Shabadoo. Forgive me.
Why when you come to me do I have to be resentfull? Aye, if only I wasn't such a child when I shouldn't be such a child.
To be a child is great, most of the time. The world is bigger and more beautiful, still within reach but with little hands that can only hold so much.
But sometimes I have to be a man. And when you needed space, I cried. I cried because it was my day one day off, and come on! I work hard and gee whizz, it was my one Sunday to go out and be warm in the amazingly warm, nonseasonal weather and see and be seen and go to the zoo, and why would you want to walk alone anyway?....shabadoo. (this is my "ohmmmmmm)"
Shabadoo. Forgive me.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
play with serious consequences.
Four men in a room, one $400 bottle of wine, one glass each, twelve hour lockdown, one gun. What happens?
This is my pitch for a new play based on the '96 Vega Sicilia "Unico" a great wine from the Ribera del Duero region of Spain. From what I understand, children across Spain sing odes to the Unico after their national pledge of allegiance. Old farmers sell their last cattle before retiring with a bottle into the long, dusty road to death. Its great.
So what happens to these four men? Who are they? What are the conditions?
_____________
Bruno, a french-emigree, mid-thirties, taste buds completely stripped in a Burgundy tasting accident, his olfactory senses revoked by border police when crossing into American from Canada and declaring that his inspector smelled of truffles.
Rudolph, the son of illustrious comic book illustrators. He is the only one from wealth, the only one who had in the past tasted any vintage Unico, the flavor profile forever imprinted on his brain.
Justin, a former teen-idol turned celebrated artist on his own right, in his own mind. This young middle class man from Wyoming does resemble Justin Timberlake, found this a means to an end early in youth and has cultivated the likeness to get what he wants. His three friends do believe he is in fact Justin Timberlake. Maybe he truly is this person, and he's playing games with me, his alternate world author.
The fourth is, of course, me. I am G-d to this slice of half-baked fiction, to this pile of dried beans in need of a soak and boil in the waters of meaning. But its my hill of beans, though it doesn't account for much.
_________
Scene 1. The four of us are in an empty basement looking room. We sit around a card table on folded chairs. One light hangs overhead. Italian opera plays, skips, plays, skips. On the table is the Unico and four glasses. A wine key balances perfectly on justin's nose.
BRUNO: So we begin our 12 hour adventure. Hands out, fellahs.
(We all reach into our pockets and produce wads of cash equalling $100. Rudolph places a revolver on the table).
BRUNO: That's right. $100 each for this $400 bottle of wine. And Rudolph, only a single bullet, yes?
RUDOLPH: Yes. A single bullet.
BRUNO: Let me see.
(Bruno takes the gun, spins the bullet holder thing, stops it and takes out the bullet it. He examines it and puts it back in with another spin of the thingy).
BRUNO: Right, so we all know the rules. A bottle of wine pours four glasses. There are four of us. We have twelve hours to enjoy. Nobody wants to finish first, but neither do they want to finish last. The last to finish is shot dead. Who can pull themselves away, even after twelve hours, from the transcendent experience of a glass of Unico? That being said; you guys know I have no sense of taste or smell, right? Chances are that we pour this baby, and I gulp it down real quick.
(The group nods that they do, in fact, know).
BRUNO: Just want to be fair, that's all.
ME: So lets proceed. Justin, first give us a song, then please open the wine.
(Justin does his thing, a rap about the Unico and life with a little dance, too).
JUSTIN: Unico. Unico. Unico. Yeah, baby. Hustle on this piece. Unico.
(Justin flexes, then opens the bottle with perfect poise. He pours the taste to me, I sniff it severely, nod that he continues. He pours a small and equal amount into each glass. We rise, clink glasses and then sit and smell. Rudolph addresses the audience).
RUDOLPH: How did the four of us come together? Not unlike the primary components of this or any wine. We were all picked...
(The four of us laugh).
