Posts

Posted on

Wonderful Absinthe

All in all, absinthe’s a bit of a disappointment. In case it escaped your attention, the green fairy, which has been illegal in the United States for most of the 20th century for its supposed hallucinogenic and psychopathic effects, is now legal. It turns out, in fact, that it’s been legal since Prohibition’s repeal but nobody noticed. Since that time, absinthe has been banned from the U.S. for containing a chemical compound that determined European importers have recently proven never existed in the wormwood-derived liqueur. So what of absinthe’s reputation for murder, mayhem and gothic artistic inspiration? Guilt by association, it turns out. It’s kinda like blaming bourbon for country music or Colt 45 for drive-by shootings.

That sober analysis takes much of the fun out of drinking absinthe, which can now be found in select liquor stores and bars in one of three brands, with more (supposedly) on the way. I’ve been sampling a bottle of the French Lucid today, which tastes like a mix of sambuca and liquid Tylenol. Forget Victorian romance, or Vincent Van Gogh’s missing ear, my favorite absinthe story can be found in Dave Van Ronk’s posthumous memoir, “The Mayor of MacDougal Street.” In the collection of anecdotes from NYC’s late-fifties folk scene, Van Ronk tells of some sailor friends who smuggled several dozen cases of absinthe out of Japan on the even of its prohibition there, hoping to make an underground score back home. When the mob wouldn’t touch it, the sailors were reduced to bartering their illicit booze for places to sleep. I’ll let comrade Van Ronk pick up the story:

As a general rule, I tried to avoid getting mixed up in this kind of convoluted skullduggery, but ever since I was a teenager, I had been reading about Lautrec and absinthe, Modigliani and absinthe, Swinburne and absinthe – naturally I was dying to find out about Van Ronk and absinthe. Also, there was the sheer joy of conspiracy for its own sake. What can I say? I have always been a hopeless romantic…

The next day my two smugglers dropped by Judy’s place, and over glasses of guess what, I got the discouraging word: my guy had bought a few cases for himself and his friends, but basically his position was, “Look – you know what it is and I know what it is, but nobody else ever heard of the stuff. Who are we going to sell it to?”

“Gee,” I said, “the Mafia sure is hard on honest crooks.”

By way of consolation, I took five more bottles off their hands. Hell, they were selling it cheaper than Irish Whiskey. For the next few weeks, the nabe was awash in absinthe. Everybody I knew must have picked up a few jugs. Then it was gone…

It must have been about ten years down the line that I happened to be doing a gig in Provincetown, and a publican in Wellfleet invited Paul Geremia (the world’s best blues guitarist and singer) and me to a high-class bash at his Victorian Gothic “cottage.” Paul and I were sitting there jamming, when our host approached us with two glasses of a familiar-looking opalescent fluid…

“I’ll bet you guys’ll never guess what this is,” our host said, as he handed me a glass.

I took a sip, ostentatiously rolled it around my tongue and replied, “It tastes very much like Japanese absinthe.”

“Jesus, how could you tell?”

I arched my eyebrows in my very best William F. Buckley imitation. “To the truly sophisticated palate,” I intoned, “there are no mysteries.”

Now, that is exactly the kind of absinthe experience I was hoping for! Not necessarily a hallucination, but at least some good old-fashioned conspiracy. But now that everything is twice as legal and half as fun, I can only hope that the humorless American commissars, who are supposedly seething at this subversion of their authority, will find a way to make absinthe illegal once again. Then my bottle of French absinthe would take on some illicit quality, and comrades could gather around my liquor cabinet for some rarified naughtiness. In the meantime, if you’re curious what all the fuss is about, but don’t want to shell out the big bucks for your own bottle, you’re welcome over to the Kew, comrade, to sample some of mine.

Posted on

This Is a Shamelessly Factional Button

Shannon Hammock just mailed me a parcel of the past: silly factional buttons from the Socialist Party’s 2001 national convention. It was the first time in many years that an organized caucus was formed to compete for seats on the party’s national committee. Although they called themselves “the Issues Caucus,” their focus seemed to be on personalities. They lumped a bunch of comrades with wildly different politics that didn’t necessarily even like each other into a cabal, the “us vs. them” that they had to “get.” And so I was opposed for re-election as the party’s Vice Chairman, and Shannon and I printed up a bunch of buttons that mocked the whole situation.

