HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY MR CAGE

CHRIS MARKER RIP

"Brooding at the end of the world on my island of Sal in the company of my prancing dogs I remember that month of January in Tokyo, or rather I remember the images I filmed of the month of January in Tokyo. They have substituted themselves for my memory. They are my memory. I wonder how people remember things who don't film, don't photograph, don't tape. How has mankind managed to remember? I know: it wrote the Bible. The new Bible will be an eternal magnetic tape of a time that will have to reread itself constantly just to know it existed."

HAPPY BLOOMSDAY

"Beckett was addicted to silences, and so was Joyce; they engaged in conversations which consisted often of silences directed towards each other, both suffused with sadness, Beckett mostly for the world, Joyce mostly for himself. Joyce sat in his habitual posture, legs crossed, toe of the upper leg under the instep of the lower; Beckett, also tall and slender, fell into the same gesture. Joyce suddenly asked some such question as, 'How could the idealist Hume write a history?' Beckett replied, 'A history of representation.'"

"YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING LIKE ME YET"

HAPPY 71st BIRTHDAY TO MR ZIMMERMAN

ANN'S SUNDAY BRUNCH

 HOME BAKED MONTREAL BAGELS W/SCRAMBLED AMERAUCANA EGGS & ARUGULA & FIFTH QUARTER SMOKED BEEF TONGUE W/ONIONS & CHERRY TOMATOES

ANN'S SUPER HEALTHY DINNER MAY DAY '12

 SAUTEED ESCAROLE W/FARRO, AVOCADO, RADISH, TOMATOES, JAPANESE CUKES & SUNFLOWER SEEDS
(farro is one of the oldest cultivated grains in the world, said to have powered the roman army during it's glory days. personally, i love the combination & never think of war while i'm consuming bowls of it).

ANN'S DINNER 4/30

 TOM KHA GAI (YELLOW THAI CURRY W/CHICKEN & POTATO)

"EATEN BREAD IS FORGOTTEN"

 these beauties are based on jim lahey's "no-knead" bread recipes that caused such a stir a few years back when they were published in bittman's nyt column. i made tons of bread way back when but i got a wild hair & started messing around w/whole wheat & various other more healthy variations. these seeded beauties(sesame & sunflower)have been the best so far.

ANN'S DINNER

MARINATED ROASTED PEPPERS W/CAPERS & ARUGULA. FRESH BAKED BREAD

ANN'S DINNER

MANGO, AVOCADO, ORANGE SALAD W/RAU RAM

 april 12 2012 san francisco

 Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

REASONS FOR MOVING

The Everyday Enchantment of Music

"A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music. Then the music was polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty home of a heart in trouble.Then suddenly there was sun and the music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and the memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and what happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin." from Mark Strand's new book of prose poems, ALMOST INVISIBLE

ANN'S DINNER

BRAISED SHORT RIBS & FIGS IN TEOTITLAN MOLE NEGRO W/CHOCHOYOTES(MASA DUMPLINGS)& SWEET POTATO PUREE, AVOCADO & CORN SALAD

ANN'S DINNER

GNOCCHI W/CHICKEN & ARUGULA

HARRY CREWS R.I.P.

crews at his most militantly oddball.

i think mr. death likes him just fine now.

EARL SCRUGGS R.I.P.

more on mr. scruggs later. for now, this little piece of genius will suffice.

ADRIENE RICH R.I.P.

poem by clayton eshleman

CAT BLISS

RITES OF SPRING

i'm assuming we'll still have some winterish weather but the cats know what they know & hodge is pretty sure spring has sprung. unlike merce our bob-tail country cat, hodge's coat is silken & doesn't keep the cold out as much as merce's velour-like coat. hearing hodge do her rebel yell when she bounces out to the warm wedge of sun that cuts across our balcony is one of those things that makes having animal companions so rewarding.

KREWE D'ETAT

indian dohl drumming combined w/a brass band configuration. who says there's nothing new under the sun? after coming from new orleans, where i saw rebirth & soul rebels & papa grows funk, this is still astonishing.

THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING

“I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.” ― John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search of America 

it is simply not like me to post a picture of myself. it has nothing to do w/buddhist ego issues. it has something to do w/the fact that i look like this. so, in a way, it is an ego issue but i'm sworn to overcome as many of those as my poor corporeal being can muster. i felt it was important to post something on this leap year day, which is about how often i plan on posting self-pics. this was taken in the french market. ann was trying her best to get me to open up to the mardi gras spirit & wear a hat. the implication was that i was a bummer. personally, i don't think a hat can save me from that determination but, for a moment, perhaps the shade of all those mardi gras spirits from years gone by converged & manifested. i've seen much stranger things happen in the city that care forgot.

HERE THEY COME, HERE THEY COME

INJUNS!

MY VALENTINES

I COME TO YOU WITH EMPTY HANDS

I GUESS I JUST FORGOT AGAIN

 

I ONLY GOT MY LOVE TO SEND 

ON VALENTINE DAY.

JOOK/JOINT

one of my gout recovery meals: rice porridge w/chicken, shitake, & peas. w/o the use of my left hand, putting a pot on the stove & simmering the rice for 2hours was a pretty comforting & delicious way of taking care of myself.

"I KNEW I WAS NOT MAGNIFICENT..."

justin vernon is a kind of negative image cohen but there's a lot happening beneath the nearly static music he's making: kind of like a frozen landscape but the dynamic of nature is still in full operational mode. cohen was in his mid-30s when his first album, songs of leonard cohen, was released. he sounded older & his writing seemed ancient & profoundly wise. vernon is still a young pup & he sounds less wise than simply aware of his own distinct foibles, which translates into some kind of truth-telling. he's developed a cult-like following, probably based on the web-based initial access to what he was doing. nothing generates fetishism faster than difficult access. i saw him on video perform an astonishing version of "skinny love" a year before his album dropped. i doubted he could sustain the idea of "bon iver" for too long but the newest album(from which this song, holocene, is taken)& his work on kathleen edwards' new album, voyageur, makes me think otherwise.

SEPARATED FROM ORDINARY MIND

The Buddha said:

Existence and non-existence are extremes,
Purity and impurity are extremes as well,
Thus, having relinquished both extremes,
The wise do not dwell even in the middle.

today is the first day of the celebration of the great tibetan scholar, longchenpa. at the nyingma institute, we marked it by a 3 or 4 day continuous chant. you'd sit for 2-3 hour shifts, keeping the chant going all day & all night. i used to love the early morning shift at 3am. at the end of the ceremony, the practice was dedicated to relieving the suffering of all sentient beings.

on my own, i can think of lots of worse ways to spend my time.

"LOVE WAS OUT OF MY CONTROL..."

Greg Dulli "Paper Thin Hotel" from Columbia Records on Vimeo.

"you go to heaven once you've been to hell"

cohen has always keenly observed & recorded our inevitably failed attempts at transcendence through human relationships, specifically romantic ones. in all the flailing about, there can be moments that actually open us up to seeing the world differently. that would be "satori" in zen, not nirvana but an awakening that might lead to it. of course the trick is being open to the revelation; most of the time, it just flashes by unnoticed.

that's what this song is all about. dulli is right on top of the revelation cohen provides & delivers on it's promise. this is a perfect & very human valentine for all our past loves.

enjoy.
this song originally appeared on the infamous death of a ladies man album.

ANN'S DINNER

CITRUS SALAD W/HABANERO & PERSIMMON
(citrus included: ugli fruit, ruby red grapefruit, moro blood oranges, & meyer lemons)

"I DREAMED ABOUT KILLING YOU AGAIN LAST NIGHT..."

i think wilco can make a claim to the title of best band in america & after seeing them in oakland last night i'd probably agree. still, the band exists as a musical extension of jeff tweedy &, it seems to me, his peculiar point of view keeps the band from an unimpeded ascension to those lofty heights. that may be, however, exactly what makes them great.

