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"Can I sleep at your house tonight?"

Here's another advantage of living in San Francisco. You can get anywhere, pretty quick.

With nothing much to do, I spent some the morning writing and editing and proofing the month of April, which'll be the next issue of the zine. Then I pooped in the communal john down the hall. Someone had thoughtfully left yesterday's Chronicle atop the toilet, and I spotted an interesting double feature playing at the Saint Frank. The next showtime: 11:15 AM. The watch on my wrist said it was 10:51. 

24 minutes to wipe, get dressed, and get myself about a mile away, in downtown at nearly midday? Traffic would be slow, but irrelevant, since I'd be under the earth riding the subway.

So I made six cheese and onion sandwiches, stuffed 'em into my backpack with a bottle of tap water, and stopped at the store for a small sack of chocolate. Then I walked a block to the BART station, where trains run so often you don't need to check a schedule, and I was at the theater with five minutes to spare. No car means no hassles, no traffic, no worries about parking.

And the movie was worth watching, too. Not Rumble in the Bronx, the Jackie Chan flick. That was meh — not good, but also not bad, a cartoon without the cartoon. I'm a Chan fan, but not this time. It's a Hong Kong chop sockey that's been badly dubbed in English, set in New York but it looks like it was filmed on Sesame Street. Cheesier than my sandwiches. Chan's made so many terrific movies — City Hunter, Super Cop, Armour of God, on and on, all subtitled and splendid, but this one's been dubbed to death. 

It's the second feature that made the trip and ticket worthwhile: The Substitute. A high school teacher is threatened by a tough kid in class, who then hires a hit man to tonyaharding the teacher. While Teach is recuperating in the hospital, the teacher's boyfriend comes to class as the substitute teacher, and he's not just a tough grader; he's a covert ops commando with some time between assignments. Some time to kill, you might say.

He's Tom Berenger, and in short order he's disarmed the class at this tough urban school, teaching them the inside history of the Vietnam War. And the kids are listening, so it's The Blackboard Jungle with bullets, corrupt cops, and a principal who's also a drug kingpin. 

You're supposed to take it all seriously, which can't be done since it's preposterous, but in weird ways it is curiously lifelike. The kids, for example, remind me of high school thugs I hated when I was in that prison, so seeing 'em get their asses Jujutsued was great fun.

It's a big dumb testosterone movie, but the script is moderately literate, slightly subversive, and there's even a psychotic assistant hero named Holland. Lotsa screaming back at the screen, lotsa laughs, lotsa fights, and lotsa stuff blowing up, in a joint operation between the CIA and the PTA. Also, gratuitous eraser fu, so The Substitute gets my highest lowbrow recommendation.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Back home, back to writing and editing and proofing the zine, but here's fair warning too late: The next issue seems kinda lame, and of course, this is it; the sucky next issue is the one you're reading now.

I like my life, but the zine of my life bores me sometimes. Not sure I'd pay three bucks for this, but my sincere thanks for the suckers people who cough it up.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Needing a break from what I was doing two weeks ago, I looked at the movie calendars on the wall, for the several theaters in and about town that show old movies. There's always something worth seeing at one or three of them, and today it was a 50th anniversary screening of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) at the Red Vic. 

A crosstown #33 took me there, to watch a drifter take a job at a diner, and take a shining to the proprietor's wife. The camera slowly climbs up Lana Turner's legs, and you should oughta know, there ain't no sultry like black-and-white sultry.

Her goofball husband should have 'cuckold' tattooed on his forehead, and after the drifter floats into Lana Turner's port they decide to off the husband. Hume Cronyn plays a lawyer you can love, and it's the best film I've seen all day.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Note from a cheapskate: With my bus and BART pass plus a wallet full of Red Vic tickets someone sent for a Pathetic Life subscription, the total cost for all three of today's movies, including snacks, was less than five bucks. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Waiting for the #33 to take me home, a green-haired man approached me, waving a pair of shoes. "Ten dollars, Doc Martens," he said. "They'll fit ya," he promised, but I shooed the shoes away.

Another man held up a ridiculous purple hat, the kind pimps wore in the 1970s. Momentarily I was tempted, so he said, "Ten bucks," and I smiled and held up an index finger to bid one dollar. He shook his head, and walked away. No bargains in the Haight-Ashbury tonight.

Still waiting for the bus, I chatted with some of the stoner youth. They're like the kids on Telegraph, only on Haight they're younger, and into harder drugs than Berkeley's marijuana. Several of them panhandled me for dimes and quarters, but I'm poor and stingy and said no.

One tooth-deprived kid in a badly-ripped overcoat didn't ask for money, but instead said, "Can I sleep at your house tonight?" I told him my wino hotel has a rule against visitors, and he laughed, said that was the best answer he'd heard that night, but "it always comes down to 'nope'."

"Yup," I said. "Nope."

"So it's back to Golden Gate Park," he said, and trudged with his beat-up backpack toward the miles of green a few blocks away.

Countless kids sleep in the bushes and on the grass in the park, every night. It's a problem, I think, but nobody in power gives a rip.

