Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say, and instead it’s open mike night. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.
1/17/2025
Anything goes #11
53 responses to “Anything goes #11”
-
Yessica
My caretaker Brigid came by yesterday and we went over the books. The renter owes $800 for five months rent and that will be a hassle. Also the water tank leaks, something more to be fixed, but if I just get the internet hooked up I could be okay. Still, alas, I am alone, with no woman, no company, but it is the same back home in the States. I’m getting X-rays, taking antibiotics and pain pills for my toothache, all things I normally avoid. Once again sitting in Mexico alone and miserable, better stick to the plan, find a new caretaker and get out of town.
I had waited all day yesterday for the man to come hook up the internet, then went next door to talk to the renter. “Lalo,” I said. “I like that you’re here, but if you can’t pay the rent then you should go.”
Later I phoned Telmex and asked them why the internet didn’t get turned on and they said because the phone bill hadn’t been paid since April. I stormed next door to Lalo, who produced the unpaid bill.
So it was back down the mountain to Matehuala to pay the bill at the Telmex office, and I tried to get them to commit to a time to hook it up.
I thought about finding a girl and followed a taxi all around the east side of town until I caught up with him. For twenty pesos he lead me to a bar by the highway, La Cueva, The Cave. It wasn’t open and I followed another cabbie around on the west side until I caught up with him.
“Donde esta las senoritas?” I asked. He gave me some directions but I didn’t understand.
I cruised around the taxi stands but the cabbies looked too old and grizzled to have the info I wanted. I stopped nearby to ask a youngish one, there was a girl nearby and other taxistas hanging around. He agreed to take me seven kilometers out of town, we passed a huge rural dance hall, then continued on to a turn-off by a little beer stand, where he pointed to a truck trailer off in the woods.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I thought.
We went back toward town and stopped by the huge bar/dance hall, and it was deserted, no cars. Inside were three women playing cards at a table, the two younger cute ones said they wouldn’t go to the private room but the older, not so nice one, said she would for $35. When we got there I tried to get her to give me a blow job con condom but she refused, so a hand job it was and I gave her twenty bucks.
We drove back to town, the taxista told me there was a girl back at the taxi stand who was seventeen and six months pregnant.
“What?!” I exploded. “Why did we drive all over to find that old lady when there was a young one right here? For you to get taxi fare?” He laughed.
I had already shot my wad but I wanted to check out this girl and I motioned her to get in the seat next to me.
“How much to play with your tits, your chi-chis,” I asked. She thought about it and then said,”Two bucks.”
“How about to suck them too?” I asked, as I didn’t think I was good for much else at the moment.
She consulted the cabbie, then said, “Five dollars and you can touch me wherever you want.” I copped a feel right there at the cab stand, with the windows fogged up and the rain falling.
“No, not here,” she said. “Las gente, poli…a la monte.” The taxi took off although I didn’t know what “la monte” was.
“Las montanas?” I asked.
We drove to the deserted edge of town on old rutted dirt roads with only a spindly spare tree or two around. The taxista got out, put his hood up, and walked away. I played with her titties a little, she touched me and I was getting aroused. What the hell, I had another condom, pulled my pants down and put the condom on the semi-hard thing. She bobbed on that baby skillfully, soon I came again, the cabbie came back and we drove back downtown to the taxi stand.
-
I think you tell true stories like me (might be wrong?). I don’t judge except on literary merit, and this mos def passes that test. Love you, man. Call me a prude, though, but I would 1000% rather stay home and make love to a sock than have business-transaction sex.
-
That was fun to dig up that old story (2008) and edit it for the first time.
-
Gonna send to to Bruce at the AVA?
-
haha, I have sent in something similar, but just for elder abuse…
i have something else i’m editing from similar era for next time…
-
-
-
-
-
This question clearly doesn’t belong here, but I do have a query about a movie I’ve not seen: Whale Music. It’s a foreign film if Canada is foreign, and stars one of my favorite character actors, the late Maury Chaykin. He was alive when he starred in the film and won whatever they call the Canadian Oscar. This seems to be a movie from a book that somewhat parallels the life of Brian Wilson who, unlike Maury Chaykin, is alive, all bets to the contrary. Opinions? Thanks.
jtb
-
I liked Maury Chaykin, and Canadian films have an overall better batting average in my opinion than American films, probably because they don’t have a Hollywood and do have a National Film Board of Canada.
