If as of now there are no active tornado warnings, which you’re telling me, and the rain is letting up, there are no power outages, no one in the viewing area is in any danger and haven’t been for 90 minutes, in fact, never having been in any weather danger all afternoon, though you continue to show the damage high winds did to a trailer that probably isn’t even in the viewing area–

Then why in the flying of fuck are you preempting the best celebrity show on the airwaves to tell me shit I can figure out by leaning out my den window?

NBC13HD WeatherPlus (or something). Accuracy matters, especially when we do 2 solid hours of weather coverage that doesn’t affect you but will run with a story about a fucked up family whose trailer got blown to bits, complete with footage of them scrounging for valuables in the wreckage.

And I’m thinking: They live in a fucking trailer and don’t have teeth! Who wants to save those family photos?

Is it ratings?

If I miss one singe case-opening on Deal Or No Deal, I’m calling my senator. 

What’s-her-face showed up at work, my tooth is killing me, I stepped on a nail while deconstructing the deck, it’s cold out, one of the dogs (okay, both) are digging holes in the back yard, my tooth is killing me, the days are getting shorter, thanks to daylight saving’s time I get to drive home in the dark, I hate my kitchen, I don’t trust anyone, and the only person you can count on in this world is yourself. And I hate my self almost as much as it hates me.

Beautiful weather this past weekend. So it was awesome that I spent most of Saturday going back and forth to The Home Depot because I kept getting the wrong “part” for whatever half-baked project I’m currently wasting time on. And most of Sunday limping around the yard basically getting nothing accomplished other than testing my pain threshold. That’s the last time I do construction in flip flops.

I currently see zero value in anything I do, whether it be playing music or writing or… anything.

Then I get up early to find a massive gas leak at the water heater intake valve. I wait on the Alagasco guy who, when he finally shows up for the emergency, looks at the leak and says almost just to himself, “I wonder how that didn’t explode. You should be dead.” “I already knew that, but not because of a gas leak.” Then he turned the gas to the house off, put a lock on it, and said I needed to call a plumber to fix it and put a shutoff valve at the intake valve. Then I could call Alagasco back and they’d be happy to turn my gas back on, when convenient, for a nominal fee.

Then Cisco reports increased profits from where they were last year, some might say significant increases, but because the higher ups won’t change their earnings estimates, the bottom drops out. And as I’m currently looking at it, it’s down 7%.

Anybody looking for a roomate who smokes, smokes, drinks, wallows and watches gobs and gobs of TV but doesn’t want to work, but, rather, just write?

That’s what I thought.

Bright side: I’ve dodged nearly certain death now twice in 1 month. I wonder who it is who’s looking out for me, because it sure as shit ain’t me.

quiblit

(Alright, maybe not for just daveto. Still, he is daveto. Plus, I need to update this blog so people don’t think I’m dead. [I’m not?])

On Saturday, October 13th, 2007, I was kidnapped, tortured, and left for dead.

Let me back up.

On Monday, October 15th, 2007, I was to turn 40. As is my new birthday tradition, my plans that night were to get drunk, stoned, maudlin and melancholy, and watch Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Good times.

On Saturday, October 13th, 2007, I was asked, at the risk of giving away what it is that I do for a living, to be at the Hilton off 280 to get “copy” on a guy who was winning some award of excellence from a bank or something. I.e., I was doing my boss a favor.

When I got to the conference room of the Hilton where a small ceremony was to take place, I was shoved into a corner where a piano was by someone I work with a lot. I had no idea what was going on. My first thought was my “friend” had assembled several people I didn’t know so that I could play the piano for them like a trained monkey. He was sort of right.

When I slowly looked up and around, I noticed there was indeed some sort of presentation going on. Someone was giving what looked to be a power point talk about a missing person. Well, the power point presenter was my oldest brother, and the missing person was me.

That’s when I realized that my entire family — my older sister, my 3 older brothers, my mom, my brother-in-law, 2 sisters-in-law, and each and every one of my nieces and nephews save 2 — was there. They’d all come down to surprise yours truly on my 40th birthday. And boy did they ever.

