042708

*Errata*

"But this must be the first big lesson any grifter learns: in everything you do you must be invisible, must;" the rest of the sentence was probably meant to be something like, "must remain utterly unnoticeable."

*ErosAromatics*

This week I made an underarm deodorant cream. I had a recipe lying around which calls for shortening; I suddenly realized that these days one can buy organic, non-hydrogenated shortening, which I procured. For deodorant properties, the formula calls for baking soda, corn starch, and various essences (I used benzoin, lavender, and jasmine). It certainly smells good; now we'll just see if it actually works well. I think the hardest part will be getting the consistency right. The last attempt I made, with 100% coconut oil, was a total failure (coconut oil is a hard solid at room temperature). I might try to make a deodorant lotion; interestingly, lotions are frequently doled out in tubes in the main, but they are most readily sold in lotion-pump bottles for the small-time operator. And...I am completely pleased with this cream. It's got the right consistency, like a loose balm, and it clearly works well. It smells glorious. It is a different experience using a deodorant cream than a spray on. I think the thing to do is apply it with a small spatula or stick. It works exceptionally well; where alcohol-based deodorant evaporate quickly, this is like a fragrant, tenacious oil slick under my arms.

Soul in D is promising though I'd say it needs some work. It's an inviting sweet grassy scent that gives way to an amber note; it needs more lasting power. When I do it again, I might try to enhance the grassiness, which stems from the violet leaf. Maybe blond tobacco? Hay? Right now it feels a little confused; do I want to be grass or sweet? Can I be both? The perfume I made a while back called Oz had a tremendous amount of detritus, some kind of white granular substance. I'm not sure which ingredient(s) it came from, but I noticed it was not nearly as fragrant once I strained it through filter paper. Next time, I will wait longer before I strain it. It could be vanilla CO2 extract which didn't fully dissolve. Next time I'd use regular vanilla absolute, obviating the need for straining (assuming the vanilla is in fact the source). And my fifth attempt at The Keeper (my chypre) is a real winner. I think it hits all the marks it's supposed to, a certain brusk character from the citrus top chord, a floral heart, and a soft base in which oakmoss and amber mingle happily.

*PoeminProgress*

I spoke with my acquaintance Rogers Truax, a director of stage plays, the other night. He highly recommended Streetcar Named Desire at the Artist's Rep (which Missy and I will see on Tuesday night). For some reason, our conversation reminded me of an old poem by Frank O'Hara called Why I Am Not a Painter. The poem I wrote has nothing at all to do with the brief conversation Mr Truax and I had; it's a clear homage to O'Hara (some might say rip off is a more accurate term). Here I will reprint both:

Why I Am Not a Painter (Frank O'Hara)

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I wold rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have sardines in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The paining is
finished. "Where's sardines?"
All that's left is just
letters. "It was too much,," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems; I call
it 'oranges.' And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called 'sardines.'

By Any Other Name (Adam Gottschalk)

I ran into Alex, my friend the playwright,
down at the Blue Monk the other night.
I asked him what he was working on; he said
a play about betrayal. I told him, wow,
that's a big area. He agreed. He asked me
what I was working on. I told him
a series of poems about love. He said, wow,
that's an even bigger area. I agreed.
A couple of weeks pass. I see Alex.
He's having some trouble with his play,
as I am with my poems. So much overlap
between good and bad, we agree.
We swear to each other that we will
persevere until some good does come
of our struggles, something lasting.
There is never enough caring, nor ever
a stop to the lies, and so our destiny is
always to put them in the spotlight.
A couple of more weeks pass.
I see Alex. His betrayal play is finished;
so are my love poems. He calls his Love;
I call mine Betrayal.

*TheGrift*

My mother told me she listened to an NPR segment the other day about con men and con games; the very knowledgeable man being interviewed was none other than Frank Abagnale himself. It turns out that when he was finally arrested some 35 years ago, the FBI quickly ascertained he would be of great use to them in apprehending the legions of men and women playing the money and deception games Abagnale had so clearly mastered. He's been working for them ever since. My mother noted that he was extremely well spoken and confidently addressed a vast array of topics. I said that being well-versed in as many areas as possible is necessary to be a successful player; the issue of being well spoken is not so cut and dry. It strikes me that if a person speaks in grammatically perfect English, he or she is more likely to stick out than if "everyday language" is used, the language of everyman, the dialect of the drinking class.

But I guess the idea is that any mark worth going after will be of such a disposition that educated speech would engender more certain trust, like, "Anyone who knows this much and speaks so eloquently must be on the up-and-up." Once when I was in college I went for a meeting with my mentor and friend, Gary Bornzin, a PhD in physics, one of my main areas of study. He was in conference with another student. When he was finished with her, he greeted me and I began to speak. The girl who was leaving, packing up her stuff, stopped me after a couple of minutes. "You talk like you're from the 1930s or something," she said. It's always seemed to me that it was the fact of my speaking properly that struck her as old-fashioned. I mean to point out that right speech is oh-so noticeable in this day and age. Abagnale is so well spoken that my mother noticed it and, while he confirmed my suspicions that things are easier for con men in the internet age, I think your average grifter is lucky he no longer needs actually to speak to his victims.

*Fiction*

This week I've been reading bel canto by Ann Patchett. My mother sent it to me with a note that read, "Any sensitive, romantic man should love this." Another acquaintance was effusive in her accolades, talking about its tremendous beauty. I wondered what could make a book received in such a way. I now have a good idea. My friend said she started listening to opera because of the book. My mother and Erin said they couldn't understand that reaction. I do, and I think this excerpt might make it quite plain:

"Roxanne Cross opened her mouth. In retrospect, it was a risky thing to do, both from the perspective of General Alfredo, who might have seen it as an act of insurrection, and from the care of the instrument of the voice itself. She had not sung in two weeks, nor did she go through a single scale to warm up. Roxanne Cross, wearing Mrs Iglesias's slacks and a white dress shirt belonging to the Vice President, stood in the middle of the vast living room and began to sing "O Mio Babbino Caro" from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. There should have been an orchestra behind her but no one noticed its absence. No one would have said her voice sounded better with an orchestra, or that it was better when the room was immaculately clean and lit by candles. They did not notice the absence of flowers or champagne, in fact, they knew now that flowers and champagne were unnecessary embellishments. Had she really not been singing all along? The sound was no more beautiful when her voice was limber and warm. Their eyes clouded over with tears for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all. They cried for the beauty of the music, certainly, but also for the failure of their plans. They were thinking of the last time they had heard her sing and longed for the women who had been beside them then. All of the love and the longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and a half minutes of song, and when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had been given in their lives and all they had lost came together and made a weight that was almost impossible to bear. When she was finished the people around her stood in stunned and shivering silence."

If it weren't for such beautiful, evocative, and sobering passages as this, the whole thing would come off as a terribly funny comedy of errors. It is that, complete with bungling terrorists, an ineffectual politician turned maid, and tensions of every sort bubbling over. It takes place in an anonymous South-American "host country," which adds to the humor. At its heart it's a love story; it is not until 2/3 of the way through the book that the reader finally figures out which two will fall in love, out of numerous possibilities. As the stage is finally set for the love affair, the reader is deeply satisfied. The two lovers are highly unlikely companions and that makes the whole thing that much sweeter.

*MyJourney*

[A story of creative nonfiction]

Once I returned from Hong Kong, I was resolved to leave Taipei. I had an English friend named William living in a small town called Hualien, a couple of hours by train south of Taipei, right on the Pacific Ocean. He had left word that he was staying at a so-called teacher's guest house. I called him on my first night back.

"Don't even think about it. Just get on the train tomorrow."

"Is it really that great?"

"Imagine eating fresh papaya in the morning from the fruit stand on the corner, heading to the beach between classes, and then finishing off the day with a trip to the hot springs in Taroko Gorge."

"How do I find you?" was my only response.

"Just ask for the Jiao Shr Hwei Guan. You'll find me right quick. I'll see you in a couple of days?"

"Probably tomorrow," I said.

I went to pack up the last of my things and look into the train schedule. The phone rang. John Lee answered. It was Wen Ming. She wanted to go out for dinner. As I was talking to her, John Lee was in the background, gesturing that I not go, that I have nothing to do with her. Standing outside the situation, he was better able to be level-headed. I agreed to meet Wen Ming for dinner. John Lee was not happy.

"You be sorry," he said, shaking his finger at me.

Wen Ming picked me up. We enjoyed a fine Cantonese meal. She could sense something was wrong. I couldn't deny her.

"I'm leaving," I said.

She asked why. I couldn't explain. Too many reasons. She turned sour and said that I couldn't leave because she hadn't learned English yet. Nothing, not an ounce of anything, in this world comes for free. The fancy clothes, the nice meals, the hotels, I began to see, all still did carry their various hang-tags with untold prices. We left the restaurant and Wen Ming asked me to drive; she wasn't feeling well. I didn't think much of it; I'd driven the streets of Taipei in her car before.

We didn't talk on the way back to the Happy Family. I pulled up at a red light at a major intersection not far from the guest house. Suddenly the driver's side door was flung open (I regretted that I never lock my doors when I'm inside a car) and our stalker, or maybe mine alone, familiar by now, was furiously screaming at me in English.

