Recommendations

SO THERE are three obvious, blatant, visual contra-dictions here. First is the cheese doodles, which are not actually Cheese Doodles, or Cheeto's (which, come to think of it, are not actually O's). These are Utz brand Cheese Curls, which are actually on the far end of the doodle spectrum: where the Cheeto's puffs are lighter and fluffier, the Utz specimen is more chewy and substantial, with the Wise varietal falling right in the middle.

The first contradiction is, obviously, you don't have cheese doodles and beer. And when I say you, I mean you. I, obviously, have cheese doodles and beer.

The second contradiction is the beer, in that I followed the Pale Ale with the Black Forest. Or maybe that's just more a non-sequitur. Shoulda done it the other way around.

The third contradiction is the television/background shot. Of all the still images I might have captured from the movie/ridiculous waste of time and money Smokey and the Bandit, this might, in fact, be the least interesting.

The film itself is something of a contradiction. Partly meant to be a celebration of 1970's Deep South heavy trucking culture, it works hard to insist that trucking culture was/is a vast melting pot of men and women embracing the same basic sexist biases. Also meant to be a celebration of American car design, it vastly mislead an entire generation of middle-aged men-- this being the class of Americans in that age able to afford to buy the new generation of "Sport Muscle" cars-- about the build and ability of the Pontiac Trans Am, which finally turned out to be a hunk of Detroit steel that ran and handled well enough for six month before turning into, well, a Pontiac.

So I don't recommend cheese doodles and beer, following a pale ale with a black Bavarian, or watching Smokey & The Bandit while eating a tuna salad sandwich, but they all three worked for me.


I do recommend The Chris Farley Show.

Not the series of SNL sketches, which, I recently discovered, you can get as a DVD from the SNL series, and although I did not investigate it thoroughly, it appears they have collected all of the "The Chris Farley Show" bits from the series and run them end to end, which just doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. The book, though, which I deliberately took with me on the plane to California, on the grounds that it might be something of a slog. And while, indeed, there were some sections which turned tedious under the burden of recollection or seemed frustratingly light due to the falibility of memory, I can heartily rcommend this book. It is not for the faint of heart-- show biz can be ugly, people can be unfair, fatigue takes its toll on the friends of junkies, and when the horse went down, it went down with a cold, hard thud-- it is also, at its core, a very sweet book. The basic structure is a biography interspersed with recollections by those who knew Farley best, and loved him most. A couple of the reviews I read complained that there were parts of the book that were contradictory, and that David Spade is an asshole, but I read the contradictions as being deliberate, not only part of the narrative, but a fact of life: people see things diffrently, and things are not always as they appear. And David Spade is not an asshole. He just plays one on TV from time to time. I think. And I can't be sure.

As for the promised pictures of California, I am still thinking that over. On downloading the pics I took, I came to the conclusion that I have not decided how many of them are worth sharing, or if I oughta just throw up as many pics as Blogger will let me, which is pretty much what I did last time (see archived posts from August '06, if you'd like.) I didn't even take the camera to Big Sur this time. It's Big Sur. I don't need to have pictures. Big Sur is in my heart.

BIG SUR, JUNE 21, 2009

“Why would Big Sur inspire anyone to write? It’s so peaceful.”

--Christopher P. Fuckin’ Nagel,
ten and three quarters years previous



We come here every time, to this place
That breaks my heart, every time. Surf, sun, sand,
Verdant hillsides that steal the eyes heavenward.
This place that makes me want to say stupid things,
Like “Love is in this land,” or
“God lives here.” Nothing
Some other idiot hasn’t said already,
But stupid things nonetheless.
Makes me want to sing and dance, this place does, and yet
It strikes me dumb.
So we come, and invite ourselves
To this broad beach, this breach
Between the ocean and the land, this fissure
In consciousness, and sit
Toasting the solstice, which will occur
Whether we toast it
Or not.




Peace.