Photograph: Frances and Jerry, mid-70's

click to enlarge

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A Keith Haring mural on Houston Street on NYC's lower east side (early '80s)

I'm pretty sure this photo was taken by Jan Newberry or Miya Ramsay, although I don't remember either of them having a Polaroid Land Camera. I have the original Polaroid, but no one has written on it. It was stapled to a postcard or something and mailed to me from San Francisco, according to the postmark. In 1982 I was living in Seattle, just after leaving NYC and Europe, and before moving to San Francisco. So, someone took the pic. in NYC, and mailed it to me from SF? That would make Jan the likely photographer.


When we lived in NYC, you could still see Keith Haring and Basquiat doing graffiti on the street and subways. Haring used to do chalk drawings several days a week on these black panels in Times Square Station, which I passed through on my way to my job in the village. I saw him a couple of times drawing with chalk on the wall. Had people realized those drawings would one day be worth tens of thousands of dollars, they would have probably removed the walls.


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The luckiest man alive - Cem Tokac, the incredible survivor

Turkish truck driver Cem Tokac somehow survived this unbelievable accident with only a few bruises. In the first part of the video, notice his hat being blown away. Jump to 0:20 in to see a closer view of this incredibly lucky guy. He should probably propose to Catherine Zeta Jones, throw mondo cash into the stock market, or get into a high stakes poker game real soon...if luck really does run in streaks. . .


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Today on the Interwebs: The Malört Face

Today On The Interwebs is one of my favorite blogs. He digs stuff! And he is almost never snarky. He wrote today about The Malört Face. .



Malört is a "wormwood-flavored Swedish schnapps. It seems like Malört face could describe the worst possible face you can make." He wrote: "Malört Face is a Flickr group showing people who have just tried Malört."

Check out the Malört Faces and slap in this bookmark for Today On The Interwebs.
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Poem: Defensive Daydreaming a/k/a Sparks

I have been [very slowly and spasmodically] attempting to winnow a manuscript of 280 pages of poetry (already down from 350) into something more suitable for print form. Or at least something an editor won't think is the mad emissions of an escapee from the laughing academy.

I first wrote this poem in California 26 years ago, and have returned to it over and over, a) because I liked it; and b) because I always felt a little sheepish over the tone and structure, which is so clearly influenced by the great poet and MOMA curator Frank O'Hara. I like the poem, but I am not going to fiddle with it anymore. This is the last tune-up! I dislike this phrase intensely (because it is too often used to write something off instead of fixing it), but. . . it is what it is.

