Notebook Nostalgia

The fact we have long enjoyed scribbling random utterances on barnaps or in notebooks while getting convivial in a bar has been mentioned before -- by me and by Melusine, the Marquis, and Kallisti. Usually, Melusine and the Marquis tend to share their drunken scrawlings in their LJs not long after the scribblings had been scribbled.

Me, on the other hand, I have a different system. I let mine ferment. I usually keep little notebooks on me -- especially in the old days when I was frequenting various gin joints with my lovely cohorts. Something always was said that prompted me to make an entry, even if later on, it was obvious that I seem to get easily amused when a tad tipsy.

Now, the problem with my notebook system is that I tend to throw them somewhere after I'm home and then they usually get pushed aside or lost in some mess -- and only will resurface later when I'm digging around in stuff looking for something else. Thus, sometimes the notebooks will have, for example, a half a dozen entries from 1998 and then skip to 2003 and then turn into a grocery list. But, actually, I think it's fun finding entries from years ago and sometimes remembering the context and sometimes having absolutely no clue.

So, anyway, an OLD notebook just resurfaced in my mess today, and there were three entries in it from 1999 that I decided to type up and share with Melusine and Kallisti, as they're the quoted here. And I thought "what the hell", I share it in the blog -- as I haven't posted much of anything in a while. So, enjoy the random out-of-context quotes. Or don't. Heh.

(M is Melusine, K is Kallisti, and I'm B where the names are abbreviated, although I'm sure you coulda figured that one out!)

____________

Feb 5, 1999
Place Pigalle
Red Wine

"I'm going to go look at the chandelier."

"I didn't give birth to anything. I was under pressure, man."
-- M

"I'm working on my alcoholism. I'll just have a pint."
-- M

"Waking up the next morning can make you a coward again."
-- M

"I will use every astrological barb to destroy the 16-year-old übergoth who doesn't think I'm cool."
-- M

"They go on Egypt binges."
-- B

"I don't want to walk home with the hiccups. They're very revealing."
-- M

"You don't have to mention that nothing else happened but this."
-- M

"I want to buy a mess of pumpkin seeds. I'm NOT writing this down."
-- B

"Having the hiccups is a lot like premature ejaculation. It's not a complete act."
-- M

"I LOVE keeping notes."
-- B

____________

Feb 15, 1999
Place Pigalle
Snakebite

"It's very easy to impress neophytes."
-- B

"Tongue in cheek. That's what we like."
-- K

"We might as well exploit ourselves over and over again."
-- M

"We have inexhaustible material."
-- B

"Just remind me a lot."
-- K

And then we had a conversation with a well-groomed boy, who bummed a cigarette, about "Suffering is Hip" and the proletariat.

"It [my bladder] just has a small capacity."
-- B

"This will redeem you. You've had Rick James come onto you. You MUST enrapture Clive Barker."
-- B to M

"God, I love beer."
-- M

(some other scribblings of wrong, very wrong alternate teletubby names here .... this I remember as it was the night we came up with Beezelbubby, which Kallisti later brought to life here.)

"We're just wrong."
-- M

"Sick and wrong."
-- K

"We need awards."
-- M

"I thought you said we needed beer."
-- B

"We don't take ourselves seriously. We deserve everything."
-- M

__________

Sept 12, 1999
Lucky 13
Snakebites & Harp

"Yes, there are many different ways to combine words."
-- Bat, after seeing "Fallopian Testimonies" and "Follicular Marmalade" written on the wall in the bathroom.

Melusine ponders why she gets approached: "It's because I don't care," she decides.

"It's because you look good in a bar."
-- B

"He's just a little off. It might be drugs."
-- M

____________________

More Hurricane Aftermath News

As mentioned in my previous post, the Marquis has been posting regular updates on the situation in New Orleans and specifically any news about our friends in his LiveJournal. Kallisti, who is here in the San Francisco Bay Area where I am, also has been posting updates and news. I'm especially appreciative of their efforts, as I found myself busy being one of the regular phone contacts (and subsequent relayer of news to various people who then relayed it on to others -- we had quite the phone/online/etc. communication chain going by the end of the week!) So, I was pretty occupied with that and doubtless probably far too freaked out myself to even attempt to post anything coherent about it all online. But I fortunately was able to relay what little I was hearing along to one or both of them all week and let them take care of the important online updating. I definitely did end up referring plenty of people to their online journals, so they could keep up on the latest.

I'd say they, the Marquis and Melusine and Michele as well as others, should know how many many people love them and asked about them and also waited on pins and needles for each little bit of news that could be relayed.

______________

So, just in case you haven't taken a look at the afore-mentioned LiveJournal updates for the latest, the big news is that Melusine got out of the city on Friday and made it to Baton Rouge. Where she actually later that evening made a point of posting an entry in her own LiveJournal.

