My Love is in America

(Ash Wednesday, 2002. Photographer: Miss Templeton)

A New York Second

If the sky that we look upon...

Ghosts of the Faithful Departed

Selections from the Exhibition

"There were thousands of poor people didn't have no place to go"

Jazz funeral for pets lost to Katrina
JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press

Madona, an offshore cook, and Smith, a house painter, took turns wearing the big brown head, which bore resemblance to Scooby-Doo. Smith said they inherited it from friends who didn't return to the city after Katrina.

Madona said the costume piece looked like his Doberman, Phideaux (pronounced "Fido"). The flat-nosed blue stuffed animal represented his red-nose pit bull, Blue, while a small black stuffed dog was for Smith's Chihuahua, Baby, which died before the hurricane.

Madona said he had to leave by bus for Houston, and couldn't take his pets. Smith stayed through the storm. She said she rescued her neighbors' dogs, covering their paws with duct tape to keep their claws from breaking the rubber raft a neighbor had left. She kept one of the dogs.

John Clark of Arabi and friend Mary Horaist of Kenner carried small sunflower bouquets and photographs of their 15-year-old dogs. They took both of them out of New Orleans, but both died afterward.

Clark, personnel director for St. Bernard Parish, had to have Katie-Raz euthanized after the power went out in Bogalusa and she went into respiratory failure.

"I promised Katie that when she would die, she would die looking into my eyes," he said.

Horaist had been nursing Fred through kidney failure with subcutaneous fluids even before the storm. Power outages, downed trees and phone failures left her unable to reach a veterinarian from the blueberry farm in Poplarville, Miss., where she had taken refuge.

Before the march began Sunday, the Rev. Bill Terry of St. Anna's Episcopal Church spoke briefly with members of the Treme Brass Band. "You know what to do," he told them. "You've done it a million times before."

Later, he told the crowd: "We're New Orleans. This is how we mourn."

Jazz funeral marches traditionally start with a dirge for the mourners' sorrow, then move into an uptempo celebration of the loved one's life and salvation.

This time, the march stepped off to a slow rendition of "Just a Closer Walk With Thee."

There was a bit of silence. The drums rattled briskly, and the band swung into "Just a Little While to Stay Here."

Whole article at the link.

Here's the official page for the current White House pet.

"I'm ready for my close-up now, Mr Farren!"

I'm hot. You're hot. He's hot. She's hot.

Mick Farren is hot! My friends in Omagh are hot!

And Europe? Europe is le Haute!

Europe cooler but deadly heatwave set to return with a vengeance.

But the good news is: President Bush rejected the Kyoto Treaty way back there in March 2001...because Global Warming really isn't scientifically proven yet. And President Bush must know what he's talking about, or New York City wouldn't have hosted the 2004 Republican Convention! New York City! And If you can't make the presidential nomination there, you can't make it anywhere...!

Husband: Name the Top Ten Movies about heatwaves...
Me: Ah...okay. Cujo.
Husband: Predator. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Lawrence of Arabia.
Me: Do the Right Thing.
Husband: Cool Hand Luke...
Me: I'm too hot to think of anything else.

But whatever. The thing is: I'm back. Got me a copy of Give the Anarchist a Cigarette and I'm ready to talk.

"Let's do the Time Warp again..."

(A Slice of Fine from the Doctor Who entry at wikipedia)

When I first met Mr. T, he had a rather extensive collection of home-taped videocassettes all bearing the hand-scrawled legend "Doctor Who." Then, too, our proximity to Silicon Valley and its legions of gnomic obsessives ensured that our PBS station carried the series (and Red Dwarf and Blake's Seven and Black Adder and the venerable Monty Python and Nova and Stephen Hawking and shows about robots) endlessly. It was the Tom Baker-era Doctor, and I gamely gave the thing a go.

Now, let only she who did not watch the rubber-mask monster and suspiciously flat-floored cave era of original series Star Trek cast the first stone. (And what about all those Class-M planets, huh? What were the odds there?) But I just couldn't summon up enough suspension of disbelief when the Doctor called on our house. "These Daleks," I said. "They don't seem to be able to step up on surfaces, do they? So...perhaps you climb a set of stairs? Problem solved?"

Eventually, as with his similar mission on behalf of the Three Stooges, my husband gave up the prosthetizing effort to convert me. But that was a long time ago. And now, reading that David Tennant has finally reached his childhood goal of playing The Doctor, I find that I might be of an entirely different opinion on the matter after all.

"Ain't Got A Home"

From the recent Fourth of July weekend:

Steve: Katrina Fatigue? Bullsh*t. Anyone in the media using the phrase "Katrina Fatigue" can kiss my ass.
Me: Did they ever find your next-door neighbor?
Steve: No.

Program aims to keep musicians in Big Easy

NEW ORLEANS - Dan Oestreicher is a 23-year-old saxophone player, not long out of college, who has lived with friends since Hurricane Katrina's floodwater drove him from his apartment. A new housing program aims to turn him into a homeowner.

