Andy Seven's Blog, page 7

Differentials

The delivery to The Montclair Group was going to be later than expected due to the delay caused by the multiple car accident on the freeway. Once I reached Laguna Beach I turned off at the nearest supermarket to do some major evacuation.

I’d been driving for four hours straight without using a restroom and my body was cramping badly. I needed to find a good restroom, and there are a few that are best for a driver to use. Department stores are too fussy and finding their restrooms can be a little too labyrinth-like to reach. Supermarkets are pretty good because they don’t place demands that you buy something in order to use their facilities.

The best are probably shopping malls because the bathrooms are large and plentiful, and always situated by the food court. The only minus are their gigantic parking structures, which sometimes demand you pay a small fee to park.

Some restrooms have keypads you need to punch a code in, but this time I got lucky. This was a multi-use walk-in restroom, so I walked right in and got to business. There were three stalls in the bathroom and the only open one was in the center.

The stall to the right of me was a little boy being instructed by his father how to use the toilet. They spoke very loudly.
“I don’t have to go anymore”.
“Are you sure? You said you really had to go”.
“I just had to peepee a little bit, but now I don’t need to”.
“Are you absolutely sure? We have to get back in the car pretty soon and then you’ll have to wait for awhile. Well, okay, pull up your pants”.
“Wait a minute! Now I have to go”.

In the stall on my left was a guy playing music videos on his cell phone and probably having a wank watching them. It didn’t sound like he was taking care of business in there.

I washed my hands, staring down at them as I lathered them up, refusing to look up in the mirror. I washed them very thoroughly and then, keeping my head down turned to grab a few paper towels. I wiped them very slowly and then finally gave in, looking up in the mirror at my face.

I looked younger than my years would admit, an almost childlike face in spite of the fact that I’d been through quite a lot in the past few decades. My hair was still in full growth, no baldness there and my eyes still looked bizarrely innocent, bizarre because they’d seen too much, but still full and colorful like it hadn’t seen enough springs and summers yet. There was a defiant, pouty little boy mouth, with the disturbing appearance of one who still expected a better tomorrow even though their world was falling apart in front of them. My body was still fit and trim because lunch breaks consisted of bottled water and tiny supermarket baguettes.

I finished up and walked over to the sink and saw a bum at the next sink giving himself an impromptu bath. He had his shirt off and took heaps of hand soap, lathering his arm pits with the stuff and washing it off with the endlessly running sink. He had a sunburnt face and neck while the rest of his body was lily white. Thankfully he kept his baggy pants on.

“Sup?” he asked while giving me a conspiratorial nod. I just smiled. He was definitely humming.

Once I was done freshening up I bought a bottle of water and a pack of chewing gum and proceeded to my delivery.

Two hours later I was back in Beverly Hills. My next pickup was at Roku Bank on Wilshire Boulevard. I picked up a packet of money, about $10,000 in cash, and assigned to deliver it to a Mr. Walter Webster in Malibu.

Of course, I had to show ID and sign a few papers before I was off and on my way to Pacific Coast Highway. Mister Webster was so far down Pacific Coast Highway that he went beyond Zuma Beach and was on the border to Ventura County.

Pacific Coast Highway was the main road running through Santa Monica Beach and Malibu. It ran even further than that, but for our purposes we were just going to go as far as the outer reaches of Malibu.

You coast down a busy road that opens up to the beach on one side and a sea wall on the other. Going south I had the beach with its pounding waves to my left and the high-cliffed sea wall to my right.

Although PCH was always busy with traffic everybody always left enough room so you never felt like anybody crowded you. You felt free even in busy traffic. It was funny like that.

After half an hour the GPS advised me to turn off a tiny rustic road that planed higher and higher up the hill to Mr. Webster’s home.
“You have arrived at your destination”, she chirped. “Your route guidance is now finished”.

I got out of the car with my sign-off sheet and the packet of cash. I opened a polished steel gate and walked through a faux Spanish villa front yard. I rang the bell and waited for my delivery.

A big, sandy-haired man in his fifties opened the door with a sandwich in his left hand, chomping away. He wore a stained polo shirt and tan Bermuda shorts with fat white sneakers that looked like baby shoes.
“Um, yeah?”
“Hi, Style Runners”, I smiled. “Your funds are here”.
“Oh, yeah”, he grunted, munching away on his ham and wheat.
“Please sign here”.
“Oh, um, huh!” he puffed away, signing with something that didn’t even look like a legitimate signature. He just wanted his dough and for me to fuck off.

I got my signature and left as he slammed his door, back to his sandwich and money. He certainly didn’t look like a rich man, bit he had the house and it was none of my business.

“Okay, 757, come back to the Westside”, my dispatcher said after I reported the delivery made. I drove by more vistas of crystal blue skies, crashing waves against perfectly sculpted rocks and pretty girls peeling out of west suits in their bikinis. People were having fun but I had money to make.

“757, head over to Barney’s New York on Wilshire”, the dispatcher called.
“10-4”.
I headed east on Santa Monica Boulevard until the two right lanes were blocked off for construction.
“ROAD WORK AHEAD”, a sign flashed.

Traffic slowed down and people tried cutting each other off to get ahead of each other. Horns blared angrily and road construction workers nonchalantly walked in front of oncoming traffic just to shorten everyone’s temper even more.

I decided to cut down Olympic Boulevard to avoid the jam but it was even worse down there. There was road work also on Olympic Boulevard (repaved road), finally reaching a full-stop where everyone had to detour further south to Pico Boulevard. I was now miles off-course because of my poor decision making.

I sat in traffic with the rest of everyone else, my mind drifting towards things in general. I began thinking about Karol and the changes in our relationship before things went bad. She started taking herself seriously, too seriously.

I once went shopping with her one afternoon in the Wilshire District. Karol took great pride in everyone in the store calling her on a first name basis; it was a frighteningly big deal to her. Bored with her making a big show of how popular she was in the store, I walked out to the sidewalk to check on my car.
A car loaded with black teenagers drove slowly by me.
'YO, OZZY OSWALD!" "SUP, OZZY OSWALD?" They yelled at me from the car, laughing. I laughed right back.
Now there's a great hip-hop name, Ozzy Oswald. Make me a cross between Ozzy Osbourne, revered metal singer of Black Sabbath with Lee Harvey Oswald, notorious killer of the great President John F. Kennedy. Those kids had spunk. Those kids had genius.

