1.  Lisa

“Well, he has great hands,” is what she told her friends when they asked why she put up with it.  The endless weekends at the bar, watching the band abrade through yet another jangled song.  The long Tuesdays and Thursdays on the plaid wool couch in the garage, feeling the nubbles scratch through her tights as the boys tried to pull together a hopeless tangle of chords.  He liked it when she came to the practices, for some reason, and so she went, sitting dutifully on the couch (though the iron bars of the pull-out bed pushed at her through the disintegrating cushion foam, though there were winter nights when the snow-bit air soaked through the cracks in the walls, and numbed her feet through three layers of socks.)  Sometimes, she did homework; sometimes, she braided her hair into a hundred tiny snakes; and always, she tried not to flinch at the countless moments when they lost the plot and the music clattered to the floor.

There were other things, too.  He wouldn’t go to any of Donna’s parties, because Donna’s boyfriend “wore polo shirts.”  Every week at the end of their shift, Donna asked her over, and every week, it got more awkward for Lisa to say no.  It was starting to drive a wedge.  Finally, one rain-strewn Friday evening, Lisa skipped the gig and went to Donna’s by herself.  She spent half the night shoving an increasingly drunk Tony Montello off, culminating in a terrible kitchen scene where he ripped the collar of her blouse (and it was a lace collar, too.)  Panicked, she called T.J., and he came to pick her up.

He had a little pea-green hatchback, and as it zoomed up, she could tell he’d already pounded the better half of a six-pack.  His eyes, hooded and strangely pale, had a dangerous glint.  He hadn’t wanted to leave the after-party early; he hadn’t wanted her to come here in the first place.  She realized she could already hear him; she already knew everything he’d say.  She hesitated a moment, shifting her weight onto her left stiletto, almost enjoying the way it strained her ankle, the pain traveling all the way up her calf. She looked at his cheekbones, preternaturally high and wide, gleaming in the streetlights, and walked towards the car.

He didn’t get out, just looked at her.  She was conscious, suddenly, of her torn collar, the mascara streaks that had settled beneath her eyes.

“What happened?”

“I told you what happened.”

“Yeah.”  He paused a moment, raking her in.  “Can’t blame him.  You look like a skag.”

“Fuck you.”

“Was that skirt for Donna?  Or did you want him to rip your shirt down?  I bet you did–I know you.”

She kicked the side of the hatchback, leaving a satisfying dent.  “Fuck off, T.J.”

Every step she took into the cold concrete cut into her feet, the cheap leather rubbing her ankles raw, the impact shooting from her heels to the base of her spine.  A winter’s hammer, drumming out the rhythm of her sins, measuring them against her fogged breath.  He idled along beside her for a few blocks, and then took off.  At best, she thought, a token effort.  When she got home (and how it felt, to peel her shoes away from her blisters, the sticky sound as the leather separated reluctantly from her flesh), she resolved never to talk to him again.

But her hand, a treacherous bird, flew at the phone when it rang the next morning; her shoulder meeting her ear to cradle the receiver between them, to listen not so much to what he said as how he said it.

Donna thought she was an idiot, and said so.  But Donna didn’t know, not really.  In her room (redone in dusty pinks and grays just last year, with satin sheets to keep her face from creasing in her sleep, her hair from shredding itself against the pillows), he maneuvered her hips, pulling her closer to him, his fingers so long they almost met across her belly.  His hands, large and callused, so warm it seemed as if they generated their own heat.  Their roughness against her skin, with the sheets smooth beneath her–it almost made it all worth it.  She wondered at herself sometimes, practicing telling her story to an imaginary audience to see what it sounded like: My name is Lisa Fleming.  I am a 24-year-old waitress.  I’m dating an asshole for the sake of his fucking hands.

In her more lucid moments, she decided it was insane.  She’d free herself of it all–his strange cop father, his eyes following her above his oddly oily mustache; the eight-hour stints at half-empty clubs, tossing mike stands across shoulders still sore from a full day of slinging seafood platters.  T.J.’s face, so empty when he came, alien in its beautiful planes and grotesque proportions.  She’d leave this little Pennsylvania mill town, go to one of those postcard cities, like London or Paris . . . But then he’d call, and again and again, she found herself saying yes, pulled along in the slipstream of his will, his certainty that she would be at the show, and he would come over afterwards, and she would make him breakfast, and so on, and on, and on.  Standing in her tiny kitchen in one of his old T-shirts, scrambling eggs for him at the stove, she would take deep breaths, forcing herself to notice the medicinal scent of the minced parsley, to listen to the roiling burps of the coffee maker, and she’d promise herself that this was the last time.

