Sunday, August 30, 2009

Not too many poems

Just a few. This one from the Aug. 24, 2009 New Yorker really grabbed me. I've read it a handful of times now and it is always perfect.

IF A CLOWN
by Stephen Dunn

If a clown came out of the woods,
a standard-looking clown with oversized
polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,
a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him
on the edge of your property,
there’d be nothing funny about that,
would there? A bear might be preferable,
especially if black and berry-driven.
And if this clown began waving his hands
with those big white gloves
that clowns wear, and you realized
he wanted your attention, had something
apparently urgent to tell you,
would you pivot and run from him,
or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed
to understand here was a clown
who didn’t know where he was,
a clown without a context?
What could be sadder, my friend thought,
than a clown in need of a context?
If then the clown said to you
that he was on his way to a kid’s
birthday party, his car had broken down,
and he needed a ride, would you give
him one? Or would the connection
between the comic and the appalling,
as it pertained to clowns, be suddenly so clear
that you’d be paralyzed by it?
And if you were the clown, and my friend
hesitated, as he did, would you make
a sad face, and with an enormous finger
wipe away an imaginary tear? How far
would you trust your art? I can tell you
it worked. Most of the guests had gone
when my friend and the clown drove up,
and the family was angry. But the clown
twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird
and gave it to the kid, who smiled,
let it rise to the ceiling. If you were the kid,
the birthday boy, what from then on
would be your relationship with disappointment?
With joy? Whom would you blame or extoll?

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Nighthawks at the diner

One of my favorite songs from my very favorite Tom Waits album, done up by Jackie Lay and brought to my life and yours courtesy of Drawn, the illustration and cartooning blog:








Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Monday, August 10, 2009

RIP Willy DeVille

When this song first hit my ears, I was a young music fan in college in 1979. The song had come out a couple years earlier but somehow didn't make it past The Boss until '79, which was a freakin' awesome year for music. The B-52's eponymous debut, Damn the Torpedos by Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, London Calling by the Clash, Entertainment by Gang of Four, Buzzcocks' Singles going steady, Joy Division, The Wall by Pink Floyd, Joe Jackson, Supertramp, Rust never sleeps, Rickie Lee Jones, Highway to Hell by AC/DC, Nick Lowe's Labour of lust, Blondie, The Police, Cheap Trick Live at Budhokhan. Joe's Garage by Frank Zappa, Talking Heads Fear of music, XTC, DEVO. Fuck. What a great time to be 19. And I was. And right in the middle of it was this perfect song Spanish Stoll. Great dance tune, great song of the times. Willy's AP obit here.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

CNR

First it was I-forget-who, some early adapter or ad friend or both and then it was the O'Connor boys in some dancing elves Christmas rap and now the fine folks at Jib Jab have brought me this. God bless them, every one.