Monthly Archives: January 2010

Elvie Thomas

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Am I the only person who has noticed just how much Wikipedia sucks? (See: I won’t even provide a link.) Wikipedia has no listing on Elvie Thomas and when mentioned on Geeshie Wiley’s page it refers to Thomas as a man! Yes, for things that don’t much matter, like Sirius Black’s family background, Wikipedia is the go-to source. And it is good for a lot of hard science (but not all; there are errors; and you are usually better off going elsewhere—like a book). It is terrible for history and politics; for example, it seems there is no consensus that George Hearst was a villainous bastard (which he most clearly was). For little known artists and thinkers: forget about it.

J. D. Salinger Dies 19 June 1965 at Age 46

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It is surprising that the death of J. D. Salinger should get so much press this week when he died over 45 years ago—on the publication of his last short story in The New Yorker.

Okay; so maybe his heart was still beating and maybe he was continuing to be an asshole to his wife, but as far as I’m concerned, he died that day, and I don’t give a fuck if it took another 44 years, 7 months, and 8 days for his heart to stop beating. I don’t get it, and for that matter, I don’t get the reverence that people show towards him and The Catcher in the Rye. It just isn’t that good a book. I think of it like Jack Kerouac‘s On the Road. Neither are good, but both are held in high regard.

I suppose it has something to do with the fact that both books speak to young people who don’t know much about literature. It is like kids who heard Pat Boone singing Ain’t That a Shame who thought that it was rock-n-roll until they heard the Fats Domino’s original. They just don’t know no better. I will grant you that Salinger was an extremely gifted writer and I would much rather read him than I would Kerouac; but Kerouac was the real deal; Salinger was the poser and I think that is why he didn’t publish anything after his literary death: he knew if he kept writing, people would realize that his early work was more style than substance and that he would suffer the same fate that later befell Susan Eloise Hinton.

But why not just admit that you are a Truman Capote? Why not admit that you are a fine writer, not a prophet. As it is, Tolstoy left us only two great books (with almost 25 more years and many fewer distractions) because he was too wrapped up in being a Great Man. Both Salinger and Tolstoy will go down in history as great men, while Capote will go down in history as an asshole. But what does that matter? Capote provided me with more pleasure than those other two combined.

So I’m not sad that J. D. stopped breathing yesterday. I am sad that he stopped publishing 45 years ago. I’m sad that I didn’t think Catcher in the Rye was a good book when I read it as a young man. And most of all, I’m sad that I’ll have to go out tomorrow and buy it (because my copy has inexplicitly disappeared) and read the damned thing again to see if maybe I was wrong about it.

The Onion

The Onion has written more eloquently about J. D. Salinger than I ever could. Understanding that there has been a lot of Salinger fan fiction written will make the following article particularly funny:

New Terminator Movie Brings J.D. Salinger Out Of Hiding

Understanding that Holden Caulfield (the main character of The Catcher in the Rye) calls people “phony” will make the following article particularly funny:

Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger

Cream of Potato Soup

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Cut up potato(es) and a half a stick of butter and add it to a medium-sized sauce pan on a lowish temperature. Stir occasionally as you cut up onion(s), carrot(s) and celery stalks. Saute until the whole mixture is kind of mushy. If it gets too dry, add some olive oil—it adds a subtle taste that is very apealing, but not necessary. I was listening to Bruce Cockburn’s The Charity of Night (with Pacing the Cage!)—that clocks in at just over an hour, so that’s how long I would cock this. Now you can set this concoction aside and get out your big aluminum stock pot. At this point, take a moment to feel superior to those fools who think that Aluminum cookware is going to cause Alzheimer’s Disease.

Boil a bunch of water in your Aluminum stock pot. How much? I don’t know: more than a quart. Cut up potato(es) and boil them until they are cooked, but don’t let them get mushy; you already have enough mushy potatoes. When you get “there”, add all of your cocked vegetables and mix it all together. Now add a fair amount of salt and about half of the pepper that you will eventually want in the soup. And add a bay leaf. Let it cook on low for about the length of Janis Ian’s Between the Lines (it is okay to skip At Seventeen or to repeat Watercolors).

During this time, go through your cupboards and refridgerator looking for things that might make this soup more delightful. Pasta is a must. If you use something like angel hair pasta (as I did), make sure you break it into small pieces; this is not some weird Vietnamese soup. Elbow macaroni works well, but requires more cooking. The truth is that everyone has old pasta lying around for years; this is the way to get rid of it. Remove the bay leaf.