But it never quite was.

And then, one day, something different.  She’d skipped practice this time–she was getting better at that, she’d noticed, which was making Donna somewhat hopeful–and so she hadn’t heard the news.  Instead, she’d slept in, enjoying the sprawl of an empty bed, the cocoon-like stillness of a space occupied only by herself.  And then he came in, face glowing like the ice rings of Saturn.

“What’s wrong?”

He brandished a newspaper.  “Look at this.”

In 15-point type of the front page of the Daily: “Local Band on Hot Track.”  And a picture beneath it of T.J. at the keyboard, wearing that stupid leather jacket and gripping a guitar, every bit the abstracted rebel artist.

“Do you know what this means?”

“That you were in the paper?  They should have put your band name in the headline.”

“No, stupid.  Don’t you get it?  There’s going to be an A & R man at the gig tonight.  This could be the break we’ve been waiting for!”

“Oh.  Well–that’s great.  Shouldn’t you, um, be getting ready, then?”

He looked deflated.  “What’s your damage, Lisa?”

She looked at his hands, clenching at his sides.  There was a pit at the center of her stomach, hard and cold.  She tried to dissolve it, to smile for him, but her face wouldn’t stretch.

She swallowed.  “No damage.  I’m happy for you.”

“Well, let’s celebrate then.”

He raked his hands through her hair, and she found herself unbending.  The pit was still there, but it was getting soft at the edges.  “Maybe.”

“Come on.”  He was hard to resist when he was like this–open, eager, like a little boy.  And so she went.

When she awoke, it was close to seven.  She knew his sound check was at seven-thirty; even if she woke him this minute, he’d be late.  And yet she hesitated.  She’d begged off the going to the show earlier, hardly knowing herself why she lied.  And now, watching him, she knew.

She’d never be rid of him unless he wanted to be rid of her.  He wasn’t the type–even if he found somebody else (and he would, especially with her missing gigs), he’d try to keep her in the picture, mollifying her with little gifts and soft words.  At first she’d almost liked this possessiveness, but now it scared her.  She’d been saying yes for so long.  She could see herself saying it, again and again, becoming smaller and smaller.  Disappearing into him.

She would, she realized, have to do something unforgivable.  And so she slowly rose from the bed, being careful not to jar him, and slipped into her clothes.  And left.  It was 7:10 p.m.  Drifts of maple leaves had pasted themselves to the streets, and she kicked through them happily, never minding the finish on her suede boots.  It was a wet Pennsylvania fall, but she could feel spring in her bones.

Timber Boss II: On the Log–the deluxe cut.

I don’t know why this is the most important August song, but it is, because it is full of the theme of this summer, which is white trash.  The thing that nobody mentions about being white trash is that it is awesome, because it is all about beauties that are very fleeting.  13-year-old girls with perfect faces that will be ordinary and swollen next year; Cheeto dust dissolving in brilliant orange rings in an oily slick of swimming hole water; picnics in the middle of blooming weed meridians.  Dirty feet and bum parties on bank parking lot lawns.  Bruised peaches and smashed blueberries getting all your papers wet.  What did you need your papers for anyway?

The other thing that nobody mentions about being poor is that you have to look at a lot more buildings than rich people.  Rich people only have to look at skyscrapers and houses; poor people have to look at the back of 7-11s all the time.  And other buildings, like apartment complexes where all the dumpsters are locked.  And franchises.  It’s a cheap world of stucco and plastic, and it’s so ugly, and the lighting is bad so you have to look at it.  But that’s what makes it beautiful, too–it’s a world where everything is disposable, so everything is free.  You can smash up your whole damn house if you want to, because it’s not actually your house and because none of your things are that nice.  You can throw away anything.

