11:59 (It's January) - Scrawl (1998)

Black Kaspar Winter 2017/2018: Drone Wars

I'm in the process of organizing my thoughts to approach a show near the end of February. It will likely be the last Black Kaspar show for a while, though nothing is really certain.

Since the end of 2016, the band has undergone a lot of changes. Black Kaspar was always, in theory, a "project" band; the idea was to recruit a band on a project basis. The first Black Kaspar recording, the ridiculously rare Pain Free Living from 2008, featured two of my TBW! band mates, Matt Whitaker and Tony Woollard. Not long after that, I started working with the rest of final TBW! lineup -  Heather Floyd, Dan Willems, and Chris Willems - along with drummer Bart Galloway. Galloway, Floyd, and the Willems brothers were working as the Sick City Four at the time, and I (as Black Kaspar) referred to the Sick City Four as the "mobile strike force", the idea being that, while Black Kaspar was still theoretically revolving membership, working with the Sick City Four allowed me to do live shows on short notice without recruiting a new band each time. Eventually, the SC4 became part of Black Kaspar, due in part to my laziness and homebody tendencies (which meant that I didn't really make a lot of connections with other musicians), and in part to the fact that I really, really like playing with Heather, Dan, Chris, and Bart, and really like what we were doing at the time. After 2008's Pain Free Living, there are two bandcamp releases, 2011's The Rocker and The Null Set, which feature various paramutations of Dan, Chris, Heather, and I working out nebulous ideas and concepts. The first coherent Black Kaspar release was, in my opinion, 2012's The Expression Machine. Jim Marlowe's Loin Seepage label put out Schizo-Tech in 2014, which was the last thing to feature Bart on drums.

After a while, SC4 wound down, and Bart drifted away. Black Kaspar continued, drummerless, for most of 2014 and 2015. We played live rarely; once, to be precise, in a rather infamous show at the Zanzibar in Louisville.

In 2014, we released The Tower. Ruins (The Tower Pt. II) came along in 2016, along with Science Fiction, which included a live show from 2012 and a solo no-input mixer piece I recorded in my basement the same year.

In the spring of 2016, we hooked up with drummer Jeff Komara, just out of Tropical Trash (he is on the first two singles and the album, as well as a couple cassettes). From spring to the end of 2016, the band was Heather, Dan, Chris, Jeff, and I, and it was the most productive period of the band, not to mention the most "band like", although that exact lineup never played live. It was during that period that Year of the Centipede was recorded (released on Gubbey Records in March of 2017). There is still over an hour of recordings from those 2016 sessions that haven't seen the light of day, all of it at least as good as Year of the Centipede.

At the end of 2016, Dan and Heather left Louisville for Indianapolis, and the weekly quintet workshops ended. The idea was to have Dan and Heather come down for the tape release in March 2017, but, for various reasons, that did not materialize. Brian Manley from Insect Policy ably assisted us at the release show and a time or two thereafter, but for the most part, as 2017 dawned, Black Kaspar was a trio, with Jeff, Chis, and I. A fucking power trio, mind you. Achievement unlocked!

The sound changed as well . . . probably as dramatically as at any point throughout the long and winding Black Kaspar road. BK had toyed with the wall of droning guitars before - Death March in 2014, "The Rocker", "Fukushima", "After Image/Beyond Image" from the first two e.p.s in 2011, "Taste the Rainbow" from Gubbey Record's 2013 Headcleaner Louisville music compilation, and even the very first public performance was a four guitar drone - but drone and guitar walls became the centerpiece of the trio sound, driven by Jeff's krautrock drums.

The power trio version of the band played out more frequently than any other version of the band - though that was still only five times, and never outside Louisville (the band has never played outside of Louisville) - and amassed a big backlog of recordings, some of which show up on Soundcloud. There is one bandcamp album, Radiate, and there is a double cassette planned for 2018 from the trio.

In November of 2017, the band (by this time it was functioning more as a band, and less as a project) decided to stop regular rehearsals/recordings/live shows to work on other projects. Chris Willems and I will continue to work together on projects which may or may not end up being Black Kaspar, while Jeff works on his own projects (though likely our paths will cross again). The sole remaining live commitment is to our friend Doodlehound's book/CD release in February.

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Which is a long set-up for the fact that I've got to get my shit together for the February show. I know Chris is on board, I know Dan and Heather won't be, but beyond that, I don't know. Back to the original concept: get a project, recruit a band, develop an idea, go.

Part of the most recent work stoppage on the band is that we were headed to what appeared to be a dead end. I am comfortable banging my head against a wall, as is Chris (there is a reason TBW! lasted for twenty years), but we were at a stalemate with the drones. Black Kaspar has always orbited somewhere between three poles: noise, free improv, and drones. With the trio, drones came to the fore - purely my deal, nobody else's, just seemed to make sense to me. But we worked it, twisted it, pushed it, and finally wore it out. It was high time to reset, work another angle, try a different tack.

To that end, I decided to dedicate the February show to . . . drones? Yeah, that's how I think. Let's have a going away party to the drones; makes perfect sense to me. Hence, Drone Wars!

So I've put together a scrapbook to define my headspace for the show. Thought I would share it with you. It starts with Wagner's majestic overture to Das Rheingold, and continues through the first act: Wagner starts with a sonorous drone, where does he go from there? It also covers Buddhist chants that leaven the droning throat singing with clanging gongs and howling reeds. Sunn O))) and Earth are there, of course, but there's a little disruption and noise as well, from people like John Cage, Robert Ashley, and Pauline Oliveros. There's noise that becomes hypnotic, repetitive, and droning, from Throbbing Gristle. Krautrock's there too, with the eponymous song from Faust IV.  There's silence, like the extended silence that begins Ives's Sixth Symphony. And the drones come in different flavors, from drone metal to Tony Conrad/Phil Niblock/Henry Flynt minimalism (which is much more interesting from where I'm sitting).

I won't be composing much for the show: just recruiting the band, setting some parameters, developing some leitmotifs, and letting the chips fall where they may. There was a time when I was considering really fleshing this out, working past the February deadline and creating a composed work. That still may happen; but right now, it doesn't seem likely. I've really been itching to work more noise back into the sound, and I'm always heavily into improv, so it looks like the other two poles may end up re-asserting themselves.

As for the future of the band, that too is unclear. Being in a loud band means two things: one, heavy equipment; and two, hearing damage. I have been doing this for a very long time, and the amplifiers have taken a toll on my hearing. That can be addressed with visits to the doctor and earplugs; but, barring BK becoming famous enough to make enough money to afford roadies, the day is coming when I won't be able to move those big ass amps and speaker cabinets any more. I mean, that's not happening tomorrow, but it is on the horizon. Maybe when I recruit a new band I need to also get people who can move my shit?

