Attention Span Therapy. a New Journal for these complicated times. Featur-
ing News, Music, FicCrition, tique, HuComPoet-
mor, ics, ry, a
Monthly Event Calendar. THIS MONTH: A Modest Proposal II, Exclusive Inter-
view by DUSHANE with MIRANDA JULY, Photos by TOBIAS WOLFF & RYAN CURRe-
TONY
TIS. views
ATTENTION SPAN THERAPY ISSUE #1 OCT / NOV
“In Times of Mass Distraction, What One Needs is Attention Span Therapy...” --Arquebus Pennybottom Letter from the Editor Welcome, everyone. I am more than pleased to be bringing you the very first issue of Attention Span Therapy. For those of you who might remember the semi-short lived reading series of the same name, (ahem), I am honored. What started out as an answer to the short pops and jerks of open mics, to give a couple of writers room to lay down a good framework, just wouldn’t stay down. After arm wrestling with it for forty days and forty nights, I have finally conceded. The monkey shall have its way. Because, that’s just what the monkey does. And I, for one, am not going to stand in his way. Here, and in future issues, myself and the other shadowy, semi-mythological figures that make up the regular cast and crew of this crazed vessel will strive to bring you something to take your mind away from things. To take it over, show it round, and give it back massaged and supple.
As it is and has always been nothing more than one elaborate high-wire experiment, the magazine will continue to grow in future months in scope and scene, and hopefully, like an avalanche, continue to catch you off your guard; and you’ll keep coming back for more for just that same reason. Why not, right? We’re only young forever. ... It’s strange, I used to say to the monkey, When my father was my age, he already had two kids. And here I am still wearing cut-offs to work. But Poncho was always firm with me. He’d say, Tyler, you’ve got a different job to do. It’s a different path. Just walk it with pride and a clear enough mind that you don’t miss what’s most important... I still wonder about the outside world. Would I trade it all, if the price was right? Well, let’s not to lose sight of the bigger picture, eh? It’s not everyday you get advice from world famous smoking monkeys. Your Humble Editor, Tyler Burton
A S T I S S U E
T A B L E
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•8-9 • 10 - 15 • 16 - 18 • 19
O F
C O N T E N T S
--A Modest Proposal II by Ken Kottka --Breakfast Anyone? by James Marchetti. --Interview w/ Miranda July by Tony DuShane (not available online) --The Pleasant Rush of Three Doors Opening at Once (Fiction): by Tyler Burton --Las Vegas (A Collage): by Christine Stoddard
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--Music Reviews by David MacFadden-Elliot & Ronald Gross
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--Cartoon by D Garth Sullivan Esquire
• 23 • 24 - 25 • 26 • 27
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--Photo by Ryan Curtis / “Hope” by Andy Junge --Poems From 8 to 80: w/ Mark Gurarie & Abigail Desmond & Randall Sokoloff (photos) --Calendar Events (Oct -- Nov) --Contributor Bios --COVER & pg 27 photos by Tobias Womack © 2007 attention span therapy all inquiries : astmag@gmail.com
A Modest Proposal ... II ... “A Plan to Help the Homeless Become Self Sufficient and Provide a General Benefit to All of San Francisco”
Whether you think downtown San Francisco is a sewer or a toilet is a matter of semantics. Most people agree it is one or the other, or both. Walking these strange, mean, polluted streets reminds one of Dante’s early rungs of Hell. Disheveled men, women, and children beg for money, scavenge through trash containers for anything to sell, eat, or trade; they defecate and urinate on the streets, use the sidewalks as their beds and, in some instances, wreck physical damage on property and passersby. The state of these indigent is deplorable and dangerous to them and to those around them. Disease and crime flourish in these conditions.
this information to establish my bonafides as a person who witnessed San Francisco firsthand before the homeless problem existed and who has endured it since our first known Alzheimer President decided to cast these helpless, hopeless souls out of government funded sanctuaries and onto what used to be our fair streets.