Defensive Daydreaming

Six hours into the surprise visit, he lumbers on.
My brain unsnaps from its moorings
and drifts like a drunken dirigible
into the torrent of everything I've seen,
smelled, eaten, licked, drunk,
smoked, touched, read, watched, and heard.
It's like he's been talking weeks now
and I remember Nikita Kruschev
on the television at the UN, flashing
those bad teeth and that goofy smile,
pounding those oxfords alive.
I try but I can't quite hear him;
I hear my friend narrating himself.
Things have gotten so out of hand that
I remember today is Renoir's 164th birthday
and I don't even like his painting,
but, hey, at least he threw in some nudes.
He looking at me! What did I miss?
He looks for a yes and keeps talking.
"Yeah," I say, "right. . .yeah." I think about
Motherwell's Reconciliation Elegy
and how he charged around the studio,
rolling vast turgid highways
of black oil over acres of canvas.
I think about Alice Neel
painting all those people
and what they thought
when they saw the final product
or what people thought when they saw
the first Cubist or Dada paintings.
My friend looks for a show of interest.
Yes! By all means, encourage him.
I cock an eyebrow. He revs back up
and I think about my favorite color,
that mid-palette blue...a blue bisque,
the color of my grandma's cameo brooch...
vibrantly subtle...is that possible?...
yes, it's the color of Della Robbia's Florentine ceramics.
He goes on about old times, about how it was then,
way way way back when when when
when we were all back where, back when, doing what
with, for, and to whom. My brains coughs up chimes,
resonations, cross-references, cerebral links,
odors, tinkles, cues, and subtle whiffs of distractions.
I hear Charlie Parker play Carvin' the Bird
somewhere in my head and it segues into
Black Throated Wind and lurches into
Foggy Mountain Breakdown. He jumps
from childhood to yesterday, in between, and back.
I think of my gal and my pal Keelin
and Jan and how in the end
it was probably a good thing plural marriage was frowned upon.
I think about the incredible, loving extended family
we built in Brooklyn and Manhattan and how often
every single one of them--Mel, Keelin, Jannah, Nick, Kevin, Jan, Miya,
Colin, Tony, Cheryl, Pinky, Fuzzy, Dot, 'Moto, and all our side friends--
shoot across memory like blazing comets, like right now.
See? He keeps sensing me drifting and dreaming but
I nod and wink and pick up the reverie, falling, falling
back, back, back to the night my daughter was born.
It was as quiet as a painting in Berkeley,
driving at three a.m. on Telegraph Avenue
toward Oakland, to the delivery room.
I saw a new moon hung on our old sky.
We watched the monitor and waited.
When her robber-stockinged face came down,
one bleat to the rafters started us all breathing again.
He's buzzing in my left ear
and the rhythms say I am safe.
I think about dreams--not drifting
like this, but real R.E.M. dreams:
I don't know which is better,
to dream it or see it,
to see it right now,
or to have seen it.
I don't know which is better,
the memory or the thing itself.
The memory can be repeated forever
but loses fidelity like an old record
and the fictions your mind confects
start filling in the gaps
until the memory becomes a framework
for what we wanted to be, or what should have been.
He nudges me, waiting for a yes, the go-ahead sign.
Yeah baby, take it on home. I think about Casey Stengel.
He suspects I am drifting over the hills and far away.
I nod "um." It is the sun's birthday
and where did the crows go? When he jumps to El Toro,
my mind starts sleepwalking from Boot Camp.
I wonder if I will ever get to Palestine,
or if there will ever be another Palestine,
or if I will get back to Seville or Tetuan,
Chora Sfokion or Brooklyn, Heraklion or Hoboken,
Vinaroz or the Delaware Water Gap, if I will ever see
Leningrad or Katmandu, and I wonder
if I would want to see Calcutta, Johannesburg,
Bhopal, Cleveland, Camden, or Port-au-Prince?
I don't know which is easier:
to listen or pretend to listen?
I think about bottles of beer
chilling in a tub of cracked ice.
Sexy rivulets of water fall down bottles
glistening in the hot sun.
Even my nose is tired.
Should I pee, or hold it?
Should I hold it and focus
on the distraction?
What did Gertrude Stein mean
when she wrote about those
"Pigeons In The Grass, Alas?"
Was it the pigeons or the grass
or the pigeons and the grass aggregated?
I want to bang my head on the wall
to dull the pain between my ears,
and he's warming up for the stretch.
A pipe doesn't slow him down and the wine
just keeps his throat supple, his voice nimble,
and the memories and word torrent flowing.
He talks about the Marines
and six years marching, marching marching
on the parade ground erect and spitshined,
marching, saluting, dreaming, marching, yes-sir-ing.
I remember Nick Gattuccio's name
means Sicilian Dogfish and the time we drained
a demi-john of Chianti in Florence.
He tells me twenty things I don't want to know
and ten I'm indifferent about for every one I do.
He remembers where he left off
and murmurs a bridge to the next installment.
I think about the firefall of light I saw that day
on a rising skyscraper.
The welder is a star thrower, and constellations
of pale yellow sparks tumble from a heaven
of beams and girders strung with wire and pipe.
Those sparks are like his words, falling down iron bars
to disappear like fugitives in a white lake of sparks.
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Drawing of Jack and Keelin Curran by Jerry Melin, 1981

click to enlarge

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Kutiman's Mother Of All Funk Chords: the best mash-up this year (so far)

This is a wonderful assemblage, where Kutiman assembles/mashes up clips of many people's solo instrumental videos from You Tube. And it ends up as a mostly coherent funk song. I don't know how many solo performances were concatenated to make the video...but it looks like 16 or so. . .anyhow, a definite must-see. . .

