Faro and I will be working the poetry/music tip at the following events…love to see you there.
July 21st at the Middleborough MA Public Library (benefit for agency for the homeless)
National Poetry Slam, Austin TX, sometime during the week — details TBA
September 19 at the Cantab Lounge, Cambridge, MA — feature at the weekly slam
More details will be posted at the Myspace: http://myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown
See you…
Every year, Worcester hosts the Summer Nationals — a four-day cruise night, so to speak, where muscle cahs, hot rods and motorcycles and their fans gather from all up and down the East Coast and beyond to celebrate the joy of burnouts, loud pipes, beer, fried street foods, and rock ‘n’ roll of the blooz rock/classic rock/rockabilly ilk.
I’ve always at least tried to catch at least part of the day events, especially the set ups at Green Hill Park where you can just check out thousands of amazing cars on display.
But until last night, I’d never been to the burnouts.
At one end of Main Street, down by the court house and the art museum and the police station, there’s a short tunnel where the street dives down under Lincoln Square. At the tunnel’s exit, the road is lined for a fairly good distance with stone walls on either side.
Here is where it happens, and what happens is this: for magical hours upon end, folks line up along those walls to see other folks bring their cars and pickups and motorcycles and ATVs to a plywood pad in that tunnel and take their turn to see how much smoke and noise they can make while spinning their wheels on the wet plywood (Worcester FD keeps the pad wet and the burned rubber washed off with firehoses), with the desired aim of eventually blowing out a tire if they’ve got the torque — all this to the cheers of the crowd.
At times, the smoke from a given car will be so thick that no one can see two feet in front of them for a couple of blocks around. (That’s not an exaggeration — Missy went into the Crowne Plaza to use the bathroom at one point and the hotel was kinda hazy inside.) Burned rubber is everywhere. It stinks, it’s dirty…and it ROCKS.
Understand, we’re not talking about the done up cars for the most part — these are the cars people use every day. They line up for hours and hours to take their shot — the last cars got through at around 1 AM.
Vehicles we witnessed burning out last night:
— wide variety of tuners and such
— big ass 4×4 trucks
— motorcycles from street racers to custom choppers and dirt bikes
— a Lincoln Town Car
— a Crown Victoria
— two ATVs set up head to head so they couldn’t go anywhere
— a motorized wheelchair (the guy had it tricked out to look like a Harley trike)
— a mid Eighties Mercedes 560 sedan (surprisingly good smoke)
— an old BMW 535 (not so good)
When it was done, we looked at each other and we were black head to toe like a couple of coal miners. That’s what we get for standing down wind and not too far behind the pad…
Prior to all that, we’d seen Jason James and the Houserockers, a local rockabilly band, playing in the courtyard of the hotel right next to the tunnel (which is why we actually went down there in the first place — hadn’t planned on getting so involved in the burnouts). Jason, a flash guitar player, played a great short set full of Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, and some other rockabilly standard issue stuff — I know their longer shows contain more originals and such, but it was crowd pleasing time so no worries.
Next year, I’m taking the Accord into the tunnel. (Yeah, right…)
Burnouts continue tonight, if anyone wants to head down…I’m gonna be elsewhere, but you should go if this thing appeals to you. I hear Paul LeMat and Cindy Williams (from American Graffitti) will be there tonight.
Hot guitars, stinking and choking smoke and dirt, and loud engine noises with a couple of beers…yeah. A good release after a not so hot week.
marvelous here, say the civic leaders,
wonderful that we’ve got
coney island hotdogs,
the kenmore,
the boulevard,
the numbers,
the cardinal,
the hotel vernon;
ralph’s diner,
ralph’s tavern,
ralph’s plumbing.
gotta love that blue collar charm.
it’s almost scriptural for some that
having a lot of guys
named ralph in your town
can make a place unique —
until you get on the road
and find the next
flock of ralphs
because there’s always
a next flock of ralphs
even if they pretend
to different names.
i once ate a pizza
in a bar in suburban chicago
and damned if the guy who made it
wasn’t a ralph
with the same lithe fingers
and dumb drunk charm as the ralph
i dropped off at his apartment
just before i left worcester.
if ten blind men named ralph
put their hands
on the walls of any city,
they’d complain about
the same ten different things.
nothing in worcester
is different enough
to make me want to stay,
anywhere else
is the city i want to live in,
i am afraid i’ll get lost
and come back around
no matter how far away i go,
so this is just to say
i’m changing my name to ralph
because if i’m going to stay
or even if i end up leaving,
i want to make an effort to fit in.
first i’ll breed my gripes
in the marrow of my thighs
and try to keep my eyes open.
then, with a name like any other,
no matter where i am
it’ll feel like home
when i set my hands flat against the walls
and begin to speak disdainfully
of ralph the pothead
at the door of the blues club
that ought to be called ralph’s
but for some reason isn’t,
of ralph the worst cop in town
who for some reason here is named
maritza,
never mentioning ralph the whiny sumbitch
straining against
the bricks, closing his eyes
again, translating for himself
the nickoby tavern, the blackthorn
social club, el coqui, lafayette’s feather,
yet another coney island, yet another george’s,
yet another band of ralphs
simmering in the evening, staring
at the road out of town.