Most charitable people agree that the current situation is terrible and lessens the quality of life for all. Most agree further that we should find a fair, economical, convenient method for making these people useful members of society, a solution that includes not just the homeless and their children, but For the past twenty years, I’ve lived in the their yet unborn children and the working Bay Area. Each year for the ten years prior poor as well. to moving here, I visited the Area on business and pleasure an average of twice a year. There are approximately 14,000 homeless For one year now, I’ve worked in the Fi- people in the City and an equal number of nancial District on Market Street. I provide people who earn wages below the poverty -4-
level. Because of these considerable numbers, all of them may participate in the proposed solution, a solution that will take them and the City out of this mess that Newsom, Willie Brown, Frank Jordan, and their predecessors could not remedy, a solution these hapless people can use to help themselves and return the City to its past glory.
The suggestion may seem radical, but the current plight of the street people lends itself to drastic measures. Because they rarely if ever vote, Newsom will have no difficulty agreeing to this solution. In fact, the few who have registered to vote are, for the most part, independents, and Newsom will be pleased to be rid of them.
To understand the wisdom of my proposed solution, first consider the current prices for various meat cuts in our supermarkets. Veal can range upwards to $15 dollars a pound, steaks from $6 to $10, with lesser choices anywhere from $2 to $4. Canned hams, bacon, and pork chops are equally as expensive. Poultry, although not quite as costly, is still a luxury for someone making $10 or less an hour.
Several factors will assure the success of this plan. One readily notes the majority of our street people are in decent physical shape, irrespective of their mental competency. Harsh street life will not allow the physically unfit to endure for long and, though unintended, their survival mode has made them desirable food sources. By necessity, they are well-muscled and lean.
With these lofty prices and other relevant factors in mind, I analyzed the applicable data and arrived at sound economic projections. I then explored the options available, thinking foremost of the well being of those involved and the health of our City. I recommend that Mayor Newsom authorize the use of two vacant City buildings in the China Basin area as processing plants to slaughter and prepare the homeless as foodstuff. This foodstuff will feed other homeless people, provide jobs and cheap meat for the working poor, and furnish the City gentry with culinary delights, a true winwin scenario.
Note, too, that the working poor tend to have jobs involving manual labor and physical dexterity, thus developing a certain strength of body and perspective. This physical and mental conditioning will serve them and the City well because they will be hired to run the slaughterhouses. The homeless who prefer and are willing and able to work may participate in the process until they, too, join their brethren in the kettles. Those who are healthy and free from disease will provide steaks, rump roasts, and ribs, although tenderizer may be needed. The older, less healthy and well-conditioned street derelicts will furnish soup bones, ham hocks, and other cheap cuts of meat that will
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be sold to the City’s soup kitchens for much less than the price of commercial meats. But the young will be the real prizes. My butcher friends tell me that children before the age of five are delectable, their meat not yet tainted by street life or muscular hardening from physical labor. Babies are an even better economic proposition; being fattened up on just mothers’ milk, they can gain three times their body weight in less than a year and bring up to $50 per pound for the more delicate, discerning palates. Expert chefs further assure me that a babe of twelve or less months will make any connoisseur of haute cuisine forget about abalone, thus cheering the environmentalist. These taste treats will be savored only by San Francisco’s gentry in Nob Hill, City Hall, and other prestigious locations, with the money from these high priced sales used to maintain the labor and facilities used for processing. Thus, the working poor will benefit from good wages as well as their access to a plentiful supply of cheap meat. To maintain an ongoing source of the expensive, profitable young delicacies, we will utilize another San Francisco tradition: pornography. Young homeless girls and women can be used to make videos and babies, assuring a dual return on the City’s investment in facilities and administration. Again, other City resources, rapists and sex offenders terrorizing the City’s streets, will
be utilized before they are turned into stew. At all times, of course, they’ll be monitored carefully to assure their copulating is within society’s prescribed boundaries. Proceeds from the videos will benefit various beautification projects for the City’s most prestigious neighborhoods. I’ve touched on only a few of the advantages this plan will produce (think of the clothing industry that can be started from hides, and odds and ends that can be created from bones), but all of the specific details can be worked out by business and economic professors from the finest universities in the Bay Area and be ready for presentation to the Mayor and the City’s elite. From the bottom of my heart, I want you to know that I do not have the least personal interest in trying to promote the required work. I care about nothing other than the public good of our City: advancing trade, providing for the homeless, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the City gentry. Other peripheral benefits, like environmentalists’ happiness, the end of the abortion conflict, better-behaved children, filmmaking and production education for aspiring Steven Spielbergs, lampshades from tattoos, etc. are simply bonuses that will promote a more civilized, humane society...
