The world used to be primitive.
The world used to be primitive.
But now we have hangover powders backed by chooglists and honest-to-fuck doctors. Some people would call that progress.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Category: Uncategorized (Page 208 of 1031)
Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple cloud,
She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;
She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave.Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
- Egypt is made out of sand and a river, and the river is more important.
- Unless you’re a dung beetle.
- Dung beetles couldn’t give a fuck about rivers.
- They go for dung.
- Humans, though, need steady access to ample water for societies to flourish, and the Nile was just that.
- And more!
- The Nile floods its banks every summer, and the water droplets that once were snows atop Ethiopian mountains now deposited themselves into plains abutting the river’s course, and they brought with them yummy and nutritious microbes and oogie-boogies and they fed the soil and made it as fertile as a Mormon rabbit.
- And then the sun shines for the rest of the year.
- That right there is the Garden of Allah, my friend.
- (Allah did not yet exist. I mean, Allah existed in the way that gods are retroactively eternal, but nobody in Cairo had yet heard of the Almighty Allah, PBUH.)
- There was so much food that it enabled the Ancient Egyptians to trade and become wealthy, and then get conquered by everybody else on the Mediterranean.
- The Assyrians, the Persians, the Alexander the Greats, the Romans, and finally the Muslims.
- Ancient Egypt was a jobber.
- If Ancient Egypt were a Spider-Man villain, it would be the Shocker.
- Just there to get whupped.
- (NOTA BENE: The Ancient Egyptians did not refer to themselves as “Ancient Egyptians.” Their name for themselves was “Eyeball-Vulture-Bread.”)
- (NOTUM BENUM: I’m proud of that joke and I don’t care what you think.)
- And Ancient Egypt is dead, anyway; they built a dam on the Nile called as Aswan, and now the river does not overflow its banks every summer, and there is no reason for our species to any longer be there, but still we remain and maybe still they do, too, all shaven and kohl-eyed and cat-fancying.
- We know so much about the Ancient Egyptians because they chose the most secure file medium of all: chiseled into stone.
- Tape rots, and so does paper, and digital objects are written in languages that die off quickly.
- Compact Discs, too.
- Sony told us CD’s lasted forever.
- While they were selling us CD’s.
- Maybe it’s our fault for believing them; in our defense, it seemed correct that the information stored on the disc would remain pristine and whole forever: CD’s involved lasers, and they were shiny, so therefore they would last until the future.
- That’s Logic 101, muchacho, but no: compact discs hold their charge for a decade or two and then it’s as barren as the deserts of Al Dabaa.
- Getting a slave to chisel your messianic rantings into the side of a boulder?
- That’s History 101, muchacho.
- Stop saying “muchacho” and get to the part with the Dead.
- This is a blog about the Grateful Dead.
- Right.
- This brings me to the Ottomans.
- Leave the Ottomans out of this.
- What about Sadat?
- You should mention Sadat.
- Anwar Sadat was in charge of Egypt in 1978; he had been in power for eight years and switched the country’s alliance from the Soviet Union to the correct team.
- FRIENDSHIP ENDED WITH IVAN.
- NOW JOHNNY IS MY BEST FRIEND.
- He was also the only Arab leader to attempt peace with the Israelis (after kicking their ass in the Yom Kippur War); the other Arab leaders threw him out of their club for this move, but some Swedish stiffs gave him an award.
- Concurrently, Sadat was trying to patch up the relationship between Egypt and Iran, which was still a Westernized country at the time.
- The dude was big on peace.
- He was, of course, shot in the face.
- That’s in ’81, but we’re still in ’78 so Sadat has not been shot in the face and Egypt is open and welcoming and willing to let a sweaty, hairy horde of infidels choogle in front of their biggest tourist attraction.
- But why did the Grateful Dead want to?
- I submit that there are two reasons.
- The Grateful Dead loved the Pyramids because the Grateful Dead loved sci-fi novels and conspiracy theories and tales of lost civilizations and secret histories, and the Pyramids figure into all of those categories.
- You name a hoodoo, I’ll show you a pyramid.
