destroyer of worlds

I want to hear the Dirtbombs, "Got To Give It Up" while I'm getting ready to go out.

Minor Threat, First Two 7s (Prelude: I want to hear this while I'm getting off work)
Armitage Shanks, Cacaphony Now
Fabrienne DelSol, Between You and Me
The BellRays, Hard, Sweet & Sticky
Tina Turner, Acid Queen
The Twilight Singers, Dynamite Steps
The Dirtbombs, Ultraglide in Black
Reigning Sound, Break Up Break Down
Jack Oblivian, Rat City


I want to hear Tina Turner's version of "Whole Lotta Love" on the way to the club. It is a destroyer of worlds.


I want to hear the BellRays, "Coming Down" when I walk into the bar.


I want to hear The Twilight Singers, "Last Night in Town" as I lurch to the door to leave.


I want to hear Jack Oblivian, "Mass Confusion" on the radio as I leave the parking lot.

Saying Things About the South

LSU Press Director MaryKatherine Callaway and I doing the author picture. Photo by Maya Cook.

Monday:
Various artists, Bartók: Contrast & Mikrokosmos (excerpts)
Andrew Bird, Break it Yourself (streaming at NPR)
Marc Smirnoff, "G&G Me With a Buccellati Silver Spoon! The OA Editor Takes Down the Competition" at OxfordAmerican.org
Dan Deacon, Spiderman of the Rings
Louisiana Red, Sweet Blood Call and Dead Stray Dog

First, RIP Louisiana Red


Louisiana Red and Paul Oshar, "Dead Stray Dog"

Second, Louisiana Saturday Night actually exists! As is evidenced above! I can see a copy from where I'm sitting. Copies are headed out to reviewers. I signed a copy for my editor even. I can't say how great everyone at the Press has been and is being. The posters just came in for the launch party (Saturday, March 10, 2012 at Teddy's Juke Joint in Zachary, LA. Here's the Facebookr event, if you keep up that way.) if you are in the area, please come. Teddy's is totally worth the drive even when there isn't a fabulous book launh party happening inside.

Plus, these gentlemen are playing.


Floyd R. Patterson and the O.M.T. Band (One More Time)

Third, I feel I have somewhat of a rooster in the cockfight ruffling between the Oxford American and Garden & Gun, having written a few times for the former. I'm a reader of both magazines and someone engaged professionally in Saying Things About the South and will say it is the kind of place that leads one to attempt to define it and, in the process, leads you to a rabbit hole of contradictions. The OA's striving for understanding is more in line with my thinking than are G&G's aspiration, but The Truth About the South is like the truth about anywhere - complicated, a rickety scaffold of facts bolted together by the perception of facts and in that wobbly vantage point does one gain a little perspective before the whole thing falls. It's like the fretboard on the Deliverance banjo that, to many, symbolizes the Southern experience; the particular twang you get depends on where you put your finger. I'm going to stop before I quote Hank Williams or something.

I do like highbrow smack talk, though. It reminds me of the wager between the museum directors from New Orleans and Indianpolis during the Super Bowl: Then he concluded by apologizing that "we have no farm scenes or portraits of football players to send you." Here's hoping G&G has a comeback in them and maybe something enlightening will emerge. If they don't mind getting their seersuckers dirty.

I got some great pictures from Poverty Point

This is Mound A, the "flying bird" mound, 72 ft high, shot from atop Mound B, the "ball court" mound, 11 ft high.

I chaperoned Maya's class field trip to Poverty Point in North Louisiana, about a three-hour bus ride drive from here.

It is one of the oldest hunter gatherer settlement sites in North America, dating back to 1400 BCE. The village of 1,000 took the shape of concentric semi-circles, which you can still see in the fields on the way to the two massive earthwork mounds at the site. The staff and museum are informative and understated, which I appreciate. Let the giant mounds do the talking.


Cropduster that kept buzzing us while we were up on the mound.


These barrels represent posts of something they just found at the site. I'm fairly certain UFO's land there at night as well.


Wild purple hyacinth with the mounds in the background.



Figurines in the museum


I was trying to capture this kid standing alone on a stump when suddenly these kids ran up and formed a star.


Sound advice.