Anyway, below is the playlist/scrapbook. It will be changing as I get closer to the show, so you can follow it on Spotify, or just return to this post as it will automatically update here. I also plan to add more notes on this blog as I make them, and ideally I will get a recording of the set as well.

Ciao!

Coca néon arc-en-ciel Polaroïd - Matmos / Villeneuve / Class of 69 (2017)

Merry Christmas! The Pacers are Kinda Good!

 Victor Oladipo

Last night (12/18/17), the Indiana Pacers played the kind of game that seemed to be a forgone conclusion for the 2017/2018 season, at least from last summer's point of view, which saw Pacers' ex-franchise player Paul George scooting out the door before it hit him in the ass. The game started with the Celtics coming out of the gate leading 12-0 en route to building an 18 point spread in the first quarter. From there, the game was a typical NBA slog, with the Celtics falling asleep, the Pacers making a run, the Celtics waking up, the Pacers getting closer but unable to pull even . . . until the fourth quarter, when the Pacers pulled the ol' "feisty underdog" routine and managed to pull even. And then, in an even feistier underdog fashion, they managed to eke out a five point lead with only 30 seconds left. AND THEN, just to reinforce the "underdog" part of "feisty underdog", they managed to become the first team all year to choke up a five point lead at 30 seconds to lose a game: with under five seconds and a one point lead, the Pacers got the ball into the hands of Bojan Bogdanovic, who manages an 87% stroke from the line. Surrounded by Celtics running at him screaming "I'm fouling him! I'm fouling him!", all Bogdanovic had to do was hold on to the ball, get fouled, and go to the line for two shots leaving three seconds on the clock for the Celtics to score. Even if he missed both free throws, that left a minuscule amount of time for the Celtics to rebound, go the length of the court, and get off a good shot, especially since the clock stoppage would allow the Pacers to set the defense. But no: Bogdanovic decided to softly loft a high-arching pass toward Victor Oladipo at center court, which was picked off and slammed home by Terry Rozier. Ballgame! For your edification, let's take a look at a graphic which describes tragic futility:

That's grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory! So, the Pacers are who we thought they were, right? Well, not so much, as it turns out. It seems that, just maybe, the Pacers are kinda good!

First, let's revisit the Celtics game: the Celts currently own the third best record in the NBA (behind this decade's dynasty, Golden State, and the Houston Rockets, the team to beat this year as Christmas rolls around) and sit on top of the Eastern Conference . . . who, collectively, are currently winning at a 48% clip against the West, undercutting another big off season talking point, namely the extreme unbalance between the conferences . . . which is a long way of saying the Celtics are currently pretty good. Add to that the P were on the second night of a back-to-back, the third game in four days, with the previous night's game on the road in Brooklyn, and you have a game with somewhat diminished expectations, especially from a team that everyone thought was lottery bound anyway. For the season, the Pacers stand at 17-14, 8 games behind the Celtics in the East, good for a fifth seed if the playoffs were today (12/19, that is). Overall they have the 9th best record in the NBA, one game behind preseason darlings the Minnesota Timberwolves, and ahead of such preseason buzz teams as the Milwaukee Bucks, the Washington Wizards, and the Philadelphia 76ers. Indeed, the Pacers are now a part of the in-season buzz, thanks to the unexpected nature of their winning ways.

All of this comes with a king-sized caveat: though the season has been underway since mid-October, it doesn't end until early April. Though the games count from day one, they don't get real until after Christmas, and it's going to be a hell of a lot more difficult to beat the Cavaliers in January (they'll get two chances) than it will have been in November and December (both games the Pacers won). Though it has been a little different this year, perennial contenders like Cleveland and San Antonio generally don't even hit third gear until after the new year, so it's not terribly unusual to see some upstarts steal games before then. The Pacers have had some good wins, but a handful come with asterisks: they took the Spurs without Parker or Leonard, the Knicks without Porzingis, the Nuggets without Milsap and Jokic, and the Cavs before James got off the beach. In the same way that there are no moral victories, there are no qualified wins; but really, we know there are moral victories, and that some wins mean less than others.

As it stands now, the Pacers are the biggest surprise of the adolescent NBA season. After the George for Oladipo/Sabonis trade (for which GM Kevin Pritchard was roundly excoriated), it was assumed from outside Indianapolis that the Pacers were tanking for a lottery pick. Inside Indy, the question was who the Pacers were going to pick up to help them out since, per the Simon ownership group, tanking is not an option. They ended up getting nobody. No less than Zach Lowe (at the top of a very short list of top notch full time basketball writers) chose them as the least watchable team in the league. Everybody who knew anything about the sport predicted their best case scenario to be the eighth playoff spot in a dreadful East: but here we are, with the Pacers at number five in an East that is not nearly as bad as expected.

We are still waiting for the regression. The Pacers are shooting hot from all over the court, being led by a fifth year player scoring eight full points over his career average. The defense, instead of being horrendous, is merely mediocre. Everybody on the team right now seems to be the absolute best version of themselves . . . how can this go on? The answer is that it probably won't, but that doesn't change the fact that the team has a whole new level of expectation: instead of the the eight playoff spot being their stretch goal, the sixth seed seems much more reasonable than them missing the playoffs altogether. This Pacers team is not who we thought they were . . . turns out that that they are much better. Maybe even good.

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Thaddeus Young

The Pacers have been outliers for a while now. Their last big run, under the eye of Frank Vogel and centered around Roy Hibbard, David West, Lance Stephenson, and George Hill (as well as Paul George) saw them playing the role of the defenders when everyone else was focusing on offense. This year, after a failed effort to create an offensive juggernaut in George's last year, the offense has finally arrived; but even so, the Pacers remain outliers in many ways. Now, it is the Kerr/Golden State by-way-of Popovich/San Antonio model of floor spacing, positionless basketball that is all the rage, mercifully taking the place of the hero-ball "trio of superstars" model that succeeded the Michael Jordan era. Hero ball still exists in some places - Houston's reliance on James Hardin as the centerpiece of their new-world ultimate realization of D'Antoni's system, and of course the Cavaliers can count on LeBron James to take over a game when necessary, because who's stopping him? - but, by and large, the league has gone to a sabermetrics-friendly offensive game that eschews all shots but three pointers and dunks because, as the statistics guys tell us, mid-range contested two point shots are the least efficient shots in the game. What this ends up looking like, in practice, is guys running at the rim and kicking it back out to teammates arranged around the three point arc if they run into the least resistance. Big guys underneath are spending less time working for shots, and more time standing around waiting for offensive rebounds and maybe, if they've been really good, an inside outlet from a driver who draws the post defender. All of this has led to some very, very pretty basketball: it's hard to deny the art behind the game when you are watching the Warriors anywhere close to their best.

