Pop Culture Connoisseur

"Think of it this way: Between work, sleep, meal preparation, writing checks, walking the dog, cleaning the litter box, talking on the phone to somebody you don't even want to talk to, and checking e-mail for good news that never comes, how much time do you actually have for fun?"

Except I don't empty the litter box anymore because our cats were eaten by mountain lions.  But you can substitute "exercising relentlessly to keep the effects of traumatic arthritis at bay" and not miss a beat.

I've probably read close to 5,000 books.  This includes many classics, including, but not limited to, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Slaughterhouse Five, Catcher in the Rye, Wuthering Heights, and 120 Days of Sodom.  OK, that last one isn't so much a classic as one day disturbing wasted in rehab that I'll never get back. Point is, I've read a lot of fucking books, and having spent about half my life in college (well, maybe a quarter is more accurate), I have had more than ample exposure to the greats.  Yet, that passage above may be the single greatest I have ever read.  Where's it from?  That's Mick LaSalle from last week's San Francisco Chronicle and an article on the worst movies of the year.  What can I say?  I'm a pop culture guy.

Some would call if lowbrow.  Others uneducated, except I've got a couple degrees, which count for something (yeah, 100K in student loan debt for a degree I can't use).  But ain't nothing I want from highbrow.  I've said it before.  I'd rather read Bukowski than Bishop, Lou Reed than Slyvia Plath, and I find David Foster Wallace incoherent, dull, and full of inaccessible bluster, no matter how many bandanas the guy wore.

                                 "Look at me.  I'm a regular guy just like you.  I don't shave either."

There are writers I went to grad school with whose head would probably explode reading that (especially the part about Bishop, whom every poet seemingly wishes they could blow but who gives me a terrific pain in the ass).  I'd endure these writers, trotted out and extolled, who bored me shitless, every semester, biting my tongue.  (Because though I may be an angry big man, I do not like confrontation or rocking boats.)  As my buddy P. Scott once said, after I bitched at length in private of my contempt, "Well, of course you don't like so and so.  He/she is not in your millieu."  He's right.  And my milieu is me.

There's a scene in Seinfeld where George is trying to land a job in publishing, and his prospective boss asks him who his favorite author is.  George says Mike Lupica. I had a friend in rehab who said every man, if you could strip away the facade and airs, is secretly George Costanza.  It's a joke in a sitcom, of course, but I wonder if you hooked some of these people up to a lie detector, or just caught them in a moment of naked candor, if anyone actually A.) read Finnegan's Wake and B.) knows the what the fucking thing is even about.  (I guess we could add C., if they actually liked it, but I don't think we would get past A. or B.)

I am a pop culture guy.  I make no apologies for that.  It wasn't always that way. When I first got to San Francisco, I hung around with a pretty hip set, and so I used to pretend not to like pop.  I denied my love of Springsteen and the Yankees, Catcher in the Rye and big blockbuster movies.  Instead I pretended to like obscure foreign pictures and Fugazi, even though the former lulled me to sleep and the latter gave me a headache.  I don't act like commercial is a dirty word anymore.

Don't get me wrong.  I've never watched American Idol, Glee, or any other reality TV program.  Though I am aware they exist.

I knew this guy, Brian, who refused to go see Pulp Fiction.  Why?  Because in 1994, everyone went to see the movie and loved it.  So Brian wouldn't.  For him popular equalled stupid, and so he listened to a lot of Fugazi and missed out seeing one of the best films ever made.  (He also ended up being a male prostitute, but I don't think those things are [necessarily] related.)

I, however, am not above admitting I love The Rock.

I need my art to speak to me, in a very very personal way (and who can't relate to a biochemical engineer fending off a terrorist attack from Alcatraz Island?).  As much as I love Pulp Fiction and True Romance, Tarantino's Jackie Brown and Inglourious Basterds do nothing for me.  Don't directly apply to my life, which is the main criterion for my art, don't care about it.  How many times did I watch (and read) High Fidelity after my divorce?  Hornby's book (and Cusack's movie) spoke so much to me during that very difficult time that I took a page from Rob Gordon and called every ex to see "where it all went wrong."  (And would you believe in every case the answer was definitely not me?

.)