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We Asked a Couple of “Regular People” What They Thought About This Essay... “That’s totally just like this one Emperor song!!”
“I’ll give you 3 seconds to get out of my face before I punch you. Coming over here talking like that...What the fuck’s wrong with you.”
“You are amazing. It was amazing. I think it’s kicking in. Awesome.”
Breakfast Anyone?
––––––––––––––––––––––––––– It had been a long disorienting weekend. I opened my eyes sometime Monday dreaming of a luscious soothing Bloody Mary–that strange delicate blend of ingredients responsible for so much worldly magic and pain. As the name suggests, one is never on the fence about a Bloody Mary. There is a passion involved which inspires nothing short of love and/or hatred–the extreme ends in the limited range of human emotion. I went to get breakfast at a place down the street, a somewhat shi-shi joint called the Slow Club, just in time for the stuffy business lunch crowd. I ordered a big breakfast, twenty dollars worth of food, a coffee, and of course one sweet and surly cocktail. The beverages came first. I looked her up and down. She had decent proportions and impressive accessories, but as I went in for a closer look the bitch reached out and slapped me in the face. Nice legs, but far too spicy, burning the lips and searing my insides all the way down, like swallowing a goddamn fireball. She had obviously been conjured at the hands of a novice. Fuckers! It must have been that creepy bastard of a waiter himself; he looked abnormal, like an angry retard, cross-eyed and bearded, with a head full of
singing bibles and dead kittens. I pushed through the catastrophe, chasing the angry potion with hot and bitter coffee. The food arrived and I began to shovel it down, sopping up runny eggs with little bacon and toast sandwiches, but I could tell already that something had gone horribly wrong. My stomach began to stir uncomfortably, kicking and moaning at the presence of the obnoxious wake-up call. I could feel my control slipping, and took a huge gulp of coffee to mask my nervousness, but it was far too hot for such an action and scalded the back of my throat. I coughed loudly and began to gag, attracting a lot of unwanted The small room was filled with sickening stench of violation...
attention. The well-dressed and overly perfumed diners shot hideous glances at me, afraid and disgusted by the scene. I re-swallowed the caustic fluids, took a deep breath, wiped the beads of sweat from my forehead, and eventually gained an acceptable level of composure. I calmly ate a wedge of blood orange and rethought my strategy. Things were happening quickly. My bowels were dropping fast and my stomach was in a tailspin, but I’m no quitter, and there was still a good deal of food and drink before me. I was determined to get my money’s worth.
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The bathroom was a secluded and well fortified little room beyond the kitchen, which was relieving. I burst in with the intention of hurling out the agitator and blowing my goddamn nose, which was leaking a steady flow of thick mucus. Yet as I leaned over the bowl, I realized that the explosion would not be coming from the topend this time around. And good god, what an explosion it was! I was lucky to get my pants off in time. It’s amazing that such a foul rot can exist within a living vessel. I’ll have to shower when I get home, I thought. The small room was filled with a sickening stench of violation. There was someone waiting to go in after me. I smiled weakly; the poor a bastard’s hair would probably fall out. Back at the table things seemed to be settling down a bit: the storm quelled, another terrible ordeal successfully avoided, but nothing is ever truly as it seems. I had taken several small safe bites to bolster my confidence before going for the gold and pushing the whole fucker down. I finished the coffee in one gulp, closed my eyes and proudly downed the wicked fireball of a cocktail followed by a sip of water as my eyes welled up with tears and the room began to spin. My focus was blurry as the waiter approached, a concerned look on his doughy face.
