The Old Masters

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Frequent visitors to this blog (all three of you) have no doubt noted a predilection to illustrate my rants with paintings of Bosch and Brueghel, Juvenalian satirists of the highest order; however, when it comes to unflattering depictions of the human race, those two Old Masters share many a Flemish cousin who can also render grotesqueries and human folly with Chaucerian panache.

The Ugly Duchess

Take the above masterpiece, Quentin Massy’s (1466-1530) portrait of Margaret, Duchess of Carinthia, also known as Margaret Maultasch (“Satchel-mouth”), though best known as The Ugly Duchess.  

An exquisite warning to in-breeders everywhere, she, of course, is the great-great-great grandmother of the Duchess Alice encounters in Wonderland.

The Ugly Duchess’s famous issue also include the Cowardly Lion:

AKA Bert Lahr (pictured below in drag)

In Auden’s frequently anthologized poem “Musée des Beaux Arts,” he notes that 

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how well, they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along [. . .]

He goes on to describe the suffering’s occurring “anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot” and cites Brueghel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus as an example.

icarusbreughel

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

But it’s not only suffering that goes on in the untidy corners of the paintings of Flemish masters; plenty of hankypanky takes place there as well.

Take this example from the above-mentioned Massys, The Ill-Matched Lovers.

Quentin-Massys-Ill-Matched-Lovers-550x373

Note while the lecher’s hand is copping a not-so-surreptitious feel,

Quentin-Massys-Ill-Matched-Lovers-Detail-thumb

the young woman’s transferring his purse to her companion,

Quentin-Massys-Ill-Matched-Lovers-Detail-purse

a literal Fool.

Quentin-Massys-Ill-Matched-Lovers-Detail-fool

Anyway, it’s not all tongue-clucking burlesque; these masters certainly could capture beauty when in the mood [not to mention pre-photographic perfection (check out the instruments at the bottom)].  

2fourmus

Caesar van Everdingen, Pegasus and the Four Muses

Nevertheless, for whatever reason (an overabundance choleric humors, perhaps), I prefer the Old Masters’ satire to their high mindedness. 

42757-wayfarer2-1

I leave you with these details from Bosch’s The Wayfarer.

56

Oink, oink, say the piggies. Splash, splash goes the urine.

The Rattle of Bones and Chuckle from Ear to Ear: A Tribute to Tom Waits

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Editor’s Note: My old blog Late Empire Ruminations is coming down soon, so I’m curating pieces from there that are not so topical. This post comes from September 2010.

Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege for the strong. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Trans. Walter Kaufmann)

The phrase that gives this blog its name – ragwater, bitters, and blue ruin – comes from the Tom Waits song “9th and Hennipen” where

All the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes

And the moon’s teeth marks are on the sky.

Tom Waits, the man, I think, could be Frederick Nietzsche’s poster boy for Beyond Good and Evil.  TW is a man who has created and recreated himself, always pushing into the future, ignoring the insect buzz of the masses to remain absolutely true to himself.  Although not quite [cue Dusty Springfield] the son of a preacher man (like Nietzsche himself, Jung, and Hesse), Waits is pretty damned close, the son of two California school teachers, who by profession had to preach the status quo, part of what Yeats dismissed as “the noisy set/Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergyman/The martyrs call the world.”

This pigeonholing may be unfair to Waits’ parents who perhaps on the first day of school each year refused to hold their hands to their hearts and pledge alliance to the flag of the United States of America, but I kind of doubt it.  After his parents divorced, Waits lived with his mother in Richard Nixon’s hometown of Whittier, California.  Once he had a record contract in hand, TW moved to the Tropicana Motel in LA.  Living the nightmare you might say.

Waits Lounging in his room at the Tropicana c. 1976

More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was always the ideal of today.” Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

What went right here?  How did this middle class product come to eschew 1) the comforts and security of carpeted dens for seedy decadence 2) the prevalent hippie zeitgeist of the 60’s for the retro Beatnikism of Cassidy and Kerouac 3) rock-n-roll for jazz, later jazz for polka?  

Always restless, TW has never settled on one groove, no matter how lucrative.  Only perhaps the German language is equipped to produce a label for his music: Volktingedbluejazzindustrocabaretmusick.

