#Weeknotes S04 E05: Pressed for Time

I had a couple of “vacation from the vacation” days but after that, this past week was all about getting back on track with daily life. I still haven’t gone through all the photos I took from Boston.

Okay, you know what? Let’s start there, then. I have just the thing, a metaphor for how I’m feeling — a little pressed.

IN THE WILD:
Life-sized diorama of a "pressing" taken at the Salem Witch Museum.

Yeah I feel you, buddy.

Anyway, one of the places we visited was the Salem Witch Museum, which starts off with “an immersive look into the events of 1692” using life-sized dioramas and narration that sounded like it was recorded in the late 1970s — kind of like the intro from Tales from the Darkside — to underscore the prejudice and injustice behind it all.

Yes, this is where I got that Margaret Hamilton photo I posted a couple weeks ago.

READING:
I haven’t gotten a lot of reading done, beyond poking away at Garielle Lutz’s complete story collection after finishing ESSAYS by Wallace Shawn, which I talked about the other day.

WRITING:
I did make a little movement on this front, though! There were a couple of calls for submissions that I noticed last week, so I put something together for one and am in the process of a new piece for another. Because, why work on the other things you have going right now, when you can just start new shit on the spot, right?

You know, I think that’s all I’ve had in me this week. Along the lines of stuff from the 1970s, maybe what I need now is to rebuild some Cognitive Salubrity…?

Not Approved for Therapeutic Use

I’d buried this tidbit in a Weeknotes post a few weeks back and it’s been bugging me ever since. This really deserved its own space.

The Witch on Horseback Institute for Cognitive Salubrity was a short-lived new age education center and performance space founded in Trumansburg, New York in the nineteen-seventies by former employees of the Moog synthesizer company. These forgotten recordings with disgraced Ithaca experimental psychologist Noving Jumand were discovered at a library sale in Ithaca, New York in the early 2020s, and have been restored from the original LPs by the musical entity known as Witch on Horseback, named in the Institute’s honor.

“This recording has not been approved for therapeutic use,” is the disclaimer that appears at the beginning of each track. I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I should listen to it a few more times…

ESSAYS by Wallace Shawn (2009)


I pulled ESSAYS by Wallace Shawn out of the bowels of my TBR pile. Maybe it was all the times I’ve been seeing him in YOUNG SHELDON reruns lately, I dunno.

Some basic impressions…

  • I read every word in Vizzini’s voice.
  • Be forewarned, a lot of these pieces were written around and about 9/11.
  • Shawn lays bare, in the plainest and simplest English, the stuff a lot of people think but are afraid to say out loud, let alone publish in a book.
  • It takes some balls to publish an interview with Noam Chomsky, but give yourself the last word. But I guess when you star in a critically acclaimed and highly referenced film about hanging out with your boy at a restaurant, you can get away with things like that.

#Weeknotes S04 E04: More Than a Feeling

IN THE WILD:
Last week’s undisclosed location was Boston, MA where I took a much-needed long-term mental health break with the fam. This was the first time in a long time where I took one before (just before) the wheels fell off. My therapist was proud!

This was the first non-convention related trip to Boston (I forget how many Readercons and Boskones it’s been at this point) in over a decade. I guess for that matter, this was my first post-pandemic trip, too. Lotta firsts on this trip. I’ve got enough pics and video, not to mention thoughts and reflections, for several weeks’ worth of blog posts that I’ll probably dribble out slowly. You might’ve noticed I did some experimenting with dribbling out posts over the past week. That’s where the one pier picture came from, btw.

PREVIOUSLY…
Oh, you missed the pier picture? Not to worry. Here’s a recap.

READING:
Still working on THE COMPLETE GARY LUTZ and QUANTUM CRIMINALS. The latter, I’m savoring slowly, like Cuervo Gold. (See what I did there?)

Like most readers I know, though, I added to the long backlog with DREAM TOWN: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity by Laura Meckler. I grew up a couple of ‘burbs over, so a tiny bit of my history overlaps with this, so I thought it’d be interesting. And, randomly, I pulled something up to the front, ESSAYS by Wallace Shawn. I dunno, I think it bubbled back up to the surface because of all the YOUNG SHELDON reruns I’ve been watching lately with Wally in them. I’ll push my thoughts out sometime this week.