I keep seeing banner ads for chemistry.com, an online date/matchmaking site, that include the come on that the site will show you the value of a “chemistry-inspired relationship.”
I think that’s a euphemism for “one night stand regretted immediately upon awakening.” Or, perhaps, “Please God, tell me I did NOT do lines off his/her belly…”
Just so you know:
that Keith Olbermann video on YouTube that y’all have been posting here? Good stuff. Nothing earthshaking if you keep track of such things, and I expect nothing will come of it…but well done.
Lately the words “grouchy,” “curmudgeonly,” and “crabby” have been applied to me so often I almost don’t want to go out of the house anymore for fear of causing offense to others.
I try to be cheerier, but I can’t sustain it for very long.
I try to find more hope in things, but I always slip back.
There’s a mockingbird singing up a storm outside the house — has been for hours.
I love mockingbirds. The variety and range of their calls is amazing. They imitate other birds and learn new calls throughout their lifetimes, and can imitate frogs, peepers, crickets, and lots of other things. I’ve heard one back at my old house who could imitate the sound of the hedge shears my dad used to trim small bushes, and there are stories of them mimicking car alarms.
I looked up a reason why a mocker might sing all night — they’re usually daylight singers — and learned that a bachelor male will call nonstop until he finds a mate.
I wish this one luck, for all our sakes.
According to that Visitor’s map I posted earlier, i’m getting hits on this blog from places in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Russian Federation. Possibly someone from Iraq, too — never sure how accurate those blue dots are…
I can sorta guess who the US hits are coming from, but who are you folks? Especially if you’re not on my friends’ list — love to get a comment as to where you are and why you’re reading. It would warm the cockles of my heart, which in general are never warm enough.
Drop a comment on here if you could. Anonymous is OK…
Thanks!
ETA: As of 1:54 PM, several of you have responded…and while I love you all to death, what I was kind of hoping for was that the people who responded would be people I didn’t already know. Hence, the “Hey Strangers” title to the entry. I was using the entry to try and track some of those unusual spots on the Visitor Map I posted earlier.
So…revision: If I already know you, have slept at your house, hang out with you fairly regularly, or we’ve had some history in the past…I appreciate the affirmations, but you’re not the droids I’m looking for, as a wise man once said.
This is an instrument
I’ve never fully understood —
at first sight it was
everything I dislike in a guitar —
but it works, somehow,
most of the time.
Big body, blonde maple
ribs, blonde spruce top
and decoration from the butt
all the way up the neck
to the head. Brand new, too —
no vintage splendid ruin
with the nicks and scratches
to tell all its previous owners’ stories
and prove its worth.
Till now I have always counted
on age’s cachet to make me love
a guitar: checking the patterns
of wear and tear to try and puzzle up
the best way to play it, play it
as it always has been played,
make it tell me what it knows.
I’ve loved best of all
a grown up guitar.
But now I play this infant
and more and more
no instrument has ever been
more dead on right for me: the thump
of the woody bass, the ring
of hard treble
and brightness, brightness
on every stroke and strum.
It tells me everything
I’ve always needed to know.
Sure, there are nights
when it hurts
to play it
for hours at a time,
wrapping myself around
its wide pale waist,
both arms gone to needles
and pins as the fingers
squeeze frets and
stumble across strings,
pulling out
flat old songs and odd
noodlings of new tunes
that sound suspiciously
like old songs anyway.
On those nights it hurts
to hear the maple first resist me,
then reluctantly give
just half of itself up
because it knows
there’s no one warmer
and better loved around.
More often these days,
it’s more than a tease.
It’s becoming comfortable enough
to play with me through
the wrecking of my hands,
play through our mutual
bulk and inexperience
to get the sound we seek.
This is starting to be joy.
And then there is the peace that comes
from knowing that someday
someone will see my own marks on this one,
my signatures all skull-weary
and blue tears, and it seems
all I need to do
is grit my teeth and keep learning
how to make them mean more
than first impressions might lead one
to believe.
1.
Star: a sharp response
to this blunt question: “what if
I never get there?”
2.
Shroud: reservoir, urn;
grey coat of many collars.
Put it on. Forget.
3.
Death: a shrouded star
wished upon hard enough to
shine, briefly, for you.
— written 7/1/07 at the Java Hut; inspired by another’s work
Dark Matter 