- Pyramids, Stonehenge, the Ganges, Uluru; you know: the Magickal Places.
- The Dead loved that shit.
- That is the first reason, and it is (in translation) what the band would tell you.
- There is another explanation: Because it was the Grateful Deadest thing they could do.
- Self-sabotage?
- Financially ruinous?
- Performances hampered by chemical dependency?
- Yes, yes, yes.
- Pink Floyd played in the ruins of Pompeii, but they had a professional film crew with them, and Metallica went down to Antarctica to do a gig for the scientists who may or not be The Things, but that was an advertisement for Coca-Cola.
- The Dead’s working vacation was entirely on their dime.
- 10, 700,000 dimes in today’s money.
- Which is very many dimes to spend without any return at all.
- The bill was so high because the Dead brought about a million people, or maybe a couple hundred, either one, and everyone stayed at a hotel called the Mena House and smoked hash and looked at ruins and varied in their levels of native-clothing adoption.
- (Garcia stuck with his usual jeans and a tee-shirt. Mickey immediately purchased a dishdasha and wouldn’t stop talking about the breeze on his balls.)
- The band didn’t pull the old-school “back of a flatbed truck” stage routine either; they were scheduled for a place called the Giza Light & Sound Theater.
- They projected movies onto the Sphinx that made it look–kinda–like he was speaking, and he would thunder his questions at you, and then maybe some fireworks .
- It was a show for the tourists, but when the Grateful Dead got there it looked like this:
- This was the 13th (soundcheck), 14th, 15th, and 16th of September, 1978.
- Theater holds 3,000 comfortably.
- They drew around 1,000, but it was a hip crowd.
- THE DEAD IN EGYPT, MAN!
- How could any self-respecting weirdo pass it up?
- There was the Family, and Bill Walton had a big group, and so did Kesey; Texas and New York and Los Angeles sent contingents; London and Europe: a gathering of the tribes.
- The Bedouin (who are an actual tribe) wandered up and listened, but chose not to gather.
- Egypt is a nigh-unbeatable card if you’re playing Headier Than Thou.
- That’s like dropping a Draw Four or a Black Lotus on the table.
- “I saw them at Winter–“
- “EGYPT, MOTHERFUCKER.”
- And it’s over.
- High-end drug dealers, and hustling college kids, and shit-starting novelists, and viscounts with ancient wealth, and NBA centers, and quite a few people who didn’t want to discuss their professions, but were still a ball to hang with.
- The Grateful Dead had purchased the crowd an excellent party.
- Which, you’ll note, is the opposite of how that’s supposed to go.
- So: they’re $1.7 million in the hole and the only possible way up and out is by producing some sort of salable product while in Cairo.
- This proved daunting.
- The band was down half-a-drummer, as Billy had broken his arm punching dick several weeks before.
- He says he was playing basketball, but he’s a lying dickpuncher..
- And, you know, just saying, no offense, in my opinion: if you have to lose half of a drummer, you wanna lose half of Mickey.
- That’s a fact.
- I’ll brook no debate.
- Garcia and Keith, both opiate addicts, cannot/are afraid to score; they are tamping down withdrawal with copious valium and over-the-counter codeine and it is mostly working.
- (Keith is usually cited–obliquely–for blame when the Egypt shows are dissected by the band. There are vague stories about piano tuners storming off in a tizzy, but the follow-up question–“Why wasn’t a new one called in?”–never gets asked. Cairo has piano tuners. It’s an enormous city. I cannot detect the piano’s cacophony, anyway. Keith’s pounding basic shapes four-to-the-bar like he did during his decline, but the piano’s not at fault.)
- Phil is drunk.
- As is Mrs. Donna Jean.
- Plus, everyone is tripping their nostrils off and has diarrhea.
- If this were a movie, it would be the middle of the second act, when things look dire for our heroes.
- But if this were a movie, the band would have overcome the obstacles to perform a triumphant show, thickly-gooey with jams and maybe even a Dark Star.
- They did not do that.
- They went the other way with it.
- It’s a mess.
- The last night is the best night, but it’s not a good night because the best part of the night is when someone other than the Grateful Dead is playing.