"You leave," he yelled. I got out of the car. Then he reached behind me, behind the driver's seat, and grabbed a small tire iron sitting there. I wondered how many circles of deception I was wading through. This weapon he now waved in my face, he knew exactly where it was! Faced with this menace in a very public place, I remembered the first lesson I had learned on this island (OK, after using chopsticks, the second lesson): a foreigner's hand must never touch a Chinese person out of anger lest there be a lynching right there on the spot. Every Taiwanese man was required to serve two years in the Army when he reached 18. This fact meant that every single man walking the streets was a trained and fearsome combatant. One did not strike if one wanted to see tomorrow.

So I simply ran away. I hurried back to the Happy Family and asked John Lee to hide me until morning, when I would catch the train to Hualien. He didn't even ask what happened, but he said, wagging his finger again, as he locked the door to the office, where he had stashed me, "I said no. I said. Right?"

*Politics&Science*

From the BBC:

"Two Latin American leaders have issued warnings about the effects of biofuel production on food supplies. Speaking at the UN in New York, Bolivian President Evo Morales said the development of biofuels harmed the world's most impoverished people. And President Alan Garcia of Peru said using land for biofuels was putting food out of reach for the poor. Meanwhile UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is hosting a meeting to discuss European policy encouraging biofuels. Ahead of the meeting, Mr Brown said that the UK should be "more selective in our support" for biofuels.

"Campaigners say providing an renewable alternative for conventional fuels can help stop global warming. But as food prices climb worldwide, there is a fear that development of biofuels could reduce the production of badly-needed basic foodstuffs. The EU has come under criticism for its target of getting 10% of road transport fuel from crops by 2020. The head of the UN World Food Programme and the chief of the African Development Bank chief are among those attending the London meeting. Opening a UN forum on the global impact of climate change on indigenous peoples, Mr Morales said that capitalism should be scrapped if the planet is to be saved from the effects of climate change.

""If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system," he said. Bolivia's left-wing president said unbridled industrial development was responsible for the pillaging of natural resources. But, he said, "some South American presidents who were talking about biofuels but did not understand what they were talking about". The BBC's Daniel Schweimler says this is a clear reference to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who says his country has enough land to grow food crops as well as plants to produce biofuels.

"Last week, he rejected allegations that biofuels are responsible for the recent rise in global food prices. And on Monday, Brazil announced a major joint venture in Ghana to grow sugar cane for bio-ethanol. "In Ghana we are developing a project that will result in growing 27,000 hectares (of sugar cane) for the production of 150 million litres of ethanol per year that are destined for the Swedish market," said President Lula, who was in Accra for the occasion.

"For his part, Peru's President Garcia said the demand for bio-fuels was putting world food production under threat. Like many Latin American nations, Peru is a producer of ethanol and other biofuels which compete for land with food crops and have pushed up prices. Just over 40% of Peruvians--some 12 million people--live below the poverty line and have been hit hard by the sharp price increases, the BBC's Dan Collyns reports from Lima."

*Music*

Atlantic Rhythm & Blues Vol. 2 1952-1955--I've had this album for many years. I usually shy away from collections such as this, but this is just about the best one I've ever heard. Every track is a classic. Most of this strikes my ears as doo-wop music, and it is, but it is so much hipper than that. On this record one is delighted to find the origins of many famous modern songs and modern ways of doing music. It covers every variety of song from the death marches of Ray Charles to such blueprints as Good Lovin' to Sh-boom by The Chords to Tipitina by Professor Longhair to the absolute best rendition I have ever heard anywhere of White Christmas by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters. This is a batch of music about which I stop every once in a while to recognize what an enormous piece of my life it is. My life would not be nearly as rich if I hadn't happened on this record by chance ages ago. I am not alone in my appreciation of the music found here; it was on the stereo the other day at The Tin Shed. Some of the songs are hysterical while being highly musical, such as Money Honey, Greenbacks, and Smokey Joe's Cafe. And every one contains an original, perfect hot horn solo, each of which could be a template for modern popular music, with its one-chorus solos, short but sweet and to-the-point.

"One day while I was eating beans [at Smokey Joe's Cafe],
just sittin' there, you know the scene [at Smokey Joe's Cafe],
a chick came walkin' through the door that I had never seen before,
at least I'd never seen her down [at Smokey Joe's Cafe].
And I started shakin' when she sat right down next to me.
Her knees were almost touching mine [at Smokey Joe's Cafe],
a chill was runnin' down my spine [at Smokey Joe's Cafe].
I could smell her sweet perfume.
She smiled at me, my heart went boom,
and everybody in the room [at Smokey Joe's Cafe]
said, "Man, be careful. That chick belongs to Smokey Joe."
From behind the counter I saw a man,
chef hat on his head and a knife in his hand.
He grabbed me by my collar and began to shout,
"You better eat up all your beans, boy, and clear right on out."
Yes, I know I'll never eat again [at Smokey Joe's Cafe],
and so we'll never meet again [at Smokey Joe's Cafe].
I'd rather eat my chili beans at Jim's or Jack's or John's or Jean's
than take my chances eating down at [Smokey Joe's Cafe].
Why risk my life when that Smokey Joe's a crazy fool?"

_____

The listings are out for the Vancouver Jazz Festival. As usual, it features the best of the best. I'd love to check out the Cowboy Junkies with Bill Frisell. There are various other great shows, both mainstream and cutting edge; Scofield's there with his trio, and Portland's own Pink Martini is headlining the second night. The first night, Herbie Hancock is playing on tour for his recent grammy-winning album River, which features the music of Joni Mitchell. This is the first jazz album in a long time to win best album across all categories. I like the album but I wasn't thinking of going...until I saw the band lineup. Jumpin' Jesus! Not only does it feature Chris Potter on sax and Dave Holland on bass (in addition to Herbie of course on piano), but it's also got one of my favorite singers, Sonya Kitchell, whom I've never heard sing jazz type stuff, only pop. I've long thought of Kitchell as a modern-day Joni Mitchell, so the idea of a band in which _she_ sings Joni's stuff (she didn't on River) is too good to be true. I can't miss it. Though Beady Belle the same night might be the thing. On the other hand, a trip to Las Vegas might just be in order. Have to mix things up sometimes. And I have been learning how to beat the house and everything.

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz

042008

My new glasses are the pinnacle of hipness, almost too hip by some accounts; they look like they could be straight out of the late '50s. Extremely well done, built-like-a-tank frames, hand made in Japan. Ultra retro with modern flare, big chunky plastic things. Amazing how this one accouterment determines the nature of the way you're perceived by the world. That might be over-stating matters a bit, though certainly not by much.

*PoeminProgress*

Bettina

I was on a student-travel trip
the summer of my freshman year in
high school. In the first few days
of the trip, I had made intimate
overtures toward the girl I deemed
to be the most beautiful on the trip;
happily, they were reciprocated.
My very first love affair ensued,
complete with the romance of Paris
and the freedom of parents on the other
side of the world. We did a stint
in Holland and I had to be separated
from my pretty girlfriend. On the first
night of our separation, I got really
drunk with my best friend, and ended up
making out with a Dutch girl named
Bettina who was also staying at our
hostel. I don't remember much; the fact
that I can remember her name is
an anomaly. I do remember that our
chaperone came out into the hallway,
where four of us were necking, and,
shaking his head, said it was time
for bed. We didn't speak of the matter
the next day as we rode our bikes to
some other town. Here is my confession:
I cheated on my first girlfriend with
a Dutch girl named Bettina. It wasn't
so much the making out as it was
the adulterous thoughts. Adultery!
It was youthful, starry-eyed love, but,
truth be told, I've always tended toward
all or nothing, and twenty-five years later,
though I have never cheated on a woman
again, the shame is still with me.

*ErosAromatics*

It's begun to annoy me a bit that I have to study if I want other perfumers to pay attention to me. Going through this workbook is a little tedious; where it might have been fun if it had been the first thing I did, I'm already making perfumes (and succeeding) so the work is rather dull. I really don't mean to sound unappreciative of the knowledge Ms Aftel is sharing; I'm glad to be spending my time and energy on the work. And, true enough, whenever I feel I'm ready, I can submit three perfumes to the Natural Perfumers Guild in hopes they'll grant me the title of "professional perfumer." That process has nothing to do, in theory, with any training, though the members of the board are the main people in the world who offer classes in natural perfumery, so they'll all know perfectly well how much studying you've done. I know I'm not ready yet, so, for now, it certainly can't hurt to do the workbook; it can only help. But it's a little like being bound and gagged and having someone teach you the rudiments of a subject you know well. Oh, the hubris!

This week I made a perfume called Soul in D based on the work of the 19th-century perfumer GW Septimus Piesse. He took multiple musical octaves and corresponded the notes within them to olfactory notes. I played around with his work a little; I took a common (soul) chord progression and looked at the notes, both musical and olfactory, which make it up. This led me to a formula that called for violet leaf and tonka bean in the base and frangipani, orange flower, rose, and clove in the heart. I fleshed it out a bit, to a total of 12 essences and the results are again very promising. A perfumer begins casting about for sources of inspiration, as any artist does. Musical analogies seem to me quite inspirational even just on the surface. Violet leaf and tonka bean with frangipani and clove? I don't know how else I would have thought to put this combination together.

My attempt at another amber, Amber F, after a week and a half, is intriguing. There is an undeniable aroma of something like cotton candy, though more sophisticated than that; it's almost like the sweet smells of Christmas time. There's something to it which draws a person into it, like, "Smell me more!" I have a funny feeling that this brew reacts with my skin in this particular way which makes it smell almost too sweet; on other skin, I'm sure one would smell the flowers more. My last attempt at The Keeper is turning out nicely. The strong citrus chord, with tagetes, on top makes for a rather masculine grapefruit-peel accord that slowly gives way to a tonka-bean amber. It has good lasting power. I'd say it still needs work, but what I've got now definitely falls into the chypre category. Something needs to be added to make it heavier.