It's been ten years and 7 days days since I last heard Jerry Melin's voice

Click to enlarge - a painting I did from a photo of Jerry. Curiously, on the wall behind him
is a piece of sheet music for the song "Dear Old Pal Of Mine."

My great friend Jerry Melin died ten years ago today. It was probably the second worst day of my life. As St. Paddy's day comes around, I always remember Mel, and his funeral on St. Paddy's Day itself. I have printed this before here, once or twice, and feel compelled to one more time. I still have moments when I wish I could tell, or ask, him something. I don't think a day goes by that I don't think of him at least once. And ten years later, his intelligence, and love of life and friends and family remain a part of my life. When I read or write or paint or speak or draw or recite of listen to music, or watch a movie, I often feel Mel looking over my shoulder. He may not applaud or approve whatever I'm up to (and I can live with that), but I still check in with him, as best I can. Mel: there is no question about it--you are both still missing and still missed.

_____________________

I'll never forget--as long as I'm compos mentis--the morning Dot Melin called me to tell me the news. It was about 7:00 in the morning. I was taking a shower and my son Colum came in and said Dot's on the phone for you. And I knew. I knew it as sure as I'd known it that day on May 19, 1964, when I rode home on my bicycle from a baseball game and saw my mom standing on our back porch watching for me to arrive home. "He's gone."

It was this week he died. His funeral was held on St. Patrick's Day.

Ten years ago, Jerry Melin, died in Marin County, California (where he lived near The Grateful Dead, a band we both loved). He even met a few of them during his years in Ross. Mel's death was a jackhammer blow; a blow I still try to understand and absorb. There is not a day when I don't think of him often, all these years later. Even now--last night, in fact--there are things I want to tell him; things so strange, or amazing, or bent, or obscure and ethereal, that only he could plug in to them. And yet my loss is nothing like that experienced by Dot, and his three wonderful daughters. Whenever I see them, I know that he's smiling and maybe bragging them up to Gabriel and St. Peter.

Mel died instantly of a heart attack in the middle of a tennis match. His wife, Dorothea, asked if I could speak a eulogy at his funeral. I wasn't sure I could, if I could even write it. I wasn't thinking right. Somehow, 'though, I felt Mel peer over my shoulder and was able to get something on paper. I was even able to deliver the eulogy in a packed church without completely breaking down. It wasn't looking at his widow or his three young daughters, or all our friends, or the people of Ross that got me through it. I asked myself "what would Jerry do?" How had Jerry managed the deaths of our friends Phil, Peter, Jannah, Colin, or his father? It was not by boohooing...that was not his way.

The Way was to realize that chapter was over and go from there, and celebrate. "You celebrate them by digging that we're here, " he would say, "there's plenty of time to be pushing daisies. You celebrate them by celebrating this. Dig this and dig it now because tomorrow never knows, as that hippie Beatle sang."

I gave a eulogy at his funeral in March, 1999:

Eulogy for Jerry Philip Melin

[This first paragraph about the church I ad-libbed at the funeral and wrote down when I got on the plane that night].

I look around this church, and I see--what?-- Three Hundred People? I know Jerry would have been amazed; he would be amused. This is half the town of Ross, California. Jerry never dreamed he could sell out a Catholic Church. It's S.R.O.--Standing Room Only--here. It should be. No, Jerry could not have dreamt this. I wonder if it's some kind of dream myself. But I know it isn't, because we are here, together. And I wish we weren't.

My earliest Jerry memory might be the Letterman's Jacket Incident. Jerry lettered in gymnastics, and had later made "improvements" to his Kent Meridian High School letterman's jacket. In addition to a carefully rendered, bright white rendition of Mister Zig-Zag on the back, he reversed the letters on his jacket to read MK. The football coach stopped him one day and asked (I'll try my dumb coach voice): "Hey­­ what's this MK jazz stand for?"

When Jerry answered "Mein Kampf," the coach, of course, went absolutely bananas. Jerry had to surrender the Jacket eventually because it violated several rules, but for Jer this was a personal triumph, beating anything he'd done on the parallel bars or the rings, and leaving his vaulting wins far in the dust. He'd riled The Man.