My oldest brother continued his talk about where I could possibly be, all the while ignoring me. His 2 daughters came to the podium while “Fire And Rain” played; they’d inserted pictures of me as a kid into pictures of them growing up. My other 2 brothers came up with guitars in hand to plead with everyone to be on the lookout for me. The one who’s a genius at rewriting the words to songs actually looked over at me there, sitting at the piano, and said, “Hey. Mac. Do you know how to work one of those things? We’re doing a little D/C/G number, so maybe fill in the dead spots? Thanks.” They performed “Can’t You See What This Woman’s Been Doing To Me”, having changed the words to inside jokes, because the woman in question was our mom, clearly, when pictures of all the kids were shown with terrible haircuts and even worse glasses over the years, while they played guitars and sang.

Then my sister, who’d been sobbing the entire time and using a table cloth as a hanky, came up with some search tools: cases of bottled water with a label that had a picture of me when I was about 7, and an artist’s (a niece’s) rendition of what I might look like today (it was uncanny) along with the phrase, “Have you seen me?”; a bright, neon-green T-shirt with the same water bottle label; and wanted posters of me.

Then the feigned and exuberant recognition by all of them of their baby brother.

You see, I constantly miss summer gatherings and holidays with my family because I’m selfish and unthinking. Well, they’d had enough and brought the party from Ohio down to The Ham.

Then my mom gave me my birthday present. Know what it was? It was the popcorn popper, the very one, that one, that dad used to make popcorn. And the giant tomato canning bowl that went with it. It looked smaller.

I was moved beyond words. Beyond words. I couldn’t speak. (Apparently they’d read about popcorn somewhere.)

Then the cake was produced with the following written on it:
“Calling your mom: $0.97.
Driving home for for a family gathering: $67.00
Having your family come to you on your 40th:
Priceless
Happy Birthday”

The rest of the evening was spent laughing, hugging, crying. But mostly laughing. I have a very funny family.

I had to leave because I’d left the dogs out because the “job” was to have taken little more than 20 minutes.

The next day I went back and visited with everyone until they had to take the airport shuttle to catch flights. My mom stayed over. We visited all Sunday afternoon and evening at the house. The next day I went to work. Her flight left at 4ish, so I took a long lunch, at my boss’s insistence. We talked, laughed, cried a little. And off she was back home.

One of the best birthdays I’ve ever had, and I despise birthdays. And it was a perfect, perfect gift. As my mom was getting out of the car at the airport, she said, “You know, it’s just a popper. You don’t have to attribute anything more than you have to to it. What’ll you do?” And I said, “I’ll probably use it to make popcorn. If I ever have a stove again.” She laughed.

Reminded me how blessed I was to have had an excellent upbringing and how much I miss my family. That’s a good thing.

quiblit

My deck in the back caught on fire last night. It’s irreparable. Ironic that last night I decided to lay off the weed so I was straight for The Office.

I was awakened by a banging on the front door at about 2:15 AM. I got out of bed, and as I walked down the hallway I could see this golden light through the unfinished kitchen window. I ran to the front door where my neighbor lady was panicking, and she said, “There’s a fire in your backyard. I called the fire department. They’re on their way.”

I ran out the back door, took the sprinkler off the end of the hose, turned on the water and watched as it did little good. I’m in my bare feet with just a t-shirt and boxers on at this point. The firemen show up, they see me trying to put the fire out, and sort of ignore me while I mutter, “2 of my older brothers helped me build this.”

Almost 5 and 1/2 years ago, Jesse and Al drove down from Ohio because, as Jesse put it at the time, he’d found out from mom that I was going to build a deck, and remarked, “No one in this family builds a deck without me.” It was about a year after our dad died. I think they were a little worried about me because I wasn’t married with a family to get me through mourning, and they hadn’t seen me since the memorial service.

That was a fun week. They’d brought this huge storage chest that henceforth has been referred to as “the tool coffin”, much to Jesse’s chagrin.

