skateboard the movie [1978]

 

how the hell have i not seen this flick until last night?!  i was an avid reader of skateboarder magazine in the late 1970s.  i had a banana board [a cheap plastic skateboard that was mass produced & sold everywhere].  i knew who tony alva was.  i even fondly remember seeing the extreme sports movie styled as a documentary go for it [1976] at the drive-ins which featured alva & a few other skateboarders.  but this particular movie?  nope.  

so when i clicked play i didn't know if this pic was a documentary of late '70s skaters & skating culture or a fictive film.  turns out it is the latter but with honest to betsy skating legends like alva & ellen o'neal.  the gist goes like this.  a down-on-his-luck sadsack hollywood agent, played by allen garfield, is in hock to the mob.  he needs a winner.  & at his wits end he finds a group of teen skaters.  one of them even leaped over his parked car.  amazed by these kids prowess on their boards he convenes a pro skating team to compete up & down the pacific seaboard.  hell, even my beloved hometown shows up as a rival skating team.

garfield is not without a kind of neurotic charm.  his charges include skating legends tony alva & ellen o'neal, indeed it is remarkable that the filmmakers included both girls & boys on the same skating team.  i could be quite wrong but i don't recall such teams integrated with both sexes when i was following skating back then.  still, the kids are all right.  even heartthrob leif garrett is in this pic.  but you might not know it for tho garrett gets top billing the real star is garfield, & skating a la '70s style.  

this is a throwback to an era of skating that was transitioning from the carve the bowl, headstands on a board, kind of skating to the skating of vertical walls & wild street skills a la rodney mullen.  even better was the era of the late 1970s captured by the filmmakers which gave me heaps of nostalgia.  indeed, my nostalgia of this era of skating is a kind of soft proof that this is a good work of exploitation cinema.

two kings of horror together in a fight of fright!

 

la ciudad nocturna

 

i got the middle of the week blues so let me put on a record & let us dance like no one is looking to 'i wanna be yr dog'

i was a regular viewer of david sanborn's music TV show in the late '80s, 'night music', which was broadcast very late sunday night.  i was thrilled to see sonic youth on the program & i have not seen this performance since buying my first copy of daydream nation.  sanborn collected a variety of killer artists & the close-out of the show would be all the artists performing one song.  that song here is 'i wanna be yr dog' by iggy pop.  so fucking good that everyone, including folk duo the indigo girls, are killing it.  ah!  such sweet noise!  i fucking love it!

skateboards & retirement

for jonathan hayes

i was asked at work how long i've been there doing this work

long enough to get near retirement

& when you retire will you & the missus [yep, he said missus] buy a RV & travel this fair land

i've traveled a bit already besides we live in the greatest [arguably] state in the country everything is here

then you can travel these californian roads

i have many many times 

then what will you do

i think i will get me a skateboard

then what

learn to ride it again or maybe hang it on the wall as art

for i can never skate like i did when i was a lad but i can imagine the streets rolling beneath my wheels as it once felt like being born again or maybe on second thought perhaps i'll skate like the devil-in-me go for broke at length upside & sideways full bore wu wei a livable death at last

poem in concrete

 

carlos murphy's

for whatever reason the restaurant, Carlos Murphy's, popped up in my mind tonight as i was collecting the photos i posted earlier.  those pics are the result of a long walk i took in the early evening a couple of weeks ago thru midtown/downtown listening to Halloween radio on my phone.  but why Carlos Murphy's?  i dunno exactly.  it specialized in a fusion of irish-mexican fare.  located across the street from Cal Expo, home of the CA State Fair, it was a chain restaurant that had locations, i just learned from a quick google search, in Emeryville, & other cities.  i admit that i never ate at Carlos Murphy's.  have no excuse why not.  i think it had a reputation as an older crowd's dating scene.  i could be wrong about that.  my parents never bothered to take the family there.  & by the time i was old enough to go on my own my interests often led me elsewhere.  but just the idea of a marriage between mexican & irish dishes sounds interesting.  even its name is a hybrid, like so many things that are of CA & American culture[s].  Carlos Murphy's folded in the late '80s or sometime in the '90s.  the building sat derelict for many years.  until it was torn down.  now the whole area is rebuilt with medical buildings, apartment complexes etc etc.  my memories are not as keen as they used to be.  partly due to age, i guess.  i recall reading online a bit of advice.  take pictures of everything.  because everything changes & when they do you will have your memories of places, people & things preserved.  how often have you driven past some place & asked yourself, what was there before this?  because our memories fade or self-delete we often forgot even the very things we would look at for years.  until they are gone.  replaced by something else.  so Carlos Murphy's is now a memory of a restaurant that i'd see so often i took it for granted.  an 'irish-mexican cafe' because why the hell not.  