“Is everything ok here?” He inquired. “NO!” I snapped, but quickly recovered “err, ah . . . yes, fine, good, check please”. “Would you like to take the rest home in a box?” You evil bastard, I thought, they’ll be taking you home in a box for what you’ve done to me! I attempted to twist the look of agony on my face into something more conventional as I shook my head. “How about a Bloody Mary for the road?” he suggested with a sick wink and devious grin as if we were friends sharing some dangerous secret. My response was thwarted by a sudden and violent revolution within my gut. My right arm flailed wildly as I waived him off. He did not understand the garbled signal. I shot him the look of a caged animal about to seek revenge for a life of torture. His eyes uncrossed for a moment and he left my table rapidly. Now the sweat was really pouring and sweet watery saliva was filling my mouth. I recognized the appearance of the lu-
bricant and knew that my time was extremely limited. My foot was tapping spastically as the fat clueless fuck was sauntering
around delivering orders to other tables, muttering unbearable niceties to men with manicures. My stomach gurgled. I swallowed repeatedly, anxiously. There was no question as to how the breakfast was going to end; it was just a matter of where and when. Running off to the bathroom now would be admitting defeat. I looked around at the pleasant diners with polished teeth and well practiced manners. Horrifying zombie bastards, I thought, this is all their fault anyway. If it wasn’t for people like these I wouldn’t be here in the first place, seeking large amounts of alcohol and coffee first thing in the morning. These clock-sucking motherfuckers had set a pace of life for us that was completely unnatural. Seri-
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ous medication was a necessitya proper balance of stimulation and sedation to even begin the freakish maze without gnawing on each other’s skulls and masturbating ourselves to death before the first turn. I realized fully with a shock of delight that it was these plebian bastards who were directly responsible for the sickness that had pervaded my system this and so many times before. It was purely animal what was happening to me. I imagined a look of horror rippling through the flab of my waiter’s pasty face as I spewed out a fountain of his badly poured and poorly received spicy red obscenity. “Compliments to the chef!” I would cheer strolling out into the gray morning. It was animal. Like a cornered raccoon I had to either fight or fly, time was running out. I scraped together what strands of dignity and courage I had left and began to move. I had resigned to exit the establishment rather than cover some unsuspecting diners with hot red bile. My plan was to move fast SEE BREAKFAST PG. 22
The Pleasant Rush of Three Doors Opening at Once
The Saturday night bus crowd on the 38 Geary line hops on into doors that open to initiate the game. No one pays the fare after the first few stops. The space fills around you, it empties and shifts. One must bend, around backpacks and elbows and feet, and knees jutting out into the aisle. An eighteen year-old Asian primadonna gone Californian slips past, jet-black hair, a fake chinchilla fur collar like a mane or a mandala. Pushing her along, her same-aged black boyfriend. They sit, cuddling close on the two center seats in the rear. Gazpacho hustlers discuss something going on up the street on Polk with the same whispered gravity as social revolution, Chinese leaks between two old seniors holding fast to their metal push-carts beside them, and she, the little primadonna, is whispering something into his soft brown ears. And the boy’s braids--because they’re not really dreds, because they’re too nice to be dreds--shake to and fro as he laughs. A laugh which is both sweet and smug at the same time, because he’s free from Dad and his fist and mom and her bills tonight. Thanks Dante, she whispers, then kisses him on the cheek; and he goes red as much as a dark black kid can. The coach lurches and my head slaps the steel pole I am leaning too close to, and I
catch the backs of coats and someone’s dayold sweat smell against my face. This could be anywhere in the world. There would just be more dog shit on the streets if it was Paris. And the black boys would be from Senegal, and she from Japan or Brazil, by way of Germany. They all come to the 38. When it’s running frequently, and there’s less threat of a ruckus even the executives board the bus and sit calmly towards the front, happy to be saving the cab fare for another bottle of vintage cabernet, or else standing the whole while as close to the door as possible, shouting into their cell phones something so important it merits being repeated three times over the groan of the diesel motor straining up the hill past Van Ness. “I said blue. My cars have always been blue....Yes, always. Always blue.” She, a woman in her late-thirties, adorns a pin-stripe suit with two full bags of Macy’s packages in her hands, the security guard wire dangling from ear, her cell phone, her “hands-free” set. She stands in the stepwell, half on the bus, which is as far as she likes to get on Saturday nights. Tottering on two wooden legs, no veteran of MUNI, she holds tight to her position, and the pole by the exit, when the driver swoops in to a
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stop, letting all the doors swing open. The hiss of the pneumatic lift. The first group of kids burst in. The game’s begun. Three young hungry Koreans on their way to an evening at the baang, they slip by so thin she hardly has to move, take their seat and chatter away about hit counts and botulism strikes and who can get the most free porn. It’s the two Poles who force the woman, now, to move. They’re too big to squeeze past, and would not do so anyway. That’s why they came to this country. The woman does as she’s directed. Then, after they’ve passed, reassumes her place in the step-well. She’s suddenly shushed her conversation, and I think I know why. Those damn Polacks. The young kids have sat beside the mandala girl and her black-as-night boy. They snicker and grunt in Korean; and she sits for a little while, tolerating them and their ignorance; but the Kim’s have been raised to be proud. And, finally, she speaks: three hostile syllables that twist them up like little pill bugs rolling into their shell, as they quickly realize she’s understood everything they’ve said. Or maybe they knew it all along.