It’s not the expense that’s giving me a sick feeling today. It’s that the deck my brothers helped me build almost almost 5 and 1/2 years ago is little more than a huge campfire site, piles of useless lumber and soot.

I could easily sit around and feel sorry for myself and drink all weekend till I’m pickled. But I’m not going to. I’m going to start over. Tonight I’ll sip on some beer and try something I’m so terrible at, namely, having a vision of what my new deck is going to look like. I will not wallow. I’ll imagine.

Both dogs and the cat are accounted for and healthy. The same can’t be said for my
dignity. But that grows back, right? That’s what I’ve been told, anyway.

I’ve pretty much shut myself off from everyone around me. You already knew that. But that piano won’t tune itself!

I have a pretty good piano. It’s not my dream piano, which is a 7′ Steinway. No. It’s a K. Kawai 5′10″ grand.

A friend and I spent a month playing pianos at dealerships (Like it’s a car!) playing piano after piano, trying to find the warmest instrument within my price range (Like you can have a price range when buying a decent grand piano!) that I wouldn’t hate, it not being a Steinway.

What we found was this Brahmsian beauty with action to match.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that a piano this good isn’t just an investment. (It is.) It’s a maintenance bomb. (It’s not. It’s fucking Japanese, for heaven’s sake!) Which means it needs to be tuned at least once every 6 months.

I have a great piano tuner. He’s contracted to maintain all the instruments at a local small liberal arts college with an excellent (though conservative) music program. He’s kind of a hippie. I hate hippies.

Well, as usual, he made the mistake of asking, “So, how’s things?”

And I made the mistake of answering. Honestly.

Closing off to people here lately has a 2-pronged effect: 1.) I don’t have to deal with members of a species that continues to haunt me on a daily basis with its capacity to be mind-bogglingly ignorant; and 2.) I don’t have to subject my own mind-boggling ignorance on those I care about. It’s a good fit.

You wouldn’t think a piano tuner would find himself in the position of having to be a counselor. But this cat is such a keeper because about 95% of his non-music school clients, get this, don’t fucking play the pianos he tunes. They have these 6′3″ Steinways gathering dust in Mountain Brook suburbs whose last utterance was either “Heart And Soul” or a post-David Lee Roth Van Halen medley. If pianos could commit suicide, it would be nice if they could figure out a way to take a couple (non-)players with them. (”Machines!”)

So when he tunes a piano that actually gets played, he feels like he’s actually doing some piano good.

Anyway, my piano wasn’t the only thing that got its action seen to. What a great guy. It’s nice to know weirdos can find each other in real life in addition to here on the internet, of which, if I’m not mistaken, and I rarely am, nearly 20% is devoted to non-pornographic websites.

He tuned my piano the day after West Side Story turned 50. And he was one of the very few people of the very few people I spoke to all week who gave a shit about it. So when he was done, I played a Bill Evans-esque version of “Somewhere”. It was pretty. He was pleased with his work as was I.

People who say there are no mistakes in jazz are probably the same folks who say that visual art is whatever it means to the individual. I.e., stupid idiots.

Though a touch on the hot and humid side, the evenings were cool and clear, near perfect beer drinking weather. The dogs love it.

Add the fact that Auburn crushed Vanderbilt, Alabama failed to wrest defeat from the clutches of victory in their homecoming game against Houston, and LSU managed to pull one out at the end, and I think we can all assume that many many times the dogs confused my yelling at the radio and TV with the more oft-bound yelling at them. And the cat.

Anyways, progress progresses on my stupid, retarded, dumb, idiotic looking fake fountain in the back. I don’t want to go into details about the fountain just yet because I don’t want to embarrass myself to the extent that it’s rivetingly embarrassing ’till it’s finished, which it never will be, because I can’t seem to finish anything.

I love gardenias. They’ve got a beautiful, lusty, jealously green foliage all year round, and the blooms smell wonderful all spring, summer and fall. So I planted 5 dwarf gardenias around half the fountain facing the house.

