feel i should post, yet nothing much to say

the world's a mess, it's in my kiss... so let's instead look at the mundane: been sick lately. caught james's cold, which he caught from me. here, catch! no, you take it! no, you! saw bugonia. shocking, so well-made. love emma stone, yorgos lanthimos. her other show, with nathan fielder, the curse: omg. you must watch it for indelible cringe & white-privilege comeuppance. the ending still seers in my coconut... laid in bed like a noodle & binged cramps live videos. the best was bourges fr 1986. such theatre! such presence! "nothing like this will ever happen again," james said: nick knox strolls out & takes to the platformed drums, coolly smoking; next, fur dixon (who'd just joined the week before) all punkrock party girl mohawked fun; then regally gorgeous ivy in sneering harem gold, her red pouffe glowing around her glowering beauty; & finally crouching lux in madman pompadour, zombie-white torso, & skin-tight gold lame. he rises, he leers, he roars, he bellows, he incites, he calls them all to be saved & damned by the church of rocknroll. as thrilling as don't knock the rock's little richard & jerry lee lewis scenes, but much sexier & with greater abandon, the 40-year old video just killed me, as art fein would've said. imagine having been there! a person would have to quit the world to follow the cramps. there would be no other way... yes, was reminded why they are still the world's greatest band alongside the blasters & the 5 royales (not considering the big bands such as bob wills', louis jordan's, louie prima's, bill haley's)... maybe they were greater due to their complete commitment to physical immersion, the visual aspect of their shows, lux's acrobatics & visceral machinations. yes, lux interior's death was a devastating loss to the world of rocknroll & wackadoodle bacchanals. he was a hurricane of cool, elvis meets frankenstein, a beautiful, bopping, psychedelic roar. again, such a loss!! the world will never reel back... then after all that, james came to my sick bed & we together saw a documentary on the church of the subgenius. cool, thought-provoking. made me miss paste-up, the exciting days of underground renegade self-publishing. remember those days? you had to search out other weirdos. but what an amazing thrill when we connected! yes, made us again miss the 80s. lately we've been so missing the pre-net days. whoda thunk. guess it mostly means we are old folks now, the idea that the world was better back then. next, saw tv show hairy bikers. comforting, humane. we wanna travel so bad. darned lovely job, chaining me here... so in other news no one cares about, am sleeping through the nights. health good tho head has cold. yoga for sickness maybe helped. if you have a cold, don't get in a sauna or sneeze too hard. i blew out an eye blood vessel, apparently by doing those things. very sexy... i crawled behind the keys & drums & we practiced music. let's do just an hour, we said. 2 and a half later, the top of my injured foot, still messed up from last month's ladder-fall, was throbbing... but we were cleansed & spent by our living room performance. we had attended our church. see, we have a duty to play this music. again we remembered: we are denying the world by not doing shows. james keeps saying, it's up to us now. lux is dead, phil alvin will never perform again. it's up to us. we must do it. we have to bring forward the music of those who came before, our version, that is. because it's so important, i here quote the dearly departed ronnie dawson, aka the blond bomber: when i die, bury me six feet deep with a rocknroll record at my feet & a phonograph needle in my hand, gonna rock my way right out of this land... when i die, doncha bury me at all, just nail my bones up on the wall, beneath these bones let these words be seen, here's the running gears of a bopping machine.

zoom care for the human suit

don't know if your insurance will cover it, but try this for nutritional improvement: nourish nutrition... it's worth seeing if you can get it, i think.

fur auld lang syne, a test run

happy 2026! this is a simplified combo of the albert ammons & dr john arrangements of this song, which as a child i only knew to have the lyrics "that's where the old folks play." continuing to build stamina in my ankles/shins & work on snare 1/8 hits. as i get stronger, will add more rhythms beyond my current 2-beat, shuffle, & semi-clave repertoire. the snare james gifted me belonged to the late great max bangwell (aka bob ebersole jr), & i adore its sound. whimsically, i hope it gives me some bangwell juju. forgive the clams!... swanee river one-man band

the drunk club, the 13th step

in the drunk club, they say women stick with women, men with men. in my 30 plus yrs, only once did a man asked me to sponsor him -- a man who liked men, so i thought, well, we'll see what happens, maybe i can help him til we get to the 5th step. he disappeared before we did any work at all, so i hope he is ok today, wherever he is!