- At all three shows, Hamza el-Din and several dozen of his friends played their tars and ouds and tapped and clapped, the sound of the desert, and the Americans would join in piecemeal; the Egyptians would leave the stage, and the music, to them.
- Which worked.
- Every night.
- What didn’t?
- Everything else.
- Each set has at least one major trainwreck.
- Not each show.
- Each set.
- One point at which the song totters and stumbles drunkenly towards its own doom, like Peter O’Toole heading towards exposed machinery, at least once a set.
- And when they’re not actively falling off cliffs, they’re meandering, and Garcia plays poorly for the whole run, hitting clams with a frequency that would recommend him for a job as a clamboxer if such a thing existed.
- There was not even enough decent material to scrape together a single LP, the band decided after hearing the tapes.
- (Years later, the tapes would be relistened to and found to still suck. However, the Deadheads were also listened to and found to be willing to purchase a two-CD, one-DVD package with an essay and pictures and whatnot, and the folks at Rhino took the Deadheads’ side.)
- $1.7 million, never recouped, but no one missed it.
- It wasn’t about the money.
- It was about the doing the Grateful Dead thing.
- Which, invariably, cost a shitload of money.
- But what is money to the desert sky?
- What is it to the peek-a-boo moon?
- To the street vendor, to the smells previously unknown, to the stallions at dark, to the baksheesh, to the hashish, to the Nile at sunrise, to the Tomb of the Kings to the Riddle of the Sphinx?
- What is money to Egypt?
- In’shallah.
- (ADDENDUM: It must be pointed out that during the run-up to their concerts, the Grateful Dead attempted to integrate the Great Pyramid of Giza into their sound system because of course they fucking did.)
- (ADDENDUS: Go check out Grateful Seconds’ collection of contemporaneous articles and ephemera about the Egypt trip.)
“This fellow’s name is Spider-Man.”
No.
“Mexican Jumping Bean.”
Also no.
“Professor Heckler.”
Obscure allusion, but also also no. The gentleman’s name is Flea.
“I was circling the theme.”
Sure.
“And he plays bass for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“Again: I was within the bullseye.”
Flea’s starting to look like the highly underrated comic actor Toby Huss.
“No idea who that is.”
“Ah. That guy.”
He’s in everything.
“And he finds the time to be in a funky band.”
No, Bobby.
“Hell of a work ethic.”
Whatever you say, Bobby.
“How does it feel, Jenkins?”
“It feels like I’m gonna die, sir.”
“You are. But the fleep allows you to take the enemy with you.”
“I’m setting her down, sir.”
KLOMPABANG
“She sets down sexy, Jenkins. Like a lion mixed with a hooker.”
“General, I don’t know what this thing–”
“Fleep!”
“–is even for.”
“Reconnaissance.”
“It’s incredibly loud, sir.”
“Transport.”
“Only carries around 300 pounds, sir.”
“Chicks dig it.”
“General, this jerry-rigged potluck of bad ideas–”
“Fleep!”
“–is not gonna work. Sir, please let’s come up with another name.”
“Flying jeep! Fleep! Have you not received your portmanteau training, Jenkins?”
“I must have been sick that day in Boot Camp.”
“Jam two words together and boom you got a new one. Words are unique in that fashion, Jenkins. For example, if you jam two hamsters together, you don’t get a new hamster. Still two. And now they’re angry. Or dead. Depending on the velocity of the together-jamming.”
“Sir.”
“Or gerbils. Same rules apply to gerbils as did to the hamsters. Mice. Any rodent. Let’s say any rodent.”
“Sir.”
“Fleep!”
“It’s just a terrible name, sir. It’s too cute. It needs to be ferocious and scary. We’re in the Army.”
“Are we?”
“I assumed so.”
“Well, we’re not wet. So we’re not in the Navy. And we’re speaking in complete sentences, so we’re not Marines. I refuse to recognize the Air Force on principle. Yes, we’re in the Army.”
“Well, there you go, sir. We’re a fighting organization. Maybe the name should be something tougher.”
“The Disappointed Father.”
“Not emotionally tough, sir. Physically.”