In the course of the 38 years since TW signed his first recording contract, he has produced a body of high quality popular music that deserves inclusion in the pantheon that houses Bob Dylan, Cole Porter, and Johnny Mercer.  As the Wall Street Journal’s (the very mouthpiece of hipdom) pop critic Jim Fusilli raves: 

Interestingly enough, in later years, TW’s has shifted from the streets of New Orleans and piano jazz eastward to the cabarets of Weimar Berlin and accordion-laced rumbas.  Among the many influences on Waits’s body of work – Stephen Foster, Louis Armstrong, Hoagy Carmichael – stand Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, late practitioners of German Expressionism, working their dark magic in the black shadows of Nietzsche’s colossal influence.  How appropriate that Wait’s first musical Frank’s Lost Years debuted at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater and that his collaboration with William S. Burrows, The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bulletsopened in 1991 in Hamburg.  In his most recent incarnations, he seems German, a sort of Chaplinesque figure, part Kafka, part Brecht, a sort of skid row ubermensch who by heroically forsaking the comforts of mediocrity descended into an underworld of gothic grotesqueries and emerged triumphant, the master of his own fate, a hero armed with the secret knowledge of suffering.

She has that razor sadness that only gets worse

With the clang and the thunder of the Southern Pacific going by

And the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet

til you’re full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin

And you spill out over the side to anyone who will listen…

And I’ve seen it all, I’ve seen it all

Through the window of the evening train.

Mr. Trump Ain’t Right in the Head

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I spent this year’s hurricane evacuation in the mountains with my father-in-law and an older couple who happen to be Trump supporters, which meant occasionally I was exposed to Fox News.  My hosts, who are in fact sophisticated, interesting, and kind,[1]are not consumed with politics, and they seem to dislike Democrats more than they admire Trump.  As I was walking past the television, I overheard one of the Fox anchors say, “The Democrats are already trying to exploit this hurricane.” 

 “Hmmm, that doesn’t sound so far and balanced, ” I mused.

It’s as if indeed “the center cannot hold,” that left is left and right is right, and never the twain shall meet.  The exception to this tribalism can be found with the Never Trump Republicans, people like Jennifer Rubin, George Well, David Frum, Bill Kristol, and Joe Walsh, pundits I once mocked but now admire for their devotion to rationality and the rule of law.

I do, however, have some Facebook friends who idolize Trump in an emotional Jim Jones cultish sort of way.  Recently, one addressed me personally in a post in which she asked in reference to the Steele dossier how I would like it if someone had made up a bunch of lies about me. Showing remarkable Dalai Lama like restraint, I didn’t respond with “Well, if I had paid off a porn star because I had sex with her three months after the birth of my son, I might not be that surprised to find myself the source of gossip.”  There’s no talking reason to these folks, who regurgitate Fox’s talking points and refer to Democrats as if they are not their neighbors but enemies to be feared. Several piled on my brother, who wasn’t as restrained as his older sibling, with smugly inane predictions about the fall of the Democratic Party.

How they’re unable to recognize Trump’s dishonesty and vulgarity amazes me.  I get why some Koch-like mega billionaire might be willing to abide Trump’s assault on democratic norms for the sake of gargantuan tax cuts, but I don’t understand why middle class citizens who try to instill honesty in their children support such an inveterate liar whose temperament makes the Amazing Hulk seem as mild-mannered as Fred Rogers in comparison.

In fact, Peter Wehner of the Atlantic makes a compelling argument that Trump suffers from mental illness:

Donald Trump’s disordered personality—his unhealthy patterns of thinking, functioning, and behaving—has become the defining characteristic of his presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism; his addiction to lying about things large and small, including his finances and bullying and silencing those who could expose them; his detachment from reality, including denying things he said even when there is video evidence to the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories; his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating.

It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his craving for adulation; his misogyny, predatory sexual behavior, and sexualization of his daughters; his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack of empathy and sympathy, including attacking a family whose son died while fighting for this country, mocking a reporter with a disability, and ridiculing a former POW. (When asked about Trump’s feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump’s mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, reportedly said, “He pisses ice water.”)

And it’s maddening! Each news cycle brings another outrage, whether it be receiving love notes from Kim Jong-un, diverting money from the military to build a medieval wall on the southern border, or encouraging foreign leaders and his own cronies to stay at his properties in blatant violation of the Emolument Clause of the Constitution.  

It’s overwhelming, and what so many of my friends have done is to just stop tuning in, which I can well understand. 

