Another One

Da Bear's Original Songs

Just a bit awkward

http://www.deargirlsaboveme.com
This is a photo from the above blog- funny stuff. I went out to hop on my bike for a 40 mile ride with the Boy Scouts on Sunday morning and discovered I had a flat and about 15 minutes to change it, if I decided to. It seemed too hard. So I put air in my daughter's bike- also oiled the chain and off I went. I'm a big guy and have a big bike with a big frame. Hers was normal sized, but with the cruising handlebars my knees didn't hit anything at least. The legs cramps at 9:00 pm last night were the most negative part of it. It was a bit larger than this one.

Played with Sawtooth on Saturday morning at a Convalescent Home. I took my little video thing with me and set it up on a ladder to film us. Guess what? You can't see me in this one either. I told the singer to move toward me a bit so he wouldn't be out of frame and when he moved, his music stand was in front of me. The same thing happened last Sunday night, when the band I sort of manage played at Boulevard Music in Culver City. Most of the audience couldn't see me and the little bit of the video that did get taken doesn't include any of me. I sit down when I play. If I stand up, I'm 6'8" and will be the center of attention whether I am or not. I was trying to do my part for the folks I playing with.

I just ordered this today:

I ain't gonna put in all this work so nobody can see me. This should put me at eye level with everyone that's standing up.

The sound of Wayne and then me singing

Goofing on Saturday Morning

That's Dan and me posing for the only photo from last Saturday's Meet-up. It's his banjo, and I can't play left handed. It's Friday night again. I'm going tomorrow to play with "Sawtooth" at a Convalescent Home in Long Beach. Maybe I'll get somebody to video it for me. Played Wednesday night again at the open mic- did a tape of that, but I ain't gonna put it up. Not enough ohmp in my singing to make it entertaining yet. Got to work on that. They are laughing at my jokes however. Got a new one for next Wednesday. Wrote a new song last Sunday. Maybe...maybe. Kinda want to write something. The new book is not ready for take off yet. Should be reading my buddy's novel- should be working on the closet doors that have been sitting out here my studio for three months.  We're going to our first Squaredancing Square Dance tomorrow night. It's raining here in LA again. Got a 40 mile ride with Scouts on Sunday. Should be reading the 1000s of pages my writer's group is sending me. Should plan and work and get ready. Think I'll go play the banjo for a while.

Reading the last of the Calvino today. Its a collection of three novellas that I hadn't read: The Watcher, Smog and something about an angry ant- its at work in my desk, so I'm not sure.

As life goes, I'm finishing off the works of my favorites. This is it for him. He's dead, can't write no more.
Maybe I'll work up a list of finished with: Did I do that all ready?
Flaubert, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Frisch, Sherwood Anderson, James Agee, Keasey,
Not as many as I thought.   

Places I have been

This is a Lois Magnolia. There was a writer's group that I had to invite myself to. A friend by the same name started a group and I heard about it. So I called and got myself invited. We met at a Hamburger Hamlet in West LA and had dinner and read to each other out loud. I really didn't want feed back at this point in my life, I just wanted to go somewhere and read it out loud. The lady that had wrote for The Love Boat (that I've mentioned earlier) was in it and a lady that wrote romance novels- and a lady that wrote plays and humorous pieces. And Bobbie, who had run the group in the park years before. People came and people left, I kept bringing in new people: Lorraine and Annette and Rex and I forget who else. We met once a month for a thousand years. I began with the second draft of the book I've since published, then there was a screenplay about Robert Louis Stevenson's romance with Fanny and then three years on the Joe Strong novel- both the screen play and novel went through two drafts and these folks listened to good potions of all of it. They had very little to say except that I was too dark. (Another woman, a poet, that I had brought into the group as well, would try to leave before I read.) I included them in gourmet outings at my house and invited a couple of them over to listen in on the jug band and to check out a male single guy in the band who was their age.  Then something began to happen, I was being flaked out on, on my invitations, and then it became clear to me that they didn't want to meet with just me- like I wasn't really their friend. And they didn't seem to want to bother with me or anything I was doing.
We moved from one restaurant to another to another - I always drank too much and tipped too much and was always shorted on the check by everyone almost all the time. When I and another friend asked for something different from the arrangement, we were ignored.
It died. Lorraine is in assisted living in Indiana, Annette is in Sweden, Bobbie can't go out at night any longer. The poet that didn't want to hear my writing goes to bed at 8:30 now from the looks of her. The ones still in LA pretty much ignored my invitation to a New Year's day music party. The poet did come and left. She still doesn't want to see any of my writing.
What the hell, it was just me performing. I've just moved on into another form of performing. C'est moi.
They will miss the Daydee book.

