Tampa
August 18th, 2010
See you in Tampa this weekend.
I will be performing at Side Splitters in Tampa Thursday through Sunday.
It’s your first chance to pick up the all new “No Slaves for Bears” t-shirt.
You will be the only one you know who has one, and it’s cool.
Also appearing, Carmen Lynch.
See you at Side Splitters Aug. 19-22.
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No Slaves for Bears
August 18th, 2010
No Slaves for Bears
No Slaves for Bears
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This is some sort of middle period
May 25th, 2010
The internet is like some sort of existing thing. Try and argue with that, it’ll get you nowhere.
The woman who owns the chimp who ate the woman’s face off died today.
I’m sure that woman never imagined a chimp would eat her face off.
The chimp also ate her hands.
I know it’s old news, but so is blogging.
Yes, negativity. It’s what I have for you today.
On the upside, I’m still in some sort of middle period.
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WC Fields. “The Bank Dick”
February 13th, 2010
You’ve got to trust me on something. The Bank Dick is one of the greatest screen comedies of all time. There’s a lot of really great subtext (some subtle, some not) and attention to detail. Fields wrote this, he’s at the top of his game on his next to last starring vehicle. Superbly (over)acted by the entire cast. Comedic chops abound. They strike the perfect tone together. Watch how Fields loses his hat while getting backed up by a crooked stock broker. Watch him reluctantly work to pay a home mortgage, getting bullied by a banker. Watch his indifference toward crime and refusal to take the police seriously, as he accidentally foils bank robberies, drives getaway cars, and encourages his prospective son-in-law to embezzle bank funds and buy stock in a beefsteak mine. He’s an existential everyman, stoically going about his life of burdens with ease, doing shots at 10 am before his first day on the job as a bank security guard. He looks as comfortable misdirecting and, indeed drugging, a bank examiner as he does showing off cigarette tricks to preteen kids who idolize him after he takes credit for something he didn’t do. An absolute tour de force of bad behavior, mistreatment, illegality and minor irritations. Easy to underrate, repeated viewings are rewarded to finally grasp the complete, subtle logic of this deceptively simple tale. It’s fraught with meaning, particularly for sensitive people who will, through Field’s many imperfections, recognize the small something in themselves that rages against hotshots, fatcats and morons and somehow still manage to sometimes control our lives. Down to the details, this film is an oddball masterpiece, a one-of-a-kind career-topping moment for an extraordinary entertainer, and one of the great innovators who, though world renowned and universally acclaimed as one of the alltime greats, still seems underappreciated when stacked against the perceived value of the legacies of the Marx Brothers and The Little Tramp. In “the bank Dick” he’s created a character of such subtlety and truth, but with a surreal edge and poetic perfection that, if you pay attention, will stick with you for weeks to come.
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Invisible cars
February 9th, 2010
Invisible cars: Worth the extra money? Go!
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January 30th, 2010
In the chase scene at the end of “The Bank Dick,” W.C. Fields is driving fast while being held hostage by a bank robber.
The cops are after them, and Fields manages to escape them. In the process, he also drives the convertible recklessly and beat the robber up and then unconscious.
It’s great because W.C. Fields isn’t taking sides. He’s in the center of it. At the end (SPOILER FOLLOWS) he is awarded $5,000 and also $10,000 and a movie contract. Great ending! ChaW!
Tags: ChaW!
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SNL
January 24th, 2010
Saturday Night Live, Season 8, ep. 15
Host Bruce Dern, Musical guest Leon Redbone.
Leon Redbone, you know it’s difficult to imagine a much cooler name than that. It’s not the kind of thing you think of often. It’s not the thing that you think of at all, this thing, this name of this man with the hat and the glasses and the mustache and the deep voice, the rich voice that he has, overflowing with…richness. When he sings there’s no question about his depth or his mustache. This hair aims for Clem’s.
On this night, I was less than thirteen years old and Saturday Night Live for me was still a magical thing. This was before your Martin Shorts and your Dana Carveys. This was way before your Victoria Jacksons and your Keven Nealons. Your Dennis Millers were still in the distant future, and so were your Ellen Cleghornes. Your Chris Farleys and your Any Gasteyers? Well, we’d have to wait a few years before we’d meet them.
This was AFTER your Jane Curtains and your and your Bill Murrays.
What does the name Nora Dunn mean to you? What’s the image it conjures? My sister’s friend was heavy and I remember she hated Nora Dunn. She revealed it to me as we sat on a front porch one summer. Nora Dunn had played a character who seemed to shame people into not masturbating. The key line from this sketch is the one she kept quoting as an example of what she hated about Nora Dunn. It seemed to me and the time and until this very moment that she took that bit in the sketch personally, and I figure I know why.
At any rate, I understand her cast mates had some pretty specific observations about her. There’s a lot I could say but sometimes you have to just err on the side of caution. I doubt that Nora Dunn or any of the other people involved are reading this, but stranger things have occurred.