______________

One random and weird bit of slightly amusing news is that Liz (Melusine) and the people she had been holed up with during the hurricane were stopped while they were making their way (by foot) out of the city on Friday and interviewed by NBC's Dateline. Kallisti mentions the segment here in one of her LiveJournal entries.

I taped the segment, too, and here are some screen captures. Liz is the one in the reddish shirt. Her cats, Claudius and Lola, are what's covered up in the shopping cart.

(click on pic to enlarge)

______

We're still worried and waiting for word on various other people we know and love who we heard made it through the hurricane itself, but we haven't heard yet how they've been faring during this pretty terrible aftermath ordeal. All we can do right now is just hope they pop up safe and soon -- and doubtless with some amazing stories to tell.

Hurricane Katrina & My Friends

As anyone who reads this regularly would know, I have a bunch of friends who live in New Orleans, including (especially) my co-editors, Melusine and the Marquis. As I've been getting some queries as to how they are in the aftermath of Katrina, I thought I'd post a note here to say that I've now heard from (or about) all my friends who live there -- and they're all okay, thus far.

Melusine (aka Hespeth aka Liz) happened to have stayed in her apartment in the French Quarter. I've been hearing periodically from her from the day before the hurricane hit.

The Marquis lives in New Orleans but was visiting in NY when Katrina started moving towards the Gulf Coast. So, for the past few days, he's been freaked out and frustrated to be so far away from home while this has been going on. He started compiling all sorts of news from the official news sources as well as all sorts of bits and pieces everyone we know who's not in the city has heard from those who are still in New Orleans. So, for that, see his LiveJournal.

"It's feeling very Mad Max around here." -- Melusine

Yeah, from the last thing I heard, it sounds like the aftermath is shaping up to be quite a bizarre thing.

Hardly really know what else to say about it right now. Other than "yow."

April is the Weirdest Month

Any month that begins with April Fools' Day and ends with Walpurgisnacht is far more weird than cruel. Oh, and the fact that Tax Day is smack in the middle of it seems both weird and cruel.

April was pleasantly weird for me this year.

I spent a week and a half in mid-April in New Orleans. Visiting the co-editors -- Melusine and the Marquis.

Stayed with Melusine. She wrote a handful of entries in her LiveJournal mentioning what all we got up to, beginning with this entry.

Found out (by a quick googling) after I returned home a little more about that Spanish ship she mentions in her "Avast me hearties!" entry. Turns out it is the Spanish navy's training ship, so all those young sailors were apparently cadets. Google turned up this site that has photos of this magnificent ship, the Juan Sebastian de Elcano. There's a good photo of the beautiful carving on the bow.

____

April being called the cruellest month, of course, comes from the opening of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

Eliot was originally going to title this poem He Do the Police in Different Voices.

But I guess since his opening line was about April's cruelty and not its weirdness, maybe "The Wasteland" sounded a bit more tough or something.

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
 
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
   
Memory and desire ....

The fragment "mixing memory with desire" has long been one of those lines that stays in my mind, cropping up at random moments. Apparently, that line does that to other people too. There's a certain episode of the Tick (I don't recall offhand exactly which one it was) where the Tick uses that very line in one of his rambling pontifications: "So once again, we find that evil of the past seeps into the present like salad dressing through cheap wax paper, mixing memory and desire."

So now I say -- once again April Fools' Day segues into Walpurgisnacht. With salad days and a salad dressing of memory & desire in an easy-to-squeeze bottle.

Yup. April is the weirdest month.

Mardi Gras in Exile

While my Sepulchritude co-editors in New Orleans are in the thick of Mardi Gras ground zero, as it were, I'm off tonight to what seems to have become an annual tradition for Kallisti and I (amongst others) -- our little Mardi Gras in Exile beer & beads fest. I'm not sure whether this thing is a true celebration on our part or more a mourning ritual that we're not there! But either way, we amuse ourselves enough with it.

I'm told Kallisti's even planning to bring along a King Cake tonight.

_____

Oh, a little link recommendation while on the subject:

Pandora Word Box, a site I mentioned at the end of an entry I made a couple of weeks ago, does one of their fascinating "illustrated overviews" on Mardi Gras.

Sick Things

A couple of days ago, a package arrived from Kallisti and Mr. Kallisti. In it was an envelope for me on which was scrawled "Long Overdue Project." I nearly died laughing when I saw what was in it -- two small decapitated Alice Cooper heads that Mr. Kallisti had made into earrings.

When I asked Kallisti later wherever did they happen to find Alice Cooper heads, she told me: "They're from the McFarlane toys Alice Cooper action figures. The guillotine set comes with extra heads. [Mr. Kallisti] had a bunch of these he'd opened and I mentioned (um, last year sometime) that you loved Alice Cooper he said we could make earrings out of them for you."