Oestreicher is one of dozens of New Orleans residents who have signed up to help build the so-called Musicians' Village, a collection of houses in a section of the Ninth Ward flooded after the storm, in exchange for a bargain price on a brand new house.

He said he liked the idea of living near fellow musicians. He also likes the idea of paying $500 a month to own a brand new, three-bedroom house worth about $90,000.

More at the link.

Well, I got a voice
And I love to sing
I can sing like a bird
And I can sing like a frog
I'm a lonely boy
I ain't got a home

I ain't got a girl
I ain't got a son
I ain't got no kin
I ain't got no one
I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home

Jeremy Harding on Syd Barrett

Last Thursday, I searched the LRB archives in vain for this article. It is clear that the editors have since made a decision to put it online, and -- even more to the point -- have made it available for free without subscription. Full article at link.

Afternoonishness

...Barrett's afternoonishness was far more supple and engaging. It superimposed the hippie cult of eternal solstice on the pre-teatime daydreams of one's childhood, occasioned by a slick of sunlight on a chest-of-drawers or a snatch of plainsong in the radiator - a daydream that quickly filled with gaudy archetypes and very private, custom-built creations. Barrett's songs are full of both: bog-standard gnomes on the one hand, homeless mice called 'Gerald' on the other. His afternoonishness is lit by an importunate adult intelligence that can't quite get back to the place it longs to be.

Remarkably, Barrett created the same, precocious longing in adolescents who heard his music at the time. I remember 'See Emily Play' drifting across a school corridor in 1967 - I was 15 then - and I remember the powerful wish to stay suspended indefinitely in that music, just as I wanted to hang about for ever in another, much darker song of the same period, 'My Eyes Have Seen You', by the Doors. I also remember the quasi-adult intimation that this wasn't possible. Which may have been why the first strains of 'Emily', even then, marked the onset of sulkiness and regret; the thing you adored was eluding you even as you heard it. Roll on teatime...

"So me and a hundred more, To Americay sailed o'er."

But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent aloft, except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the ship below, and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday appearance. During the morning, meetings were held and all manner of committees set to work on the celebration ceremonies. In the afternoon, the ship’s company assemble aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the asthmatic melodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled the Star Spangled Banner, and the choir chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered it. Nobody mourned.

We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional and I do not endorse it) and then the President, throned behind a cable-locker, with a national flag spread over it, announced the “Reader,” who rose up and read that same old Declaration of Independence which we have all listened to so often without paying any attention to what it said: and after that the President piped the Orator of the Day to quarters and he made that same old speech about our national greatness which we so religiously believe and so fervently applaud. Now came the choir into court again, with the complaining instruments and assaulted Hail Columbia; and when victory hung wavering in the scale, George returned with his dreadful wild-goose step turned on and the choir won of course. A minister pronounced the benediction, and the patriotic little gathering disbanded. The Fourth of July was safe, as far as the Mediterranean was concerned.

from The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain, cub-reporter, Alta California, San Francisco, 1867.



To my various email correspondents of late: it is a great honor to me to be called a “Yank,” in whatever spirit you intended, as I share this title with Mark Twain, an author whose collected works inspired not only the post-modernist masterpiece Finnegans Wake, but also the general spirit and vein of the collected works of Flann O’Brien. I only hope that I can live up to the legacy that your deep respect for my online scribbling entails.



Another perspective on the Fourth of July from Samuel Clemons.



From Flann O'Brien's Third Policeman:

'Is it about a bicycle?' he asked.

'Not that' said the Sergeant. 'This is a private visitor who says he did not arrive in the townland upon a bicycle. He has no personal name at all. His dadda is in far Amurikey.'

'Which of the two Amurikeys?' asked MacCruiskeen.

'The Unified Stations,' said the Sergeant.

'Likely he is rich by now if he is in that quarter,' said MacCruiskeen, 'because there's dollars there, dollars and bucks and nuggets in the ground and any amount of rackets and golf games and musical instruments. It is a free country too by all accounts.'

And finally:


God prosper the bold hearts on both land and ocean,
Who go in defiance of danger and scars,
And send them safe home to their wives and their sweethearts,
With the Harp of old Erin and Banner of Stars

Bless me Blogger for I have sinned...

It's been nearly two weeks since my last blogging (that Whitby greeting doesn't really count, does it?). I've committed YouTube several times. (It's just so easy to cut and paste those things!) And I've been remiss in visiting Generic Mugwump, Doc40 and many others. It's almost the Fourth of July and I don't even have a theme post planned.

But I do have news on Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono:

Vegas Very Much in "Love" with the Beatles

Ringo Starr walked the red carpet Friday night with Yoko Ono and George Harrison's widow, Olivia, at the Friday premiere of Love, a new Cirque du Soleil extravaganza set entirely to Beatles music handpicked by the Fab Four's main producer, George Martin.

Paul McCartney was also expected to attend the show, which has moved into a $130 million, 2,013-seat theater at the Mirage Hotel that took two years to build. Every seat is equipped with three speakers, to better immerse the audience in the magical, mysterious world populated by "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Lady Madonna."

More at link.

