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the big tooth grin of the piano -- Ben Carlin the big tooth grin of the piano no longer welcomes me. it had been quite some time now. open wide. say, "aaahhh..." this might hurt a bit. but it will let you know that you're alive. stop shadow boxing and punch the fucking wall. never broken a bone in my life, but I've got some life left; hammers and strings, tie me up and beat me. say something, please don't just sit there smiling. * * * The Chief was My Favorite (for Ken Greeley) -- Anthony George I remember when Lou Albano with his fake arm cast cracked open Chief Jay Strongbow's skull How the Chief tried to war dance his way out of it On Channel 17 the Chief vomiting blood pouring down his face Chief Jay Strongbow was the only one to resist BlackJack's Death Grip to foil Stan Staziak's Heart Punch the only one to rise up while in Johnny Hart's Sleeper Hold Unlocking these villains and triumphing I remember the Chief's best partner Ivan Putski the Polish Hammer how they beat the best tag team goons the Grand Wizard and Freddie Blassie equipped with foreign objects Chief Jay Strongbow beat Killer Kowalski, Ivan Volkov, George the Animal Steele, The Sheik, Mr. Fugi and Professor Tanaka The war dance lifted Chief Jay Strongbow from the middle of a pounding He'd start to twitch, shake his head the dance would begin his knees rising feet stomping head moving with his whoops the opponent punching him from behind chasing his certain end Then the miracle of the Chief he'd stop his face more proud than 1000 Mount Rushmores His body rigid for a moment his feet stutter stepping the rhythm to be unleashed his head bobbing again the spirits filling him he'd turn and bash the bad guy tormentor His dance returning to full force with each crunching blow In the living room I destroyed furniture I ran into walls, slammed doors, elbow smashed the hassack, came off the top rope of the sofa, spun in screaming circles of good guy ecstasy like the tv crowd in the clutch of my favorite Chief Jay Strongbow * * * in a world with no mirrors -- Ben Carlin in a world with no mirrors: men do not wrestle with alligators. women do not wrestle with themselves. winos rule the world -- with or without mirrors pit bulls are friendly by nature. I sleep in a bed of cactus and choose not to change the sheets -- stay ready, keep steady it's going to shatter wear your boots: combat in a world with no mirrors: vanity becomes stronger than money, the women are all still as beautiful -- with or without mirrors. The alligators are left in peace -- here they come now... and there is a lot less broken glass; bloody footprints * * * (Not quite poetry, we know, but a fine, fitting short piece nonetheless) In Memory of Clayton Moore, December 1999 -- Aviva Rosenthal I'm sitting here on a lovely sunny blue-skied morning with the ocean roaring outside my window and listening to the inimitable Lyle Lovett. He's the kind of guy everybody loves, the kind who could make a record saying he reciprocates in kind and you'd believe him. A Clayton Moore kinda guy. I was happy Clayton died when he did, by the way; he deserved to be the last fame corpse of the millennium. He lived a long, full life and seemed to possess a Buddhistic calm about his icon status, neither dismissing it as a shameful chapter in his life, nor clinging, Adam West-like. When I was seven, I had the whole Lone Ranger ensemble: a little black mask, cheap white straw panama, red bandanna, black cowboy boots and a chambris shirt with "Ma Bell is a cheap mother" embroidered on the back. I'd run around the crabgrass lawns of New Jersey summers shooting at cars with my cap gun, and I wasn't alone. He made everyone I know so happy; we all wanted to be him, marry him, or at least shake his hand and say, thanks for making us believe, sort of, that someone like you existed. And this was the seventies. Who was he anyway? We never did find out, and for this I thank the god of pre-"Who's the Boss?" interminable series mush. He was Luke without the hocus-pocus, Bogie without the sneer, Superman without the ubermenschian powers. Just a fellow, and maybe if you took the mask off, there would be no one underneath but an accounts receivable clerk or a cynical haberdasher, or maybe no one at all. His eloquence rested almost entirely on his unimpaired anonymity; Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are just ex- costumed alter egos, but there is no unmasked Ranger. And I don't believe, despite Monday morning PC analyses, that Tonto (and Silver and Paint) were playing Uncle Remus to his spoiled caucasian boy. They stuck around because they wanted to, because the aimless wanderings of the Ranger constituted the perfect meeting of the Dionysian and the Apollonian, the eroticism of abstinence and rootlessness, the mysterioso streamlined contours of pistol and heaving horse's flank, of civilization and the final source of natural anarchy, of snappy wit and manly silence; they stuck around because it was the only game going that managed to be both decent and fun. Women hardly ever came into play, not because they were redundant but because there is an androgynous romance beyond the complications of sexuality and modernity, one that doesn't suffer the banality of linear success, of ridiculous, awkward gender divisions and the ultimate omninegation of death but says instead, always, Hiyo, Silver! Away! and gallops off into all the setting suns of what I think really will be our last millennium. Hell, I'm amazed we've made it this far, looking back over the last ten centuries at the sum of our acts, such horror and beauty, I think our successors will be able only to shake their heads, wondering aloud, who -- if anyone -- were those masked men? But that's just me, babbling. Thanks, Clayton, for both memories and timing; you tied this all up for me better than any champagne or laser show fireworks ever could. |