Not sure where I draw the line, why the Boss is cool but Billy Joel is lame; why Seinfeld is awesome but  Friends sucks; why Mick LaSalle's article made me laugh but Peter King is the most unoriginal sports writer around (and yet I still read his milk-and-cookie "Monday Morning QB," religiously, every week). Perhaps it's as simple as the lyrics to Gluehead's song, "U100."  I don't know art but I know what I like.*

(*Glue doesn't actually remember if this is the title or not.  To be fair, we were doing a lot of drugs at the time.)

I am not a hipster.  I openly embrace LOL Cats.

Or whatever the version is for adorable puppies.

You can have the penthouse; I'll take the gutter (though not literally, of course; it stinks down there).

My lawyers used to call me a conundrum.  Which I always took as a compliment. Who wants to be uniform and predictable?  Actually, I suppose I do (http://tinyurl.com/6qhjb9g).  But if like Mike "Soupy" Supinski says being a Christian in Berkeley is the new punk rock, maybe being such a mainstream conformist cliché is the new original?

Maybe that's not the question.  And as long as I don't have to pretend to find value in Ted Roethke, or try, once again, to get through Moby Dick, what do I care?

I think part of the problem I had reading in high school, and ultimately why I was such a bad student and started to fall by the wayside, was the unchallenged canon trotted out every year.  You didn't get exposed to Kerouac or Celine, except by the cool chicks in the Art Dept., and back then, cool chicks didn't want anything to do with me.

It's like the Butch Walker song.  Nobody knew Bryan Adams wasn't cool.  The TV just told me he was.

At 41, like Gluehead I know what I like.  Mick LaSalle got it right.  I don't get a lot of time these days to spend on fun (i.e., art).  So why waste any of it pretending I give a damn about a villanelle?     

A Card Table at Joe Bazooka Press

I've always had a certain international charm.  Touring Europe at 19, I was a big hit with the ladies.  There was the Italian on the train, the Brit in the club, and the island girl whose life I saved with my water bottle.  Back when I was big man on campus--and trust me, when you return to your small twon college after living ten years in the big city, you're de facto big man--the girls loved me, especially the foreign ones. Like the hot Czechoslovakian in the mini-trench and fog, who, after making slow, sweet love in the blinking neon hotel, said (huskily), "You have cigarette for me?" (At least that's how I choose to remember it.)  And the last time I was in Paris on my honeymoon with my (least favorite) ex-wife, I remember the cute blonde Parisian concierge, with her gaggle of equally cute girlfriends, saying, "We give you better room, charge you less money.  Because we like the way you look."  See? International appeal.

Got some more poems up over there in England at the Railroad Poetry Project (http://issuu.com/railroadpoetryproject/docs/issue3).  Not sure why they like me so much more overseas.  Probably has something to do with delusions and no one liking me more or less anywhere.  My friend Matt told me this saying he heard once.  "When I was in my 20s, I cared what other people thought of me; and when I was in my 40s, I didn't give a damn what other people thought of me; and when I was in my 60s, I realized, they were never thinking of me."  Except I'm not in my 60s.  I still have some fight left in me.

The stuff over at Railroad pretty much taps me of all of my poetry.  I haven't written a new poem in five years, and like quitting smoking, now that I've kicked the dirty habit, I ain't gonna start back up now.  But I'm glad these poems have found homes, because I always liked them, even when I was getting them rejected daily with the "Dear Writer, your work doesn't suit our current editorial needs," which is the literary version of "it's not you, it's me."  Editorial needs?  Like there's some master plan for bringing coherence to the Poetic Force.

I so wanted to be a Jedi.  I bought Holden a lightsaber for Christmas.  It's too late for me.  But he still has a chance...

The only "editorial needs" a magazine has is to fill its pages with the best material possible.  But writers are such a fickle, disturbed lot, you got to let them down easily, like firing someone on a Friday; no reason to take any chances of someone burning the place down.

Most literary magazines are run by writers.  Because let's face it, who the fuck else is going to waste their time sifting through the slush pile of shitty break-up poems by girls named Jennifer and 30-page plotless stories about rainy parking lots? It's like the old Bukowski joke about attending a poetry reading.  Who goes to poetry readings?  Other fucking poets.

