I took this still of Marv playing guitar while we shot a short video of him performing kiddie songs for his grandchildren.
While experimenting with video and audio the past couple days it strikes me that I overlooked the first anniversary of my friend and neighbor Marvin J. Berkman’s passing on Tuesday. I pegged the date in my mind based on the post I wrote about his departure, but without noticing that the post had, as usual, been a few days late and more than a few dollars short.
I rarely mess around with advanced technologies — most days I count myself fortunate if I can crank out a few static words and pictures for fun and/or profit. Indeed, the last time I got semi-serious about video was when Marv asked me to shoot him playing guitar and singing some nursery rhymes for his grandkids.
He burned through his juvenile repertoire in short order and Herself and I asked him to play something for the adults in the audience. I kept the camcorder’s tape rolling, and I’m so glad we did, because we wound up playing the edited video at his funeral, and burning DVDs for his survivors.
Every now and then I think I see Marv’ marching along some street somewhere. He had a style about him, and a distinctive gait, and once in a while some stylish, snappy elderly gent comes oh so close. But it’s always no cigar.
Marv’ was one in a million, and we miss the hell out of him around here.
It's a damp fall morning in Bibleburg, and happily for us, all our worldly goods are inside.
The gods are bowling. We can hear them up there like so many really big Lebowskis trying to convert a 7-10 split. And somebody up there must’ve spilled his beverage, because we’re getting our first precip’ in the better part of quite some time. Hallelujah. A trail ride these days leaves my bike coated with a fine brown dust and sets me to wheezing.
The boisterous young swine who apparently have been evicted from the crumbling rental across the alley will not welcome a bracing rain, however. A crew of laborers spent the past few days piling their goods in the tiny back yard, and a mighty big pile it was, too.
The owner has a tragic history and according to Rumor Control was no better at picking husbands than she is at picking tenants. We’ve seen quite a parade of folks come and go at her rental property, most of them night-crawling yowlers who remind me very much of me at a certain age, only with more tattoos. Dogs were much in evidence, and once a child, but mostly it was a progression of shaggy young men with no visible means of support.
The cops paid a visit to the place recently, flanked by a fire truck and ambulance, and shortly thereafter the inhabitants vanished, leaving strangers to stack their worldly goods outdoors. A metal bed frame disappeared overnight, as did a bicycle. A battered Hotpoint range, boxes of cassette tapes and magazines, a stained mattress and a scattering of clothes remained when we sneaked a peek this morning.
They weren’t there for long, though. Word spread and a flock of scavengers in pickup trucks spent most of the morning picking through the refuse for objets d’art. Looks like the recession still has its hooks in some folks, no matter what The Wall Street Journal says.
Last but not least came the trash truck for the items nobody else wanted, even for free. There’s something kind of sad about that.
Still, there’s also something to be said for walking away from a fuck-up instead of packing it along with you like luggage. Here’s another bit of Thomas McGuane, from “Something To Be Desired.” Lucien Taylor and his estranged father are indulging in a bit of unauthorized camping, and as many things do in a McGuane novel, it ends badly.
His father circled the tent slowly, digging a finger into his disordered hair, inventorying the camp, the camp that a few days ago had been erected as a gateway to an improved world.
“We’re looking at under a hundred bucks,” said his father, standing at their camp. “Let’s walk away from it.”
The other day when I mentioned ASO’s Tour de France route announcement and Apple’s impending MacBook Air proclamation I neglected to mention the third leg of this consumer trifecta, the release of a new Thomas McGuane novel.
As it was cheaper than a ticket to France to chase dope fiends around in person or a new laptop to chase dope fiends around from home I dashed straight out and bought the sonofabitch. And not from Amazon, either. An actual working stiff from Bibleburg sold me my copy. Thus I support local industry while lashing a few pennies into the city’s dwindling sales-tax coffers.
Over the years I have admired (and shamelessly lifted) many a McGuane line:
“I am on top of the earth and I don’t work for the government.”
“The lady doesn’t marry the carpenter unless he’s got a second home in Santa Monica or a two-foot dick.”
“I feel sorry for the young people of today with their stupid fucking tuneless horseshit; that may be a generational judgment but I seriously doubt it.”
That sort of thing. When he’s not cranking out the Great Flyover Country Novel he writes a great essay, too. “Me and My Bike and Why,” about an impulsive motorcycle purchase, is simply one of the best things I’ve ever read, period. You can find it in “An Outside Chance: Essays On Sport.”
While you’re buying that one, pick up a copy of “Ninety-Two In the Shade,” which is said to be an autobiographical account of McGuane’s days as Captain Berserko. And don’t forget “Nothing But Blue Skies,” which is that rare McGuane novel with what appears to be a hint of a whisper of a twitch of a happy ending.
Hell, buy his whole catalog. It’s cheaper than a Cupertino paperweight, and a weak McGuane (and there are a couple) is still better than nine-tenths of The New York Times best-seller list.
Every now and then you get the idea that Someone is playing a massive practical joke on you.
Actually, I have that feeling all the time. But The Farce is strong with me now, perhaps because both Cheech and Chong and Glenn Beck are coming to Bibleburg.
Not at the same time, of course — the universe would explode. But still. Damn.
I wonder whether Sister Mary Elephant would approve.
Turkish, our local version of the IWW Sabo-Cat, takes a Labor Day break from his duties, whatever those might be.
Holiday, schmoliday. I had to work this morning. Not very hard, or for very long, but still.
The prez was working, too, calling for a $50 billion public works plan that seems to have absolutely no hope of coming to fruition before the Congresscritters scurry home, running like rats for re-election, proving yet again that they care more about whether they stay employed than whether we do.
Kevin Drum, another poor sod at the keyboard instead of the grill, is dismissive of the proposal, calling it “too small to be more than a pinprick.” Steve Benen speaks more gently of the plan, saying “it’s good to have lawmakers put on the spot before the election, taking a position on sensible, effective economic proposals like this one.” He also reminds us that Rep. John Boehner (R-Tanning Salon) is an idiot.
And Paul Krugman, drawing parallels with FDR’s situation in 1938, moans that “politicians and economists alike have spent decades unlearning the lessons of the 1930s, and are determined to repeat all the old mistakes.”
He adds: “And it’s slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out.”
True dat, Paul old sock. Buckle up, folks, it’s gonna be a rough ride.
• Late update: To celebrate Labor Day Herself and I attended an Arlo Guthrie concert — yes, thatArlo Guthrie — right here in Bibleburg; in fact, only a few blocks from Chez Dog, in a park behind the Fine Arts Center. He didn’t do “Alice’s Restaurant,” but he did sing the great Steve Goodman tune, “City of New Orleans,” “The Motorcycle Song,” his fabled Woodstock number “Coming Into Los Angeles,” a couple of Leadbelly bits and (of course) his old man’s“This Land Is Your Land.” We sang along, a few thousand elderly hippies plus a few young folks who must have grown weary of their generation’s “stupid fucking tuneless horseshit,” as Thomas McGuane has accurately described it. It was great. “Take a good look around, Toots,” I told Herself as we strolled in. “This is what my nursing home is gonna look like.” Arlo must have been thinking along similar lines. At one point he quipped, “I’m what’s left of me.” Me, too, bruh. And I wasn’t even at Woodstock. At least, I don’t think I was. …
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