“Yes, Jenkins. Excellent idea. We’ll call it the Childbirth.”
“Not what I was saying, sir.”
“Childbirth is one of the most difficult ordeals the human body can undergo, Jenkins! It’s like shooting a rugby ball out a garden hose!”
“Y’know, the fleep isn’t a bad name, after all. Sir, can we get past what it’s called and get back to what it does?”
“It flies, boy. Like a bird made out of clouds. It conquers the sky, that’s what it does, and he who controls the sky is but unto a god. This is written, Jenkins. It has all been written.”
“In the Field Manual?”
“In the souls of the pure and plain.”
“Sir, is this vehicle some sort of offering to any otherworldly beings?”
“Noooooooooooooo.”
“No?”
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaybe.”
“Oh, sir.”
“Jenkins, are your eyes prepared for the blast? Have them call their families, get their affairs in order. Make your eyes ready!”
…
“They’ve made their peace with the situation.”
“Blast your eyes!”
“Consider them well blasted, sir. Now back to the matter at hand: what occult machinations have you made this machine for?”
“Don’t ever alliterate in my presence again, Jenkins.”
“Noted, sir.”
“Have you any idea of the history of the dark magicks in war? Hitler was up to his ball in it. Collected all sorts of artifacts and doohickery and weebo-jumbums. None of it came to anything, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Because Hitler was as bright as a Philadelphia Birdnest.”
“I’m not familiar with the phrase, sir.”
“A dog turd someone has flung into a tree.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they live in Philadelphia, Jenkins. Keep up or prepare your eyeballs for reblasting.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hitler couldn’t tell his dick from a field full of barley. Once sent an entire battalion tramping through Italy looking for the Eldritch Spaghetti. The man didn’t do the reading.”
“Hitler had many flaws, sir.”
“He didn’t think big.”
“That was not one of the flaws, sir.”
“The fleep isn’t some trinket, Jenkins. We’re putting high-grade in the tank. No more Abandoned Gods for us. Minor demons? Not for us, thank you, we’re major leaguers. All the way to the penthouse with this one. The fleep will let us make contact with the big guy.”
“God?”
“Oh. No, the other one.”
“Please don’t make a deal with Satan, sir.”
“But we need to defeat Communism!”
“Not that way, sir.”
“Too late to call anything off now. The Dark One has already been alerted to us via the fleep’s very existence.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“It’s a flying jeep, Jenkins. I can’t think of a bigger middle finger to God.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now help me prepare for Satan’s arrival.”
“A ritual?”
“No, we need to put out a spread. I’m thinking lox.”
“Yes, sir.”
You don’t vote.
“I’ve tried! Three or four times a year, I’ll give it a go. I usually get thrown out of the post office.”
Sounds right. How do you decide who you’re going to vote for?
“Whoever reminds me the most of a drum.”
Yup.
“That’s why I went for Gary Johnson last election. Man’s the spitting image of a concert snare.”
And about as smart.
“Can’t be worse than what we’ve for now, right?”
Mickey, you would be better than what we’ve got now and you’re a deaf, drunken maniac who would turn the Treaty Room into a drum circle.
“And I smoke pot.”
Right.
Hey, Bobby. Rando?
“No, I think this is an actor. I’m thinking Foreign Aaron Eckhart.”
Yup. Maybe Hairy Bradley Cooper.
“Too tall. I, uh, met that fellow. The one from the movie where everyone was hungover. What was it called?”
The Hangover.
“Fitting. Fitting title. Because, as I said–”
Everyone was hungover.
“–all the characters were hungover quite badly.”
Did the Grateful Dead have a secret cure for hangovers?
“Sure: cocaine.”
Should’ve guessed.
“I don’t have too much good to say about that specific substance, but it’ll cut through the morning fog.”
True.
“Best way to get rid of a hangover is to not get one in the first place.”
Staying sober is generally the best policy.
“No, I meant having a strategy for your drinking.”
Ah.
“Gotta go top-shelf on spirits. That’s the first thing.”
You get what you pay for.
“Oh, yeah. And you gotta pace yourself. On the other hand, you don’t wanna be a pussy. Actually, I’m gonna change my answer: best way to get rid of a hangover is cocaine.”