I like gardenias so much that I’ve decided to put the non-dwarf variety all around the deck. In the spring, summer and fall, their white, rose-like blooms will go nicely with the deep red, white and light purple tufts of the crape myrtle blooms.

The New Fray has officially pissed me off. I can remember, not so long ago, lurking amongst the posters and posts of Best of the Fray and being pretty blown away with the writing. I know this’ll make me sound like an old school retard, but there’s just no there there anymore there. Sour grapes? Absolutely. It’s just that this time the grapes were sour because I actually got to taste them. Again.

Which is why, to a certain extent, I’m not a little excited about quiblit. Why? Because 1.) It’s got some of my favorite writers from The Fray, including me; 2.) the editor might very well have the Draconian tendencies any online magazine needs in order to discourage insane retards from peeing in the pool; 3.) see 1.) above; 4.) he’s right. Sorry. I might very well be done with BotF. Oh well. Their loss, &c., and so on and so forth.

But enough about The Fray, other than to say that it’s a pain in the ass to have to sift through tons of dirt to find a tiny nugget of gold. I know where all the gold is and is going.

I think I’ll still post to articles, if only to plug quiblit.com. So, if you’ll excuse me, my rabid Zionism is desparately needed on Foreigners.

Uppity Negroes Set Back Civil Rights Movement 40 Years And Counting
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. SPINS IN GRAVE AGAIN COUNTER-CLOCKWISE THIS TIME
City Fathers Call For A Return To Separate But Unequal ASAP
Sharpton, Jackson Set To Protest Themselves, Stir Up WASP’s Nests

Ever hear one of those stories on your local news that leaves you with nothing but the ability to say, “Uh. Wait. What?”

Sometime in late August, Kathleen Bullard, African-American, mother, lover of ice, was allegedly assaulted in and/or around the Eastlake Texaco And Deli by its owner, Ty Nguyen, Asian, father, purveyor of ice. The alleged assault occurred on account of the fact that Bullard may or may not have been caught stealing a bag of ice. Again.

Nguyen claims she assaulted him when he confronted her about the allegedly stolen ice and that he was merely defending himself.

It gets real hot down here. And apparently we’re running out of ice everywhere around the world. So this is a real global affair, not to mention a hot (Wink!) button issue.

(Here’s a tip, Kathleen: Putting water into small cube-like containers and then putting that in your freezer at home makes ice! Wonderful stuff.)

Reliable witnesses (i.e., white people who live in the neighborhood [okay, white trash people to the core who live in the neighborhood]) say that, yes, indeed, Bullard did attack our vowel-challenge named oriental business owner first, and that he was just defending himself. In fact, if I heard right, she was actually attacking him with the allegedly filched ice. And I’m thinking, What, did she grab one of those giant Slim Jims, tie it off the end of the bag of ice and use it like a medieval flail? I just hope there isn’t a series of ice attacks and copycat crimes. Good thing Summer’s over and the heat wave finally broke.

Very shortly after the alleged assault by whomever on whomever, black people from around the neighborhood began to protest outside the store because of the alleged violence in their neighborhood, perpetrated by these slant-eyed ne’er-do-well, tax paying, license paying store owners. Protesting so much so that commerce at the store was interrupted. Note: Eastlake is heavily black, in both senses, and it appeared most of the protesters were heavyset black women.

The Birmingham city council, in all its massive wisdom, convened an emergency meeting. Black person after black person, again, mostly female, stepped up to the microphone and ranted about being black and by virtue of being black it was their right to yammer on and on and on about being black, all the while speaking neither to the issue of the alleged assault nor the alleged attempted robbery nor about the fact that the store owner, if not lying, certainly had a right to defend himself and his legal property, all the while yammering on and on and on with great passion and to much enthusiastic applause about how they were tired of all the crime happening in Eastlake, some of which took place inside the Texaco and outside the Texaco, much of which had been at the expense of the store owner, who had reported the trouble to the police, who’d received almost 20 reports of occasions of various crimes in and around the vicinity of the Eastlake Texaco And Deli.