The other thing you need to look for is stuff to turn what should be, at this point, a perfectly fine soup into an exquisite cream soup. I had left over sour cream, some box milk, and (because I am who I am) a cup of heavy cream. Cream cheese would work well too. Add whatever cream you can until you feel the need to consult a cardiologist.

Finally, add the rest of your pepper. Enjoy it, but don’t eat it all now because it will be even better tomorrow.

Mom’s Recipes

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My mother was an excellent cook; she had her own restaurant for about a decade. There were several dishes that I wanted her recipes for: Chicken Cacciatore, her chili, and especially her Potato Soup. My attempts to get these recipes always went something like this:

“Can I get your Potato Soup recipe?”

“Oh sure,” she would say. “It’s really easy.”

“Great! Do you have it written down?”

“No,” she would say with a small frown. “But’s it’s really easy.”

“Okay,” I’d say. Then I’d get my notebook out and wait for the recipe she had memorized.

She would get a far-away look, like she was remembering cooking the soup. “Well, you just boil some water and add chopped up potatoes.”

“How much water? How many potatoes?” I would ask.

“Oh, I don’t know. Until it looks about right,” she answered unhelpfully.

“Okay. I can boil potatoes.”

“Then you add the pasta,” she said, continuing with the recipe.

“When?” I asked stupidly.

“Oh, I don’t know. When the potatoes look about right,” she answered unhelpfully.

“Okay,” I said. “So I add the pasta. When does the cream go in?”

“Oh! Not until you add the spices,” she answered somewhat helpfully.

“What spices?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Salt and pepper, of course. And a bay leaf. Maybe some Worcestershire sauce. Or paprika.”

“How much?” I would ask, almost giving up.

“Oh, I don’t know. Until it tastes about right.”

“Do you have approximate amounts?” I asked hopefully.

“Not really. But when that’s done, you add the cream,” she said.

I knew not to ask how much cream. Why? Oh, I don’t know.

One Song, Two Song, Song Sung Blue Song

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I have read a couple of sources that indicated that Thompson’s Real has two extra songs, not one. However, from what I can tell, the original album contained 13 songs and the reissue contains 14 songs. I’m good at math: 14 – 13 = 1. It could be that I am wrong about the original album containing 13 songs; maybe it included only 12. Or maybe they took one song away from the original collection and replaced it with two new songs. I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. It is still a fine disc.

Skinny Leg Blues

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My take on Skinny Leg Blues is that it is a revenge story. The singer has been raped by the man she is singing to and now she is coming to kill him. All the stuff about skinny legs and slowness put forward the idea that her revenge is inevitable: I am coming for you. The second verse lines “I’ve got little bitty legs, keep up these noble thighs” seems to indicate virginity—”between a woman’s thighs” is a common euphemism for coitus. The rest of the song is self-explanatory. In the end the song means one thing: Don’t mess with Geeshie.

Geeshie Wiley was not Dinah Washington: it is not always easy to understand what she is singing. For example, I’m not sure she’s saying “keep up these noble thighs”. Nevertheless, here is my best effort at transcribing Skinny Leg Blues:

And I’m a little bitty Mama, baby and I ain’t built for speed
Crying I’m a little bitty Mama, baby and I ain’t built for speed
Oh, and I ain’t built for speed
I’ve got everything that a little bitty Mama needs.

I’ve got little bitty legs, keep up these noble thighs [?]
I’ve got little bitty legs, keep up these noble thighs
Oh, keep up these noble thighs
I’ve got something I don’t need, just like a bullhorn cry [?!]

And when you see me coming, pull down your window blind
And when you see me coming, pull down your window blind
You see me coming, pull down your window blind
So your next door neighbor, sure can hear you whine

I’m gonna cut your throat baby, gone look down in your face
I’m gonna cut your throat babe, gone look down in your face
Oh, I’ll look down in your face
I’m gonna let some lonesome graveyard, be your resting place.

Music Worth Listening To: Eric & Suzy Thompson

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After Cher’s 1998 hit Believe, I honestly thought I would never again have to hear digital pitch-correction used as an effect. The first time I heard it, I hated it. Every digital engineer had played around with it, but it wasn’t something you allowed in public except maybe to scare kids on Halloween. Mark Taylor is responsible—not just for the monstrosity that is this song, but for starting a deeply scarring trend. My brother-in-law (and Emmy Award winning sound engineer for Fox) Lee Walker promises me that the trend is almost dead. I hope he is right, but I have noticed that it still lingers—though more subtly—on singers such as Taylor Swift; this makes me think that Swift can’t sing. So now we just have to find “cute” little things, correct their woefully out of tune singing, and claim we are just “producing” their music.