...Bruno, like the grapes, was harvested from the ground. A former drunk, sprawled on a city subway station platform, he was plucked from his place of being, an anti-growth, shall we say? In his native Savoie, had he ever felt the sun? The good rain? A wash of water draining off in time to make the tasting roots crave more, dig deep into the soil, push out the great membrane of skin to protect the pim, the seed for future generations? What is it about fruit that tastes so good, but genetics?
BRUNO...butt genetics?
(We all laugh).
RUDOLPH: Justin, a teen idol, is like the magic of yeast. He speaks to us because he can sense what is in the air, a righteous bacteria, he knows what we all think and feel and can express it, fermenting our natural juices into a concoction with heady consequences. Then there is Gabriel, like the oak in which the juice sits for sometimes months, sometimes years. His heritage is rough hewn like French oak, imparting hints of hazelnut. Tannins–stick and bramble–are exonerated after years pent-up and add depth to the juice. Rudolph? Me? I am the merchant tonight. I am the negociant, picking crop from various fields to make the blend as I deem fit. Did we miss anyone?
GABRIEL: I am so sexy.
BRUNO: They say in zen that art is not complete without the viewer. It is only half, the archer pulling back on the bow, but the arrow can't take flight without letting loose, so lets get on with the juice.
(We all smell and then drink. I call out).
GABRIEL: Justin, pour the four glasses!
(Justin finishes pouring the four glasses with perfection. We all sit and smell and contemplate).
(SCENE 1 OVER AND OUT).
This is my pitch for a new play based on the '96 Vega Sicilia "Unico" a great wine from the Ribera del Duero region of Spain. From what I understand, children across Spain sing odes to the Unico after their national pledge of allegiance. Old farmers sell their last cattle before retiring with a bottle into the long, dusty road to death. Its great.
So what happens to these four men? Who are they? What are the conditions?
_____________
Bruno, a french-emigree, mid-thirties, taste buds completely stripped in a Burgundy tasting accident, his olfactory senses revoked by border police when crossing into American from Canada and declaring that his inspector smelled of truffles.
Rudolph, the son of illustrious comic book illustrators. He is the only one from wealth, the only one who had in the past tasted any vintage Unico, the flavor profile forever imprinted on his brain.
Justin, a former teen-idol turned celebrated artist on his own right, in his own mind. This young middle class man from Wyoming does resemble Justin Timberlake, found this a means to an end early in youth and has cultivated the likeness to get what he wants. His three friends do believe he is in fact Justin Timberlake. Maybe he truly is this person, and he's playing games with me, his alternate world author.
The fourth is, of course, me. I am G-d to this slice of half-baked fiction, to this pile of dried beans in need of a soak and boil in the waters of meaning. But its my hill of beans, though it doesn't account for much.
_________
Scene 1. The four of us are in an empty basement looking room. We sit around a card table on folded chairs. One light hangs overhead. Italian opera plays, skips, plays, skips. On the table is the Unico and four glasses. A wine key balances perfectly on justin's nose.
BRUNO: So we begin our 12 hour adventure. Hands out, fellahs.
(We all reach into our pockets and produce wads of cash equalling $100. Rudolph places a revolver on the table).
BRUNO: That's right. $100 each for this $400 bottle of wine. And Rudolph, only a single bullet, yes?
RUDOLPH: Yes. A single bullet.
BRUNO: Let me see.
(Bruno takes the gun, spins the bullet holder thing, stops it and takes out the bullet it. He examines it and puts it back in with another spin of the thingy).
BRUNO: Right, so we all know the rules. A bottle of wine pours four glasses. There are four of us. We have twelve hours to enjoy. Nobody wants to finish first, but neither do they want to finish last. The last to finish is shot dead. Who can pull themselves away, even after twelve hours, from the transcendent experience of a glass of Unico? That being said; you guys know I have no sense of taste or smell, right? Chances are that we pour this baby, and I gulp it down real quick.
(The group nods that they do, in fact, know).
BRUNO: Just want to be fair, that's all.
ME: So lets proceed. Justin, first give us a song, then please open the wine.
(Justin does his thing, a rap about the Unico and life with a little dance, too).
