"...sitting up next to each other in bed, each making love with totally skilled concentration to the electronic gadget of his or her choice. Occasionally a hand reaches around the back, meets another, they squeeze briefly, contact made, base touched, and pullaway, back tot he real reel deal, the empty floursack heart's last whispered wish, to keep on that little bugger tapping out those codes in combinations and permutations infinite as Borges' Library of Babylon until you hit that PERFECT CONNECTION where everything merges and nothing needs 'cause you won't exist."
So you think, "Now I've got it; I write like nobody else before or since!" Yahoo! I mean I'm jumpin' around like a Holy Roller preacher thinkin' I'm damn-near divine when out jumps words from a book, a book I didn't realize existed until one night I was cruisin' eBay looking for trinkets from my past and related to my collectible needs--collecting being a passion of mine--and I suddenly recalled this name, the name of a character I'd totally forgotten for right at 25 years--I moved in where I live now the year this dude died--and then I recalled him some more and in terms of that spring morning I woke up with a crashing, pounding, way-off beat, screamin' for help or some such thunderous and gravelly howling of some sort of caged animal seeking salvation--through the words of Bobby Fuller's "I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)," "I Fought the Law" the way the tune was finally listed on the album they eventually made, this new band of Matty Quick's that was gonna be THE new wave band, the band cruisin' in a different sky going a different direction in the roaring up and waving up onto the beach on a puppet surfer who looks like Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent from the old Beany and Cecil Bob-Clampett cartoons on teevee--
And a funny aside, I was banging my best friend's wife in the Southwest somewhere in her youngest kid's room, I mean the kid was freaky young and had all these stuffed animals and odd little teevee-promo dolls, you know, the kind old Telly Sevallas made scary as hell on that famous Twilight Zone where Chatty Cathy drives old guinea-tee-shirted Telly made as Kojack-Hell to the point he butcher knifes poor Chatty C until she's chopped liver and he pitches her remains into a galvanized garbage can and he slams down the lid and you know enough about television writing to know the rest whether you've ever seen that episode or not.
So I'm bangin' away with this lovely lovely woman who before I knew she was my best friend's wife I fell geegaw madly in love with--she was my girlfriend's sister--and I swear to God it was hours of being madly in love with her and following her around like a spray-can of pheromones before I found out she was married and that was also before he was my best friend--and I'm justifying like I have morals, hell, I have no morals, so anyway, I'm bangin' this exquisite creature with mad passionate love when in a throe of ecstasy I slammed my head into the backboard of this kid's bed, into the shelves on which his talking-dolls were kept--and when I slammed into that backboard, Holy Hell, these dolls came tumbling down all over us, and one bounced off my head and I grabbed at it and caught it's pull cord, you know, the cord that you pulled to make it talk--it was a wire-recorder kind of recording--and in trying to fling it away I whipped out that cord and this doll blurted out, "Hi, I'm Beany Boy--heh-heh-heh-heh," and it was Beany blabbing over my head still giving out his little freckled giggle--and then I punched a doll in the stomach and it started crying and saying, "I'm a baaaaaad boy!" Jesus, I'd punched Lou Costello in his gut--we finished off in a gaggle of giggling guffawing gossiping dolls.
And I found this book on eBay, a book about this character, and I bought the damn thing. And then I started searchin' eBay for stuff on this guy and that's when I came across all these old Creem magazines from the early 70s and some old copies of New Wave magazine--and then I started reading this guy's writing and shit soon I was gallopping along with his every word, preceding him sometimes like knowing what words he was gonna use in the next "Fucking" sentence or in the actual "Fucking" continuing sentence and this guy...but, let me introduce this guy to ya.
Back at the Ear Inn one fall day of '78; I'd already met Mitch Leigh and David Merrill like I said, and I knew they were the crux of Matty's new band that had started rehearsing according to Matty but I hadn't heard them; by the time they rehearsed I was immersed in my work at the north-end of the bar in the front window at the Ear Inn behind a glowing wall of old neon beer signs, one advertising Fidelio beer--and I was there certainly by noon every damn day--I was making my money as a book editor for a vanity press--Vantage Press, I'm not ashamed, one of the sleaziest of the vanities, finally exposed on Sixty Minutes on CBS one Sunday night after I'd been fired from there by the big boss himself, Mr. Goldberg, but during this time, I was in full favor overthere, editing conservatively, the way Mr. Goldberg liked these worthless pieces of shit books edited--"No EAs," he'd holler with some Yiddish foul language thrown in for boss-good-measure, "only PEs and AAs...did you hear me, NO EAs!!"--and I was so slick at this style of "leave the author looking like an ignorant fool" since we weren't allowed to do much cut and trash too much of the authors's total lack of compositional skills and no knowledge of good grammar, syntax--oh forget explaining syntax to these fools--these fools who were retired people mostly, military fools, school teachers, accountants, all so foolish and egotistical they would go so far as to take out a second-mortgage on their houses to pay the $30,000 old Mr. Goldberg eventually wrung out of these talentless fools. Hell, sittin' in the Ear Inn like that for at least a couple of years doing my editing while sipping on several well-poured straight-up slugs of Murphy's Irish Whiskey with a pint of Bass Ale to wash it down--and I was able to make $500 a week easy doing this vanity editing, and 500 hundred smackers a week, plenty of bucks in those days to keep me partying and trying to become a music star myself, just like Matty and Mitch and David and Chris Stein and Debbie Harry and Brian Eno and Rhys Chatham and Blue Gene Tierney and Ned Sublette--I could name drop all day and several nights--yep, I was just like Matty and this gang; just like Jesus Christ, too, just like I was Jewish and from Brooklyn and into Elvis Costello--and holy shit Jesus Christ was really into Elvis Costello, who by the way looked like Matty Quick--and really, I don't think Matty Quick was tryin' to look like Elvis Costello (I think he's just another Brit fop who stole what creativeness he had from us American musicians and stylists and songwriters and warblers and crooners and guitar jammers and piano slammers--and F Elton John, too, while I'm on an anglophobic temper tantrum...and God I hated the Brit bands with a terribly vicious and chauvinistic passion--Jimi Hendrix was diluted by going to England and forming the Experience--English musicians held him back--and later when he recorded with Buddy Miles, what a difference! Chuck Berry was an undiluted guitar player. Jimi led the blues off into the wild blue yonder--extending Chuck Berry's style, elongating it into machinegun-like enfillade of bent and twanged and wah-wahed fire right in the face of the audience--trying to set the guitar on fire, whereas with Chuck Berry the guitar was a prop, his magic broomstick, which when magically flying sprinkled glam-showers-of guitar notes into a transcending duck walk--Jimi couldn't do the Duck Walk but he could make a guitar set itself on fire--F Santana--he's too much like Eric Got-the-Clapton--ohhh, I'm sorry, my anglophobia is making me biased again--I'm reining in my mastiffs.
thedaylateanddollarshortgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
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