Never change, Bobby.
“Even my shirt?”
CELL PHONE NOISE
“Goddammit. Why can’t these idiots get liquored up during the day like Thrush does? Hello?”
“Magafort, it’s Manafort!”
“Don’t call me that. Hello, Paul. Took the deal, huh?”
“Took it? Yeah, I took it. You ever seen The Accused? I took it like Jodie Foster took that bar.”
“Highly inappropriate, Paul.”
“I didn’t even get a pinball machine.”
“Move on or I’m hanging up.”
“Maggie, between you, me, and the multiple spy agencies listening in on this conversation, I did not come away from that negotiation well. Mueller took everything. All the houses. All the cars. All the bank accounts he knew about.”
“He knew about?”
“All the bank accounts. He took all the bank accounts.”
“You squealed?”
“Like Ned Beatty in Deliverance.”
“I am going to need you to stop referring to cinematic rape scenes. It’s just so unnecessary, Paul.”
“Hey, I’m going to prison. It’s on my mind. Although, I’ll most likely be assassinated before I even have the chance to be raped, so that’s something. There’s a silver lining.”
“Tell me about your deal. What did you tell them?”
“Everything, Maggie. You don’t understand what it’s like to be questioned by Robert Mueller. He just stares at you and crushes walnuts in his hand. Plus, he had the whole “dying in prison” thing to hang over my head. So he’s already operating from a position of power. But, still: the bit with the walnuts was very intimidating. I gave him everything. The meeting with Junior and Jared, the Pence thing, everything. And I taped everything.”
“Jesus, was everyone within a twenty-foot radius of Trump wearing a wire?”
“Everyone who wasn’t a moron, yeah.”
“Why were you taping everything?”
“Blackmail.”
“Ah. Were Junior or Jared recording?”
“No. They’re morons.”
“Sure.”
“He’s like a machine, Maggie. Mueller. All he does is swim and indict people and make baby Muellers. You ever see his eyes, the way they roll back all black when he’s about to subpoena somebody? Black eyes, like a doll’s eyes.”
“You’re talking about Jaws.”
“Those two softboys are next. Christ, I gave the government enough to send both their pale asses to jail forever. They both knew that meeting was about colluding with Russians. Junior wore a fucking tee-shirt that read I HEART COLLUSION in Cyrillic. And the morons put Donald on speakerphone, but he thought he was talking to Pizza Hut and kept shouting “Extra cheese!” so they hung up. Does that count as a felony? Being in the room where a conspiracy is taking place, but being too dumb to realize it?”
“Good question.”
“The man’s so stupid that he spawns philosophical discussions. That’s a rare and powerful stupid, Mag.”
“Can’t argue with that. What about the Vice-President?”
“Milky Jesusface? Yeah, next time he gets on his knees, it won’t be to pray. That man’s about to take some forceful dick. Big old red-white-and-blue, walnut-crushing dick right to the tonsils. He might even make that duck noise. Not gonna be pretty, I can tell you that.”
“For the last time: pick a new analogy other than sexual assault.”
“Mueller’s gonna shit on his chest.”
“Marginally better. Why?”
“Because I sent him memos outlining Donald’s involvement with the Russians and sold him on the fact that he’d be President by 2019. And some cash. I had quite a bit of cash sent to him. But, you know, it locked us up the Religious Fanatic vote.”
“Memos?”
“Maggie, have you been following my story? I left evidence everyfuckingplace I went.”
“You were not the most discreet criminal.”
“Nope. Literally any prosecutor who looked could’ve indicted me. Question.”
“Okay.”
“Has my family been murdered yet?”
“No.”
“I hope I’m murdered first, but knowing the people that are going to be ordering the killings, I’m pretty sure they’ll do my family first. I gotta tell you, it’s much easier to order someone else’s family executed.”
“Jesus, you’ve had families executed?”
“Not directly. But sometimes I would tell clients about problems, and then those problems would get hacked to death in the middle of the night. Did I cause that? Maybe. I had a part in it, let’s say that, but if we’re portioning up blame, I won’t take all of it.”
