Friday, March 27, 2015

My Letter to Todd Akin

On August 19, 2012 Missouri Representative Todd Akin made this comment...



On September 3, 2012 I sent this e-mail via his website...

Dear Representative Akin,
     
I feel it has been a sufficient amount of time to let the hullabaloo die down so that I might be heard above the din. I am writing to you about your comments - and I quote...

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

First off, It seems to me that you must have a mother? a Wife? or a female that has touched your life in some significant way? If not, some sense of shared humanity?

How could you say something like that?

I mean "deep down" in your conscience, how can you say something like that?

If it were me, and I'm not suggesting this for you, I would drop out of politics, pack everything I had in a rucksack, and spend the remainder of my days apologizing to every woman that I came across.

Rape is such a vicious violent act and damages not only the victim, but the foundation upon which our society is built. How anyone could try to mitigate this act because of some misguided political belief is simply bewildering.

I hope that you can find it in your heart to renounce the horrific things you have said in a sincere way and make amends - if that is possible, and in the future choose your conscience above your politics.

Sincerely,
L.M. Little

Akin apologized but rebuffed calls to withdraw from the election.

He was defeated by Claire McCaskill by 54.7% to 39.2%.

In a 2014 book, Akin said he regretted apologizing and defended his original comments.


Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Endless St. John's River & The Death of Pink Floyd

The Endless St. John's River & The Death of Pink Floyd



The-Endless-River.jpg


Just got back from Jacksonville the other day. There is a place on the stretch of road we take to get there where the foliage on the side of the road abruptly opens up and you can see the St. John's River in all its glory. It's just a glimpse, only for a moment, but it lets you know that you are back. I moved to Jacksonville, Florida a couple of years after I graduated from high school in Southern Illinois. We had a river there, too. Even though it flowed through Illinois, it was called the Ohio River. I love creeks and streams, but rivers are something else. Full of mystery and surrounded by folklore and superstition. Once I had heard that there were catfish the size of Volkswagen Beetles near the lock and dam. Nobody swam in the Ohio River, except deer crossing from the Kentucky side to Illinois. Coal barges traversed the river frequently. I once thought about jumping off the bluff into the river after my mother's schizophrenia had taken a particularly bad turn. As it happens, that was very close to my graduation in 1992.


I worked at a McDonald's in Harrisburg, Illinois to help put myself through community college. I had Pell Grants and JTPA assistance, but the job at McDonald's helped cover extraneous expenses. A few of the coal mines had shut down and others were laying off workers at the time, and jobs were hard to come by. I had to have someone put in a good word for me just to get hired as a burger flipper. Southeastern Illinois Community College was a particular mix of freshly graduated high school students and coal miners looking to get retrained for other employment.


I was a young man at the time with ideals and ambitions and so blissfully unaware of how vastly the game was stacked against me. Fast food was beneath me. I was a writer and a musician and an artist and most definitely not a fry guy. I soon grew depressed and bored and was working on the grill one day when one of my co-workers noticed me flip a burger - leaving half the meat stuck to the grill. I’ll never forget this moment as it has informed the way that I approach things even to this day. He told me that he understood that I didn’t want to be there doing what I was doing, but that since I was there doing what I was doing - that I should be the best. He said that the only way to move up from a shit position was to perform like a professional. “If you have to pick up garbage on the side of the road” he said “be the best garbage picker.”


I took his advice to heart. In a short time I was appointed crew member of the month. Not long after that, I got to attend the McDonald’s rally in St. Louis - a much needed distraction from the provincialism of rural Southern Illinois.


More importantly to me, I began to be able to do my job in a way that left my mind free to engage in creative pursuits.


I began to sing.


More specifically, I began to sing Pink Floyd’s “The Final Cut” from beginning to end. Yet another commonality with the fellow (Mike I believe his name was) who had taken an interest in my life’s trajectory.


So when I sang “TELL ME TRUE - TELL ME WHY - WAS JESUS CRUCIFIED…”


The other Mike joined in with “WAS IT FOR THIS THAT DADDY DIED…”



I do not remember how many Big Mac’s I made, or how often I stirred the McRib sauce, or even how many batches of dehydrated onions I brought back to life, but I remember falling head over heels profoundly in love with one of the greatest progressive rock bands ever. How they helped an awkward kid transcend the doldrums and think and dream. Most everyone knows “The Wall” and “The Dark Side of the Moon” but to find someone who knew “The Final Cut” was a revelation to me that I was not alone in searching for cool stuff along the fringes.


