There are three material things I love greatly in life, three hedonistic focuses if you will. Coffee, Books, and Movies. I wouldn’t choose a life absent of any one of those things. Not that I’d give up my whiskey, tobacco, marijuana, cherry pie, or chocolate without a violent struggle. Those are just not really the hills I’d choose to die on, all things considered.…
Material days were long and hot, but that is summer. Farmers and others who work by sunlight praise the season. It is a vacation from school for children all over America, and so their numbers in public spaces tends to increase during these sordid months. Because of the heat, the tawdry fashion sense that dominates America plunges to an all-time low. People would go…
Art school was often about hanging out with other art students, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, and usually talking or arguing about art, philosophy. or music. Most artists listen to a lot of music. Nobody paints in a quiet studio. In art school the painting studio was the location of many music arguments, as there was only one cassette deck and a limited supply…
Jimmy Killingsworth always told me I keep too many irons in the fire. He was the first person to give me a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow, the man who turned me on to Pynchon, so I was inclined to take his advice in every area but that one. It was also a delight to entertain him with ridiculous stories of how I managed to…
Back in the Eighties sometimes we would spend long hours drinking cocktails and talking about the things people talk about when they spend long hours drinking cocktails. There was an old editor who lived in the village and enjoyed taking small groups of young writers out for dinner and drinks. We usually met at this grand old hotel near the plaza, a vast adobe…
My friend MacGilleathain, art critic and budo master, had never seen Citizen Kane. So we bought two big cans of Scottish ale and staked out the front row of the underground repertory theater. The cinema was literally underground, converted from an old subterranean experimental theater stage, so the front row was not too close to the screen. It was in fact an ideal position…