Clearly they were after justice. Or something. Nothing at this point had been proved, mind you. These were merely allegations. People who weren’t even at the scene were barking out demands like short order cooks and calling for prosecution and equal rights under the law. Or something. Everyone was jumping madly to conclusions.

So the city council, in its vast embrace of knowledge and reason free from passion, jumped right along with them and ultimately decided to revoke our little yellow devil’s business license before pressing criminal charges. And the Eastlake Texaco And Deli was officially closed for business.

Get it? An angry group of people demand that a business be taken away from a tax and fee and license paying citizen because of something they heard was being alleged, and the government goes ahead and does it.

I’m no history of civil rights expert by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m pretty confident that’s not what Rosa had in mind when she kept her seat.

I can only presume that most of the protesters and testifiers were black women because I assume the black men were more concerned about just where the hell they were going to buy their malt liquor now.

Don’t get me wrong: Hu Phlung Poo’s no saint. He’s even got a record, assaulting some kid in 2001, probably because he was stealing malt liquor for his absent father.

But I gotta hand it to this gal Bullard, bringing ice to a Hun fight. These aren’t your father’s civil rights. If Kathleen Bullard did steal that ice, then a thief ruined the lives of reasonably decent folks trying to make a living. Except the thief isn’t Bullard. It’s our government. Again.

Which goes to show you no matter who’s in the true minority at any given point down here in The Deep South, black victimhood trumps any other race’s every time. And I don’t think Malcolm X, genius and hero, whose name the lame protesters took in vain, would approve.

Iraq Civilian Death Toll Down
U.S. MILITARY/IRAQ INSURGENTS RUNNING OUT OF TARGETS, START FIRING UPON ONE ANOTHER
Blackwater Promises To Ramp Up Random Attacks Against No One In Particular Again

I wonder if Iraqi deaths are down because there are fewer Iraqis to be dead. Considering the hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled into the surrounding countries, not to mention the staggering number of Iraq civilians we’ve brought to our own country (I think that total is approaching 37 or 38 — too many to count), and that doesn’t leave a lot of warm bodies left over to go cold.

Uncle Thomas Makes Media Rounds
ASSOCIATE JUSTICE HITS 60 MINUTES, RUSH LIMBAUGH, IS OPRAH NEXT?
Pubic Hair Spotted On Pepsi, Coke To Sue

Smart man, well spoken. But his appearance on Rush’s show raises some ethical concerns. Sure, Justice Breyer was on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. But Paula Poundstone didn’t ask him if there was anything humans could learn from natural law re: abortion.

I.e., Rush was clearly enamored. I haven’t heard that many softballs since Ira Glass interviewed David Sedaris.

What was so troubling was to hear a supreme court justice talking about affirmative action, or lack thereof in his own career, to an entertainer whose sole purpose seems to be that of pandering to warmongering liars.

Add the fact that he’s got a new book out about his grandfather, and it might be time to revisit that whole “separation of powers” bit the founders were so nuts about.

All in all, very likable. His is a great story; and it’s not a little heartwarming to hear his embrace, rebellion and re-embrace of a difficult life marked by personal triumph and racial overcomings. I give it 2 gavels up.

Burns Rethinks The War
NEW PBS DOC MARATHON WONDERS IF WE ACTUALLY WON
And If We Did, What Did We Win?

Face it: Ken Burns is a genius. From the first frames of The Civil War, we knew we’d just met a new, powerful voice in the documentary filmmaking world.

World War 2, and the men who fought it, have verged on the mythological, so much so that they’re routinely regarded as “The Greatest Generation”. How could they not be? Something wasn’t quite right over there in Europe, and something was definitely wrong in Japan. Men and boys signed up faster than you could kill every Jew on the goddamn planet. Recruitment offices couldn’t keep up with all the volunteers and had to start turning away 95-year old geezers who kept shouting, “Lafayette! We are here!”

What Burns did is peel away the mythology and expose war for what it pretty much boils down to, i.e., hell on earth, both for those in the trenches and those back home waiting for them.

