From Pathetic Life #4
Friday, September 30, 1994
The nose pimple is shrinking, damn it. I’ve enjoyed watching people avoid looking at it, and toyed with the idea of painting it red and topping it off with a dollop of White-Out to heighten the effect, but alas, it’s almost gone.
Usually the crazies aren't up so early in the morning, but today a Christoholic was preaching at the corner of Powell and O’Farrell, on my walk to work. There’s often a preacher a block down Powell, at Market Street, but this wasn’t that guy. I do hope they’re not franchising.
“I say, sinner," he said, "are you ready for the Rapture?
Are you ready to be judged by Jesus?”
♦ ♦ ♦
I don’t have any interest in learning any of what Marcia knows about workflow in the company, but after her, I’m the worker who knows second-most about things. Our lead, Jennifer, probably comes in fourth.With Marcia leaving, today's the first Friday I’ve been certain I wasn’t being laid off. Yeah, Marcia’s new job gives me job security, for at least as long as it takes to train some new hire on the basics — a couple of weeks, maybe. By company standards, though, that’s a career.
And there’s still not much work to do at work. So why do we call it work?
♦ ♦ ♦
By not getting laid off, I lost my bet with Beatrice. Tried to give her a tenspot, but she said she’d rather I buy her a beer some night after work. She’s twenty years older than me so that’s not a romantic invitation, just an offer of friendship, but I don’t much even like beer. And jeez, am I looking for friendship?
I like Beatrice. Apparently she likes me. When we’ve kept the conversation superficial and mostly work-related, it’s flowed smoothly. And she’s my crumpet dealer. So ... OK, we’ll guzzle a beer some night, and see if we’re friends when the talk isn’t so shallow.
♦ ♦ ♦
That’s enough social interaction to get my membership in the Hermits’ Association canceled, but wait, there’s more:
Kallie is a co-worker in my department, and her TV fizzled and died a few nights ago. When she mentioned it yesterday, I offered mine. I meant it as a loan but didn’t quite make that clear, and when she said she’d take it if I didn’t want it, fingersnap, just like that I decided I didn’t want it. Not even in the closet.
So this morning I put the TV in my backpack and brought it to work, to give it to Kallie. It’s an old, small black-and-white set, and I don’t know what it weighs — five or ten pounds? Kallie has back trouble, though, so she offered me dinner if I’d deliver the TV.
Uhhhh ... Kallie is about my age, and she’s attractive, and a little overweight, which could go nicely with my “a lot overweight.”
Am I allowed to think such thoughts?
No. I’m certain it’s not a date, and if it is a date or ever becomes anything like a date, Kallie will have to explain it to me and she'll have to bring up the subject, because I sure won't. But we're having dinner at her house within a week or so, “when I can afford to cook,” Kallie says.
♦ ♦ ♦
Two social events are on my calendar? Even one would be almost unprecedented, but two?
If I didn’t know these ladies I’d be nervously squirming already, but I do know them, so I hope I’ll be able to relax and be me, not the tongue-tied petrified run-and-hide shy guy that I’ve always been when humans are around. Especially female humans.
I hate navigating the social realm, though. I am introverted, with as much to say as a table says to a chair. I fumble all over myself trying to make small talk. And I’m fat and ugly in my own eyes, so even a fleeting thought of smooching some dame seems like an insult to her.
Margaret was my girlfriend mostly by mutual default, but except for her, I haven’t so much as held a woman’s hand for … nine years. (I had to stop and think.)
And except for Bruno, a friend I left behind in Seattle, and except for maybe a few zine-weirdos who hang out in my mailbox, there isn’t even anyone who’s really a friend.
Maybe it’s time for one or the other.
♦ ♦ ♦
End of month postscript & call for art submissions:
Words, words, more words. It’s hard on the eyeballs. What this zine needs is some artwork — a few comics, drawings, or imaginative doodles could class up the joint and keep readers awake.
If you’re looking for a creative artistic outlet, you’re invited. It doesn’t need to be funny, doesn’t need to be on any particular theme, doesn’t even need to be all that good. It just needs to be not too profoundly ugly and fit onto a piece of paper. Or why not shoot the works and give the next issue a cover?