I stood around five minutes more and then a car of white teenage girls pulled up asking me all kinds of questions. Talking to teenage girls is a lot like being abducted by aliens: once it's over you have no recollection of what just happened. I think they were asking me about my 7-star tattoo sleeve, but then again I might have imagined that as the topic.

Karol came out of the store and asked me where I went.
"Oh, a couple of cars full of kids pulled up to talk to me".
"TALK TO YOU? WHY WOULD ANYBODY WANT TO TALK TO YOU? YOU'RE NOT FAMOUS!"
"I used to be famous".
'NO, I'M FAMOUS!!! I HAVE OVER 700 FOLLOWERS ON FACEBOOK!"
I smiled and said, "But this isn't Facebook, this is real life".

Well, it didn’t seem like much but it was fairly symptomatic of her rampant egomania getting out of control, with my head on the chopping block because she had to be the alpha queen of it all. Shucks. I just couldn’t comply with her megalomania.

I continued to meditate on that in a daze, until the spell was broken by an angry car horn growling behind me. I jumped a little bit and pumped the accelerator. I moved up in line and after snaking through many detours and cut-off lanes finally snaked behind Wilshire Boulevard to Barney’s.

I grabbed the Dolce & Gabbana and avoided all the detours to make the delivery to Century City. Century City earned its name from being a former backlot of 20th Century Fox, who had to sell off some of their land to developers to keep their studio from going under.

Since all this deal making was done in the late Sixties during the height of the Space Race many streets were named after celestial bodies, like Galaxy Way, Constellation Boulevard and the like. Bored from the constant task of driving all day, I started singing a song in praise of all the streets of Century City.

There was no intelligible melody in all this, but I began crooning, “Century Park East… Avenue of the Stars…Solar Way…Constellation Boulevard…Galaxy Way…Century Park West…Avenue of The Stah-hah-hars….”

I just went on and on, singing these silly street names to myself over and over again until they actually sounded like something musical.

“Solar Way…Con-stell-ay-shun Boo-leh-vard…”, I crooned like a fool. Was the loneliness overtaking me? I wondered.

GLEEPGLEEP!
“757, what is your ETA?”
“Twenty minutes”, I responded. I always said twenty minutes no matter how far I was from my destination. It was the safest answer.
“10-4”.

The roads looked grayer and my vision felt blurrier but I kept my mind occupied with my stupid song.

“Century Park East… Avenue of the Stars…Solar Way…Constellation Boulevard…Galaxy Way…Century Park West…Avenue of The Stah-hah-hars….”

I drove slower and let everyone pass me, the transit buses, endless growling motorcycles, the taxicabs, the tourist buses, aggressively macho convertibles, even the bicyclists. It was their road and I didn’t feel like fighting over it. I didn’t care. With a song in my heart, I sang…
“Century Park East… Avenue of the Stars…Solar Way…Constellation Boulevard…Galaxy Way…Century Park West…Avenue of The Stah-hah-hars….”

I pulled up to the townhouse, which had its own private yard. I walked through the wooden gate, and in the yard was a gray pot-bellied pig, rooting around the lawn. I was taken aback because I was used to dogs, cats and birds, but not a large pig hobbling around the front lawn. It grunted at me a few times.

The lawn was surprisingly clean and I didn’t smell any scat, so this was a well-kept city pig. It just kept grunting over and over like a sick ARP synthesizer.

I walked around the pig and knocked on the delivery’s door. A pretty young girl answered.

“Hi, Style Runners. Your Dolce’s here. Please sign here”, I handed her my pen and clipboard. She noticed my unease.
“Don’t let my pig bother you”, the woman smiled. “She attaches herself to everybody”.
“Oh, I get that sometimes. She doesn’t bite, does she?”

“Oh, no”, the woman laughed as I handed her the garment bag. “You won’t have anything to worry about. Thank you!”
She closed the door and I turned to leave, but….

The pig positioned herself right in front of me and refused to budge. I tried to walk around her and she moved towards me. Her head half lowered to the ground and half looking at me from below, She was a strange one.
“Come on, kid. I got to go”.

The pig wouldn’t move over, so I started charging at her. Instead of attacking back she started squealing and squealing to beat the band.
“Shut up, you dumb bitch. I’ve got to go”. I shoved her gray ass over with my foot with her still squealing her head off.

I got back in my car and forgot the words to my stupid song. That fucking pig ruined my space age mantra.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying (And Love Industrial Dance)

Sometimes when you're sad you drown out your problems in booze, sometimes in food, drugs, sex, and sometime you drown out your problems in music. Getting over my broken marriage, I gorged on listening and watching music videos on You Tube. On that particular evening I chose a bunch of electro swing videos, not just the music but watching some insane guys dancing to these tunes.

My favorite dancer was a guy from Canada called Take Some Crime, whose dancing to swing was part jazz dancing, part hip hop, some amazing mime as well as many new things he probably invented himself. There was another wild dancer called The Boogie Man (channel - Sly Mogul) who was also a lot of fun to watch.

Watching these guys dancing and feeling free with their bodies brought an indescribable happiness that's hard to describe, but bargain, the code word was FREEDOM. They looked so free in their movements and unhampered by whatever shit was floating through their lives. Their terpsichorean hijinx felt positively liberating. I instantly responded to them.

So while I'm window shopping all these dance marvels on video, You Tube in their obtrusive matchmaking style ("Other videos you might enjoy") offered several thumbnails of beautiful girls in fake multicolored dreads and leather face masks dancing. I couldn't resist.

What I saw were videos of industrial dance from every part of the world, from Argentina, Germany, Spain, Poland, and even Egypt. Every girl had her own style while still falling under the general template of industrial dance. The number of girls outnumbered the guys, whom I didn't think danced as well as the girls.

At any rate, most of the dancers dressed in cybergoth finery, some of which consisted of the aforementioned dreads, face masks, large creeper boots and tons of punk bracelets. There was even an instructional video on how to dance ion the style but a woman named Brioni Faith, who explains some of the moves in such a way that even movement falls in for a reason.

My two favorite dancers were Sayomi from Poland and Wendy Ailan from Argentina. The other ones are great, too, but these two have the most dynamic dance videos of the bunch. Sayomi seems to have a preference for shooting her videos at Comic Cons and cosplay fests. There's also a video at a shopping center and one at an aquarium. A real exhibitionist.

Wendy Ailan's videos largely take place in stark urban landscapes which give her videos a gritty, urban feel I like a lot. There's also a group of dancers called Das Klub who are fun to watch, too. What a great antidote to all those vile Dancing With The Stars shows crapping up television.