Oh, I do love my friends.

"You can take my head and cut it off, but you ain't gonna change my mind."
- from Alice Cooper's "Lock Me Up."

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Melusine's Coming To Town

Melusine's coming to visit in less than a month.

I'm stocking up on libations already.

My Bad

Well, I'm entirely chagrined to admit that my last lovely little entry contains one huge glaring error. Namely, I screwed up in remembering the Marquis' proper date of birth. His is the 28th not the 27th -- which when I was reminded of this did seem to ring more of a bell with me (and explained why no one had ever before noticed Charlotte Corday shared a birthday with our Marquis ....heh).

But my calendar program had the incorrect day for it, so that's what I get for relying on technology. Heh.

So, might as well let the lovely terminally french calendar trivia stand as is, and perhaps next year I'll do the proper day's calendar trivia for the Marquis. Although the Marquis informed me that:

"My favorite FunFact™ about 7/28 is that it is the day Bach died. If he hadn't died, I would have certainly killed him by now for he makes my fingers and my brain ache most wretchedly."

[The Marquis happens to play piano, and I've heard him practicing Bach in the past ....]

Happy Birthday to the Marquis Déjà Dû

Today happens to be the Marquis Déjà Dû's birthday. Earlier today, I started to compose him a simple email happy birthday message and decided to compile him a quick little list of interesting calendar trivia that had happened on his birthday. But as I looked through the usual historical trivia reference materials I regularly use to find interesting calendar trivia, I collapsed into peals of laughter as I could hardly believe what I saw: even the Marquis' birthday, like the cur himself, would end up being ever so "terminally french."

Let me explain about "terminally french" (intentional lowercase "f'). It's something I called the Marquis some years ago when I was asked to come up with a short description for him. It does not refer to nationality nor ancestry nor lineage, but more to a state a mind. The Marquis liked the description quite a bit and even once wrote about in his old Intimate Diary.

Certainly, he will like his birthday calendar trivia very much as well. Because -- well -- it is just so him.

Thus, with tiny fanfare and in honor of the Marquis' birthday, I do now present the best highlights for July 27th, the Day of the Terminally French:

Terminally French Notable Birthdays (besides the Marquis')

Alexandre Dumas fils, born July 27, 1824. His most famous work "Camille" is most definitely terminally french. Cough, cough, cough.

Charlotte Corday, born July 27, 1768. Famous French Revolutionary figure who acquired her fame for terminating Marat. And for allegedly blushing after her head was cut off. Now, that's terminally french.

(See Décolleté ~ The Terror & The Guillotine for more about Corday and Marat. It's the best gallery of beheadings ever, but of course I'm biased as the gallery is by my other Sepulchritude co-editor, Kallisti.)

Terminally French Deaths for July 27th.

July 27, 1844
Guilbert de Pixérécourt dies. Pixérécourt was famous for writing dozens of melodramas for the théatres des boulevards, which if you think about it could kinda be seen as the dive clubs of his day. Okay, so I'm stretching this one a bit. But it's still terminally french.

July 27-29, 1890
Vincent Van Gogh commited suicide (in France) by shooting himself in the chest on July 27th. He died from the infected wound two days later. Tardy and terminal, n'est-ce pas?

July 27, 1946
Gertrude Stein died (in France) with Alice B. Toklas by her side. Their reputed final conversation was Stein apparently inquiring of Toklas about the meaning of life by saying "What is the answer?" When Toklas couldn't or wouldn't reply, Stein then asked "In that case, what was the question?"

____

Ah, what indeed is the question? Je ne sais pas.

But this I do know:
Violà, this entry is for you, my dear Marquis! Je t'embrace and Merry Merry!

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Norman Day

Today is the 10th anniversary of my friend Norman's death.

Yesterday, I went to visit his niche at the Columbarium. (See this archived entry from 2002 for a little more about Norman's niche in the Columbarium -- incidentally, the Bastille Day flag mentioned in that entry is still there, I'm pleased to report).

As I felt I should mark the occasion with some sort of 10th anniversary offering, I left him a pink elephant swizzle stick in his flower vase. Why that? Just seemed appropriate somehow. Pink elephants (and just generally swizzle sticks for that matter) seemed appropriate somehow for someone whose ashes are residing in a martini shaker. Oh, and there's that whole bit about how elephants never forget, ya know, which seemed highly apropos for the occasion. As well as at least a half-dozen other favorable metaphorical allusions involving elephants I probably could cough up, if pressed, but I won't.