Some People say you have to be high to understand “The Wall”. Poppycock, I say. I saw it at around 13 years of age and understood it immediately. I understood it because I lived it.


Let me explain…


Not the existential rock star angst or the descent into drugged out madness, but the building of an emotionless barricade around yourself in order to save what is left of your humanity. My childhood was full of upheavals and traumatic experiences the likes of which would have destroyed most people. My mother’s schizophrenia caused her to flee in the dead of night heading to god-knows-where not once but twice. Both times she ended up in Southern Illinois where my long suffering father would have to come retrieve his son and mentally unstable wife. I don’t remember everything as I was very young, but I do remember some things.


One thing in particular.


My mother had somehow decided to shack up with a monster. My guess is that she ran out of money and had to attach herself to someone out of necessity. She had a habit all her life of attracting the worst kind of men. Any decent person was driven away. I don’t know all the details because my mother became defensive whenever I would try to talk to her about what happened. All I know was that I was sitting between the man’s elderly parents watching my mother being assaulted on the couch. I know that the man had broken his own father’s arm in an argument so the parents were afraid to interfere and tried to restrain me from acting. I believe that the man was trying to sexually assault her. Clothes were being torn off and he had slapped her and punched her and then… I threw a shoe. My shoe. My 5-6 year old shoe which sailed across the room and hit the man in the back of the head. He got off my mother allowing her to escape out a window. The man turned towards me with his fists raised and spittle dripping out of the corners of his mouth and his face as red as a burning log. Would he have killed me? I’ll never know. He was distracted by the commotion of my mother jumping out the window and fled after her into the darkness.


My mother returned after a time and we left in the car. I remember her sobbing all night long as she drove deeper and deeper into what seemed like nowhere until at last the pale glimmer of sunlight began to rise quietly over the horizon.


I remember her singing Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” as I drifted off to sleep.


I had one singular thought then that I have carried with me throughout my life - “I should have done more.”


It didn't go away when I pummeled her abusive husband.


It didn't go away when I saw the squalid conditions in which she died in Atlantic Beach on January 12, 2015.



The day she died I wrote these words: 

Here I sit on the couch. It's 11:48 pm. Gina is asleep in bed, snoring softly. Our cat is sitting under the tv on the one square of carpet left in the house. I am exhausted - yet unable to sleep.

My mother died today.


She was 57 years old.

I am listening to Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)" from the "Apollo" album.

It will henceforth be inextricably linked to this particular moment. This heartbreakingly beautiful - exquisitely terrible moment in my life.

What comes bubbling up out of the dark secret estuaries of my memory?

Moments...

The Man From Snowy River - Eating so much popcorn during Jaws 3-D that I threw up - The snow in northern Arizona - The snow in southern Illinois - The Dark Crystal - My dog Buddy, long gone... - My first bicycle ride without training wheels - Tuna casserole - Crystal Gale - and flashes flashes flashes of her. A loving her. A dark her. A sane her. A cruel her. A sick her...

I remember running barefoot across the hot desert sand after she'd told me not to. I passed out and woke up in her arms and she was brushing the hair out of my eyes and carrying me.

I remember running after her car after a weekend visit when she had dropped me off at my Dad's. She didn't see me in the rearview mirror and I cried for the rest of the night because I wasn't fast enough to catch up to her.

Seems like I was always chasing after her but never quite catching up.

I remember coloring a mother's day picture after storytime at Barnes & Noble and writing "Happy Mother's Day" in crayon and one of the mothers noticed and asked me if I was going to send it to her and I said I would. I never did.

What dreams did she have yet unfulfilled? Why did she prepare me for so long, yet leave my brother so unprepared? 

On some alternate earth in an alternate universe, did she make different choices? Did she turn left instead of right? Did her better angels defeat her demons? If so, is she happy there... in that world? In that world that is so far removed from the cruelty and suffering and brilliance and beauty of this one?

I hope so.

God, I hope so.

