Too Short

Ink on paper, 14 x 17 inches, by Allan Reinke
The following is stuff from a failed "essay" of mine, hopefully improved by the music links...

"Here's my chance / to dance my way / out of my constriction" - Bootsy Collins

I think the world would be a better place if we could all plug in to the cosmic current and "let it flow."  Every bit of the universe throbs with rhythm, layered & syncopated, from the pulse in your wrist to the lighthouse strobe of a pulsar, and all we have to do – to feel at home – is find the beat.  (I blame the hippies for giving cosmic talk like that a bad name, and what with the drugs, light shows and bare feet, there was no way they could find the beat.)

[ Bootsy's Hollywood Squares remix at YouTube* ]

"I can drink a whole Hennessy fifth / some call it a problem / I call it a gift" - Xzibit (pronounced "exhibit"), rapper

Now that we have the technology to become gods we choose instead to become Fantastic Voyeurs, snorkeling through the dyed hair and dead brain cells of D-list celebrities, watching them sin and suffer in our place.

I just hope Xzibit sounds as clever now as he did when he spit out those fearless lyrics, and isn't drinking generic vodka at the back of a supermarket parking lot, listening to his brain cells burst like bubble wrap.

I've been a big hip hop fan since the mid '80s.  Though too much of it is brain-dead pop music, or vicious just to make a buck, there's a huge amount of beauty if you know where to listen: to the life-affirming intelligence of the layered soundscapes, the playful boasting and bittersweet yearning.  And that's what I love about the music beyond its sound: the recognition that life is a struggle, a bittersweet thing that's trying to kill you just as hard as you're trying to love it.

[ Rhyme Poetic Mafia's bittersweet lament G Life at YouTube ]

"Life is the only thing worth living for" - Flipper, a sometimes glue-sniffingly-slow punk band

[ Flipper's Sex Bomb at YouTube ]

That might be the deepest one yet, and a good way to close – but here's just one more, from Too Short, a rapper who turned a sparse sound and dirty mind into gold, at least for a while:

"Life is / ... / too short..."

[ Too Short's Life is Too Short at YouTube ]

* Warner Music Group (WMG) made YouTube remove the video I used to link to here, likely cheating Bootsy out of some money, and certainly some glory, because listeners unfamiliar with this tune will never hear it and become fans.

There's a difference between outright piracy for profit and low-key sharing on the web, but corporations like WMG, Sony and Disney are only interested in protecting their profits, not the culture they've been allowed to monopolize and suck dry.

Macy's Holiday Display 1

The best holiday display I've seen so far this year wasn't in a window, but outside -- the virtual Christmas tree hung from Macy's Herald Square storefront.

I don't like it just because it looks great on a foggy day, but because it doesn't require a theme like the store windows, which manage to go past the Santa-centric Believe Meter, pictured above left, to mushy intergalactic bromides about the power of belief -- in the sacred power of consumerism I assume, since these displays don't pay for themselves -- to heal our inner selves and clear store shelves.

Bergdorf Goodman Holiday Windows

I only saw the windows along Fifth Ave., apparently less creepy than the others, but still strange.  Above, the window woman protects her cake from passersby.

Below left, a sophisticate puffs past the even snootier woman in the window, dressed in a whipped cream gown.  Below right, a familiar sight -- I can't think of a serious painter who does not paint by chandelier while surrounded by dead stuffed animals.


Below left, the Birdwoman of Bergdorf Goodman, staring down a cuckoo clock.  (I fear for the lawn in nearby Central Park if she has to eat her weight in worms every day.)  Below right, a stuffed woman dressed in down, surrounded by stuffed birds and a pigeon palace.  (I think the window designers went a little overboard with the pair of "egg heads" at the bottom.)


Below left, I think the woman is supposed to be surfing the bottom of the sea, under a phony waterfall of resin and seasick green lighting; the only part I like is the cutaway seabed.  And finally, below right, another angle on the scene up top, with a clear view of the aristocratically attired grinch monkey hanging by its tail, fishing for plaster frosted cake.

Mad Style

I couldn't resist taking these pictures, exploitative or not.  It was pretty obvious he was out of his mind, but he seemed to be in a good mood.


