angie's important autumn event -- please gogogo!!!

Event Description Here cousin thomas, visiting from tx, is back in bako with the gias, & my insides are packed with bean & onion burrito. trying to be of some good use, i edited the poster my seester started for her bakersfield event. she & her hubby doug have created a highly-worthwhile drop-in center for women living on & around union avenue. homeless, staying in hotels, sheltering wherever they can, couch-surfing, walking the streets: visitors to the center are doing what they must to stay vertical. the drop-in center is a clean, safe, lovely little refuge where women receive free counseling, food, clothing, & shoes. they can wash up & take a break from the bakersfield heat. i tell you, what angie & doug are doing with this center is their best idea yet, & they've had some good ones. doug has plans to expand it, if the dough is there, so if you are in bako or want to make the drive, this will be a fun as well as spiritually valuable & rewarding investment -- i believe tax-deductible, too. plus james & i will be doing a set. :)

why hate?

it took only 58 yrs, but my mug finally made the bakersfield society pages, thx to rod thornburg, photojournalist. at my left & right, respectively, are dapper dad & handsome hank... well, i read again today that vegans are widely hated, but now typing that, i remember having addressed it already. vegans make ppl uncomfy, it read. since i'm no longer vegan, i can make ppl comfy again. had to add small oily fish *tinned fish!!!! yum!!!!* bc my iron level dropped. should feel bad for the little oily fish, but i don't. must be a character flaw, an oddly empty moral space... well, nothing much is up except this way of eating is causing me to lose chub, but mebbe it's not the food, perhaps i'm just more dad than mama, & the older dad gets, the skinnier he gets. he was a child fatty, like i was. whatever the reason, this is a good health direction to be heading... just went to the ridge rt museum yard sale on this here labor day (thank you, trade unions, for all the benefits you've given this ungrateful society) & got 2 yoga books, 1 vegan cookbook (the veganomicon - what a title!), & the smokey bear comic of my (maybe your) childhood, all for a buck. that is one solid deal. one can never, never, never have too many books... back to food, have gotten to enjoy some superb meals lately. sister-in-law sherri sent me a gift card, so we drove south & had a staunchly middle-class, bustling, air-conditioned time @ cheesecake factory. what you see is the make-your-own lettuce wraps. outstanding!!! the other pic is from the botanist (bakersfield). the blood-suckingly dark, swanky interior made the table top glow with jeweled tones. seester angie had recommended it, & tho i think the botanist is mostly known for its booze drinks, they insisted that they had eats for the teetotaler, too. (that is fun to say aloud, btw.) i was surprised by the posh west-LA atmosphere (difference: only 10 ppl in the restaurant) & had the mezze plate w/very fresh, chunked-up veggies, hummus, & sourdough toasted in olive oil. great stuff!! it was exotic to eat @ such a chichi place in the middle of downtown bakingfield, but i've not lived there for a long time, so mebbe LA has stretched its tippytoes to reach nashville west. when we exited this place, we recoiled & screamed like vampires... i exaggerate, but you get the pitcher.

blablablablablablabla

"any fool can criticize, condemn and complain… and most do." (purposely not attributed!)

well, i missed @f's memorial due to work, as i thought would happen. franklin odel just posted the youtube video of the event, direct from hollywood forever cemetery. of course, there! i wish @ could see all the tributes he's gotten, all the ink, a memoriam in LA Times, even -- he would plotz!!! not proud of this, but i got p.o'ed seeing 2 of the dudes speaking whom art didn't even like, at least up to 10 yrs ago... i went thru my pix looking for the ones of me & art & paul body that last time i saw @... and i couldn't even find them!! -- but looking thru those 100s of photos, i realized a whole buttload of life has gone by, & that settled my resentment about those two about whom @f had gossiped & complained. many thousands of hours & times shared have transpired since i last saw @, a whole lot of his life & mine with zero shared moments. it's likely he gained a more positive perspective on those two. right? or they got up there when they had no right. i mean, if i knew all, i'd understand all, but i never will.

so in this life on this plane where we still have locomotion, limbs, eyes to see, hearts that pump, brain pans, guts, experiences to enjoy, lessons to learn, more to come, james & i have been chugging along. here we are this past wkend @ our home. my job is a jewel, a precious jewel! my health is strong. i get to get old. i get to help people, one this very eve, in fact.