this is the unusual set list from last night's concert. they do essentially a new show every night but this one was unusual in that they played a lot from their first two albums(which they hadn't been doing)& the encore was complex & surprisingly long.
Poor Places
Art Of Almost
I Might
Muzzle of Bees
Via Chicago
Spiders (Kidsmoke)
(Acoustic)
One Wing
How To Fight Loneliness
Born Alone
California Stars
Impossible Germany
Whole Love
Pot Kettle Black
Hate It Here
Theologians
Can't Stand It
Heavy Metal Drummer
Dawned On Me
Hummingbird
Encore:
A Shot in the Arm
Wilco (The Song)
Passenger Side
Kingpin
Monday
Outta Mind (Outta Sight)
Casino Queen
Hoodoo Voodoo

HAPPY B'DAY TO ME

VIII.
Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love,
An ancient aspect touching a new mind.
It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies.
This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.
We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed,
The laughing sky will see the two of us
Washed into rinds by rotting winter winds.

FROM "LE MONOCLE DE MON ONCLE" BY WALLACE STEVENS
that's a pic of my swollen hand that resulted from a vicious gout attack in my wrist last week. i spent 14 harrowing hours in the e.r. but they did load me up on morphine. i was told that an initial gout attack hitting the wrist is rare. the doctor seemed impressed. it usually manifests in the big toe.
as bobo told my mother when he called her to tell about a friend's death: "it's all hospitals & funerals from here on out." stevens says the same thing but w/an eloquence that usually escaped bobo, which is not to say that bobo wasn't succinct.

WEEKEND PASTRIES

"FOR THE LISTENER, WHO LISTENS IN THE SNOW..."

Winter
H. L. Hix
from "The God of Window Screens and Honeysuckle"

Stubble rows, four matte, four shiny in morning sun,/
show the combine’s direction. What can be preserved/
must be preserved as some self other than its own./
Bent cattails mimic stubble in the frozen pond./
Suet nearly gone, chickadees cling upside down/
to the feeder. Above it, a hedgeapple wedged/
between branches since fall. Past that, changing direction/
at once, fast as mackerel, a thousand blackbirds./
Skaters on a pond, we fall into what we know,/
drown in disorienting light before we freeze./
In angled afternoon sun, the fence’s shadow/
caresses the snow’s contours like tight-fitting clothes./
Even when grass greens to re-enact spring, the snow/
will linger, longest in the shadows of houses.

"HALF WAY TO A BREAKDOWN..."

w/o his band, the hold steady, to push him, finn just lays low & lets the story do the talking. there aren't too many more christ-haunted rockers out there than mr finn but he gives the devil his due as well.

i remember a guy at new college who had a christ complex, actually believed he WAS christ. his delusion, it was explained to me, emerged from the detritus of a bad acid trip: he sat, paralyzed & sweating for hours, hallucinating the devil & christ literally wrestling for possession of his soul. he claimed that christ was victorious but it seemed clear enough to me that the devil was the actual winner.

if he'd learned to play guitar & write songs, i'd have given the win to christ.

WHY THE BAY AREA DOESN'T DESERVE THEIR SPORTS TEAMS

KYLE WILLIAMS GETTING DEATH THREATS

http://kluc.radio.com/2012/01/24/kyle-williams-getting-death-threats/

that's a current head-line around the bay area & the source of much discussion. the bay area seems to have the rock bottom worse kind of sports fans: petulant & ugly when things don't go their way; gut-churningly arrogant & over-bearing when they do. same applies to the local media(w/a few exceptions)which explains why i felt no joy in the giant's unlikely world series victory two years ago or the niner's excellent season this year. the media & the fans simply drained all that's good out of both stories & replaced it w/their own petty egos.

these people don't deserve kyle williams. they don't deserve winning teams. losers deserve losers. they deserve something commensurate w/the void of their own lives.

sickening.

SUNDAY DINNER

ROASTED WILD COD, ROASTED JAPANESE SHISHITO PEPPERS, & WINTER CITRUS SALAD W/DATES & MINT

RETURN TO FOREVER

LAST NIGHT I HEARD JOHN BOUTTE SINGING THE THEME SONG FROM THE HBO SERIES TREME COMING FROM ANN'S BEDROOM. "SHE'S GEARING UP," I THOUGHT TO MYSELF. WE'RE HEADED FOR NEW ORLEANS IN A MONTH FOR THIS YEARS MARDI GRAS. I CAN THANK TREME FOR EXCITING ANN ENOUGH FOR HER TO STATE A DESIRE TO BE IN NEW ORLEANS FOR MARDI GRAS. I JUMPED AT THE CHANCE. I WILL JUMP AT ANY CHANCE TO GO TO THE CITY OF MY DREAMS.
I WROTE THIS OVER 3 YEARS AGO. IT SPEAKS DIRECTLY TO MY LOVE FOR THE CRESCENT CITY.