JUSTIN: Unico. Unico. Unico. Yeah, baby. Hustle on this piece. Unico.
(Justin flexes, then opens the bottle with perfect poise. He pours the taste to me, I sniff it severely, nod that he continues. He pours a small and equal amount into each glass. We rise, clink glasses and then sit and smell. Rudolph addresses the audience).
RUDOLPH: How did the four of us come together? Not unlike the primary components of this or any wine. We were all picked...
(The four of us laugh).
...Bruno, like the grapes, was harvested from the ground. A former drunk, sprawled on a city subway station platform, he was plucked from his place of being, an anti-growth, shall we say? In his native Savoie, had he ever felt the sun? The good rain? A wash of water draining off in time to make the tasting roots crave more, dig deep into the soil, push out the great membrane of skin to protect the pim, the seed for future generations? What is it about fruit that tastes so good, but genetics?
BRUNO...butt genetics?
(We all laugh).
RUDOLPH: Justin, a teen idol, is like the magic of yeast. He speaks to us because he can sense what is in the air, a righteous bacteria, he knows what we all think and feel and can express it, fermenting our natural juices into a concoction with heady consequences. Then there is Gabriel, like the oak in which the juice sits for sometimes months, sometimes years. His heritage is rough hewn like French oak, imparting hints of hazelnut. Tannins–stick and bramble–are exonerated after years pent-up and add depth to the juice. Rudolph? Me? I am the merchant tonight. I am the negociant, picking crop from various fields to make the blend as I deem fit. Did we miss anyone?
GABRIEL: I am so sexy.
BRUNO: They say in zen that art is not complete without the viewer. It is only half, the archer pulling back on the bow, but the arrow can't take flight without letting loose, so lets get on with the juice.
(We all smell and then drink. I call out).
GABRIEL: Justin, pour the four glasses!
(Justin finishes pouring the four glasses with perfection. We all sit and smell and contemplate).
(SCENE 1 OVER AND OUT).
Monday, February 02, 2009
the bastard son of Lincoln, the everyman.
In 1886, Rod Lincoln, the self-proclamined bastard son of Abraham Lincoln, went for a proverbial walk down memory lane.
He sat comfortably in his whicker chair on his whicker porch, with the whicker window to his whicker house left open, the smell of apple pie drifting from its cooling spot on the whicker sill. Rod, 36 at this time, rested with his complete collection of the local newspaper's New Years editions starting from his birthyear to his present.
The first ten years of his life's worth of newspapers were provided to him and all the others at the orphanage each January from their arrival till their emancipation with a foster parent, or in the case of Rod, till they were forced out, in tears, at the still emotionally tender age of 16.
Oh Rod! The dissafected youth, always picked on, always waiting for a moment of truth. Since heralded into the orphanage at two weeks of age, Rod was always the runt. The brunt of all the orphan's dejection and anger at fate was then laid onto this outsider of outsiders, so that from from 1850 and California's entry as the 31st state and all the way to 1866 when Andrew Jackson formally declared the Civil War over, our Rod had a hard time with it.
Through the years, new orphans would come and go, and they always seemed to find Rod as a focal point for their frustration, a whipping post of sorts for their vocal lashes. No matter how old, how he thought of his senority, the case remained the same until the month before his 16th year.
In that month, Rod declared he'd take no more. He'd give no less than what he had taken. He gave every remained orphan, most new arrivals as foster care in this particular mountain and coal mining filled town was prosperous, with flowers. Then he was out with a sack of newspapers and a dream.
Rod dreamt of whicker. He loved weaving parts in and out, forming solid planes to then form chairs, mantels, animal shapes. Whicker was his thing. So at 16, Rod traveled the land seeking out masters of the whicker trade. He landed first in small town North Dakota, apprenticed to carnival whare whicker merchant named Sid. Rod ran the merchandize at the tables. He traveld with Sid and the company throughout the state for that season of country fairs. He learned to ferment whicker into a kind of whicker-beer. He invented a kind of slap bracelet of whicker that stands as a straight six inch piece, but upon slapping it against one's wrist, it curls around fitting snug and attractive.