Endless Vinyl


My wife bought “The Endless River” for me as a Valentine’s present. I opened it the night before Valentine’s Day as we were travelling to Jacksonville the following day to check in on my brother Austin.



It is supposed to be the last Pink Floyd album. Ever.


How do I describe it. Elegiac. Sapient. Boundless.


Endless...


Like a river


that flows onward


along its dark and mysterious course.


To take the hipster-ish tact of dismissing the latest work by a great artist is unwise. There is music to ponder here. Do something profound while listening to this and you will see what I mean. There are hints and nods to the past aplenty, but the trajectory is clearly upwards and onward.

Sometimes an artist fights so hard and for so long for true independence that they fail to realize that some of the best art is created within the confines of restrictions and limitations and compromises. Take Islamic and Soviet art for instance. I am loyal to Pink Floyd in much the same way that I am loyal to George Lucas. Their work has colored my thoughts and filled my dreams with such possibilities that I will always love it for its faults and not despite them.

In 1995, I bought "Pulse" I was living in Jacksonville and I was engaged. On the side of the compact disk box there was a blinking red light.



I've thought quite a bit about death and loss this year. About how we must not use our grief to strike out, rather to transcend the limits of our existence by the one force we wield that cannot ever be extinguished - love. 

I revisited the music of Pink Floyd when this album came out.


The sheer magnitude of it all is formidable. I chuckle when I read about the so-called “Death of Pink Floyd”. Hell, I could listen to their music exclusively for years and never be able to take in the scope of it all.

I celebrated New Years (1997 or 1998) at The Jacksonville Landing. It was a glorious night, Jazz in the air, the light from the bridge dancing in the dark waters of the St. John's River. I hugged a random black guy for no other reason than the sheer ecstatic joy of the moment.

I left Jacksonville not long after that. I only returned sporadically.

I saw my brother and mother once during my time in exile. We went to St. Augustine. We went to the Ripley's Museum. We had dinner at The Milltop on St. George Street. It was a beautiful day. The white lights were strung in the trees. There was a breeze coming off the Matanzas. Marble lions stood sentinel on the bridge.

It was the last time I saw my mother alive...


I hugged my brother for the first time in years. 

In Jacksonville.


With the smell of coffee in the air and the St. John’s river flowing endlessly past, teeming with specters of things long gone. Of unresolved guilt and anguish. Of the chance to reconnect.

A month or two later, he wanted to repeat that St. Augustine trip. St. Augustine has always been a city of ghosts, and the memory of my mother loomed large and heavy over that day. It was in the back of both our minds.




I stayed behind the camera, observing, hiding between the folds of detachment, oblivious to how much our defense mechanisms only serve to magnify our fears and insecurities. 

The bitterest of ironies is the thought in my mind that I might not have the relationship I have now with my brother had it not been for the death of my mother.

But, is that such a bad thing? That something good should come from something so profoundly fucked up? It leaves me wondering what is truly meant by the end or the last or the finality of anything… or everything...

I sometimes lament how much has been lost in the labyrinth of memory or for simple want of a pen and a scrap of paper. Nevertheless, real truths come back to us in some form or other. Which leaves me with one simple yet contradictory truth - everything must end, but part of everything flows on forever.



Coda: Remembrance Day.


Saturday, March 14, 2015

Rock N' Roll Daddy-O

Rock N’ Roll Daddy-O


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I was one of those kids. You know the ones. You hear them screaming and crying when they don't get the toy they want. Well, maybe I wasn't that emotive. My need and desire for a particular toy manifested itself in an elevated/anxiety fueled panic. There was a feeling that I might actually die if I couldn't take home that blister packed hunk of Taiwan made goodness...


My father told me something, a few years back, about how I cried and pestered him endlessly for toys - every single time we went to the store. The "store", for us, was Smitty's.


Original Smitty's location at 16th Street and Buckeye Road..jpg

He portrayed me as some form of childlike harpie endlessly devouring the liver of his wallet to fill my insatiable action figure appetite. Avarice was my engine, mental manipulation was my weapon. Nothing was sacred, no line was off limits. If I destroyed my father financially and utterly to get my greedy mitts on a toy I wanted... well, that was just collateral damage. This was war, goddammit. If I had to lay down a suppressing fire of anguish followed by a napalm bomb of guilt or an agent orange dousing of manipulation... fukkit. Toys were all that mattered to me. Food? Baaah! I could still play with an action figure with my distended belly and withered fingers. I didn't give a tinker's damn If we had to live behind a garbage bin.