I will only say this: It doesn’t matter how you get into the water, the point is to wade in whenever possible.
Now, this episode in 1983 is the one where Buckwheat is shot. It looked just like the Reagan shooting. It took them two years (Reagan was shot in 1981), but they still were satirizing the assassination attempt of a president. Pretty nuts when you think about it. I doubt anyone was joking about Lincoln’s shooting two years after, but then of course Reagan lived. Also, Lincoln was Lincoln.
Lincoln Logs, man. Those used to be the big toy, which is also hard to believe. There’s no video game version of Lincoln Logs. They exist only in the real physical world and in our memories. Lincoln Logs, in that sense, are very much like the Lincoln Assassination. Or, rather, they are not.
(Lincoln’s wallet is the one that says “Bad Mutherfucker” on it. In terms of Presidents, he’s the one that is supposed to be all the shit. Giant SHIT MAN is Lincoln, according to the historians. He built stuff out of wood and he did this and he did that. He “spun a yarn” and he was “quotable.” Many of his “quotes” are “in books.” ((You see how quotes are used to demonstrate irony. It’s a very specific reassignment of the duties of this piece of punctuation. The quotation mark was intended to indicate dialogue, to show what one is saying. And then somehow it got to mean like something is “quote” bullshit.)) He’s the captain of the team at all times. This was before your James Garfields and your Chester A. Arthurs. WELL before your William McKinleys and your William Howard Tafts. He saved the Union, he had a beard and when you look at him without knowing he’s “Lincoln” you realize he a pretty scary-looking dude. He could’ve easily just been some kind of criminal when you consider his looks. Grew up in a log cabin and then probably used that fact to get all “common man” on people. I can’t support that in my memory.)
It strikes me as a pretty bold move at any point to make fun of such a thing. The real Buckwheat, at the time, was very much against the use of his image during this episode to be satirizing the shooting of Reagan, saying repeatedly that he found it “ditdateful.”
8 seasons in, people were saying it was “over” and how innocent do we all look now, when we look back and see things from the perspective of time, which has past by the fuckload since then. We were all about to find out about a little something called “We Are the World” and AIDS. All that shit was coming up, we couldn’t have known.
Sitting around watching Tim Kazurinsky or some shit. Is he anyone’s favorite cast member?
Ah, but you ask the obvious question. “What DID Leon Redbone sing?”
“Sweet Sue,” “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody.”
Any questions?
http://www.hulu.com/watch/10389/saturday-night-live-buckwheat-buys-the-farmhttp://www.hulu.com/watch/10389/saturday-night-live-buckwheat-buys-the-farmhttp://www.hulu.com/watch/10389/saturday-night-live-buckwheat-buys-the-farm
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January 16th, 2010
So, many of you have been writing and asking me how I like to spend my time in Appleton, WI. I’ve gotten emails in the teens about this. They keep coming in, dozens of them, all in the teens, numerous requests for information, which I’m now willing to provide.
I can’t tell you the information, I was unable to retrieve, hahahaha. It’s a rather esoteric statement this morning from the black part of my core, and it’s got a lot to do with a certain feeling you get sometimes. A couch, a television, a sandwich, a piece of fruit, a cup of coffee, some snow, some trail mix, a hot shower, picking a tie, next thing you know you’re being watched by 180 people in a room, there is laughter and cheering. Turn the mutherfucking page. This is my book. MY book, do you understand me?
Communication is happening all around us. I’m too unable to remember the things that happened in recent communications which might be helpful. Again, unable to retrieve, but you’re getting the idea. At the end I reveal who shot the main character, and there’s a wedding episode filled with surprises. The beginning touches the end and the end wraps around and licks the ass of the beginning. That’s the way a circle works. In every circle, there is the implication of ass eating. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat ass? Stand still with it!
Circles is what I’m talking about. There are tons of them. Everything a circle in it’s way, and in it’s own way eating ass. The Olympics, in it’s way, is the biggest ass-eating event there is. It’s impossible to look at the Olympic symbol and not be thinking about eating the ass, even if it’s deep in your subconscious mind. It’ll probably never be an Olympic event.
Maybe you’re starting to figure it out. Use your brain to do your thinking and your tongue for you know what. Then turn off your brain and your radio. No music while you’re doing that. You don’t want to fall into a steady rhythm.
Tags: Appleton, ass, blog, eat, Pat Dixon, Pat Dixon's blog
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Ice Cream For Crow
January 9th, 2010
I just watched a video on youtube.com for a Captain Beefheart song called “Ice Cream For Crow” and I believe there’s a chance that this experience has changed my life forever, changed me as a person, as a man.
(There’s a leather thing under me.)
