LAURAL'S DISH
Laural is our dog, my dog. Everyone else heads off to school, "people like me and Laural" stay home. He's a fine companion, but you have to understand. If he's having a really good time he tries to bite you, me, anyone. Not hard, just…similarly, if you're scratching his belly real good, but then shift to his (apparently less preferable) ears, he'll growl at you. The irregular spelling of his name results from the time that Alexandra and I were mulling the possibilities, in a tunnel in Newton Abbot, when we came across the graffiti: Laura L is a dog.
Laural loves to eat more than any living being ever created, and he will eat absolutely anything. We've weaned him from rocks but he once tried to eat an unopened can of Carlsberg Export. surprise! So his dish frequently has unusual things in it, bits of this or that, absolute treasures that others might consider slightly unfit for human consumption, for whatever stupid reasons.
Beneath please find my literary reflection of Laural's Dish:
28 August 2009
This is Nessie's Dish, a special edition of Laural's Dish mainly dedicated to our trip to Loch Ness. Theresa, Myles and I went; Alexandra and Amelia stayed home. Kasmira lives a few blocks away and was going to help them out until they got so bitchy.
Did we return to a mess? Ah, I don't think it was too bad. Not like a few years ago when we went to Barcelona and left Kasmira and she immediately took her food money and bought wine glasses and place mats and threw a party that was ultimately visited three times by the police and once by an ambulance and Laural ate my phone and we were still picking empty vodka bottles out of the potted plants two weeks later. Not like that...
But as of this writing we've been home for two days and they still haven't finished telling on each other. Sounds like they had a great time, too.
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About, nearly 40 years ago now...I woke up, in a cold and rain-soaked campsite in France. It was spring but it had rained hard all night, and it was still cold in the morning. I guess I was about eleven years old, so a little more than 35 years ago.
Anyway, while wandering around kicking a football or something, trying to avoid having to go brush my teeth, I started singing to myself. I don't remember what. I was surprised to hear that my cold had descended into my voice, all very mature and croaky. After some experimentation I decided that I sounded absolutely amazing singing country music that way...
And so when I woke up on about the 8th day by Loch Ness with a very froggy throat, I knew what to do right away. I started ad libbing a song in that country croak that may sound something like Kris Kristofferson ordering a fifth round back in the handful-of-pills-and-a-rotgut-chaser days. The tune probably owes enough to Jerry Jeff Walker's "L.A. Freeway" to be legally actionable, but the last line of each stanza drops loooow, like Kris likes to do...
Got off the train
in Dumbnacrackit
threw me off the train
though I caused no racket
something wrong with my ticket
or my jeans
Fell into cards with a gal
named Nessie
80 foot long, and
her friend Bessie
broke the Loch Ness bank
jacks over queens
It went on and on and the ("Mama Tried"-like) chorus had something about being chased 'cross "highlands, heather and the moon," but it must not have been very memorable because I don't 'zacktly remember it. It was very early, we still get up before 7 am on vacation.
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SURREALIST MOMENT OF THE WEEK: Fort Augustus is on the southwest end of the Loch, just a few miles from Craeg an Iarin, a mountain that overlooks it all. That was the hardest core day. At least a mile of that had to be straight up before inexplicably opening up onto the Old Military Highway (which is how tenderfeet get there, and people who read maps).
So we were way up in the air, hadn't seen anyone in miles (last couple we'd seen, replete with what must have been a grand worth of hiking gear, took one look up the hardest core trail [that we took] and headed back down to the main road)...not in miles, hours. We were at least headed down again, but on this trail maybe 18 inches wide. We were feelin' pretty tough.
Looked down the trail and saw a group of about ten people, who turned out to be from India. They were a parade. Two were pushing mountain bikes, one lady was pushing an empty stroller (with a wheel base twice as wide as the path) and her husband had the baby on his back. They were all attired in a pastel manner calculated to ensure them smooth entry to any establishment requiring "smart casual" dress. They'd been coming up that skinny, steep trail for hours, often straight up. They were professionals, articulate, polite, probably computers or accounting. They were all in very high spirits about the entire thing, and I swear that I don't think a one of them had broke a sweat. They were friendly, they were glad to see us. They were particularly pleased to hear that the Old Military Highway was only another half mile or so straight up.