peace & love  

new world co.

 

bard's eye view

 

it's saturday nite, you got the america blues, so you wanna hear a rock&roll protest song by brandi fucking carlile!

an old home movie on videotape

put in the videocassette & press play

you hear that old familiar click & rattle

of the VCR when onscreen the scene is

a moment in your travels in sweden 

at the viking burial mounds outside Uppsala

the summer sky peppered with huge white clouds

an ordinary swedish summer day 

& the mounds are ancient 

things that take your breath away

when a tour bus pulls into the parking lot

stops & tumbles out is a group of elderly americans 

making their own holiday 

funny loud & typical you hear one man say

'i've heard two things about sweden

its smorgasbords & its beautiful women

i've seen its women now where are the smorgasbords!'

the tape stops at that final declaration

of naivety & industry 

 

of a man who knows nothing 

but then everything centers toward him

as a stay against decay & death

death holds sway 

which holds its resolve for everyone

under the bright clear swedish summer sun

 

don't let the sun go down on me

 

i love live performances.  i watch a lot of it on youtube.  be it music & poetry readings.  i prefer going to see bands/musicians in person, of course.  the energy one gets from the band that then feeds the band to take it higher is like going to church.  in the phrase of the late sly stone, live music can take you higher.  poetry readings too.  except that i find my poetry reading nourishment more on youtube than in person.  but nothing beats a good poet reading well in person.  it can take you higher.  so then, i have a couple of live performances to look forward to this month.  my mother-in-law & i will see humorist david sedaris this sunday.  i have been a big fan of sedaris for well over 30 years.  i remember the first time i read his essay, 'Diary of a Smoker' about the history of cigarette smoking in his family.  when he said that he had a picture of his mother breastfeeding his sister, while pregnant with another sister, then leaning forward toward the held zippo to light the cigarette between her lips i busted out laughing, & i felt seen!  i come from a family of smokers too.  later this month anna & will head over to the Crest Theater to see andy bell, the singer for the wonderful technopop duo, Erasure, who will perform solo.  dude has a magnificent set of pipes.  but i am bummed that the great rockabilly band, The Stray Cats, have cancelled their tour because of brian setzer's chronic illness.  we had tix to see the Cats later this month at the Hard Rock in wheatland.  i am, as i've stated before, at heart a greaser/hippie/punk, & i love, really love, rockabilly.  i saw the Cats, with my brothers, in 1983 at the Memorial Auditorium.  the doowop group, 14 Karat Soul, opened for them.  it was a killer show.  here's to brian setzer getting well soon.   praise be for live music & live poetry readings.  which have sustained me & continues to nourish me as i stare at my years of a, so far, not so short a life.  i am, after all, looking down the barrel of 60 years on this green & blue rock.  so, in the words of elton john, don't let the sun go down on me.  not yet, at least.  for their will be another show to see.

peace & love 

street song

dressed in work clothes he gets out of his car

in the Safeway parking lot 

holding a can of something

beans or soup? 

it was a long day at work

i just walked 2.5 miles home

thru downtown/midtown

my old muscles & bones feeling it

i pass him as i walk across the lot

excuse me, i say, when i pass

no bother, he says, then

hey are you homeless, he asked me

no

are you a teacher, he followed

i chuckled, no, perhaps i have that look

ok, you take care of yourself, he concluded

still with his can of soup or beans

in his hands standing

outside the entrance of Safeway

hope against hope married to the futility & beauty of living

belated halloween greetings from supercat jack

 

meeeow!