A HIGH-RISE MEGAFARM IN ROTTERDAM

Not to get all Biz Stone on you, but we’re bullish on the closed-loop high-rise farm idea. Once we perfect it, we can put it on Silent Running-style space ships and off we go. Nice.

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WHAT WE ARE SPARING YOU

Here at Mango Pudding Blues we spend our days, lately, clenched in combat with our very darkest demons. We are, of course, losing the fight. Always losing the fight.

Nevertheless, it can’t be said that we don’t have you in mind. We are sparing you the details. What we are sparing you is the ream of loathsome hopeless introspection that runs through us as we bear the blows. What we are sparing you is our infinite cyclic figuring and refiguring of the equations and algorithms that measure the arc of our life and its interaction with the fractal chaos of the lives around it. What we are sparing you are our lengthy ledgers of detailed and obsessive accounts we keep of our many shortcomings.

Well, anyway; in the musical mailbag today we have an item from a reader in New York who not only combed the back alleys of the peer-to-peer internet looking for Which Side of the Bed, but who combed E-Bay for a copy of the soundtrack to One Night In Heaven, a dreadful-sounding 80s film, which contains the song. We are impressed by the resourcefulness of our readers. Also in the musical mailbag was a note from Smack in Indonesia, who was surprised to hear that Gamelan is played here in good ’ol North America. Not only played, Smack, but listened to incessantly in the old Sony Walkman by us as we walk around the river paths here, unemployed, nervous, playing the same two songs over and over as we try to figure out their structure.

In other music news, we came across a copy of Bob Dylan’s 1974 Blood On The Tracks yesterday. We had long forgotten this record, which we had owned, in our youth, on vinyl. We slipped it on, not keen, thinking we’d listen to one song, and found ourselves fully transfixed by the harrowing insistent genius-level artistry that burns so hot that we almost couldn’t take it and wanted to turn it off but couldn’t stop listening. Particularly in a song called The Idiot Wind, ol’ Bob attacks with his keening, cracking voice and embittered lyrics, swooping like a broken kite between the transcendent and the awful, sounding so raw and venomous that it’s clear that he doesn’t care. Whew. Understand that we’re not recommending this to anyone. But if you’re strong and you’re ready, go find it.

Also, finally, this; Sorry about the Archives page. We have no idea what’s gone wrong with it, but we’ll fix it later.

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SAVED

At Mango Pudding Blues we are sometimes accused of employing hyperbole in our little dispatches. But our frantic further research confirmed that there was nothing even slightly hyperbolic about our assertion, here, the other day, that the song Which Side of the Bed by the English Beat simply cannot be had. It no longer exists. Gone.

Lucky for us, we have a friend with a long memory, good back-up habits and a very large hard drive. And so our beloved rarity has been reunited with us, and we are ecstatic. Those of you who have been combing the back alleys of the peer-to-peer internet on our behalf may now let up.

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THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS

We’re in the suburbs one night, coming home after seeing a movie at one of those noisy fat suburban movie bunkers. Killer is driving. Up next to us at a red light pulls this vivid yellow wedge of a car on fat wheels, throbbing with contrapuntal oscillations of its mighty baritone engine and the phat dope beats from its stereo. A Ferrari. A Delorean. A Lotus. An Apollo 440. I don’t know. Ferrari, I think. It looks like it’s moving even though it has stopped. It’s vibrating as though it just beamed in from another dimension. It sits coiled like the machinery of night next to our sensible Saturn SL-1 four-door sedan, the cheapest car money can buy.

The light turns green and Killer fucking guns it, pops the clutch and we go off squealing, the G-force of lift-off pushing my shriek back into my mouth, my mouth back into my head and my head back into my seat. The Killer, neatly dressed and pressed in modern grays, a professional with an office and a briefcase who is not given to excesses of any kind, who enjoys wine and classical music and holds a couple of degrees and wears little librarian glasses, is whooping and shaking her fist at the rearview mirror, yelling, “Eat my dust, motherfucker!”

And the Vin Diesel-alike is eating our dust, crippled by the element of surprise. When he finally hits it to catch up with us, the yellow wedge just floats in gracefully next to our straining screeching little car. He looks over, gape-mouthed, incredulous, hands and eyebrows saying, “the fuck you doin’?” and then he really hits it and simply vanishes over the horizon, driving so fast that we appear to be standing still.

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