At least that was how he made it out to me.


I have serious doubts.


I think that it was more like I was a regular kid who, as a byproduct of capitalist commercial inundation - not to mention a seriously fucked-up childhood (i.e floods, divorce, a mother who had schizophrenia) had occasional bouts of brattiness. I certainly don't remember having an Imelda Marcos-type collection of luxury playthings, and the business of father/stepmother seemed fruitful... at least on their end.


My father and I both have the common trait of exaggerating things, so the truth is probably somewhere in the middle and not quite as... how shall we say? Colorful.


But I digress.


I was a greedy little bastard. In Dante's film Gremlins, there are three simple rules.



1. Never expose a Mogwai to sunlight


Not a problem. The 110 degrees Arizona sun saw to it that entire generations of kids just like me became indoor pets. I remember getting detention on purpose to be able to stay in the study hall a/c.


2. Never get a Mogwai wet


I think this one has something to do with the practice of asexual reproduction. I think this one might require a whole blog post unto itself. Maybe more than one.


3. Never feed a Mogwai after midnight


Aha! Now we're getting to it. Let's scratch out midnight and replace it with 6:30 in the morning. On a Saturday to be more precise. Feed = corn sweetened corn cereal with artificial chemical flavors and colors in a box that looks like the Merry Pranksters painted it, with a giant smiling cartoon character emblazoned on the front. Hell, just for kicks, lets put a cheap ass plastic toy at the bottom of the bag so that the unsuspecting little twit will have to either immerse himself elbow deep into this toxic cardboard container of genetically modified candy-coated foodstuff, thereby getting a contact high from a manufactured product that is actually created by people wearing goggles and masks and gloves and protective outerwear... not to mention soulless mechanical robots.


There are four main food groups in a child's diet as evidenced by the titans of cereal production.


1. Sugar
2. Corn
3. Artificial Flavors
4. Artificial Colors


Let’s take a look at the K mart model through a child’s perspective. So… as your Mom’s car turns into the parking lot, blasting the latest song sensation…




you are immediately hypnotized by the glow of the giant red “K”, coupled with the cooling glow of the sea foam blue “mart” in non-threatening lowercase font.


Cat Eyes.gif


Before you even get to through the doors you are distracted by the greatest thrill ride your brain can possibly imagine.


Coin Operated Ride


If your Mom smoked, there was always the possibility that the combo of a leaking propane tank (see picture above) and a lit flame might rocket you to worlds beyond. After the joy of a ride with Woody Woodpecker…


Woodpecker


when you finally entered the labyrinthine building proper, you would be greeted by a militarily precise line of coin operated sentinels promising a plastic egg full of toys and/or candy for the paltry sum of 1 quarter. Parents during those times must have had to carry heaping pocket loads of quarters in order to momentarily satiate their offspring.


My particular favorite was The Chicken Machine.


Chicken Machine


You would place a quarter (or two) in the slot, push the slot in… and let the good times roll. The Chicken would begin clucking and squawking and rotating and lights would flash and bells would ring and… it was almost like witnessing the terrible and majestic process of birth. Your hair would stand up, you would feel an electrical jolt traverse the course of your spinal cord and synapses would fire like a Napoleonic battlefield inside your brain… and then it would end.


A small plastic easter egg would tumble with lackluster aplomb out of the slot with a goodie of some sort, but it was inferior to the main event which was the show.


In “Schindler’s List”, Schindler leans forward in one scene and you can hear the leather of his jacket stretch as he delivers the line “I’m not good at the work, but the presentation... (waves hands in the air).”


No matter what you would find in that plastic egg, it could never match the majesty of the show leading up to it. It was like a shot of kid heroin. I wanted more, more, more…


I no longer cared if I got the toy, I would stand in awe and watch as another kid would put in a quarter. I would continue to do this until I was physically dragged away weeping at the hunger in my soul.


Nowadays the whole thing is mixed up and cross wired in my brain. My brain feels a bit like C-3PO from this scene when I think back upon it.


c3po.png


New associations mix with old and I find myself wishing I could go back and feel that same raw desire, but knowing in my heart it would never be the same. The shadows of childhood memories combine with images of Werner Herzog and Ian Curtis and I’m left contemplating scenes and images like this one.