There’s an obscene luxury to buying single-serving cigarettes in plastic cases; it’s the kind of thing that only a madman or a king–or a poor–would do.  When you give up, when you accept your bad teeth and cut-up hands, you can smile at anybody, you can pick anything up.  You don’t worry about what they’ll think of you; you worry about what you want and if you like it.  And if you can’t afford anything, you want everything, it all gets leveled out and no one thing is more particularly desirable than any other thing.  It all falls into the category of “not yours,” which makes it easier to let go of.  That is the Zen of poor–a cut crystal brandy snifter becomes equal to a beach house.  If you’re middle-class, you might save up for brandy snifters; you might deny yourself simpler pleasures so that you can obtain this stupid glass set that you’ll never enjoy drinking out of, because you’ll be thinking about what it costs and what if it breaks and so on.  The unobtainable fantasy tastes much sweeter than the achievable goal.

“Sweet Virginia” is a great song about drugs.  It’s a fantasy about being very strung out but sort of comfortably country about it.  When you’re tired and strung out, it never feels good, but in retrospect you can cast a glow over it.  Poverty is not actually all that freeing or wonderful, but the idea of poverty is intoxicating when you have access to food and shelter.  Sometimes I think human society is just one giant D&D game, a bunch of nerds sitting around and pitting their fantasies against each other.  When you consider how the world is just some stuff that some people made up, this begins to seem less implausible.

(”Time to have earthenware pots in our early human culture.”  “Why?”  “Because I think they’re cool.”  “Okay, I hope somebody writes a textbook about this, and then another person can make it a choice on a multiple-choice test for some kids who are just sitting around.”  “Sounds great.”)

2. Embrace Chicken Fandom.

They're coming for you, but they don't know why.

Why chickens?  What are they up to?  Why are people obsessed with chickens?  Why am I obsessed with chickens?  All they do is root stuff out.  All they do is taste delicious.

It seems to me like if you like chickens enough you can make your life like a storybook all the time.  I don’t know if that’s a good goal, but I have it.

3.  Wonder What “You Never Even Called Me by My Name” Is About.

I mean, I love this song and all.  Not sure what it’s about, though.

4. Ride the Bus

Everybody on the bus is fantastic.  I recently started a new bus route and already have many regulars that I am consumed with observing.  They are:

1. The lazy anorexic.
2. The Dutch goth.
3. Face War.

The lazy anorexic is a very small, frail type who frequently wears her hair in a complicated braid bun.  She mitigates this with gold platform fuck-me sandals, but further complicates things by wearing many tiny children’s sweaters (no doubt purchased at Baby Gap, for real.)  I do not mean to mock her; of course it is horrible that she is anorexic but my job is to report the news, and that is what she is up to.  We both have poor circulation and give each other the side eye when others complain about the bus being too hot.

The best thing about the lazy anorexic, besides the fact that she has a very mannered and disdainful way of holding herself, is that every day, she rides the bus from the downtown Bellingham station to the downtown library–a mere eight blocks or so.  Why does she do this?  Does she have a bus pass, or is she paying a dollar a pop for her three-minute morning ride?  Does she ride the bus back to the station?  Every time she gets off, she gives me a dark and flirtatiously defiant look, as if she knows what I am thinking but rejects my peasant’s inclinations towards thrift.  I think she is very glamorous.

So sulky.

The Dutch goth has that broad Dutch bone structure that can be so pretty, and a wool coat always and sunglasses always, and he works at the mall, and he hates his life even though he has everything.  He doesn’t even know, and he’s wasting his life riding the bus to the mall when he could be brooding around Copenhagen, wasting his life in a much more Continental way.  Anna and Nora and I have a plan to ride the bus with him all the time and give him a lot of side eye; he would not be able to handle strong flirting because he is so death-oriented and takes himself so seriously, and he would probably get very upset and then we could laugh and laugh.  He is a Dull Boy, and no mistake.  Take off your coat, dull boy!

Fuck you, I have a peacock.

Face War is an older woman, generous of frame and tall like an overgrown myrtle bush, and she likes to yell.  She is like a matriarchal Greek goddess, except for being poor and yelling.  There are all these lines Renaissance-ish/new Romantic poetry about Juno’s wide white brow and so on, and I think of this when I look at this lady’s face.  If she relaxed her face, it would be beautiful–it has very clean, broad lines, like something drawn, and she also has what the poet’s called “cow eyes,” like they are always referring to “cow-eyed Hera/Juno,” and they mean it as a compliment, even though it sounds like the worst, but if you have looked at cows much (as I have), you know that cows have lovely big eyes.  But this lady is always moving her face around and yelling, so that is why I call her Face War–if she would CALM DOWN, she would have a pleasant face, but she seems intent on ruining it.  And she moves like somebody who thinks their body is an axe instead of a body–like she flings it around hilariously, but she is not trying to be hilarious and reckless–she really just does not think about it as anything visual.  I think it’s more of an instrument for her (for yelling with.)