To be honest, the reason I chose it is that it was the thing I found lying around in the junk in my room yesterday morning that happened to jump out at me and say "This. This one is it." Yeah, flowers are a more traditional offering for such circumstances, I guess, but I usually tend to proffer ephemeral flotsam rather than ephemeral flora when I go about paying homage or respect. An urban vs. bucolic response, I guess? Kinda like that line in a Frank O'Hara poem that goes "I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life." (from "Meditations in an Emergency" -- which can be found online here.)

So. That's what I took to Norman's niche with a little message tied around the stem of the stick as well. Yes, I realize passing notes to the dead tends to be ineffectual (on all sorts of levels) and admitting to it will simply cause others to think I'm daft (if they didn't already). Those in the more scientifically-logical belief camp would think I'm daft because the dead, once dead, are incapable of reading (amongst other things) and those who are more spiritually or cosmically-inclined might be likely to point out that disincorporated loved ones wouldn't need the formality of a physical note as a method of communication.

Which do I believe? Neither. Both. My actual beliefs tend to be far more convoluted than even -- well -- my prose sometimes. Thus, I will refrain today from inflicting them (the beliefs, at any rate) on you. Although I'll show you a copy of the note, just because:

__________________________

I know my mention of this anniversary is likely to startle those old friends of mine and Norman's who do drop in to glance at this blog from time to time ("It's been ten years?? Already?? No way!" I can hear them now.) And it is to them that I write the following: now that I've probably induced a little melancholy pang in your heart by mentioning the occasion and you're thinking of Norman, why don't you hit the little comment link below this entry and leave a little note telling a favorite memory or anecdote of yours about Norman? You know as well as I do that Norman always liked to be talked about and yearned to become a mythic figure of some sort. So ... c'mon, indulge -- indulge yourself, indulge me, and indulge Norman.

Highlights from New Orleans Trip

Okay, I promised a few highlights from my recent trip.

(Please read no further or avert your eyes if you're allergic to vacation snaps or slides or prattlings ... !)

If you read either Melusine’s or the Marquis’s LiveJournals, you can often read of the various events and club nights they both speak of and attend (or, in the Marquis’s case, sometimes work at), so for the two weeks I was there, I was usually somewhere in the backdrop of any that they mention during that period.

But here are a few of the more notable bits.

The ”I, Claudius Drinking Game” nights were especially amusing. You can see the Marquis’ mention of it for more of an explanation of what that was all about as well as Jonno’s, (whom I had the pleasure of meeting as the event had been moved from the Shim Sham to Jonno's.) So, the event at Jonno’s was attended by a more intimate group, about 10-20 enthusiasts, many of whom were theatre people then involved in a stage presentation of a play called "I Suddenly Know What You Did Last Summer" that the Shim Sham Club was running for a few weeks in wacky homage to Tennessee Williams' week. (I got to see this play one of the nights I was there -- funny funny! Triumphant overacting.)

Playing the "I, Claudius Drinking Game" with a bunch of twisted theatre people was most fun, and as the two Tuesdays I was there spanned the Caligula and Messalina episodes -- definitely the most rambunctious of episodes -- it was especially delicious. Everyone roared and drank up at the infamous "Not My Head" scene! Then we reversed it to the beginning of that scene and savored it again.

Punk Rock Karaoke at the Shim Sham Club, which I went to both Wednesdays I was there, was adorable, just adorable.

Oh, yeah, mustn’t forget to mention the night the Marquis, bartending at Lounge Lizards, got us (me, Melusine, Sonya, and Lucy) drunk, and we decided then to meander off and all go get tattoos like we were drunken sailors. Yup.

Thus, my new tattoo (and permanent souvenir of the trip)

Unfortunately, the day before my last full day there, we had one major trauma of a day when upon waking up one morning, we discovered that Melusine’s 18-year-old cat Sophie had died in the night. She hadn’t been sick so apparently she had just arranged herself in the middle of the floor and died peaceably of old age. Still, it was understandably very upsetting -- for Melusine especially. A toast to you, dear Soph.

Saturday, early morning, I needed to leave for the airport at 6 am. So, as the bar downstairs from Melusine’s closes at 6 am, we told a few people to meet us there around 4 or 5 for my sendoff party. I actually was sensible (for once) and took a few hour nap from being out the evening before until 4:30 am when the Marquis called us from downstairs to say “Where are you? What are you doing sleeping? Come down here now.”

This we did.

They insisted on wanting to take a picture of me right after I’d just woken up and my hair was still wet. Digital cameras can be a menace. I protested, so here’s the Marquis trying to help by covering up my damp bangs.

Also from that morning, a picture of Melusine at the bar’s jukebox:

Just Got Back

Just got back home (San Francisco) earlier this evening from visiting and frolicking with Melusine and the Marquis in New Orleans. I’d been there for two and a half weeks. Like usual -- when visiting those two in that city -- I find I need to recover from my so-called “vacation.”