since i've been sober so long, of course i've had male friends, & certainly i've admired the program of many, looked up to many, but whatever love existed there was philic, not erotic. on the other hand, over those same many yrs, some males (never the ones who were my friends) expressed carnal interest in me, likely because i was young & good-looking... & new! but in the context of "the rooms," their lust seemed gross & scary -- the program saved my life & was/is sacred. not to mention that sex is especially troublesome for People Like Us -- helpless, hopeless, certainly sick in body & mind, to paraphrase the book... what about my very life? what about theirs? yecch, horndogs, go away!!!

never have i ever contacted a man to "talk about the program." because it's never that. that's a baldfaced lie. yes, i've sure made mistakes with the opposite sex, but never under the sleazy pretense of trying to help someone stay sober. alcoholics die all the time from this disease. to purport to help someone while trying to get in their drawers... evil. in my 1.5 decades with james, a few females have tried this. of course they have! he's james! apparently long ago when the announcement was made at a huge music show that we had eloped, there was screaming, wailing, clawing at the eyeballs & breasts, & likely plots to do me in! after that, a few really tried to get between us. nice try! didn't work!

but to try to get to him through the program? again, that is selfishness bordering on evil. do they even consider james's sobriety? of course not!! as angie happily said the other day, "those cows will get theirs. karma has a way of catching up with people like that." so next time a woman tries to sponsor james, or a man tries to sponsor me (i mean, it could happen still, right?), we'll raise the sign of the cross, i likely will quote the big book since it's part of my working mind now, but james, being new, might quote father karras, something from the exorcist, something like be gone, demon!!! be gone!!

nov 18-dec 18 are finito.

nov 18 our dear little louie, so sick, so darling, our sweet old boy, had to go over the rainbow bridge. on pearl harbor day, james tried to torpedo his sobriety, but from "the most horrible mistake of my life," as he called it, better days are on the horizon... i drove to 6500 elevation & got a lovely haircut & dye from our friend gabi, a wonderful mother of two & bettie page look-alike who told stories of bear break-ins & blizzards as if they were commonplace.

. i'm so glad we're in the relative lowlands @ only 5000 elevation! then Life struck again on dec 18, when at dawn i rushed to the e.r. the good news is, i know my heart's ok. the bad news is, i'm noiviss, so jittereh, so went back on pranayama. i've got some imbalances from not eating animals for 1.5 yrs, too, so veganism must now be caput. am still off cow, pig, octopus - any animal smarter than a toddler just should not be food, least in this society, altho where places of deprivation be, all bets & i.q. tests are off. and of course there is "grandma's rule," which i'll abide... looked up the names of cheeses that are non-cow & a puerile beach boys melody arose: "romano, manchego, rocquefort, peccorino, a-and vegan, and feta, buf'lo mozzarella!" (did you hear it, too?) well, it's almost meeting time for us, so chow for nyow.

funny, how strong

james is such a comedian so often. I mean, he could be one of the greats , if he chose to do so. i'd never heard mama laugh so loud until he came along. we sat at the dr this eve waiting and waiting and took hand pix. his goofy cracks about his hand's appearance hit in such a swift volley, i was lost in laughing and can't tell you even one now... since nov 18, some sad and truly crappy events have occurred, but cracked ceramic, when glued back together, gets that much stronger. i am tired, so forgive this loose and lazy writing.

happy 59th anniversary, mom and dad. we took them to italian for a festive meal, then drove back up to the mountain in the dark night. "that was a very special time," said my spouse, who took over driving duties because i was on a 14 hr day by that time. i am grateful.

" As monsters grow more human, humans look more monstrous."

How Monsters Went from Menacing to Misunderstood | The New Yorker https://share.google/R5h530RWOIEdoK9V4 Read this through to the end for its fascinating conclusion.

if you give a man a jingle, he'll jingle for a day, but if you teach a man to jingle, he'll jingle all the way. - big manny

thank goodness for this time of year. if you knew manuel or loved his music, send your own (short) holiday music videos to james at the address on the flyer to be included in this joyful happy show. THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED! <3

our sweet boy / 72 hrs

ago we were forced to put down our dear precious little old boy louie and the freezing howling bleak and stormy grayness this week mirrors the despair of it