I’m not sure really where Captain Beefheart came from, like what planet because this fucking guy is undeniably from a planet that’s not this one. I can’t come to any other conclusion. Planet planet.
There’s a huge blues influence on the music, and it seems like it might be the only logical next step that rock and roll never took. Meaning that he’s not so much ahead of his time as just beyond any time that’s going to ever exist. To the extent that popular music deviates from this extraordinary music, that is the extent to which it is completely off course.
I can hear this music reaching back into a chant, something primal, something born with time or before it while reaching into the future, or into a future that’ll never exist. It is a music with the breadth and depth to stretch across and encompass all of time. It is the music it is because it is every music simultaneously, the one without beginning and without end. It’s a club and a raygun, a spaceship up on blocks in front of a cave. I’m wearing a loincloth.
All this music was meticulously composed by Van Vliet. If you watch and listen, you will be startled at this. These musicians are playing note for note compositions by the singer, they are not just jamming, this is the way the song was written, for each instrument. It’s the least corny music that could possibly exist because it takes you prisoner and never lets you go broadcasting something into your consciousness that you are not conscious of really, what music does what I just said? You can’t name one, except for this one. I’ve listened to it.
This is from his last album and it’s an example of him at his highest level. Where could this have gone beyond this? I think it’s appropriate that he retired from music for painting. It makes all the sense in the world. He carried it to this point, and now I have yet to hear anything that picks it up and carries it forward.
The greatest of all time is that way because it’s the only of it’s kind. This music is at once completely repetitive and constantly evolving. It it scripted, drawn up, meticulously crafted, diligently rehearsed and explosively executed chaos. What is the music that also answers to this description.
I can see something maybe in Ornette Coleman that’s similar, but here’s the difference: Captain Beefheart is doing this blasting rock thing and this deep blues groove and holler. There’s a lyrical element that you don’t really get with Ornette.
Not to be ridiculous by posting a challenge; but I honestly do not think it’s possible to watch this, to become totally absorbed in it, the music and the images, and to not have some sort of religious experience.
There are also a series of concert videos by the man that are astounding. This is not the way humanoids play music. Z rhymes with K. Flonk.
CLICK THE LINK BELOW
Ice Cream For Crow watch?v=iqRHr5pEIFU
Tags: Captain Beefheart, fucking awesome, music, Pat Dixon
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Learning Spanish
January 7th, 2010
This is the year I finally learn Spanish. I always thought it would be really hard and that’s what’s held me back all this time. It turns out it’s no big deal, because I got this calendar and I’m learning a phrase every day this year and in one year I’ll be able to say 365 things, which is WAY MORE than I’ll ever need. Think about it, 365 things. I don’t think I can even say 365 things in English and even if I could, who would care? Long about thing 60 people are generally going to be looking at me funny; it’s not like I’m a topless women, they can say as many things as they want and mostly people will pretend to be interested.
The only problem I can see after the first week of learning to say things is that I seem to be learning to say things I’d never say. Things like “Sus ninos son adorables.” Sure, there are adorable children out there, and I might even meet someone who has adorable children, but it’s just something I’m going to say and the reasons are obvious. In this country, every time you so much as stare at someone’s child for longer than 2 minutes and it’s red flag city, even if you don’t say anything. This guy on Tv with the cookies and teenage whores has kind of ruined the vibe in this country, and it’s too bad. I happen to like M&M’s, and kids like M&M’s but try sharing some. So much for the innocence of childhood, right. That’s the phrase they should teach on Day 7! “This guy with the cookies and teenage whores has caused too much paranoia.” That’s something I might use.
“El primer paso es el mas dificil.” If only the first step was the hardest! Tell that to one of the fatasses I see at the gym trying to work off all that pudding and ham! I think the 700th step is a lot harder for them (or anyone! c’mon PhrasaDay!). You get on a treadmill, those first few steps aren’t so bad. I would think you could gauge difficulty by how much sweating and heavy breathing and collapsing is taking place, but here I am LIVING IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE AGAIN, apparently.
That’s my problem, I’m living in the land of “should,” you know what I mean.
The main problem with learning Spanish is that I certainly know a lot, and I certainly enjoy talking to people about all the things I know, but it’s hard to be convincing about all the things when you don’t know the words to say them. Once I know how to say 365 things, fuck it, I’m gold, but for now it’s kind of “dificil” because my phraseology is not complete. If I was writing this calendar, there would be phrases toward the beginning to buffer this tender time in my learning process, things like “I’m fucking smart, take my word for it” or “You think you’re fucking better than me? Talk to me in 360 days, buddy, and we’ll see who can say more things” or “I fucked your mother. Just kidding!” Just because I’m new at a language is no reason for me to take shit off mutherfuckers.
I’m sure later that the phrases in the calendar will be stuff I want to say, because I’m not going to be telling people “Hi, I’m a pedophile” or preaching to people on treadmills; can you imagine how rude this would be?
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