Crack Wise With Th' Four Or Five Guys© Dept. - MrDave's Cavalcade Of Carnage

Collect and trade with your pals!

Four Or Five Guy© MrDave [SWELL TRADING CARD AT LEFT - Ed.] promised me money if I put this up, so I say the hell with Quality Control.

The Last Day
 
It was on the morning of the 53rd day when I was suddenly jolted awake, struggling to disentangle pmac's raspily whispered words, conveyed through a spray of stale palm-wine spittle, from the rapidly fading fragments of a mostly sleepless dream of a time before, an almost forgotten world of people, places, and things indifferently observed from the relative comfort of the abandoned El Segundo flat I had been squatting in before lured … here … by the timeless siren song of wine, women, and … yes, song.

"It's time."

My stomach convulsed involuntarily despite the familiarity of the thick stench of rotting armadillo husks, leftovers from "Sunday Suppers" past, that hung in the tropical humidity like the persistent burnt-umber smear dominating the Los Angeles horizons of my misspent youth.

Apart from the incessant buzzing of flies and wheezing air-conditioner atop the luxury recreational trailer our host had airlifted here it was silent for the first time I can remember since arriving.

Five Guns West was already waiting for us at the other side of our pathetic encampment. It was a shrine to the hollow shell of modernity littered with the remnants of what we thought was important when we made the journey: crushed cans and broken bottles from the laughably inadequate supply of cheap alcohol we had been able to carry with us, deflated Dollar Store pool toys tragically ill-suited for ocean frollicking as Crab Devil (RIP) had all too quickly demonstrated, a scattering of lurid pages spared toilet paper duty from the extensive collection of Lithuanian porn that Bob had ferried from Vancouver, and of course the lifeless laptops and mobile devices overstuffed with the low bitrate pirated mp3s that our host had hooked us with like the "free" tastes of diluted dope successful dealers have always used to curate their clientele.

It was a neat trick. When billionaire industrial heir Farquhar Throckmorton III, had "thrown in the towel" on the little dog-and-pony show he ran out of the off-strip Vegas motel that had been renovated into his private playpen we had all begged him to come back. Four days later, in the hackneyed tradition of the minstrel bounding back to the stage for the "surprise" encore, Throckmorton had planted his tentpole on a private island and extended an open invitation -- a safe haven from the global pandemic that was rapidly plunging the world into mass hysteria and economic collapse. Conveniently enough, the island was also out of legal jurisdiction for the mysterious death of Ms. Myra Nussbaum, the elderly guardian of his teenage plaything at the time, who had been found floating in his pool shortly after she had shown up on his doorstep.

Like the rats of Hamelin most of us four-or-five "guys" (one of which was a real high-steppin'-stump-knocker) fell right in line when he tooted his 3-penny tin pan alley piccolo: J. Fred Muggs, One Buck Guy, Billy Mac, FivesGunsWest, Pmac, JJWombat, Crab Devil, Jack Kerouac's Cat, Kwai Chang, bk, B.B, Bill, Bob and Rob, [your name here] and too many more to count, many of whom had tried to swim the 3000 miles and didn't quite make it. Since then it had been a cavalcade of carnage as one by one our herd was thinned through what had appeared a series of bizarre mishaps but looking back formed a grand parade of atrocity presumably orchestrated for the amusement of our maestro. In spite of reverent tales of later day Grateful Dead shows he eagerly shared with us, or perhaps because of them, Rob had been the first to go.

Saturday Slugfest Dept. - Bubblegum Bloodbath!

Hundreds - that's Fern n' Bern Hundreds, of Tampon Butte, WIS. - have written us to beg for another Cagefight Saturday. "It wus th' highpoint of our week," kvetches Fern (68). "We don't git out much, on account we's shut-ins, n' we's gather round th' radiogram to catch the latest Slugfest, Drano shots n' placin' bets n' beatin' th' livin' shit outta each other! HIHIHIHIH!" Hubby Bern (72) concurs. "Yus! Dey wus th' best o' times! Yez tell kids today, n' dey jes' don' wanna know ..."

So to please Fern n' Bern, here's the latest in our much-loved series. Today's Cagefight pits The Innocence against The Children Of Prague. A little back story is added here as a bonus for the two or three of the Four Or Five Guys© who actually read this garbage.

The Innocence album was a project of the New York Juvenile Delinquency And Drug Abuse Program. The musicians were all street addicts, tough kids from bad neighborhoods. Singing Mairzy Doats was thought to be swell therapy.

The Children Of Prague were just that - kids in a Prague orphanage, many of them terminally ill. This knowledge shouldn't color your enjoyment of their courageous rendition of Chim Chim Cheree.

So- street thug versus Iron Curtain orphan - who will win? Remember - it's your vote that counts!

The Big Apple Folk Duo Syndrome

Cashman, Pistilli, and West's first album, the shimmeringly gorgeous Bound To Happen, has been FoamFeaured antecedently, but their follow-up recordings, where they ditched the nehru shirts and slimmed down to Cashman and West, may be new to you.

They're full of the good stuff; fine singing, nice songs, edged with the prevailing Simon n' Garfunkel folksy sincerity. Cut from the same quality cloth as Aztec Two-Step.