Over the years, I called him at various times--of the names I can actually say in church--Jed, Jer, Mel, Bart (referring to the Hobart Dump), Jeddy and even sometimes, Jerry. These last few years we settled into Mel, and he called me either Doc, or Jack.

He was a skilled artist, creating bawdy cartoons of people locked in improbable combinations and situations, and incredible William Blake-inspired drawings of sinners and angels. He was a skilled stockmarket analyst and a securities trading wiz (not bad for a guy with a degree in English literature). He wrote chilling fiction and fantasy, often in stream of consciousness bursts, folded into those twenty page letters from Mexico, Alaska, Greece, Bellingham, Manhattan or Seattle. He was an introspective philosopher who could keep you up all night discussing The Big Ideas, and Art and Women and Godhead. Jerry was also a prankster unparalleled. I could go on about that alone forever. Jerry was an adoring husband, a doting father, and a friend whose intensity swallowed you up. You knew he loved you.

I tried to find my box of letters, stories, drawings, and poems from him before I came to California for this funeral--and even those many emails. His letters to me, at least, were machine-gun meditations on life--a vortex of free associations on the nature of Art and Destiny and Man's follies. These letters were shot through with his comic vision of humankind that plumbed the lowest and highest of humor.

His warped sense of humor and willingness to talk from the heart sustained us through a lot of happy times, tragic losses, and life itself.

In 1978, Jerry and I took a most ill­-advised trip from my home in New York City to his home in Seattle. You could travel from anywhere to anywhere in the U.S. for $49 on the Greyhound Bus.

One of the things I remember most about that trip is how much we laughed and babbled and talked through the night as we crossed those twelve desolate, frozen states in those nightmare bus seats, usually trapped in the back of the bus, near the toilet. We finally arrived in Seattle, and staggered off the bus after three and a half showerless and cramped days. We went to our respective family's homes.

Jerry called two hours later to see if I wanted to hang out. We had been six inches apart for 85 hours! I was ready for a serious and long Jerry­break, but he wanted to know when I would be arriving at his place to liberate him! There was more to transact! We had unfinished business. He could never have enough. I was always the first one to go, to hang up, log off, or go to bed. He never ever wanted to say goodbye.

There was never a time when we talked that he didn't hound me to come visit him in Kent, Seattle, Bellingham, Manhattan, Long Island, Mexico, San Francisco, or up in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Wherever he was was where I should be. It was critical that he knew exactly when we would see each other again. It was always "Jack. . .drive that car down here tomorrow. . .it's only 16 hours and you've got five days off." Or "Doc. . .come down here and quit working so damned hard. . .we'll sit in the hot tub and talk about politics and Rembrandt and old kings."

Jerry would never ever hang up without extracting a solid promise we would get together As Soon As Possible.

In retrospect, I wish I had driven down here a week ago, the last time he insisted I come immediately. He was really applying the heat this time. He knew I had a lot of time off, and I thought about it. He really applied the pressure­­. But I don't think Jerry had any sense of what was to come later that week; I don't think he knew he had days to live. He just wanted that visit to glimmer in the distance, as a possibility, as a carrot to keep him going. Mel had to know you'd be there again, in person.

How can we not all love and cherish someone who loved us as relentlessly as that? For everyone who knew and loved him, there will always be a void that only Jerry can fill.

I'll miss those midnight calls about Flemish painters and Yeats and Shakespeare and the mad popes. It was all so very important to him and he always wanted every detail about my life, and the things I read and wrote and painted, and created at work, and about my family, and about my wife he adored. . .all of that was never far from his mind. Half the time, I couldn't pry a word out of Jerry, but he was there, pumping words out of me like an oil derrick.

Mel measured his life by the people he loved. That was his yardstick. I hope we can all come to practice even a little bit of what he taught us about devotion and intensity and reaching out. Jerry's love was relentless.

I know I speak for Jerry when I tell you he wants us to somehow accept this terrible thing and learn to laugh again. Jerry was never much of a mourner; he was a liver. This much commotion about his passing would be too much. He wants you to ponder not his passing but his glorious transit through this bright blue ball.