[1]When I suggested I might drive down Friday early to check on my house, the husband of the couple offered to fly me to Johns Island in his private plane.

Confessions of a Fair Weather Fan

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Let’s begin with a string of clichés since this post is about sports.

I sort of admire those die-hard fans who, rain or shine, stay true to their teams.  I know many Clemson fans who would remain in the stands till the bitter end in the good ol’ days when Clemson would occasionally take a drubbing.  Back when Carolina won five straight from the Tigers, I marveled as Clemson devotees posted in unequivocal terms on Facebook that their love was steadfast, that there was no Himalayan peak high enough, no Mariana Trench deep enough, etc.  

Not I-and-I.  During the Gamecocks 21 game-losing streak, you wouldn’t find me anywhere near the am radiobroadcast of the game.[1]  In 1990, when the Atlanta Braves ended up in last place, I wouldn’t even bother to glance at the box scores in the paper.  No, I’m a fair weather fan, one whose tribal affiliations are weak.  

This disinclination to link with hometown teams began in Summerville where high school football seemed to be the center of most people’s lives.  Back in the pre-hippie days, if you weren’t on the team or a cheerleader, you could not be an A-list celebrity.  Going to the games on Friday nights was de rigueur.  In fact, my father, who didn’t give a sou[2]about sports, pulled against the Mighty Green Wave for spite’s sake.  Needless, to say, he never accompanied me to a game, nor, in fact, sat in to watch me strike out in my Little League games. [3]  He had better things to do, and I mean that sincerely.  

So, once I deep-sixed preppydom and donned the bandana hairband of the counterculture, I, too, quit going to the games, spending my Friday nights at my pal Adam’s apartment listening to him and his bandmates jam, drinking PBRs, and smoking stems and seeds. After the games, we’d cruise Tastee Freeze’s parking lot, circling amid the blare of rock-n-roll blasting from the speakers of various cars.  What fun!

Post Preppy I-and-I

So when I matriculated at USC, I wasn’t at all into football and didn’t particularly like the players I had in my classes, those hulking short-haired muscle men with “Nixon’s the One” campaign buttons pinned to their pecs.   As a matter of fact, in college I didn’t attend one single game.

However, under the influence of postgraduate peers, I began following the Gamecocks, and I have always been a Braves fan, even in the most bohemian of my days.  Nevertheless, these affiliations are weak, and I no longer let a broadcast impede on anything more promising, like a party or concert.

All that said, I’m really enjoying the 2019 Atlanta Braves, who, right now are killing it.[4]

It’s fun getting to know the players, and the game itself is so inherently interesting with the many complexities underlying each individual pitch.

So let’s go Bravos, I’m with you some of the way.

[1]These pre-dated the ubiquitous television broadcasts that fans now enjoy.

[2]Let’s keep this French merde going for a while.

[3]To show you what a better father I was than Daddy,  I attended my sons’ games, though bringing a New Yorker magazine with me, which I read during the contests.

[4]Not at this very second; they’re down 4-1 in the top of the fifth.  But they’ve won 9 out of their last 10 and something like 16 out of their last 18.  

The Ever Losing Gamecock Blues

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Take me to a taproom,

Pull me an IPA.

Ain’t no Pabst gonna do it,

The Gamecocks played today.

 

Most talented team ever,

All the sportswriters said,

But when the game clock expired,

My hopes were also dead.

 

So here we go again,

A dozen or so Saturdays shot.

Ought to cancel my ESPN

And buy me a pound of pot.

 

But Hope is a powerful drug,

And patterns easy to ignore.

So sure as hell next Saturday,

I’ll be cursing our failure to score.

 

So take me to a taproom,

Pull me an IPA,

Ain’t no Pabst gonna do it,

The Gamecocks played today.

 

Weekday Road Trip, Featuring Live: Steve Earle, Beto O’Rourke, and the Mighty Dukes

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Steve Earle and the Dukes At Francis Marion U. Performing Arts Center Tuesday 27 August 2019

BBQ and Alt American Heroes

For the last couple of decades, on a weekday around 11:30, you’d likely find me at the cafeteria sneaking an early bite in hopes of avoiding the crush of famished adolescents who descend upon the regular lunch period.  But last Tuesday at 11:30, I was pulling into what my father-in-law Lee Tigner calls the omphalos of the barbeque world, Brown’s Bar-B-Que, right outside of Kingstree on North Hwy 52.