i was staying w/mark applegate down in key west. walker was w/me. we stayed for several weeks on the downstairs couches in a large old key west house. there were seven or so other folks staying too. i remember it was winter. one of the guys wore his wetsuit to bed at night. this probably had something to do w/the fact that there were only a few extant windows in the whole house. when you're way down in the sub-tropics, who needs windows, right?

this was a real introduction to the key west experience for me. the guys in the house took us to several bars that were off the beaten path(green parrot, boat bar, the bar w/no name over on shell island). this was when the shrimpers still ran the town. there were no tourists. i remember seeing a college kid in the boat bar beaten savagely & thrown out onto duval street because he insisted to one of the shrimpers that he hadn't hit the 8 ball. he wouldn't drop it, even when a voice from the darkness in the bar bluntly stated, "that's how we play it here, kid." the kid didn't even finish his next sentence. things happened to him quickly & very violently & then it was over & he was gone. there was a kind of general shrug in the bar. no police were ever involved. this happened before we were run out of the house because walker used & ruined spider's delicate leather work tools to open a coconut he'd proudly obtained by climbing up a coconut tree. when we were told it would be best for us to leave NOW, we did. no questions asked. we understood. but before that i'd noticed that everyone in key west seemed to be harboring the same life plan, or shall we say, the same dream. "i'm gonna build a boat & get offa this rock," came out most often unsolicited but it came out nevertheless. it came out of the mouths of bums, strippers, waiters & cooks. it came out of the mouths of people at the pier house & down in the marina. everyone said it. it was kind of like the pod-people in "body snatchers." deeply creepy. it began to stike me(before we were unceremoniously hussled out of town)that these folks might actually be dangerous. men w/dreams, no matter how outlandish, are dangerous because they had something to aspire to.

i've been thinking about new orleans lately. i got an email from my buddy mark talking about mardi gras(which actually lasts for a month there in the city)& some of the lesser, tho no less exuberant, krewes. he was planning on attending a happening over in the marigny on frenchman. we've been going to that neighborhood for years(i remember slow dancing w/nat there at cafe brasil to the iguanas)& it's become my home base area when i'm there now. my new college buddy, nancy, also called & since she & i had just spent an eventful week there last summer, her call served to also stir up all the memories & desires that city conjures.

nan got pierced there last summer & broke my long standing(so to speak)record of falling down drunk. i'm giving her the benefit of the doubt here because several of her falls were in the privacy of the hotel room while, i believe, most of mine were done right out in public. the outrigger kids loved to tell the story of leaving a bar & joking that 'we'll probably find jones in some gutter' & me rising up from said gutter to greet them & begin round 3 or 4 of the evening. fun times were had by all &, of course, we all have stories of new orleans.

right before i got accepted to new college, i'd been debating on which city i wanted to flee p'cola to, new orleans or key west. philip & i had just had a great trip to new orleans. we'd spent time w/philip's gay friend, marty. philip introduced me to several older men, prefacing each intro w/"i'm not really sure that he's gay," whereupon a door would swing open & the most flamboyantly gay man would come mincing out, exclaiming & gesturing about this or that in diva-like dramatics. it never bothered me &, in this case, i liked marty a lot. educated & cultured & well-traveled. w/him as our guide, we went to quite a few off the beaten track places too. these weren't as life threatening as the key west dives that walker & i had been to w/mark & spider.

