drive-in movie speaker haiku

the chunk of steel in the driver's side window how a walk to the snack bar is an experience of dopplered sound with each car while the crunch of gravel underneath my feet & the ambient air of a hot summer NorCal night oh where is it now where can i purchase that tinny music

haiku at LACMA

where i learned to see beauty in the boxing paintings of george bellows

where the day was bright & long & green

where students sat on the floor copying the masters

where i knew somewhere near bukowski was living & writing

where the coolest dude i would ever see sat outside 

dressed in black jeans black button-down shirt & motorcycle boots

where music & line & color opened a trapdoor under my feet & mind

where still, even right now, i am falling in love

suburban haiku: that ineffable july evening sun

 

buzzcocks haiku

walking midtown late afternoon at 100 F

dog walkers on every corner

houseless citizens setting up for the night

roasted meat smells at the corner bistro

hurly-burly

horror & beauty

the beat of a city felt in the palms of the hand

it seems so real

so why can't i touch it?

anti-anti aging haiku

the next life-ending solar flare is predicted to happen at. . .

pay attention

pay attention

no don't, but 

say

hello!

it's a summer friday nite & you want that drive-in feeling so you watch the opening credits & intro to escape from new york [1981]

i fucking love this movie.  sheer cinema brilliance by the writer/director, & film composer, john carpenter.  i so loved this flick that i convinced my parents to take me to see this movie at the Sac 6 Drive-Ins [still showing films to this day!] during that summer of 1981 as often as their sanity would allow.  i loved this score so much i took my cheap ass tape recorder & recorded this opening theme by sticking my tape recorder under the drive-in speaker.  you know that kind of speaker that you attached to your car window & had that very tinny sound?  yeah!  i wish i still had that tape for i am sure i also captured the ambient sounds of a summer night at the drive-ins.  the crunch of the gravel under footfalls & rolling truck & car tires, that doppler effect of many speakers playing the same movie, people walking by going to & from the snack bar.  a whole world of movie-going that is not quite lost in time but rarer today.  for those were hot summer nites!  

please allow me to introduce to you the always fabulous, brilliant poet alex gildzen, 'Aging Wildly,' interviewed on The Poet's Bench in Palm Springs, CA

 

three great speeches from fictive u.s. presidents for the 4th of july

it's been a quiet week.  surprisingly.  because usually the lighting of fireworks starts a week before this holiday.  but tonight it seems everyone saved up to light them all off right now.  as i type, with my window open to the warm july night, it sounds like the front line of a war.  i noticed, today, the great many homes, in neighborhoods up & down & across my fair city, are proudly displaying an american flag.  so are we.  for america is an idea & an ideal.  worthy of them too even if our present time seems to contraindicate the idea & ideal just so.  

so in the spirit of this great american holiday here are three speeches from fictive u.s. presidents.

1.  the west wing [1999 - 2006].  president bartlett's speech here is goosebumpery.  martin sheen delivers this speech with great aplomb.  aaron sorkin's writing is a balance of nobility, grace & pride.  president bartlett may be the greatest u.s. president in american fiction.   

2.  independence day [1996].  i have come to love this flick.  when i first watched it, 30 years ago, i agreed with the new yorker's summation that this was a work of 'spectacular nothing.'  i've long since changed my mind.  this flick is a summer movie deluxe.  it's got a killer cast, fantastic FX, & the director, roland emmerich, delivers such goofball panache to what is, in essence, a summer popcorn movie.  but when president whitmore, played by bill pullman, gives his st. crispin's day speech, oh wow!  for again, this speech is evidence that america, & being american, is an idea & an ideal.  

3.  ioiocracy [2006].  now this is a movie.  a satire of u.s. culture, political & popular, this flick is a bastion of hilarious counter moves against our own current culture, political & popular.  but i will say that president dwyane elizondo mountain dew herbert camacho, played by the great terry crews, only wants what is best for his people.  so he gets the smartest man in the world, not sure, wonderfully essayed by luke wilson, to create a three-point plan, to fix everything! president camacho's state of the union speech is a miracle of theater & persuasion.  

there you have three fictive american presidents giving the speeches of their lives.  

the fireworks are still lighting the Sac sky.  i love it.  i love the holiday.  one of my favorites, behind halloween.  because it is a summer holiday, & an american holiday.  for whoso chooses to celebrate this day is american.