While we wait to complete the instrumental tracks on the All That Jaws album, Brian Descheneaux and I decided to form a band that would be impervious to studio delays, musicians' schedules, and mountain road closures in that it would consist of ourselves.
We chose the name Fogelfoot, an abbreviation of Croce Dan and Seals Bread Fogelfoot, to pay tribute to the earnest 70's songwriting traditions of Jim Croce, Bread, Seals & Crofts, Gordon Lightfoot, Dan Fogelberg, and England Dan And John Ford Coley.
And because the name "Cormorant" was already taken, inexplicably, by a San Francisco metal band.
So each week we set ourselves a task. This week I wanted to pay homage to every 70's song that used the word "Lady" and write a story a la "Brandy" about an inaccessible love interest with a past. Because the past involved a Mexican soldier, I wanted the song to be reminiscent of Jose Feliciano's "Chico and the Man" and to incorporate as many 70's props as possible, including a creepy narrator, amulets, and cocaine. Finally, the narrator needed to solve all his love interest's problems by telling her that she was pretty.
The song is called "Lady And the Man," Brian did all the music, and it is available on the Flight of the Mavervorl podcast. Subscribe now!
Lady is a lady Long-legged sultry lady She sways her hips for the gentlemen On the lonely side of town
When it's midnight in the city I go to see my Lady And I bring her gifts of sweet white wine And spices from the East
She tells me, "I would like to make sweet love to you By the torrid Tampiquena Sea But you cannot catch The Cormorant, can you? It's only when she's dancing that she's free."
There's a sadness in my Lady So I feed her rails of cocaine But the rain it falls like honey in the snow
OK!
'twas a horseman named Felipe Not a word could she comprende But she understood his urgency 'fore he marched off to the West
And I'm dancing with my Lady And she has something to tell me She shows to me the amulet That dangles 'twixt her breasts
And when the letter came one chilly Friday Saying that he'd been et by ants She knew of nothing else to serve his mem'ry Than to love him through her dance
So if you see my Lady Just tell her that she's pretty That's all a lovely lady Needs to know
Claim Jumper is one of those restaurants to which people say you should go with an empty stomach and big appetite.
"Go with an empty stomach and big appetite!" they say.
Because the Northridge Claim Jumper is perched at the epicenter of the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, I chose to go there recently when my stomach was empty, my appetite was big, and my Richter scale needed recalibrating.
"I will have the crab cakes and the Whiskey Chicken," I told the waitress. If I could have had Jagermeister Chicken or just Jagermeister, I would have.
"Do you think you can eat all that?" she asked.
"I'll take a doggie bag if I can't," I said. I'm not proud.
It wasn't until recently that I became aware that taking a doggie bag is viewed as uncool. Not that I thought it was cool, particularly, but that someone who chooses not to throw food away would be thought of as uncool made me think I wasn't subscribing to the right magazines.
It was at a sushi restaurant in Canoga Park and I'd eaten most everything on my plate. But now I felt bloated and mean.
"Can I get a To Go bag?" I asked.
"No," I was told, "you have to eat that here."
"But I paid for it (actually I hadn't). Are you saying you're going to throw it away?"
"If you don't eat it."
"At least tell me that you'll eat it or you'll take it home," I said. "Because it's stupid to just leave this food here and not be able to take it from the building."
"We don't do doggie bags," I was told.
"Whoa," I said. That smarts.
When I worked at Pizza Hut as a teen, we would eat our mistakes. I will not say I ever made a deliberate mistake so that I could eat a pizza with the wrong topping on it, because I have evidence that my former manager reads this site. All I'm saying is that the food was not wasted.
At the sushi restaurant, I sat back down and finished my meal in spite.
People talk about animal fear. When I eat a steak, I enjoy trying to detect fear.
"Not enough fear on this one," I will say at a steakhouse. "Send it back and scare the shit out of it."
But I wonder if one's own spite changes the taste of food?
Back at the Claim Jumper, my crab cakes and Whiskey Chicken had arrived. I had a couple of margaritas and a glass of water. As I ate I was aware that I would easily finish this meal and still be hungry.
"You're really tearing through that," the waitress said. "You must have been hungry."
Maybe the experience at the sushi place a mile away had released a chemical into my hypothalamus that turned off my awareness of my own satiation in restaurants. In any case, my waitress was beginning to make me feel like I was a miracle of science, because I finished my meal and she said, "You got through it!"
I was sad that I wasn't going to be able to eat this at work.
There are food riots going on in the Southern Hemisphere. Today I found this excellent pictorial article detailing the weekly meals and food expenditures for several households around the world. I was envious of this North Carolina family's ability (left) to get pizza delivered twice a week. They must be tycoons.
If you were to enter a conversation late on the line "...he should be dead," chances are you would assume the topic was Keith Richards.