*Quotations*

I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. --Helen Keller

Chutzpah: That quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. --Leo Rosten

Curmudgeon: Anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner. --Jon Winokur

Facts have long since upstaged fiction, and the novelistic imagination now contents itself with documenting incidents it wouldn't have the temerity to invent. --Peter Conrad

Dare to be naive. --Buckminster Fuller

All serious daring starts from within. --Harriet Beecher Stowe

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit. --Baltasar Gracian

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up? --Marian Wright Edelman

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. --Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. --Winston Churchill

*MicroFiction*

This piece started its life in about 1993 and I thought of it, and its subject matter, just the other day. I went and found it in an old anthology:

Amber

I never felt good about smoking joints in front of Amber. Not because I thought the smoking was all that bad of an influence. But we used to keep her up pretty late, her mother and I. We'd smoke and talk about the past mostly, and the poetry we'd seen lately. The radio was always on and Amber was rarely allowed out of bed, it was so late. I knew that Amber liked me. I must have been one of the few men that ever came around.

"I'm not tired mom," she'd squeal. I remembered that tight not-tiredness, that feeling huge inside a little body, that wanting to be up and living, not drowning out in the bunk with the night.

"Quiet, Amber. Sure you don't want a beer or something, Adam?"

"Maybe I could show her a card trick, Margaret."

"She's got school, you know. You're sweet. I've got to put my foot down somewhere."

I never felt good about smoking herb in front of Amber because she never saw me any other way. I hate it when a person only sees me one way. Margaret and I would smoke a bowl or two if the joint went out. I always think of Bill Cosby when I see a friend coughing and handing me a bowl, remember his noting how strange it was to see a friend hacking and to await eagerly the same fate.

Margaret listened to the college jazz station. She liked to talk about Lonnie a lot, the father of the little girl I knew only from across the room, from underneath. I never understood how a woman could speak so pleasantly about a man who walked out. I understand the walking out part. Not on a mother and child, but I know the need to leave. Lonnie played alto and he and Margaret went to Paris together once. Whenever she told me about the trip, which she did often, I felt as though I could tell her something she didn't know about her own story, about arriving in a place like Paris with someone, about finding fast, in a place like Paris, how big the world is, how many faces might be in it, and how small the stage you'd lived on before.

I liked talking with Margaret but I always wanted to ask Amber how she felt about her own life. I liked Amber. I remembered what it was like to be like Amber. She wasn't around yet for the Paris trip. She lay up in her bed all those nights I came by trying to picture what her mother looked like before she got pregnant, what her grandmother must look like, frail and pale like her mom. I wanted to talk to Amber and somehow in the speaking to make it all right that a girl and her mother should have been disowned twice. Somehow.

Amber lay wondering why her mother's family was never spoken of except when I came around, and then only in low and angry tones. She wanted to ask, in the daytime when I was away, where Lonnie had gone to and what had made him go. I sat laughing with Margaret about whatever crazy person had gotten up to the mic the week before or about her promise that Parisians wouldn't know jazz if it spoke fluent French. I sat glancing up at the bunk now and again, wondering how a girl could go through her life calling her father by his first name, calling him that in his absence no less. I sat wondering what it was like in fact to be Amber, caught up in the bunk, wanting to be really alive.

"Can I get up for little while, Mom?"

"You're supposed to be sleeping, young lady."

"I'm not tired."

"Don't make me take out my belt."

I wondered how deceiving Margaret's frailty must have been. I never saw her take out her belt, but she did have to take a stand. I never saw Amber go to sleep either. I never liked smoking in front of Amber, but in the late-night conversations that went on in that sagging flat, I tried to say things that would offer a little picture of how big the world is for the ears I knew were listening a few feet from me, up near the ceiling, in the shadows.

I left them alone, the girl and her mother, in their tight quarters, no later than two. I always promised to come back soon. I walked the few crooked blocks home, thought of Bill Cosby and the songs you're supposed to sing to yourself alone on the street on your way home at night, to keep yourself safe and on your way home. I thought if I ever had the chance, I'd tell all the mothers I know:

"Don't make the kid sleep. Let her live. Let her breathe. Let her find out how big the world is, how many faces might be in it. Tell her what you've wanted to say for so long; don't make her sleep. Tell her about your own mother and about being a mother, about becoming a woman and all the ways you learn to take a stand. Don't make her sleep. Let her down from there. Let her sit in the light for a while. Let her breathe, while she can, while she's up, while she's young, and maybe she'll learn how to stay that way."

*Politics&Science*

Across the country, people are outraged at skyrocketing gasoline prices. This reaction disgusts me; all I can say is: it's about friggin' time! The rest of the civilized world pays more than we do even with the recent price inflation. The government's subsidizing oil has a great deal, of course, to do with the war, despite what the administration says. What's being subsidized is the American Dream of an infinite horizon; Americans want to know that at any moment they can get in their cars and drive off into the sunset. They want to be able to live in their isolated suburbs and drive 20 minutes to buy a quart of milk, they want to believe there's still some frontier which they might one day escape to, they want to be able to get on board and just ride. It's got to stop. The only way we'll be able to bring the world back from the brink of extinction is if we model our lives again on the ways they used to be: every single person must be able to get what they need within the distance of the "neighborhood," without having to drive. Most Americans take the freedom of driving as their right; it most assuredly is not. It's stating the obvious but one finds nothing about cars in the documents our founding fathers drew up.

Human-induced Global Warming is, finally, incontrovertible; so is the fact that our American contribution is a very large one. And now China produces more carbon emissions than any other nation. Not surprising considering the enormity of their population, and considering that nearly no one, in the push to get Chinese in cars, stopped to think what a horror it would be if an _additional_ one billion people started polluting an already over-buurdened global ecosystem. Economic pundits generally advise a developing economy to start with cars and build from there; of course, no one ever reminds the victims that with cars you need extensive networks of roads and highways. And then of course you have the pollution nightmare. The shit has hit the fan already, and now China is added to the mess? What a nightmare. I and a few others (precious few unfortunately) did stop to think about this threat. When I was in college, being a speaker of Mandarin Chinese and studying auto engineering, I seriously contemplated getting a job in China promoting electric cars instead of internal-combustion-engine cars. My life took a few unfortunate and disabling turns since then, but now that I see the way things are turning out, I'm almost ashamed I didn't do something while I still could.

Again I reiterate my conviction (not unique to me; it's more a statement of fact than a matter of opinion) that the cars of the future (hovercraft, jet packs, personal helicopters, whatever) must involve no combustion at all. There are two problems with this necessity: 1) the electricity needed for automotive power must be made one way or another, and, unless it's made by way of direct-solar stored to batteries, the whole thing is a wash; if you're still getting electricity from coal power plants, there's no benefit, and the same goes for fuel cells--isolating the hydrogen takes an immense amount of power, so I am not a believer that fuel cells could ever help us out of these dire straits, and 2) no money has been spent yet on what will be world-saving battery technologies. We need to begin imagining whole new ways of powering our lives--in fact, we should have started long ago. An example of a new way of thinking about power: zinc-air batteries--electricity is produced by the reaction of a zinc plate, zinc being one of the most plentiful elements on earth, with air. No need for power plants or solar panels or wind generators. Zinc plates and you've got power. I'd wager that once our plight gets to the point where we can no longer hide from it, cottage industries will sprout up in the production of zinc-air batteries and zinc plates for them. All other batteries that I know of require mechanical charging and so are only marginally helpful.

Public notice: !!!Futures in zinc-air battery technology now available!!! Contact Citizen Productions for more information and pricing.

*TheGrift*

Last week I read an excerpt from Frank W Abagnale's Catch Me If You Can. In reading it, one thing become crystal clear to me: to play confidence games of any kind you must be able to forge documents. In Abagnale's case it was forging university credentials and pilot's licenses. In other cases it's forging bank forms and official letterhead. If you're a good forger, chances are you can play confidence games, or at least be a part of them. I take note that when I was in high school, I once forged a signature in order to be excused to Boston for the day. The teacher whose signature I forged called me to his office the following week. He told me he was quite amazed. He didn't plan to take disciplinary action, so sure was he that I would never do it again. But he was in awe because the only way he knew it was a forgery was that he specifically remembered that he had not signed me out on the day in question; my major mistake was that he was on duty that day (which is why I used his name) so he remembered clearly. Otherwise he would never have noticed. But this must be the first big lesson any grifter learns: in everything you do you must be invisible, must go unnoticed.

These days, of course, I couldn't be a con man because I enjoy my stationary, sedentary domestic life, I can't manage anything more (quite literally), and the tremor in my right hand is so bad I couldn't forge my way out of a paper bag. Oh, and it's illegal. It's amazing to realize that identity theft, the original con, is more common today than ever. All a grifter needs is certain information about you, and they can _forge_ all the documents they need to take over your life. One might think the electronic age would be an obstacle to forgery; on the contrary, it only makes things easier for the player. Folks today are less reliant on signatures than they used to be, which is certainly a positive state of affairs for the sociopath. Officials are looking for a _combination_ of facts; if, for example, a person knew a few salient factoids about me, they could probably mess up my life pretty well just by making a few phone calls.

