Mango Pudding Blues 3.0

2008 RESOLUTIONS

To make rabbit cacciatore. To finally and fully embrace my inner intellectual elitist euro-snob fuckbar and just be it. Oh, wait. I’m already doing that. To continue the total devotion to beauty in all its forms. To get somewhere musically. To work harder. More minimalism. Intelligence. To edit more fiercely my communication.

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Saturday, December 15, 2007

WHAT WE’LL BE READING ON THE BEACH IN THE MAYAN RIVIERA, MEXICO, DURING OUR CHRISTMAS VACATION

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century by Alex Ross. He’s the classical music critic of the New Yorker.

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño.

Both are hardcover, the schlepping of which on vacation is is against my policy, but Killer says I should get over it.

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CRAZY OSCILLATIONS

We are hung over, today at Mango Pudding Blues, the effects of a party at a neighbour’s house. And it’s not helping that our shuffling i-tunes has chosen to play Inspiration From a Vietnamese by Paul Motian, a free-jazz freakout with, we think, Keith Jarrett on piano.

But our mental state has called to mind a quote by Liang Jing, Chinese economist, that we read in the Globe and Mail business pages some time ago and have been meaning to share with you.

“The stock market will carry on with its craziness, whether it collapses, oscillates, or both at the same time – collapsing in crazy oscillations.”

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Thursday, December 13, 2007

PUSSY MOUSTACHE

She grew out her pubic hair because we read somewhere that big bushes were back in style for the first time since the 70s. This was a while back. She’s young, you know, so she wasn’t really aware at the time. Didn’t believe that girls ever just let it grow wild down there. I had to dig up some vintage porn on the net from back in the day to show her. The porny girls looked so real then! So anyway, she grows it for fashion’s sake, because her attitude is that fashion is fun and so why not? But after a while it got tired and she sheared it all back off into the little stripper-style ’do that’s more the norm nowadays and I picked up a wad of her curlies off the bathroom floor and held ‘em over my lip in a big, bushy Gene Shalit pussy moustache. And that was pretty funny.

And the young ones among you are sayin’, “Who’s Gene Shalit?”

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Tuesday, December 04, 2007

DEDICATION

We are dedicated to joy. We are dedicated to beauty. We are dedicated to the pure miracle of Sam Cooke. We are dedicated to the night. We wiggle our toes in the sand where the land meets the sea. We are inspired by the wonders wrought by human hands. We are firmly on the side of those who are against those who are against the pleasures of the senses. We believe in magic in a young girl’s heart. We eat truffles! We eat truffles! We are soldiers in the vast secret army of delight. We are foes of dreariness. We are wearing red nail polish on our toes. We are dedicated to vigorous sexual intercourse. We are dedicated to love. We are dedicated to awe. We are dedicated to you.

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Sunday, December 02, 2007

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN PT. 2

And, as professor Tolkien once said, there is much to be said about bad times, and not so much about good times, since conflict is the heart of stories.

And times, dear readers, have been very good here at Mango Pudding Blues for a long time. In spite of the bear market that has devoured all of the dizzying gains we made earlier this year on the stock market. In spite of the headache we’re nursing in the aftermath of the delightful corporate Christmas party we attended last night. In spite of the mysterious pink albino rat infestation of MPB headquarters. In spite of the unshakable existential despair that lies at the foundation of life, the times have been extraordinarily good.

And so next we will settle into our steel couch next to our gorgeous long-suffering girlie to watch Audrey Hepburn in Paris When it Sizzles, snacking on a very special truffled Salt Spring Island goat cheese, a nice veggie paté from Quebec and some Italian truffled olives. We’re bullish on truffles here at Mango Pudding Blues.

And on Wednesday next week you will find us in Montreal at the sleek ultra-modern condo of my brother and his boyfriend; Thursday we’re eatin’ at Jo-jo, a Jean-George Vongerichten spot, followed by Philip Glass performing selections from Einstein on the Beach at Carnegie Hall, then to drinks and bed at the very fucking cool Hudson Hotel. All part of the week-long K34 celebrations we’re undertaking for Killer’s birthday.

As we said, times are good.

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HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Thomas Pynchon once said of his famous status as a recluse that he is not, in fact, reclusive at all. “I talk to all sorts of people all the time,” he said to a reporter (we are, perhaps, paraphrasing, from memory), “I just don’t talk to you guys.”

And Jello Biafra, singer (?) of the California hardcore punk rock band the Dead Kennedys, vanished temporarily after the band broke up before finally resurfacing with, we think, an album called Lard. Of his time away from rock ’n’ roll, Biafra said that he’d spent a long time thinking about his next move, and how it had to in some way be better or bigger or at least a departure from what he was doing before, and yet one day it dawned on him that he just wasn’t doing anything at all, and that singing for a fast, mean punk rock band was what he wanted to do, because it was his thing, and that he was just gonna do his thing and not worry so much about how it fit in with whatever happened before.

And U2 were, once, desperately trying to transmogrify their sound in the style of David Bowie; throwing things out the window and trying not to repeat themselves. And they were hanging out with and being influenced by a DJ, Howie B, whom, we at Mango Pudding Blues are slightly hesitant to say, didn’t do them any favors. We’re sure he’s a nice fellow and whatnot, but really, what were they thinking? Anyway, one day they had arrived at the studio and were just jamming in the classic U2 style, perhaps fatigued of trying to find a new way of sounding. And Howie B hears them and says, hey, that’s really something, that thing you’re playing. What is that thing? And they stop and look at him and realize that the very thing they’re artistically trying to flee is, in fact, the thing they do best. The thing they were put on the planet for. They were born to rock and roll.

And we at Mango Pudding Blues have always been nearly freakishly dedicated to the moment. And we at Mango Pudding Blues are gathering ourselves like storm clouds on the horizon. And we at Mango Pudding Blues will lead you out of the desert. And we at Mango Pudding Blues have no idea where the time went.

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