(I guess it's considered bad taste to even mention the fact that crazed people wander the streets; we'd rather act like they're invisible -- and let them range "free" -- than make hard, expensive decisions.)

At any rate, he had enough sense of self to dress in this striking black outfit -- somewhere between ninja and nun -- that seems to be made of umbrellas.

How to Stay Alive in the Woods

Post Apocalyptic HQ at the Queens end of the Greenpoint Ave. Bridge
As I wake up to headlines that say the world is careening like an old car with no brakes at the edge of an abyss, I remember that the used survival book I had banked on to save me when it came to this -- Bradford Angier's How to Stay Alive in the Woods -- is probably a load of crap.

Along with practical information that gave me confidence I could not only stay alive but dress stylishly in the post apocalyptic woods, like:

Some aborigines make waterproof garments by opening the dried intestines of large animals and sewing the strips together vertically with sinew.

...were ambiguous passages like this:

The point is: no ordinary problem will stump any of us for very long if we possess sufficient enterprise and ingenuity to have a reasonable chance of surviving at all.

...that robbed me of confidence and made me wonder if the cigars and brandy he was enjoying as he wrote this stuff -- probably with a silver fountain pen, while dressed in a smoking jacket in a wood paneled study -- had dulled his interest in the reader's survival.

So I will have to go with guidance from my backup survival book, Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  You would think a story about a father and son walking south in a gray, post apocalyptic world, dodging fiendish perverts and cannibals as they hone their survival skills, would be boring on top of grim.

But The Road turns out to be suspenseful and deep, and McCarthy -- who can pour on the turgid prose until you feel like a soggy stack of pancakes drowning under a bottomless bottle of thick purple syrup -- in this case manages to pull life and hope from a restricted, monochrome reality in a natural way.

The Road tells me I will have to do some horrible things to survive, like bushwhacking bushwhackers before they bushwhack me, and mating with hill country Jezebels with enough inbred genetic damage to make sure our Jethro spawn are dim witted enough to want to survive a sooty hell on earth.

And it tells me that after this house of cards collapses, with any luck, we will meet again in the grayness of spring, perhaps on the Gulf Coast, where we will find a boat.

It will be years before the smoke clears, but the sail will hold, the wind will know the way, and before long we can start over fresh, free of fiends.  (Except for those stowed in our genes.)

Naked Power Palin

Sign above seen at the CUNY Graduate Center on Fifth at 34th
I'm ready to ignore the rest of the GOP hierarchy for a while, as it tries to come up with a new angle to sell its lies, but not the demagogue Sarah Palin.  From a recent interview:

"I’m like, O.K., God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door."

A little later she tries to expand the ring of supposed beneficiaries of her being elected, but it's obvious that Sarah Palin is the beginning and end of what matters to Sarah Palin.

Palin's "faith" doesn't connect her to anything larger than herself, but shrinks Creation to serve her schemes.  She sees God as her personal genie and -- like George Bush, Osama bin Laden and fundamentalists the world over -- believes that God's heart is just as puny and self-serving as her own.

She's "real" alright -- just like every other smooth, conscience-free demagogue with the power to focus and multiply hate.  The trouble with her -- and with the fans and the hucksters who'll help sell her -- is that she refuses to accept the fact that a world exists outside herself, with billions of souls whose aspirations and sufferings are every bit as real as her own.

Because she can't and won't see the world outside herself, she doesn't see any consequences to her actions, and like a true god-queen, like a Pharaoh, could take the world with her to Kingdom Come without blinking.

What was that line Bob Dylan tossed off?  Something about letting you be in his dream if he could be in yours too?  Bob may be a performing machine, a windup troubadour doomed to play hick towns and dinner clubs three nights a week until he's 106 and on his thirteenth Blonde on Blonde Poly-fro wig.  But Bob Dylan has got more decency and heart in his eyelash dandruff than all the Palins, Bushes, and bin Ladens on earth.

(Now that Obama has helped us pry the gun from Charlton Heston's cold dead hands, don't think for a minute that Heston's buddies are just going give us the world -- we have to take it from them.)