Visiting the co-editors is all running about, perching on barstools all around town, aspirins, Emer-gen-C packets mixed with cocktails, being dragged around to other barstools, finding the weirdest things the next day written in the ubiquitous notebook, ruining shoes on uneven pavement, and laughing way too much with Melusine and the Marquis like in the old days -- all to exhiliration and exhaustion.

So, really, going there to see them no way qualifies as a vacation. It’s a Survivor Urban Adventure, where you might eat bugs (crawfish = mudbugs), drink from streams (of beer taps), are given tasking challenges (e.g., challenges such as the Duo Bourbon Street Hop, Skip, and Jump Over Challenge, which entails avoiding Bourbon Street at all costs in the prime of the evening and then in the morning avoiding stepping in vomit and other malodorous debris on Bourbon Street before the shopkeeps have a chance to wash the sidewalks down; the Eyeliner Challenge -- see how many minutes it takes for freshly applied eyeliner to slide down one’s face in the heat; or perhaps, the “It’s Time for Shots” call by bartender friends [truly, an immunity challenge, if ever there was one.].)

Now, you may ask why I’m using “Survivor” as a metaphor here. Blame Melusine. She has this thing for trash TV, and she loves the irreality shows. She made me watch an episode of “Survivor” earlier this week before we went out to face our own challenges in the neverending “Urban Survivor - New Orleans.” Worse, though, she’d come home from work at lunch and if I was there (and I often was, hiding out from the noonday sun), she’d make me watch “Elimidate” and “Fifth Wheel” and some other hideous dating shows -- which I’d never watched before -- and I got sucked in because they’re like watching a car wreck. She’s always loved doing this to me. She says she knows I’ll watch them now at home. I say I will not. They wouldn’t be AT ALL the same without her very important asides and commentary ....

Although watching trash with Melusine is always entertaining (even if slightly painful, depending on how horrid the show chosen truly is) .... that pasttime was a minor fraction of what I spent time doing. What was the main thing I spent time doing? Hmm. Obviously, drinking. (Obviously, because it was after all me, them, and there.)

And. Melusine happens to live in the Quarter above a bar. As I was staying with Melusine most of the time I was there, I was instructed to introduce myself to the bartenders at the bar downstairs so they knew it was copasetic that I had the keys to get in upstairs. And -- when you introduce yourself to bartenders and then say hello as you pass in and out of the place during the day, you end up getting .... drinks.

Just to be sociable, ya know. And New Orleans is sociable.

Ya know.

Speaking of the downstairs bar, the first person, in fact, I happened to encounter upon exiting the taxi when I arrived in town this visit was the fabulous Sonya as she was bartending. She greeted me enthusiastically when I said I was Melusine’s old friend Bat, the houseguest Melusine had informed (warned? promised?) the bar about. Sonya said “I knew the minute I saw you get out of the taxi that you had to be Melusine’s friend.”

Hmm. Must have been the Sepulchritude taint. More telling than stigmata on a balmy day.

____

Shall try to recount a few tidbits or highlights from the trip in the next couple of days after I’ve had a little time recompose or reorient myself a bit ...

And dry out. Just a tad.

Hmm. Emer-gen-C Raspberry. That'll do for now.

How Sentimental

A couple of nights ago, I went with my friend Dave (inspired by the fact that we've been bonding for weeks now on old 80s music and other such nostalgia) to go see Camper Van Beethoven who played at Bimbo's. It was a blast, and Camper Van Beethoven was really good -- sometimes, ya know, those reunion of the old band incarnation shows can suck. But they didn't. They were really amazing.

They did a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" that I'd never heard them do before and it was really bizarrely wonderful. But they really have always had a way with twisted covers.

When they did their song "Take the Skinheads Bowling," couldn't help being reminded of my dead friend Norman (due to the fact that I remember being stuck in a car with Norman one drunken night years and years ago where we were waiting for the others to return from where they went a-romping, and Norman and I entertained each other by drunkenly singing that song to each other loudly ...hehehe.)

I used to go see bands all the time back in the 80s. I so rarely do anymore. Did happen to see Daniel Ash last year when I was in New Orleans, but nothing in between. It usually just seems like too much trouble and I don't even really pay much attention to what's going on out there in more recent days at all. Gettin' old or lazy, I guess. But this was a definitely amusing outing and felt even a little revived from it. Somehow, I'm half-enjoying and half-frightened of this little inadvertent nostalgia trip I keep going on lately -- some of which has been half-provoked by Dave, as he keeps telling me nostaglic bits from his misspent youth ..... while playing me Flipper ("Sex Bomb Baby, yeah!") and the Beat Farmers, for god's sake.