I've been toying with the idea of starting up one of my own lit mags.  I've edited a few in the past, and by keeping it online, you get around that whole nagging budget issue.  Not that keeping it digital doesn't come with its own set of problems. Namely, who's going to design the thing?  I finally found someone to combine all my sites (http://www.joeclifford.com/, et al), so I should have Wordpress capabilities to create an online journal.  But that doesn't exactly help me out, since I can barely navigate around blogger, which is pretty much set up so a three-year-old can do it. My mind just doesn't work spatially.  The last thing I tried to assemble is the drawing desk down in my office, and if you look closely, you can see where I abandoned trying to screw the goddamn thing together and just used wood glue.

My friend over in England, Jade, says he'll help.  You might remember Jade (http://tinyurl.com/7e7x47y).  He was half the creative force behind the Railroad Poetry Project.  He's since left, so he has the time (and the experience) to lend a hand.  But he isn't a web guy, either.  So I still need someone with design skills.  Boy, there's one thing I regret not trying to learn.  If I a flux capacitor and could go back, man, I'd learn how to create web pages.  I spend half my life trying to A.) find a designer, and B.) even worse, finding one, and then harassing them to help me update my site.

But this is about literature!  The chance to get in on the the first floor for a ride that may--just may--end up taking us someday to a card table in some shitty Midwestern town for an AWP Conference, where you, too, can be surrounded by stuck-up douche bags, hasbeens, and neverweres, who hold council next to their stacks of signed chapbooks from Joe Bazooka Press.  What'd'ya say?  Any takers?  Drop me a line.

Speaking of Jade, he recently asked some folks to videotape themselves reading one of his poems, which he is putting up on his blog.  Not sure what he's hoping to accomplish, other than performing the requisite endless, shameless pimping/whoring of one's own work.  It is what we do as writers after all, especially in this digital age.  For all you wondering what I look like first thing in the morning after a long Christmas run; after Holden's woken me up at 4 a.m., I'm running low on coffee, and the sun is starting to sprinkle its shine prematurely into my castle, here you go: http://tinyurl.com/6px6w9a.

Jenny Dreadful: Riches for One, Poverty for Two

Jenny's real last name is Rossi.  My first editorial suggestion would be to stick with "Dreadful," all the better since the work that fills the bulk of these pages is not particularly bad ass.  In fact, there is a great deal of touching and sweet to it.  I don't say that as a slight.  For all my flippancy, dismissiveness, ridicule of just about everything everyone calls dear, etc., the truth is, I really admire those with the balls (figuratively speaking, of course) to wear their hearts on their sleeves, believe in the possibility of the better day, holding onto ideals and integrity, like wishes to the heart.  I used to be like that.  Until I realized

I used to know this guy--yes, back in the day--let's call him...Brian Fast.  I was a wide-eyed rube just off the farm truck, and Brian was the hardened city boy.  We became friends.  I think that's what you'd call it.  Everything was a joke to Brian. He wrote songs about erectile dysfunction or shitting too much or whatever other novelty topic he could use to mock what others believed in.  I was only 23, and I held everything dear, and my earnest Springsteen knock-offs were ripe fodder for Brian. I learned a couple things from Brian.  One, that it's easy to make fun of everything when you don't stand for everything, and two--and more importantly--that if I stayed that wide-eye naif, I wouldn't last another year in this city.  And thus I mourn the loss of that innocence...

I don't know how old Jenny Dreadful is, but I'm guessing younger than I, and, again, I'm not saying that to disparage her.  There is something endearing about youthful cynicism tempered with heavier-than-usual doses of the ideal.  When you get to my age, there's just a heart that's been broken too many times to love anymore (sigh).  The problem is that usually the younger you are, the lousier the writing.  Usually.  But that's not the case here.  Which isn't a coincidence.  When Jenny asked if I'd review her chapbook, I said I'd have to read it first, because I didn't feel comfortable writing a negative review.  You bust your ass and leave your heart on the page, only to have some asshole (see grad writing workshops) dismiss it with the wave of a hand.  ("The image of the pineapple as a metaphor for loss in line 3 just isn't working for me."  Well, fuck you, David Norman.  I don't give a shit what you think.)