here we are at loner troubadour's open mike in bako a few wks back. there were no keys & i was stumped what to do, but fortunately kathy kennedy let me use her snare, so james & i stomped out a few songs. i felt out of my realm, but james said it was good for us, & i spose so, going out in deep waters & not drowning, in fact, swimming back to shore strong.

life is good.

i want to write about art fein

Dictated, then edited: My heart just hurts and I feel sad even though I hadn't even seen him in 10 years. I married James and James has a reputation, he is very tough and nobody to mess with, especially in those days, now he's so much more reasonable, and I was a big weenie and my friendship with Art just fell away. We used to write with each other everyday, constantly, because he was in love with the written word, like I am, like so many of us are. Such word play, such wit, such a crabby yet hopeful, challenging, confrontational, super-bright man he was. So many amazing stories. And we had something else in common besides that we loved our American music. He had a funny little voice, a youthful voice even when he got old, and I am like that, too. The last time I saw him was at an Elvis show where James and I were supposed to play, but James did not show up, and Art said I figured you weren't gonna be here, but he put me right on and some other performers were not very happy because they had no idea who I was and how dare did I get up there like I was somebody? ... ... But Art thought I was somebody. Rip Masters told me last week, I know Art was your fan. Art was my fan! :( I got up there and did an Elvis number but in more of a Jerry Lee Lewis style and when I got done, Art had that glazed-over crazy smile that he would get, knocked silly by rock and roll music, American music, the greatest sound right from the USA. So I did another 1 and then that was it: Life took over, I went back to teaching, I stopped playing my repertoire, I was gonna go to his book opening 2 years ago in Hollywood, which isn't even far, but I got busy and now I just wish I had, I wish I had. So many people are writing their stories about him and man, what a testament. How many thousands of musicians and artists he connected! In fact I remember him saying something about how much he loved putting people together, like puzzle pieces. I wanna write my stories too, but I don't want to put them on social media, I'm not sure why, it just hurts. I wanna say so much and I know I didn't know him near as well as other people did, so maybe I'm being stupid. I went to his Silent Era Spanish-style mansionette near the Hollywood Bowl 1 time and he had his little dog corraled in the kitchen. He told me he would give me his cassette tape collection someday. It filled his garage! 10 years later James told me Art had told him the same thing when he 1st met him in the 90s. I think when he met people he thought were cool, he just wanted to share as much amazing music as possible with them. Hence the cassette mix tapes. How many freaking mixtapes did Art Fein make and share over the decades? I have at least 10, 2 of which he made for me. I wonder how many hundreds of others were made personally for this friend or that? Many times I would drive down to LA and we would go out to eat and see who could spend less because we both were cheapskates. I'd get mad when he would cheese on the bill, but he thought it was funny! We went to an art opening where Phil Alvin showed up in his gaudy orange sharkskin suit. Art had my band on his Poker Party show 3 times, and we never got to sit down to be interviewed because he wanted us to keep playing! He had the Blasters on when they did 4-11-44 and everyone was laughing so much!, having so much fun, and then we all went out for Mexican food. Another time we went to the Melrose Swap Meet and 2 men commented at me, Now there's a girl who's not trying to be like everyone else. That's real style! And Art smiled like he was proud. At one point I wrote and recorded for him a upbeat song because he was going through a period of depression ... ... Now after writing all this I can see it was inevitable that we ended up having a conversation because he wanted to go out with me but I had just left my 1st husband and his wife was leaving him and it was very awkward to talk to my friend and have to tell him I just couldn't. My friend in Texas said something like that happened with her, so I wonder how many other women in the music business it happened to? In my case I believe it was not that I was something so wonderful, it was that whatever is special about me has to do with American music, his greatest love, so he couldn't help but fall for women in the music... Art was the guy who made it happen for so many of us. He loved us and what we did. He loved the musicians who were not famous just as much or maybe even more than the ones that went big time because he loved underdogs. I deeply feel like an important glue has dissolved away. Other people will speak more tomorrow about how important Art was to the history of the rock and roll era. They scheduled his service, on Zoom, for the 1st day of school, so I don't even know if I'll get to attend. R.i.p., Art. I wish I had been a better friend to you. :(

good deeds, good dids, good dones, good duds

will write this later

r.i.p., fein art

:( :( :(