After watching these great dancers at work something very funny came over me. I WANTED TO DANCE, TOO. I began attending very dark goth dances (the darker the better) and began moving much like my new video heroines. I had nothing to be afraid of because every dancer was in their own world and didn't seem to care about what I was doing. That was great.

With every dance I got bolder and stronger in my dancing and even tried all kinds of new moves. I had several moves I used when I swam and incorporated them into my dance regimen, which blended beautifully. I even began buying leather face masks (I draw the line at those neon dreads, though. Not my style.). At this point in time I can go into any club and now dance without feeling nervous, which brings me to my next topic.

THINGS THAT BOTHER ME ON DANCE FLOORS

1. Some guys are really self-conscious about dancing, so they dance comically like the whole thing's a joke. It's not. Stay off the floor if you're too uptight to take dancing seriously. Don't make fun of the rest of us. Thanks.

2. People standing in the middle of the dance floor having conversations. Um, unless you're in a Rob Lowe movie like Less than Zero go have your conversation with your pals OFF the dance floor, okay? The rest of us are trying to dance.

3. Guys edging their way into me because I'm dancing too close to their girl friends. They throw their backs right into your face forming a wall between your and their girlfriend. Look, I'm not even paying attention to your girl friend, okay? Nobody's fucking anybody, it's only dance. Jealous fucking boyfriends. Sheesh.

4. I've also been to clubs where the club staff have made a point of walking through the dance floor - disruptive much? - when there's more than ample room for them to walk around it. There's also the club where the security guys have to keep shoving their way through the dance floor when there's nothing wrong going on. How very high school.

In spite of all this rebop I've felt a new personal freedom in dance that I've never experienced before. I've been dancing to darkwave, witch house, EDM, goth, dubstep, industrial and everything else. It may not sound like much, but I've discovered a state of exhilaration and renewal I never thought I'd reach, and I owe to the ladies in dreads and face masks.

May-December Continuum

One summer night I was driving home in my car, not paying much attention to the other cars driving by me. In the lane next to me was a car of about four teenage girls, listening to music and having fun. The car started driving side by side with me, not slowing down or speeding up from me.

When we stopped by the light one of the girls leaned out of her window.
"HEY!" she smiled. "What's up! D'you wanna hang out?"
I just smiled back. If she knew how old I was she wouldn't have started up, or would she?
"Hey! C'MON!" she laughed. She was probably drunk or something, but when they realized I wasn't interested, they pulled away and drove off.

This made me think of when I was younger and it wasn't unusual to see a 16-year old girl date a 22-year old guy. It was a generally accepted thing in my high school; it didn't seem like a big deal.

Around the time this carload of cooze happened I read Pamela Des Barres' memoir I'm With The Band, where she writes page after page of dating older rock stars even though she was hovering 16 to 18 years of age. Her friends in The GTOs shared similar relationships, and Frank Zappa even responded with songs like Motherly Love ("...you know it doesn't bother me at all that you're only 18 years old..").

While the male is always characterized as being a lech it's always been a fact that many younger girls are attracted to older guys, sometimes much older guys. At what point did this become viewed as some sort of dirty, sinister thing?

Altogether now...THE INTERNET. That's right, ever since social networking as dictated to one and all what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, we now have to listen to bluenoses proclaim any man dating a young lady as filthy and that immortal Internet word, CREEPY. The Internet loves that word, that and "disturbing".

Listen, if a teenage girl wants to date a rich, old crone I couldn't care less. She's getting what she wants and you know he's getting what he wants and who the fuck is anybody to judge either of them? By the way, if an older woman with stacks of cash wanted to cruise me I'd definitely let her dock in my harbor. Why not?

I fucking hate the Internet. I now have to read how Kim Fowley, a great artist, is a "rapist" (nobody said shit when he was alive...interesting), Woody Allen, another devil, etc. Every man, thanks to the Internet is now a pervert. It's boring and I don't care.

It doesn't matter that Charlie Chaplin, Steve Cochran, and countless other stars married or dating far below their age group and their women didn't give a damn, either. When do you think this whole shame circus started? You guessed it, social networking.

Look, I'm not going to hang around some high school tomorrow looking for ladies to hustle, but I'm not going to flip out over their lack of maturity. And see the average American nightclub keep an underage girl from getting in...please, everything's permitted and it's a consensual thing. Just stay off Twitter and Facebook or they'll stone you like an Islamic tribunal.

Sounds Like The Turtles

In the world of Sixties pop music there have been a small handful of bands that have stood the test of time and trends, endearing themselves to people of all musical tastes, and one of those bands is undoubtedly The Turtles.

Originally a surf band called The Crossfires, they got smitten by The Byrds protest folk-rock bug and inadvertently created a bizarre hybrid of surf-folk. The band played protest songs like Let Me Be and It Ain't Me Babe with a surf-rock style that made the band stand out in a big way. It also didn't hurt that cheery Mark Volman always played a whimsical foil to Howard Kaylan's dramatic vocals. The band was a lot of fun no matter what the message was.

During their four-plus years in the Top 40 The Turtles had a long streak of hits which lasted longer then many of their contemporaries like The Monkees or Paul Revere & The Raiders. Why? Maybe it's because they didn't have a gimmick, just a very straightforward approach to producing sunny yet provocative pop records.

By 1970, The Turtles called it quits in spite of their unbroken string of hits because of signing with too many managers and getting wrangled up in an endless stream of binding contracts. There were also complaints of royalties not reaching the right people.

Three members of The Turtles – Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan and Jim Pons joined Frank Zappa & The Mothers and recorded five great albums together, some of Zappa’s best work: Chunga’s Revenge, Fillmore East June 1971, Just Another Band From LA (I attended that show!), the motion picture soundtrack to 200 Motels, and the released-much-later Playground Psychotics.

Although the music produced was terrific it was probably the worst season in The Mothers’ careers, as it was fraught with horrific episodes like a hotel fire in Montreaux, Switzerland (immortalized in Deep Purple’s Smoke On The Water) and an attempted assassination of Zappa on stage at The Rainbow Theater in London, England, relegating Zappa to a wheelchair for the next 12 months.

During their tenure in The Mothers Mark and Howard recorded under the names The Phluorescent Leech and Eddie, which they used to call their new band, including Pons (drummer Johnny Barbata joined Jefferson Starship). They recorded about four albums, two for Warner Bros. and two for Columbia. The Turtles sound lives on in occasional reunion tours and the band has never lost their sense of humor in spite of a career loaded with speed bumps and brick walls.