All of this explains, in part, why more and more I gravitate to older music. When a guy stands in front of a mic with just his voice and guitar, you get as close as possible to a real human interaction—a human connection. Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of music from the 1920s and 1930s. One artist—Geeshie Wiley (there are MP3 files of three of her songs)—I was introduced to at a free concert that I attended by Eric & Suzy Thompson back on 25 September 2009 at the Sonoma County Library.

In general Suzy sings and plays the fiddle and Eric plays guitar. But they mix it up; they are both multi-instrumentalists. What is more important is that they perform an eclectic mix of music, and I don’t mean Death Metal as well as Glam Metal; they do everything from Country (like the Delmore Brothers, not modern Country that seems to be nothing more than pop with a slide guitar and optional affected southern accent); and diverse Blues (Memphis Minnie and Peg Leg Howell who are almost from different planets, much less the same musical genre—Minnie is the one from earth in case you were wondering); and Cajun music (the Thompsons were part of the California Cajun Orchestra with the late Danny Poullard and are now Aux Cajunals).

They were engaging, fun, and musical throughout their 12 song, hour and ten minute set before an audience of a little less than 100. In addition, there were two high points for me. First, Eric Thompson’s guitar playing on Memphis Minnie’s Nothing In Rambling was magical; if I hadn’t been watching him, I would have thought he was playing slide guitar; I’m still trying to figure out just what he was doing. Second, Suzy sang Geeshie Wiley’s Skinny Leg Blues—having reworked the lyrics to suit her style. The song is about a wronged woman who is coming to have her revenge. The original is sexual and violent. Wiley sings:

  I’m gonna cut your throat baby, gone look down in your face …
  I’m gonna let some lonesome graveyard, be your resting place.

Thompson removes the violence and makes it all about sex and maybe domination:

  I’m gonna squeeze you tight baby, until you scream and shout
  Cause this little bitty mama knows what it’s all about.

The bottom line is that she killed the song; I loved it.

If you get a chance to see either or both of these fine musicians, don’t pass it up. You won’t be bothered with electronic effects or stage histrionics—just good music well performed. There are not many better ways to spend an hour or two.

Postscript One: Bluegrass Guitar

In 2000, Eric Thompson reissued his first album Bluegrass Guitar (1979) under the title Thompson’s Real. The reissue includes one extra song with David Grisman. It is all instrumental and doesn’t include anything that blows me away. However, it is a very enjoyable album; I like to listen to it when I’m cooking dinner.

What is most remarkable about the album is the musicianship—especially of Thompson. As a fairly capable guitarist myself, listening to Thompson reminds me how much I get away with playing Rock. Rock is sloppy and I love it. Bluegrass, on the other hand, is as demanding as classical music. Listening to this album, I often just marvel at the technique. “Wow! ‘Wow’ is the word you’re looking for!” I couldn’t say it better myself (so I didn’t).

Postscript Two: Dream Shadows

I just got a copy of the Thompson’s 2008 album Dream Shadows.

Dream Shadows

What a wonderful album this is! It is somewhat like the concert I attended. There are a number of the same songs such as Beaver Slide Rag and Lloyd Bateman. And, of course (because Suzy Thompson seems to be as aware as I that she kills the song), Skinny Leg Blues—which she calls Little Bitty Mama. I wish I could provide it for you here, but that would be illegal and unethical and really unfair to these fine performers; but the good news is that you can download the MP3 for just 99 cents—like most songs. The album also includes a beautiful tune by Geshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas: Motherless Child. Suzy’s voice really takes to this kind of song. The same goes for Wiley’s Last Kind Words.

I have to agree to some extent with Ralph in the comments that their Cajun music was not particularly good live. On this album, it is different. There are two stellar Cajun tunes: Gasport Two-Step and Valse de Vieux Temps. It helps to have a few more musicians; Cajun music is a little hard to do as a duo—not that they don’t; live their Cajun music was enjoyable, just not as great as the rest of their stuff.

I’m not going to go into the background of the original artists and songs or even list them any more than I already have. The Thompson’s have already done this. Buy this album; it is just $8.99 for the MP3 download of the whole album from Amazon. Now. Really.