Parent Fiasco #1

I decided that we needed to go camping. The twin bears were pre-kindergarden- don't remember exactly how old they were. We borrowed some stuff and I bought a tent and off we went. Left the baby at home. When we checked in, the ranger warned us about mountain lions. Apparently one had been spotted. My wife was reassured. We had a nice hike and a campfire and dinner and then put the two to bed in the tent with water bottles in case they got thirsty in the night. I borrowed a pup tent from a friend that turned out not to be long enough, so I positioned it under a card table to protect my head. They proceeded to spill the contents of one bottle all over their tent, soaking their sleeping bags and all of their clothes. After momentary consideration, we had to pack everything up and drive back home in the middle of the night since there was nothing else to do. I threw everything into the back of the van and spent the entire next day untangling the whole mess.

Clubs That I Wouldn't Want to Have Me As A Member

When I started going to the Chamber Pot Society (see yesterday's post) it was very clear that most of the people that attended and participated felt that the "art" - the poetry, the literature, etc. was sacrosanct and so was the person that created it. The poets were all lyrical song birds, the novelists were genius and profound and wrote like arch-angels. It was very apparent I did not fit in with this attitude. I look at it all for entertainment and knowledge AND for the bones sticking out, the clunkers, the mistakes. There were very few that were geniuses. I was too cynical and too disrespectful to be a true member of the club. I loved to drink too much and play mind games with them. I recall an hour long discussion with Paul and later with Chris Farmer about how I could make a case that Hemingway and Faulkner and Steinbeck were all romance writers. Anyhow, since I didn't have the right attitude, I didn't get included with other groups that were off shoots. There was a writers' group that Larry Spingarn ran over in the valley. The other writers in the Chamber Pot all went, except me. I finally went to him and asked to be included and was invited and went once. It was boring and not even insightful. There was the Contra Nostra that I was invited to and then uninvited to because they knew I was sacrilegious- god forbid I might show up with some off the wall interpretation of something they had studied in depth for several months. Even had some friends that belonged to it.  I honestly believe to this day that I was too scary or not serious enough. Lenny, who ran the Chamber Pot for years, would not let me do Sherwood Anderson for 5 years. Wouldn't let me do John Gardner at all. I didn't quite understand until he published his silly little book on Chaucer and purposely didn't invite me to the publication party. Who am I to talk - who doesn't even have a degree, let alone spent years beating a dead horse to death.

There was another poetry group that I wasn't invited to, but I can't really remember the folks' names now.
One of 'em read some of his own poetry at the session we had of everyone's creative stuff and I was particularly interested in hearing his, since he had done lectures on a bunch of poets over the years. He stunk. The part I couldn't understand was how he could not hear the difference between his stuff and the stuff he lectured on.