I'm not going to go all gushy here.  Frankly, not all the poems move me in this collection.  Which isn't surprising.  I have a very small window for what appeals to me.  Or as P. Scott Cunningham says, I "can't appreciate anything outside [my] milieu."  Very true, P. Scott.  Very true.  I need a certain subject matter, a visceral grittiness... I need Hank Bukowkski.  Or Kerouac.  And here we get both.  If with a twist.

In "Kerouac Is Kool," the subject is my favorite author--but it's not what you think. There are a million (shitty) poems affecting the hepcat Beat manner of speech, or commandering time for a mythical night out with Allen, Jack, Billy and Neal, overwrought, tired images of highways and trains, drinking from bags, living wild, young, and free.  Which is idealizing, just a wee bit.  This was the first poem that really grabbed me in this collection, showed me that I was dealing with a writer with formidable chops.  I've already confessed, I am no barometer for poetic prowess. But I do know writing.  And this is good stuff.

You must father a daughter to be this Kool / and leave her to the wolves of the '60s / you must be a man like that / Have many journeys, skip birthdays, grudgingly give a paternity test.


The first time I heard about Jan Kerouac was during a Beat festival at the Roxie sometime in the mid 1990s.  I was caught up in all things Beat; Kerouac was the reason I was in this city.  Jan was going to present a film that night but was too sick from the liver that was failing her.  She died not long after.  Jack Kerouac was an amazing writer, but even his biggest supporters are forced to admit, he was a rather shitty human being.  And as a father, his behavior incorrigible and shameful. Trying to emulate the father she never knew, while at the same time outrun a shadow of legendary excess, Jan was an alcoholic almost out of the gate, doomed to a wasted life.  I love that Jenny takes Jan's side here.  This poem succeeds in embracing the Beat aesthetic while infusing it with a punkish feminism.  Very cool.

There is a cute poem in this collection called "Oh, Bukowski," which I won't reproduce here, but in a handful of lines, I promise, it does as good a job of capturing the essence of Bukowksi as you'll ever read.

Still, the real strength of Jenny Dreadful's debut, Riches for One, Poverty for Two, is in its raw innocence, bite reconciled with reflection, punches that don't come at the expense of admitting personal loss and just how much that loss hurt, how big a hole it left.  At its core are the relationships that forge who we are, allow us to grow and mature, evolve, but these things never come free.

In "What Ray Taught Me," we get a glimpse at the dying stages of lesser stars.

I once fell in love with a man who had an open book for a face.
When we started to fall apart I couldn't help but leave copies
of Fahrenheit 451 by the bed.  "You're a bitch," he said but I just 
sat around flickering lighters until my thumb was raw.


I've been in that room, love dying on the vine and all that's left is for the rotten fruit to drop and just end it, so everyone can get on with their lives, alone and apart.  It's excruciating, the silence between us.

I play rock 'n' roll, been doing it for a while.  I write songs.  There are various stages to learning new songs with a band.  The first stage is the shittiest part, because nobody knows the fucking chords or changes or dynamics, and someone (usually the bass player [*note this is NOT directed at current WJ bassist, Big Tom]) will start shouting out random notes to replace the ones that are already there so that he can say he helped write it ("How about a...G?").  If you don't give up, give in, and can get everyone on the same page, the next stage is where the magic happens. Your first few performances are ragged, raw, sloppy but passionate.  Later on, you'll know the song better, and it will be more polished and professional.  It will be better.  But you never can get that initial energy back. (Listen to the Replacements' two version of "Can't Hardly Wait," the outtake from Tim and the official release off Pleased to Meet Me; you'll experience this phenomena firsthand...)

I use this analogy because through Riches/Poverty, I spotted mistakes, the little things you learn not to do in grad school, ending lines with prepositions, the improper quotation, etc., small things, and these errors will certainly get the snooty to to feel superior, but I am not sure the trade-off, polishing and packaging pretty at the expense of an imperfect band just figuring shit out and playing with reckless abandon is worth it.

I think you'd lose poems like this.

"I Could Use a New Country, Maybe Brazil"

where the sun knives my skin, paring it to the flesh of peaches
where even saudade is overripe, a bearable linger, like the sun
through the skin of leaves.

Not the sort of tenderness I'd expect from a girl who calls herself Jenny Dreadful. Which is why I like it.