They remain facing the window quietly-until the comedian of the group smacks the one beside him, and they can ignore her and still not lose too much face. She seems pleased. Underneath the fluourescents, the crowd moves, trying all the harder to forget who we are. We scrunch tight into headphones, closed eyes, dreams of being home--even if home is cold and empty, it is still home. The woman with the packages exits. Two Arabs take her place, with their swarthy beards and semitight wind-breakers from LL Bean, growling playfully in their guttural tongue, but still smiling. They are the only ones smiling at me on the late night weekday bus. Here we recognize each other again, through crowded legs and packages. Then Green pushes past in the form of two Christmas elves snapping gum on their way home to change out of their uniforms before going out for Guiness and to look for men for the night. The Green parting to Red Chamois: and a sweater, and a woman, who moves from the front holding a fresh transfer in her hand. Did she actually pay? I wonder. Even though this driver
is one who lays on the pedal, and all doors fly open as he stops? She’s either noble or wealthy or honest or stupid, I think. And again we stop, and the crowd fluxes and changes. I imagine there must be a button for that. For opening all the doors at once. I can only imagine that the sound of three doors flying open simultaneously on their pneumatic hinges adds something special to the flavor of the job. He, the driver of the party bus, of the Saturday crowd. Someone starts their phone playing a little plastic dance beat that is tinny but effective. The whole bus is rocking slightly, like an infection, like the sound of sniffling noses in January: it spreads. She bops to it a little, the Red Chamois, flexing her firm calves to the beat I feel in the soles of my feet. The black guy nods his head too; but I realize he’s talking to his primadonna, nuzzling the top of her chinchilla fur that’s laid across his lap, staring at passing trees, until passing trees give way to some pottery festival going on in Japan-Town. My parents go there every year, she mumbles from his lap, half-sleepy from their long day. The noble Red Chamois finds a seat two in front of me. Then he sidles over to stand protective; and now I see it. They’re together. Ahhhhh... He was behind her nonchalantly, at first, and I’d barely noticed. But now he’s facing her, still standing, but in the way only boyfriends stand next to their seated girlfriends. Not nobly, not even humbly, just dull and apelike.
He doesn’t treat her like a woman. He doesn’t treat her right. He’s got a little money, that’s obvious; but whatever he’s got, the lady in the Red Chamois has got it plus a forturne the size of Africa in ethereal things he can’t even touch. So what’s she doing with him? This sad, affected dough boy of a Greek-American with these jowl-shrouded eyes. There’s this disappointment. It’s clear as day on his face. He regards her jealously, and they stand just like so many--together but still apart, facing opposite directions. And then a seat opens up in front of her, and he sits down, ahead of her, facing ahead. So they aren’t together after all. Suddenly, I want to be that hero at the helm, the driver of this Saturday bus, who lets anyone and everyone on because, in the end, what does it matter? And I wonder why I don’t approach her? Why I don’t break the rule that is unwritten in the first place. And as I’m thinking this, I’m pulling the chain and moving closer to the door. And as she’s thinking about her mother down in Daly City, I’m already getting off, and watching that Red Chamois disappear into the slow roiling fog and mercury vapor lit city night scape of the Richmond, with a low groan in my throat much like the sound of a diesel engine as it labors its way on up the Geary hill. The fog is in. I tie my coat.