*PoeminProgress*

Smiles

What happened to smiles?
They look so nice on
a person, it's a shame
they've gone into hiding.
Everywhere I look, I see
photos of people who,
in earlier, more-innocent
times, would have been
proudly wearing smiles,
but now grimace and smirk,
as if that's the appropriate
response to the world today,
cynicism, despair, sullenness.
What happened to smiles?
My favorite singers look as
though they're in pain on
their various angst-ridden
album covers. It gets to
making a guy feel down
himself. Is there no one
happy in the world anymore?
What happened to the idea
of helping us, the general
public, feel better about
our sorry lots? What happened
to lifting us up? What happened
to irrepressible mirth? All I
see are frowns; it seems they're
all I know. What happened
to smiles?

*Music*

My latest mix is the first in several years in which I mixed all manner of music together, old and new, jazz and third stream, fusion and pop, folk and funk. As such, it makes for a topsy-turvy listen:

April Rules, 2008

1. Boogie on Reggae Woman, Stevie Wonder
2. Ruby Eyed, Gretchen Lieberum
3. So What (M Davis), Christian Scott
4. Sic of Elephants, Andrew Bird
5. Lonnie's Lament (Coltrane), Kenny Garrett
6. One Day You Won't be Here, Rocky Votolato
7. I was Meant for the Stage (live), The Decemberists
8. You Speak My Language, John Scofield & Pat Metheny
9. Charlie (original), Peter Mulvey
10. I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone (Buddy Johnson), James Carter
11. Simple X (live), Andrew Bird
12. Shut Me Up, Joe Henry
13. Teo (M Davis), Joe Henderson
14. Lilly White, Rocky Votolato

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz

041308

Well, this month, my infusion brought no noticeable improvement to my chess game. I am, however, perennially trying out new things. Often old things. Lately I've been experimenting with a king's gambit sort of opening, which involves putting pawns in place as bait on the king side; this sort of opening was the most popular choice in the 1800s.

I added five spoken-word clips to adamgottschalk.net.

*ErosAromatics*

This week I picked up my workbook from Mandy Aftel after many months of not looking at it. This book is to perfumery what running scales is to music--busy work that you've just got to practice if you are to be worth your weight in salt one day. The book assigns you a variety of tasks, from evaluating different essences (six in each category, base, heart, and top) and learning some olfactory vocabulary to describe them better, to evaluating them in detail over time, to creating and evaluating numerous different simple blends, called accords. The ideal way to operate I gather is to make accords first, then blend the accords together. At the moment, with limited resources, I can only think in terms of making finished perfumes. If I try repeatedly to make a certain accord and my nose tells me it's failing, that's a waste of expensive materials; if, however, I blend a complete perfume together, I smell with my own nose whether or not the accords which make it up work well together. I can better wrap my mind around fine tuning accords within a perfume than I can the idea of focusing on one accord at a time.

Olfactory education is a fascinating notion; as Gandhi said when he was asked what he thought of Western Civilization, "It would be a good idea." There is no such thing as olfactory education (though certainly it would be a good idea). This sorry fact is due to the stupidity which has led to the sense of smell being deemed a lesser sense, and so, deserving of no consideration at all. We natural perfumers know that the sense of smell is actually possibly the deepest and most complex sense. Having no schooling on the subject of what we smell, we're left describing scents in relation to what's familiar. "Oh, it reminds me of me father's den," or, "Makes me think of the beach." If we were to receive an ounce of training in how to talk about scent, we would be able to use precise language such as: Ylang ylang is a heady floral whereas orris is a soft floral; blond tobacco is a heavy agrestic scent whereas patchouli is a rich earthy one; and lavender is a sharp herbal note whereas tarragon is an anisic herbal. Some of the words we might use were we better educated in smell: agrestic, animalistic, anisic, balsamic, earthy, fungal, grassy, harmonious, heady, liqueur, marine, mossy, round, sharp, tea, velvety, woody, and many more.

My last try at The Keeper is a resounding success. It's got amber qualities, with effervescent overtones at first. The twist on amber using tonka bean instead of vanilla makes for an intriguing scent with a strong aura. I've been told that tonka can lend a powdery aspect; indeed this is the most powdery perfume I've made. After a few minutes on the skin it takes on a pleasing milky quality with an attractive powdery-ness. I'll need to work on its longevity. And I'll need to work on the name if it's a recipe I want to keep around; it needs to have mystery to it. I need to create a mysterious back story for it. I could call it Moonlight; "Captures the softness of a full-moon night." My two amber perfumes (a discussion of the second one is below) I might call Adam for the peppery one and Eve for the more floral one; "Scents originating in that infamous garden in once-fertile Mesopotamia."

This week I made another amber perfume, this one intended for women. Jetta smelled my first amber, Adam's Amber (possibly Adam), and said that in the first few minutes, it's quite strong; she thought it might be best for men. I heard some feedback through the grapevine that indeed this might be the case, though a recent female acquaintance said she likes the pepperiness. I myself love the way it changes from a brusk, complicated sweet/spiciness to a soft sweet amber; however, I could see where a woman might want something softer, maybe more floral. I attempted this, removing a lot of the top which appeared in the "man's version," including black pepper; I beefed up the floral heart, added some guaiacwood to the base, upped the amount of vanilla, and lightened up the top, emphasizing rose with rosewood and geranium w/roses. The result, on first whiff, is again very promising. Three days into it, I'm liking the potion. It smells a bit like cotton candy. It's not nearly as ambery as the first, but, as I hoped, it is not peppery at all, and has a fascinating floral backdrop. I myself prefer the first, but I will aim to get some feedback from women about this one.

*PoeminProgress*

James Taylor

In the 1970s I was given for Christmas
a big red pair of AM-radio headphones.
They were my prized possession. Aside from
the theme to Rocky, the song I remember
with the greatest fondness is James Taylor's
You've Got a Friend. I had a very clear
picture in my mind's eye of the people
populating that song; I could see two cold
lovers bundled together in the New-York winter,
amid the bluffs of snow in Central Park.
"Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you got
to do is call." I honestly believed one day
I would find a woman who reminded me of
that song, who would suffer the insufferable
with me, winter, spring, summer, and fall.
Wouldn't you know, such a lot is only for
precious few of us. Now I must content
myself with fractions of my boyhood hopes,
shrapnel of the ways I dreamed life might
be for me. For my family. Imagine that.
I once dreamed I might one day have my own
family. James Taylor's music and my
memories of myself as a boy, hoping,
dreaming big, ever the romantic, are
just about the only things keeping the dream
alive anymore. James Taylor and my fate.
Who'd have thunk it?

*Quotations*

It would be easy to say oh, I have writer's block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don't. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done. --Barbara Kingsolver

Perversity is the muse of modern literature. --Susan Sontag

I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time. --John Updike

Miles Davis was a master. In every phase of his career, he understood that this music was a tribute to the African muse. --Cassandra Wilson

When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go.... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back! --Judy Collins

_____

Quotes from Joe "Yellow Kid" Weil, also known as The Kid, who is reckoned to be one of the greatest American confidence men, separating millions of dollars from his marks over many years' time. Later in life he reformed himself and went straight.:

"I have never cheated any honest men, only rascals. They may have been respectable, but they were never any good."

"My power lay in words. In words I became a commander."

"I was a psychologist. My domain was the human mind."

"My purpose was invisible. When [the marks] looked at me they saw themselves. I only showed them their own purpose."

"In [the burglar's] view you should sneak up on people and burglarize them, but to look them in the eyes, gain their confidence, that is impure."

Ah, the nuances of moral argument between practitioners of the heavy rackets and genteel confidence men.

*Nonfiction*

This week I read about Izzy and Moe, two of the most famous prohibition agents. When we occasion to think of prohibition, we never stop to realize that there must have been officers of the law tasked with keeping tabs on illegal activities. Izzy and Moe became agents by chance, Izzy responding to a help-wanted ad, and Moe being brought onboard later by Izzy. Their antics were flat-out hysterical; they ended when the brass reassigned Izzy to Chicago (the administration had grown weary of the fame these two enjoyed in newspapers) and Izzy simply declined, being born and raised in New York.

Izzy's signature schtick was to show up at a drinking establishment openly announcing that he was a prohibition agent. He did so on his very first job. The proprietor who had met him at the door started laughing hysterically and let him in saying, "Come on in pal! That's the best gag I've heard yet." After Izzy and Moe had achieved a great deal of renown, their portraits were posted in every speakeasy across the nation. Still, Izzy, whose last name was Einstein, showed up one night at a bar, saying it was Izzy Epstein the prohibition agent. The proprietor got into an argument with him, insisting the man's last name was Einstein. He let Izzy in and he and his customers proceeded to argue with Izzy about it, standing right near Izzy's portrait the whole time. Finally, Izzy suggested they bet a round of drinks on it; the bartender poured the drinks and was promptly arrested.

From the Merry Antics of Izzy and Moe by Herbert Asbury:

"In those early days of the noble experiment everything that happened in connection with prohibition was news, and some of New York's best reporters covered enforcement headquarters. Casting about for a way to enliven their stories and provide exercise for their imaginations, they seized upon the exploits of Izzy and Moe. The two fat and indefatigable agents supplied human-interest material by the yard; moreover they were extraordinarily cooperative. They frequently scheduled their raids to suit the convenience of the reporters and the newspaper photographers, and soon learned that there was more room in the papers on Monday mornings than on any other day of the week. One Sunday, accompanied by a swarm of eager reporters, they established a record by making 71 raids in a little more than 12 hours. Hundreds of stories, a great many of them truthful, were written about Izzy and Moe and their grotesque adventures, and they probably made the front pages oftener than any other personages of their time except the President and the Prince of Wales....