actually, what struck me back then was how life affirming the places & people of new orleans were. no one i met was planning on building a boat. did i meet people who were planning to leave? you bet. i met people who'd just arrived too. the comings & goings had nothing to do w/dreams or life plans, at least as they were articulated. when you left you didn't sail away on a boat; you had stories. when you arrived, you heard stories from & about others. i was run out of here too. i was asked to leave new orleans by no less of an eminence than jim monahan(rip), owner of the molly's empire. as menacing as the request was, i knew it would work itself out & it did. but i did leave, taking cirota & jayne w/me(the toxic combo that landed me in rehab...along w/my own bad habits). this was a fundamental difference between key west & new orleans as far as i was concerned. things would & could be forgiven. they'd be forgiven because you were needed to add to the life & times of new orleans. at least, i think that's why i was renting another room from mr monahan 6 months later(w/o cirota & janie this time). i didn't think about key west much after that.

of course, key west didn't have the music or the food either. new orleans stands as the only major city w/its own indigenous music & food cultures. that's frosting on the cake to me. new orleans was & is a city in which living & loving is primary to the project of being in the world. & then, you tell the stories.

"I DON'T WANNA WAIT..."

one of the best things to come out of alabama since the drive-by truckers, these folks know how to lay down a groove & she can belt out what needs to be said as forcefully as any of them. there are shades of joplin here, which i don't mind a bit since it's more the texture of the voice than any imitative thing.
after a few bad days for pop music, it's always nice to hear something like this. it's what helps us hold on, i suppose.

ETTA JAMES RIP

a bad couple of days for pop music.

JOHNNY OTIS RIP

born to greek emigrants in vallejo ca, otis was commonly referred to as "the godfather of rhythm & blues." his life is just more proof that american pop culture is a mutt, lovable & handsome but a mutt nonetheless.

PRAYERFUL SIMPLICITY

from watching & waiting, a photography collection by steve mccurry. these are prayer flags in amdo, tibet. at odiyan, they used to hang the old worn-out prayer flags on a barren, lighting-struck tree that used to stand on the property where the new cintamani temple was built. prayers are not directed towards a god but rather generally aimed at the welfare of everyone, including enemies.

here's the link to more of mccurry's pics:
http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/exhibitions/mccurry/index.htm

TONIGHT'S DESSERT

APPLE & CHERRY PIE

LAST NIGHT'S DINNER

HALIBUT W/SHORSHE BATA MAACH(BENGALI MUSTARD SEED SAUCE), ROASTED MAITAKE MUSHROOM, CASTELFRANCO GREENS W/AVOCADO,PARSLEY ROOT

FAVORITE 2011 MUSIC

here's my list of favorite music from 2011 that i posted over at the no depression site just before c'mas. this does not include new jazz or new classical. it would have included the black key's el camino but it came out after i'd drawn up the list.

in no particular order:

1) bonnie "prince" billy: WOLFROY GOES TO TOWN

2)tab benoit: MEDICINE

3)the low anthem: THE SMART FLESH

4)gillian welch: THE HARROW & THE HARVEST

5)tom waits: BAD AS ME

6)tom russell: MESABI

7)jeffrey foucault: THE HORSE LATITUDES

8)jessica lea mayfield: TELL ME

9)malcolm holcolme: TO DRINK THE RAIN

10)wilco: THE WHOLE LOVE

honorable mentions: the decemberists, jason isbell, gregg allman, monk boudreux, willem maker(agapao), austin lucas, slackeye slim, hellbound glory, glossary, the bo-keys, big harp, the deep dark woods, mike doughty, john hiatt, joseph arthur, dave alvin, buddy miller.

re-release of the year: mickey newbury, an american trilogy.

& i have to mention my new orleans friend, the great transcendent coco robicheaux. rip

A PERFECT BOWL

RANCHO GORDO BEANS, BRAISED PORK BELLY, GARLIC PEA SPROUTS,& A FRIED EGG

"YOU LET THE DEVIL IN YOUR HOME..."

the new millenium's version of spector's wall of sound but now they just bring all the instruments onto the stage & do it live. this is a portland band. if they don't go the pompous route, they could be very good.

enjoy.

"OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND..."

today would be smithson's 73rd birthday if he hadn't been accidently killed back in 1973. this is a recent picture, taken by greg lindquist during a winter pilgrimage out to the remote area of smithson's spiral jetty. i've always loved everything about the jetty: the conception, the realization, the end result which is in constant flux while seeming to be immutable. i was struck by the beauty of this particular picture.

here's a link:

http://hyperallergic.com/16412/winter-spiral-jetty/