Payment? No.
This
is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago,
called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but
might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting
things, so parental guidance is advised.
Here, in its modest brevity, is Ramses II is Dead, My Love by a new young group (Ed Sanders is only 85) The Fugs . . .
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSm1pacpSWY
John
Man, that's blasphemy, unless blasphemy require someone alive to be offended...
DeleteI don't think I know exactly what blasphemy is, but Ramses II's funeral was twelve hundred years before Jesus invented christianity, around the time of Moses. Although the song is sung in the style of country/western, that type of music would have to wait for the invention of the six-string guitar (likely yet to be invented simultaneously in Europe and Africa) and electricity (yet to be harnessed by Thomas Edison, et al.). Ed Sanders liked to compress time, which is one of his charms. The song likely accurately describes the funeral of Ramses II, but not the musical accompaniment, which would have to wait for A. P. Carter (Johnny Cash's father-in-law) and my man Jimmie Rodgers, "The Singing Brakeman". The story gets complicated starting here.
DeleteJohn
Ed Sanders is still alive and quipping, and so are the Fugs. "Dancing in the Universe" doesn't have Kupferberg's kick in the lyrics, him being dead and all, but I love the music of it, and sometimes play it to get myself psyched up for breakfast with Mom.
DeleteTuli is only dead in a few republican counties in Ohio and most of the non-fiddle playing south. Everywhere else he lives on without paying taxes. What the hell -- the man never had a job.
Deletejtb
Country music has many fathers and quite a few mothers, but a pivot point is Jimmie Rodgers, who lived a short life at the beginning of the 20th century. He sounded like this . . .
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIBmGZxAhg
That's Blue Yodel #1, also known as T for Texas. This film likely would have been shown as a short in early sound theaters. Modern country music followed shortly.
John
My pop yodeled, so I never much took it seriously, but that there is genuine yodeling. This was an accepted genre of popular music?
DeleteThe film was recorded at the birth of recorded country music. The genre dates back to A.C. "Eck" Robertson, fiddle player whose "Sally Gooden" became the first recording in the country music genre in 1887, but the idea of popular or pop music is a 20th century phenomenon.
DeleteBut when you see and hear Jimmie Rodgers, you're hearing the beginning of modern country and western music. It has roots with A. P. Carter and other Appalachian players and singers, as well as performers in the American south, Texas, and as far north as Tennessee and West Virginia.
The music factories of New York, typified by the Brill Building likely hold the earliest sounds of "pop" music. Long before there were records, sheet music was sold and there was essentially a "top 40" list of sheet music sales. People write books about this stuff, and I've read a few. It's a little complicated.
John
It doesn't feel like "the beginning of modern country and western music," as I'm not instantly repulsed.
DeleteYou've read the books, so let me ask in all sincerity, what is it that draws the deplorables so fervently to country music?
Under what conditions did your Dad yodel? I assume it was front mouth yodeling as opposed to back mouth yodeling, but if he was from the south it could have been the latter. I was a small part of a bar fight over yodeling when I was young and only slightly more adventurous. My friend Brian played the wrong song on the juke box over and over and front-mouth yodeled along with it. Chaos ensued.
ReplyDeleteJohn
Dad simply yodeled for fun. Driving the car or at the dinner table, he would burst into yodeling without warning, for a minute or two at a time. He was pretty good at it, but he wasn't a performer, or at all musically inclined.
DeleteLooked to me like he used his whole gosh entire mouth.
Sounds like a fun guy. my Dad's musical outlet involved one of his many harmonicas, but the dinner table was dedicated to quizzes: geography, history, astronomy mostly. I'd kick my sister's ass because I was older. Now she kicks my ass.
ReplyDeleteJohn
But you're still older, right? The quizzes sound like fun. Were there prizes, or just bragging rights?
DeleteMy dad sat at the table, eating dinner while reading the paper and concurrently watching Waler Cronkite. Sometimes he'd turn the TV down and read news articles to us, even ask our opinions and listen to the answers to make sure we were thinking things through at age 7, 9, 11, whatever.