"What the newspapers enjoyed most about Izzy and Moe was their ingenuity. Once they went after a speakeasy where half a dozen dry agents had tried without success to buy a drink. The bartender positively wouldn't sell to anyone he didn't know. So on a cold winter night Izzy stood in front of the gin-mill, in his shirt sleeves, until he was red and shivering and his teeth were chattering. Then Moe half-carried him into the speakeasy, shouting excitedly: "Give this man a drink! He's just been bitten by a frost!" The kindhearted bartender, startled by Moe's excitement and upset by Izzy's miserable appearance, rushed forward with a bottle of whiskey. Moe promptly snatched the bottle and put him under arrest.

"One of Izzy's most brilliant ideas was always to carry something on his raids, the nature of the burden depending upon the character of the neighborhood and of a particular speakeasy's clientele. When he wanted to get into a place frequented by musicians, for example, he carried a violin or trombone, and if, as sometimes happened, he was asked to play the instrument, he could do it. He usually played "How Dry I Am." On the East Side and in the poorer sections of the Bronx, if the weather permitted, Izzy went around in his shirt sleeves carrying a pitcher of milk, the very pattern of an honest man on his way home from the grocery. Once in Brooklyn he was admitted to half a dozen gin-mills because he was lugging a big pail of dill pickles. "A fat man with pickles!" said Izzy. "Who'd ever think a fat man with pickles was an agent?"...

"For more than five years the whole country laughed at the antics of Izzy and Moe, with the exception of the ardent drys, who thought the boys were wonderful, and the bootleggers and speakeasy proprietors, who thought they were crazy and feared them mightily. And their fear was justified, for in their comparatively brief career Izzy and Moe confiscated 5,000,000 bottles of booze, worth $15,000,000, besides thousands of gallons in kegs and barrels and hundreds of stills and breweries. They smashed an enormous quantity of saloon fixtures and equipment, and made 4,392 arrests, of which more than 95% resulted in convictions. No other two agents even approached this record."

*MyJourney*

[A story of creative nonfiction]

The incident with the doctor shook me up, so I wasn't very sorry when it came to my attention that my six-month visa was nearly up. I would have to head to Hong Kong; even just a day would work, but I'd never been to Hong Kong, so I decided to go for a week. My friends talked of Hong Kong with great reverence; I'd saved up some money by then, so I packed a bag, got a couple of names for places to stay, gave a quick excuse to Wen Ming, and took off for the Fragrant Harbor. My hope was to collect myself and probably leave Taipei when I returned to Taiwan, hopefully dodging Wen Ming.

The flight to Hong Kong from Taipei was brief; it was a little scary too: as you're landing, you're flying between skyscrapers. Once there, I quickly found my way to a decent guest house. I had been told quite emphatically that Chung King Mansion was good for buying hash and cheap Indian food, but not for accommodation. As I heard it, people only marginally outnumbered rats, and we were talking about a very large mass of humanity, stacked up and towering in the Kowloon air. I decided, rightly, to avoid such nastiness. My first night in town, I did however head to the Mansion for some hash and some excellent Indian food.

Chung King Mansion is quite remarkable; it was at the time like something out of Brazil or The Matrix. It was made up of five enormous towers. The ground floor was a bazaar, with dozens of markets of all kinds, from produce to shaving cream. I had been advised when going for food at night, to choose one of the two towers at front; heading into the back after night fall was heading into dark and dangerous territory. Indian restaurants, which advertised their brief existences in flyers freely distributed by busy bodies on the ground floor, were in almost every nook and cranny. It was quite amazing to get off the elevator on a floor that looked like any other residential floor, double check the flyer that brought you there, and knock on some anonymous door to be let into a little, private Indian kingdom, with hand-made food, made fresh daily, that was some of the very best Hong Kong had to offer.

My guest house was sparsely populated. I had the impression those there were long-term Hong-Kong residents, which included Americans, Englishmen, Philppinos (generally working for Hong Kong's affluent as nannies or maids), and the occasional intrepid Japanese tourist (most were rich enough to afford a proper hotel). There was an interesting American couple. I got to drinking and talking with them the second night I was there. The guy, Christopher, was an itinerant graffiti artist, one of the original wiggers; he had a pony tail but he did graffiti and was a formidable force, with his girl, on the dance floor I discovered. His girlfriend, Jade, was mulatto; her father was black and her mother Japanese. She was bright and, like her boyfriend, hot-tempered.

On my third night in town, we were out at a club, taking a break from the dance floor, all of us plastered, and Jade and I got into a heated argument about whether or not China had ever been colonized. At the time, Hong Kong was still very much British, so placing a nay vote was a little absurd; but I stuck to my guns, insisting that China, as a general rule, had never been a colony. Hong Kong was the exception to the rule I insisted. We woke up the next day and I think we'd both forgotten the argument, or pretended so anyway. Christopher and I decided to go to the central park not far away and smoke a bowl.

On the ground floor of the building in which our guest house was situated was a number of high-end clothing shops, each with several hawkers out front trying to drum up business. As we left, Christopher was saying something about the difference between Hong Kong and Tokyo; one of the hawkers made the mistake of grabbing him by his shoulder. In the blink of an eye, Christopher swirled around and clocked his would-be salesperson. The others were distressed, but apologetic. They seemed to understand some unwritten hawker rule: no bodily contact, ever. The poor gent was bleeding profusely from the side of his head as he was led to a taxi, and I thought to myself this was a mighty fine introduction to Hong Kong.

*Politics*

Watch this quick little video about the senselessness, doublespeak, and murky thinking related to Our Endless War. How do you get to 100 years in Iraq? Six months at a time.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suNqiAgE1kw

_____

By Matt Frei for the BBC:

"...The Chinese have had their way over Tibet. They have openly intimidated those countries who want to have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. And from their point of view, the Tibetans are an ungrateful bunch of peasants who have been dragged from the Dark Age of a Buddhist theocracy to the modern era of paved roads, city plumbing and light bulbs. I travelled through China as a student in 1984 when the country was largely closed to outsiders. I stayed in Taerse, a stunning Tibetan monastery on the edge of the Tibetan plateau.

"This home to hundreds of Tibetan monks had been saved by Zhou Enlai during the Cultural Revolution, as the Chinese mobs prepared to level it to the ground. He felt it was simply too beautiful to be left to the mercies of those wielding the axe in one hand and the Little Red Book in the other. One day, bus loads of Chinese tourists in Mao uniforms arrived. They lined the dirt road to the monastery and laughed openly at the monks and pilgrims who were approaching on their knees as custom dictates. Some shouted abuse. Some even spat. I asked them why they had done that. "Look," a woman with thick, black-rimmed spectacles wearing a blue Mao suit told me. "They are like cave people."

"China may have brought electrical power to Tibet but it has also humiliated its recipients for decades, forced the Dalai Lama to stay in exile and imprisoned his chosen successor, the Panchen Lama, when he was just a six-year-old boy, appointing another Tibetan boy in his place. Now that bubble of humiliation, oppression and quiet suffering has burst. The Tibetans know that 2008 is perhaps their only chance to force the world outside Hollywood and what President George W Bush told me in February was "the Dalai Lama crowd" to take note.

"From governments to Western companies sponsoring the Olympics, all will have to make choices as the protests continue. To boycott or not to boycott. To incur the wrath of China or not. These will become ever more pressing questions, sharpened in the US by the demands of the presidential election campaign and a hinterland of Sinophobia ranging from toxic toys to outsourced jobs. President Bush told me in February that he does not support any boycott. He knows better than anyone how much Chinese investment now underwrites the US economy, how many billions of dollars in US treasury bonds are owned by China. And let's face it: you do not pick a fight with your banker, especially when your economy is in trouble.

"The Chinese, too, will have to make choices. Do they live up to their vow to crack down on any dissent? Do they care more about the placement, the canapes and the band at the wedding than about the couple at the altar? What motivates them in their hardline rhetoric towards keeping the torch alight and the Olympics free of dissent is, as ever, fear of chaos. If they are seen to give in over Tibet, they believe it will soon be open season on China's brittle unity. Such is the paranoia of dictatorships. The wedding would be off and the marquee burned to the ground.

"I end back on that clammy night in Beijing. Amid the euphoria and the crowds, we began to notice armoured vehicles on Chang An. It was the first time since the violent suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that the military had been deployed on the streets of the capital. The Chinese do not like large gatherings of crowds, even patriotic ones, if they display too much emotion. Events could go off-script. That was the mistake of 1989. The men and women living in the modern Forbidden City, Zhongnanhai, the heavily guarded home of the party elite, simply do not trust their own people.

"This may not be a sound basis on which to host a sporting event that is by its very nature unpredictable, but it is the reality of an emerging super-power in which we are all heavily invested. And the hapless little torch making its way around the globe this week is shedding a glaring light on some very inconvenient truths about our relationship with China."

*Music*

This week I've been reckoning with the fact that jazz is a large part of my identity. I did not seek this condition out; it happened naturally. My life was forever changed the moment I heard a track called Twang from John Scofield; "Jazz guitar is allowed to sound like that?" I thought, "Like Jimi Hendrix?" Since that moment I've been an unrepentant jazzoid (Dick Stein's favorite term; he is of Seattle's KPLU). I tried for years to "get into" jazz, with every knowledgeable person I knew suggesting old, classic jazz like old Wes Montgomery and others (I was a guitarist). I could not get into that old music at all, not even a little. Through Scofield, I was finally let into the jazz world; I finally found jazz which could be mine, my music. With my stint as a jazz DJ, I can now say this American art form veritably oozes from my skin. True enough, I've been listening to a lot of pop, alternative, and singer-songwriters, but the jazz fanaticism remains. And in remaining, so strengthens my conviction that popular music the world over owes a tremendous, largely unacknowledged debt to Africa's music and its descendants, like jazz. It is my conviction (and I'm by no means alone) that jazz is the ultimate music, and the progenitor of most of what we hear being made today (with the notable exceptions of classical and heavy metal); the best jazz musicians are the best musicians on the planet. And yes, one can measure musicianship.

