funk over it, I threw myself mindlessly into the Front 242 festivities here in Chicago, hoping to lose myself in the excitement.

It turned into a journey of epic proportions.  At least, in the confines of the city of Chicago.  I found myself in neighborhoods I never imagined even existing, and that’s after 30 plus years of living here.

Take the Dark Matter Coffee warehouse, out in the middle of some industrial zone area that it took 25 stops on the Grand Avenue CTA bus to reach.  Dark Matter Coffee had allied itself with Wax Trax and The Front, so that this vast, cavernous warehouse with wooden kegs and bags of coffee beans had turned into celebratory temple for various rites and activities.

 

 

The one I attended was a film about Electronic Body Music and featured all those names I remembered fondly from my years kicking around Europe in the mid to late 1980s: The Neon Judgement, A Split Second, Nitzer Ebb.  This music was way ahead of the curve at the time and all its preoccupations with power, force and movement particularly ring true in this fateful post-election cycle.

It certainly isn’t music meant to provoke nostalgia, but it was coming on strong the whole night for me: during an interview with Front 242 after the movie, I reacted strongly when Richard 23 mentioned a bar-club called DNA I used to visit regularly in Brussels: a dive with walls splattered with assorted dips and swirls of graffiti.

But as much as I enjoyed the visit, I still found myself slightly disoriented by this warehouse out in the middle of an industrial zone.  I still felt bad about my unfortunate introverted tendency to butcher the first names of people who mean something or other to me: the week before, at the StoryStudio Writers Festival, I had called noted Chicago author Rebecca Makkai “Rachel”, which provoked a snarl from her and, at the warehouse movie show, I couldn’t remember if the current owner of Wax Trax was named Julie or Julia Nash, so I went with “Julie” and failed in that guess too, though Julia didn’t snarl at me, probably because that faux pas was lost in the general hubbub around her.

And getting out of the warehouse wasn’t easy.  I and a friend were hit with blasts of cold and hard November Chicago rain while we were searching for Western Avenue and, when we finally reached it, we huddled under a bus stop across the street from a food outlet called Piranha’s Fish 'N' Chicken and waited for the #49 Western bus that never came.  I eventually had to call on Uber to lift out the both of us. 

So I was too beat the next day to go to the scheduled Front 242 DJ set at the warehouse.  And though I had hoped in the back of my mind that I would score free tickets to the actual farewell concerts at Metro, that didn’t happen.  But what I did do later was hang out at The Museum of Post-Punk and Industrial Music in Bridgeport, to meet fellow Front 242 fans from across the country.

Really, my only knowledge of Bridgeport had been limited to the confines around White Sox Park over the years.  Like, my dad had a special parking spot for games there and we used to visit a bar or two just up the street. Nothing like my explorations last week around Halsted, where I made some nice discoveries.

 

First, two excellent restaurants: something that just had Asian Seafood Restaurant in English on the front, the rest in Japanese.  I dug into a massive plate of fried rice, shrimp and chicken and checked out the aquarium of live edibles in the back hallway, with lobsters the size of my fist and some kind of a black eel.  And next day, I brunched on a Grabowski Gyro at Greek Grill while watching the fleeting promise in the first quarter of a Bears victory over the Pack, only to later learn about the missed field goal with time expiring: the kiss of death.

 

And I also found one of the best bookstores in Chicago, Tangible Books, that offered to carry my novel, Zelda Rising.  I was happy to find an original paperback copy of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by that esteemed doctor of journalism, Hunter Thompson.  Also a JR Powers book (a best-selling Chicago author back in day who coined the question, Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? in his remembrances of growing up Roman Catholic in Chicago with Catholic girls, who I guess were much like how Britney Spears depicted them in her saucy first video and here I won’t go into Chicago’s very own Jennifer McCarthy, but same difference) and an attractive branch of the Chicago public library system that actually had a metal tower of drawers containing free plant seeds for neighborhood gardening projects.

 

But of course, I was mainly in Bridgeport to lounge around The Museum of Post-Punk and Industrial Music, drink strange brews, and listen to curator Martin Atkins expound on the various rock and roll legends and semi-legends he knows, worship at his shrine to the appearance of Public Image LTD on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, and visit his downstairs studio as he cues up massive jolts of raw power out of rare alternate versions of songs from Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult.  Pure bliss.

Yes, Martin knows how to tell a story or three, but it was the first time I heard about his encounter with rock-and-roll nihilist GG Allin.  Seems that, years before, Martin had gone into a drunken rage over Allin’s first punk band, climbed on the stage, and began throwing around guitars, mikes, amps, and a huge monitor.  Later, when he was in the bathroom looking at himself, someone pushed him into the mirror and screwed up his nose bad, not to mention serious bleeding.  That someone was GG Allin his bad self, a bit early in his career before he started going on talk shows like Geraldo, where he’d proclaim himself the “God of Rock” and beckon young girls and boys to break from their parents and worship him.

And let me say right here, I’m glad Martin never ended up as a corpse in an open casket, attending his own wake, like GG.  Or dancing naked on the stage along with all the other abusive pranks GG used to pull.  Martin made better music too, so there’s that.

So, yeah, I enjoyed not only the museum itself, but meeting Front 242 fans from Chicago and mostly California, who expressed an interest in reading my novel.  I gave them my swag bookmark and my business card, but haven’t heard from them.

 

I mean, what is it about Zelda Rising anyway?  Sure, a couple people have really gone all out praising it – for which I am very grateful – but for the most part, abject silence.  Are you speechless over its brilliance or is this a glorified ghosting because you don’t want to tell me it’s garbage or even, gasp, that it’s only “interesting”?  Along those lines, what about best-selling Chicago author Rebecca “Rachel” Makkai?  I gave her an autographed copy, after all, so what’s her take?

Oh well, I’m sure JR Powers would have liked it.  Even from me, a lapsed Catholic author who often reflects on black patent leather shoes and how they trigger the male gaze … or whatever.