And he liked reading articles about kids getting run over and killed while riding bicycles. It helped re-establish that none of us were allowed to have bikes, and why.
Just bragging rights. You get a question right, you get a couple of bites of the dinner item you like best; you miss a question, you gotta take a big bite of the vegetable or whatever dish you liked least. Not easy stuff either . . .
ReplyDeleteHow many moons does Mars have and what are their names?
Name seven states that border the Atlantic Ocean.
Which state has the highest percentage of land under Native American control?
What year was the Washington Territory formed and what year did it become a state?
These were actual questions Dad asked us when we were six, seven, eight years old. Some were tougher. Mom would say, "Tom, that's too hard." Dad would say, "Johnny, are these questions too hard for you?" What was I going to say? (The correct answer is "I like hard questions.") By the time we were early teenagers, Dad was working the encyclopedia for questions. Everything was in fun, and we laughed right through dinner, but we took the questions seriously. In the summer, after dinner we took turns on the back of Dad's big Harley, trail riding around the Channel 13 broadcast tower on a hand-shifted street moterbike.
John
I like your dad.
DeleteYou lived near Channel 13? Did you ever meet Mr Blaidon? Man, channel 13 in the Blaidon era was the best indy TV station I've ever seen. Great movies, and Bob Corcoran...
DeleteI think we discussed this in 2021. I experienced two eras of Channel 13, whose studios (to stretch the meaning of a word) were at the base of their tower. (Most TV and even radio stations have a studio remote from their broadcast tower), That hill, overlooking much of Tacoma's North End, Point Defiance, Commencement Bay, and Vashon Island, contains the main North End Reservoir, a hundred acres of scotch broom, and the modest Channel 13 executive offices, studio and tower. In the last 20 years, a few clapboard apartment buildings and a condo or two have infringed on the scotch broom.
DeleteThe first era was when I was a youngster in the 50s and Sheriff Tex had a kids show (cartoons, skits, a fake jail) weekday afternoons on Channel 13.(My parents kept a bottle of bourbon in the house and had exactly an ounce each of bourbon mixed with Squirt or 7-up every day before dinner, so I don't know how I picked up on the vocabulary). In any case, my late Mom claimed that when I was 5 or 6, I told her, "Mommy, I think Sheriff Tex has a drinking problem." And she watched the show with me and agreed.
Fifteen years later, when I was attending Tacoma Community College, I was a features writer for the college newspaper. The features editor, my friend Grant and I decided to do a feature story on Stu Martin, who I believe followed Bob Corcoran with two more movies, hosted by Stu himself and Miss Early Date and Miss Late Date who were nothing to sneeze at. We started hanging around the studio nightly, interviewing Stu, Miss E.D. and Miss L.D., and writing stories of their usually unsuccessful commercial exploits. We ended up with two pages of articles on Double Date at the Movies and Grant got suspended for an issue of the paper and I got a firm talking to: we were supposed to write one article about any topic, and we had written a dozen for the same issue of the paper: two full pages. Our faculty advisor didn't see the pathos in the presentation.
But we got to know Stu a little (and Miss E.D. and Miss L.D.) and had a wonderful time.
Those are my two brushes with the greatness of Channel 13 besides the brushes through the scotch broom on the back of my Dad's big Harley.
John
I remember talking with you about channel 13 a few years back, mostly because you and I are the only people alive who remember Bob Corcoran. These be brand new stories to me, though, about Sheriff Tex's drinking problem and Double Date at the Movies. Or if they're reruns, my recollection is rapidly advancing.
DeleteOnce upon a time in America, there were TV and radio stations that created local programming, and were a genuine part of their community. Now the stations are very, very homogenized and nationalized, with nothing produced locally except news that looks and sounds the same in every city. No more Sheriff Tex, or Brakeman Bill, or JP Patches, Wunda Wunda, no more Bob Corcoran or Nightmare Theater or Million Dollar Movies, and certainly no more Almost Live. Newt Minow said television was "a vast wasteland" in 1961, and it's only gotten vaster.