We're off to the Gold Coast for a family holiday. For those of you who don't know, it's a little slice of Southern Florida pasted onto Southern Queensland. (With Indonesians playing the Cubans, apparently). We went there this time last year and I don't remember a lot about it except for long hours around the pool, a nice sandy beach and sangria....
By the miracle of post stacking I'll be publishing the regular schedule of posts over the next week but the replies to comments may be less frequent and/or drunken...
36 comments:
Hope you all have a great time. And that at least some of you remember it.
You should come up to the Sunny Coast instead. Less bogans but more hippies
Seana
I thought you'd get a kick out of this. I saw a poster for Henry Rollins (the punk icon)'s standup show. The best quote they could come with was from across the world was from the Santa Cruz Sentinel "the show is long, but ultimately thrilling."
Rob
Ahh, but culturally I'm much more bogan than hippie.
But yes I can see exactly what you're saying...
That is pretty funny. Although I think Rollins does have a fairly significant following here, or did, the Sentinel is not the paper that I would expect young punks to seek him out in. Sounds like a show I would have left at intermission.
Bogan?
Seana
I see the dodgy syntax prediction I made in the post is coming true...that wasnt the booze but poor visibility in a very dodgy internet cafe.
A bogan is a chav or white trash but at least to my mind slightly more loveable.
A hoon is a bogan with a fast car....Many of those on the Gold Coast.
Hope y'all have a grand time.
I missed the syntax problem till you pointed it out. But I am sure there are others who wouldn't.
It's not something I would have ever predicted, but here in one of the hippie capitals of the world, hippie has become a bit of a slur. It's kind of a rebellion against one's parents kind of thing, I guess, or at least it's that generation that uses it as an epithet. It's a bit odd, because they seem to accept the weed smoking, slacker part of it--actually I don't know what part of it they don't accept. Even the hair is coming back, after all. Maybe they just didn't like the hippie names they got stuck with, like Shanti and...well, that's the only real one I can think of right now.
The hoons sound like they might be kind of fun to hang out with for a short time.
Mike
We are so far. Did you ever go to Tenerife?
Its like that.
With fewer Germans obviously.
Seana
I've never been to a Rollins gig but I imagine its a lot of him SHOUTING very obvious points at a hipster audience for two hours.
Obvious, but in the end, thrilling.
Now that Adrian's away, let's talk about drag queens.
Now that Adrian's away, let's talk about drag queens.
And Bono.
Drag queens, maybe, but Bono? I'm not sure that he's as away as all that.
I've never been to a Rollins gig but I imagine its a lot of him SHOUTING very obvious points at a hipster audience for two hours
He actually reads in a very calm tone of voice. And he's a real bookworm. Among his favorites and inspirations he quotes Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Truman Capote,Henry Miller, Camus, John Fante, Lautreamont, Baudelaire, Artaud, Rimbaud, Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor...while he hates Kerouac, Burroughs and the Beat generations and among crime writers he only saves Chandler and Hammett.
Rollins
Bono was a drag queen. He, Gavin Friday and Sinead O'Connor used to put on some killer shows.
Well, with all those literary allusions, you can see how it might run a bit long. Sounds like a syllabus. To the extent that I've read these authors, I think we'd fall in roughly the same camp. Although mine has a lot of room for crime writers. ginsberg was sort of the essence of the Beat generation, though, wasn't he?
I wonder how he feels about Bono.
(I couldn't make the Rollins link work.)
Rollins I/W
Should work now.
It's a bit long, but very interesting.
Allen Ginsberg was probably the E of the Beats. He named the writing program at Naropa the "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics."
And he was a total hound for anyone cool and famous. I am guessing he loved Bono.
Bono? Care to comment?
My sister has the distinction of having not only been almost punched by Sean Penn, but having been treated very badly by Ginsberg as well. She went to get a book autographed for her then boyfriend, who was pretty into the author of Howl at the time. I don't know if Ginsberg took against her because she was only a secondhand autograph seeker or because she wasn't of the right gender, but based on her account, I'm pretty sure I know where I'd place my bets.
You're right. Bono would not have been treated so cavalierly.
Should say here that as Adrian is apparently having to cough up the moolah to comment on his own blog, we should all feel pretty secure in talking about our love for Bono, or drag queens or, well, pretty much whatever.
I'll start. Although I dislike Bono's prose, I do have to say that I like Mystery Girl, which he wrote for Roy Orbison. I even like his singing it himself under the Brooklyn Bridge, though not as much as Orbison's version.
I'm not sure how I can work drag queens into this, except to say that there is some Pedro Almodovar I like more than others and I did enjoy Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Though not as much as some people did, apparently. (It was a cult classic here in Santa Cruz, which pretty much goes without saying.
v word: fruffs
The interviewer mentioned to Rollins that he's often tossed in with the beat writers, and he said that he couldn't stand them, especially Kerouac.
The onlyexception was Ginsberg, whose Kaddish and Howl he thinks were really good.