And news from Hot Press:


PACO PENA AND FRIENDS PLAY VICAR STREET AS PART OF WALTON'S GUITAR FESTIVAL OF IRELAND

If the five-string is your thing, here's some useful info for you: Ireland's "biggest and best" guitar festival is preparing for a hive of activity next week, with the lion's share of its events taking place between 4-9 July.

In addition to workshops, special events and seminars, the festival has attracted respected acts such as the Niall Toner Band, Clive Barnes and John Williams & John Etheridge.

A highlight will be Paco Peña & Friends, who play Vicar Street on Friday 7 July.

Tickets are available via Ticketmaster for E35.

More information on this event, and the festival, is available from www.gfi.ie

www.gfi.ie

Okay. Off to Generic Mugwump for a while!

The Man Who Built America: Thomas Aloysius Dorgan

While spiffing up one of my MySpace profiles, I was skimming through some color plates in my copy of The Big Book of American Irish Culture, Bob Callahan, editor* and read up on the source of the plate I was turning into website wallpaper. And what do I find? The cartoonist of the panel I really admired is from San Francisco, baby!

Thomas A. Dorgan

(April 29, 1877 [citation needed] - May 2, 1929[1])("Thomas Aloysius Dorgan," "Tad Dorgan", "TAD") was an American cartoonist who signed his drawings as TAD. He is credited with coining more popular words and expressions than anyone else.

He was born in San Francisco. When he was thirteen years old, he lost the last three fingers of his right hand in an accident with a factory machine. He took up drawing for therapy. A year later at the age of 14 he joined the art staff of the San Francisco Bulletin. By 1902 he was not only the top sports cartoonist for the New York Journal, but also a reporter and sportswriter. Jack Dempsey described him as "the greatest authority on boxing".

Dorgan is generally credited with either creating or popularizing such words and expressions as "dumbbell" (a stupid person); "for crying out loud" (an exclamation of astonishment); "cat's meow" and "cat's pajamas" (as superlatives); "applesauce" (nonsense); "cheaters" (eyeglasses); "skimmer" (a hat); "hard-boiled" (a tough person); "drugstore cowboy" (loafers or ladies' men); "nickel-nurser" (a miser); "as busy as a one-armed paperhanger" (overworked); and "Yes, we have no bananas," which was turned into a popular song.

His New York Times obituary brackets him with George Ade and Ring Lardner as popularizers of "a new slang vernacular," and also credits him as originator of "Twenty-three, Skidoo," "solid ivory," "Dumb Dora," "finale hopper," "Benny" for hat and "dogs'" for shoes.[1]

(A sample of TADs style found on www.lambiek.net)

From that site:

When he was thirteen years old, Thomas Aloysius Dorgan lost the last three fingers of his right hand in an accident with a factory machine. While recuperating, he drew a lot of cartoons as manual therapy. A year later, he found himself a job as staff artist on the San Francisco Bulletin. In 1902, he was employed by the prestigious San Francisco Chronicle, where he created his first weekly comic strip, 'Johnny Wise'. He was hired away by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and put to work at the New York Journal as a sports cartoonist.

(More of TAD at an Ohio State University collection.)



*The mere fact that this book is in my personal library, along with the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and the indispensable Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, is really all you need to know about me.

"From Brixton's lovely boulevards To Hammersmith's sightly shores"

Ah...me.

From what I can tell, The Duke de Mondo is in the throes of another romantic entanglement, and he has done the very sensible thing of listening to Rum, Sodomy and the Lash while he figures things out:

...Aye, I tell her. These gloriously wretched tableau's and episodes, I been catching glimpses of them e'er since that momentous afternoon when first I hit play on Rum, Sodomy & The Lash.

But the other London Shane talks about, the London of "long-gone songs from day's gone by" carried along the swell o' the Thames, the London of "Rainy Night In Soho," I been pining for that, y'unnerstann.

"Rainy Night In Soho," I remind her, is maybe the most beautiful song ever written, certainly the most beautiful ever written about Soho.

Was goin to be the first song at the wedding I almost stumbled into, by the by. We used to dance drunkenly round the kitchen in time to the sway o' yon strings.

"I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms"

But beyond all that is the startling development that The Duke has made a decision regarding his literary future:

I got a burning in the belly reeks o' a craving for to be heard and read, I say. I point out that the longer I sit here in this back room with the fag in the maw and the fags in the brains, with the fringe getting blacker and the eyes getting redder, with the stacks o' Chapter One Paragraph One getting closer to the roof-slates with each tick o' the time-tock, the longer this goes on, I say, the closer the factory gets.

Fore a fella knows what's happened he's stood in yonder production line checking pharmaceutical paraphernalia for anything out of the ordinary, yacking all about how he's gonna get a novel out one day, soon as my agent gets back to me. Soon as the publisher's ready. Soon as this leg gets fixed. Soon as the doctors let me go. Soon as I get this black from out my lung.

What I say is don't get me wrong, not for a second. The factory, it's a place humming with strong and beautiful and soulful and special and dedicated human beings. But I'd be lying, I say, if I pretended yon grinding and sparking and thumping didn't scare the yellow out my pish.