For our first anniversary, my wife Caroline bought us tickets[1]to a Steve Earle concert in Florence, South Carolina, a city on the move in an otherwise non-prosperous region of the Palmetto State.  On a whim, we decided to take the back roads and have lunch on the way.  The obvious choice was Brown’s.

If I should ever find myself on death row, I’m ordering Browns’ buffet for my last meal.[2]

Rice, roast beef stew, delicious tiny fried creek shrimp, fried catfish, mac and cheese, vinegary pepper barbeque (lean and clean), pork brusque, potato salad, coleslaw, desserts galore, including banana pudding, any condiment you could hope to have.[3]

Overstuffed but satisfied, we continued our journey racing graffiti-covered boxcars as they rumbled along parallel to us on 52.

As the outskirts of Florence became center city, we slowed down in anticipation of making a right turn when we saw on the sidewalk coming towards us this quirky bespectacled man sporting red knee-length shorts, a ZZ-Top-like beard, and long shoulder length hair.

Yes, it was the man himself, Steve Earle, American treasure, brilliant songwriter, and eclectic producer of a various strains of Americana music – blues, country, bluegrass, rockabilly, Celtic hybrids.  He’s also a published short story writer, novelist, and playwright. Probably, he was on his way to the Francis Marion Performing Arts Center, which was walking distance from our hotel and the Hyatt.  I’m embarrassed to say it, but it was sort of thrilling seeing him as a civilian, sporting what my pal Jake would call a dgaf [4]outfit.

Checking In and Out

The Hotel Florence is lovely and well staffed, and I don’t know why this happens, but when Caroline checked us in, they bumped us up to a two-bedroom suite with a full kitchen and two full baths, shades of our honeymoon when we were bumped up to the Presidential Suite at the Grove Park Inn.  In both cases it was too much, appreciated, but under-utilized.

Despite the swanky digs, we weren’t in the mood to lounge around in our rooms.  We needed a drink, so I googled “bars in Florence,” and the most interesting name that came up was “Downtown Southern Funk,” located eight minutes away in the warehouse of Seminar Brewery, Florence’s oldest.

While we were in that cavernous space, the Manager asked if we wanted a free ticket to the concert that night.  We told him we were set, but he insisted we take the ticket and try to give it away at the venue.  So we took the ticket, and as we were chatting with a bartender, I said,” Hey, man, you really ought to take the ticket and go.”  He insisted he couldn’t because with Beto being there in a couple of hours, they’d need all the bartenders they could muster.

“Beto O’Rourke?”

“Yeah, he’s giving a town hall meeting here at six.”

We ended up giving the ticket to another patron, whom we saw later at the show and who picked up our tab.

 To Go or Not to Go

Back at the hotel, we contemplated.  The town hall started at 6, the concert at 7:30, which would mean an Uber to and fro, but ultimately, we opted for the rough and tumble of American democracy instead of the serenity of the hotel bar.

We arrived at about a quarter to six, and the lack of security surprised me: no metal detectors, no riffling through handbags.  I’d call it a modest crowd, mostly white.  We grabbed a couple of beers and chatted with Beto’s South Carolina chair, a lovely, articulate woman in her late twenties.

After a brief introduction from a state representative, Beto took the microphone and delivered his stump speech, which focused on guns and immigration.   Of course, he hails from El Paso, site of recent carnage, and I was somewhat surprised when he said the word “shit.”  “We need to quit selling that shit,” he said, referring to assault weapons. Indeed, how absurd that it’s legal to buy weaponry not intended for hunting or self-defense but for rapidly killing human beings, whether they be elementary school children, patrons of movies or gay bars, or Walmart shoppers.

Some smug, ramrod-erect old man interrupted Beto, who goofed by handing him the microphone. [5]The man launched into a screed claiming it was cellphones, not guns, that were to blame for the spate of American bloodbaths. No, these massacres are a by-product of educational dereliction, a consequence, he claimed, of society’s and government’s rejection of Yahweh and His Only Begotten Son.  Aides attempted to get the mike from him and finally succeeded.  Once Beto was able to speak, looking directly into the man’s face, he calmly mentioned that European countries also had high cellphone usage and were much less religious than the USA but rarely were the the scenes of mass shootings.

Once questions began, a young man with a baseball cap flipped backwards claimed that Trump was not a racist among a shower of boos as Caroline and I sidled outside to catch our Uber and hit the concert.

