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".