Bon(ed) Soir

"a musical wasteland of endless bass solos and fart-like runs ... "

 This was all I could muster after seeing Wycliffe.

I don't know if the music was lacking, it was the overall vibe of the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors crowd (most of them there to see Randy Newman this night) ... younger now, but no less pretentious and trying-too-hard-seeming as when I used to live across the street and (barely) attended auld FU.

Or, have I finally stopped trying too hard to dig jazz?

When I used to immerse in the scene, in the clubs, eating cheeseburgers ... waitresses (swimming in sax!) ... with the crowing, old voices of jazz legends nightly, and Wryly Sardonix demanding I leave ... which I did one night, mid-set, when he yelled from the stage that he sounded "like shit" and the cause of that mess fell on my deaf ears ... WHAT!?

I stormed offstage that night before he did!  There's only one King, bitch, and I left the building!!!

... Where was I?

Oh, right.  So Wycliffe Gordon ...

I went to see James Brown once, back in the day when we lived in America ... and shuffling around the stage at Radio City Music Hall at one point with an RK-100, he launched into a noodling rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" ...

Now don't ever let anyone try and tell you that James Brown, 'the Godfather', was NOT a show-stopper!  He stopped that show dead ... ground to a halt, as he strutted and poked on his shoulder-slung Korg, an eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth verse.  Of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".

Really.

"The hell is he doing?" a guy behind me asked his date.  Something large and thrown fell just short of the stage ... A chorus of "boos" began, like an imagined cliché scene, and rose in cresecendo until filling the theater.

James Brown stripped to his undershorts and started kicking Rockette-like, as the curtain came down and there wasn't an encore.

Just kidding!  Nobody really threw anything.

But I remember that night well ... I hooked up with a girl who thought she had tickets to see Jethro Tull ... and experienced something like it last night seeing Wycliffe.

Or maybe I wasn't in the mood.

Expressively (Irresponsibly) Yours

I don’t care if I have Ebola, I’m riding my damn bike. - "Kaci Hickox"

When I was back there in seminary school ... there was a guy who used to get bogged down in expressing himself.  Huge sports fan, he was also (like me) a theater geek - and (also like me) used to write and direct things, and strut around like Fellini.

But when it came to expressing himself in public, when not dismissively, almost disdainfully, breaking off sentences to snort in bemusement ... M.D. would flounder for words, often babbling, repeating himself.

To be clear (and fair to the guy), I also have trouble getting sentences spoken in public to make sense ... Sometimes, getting them out of my mouth is a challenge!  Being a writer, I tend to overthink speech:  when speaking, I sometimes wrestle with adjectives ... synonyms, adverbs, metaphors, "flow" ... the same way I do as I when I'm writing.

The difference is that writing, no one's listening to me.  The exercise is done in private, the sweat and the grunting remain offstage.  The only thing a reader "hears" of my written words and stories is the result, not the process.

When speaking, I can sound retarded.  Confused, marble-mouthed (... and I mean no offense whatsoever to people with marbles in their mouths!) ...

Anyway, M.D. from F.U., I suspect, used to struggle similarly.  A fellow wordsmith ... but he also used to get into these paroxysms of frustration over events that he felt he couldn't control.  There was Chernobyl ... Black Monday ... Tiananmen Square and the Hillsborough soccer disaster in England (probably the most frustrating of all to him ... big nutty sports fan that I knew him to be back then).

Then locally, on at least one occasion ... I remember him during a meeting of our relatively small theater department -- convened specifically to address something or other which mattered then -- and M.D. literally sputtering, repeating, "All of the ... BULLSHIT ... has to stop!  We can't continue with this ... BULLSHIT.

"I would just like all of the ... BULLSHIT ... to end!"

"What are you referring to?" he was patiently asked.

"Just ... BULSHIT!  I can't explain the ... BULLSHIT."

Our poet laureate emerged from that, somehow, with a new patina of respect ... as rather than being mocked, he received backslaps, handshakes and commiserations after the meeting ... not to mention going home with my girlfriend that night!

It dawned on me then that by speaking up, be(com)ing a voice, no matter how eloquent (or not) your message ... you will be heard.

Ode to a Self-Absorbed Medical Worker

I've also come to understand all too well the immediate power and limitless reach of the World Wide Web ... a potentially devastating power and overreach, which is only now beginning to be recognized and kept in check:  lids are being placed back on steaming kettles, masks ripped off and new gates erected ...  not at all "ending" Freedom of Speech, but rather, returning to civil discourse.

This is overdue.

So instead of weighing in more than I already have about the stricken "Hero" Without Sense, Dr. Craig Spencer, and pulling punches entirely on the obnoxious and causelessly rebellious Nurse Kaci Hickox, I'll instead put forth the proposition that Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass ...

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

... I CANNOT say Shoshana Roberts has a FINE ASS!!!!!!