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OMIGOSH!!!, the Venison salami at C. W. MacDougall's Butchery in Fort Augustus, don't miss it!!!!
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I concluded an eighteen year moratorium on hard liquor consumption with a shot of Monster's Choice Scotch on the banks of the Caledonian Canal. Even in the most glorious of my whisky days I wasn't much of a Scotch drinker, but I did some reasonable and empirical scientific research on this trip. My favorite was Glenmorangie. The worst was unquestionably Aura, recommended by the waitress at a diner in Dumnadrochit who said her big brother liked it a lot. Had to wait 'til the stroke of 11 am to be served it, too! Is there anything in the world more putrid than bad, late Scotch?
I've always been a Scottish Ale enthusiast. We tried a lot of 'em and it was wonderful-not a mediocre one in the lot-but I honestly can't point to anything that I like better than MacEwan's. They had MacEwan's on draught, and plenty of Pogues on the jukebox, at the local and that's a real nice combination.
For the record, though, I have to say that I consider the Pacific Northwest the highest concentration of great and wonderful and unique and local beers in the world. Scotland would probably take Germany for second.
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Fort Augustus starts very slow in the morning. Theresa and I and an old local getting his newspaper are the only ones on the streets before 8, when a few locals come out when the Gulf station opens. But at 10 the tour buses start rolling in, and it's difficult to find a Scottish accent in the mix. German, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, French, Italian, Spanish, Australian, American, Peruvian, Lithuanian...every language is represented, it's like a mini-United Nations.
The Scottish Air Force buzzes it all in a fighter jet every afternoon. They start at the north end of Loch Ness, flying very low and veering erratically between the mountains on every side, tipping wings and generally making a very loud noise and finally climbing desperately just as they're about to run into the top of the Rare Breeds exhibit in Fort Augustus. Without getting too much into wise uses of tax money and training for the real world or anything like that...it looks like a lot of fun, and it's very funny.
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Unlike Saddam Hussein, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was actually involved in terrorism against the West ( probably: he certainly wasn't single-handedly responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, but he did spend a good deal of time with unsavory characters). Unlike Osama bin Laden, Megrahi was caught and imprisoned. Unlike inmates in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, Megrahi was imprisoned in an institution that respected his human rights. Many Scots are therefore understandably confused at politicians from the United States and England speaking down to them on the subject of terrorists and prisons. Kevin McKenna probably put it best, in The Observer (Scottish):
Megrahi's homecoming to Libya has variously been described as triumphant and joyous, strange words to describe an event about a man about to die of cancer...
But it has been the outrage of the Obama administration in Washington that has been most difficult to stomach. Hillary Clinton's cack-handed attempt to interfere in matters under the jurisdiction of Holyrood last week was highly dubious. Scotland needs no lesson in matters of fairness from a country that has been routinely waterboarding suspects in Guantanmo Bay.
Make no mistake: through the 1950s and well into the 1960s Americans were most widely celebrated as smiting enemies and bearing the gift of jazz; and being casual and laughing loud....an international ideal that we now apply to ourselves far more than anyone else does. And it's very foolish to pretend that there's no reason for that. We need to start being an example again if we intend on talking down to the rest of the world, and we really should be that example for awhile again before we resume any similar discourse.
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The lodge catered mainly to those big tour bus people, so we'd have the run of the place during the day if we finished up early. It has a big film room, and on our day off (the only really rainy day, on the day we'd decided to take a break from daily 15 mile hikes no matter what) we watched:
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Some of the tour bus people could get pretty loud, especially the Aussies. All friendly, all on holiday, all having a great time. A captive audience as far as Myles was concerned. It got to be a joke between us that whenever there was an explosion of laughter anywhere on the grounds....Theresa and I would look at each other and wonder what Myles was doing. Entertaining the troops.
His favorite was getting on one bouncy ball, bouncing across the yard and trying to land it on another bouncy ball, and stay there. Not necessarily guaranteed for success. They filmed him and I think he's up on YouTube somewhere.
