“Real” name Kazuhiko Kato, but I always thought that was one of the ideal-odd pseudes. Here’s a nice thorough obit. And I must confess that only the one of his creations I know more than a tiny bit is Lupin III, and, worse yet, I prefer the anime versions I know to the manga I have read. The Castle of Cagliostro has the seeds of genius all over it.
D has managed to get a few co-workers fascinated by Marisa Monte, and the mixdisc duplicates as closely as possible a transcendent concert we heard in, yes, Miami, 2006.
MIAMI MARISA
2006
Yes, I think one of them is crazy. The other one is evil.
These appear in a (I believe 1920s) promo-thingy (for sewing needles) from The A.W. Miles Co., Livingston Montana (A.W. was my grandfather).
The constant drip of water wears away the hardest stone.
The constant gnaw of Towser masticates the toughest bone.
The constant cooling lover carries off the blushing maid.
And the store that makes the prices, is the store that gets the trade.
[Ahem] A. W. died 20 years before I was born. The poem inside the folder:
Remember the strike — the great coal strike
Were you caught with an empty bin?
And did you shiver and did you shake
And shake and shiver within?
Did you or your little ones catch a cold,
And the Doctor’s bills run high?
To-morrow may be a day too late —
TO-DAY is the day to buy
THE A.W. MILES CO.,
Agents Rocky Fork Coal
Little Feat, Waiting for Columbus (Rhino reissue, 2002, two-CD set).
I’ve been crazy about this record for more than 40 years now. If you need some scoop on the band, this does a fine job. I’m going to throw in a couple of personal notes.
A colleague in the poetry-writing program at the University of Montana became a fan of my musical smarts after I turned him on to Little Feat and once described our august teacher, the masterful Richard Hugo, as “A Fat Man in the Bathtub with the blues,” which I still think is Surrealist perfect.
My utmost agonies over rock deaths began with Janis and Jimi and ended with Cobain. Right in the middle was the horrid demise of Lowell George. I admit I was shocked at how sloppy and incoherent his solo album was — he sounded like fried brains on a plate. And he’d become a gruesome-balloon version of his once-sexy self.
I was working in a record store when the news of his death came over the radio. A rock-singer gal who also worked there (and would later die of a smack OD herself) told me a story about a backstage encounter she had with George. A groupie came scampering up to him and said “I got what you wanted, Lowell,” then presented a double-handful of mixed pills, pills and more pills. She dumped them into George’s hands and he — GLOMPH — snarfed them all down at once. As Eve Babitz has observed, Keith Richards survived because he didn’t mix his drugs.
For bonus credits (and no fair doing online research) can some youngsta tell me the joke and significance buried in Neon Park’s cover illustration (Gawd, seems the most talented people associated with this band were cursed). Also met a premature, albeit not self-caused, death.
Living in Cambridge during the late ’70s, I didn’t “get” the Marathon. It was for Bostonians and I didn’t feel like one. It also had obsessive quirks that reminded me of the repulsive inverse-pride for the Red Sox not winning a World Series. (It HAD to be considered one of the major sports events in the Universe. HAD to be, asshole.) And it was quite a hike to get over to Beacon Street from where I was. Eventually, I made the pilgrimage, but didn’t pay attention to timing and so just saw a torrent of ho-hum runners.
Later, I made the same journey with D and it was notably more fun. She was able to point out offbeat Boston-zone manners and mores. But, most years, if you lived in Cambridge, the Marathon was something you could avoid.
That was not possible after we relocated to Brookline. Beacon Street is our main thoroughfare and it’s about a 10-minute walk from our place to where the runners turn on to Beacon. Learned to leave the car in the garage on Patriots’ Day and if the weather was nice, a little stroll along the course with the fans and the fast-moving parade of ectomorphs was a contact high. Whiffs of party atmosphere. Got to take a childhood-friend house guest from MT along one time and that was about my favorite romp.
Then the bombing happened. I turned on the TV to the most mind-erasing moments since I flicked the switch and saw the second tower go down on 9/11.
The Marathon has never been the same for us. More rigid. More sense of being watched every second. Little puffs of danger floating in the air. I have walked down to the event maybe once since the catastrophe. When it’s kinda yuck weather like today, even the TV stays off. I don’t “get” the Marathon, in a completely different way.
At least we got a long, detailed look at all sides of the exterior of the cathedral when we visited Paris. Were astonished at the huge number of individually rendered gargoyles all over the upper structure. Never felt the medieval-monster mindset so vividly. An agonizing reminder that fire is the enemy of beauty and history.
Just a little reminder of the H.R. Giger illustration that spawned the most persistently widespread image of an alien since Little Green Men and Eggheads with Huge Eyes.