The Chamber Pot

While it wasn't a writer's group, it did offer a great deal to my education and gave me direction to my various hobby horses. The Chamber Pot Society existed in West LA for maybe twenty years? I came into it late. It was a large group of folks, that originally met once a month to discuss poetry (my understanding anyway) and it grew and grew. It met once a month at different people's houses or apartments and a speaker or presenter would give forth on the subject he or she signed up to do. These things were attended by up to forty people and food was usually served and it was a great way to met other intellectuals (single smart people) and learn about things you hadn't focused on before. There were poets that were examined, music, art and literature and philosophy and the latest in intellectual fads. You had to sign up a year in advance and were responsible for coming up with your own location for hosting it. The host generally paid for it, you could put out a donation basket but would seldom get more than thirty bucks. I did several: the first was on James Agee's "Death In The Family" - I did it at a friend's condo, picked apart the book, talked about how it was put together after Agee's death, did a slide photo interpretation of the intro that had been set to music by Samuel Barber. Also, was scared to death myself because I had never spoken in front a large group of people before and drank coffee and wine all night and managed it. I did Robbe-Grillet's "In The Labyrinth," did Robert Frost, Kokoshka the painter, Stevenson's "Travel With A Donkey." Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," Winslow Homer the painter, Mead's :Coming of Age In Samoa."  Usually worked on each for the year before hand- it was a great way to concentrate one's interest and have an end result. Did Virginia Woolf's "The Waves" - did a little three voice play from Woolf's diaries, her letters and from the book itself to dramatize the process. This accounts for about 10 years of my life. I went to the other folks' presentations and  read stuff that I might not had gotten to. I hosted a friend doing the first volume of Proust in my slum apartment in Oakwood in Venice. In it's hayday, it was quite fun. The organizers retired from doing it and it reorganized as a group called Bloomsbury West, but they imposed a time limit and the group really wasn't as smart as it used to be. I went to one of the last one on Flaubert's "Salambo" which the presenters and the people who said they read it, didn't quite get the meaning of it. It was sad. The last one I did on Mead, one of the guests started complaining that I was taking too long, because they wanted run off to a restaurant for dinner and how dare I bore them. I never did a presentation longer than 90 minutes, which is the length of a movie. I timed my things before I did them.  
It was was to meet other single people and to drink and be silly. They did Freud one time and there were fifty very angry ex-Freudian patients that riled at the presenter. Kistel did one on music that went on for three hours. We even one of folks' creative works which was fun. I turned to building web sites when the whole thing died.
The original organizers did have a chamber pot that someone had given them. 

Three Men In A Boat

Just finished this- the book itself, that it. Great bunch of silliness from 1890. About going up the river Thames and others to Oxford and back. Quotable things in here, and still read after 120 years. Perfect for a rainy day

 "Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing."

Jerome sat down to write Three Men in a Boat as soon as the couple returned from their honeymoon. In the novel, his wife was replaced by his longtime friends George Wingrave (George) and Carl Hentschel (Harris). This allowed him to create comic (and non-sentimental) situations which were nonetheless intertwined with the history of the Thames region. The book, published in 1889, became an instant success and is still in print. Its popularity was such that the number of registered Thames boats went up fifty percent in the year following its publication, and it contributed significantly to the Thames becoming a tourist attraction.
In its first twenty years alone, the book sold over a million copies worldwide. It has been adapted to movies, TV and radio shows, stage plays, and even a musical. Its writing style influenced many humorists and satirists in England and elsewhere.
With the financial security the sales of the book provided, Jerome was able to dedicate all of his time to writing. He wrote a number of plays, essays and novels, but was never able to recapture the success of Three Men in a Boat. In 1892 he was chosen by Robert Barr to edit The Idler (over Rudyard Kipling). The magazine was an illustrated satirical monthly catering to gentlemen (who, following the theme of the publication, appreciated idleness). In 1893 he founded To-Day, but had to withdraw from both publications because of financial difficulties and a libel suit.
In 1898, a short stay in Germany inspired Three Men on the Bummel, the sequel to Three Men in a Boat. While reintroducing the same characters in the setting of a foreign bicycle tour, the book was nonetheless unable to capture the life-force and historic roots of its predecessor, and it enjoyed only a mild success. In 1902 he published the novel Paul Kelver, which is widely regarded as autobiographical. His 1908 play The Passing of the Third Floor Back introduced a more sombre and religious Jerome. This was a tremendous commercial success but was condemned by critics – Max Beerbohm described it as "vilely stupid" and as written by a "tenth-rate writer".

Rhubarb Meringue Pie In Action

We were cooking.

USC Writing Program

Just before last little bear was born, I had started taking night classes at the USC Master of Professional Writing Program. I wasn't sure exactly why, other than I thought maybe I might finish it and.or someone might hook me up to an agent or a publisher. Herbert Selby was teaching then, and I thought it would cool to take a class with him, but I could never get in. Had a play writing class with a guy (who's name I can't remember) who had made an entire career out of being in the Actor's Studio at the same time that de Niro and Pacino and Hoffman were there. They were friends, so he wrote screenplays for them and the producers bought them. What this guy knew about stage writing, I don't know. I can't remember if any of his plays were put on. Anyway, I wrote a
soliloquy in the opening of mine and everyone in the class copies me.The teacher kept looking at me each time one popped up.