The Pacers offense relies on pace-and-space, but they run pick and rolls at an extremely high rate. Further, unlike the old hero ball pick and rolls, they will run the pick and rolls with a wide variety of triggers: Oladipo, obviously, is the favorite, but Darren Collison will run it as well, and of course Lance Stephenson and Domantas Sabonis make a great pick and roll team for the second unit. In the case of both units, the Oladipo/Collison or Stephenson/Joseph guard pair finds the point (Collison or Joseph) triggering the offense, but then setting the table for the two guard (Oladipo or Stephenson) to run the pick and roll, leaving the point out at the arc as a three point shooter. On both units, the guard play is very fluid, leaving whoever has the hot hand room to operate. This usually means that, on the first unit, Oladipo and Collison share the trigger about evenly, though you usually end up seeing a lot of Victor in the first and fourth quarters, as well as if the team seems to be moribund. On the second unit . . . well, Lance is Lance, so the ball's gonna be in his hands, and Cory will do whatever is needed, including taking the ball out of Lance's hands when too much Bad Lance makes an appearance. Modern pick and roll isn't exactly hero ball, and it does rely on spacing as much as the Golden State offense, but the screening and passing function is slightly different between the two systems.

New offensive philosophies breed new defensive strategies to counter them, and the top keeps spinning. Current Timberwolves coach Tom Thibodeau is a defensive strategist who wrote the blueprint for ending the 90's iso-ball offenses (hero ball: give your superstar the ball, clear his side of the court, and let him work) when he was with the Celtics in the early aughts. Against the new defenses, the common strategy became to have more than one superstar to operate, a strategy pioneered when the Celtics picked up Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in 2007 and won an NBA championship powered by their three triplets (Garnett, Allen, and incumbent Paul Pierce). The "three superstar" rule, as vulgarized in popular imagination, became the rule of the day, leading to James's "The Decision" in the summer of 2010 to create his own dynasty in Miami with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. James spent four years in Miami and won two championships, which in retrospect looks less like an endorsement of the "triplets" scheme and more like the force of James's own will. It is telling that popular opinion feels that Miami unperformed in the James era, when in fact two titles in four years will look very good as history provides context. It is also interesting to look at the two teams who beat them: the Dallas Mavericks, driven by incisive in-game coaching by Rick Carlisle and an unconscious performance by Dirk Nowitzki; and the San Antonio Spurs arriving with a fully articulated version of the offense now dominating the NBA.

The arrival of the "triplets" scheme also coincided with the dawn of a primary pace and space principle: the inefficiency of the mid-range jumper. It is about this time when teams started the "run to the rim, kick out for three" strategy that currently dominates offenses. Against this, a defensive strategy evolved which was primarily embodied by the "Blue Collar Gold Swagger" Pacers of a few years back. The idea is fairly simple: get a huge shot-blocking post presence to handle any and all traffic that comes to the rim, and match them with long, rangy, athletic wings to run shooters off the three point line. The Pacers had the perfect starting five for this defense: George Hill was big enough and quick enough to cause serious problems for most point guards trying to trigger offenses; Stephenson and George were big, athletic wings who ran at anybody on the three point line; when the wings oversold on the jump shot and the offense put the ball on the floor, they would meet the great wall of Roy Hibbert at the hoop. Add David West at the four to stop interior passing and clean up rebounds, and you had a defense that was very adept at shutting down the offenses of the day . . . or at least they were until the San Antonio/Golden State model turned "drive and kick" into an intricate, beautiful display of passing and motion.

But as the defense taketh away, so the defense giveth. That ten-to-twenty foot jumper that offenses and defenses alike ignore because it is inefficient? It starts to look a lot more efficient when it is barely contested. And while the current iteration of the Pacers are pretty good both at the rim and on the three point line, it is their mid-range offense which makes them look different than most of the league, and makes their spacing better across the whole court. While the team lacks any true superstars (Victor Oladipo is trying to put the lie to that, but we'll get to that in a minute), it has a lot of decent players who do some things pretty well. Thaddeus Young, for instance, is a player virtually forgotten by the league because his mid-range bump and grind offense is so out of style; but he shows up every night, puts up 13 and 6, and does the little things your team needs to have to be good. Turner and Sabonis both have deadly midrange games: both have the skill and footwork to get their own shots, as well as find open shooters when they draw the double. Both are nightmares to defend in the pick and roll, since both can shoot and drive with equal skill. Oladipo and Collison both can get mid-range space with their quickness and ability to pull up on a dime and get a shot off. Lance still has that old-school playground game, and has the ability to muscle the defenders he can't beat. You're not calling any of these guys superstars, but they are getting the job done . . . and even if some regression shows up in the shooting percentages, it is now clear that are 100% legit on the offensive end.

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Domantas Sabonis

It was no secret that the over riding purpose of the 2016-2017 Indiana Pacers was to convince their franchise player, Paul George, to sign a new contract and stay in Indiana. To that end, Pacers president Larry Bird dumped Frank Vogel and the remnants of Blue Collar Gold Swagger, and tried to re-invent the Pacers as an electric offensive force. It was a miserable failure; at the end of the season, Paul George bailed, followed by Jeff Teague and C. J. Miles, and Bird essentially fired himself, turning control over to Kevin Pritchard. George managed to further deflate his trade value by letting the press know he was leaving at about the same time the team knew. Cleveland desperately wanted George to help them challenge Golden State, but they were unwilling to pay the price Pritchard was asking: George for Kyrie Irving. Ironically, Irving demanded a trade not long after the George trade to OKC was complete, and Cleveland got less value for him. Indiana, for their part, settled for Domantas Sabonis and Victor Oladipo, a deal that had almost every basketball writer wondering aloud if that really was the best they could have done (the general bewildered consensus: uh, no?). Most thought that they were taking on one ex-lottery pick on a bad contract, and one young player with "decent role player" as his upside. Turns out that the haul was much better than anyone - perhaps even Pritchard himself - expected it to be.

Both Oladipo and Sabonis suffered in the oxygen-poor atmosphere of an offense run by Russell Westbrook, but no one knew exactly how much. Sabonis stepped up immediately when projected new franchise Myles Turner suffered a concussion in the first game and ended up missing several after that. When Turner came back, there was some serious discussion as to whether he should go to the bench if he could not co-exist with Sabonis. Sabonis, for his part, is starting to show that he is not too far off of being a really good role player, the kind of "glue guy" essential to any good team.

As big a surprise as Sabonis has provided thus far, it has been Oladipo that has been the real revelation. As mentioned above, Victor is scoring eight points above his career average, and has eagerly accepted the role as the face of the franchise . . . a role that, before this year, there was no indication whatsoever that Vic could fill.