Beto at Seminary Brewing Tuesday 27 August 2019

 

The Francis Marion Performing Arts Center

Florence, or FloTown as the hipsters call it, is enjoying urban renewal, and you could sense a genuine pride in several of the residents we talked to about the transformation. They said that before the Performing Arts Center, you wouldn’t want to be in this section of town at night.  One actually compared it to Detroit. Now, it’s very peaceful, laidback, verdant.

Anyway, the area is now quite nice, and I agree with brochure we were handed when we entered  the Performing Arts Center that “the unique facility offers patrons an unusual level of intimacy, paired with sophisticated acoustics.”

The Concert

Steve came out and introduced the first act, the Mastersons, a husband-and-wife team consisting of superb guitarist Chris and exquisite fiddler Eleanor Whitmore, masters of technique and vocal harmony.

Alexandria, VA – July 18, 2017 – Steve Earle and The Dukes perform at The Birchmere. (Photo by Richie Downs)

They also accompanied Steve and the Dukes throughout the concert, which featured several covers of Guy Clark songs and a generous sampling of Steve’s greatest hits, which, as I have already said, cover the gamut of various Americana subgenres.

I can’t provide a complete set list but songs included Clark covers “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “Dublin Blues,” and “LA Freeway.”

Among Earle’s hits, we heard “Guitar Town,”  “Galway Girl,”  “Fort Worth Blues,”  “Copperhead Road,” and many others, including a car medley featuring Springsteen’s “Racing in the Streets,”  “Sweet Little 66,” and “Pink Cadillac.”[6]

The Dukes sounded great, whether harmonizing a bluegrass number, plucking an Irish melody, or fuzzing dissonantly on one of his rockers.

A+

At the Francis Marion Performing Arts Center Tuesday 27 August 2019

The Dispensary

We walked home after the show, and instead of going back to the hotel, we hit the rooftop bar at the Dispensary.

It’s fairly dark up there and seating consists of sofa sets and coffee tables.  When we arrived, a couple of females nestled at a corner table, but that was it.  About a half an hour later, a college couple arrived, and the male gave his date a sort of a mini tour of the skyline before snuggling down on a sofa across the bar from us.

As we got up to leave, in stepped the Dukes: the above-mentioned Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore, Ricky Ray Jackson, and Brad Pemberton (sans bassist Kelly Looney).  We told them how much we enjoyed the show, and Chris thanked us. I apologized for being intrusive, and he said, “Oh no, thanks for coming to the show.”

We hauled our glasses downstairs, the bartender thanked us, and that was that: a memorable post-retirement weekday, to say the least.

Selfie at the Dispensary Rooftop Bat Tuesday 27 August 2019

[1] Of course, the traditional gift for the first anniversary is paper.

[2]BTW, Mr. Earle has two dramatic monologue songs sung by death row denizens, “Bill Austin” and “Jonathan’s Song.”

[3] Or would it make more psychological sense to order a pack of saltines and a Carling Black Label beer?

[4] an acronym for “don’t give a fuck fig.”

[5]At these town halls, aides carry a separate microphone to field questions.

[6] Steve’s hero, Townes Van Zandt also covered “Racing in the Streets” on one of his live albums.

1950’s Trivia Quiz

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In my last post, I wrote about teaching a history elective called America in the Sixties.  Unfortunately, I didn’t interweave the material into a harmonious tapestry; instead, I patched together a quilt – separate units on the 50’s, civil rights, Vietnam, the Great Society, Second Wave Feminism, Counterculture, and music.

I thought it might be fun to see how any trivia mavens out there might fare on the multiple-choice section of my final exam.  I’m fairly sure no one is interested in tackling the exam essay.[1]

So, here’s the first section on the 1950’s.  The answers will appear in the comments below.

1. Who warned the American People about the dangers of “the military-industrial complex?”

A. Truman  B. Eisenhower  C. Kennedy  D. Nixon

2. Which of the following statements is not true concerning the US economy in the 1950s?

A. GNP averaged 7.6%    B. high government spending  C. characterized by consumer society D. low taxes

3. Which of the following is not true about women in the 1950s?

A. median age of marriage rose
B. many women kept working
C. women could not legally obtain an abortion
D. women were seldom employed as business executives

4. What was the primary reason that the number of college students doubled in the 1950s?

A. booming economy   B. baby boom   C. GI Bill   D. more acceptable for women to attend

5. Who is the Senator who spearheaded the Red Scare persecution of American citizens considered “communist sympathizers?”