That is why I listen when he tells me what food I should avoid; because what scares Keith Richards scares me.
The miracle of pharmacology Rolling Stones guitarist said in an interview with GQ that he will not eat cheese. He said this while guzzling a 16-oz. Solo cup filled with Ketel One at 4 in the afternoon. Therefore, I will stop eating cheese.
"Cheese is very wrong," he said. "Fermented milk is not the ideal choice for everyday eating."
He also said the story about the daily blood transfusions is an untrue rumor. But he was pretty clear about the cheese.
It pains me to so blatantly rip off Joe Frank and "This American Life," but I've been meaning to record some of my conversations with my junior high school friend Bill Brightman for several years, and Ennio Morricone's is the best possible soundtrack for that sort of thing.
This will soon be available for download as a podcast in the iTunes Store, but for now here's a Flash video.
UPDATE: "The Flight of the Mavervorl" is now available as an enhanced podcast on iTunes. If you have an Apple account, feel free to subscribe and comment here.
I was recently in Tempe, AZ for a conference and also to visit my in-laws. I have never liked the Phoenix area, despite my fondness for Alice and Death Wish, and each time I visit it is a struggle to enjoy myself, beloved in-laws notwithstanding.
Too hot outside, too air-conditioned inside, too many chain stores, and a sense of overwhelming complacence. I will make this sound better when I run for President, but until then, I sure don't like Arizona.
I explained this to my friend Troy while typing online in a coffee shop in the shadow of Arizona State University Mountain.
"Are you on Mill Ave?" he asked.
"I am," I said. "But how did you know that?"
"Because I used to go to ASU," he confided. "While Tempe is best seen through a rearview mirror, there is one place you can walk to..."
He directed me to a neighborhood a few blocks away, where I found Casey Moore's, an Irish bar and oyster house built by the parents of early Arizona governor Benjamin Mouer. Apparently it's haunted.
I haunted it myself for the course of three drinks. It was the first time I actually enjoyed being here; the neighborhood reminded me of Austin.
After my Lenten teetotallitarianism I have not rebounded with a vengeance, but a few drinks at a bar in the middle of the afternoon on a work day was great. "I need to do this more," I said, and I don't care if it was out loud.
"Yes, you do," the ghost said.
On the way home (gas cost $168 this trip, or about $12 for each hour in the car), we stopped in the bucolic former mining town of Desert Center, CA.
"I could live here," I told my wife, as my daughter ran around an abandoned Kaiser Steel boxcar. "This is the kind of place where a man can breathe."
I wonder if my credit union would give me a loan for some jet skis and a meth lab?
There are two things I look forward to seeing on the way home from Arizona. One is the Colorado River, which forms part of the California/Arizona border. It has always been a relief to cross the Colorado; the first time I did it was when I moved here. At that time I was on the 40, not the 10, and had passed through Flagstaff instead of Phoenix. I was driving a 40-foot Ryder truck with a car towed in back and was just happy to have made it to the final state in my trip.
The other is the miles-long windmill farm near Indio and Palm Springs. We drove into the sunset this time, so it looked a little like Mordor.
But, on the whole, if you think Mordor is bad, try Arizona.
...or paying four bucks for gas? Or school integration? Or devil worship?
This picture reminds me of one of my favorite Bible stories:
While we wait to complete the instrumental tracks on the All That Jaws album, Brian Descheneaux and I decided to form a band that would be impervious to studio delays, musicians' schedules, and mountain road closures in that it would consist of ourselves.
Claim Jumper is one of those restaurants to which people say you should go with an empty stomach and big appetite.
There are food riots going on in the Southern Hemisphere. Today I found this excellent pictorial article detailing the weekly meals and food expenditures for several households around the world. I was envious of this North Carolina family's ability (left) to get pizza delivered twice a week. They must be tycoons.
If you were to enter a conversation late on the line "...he should be dead," chances are you would assume the topic was Keith Richards.
I was recently in Tempe, AZ for a conference and also to visit my in-laws. I have never liked the Phoenix area, despite my fondness for Alice and Death Wish, and each time I visit it is a struggle to enjoy myself, beloved in-laws notwithstanding.
I haunted it myself for the course of three drinks. It was the first time I actually enjoyed being here; the neighborhood reminded me of Austin.
On the way home (gas cost $168 this trip, or about $12 for each hour in the car), we stopped in the bucolic former mining town of Desert Center, CA.
"I could live here," I told my wife, as my daughter ran around an abandoned Kaiser Steel boxcar. "This is the kind of place where a man can breathe."
I wonder if my credit union would give me a loan for some jet skis and a meth lab?
The other is the miles-long windmill farm near Indio and Palm Springs. We drove into the sunset this time, so it looked a little like Mordor.
But, on the whole, if you think Mordor is bad, try Arizona.