My brother is in need of new music, so I sent him a stack of my favorite jazz; in so doing I had a chance to listen to albums I haven't heard in ages. All of it is so much a part of my psyche, it's as if I never left it. And I'm reminded of exactly who I was 10 or 15 years ago, what I was hoping for, what I was dreaming of. They've released the first few names for the Vancouver jazz festival; this year I might go with Jetta's help. The first few days are like a who's who of the best jazz players, Charlie Haden's Quartet West, Bill Frisell with the Cowboy Junkies, and John Scofield; it will be a tremendous feat to avoid it. Who am I kidding? I can't miss it. And I realized any woman I might entertain being with absolutely must not only understand my devotion to jazz, but also be on board to some extent, must be able not only to tolerate my music, but also to love it, honestly and deeply, as I do.

There is no debate anymore: the Vancouver Jazz Festival is the best in the entire world, bar none. No more Montreux, no more Monterey. Vancouver BC. This fact is due to two main aspects: 1) the creme de la creme plays there every year, and 2) Vancouver is the hippest town in the hemisphere. It's a yearly treat not only for visitors but for the musicians as well. Vancouver is a bustling, international metropolis. It's got everything you could want from a city and more: you can see the mountains from the beach--all from the middle of town; the food is of every kind and of the best caliber (actually the traveler can find food to fit _all_ budgets); it is a town of beautiful people from across the world. At first, one is a tad daunted, but the residents of Vancouver are universally great people so you just can't lose.

I've asked my good friend and master jazz guitarist Christopher Woitach to do a Jazz at the Bungalow show in the next couple of months. I'll be sure to leave word here about when it will be.

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz

040608

I now wear glasses, with no intention of switching to contacts. I went to a real eyeglass boutique hidden away in the northwest part of town. I had two cute young women advising me on my choices. I had gone in wanting to find glasses like my pair of vintage 1960s Polaroids, which are not only a cool zebra-esque pattern in brown, but also I think the right shape for my face. Just in going through various choices we ended up deciding on a pair that's very similar to my Polaroids, big, bulky plastic frames, very retro. In a dark, almost-black green. I got them with Transitions lenses which are the kind that darken and lighten with ambient light, gray lenses (from dark gray to clear).

*Errata*

For some reason last week when I copied and pasted last week's post from my text editor, as I always do, it didn't keep certain simple formatting, so I had to go through and do it again. Regardless of that problem, there were still a few other errors.

--"eaux de toilettes and eaux de parfums." Should be eaux DES.... Duh. Frankly, Greenpeace might be wrong; maybe it should be eaux de toilette and eaux de parfum. What's being pluralized, I think, is the word eau.

--"I remember how as clear as
if it were yesterday:" Should be as clearly as.... That particular sentence needs some work.

--Martin Sexton's "Put 'em in a big red bow and send 'emcare of me" should be
send 'em
care of me.

And Jolie Holland's line "Put me at the head of you list" is
head of YOUR list.

--Also, my mother corrected me: it's Bible but biblical; when using the word as an adjective, it becomes a lower-case affair. I don't think either one of us is 100% certain; we can think of other examples where this rule doesn't hold. Germany and German for example. The latter is most assuredly capitalized.

*ErosAromatics*

This week I made a fifth attempt at the keeper. My intention was to make the oakmoss more prominent, and the amber note less so. I also added more citrus notes to the top (grapefruit, bergamot, mandarin, and tangerine), along with tagetes to balance out the citrus. The heart is heavy floral; it has, for example, regular rose absolute and also rose otto, regular jasmine absolute and also jasmine sambac (among others). Otto and sambac have strong auras, which tend to carry over to the finished perfume. An olfactory aura is a smell seemingly at the perimeter of things, a scent which precedes the up-close encounter. Open a bottle of jasmine-sambac absolute, for example, and you immediately perceive its aura, and its aura is somewhat different, though not entirely distinct, from its smell close up.

Four or five days into it, I think this last iteration hits the mark. It's not quite perfect but it is like the fragrance I had pictured in my mind's eye. The ambery note is there, alongside the oaskmoss. It's heavy without being too sweet. It has a general floral character, with some spicy, pepperiness too (not sure where that comes from). I think it's not quite long-lasting enough; I attribute this fact to the abundance of oakmoss in the brew--oakmoss has a low odor intensity, and low diffusiveness. It's not a very noticeable essence. Now I will move on to other scent types, fougere, oriental, etc. Though I will be finding new sources of inspiration. There was discussion this week on the perfumers list about making a perfume based on a poem. I can't really wrap my head around that idea as well as I can around the idea basing a perfume on music, on a song, a song type, a time signature, a key, etc.

I gather most folks don't understand that, originally, perfume was made with botanical extracts (many of us, in the niche markets, believe strongly it is _properly_ made from botanical extracts). It's clear to me now that when folks hear the word perfume they automatically think of the universally hated perfume counter at department stores. The thinking process doesn't go "perfume" then "essential oils," as it well should. I reckon if most folks had to hazard a guess they would say that to make perfume, you need chemicals. Maybe some botanical material, but primarily chemicals. This a very tough obstacle for we natural perfumers to overcome; for most, the notion of a "natural perfume" is oxymoronic. Please tell any perfume-wearing friends you might have: there is indeed 100%-natural perfumery, the art in its original form, and there is not only nothing toxic in natural perfume, but it also has none of the obnoxious, overwhelming, smothering qualities of mainstream perfume.

And that, in the end, is the most important difference between natural and synthetic perfumery: the natural variety is intimate and personal; the synthetic variety screams to everyone around, whether they were wondering or not, "I'M WEARING PERFUME!" Yes the two branches have their roots in the same history, but the commercial, capitalist nature of mainstream perfume has turned it into a market-driven (sometimes market-making) endeavor which bears no resemblance at all to the art in its original form, the art as still practiced by natural perfumers. Again, I believe that when synthetics came on the scene in the early 1900s, commercial perfumers became little more than artful grifters. Instead of preying on victims' inherent dishonesty, it has preyed on folks' willingness to believe in fanciful fairy tales. Someone who sells perfume can say absolutely anything they want about it; no governing body is going to make sure they don't make of stories out of the blue. And, hey, if Chris at the Perfume House is a good enough con man to have me believe, with but little prompting on his part, in the existence of snow roses, then I believe he earned the $250 I gave him. Here's a classic piece of liquid grift:

"Three hundred years ago, the son of a wealthy European family went on a trek in Nepal; at the time, this was the sort of excursion only the richest of the rich could afford. One day, the young man was out walking the snowy hills alone; he slipped and fell into a ravine. He was missing for a week; by then, everyone had given up hope of his being found alive. In the cruel mountains of Nepal, people rarely lasted more than a day or two alone. Then finally he was found. His family was on their way in the meantime. They arrived and made sure their son got medical attention from their family doctor, who had come with them. The son repeatedly said that during the week he was unconscious in the wilderness, he would wake up every so often, and he swore he smelled roses numerous times. Well, his family refused to believe their son was crazy, so they sent for a perfumer. The perfumer wandered around for a couple of weeks, then one day came across something incredible: little tiny roses grew up through the snow and ice in the morning, and gave off their subtle scent for less than a day, before dying in the freezing cold. The perfumer decided to capture this amazing, magical scent; he took a syringe and spent much time extracting the essence from thousands of little flowers before they died."

Every single bit of the above is fiction. It is spoken knowing the listener will be more than willing to suspend his disbelief to believe the grand fairy tale, knowing the listener likely has no clue how the essence of roses is actually extracted. There is no way on earth a person could verify or factually dismiss such a story, except for the syringe part. In exactly the same way that victims of con games rarely if ever press charges--doing so would be admitting one's own guilt in a crime--I couldn't justly get mad at Chris for taking me the way he did. I was just another mark happy to believe in mountaineering princes and more than happy to believe in 18th-century jet-set perfumers. There are no laws on the books that say you can't lie to a person about what's in a perfume. Calvin Klein TV ads would have you believe they're selling you little bottles of sex.

*Fiction*

I read The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard. It is similar to Mr Timothy in that it is a period piece. It's another story in which Mr Bayard got the idea, "What if I make a story about that famous character but in a wholly original context?" In this one, he takes the character of Edgar Allen Poe and wonders what life might/could have been like for him during his stay at West Point Academy in the 1830s. The story doesn't really have anything to do with Poe, but the way Bayard handles the existence of this personality in his story is loads of fun to behold. And after reading this second book of his, I am convinced that, at heart, Bayard is a poet. Throughout both books I've read of his, there is a constant, barely tamed dislike for poets and poetry, to the point where a poet like me is bound to think, "Isn't he just getting back at the world which never paid him any notice when he was but a lowly poet?"

In fact, this book revolves around one particular poem, but of course, the reader doesn't know it until the end. In the end, I can't say as I liked this book as much as I did Mr Timothy. The humor found here is quite pronounced; it's not laugh-out-loud kind of humor, but the sort that makes the reader chuckle quietly to himself, proud that he was bright enough to pick up on it and find it amusing. The near ending involves a bit of satan worship that I found somewhat implausible; the ultimate end does propel the story to a resounding and evocative conclusion. As always, it's fun to be taken on the wings of great writer and allowed to experience an older, simpler, sweeter time--albeit with bits of the macabre and craziness mixed in. This book certainly entertains excellently well; I did not, however, find it quite as compelling as The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox.