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This is where Nessie spends most of her time, when she's on holiday in this dimension, when she assumes the guise of Nessie. No one can bother her under the locks. Locals have known about it for centuries, it's actually why the otherwise unnecessary locks were built. It's a long story, I'd hate to bore you. I was even permitted to interview her, but since it was an Astral Plane visitation the transcript wouldn't be much more than a bunch of blips and burps. It was fascinating, but more something you carry than express.
Sadly, the pictures that I took of her didn't come out. She blocks 'em unless she's in a tourism-generating mood. She's kind of sick of tourists, and really pissed off about the likenesses of her schlepped in from China that they buy. The easiest way to experience her is to stand by the locks and when there's a sudden swirling in the water, that rises into the air like a psychotic plenary funnel, look straight down into the aquatic vortex. The best evidence that I have of her existence is the strange reaction of the man, above right. How could that not be true?
Anyway, she's very happy and wants you to be, too.
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COMFORT MUSIC OF THE WEEK: Triumph- Live at the US Festival (1982, released 2003) This doesn't have anything to do with Scotland. The festival was in California and I only just listened to this in Exeter, here. The British have this concept called "comfort food." It's food you're...comfortable with, when, you know, you're ill or have a hangover or an upset head or stomach. So I come home from Loch Ness (wait, maybe it does have something to do with it!-let's see) dragging this cough and burned out from too much exercise and all...and naturally the only thing I want the next morning is basmati rice & Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup. (no, just pour the can onto the completed rice and muck it around a bit. that's the recipe. salt to taste. nourishing but not too nourishing or rich)
This is kind of that of music. For like if you're not quite sick enough to stay home from work (those of us who work at home, read "refuse to do anything constructive"), but you're a little off and just need a bump. You want music that will keep going but isn't so brilliant that it demands that you listen to it. Not irritating, definitely there. This worked.
I saw Triumph in Shreveport in early 1980. They had a great light show and lots of dry ice. They were good, I enjoyed myself. It was one of those old southern theaters with all kinds of cool woodwork painted gold. I was 17. I accidentally set fire to my hair. It smelled awful for weeks, even though I washed my hair every 20 minutes or so back in those days.
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I don't have anything prepared. I honestly didn't think that Ted Kennedy was going to die. The top layer of my brain may have wondered, but the lower, larger, truer levels definitely never entertained the possibility that any earthly force could physically defeat the man. Like Keith Richards, but a Kennedy.
That was a big thing to me, for a long time, I guess years ago now. Not that the Kennedys ever did anything to shake it, more that I....nothing to do with Ted, I think I just more noticed...I think it was when the next generation didn't take the opportunity to make fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger, actually.
But for a long time it seemed like being a Kennedy was something akin to having diplomatic immunity (it obviously is), and being sprinkled with magical talents by angels (less common but also true). I remember walking home with my friend Pete Dudley, from a concert on one side of Baton Rouge to our apartment down Government Street in the Black part of town. Pete was a Reagan apologist ("He's not that bad!" was his rallying cry), and I was forever going on about this or that great thing that some Kennedy had done or was about to do. I seriously considered the possibility that Reagan was the anti-Christ, Pete thought the Kennedys were a bunch of pampered and pathetic phonies. It must have been 1983 or 4, I guess. Anyway we were dog tired, had drank more than even gentlemen our age should and probably had another five miles to walk. "Damn!" I said, "If only a Kennedy would come along and give us a ride."
Waaal, you know, I think Ted was the kind of guy who would have if he'd been around. He didn't have the natural affinity with the common folk that his brother Robert did, but he understood that there were a lot of problems in America, and was nearly unique amongst senators of that time in that he felt a responsibility to do something to solve them.
Most of us struggle to conceptualize any ideal. Ted became the embodiment of one. He wasn't the Don of American liberals, he completed the concept to the extent that he expanded it, outgrew it. No longer did "liberal" mean the application of past ideas to a present situation, it came to mean what Ted Kennedy was going to do.
I'm not saying that he was a visionary, he was not. His approach to progress was, became as the years wore on and he became increasingly able to affect situations beyond his control, strikingly utilitarian. He would, for example, denounce the impending war in Iraq in the most appropriate and stunning terms, but then rather than grandstand about it he'd turn his energies to a bill he had some chance of passing.