So aye. I'm going to London. I'm taking a couple bags fulla personality, a guitar tuned to Blue and a case filled wi' y-fronts on account of I wore boxers once in 1999 and my knackers ended up moored off Arran for a fortnight.

Ever the one to encourage and enthuse, I'm reminded of George Orwell's delightfully brilliant Keep the Aspidistra Flying:

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over
The bending poplars, newly bare.

As a matter of fact, though, there was not a breath of wind that afternoon. It was almost as mild as spring. Gordon repeated to himself the poem he had begun yesterday, in a cadenced whisper, simply for the pleasure of the sound of it. He was pleased with the poem at this moment. It was a good poem--or would be when it was finished, anyway. He had forgotten that last night it had almost made him sick.

The plane trees brooded motionless, dimmed by faint wreaths of mist. A tram boomed in the valley far below. Gordon walked up Malkin Hill, rustling instep-deep through the dry, drifted leaves. All down the pavement they were strewn, crinkly and golden, like the rustling flakes of some American breakfast cereal; as though the queen of Brobdingnag had upset her packet of Truweet Breakfast Crisps down the hillside.

Jolly, the windless winter days! Best time of all the year--or so Gordon thought at this moment. He was as happy as you can be when you haven't smoked all day and have only three-halfpence and a Joey in the world. This was Thursday, early-closing day and Gordon's afternoon off. He was going to the house of Paul Doring, the critic, who lived in Coleridge Grove and gave literary tea-parties.

It had taken him an hour or more to get himself ready. Social life is so complicated when your income is two quid a week. He had had a painful shave in cold water immediately after dinner. He had put on his best suit--three years old but just passable when he remembered to press the trousers under his mattress. He had turned
his collar inside out and tied his tie so that the torn place didn't show. With the point of a match he had scraped enough blacking from the tin to polish his shoes. He had even borrowed a needle from Lorenheim and darned his socks--a tedious job, but better than inking the places where your ankle shows through. Also he had procured an empty Gold Flake packet and put into it a single cigarette extracted from the penny-in-the-slot-machine. That was just for the look of the thing. You can't, of course, go to other people's houses with NO cigarettes. But if you have even one it's all right, because when people see one cigarette in a packet they assume that the packet has been full. It is fairly easy to pass the thing off as an accident.

'Have a cigarette?' you say casually to someone.

'Oh--thanks.'

You push the packet open and then register surprise. 'Hell! I'm down to my last. And I could have sworn I had a full packet.'

'Oh, I won't take your last. Have one of MINE,' says the other.

'Oh--thanks.'

And after that, of course, your host and hostess press cigarettes upon you. But you must have ONE cigarette, just for honour's sake.

Hmmm...on second thought, perhaps the Duke should avoid that particular read until he's on his own second or third publication.

I will be following the Duke's September adventures in the City of Dickens and Wilde with great interest.

The Things You Find in Google

Was doing the classically egotistical thing of googling on my name (coupled with Horslips, so as to eliminate the Franklin-Templeton* Fund hits) and found this!

Aaron McMullan Reviews.

Which guilts us into a visit to Mondo Irelando to see what might be new.

Skirting the temptation to read The Duke's opinions on Anne Coulter (and goodness! What is he going to say that Mick Farren doesn't already say with pictures of leather and bondage!) I find that the Duke has gone and seen Brokeback Mountain:

"Hells fire, mean did you ever find yourself all touchy-feely round about a man o' your self-same sex?"

What I say is no, what I say is what kinda mania you hopped on, anyroad?

Behind the eyes, you'll be aware, s'all sortsa flashback.

"D'You Know What I Mean" by Oasis, I'll be damned, s'just gone Number One, this record, sayin, this record's gonna be amazing.

Fella sat beside me way back then, he's sayin aye, I'd wager it'll be tight as a vicar's arse, you can be damn sure ain't gon' be no songs longer than three minutes, ain't gon' be no outlandish production, gon' be focused, oh aye.

Be Here Now, they're calling it. S'gonna be amazing, don't you know?

(And it was, dammit, and I'll defend it to the slight discomfort, best believe it.)

High on the rugged throat o' Gallagher, we set off for to find a tavern might accept a couple moments gruntin' and a cigarette in the yap as answer enough to the question "You got any ID?"

On receipt of a barman sympathetic to our plight, we settled 'side a jukebox stuck on H17, bein "Revolution 9" by The Beatles, that discordant cut/paste symphony spinning close to two dozen times afore someone in the midst of a beered-up brain-wank tore the plug out the wall and trampled the fucker to chards o' mangled mush.

Soon enough, talk took a dive t'wards the mysteries o' the bollocks.

"See", he gets to yackin, "I fancy her, but I can't stand her. Mean to say, I love her, I think, but she curdles the pish in me guts."

Me all nodding. I understand, I'm saying, s'like that lad I asked out, and yet, hetero to the back a the nuts, I am.

"Aye, for sure." And then; "What?"

