Big Brown to help decide NBA Finals
 Because we are the same height, people often mistake me for Kobe Bryant. I have decided that I will root for the Lakers when they are in town and for the Celtics when they are at the Garden; this is the only way to keep from going nuts, and this means that the Celtics will win it in Boston.
I found the following poem scrawled on the subway wall:
I managed a frown when Big Brown let me down
Coming in very last place
That Seattle Slew was the last of the few
To've won every Triple Crown race
When Barbaro died I felt nothing inside
I erected no shrine to Eight Belles
I'm open for bets that they're doing their next
Mile and a quarter in Hell
And I have no regrets that, in three brutal sets
Federer got stomped in the clay
We hoi polloi find it hard to enjoy
Sports with a dress code to play
But in the case of Celtics v. Lakers
My loyalties go either way
Would Big Brown prefer that the banner hang down
Over rapists or over parquet?
(I might have scrawled it.)Labels: boston, los angeles, poetry, sports
The turducken cannot hear the turduckener
 For Christmas we are eating a turducken, a Cajun dish in which a duck is shoved into a chicken which is shoved into a turkey. Beaks and bones have been removed (though a beak would have come in handy during the shoving).
In between the discrete fowlic elements is slathered a cornbread stuffing. Eating a turducken is like slicing through three-layered Neopolitan ice cream, except with birds.
Because our friend Eric is joining us, and because Eric actually raises falcons, we were hoping to surprise him by adding his falcon to the mix. The integrity of the meter would be maintained if the resulting dish was a turdalcken, and the configuration would be duck -> falcon -> chicken -> turkey. If we can get it together in time, we might be able to surprise Eric with this new tradition.
"This tastes like -- Oh My God!" he will say. "It's my Charlemagne!"
If we had more time, we might have been able to prepare a turdalckenelope, turdalckenelopiraffe, or even a turdalckenelopiraffephant, but Christmas shouldn't be about complexity.
See also: The Second ComingLabels: food, holiday, poetry
A free verse ode to the Comfort Suites in Tempe
 The Comfort Suites in Tempe
Has a continental breakfast
With coffee, fruit, and waffles
And mini sausage patties
The Internet was broken
They gave me lame excuses
For four days it was broken
They'd better give a discount
We watched a lot of cable
And a marathon of "Spongebob"
The remote control was broken
I was oldschool in my methods
Housekeeping disappointed
With sparse restocks on towels
One maid, who was retarded
Did not refill the Kleenex
The pool was oft deserted
Though it was also heated
We used it almost daily
I had to borrow swim trunks
The Coke machine was broken
(Even though it vended Pepsi)
I lost a dollar twenty
The Sheraton's was better
If you have to go to Tempe
I'm sure you could do better
But curb your expectations
What do you want from Tempe?Labels: arizona, despair, faulty technology, poetry, travel
Bob Dylan's kelping hand
 While Bob Dylan has done just fine without relying on my opinion, I am worried about his legacy as reflected in a section of lyrics that has always made me want to pop an aneurysm.
Dylan's beautiful love song "Sara", from his 1976 album "Desire" (which includes "Hurricane") is his second most well known song about his ex-wife. He name-checks the first in "Sara" in a self-referential move worthy of rappers:
I can still hear the sounds of those Methodist bells,
I'd taken the cure and had just gotten through,
Stayin' up for days in the Chelsea Hotel,
Writin' "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" for you. Here's the line that bothers me. It comes near the end of the song:
Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp
And a piece of an old ship that lies on the shore.
You always responded when I needed your help,
You gimme a map and a key to your door. I think the most important lines are the last two, but he painted himself into a corner by falling in love with "when I needed your help", because what does one rhyme with help?
If I asked you who was at the restaurant, for example, and you said, "No one but the bar towels," I would punch you. Don't get cute with me, pal. Life is too short. Kelp.
When you say that something is deserted, you mean that it is devoid of humans or living things. So you could say that a house is deserted except for some mice. By mistakenly introducing kelp, Dylan became responsible to list every other non-living thing on that beach, and should have also said:
Now the beach is deserted, except for some kelp, sand, crabs, lobster parts, Pepsi cans, french fries someone forgot about, a Butterfinger wrapper, a murder of cormorants
And a piece of an old ship that lies on the shore. If Dylan could have just let go of "help", he could have been faithful to the beach imagery throughout the song and maintained the integrity of the powerful final lines of that quatrain. Here's a dazzling substitution:
Up to the sandbar, the cormorants WADE
And gaze at the PEPSI CANS that lie on the shore
You always responded when I needed your AID,
You gimme a map and a key to your door. or, just as powerful but not employing the kelp logical fallacy:
Out in the harbor, the musk seals doth YELP
About how ST. FRANCIS would give to the POOR
You always responded when I needed your help,
You gimme a map and a key to your door. Not only are these suggestions lyrically sound, but they also impress the listener with a deeper understanding of the song, as well as of the desires of cormorants. You might have an issue with "doth yelp", pointing out that it would be better to have said "yelped", but as my "All That Jaws" collaborator Brian Descheneaux has observed, there is a precedent in Dylan's lyrics for padding the verb:
Outside in the cold distance, a wildcat DID GROWL I encourage you to submit your own versions of the kelp stanza, and I will present these worthy alternates to Dylan the next time I see him.