He was a very, very bright man, but not an electric shock across the psyche of the zeitgeist like his brother John. He was a great leader, but he never had it in him to be the man that people like me wanted him to be. He took greater hits on a bigger stage than anyone...probably in the history of the world. He wasn't ever perfect, but he was always a lot better than those who hated and critisized him the most.
He was a rock. He didn't create, but maintained in the face of incredible odds and obstacles, an important place to be. He never meant to-least in the whisky, women & cocaine days-but he became the conscience of the American government. If Tip O'Neill led the suicide charge against the inexorable powers destroying America in the '80s, Ted was the machine-gunner giving him intellectual cover. When Clinton did everything he could to destroy what shreds were left of ideology in the Democratic party in the '90s, Ted ensured that it did not come to pass.
He gave the greatest political speech of my lifetime. He stood for my values more often and more powerfully than anyone else. He didn't bow when he was beaten. He didn't consult polls or flow charts in determining how to go forward. His compass was perfect.
Every death is unique, as is every life. I don't have any idea whose life to compare with Ted's, but his death reminds me a lot of Jerry Garcia. The leader of a tribe of millions, a good, intelligent, peaceful, compassionate tribe, has gone to spirit.
At least he wasn't so great that there's nothing left for us to do! The Cause endures, the Hope burns brighter than it has in decades, and he moved us closer to the Dream. The only way to thank him is by taking it from here.
14 August 2009
This [semi-literary] reflection of Laural's Dish will be empty next week, as I'll be in Loch Ness filling up Nessie's dish, riding the monster or havin' a Tennant's Super trying. Laural's dish will resume its regular hours 28 August. Cheers, Clayton
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Well yea, but, um...what are good God-fearing Mexicans (preferably not Catholics) supposed to do when their homes are invaded by Nazi tanks....? If they can't blow up any tank inside their kitchen they're doomed to become enslaved like in Planet of the Apes...
and, and....what if treating babies in hospitals leads to Stalinism!!?
(I'm so sick and tired of NRA/John Birchist/illiterati bullshit)
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IT AIN'T LIKE A HIGH STICK TO THE CHOPS, BUT I GUESS I'LL MENTION BASEBALL ANYWAY (Canadians on the greatest game)
... and the learned gentleman is absolutely right on every account.
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GENIUS CLIENT FROM HELL OF THE WEEK:
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Barack Obama is the not the first world leader to fail in his efforts to bring Afghanistan into the civilized world, under whatever pretense, explanation or rubic.
The British Empire failed, the Soviet Union failed, the American Republicans failed, and now...Obama did talk some shit frankly, but now he's failing, too. It appears that the only way to turn it around is major, major troop deployments (like Vietnam, neh?) and an exponential increase in casualties on all sides. I can't imagine that anyone with a sane mind is seriously considering that. It's a fucking mess. And there's no good solution.
I supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 for two reasons: (1) they'd harbored al-Qaeda, and some major response was both necessary and appropriate, and (2) the Taliban are such assholes. No one said we were gonna have to occupy [half] the place for ten or 30 or 100 years, killing civilians all the way. The Taliban continue to be, obviously, assholes of a measure to inspire the sentiment, but the equation demands a determination of what we're achieving at what cost. Limited areas of women beyond the grotesque burkas?...yep, that's good, that's very, very good. I applaud it, and imagine that most Afghan men with a functional brain in their head do, too. Amplified music permitted in some areas? Cool. The major crop (opium/heroin poppies) production and profits moved from the "good" areas to the "bad" areas? That may work for some on an aesthetic scale for about two seconds, but deteriorates entirely once you realize that we need those downers for medical purposes, and are only buying them elsewhere.
Alternative? No good one, but maybe nothing worse than staying the course. Pull out. Clinton-era airstrikes to keep 'em honest. Ruling from the air. Dictate burka policy and threaten airstrikes...how do you like that Flipper? Occasionally hitting the wrong place (as we are now, anyway), but limiting our own casualties, allowing deployment elsewhere if warranted. Demanding that the tribes work something out without us. We have to do something for progressive Afghans, but it has to be something other than convincing everyone else that they're dupes of a heathen occupying force. (remember how funny it used to be when Islamist extremists declared America "the great devil"? After bombing marketplaces and wedding ceremonies and...it gets easier and easier for the relatives of the victims to believe. We've proved it as far as they're concerned.)