But, actually, can't totally blame him, as come to think of it, just about everybody I know who was cognizant during that time period seems to be indulging in something like this lately. What's the deal? Is it time for the punk big chill or some other sort of ice age or something? Oh, please, no.

Whatever it is, it's starting to drive me slightly insane as I keep wondering if my life is flashing before my eyes or if I'm just having flashbacks? Both, probably. But I'm probably actually just perimenopausal or something.

Anyway, dizzy from these fumes of nostalgia, I went digging through some old photos again and just added a couple new pages to my Misspent Youth photo pages. The ones I just added are Proto-bat (photos of me from 1983) and Living at Night Isn't Helping My Complexion. (photos of Norman, Lorrainne, and moi from 1986).

Well, to quote something else from ancient days, like Magenta would say: "How sentimental ......"

Yup. 'Tain't it?

Sigh.

Nag Muse

An old friend of mine, Michael (aka Nina Rage), started a blog recently partly because he's been trying to find a viable outlet for his semi-dormant creativity. He thought keeping a blog might be a good way to force himself to write on a more regular schedule. His blog is called La Belle Epoque or....

He asked me to check in on it and to yell at him if he starts to slack off writing in it regularly. I told him that for him I would take on the role of a Muse of Nagging for his little project and do so.

Nagging muses, I guess, can be as valuable as inspirational ones in certain circumstances.

February 6th

Okay, yesterday may have been the birthday of Dada, but I swear today IS Dada. Look at the people who were born today and tell me why, why, why were all these people born on this date?

Christopher Marlowe
Aaron Burr
Babe Ruth
Ronald Reagan
John Lund
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Patrick Macnee
Sixten Jernberg
Rip Torn
Francois Truffaut
Mamie Van Doren
Mike Farrell
Tom Brokaw
Fabian
Bob Marley
Natalie Cole
Axl Rose
Robert Townsend
Kathy Najimy
Barry Miller
Rick Astley

And if that wasn't enough to make my hair stand up on end, Laszlo's birthday happens to be today. I gave him the list of people whose Aquarian birthday he shares and can see how he fits on this list for certain. If only because he's as weird a juxtaposition as any o' them.

And I tell you, it's an odd thing to live with a juxtaposition.

Happy Birthday, Laszlo!

Dead Dinner Party

The following was something I posted in the Suffering is Hip forum last year on Thanksgiving. So, I thought why not pretend it's tradition and post it here this Thanksgiving.

My one steadfast (and arguably irrational) belief in an afterlife has always been that I get to have a welcome-to-death dinner party.

So, just to amuse myself one day a couple of years ago, I played a game where I tried not to think about it, but quickly jotted down the names of a table's worth of dead people I would most want at my "inaugural" after-death dinner party.

I then decided to ask other people who they wanted at their dinner party and emailed a bunch of friends. We circulated the "game" and the subsequent lists via a couple of different email lists and also Melusine then posted it to an old board she was active on a year and a half ago and got some great responses.

Below are a few examples of people's lists. I'm not including my own list because I've probably revised it a thousand times in my head since and somehow I was always much more amused by other people's lists and their occasional explanations for certain choices.

So, here, as examples, are just a few of the old responses from the spring of 2000:

The old list from Melusine:

• Mae West
• Oscar Wilde
• Divine
• Caligula (he'd be sitting next to Ed Gein)
• Tennessee Williams
• Grace Kelly
• Sammi Davis Jr. (I actually wanted the entire Rat Pack but then the dinner would degenerate into a booze-soaked roast!)
• Carl Jung
• Dorothy Parker
• Ed Gein (he made furniture out of womens body parts for hell's sake. I have questions.)
• Jackie Susann

Now the seating arrangements are another dilemma entirely but I absolutely certain I'd want to be sitting between Oscar Wilde and Mae West with Dorothy Parker in close proximity.

Anna's old list. (Anna's an artist , in case you can't guess from her Dead Dinner Party guest list. Her paintings are fabulous, if I may add.).

Anyway. Anna's list especially amused me because she included a menu with it:

Seared foie gras with balsamic reduction, carmalized onions and micro greens
and squab in puff pastry shells with fig sauce...fine wines assumed along
with additional courses...ps chocolate souffle too.

• Francis Bacon (both of 'em)
• Gustave Moreau
• Reiner Klimke
• Gurdjieff
• Mother Teresa
• Gustav Klimt
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Simone de Beauvoir
• Foucault
• Ruth Gordon

Laszlo's old list:

• Louise Brooks
• Joan of Arc
• Cleopatra
• Benjamin Franklin
• Leonardo DaVinci
• Albert Einstein
• Carl Sagan (but only if he brings a 2-liter of strawberry soda and some party hats)
• Socrates (we'll make it a toga party)
• John Belushi (...we'll make it a toga party!)