I watched Oladipo at Indiana, and he was a rough-edged player of breathtaking potential. After three years at IU, he went second overall in 2013 (behind Anthony Bennett, who is now out of the league) in a draft whose only real superstar to this day is Giannis Antetokounmpo. Oladipo, for his part, had spent four years in the league, and had yet to transcend the "potential" tag, to the point that is was a serious question as to whether he would ever become a player worthy of his draft position. The trade that brought him to Oklahoma City was supposed to be a move that helped Westbrook by surrounding him with more firepower . . . but Vic only managed a 16 point average last season. In his one season in OKC, his inability to take his game up a level and live up to his potential was becoming his story.

I remember very clearly what his game was at the college level: blindingly fast, ridiculously athletic, shaky handle, hot and cold jumper, good defense that saw him occasionally get burned by over committing. I've not seen much of his previous four seasons in the league, but what little I did see showed minor improvement, not the step up that everyone was looking for. Last year in OKC, he looked better, but still raw. And lost. But that, again, that may be almost as much due to sharing the court with Westbrook as it does his own shortcomings.

Everyone is talking about the jump in the numbers Vic has put up this year, but there's more to it than that. Beyond the numbers, he looks to finally have taken that step that he was expected to take in year two or three. There has been talk about his new physical regimen, about how he has transformed his body. No doubt this has helped, and no doubt starting to be this uncompromising about his body will help in the future, but Vic's physicality has never been his problem. He has always been fast, strong, and athletic, and beyond the added endurance, I think the mental boost this regimen has given him is its most important benefit. But, while the national TV audience for the OKC game was enthralled by Vic's new six-pack, I was noticing a lot of other differences from the days he was in Bloomington: first, dude finally has a handle. Back in the IU days, his kamikaze dives at the rack were almost as likely to end up with Vic dribbling off his foot as they were with him slamming it home . . . but now, though he's not exactly Kyrie Irving in traffic, he still manages to control his drives just fine; and given his speed, that's quite enough.

This transformation goes beyond his control, body or handle. Victor has always seemed like a bit of a slow learner; but watching him lately it seems that he has finally absorbed the offensive side of the game in a way that he never has before. There is an oft repeated clip of Vic breaking Kevin Love's ankles to hit a dagger three to end the Cavalier's win streak, but the part that really impressed me is how he ran the play by waving off Bogdanovic's pick (Bojan was guarded by James, it would have defeated the purpose to run J. R. Smith through a pick just to have James switch onto him) and calling Young up to get Love on the switch. And there's more, a lot more: he's getting ridiculous with his caroms off the backboard on his drives, which allows shots from all different angles when he's driving, and also helps him complete the shot through contact. His decision making is much better than before, when his choices to drive, shoot, or pass seemed (seemed? probably were) completely arbitrary. And while his outside stroke seems to be better than it was, that's almost secondary; he actually seems to be building an arsenal of shots that he can use even when his stroke temporarily deserts him. I'm convinced that, even if Victor's shot encounters some turbulence, he's finally made the step up. The All Star team is a very real prospect for him this year, as is the Most Improved Player at the end of the year. But beyond that, Oladipo is ready to be the face of the franchise, if that is what is called for. Or, if another face of the franchise shows up, he's willing to step aside and play the role he has been given. And what's more, he has a rare temperament which will allow him to function in whatever role is necessary for winning, as well has the wisdom to finally understand how he may contribute to that ultimate goal. In short, Victor Oladipo has become a franchise player, even if he is not the franchise player.

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Bojan Bogdanovic

There's more to this team - Myles Turner leads the league in blocks, Darrin Collison has shown an uncanny ability to manipulate game tempo to the Pacers advantage, Lance Stephenson rebounds his position like a maniac (well, he does everything like a maniac) - but it's time to bail with one last note: chemistry.

"Chemistry" in team sports is a nebulous concept: you can observe it, but you can't quantify it. It often becomes one of those mystical bullshit shibboleths that old timers will throw out contra sabermetrics, and one of those unfortunate points of statistical noise that the numbers folk ignore because they can't plot it. Chemistry became a big thing during the whole "triplets" era: Boston immediately had great chemistry between Garnett, Allen, and Pierce, so much so that everyone pretty much assumed that getting stars was all you had to do, when of course you have to figure out how the stars fit together. The LeBron Heat teams did well, but they didn't automatically win, which is why some thought them a failure. Right now, OKC has the reigning MVP (Westbrook), one of the two best two way players in the league (George), and the best pure scorer in the league (Anthony); yet, as of this writing, they are .500 for the year. They are starting to figure things out, but it's not something that always happens right away . . . there's this weird qualitative thing we call "chemistry" that always pops up in most unpredictable ways.

Indiana Pacers fans know about chemistry. When Frank Vogel took over for the fired Jim O'Brien in 2011, the Pacers had been mired in mediocrity since the implosion of the Malice at the Palace Pacers. Vogel managed to elevate the Pacers to the level of feisty underdogs almost immediately, and showed steady improvement from there. In the 2012-2013 season, those feisty underdogs made it to the Eastern Conference finals to give the hated Heat everything they could ask for. The 2013-2014 Pacers managed to get the first seed in the playoffs, but not before an ugly confrontation with chemistry.

That year, the young Pacers thought they had everything pretty much lined up. They had chemistry: George Hill frequently took Paul George and Roy Hibbert out fishing on Geist, and somewhere, there is a brilliant picture of the team at Disneyland. There may have been an offensive revolution in progress, but the Pacers had the defense to solve the problem. But, as good as the P were on defense, they could never generate consistent offense . . . that was the chink in the armor.

Larry Bird was never a fan of "good enough". And, as a hard-assed Hoosier individualist, he had a dour view of mystical concepts like "chemistry". On February 21st, 2014, Bird traded Danny Granger, Paul George's mentor and the only bright light from the previous Pacer era, for Evan Turner and Lavoy Allen. Granger, in spite of his status as a team hero, was diminished by knee and lower leg injuries, and by that point was a rather expensive bench/situational player. Bird decided that he needed more offense of the bench, and he thought Turner was a good answer. On paper, he may have been, but the callous offloading of a player that had been the emotional and spiritual core of the team had an effect. There were rumors of off-court friction between the players, and many reports that Turner caused friction on the court as well. This nebulous thing called chemistry asserted itself in a very concrete way: before the trade, the Pacers were 41-13; after, they were 15-13. When Bird decided to dismantle the Blue Collar Gold Swagger Pacers, he managed to poison the well by making it clear to Roy Hibbert that the team did not want him has a way of getting Hibbert to refuse his player option. That poison carried into last season . . . and frankly, George had every reason to leave an organization which was becoming dysfunctional.