His editing is flawless: Japanese internment camps in America juxtaposed with crazed Japanese soldiers not expecting to live through a battle, and fighting accordingly; a Waterbury Jewish G.I. reminiscing about meeting an unaccented German who knew almost as much about Waterbury as he did; the heroes of Iwo Jima trying to kiss all the USO women in Mobile.

His approach of centering his narrative around 5 medium-sized cities was a stroke of brilliance. And his Rick Ruben-esque method of letting folks “tell their own story” (I’m thinking of Rick’s work with Johnny Cash) only makes each individual story that much more compelling with the endless and vivid photographs and archival footage for which some researcher needs to get an academy award just for finding it all.

People dismissing it as anti-American liberal propaganda are being soul-crushingly idiotic. They remind me of all the Catholics who panned The Last Temptation Of Christ without ever seeing it. If they’d had a brain in their head they would’ve forbidden people to see it because it was so god awful. Period.

The War doesn’t make World War 2 veterans look any less patriotic or brave or heroic. It just makes them look more real and vivid. And human.

Anyways, astonishing work, Ken. Well done.

New Jenna Bush Book Not About Coked Up Drunk American Skanks In Panama
GRANDMA SIGHS IN RELIEF
Prez Looking Forward To Reading When It Comes Out On Tape

I gotta hand it to her: She’s managed to tone down the Paris/Lindsay approach to public relations and go Mandy Moore all up in the joint. I say, “Well done, m’lady.”

The book is about a 17-year old mother in Central America who’s HIV positive. And she hopes it will cause more folks to get involved.

!!!

How long have I been asleep? What planet is this? Perhaps my theory of President Jenna Bush isn’t so crazy after all. Promise to put JT on the ticket and make Miss Moore secretary of state, and you’ve got my vote.

I must’ve been 11 or 12, lying in a beanbag chair in the middle of the living room, having attended church with the peeps, then eating our massive Sunday dinner (non-negotiable, more on this later) on a lazy Sabbath afternoon staring at the TV with most of the family nearly passed out, when dad came across West Side Story on a local affiliate station.

“Hey! Let’s watch this,” dad said. “You’ll love it.” We all groaned. (Though a couple years earlier my mom had pulled the same stunt with a little something called It’s A Wonderful Life, and goddammit if the old bag wasn’t exactly right. So I was hesitant to poo-poo the idea altogether.)

If I’m not mistaken (I don’t feel like googling — besides, I’m operating under the assumption that non-googling, like doing crossword puzzles, prevents Alzeimer’s disease), Leonard Bernstein, pronounced “Bern-stein”, was 26 years old when he got the call that Bruno Walter (I think) was under the weather (Drunk!) and the Harvard whiz kid had to sub with the New York Philharmonic that night. I like to believe Mahler was on the program, which makes it even more dramatic. I hope he was.

The rest isn’t just history. It’s legendary.

I had the privilege of meeting him only once. It was at a party after a concert of Ned Rorem’s liturgical music at an Anglican Church service. My teacher at the time was a familiar acquaintance of his, so I got introduced. Being not even 20 and in awe of his talent and career, my memory of the conversation is fairly hazy. But what I do remember is blathering something about how phenomenal his music was. Obviously he’d heard this 14.7 kajillion times and was visibly annoyed at the platitude. So he smirked, “Really? I’m quite moved. What’s your favorite piece?” After thinking hurriedly about an answer that would impress him — the atonal piano music, that one piece with the flute — and then seeing him realize all the wind had left my sails, I meekly whispered, “West Side Story.”
“The musical or The Symphonic Dances?”