If you're a success in music you're going to inspire a spate of imitators who are either influenced by your sound or simply want to cash in on your magic. Whatever their motives may be, this blog tracks down three records heavily influenced by The Turtles sound, largely written by the team of Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon:

Life Is Short - Billy Nicholls

Billy Nicholls was a friend of The Small Faces, and that was connection was put to good use with Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott playing and producing his album, Would You Believe? Would You Believe is an interesting album in that it's more Sunshine Pop than Freakbeat. Sunshine Pop didn't really hit England as much as Freakbeat did, so Nicholls' album is very different than the usual album coming out of the UK. Several of the tracks have a strong Turtles influence in them, especially Daytime Girl and this one, Life Is Short.

Reason To Believe - Skip Bifferty

Nobody sang a more heartfelt ballad than Howard Kaylan and you can definitely hear echoes of that in Skip Biffferty's great moody, romantic sing, Reason To Believe. Brief but touching!

You're Gonna Hurt Yourself - The Bystanders

You're Gonna Hurt Yourself was originally recorded by The Four Seasons but this version has more bounce. The harmonies recall classic Mark and Howard, too. Again, a good English tribute to the boys from Westchester, who obviously made a strong impact on the UK, especially with Marc Bolan, who used Volman and Kaylan as his backup singers on countless classic T. Rex hit singles, as well as on the Electric Warrior and Slider albums. Perhaps they were good luck charms for him, bringing him luck at every turn.

The Little Hand Man

THE LITTLE HAND MAN

The Little Hand Man
swings a golf club too big for his tiny little hands
He stands on a scorched, blackened golf course
THE BALL IS ON THE TEE

SWING! He misses the ball
SWING!!! He misses the ball again
Little beads of sweat line the top of his blanched pink lips

The hair on the back of his head
flies to the front, makes a shape like an old Injun's canoe
His sturdy frame twists like a rusty turnstile

SWING! He misses the ball
SWING!!! He hits the ball...finally
The Little Hand Man curses
As the blanched pink men clap their little, pink, wrinkled hands

Gridlock

Tourists, tourists, tourists. I'm making a drop-off up in the Hollywood Hills and I'm really flustered getting the gown out of my car and all, my ass is hanging out of my pants and my clipboard is falling down, and I turn around and there's this TMZ tour bus with these apple knockers with their fucking cameras and mobile phones taking pics of me pulling out a gown with my dick falling out my pants and I got THIS close to screaming, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?"

But I didn’t.

I threw my back out towards the rubberneckers and kept it there until the tour bus finally trotted off, disappointed that I wasn’t about to march over to some celebrity’s doorstep with their clothes.

Truth be told, the delivery wasn’t even famous. Just a barely known film producer’s wife getting her gown for the night’s festivities. People make a big fuss about nothing, even my pants sliding down my hips. Tourists are funny; so many of them behave like boobs who paid their money see a freak show at the carnival.

Sometimes I feel bad about my job and how it looks to “normal” people, and other times I tell myself “this is where I belong” and believe it. I’ve been holding down this gig for about a year and a half already but it felt much, much longer than that.

It wasn’t hard work, it was pretty easy, but it was very exhausting running around and picking things up and then sitting in traffic all day getting to the delivery and dropping it off, repeating the cycle for ten hours straight without breaks. The repetition of it all is what killed you.

When I think back on my first day on the job it all seems pretty ironic. I was heartbroken at the prospect of finally succumbing to become a delivery person. I always thought it was the last resort for dysfunctional idiots who couldn’t do anything else. I was totally broke, flat busted. I didn’t have enough money to buy a loaf of bread and Karol was getting tired of it. She still lived with me.

Whoever tells you money can’t buy you love doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The money was gone and so was her love for me. Every day she yelled at me more and more. Sick and tired of being broke, I finally caved in and answered an ad for a delivery company. I sank to the bottom of the labor food chain. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die.

Karol didn’t really appreciate my effort taken in relieving my sad financial state. She simply told her friends, “My boyfriend’s a delivery boy”.

Without looking like I was moping too hard I went to the office of Style Runners and filled out all the paperwork. I showed my driver’s license, proof of auto insurance and my DMV driving record of the past five years, all necessary to qualify for the job. After doing so I was told to sit and wait.

I sat there in the waiting room feeling like a total loser, hating my miserable life and the shitty hand Fate had dealt me. My eyes burning a hole down at the carpet feeling shame, it was interrupted by the manager walking up to me with a very large black man in a Style Runners uniform.

“Okay, Tracy, everything seems to be in order. This is Cabernet, one of our best drivers. He’s going to show you the ropes and give you orientation of what we do here. So, off you go and good luck!”

Cabernet shook my hand as I got up. “How you doin’, man?”
“Fine”, I lied.
“You ever driven before?”
“Yeah, I did some drug store deliveries years ago. I kind of have an idea of what I need to do”.
“Good, this shouldn’t take too long, then. Let’s bounce”.

We got in a small car and he immediately radioed in. “Driver 124, standing by in West Los Angeles”, he turned to me and said, “That’s how you tell the dispatchers you’re sitting around waiting for something to do. You never say ‘give me stuff to pick up’, you say ‘Standing by and you give them your location’”.

The dispatcher radioed back in three minutes and he quietly wrote down several locations for pickups. He put the car in gear and began driving west. I thought we were headed to a dumpy area and pick up a bunch of crummy Italian food.

He made a few turns while interjecting a few boring pleasantries.
“Got any kids? Got a girl? My Lakers are letting me down…”

The scenery changed and it changed radically. We moved into Beverly Hills and went up Rodeo Drive. What gives? I thought. Is this a joke?

“Okay, first we’re going to Burberry and then we’re heading over to Cartier to pick up a delivery”. My face lit up and forgot about my self-pity.
He pulled into the Rodeo Drive alley and swung the car into the Burberry parking lot.

We walked down a clean, well-lit staircase to the basement where an attendant stood by a bank of closed circuit cameras and a few rails of garment bags all bearing the Burberry symbol.
“Cabernet!”
“Marcel, picking up a bag and training this new guy here”. Marcel appraised me as if I were some new species let loose upon the world.
“Ah, good luck, my friend”.
“Grab the bag, dude”, Cabernet instructed. I picked it up aggressively.

We got back in the car and Cabernet told me, “Okay, now record the time you picked up the bag on your trip sheet. That’s it, now let’s head over to Cartier”.
We went over to Cartier, where we had to show ID and sign a few papers. Security was pretty tight there and after a few more hoops jumped through we were finally given the bag with the jewels.

