The Armchair Geographers

Well, it started as a side project of the Monkeyface News (see below). I was kind of hoping it would be a more or less independant thing for me but then there we were, on stage at the Odeon again. The whole crew. Rev Wupass (prof. Henderson) Max A., (Pinsford), the late addition Mahatma B.B. (Higgensengensengensengen) and last but certainly not least Dave Gantz (Prof. Gains) Went out and bought five corduroy jackets with arm patches... at no small expense. Not sure anyone gets the connection between sea chanties and armchair geography, (if they don't... fuck 'em). Chris Karney kicked serious ass. Dangerous with that squirt gun too. Right now listening to sea chanties. No surprise there.
Monkeyface news gets closer, closer. You can almost smell it. Which reminds me I have week old eel skins pickling on my roof and I really do need to deal with the fuckers.

Odeon 1am

Friday night's show (last week) at the Odeon, was a sodden affair even by our own drunken standards. I dunno. Going on at close to 1am is a losing proposition. Yes, everyone (who's left) dances (well, sloshes around in beer anyway). It is true, I would rather be playing than sleeping, which is what I tend to be doing at 1am anyway and yes, we love and apppreciate the Odeon (for all it's sonic challenges) but... what? Maybe I'm getting too old for this shit.

Slim Harpo

Listening to Slim Harpo after years of being without him. Great Christ, why have I deprived myself of this music?

May 21st, Right to Write Benefit

On May 21st we will be performing with Lord Loves a Working Man at the Right to Write benefit show at Amnesia. Right to Write is Ms. C-Funk's (soon to be) non-profit organization that brings poetry to the inmates in the S.F. women's jail. Don't miss it. Also performing the all-female country band The Whoreshoes!

Three Cheers for Mahatma Boom Boom

The morning after a good show is always a good morning. It is 12:05pm and I am functioning (barely) on 5 hours of sleep. The stage at Van Cleef's is not so much a stage but a narrow lane. Only way to position ourselves and still face the audience was in single file. I thought for sure this was a recipe for sucking, but we did not suck. If there is an opposite for sucking (unfortunately, I guess it's blowing) that was what we did. I don't know how. The sound on stage was akin to the sound of a blue whale farting. There was no sound man and Mahatma B.B., being the closest to the board, had to fix all the levels while playing guitar and singing. (I just killed a gargantuan spider crawling on the wall near my beck) Three cheers for the multitalented Mahatma. Hip hip! Hip hip! Hip hip! Did I say that Freddi Price is my hero? Well he is.

Max A. Million In Da House Y'all

Got into a lengthy conversation with the adoring owner of Van Cleef's after the show. He likened us to Bo Diddley and the Stones. Heh, heh. 8 years into the Stones' career they were releasing what? Goat's Head Soup? Exile? I wonder if the Stones ever had to do their own sound while they were playing, and if so, when?
Anyway, I just want to give it up for Maxie. I got all sentimental after the show (inexcusable because I wasn't even drunk) and told him how much he's meant to the band this last year. I mean, really, after last night it's hard for me to imagine Mannix or Pablo or Oh Father without Maxie coldclocking the washboard and shit hammering his funkass lines the bass. Why in the name of Christ would I ever play Mawson again without Max whirling around the stage with his accordion? Three cheers for Maxie: Hip hip! Hip hip! Hip hip!

The Right Reverend

While I'm spreadin' it around I might as well go ahead and give the Hon. Rev. Wupass some. Really, the person who got the shaft last night was Lar. Not only was he stuck all the way in the back, but mama wasn't even miked and his vocal was way low in the mix. Did that stop this invincible grumpster from laying down his working class rhythms and inexorable, lumpen basslines? No. HELL NO, in fact. When everything else had gone to shit the hon. Reverend was always there with the slap happy chunka--chunkas to keep the train wreck bad but manageble.

Babe Fuckin' Ruth

What else... let's see. If you weren't there last night, here's what you missed:

1. The two hottest bartenders (Ms. C-Funk and Robin) in the western world, reunited at the Odeon East (Van Cleef's). I shit you not boyz.
2. Katy Bell's new white dress--and white heels, aie mommie look out!
3. THE AUTHOR'S FIRST EVER TOTALLY SOBER PERFORMANCE IN HIS EIGHT YEAR STINT AS A MEMBER OF RUBE WADDELL (you mean our songs really are that easy to play?)
4. Outside the bar around the corner, before we went on, Captain Legit (yes, I prefer Captain Feedback, but you know, when your father gives you a moniker you have to accept that it will be your moniker for a long time), challenged Max, Chris and Larry to a couple of innings (each) of wiffle ball. The only word that can describe my subsequent athletic performance is: DOMINANT. Those poor boys never had a chance. Not only did I mow them down with the blazing power of my fastball, confound them with the space-time anomally of my mungo-ephus change-up, shatter their minds with the geographic impossibility of my curve, (shutting all three of them out, and not allowing a single run) but I managed to load the bases twice (while batting) and then bludgeon a couple of prodigious grand slams to dead center field (over the second story window of the bank across the street).
5. Scintillating conversation. Brian Kinney Fresno in the house. Dan the Improver. Nikki's cleavage. And a veritable who's who of former Vaccination superstars: Dave Cooper. John Scherba. Beth Lissick. Holy hell where the fuck have all these peoples been hiding out?
6. Free frozen pizzas after the gig.
7. Mike Binion oggling my freshly tanned eel hides (see below).
8. and lasst but not least, Dave's striped jacket.