From Pathetic Life #23
Wednesday, April 24, 1996

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.

26 comments:

  1. > I will maybe cue up that album at bedtime. So what makes the live versions of those songs better than the studio versions?


    The place you made this comment is so crowded with comments that there's no room to reply. So I moved it here.

    Live versions of songs are rarely "better" than studio versions. Elvis was doubled right from the git-go at Sun and RCA continued the practice, so if you heard an Elvis record you heard him singing twice, a couple of teensy ticks apart. It made his slightly thin voice thicker. It was the Elvis of the record.

    In the beginning of his live performances, the technology to mimic this doubling live was nascent at best. So when you heard early Elvis on the Louisiana Hayride, he sounded just slightly different, like he was standing too far from the mic. The first time he was on the Hayride, he was holding a guitar, which he didn't play particularly well. But nobody heard him play badly because on the first downstrum he broke five of the six strings. But he had his backup guys behind him, so if you were listening on the radio it sounded OK. If you were watching live you were seeing the future, with thin voice, strong arms and a powerful message.

    Playing live is working without a net. I won't say it's "better" but it does have its attractions. If you like perfect music with no whistles, you might give Steely Dan a try. Aja is so close to a perfect record it makes me nervous. It's one of my favorite albums, but there's not a great deal of spontaneity there.

    There is a checkout clerk at my local Krogers who is a looker, perhaps 25-30. Her name is Aja and she says her parents named her after the Steely Dan album. She is Black. Her parents must be the only Black folks who bought any Steely Dan album, especially Aja. I didn't mention that part to her. I just told her what she already knew: that she was named after one of the best albums ever recorded. I almost said overrecorded, which it was. The boys liked faders.

    John

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    1. > Playing live is working without a net.

      Like improv, perhaps. Haven't seen much of it and sometimes it's funny, but it'll never be as funny as something a good comedian has spent hours perfecting.

      Or first drafts of writing, as compared to something the author polished up real nice.

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    2. Yeah, well my conclusion was obviously that live music and music that is put together note by note by engineers and technicians, re-recorded, slowed down, sped up, merged with electronic music, thrown away, started again, and re-recorded, each has artistic value. But those values are expressed very differently. I do want to hear the Dead recorded live with Jerry throwing in a key change and the other guys hearing it and following along and back to the original key, or whoever is on keyboard (they had a few) start playing a 7th at the beginning of each chorus and Weir following him down this path to madness next time around while Lesh is finding a seventh equivalent on his five-string bass.

      I also want to hear Steely Dan's Becker and Fagen audition six different drummers for the same short fill and figure out which one is taking them where they went to go, then starting in on the bass auditions.

      Do I prefer a lovely windless spring day at Point Defiance Park looking up the Narrows at the majestic twin bridges or a blustery day at the ocean with the wind blowing the crown of each breaking wave back? I don't have to choose. They each capture human and natural beauty raw and wild in the midst of a highly populated region of salt water and dynamic weather systems.

      Jerry Garcia and Walter Becker are both gone for good, but they each left behind a philosophy of how humanity can see itself and express its desires through music-- in very different ways. I salute the difference. It's what makes us human.

      John

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    3. Orval Faubus is gone for good. Jerry Garcia, not so good. Walter Becker, I had to look him up. How come he's not so famous as Steely Donald Fagen? And is Steely Dan considered major league '70s rock, or kinda double-A?

      Just blowing thoughts out my blowhole, I remember kinda liking Steely Dan, though without Googling (I refuse) no partiular songs come to mind. Fagen alone annoyed my ears, singing in a near-falsetto.

      As for live versus studio, all your thoughts make sense and you've never not, but still I gotta ask again — do you not even hear the whistles from the crowd? I can tolerate the applause, even the mumbley talking in the background when a song has a moment of silence, but the whistles make me want to hop into my TARDIS and go back to the concert and smack the whistler right in his whistler.

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    4. Hmmm... After saying all that, there is one song where I want to hear a live recording every time, including the crowd's whistles and shouts and applause.

      You can probably guess what song it is.

      I'll include it on the next cranky playlist, if'n I don't forget.

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    5. I've been slapped across the face with an empty glove! Pistols at dawn, sir!

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    6. It's a gorgeous song, they're a great band, in many ways more honestly progressive than their public nemesis Neil Young.

      https://youtu.be/iExsbDuVqeE

      https://youtu.be/W86Kpcc9XQ0

      https://youtu.be/35Ipe_0kadM

      https://youtu.be/ibtpi5RlC-U

      https://youtu.be/Npm_vwtlN4A

      https://youtu.be/gDDME6Fsphs

      https://youtu.be/94RVX7pLF_A

      https://youtu.be/P7oQzzORJoI

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    7. Neil Young replies . . .

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOMaqe0LOmo

      John

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    8. Steely Dan was Major League. Like Count Basie, they still are.

      John

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    9. "Public nemesis"? There's a feud between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young?

      Thought you were joshing me, Claude. "Freebird" is a good song, but I've heard it all the way through only half a dozen times.

      Lynyrd Skynyrd never cracked my top 40, probably because they play with a twang and sing with a Southern accent. When a song veers toward country/western, my habit is to change the station.