Poetry

In honor of National Poetry Month (or maybe it was in fucking April, who really knows), I thought we'd devote a week talking about the least valid, lucrative, or tangible of all writing forms: poetry.  Or maybe we'll just do it until we hit a wall. Wouldn't want another "Burning Man III" debacle (http://tinyurl.com/4xjur47).  It's tough to understand poetry, at least in terms of its functionality in a modernized world. Poetry is like that guy who once had it all in high school.  He quarterbacked the goddamn team, all the girls dug him, all the guys wanted to be him.  But then you see him at your class reunion and he's bald, working in middle management, or selling cars, and he smells like cheese, and you can't understand how this guy was ever relevant.

For me poetry is pretty much this Cracked article (http://www.cracked.com/funny-2260-poetry/), a once necessary and even vital art form whose use has long been supplanted by things people can actually use, like breasts and the Internet.  Now I must admit, some of my best friends are poets, and that furthermore I, too, used to write the stuff.  In fact, I have a couple poems being published next month.  These are not new poems. Back in aught4 (sorry, Esther), when I first was getting sober and didn't know any better, between the rock and the roll, my ear still fucked up from the years of hardcore stimulant abuse, I wasn't playing the guitar, which reminded me too much of getting high, drugs and the music so inextricably linked, and poetry seemed enough like writing lyrics (it's not), so I stared trying my hand at it, and people started liking it.  I won some award at the CT Review and was paid about $400 to tour the state that summer as a "CT Student Poet," which is apparently some time-honored, -respected tradition, with a long list of poets whose names I don't recognize.  It was cool enough.  A pretty girl once asked me for my autograph.  Always thought I was someone, turned out I was wrong...

Well, my poetry career was a short-lived one.  Once I realized the best I could hope for should I master the craft (which wasn't happening) was abject poverty, chapbooks, and non-recognition, I jumped on the fiction bandwagon (Oh, and that decision has worked out smashingly).  I forgot all about poetry, and the only verse I'm writing these days are the ones that come before the chorus (and usually after it, too, and then again after the bridge, but sometimes we skip a bridge and add last verse and go right back to the chorus--a double rock 'n' roll chorus!).  

(But I still have a few poems that haven't been published, one or two of which I still think are quite good. Occasionally I get solicited by magazines, because I know the editor or because the author and I have appeared elsewhere together, and when I do I will send them some of these.  Which is why I have a couple poems coming out next month.  Not that you give a shit.)

My poetry career died a slow, unnoticed death.  The last poetry reading I gave was in '09, when a friend asked me to read at an event he was hosting.  It was me and three other readers.  It received a single Yelp review.  Which I will re-post here.  

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5/3/2009Janis R. says:

Being unemployed and finding something to do on a Sunday night, this was a good diversion from the mononity of sitting at home and watching another re-run.

[Reader A] is awesome!  She opened with the funniest poem ever that was a great ice breaker (too bad she was last).  Her preview to her collection of [Book Title] left me wanting more... can you start a blog or something?  I appreciated [Reader B's] poems, but loved his explanations to the inspirations of each one more.  Joe Clifford's personality is hilarious, but his poems left more to be desired... with the exception of his last poem about his brother... very deep; and lastly, [Reader D]... nice spin on America but had too many re-occurring phrases they took my attention away from the individual poem and left me comparing them to her previous ones.

Overall, thankful they put this together, had the courage to share their works and surprisingly sparked an interest to document events in our lives through this expression.

So clearly the world isn't exactly clamoring for my return to hexameter.  At least Janis R. isn't.  And who are we to argue with Janis R.? 

All of which is a long-winded, roundabout way of saying (much like my poetry itself), I am probably the least qualified guy to review the shit.  I hate poetry.  If Bukowski didn't write it, I don't want to read it.  I find Shel Silverstein infinitely more enjoyable than Walt Whitman, Liz Bishop, or any of the other stuffy set.  And of all the writers I've know, by far, the dullest have been the poets (current friends withstanding, for you are a wacky and zany bunch).  

When I think of poetry, I think if Steve Kobak.  Steve and I worked on a literary magazine at CCSU called Helix.  And holy fuck did we receive a lot of shitty poems.  Most of these came from lovesick undergrad girls.  The staff used to go through these submissions together, basically four guys hanging around a classroom after school, smoking cigarettes, reading aloud and seeing just how bad bad writing could be.  After one particularly dreadfully, sappy love poem, something about "long tendrils of hair," Steve goes, "Happy Two Month Anniversary, Honey."  Still makes me laugh.