So? Who would YOU want at your Dead Dinner Party?

New Orleans Calling

Last Sunday around 9 am, I got a phone call from Melusine and the Marquis, who were in the midst of what sounded like a fine drunken morning frolic. (They're in New Orleans; I'm in San Francisco.)

Apparently, from what I gathered in between slurred boisterous cackling from Melusine and insistent queries about whether I knew any details about Lady Miss Kier's demise from the Marquis, the Marquis had just been finishing off his graveyard shift as bartender at the Hideout on Decatur when Melusine came in and ordered a sidecar. Well, after Melusine had imbibed three sidecars and the Marquis had imbibed who-knows-what, Melusine and he decided to call up everyone they knew to inquire about Lady Miss Kier.

Now I, ignorant of certain music trivia, had no idea who Lady Miss Kier was. I was informed forthwith she was the singer for Deee-Lite. "Oh, yeah, Deee-Lite. I know who that is. Haven't a clue about your singer, though. Never knew what the singer's name was before," I replied. "Enjoying a nice post-Isidore Sunday morning, are we?"

That they were.

I talked to them for quite a while until Melusine realized she was too drunk to talk anymore and hung up. Melusine likes to call me from her cell phone when she's in bars. This can be most fun. She does not make a habit of frequenting the bars that early in the morning, let me add, but -- hey -- it's been a weird couple of weeks there -- what with hurricanes/tropical storms Isidore and Lili having contemplated visiting their city and all...... so, I guess, it tends to really skew one's routine.

About an hour after that phone call, the phone rang again. It was a collect call from the New Orleans jail, where Sammi is currently residing for a wee spell. Sami is a friend of the Marquis' and Melusine's whom I met and befriended on my last visit there.

He happened to mention that he'd just heard Florence Henderson had died.

"You're kidding? I hadn't heard about that," said I.

After we hung up, I looked online at the Reuters and AP feeds to see if there was news or some details on that. Never found any. Just some very strange jailhouse rumor?

Is this what they do in New Orleans in between hurricane warnings? Contemplate celebrity demises?

_____

A few days before that, when I was grocery shopping, I bought a pound of crawfish (they were pre-cooked. frozen, and thawed -- as that's usually the only way we get 'em out here). They don't usually have 'em and the price was good. I told the fishmonger I was buying 'em in honor of Isidore the Hurricane (as the day I bought them was the day it was supposed to hit land somewhere).

Just as I was finished cooking 'em for Laszlo and I, Ferret showed up on my doorstep and the sight of them scared him away after he scrounged my cigarettes and used my phone. I enjoyed scaring him with my swamp bugs (Procambarus clarkii).

As I sat down to eat my lunch, I turned on "In Search Of ..." and the episode was one about swamp monsters in Louisiana bayous.

____

Enough with the synchronicity from down south already.

It makes it almost seem like all of this must connect somehow, but damned if I know how it does.

My Friend is in a Martini Shaker

Updating, updating, updating.

Well, I think I've proved myself lackadaisical about this blog/journal thing. I figured I would be. Although I certainly don't mind being self-referential and relating anecdotes, I haven't the stomach to sit down regularly and regurgitate everything in journal form. I don't even write in my private journals that extensively anymore. But there are reasons for that. And what are they?

Oh, please. I am half-mad, ya know. Do not make me elucidate.

I started several entries over the last couple of months for this thing, but I almost always got interrupted before I finished them. So. I did not finish them. And most of them seem far away and not worth finishing now.

So, maybe, I'll just finish something else instead.

However, I've been more recently embroiled in updates, some of which are worth pointing out here. Beginning of May, I helped to get a mini-update pulled together for the long-neglected Suffering is Hip. See SiH's NEWS for that.

I added a new section to the Bat Cafe -- the "booklets" page. Threw a downloadable PDF of a booklet (it's about 75 pages long) of my old poetry on there. It's the online version of a booklet I made a few years back and printed out for the Marquis. Silly boy. He likes my poetry. Well, actually, quite a few people like it. I'm usually ambivalent about it. My poetry is often just my cerebellum leaking. Nothing well-crafted or anything, usually. But I guess it has its moments.

Then I did a little maintenance redesign on SINS OF COFFEE, including the tribute page to Norman.

I went to visit Norman's niche in the Columbarium in March and took a photo with the digital camera (such a handy gadget). I've been meaning to get a photo of his niche for a long time now.