It’s pedestrian, but for movies unknown I rely on IMDB’s user-voted ratings. Anything 7.0 or better gets a green light from me, unless it stars Leonardo DiCaprio. Seems to work out OK.
WHALE MUSIC is rated 7.1, so I’m adding it to my list. Warn me if you hate it, though.
-
Also, who says the question doesn’t belong here? Seems like a pretty good question to me. (:
-
I lived in the poor part of a wealthy suburb for a few years when I was a kid. The housing complex I lived in was surrounded by cornfields and outside of a highway a footpath was the only thing connecting you to any other part of the town. Still, kids are kids and don’t recognize class distinctions until they’re a little older. I thought it was odd that all of my friends who lived in houses rather than apartments also had a dad.
I was visiting one of them, and my friend’s bedroom was bigger than my house. Plus a skylight. Not too far away was this weird mansion that looked like a normal suburban house that died while shedding its skin — all these humps and flying triangles coming out of it and then stopping abruptly.
My friend said that some guy named “Brian Wilson” lived there, I didn’t know who that was but I knew a song (probably “Good Vibrations”) from the Beach Boys. For some reason this surf king moved to this wealthy town in the middle of nowhere. I later remembered this and I guess his “producer” moved nearby, and Wilson uprooted his life to be close to him. Knowing what I know now, it’s even stranger.
-
Well, that rocks. Nobody who was anybody ever lived in my town. I’m jealous. Did you ever go trick-or-treatin’ at Brian Wilson’s house with humps and flying triangles? Did he have kids?
-
This must have been Brian’s house in Southern California where he was said to be a slightly insane hermit for a couple of decades. AFTER the enforced or voluntary separation from whatever passes for normal society these days, he emerged from the flying triangles and did this (see below), which sounds resolutely sane to me. I assume you were in southern California. What was the name of the jurisdiction?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ2RJwTwbzg
jtb
-
Brian Wilson was his own producer, but he did have a couple of writing partners, most notoriously Van Dyke Parks in the Smile Sessions (which is what sent him to the triangle asylum in the first place). Brian got so tied up in writing and producing that he stopped touring with the Beach Boys early, and just essentially lived in the studio and in his home studio. One day, as Smile was falling apart, Mr Wilson went into his home studio and didn’t come out for several Presidential administrations. OK, he didn’t miss all that much, but not everybody recovers from extended absences. That’s my bio of Brian Wilson. Print it.
jtb
-
Nope, which makes it even more amazing. Suburban Chicago, Illinois:
https://patch.com/illinois/stcharles-il/beach-boy-brian-wilsons-st-charles-house-is-up-for-sale
Though it was his “manager” according to this. I still haven’t the slightest idea why he, or the other guy, or both of them, picked that place.
-
I had no idea of the Chicago stop on Brian Wilson’s wild trolley ride of a life. He did vanish for well over a decade, and he must have been in Chicago. It takes a lot to laugh, it takes at least a train, maybe a whole train of trackless trolleys to cry. Bob Dylan sort of said that. Brian Wilson blew away to the Windy City. I said that.
Johnthebasket
-
That house looks so disappointingly *normal*. A McMansion, basically. I guess the real estate agent had all the humps and flying triangles and anything interesting removed.
-
-
A pretty, pretty, pretty good song.
-
-
The town WAS great for trick-or-treating, thanks for reminding me. A white sheet with a couple of holes in it like Charlie Brown and you’re still getting full-sized Butterfingers. Never went near Wilson’s house, though.
-
Maybe I was still a kid when the bastards invented “bite-size” candy bars. I clearly remember bringing home nothing but full-size, and then watching them get smaller as I got bigger.