He had me backed into a corner, literally. So I mustered a bit of courage and muttered, “It’s not a musical, Maestro. It’s an opera. But to be honest, I think I prefer listening to Symphonic Dances because it fascinates me how you re-orchestrated the music without all the singing and it’s still abundantly satisfying and complete. Of course, I’m one of the few people who actually prefers the original, very small orchestration of Copeland’s Appalachian Spring, where it’s just flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano, and a few string players.” (If I’m not mistaken [not googling], it’s 2 fiddles, a viola, a cello and a double bass. And if it is just 2 fiddles, it’s an orchestration conundrum because one of the first things you learn in Orchestration 101 is that you use either 1 fiddle or 3 fiddles — never just 2 because of intonation problems. I’d go on but I’d need a chart and some masking tape to make it clearer.)

He leaned in slightly, smiling guiltily, and said, “I hate the full orchestration of Appalachian Spring. It’s so heavy and overbearing. The original is so immediate, so intimate.” I knew excactly what he meant.

I think I must’ve caught him off guard. Thank god. This was around the time that 2 things had happened: 1.) The Met had staged that heaping pile of dog crap also known as Porgy And Bess; and 2.) PBS had produced a documentary of the making of a new West Side Story recording with the big name opera stars of the day: Kiri Te Kanawa, Josep Carreras, Titiana Troyanas (Barf!) . I felt I had nothing to lose and, therefore, fearless (not really — I was terrified: This was Lenny), continued on.

“Why on earth would the record producers, even for just an album, cast a kiwi from New Zealand as the latino Maria, and a Spanish tenor with an unmistakably heavy accent as the American Tony?” My teacher inhaled quickly, thinking to himself I can only imagine, “Midwesterners.”
Lenny said something like (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Yeah-mmm-eh-oy-fuck.”

If you’ve ever seen the PBS documentary, it’s some of the most uncomfortable music-making on film. At one point, tenor Carreras storms off the soundstage during the recording of “Maria”, presumably because it’s the first time in his life he realizes that, like most singers, he can’t fucking count. Lenny wasn’t happy.

I have vivid memories of 3 things that happened in that documentary that I’ve seen only once over 20 years ago (which I watched with my dad! Closure?): The Carreras counting moment, after which Lenny hung his head in his hands; Lenny going off on Stephen Sondheim (I think) about an orchestration change that hadn’t been made (Steve was the librettist, so… Hmm); and one of the producers, after they’d just recorded one of the numbers, thinking he’d heard a flashbulb go off, losing it, saying something along the lines of, “Did someone just take a picture while we were rolling? Did I hear a flashbulb!? Anybody who takes a picture while we’re rolling is gonna take a bullet.” Ouch.

Emboldened, I asked, “Do you think, now that The Met has staged [that heaping pile of dog crap also known as (like I’d actually say that to him)] Porgy And Bess, that they’ll finally produce West Side Story?”
I swear his eyes twinkled. But then, “No. Not in my lifetime.”

Leonard Bernstein doesn’t just talk to anyone. But folks reared in the midwest generally have this tactless sense of sincerity that endears us to others, but only when we’re not in the midwest, and especially when we’re in “the big city”. I’d never seen the score to West Side Story, and the icky rose wine I’d had (this was New York in the 80s — nobody cared; I suspect Dennis Russell Davies was on line 3 in the adjacent bedroom, and he wasn’t talking on the phone) gave me a bit of courage.

“How do you get the pit orchestra to swing? Is the syncopation notated rhythmically, or do you just tell them to swing?”
He laughed.
“He [me] comes from a jazz background,” my teacher apologized.

Getting classical musicians to swing is like trying to make Baptists dance and drink at the same time while using profanity during sex in any position other than “missionary” more than once a month. I.e., it’s a pretty tall order. But with that question — honest, sincere, pointed, meaningful (i.e., a good question) — I’d endeared myself to this genius.

“It’s notated. Classical musicians can’t swing. You have to spell it out for them literally.”

True: Classical musicians, minus The Chronos Quartet, are pretty square. But unlike singers, they can fucking count. Those motherfuckers can count like you wouldn’t believe. Especially percussionists. They’re practically psychic. (Duh.)