Note there's a French flag in his flower vase in this photo. That gave me a smile. Now, WHO put THAT there? Emmitt Watson, the caretaker of the Columbarium, told me the flag's been there for quite some time. I suspect someone who has read about Norman on Sepulchritude's/Sins of Coffee's pages might have placed it there -- as I can't quite figure out why someone else would put a French flag there. Unless one of Norman's other friends I wasn't so well-acquainted with had some sort of French in-joke with him ....

But if my suspicions are near to the truth, I suppose here would be as good a place as any to say --okay, 'fess up. What amenable personage has been anointing Norman's niche with French flags??? (curiosity maimed the bat, ya know .....).

The anniversary (nine years) of Norman's death is coming up next month. Sigh. I do still miss him terribly. I think he would have damn well enjoyed all we all have gotten up to these last nine years. But then, I think Norman's been damn well enjoying becoming a minorly notable landmark just where he is. (Cheers, Norman!)

Speaking of where Norman is and as I did mention Emmitt Watson, the Columbarium's caretaker, I do have one particular unfinished entry I started in March that I think it's time to finally get around to posting. March was a rather peculiar month for me. Both the unexpected and synchronicity seemed to mark most of it. And my visit to see Norman in March (when I took the photo) turned into quite the unexpected little adventure.

{And one that had been brought about by the synchronicity of the chairs -- but the story about the chairs is yet another unfinished entry I started in March -- but one I'll just have to save (or else I fear I'll never get THIS one finished)}

So, on a Friday back in late March, Laszlo and I happened to be passing by the neighborhood of the Columbarium around 8 in the morning. I was pretty sure the Columbarium would probably not be open that early, but thought we might check the hours on the door, since I always forget them and I'd been meaning to pay Norman a visit. (Partially because of the chairs .... later, later ....)

As I walked up towards the door, a friendly groundskeeper wandered over to find out what I was looking for. I told him I wanted to know the hours just so I could come back at a time when I could visit my friend inside. He told me what the hours were and then asked who my friend was. I told him my friend was the guy in the martini shaker.

"Oh, don't tell me ..." he says.

"Norman," I replied

"Yes. Norman Whited."

I smiled. "Yes, that's him. I've even had martinis from that shaker," I told him, adding: "Not lately, though, of course."

With that, I was graciously and heartily welcomed by this friendly man, who turned out to be Mr. Emmitt Watson -- caretaker, groundskeeper, historian (and more) of the Columbarium. He's really, I think, the unofficial Prince of this Necropolis and rather a fascinating person to chat with and listen to. I realized later on that I'd heard of him before -- he gets the occasional write-up in the local papers and other friends of mine had met him before on visits to the Columbarium. Although I've been to visit Norman before, somehow, I'd not yet had the pleasure. (Although I also realized he was the one I'd written a letter to some years ago after reading one of the articles that mentioned how he enjoys collecting stories of the people who reside within the Columbarium's walls. Of course, upon reading that, I just had to send him a couple of Norman stories ....)

Anyway, after exchanging these introductions, Emmitt Watson led us into the Columbarium (which was, as I had thought, not officially open that early in the morning) and showed us around, told us stories, and chatted with us. When we wound our way up to the floor to where Norman's niche is, he let us have time to say hello to Norman. Then, he continued to show us around. We ended up spending at least a couple of hours with Emmitt Watson, getting this delightful impromptu tour of the place. The man has stories. Lots of stories and history. And a reverence for the place and the people interred there that is just remarkable.

Norman is being looked after quite well, I would say. As are all the others. Some of whom I know a little about now, thanks to the stories I heard from the unofficial Prince of that Necropolis.

Emmitt Watson gives official tours, by the way, and many of the fascinating stories he told me that morning are the stories he tells on the official tours. This is one unique tour I think well worthwhile. (For Columbarium information, see this listing.)

So, if you do happen to ever find yourself at the Columbarium, on the tour or perhaps visiting a friend of yours, don't forget to wave to Norman. You'll know who he is. He's one of the stories.

And I don't doubt Norman is giggling in glee somewhere over that.

Ash Wednesday

Well, if it's Ash Wednesday, that means last night was - yup - Mardi Gras!

Last year, Kallisti and I spent Mardi Gras in New Orleans with Melusine and the Marquis. This year, we made do with bringing our own beads (leftover from what we dragged back to SF with us last year) to Zeitgeist.

Beer & Beads.

Oh! Must mention: Two laudable people indulged me in my beverage fund a few days back -- the very first ones. (I would name them in gaudy recognition, but I didn't inquire as to whether they might wish to be publically thanked ... so, shouldn't name 'em 'til I do so inquire). But ... just wanted to show proof that they bought me a drink! My gratitude overfloweth like the beads, the beads, the beads .....

And, lastly, here's a half-cloaked Kallisti and a pitcher of Mardi Gras bounty.

Happy Mardi Gras! Welcome to Ash Wednesday.