“We are all droogs, but somebody has to be in charge. Right? Right?”
Appy polly loggies, droogies, but I could not watch last night’s “debate” between Coach Walz and Clockwork Orange.
I made it past the explanation of the rules and maybe two questions in and then yelped “Out out out out!” like a doggie.
Bedways was rightways as I saw it. We weren’t going to learn anything from this gloopy chepooka that would change our rassoodocks about these two chellovecks.
The Coach seems a proper moodge who plays by the rules while Clockwork Orange is anything but. He’s a smart, mean grahzny bratchny who would steal the coppers off his dead granny’s eyes for his ante into the Big Game, with a few aces up the old sleeve courtesy of his prestoopnik pals.
And you don’t fight him with facts. A cutthroat britva is what a lewdie needs for this lot, O my brothers.
• O my brothers (and sisters): If you’re not conversant with the nadsat dialect Anthony Burgess devised for his characters, you’ll have to hunt down a glossary. Burgess was opposed to such assistance, but one of my copies went against his wishes.
“I wouldn’t be doing any of it if it weren’t for writing,” he said, looking back on his career, in a 2006 interview with the online magazine Country Standard Time.
“I never would have gotten to make records if I didn’t write. I wouldn’t have gotten to tour without it. And I never would’ve been asked to act in a movie if I hadn’t been known as a writer.”
“Writer” was the occupation listed on Mr. Kristofferson’s passport.
The North Diversion Channel Trail, just below the Osuna-Bear Arroyo connection.
Too bloody much going on lately. Trying to corral my thoughts, if any, has been like chasing jackrabbits through a funhouse with a lacrosse stick, wearing clown shoes and oven mitts. In a word: unproductive.
I won’t bore you with the details. We’re talking First World problems here:
The Soma Double Cross at Elena Gallegos.
Buffing the rough edges out of El Rancho Pendejo in preparation for a houseguest. Stalking the elusive turnip for a promised dish (Whole Foods and Sprouts, nyet; Albertsons, da). Learning that I had failed to acquire the ingredients for another anticipated dish, the promise of which I had not been made aware, and the subsequent acquiring of same. Yet another round of flat-fixing, this time in the garage.
My favorite annoyance was an appointment at the local Apple Store’s Genius Bar, where I expected to be advised in fairly short order to hand over my elderly 15-inch MacBook Pro for a vigorous wash and brushup to resolve its “Apocalypse Now/Ride of the Valkyries” fans issue. There’s either some demonic technical haint in residence or enough hair in the case to build an entirely new cat to keep Miss Mia company. Whichever it is, I ain’t going in there looking for it. That’s what we pay Geniuses for.
But no. What I got was straight out of “Nothing but Blue Skies,” by Thomas McGuane. The scene where Frank Copenhaver and his estranged wife, Gracie, visit a Deadrock restaurant for conversation and something to eat. Conversation they get (Gracie insists). But eats, not so much, as waiters glide past without a glance in their direction, the thundering lunch herd slowly thins, and Frank comes to a rolling boil.
After the place empties out Frank finally takes the bull by the horns, flags down a table-wiping waiter, says they’d like to order.
“I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” replies the waiter.
The Apple Store wasn’t closed. But apparently upon my arrival I had not been properly logged in for my 3:30 appointment, which I did not learn until 4:15, when I was ’bout yay far from knocking over chairs and chasing a Genius through his kitchen.
And now I have another appointment on Tuesday.
So, yeah. That’s the scenic route toward explaining the lack of postage around here lately.
Speaking of scenic routes, the pix are from the rides I’ve been taking lately to keep my blood pressure on simmer as I await service.
I’m not even pretending to understand how my mind works (or doesn’t) anymore.
What sane person wakes after a restless sleep with the songs “Paint It Black” and “Wand’rin’ Star” conflated into a mental Spotify loop? Something like:
Do I know where Hell is? Hell is in “hello” I have to turn my head Until my darkness goes
—”Paint Your Wagon Black,” Jagger, Richards, Lerner, Lowe & O’Grady
Just picture, if you dare, Mick Jagger and Lee Marvin croaking along in duet before your first cup of coffee, after a long Night of the Worm Moon. As earworms go this will not crack anyone’s Top 40. Not even in Hell.
Barking my shins on ancient pop-culture references as I stumble drowsily through my hoarder’s skull with the Voices cackling at my missteps — A 1966 Rolling Stones hit? A 1969 musical-comedy miss? And what’s all this about worms? — is hardly a recipe for refreshment.
Whose fingerprints are all over this sonic crime scene, anyway? Well, Clint Eastwood, whose various shoot-’em-ups I have seen far too many times and may have triggered (har har har) my Magnum fetish, is said to have called “Paint Your Wagon” “Cat Ballou II.” You may recall that the Jane Fonda flick “Cat Ballou” — which, like “Paint Your Wagon,” co-starred Lee Marvin — was filmed in part in the Wet Mountain Valley, near the old home place I call Weirdcliffe.
Then we have the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band cameo in “Paint Your Wagon.” Years before Herself and I set up shop outside Weirdcliffe I got to hang around backstage at a whole passel of NGDB shows throughout Colorado, thanks to some San Luis Valley bros with connection to the Nitty Grittys’ road manager.
Worms, you inquire? Night before last, I was revisiting the Don Marquis collection “The Lives and Times of Archy & Mehitabel,” in which Archy threatens to organize a revolutionary society of insects — The Worms Turnverein — to avenge themselves upon their human oppressors. The works of Marquis, along with Frank Herbert’s sandwormy “Dune,” and “The Short-Timers,” the book by Gustav Hasford that was the basis for “Full Metal Jacket” — whose closing credits roll to “Paint It Black” (also, note the Lee Marvin reference at the Hasford link) — are among the books I’ve read many more times than once.
Michael Herr, who worked with Hasford and director Stanley Kubrick on the “FMJ” screenplay, wrote another of my favorite books, “Dispatches,” which with “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque may be tied for the best book about war ever written. From the vantage point of someone who’s never been there and done that, anyway.
I know, I know. This is an awful lot of fuel for a mighty small fire. Happily, Herr, Hasford and Herbert never sat in with the Dirt Band, and Kubrick and Marquis never made a musical (“Paint Your Ornithopter?” “Cat & Roach Ballou?”) so let’s count our blessings. We already have more than enough to keep us awake at night, and most of it is nonfiction.