But, upon the exit of Bird and George, a funny thing happened: the team found chemistry again. It may be the freedom of lower expectations, it may be the "new day" vibe, and with it a chance for a bunch of players who labored in the shadows to prove themselves. That considered, it certainly has a lot to do with the personalities of the players: a humble two guard who never had the ego to match his raw talents, a big pivot with a preternatural positive outlook on life, a prodigal son who returned to find that Indianapolis would not only tolerate his eccentricity, but revel in it. As it stands now, this team plays together as well as any that has ever been here . . . Oladipo is the big shot guy now, and everyone looks for him when the game is on the line, but Vic knows that, if he draws the defense, he can pass it off to anyone, and they will know what to do. Right now it is trust that is driving this team, and it shows. Oladipo may lead the team, but there are five other players that average double figures, and everyone on the team can count on getting the ball if he is open. There is an openness and optimism to this team that is catching the fans in Banker's Life Fieldhouse, and it's getting noticed around the league.

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Darren Collison

That's about a wrap for this screed; but before I go, where is the team really?

Right now, the upside goal is a four seed in the Eastern Conference, minimum expectation would have to be a seven. Six seems realistic to me.

If they can get to a five seed or above, we should expect them to win a playoff series. Six, seven, or eight would have them facing the Celtics, Raptors, or Cavaliers, and I would expect any of those series to be a competitive loss.

At the end of the day, this will be a very good season for the Pacers. They are already playing with house money since they were expected to be a lottery team . . . they have the freedom of low expectations. And while the expectations have already advanced due to the early season performance, they still have plenty of slack on their side.

Things will get tougher for the Pacers. Their opponents no longer see them as a lottery team, and will adjust accordingly. Some of those numbers will regress to the mean somewhat. But, through all that, there is enough going for this team that they should be able to maintain their pace, whatever obstacles may arrive. They may be surpassing expectations, and they may be catching teams off guard, but there also is plenty of room to get even better than they are now. This team is clearly better than anyone thought it would be.

The next step, as the previous iteration of the team found out the hard way, is the hard one. In the meantime, enjoy this season, 'cause it will be a fun one. 

Ballhog or Tugboat?

Happy  60th to Mike Watt. Long may you rage.

The Western Lands Mixtapes Part IV: The Underworld, Illusions of Fury

A swan drifting through the land of the dead opens this volume of The Western Lands mixtape series. Illusions, delusions, Faustian bargains, the underworld - the Western Lands from the Egyptian Book of the Dead - haunt this collection, from Sibelius's Finnish phoenix, through Rimsky-Korsakov's Arabian Nights, Liszt's trio of devils, Branca's satanic choir, Partch's furies, and Stravinsky's Russian phoenix. As per usual, twists and turns abound, from romanticism to atonalism to minimalism and points in between. A loose narrative flow was attempted on tape 8 (more details here), but it really doesn't demonstrate any more cohesion than any of the others.

Next up: songs. As always, the Spotify playlist is not always the same as the tapes, though it is as close as possible.

Tape 7

Side 1

Jean Sibelius – The Swan of Tuonela (Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra)

Edvard Grieg – Concerto in A Minor for Piano and Orchestra: I Allegro molto moderato (Von Karajan/Philharmonia Orchestra)

Elliot Carter – Piano Concerto (Leinsdorf/Boston Symphony)

Anton Webern – String Trio Op. 20: 2. Sehr getragen und ausdrucksvoll (Boulez/Ensemble Intercontemporian)

Benjamin Britten – The Courtly Dances: III Pavane (from Symphonic Suite: Glorianna, Op. 52a) (Bedford/LSO)

Side 2

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – Scheherazade: I The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship (Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra)

Alban Berg – Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin, and 13 Wind Instruments (Pisek/Chamber Ensemble of Wind Instruments, Prague)

György Ligeti – Doppelkonzert für Flöte, Oboe, und Orchester (Howarth/Swedish Radio Orchestra)

Tape 8

Side 1

Franz Liszt – A Faust Symphony: III Mephistopheles (Bernstein/NYP)

Glenn Branca – Symphony No. 6 (Devil Choirs at the Gates of Heaven): Fifth Movement (Branca/Ensemble)

Eduard Tubin – Symphony No. 9: I Adagio (Järvi/Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra)

Side 2

John Philip Sousa – George Washington’s Bicentennial March (Urbanec/Czechoslovak Brass Orchestra)

Vyacheslav Artiomov – Sonata of Meditation: III Evening

Harry Partch – Delusion of the Fury: Exordium Beginning of the Web (Mitchell/Ensemble)

Igor Stravinsky – The Firebird Suite (Ozawa/Boston Symphony Orchestra)

Harald Weiss – Arche (excerpt)

Invisible Blues - Sunny Murray (1969)

RIP Sunny Murray (9/21/1936 - 12/7/2017)

Blue (Moby Dick) - Jackson Pollock (1943)

Le Mer - Debussy (Boulez/Cleveland Orchestra)

A very good version of one of my favorite symphonic pieces. This is the La Mer I hear in my head; I have, however, run across different versions, and there certainly is a space for interpretation here. I may decide upon a different La Mer sometime down the line.

I Trust My Guitar, Etc. - Magik Markers (2004)

Dispatch From Mar-a-Lago - L7 (2017)

Happy Birthday Hoagy!: A Hoagy Carmichael Sampler

Hoagland Howard Carmichael 11/22/1899 - 12/27/1981

Myles Turner

Is he ready?

The Western Lands Mixtapes Part III: Klavier!

Next up in the Western Lands mixtape series: piano! Keyboards are perhaps the heart of western music, the site where composition often occurs. Its maestros are at the front of the orchestras, the rock stars of concert hall (Lisztomania!). Piano music is capable of the most delicate intricacies, the most overwhelming fiery explosions, and everything in between.

A side note: there are two African-American jazz composers/pianists included on these mixtapes. Cecil Taylor is up front about looking at the European tradition as much as the history of jazz; Monk, not as much. A purist would argue about their inclusion, but it is well known that 20th century composers by and large were eager to celebrate the contributions of jazz . . . Stravinsky, for instance, wrote pieces for "jazz orchestra" and is said to have championed Duke Ellington as the greatest composer as the 20th century. And though Monk may not display the chops of a Glenn Gould (okay, that's not fair, because who does?), the parallels between his brand of eccentricity and someone like Satie seems fairly clear.

So, enjoy this playlist as some of the all time greats tickle the ivories! As always, Spotify playlist tracks mixtapes as closely as reasonably possible.