To Seth on his Eighteenth Birthday

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When I was eighteen years old, I wrote my first song: a “gift” for a friend who was graduating from high school. The chorus of the song was: “Good-bye graduate / It’s the start of the end.” At the time, I thought this was very funny. It had other gems like: “You’ll get a job and work for Dodge / Then you’ll lie to your children.” I no longer think the song is funny (well, maybe a little); now I think it is a good sober warning. So, on this, your eighteenth birthday, let me put it plainly: the fun is over.

Yes, it is true: you will go on to do many things that you now think of as fun and which would be fun if you were to have done them before midnight tonight. But these “fun” things are in fact psychological crutches that allow you to continue to exist. The future is bleaker than you can now imagine, but do not worry, it will come into focus very quickly.

Up to this point the world has been nothing but possibilities; you could walk through any door you wanted to an exciting future. This is true, if by “exciting future” you mean a future in which you struggle your whole life to get by and not despair so much that you finally just give up either via long drop and sudden stop or just by refusing to get out of bed. But the moment you walk through that door, you will hear all those other doors slam shut. And you will be looking at… It’s kind of like Let’s Make a Deal except there are more doors and a llama is behind every one of them.

Still, there is a lot of room behind that door you chose, and the llama may be sweet and housebroken. But you won’t be able to see what good is in your life, so you will decide (probably unconsciously, like you live the rest of your life) that you’ve totally fucked up your life. And so you will have (another subconscious) idea designed to make yourself feel better. You will create a mini-you and put all of your failed hopes and dreams into it. The problem is that this mini-you is just like you. I don’t want to spoil the whole trip for you; just leave it at this: you sell the llama to buy Pampers; the llama buys its freedom, and settles down with a much better job, house, wife, and kids than you.

If you are like most people, you will not notice until you are very old that you are merely perpetuating an existence that makes you and everyone else miserable. At that point, you will be too weak to do anything about it. And anyway, on Sundays the old-folks home serves chicken and you kind of look forward to that. Plus, there is that one sexy nurse—and you like looking at her even though you couldn’t do anything even if she didn’t consider you a pathetic old man and even if you weren’t a pathetic old man. So you keep on keeping on, or more correctly, you limp on limping on (in more ways than one). Until you gladly die—though you may not notice this joy because it is so unfamiliar to you.

Or I could be wrong. Actually, other than the fact that I can’t get a hot girlfriend and even if I did she would talk too much, I’m pretty happy with my life. The thing about all those doors that slammed shut: the locks can be picked or you can just take a sledgehammer to them. The truth is the doors slamming? The kids destroying you? The displeasure at what the world has and does offer? It’s all you. And that sucks, because there is no one else to blame. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

[9:56 pm, 12 January 2010]

Let’s Make a Deal

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This evening, I wrote a letter to my nephew on his 18th birthday. I like to torture him, so I wrote:

Up to this point the world has been nothing but possibilities; you could walk through any door you want to an exciting future. This is true, if by “exciting future” you mean a future in which you struggle your whole life to get by and not despair so much that you finally just give up either via long drop and sudden stop or just by refusing to get out of bed. But the moment you walk through that door, you will hear all those other doors slam shut. And you will be looking at… It’s kind of like Let’s Make a Deal except there are more doors and a llama is behind every one of them.

This brought to mind Monty Hall (who is still alive) and the Monty Hall Problem and, unfortunately, Marilyn vos Savant. I say “unfortunately” because I find her annoying. She is exactly the kind of snarky intellectual that I hate. Here is my biggest complaint: she advertises herself as having the highest IQ in the world, but when anyone questions that claim, she responds that the IQ doesn’t really mean that much. That’s quite true: the IQ is a measure of a certain type of mental functioning; to say it is limited is to be charitable. But vos Savant’s whole career is based upon this claim. If it doesn’t mean much, why is it listed in everything she writes? All of this should not be taken to mean that I think she is stupid—just a PITA self-promoter.

I am grateful to vos Savant for introducing me to the Monty Hall Problem. Here it is: suppose you are on Let’s Make a Deal and there is a new car behind one of the doors and a llama behind each of the other two. You pick door number one. Monty says, “Are you sure you want to pick that door?” And to entice you to change your door, he opens door number three and shows that behind it is a llama. So now you have two doors: one has a car and one has a llama. Should you change to door number two?

