SERIOUSLY

No time for blogging now. I’m off to tour a chocolate factory.

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BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

The brand new Baz Lurhmann La Boheme on Broadway, sure. But also a visit to the tiny old Amato Opera’s The Barber of Seville for an authentically bohemian opera. Kind of the alpha and omega of New York opera at the moment. Our host S has already seen the Lurhmann thing and raved about it. What she doesn’t know is that we’re taking her to the Amato show when we go. Maybe she’ll read it here.

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SEVENTY-THREE WORDS THAT RHYME WITH “NO”

Adagio, aglow, allegro, apropos, banjo, beau, below, bestow, blow, Bordeaux, braggadocio, bravo, buffalo, bungalow, cameo, chapeau, crow, depot, domino, dough, embryo, falsetto, floe, folio, forego, foreshow, fresco, gazebo, gigolo, glow, grow, hello, hoe, imbroglio, impressario, indigo, Joe, know, low, mistletoe, moonglow, mot, mow, oboe, oh, Ontario, outgrow, overthrow, pistachio, potato, pro, radio, rainbow, roe, Romeo, seraglio, snow, sourdough, stiletto, studio, tableau, throw, tiptoe, tomato, tornado, torpedo, tremolo, tow, vertigo, volcano, whoa, woe, zero.

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THE DRAINPIPE BABY

I was in the shower but the water wasn’t draining fast enough. Again. I sighed. I got down on my hands and knees, the hot water needles bouncing off my pink back. I stuck my puckered fingers down the drain to try for a purchase on the slippery slime of Killer’s hairs that accumulates on the crossbars in the drainhole. There were more than usual, and they had combined, horrifically, with the various secretions and sheddings from my own body that they had strained from the water over time. The biological matter had incubated in the fluid runoff of hot showers, strands of aggressive DNA intertwining and recombining and then, finally, growing. I pulled out – delivered! – a drainpipe baby, the soap-scum slippery dark brother of the child we never wanted to have.

“Set me free,” the drainpipe baby demanded, “and I will fill this barren apartment with the slip slap of my drainpipe baby feet, and I will grow mighty over the years and support you when you retire.”

I flushed it down the toilet immediately. I’m already retired.

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THE RESONANCE OF MEATLOAF

Can meatloaf resonate? Can meatloaf contain the olifactory triggers to evoke not only the expected warmth of hearth and home, but something more? Can the flavor of a meatloaf plug its consumer into the interconnected roots of the dreamland structure that underlies our entire species on this planet? Can a meatloaf induce a trance-like state that allows one to peek beneath the floorboards, as Terrence McKenna once put it, at the intelligent machine works that drive us all? Can a meatloaf speak? Can a meatloaf sing the body electric? Can a meatloaf increase the uptake of certain chemical receptors in the brain to produce visions? Maps of landscapes above and below the ability of our conscious minds to apprehend? Can a meatloaf be tuned to the whisper of the spheres?

I just ate such a meatloaf.

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JERRY WEXLER

I like to stand, for a quiet moment, outside the Brill Building in New York City, the warm pressure of the wind of neon from Times Square at my back, and I think about the grand history of the American pop song and about rhythm and blues and about the birth of rock and roll. And I think about Jerry Wexler. I think of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, and I think about Ahmet Urtegun and Doc Pomus, too, but mostly I think about Jerry Wexler. I don’t know why. I always wonder whether Jerry Wexler mightn’t have had a taste for the honey-roasted hot nuts from the pushcarts on Broadway. I think about Jerry Wexler, triumphant, walking up Seventh Avenue after listening to something he’d just produced, some Ray Charles record, with a little wax paper bag of hot nuts and a glorious smile.

We’re going to New York City again, Killer and I, in a couple of weeks.

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