He met his future wife, Belinda, while testing out his invention on the troupe of horseriders from Mongolia. Belinda had emigrated with her family some years before, having passed through mainland China, the southern province, to Hong Kong and stopped in Hawaii for childhood years. Her father, a juggler of pins great and small, was hired into one carnival after another with his most famous trick, the pincushion jugglethon lasting twelve hours.
They traveled, this restless Mongolian clan, eventually building such a reputation as to choose their own bookings, no longer at the mercy of ruthless promoters and small town gigs. They enjoyed the plains, the horses, the people of the Dakotas and took in with the particular carnival our Rod belonged to.
And then one day there was the slap bracelet, love, a common bond of whicker and Mongolian barbeque. Rod was always embarrassed at both his physical statue and his orphaned background, and decided to tell Belinda on their second date that he was in fact the lost son to former President Lincoln. She didn't believe him for a second, and said so. She added, "But sounds like a good story. Maybe I'm the descendent of Ghengis Khan, Chances are, what with all his concubines, that most of us are..." And it got into Rod's head one day, remembering this, as he flipped through papers, as his mind wove ideas not unlike weaving bands of whicker, he thought:
"Maybe we are all the descendents of Abraham Lincoln spirtitually, then. If Ghengis Khan had so many brides, that would surely influence things. But what if America, the land, is the bride, with time the mid-wife, and Lincoln, the great man fathered the nation from our great defining trauma. Afterall, the revolution was just a revolution. The means of ruling, the style and substance remained the same, but with a revolution in who did the ruling. But this great war of states? This was our defining moment and Lincoln our leader, a great father...."
That's what Rod thought about-Rod the bastard son of Abraham Lincoln-sitting with his newspapers and whicker and minding the apple pie and thinking about all the good Mongolian style bbq he and his wife and children and grandchildren would soon be enjoying.
Something like this.
He sat comfortably in his whicker chair on his whicker porch, with the whicker window to his whicker house left open, the smell of apple pie drifting from its cooling spot on the whicker sill. Rod, 36 at this time, rested with his complete collection of the local newspaper's New Years editions starting from his birthyear to his present.
The first ten years of his life's worth of newspapers were provided to him and all the others at the orphanage each January from their arrival till their emancipation with a foster parent, or in the case of Rod, till they were forced out, in tears, at the still emotionally tender age of 16.
Oh Rod! The dissafected youth, always picked on, always waiting for a moment of truth. Since heralded into the orphanage at two weeks of age, Rod was always the runt. The brunt of all the orphan's dejection and anger at fate was then laid onto this outsider of outsiders, so that from from 1850 and California's entry as the 31st state and all the way to 1866 when Andrew Jackson formally declared the Civil War over, our Rod had a hard time with it.
Through the years, new orphans would come and go, and they always seemed to find Rod as a focal point for their frustration, a whipping post of sorts for their vocal lashes. No matter how old, how he thought of his senority, the case remained the same until the month before his 16th year.
In that month, Rod declared he'd take no more. He'd give no less than what he had taken. He gave every remained orphan, most new arrivals as foster care in this particular mountain and coal mining filled town was prosperous, with flowers. Then he was out with a sack of newspapers and a dream.
Rod dreamt of whicker. He loved weaving parts in and out, forming solid planes to then form chairs, mantels, animal shapes. Whicker was his thing. So at 16, Rod traveled the land seeking out masters of the whicker trade. He landed first in small town North Dakota, apprenticed to carnival whare whicker merchant named Sid. Rod ran the merchandize at the tables. He traveld with Sid and the company throughout the state for that season of country fairs. He learned to ferment whicker into a kind of whicker-beer. He invented a kind of slap bracelet of whicker that stands as a straight six inch piece, but upon slapping it against one's wrist, it curls around fitting snug and attractive.