Dancing Chicken gif


If I could somehow understand the significance of this scene, is it possible that I might then wield a knowledge so powerful that I could not hope to control it and then become a destroyer of worlds? Possibly…



Anyway, we are not even past the entrance of one retail outlet and we see the tentacles of capitalist indoctrination winding their way around our collective throats. Do I even have to describe the K mart snack bar with the giant rotating ICEE machine and the popcorn? Or the toy department? Or cereal and toy commercials aimed at kids?


This is powerful stuff, especially when combined with our varied childhood experiences both good and bad.




Did you see the blonde haired/bearded badass popping a wheelie on his motorbike? That’s Rock ‘n Roll. His real name was Craig S. McConnell. He was born in Malibu, California.


Rock 'n Roll's primary military specialty was infantry, and his secondary military specialty is PT instructor. He was familiar with all NATO and Warsaw Pact light and heavy machine guns  (he often used the M60). He graduated top of class from advanced infantry training, and received specialized education in covert ops school at Langley. In time, Rock 'n Roll moved on from being a machine gunner to a Gatling gunner.


A surfer, weightlifter, and bassist (my particular instrument of choice), Rock 'n Roll is cunning but naive, and forceful but shy. He possesses a strong sense of loyalty to his teammates and is sincerely concerned about their well being. Rock 'n Roll is a man of honor and integrity who can be counted on to hold the line.


Rock 'n Roll was first released as an action figure in 1982. His character was re-issued with a new action figure design in 1989, with a slight name change to Rock & Roll, however, his file card's content continued to maintain the code name Rock 'n Roll. The name change was temporary, as the next few editions of his action figure all used the Rock 'n Roll name.


Dad News.jpg


This is a newspaper clipping of my dad who was drafted and served two tours in Vietnam. He often regaled the family with tales of his time there during family gatherings in which impromptu slideshows would inevitably break out.


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This is an image of Rock n’ Roll from his blister pack. When I first happened upon him in the toy aisle at Smitty’s, my parents had divorced and we were living with my stepmother. Things were not well from my end. My stepmother’s perpetual paranoia of any shadow of my mother’s memory - what was I? - had made her come up with a crafty plan. She started to look at the differences between my father and I and then she began to exploit them. I loved books - he did not. That was a big one. He loved horses - I did not. That was an even bigger one. There were many of these. They were legion. Ill treatment from her combined with alienation from my father began to poison the well of our relationship.

With the passage of time, the divisions became fault lines that now and again threaten to shake our tentative connections from one another apart and have, on occasion, resulted in two or three year bouts of non-communication. It's tough for both of us to break free of the standard traditional roles that prevent us from moving forward. The inability to find resolutions for past grievances has forced me to seek deeper truths in my writing.

So let's recap. In one hand you had my then distant father - and, in the other, a plastic personification of him. Is it any wonder why I cried so hard to get that toy.


Hell, I’m tearing up right now thinking of it.

Next time you hear a kid screaming and crying in a toy aisle, think to yourself that the child might not be a horrible materialistic swine, but quite possibly a kid diseased by corporate influence and missing the Dad he used to know.


Monday, March 9, 2015

Jazz at The London House

Jazz at The London House

Defunct Jazz Club Series I


The London House was a jazz club and restaurant in Chicago located at the corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue, in the London Guarantee and Accident Company building, 360 North Michigan.





It was one of the foremost jazz clubs in the country, once home to such luminaries as Oscar Peterson, Ramsey Lewis, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Marian McPartland, Cannonball Adderley, Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal, Nancy Wilson, Barbara Carroll, Bobby Short and many others.





The London House closed in the early 1970s. It later became a Burger King. It is now a Corner Bakery Cafe.





The London House today, located at 360 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL 60601.



Several live albums were recorded at The London House.

George Shearing and his group often played at The London House in the '60's. On its closing night, a group of jazz luminaries gathered to say goodbye. Shearing wrote and performed "A Foggy Day in London House." Ken Ehrlich produced and directed a film of the same name, his first production, documenting the last evening.





The London House @ answers.com





For Further Reading