Sometimes a fella just stumbles into these things, just opens the yap without thinking and next thing anyone knows there he is, flailing in the hedgerows o' hell with those words round about slinging sulphur 'gainst his jowels for all eternity.

Well, like, y'know, that fella. I kinda, y'know.

"And did he?"

Well not then. Later on, like.

Later on round back the club, with the snow to the ankles and the mumbled beats all crashing from beyond the walls. Nothing X-rated, I'm telling him. Just. Y'know.

He studies the end o' his cigarette for a time. "This is some momentous fuckin shit you're flingin on me here."

A silence, aye, thick as the man-slush o' Zeus. Then it's all come on, for fucks sakes, the hell kinda tosser are you, anyroad, a big ol' tosser likes o' which I never once laid eyes on, that's what kind, if'n you accept that sorta banter as Gospel. Fuckin wi' your mentals like there's no tomorrow, that's what I'm doin' here an now.

Couple pints later it's forgotten.

On the kerb by the KFC, the lass is asking me, "So what, then?"

What what?

"Well, did you?"

A shrug from yours truly. Who's to say, in this day and age?

More at the link. And always worth the read.













*Me (to husband who is downstairs): Honey?
Husband: WHAT!!!
Me: Are we related to the Franklin-Templeton people?
Husband: NO!!!
Me: (sotta voice) F*ck.
Husband: I HEARD THAT!!!

"Where the Seats Have No Name"

Ancient Gaelic on the walls and perfume in the ladies’ room
Dark wood tables, each brought over
Piece by piece from Boru’s tomb
Bridgid brings a round of Smithwick’s plus a Power’s on the rocks
Raven tresses though her sister sports the wild fiery locks

(chorus):
Pints in glasses, raise a din
They never shoulda let us in
We’re all wicked liquored up at the upscale downtown Irish pub



Shortly after New Year’s Eve, I was walking around O’Farrell and Cyril Magnin and happened to notice that Johnny Foley’s was closed for seismic retro-fitting. A quick count of weeks to mid-March told me this would either be [a] the fastest seismic retrofitting in town which means someone had an inside track with the Building Permit Department – not a far stretch, really - and dust would fly or [b] Johnny Foley’s was perhaps not to return.

But Johnny Foley’s returned to great fanfare in the California Irish Herald and the local grapevine. And in time for the big day.

A week or so after the last green plastic cup was carted off to the local landfill, I stopped by to say 'hello' to the good folks I used to see on a regular basis until the hamburgers jumped to $9.95 and they started charging extra for the bleu cheese.

Marie met me at the door and showed off the remodel with proprietorial pride. She made me list all the improvements I could see, without telling me first.

Me: New wallpaper, I see that right off, and it’s beautiful. I love that color. New art nouveau sconces, nice! And new taps…that’s a lot of brass there! Okay, what else? Those stairs to the cellar, that’s a whole partition now. And the bookcase over there, well that’s gone. And – hey! -- the ‘Hippies Use the Side Door’ sign, that’s gone too!
Marie: And so’s the side door.
Me: I can see that! But I liked that sign!
Marie: It’s over here, by the bathrooms. And we’ve got new pictures up by there too.
Me: Fidel Castro with a bottle of Powers. Cool.
Marie: What else do you see?
Me: The whole bathroom layout is different, obviously, no more payphones here and the coat rack is gone. And…oh my god!
Marie: What?
Me: That’s a stunning portrait of Bono you got there!

One week later, I had Mssrs Pachinko & Hoover down to see this. Their reaction was near to mine. We hadn’t planned on staying for a meal, but the new waitress mistook our interest and seated us right at this most august of tables.



(Joe Pachinko, San Francisco poet. Photographer: Miss Templeton)

I tried to convince my friends of the significance of this addition to the time-honored, tradition bound iconography of the joints I had known most of my life. "Look," I said. "This puts the man in a whole new realm. This is beyond lunch with the President of the United States or meeting the Pope or being in a video with Sting. Love him or don’t, we now have to give Bono the respect of someone who is Up on the Wall of a Pub."

Although my lunch mates were dubious, I warmed to the theme. "First of all, almost everyone else in a gilded frame in this room is dead. And not of old age either. And with Bono, we are clearly beyond the categories of politics, literature, and sport."

"Maybe he fits under 'literature' as a writer. A songwriter." Hoover offered.

We gave that some thought as we ordered another round.

"Perhaps," I said. "But it is still new ground. Songwriting as poetry? It’s a pretty bold step forward! Why, next there will be women on the wall!"

My companions hugged their glasses close and inched away, cringing against the lightening sure to strike me at this blasphemy.* But the moment of danger passed.

"No," I said. "This is historic. This is the dawn of a new era in pub décor."



It’s a new phenomenon, one for a new millennium
Sippin’ in a classy joint and not a dive just like some bum
This is grand, we’re well-behaved with voices at a decent pitch
Mind your language and the doorman, he’s a big son of a bitch!