Tape 5: Piano

Side 1

Ludwig Van Beethoven – Piano Sonata No.2: II Adagio cantabile (Glenn Gould)

Erik Satie – Trios Nocturnes (Aldo Ciccolini)

John Cage – Music of Changes III (David Tudor)

Cecil Taylor – Erzulie Maketh Scent: Part II (Cecil Taylor)

Side 2

Frédéric Chopin – Waltz Op. 34 No. 3 (Agustín Anievas)

Alexander Scriabin – Quatre Morceaux Op. 56 (Vladimir Ashkenazy)

Charles Ives – Piano Sonata No. 2: II Hawthorne (Gilbert Kalish)

Claude Debussy – Suite bergamasque (Walter Gieseking)

Sergei Prokofiev – Sonata No. 6: I Allegro moderato (Van Cliburn)

György Ligeti – Capriccio No. 1 (Irina Kataeva)

Tape 6: Piano Too

Side 1

Modest Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition (Sviatoslav Richter)

Charles Ives – Three Quarter-tone Pieces for Two Pianos (Herbert Henck, Deborah Richards)

John Cage – Third Interlude (for Prepared Piano) (Maro Ajemian)

Side 2

Conlon Nancarrow – Sonatina (Conlon Nancarrow – piano roll)

Henry Cowell – Dynamic Motion/What’s This?/Amiable Conversation (Henry Cowell)

Morton Feldman – Nature Pieces (Philipp Vandré)

Domenico Scarlatti – In B Minor, L. 33, Andante mosso (Aldo Ciccolini)

Karlheinz Stockhausen – KLAVIERSTÜCKE I (Herbert Henck)

Johann Sebastian Bach – Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914 (Glenn Gould)

Thelonious Monk – Pannonica (Thelonious Monk)

Aberdeen Mississippi Blues - Bukka White (1940/1967)

Booker T. Washington White, born this day sometime between 1904 and 1909

Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day
fades to red white & blue dark
   this the
   celebration of the betrayed

   (does the phrase
          "cannon fodder"
   ever truly go out of style?)

  what chance have they been given?

raise a glass
to the pebbles
beneath capital's feet

give them shitty steaks
at Applebee's

they didn't die for you
they died
for what will kill you

The Well-Tuned Piano in The Magenta Lights - La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela (2002)

The Western Lands Mixtapes Part II: Transfigured Night

My mother, in a well-intentioned (probably Dr. Spock influenced) effort to expose her firstborn to culture at a young age, made sure I listened to a copy of some sort of Disney-esqe classical music for children LP. It went well with the grey wool pants, suspenders, starched white shirt, bow tie, and sweater with a crest that I sported in my toddler pictures. Fortunately for everyone involved, she gave up on that by the time her other children showed up. I did, however, manage to pick up a couple orchestral favorites before I turned five: Handel's Water Music, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Neither are of major interest to me anymore, but I have copies on hand in case I ever want to revisit them.

As a teenager, I became obsessed with rock, mainly hard rock/heavy metal. Led Zeppelin was never far from the turntable, nor were The Who, Hendrix, or the Rolling Stones. Eventually, Frank Zappa became an obsession, which led to my second brush with classical music: I had his first London Symphony Orchestra record, 200 Motels, and Orchestral Favorites (one of the Läther releases). I didn't really "get" it, I didn't know if it was supposed to be good or not (because lord knows you can't count on Zappa fans for a reasonable critique of his "genius"). It occurred to me to start listening to classical music as a way to acquire more knowledge of music - which was quickly becoming my main fascination - and to that end, I picked up a couple cheap classical cassettes. One, Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites, remains a favorite to this day; a second, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, is also a piece that still stays with me.

But then, punk rock happened to me, and I took a different track.

A few years into punk, I headed hard in the noise direction. At some point someone pointed out that there were "modern classical" composers who were even more obnoxious than Einstürzende Neubauten, and I discovered Turnabout's infamous Electronic Music LP, which featured Cage's "Fontana Mix", Berio's "Visage", and Mimaroglu's "Agony". Not far behind were Varèse, Stockhausen, Penderecki, Xenakis . . .

From there, I decided to start listening to classical music in a somewhat more systematic way. One gray day I ended up in Ars Nova/The Glass Harmonica, a classical music store (sheet music as well as classical LPs, cassettes, and the then-new medium of CD) just off Third Street down by Indiana University's School of Music, poking around to find something that might catch my interest. I found a tape from the so-called Walkman Classics series that featured Arnold Schoenberg. The only thing I know about Schoenberg is that a classical music snob I knew went on and on about how terrible he was, and said I should listen to everything by Mozart before anything else. I hated the Mozart I heard, so I guessed that I would like the guy he hated. That tape turned out to be one of the most deeply influential music pickups I ever made: Verklärte Nacht is one of my favorite pieces, but the other stuff blew me away as well: Ligeti's Lux aeterna, Nono's Como una ola de fuerza y luz, some Alban Berg . . . and a Stravinsky piece I didn't care for much. Maybe it was how the music perfectly sliced through the fog of the day, maybe it was the mood I was in; whatever the reason, that tape (pictured above) sent me on my quest to grasp classical music. Transfigured night, indeed.

I tell people all the time that I got into classical music backwards, starting with "difficult" modern composers and going backwards to more traditional classical music icons. I really don't go back to much further than Beethoven. I still hate most of the Mozart I hear (with the notable exception of his Requiem), and Bach sounds like math to me unless it is played by a transcendent musician such as Pablo Casals or Glenn Gould. But there is plenty of the romantic that I like - Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Grieg, Sibelius - and I'm down for the mixing of melody, atonality, and just plain insanity of composers from Shostakovich to Cowell and Ives.

This, then, would be a reckoning. 

As always, the Spotify playlist hews as close to the tapes as possible, but it is not always possible to find the exact version that I have. And yes, there are more to come: as I write this, I am up to tape 9.

Tape 3

Side 1

Luigi Nono – Y su sangre ya viene cantando (Maderna/Rome Symphony Orchestra)

Giacinto Scelsi – Canti del Capricorno No. 2 (Michiko Hirayama, voice)

Arnold Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht (Boulez/Ensemble InterContemporian)

Side 2

Henry Cowell – Toccanta: Moderato pomposo ma vivo

Ludwig Van Beethoven – String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4 (Budapest String Quartet)

Krzysztof Penderecki – Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (Penderecki/Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra)

Charles Ives – They are There! (Ives, piano and voice)

Johann Strauss – The Blue Danube (Von Karajan/BPO)(OST – 2001: A Space Odyssey)

Tape 4

Side 1

La Monte Young – Sarabande (Just Strings)

Claude Debussy – La Mer (Szell/Cleveland Orchestra)

Béla Tardos – Evocatio (Erdély/Hungarian State Orchestra

Henryk Górecki – Symphony No. 3, Op. 36: II. Lento e largo - Tranquillissimo (Zinmann/London Sinfonietta)

John Lurie – Bella by Barlight (Kronos Quartet)

Side 2

Edgar Varèse – Ionisation (Boulez/New York Philharmonic)

Arvo Pärt – Tabula Rasa (Studt/Bournemouth Sinfonietta)

Ludwig Van Beethoven – Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Op. 55: IV Finale (Walter/Columbia Symphony Orchestra)

Bonzi Colson

is it college hoop season yet?

late.  I take a little detour
windows down, top open,
roll up on The Captain's Locker,
pay too much for booze after two a.m.