Las Vegas 19
ADVERTISE with AST today astmag@gmail.com MUSIC> Danny Kalb: Still Projecting
Folk/Bluesman Danny Kalb is not as well known as his contemporaries. But he taught Bob Dylan how to play “Mean Old Southern Railroad,” and he himself was a protégé of Dave Van Ronk. Kalb is best known as a member of The Blues Project, an innovative band that lasted (roughly) from 1965-1967. The collaboration
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between Kalb, Al Kooper and Steve Katz (who would later form Blood, Sweat and Tears) and flautist/bassist Andy Kulberg (now deceased) left an undeniable mark on New York’s psychrock scene. By sizing up the old man in the bar, you wouldn’t know it. There he is, at a table by himself, guitar at his side, having some take-out dinner while he waits for the back room to fill up. His sideman, Bob Jones, an upright bassist with a hunched-back that provides a seeminglynatural contour to his axe, checks on Kalb. He attends to Kalb throughout the evening, constantly adjusting his microphone and calling out songs to their drummer. Any doubt about whether Kalb still has the touch vanishes when he plays. His stripped-down acoustic trio gives him room, an outlet to showcase the honed instincts of his still-nimble fingers. Kalb’s voice, though sometimes strained, finds a home in blues numbers like “I Just Can’t be Satisfied,” “Hey Hey,” and “Alberta,” a classic from his Blues Project
repertoire. To witness the further exploration of blues and folk interpolations by one of the greats is a rare occasion. Blues enthusiasts wondering what it must have been like to swarm the tiny cafés and barrooms of Greenwich Village in its heyday ought to consider checking out a Danny Kalb show for the nearest conceivable approximation... Alexa Weber Morales: Vagabundeo
Oakland singer / songwriter Alexa Weber Morales recently released her second CD, Vagabundeo on Patois Records. She co-produced the CD with another Bay Area musician, jazz trombonist and three time Grammy nominee, Wayne Wallace. “Alexa is one to try things that others won’t. In this day and age of commer-
MUSIC REVIEWS
cialism, I think it’s important to put out something with art in it,” says Wayne of his newest artist on his Patois label. Morales displays her versatility. She sings in four different languages on this CD, English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese (she studied language at Bryn Mawr College) and she eases through four different genres ranging from salsa, to jazz, to bossa nova, and funk. Her vocals are dynamic changing from a resonating high soprano down to an earthy alto. Alexa performs beautifully on her own original compositions (five of the tracks she wrote) as well as ones by Bizet, Jobim, Edu
Lobo and Ruben Blades. She sings with confidence through a diverse repertoire of Latin, Cuban, Brazilian and African music. She seems to have an intuitive rhythmic sense and phrasing that is apparent on Bob Telson’s “Calling You”, the only a cappella tune on Vagabundeo. It really displays Morales’ vocal range and talent. On “Habanera”, she takes Bizet’s famous aria from Carmen and puts a contemporary spin on it. Her version starts off with Cuban pilon rhythms and ends in a jumpin’ salsa beat. On her own “The goddess of War”, Morales infuses a funky Afro/Latin groove with lyrics of convic-
tion of a woman fed up. These are just sprinklings of what she does on these recordings. So who is Alexa Weber Morales? Born in Berkeley, California to a creative family, her father was a novelist and freelance writer and her mother an aspiring vocalist. Alexa started her musical studies early; she began classical piano lessons at age five, and took voice lessons as a teenager. Morales traveled to Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and Cuba where she attended the Escuela Nacional de Arte. After moving back to the Bay Area, she continued her music studies and sang at different SEE MUSIC PG. 22
MUSIC FROM PG. 21
venues while collaborating with local musicians. Morales recently completed a successful three-night stint at Pearl’s in San Francisco. Among her future engagements is a date with Wayne Wallace at Yoshi’s in Oakland’s Jack London Square (10/9) MIRANDA JULY FROM PG. 15
it wants to rule the world. So the idea that you’d want to do anything else is something you have to keep insisting on in yourself. T: Were scripts knocking on your door after the success of “Me and You and Everyone We Know”?