Pints in glasses, raise a din
They never shoulda let us in
We’re all wicked liquored up at the upscale downtown Irish pub




*EXTRACT from DO THE RIGHT FECKIN’ THING, Draft of Spike Lee’s 1989 film with Jennifer Connolly as Buggin’ Out, Aidan Quinn as Brian, and Martin Sheen as Mike. Script was subsequently re-written for a different cast.

ANGLE--PUB
________________________________BUGGIN' OUT
-------------------------Mike, how come you ain't got no
-------------------------sisters up on the wall here?

_________________________ ______MIKE
-------------------------You want sisters up on the Wall
-------------------------of Fame, you open up your own
-------------------------business, then you can do what you wanna
-------------------------do. My Irish bar, men up on the wall.
____________________________________________________________________15.

_______________________________BRIAN
-------------------------Take it easy, Mike.

_______________________________MIKE
-------------------------Don't start on me today.

_______________________________BUGGIN' OUT
-------------------------Mike, that might be fine, you own
-------------------------this, but not only do I see men
-------------------------eating in here, I see women.
-------------------------So since we spend much money
.........................here, we do have some say.

_______________________________MIKE
-------------------- You a troublemaker?

Brian walks over to Buggin' Out.

_______________________________BRIAN
--------------------You making trouble.

_______________________________BUGGIN' OUT
--------------------Put some sisters up on this Wall
------------------______-of Fame. We want Mother Jones,
-----------------_____---Maureen O’Sullivan, Rosie O’Donnell
-------------------------tomorrow.

"They gave me a sneer and a guitar pick, and a yellow dandelion."

"I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God."
--John Cash.

Look here. About a month ago, I left for Dublin on the southbound train from the Portadown station hours before some strike or another that would hit on Tuesday 28 March, and checked into an airport-side hotel in Dublin in happy anticipation of a flight home via Paris on that same day.

And that very Tuesday morning found me at the Dublin Airport staring at the word "Cancelled" next to my Air France flight.

"What I can do is book you for the same flight tomorrow." said the sweet young thing at the Air France counter after handing me a government-funded mimeograph that explained how there wasn't a whole lot I could do about any of this.
"But what if the strike is still going on tomorrow!" wailed I, good-nature falling apart like a set of EuroDisney mouse-ears left in the rain.
"At this, we would say 'C'est la Vie.'" she replied. "Do you wish the ticket or not?"

So it was WEDNESDAY, March 29 that found me racing through the Parisienne Airport with a scant twenty minutes to catch the plane that would take me home to beloved San Francisco. O it was horrible! Every ugly American impulse to complain, to speak loudly, to demand to see management pounded in my veins. One of the security men actually made a bit of fun of my whimpering. But then...they held the flight for us! And they booked all of us in first class.

When the flight attendent came by for the first meal, he asked my wine preference. "Oh, red wine please" I said. Can't do white. "Very good," he replied. "2003 Merlot or 2002 Pinot Noir?" And then two bottles were flourished for my perusal. A choice of wines on a flight! I wanted to stand up and kiss him. I wanted to say "Condoleezza Rice is so f*ckin' outta line, man. France rocks!" Instead I said "Let's start with the Merlot and see where the flight takes us."

And with a meal of fresh salmon and a glass of a pleasantly brash Merlot, I turned to the inflight entertainment. And that's where I finally saw Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon going to Jackson -- and Nashville and Vegas and San Quentin -- in Walk the Line.

I should have written this film up long before. But fortunately, Duke De Mondo has taken care of all that for me:

The line Walk The Line walks most perilously is the one atween Selective Portrayal an Fuckin Slander. The flaws it presents; took a buncha pills an did some shaggin around; are sparks in the furthest flung corners a the gargantuan fires Cash scorched himself within. The virtues; he was a good lad wrote a good song; are further still from the pulsatin brilliance of his true beauty.

The flick, y’unnerstann, is shallow an predictable where Johnny Cash had the depth a the Mariana’s Trench an the unpredictability o’ an erection in a convent. It’s enjoyable an emotional an touchin, most certainly, but when the credits roll an the real Johnny an June are rippin the speakers apart every which way, a fella can’t help but reflect on the disservice it does to the man.

The True Story Of Johny Cash. Here it is;

Johnny Cash Live At Folsom Prison.

Johnny Cash Live At San Quentin.

Bitter Tears.

America – A 200 Year Salute In Story And Song.

Johnny Cash Sings The Ballads Of The True West.

Songs Of Our Soil.

American Recordings III – Solitary Man.

When those records’ve eaten into your every wakin moment till hardly a note passes your ear ‘thout facin comparison wi those incendiary, astounding, achingly beautiful pieces a work, then most likely you can assume you know as much as there is to know.

Records like shots a blazin fuck to the back a the brains, records about life an about justice an about redemption doesn’t come as easy as the cold turkey montage would have a fella believe. Records that sound like the rumble a the Earth’s gut one minute, an like the opium sanctity a sleep the next.

Records serve as teachers an pupils, records to feed the hunger in the dream-space, y’unnerstann.

Whoever he was, this man Johnny Cash wi the feet all scorched an blistered on account a the heat o’ those dunes, whoever he was, ain't much sight of him in Walk The Line.