Rod Stewart is important for helping you transition from winter to spring, because (like early spring), he is sort of sad but real into stuff.  It’s like how everything is very grey and brown right now, but there are still lupines poking up from under the dead blackberry leaves.  His songs are usually about relationships not working out, but instead of seeming sad about this he seems to feel melancholy but also hella angry and relieved.  Unlike my winter friend Bob Seger, Rod Stewart doesn’t want any of his girlfriends back.  He just wants to tell them about how they hurt his feelings and he is so over it, which seems like a healthy reaction.  I feel like if I dated Rod Stewart he would put up with my crap to a certain extent because he would be confused, but then one night he would go out with his girlfriends and he would describe my behavior to them and they would be like, “Oh girl,” and then he would decide that maybe he should dump me and they would agree and get him real whipped up about it and they would drink so many Cosmos and trash my name and then he would come home and I would be lying around in a white chair drinking melted chai tai ice cream and pushing on my cuticles with a file and he would say, “It’s over, dude,” and I would be like, “Whatever, get out of my house,” and he would be like, “It’s my house, weirdo,” and then I would throw a heavy thing through the bank of windows behind us and it would shatter and he wouldn’t say anything. And then I would call my friend Pablo and we would go on a road trip and Rod Stewart would write a song about it called “The Last Window,” or something.

2.  Look at pictures of horses on the Internet.

HORSES

One thing that you might have forgotten about, due to winter and tromping around and feeling pathetic, is that it is important to be proud, like a horse.  This country America is a very beautiful country, which you might not be proud of because of politics or personal problems that you have.  But you should probably be proud of America because it is an exotic place with many horses and grasslands in it.  Maybe you should put on some clean clothes and go fight someone in a field instead of feeling sorry for yourself all the time.  Maybe you should oil up your limbs and grow your hair out and run around being spooked by things and also disdaining bridles.  Have you ever read the book “Black Beauty”?  That’s a hell of a book.  Take a page from it–go eat an apple and kick somebody’s uncle in the head.

3.  Walk by some lakes or streams but not ponds.

Ponds are stagnant.  What lakes have are birds and what streams have are plants that the water pushes back, but it doesn’t uproot them.  You can look at the tendrils of the plants floating and bobbing in the water, and you can also see some rocks.  Maybe you’ll get excited by some rose quartz and bring it home.  Big mistake–nobody is ever impressed by rose quartz.  Better throw it back in the stream and/or river.  Blue rocks are good, even though they are common.

4.  Learn how to frame pictures.

I bet you have a bunch of damn posters lying around your house in disarray.  Maybe you should pretend to care about life and frame them so that they look less dumb.  You can use an X-acto knife to cut the mats and you can also use that to make little cut marks all over your house.  Do this on the underside of things, so that nobody else knows about it.  You will know about it and it will make you feel as if you are the true master of your environment, a wizard unto your own furniture, and that pride will translate into an increased self-confidence that will have you winning over strangers and confidants by the dozen.  Never tell them about the source of your power; they wouldn’t understand.

5.  Listen to “Thunder Road” over and over again.

“Thunder Road” is a song that Bruce Springsteen wrote about getting his high school girlfriend to do something.  You probably think that Bruce Springsteen is dumb, and he is, but you should love him for being a Dutch/Wop American who has felt some fucking emotions in his time.  If you don’t believe me, listen to any of his songs.  Anyway, “Thunder Road” is a good song because it is about overcoming obstacles like porches and not being good-looking in order to be in a car.  Being in a car is a very American thing to do, so if you want to actually understand your personality you should probably do this as often as possible.  You don ‘t even have to buy a car if you are afraid of fossil fuels; just rent one and then get in it and then make a turn and then make another turn and then get on a straight road and then see how the wind smells.  You may end up seeing a number of towns, or better yet, seeing them vanish behind you.

6.  Plant a magnolia tree.

I like magnolia trees because they have no leaves when they’re in bloom, just flowers.  Pink ones are preferable but white ones will do.  If you do this I will walk by your house A LOT.