I miss the turn the first time;
it's been awhile.
I'm surprised at all the cars,
then remember I was always surprised
  by all the cars,
  a parking lot jammed and stretched back
  winding along Hillside, a little up and down
for its twist.

I have a bottle beside me on the seat.
A small one.  We're older now.
I caught your porch out of the corner
    of my eye
I had to turn around butt first
in the last drive and cruise it again.
You weren't out there.  Of course you weren't.
You don't smoke anymore.

Happy Birthday!

Eugene Debs born in Terre Haute, IN

November 5th, 1855

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1961 (watercolor on paper)

The Bird Song - Muhal Richard Abrams (1967)

RIP  Muhal Richard Abrams September 19, 1930 - October 29, 2017

Ghosts of October - Black Kaspar (2016)

artwork by Julie Slagle

Francis Bacon (October 28,1909)

Self Portrait (1975)

Statues - Hüsker Dü (1981)

Maybe it's just me, but I hear some PIL here.

The Western Lands Mixtapes Part I: Garden of Joy and Sorrow

I tell people that lately I have been listening to a lot of "classical" music, and they nod their heads as if they know exactly what I mean . . . which is, of course, even less sensible than pretending to know what I mean if I say I listen to "rock". What generally is called "classical" covers centuries of Western music, and if you think the Stooges would sound incongruous on your local classic rock station, it would be nothing compared to Stockhausen's Kontakte sandwiched between Bach and Vivaldi on the local NPR classical outlet.

I have been buying up classical LPs at the local shops, since they sell for a fraction of what rock, punk, and jazz LPs go for these days. I got into classical music backwards: coming from a punk/post-punk/free jazz/free improv background, I started with 20th Century experimental work and really only go back as far as Beethoven. The big names in 20th Century experimental - Stockhausen, Oliveros, Partch, Cage, Xenakis, et al. - have a certain cachet among the post-punk crowd, and therefore pull higher prices on the used market than the average classical records and CDs (collector items notwithstanding, of course) . . . so, I'm using this opportunity to fill the gaps in my (more mainstream) classical collection. My good friend Shannon has recently ferreted out a couple large classical LP collections, and has allowed my to skim off the top for almost nothing, so I've currently got a big haul that I am wading through. There's plenty here by some of my faves - Beethoven, Debussy, Mahler, Shostakovich - so I have the luxury of finding my favorite versions.

Whilst sifting through my booty, I've decided to start making classical mixtapes: after all, what goes better with vinyl surface noise than low bias cassette tapes? Below the track listings is a Spotify playlist which, when possible, has the exact version that I pulled from my collection. I find that, while the records I am picking up these days are more mainstream in nature, these mixtapes are pulling liberally from my whole collection, including the more "weird" sounding modern classical.

TAPE 1

Side 1

Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 9 in D: I - Adante comodo (Bernstien/NYP)

Sofia Gubaidulina – Garden of Joy and Sadness (excerpt)

Charles Ives - Symphony No. 4: Comedy – Allegretto (Tilson-Thomas/CSO)

Side 2

Robert Schumann – Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in A Minor (Prades Festival Orchestra, Pablo Casals, Cello)

Jean Sibelius – Kyllikki, Op. 41: II – Andantino (Glenn Gould, piano)

Walter Piston – Symphony No. 8: I – Moderato Mosso (Mester/Louisville Symphony Orchestra)

Elliot Sharp – Digital (Kronos Quartet)

TAPE 2

Side 1

Richard Wagner – Das Rheingold: Overture, Scene I (Von Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic)

Morton Feldman – The O’Hara Songs (Ensemble Avantgarde)

Arnold Schoenberg – A Survivor From Warsaw, Op. 46 (Boulez/BBC Symphony Orchestra)

Side 2

Carl Ruggles – Sun Treader (Rozsnyai/Columbia Symphony Orchestra)

Maurice Ravel – Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No.2 (Szell/Cleveland Orchestra)

Witold Lutoslawski – String Quartet, Introductory Movement (Kronos Quartet)

Luc Ferrari – Tête et queue du dragon (Ferrari)

Enjoy! There's plenty more to come; I'm already up to tape 5.

DoE Flashback May 29, 2014: All Women, All Men

  Facebook is filling up with witness to sexual assault/abuse/harassment against women, and I think it best that men temporarily step off the facebook response/engagement train to allow women the space to have their say (am I the only one who finds the "we see you" posts, no matter how well intentioned, as just another way to insert men into the discussion?). Obviously men have to step up and stand against institutional misogyny, but they need to be bringing these discussions into "male" spaces (King Cheeto's infamous "locker room"), and stand behind the women who are leading the public interrogation.
  To that end, I am using my space here to re-run a Death of Everything post from 2014 on the issue. I want to take a little time to refocus an issue that this post addresses, and a couple that it doesn't:
  1)  All women have been subject to sexual abuse of some sort. On the flip side, all men have been guilty of harassment at some level, if only because misogyny is so deeply written upon our culture. I have sexually harassed women before (see the discussion of "grabass" below). What I did may not have been outside the "normal" behavior of teenage boys, but that only goes to show how deeply misogynistic our culture is. There is no point in saying "not me"; we have to take personal responsibility, and move to make changes. It is easy to attack big monsters like King Cheeto or Harvey Weinstein, but it is the very banality of misogyny - the asshole cat-calling in the street, the guy greeting a woman with "hey baby" when she walks in the room, the never-ending normative comments on appearance based on the male gaze -  that is the bedrock of female oppression in our culture. It really is every woman, every man. 
  2)  I understand my discussion of the issue is gendered in a very determinative way, and I understand the problems and limitations of that. I choose to have this discussion traditionally gendered because that is how misogyny is coded into our culture. I also understand that, beyond misogyny, gender itself is an issue.  
  3)  Perhaps my biggest reservation about running this is the manner in which it personalizes the oppression of the other: like the man who prefaces his disgust with the big bully misogynist with "as a father of two daughters", it implies that I can only understand oppression when it involves me personally. In spite of that, I think it is worth reposting; but we have to be able to comprehend and deal with oppression outside of our sphere if we ever expect justice to be served.
  Oh yeah, and never, ever, ever, ever drive drunk. That is bad bad bad. I could have killed someone that night.
  With that, on to this post from The Death of Everything. . . 