Back to the dayjob tomorrow, so I’m going to finish out the weekend reminiscing about the trip to what cultural scholar Carl Brutananadilewski calls The Ultimate Song…

Birdland, Revisited

I just needed somewhere to pin this memory: When I first became aware of Weather Report’s classic jazz fusion tune, it was only in the context of shitty high school marching band or college big band renditions. So many of them that when I finally heard Weather Report’s original version in college, I couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t hear it without cringing. Couldn’t undertand it. Couldn’t watch it being played by anyone, even if they were trying to be true to the original, without a sneer of derision.

I got a copy of HEAVY WEATHER in college when I was heaviest into my Jazz Phase when the thing that separated the people who took jazz courses for the credits was and the Real Hip Cats(TM) was knowing about the side projects of the people who played with Miles on BITCHES BREW (in this case, Josef Zawinul, Jaco Pastorious, et al.). But I didn’t get it, not really. Not “Birdland,” and certainly not “Teen Town” or “Palladium.”

It’s taken nigh on 25 years to finally get all that out of my system and actually appreciate HEAVY WEATHER and “Birdland” for the classics they are. This shit is in the jazz fusion canon for a reason, and now I respect it enough to NOT want any part of rearranging and playing my own version.

Revisionist Harmony

“Harmonious” is one of my favorite Eric Bogosian monologues. In terms of content, this stuff is evergreen! Presentation, though — that can get a little touchy. The piece is from Bogosian’s 2001 one-man show WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE. Apparently inspired by some Deepak Chopra specials he’d seen on PBS, the stage direction reads thus:

A man speaks in a British/Indian accent, deep and resonant with a slight lisp:

So obviously, 20some years ago, that’s how he performed it.

Now, this isn’t a “Gotcha, you colonizing appropriator!” post. I’m just saying Bogosian definitely owes Aasif Mandvi, here.

The New Yacht Rock

Tired: Young musicians using the recording techniques and gear of the ’60s to replicate ’60s R&B.

Wired: Young musicians using the recording techniques and gear of the late ’70s/early ’80s to replicate Yacht Rock. (With bonus points for scoring one of that era’s legendary vocalists!)

#Weeknotes S04 E03: Livin’ In Sin with a Safety Pin

This week’s episode is being broadcast from an undisclosed location. I’ll talk more about that next week.

IN THE WILD
Even at the undisclosed location, I find once again that where I’m from tends to sneak itself into wherever you are.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Margaret Hamilton (December 9, 1902 – May 16, 1985) was a schoolteacher turned actress, best known for her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film THE WIZARD OF OZ.

This comes on top of a couple of other Cleveland-related things that have come across my transom this week.

ALL THIS ENERGY CALLING ME…
The name Dick Goddard probably doesn’t mean much to anyone not of a certain age who came up in the 216 a couple of decades after the river caught fire. But, behold the ancient wisdom of a legendary Clevelander!

In addition to its winter forecast, Farmers’ Almanac also shared “20 Signs of a Hard Winter Ahead,” which was curated by famed late Cleveland weatherman Dick Goddard. The list was first featured in the 1978 Farmers’ Almanac, “and it is still relevant today,” according to the almanac.

–via cleveland.com

It’s that fuzzy Midwestern feeling of when a local boy does good. And speaking of local boys who done good, there’s a fall event being organized, in part, by Ursuline College’s Rust Belt Humanities Lab — okay, wait, let’s back up. First off, there’s a Rust Belt Humanities Lab!!

Anyway, Superman’s Cleveland: Lineage and Legacy will be celebrated in the place where the Neverending Battle began.

Superman’s Cleveland is a city-wide celebration of the heritage of Superman, the world’s first comic book superhero invented in 1938 in Glenville by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish high school students.

This Fall, scholars and comic book lovers will join interested Clevelanders in book discussions, comics-making workshops, live interviews with creators, and a rich lineup of programs exploring the lineage and legacy of Superman and Cleveland.

READING
Finished Christine Schutt’s collection A DAY, A NIGHT, ANOTHER DAY, SUMMER. I’m still plowing away at THE COMPLETE GARY LUTZ, with only moderately less mental and emotional distress than I experienced when reading Lutz and Eric Bogosian at the same time.

I’ve always enjoyed so-called Minimalist fiction. I’ve read who (I think) most would think of as “the big names,” like Carver, Hempel, Hannah, Beattie, Robison. But there’s another strata that I’m only now getting to: Sam Lipsyte (whose story collections I read before I came back to blogging), Gary Lutz, Christine Schutt, Noy Holland (her stuff is next on tap), etc. These writers’ work is definitely different. The language is playful, which seems to make their stories (in my opinion) more brutal.

