Regular Joes

I believe its the year of the Regular Joe, who can be male or female. In my neighborhood, I've been noticing a nice trend - instead of a pack of 8 precious people who look  like they wouldn't talk to me if my hair was on fire, especially then, there are girls whose outfits are not quite perfect, men boisturously chatting, and like that. 

I'm also basing this thesis on the heat wave. Its been too hot to go out here so I'm doing numerous domestic routines, like listening to my cassette tapes and albums. Also cds. I got rid of two Lee Scratch Perry cds, but that has nothing to do with him being or not being a Regular Joe. Being a visionary and mentally interesting has exempted him from all theories for life. 

My albums, though....I just listened to a Grace Slick album. It was ok to hear once, but now I can get rid of it because I only have a certain number of pristine album slip covers, which of course I ordered from the collectors paradise, Bags Unlimited. She is singing.....about some various men. How cool they are, the fleeting nature of their beings, and oh their black eyes. Yeah I know those tiny black eyes. Like Andy Griffith in Face in the Crowd black eyes, cutting to the corner to check how their soulful seeming verbiage is working. 

Then on the album there is some extended jamming, better by far than most of the jamming I've been subjected to, but still jamming. Then she throws in, like, half a verse from "Go Ask Alice!" at the end to remind the live audience of a great song she wrote once. This is all because Grace Slick had to end up in Marin. Marin is not a place for regular Joes. Then she had to go to AA, but they were not bums or even probably sports bar alcoholics. They were French men playing covers of Robert Johnson songs, twitching their expression moodily. This was not a good way for Grace Slick wind up. I have never been welcome in Marin. I myself do not welcome Marin. This older gentleman in the park the other day, Sodu, reassured me that if I was in Big Sur or  Monterey or Marin for THREE MONTHS they would relax and be friendly, but I do not have that kind of TIME. 

So I am getting rid of the Grace Slick album, just throwing it out because I cannot sanction the use of an album slipcover on it and that's the only way I could donate it to a hapless trapped street vendor. Now next I put on a Loretta Lynn album. She had/has (dead yet?) a hellish life, due partly to the times and the good ole boys. But these Good Ole boys, though they drank and betrayed and promised and vanished and used everybody in sight at times, were still not French guys screwing up their face soulfully while they, yes, replicated a song by Robert Johnson, a late African American whose pain they all aspire to copy the tuneful part of. They were just assholes, or acting like assholes at the time. I am keeping that Loretta Lynn album.

Check out my new podcast, thanks to my audio partner David Hornbuckle:

Blowdryer86.podbean.com, Rob Shapiro and Jeff Dickinson are on it so far. 

EV Comix Opening

This image came out sideways, it's my favorite from my new comix zine, by jim smith - the Gallery Opening was a smash, Juggernut performed his winning number "A Woman's Ass!" on the sidewalk with loud Run DMC Era Beats, wearing a shoddy nut costume, then Moonshine sang the theme song to "Unicorn Planet", prefacing it with a folksy introduction. The children seemed a lot less scared of Moonshine, and even chanted the story and song along with him intermittently, in an entranced manner.
Mary Reilly, frequent blogger and zine contributer, read on the sidewalk, rapid poetry from her rapid mind, and Jen from the Fools did two soothing acoustic numbers. Touchingly, Jen looked at me like "Is it OK now?" and "Is one more number OK?" and for that 5 minute interval I was the administrator for a small patch of sidewalk. Now if I was in Art Graduate Theory I might say I was reappropriating public space, but the Grants just aren't rolling my way, people, so I won't bother to say that. Plus I would have to spell it first, and I can't use spell check effectively on here.

nothing is happening

Finally, a pet peeve, the base of all blogs. So I have been a bit down and susceptible to accepting bullshit, at least for a half a minute longer than usual. I was walking over to Sal's at 7th Street and Avenue A to get an Iced Coffee and sit in the park. This fellow B A was there, he had been there a couple of nights ago as well. Basically, he got a large settlement, about $100,000 or maybe more, for getting bashed by the police in the Tompkins Square Park riots in the 80s. Clayton Patterson taped some of the cops doing things on that riot day, and wouldn't give the video over to the Court or the NYPD, and as a result his footage gave a few people who got whomped big bucks in a settlement. Now B A has never thanked Clayton for this. What he does is stand on that corner every night, taking photos, especially happy if there's a brawl, and put them in the Villager. That's fine, but....

The other night I was taking my friend Popcorn somewhere for a snack and was jokily complaining about the short hours the street vendors keep, because I'd had a donation and had to leave it in there area. My friend Jim Flynn was there, a young guy who did this amazing book Stranger to the System letting people tell their own stories that lived in the park and the East River park. 

"I'm not responsible for that!" B A responded, meanly, energetically. I had become the man, because he has no funnybone and cannot perceive me clearly.

"I'm taking my friend Popcorn for a snack" I continued.

"Why don't you take her to Sal's?!" he queried rebelliously. Well Sals has been there forever and has egg creams and hot dogs and coffee and newspapers, but the point he was making was that I was just an upscale newcomer and Sal's was valid because the proprieter is an old man and from the old Polish days and has hung in there as the neighbhorhood transitioned into being one full of NYU students, small dogs, and small children. What a dick.

I could respond at length, but then it turns into "No, I"M more valid, or as valid! Oh, I know - I know about the longstanding egg cream vending!" and that is ridiculous in the middle aged. Anyway half of society is pretending they have it better than they do and the other half is competing to expound on their huge amount of bad breaks. 

So then anyway when I was walking past him by myself, well, first I  got my huge Iced Coffee, then I handed him a little card flyer for something I'm having, and it really is just something, a get together, a bunch of art, local kids, a remote genuis across the country represented in a very small manner due to a couple of drawings I fished out of a stack in his closet, and its going on for 6 fricking hours five blocks away. I also gave him my related zine.

"It's summer, but nothing is going on."

"My show is going on" I  pointed out.

"You know what I mean" B A replied. Yep, got ya. I am not going on. Nobody doing things on Thursday is going on. Everything that was going on was 20 years ago, probably male. I stupidly gave him a zine after he attempted to hand it back to me as if I were a common solicitor. Now why did I do that? That zine costs me a dollar per, much more in time and effort. He had already let me know I was nothing going on. I will NEVER get that paticular dollar back. I know that. He will never get back any kind of mojo back but middle aged complaining and I hope that Jim Flynn flies flies away safely to the land of current life. Go. Go now.