God love him and he's generally doing a fine job, but President Obama's on the wrong end of this one. If he's the master of circumstances that he's appeared to be he'll probably limp it past the election (you're forgiven for hearing echoes of Kennedy/Rusk or Nixon/Kissinger here). If he's the absolute genius that liberals have prayed for, the anti-Reagan, he'll figure out how to explain it to the families of those who might otherwise have been killed. It may not be a situation best served by an immediate and absolute withdrawal, but I tell you this: Afghanistan is not going to turn into Switzerland any time during this or the next presidency. Or the next one, either. I'm not willing to risk my son for the best (or against the worst) of what could happen, and I wouldn't ask anyone else to, either.
If we're still there in 2012 and the Republican grassroots generate an isolationist nominee intent on bringing the boys home, what are the Bush loyalists (rednecks, the dumber Texans, welfare CEOs, the military) going to do? For that matter, what are peace groups going to do?
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ROCK POETRY OF THE WEEK: GIL-SCOTT HERON – "Whitey on the Moon" (1970)
It asks more questions now than when it was done. Is it racist?* Why haven't things got better? Is he still out of jail? Gil-Scott was, is, a Black Panther apologist and turn-of-the-decade liberal dream: better looking than everyone else, smarter than everyone else, poetic and possessed of a jazz sensibility to please the jazziest. So what happened? The world turned away from him, Black culture picked a wave he refused to ride; the world turned away from him and as it so often goes he soon turned away from it. He's alive, man, he's out of jail, I imagine he has really good lawyers (like everyone else, he could use a better judge), those closest to him say he's got a lot left. We need it, I know that.
*Just fucking incredible. Not a question anyone would ask-pre Polical Correctness days-about an artistic endeavour trading mainly in humor. The late, brilliant Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion Arthur Ashe probably put it best in his first autobiography, Poetry in Motion, simply noting that "Black people and White people are always going to be different, if only because Black people are black and White people are white." I'm always going to be different from you because I'm here and you're there. No use pretendin' it ain't the truth.
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JOHN HUGHES, R.I.P. Directed one of the greatest films ever made.
When I first moved to Ocean Beach, San Diego, August 1985...a few days after I moved there. The theater on Newport Street, The Strand-I heard it shows porn now...but back then it had a nightly/weekly booked double-feature of relatively recently released mainstream stuff.
So on a Tuesday I checked in for The Breakfast Club and something else, I forget the other one. The theater had maybe 40 people in it, 30 high school kids, I sat in the back like I like to. About halfway through, at the pivotal moment, maybe twenty of the kids and damn near all the adults lit up. Hell, I was prepared to do that (I'd just been to The Black across the street, and had a new and barely used Mexican marble pipe even)!!
I'd rarely if ever before-and I doubt if ever since-felt so culturally at home. I attended the showing on Wednesday too, and Thursday. Again on Friday, but it was different movies and it wasn't ever quite the same. One of those moments that will hold you forever, whenever you want it to, though.
Thanks for that moment, John.
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I snuck into the press section of the 1982 (3?) International Special Olympics ceremony, at Tiger Stadium, LSU. I mumbled "Rolling Stone" at the guy taking credentials, and was apparently haughty enough to make it work. I was a few rows down from her brother Ted, my political hero at that time and forever a worthy one.
John Schneider of Dukes of Hazzard fame played a song or two-I don't know, I was backstage by then- with a band that included the great guitarist Jerry McGee ( Kris Kristofferson, John Mayall ), with whom I'd spent some time earlier that year in Los Angeles. Onstage in front of 70,000 including tens of thousands of special needs children, Bo Duke made the mistake of starting to jibber and jabber about how if you would send him some money he'd send you back an autographed picture of himself. Eunice ran straight up and took him out and stomped his ass, right there in front of God and everybody. Me and Jerry McGee were laughing about it later. Thanks, Kennedys.