7.  Listen to Nick Cave’s non-ballad-y albums constantly.

I feel like if I went to Nick Cave’s house, it would be similar to going to PeeWee Herman’s house, in that all the objects in the house would be animate.  It would be dissimilar to going to PeeWee Herman’s house in that all the objects would have bone-chillingly cool personalities, so you’d feel way too intimidated to get particularly intimate with them.  The only friend you’d have would be the back porch, where there would be a lot of broken green chairs and you could maybe whittle on them a little.

8.  Get in fights.

You’ve probably never been in a fight.  Maybe you’d be really good at it?  Maybe somebody could knock the books out of your hands and then you could take off your shirt and go into a hayloft and just hit somebody for a while?  Maybe there would be lots of dust rising around you, catching in the sunlight coming through the gaps between the boards of the barn, and he’d catch you a good one, right under the jaw, and your teeth would crunch a little and you’d nip your tongue slightly and the blood would fill your mouth in a gush of copper and lime, and you would feel strong and angry and you’d wrest that other guy to the floor and pound on his ears until he yelled and then you’d both collapse and look at the ceiling, and the blue sky behind it, and all of your limbs would feel tired and full?

9.  Watch “The Dogfather.

Just do it.  How else are you supposed to find out whether or not your dog is actually a father, and vice-versa?

10.  Learn falconry and/or make a hammock out of a barrel.

Realistically, you probably want an army of falcons.  Barring that, wouldn’t you like to have a beautiful barrel hammock that you strung between two birches?  You could lie in it and think about colors like ochre and slate, or you could drink mint tea in it and throw the ice at all the handsome people who might be playing badminton in white clothes nearby.  They would get angry at you and then you could run and run and run into the woods and go hide under some maidenhair ferns and then get up and keep going.  They’ll never catch you now.

Seriously, WHAT is Taboo up to?

Lately, I’ve been pausing in porticos, haunted by a particular line from a particular song.  The ditty in question, “Boom Boom Pow,” was released by the redoubtable Black Eyed Peas more than a year ago, yet certain peculiarities of its lyrical cadences still manage to wash up upon the shores of my mind, as clear and startlingly whole as twisted lengths of beach glass.

There are at least a dozen turns of phrase from “Boom Boom Pow” that reoccur to me at odd times throughout the day.  As I stand in my poorly-lit kitchen, washing the perpetually stained white plastic cutting board, I reflect upon how it truly is “next level visual shit,” at least insofar as its lack of visual appeal seems to be indicative of some sort of advance in ugliness.  When I walk the broad leafy avenues of my small suburb, dodging inchworms like a ninja, I feel strong and fluid, as if I “got that rock and roll/that future flow.”  In moments of deep frustration, I’ve been known to give my boyfriend an eldritch look, attempting to settle the matter at hand by declaring that “this beat be bumping bumping/this beat goes boom boom.”

Perhaps most damningly, I find this injunction by Fergie–”People in the place/If you wanna get down/Put your hands in the air/will.i.am drop the beat now”–to be highly stirring.  It’s not the words themselves that move me; rather, it is the absolute conviction with which Fergie wails them.  When you hear it, it’s nigh impossible not to respond.  After all, whoever you are, you are probably a “people” in a “place.”  You might not feel like getting down at the moment, but certainly you must have experienced the desire to get down at one point or another.  It seems like little enough to ask that you put your hands in the air, especially if, in return, will.i.am is willing to drop a beat for you.

I should clarify here that I do not go out of my way to experience “Boom Boom Pow.”  Oh, I watched the video[1] when it came out, and I heard the strange snippets of it that accompanied various ads for several months after its release (let no one accuse the Black Eyed Peas of meeting a licensing opportunity that they didn’t like.)  But I own no Black Eyed Peas albums; I don’t listen to Top 40 radio stations; and I usually refrain from attending dance parties or clubs.  In other words, I do not generally lead a Black Eyed Peas-centric lifestyle.

(Leading a Black Eyed Peas-centric lifestyle.)

And yet I thrall to the “space ship zoom,” “the boom boom bap.”  I am the “chicken” who is “jacking” Fergie’s “swagger,” I am the “into the future cybertron.”  The hold that “Boom Boom Pow” has taken over my imagination is so strong that I fear it may only be broken by my demise.  Months may go by without my hearing the song, yet my dreams teem with sinister whispers, adjuring me to “get that base overload,” to taste “that digital spit.”  It’s gotten to the point that the mere sight of the word “boom” in a comics panel causes me to blush wildly.