Previously: The Other Side of the Mirror...; The Smog Cutter: It was all yellow; Tearing that hotel down, contextually; You go back and revise; "A cormorant will snack on us all."Labels: music, poetry, pop
The Golden Compass
 Without knowing there was a movie coming out, I started reading Phillip Pullman's brilliant "His Dark Materials" trilogy, the first book of which, "The Golden Compass", has been adapted for film.
My education in fantasy stories has been limited by my dislike of most people who like fantasy stories. It is an ancient prejudice. But I've been lucky; I've enjoyed the "Harry Potter" books, think "The Lord of the Rings" is a masterpiece, and am very impressed with "His Dark Materials", which takes its title from this area of "Paradise Lost":
Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
 Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross.
My brief exposure to fantasy stories has revealed that they all have things in common:
1. Children with dead or compromised parents
2. Guys in robes
3. A weapon to be used for good or evil
4. Betrayal
Based on this, I have written my own short fantasy story. It is called
The Wondrous Bathrobe Tool
by Marty Barrett
Hugh Hefner approached Gary.
"It's a shame your parents are dead," he said, "but these witches want you to be their leader."
"May I take my magic toothbrush?" asked Gary.
"That's not any toothbrush," replied Hef. "His Dark Materials" is ambitious and uncondescending to young readers. It also has some bold things to say about organized religion and God, something I think "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" deal with obliquely, but Pullman puts right out there.
"But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one; you can never see any concrete proof that it exists but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of thibngs that couldn't be imagined without it." If the movie trailer is any indication, "The Golden Compass" gets dumbed down in the adaptation, but I'll still see it; it still looks fun. Gandalf plays a bear, for example.
Labels: books, geekery, movies, poetry
Yeats to glade: "I changed my goddamn mind."
 Partially because of the faerie problem, and partially because I have been coveting Martha's Vineyard real estate (it's the type of coveting free of the ability to procure it), I have been thinking about a particular phrase of William Butler Yeats in his description of his intended digs on Innisfree.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core. Through the guy living in my office building's garage, I was able to contact W.B. Yeats and ask a few questions.
MB: How would you describe the noise in your glade, Mr. Yeats?
WBY: Oh, it's bee-loud.
MB: Does that mean the noise in your glade is made by bees, and that they are loud?
WBY: Yes.
MB: Does it ever bother you, the bee-loudness?
WBY: Aye.
MB: What, you're a pirate now?
Because the directory was already open to that page, psychically, I then contacted W.B. Mason for some mailing labels.
In terms of glades, their usability decreases in inverse proportion to the number of bees in them. If I were to own property with a glade, I would put a barbecue and hammock in it. And if my enemies came over, I would suggest they try out the hammock, and then put the barbecue under it, thus burning my enemies to death, as the guy in my garage suggested.
Were I to have a glade, there are only a few types of sound I would allow, lest my property value decrease:
- donkey-loud
- poltergeist-loud
- one-legged Thai mail-order bride-loud
- Weber Grill-loud
- cash-loud
- Jagermeister Tap Machine-loud
- potato salad-loud
- Jaws-loud
- Not your mother-loud
- thong-loud
See also: William Butler Yeats, Martha's Vineyard Real EstateLabels: martha'svineyard, poetry
The Faunz reimagined
 I watched Pan's Labyrinth the other night and was a little upset by how one of my favorite television characters, The Fonz, was recharacterized as a menacing, child-frightening monster.
Not since Wayne Rogers' happy go lucky character in M*A*S*H became the dour Pernell Roberts interpretation in Trapper John, MD has an iconic character from my youth been so poorly treated.
Despite this, Pan's Labyrinth is a beautiful, beguiling, and poignant movie that nevertheless puts me as a parent yet again on edge: What's with the goddamn faeries leading children away? It seems that, throughout literature, faeries are the manifestation of a parent's - and therefore society's - failure to keep children entertained.
I resolve to feed my daughter more gum.
The Stolen Child - William Butler Yeats
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scare could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand. See also: Pan's Labyrinth official siteLabels: art, movies, netflix odyssey, poetry
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