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LITERARY FLOURISH OF THE WEEK: It's not widely known, in fact I just thought of it myself, but introducing a friend is a grand art. Otherwise your friend is left to whatever whims and prejudices the introducee invokes from mere first impressions relating to looks, dress, immediate impressions of mental state, hygiene...you know, superficial stuff like that that couldn't begin to tell any story. So a little poetic insight may often prove useful...
Right now, the man who fought, the man who fought against the elements. The man. The man who, who fought against food poisoning. The man who drinks Heineken. The man who doesn't get out of bed. The man who hasn't got a cymbal. The man who's having a chat with his man who knows the man who tunes Jimmy's guitar who comes from Scotland, and doesn't know the man Tim but does know Audrey from Dallas. Thank you. Sshhh, hang on... The man who now learns to construct his own drum kit. The man who's not very professional Shut up, wait a bit, ssshhhhhh. The man who said he could go back to a building site any time, and we all agreed. The man who's holding up this show. The rhinestone cowgirl. Come on Bonzo, get on with it. That's what the quaalude stagger is. The man who played the Los Angeles Aztecs and beat them 10-1 by himself. The man who, one wonders, is he worth waiting for, and doesn't really realize there's a curfew here. A childhood friend. A man who many people once said, "never heard of him." John Bonham, over the top!
--Robert Plant, L.A. Forum June 21, 1977
It's a great show, probably the most famous show of the second half of the Zeppelin epoch. I generally prefer their earliest stuff, before they realized how seriously everyone intended to take them. As the years wore on and the drugs and alcohol and trout abuse got increasingly symptomatic, it seems that there was almost a reaction formation of trying to put on a more professional show. Or maybe it just got too exhausting making it up as they went along, so they worked from a more developed framework, like clinging. Whatever the case, the live Zeppelin canon is, in my opinion, second to none. You may wish to comfort yourself in the absence of anything new emanating from Laural's Dish next week by repeatedly listening to it.
7 August 2009
When I was a very little boy, I guess about three years old, I loudly assembled my crayons and paper and announced "I'm gonna draw the Eiffel Tower." My parents encouraged me in such a lofty pursuit. I drew for awhile, but the vertical lines hadn't taken the shape I remembered. "I think I'll draw a punkin," I suggested, but with some less confidence. My parents murmured agreement. My eliptical renderings weren't particularly pumpkin-like, but against the background of the vertical lines they did suggest something.
I pondered the rendering and, drawing up all the dignity that I could muster proclaimed "I think I'll draw scissors..." A little here and little there, connect that to this, a little more color on that line...I sat back to consider the completed work.
My verdict was more honest than kind. "This is not the Eiffel Tower," I declared. My parents looked on. "This is not a punkin..." (by now they were becoming somewhat concerned by the enthusiasm with which I was decrying my own creation) "This is not scissors....GOD WHAT IS IT?????!!!!!"
I've spent some time this week integrating writings on films that I've seen recently into the greater body of work constituting my....well, they're not reviews, not in any technical sense...they're even less like synopses or anything like that...there aren't any pictures, not of the films themselves....(God, what are they?)...
Anyway there's a lot of stuff about movies floating around Laural's Dish this week (in order of viewing):
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Went out on Dartmoor last week. Here are some photos of such dubious quality that I didn't even have the heart to put them up on Facebook.
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LOUD MUSIC OF THE WEEK: STREET SWEEPER SOCIAL CLUB - Fight! Smash! Win! (2009) Tom Morello's back with a totally fucking hot band again! Not that Audioslave was terrible or anything, just that they were always disappointing in at least the sense that it represented a major backing down from the glorious (if nearly lunatic...what did Spock say on Star Trek, "In an insane society the sane are necessarily considered insane."...) audacity and ambition of Rage Against the Machine. You want audacity...the Sweepers gots enough to pass around! If someone says this sounds like it could be Rage track that ain't nuthin' but a complement to me. Long live militant riffmeisters!!!!!
LITERARY FLOURISH OF THE WEEK:
One thing I'd better tell you right away. I'd never been able to stomach the country. I'd always found it dreary, those endless fields of mud, those houses where nobody's ever home, those roads that don't go anywhere. And if to all that you add a war, it's completely unbearable.
--Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night
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go back home, Laural! Go see what's in your dish!