While the Polish Girl Sneezed in My Food

At Dinner Tonight
There's a restaurant I sometimes frequent around on Fifth Avenue that has such wonderful food always; tonight I had a chopped steak with veggies and brown rice, green pea soup, and two big mugs of iced tea. I'm drinking iced tea again. We used to call it "ice tea" when I was a kid like the rapper uses his name, Ice Tea, with emphasis on the ice. Ice couldn't call himself Iced Tea, now could he? Gettin' iced, doesn't that mean meeting the Maker before your time, like being "put on ice" means you're on a cold marble slab down at the city ice house. Like maybe with an ice pick out the top of your skull. That's what happened to bluesman John Lee Williamson. Yep, somebody came up and struck him with an ice pick through the top of his head while he wasn't looking. That's the blues man.

I once met a chick singer who had been standing just to the side of Eddie Jefferson, the now-forgotten "King Pleasure"-cover singer from the seventies--and Eddie was once ridin' high--and this chick was standing right by Eddie when he got his head blown off by a pissed-off dude with a shotgun--"I got Eddie's blood all over my blouse. Here, let me show you...I kept the blouse...here it is. Look, that's Eddie's blood." That happened in Detroit, many years ago now.

Another now-forgotten singer like that--besides King Pleasure, Babs Gonzales, and Eddie Jefferson--how about Leon Thomas? "The creator has a master plan/peace and love throughout the land...." Remember that? Leon once joined Santana's band in the seventies--I'm sure most everybody's forgotten that by now. Not this guy! Look, a very good tribute to Leon Thomas site...Check it out! Remember that phrase? "Hey, man, check it out!"

http://members.aol.com/ilebaba/adeleke/thomas.html

There are just too many past artists now to celebrate them all the way we used to could when some of the originators were still alive. I mean Bunk Johnson was still alive and blowing when I was a kid. So was Paul Whiteman. Yeah, hell yeah; I used to listen to Paul Whiteman; he was cheesy, he was art deco, but he was a serious musician cat and he gave us Bing Crosby and Bix Biederbiecke and also Joe Venuti, but I know nobody remembers fiddlin' Joe Venuti anymore.

I mean there are hundreds of artists going in and out of fame and notoriety daily in the music world. Too many to keep up with.

My post head today refers to the fact that while the Polish waitress at this restaurant where I ate tonight sneezed in my green pea soup as she was bringing it to me. I suppose she's safe. She's pretty enough, but, by God, she did sneeze, like a KA-blooooey! sneeze; I'm sure I'm full of her DNA now.

This restaurant has a big flat screen teevee on the wall and they are always playing concerts on it--a lot of PBS-type-Brit-oriented concerts--I've see God-awful Eric Clapton in there; I've seen God-awful Elvis "He Makes Me Puke" Costello and his Jazz Babe wife in there; I've seen, not Brit but might as well be, Don Henley in there; and tonight I suffered through some of the boring music I've ever heard in my long-born days. It was Sade in concert. And holy dull shit, how did this rather plumping-up chick ever become so major with the songs she sings. The concert was still going on when I left and it still sounded like she was still singing her big hit, which she did tonight while I was trying to spoon down my delicious germ-ladened green pea soup.

And it looked like there were thousands of people in the audience. I mean why weren't they sleeping? Instead they were waving their hands in the air and screaming...I mean, for what? I've never heard a more boring singer in my life. She's even more boring than Britney "House Trailer Trash" Spears or Lindsay "Dealt'a" Low Hand. She's more boring than Ricky Martin(ez)
and a stage-full of American Idol winners or losers--I can't tell the difference.

Music basically sucks around the world these days.

I did hear an interesting group the other night to be fair to some true-creating dudes out there, they call themselves TV on the Radio; and I also like these two babes from Can-na-da, as they call it, I heard on the 900th rerun of some New York City Summer Stage season god only knows how many years old by now that runs consistently over and over on Channel 25, the education channel in this fair city. It's the same Summer Stage the reorganized Sun Ra Arkestra played at--raise a ham if you remember Sun Ra. That's OK; I see no hams when I ask for hams on a lot of formerly creative geniuses, like Booker Erwin; Clifford Brown; Serge Chaloff; Tony Fruscella; Carl Perkins the jazz pianist; Hampton Hawes; Carmel Jones, Lee Morgan--I forgot more than you ever knew....

I'm pissy tonight. Just sittin' here in the still of the night and damn it is a nice still night here in the Big Apple, worms and all.

There is another Melissa Scott, too. One of my favorite women of all time emailed me the fact that there is a science fiction writer named Melissa Scott and I checked her out and sure enough there's an image of her on Google--she ain't no Pastor Melissa Scott but hey she is a Melissa Scott--my friend's brilliant husband did art work for this babe. I do art work for Pastor Melissa Scott ever night when I shake a few prayers off Jesus's way.

I love that Native American dude that does that Lakota ad--Lakota is an ointment for muscle and back pain relief. That's a cool attitude that Native American attitude.

More From Jack Spicer
"Real bad poems
Dear Sir: I should like to --
Hate and love are clarifications enough of themselves, do not
belong in poetry, embarrass the reader and the poet, lack
Dignity.
Or the dignity of a paper airplane
That you throw at someone's face
And it swoops across the whole occasion quickly
Hitting every angle.
Hate and love are clar--
Dear Sir" I should like to make sure that everything that I said
about you in my poetry was true, that you really existed,
That everything that I said was true
That you were not an occasion
In a real bad scene
That what the poems said had meaning
Apart from what the poems said.
Dear Sir:
My mouth has meanings
It had not wanted to argue."

[From Fifteen False Propositions Against God, #IV. The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, Black Sparrow Press, Los Angeles, 1975.]

Baseball Tomorrow!

thegrowlingrighthanded wolf
for The Daily Growler