Saturday, April 29, 2006

That time of year again

Every year about this time, maple seeds start to fall. Many of them get stuck in the perforated top of the table that sits on our deck. It's a good time of year, when it's not raining (like today).

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Season of the Willies

This is not a review. A progress report, maybe. I'm almost done with Tony Hendra's new novel The Messiah of Morris Avenue, which I've enjoyed very much even though it gives me the willies.

TMMA was actually just released this month and Hendra himself was in town last week at Rainy Day Books. I didn't go and neither did you. For shame.

But anyway...

TMMA is set in a not too terribly distant future that could be just last week. Fundamentalists pretty much run the govt and the country with a Bible-thumping iron fist (that's the last week part) when rumors start to spread about a young Latino named Jose from the Bronx going around declaring himself to be Jesus Christ returned and performing miracles. A burnt-out jaded reporter goes out to investigate.

I'm about 40 pages from the end and it appears that Jose is meeting many of the same challenges as JC #1. (In fact, I'm sure Mel Gibson would like to film 10 particularly gruesome pages I read last night – but only those pages.)

There are problems with the book, such as an arbitrary switch from the first to third person on two occasions more than halfway through, done entirely to explain a particular strand of the plot. But it's a small price to pay for some good willies.

This is starting to sound a lot like a review. So sorry.

I don't usually read new novels, mostly because there are so many old novels I still haven't made it to, but TMMA just happened to arrive in my possession while I was finishing up the last book I read (another willie giver: Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer) and before I had decided on the next. It's a very tender point in any reader's life but somehow a book always manages to suggest itself.

Unfortunately, what seems to have suggested itself is a string of books religio-apocalyptic books with violent tendencies (go, Freud, go!).

Under the Banner of Heaven (subtitle "A Story of Violent Faith") is about, among other things, the Mormon religion and in particular two fundamentalist Mormon brothers to whom God "revealed" the necessity of murdering (aka, blood atonement) a sister-in-law who questioned their pursuit of polygamy and tax evasion. God also wanted her infant daughter dead, and now she is. If the brothers had met Jose, he would have told them that if God tells you to kill someone, you're probably not talking to God.

Amazon tells me that people who bought TMMA also purchased "American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century" by Kevin Phillips. Go figure. That title alone is willie-worthy.

Up next in my book stack: "The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick, an "alternative history" novel I've been meaning to get around to it for a couple of years now. There's apparently a big I-Ching element to it. We shall see. I can use a break from the fundamentalists, if only on the page.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Another curbside attraction



This morning they were picking up yard waste in my neighborhood. Tomorrow looks like the city will haul your devotional figures away.

By the way, that's the Bambino between J&M, sheltered under His strawless manger. It's hard out there for a creche.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Uphill night for jazz dudes



She's not in this picture, but believe me she's there. And she's the loudest woman I have ever heard.

I stopped by Jardine's Tuesday night to catch the Dan Thomas Quintet. Dan brings a quality assemblage to Jardine's about once a month and this time around sounded especially promising: Harold O'Neal was back from touring and sitting in at the piano. Bram Wijnands was sitting in his other other instrument, not the piano and not the bass but the accordion. As a jazz dilettante and musical curiosity seeker how could I pass up the chance to hear an accordion in a jazz combo?

The place was more than half full when I arrived and the quintet was blowing full force. I ordered a Guinness and perched on a barstool to enjoy the breeze. During the next number (Blues for BLT) I noticed this strange sound rising up through the music. It was a though someone testing a dental drill on a piece of sheet metal.

Turns out it was coming from a blonde woman in a pair of white pants and a bucket of white wine (quantities approximate). I might have guessed. I had passed her on my way into the club from the back entrance. She was oscillating outside the women's restroom, wine glass in hand.

Although she was blocking the way, she acted like I'd stopped by to chat. I politely said excuse me and slipped through the gap between her and the wall. "Well, OK bye then," she slurred after me. No such luck.

She was with a large group of people, at least 20, who were having some kind of group dinner and from the way they were carrying on, it was clear that someone else was picking up the tab. (As the group was starting to break up later on, I saw the lone gray head in the group shaking his head at a bill as long as his leg.)

On a technical level, it was amazing. Five guys with instruments, amplified and blowing away, and yet one birdy white woman with no chest capacity to speak of and a bag on rises above it somehow. Really amazing.

On an aesthetic level, it was an exquisite kind of irritation. Because the band was good and the band played on. They played louder, they played at her. For the most part she ignored the music, apart from occasionally shaking her modest can as she moved shrieking from table to table.

Other people in the club went over to talk to her friends. Her friends apologized to the band. Someone, purposely or not, spilled a drink on her. And yet there was no stopping her. It made me long for the days when Buddy Rich would stop the show if patrons got loud and/or lit, offer to pay their tab and tell them to leave. According to Buddy, they usually piped down.

And it's not just a Midwest dipshit thing either. About ten years ago, I went to see Bobby Short at the Carlyle Hotel in NYC and mid-show some jackass in a tailored suit and his lady companions had apparently plunked down a couple hundred dollars to yuck it up amongst themselves while the rest of us did our best to enjoy one of the greatest cabaret entertainers to walk the planet. The staff at the Carlyle eventually quelled the ruckus. No such luck at Jardine's.

At the break between the second and third sets, I complimented Bram for his restraint. "I'm just trying to survive," he said.

I suppose that's all anyone who plays music for a living does. Too bad it's such a struggle sometimes.

Monday, April 3, 2006

Call the Weather Channel

Going on six months now, the corner of 49th & Main has been expereincing what must be if not the longest then at least the most consistent heat wave in the history of meteorology.

US Bank's sign is also about the only thing that won't be vastly improved by the passage of our two stadium measures tomorrow.