There was also a asshole who assigned you his books so you had to buy them and it was soon apparent that he wrote with his dick. A friend in the "business" told me he was known among TV writers as the machine. He typed, endlessly. He had nothing to teach because he didn't think. I was also dinged on my perfect 4.0 because I had to miss one of his classes.

And then I had Mr. Rechy (above) for a couple of classes. The first one was on campus. The second was at his apartment over by Griffith Park. He was intelligent and had things to say. He would not let you into his apartment until the exact time, so you couldn't come early. He had a coffee table full of crystal vases, and would put out a heavy fold out cover on his dining room table before we would sit down to work. I soon discovered that I had to edit my critiques and do them after him, because we were repeating each other. (And he was the teacher.) I had made casual comment about having a nice antique copy of The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Flaubert and he disappeared for a good ten minutes to check if the novel really existed because it was one he had never heard of. I think he thought I was bullshitting him. He did turn me on to an agent, but when I went to meet her, she was a real downer. I think because she thought I was too old. Rechy also made it very clear to all of us that he had a "Special" Writer's Group that only published writers were allowed in- which excluded all of us.
I got an autographed copy of one of his books.

The littlest bear was born and the issue of driving downtown for a couple of evenings a week was becoming impossible. The teachers weren't all that hot, to be honest with you. They were just doing it for extra income. But if you are an idiot, I'd suggest a class with Rechy. You could learn a lot.

He also had a story about meeting Faulkner in the NYC Central Park when he was young.

 

You Miss Me?

I been buzy. Rhubarb Meringue Pie played the Westchester Boy Scout Troop 915 Annual Pancake Breakfast Sunday morning- an hour and a half for compliments and a free breakfast. Then we ran off to my bear's Senior Recital Sunday afternoon.

She did wonderfully. Videos to come as soon as I load them up to YouTube.

Monday night, ran off to a little theater group in Santa Monica to see if they were interested in looking at my play. Turned out they weren't a theater group at all, but a group of writers that wanted to think about being a theater group. Only a couple of real actors and a lot of touchy feely stuff that I'm too old for.
They looked like this, and we know who these two are.

Been Square dancing and oh and Saturday went off to Santa Monica to play with a new meet-up group for bluegrass jam. I think I get to go home Thursday night.

More Writer's Education

David and I became buddies of a sort- we were the same age, single and writing, He was Jewish and a Texan, I was a tall Wasp from Indiana. Absolutely nothing in common in our backgrounds. I was friends with a writer actually making a living at it, and he was friends with someone he thought was talented, but also had "had" a life and was having one. I could sleep without a lot of women, he only had a handful of relationships in his whole life, He introduced me to a friend of his that was also a TV writer, and we went out. This was at the time when I was very cynical about popular culture and television. I hadn't had a TV in years. Anyway, I recall a discussion over dinner with this lady and saying "you know, that claptrap they put on television, the Love Boat school of writing."

And then I realized that this was probably the person he had meant when he was telling stories about a friend that had written for The Love Boat. It was. She had written for Mary Tyler Moore and Laugh-In and had wrote part of the pilot for Love Boat. Then things began to slide.

Anyway, she and David and I would have these dinners where we would pick apart each other's writing and everything else we had seen and watched and read. They both suggested Bob McKee (see below). Back then, his seminar was like a six class thing over several weeks and it was money. I took it. It was well worth it. It convinced me that a novel had to have as much structure as a movie or a play, Even if you are writing something serious, rather than a potboiler. I had thought that maybe he had died, but I guess not. This ad just came from Scripped, an on-line screen and play writing format for those of us who don't want to have to think about if it is the proper format. 

She and I started a screenplay together, but it fell apart like our friendship. I have always pushed and moved on with things. My characters (except for ole Joe Strong, in the lastest finished novel) have always pushed. David never would write with me. I offered him a partnership on the Robert Louis Srevenson screenplay, and he didn't want it. After I finished it, we were no longer in touch. I certainly wasn't going to ask him for help to peddle it. 

