merry christmas! & whoohoo!!!! let's celebrate the king (of rocknroll, that is) (some would disagree, but falalalalalalalala)... :) :)

the avalon is at 1735 vine st (at hollywood), LA CA, 90028. show starts 5:30 pm. proceeds benefit the firemen's fund. for more info, keep checking www.sofein.com ... i know we & manuel will be there, & many of art's friends, wonderful performers from famous to little-known... it will be great to hang out w/manuel & listen & watch as everyone remembers elvis!!!
packing for colorado... brrr.... merry christmas, happy hannukah, happy festivus, happy new year!!!! :) :) :)

merry christmas & a happy new year

the laughingstock speaks; move over, guy

- i'm the butt of family jokes, as is whoever's not in the rm, when my family gathers -- cheapskate (they don't know i save every cent for when they all are in the poorhouse due to their flagrant ways); "the makeup" (old family nickname: morticia); wild past (now the far past, except when our texas cousin comes a-visiting & she tells my every dumbass drunk tale since for some reason she was with me near-every time i was especially inebriatedly stupid). they can't joke anymore about the church falling down if i walk in because i've got mother mary goddess-worship going on (in memoriam, dear grandma) & rapture (not the holy roller kind) when w/in mother church (tho must plug ears tight in spots so can be rapturous instead of despairing)... tonight our meeting got on the topic of humility & a lovely pal talked of "the universe's" (i'll call it) will oftentimes being uncomfortable & seeming unfair, but that it's not about her, but the greater good, & another spoke of sacrifice & the magnificat & i thought, oh crap, we're getting awful religious here, but next was near-tears... such talk doesn't make me wanna barf anymore & in fact brings moments that feel like revelation, freedom, possibility of relief from the infernal self, the cunning varmint that won't go way. faith works for & brings peace to much better folks than i. who am i to judge?
- the family says i can't cook. and they're right. nor do i want to. except lately we saw that show w/the funny chubby guy fieri laughing & shmoozing & eating at all these delicious fun roadside joints & so then tonight i made not just dinner that didn't injure my spouse, but energy bars, & they came out dang good. just goes to show: know thyself... then watch that self change.
ynnej's energy bars:
- big handful dry flaxseed/oat cereal
- 2 big handfuls dry oatmeal
- a big handful of raisins or craisins
- handful of peanuts, handful of almonds
- small handfuls of sesame &/or flax seed
- 2-3 packs of the pink stuff (sweetener)
- pinch each of cinnamon, nutmeg, even ginger
- dose of vanilla flavor (the non-alcohol kind)
- big splash each of fake eggs and applesauce
1. mix until batter consistency. 2. spray down a cooking dish. 3. plop batter in cooking dish & shape it so it looks nice. 4. top w/whatever you want -- dried cocoa, drizzled honey, marshmallow, etc. 5. cook at 325 degrees for 25 mins or until crispy. 6. let cool. 7. be near the can. this stuff is fiber-heavy &'ll clean your pipes. makes 6-8 bars, depending on how big you cut them.
- i think a banana would work in here, too. look out, guy fieri.

kicks!

-> listen to manuel's cholo-rocking christmas tune "santa claus" (farmer john) here! :) :) :) -> http://www.crackedpistonrecordings.com/music-53.html
-> we got to take the train to hanford yesterday w/47 great friendly folks & sat w/the funnest couple, dan & marylou, who spun ideas for inventions & movie scripts (lately have thought it'd be fun to do a film short)... like if i were gonna make a movie, it might come out something like this poster (gene v, esquerita, & sputnik m would appear only in ghost form)(& i dropped the library-murder scheme dan suggested, tho librarians'd probably laugh w/great satisfaction at it)... they really fired my imagination. philbert suggested a storyline wherein we go town to town playing music, then i lure people in & he kills them by hitting them w/his guitar & we all split to the next gig (once again, i realize philbert & i are more alike than it appears) & dan & brian concluded the movie should be strange, shocking, nerdy, kitschy, noirish, funny, innocent, yet redemptive. good lord! what a task! so i'll just make a poster for now & call it good... still, i know so many folks w/really good character mugs & great personalities. it'd be so fun to see them on the b&w big (or small) screen; then if anyone saw it & enjoyed, that'd be the lagniappe!
-> ... mebbe i'll try to do this. only the great eggnog knows...
-> am still recovering this a.m. from the ice cream sundae we had in hanford at superior dairy (AFTER dinner! it was somewhat obscene!): banana & maple nut ice cream w/walnuts & marshmellow. if i lived in hanford, i would be sideshow-big bc of this wonderful place -- was slurring my words after just a few bites: it was that sugar-overloaded delicious... now it's time for a little penance, a nice run, my 1st in near-2 wks cause i'm finally getting well!!! then philbert & marko come over & i will give them new songs to sing. so what a nice day, & best to you who might read this... feliz navidad, prospero ano y felicidad....

geez louise. bettie page is gone.