Working Drag Queens into this - Rollins is friend with RuPaul, they recorded a duet together, and RuPaul invited him as a judge in a drag contest program s/he hosts.
I didn't have time to listen to the Rollins link last night--too busy replaying my extensive Bono collection I guess. But I will get to it.
Marco, I got through a bit of the Rollins interview.
Is it so wrong to not like Tom Wolfe's writing? Also, Rollins talks about Hemingway's treatment toward women and sort of contextualizing writing at that time but then goes on to dismiss Kerouac's On the Road, calling him a pussy, "because it was so nothing like what I was enduring on the road." Right, the 1950s was so much like the 1980s.
But maybe I'm feeling antagonistic because I really wanted to talk about Bono, but have to agree with Seana that Mystery Girl is a great song.
As for drag queens, and I'm so glad you guys are running with the theme (hi Adrian, sorry for the hijacking), I was awarded some scholarship money from the world's largest drag queen organization. They had an Imperial Ball at a hotel in Denver.
But now that I type this out, I think I may have mentioned this in an earlier commentary hijacking.
Is it so wrong to not like Tom Wolfe's writing?
Morality is so subjective. Is strangling kittens wrong? Some people think the sight of chocolate bunnies melting is an educational experience , others are
horrified by it.
"because it was so nothing like what I was enduring on the road."
I think his point was more that Kerouac and the others were self-involved narcissistic petit bourgeoises at heart.
But maybe I'm feeling antagonistic because I really wanted to talk about Bono,
Why, Dear God, why?
Off on a tangent, have you ever heard Team Dresch?
(for those interested, my devious thought processes ran thusly:)
Bono - Sinead O' Connor - Sometimes it feels good to tear up a picture of the Pope - Team Dresch
and
Drag Queens - Drag Kings - Uncle Phranc - Team Dresch.
I loved both their albums
I'm a long way toward liking anyone who didn't like On the Road right from the get go. I don't really know if I'd judge Kerouac's work solely on that though. People do sometimes mature.
The world's largest drag queen organization? In Denver?
And Marco, what is your obsession with Team Dresch? It goes without saying of course that I have never heard of them. Did they ever play with Bono?
Seana, Marco, Sheiler
Well I really cant speak to Rollins as a performer but I did see his movie show once when he had Werner Herzog on. He kept trying to get Werner to diss LA as a shallow cess pit of fakeness and vulgarity and Werner resisted completely and said that those were among the many reasons that he loved LA.
And Marco, what is your obsession with Team Dresch? It goes without saying of course that I have never heard of them. Did they ever play with Bono?
No, but Tocotronic did write a song called "Die Sache mit der Team Dresch Platte". Basically the singer said how much he enjoyed it even if he wasn't a lesbian. His girlfriend, however, didn't like that most of their songs were in a minor key.
He kept trying to get Werner to diss LA as a shallow cess pit of fakeness and vulgarity and Werner resisted completely and said that those were among the many reasons that he loved LA.
Your recollections seem to be somewhat unreliable
Seana,
Sorry your sister had that typical experience with AG. He liked some women, straight, lesbos and soon to be transgendered, but I could never tell why a certain gal was ok with him and why others, me, weren't. In one of the classes I took with him, really almost one on one, he asked me very strange questions about my poem (who, what, where, when, why as though I were in journalism 101 - and I had left studying journalism for poetry, alas). This stumped me, which then gave him time to reach out to one of the guy students and almost cuddle him in class.
I liked him so much better on stage at our Naropa blow outs.
I also loved the fact that he started the program that was the only one that kept my interest.
The drag queen organization has chapters throughout the US, and places like Puerto Rico, Canada, maybe Venezuela? They met in Denver the year I won the first scholarship. I kept asking and asking what they were, what they did. But everyone spoke second hand lines that made almost no sense to me. I was not part of their world. I had stumbled upon it while at a gay cowboy bar in Denver (as though I were a honkie tourist in, say, Japan). The back pages of a tiny gay newspaper. They had no guidelines other than the fact that you had to be enrolled in college. And somewhat helpful.
I got letters from college dignitaries (hey, the Registrar called me a Zen Master Queer), and transcripts and wrote up a little something regarding my kind of helpfulness, submitted it all and then got a call telling me that I'd won but in order to get the money I had to attend their ball in Denver. Which the mayor of Denver attended as well as some minor state congress people. It was hugely attended and involved an obscene amount of glitter and really bad lip synching.
One of the other scholarship women came with her mother and kept changing into different ball gowns and tiaras. I just figured it was because she was blonde. Kidding. But she kept disappearing. Coming back. Her mother fawning continuously. And then her mother telling me, as if I were some straight girl, "You have to get used to this," this meaning being surrounded by all the gays. My gay roommate had accompanied me to this thing. He knew some of the drag queens there. And we kept trying to come up with a way to out myself in an artful yet in your face way. Kept trying all night. But there were not a lot of women around my area. And while trying to will something to artfully happen we noticed that some drag queens were really distressed by the blonde scholarship girl but could not understand why. Again, using English words but them not making any sense. 97 hours later because I guess it's a known thing that part of the drag culture is to drag things out until you're half dead, I get called up to receive my award. We scholarship kids have to walk the plank. The runway? The runway. I get called up very last. I'm thinking too bad I could not out myself to the fussing mother but ok here's where I get some money. And then I get introduced as the Zen Master Queer, etc etc, and I walk the plank and get my award, deeply gratified.