Haven’t had a trick-or-treater knock on my door in at least fifteen years. And I *always* dropped full-size into every kid’s bag.
-
You are a god among men!
-
Nah, it was easy as heck once the kids stopped coming on Halloween. Full-size candy bars are a big expense if you’re expecting 200 doorbell-ringers, but affordable for even a poor schmoe like me, when you’re expecting maybe five kids and get one, and eat most or all of the candy yourself. Good times…
But I still miss Caravelle bars.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
At the time I wrote that this question clearly doesn’t belong here, the comment immediately followed the extended comment/commentary/story of Mr Eel. I thought the context switching might be neck-wrenching.
jtb
-
We should seek clarification from John, exalted inspiration for this page, but my overconfident misunderstanding is that anything goes, all comments are islands, and any relation between X comment and Y comment is as accidental as lucidity from Trump. Neck braces are recommended.
-
Answer: If you click the “Comments” box on the masthead, you’ll get the answers before the questions. I’ve found that this makes no less sense than clicking in the Comments sections, which also tend to give you the answers before the questions, but attempt to make sense of the questions. For example, this comment — I’ve lost track of what the question was.
jtb
-
Hadn’t considered it, but I suppose the order of comments could be confusing. The threading helps, for me. I remember when websites with comments didn’t seem to have any threading at all, specifically the early-web version of the local alt-weekly paper. There were thousands and thousands of comments, hundreds more daily, but I never said much of anything. It was like standing at a wall with no door.
-
-
-
The Brian Wilson writing partner I was trying to think of is Tony Asher, who worked on God Only Knows and another dozen Wilson/Beach Boys Songs. Tony and Brian, both in their 80s, are still around, but I don’t think they’ve worked together since they worked successfully on Pet Sounds and unsuccessfully on Smile.
John
-
Was SMILE unsuccessful? Or simply unprofitable?
-
It hasn’t been released (yet). After two or three years of writing and recording, the Beach Boys and/or their label released an album called Smiley Smile, but all we’ve really seen of SMiLE is Good Vibrations. The album’s nonexistence led to Brian Wilson’s two decade absence from the world as we know it. In their cross-Atlantic duel, the Beatles had Lennon/McCartney and George Martin, and the Beach Boys had Brian Wilson and uh Brian Wilson. Don’t be fooled by cheap imitations like “Brian Wilson’s SMiLE”, or agree to be fooled so we can move on.
The best answer to your question is that the only genuine SMiLE is the one on the Cheshire Cat, who exists and doesn’t exist. There is no such thing and it was unprofitable.
John
-
Well, steal my cheesecake à la mode. I remember a Beach Boys album getting the classic treatment fairly recently. Was it PET SOUNDS that got a polished release?
Obviously I’m decades late to the mystery, but it’s hard to imagine Wilson & Company making an album that’s not good enough to be released. Or is it just not good enough for Brian Wilson?
-
It’s four in the morning, the end of December,
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better . . .When Leonard Cohen started something, he usually finished it, but not so much Brian Wilson. Pet Sounds got released, a little late and a lot over budget, but it was well-received and lots of people bought it, including Paul McCartney, who might have said “God Only Knows” was his favorite song. Pet Sounds contains, at least in part, the “pocket symphonies” Brian Wilson was trying to create. So Brian started on his next project, “SMiLE” with a bigger budget which he, after months of time and miles of tape, blew on one song. But you can’t just cut Good Vibrations six times and call it an album. Brian and a writing partner or two never finished another song unless you count “Heroes and Villains” which is usually included in the SMiLE rubric, although Brian has said that it’s not really part of SMiLE. He also said that it’s definitely part of SMiLE. Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.Brian Wilson is not the first or last artist to get lost in an endeavor, but there are college business courses that use SMiLE as an example of how NOT to run a project. Artists HATE being managed, but some creative guidance from somebody like George Martin might have come it handy.
By the way, when I started this reply, it WAS four in the morning. It’s now four twenty-two. Goodnight.
John
-
That’s a pretty good time, 22 minutes to bang out something coherent. Takes me an hour, minimum, and it’s still debatable.