Odeon on Friday

Anyhoo, time to go do something with what'sleft of the day. Don't miss our upcoming show at the Odeon Bar this Friday Night.
The mass is ended, go in pieces... thanks be to God

-- Kirk-out

Six Months Since

What can I say? To the dozen or so people who actually read this thing I am sorry for the six month hiatus. Be assured, I have been hopelessly preoccupied with a series of back breaking and financially unrewarding endeavors: 1. Writing the great American novel, 2. getting the Monkey Face News ready for publication, 3. skinning eel hides on my roof and 4. teaching art to the downtrodden.

There will be a Monkeyface News and Intertidal Report, opening/lecture/gala/fundraiser at some point this summer and I am sure the musical entertainment and hijinks of this event will be unparrallelled in the annals of piscatorial celebration.

What Is The Monkeyface News, You Ask?

The Monkeyfacenews and Interitdal Report is a small, misanthropic fishing report of tremendous scope and magnitude. Within its immaculately rendered pages one will find great steaming mountains of truth. Although fish stories abound the MFN will also contain expertly detailed maps, ponderous literary criticisms, gargantuan works of poetry, tasteless photographs of naked young women, passionate diatribes on pelicans, Cambodians, eel skinning, and fish slavery (though not necessarily in that order).

In a small pouch at the rear of the Monkeyfacenews one will find a shiny CD containing a choice selection of sea faring songs, all performed in their native language by the reknowned Barbary Coast band The Arm Chair Geographers A muscial entourage consisting of select members of Rube Waddell and The Japanize Elephants.
But in the end, despite all it has to offer, the MFN will probably be remembered solely on the basis of its cover. Know this oh gentle reader: the Monkeyface Eel skinning station and book binding conglomerate (Harrison St., SF. CA.) will stop at nothing to provide you with the finest monkeyface eel-skin book covers on earth. (Honestly, whoever you are, you have no idea how hard I have slaved over these fucking things, scraping the eel mucous off the pelts, setting up the buckets of noxious tanning chemicals on the roof, pinning the hides to boards, fighting off the alley cats and vultures--hey, you can read all about it in the Monkeyface News).

Tonight Van Cleef's, Tomorrow....

Tonight we play Van Cleef's. Wondering how we'll deal with the strange angle of the stage. Camilladilla works the bar. Breaking out some new songs.

Awright, the mass is ended, go in pieces... Thanks be to God

Holy shit. Well well, sometimes tomorrow never comes. Jesus has it really been 6 months since I wrote anything in here? Great Christ. Perhaps I'm about to turn over a new leaf. Okay, bye.

Ween is Coming

And Rube Waddell is going to the show. Well half of us anyway. Will review the show here tomorrow.

Johnny Cash Will Never Die

As long as there's Sunday mornings, truck stops, repentant sinners, tin cups, mean eyed cats, (Sandoval, paging Sandoval) octoroon relatives of Rev. Wupass , faded memories of drunken Indians, hard men in low places, dead women in bad places, cracked lines on dust filled American faces, ass-kickings in back alleys, (what's that Flannery O'Connor story about dirt bag, low-life husband who takes all his wife's hard earned money, loses it in a poker game and then returns to the house, broken, dejected, ready to have a rolling pin put upside his skull, and, as his wife is about to hurl a fry pan at him, rips off his shirt and reveals a fresh, scabby tattoo of a crucified Jesus across his back? What is that story? I bet Johnny loved that story, if he ever read it. I bet Johnny could've come up with a killer soundtrack for Blood Meridian -- if Peckinpagh had lived long enough to make it. Everybody knew the motherfucker was dying but I dunno. I am still moved to tears everytime I play "I Still Miss Someone," and I've played it, what, 300 times in the last five days?) the possibility of whiskey communion with Shiva in a back alley in Bismark North Dakota, tobacco hangovers, ("I smoked my mind the night before on cigarettes and songs that I been pickin," yeah i know Kristoferson wrote the bitch, but it was annexed by Johnny like the Romans in Gaul) Catfish, freight trains, and the overall aesthetic of American pain (vulnerable and unromanticized) and the impossibility of our own motherfucking redemption. You can all kiss my ass I'm crying (sniff) dripping snot on the keyboard as I write this goodbye.

Ass-tronomy
Back from Europe sitting in my Asstronomy 1 class at City College. The cosmos is difficult enough for me to comprehend without having it explained to me by a soft spoken Korean gentleman with a bizzarre lisp and an even more confounding approach to English syntax.

Ah Civilization!
Denmark is a clean and efficient country with 55 percent taxation rates and virtually no homelessness, crime, or poverty. When you get too old to care for yourself they come and whisk you off to one of the clean, efficient, modern hospitals staffed by blond, cheerful, bright eyed supermodels.

Cold Beers in Hot Places
Mallorca is a hot place. 13th century stone buildings. Warm beaches with no fish in the water. Beautiful plazas. Cold beers at Paca's in Fornalutx (Forn-a-looch) . Visited Father Juniperro Serra's birthplace. Ate suckling pig. Hung out with miss C-Fuck's goodly peoples.

Art Teacher
Now I'm back. New Job as art teacher of emotionally disturbed youth. Only four days a week! Fridays is a day specially reserved for poke poling. Last week it was another cabby. Is it just my imagination or have there been more (and bigger) cabbies and rockfish since the ban ended? Anyway, you can all look forward to Monkeyface News #3, which is due out some time in October.

Rube Waddell
Nothing to report on the Rube front. Hopefully that will change.

Goodbye.