23 Skid-OW! or, Dr. Pangloss meets the Pavement

About six months ago, I sold my car and bought a scooter. This, I thought, as an urban dweller with a five minute commute, was merely the logical thing to do in times of four dollar gas and global climate collapse. We still had a car (my wife's Prius) for such things as schlepping desks across town, fetching Christmas trees and stocking the Blakemore Institute with comestibles and liquescences. Now, many of you have seen what passes for a scooter these days: chiselled wads of Chinese plastic and tin foil meant to summon visions of Luke's Speeder rather than Quadrophenia. Me, I love the old Lambrettas: time capsules of classic 1960's Italian design, made to tool around town with a plait-wrapped bottle of Chianti whilst the raven-haired, pneumatic sirens simply melt at your pointy-toed feet. Sadly, Lambretta has joined the Avanti and the Cord in the graveyard of beautiful ideas, but the Vespa, always more conventional and less dorky-gorgeous, still aspirates, still draws stares... and gasps from anyone perusing its price sticker. Me, I teach. School. In Los Angeles. So a seven-thousand dollar scooter was about as likely in my driveway as a Tiffany's diamond on my wife's finger.
I fancy myself very clever. And knowledgable of the ways of the 'net. So when the dream of a new Vespa went south, I parked my ass at Google and reckoned up my few alternatives. There were the Japanese faux Vespas, the so-called "retro" Vinos and their ilk. There were a few macho-looking German scoots with names like automatic weapons, all of which severely underpowered by crippling 50cc engines. There were the breathtaking restored Vespas and Lambrettas advertised on eBay for sale from Vietnam, whose new parts were pressed from recycled aluminum cans (an environmentally-sound decision that unfortunately resulted in bikes which crumpled when pushed against a drunken frat-boy's forehead). And then there was the Bajaj.

Ahh, the Bajaj. Built in the subcontinent at what was once the Vespa India factory, using mostly Italian design but modern 4-stroke engines, gearing and brakes, this lovely little throw-back seemed to my jaded eyes the best of all possible worlds: new yet old, stylish yet reliable, economical (90 mpg, according to the screaming web-page) yet powerful (55-60 mph, baby!). This would be my bike. At 3800 measly schekels, how could I lose? And then, as if God were shouting "BUY!! BUY!!" in my ear like some commodities trader, while surfing through Craigslist for solid gold noseclippers I stumbled across a jade 2006 Chetak, 94 strapping miles on the odometer, whose owner was willing to part with it for only 2500 beans. What could I do?
Well, running the opposite direction might have been a good start.

Once there was a way to get back homewards...

So it's been a while since I last blogged. Much has been happening. I discovered gingko biloba, which helps some in the recovery of my lost intellect. I've finished one term and am preparing to begin another. I've begun to question some positions I'd taken on unexplained phenomena (such as belief in God, the reality of UFO's, the existence of ghosts). I'm about to commence an Introductory Screenwriting class (though I've written five complete scripts, I feel I need a better grasp of current narrative theory to move to the next level -- plus, I need the catalyst of a deadline to stir me off my fat ass). But first and foremost, I've discovered iLike.







What is iLike? Well, it's in beta right now, so it will probably be quite different once you start hearing much about it. As it stands, it's a little app that piggy-backs on iTunes to send a record of what music you're playing at any given time to a central server. The server retains a list of the last hundred or so songs in a "Recently Played" RSS feed which is available for any iLike member to view. It also compiles a list of "Favorite songs" spuriously based on iTunes' "play counts." I spent hours trying to fix the pentimento of a loop I used for a class recently which, in iLike, informed the world that my favorite audio was Bigfoot screams.

But what I find indispensibly addictive about iLike is its notion of "Friends." To create an iLike account, you first go through a long selection process wherein you choose bands "I Like." It can take a while, and many of the more obscure groups I happen to favor never appear. In this case, you can simply enter the name in a search window. If anyone else has ever expressed an affection for them in the past, a page will appear listing their albums, top songs and admirers; if not, you get to pop their cherry). Once you've created an account, you begin playing your music and fishing through the multitude of other users for Friends: people with similar or complementary tastes, based on their own recorded preferences. If someone likes Movietone (which thins the herd dramatically, let me tell you) they will show up as "Highly Compatible" to yours truly. If they prefer Akon, 50 Cent and Shakira, the app will gently steer me elsewhere ("Compatibility: LOW").

If this was all iLike did, we'd be looking at a rather grandiose Mutual Admiration Society. But remember that you can see what your Friends are playing -- this appears in what's called the iLike "sidebar" which attaches itself like a barnacle to the right side of your main iTunes window. And the website includes a rather rudimentary Chat function which allows users to send instant messages and emails to their Friends (or, indeed, to any other user, friend or foe). So, when my friend Annie recently decided to bail on her eMusic membership and donated her remaining 80 downloads to me, I solicited suggestions from most of the 26 members of my Friends List. What a treasure trove of arcana I received! Amazing suggestions for bands new, old, famous and obscure. I managed to run through my 80 selections in less than a day and was tempted to re-up my old subscription, just to complete my fishing junket.

