UNREMITTING FAILURE

Hitler and Garfunkel

Adolf Hitler committed suicide on this day in 1945.  The Nazi leader was despondent over the failure of his Hitler! Live at Budokan! LP to reach the Hot 100. Secluded like Sly Stone in his fortified underground bunker, the disconsolate dictator/singer/songwriter poured scorn upon bands like the Doobie Brothers and the Eagles, which he called "toothless country rock for people whose idea of the country is the vacant lot behind the In-N-Out Burger on Venice Boulevard."  As the Russian Army closed in, Hitler rued the failure of his intelligence service to kidnap Art Garfunkel.  "Hitler & Garfunkel," he told his faithful-to-the-end propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, "would have changed the outcome of the war.  The combination of my fanatical will and Art's ethereal backing vocals would have both moved and terrified the record-buying public.  No one could have stopped the sonic blitzkrieg of our Aryan-Semitic fusion!"  Like many a performing artist before and after him, the folky fuhrer refused to let go of the dream.  "I built this Reich on rock'n'roll!" he told his vegetarian chef, Fraulein Manzialy. "And I will survive!  Hey, that sounds like a good idea for a song."

William Wordsworth: An Appreciation

Go to the Lake Country, as we did this past year, and you will be bored shitless.  Oh, it's great if you like lakes.  But who likes lakes?  And how many lakes do anyone really need to see?  One lake is enough for most people, one good pond even.  Heck, we'll settle for a standing pool of stagnant water in that vacant lot where the Dunkin' Donuts used to be.  But still we went to the Lake Country, because we wanted to seek out the immortal shade of that most brilliant of dull poets, William Wordsworth. 

We'll be the first to admit we haven't always been a big fan of the poetry of Wordsworth.  Most of it, frankly, is so boring you'll pray to be struck illiterate.  Then we read The Idiot Boy.  The Idiot Boy is about an idiot boy and the girl who loves him.  It's a pretty dull poem, actually, but you can't beat it for subject matter.   

If you bore into a poet's work, and by this we mean really bore like a tapeworm or something that's really good at boring, you will be rewarded.  For instance, we never knew Wordsworth wrote a poem called A Briton's Thoughts Upon the Subjugation of Switzerland.  We can't believe Jerry Bruckheimer hasn't turned this baby into golden popcorn.  Everybody sees a poet's A work, it gets to walk the red carpet and snob around at Elton John's afterparty, but a poet's C work hardly ever sees the light of day.  It's lucky to get invited to the Grand Opening of a lighting fixtures store in Busby Falls, Montana.

Of course, there isn't a human on earth who hasn't doesn't Wordsworth's biggest catch phrases by heart. For instance, I wandered lonely as a cloud/Uh... bubbity bippety whoosit.  But you get our point.  He's the guy who asked, Whither hast fled the visionary gleam? like he didn't know LSD wears off.  And trailing clouds of glory do we come, which you have to agree is a damned poetical way to describe getting orgasmacited.  We're especially fond of

Behold the child among his new-born blisses
A six years’ Darling of a pigmy size

It takes an authentic poetic genius to compare a small child to a pygmy. Let's hope this wasn't his idea of a MILF come-on.  Remember, Wordy was the guy who wrote "strange fits of passion I have known."  No shit.  We talked to the local sheep.

Vietnam Poesy

Tyger, tyger
Burning bright
Sorry about the napalm

I think that I shall never see
Charlie shot my eyes out

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow
Don’t be alarmed now
Arty'll flatten the fucker

Oh rose, thou art sick
It's probably the Agent Orange

Our Upbringing

Was, umm... unusual.  We had the only Mom on our block who served chicken jello.  With actual chicken pieces suspended in it.  Dad was crazy.  He might finish breakfast of a Saturday, slap the table with the palm of a hand, and say, "Time to lick the dog." We must have had 10 dogs run away.  The thing Dad liked doing most was burning trash in the barrel by the garage.  Once he got a good blaze going he had to keep feeding it, and just about anything became fuel in his eyes.  We'd pick up our baseball mitts and Mom would shriek "Don't go out there!"   Another thing he liked to do was work on the car until there was nothing left of it.  He had one tool,  a ball-peen hammer, and he simply loved swinging it.  The tires presented a special challenge. Mom smoked but was trying to cut down so she'd light one, take maybe five puffs, then give it to our six-year-old brother and say, "Here, you finish it."  We were the only family we knew who took family vacations to the LaBrea Tar Pits where our parents would send one or the other of us kids out onto the tar holding a big rock.  Our oldest brother took after Pop.  He fashioned himself a mechanical savant because one day it came to him to take the screens off all the fans.  Our youngest brother read about the Franklin Expedition and was never the same.  He walked around in all weather in winter clothing muttering deliriously "Blubber, oh for a delicious meal of blubber!"  We stood outside of a summer night, barefoot in the grass, with the stars spread out above us and oh the wonder of it! Then dad set the lawn on fire.

When in Jonestown...

The song title of the new Millennium hereby goes to the Brian Jonestown Massacre for Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mills' Wooden Peg.

Hark, a Tree!

Let us hug you, leafy wooden hindrance!  Keats called you a "shady boon for simple sheep"  but we once knew a sheep who was anything but simple, and in fact ended up pressing the sexual harassment  charges that ended our shepherding career!  Oh tree, is that a nest of robins in your hair?  Or the fur of an exploded grizzly bear?  Bower dweller, thy leaves harken spring, your roots run deep, your branches fall down and kill innocent people seeking refuge during thunderstorms!  Oh lucky tree, thou doest not have to wear underpants!  There you are out our window, waving your arms like a receiver who wants the football.  Do you want the football, tree?  When we were a child we shot the birds out of you, and their feathers sang.  But now we are a man, and we're warming up the chainsaw.  Tree, protect us from the sun!  Don't ask questions, fucker! Just do it!

 

Today in Music History!

On this day in 1965 Gerry and the Pacemakers began a U.S. tour at Brooklyn's Fox Theater.  On a lesser note, Duke Ellington was born in 1899.

With Gerry on top

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident

1. Patriotism is an affliction much like mental retardation.  Its sufferers frequently wear American flag lapel pins to alert emergency medical personnel in the event of salute.

2. Belief in the ability of the political process to address any real problem whatsoever is a sign of incurable derangement.

3. To engage in any capacity with said political process is to spit in the face of the only freedom we have, i.e., to be futile without compromise.

4.  To say that revolution doesn't work is not to dismiss revolution.  Occasionally the right people lose their heads.  Still, it should be consigned to its rightful place in the armamentarium of broken promises. 

5.  The only valid political act is suicide, the only true ballot box the coffin.

Towards the end of his life

Mr. Ed stopped talking.  No one knew why.  Shortly thereafter he ran off, just as the dying Tolstoy ran off  in 1910 to get away from his wife and his disciples and his bloodless philosophy.   

Except that unlike Tolstoy, Mr. Ed made it.  Disappeared into Mexico like Ambrose Bierce, like the horse in that song about the horse with no name, like a wild ghost.  Maybe he's Emiliano Zapata's horse now.  Or better yet the horse of Pancho Villa, whose last words were "Don't let it end like this.  Tell them I said something."

That's the difference between a man and a horse.  The horse would sooner go down in silence, declining to deface the sacred with mere words.

Before his vow of silence

We Have Abandoned Futilism

In favor of the austere philosophy of Antigoogooism.  We don't know what the antigoogooists stand for, but you have to like a philosophy that comes with its own brass band.