- was posting manuel's xmas shows (tomorrow at the game in temple city; go to www.myspace.com/bigmannyband to see) & chuckling w/him excitedly about the record when i read that bettie page died. :( 85 yrs old. (not young; she had a heckuva hard life: abuse, pinup yrs, holy roller, insanity - tho in her last photo, at age 80, she looked great!) she made the rest of us women look like little men, i think. considering she's a patrician blonde, gretchen mol did a pretty darn good job as bettie in "the notorious bettie page," getting her spirit (i suppose), but gretchen mol, too, looked like a little man compared to the real bettie.
- she exercised daily before most women did. she had the most perfect, lovely figure (revealed most beautifully in bunny yeager's shots) & bewitching features. i saw color film footage of her once & she was indigenous-brown. she was a teacher for a while. she didn't drink or smoke, which gave me hope when my life was very dark. later in life, she struggled big time w/mental illness. (i did too before i stopped drinking, tho i never stabbed anyone. bettie did.)
- i think if i hadn't had to clean my life up, i'd've been one of these rockabilly gals steeped in bettie-worship, who blackens & rolls her hair just like bettie, dresses just like her, drives herself bonkers being in love w/"being" bettie, but i did, so i don't. plus who am i kidding??
- she was more magical than 500 of her impostores. none can come even close because soul, which bettie had, is organic & free-flowing & imitation is studied & ironic, the opposite of soul. in black & white, she was the sweetest angel, the naughtiest devil, the mightiest queen, & everything in between. the wanna-betties (that sounds harsh; what's a better name?) can't imitate that amazing quality because it was spontaneous & authentic; like elvis impersonators, they can only ape. oo-oo-oo!
- but heck, i guess it's cooler to ape bettie than say... heck, most anyone else. so don't mean to sound unnecessarily harsh, but i think the point is, why ape at all? there'll only ever & always be one bettie page, & now she's gone. so just be yourself!... whatever THAT means!!
- row row row your boat, c'est la vie, memento mori... forry, bettie, the evidence keeps building. i guess ain't none of us getting out alive, so go have fun, friend, kick up your heels & go.

dusk devils pic from walter the dancer

at the barndance back in oct, walter, earl, & b took a bunch of pix, which was really cool! just saw this one on my myspace (a "tagged" photo) & like it. the guys look handsome!!
that was a fun albeit rather strange night. one of those deals where you just get warmed up & it's time to clear the stage! ronnie mack looked like abraham lincoln to me. i just love abraham lincoln; it kinda haunts me, so i don't think about it. and he was very kind, sincere.
i wonder if we'll do it again? w/my lingering laryngitis, i've just been concentrating on staying warm, getting better... the holidays are zooming up. seems like the evenings & weekends are filling up fast!!!!!!
well, that's plenty o'posting for one wkend. feliz semana! :) :) :)

mos def as chuck berry!! "...a lot of people call themselves teachers or leaders, but they're really just propagandists."

->in the movie "cadillac records," the singer/actor (tho diminutive, younger, w/different singing style) looks so much like berry, he does many scenes even sans pencil-mustache. his 1st scene was so great, i started blubbering w/joy!!! this movie, to my cashiers-du-cinema [sic] mind, was fair, w/moments of excitement, but mostly inducing the mopes as swell blues & R&R music morph into the slow stuff, but the topic... SO WORTH IT!! and beyonce, jeez, what a movie star: marilyn curves, beautiful baby face, husky southern drawl (but the movie was weird in having the actors "interpret" the [i think] uninterpretable songs... leave the songs be!!!)...
now we need movies fully devoted to specialty, king, imperial, verve, & of course, sun, then eccentric later labels like arhoolie, norton, rollin' rock, rhino, slash, bomp, uh uh... add to the list! on CR's soundtrack is a slithering, smoldering tune "let's take a walk" that i thought was some great 50s female soul singer, some unknown-to-me plum... then maybe al green... but no, it's raphael saadiq, & feeling like vincent price in "last man on earth," i didn't know of him!!! if you don't, either, here's his site: Www.myspace.com/raphaelsaadiq