A. Joseph McCarthy   B. Roy Cohn  C. Barry Goldwater D. J Edgar Hoover

6. What was the surname of the married couple who were convicted of providing the Soviet Union with scientific atomic bomb making secrets?

A. Hiss  B. Cohn  C. Arnold   D. Rosenberg

7. Which of the following didn’t occur in the 1950s?

A. Montgomery Bus Boycott  B. integration of Little Rock Schools  C. Brown v. Board of Education  D. the March on Washington

8. Who was the leader of the Soviet Union for majority of the Fifties?

A. Lenin  B. Stalin  C. Khrushchev D. Brezhnev

9. Which of the following is not associated with Beats?

A. Allen Ginsberg  B. Timothy Leary  C. Jack Kerouac D. William Burroughs

10.  Which of the following wasn’t a musical force in the Fifties?

A.  Bo Diddley                                    B.  Buddy Holly

C. Chuck Berry                                  D.  James Baldwin

[1]The 60s obviously had its dark and bright sides, and not surprisingly, historians disagree about whether the overall impact was positive or negative. Here’s historian Arthur Marwick:

Mention of `the sixties’ rouses strong emotions even in those who were already old when the sixties began and those who were not even born when the sixties ended. For some it is a golden age, for others a time when the old secure framework of morality, authority, and discipline disintegrated. In the eyes of the far left, it is the era when revolution was at hand, only to be betrayed by the feebleness of the faithful and the trickery of the enemy; to the radical right, an era of subversion and moral turpitude. What happened between the late fifties and the early seventies has been subject to political polemic, nostalgic mythologizing, and downright misrepresentations.

In a thesis driven essay in which you cite specific events and individuals, evaluate the 60s as a decade. On the whole, do you consider it positive or negative. Why?

Matters you might consider include the social and economic order of the 1950s, the Communist threat, civil rights, assassinations, Viet Nam, Great Society legislation, social upheaval (counterculture, protests, riots), and women’s rights.

 

The Omission of Blue Cheer

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In my last two years at Porter-Gaud, I taught a class called “America in the Sixties,” a history elective I felt unqualified to teach.  Sure I came of age in the Late Sixties and Early Seventies, yes, I was suspended from school for wearing a black armband on Moratorium Day[1], and, um, sure, I could offer firsthand insight of what it is like to ingest lysergic acid diethylamide. On the other hand, my knowledge of the Freedom Riders, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the Great Society agenda was on par with Mike Pence‘s knowledge of the poetry of Charles Bukowski.

The one topic we covered I felt confident about was music.  Thanks to the sophistication of the latest technology, I could embed short videos into Keynote slide shows that covered the roots of rock, Early Sixties music, Mo Town, Stax, the British invasion, and finally the San Francisco sound.

But even here I was somewhat derelict because in the San Francisco piece I failed to mention the seminal acid blues rock band Blue Cheer, whom some identify as the very first heavy metal band.[2]

My pal, the late Gordon Wilson, turned me on to Blue Cheer in ’69.  The band, which borrowed their name from a variety of LSD, had released a really arresting album, Vincebus Eruptum, the year before.   Its most successful single, a cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues,” actually peaked at #14 on Billboard, though I don’t remember ever hearing it on the radio. Also featured on the album was the blues standard “Rock Me, baby,” made famous earlier by Muddy Waters and BB King.

Eddie Cochran

So what you got was the blues all hepped up on goofballs.

Here’s a video.  Note the relentless drumming and wailing guitar.

 

 

Anyway, I think “Summertime Blues” holds up fairly well, though I doubt if many of my students in the Sixties course would have dug it.  When I first started teaching at PG in the mid-Eighties, students were obsessed by Sixties music.  In fact, I dubbed them “the re-generation.” However, nowadays hip hop and country have replaced rock as the most popular genres, and most of those students of mine last year would prefer to hear Beyoncé over Janis Joplin.

[1]15 October 1969

[2]Maybe, but isn’t the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” at least a heavy metal song, even if you wouldn’t call the Kinks a “heavy metal band?”

Corky Cain, Washed Up Surfer, Sings of Dead End Hedonism

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sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

 

My ash blonde hair has disappeared,

leaving a freckled scalp in its stead.

Two black bags bulge beneath my eyes,

All rheumy and rimmed with red.