Just found myself in the Duke's link list this weekend. So I'll have to repay that courtesy with lots and lots of visits to Mondo Irelando.

Diary of Johann August Sutter

January 28th. [1848]

Marshall arrived in the evening, it was raining very heavy, but he told me he came on important business. After we was alone in a private Room he showed me the first Specimens of Gold, that is he was not certain if it was Gold or not, but he thought it might be; immediately I made the proof and found that it was Gold. I told him even that most of all is 23 Carat Gold; he wished that I should come up with him immediately, but I told him that I have to give first my orders to the people in all my factories and shops.

(Could have been this morning at the Union Square Post Office. Why don't more people file their taxes online!?! Image from sfmuseum.org)

So it's goodbye Molly Durkin, I'm sick and tired of workin'
And my heart is nearly broken, but no longer I'll be fooled;
And as sure as my name is Cooney, I'm bound for Califooney
And instead of diggin' mortar I'll be diggin' lumps of gold.

Well, I landed in Castle Garden, sure I met a man named Burke
And he told me remain in New York until he got me work.
But he hasn't got it for me, so tonight I'll tell him plain,
For San Francisco in the morn I'm going to take a train.

Trains. Trains are a whole other story! But as we've finally managed to work it back to music, I'm bringing this series of posts to a close. But remember: keep 72 hours worth of food, bleach, and fresh water in the house. Check those flashlight batteries and discuss alternate transit strategies with your household today. At work, they recommend that all employees keep a change of frillies (or male equivalent thereof) and a toothbrush and toothpaste at the office for unexpected overnight stays. That's not a bad idea either.

Oct. 15 OAKLAND (Moore) 5 San Francisco (Reuschel) 1

1989 World Series

Known variously as the Bay Area Series and BART Series (for Bay Area Rapid Transit), the 1989 Fall Classic opened in Oakland, and Athletics ace Dave Stewart was brilliant, tossing a complete-game five-hitter to shut out the Giants, 5-0.

The results were similar in Game 2. Mike Moore and two relievers limited the Giants to four hits and one run, while the A's tallied four in the fourth inning - highlighted by Terry Steinbach's three-run homer - on their way to a 5-1 victory.

(Logo from Baseballliving.com)

Earthquake hits San Francisco

A powerful earthquake has rocked San Francisco killing nine people and injuring hundreds.

The number of dead is expected to rise significantly. The two tier Bay Bridge and Nimintz freeway both partially collapsed and rescuers are waiting to recover bodies from cars crushed by the quake.

The epicentre of the quake, which measured 6.9 on the Richter scale, is thought to have been Loma Prieta, 10 miles north of Santa Cruz on the San Andreas fault.

A massive rescue effort is now underway in what experts believe is the second biggest earthquake ever to hit the United States.

Officials have reported "unbelievable damage to infrastructure" with collapsed bridges and freeways, fires, shattered buildings, gaping cracks in roads and land slides.

Tremors from the quake, which lasted 15 seconds, were reported 400 miles away in Los Angeles and 200 miles away in Reno, Nevada.

The quake struck at 1704 local time (18 October, 0004 GMT), as people were making their way home after work. Traffic was brought to a standstill and many homes left without power.

Fans waiting to see the baseball World Series match at Candlestick Park were also caught up in the quake. Supporters ran onto the pitch as the whole stadium swayed.

(Image from the sfmuseum.net)

U.S. Geological Survey Intensity Map for the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake

The highest concentration of fatalities, 42, occurred in the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct on the Nimitz Freeway (Interstate 880), where a double-decker portion of the freeway collapsed, crushing the cars on the lower deck. One 50-foot (15 m) section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge also collapsed, causing two cars to fall to the deck below, leading to the single fatality on the bridge. The bridge was closed for repairs for a month and one day, reopening on November 18. While the bridge was closed, ridership on Bay Area Rapid Transit and ferry services soared.

Wikipedia Entry on Loma Prieta Quake


(Embarcadero Freeway blocking Ferry Building from the city, 1960s. Image from shapingsf.org)


(Where the Embarcadero Freeway once stood. Image from Mike Humbert's Idiosyncratic Guide to San Francisco)




"The Bay Area is so beautiful, I hesitate to preach about heaven while I'm here."
~Billy Graham

"You are fortunate to live here. If I were your President, I would levy a tax on you for living in San Francisco!"
~Mikhail Gorbachev

"Somehow the great cities of America have taken their places in a mythology that shapes their destiny: Money lives in New York. Power sits in Washington. Freedom sips Cappuccino in a sidewalk cafe in San Francisco."
~Joe Flower





From the San Francisco Chronicle, September 2, 2005:

In 2001, a FEMA report ranked hurricane damage to New Orleans as one of the three most likely catastrophes facing the country (the other two were a terrorist attack on New York City and an earthquake in San Francisco).

"Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time."

Heros and Icons: Harvey Milk

But banking bored him, and the gay Greenwich Village milieu that he slipped into was full of scruffy radicals, drug-addled theater queens and goofy twentysomethings fleeing Midwest bigotry. Milk befriended or had sex with many of them (including Craig Rodwell, who would help lead the 1969 riots outside the Stonewall bar that launched the gay movement). By the early 1970s, Milk had moved to San Francisco, enraptured by its flourishing hippie sensibilities.