*MyJourney*

[A story of creative nonfiction]

The next morning Wen Ming arrived early at the Happy Family. I was still asleep; my eyes had barely focused on her as she began to pack up, in a bag she brought, what few things of mine she could see. She told me, with no small amount of urgency in her tone, that we had to hurry; the plan was to hide out at hotel on the other side of town where our alleged stalker would never find us, Wen Ming assured me. I wanted to know if she was aware of the interlude with the fake police. It seemed she was, but tried not to let on. More and more I was feeling like a fool to have been led along by this woman. No doubt, I had been quite willingly deceived.

We headed straight to our new hideout. We fixed ourselves securely in our hotel room. Then Wen Ming informed me she had to attend to some business, something about a meeting with her family. Again, she didn't seem to want to let on too much, so I let her go. I asked when she would be back and she told me she would return in time to go out for dinner. I contented myself with bagged oolong tea--by now, an extremely down-market notion for me to bear. There was a TV, of course, but I really didn't enjoy Taiwanese television. It was either MacGyver reruns, or it was over-the-top stories of ancient China, full of wizards and cheesy kung-fu bits, every single frame with obnoxious Chinese subtitles (this island was literally swimming in different tongues and dialects, so generally folks needed the subtitles, to understand their own language). So I stuck to the tea. My books were in my big backpack back at the guesthouse.

Late afternoon turned to evening turned to night. By that time I was more than a little worried. I was about to go downstairs to see if I could do something, anything. Just then Wen Ming returned. She now was wearing a coat, one I'd never seen. She burst in, slammed the door, and ran to my arms. She was crying. I tried to get her to tell me what happened but she wanted me to hold her a little while. We sat down and I poured her some tea. Slowly, the story came out. What stunned me was that she hadn't once thought to mention the fact she was bleeding.

She explained that she went to dinner with her father. They started talking about me (so she said) and their conversation quickly turned into an argument. As far as I could make out, Wen Ming was telling me that in protest of her father's condemnation of our relationship, she picked up one of the steak knives sitting on the table and cut one of her own wrists. Immediately, I demanded to see the wound. Thankfully, it didn't appear all that bad. But she tried to slit her wrist! For me! Oh, the drama of it. How very Chinese, I thought. I was beginning to grow wary of the direction my relationship with Wen Ming seemed to be headed.

I insisted we go to a hospital to make sure she was OK. She was extremely reluctant, reminding me it would be better for us not to be seen. I wouldn't take no for an answer, so off we went to the hospital. As the hour was late, the emergency room was empty. A doctor was with us in only a minute or so. He and Wen Ming knew each other, that was clear, though they weren't speaking Mandarin which made things difficult for me to grasp. The doctor quickly tended to Wen Ming's wound. He assured us it wasn't serious and we needn't worry (speaking to both of us now, in plain Mandarin). Some cleaning and a single bandage was all it took and we were dismissed. Wen Ming said she would pay while I went to get the car. Just as I exited the hospital, the doctor came running up to me, apparently having left through a different exit.

Quite excitedly he said, "You be careful."

"What, what's the matter?" I asked.

"I see her before."

"I know. I could tell you knew each other."

"No, no. She came for same thing."

"What? What do you mean the same thing?"

"Last year, she came with same cut on wrist. With a foreigner."

There are moments when your life flashes before your eyes, or under your eyelids. This was one of those moments. I began to go over in my mind every moment we'd spent together over the last two months. The way we met. The circumstances under which we extended our relationship. I noted how many gray areas there were about Wen Ming. I'd never been to any apartment or home where she stayed. I didn't know where, or if, she worked. I always assumed it was family money that kept us in nice dinners and fancy hotels. With this one statement from the doctor, everything became a little clearer. I couldn't trust a word she said. The doctor as much as told me so before he took off running. I waited patiently for a woman about whom I didn't know the first whit.

*PoeminProgress*

Gospel according to Adam

Wouldn't you think God's first man
had a thing or two to say on the
subject of this Jesus fellow?
A few of his disciples had their
go, and I want to know why no one
ever thought to ask me, or rather,
the memory of me, the ghost of me,
if you will. Well, this son of man
as he liked to call himself
certainly was full of sage,
if a bit quaint, aphorisms and
quotable snippets and pithy
turns of phrase. But, I mean,
"Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you"? Come on. Anyone
who's walked this godforsaken earth
for more than a day would tell you
that's a plain fact of life.
It's not like we really have
a choice in the matter; if
a person were to do unto others
as he would NOT have done unto him,
well, that person is plumb
screwed. Every man reaps just what
he sows; this I can tell you from
hard-won experience. All Im saying
is that carpenter should well have
stayed where he was. What good did
he ever do, really, for people, for
these ones I should call MY children?
So his legacy saves a few prostitutes
and drunks, so what? We're talking
about a few souls every year saved
from their own damnation. And look
at the world. See how they trammeled
my once-beautiful garden. True, we
were kicked out, or so they say,
but don't you know, we wanted to go
anyway. We let him say he
kicked us out to let him save face.
I shouldn't think the fact of
our dismissal gives the race
a right to bring hellfire and
welter to these once-grand lands.
No, in fact, I'm sure it doesn't.
This is what I would put down
in MY gospel: we asked for the chance
to make it on our own, not for
the opportunity to ensure
our own destruction.

*Nonfiction*

From Low Life by Luc Sante (1991):

"Faro was popular across the country and with every class. One measure of its influence is the number of terms specific to it that have entered the language in a general way: 'tabs' were sheets annotated by players to keep track of cards that had already been dealt, hence 'keeping tabs;' 'losing out' meant to lose four times on the same card, and winning out was its opposite; 'piking' was to place small bets all over the board, and a practitioner was known as a piker; to 'break even' was to play a system; to 'string along' was to play all odd cards or all evens; a 'square deal' was one made not with round-cornered but with square-edged cards, which were harder to adulterate; a 'sleeper' was a bet made on a dead card (which might be carried over to the next game); a 'pigeon' was the victim of a leg--a sharper--and a 'stool pigeon' was a shill; a 'shoe string' involved playing a small bank roll into big winnings; the last card was said to be 'in hock' because the first card was called 'soda,' after the expression 'soda to hock' (hock was dry white wine)....

"The games were played in elaborate setups called banco skins; usually hotel rooms or rooms in financial-district buildings made up to look like bustling business offices. The marks were usually newcomers to the city, prosperous visiting farmers being the best targets. The skins employed a pair of touts to lure them: the feeler and the catcher. The feeler would hang around hotels, identifying wealthy rubes and tourists, and would research details of their hometowns, professions, family lives, hobbies. He would then pass the information along to the catcher, who would feign acquaintance or kinship with the mark, who could usually be induced to believe that he simply failed to recall his old army buddy or second cousin, and the camaraderie thus fired would lead to an evening on the town, complete with roistering and various entertainments of varyingly risque nature. As the hour grew late, the roper would propose one last bit of jollity, a visit to a friendly game gotten up by friends of his, and he would steer the pigeon to the banco skin.

"As the mark lost, the tout would be losing as well, and would accompany his loss with such a theatrical display of bad sportsmanship that the embarrassed target would temporarily be distracted from his own misfortune. The most famous catcher was Hungry Joe Louis, and his most famous catch was Oscar Wilde, on the latter's 1882 tour of the United States. Hungry Joe took the dramatist for $5000, but was trusting enough to let him pay by check. When Wilde figured out that he had been swindled, he simply stopped payment. Wilde refused to prosecute, however, so Hungry Joe was not finally sopped until 1888, when he was arrested for a $5000 catch in Baltimore.

"Before that time, Hungry Joe was reckoned to be the greatest banco artist of them all, prodigiously successful and prolific in his swindles; his fatal flaw was that, according to Police Captain Thomas Byrnes, he was "a terrible talker," so unable to stop gabbing that he nearly gave the operation away more than once. He ultimately wound up in the laundry business. The upper rank of the banco circuit also included Tim O'Brien and Charles P Miller, both at various times called King of the Banco Men, and Peter Lake, aka Grand Central Pete, all of whom endured in their profession well into the 1890s. Amazingly enough, banco survives into the present day; the late 1980s saw a banco skin as elemental as any of those of the previous century setting up at various locations--hardware stores, multi-vendor bazaars--around SoHo, possibly in some of the very same buildings."

*BoobToob*

Two new shows I've been watching are Dexter and New Amsterdam. Dexter is about a serial killer who works for the police department as a blood-spatter analyst. I now understand that he only kills people who, as he puts it, "deserve to die." So he kills other serial killers and the like. In the last episode I watched, he confronts a young criminal whom he had, at some time earlier, let off with no punishment on the condition that he only kill people who deserve to die. The boy doesn't follow that rule, and Dex confronts him immediately. Turns out the boy was having major bouts with depression and he thought maybe taking a life might be the release he needed. They agree it wasn't. Then the boy ends up committing suicide and Dex is left thinking, "Well, at least he was true to his word this time. He killed someone who deserved to die."