M: There was some of that, though I definitely just want to write my own material and I think people got that–and my agent certainly [did]. Usually, there’ll be a book by a young woman writer that’s really hot, and people will think I just want to do it because I’m a young woman too. There was sort of no reason for me to take any meetings or do anything like that, after the movie, because it’s like, well, when I’ve come up with something new I’ll go back into the business. But I also don’t put things on credit or use credit cards or like taking money for things I haven’t made. So I like finished this book of stories and then I sold it and I’d like to finish this script and then sell it. Of
course that’s a luxury and I’m living very cheaply to do that, but it also keeps the pressure off. Like, I did not jump into a deal after the movie because I thought well, ‘how do I know my next idea will even be a movie, and then I’ll feel really guilty that this company paid me all this money and I’m working on something totally else. BREAKFAST FROM PG. 9
and get as far away as possible from the sidewalk tables before the attack took hold. Not that I would feel much humiliation or shame before these people. I can’t be sure of my reasoning; my thought process had become a meaningless babble of panic. I fled the scene with
...piggy back our ride ...
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astmag@gmail.com discounts for carriers. - 22 -
quick, shaky steps. “Thank you!” a pretty waitress called as I rushed past. I tried to say something nice but the words were garbled together with the force of a volcano-like regurgitation and came out instead as a meaty and disturbing hacking gag of a cough. She was clearly repulsed. Out the door and moving fast I aimed for the corner, to get around it and out of view. Like a sprinter headed for some unreachable finish line in a bad twisted nightmare, I lunged uncontrollably, hopelessly. I dropped to my knees just a few yards from where an elderly couple was slurping eggs from large silver forks and wretched violently there in the open, naked and alone. “Oh my goodness” shrieked the wrinkly woman, “Are you okay?” “No problem here ma’am. Everything is completely under control.” I assured her. I stood up and pulled myself together, sent her a wink before putting on my sunglasses, straightening my collar, and strutting off down the road, ready to face another day. . .
yin and yang
For The Future Is Not Necessarily a Bad Thing - 23 -
I’
m and Asshole When
every minute every second of the double dances in my sore digits, worn in enough to punch out the clock digitally grafted into my joints I get off the second job shuffle through the tubes, wait like you always gotta, and the station schizophrenic trembles to no one, to his own jagged cut mustache buried in the post, he winces through it the wirey electric defence mechanisms that wear overstuffed backpacks, the third rail sneers Looks me dead in what could be a crater or a dried out well or a cardboard cut out of a dried out well but is just my eye “fucking zombies.” he says in this tinny, raspy stepped-on-cat voice“you all look like fucking zombies,” and we might, we do, we commuters in the rainbow noodle maze where they are all express and we’re on the local. And all I got is 43, 200 service industry seconds in the aquarium that is the 42nd St. Passage through a shop front window riding high in my shoulders a headache that’s renting in my temples but looking to move to the Upper East Brow. And all I got is: “I’m not a zombie, man I’m a poet.”
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Some asshole thing like that half muted, semi-defensive, in it’s solid twenty seconds
too late, he has already moved on to pester the old Chinese violinist busqueing, hovers in the melody like a fly on a muffin I should be the one who sees zombies in all this, should grow a mustache that spawn madness then flings it around, surly and slicker than thou, but the exhausted slump has done me well lately, it’s an easy coctail, it’s a coaster
Poems from 8 to 80...
tacked to the crackling plaster board that is lunatic truth. I guess, I am the most zombie-like I’ve been in ages, but no I’m just some asshole when the day crawls through the greasy yellow under belly, when the day should just give up, wants to nod off in his seat but there aren’t any left.
won how ’t do yo do t tiresom ur laun ake your e. hone dry? st Xan ax™ ly.