*

I received an e-mail last week from Candy and Cigarettes regular reader Jenny Dreadful, asking if I'd review her poetry chapbook.  Don't ask me why the fuck she'd think my doing so would, in any way, help her "career."  But I said I would. Because 1.) her name is Jenny Dreadful.  I've never had a cool nickname, and so I admire people who do.  Gluehead.  Kelpbed.  Jimmy Dread (Tom Pitt's friend, not mine, and no relation to Jenny Dreadful, at least not that I am aware).  Best I ever had was Tweek the Wunderkid.  Which stuck about as well as you'd think it would. And I gave it to myself.

Part of the reason I haven't gone further in life, I'm convinced, is because I never had a cool nickname.  Life caters to people with cool nicknames.  Reason #2 I said I would view Jenny's chapbook is that she asked me, however misguided her assumptions.  Let's face it.  I'm a nice fucking guy. Beneath the tattoos and the muscles (and the smoldering, movie-star good looks), I'm just a sensitive boy who loves to help others.

So this will be Poetry Week on Candy and Cigarettes.  Which should really drive up the ratings.  

Do you have a story about a poem that changed your life?  If so, please keep it to yourself.

(And I'll get to that review sometime this week, Jenny.  And it won't be a hatchet job.  I've read the chapbook and it's good.  I think you and I are going to be friends. You wrote a poem about Bukowski...)

Record Reviews and Fan Mail

It's been a weird few days re: artistic validation.  On Friday this guy (Barry) contacted me about an old band of mine, The Creeping Charlies, reforming and playing a (paid [gasp])...gig.  It's probably not going to happen, I realize.  Not unlike when Joe Corbin offered to "buy" my first "song" back in 1985, once he cleared it with his "manager," these sort of things fall somewhere between wishful thinking and self aggrandizing prophecy.  But the cool part of the story is that Barry still thinks enough of a band I was in (back in 19aught7) to write me and even ask the goddamn question (the show would be for his tech company's annual retreat, if I'm not mistaken; and, yes, Barry, if you're reading this, we're all in [just keep in mind Dan, our leader, has a wedding he has to go to on the 20th, FYI...]).

But there's lots of other stuff, too.  Besides the Big Game Hunting of trying to get Junkie Love published (or The Boys of Belvedere as we're now calling it to separate ourselves from its dark, drug-addled past), or a TV show on the air, it's the little things that keep us going (in the third world plural).  Because those big things also seem to fall between those aforementioned far-fetched points.

If you read this blog enough, you know that validation is one of its predominate themes.  I don't mind getting naked in front of you.  I think the only truly special asset I bring to the table is unapologetic candor.  Or, as a rehab buddy of mine used to say when we'd make anagrams of our names, I need a lot.

(This guy, Russel, and I would wait for group for the really special cases to end, and then we'd sneak in after everyone was gone, and on the blackboard there were all these names from the class, big, blocked letters, and after each letter would be these really nice things written after them, because we lived in a long-term treatment facility, and most of these people were really wrecked, feeling pretty shitty about themselves after years of living on the street, being sick, having no education, criminal records, etc., so the counselors were trying to install them with confidence, so, like, the name "Chris" might have after it C -- caring, H -- helpful, and, well, you get the point, but what Russel and I would do is we'd write our names on the board and do the opposite, so, like, I'd write his name, R -- retarded, U -- useless,
S -- stupid, and this would make us laugh till we couldn't breathe because, yeah, it was our stupid sense of humor, but moreover, when you've sunk that low, to the point where you literally need Stuart Smalley, you have to keep laughing at yourself, like you've been in on the joke all along, otherwise you're jumping out that seventh floor window.  Anyway, for me (because we used "Joseph" for the extra letters), Russel wrote "super needy."  I remember literally holding my stomach because he had me cracking up so hard.  Fucking still makes me laugh.)