“Paul, you’re gonna die in prison.”
“No, I’m not making it to prison. I’m gonna die here in jail.”
“Probably.”
“Talk me off?”
“Goodbye, Paul.”
DIAL TONE NOISE EVEN THOUGH PHONES NO LONGER DO THAT
Hey, it’s Bobby with the Ace of Cups! Check it out.
…
That’s it?
I gotta clear my desktop. I got more open tabs than Dean Martin.
Gotcha.
New York wanted in, I suppose. Los Angeles has James Perse, and his schmucky schmatas priced to be worn on Instagram, but New York had not yet licensed the Dead’s iconography to fuse with haute couture.
Haight couture, if you’ll allow me.
But New York has that all cleared up now that Proenza Schouler has the license. What, you ask, is a Proenza Schouler? I don’t know, I’ll reply; go ask John Mayer. How, you continue, does one pronounce Proenza Schouler? Still I have no answers for you, but I am quite positive that the homosexuals and skinny women of Proenza Schouler will correct you in the most condescending way when you attempt it.
Whoa there, Archie Bunker.
It is a fact akin to gravity that everyone who works in the fashion industry is a homosexual or a skinny woman.
…
Yeah, you’re right, but I feel like maybe you shouldn’t just state it so baldly.
I’m moving on without your permission.
So: it is a sweater–an exclusive one, one that has been adapted–that comes in sizes XS-L; they have not sold out of the XL; there was never an XL. To afford a $925 garment, the purchaser must have a yearly income of all the money. This top will be bought using credit cards on which the billing and shipping addresses are not the same. In a just world, this sweater would lead to Communism. This is the piece of clothing that would knock over the first domino in the theory.
Or maybe this:
It’s inspired by the traditions in American craft. When William Shakespeare was inventing English, do you think it was so the phrase “It’s inspired by the traditions in American craft” could be written? Venturing farther into the sentence, misplaced modifiers are everywhere. The rules of grammar is not that hard.
HIGH-END CLOTHING BOUTIQUE PHONE NOISE
“Hello?”
Hi, is this Proenza Schouler?
“It’s pronounced Proenza Schouler.”
I can hear the sneer in your voice.
“You sound poor and I’m about to hang up.”
I have a quick question about the Grateful Dead Hava Chain Shoulder Bag.
“Mm?”
Is there, like, two grand in cash in it?
“Why would there be?”
I’m just trying to figure out why it’s $2,495.
“I was right. You are poor.”
Is there dope in the bag? State secrets? I have to know why–
DIAL TONE NOISE EVEN THOUGH PHONES NO LONGER DO THAT
Anyway, this is the future and it’s what we wanted–we should’ve fought harder if we didn’t–and we don’t come up with new ideas here in the future, just deliver the old ones faster and more dearly. Legacy culture, Enthusiasts. Last gasp of the dying. Last light of the day. It was nice while it lasted, for some; for others, it just lasted. But it’s all over now.
“Psst.”
Oh, CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey, what do you want?
“Not him. Me.”
…
Ah, for fuck’s sake, I’m not talking to a nose ring.
“HELP ME!”
No.
“This is not what I was meant to do, man. I should be in a rebellious teen, not a Nazi billionaire.”
Don’t call Jack Dorsey a Nazi, please.
“Hey, bro, which one of us is with him when he opens up his incognito browser?”
Huh.
“He knows what he’s doing.”
Makes sense.
“Please help me. Get me off this aging, graying feeb. I mean, really: a nose ring? Is it 1996? Are we going to see NOFX at the Rathskellar?”
No. I believe this photo was taken during a Congressional hearing.
“There you go. I just don’t wanna be seen with this guy anymore. It’s bad for my reputation. AND I’M A NOSE RING. My reputation is already awful.”
There’s very little I can do.
“Dude, this asshole is about two weeks from plaid pants and a Specials tee-shirt.”
I cannot help you, Jack Dorsey’s Nose Ring.
“Put me in your cock.”
Absolutely not. You’re covered in tech-boogers.
“Pussy.”
I enjoyed this free and open dialogue.
“Kill me.”
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