> Nothing beside remains.
Does that mean there’s not even incomplete notes and arrangements? All is lost?
Maybe that would be better than if fragments are still around. After Brian’s gone, some corporation would take the fragments and deal them out to the likes of Taylor Swift and the Jonas Brothers or whoever, to concoct a platinum ‘tribute to Smile’ album.
-
Well, I’ve seen a picture of Taylor Swift holding a guitar, and I thought the Jonas Brothers were notorious bank robbers, but even if you found legitimate musicians that’s not the way Brian worked. He most always started with a melody in his head and occasionally created a chart or two for a union musician to toot or twang on, then had someone go to the loo and grab the plunger because he started hearing an oom-pa sound in his head. Pet Sounds includes a fine song where time is kept on the bottom of an empty water cooler container. Brian heard music in his brain and any idea of notes or charts that could be interpreted by any brothers or professional costume designers is pie in the sky. Brian rolled the dice and most of the time missed the table.
John
-
So it’s never to be heard, never to be plagiarized. I guess that’s the best ending available.
Last I heard he’s in a conservatorship and suffering dementia, but I’m going to imagine he’s still working on SMILE.
-
Brian had an uphill climb. His father (and the father of a couple other Beach Boys) was said to be physically and emotionally cruel and jealous of his sons’ success. We don’t always become our father: sometimes we become the opposite of what he was, and Brian did his best to treat people very differently than his father had treated his sons. But the emotional burden of an asshole father combined with the financial burden of being the writer, arranger, producer and, in the beginning, the singer and bassist for the songs he wrote finally took its toll. Studio musicians who played for Brian have had pretty kind things to say about him over the years. He seems to have had a horrible wife, and that can be problematic on Pinochle night and every other night. He swam upstream and damn near caught the Beatles before it all fell apart.
Carol Kaye (who turns 90 in a month or so) was a regular session player for Brian, and one of the few people Brian would allow in his house during his hideout, said that Brian was one of the few producers who would actually listen to his session players for suggestions. She said he was a quiet genius. I had no idea he was quiet.
John
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Trump launching crypto coins on the eve of inauguration is just a teaser of how incredibly fucking stupid the next 4 years are going to be.
-
He knows his sucker market. They’ll buy his sucker products and believe his sucker lies.
Best case scenario, his second term will be just a replay of his idiocy from last time, but this time he’s surrounded by other evil assholes, some of whom aren’t stupid. It’s going to be ugly and people will die, but long as Trump et al don’t unplug Social Security it’ll at least be interesting to watch the country die.
-
Hey Doug,
I’ve been thinking the reason I love reading your words is similiar to why I loved Harvey Pekar’s works. Even though you cover different aspects of your lives from different viewpoints I feel there is a link between you two. You both offer an unfiltred look into your life, while that may seem to be an easy task, it really takes some skill.
-
Thank you — I’ll take that as the highest compliment short of a blowjob.
As with most of the greats of art and literature, my Pekar awareness isn’t as strong as it should be, but my Berkeley pal Brenda, who wrote for Zine World before she passed away, was Mr Pekar’s ex.
-
-
Do you think this is good news or bad news? The haters will say its admission of guilt.
-
Like a lot of news, it’s a mix. Certainly it’s better for the pardoned, as Trump has made it loud and clear that he wants to retaliate against them. Months of theatrical with-hunting against everyone on his enemies list would’ve made Trump’s unwiped arseholehood even more obvious, but it’s already obvious and matters to nobody.
-
-
I think Mr Cohen deserves his own topic heading to commemorate the day after whosis moved into the whathouse, but, lacking that, here’s Leonard Cohan’s response to whosis written decades before his second coming . . .