And it's been coming in droves of late, these little things, which are really big things if you think about it,  stories getting taken, etc., since they mean so much to me. Like, for instance, this recent review of the Wandering Jews' EP Down on the Farm. http://shitforfuckheads.blogspot.com/2011/07/wandering-jews-down-on-farm.html. As the review states, I went to high school with one of the guys, like a hundred years ago, but not the other guy.  Chris and I reconnected like everyone does these days, via Facebook, but he didn't have to review my album, nor did he and his partner have to say nice things about it if they hated it.  They'd simply find a reason not to review the damn thing.  But they did review it, and they got all the influences right, and what the band was trying to do, and even nailed all the miscues, and that shit means a lot.  I'm not getting a record contract at this age.  That's not the point. What is, I've recorded some god-awful music over the years.  This was the last cogent moment (http://tinyurl.com/3tg2umo).  Uppers fuck with your pitch something fierce, and when I lost it at the end, I really lost it.  I kept playing. Because I have the constitution of a wronged bull on steroids.  But it was bad.  It took me years to pick up a guitar again, and even longer to sing in front of people again.  And it's still hard to do.  But I love rock 'n' roll, and I have to keep playing because that's what I do.  And I am damn proud of this new record (which I am hoping will soon be available in iTunes.  At which point, I will shamelessly promote, promote, promote...), and I am thankful that shit for fuckheads (http://shitforfuckheads.blogspot.com/) saw something worthwhile in it too.

The other thing that happened was a phone call I received Sunday afternoon.  By now, anyone who talks to me should know that that conversation is fodder for this blog, and all my work really (unless I am explicitly told not to use said person/conversation, a wish I will respect).  I got a call from this girl, Carrie, although when I knew her, she was Bubbles (Bubbles appears, briefly, in Junkie Love, in the chapter "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVCliffordJoe.htm).  (And since I just linked a piece in the awesome Underground Voices, let's do it again, this time with this uplifting, cheery nugget they just put out about my failed suicide bid: http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVCliffordJoe3.htm.)

After I'd gotten sober I reconnected with Carrie/Bubbles at City College, where we were both taking classes to get our Drug & Alcohol Certification.  She didn't recognize me at first.  I used be smaller.  A lot smaller.  But then we start talking because we both knew Gluehead and all those crazy bastards, and when you go to get your DAC certification, you inevitably run into people you used to run with, and it's amazing how everybody just sort of...grows...up.  Or they die.

So Bubbles calls me yesterday, Sunday, to tell me she with a woman who wants to talk to me.  This woman, Stephanie, apparently has read my memoir (because a long time ago, when I first wrote the damn thing, I sent a copy off to Pete French, who made copies and began passing the damn thing around, and this actually happens a lot), and she now reads this blog (Hi, Stephanie), and says I'm the "new Bukowski," which is always nice to hear, and OK, on the surface, there is the obvious answer as to why I'd write about this.  I am a vain, egotistical man, who, like most men of that ilk, is fraught with glaring, crippling insecurities and in constant dire need for reaffirmation.  Not denying that.  But there is also a subtext to this as well.  Because I don't have that book deal (yet), and I don't have any fellowships to buoy my adrift artistic spirits.  I am lost in a sea with every other fucking wannabe writer, because who's to say I won't one day be forced to self-publish my opus where it will be stored on Lulu's non-existent shelves right next to Aunt Edna's poetry collection about homemade jams?

But I get these calls a lot--I mean, enough that I'd care to remark on it--the random e-mails and phone calls from strangers who tell me they've read that book, Junkie Love, and that it's made a difference in their lives, however you define that.  It's been happening regularly since I returned the Bay Area.  And these are sincere reactions from people who actively seek me out.  We're not talking thousands, or even hundreds.  But there have been six, ten people, who didn't know me, read something I wrote, and it moved them enough to try to find me and tell me this.  I won't deny the ego boost.  (Of course, it's an ego boost.)  But writing, like all art, needs to be an ongoing dialogue.  The best of it at least.  Creation doesn't occur in a vacuum but with an audience.  And phone calls like the one I got on Sunday means that, even if my agent hasn't found our book a home (yet), I am doing something right.  And that is enough to get going.  At least on this Monday morning.

And in conclusion, a complete non-sequitor.  For Jimmy.  Because I love Jimmy, and I need him to stay alive so I can steal this thoughts.  (And it's true.  I have the monkeys.  And I will let them loose.  Someday.)