I grew up sheltered to a large degree, and my realization of the depths of the issues that women face was a bit slow in coming.  The slap and tickle grabass that sometimes broke out among teenagers always stopped at "no" as far as I was concerned . . . and besides, it was mutual, wasn't it?  It didn't occur to me that maybe a girl grabbing a boy's ass isn't the same as the other way around*.  Or, more to the point, that many women didn't have the agency to say "no" when the line had been crossed.

The whole concept of explicit verbal contracts for physicality was just surfacing at universities when I was in my twenties, and was subject to about the same level of incredulity that trigger warnings are today.  And like trigger warnings, the verbal contracts at very least started to bring to the surface deep structural issues (in this case, the pervasiveness of men's institutional control over women and their bodies).

It took another incident to start to bring home what a woman in this culture has to deal with.  In my twenties, I was really only good at drinking, so I spent a lot of my time going to house parties, since I never had the income to blow at the bars.  There was a young woman, "Janie" we'll call her, who used to hang out with us.  Janie was (and still is!) a bright, bubbly girl who had an amazing smile that she beamed constantly.  She was always full of positive energy, and a delight to be around.  She was also all of 16 years old when we first met (I was about ten years older), and perhaps slightly naive about the sexuality that she radiated.  She was, however, a pretty good judge of character, and surrounded herself with people whom she could trust; while she was out on the punk rock house party circuit frequently, she was always surrounded by her extended family of big brothers and big sisters who would watch her back (and, it also helped immensely that she was never much into booze or drugs, so she wasn't compromised in that sense).

One night Janie, my friend Al, and I were at a particularly loud and crowded party.  We got there early enough to make three or four runs at the keg before the line got too long.  After that, Al and I did pretty much what we always did at parties: lean against the wall, slam down whatever booze we got our hands on, and cracked wise.  This party, as crowded as it was, didn't afford us too many beers, so we were light on the booze and heavy on the cracking wise.  At a certain point, Janie circulated back around and chatted with us briefly.  I lamented my lack of beer, and Janie volunteered to go get me one, since she knew the guy dispensing the beer would let her cut to the front of the line.  I was fine with that, so against the wall I stayed.  An ass pocket bottle of whiskey was passed my way, and I got a short drag just before Janie got back with my beer.  As she gave it to me, I told her not to stray too far, that I was planning on leaving fairly soon, pretty much as soon as I finished the beer.  And that's the last thing I remember with any real clarity.

The next day I had to open the record store at about noon (it was Sunday).  As I jammed my key into the lock in a mad scramble to get the lights on, drawers counted, and the store open, I managed to slam my right hand in the heavy glass and metal front door.  That was the first event that I remembered clearly since I got that beer from Janie the night before.

At this point, anybody reading this knows exactly what happened.  But at the time, Law and Order: SVU had yet to turn roofies into a standard plot cliche, so I had yet to grasp the situation.

I was definitely much more than just hung over.  I got the store open reasonably close to on time.  It was the summer in a college town, and the store was right off campus, so no one was banging the doors down to get in.  The light was slicing through my head: it was so bad that I took of my prescription glasses, stuck them in my pocket, and grabbed some shades from the sunglasses display.  At about that time, Al walked in, and seeing me behind the counter with a set of Velvet Underground wrap around Ray Bans pasted to my mug sent him into a laughing fit that lasted five minutes.

I told him that I had no idea what happened to me the night before.  I could only remember drinking, at most, five beers, along with a slug or two of whiskey. I figured something must have happened after we left the party, but Al assured me that I started acting very strangely right before we left.  Al and I were frequent drinking buddies, so he was shocked that I was going to hell so quick on such a small amount of alcohol.

I had totally blacked out part of the night.  The only time I had blacked out before, I had consumed many, many times that amount of alcohol.  To this day, those are the only two times I have ever blacked out.

I was completely confused about what happened.  Al and I went over the night minute by minute, but nothing got much clearer.  He said that after Janie got me the beer, I chugged it, and then told Janie to say her goodbyes so we could hit the road.  That took her approximately twenty minutes to a half hour; by the time she got back, I was slurring my words.  As we walked to the car, Al noticed me stumbling.  He passed a friend who had just arrived at the party and got his car keys.  Janie in the meantime decided to leave with another friend, so Al was left with only me.  He couldn't talk me into leaving my truck there, so he told me to follow him, and he led me safely home.  As I went up to my house, I was barely walking, so it seemed unlikely that I did anything other than fall into bed when I got home.  It's a wonder I managed to set my alarm.

As we discussed it, all I could do is say "man, that beer Janie got me really did me in".  About the third time I said it, Al gave me a strange look, and I realized what had happened: some asshole was trying to get Janie, but got me instead.  Considering how whatever that beer was spiked with hit me, it would have completely wiped out poor little Janie.

We got a hold of Janie a few days later.  I'm not sure if what we were saying to her registered, other than the fact that she had to be careful when she was out.  Fortunately, she already was careful.  I can't say the same for some of her peers that showed up in the scene a few years later.

*          *          *          *          *

I will never understand fully what it is like to be a woman (obviously).  Even my wife, who is no shrinking violet, has had to get off the bus a stop early, or get off and walk around the block, just so some creep that was bugging her on the bus can't see where she lives.  As for me, there aren't many places in this city where I am afraid to walk (a few, but not many).  Only once was I concerned about my safety when I was being followed on the street, and all it took was an opportune scrap of 2" x 4" to redirect the attention of the people following me.

It is all women, and it is all men.  There are thousands of small, seemingly insignificant gestures that are coded in ways that men don't understand.  But worse, there are thousands of gestures which clearly cross the line that our culture still tries to excuse.  The fact that you have every intention of treating women decently is moot unless you work to revolutionize the sexist culture that surrounds us.  The fact that anyone finds the discussion of these things even remotely feminist (as opposed to being about SIMPLE HUMAN DECENCY) is sad.

So remember this next time you want to complain about being "friendzoned": first, she doesn't owe you anything, much less her body.  Second, her friendship is probably the most valuable gift she could give you.  Third, if you even think "friendzone" is a thing, you don't deserve her friendship.

It is time to start shunning and shaming sexist behavior.

_______________
*  I won't deny that boundaries are being violated in each case, but they are in no way equivalent.  It's the same with the idea that men can be the victims of physical domestic abuse.  I once discussed with an acquaintance some of the episodes from an earlier relationship when my significant other physically attacked me, and he went immediately to "see, men can be victims of domestic abuse too!", which was completely absurd because I had a foot and 110 pounds on my ex.  She was not a real physical threat to me.  Situations that are different are very, very rare.