The few gays who had scratched their way into the city's establishment blanched when Milk announced his first run for supervisor in 1973, but Milk had a powerful idea: he would reach downward, not upward, for support. He convinced the growing gay masses of "Sodom by the Sea" that they could have a role in city leadership, and they turned out to form "human billboards" for him along major thoroughfares. In doing so, they outed themselves in a way once unthinkable. It was invigorating.

(From Woodmere N.Y. to San Francisco CA. Harvey Milk and Market Street in the mid-70s. Image from sfgate.com)

A long, long time ago, let's say 1976, in a place very far away (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), a convent of Roman Catholic nuns lent some retired habits to a group of men performing their version of The Sound of Music. Three years later, those habits resurfaced in the streets of San Francisco's Castro district...
(From Sistory: A Blow by Blow History of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence)

Despite the characters' rueful and frequently baffled quest for romantic fulfillment, there's a giddiness in the very fabric of the Tales; it's the rush of liberation, an elixir familiar to any misfit who ever relocated to San Francisco, including Maupin. The author, who remembers himself as an "uptight, archconservative, racist brat" during his Southern youth (he even worked briefly for Senator Jesse Helms), came to San Francisco at the age of twenty-seven and came out of the closet shortly thereafter. His work as a journalist made him privy to all manner of gossip about society high and low, and his participation in the emergence of a new kind of society-a sort of republic of pleasure-fed his desire to write.

Literary Bent.com site for Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City

SF Pride Parade: Official Site and 2006 Registration Entry Form

While his first three tries for office failed, they lent Milk the credibility and positive media focus that probably no openly gay person ever had. Not everyone cheered, of course, and death threats multiplied. Milk spoke often of his ineluctable assassination, even recording a will naming acceptable successors to his seat and containing the famous line: "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

Candlelight March for Harvey Milk, Market Street, November 27, 1978

"There was cowboy Neal at the wheelOf a bus to never-ever land"

San Francisco in the middle 60's was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive, in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction. At any hour, you could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. That we were winning. And that I think was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense. We didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail.
-Hunter S. Thompson

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."
-Ken Kesey

Tarnished Galahad: The Prose and Pranks of Ken Kesey


(Scanned from private collection.)

By 1968, though, Bill Fuller’s attention was firmly focussed on one of his greatest dreams yet: building an Irish village in Galway Bay. While he was doing this, the American rock promoter Bill Graham flew to Ireland in a desperate attempt to obtain the lease on The Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco. It was easier than Graham had imagined. Fuller was waiting for him when he arrived at Shannon Airport at 8am, ordered a bottle of bourbon, shook hands on a deal, finished the remaining shots of liquor and then announced that he was going back to work on his building site. By 5pm, Graham was on a flight home, all set to turn The Carousel into the legendary rock venue, the Fillmore West.

We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest, of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high watermark...that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
-Hunter S. Thompson

But as Garcia said, you know, the '60s ain't over till the fat lady gets high. And that means that whatever it takes to get you high: sometimes grief, sometimes it's prayer, fasting. I prefer a joint.
-Ken Kesey

"riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening"

"It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness of the late afternoon of time."
-Sal Paradise, On The Road



(In the road ... Bob Donlin, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert La Vigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti outside the City Lights bookstore in 1956. Photograph: Allen Ginsberg/Corbis as reprinted in the Guardian.co.uk)

"Jack Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million Levis to both sexes."
-William Burroughs

About Levi Strauss & Co.

Sunflower Sutra, Allen Ginsberg

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
....sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
....Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
....box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
....pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
....of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,
....surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
....machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
....sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
....stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves
....rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
....on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
....shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
....dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
....memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem...

The mad road, lonely, leading around the bend into the openings of space towards the horizon Wasatch snows promised us in the vision of the West, spine heights at the world's end, coast of blue Pacific starry night—nobone halfbanana moons sloping in the tangled night sky, the torments of great formations in mist, the huddled invisible insect in the car racing onwards, illuminate.—The raw cut, the drag, the butte, the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass—orangebutted west lands of Arcadia, forlorn sands of the isolate earth, dewy exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and the gopher the level of the world, low and flat: the charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route.

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

AMERICAN BARBARISM: The Apostle of Estheticism Exposes Our Sins, San Francisco Daily Chronicle, March 30, 1882

A scene of considerable excitement occurred yesterday afternoon when Oscar Wilde ventured out in search of Celestial handiwork. In company with a lady and an escort, he called at a Chinese store on Sacramento street, below Kearny. No sooner had he been seen to leave his carriage than a general rush took place, and in a moment the street in front of the store was utterly impassable, and it required the bear-efforts of Officer Curtis to prevent the spectators from precipitating themselves into the store.

(Image from sfmuseum.org)

"It's an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world."
-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, 1891

San Francisco City Search: Wilde Oscar's