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the other day i was happier than can be because we were listening to cool music, dancing around the living room, & then i was exercising. the next day i felt free free free driving out lockwood valley, which looks a bit like northerly texas but with different trees, & bought humane eggs & sourdough bagels & apple butter from a nice young woman on a spacious working farm. then i was instructed to walk past a fence &'d be on a trail, & from there i veered off & explored an abandoned bsa camp, climbing through the tall trees up to the chapel benches where score upon score of forgotten obedient boys worshipped their lord, then down to their tattered & abandoned bunks, spooky because you know part of the reason the boy scouts doesn't really exist anymore is all the abuse those obedient boys suffered at the hands of monsters they trusted... fortunately after that there was plenty else to see, a great mess hall, a climbing wall, a dried-out pool, a wild-west-looking structure for some no-doubt-fun purpose, & man, those scouts got to learn & experience some great things, & certainly not all of them were abused, tho for every one that was, i hope each filthy predator burns in eternal hellfire on earth & (if there is one) afterearth... i used to adventure all the time & it was lonely good times to do so again in the soaring sighing outdoors. today is veterans' day, which james (thank you for his service) usually spends in bed til it blows over, so yesterday & today i shoveled 1 ton of gravel onto the second driveway & felt pretty good, tho now pretty sore, as you'd expect. i give many thanks for being able to do such a thing at my age, for life, health, the good fortune to be born here at this time, when mixed-race & brown people & women have some rights still, more than other places on earth & less than in yet others, & to own this house & our cars because times is rough in these united states, so many are suffering, needlessly, cruelly so, but right now, at least right now, we are ok. we can give back & help others, like you probably do. and we still got cool music, dancing, exercising, exploring, love, laughs, tribulations, sobriety, life. still on this side of the soil, there's much for which to be grateful.

The monster, the borg, the gigs

cyberdyne's skynet is here! but there are advantages. the all-seeing eye, big bro, the deus ex machina of machine city, the borg, well, it can save us individual minds worry & time. for example, i have an old car, my little ruby. i'm trying to get her to 200k before sending her out on the old-car ice floe. took her in here in the Big City for a battery replacement & suddenly, she has other issues. a quick chatgpt calmly brought solace. reading chat gpt, i hear warmly reassuring, avuncular tones, as if burl ives were narrating. the problem she has is common, & when Dad returns from walking, we will fix it. suggested were simple steps to allow the engine to re-establish its codes.... our gig thursday went well; doug says we stole the show. the joint was beautifully presented with glittery lights. my brilliant sister had cornhole & cake walk going between bands, with americana playlist, too. my heart burst when friends from childhood & my bakersfield years were there, happy lovely friends! the last act was helmed by my former student zane, who now is a boyishly adorable western swing frontman, commendable for carrying forth the traditions of those who came before us, to paraphrase phil alvin. i danced with mom & dad, james, & my delightful sister, who wore spurs (she used to dress like spiderman as a child & never has shied away from costume). she & i went yesterday to see guillermo del toro's frankenstein, which i thought i would have to politely tolerate for her sake because, well, no boris karloff. boy, sure was wrong. what a piece of cinema! what a stirring, memorable, moving piece of gothic humanity it turned out to be! go see it on the big screen before it goes directly to netflix... well, Dad is back & it's time for coffee. may you be well.

deception & being one's own locomotive

images are such illusion. here are some from yesterday, our lucky 13th anniversary.

just spent 45 mins breaking down my gear for tomorrow's show. it is a lot!!! hope it'll be a good show & a fun event for my sister. will get some more ink in the californian to promote the show -- thank you, cesareo... i'm hopeful about making some contacts tomorrow &, if i'm well enough to go, on sunday. here is the biz card i just had made. they're gonna be super rudimentary, which i prefer. my phone number's on there if you wanna call, but you have to tell me who you are or i'll think you're spam! good night for now.

the bride

there's a BRIDE film coming out. we saw the previews &, initially very excited, we ultimately were annoyed, just one reason being Christian Bale's stupid expression. i've been having such huge loads of fun doing the one man band thing, also practicing with james. for next thursday's show, we got some ink & a photo in bakersfield's tenacious newspaper, in its death rattle but hanging on for dear life. (thank you, pat, my beloved former sponsor in bakersfield, for telling me about the picture!) in a long-past life, i perceived the californian to be my press rival (was publishing an underground rag & likely was delusional). by not yet drowning, being print media in a world sick with ai & digital effluvia, the californian now is the little engine that could. so long may it run.......... well i tried to upload a video of me playing my old song the bride of

frankenstein with my one man band but it's too dang big, so whatever... good night! ( p s, " rock and blues duo"... heheheh!)

stompstompstompstompstomp

this will be a fun eve for all. then that sunday, me and my phantoms will open for the formidable & bad*ss whiteboy james blues express in i think pico rivera... new roof on house: it's gleaming metal gorgeous, making up for weeks of crashing, hammering, no internet, yard trash, no driveway access, etc. ppl around town comment on its beauty. how do they know where we live? now we don't have to cover the piano with trash bags when the heavy rains sweep in.

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.

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"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