This puzzle is counter-intuitive. My first guess (and yours too I bet) is that you shouldn’t change doors, or rather that it doesn’t matter: there is an equal chance of the car being behind each one of the doors. But this is utterly false. Think about it this way: at the beginning, there is 1/3 chance the car is behind door number one; there is a 2/3 chance that it is behind door number two or door number three. So after door number three is taken out of the equation, there is a 2/3 chance that the car will be behind door number two.

You don’t believe me though, do you? That’s okay; I wouldn’t either. But before you embarrass yourself, you should do what slow thinking Frank did: get out a deck of cards. Take three cards and define one of them as the car. Then run through the process. If you are smart (like vos Savant or even me) you will quickly (like after one or two deals) see it (in the religious sense). If you are not so smart, just do it ten or twenty times and you will see that by switching, you will win the car about 70% of the time. Q-E-fucking-D!

You might wonder why switching has this effect. I’m not as smart as Ms. vos Savant (although I’m more fun at parties), but I think I can help. By showing you one of the llama doors, Monty is adding information to the system. When you stick with your original choice, you are not taking advantage of the new information. There is always a 1/3 chance that the car is behind door number one; but there is a 1/3 chance it is behind door number two at the beginning and a 2/3 chance it is behind door number two at the end.

It is not considered ethical to torture people. This is why they invented probability theory. Luckily, I have my nephew to abuse.

Check out the excellent New York Times article/interview with Monty Hall that will explain it all, including some aspects that I have not talked about.

As if I Have Nothing Better

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Andrea sent me a second link, as if I have nothing better to do than sit around watching TV. This one is to the pilot episode of the long-dead BBC sitcom Black Books. As usual, Andrea has rather good taste; the show is very interesting and funny. It tells the story of a group of people who live and work around a small used bookstore in London. Think “Hot l Baltimore” and you get the basic idea. It has some distinctly surreal elements, however; it reminds me of Stella only far more accessible. It is worth looking at. (Plus it is a chance to see Rupert Vansittart in a small role playing a part that is slightly less awful than usual.)

On Watching SNL

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I haven’t watched Saturday Night Live for at least a decade. But when Andrea told me that last week’s episode with Carls Barkley (Season 35, Episode 11) was very funny, I figured that I would waste an hour watching it.

  1. I thought the opening about Yemen was a bit racist, but still very funny.
  2. The insurance company commercial was fun.
  3. Reel Quotes was very funny, but I thought it could have been smarter (which would have made it less funny).
  4. MacGruber I was delicious—a simple idea well executed.
  5. The bimbo skit? What was with that? I get it, and I assume that the character is recurring; but it just doesn’t work very well. But then, the joke with such characters is that they are people we laugh at—people we are better than. It rarely works; the only exception I can think of is Julia Sweeney’s Pat, which transcended this limitation because the more we saw her, the smarter he got.
  6. MacGruber II was pushing it, but pulled it out in the end.
  7. The NBA game broadcast with the kid? I don’t know: sort of funny, I guess.
  8. MacGruber III was good. They took a clever idea and pushed it much too far. The fact that they ended up with silly instead of annoying is an indication of their talent.
  9. Weekend Update was weak, I thought. The James Carvell bit was good; the Nicholas Cage bit seemed more like Keanu Reeves and was pretty stupid; the David Paterson bit was kind of funny and the guy does him well, but it struck me as kind of cruel.
  10. The Haney Project was fun, mostly just because Barkley was so good natured about his reputation.
  11. The Alicia Keys bit really didn’t work for me. It is a funny idea, but I’m not sure how it could be made to work. It did one thing that few SNL skits ever do: it had a good ending. I tend to think that the problem is not with the writing; it is either the acting or me.
  12. The Scared Straight skit was amusing. I guess the actors were a bit punchy by that time, because most of them lost it at one time or another. It bugs me a little bit that both the guys were black; if Will Ferrell were in the cast, I’m sure he would have been part of it–it’s his style; and that would have made it a little less offensive.
  13. Barkley’s Bank was very weak. Again, it is nice that Barkley is okay with his rep, but the skit didn’t do much; and given the potential, that’s a shame. They will usually throw weak stuff to the end on the assumption that fewer people will be watching and that they may not have time for it anyway. I had hoped for a MacGruber IV, but I was disappointed.

Overall, the show was much better than I would have thought. But I will probably go another decade before I tune in again.