Some of these folks must have the most incredible record collections: JenaSuperMoxie!, a retired drummer from Seattle, has not repeated a song (at least while I was online) in two weeks, and of all her stuff the only name familiar to me was "Bowie, David." I've been watching what she listens to, sampling it (iLike has ten- to twenty-second samples of most widely-available music) then buying the stuff I could actually discover at any of my multifarious online resources. Zak Shooster and I have discovered a mutual idolatry for Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. Kazuya T., a Kyoto DJ, mixes Todd Rundgren and Sergio Mendes with the Reindeer Section, I'm From Barcelona and Ninja High School. It can get a little daunting, trying to keep up. But if you like to stay abreast of the latest scene, iLike is the place to hang out.

So why is this guy, about to enter his second half-century, so involved in the fringes of popular musical culture? For the same reason I ride a scooter (oh yeah, i forgot to mention that - for some later post, perhaps). I guess I haven't yet given up on that idea which possessed and chagrined me from my earliest youth. One summer evening in the late sixties, I lay on the front lawn of our house in Riverside, Connecticut and gazed up into the starflecked sky. Then I started to cry. In part, it was out of fear: there were so many stars out there I felt impossibly small in my particularity. But also because I realized that I would never know everything -- and I wanted to. Something in me, in this rational adult being, still longs to know everything there is to know: every band, every singer, every new genre. It's not a dangerous curiosity, at least I don't think it is. And given the sullen, self-pitying tone of my previous posts, maybe it's a very healthy one. So thanks, JenaSuperMoxie! and Kazuya and Zak and Fish and Bugg and anjuli and Burko and SARAH i and snob and one thousand one and Manda and allie and Whirly Wombat and ki and Jessi of Asher, are you drawing pretty things and Nikka and TMB and Clara and Substandard Vixen and Ambure and sonic meow and Sue Merchant and la-underground and Oenodog and Tracy and Thomas S. You've made my world bigger... and smaller.

With love,

Servant Severin

Erato or Thalia?

What follows is a poem I wrote a few years back, as Sariah and I were just getting to know one another. She was my inspiration then, my muse as I called her (she still is, BTW). I kinda like it. It goes so:

Ham

My name is shorter than yours
like one loose straw poking from the brim
of Uncle Henry’s fishing hat. A surprise
if you taste it: still sweet-green
after years of yellow from the sun
on Uncle Henry’s fishing hat. Listen

to the voices from the street. The girl’s
thin shriek pickled in peach brandy;
the piping bark of the dog, salty as ham,
like swearing; a very little laugh
not meant to travel. She is out without a hat

beneath a sky just waiting for morning. Why argue
if we have no answers, if the questions
won’t bring fine weather? Why ask
without a hope? Why look at me that way

through those glasses
cocked like Sinatra ordering a sandwich
at three a.m. That bird sees you.
The braying girl made happy
by the smell of new asphalt loves you too.
Have mercy. The sun may rise
as expected. For now, let’s watch the surfers
pack their cars, dreaming of sand
between half-open eyes. If you spread
your hands to me
I may crawl in.

Explosive Logorrhea

Greetings, all. I decided to start a separate blog from the family one because I wanted control over its look, and my wife ruled the Institute. So here I am. Starving.

That's right, starving. Two days ago, we started the so-called "lemonade diet" or Master Cleanse, because I stepped on a scale last week and lapsed into a coma. Lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper and spring water for two weeks... and nothing else. After two days with no actual solid food, even the dog chow smells good. But it feels like it's working. That is, we're both starving most of the time, but we're not eating. And anyone who read my other blog will know that I was worried about my slipping mind. Well, it feels sharper already, along with my temper, probably because I haven't eaten for two days. Go figure.

It's not really so hard to do. But as we both have noticed, so much of our everyday life is taken up in planning, executing and consuming meals that we have these gaping holes in our days. I never know what to do about now -- suppertime -- and Sariah's at the same loss. No breakfast. No lunch break. No family hour over dinner. The world feels thin, "like too little butter spread over too much bread" to paraphrase, I believe, Samwise Gamgee. And I seem to miss meals, even though I'm not actually hungry. It's a little like how I imagine amputees feel when they talk about pain from a lost limb...only hardly so severe, of course. (beg pardon to any amputees reading this)

I won't talk about what happens to one's innards in this process, but you may fill in the blanks with some success if I mention that, before bed each night, one drinks or eats a healthy dose of herbal laxative, then in the morning, upon rising, guzzles a quart (yes, you read that right: a quart) of salt water. Then of course you dash to the water-cabinet and hunker down for the duration (an hour or so is recommended). We have laid in a supply of Charmin BIG rolls for our little adventure, and today I purchased some limes to alternate with the lemons and give a a whisper of variety. But let me tell you how lemonade, usually one of my favorite liquefactions, is ruined by the addition of cayenne. Initially, Sariah said it reminded her of a treat she used to get in Mexico when she was a child: jicama coated with lime juice and chili powder. Now she simply makes a face every time she takes a sip. A student in a childrens' lit class I used to teach once brought in a sampling of Mexican postres which included mango coated with chili. Even she could not explain its odd allure. My individually wrapped serving wound up in the bottom of the wastebasket, right beside the half-masticated morsel which had insulted my tastebuds. And now I have to drink the same thing between 6 and 12 times a day, for at least 10 days. If we make it, we'll have earned our merit badges.

To distract us from our misery, we attended the Magritte show at LACMA today. It will take me till tomorrow to process the brilliance, but more on that then.

Pray for me, friends.