      I'm listening to "Tuesday's Gone" as I type this, and it's about 85% rock'n'roll, very listenable. The other 15% is country, so I'm still apprehensive.

      Now it's "I Need You," which is sorta soully, but slow.

      "The Ballad Of Curtis Loew" is kickin' my butt. It's smart, sad, catchy enough. I'm digging it but still skeptical.

      So far as I can recall, these are the only three songs I've heard by Lynyrd Skynyrd in this life or any other, and I'm not clicking it off.

      As for the Neil Young side of this debate if it is one, "After the Gold Rush" is one of his many that I like a lot. Rock'n'roll needs more science fiction. I remember reading that someone asked him what it meant, and he said heck if I know...

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  2. Maybe I didn't say this clearly. I don't enjoy live music because of the crowd noise. I enjoy live (or live-recorded) music despite the crowd noise. Maybe I'm listening for that language musicians speak with their instruments, inviting their fellow musicians to make subtle alterations to a song the crowd has heard thirty times and is hearing for the first time with this alteration. Muddy Waters' favorite piano player Otis Spann said he always played the same songs but never played them the same way twice. He'd lead the Waters band into uncharted territory and, the rest of the band fervently hoped, back again. All we have are old records, but if I could go back to the last time Otis played with Muddy live at Newport n 1969, I'd sell all my Muddy records for the ticket.

    It occurs to me that I've been to a few live shows over the years including Hendrix and Dylan and Buddy Guy and Mose Allison and Jackson Browne and Simon and Garfunkel (twice), and I just don't remember much whistling from the crowd. Maybe I'm catching the wrong acts.

    John

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    1. Nah, when you're there, in the moment, the whistles and stomps disappear from your ears, like the whole restaurant disappears when your girlfriend walks in. But everything's still there, loud and clear and driving me nuts on the recordings.

      I saw Simon & Garfunkel only once, in Vancouver BC, and it was a hell of a show, with the best rendition of "Bridge over Troubled Water" I've ever heard, with some guy whose name I didn't know playing a pounding piano that made the song beat right into my heart.

      But if I heard a recording of it from that show, that night, I'd probably hate it.

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    2. I saw S&G in 1969 in Corvallis, OR, and in c. 2002 in Seattle. The second time was the Everly tour where the boys invited Don and Phil to sing some of their wonderful songs, then join the boys for a quartet. A very nice evening. You're right. I don't remember any whistles.

      John

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    3. I didn't know they'd toured as S&G as recently as that. And with the Everly Bros? Seems like a good match, but unexpected.

      Where did they play in Seattle?

      In Vancouver it was at some giant football stadium with 55,000 people, but that was the 1980s. Not sure they could draw a crowd like that now, since a lot of S&G's fans are so old or so dead.

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    4. They played the Seattle Center big house. The Arena? Looked like about 25,000 and I think it was a sellout. Hell, a chance to see the Everly Brothers? I just missed them on the other end. And Paul and Art played for a long time. The acoustics were remarkably good. The Everlys hardly even hit each other. And I must say they could still harmonize.

      John

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    5. And I was off by a year. It was 2003. S&G last played together publicly in 2010. I don't think they play together privately.

      John

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    6. I hope you realized when you googled that Neil Young was actually very friendly with Ronnie Van Zant and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He performed Sweet Home Alabama in concert at one point and has worn LS shirts on stage. Most of the swordplay was early on and amused everyone involved.

      My personal favorite LS tunes, outside of Tuesday's Done and Searchin', would be Was I Right or Wrong, One More Time and All I Can Do Is Write About it. And Saturday Night Special, an anti-handgun song! Unthinkable by a "Southern Rock" band these days-- if you want to keep your audience -- Arden

      Was I Right or Wrong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7F8_S3xr80

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    7. Please note there's a shot of Ronnie wearing a Neil Young t-shirt from Tonight's the Night in the video. -- Arden

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    8. To completely switch up here. Harmonies? Richard and Linda Thompson and A Heart Needs a Home, live on British TV with Whispering' Bob Harris... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqViJyweNV0 -- Arden. Perfection.

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    9. Simon and Garf and the Everly Brothers is a concert I'd do, even knowing the crowd would give me a claustrophobic headache.

      I never Googled Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but I'm glad they're pals instead of arch enemas.

      The music will get a spin after dinner and before bedtime, unless I fall asleep during dinner... again.

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    10. Did someone say harmony?

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_fkzaAEbQg

      John

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    11. Classic folk and early rock...

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  3. Here are two live performances of "Jumpin' at the Woodside" by Count Basie. There are a couple of subtle differences between them. See whether you can spot them. This is live music.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnEVppghro4


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuJHKVQ2kLA

    John

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  4. This live music is called Canned Music.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2H_U_BXaLM

    John

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    1. You've made me smile for fifteen minutes now. The Count knows his number, and there was never a show like THE GONG SHOW, not even THE GONG SHOW, and "Canned Music" is subtly about gorgeous babes who want to dance to live music, not whatever's on the radio. Point taken.

      Delete

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