The Lyrics to Highway 61 Revisited

I post this because of the post that precedes it.  I like it when you have the full picture.

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What ?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done ?"
God says. "Out on Highway 61".

Well Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose
Welfare Department they wouldn't give him no clothes
He asked poor Howard where can I go
Howard said there's only one place I know
Sam said tell me quick man I got to run
Ol' Howard just pointed with his gun
And said that way down on Highway 61.

Well Mack the finger said to Louie the King
I got forty red white and blue shoe strings
And a thousand telephones that don't ring
Do you know where I can get ride of these things
And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son
And he said yes I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61.

Now the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren't right
My complexion she said is much too white
He said come here and step into the light he says hmmm you're right
Let me tell second mother this has been done
But the second mother was with the seventh son
And they were both out on Highway 61.

Now the rowin' gambler he was very bored
He was tryin' to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.

You don't really have to go too much farther than the first verse to know something extraordinary is at work.

"Are we rolling, Bob?"

Since this is a blog about writing, nobody writes like Bob Dylan.  Consider this ...

If you’d had listened to Robert Johnston singing, "Better come in my kitchen, 'cause it's gonna be raining out doors," as many time as I listened to it, sometime later you just might write, "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall."


And this ...

Big Bill Broonzy had a song called "Key to the Highway." "I've got a key to the highway / I'm booked and I'm bound to go / Gonna leave here runnin' because walking is most too slow." I sang that a lot. If you sing that a lot, you just might write,

Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose
Welfare Department they wouldn’t give him no clothes
He asked poor Howard where can I go
Howard said there’s only one place I know
Sam said tell me quick man I got to run
Howard just pointed with his gun
And said that way down on Highway 61

You'd have written that too if you'd sang "Key to the Highway" as much as me.

A couple of anecdotes about the inevitability of his songwriting taken from an acceptance speech he recently gave for some award.  Rolling Stone Magazine, God blessum, shares the entire speech here.  It is remarkable, if you have some time.  Absolutely remarkable.  I am amused and flattered by Dylan's suggestion that in a different world, if I had listened to "Key to the Highway" as much as he did I might have ended up writing "Highway 61 Revisited."  Instead of him.

Anyway, I was looking on U-Tube to see if I could find a tape of the thing.  I couldn't, but this popped up instead.  I wonder what Bob would say about a computer-generated voice giving us the news ...



I wonder what Brian Williams would say too.

Me?  I got to be going.  I'm going to put an egg in my shoe and beat it.

Revis is God

I once had this idea of massive, flat, assembled-junk sculptures -- bas-reliefs, almost -- that could be hung on a wall like a painting.  I called the would-be series American Shantytown.  It was to be my usual painterly grappling with issues related to the American economy, this time writ large.  Here is a study of the first, and only one ...

It's kind of a riff on that famous bit of 60s graffiti that read "Clapton is God".  In the end I wasn't sure of the viability of the project, plus I didn't really have the space, equipment (a pick-up truck being the most vital) and inclination to pursue it.

All by way of saying that I just finished reading "Collision Low Crossers," a book by some guy named Nicholas Dawidoff.  The gist of the thing is that he was an embedded journalist with the New York Jets for the duration of the 2011 season.   2011, if you don't remember, was the season immediately following the Jets' two forays into the AFC Championship games, and as the book began, hopes were high for another outstanding season.

Then it all turned to shit.  The offense, let by Mark Sanchez, sucked generally.  Wide receiver Santonio Holmes feuded first with the offensive line, then with Sanchez, and then pretty much called it in for the last quarter of the season.  The defense resented the offense's incompetence, and the locker room -- long thought to be a Rex Ryan strong-point -- shattered.

The take-away is this:

Santonio Holmes -- The man, as frequently noted, was pretty much of a shit.

Mark Sanchez -- Sanchez' unrealized potential (and, in fairness, that knucklehead John Idzik's unwillingness to purchase a decent cornerback -- although that's another story) was the iceberg that sank Ryan's Jets career and a lot of others as well.  You kind of wanted to take the kid and shake some sense into him.  The book is brutal in describing what a crappy quarterback he was, and the toll that took on the psyche of the entire team.

Darrelle Revis -- The only good thing about this most recent Superbowl is that Darrelle got a ring.  The book is one long valentine to an amazing athlete, one regarded by almost everybody in the Jets organization with well-deserved awe.  That they let him go still stuns me.