 

They say sagacity is recompense.

(I’d settle for a dollop of common sense).

Hey, little lady, could you spare me a smile?

(Or at least a wink instead of a wince?)

 

No, when it comes to wisdom,

I’m an old lecher banging on a drum,

cruising the boulevards looking for love

in the suburban sprawl of Byzantium.

 

Playing the fool, the pantaloon,

howling for hours at the hollow moon,

waking in the morning with a broke down head,

knowing that never will be all too soon.

 

Old friend, Willy B, sing me a song

that will drown out the barbarous gong

of the death knell clanging in my brain

you, the king of love gone wrong.

Al Gored

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Where will my typing fingers lead my mind this morning?  There are so many topics to explore, from the divine (is there an afterlife and what would it be like) to the absurd (evangelical Christians claiming a Professional Wrestling promoter who paid off a porn star to keep quiet about their tryst three months after the birth of his son was sent by God Almighty to save us all).

Or I could waste my and your time engaging in wishful thinking.  For example, how would the world be different if 19,000 Palm County Florida ballots had not been spoiled because of shoddy ballot design and Al Gore had been elected President in 2000?

Here are some possibilities:

Perhaps 9/11 would have been prevented.  Bush ignored intelligence warnings that Bin Laden was planning to attack the US. Perhaps Gore would have put the nation on Red Alert, but, of course, there’s no way of knowing for sure.

I am, however, supremely confident that Gore would not have waged war against Iraq – Afghanistan perhaps, but not Iraq — saving hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

Imagine that money being directed towards infrastructure instead of military hardware.

Remember his much maligned idea of taking the Clinton surplus, placing it “in a lock box” for the upcoming rainy day (think monsoon, deluge) when our aging population overwhelms Social Security and Medicare funds?

John Roberts and Samuel Alito wouldn’t be on the Supreme Court.

The Great Recession avoided.

I could go on.

But what is it about Al Gore that makes him the target of such widespread animosity?   He seems to provoke a disproportionate amount of scorn from Late Empire citizens from all walks of life.  I remember all too well during the 2000 Campaign when the mainstream [insert nervous throat-clearing audio] liberal press pilloried him, as if coming off as a somewhat pompous, wooden media presence was more worthy of scorn than being a dysphasic Connecticut cowboy with a mutant Midas touch that turns everything he touches into shit, whether it be an oil-drilling company, a war of liberation, or the United States economy.[1]  So what if Gore served in Nam?  W served his country in the saloons of Texas.  So what if W is incapable of delivering an unscripted coherent paragraph? Al Gore claims that he invented the Internet. Ha ha ha ha ha.

You would think that in the ruinous aftermath of the Bush Debacle, people might cut poor Al some slack, realizing that a rather robotic public persona doesn’t mean that human being behind the automaton mask is necessarily a buffoon.  Having W as your lab partner might yield a couple of funny jokes you could tell later, but you’re much less likely to have a beaker blow up in your face if Al (or Hillary Clinton) were working at your side.

But people still love to hate Gore.  I remember a decade ago when the South Carolina Aquarium bestowed upon Gore its Legacy Award, providing him a pulpit to preach his sermon on looming environmental disaster.

At the time, disgruntled citizens inundated[2]our local paper with comments like these:

 

An award? An AWARD???  Instead, ARREST this sorry piece of trash for aiding and abetting the greatest scientific fraud in the history of mankind!

Ask any REAL scientist, physicist, etc. Gore’s theories are not supported by the scientific community.

Anyone curious about how Gore’s family made their money in Tennessee?

[. . .] the SC Aquarium is honoring the father of all hoaxes ALGORE. It is a joke. I sure am not going to visit or take my children to a place that supports fraud science.

We already have clean air, water and food or we would all be dead.

Critical thinking at its finest!

So what are we to make of the general public’s disdain of this well-meaning man?  I have noticed similar reactions to certain students when I worked as an educator.  For whatever reason, some unfortunates attract a disproportionate fusillade of slings and arrows for their seemingly petty peccadillos – their fashion faux pas, shyness, sexual orientation, intellectual curiosity, etc.

I suspect that this tendency for folk to gang up on the socially awkward lies in some deep-rooted evolutionary adaptation.  It’s nothing new.

[1]Our current President, who makes W sound Ciceronian when it comes to oratory, shares these sentiments.

[2]Have you picked up on the flood motif?