It's going to be too long
until we hug Jerry
but until then,
I know that once you're through
with the orientation and settling in,
you'll be teaching those angels
new moves and showing them
just how much room there really is
to dance on the head of a pin. ­­­­

Jack Brummet, 1999

_______________________

Some other articles (although the ones wth audio links no longer work) on Jerry:


Jerry Melin, Master Forger and Craftsman
A Blog for Phil Kendall
Photograph: Jerry Melin At Mud Bay, Bainbridge Island, Washington
Jerry Melin, still missing, still missed
Mel, Part 1
Audioblogger Post::::Kevin Curran And Jerry Melin Meet The Poet Allen Ginsberg At The Grass Roots Tavern On NYC's Lower East Side
Senator Jerry Melin Speaks Out About 1979
Further ruminations on Phil Kendall
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Painting: Hi Mom! I'm Paroled!

On the Surf N Turf Circuit: Faded supernovas, one-hit wonders, and bands you've sort of heard of board their buses on the casino loop

Hearing that Jewel was playing the casino circuit now, I began wondering who else had been reduced to the casino loop. An unbelievable array of bands and singles are criss-crossing the country now, and may be nearly as big a draw as the $1.29 well drinks and the $9.99 all you can eat buffet.

Even people who can still sell out mid-sized venues like Bob Dylan (it hurts to type this), Cher, Jimmy Buffett and Shania Twain have hit the casinos.

The Century Casino in Edmonton, Alberta has recently hosted acts like Trooper, Herman’s Hermits (who in their prime often out-sold The Beatles), Air Supply, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and Don McLean. They have also had arguably strong rockers appear like Joan Jett and Cheap Trick.

Wayne Newton started out playing casinos, but now he's playing the really crappy ones. Danke Shoen, dude!

Blind Melon, Vanilla Ice, Chilliwack, Soul Asylum, Kim Mitchell, The Cowsills, Glass Tiger, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Blue Oyster Cult have all recently played in a Calgary casino.

Three Dog Night, The Doobie Brothers, The Allman Brothers, Blondie, The Beach Boys (with none of the Wilson Brothers), The Oustsiders (Time won't let me...a great rock single), ? and the Mysterians, Eric Burdon of The Animals, Tommy James & The Shondells, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & The Raiders, Mitch Ryder of The Detroit Wheels, and Ron Dante of The Archies have all hit the circuit.

Air Supply also played the Stampede Casino. Kelly Doody (nice name) wrote in the Calgary Sun: "I asked one of the clean-up staff if it had been a sold-out performance. "Yeah," he told me emphatically while straightening back out the banquet chairs. "I'd say there were at least 200 people in here."

He's not a rocker, but the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut had a year long agreement with The Daily Show's Jon Stewart to appear.

Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, Californiahas brought in rockers, as well as people and bands like Bill Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld, Keith Sweat, Kool & the Gang, and even bands like Rascal Flatts, and Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20, that attract the under 50 set.

Jewel. I am really not a fan of her poetry, but I thought her first album was pretty good. She tried to become a pop tart and it didn't fly with the public, and now she too is on the Surf N Turf Circuit.

Creedence Clearwater Revisited. Yeah, Tom Fogerty is dead, and founder, singer, songwriter and guitarist John Fogerty won't go near them, but Stu Cook and Doug Clifford have been on the circuit the better part of the last two decades.

Journey. Actually, these guys can sell out ampitheatres, but they also work the casino circuit. The greatest part of the new (and Steve Perry-less) band is that they hired the spot-on singer of a Journey tribute band to front Journey.

Bret Michaels. The Poison lead singer parlayed success on VH1's Rock of Love into a tour, stopping mainly at the casinos.

Kansas tours with an orchestra, and sometimes charge up to $75 a seat.

And there are literally hundreds more bands you've heard out there, in the great American night, hurtling on buses to their next gig up the interstate.
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"It's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care."

Click to enlarge

One of the dozens of excellent quotes from the film Office Space.
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Song: Tennessee Stud by Doc Watson with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Doc Watson's Tennessee Stud is one of my favorite songs of all time. Doc did a stunning rendition of the song on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's landmark album in the early 70's.



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