forry lives

-> the legendary (yes, legendary!) creator of famous monsters of filmland passed away today. 92 yrs young! he'd been sick for quite a spell, but i thought of him akin to bradbury: a fellow old in yrs, but ever-young & amazing in imagination, therein somehow eternal... his mag changed so much about pop culture, proffering "the monster" as what we resemble & desire since we (well, me, for one) feel misfitted, misunderstood, monstrous a bit or a lot: it was a bible that way. an ex, the blazers bassist dude, had scores of FMOF up in his bedroom closet, plastiqued & coveted like i have my mad mag cache, & he'd only let me glance at them, never touch...
-> we (not blazers dude, but me & b, me & greg) went to forry's ackermansion near griffith park many times in the early 00s. the house alone was aged & fabulous, near (heck, maybe in; i dunno) the hollywood hills, where the streets are so steep, narrow, & windy, you're sure you'll crash back into yourself on ascent. i imagine the vintage near art fein's place, which is only a stone's throw away: exclusive silent era.
-> he had maria -- the REAL maria! golden, forbidding, beautiful, from metropolis, his favorite movie -- looming before the giant picture window in his sunken living rm, which overlooked hollywood. god, that alone was impressive!! he had face masks of ALL the horror greats -- karloff, lugosi, chaney jr & sr, everyone! (he knew them all, too) -- & the place, opened to the public saturdays, teemed, moaned, groaned, creaked basement to ceiling w/the most amazing collection of horror/scifi movie memorabilia & reading you could ever in your life've seen in one place. you'd wind thru that house, agape, pinching yourself at how every wondrous site from every horror/scifi film ever was there! how could it be???
-> each time we'd go, & all gathered at end of tour in the living rm for forry's fireside chat, he'd use me while telling a story of a famous actor on a drunk who chased a "pretty girl" & i'd be flattered as heck, tho know it was only convenience that let me be the model. (really wish all the pix weren't buried on a disc someplace in this old haunted house...)
-> my friends gary & darrell, who along w/but distinct from greg goodsell are bakersfield's forrest j. ackerman, 4-5 yrs ago put out a drive in-cold war-vibed horror flick, "the creep." forry introduced it! by the time of their 2nd film, "silver angel vs. the death zombie," forry was too ill to do the intro. so guess who did it??? yours truly!!! yes, a lovely costume lady altered an old halloween dress &, in that, aided by G&D's soft lighting, i looked like a million bucks!! i could scarcely believe what i saw, actually... heard was another story. i cannot act w/no piano in front of me, not even by a toenail... but back to forry: greg goodsell will write more & better about him. i say rest in peace to someone who helped us all recognize & grow to love the monster w/in. "fangs for the memories," dr. acula.

weegee the wonderful and the curse & blessing of instant infomation: my name is croaky & i'm...

how are you, kind reader/skimmer of this post? i've had laryngitis off/on this wk, so made mistake of looking the condition up & now the magic mind tells me i have vocal nodules. apparently it's not enough to block web md: must stay off all sites having to do w/health or the turncoat between my ears tells me it's fatal, from stubbed toe to runny nose, this is it. say goodbye to everyone you love, cause you ain't long for this lonely blue & what made you think you'd last, anyways, you little fool??... met recently w/my sponsor -- wise & regal rescuer of desperate souls, i say, not hyperbolically, neither -- & she suggested rationing net time so i can have a little more what some people call "peace of mind." so i set my internal timer & after an hr, whack: turn that sucker off. at 1st, i had moments of gnawing jones: while talking to someone, driving, brushing my teeth, the enemy whispers, "wonder if you got any emails? wonder how your sites are doing? wonder what he/she/it is up to?" but like drinking, like smoking, seems (knock wood) like after just a few days, the obsession is being lifted.
so just for today, i feel free. heck, even sick, since just saying no i've done 90% of the xmas shopping (& we're talking a LARGE family, of choice & blood) & read a novel, the caveman's valentine (not bad; liked the wild weird protagonist a lot, tho this wingnut i knew who's like him scares the crap out of me) & am starting a john irving now. that's right -- i read BOOKS! i'd relegated that to 2nd to reading humming diode-lit screens! books are much better, & heck, i'm a librarian now, so dang it, books first. must've been lost to think otherwise...
am in love w/lots of things, & it's ever-wandering, & right now it's weegee. always thought his stuff mebbe was coming from an arbus-like, sort of misanthropic, pugnacious-shocker pov, but never really LOOKED at it, & check out this quote: "when you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know you are on the right track." a humanist. weegee loved people. especially the underdog, the lonely, the poor, the departed. it's so swelled up w/love when i look w/the right eyes, i could just cry.
time's up. gonna go. love, froggy