But the symptom that’s worried me most deeply in recent times is my obsession with a certain key phrase.  By far the single most baffling line in a song full of them, this line resonates with intrigue, like one of Blake’s more mysterious incantations.  Observe!

Beats so big I’m stepping on leprechauns

Shitting on you with the Boom Boom.

Leaving aside the degradation implicit in this announcement (for now), we are still faced with an array of questions.  For instance, just on a basic linguistic level, what does this statement mean?  Who is the “I” in the song, and who is the subject?  Is the shitter of “boom booms” the line’s singer, will.i.am, or is it the song itself?  Where in time and space is the protagonist located, that it affords him the opportunity to injure leprechauns?  Does “Boom Boom Pow” take place in our reality, or is its setting a more mystical realm, like, say, Ireland?  More importantly, what is it about the size of these “beats” that allows the speaker to step on leprechauns?  I myself have been in the presence of many beats before, and no matter how big they got, they were unable to physically impair the least of God’s life forms.  None of this information seems consistent with Western epistemology as we know it.

In order to understand this line then, we must make a few decisions.  Firstly, we must assume that the world of “Boom Boom Pow” is not our world; rather, it is a shadow realm, in which fantasy and the forces of faery reign.  Secondly, we must discard the theory that will.i.am is speaking in the voice of his own experience; rather, he is speaking as the personification of the song itself.  He is constructing for us a meta-narrative, wrought from the mythos of his performance even as it occurs. “Sing to me, O Muse!” indeed.

Nonetheless, we are still left with the problem of how to resolve the Leprechaun Ambiguity.  Although we can all agree that leprechauns caper through the world of “Boom Boom Pow,” we still don’t know why it is that beats are so dangerous to them.  After some fevered pondering, I do have a somewhat sketchy theory.

It is my belief that the various beats of which “Boom Boom Pow” is composed have certain uncanny powers.  Likely, we will never know the full scope of them, but the Peas provide us with a few tantalizing hints.  We know, for instance, that the beats can make “them girls go apeshit, uh.”  That this piece of data is provided by the group’s scariest member, Taboo, gives it automatic gravitas–but might this fact itself offer a clue?  That which is taboo is that which we are forbidden from speaking of–yet the taboo always manages eke out a bubbling, seething existence beneath the thin veneer of our civilization.  So–which taboo does Taboo’s assertion bravely speak to?  Why, none other than that most taboo of taboos–raw, unbridled female sexuality!

(That which is Taboo.)

Given the above, we can safely say that these beats the Peas speak of are incredibly powerful.  According to apl.de.ap, the beats have even allowed him to be “sexing ladies extra longer.”  Most likely, he is not referring to the practice of determining ladies’ genders (so beloved by agriculturalists!), but rather to servicing the beats-enhanced sexualities of various women.  Therefore, it is not too ridiculous to suppose that the beats possess some sort of chthonic Goddess energy, which brings me to my point: I contend that the beats are so potent that they are capable of embiggening will.i.am to giant scale, allowing him to crush leprechauns as if they were ants!

Please take a moment to recover.

Are you feeling better?  Good.  Gather your strength, ye readers, as there is still one more vagary which we needs must nail down: namely, the insult embedded within the immortal lyric “Shitting on you with the boom boom.”

At face value, this is not a very nice lyric.  Detailed analysis reveals it to still not be a very nice lyric.  I regret to inform you that this line is repeated subsequent to its placement above–not once, but twice.  Because will.i.am thrice tells us that he will be “shitting on [us] with the boom boom,” we know that this is no mere slip of the tongue–he truly means it, and wants us to think about it.

Interestingly enough, the radio version of “Boom Boom Pow” censors this statement, changing it to “Y’all getting hit with the boom boom.”  While this is still a somewhat unkind and threatening phrase to say, it’s leagues less offensive than getting “boom boom” shat all over you.  Why would will.i.am go to such lengths to alienate his audience?

We must remember that will.i.am is speaking for the song, not to his own inclinations.  I firmly aver that in real life, will.i.am would not make the choice to shit on me.  If we seek to unravel the phrase, we must harken back to the taboo nature of the beats.  If the nature of the beats is Godlike, it is also id-like–it drinks deep from primal waters.  In their urge to shit all over us, the beats reveal their defiance of traditional social codes and mores–they remain at the anal phase of development, when the ego is not yet fully formed, when man still retains his animal nature.  Not for nothing does Taboo say “I’m a beast when you turn me on.”  His is not an idle admonition–instead, it rings with the primordial truth of the beats.