He met his future wife, Belinda, while testing out his invention on the troupe of horseriders from Mongolia. Belinda had emigrated with her family some years before, having passed through mainland China, the southern province, to Hong Kong and stopped in Hawaii for childhood years. Her father, a juggler of pins great and small, was hired into one carnival after another with his most famous trick, the pincushion jugglethon lasting twelve hours.
They traveled, this restless Mongolian clan, eventually building such a reputation as to choose their own bookings, no longer at the mercy of ruthless promoters and small town gigs. They enjoyed the plains, the horses, the people of the Dakotas and took in with the particular carnival our Rod belonged to.
And then one day there was the slap bracelet, love, a common bond of whicker and Mongolian barbeque. Rod was always embarrassed at both his physical statue and his orphaned background, and decided to tell Belinda on their second date that he was in fact the lost son to former President Lincoln. She didn't believe him for a second, and said so. She added, "But sounds like a good story. Maybe I'm the descendent of Ghengis Khan, Chances are, what with all his concubines, that most of us are..." And it got into Rod's head one day, remembering this, as he flipped through papers, as his mind wove ideas not unlike weaving bands of whicker, he thought:
"Maybe we are all the descendents of Abraham Lincoln spirtitually, then. If Ghengis Khan had so many brides, that would surely influence things. But what if America, the land, is the bride, with time the mid-wife, and Lincoln, the great man fathered the nation from our great defining trauma. Afterall, the revolution was just a revolution. The means of ruling, the style and substance remained the same, but with a revolution in who did the ruling. But this great war of states? This was our defining moment and Lincoln our leader, a great father...."
That's what Rod thought about-Rod the bastard son of Abraham Lincoln-sitting with his newspapers and whicker and minding the apple pie and thinking about all the good Mongolian style bbq he and his wife and children and grandchildren would soon be enjoying.
Something like this.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Ah. John. John, John, John. Oh John Updike. Whewww.
Dear Anthony,
I know I haven't written in a while. I've taken an unpurposeful hiatus. But then John Updike died last night. And I feel so lonely.
I feel so lonely because John was the only one who understood me. And I know that the phrase connotes an act of listening on John's part to me. And I know that he didn't know that I myself exist amongst the many out there. But for him to be a writer seeing the world and recording the world the way he did–well, I just feel in reading his work that he understands me, that's all.
Do I understand him? I don't know. I haven't read enough of his work, and even if I did, who is to say truth and intent lie together at night post-coital from a day's attempt at unity?
I don't think that last sentence makes sense, but you know what I'm getting at, right?
John. John, John, John. Oh John. I'll have to take a present, a bookstore gift certificate from my parents from the holidays and buy your Olinger collection. I'll never forget reading "The Alligators" and just reaching the epiphany with the narrator and thinking, "man, so true."
I just read, 'A&P" at http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike. Wheww! Both stories are in the mind of a nice boy, the narrator, and the world moves around him and he wants to participate as a hero. And something catches up to him. And its beautiful.
Ah. John. John, John, John. Oh John Updike. Whewww. I wish I knew you better.
I know I haven't written in a while. I've taken an unpurposeful hiatus. But then John Updike died last night. And I feel so lonely.
I feel so lonely because John was the only one who understood me. And I know that the phrase connotes an act of listening on John's part to me. And I know that he didn't know that I myself exist amongst the many out there. But for him to be a writer seeing the world and recording the world the way he did–well, I just feel in reading his work that he understands me, that's all.
Do I understand him? I don't know. I haven't read enough of his work, and even if I did, who is to say truth and intent lie together at night post-coital from a day's attempt at unity?
I don't think that last sentence makes sense, but you know what I'm getting at, right?
John. John, John, John. Oh John. I'll have to take a present, a bookstore gift certificate from my parents from the holidays and buy your Olinger collection. I'll never forget reading "The Alligators" and just reaching the epiphany with the narrator and thinking, "man, so true."
I just read, 'A&P" at http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike. Wheww! Both stories are in the mind of a nice boy, the narrator, and the world moves around him and he wants to participate as a hero. And something catches up to him. And its beautiful.
Ah. John. John, John, John. Oh John Updike. Whewww. I wish I knew you better.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