EVERYBODY KNOWS
@1988, L. Cohen[Verse 1]
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows[Verse 2]
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long-stem rose
Everybody knows[Verse 3]
And everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful
Ah, give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you’ve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows[Chorus]
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows[Verse 4]
And everybody knows that it’s now or never
Everybody knows that it’s me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah, when you’ve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe’s still picking cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows[Verse 5]
And everybody knows that the plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows[Verse 6]
And everybody knows that you’re in trouble
Everybody knows what you’ve been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it’s coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows[Chorus]
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Oh, everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knowshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4rf7bAApM4
johnthebasket
-
One of my favorite pessimisms. I could name that tune from the first note, and sing along all the way through. It ought to be the new national anthem.
For obvious reasons it was never “Top 40,” and most people don’t know “Everybody Knows.”
-
-
I don’t want to leave that feeling lingering, so . . .
Ian Tyson a former rodeo rider from British Columbia wrote “Someday Soon” in 1963. I had a friend named Phyllis who played the guitar and had a songbird voice, who used to visit us (my parents’ house was the big hangout spot when I was a teen) and, on request or demand, would go out to her car and get her guitar, tune it up, and sing this song for us — actually for me, because it is a beautiful song and Phyllis could really belt it, but whatever gang was assembled in my folks’ living room got to listen, and it was a treat. I don’t have a recording of Phyllis singing “Someday Soon” in my parents’ living room in front of the fireplace in 1966, but here’s Judy Collins singing it on the Smothers Brothers TV show three years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70-1b9SCj0&list=RDw70-1b9SCj0&index=1
johnthebasket
-
The opposite of Cohen’s pessimism. I’m 15 again, big dreams, world’s a fascinatin’ and terrific place…
-
-
There’s no coherent reason for a songwriter/singer to write for, or sing for, radio play except money, and it was lack of money that made Cohen successful. Columbia had refused to release his previous album, which contained the H-word, because it “wasn’t good enough”, and they weren’t crazy about releasing “I’m Your Man”, on which this song appears. Of course, the 700 people who attended Leonard’s concerts until Jeff Buckley came along briefly, bought just enough copies for Columbia to come close to breaking even. He briefly toured on this album, released one more, then retired to Mount Baldy. After his manager stole every penny Leonard had in the bank, he came down from the mountain and went back to work. The rest is a distinct lack of silence — but still little radio play.
johnthebasket
-
I think this was worth saying once — I’m a fairly enthusiastic Leonard Cohen fan. But why would I have typed the same words twice? Is the world that short of words?
jtb
-
Had you said it before?
-
-
So many things changing so fast. I was about to type that there are dozens of Cohen songs I’d turn up louder, if they came on the radio… and then I realized I no longer listen to radio, ever, now that I don’t have a car. When I want Cohen, I hear Cohen. Fuck radio.
-
-
Dougles, I assume you’re linking these web addresses for me, and I want to thank you for running a full-service blog up there on what I imagine to be the top of Queen Anne Hill, surrounded by three mighty broadcast towers. Were you Jewish, you’d be a mensch. I suspect you are anyway.
as always,
John
-
This is a full-service joint. Order a weenie, and it comes with a bun. I’m not putting in any extra effort, though; the links are automated with the new hosting service.
How uncaring was our old host, one might wonder, to leave URLs as dead text and not as links?
I used to live atop QA Hill, between the towers.
You don’t have to be Jewish to be a mensch.
-
-
I predict that, in less than a century, the good old USA will be gone. Instead it will be divided into five countries: Northeast, South, Midwest, Mountain, and Pacific States of America. And, to no one’s surprise, they will declare war on each other. That, in my opinion, will be Trump’s ultimate legacy.
-
I don’t think it’ll take a century. The USA would be gone within my lifetime, if I lived healthier.
-
-
-
Stevie Nicks! Somehow I never would’ve guessed it.
Haven’t seen Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the list yet… (ah, there she is)
Dino, Desi & Billy keep popping up, and I’d never even heard of the group.
Dunno where you draw the line, but I’m with whoever said it in that thread — middle class and upper-middle class doesn’t grab my attention much. But if you were born and bred so wealthy that your art was really a lark, no peril involved, well… it still might be art, but I’ll think less of the artist.
-
Comments with attachments or multiple links are held for manual approval.
Leave a Reply