Here's where you, Mr. Four Or Five Guy©, can help! I can't find the A Song Or Two album, or the Buchanan Brothers album Medicine Man (same guys, different name). Anybody gots? Huh? Hoo hah?

EDIT: binkerbo (Diplomat With Chrome Horse) nets the surprisingly elusive Medicine Man album with his dreamcatcher, and Smash Adams slides home with A Song Or Two - both links in the comments. Thank you! 

(but/and no thanks at all to this furshlugginer blog template for screwing me around ...)

TL-DR Dept. - Tinseltown Tarnished, Part Uno

It was 1998, and the only reason I know that is because I slept through The Big Lebowski at the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. I was struggling through my first divorce back in Switzerland at the time and sobbing in the street so events are hazy. 

I was staying at the Highland Gardens on Franklin, a block up the hill from Grauman's Chinese. At that time the Highland was still a slightly seedy and affordable address for H'wood bottom-feeders like me. There were fading B&W publicity shots of D-list movie stars with their  benzedrine smiles in reception, and free donuts and coffee in the morning. Aspiring actors read their sides by the cracked and surprisingly cold pool. Ageing Brit thesp Roy Dotrice lived there permanently. It was cool and relaxed, and had walls I could bounce off without disturbing the neighbors.

This was the Golden Era of English public schoolboy producers, with their baggy white shirts and floppy fringes. I lucked out - three of them were kicking my book around. My first meeting was with Lionel Wigwam (as I couldn't help but call him) at Warners or Sony or whoever they were that week. He said, Tim, we love everything about the book, except the plot, and the characters. It took a moment for me to realize he wasn't being ironic. I had to stifle a laugh. So I labored long and hard through three drafts and their revisions, excising everything I loved from the book, driven to frothing internal fury by notes from nitwit interns and random passers-by, all of whom were given more consideration than the fucking writer. Months later, Lionel said you've done everything we asked for, but it's not what we want.

So I quit Hollywood while I was behind, and became a pool guy in the South of France. And I still haven't managed to stay awake through The Big Lebowski.

Crack Wise With The Four Or Five Guys!© Dept. - Psychfan Blows His Mind

Collect th' set! Impress dames!

Psychfan's credentials are exemplary. Graduating from the Bowery Correspondence Academy Of Pool with a swell diploma suitable for framing, he soon made his fortune winning rake fights at Amish hootenannies! Here he cracks wise about a subject dear to his heart - rutabaga husbandry. Take it away, Mr. Fan!

The Manilow Syndrome

In the late fifties and early sixties my neighborhood movie theater did a Saturday matinee that consisted of a kid movie paired with whatever was being shown to the general audience at night. This made for some odd pairings that no doubt contributed to the eclectic, post modern world view of even the dumbest kids as, for instance, Tarzan Goes To India collided with something starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day.

One consequence of this, however, was that I ended up seeing some musicals there. I had an intense dislike for musicals, having seen plenty of older ones on TV. Being mesmerized by the tube meant that I watched at least parts of them anyway but I was unhappy to have them intrude on my Saturday in the dark.
Some of them actually weren't bad though. In 1958 I liked Damn Yankees for it's sly humor even though some of it went over my seven year old head. In 1961 I was blown away by West Side Story even though I knew that it's lack of Rock and Roll made it completely inauthentic. I never did develop any love for the form itself, though, and still haven't.
 
Those experiences made me realize that there was a difference between stuff that was inconsistent with my own taste and stuff that sucks. There are many that never grasp that distinction, though.
 
I think about this a lot in relation to music, especially pop music which nearly everyone seems to experience through a time specific lens. My own taste in pop predictably fades in around 1955 and fades out around 1985 (Madonna helped to chase me away). It's not that I don't like anything newer than that; I just lost interest in keeping up in any systematic way and have no patience for listening to too much stuff I just don't like.
 
What kept me from tuning out entirely was the understanding that my reaction was partly subjective and that skill and even imagination were still at work, even in stuff I didn't necessarily like.
 
Take Barry Manilow, for instance [Please - Ed.]. Many would say that he has no talent. I disagree. The truth is that he's very capable and even talented. It's just that I have no use for what he does. Millions of other people do, however.
Does this mean that there are no objective standards and that nothing truly sucks (or is truly great)? Of course not! The 1960's and 1970's were the greatest time for music for a few easily indentified reasons. First and foremost, BABY BOOM. If there are X number of musical geniuses per thousand births there were more then than ever before. This also meant that the market was huge which emboldened record companies to reach beyond the lowest common denominator and actually market more adventurous music.
 
Combine that with much greater access to education, more media choices than ever before, huge advances in technology along with a restless rejection of the conformity that had followed the worldwide trauma of WWII and you have exceptionally fertile ground for artistic advancement. This took the form of mutated versions of various kinds of American folk music and, ultimately, jazz (the first 20th century musical form).
 
Back to Manilow (and Madonna). Their stuff is competently done but has little artistic vision as far as I can see (a key phrase here). Manilow would likely protest that his inspiration comes from Broadway and other traditional pop and Madonna that hers comes from disco but those seem to me to be impoverished and long exhausted sources that are, none the less, loved by many people.
 
The same is true of Country "Hat" acts, Top 40 rap acts, Taylor Swift etc. I don't like their stuff but is that a failure of perspective on my part? If I sound confused it's because I am.
 
I still hate musicals.