Shut up you guys! Taboo is trying to show us a primordial truth!

will.i.am and the other Peas want us to know that the beats are to be treated with caution.  Thus, we finally see that “Boom Boom Pow” is not a celebration of the beats, but rather a condemnation of them.  Although they sing lovingly of the beats, the Peas also embed their extolling of the beats’ virtues with a subtext of forewarning.

If only we could hear it.

Male Heterosexuality: A Celebration

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10/01/09 walmart – m4w – 50 (bham )

PostingID: 1402377644

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain,has such small hands

–e.e. cummings

I think we all know what’s going on here.

Mom Party, Y'all!

“Amy” is a harrowing story of co-dependency and denial.  It’s also a Harlequin SuperRomance!  The titular Amy, one of three sisters (each of whom Harlequin, in its infinite wisdom, deemed worthy of their own SuperRomances), is a crazy, child-like rich hippie living in classy South Florida.   She’s pretty much obsessed with family unity, to the point of constantly lying to and pressuring her family members into interacting despite their well-founded desire to see as little of each other as possible.  She’s in her early thirties, so this is part of why it’s so weird that she is always trying to engineer family reunions and reconciliations.  She’s most adept, however, at lying to herself – about other people’s feelings, her own feelings, actual facts, etc.  Part of the reason that “Amy” is a frustrating read is that, although her initial efforts at breaching people’s boundaries are sensibly rebuffed, she eventually wins people over to her bizarre world view.  As a result, by the end of the novel, you feel quite fearful about the future of Amy’s family and friends, since it’s obvious that their encouragement of her strange fantasies will result in further machinations on her part.

To begin at the beginning: Amy’s weirdo parents, the unrealistically-named Helene and Merrick, decide upon Helene’s instigation to pretend that they are having marital difficulties, in order to draw their family together (!).  Amy’s sisters, also in their thirties, are pursuing their lives in other parts of the country, and the family is not particularly close.  Helene, from whom Amy obviously inherited her craziness, wants to reconcile the girls to celebrate her and Merrick’s golden anniversary.  She thinks the best way to do this is for her and Merrick to pretend to be getting a divorce.  Then, to her mind,  everybody will freak out and come together.  Merrick thinks it’s a dumb idea, for good reasons, but she tricks him into agreement by saying it will be an “acting challenge.”  Apparently Merrick, on top of being a superrich mogul with a “trim physique” and a “silver mustache” that he likes to “dab” with “linen napkins,” is also an actor, although “he hadn’t acted in forty years or more – not since he’d turned his back on the early days of TV.”  Also, I should probably point out here that Peg Sutherland takes great care to describe Merrick and Helene as being totally hot, even though they are in their seventies.  I feel this is egregious over-writing – must Merrick, on top of being fabulously rich and famous and in love with his wife, also embody Platonic ideals of attractiveness?  This story would have been improved by 35% by making him fat.  Think it through and you’ll agree.

Anyway, Merrick and Helene embark upon their plot, acting as if they are estranged, which – weirdly – actually causes them to become estranged.  Is this a commentary on the thin line between art and life, or a mere plot device designed to give Amy something to freak out about?  Either way, this contrived premise, while not wholly devoid of dramatic potential, is utterly unexploited by Sutherland.  I could see this working in a screw-ball comedy, but Amy is not a comedy; rather, it is an unwittingly dark look into personalities damaged by a romantic obsession with nuclear family norms.

Amy becomes consumed with the rift between her parents.  Her co-worker Grace advises her to back off, but to no avail:

“‘Give it up, Amy.  Nobody appointed you to fix everybody’s life, you know.”

“That shows how little you know.  Check my wallet and you’ll find my license to fix anything that’s not working, right next to my library card.”"

Note: Amy is an egomaniac.  Later:

“‘Besides,” she said, resuming their earlier conversation, “it’s not like I’m interfering with strangers.  This is Mom and Dad I’m talking about.”

“Everybody has a tiff from time to time, Amy.  It’s not the end of the world.”

“But they’re acting so weird.”

“That’s a family trait, isn’t it?”  [Note: Does Grace hate Amy?  If so, cool.]