Rex Ryan -- Enough is enough.  Rex deserved to go this year and he did.  But I, like millions of Jets fans, never really held it against him.  The picture painted of him in the book is that of a great defensive coordinator perhaps not ideally suited to be a head coach.  But hey, we all have our faults.  I miss the guy already and he's barely been gone a month.

I'm telling you all this so you don't have to read the book.  I thought it was a bit long and not quite as good as I had hoped, but I had a bad taste in my mouth after the Jets season and thought it might be interesting.  Letter grade: C+.  I'd have graded higher but the author has an odd habit of glossing over some of the really interesting things and focusing on the arcana of the sport.  Of which there's plenty in football.  Specifically, I refer to an incident in the last game of the season when the offensive line told Holmes he wasn't allowed in the huddle and sent him back to the sideline.  Absolutely unheard of.  And all it got was a short paragraph.  A casual mention, where some depth would have been interesting.  It was later glossed over by the Jets with a bunch of coach-speak and subject-changing -- which automatically tells you that there's an untold story, and I would have loved to have heard the real skinny, fully explored.  What's the point of living with the team for a year if you can't scrape up some of the good stuff?  I could come up with other examples if pressed.

Anyway, it was interesting to read a sports book.  I almost never do.  I'm trying to think of the last one I read before this.  But I can't, unless "Seabiscuit" counts.  Which was a great book and when I finish typing this I'm wandering down to the library where, I've been informed via email, they are holding Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand's "Unbroken."

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire.  Me?  I'm thinking ice.

I say this because the greater Troy region has received 28 inches of snow in the last two weeks.  And, since the temperature has rarely crested freezing during that period of time, the snow that has arrived has chosen to stay.  And if that wasn't enough, more is coming down as I type.

We're talking biblical levels of snow.  The pile of snow in front of my house is so high that when I shovel the walk and throw the snow on the pile, it falls back down on the sidewalk.  Like a little avalanche.

The good news is that I made a pot of really top-drawer chili, and it's nice to eat the chili and stare out the window at the snow.   On a related front, I just finished watching Snowpiercer, the super-bizarre futuristic dystopian saga by Korean director Joon-ho Bong about the entirety of entire human race stuck on a train circling an ice and snow-encrusted world.  Battlestar Galactica meets The Polar Express, if you will.  The back story has something to do with an experiment to end global warming that took things a bit too far the other direction.  Some people have to live in the back of the train and some live in the front.  Class warfare ensues.  I'm guessing New York City will look something like this in five years.

Anyway, I don't know what I was expecting.  But it wasn't what I got.

Four point two five stars.

You My Bess

Did you happen to watch Cleveland play the Lakers this afternoon?  It was such a gathering of ex-Knicks as to make my heart pump hard against my ribs and tears well in my eyes.  The basketball version of an Entmoot, if that's not too obscure.

Jeremy Lin, for starters, although he's no longer starting for the Lakers.  It's always good to see him.  Linsanity, as brief as it was, was one of the few high points of the last Knick decade.

Then the recently exiled Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith.  Both were key players in the only decent Knicks season in recent history.  56 wins, if I remember correctly.  Beautiful to watch, even though we came apart against the Pacers in the playoffs.  Shumpert had that outstanding haircut and a keen defensive game.  And J.R., who won 6th Man of the Year that year, was one of the loveliest parts.  Like Ophelia -- a bit unhinged and difficult to understand, but beautiful to behold in her terrible majesty.  I love the man, in a sort of a way.

For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze
--Arthur Rimbaud

And finally Timofey Mozgov -- which is a fun way to spell Timothy.  He was part of the core group of engaging, talented young players that the Knicks owner, who we'll refer to as Voldemort, forced Donnie Walsh to give up to consummate the Carmelo Anthony trade.  Which you could perhaps forgive (because the NBA is a league of superstars, so you need some -- even ones as dysfunctional as Anthony),  except for the fact that Anthony was going to be a free agent in a few months and ready to come to New York for nothing.

That was a fun team to watch.  Mozgov, Danilo Gallinari, all spellings approximate, Wilson Chandler and that noble warrior, Amar'e Stoudmire.

That, friends, was a black day for basketball.

Today is a black one too, since it was sometime last night when Dean Smith died.  I never disliked Smith the way a lot of my friends did.

Adios Campagnolo.  Somewhere in heaven they're playing the four corners.

Me?  I'm licking my wounds and listening to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald sing Summertime from their version of Porgy and Bess.  Which is something, I can tell you.