THIS IS ONLY A TEST
Since I’m back on my bullshit here, I thought I’d dick around with some of the other ancient tools from yesteryear, what with everyone retreating into newsletters, blogs, or other older platforms. I was never really much of a LiveJournal guy, but there was a time when I Tumblr’d 4 ya quite a lot.

Anyway, don’t mind me…

https://donfoolery.tumblr.com/post/726137225048473600/first-look-at-the-new-toxic-avenger-movie-peter

#Weeknotes S04 E02: Cognitive Salubrity

READING
I’ve finished Eric Bogosian’s 100 MONOLOGUES. I’ve flipped back and forth between monologues, kind of like how your average Catholic flips around the Bible randomly, but I took the time to read these 100, cover to cover from start to finish. I took two things away from this experience:

  1. Some of these pieces go back 30 or 35 years, and it’s scary how some of the reactionary characters depicted must’ve somehow time-traveled forward to 2023.
  2. Reading 100 MONOLOGUES while concurrently reading THE COMPLETE GARY LUTZ might not have been good for my mental and emotional health. I mean, the collection includes a book titled, PARTIAL LIST OF PEOPLE TO BLEACH, so I’m sure you can imagine.

I’ve still got a ways to go before finishing Lutz’s stuff, while still picking away at Christine Schutt’s A DAY, A NIGHT, ANOTHER DAY, SUMMER. But I’ve got a huge to-read pile, so I’ve moved QUANTUM CRIMINALS: RAMBLERS, WILD CAMBLERS, AND OTHER SOLE SURVIVORS FROM THE SONGS OF STEELY DAN by Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay up the queue.

Even if you’re someone who’s inclined to shit on Steely Dan you might still enjoy the snark that’s so cleverly (and at some points, lovingly) laid down on Donald and Walter.

In the ’70s, Donald [Fagan] favors a preshow Valium and two immediately preshow tequila shots before taking the stage. But the Cuervo Gold and the fine anxiolytics can only go so far in terms of making the night a tolerable thing.

COGNITIVE SALUBRITY
This is the type of local history that always fascinated me. I’ve always said that the first time I visited this zone of “10 square miles surrounded by reality” almost two decades ago, I knew I’d found my place. Stuff like this is why…

The Witch on Horseback Institute for Cognitive Salubrity was a short-lived new age education center and performance space founded in Trumansburg, New York in the nineteen-seventies by former employees of the Moog synthesizer company. These forgotten recordings with disgraced Ithaca experimental psychologist Noving Jumand were discovered at a library sale in Ithaca, New York in the early 2020s, and have been restored from the original LPs by the musical entity known as Witch on Horseback, named in the Institute’s honor.

“AY, OH, WAY TO GO, OHIO”
My home state, much like a broken clock, can be right twice a day…

“Ohio voters reject Issue 1, scoring win for abortion-rights supporters ahead of November” from The Columbus Dispatch.

IN THE WILD
There’s this coffee shop at my (dying) local mall that’s been around for a few years. It’s all right. It’s small, it’s local. The food and drinks are decent and the folks who run it are nice. The furnishings came from the Borders that left the mall when it closed down. They gathered dust in the closed storefront for years, before being moved to a new space to be re-used.

I spent hours at the old Borders cafe doing a lot of writing. I’ve likely sat on every chair and at every table (including the couches you don’t see) at one point, so it’s kind of like visiting old friends and seeing if I can recreate the old writing magic we once had.

#Weeknotes S04 E01: Back on My Bullshit

I come up here and I do the best I can. I give you the best I can. I can’t do better than this. I can’t.

–Eric Bogosian, “I’m Here. I’m Here Every Night”
from TALK RADIO

I used to be one of those people who would come back to their blogs after a prolonged absence, all self-conscious about it, wanting to explain, to pledge to post more regularly, to get on a schedule. I’m over that.

So, the only question is what to write about after so long? I cast an eye inward, but then decided to just let the Story Cubes put my thoughts together.

I’ve been on a huge reading binge lately. I’ve got about 5 or 6 books going on right now, but the top 3 this past week:

The thing that’s helped me do all this reading is the Nook Glowlight 4e that I decided to splurge on a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it’s my aging eyes, but my laptop, tablet, and phone screens just weren’t cutting it anymore. Between that and the fact that reading at night no longer keeps me up and is thus improving the quality of my sleep, Nook is the first single-use media device I’ve had in my EDC kit for a very long time.

All this reading has definitely unlocked something. It’s filling me up on the old magic, helping me rediscover things that make me smile. Things like Nathasha Lyonne doing an Eric Bogosian monologue…