The drive up will fulfill your needs for experiencing in-process industrial decay and how societies and brick and steel are involved in the Alchemy of charm. I regret not getting a shot of the seafoam green front of the Cave Theatre in Dephi, but then I get to go back.


There was some real magic hour light out on the vast flatness of the Louisiana delta, a part of the state whose surface I've barely scratched.

the best afternoon soundtrack in a while

Tindersticks, "Show Me Everything"

Tindersticks, The Something Rain
Helado Negro, Awe Owe and Island Universe Story One


Helado Negro, "Dahum"

Duane Pitre, Origin
Calexico, Spoke


Calexico, "Removed"

Nina Simone, Moonsong


Nina Simone, "Don't Smoke in Bed

Louisiana Saturday Night Book Launch Party

Louisiana Saturday Night Book Launch Party

Saturday March 10, 2012, 8pm until at Teddy's Juke Joint

Celebrate the good times only found in south Louisiana's juke joints, honky-tonks, and dance halls with the author Alex V. Cook, the legendary Teddy Johnson, and the sounds of One More Time. Patrons will be able to purchase an autographed copy of LOUISIANA SATURDAY NIGHT at the event.

Free and open to the public!

For more information, visit http://www.lsupress.org/ or call (225) 578-8282

Here is the Facebook event.

Edited to add: I have a loose agreement with Teddy that he's gonna let me wear one of his capes.


If not for me, come out there for ol' Teddy.

her and she and hey and yes

Al Hansen, Calliope Venus... Lick Me Momma,1968, Hershey wrappers and sliver paint on plywood
27 x 25 inches (68.90 x 64.14 cm) ARG# HA1968-002 from the Andrea Rosen Gallery site

I had a dream last night that I'd acquired Calliope Venus at an estate sale. The estate sale people thought it was something one of the kids of the family had done. I will say that it was considerably larger in my dream.

As it happens, Maya was playing with the leftover foil from a Hersey's kiss in the car on the way to school this morning and asked if anyone had ever made a sculpture out of Hershey's kiss foil and I told her about Al Hansen, how he generally had one artistic end in mind - big booby lady silhouettes - and a number of means to get there - cigarette butts, text from magazines, arriving at Hershey wrappers because he could make her and she and hey and yes. 

I had it in my head (and dream) that the silver negative space was made from the candy wrapper foil.  The effluvia of silver paint is better. It is the reflective world forming her bombshell presence. The pronoun that is her silhouette. The world looks to be as thick as a lava flow, settling in pools to cool around her. It is she who is the hey and her and yes and most important to understand, hers, while the world is just whatever the world is. Boring without her in it.

for your float viewing pleasure

Frankenstein Float, Krewe of Houmas, Mardi Gras Day 2012, Houma

Friday:
Fugazi, In On the Kill Taker and Instrument Soundtrack
Marginal Man, Identity
Dag Nasty, Can I Say
Bad Brains, I Against I
Hüsker Dü, Candy Apple Grey
Sugar, Copper Blue
The London Suede, Dog Man Star
Public Image LTD., The Flowers of Romance


Detail of "Civil War" float, Krewe of Kajuns, Mardi Gras Day 2012, Houma

Tuesday:
Ramsay Midwood, Larry Buys a Lighter (4 times)
The Allman Brothers Band, Eat a  Peach
Now Ensemble, Awake
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!


Cops arranged in a Fibonacci sequence before the Krewe of Houmas, Parade

Wednesday:
Warren Zevon, Excitable Boy
Talking Heads, Fear of Music
Galactic, Carnivale Electricos
The Quantic Soul Orchestra, Stampede
Alice Russell, My Favorite Letters
Otis Taylor, Otis Taylor's Contraband
Tindersticks, The Something Rain


The purchasing of plastic swords at Krewe of Houmas

I don't have much of a Mardi Gras wrap-up thesis statement to make. I had a 10% inclination to go to New Orleans this year, but really I love the way Mardi Gras Day plays out in Houma. Sweet, hodgepodge, a little trashy, the streets alive but not clogged with whole down-the-bayou families that otherwise don't venture into town except to party it down. Here are a few others for your float viewing pleasure.






Maya and her friend "goin' walk" - their first stab at the great MG tradition of aimlessly traipsing the route while waiting for the parade to start.