Turns out that the blonde gal had been wearing her dead uncle's ball gowns and tiaras all night. He had died from AIDS and that was their clumsy way of honoring him maybe. But the other queens were pissed that she was doing it because she hadn't earned the tiaras.
I was not a disciple of On The Road. But I appreciated the love story aspect. It was idealistic. And, coming from the Midwest, I grew up surrounded by all of these nut jobs in love with trains. My father, his father, his five brothers, the men in my mother’s family. All love trains. Love to watch them go by. My father worked on freight trains for a time. And he’d come back with great bed time stories for us. So that part of me enjoyed Kerouac’s story. I guess I have a little road trip junkie in me, ok? The Canterbury Tales rocks my world. But the Rollins piece where he’s basically patting himself on the back for pointing out Hemingway’s misogeny and then calling Kerouac a pussy is a bit galling. Also, as someone who travels the road? I find that if you have a little bit of love in you, you can have a great time. I learned that from On The Road. As a result of this, I have the best people riding with me to and from Montreal and Boston. People hear about me, and track me down. I’ve had about 250 different people come along with me, though I get a bunch of repeat offenders. Only one guy was questionable, he hailing from a gun manufacturing family, and just being slightly ‘off’. Were I to have the Henry Rollins’ school of hard knocks attitude I probably would have attracted more gun lovers. I’ve heard stories from my offenders about the other nuts making the same ride and drives. It’s not a route filled only with angels.
Can you tell I've had some caffeine this morning?
Yes, why yes you can.
Sheiler
What an awesome story. If you cant turn that into a short story or an article then you should just bloody give up. You are being rained on with the kind of material, prissy whitebread New England novelists would kill for.
I plead guilty to the train thing too. I used to go down to the railroad junctions on West Mississippi in Denver just to watch and take photographs of the freight cars. I was maybe the only person in the world who was disappointed that Trainspotting wasnt actually about Trainspotting.
And you know when I was teaching at Naropa I ran a tight ship with no favouritism, of course I wasnt in the Subterranean Homesick Blues video.
Marco
Only somewhat.
Sheiler, well, you've made my morning, and probably made me late for work too, but never mind. I was going to say pretty much exactly what Adrian said, except mine was more in the form of So how's that novel coming? Great stuff.
I do understand that On the Road has been a great formative influence on a lot of people, and as in your case, often to the good. It's just that out here on the west coast, I see a lot of people who ended up on the wrong kind of journey because of the mystique around it all. I blame Cassady more than Kerouac, though. I think he made for a bad mentor.
Oh, and I don't think my sister was too traumatized by Ginsberg. It would have been a different thing if she had been a starry-eyed disciple and he'd crushed her, but she was just picking up a gift for her boyfriend.
I've worked in the book biz long enough to know that you should probably never meet your idols. Though it doesn't always go so badly. It's just a risk you take.
Seana,
Thanks for your kind words. Yeah, you're right. It is tricky meeting one's idols. I wasn't so much crushed by Allen's wandering boy eyes so much as I was by Ken Kesey being such a francophonic (creative way to not swear) drunkard with no more talent as evidenced in a show he put on one summer in Boulder. It was the most stupid thing I'd ever seen. I got all kinds of students riled up and almost pushed them back in to the theatre, where they started loudly and hysterically booing. Rolling Stone quoted Anne Waldman about the show saying something about it being misogynistic, but really that missed the point completely. I sat outside on his red convertible tank of a car and wished him dark thoughts.
I didn't have idols for a long time, but then someone in my family started the "Who would you have over for dinner if it could be anyone," kind of game. It's the gateway drug to idol worshipping, I tell you.
No dinners with no one you like. I guess ice cream from the North shore would be ok though.
Adrian,
OK thanks for confirming something for me. I was thinking that maybe I had some material but then some other dumb voice would barge in and tell me that I didn't have anything. Ah, a lifelong out-guessing-yourself game. Guess I need to get in it to win it.
For a time I was swearing under my breath for missing out on taking your classes. Graduated a wee bit too early to meet you. But I do prefer the conversations you have with everyone on your blog here. If I'm not getting anywhere writing on my own, partly because I'm tired; partly because I'm a slacker, I go to your site and see what triggers me to write. And then I hog up your commentary section.
Sheiler
Its the kind of piece they should be publishing in The New Yorker if The New Yorker wasnt run by insider hipster wank jobs. But still short story/article/novel chapter/memoir chapter for definite.
Sheiler, you heard the man--go to it! He knows his stuff.
And dinner with idols does sometime work out. I'd probably risk it and then dine on the result either way.
Post a Comment