But that was a good time- at those dinners. It made me feel like a professional, even though I wasn't. At that point they treated me as an equal. I'd recommend this guy.

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Outside the Bunker

Outside the little bunker south of the Federal Building there was a tennis court. One day, when we were early, David and I and Bob (with CP, sitting as usual on his bad hand that he had no control over), were sitting on the bench outside watching some girls we didn't know play a game. It shortly turned into a leering giggling droolfest for the other two guys. I was embarrassed and got up and walked away and they got mad at me. The other Bob (who wanted to write like Mickey Spillane) was perpetually questioning me about who I was seeing and what I was doing at night. When Sita started coming to the group and it was apparent that we were seeing each other, he couldn't get enough of her and would provoke arguments just so she would talk to him. I left them arguing one night and went home alone on the bus. I was good to people until I wasn't. There's few I'd seek out to talk to these days- I suppose it was that way then. Who's on your list?

My spouse. Lorraine Levin. My kids. Lamont. 

There's a few I respect: Rex, Rosaline, Joel, my brother, Betsy, Bob (with CP), Dan & Rob, my backpacking buddies. Joe

Part of the writing, is being ruthless with the material of your life- maybe that carries over to be ruthless with your friends. There seems to be a point of diminishing returns for for me.
You know who I am interested in talking to is: Dom, and Mat and Justin and all the kids in Troop 915 and the bears' buddies.


You know who I am interested

UCLA Writers Extension Courses

They have these Writer's Classes at UCLA that several of my friends and others have taken. I did try it a couple of times, but for the life of me I can't recall the first time. So much for lasting impressions, The second time was with this lady, who I really don't recall either, but we were supposed to be reading Jean Rhys and writing for critique. These were the days when it seemed a lot of people were reading skinny little books and talking profoundly about them. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was out at about this time.

I have nothing against Jean Rhys. But I was left with a feeling of lightness myself. I couldn't see how her writing benefited me and the lady who was teaching the class wasn't particularly well versed in the craft herself. I decided to drop out and (the reason I remember it at all) was that the teacher begged me to stay and promised me an A if I finished the next 3 or 4 weeks. It was all very flattering. 

You know, the other part of the writing education that I don't think I've addressed, is the writing itself. One does have to write to be a writer. By the 80s, I had written three books and a pile of short stories and a pile of poetry- all of which, perhaps weren't very good. but you do need to sit down and write.

One of those days

When you come from a world where the worse was always what happened, you smell trouble even if it doesn't exist. When you are around uncommunicative people who are not very bright, it's easy to conceive that through no fault of their own, they will shaft you. The bright ones will sacrifice you at a drop of a pin. I've been reassured. I will believe it when I see it.

 

Banjo Boy

More Workshops -LA Style

So after I was fired by Beyond Baroque, I was deserted by wife and child and I was single once again. No car, no refrigerator, one pair of shoes that I had to break down and replace. Took the bus all over the city. Had a cooler in the apartment that I bought ice for and kept snacks in. Had a yard sale when it became very apparent that the ex was not coming back. So this TV writer that showed up at my Beyond Baroque Workshop had invited me to this Workshop that met behind the Federal Building in a rec building in the park. He told me it was run by the radical that was in and out of jail on protest arrests. I went.
It was Bobbie, a little lady who was a professional editor and had been an editor of Bachy magazine, a West LA Literary Magazine. (No radical at all, except for the maryjane in her back yard.) Bob, a shrink with CP, who wrote brilliantly and funny. Rod Bradley, who had sold his first novel to a big publisher, but had sold nothing since. Another Bob, a Probation Officer, who was trying to write like Mickey Spillane. There was a Polish or Russian Jewish lady that was writing really good stuff about how her parents hid her in a Catholic School for girls during WWII and how she survived even though all the other girls knew she was Jewish. And another Bobbie and Sandy who wanted to write. And David, the TV writer that had a long list of credits. This became the beginning of my social life after the divorce. We were mostly all mid-thirties and free. The second Bobbie had a Friday night artist party once a month. David and I became good friends and had a mutual respect thing going for a while. I fooled with the ladies. They fooled with us. I went drinking a lot with Sandy's crowd. I developed a better reality awareness of what fiction was and could be and outgrew trying to write like James Joyce. Was it every week? It seems so long ago, but it was great fun- I had come from several years of working seven days a week and having no friends to making a lot of friends and was like a kid in a candy shop- the women were all there.
I was doing open mikes at poetry readings all over Los Angeles too. Met a lot of good people. Thru David I met Marion whose friend had a relationship Paul Kistel, who brought me to the Chamber Pot Society.
I wrote my first real novel out of a conversation with David one night over wine and donuts. These folks were well worth knowing and my writing grew from it.