“This is a shamelessly factional button” was a properly irreverent sentiment, and I think we got comrades on all sides to wear those little yellow buttons. “No Factions” and the Rodney King button further got the point across. “I’m okay. You have ‘Issues'” was cute, I thought. The cowboy button was inspired by a bizarre, rambling attack e-mail by one young comrade from Chicago that ended with the hysterical exhortation, “Circle the wagons, boys!!!”

In another e-mail, David McReynolds had accused me of being “against Chicago.” My flippant response was that I had nothing against the city of Chicago, except that I hate the way they cut pizzas into squares. I’m really very right-wing on this issue. As my response successfully diverted attention from whatever-the-hell supposed “issue” we were debating to a free-for-all over what constitutes good pizza (I’m not actually making this up), we thought “No Square Pizzas” would make a good button. Bill Stodden later formed a “No Square Pizza” Caucus to keep up the shenanigans, but, being anti-organized factions myself, I did not join.

Much of the personality focus was on lumping myself and Greg Pason together as some kind of gruesome twosome of party bureaucrats. It was so bad that one could be forgiven for thinking that Greg’s last name is “and Shaun.” The picture of the two of us, with the word “Evil?” was a fitting rejoinder. (What’s particularly funny about that button is that there was a third man standing between us in the original photograph, but, like a good apparatchik, I airbrushed the comrade out of the photo!) The idea of floating Greg’s name as a possible Presidential candidate (even on the preposterous ticket of Greg Pason-Angela Davis) was, perversely meant to provoke a little more hostility from the anti-Greg and Shaun crowd. The supreme irony, of course, is that Greg and I, despite being good friends, could never agree on anything politically.

Finally, my sole campaign button read, “Shaun indulges my vices, so I’ll indulge him as Vice Chair.” The only campaign caucusing I did that weekend in Boulder consisted of booze and sex and lots of it (well, mostly booze). I lost, of course.

Posted on

The Great Blog Circle Jerk, part IV

I’m pleased as punch to finally be able to acknowledge someone who has been instrumental in keeping me on the dubya dubya dubya dot org all these years. I’ve worked with Josh Handle (Handle is a “handle,” dig?) on a number of socialist websites (including Ypsl’s and others) over the years, most of which he designed as I barked orders for how it should look. For my own dot org, he’s been an indispensable resource for coaching me through Blosxom, WordPress, PhP and other techno-gibberish that I would not otherwise understand.

Josh shares that democratizing impulse for the internet on his own blog, Open Source Society. It’s a good resource, and probably about as readable as this geek talk can be. If you need more hand holding, he’s offering his services for a fee for web design. His web design work, and, more importantly, his availability and cooperativeness, get the strongest endorsement from me. Plus, it’s for a good cause. Comrade’s got a lot of babies to feed.

Posted on

Nothing Is Revealed

Todd Haynes’ new anti-biopic, “I’m Not There,” lives up to its hype as the perfect film distillation of the life and legend of Bob Dylan. The stories of six Dylan-like characters (played, among others, by a 13-year-old black boy, a British actress, Richard Gere and Batman) intertwine, and, naturally, nothing is revealed.

The soundtrack is fantastic, including covers by a who’s who of middle-aged alt-rock and a terrific selection of Dylan classics and overlooked gems like “Blind Willie McTell” and the early version of “Idiot Wind” that wound up on the cutting room floor for “Blood On The Tracks.” The title is taken from a heretofore unreleased “basement tapes” recording, one of those haunting songs that Dylan recorded in one take and perversely never touched again, much to the chagrin of us cultists. It turns up here in a re-mastered mix and Sonic Youth cover.

Cultists, the only folks who could properly enjoy two and a half hours of abstract Dylanology, will have a field day with character names, set decoration and other sly references to songs both popular and rare. The rest of the squares, like the couple sitting behind me who would not shut up, will content themselves by pointing out that Cate Blanchett’s insufferable-prick-era “Dylan,” Jude Quinn, “probably means the Rolling Stones,” when introducing Brian Jones as a member of “that cute little cover band.”

For many, the scenes that stretch hardest for credibility are Richard Gere as Billy the Kid-in-hiding, after escaping Pat Garrett’s bullet. For me, this is the most enjoyable part of the film. It’s a tribute and celebration of Dylan’s weird and wonderful “basement tapes” period; a tangled up mix of Americana from the Civil Way to the Dust Bowl, with circus freaks and outlaws and ostriches, that somehow makes sense of non-sensical lyrics like “pack up the meat, sweet” and “open the door, Homer.” It’s a visual delight for any true Dylan freak.