e eon onc inatown g i p a ch had ss, from o r g s a it w i ate it. i mean
you of ha packed for l m, a le me a ba unch m g , you on and g dum u b ba m chel or. 25
BIMONTHLY CALENDAR
OF EVENTS RECOMMENDED IN CONJUNCTION WITH TWO TABS SEX. POLAR BEARS
AND ROYAL JELLY. STILL TO CONSIDER: AFRICA, THE OUTSIDE, WHEAT, WELTS AND WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES MY RIGHT ARMPIT STINK SO MUCH MORE THAN MY LEFT? IS IT A COGNITIVE THING? WHICH SIDE DO I GO WITH?../.... October 4
October 18
the Hall of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, 9th & Irving, (125pm)
at the Great American Music Hall (7pm)
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
November 8
THE FILMS OF JAN SVANKMAJER at the Pacific Film Archive Theater (530pm)
OAKLAND INT FILM FESTIVAL at the Grand Lake Theater (thru Oct 24th)
October 10
October 19
October 23
ARAB FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE at the Roxie (7pm)
STRING QUARTET at Grace Cathedral (3pm) AN EVENING “W/“
MICHAEL HURLEY at the Hemlock
October 25
NINA NASTASIA & JIM WHITE at the Rickshaw Stop (9pm) October 11
ANNUAL GOOD VIBRATIONS AMATEUR EROTIC FILM COMPETITION! at the Castro Theater. CRAZY RAYS: SCIENCE FICTION & THE AVANT GARDE at the Roxie (7 & 930pm) October 17
INSIDE STORYTIME at the Rickshaw Stop (7pm)
DJ VADIM at the October 20
Mighty (11pm) LIGHTS OUT SAN FRANCISCO, a cityOctober 21
wide energy conservation evening SF CRAFT MAFIA 2007 WINTER TRUNK SHOW at
ALICE B. TOKLAS at the Jewish Community Library (730pm) INDEPENDENT EXPOSURE – HALOctober 27
LOWEIRD EDITION at the Red Vic (8 & 10pm) October 29
END THE WAR NOW protest at the Civic Center (11am) THURSTON MOORE
October 31
THE ANGOLA PROJNovember 30
ECT at Intersection for the Arts (8pm) THE SHINING at the Clay Theater (mid-
ROKY ERICKSON at the Great American Music Hall, (8pm) CRAZY RAYS: SCIENCE FICTION & THE AVANT GARDE at the Roxie (7 & 930pm) November 13
KALX 45TH ANNIVERSARY BENEFIT SHOW at the Rickshaw Stop JOE LALLY W/ CAPILLARY ACTION at the Hemlock November 16
HOWARD WILEY &
SUBMIT YOUR EVENT TODAY TO ASTMAG @ GMAIL.COM
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LAUNCH PARTY Friday, Nov 16th Adobe Books 3166 16th St., SF, CA 7 - 9 PM
...ALL AGES, NO COVER. TOP NOTCH READERS, LIVE MUSIC. PERUSE THE SHELVES, GRAB A MAGAZINE. COME HEAVY, AND COME HARD, AND COME READY TO LISTEN...more info at: astmag.google pages.com...10/4?..:..:
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CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOS: Ken Kottka is the author of the novel “All I Thought Was True” published by Left Coast Press. He teaches English part-time at both St. Mary’s College and Chabot. Tony DuShane writes entertainment articles for the San Francisco Chronicle and other media outlets and hosts the interview radio show “Drinks with Tony”. He’s almost finished with his novel “Holy Smoke”. Christine Stoddard is a first year at Grinnell College with a passion for art, writing and Chinese food. Abby Desmond is a kind, loving, and magnanimous individidual who always does what is right and good.
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Today, I saw the most disturbing thing I think I’ve seen in awhile on Youtube. Search for Tibet Pilgrims. It is just footage of a mountain at first, of the slow snow progress of nature, unending and eternal, and like a threadline, like a hair, like a small filament of dust making its way down the chin of a great battle hero machine is a single-file line of pilgrims; Tibetans, on their way from beleaguered Tibet to India to see their holy man; and the footage is grainy but they make it easier for you to see because they highlight, up there in the front, the guy at point, they draw a circle on him just a few seconds before his body crumples to the ground, and the audio over the back of the shot is full of gasps in every dialect. And then another shot, another crumples to the ground, as the rest of the pilgrims continue on.
They know they can’t stop, if they stop they are shot as much as if they go. So they go. In 20 minutes, the Chinese soldiers will have shot four of them. And it all seems just in sport. They check t h e i r k i l l s . Soon, they will stumble lazily like conquerors into the internat i o n a l camp of climbers who, on their way to Mount Everest, have just witnessed this casual mass a c r e .
Free
Tibet
Hiding in the toilet, a German finds one of the r e f u g ess. He does what he can by offering a little food and some warm clothes. The man thanks him. And there is something so holy just in the motion. The soldiers will ask their questions, but the climbers will not tell them anything, and the Army has orders, in any case, not to molest the Internationals.