Forgot about this -its wonderful

Saturday Morning

The routines of our lives. I no longer seem able to sleep past 7:00 am, even if it's a Saturday. Of course the dog helps. She bugs us until we are both up and on the coach reading the morning paper and having coffee. This is what we have done for the last twenty years. Why aren't we in our usual place? Then we shower and eat a bit and I go scoop up her weekly leavings because the gardener comes on Saturday about noon and they won't clean up after your dog, they just mow over it. Usually, these days my buddy and I go off to Long Beach to play music in a big circle in the park for a couple of hours. It's quiet around here. No other bodies snoring in bedrooms.

Went down to Chapman U last night to see the University Choir that my bear sings in. Great music, funny conductor, marvelous voices. If you ever get a chance.

All is calm in this part of the world.

   

Done

The play is the thing. Mine is done -as far as I can take it right now. Going to find a theater company to work on it from here. I found one in Santa Monica that I'm going to visit on the 14th. Its the story of Charlie & Patty- a love story. To be honest the play started as a dream years ago. In the dream the guy was thrown out of the apartment building and the front gate was locked and I was one that had to stand out front and tell him what we had done. The first go through with it had a a guy as the lead, the divorced father of the the 15 year old girl who had moved into the building where his daughter and ex-wife lived to try to reconnect with them. And of course the evil drug lord and pimp that lived upstairs. It never quite worked. When I was taking a Playwriting class at USC 18 years ago, I took the character out completely and started with the 15 year old girl. The first half worked pretty well, but I had no ending. Now I have an ending, and all the rest of it. I think it's pretty good. And a different kind of story. Everyone is gonna think it's my fantasy of getting the young girl even though you are an old fart. We know I don't write like that.

I printed out a couple of copies. It looks good printed.

Singing

Need one of these. Anybody got one? Actually I probably need 4 and a sound system to go with. Running a band is hard work. We have a gig playing for a Boy Scout Pancake Breakfast for an hour. No mics - no sound - a funky keyboard instead of a real piano. We will have to shout I guess. At what point do you decide you have to have this stuff? I'm off tonight for one more open mic night. This will mark the last of my original songs to this venue, so I got to write some more I suppose. Or move on to somewhere else. Los Angeles has lots of places to go. There's a place over by McCabe's and Canter's Deli Bar both have open mic nights. We shall see.

Inspiring

E---------------- - Inspiring Watermedia wih Collage Workshop March 7-9, 2011 (9:30am - 4pm) — The splash and flow of juicy watercolor and acrylic paint coupled with the surprising shapes and textures added by collage you have prepared yourself can add excitement to your life and life to your art! E----- will lead you through techniques and thought processes designed to maximize your creativity and the individuality of your paintings. But, recognizing that a resolved work of art is more than chance and excitement, E---- will help you to complete your work through attention to composition and the principles of design. E------------ is a signature member of N-- and W------, as well as a seasoned teacher and published artist with many awards. $235.00

What I could be doing. The second piece I ever sold was a collage I did in high school. (The first was a pencil drawing of a Frat house when I was in 8th grade- one of the guys that lived in the house bought it) When I was TA for a LAUSD Elementary School, I became the full time art teacher for the magnet 3rd grade. We did meaningful notebooks. The covers were magazines torn up in strips and glued back diagonally with spaces between each strip. Everyone loved them. I was even given the dubious distinction of being put in charge of the Holiday decorations in the auditorium for their big holiday show.                                         In another life, perhaps - after I get one where I'm writing all day.