West Side Story and, by default, Symphonic Dances From West Side Story, is complicated music, even by 20th standards. It melds jazz, movie music, musical theater music, opera, contemporary concert music, latino dance music and popular music all together seamlessly, effortlessly. Not surprising from someone for whom composing, conducting, piano playing and all-around serious music advocating and educating came so effortlessly and easily.

And the choreography of Jerome Robbins, dancer/producer/communist sympathizer/stool pigeon/fag/self-loathing pseudo-Jew/foot breaker/loving husband, ain’t too shabby either. (I don’t think anyone associated with the production ever forgave him. They knew why he sang; I mean he practically had to finger his friends, considering the circumstances he was in. But I don’t think they could forgive him.)

Bernstein wasn’t a national treasure. He was a national gold mine, one that continues to enrich thoughtful listeners with an appreciation for those people like Lenny who not only get to do what they love and get paid for it; folks like Lenny are so demoralizing to the rest of us mediocre doofuses because he was so much better than anyone else at it by margins that approach the unrealistic. A true God amongst us mere mortals, like Roger Federer. (Although I think GerFed was a bit taller. I think.)

Most people who know me are still shocked at how much I love West Side Story because they know I’m the worst sort of musical snob. Since it’s Lenny’s most commercial endeavor and arguably his most successful project, they immediately discount its artistic merit based solely on those criteria. What they forget in all that messy thinking is that it was a project near and dear to his heart and, therefore, one which he threw himself whole-heartedly into and one in which much of his soul resides even today. So how could I not love it realizing all that?

“Very nice to have met you, young man. Good luck to you.”

I think we can all be pretty sure who made out better in the exchange that day. I still think West Side Story is the best thing he ever wrote, on so many levels (musical, sociological, psychological) and for so many reasons (complexity rendered inevitable, beauty as both means and end, music enlisting and emboldening choreography as opposed to choreography having to apologize for music). And you know what? I think Lenny would agree with me on this one.

Happy 50th birthday, West Side Story. You don’t look (or sound) and day over 35.

Survivor 29 Premier Starts With Bang, Ends With Chang
REALITY SHOW GIVES TAIPEI THE FINGER
Charlie Sheen: Tasteless, Talentless, Idiotic Thug (Unrelated)
I Haven’t Seen That Much Cleavage Since Sweeney Todd Made Meatloaf Out Of Mrs. Johnston Again

I’ll spare all y’all and get straight to the highlights.

-Another she-mullet. Fantastic. I sense affirmative action at work.

-I love how the evangelical christian takes an opportunity to participate in something both spiritual and greater than the sum of its parts and manages to show disrespect to both Buddhists around the world and her future teammates/competitors. A bold strategical move, methinks. Is CBS gonna have a Jesus Freak in every reality show now? The Amazing Race as a Jesus Camp cast reunion. I smell a hit. (Or would that be “caste reunion”, given the context?)

-Have they not heard of the show re: you may take only the clothing on your back. Me? I’d show up wearing kevlar coveralls, each pocket carrying a carton of Camel Lights, a flask, a putty knife, 2 stacks of $20’s and a tuning fork. I’m nothing if not prepared.

-If I were Chicken, I’d build this split level A-frame number with a pool and 4 bathrooms, one of which is the pool.

-Texas Hold’em needs to put on a shirt. That gut looks like it’s got its own moon.

-The wrestler gal reminds me of Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. TOTGA says that The Swankster has masculine features and is therefore unattractive. I disagree heartily.

-Former model has Zoolander moment at council. What is this: A tribe of ants?

-Chicken is the long lost twin of Norm Abram, just with no chin. Or teeth. Somehow it all works with the overall look he’s going for. But he talks strictly like an Alabamian.

-The oriental gal’s handwrighting was really good. Good penmanship = high maintenance. I look to her to accidentally start forming alliances with people who’ve already been voted off.

-Voting off chicken = really bad move. He may be pretty strange (Okay, very strange.), but I’d bet my left testicle that he’s only one in the whole crowd who knows how to properly prepare roasted monkey spleen. Food gets pretty scarce and monotonous come week 3. And there’s no ketchup this go-around, you dumbasses.