New Amsterdam is about a detective in New York who is more than 400 years old. I still haven't figured how this fact is possible. He's not a vampire but he doesn't age. New York was originally called New Amsterdam. The most fascinating part for me is the detective's memories of earlier times; it could be anything from Napoleonic wars to the assassination of Lincoln to the early jazz age, and when the man remembers, the viewer is taken along with him. All the while he's solving crimes; having seen so much of the world, he's an excellent detective, frequently calling on his past experiences to bring about justice. And, lyrically, he's on an eternal quest for "the one," the one woman who apparently can make him mortal again. That idea is a poem in itself: I'm looking for a woman who will make me mortal, make me understand the true pangs of mortality in love's face.

In the last episode, in one of his earlier lives, he is just at the end of another relationship. What happens is his wives age but he doesn't age a day; in this particular circumstance, he is a painter in the late 1800s who finds a new model and takes her as his mistress. He hopes the poor women he's married to will end up just leaving him; there's really no easier way for him to proceed, otherwise he's got to explain himself and it never works (at the same time, in real life, here and now, he's just told his girlfriend the truth and she reacted the way they all have--"Don't try and get out of this by making up fairy tales!"). Before the wife and son desert in the earlier time, he has a brief interlude with his son, excitedly explaining why painting is so important. "It's the way we communicate with the past and the future," he says. "Anyone who's ever listened to Mozart knows the same joy, whether it's today o hundred years from now. It's what ties together past, present, and future."

I do not often enough think of myself in this light; as an artist I am constantly, in innumerable ways, carrying on conversations with artists past and future. The trick is to ratchet up the talk until you are forced to create something which will be heard in fact 100 years from now. Timeless is only a word, and I find it an imperfect descriptor of the task with which an artist is charged. An artist must always remain hyper-aware of time's presence, within his own work, as it relates to time past, as it will relate to what is yet to come. It's a terribly difficult balancing act. And add to that your own petty dreams! What we're tasked with is nearly impossible; nobody supports us, not until we're successes anyway. Practicing any art is necessarily an extremely lonely proposition. It is different from the vast majority of efforts in that the only time there is any interaction with the world is generally after a winning run. Until then, suck it up.

*Politics*

I watched the clip of Robin Williams doing an impromptu bit at a BBC-hosted debate during a technical glitch. It was of course, hysterical. The man is and always has been a genius. I'm sure you can find the clip online (Robin Williams Hijacks BBC Debate). By Matt Frei for the BBC:

"When technology fails at a technology conference, it is embarrassing. But when the audience includes some of the demi-gods of hi-tech, who have each coughed up $6,000 (£3,000) to be there, it becomes excruciating. I had come to Monterey, on the glistening shores of the Pacific, to host a BBC World debate about the tussle between the old media and the new media. As it turned out, I ended up dealing with a more old-fashioned tussle, the one between fear and limelight.

"On stage we had, amongst others, Queen Noor of Jordan, Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame and Sergey Brin of Google. In the audience I spotted the other founder of Google, and the founders of eBay, Facebook and YouTube. The Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker was there too, and so were dozens of the richest, cleverest and most quick-witted citizens of California who have reinvented the way we live our lives. Later I bumped into the inventor of the iPod and the man who had dreamed up Google Earth. A very impressive bunch and a tough crowd to please.

"The annual Technology, Entertainment and Design conference, or TED, is a mecca for Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The only thing that is sub-prime here is the dress sense. The de rigueur fashion for cyber-billionaires are Crocs without socks, slacks and black T-shirts. The richer you are, the more you dress down. Wearing a suit (I had quietly ditched the tie), I was definitely the most over-dressed and poorest person in the auditorium. It was time to start the debate. I was 30 seconds into my opening and was just about to remind the audience--as if they needed it--that Sergey Brin has an estimated worth of $18bn and is thus only the fourth youngest billionaire in the world.

"The other three were all in the audience. I asked Mr Brin how he could live with being number four. I thought that was quite witty. Then I heard the usually calm and reasonable voice of my producer Neil talk into my earpiece. His voice had been tuned up half a tone. I detected a bat's squeak of panic. "Matt?!" he said, half question, half address. "We have a problem. The cameras aren't working yet!" The sentence lingered in my head for a second while the words continued to come out of my mouth and I was mulling the consequences for what was, after all, a televised debate. "Stop talking!" he helped out. "Now. You need to entertain the audience!"

"I explained what had happened to 600 people and then wondered what the hell I would do next. I told the crowd, for whom time really is money, that we had to interrupt the show because the producer had insisted on telling me a very complicated but hilariously funny political joke from Poland. I would have to listen to it while they watched in silence and I promised to share it with them later. The billionaires laughed. Phew. I could have started our discussion on stage but that would have deflated the hour-long debate we would eventually record.

"So I was about to abseil over the next abyss of improvisation when I sensed a commotion in what theatregoers in London call "the Gods", the final rows at the very back and top of the theatre. Then I made out a Scottish accent. A heckler. Damn. He was getting quite abusive too. Expletives were heard. A physical tussle was the last thing I needed. Suddenly the murmurs morphed into a wave of laughter that washed down to the stage. Carl Bernstein stood up, pointed and said. "It's Robin! Come on down Robin!"

""Robin? Who the hell is Robin?" I thought, not imagining for one second that perhaps the world's most famous actor and comedian would now run down the stairs and stand in front of me. Robin Williams was not just in the house. He was on stage, stealing my show, or rather rescuing me from another tortuous silent political joke. While cameras were being adjusted, he treated us to a brilliant, impromptu improvisation on the tussle between old and new technology. It was spot on and deliciously rude. It had the audience rolling in the aisles, the organisers fretting about keeping time and me worrying about how I would ever be able to rekindle interest in a debate about journalism.

"It would be like dried biscuits after chocolate souffle. What I didn't have to worry about was how to warm up the audience. They were red-hot and giddy with excitement after Robin had finished delivering his soliloquy."

_____

From MoveOn (Ten footnotes citing sources for each fact removed):

"10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don't):

1. John McCain is one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.

4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."

5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.

6. He voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.

7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0Ñ-yes, zeroÑ-from the League of Conservation Voters last year."

*Music*

Peter Mulvey--I don't know why but it took me a couple of years to realize just how great Mulvey is. For anyone who enjoys the huge acoustic-guitar sound of Michael Hedges, Mulvey is too good to be true. Imagine all the compositional and arranging finesse of Hedges, replete with altered tunings, combined with world-class song-writing skills, poetry, and artistic endeavor of the first order. Mulvey is your man, and he's very real (not too good). I think his best records are 10,000 Mornings and his latest Notes from Elsewhere; these two show off his stellar guitar skills best of all. Hedges was taken from us too soon (he died in a car wreck) but in Mr Mulvey we have the no-holds-barred spirit of Hedges, added to the magical bells and whistles of a true artist, someone with integrity as an artist and dedicated always to being artistically and socially relevant. Frankly, I'm fairly certain Mulvey would rather not be associated with Hedges and all the new-age garbage that (mistakenly) comes with Hedges' legacy; if so, that's fine--I'm not sure Mulvey isn't better, if only insofar as he is able to appeal to a popular current more than Hedges ever could.

Andrew Bird, Austin City Limits--Wow. I'm really impressed with what Bird pulls off here. Listening to the one studio album I have, I would have thought it would be tough to pull off his bag on stage; I imagined he might be solo with a guitar. Bird is unafraid of treading wherever his muse takes him; the music found on this album is even more ornate and complex than his studio work, combined with the improvisational aspects natural to live shows. The orchestration is rich, from gutsy distorted guitar, to strings (Bird is a violinist), to dense percussion arrangements. I do find the lyrics overly cryptic much of the time; I really have no idea what he's talking about--he often makes me go to the dictionary (what exactly does apocrypha mean? what exactly are Scythian empires?). If you wished he would just do it the way it is on the album, you're out of luck. Every note and every lyric is re-imagined, is made new. Bird and his crew take chances and take the listener along for one hell of a ride. There's something about Bird's voice which is eminently appealing.

Mike Doughty--There's a song on Doughty's latest, Golden Delicious, called Fort Hood. In it, Doughty "borrows" the chorus from Hair's The Flesh Failures, replete with back up singers (you know, "Let the sun shine in. Let the sun shine in. The sun shine in"). Now this is for no apparent reason; I can find no correlation between that chorus and the rest of the lyrics, which are highly Doughty-esque:

"I'd rather watch movie stars get fat.
I'd rather hang up the flag and be done with it.
I'd rather keep the fire and frenzy out of my mind.
I'd rather take sides in an argument.
I'd rather crank up the bass in a dark basement.
I'd rather leave the mobs and the murder
in a distant land.
Let the sun shine in...."

Looking at the lyrics written out, I guess the connection is actually quite clear. All I can say is that if I were in Doughty's position, I'd probably find a way to make use of this refrain as well, having its origin in my favorite boyhood music.

Horowitz Interpreta Chopin--This is my first dose of Vladimir Horowitz and it's quite a good listen. Extremely emotional and dynamic music. Clearly Horowitz is a virtuoso, which is to say he's so good you're hard pressed to notice how good he is. Everything, from the quickest flights to the melancholy marches to the thundering stampedes, flows as if without effort. Being a classical newbie, I'm not familiar with Chopin. This endlessly evocative music strikes me very much as a precursor of sorts to some of the jazz piano to come later in the century--Horowitz began his career in the 1920s. I do not find this collection as immediately likable as some of the other classical I've downloaded (like the violin chamber music of Lara St John); there is no question it is dense and somewhat difficult. But Horowitz's madly tinkling fingers never cease to keep your attention, with their limitless variety of volume, nuance, and rhythm, as well as dexterity. This is music for the ages, and this is a musician to be reckoned with.

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz