New York City was covered with a thin layer of snow when I exited my apartment this morning and hit the quiet streets to get coffee and juice. It was 21 degrees in Central Park; that's what they said; it didn't feel like 21 in the street; no, it didn't feel cold at all. But then I was born in a hot climate; cold doesn't bother me like it bothers most people.
There is a dove outside my window calling in the still morning--looking for love on such a cold morning? What's a damn dove doing coo-ing this deep into winter? A nut dove? I thought doves flew south for the winter.
I don't mind the winter at all; snow doesn't bother me either; the thicker it is the quieter the city becomes. This being a Sunday, she's really quiet this morning. Do we think of our cities as female? I've never heard New York City referred to as a "he." We call our cars "shes"; and our ships at sea "shes"; even our cigarette boats are "shes." We even call our guns "shes." "Take ole Betsy thar, she's shot many a revenooer in his snoopin' ass." The big bomber planes in WWII were named with women's names. The B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was named after the pilot's mother, Enola Gay, and that dude just died this year and went to his grave saying he never regretted using his mother's name to turn 300,000 innocent men, women, and children into melted blobs and film negatives--burned 'em alive! Ah what a mother! Enola Gay. Sounds like a dumbass hillbilly name to my prejudiced way of interpreting names.
So it's a quiet snowy Sunday in New York City, crispy cold, just the way it's fun, my apartment toasty, the sky is grey--snow lets the mind go on sleigh rides around the wanderings and wonderments of the current existential existence, all accompanied by a cooing dove. I should go up on my building's roof and shoot some photos--and maybe that dove.
How 'Bout a Cutesy-Wootsie Snow Poem (as selected by Helen Highman-Klein LaCloos, thedailygrowlerpoetryeditor)
White Snow
Helen H. Moore
The snow is white and clean.
It makes a lovely scene.
It covers cars, and trees, and streets,
and makes the world go "hush".
It looks so very pretty -
until it turns to slush!
How 'Bout One of "Our" Snow Poems (a la Helen Moore)
The snow is brown and yellow
As though the Snow queen's peed
And done that other deed, too, whew!
It covers sidewalks, cars, trucks, such foul slush,
So if it's yellow, let it mellow,
But if it's brown, flush it on down.
Elmer Snowedin
Disclaimer: We really do love good poetry here at The Daily Growler--though you couldn't prove it by some of the poetry our poetry editrix comes up with.
Helen H-K LaCloos replies: "F all you all!"
Eric Clapton's "Crossroads" PBS Extravaganza
I watched it. Some of the performers amazed me. Like Vince Gill. That dude is a "true" American music dude--marvelous band behind him, too--though I think it was a pick-up band of studio all-stars because the piano player was backing every "star" lamebrain Eric chose as his kind'a best guitar players--B.B. King was there--but he was the only black I think....
I know. I'm so damn biased. Why does it bother me so to see these Brit copycat fops getting so much reward and celebration and glorification by my own people?
OK, I admit, Jeff Beck is a weird guitar player but he ain't no Jimi Hendrix. He ain't even a Roy Buchanan.
Eric Clapton said nobody had made the guitar sound like Jeff Beck--he didn't mention Roy Buchanan.
Willie Nelson was there. Now Willie's a champ with me because he's so fucking real; so original; I mean he's Texian to the country core but he's elevated himself above categorization--and the way he manipulates his guitar--fuck Jeff Beck; how does Willie get that sound out of his old piece-of-shit guitar? But I have to admit, I did watch Jeff Beck and did enjoy it--and his latest piece-of-ass underaged chile bass player, a chick--could'a been his daughter though by the way he was carrying on about her, I figured he was banging her and helping her career--and she was cool and bass-knowledgeable, though what she played was simple--it was hot because it was a "girl" doing it, a child-looking girl, the kind rockers love, so that's why I just figured he was banging her.
Or where was Buddy Guy? Is he dead? Or where was Chuck Berry? He's still alive, though he plays smart-ass dumb and lousy these old achin' days. Or where was Ike Turner?
Eric's all-white guitar players! One Brit bastard after Johnny Winter had cooled their Brit asses out the back window started hollerin' "Enough blues; I'm tired of the blues, aren't you?" The audience responded to this fool with a groan. He continued with his foolish emceeing, "Come on, how 'bout some real NASCAR...." He was introducing Vince Gill and then Gill comes out and does a fuckin' rockin' blues.
It embarrasses me to see Americans kissing Eric Clapton's ass all over the god-damn music world. Why do these Brits so intrigue white people? Do whites still feel obedient to "mother" England or something? Like how did the Beatles lure in so many Amurican kids with their white church-modal wee-willie-winkle harmless rock? I'll give you, the more I read about John Lennon I feel he can be excused but not McCartney, Harrison, and Ringo Starr! At best they were 3rd-rate musicians. Look at Sir Paul's embarrassing effort at proving he was a great classical composer! Did you ever hear that shit he wrote using the London Philharmonic? Did you know anybody with the bucks can hire the London Phiharmonic to do their music?
I mean, there are Brits all over my life; on teevee: hell a Brit fop gets to pick who our next lamebrained girl and boy-ie-woyey singers are gonna be--Carrie Underwood is so lame--anybody noticed that?
And on the really cornball Dancing With the Stars there is a Brit fop judge there, too. And how embarrassing are these movie-star dancers, like plumpish but delightfully dumb Marie Osmond, for instance (she has eight children by tons of men some of whom she may have married--remember the topless photo of her with her rock boyfriend that one time years ago?), and her using every attention-getting trick in the book every time she and her overcooked brother, Donnie, get a chance to hog a teevee screen. Has-beens looking for comeback opportunities.
The Geico gecko has an Aussie accent. Television commercials are full of actors and actresses with Brit accents. We white folks love the Brits. We think their accents are cute, I suppose. It's something I can only understand through whites being racists. That's certainly why a Brit wimp like Eric Clapton can get his own PBS extravaganza and through it tell me how he and his Brit buddies know more about and play better American music than Americans do.
Muddy Waters's last harmonica player, white boy, Jerry Purfoy, said all the years he worked with Muddy he didn't make enough to really get by on. Only after Muddy died and Eric Clapton hired Jerry did Jerry say he finally made big bucks playin' the blues. Isn't that a cryin' shame, Americans?
Los Lobos was there and they kicked some serious ass--made the Brits sound like circus clowns.
The PBS money-grubbers stated that Eric Clapton had taken blues and folk and r and b and formed a new kind of rock music from it--"Get outta heah," I'm growling like a maniac at the teevee, "Eric Clapton is a cub scout compared to even Bob Dylan, folks."
I'd rather hear Bern Nix play the guitar. You ever heard Bern Nix play the guitar?
There's Bern. He's one of the coolest cats I've ever had the privilege of knowing for a short spell. It's been 2o + years since I've seen Bern, but, hey, he's still a cool cat. Plays the guitar with a lot more creativeness than Eric Clapton--Bern, however, wasn't on any of Eric's fame lists for his Crossroads affair--you see, Eric covered Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" back in his mimicking days and that's why he calls this concert his Crossroads--
As I've told you all before, Percy Mayfield sang, "Dirty Work at the Crossroads," which brought Robert Johnson's little story of how to play your instrument better than anyone else; how you gotta meet the Devil down at the Crossroads--which, like I said, was in Mississippi, down there around where the Yellow Dog crossed the Southern Cross--down that dirt road there--see--you can see it clearly in the full moonlight.
thegrowlingwolf
for The Snowbound Daily Growler
No comments:
Post a Comment