Suffering The Benz

I’ve never been on a cruise, but this one in October is seriously tempting. Bryan Lee is amazing. Never been to Honduras or Belize. And it’s an excuse to go to New Orleans to hop on the boat.

Who’s in?

Howard Zinn’s recent death got me thinking. The fundamentalists have been insisting that we should “teach the controversy” and offer creationism as a viable alternative to evolution when instructing our impressionable youth.

OK. I’ll go for that … if they’re willing to require that Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” also be taught in our schools. What? That’s too controversial? I thought so …

During the early days of Sundown in the City, Knoxville’s free concert series, R.B. Morris took the stage. I’d been waiting eagerly all week to see him and was pissed when some high school kid stood in front of me, gabbing to his friends, oblivious to the music starting on stage.

I tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, listen to this. This guy’s great. A freakin’ poet. And he’s from around here.”

The kid gave me the look kids give some old guy who’s telling them what’s cool, and he turned back to his friends.

But after Morris finished his set, the surprised and chagrined kid turned to me and said: “He was good …”

I grinned the way an old guy grins when he’s bludgeoning youth with his hard-won wisdom.

This week, Metro Pulse has a great profile of  Morris, who remains on one of my favorite singer/songwriters. He’s one of those  rare people who walks his own path, regardless of what others think or demand. Maybe that’s why he toils in relative obscurity.

I’ve never met Morris, but the accounts of him I’ve heard over the years ring very true to the portrait Metro Pulse writer Mike Gibson offers in the story.

Why is R.B. a cut above all those other singer/songwriters out there? I think Todd Steed (another Knoxville gem in his own right), sums it up best in this quote from the story:

“R.B. is almost like a verbal version of Thelonious Monk. It’s like jazz, verbal riffing, full of stops and starts and turns and spontaneous humor.”

Via BoingBoing, I found this New York Times article about Gary Snyder, where he offers his unique take on modern tech, including a previously unpublished ode to the Mac, “Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh.”

“Because my mind flies into it through my fingers,

“Because it leaps forward and backward, is an endless sniffer and searcher,

“Because its keys click like hail on a boulder …”

Love it. Vintage Snyder, especially the faint echo of RipRap, where he urges his reader to “Lay down these words/ before your mind like rocks.”

Maybe it helps that I share his abhorrence of texting …

He was a good dog.

Well, no. Not really.

Half the time he was a good dog. A SuperDog. Worthy of Polly Purebred.

But the other half, he was a whiney, headstrong itch that constantly demanded scratching.

And I loved him. I’m proud that my last day with Gilligan was at Frozen Head State Park, switch-backing up to the lookout tower, driven by his and Ozzy’s panting pace. He pissed me off a few times. He amazed me a few more. And when we met a group of backpackers who were about to ascend the mountain to spend the night, he managed to slip his collar and insert himself next to their husky in a photo I was trying to snap for them.

That was Gilligan. Half the time I loved him; half the time I wanted to slap him upside the head. Sometimes, regrettably, I did.

I never realized how hard I would take his death.

He started whining when we hit Oak Ridge on the way back from Frozen Head. I figured he needed to pee. I consoled him. Only a few more minutes. He put his black-and-tan muzzle on my right shoulder, looking me in the eye through the rearview mirror from the back seat of my truck. When we pulled into the driveway, I let him and Ozzy out. They’d been bolting at every opportunity, but I didn’t think they would now.

Not after a 3 1/2 hour, 7 mile hike up Frozen Head.

Not when I was dangling dinner in their earholes.

But they leaped out of the truck, pissed on the nearest shrubbery and bolted up the driveway to freedom. Lara, who was taking Xena on her after-dinner walk up on the street, shouted as the hounds flew past. They kept going, fueled by the thrill of rubbing their freedom in the face of every fenced dog they passed. I was pissed. Really pissed. But there wasn’t much to be done. I showered. Lara and I went off to meet friends for dinner, confident that the hounds would be home when we returned.

They weren’t. Lara went to bed around 1 a.m. When she awoke at 4, Ozzy was in the garage, grateful to be let in the house. Gilligan was nowhere to be seen.

He still wasn’t here when I awoke around 8. I put a note on Facebook. On my blog. On the animal shelter’s site. Ozzy and I walked the road looking for Gilligan. Lara called the emergency vet clinic. There was no sign of him. We decided to grab lunch and run errands. And that’s when Lara spotted him. Lying on the side of the road. Already stiff. I think he died instantly, but that wasn’t much consolation. I spent the rest of the afternoon bathed in vodka and tears, wishing that asshole were whining at my feet, begging to go down to the dock for a swim in the frigid cove.

So  now I’m sitting here smoking a cigar, listening to Hayes Carll, thinking about all the dock diving our black-and-tan dumpster diver got to do before he met his maker.

Godpeed, Mr. Gilligan. You were a good dog …

Photos of the Frozen Head Hike

Photos of Gilligan

Gilligan joins the pack

Gilligan

If you’re in or near West Knoxville, please keep an eye out for Gilligan, our black and tan coonhound cross. He and Ozzy ran off yesterday at about 5 p.m. Ozzy returned sometime between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. today (1/16/10). Still no sign of Gilligan.

I’ve already filed a report with the animal shelter (which has a pretty cool feature allowing you to post descriptions/photos of missing pets).

If you see him, please email me or call 865.288.0496.

The first time I heard Knoxville Girl, I was astounded at the brutality and gothic menace of the song, set to a seesaw bluegrass ballad that belies the horror the narrative conveys. So when I heard “Ghost of the Knoxville Girl” on WDVX a while back, it definitely hooked me. Didn’t hear who sang it initially, but I finally figured out it’s Doug and Telisha Williams. What a wonderful twist on the tale, telling the story and aftermath from the perspective of the brutalized woman.

And the rest of the CD is rock solid, too.

Snap it up.

BTW, you can hear the Louvin Brothers’ original version of Knoxville Girl here.

As BoingBoing’s Maggie Koerth-Baker notes, “Haiti is caught in a deal with the devil, and the devil is us.”

The Onion strikes again.

Director and Monty Python alumnus  Terry Gilliam offers his assessment of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” in Mother Jones:

“I’m reading David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest,’ and I seem to have been reading it for the last seven months. It’s the thickest, most word-heavy book I’ve ever read. And it’s wonderful!”

I couldn’t agree more. I’m a few months and several hundred pages into Wallace’s epic. Truly a brilliant book, but also very challenging. I keep thinking of “Moby Dick,” where Melville heaps detail upon detail on the reader. All that information becomes a literary speedbump, forcing the reader to slow down and dig deep into the story rather than gobbling it up like an action/adventure flick.

I’m particularly enjoying a trend in “Infinite Jest” where something seems really implausible, and then I catch an echo of it in today’s headlines. In Wallace’s universe, advertisers can buy naming rights to each calendar year. Events don’t happen in 2011; they happen in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. Seemed ridiculous. But then I caught myself watching the Tennessee Vols lose in the Chick-fil-A Bowl …

As for Gilliam, the Mother Jones interview definitely is worth a look if you’re a fan.