Summertime and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
Yo' daddy's rich and yo' mama's good lookin'
So hush little baby, don't you cry

One of these mornin's you gonna rise up singin'
You gonna spread your little wings and you'll take to the sky
But 'till that mornin' there ain't nothin' gonna harm you
With yo mama and daddy standin' bye

Now it's summertime and the livin' is easy
Them fish are jumpin' and the cotton's 'bout waist high
Yo' daddy's rich and, ya know yo' mama's good lookin'
Now hush little baby, don't you cry

Summertime
Ah, said it's summertime

It's 13 degrees out, and snowing again.  No fish jumping here.

The Writing Process, plus a wee bit o Robert Burns. And who doesn't like that guy?

What's that whole business about schemes that "gang aft agley?"

If you're a George R. R. Martin fan, this recently-unearthed pitch letter to his agent is fascinating reading, if for no other reason than it's interesting to see where writers start and where they end.  Or go, in Martin's case, since the end is nowhere in sight.

Under the Truth in Blogging Act, I should say that I found all this in a recent post on Vulture, the online presence of New York Magazine.  Read their piece here, although the meat of the matter is the letter below ...

For you completists, here's the whole Burns poem...

To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't.

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Ice and snow

I reckon the amount of snow that has fallen on Troy and vicinity in the last four weeks is best measured in feet rather than inches.  Lately it's been nice.  The temperature has not exceeded freezing for the past ten days or so, and that creates a dry, powdery snow that you can just as easily sweep off your steps as shovel.

Prior to that, though, we had some unseemly scenarios where light dustings of snow covered sheets of ice.  Which wasn't nice.  I went down once, then started paying attention.

The other day I passed the mailman on my way to the library.  Person.  Carrier.  And I wondered briefly if the USPS sends their letter carriers to some sort of academy the way the police and fire departments do.  Mostly, I suppose, for training on how to walk effectively in slippery situations.  Pigeon-toed is, I'm told, one of the essential techniques.  Leaning slightly forward rather than backwards has a certain wisdom as well.

On an only slightly related note, it's amazing the advances they've made in cat litter technology.  Amazing.

How is that related to snow and ice?
Because back in the old days, when cat litter consisted of big chunky granules of clay, it was recommended that you carry a bag of it in your trunk and scatter it on the slippery parts of the road if your tires got stuck in a snow bank or something.  Much better than sand for generating grip.
Hmmm.  In Greece we don't have this problem.
No.  I suppose you wouldn't.

Dude ...

Today's humbling graphic ...

The Year of Magical Painting used to get ten thousand hits a month.  On February 2, I didn't get a single one.  I'm not complaining, I'm just saying.

Breakfast of Champions

The reason you don't read P.G.Wodehouse in the subway is that when you start laughing uncontrollably, people stare at you.  Some move away.

On a related note, I was in the library this morning reading the New York Magazine profile of Larry David and I realized that roughly the same thing was happening.  With some difficulty I manned up and stifled myself for the duration of the piece.  With success, for the most part.

Read it here.  Highly recommended.

And, for you completists, this was today's breakfast ...

I don't know why I don't style these photos a bit better before taking them.  The stray bits of food on the plate (at the 12:00 and 6:00 marks) really annoy me.  Likewise the chip in the rim.  I wish the fork was straighter too.  And I should have either put more milk in the coffee or none at all.

For the record, this is not a snowy owl.  It's just two eggs on a bed of chicken chili, rice, corned beef hash and sriracha sauce, with a side of whole wheat toast and some coffee.

Duck Fook

Yesterday was a Black Day for the Cavalier Nation.  Today too, because of the hangover.  And what with this being Sunday, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on the old parable about not counting your chickens before they hatch.  Although it might not be a parable.  Might just be a saying.

In any case, at a certain point in the second half of the game last night, with the good guys up by eleven, I went out to the coop and started counting my chickens.

Big mistake.

I refer, of course, to the Duke Blue Devil's come-back victory over the team of my foster mother, the University of the State Named After an English Queen.

The key now is to travel to the University of the Northernmost State Named After Somebody Named Caroline and take care of business there.  As for Duke, we shall patiently await a rematch in the finals of the ACC Tournament.  And then we shall see.

Brief personal aside:  Perhaps ten years ago I found myself in Charlottesville attending a Virginia/Duke football game.  A number of Virginia students were wearing simple gray t-shirts with the words "Duck Fook" emblazoned on the front in black type.  It took me the longest time to figure out what the hell was going on.