“Not funny, Grace.  You should have seen Mom when I ran into her at the Green Market the other day.  She was fluttering.  The way she does when she’s upset.  You know, her hands, her lips, even her eyelashes.  Like a trapped bird who won’t give up the search for the way out.  All she would say was that it would blow over.”  [Note: this imagery is unexpectedly poignant.  Perhaps Helene is coming to the realization that her marriage is a hellish trap.]

They keep talking, mostly about the terrifying revelation that Merrick chose to take a walk alone (italics both mine and Amy’s.)  Apparently, choosing to walk alone is a sure sign that your marriage is pretty much over.

Now, you may have noticed that I’m half-way through this review and I’ve yet to mention Amy’s love interest, Jon Costas.  That is because he is pretty much tangential to the central romance – which is between Amy and her family.  Don’t believe me?  Jon is Amy’s sister Lisa’s ex-husband.  Sutherland tries to spin Amy’s attraction to him as something that predates Jon’s marriage to Lisa, and vice-versa; however, given the evidence at our disposal, it’s not hard to suspect that Amy pursues Jon because and simply because she wants to be closer to her sister.  It’s pretty sick.

In other incest news, another central relationship in this novel is between Jon and his niece Kieran.  Jon has come home to help out his family because Kieran’s father Nick has abandoned her.  Jon and Kieran dance a strange pas de deux – the sort that can only emerge between a lovely teenage girl and her sexy, remote uncle.  See, Kieran is a rebellious teen – she dreads her hair, has a nose ring, and enjoys surfing the Internet.  Sutherland’s attempts to describe Kieran’s Interneting constitute the only enjoyable parts of this novel.  Kieran doesn’t email people, she sends messages to their electronic mailboxes. Whilst Interneting, Kieran makes a nefarious felon Internet gentlemen friend, the hilariously sketchy Hardball, who travels across the country to see her.  He squats in a hovel down by the ocean; quotes Thoreau, and tries to pressure her into smoking pot.  He seems pretty cool, but it is heavily implied that he plans to hook Kieran on the dope and get her into white slavery.  Clearly, Sutherland overestimates the Internet.

Don't overestimate the Internet!

As you may have guessed, things inevitably resolve themselves.  Kieran transfers her infatuation from Hardball to Jon; Amy’s parents fall in love with her all over again, etc.  There’s also a really boring real-estate plot which finds its conclusion as well.  There’s very little hot sex, but there is a town hall meeting described in loving detail.

I hated Amy.  Do not read this book, except for the Internet parts.

Grade: D

IM WORRYIED!

Welcome to Mar’s Archives, where I’ll be collecting various of my pieces from the last few years in one clean and shiny Internet location.   Today’s entry is from Jan. ‘05, and concerns GOTH MINISTERS.

GOTH MINISTER only had one pie.  He wanted some more, but he did not know how to bake.  So he went to the store and tried to buy a pie.  This is what the people said to him:

“Look GOTH MINISTER, I don’t know why you don’t just bake a pie yourself.”

PIE

“But I do not know HOW.”

“Just follow a recipe.”

“WHere is RECIPE?”

“Books or the internet.”

“I don’t like to read.  I DON’T KNOW INTERNET.”

“Go find a person who knows internet and make them help you.”

“OKAY.”  But how do I find?”

“Put an ad on Craigslist.”

CRAIG'S LIST

“Where is CRAIG’S list?

“On the internet.”

“I HATE YOU GUYS ALOT.”

So GOTH MINISTER ran away crying.  Then he decided to wander the streets, looking for a person who knew internet.  But no one wanted to help GOTH MINISTER, because he was too GOTH, and also TOO MINISTER.

Finally, he found some kids who thought they might want to help him.  But only if he completed three tasks.

“Here is the first task,” said the kids.  “Tell us why you go by GOTH MINISTER.”

“THAT’S A SECRET YOU ASSHOLES GODDAMMIT JUST HELP ME INTERNET.”

“Jeez.  Okay, um, the second task is for you to – maybe, um – minister to some goths.”

“OKAY.”

GOTH MINISTER went and bought some soup and gave it to some goths.  Then he found the kids again and asked them what the next task was.

“Um, well – can we have five bucks?”

“GODAMMIT FINE OKAY? INTERNET PIE NOW!”

WHAT A GOOD BOOK!

“Okay.  I’ll just google it and print the recipe up.  There.  Here you go.”

“YOU ASSHOLES I CAN’T REAd.”

The End