“We’ll have to drop off the jewels first”, Cabernet said once we got back to the car.
“Get your belt on, here we go”. We headed over to Coldwater Canyon and pulled up to a high walled estate. Cabernet got out of the car and walked up to the intercom by the tall gate.

“Style Runners delivering the Cartier”, he spoke into the little talk box. A moment later the gate slid open a few feet and a big man in a suit, dark glasses and an earpiece stepped out and took the bag. He quickly jotted his initials on the trip sheet and Cabernet returned to the car.

“Okay, that’s done. Now we gotta go to Jimmy Choo’s”. On and on it went like that all day, my mood elevating from despair to elation at the romantic delivery jobs assigned to us all day in Beverly Hills.

Burberry, Cartier, Jimmy Choo continued on to Hermes, Neiman Marcus and Yves St. Laurent, picking up from glamorous designers and dropping them off at homes in Bel Air, Malibu and Benedict Canyon. Delivery work, yes, but pretty lofty delivery.

When I got home that night I tried to tell Karol about my new job, but she just goofed around on her cell phone talking to her friends. It was strange; we got along fine for years but overnight she hated me and treated me terribly. There was no explanation or reason why she decided to turn on me; she simply decided she hated me now.

I was happy that the delivery job turned out to be pretty good, but she seriously didn’t give a damn. She was non-plussed by everything I told her and communicating with her became impossible. I truly felt alone. One month later she left ne and moved back to her mother in Canada.

I continued to drive on weekends after that and it turned out pretty well. I made the rent every month and ate alright, so the poverty scene was forestalled again. Delivering cool fashion prevented me from feeling any shame at being a delivery person. I never did shame very well, anyway. I always liked myself in spite of the hate coming out of other people. It never really affected me.

I got the radio call to go to The Montclair Group, a modeling agency near the Laurel Canyon area. They were doing business out of a mid-century modern house in the rustic hills. My GPS compassed me to the house, the upper floor stuck out above a cluster of bushes. I pulled over to the side of the driveway and walked up to the entrance, hit the buzzer and identified myself.

“Come in. I have a few bags for you to deliver to a client in Laguna Beach”, a strikingly beautiful girl with big red hair in skin tight black pants ran around the room, all business, no smiles, nothing.

As I followed her to the studio I saw a dozen thin, stunning girls all dashing about every which way, buzzing around like fireflies. Some of the girls were blond, some were brunette, some black, some Asian, and they were all gorgeous. Thin. Ravishing. Like my hostess they were all very serious and stressed.

“Casey, what time is the photographer coming by with the proofs?”
“Excuse me! Are you delivering the Continental breakfast we ordered 45 minutes ago?”
Severe eyebrows pointed at me.

“No, I’m here to pick up some bags”.
“Tch!!”
“Bailey, did you call Armando?”
“No, Ashley, was I supposed to?”
“Call Armando. Like now. You were supposed to call him like a million years ago”.

As I stood around waiting for the bags more beautiful girls ran in and out of the room, making me feel like I was in a Room of Mirrors at the Fun House with ravishing women all around me. There were no men present at all.

“Are you from Geek Squad?” More severe eyebrows pointed at me. “I need to have my laptop defragged”.
“You don’t know how to defra-“
“Tch! He’s not from Geek Squad”, the Redhead heaved three bags at me. “Okay, here’s the bags. How soon can she get them?”
“Well, Laguna Beach is in Orange County so I’d say about an hour from now, at least, so-“
“GOOD ENOUGH! THANK YOOOOOUUU!”

She practically slammed the door behind me, but it was alright. As beautiful as the girls were, there was something demonically claustrophobic about being in that house. Besides, a beautiful girl that never smiles is as appealing as an ice cream cone with salt and pepper all over it.

“757, holding The Montclair order to Laguna Beach”, I radioed in.
“Ten-four, call clear, 757”, the dispatcher returned back.

I turned up the air conditioning and pulled out some gum and chewed away, slowly crawling up the ramp to the 405 Freeway. My mp3 player was playing the William Tell Overture by Wendy Carlos and I chuckled at the perky synthesizer music.

Traffic moved fairly smoothly up the 405, better than usual. As I went by I occasionally looked over at the shoulder on the freeway, noticing forgotten shirts and pants lying in a heap. A few miles later there was the torn off bumper, the decapitated fender, and the usual spray of broken glass.

As I drove further down I noticed deep, dark grooves burned into the asphalt by squealed tires, indicating sudden braking or wild last-minute swerves. At first I only noted one every few feet, but then there appeared to be more and more.

Traffic gradually slowed down more and more. The other side of the freeway was grooving at a pretty swift pace, but our side started creeping like a fly in molasses. It was hard to see what the cause of the slowdown was, but it didn’t feel right.

I heard a few sirens blasting behind me, faintly, then progressively louder and louder. Then an EMS truck ran down the shoulder I’d just stared at, followed by two police cars and a fire truck blasting its trombone horn to hell.

We crawled further and had to move two lanes to the left, but I got a good view. It was an accident, and it was a good one. There were four cars slammed into each other, radiator steam billowing out, as well as clouds of black smoke from burning oil. One had spun in the opposite direction, another had its front end completely crushed in, the third had the entire left side bashed in with a driver still stuck inside, and the fourth had its rear fender and bumper town off completely.

The fourth car’s owner was a fat, homely man sitting on the ground crying like a child over his car being destroyed. The car with the front end crushed in was a woman comforting her young daughter, a blanket thrown around the little girl’s shoulders. The man in the car spun around was unconscious behind the wheel. He may have been dead, but I didn’t care. I had a delivery to make.

We trudged further up the freeway through the smoke and steam and burned rubber odors. I hated to break it to The Beautiful Redhead, but I probably wasn’t going to deliver the fashion on time. There are times when Death trumps Beauty.

Punk Rock Retirement Home

This was a three-night engagement I played at The Whiskey A Go Go with my band Arthur J. and The Gold Cups, which was an all-star punk big band (I played saxophone), The band also featured the late Brendan Mullen on drums, Geza X on guitar, Paul Roessler on keyboards and a host of others.

Because it was a three night engagement we had a different band open the show each night, and as you can see X opened one night and The Alleycats opened another. The Avengers headlined and were absolutely amazing. I think Penelope Houston is the best punk rock singer I've ever heard, bar none.

Brendan designed the poster and organized the show.

In September of 1978 I was asked to play sax with The Screamers at The Whisky A Go Go. Pat Delaney from The Deadbeats and I joined them for their exciting encore of The Germs' Sex Boy, re-titled Sax Boy as a tribute to us.

Lead singer Tomata Du Plenty and synthesizer man Tommy Gear prowled the stage like a pair of wild leopards singing the Darby classic while Pat and I honked away. At one point I was given a short sax break and I tooted the riff to Punish Or Be Damned. Tommy winced painfully. Good times.

My friend Lisa Brenneis joined Richard Meltzer's new band Vom as the bass guitarist. Meltzer just moved to Los Angeles from New York, which was a big deal because he was one of the most idiosyncratically New York rock writers around that time. He put together a pretty interesting band, which besides Lisa also included Metal Mike Saunders and Gregg Turner. I may have missed one or two other guys; it was a long time ago.

Vom played their first show at the Whiskey A Go-Go and Lisa invited me. What I didn't count on was being recruited during sound check to act as their official "bodyguard". In order to distinguish me at this dubious job they gave me one of their custom made shirts (seen in the photo). This meant keeping the crowd from killing them, because Meltzer made a few disparaging remarks about Hollywood punks being phony and plastic. He wasn't being serious about it; in fact he was method acting like a locker room wrestler trying to rile the local kids up, and it worked. A little too well!

The club was filled with all the usual local punks ready to boo and heckle the band to death. The entire staff of Slash magazine was there heckling the band to death, as well. Vom went into all their killer numbers like I'm In Love With Your Mom, Electrocute Your Cock, and Broads Is Equal. Kids were picking up anything in sight and flinging it at the band, and it was my job to admonish these twerps from throwing things, like a stodgy old school teacher. Nobody listened to me. I hated it.

Meltzer even chided me from the stage. "Hey, do your job, Tall Guy in the Vom Shirt. You're supposed to be protecting us. By the way, the fat punk chick in the front, you look like a piece of shit with lipstick!" Try defending someone who talks like that.

Not content to merely piss off the audience, they now incurred the ire of the club itself, when they went into their intense rendition of The Doors' My Eyes Have Seen You, which featured Meltzer and Turner pulled out a pickled jar of cows' eyeballs and bursting them on stage and throwing them out into the dance floor at all the heckling punks. The floor was sticky and slippery from formaldehyde goo with crushed eyeballs all over the place.

Well, after this Vom-itous bit of show business the sound man, like the voice of Zeus, thundered over the PA, "OKAY, ASSHOLES, GET OFF MY STAGE! NOW!!!" Of course, this made all the punks cheer as if God himself stepped in and sent the band to Purgatory.

There's a happy ending to some of this, of course. Meltzer shortly after got a hot radio show on KPFK-FM where he invited every punk band he previously insulted and they all played phony kissy face with each other, and then my picture showed up in a crummy fake "New Wave" magazine. Of course, all the idiot Hollywood punks chastised for posing wearing a Vom shirt. Never mind that these were the same people that couldn't kiss Meltzer's ass hard enough to get on his show.

Come to think of it, Richard Meltzer was probably right the first time. Hollywood punks are a bunch of phony assholes, after all.

A Proper Burial

I was tracing and cutting fabric in the workroom when Dovina came in and happily announced to me, "I'm back! And I've got some cool swag!"

She came back from the blacksmith's shop and he always packed her down with weird metal objects we sometimes could use and usually couldn't. The girl came back to her workroom with bags filled with metal bracelets, bizarre rings that could be used for notions, and everything else imaginable.

What caught my attention, though, was a tiny plastic shopping bag she pulled out of her handbag. A furry spotted paw stuck out of the shopping bag.
"What's that?"
"Oh, look at this. Timothy was going to throw this in the trash and I said, 'Don't you dare!', and he said, 'Do you really want this?' I figured he needed a home".

Smiling, she pulled out a pelt of a bobcat, all four paws, tail and head intact. The head exposed a snarling cat face without a lower jaw. Whatever face the cat made at the time of its death and subsequent skinning, it didn't look terribly happy, gold eyes blazing and face permanently twisted in a snarl of anger that was there for keeps.

"Now, let's see, I think I'll put it...over here!" She did an eenie-meenie-miney-moe spin around the room until she found a red plastic hook around the sewing machine to hang the pelt on.
"There!" she smiled. "What do you think?"
"Well, it'll definitely have something to look at. It already has a disapproving look on its face".

For the next few days I came in working to the spectacle of having dead bobcat with face giving me a Fuck You look all day. It wasn't a Jean Paul Gaultier moment but I simply shut up and dealt with it.

Dovina slammed down the phone after getting yelled at by Miss Prewett, one of her fussier clients.
"Oh, that bitch! I was up all night sewing that stupid dress for her and now she says it doesn't fit her and I don't know how to sew! That cunt".
Her cell phone rang a little perky jingle. "Hello? This is she! Hi, how are you. What? They told me it was good. Insufficient funds? Ughhhh..."

Another client wrote her a bounced check and now she had to get on the phone and get them to pay cash to cover the bad check. The next day she appraised my work. "No, No, NO! All wrong. Do it again!"
Dovina took the dress and threw it in my face.
"Don't throw shit in my face!"
"My clients demand a certain standard from me and you can't deliver", she snarled.
"Oh, like the way you delivered to Miss Prewett?"
"FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!!! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY ROOM! NOW!"

We fought like crazy for the next few days, and ironically kissed and made up in the apartment we had next door.
One week later: "Hey, why don't you put away that pelt? It's freaking people out".
"I don't know", she moaned behind her sewing machine. "It's kind of cute. Puddy Tat's so lonesome".

"Please put it away. Seriously, Dovina. The customers aren't cool with it".
She finally broke down and put away the pelt.
"Well! You won't have to worry about him any more. He's gone for good".

The fighting gradually stopped, the checks were all good and the customers were a little more civilized (most of the time; you can't change that much). Things were relatively back to normal.

But then things got weird, really weird. She went back to telling me I couldn't sew or do anything useful. She began sewing with all the lights out. Nobody could work with her because the workroom was draped in darkness. She hired inexperienced women to assist her and would quietly complain about them behind their backs. And then she simply left town and abandoned me.

The workroom was gutted and a new tenant moved into the space. It was like the workroom ceased to exist. The girl now lived abroad with her parents and had no desire to ever see me again.

Fast forward two years later and I'm in Dovina's room, going through her things, all left behind for me to sort out. There was fabric, notions, belts, sewing needles, all matter of implements. I opened up box after box, storage container after storage container.

I saw a tiny pink plastic shopping bag at the bottom of a storage container. I felt something soft in it. I pulled it out, a thin spotted tail followed by a pair of furry paws and then topped with a snarling cat face with pointy ears. The bobcat was still in the house, looking right at me, staring straight at me with nothing but hate on its face.

It was then that I decided to finally do the humanitarian thing for this poor creature. I marched it down in its pink plastic bag to the dumpster and threw it in. From there on in it would be picked up by the Los Angeles Sanitation Department, dumped in the Disposal Grounds and given a proper burial. And then maybe the sun will finally set down on the moon.

Ashtray

There was this guy at work. We called him The Ashtray, and although it wasn't funny it was a better name than The Doormat. He had this talent, a dubious talent, but one that gained him notoriety from the upper echelons of management to the lower depths of the clerical pool.

He was a highly skilled, well-adjusted man who could buffer the abuse of any and all tyrannical supervisors in the office. Whenever a difficult supervisor tore through subordinates to warrant their own circus cage they'd send The Ashtray in to work for them. Every term served was practically a Master's thesis in abnormal psychology.

 

The Ashtray had dark hair, dark eyes and kind of looked like a walking shadow. He was very quiet and seemed to slip in and out of every department he was sent to. And he did all the problem ones, from corporate to casual. Dressy to messy, he was sent there if there was a difficult, dysfunctional boss to defuse any problem situation.

He won awards, citations, got fancy silver badges, the works, but especially the drama. What amazed everyone was that after all the dust had settled, he managed to walk out of the office in one piece, looking younger and happier than the rest of his co-workers. It was 100% weird.

He first gained notoriety when he served as the assistant to Miss Felice, a manager who demanded that her computer be turned on before she arrived in the morning, the air conditioning turned up to her preferred temperature and her favorite music streaming playlist set at an acceptable volume.

But that wasn’t what made her difficult; it was her disbelief in anything she was told. Her mind processed everything people said as a lie, so if someone explained a problem to her she would ask them to tell her again, and then of course again. She would then dissect what they just said and pointed out the inconsistencies in what they explained in each version. It drove her previous assistants mad, many running out crying and calling in sick too times too many.

They sent The Ashtray to her. She liked his looks; she was single and blonde and its’ been said that blondes like dark men and dark women like blonde men. Once she got over her attraction to him she went to work on cracking his marble veneer.

When he answered her questions she made sure to interrupt his answers to unnerve him. Every reply to her stern questioning would be brought down by her outraged interruptions.

One Friday afternoon The Ashtray had his nose buried in a report he had to complete by 4 pm and many co-workers had left early for the weekend. Of course the boss made him stop drafting his report to explain to her why everyone was gone. She made him explain one more time, and then again…his responses were so flat and indifferent he killed all the fun out of her sadism. Disappointed, she chastised him for not being done with his report.

But all good things must come to an end, as Del transferred to another section to find a less micro-managing boss. The next one hew as assigned to was a different kind of strange.

Mr. Boswick was an odd man. He'd report to work two hours later than Del and ignore him for most of the morning as he worked. Occasionally Del walked by Mr. Boswick's cubicle and would see him: 1) meticulously trimming his fingernails, 2) arguing on the phone with his wife, who always hung up on him, only to get him to phone her back and argue more; and, oddly 3) he would be prone to sitting in front of his desk simply staring off into space.

He trimmed his fingernails every day even if there was hardly anything left to cut. They were done so loudly you could hear the incessant snipping down the hall. Not so loud were his arguments on the phone with his wife, which were always delivered in a hissing stage whisper.

"Abby? Abby? ABBY? ABIGAIL!!!"

Mr. Boswick would fortunately gain his second wind by 3 pm in the afternoon and suddenly assault Del with an insurmountable pile of work for him to tackle, apathetically oblivious to the fact that quitting time was in two hours. It dove Del The Ashtray mad.

Co-workers would join him for a smoke on his break and the same question would arise.
"Boswick's an asshole, Del. How do you put up with his bullshit?"
"It's just part of the job, I guess".
"No, this guy goes over the line. I'd report him to the Internal Affairs Committee".
"I'll think about it. I got to go".
"Yeah! He's probably timing you with his watch! Later!"

Occasionally Mr. Boswick and Del would attend meetings and sit together at the conference table. Whenever Del got up from his seat to give handouts to the attendees he had to rise up slowly. It was peculiar, but the reason arose from an episode at previous meeting.

"Del", Mr. Boswick chastised him, "I need to speak to you about your attitude".
"Why? What's wrong?"
"The way you got up from your chair. You looked so angry, everybody stared at me. Your chair spun around a few times! That makes us look bad, Del. If that ever happens again I'll write you up for discipline".

After being admonished about the "spinning chair" incident Del did a peculiar rise from the chair to prevent it from spinning around, which only made the attendants stare at him even more. The rise was not unlike a cobra rising from its wicker basket, a sort of vertical unfolding. Mr. Boswick still looked disgusted, anyway.

The Ashtray was taken away from Mr. Boswick and handed over to a new supervisor, a Mr. Schubert. How Mr. Schubert scaled the heights of supervisory status was never known because his spelling and grammar were a modest grammar school D grade level.

The Ashtray would occasionally correct Mr. Schubert, raising his ire.
"The memo will go out AS IS!"
After the Division Chief was copied on the email, she would call Schubert into her office and ask why would he send out a message with so many errors. Schubert called Del into the room and blame him for typing up his poorly written memo.

He was then made to apologize for arguing with Mr. Schubert. The Ashtray complied, feeling bitter resentment.

Things came to a head with them when the Ashtray planned a vacation a month in advance and Mr. Schubert decided the week before to take that very week off, too.

"Coverage, Del, coverage! Someone in our section needs to be here. You can't take off when I'm going on vacation. You're already on probation for sending out those poorly written memos. I'd watch my Ps and Qs if I were you. Just a friendly word of advice".

After that admonition he'd step out for an angry smoke and run into Miss Felice, smiling at him for the first time he'd known her.
"Oh, Del, things just aren't the same without you. I feel lost without my favorite assistant".

She continued for another minute telling him that she couldn't hold on to anyone as long she did with him. He wasn't surprised but just kept smiling that strange smile of his. Funny, the smile seemed believable but you could almost detect a few cracks beneath the surface of that smile.

Standing in front of the building, having his smoke, a co-worker sidled up.
"Schubert fucked with your vacation, you know? You should look into getting a lawyer, I'm telling you".
"What's that going to do?"
"You have to document every time you get disciplined, like keep a diary for every time he gives you shit and keep copies of every time he writes you up or threatens to write you up and maybe you should go to a psychiatrist and take time off for stress time taken off and then have the psych write you a report and..."

Schubert didn't last, either. The Ashtray was reassigned to a new supervisor, Mrs. Ganigher, a divorced mother who always demanded he sit next to her while she instructed him on how to type up a report. He had over ten years experience in drafting reports, but she needed him to sit right next to her while she tediously typed away, speaking to him as if he were her child. It was maddening.

"Now this is the way we title the report and format it", she would speak slowly as if he were simple. Co-workers would walk by the cubicle and look at him, then at her and roll their eyes.

Once Del was home sick and she called him, hysterical about not being able to find a file. He was doped up on flu medication and she screamed at him.
"How could you pick an important day like today to call in sick? I need to find that file. I know you know where it is! Tell me! Are you sure you don't know??? Sure you're sure?"

 

Mrs. Ganigher rarely bathed, so when it was time to attend a meeting she'd pull out a bottle of Evening Musk and spray herself like lice spray at the local jail. She also had a bad habit of pulling at the straps of her bra while talking to people, which always put them off from her and made them prefer to speak with him, which always made her insanely jealous.

 

Even an ashtray cracks and breaks and that day finally came. Mrs. Ganigher gave him three reports to draft and loaned him out to two more supervisors to transcribe their meetings. All of this work was due by the end of the day.

While he was processing all these reports Mrs. Ganigher kept interrupting him with important questions and a few stories of her porn-addicted teenage son. Finally it was nearing the final hour of the day and he only managed to draft two out of the five reports.

"WHY? WHY NOT??"
"I'll need more time", The Ashtray patiently explained.
"NO YOU DON'T. YOU TOLD ME YOU WOULD BE DONE BY THE END OF THE DAY AND YOU'RE NOT! DEL!!!"

"I'm going to need more time to complete this work".
"I've had enough of this bad attitude from you. We're going to see Ms. Adams about your sloppy output. I'm getting really fed up with it!"

The Ashtray's eyes got real big and he said, "No we're not. I'm not putting up with this anymore. You finish this fucking work!"
The Ashtray grabbed his jacket and walked out of the building, never to return.

He didn't take anything with him and that was pretty smart. If he had the company could have nailed him for stealing, but if he walked out without taking anything they couldn't put up anything against him.

This didn't go well with his wife, of course. When The Ashtray's wife found out he quit his job there went the medical benefits and the expensive vacations and the job security.

"HOW COULD YOU DO SUCH A STUPID THING? HOW COLD YOU JUST WALK OFF A JOB???"
"I had enough", he said, stammering a little bit. "You just don't understand".
"WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? YOU'RE AN IDIOT!"
"No, I'm not, we'll be fine. I have some money saved up".
'SO WHAT?? I WANT YOU TO APOLOGIZE TO ME RIGHT NOW FOR QUITTING YOUR JOB! I DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHETHER YOU'RE HAPPY OR NOT!"

"Look,. I've supported you all this time. Now it's your turn to support me, I mean-"
"OH, FUCK YOU, DEL!"
She stormed out of the apartment, going to a Mexican restaurant where she'd meet up with some man she was seeing behind Del's back.

Del mumbled mutely to himself and looked around the empty apartment. He wanted to cry and he wanted to laugh, but he just mused on the futility of making unhappy people happy.

Instead, he picked up the phone, dialed a number and said, "Hi, this is Del Carver. I have twenty years clerical experience and have awards and citations. Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe Creative Cloud and difficult supervisors a specialty. Please keep me in mind"....

 

"One Meatball"

I was going to write an essay about the first Ry Cooder album and explain why I thought it was a bizarre amalgam of country blues, acid rock (straight from the Performance soundtrack) and vintage Warner Brothers movie soundtracks. The most fully realized track combining these unlikely bedfellows was a cover of the Forties hit One Meatball. Written by Lou Singer and Hy Zaret, it's a vamp blues about a Depression-era man who only has enough money to buy himself a meatball and nothing else.

While some singers put some whimsy into the tune (see below) by interpreting the song as the tale of a sad sack who didn't have enough scratch to feed himself, Cooder and producers Ted Templeman and Van Dyke Parks delivered a Depression-era horrorshow of a man who had no future or present day dreams to get him through his stripped down meal.

The version created on the Cooder album was a dirgey nightmare featuring a wash of atonal strings providing a counterpoint to Cooder's weeping bottleneck guitar. It's a haunting track showing Cooder and Parks at their greatest strengths.

In the course of researching One Meatball I discovered that just about everyone at the time covered it, from Frank Sinatra to The Andrews Sisters to Louis Armstrong to Josh White. The song's like a mood ring; everyone put a very radical take on the song, from The Andrews Sisters doing a slightly amused version to Josh White's very somber performance.

Forties Soundies version

The video above is a Forties soundie version, a Warner Bros. cartoon vibe serving just about everything but a Mel Blanc voice over. The "waitress" singing gives a fairly standard Forties vocal. It's a fun short. but far from Ry Cooder's bleak Depression dirge.

One Meatball - Candy Candido

And now for something completely different: a supper club comedy chanteuse named Candy Candido. He's so odd it's not even funny, he's just downright creepy in a twitchy David Lynch movie way. His bizarre mannerisms are the thing of weird dreams that make you wake up at 3 am and resent eating that Pastrami sandwich with cole slaw and Russian dressing right before bedtime. Ha! As a side note, I think some of the low notes sung are dubbed in by Mel Blanc (yeah, him again). File under "Unfunny and Creepy".

One Meatball - Dave Van Ronk

Every sad story has a happy ending, though, and this one is about the discovery of Dave Van Ronk. His version of One Meatball is nothing short of amazing, Ronk doing a scatting folk singer thing decades before Tom Waits. Discovering Van Ronk was like finding a $1000 dollar bill on the street. What a demon.

Van Ronk sounds like a Robert Crumb caricature of the wild man folkie screaming and scatting while banging the crap out of his acoustic guitar. He puts so much energy into the jazzabilly blues of this song, he invigorates every word with his electric energy. There's some great blues interpretation to be found in his version of One Meatball.

Ry Cooder really hit his stride with his first album, especially the creepy One Meatball, but nothing prepared me for the widely divergent interpretations of the song. This is the sort of thing that makes music so exciting. It's the singer, not the song.